The Secret Places of the Heart

tio

enity 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 discovere

en Avebury, but Dr. Martineau

l long before 2000 B.C. It may be five thousand years old or even more. It is t

acts. The secret places of the

it to amplify his confe

tio

Marlow and had lunched at a riverside inn, returning after a restful hour in an arbour on the lawn of this place to

r the account I tried to give you of my moti

asked t

phere, the proportions.... I don't know if I ga

he doctor remarkably.

lga

sexual psychology is li

ruck upon the sort of thing that

hort 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

hey are easier,"

the outset counts. The more tired one is the more rea

of my work goes, I think we got something like the spirit o

mond went on with an air of having cleared the ground for

irs. Before you realize it your affections are in

ere was a note of genuine self-r

le 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 wh

with any morbid excess of pity," t

robably. I forget ex

offered no

ting 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. S

e suffer FRIGHTFULLY.... W

estly. The doctor controlle

he young lad

ering all right. I've

so much of this affair, I may as well tell you all. It is a

ould always listen to; it was only when people told him t

e seen in the illustrated papers a peculiar sort of humorous illustrations us

ly amusi

e immensely. I'm not the sort of man who waylays and besieges women and girls. I'm not the pursuing type. But I perceiv

aid Dr.

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 s

d y

d 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

the c

d to us. All the time I have been overworking, first at explosi

straught, preoccupied way we are abominably fond of each other. 'Fond' is the

" said Sir Richmond as if he delivered

ry much of

hames 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--w

do not alw

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 lea

ond stopp

is generally her faul

st al

on't?" said th

. The essential incompatibility

d his expression of

nywhere. All she wants is just cardboard and ink. My min

ttle thing m

ways drift round to the same discussion; w

you beg

erfectly contented when I am about.

er pe

ll she wants to do is just to settle down when I am there an

Which haven't yet fitted themselves to people like you two. It is the sense of uncertainty makes her, as you sa

we live in," said Sir Ri

situation, that it is not the individuals to blame

ecting this pacifying suggestion; "she c

t h

eculiarities of our position.... She could be cleverer. Other women

uldn't be the genius she is. She

arkly and desperately. "Perhaps she woul

sed his eyebrows

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 o

not for th

o see her disfigured. She does not understand--" Sir Richmond

let you g

the trouble about educating the girl. Whatever happ

is worryin

sier. It needs constant tact and dexterity to fix thin

mond mus

Leeds's sense of humour. And her powers of expression. She must be attrac

d turned on

t to part from he

ght pain her. But once

t. I believe I

el

y affection

inary--TENDERN

afr

wh

tithe of the ordinary coolheaded calculation of an average woma

e doctor ma

f parting has been very

g her g

it in that wa

fatal operation f

olerable idea. When one is invaded by a flood o

s that the right word,--a

selves threading their way through a little crowd of boating people and lo

nor 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 go

s that Miss Ma

Sir Richm

long

narily difficult to think

tio

eau sought, rather unsuccessfully, to

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

th Sir Richmond was suddenly conclusive. "It's no use," he s

en 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 dir

, bu

a rest a

for Dr. Martinea

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 fel

tio

y. 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

s 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 lone

nd 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

o beasts of burthen. But suppose one day someone were to find a potshe

t 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

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.

ichmond nor the doctor could throw a gleam of light upon the

ppose, is what interests you. A vivid childish mind, I guess, with not a s

the age of about twelve or thirteen--when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and one begins t

hat already?... These people

or the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace of the paintin

or tell them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed the

id the doctor. "So

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 l

one was a child. It is like coming on something that one built u

left its traces in traditions, in mental predisp

ther, 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 w

ll and the setting sun cast long shadows

ncy; "after another four thousand years or so, with different names and ful

ir 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 str

of this ditch here foot by foot--and dry the stuff and sift

tio

moon sinking over beyond Silbury, and then went in and sat by lamplight before a

o go on talking about myself

en," said the d

. I can't tell you how good Avebury has been for me. This afternoon half my c

ng touch o

my damned Committee has

lf in his chair and blinked

ed me to get outside myself, to look at myself as a Case. Now I can even see myself as a remote Case. That

that--quite--yet,

hen I spread myself out there is not much indication of a suppressed wish or of anything masked or

hould say, exceptionally free. Generally you are doing what you want t

of fatigue under irritating circumstances with

ly speaking, at all. You are in open conflict with yourself, upon moral and soc

I sa

tions you have co

did not ans

he 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 mig

elpfully. He added after some seconds, "Milton knew of these t

chokes me," sa

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

. "Incidentally, we may be able to throw a little mo

Richmond. "Let me get right away from ev