The Secret Places of the Heart

tio

r 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

unch 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 Midl

the company--"in most of the cases anyhow. The two in

e reflec

e rowed the doctor up th

id, returning to the subject, "I

as though he had not thou

ok, tying up, buzzing about in motor launches, fouling other people's boats, are merely the stage business of the drama. The ruli

said Dr. Martineau, after he had done

of quiet industrious soakers. The incurabl

ged Sir Richmond by a

e 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 ca

octor. "You tear th

the place," sa

the place a

ls awash, rippli

r 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 th

back of the human mind?" the doctor suggested. "W

e?" asked Sir Richm

he doctor

nd drive. I admit its discontent with pleasure as an end--but has it any end of its own?

the doctor, with an afternoon smil

tio

Sir Richmond, "I have been trying myself over

," said the doctor w

alled a personality. I cannot discover even a general direction. Much more am I like a taxi-cab in whic

memory?" said the doctor and considered. "More than that. More than

of circumstances that keeps

there is also something, a cons

chan

ntly with

ichmond, going off at a tangent. "My sentimental education.

ese matters than others," said th

entful or not. The brakes may be strong or weak but the drive is the same. I can't r

said the d

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

hite 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

rma

siological 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

ely," said

r goes through the stuffy horrors described in Jam

not re

up in darkness and ignorance to accumulate filth. In the

rri

s, the tensions that make young people

te in those matters nowadays. Where not

in my memory now is this idea, of a sort of woman goddess who was very lovely and kind and powerful a

artineau as a passing botanist m

stared at him

ther or any mother or any particular woman at

perhaps immediately vi

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

ou co-e

r 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

e 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 resorte

ained a simple fo

you meet

ot recognized her. A day or so later I was stabbed to the heart by

had g

r e

brightly at the doct

tio

umed presently. "Never. I do not think any man is. We are too much plastere

s green umbrella, nodde

lation 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

d abruptly and rowe

au sought i

here was a sensuous elem

. It didn't dominate but it w

concentrate? To group itself about a single figure, the s

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 lik

tle thought

youn

es

ceived of, and I was conceived of, as being concerned in some tremendous enterprise--something

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 th

the green umbrella like an animated h

my relations with women. Never. So far as I can analyze the thing, it

p the lovers together in the interest of

ften it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as she is encumb

oded over his sc

ious work. I've travelled much. I've organized great business developments. You might think that my time has been fairly well filled without much ph

aited through a

an 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 de

children by y

t 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 througho

off in mi

shook his head

"it wasn't fair

o her.... Heaven knows what counter disappointments she has concealed.... But it is no good arguin

dge," said Dr. Ma

ops 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 no

ond's voi

to row and rowed perhaps a score of strokes. Then he stopped and the boat dro

g 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

"AS I AM MADE--I do not believe that I could go on without the

u made a rea

ouch 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

pau

, abnormal," cons

existence, no rest, no sort of satisfaction. The world is a battlefield, trenches, barbed wire, rain, mud, logical necessity and utt

said Dr. Martineau.

am made," sai

ow you are made. We are getting to something in all this. It is, I i

on, almost as if

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 the

tio

y 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

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 e

t the sweet rushes and crushed them in her hand. S

finition 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

own what you call an openly bad woma

ick curiosity at his compan

n't attr

repe

thought are old-fashioned, I suppose, but the mere suggestion about a woman that there wer

ession complete

ore he carried the great research into the explorer's country. "You ar

spect

ment of

t way if you like. Anyhow I do not let myse

ng. You lose a re

a thoughtf

friend," said the doctor, "wh

gly interrogative. He had found the effective counterattack and he meant to press i

tio

ce the doctor became bri

and you are a man to respect obligations. I grasp that. Then you tell me of these women who have come and gone

n't pretend to have made my autobio

a special person,

d on my present s

t have dropped from you, I s

mond after a brief pa

der tha

ars and

o to her. That leaves you at loose ends, because for some time, for two or three y

espect your p

ine companionship for weary men. I guess she is a very j

t is a fair description. When she care

zarded the doctor. He exploded a

eningly 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 a

Dr. Martineau. "No doubt

oke with deliberation. "A perfectly aimless, u

d slammed a door. The doctor realized that for the present t

e left of the lock by an occasional stroke. Now with a general air of departure he swun

had tea,"

tio

he carbuncle. The doctor went to his room, ostensibly to write a couple of letters and put on a dinner jacket, but

f very discrepant things were busy in his mind. He had experienced a disconce

f a rake," he

'affairs.' A physiological uneasiness, an imaginative laxity, the temptations of the trip to London--weakness masquerading as a psychol

his own remarks with

s is in much the same case as he is, that does not dismiss the case. It makes it a more important one, much more i

er all, make out a sort

lid c

nd apposed to the fingers of the other. "He makes me bristle because all his lif

iting and sat tapping his pencil-case on the table. "The amazing selfishness of his attitude! I do not think that once--not

espect was formed befor

ink explai

young woman with the carbuncle?... 'Totally

any standards to use women

y stan

d his head slowly with the c

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 ce

e 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 absolute

as prepared in his thoughts to fly high and go far. Without giving any guarantee, of course, t

y 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

tineau, and considered for a time. "Yet--certainly--I am

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, an

n 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 bein

ialized civilizatio

opes of help and direction. Except," the doctor stipulated, "for a few highly developed modern types, most men found

excitingly and competitively for her own pride and glory,

ith the creature?" w

at 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

," noted the doctor's silver pencil; "SEX MAY

ssed out "sex" and wrote

e we want the completest revision of all our standards of sexual obliga

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

h women? Can there

fine to deserve her help. B

e to teach the sexes to get

ould jostle in the streets! But the early Christia

far more seriously as sources of energy--as guardians and helpers of men. And we have to suppress them fa

ade responsible flo

ter since you got hold o

common danger.... The inspector said the man was in a pitiful stat

, telescoped his p

tio

Sir Richmond also had been thinkin

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

end. One does not want to live for sex but only through sex. The main thing in my life has always been my work. Th

lluminating,"

is the defective bearing talks....

led a faint smile o

Sir Richmond. "So long as on

smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, "what is your idea of your work?

e most gen

e most gen

t is hard to put something one is always thinking about in g

o 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

of view. I suppose I have much the same general ide

fe as something that is only just beginning to

said the do

rnish, as you call it, who are becoming dimly awake to what we are, to what we have in comm

rest of Maidenh

ams, greedy solicitudes fill them up. The

, have," doubt

ha

ew 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

rt of

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

creaked as he rolled to and fro with the

this fashion. Something in this fashion. What one calls one

uch bigger,"

the doctor urged, "in so far

a little while. "Of course we trail a

purely egotism. It is no longer, 'I am I' but 'I

ink of life rather as a mind that tries itself over in millio

ms of fuel," sa

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

were to get unlimited energy

s 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

cationally we waste,"

nize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane fuel using. And that s

ok 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 br

entre 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

table that the startled coffee cups cried out upon the tray; "was given to men

ry, I suppos

story is

s of oil are inexhaustible--that you can muddle about with oil anyhow.... Optimism of k

pt silence--as if in u

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 the

are you working for

scussed and reported upon as one affair so that some day

you say? You m

ou can't work it in bits. I want to call in

y--consu

The sooner we scrap this nonsense about an autonomous British Empire complete in itself, con

a difficult proposit

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 again

said Dr.

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 wan

er get your Perm

ne. If I can

whole Committe

e whole Committee isn't again

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 th

ce in fact. This marches ver

ttee, some drive anyhow, towards the decent thing. It is the same drive that drives me. But I am the most driven. It has turned

e. "An increasing force in modern life. In the psychology of a n

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

ow

ame labour representatives, balance with shady new adventurer millionaires, get in still shadier stuff from abroad, let these gentry

m going under the cloak of YOUR Committe

eave things just exactly what they were before. And as I suffer under the misfortune of seeing the thing rather more clearly, I have to

that damned Committee? Why should I do this exhausting inhuman job?.... In their

hrough with it,"

red. 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 repor

ough with it," Dr.

eadable 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

ssness of playin

black silhouette against the lights on the

ppealed. "Why has it been put upon me? Seeing what a

tio

loneliness of yours, said t

OLERABLE

urn to women as you do. You want help; you wa

en quite like that," S

one 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 wr

uppose th

ady that women are necessary

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 re

rther. "I suppose," he

move in his chair, cre

d the doctor, "turned

ade no other answer for th

ompanion to speak, a falling star

e in a God," sa

ashion of a God," said

ichmond. "Nothin

s, this craving for

till in the darkness with our souls crying out for the fellowship of God, demanding some

as never bee

ever had a

ve a feeling of exal

el

ng William James on religious experiences and I was thinking

es

fa

xperience of ineffectual invocation, this appeal to the fading shadow of a vanished God. In the night. In utter loneliness. Answer me! Speak t

au sat with

ong 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 h

ds," said Dr. Martineau--st

o mate. I want fellowship because I am a social animal and I want it from another so

sently. I do not know. Perhaps it last

as for the God of All Things consoling and helping! Imagine it! That up there--having fellowship with