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IN THE LAND OF THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLES + +6. THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE + +7. COMPANIONSHIP + +8. FULL MOON + +9. THE LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY + + + +THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST + +THE CONSULTATION + +Section 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 +unpleasant taste. Almost imperceptibly she relieved him of +his umbrella and juggled his hat and coat on to a massive +mahogany stand. "What name, Sir?" she asked, holding open the +door of the consulting room. + +"Hardy," said the gentleman, and then yielding it reluctantly +with its distasteful three-year-old honour, "Sir Richmond +Hardy." + +The door closed softly behind him and he found himself in +undivided possession of the large indifferent 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 medical +works, some paintings of Scotch scenery, three big armchairs, +a buhl clock, and a bronze Dancing Faun, by their want of any +collective idea enhanced rather than mitigated the +promiscuous disregard 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! + +"Rush out of the place? . . . + +"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 +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 dispelled 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 important I SHOULDN'T break +down. It's VITALLY important." + +He stressed his words and reinforced them with a quivering +gesture of his upraised clenched hand. "My temper's in rags. +I explode at any little 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 absent 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 _I_'d been got at; two Labour +men who'd do anything you wanted them to do provided you +called them 'level-headed.' Wagstaffe the socialist art +critic who could be trusted to play the fool and make +nationalization look silly, and the rest mine owners, railway +managers, oil profiteers, financial adventurers. . . . " + +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 a new +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 +nothing had changed. . . . Strikes, Russia, nothing will warn +them. There are men on that Commission 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?" + +"I lie awake at night, thinking of it." + +"A social smash-up." + +"Economic. Social. Yes. Don't you?" + +"A social smash-up seems to me altogether a possibility. All +sorts of people I find think that," said the doctor. "All +sorts of people lie awake thinking of it." + +"I wish some of my damned Committee would!" + +The doctor turned his eyes to the window. "I lie awake too," +he said and seemed to reflect. But he 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. + +Section 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 adventurous 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? 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 desirous +to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and +weak-willed and inaccurate. ... Sloppy. . . . Indolent. . . . +VISCIOUS! . . . " + +The doctor was about to speak, but Sir Richmond 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 psychoanalysis 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," he 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 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 reasonable," he cried. +"That's not reasonable. That's superstition. Call a thing a +drug and condemn 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 reaction after them? When I'm exhausted I +want food. When I'm overactive and sleepless I want +tranquillizing. When I'm dispersed I want pulling together." + +"But we don't know how to use drugs," the doctor 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 manipulate drugs-- +all sorts of drugs--and work them in to our general way of +living. I have no prejudice against them at all. A time will +come when we shall correct our moods, get down to our +reserves of energy by their help, suspend fatigue, put off +sleep during long spells of exertion. At 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 playing 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 resorting to a +drug. Given structural injury I don't mind surgery. But +except for any little mischief your amateur drugging 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 are-- +worried--ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectly sound. +It's the current of your thoughts, fermenting. If the trouble +is in the mental 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 unravelled strand behave +disproportionately. You don't want that. You want to take +stock of yourself 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. + +"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." + +"But _I_ 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 simple tour. Nothing elaborate. You wouldn't bring a +man?" + +"I always drive myself." + +Section 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 responsible. +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 self-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." + +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 EVERYBODY 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 creature in vacuo. +He's himself and his world. He's a surface of contact, a +system of adaptations, between 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, +without 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. + +"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 +altered 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 passport. 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. That was the sheltering and friendly greenhouse +in which we grew. We fitted our minds to that. . . . And here +we are with the greenhouse falling in upon us lump by lump, +smash and clatter, the wild winds of heaven tearing in +through the gaps." + +Upstairs on Dr. Martineau's desk lay the typescript of the +opening chapters of a book that was intended to make a great +splash in the world, his PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE. He had his +metaphors ready. + +"We said: 'This system will always go on. We needn't bother +about it.' We just planned our 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 +someone 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 doctor 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 to 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 +of living out of water. His mental existence may be +conditional on that. Deprived of it he may become 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." + +Section 4 + +"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 inadaptation. 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 +breakup of the entire system. Agreed! We have to make another +system or perish amidst the wreckage. I see that clearly. +Science and plan have to replace custom and tradition in +human affairs. Soon. Very soon. Granted. Granted. We used 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 renewed. Rebuilding civilization--while the +premises 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 enterprise. 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, +straggles, misbehaves." + +"Exactly." + +The word irritated Sir Richmond. "Not 'exactly' at all. +'Amazingly,' if you like. . . . I have this unlimited faith +in our present tremendous 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 that is +explicable. Indeed it is. Listen for a moment 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 +accepted 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 I will confess that I owe much to +the psychoanalyst--what he does is to direct thwarted, +disappointed and perplexed people to the realities 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 +morally denuded. Dreams they hate pursue them; abhorrent +desires draw them; they are the prey of irresistible yet +uncongenial impulses; they succumb to black despairs. The +first thing we ask them is this: 'What else could you +expect?'" + +"What else could I expect?" Sir Richmond repeated, looking +down on him. "H'm!" + +"The wonder is not that you are sluggish, reluctantly +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 +forgotten 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 revolution 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!" + +"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 prevent 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 himself, +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 mental knot is to untie +it." + +"You propose that I shall spend my time, until the Commission +meets, in thinking about myself. I wanted to forget myself." + +"Like a man who tries to forget that his petrol is running +short and a cylinder missing fire. . . . No. Come back to the +question of what you are," said the doctor. "A creature of +the darkness with 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 immemorial 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 struggle 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 awakened . . . . " + +The doctor gave this quotation from his unpublished 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?" + +"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 honesty with yourself. +As an opening. . . . It will take longer than that if we are +to go through with the job." + +It is a considerable--process." + +"It is." + +"Yet you shrink from simple things like drugs!" + +"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. . . . We'll try it. +We'll try it. . . . And so for this journey into the west of +England. . . . And--if we can 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 thrust +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 +manner, 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. + +"I don't confide . . . . Do I even confide in myself? 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 regards facts? + +"Does it really help a man--to see himself?. . ." + +Such thoughts engaged him until he found himself 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? +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 +martyrdom. 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 be 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 came in." + +"But you've not waited--" + +"I've had a mouthful of soup." Lady Hardy rang the bell. + +"I've done some work at last," said Sir Richmond, astride on +the hearthrug. + +"I'm glad," said Lady Hardy, without gladness. "I waited for +three hours." + +Lady Hardy was a frail little blue-eyed woman with uneven +shoulders and a delicate sweet profile. 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 Richmond 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 intensified. 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 illness and +worries?" + +"He seems a good sort of fellow. . . . I'm inclined to like +him. He'll be as good company as anyone. . . . This TOURNEDOS +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 atmosphere of +observant criticism. And he did not like talking with his +mouth full to an unembarrassed 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--?" + +"The ice pudding!" he exploded wrathfully. "The ice pudding!" + +Lady Hardy sat for a moment, a picture of meek distress. +Then, her delicate eyebrows raised, and the corners of her +mouth drooping, she touched the button of the silver table- +bell. + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD + +THE DEPARTURE + +Section 1 + +No wise man goes out upon a novel expedition without +misgivings. And between their first meeting 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 himself trying to recall the other with +greater distinctness and able to recall nothing but queer, +ominous and minatory traits. The doctor's impression 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 talked too much. In +addition, he read into his imperfect memory of the doctor's +face, an expression 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 fierceness of an +overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glance that +the curiosity of Dr. Martineau'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 it +would have been evident to a much less highly trained +observer than Dr. Martineau that some dissension had arisen +between the little, ladylike, 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 was adorned with a 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 +unpleasantness. + +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 habitually 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 betrays when he explains the uncongenial +habits of some unloved intimate. And when the moment came to +start and the little engine did not immediately respond to +the electric starter, he said: "Oh! COME up, you--!" + +His voice sank at the last word as though it was an entirely +confidential communication to the little car. And it was an +extremely low and disagreeable word. So Dr. Martineau decided +that it was not his business to hear it. . . . + +It was speedily apparent that Sir Richmond was 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 accurate +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 garage 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--incidental to the make--gear-box over the back +axle for example--gets all the vibration. Whole machine +rather on the flimsy side. Still--" + +He left the topic at that. + +Dr. Martineau said something of no consequence about 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 doubt very much if we shall get anything out of +them." + +"Probably not," said Dr. Martineau. + +"After all, what I want is a tonic. I don't see that there is +anything positively wrong with me. A certain lack of energy-- +" + +"Lack of balance," corrected the doctor. "You are wasting +energy upon internal friction. "But isn't that inevitable? No +machine is perfectly efficient. No man either. There is +always a waste. Waste of the type; waste of the individual +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 natural 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 argument. "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 notion of stripping down to something fundamental. The +ape before 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." + +"Recognize it," said the doctor. + +"And then?" said Sir Richmond, controversially. + +"Recognize in particular your own tangle." + +"Is my particular tangle very different from the general +tangle? (Oh! Damn this feeble little engine!) 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 incompatible +things you are urged to do. We examine and weigh--we weigh--" + +The doctor was still 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 exasperation of +man and machine was brought to a crisis by the clumsy +emergence 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, raced noisily, disengaged great volumes of +bluish smoke, and displayed an unaccountable indisposition +to run on any gear but the lowest. Sir Richmond thought +aloud, unpleasing thoughts. He addressed the little car as a +person; he referred to ancient disputes and temperamental +incompatibilities. His anger betrayed him a coarse, ill-bred +man. The little 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 Richmond sat like a man of stone. + +"I must wind it up " he said at last in a profound and awful +voice. "I must wind it up." + +"I get out, don't I?" asked the doctor, unanswered, 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 inadvertency 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 madman, mouthing vileness, who had only a minute or +so before been a decent British citizen. He made some blind +lunges at the tremulous but obdurate car, but rather as if he +looked for offences and accusations than for displacements to +adjust. Quivering and refusing, the little car was +extraordinarily like some recalcitrant little old +aristocratic lady in the hands of revolutionaries, and this +made the behaviour of Sir Richmond 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 and turned his +back on the car. He remarked in a voice of melancholy +detachment: "It was a mistake 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 somebody'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 suspiciously at his companion. + +"These outbreaks do nothing to amend the originating +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." + +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," said Sir Richmond. "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 between 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." + +Section 2 + +The affair of the car effectively unsealed Sir Richmond's +mind. Hitherto Dr. Martineau had perceived the possibility +and danger of a defensive 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. + +He began as they stood waiting for the relief car from the +Maidenhead garage. "You were talking of the ghosts of apes +and monkeys that suddenly come out from the darkness of the +subconscious . . . ." + +"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--? 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 fight. A conger eel in a boat will +rage dangerously." + +"A vertebrate. Yes. But even among the vertebrata; 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, screaming 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 raging 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 went 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, "so +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 +itself, flaring out. Brooking no contradiction." He came +round suddenly to the doctor's qualification. "Why male? +Don't little girls smash things just as much?" + +"They don't," said Dr. Martineau. "Not nearly as much." + +Sir Richmond went off at a tangent again. "I suppose you have +watched any number of babies?"' + +"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." + +"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 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 recently filled in. + +The two philosophers returned to practical matters. + +Section 3 + +For half an hour after the departure of the little Charmeuse +car with Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau, the brass Mercury +lay unheeded in the dusty roadside grass. Then it caught the +eye of a passing child. + +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. + +"Yew'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 definitely that he would never +relinquish this bright and lovely possession again. It was +the first beautiful thing he had ever possessed. He was the +darling of fond and indulgent parents and his nursery 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 cleanlimbed, shining figure and +his small soul was recognized. But he carried his point at +last. The Mercury became his inseparable darling, his symbol, +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 condescensions of adult love. + + + +CHAPTER THE FOURTH + +AT MAIDENHEAD + +Section 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 the car 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 Richmond astonished the +doctor by going to his room, reappearing dressed in tennis +flannels and looking 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 Maytime +animation. Pink geraniums, vivid green lawns, gay awnings, +bright glass, white paint and 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: "Temporary 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 married. You never know nowadays." + +He became reflective. . . . + +After lunch and coffee he rowed the doctor up the river +towards Cliveden. + +"The last time I was here," he said, returning 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, tying 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?" + +"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 industriously +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 gracefully, punting beautifully, +brandishing boat-hooks with ease and charm. They look to +meet, under pleasant or romantic circumstances, other +possessors 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 extraordinary 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 Thamesside 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 his 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 curiously +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 hotels, 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 fuddle 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 suggested. "Which refuses to be +content with pleasure 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. "Go on." + +Section 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 deserve 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 doctor and considered. "More than +that. More than that. We have leading ideas, associations, +possessions, 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 history," said Sir +Richmond, going off at a tangent. "My sentimental education. +I wonder if it differs very widely from yours or most men's." + +"Some men are more eventful in these matters 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." + +"Your psychoanalysts tell a story of fears, suppressions, +monstrous imaginations, symbolic replacements. 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 Tenniel in the cartoons in PUNCH. I +must have been a very little chap at the time of the +Britannia affair. 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 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 Oedipus 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 concentration 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 shameful curiosity. I got my ideas +into definite form out of a little straightforward +physiological teaching 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 this +distorted perverse stuff that grows up in people's minds +about sex and develops 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 upbringing ever goes +through the stuffy horrors described in James Joyce's +PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN." + +"I've not read it." + +"A picture of the Catholic atmosphere; a young soul shut up +in darkness and ignorance to accumulate filth. In the name of +purity and decency and under threats of hell fire." + +"Horrible!" + +"Quite. A study of intolerable tensions, the tensions that +make young people write unclean words in secret places. " + +"Yes, we certainly ventilate and sanitate in those matters +nowadays. Where nothing is concealed, nothing can explode." + +"On the whole I came up to adolescence pretty straight and +clean," said Sir Richmond. "What stands out in my memory now +is this idea, of a sort of woman goddess who was very lovely +and kind and powerful and wonderful. That ruled my secret +imaginations as a boy, but it was very much in my mind as I +grew up." + +"The mother complex," said Dr. Martineau as a passing +botanist might recognize and name a flower. + +Sir Richmond stared at him for a moment. + +"It had not the slightest connexion with my mother or any +mother or any particular woman at all. Far better to call it +the goddess complex." + +"The connexion is not perhaps immediately visible," said the +doctor. + +"There was no connexion," said Sir Richmond. "The women of my +adolescent dreams were stripped and strong and lovely. They +were great creatures. They came, it was clearly traceable, +from pictures sculpture--and from a definite response in +myself to their beauty. My mother had nothing whatever to do +with that. The women and girls about me were fussy bunches of +clothes that I am sure I never even linked with that dream +world of love and worship." + +"Were you co-educated?" + +"No. But I had a couple of sisters, one older, one younger +than myself, and there were plenty of girls in my circle. I +thought some of them pretty--but that was a different affair. +I know that I didn't connect them with the idea of the loved +and worshipped goddesses at all, because I remember when I +first saw the goddess in a real human being and how amazed I +was at the discovery. . . . I was a boy of twelve or +thirteen. My people took me one summer to Dymchurch in Romney +Marsh; in those days before the automobile had made the Marsh +accessible to the Hythe and Folkestone crowds, it was a +little old forgotten silent wind-bitten village crouching +under the lee of the great sea wall. At low water there were +miles of sand as smooth and shining as the skin of a savage +brown woman. Shining and with a texture--the very same. And +one day as I was mucking about by myself on the beach, boy +fashion,--there were some ribs of a wrecked boat buried in +the sand near a groin and I was busy with them--a girl ran +out from a tent high up on the beach and across the sands to +the water. She was dressed in a tight bathing dress and not +in the clumsy skirts and frills that it was the custom to +inflict on women in those days. Her hair was tied up in a +blue handkerchief. She ran swiftly and gracefully, intent +upon the white line of foam ahead. I can still remember how +the sunlight touched her round neck and cheek as she went +past me. She was the loveliest, most shapely thing I have +ever seen--to this day. She lifted up her arms and thrust +through the dazzling white and green breakers and plunged +into the water and swam; she swam straight out for a long way +as it seemed to me, and presently came in and passed me again +on her way back to her tent, light and swift and sure. The +very prints of her feet on the sand were beautiful. Suddenly +I realized that there could be living people in the world as +lovely as any goddess. . . . She wasn't in the least out of +breath. + +"That was my first human love. And I love that girl still. I +doubt sometimes whether I have ever loved anyone else. I kept +the thing very secret. I wonder now why I have kept the thing +so secret. Until now I have never told a soul about it. I +resorted to all sorts of tortuous devices and excuses to get +a chance of seeing her again without betraying what it was I +was after." + +Dr. Martineau retained a simple fondness for a story. + +"And did you meet her again?" + +"Never. Of course I may have seen her as a dressed-up person +and not recognized her. A day or so later I was stabbed to +the heart by the discovery that the tent she came out of had +been taken away. " + +"She had gone?" + +"For ever." + +Sir Richmond smiled brightly at the doctor's disappointment. + +Section 3 + +"I was never wholehearted and simple about sexual things," +Sir Richmond resumed presently. "Never. I do not think any +man is. We are too much plastered-up things, too much the +creatures of a tortuous and complicated evolution." + +Dr. Martineau, under his green umbrella, nodded his conceded +agreement. + +"This--what shall I call it?--this Dream of Women, grew up in +my mind as I grew up--as something independent of and much +more important than the reality of Women. It came only very +slowly into relation with that. That girl on the Dymchurch +beach was one of the first links, but she ceased very +speedily to be real--she joined the women of dreamland at +last altogether. She became a sort of legendary incarnation. +I thought of these dream women not only as something +beautiful but as something exceedingly kind and helpful. The +girls and women I met belonged to a different +creation. . . ." + +Sir Richmond stopped abruptly and rowed a few long strokes. + +Dr. Martineau sought information. + +"I suppose," he said, "there was a sensuous element in these +dreamings?" + +"Certainly. A very strong one. It didn't dominate but it was +a very powerful undertow." + +"Was there any tendency in all this imaginative stuff to +concentrate? To group itself about a single figure, the sort +of thing that Victorians would have called an ideal?" + +"Not a bit of it," said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There +was always a tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact +the thing I liked least in the real world was the way it was +obsessed by the idea of pairing off with one particular set +and final person. I liked to dream of a blonde goddess in her +own Venusberg one day, and the next I would be off over the +mountains with an armed Brunhild." + +"You had little thought of children?" + +"As a young man?" + +"Yes." + +"None at all. I cannot recall a single philoprogenitive +moment. These dream women were all conceived of, and I was +conceived of, as being concerned in some tremendous +enterprise--something quite beyond domesticity. It kept us +related--gave us dignity. . . . Certainly it wasn't babies." + +"All this is very interesting, very interesting, from the +scientific point of view. A PRIORI it is not what one might +have expected. Reasoning from the idea that all instincts and +natural imaginations are adapted to a biological end and +seeing that sex is essentially a method of procreation, one +might reasonably expect a convergence, if not a complete +concentration, upon the idea of offspring. It is almost as if +there were other ends to be served. It is clear that Nature +has not worked this impulse out to any sight of its end. Has +not perhaps troubled to do so. The instinct of the male for +the female isn't primarily for offspring--not even in the +most intelligent and farseeing types. The desire just points +to glowing satisfactions and illusions. Quite equally I think +the desire of the female for the male ignores its end. Nature +has set about this business in a CHEAP sort of way. She is +like some pushful advertising tradesman. She isn't frank +with us; she just humbugs us into what she wants with us. All +very well in the early Stone Age--when the poor dear things +never realized that their mutual endearments meant all the +troubles and responsibilities of parentage. But NOW--!" + +He shook his head sideways and twirled the green umbrella +like an animated halo around his large broad-minded face. + +Sir Richmond considered. "Desire has never been the chief +incentive of my relations with women. Never. So far as I can +analyze the thing, it has been a craving for a particular +sort of life giving companionship." + +"That I take it is Nature's device to keep the lovers +together in the interest of the more or less unpremeditated +offspring." + +"A poor device, if that is its end. It doesn't keep parents +together; more often it tears them apart. The wife or the +mistress, so soon as she is encumbered with children, becomes +all too manifestly not the companion goddess. . . ." + +Sir Richmond brooded over his sculls and thought. + +"Throughout my life I have been an exceedingly busy man. I +have done a lot of scientific work and some of it has been +very good work. And very laborious work. I've travelled much. +I've organized great business developments. You might think +that my time has been fairly well filled without much +philandering. And all the time, all the time, I've been-- +about women--like a thirsty beast looking for water. . . . +Always. Always. All through my life." + +Dr. Martineau waited through another silence. + +"I was very grave about it at first. I married young. I +married very simply and purely. I was not one of those young +men who sow a large crop of wild oats. I was a fairly decent +youth. It suddenly appeared to me that a certain smiling and +dainty girl could make herself into all the goddesses of my +dreams. I had but to win her and this miracle would occur. Of +course I forget now the exact things I thought and felt then, +but surely I had some such persuasion. Or why should I have +married her? My wife was seven years younger than myself,--a +girl of twenty. She was charming. She is charming. She is a +wonderfully intelligent and understanding woman. She has made +a home for me--a delightful home. I am one of those men who +have no instinct for home making. I owe my home and all the +comfort and dignity of my life to her ability. I have no +excuse for any misbehaviour--so far as she is concerned. None +at all. By all the rules I should have been completely +happy. But instead of my marriage satisfying me, it presently +released a storm of long-controlled desires and imprisoned +cravings. A voice within me became more and more urgent. +'This will not do. This is not love. Where are your +goddesses? This is not love.' . . . And I was unfaithful to +my wife within four years of my marriage. It was a sudden +overpowering impulse. But I suppose the ground had been +preparing for a long time. I forget now all the emotions of +that adventure. I suppose at the time it seemed beautiful and +wonderful. . . . I do not excuse myself. Still less do I +condemn myself. I put the facts before you. So it was." + +"There were no children by your marriage?" + +"Your line of thought, doctor, is too philoprogenitive. We +have had three. My daughter was married two years ago. She is +in America. One little boy died when he was three. The other +is in India, taking up the Mardipore power scheme again now +that he is out of the army. . . . No, it is simply that I was +hopelessly disappointed with everything that a good woman and +a decent marriage had to give me. Pure disappointment and +vexation. The anti-climax to an immense expectation built up +throughout an imaginative boyhood and youth and early +manhood. I was shocked and ashamed at my own disappointment. +I thought it mean and base. Nevertheless this orderly +household into which I had placed my life, these almost +methodical connubialities . . . ." + +He broke off in mid-sentence. + +Dr. Martineau shook his head disapprovingly. + +"No," he said, "it wasn't fair to your wife." + +"It was shockingly unfair. I have always realized that. I've +done what I could to make things up to her. . . . Heaven +knows what counter disappointments she has concealed. . . . +But it is no good arguing about rights and wrongs now. This +is not an apology for my life. I am telling you what +happened. + +"Not for me to judge," said Dr. Martineau. "Go on." + +"By marrying I had got nothing that my soul craved for, I had +satisfied none but the most transitory desires and I had +incurred a tremendous obligation. That obligation didn't +restrain me from making desperate lunges at something vaguely +beautiful that I felt was necessary to me; but it did cramp +and limit these lunges. So my story flops down into the +comedy of the lying, cramped intrigues of a respectable, +married man. . .I was still driven by my dream of some +extravagantly beautiful inspiration called love and I sought +it like an area sneak. Gods! What a story it is when one +brings it all together! I couldn't believe that the glow and +sweetness I dreamt of were not in the world--somewhere. +Hidden away from me. I seemed to catch glimpses of the dear +lost thing, now in the corners of a smiling mouth, now in +dark eyes beneath a black smoke of hair, now in a slim form +seen against the sky. Often I cared nothing for the woman I +made love to. I cared for the thing she seemed to be hiding +from me . . . . " + +Sir Richmond's voice altered. + +"I don't see what possible good it can do to talk over these +things." He began to row and rowed perhaps a score of +strokes. Then he stopped and the boat drove on with a whisper +of water at the bow and over the outstretched oar blades. + +"What a muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. +"What a fumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She +drives us into indignity and dishonour: and she doesn't even +get the children which are her only excuse for her mischief. +See what a fantastic thing I am when you take the machine to +pieces! I have been a busy and responsible man throughout my +life. I have handled complicated public and industrial +affairs not unsuccessfully and discharged quite big +obligations fully and faithfully. And all the time, hidden +away from the public eye, my life has been laced by the +thread of these--what can one call them? --love adventures. +How many? you ask. I don't know. Never have I been a whole- +hearted lover; never have I been able to leave love alone. . +. . Never has love left me alone. + +"And as I am made, said Sir Richmond with sudden insistence, +"AS I AM MADE--I do not believe that I could go on without +these affairs. I know that you will be disposed to dispute +that. + +Dr. Martineau made a reassuring noise. + +"These affairs are at once unsatisfying and vitally +necessary. It is only latterly that I have begun to perceive +this. Women MAKE life for me. Whatever they touch or see or +desire becomes worth while and otherwise it is not worth +while. Whatever is lovely in my world, whatever is +delightful, has been so conveyed to me by some woman. Without +the vision they give me, I should be a hard dry industry in +the world, a worker ant, a soulless rage, making much, +valuing nothing." + +He paused. + +"You are, I think, abnormal," considered the doctor. + +"Not abnormal. Excessive, if you like. Without women I am a +wasting fever of distressful toil. Without them there is no +kindness in existence, no rest, no sort of satisfaction. The +world is a battlefield, trenches, barbed wire, rain, mud, +logical necessity and utter desolation--with nothing whatever +worth fighting for. Whatever justifies effort, whatever +restores energy is hidden in women . . . ." + +"An access of sex," said Dr. Martineau. " This is a +phase. . . ." + +"It is how I am made," said Sir Richmond. + +A brief silence fell upon that. Dr. Martineau persisted. "It +isn't how you are made. We are getting to something in all +this. It is, I insist, a mood of how you are made. A +distinctive and indicative mood." + +Sir Richmond went on, almost as if he soliloquized. + +"I would go through it all again. . . . There are times when +the love of women seems the only real thing in the world to +me. And always it remains the most real thing. I do not know +how far I may be a normal man or how far I may not be, so to +speak, abnormally male, but to me life has very little +personal significance and no value or power until it has a +woman as intermediary. Before life can talk to me and say +anything that matters a woman must be present as a medium. I +don't mean that it has no significance mentally and +logically; I mean that irrationally and emotionally it has no +significance. Works of art, for example, bore me, literature +bores me, scenery bores me, even the beauty of a woman bores +me, unless I find in it some association with a woman's +feeling. It isn't that I can't tell for myself that a picture +is fine or a mountain valley lovely, but that it doesn't +matter a rap to me whether it is or whether it isn't until +there is a feminine response, a sexual motif, if you like to +call it that, coming in. Whatever there is of loveliness or +pride in life doesn't LIVE for me until somehow a woman comes +in and breathes upon it the breath of life. I cannot even +rest until a woman makes holiday for me. Only one thing can I +do without women and that is work, joylessly but effectively, +and latterly for some reason that it is up to you to +discover, doctor, even the power of work has gone from me." + +Section 4 + +"This afternoon brings back to me very vividly my previous +visit here. It was perhaps a dozen or fifteen years ago. We +rowed down this same backwater. I can see my companion's +hand--she had very pretty hands with rosy palms--trailing in +the water, and her shadowed face smiling quietly under her +sunshade, with little faint streaks of sunlight, reflected +from the ripples, dancing and quivering across it. She was +one of those people who seem always to be happy and to +radiate happiness. + +"By ordinary standards," said Sir Richmond, "she was a +thoroughly bad lot. She had about as much morality, in the +narrower sense of the word, as a monkey. And yet she stands +out in my mind as one of the most honest women I have ever +met. She was certainly one of the kindest. Part of that +effect of honesty may have been due to her open brow, her +candid blue eyes, the smiling frankness of her manner. . . . +But--no! She was really honest. + +"We drifted here as we are doing now. She pulled at the sweet +rushes and crushed them in her hand. She adds a remembered +brightness to this afternoon. + +"Honest. Friendly. Of all the women I have known, this woman +who was here with me came nearest to being my friend. You +know, what we call virtue in a woman is a tremendous handicap +to any real friendliness with a man. Until she gets to an age +when virtue and fidelity are no longer urgent practical +concerns, a good woman, by the very definition of feminine +goodness, isn't truly herself. Over a vast extent of her +being she is RESERVED. She suppresses a vast amount of her +being, holds back, denies, hides. On the other hand, there is +a frankness and honesty in openly bad women arising out of +the admitted fact that they are bad, that they hide no +treasure from you, they have no peculiarly precious and +delicious secrets to keep, and no poverty to conceal. +Intellectually they seem to be more manly and vigorous +because they are, as people say, unsexed. Many old women, +thoroughly respectable old women, have the same quality. +Because they have gone out of the personal sex business. +Haven't you found that?" + +"I have never," said the doctor, known what you call an +openly bad woman,--at least, at all intimately. . . . " + +Sir Richmond looked with quick curiosity at his companion. +"You have avoided them!" + +"They don't attract me." +"They repel you?" + +"For me," said the doctor, "for any friendliness, a woman +must be modest. . . . My habits of thought are old-fashioned, +I suppose, but the mere suggestion about a woman that there +were no barriers, no reservation, that in any fashion she +might more than meet me half way . . . " + +His facial expression completed his sentence. + +"Now I wonder," whispered Sir Richmond, and hesitated for a +moment before he carried the great research into the +explorer's country. "You are afraid of women?" he said, with +a smile to mitigate the impertinence. + +"I respect them." + +"An element of fear." + +"Well, I am afraid of them then. Put it that way if you like. +Anyhow I do not let myself go with them. I have never let +myself go." + +"You lose something. You lose a reality of insight." + +There was a thoughtful interval. + +"Having found so excellent a friend," said the doctor, "why +did you ever part from her?" + +Sir Richmond seemed indisposed to answer, but Dr. Martineau's +face remained slantingly interrogative. He had found the +effective counterattack and he meant to press it. "I was +jealous of her," Sir Richmond admitted. "I couldn't stand +that side of it." + +Section 5 + +After a meditative silence the doctor became briskly +professional again. + +"You care for your wife," he said. "You care very much for +your wife. She is, as you say, your great obligation and you +are a man to respect obligations. I grasp that. Then you tell +me of these women who have come and gone. . . . About them +too you are perfectly frank. . . There remains someone +else." Sir Richmond stared at his physician. + +"Well," he said and laughed. "I didn't pretend to have made +my autobiography anything more than a sketch." + +"No, but there is a special person, the current person." + +"I haven't dilated on my present situation, I admit." + +"From some little things that have dropped from you, I should +say there is a child." + +"That," said Sir Richmond after a brief pause, "is a good +guess." "Not older than three." "Two years and a half." + +"You and this lady who is, I guess, young, are separated. At +any rate, you can't go to her. That leaves you at loose ends, +because for some time, for two or three years at least, you +have ceased to be--how shall I put it?--an emotional +wanderer." "I begin to respect your psychoanalysis." + +"Hence your overwhelming sense of the necessity of feminine +companionship for weary men. I guess she is a very jolly +companion to be with, amusing, restful--interesting." + +"H'm," said Sir Richmond. "I think that is a fair +description. When she cares, that is. When she is in good +form." + +"Which she isn't at present," hazarded the doctor. He +exploded a mine of long-pent exasperation. + +"She is the clumsiest hand at keeping well that I have ever +known. Health is a woman's primary duty. But she is incapable +of the most elementary precautions. She is maddeningly +receptive to every infection. At the present moment, when I +am ill, when I am in urgent need of help and happiness, she +has let that wretched child get measles and she herself won't +let me go near her because she has got something disfiguring, +something nobody else could ever have or think of having, +called CARBUNCLE. Carbuncle!" + +"It is very painful," said Dr. Martineau. "No doubt it is," +said Sir Richmond. + +"No doubt it is." His voice grew bitter. He spoke with +deliberation. "A perfectly aimless, useless illness,--and as +painful as it CAN be." + +He spoke as if he slammed a door viciously. And indeed he had +slammed a door. The doctor realized that for the present +there was no more self-dissection to be got from Sir +Richmond. + +For some time Sir Richmond had been keeping the boat close up +to the foaming weir to the left of the lock by an occasional +stroke. Now with a general air of departure he swung the boat +round and began to row down stream towards the bridge and the +Radiant Hotel. + +"Time we had tea," he said, + +Section 6 + +After tea Dr. Martineau left Sir Richmond in a chair upon the +lawn, brooding darkly--apparently over the crime of the +carbuncle. The doctor went to his room, ostensibly to write +a couple of letters and put on a dinner jacket, but really to +make a few notes of the afternoon's conversation and meditate +over his impressions while they were fresh. + +His room proffered a comfortable armchair and into this he +sank. . . A number of very discrepant things were busy in his +mind. He had experienced a disconcerting personal attack. +There was a whirl of active resentment in the confusion. + +"Apologetics of a rake," he tried presently. + +"A common type, stripped of his intellectual dressing. Every +third manufacturer from the midlands or the north has some +such undertow of 'affairs.' A physiological uneasiness, an +imaginative laxity, the temptations of the trip to London-- +weakness masquerading as a psychological necessity. The Lady +of the Carbuncle seems to have got rather a hold upon him. +She has kept him in order for three or four years." + +The doctor scrutinized his own remarks with a judicious +expression. + +"I am not being fair. He ruffled me. Even if it is true, as I +said, that every third manufacturer from the midlands is in +much the same case as he is, that does not dismiss the case. +It makes it a more important one, much more important: it +makes it a type case with the exceptional quality of being +self-expressive. Almost too selfexpressive. + +"Sir Richmond does, after all, make out a sort of case for +himself. . . . + +"A valid case?" + +The doctor sat deep in his chair, frowning judicially with +the fingers of one hand apposed to the fingers of the other. +"He makes me bristle because all his life and ideas challenge +my way of living. But if I eliminate the personal element? " + +He pulled a sheet of note-paper towards him and began to jot +down notes with a silver-cased pencil. Soon he discontinued +writing and sat tapping his pencil-case on the table. "The +amazing selfishness of his attitude! I do not think that +once--not once--has he judged any woman except as a +contributor to his energy and peace of mind. . . . Except in +the case of his wife. . . . + +"For her his habit of respect was formed before his ideas +developed. . . . + +"That I think explains HER. . . . + +"What was his phrase about the unfortunate young woman with +the carbuncle? . . . 'Totally Useless and unnecessary +illness,' was it? . . . + +"Now has a man any right by any standards to use women as +this man has used them? + +"By any standards?" + +The doctor frowned and nodded his head slowly with the +corners of his mouth drawn in. + +For some years now an intellectual reverie had been playing +an increasing part in the good doctor's life. He was writing +this book of his, writing it very deliberately and +laboriously, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE, but much more was +he dreaming and thinking about this book. Its publication was +to mark an epoch in human thought and human affairs +generally, and create a considerable flutter of astonishment +in the doctor's own little world. It was to bring home to +people some various aspects of one very startling +proposition: that human society had arrived at a phase when +the complete restatement of its fundamental ideas had become +urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate, +partial adjustments to two centuries of changing conditions +had to give place to a rapid reconstruction of new +fundamental ideas. And it was a fact of great value in the +drama of these secret dreams that the directive force towards +this fundamentally reconstructed world should be the pen of +an unassuming Harley Street physician, hitherto not suspected +of any great excesses of enterprise. + +The written portions of this book were already in a highly +polished state. They combined a limitless freedom of proposal +with a smooth urbanity of manner, a tacit denial that the +thoughts of one intelligent being could possibly be shocking +to another. Upon this the doctor was very insistent. Conduct, +he held, could never be sufficiently discreet, thought could +never be sufficiently free. As a citizen, one had to treat a +law or an institution as a thing as rigidly right as a +natural law. That the social well-being demands. But as a +scientific man, in one's stated thoughts and in public +discussion, the case was altogether different. There was no +offence in any possible hypothesis or in the contemplation of +any possibility. Just as when one played a game one was +bound to play in unquestioning obedience to the laws and +spirit of the game, but if one was not playing that game +then there was no reason why one should not contemplate the +completest reversal of all its methods and the alteration and +abandonment of every rule. Correctness of conduct, the doctor +held, was an imperative concomitant of all really free +thinking. Revolutionary speculation is one of those things +that must be divorced absolutely from revolutionary conduct. +It was to the neglect of these obvious principles, as the +doctor considered them, that the general muddle in +contemporary marital affairs was very largely due. We left +divorce-law revision to exposed adulterers and marriage +reform to hot adolescents and craving spinsters driven by the +furies within them to assertions that established nothing and +to practical demonstrations that only left everybody +thoroughly uncomfortable. Far better to leave all these +matters to calm, patient men in easy chairs, weighing typical +cases impartially, ready to condone, indisposed to envy. + +In return for which restraint on the part of the eager and +adventurous, the calm patient man was prepared in his +thoughts to fly high and go far. Without giving any +guarantee, of course, that he might not ultimately return to +the comfortable point of inaction from which he started. + +In Sir Richmond, Dr. Martineau found the most interesting and +encouraging confirmation of the fundamental idea of THE +PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE, the immediate need of new criteria +of conduct altogether. Here was a man whose life was +evidently ruled by standards that were at once very high and +very generous. He was overworking himself to the pitch of +extreme distress and apparently he was doing this for ends +that were essentially unselfish. Manifestly there were many +things that an ordinary industrial or political magnate would +do that Sir Richmond would not dream of doing, and a number +of things that such a man would not feel called upon to do +that he would regard as imperative duties. And mixed up with +so much fine intention and fine conduct was this disreputable +streak of intrigue and this extraordinary claim that such +misconduct was necessary to continued vigour of action. + +"To energy of thought it is not necessary," said Dr. +Martineau, and considered for a time. "Yet--certainly--I am +not a man of action. I admit it. I make few decisions. + +"The chapters of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE dealing with +women were still undrafted, but they had already greatly +exercised the doctor's mind. He found now that the case of +Sir Richmond had stirred his imagination. He sat with his +hands apposed, his head on one side, and an expression of +great intellectual contentment on his face while these +emancipated ideas gave a sort of gala performance in his +mind. + +The good doctor did not dislike women, he had always guarded +himself very carefully against misogyny, but he was very +strongly disposed to regard them as much less necessary in +the existing scheme of things than was generally assumed. +Women, he conceded, had laid the foundations of social life. +Through their contrivances and sacrifices and patience the +fierce and lonely patriarchal family-herd of a male and his +women and off spring had grown into the clan and tribe; the +woven tissue of related families that constitute the human +comity had been woven by the subtle, persistent protection of +sons and daughters by their mothers against the intolerant, +jealous, possessive Old Man. But that was a thing, of the +remote past. Little was left of those ancient struggles now +but a few infantile dreams and nightmares. The greater human +community, human society, was made for good. And being made, +it had taken over the ancient tasks of the woman, one by one, +until now in its modern forms it cherished more sedulously +than she did, it educated, it housed and comforted, it +clothed and served and nursed, leaving the wife privileged, +honoured, protected, for the sake of tasks she no longer did +and of a burthen she no longer bore. "Progress has +TRIVIALIZED women," said the doctor, and made a note of the +word for later consideration. + +"And woman has trivialized civilization," the doctor tried. + +"She has retained her effect of being central, she still +makes the social atmosphere, she raises men's instinctive +hopes of help and direction. Except," the doctor stipulated, +"for a few highly developed modern types, most men found the +sense of achieving her a necessary condition for sustained +exertion. And there is no direction in her any more. + +"She spends," said the doctor, "she just spends. She spends +excitingly and competitively for her own pride and glory, she +drives all the energy of men over the weirs of gain. . . . + +"What are we to do with the creature?" whispered the doctor. + +Apart from the procreative necessity, was woman an +unavoidable evil? The doctor's untrammelled thoughts began to +climb high, spin, nose dive and loop the loop. Nowadays we +took a proper care of the young, we had no need for high +birth rates, quite a small proportion of women with a gift in +that direction could supply all the offspring that the world +wanted. Given the power of determining sex that science was +slowly winning today, and why should we have so many women +about? A drastic elimination of the creatures would be quite +practicable. A fantastic world to a vulgar imagination, no +doubt, but to a calmly reasonable mind by no means fantastic. +But this was where the case of Sir Richmond became so +interesting. Was it really true that the companionship of +women was necessary to these energetic creative types? Was it +the fact that the drive of life towards action, as +distinguished from contemplation, arose out of sex and needed +to be refreshed by the reiteration of that motive? It was a +plausible proposition: it marched with all the doctor's ideas +of natural selection and of the conditions of a survival that +have made us what we are. It was in tune with the Freudian +analyses. + +"SEX NOT ONLY A RENEWAL OF LIFE IN THE SPECIES," noted the +doctor's silver pencil; "SEX MAY BE ALSO A RENEWAL OF ENERGY +IN THE INDIVIDUAL." + +After some musing he crossed out "sex" and wrote above it +"sexual love." + +"That is practically what he claims, Dr. Martineau said. "In +which case we want the completest revision of all our +standards of sexual obligation. We want a new system of +restrictions and imperatives altogether." + +It was a fixed idea of the doctor's that women were quite +incapable of producing ideas in the same way that men do, but +he believed that with suitable encouragement they could be +induced to respond quite generously to such ideas. Suppose +therefore we really educated the imaginations of women; +suppose we turned their indubitable capacity for service +towards social and political creativeness, not in order to +make them the rivals of men in these fields, but their moral +and actual helpers. "A man of this sort wants a mistress- +mother," said the doctor. "He wants a sort of woman who cares +more for him and his work and honour than she does for child +or home or clothes or personal pride. "But are there such +women? Can there be such a woman?" + +"His work needs to be very fine to deserve her help. But +admitting its fineness? . . . + +"The alternative seems to be to teach the sexes to get along +without each other. + +"A neutralized world. A separated world. How we should jostle +in the streets! But the early Christians have tried it +already. The thing is impossible. + +"Very well, then, we have to make women more responsible +again. In a new capacity. We have to educate them far more +seriously as sources of energy--as guardians and helpers of +men. And we have to suppress them far more rigorously as +tempters and dissipaters. Instead of mothering babies they +have to mother the race. . . . " + +A vision of women made responsible floated before his eyes. + +"Is that man working better since you got hold of him? If +not, why not? "Or again,--Jane Smith was charged with +neglecting her lover to the common danger. . . . The +inspector said the man was in a pitiful state, morally quite +uncombed and infested with vulgar, showy ideas. . . ." + +The doctor laughed, telescoped his pencil and stood up. + +Section 7 + +It became evident after dinner that Sir Richmond also had +been thinking over the afternoon's conversation. + +He and Dr. Martineau sat in wide-armed cane chairs on the +lawn with a wickerwork table bearing coffee cups and little +glasses between them. A few other diners chatted and +whispered about similar tables but not too close to our +talkers to disturb them; the dining room behind them had +cleared its tables and depressed its illumination. The moon, +in its first quarter, hung above the sunset, sank after +twilight, shone brighter and brighter among the western +trees, and presently had gone, leaving the sky to an +increasing multitude of stars. The Maidenhead river wearing +its dusky blue draperies and its jewels of light had +recovered all the magic Sir Richmond had stripped from it in +the afternoon. The grave arches of the bridge, made complete +circles by the reflexion of the water, sustained, as if by +some unifying and justifying reason, the erratic flat flashes +and streaks and glares of traffic that fretted to and fro +overhead. A voice sang intermittently and a banjo tinkled, +but remotely enough to be indistinct and agreeable. + +"After all," Sir Richmond began abruptly," the search for +some sort of sexual modus vivendi is only a means to an end. +One does not want to live for sex but only through sex. The +main thing in my life has always been my work. This +afternoon, under the Maidenhead influence, I talked too much +of sex. I babbled. Of things one doesn't usually . . . " + +"It was very illuminating," said the doctor. + +"No doubt. But a temporary phase. It is the defective bearing +talks. . . . Just now--I happen to be irritated." + +The darkness concealed a faint smile on the doctor's face. + +"The work is the thing," said Sir Richmond. So long as one +can keep one's grip on it." + +"What," said the doctor after a pause, leaning back and +sending wreaths of smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, +"what is your idea of your work? I mean, how do you see it in +relation to yourself--and things generally?" + +"Put in the most general terms?" + +"Put in the most general terms." + +"I wonder if I can put it in general terms for you at all. It +is hard to put something one is always thinking about in +general terms or to think of it as a whole. . . . Now. . . . +Fuel? . . . + +"I suppose it was my father's business interests that pushed +me towards specialization in fuel. He wanted me to have a +thoroughly scientific training in days when a scientific +training was less easy to get for a boy than it is today. And +much more inspiring when you got it. My mind was framed, so +to speak, in geology and astronomical physics. I grew up to +think on that scale. Just as a man who has been trained in +history and law grows to think on the scale of the Roman +empire. I don't know what your pocket map of the universe is, +the map, I mean, by which you judge all sorts of other +general ideas. To me this planet is a little ball of oxides +and nickel steel; life a sort of tarnish on its surface. And +we, the minutest particles in that tarnish. Who can +nevertheless, in some unaccountable way, take in the idea of +this universe as one whole, who begin to dream of taking +control of it." + +"That is not a bad statement of the scientific point of view. +I suppose I have much the same general idea of the world. On +rather more psychological lines." + +"We think, I suppose, said Sir Richmond, of life as something +that is only just beginning to be aware of what it is--and +what it might be." + +"Exactly," said the doctor. "Good." + +He went on eagerly. "That is precisely how I see it. You and +I are just particles in the tarnish, as you call it, who are +becoming dimly awake to what we are, to what we have in +common. Only a very few of us have got as far even as this. +These others here, for example . . . ." + +He indicated the rest of Maidenhead by a movement. + +"Desire, mutual flattery, egotistical dreams, greedy +solicitudes fill them up. They haven't begun to get out of +themselves." + +"We, I suppose, have," doubted Sir Richmond. + +"We have." + +The doctor had no doubt. He lay back in his chair, with his +hands behind his head and his smoke ascending vertically to +heaven. With the greatest contentment he began quoting +himself. "This getting out of one's individuality--this +conscious getting out of one's individuality--is one of the +most important and interesting aspects of the psychology of +the new age that is now dawning. As compared with any +previous age. Unconsciously, of course, every true artist, +every philosopher, every scientific investigator, so far as +his art or thought went, has always got out of himself,--has +forgotten his personal interests and become Man thinking for +the whole race. And intimations of the same thing have been +at the heart of most religions. But now people are beginning +to get this detachment without any distinctively religious +feeling or any distinctive aesthetic or intellectual impulse, +as if it were a plain matter of fact. Plain matter of fact, +that we are only incidentally ourselves. That really each one +of us is also the whole species, is really indeed all life. " + +"A part of it." + +"An integral part-as sight is part of a man . . . with no +absolute separation from all the rest--no more than a +separation of the imagination. The whole so far as his +distinctive quality goes. I do not know how this takes shape +in your mind, Sir Richmond, but to me this idea of actually +being life itself upon the world, a special phase of it +dependent upon and connected with all other phases, and of +being one of a small but growing number of people who +apprehend that, and want to live in the spirit of that, is +quite central. It is my fundamental idea. We,--this small +but growing minority--constitute that part of life which +knows and wills and tries to rule its destiny. This new +realization, the new psychology arising out of it is a fact +of supreme importance in the history of life. It is like the +appearance of self-consciousness in some creature that has +not hitherto had self-consciousness. And so far as we are +concerned, we are the true kingship of the world. +Necessarily. We who know, are the true king. . . .I wonder +how this appeals to you. It is stuff I have thought out very +slowly and carefully and written and approved. It is the very +core of my life. . . . And yet when one comes to say these +things to someone else, face to face. . . . It is much more +difficult to say than to write." + +Sir Richmond noted how the doctor's chair creaked as he +rolled to and fro with the uneasiness of these intimate +utterances. + +"I agree," said Sir Richmond presently. "One DOES think in +this fashion. Something in this fashion. What one calls one's +work does belong to something much bigger than ourselves. + +"Something much bigger," he expanded. + +"Which something we become," the doctor urged, "in so far as +our work takes hold of us." + +Sir Richmond made no answer to this for a little while. "Of +course we trail a certain egotism into our work," he said. + +"Could we do otherwise? But it has ceased to be purely +egotism. It is no longer, 'I am I' but 'I am part.'. . . One +wants to be an honourable part." + +"You think of man upon his planet," the doctor pursued. "I +think of life rather as a mind that tries itself over in +millions and millions of trials. But it works out to the same +thing." + +"I think in terms of fuel," said Sir Richmond. + +He was still debating the doctor's generalization. "I suppose +it would be true to say that I think of myself as mankind on +his planet, with very considerable possibilities and with +only a limited amount of fuel at his disposal to achieve +them. Yes. . . . I agree that I think in that way. . . . I +have not thought much before of the way in which I think +about things--but I agree that it is in that way. Whatever +enterprises mankind attempts are limited by the sum total of +that store of fuel upon the planet. That is very much in my +mind. Besides that he has nothing but his annual allowance of +energy from the sun." + +"I thought that presently we were to get unlimited energy +from atoms," said the doctor. + +"I don't believe in that as a thing immediately practicable. +No doubt getting a supply of energy from atoms is a +theoretical possibility, just as flying was in the time of +Daedalus; probably there were actual attempts at some sort of +glider in ancient Crete. But before we get to the actual +utilization of atomic energy there will be ten thousand +difficult corners to turn; we may have to wait three or four +thousand years for it. We cannot count on it. We haven't it +in hand. There may be some impasse. All we have surely is +coal and oil,--there is no surplus of wood now--only an +annual growth. And water-power is income also, doled out day +by day. We cannot anticipate it. Coal and oil are our only +capital. They are all we have for great important efforts. +They are a gift to mankind to use to some supreme end or to +waste in trivialities. Coal is the key to metallurgy and oil +to transit. When they are done we shall either have built up +such a fabric of apparatus, knowledge and social organization +that we shall be able to manage without them--or we shall +have travelled a long way down the slopes of waste towards +extinction. . . . To-day, in getting, in distribution, in use +we waste enormously. . . .As we sit here all the world is +wasting fuel fantastically." + +"Just as mentally--educationally we waste," the doctor +interjected. + +"And my job is to stop what I can of that waste, to do what I +can to organize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane +fuel using. And that second proposition carries us far. Into +the whole use we are making of life. + +"First things first," said Sir Richmond. If we set about +getting fuel sanely, if we do it as the deliberate, +co-operative act of the whole species, then it follows that +we shall look very closely into the use that is being made of +it. When all the fuel getting is brought into one view as a +common interest, then it follows that all the fuel burning +will be brought into one view. At present we are getting fuel +in a kind of scramble with no general aim. We waste and lose +almost as much as we get. And of what we get, the waste is +idiotic. + +"I won't trouble you," said Sir Richmond, "with any long +discourse on the ways of getting fuel in this country. But +land as you know is owned in patches and stretches that were +determined in the first place chiefly by agricultural +necessities. When it was divided up among its present owners +nobody was thinking about the minerals beneath. But the +lawyers settled long ago that the landowner owned his land +right down to the centre of the earth. So we have the +superficial landlord as coal owner trying to work his coal +according to the superficial divisions, quite irrespective of +the lie of the coal underneath. Each man goes for the coal +under his own land in his own fashion. You get three shafts +where one would suffice and none of them in the best possible +place. You get the coal coming out of this point when it +would be far more convenient to bring it out at that--miles +away. You get boundary walls of coal between the estates, +abandoned, left in the ground for ever. And each coal owner +sells his coal in his own pettifogging manner... But you know +of these things. You know too how we trail the coal all over +the country, spoiling it as we trail it, until at last we get +it into the silly coal scuttles beside the silly, wasteful, +airpoisoning, fog-creating fireplace. + +"And this stuff," said Sir Richmond, bringing his hand down +so smartly on the table that the startled coffee cups cried +out upon the tray; "was given to men to give them power over +metals, to get knowledge with, to get more power with." + +"The oil story, I suppose, is as bad." + +"The oil story is worse. . . . + +"There is a sort of cant," said Sir Richmond in a fierce +parenthesis, "that the supplies of oil are inexhaustible-- +that you can muddle about with oil anyhow. . . . Optimism of +knaves and imbeciles. . . . They don't want to be pulled up +by any sane considerations. . . ." + +For some moments he kept silence--as if in unspeakable +commination. + +"Here I am with some clearness of vision--my only gift; not +very clever, with a natural bad temper, and a strong sexual +bias, doing what I can to get a broader handling of the fuel +question--as a common interest for all mankind. And I find +myself up against a lot of men, subtle men, sharp men, +obstinate men, prejudiced men, able to get round me, able to +get over me, able to blockade me. . . . Clever men--yes, and +all of them ultimately damned--oh! utterly damned--fools. +Coal owners who think only of themselves, solicitors who +think backwards, politicians who think like a game of cat's- +cradle, not a gleam of generosity not a gleam." + +"What particularly are you working for?" asked the doctor. + +"I want to get the whole business of the world's fuel +discussed and reported upon as one affair so that some day it +may be handled as one affair in the general interest." + +"The world, did you say? You meant the empire?" + +"No, the world. It is all one system now. You can't work it +in bits. I want to call in foreign representatives from the +beginning." + +"Advisory--consultative?" + +"No. With powers. These things interlock now internationally +both through labour and finance. The sooner we scrap this +nonsense about an autonomous British Empire complete in +itself, contra mundum, the better for us. A world control is +fifty years overdue. Hence these disorders. " + +"Still--it's rather a difficult proposition, as things are." + +"Oh, Lord! don't I know it's difficult!" cried Sir Richmond +in the tone of one who swears. "Don't I know that perhaps +it's impossible! But it's the only way to do it. Therefore, I +say, let's try to get it done. And everybody says, difficult, +difficult, and nobody lifts a finger to try. And the only +real difficulty is that everybody for one reason or another +says that it's difficult. It's against human nature. Granted! +Every decent thing is. It's socialism. Who cares? Along this +line of comprehensive scientific control the world has to go +or it will retrogress, it will muddle and rot. . . ." + +"I agree," said Dr. Martineau. + +"So I want a report to admit that distinctly. I want it to go +further than that. I want to get the beginnings, the germ, of +a world administration. I want to set up a permanent world +commission of scientific men and economists--with powers, +just as considerable powers as I can give them--they'll be +feeble powers at the best--but still some sort of SAY in the +whole fuel supply of the world. A say--that may grow at last +to a control. A right to collect reports and receive accounts +for example, to begin with. And then the right to make +recommendations. . . . You see? . . . No, the international +part is not the most difficult part of it. But my beastly +owners and their beastly lawyers won't relinquish a scrap of +what they call their freedom of action. And my labour men, +because I'm a fairly big coal owner myself, sit and watch and +suspect me, too stupid to grasp what I am driving at and too +incompetent to get out a scheme of their own. They want a +world control on scientific lines even less than the owners. +They try to think that fuel production can carry an unlimited +wages bill and the owners try to think that it can pay +unlimited profits, and when I say; 'This business is +something more than a scramble for profits and wages; it's a +service and a common interest,' they stare at me--" Sir +Richmond was at a loss for an image. "Like a committee in a +thieves' kitchen when someone has casually mentioned the +law." + +"But will you ever get your Permanent Commission?" + +"It can be done. If I can stick it out." + +"But with the whole Committee against you!" + +"The curious thing is that the whole Committee isn't against +me. Every individual is . . . ." + +Sir Richmond found it difficult to express. "The psychology +of my Committee ought to interest you. . . . It is probably a +fair sample of the way all sorts of things are going +nowadays. It's curious. . . . There is not a man on that +Committee who is quite comfortable within himself about the +particular individual end he is there to serve. It's there I +get them. They pursue their own ends bitterly and obstinately +I admit, but they are bitter and obstinate because they +pursue them against an internal opposition--which is on my +side. They are terrified to think, if once they stopped +fighting me, how far they might not have to go with me." + +"A suppressed world conscience in fact. This marches very +closely with my own ideas." + +"A world conscience? World conscience? I don't know. But I do +know that there is this drive in nearly every member of the +Committee, some drive anyhow, towards the decent thing. It is +the same drive that drives me. But I am the most driven. It +has turned me round. It hasn't turned them. I go East and +they go West. And they don't want to be turned round. +Tremendously, they don't." + +"Creative undertow," said Dr. Martineau, making notes, as it +were. "An increasing force in modern life. In the psychology +of a new age strengthened by education--it may play a +directive part." + +"They fight every little point. But, you see, because of this +creative undertow--if you like to call it that--we do get +along. I am leader or whipper-in, it is hard to say which, of +a bolting flock. . . .I believe they will report for a +permanent world commission; I believe I have got them up to +that; but they will want to make it a bureau of this League +of Nations, and I have the profoundest distrust of this +League of Nations. It may turn out to be a sort of side- +tracking arrangement for all sorts of important world issues. +And they will find they have to report for some sort of +control. But there again they will shy. They will report for +it and then they will do their utmost to whittle it down +again. They will refuse it the most reasonable powers. They +will alter the composition of the Committee so as to make it +innocuous." + +"How?" + +"Get rid of the independent scientific men, load it up so far +as Britain is concerned with muck of the colonial politician +type and tame labour representatives, balance with shady new +adventurer millionaires, get in still shadier stuff from +abroad, let these gentry appoint their own tame experts after +their own hearts,--experts who will make merely advisory +reports, which will not be published. . . ." + +"They want in fact to keep the old system going under the +cloak of YOUR Committee, reduced to a cloak and nothing +more?" + +"That is what it amounts to. They want to have the air of +doing right--indeed they do want to have the FEEL of doing +right--and still leave things just exactly what they were +before. And as I suffer under the misfortune of seeing the +thing rather more clearly, I have to shepherd the conscience +of the whole Committee. . . . But there is a conscience +there. If I can hold out myself, I can hold the Committee." + +He turned appealingly to the doctor. "Why should I have to be +the conscience of that damned Committee? Why should I do this +exhausting inhuman job? . . . . In their hearts these others +know. . . . Only they won't know. . . . Why should it fall +on me?" + +"You have to go through with it," said Dr. Martineau. + +"I have to go through with it, but it's a hell of utterly +inglorious squabbling. They bait me. They have been fighting +the same fight within themselves that they fight with me. +They know exactly where I am, that I too am doing my job +against internal friction. The one thing before all others +that they want to do is to bring me down off my moral high +horse. And I loathe the high horse. I am in a position of +special moral superiority to men who are on the whole as good +men as I am or better. That shows all the time. You see the +sort of man I am. I've a broad streak of personal vanity. I +fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've other things, as you +perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I +get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable +sense of ill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be +working with me steadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly +witty. He gets a laugh round the table at my expense. Young +Dent, the more intelligent of the labour men, reads me a +lecture in committee manners. Old Cassidy sees HIS opening +and jabs some ridiculous petty accusation at me and gets me +spluttering self-defence like a fool. All my stock goes down, +and as my stock goes down the chances of a good report +dwindle. Young Dent grieves to see me injuring my own case. +Too damned a fool to see what will happen to the report! You +see if only they can convince themselves I am just a prig and +an egotist and an impractical bore, they escape from a great +deal more than my poor propositions. They escape from the +doubt in themselves. By dismissing me they dismiss their own +consciences. And then they can scamper off and be sensible +little piggy-wigs and not bother any more about what is to +happen to mankind in the long run. . . . Do you begin to +realize the sort of fight, upside down in a dustbin, that +that Committee is for me?" + +"You have to go through with it," Dr. Martineau repeated. + +"I have. If I can. But I warn you I have been near breaking +point. And if I tumble off the high horse, if I can't keep +going regularly there to ride the moral high horse, that +Committee will slump into utter scoundrelism. It will turn +out a long, inconsistent, botched, unreadable report that +will back up all sorts of humbugging bargains and sham +settlements. It will contain some half-baked scheme to pacify +the miners at the expense of the general welfare. It won't +even succeed in doing that. But in the general confusion old +Cassidy will get away with a series of hauls that may run +into millions. Which will last his time--damn him! And that +is where we are. . . . Oh! I know! I know! . . . . I must do +this job. I don't need any telling that my life will be +nothing and mean nothing unless I bring this thing +through. . . . + +"But the thanklessness of playing this lone hand!" + +The doctor watched his friend's resentful black silhouette +against the lights on the steely river, and said nothing for +awhile. + +"Why did I ever undertake to play it?" Sir Richmond appealed. +"Why has it been put upon me? Seeing what a poor thing I am, +why am I not a poor thing altogether?" + +Section 8 + +"I think I understand that loneliness of yours, said the +doctor after an interval. + +"I am INTOLERABLE to myself." + +"And I think it explains why it is that you turn to women as +you do. You want help; you want reassurance. And you feel +they can give it." + +"I wonder if it has been quite like that," Sir Richmond +reflected. + +By an effort Dr. Martineau refrained from mentioning the +mother complex. "You want help and reassurance as a child +does," he said. "Women and women alone seem capable of giving +that, of telling you that you are surely right, that +notwithstanding your blunders you are right; that even when +you are wrong it doesn't so much matter, you are still in +spirit right. They can show their belief in you as no man +can. With all their being they can do that." + +"Yes, I suppose they could." + +"They can. You have said already that women are necessary to +make things real for you." + +"Not my work," said Sir Richmond. "I admit that it might be +like that, but it isn't like that. It has not worked out like +that. The two drives go on side by side in me. They have no +logical connexion. All I can say is that for me, with my +bifid temperament, one makes a rest from the other, and is so +far refreshment and a renewal of energy. But I do not find +women coming into my work in any effectual way. " + +The doctor reflected further. "I suppose," he began and +stopped short. + +He heard Sir Richmond move in his chair, creaking an +interrogation. + +"You have never," said the doctor, "turned to the idea of +God?" + +Sir Richmond grunted and made no other answer for the better +part of a minute. + +As Dr. Martineau waited for his companion to speak, a falling +star streaked the deep blue above them. + +"I can't believe in a God," said Sir Richmond. + +"Something after the fashion of a God," said the doctor +insidiously. + +"No," said Sir Richmond. "Nothing that reassures." + +"But this loneliness, this craving for companionship. . . ." + +"We have all been through that," said Sir Richmond. "We have +all in our time lain very still in the darkness with our +souls crying out for the fellowship of God, demanding some +sign, some personal response. The faintest feeling of +assurance would have satisfied us." + +"And there has never been a response?" + +"Have YOU ever had a response?" + +"Once I seemed to have a feeling of exaltation and security." + +"Well?" + +"Perhaps I only persuaded myself that I had. I had been +reading William James on religious experiences and I was +thinking very much of Conversion. I tried to experience +Conversion. . . ." + +"Yes? " + +"It faded." + +"It always fades," said Sir Richmond with anger in his voice. +"I wonder how many people there are nowadays who have passed +through this last experience of ineffectual invocation, this +appeal to the fading shadow of a vanished God. In the night. +In utter loneliness. Answer me! Speak to me! Does he answer? +In the silence you hear the little blood vessels whisper in +your ears. You see a faint glow of colour on the +darkness. . . . " + +Dr. Martineau sat without a word. + +"I can believe that over all things Righteousness rules. I +can believe that. But Righteousness is not friendliness nor +mercy nor comfort nor any such dear and intimate things. This +cuddling up to Righteousness! It is a dream, a delusion and a +phase. I've tried all that long ago. I've given it up long +ago. I've grown out of it. Men do--after forty. Our souls +were made in the squatting-place of the submen of ancient +times. They are made out of primitive needs and they die +before our bodies as those needs are satisfied. Only young +people have souls, complete. The need for a personal God, +feared but reassuring, is a youth's need. I no longer fear +the Old Man nor want to propitiate the Old Man nor believe he +matters any more. I'm a bit of an Old Man myself I discover. +Yes. But the other thing still remains. " + +"The Great Mother of the Gods," said Dr. Martineau--still +clinging to his theories. + +"The need of the woman," said Sir Richmond. "I want mating +because it is my nature to mate. I want fellowship because I +am a social animal and I want it from another social animal. +Not from any God--any inconceivable God. Who fades and +disappears. No. . . . + +"Perhaps that other need will fade presently. I do not know. +Perhaps it lasts as long as life does. How can I tell?" + +He was silent for a little while. Then his voice sounded in +the night, as if he spoke to himself. "But as for the God of +All Things consoling and helping! Imagine it! That up there-- +having fellowship with me! I would as soon think of cooling +my throat with the Milky Way or shaking hands with those +stars." + + + +CHAPTER THE FIFTH + +IN THE LAND OF THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLES + + +Section 1 + +A gust of confidence on the part of a person naturally or +habitually reserved will often be followed by a phase of +recoil. At breakfast next morning their overnight talk seemed +to both Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau like something each +had dreamt about the other, a quite impossible excess of +intimacy. They discussed the weather, which seemed to be +settling down to the utmost serenity of which the English +spring is capable, they talked of Sir Richmond's coming car +and of the possible routes before them. Sir Richmond produced +the Michelin maps which he had taken out of the pockets of +the little Charmeuse. The Bath Road lay before them, he +explained, Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough, Silbury +Hill which overhangs Avebury. Both travellers discovered a +common excitement at the mention of Avebury and Silbury Hill. +Both took an intelligent interest in archaeology. Both had +been greatly stimulated by the recent work of Elliot Smith +and Rivers upon what was then known as the Heliolithic +culture. It had revived their interest in Avebury and +Stonehenge. The doctor moreover had been reading Hippisley +Cox's GREEN ROADS OF ENGLAND. + +Neither gentleman had ever seen Avebury, but Dr. Martineau +had once visited Stonehenge. + +"Avebury is much the oldest," said the doctor. They must have +made Silbury Hill long before 2000 B.C. It may be five +thousand years old or even more. It is the most important +historical relic in the British Isles. And the most +neglected. " + +They exchanged archaeological facts. The secret places of the +heart rested until the afternoon. + +Then Sir Richmond saw fit to amplify his confessions in one +particular. + +Section 2 + +The doctor and his patient had discovered a need for exercise +as the morning advanced. They had walked by the road to +Marlow and had lunched at a riverside inn, returning after a +restful hour in an arbour on the lawn of this place to tea at +Maidenhead. It was as they returned that Sir Richmond took up +the thread of their overnight conversation again. + +"In the night," he said, "I was thinking over the account I +tried to give you of my motives. A lot of it was terribly out +of drawing." + +"Facts?" asked the doctor. + +"No, the facts were all right. It was the atmosphere, the +proportions. . . . I don't know if I gave you the effect of +something Don Juanesque? . . ." + +"Vulgar poem," said the doctor remarkably." I discounted +that." + +"Vulgar!" + +"Intolerable. Byron in sexual psychology is like a stink in a +kitchen." + +Sir Richmond perceived he had struck upon the sort of thing +that used to be called a pet aversion. + +"I don't want you to think that I run about after women in an +habitual and systematic manner. Or that I deliberately hunt +them in the interests of my work and energy. Your questions +had set me theorizing about myself. And I did my best to +improvise a scheme of motives yesterday. It was, I perceive, +a jerry-built scheme, run up at short notice. My nocturnal +reflections convinced me of that. I put reason into things +that are essentially instinctive. The truth is that the +wanderings of desire have no single drive. All sorts of +motives come in, high and low, down to sheer vulgar +imitativeness and competitiveness. What was true in it all +was this, that a man with any imagination in a fatigue phase +falls naturally into these complications because they are +more attractive to his type and far easier and more +refreshing to the mind, at the outset, than anything else. +And they do work a sort of recovery in him, They send him +back to his work refreshed--so far, that is, as his work is +concerned." + +"At the OUTSET they are easier," said the doctor. + +Sir Richmond laughed. "When one is fagged it is only the +outset counts. The more tired one is the more readily one +moves along the line of least resistance. . . . + +"That is one footnote to what I said. So far as the motive of +my work goes, I think we got something like the spirit of it. +What I said about that was near the truth of things. . . . + +"But there is another set of motives altogether, "Sir +Richmond went on with an air of having cleared the ground for +his real business, "that I didn't go into at all yesterday." + +He considered. "It arises out of these other affairs. Before +you realize it your affections are involved. I am a man much +swayed by my affections." + +Mr. Martineau glanced at him. There was a note of genuine +self-reproach in Sir Richmond's voice. + +"I get fond of people. It is quite irrational, but I get fond +of them. Which is quite a different thing from the admiration +and excitement of falling in love. Almost the opposite thing. +They cry or they come some mental or physical cropper and +hurt themselves, or they do something distressingly little +and human and suddenly I find they've GOT me. I'm distressed. +I'm filled with something between pity and an impulse of +responsibility. I become tender towards them. I am impelled +to take care of them. I want to ease them off, to reassure +them, to make them stop hurting at any cost. I don't see why +it should be the weak and sickly and seamy side of people +that grips me most, but it is. I don't know why it should be +their failures that gives them power over me, but it is. I +told you of this girl, this mistress of mine, who is ill just +now. SHE'S got me in that way; she's got me tremendously." + +"You did not speak of her yesterday with any morbid excess of +pity," the doctor was constrained to remark. + +"I abused her very probably. I forget exactly what I +said. . . ." + +The doctor offered no assistance. + +"But the reason why I abuse her is perfectly plain. I abuse +her because she distresses me by her misfortunes and instead +of my getting anything out of her, I go out to her. But I DO +go out to her. All this time at the back of my mind I am +worrying about her. She has that gift of making one feel for +her. I am feeling that damned carbuncle almost as if it had +been my affair instead of hers. + +"That carbuncle has made me suffer FRIGHTFULLY. . . . Why +should I? It isn't mine." + +He regarded the doctor earnestly. The doctor controlled a +strong desire to laugh. + +"I suppose the young lady--" he began. + +"Oh! SHE puts in suffering all right. I've no doubt about +that. + +"I suppose," Sir Richmond went on, "now that I have told you +so much of this affair, I may as well tell you all. It is a +sort of comedy, a painful comedy, of irrelevant affections." + +The doctor was prepared to be a good listener. Facts he would +always listen to; it was only when people told him their +theories that he would interrupt with his "Exactly." + +"This young woman is a person of considerable genius. I don't +know if you have seen in the illustrated papers a peculiar +sort of humorous illustrations usually with a considerable +amount of bite in them over the name of Martin Leeds? + +"Extremely amusing stuff." + +"It is that Martin Leeds. I met her at the beginning of her +career. She talks almost as well as she draws. She amused me +immensely. I'm not the sort of man who waylays and besieges +women and girls. I'm not the pursuing type. But I perceived +that in some odd way I attracted her and I was neither wise +enough nor generous enough not to let the thing develop." + +"H'm," said Dr. Martineau. + +"I'd never had to do with an intellectually brilliant woman +before. I see now that the more imaginative force a woman +has, the more likely she is to get into a state of extreme +self-abandonment with any male thing upon which her +imagination begins to crystallize. Before I came along she'd +mixed chiefly with a lot of young artists and students, all +doing nothing at all except talk about the things they were +going to do. I suppose I profited by the contrast, being +older and with my hands full of affairs. Perhaps something +had happened that had made her recoil towards my sort of +thing. I don't know. But she just let herself go at me." + +"And you?" + +"Let myself go too. I'd never met anything like her before. +It was her wit took me. It didn't occur to me that she wasn't +my contemporary and as able as I was. As able to take care of +herself. All sorts of considerations that I should have shown +to a sillier woman I never dreamt of showing to her. I had +never met anyone so mentally brilliant before or so helpless +and headlong. And so here we are on each other's hands! " + +"But the child? + +"It happened to us. For four years now things have just +happened to us. All the time I have been overworking, first +at explosives and now at this fuel business. She too is full +of her work. + +"Nothing stops that though everything seems to interfere with +it. And in a distraught, preoccupied way we are abominably +fond of each other. 'Fond' is the word. But we are both too +busy to look after either ourselves or each other. + +"She is much more incapable than I am," said Sir Richmond as +if he delivered a weighed and very important judgment. + +"You see very much of each other?" + +"She has a flat in Chelsea and a little cottage in South +Cornwall, and we sometimes snatch a few days together, away +somewhere in Surrey or up the Thames or at such a place as +Southend where one is lost in a crowd of inconspicuous +people. "Then things go well--they usually go well at the +start--we are glorious companions. She is happy, she is +creative, she will light up a new place with flashes of +humour, with a keenness of appreciation . . . . " + +"But things do not always go well?" + +"Things," said Sir Richmond with the deliberation of a man +who measures his words, "are apt to go wrong. . . . At the +flat there is constant trouble with the servants; they bully +her. A woman is more entangled with servants than a man. +Women in that position seem to resent the work and freedom of +other women. Her servants won't leave her in peace as they +would leave a man; they make trouble for her. . . . And when +we have had a few days anywhere away, even if nothing in +particular has gone wrong--" + +Sir Richmond stopped short. + +"When they go wrong it is generally her fault," the doctor +sounded. + +"Almost always." + +"But if they don't?" said the psychiatrist. + +"It is difficult to describe. . . . The essential +incompatibility of the whole thing comes out." + +The doctor maintained his expression of intelligent interest. + +"She wants to go on with her work. She is able to work +anywhere. All she wants is just cardboard and ink. My mind on +the other hand turns back to the Fuel Commission . . . ." + +"Then any little thing makes trouble." + +"Any little thing makes trouble. And we always drift round to +the same discussion; whether we ought really to go on +together." + +"It is you begin that?" + +"Yes, I start that. You see she is perfectly contented when I +am about. She is as fond of me as I am of her." + +"Fonder perhaps." + +'I don't know. But she is--adhesive. Emotionally adhesive. +All she wants to do is just to settle down when I am there +and go on with her work. But then, you see, there is MY +work." + +"Exactly. . . . After all it seems to me that your great +trouble is not in yourselves but in social institutions. +Which haven't yet fitted themselves to people like you two. +It is the sense of uncertainty makes her, as you say, +adhesive. Nervously so. If we were indeed living in a new age +Instead of the moral ruins of a shattered one--" + +"We can't alter the age we live in," said Sir Richmond a +little testily. + +"No. Exactly. But we CAN realize, in any particular +situation, that it is not the individuals to blame but the +misfit of ideas and forms and prejudices." + +"No," said Sir Richmond, obstinately rejecting this pacifying +suggestion; "she could adapt herself. If she cared enough." + +"But how?" + +"She will not take the slightest trouble to adjust herself to +the peculiarities of our position. . . . She could be +cleverer. Other women are cleverer. Any other woman almost +would be cleverer than she is." + +"But if she was cleverer, she wouldn't be the genius she is. +She would just be any other woman." + +"Perhaps she would," said Sir Richmond darkly and +desperately. "Perhaps she would. Perhaps it would be better +if she was." + +Dr. Martineau raised his eyebrows in a furtive aside. + +"But here you see that it is that in my case, the fundamental +incompatibility between one's affections and one's wider +conception of duty and work comes in. We cannot change social +institutions in a year or a lifetime. We can never change +them to suit an individual case. That would be like +suspending the laws of gravitation in order to move a piano. +As things are, Martin is no good to me, no help to me. She +is a rival to my duty. She feels that. She is hostile to my +duty. A definite antagonism has developed. She feels and +treats fuel--and everything to do with fuel as a bore. It is +an attack. We quarrel on that. It isn't as though I found it +so easy to stick to my work that I could disregard her +hostility. And I can't bear to part from her. I threaten it, +distress her excessively and then I am overcome by sympathy +for her and I go back to her. . . . In the ordinary course of +things I should be with her now." + +"If it were not for the carbuncle?" + +"If it were not for the carbuncle. She does not care for me +to see her disfigured. She does not understand--" Sir +Richmond was at a loss for a phrase--"that it is not her good +looks." + +"She won't let you go to her?" + +"It amounts to that. . . . And soon there will be all the +trouble about educating the girl. Whatever happens, she must +have as good a chance as--anyone. . . . " + +"Ah! That is worrying you too!" + +"Frightfully at times. If it were a boy it would be easier. +It needs constant tact and dexterity to fix things up. +Neither of us have any. It needs attention. . . . " + +Sir Richmond mused darkly. + +Dr. Martineau thought aloud. "An incompetent delightful +person with Martin Leeds's sense of humour. And her powers of +expression. She must be attractive to many people. She could +probably do without you. If once you parted." + +Sir Richmond turned on him eagerly. + +"You think I ought to part from her? On her account?" + +"On her account. It might pain her. But once the thing was +done--" + +"I want to part. I believe I ought to part." + +"Well?" + +"But then my affection comes in." + +"That extraordinary--TENDERNESS of yours?" + +"I'm afraid." + +"Of what?" + +"Anyone might get hold of her--if I let her down. She hasn't +a tithe of the ordinary coolheaded calculation of an average +woman. . . . I've a duty to her genius. I've got to take care +of her." + +To which the doctor made no reply. + +"Nevertheless the idea of parting has been very much in my +mind lately." + +"Letting her go FREE?" + +"You can put it in that way if you like." + +"It might not be a fatal operation for either of you." + +"And yet there are moods when parting is an intolerable idea. +When one is invaded by a flood of affection.". . . . And old +habits of association." + +Dr. Martineau thought. Was that the right word,--affection? +Perhaps it was. + +They had come out on the towing path close by the lock and +they found themselves threading their way through a little +crowd of boating people and lookers-on. For a time their +conversation was broken. Sir Richmond resumed it. + +"But this is where we cease to be Man on his Planet and all +the rest of it. This is where the idea of a definite task, +fanatically followed to the exclusion of all minor +considerations, breaks down. When the work is good, when we +are sure we are all right, then we may carry off things with +a high hand. But the work isn't always good, we aren't always +sure. We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued. Then the +sacrificed affections come in as accusers. Then it is that we +want to be reassured." + +"And then it is that Miss Martin Leeds--?" + +"Doesn't," Sir Richmond snapped. + +Came a long pause. + +"And yet-- + +"It is extraordinarily difficult to think of parting from +Martin." + +Section 3 + +In the evening after dinner Dr. Martineau sought, rather +unsuccessfully, to go on with the analysis of Sir Richmond. + +But Sir Richmond was evidently a creature of moods. Either he +regretted the extent of his confidences or the slight +irrational irritation that he felt at waiting for his car +affected his attitude towards his companion, or Dr. +Martineau's tentatives were ill-chosen. At any rate he would +not rise to any conversational bait that the doctor could +devise. The doctor found this the more regrettable because it +seemed to him that there was much to be worked upon in this +Martin Leeds affair. He was inclined to think that she and +Sir Richmond were unduly obsessed by the idea that they had +to stick together because of the child, because of the look +of the thing and so forth, and that really each might be +struggling against a very strong impulse indeed to break off +the affair. It seemed evident to the doctor that they jarred +upon and annoyed each other extremely. On the whole +separating people appealed to a doctor's mind more strongly +than bringing them together. Accordingly he framed his +enquiries so as to make the revelation of a latent antipathy +as easy as possible. + +He made several not very well-devised beginnings. At the +fifth Sir Richmond was suddenly conclusive. "It's no use," he +said, "I can't fiddle about any more with my motives +to-day." + +An awkward silence followed. On reflection Sir Richmond +seemed to realize that this sentence needed some apology. "I +admit," he said, "that this expedition has already been a +wonderfully good thing for me. These confessions have made me +look into all sorts of things-squarely. But-- + +"I'm not used to talking about myself or even thinking +directly about myself. What I say, I afterwards find +disconcerting to recall. I want to alter it. I can feel +myself wallowing into a mess of modifications and +qualifications." + +"Yes, but--" + +"I want a rest anyhow. . . ." + +There was nothing for Dr. Martineau to say to that. + +The two gentlemen smoked for some time in a slightly +uncomfortable silence. Dr. Martineau cleared his throat twice +and lit a second cigar. They then agreed to admire the bridge +and think well of Maidenhead. Sir Richmond communicated +hopeful news about his car, which was to arrive the next +morning before ten--he'd just ring the fellow up presently to +make sure--and Dr. Martineau retired early and went rather +thoughtfully to bed. The spate of Sir Richmond's confidences, +it was evident, was over. + +Section 4 + +Sir Richmond's car arrived long before ten, brought down by a +young man in a state of scared alacrity--Sir Richmond had +done some vigorous telephoning before turning in,--the +Charmeuse set off in a repaired and chastened condition to +town, and after a leisurely breakfast our two investigators +into the springs of human conduct were able to resume their +westward journey. They ran through scattered Twyford with its +pleasant looking inns and through the commonplace urbanities +of Reading, by Newbury and Hungerford's pretty bridge and up +long wooded slopes to Savernake forest, where they found the +road heavy and dusty, still in its war-time state, and so +down a steep hill to the wide market street which is +Marlborough. They lunched in Marlborough and went on in the +afternoon to Silbury Hill, that British pyramid, the largest +artificial mound in Europe. They left the car by the roadside +and clambered to the top and were very learned and +inconclusive about the exact purpose of this vast heap of +chalk and earth, this heap that men had made before the +temples at Karnak were built or Babylon had a name. + +Then they returned to the car and ran round by a winding road +into the wonder of Avebury. They found a clean little inn +there kept by pleasant people, and they garaged the car in +the cowshed and took two rooms for the night that they might +the better get the atmosphere of the ancient place. Wonderful +indeed it is, a vast circumvallation that was already two +thousand years old before the dawn of British history; a +great wall of earth with its ditch most strangely on its +inner and not on its outer side; and within this enclosure +gigantic survivors of the great circles of unhewn stone that, +even as late as Tudor days, were almost complete. A whole +village, a church, a pretty manor house have been built, for +the most part, out of the ancient megaliths; the great wall +is sufficient to embrace them all with their gardens and +paddocks; four cross-roads meet at the village centre. There +are drawings of Avebury before these things arose there, when +it was a lonely wonder on the plain, but for the most part +the destruction was already done before the MAYFLOWER sailed. +To the southward stands the cone of Silbury Hill; its shadow +creeps up and down the intervening meadows as the seasons +change. Around this lonely place rise the Downs, now bare +sheep pastures, in broad undulations, with a wart-like barrow +here and there, and from it radiate, creeping up to gain and +hold the crests of the hills, the abandoned trackways of that +forgotten world. These trackways, these green roads of +England, these roads already disused when the Romans made +their highway past Silbury Hill to Bath, can still be traced +for scores of miles through the land, running to Salisbury +and the English Channel, eastward to the crossing at the +Straits and westward to Wales, to ferries over the Severn, +and southwestward into Devon and Cornwall. + +The doctor and Sir Richmond walked round the walls, surveyed +the shadow cast by Silbury upon the river flats, strolled up +the down to the northward to get a general view of the +village, had tea and smoked round the walls again in the warm +April sunset. The matter of their conversation remained +prehistoric. Both were inclined to find fault with the +archaeological work that had been done on the place. "Clumsy +treasure hunting," Sir Richmond said. "They bore into Silbury +Hill and expect to find a mummified chief or something +sensational of that sort, and they don't, and they report +nothing. They haven't sifted finely enough; they haven't +thought subtly enough. These walls of earth ought to tell +what these people ate, what clothes they wore, what woods +they used. Was this a sheep land then as it is now, or a +cattle land? Were these hills covered by forests? I don't +know. These archaeologists don't know. Or if they do they +haven't told me, which is just as bad. I don't believe they +know. + +"What trade came here along these tracks? So far as I know, +they had no beasts of burthen. But suppose one day someone +were to find a potsherd here from early Knossos, or a +fragment of glass from Pepi's Egypt." + +The place had stirred up his imagination. He wrestled with +his ignorance as if he thought that by talking he might +presently worry out some picture of this forgotten world, +without metals, without beasts of burthen, without letters, +without any sculpture that has left a trace, and yet with a +sense of astronomical fact clear enough to raise the great +gnomon of Silbury, and with a social system complex enough to +give the large and orderly community to which the size of +Avebury witnesses and the traffic to which the green roads +testify. + +The doctor had not realized before the boldness and +liveliness of his companion's mind. Sir Richmond insisted +that the climate must have been moister and milder in those +days; he covered all the downlands with woods, as Savernake +was still covered; beneath the trees he restored a thicker, +richer soil. These people must have done an enormous lot with +wood. This use of stones here was a freak. It was the very +strangeness of stones here that had made them into sacred +things. One thought too much of the stones of the Stone Age. +Who would carve these lumps of quartzite when one could carve +good oak? Or beech--a most carvable wood. Especially when +one's sharpest chisel was a flint. "It's wood we ought to +look for," said Sir Richmond. "Wood and fibre." He declared +that these people had their tools of wood, their homes of +wood, their gods and perhaps their records of wood. "A peat +bog here, even a few feet of clay, might have pickled some +precious memoranda. . . . No such luck. . . . Now in +Glastonbury marshes one found the life of the early iron +age--half way to our own times--quite beautifully pickled." + +Though they wrestled mightily with the problem, neither Sir +Richmond nor the doctor could throw a gleam of light upon the +riddle why the ditch was inside and not outside the great +wall. + +"And what was our Mind like in those days?" said Sir +Richmond. "That, I suppose, is what interests you. A vivid +childish mind, I guess, with not a suspicion as yet that it +was Man ruling his Planet or anything of that sort." + +The doctor pursed his lips. "None," he delivered judicially. +"If one were able to recall one's childhood--at the age of +about twelve or thirteen--when the artistic impulse so often +goes into abeyance and one begins to think in a troubled, +monstrous way about God and Hell, one might get something +like the mind of this place." + +"Thirteen. You put them at that already? . . . These people, +you think, were religious?" + +"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare +terror. And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, +they've left not a trace of the paintings and drawings and +scratchings of the Old Stone people who came before them." + +"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. +Thirteen-year-old children with the strength of adults--and +no one to slap them or tell them not to. . . . After all, +they probably only thought of death now and then. And they +never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to +that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble +and kill the new undergrowth. DID these people have goats? " + +"I don't know," said the doctor. So little is known." + +"Very like children they must have been. The same unending +days. They must have thought that the world went on for ever- +just as they knew it--like my damned Committee does. . . . +With their fuel wasting away and the climate changing +imperceptibly, century by century. . . . Kings and important +men followed one another here for centuries and centuries. . +. . They had lost their past and had no idea of any future. . +. . They had forgotten how they came into the land . . . When +I was a child I believed that my father's garden had been +there for ever. . . . + +"This is very like trying to remember some game one played +when one was a child. It is like coming on something that one +built up with bricks and stones in some forgotten part of the +garden. . . . " + + +"The life we lived here," said the doctor, has left its +traces in traditions, in mental predispositions, in still +unanalyzed fundamental ideas." + +"Archaeology is very like remembering," said Sir Richmond. +"Presently we shall remember a lot more about all this. We +shall remember what it was like to live in this place, and +the long journey hither, age by age out of the south. We +shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazy reasons +why we made them. We sowed our corn in blood here. We had +strange fancies about the stars. Those we brought with us out +of the south where the stars are brighter. And what like were +those wooden gods of ours? I don't remember. . . . But I +could easily persuade myself that I had been here before." + +They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting +sun cast long shadows of them athwart a field of springing +wheat. + +"Perhaps we shall come here again," the doctor carried on Sir +Richmond's fancy; "after another four thousand years or so, +with different names and fuller minds. And then I suppose +that this ditch won't be the riddle it is now." + +"Life didn't seem so complicated then," Sir Richmond mused. +"Our muddles were unconscious. We drifted from mood to mood +and forgot. There was more sunshine then, more laughter +perhaps, and blacker despair. Despair like the despair of +children that can weep itself to sleep. . . . It's +over. . . . Was it battle and massacre that ended that long +afternoon here? Or did the woods catch fire some +exceptionally dry summer, leaving black hills and famine? Or +did strange men bring a sickness--measles, perhaps, or the +black death? Or was it cattle pest? Or did we just waste our +woods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into +the land across the southern sea? I can't remember. . . . " + +Sir Richmond turned about. "I would like to dig up the bottom +of this ditch here foot by foot--and dry the stuff and sift +it--very carefully. . . . Then I might begin to remember +things." + +Section 5 + +In the evening, after a pleasant supper, they took a turn +about the walls with the moon sinking over beyond Silbury, +and then went in and sat by lamplight before a brightly fussy +wood fire and smoked. There were long intervals of friendly +silence. + +"I don't in the least want to go on talking about myself, " +said Sir Richmond abruptly. + +"Let it rest then," said the doctor generously. + +"To-day, among these ancient memories, has taken me out of +myself wonderfully. I can't tell you how good Avebury has +been for me. This afternoon half my consciousness has seemed +to be a tattooed creature wearing a knife of stone. . . . " + +"The healing touch of history." + +"And for the first time my damned Committee has mattered +scarcely a rap. " + +Sir Richmond stretched himself in his chair and blinked +cheerfully at his cigar smoke. + +"Nevertheless," he said, "this confessional business of yours +has been an excellent exercise. It has enabled me to get +outside myself, to look at myself as a Case. Now I can even +see myself as a remote Case. That I needn't bother about +further. . . . So far as that goes, I think we have done all +that there is to be done." + +"I shouldn't say that--quite--yet," said the doctor. + +"I don't think I'm a subject for real psychoanalysis at all. +I'm not an overlaid sort of person. When I spread myself out +there is not much indication of a suppressed wish or of +anything masked or buried of that sort. What you get is a +quite open and recognized discord of two sets of motives." + +The doctor considered. "Yes, I think that is true. Your +LIBIDO is, I should say, exceptionally free. Generally you +are doing what you want to do--overdoing, in fact, what you +want to do and getting simply tired." + +"Which is the theory I started with. I am a case of fatigue +under irritating circumstances with very little mental +complication or concealment." + +"Yes," said the doctor. "I agree. You are not a case for +psychoanalysis, strictly speaking, at all. You are in open +conflict with yourself, upon moral and social issues. +Practically open. Your problems are problems of conscious +conduct." + +"As I said." + +"Of what renunciations you have consciously to make." + +Sir Richmond did not answer that. . . . + +"This pilgrimage of ours," he said, presently, "has made for +magnanimity. This day particularly has been a good day. When +we stood on this old wall here in the sunset I seemed to be +standing outside myself in an immense still sphere of past +and future. I stood with my feet upon the Stone Age and saw +myself four thousand years away, and all my distresses as +very little incidents in that perspective. Away there in +London the case is altogether different; after three hours or +so of the Committee one concentrates into one little inflamed +moment of personality. There is no past any longer, there is +no future, there is only the rankling dispute. For all those +three hours, perhaps, I have been thinking of just what I had +to say, just how I had to say it, just how I looked while I +said it, just how much I was making myself understood, how I +might be misunderstood, how I might be misrepresented, +challenged, denied. One draws in more and more as one is used +up. At last one is reduced to a little, raw, bleeding, +desperately fighting, pin-point of SELF. . . . One goes back +to one's home unable to recover. Fighting it over again. All +night sometimes . . . . I get up and walk about the room and +curse . . . . Martineau, how is one to get the Avebury frame +of mind to Westminster?" + +"When Westminster is as dead as Avebury," said the doctor, +unhelpfully. He added after some seconds, "Milton knew of +these troubles. 'Not without dust and heat' he wrote--a great +phrase." + +"But the dust chokes me," said Sir Richmond. + +He took up a copy of THE GREEN ROADS OF ENGLAND that lay +beside him on the table. But he did not open it. He held it +in his hand and said the thing he had had in mind to say all +that evening. "I do not think that I shall stir up my motives +any more for a time. Better to go on into the west country +cooling my poor old brain in these wide shadows of the past." + +"I can prescribe nothing better," said Dr. Martineau. +"Incidentally, we may be able to throw a little more light on +one or two of your minor entanglements." + +"I don't want to think of them, said Sir Richmond. "Let me +get right away from everything. Until my skin has grown +again." + + + +CHAPTER THE SIXTH + +THE ENCOUNTER AT STONEHENGE + +Section 1 + +Next day in the early afternoon after a farewell walk over +the downs round Avebury they went by way of Devizes and +Netheravon and Amesbury to Stonehenge. + +Dr. Martineau had seen this ancient monument before, but now, +with Avebury fresh in his mind, he found it a poorer thing +than he had remembered it to be. Sir Richmond was frankly +disappointed. After the real greatness and mystery of the +older place, it seemed a poor little heap of stones; it did +not even dominate the landscape; it was some way from the +crest of the swelling down on which it stood and it was +further dwarfed by the colossal air-ship hangars and +clustering offices of the air station that the great war had +called into existence upon the slopes to the south-west. "It +looks," Sir Richmond said, "as though some old giantess had +left a discarded set of teeth on the hillside." Far more +impressive than Stonehenge itself were the barrows that +capped the neighbouring crests. + +The sacred stones were fenced about, and our visitors had to +pay for admission at a little kiosk by the gate. At the side +of the road stood a travelstained middle-class automobile, +with a miscellany of dusty luggage, rugs and luncheon things +therein--a family automobile with father no doubt at the +wheel. Sir Richmond left his own trim coupe at its tail. + +They were impeded at the entrance by a difference of opinion +between the keeper of the turnstile and a small but resolute +boy of perhaps five or six who proposed to leave the +enclosure. The custodian thought that it would be better if +his nurse or his mother came out with him. + +"She keeps on looking at it, " said the small boy. "It isunt +anything. I want to go and clean the car." + +"You won't SEE Stonehenge every day, young man," said the +custodian, a little piqued. + +"It's only an old beach," said the small boy, with extreme +conviction. "It's rocks like the seaside. And there isunt no +sea." + +The man at the turnstile mutely consulted the doctor. + +"I don't see that he can get into any harm here," the doctor +advised, and the small boy was released from archaeology. + +He strolled to the family automobile, produced an EN-TOUT-CAS +pocket-handkerchief and set himself to polish the lamps with +great assiduity. The two gentlemen lingered at the turnstile +for a moment or so to watch his proceedings. "Modern child," +said Sir Richmond. "Old stones are just old stones to him. +But motor cars are gods." + +"You can hardly expect him to understand--at his age," said +the custodian, jealous for the honor of Stonehenge. . . . + +"Reminds me of Martin's little girl," said Sir Richmond, as +he and Dr. Martineau went on towards the circle. "When she +encountered her first dragon-fly she was greatly delighted. +'0h, dee' lill' a'eplane,' she said." + +As they approached the grey old stones they became aware of a +certain agitation among them. A voice, an authoritative bass +voice, was audible, crying, "Anthony!" A nurse appeared +remotely going in the direction of the aeroplane sheds, and +her cry of "Master Anthony" came faintly on the breeze. An +extremely pretty young woman of five or six and twenty became +visible standing on one of the great prostrate stones in the +centre of the place. She was a black-haired, sun-burnt +individual and she stood with her arms akimbo, quite frankly +amused at the disappearance of Master Anthony, and offering +no sort of help for his recovery. On the greensward before +her stood the paterfamilias of the family automobile, and he +was making a trumpet with his hands in order to repeat the +name of Anthony with greater effect. A short lady in grey +emerged from among the encircling megaliths, and one or two +other feminine personalities produced effects of movement +rather than of individuality as they flitted among the +stones. "Well," said the lady in grey, with that rising +intonation of humorous conclusion which is so distinctively +American, "those Druids have GOT him." + +"He's hiding," said the automobilist, in a voice that +promised chastisement to a hidden hearer. "That's what he is +doing. He ought not to play tricks like this. A great boy who +is almost six." + +"If you are looking for a small, resolute boy of six," said +Sir Richmond, addressing himself to the lady on the rock +rather than to the angry parent below, "he's perfectly safe +and happy. The Druids haven't got him. Indeed, they've failed +altogether to get him. 'Stonehenge,' he says, 'is no good.' +So he's gone back to clean the lamps of your car." + +"Aa-oo. So THAT'S it! " said Papa. "Winnie, go and tell Price +he's gone back to the car. . . . They oughtn't to have let +him out of the enclosure. . . ." + +The excitement about Master Anthony collapsed. The rest of +the people in the circles crystallized out into the central +space as two apparent sisters and an apparent aunt and the +nurse, who was packed off at once to supervise the lamp +cleaning. The head of the family found some difficulty, it +would seem, in readjusting his mind to the comparative +innocence of Anthony, and Sir Richmond and the young lady on +the rock sought as if by common impulse to establish a +general conversation. There were faint traces of excitement +in her manner, as though there had been some controversial +passage between herself and the family gentleman. + +"We were discussing the age of this old place," she said, +smiling in the frankest and friendliest way. "How old do YOU +think it is?" + +The father of Anthony intervened, also with a shadow of +controversy in his manner. "I was explaining to the young +lady that it dates from the early bronze age. Before +chronology existed. . . . But she insists on dates." + +"Nothing of bronze has ever been found here," said Sir +Richmond. + +"Well, when was this early bronze age, anyhow?" said the +young lady. + +Sir Richmond sought a recognizable datum. "Bronze got to +Britain somewhere between the times of Moses and Solomon." + +"Ah! " said the young lady, as who should say, 'This man at +least talks sense.' + +"But these stones are all shaped," said the father of the +family. "It is difficult to see how that could have been done +without something harder than stone." + +"I don't SEE the place," said the young lady on the stone. "I +can't imagine how they did it up--not one bit." + +"Did it up!" exclaimed the father of the family in the tone +of one accustomed to find a gentle sport in the intellectual +frailties of his womenkind. + +"It's just the bones of a place. They hung things round it. +They draped it." + +"But what things?" asked Sir Richmond. + +"Oh! they had things all right. Skins perhaps. Mats of +rushes. Bast cloth. Fibre of all sorts. Wadded stuff." + +"Stonehenge draped! It's really a delightful idea;" said the +father of the family, enjoying it. + +"It's quite a possible one," said Sir Richmond. + +"Or they may have used wicker," the young lady went on, +undismayed. She seemed to concede a point. "Wicker IS +likelier." + +"But surely," said the father of the family with the +expostulatory voice and gesture of one who would recall +erring wits to sanity, "it is far more impressive standing +out bare and noble as it does. In lonely splendour." + +"But all this country may have been wooded then," said Sir +Richmond. "In which case it wouldn't have stood out. It +doesn't stand out so very much even now." + +"You came to it through a grove," said the young lady, +eagerly picking up the idea. + +"Probably beech," said Sir Richmond. + +"Which may have pointed to the midsummer sunrise," said Dr. +Martineau, unheeded. + +"These are NOVEL ideas," said the father of the family in the +reproving tone of one who never allows a novel idea inside +HIS doors if he can prevent it. + +"Well," said the young lady, "I guess there was some sort of +show here anyhow. And no human being ever had a show yet +without trying to shut people out of it in order to make them +come in. I guess this was covered in all right. A dark +hunched old place in a wood. Beech stems, smooth, like +pillars. And they came to it at night, in procession, beating +drums, and scared half out of their wits. They came in THERE +and went round the inner circle with their torches. And so +they were shown. The torches were put out and the priests did +their mysteries. Until dawn broke. That is how they worked +it." + +"But even you can't tell what the show was, V.V." said the +lady in grey, who was standing now at Dr. Martineau's elbow. + +"Something horrid," said Anthony's younger sister to her +elder in a stage whisper. + +"BLUGGY," agreed Anthony's elder sister to the younger, in a +noiseless voice that certainly did not reach father. +"SQUEALS! . . . ." + +This young lady who was addressed as "V.V." was perhaps one +or two and twenty, Dr. Martineau thought,--he was not very +good at feminine ages. She had a clear sun-browned +complexion, with dark hair and smiling lips. Her features +were finely modelled, with just that added touch of breadth +in the brow and softness in the cheek bones, that faint +flavour of the Amerindian, one sees at times in American +women. Her voice was a very soft and pleasing voice, and she +spoke persuasively and not assertively as so many American +women do. Her determination to make the dry bones of +Stonehenge live shamed the doctor's disappointment with the +place. And when she had spoken, Dr. Martineau noted that she +looked at Sir Richmond as if she expected him at least to +confirm her vision. Sir Richmond was evidently prepared to +confirm it. + +With a queer little twinge of infringed proprietorship, the +doctor saw Sir Richmond step up on the prostrate megalith and +stand beside her, the better to appreciate her point of view. +He smiled down at her. "Now why do you think they came in +THERE?" he asked. + +The young lady was not very clear about her directions. She +did not know of the roadway running to the Avon river, nor of +the alleged race course to the north, nor had she ever heard +that the stones were supposed to be of two different periods +and that some of them might possibly have been brought from a +very great distance. + +Section 2 + +Neither Dr. Martineau nor the father of the family found the +imaginative reconstruction of the Stonehenge rituals quite so +exciting as the two principals. The father of the family +endured some further particulars with manifest impatience, no +longer able, now that Sir Richmond was encouraging the girl, +to keep her in check with the slightly derisive smile proper +to her sex. Then he proclaimed in a fine loud tenor, "All +this is very imaginative, I'm afraid." And to his family, +"Time we were pressing on. Turps, we must go-o. Come, +Phoebe!" + +As he led his little flock towards the exit his voice came +floating back. "Talking wanton nonsense. . . . Any +professional archaeologist would laugh, simply laugh. . . ." + +He passed out of the world. + +With a faint intimation of dismay Dr. Martineau realized that +the two talkative ladies were not to be removed in the family +automobile with the rest of the party. Sir Richmond and the +younger lady went on very cheerfully to the population, +agriculture, housing and general scenery of the surrounding +Downland during the later Stone Age. The shorter, less +attractive lady, whose accent was distinctly American, came +now and stood at the doctor's elbow. She seemed moved to play +the part of chorus to the two upon the stone. + +"When V.V. gets going," she remarked, "she makes things come +alive." + +Dr. Martineau hated to be addressed suddenly by strange +ladies. He started, and his face assumed the distressed +politeness of the moon at its full. "Your friend," he said, +"interested in archaeology? " + +"Interested!" said the stouter lady. "Why! She's a fiend at +it. Ever since we came on Carnac. " + +"You've visited Carnac?" + +"That's where the bug bit her." said the stout lady with a +note of querulous humour. "Directly V.V. set eyes on Carnac, +she just turned against all her up-bringing. 'Why wasn't I +told of this before?' she said. 'What's Notre Dame to this? +This is where we came from. This is the real starting point +of the MAYFLOWER. Belinda,' she said, 'we've got to see all +we can of this sort of thing before we go back to America. +They've been keeping this from us.' And that's why we're here +right now instead of being shopping in Paris or London like +decent American women." + +The younger lady looked down on her companion with something +of the calm expert attention that a plumber gives to a tap +that is misbehaving, and like a plumber refrained from +precipitate action. She stood with the backs of her hands +resting on her hips. + +"Well," she said slowly, giving most of the remark to Sir +Richmond and the rest to the doctor. "it is nearer the +beginnings of things than London or Paris." + +"And nearer to us, " said Sir Richmond. + +"I call that just--paradoxical," said the shorter lady, who +appeared to be called Belinda. + +"Not paradoxical," Dr. Martineau contradicted gently. "Life +is always beginning again. And this is a time of fresh +beginnings." + +"Now that's after V.V.'s own heart," cried the stout lady in +grey. "She'll agree to all that. She's been saying it right +across Europe. Rome, Paris, London; they're simply just done. +They don't signify any more. They've got to be cleared away." + +"You let me tell my own opinions, Belinda," said the young +lady who was called V.V. "I said that if people went on +building with fluted pillars and Corinthian capitals for two +thousand years, it was time they were cleared up and taken +away." + +"Corinthian capitals?" Sir Richmond considered it and laughed +cheerfully. "I suppose Europe does rather overdo that sort of +thing." + +"The way she went on about the Victor Emmanuele Monument! " +said the lady who answered to the name of Belinda. "It gave +me cold shivers to think that those Italian officers might +understand English. " + +The lady who was called V.V. smiled as if she smiled at +herself, and explained herself to Sir Richmond. "When one is +travelling about, one gets to think of history and politics +in terms of architecture. I do anyhow. And those columns with +Corinthian capitals have got to be a sort of symbol for me +for everything in Europe that I don't want and have no sort +of use for. It isn't a bad sort of capital in its way, florid +and pretty, but not a patch on the Doric;--and that a whole +continent should come up to it and stick at it and never get +past it! . . ." + +"It's the classical tradition." + +"It puzzles me." + +"It's the Roman Empire. That Corinthian column is a weed +spread by the Romans all over western Europe." + +"And it smothers the history of Europe. You can't see Europe +because of it. Europe is obsessed by Rome. Everywhere Marble +Arches and ARCS DE TRIOMPHE. You never get away from it. It +is like some old gentleman who has lost his way in a speech +and keeps on repeating the same thing. And can't sit down. +'The empire, gentlemen--the Empire. Empire.' Rome itself is +perfectly frightful. It stares at you with its great round +stupid arches as though it couldn't imagine that you could +possibly want anything else for ever. Saint Peter's and that +frightful Monument are just the same stuff as the Baths of +Caracalla and the palaces of the Caesars. Just the same. They +will make just the same sort of ruins. It goes on and goes +on." + +"AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS," said Dr. Martineau. + +"This Roman empire seems to be Europe's first and last idea. +A fixed idea. And such a poor idea! . . . America never came +out of that. It's no good-telling me that it did. It escaped +from it. . . . So I said to Belinda here, 'Let's burrow, if +we can, under all this marble and find out what sort of +people we were before this Roman empire and its acanthus +weeds got hold of us.'" + +"I seem to remember at Washington, something faintly +Corinthian, something called the Capitol," Sir Richmond +reflected. "And other buildings. A Treasury." + +"That is different," said the young lady, so conclusively +that it seemed to leave nothing more to be said on that +score. + +"A last twinge of Europeanism," she vouchsafed. "We were +young in those days." + +"You are well beneath the marble here." + +She assented cheerfully. + +"A thousand years before it." +"Happy place! Happy people!" + +"But even this place isn't the beginning of things here. +Carnac was older than this. And older still is Avebury. Have +you heard in America of Avebury? It may have predated this +place, they think, by another thousand years." + +"Avebury?" said the lady who was called Belinda. + +"But what is this Avebury?" asked V.V. "I've never heard of +the place." + +"I thought it was a lord," said Belinda. + +Sir Richmond, with occasional appeals to Dr. Martineau, +embarked upon an account of the glory and wonder of Avebury. +Possibly he exaggerated Avebury. . . . + +It was Dr. Martineau who presently brought this disquisition +upon Avebury to a stop by a very remarkable gesture. He +looked at his watch. He drew it out ostentatiously, a thick, +respectable gold watch, for the doctor was not the sort of +man to wear his watch upon his wrist. He clicked it open and +looked at it. Thereby he would have proclaimed his belief +this encounter was an entirely unnecessary interruption of +his healing duologue with Sir Richmond, which must now be +resumed. + +But this action had scarcely the effect he had intended it to +have. It set the young lady who was called Belinda asking +about ways and means of getting to Salisbury; it brought to +light the distressing fact that V.V. had the beginnings of a +chafed heel. Once he had set things going they moved much too +quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. He found +himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate +the painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where +their luggage awaited them at the Old George Hotel. In some +way too elusive to trace, it became evident that he and Sir +Richmond were to stay at this same Old George Hotel. The +luggage was to be shifted to the top of the coupe, the young +lady called V.V. was to share the interior of the car with +Sir Richmond, while the lady named Belinda, for whom Dr. +Martineau was already developing a very strong dislike, was +to be thrust into an extreme proximity with him and the +balance of the luggage in the dicky seat behind. + +Sir Richmond had never met with a young woman with a genuine +historical imagination before, and he was evidently very +greatly excited and resolved to get the utmost that there was +to be got out of this encounter. + +Section 3 + +Sir Richmond displayed a complete disregard of the sufferings +of Dr. Martineau, shamefully compressed behind him. Of these +he was to hear later. He ran his overcrowded little car, +overcrowded so far as the dicky went, over the crest of the +Down and down into Amesbury and on to Salisbury, stopping to +alight and stretch the legs of the party when they came in +sight of Old Sarum. + +"Certainly they can do with a little stretching," said Dr. +Martineau grimly. + +This charming young woman had seized upon the imagination of +Sir Richmond to the temporary exclusion of all other +considerations. The long Downland gradients, quivering very +slightly with the vibration of the road, came swiftly and +easily to meet and pass the throbbing little car as he sat +beside her and talked to her. He fell into that expository +manner which comes so easily to the native entertaining the +visitor from abroad. + +"In England, it seems to me there are four main phases of +history. Four. Avebury, which I would love to take you to see +to-morrow. Stonehenge. Old Sarum, which we shall see in a +moment as a great grassy mound on our right as we come over +one of these crests. Each of them represents about a thousand +years. Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and the +Saxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city. Now it +is pasture for sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury,--English, +real English. It may last a few centuries still. It is little +more than seven hundred years old. But when I think of those +great hangars back there by Stonehenge, I feel that the next +phase is already beginning. Of a world one will fly to the +ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, your +people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were +made in all these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am +glad I came back to it just when you were doing the same +thing." + +"I'm lucky to have found a sympathetic fellow traveller," +she said; "with a car." + +"You're the first American I've ever met whose interest in +history didn't seem--" He sought for an inoffensive word. + +"Silly? Oh! I admit it. It's true of a lot of us. Most of us. +We come over to Europe as if it hadn't anything to do with us +except to supply us with old pictures and curios generally. +We come sight-seeing. It's romantic. It's picturesque. We +stare at the natives--like visitors at a Zoo. We don't +realize that we belong. . . . I know our style. . . . But we +aren't all like that. Some of us are learning a bit better +than that. We have one or two teachers over there to lighten +our darkness. There's Professor Breasted for instance. He +comes sometimes to my father's house. And there's James +Harvey Robinson and Professor Hutton Webster. They've been +trying to restore our memory." + +"I've never heard of any of them," said Sir Richmond. + +"You hear so little of America over here. It's quite a large +country and all sorts of interesting things happen there +nowadays. And we are waking up to history. Quite fast. We +shan't always be the most ignorant people in the world. We +are beginning to realize that quite a lot of things happened +between Adam and the Mayflower that we ought to be told +about. I allow it's a recent revival. The United States has +been like one of those men you read about in the papers who +go away from home and turn up in some distant place with +their memories gone. They've forgotten what their names were +or where they lived or what they did for a living; they've +forgotten everything that matters. Often they have to begin +again and settle down for a long time before their memories +come back. That's how it has been with us. Our memory is just +coming back to us." + +"And what do you find you are?" + +"Europeans. Who came away from kings and churches-@-and +Corinthian capitals." + +"You feel all this country belongs to you?" + +"As much as it does to you." +Sir Richmond smiled radiantly at her. "But if I say that +America belongs to me as much as it does to you?" + +"We are one people," she said. + +"We" + +"Europe. These parts of Europe anyhow. And ourselves." + +"You are the most civilized person I've met for weeks and +weeks." "Well, you are the first civilized person I've met in +Europe for a long time. If I understand you." + +"There are multitudes of reasonable, civilized people in +Europe." + +"I've heard or seen very little of them. + +"They're scattered, I admit." + +"And hard to find." + +"So ours is a lucky meeting. I've wanted a serious talk to an +American for some time. I want to know very badly what you +think you are up to with the world,--our world. " + +"I'm equally anxious to know what England thinks she is +doing. Her ways recently have been a little difficult to +understand. On any hypothesis-that is honourable to her." +"H'm," said Sir Richmond. + +"I assure you we don't like it. This Irish business. We feel +a sort of ownership in England. It's like finding your +dearest aunt torturing the cat." + +"We must talk of that," said Sir Richmond. + +"I wish you would." + +"It is a cat and a dog--and they have been very naughty +animals. And poor Aunt Britannia almost deliberately lost her +temper. But I admit she hits about in a very nasty fashion." + +"And favours the dog." + +"She does." + +"I want to know all you admit." + +"You shall. And incidentally my friend and I may have the +pleasure of showing you Salisbury and Avebury. If you are +free?" + +"We're travelling together, just we two. We are wandering +about the south of England on our way to Falmouth. Where I +join a father in a few days' time, and I go on with him to +Paris. And if you and your friend are coming to the Old +George--" + +"We are," said Sir Richmond. + +"I see no great scandal in talking right on to bedtime. And +seeing Avebury to-morrow. Why not? Perhaps if we did as the +Germans do and gave our names now, it might mitigate +something of the extreme informality of our behaviour." + +"My name is Hardy. I've been a munition manufacturer. I was +slightly wounded by a stray shell near Arras while I was +inspecting some plant I had set up, and also I was hit by a +stray knighthood. So my name is now Sir Richmond Hardy. My +friend is a very distinguished Harley Street physician. +Chiefly nervous and mental cases. His name is Dr. Martineau. +He is quite as civilized as I am. He is also a philosophical +writer. He is really a very wise and learned man indeed. He +is full of ideas. He's stimulated me tremendously. You must +talk to him." + +Sir Richmond glanced over his shoulder at the subject of +these commendations. Through the oval window glared an +expression of malignity that made no impression whatever on +his preoccupied mind. + +"My name," said the young lady, "is Grammont. The war whirled +me over to Europe on Red Cross work and since the peace I've +been settling up things and travelling about Europe. My +father is rather a big business man in New York." + +"The oil Grammont?" + +"He is rather deep in oil, I believe. He is coming over to +Europe because he does not like the way your people are +behaving in Mesopotamia. He is on his way to Paris now. Paris +it seems is where everything is to be settled against you. +Belinda is a sort of companion I have acquired for the +purposes of independent travel. She was Red Cross too. I must +have somebody and I cannot bear a maid. Her name is Belinda +Seyffert. From Philadelphia originally. You have that? +Seyffert, Grammont?" + +"And Hardy?" "Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau." + +"And-Ah!--That great green bank there just coming into sight +must be Old Sarum. The little ancient city that faded away +when Salisbury lifted its spire into the world. We will stop +here for a little while. . . . " + +Then it was that Dr. Martineau was grim about the stretching +of his legs. + +Section 4 + +The sudden prospect which now opened out before Sir Richmond +of talking about history and suchlike topics with a charming +companion for perhaps two whole days instead of going on with +this tiresome, shamefaced, egotistical business of self- +examination was so attractive to him that it took immediate +possession of his mind, to the entire exclusion and disregard +of Dr. Martineau's possible objections to any such +modification of their original programme. When they arrived +in Salisbury, the doctor did make some slight effort to +suggest a different hotel from that in which the two ladies +had engaged their rooms, but on the spur of the moment and in +their presence he could produce no sufficient reason for +refusing the accommodation the Old George had ready for him. +He was reduced to a vague: "We don't want to inflict +ourselves--" He could not get Sir Richmond aside for any +adequate expression of his feelings about Miss Seyffert, +before the four of them were seated together at tea amidst +the mediaeval modernity of the Old George smoking-room. And +only then did he begin to realize the depth and extent of the +engagements to which Sir Richmond had committed himself. + +"I was suggesting that we run back to Avebury to-morrow," +said Sir Richmond. "These ladies were nearly missing it." + +The thing took the doctor's breath away. For the moment he +could say nothing. He stared over his tea-cup dour-faced. An +objection formulated itself very slowly. "But that dicky," he +whispered. + +His whisper went unnoted. Sir Richmond was talking of the +completeness of Salisbury. From the very beginning it had +been a cathedral city; it was essentially and purely that. +The church at its best, in the full tide of its mediaeval +ascendancy, had called it into being. He was making some +extremely loose and inaccurate generalizations about the +buildings and ruins each age had left for posterity, and Miss +Grammont was countering with equally unsatisfactory +qualifications. "Our age will leave the ruins of hotels," +said Sir Richmond. "Railway arches and hotels." + +"Baths and aqueducts," Miss Grammont compared. "Rome of the +Empire comes nearest to it . . . . " + +As soon as tea was over, Dr. Martineau realized, they meant +to walk round and about Salisbury. He foresaw that walk with +the utmost clearness. In front and keeping just a little +beyond the range of his intervention, Sir Richmond would go +with Miss Grammont; he himself and Miss Seyffert would bring +up the rear. "If I do," he muttered, "I'll be damned!" an +unusually strong expression for him. + +"You said--?" asked Miss Seyffert. + +"That I have some writing to do--before the post goes," said +the doctor brightly. + +"Oh! come and see the cathedral!" cried Sir Richmond with +ill-concealed dismay. He was, if one may put it in such a +fashion, not looking at Miss Seyffert in the directest +fashion when he said this. + +"I'm afraid," said the doctor mulishly. "Impossible." + +(With the unspoken addition of, "You try her for a bit.") + +Miss Grammont stood up. Everybody stood up. "We can go first +to look for shops," she said. "There's those things you want +to buy, Belinda; a fountain pen and the little books. We can +all go together as far as that. And while you are shopping, +if you wouldn't mind getting one or two things +for me. . . ." + +It became clear to Dr. Martineau that Sir Richmond was to be +let off Belinda. It seemed abominably unjust. And it was also +clear to him that he must keep closely to his own room or he +might find Miss Seyffert drifting back alone to the hotel and +eager to resume with him. . . . + +Well, a quiet time in his room would not be disagreeable. He +could think over his notes. . . . + +But in reality he thought over nothing but the little +speeches he would presently make to Sir Richmond about the +unwarrantable, the absolutely unwarrantable, alterations that +were being made without his consent in their common +programme. . . . + +For a long time Sir Richmond had met no one so interesting +and amusing as this frank-minded young woman from America. +"Young woman" was how he thought of her; she didn't +correspond to anything so prim and restrained and extensively +reserved and withheld as a "young lady "; and though he +judged her no older than five and twenty, the word "girl" +with its associations of virginal ignorances, invisible +purdah, and trite ideas newly discovered, seemed even less +appropriate for her than the word "boy." She had an air of +having in some obscure way graduated in life, as if so far +she had lived each several year of her existence in a +distinctive and conclusive manner with the utmost mental +profit and no particular tarnish or injury. He could talk +with her as if he talked with a man like himself--but with a +zest no man could give him. + +It was evident that the good things she had said at first +came as the natural expression of a broad stream of alert +thought; they were no mere display specimens from one of +those jackdaw collections of bright things so many clever +women waste their wits in accumulating. She was not talking +for effect at all, she was talking because she was +tremendously interested in her discovery of the spectacle of +history, and delighted to find another person as possessed as +she was. + +Belinda having been conducted to her shops, the two made +their way through the bright evening sunlight to the compact +gracefulness of the cathedral. A glimpse through a wrought- +iron gate of a delightful garden of spring flowers, alyssum, +aubrietia, snow-upon-the-mountains, daffodils, 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 prepared for it by her own eager exploration in +Europe. "My friend, the philosopher," he had said, "will not +have it that we are really the individuals 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." + +"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 +recalling why they had built Salisbury Cathedral. + +"We built temples by habit and tradition," said Sir Richmond. +"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 his 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 that I ever worshipped 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. It is architecture in a mood of flaming ambition. +The Freemasons on the building could hardly refrain from +jeering at the little priest they had left down below there, +performing antiquated puerile mysteries at his altar. He was +just their excuse for doing it all." + +"Sky-scrapers?" she conceded. "An early display of the sky- +scraper spirit. . . . You are doing 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 +cathedrals 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?" + +"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." + +"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. + +Section 5 + +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 +definitely dressed, pretty alterations had happened to their +coiffure, a silver band and deep red stones lit the dusk of +Miss Grammont's hair and a necklace of the same colourings +kept the peace between her jolly sun-burnt cheek and her soft +untanned neck. It was evident her recent uniform had included +a collar of great severity. Miss Seyffert had revealed a +plump forearm and proclaimed it with a clash of bangles. Dr. +Martineau thought her evening throat much too confidential. + +The conversation drifted from topic to topic. It had none of +the steady continuity of Sir Richmond's duologue with Miss +Grammont. Miss Seyffert's methods were too discursive and +exclamatory. She broke every thread that appeared. The Old +George at Salisbury is really old; it shows it, and Miss +Seyffert laced the entire evening with her recognition of the +fact. "Just look at that old beam!" she would cry suddenly. " +To think it was exactly where it is before 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 beggars 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 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 organization. " + +"For any social organization," said Sir Richmond. + +"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 undeveloped lives," said +Sir Richmond. "Which amount to nothing. Which do not even +represent happiness. And which help to use up the resources, +the fuel and surplus energy of the world." + +"I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives," Miss +Grammont reflected. + +"Does that matter? They do nothing to carry life on. They are +just vain repetitions--imperfect dreary, blurred repetitions +of one common life. All that they feel has been felt, all +that they do has been done better before. Because they are +crowded and hurried and underfed and undereducated. And as +for liking their lives, they need never have had the chance." + +"How many people are there in the world?" she asked abruptly. + +"I don't know. Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred 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 that the movement of thought is away from +haphazard towards control--" + +"I'm for control all the time," Miss Seyffert injected, +following up her previous success. + +"I admit", the doctor began his broken sentence again with +marked patience, "that the movement of thought is away from +haphazard towards control--in things generally. But is the +movement of events?" + +"The eternal problem of man," said Sir Richmond. "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 millions of fully developed +human beings with room to live and breathe in and no need for +wars. Will 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, appreciatively. . . . + +"Well!" said Dr. Martineau, as the door closed behind the two +Americans, "This is a curious encounter." + +"That young woman has brains," said Sir Richmond, standing +before the fireplace. 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 Avebury?" he said. + +"They ought to see Avebury, " said Sir Richmond. + +"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 seeing 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 insincerely. + +"I must confess that four people make the car at any rate +seem tremendously overpopulated. 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 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 interesting--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, +regarding Sir Richmond squarely. "Considering the general +situation of things and your position, I do not care very +greatly for the part of an accessory 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 +conversation, an ordinary intellectual conversation. That is +not the word. Simply that is not the word. You people eye one +another. . . . Flirtation. I give the affair its proper name. +That is all. Merely that. When I think--But we will not +discuss it now. . . . Good night. . . . Forgive me if I put +before you, rather bluntly, my particular point of view." + +Sir Richmond found himself alone. With his eyebrows raised. + +Section 6 + +After twenty-four eventful hours our two students of human +motives found themselves together again by the fireplace in +the Old George smoking-room. They had resumed their overnight +conversation, in a state of considerable tension. + +"If you find the accommodation of the car insufficient," 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 Belinda 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, confidential tones. "She is quite a +manageable person. Quite. She could--for example--be left +behind 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 today 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 that has never +happened in my life. This highway coupling--" + +"Don't you think," said Sir Richmond, "that you are attaching +rather too much--what shall I say--romantic?--flirtatious?-- +meaning to this affair? I don't mind that after my rather +lavish confessions you should consider me a rather oversexed +person, but isn't your attitude rather unfair,--unjust, +indeed, and almost insulting, to this Miss Grammont? After +all, she's a young lady of very good social position indeed. +She doesn't strike you--does she?--as an undignified or +helpless human being. Her manners suggest a person of +considerable self-control. And knowing less of me than you +do, she probably regards me as almost as safe as--a maiden +aunt say. I'm twice her age. We are a party of four. There +are conventions, 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 genuine 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 Bournemouth. Nothing +simpler than to go to him now . . . ." + +"I shall be sorry all the same." + +"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 Richmond, "then, surely, +a friendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected +to the--the inconveniences 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 Honi soit qui mal 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 personal +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 +reverse. Then, there will be much more collective control and +much more insistence, legal insistence, upon individual +responsibility. But we are not living in a new age yet; we +are living in the patched-up ruins of a very old one. And +you-- if you will forgive me--are living in the patched up +remains of a life that had already had its complications. +This young lady, whose charm and cleverness I admit, behaves +as if the new age were already here. Well, that may be a very +dangerous 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 curious 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 impression of Miss Grammont and +her position in life. + +"She is," he said, "manifestly a very expensively educated +girl. And in many ways interesting. 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 frankness, 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 problems for which the normal mother +provides ready 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 manner +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, and whenever +she has wanted a companion or governess butchered, the thing +has been done. . . . These business Americans, I am told, +neglect their womenkind, give them money and power, let them +loose on the world. . . . It is a sort of moral laziness +masquerading as affection. . . . Still I suppose custom and +tradition kept this girl in her place and she was petted, +honoured, amused, talked about but not in a harmful way, and +rather bored right up to the time when America came into the +war. Theoretically she had a tremendously good time." + +"I think this must be near the truth of her biography," said +Sir Richmond. + +"I suppose she has lovers." + +"You don't mean--?" "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 happiness and her gratifications and her +condescensions seem a matter of very great importance to +them. She had the flattery of an extremely uncritical and +unexacting admiration. That is the sort of thing that +gratifies a silly woman extremely. 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 wearing things and +dancing and playing games and going 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." + +"What do you think she found?" + +"What would a rich girl find out there in America? I don't +know. I haven't the material to guess with. In London a girl +might find a considerable 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 people in a way that made the +ordinary entertainments 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 think 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 that promise. + +"How?" + +"I don't know. Perhaps I am only romancing. But for this +young woman I am convinced this expedition to Europe has +meant experience, harsh educational experience and very +profound mental disturbance. There have been love +experiences; experiences that were something more than the +treats and attentions and proposals that made up her life +when she was sheltered over there. 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. +Perhaps 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 history 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 +history as you see it and I see it. She is a very grown-up +young woman. + +"It's just that," said Sir Richmond. "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 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 necessarily a certain imaginative fixity. Miss +Grammont 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 +Martin 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 left London you have +been ready to fall in love with any pretty thing in +petticoats that 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 Grammont being a woman is a +little more selective than that. But if she's at a loose end +as I suppose, she isn't protected by the sense of having made +her selection. And she has no preconceptions of what she +wants. You are a very interesting man in many ways. You carry +marriage 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 Richmond. "These +miracles--grotesquely--happen," 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 possibility 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 tolerate friendship and companionship WITH +that accompaniment. 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 + +Section 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. + +Section 2 + +For the better part of forty hours, Sir Richmond 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 incongruous +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 remembered comments and prophets of her +contemporaries about herself. She either concealed or she had +lost any great interest in her own personality. 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 faint smile on her lips as +he spoke, and she spread her opinions before him carefully in +that soft voice of hers like a shy child showing its +treasures to some suddenly trusted and favoured visitor. + +Their ways of thought harmonized. They talked at first +chiefly about the history of the world and the extraordinary +situation of aimlessness 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 something--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 Grammont 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 clambering +to the top of it and sliding on their little behinds down its +smooth and sloping side amidst much mirthful squealing. + +Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont had walked round the old +circumvallation together, but Belinda Seyffert had strayed +away from them, professing 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 possessed by a +devil who interrupted conversations. + +When Miss Grammont was keenly interested in a conversation, +then Belinda had learnt from experience 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 million fully developed, beautiful and happy +people?" + +"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, unintelligent +life of its own." + +Her imagination glowed in her eyes and warmed her voice. "I +believe what you say is possible. If people dare." + +"I 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 great but great disasters. Here is something +mankind can attempt, that we can attempt." + +"And will? " + +"I believe that as Mankind grows up this is the business Man +has to settle down to and will settle down to." + +She considered that. + +"I've been getting to believe something like this. +But-- . . . it frightens me. I suppose most of us have this +same sort of dread of taking too much upon ourselves." + +"So we just live like pigs. Sensible little piggywiggys. 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?" + +"We are afraid," she said. "It's too vast. We want bright +little lives of our own. " + +"Exactly--sensible little piggy-wiggys." + +"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 nowadays. . . . 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 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--?" + +"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 thinking as well as talking. That +perhaps is why I'm so clear and positive." + +"I don't complain that you are clear and positive. 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 respects. 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 mankind. It +is an idea that seizes the imagination. There is a flow of +new ideas abroad, he thinks, widening realizations, +unprecedented hopes and fears. There is a consciousness of +new powers and new responsibilities. We are sharing the +adolescence of our race. It is giving history a new and 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 matter. 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 question 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. + +"Yes. Yes, I have." + +"I haven't," she said. + +"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 Richmond 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 foundation of a scientific world control of fuel +production and distribution. We have a Fuel Commission in +London with rather wide powers of enquiry into the whole +world problem of fuel. We shall come out to Washington +presently with proposals. " + +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 Richmond 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 +unless it got people like my father under some sort of +control. But controlling father--as distinguished from +managing him!" She reviewed some private and amusing +memories. "He is a most intractable man." + +Section 3 + +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, because, it seemed, she had been engaged or was engaged +to marry him. "All these people," she said, "are pushing +things about, affecting millions 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 +particular. . . . 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 recalled too the soft firmness of her +profile and the delicate line of her lifted chin. He felt +that this 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 composition 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 passion 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 +companionship. That's what she was,--a companion. + +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 original 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 recently acquired vote. She evidently +classified voters into the irresponsible who just had votes +and the responsible who also had a considerable 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 citizens." Or they fell a prey +to the merely adventurous 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 such like +property. Her interest in Sir Richmond's schemes for a +scientific world management of fuel was therefore, she +realized, a very direct one. But it was remarkable to find a +young woman seeing it like that. + +Father it seemed varied very much in his attitude 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 regrettable 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, agreements and suchlike +complications, or for acquiring a workable son by marriage. +To this last idea it would seem the importance in her life of +the rather heavily named Gunter Lake was to be ascribed. 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 direct 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 provided 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 +afternoons 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. Grammont, because he feared his 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 menservants and a +trustworthy secretary used to pick her out from the torrent +of undistinguished workers that poured out of the Synoptical +Building. This masculinization idea had also sent her on a +commission of enquiry into 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 +improper 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 gathered, 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, however, +connected with her war services in Europe upon which Miss +Grammont was evidently indisposed 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 itself 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 sustaining topic +was this New Age Sir Richmond fore shadowed, this world under +scientific control, the Utopia of fully developed people +fully developing the resources of the earth. For a number of +trivial 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. Martineau. 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-morrow the New Age +will be here no doubt, but today 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 commonsense, healthy and secure, +gathering knowledge and power for creative adventures as yet +beyond dreaming. They were prepared to think of the makers of +the Avebury dyke as their yesterday selves, of the stone age +savages as a phase, in their late childhood, and of this +great world order Sir Richmond foresaw as a day where dawn +was already at hand. And in such long perspectives, the +states, governments and institutions of to-day became very +temporary-looking and replaceable structures indeed. Both +these two people found themselves thinking in this fashion +with an unwonted courage and freedom because the other one +had been disposed to think in this fashion before. Sir +Richmond was still turning over in his mind the happy mutual +release of the imagination this chance companionship had +brought about when he found himself back again at the +threshold of the Old George. + +Section 4 + +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 equally sleepless and preoccupied. And although Mr. +Lake was a man of vast activities and complicated engagements +he was coming now to Europe for the express purpose of seeing +V.V. and having things out with her fully and completely +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 head in +a museum, for any indication it betrayed of the flow of +thought within. He lay on his back and his bent knees lifted +the bed-clothes into a sharp mountain. He was not even trying +to sleep. + +Why, he meditated, had V.V. stayed on in Europe so much +longer than she need have done? And why had Gunter Lake +suddenly got into a state of mind about her? Why didn't the +girl confide in her father at least about these things? What +was afoot? She had thrown over Lake 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 all ordinary female person. . . . Her +mother hadn't been ordinary anyhow, whatever else you called +her, and no one could call Grammont blood all 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 infuriated and disgusted him. He +fought against it as a possibility. Once some woman in New +York had ventured to hint something to him of 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 Caston, 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 things 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, suddenly white to +the lips. . . . + +Old Grammont stared at his memory of that moment for a while. +That affair was all right, quite all right. Of course it was +all right. And also, happily, Caston was among the dead. But +it was well her broken engagement with Lake had been resumed +as though it had never been broken off. If there had been any +talk that fact answered it. And now that Lake had served his +purpose old Grammont did not care in the least if he was +shelved. V.V. could stand alone. + +Old Grammont had got a phrase in his mind that looked like +dominating the situation. He dreamt of saying to V.V.: "V.V., +I'm going to make a man of you--if you're man enough." That +was a large proposition; it implied--oh! it implied all sorts +of things. It meant that she would care as little for +philandering as an able young business man. Perhaps some day, +a long time ahead, she might marry. There wasn't much reason +for it, but it might be she would not wish to be called a +spinster. "Take a husband," thought old Grammont, "when I am +gone, as one takes a butler, to make the household complete." +In previous meditations on his daughter's outlook old +Grammont had found much that was very suggestive in the +precedent of Queen Victoria. She had had no husband of the +lord and master type, so to speak, but only a Prince Consort, +well in hand. Why shouldn't the Grammont heiress dominate her +male belonging, if it came to that, in the same fashion? Why +shouldn't one tie her up and tie the whole thing up, so far +as any male belonging was concerned, leaving V.V. in all +other respects free? How could one do it? + +The speculative calm of the sunken brown eyes deepened. + +His thoughts went back to the white face of the private +enquiry agent. "Absolutely nothing, Sir." What had the fellow +thought of hinting? Nothing of that kind in V.V.'s +composition, never fear. Yet it was a curious anomaly that +while one had a thousand ways of defending one's daughter and +one's property against that daughter's husband, there was no +power on earth by which a father could stretch his dead hand +between that daughter and the undue influence of a lover. +Unless you tied her up for good and all, lover or none. . . . + +One was left at the mercy of V.V.'s character. . . . + +"I ought to see more of her," he thought. "She gets away from +me. Just as her mother did." A man need not suspect his +womenkind but he should know what they are doing. It is duty, +his protective duty to them. These companions, these Seyffert +women and so forth, were all very well in their way; there +wasn't much they kept from you if you got them cornered and +asked them intently. But a father's eye is better. He must go +about with the girl for a time, watch her with other men, +give her chances to talk business with him and see if she +took them. "V.V., I'm going to make a man of you," the phrase +ran through his brain. The deep instinctive jealousy of the +primordial father was still strong in old Grammont's blood. +It would be pleasant to go about with her on his right hand +in Paris, HIS girl, straight and lovely, desirable and +unapproachable,--above that sort of nonsense, above all other +masculine subjugation. + +"V.V., I'm going to make a man of you. . . ." + +His mind grew calmer. Whatever she wanted in Paris should be +hers. He'd just let her rip. They'd be like sweethearts +together, he and his girl. + +Old Grammont dozed off into dreamland. + +Section 5 + +The imaginations of Mr. Gunter Lake, two days behind Mr. +Grammont upon the Atlantic, were of a gentler, more romantic +character. In them V.V. was no longer a daughter in the +fierce focus of a father's jealousy, but the goddess +enshrined in a good man's heart. Indeed the figure that the +limelight of the reverie fell upon was not V.V. at all but +Mr. Gunter Lake himself, in his favourite role of the perfect +lover. + +An interminable speech unfolded itself. "I ask for nothing in +return. I've never worried you about that Caston business and +I never will. Married to me you shall be as free as if you +were unmarried. Don't I know, my dear girl, that you don't +love me yet. Let that be as you wish. I want nothing you are +not willing to give me, nothing at all. All I ask is the +privilege of making life happy--and it shall be happy--for +you. . . . All I ask. All I ask. Protect, guard, +cherish. . . ." + +For to Mr. Gunter Lake it seemed there could be no lovelier +thing in life than a wife "in name only" slowly warmed into a +glow of passion by the steadfast devotion and the strength +and wisdom of a mate at first despised. Until at last a day +would come. . . . + +"My darling!" Mr. Gunter Lake whispered to the darkness. "My +little guurl. IT HAS BEEN WORTH THE WAITING. . . ." + +Section 6 + +Miss Grammont met Sir Richmond in the bureau of the Old +George with a telegram in her hand. "My father reported his +latitude and longitude by wireless last night. The London +people think he will be off Falmouth in four days' time. He +wants me to join his liner there and go on to Cherbourg and +Paris. He's arranged that. He is the sort of man who can +arrange things like that. There'll be someone at Falmouth to +look after us and put us aboard the liner. I must wire them +where I can pick up a telegram to-morrow." + +"Wells in Somerset," said Sir :Richmond. + +His plans were already quite clear. He explained that he +wanted her first to see Shaftesbury, a little old Wessex town +that was three or four hundred years older than Salisbury, +perched on a hill, a Saxon town, where Alfred had gathered +his forces against the Danes and where Canute, who had ruled +over all Scandinavia and Iceland and Greenland, and had come +near ruling a patch of America, had died. It was a little +sleepy place now, looking out dreamily over beautiful views. +They would lunch in Shaftesbury and walk round it. Then they +would go in the afternoon through the pleasant west country +where the Celts had prevailed against the old folk of the +Stonehenge temple and the Romans against the Celts and the +Saxons against the Romanized Britons and the Danes against +the Saxons, a war-scarred landscape, abounding in dykes and +entrenchments and castles, sunken now into the deepest peace, +to Glastonbury to see what there was to see of a marsh +village the Celts had made for themselves three or four +hundred years before the Romans came. And at Glastonbury also +there were the ruins of a great Benedictine church and abbey +that had once rivalled Salisbury. Thence they would go on to +Wells to see yet another great cathedral and to dine and +sleep. Glastonbury Abbey and Wells Cathedral brought the +story of Europe right up to Reformation times. + +"That will be a good day for us," said Sir Richmond. "It will +be like turning over the pages of the history of our family, +to and fro. There will be nothing nearly so old as Avebury in +it, but there will be something from almost every chapter +that comes after Stonehenge. Rome will be poorly represented, +but that may come the day after at Bath. And the next day too +I want to show you something of our old River Severn. We will +come right up to the present if we go through Bristol. There +we shall have a whiff of America, our new find, from which +the tobacco comes, and we shall be reminded of how we set +sail thither--was it yesterday or the day before? You will +understand at Bristol how it is that the energy has gone out +of this dreaming land--to Africa and America and the whole +wide world. It was the good men of Bristol, by the bye, with +their trade from Africa to America, who gave you your colour +problem. Bristol we may go through to-morrow and Gloucester, +mother of I don't know how many American Gloucesters. Bath +we'll get in somehow. And then as an Anglo-American showman I +shall be tempted to run you northward a little way past +Tewkesbury, just to go into a church here and there and show +you monuments bearing little shields with the stars and +stripes upon them, a few stars and a few stripes, the +Washington family monuments." + +"It was not only from England that America came," said Miss +Grammont. + +"But England takes an American memory back most easily and +most fully--to Avebury and the Baltic Northmen, past the +emperors and the Corinthian columns that smothered Latin +Europe. . . . For you and me anyhow this is our past, this +was our childhood, and this is our land." He interrupted +laughing as she was about to reply. "Well, anyhow," he said, +"it is a beautiful day and a pretty country before us with +the ripest history in every grain of its soil. So we'll send +a wire to your London people and tell them to send their +instructions to Wells." + +"I'll tell Belinda," she said, "to be quick with her +packing." + +Section 7 + +As Miss Grammont and Sir Richmond Hardy fulfilled the details +of his excellent programme and revised their impressions of +the past and their ideas about the future in the springtime +sunlight of Wiltshire and Somerset, with Miss Seyffert acting +the part of an almost ostentatiously discreet chorus, it was +inevitable that their conversation should become, by +imperceptible gradations, more personal and intimate. They +kept up the pose, which was supposed to represent Dr. +Martineau's philosophy, of being Man and Woman on their +Planet considering its Future, but insensibly they developed +the idiosyncrasies of their position. They might profess to +be Man and Woman in the most general terms, but the facts +that she was the daughter not of Everyman but old Grammont +and that Sir Richmond was the angry leader of a minority upon +the Fuel Commission became more and more important. "What +shall we do with this planet of ours? " gave way by the +easiest transitions to "What are you and I doing and what +have we got to do? How do you feel about it all? What do you +desire and what do you dare?" + +It was natural that Sir Richmond should talk of his Fuel +Commission to a young woman whose interests in fuel were even +greater than his own. He found that she was very much better +read than he was in the recent literature of socialism, and +that she had what he considered to be a most unfeminine grasp +of economic ideas. He thought her attitude towards socialism +a very sane one because it was also his own. So far as +socialism involved the idea of a scientific control of +natural resources as a common property administered in the +common interest, she and he were very greatly attracted by +it; but so far as it served as a form of expression for the +merely insubordinate discontent of the many with the few, +under any conditions, so long as it was a formula for class +jealousy and warfare, they were both repelled by it. If she +had had any illusions about the working class possessing as a +class any profounder political wisdom or more generous public +impulses than any other class, those illusions had long since +departed. People were much the same, she thought, in every +class; there was no stratification of either rightness or +righteousness. + +He found he could talk to her of his work and aims upon the +Fuel Commission and of the conflict and failure of motives he +found in himself, as freely as he had done to Dr. Martineau +and with a surer confidence of understanding. Perhaps his +talks with the doctor had got his ideas into order and made +them more readily expressible than they would have been +otherwise. He argued against the belief that any class could +be good as a class or bad as a class, and he instanced the +conflict of motives he found in all the members of his +Committee and most so in himself. He repeated the persuasion +he had already confessed to Dr. Martineau that there was not +a single member of the Fuel Commission but had a considerable +drive towards doing the right thing about fuel, and not one +who had a single-minded, unencumbered drive towards the right +thing. "That," said Sir Richmond, "is what makes life so +interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic +disappointments, so hopeful. Every man is a bad man, every +man is a feeble man and every man is a good man. My motives +come and go. Yours do the same. We vary in response to the +circumstances about us. Given a proper atmosphere, most men +will be public-spirited, right-living, generous. Given +perplexities and darkness, most of us can be cowardly and +vile. People say you cannot change human nature and perhaps +that is true, but you can change its responses endlessly. The +other day I was in Bohemia, discussing Silesian coal with +Benes, and I went to see the Festival of the Bohemian Sokols. +Opposite to where I sat, far away across the arena, was a +great bank of men of the Sokol organizations, an unbroken +brown mass wrapped in their brown uniform cloaks. Suddenly +the sun came out and at a word the whole body flung back +their cloaks, showed their Garibaldi shirts and became one +solid blaze of red. It was an amazing transformation until +one understood what had happened. Yet nothing material had +changed but the sunshine. And given a change in laws and +prevailing ideas, and the very same people who are greedy +traders, grasping owners and revolting workers to-day will +all throw their cloaks aside and you will find them working +together cheerfully, even generously, for a common end. They +aren't traders and owners and workers and so forth by any +inner necessity. Those are just the ugly parts they play in +the present drama. Which is nearly at the end of its run." + +"That's a hopeful view," said Miss Grammont. "I don't see the +flaw in it--if there is a flaw." + +"There isn't one, " said Sir Richmond. "It is my chief +discovery about life. I began with the question of fuel and +the energy it affords mankind, and I have found that my +generalization applies to all human affairs. Human beings are +fools, weaklings, cowards, passionate idiots,--I grant you. +That is the brown cloak side of them, 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 absolutely 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 education, 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 organization 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 beginnings of success, +but the spirit of order, the spirit that has already produced +organized science, if only there are a few faithful, +persistent 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 matter. You know we +don't matter." + +"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. Suddenly I had lost my power of +work. My confidence in the rightness of what I was doing +evaporated. 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 a momentary doubt. + +"I don't know why I tell you these things," he said. + +"You tell them me," she said. + +"It's a little like a patient in a hydropath retailing his +ailments." + +"No. No. Go on." + +"I began to think now that what took the go out of me as my +work went on was the lack of any real fellowship in what I +was doing. It was the pressure of the opposition in the +Committee, day afterday. It was being up against men who +didn't reason against me but who just showed by everything +they did that the things I wanted to achieve didn't matter to +them one rap. It was going back to a home, lunching in clubs, +reading papers, going about a world in which all the +organization, all the possibility of the organization I dream +of is tacitly denied. I don't know if it seems an +extraordinary confession of weakness to you, but that steady +refusal of the majority of my Committee to come into co- +operation with me has beaten me--or at any rate has come very +near to beating me. Most of them you know are such able men. +You can FEEL their knowledge and commonsense. They, and +everybody about me, seemed busy and intent upon more +immediate things, that seemed more real to them than this +remote, theoretical, PRIGGISH end I have set for +myself. . . ." + +He paused. + +"Go on," said Miss Grammont. "I think I understand this. " + +"And yet I know I am right." + +"I know you are right. I'm certain. Go on. + +"If one of those ten thousand members of the Sokol Society +had thrown back his brown cloak and shown red when all the +others still kept them selves cloaked--if he was a normal +sensitive man--he might have felt something of a fool. He +might have felt premature and presumptuous. Red he was and +the others he knew were red also, but why show it? That is +the peculiar distress of people like ourselves, who have some +sense of history and some sense of a larger life within us +than our merely personal life. We don't want to go on with +the old story merely. We want to live somehow in that larger +life and to live for its greater ends and lose something +unbearable of ourselves, and in wanting to do that we are +only wanting to do what nearly everybody perhaps is ripe to +do and will presently want to do. When the New Age Martineau +talks about begins to come it may come very quickly--as the +red came at Prague. But for the present everyone hesitates +about throwing back the cloak." + +"Until the cloak becomes unbearable," she said, repeating his +word. + +"I came upon this holiday in the queerest state. I thought I +was ill. I thought I was overworked. But the real trouble was +a loneliness that robbed me of all driving force. Nobody +seemed thinking and feeling with me. . . . I have never +realized until now what a gregarious beast man is. It needed +only a day or so with Martineau, in the atmosphere of ideas +and beliefs like my own, to begin my restoration. Now as I +talk to you--That is why I have clutched at your company. +Because here you are, coming from thousands of miles away, +and you talk my ideas, you fall into my ways of thought as +though we had gone to the same school." + +"Perhaps we HAVE gone to the same school," she said. + +"You mean?" + +"Disappointment. Disillusionment. Having to find something +better in life than the first things it promised us." + +"But you--? Disappointed? I thought that in America people +might be educating already on different lines--" + +"Even in America," Miss Grammont said, "crops only grow on +the ploughed land." + +Section 8 + +Glastonbury in the afternoon was wonderful; they talked of +Avalon and of that vanished legendary world of King Arthur +and his knights, and in the early evening they came to Wells +and a pleasant inn, with a quaint little garden before its +front door that gave directly upon the cathedral. The three +tourists devoted a golden half hour before dinner to the +sculptures on the western face. The great screen of wrought +stone rose up warmly, grey and clear and distinct against a +clear blue sky in which the moon hung, round and already +bright. That western facade with its hundreds of little +figures tells the whole story of God and Man from Adam to the +Last Judgment, as the mediaeval mind conceived it. It is an +even fuller exposition than the carved Bible history that +goes round the chapter house at Salisbury. It presented the +universe, said Sir Richmond, as a complete crystal globe. It +explained everything in life in a simple and natural manner, +hope, heaven, devil and despair. Generations had lived and +died mentally within that crystal globe, convinced that it +was all and complete. + +"And now," said Miss Grammont, "we are in limitless space and +time. The crystal globe is broken." + +"And?" said Belinda amazingly--for she had been silent for +some time, "the goldfish are on the floor, V.V. Free to flop +about. Are they any happier?" + +It was one of those sudden rhetorical triumphs that are best +left alone. "I trow not," said Belinda, giving the last touch +to it. + +After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont walked round the +cathedral and along by the moat of the bishop's palace, and +Miss Seyffert stayed in the hotel to send off postcards to +her friends, a duty she had neglected for some days. The +evening was warm and still and the moon was approaching its +full and very bright. Insensibly the soft afterglow passed +into moonlight. + +At first the two companions talked very little. Sir Richmond +was well content with this tacit friendliness and Miss +Grammont was preoccupied because she was very strongly moved +to tell him things about herself that hitherto she had told +to no one. It was not merely that she wanted to tell him +these things but also that for reasons she did not put as yet +very clearly to herself she thought they were things he ought +to know. She talked of herself at first in general terms. +"Life comes on anyone with a rush, childhood seems lasting +for ever and then suddenly one tears into life," she said. It +was even more so for women than it was for men. You are shown +life, a crowded vast spectacle full of what seems to be +intensely interesting activities and endless delightful and +frightful and tragic possibilities, and you have hardly had +time to look at it before you are called upon to make +decisions. And there is something in your blood that urges +you to decisive acts. Your mind, your reason resists. "Give +me time," it says. "They clamour at you with treats, crowds, +shows, theatres, all sorts of things; lovers buzz at you, +each trying to fix you part of his life when you are trying +to get clear to live a little of your own." Her father had +had one merit at any rate. He had been jealous of her lovers +and very ready to interfere. + +"I wanted a lover to love," she said. "Every girl of course +wants that. I wanted to be tremendously excited. . . . And at +the same time I dreaded the enormous interference. . . . + +"I wasn't temperamentally a cold girl. Men interested and +excited me, but there were a lot of men about and they +clashed with each other. Perhaps way down in some out of the +way place I should have fallen in love quite easily with the +one man who came along. But no man fixed his image. After a +year or so I think I began to lose the power which is natural +to a young girl of falling very easily into love. I became +critical of the youths and men who were attracted to me and I +became analytical about myself. . . . + +"I suppose it is because you and I are going to part so soon +that I can speak so freely to you. . . . But there are things +about myself that I have never had out even with myself. I +can talk to myself in you--" + +She paused baffled. "I know exactly," said Sir Richmond. + +"In my composition I perceive there have always been two +ruling strains. I was a spoilt child at home, a rather +reserved girl at school, keen on my dignity. I liked respect. +I didn't give myself away. I suppose one would call that +personal pride. Anyhow it was that streak made me value the +position of being a rich married woman in New York. That was +why I became engaged to Lake. He seemed to be as good a man +as there was about. He said he adored me and wanted me to +crown his life. He wasn't ill-looking 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 +sensuousness. 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. + +"He was," she said deliberately, "a very rotten 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 +artist, 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, he talked in a +way that irritated me. He talked like an East Side Annunzio, +about art and war. It 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 wanted to go on my own account. I +forget. I forget my motives altogether now. That early war +time was a queer time for everyone. A kind of wildness got +into the blood. . . . I threw over Lake. All 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 something of the war-time +atmosphere. There was death everywhere and people snatched at +gratifications. 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 ordinary 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 cowardice +imaginable. He let three other men go on and get killed. . ." + + +"No. It is no good your inventing excuses for a man you know +nothing about. It was vile, contemptible 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 careful 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 felt 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 at the time. I felt I had to got hold of +something or go to pieces. I couldn't turn to religion. I had +no religion. And Duty? What is Duty? I set myself to that. I +had a kind 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 +making 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 understand how it is with you. What +you've got, this idea of a scientific ordering of the world, +is what I, in my younger, less experienced way, have been +feeling my way towards. I want to join on. I want to got hold +of this idea of a great fuel control 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." + +Section 9 + +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 extremely anxious to express his vivid sense of the value +of her friendship. And while he hesitated over this difficult +and unfamiliar task she began 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 of what it means to be married to a man. And here I +am drifting back to him. The horrible thing about 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 most extraordinary bargains. So long as he can in +any way fix me and get me. What does it mean? What is there +behind those watching, 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 Richmond'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 discovered 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. Reasonably 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, always, 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?" + +"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 being. 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 triumphantly +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 sentiments. + +"There is only one decent way in which a civilized man and a +civilized woman may approach one another. Passionate desire +is not enough. What is called love is not enough. Pledges, +rational considerations, all these things are worthless. All +these things are compatible with hate. The primary essential +is friendship, clear understanding, absolute confidence. Then +within that condition, in that elect relationship, love is +permissible, mating, marriage or no marriage, as you will-- +all things are permissible. . . ." + +Came a long pause between them. + +"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." + +Section 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 moonlight 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 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 overwhelmingly +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." + +Section 11 + +That was the dawn of a long day of tension for Sir Richmond +and Miss Grammont. Because each was now vividly aware of +being in love with the other and so neither was able to see +how things were with the other. They were afraid of each +other. A restraint had come upon them both, a restraint that +was greatly enhanced by their sense of Belinda, acutely +observant, ostentatiously tactful and self-effacing, and +prepared at the slightest encouragement to be overwhelmingly +romantic and sympathetic. Their talk waned, and was revived +to an artificial activity and waned again. The historical +interest had evaporated from the west of England and left +only an urgent and embarrassing 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 Nownham 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 garden 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 towards Chepstow. Both of them were +absurdly and nervously pressing to Belinda to come with them, +but she was far too 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 Grammont and led the way to the door. + +They passed through the garden. "I think we go up the hill? " +said Sir Richmond. + +"Yes," she agreed, "up the hill." + +Followed a silence. + +Sir Richmond made an effort, but after some artificial and +disconnected talk about Tintern Abbey, concerning, which she +had no history ready, and then, still lamer, about whether +Monmouthshire 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 said, "with all my +heart." + +Her soft voice came back after a stillness. "I love you," she +said, "with all myself." + +"I had long ceased to hope, " said Sir -Richmond, that 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 happiness as I +could not have imagined." + +The light of a silent bicycle appeared above them up the hill +and swept down upon them, lit their two still faces brightly +and passed. + +"My dear," she whispered in the darkness between the high +hedges. + +They stopped short and stood quite still, trembling. 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 followed them, and enlarged +upon the moonlight effect of the Abbey ruins from the inn +lawn. But the scared congratulations in her eyes betrayed her +recognition that momentous things had happened between the +two. + +CHAPTER THE EIGHTH + +FULL MOON + +Section 1 + +Sir 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 Martineau-Hardy, an +abstracted intellectual conscience, was demanding what he +thought he was doing with Miss Grammont and whither he +thought he was taking her, how he proposed to reconcile the +close relationship with her that he was now embarked upon +with, in the first place, his work upon and engagements with +the Fuel Commission, and, in the second place, Martin Leeds. +Curiously enough Lady 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 resolute 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 +maintained 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 himself 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 perfected fellowship, +and you have made her that tremendous promise. That was +implicit in your embrace. And how can you keep that promise?" + +It was as if Martin spoke; it was her voice; it was the very +quality of her thought. + +"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? Think of all that there has been between +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 was there--for all you would not know. No one else will +ever be so intimate with you as I am. We have quarrelled +together, wept together, jested happily and jested bitterly. +You have spared me not at all. Pitiless and cruel you have +been to me. You have reckoned up all my faults against me as +though they were sins. You have treated me at times +unlovingly--never was lover treated so unlovingly as you have +sometimes treated me. And yet I have your love--as no other +woman can ever have it. Even now when you are wildly in love +with this girl's freshness and boldness and cleverness I come +into your mind by right and necessity." + +"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 +extravagantly imperfect lover. But I have learnt to accept +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 foreground of his +mind. + +He was astonished to think how planless, instinctive 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 foregoes." + +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 the 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 +unhesitating. Man upon his planet has not grown up to love, +is still an eager, egotistical and fluctuating adolescent. He +lacks the courage to love and the wisdom to love. Love is +here. But it comes and goes, it is mixed with greeds and +jealousies 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 Richmond'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 +impatience. He would have done his work calmly. He would have +won his way with his Committee instead of fighting and +quarrelling with it perpetually. . . . + +"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 passing 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 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. + +Section 2 + +The shadow of Martin stood over him, inexorable. He had to +release Miss Grammont from the adventure into which he had +drawn her. This decision 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 confessions 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 ugly after she has believed in +me. . . . It would be like playing a practical joke upon her. +It would be like taking her into my arms and suddenly making +a grimace at her. . . . It would scar her with a second +humiliation. . . ." + +Should he take her on to Bath or Exeter to-morrow and +contrive by some sudden arrival of telegrams that he had to +go from her suddenly? But a mere sudden parting would not end +things between them now unless he went off abruptly without +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 Falmouth. 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 mystery 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. 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 business 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 thing would embarrass us, +would spoil everything. + +"Spoil everything," he repeated, rather like a small boy who +learns an unpalatable lesson. + +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-- sublimate! . . . . 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 purpose. Sir +Richmond fell asleep during the fourth recapitulation of this +programme. + +Section 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 upon liners +and in the civilized world of the west. "He's getting us tea +spoons," said Belinda, as they sat 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. It's +the greenest morning world and full of wild flowers. Look at +these." + +"That's lady's smock," said Sir Richmond. "It's not really a +flower; it's a quotation from Shakespeare." + +"And there are cowslips!" + +"CUCKOO BUDS OF YELLOW HUE. DO PAINT THE MEADOWS WITH +DELIGHT. All the English flowers come out of Shakespeare. 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 Chepstow, 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 produced 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 coal 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 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-morrow afternoon will +be soon enough for Falmouth, anyhow." + +He stopped interrogatively. + +Miss Grammont's face was white. "That will do very well," she +said. + +Section 4, + +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 Richmond 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 deliberately to measure her companion's +distance. Evidently she judged her out of earshot. + +"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." + +"And to-morrow we part?" + +He looked her in the eyes. "I have been thinking 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--impossible. . . . " + +Sir Richmond, faced with his own nocturnal decision, was now +moved to oppose it flatly. "Nothing that one can do is +impossible." + +She glanced again at Belinda and bent down towards him." +Suppose," she said, "you got back into that car with me; +suppose that instead of going 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 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 +indulgences 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 I 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 man, obstinate, more +than half a savage. For me--I know it--he has the jealousy of +ten husbands. If you take me--If our secret becomes +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 +responsible 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, enduring 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 you know, in the night I was thinking, I was +coming 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." + +"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. + +"I 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." + +Section 5 + +Because Belinda Seyffert was in the dicky behind them with +her alert interest in their emotions all too thinly and +obviously veiled, it seemed more convenient to Sir Richmond +and Miss Grammont to talk not of themselves but of Man and +Woman and of that New Age according to the prophet Martineau, +which Sir Richmond had partly described and mainly invented +and ascribed to his departed friend. They talked +anthropologically, philosophically, speculatively, with an +absurd pretence of detachment, they sat side by side in the +little car, scarcely glancing at one another, but side by +side and touching each other, and all the while they were +filled with tenderness and love and hunger for one another. + +In the course of a day or so they had touched on nearly every +phase in the growth of Man and Woman from that remote and +brutish past which has left its traces in human bones mingled +with the bones of hyaenas and cave bears beneath the +stalagmites of Wookey Hole near Wells. In those nearly +forgotten days the mind of man and woman had been no more +than an evanescent succession of monstrous and infantile +imaginations. That brief journey in the west country had lit +up phase after phase in the long teaching and discipline of +man as he had developed depth of memory and fixity of purpose +out of these raw beginnings, through the dreaming childhood +of Avebury and Stonehenge and the crude boyhood of ancient +wars and massacres. Sir Richmond recalled those phases now, +and how, as they had followed one another, man's idea of +woman and woman's idea of man had changed with them, until +nowadays in the minds of civilized men brute desire and +possession and a limitless jealousy had become almost +completely overlaid by the desire for fellowship and a free +mutual loyalty. "Overlaid," he said. "The older passions are +still there like the fires in an engine." He invented a +saying for Dr. Martineau that the Man in us to-day was still +the old man of Palaeolithic times, with his will, his wrath +against the universe increased rather than diminished. If to- +day he ceases to crack his brother's bones and rape and bully +his womenkind, it is because he has grown up to a greater +game and means to crack this world and feed upon its marrow +and wrench their secrets from the stars. + +And furthermore it would seem that the prophet Martineau had +declared that in this New Age that was presently to dawn for +mankind, jealousy was to be disciplined even as we had +disciplined lust and anger; instead of ruling our law it was +to be ruled by law and custom. No longer were the jealousy of +strange peoples, the jealousy of ownership and the jealousy +of sex to determine the framework of human life. There was to +be one peace and law throughout the world, one economic +scheme and a universal freedom for men and women to possess +and give themselves. + +"And how many generations yet must there be before we reach +that Utopia?" Miss Grammont asked. + +"I wouldn't put it at a very great distance." + +"But think of all the confusions of the world!" + +"Confusions merely. The world is just a muddle of states and +religions and theories and stupidities. There are great lumps +of disorderly strength in it, but as a whole it is a weak +world. It goes on by habit. There's no great idea in +possession and the only possible great idea is this one. The +New Age may be nearer than we dare to suppose." + +"If I could believe that!" + +"There are many more people think as we do than you suppose. +Are you and I such very strange and wonderful and exceptional +people?" + +"No. I don't think so." + +"And yet the New World is already completely established in +our hearts. What has been done in our minds can be done in +most minds. In a little while the muddled angry mind of Man +upon his Planet will grow clear and it will be this idea that +will have made it clear. And then life will be very different +for everyone. That tyranny of disorder which oppresses every +life on earth now will be lifted. There will be less and less +insecurity, less and less irrational injustice. It will be a +better instructed and a better behaved world. We shall live +at our ease, not perpetually anxious, not resentful and +angry. And that will alter all the rules of love. Then we +shall think more of the loveliness of other people because it +will no longer be necessary to think so much of the dangers +and weaknesses and pitifulliesses of other people. We shall +not have to think of those who depend upon us for happiness +and selfrespect. We shall not have to choose between a +wasteful fight for a personal end or the surrender of our +heart's desire." + +"Heart's desire," she whispered. "Am I indeed your heart's +desire?" + +Sir Richmond sank his head and voice in response. + +"You are the best of all things. And I have to let you go." + +Sir Richmond suddenly remembered Miss Seyffert and half +turned his face towards her. Her forehead was just visible +over the hood of the open coupe. She appeared to be +intelligently intent upon the scenery. Then he broke out +suddenly into a tirade against the world. "But I am bored by +this jostling unreasonable world. At the bottom of my heart I +am bitterly resentful to-day. This is a world of fools and +brutes in which we live, a world of idiotic traditions, +imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean +cruelty. It is a slum of a world, a congested district, an +insanitary jumble of souls and bodies. Every good thing, +every sweet desire is thwarted--every one. I have to lead the +life of a slum missionary, a sanitary inspector, an underpaid +teacher. I am bored. Oh God! how I am bored! I am bored by +our laws and customs. I am bored by our rotten empire and its +empty monarchy. I am bored by its parades and its flags and +its sham enthusiasms. I am bored by London and its life, by +its smart life and by its servile life alike. I am bored by +theatres and by books and by every sort of thing that people +call pleasure. I am bored by the brag of people and the +claims of people and the feelings of people. Damn people! I +am bored by profiteers and by the snatching they call +business enterprise. Damn every business man! I am bored by +politics and the universal mismanagement of everything. I am +bored by France, by AngloSaxondom, by German self-pity, by +Bolshevik fanaticism. I am bored by these fools' squabbles +that devastate the world. I am bored by Ireland, Orange and +Green. Curse the Irish--north and south together! Lord! how I +HATE the Irish from Carson to the last Sinn Feiner! And I am +bored by India and by Egypt. I am bored by Poland and by +Islam. I am bored by anyone who professes to have rights. +Damn their rights! Curse their rights! I am bored to death by +this year and by last year and by the prospect of next year. +I am bored--I am horribly bored--by my work. I am bored by +every sort of renunciation. I want to live with the woman I +love and I want to work within the limits of my capacity. +Curse all Hullo! Damn his eyes!--Steady, ah! The spark! . . . +Good! No skid." + +He had come round a corner at five and twenty miles an hour +and had stopped his spark and pulled up neatly within a yard +of the fore-wheel of a waggon that was turning in the road so +as to block the way completely. + +"That almost had me. . . . + +"And now you feel better?" said Miss Grammont. + +"Ever so much," said Sir Richmond and chuckled. + +The waggoner cleared the road and the car started up again. + +For a minute or so neither spoke. + +"You ought to be smacked hard for that outbreak,--my dear," +said Miss Grammont. + +"I ought--MY dear. I have no right to be ill-tempered. We two +are among the supremely fortunate ones of our time. We have +no excuse for misbehaviour. Got nothing to grumble at. Always +I am lucky. THAT--with the waggon--was a very near thing. God +spoils us. + +"We two," he went on, after a pause, "are among the most +fortunate people alive. We are both rich and easily rich. +That gives us freedoms few people have. We have a vision of +the whole world in which we live. It's in a mess--but that is +by the way. The mass of mankind never gets enough education +to have even a glimpse of the world as a whole. They never +get a chance to get the hang of it. It is really possible for +us to do things that will matter in the world. All our time +is our own; all our abilities we are free to use. Most +people, most intelligent and educated people, are caught in +cages of pecuniary necessity; they are tied to tasks they +can't leave, they are driven and compelled and limited by +circumstances they can never master. But we, if we have +tasks, have tasks of our own choosing. We may not like the +world, but anyhow we are free to do our best to alter it. If +I were a clerk in Hoxton and you were a city typist, then we +MIGHT swear. " + +"It was you who swore," smiled Miss Grammont. + +"It's the thought of that clerk in Hoxton and that city +typist who really keep me at my work. Any smacking ought to +come from them. I couldn't do less than I do in the face of +their helplessness. Nevertheless a day will come--through +what we do and what we refrain from doing when there will be +no bound and limited clerks in Hoxton and no captive typists +in the city. And nobody at all to consider." + +"According to the prophet Martineau," said Miss Grammont. + +"And then you and I must contrive to be born again. " + +"Heighho!" cried Miss Grammont. "A thousand years ahead! When +fathers are civilized. When all these phanton people who +intervene on your side--no! I don't want to know anything +about them, but I know of them by instinct--when they also +don't matter." + +"Then you and I can have things out with each other-- +THOROUGHLY," said Sir Richmond, with a surprising ferocity in +his voice, charging the little hill before him as though he +charged at Time. + +Section 6 + +They had to wait at Nailsworth for a telegram from Mr. +Grammont's agents; they lunched there and drove on to Bath in +the afternoon. They came into the town through unattractive +and unworthy outskirts, and only realized the charm of the +place after they had garaged their car at the Pulteney Hotel +and walked back over the Pulteney Bridge to see the Avon with +the Pump Room and the Roman Baths. The Pulteney they found +hung with pictures and adorned with sculpture to an +astonishing extent; some former proprietor must have had a +mania for replicas and the place is eventful with white +marble fauns and sylphs and lions and Caesars and Queen +Victorias and packed like an exhibition with memories of +Rome, Florence, Milan, Paris, the National Gallery and the +Royal Academy, amidst which splendours a competent staff +administers modern comforts with an old-fashioned civility. +But round and about the Pulteney one has still the scenery of +Georgian England, the white, faintly classical terraces and +houses of the days of Fielding, Smollett, Fanny Burney and +Jane Austen, the graceful bridge with the bright little shops +full of "presents from Bath"; the Pump Room with its water +drinkers and a fine array of the original Bath chairs. + +Down below the Pump Room our travellers explored the memories +of the days when the world was Latin from York to the Tigris, +and the Corinthian capital flourished like a weed from Bath +to Baalbek. And they considered a little doubtfully 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 enthusiastic about everything, but +in the evening after dinner it was clear that her role was to +remain in the hotel. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont 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 illumination, +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. 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, surveying 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 overworking 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 say to- +night," she said. "I'm just full of a sort 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. + +I want you to kiss me. " + +"Yes," he said awkwardly, glancing over his shoulder, acutely +aware of the promenaders passing 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 unavoidable 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 intellectual +dignity of their relationship. + +"I suppose I ought to be more concerned tonight about the +work I have to do in the world and anxious for you to tell me +this and that, but indeed 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 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 Richmond. + +"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 things," she +said. + +"YOU are divine. . . . I'm not talking lovers' nonsense," he +hastened to add. "I mean that there is something about human +beings--not just 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 +courage. It is wonderful enough that we should take food and +drink and turn them into imagination, invention and creative +energy; it is still more wonderful that we should take an +animal urging and turn it into a light to discover beauty and +an impulse 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 dreaming +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 Grammont +strolled through the dispersing crowd 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 watchful eyes of your dragon. " + +"She has not been a very exacting dragon so far, has she?" + +"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 Grammont. + +For a time she peered down at the dark figure wading in the +foam below as though it was the 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." + +Section 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 +bearing. 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. They +had stayed out late last night, so late that she had not +heard them come in. Perhaps then they had passed the climax +of their emotions. Sir Richmond, she learnt, was to take the +party to Exeter, 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 in which to deal with +a puncture or any such misadventure. + +They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mallet, ran through +Tilchester and Ilminster into the lovely hill country about +Up-Ottery and so to Honiton and the broad level road to +Exeter. Sir Richmond 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 protestations. That might prove a mutual torment. +Their love was to be implicit. They were to write at +intervals 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 +children. 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." + +Some day--somewhere--we two will certainly meet again." + +"Even you have to force circumstances a little," said Sir +Richmond. + +"We shall meet, she said, "without doing that." + +"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 are different from +men in their jealousy. Men are jealous of the other man; +women are jealous for their man--and careless about the other +woman. What I love in you I am sure about. My mind was empty +when it came to you and now it is full to overflowing. I +shall feel you moving about 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 to spare after +all. Hardly had Sir Richmond secured 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. + +Section 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 threads 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 that will serve to keep them real; and as for +me--this connects with nothing else in my life at all. . . . +It is as disconnected as a dream. . . . Already it is hardly +more substantial than a dream. . . . + +"We shall write letters. Do letters breathe faster or slower +as you read them? + +"We may meet. + +"Where are we likely to meet again? ... I 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 TOGETHER again. +It's over--With a completeness. . . . + +"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 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, because she loved him more steadfastly than he +did her. Whatever happened he must not take it out of Martin. +It was astonishing how real she 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 the +facts of life with her, even as he had done with that phantom +Martin in his dream. . . . + +But things were not like that. + +He looked to see if his car was short of water or petrol; +both needed replenishing, and so he would have to go up the +hill into Exeter town again. He got into his car and sat with +his fingers on the electric starter. + +Martin! Old Friend! Eight days were still left 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. + +"I'll take it out of the damned Commission. I'll make old +Rumford 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 + +Section 1 + +The Majority and Minority Reports of the Fuel Commission were +received on their first publication with much heat and +disputation, but there is already a fairly general agreement +that they are great and significant documents, broadly +conceived 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 scientific work, that may +yet arrest the drift of our western civilization towards +financial and commercial squalor and the social collapse that +must ensue inevitably on that. In view of the composition of +the Committee, the Majority Report is in itself an amazing +triumph of Sir Richmond's views; it is astonishing that he +was able to drive his opponents so far and then leave them +there securely advanced 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 +exceptional vigour; for a time he completely dominated the +Committee by the passionate force of his convictions 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 increasingly 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 +hitherto mitigated his behaviour on the Committee departed +from him, He carried his last points, gesticulating and +coughing and wheezing rather than speaking. But he had so +hammered his ideas into 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 contained 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, he said, in +his car from Cornwall to a conference with Sir Peter Davies +in Glamorganshire. + +But in the interim Dr. Martineau had the pleasure of meeting +Lady Hardy at a luncheon party. He was seated next 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 together. Either she knew +nothing of the circumstances of their parting or if she did +she did not betray her knowledge. "That holiday did him a +world of good," she said. "He came back to his work like a +giant. I feel very grateful to you." + +Dr. Martineau said it was a pleasure to have helped Sir +Richmond's work in any way. He believed in him thoroughly. +Sir Richmond was inspired 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. + +Section 2 + +It was with some surprise that Dr. Martineau received a fresh +appeal for aid from Sir Richmond. It was late in October and +Sir Richmond 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. Martineau 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 bolstered 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 happens 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, +stethoscope 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 you may go about and still pull through. But at +any time this may pass into pneumonia. And there's not much +in you just now to stand up against pneumonia. . . ." + +"I'll take all reasonable care." + +"Is your wife at home!" + +"She is in Wales with her people. But the household is well +trained. I can manage." + +"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 Commons corridors. . . ." + +They parted with an affectionate handshake. + +Section 3 + +Death approved of Sir Richmond's determination 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 corrections +upon the proofs of the Minority Report. He found it +increasingly difficult to make decisions; 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 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 exasperating 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 a desk and reading lamp for night +work near the fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at +night, a silver biscuit tin; all the apparatus for the lonely +intent industry of the small hours. There was a bookcase of +bluebooks, books of reference and suchlike material, and some +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 working 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. Martineau'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, returning 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." + +"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 Richmond submitted almost +silently to his expert handling and was sounded and looked to +and listened at. + +"H'm," said the second doctor, and then encouragingly 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 +Salisbury. 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 Richmond must have dozed, for his +next perception was of Dr. Martineau standing over him and +saying "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," he said, and after a pause, "Don't +want anybody about." + +"But if anything happens-?" + +"Send then." + +An expression of obstinate calm overspread Sir 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 want things said to +them...Things to remember...I CAN'T. I'm tired out." + +"Don't trouble," whispered Dr. Martineau, suddenly +remorseful. + +But Sir Richmond was also 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 things to say--after +a sleep. But if they came now...I'd say something wrong. Be +cross perhaps. Hurt someone. I've hurt so many. People +exaggerate...People exaggerate--importance these occasions." + +"Yes, yes," whispered Dr. Martineau. "I quite understand." + +Section 4 + +For a time Sir Richmond dozed. Then he stirred and muttered. +"Second rate. . . Poor at the best. . . Love. . . Work. +All. . ." + +"It had been splendid work," said Dr. Martineau, and was not +sure that Sir Richmond heard. + +"Those last few days. . . lost my grip. . . Always lose my +damned grip. + +"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 beyond 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 battlefield. 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. + +"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. + +Section 5 + +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 uncomfortable little bed in his big bedroom and +by the curious effect of loneliness produced by the nocturnal +desk and by the evident dread felt by Sir Richmond of any +death-bed partings. He realized 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 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 figure 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, +enormous cloudy darknesses, above him and below. He was going +along this path without looking back, without a thought for +those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him on +his way, walking 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 enveloping darkness hide +the beginnings of some strange long journey or would it just +dissolve that figure into itself? + +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 figure but still it remained visible. As one +can continue 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 always 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 memories 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 +monsters, ferrying a dark and dreadful stream. He came to the +scales of judgment before the very throne of Osiris and stood +waiting while dogheaded Anubis weighed his conscience and +that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead, crouched ready +if the judgment went against him. The doctor's attention +concentrated upon the scales. A memory of Swedengorg's Heaven +and Hell mingled with the Egyptian fantasy. Now at last it +was possible to know something real about this 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. Suddenly he saw again that lonely +figure on the narrow 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 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. + +Section 6 + +Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr. Martineau's +telegram late on the following evening. He was with her next +morning, comforting and sympathetic. Her big blue eyes, +bright with tears, met his very wistfully; her little body +seemed very small and pathetic in its simple black dress. And +yet there was a sort of bravery about her. When he came into +the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses +talking to a serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type. +She left her business at once to come to him. "Why did I not +know in time?" she cried. + +"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 possible 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 formalities--" + +"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 arrangements. "My daughter Helen +comes home to-morrow afternoon," she explained. "She is in +Paris. But our son is far, far away in the Punjab. 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 Richmond +that had survived even the trying incident of the Salisbury +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 preservative 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 interpretation she had imposed upon him. She was +finding much comfort in this task of reconstruction. She had +gathered together in the drawingroom 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 statuette 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 photograph and some +notes. She flitted among these memorials, going from one to +the other, undecided which to make the standard portrait. " +That painting, I think, is most like," she said: "as he was +before the war. But the war and the Commission changed him,-- +worried him and aged him. . . . I grudged him to that +Commission. He let it worry him frightfully." + +"It meant very much to him," said Dr. Martineau. + +"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. Something a little more real than the ordinary +official biography. . . . I have thought of young Leighton, +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 +writer's gift, doctor." + +Section 7 + +It was on the second afternoon that Lady Hardy summoned Dr. +Martineau by telephone. "Something 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 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 reserved, 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 realizing that this was +a mistake, he said: "He told me the essential facts." + +The poor lady breathed a 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 never met her. Never set eyes on her. For all I know she +may want to make a scene." There was infinite dismay in her +voice. + +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. Suppose +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 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 remained to +be seen to. + +Section 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 +forward the doctor first perceived that she had a very sad +and handsome face, the face of a sensitive 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 painting and stood in +front of it with her distressed gaze wandering about her. +"Horrible!" she said. "Absolutely horrible! . . . Did SHE do +this?" + +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. + +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 +portrait of Aliss 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 presence in the coffin. "I +think he loved," she said. "Sometimes I think he loved me. +But it is hard to tell. He 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 care for +himself. . . . Anyhow, I loved HIM. . . . There is nothing +left in me now to love anyone else--for ever. . . ." + +She put 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 sort of dishonesty in his kindness. He would not +let you have the bitter truth. He would not say he did not +love you. . . . + +"He was too kind to life ever to call it the foolish thing it +is. He took it seriously because it 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 took 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 before 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 coffin. She wept loudly and +fiercely as a child does.... + +Dr. Martineau drifted feebly to the window. + +He wished he had locked the door. The servants 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 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg etext of The Secret Places of the Heart by H. +G. Wells + |