LIBRARY THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART If Mr. WELLS has also written the following novels: LOVE AND ME. LEWISHAM KIPPS MR. POLLY THE WHEELS OF CHANCE THE NEW MACHIAVELLI ANN VERONICA TONO BUNGAY MARRIAGE BEALBY THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HAR- MAN THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH THE SOUL OF A BISHOP JOAN AND PETER THE UNDYING FIRE If The following fantastic and. imag- inative romances: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS THE TIME MACHINE THE WONDERFUL VISIT THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU THE SEA LADY THE SLEEPER AWAKES THE FOOD CF THE GODS THE WAR IN THE AIR THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON' IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET THE WORLD SET FREE And numerous Short Stories now collected in One Volume under the titlo of THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND If A Series of books upon Social, Re* ligious, and Political questions: ANTICIPATIONS (1900) MANKIND IN THE MAKING FIRST AND LAST THINGS NEW WORLDS FOR OLD A MODERN UTOPIA THE FUTURE IN AMERICA AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD WHAT IS COMING? WAR AND THE FUTURE IN THE FOURTH YEAR GOD THE INVISIBLE KING THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZA- TION WASHINGTON AND THE RIDDLE OF PEACE X And two little books about chil- dren's play, called: FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART BY H. G. WELLS TLTEMACMILLAX COMPANY 1922 All rights reserved ffBINIBD IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEEIOA COPYRIGHT, 1921 AND 1022, Br The international magazine COMPANY, Copyright, 1921 and 1922, By H. G. WELLS. Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1922i All rights reserved by the Author. CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. The Consultation 2. Lady Hardy .... 3. The Departure .... 4. At Maidenhead .... 5. In the Land of the Forgotten Peoples G. The Encounter at Stonehenge . 7. Companionship .... 8. Full Moon ..... 9. The Last Days of Sir Richmond Hardy PAQD 1 22 26 42 99 . 125 ., 172 . 221 . 261 THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART CHAPTER THE FIRST THE CONSULTATION ^ 1 The maid was a young woman of great natural calmness; she was accustomed to let in visitors who had this air of being annoyed and finding one umbrella too numerous for them. It mattered nothing to her that the gentleman was asking for Dr. Martineau as if he was asking for something with an unpleasanl taste. Almost imperceptibly she relieved him of bis umbrella and juggled his hat and ooat on <<> a massive mahogany stand. "What uame, Sir!" she asked, holding open the door of the consulting room. "Hardy," Baid the gentleman, and then yield- it, reluctantly with its distasteful three-year- old honour, "Sir Richmond Bardy." The doer closed softly behind him and he found himself in undivided po ion of the large indif- 1 2 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART f erent apartment in which the nervous and mental troubles of the outer world eddied for a time on their way to the distinguished specialist. A bowl of daffodils, a handsome bookcase containing bound Victorian magazines and antiquated medi- cal works, some paintings of Scotch scenery, three big armchairs, a buhl clock, and a bronze Dancing Faun, by their want of any collective idea en- hanced rather than mitigated the promiscuous dis- regard of the room. He drifted to the midmost of the three windows and stared out despondently at Harley Street. For a minute or so he remained as still and limp as an empty jacket on its peg, and then a gust of irritation stirred him. "Damned fool I was to come here," he said. . . . "Damned fool! 1 ' Rush out of the place f . . . "I've given my name." . . , He heard the door behind him open and for a moment pretended not to hear. Then he turned round. "I don't see what you can do for me," he said. "I'm sure I don't," said the doctor. "People come here and talk." There was something reassuringly inaggressive about the figure that confronted Sir Richmond. Dr. Martineau's height wanted at least three inches of Sir Richmond's five feet eleven; he was humanly plump, his face was round and pink and THE CONSULTATION 3 cheerfully wistful, a little suggestive of the full moon, of what the full moon might be if it could get fresh air and exercise. Either his tailor had made his trousers too short or he had braced them too high so that he seemed to have grown out of them quite recently. Sir Richmond had been dreading an encounter with some dominating and mesmeric personality; this amiable presence dis- pelled his preconceived resistances. Dr. Martineau, a little out of breath as though he had been running upstairs, with his hands in his trouser pockets, seemed intent only on disavowals. "People come here and talk. It does them good, and sometimes I am able to offer a suggestion. "Talking to someone who understands a little," he expanded the idea. "I'm jangling damnably . . . overwork. . . ." "Not overwork," Dr. Martineau corrected. "Not overwork. Overwork never hurt anyone. Fatigue stops that. A man can work — good straightforward work, without internal resistance, until he drops, — and never hurt himself. You must be working against friction." "Friction! I'm like a machine without oil. I'm grinding to death. . . . And it's so damned im- portant I shouldn't break down. It's vitally important." He stressed his words and reinforced them with a quivering gesture of hifl upraised clenched hand. "My temper's in rags. I explode at any little 4 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART thing. I'm raw. I can't work steadily for ten minutes and I can't leave off working." "Your name," said the doctor, ''is familiar. Sir Richmond Hardy? In the papers. What is it?" "Fuel." "Of course! The Fuel Commission. Stupid of me ! We certainly can't afford to have you ill. ' ' "I am ill. But you can't afford to have me ab- sent from that Commission." ' ' Your technical knowledge " ' ' Technical knowledge be damned ! Those men mean to corner the national fuel supply. And waste it! For their profits. That's what I'm up against. You don't know the job I have to do. You don't know what a Commission of that sort is. The moral tangle of it. You don't know how its possibilities and limitations are canvassed and schemed about, long before a single member is appointed. Old Cassidy worked the whole thing with the prime minister. I can see that now as plain as daylight. I might have seen it at first. . . . Three experts who'd been got at; they thought Z'd been got at; two Labour men who'd do anything you wanted them to do provided you called them 'level-headed.' Wagstaffe the social- ist art critic who could be trusted to play the fool and make nationalization look silly, and the rest mine owners, railway managers, oil profiteers, fi- nancial adventurers. ..." THE CONSULTATION 5 He was fairly launched. "It's the blind folly of it ! In the days before the war it was different. Then there was abundance. A little grabbing or cornering was all to the good. All to the good. It prevented things being used up too fast. And the world was running by habit; the inertia was tremendous. You could take all sorts of liberties. But all this is altered. We 're living in a different world. The public won't stand things it used to stand. It's anew public. It's — wild. It'll smash up the show if they go too far. Everything short and running shorter — food, fuel, material. But these people go on. They go on as though noth- ing had changed. . . . Strikes, Russia, nothing will warn them. There are men on that Commis- sion who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway just before they went down in it. . . . It's a struggle with suicidal Imbeciles. It's ! But I'm talking! I didn't come here to talk Fuel." "You think there may be a smash-up?" "1 lie awake at night, thinking of it." "A social smash-up." "Economic. Social. Yes. Don't you?" "A social smash up seems 1<> me altogether a ibility. All Borts of people L find think that," I the doctor. "All sorts of people lie awake thinking of H." " I wish some of my damned Committee would 1" The doctor turned his eyes to the window. "I lie awake too," he said and seemed to reflect. But he 6 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART was observing his patient acutely — with his ears. "But you see how important it is," said Sir Richmond, and left his sentence unfinished. "I'll do what I can for you," said the doctor, and considered swiftly what line of talk he had best follow. $2 "This sense of a coming smash is epidemic," said the doctor. "It's at the back of all sorts of mental trouble. It is a new state of mind. Before the war it was abnormal — a phase of neurasthenia. Now it is almost the normal state with whole classes of intelligent people. Intelligent, I say. The others always have been casual and adven- turous and always will be. A loss of confidence in the general background of life. So that we seem to float over abysses." "We do," said Sir Richmond. "And we have nothing but the old habits and ideas acquired in the days of our assurance. There is a discord, a jarring." The doctor pursued his train of thought. "A new, raw and dreadful sense of responsibility for the universe. Accompanied by a realization that the job is overwhelmingly too big for us." "We've got to stand up to the job," said Sir Richmond. "Anyhow, what else is there to do? THE CONSULTATION 7 We may keep things together. . . . I've got to do my bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that's where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so de- sirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and inaccurate. . . . Sloppy. . . . Indolent. . . . Vicious! ..." The doctor was about to speak, but Sir Rich- mond interrupted him. "What's got hold of me? What's got hold of me? I used to work well enough. It 's as if my will had come untwisted and was ravelling out into separate strands. I've lost my unity. I'm not a man but a mob. I've got to recover my vigour. At any cost." Again as the doctor was about to speak the word was taken out of his mouth. "And what I think of it, Dr. Martineau, is this: it's fatigue. It's mental and moral fatigue. Too much effort. On too high a level. And too — austere. One strains and fags. Flags! 'Flags' I meant to say. One strains and flags and then the lower stuff in one, the subconscious stuff, takes control." There was a flavour of popularized psychoanal- ysis about this, and the doctor drew in the corners of his mouth and gave his head a critical slant. "M'm." But this only made Sir Richmond raise his voice and quicken his speech. "I want," lie said, "a good tonic. A pick-me-up, a stimulating harmless drug of some sort. That's indicated anyhow. To begin with. Something to pull me 8 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART together, as people say. Bring me up to the scratch again. ' ' "I don't like the use of drugs," said the doctor. The expectation of Sir Richmond's expression changed to disappointment. ''But that's not rea- sonable," he cried. "That's not reasonable. That's superstition. Call a thing a drug and con- demn it ! Everything is a drug. Everything that affects you. Food stimulates or tranquillizes. Drink. Noise is a stimulant and quiet an opiate. What is life but response to stimulants? Or reac- tion after them? When I'm exhausted I want food. When I'm overactive and sleepless I want tranquillizing. When I'm dispersed I want pull- ing together." "But we don't know how to use drugs," the doc- tor objected. "But you ought to know." Dr. Martineau fixed his eye on a first floor window sill on the opposite side of Harley Street. His manner suggested a lecturer holding on to his theme. "A day will come when we shall be able to ma- nipulate drugs — all sorts of drugs — and work them in to our general way of living. I have no preju- dice against them at all. A time will come when we shall correct our moods, get down to our re- serves of energy by their help, suspend fatigue, put off sleep during long spells of exertion. At THE CONSULTATION 9 some sudden crisis for example. When we shall know enough to know just how far to go with this, that or the other stuff. And how to wash out its after effects. ... I quite agree with you, — in principle. . . . But that time hasn't come yet. . . . Decades of research yet. ... If we tried that sort of thing now, we should be like children play- ing with poisons and explosives. ... It's out of the question." "I've been taking a few little things already. Easton Syrup for example." "Strychnine. It carries you for a time and drops you by the way. Has it done you any good — any nett good? It has — I can see — broken your sleep." The doctor turned round again to his patient and looked up into his troubled face. "Given physiological trouble I don't mind re- sorting to a drug. Given structural injury I don't mind surgery. But except for any little mischief your amateur dragging may have done you do not seem to me to be either sick or injured. You've no trouble either of structure or material. You're — worried — ill in your mind, and otherwise per- fectly sound. It's the ourrenl of your thoughts, fermenting, [f the trouble is in the menial sphere, why go out, of the mental sphere for a treatment? Talk and thought ; these are your remedies. Cool deliberate thought. You're unravelled. You say it yourself. Drugs will only make this or that un- 10 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART ravelled strand behave disproportionately. You don't want that. You want to take stock of your- self as a whole — find out where you stand." "But the Fuel Commission?" "Is it sitting now?" "Adjourned till after Whitsuntide. But there 's heaps of work to be done. 1 ' Still," he added, "this is my one chance of any treatment. ' ' The doctor made a little calculation. "Three weeks. ... It's scarcely time enough to begin." "You're certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosen tonics " "Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it." He decided to take a plunge. "I've just been thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I'd like to see you through this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be some sort of beginning now. In this three weeks. Suppose. ..." Sir Richmond leapt to his thought. "I'm free to go anywhere. ' ' "Golf would drive a man of your composition mad?" "It would." "That's that. Still—. . . The country must be getting beautiful again now, — after all the rain we have had. I have a little two-seater. I don't know. . . . The repair people promise to release it before Friday. ' ' THE CONSULTATION 11 "But / have a choice of two very comfortable little cars. Why not be my guest?" "That might be more convenient." "I'd prefer my own car." "Then what do you say?" "I agree. Peripatetic treatment." "South and west. We could talk on the road. In the evenings. By the wayside. We might make the beginnings of a treatment. ... A sim- ple tour. Nothing elaborate. You wouldn't bring a man?" "I always drive myself." § 3 "There's something very pleasant," said the doctor, envisaging his own rash proposal, "in travelling along roads you don't know and seeing houses and parks and villages and towns for which you do not feel in the slightest degree re- sponsible. They hide all their troubles from the road. Their backyards are tucked away out of sight, they show a brave face; there's none of the nasty sell' betrayals of the railway approach. And everything will be fresh still. There will still be a lot of apple blossom — and bluebells. . . . And all the while we can be getting on with your affair." 12 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART He was back at the window now. "I want the holiday myself," he said. He addressed Sir Richmond over his shoulder. "Have you noted how fagged and unstable every- body is getting? Everybody intelligent, I mean." "It's an infernally worrying time." "Exactly. Everybody suffers." "It's no good going on in the old ways " "It isn't. And it's a frightful strain to get into any new ways. So here we are. "A man," the doctor expanded, "isn't a crea- ture in vacuo. He's himself and his world. He's a surface of contact, a system of adaptations, be- tween his essential self and his surroundings. Well, our surroundings have become — how shall I put it? — a landslide. The war which seemed such a definable catastrophe in 1914 was, after all, only the first loud crack and smash of the collapse. The war is over and — nothing is over. This peace is a farce, reconstruction an exploded phrase. The slide goes on, — it goes, if anything, faster, with- out a sign of stopping. And all our poor little adaptations! Which we have been elaborating and trusting all our lives ! . . . One after another they fail us. We are stripped. . . . We have to begin all over again. ... I'm fifty-seven and I feel at times nowadays like a chicken new hatched in a thunderstorm." The doctor walked towards the bookcase and turned. THE CONSULTATION 13 " Everybody is like that. ... It isn't — what are you going to do? It isn't — what am I going to do? It's — what are we all going to do? . . . Lord ! How safe and established everything was in 1910, say. We talked of this great war that was coming, but nobody thought it would come. We had been born in peace, comparatively speaking; we had been brought up in peace. There was talk of wars. There were wars — little wars — that al- tered nothing material. . . . Consols used to be at 112 and you fed your household on ten shillings a head a week. You could run over all Europe, barring Turkey and Russia, without even a pass- port. You could get to Italy in a day. Never were life and comfort so safe — for respectable people. And we were respectable people. . . . That was the world that made us what we are. Thai was the sheltering and friendly greenhouse in which we grew. We fitted our minds to that. . . . And here we are with the greenhouse fall- ing in upon as Lump by lump, smash and clatter, the wild winds of heaven tearing in through the ipa." Upstairs on Dr. Martineau's desk lay the typescript of tin' opening chapters of a hook that was Intended to make a greal splash in the world, his Psychology of a New Age. Be had his meta- phors ready. "We said : 'This system will always go on. We needn't bother abont it.' We just planned our 14 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART lives accordingly. It was like a bird building its nest of frozen snakes. My father left me a decent independence. I developed my position; I have lived between here and the hospital, doing good work, enormously interested, prosperous, mildly distinguished. I had been born and brought up on the good ship Civilization. I assumed that some- one else was steering the ship all right. I never knew ; I never enquired. ' ' "Nor did I," said Sir Richmond, "but " "And nobody was steering the ship," the doc- tor went on. ' ' Nobody had ever steered the ship. It was adrift." "I realized that. I " " It is a new realization. Always hitherto men have lived by faith — as children do, as the animals do. At the back of the healthy mind, human or animal, has been this persuasion: "This is all right. This will go on. If I keep the rule, if I do so and so, all will be well. I need not trouble further; things are cared for.' " "If we could go on like that!" said Sir Richmond. "We can't. That faith is dead. The war — and the peace — have killed it." The doctor's round face became speculative. His resemblance to the full moon increased. He seemed + o gaze at remote things. "It may very well be that man is no more capable of living out of that atmosphere of assurance than a tadpole is THE CONSULTATION 15 of living out of water. His mental existence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may be- come incapable of sustained social life. He may become frantically self-seeking — incoherent . . . a stampede. . . . Human sanity may — disperse. "That's our trouble," the doctor completed. "Our fundamental trouble. All our confidences and our accustomed adaptations are destroyed. We fit together no longer. We are — loose. We don't know where we are nor what to do. The psychology of the former time fails to give safe responses, and the psychology of the New Age has still to develop." M "That is all very well," said Sir Richmond in the resolute voice of one who will be pent no longer. "That is all very well as far as it goes. But it does not cover my case. I am not suffering from Lnadaptation. I have adapted. I have thought things out. I think — much as you do. Much as you do. So it's not that. But . . . Mind you, I am perfectly clear where I am. Where we are. What is happening to us all is the break- up of the entire system. Agreed! We have to make another system or perish amidst the wreck- age. I see that clearly. Science and plan have to replace custom and tradition in human affairs. Soon. Very soon. Granted. Granted. We used 16 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART to say all that. Even before the war. Now we mean it. We've muddled about in the old ways overlong. Some new sort of world, planned and scientific, has to be got going. Civilization re- newed. Rebuilding civilization — while the prem- ises are still occupied and busy. It's an immense enterprise, but it is the only thing to be done. In some ways it's an enormously attractive en- terprise. Inspiring. It grips my imagination. I think of the other men who must be at work. Working as I do rather in the dark as yet. With whom I shall presently join up. . . . The attempt may fail; all things human may fail; but on the other hand it may succeed. I never had such faith in anything as I have in the rightness of the work I am doing now. I begin at that. But here is where my difficulty comes in. The top of my brain, my innermost self says all that I have been saying, but The rest of me won't follow. The rest of me refuses to attend, forgets, strag- gles, misbehaves." "Exactly." The word irritated Sir Richmond. "Not 'ex- actly' at all. 'Amazingly,' if you like. ... I have this unlimited faith in our present tremen- dous necessity — for work — for devotion ; I believe my share, the work I am doing, is essential to the whole thing — and I work sluggishly. I work reluctantly. I work damnably." "Exact " The doctor checked himself. "All THE CONSULTATION 17 that is explicable. Indeed it is. Listen for a mo- ment to me! Consider what you are. Consider what we are. Consider what a man is before you marvel at his ineptitudes of will. Face the ac- cepted facts. Here is a creature not ten thousand generations from the ape, his ancestor. Not ten thousand. And that ape again, not a score of thousands from the monkey, his forebear. A man's body, his bodily powers, are just the body and powers of an ape, a little improved, a little adapted to novel needs. That brings me to my point. Can his mind and will be anything better? For a few generations, a few hundreds at most, knowledge and wide thought have flared out on the darknesses of life. . . . But the substance of man is ape still. He may carry a light in his brain, but his instincts move in the darkness. Out of that darkness he draws his motives." "Or fails to draw them," said Sir Richmond. "Or fails. . . . And that is where these new methods of treatment come in. We explore that failure. Together. What the psychoanalyst does — and 1 will confess that I owe much to the psychoanalyst — what lie does is to direct thwarted, disappointed and perplexed people to the reali- ties of their own nature. Which they have been accustomed to ignore and forget. They come to us with high ambitions or Lovely illusions about themselves, torn, shredded, spoilt. They are mor- ally denuded. Dreams they hate pursue them; 18 SECRET PLACES OP THE HEART abhorrent desires draw them; they are the prey of irresistible yet uncongenial impulses ; they suc- cumb to black despairs. The first thing we ask them is this : ' What else could you expect f ' " "What else could I expect?" Sir Richmond re- peated, looking down on him. "H'm!" "The wonder is not that you are sluggish, re- luctantly unselfish, inattentive, spasmodic. The wonder is that you are ever anything else. . . . Do you realize that a few million generations ago, everything that stirs in us, everything that exalts human life, self-devotions, heroisms, the utmost triumphs of art, the love — for love it is — that makes you and me care indeed for the fate and welfare of all this round world, was latent in the body of some little lurking beast that crawled and hid among the branches of vanished and for- gotten Mesozoic trees? A petty egg-laying, bristle-covered beast it was, with no more of the rudiments of a soul than bare hunger, weak lust and fear. . . . People always seem to regard that as a curious fact of no practical importance. It isn't: it's a vital fact of the utmost practical importance. That is what you are made of. Why should you expect — because a war and a revolu- tion have shocked you — that you should suddenly be able to reach up and touch the sky?" "H'm!" said Sir Richmond. "Have I been touching the sky?" THE CONSULTATION 19 "You are trying to play the part of an honest rich man." "I don't care to see the whole system go smash." "Exactly," said the doctor, before he could pre- vent himself. "But is it any good to tell a man that the job he is attempting is above him — that he is just a hairy reptile twice removed — and all that sort of thing?" "Well, it saves him from hoping too much and being too greatly disappointed. It recalls him to the proportions of the job. He gets something done by not attempting everything. . . . And it clears him up. We get him to look into him- self, to see directly and in measurable terms what it is that puts him wrong and holds him back. He's no longer vaguely incapacitated. He knows." "That's diagnosis. That's not treatment." "Treatment by diagnosis. To analyze a men- tal knol is lo untie it." "You propose thai I shall spend my time, until the Commission unci.-, in thinking about myself. ... I wanted to forget myself.*" "Like a man who tries lo forget (hat his petrol i- running short and a cylinder missing fire. . . . No. Come back to I he question of what you are," said the doctor. "A creature of the darkness with 20 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART new lights. Lit and half -blinded by science and the possibilities of controlling the world that it opens out. In that light your will is all for service ; you care more for mankind than for yourself. You begin to understand something of the self beyond your self. But it is a partial and a shaded light as yet ; a little area about you it makes clear, the rest is still the old darkness — of millions of intense and narrow animal generations. . . . You are like someone who awakens out of an imme- morial sleep to find himself in a vast chamber, in a great and ancient house, a great and ancient house high amidst frozen and lifeless mountains — in a sunless universe. You are not alone in it. You are not lord of all you survey. Your leadership is disputed. The darkness even of the room you are in is full of ancient and discarded but quite unsubjugated powers and purposes. . . . They thrust ambiguous limbs and claws suddenly out of the darkness into the light of your attention. They snatch things out of your hand, they trip your feet and jog your elbow. They crowd and cluster behind you. Wherever your shadow falls, they creep right up to you, creep upon you and strug- gle to take possession of you. The souls of apes, monkeys, reptiles and creeping things haunt the passages and attics and cellars of this living house in which your consciousness has awak- ened. ..." The doctor gave this quotation from his unpub- THE CONSULTATION 21 lished book the advantages of an abrupt break and a pause. Sir Richmond shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "And you propose a vermin hunt in the old tenement I" "The modern man has to be master in his own house. He has to take stock and know what is there." "Three weeks of self vivisection." "To begin with. Three weeks of perfect hon- esty with yourself. As an opening. ... It will take longer than that if we are to go through with the job." "It's a considerable — process." "It is." "Yet you shrink from simple things like drugs!" 1 ' Self -knowledge — without anaesthetics. ' ' "Has this sort of thing ever done anyone any good at all?" "It has turned hundreds back to sanity and steady work." "How frank are we going to be? How full are we going to be? Anyhow — we can break off at any time. . . . Well try it. We'll try it. . . . And so for this journey into the west of England. . . . And — if we (-an get there — I'm not sure that we can get there — into the secret places of my heart." CHAPTER THE SECOND LADY HARDY The patient left the house with much more self- possession than he had shown when entering it. Dr. Martineau had thrus[t him back from his intenser prepossessions to a more generalized view of himself, had made his troubles objective and detached him from them. He could even find something amusing now in his situation. He liked the immense scope of the theoretical duet in which they had indulged. He felt that most of it was entirely true — and, in some untraceable man- ner, absurd. There were entertaining possibilities in the prospect of the doctor drawing him out — he himself partly assisting and partly resisting. He was a man of extensive reservations. His private life was in some respects exceptionally private. "J don't confide. ... Do I even confide in my- self? I imagine I do. ... Is there anything in myself that I haven't looked squarely in the face? . . . How much are we going into? Even as re- gards facts? "Does it really help a man — to see himself? ..." 22 LADY HARDY 23 Such thoughts engaged him until he found him- self in his study. His desk and his writing table were piled high with a heavy burthen of work. Still a little preoccupied with Dr. Martineau's exposition, he began to handle this confusion. . . . At half past nine he found himself with three hours of good work behind him. It had seemed like two. He had not worked like this for many weeks. "This is very cheering," he said. "And unexpected. Can old Moon-face have hypnotized me 1 Anyhow — . . . Perhaps I Ve only imagined I was ill. . . . Dinner?" He looked at his watch and was amazed at the time. "Good Lord! I've been at it three hours. What can have happened? Funny I didn't hear the gong." He went downstairs and found Lady Hardy reading a magazine in a dining-room armchair and finely poised between devotion and martyr- dom. A shadow of vexation fell athwart his mind at the sight of her. " I 'd no idea it was so late, ' ' he said. ' ' I heard no gong." "After you swore so at poor Bradley I ordered that there should he no gongs when we were alone. I did come up to your door about half past eight. I crept up. But I was afraid I might upset you if I cume in." "But you've not waited " "I've had a mouthful of soup." Lady Hardy rang the bell. 24 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "I've done some work at last," said Sir Rich- mond, astride on the hearthrug. "I'm glad," said Lady Hardy, without glad- ness. "I waited for three hours." Lady Hardy was a frail little blue-eyed woman with uneven shoulders and a delicate sweet pro- file. Hers was that type of face that under even the most pleasant and luxurious circumstances still looks bravely and patiently enduring. Her refinement threw a tinge of coarseness over his eager consumption of his excellent clear soup. "What's this fish, Bradley?" he asked. "Turbot, Sir Richmond." "Don't you have any?" he asked his wife. "I've had a little fish," said Lady Hardy. When Bradley was out of the room, Sir Rich- mond remarked: "I saw that nerves man, Dr. Martineau, to-day. He wants me to take a holiday." The quiet patience of the lady's manner intensi- fied. She said nothing. A flash of resentment lit Sir Richmond's eyes. When he spoke again, he seemed to answer unspoken accusations. "Dr. Martineau 's idea is that he should come with me." The lady adjusted herself to a new point of view. "But won't that be reminding you of your ill- ness and worries?" "He seems a good sort of fellow. ... I'm in- clined to like him. He'll be as good company as LADY HARDY 25 anyone. . . . This toumedos looks excellent. Have some." "I had a little bird," said Lady Hardy, "when I found you weren't coming." "But I say — don't wait here if you've dined. Bradley can see to me." She smiled and shook her head with the quiet conviction of one who knew her duty better. "Perhaps I'll have a little ice pudding when it comes," she said. Sir Richmond detested eating alone in an at- mosphere of observant criticism. And he did not like talking with his mouth full to an unembar- rassed interlocutor who made no conversational leads of her own. After a few mouthfuls he pushed his plate away from him. "Then let's have up the ice pudding," he said with a faint note of bitterness. "But have you finished V 1 "The ice pudding!" he exploded wrathfully. "The ice pudding!" Lady Hardy sat for a moment, a picture of meek dial rees. Then, her delicate eyebrows raised, and tin- corners of her mouth drooping, she touched the button of the silver table-bell. CHAPTER THE THIRD THE DEPARTURE No wise man goes out upon a novel expedition without misgivings. And between their first meet- ing and the appointed morning both Sir Richmond Hardy and Dr. Martineau were the prey of quite disagreeable doubts about each other, themselves, and the excursion before them. At the time of their meeting each had been convinced that he gauged the other sufficiently for the purposes of the proposed tour. Afterwards each found him- self trying to recall the other with greater dis- tinctness and able to recall nothing but queer, ominous and minatory traits. The doctor's impres- sion of the great fuel specialist grew ever darker, leaner, taller and more impatient. Sir Richmond took on the likeness of a monster obdurate and hostile, he spread upwards until like the Djinn out of the bottle, he darkened the heavens. And he talked too much. He talked ever so much too much. . . . Sir Richmond also thought that the doctor 26 THE DEPARTURE 27 talked too much. In addition, he read into his imperfect memory of the doctor's face, an expres- sion of protruded curiosity. What was all this problem of motives and inclinations that they were "going into" so gaily? He had merely consulted the doctor on a simple, straightforward need for a nervous tonic — that was what he had needed — a tonic. Instead he had engaged himself for — he scarcely knew what — an indiscreet, indelicate, and altogether undesirable experiment in confidences. Both men were considerably reassured when at last they set eyes on each other again. Indeed each was surprised to find something almost agreeable in the appearance of the other. Dr. Martineau at once perceived that the fierceness of Sir Richmond was nothing more than the fierce- ness of an overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glance that the curiosity of Dr. Mar- tineau'. s bearing had in it nothing personal or base; it was just the fine alertness of the scientific mind. Sir Richmond had arrived nearly forty minutes late and ii would have been evidenl to a much less highly trained observer than \)r. Martineau that some dissension had arisen between the little, lady- like, cream and black Charmeuse car and its owner. There was a faint air of resentment and protest between them. As if Sir Richmond had been in some way rude to it. The cap of the radiator w r as adorned with a 28 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART little brass figure of a flying Mercury. Frozen in a sprightly attitude, its stiff bound and its fixed heavenward stare was highly suggestive 'of a forced and tactful disregard of current unpleas- antness. Nothing was said, however, to confirm or dispel this suspicion of a disagreement between the man and the car. Sir Richmond directed and assisted Dr. Martineau 's man to adjust the luggage at the back, and Dr. Martineau watched the proceedings from his dignified front door. He was wearing a suit of fawn tweeds, a fawn Homburg hat and a light Burberry, with just that effect of special preparation for a holiday which betrays the habit- ually busy man. Sir Richmond 's brown gauntness was, he noted, greatly set off by his suit of grey. There had certainly been some sort of quarrel. Sir Richmond was explaining the straps to Dr. Martineau 's butler with the coldness a man be- trays when he explains the uncongenial habits of some unloved intimate. And when the moment came to start and the little engine did not imme- diately respond to the electric starter, he said: 1 * Oh ! Come up, you ! ' ' His voice sank at the last word as though it was an entirely confidential communication to the lit- tle car. And it was an extremely low and dis- agreeable word. So Dr. Martineau decided that it was not his business to hear it. . . . It was speedily apparent that Sir Richmond was THE DEPARTURE 29 an experienced and excellent driver. He took the Charmeuse out into the traffic of Baker Street and westward through brisk and busy streets and roads to Brentford and Hounslow smoothly and swiftly, making a score of unhesitating and ac- curate decisions without apparent thought. There was very little conversation until they were through Brentford. Near Shepherd's Bush, Sir Richmond had explained, "This is not my own particular car. That was butted into at the ga- rage this morning and its radiator cracked. So I had to fall back on this. It's quite a good little car. In its way. My wife drives it at times. It has one or two constitutional weaknesses — inci- dental to the make — gear-box over the back axle for example — gets all the vibration. Whole ma- chine rather on the flimsy side. Still " He left the topic at that. Dr. Marl in ci n said something of no consequence aboul its being a very comfortable little car. Somewhere between Brentford and Hounslow, Sir Richmond plunged into the matter between them. " I don't know how deep we are going into these psychological probings of yours," he said. "But I donlij wry much if wo shall get anything out of thorn." "Probably not," said Dr. Martineau. "After all, what I want is a tonio. F don't see that there is anything positively wrong with me. A certain lack of energy " 30 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART ' ' Lack of balance, ' ' corrected the doctor. * ' You are wasting energy upon internal friction." "But isn't that inevitable? No machine is per- fectly efficient. No man either. There is always a waste. Waste of the type ; waste of the individ- ual idiosyncrasy. This little car, for instance, isn't pulling as she ought to pull — she never does. She's low in her class. So with myself; there is a natural and necessary high rate of energy waste. Moods of apathy and indolence are nat- ural to me. (Damn that omnibus ! All over the road!)" "We don't deny the imperfection " began the doctor. "One has to fit oneself to one's circumstances," said Sir Richmond, opening up another line of thought. "We don't deny the imperfection," the doctor stuck to it. ' ' These new methods of treatment are based on the idea of imperfection. We begin with that. I began with that last Tuesday. ..." Sir Richmond, too, was sticking to his argu- ment. "A man, and for that matter the world he lives in, is a tangle of accumulations. Your psychoanalyst starts, it seems to me, with a no- tion of stripping down to something fundamental. The ape before us was a tangle of accumulations, just as we are. So it was with his forebears. So it has always been. All life is an endless tangle of accumulations." THE DEPARTURE 31 "Recognize it," said the doctor. "And then?" said Sir Richmond, controver- sially. "Recognize in particular your own tangle." "Is my particular tangle very different from the general tangle ? (Oh! Damn this feeble little en- gine!) I am a creature of undecided will, urged on by my tangled heredity to do a score of entirely incompatible things. Mankind, all life, is that." "But our concern is the particular score of in- compatible things you are urged to do. We ex- amine and weigh We weigh " The doctor wasjstill saying these words when a violent and ultimately disastrous struggle began between Sir Richmond and the little Charmeuse car. The doctor stopped in mid-sentence. It was near Taplow station that the mutual ex- asperation of man and machine was brought to a crisis by the clumsy ('mergence of a laundry cart from a side road. Sir Richmond was obliged to pull up smartly and stopped his engine. It refused an immediate obedience to the electric starter. Then it picked up, Paced noisily, disen- gaged great volumes of bluish smoke, and dis- played an unaccountable indisposition to run on any gear bn1 the lowest. Sir Richmond thought aloud, unpleasing thoughts. He addressed the lit- tle car as a person ; he referred to ancienl disputes and temperamental incompatibilities. His anger betrayed him a coarse, ill-bred man. The little 32 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART car quickened under his reproaches. There were some moments of hope, dashed by the necessity of going dead slow behind an interloping van. Sir Richmond did not notice the outstretched arm of the driver of the van, and stalled his engine for a second time. The electric starter refused its office altogether. For some moments Sir Eichmond sat like a man of stone. "I must wind it up," he said at last in a pro- found and awful voice. ' ' I must wind it up. ' ' "I get out, don't I?" asked the doctor, unan- swered, and did so. Sir Richmond, after a grim search and the displacement and replacement of the luggage, produced a handle from the locker at the back of the car and prepared to wind. There was a little difficulty. ' ' Come up!" he said, and the small engine roared out like a stage lion. The two gentlemen resumed their seats. The car started and then by an unfortunate inadvert- ency Sir Richmond pulled the gear lever over from the first speed to the reverse. There was a metallic clangour beneath the two gentlemen, and the car slowed down and stopped although the engine was still throbbing wildly, and the dainty veil of blue smoke still streamed forward from the back of the car before a gentle breeze. The doctor got out almost precipitately, followed by a gaunt mad- man, mouthing vileness, who had only a minute or so before been a decent British citizen. He THE DEPARTURE 33 made seme blind lunges at the tremulous but ob- durate car, but rather as if he looked for offences and accusations than for displacements to adjust. Quivering and refusing, the little car was ex- traordinarily like some recalcitrant little old aris- tocratic lady in the hands of revolutionaries, and this made the behaviour of Sir Eichmond seem even more outrageous than it would otherwise have done. He stopped the engine, he went down on his hands and knees in the road to peer up at the gear-box, then without restoring the spark, he tried to wind up the engine again. He spun the little handle with an insane violence, faster and faster for — as it seemed to the doctor — the better part of a minute. Beads of perspiration appeared upon his brow and ran together; he bared his teeth in a snarl; his hat slipped over one eye. He groaned with rage. Then, using the starting handle as a club, he assailed the car. He smote the brazen Mercury from its foothold and sent it and a part of the radiator cap with it flying across the road. He beat at the wings of the bonnet, until they bent in under his blows. Finally, he hurled the starting-handle at the wind-screen and smashed it. The starting-handle rattled over the bonnet and fell to the ground. . . . The paroxysm was over. Ten seconds later this cataclysmal lunatic; had reverted to sanity — a rather sheepish sanity. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets 34 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART and turned his back on the car. He remarked in a voice of melancholy detachment : "It was a mis- take to bring that coupe." Dr. Martineau had assumed an attitude of trained observation on the side path. His hands rested on his hips and his hat was a little on one side. He was inclined to agree with Sir Richmond. "I don't know," he considered. "You wanted some such blow-off as this." "Did I?" ' ' The energy you have ! That car must be some- body 's whipping boy. ' ' "The devil it is!" said Sir Richmond, turning round sharply and staring at it as if he expected it to display some surprising and yet familiar features. Then he looked questioningly and sus- piciously at his companion. ' ' These outbreaks do nothing to amend the orig- inating grievance," said the doctor. "No. And at times they are even costly. But they certainly lift a burthen from the nervous system. . . . And now I suppose we have to get that little ruin to Maidenhead." "Little ruin!" repeated Sir Richmond. "No. There's lots of life in the little beast yet." He reflected. "She'll have to be towed." He felt in his breast pocket. "Somewhere I have the R.A.C. order paper, the Badge that will Get You Home. We shall have to hail some passing car to take it into Maidenhead." THE DEPARTURE 35 Dr. Martineau offered and Sir Richmond took and lit a cigarette. For a little while conversation hung fire. Then for the first time Dr. Martineau heard his patient laugh. ''Amazing savage 1" said Sir Richmond. 1 ' Amazing savage ! ' ' He pointed to his handiwork. "The little car looks ruffled. "Well it may." He became grave again. "I suppose I ought to apologize." Dr. Martineau weighed the situation. "As be- tween doctor and patient," he said. "No." "Oh!" said Sir Richmond, turned to a new point of view. "But where the patient ends and the host begins. ... I'm really very sorry." He reverted to his original train of thought which had not concerned Dr. Martineau at all. "After all, the little car was only doing what she was made to do." The affair of the car effectively unsealed Sir Richmond's mind. Hitherto Dr. Martineau had perceived the possibility and danger of a defen- sive silence or of a still more defensive irony; but now that Sir Richmond had once given himself away, he seemed prepared to give himself away to an unlimited extent. He embarked upon an apologetic discussion of the choleric temperament. 36 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART He began as they stood waiting for the relief car from the Maidenhead garage. ' ' You were talk- ing of the ghosts of apes and monkeys that sud- denly come out from the darkness of the sub- conscious. ..." "You mean — when we first met at Harley Street?" "That last apparition of mine seems to have been a gorilla at least." The doctor became precise. "Gorillaesque. We are not descended from gorillas." "Queer thing a fit of rage is!" "It's one of nature's cruder expedients. Crude, but I doubt if it is fundamental. There doesn't seem to be rage in the vegetable world, and even among the animals f No, it is not universal." He ran his mind over classes and orders. "Wasps and bees certainly seem to rage, but if one comes to think, most of the invertebrata show very few signs of it." "I'm not so sure," said Sir Richmond. "I've never seen a snail in a towering passion or an oyster slamming its shell behind it. But these are sluggish things. Oysters sulk, which is after all a smouldering sort of rage. And take any more active invertebrate. Take a spider. Not a smashing and swearing sort of rage perhaps, but a disciplined, cold-blooded malignity. . . . Crabs THE DEPARTURE 37 fight. ... A conger eel in a boat will rage — dangerously." "A vertebrate. Yes. But even among the verte- brata; who has ever seen a furious rabbit?" " Don't the bucks fight?" questioned Sir Richmond. Dr. Martineau admitted the point. "I've always had these fits of passion. As far back as I can remember. I was a kicking, scream- ing child. I threw things. I once threw a fork at my elder brother and it stuck in his forehead, doing no serious damage — happily. There were whole days of wrath — days, as I remember them. Perhaps they were only hours. ... I've never thought before what a peculiar thing all this rag- ing is in the world. Why do we rage? They used to say it was the devil. If it isn't the devil, then what the devil is it? "After all," he wont on as the doctor was about to answer his question; "as you pointed out, it isn't the lowlier things that rage. It's the higher things and us." ''The devil nowadays," the doctor reflected after a pause, "bo far as man is concerned, is understood to be the ancestral ape. And more particularly the old male ape." But Sir Richmond was away on another line of thought. "life if self, flaring out. Brooking no contradiction." lie came round suddenly to 38 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART the doctor's qualification. "Why male? Don't little girls smash things just as much?" 1 ' They don 't, ' ' said Dr. Martineau. ' ' Not nearly as much." Sir Eichmond went off at a tangent again. "I suppose you have watched any number of babies V* ''Not nearly as many as a general practitioner would do. There's a lot of rage about most of them at first, male or female. ' ' "Queer little eddies of fury. . . . Recently — it happens — I've been seeing one. A spit of red wrath, clenching its fists and squalling threats at a damned disobedient universe." The doctor was struck by an idea and glanced quickly and questioningly at his companion's profile. "Blind driving force," said Sir Richmond, musing. "Isn't that after all what we really are?" he asked the doctor. "Essentially — Rage. A rage in dead matter, making it alive." "Schopenhauer," footnoted the doctor.- "Boehme." 1 ' Plain fact, ' ' said Sir Richmond. ' ' No Rage — no Go." "But rage without discipline?" "Discipline afterwards. The rage first." "But rage against what? And for what?" "Against the Universe. And for ? That's more difficult. What is the little beast squalling THE DEPARTURE 39 itself crimson for? Ultimately? . . . What is it clutching after? In the long run, what will it get?" ("Yours the car in distress what sent this?" asked an unheeded voice.) "Of course, if you were to say 'desire'," said Dr. Martineau, ' ' then you would be in line with the psychoanalysts. They talk of libido, meaning a sort of fundamental desire. Jung speaks of it at times almost as if it were the universal driving force." "No," said Sir Richmond, in love with his new idea. "Not desire. Desire would have a definite direction, and that is just what this driving force hasn't. It's rage." "Yours the car in distress what sent this?" the voice repeated. It was the voice of a mechanic in an Overland car. He was holding up the blue request for assistance that Sir Richmond had re- cently filled in. The two philosophers returned to practical matters. For half an hour after the departure of the little Channelise car with Sir Iiiclunond and Dr. Mar- tinoau, the brass Mercury lay unheeded in the dusty roadside grass. Then it caught the eye of a passing child. 40 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART He was a bright little boy of five. From the moment when he caught the gleam of brass he knew that he had made the find of his life. But his nurse was a timorous, foolish thing. "You did ought to of left it there, Masterrarry," she said. "Findings ain't keepings nowadays, not by no manner of means, Masterrarry. "Yeiv'd look silly if a policeman came along arsting people if they seen a goldennimage. "Arst yer 'ow you come by it and look pretty straight at you. ' ' All of which grumblings Master Harry treated with an experienced disregard. He knew defi- nitely that he would never relinquish this bright and lovely possession again. It was the first beau- tiful thing he had ever possessed. He was the darling of fond and indulgent parents and his nur- sery was crowded with hideous rag and sawdust dolls, golliwogs, comic penguins, comic lions, comic elephants and comic policemen and every variety of suchlike humorous idiocy and visual beastliness. This figure, solid, delicate and gracious, was a thing of a different order. There was to be much conflict and distress, tears and wrath, before the affinity of that clean- limbed, shining figure and his small soul was recognized. But he carried his point at last. The Mercury became his inseparable darling, his sym- THE DEPARTURE 41 bol, his private god, the one dignified and serious thing in a little life much congested by the quaint, the burlesque, and all the smiling, dull condescen- sions of adult love. CHAPTER THE FOURTH AT MAIDENHEAD § 1 The little Charmeuse was towed to hospital and the two psychiatrists took up their quarters at the Radiant Hotel with its pleasant lawns and graceful landing stage at the bend towards the bridge. Sir Richmond, after some trying work at the telephone, got into touch with his own proper car. A man would bring that down in two days' time at latest, and afterwards the detested coupe could go back to London. The day was still young, and after lunch and coffee upon a sunny lawn a boat seemed indicated. Sir Rich- mond astonished the doctor by going to his room, reappearing dressed in tennis flannels and look- ing very well in them. It occurred to the doctor as a thing hitherto unnoted that Sir Richmond was not indifferent to his personal appearance. The doctor had no flannels, but he had brought a brown holland umbrella lined with green that he had acquired long ago in Algiers, and this served to give him something of the riverside quality. The day was full of sunshine and the'river had a May time animation. Pink geraniums, vivid green lawns, gay awnings, bright glass, white paint and 42 AT MAIDENHEAD 43 shining metal set the tone of Maidenhead life. At lunch there had been five or six small tables with quietly affectionate couples who talked in undertones, a tableful of bright-coloured Jews who talked in overtones, and a family party from the Midlands, badly smitten with shyness, who did not talk at all. "A resort of honeymoon couples," said the doctor, and then rather knowingly : ' ' Tem- porary honeymoons, I fancy, in one or two of the cases." " Decidedly temporary," said Sir Richmond, considering the company — "in most of the cases anyhow. The two in the corner might be mar- ried. You never know nowadays." He beca>me reflective. . . . After lunch and coffee he rowed the doctor up the river towards Cliveden. "The last time I was here," he said, return- ing to the subject, "I was here on a temporary honeymoon." The doctor tried to look as though he had not thought that could be possible. "I know my Maidenhead fairly well," said Sir Richmond. "Aquatic activities, such as rowing, punting, messing about with a boat-hook, fcying- up, buzzing about in motor launches, fouling other people's boats, are merely the stage business of the drama. The ruling interests of this place are love — largely illicit — and persistent drinking. . . . Don't you think the bridge charming from here?" 44 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "I shouldn't have thought — drinking," said Dr. Martineau, after he had done justice to the bridge over his shoulder. "Yes, the place has a floating population of quiet industrious soakers. The incurable river man and the river girl end at that." Dr. Martineau encouraged Sir Richmond by an appreciative silence. "If we are to explore the secret places of the heart," Sir Richmond went on, "we shall have to give some attention to this Maidenhead side of life. It is very material to my case. I have, — as I have said — been here. This place has beauty and charm; these piled-up woods behind which my Lords Astor and Desborough keep their state, this shining mirror of the water, brown and green and sky blue, this fringe of reeds and scented rushes and forget-me-not and lilies, and these perpetually posing white swans : they make a picture. A little artificial it is true; one feels the presence of a Conservancy Board, planting the rushes and in- dustriously nicking the swans; but none the less delightful. And this setting has appealed to a number of people as an invitation, as, in a way, a promise. They come here, responsive to that promise of beauty and happiness. They conceive of themselves here, rowing swiftly and grace- fully, punting beautifully, brandishing boat-hooks with ease and charm. They look to meet, under pleasant or romantic circumstances, other posses- AT MAIDENHEAD 45 sors and worshippers of grace and beauty here. There will be glowing evenings, warm moonlight, distant voices singing. . . . There is your desire, doctor, the desire you say is the driving force of life. But reality mocks it. Boats bump and lead to coarse ungracious quarrels; rowing can be curiously fatiguing; punting involves dreadful indignities. The romance here tarnishes very quickly. Romantic encounters fail to occur ; in our impatience we resort to — accosting. Chilly mists arise from the water and the magic of distant singing is provided, even excessively, by boatloads of cads — with collecting dishes. When the weather keeps warm there presently arises an extraordi- nary multitude of gnats, and when it does not there is a need for stimulants. That is why the dreamers who come here first for a light delicious brush with love, come down at last to the Thames- side barmaid with her array of spirits and cordials as the quintessence of all desire." "I say," said the doctor. "You tear the place to pieces." "The desires of the place," said Sir Richmond. "I'm using the place as a symbol." He held liis sculls awash, rippling in the water. "The real force of life, the rage of life, isn't here," he said. "It's down underneath, sulking and smouldering. Every now and then it strains and cracks the surface. This stretch of the Thames, this pleasure stretch, has in fact a curi- 46 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART ously quarrelsome atmosphere. People scold and insult one another for the most trivial things,. for passing too close, for taking the wrong side, for tying up or floating loose. Most of these notice boards on the bank show a thoroughly nasty spirit. People on the banks jeer at anyone in the boats. You hear people quarrelling in boats, in the ho- tels, as they walk along the towing path. There is remarkably little happy laughter here. The rage, you see, is hostile to this place, the rage breaks through. . . . The people who drift from one pub to another, drinking, the people who fud- dle in the riverside hotels, are the last fugitives of pleasure, trying to forget the rage. ..." "Isn't it that there is some greater desire at the back of the human mind?" the doctor sug- gested. "Which refuses to be content with pleas- ure as an end?" "What greater desire?" asked Sir Richmond, disconcertingly. "Oh! . . ." The doctor cast about. "There is no such greater desire," said Sir Richmond. ' ' You cannot name it. It is just blind drive. I admit its discontent with pleasure as an end — but has it any end of its own? At the most you can say that the rage in life is seeking its desire and hasn't found it." "Let us help in the search," said the doctor, with an afternoon smile under his green umbrella. "Goon." AT MAIDENHEAD 47 §2 " Since our first talk in Harley Street," said Sir Richmond, "I have been trying myself over in my mind. (We can drift down this backwater.) " "Big these trees are," said the doctor with infinite approval. "I am astonished to discover what a bundle of discordant motives I am. I do not seem to de- serve to be called a personality. I cannot discover even a general direction. Much more am I like a taxi-cab in which all sorts of aims and desires have travelled to their destination and got out. Are we all like that?" "A bundle held together by a name and address and a certain thread of memory?" said the doc- tor and considered. "More than that. More than that. We have leading ideas, associations, pos- sessions, liabilities." "We build ourselves a prison of circumstances that keeps us from complete dispersal." "Exactly," said the doctor. "And there is also something, a consistency, that we call character." "It changes." "Consistently with itself." "I have been trying to recall my sexual his- tory," said Sir Richmond, going <>ff at a tangent. "My sentimental education. I wonder if il differs very widely from yours or most men's." 48 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "Some men are more eventful in these mat- ters than others," said the doctor, — it sounded — wistfully. "They have the same jumble of motives and traditions, I suspect, whether they are eventful or not. The brakes may be strong or weak but the drive is the same. I can't remember much of the beginnings of curiosity and knowledge in these matters. Can you?" "Not much," said the doctor. "No." 1 ' Your psychoanalysts tell a story of fears, sup- pressions, monstrous imaginations, symbolic re- placements. I don't remember much of that sort of thing in my own case. It may have faded out of my mind. There were probably some uneasy curiosities, a grotesque dream or so perhaps; I can't recall anything of that sort distinctly now. I had a very lively interest in women, even when I was still quite a little boy, and a certain — what shall I call it? — imaginative slavishness — not towards actual women but towards something magnificently feminine. My first love " Sir Richmond smiled at some secret memory. ' ' My first love was Britannia as depicted by Ten- niel in the cartoons in Punch. I must have been a very little chap at the time of the Britannia af- fair. I just clung to her in my imagination and did devoted things for her. Then I recall, a little later, a secret abject adoration for the white goddesses of the Crystal Palace. Not for any particular one AT MAIDENHEAD 49 of them that I can remember, — for all of them. But I don't remember anything very monstrous or incestuous in my childish imaginations, — such things as Freud, I understand, lays stress upon. If there was an (Edipus complex or anything of that sort in my case it has been very completely washed out again. Perhaps a child which is brought up in a proper nursery of its own and sees a lot of pictures of the nude human body, and so on, gets its mind shifted off any possible concen- tration upon — the domestic aspect of sex. I got to definite knowledge pretty early. By the time I was eleven or twelve. " "Normally?" "What is normally? Decently, anyhow. Here again I may be forgetting much secret and shame- ful curiosity. I got my ideas into definite form out of a little straightforward physiological teach- ing and some dissecting of rats and mice. My schoolmaster was a capable sane man in advance of his times and my people believed in him. I think much of 11) is distorted perverse stuff that grows up in people's minds about sex and de- velops into evil vices and still more evil habits, is due to the mystery we make about these things." "Not entirely," said the doctor. "Largely. What child under a modern up- bringing over goes through the stuffy honors i' a broad stream of alert thought; they were no mere dis- play specimens from one of those jackdaw collec- tions of bright things so many clever women waste their wits in accumulating. She was not talking for effect at all, she was talking becaui e I In- was tremendously interested in her discovery of the spectacle of history, and delighted to find another person as possessed as she was. 150 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Belinda having been conducted to her shops, the two made their way through the bright eve- ning sunlight to the compact gracefulness of the cathedral. A glimpse through a wrought-iron gate of a delightful garden of spring flowers, alys- sum, aubrietia, snow-upon-the-mountains, daffo- dils, narcissus and the like, held them for a time, and then they came out upon the level, grassy space, surrounded by little ripe old houses, on which the cathedral stands. They stood for some moments surveying it. "It's a perfect little lady of a cathedral," said Sir Richmond. "But why, I wonder, did we build it?" "Your memory ought to be better than mine," she said, with her half -closed eyes blinking up at the sunlit spire sharp against the blue. "I've been away for so long — over there — that I forget altogether. Why did we build it?" She had fallen in quite early with this freak of speaking and thinking as if he and she were all mankind. It was as if her mind had been pre- pared 'for it by her own eager exploration in Eu- rope. ' ' My friend, the philosopher, ' ' he had said, "will not have it that we are really the individ- uals we think we are. You must talk to him — he is a very curious and subtle thinker. We are just thoughts in the Mind of the Race, he says, passing thoughts. We are — what does he call it? — Man on his Planet, taking control of life.' > j THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEIIENGE 151 "Man and woman," she had amended. But just as man on his planet taking control of life had failed altogether to remember why the ditch at Avebury was on the inside instead of the outside of the vallum, so now Miss Grammont and Sir Richmond found very great difficulty in re- calling why they had built Salisbury Cathedral. "We built temples by habit and tradition," said Sir Eichmond. "But the impulse was losing its force." She looked up at the spire and then at him with a faintly quizzical expression. But he had his reply ready. "We were beginning to feel our power over matter. "We were already very clever engineers. What interested us here wasn't the old religion any more. We wanted to exercise and display our power over stone. We made it into reeds and branches. We squirted it up in all these spires and pinnacles. The priest and bis altar were just an excuse. Do you think people have ever feared and worshipped in this — this artist's lark — as they did in Stonehenge?" "I certainly do not remember 1 hat I ever wor- shipped here," she said. Sir Richmond was in love with his idea. "The spirit of the Gothic cathedrals," he said, "is the spirit of the sky-scrapers. If Ls architecture in a mood of flaming ambition. The Freemasons on the building could hardly refrain from jeering at 152 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART the little priest they had left clown below there, performing antiquated puerile mysteries at his altar. He was just their excuse for doing it all." 1 ' Sky-scrapers ? ' ' she conceded. ' ' An early dis- play of the sky-scraper spirit. . . . You are do- ing your best to make me feel thoroughly at home." "You are more at home here still than in that new country of ours over the Atlantic. But it seems to me now that I do begin to remember building this cathedral — and all the other cathe- drals we built in Europe. ... It was the fun of building made us do it. . . ." "H'm," she said. "And my sky-scrapers?" "Still the fun of building. That is the thing I envy most about America. It's still large enough, mentally and materially, to build all sorts of things. . . . Over here, the sites are frightfully crowded. ..." "And what do you think we are building now? And what do you think you are building over here?" 1 * What are we building now ? I believe we have almost grown up. I believe it is time we began to build in earnest. For good. . . . "But are we building anything at all?" "A new world." "Show it me," she said. "We're still only at the foundations," said Sir Richmond. "Nothing shows as yet." THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 153 "I wish I could believe they were foundations." "But can you doubt we are scrapping the old? . . ." It was too late in the afternoon to go into the cathedral, so they strolled to and fro round and about the west end and along the path under the trees towards the river, exchanging their ideas very frankly and freely about the things that had recently happened to the world and what they thought they ought to be doing in it. After dinner our four tourists sat late and talked in a corner of the smoking-room. The two ladies had vanished hastily at the first dinner gong and reappeared at the second, mysteriously and pleasantly changed From tweedy pedestrians to indoor company. They were quietly but defi- nitely dressed, pretty alterations bad happened to their coiffure, a silver band and deep red stones lit the dusk of Miss Grammont's hair and a neck- lace of the same colourings kept the peace be- tween her jolly sun burni cheek and her soft on- tanned aeck. It was evidenl her recent uniform had included a collar of great severity. Miss Seyfferl had revealed a plump forearm and pro- claimed il wilh a clash of bangles. Dr. Marlineau thoughl her evening throal much too confidential. The conversation drifted from topic to topic. 154 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART It had none of the steady continuity of Sir Rich- mond's duologue with Miss Grammont. Miss Seyffert 's methods were too discursive and ex- clamatory. She broke every thread that ap- peared. The Old George at Salisbury is really old; it shows it, and Miss Seyffert laced the en- tire evening with her recognition of the fact. "Just look at that old beam!" she would cry sud- denly. "To think it was exactly where it is be- fore there was a Cabot in America ! ' ' Miss Grammont let her companion pull the talk about as she chose. After the animation of the afternoon a sort of lazy contentment had taken possession of the younger lady. She sat deep in a basket chair and spoke now and then. Miss Seyffert gave her impressions of France and Italy. She talked of the cabmen of Naples and the beg- gars of Amalfi. Apropos of beggars, Miss Grammont from the depths of her chair threw out the statement that Italy was frightfully overpopulated. "In some parts of Italy it is like mites on a cheese. Nobody seems to be living. Everyone is too busy keeping alive." "Poor old women carrying loads big enough for mules," said Miss Seyffert. "Little children working like slaves," said Miss Grammont. "And everybody begging. Even the people at THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 155 work by the roadside. Who ought to be getting wages — sufficient. ..." "Begging — from foreigners — is just a sport in Italy," said Sir Richmond. "It doesn't imply want. But I agree that a large part of Italy is frightfully overpopulated. The whole world is. Don't you think so, Martineau?" "Well — yes — for its present social organiza- tion." "For any social organization," said Sir Rich- mond. "I've no doubt of it," said Miss Seyffert, and added amazingly : "I'm out for Birth Control all the time." A brief but active pause ensued. Dr. Martineau in a state of sudden distress attempted to drink out of a cold and empty coffee cup. "The world swarms with cramped and unde- veloped lives," said Sir Richmond. "Which amount to nothing. Which do not even represent happiness. And which help to use up the re- sources, the fuel and surplus energy of the world." "I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives," Miss Grammont reflected. "Does thai matter) They do nothing to carry life on. They are just vain repetitions -imper- fect — dreary, blurred repetitions of one common life. All that they feel has been felt, all that they 156 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART do has been done better before. Because they are crowded and hurried and underfed and underedu- cated. And as for liking their lives, they need never have had the chance. ' ' 1 'How many people are there in the world?" she asked abruptly. "I don't know. Twelve hundred, fifteen hun- dred millions perhaps." "And in your world?" "I'd have two hundred and fifty millions, let us say. At most. It would be quite enough for this little planet, for a time, at any rate. Don't you think so, doctor?" "I don't know," said Dr. Martineau. "Oddly enough, I have never thought about that question before. At least, not from this angle. ' ' "But could you pick out two hundred and fifty million aristocrats ? ' ' began Miss Grammont. "My native instinctive democracy " "Need not be outraged," said Sir Richmond. "Any two hundred and fifty million would do, They'd be able to develop fully, all of them. As things are„ only a minority can do that. The rest never get a chance." "That's what I always say," said Miss Seyffert. "A New Age," said Dr. Martineau; "a New World. We may be coming to such a stage, when population, as much as fuel, will be under a world control. If one thing, why not the other? I admit THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 157 that the movement of thought is away from hap- hazard towards control " "I'm for control all the time," Miss Seyffert injected, following up her previous success. "I admit," the doctor began his broken sen- tence again with marked patience, "that the move- ment of thought is away from haphazard towards control — in things generally. But is the move- ment of events?" "The eternal problem of man," said Sir Rich- mond. "Can our wills prevail?" There came a little pause. Miss Grammont smiled an enquiry at Miss Seyffert. "If you are," said Belinda. "I wish I could imagine your world," said Miss Grammont, rising, "of two hundred and fifty mil- lions of fully developed human beings with room to live and breathe in and no need for wars. WiU they live in palaces? Will they all be healthy! . . . Machines will wait on them. No! I can't imagine it. Perhaps I shall dream of it. My dreaming self may be cleverer." She held out her hand to Sir Richmond. Just for a moment they stood hand in hand, appre- ciatively. . . . "Well ["said Dr. Martineau, as the door closed behind the two Americans, "This is a curious — encounter." "That young woman has brail said Sir Richmond, standing before the fireplai 158 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART There was no doubt whatever which young woman he meant. But Dr. Martineau grunted. "I don't like the American type," the doctor pronounced judicially. "I do," Sir Richmond countered. The doctor thought for a moment or so. "You are committed to the project of visiting Ave- bury?" he said. "They ought to see Avebury," said Sir Eichmond. "H'm," said the doctor, ostentatiously amused by his thoughts and staring at the fire. "Birth Control! I never did." Sir Richmond smiled down on the top of the doctor's head and said nothing. "I think," said the doctor and paused. . . . . "I shall leave this Avebury expedition to you." "We can be back in the early afternoon," said Sir Richmond. "To give them a chance of see- ing the cathedral. The chapter house here is not one to miss. ..." "And then I suppose we shall go on?" "As you please," said Sir Richmond insin- cerely. "I must confess that four people make the car at any rate seem tremendously overpopu- lated. And to tell the truth, I do not find this encounter so amusing as you seem to do. ... I shall not be sorry when we have waved good-bye THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 159 to those young ladies, and resume our interrupted conversation. ' ' Sir Richmond considered something mulish in the doctor's averted face. "I find Miss Grammont an extremely interest- ing — and stimulating human being." "Evidently." The doctor sighed, stood up and found himself delivering one of the sentences he had engendered during his solitary meditations in his room before dinner. He surprised himself by the plainness of his speech. "Let me be frank," he said, regard- ing Sir Richmond squarely. "Considering the general situation of things and your position, I do not care very greatly for the part of an acces- sory to what may easily develop, as you know very well, into a very serious — flirtation. An absurd, mischievous, irrelevant flirtation. You may not like the word. You may pretend it is a conversa- tion, an ordinary Intellectual conversation. That is not the word. Simply that is not the word. Von people eye one another. . . . Flirtation. I give the affair its proper name. That is all. Merely that. When 1 think But we will not discuss if now. . . . Good night. . . . Forgive me if 1 put before yen, rather bluntly, my particu- lar point of view." Sir Richmond found himself alone. With his eyebrows raised. 160 SECRET PLAGES OF THE HEART, §6 After twenty-four eventful hours our two stu- dents of human motives found themselves to- gether again by the fireplace in the Old George smoking-room. They had resumed their over- night conversation, in a state of considerable tension. '•'If you find the accommodation of the car insuf- ficient," said Sir Richmond in a tone of extreme reasonableness, "and I admit it is, we can easily hire a larger car in a place like this." ''I would not care if you hired an omnibus," said'Dr. Martineau. "I am not coming on if these young women are." "But if you consider it scandalous — and really, Martineau, really ! as one man to another, it does seem to me to be a bit pernickety of you, a broad and original thinker as you are ' ' "Thought is one matter. Rash, inconsiderate action quite another. And above all, if I spend another day in or near the company of Miss Be- linda Seyffert I shall — I shall be extremely rude to her." "But," said Sir Richmond and bit his lower lip and considered. "We might drop Belinda," he suggested — turning to his friend and speaking in low, confi- dential tones. "She is quite a manageable per- THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 161 son. Quite. She could — for example — be left be- hind with the luggage and sent on by train. I do not know if you realize how the land lies in that quarter. It needs only a word to Miss Grammont. ' ' There was no immediate reply. For a moment he had a wild hope that his companion would agree, and then he perceived that the doctor's silence meant only the preparation of an ultimatum. ''I object to Miss Grammont and — that side of the thing, more than I do to Miss Seyffert." Sir Richmond said nothing. "It may help you to see this affair from a slightly different angle if I tell you that twice to- day Miss Seyffert has asked me if you were a married man." "And of course you told her I was." "On the second occasion." Sir Richmond smiled again. "Frankly," said the doctor, "this adventure is altogether uncongenial to me. It is the sort of thing thai ha i never happened in my life. This highway coupling " "DonM you think," said Sir Richmond, "that you are attaching rather too much — what shall I say — romantic f — flirtatious .'--meaning to this affair? I don't mind that after my rather lavish confessions you should consider me a rather over- sexed person, hut I your attitude rather un- fair,— unjust, indeed, and almoi t Insulting, to this 162 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Miss Grammont? After all, she's a young lady of very good social position indeed. She doesn't strike you — does she f — as an undignified or help- less human being. Her manners suggest a person of considerable self-control. And knowing less of me than you do, she probably regards me as al- most as safe as — a maiden aunt say. I'm twice her age. We are a party of four. There are con- ventions, there are considerations. . . . Aren't you really, my dear Martineau, overdoing all this side of this very pleasant little enlargement of our interests." (( Am I?" said Dr. Martineau and brought a scrutinizing eye to bear on Sir Richmond's face. "I want to go on talking to Miss Grammont for a day or so, ' ' Sir Richmond admitted. "Then I shall prefer to leave your party." There were some moments of silence. "I am really very sorry to find myself in this dilemma," said Sir Richmond with a note of gen- uine regret in his voice. "It is not a dilemma," said Dr. Martineau, with a corresponding loss of asperity. "I grant you we discover we differ — upon a question of taste and convenience. But before I suggested this trip, I had intended to spend a little time with my old friend Sir Kenelm Latter at Bourne- mouth. Nothing simpler than to go to him now. . . ." "I shall be sorry all the same." THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 163 "I could have wished," said the doctor, "that these ladies had happened a little later. ..." The matter was settled. Nothing more of a practical nature remained to be said. But neither gentleman wished to break off with a harsh and bare decision. "When the New Age is here," said Sir Rich- mond, i l then, surely, a friendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected to the — the in- conveniences your present code would set about it? They would travel about together as they chose?" "The fundamental principle of the new age," said the doctor, "will be Uoni soit qui mat y pense. In these matters. With perhaps Fay ce que vouldras as its next injunction. So long as other lives are not affected. In matters of per- sonal behaviour the world will probably be much more free and individuals much more open in their conscience and honour than they have ever been before. In matters of property, economics and public conduct it will probably be just the re- verse. Then, there will be much more collective control and much more insistence, legal insist- ence, upon individual responsibility. But we are not living in a new age yet ; we are living m (he patched up rains of a very old one. And you — if you will forgive me — are living in the patched- up remains of a life thai had already had Its complications. T! '. dy, v hose charm and 164 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART cleverness I admit, behaves as if the new age were already here. Well, that may be a very dan- gerous mistake both for her and for you. . . . This affair, if it goes on for a few days more, may involve very serious consequences indeed, with which I, for one, do not wish to be involved. ' ' Sir Richmond, upon the hearthrug, had a curi- ous feeling that he was back in the head master's study at Caxton. Dr. Martineau went on with a lucidity that Sir Richmond found rather trying, to give his impres- sion of Miss Gramniont and her position in life. "She is," he said, "manifestly a very expen- sively educated girl. And in many ways — inter- esting. I have been watching her. I have not been favoured with very much of her attention, but that fact has enabled me to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert is a fairly crude mixture of frank- ness, insincerity and self-explanatory egotism, and I have been able to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she has addressed to me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother since she was quite little." "Your guesses, doctor, are apt to be pretty good," said Sir Richmond. "You know that?" "She has told me as much." "H'm. Well She impressed me as having the air of a girl who has had to solve many prob- lems for which the normal mother provides ready- THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 165 made solutions. That is how I inferred that there was no mother. I don't think there has been any stepmother, either friendly or hostile? There hasn't been. I thought not. She has had various governesses and companions, ladies of birth and education, engaged to look after her and she has done exactly what she liked with them. Her man- ner with Miss Seyffert, an excellent manner for Miss Seyffert, by the bye, isn't the sort of manner anyone acquires in a day. Or for one person only. She is a very sure and commanding young woman." Sir Richmond nodded. "I suppose her father adores and neglects her, ami whenever she has wanted a companion or governess butchered, the thing has been done. . . . These business Americans, I am told, neglect their womankind, give them money and power, let them Loose on the world. ... It is a sort of moral laziness masquerading as affection. . . . Still I suppoi e custom and 1 radition kept this girl in her place and she was petted, honoured, amused, talked aboul bul qoI in a harmful way, and rather bored right up to the time when America came into tin- war. Theoretically Bhe had a tremendously •d time." " I think this must be near the truth of her biog- raphy," said Sir Richmond. "I suppose she lias Lovers." "You don't mean ?" 166 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "No, I don't. Though that is a matter that ought to have no special interest for you. I mean that she was surrounded by a retinue of men who wanted to marry her or who behaved as though they wanted to marry her or who made her hap- piness and her gratifications and her condescen- sions seem a matter of very great importance to them. She had the flattery of an extremely un- critical and unexacting admiration. That is the sort of thing that gratifies a silly woman ex- tremely. Miss Grammont is not silly and all this homage and facile approval probably bored her more than she realized. To anyone too intelligent to be steadily excited by buying things and wear- ing things and dancing and playing games and go- ing to places of entertainment, and being given flowers, sweets, jewellery, pet animals, and books bound in a special sort of leather, the prospect of being a rich man's only daughter until such time as it becomes advisable to change into a rich man's wealthy wife, is probably not nearly so amusing as envious people might suppose. I take it Miss Grammont had got all she could out of that sort of thing some time before the war, and that she had already read and thought rather more than most young women in her position. Before she was twenty I guess she was already looking for something more interesting in the way of men than a rich admirer with an automobile full of presents. Those who seek find." THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 167 "What do you think she found?" "What would a rich girl find out there in Amer- ica? I don't know. I haven't the material to guess with. In London a girl might find a consid- erable variety of active, interesting men, rising politicians, university men of distinction, artists and writers even, men of science, men — there are still such men — active in the creative work of the empire. "In America I suppose there is at least an equal variety, made up of rather different types. She would find that life was worth while to such peo- ple in a way that made the ordinary entertain- ments and amusements of her life a monstrous silly waste of time. With the facility of her sex she would pick up from one of them the idea that made life worth while for him. I am inclined to tli ink there was someone in her case who did seem to promise a sort of life that was worth while. And that somehow the war came to alter the look of thai promise." "How;"' "I don't know. Perhaps I am only romancing. But for this young woman I am convinced this e: peditioD to Europe has meant — experience, harsh educational experience and very profound ment .il di Uirbance. There have been love experi- ences; experiences thai were something more than the treats and attentions ; n w I proposals thai made up her life when she was sheltered over there. 168 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART And something more than that. What it is I don't know. The war has turned an ugly face to her. She has seen death and suffering and ruin. Per- haps she has seen people she knew killed. Perhaps the man has been killed. Or she has met with cowardice or cruelty or treachery where she didn't expect it. She has been shocked out of the first confidence of youth. She has ceased to take the world for granted. ... It hasn't broken her but it has matured her. . . . That I think is why his- tory has become real to her. Which so attracts you in her. History, for her, has ceased to be a fabric of picturesque incidents ; it is the study of a tragic struggle that still goes on. She sees his- tory as you see it and I see it. She is a very grown-up young woman. . . . " " It 's just that, ' ' said Sir Richmond. ' l It 's just that. If you see as much in Miss Grammont as all that, why don't you want to come on with us? You see the interest of her." "I see a lot more than that. You don't know what an advantage it is to be as I am, rather cold and unresponsive to women and unattractive and negligible — negligible, that is the exact word — to them. You can 't look at a woman for five minutes without losing sight of her in a mist of imaginative excitement. Because she looks back at you. I have the privilege of the negligible — which is a cool head. Miss Grammont has a startled and matured mind, an original mind. Yes. And there THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 169 is something more to be said. Her intelligence is better than her character." "I don't quite see what you are driving at." "The intelligence of all intelligent women is better than their characters. Goodness in a woman, as we understand it, seems to imply neces- sarily a certain imaginative fixity. Miss Gram- mont has an impulsive and adventurous character. And as I have been saying she was a spoilt child, with no discipline. . . . You also are a person of high intelligence and defective controls. She is very much at loose ends. You — on account of the illness of that rather forgotten lady, Miss Mar- tin Leeds " "Aren't you rather abusing the secrets of the confessional?" "This is the confessional. It closes to-morrow morning but it is the confessional still. Look at the thing frankly. You, I say, are also at loose ends. Can you deny it? My dear sir, don't we both know that ever since we lefl London you have been ready to fall in love with any pretty thing in petticoats thai seemed to promise you three ha'porth of kindness. A lost dog looking for a master! You're a stray man looking for a mistress. Miss (Jranmiont being a woman is a lit- tle more selective than that. But if she's at a loose end as 1 suppose, sin- isn't protected by the sense of having made her selection. And she has no preconceptions of what she wants. Son are a very 170 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART interesting man in many ways. You carry mar- riage and — entanglements lightly. With an air of being neither married nor entangled. She is quite prepared to fall in love with you." "But you don't really think that?" said Sir Richmond, with an ill-concealed eagerness. Dr. Martineau rolled his face towards Sir Rich- mond. ' ' These miracles — grotesquely — hap- pen," he said. "She knows nothing of Martin Leeds. . . . You must remember that. . . . "And then," he added, "if she and you fall in love, as the phrase goes, what is to follow?" There was a pause. Sir Richmond looked at his toes for a moment or so as if he took counsel with them and then decided to take offence. "Really!" he said, "this is preposterous. You talk of falling in love as though it was impossible for a man and woman to be deeply interested in each other — without that. And the gulf in our ages — in our quality! From the Psychologist of a New Age I find this amazing. Are men and women to go on for ever — separated by this pos- sibility into two hardly communicating and yet interpenetrating worlds? Is there never to be friendship and companionship between men and women without passion ? ' ' "You ought to know even better than I do that there is not. For such people as you two anyhow. And at present the world is not prepared to toler- THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE 171 ate friendship and companionship ivith that ac* companiment. That is the core of this situation.' ' A pause fell between the two gentlemen. They had smoothed over the extreme harshness of their separation and there was very little more to be said. "Well," said Sir Richmond in conclusion, "I am very sorry indeed, Martineau, that we have to part like this." CHAPTER THE SEVENTH COMPANIONSHIP §1 "Well," said Dr. Martineau, extending his hand to Sir Richmond on the Salisbury station platform, "I leave you to it." His round face betrayed little or no vestiges of his overnight irritation. "Ought you to leave me to it?" smiled Sir Richmond. "I shall be interested to learn what happens." "But if you won't stay to see!" "Now sir, please," said the guard respectfully but firmly, and Dr. Martineau got in. Sir Richmond walked thoughtfully down the platform towards the exit. "What else could I do?" he asked aloud to nobody in particular. For a little while he thought confusedly of the collapse of his expedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr. Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of his mind. Dr. Martineau was forgotten. 172 COMPANIONSHIP 173 $2 For the better part of forty hours, Sir Eich- mond had either been talking to Miss Grammont, or carrying on imaginary conversations with her in her absence, or sleeping and dreaming dreams in which she never failed to play a part, even if at times it was an altogether amazing and incon- gruous part. And as they were both very frank and expressive people, they already knew a very great deal about each other. For an American Miss Grammont was by no means autobiographical. She gave no sketches of her idiosyncrasies, and she repeated no remem- bered comments and prophets of her contempo- raries about herself. She either concealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personal- ity. But she was interested in and curious about the people she had met in life, and her talk of them reflected a considerable amount of light upon her own upbringing and experiences. And her liking for Sir Richmond was pleasingly manifest. She liked his turn of thought, she watched him with a tain! smile on her lips as he spoke, and she spread her "pinions before liim carefully in that soft voice of hers like a shy child showing its treasures to some suddenly trusted and favoured visitor. Their ways of thoughl harmonized. They talked .-it lirst chiefly about the history of the 174 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART world and the extraordinary situation of aimless- ness in a phase of ruin to which the Great War had brought all Europe, if not all mankind. The world excited them both in the same way; as a crisis in which they were called upon to do some- thing — they did not yet clearly know what. Into this topic they peered as into some deep pool, side by side, and in it they saw each other reflected. The visit to Avebury had been a great success. It had been a perfect springtime day, and the little inn had been delighted at the reappearance of Sir Richmond's car so soon after its departure. Its delight was particularly manifest in the cream and salad it produced for lunch. Both Miss Gram- mont and Miss Seyffert displayed an intelligent interest in their food. After lunch they had all gone out to the stones and the wall. Half a dozen sunburnt children were putting one of the partially overturned megaliths to a happy use by clamber- ing to the top of it and sliding on their little be- hinds down its smooth and sloping side amidst much mirthful squealing. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont had walked round the old circumvallation together, but Be- linda Seyffert had strayed away from them, pro- fessing an interest in flowers. It was not so much that she felt they had to be left together that made her do this as her own consciousness of being pos- sessed by a devil who interrupted conversations. COMPANIONSHIP 175 When Miss Grammont was keenly interested in a conversation, then Belinda had learnt from ex- perience that it was wiser to go off with her devil out of the range of any temptation to interrupt. "You really think," said Miss Grammont, "that it would be possible to take this confused old world and reshape it, set it marching towards that new world of yours — of two hundred and fifty mil- lion fully developed, beautiful and happy people?" 1 ' Why not ? Nobody is doing anything with the world except muddle about. Why not give it a direction ? ' ' "You'd take it in your hands like clay?" "Obdurate clay with a sort of recalcitrant, un- intelligent life of its own." Her imagination glowed in her eyes and warmed her voice. "I believe what you say is possible. If people dare." "1 am tired of following little»motives that are like flames that go out when you get to them. I am tired of seeing all the world doing the same. I am tired of a world in which there is nothing at bul gn-at disasters. Here is something man- kind can attempt, that we can attempt." "And will.'" "1 believe that as Mankind grows up this is the business Man has to settle down to and will settle down to." Sin- considered that. "I've been getting to believe something like 176 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART this. But — ... it frightens me. I suppose most of us have this same sort of dread of taking too much upon ourselves." 1 ' So we just live like pigs. Sensible little piggy- wiggys. I 've got a Committee full of that sort of thing. We live like little modest pigs. And let the world go hang. And pride ourselves upon our freedom from the sin of presumption." "Not quite that!" ' ' Well ! How do you put it ? " 1 ' We are afraid, ' ' she said. ' ' It 's too vast. We want bright little lives of our own." " Exactly — sensible little piggy-wiggy s. " "We have a right to life — and happiness." "First," said Sir Richmond, "as much right as a pig has to food. But whether we get life and happiness or fail to get them we human beings who have imaginations want something more nowa- days. ... Of course we want bright lives, of course we want happiness. Just as we want food, just as we want sleep. But when we have eaten, when we have slept, when we have jolly things about us — it is nothing. We have been made an exception of — and got our rations. The big thing confronts us still. It is vast, I agree, but vast as it is it is the thing we have to think about. I do not know why it should be so, but I am compelled by something in my nature to want to serve this idea of a new age for mankind. I want it as my culminating want. I want a world in COMPANIONSHIP 177 order, a disciplined mankind going on to greater things. Don't you?" "Now you tell me of it," she said with a smile, "I do." "But before f" "No. You've made it clear. It wasn't clear before." "I've been talking of this sort of thing with my friend Dr. Martineau. And I've been think- ing as well as talking. That perhaps is why I'm so clear and positive." "I don't complain that you are clear and posi- tive. I've been coming along the same way. . . . It's refreshing to meet you." "I found it refreshing to meet Martineau." A twinge of conscience about Dr. Martineau turned Sir Richmond into a new channel. "He's a most interesting man," he said. "Rather shy in some I pects. Devoted to his work. And he 's writing a book which has saturated him in these ideas. Only two nights ago we stood here and talked about it. The Psychology of a New Age. The world, he believes, is entering upon a new phase in its history, the adolescence, so to speak, of man- kind. It is an idea tliat seizes the imagination. There is a flow of new ideas abroad, he thinks, widening realizations, unprecedented hopes and fears. Tin re is a eonsciousness of new powers and new responsibilities. We are sharing the adoles- cence of our race. It is giving history a new and 178 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART more intimate meaning for us. It is bringing us into directer relation with public affairs, — making them matter as formerly they didn't seem to mat- ter. That idea of the bright little private life has to go by the board." "I suppose it has," she said, meditatively, as though she had been thinking over some such ques- tion before. ''The private life," she said, "has a way of coming aboard again." Her reflections travelled fast and broke out now far ahead of him. "You have some sort of work cut out for you," she said abruptly. 1 ' Yes. Yes, I have. ' ' "I haven't," she said. 1 ' So that I go about, ' ' she added, ' ' like someone who is looking for something. I 'd like to know — if it's not jabbing too searching a question at you — what you have found." Sir Eichmond considered. "Incidentally," he smiled, "I want to get a lasso over the neck of that very forcible and barbaric person, your father. I am doing my best to help lay the foun- dation of a scientific world control of fuel produc- tion and distribution. We have a Fuel Commis- sion in London with rather wide powers of enquiry into the whole world problem of fuel. We shall come out to Washington presently with pro- posals." COMPANIONSHIP 179 Miss Grammont surveyed the landscape. "I suppose," she said, ''poor father is rather like an unbroken mule in business affairs. So many of our big business men in America are. He'll lash out at you. ' ' "I don't mind if only he lashes out openly in the sight of all men." She considered and turned on Sir Kichmond gravely. ' ' Tell me what you want to do to him. You find out so many things for me that I seem to have been thinking about in a sort of almost invisible half -conscious way. I've been suspecting for a long time that Civilization wasn't much good un- less it got people like my father under some sort of control. But controlling father — as distin- guished from managing him!" She reviewed some private and amusing memories. "He is a most intractable man." They had gone on to talk of her father and of the types of men who controlled international business. She had had plentiful opportunities for observation in their homes and her own. Gunter Lake, the big banker, she knew particularly well, becauso, it seemed, she had been engaged or was engaged to marry him. "All these people," she said, "are pushing things about, affecting mil- 180 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART lions of lives, hurting and disordering hundreds of thousands of people. They don't seem to know what they are doing. They have no plans in par- ticular. . . . And you are getting something going that will be a plan and a direction and a conscience and a control for them? You will find my father extremely difficult, but some of our younger men would love it. "And," she went on; "there are American women who'd love it too. We're petted. We're kept out of things. We aren't placed. We don't get enough to do. We're spenders and wasters — not always from choice. While these fathers and brothers and husbands of ours play about with the fuel and power and life and hope of the world as though it was a game of poker. With all the empty unspeakable solemnity of the male. And treat us as though we ought to be satisfied if they bring home part of the winnings. "That can't go on," she said. Her eyes went back to the long, low, undulating skyline of the downs. She spoke as though she took up the thread of some controversy that had played a large part in her life. "That isn't going on, ' ' she said with an effect of conclusive decision. Sir Richmond recalled that little speech now as he returned from Salisbury station to the Old George after his farewell to Martineau. He re- called too the soft firmness of her profile and the delicate line of her lifted chin. He felt that this COMPANIONSHIP 181 time at any rate he was not being deceived by the outward shows of a charming human being. This young woman had real firmness of character to back up her free and independent judgments. He smiled at the idea of any facile passion in the com- position of so sure and gallant a personality. Martineau was very fine-minded in many respects, but he was an old maid ; and like all old maids he saw man and woman in every encounter. But pas- sion was a thing men and women fell back upon when they had nothing else in common. When they thought in the pleasantest harmony and every remark seemed to weave a fresh thread of common interest, then it wasn't so necessary. It might happen, but it wasn't so necessary. . . . If it did it would be a secondary thing to compan- ionship. .. . . That's what she was, — a com- panion. But a very lovely and wonderful companion, the companion one would not relinquish until the very last moment one could keep with her. Her views about America and about her own place in the world seemed equally fresh and orig- inal to Sir Richmond. "I realize I've got to be a responsible American citizen," she had said. That didn't mean that she attached very much importance to her re- cently acquired vote. She evidently classified voters into the irresponsible who just had votes and the responsible who also had a considerable 182 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART amount of property as well. She had no illusions about the power of the former class. It didn't exist. They were steered to their decisions by people employed, directed or stimulated by ''father" and his friends and associates, the owners of America, the real " responsible citi- zens." Or they fell a prey to the merely adven- turous leading of ' ' revolutionaries. ' ' But anyhow they were steered. She herself, it was clear, was bound to become a very responsible citizen indeed. She would some day, she laughed, be "swimming in oil and suchlike property." Her interest in Sir Richmond's schemes for a scien- tific world management of fuel was therefore, she realized, a very direct one. But it was remark- able to find a young woman seeing it like that. Father it seemed varied very much in his atti' tude towards her. He despised and distrusted women generally, and it was evident he had made it quite clear to her how grave an error it was on her part to persist in being a daughter and not a son. At moments it seemed to Sir Richmond that she was disposed to agree with father upon that. When Mr. Grammont's sense of her regretta- ble femininity was uppermost, then he gave his intelligence chiefly to schemes for tying her up against the machinations of adventurers by means of trustees, partners, lawyers, advisers, agree- ments and suchlike complications, or for acquir- ing a workable son by marriage. To this last idea COMPANIONSHIP 183 it would seem the importance in her life of the rather heavily named Gunter Lake was to be as- cribed. But another mood of the old man's was distrust of anything that could not be spoken of as his "own flesh and blood," and then he would di- rect his attention to a kind of masculinization of his daughter and to schemes for giving her the completest control of all he had to leave her pro- vided she never married nor fell under masculine sway. "After all, ' ' he would reflect as he hesitated over the practicability of his life's ideal, "there was Hetty Green." This latter idea had reft her suddenly at the age of seventeen from the educational care of an English gentlewoman warranted to fit her for marriage with any prince in Europe, and thrust her for the mornings and a moiety of the after- noons of the better part of a year, after a swift but competent training, into a shirt waist and an office down town. She had been entrusted at first to a harvester concern independent of Mr. Gram- mont, because he feared bis own people wouldn't train her hard. She had worked for ordinary wages and ordinary hours, and at the end of the day, she mentioned casually, a large automobile with two menservanta and a trustworthy secre- tary used to pick her onl from the torrent of un- distingoished workers thai poured ont of the Synoptical Building. This masculinization idea had also sent her on n commission of enquiry into 184 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Mexico. There apparently she had really done responsible work. But upon the question of labour Mr. Grammont was fierce, even for an American business man, and one night at a dinner party he discovered his daughter displaying what he considered an im- proper familiarity with socialist ideas. This had produced a violent revulsion towards the purdah system and the idea of a matrimonial alliance with Gunter Lake. Gunter Lake, Sir Richmond gath- ered, wasn't half a bad fellow. Generally it would seem Miss Grammont liked him, and she had a way of speaking about him that suggested that in some way Mr. Lake had been rather hardly used and had acquired merit by his behaviour under bad treatment. There was some story, how- ever, connected with her war services in Europe upon which Miss Grammont was evidently indis- posed to dwell. About that story Sir Richmond was left at the end of his Avebury day and after his last talk with Dr. Martineau, still quite vaguely guessing. So much fact about Miss Grammont as we have given had floated up in fragments and pieced it- self together in Sir Richmond's mind in the course of a day and a half. The fragments came up as allusions or by way of illustration. The sustain- ing topic was this New Age Sir Richmond fore- shadowed, this world under scientific control, the Utopia of fully developed people fully developing COMPANIONSHIP 185 the resources of the earth. For a number of triv- ial reasons Sir Richmond found himself ascribing the project of this New Age almost wholly to Dr. Martineau, and presenting it as a much completer scheme than he was justified in doing. It was true that Dr. Martineau had not said many of the things Sir Richmond ascribed to him, but also it was true that they had not crystallized out in Sir Richmond's mind before his talks with Dr. Mar- tineau. The idea of a New Age necessarily carries with it the idea of fresh rules of conduct and of different relationships between human beings. And it throws those who talk about it into the companionship of a common enterprise. To-mor- row the New Age will be here no doubt, but to- day it is the hope and adventure of only a few human beings. So that it was natural for Miss Grammont and Sir Richmond to ask: "What are we to do with such types as father?" and to fall into an idiom that assumed a joint enterprise. They had agreed by a tacit consent to a common conception of the world they desired as a world scientifically ordered, an immense organization of mature com monsense, healthy and secure, gathering knowl- edge and power for creative adventures as yet beyond dreaming. They were prepared to think of the makers of the Avebury dyke, as their yes- terday selves, o£ the stone age savages as a phase in their Late childhood, and of this grval 186 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART world order Sir Richmond foresaw as a day where dawn was already at hand. And in such long per- spectives, the states, governments and institu- tions of to-day became very temporary-looking and replaceable structures indeed. Both these two people found themselves thinking in this fash- ion with an unwonted courage and freedom be- cause the other one had been disposed to think in this fashion before. Sir Richmond was still turning over in his mind the happy mutual re- lease of the imagination this chance companion- ship had brought about when he found himself back again at the threshold of the Old George. M Sir Richmond Hardy was not the only man who was thinking intently about Miss Grammont at that particular moment. Two gentlemen were coming towards her across the Atlantic whose minds, it chanced, were very busily occupied by her affairs. One of these was her father, who was lying in his brass bed in his commodious cabin on the Hollandia, regretting his diminishing ability to sleep in the early morning now, even when he was in the strong and soothing air of mid- Atlantic, and thinking of V.V. because she had a way of coming into his mind when it was undefended ; and the other was Mr. Gunter Lake on the Megantic, one day out from Sandy Hook, who found himself COMPANIONSHIP 187 equally sleepless and preoccupied. And although Mr. Lake was a man of vast activities and com- plicated engagements he was coming now to Europe for the express purpose of seeing V.V. and having things out with her fully and com- pletely because, in spite of all that had happened, she made such an endless series of delays in coming to America. Old Grammont as he appeared upon the pillow of his bed by the light of a rose-shaded bedside lamp, was a small-headed, grey-haired gentleman with a wrinkled face and sunken brown eyes. Years of business experience, mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords, had intensified an instinctive inexpressiveness. Under the most solitary circumstances old Grammont was still inexpressive, and the face that stared at the ceiling of his cabin and the problem of his daughter might have been the face of a pickled bead in a museum, for any indication it betrayed of the flow of thought within. He lay on his back and bis bent knees lilted the bed-clothes into a sharp mountain. lie was not even trying to sleep. Why, he meditated, had V.V. stayed on in Eu- rope so much longer than she need have done? And why bad Ghinter Lake suddenly got into a state of mind about her? Whydidn'l the girl eon fide in her father al Leasl about these things? What was afoot? She had thrown over Lake 188 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART once and it seemed she was going to turn him down again. Well, if she was an ordinary female person that was a silly sort of thing to do. With her fortune and his — you could buy the world. But suppose she was not an ordinary female per- son. . . . Her mother hadn't been ordinary any- how, whatever else you called her, and no one could call Grammont blood an ordinary fluid. . . . Old Grammont had never had any delusions about Lake. If Lake's father hadn't been a big man Lake would never have counted for anything at all. Suppose she did turn him down. In itself that wasn't a thing to break her father's heart. What did matter was not whether she threw Lake over but what she threw him over for. If it was because he wasn't man enough, well and good. But if it was for some other lover, some good-looking, worthless impostor, some European title or suchlike folly ! At the thought of a lover for V.V. a sudden flood of anger poured across the old man's mind, behind the still mask of his face. It infuriated him even to think of V.V., his little V.V., his own girl, entertaining a lover, being possibly — most shameful thought — in love! Like some ordinary silly female, sinking to kisses, to the deeds one could buy and pay for. His V.V. ! The idea in- furiated and disgusted him. He fought against it as a possibility. Once some woman in New York had ventured to hint something to him of COMPANIONSHIP 189 some fellow, some affair with an artist, Caston; she had linked this Caston with V.V.'s red cross nursing in Europe. . . . Old Grammont had made that woman sorry she spoke. Afterwards he had caused enquiries to be made about this Cas- ton, careful enquiries. It seems that he and V.V. had known each other, there had been something But nothing that V.V. need be ashamed of. When old Grammont 's enquiry man had come back with his report, old Grammont had been very particular about that. At first the fellow had not been very clear, rather muddled indeed as to how tilings were — no doubt he had wanted to make out there was something just to seem to earn his money. Old Grammont had struck the table sharply and the eyes that looked out of his mask had blazed. "What have you found out against her?" he had asked in a low even voice. "Absolutely nothing, Sir," said the agent, sud- denly white to the lips. . . . Old Grammoni stared a1 his memory of that moment for a while. Thai affair was all right, quite all right. Of course it was all right. And also, happily, Caston was among the f them, 200 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART so to speak. But they are not such fools and so forth that they can't do pretty well materially if once we hammer out a sane collective method of getting and using fuel. Which people generally will understand — in the place of our present methods of snatch and wrangle. Of that I am ab- solutely convinced. Some work, some help, some willingness you can get out of everybody. That's the red. And the same principle applies to most labour and property problems, to health, to educa- tion, to population, social relationships and war and peace. We haven't got the right system, we have inefficient half-baked systems, or no system at all, and a wild confusion and war of ideas in all these respects. But there is a right system possible none the less. Let us only hammer our way through to the sane and reasonable organiza- tion in this and that and the other human affairs, and once we have got it, we shall have got it for good. We may not live to see even the be- ginnings of success, but the spirit of order, the spirit that has already produced organized science, if only there are a few faithful, persist- ent people to stick to the job, will in the long run certainly save mankind and make human life — clean and splendid, happy work in a clear mind. If I could live to see it ! " "And as for us — in our time?" "Measured by the end we serve, we don't mat- ter. You know we don't matter." COMPANIONSHIP 201 "We have to find our fun in the building and in our confidence that we do really build." "So long as our confidence lasts there is no great hardship, ' ' said Sir Richmond. "So long as our confidence lasts," she repeated after him. ' < Ah ! " cried Sir Richmond. ' * There it is ! So long as our confidence lasts ! So long as one keeps one's mind steady. That is what I came away with Dr. Martineau to discuss. I went to him for advice. I haven't known him for more than a month. It's amusing to find myself preaching forth to you. It was just faith I had lost. Sud- denly I had lost my power of work. My confi- dence in the Tightness of what I was doing evap- orated. My will failed me. I don't know if you will understand what that means. It wasn't that my reason didn't assure me just as certainly as ever that what I was trying to do was the right thing to try to do. But somehow that seemed a cold and personally unimportant proposition. The life had gone out of it. . . ." He paused as if arrested by ;i momentary doubt. "I don't know why I tell you these things," he Baid. "You tell them me," slie s;iid a man as there was about. He said he adored me and 208 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART wanted me to crown his life. He wasn't ill-look- ing or ill-mannered. The second main streak in my nature wouldn't however fit in with that." She stopped short. "The second streak," said Sir Richmond. "Oh! Love of beauty, love of romance. I want to give things their proper names; I don't want to pretend to you. ... It was more or less than that. ... It was — imaginative sensuous- ness. Why should I pretend it wasn't in me? I believe that streak is in all women." "I believe so too. In all properly constituted women. ' ' "I tried to devote that streak to Lake," she said. "I did my best for him. But Lake was much too much of a gentleman or an idealist.about women, or what you will, to know his business as a lover. And that side of me fell in love, the rest of me protesting, with a man named Caston. It was a notorious affair. Everybody in New York couples my name with Caston. Except when my father is about. His jealousy has blasted an area of silence — in that matter — all round him. He will not know of that story. And they dare not tell him. I should pity anyone who tried to tell it him." "What sort of man was this Caston?" Miss Grammont seemed to consider. She did not look at Sir Richmond ; she kept her profile to him. COMPANIONSHIP 209 "He was," she said deliberately, "a very rot- ten sort of man." She spoke like one resolved to be exact and judicial. "I believe I always knew he wasn't right. But he was very handsome. And ten years younger than Lake. And nobody else seemed to be all right, so I swallowed that. He was an art- ist, a painter. Perhaps you know his work." Sir Richmond shook his head. "He could make American business men look like characters out of the Three Musketeers, they said, and he was beginning to be popular. He made love to me. In exactly the way Lake didn't. If I shut my eyes to one or two things, it was delightful. I liked it. But my father would have stood a painter as my husband almost as cheerfully as he would a man of colour. I made a fool of myself, as people say, about Caston. Well When the war came, be talked in a way that irritated me. He talked like an East Side Animiizio, about art and war. II made me furious to know it was all talk and that he didn't mean business. ... I made him go." She paused for a moment. "He hated to go. "Then I relented. Or I missed him and I wanted to be made love to. Or I really wauled to go on my own account. I forget. I forget my motives altogether now. Thai early war time was ;i queer time for everyone. A kind of wildness got into the blood. ... I threw over Lake. All 210 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART the time things had been going on, in New York- I had still been engaged to Lake. I went to France. I did good work. I did do good work. And also things were possible that would have seemed fantastic in America. You know some- thing of the war-time atmosphere. There was death everywhere and people snatched at gratifi- cations. Caston made ' To-morrow we die' his text. We contrived three days in Paris together — not very cleverly. All sorts of people know about it. . . . We went very far. ' ' She stopped short. ' 'Well?" said Sir Richmond. ".He did die. . . ." Another long pause. "They told me Caston had been killed. But someone hinted — or I guessed — that there was more in it than an or- dinary casualty. "Nobody, I think, realizes that I know. This is the first time I have ever confessed that I do know. He was shot. He was shot for cowardice. ' ' "That might happen to any man," said Sir Richmond presently. "No man is a hero all round the twenty-four hours. Perhaps he was caught by circumstances, unprepared. He may have been taken by surprise." "It was the most calculated, cold-blooded cow- ardice imaginable. He let three other men go on 5ind get killed. . . . COMPANIONSHIP 211 "No. It is no good your inventing excuses for a man you know nothing about. It was vile, con- temptible cowardice — and meanness. It fitted in with a score of ugly little things I remembered. It explained them all. I know the evidence and the judgment against him were strictly just and true, because they were exactly in character. . . . And that, you see, was my man. That was the lover I had chosen. That was the man to whom I had given myself with both hands." Her soft unhurrying voice halted for a time, and then resumed in the same even tones of care- ful statement. ' ' I wasn 't disgusted, not even with myself. About him I was chiefly sorry, intensely sorry, because I had made him come out of a life that suited and protected him, to the war. About myself, I was stunned and perplexed. I had the clearest realization that what you and I have been calling the bright little personal life had broken off short and was spoilt and over and done with. I frit as though it was my body they had shot. And there I was, with fifty years of life left in me and nothing particular to do with them." "That was just the prelude to life," said Sir Richmond. "It didn't seem so al the time. I frit I liad lo : hold ..!' something or go to pieces. I COUldnM turn to religion. I had no religion. And Duly: What is Duly? I sH myself to that. I had a kind 212 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART of revelation one night. 'Either I find out what all this world is about,' I said, 'or I perish.' I have lost myself and I must forget myself — by getting hold of something bigger than myself. And becoming that. That 's why I have been mak- ing a sort of historical pilgrimage. . . . That's my story, Sir Richmond. That's my education. . . . Somehow though your troubles are different, it seems to me that my little muddle makes me un- derstand how it is with you. What you've got, this idea of a scientific ordering of the world, is what I, in my 3 r ounger, less experienced way, have been feeling my way towards. I want to join on. I want to get hold of this idea of a great fuel con- trol in the world and of a still greater economic and educational control of which it is a part. I want to make that idea a part of myself. Rather I want to make myself a part of it. When you talk of it I believe in it altogether." "And I believe in it, when I talk of it to you." Sir Richmond was stirred very deeply by Miss Grammont's confidences. His dispute with Dr. Martineau was present in his mind, so that he did not want to make love to her. But he was ex- tremely anxious to express his vivid sense of the value of her friendship. And while he hesitated over this difficult and unfamiliar task she began COMPANIONSHIP 213 to talk again of herself, and in such a way as to give a new turn to Sir Richmond's thoughts. " Perhaps I ought to tell you a little more about myself," she said; "now that I have told you so much. I did a thing that still puzzles me. I was filled with a sense of hopeless disaster in France and I suppose I had some sort of desperate idea of saving something out of the situation. ... I renewed my correspondence with Gunter Lake. He made the suggestion I knew he would make, and I renewed our engagement." "To go back to wealth and dignity in New York?" "Yes." "But you don't love him?" "That's always been plain to me. But what I didn't realize, until I had given my promise over again, was that I dislike him — acutely." "You hadn't realized that before?" "I hadn't thought about him sufficiently. But now I had to think about him a lot. The other affair had given me an idea perhaps ol* what it means to be married to a man. And here I am drifting hack to him. The horrible thing abont him is the steady — enveloping way in which he has always come at me. Without fellowship. Without any community of ideas. Ready to make the mo traordinary bargains. So long as he can in any way fix me and gel me. Whal does if meant What is there behind those watching, 214 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART soliciting eyes of his? I don't in the least love him, and this desire and service and all the rest of it he offers me — it's not love. It's not even such love as Caston gave me. It's a game he plays with his imagination." She had released a flood of new ideas in Sir Eichmond's mind. "This is — illuminating," he said. "You dislike Lake acutely. You always have disliked him. ' ' "I suppose I have. But it's only now I admit it to myself." "Yes. And You might, for example, have married him in New York before the war. ' ' "It came very near to that." "And then probably you wouldn't have dis- covered you disliked him. You wouldn't have admitted it to yourself." "I suppose I shouldn't. I suppose I should have tried to believe I loved him." "Women do this sort of thing. Odd! I never realized it before. And there are endless wives suppressing an acute dislike. My wife does. I see now quite clearly that she detests me. Rea- sonably enough. From her angle I'm entirely detestable. But she won't admit it, won't know of it. She never will. To the end of my life, al- ways, she will keep that detestation unconfessed. She puts a face on the matter. "We both do. .And this affair of yours. . . . Have you thought how unjust it is to Lake?" COMPANIONSHIP 215 a if Not nearly so much as I might have done." : It is unfair to him. Atrociously unfair. He's not my sort of man, perhaps, but it will hurt him cruelly according to the peculiar laws of his be- ing. He seems to me a crawling sort of lover — with an immense self-conceit at the back of his crawlingness." "He has," she endorsed. "He backs himself to crawl — until he crawls tri- umphantly right over you. ... I don't like to think of the dream he has. ... I take it he will lose. Is it fair to go into this game with him?" "In the interests of Lake," she said, smiling softly at Sir Richmond in the moonlight. "But you are perfectly right." "And suppose he doesn't lose!" Sir Richmond found himself uttering senti- menls. "Thorn is only one decent way in which a civi- lized mail and a civilized woman may approach one another. Passionate desire is not enough. What is called love is nol enough. Pledges, ra- tional considerations, all these things arc worth- i. All these limits arc compatible with hale Tin- primary essential is friendship, clear under- standing, absolute confidence. Then within that condition, in that eleci relationship, l«>vc is per- ble, mating, marriage or no marriage, as you will- nil things are permissible. . . I Hue ;i long \r.\\l >• 1m ■iwei-ll Hm'III. J 1 216 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART 1 'Dear old cathedral," said Miss Grammont, a little irrelevantly. She had an air of having concluded something that to Sir Richmond seemed scarcely to have begun. She stood looking at the great dark facade edged with moonlight for some moments, and then turned towards the hotel, which showed a pink-lit window. "I wonder," she said, ''if Belinda is still up. And what she will think when I tell her of the final extinction of Mr. Lake. I think she rather looked forward to being the intimate friend, secrets and everything, of Mrs. Gunter Lake." $ 10 Sir Richmond woke up at dawn and he woke out of an extraordinary dream. He was saying to Miss Grammont: "There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds. There is no other marriage than the marriage of true minds." He saw her as he had seen her the evening before, light and cool, coming towards him in the moon- light from the hotel. But also in the inconsistent way of dreams he was very close to her kind, faintly smiling face, and his eyes were wet with tears and he was kissing her hand. "My dear wife and mate," he was saying, and suddenly he was kissing her cool lips. He woke up and stared at his dream, which faded out only very slowly before the fresh sun- COMPANIONSHIP 217 rise upon the red tiles and tree boughs outside the open window, and before the first stir and clamour of the birds. He felt like a court in which some overwhelm- ingly revolutionary piece of evidence had been tendered. All the elaborate defence had broken down at one blow. He sat up on the edge of his bed, facing the new fact. "This is monstrous and ridiculous," he said, "and Martineau judged me exactly. I am in love with her. ... I am head over heels in love with her. I have never been so much in love or so truly in love with anyone before." § 11 That was the dawn of a long day of tension for Sir Richmond and Miss G-rammont. Because each was now vividly aware of being in love with the other and so neither was able to sec how lliings were with the oilier. They were afraid of each other. A r< straint had come upon them both, a traint thai was greatly enhanced by their sense of Belinda, acutely observant, ostentatiously tad I'u) ;i!id self -effacing, and prepared a1 the slightest encouragement to 1»' overwhelmingly romantic and sympathetic. Their tali waned, and was re vived <<» an artificial activity and waned again. The historical interest had evaporated from the 218 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART west of England and left only an urgent and em- barrassing present. But the loveliness of the weather did not fail, and the whole day was set in Severn landscapes. They first saw the great river like a sea with the Welsh mountains hanging in the sky behind as they came over the Mendip crest above Shipham. They saw it again as they crossed the hill before Clifton Bridge, and so they continued, climbing to hill crests for views at Alveston and near Dursley, and so to Gloucester and the lowest bridge and thence back down stream again through fat meadow lands at first and much apple-blossom and then over gentle hills through wide, pale Newn- ham and Lidney and Alvington and Woolaston to old Chepstow and its brown castle, always with the widening estuary to the left of them and its foaming shoals and shining sand banks. From Chepstow they turned back north along the steep Wye gorge to Tintern, and there at the snug little Beaufort Arms with its prim lawn and flower gar- den they ended the day's journey. Tintern Abbey they thought a poor graceless mass of ruin down beside the river, and it was fenced about jealously and locked up from their invasion. After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont went for a walk in the mingled twilight and moonlight up the hill towarfts Chepstow. Both of them were absurdly and nervously pressing to Belinda to come with them, but she was far too COMPANIONSHIP 219 wise to take this sudden desire for her company seriously. Her dinner shoes, she said, were too thin. Perhaps she would change and come out a little later. "Yes, come later," said Miss Gram- mont and led the way to the door. They passed through the garden. "I think we go up the hill I ' ' said Sir Richmond. ''Yes," she agreed, "up the hill." Followed a silence. Sir Richmond made an effort, but after some artificial and discoimected talk about Tintern Abbey, concerning which she had no history ready, and then, still lamer, about whether Monmouth- shire is in England or Wales, silence fell again. The silence lengthened, assumed a significance, a dignity that no common words might break. Then Sir Richmond spoke. "I love you," he aid, "with all my heart." Her soft voire came back after a stillness. "I love you," she said, "with all myself." " I had long ceased to hope," said Sir Richmond, "thai I should ever find a friend ... a lover . . . perfect companionship. . . ." They went on walking side by side, without touching each other or turning to each other. "All the things I wanted to think I believe have come alive in me," she said. . . . "Cool and sweet," said Sir Richmond. "Such bappinee a I could no1 have imagined." Tin- light of a silent bicycle appeared above 220 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART them up the hill and swept down upon them, lit their two still faces brightly and passed. "My dear," she whispered in the darkness be- tween the high hedges. They stopped short and stood quite still, trem- bling. He saw her face, dim and tender, looking up to his. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her lips as he had desired in his dream. . . . When they returned to the inn Belinda Seyffert offered flat explanations of why she had not fol- lowed them, and enlarged upon the moonlight ef- fect of the Abbey ruins from the inn lawn. But the scared congratulations in her eyes betrayed her recognition that momentous things had hap- pened between the two. CHAPTER THE EIGHTH Full Moon § 1 Sm Richmond had talked in the moonlight and shadows of having found such happiness as he could not have imagined. But when he awoke in the night that happiness had evaporated. He awoke suddenly out of this love dream that had lasted now for nearly four days and he awoke in a mood of astonishment and dismay. He had thought that when he parted from Dr. Martineau he had parted also from that process of self-exploration that they had started together, but now he awakened to find it established and in full activity in his mind. Something or someone, a sort of etherealized Martinean-Hardy, an ab- stracted intellectual conscience, was demanding what he though! he was doing with Miss Gram mont and whither he thought he was taking her, how he proposed to reconcile the close relationship with her thai he was now embarked upon with, in the firsl place, his work upon and engagements with the Fuel Commission, and, in the second place, Martin Leeds. Curiously enough Lady 221 222 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Hardy didn't come into the case at all. He had done his utmost to keep Martin Leeds out of his head throughout the development of this affair. Now in an unruly and determined way that was extremely characteristic of her she seemed reso- lute to break in. She appeared as an advocate, without affection for her client but without any hostility, of the claims of Miss Grammont to be let alone. The elaborate pretence that Sir Richmond had main- tained to himself that he had not made love to Miss Grammont, that their mutual attraction had been irresistible and had achieved its end in spite of their resolute and complete detachment, collapsed and vanished from his mind. He admitted to him- self that driven by a kind of instinctive necessity he had led their conversation step by step to a realization and declaration of love, and that it did not exonerate him in the least that Miss Grammont had been quite ready and willing to help him and meet him half way. She wanted love as a woman does, more than a man does, and he had steadily presented himself as a man free to love, able to love and loving. "She wanted a man to love, she wanted per- fected fellowship, and you have made her that tremendous promise. That was implicit in your embrace. And how can you keep that promise 1 ' ' It was as if Martin spoke ; it was her voice ; it was the very quality of her thought. FULL MOON 228 "You belong to this work of yours, which must needs be interrupted or abandoned if you take her. "Whatever is not mortgaged to your work is mortgaged to me. For the strange thing in all this is that you and I love one another — and have no power to do otherwise. In spite of all this. "You have nothing to give her but stolen goods," said the shadow of Martin. "You have nothing to give anyone personally any more. . . . "Think of the love that she desires and think of this love that you can give. . . . "Is there any new thing in you that you can give her that you haven't given me? You and I know each other very well ; perhaps I know you too well. Haven't you loved me as much as you can love anyone I Think oi' all that there has been be- tween us that you are ready now, eager now to set aside and forget as though it had never been. For four days you have kept me out of your mind in order to worship her. Yet you have known I then — for all you would not know. No one e will ever be so intimate with you as I am. We ha\ e quarrelled together, wept together, jested happily and jested bitterly. You have spared me at all. Pitiless and cruel you have been to me. Von have reckoned ap all my faults against me though they wen gins. YOD have treated me at times onlovingly— never was Lover treated so un- loving] on h: imetimes treated me. And yet 1 have your love — as no other woman can e 224 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART have it. Even now when you are wildly in love with this girl's freshness and boldness and clever- ness I come into your mind by right and necessity. 1 ' She is different, ' ' argued Sir Richmond. "But you are the same," said the shadow of Martin with Martin's unsparing return. "Your love has never been a steadfast thing. It comes and goes — like the wind. You are an extrava- gantly imperfect lover. But I have learnt to ac- cept you, as people accept the English weather. . . . Never in all your life have you loved, wholly, fully, steadfastly — as people deserve to be loved ; not your mother nor your father, not your wife nor your children, nor me, nor our child, nor any living thing. Pleasant to all of us at times — at times bitterly disappointing. You do not even love this work of yours steadfastly, this work to which you sacrifice us all in turn. You do not love enough. That is why you have these moods and changes, that is why you have these lassitudes. So it is you are made. . . . "And that is why you must not take this brave young life, so much simpler and braver than your own, and exalt it — as you can do — and then fail it, as you will do. ..." Sir Richmond's mind and body lay very still for a time. "Should I fail her? . . ." For a time Martin Leeds passed from the fore- ground of his mind. FULL MOON 225 He was astonished to think how planless, in- stinctive and unforeseeing his treatment of Miss Grammont had been. It had been just a blind drive to get hold of her and possess her. . . . Suddenly his passion for her became active in its defence again. "But is there such a thing as a perfect love? Is yours a perfect love, my dear Martin, with its insatiable jealousy, its ruthless criticism? Has the world ever seen a perfect lover yet? Isn't it our imperfection that brings us together in a common need? Is Miss Grammont, after all, likely to get a more perfect love in all her life than this poor love of mine? And isn't it good for her that she should love?" "Perfect love cherishes. Perfect love fore- goes." Sir Richmond found his mind wandering far away from the immediate question. "Perfect love," the phrase was his point of departure. Was it true that he could not love passionately and completely? Was that fundamentally what was tlM matter with him.' Was that perhaps what was the matter with the whole world of mankind? It had not yet come to that power of loving which makes action full and simple and direct and un- hesitating. Man u)inii his planet has not grown up to Love, is still an eager, egotistical and fluc- tuating adolescent, lie lacks the courage to love and the wisdom to love. Love is here. But it 226 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART comes and goes, it is mixed with greeds and jeal- ousies and cowardice and cowardly reservations. One hears it only in snatches and single notes. It is like something tuning up before the music begins. . . . The metaphor altogether ran away with Sir Eichmond's half dreaming mind. Some day perhaps all life would go to music. Love was music and power. If he had loved enough he need never have drifted away from his wife. Love would have created love, would have tolerated and taught and inspired. Where there is perfect love there is neither greed nor impa- tience. He would have done his work calmly. He would have won his way with his Committee instead of fighting and quarrelling with it perpetually. . . . 1 ' Flimsy creatures, ' ' he whispered. * ' Uncertain health. Uncertain strength. A will that comes and goes. Moods of baseness. Moods of utter beastliness. . . . Love like April sunshine. April? . . ." He dozed and dreamt for a time of spring pass- ing into a high summer sunshine, into a continuing music, of love. He thought of a world like some great playhouse in which players and orchestra and audience all co-operate in a noble production without dissent or conflict. He thought he was the savage of thirty thousand years ago dreaming of the great world that is still perhaps thirty thousand years ahead. His effort to see more of FULL MOON 227 that coming world than indistinct and cloudy pinnacles and to hear more than a vague music, dissolved his dream and left him awake again and wrestling with the problem of Miss Grammont. * 2 The shadow of Martin stood over him, inexor- able. He had to release Miss Grammont from the adventure into which he had drawn her. This de- cision stood out stern and inevitable in his mind with no conceivable alternative. As he looked at the task before him he began to realize its difficulty. He was profoundly in love with her, he was still only learning how deeply, and she was not going to play a merely passive part in this affair. She was perhaps as deeply in love with him. . . . He could not bring himself to the idea of con- fessions and disavowals. He could not bear to think of her disillusionment. He felt that he owed it to her not to disillusion her, to spoil things for her in that fashion. "To turn into something mean and ngly after she 1ms believed in me. . . . It would be like playing a practical joke upon her. Tt would be like taking her into my arms and sud- denly making a grimace at her. . . . Tt would scar her with a Becond humiliation. . . ." Should he take her on to Bath or Exeter to-mor- row and contrive by some sudden arrival of tele- 228 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART grams that he had to go from her suddenly? But a mere sudden parting would not end things be- tween them now unless he went off abruptly with- out explanations or any arrangements for further communications. At the outset of this escapade there had been a tacit but evident assumption that it was to end when she joined her father at Fal- mouth. It was with an effect of discovery that Sir Richmond realized that now it could not end in that fashion, that with the whisper of love and the touching of lips, something had been started that would go on, that would develop. To break off now and go away without a word would leave a raw and torn end, would leave her perplexed and perhaps even more humiliated with an aching mys- tery to distress her. "Why did he go? Was it something I said? — something he found out or imagined ? ' ' Parting had disappeared as a possible solution of this problem. She and he had got into each other's lives to stay: the real problem was the terms upon which they were to stay in each other's lives. Close association had brought them to the point of being, in the completest sense, lovers; that could not be; and the real problem was the transmutation of their relationship to some form compatible with his honour and her happiness. A word, an idea, from some recent reading floated into Sir Richmond's head. "Sublimate," he whispered. "We have to sublimate this affair. FULL MOON 229 We have to put this relationship upon a Higher Plane." His mind stopped short at that. Presently his voice sounded out of the depths of his heart. "God! How I loathe the Higher Plane! . . . "God has put me into this Higher Plane busi- ness like some poor little kid who has to wear irons on its legs. "I want her. ... Do you hear, Martin? I want her." As if by a lightning flash he saw his car with himself and Miss Grammont — Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out — traversing Europe and Asia in headlong flight. To a sunlit beach in the South Seas. . . . His thoughts presently resumed as though these unmannerly and fantastic interruptions had not occurred. "We have to carry the whole affair on to a Higher Plane — and keep it there. We two love one another — that has to be admitted now. (I ought never to have touched her. I ought never to have thought of touching her.) But we two are too high, our aims and work and obligations are too high for any ordinary love making. That sort of tiling would embarrass us, would spoil everything. "Spoil everything," he repeated, rather like a small boy who learns an unpalatable lesson. 230 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART For a time Sir Richmond, exhausted by moral effort, lay staring at the darkness. ' 'It has to be done. I believe I can carry her through with it if I can carry myself. She's a finer thing than I am. . . . On the whole I am glad it's only one more day. Belinda will be about. . . . Afterwards we can write to each other. . . . If we can get over the next day it will be all right. Then we can write about fuel and politics — and there won't be her voice and her presence. We shall really sublimate. . . . First class idea, — subli- mate ! . . . And I will go back to dear old Martin who's all alone there and miserable; I'll be kind to her and play my part and tell her her Carbuncle scar rather becomes her. . . . And in a little while I shall be altogether in love with her again. . . . " Queer what a brute I've always been to Martin." "Queer that Martin can come in a dream to me and take the upper hand with me. . . . "Queer that now — I love Martin." He thought still more profoundly. "By the time the Committee meets again I shall have been tremendously refreshed. ' ' He repeated : — "Put things on the Higher Plane and keep them there. Then go back to Martin. And so to the work. That's it. . . ." Nothing so pacifies the mind as a clear-cut pur- pose. Sir Richmond fell asleep during the fourth recapitulation of this programme. FULL MOON 231 §3 When Miss Grammont appeared at breakfast Sir Richmond saw at once that she too had had a restless night. When she came into the little long breakfast room of the inn with its brown screens and its neat white tables it seemed to him that the Miss Grammont of his nocturnal speculations, the beautiful young lady who had to be protected and managed and loved unselfishly, vanished like some exorcised intruder. Instead was this real dear young woman, who had been completely forgotten during the reign of her simulacrum and who now returned completely remembered, familiar, friendly, intimate. She touched his hand for a moment, she met his eyes with the shadow of a smile in her own. " Oranges!" said Belinda from the table by the window. "Beautiful oranges." She had been preparing them, poor Trans- atlantic exile, after the fashion in which grape fruits are prepared npon liners and in the civi- lized world of the west. "lie's getting us tea spoons," said Belinda, as they sal down. "This is realler England than ever," she said. "I've been up an hour. I found a little path down to the river bank. If 'a the greenest morning world and full of wild flowers. Look af these." 232 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART ''That's lady's smock," said Sir Richmond. "It's not really a flower; it's a quotation from Shakespear." "And there are cowslips!" "Cuckoo buds of yellow hue. Do paint the meadows with delight. All the English flowers come out of Shakespear. I don't know what we did before his time." The waiter arrived with the tea spoons for the oranges. Belinda, having distributed these, resumed her discourse of enthusiasm for England. She asked a score of questions about Gloucester and Chep- stow, the Severn and the Romans and the Welsh, and did not wait for the answers. She did not want answers; she talked to keep things going. Her talk masked a certain constraint that came upon her companions after the first morning's greetings were over. Sir Richmond as he had planned upstairs pro- duced two Michelin maps. "To-day," he said, "we will run back to Bath — from which it will be easy for you to train to Falmouth. We will go by Monmouth and then turn back through the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitive coai mines still worked by two men and a boy with a windlass and a pail. Perhaps we will go through Cirencester. I don't know. Perhaps it is better to go straight to Bath. In the very heart of Bath you will find yourselves in just the FULL MOON 233 same world you visited at Pompeii. Bath is Pompeii overlaid by Jane Austen's England." He paused for a moment. "We can wire to your agents from here before we start and we can pick up their reply at Gloucester or Nailsworth or even Bath itself. So that if your father is nearer than we suppose But I think to-mor- row afternoon will be soon enough for Falmouth, anyhow." He stopped interrogatively. Miss Grammont's face was white. "That will do very well," she said. They started, but presently they came to high banks that showed such masses of bluebells, ragged Robin, great stitchwort and the like that Belinda was not to be restrained. She clamoured to stop the car and go up the bank and pick her hands full, and so they drew up by the roadside and Sir Kiehmond and Miss Grammont sat down near the car while Belinda carried her enthusiastic onslaught on the flowers up the steep bank and presently out of earshot. The two lovers said unheeded things about the flowers to each other and then fell silent. Then Miss Grammont turned her head and seemed de- liberately to measure her companion's distance Evidently she judged her out of earshot. 234 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "Well," said Miss Grammont in her soft even voice. "We love one another. Is that so still?" "I could not love you more." "It wasn't a dream ?" "No." 1 ' And to-morrow we part ? ' ' He looked her in the eyes. "I have been think- ing of that all night," he said at last. "I too." "And you think ?" ' ' That we must part. Just as we arranged it — when was it? Three days or three ages ago? There is nothing else in the world to do except for us to go our ways. ... I love you. That means for a woman It means that I want to be with you. But that is impossible. . . . Don't doubt whether I love you because I say — impos- sible. ..." Sir Richmond, faced with his own nocturnal de- cision, was now moved to oppose it flatly. "Noth- ing that one can do is impossible." She glanced again at Belinda and bent down to- wards him. "Suppose," she said, "you got back into that car with me ; suppose that instead of go- ing on as we have planned, you took me — away. How much of us would go?" ' ' You would go, ' ' said Sir Richmond, ' ' and my heart." "And this work of yours? And your honour? For the honour of a man in this New Age of FULL MOON 235 yours will be first of all in the work he does for the world. And you will leave your work — to be just a lover. And the work that I might do — because of my father's wealth; all that would vanish too. We should leave all of that, all of our usefulness, all that much of ourselves. But what has made me love you? Just your breadth of vision, just the sense that you mattered. What has made you love me ! Just that I have understood the dream of your work. All that we should have to leave behind. We should specialize, in our own scandal. We should run away just for one thing. To think, by sharing the oldest, simplest, dearest indul- gences in the world, that we had got each other. When really we had lost each other, lost all that mattered. ..." Her face was flushed with the earnestness of her conviction. Her eyes were bright with tears. "Don't think 1 don't love you. It's so hard to say all this. Somehow it seems like going back on something — something supreme. Our instincts have got us. . . . Don't think I'd hold myself from you, dear. I'd give myself to you with both hands. I love you When a woman loves — I at any rate — she loves altogether. But this thing — I am convinced cannot be. I must go.my own way, the way I have to go. My father is the Btrangesl man, obstinate, more than half a savage. For me — I know it — he has the jealousy of ten husbands, [f you take me [f our secret be- 236 SECRET PLACES OP THE HEART comes manifest If you are to take me and keep me, then his life and your life will become wholly this Feud, nothing but this Feud. You have to fight him anyhow — that is why I of all people must keep out of the quarrel. For him, it would be an immense excitement, full of the possibility of fierce satisfactions ; for you, whether you won me or lost me, it would be utter waste and ruin." She paused and then went on: — "And for me too, waste and ruin. I shall be a woman fought over. I shall be fought over as dogs fight over a bone. I shall sink back to the level of Helen of Troy. I shall cease to be a free citizen, a respon- sible free person. Whether you win me or lose me it will be waste and ruin for us both. Your Fuel Commission will go to pieces, all the wide, endur- ing work you have set me dreaming about will go the same way. We shall just be another romantic story. . . . No!" Sir Richmond sat still, a little like a sullen child, she thought. "I hate all this," he said slowly. "I didn't think of your father before, and now I think of him it sets me bristling for a fight. It makes all this harder to give up. And yet, do ycru know, in the night I was thinking, I was com- ing to conclusions, very like yours. For quite other reasons. I thought we ought not to We have to keep friends anyhow and hear of each other?" "That goes without saying." FULL MOON 237 "I thought we ought not to go on to be lovers in any way that would affect you, touch you too closely. ... I was sorry — I had kissed you." "Not I. No. Don't be sorry for that. I am glad we have fallen in love, more glad than I have been of anything else in my life, and glad we have spoken plainly. . . . Though we have to part. . . . And " Her whisper came close to him. "For a whole day yet, all round the clock twice, you and I have one another." Miss Seyffert began speaking as soon as she was well within earshot. 1 1 1 don 't know the name of a single one of these flowers," she cried, "except the bluebells. Look at this great handful I've gotten! Springtime in Italy doesn't compare with it, not for a moment." §5 Because Belinda Seyffert was in the dicky be- hind them with her alert interest in their emo- tions all loo thinly ;m!' Kidding, Smollett, Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, the graceful bridge with the bright little shops full of "presents from 246 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Bath"; the Pump Room with its water drinkers and a fine array of the original Bath chairs. Down below the Pump Room our travellers ex- plored the memories of the days when the world was Latin from York to the Tigris, and the Cor- inthian capital flourished like a weed from Bath to Baalbek. And they considered a little doubt- fully the seventeenth century statue of Bladud, who is said to have been healed by the Bath waters and to have founded the city in the days when Stonehenge still flourished, eight hundred years before the Romans came. In the afternoon Miss Seyffert came with Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont and was very en- thusiastic about everything, but in the evening after dinner it was clear that her role was to re- main in the hotel. Sir Richmond and Miss Gram- mont went out into the moonlit gloaming; they crossed the bridge again and followed the road beside the river towards the old Abbey Church, that Lantern of the West. Away in some sunken gardens ahead of them a band was playing, and a cluster of little lights about the bandstand showed a crowd of people down below dancing on the grass. These little lights, these bobbing black heads and the lilting music, this little inflamed centre of throbbing sounds and ruddy illumina- tion, made the dome of the moonlit world about it seem very vast and cool and silent. Our visitors began to realize that Bath could be very beautiful. FULL MOON 247 They went to the parapet above the river and stood there, leaning over it elbow to elbow and smoking cigarettes. Miss Grammont was moved to declare the Pulteney Bridge, with its noble arch, its effect of height over the swirling river, and the cluster of houses above, more beautiful than the Ponte Vecchio at Florence. Down below was a man in waders with a fishing-rod going to and fro along the foaming weir, and a couple of boys paddled a boat against the rush of the water lower down the stream. "Dear England!" said Miss Grammont, sur- veying this gracious spectacle. "How full it is of homely and lovely and kindly things!" "It is the home we come from." "You belong to it still." "No more than you do. I belong to a big over- working modern place called London which stretches its tentacles all over the world. I am as much a home-coming tourist as you are. Most of this western country I am seeing for the first time." She said nothing for a space. "I've not a word to Bay to night," she said. "I'm just full of a sorl of animal satisfaction in being close to you. . . . And in being with you among lovely things. . . .Somewhere Before we part to-night — • • • "Yes?" he said to her pause, and his face came very near to hers. 248 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "I want you to kiss me." "Yes," he said awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder, acutely aware of the promenaders pass- ing close to them. "It's a promise?" "Yes." Very timidly and guiltily his hand sought hers beside it and gripped it and pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest and most unavoid- able of expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon their Planet ; it was much more like the shy endearments of the shop boys and work girls who made the darkling populous about them with their silent interchanges. "There are a thousand things I want to talk about to you," she said. "After we have parted to-morrow I shall begin to think of them. But now — every rational thing seems dissolved in this moonlight.". . . Presently she made an effort to restore the in- tellectual dignity of their relationship. "I suppose I ought to be more concerned to- night about the work I have to do in the world and anxious for you to tell me this and that, but in- deed I am not concerned at all about it. I seem to have it in outline all perfectly clear. I mean to play a man 's part in the world just as my father wants me to do. I mean to win his confidence and work with him — like a partner. Then some day I shall be a power in the world of fuel. And at FULL MOON 249 the same time I must watch and read and think and learn how to be the servant of the world. . . . We two have to live like trusted servants who have been made guardians of a helpless minor. We have to put things in order and keep them in order against the time when Man — Man whom we call in America the Common Man — can take hold of his world " "And release his servants," said Sir Rich- mond. "All that is perfectly clear in my mind. That is what I am going to live for ; that is what I have to do." She stopped abruptly. "All that is about as interesting to-night — in comparison with the touch of your dear fingers — as next month's railway time-table." But later she found a topic that could hold their attention for a time. "We have never said a word about religion," she said. Sir Richmond paused for a moment. "I am a godless man," he said. "The stars and space and time overwhelm my imagination. I cannot imagine anything above or beyond them." She thought that over. "But there are divine tilings," she said. "You are divine. . . . T'm not talking lovers' nonsense." he hastened to add. "T mean that there is something about human beings — not just 250 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART the everyday stuff of them, but something that appears intermittently — as though a light shone through something translucent. If I believe in any divinity at all it is a divinity revealed to me by other people And even by myself in my own heart. ''I'm never surprised at the badness of human beings," said Sir Richmond; "seeing how they have come about and what they are; but I have been surprised time after time by fine things. . . . Often in people I disliked or thought little of . . . . I can understand that I find you full of divine quality, because I am in love with you and all alive to you. Necessarily I keep on discovering loveliness in you. But I have seen divine things — in dear old Martineau, for example. A vain man, fussy, timid — and yet filled with a passion for truth, ready to make great sacrifices and to toil tremendously for that. And in those men I am always cursing, my Committee, it is astonishing at times to discover what streaks of goodness even the really bad men can show. . . . But one can't make use of just anyone's divinity. I can see the divinity in Martineau but it leaves me cold. He tired me and bored me. . . . But I live on you. It's only through love that the God can reach over from one human being to another. All real love is a divine thing, a reassurance, a release of cour- age. It is wonderful enough that we should take food and drink and turn them into imagination, FULL MOON 251 invention and creative energy ; it is still more won- derful that we should take an animal urging and turn it into a light to discover beauty and an im- pulse towards the utmost achievements of which we are capable. All love is a sacrament and all lovers are priests to each other. You and I " Sir Richmond broke off abruptly. "I spent three days trying to tell this to Dr. Martineau. But he wasn't the priest I had to confess to and the words wouldn't come. I can confess it to you readily enough. ..." "I cannot tell," said Miss Grammont, " whether this is the last wisdom in life or — moonshine. I cannot tell whether I am thinking or feeling; but the noise of the water going over the weir below is like the stir in my heart. And I am swimming in love and happiness. Am I awake or am I dream- ing you, and are we dreaming one another? Hold my hand — hold it hard and tight. I'm trembling with love for you and all the world. ... If I say more I shall be weeping." For a long time they stood side by side saying not a word to one another. Presently the band down below and the dancing ceased and the little lights were extinguished. The silent moon seemed to grow brighter and larger and the whisper of the waters louder. A crowd of young people flowed out of the gardens and passed by on their way home. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammonl Btrolled throng! the dispersing crowd 252 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART and over the Toll Bridge and went exploring down a little staircase that went down from the end of the bridge to the dark river, and then came back to their old position at the parapet looking upon the weir and the Pulteney Bridge. The gardens that had been so gay were already dark and silent as they returned, and the streets echoed emptily to the few people who were still abroad. "It's the most beautiful bridge in the world," said Miss Grammont, and gave him her hand again. Some deep-toned clock close by proclaimed the hour eleven. The silence healed again. "Well?" said Sir Richmond. "Well?" said Miss Grammont smiling very faintly. "I suppose we must go out of all this beauty now, back to the lights of the hotel and the watch- ful eyes of your dragon. ' ' "She has not been a very exacting dragon so far, has she?" 1 ' She is a miracle of tact. ' ' ' ' She does not really watch. But she is curious — and very sympathetic." "She is wonderful." . . . "That man is still fishing," said Miss Gram- mont. For a time she peered down at the dark figure wading in the foam below as though it was the FULL MOON 253 only thing of interest in the world. Then she turned to Sir Richmond. "I would trust Belinda with my life," she said. "And anyhow — now — we need not worry about Belinda." §7 At the breakfast table it was Belinda who was the most nervous of the three, the most moved, the most disposed to throw a sacramental air over their last meal together. Her companions had passed beyond the idea of separation; it was as if they now cherished a secret satisfaction at the high dignity of their parting. Belinda in some way perceived they had become different. They were no longer tremulous lovers ; they seemed sure of one another and with a new pride in their bear- ing. It would have pleased Belinda better, seeing how soon they were to be torn apart, if they had not made quite such excellent breakfasts. She even suspected them of having slept — well. Yet yesterday they had been deeply stirred. Tiny had stayed out late lasl night, so late that she had not heard them come in. Perhaps then they had passed Hie climax of their emotions. Sir Rich- mond, Bhe Learnt, was to take the party to Kxeter, where there would be a train for Falmouth a little after two. If they started from Bath about nine that would give them an ample margin of time 254 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART in which to deal with a puncture or any such misadventure. They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mal- let, ran through Ilchester and Ilminster into the lovely hill country about Up-Ottery and so to Honiton and the broad level road to Exeter. Sir Eichmond and Miss Grammont were in a state of happy gravity; they sat contentedly side by side, talking very little. They had already made their arrangements for writing to one another. There was to be no stream of love-letters or protesta- tions. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to be implicit. They were to write at in- tervals about political matters and their common interests, and to keep each other informed of their movements about the world. "We shall be working together," she said, speaking suddenly out of a train of thought she had been following, "we shall be closer together than many a couple who have never spent a day apart for twenty years." Then presently she said : "In the New Age all lovers will have to be accustomed to meeting and parting. We women will not be tied very much by domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have chil- dren. We shall be going about our business like men ; we shall have world-wide businesses — many of us — just as men will. . . . 'It will be a world full of lovers' meetings. if FULL MOON 255 Some day — somewhere — we two will certainly meet again." "Even you have to force circumstances a lit- tle, ' ' said Sir Richmond. "We shall meet," she said, "without doing that." 1 ' But where ? " he asked unanswered. . . . "Meetings and partings," she said. "Women will be used to seeing their lovers go away. Even to seeing them go away to other women who have borne them children and who have a closer claim on them." "No one " began Sir Richmond, startled. "But I don't mind very much. It's how things are. If I were a perfectly civilized woman I shouldn't mind at all. If men and women are not to be tied to each other there must needs be such things as this." "But you," said Sir Richmond. "I at any rate am not like that. I cannot bear the thought that you "You need not bear it, my dear. I was just trying to imagine this world that is to be. Women I think arc different from men — in their jealousy. Men are jealous of the other man ; women are jeal- ous for their man— and careless about the other woman. What I love in you I am sure about. My mind was empty wlmii it came to you and now it is full to overflowing. I shall feel you moving about 256 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART in the same world with me. I 'm not likely to think of anyone else for a very long time. . . . Later on, who knows ? I may marry. I make no vows. But I think until I know certainly that you do not want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have a lover. I don't know, but that is how I believe it will be with me. And my mind feels beautifully clear now and settled. I've got your idea and made it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that the work we do matters supremely. I'll find my rope and tug it, never fear. Half way round the world perhaps some day you will feel me tugging. ' ' "I shall feel you're there," he said, " whether you tug or not. . . . "Three miles left to Exeter," he reported presently. She glanced back at Belinda. "It is good that we have loved, my dear," she whispered. "Say it is good." "The best thing in all my life," he said, and lowered his head and voice to say: "My dearest dear." "Heart's desire— still?" "Heart's delight. . . . Priestess of life. . . . Divinity." She smiled and nodded and suddenly Belinda, up above their lowered heads, accidentally and irrelevantly, no doubt, coughed. At Exeter Station there was not very much time FULL MOON 257 to spare after all. Hardly had Sir Richmond se- cured a luncheon basket for the two travellers before the train came into the station. He parted from Miss Grammont with a hand clasp. Belinda was flushed and distressed at the last but her friend was quiet and still. "Au revoir," said Belinda without conviction when Sir Richmond shook her hand. § 8. Sir Richmond stood quite still on the platform as the train ran out of the station. He did not move until it had disappeared round the bend. Then he turned, lost in a brown study, and walked very slowly towards the station exit. "The most wonderful thing in my life," he thought. "And already — it is unreal. "She will go on to her father — whom she knows ten thousand times more thoroughly than she knows me; she will go on to Paris, she will pick up all the 11j icads of her old story, be reminded of endless things in her life, but never except in the most casual way of these days: they will be cut off from everything else thai will serve to keep them real; and as forme — this connects with noth- ing else in my life at all. . . . It is as disconnected as a dream. . . . Already it is hardly more sub- stantial than a dream. . . . "We shall write letters. Do letters breathe faster or slower as you read them? 258 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART; "We may meet. "Where are we likely to meet again? . . . 1 never realized before how improbable it is that we shall meet again. And if we meet? . . . "Never in all our lives shall we be really to- gether again. It's over ^With a complete- ness. . . . "Like death.' ' He came opposite the bookstalls and stopped short and stared with unseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering now whether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced something of the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. His golden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational sense of loss was flooding every other feeling about V.V. If she had loved him truly and altogether could she have left him like this? Neither of them surely had intended so complete a separation. He wanted to go back and recall that train. A few seconds more, he realized, and he would give way to anger. Whatever happened that must not happen. He pulled himself together. What was it he had to do now? He had not to be angry, he had not even to be sorry. They had done the right thing. Outside the station his car was waiting. He went outside the station and stared at his car. He had to go somewhere. Of course ! down FULL MOON 259 into Cornwall to Martin's cottage. He had to go down to her and be kind and comforting about that carbuncle. To be kind? ... If this thwarted feeling broke out into anger he might be tempted to take it out of Martin. That at any rate he must not do. He had always for some inexplicable cause treated Martin badly. Nagged her and blamed her and threatened her. That must stop now. No shadow of this affair must lie on Martin. . . . And Martin must never have a suspicion of any of this. . . . The image of Martin became very vivid in his mind. He thought of her as he had seen her many times, with the tears close, fighting with her back to the wall, with all her wit and vigour gone, be- cause she loved liini more steadfastly than be did her. Whatever happened he must aol lake it out of Martin. Tt was astonishing how real sin- had become now as V.V. became a dream. Yes, Martin was astonishingly real. And if only he could go now and talk to Martin — and face all tin' fads of lil'' 1 with her, even as he had done with that phantom Martin in his dream. . . . lint things were not like that. Be Looked to Bee if his car was short of water or petrol; both needed replenishing, and so he would have to go np the hill into Exeter town mil Il«' gol into his <-ar and sal. with his lin rs on tlir eled ric start* p. Martini old Priendl Eight days were still lefl 260 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART before the Committee met again, eight days for golden kindness. He would distress Martin by no clumsy confession. He would just make her happy as she loved to be made happy. . . . Nevertheless. Nevertheless. . . . Was it Martin who failed him or he who failed Martin? Incessant and insoluble dispute. Well, the thing now was to go to Martin. . . . And then the work ! He laughed suddenly. 1 * I '11 take it out of the damned Commission. I '11 make old Rumf ord Brown sit up. ' ' He was astonished to find himself thinking of the affairs of the Commission with a lively interest and no trace of fatigue. He had had his change ; he had taken "his rest ; he was equal to his task again already. He started his engine and steered his way past a van and a waiting cab. " Fuel, "he said. CHAPTER THE NINTH The Last Days of Sir Richmond Hardy The Majority and Minority Reports of the Fuel Commission were received on their first publica- tion with much heat and disputation, but there is already a fairly general agreement that they are great and significant documents, broadly con- ceived and historically important. They do lift the questions of fuel supply and distribution high above the level of parochial jealousies and above the petty and destructive profiteering of private owners and traders, to a view of a general human welfare. They form an important link in a series of private and public documents that are slowly opening out a prospect of new economic methods, methods conceived in the generous spirit of scien- tific work, thai may yet arrest the drift of our western civilization towards financial and commer- cial squalor and the social collapse that must ensue inevitably on that. In view of the composition of the Committee, the Majority Eteporl is in itself an amazing triumph of Sir Richmond's views; it is 261 262 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART astonishing that he was able to drive his opponents so far and then leave them there securely ad- vanced while he carried on the adherents he had altogether won, including, of course, the labour representatives, to the further altitudes of the Minority Report. After the summer recess the Majority Report was discussed and adopted. Sir Richmond had shown signs of flagging energy in June, but he had come back in September in a state of excep- tional vigour ; for a time he completely dominated the Committee by the passionate force of his con- victions and the illuminating scorn he brought to bear on the various subterfuges and weakening amendments by which the meaner interests sought to save themselves in whole or in part from the common duty of sacrifice. But toward the end he fell ill. He had worked to the pitch of exhaustion. He neglected a cold that settled on his chest. He began to cough persistently and betray an increas- ingly irritable temper. In the last fights in the Committee his face was bright with fever and he spoke in a voiceless whisper, often a vast angry whisper. His place at table was marked with scattered lozenges and scraps of paper torn to the minutest shreds. Such good manners as had hith- erto mitigated his behaviour on the Committee de- parted from him. He carried his last points, ges- ticulating and coughing and wheezing rather than speaking. But he had so hammered his ideas into LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 263 the Committee that they took the effect of what he was trying to say. He died of pneumonia at his own house three days after the passing of the Majority Report. The Minority Report, his own especial creation, he never signed. It was completed by Wast and Carmichael. ... After their parting at Salisbury station Dr. Martineau heard very little of Sir Richmond for a time except through the newspapers, which con- tained frequent allusions to the Committee. Someone told him that Sir Richmond had been staying at Ruan in Cornwall where Martin Leeds had a cottage, and someone else had met him at Bath on his way, ho said, in his car from Cornwall to a conference with Sir Peter Davies in Glamor- ganshire. But in the interim Dr. Martineau had the pleas- ure of meeting Lady Hardy al a luncheon party. He was seated nexl to her and he found her a very pleasing and sympathetic person indeed. She talked to him freely and simply of her husband and of the journey the two men had taken ether. Either she knew nothing of the circum- stances of their parting or if she did she did not betray her knowledge. "Thai holiday did him a world of good," she said. "He came hack to his work like a giant. I feel very grateful to yon." Dr. Martineau said if was a pleasure to have helped Sir Richmond's work in any way. lie be- 264 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART lieved in him thoroughly. Sir Richmond was in- spired by great modern creative ideas. "Forgive me if I keep you talking about him," said Lady Hardy. "I wish I could feel as sure that I had been of use to him." Dr. Martineau insisted. "I know very well that you are." "I do what I can to help him carry his enormous burthen of toil" she said. "I try to smooth his path. But he is a strange silent creature at times." Her eyes scrutinized the doctor's face. It was not the doctor's business to supplement Sir Richmond's silences. Yet he wished to meet the requirements of this lady if he could. ' ' He is one of those men," he said, "who are driven by forces they do not fully understand. A man of genius." "Yes," she said in an undertone of intimacy. "Genius. ... A great irresponsible genius. . . . Difficult to help. ... I wish I could do more for him." A very sweet and charming lady. It was with great regret that the doctor found the time had come to turn to his left-hand neighbour. § 2 It was with some surprise that Dr. Martineau received a fresh appeal for aid from Sir Rich- mond. It was late in October and Sir Richmond LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 265 was already seriously ill. But he was still going about his business as though he was perfectly well. He had not mistaken his man. Dr. Marti- neau received him as though there had never been a shadow of offence between them. He came straight to the point. * ' Martineau, " he said, "I must have those drugs I asked you for when first I came to you now. I must be bol- stered up. I can 't last out unless I am. I 'm at the end of my energy. I come to you because you will understand. The Commission can't go on now for more than another three weeks. Whatever hap- pens afterwards I must keep going until then." The doctor did understand. He made no vain objections. He did what he could to patch up his friend for his last struggles with the opposition in the Committee. "Pro forma," he said, stetho- scope in hand, "I must order you to bed. You won't go. But I order you. You must know that what you are doing is risking your life. Your lungs are congested, the bronchial tubes already. That may spread at any time. If this open weather lasts yon may go about and still pull through. Bui at any time this may pass into pneumonia. And there's not much in you jnst now to stand up against pneumonia. ..." "I'll take all reasonable care." "Is your wife al home?" "She is in Wales with her people. But the household is well trained. I can manage." 266 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "Go in a closed car from door to door. Wrap up like a mummy. I wish the Committee room wasn't down those abominable House of Com- mons corridors. ..." They parted with an affectionate handshake. § 3 Death approved of Sir Richmond's determina- tion to see the Committee through. Our universal creditor gave this particular debtor grace to the very last meeting. Then he brushed a gust of chilly rain across the face of Sir Richmond as he stood waiting for his car outside the strangers' entrance to the House. For a couple of days Sir Richmond felt almost intolerably tired, but scarcely noted the changed timbre of the wheezy notes in his throat. He rose later each day and with ebbing vigour, jotted down notes and cor- rections upon the proofs of the Minority Report. He found it increasingly difficult to make deci- sions; he would correct and alter back and then repeat the correction, perhaps half a dozen times. On the evening of the second day his lungs became painful and his breathing difficult. His head ached and a sense of some great impending evil came upon him. His skin was suddenly a detestable garment to wear. He took his temperature with a little clinical thermometer he kept by him and found it was a hundred and one. He telephoned LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 267 hastily for Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival, took a hot bath and got into bed. He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived. * < Forgive my sending for you, ' ' he said. ' ' Not your line. I know. . . . My wife's G.P. — an ex- asperating sort of ass. Can't stand him. No one else." He was lying on a narrow little bed with a hard pillow that the doctor replaced by one from Lady Hardy's room. He had twisted the bed-clothes into a hopeless muddle, the sheet was on the floor. Sir Richmond's bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed to have been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose. On one hand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the other into the day study. It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man who had Long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocated hours and habits. There was ;i desk and reading Lamp for night work near the fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at night, a silver biscuil tin ; all the apparatus for the lonely intent Industry of the small hours. There was a bookcase of blnebooks, books of ref- erence and suchlike material, and souk- files. Over the mantelpiece was an enlarged photograph of Lady Hardy and a plain office calendar. The desk was littered with the galley proofs of the Minority Report upon which Sir Richmond had been work- 268 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART ing up to the moment of his hasty retreat to bed. And lying among the proofs, as though it had been taken out and looked at quite recently, was the photograph of a girl. For a moment Dr. Mar- tineau's mind hung in doubt and then he knew it for the young American of Stonehenge. How that affair had ended he did not know. And now it was not his business to know. These various observations printed themselves on Dr. Martineau's mind after his first cursory examination of his patient and while he cast about for anything that would give this large industrious apartment a little more of the restfulness and comfort of a sick room. "I must get in a night nurse at once," he said. "We must find a small table somewhere to put near the bed. "I am afraid you are very ill," he said, re- turning to the bedside. "This is not, as you say, my sort of work. Will you let me call in another man, a man we can trust thoroughly, to consult?" "I'm in your hands," said Sir Richmond. "I want to pull through." 1 ' He will know better where to get the right sort of nurse for the case — and everything. "... The second doctor presently came, with the right sort of nurse hard on his heels. Sir Rich- mond submitted almost silently to his expert han- dling and was sounded and looked to and listened at. "H'm," said the second doctor, and then en- LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 269 couragingly to Sir Richmond : ' ' We Ve got to take care of you. " There's a lot about this I don't like," said the second doctor and drew Dr. Martineau by the arm towards the study. For a moment or so Sir Richmond listened to the low murmur of their voices, but he did not feel very deeply interested in what they were saying. He began to think what a decent chap Dr. Martineau was, how helpful and fine and forgiving his professional training had made him, how completely he had ignored the smothered incivilities of their parting at Salis- bury. All men ought to have some such training. Not a bad idea to put every boy and girl through a year or so of hospital service. . . . Sir Rich- mond must have dozed, for his next perception was of Dr. Martineau standing over him and say- ing, "I am afraid, my dear Hardy, that you are very ill indeed. Much more so than I thought you were at first." Sir Richmond's raised eyebrows conveyed that he accepted this fact. "I think Lady Hardy ought to be sent for." Sir Richmond shook his head with unexpected vigour. " Don't want her about," lie said, and after a pause, "Don't want anybody about." "But if anything happens V 1 "Send then." An expression of obstinate calm overspread Sir 270 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Richmond's face. He seemed to regard the matter as settled. He closed his eyes. For a time Dr. Martineau desisted. He went to the window and turned to look again at the impassive figure on the bed. Did Sir Richmond fully understand? He made a step towards his patient and hesitated. Then he brought a chair and sat down at the bedside. Sir Richmond opened his eyes and regarded him with a slight frown. "A case of pneumonia," said the doctor, "after great exertion and fatigue, may take very rapid and unexpected turns. ' ' Sir Richmond, cheek on pillow, seemed to assent. "I think if you want to be sure that Lady Hardy sees you again ... If you don 't want to take risks about that . . . One never knows in these cases. Probably there is a night train." Sir Richmond manifested no surprise at the warning. But he stuck to his point. His voice was faint but firm. ' ' Couldn 't make up anything to say to her. Anything she'd like." Dr. Martineau rested on that for a little while. Then he said: "If there is anyone else?" "Not possible," said Sir Richmond, with his eyes on the ceiling. "But to see?" Sir Richmond turned his head to Dr. Martineau. His face puckered like a peevish child 's. " They 'd LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 271 want things said to them. . . . Things to remem- ber. ... I can't. I'm tired out." ''Don't trouble," whispered Dr. Martineau, suddenly remorseful. But Sir Richmond also was remorseful. ' ' Give them my love," he said. "Best love. . . . Old Martin. Love. ..." Dr. Martineau was turning away when Sir Richmond spoke again in a whisper. "Best love. . . . Poor at the best. ..." He dozed for a time. Then he made a great effort. "I can't see them, Martineau, until I've something to say. It's like that. Perhaps I shall think of some kind tilings to say — after a sleep. But if they came now. ... I'd say something wrong. Be cross perhaps. Hurt someone. I've hurl so many. . . . People exaggerate. . . . Peo- ple exaggerate — importance these occasions." "Yes, yes," whispered Dr. Martineau. "I quite understand." M For a time Sir Richmond dozed. Then he stirred and mattered. "Second rate. . . . Poor at the best. . . . Love. . . . Work. All. . . ." "It has been splendid work," said Dr. Mar- tineau, and was noi sure thai Sir Richmond heard. "Those lasl IVw days . . . lost my -Tip. . . . Always lose my damned grip- 272 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "Ragged them. . . . Put their backs up. . . . Silly. . . . "Never. . . . Never done anything — well. . . . "It's done. Done. Well or ill. . . . "Done." His voice sank to the faintest whisper. "Done for ever and ever . . . and ever . . . and ever." Again he seemed to doze. Dr. Martineau stood up softly. Something be- yond reason told him that this was certainly a dying man. He was reluctant to go and he had an absurd desire that someone, someone for whom Sir Richmond cared, should come and say good- bye to him, and for Sir Richmond to say good-bye to someone. He hated this lonely launching from the shores of life of one who had sought intimacy so persistently and vainly. It was extraordinary — he saw it now for the first time — he loved this man. If it had been in his power, he would at that moment have anointed him with kindness. The doctor found himself standing in front of the untidy writing desk, littered like a recent bat- tlefield. The photograph of the American girl drew his eyes. What had happened? Was there not perhaps some word for her? He turned about as if to enquire of the dying man and found Sir Richmond's eyes open and regarding him. In them he saw an expression he had seen there once or twice before, a faint but excessively irritating gleam of amusement. LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 273 "Oh! — Well!" said Dr. Martineau and turned away. He went to the window and stared out as his habit was. Sir Richmond continued to smile dimly at the doctor's back until his eyes closed again. It was their last exchange. Sir Richmond died that night in the small hours, so quietly that for some time the night nurse did not observe what had happened. She was indeed roused to that realization by the ringing of the telephone bell in the adjacent study. For a long time that night Dr. Martineau had lain awake unable to sleep. He was haunted by the figure of Sir Richmond lying on his uncom- fortable little bed in his big bedroom and by the curious effect of loneliness produced by the noc- turnal desk and by the evident dread felt by Sir Richmond of any death-bed partings. He real- ized how much this man, who had once sought so feverishly for intimacies, had shrunken back upon himself, how solitary his motives had become, how rarely he had taken counsel with anyone in his later years. His mind now dwelt apart. Even if people came about him he would still be facing death alone. And so it seemed he meant to slip out of life, as a man might slip out of a crowded assembly, unobserved. Even now he might be going. The 274 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART doctor recalled how he and Sir Richmond had talked of the rage of life in a young baby, how we drove into life in a sort of fury, how that rage impelled us to do this and that, how we fought and struggled until the rage spent itself and was gone. That eddy of rage that was Sir Richmond was now perhaps very near its end. Presently it would fade and cease, and the stream that had made it and borne it would know it no more. Dr. Martineau's thoughts relaxed and passed into the picture land of dreams. He saw the fig- ure of Sir Richmond, going as it were away from him along a narrow path, a path that followed the crest of a ridge, between great darknesses, enor- mous cloudy darknesses, above him and below. He was going along this path without looking back, without a thought for those he left behind, with- out a single word to cheer him on his way, walk- ing as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled along that path, the darkness closed in upon him. His figure became dim and dimmer. Whither did that figure go? Did that envelop- ing darkness hide the beginnings of some strange long journey or would it just dissolve that figure into itself? LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 275 Was that indeed the end? Dr. Martineau was one of that large class of people who can neither imagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the fig- ure but still it remained visible. As one can con- tinue to see a star at dawn until one turns away. Or one blinks or nods and it is gone. Vanished now are the beliefs that held our race for countless generations. Where now was that Path of the Dead, mapped so clearly, faced with such certainty, in which the heliolithic peoples believed from Avebury to Polynesia? Not al- ways have we had to go alone and unprepared into uncharted darknesses. For a time the dream artist used a palette of the doctor's vague mem- ories of things Egyptian, he painted a new roll of the Book of the Dead, at a copy of which the doctor had been looking a day or so before. Sir Richmond became a brown naked figure, crossing a bridge of danger, passing between terrific mon- sters, ferrying a dark and dreadful stream. He came to lie scales of judgment before the very Hi rone of Osiris and stood waiting while dog- headed Annbis weighed his conscience and that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead, crouched ready it' the judgmenl went against him. The doctor's attention concentrated upon the *c;\ l A memory <>r Swedenborg's Heaven and Well mingled with the Egyptian fantasy. Now at I. it was possible t<> know something real about this 276 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART man's soul, now at last one could look into the Secret Places of his Heart. Anubis and Thoth, the god with the ibis head, were reading the heart as if it were a book, reading aloud from it to the supreme judge. Suddenly the doctor found himself in his own dreams. His anxiety to plead for his friend had brought him in. He too had become a little painted figure and he was bearing a book in his hand. He wanted to show that the laws of the new world could not be the same as those of the old, and the book he was bringing as evidence was his own Psychology of a New Age. The clear thought of that book broke up his dream by releasing a train of waking troubles. . . . You have been six months on Chapter Ten ; will it ever be ready for Osiris? . . . Will it ever be ready for print? . . . Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windy day in April. Sud- denly he saw again that lonely figure on the nar- row way with darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand. But this time it was not Sir Richmond. . . . Who was it? Surely it was Everyman. Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road, leaving love, leaving every task and every desire. But was it Everyman? ... A great fear and horror came upon the doctor. That little figure was himself! And the book which was his particular task in LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 277 life was still undone. He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely path with the engulfing darknesses about him. . . . He seemed to wrench himself awake. He lay very still for some moments and then he sat up in bed. An overwhelming conviction had arisen in his mind that Sir Richmond was dead. He felt he must know for certain. He switched on his electric light, mutely interrogated his round face reflected in the looking glass, got out of bed, shuffled on his slippers and went along the passage to the telephone. He hesitated for some seconds and then lifted the receiver. It was his call which aroused the nurse to the fact of Sir Richmond's death. Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr. Martineau's telegram late on the following eve- ning. He was with her next morning, comforting and sympathetic. Her big blue eyes, bright with tears, met his very wistfully; her little body Beemed very small and pathetic in its simple black dross. And yd there was a sort of bravery about her. When he came into the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses talking lo a serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type. She ld'f her business al once to come to him, "Why did 1 QOl know in lime?" she cried. 278 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "No one, dear lady, had any idea until late last night," he said, taking both her hands in his for a long friendly sympathetic pressure. "I might have known that if it had been possi- ble you would have told me, ' ' she said. "You know," she added, "I don't believe it yet. I don't realize it. I go about these formal- ities " "I think I can understand that." "He was always, you know, not quite here. . . . It is as if he were a little more not quite here. . . . I can't believe it is over. ..." She asked a number of questions and took the doctor's advice upon various details of the ar- rangements. "My daughter Helen comes home to-morrow afternoon," she explained. "She is in Paris. But our son is far, far away in the Pun- jab. I have sent him a telegram. ... It is so kind of you to come in to me." Dr. Martineau went more than half way to meet Lady Hardy's disposition to treat him as a friend of the family. He had conceived a curious, half maternal affection for Sir Kichmond that had survived even the trying incident of the Salis- bury parting and revived very rapidly during the last few weeks. This affection extended itself now to Lady Hardy. Hers was a type that had always appealed to him. He could understand so well the perplexed loyalty with which she was now setting herself to gather together some pre- LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 279 servative and reassuring evidences of this man who had always been; as she put it, "never quite here." It was as if she felt that now it was at last possible to make a definite reality of him. He could be fixed. And as he was fixed he would stay. Never more would he be able to come in and with an almost expressionless glance wither the inter- pretation she had imposed upon him. She was finding much comfort in this task of reconstruc- tion. She had gathered together in the drawing- room every presentable portrait she had been able to find of him. He had never, she said, sat to a painter, but there was an early pencil sketch done within a couple of years of their marriage ; there was a number of photographs, several of which — she wanted the doctor's advice upon this point — she thought might be enlarged; there was a statu- ette done by some woman artist who had once beguiled him into a sitting. There was also a painting she had had worked up from a photo- graph and some notes. She Hilled among thi memorials, going from one l<> the other, undecided which to make the standard portrait. "Thai painting, 1 think, is mosl like," six- said: "as he was before the war. But the war and the Com misi ion changed him, worried him and aged him. . . . I grudged him to that Commission. II<' Id, it worry him frightfully." "It meant very much f<> him," said Dr. Mar tineau. 280 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART "It meant too much to him. But of course his ideas were splendid. You know it is one of my hopes to get some sort of book done, explaining his ideas. He would never write. He despised it — unreasonably. A real thing done, he said, was better than a thousand books. Nobody read books, he said, but women, parsons and idle people. But there must be books. And I want one. Some- thing a little more real than the ordinary official biography. ... I have thought of young Leigh- ton, the secretary of the Commission. He seems thoroughly intelligent and sympathetic and really anxious to reconcile Richmond's views with those of the big business men on the Committee. He might do. ... Or perhaps I might be able to persuade two or three people to write down their impressions of him. A sort of memorial volume. . . . But he was shy of friends. There was no man he talked to very intimately about his ideas unless it was to you ... I wish I had the writ- er's gift, doctor." §7 It was on the second afternoon that Lady Hardy summoned Dr. Martineau by telephone. "Some- thing rather disagreeable," she said. "If you could spare the time. If you could come round. "It is frightfully distressing," she said when he got round to her, and for a time she could tell him nothing more. She was having tea and she LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 281 gave him some. She fussed about with cream and cakes and biscuits. He noted a crumpled letter thrust under the edge of the silver tray. * ' He talked, I know, very intimately with you, ' ' she said, coming to it at last. "He probably went into things with you that he never talked about with anyone else. Usually he was very re- served. Even with me there were things about which he said nothing." "We did," said Dr. Martineau with discretion, "deal a little with his private life." "There was someone " Dr. Martineau nodded and then, not to be too portentous, took and bit a biscuit. "Did he by any chance ever mention someone called Martin Leeds?" Dr. Martineau seemed to reflect. Then realiz- ing that this was a mistake, he said: "He told me the essential facts." The poor lady breathed ;i sigh of relief. "I'm glad," she said simply. She repeated, "Yes, I'm glad. It makes things easier now." Dr. Martineau looked his enquiry. "She wants to come and see him." "Here?" "Here! And Helen here! And the servants noticing everything! I 've aever met her. Never set eyes on her. For ;ill I know she may want to make a scene." There was infinite dismay in her voice. 282 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART Dr. Martineau was grave. "You would rather not receive her?" "I don't want to refuse her. I don't want even to seem heartless. I understand, of course, she has a sort of claim." She sobbed her reluctant admission. "I know it. I know. . . . There was much between them." Dr. Martineau pressed the limp hand upon the little tea table. "I understand, dear lady," he said. "I understand. Now . . . suppose I were to write to her and arrange I do not see. that you need be put to the pain of meeting her. Sup- pose I were to meet her here myself?" "If you could!" The doctor was quite prepared to save the lady any further distresses, no matter at what trouble to himself. "You are so good to me," she said, letting the tears have their way with her. "I am silly to cry," she said, dabbing her eyes. "We will get it over to-morrow," he reassured her. "You need not think of it again." He took over Martin's brief note to Lady Hardy and set to work by telegram to arrange for her visit. She was in London at her Chelsea flat and easily accessible. She was to come to the house at mid-day on the morrow, and to ask not for Lady Hardy but for him. He would stay by her while she was in the house, and it would be quite easy for Lady Hardy to keep herself and her daughter LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 283 out of the way. They could, for example, go out quietly to the dressmakers in the closed car, for many little things about the mourning still re- mained to be seen to. §8 Miss Martin Leeds arrived punctually, but the doctor was well ahead of his time and ready to receive her. She was ushered into the drawing- room where he awaited her. As she came for- ward the doctor first perceived that she had a very sad and handsome face, the face of a sensi- tive youth rather than the face of a woman. She had fine grey eyes under very fine brows; they were eyes that at other times might have laughed very agreeably, but which were now full of an unrestrained sadness. Her brown hair was very untidy and parted at the side like a man's. Then he noted that she seemed to be very untidily dressed as if she was that rare and, to him, very offensive thing, a woman careless of her beauty. She was short in proportion to her broad figure and her broad forehead. "You are Dr. Martineau?" she said. "He talked of you." As she spoke her glance went from him to the pictures that stood about the room. She walked up to the {minting and stood in front of it with her distressed ga/.c wandering about her. "Horrible!" she said. "Absolutely horrible! . . . Did she do this?" 284 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEAET Her question disconcerted the doctor very much. "You mean Lady Hardy?" he asked. "She doesn't paint." "No, no. I mean, did she get all these things together?" "Naturally," said Dr. Martineau. "None of them are a bit like him. They are like blows aimed at his memory. Not one has his life in it. How could she do it? Look at that idiot statuette ! ... He was extraordinarily difficult to get. I have burnt every photograph I had of him. For fear that this would happen ; that he would go stiff and formal — just as you have got him here. I have been trying to sketch him almost all the time since he died. But I can't get him back. He's gone." She turned to the doctor again. She spoke to him, not as if she expected him to understand her, but because she had to say these things which burthened her mind to someone. "I have done hundreds of sketches. My room is littered with them. When you turn them over he seems to be lurking among them. But not one of them is like him." She was trying to express something beyond her power. "It is as if someone had suddenly turned out the light." She followed the doctor upstairs. "This was his study," the doctor explained. "I know it. I came here once," she said. LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 285 They entered the big bedroom in which the coffined body lay. Dr. Martineau, struck by a sudden memory, glanced nervously at the desk, but someone had made it quite tidy and the por- trait of Miss Grammont had disappeared. Miss Leeds walked straight across to the coffin and stood looking down on the waxen inexpressive dignity of the dead. Sir Richmond's brows and nose had become sharper and more clear-cut than they had ever been in life and his lips had set into a faint inane smile. She stood quite still for a long time. At length she sighed deeply. She spoke, a little as though she thought aloud, a little as though she talked at that silent pres- ence in the coffin. "I think he loved," she said. ' ' Sometimes I think he loved me. But it is hard to tell. lie was kind. He could be intensely kind and yet he didn't seem to care for you. He could be intensely selfish and yet he certainly did not can- for himself. . . . Anyhow, I loved him. . . . There is nothing left in me now to love anyone else — for ever. ..." She pnl her hands behind her back and looked at the dead man with her head a little on one side. "Too kind," she said very softly. "There was a SOrl of dishonesty in his kindness. He would not let you have the hitler truth. He would no1 say be did not love you. . . . "He was too kind to life ever to call it the fool- ish thing it is. He took it seriously because it 286 SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART takes itself seriously. He worked for it and killed himself with work for it. . . . " She turned to Dr. Martineau and her face was streaming with tears. "And life, you know, isn't to be taken seriously. It is a joke — a bad joke — made by some cruel little god who has caught a neglected planet. . . . Like torturing a stray cat. . . . But he topk it seriously and he gave up his life for it. "There was much happiness he might have had. He was very capable of happiness. But he never seemed happy. This work of his came be- fore it. He overworked and fretted our happiness away. He sacrificed his happiness and mine." She held out her hands towards the doctor. "What am I to do now with the rest of my life? Who is there to laugh with me now and jest? "I don't complain of him. I don't blame him. He did his best — to be kind. "But all my days now I shall mourn for him and long for him. ..." She turned back to the coffin. Suddenly she lost every vestige of self-control. She sank down on her knees beside the trestle. "Why have you left me?" she cried. " Oh ! Speak to me, my darling ! Speak to me, I tell you! Speak to me!" It was a storm of passion, monstrously childish and dreadful. She beat her hands upon the cof- LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY 287 fin. She wept loudly and fiercely as a child does. . . . Dr. Martineau drifted feebly to the window. He wished he had locked the door. The serv- ants might hear and wonder what it was all about. Always he had feared love for the cruel thing it was, but now it seemed to him for the first time that he realized its monstrous cruelty. THE END DATE DUE CAYLORO PRINTED IhU ft- A PR5774 S43 AA 000 642 603 5 rtells, Herbert George, 1866- 1946. The secret places of the near t. 00239 8194