Alan looked at her and mused. She was tall and stately, but her figure was well developed, and her form softly moulded. He admired her immensely. How incongruous an outcome from a clerical family! “It’s curious,” he said, gazing hard at her, “that you should be a dean’s daughter.”
“On the contrary,” Herminia answered, with perfect frankness, “I regard myself as a living proof of the doctrine of heredity.”
“How so?” Alan inquired.
“Well, my father was a Senior Wrangler,” Herminia replied, blushing faintly; “and I suppose that implies a certain moderate development of the logical faculties. In his generation, people didn’t apply the logical faculties to the grounds of belief; they took those for granted; but within his own limits, my father is still an acute reasoner. And then he had always the ethical and social interests. Those two things—a love of logic, and a love of right—are the forces that tend to make us what we call religious. Worldly people don’t care for fundamental questions of the universe at all; they accept passively whatever is told them; they think they think, and believe they believe it. But people with an interest in fundamental truth inquire for themselves into the constitution of the cosmos; if they are convinced one way, they become what we call theologians; if they are convinced the other way, they become what we call free-thinkers. Interest in the problem is common to both; it’s the nature of the solution alone that differs in the two cases.”
“That’s quite true,” Alan assented. “And have you ever noticed this curious corollary, that you and I can talk far more sympathetically with an earnest Catholic, for example, or an earnest Evangelical, than we can talk with a mere ordinary worldly person.”
“Oh dear, yes,” Herminia answered with conviction. “Thought will always sympathise with thought. It’s the unthinking mass one can get no further with.”
Alan changed the subject abruptly. This girl so interested him. She was the girl he had imagined, the girl he had dreamt of, the girl he had thought possible, but never yet met with. “And you’re in lodgings on the Holmwood here?” he said, musing. “For how much longer?”
“For, six weeks, I’m glad to say,” Herminia answered, rising.
“At what cottage?”
“Mrs Burke’s—not far from the station.”
“May I come to see you there?”
Herminia’s clear brown eyes gazed down at him, all puzzlement. “Why, surely,” she answered; “I shall be delighted to see you!” She paused for a second. “We agree about so many things,” she went on; “and it’s so rare to find a man who can sympathise with the higher longings in women.”
“When are you likeliest to be at home?” Alan asked.
“In the morning, after breakfast—that is, at eight o’clock,” Herminia answered, smiling; “or later, after lunch, say two or thereabouts.”
“Six weeks,” Alan repeated, more to himself than to her. Those six week were precious. Not a moment of them must be lost. “Then I think,” he went on quietly, “I shall call tomorrow.”
A wave of conscious pleasure broke over Herminia’s cheek, blush rose on white lily; but she answered nothing. She was glad this kindred soul should seem in such a hurry to renew her acquaintance.
Chapter II
Next afternoon, about two o’clock, Alan called with a tremulous heart at the cottage. Herminia had heard not a little of him meanwhile from her friend Mrs Dewsbury. “He’s a charming young man, my dear,” the woman of the world observed with confidence. “I felt quite sure you’d attract one another. He’s so clever and advanced, and everything that’s dreadful—just like yourself, Herminia. But then he’s also very well connected. That’s always something, especially when one’s an oddity. You wouldn’t go down one bit yourself, dear, if you weren’t a dean’s daughter. The shadow of a cathedral steeple covers a multitude of sins. Mr Merrick’s the son of the famous London gout doctor—you must know his name—all the royal dukes flock to him. He’s a barrister himself, and in excellent practice. You might do worse, do you know, than to go in for Alan Merrick.”
Herminia’s lip curled an almost imperceptible curl as she answered gravely, “I don’t think you quite understand my plans in life, Mrs Dewsbury. It isn’t my present intention to go in for anybody.”
But Mrs Dewsbury shook her head. She knew the world she lived in. “Ah, I’ve heard a great many girls talk like that beforehand,” she answered at once with her society glibness; “but when the right man turned up, they soon forgot their protestations. It makes a lot of difference, dear, when a man really asks you!”
Herminia bent her head. “You misunderstand me,” she replied. “I don’t mean to say I will never fall in love. I expect to do that. I look forward to it frankly—it is a woman’s place in life. I only mean to say, I don’t think anything will ever induce me to marry—that is to say, legally.”
Mrs Dewsbury gave a start of surprise and horror. She really didn’t know what girls were coming to nowadays—which, considering her first principles, was certainly natural. But if only she had seen the conscious flush with which Herminia received her visitor that afternoon, she would have been confirmed in her belief that Herminia, after all, in spite of her learning, was much like other girls. In which conclusion Mrs Dewsbury would not in the end have been fully justified.
When Alan arrived, Herminia sat at the window by the quaintly clipped box-tree, a volume of verse held half closed in her hand, though she was a great deal too honest and transparent to pretend she was reading it. She expected Alan to call, in accordance with his promise, for she had seen at Mrs Dewsbury’s how great an impression she produced upon him; and, having taught herself that it was every true woman’s duty to avoid the affectations and self-deceptions which the rule of man has begotten in women, she didn’t try to conceal from herself the fact that she on her side was by no means without interest in the question how soon he would pay her his promised visit. As he appeared at the rustic gate in the privet hedge, Herminia looked out, and changed colour with pleasure when she saw him push it open.
“Oh, how nice of you to look me up so soon!” she cried, jumping from her seat (with just a glance at the glass) and strolling out bareheaded into the cottage garden. “Isn’t this a charming place? Only look at our hollyhocks! Consider what an oasis after six months of London!”
She seemed even prettier than last night, in her simple white morning dress, a mere ordinary English gown, without affectation of any sort, yet touched with some faint reminiscence of a flowing Greek chiton. Its half-classical drapery exactly suited the severe regularity of her pensive features and her graceful figure. Alan thought as he looked at her he had never before seen anybody who appeared at all points so nearly to approach his ideal of womanhood. She was at once so high in type, so serene, so tranquil, and yet so purely womanly.
“Yes, it is a lovely place,” he answered, looking around at the clematis that drooped from the gable-ends. “I’m staying myself with the Watertons at the Park, but I’d rather have this pretty little rose-bowered garden than all their balustrades and Italian terraces. The cottagers have chosen the better part. What gillyflowers and what columbines! And here you look out so directly on the common. I love the gorse and the bracken, I love the stagnant pond, I love the very geese that tug hard at the silverweed, they make it all seem so deliciously English.”
“Shall we walk to the ridge?” Herminia asked with a sudden burst of suggestion. “It’s too rare a