The Secret Places of the Heart

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e imagined. But when he awoke in the night that happiness had evaporated. He awoke suddenly out of this

tual 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 th

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

and you have made her that tremendous promise. That was im

t was her voice; it was the

r. Whatever is not mortgaged to your work is mortgaged to me. For the strange thing in all thi

ds," said the shadow of Martin. "You have no

e desires and think of thi

e 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 fault

rent," argued

h 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 time

e, so much simpler and braver than your own, and exalt

d and body lay ver

I fail

ds passed from the fo

oreseeing his treatment of Miss Grammont had been. It had be

for her became active

ism? 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,

erishes. Perfect

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 g

would have tolerated and taught and inspired. Where there is perfect love there is neither greed nor impatience. He would have

strength. A will that comes and goes. Moods of baseness. Mood

l 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 e

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Grammont from the adventure into which he had drawn her. This decision s

ly in love with her, he was still only learning how deeply, and she was not going to pl

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

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

ociation 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 an

topped sho

f the depths of his heart. "God!

ne business like some poor little ki

Do you hear, Mar

ammont--Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out--traversing Europe a

though these unmannerly and fantas

ow. (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

d, rather like a small boy who

xhausted by moral effort,

ther.... 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 wil

ute I've always

me in a dream to me and t

t NOW--I l

the time the Committee meets again I s

lane and keep them there. Then go back to

purpose. Sir Richmond fell asleep during t

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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 h

from the table by the wi

in which grape fruits are prepared upon liners and in the civilized world

hour. I found a little path down to the river bank. It's the g

chmond. "It's not really a flower;

re are c

TH DELIGHT. All the English flowers come out of Sha

with the tea spoo

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 k

n 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

up their reply at Gloucester or Nailsworth or even Bath itself. So that if your father is near

d interro

as white. "That will d

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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

n fell silent. Then Miss Grammont turned her head and seemed deliberately t

her soft even voice. "We love

not love

sn't a

N

morrow w

I have been thinking of that

t

ou thi

in the world to do except for us to go our ways.... I love you. That means for a woman--It means that I wa

decision, was now moved to oppose it flat

said, "you got back into that car with me; suppose that instead of go

said Sir Richmon

sh 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 sh

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 kee

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

ow 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

s without

in any way that Would affect you, touch you

love, more glad than I have been of anything else in my life, a

a whole day yet, all round the clock

eaking as soon as she

ed, "except the bluebells. Look at this great handful I've gotten

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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 ab

f 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

ed 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 de

ust there be before we reach th

it at a very g

ll the confusio

at lumps of disorderly strength in it, but as a whole it is a weak world. It goes on by habit. There's no great id

uld beli

than you suppose. Are you and I such very s

don't t

ich 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 lov

whispered. "Am I indee

k his head and v

f all things. And I

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 Anglo-Saxondom, by German self-pity,

pped his spark and pulled up neatly within a yard of the fore-wheel of

lmost h

el better?" sai

said Sir Richm

d the road and the

e or so nei

ard for that outbreak,--my

fortunate ones of our time. We have no excuse for misbehaviour. Got nothing to grumb

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 t

swore," smiled

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 f

rophet Martineau,"

I must contrive

. When all these phanton people who intervene on your side--no! I don't want to kno

," said Sir Richmond, with a surprising ferocity in his voice,

tio

y 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 admini

l 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

aying, 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 st

ing this gracious spectacle. "How full it

home we c

ong to i

which stretches its tentacles all over the world. I am as much a home-coming to

m just full of a sort of animal satisfaction in being close to you.... And in

pause, and his face

you to k

ver his shoulder, acutely aware of t

a pr

es

nd most unavoidable of expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon their Planet; it was much more like the

. "After we have parted to-morrow I shall begin to think of them. B

to restore the intellectual d

t 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 th

s servants," sa

mind. That is what I am going to li

ting to-night--in comparison with the touch of your

opic that could hold th

id a word about r

he said. "The stars and space and time overwhelm my imag

. "But there are divi

not just the everyday stuff of them, but something that appears intermittently--as though a light shone through something trans

ssy, 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

his to Dr. Martineau. But he wasn't the priest I had to confess to an

e 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

od side by side saying n

ssed 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

in the world," said Miss Gramm

ck close by proclai

nce heal

said Sir

s Grammont smili

auty now, back to the lights of the hote

very exacting drag

miracle

tch. But she is curious

wonder

ll fishing," sai

in the foam below as though it was the only thing of

fe," she said. "And anyhow--now--

tio

ent. 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

re 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.

train of thought she had been following, "we shall be closer together

We women will not be tied very much by domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have children. We shall be

orld full of lo

re--we two will ce

e circumstances a litt

she said, "with

he asked un

their lovers go away. Even to seeing them go away to other women

gan Sir Richm

tly civilized woman I shouldn't mind at all. If men and women are no

at any rate am not like that. I c

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,

here," he said, "wheth

to Exeter," he r

ed back a

loved, my dear," she wh

he said, and lowered his head and

desire-

... Priestess of

a, up above their lowered heads, accident

travellers before the train came into the station. He parted from Miss Grammont with a hand clasp. Belinda was flushed and distre

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tation. He did not move until it had disappeared round the bend. Then he tur

in my life," he thought. "

ory, 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 t

o letters breathe faster o

may

ever realized before how improbable it is

e be really TOGETHER again. It'

e de

enced 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 feel

t happen. He pulled himself together. What was it he had to do now? He had not to be angry, he

rbuncle. 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

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.

were not

plenishing, and so he would have to go up the hill into Exeter town agai

days for golden kindness. He would distress Martin by no clumsy confession. He woul

failed him or he

. Well, the thing now was to go

ghed s

amned Commission. I'll mak

erest and no trace of fatigue. He had had his change; he had taken his rest; he was equal to

," he