THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART

By H. G. Wells

1922

CONTENTS

 Chapter

 1. THE CONSULTATION

 2. LADY HARDY

 3. THE DEPARTURE

 4. AT MAIDENHEAD

 5. 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 accustomedto let in visitors who had this air of being annoyed and finding oneumbrella too numerous for them. It mattered nothing to her that thegentleman was asking for Dr. Martineau as if he was asking for somethingwith an unpleasant taste. Almost imperceptibly she relieved him of hisumbrella and juggled his hat and coat on to a massive mahogany stand. "What name, Sir?" she asked, holding open the door of the consultingroom. 

"Hardy, " said the gentleman, and then yielding it reluctantly with itsdistasteful three-year-old honour, "Sir Richmond Hardy. "

The door closed softly behind him and he found himself in undividedpossession of the large indifferent apartment in which the nervous andmental troubles of the outer world eddied for a time on their way tothe distinguished specialist. A bowl of daffodils, a handsome bookcasecontaining bound Victorian magazines and antiquated medical works, somepaintings of Scotch scenery, three big armchairs, a buhl clock, anda bronze Dancing Faun, by their want of any collective idea enhancedrather than mitigated the promiscuous disregard of the room. He driftedto the midmost of the three windows and stared out despondently atHarley Street. 

For a minute or so he remained as still and limp as an empty jacket onits 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 tohear. Then he turned round. "I don't see what you can do for me, " hesaid. 

"I'm sure _I_ don't, " said the doctor. "People come here and talk. "

There was something reassuringly inaggressive about the figure thatconfronted Sir Richmond. Dr. Martineau's height wanted at least threeinches of Sir Richmond's five feet eleven; he was humanly plump, hisface was round and pink and cheerfully wistful, a little suggestive ofthe full moon, of what the full moon might be if it could get fresh airand exercise. Either his tailor had made his trousers too short or hehad braced them too high so that he seemed to have grown out of themquite recently. Sir Richmond had been dreading an encounter with somedominating and mesmeric personality; this amiable presence dispelled hispreconceived resistances. 

Dr. Martineau, a little out of breath as though he had been runningupstairs, with his hands in his trouser pockets, seemed intent only ondisavowals. "People come here and talk. It does them good, and sometimesI 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 neverhurt anyone. Fatigue stops that. A man can work--good straightforwardwork, without internal resistance, until he drops, --and never hurthimself. 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 VITALLYimportant. "

He stressed his words and reinforced them with a quivering gestureof his upraised clenched hand. "My temper's in rags. I explode at anylittle thing. I'm RAW. I can't work steadily for ten minutes and I can'tleave off working. "

"Your name, " said the doctor, "is familiar. Sir Richmond Hardy? In thepapers. What is it?"

"Fuel. "

"Of course! The Fuel Commission. Stupid of me! We certainly can't affordto 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 nationalfuel supply. And waste it! For their profits. That's what I'm upagainst. You don't know the job I have to do. You don't know what aCommission of that sort is. The moral tangle of it. You don't know howits possibilities and limitations are canvassed and schemed about, longbefore a single member is appointed. Old Cassidy worked the whole thingwith the prime minister. I can see that now as plain as daylight. Imight have seen it at first.... Three experts who'd been got at; theythought _I_'d been got at; two Labour men who'd do anything you wantedthem to do provided you called them 'level-headed. ' Wagstaffe thesocialist art critic who could be trusted to play the fool and makenationalization 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 beforethe war it was different. Then there was abundance. A little grabbingor cornering was all to the good. All to the good. It prevented thingsbeing used up too fast. And the world was running by habit; the inertiawas tremendous. You could take all sorts of liberties. But all thisis altered. We're living in a different world. The public won't standthings it used to stand. It's a new public. It's--wild. It'll smash upthe 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 hadchanged.... Strikes, Russia, nothing will warn them. There are men onthat Commission who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway justbefore 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 ofpeople I find think that, " said the doctor. "All sorts of people lieawake 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 andseemed to reflect. But he was observing his patient acutely--with hisears. 

"But you see how important it is, " said Sir Richmond, and left hissentence unfinished. 

"I'll do what I can for you, " said the doctor, and considered swiftlywhat line of talk he had best follow. 

Section 2

"This sense of a coming smash is epidemic, " said the doctor. "It's atthe 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 isalmost the normal state with whole classes of intelligent people. Intelligent, I say. The others always have been casual and adventurousand always will be. A loss of confidence in the general background oflife. 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 daysof our assurance. There is a discord, a jarring. "

The doctor pursued his train of thought. "A new, raw and dreadful senseof responsibility for the universe. Accompanied by a realization thatthe job is overwhelmingly too big for us. "

"We've got to stand up to the job, " said Sir Richmond. "Anyhow, whatelse is there to do? We MAY keep things together.... I've got to do mybit. 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 desirousto work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willedand inaccurate.... Sloppy.... Indolent.... VICIOUS!... "

The doctor was about to speak, but Sir Richmond interrupted him. "What'sgot hold of me? What's got hold of me? I used to work well enough. It'sas if my will had come untwisted and was ravelling out into separatestrands. I've lost my unity. I'm not a man but a mob. I've got torecover my vigour. At any cost. "

Again as the doctor was about to speak the word was taken out of hismouth. "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. Andtoo austere. One strains and fags. FLAGS! 'Flags' I meant to say. Onestrains and flags and then the lower stuff in one, the subconsciousstuff, takes control. "

There was a flavour of popularized psychoanalysis about this, and thedoctor drew in the corners of his mouth and gave his head a criticalslant. "M'm. " But this only made Sir Richmond raise his voice andquicken his speech. "I want, " he said, "a good tonic. A pick-me-up, a stimulating harmless drug of some sort. That's indicated anyhow. Tobegin with. Something to pull me together, as people say. Bring me up tothe 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'ssuperstition. 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 tostimulants? Or reaction after them? When I'm exhausted I want food. WhenI'm overactive and sleepless I want tranquillizing. When I'm dispersed Iwant 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 oppositeside of Harley Street. His manner suggested a lecturer holding on to histheme. 

"A day will come when we shall be able to manipulate drugs--all sortsof drugs--and work them in to our general way of living. I have noprejudice against them at all. A time will come when we shall correctour moods, get down to our reserves of energy by their help, suspendfatigue, put off sleep during long spells of exertion. At some suddencrisis for example. When we shall know enough to know just how far togo with this, that or the other stuff. And how to wash out its aftereffects.... I quite agree with you, --in principle.... But that timehasn't come yet.... Decades of research yet.... If we tried that sortof thing now, we should be like children playing with poisons andexplosives.... It's out of the question. "

"I've been taking a few little things already. Easton Syrup forexample. "

"Strychnine. It carries you for a time and drops you by the way. Has itdone 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 histroubled face. 

"Given physiological trouble I don't mind resorting to a drug. Givenstructural injury I don't mind surgery. But except for any littlemischief your amateur drugging may have done you do not seem to me tobe either sick or injured. You've no trouble either of structure ormaterial. You are--worried--ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectlysound. It's the current of your thoughts, fermenting. If the trouble isin 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 orthat 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 scarcelytime enough to begin. "

"You're certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosentonics--"

"Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it. " He decided to take a plunge. "I've justbeen thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I'd like to see youthrough this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be somesort 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 againnow, --after all the rain we have had. I have a little two-seater. Idon't know.... The repair people promise to release it before Friday. "

"But _I_ have a choice of two very comfortable little cars. Why not bemy 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 thewayside. 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 ownrash proposal, "in travelling along roads you don't know and seeinghouses and parks and villages and towns for which you do not feel inthe slightest degree responsible. They hide all their troubles from theroad. Their backyards are tucked away out of sight, they show a braveface; there's none of the nasty self-betrayals of the railway approach. And everything will be fresh still. There will still be a lot ofapple-blossom--and bluebells.... And all the while we can be getting onwith 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 faggedand 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 herewe are. 

"A man, " the doctor expanded, "isn't a creature in vacuo. He's himselfand his world. He's a surface of contact, a system of adaptations, between his essential self and his surroundings. Well, our surroundingshave become--how shall I put it?--a landslide. The war which seemedsuch a definable catastrophe in 1914 was, after all, only the first loudcrack and smash of the collapse. The war is over and--nothing is over. This peace is a farce, reconstruction an exploded phrase. The slide goeson, --it goes, if anything, faster, without a sign of stopping. And allour poor little adaptations! Which we have been elaborating and trustingall 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 timesnowadays 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? Itisn'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 thisgreat war that was coming, but nobody thought it would come. We had beenborn in peace, comparatively speaking; we had been brought up in peace. There was talk of wars. There were wars--little wars--that alterednothing material.... Consols used to be at 112 and you fed yourhousehold on ten shillings a head a week. You could run over all Europe, barring Turkey and Russia, without even a passport. You could get toItaly in a day. Never were life and comfort so safe--for respectablepeople. And we WERE respectable people.... That was the world that madeus what we are. That was the sheltering and friendly greenhouse inwhich we grew. We fitted our minds to that.... And here we are with thegreenhouse falling in upon us lump by lump, smash and clatter, the wildwinds of heaven tearing in through the gaps. "

Upstairs on Dr. Martineau's desk lay the typescript of the openingchapters of a book that was intended to make a great splash in theworld, 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 buildingits nest of frozen snakes. My father left me a decent independence. Ideveloped my position; I have lived between here and the hospital, doinggood work, enormously interested, prosperous, mildly distinguished. Ihad been born and brought up on the good ship Civilization. I assumedthat someone else was steering the ship all right. I never knew; I neverenquired. "

"Nor did I, " said Sir Richmond, "but--"

"And nobody was steering the ship, " the doctor went on. "Nobody had eversteered the ship. It was adrift. "

"I realized that. I--"

"It is a new realization. Always hitherto men have lived by faith--aschildren do, as the animals do. At the back of the healthy mind, humanor animal, has been this persuasion: 'This is all right. This will goon. If I keep the rule, if I do so and so, all will be well. I need nottrouble 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 fullmoon increased. He seemed to gaze at remote things. "It may very wellbe that man is no more capable of living out of that atmosphere ofassurance than a tadpole is of living out of water. His mentalexistence may be conditional on that. Deprived of it he may becomeincapable of sustained social life. He may become franticallyself-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 fittogether no longer. We are--loose. We don't know where we are nor whatto 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 onewho 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. IHAVE adapted. I have thought things out. I think--much as you do. Muchas you do. So it's not that. But--... Mind you, I am perfectly clearwhere I am. Where we are. What is happening to us all is the breakupof the entire system. Agreed! We have to make another system or perishamidst the wreckage. I see that clearly. Science and plan have toreplace 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 someways it's an enormously attractive enterprise. Inspiring. It grips myimagination. I think of the other men who must be at work. Working as Ido rather in the dark as yet. With whom I shall presently join up... Theattempt may fail; all things human may fail; but on the other handit may succeed. I never had such faith in anything as I have in therightness of the work I am doing now. I begin at that. But here is wheremy difficulty comes in. The top of my brain, my innermost self says allthat I have been saying, but--The rest of me won't follow. The rest ofme 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 tremendousnecessity--for work--for devotion; I believe my share, the work I amdoing, is essential to the whole thing--and I work sluggishly. I workreluctantly. I work damnably. "

"Exact--" The doctor checked himself. "All that is explicable. Indeed itis. Listen for a moment to me! Consider what you are. Consider whatwe are. Consider what a man is before you marvel at his ineptitudesof will. Face the accepted facts. Here is a creature not ten thousandgenerations from the ape, his ancestor. Not ten thousand. And that apeagain, not a score of thousands from the monkey, his forebear. A man'sbody, his bodily powers, are just the body and powers of an ape, alittle improved, a little adapted to novel needs. That brings me to mypoint. CAN HIS MIND AND WILL BE ANYTHING BETTER? For a few generations, a few hundreds at most, knowledge and wide thought have flared out onthe darknesses of life.... But the substance of man is ape still. He maycarry a light in his brain, but his instincts move in the darkness. Outof 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 Iwill confess that I owe much to the psychoanalyst--what he does is todirect thwarted, disappointed and perplexed people to the realities oftheir own nature. Which they have been accustomed to ignore andforget. They come to us with high ambitions or lovely illusions aboutthemselves, torn, shredded, spoilt. They are morally denuded. Dreamsthey hate pursue them; abhorrent desires draw them; they are the prey ofirresistible 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 anythingelse.... Do you realize that a few million generations ago, everythingthat stirs in us, everything that exalts human life, self-devotions, heroisms, the utmost triumphs of art, the love--for love it is--thatmakes you and me care indeed for the fate and welfare of all this roundworld, was latent in the body of some little lurking beast that crawledand hid among the branches of vanished and forgotten Mesozoic trees?A petty egg-laying, bristle-covered beast it was, with no more of therudiments of a soul than bare hunger, weak lust and fear.... Peoplealways 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. Thatis what you are made of. Why should you expect--because a war and arevolution have shocked you--that you should suddenly be able to reachup 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 abovehim--that he is just a hairy reptile twice removed--and all that sort ofthing?"

"Well, it saves him from hoping too much and being too greatlydisappointed. It recalls him to the proportions of the job. He getssomething done by not attempting everything. ... And it clears him up. We get him to look into himself, to see directly and in measurableterms what it is that puts him wrong and holds him back. He's no longervaguely 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, inthinking about myself. I wanted to forget myself. "

"Like a man who tries to forget that his petrol is running short anda cylinder missing fire.... No. Come back to the question of what youare, " said the doctor. "A creature of the darkness with new lights. Litand half-blinded by science and the possibilities of controlling theworld that it opens out. In that light your will is all for service;you care more for mankind than for yourself. You begin to understandsomething of the self beyond your self. But it is a partial and a shadedlight as yet; a little area about you it makes clear, the rest isstill the old darkness--of millions of intense and narrow animalgenerations.... You are like someone who awakens out of an immemorialsleep to find himself in a vast chamber, in a great and ancient house, agreat and ancient house high amidst frozen and lifeless mountains--in asunless universe. You are not alone in it. You are not lord of all yousurvey. Your leadership is disputed. The darkness even of the room youare in is full of ancient and discarded but quite unsubjugated powersand purposes.... They thrust ambiguous limbs and claws suddenly out ofthe darkness into the light of your attention. They snatch things outof your hand, they trip your feet and jog your elbow. They crowd andcluster behind you. Wherever your shadow falls, they creep right up toyou, creep upon you and struggle to take possession of you. The soulsof apes, monkeys, reptiles and creeping things haunt the passages andattics and cellars of this living house in which your consciousness hasawakened.... "

The doctor gave this quotation from his unpublished book the advantagesof an abrupt break and a pause. 

Sir Richmond shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "And you propose avermin hunt in the old tenement?"

"The modern man has to be master in his own house. He has to take stockand know what is there. "

"Three weeks of self vivisection. "

"To begin with. Three weeks of perfect honesty with yourself. As anopening.... It will take longer than that if we are to go through withthe 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--wecan break off at any time.... We'll try it. We'll try it.... And so forthis journey into the west of England.... And--if we can get there--I'mnot 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 hadshown when entering it. Dr. Martineau had thrust him back from hisintenser prepossessions to a more generalized view of himself, had madehis troubles objective and detached him from them. He could even findsomething amusing now in his situation. He liked the immense scope ofthe theoretical duet in which they had indulged. He felt that most of itwas entirely true--and, in some untraceable manner, absurd. There wereentertaining possibilities in the prospect of the doctor drawing himout--he himself partly assisting and partly resisting. 

He was a man of extensive reservations. His private life was in somerespects exceptionally private. 

"I don't confide.... Do I even confide in myself? I imagine I do.... Isthere 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 deskand his writing table were piled high with a heavy burthen of work. Still a little preoccupied with Dr. Martineau's exposition, he began tohandle this confusion.... 

At half past nine he found himself with three hours of good work behindhim. 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-facehave 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 hearthe gong. "

He went downstairs and found Lady Hardy reading a magazine in adining-room armchair and finely poised between devotion and martyrdom. Ashadow 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 nogongs when we were alone. I did come up to your door about half pasteight. 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 thehearthrug. 

"I'm glad, " said Lady Hardy, without gladness. "I waited for threehours. "

Lady Hardy was a frail little blue-eyed woman with uneven shoulders anda delicate sweet profile. Hers was that type of face that under eventhe most pleasant and luxurious circumstances still looks bravely andpatiently enduring. Her refinement threw a tinge of coarseness over hiseager 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 thatnerves 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, heseemed to answer unspoken accusations. "Dr. Martineau's idea is that heshould 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'llbe as good company as anyone.... This TOURNEDOS looks excellent. Havesome. "

"I had a little bird, " said Lady Hardy, "when I found you weren'tcoming. "

"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 knewher duty better. "Perhaps I'll have a little ice pudding when it comes, "she said. 

Sir Richmond detested eating alone in an atmosphere of observantcriticism. And he did not like talking with his mouth full to anunembarrassed interlocutor who made no conversational leads of her own. After a few mouthfuls he pushed his plate away from him. "Then let'shave 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, herdelicate eyebrows raised, and the corners of her mouth drooping, shetouched 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. Andbetween their first meeting and the appointed morning both Sir RichmondHardy and Dr. Martineau were the prey of quite disagreeable doubts abouteach other, themselves, and the excursion before them. At the timeof their meeting each had been convinced that he gauged the othersufficiently for the purposes of the proposed tour. Afterwards eachfound himself trying to recall the other with greater distinctnessand 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 ofa monster obdurate and hostile, he spread upwards until like the Djinnout of the bottle, he darkened the heavens. And he talked too much. Hetalked ever so much too much. Sir Richmond also thought that the doctortalked too much. In addition, he read into his imperfect memory of thedoctor's face, an expression of protruded curiosity. What was all thisproblem of motives and inclinations that they were "going into" sogaily? He had merely consulted the doctor on a simple, straightforwardneed for a nervous tonic--that was what he had needed--a tonic. Insteadhe 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 oneach other again. Indeed each was surprised to find something almostagreeable in the appearance of the other. Dr. Martineau at onceperceived that the fierceness of Sir Richmond was nothing more than thefierceness of an overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glancethat the curiosity of Dr. Martineau's bearing had in it nothing personalor base; it was just the fine alertness of the scientific mind. 

Sir Richmond had arrived nearly forty minutes late, and it would havebeen evident to a much less highly trained observer than Dr. Martineauthat some dissension had arisen between the little, ladylike, cream andblack Charmeuse car and its owner. There was a faint air of resentmentand protest between them. As if Sir Richmond had been in some way rudeto it. 

The cap of the radiator was adorned with a little brass figure of aflying Mercury. Frozen in a sprightly attitude, its stiff bound and itsfixed heavenward stare was highly suggestive of a forced and tactfuldisregard of current unpleasantness. 

Nothing was said, however, to confirm or dispel this suspicion of adisagreement between the man and the car. Sir Richmond directed andassisted Dr. Martineau's man to adjust the luggage at the back, and Dr. Martineau watched the proceedings from his dignified front door. He waswearing a suit of fawn tweeds, a fawn Homburg hat and a light Burberry, with just that effect of special preparation for a holiday which betraysthe habitually busy man. Sir Richmond's brown gauntness was, he noted, greatly set off by his suit of grey. There had certainly been some sortof quarrel. Sir Richmond was explaining the straps to Dr. Martineau'sbutler with the coldness a man betrays when he explains the uncongenialhabits of some unloved intimate. And when the moment came to start andthe 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 entirelyconfidential communication to the little car. And it was an extremelylow and disagreeable word. So Dr. Martineau decided that it was not hisbusiness to hear it.... 

It was speedily apparent that Sir Richmond was an experienced andexcellent driver. He took the Charmeuse out into the traffic ofBaker Street and westward through brisk and busy streets and roadsto Brentford and Hounslow smoothly and swiftly, making a score ofunhesitating and accurate decisions without apparent thought. Therewas very little conversation until they were through Brentford. NearShepherd's Bush, Sir Richmond had explained, "This is not my ownparticular car. That was butted into at the garage this morning andits radiator cracked. So I had to fall back on this. It's quite a goodlittle car. In its way. My wife drives it at times. It has one or twoconstitutional weaknesses--incidental to the make--gear-box over theback axle for example--gets all the vibration. Whole machine rather onthe flimsy side. Still--"

He left the topic at that. 

Dr. Martineau said something of no consequence about its being a verycomfortable little car. 

Somewhere between Brentford and Hounslow, Sir Richmond plunged intothe matter between them. "I don't know how deep we are going into thesepsychological probings of yours, " he said. "But I doubt very much if weshall 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 anythingpositively wrong with me. A certain lack of energy--"

"Lack of balance, " corrected the doctor. "You are wasting energy uponinternal friction. "

"But isn't that inevitable? No machine is perfectly efficient. No maneither. There is always a waste. Waste of the type; waste of theindividual idiosyncrasy. This little car, for instance, isn't pulling asshe ought to pull--she never does. She's low in her class. So withmyself; there is a natural and necessary high rate of energy waste. Moods of apathy and indolence are natural to me. (Damn that omnibus! Allover 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 newmethods of treatment are based on the idea of imperfection. We beginwith that. I began with that last Tuesday.... "

Sir Richmond, too, was sticking to his argument. "A man, and forthat matter the world he lives in, is a tangle of accumulations. Yourpsychoanalyst starts, it seems to me, with a notion of stripping downto 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. Alllife 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 incompatiblethings. Mankind, all life, is that. "

"But our concern is the particular score of incompatible things you areurged to do. We examine and weigh--we weigh--"

The doctor was still saying these words when a violent and ultimatelydisastrous struggle began between Sir Richmond and the little Charmeusecar. The doctor stopped in mid-sentence. 

It was near Taplow station that the mutual exasperation of man andmachine was brought to a crisis by the clumsy emergence of a laundrycart from a side road. Sir Richmond was obliged to pull up smartly andstopped his engine. It refused an immediate obedience to the electricstarter. Then it picked up, raced noisily, disengaged great volumes ofbluish smoke, and displayed an unaccountable indisposition to run on anygear but the lowest. Sir Richmond thought aloud, unpleasing thoughts. He addressed the little car as a person; he referred to ancient disputesand temperamental incompatibilities. His anger betrayed him a coarse, ill-bred man. The little car quickened under his reproaches. There weresome moments of hope, dashed by the necessity of going dead slow behindan interloping van. Sir Richmond did not notice the outstretched armof the driver of the van, and stalled his engine for a second time. Theelectric 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. "Imust wind it up. "

"I get out, don't I?" asked the doctor, unanswered, and did so. SirRichmond, after a grim search and the displacement and replacement ofthe luggage, produced a handle from the locker at the back of the carand prepared to wind. 

There was a little difficulty. "Come UP!" he said, and the small engineroared out like a stage lion. 

The two gentlemen resumed their seats. The car started and then by anunfortunate inadvertency Sir Richmond pulled the gear lever over fromthe first speed to the reverse. There was a metallic clangour beneaththe two gentlemen, and the car slowed down and stopped although theengine was still throbbing wildly, and the dainty veil of blue smokestill 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 decentBritish citizen. He made some blind lunges at the tremulous but obduratecar, but rather as if he looked for offences and accusations than fordisplacements to adjust. Quivering and refusing, the little car wasextraordinarily like some recalcitrant little old aristocratic ladyin the hands of revolutionaries, and this made the behaviour of SirRichmond seem even more outrageous than it would otherwise have done. Hestopped the engine, he went down on his hands and knees in the road topeer up at the gear-box, then without restoring the spark, he triedto wind up the engine again. He spun the little handle with an insaneviolence, faster and faster for--as it seemed to the doctor--the betterpart of a minute. Beads of perspiration appeared upon his brow and rantogether; 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, heassailed the car. He smote the brazen Mercury from its foothold and sentit and a part of the radiator cap with it flying across the road. Hebeat at the wings of the bonnet, until they bent in under his blows. Finally, he hurled the starting-handle at the wind-screen and smashedit. The starting-handle rattled over the bonnet and fell to theground.... 

The paroxysm was over. Ten seconds later this cataclysmal lunatic hadreverted to sanity--a rather sheepish sanity. 

He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and turned his back on thecar. He remarked in a voice of melancholy detachment: "It was a mistaketo bring that coupe. "

Dr. Martineau had assumed an attitude of trained observation on the sidepath. His hands rested on his hips and his hat was a little on oneside. He was inclined to agree with Sir Richmond. "I don't know, " heconsidered. "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 staringat it as if he expected it to display some surprising and yet familiarfeatures. Then he looked questioningly and suspiciously at hiscompanion. 

"These outbreaks do nothing to amend the originating grievance, " saidthe doctor. "No. And at times they are even costly. But they certainlylift a burthen from the nervous system.... And now I suppose we have toget that little ruin to Maidenhead. "

"Little ruin!" repeated Sir Richmond. "No. There's lots of life in thelittle 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 GetYou Home. We shall have to hail some passing car to take it intoMaidenhead. "

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 itmay. "

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 thepatient ends and the host begins.... I'm really very sorry. " He revertedto his original train of thought which had not concerned Dr. Martineauat all. "After all, the little car was only doing what she was made todo. "

Section 2

The affair of the car effectively unsealed Sir Richmond's mind. HithertoDr. Martineau had perceived the possibility and danger of a defensivesilence or of a still more defensive irony; but now that Sir Richmondhad once given himself away, he seemed prepared to give himself away toan unlimited extent. He embarked upon an apologetic discussion of thecholeric temperament. 

He began as they stood waiting for the relief car from the Maidenheadgarage. "You were talking of the ghosts of apes and monkeys thatsuddenly 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 fromgorillas. "

"Queer thing a fit of rage is!"

"It's one of nature's cruder expedients. Crude, but I doubt if it isfundamental. There doesn't seem to be rage in the vegetable world, andeven among the animals--? No, it is not universal. " He ran his mind overclasses and orders. "Wasps and bees certainly seem to rage, but if onecomes 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 atowering passion or an oyster slamming its shell behind it. But theseare sluggish things. Oysters sulk, which is after all a smouldering sortof rage. And take any more active invertebrate. Take a spider. Nota smashing and swearing sort of rage perhaps, but a disciplined, cold-blooded malignity. Crabs fight. A conger eel in a boat will ragedangerously. "

"A vertebrate. Yes. But even among the vertebrata; who has ever seen afurious 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 forkat my elder brother and it stuck in his forehead, doing no seriousdamage--happily. There were whole days of wrath--days, as I rememberthem. Perhaps they were only hours.... I've never thought before whata peculiar thing all this raging is in the world. WHY do we rage? Theyused to say it was the devil. If it isn't the devil, then what the devilis it? After all, " he went on as the doctor was about to answer hisquestion; "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 asman is concerned, is understood to be the ancestral ape. And moreparticularly 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 thedoctor's qualification. "Why male? Don't little girls smash things justas much?"

"They don't, " said Dr. Martineau. "Not nearly as much. "

Sir Richmond went off at a tangent again. "I suppose you have watchedany number of babies?"'

"Not nearly as many as a general practitioner would do. There's a lot ofrage about most of them at first, male or female. "

"Queer little eddies of fury.... Recently--it happens--I've been seeingone. A spit of red wrath, clenching its fists and squalling threats at adamned disobedient universe. "

The doctor was struck by an idea and glanced quickly and questioninglyat 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 thelittle beast squalling itself crimson for? Ultimately? ... What is itclutching 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 youwould be in line with the psychoanalysts. They talk of LIBIDO, meaninga sort of fundamental desire. Jung speaks of it at times almost as if itwere the universal driving force. "

"No, " said Sir Richmond, in love with his new idea. "Not desire. Desirewould have a definite direction, and that is just what this drivingforce hasn't. It's rage. "

"Yours the car in distress what sent this?" the voice repeated. It wasthe voice of a mechanic in an Overland car. He was holding up the bluerequest 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 withSir Richmond and Dr. Martineau, the brass Mercury lay unheeded in thedusty 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 thegleam of brass he knew that he had made the find of his life. But hisnurse 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 seena goldennimage. 

"Arst yer 'ow you come by it and look pretty straight at you. "

All of which grumblings Master Harry treated with an experienceddisregard. He knew definitely that he would never relinquish this brightand lovely possession again. It was the first beautiful thing he hadever possessed. He was the darling of fond and indulgent parents and hisnursery was crowded with hideous rag and sawdust dolls, golliwogs, comicpenguins, comic lions, comic elephants and comic policemen and everyvariety 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, beforethe affinity of that clean-limbed, shining figure and his small soul wasrecognized. But he carried his point at last. The Mercury became hisinseparable darling, his symbol, his private god, the one dignifiedand serious thing in a little life much congested by the quaint, theburlesque, 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 psychiatriststook up their quarters at the Radiant Hotel with its pleasant lawns andgraceful landing stage at the bend towards the bridge. Sir Richmond, after some trying work at the telephone, got into touch with his ownproper 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 wasstill young, and after lunch and coffee upon a sunny lawn a boat seemedindicated. Sir Richmond astonished the doctor by going to his room, reappearing dressed in tennis flannels and looking very well in them. Itoccurred to the doctor as a thing hitherto unnoted that Sir Richmond wasnot indifferent to his personal appearance. The doctor had no flannels, but he had brought a brown holland umbrella lined with green that he hadacquired long ago in Algiers, and this served to give him something ofthe riverside quality. 

The day was full of sunshine and the river had a Maytime animation. Pinkgeraniums, vivid green lawns, gay awnings, bright glass, white paint andshining metal set the tone of Maidenhead life. At lunch there had beenfive or six small tables with quietly affectionate couples who talked inundertones, a tableful of bright-coloured Jews who talked in overtones, and a family party from the Midlands, badly smitten with shyness, whodid not talk at all. "A resort, of honeymoon couples, " said the doctor, and then rather knowingly: "Temporary honeymoons, I fancy, in one or twoof the cases. "

"Decidedly temporary, " said Sir Richmond, considering the company--"inmost of the cases anyhow. The two in the corner might be married. Younever know nowadays. "

He became reflective.... 

After lunch and coffee he rowed the doctor up the river towardsCliveden. 

"The last time I was here, " he said, returning to the subject, "I washere on a temporary honeymoon. "

The doctor tried to look as though he had not thought that could bepossible. 

"I know my Maidenhead fairly well, " said Sir Richmond. "Aquaticactivities, 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 thisplace are love--largely illicit--and persistent drinking.... Don't youthink the bridge charming from here?"

"I shouldn't have thought--drinking, " said Dr. Martineau, after he haddone 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 wenton, "we shall have to give some attention to this Maidenhead side oflife. It is very material to my case. I have, --as I have said--BEENHERE. This place has beauty and charm; these piled-up woods behind whichmy Lords Astor and Desborough keep their state, this shining mirrorof the water, brown and green and sky blue, this fringe of reeds andscented rushes and forget-me-not and lilies, and these perpetuallyposing white swans: they make a picture. A little artificial it is true;one feels the presence of a Conservancy Board, planting the rushes andindustriously nicking the swans; but none the less delightful. And thissetting has appealed to a number of people as an invitation, as, in away, a promise. They come here, responsive to that promise of beautyand happiness. They conceive of themselves here, rowing swiftly andgracefully, punting beautifully, brandishing boat-hooks with ease andcharm. They look to meet, under pleasant or romantic circumstances, other possessors and worshippers of grace and beauty here. There willbe glowing evenings, warm moonlight, distant voices singing.... There isyour desire, doctor, the desire you say is the driving force of life. But reality mocks it. Boats bump and lead to coarse ungraciousquarrels; rowing can be curiously fatiguing; punting involves dreadfulindignities. The romance here tarnishes very quickly. Romanticencounters fail to occur; in our impatience we resort to--accosting. Chilly mists arise from the water and the magic of distant singingis provided, even excessively, by boatloads of cads--with collectingdishes. When the weather keeps warm there presently arises anextraordinary multitude of gnats, and when it does not there is a needfor stimulants. That is why the dreamers who come here first for a lightdelicious brush with love, come down at last to the Thamesside barmaidwith her array of spirits and cordials as the quintessence of alldesire. "

"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'sdown underneath, sulking and smouldering. Every now and then it strainsand cracks the surface. This stretch of the Thames, this pleasurestretch, has in fact a curiously quarrelsome atmosphere. People scoldand insult one another for the most trivial things, for passing tooclose, for taking the wrong side, for tying up or floating loose. Mostof these notice boards on the bank show a thoroughly nasty spirit. People on the banks jeer at anyone in the boats. You hear peoplequarrelling in boats, in the hotels, as they walk along the towing path. There is remarkably little happy laughter here. The RAGE, you see, ishostile to this place, the RAGE breaks through.... The people whodrift from one pub to another, drinking, the people who fuddle in theriverside hotels, are the last fugitives of pleasure, trying to forgetthe rage.... "

"Isn't it that there is some greater desire at the back of the humanmind?" the doctor suggested. "Which refuses to be content with pleasureas 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 nameit. It is just blind drive. I admit its discontent with pleasure as anend--but has it any end of its own? At the most you can say that therage in life is seeking its desire and hasn't found it. "

"Let us help in the search, " said the doctor, with an afternoon smileunder his green umbrella. "Go on. "

Section 2

"Since our first talk in Harley Street, " said Sir Richmond, "I have beentrying 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 discovereven a general direction. Much more am I like a taxi-cab in which allsorts of aims and desires have travelled to their destination and gotout. Are we all like that?"

"A bundle held together by a name and address and a certain thread ofmemory?" said the doctor and considered. "More than that. More thanthat. We have leading ideas, associations, possessions, liabilities. "

"We build ourselves a prison of circumstances that keeps us fromcomplete 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 itdiffers very widely from yours or most men's. "

"Some men are more eventful in these matters than others, " said thedoctor, --it sounded--wistfully. 

"They have the same jumble of motives and traditions, I suspect, whetherthey are eventful or not. The brakes may be strong or weak but the driveis the same. I can't remember much of the beginnings of curiosity andknowledge in these matters. Can you?"

"Not much, " said the doctor. "No. "

"Your psychoanalysts tell a story of fears, suppressions, monstrousimaginations, symbolic replacements. I don't remember much of that sortof thing in my own case. It may have faded out of my mind. There wereprobably some uneasy curiosities, a grotesque dream or so perhaps; Ican't recall anything of that sort distinctly now. I had a very livelyinterest in women, even when I was still quite a little boy, and acertain--what shall I call it?--imaginative slavishness--not towardsactual women but towards something magnificently feminine. My firstlove--"

Sir Richmond smiled at some secret memory. "My first love was Britanniaas depicted by Tenniel in the cartoons in PUNCH. I must have been a verylittle chap at the time of the Britannia affair. I just clung to her inmy imagination and did devoted things for her. Then I recall, a littlelater, a secret abject adoration for the white goddesses of the CrystalPalace. Not for any particular one of them that I can remember, --for allof them. But I don't remember anything very monstrous or incestuousin my childish imaginations, --such things as Freud, I understand, laysstress upon. If there was an Oedipus complex or anything of that sortin my case it has been very completely washed out again. Perhaps a childwhich is brought up in a proper nursery of its own and sees a lot ofpictures of the nude human body, and so on, gets its mind shifted offany possible concentration upon the domestic aspect of sex. I got todefinite knowledge pretty early. By the time I was eleven or twelve. "

"Normally?"

"What is normally? Decently, anyhow. Here again I may be forgetting muchsecret and shameful curiosity. I got my ideas into definite form out ofa little straightforward physiological teaching and some dissecting ofrats and mice. My schoolmaster was a capable sane man in advance ofhis times and my people believed in him. I think much of this distortedperverse stuff that grows up in people's minds about sex and developsinto evil vices and still more evil habits, is due to the mystery wemake about these things. "

"Not entirely, " said the doctor. 

"Largely. What child under a modern upbringing ever goes through thestuffy horrors described in James Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AYOUNG MAN. "

"I've not read it. "

"A picture of the Catholic atmosphere; a young soul shut up in darknessand ignorance to accumulate filth. In the name of purity and decency andunder threats of hell fire. "

"Horrible!"

"Quite. A study of intolerable tensions, the tensions that make youngpeople 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, " saidSir Richmond. "What stands out in my memory now is this idea, of asort of woman goddess who was very lovely and kind and powerful andwonderful. That ruled my secret imaginations as a boy, but it was verymuch in my mind as I grew up. "

"The mother complex, " said Dr. Martineau as a passing botanist mightrecognize 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 anyparticular 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 adolescentdreams were stripped and strong and lovely. They were great creatures. They came, it was clearly traceable, from pictures sculpture--and froma definite response in myself to their beauty. My mother had nothingwhatever to do with that. The women and girls about me were fussybunches of clothes that I am sure I never even linked with that dreamworld 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 thempretty--but that was a different affair. I know that I didn't connectthem with the idea of the loved and worshipped goddesses at all, becauseI remember when I first saw the goddess in a real human being and howamazed I was at the discovery.... I was a boy of twelve or thirteen. Mypeople took me one summer to Dymchurch in Romney Marsh; in those daysbefore the automobile had made the Marsh accessible to the Hythe andFolkestone crowds, it was a little old forgotten silent wind-bittenvillage crouching under the lee of the great sea wall. At low waterthere were miles of sand as smooth and shining as the skin of a savagebrown woman. Shining and with a texture--the very same. And one day as Iwas mucking about by myself on the beach, boy fashion, --there were someribs of a wrecked boat buried in the sand near a groin and I was busywith them--a girl ran out from a tent high up on the beach and acrossthe sands to the water. She was dressed in a tight bathing dress andnot in the clumsy skirts and frills that it was the custom to inflicton women in those days. Her hair was tied up in a blue handkerchief. Sheran swiftly and gracefully, intent upon the white line of foam ahead. Ican still remember how the sunlight touched her round neck and cheek asshe went past me. She was the loveliest, most shapely thing I haveever seen--to this day. She lifted up her arms and thrust through thedazzling 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 presentlycame in and passed me again on her way back to her tent, light andswift 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 aslovely 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 doubtsometimes whether I have ever loved anyone else. I kept the thing verysecret. I wonder now why I have kept the thing so secret. Until now Ihave never told a soul about it. I resorted to all sorts of tortuousdevices and excuses to get a chance of seeing her again withoutbetraying 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 notrecognized her. A day or so later I was stabbed to the heart by thediscovery 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 Richmondresumed presently. "Never. I do not think any man is. We are toomuch plastered-up things, too much the creatures of a tortuous andcomplicated 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 asI grew up--as something independent of and much more important than thereality of Women. It came only very slowly into relation with that. Thatgirl on the Dymchurch beach was one of the first links, but she ceasedvery speedily to be real--she joined the women of dreamland at lastaltogether. She became a sort of legendary incarnation. I thought ofthese dream women not only as something beautiful but as somethingexceedingly kind and helpful. The girls and women I met belonged to adifferent 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 verypowerful undertow. "

"Was there any tendency in all this imaginative stuff to concentrate?To group itself about a single figure, the sort of thing that Victorianswould have called an ideal?"

"Not a bit of it, " said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There was alwaysa tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact the thing I liked leastin the real world was the way it was obsessed by the idea of pairing offwith one particular set and final person. I liked to dream of a blondegoddess in her own Venusberg one day, and the next I would be off overthe 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. Thesedream women were all conceived of, and I was conceived of, as beingconcerned in some tremendous enterprise--something quite beyonddomesticity. It kept us related--gave us dignity.... Certainly it wasn'tbabies. "

"All this is very interesting, very interesting, from the scientificpoint of view. A PRIORI it is not what one might have expected. Reasoning from the idea that all instincts and natural imaginations areadapted to a biological end and seeing that sex is essentially a methodof procreation, one might reasonably expect a convergence, if not acomplete concentration, upon the idea of offspring. It is almost asif there were other ends to be served. It is clear that Nature hasnot worked this impulse out to any sight of its end. Has not perhapstroubled to do so. The instinct of the male for the female isn'tprimarily for offspring--not even in the most intelligent and farseeingtypes. The desire just points to glowing satisfactions and illusions. Quite equally I think the desire of the female for the male ignores itsend. Nature has set about this business in a CHEAP sort of way. She islike some pushful advertising tradesman. She isn't frank with us; shejust humbugs us into what she wants with us. All very well in the earlyStone Age--when the poor dear things never realized that their mutualendearments meant all the troubles and responsibilities of parentage. But NOW--!"

He shook his head sideways and twirled the green umbrella like ananimated halo around his large broad-minded face. 

Sir Richmond considered. "Desire has never been the chief incentive ofmy relations with women. Never. So far as I can analyze the thing, ithas 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 theinterest 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 asshe is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly not thecompanion goddess.... "

Sir Richmond brooded over his sculls and thought. 

"Throughout my life I have been an exceedingly busy man. I have done alot of scientific work and some of it has been very good work. Andvery laborious work. I've travelled much. I've organized great businessdevelopments. You might think that my time has been fairly wellfilled without much philandering. And all the time, all the time, I'vebeen--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 verysimply and purely. I was not one of those young men who sow a large cropof wild oats. I was a fairly decent youth. It suddenly appeared to methat a certain smiling and dainty girl could make herself into all thegoddesses of my dreams. I had but to win her and this miracle wouldoccur. 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. Shewas charming. She is charming. She is a wonderfully intelligent andunderstanding woman. She has made a home for me--a delightful home. I amone of those men who have no instinct for home making. I owe my home andall the comfort and dignity of my life to her ability. I have no excusefor any misbehaviour--so far as she is concerned. None at all. Byall the rules I should have been completely happy. But instead of mymarriage satisfying me, it presently released a storm of long-controlleddesires and imprisoned cravings. A voice within me became more and moreurgent. '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 yearsof my marriage. It was a sudden overpowering impulse. But I suppose theground had been preparing for a long time. I forget now all the emotionsof that adventure. I suppose at the time it seemed beautiful andwonderful.... I do not excuse myself. Still less do I condemn myself. Iput the facts before you. So it was. "

"There were no children by your marriage?"

"Your line of thought, doctor, is too philoprogenitive. We have hadthree. My daughter was married two years ago. She is in America. Onelittle boy died when he was three. The other is in India, taking up theMardipore power scheme again now that he is out of the army.... No, itis simply that I was hopelessly disappointed with everything that agood woman and a decent marriage had to give me. Pure disappointment andvexation. The anti-climax to an immense expectation built up throughoutan imaginative boyhood and youth and early manhood. I was shockedand 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 whatI could to make things up to her.... Heaven knows what counterdisappointments she has concealed.... But it is no good arguing aboutrights and wrongs now. This is not an apology for my life. I am tellingyou 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 satisfiednone but the most transitory desires and I had incurred a tremendousobligation. That obligation didn't restrain me from making desperatelunges 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 thecomedy of the lying, cramped intrigues of a respectable, married man... Iwas still driven by my dream of some extravagantly beautiful inspirationcalled love and I sought it like an area sneak. Gods! What a story itis when one brings it all together! I couldn't believe that the glow andsweetness I dreamt of were not in the world--somewhere. Hidden awayfrom me. I seemed to catch glimpses of the dear lost thing, now in thecorners of a smiling mouth, now in dark eyes beneath a black smoke ofhair, now in a slim form seen against the sky. Often I cared nothing forthe woman I made love to. I cared for the thing she seemed to be hidingfrom me.... "

Sir Richmond's voice altered. 

"I don't see what possible good it can do to talk over these things. " Hebegan to row and rowed perhaps a score of strokes. Then he stoppedand the boat drove on with a whisper of water at the bow and over theoutstretched oar blades. 

"What a muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. "What afumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She drives us intoindignity and dishonour: and she doesn't even get the children which areher only excuse for her mischief. See what a fantastic thing I am whenyou take the machine to pieces! I have been a busy and responsible manthroughout my life. I have handled complicated public and industrialaffairs not unsuccessfully and discharged quite big obligations fullyand faithfully. And all the time, hidden away from the public eye, my life has been laced by the thread of these--what can one callthem?--love adventures. How many? you ask. I don't know. Never have Ibeen a whole-hearted lover; never have I been able to leave lovealone.... Never has love left me alone. 

"And as I am made, " said Sir Richmond with sudden insistence, "AS I AMMADE--I do not believe that I could go on without these affairs. I knowthat you will be disposed to dispute that. "

Dr. Martineau made a reassuring noise. 

"These affairs are at once unsatisfying and vitally necessary. It isonly latterly that I have begun to perceive this. Women MAKE lifefor me. Whatever they touch or see or desire becomes worth whileand 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 theworld, 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 wastingfever of distressful toil. Without them there is no kindness inexistence, no rest, no sort of satisfaction. The world is a battlefield, trenches, barbed wire, rain, mud, logical necessity and utterdesolation--with nothing whatever worth fighting for. Whatever justifieseffort, 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 howyou 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 loveof women seems the only real thing in the world to me. And always itremains the most real thing. I do not know how far I may be a normal manor how far I may not be, so to speak, abnormally male, but to me lifehas very little personal significance and no value or power until ithas a woman as intermediary. Before life can talk to me and say anythingthat matters a woman must be present as a medium. I don't mean that ithas no significance mentally and logically; I mean that irrationally andemotionally it has no significance. Works of art, for example, bore me, literature bores me, scenery bores me, even the beauty of a woman boresme, unless I find in it some association with a woman's feeling. Itisn't that I can't tell for myself that a picture is fine or a mountainvalley lovely, but that it doesn't matter a rap to me whether it is orwhether it isn't until there is a feminine response, a sexual motif, ifyou like to call it that, coming in. Whatever there is of lovelinessor pride in life doesn't LIVE for me until somehow a woman comes in andbreathes upon it the breath of life. I cannot even rest until a womanmakes holiday for me. Only one thing can I do without women and that iswork, joylessly but effectively, and latterly for some reason that it isup 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 samebackwater. I can see my companion's hand--she had very pretty hands withrosy palms--trailing in the water, and her shadowed face smiling quietlyunder her sunshade, with little faint streaks of sunlight, reflectedfrom the ripples, dancing and quivering across it. She was one of thosepeople who seem always to be happy and to radiate happiness. 

"By ordinary standards, " said Sir Richmond, "she was a thoroughly badlot. 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 honestwomen I have ever met. She was certainly one of the kindest. Part ofthat effect of honesty may have been due to her open brow, her candidblue eyes, the smiling frankness of her manner.... But--no! She wasreally honest. 

"We drifted here as we are doing now. She pulled at the sweet rushesand crushed them in her hand. She adds a remembered brightness to thisafternoon. 

"Honest. Friendly. Of all the women I have known, this woman who washere with me came nearest to being my friend. You know, what we callvirtue in a woman is a tremendous handicap to any real friendliness witha man. Until she gets to an age when virtue and fidelity are no longerurgent practical concerns, a good woman, by the very definition offeminine goodness, isn't truly herself. Over a vast extent of her beingshe is RESERVED. She suppresses a vast amount of her being, holds back, denies, hides. On the other hand, there is a frankness and honesty inopenly bad women arising out of the admitted fact that they are bad, that they hide no treasure from you, they have no peculiarly preciousand delicious secrets to keep, and no poverty to conceal. Intellectuallythey seem to be more manly and vigorous because they are, as people say, unsexed. Many old women, thoroughly respectable old women, have thesame 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 badwoman, --at least, at all intimately.... "

Sir Richmond looked with quick curiosity at his companion. "You haveavoided them!"

"They don't attract me. "

"They repel you?"

"For me, " said the doctor, "for any friendliness, a woman must bemodest.... My habits of thought are old-fashioned, I suppose, butthe mere suggestion about a woman that there were no barriers, noreservation, that in any fashion she might more than meet me halfway... "

His facial expression completed his sentence. 

"Now I wonder, " whispered Sir Richmond, and hesitated for a momentbefore he carried the great research into the explorer's country. "You are afraid of women?" he said, with a smile to mitigate theimpertinence. 

"I respect them. "

"An element of fear. "

"Well, I am afraid of them then. Put it that way if you like. Anyhow Ido 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 everpart from her?"

Sir Richmond seemed indisposed to answer, but Dr. Martineau'sface remained slantingly interrogative. He had found the effectivecounterattack and he meant to press it. "I was jealous of her, " SirRichmond 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 respectobligations. I grasp that. Then you tell me of these women who have comeand gone.... About them too you are perfectly frank... There remainssomeone else. " Sir Richmond stared at his physician. 

"Well, " he said and laughed. "I didn't pretend to have made myautobiography 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 thereis 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 sometime, for two or three years at least, you have ceased to be--howshall I put it?--an emotional wanderer. "

"I begin to respect your psychoanalysis. "

"Hence your overwhelming sense of the necessity of femininecompanionship for weary men. I guess she is a very jolly companion to bewith, amusing, restful--interesting. "

"H'm, " said Sir Richmond. "I think that is a fair description. When shecares, that is. When she is in good form. "

"Which she isn't at present, " hazarded the doctor. He exploded a mine oflong-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 mostelementary precautions. She is maddeningly receptive to every infection. At the present moment, when I am ill, when I am in urgent need of helpand happiness, she has let that wretched child get measles andshe herself won't let me go near her because she has got somethingdisfiguring, 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 SirRichmond. 

"No doubt it is. " His voice grew bitter. He spoke with deliberation. "Aperfectly aimless, useless illness, --and as painful as it CAN be. "

He spoke as if he slammed a door viciously. And indeed he had slammeda door. The doctor realized that for the present there was no moreself-dissection to be got from Sir Richmond. 

For some time Sir Richmond had been keeping the boat close up to thefoaming weir to the left of the lock by an occasional stroke. Now witha general air of departure he swung the boat round and began to row downstream 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 doctorwent to his room, ostensibly to write a couple of letters and put ona dinner jacket, but really to make a few notes of the afternoon'sconversation 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 hadexperienced a disconcerting personal attack. There was a whirl of activeresentment in the confusion. 

"Apologetics of a rake, " he tried presently. 

"A common type, stripped of his intellectual dressing. Every thirdmanufacturer from the midlands or the north has some such undertowof 'affairs. ' A physiological uneasiness, an imaginative laxity, the temptations of the trip to London--weakness masquerading as apsychological necessity. The Lady of the Carbuncle seems to have gotrather a hold upon him. She has kept him in order for three or fouryears. "

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, thatevery third manufacturer from the midlands is in much the same case ashe is, that does not dismiss the case. It makes it a more importantone, much more important: it makes it a type case with the exceptionalquality 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 fingersof one hand apposed to the fingers of the other. "He makes me bristlebecause all his life and ideas challenge my way of living. But if Ieliminate the personal element?"

He pulled a sheet of note-paper towards him and began to jot down noteswith a silver-cased pencil. Soon he discontinued writing and sat tappinghis 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 asa contributor to his energy and peace of mind.... Except in the case ofhis 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 thecarbuncle?... 'Totally Useless and unnecessary illness, ' was it?... 

"Now has a man any right by any standards to use women as this man hasused them?

"By any standards?"

The doctor frowned and nodded his head slowly with the corners of hismouth drawn in. 

For some years now an intellectual reverie had been playing anincreasing part in the good doctor's life. He was writing this book ofhis, writing it very deliberately and laboriously, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANEW AGE, but much more was he dreaming and thinking about this book. Its publication was to mark an epoch in human thought and human affairsgenerally, and create a considerable flutter of astonishment in thedoctor's own little world. It was to bring home to people some variousaspects of one very startling proposition: that human society hadarrived at a phase when the complete restatement of its fundamentalideas had become urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate, partial adjustments to two centuries of changing conditions had to giveplace to a rapid reconstruction of new fundamental ideas. And it wasa fact of great value in the drama of these secret dreams that thedirective force towards this fundamentally reconstructed world should bethe pen of an unassuming Harley Street physician, hitherto not suspectedof any great excesses of enterprise. 

The written portions of this book were already in a highly polishedstate. They combined a limitless freedom of proposal with a smoothurbanity of manner, a tacit denial that the thoughts of one intelligentbeing could possibly be shocking to another. Upon this the doctor wasvery insistent. Conduct, he held, could never be sufficiently discreet, thought could never be sufficiently free. As a citizen, one had to treata 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'sstated thoughts and in public discussion, the case was altogetherdifferent. There was no offence in any possible hypothesis or in thecontemplation of any possibility. Just as when one played a game one wasbound to play in unquestioning obedience to the laws and spirit of thegame, but if one was not playing that game then there was no reason whyone should not contemplate the completest reversal of all its methodsand the alteration and abandonment of every rule. Correctness ofconduct, the doctor held, was an imperative concomitant of all reallyfree thinking. Revolutionary speculation is one of those things thatmust be divorced absolutely from revolutionary conduct. It was to theneglect of these obvious principles, as the doctor considered them, thatthe general muddle in contemporary marital affairs was very largely due. We left divorce-law revision to exposed adulterers and marriage reformto hot adolescents and craving spinsters driven by the furieswithin them to assertions that established nothing and to practicaldemonstrations that only left everybody thoroughly uncomfortable. Farbetter to leave all these matters to calm, patient men in easy chairs, weighing typical cases impartially, ready to condone, indisposed toenvy. 

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 andgo far. Without giving any guarantee, of course, that he might notultimately return to the comfortable point of inaction from which hestarted. 

In Sir Richmond, Dr. Martineau found the most interesting andencouraging confirmation of the fundamental idea of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANEW AGE, the immediate need of new criteria of conduct altogether. Herewas a man whose life was evidently ruled by standards that were at oncevery high and very generous. He was overworking himself to the pitchof extreme distress and apparently he was doing this for ends thatwere essentially unselfish. Manifestly there were many things that anordinary industrial or political magnate would do that Sir Richmondwould not dream of doing, and a number of things that such a man wouldnot feel called upon to do that he would regard as imperative duties. And mixed up with so much fine intention and fine conduct was thisdisreputable streak of intrigue and this extraordinary claim that suchmisconduct was necessary to continued vigour of action. 

"To energy of thought it is not necessary, " said Dr. Martineau, andconsidered for a time. "Yet--certainly--I am not a man of action. Iadmit it. I make few decisions. "

The chapters of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE dealing with women werestill undrafted, but they had already greatly exercised the doctor'smind. He found now that the case of Sir Richmond had stirred hisimagination. He sat with his hands apposed, his head on one side, andan expression of great intellectual contentment on his face while theseemancipated ideas gave a sort of gala performance in his mind. 

The good doctor did not dislike women, he had always guarded himselfvery carefully against misogyny, but he was very strongly disposed toregard them as much less necessary in the existing scheme of things thanwas generally assumed. Women, he conceded, had laid the foundations ofsocial life. Through their contrivances and sacrifices and patience thefierce and lonely patriarchal family-herd of a male and his womenand off spring had grown into the clan and tribe; the woven tissue ofrelated families that constitute the human comity had been woven by thesubtle, persistent protection of sons and daughters by their mothersagainst the intolerant, jealous, possessive Old Man. But that was athing, of the remote past. Little was left of those ancient strugglesnow but a few infantile dreams and nightmares. The greater humancommunity, human society, was made for good. And being made, it hadtaken over the ancient tasks of the woman, one by one, until now in itsmodern forms it cherished more sedulously than she did, it educated, ithoused and comforted, it clothed and served and nursed, leaving the wifeprivileged, honoured, protected, for the sake of tasks she no longer didand 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 thesocial atmosphere, she raises men's instinctive hopes of help anddirection. Except, " the doctor stipulated, "for a few highly developedmodern types, most men found the sense of achieving her a necessarycondition for sustained exertion. And there is no direction in her anymore. 

"She spends, " said the doctor, "she just spends. She spends excitinglyand competitively for her own pride and glory, she drives all the energyof 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? Thedoctor's untrammelled thoughts began to climb high, spin, nose dive andloop the loop. Nowadays we took a proper care of the young, we had noneed for high birth rates, quite a small proportion of women with a giftin that direction could supply all the offspring that the world wanted. Given the power of determining sex that science was slowly winningtoday, and why should we have so many women about? A drastic eliminationof the creatures would be quite practicable. A fantastic world to avulgar imagination, no doubt, but to a calmly reasonable mind by nomeans fantastic. But this was where the case of Sir Richmond becameso interesting. Was it really true that the companionship of women wasnecessary to these energetic creative types? Was it the fact that thedrive of life towards action, as distinguished from contemplation, aroseout 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 ideasof natural selection and of the conditions of a survival that have madeus what we are. It was in tune with the Freudian analyses. 

"SEX NOT ONLY A RENEWAL OF LIFE IN THE SPECIES, " noted the doctor'ssilver 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 whichcase we want the completest revision of all our standards of sexualobligation. We want a new system of restrictions and imperativesaltogether. "

It was a fixed idea of the doctor's that women were quite incapable ofproducing ideas in the same way that men do, but he believed that withsuitable encouragement they could be induced to respond quite generouslyto such ideas. Suppose therefore we really educated the imaginations ofwomen; suppose we turned their indubitable capacity for service towardssocial and political creativeness, not in order to make them the rivalsof men in these fields, but their moral and actual helpers. "A man ofthis sort wants a mistress-mother, " said the doctor. "He wants a sort ofwoman who cares more for him and his work and honour than she does forchild 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 itsfineness?... 

"The alternative seems to be to teach the sexes to get along withouteach other. "

"A neutralized world. A separated world. How we should jostle in thestreets! But the early Christians have tried it already. The thing isimpossible. "

"Very well, then, we have to make women more responsible again. In anew capacity. We have to educate them far more seriously as sources ofenergy--as guardians and helpers of men. And we have to suppress themfar more rigorously as tempters and dissipaters. Instead of motheringbabies 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 thecommon 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 thinkingover the afternoon's conversation. 

He and Dr. Martineau sat in wide-armed cane chairs on the lawn with awickerwork table bearing coffee cups and little glasses between them. Afew other diners chatted and whispered about similar tables but not tooclose to our talkers to disturb them; the dining room behind them hadcleared its tables and depressed its illumination. The moon, in itsfirst quarter, hung above the sunset, sank after twilight, shonebrighter and brighter among the western trees, and presently had gone, leaving the sky to an increasing multitude of stars. The Maidenheadriver wearing its dusky blue draperies and its jewels of light hadrecovered all the magic Sir Richmond had stripped from it in theafternoon. The grave arches of the bridge, made complete circles by thereflexion of the water, sustained, as if by some unifying and justifyingreason, the erratic flat flashes and streaks and glares of traffic thatfretted to and fro overhead. A voice sang intermittently and a banjotinkled, but remotely enough to be indistinct and agreeable. 

"After all, " Sir Richmond began abruptly, "the search for some sort ofsexual modus vivendi is only a means to an end. One does not want tolive for sex but only through sex. The main thing in my life has alwaysbeen my work. This afternoon, under the Maidenhead influence, I talkedtoo 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 keepone's grip on it. "

"What, " said the doctor after a pause, leaning back and sending wreathsof smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, "what is your idea of yourwork? I mean, how do you see it in relation to yourself--and thingsgenerally?"

"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 toput something one is always thinking about in general terms or to thinkof it as a whole.... Now.... Fuel?... 

"I suppose it was my father's business interests that pushed me towardsspecialization in fuel. He wanted me to have a thoroughly scientifictraining in days when a scientific training was less easy to get for aboy than it is today. And much more inspiring when you got it. My mindwas framed, so to speak, in geology and astronomical physics. I grew upto think on that scale. Just as a man who has been trained in historyand law grows to think on the scale of the Roman empire. I don't knowwhat your pocket map of the universe is, the map, I mean, by which youjudge all sorts of other general ideas. To me this planet is a littleball of oxides and nickel steel; life a sort of tarnish on its surface. And we, the minutest particles in that tarnish. Who can nevertheless, insome 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. Isuppose I have much the same general idea of the world. On rather morepsychological lines. "

"We think, I suppose, said Sir Richmond, of life as something that isonly 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 justparticles in the tarnish, as you call it, who are becoming dimly awaketo what we are, to what we have in common. Only a very few of us havegot 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 fillthem 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 behindhis head and his smoke ascending vertically to heaven. With the greatestcontentment he began quoting himself. "This getting out of one'sindividuality--this conscious getting out of one's individuality--is oneof the most important and interesting aspects of the psychology ofthe new age that is now dawning. As compared with any previous age. Unconsciously, of course, every true artist, every philosopher, everyscientific investigator, so far as his art or thought went, has alwaysgot out of himself, --has forgotten his personal interests and become Manthinking for the whole race. And intimations of the same thing have beenat the heart of most religions. But now people are beginning to getthis detachment without any distinctively religious feeling or anydistinctive aesthetic or intellectual impulse, as if it were a plainmatter of fact. Plain matter of fact, that we are only incidentallyourselves. That really each one of us is also the whole species, isreally indeed all life. "

"A part of it. "

"An integral part-as sight is part of a man... With no absoluteseparation from all the rest--no more than a separation of theimagination. The whole so far as his distinctive quality goes. I do notknow how this takes shape in your mind, Sir Richmond, but to me thisidea of actually being life itself upon the world, a special phase of itdependent upon and connected with all other phases, and of being oneof a small but growing number of people who apprehend that, and want tolive in the spirit of that, is quite central. It is my fundamental idea. We, --this small but growing minority--constitute that part of life whichknows and wills and tries to rule its destiny. This new realization, thenew psychology arising out of it is a fact of supreme importance in thehistory of life. It is like the appearance of self-consciousness in somecreature that has not hitherto had self-consciousness. And so far as weare concerned, we are the true kingship of the world. Necessarily. Wewho know, are the true king.... I wonder how this appeals to you. Itis stuff I have thought out very slowly and carefully and written andapproved. It is the very core of my life.... And yet when one comesto say these things to someone else, face to face.... It is much moredifficult to say than to write. "

Sir Richmond noted how the doctor's chair creaked as he rolled to andfro 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 tosomething much bigger than ourselves. 

"Something much bigger, " he expanded. 

"Which something we become, " the doctor urged, "in so far as our worktakes hold of us. "

Sir Richmond made no answer to this for a little while. "Of course wetrail a certain egotism into our work, " he said. 

"Could we do otherwise? But it has ceased to be purely egotism. It isno longer, 'I am I' but 'I am part. '... One wants to be an honourablepart. "

"You think of man upon his planet, " the doctor pursued. "I think oflife rather as a mind that tries itself over in millions and millions oftrials. 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 wouldbe true to say that I think of myself as mankind on his planet, withvery considerable possibilities and with only a limited amount of fuelat his disposal to achieve them. Yes.... I agree that I think in thatway.... I have not thought much before of the way in which I think aboutthings--but I agree that it is in that way. Whatever enterprises mankindattempts are limited by the sum total of that store of fuel upon theplanet. That is very much in my mind. Besides that he has nothing buthis 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 doubtgetting a supply of energy from atoms is a theoretical possibility, just as flying was in the time of Daedalus; probably there were actualattempts at some sort of glider in ancient Crete. But before we getto the actual utilization of atomic energy there will be ten thousanddifficult corners to turn; we may have to wait three or four thousandyears for it. We cannot count on it. We haven't it in hand. There may besome impasse. All we have surely is coal and oil, --there is no surplusof 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 onlycapital. They are all we have for great important efforts. They are agift 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 donewe shall either have built up such a fabric of apparatus, knowledge andsocial organization that we shall be able to manage without them--orwe shall have travelled a long way down the slopes of waste towardsextinction.... To-day, in getting, in distribution, in use wewaste enormously.... As we sit here all the world is wasting fuelfantastically. "

"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 toorganize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane fuel using. Andthat second proposition carries us far. Into the whole use we are makingof life. 

"First things first, " said Sir Richmond. If we set about getting fuelsanely, if we do it as the deliberate, co-operative act of the wholespecies, then it follows that we shall look very closely into the usethat is being made of it. When all the fuel getting is brought into oneview as a common interest, then it follows that all the fuel burningwill be brought into one view. At present we are getting fuel in a kindof scramble with no general aim. We waste and lose almost as much as weget. And of what we get, the waste is idiotic. 

"I won't trouble you, " said Sir Richmond, "with any long discourse onthe ways of getting fuel in this country. But land as you know is ownedin patches and stretches that were determined in the first place chieflyby agricultural necessities. When it was divided up among its presentowners nobody was thinking about the minerals beneath. But the lawyerssettled long ago that the landowner owned his land right down to thecentre of the earth. So we have the superficial landlord as coal ownertrying to work his coal according to the superficial divisions, quiteirrespective of the lie of the coal underneath. Each man goes for thecoal under his own land in his own fashion. You get three shafts whereone would suffice and none of them in the best possible place. You getthe coal coming out of this point when it would be far more convenientto bring it out at that--miles away. You get boundary walls of coalbetween the estates, abandoned, left in the ground for ever. And eachcoal owner sells his coal in his own pettifogging manner... But youknow of these things. You know too how we trail the coal all over thecountry, spoiling it as we trail it, until at last we get it intothe silly coal scuttles beside the silly, wasteful, airpoisoning, fog-creating fireplace. 

"And this stuff, " said Sir Richmond, bringing his hand down so smartlyon the table that the startled coffee cups cried out upon the tray; "wasgiven to men to give them power over metals, to get knowledge with, toget 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 aboutwith oil anyhow.... Optimism of knaves and imbeciles.... They don't wantto 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 canto get a broader handling of the fuel question--as a common interestfor 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 toget over me, able to blockade me.... Clever men--yes, and all of themultimately damned--oh! utterly damned--fools. Coal owners who think onlyof themselves, solicitors who think backwards, politicians who thinklike 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 andreported upon as one affair so that some day it may be handled as oneaffair 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. Iwant to call in foreign representatives from the beginning. "

"Advisory--consultative?"

"No. With powers. These things interlock now internationally boththrough labour and finance. The sooner we scrap this nonsense about anautonomous British Empire complete in itself, contra mundum, the betterfor 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 toneof one who swears. "Don't I know that perhaps it's impossible! But it'sthe only way to do it. Therefore, I say, let's try to get it done. Andeverybody says, difficult, difficult, and nobody lifts a finger to try. And the only real difficulty is that everybody for one reason or anothersays that it's difficult. It's against human nature. Granted! Everydecent thing is. It's socialism. Who cares? Along this line ofcomprehensive scientific control the world has to go or it willretrogress, it will muddle and rot.... "

"I agree, " said Dr. Martineau. 

"So I want a report to admit that distinctly. I want it to gofurther than that. I want to get the beginnings, the germ, of a worldadministration. I want to set up a permanent world commission ofscientific men and economists--with powers, just as considerable powersas I can give them--they'll be feeble powers at the best--but still somesort of SAY in the whole fuel supply of the world. A say--that may growat last to a control. A right to collect reports and receiveaccounts for example, to begin with. And then the right to makerecommendations.... You see?... No, the international part is not themost difficult part of it. But my beastly owners and their beastlylawyers won't relinquish a scrap of what they call their freedom ofaction. 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 atand too incompetent to get out a scheme of their own. They want a worldcontrol on scientific lines even less than the owners. They try to thinkthat fuel production can carry an unlimited wages bill and the ownerstry to think that it can pay unlimited profits, and when I say; 'Thisbusiness is something more than a scramble for profits and wages; it's aservice and a common interest, ' they stare at me--" Sir Richmond wasat a loss for an image. "Like a committee in a thieves' kitchen whensomeone 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. Everyindividual is.... "

Sir Richmond found it difficult to express. "The psychology of myCommittee ought to interest you.... It is probably a fair sample of theway all sorts of things are going nowadays. It's curious.... There isnot a man on that Committee who is quite comfortable within himselfabout the particular individual end he is there to serve. It's there Iget them. They pursue their own ends bitterly and obstinately I admit, but they are bitter and obstinate because they pursue them against aninternal 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 withme. "

"A suppressed world conscience in fact. This marches very closely withmy own ideas. "

"A world conscience? World conscience? I don't know. But I do know thatthere is this drive in nearly every member of the Committee, some driveanyhow, 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 agestrengthened by education--it may play a directive part. "

"They fight every little point. But, you see, because of this creativeundertow--if you like to call it that--we do get along. I am leader orwhipper-in, it is hard to say which, of a bolting flock.... I believethey will report for a permanent world commission; I believe I have gotthem up to that; but they will want to make it a bureau of this Leagueof Nations, and I have the profoundest distrust of this League ofNations. It may turn out to be a sort of side-tracking arrangement forall sorts of important world issues. And they will find they have toreport for some sort of control. But there again they will shy. Theywill report for it and then they will do their utmost to whittle it downagain. They will refuse it the most reasonable powers. They will alterthe composition of the Committee so as to make it innocuous. "

"How?"

"Get rid of the independent scientific men, load it up so far as Britainis concerned with muck of the colonial politician type and tame labourrepresentatives, balance with shady new adventurer millionaires, get instill shadier stuff from abroad, let these gentry appoint their own tameexperts after their own hearts, --experts who will make merely advisoryreports, which will not be published.... "

"They want in fact to keep the old system going under the cloak of YOURCommittee, reduced to a cloak and nothing more?"

"That is what it amounts to. They want to have the air of doingright--indeed they do want to have the FEEL of doing right--and stillleave things just exactly what they were before. And as I suffer underthe misfortune of seeing the thing rather more clearly, I have toshepherd the conscience of the whole Committee.... But there is aconscience there. If I can hold out myself, I can hold the Committee. "

He turned appealingly to the doctor. "Why should I have to be theconscience of that damned Committee? Why should I do this exhaustinginhuman job?.... In their hearts these others know.... Only they won'tknow.... 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 inglorioussquabbling. They bait me. They have been fighting the same fight withinthemselves that they fight with me. They know exactly where I am, that Itoo am doing my job against internal friction. The one thing before allothers that they want to do is to bring me down off my moral highhorse. And I loathe the high horse. I am in a position of special moralsuperiority 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 broadstreak of personal vanity. I fag easily. I'm short-tempered. I've otherthings, as you perceive. When I fag I become obtuse, I repeat and bore, I get viciously ill-tempered, I suffer from an intolerable sense ofill usage. Then that ass, Wagstaffe, who ought to be working with mesteadily, sees his chance to be pleasantly witty. He gets a laugh roundthe table at my expense. Young Dent, the more intelligent of the labourmen, reads me a lecture in committee manners. Old Cassidy sees HISopening and jabs some ridiculous petty accusation at me and gets mespluttering self-defence like a fool. All my stock goes down, and as mystock goes down the chances of a good report dwindle. Young Dent grievesto see me injuring my own case. Too damned a fool to see what willhappen to the report! You see if only they can convince themselves I amjust a prig and an egotist and an impractical bore, they escape from agreat deal more than my poor propositions. They escape from the doubtin themselves. By dismissing me they dismiss their own consciences. And then they can scamper off and be sensible little piggy-wigs and notbother 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. Andif I tumble off the high horse, if I can't keep going regularly thereto ride the moral high horse, that Committee will slump into utterscoundrelism. It will turn out a long, inconsistent, botched, unreadablereport that will back up all sorts of humbugging bargains and shamsettlements. It will contain some half-baked scheme to pacify the minersat the expense of the general welfare. It won't even succeed in doingthat. But in the general confusion old Cassidy will get away witha series of hauls that may run into millions. Which will last histime--damn him! And that is where we are.... Oh! I know! I know!.... Imust do this job. I don't need any telling that my life will be nothingand 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 thelights on the steely river, and said nothing for awhile. 

"Why did I ever undertake to play it?" Sir Richmond appealed. "Why hasit been put upon me? Seeing what a poor thing I am, why am I not a poorthing altogether?"

Section 8

"I think I understand that loneliness of yours, said the doctor after aninterval. 

"I am INTOLERABLE to myself. "

"And I think it explains why it is that you turn to women as you do. Youwant 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 andwomen alone seem capable of giving that, of telling you that you aresurely right, that notwithstanding your blunders you are right; thateven when you are wrong it doesn't so much matter, you are still inspirit right. They can show their belief in you as no man can. With alltheir being they can do that. "

"Yes, I suppose they could. "

"They can. You have said already that women are necessary to make thingsreal 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 drivesgo on side by side in me. They have no logical connexion. All I can sayis that for me, with my bifid temperament, one makes a rest from theother, and is so far refreshment and a renewal of energy. But I do notfind 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 aminute. 

As Dr. Martineau waited for his companion to speak, a falling starstreaked 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 ourtime lain very still in the darkness with our souls crying out for thefellowship of God, demanding some sign, some personal response. Thefaintest 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 readingWilliam James on religious experiences and I was thinking very much ofConversion. I tried to experience Conversion.... "

"Yes?"

"It faded. "

"It always fades, " said Sir Richmond with anger in his voice. "I wonderhow many people there are nowadays who have passed through this lastexperience of ineffectual invocation, this appeal to the fading shadowof a vanished God. In the night. In utter loneliness. Answer me! Speakto me! Does he answer? In the silence you hear the little blood vesselswhisper 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 believethat. But Righteousness is not friendliness nor mercy nor comfort norany such dear and intimate things. This cuddling up to Righteousness! Itis a dream, a delusion and a phase. I've tried all that long ago. I'vegiven it up long ago. I've grown out of it. Men do--after forty. Oursouls 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 asthose needs are satisfied. Only young people have souls, complete. Theneed for a personal God, feared but reassuring, is a youth's need. I nolonger fear the Old Man nor want to propitiate the Old Man nor believehe matters any more. I'm a bit of an Old Man myself I discover. Yes. Butthe other thing still remains. "

"The Great Mother of the Gods, " said Dr. Martineau--still clinging tohis theories. 

"The need of the woman, " said Sir Richmond. "I want mating because it ismy nature to mate. I want fellowship because I am a social animal and Iwant it from another social animal. Not from any God--any inconceivableGod. Who fades and disappears. No.... 

"Perhaps that other need will fade presently. I do not know. Perhaps itlasts 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 consolingand helping! Imagine it! That up there--having fellowship with me! Iwould as soon think of cooling my throat with the Milky Way or shakinghands 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 habituallyreserved will often be followed by a phase of recoil. At breakfastnext morning their overnight talk seemed to both Sir Richmond andDr. Martineau like something each had dreamt about the other, a quiteimpossible excess of intimacy. They discussed the weather, which seemedto be settling down to the utmost serenity of which the English springis capable, they talked of Sir Richmond's coming car and of the possibleroutes before them. Sir Richmond produced the Michelin maps which hehad taken out of the pockets of the little Charmeuse. The Bath Road laybefore them, he explained, Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough, Silbury Hill which overhangs Avebury. Both travellers discovered acommon excitement at the mention of Avebury and Silbury Hill. Both tookan intelligent interest in archaeology. Both had been greatly stimulatedby the recent work of Elliot Smith and Rivers upon what was then knownas the Heliolithic culture. It had revived their interest in Avebury andStonehenge. The doctor moreover had been reading Hippisley Cox's GREENROADS OF ENGLAND. 

Neither gentleman had ever seen Avebury, but Dr. Martineau had oncevisited Stonehenge. 

"Avebury is much the oldest, " said the doctor. "They must have madeSilbury Hill long before 2000 B. C. It may be five thousand years oldor even more. It is the most important historical relic in the BritishIsles. And the most neglected. "

They exchanged archaeological facts. The secret places of the heartrested 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 themorning advanced. They had walked by the road to Marlow and had lunchedat a riverside inn, returning after a restful hour in an arbour on thelawn of this place to tea at Maidenhead. It was as they returned thatSir Richmond took up the thread of their overnight conversation again. 

"In the night, " he said, "I was thinking over the account I tried togive 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, theproportions.... I don't know if I gave you the effect of something DonJuanesque?... "

"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 tobe called a pet aversion. 

"I don't want you to think that I run about after women in an habitualand systematic manner. Or that I deliberately hunt them in the interestsof my work and energy. Your questions had set me theorizing aboutmyself. 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. Mynocturnal reflections convinced me of that. I put reason into thingsthat are essentially instinctive. The truth is that the wanderings ofdesire have no single drive. All sorts of motives come in, high and low, down to sheer vulgar imitativeness and competitiveness. What was truein it all was this, that a man with any imagination in a fatiguephase falls naturally into these complications because they are moreattractive 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 recoveryin him, They send him back to his work refreshed--so far, that is, ashis 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 leastresistance.... 

"That is one footnote to what I said. So far as the motive of my workgoes, I think we got something like the spirit of it. What I said aboutthat was near the truth of things.... 

"But there is another set of motives altogether, " Sir Richmond went onwith an air of having cleared the ground for his real business, "that Ididn't go into at all yesterday. "

He considered. "It arises out of these other affairs. Before yourealize it your affections are involved. I am a man much swayed by myaffections. "

Mr. Martineau glanced at him. There was a note of genuine self-reproachin 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 offalling in love. Almost the opposite thing. They cry or they come somemental or physical cropper and hurt themselves, or they do somethingdistressingly little and human and suddenly I find they've GOT me. I'mdistressed. I'm filled with something between pity and an impulse ofresponsibility. I become tender towards them. I am impelled to take careof them. I want to ease them off, to reassure them, to make them stophurting at any cost. I don't see why it should be the weak and sicklyand seamy side of people that grips me most, but it is. I don't know whyit should be their failures that gives them power over me, but it is. Itold you of this girl, this mistress of mine, who is ill just now. SHE'Sgot me in that way; she's got me tremendously. "

"You did not speak of her yesterday with any morbid excess of pity, " thedoctor 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 becauseshe distresses me by her misfortunes and instead of my getting anythingout of her, I go out to her. But I DO go out to her. All this time atthe back of my mind I am worrying about her. She has that gift of makingone feel for her. I am feeling that damned carbuncle almost as if it hadbeen my affair instead of hers. 

"That carbuncle has made me suffer FRIGHTFULLY.... Why should I? Itisn't mine. "

He regarded the doctor earnestly. The doctor controlled a strong desireto 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 muchof this affair, I may as well tell you all. It is a sort of comedy, apainful comedy, of irrelevant affections. "

The doctor was prepared to be a good listener. Facts he would alwayslisten to; it was only when people told him their theories that he wouldinterrupt with his "Exactly. "

"This young woman is a person of considerable genius. I don't know ifyou have seen in the illustrated papers a peculiar sort of humorousillustrations usually with a considerable amount of bite in them overthe name of Martin Leeds?

"Extremely amusing stuff. "

"It is that Martin Leeds. I met her at the beginning of her career. Shetalks almost as well as she draws. She amused me immensely. I'm notthe sort of man who waylays and besieges women and girls. I'm not thepursuing type. But I perceived that in some odd way I attracted herand I was neither wise enough nor generous enough not to let the thingdevelop. "

"H'm, " said Dr. Martineau. 

"I'd never had to do with an intellectually brilliant woman before. Isee now that the more imaginative force a woman has, the more likely sheis to get into a state of extreme self-abandonment with any male thingupon which her imagination begins to crystallize. Before I came alongshe'd mixed chiefly with a lot of young artists and students, all doingnothing at all except talk about the things they were going to do. Isuppose I profited by the contrast, being older and with my hands fullof affairs. Perhaps something had happened that had made her recoiltowards my sort of thing. I don't know. But she just let herself go atme. "

"And you?"

"Let myself go too. I'd never met anything like her before. It was herwit took me. It didn't occur to me that she wasn't my contemporaryand as able as I was. As able to take care of herself. All sorts ofconsiderations that I should have shown to a sillier woman I neverdreamt of showing to her. I had never met anyone so mentally brilliantbefore or so helpless and headlong. And so here we are on each other'shands!"

"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 atthis fuel business. She too is full of her work. 

"Nothing stops that though everything seems to interfere with it. Andin a distraught, preoccupied way we are abominably fond of each other. 'Fond' is the word. But we are both too busy to look after eitherourselves or each other. 

"She is much more incapable than I am, " said Sir Richmond as if hedelivered 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, andwe sometimes snatch a few days together, away somewhere in Surrey or upthe Thames or at such a place as Southend where one is lost in a crowdof inconspicuous people. Then things go well--they usually go well atthe 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 ofappreciation.... "

"But things do not always go well?"

"Things, " said Sir Richmond with the deliberation of a man who measureshis words, "are apt to go wrong.... At the flat there is constanttrouble with the servants; they bully her. A woman is more entangledwith servants than a man. Women in that position seem to resent the workand freedom of other women. Her servants won't leave her in peace asthey would leave a man; they make trouble for her.... And when we havehad a few days anywhere away, even if nothing in particular has gonewrong--"

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 thewhole 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 shewants is just cardboard and ink. My mind on the other hand turns back tothe Fuel Commission.... "

"Then any little thing makes trouble. "

"Any little thing makes trouble. And we always drift round to the samediscussion; 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 wantsto 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 notin yourselves but in social institutions. Which haven't yet fittedthemselves to people like you two. It is the sense of uncertainty makesher, as you say, adhesive. Nervously so. If we were indeed living in anew 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 itis not the individuals to blame but the misfit of ideas and forms andprejudices. "

"No, " said Sir Richmond, obstinately rejecting this pacifyingsuggestion; "she could adapt herself. If she cared enough. "

"But how?"

"She will not take the slightest trouble to adjust herself to thepeculiarities of our position.... She could be cleverer. Other women arecleverer. Any other woman almost would be cleverer than she is. "

"But if she was cleverer, she wouldn't be the genius she is. She wouldjust be any other woman. "

"Perhaps she would, " said Sir Richmond darkly and desperately. "Perhapsshe 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 fundamentalincompatibility between one's affections and one's wider conception ofduty and work comes in. We cannot change social institutions in a yearor a lifetime. We can never change them to suit an individual case. That would be like suspending the laws of gravitation in order to movea piano. As things are, Martin is no good to me, no help to me. She is arival to my duty. She feels that. She is hostile to my duty. A definiteantagonism has developed. She feels and treats fuel--and everything todo with fuel as a bore. It is an attack. We quarrel on that. It isn't asthough I found it so easy to stick to my work that I could disregard herhostility. And I can't bear to part from her. I threaten it, distressher excessively and then I am overcome by sympathy for her and I go backto 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 herdisfigured. She does not understand--" Sir Richmond was at a loss for aphrase--"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 abouteducating the girl. Whatever happens, she must have as good a chanceas--anyone.... "

"Ah! That is worrying you too!"

"Frightfully at times. If it were a boy it would be easier. It needsconstant tact and dexterity to fix things up. Neither of us have any. Itneeds attention.... "

Sir Richmond mused darkly. 

Dr. Martineau thought aloud. "An incompetent delightful person withMartin Leeds's sense of humour. And her powers of expression. She mustbe attractive to many people. She could probably do without you. If onceyou 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 ofthe ordinary coolheaded calculation of an average woman.... I've a dutyto 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 oneis invaded by a flood of affection..... And old habits of association. "

Dr. Martineau thought. Was that the right word, --affection? Perhaps itwas. 

They had come out on the towing path close by the lock and they foundthemselves threading their way through a little crowd of boating peopleand lookers-on. For a time their conversation was broken. Sir Richmondresumed it. 

"But this is where we cease to be Man on his Planet and all the rest ofit. This is where the idea of a definite task, fanatically followed tothe exclusion of all minor considerations, breaks down. When the workis good, when we are sure we are all right, then we may carry off thingswith a high hand. But the work isn't always good, we aren't alwayssure. We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued. Then thesacrificed affections come in as accusers. Then it is that we want to bereassured. "

"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 fromMartin. "

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 regrettedthe extent of his confidences or the slight irrational irritationthat he felt at waiting for his car affected his attitude towards hiscompanion, or Dr. Martineau's tentatives were ill-chosen. At any rate hewould not rise to any conversational bait that the doctor could devise. The doctor found this the more regrettable because it seemed to him thatthere was much to be worked upon in this Martin Leeds affair. He wasinclined to think that she and Sir Richmond were unduly obsessed by theidea that they had to stick together because of the child, becauseof the look of the thing and so forth, and that really each might bestruggling against a very strong impulse indeed to break off the affair. It seemed evident to the doctor that they jarred upon and annoyed eachother extremely. On the whole separating people appealed to a doctor'smind more strongly than bringing them together. Accordingly he framedhis enquiries so as to make the revelation of a latent antipathy as easyas possible. 

He made several not very well-devised beginnings. At the fifth SirRichmond was suddenly conclusive. "It's no use, " he said, "I can'tfiddle about any more with my motives to-day. "

An awkward silence followed. On reflection Sir Richmond seemed torealize 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 directlyabout myself. What I say, I afterwards find disconcerting to recall. I want to alter it. I can feel myself wallowing into a mess ofmodifications 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 uncomfortablesilence. Dr. Martineau cleared his throat twice and lit a second cigar. They then agreed to admire the bridge and think well of Maidenhead. SirRichmond communicated hopeful news about his car, which was to arrivethe next morning before ten--he'd just ring the fellow up presently tomake sure--and Dr. Martineau retired early and went rather thoughtfullyto bed. The spate of Sir Richmond's confidences, it was evident, wasover. 

Section 4

Sir Richmond's car arrived long before ten, brought down by a youngman in a state of scared alacrity--Sir Richmond had done some vigoroustelephoning before turning in, --the Charmeuse set off in a repaired andchastened condition to town, and after a leisurely breakfast our twoinvestigators into the springs of human conduct were able to resumetheir westward journey. They ran through scattered Twyford with itspleasant looking inns and through the commonplace urbanities of Reading, by Newbury and Hungerford's pretty bridge and up long wooded slopes toSavernake forest, where they found the road heavy and dusty, still inits war-time state, and so down a steep hill to the wide market streetwhich is Marlborough. They lunched in Marlborough and went on in theafternoon to Silbury Hill, that British pyramid, the largest artificialmound in Europe. They left the car by the roadside and clambered to thetop and were very learned and inconclusive about the exact purpose ofthis vast heap of chalk and earth, this heap that men had made beforethe temples at Karnak were built or Babylon had a name. 

Then they returned to the car and ran round by a winding road into thewonder of Avebury. They found a clean little inn there kept by pleasantpeople, and they garaged the car in the cowshed and took two rooms forthe night that they might the better get the atmosphere of the ancientplace. Wonderful indeed it is, a vast circumvallation that was alreadytwo thousand years old before the dawn of British history; a great wallof earth with its ditch most strangely on its inner and not on its outerside; and within this enclosure gigantic survivors of the great circlesof 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 themost part, out of the ancient megaliths; the great wall is sufficient toembrace them all with their gardens and paddocks; four cross-roads meetat the village centre. There are drawings of Avebury before these thingsarose there, when it was a lonely wonder on the plain, but for the mostpart the destruction was already done before the MAYFLOWER sailed. Tothe southward stands the cone of Silbury Hill; its shadow creeps up anddown the intervening meadows as the seasons change. Around this lonelyplace rise the Downs, now bare sheep pastures, in broad undulations, with a wart-like barrow here and there, and from it radiate, creepingup to gain and hold the crests of the hills, the abandoned trackwaysof that forgotten world. These trackways, these green roads of England, these roads already disused when the Romans made their highway pastSilbury Hill to Bath, can still be traced for scores of miles throughthe land, running to Salisbury and the English Channel, eastward tothe crossing at the Straits and westward to Wales, to ferries over theSevern, and southwestward into Devon and Cornwall. 

The doctor and Sir Richmond walked round the walls, surveyed the shadowcast by Silbury upon the river flats, strolled up the down to thenorthward to get a general view of the village, had tea and smokedround the walls again in the warm April sunset. The matter of theirconversation remained prehistoric. Both were inclined to find faultwith the archaeological work that had been done on the place. "Clumsytreasure hunting, " Sir Richmond said. "They bore into Silbury Hill andexpect to find a mummified chief or something sensational of that sort, and they don't, and they report nothing. They haven't sifted finelyenough; they haven't thought subtly enough. These walls of earth oughtto tell what these people ate, what clothes they wore, what woods theyused. Was this a sheep land then as it is now, or a cattle land? Werethese hills covered by forests? I don't know. These archaeologists don'tknow. Or if they do they haven't told me, which is just as bad. I don'tbelieve they know. 

"What trade came here along these tracks? So far as I know, they had nobeasts of burthen. But suppose one day someone were to find a potsherdhere from early Knossos, or a fragment of glass from Pepi's Egypt. "

The place had stirred up his imagination. He wrestled with his ignoranceas if he thought that by talking he might presently worry out somepicture of this forgotten world, without metals, without beasts ofburthen, without letters, without any sculpture that has left a trace, and yet with a sense of astronomical fact clear enough to raise thegreat gnomon of Silbury, and with a social system complex enough to givethe large and orderly community to which the size of Avebury witnessesand the traffic to which the green roads testify. 

The doctor had not realized before the boldness and liveliness of hiscompanion's mind. Sir Richmond insisted that the climate must have beenmoister and milder in those days; he covered all the downlands withwoods, as Savernake was still covered; beneath the trees he restored athicker, richer soil. These people must have done an enormous lot withwood. This use of stones here was a freak. It was the very strangenessof stones here that had made them into sacred things. One thought toomuch of the stones of the Stone Age. Who would carve these lumps ofquartzite 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 oughtto look for, " said Sir Richmond. "Wood and fibre. " He declared thatthese people had their tools of wood, their homes of wood, their godsand perhaps their records of wood. "A peat bog here, even a few feet ofclay, might have pickled some precious memoranda.... No such luck.... Now in Glastonbury marshes one found the life of the early ironage--half way to our own times--quite beautifully pickled. "

Though they wrestled mightily with the problem, neither Sir Richmond northe doctor could throw a gleam of light upon the riddle why the ditchwas inside and not outside the great wall. 

"And what was our Mind like in those days?" said Sir Richmond. "That, Isuppose, is what interests you. A vivid childish mind, I guess, with nota suspicion as yet that it was Man ruling his Planet or anything of thatsort. "

The doctor pursed his lips. "None, " he delivered judicially. "If onewere able to recall one's childhood--at the age of about twelve orthirteen--when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and onebegins to think in a troubled, monstrous way about God and Hell, onemight 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 traceof the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone peoplewho came before them. "

"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-oldchildren with the strength of adults--and no one to slap them or tellthem not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now andthen. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end tothat. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill thenew 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. Theymust have thought that the world went on for ever-just as they knewit--like my damned Committee does.... With their fuel wasting away andthe climate changing imperceptibly, century by century.... Kings andimportant men followed one another here for centuries and centuries.... They had lost their past and had no idea of any future.. .. They hadforgotten how they came into the land... When I was a child I believedthat my father's garden had been there for ever.... 

"This is very like trying to remember some game one played when one wasa child. It is like coming on something that one built up with bricksand stones in some forgotten part of the garden.... "

"The life we lived here, " said the doctor, "has left its traces intraditions, in mental predispositions, in still unanalyzed fundamentalideas. "

"Archaeology is very like remembering, " said Sir Richmond. "Presently weshall remember a lot more about all this. We shall remember what it waslike to live in this place, and the long journey hither, age by age outof the south. We shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazyreasons why we made them. We sowed our corn in blood here. We hadstrange fancies about the stars. Those we brought with us out of thesouth where the stars are brighter. And what like were those wooden godsof ours? I don't remember.... But I could easily persuade myself that Ihad been here before. "

They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting sun castlong shadows of them athwart a field of springing wheat. 

"Perhaps we shall come here again, " the doctor carried on Sir Richmond'sfancy; "after another four thousand years or so, with different namesand fuller minds. And then I suppose that this ditch won't be the riddleit is now. "

"Life didn't seem so complicated then, " Sir Richmond mused. "Our muddleswere unconscious. We drifted from mood to mood and forgot. There wasmore sunshine then, more laughter perhaps, and blacker despair. Despairlike the despair of children that can weep itself to sleep.... It'sover.... Was it battle and massacre that ended that long afternoon here?Or did the woods catch fire some exceptionally dry summer, leaving blackhills 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 ourwoods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into the landacross the southern sea? I can't remember.... "

Sir Richmond turned about. "I would like to dig up the bottom ofthis ditch here foot by foot--and dry the stuff and sift it--verycarefully.... Then I might begin to remember things. "

Section 5

In the evening, after a pleasant supper, they took a turn about thewalls with the moon sinking over beyond Silbury, and then went in andsat by lamplight before a brightly fussy wood fire and smoked. Therewere long intervals of friendly silence. 

"I don't in the least want to go on talking about myself, " said SirRichmond abruptly. 

"Let it rest then, " said the doctor generously. 

"To-day, among these ancient memories, has taken me out of myselfwonderfully. I can't tell you how good Avebury has been for me. Thisafternoon half my consciousness has seemed to be a tattooed creaturewearing 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 athis cigar smoke. 

"Nevertheless, " he said, "this confessional business of yours has beenan excellent exercise. It has enabled me to get outside myself, to lookat myself as a Case. Now I can even see myself as a remote Case. ThatI needn't bother about further.... So far as that goes, I think we havedone 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 notan overlaid sort of person. When I spread myself out there is not muchindication of a suppressed wish or of anything masked or buried of thatsort. What you get is a quite open and recognized discord of two sets ofmotives. "

The doctor considered. "Yes, I think that is true. Your LIBIDO is, Ishould say, exceptionally free. Generally you are doing what you want todo--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 underirritating circumstances with very little mental complication orconcealment. "

"Yes, " said the doctor. "I agree. You are not a case for psychoanalysis, strictly speaking, at all. You are in open conflict with yourself, uponmoral and social issues. Practically open. Your problems are problems ofconscious 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 formagnanimity. This day particularly has been a good day. When we stood onthis old wall here in the sunset I seemed to be standing outside myselfin an immense still sphere of past and future. I stood with my feetupon the Stone Age and saw myself four thousand years away, and all mydistresses as very little incidents in that perspective. Away there inLondon the case is altogether different; after three hours or so ofthe Committee one concentrates into one little inflamed moment ofpersonality. There is no past any longer, there is no future, there isonly the rankling dispute. For all those three hours, perhaps, I havebeen 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 myselfunderstood, how I might be misunderstood, how I might be misrepresented, challenged, denied. One draws in more and more as one is used up. Atlast 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 aboutthe room and curse.... Martineau, how is one to get the Avebury frame ofmind to Westminster?"

"When Westminster is as dead as Avebury, " said the doctor, unhelpfully. He added after some seconds, "Milton knew of these troubles. 'Notwithout 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 onthe table. But he did not open it. He held it in his hand and said thething he had had in mind to say all that evening. "I do not think thatI shall stir up my motives any more for a time. Better to go on intothe west country cooling my poor old brain in these wide shadows of thepast. "

"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 minorentanglements. "

"I don't want to think of them, " said Sir Richmond. "Let me get rightaway 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 downsround Avebury they went by way of Devizes and Netheravon and Amesbury toStonehenge. 

Dr. Martineau had seen this ancient monument before, but now, withAvebury fresh in his mind, he found it a poorer thing than he hadremembered it to be. Sir Richmond was frankly disappointed. After thereal greatness and mystery of the older place, it seemed a poor littleheap of stones; it did not even dominate the landscape; it was some wayfrom the crest of the swelling down on which it stood and it was furtherdwarfed by the colossal air-ship hangars and clustering offices of theair station that the great war had called into existence upon the slopesto the south-west. "It looks, " Sir Richmond said, "as though some oldgiantess had left a discarded set of teeth on the hillside. " Far moreimpressive than Stonehenge itself were the barrows that capped theneighbouring crests. 

The sacred stones were fenced about, and our visitors had to pay foradmission at a little kiosk by the gate. At the side of the road stooda travel-stained middle-class automobile, with a miscellany of dustyluggage, rugs and luncheon things therein--a family automobile withfather no doubt at the wheel. Sir Richmond left his own trim coupe atits tail. 

They were impeded at the entrance by a difference of opinion between thekeeper of the turnstile and a small but resolute boy of perhaps five orsix who proposed to leave the enclosure. The custodian thought that itwould 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. Iwant to go and clean the car. "

"You won't SEE Stonehenge every day, young man, " said the custodian, alittle 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-CASpocket-handkerchief and set himself to polish the lamps with greatassiduity. The two gentlemen lingered at the turnstile for a moment orso to watch his proceedings. "Modern child, " said Sir Richmond. "Oldstones are just old stones to him. But motor cars are gods. "

"You can hardly expect him to understand--at his age, " said thecustodian, 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 firstdragon-fly she was greatly delighted. 'Oh, dee' lill' a'eplane, ' shesaid. "

As they approached the grey old stones they became aware of a certainagitation among them. A voice, an authoritative bass voice, was audible, crying, "Anthony!" A nurse appeared remotely going in the direction ofthe aeroplane sheds, and her cry of "Master Anthony" came faintly on thebreeze. An extremely pretty young woman of five or six and twenty becamevisible standing on one of the great prostrate stones in the centre ofthe place. She was a black-haired, sun-burnt individual and she stoodwith her arms akimbo, quite frankly amused at the disappearance ofMaster Anthony, and offering no sort of help for his recovery. On thegreensward before her stood the paterfamilias of the family automobile, and he was making a trumpet with his hands in order to repeat the nameof Anthony with greater effect. A short lady in grey emerged from amongthe encircling megaliths, and one or two other feminine personalitiesproduced effects of movement rather than of individuality as theyflitted among the stones. "Well, " said the lady in grey, with thatrising intonation of humorous conclusion which is so distinctivelyAmerican, "those Druids have GOT him. "

"He's hiding, " said the automobilist, in a voice that promisedchastisement to a hidden hearer. "That's what he is doing. He ought notto play tricks like this. A great boy who is almost six. "

"If you are looking for a small, resolute boy of six, " said SirRichmond, addressing himself to the lady on the rock rather than to theangry parent below, "he's perfectly safe and happy. The Druids haven'tgot him. Indeed, they've failed altogether to get him. 'Stonehenge, ' hesays, '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'sgone back to the car.... They oughtn't to have let him out of theenclosure.... "

The excitement about Master Anthony collapsed. The rest of the peoplein the circles crystallized out into the central space as two apparentsisters and an apparent aunt and the nurse, who was packed off atonce to supervise the lamp cleaning. The head of the family found somedifficulty, it would seem, in readjusting his mind to the comparativeinnocence of Anthony, and Sir Richmond and the young lady on the rocksought as if by common impulse to establish a general conversation. There were faint traces of excitement in her manner, as though therehad been some controversial passage between herself and the familygentleman. 

"We were discussing the age of this old place, " she said, smiling in thefrankest and friendliest way. "How old do YOU think it is?"

The father of Anthony intervened, also with a shadow of controversy inhis manner. "I was explaining to the young lady that it dates fromthe early bronze age. Before chronology existed.... But she insists ondates. "

"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 Britainsomewhere between the times of Moses and Solomon. "

"Ah!" said the young lady, as who should say, 'This man at least talkssense. '

"But these stones are all shaped, " said the father of the family. "It isdifficult to see how that could have been done without something harderthan stone. "

"I don't SEE the place, " said the young lady on the stone. "I can'timagine how they did it up--not one bit. "

"Did it up!" exclaimed the father of the family in the tone of oneaccustomed to find a gentle sport in the intellectual frailties of hiswomenkind. 

"It's just the bones of a place. They hung things round it. They drapedit. "

"But what things?" asked Sir Richmond. 

"Oh! they had things all right. Skins perhaps. Mats of rushes. Bastcloth. Fibre of all sorts. Wadded stuff. "

"Stonehenge draped! It's really a delightful idea;" said the father ofthe family, enjoying it. 

"It's quite a possible one, " said Sir Richmond. 

"Or they may have used wicker, " the young lady went on, undismayed. Sheseemed to concede a point. "Wicker IS likelier. "

"But surely, " said the father of the family with the expostulatory voiceand gesture of one who would recall erring wits to sanity, "it isfar more impressive standing out bare and noble as it does. In lonelysplendour. "

"But all this country may have been wooded then, " said Sir Richmond. "Inwhich case it wouldn't have stood out. It doesn't stand out so very mucheven now. "

"You came to it through a grove, " said the young lady, eagerly pickingup 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 reprovingtone of one who never allows a novel idea inside HIS doors if he canprevent it. 

"Well, " said the young lady, "I guess there was some sort of show hereanyhow. And no human being ever had a show yet without trying to shutpeople out of it in order to make them come in. I guess this was coveredin all right. A dark hunched old place in a wood. Beech stems, smooth, like pillars. And they came to it at night, in procession, beatingdrums, and scared half out of their wits. They came in THERE and wentround the inner circle with their torches. And so they were shown. Thetorches were put out and the priests did their mysteries. Until dawnbroke. 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 astage whisper. 

"BLUGGY, " agreed Anthony's elder sister to the younger, in a noiselessvoice that certainly did not reach father. "SQUEALS!.... "

This young lady who was addressed as "V. V. " was perhaps one or two andtwenty, 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 breadthin the brow and softness in the cheek bones, that faint flavour of theAmerindian, one sees at times in American women. Her voice was a verysoft and pleasing voice, and she spoke persuasively and not assertivelyas so many American women do. Her determination to make the dry bones ofStonehenge live shamed the doctor's disappointment with the place. Andwhen she had spoken, Dr. Martineau noted that she looked at Sir Richmondas if she expected him at least to confirm her vision. Sir Richmond wasevidently prepared to confirm it. 

With a queer little twinge of infringed proprietorship, the doctor sawSir Richmond step up on the prostrate megalith and stand beside her, thebetter to appreciate her point of view. He smiled down at her. "Now whydo you think they came in THERE?" he asked. 

The young lady was not very clear about her directions. She did not knowof the roadway running to the Avon river, nor of the alleged race courseto the north, nor had she ever heard that the stones were supposed to beof two different periods and that some of them might possibly have beenbrought from a very great distance. 

Section 2

Neither Dr. Martineau nor the father of the family found the imaginativereconstruction of the Stonehenge rituals quite so exciting as the twoprincipals. The father of the family endured some further particularswith manifest impatience, no longer able, now that Sir Richmond wasencouraging the girl, to keep her in check with the slightly derisivesmile proper to her sex. Then he proclaimed in a fine loud tenor, "Allthis is very imaginative, I'm afraid. " And to his family, "Time we werepressing on. Turps, we must go-o. Come, Phoebe!"

As he led his little flock towards the exit his voice came floatingback. "Talking wanton nonsense.... Any professional archaeologist wouldlaugh, simply laugh.... "

He passed out of the world. 

With a faint intimation of dismay Dr. Martineau realized that the twotalkative ladies were not to be removed in the family automobile withthe rest of the party. Sir Richmond and the younger lady went on verycheerfully to the population, agriculture, housing and general sceneryof the surrounding Downland during the later Stone Age. The shorter, less attractive lady, whose accent was distinctly American, came now andstood at the doctor's elbow. She seemed moved to play the part of chorusto 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. Hestarted, and his face assumed the distressed politeness of the moon atits full. "Your friend, " he said, "interested in archaeology?"

"Interested!" said the stouter lady. "Why! She's a fiend at it. Eversince we came on Carnac. "

"You've visited Carnac?"

"That's where the bug bit her. " said the stout lady with a note ofquerulous humour. "Directly V. V. Set eyes on Carnac, she just turnedagainst all her up-bringing. 'Why wasn't I told of this before?' shesaid. 'What's Notre Dame to this? This is where we came from. This isthe real starting point of the MAYFLOWER. Belinda, ' she said, 'we've gotto 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 rightnow instead of being shopping in Paris or London like decent Americanwomen. "

The younger lady looked down on her companion with something of the calmexpert attention that a plumber gives to a tap that is misbehaving, andlike a plumber refrained from precipitate action. She stood with thebacks of her hands resting on her hips. 

"Well, " she said slowly, giving most of the remark to Sir Richmond andthe rest to the doctor. "It is nearer the beginnings of things thanLondon or Paris. "

"And nearer to us, " said Sir Richmond. 

"I call that just--paradoxical, " said the shorter lady, who appeared tobe called Belinda. 

"Not paradoxical, " Dr. Martineau contradicted gently. "Life is alwaysbeginning 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 anymore. They've got to be cleared away. "

"You let me tell my own opinions, Belinda, " said the young lady who wascalled V. V. "I said that if people went on building with fluted pillarsand Corinthian capitals for two thousand years, it was time they werecleared up and taken away. "

"Corinthian capitals?" Sir Richmond considered it and laughedcheerfully. "I suppose Europe does rather overdo that sort of thing. "

"The way she went on about the Victor Emmanuele Monument!" said thelady who answered to the name of Belinda. "It gave me cold shivers tothink that those Italian officers might understand English. "

The lady who was called V. V. Smiled as if she smiled at herself, andexplained herself to Sir Richmond. "When one is travelling about, onegets to think of history and politics in terms of architecture. I doanyhow. And those columns with Corinthian capitals have got to be a sortof symbol for me for everything in Europe that I don't want and have nosort of use for. It isn't a bad sort of capital in its way, florid andpretty, but not a patch on the Doric;--and that a whole continent shouldcome 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 theRomans all over western Europe. "

"And it smothers the history of Europe. You can't see Europe becauseof it. Europe is obsessed by Rome. Everywhere Marble Arches and ARCS DETRIOMPHE. You never get away from it. It is like some old gentleman whohas lost his way in a speech and keeps on repeating the same thing. Andcan't sit down. 'The empire, gentlemen--the Empire. Empire. ' Rome itselfis perfectly frightful. It stares at you with its great round stupidarches as though it couldn't imagine that you could possibly wantanything else for ever. Saint Peter's and that frightful Monument arejust the same stuff as the Baths of Caracalla and the palaces of theCaesars. Just the same. They will make just the same sort of ruins. Itgoes on and goes on. "

"AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS, " said Dr. Martineau. 

"This Roman empire seems to be Europe's first and last idea. A fixedidea. And such a poor idea!... America never came out of that. It's nogood-telling me that it did. It escaped from it.... So I said to Belindahere, 'Let's burrow, if we can, under all this marble and find out whatsort of people we were before this Roman empire and its acanthus weedsgot hold of us. '"

"I seem to remember at Washington, something faintly Corinthian, something called the Capitol, " Sir Richmond reflected. "And otherbuildings. A Treasury. "

"That is different, " said the young lady, so conclusively that it seemedto leave nothing more to be said on that score. 

"A last twinge of Europeanism, " she vouchsafed. "We were young in thosedays. "

"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 wasolder than this. And older still is Avebury. Have you heard in Americaof Avebury? It may have predated this place, they think, by anotherthousand 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 uponan account of the glory and wonder of Avebury. Possibly he exaggeratedAvebury.... 

It was Dr. Martineau who presently brought this disquisition uponAvebury to a stop by a very remarkable gesture. He looked at his watch. He drew it out ostentatiously, a thick, respectable gold watch, forthe doctor was not the sort of man to wear his watch upon his wrist. Heclicked it open and looked at it. Thereby he would have proclaimed hisbelief this encounter was an entirely unnecessary interruption of hishealing duologue with Sir Richmond, which must now be resumed. 

But this action had scarcely the effect he had intended it to have. Itset the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means ofgetting 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 theymoved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. Hefound himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate thepainless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where their luggageawaited 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 OldGeorge 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 withSir Richmond, while the lady named Belinda, for whom Dr. Martineauwas already developing a very strong dislike, was to be thrust into anextreme proximity with him and the balance of the luggage in the dickyseat behind. 

Sir Richmond had never met with a young woman with a genuine historicalimagination before, and he was evidently very greatly excited andresolved to get the utmost that there was to be got out of thisencounter. 

Section 3

Sir Richmond displayed a complete disregard of the sufferings of Dr. Martineau, shamefully compressed behind him. Of these he was to hearlater. He ran his overcrowded little car, overcrowded so far as thedicky went, over the crest of the Down and down into Amesbury and onto Salisbury, stopping to alight and stretch the legs of the party whenthey came in sight of Old Sarum. 

"Certainly they can do with a little stretching, " said Dr. Martineaugrimly. 

This charming young woman had seized upon the imagination of SirRichmond to the temporary exclusion of all other considerations. Thelong Downland gradients, quivering very slightly with the vibration ofthe road, came swiftly and easily to meet and pass the throbbing littlecar as he sat beside her and talked to her. He fell into that expositorymanner which comes so easily to the native entertaining the visitor fromabroad. 

"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 ourright as we come over one of these crests. Each of them representsabout a thousand years. Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and theSaxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city. Now it is pasturefor sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury, --English, real English. It maylast a few centuries still. It is little more than seven hundred yearsold. 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 willfly to the ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, yourpeople and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were made inall these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am glad I came backto 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 historydidn'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 comeover to Europe as if it hadn't anything to do with us except to supplyus with old pictures and curios generally. We come sight-seeing. It'sromantic. It's picturesque. We stare at the natives--like visitors ata Zoo. We don't realize that we belong.... I know our style.... But wearen'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'sProfessor Breasted for instance. He comes sometimes to my father'shouse. 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 andall sorts of interesting things happen there nowadays. And we are wakingup to history. Quite fast. We shan't always be the most ignorant peoplein the world. We are beginning to realize that quite a lot of thingshappened 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 ofthose men you read about in the papers who go away from home and turn upin some distant place with their memories gone. They've forgotten whattheir names were or where they lived or what they did for a living;they've forgotten everything that matters. Often they have to beginagain 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 Corinthiancapitals. "

"You feel all this country belongs to you?"

"As much as it does to you. " Sir Richmond smiled radiantly at her. "Butif 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 longtime. 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 Americanfor some time. I want to know very badly what you think you are up towith the world, --our world. "

"I'm equally anxious to know what England thinks she is doing. Herways recently have been a little difficult to understand. On anyhypothesis--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 ofownership in England. It's like finding your dearest aunt torturing thecat. "

"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. Andpoor Aunt Britannia almost deliberately lost her temper. But I admit shehits 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 ofshowing you Salisbury and Avebury. If you are free?"

"We're travelling together, just we two. We are wandering about thesouth of England on our way to Falmouth. Where I join a father in a fewdays' time, and I go on with him to Paris. And if you and your friendare coming to the Old George--"

"We are, " said Sir Richmond. 

"I see no great scandal in talking right on to bedtime. And seeingAvebury to-morrow. Why not? Perhaps if we did as the Germans do and gaveour names now, it might mitigate something of the extreme informality ofour behaviour. "

"My name is Hardy. I've been a munition manufacturer. I was slightlywounded by a stray shell near Arras while I was inspecting some plant Ihad set up, and also I was hit by a stray knighthood. So my name isnow Sir Richmond Hardy. My friend is a very distinguished Harley Streetphysician. Chiefly nervous and mental cases. His name is Dr. Martineau. He is quite as civilized as I am. He is also a philosophical writer. Heis really a very wise and learned man indeed. He is full of ideas. He'sstimulated me tremendously. You must talk to him. "

Sir Richmond glanced over his shoulder at the subject of thesecommendations. Through the oval window glared an expression of malignitythat made no impression whatever on his preoccupied mind. 

"My name, " said the young lady, "is Grammont. The war whirled me overto Europe on Red Cross work and since the peace I've been settling upthings and travelling about Europe. My father is rather a big businessman in New York. "

"The oil Grammont?"

"He is rather deep in oil, I believe. He is coming over to Europebecause he does not like the way your people are behaving inMesopotamia. He is on his way to Paris now. Paris it seems is whereeverything is to be settled against you. Belinda is a sort of companionI have acquired for the purposes of independent travel. She was RedCross too. I must have somebody and I cannot bear a maid. Her name isBelinda 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 OldSarum. The little ancient city that faded away when Salisbury lifted itsspire into the world. We will stop here for a little while.... "

Then it was that Dr. Martineau was grim about the stretching of hislegs. 

Section 4

The sudden prospect which now opened out before Sir Richmond of talkingabout history and suchlike topics with a charming companion for perhapstwo whole days instead of going on with this tiresome, shamefaced, egotistical business of self-examination was so attractive to him thatit took immediate possession of his mind, to the entire exclusionand disregard of Dr. Martineau's possible objections to any suchmodification of their original programme. When they arrived inSalisbury, the doctor did make some slight effort to suggest a differenthotel from that in which the two ladies had engaged their rooms, buton the spur of the moment and in their presence he could produce nosufficient reason for refusing the accommodation the Old George hadready for him. He was reduced to a vague: "We don't want to inflictourselves--" He could not get Sir Richmond aside for any adequateexpression of his feelings about Miss Seyffert, before the four of themwere seated together at tea amidst the mediaeval modernity of the OldGeorge smoking-room. And only then did he begin to realize the depth andextent of the engagements to which Sir Richmond had committed himself. 

"I was suggesting that we run back to Avebury to-morrow, " said SirRichmond. "These ladies were nearly missing it. "

The thing took the doctor's breath away. For the moment he could saynothing. He stared over his tea-cup dour-faced. An objection formulateditself very slowly. "But that dicky, " he whispered. 

His whisper went unnoted. Sir Richmond was talking of the completenessof Salisbury. From the very beginning it had been a cathedral city; itwas essentially and purely that. The church at its best, in the fulltide of its mediaeval ascendancy, had called it into being. He wasmaking some extremely loose and inaccurate generalizations about thebuildings and ruins each age had left for posterity, and Miss Grammontwas countering with equally unsatisfactory qualifications. "Our agewill leave the ruins of hotels, " said Sir Richmond. "Railway arches andhotels. "

"Baths and aqueducts, " Miss Grammont compared. "Rome of the Empire comesnearest to it.... "

As soon as tea was over, Dr. Martineau realized, they meant to walkround and about Salisbury. He foresaw that walk with the utmostclearness. In front and keeping just a little beyond the range of hisintervention, Sir Richmond would go with Miss Grammont; he himself andMiss Seyffert would bring up the rear. "If I do, " he muttered, "I'll bedamned!" an unusually strong expression for him. 

"You said--?" asked Miss Seyffert. 

"That I have some writing to do--before the post goes, " said the doctorbrightly. 

"Oh! come and see the cathedral!" cried Sir Richmond with ill-concealeddismay. He was, if one may put it in such a fashion, not looking at MissSeyffert 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 lookfor 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 asthat. And while you are shopping, if you wouldn't mind getting one ortwo things for me.... "

It became clear to Dr. Martineau that Sir Richmond was to be let offBelinda. It seemed abominably unjust. And it was also clear to him thathe must keep closely to his own room or he might find Miss Seyffertdrifting back alone to the hotel and eager to resume with him.... 

Well, a quiet time in his room would not be disagreeable. He could thinkover his notes.... 

But in reality he thought over nothing but the little speeches he wouldpresently make to Sir Richmond about the unwarrantable, the absolutelyunwarrantable, alterations that were being made without his consent intheir common programme.... 

For a long time Sir Richmond had met no one so interesting and amusingas this frank-minded young woman from America. "Young woman" was how hethought of her; she didn't correspond to anything so prim and restrainedand extensively reserved and withheld as a "young lady "; and thoughhe judged her no older than five and twenty, the word "girl" with itsassociations of virginal ignorances, invisible purdah, and trite ideasnewly 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 adistinctive and conclusive manner with the utmost mental profit and noparticular tarnish or injury. He could talk with her as if he talkedwith 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 thenatural expression of a broad stream of alert thought; they were no meredisplay specimens from one of those jackdaw collections of bright thingsso many clever women waste their wits in accumulating. She was nottalking for effect at all, she was talking because she was tremendouslyinterested in her discovery of the spectacle of history, and delightedto find another person as possessed as she was. 

Belinda having been conducted to her shops, the two made their waythrough the bright evening sunlight to the compact gracefulness of thecathedral. A glimpse through a wrought-iron gate of a delightfulgarden of spring flowers, alyssum, aubrietia, snow-upon-the-mountains, daffodils, narcissus and the like, held them for a time, and then theycame out upon the level, grassy space, surrounded by little ripe oldhouses, on which the cathedral stands. They stood for some momentssurveying it. 

"It's a perfect little lady of a cathedral, " said Sir Richmond. "Butwhy, I wonder, did we build it?"

"Your memory ought to be better than mine, " she said, with herhalf-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 DIDwe build it?"

She had fallen in quite early with this freak of speaking and thinkingas if he and she were all mankind. It was as if her mind had beenprepared for it by her own eager exploration in Europe. "My friend, the philosopher, " he had said, "will not have it that we are really theindividuals we think we are. You must talk to him--he is a very curiousand 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 hisPlanet, taking control of life. "

"Man and woman, " she had amended. 

But just as man on his planet taking control of life had failedaltogether to remember why the ditch at Avebury was on the insideinstead of the outside of the vallum, so now Miss Grammont and SirRichmond found very great difficulty in recalling why they had builtSalisbury Cathedral. 

"We built temples by habit and tradition, " said Sir Richmond. "But theimpulse was losing its force. "

She looked up at the spire and then at him with a faintly quizzicalexpression. 

But he had his reply ready. 

"We were beginning to feel our power over matter. We were already veryclever engineers. What interested us here wasn't the old religion anymore. We wanted to exercise and display our power over stone. We madeit into reeds and branches. We squirted it up in all these spires andpinnacles. The priest and his altar were just an excuse. Do you thinkpeople have ever feared and worshipped in this--this artist's lark--asthey 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 Gothiccathedrals, " he said, "is the spirit of the sky-scrapers. It isarchitecture in a mood of flaming ambition. The Freemasons on thebuilding could hardly refrain from jeering at the little priest they hadleft down below there, performing antiquated puerile mysteries at hisaltar. He was just their excuse for doing it all. "

"Sky-scrapers?" she conceded. "An early display of the sky-scraperspirit.... 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 oursover the Atlantic. But it seems to me now that I do begin to rememberbuilding this cathedral and all the other cathedrals we built inEurope.... 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 ofthings.... Over here, the sites are frightfully crowded.... "

"And what do you think we are building now? And what do you think youare building over here?"

"What are we building now? I believe we have almost grown up. I believeit 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 showsas 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 theystrolled to and fro round and about the west end and along the pathunder the trees towards the river, exchanging their ideas very franklyand freely about the things that had recently happened to the world andwhat they thought they ought to be doing in it. 

Section 5

After dinner our four tourists sat late and talked in a corner of thesmoking-room. The two ladies had vanished hastily at the first dinnergong and reappeared at the second, mysteriously and pleasantly changedfrom tweedy pedestrians to indoor company. They were quietly butdefinitely dressed, pretty alterations had happened to their coiffure, asilver band and deep red stones lit the dusk of Miss Grammont's hairand a necklace of the same colourings kept the peace between her jollysun-burnt cheek and her soft untanned neck. It was evident her recentuniform had included a collar of great severity. Miss Seyffert hadrevealed 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 thesteady continuity of Sir Richmond's duologue with Miss Grammont. MissSeyffert's methods were too discursive and exclamatory. She broke everythread that appeared. The Old George at Salisbury is really old;it shows it, and Miss Seyffert laced the entire evening with herrecognition of the fact. "Just look at that old beam!" she would crysuddenly. "To think it was exactly where it is before there was a Cabotin America!"

Miss Grammont let her companion pull the talk about as she chose. Afterthe animation of the afternoon a sort of lazy contentment had takenpossession of the younger lady. She sat deep in a basket chair and spokenow 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 outthe statement that Italy was frightfully overpopulated. "In some partsof 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 MissSeyffert. 

"Little children working like slaves, " said Miss Grammont. 

"And everybody begging. Even the people at work by the roadside. Whoought 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 isfrightfully 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 outfor Birth Control all the time. "

A brief but active pause ensued. Dr. Martineau in a state of suddendistress attempted to drink out of a cold and empty coffee cup. 

"The world swarms with cramped and undeveloped lives, " said SirRichmond. "Which amount to nothing. Which do not even representhappiness. And which help to use up the resources, the fuel and surplusenergy of the world. "

"I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives, " Miss Grammontreflected. 

"Does that matter? They do nothing to carry life on. They are just vainrepetitions--imperfect dreary, blurred repetitions of one common life. All that they feel has been felt, all that they do has been donebetter before. Because they are crowded and hurried and underfed andundereducated. And as for liking their lives, they need never have hadthe 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 wouldbe quite enough for this little planet, for a time, at any rate. Don'tyou think so, doctor?"

"I don't know, " said Dr. Martineau. "Oddly enough, I have never thoughtabout 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 fiftymillion would do, They'd be able to develop fully, all of them. Asthings 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 tosuch a stage, when population, as much as fuel, will be under a worldcontrol. If one thing, why not the other? I admit that the movement ofthought is away from haphazard towards control--"

"I'm for control all the time, " Miss Seyffert injected, following up herprevious success. 

"I admit, " the doctor began his broken sentence again with markedpatience, "that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towardscontrol--in things generally. But is the movement of events?"

"The eternal problem of man, " said Sir Richmond. "Can our willsprevail?"

There came a little pause. 

Miss Grammont smiled an enquiry at Miss Seyffert. "If YOU are, " saidBelinda. 

"I wish I could imagine your world, " said Miss Grammont, rising, "of twohundred and fifty millions of fully developed human beings with roomto 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'timagine it. Perhaps I shall dream of it. My dreaming self may becleverer. "

She held out her hand to Sir Richmond. Just for a moment they stood handin 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 thefireplace. There was no doubt whatever which young woman he meant. ButDr. 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 projectof visiting Avebury?" he said. 

"They ought to see Avebury, " said Sir Richmond. 

"H'm, " said the doctor, ostentatiously amused by his thoughts andstaring at the fire. "Birth Control! I NEVER did. "

Sir Richmond smiled down on the top of the doctor's head and saidnothing. 

"I think, " said the doctor and paused. "I shall leave this Aveburyexpedition to you. "

"We can be back in the early afternoon, " said Sir Richmond. "To givethem a chance of seeing the cathedral. The chapter house here is not oneto 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 seemtremendously overpopulated. And to tell the truth, I do not find thisencounter so amusing as you seem to do.... I shall not be sorry when wehave waved good-bye to those young ladies, and resume our interruptedconversation. "

Sir Richmond considered something mulish in the doctor's averted face. 

"I find Miss Grammont an extremely interesting--and stimulating humanbeing. 

"Evidently. "

The doctor sighed, stood up and found himself delivering one of thesentences he had engendered during his solitary meditations in his roombefore dinner. He surprised himself by the plainness of his speech. "Letme be frank, " he said, regarding Sir Richmond squarely. "Consideringthe general situation of things and your position, I do not care verygreatly for the part of an accessory to what may easily develop, as youknow very well, into a very serious flirtation. An absurd, mischievous, irrelevant flirtation. You may not like the word. You may pretend it isa conversation, an ordinary intellectual conversation. That is notthe 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.... Forgiveme 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 motivesfound themselves together again by the fireplace in the Old Georgesmoking-room. They had resumed their overnight conversation, in a stateof considerable tension. 

"If you find the accommodation of the car insufficient, " said SirRichmond in a tone of extreme reasonableness, and I admit it is, we caneasily hire a larger car in a place like this. 

I would not care if you hired an omnibus, said Dr. Martineau. "I am notcoming on if these young women are. "

"But if you consider it scandalous--and really, Martineau, really! asone man to another, it does seem to me to be a bit pernickety of you, abroad and original thinker as you are--"

"Thought is one matter. Rash, inconsiderate action quite another. Andabove all, if I spend another day in or near the company of Miss BelindaSeyffert 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 speakingin low, confidential tones. "She is quite a manageable person. Quite. She could--for example--be left behind with the luggage and sent on bytrain. 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 hiscompanion would agree, and then he perceived that the doctor's silencemeant only the preparation of an ultimatum. 

"I object to Miss Grammont and that side of the thing, more than I do toMiss Seyffert. "

Sir Richmond said nothing. 

"It may help you to see this affair from a slightly different angle ifI tell you that twice today Miss Seyffert has asked me if you were amarried 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 uncongenialto me. It is the sort of thing that has never happened in my life. Thishighway coupling--"

"Don't you think, " said Sir Richmond, "that you are attaching rather toomuch--what shall I say--romantic?--flirtatious?--meaning to this affair?I don't mind that after my rather lavish confessions you shouldconsider me a rather oversexed person, but isn't your attitude ratherunfair, --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 humanbeing. Her manners suggest a person of considerable self-control. Andknowing less of me than you do, she probably regards me as almost assafe 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 littleenlargement of our interests. "

"AM I?" said Dr. Martineau and brought a scrutinizing eye to bear on SirRichmond's face. 

"I want to go on talking to Miss Grammont for a day or so, " Sir Richmondadmitted. 

"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 SirRichmond with a note of genuine regret in his voice. 

"It is not a dilemma, " said Dr. Martineau, with a corresponding loss ofasperity. "I grant you we discover we differ upon a question of tasteand convenience. But before I suggested this trip, I had intended tospend 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 happeneda little later.... "

The matter was settled. Nothing more of a practical nature remained tobe said. But neither gentleman wished to break off with a harsh and baredecision. 

"When the New Age is here, " said Sir Richmond, "then, surely, afriendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected to the--theinconveniences your present code would set about it? They would travelabout together as they chose?"

"The fundamental principle of the new age, " said the doctor, "will beHoni soit qui mal y pense. In these matters. With perhaps Fay ceque vouldras as its next injunction. So long as other lives are notaffected. In matters of personal behaviour the world will probably bemuch more free and individuals much more open in their conscienceand 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 livingin a new age yet; we are living in the patched-up ruins of a very oldone. And you--if you will forgive me--are living in the patched upremains of a life that had already had its complications. This younglady, whose charm and cleverness I admit, behaves as if the new age werealready here. Well, that may be a very dangerous mistake both for herand for you.... This affair, if it goes on for a few days more, mayinvolve very serious consequences indeed, with which I, for one, do notwish to be involved. "

Sir Richmond, upon the hearthrug, had a curious feeling that he was backin the head master's study at Caxton. 

Dr. Martineau went on with a lucidity that Sir Richmond found rathertrying, to give his impression of Miss Grammont and her position inlife. 

"She is, " he said, "manifestly a very expensively educated girl. Andin many ways interesting. I have been watching her. I have not beenfavoured with very much of her attention, but that fact has enabledme to see her in profile. Miss Seyffert is a fairly crude mixture offrankness, insincerity and self-explanatory egotism, and I have beenable to disregard a considerable amount of the conversation she hasaddressed to me. Now I guess this Miss Grammont has had no mother sinceshe 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 hadto solve many problems for which the normal mother provides ready madesolutions. That is how I inferred that there was no mother. I don'tthink there has been any stepmother, either friendly or hostile?There hasn't been. I thought not. She has had various governesses andcompanions, ladies of birth and education, engaged to look after herand she has done exactly what she liked with them. Her manner with MissSeyffert, an excellent manner for Miss Seyffert, by the bye, isn't thesort of manner anyone acquires in a day. Or for one person only. She isa very sure and commanding young woman. "

Sir Richmond nodded. 

"I suppose her father adores and neglects her, and whenever she haswanted a companion or governess butchered, the thing has been done.... These business Americans, I am told, neglect their womenkind, give themmoney and power, let them loose on the world.... It is a sort of morallaziness masquerading as affection.... Still I suppose custom andtradition kept this girl in her place and she was petted, honoured, amused, talked about but not in a harmful way, and rather bored rightup to the time when America came into the war. Theoretically she had atremendously good time. "

"I think this must be near the truth of her biography, " said SirRichmond. 

"I suppose she has lovers. "

"You don't mean--?"

"No, I don't. Though that is a matter that ought to have no specialinterest for you. I mean that she was surrounded by a retinue of men whowanted to marry her or who behaved as though they wanted to marry her orwho made her happiness and her gratifications and her condescensionsseem a matter of very great importance to them. She had the flattery ofan extremely uncritical and unexacting admiration. That is the sort ofthing that gratifies a silly woman extremely. Miss Grammont is not sillyand all this homage and facile approval probably bored her more than sherealized. To anyone too intelligent to be steadily excited by buyingthings and wearing things and dancing and playing games and going toplaces of entertainment, and being given flowers, sweets, jewellery, petanimals, and books bound in a special sort of leather, the prospect ofbeing a rich man's only daughter until such time as it becomes advisableto change into a rich man's wealthy wife, is probably not nearly soamusing as envious people might suppose. I take it Miss Grammont had gotall she could out of that sort of thing some time before the war, andthat she had already read and thought rather more than most young womenin her position. Before she was twenty I guess she was already lookingfor something more interesting in the way of men than a rich admirerwith 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. Ihaven't the material to guess with. In London a girl might find aconsiderable 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 theempire. 

"In America I suppose there is at least an equal variety, made up ofrather different types. She would find that life was worth while to suchpeople in a way that made the ordinary entertainments and amusements ofher life a monstrous silly waste of time. With the facility of her sexshe would pick up from one of them the idea that made life worth whilefor him. I am inclined to think there was someone in her case who didseem to promise a sort of life that was worth while. And that somehowthe war came to alter the look of that promise. 

"How?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I am only romancing. But for this young womanI am convinced this expedition to Europe has meant experience, harsheducational experience and very profound mental disturbance. There havebeen love experiences; experiences that were something more than thetreats and attentions and proposals that made up her life when she wassheltered over there. And something more than that. What it is I don'tknow. The war has turned an ugly face to her. She has seen death andsuffering and ruin. Perhaps she has seen people she knew killed. Perhapsthe man has been killed. Or she has met with cowardice or cruelty ortreachery where she didn't expect it. She has been shocked out of thefirst 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 historyhas 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 atragic struggle that still goes on. She sees history as you see it and Isee it. She is a very grown-up young woman. 

"It's just that, " said Sir Richmond. "It's just that. If you see as muchin Miss Grammont as all that, why don't you want to come on with us? Yousee the interest of her. "

"I see a lot more than that. You don't know what an advantage it is tobe as I am, rather cold and unresponsive to women and unattractive andnegligible--negligible, that is the exact word--to them. YOU can't lookat a woman for five minutes without losing sight of her in a mistof imaginative excitement. Because she looks back at you. I have theprivilege of the negligible--which is a cool head. Miss Grammont has astartled and matured mind, an original mind. Yes. And there is somethingmore 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 theircharacters. Goodness in a woman, as we understand it, seems to implynecessarily a certain imaginative fixity. Miss Grammont has an impulsiveand adventurous character. And as I have been saying she was a spoiltchild, with no discipline.... You also are a person of high intelligenceand defective controls. She is very much at loose ends. You--on accountof 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 theconfessional still. Look at the thing frankly. You, I say, are also atloose ends. Can you deny it? My dear sir, don't we both know that eversince we left London you have been ready to fall in love with anypretty thing in petticoats that seemed to promise you three ha'porth ofkindness. A lost dog looking for a master! You're a stray man lookingfor a mistress. Miss Grammont being a woman is a little more selectivethan that. But if she's at a loose end as I suppose, she isn't protectedby the sense of having made her selection. And she has no preconceptionsof what she wants. You are a very interesting man in many ways. Youcarry marriage and entanglements lightly. With an air of being neithermarried nor entangled. She is quite prepared to fall in love with you. "

"But you don't really think that?" said Sir Richmond, with anill-concealed eagerness. 

Dr. Martineau rolled his face towards Sir Richmond. "Thesemiracles--grotesquely--happen, " he said. "She knows nothing of MartinLeeds.... 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 counselwith them and then decided to take offence. 

"Really!" he said, "this is preposterous. You talk of falling in love asthough it was impossible for a man and woman to be deeply interested ineach other without that. And the gulf in our ages--in our quality! Fromthe Psychologist of a New Age I find this amazing. Are men and womento go on for ever--separated by this possibility into two hardlycommunicating and yet interpenetrating worlds? Is there never to befriendship and companionship between men and women without passion?"

"You ought to know even better than I do that there is not. For suchpeople as you two anyhow. And at present the world is not prepared totolerate friendship and companionship WITH that accompaniment. That isthe core of this situation. "

A pause fell between the two gentlemen. They had smoothed over theextreme harshness of their separation and there was very little more tobe 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 theSalisbury station platform, "I leave you to it. "

His round face betrayed little or no vestiges of his overnightirritation. 

"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 hisexpedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr. Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of hismind. Dr. Martineau was forgotten. 

Section 2

For the better part of forty hours, Sir Richmond had either been talkingto Miss Grammont, or carrying on imaginary conversations with her in herabsence, or sleeping and dreaming dreams in which she never failedto play a part, even if at times it was an altogether amazing andincongruous part. And as they were both very frank and expressivepeople, they already knew a very great deal about each other. 

For an American Miss Grammont was by no means autobiographical. Shegave no sketches of her idiosyncrasies, and she repeated no rememberedcomments and prophets of her contemporaries about herself. She eitherconcealed or she had lost any great interest in her own personality. Butshe 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 herown upbringing and experiences. And her liking for Sir Richmond waspleasingly manifest. She liked his turn of thought, she watched himwith a faint smile on her lips as he spoke, and she spread her opinionsbefore him carefully in that soft voice of hers like a shy child showingits treasures to some suddenly trusted and favoured visitor. 

Their ways of thought harmonized. They talked at first chiefly about thehistory of the world and the extraordinary situation of aimlessness in aphase of ruin to which the Great War had brought all Europe, if not allmankind. The world excited them both in the same way; as a crisis inwhich they were called upon to do something--they did not yet clearlyknow what. Into this topic they peered as into some deep pool, side byside, and in it they saw each other reflected. 

The visit to Avebury had been a great success. It had been aperfect springtime day, and the little inn had been delighted at thereappearance of Sir Richmond's car so soon after its departure. Itsdelight was particularly manifest in the cream and salad it producedfor lunch. Both Miss Grammont and Miss Seyffert displayed an intelligentinterest in their food. After lunch they had all gone out to the stonesand the wall. Half a dozen sunburnt children were putting one of thepartially overturned megaliths to a happy use by clambering to the topof it and sliding on their little behinds down its smooth and slopingside amidst much mirthful squealing. 

Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont had walked round the old circumvallationtogether, but Belinda Seyffert had strayed away from them, professingan interest in flowers. It was not so much that she felt they had to beleft together that made her do this as her own consciousness of beingpossessed by a devil who interrupted conversations. 

When Miss Grammont was keenly interested in a conversation, then Belindahad learnt from experience that it was wiser to go off with her devilout of the range of any temptation to interrupt. 

"You really think, " said Miss Grammont, "that it would be possible totake this confused old world and reshape it, set it marching towardsthat new world of yours--of two hundred and fifty million fullydeveloped, 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 itsown. "

Her imagination glowed in her eyes and warmed her voice. "I believe whatyou say is possible. If people dare. "

"I am tired of following little motives that are like flames that go outwhen you get to them. I am tired of seeing all the world doing thesame. I am tired of a world in which there is nothing great but greatdisasters. 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 tosettle down to and will settle down to. "

She considered that. 

"I've been getting to believe something like this. But--... It frightensme. I suppose most of us have this same sort of dread of taking too muchupon ourselves. "

"So we just live like pigs. Sensible little piggywiggys. I've got aCommittee 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 thesin of presumption. 

"Not quite that!"

"Well! How do you put it?"

"We are afraid, " she said. "It's too vast. We want bright little livesof 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. Butwhether we get life and happiness or fail to get them we human beingswho have imaginations want something more nowadays.... Of course we wantbright lives, of course we want happiness. Just as we want food, just aswe want sleep. But when we have eaten, when we have slept, when we havejolly things about us--it is nothing. We have been made an exceptionof--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. Ido not know why it should be so, but I am compelled by something in mynature to want to serve this idea of a new age for mankind. I want itas my culminating want. I want a world in order, a disciplined mankindgoing 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 soclear and positive. "

"I don't complain that you are clear and positive. I've been comingalong the same way.... It's refreshing to meet you. "

"I found it refreshing to meet Martineau. " A twinge of conscience aboutDr. Martineau turned Sir Richmond into a new channel. "He's a mostinteresting man, " he said. "Rather shy in some respects. Devoted to hiswork. 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 ofa New Age. The world, he believes, is entering upon a new phase in itshistory, the adolescence, so to speak, of mankind. It is an idea thatseizes the imagination. There is a flow of new ideas abroad, he thinks, widening realizations, unprecedented hopes and fears. There is aconsciousness of new powers and new responsibilities. We are sharing theadolescence of our race. It is giving history a new and more intimatemeaning for us. It is bringing us into directer relation with publicaffairs, --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 beenthinking 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 forsomething. I'd like to know if it's not jabbing too searching a questionat you--what you have found. "

Sir Richmond considered. "Incidentally, " he smiled, "I want to geta lasso over the neck of that very forcible and barbaric person, yourfather. I am doing my best to help lay the foundation of a scientificworld control of fuel production and distribution. We have a FuelCommission in London with rather wide powers of enquiry into the wholeworld problem of fuel. We shall come out to Washington presently withproposals. "

Miss Grammont surveyed the landscape. "I suppose, " she said, "poorfather IS rather like an unbroken mule in business affairs. So many ofour 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 methat I seem to have been thinking about in a sort of almost invisiblehalf-conscious way. I've been suspecting for a long time thatCivilization wasn't much good unless it got people like my father undersome sort of control. But controlling father--as distinguished frommanaging him!" She reviewed some private and amusing memories. "He is amost intractable man. "

Section 3

They had gone on to talk of her father and of the types of men whocontrolled international business. She had had plentiful opportunitiesfor observation in their homes and her own. Gunter Lake, the big banker, she knew particularly well, because, it seemed, she had been engagedor was engaged to marry him. "All these people, " she said, "are pushingthings about, affecting millions of lives, hurting and disorderinghundreds of thousands of people. They don't seem to know what theyare doing. They have no plans in particular.... And you are gettingsomething going that will be a plan and a direction and a conscienceand a control for them? You will find my father extremely difficult, butsome of our younger men would love it. 

"And, " she went on; "there are American women who'd love it too. We'repetted. We're kept out of things. We aren't placed. We don't get enoughto do. We're spenders and wasters--not always from choice. While thesefathers and brothers and husbands of ours play about with the fuel andpower 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 asthough 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 hadplayed a large part in her life. "That isn't going on, " she said with aneffect of conclusive decision. 

Sir Richmond recalled that little speech now as he returned fromSalisbury station to the Old George after his farewell to Martineau. Herecalled too the soft firmness of her profile and the delicate line ofher lifted chin. He felt that this time at any rate he was not beingdeceived by the outward shows of a charming human being. This youngwoman had real firmness of character to back up her free and independentjudgments. He smiled at the idea of any facile passion in thecomposition of so sure and gallant a personality. Martineau was veryfine-minded in many respects, but he was an old maid; and like all oldmaids he saw man and woman in every encounter. But passion was a thingmen and women fell back upon when they had nothing else in common. Whenthey thought in the pleasantest harmony and every remark seemed to weavea fresh thread of common interest, then it wasn't so necessary. It mighthappen, but it wasn't so necessary.... If it did it would be a secondarything to companionship. That's what she was, --a companion. 

But a very lovely and wonderful companion, the companion one would notrelinquish until the very last moment one could keep with her. 

Her views about America and about her own place in the world seemedequally 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 recentlyacquired vote. She evidently classified voters into the irresponsiblewho just had votes and the responsible who also had a considerableamount of property as well. She had no illusions about the power of theformer class. It didn't exist. They were steered to their decisions bypeople employed, directed or stimulated by "father" and his friends andassociates, the owners of America, the real "responsible citizens. " Orthey fell a prey to the merely adventurous leading of "revolutionaries. "But anyhow they were steered. She herself, it was clear, was boundto become a very responsible citizen indeed. She would some day, shelaughed, be swimming in oil and such like property. Her interest inSir Richmond's schemes for a scientific world management of fuel wastherefore, she realized, a very direct one. But it was remarkable tofind a young woman seeing it like that. 

Father it seemed varied very much in his attitude towards her. Hedespised and distrusted women generally, and it was evident he had madeit quite clear to her how grave an error it was on her part to persistin being a daughter and not a son. At moments it seemed to SirRichmond that she was disposed to agree with father upon that. When Mr. Grammont's sense of her regrettable femininity was uppermost, then hegave his intelligence chiefly to schemes for tying her up against themachinations of adventurers by means of trustees, partners, lawyers, advisers, agreements and suchlike complications, or for acquiring aworkable son by marriage. To this last idea it would seem the importancein 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 couldnot be spoken of as his "own flesh and blood, " and then he would directhis attention to a kind of masculinization of his daughter and toschemes for giving her the completest control of all he had to leave herprovided she never married nor fell under masculine sway. "After all, "he would reflect as he hesitated over the practicability of his life'sideal, "there was Hetty Green. "

This latter idea had reft her suddenly at the age of seventeen fromthe educational care of an English gentlewoman warranted to fit her formarriage with any prince in Europe, and thrust her for the mornings anda moiety of the afternoons of the better part of a year, after a swiftbut competent training, into a shirt waist and an office down town. Shehad been entrusted at first to a harvester concern independent of Mr. Grammont, because he feared his own people wouldn't train her hard. Shehad worked for ordinary wages and ordinary hours, and at the end of theday, she mentioned casually, a large automobile with two menservantsand a trustworthy secretary used to pick her out from the torrent ofundistinguished workers that poured out of the Synoptical Building. Thismasculinization idea had also sent her on a commission of enquiry intoMexico. There apparently she had really done responsible work. 

But upon the question of labour Mr. Grammont was fierce, even for anAmerican business man, and one night at a dinner party he discoveredhis daughter displaying what he considered an improper familiaritywith socialist ideas. This had produced a violent revulsion towards thepurdah system and the idea of a matrimonial alliance with Gunter Lake. Gunter Lake, Sir Richmond gathered, wasn't half a bad fellow. Generallyit would seem Miss Grammont liked him, and she had a way of speakingabout him that suggested that in some way Mr. Lake had been ratherhardly used and had acquired merit by his behaviour under bad treatment. There was some story, however, connected with her war services in Europeupon which Miss Grammont was evidently indisposed to dwell. About thatstory Sir Richmond was left at the end of his Avebury day and after hislast talk with Dr. Martineau, still quite vaguely guessing. 

So much fact about Miss Grammont as we have given had floated up infragments and pieced itself together in Sir Richmond's mind in thecourse of a day and a half. The fragments came up as allusions or by wayof illustration. The sustaining topic was this New Age Sir Richmondfore shadowed, this world under scientific control, the Utopia of fullydeveloped people fully developing the resources of the earth. For anumber of trivial reasons Sir Richmond found himself ascribing theproject of this New Age almost wholly to Dr. Martineau, and presentingit as a much completer scheme than he was justified in doing. It wastrue that Dr. Martineau had not said many of the things Sir Richmondascribed to him, but also it was true that they had not crystallized outin Sir Richmond's mind before his talks with Dr. Martineau. The idea ofa New Age necessarily carries with it the idea of fresh rules of conductand of different relationships between human beings. And it throwsthose 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 hopeand adventure of only a few human beings. 

So that it was natural for Miss Grammont and Sir Richmond to ask: "Whatare we to do with such types as father?" and to fall into an idiom thatassumed a joint enterprise. They had agreed by a tacit consent to acommon conception of the world they desired as a world scientificallyordered, an immense organization of mature commonsense, healthy andsecure, gathering knowledge and power for creative adventures as yetbeyond dreaming. They were prepared to think of the makers of theAvebury dyke as their yesterday selves, of the stone age savages asa phase, in their late childhood, and of this great world order SirRichmond foresaw as a day where dawn was already at hand. And in suchlong perspectives, the states, governments and institutions of to-daybecame very temporary-looking and replaceable structures indeed. Boththese two people found themselves thinking in this fashion with anunwonted courage and freedom because the other one had been disposed tothink in this fashion before. Sir Richmond was still turning over inhis mind the happy mutual release of the imagination this chancecompanionship had brought about when he found himself back again at thethreshold of the Old George. 

Section 4

Sir Richmond Hardy was not the only man who was thinking intently aboutMiss Grammont at that particular moment. Two gentlemen were comingtowards her across the Atlantic whose minds, it chanced, were verybusily occupied by her affairs. One of these was her father, whowas 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, andthinking of V. V. Because she had a way of coming into his mind when itwas undefended; and the other was Mr. Gunter Lake on the Megantic, one day out from Sandy Hook, who found himself equally sleepless andpreoccupied. And although Mr. Lake was a man of vast activities andcomplicated engagements he was coming now to Europe for the expresspurpose of seeing V. V. And having things out with her fully andcompletely because, in spite of all that had happened, she made such anendless series of delays in coming to America. 

Old Grammont as he appeared upon the pillow of his bed by the light of arose-shaded bedside lamp, was a small-headed, grey-haired gentleman witha wrinkled face and sunken brown eyes. Years of business experience, mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords, hadintensified an instinctive inexpressiveness. Under the most solitarycircumstances old Grammont was still inexpressive, and the face thatstared at the ceiling of his cabin and the problem of his daughtermight have been the face of a pickled head in a museum, for anyindication it betrayed of the flow of thought within. He lay on his backand his bent knees lifted the bed-clothes into a sharp mountain. He wasnot even trying to sleep. 

Why, he meditated, had V. V. Stayed on in Europe so much longer than sheneed have done? And why had Gunter Lake suddenly got into a state ofmind about her? Why didn't the girl confide in her father at leastabout these things? What was afoot? She had thrown over Lake once andit seemed she was going to turn him down again. Well, if she was anordinary female person that was a silly sort of thing to do. With herfortune and his--you could buy the world. But suppose she was not allordinary female person.... Her mother hadn't been ordinary anyhow, whatever else you called her, and no one could call Grammont blood allordinary 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 foranything at all. Suppose she did turn him down. In itself that wasn't athing to break her father's heart. 

What did matter was not whether she threw Lake over but what she threwhim over for. If it was because he wasn't man enough, well and good. Butif 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 acrossthe old man's mind, behind the still mask of his face. It infuriatedhim even to think of V. V. , his little V. V. , his own girl, entertaininga lover, being possibly--most shameful thought--IN LOVE! Like someordinary silly female, sinking to kisses, to the deeds one could buyand pay for. His V. V. ! The idea infuriated and disgusted him. He foughtagainst it as a possibility. Once some woman in New York had venturedto 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 inEurope.... Old Grammont had made that woman sorry she spoke. Afterwardshe had caused enquiries to be made about this Caston, careful enquiries. It seems that he and V. V. Had known each other, there had beensomething. But nothing that V. V. Need be ashamed of. When old Grammont'senquiry man had come back with his report, old Grammont had been veryparticular about that. At first the fellow had not been very clear, rather muddled indeed as to how things were--no doubt he had wantedto make out there was something just to seem to earn his money. OldGrammont had struck the table sharply and the eyes that looked out ofhis mask had blazed. "What have you found out against her?" he had askedin a low even voice. "Absolutely nothing, Sir, " said the agent, suddenlywhite to the lips.... 

Old Grammont stared at his memory of that moment for a while. Thataffair was all right, quite all right. Of course it was all right. Andalso, happily, Caston was among the dead. But it was well her brokenengagement with Lake had been resumed as though it had never been brokenoff. If there had been any talk that fact answered it. And now that Lakehad served his purpose old Grammont did not care in the least if he wasshelved. V. V. Could stand alone. 

Old Grammont had got a phrase in his mind that looked like dominatingthe situation. He dreamt of saying to V. V. : "V. V. , I'm going to makea man of you--if you're man enough. " That was a large proposition; itimplied--oh! it implied all sorts of things. It meant that she wouldcare as little for philandering as an able young business man. Perhapssome day, a long time ahead, she might marry. There wasn't much reasonfor 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 abutler, to make the household complete. " In previous meditations on hisdaughter's outlook old Grammont had found much that was very suggestivein the precedent of Queen Victoria. She had had no husband of the lordand master type, so to speak, but only a Prince Consort, well in hand. Why shouldn't the Grammont heiress dominate her male belonging, if itcame to that, in the same fashion? Why shouldn't one tie her up and tiethe whole thing up, so far as any male belonging was concerned, leavingV. 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 acurious anomaly that while one had a thousand ways of defending one'sdaughter and one's property against that daughter's husband, there wasno power on earth by which a father could stretch his dead hand betweenthat daughter and the undue influence of a lover. Unless you tied her upfor 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. Justas her mother did. " A man need not suspect his womenkind but he shouldknow what they are doing. It is duty, his protective duty to them. Thesecompanions, these Seyffert women and so forth, were all very well intheir way; there wasn't much they kept from you if you got them corneredand asked them intently. But a father's eye is better. He must go aboutwith the girl for a time, watch her with other men, give her chancesto talk business with him and see if she took them. "V. V. , I'm goingto make a man of you, " the phrase ran through his brain. The deepinstinctive jealousy of the primordial father was still strong in oldGrammont's blood. It would be pleasant to go about with her on hisright hand in Paris, HIS girl, straight and lovely, desirable andunapproachable, --above that sort of nonsense, above all other masculinesubjugation. 

"V. V. , I'm going to make a man of you.... "

His mind grew calmer. Whatever she wanted in Paris should be hers. He'djust 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 uponthe 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, butthe goddess enshrined in a good man's heart. Indeed the figure that thelimelight of the reverie fell upon was not V. V. At all but Mr. GunterLake 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 Iknow, 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 Iask is the privilege of making life happy--and it shall be happy--foryou.... All I ask. All I ask. Protect, guard, cherish.... "

For to Mr. Gunter Lake it seemed there could be no lovelier thing inlife than a wife "in name only" slowly warmed into a glow of passion bythe steadfast devotion and the strength and wisdom of a mate at firstdespised. Until at last a day would come.... 

"My darling!" Mr. Gunter Lake whispered to the darkness. "My littleguurl. IT HAS BEEN WORTH THE WAITING.... "

Section 6

Miss Grammont met Sir Richmond in the bureau of the Old George with atelegram in her hand. "My father reported his latitude and longitude bywireless last night. The London people think he will be off Falmouthin four days' time. He wants me to join his liner there and go on toCherbourg and Paris. He's arranged that. He is the sort of man who canarrange things like that. There'll be someone at Falmouth to look afterus and put us aboard the liner. I must wire them where I can pick up atelegram to-morrow. "

"Wells in Somerset, " said Sir Richmond. 

His plans were already quite clear. He explained that he wanted herfirst to see Shaftesbury, a little old Wessex town that was three orfour hundred years older than Salisbury, perched on a hill, a Saxontown, where Alfred had gathered his forces against the Danes and whereCanute, who had ruled over all Scandinavia and Iceland and Greenland, and had come near ruling a patch of America, had died. It was a littlesleepy place now, looking out dreamily over beautiful views. Theywould lunch in Shaftesbury and walk round it. Then they would go inthe afternoon through the pleasant west country where the Celts hadprevailed against the old folk of the Stonehenge temple and the Romansagainst the Celts and the Saxons against the Romanized Britons and theDanes against the Saxons, a war-scarred landscape, abounding in dykesand entrenchments and castles, sunken now into the deepest peace, toGlastonbury to see what there was to see of a marsh village the Celtshad made for themselves three or four hundred years before theRomans came. And at Glastonbury also there were the ruins of a greatBenedictine church and abbey that had once rivalled Salisbury. Thencethey would go on to Wells to see yet another great cathedral and to dineand sleep. Glastonbury Abbey and Wells Cathedral brought the story ofEurope right up to Reformation times. 

"That will be a good day for us, " said Sir Richmond. "It will be liketurning over the pages of the history of our family, to and fro. Therewill be nothing nearly so old as Avebury in it, but there will besomething from almost every chapter that comes after Stonehenge. Romewill be poorly represented, but that may come the day after at Bath. Andthe 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. Therewe shall have a whiff of America, our new find, from which the tobaccocomes, and we shall be reminded of how we set sail thither--was ityesterday or the day before? You will understand at Bristol how itis that the energy has gone out of this dreaming land--to Africa andAmerica and the whole wide world. It was the good men of Bristol, by thebye, with their trade from Africa to America, who gave you your colourproblem. Bristol we may go through to-morrow and Gloucester, mother of Idon'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 younorthward a little way past Tewkesbury, just to go into a church hereand there and show you monuments bearing little shields with the starsand stripes upon them, a few stars and a few stripes, the Washingtonfamily monuments. "

"It was not only from England that America came, " said Miss Grammont. 

"But England takes an American memory back most easily and mostfully--to Avebury and the Baltic Northmen, past the emperors and theCorinthian columns that smothered Latin Europe.... For you and me anyhowthis is our past, this was our childhood, and this is our land. " Heinterrupted laughing as she was about to reply. "Well, anyhow, " he said, "it is a beautiful day and a pretty country before us with the ripesthistory in every grain of its soil. So we'll send a wire to your Londonpeople 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 hisexcellent programme and revised their impressions of the past and theirideas about the future in the springtime sunlight of Wiltshire andSomerset, with Miss Seyffert acting the part of an almost ostentatiouslydiscreet chorus, it was inevitable that their conversation shouldbecome, by imperceptible gradations, more personal and intimate. Theykept up the pose, which was supposed to represent Dr. Martineau'sphilosophy, of being Man and Woman on their Planet considering itsFuture, but insensibly they developed the idiosyncrasies of theirposition. They might profess to be Man and Woman in the most generalterms, but the facts that she was the daughter not of Everyman but oldGrammont and that Sir Richmond was the angry leader of a minority uponthe Fuel Commission became more and more important. "What shall we dowith this planet of ours?" gave way by the easiest transitions to "Whatare you and I doing and what have we got to do? How do you feel about itall? What do you desire and what do you dare?"

It was natural that Sir Richmond should talk of his Fuel Commission toa 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 recentliterature of socialism, and that she had what he considered to be amost unfeminine grasp of economic ideas. He thought her attitudetowards socialism a very sane one because it was also his own. So far associalism involved the idea of a scientific control of natural resourcesas a common property administered in the common interest, she and hewere very greatly attracted by it; but so far as it served as a form ofexpression for the merely insubordinate discontent of the many withthe few, under any conditions, so long as it was a formula for classjealousy and warfare, they were both repelled by it. If she had had anyillusions about the working class possessing as a class any profounderpolitical wisdom or more generous public impulses than any other class, those illusions had long since departed. People were much the same, shethought, in every class; there was no stratification of either rightnessor righteousness. 

He found he could talk to her of his work and aims upon the FuelCommission and of the conflict and failure of motives he found inhimself, as freely as he had done to Dr. Martineau and with a surerconfidence of understanding. Perhaps his talks with the doctor had gothis ideas into order and made them more readily expressible than theywould have been otherwise. He argued against the belief that anyclass could be good as a class or bad as a class, and he instanced theconflict of motives he found in all the members of his Committee andmost so in himself. He repeated the persuasion he had already confessedto Dr. Martineau that there was not a single member of the FuelCommission but had a considerable drive towards doing the right thingabout fuel, and not one who had a single-minded, unencumbered drivetowards the right thing. "That, " said Sir Richmond, "is what makes lifeso interesting and, in spite of a thousand tragic disappointments, sohopeful. Every man is a bad man, every man is a feeble man and everyman is a good man. My motives come and go. Yours do the same. We vary inresponse to the circumstances about us. Given a proper atmosphere, mostmen will be public-spirited, right-living, generous. Given perplexitiesand darkness, most of us can be cowardly and vile. People say you cannotchange human nature and perhaps that is true, but you can change itsresponses endlessly. The other day I was in Bohemia, discussing Silesiancoal 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 ofmen of the Sokol organizations, an unbroken brown mass wrapped in theirbrown uniform cloaks. Suddenly the sun came out and at a word the wholebody flung back their cloaks, showed their Garibaldi shirts and becameone solid blaze of red. It was an amazing transformation until oneunderstood what had happened. Yet nothing material had changed but thesunshine. And given a change in laws and prevailing ideas, and thevery same people who are greedy traders, grasping owners and revoltingworkers to-day will all throw their cloaks aside and you will find themworking together cheerfully, even generously, for a common end. They aren't traders and owners and workers and so forth by any innernecessity. 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 init--if there is a flaw. "

"There isn't one, " said Sir Richmond. "It is my chief discovery aboutlife. I began with the question of fuel and the energy it affordsmankind, and I have found that my generalization applies to allhuman affairs. Human beings are fools, weaklings, cowards, passionateidiots, --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 wellmaterially if once we hammer out a sane collective method of getting andusing fuel. Which people generally will understand--in the place ofour present methods of snatch and wrangle. Of that I am absolutelyconvinced. Some work, some help, some willingness you can get out ofeverybody. That's the red. And the same principle applies to most labourand property problems, to health, to education, to population, socialrelationships and war and peace. We haven't got the right system, wehave inefficient half-baked systems, or no system at all, and a wildconfusion and war of ideas in all these respects. But there is a rightsystem possible none the less. Let us only hammer our way through to thesane and reasonable organization in this and that and the other humanaffairs, and once we have got it, we shall have got it for good. We maynot live to see even the beginnings of success, but the spirit of order, the spirit that has already produced organized science, if only thereare a few faithful, persistent people to stick to the job, will in thelong 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'tmatter. "

"We have to find our fun in the building and in our confidence that wedo really build. "

"So long as our confidence lasts there is no great hardship, " said SirRichmond. 

"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 withDr. Martineau to discuss. I went to him for advice. I haven't known himfor more than a month. It's amusing to find myself preaching forth toyou. 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 willfailed me. I don't know if you will understand what that means. Itwasn't that my reason didn't assure me just as certainly as ever thatwhat I was trying to do was the right thing to try to do. But somehowthat seemed a cold and personally unimportant proposition. The life hadgone 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 wenton was the lack of any real fellowship in what I was doing. It was thepressure of the opposition in the Committee, day afterday. It was beingup against men who didn't reason against me but who just showed byeverything they did that the things I wanted to achieve didn't matterto them one rap. It was going back to a home, lunching in clubs, readingpapers, going about a world in which all the organization, all thepossibility of the organization I dream of is tacitly denied. I don'tknow if it seems an extraordinary confession of weakness to you, but that steady refusal of the majority of my Committee to come intoco-operation with me has beaten me--or at any rate has come very near tobeating me. Most of them you know are such able men. You can FEEL theirknowledge and commonsense. They, and everybody about me, seemed busy andintent upon more immediate things, that seemed more real to them thanthis 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 thrownback his brown cloak and shown red when all the others still kept themselves cloaked--if he was a normal sensitive man--he might have feltsomething of a fool. He might have felt premature and presumptuous. Redhe was and the others he knew were red also, but why show it? That isthe peculiar distress of people like ourselves, who have some senseof history and some sense of a larger life within us than our merelypersonal life. We don't want to go on with the old story merely. We wantto live somehow in that larger life and to live for its greater ends andlose something unbearable of ourselves, and in wanting to do that we areonly wanting to do what nearly everybody perhaps is ripe to do and willpresently want to do. When the New Age Martineau talks about begins tocome it may come very quickly--as the red came at Prague. But for thepresent 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 thatrobbed me of all driving force. Nobody seemed thinking and feeling withme.... 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 ideasand beliefs like my own, to begin my restoration. Now as I talk toyou--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 fallinto 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 inlife than the first things it promised us. "

"But you--? Disappointed? I thought that in America people might beeducating already on different lines--"

"Even in America, " Miss Grammont said, "crops only grow on the ploughedland. "

Section 8

Glastonbury in the afternoon was wonderful; they talked of Avalon and ofthat vanished legendary world of King Arthur and his knights, and inthe early evening they came to Wells and a pleasant inn, with aquaint little garden before its front door that gave directly upon thecathedral. The three tourists devoted a golden half hour before dinnerto the sculptures on the western face. The great screen of wrought stonerose up warmly, grey and clear and distinct against a clear blue sky inwhich the moon hung, round and already bright. That western facade withits hundreds of little figures tells the whole story of God and Man fromAdam to the Last Judgment, as the mediaeval mind conceived it. It is aneven fuller exposition than the carved Bible history that goes roundthe chapter house at Salisbury. It presented the universe, said SirRichmond, as a complete crystal globe. It explained everything inlife 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. Thecrystal 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 anyhappier?"

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 cathedraland along by the moat of the bishop's palace, and Miss Seyffert stayedin the hotel to send off postcards to her friends, a duty she hadneglected for some days. The evening was warm and still and the moonwas approaching its full and very bright. Insensibly the soft afterglowpassed into moonlight. 

At first the two companions talked very little. Sir Richmond was wellcontent with this tacit friendliness and Miss Grammont was preoccupiedbecause she was very strongly moved to tell him things about herselfthat hitherto she had told to no one. It was not merely that she wantedto tell him these things but also that for reasons she did not put asyet very clearly to herself she thought they were things he ought toknow. She talked of herself at first in general terms. "Life comes onanyone with a rush, childhood seems lasting for ever and then suddenlyone tears into life, " she said. It was even more so for women than itwas for men. You are shown life, a crowded vast spectacle full of whatseems to be intensely interesting activities and endless delightful andfrightful and tragic possibilities, and you have hardly had time tolook at it before you are called upon to make decisions. And there issomething in your blood that urges you to decisive acts. Your mind, your reason resists. "Give me time, " it says. "They clamour at you withtreats, crowds, shows, theatres, all sorts of things; lovers buzz atyou, each trying to fix you part of his life when you are trying to getclear to live a little of your own. " Her father had had one merit at anyrate. 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 dreadedthe 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 inlove quite easily with the one man who came along. But no man fixed hisimage. After a year or so I think I began to lose the power which isnatural to a young girl of falling very easily into love. I becamecritical of the youths and men who were attracted to me and I becameanalytical about myself.... 

"I suppose it is because you and I are going to part so soon that I canspeak so freely to you.... But there are things about myself that I havenever 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 onmy dignity. I liked respect. I didn't give myself away. I suppose onewould call that personal pride. Anyhow it was that streak made me valuethe position of being a rich married woman in New York. That was whyI became engaged to Lake. He seemed to be as good a man as there wasabout. He said he adored me and wanted me to crown his life. He wasn'till-looking or ill-mannered. The second main streak in my naturewouldn'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 theirproper names; I don't want to pretend to you.... It was more or lessthan that.... It was--imaginative sensuousness. Why should I pretend itwasn'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 forhim. But Lake was much too much of a gentleman or an idealist aboutwomen, or what you will, to know his business as a lover. And that sideof 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 withCaston. Except when my father is about. His jealousy has blasted anarea of silence--in that matter--all round him. He will not know of thatstory. And they dare not tell him. I should pity anyone who tried totell it him. "

"What sort of man was this Caston?"

Miss Grammont seemed to consider. She did not look at Sir Richmond; shekept 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 Ialways knew he wasn't right. But he was very handsome. And ten yearsyounger than Lake. And nobody else seemed to be all right, so Iswallowed that. He was an artist, a painter. Perhaps you know his work. "Sir Richmond shook his head. "He could make American business men looklike characters out of the Three Musketeers, they said, and he wasbeginning to be popular. He made love to me. In exactly the way Lakedidn't. If I shut my eyes to one or two things, it was delightful. Iliked it. But my father would have stood a painter as my husband almostas cheerfully as he would a man of colour. I made a fool of myself, aspeople say, about Caston. Well--when the war came, he talked in a waythat irritated me. He talked like an East Side Annunzio, about art andwar. It made me furious to know it was all talk and that he didn't meanbusiness.... 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. OrI really wanted to go on my own account. I forget. I forget my motivesaltogether now. That early war time was a queer time for everyone. Akind of wildness got into the blood.... I threw over Lake. All the timethings 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 thingswere possible that would have seemed fantastic in America. You knowsomething of the war-time atmosphere. There was death everywhere andpeople snatched at gratifications. Caston made 'To-morrow we die' histext. We contrived three days in Paris together--not very cleverly. Allsorts 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 someonehinted--or I guessed--that there was more in it than an ordinarycasualty. 

"Nobody, I think, realizes that I know. This is the first time I haveever confessed that I do know. He was--shot. He was shot for cowardice. "

"That might happen to any man, " said Sir Richmond presently. "No manis a hero all round the twenty-four hours. Perhaps he was caught bycircumstances, unprepared. He may have been taken by surprise. "

"It was the most calculated, cold-blooded cowardice imaginable. He letthree other men go on and get killed... "

"No. It is no good your inventing excuses for a man you know nothingabout. It was vile, contemptible cowardice and meanness. It fitted inwith a score of ugly little things I remembered. It explained them all. I know the evidence and the judgment against him were strictly just andtrue, because they were exactly in character.... And that, you see, wasmy man. That was the lover I had chosen. That was the man to whom I hadgiven myself with both hands. "

Her soft unhurrying voice halted for a time, and then resumed in thesame even tones of careful statement. "I wasn't disgusted, not even withmyself. About him I was chiefly sorry, intensely sorry, because I hadmade him come out of a life that suited and protected him, to thewar. About myself, I was stunned and perplexed. I had the clearestrealization that what you and I have been calling the bright littlepersonal life had broken off short and was spoilt and over and donewith. 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 withthem. "

"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 orgo 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 onenight. 'Either I find out what all this world is about, I said, or Iperish. ' I have lost myself and I must forget myself by getting hold ofsomething bigger than myself. And becoming that. That's why I havebeen making a sort of historical pilgrimage.... That's my story, SirRichmond. That's my education.... Somehow though your troubles aredifferent, it seems to me that my little muddle makes me understand howit is with you. What you've got, this idea of a scientific ordering ofthe world, is what I, in my younger, less experienced way, have beenfeeling my way towards. I want to join on. I want to got hold ofthis idea of a great fuel control in the world and of a still greatereconomic and educational control of which it is a part. I want to makethat 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. Hisdispute with Dr. Martineau was present in his mind, so that he did notwant to make love to her. But he was extremely anxious to express hisvivid sense of the value of her friendship. And while he hesitated overthis 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; "nowthat I have told you so much. I did a thing that still puzzles me. I wasfilled with a sense of hopeless disaster in France and I suppose I hadsome sort of desperate idea of saving something out of the situation.... I renewed my correspondence with Gunter Lake. He made the suggestion Iknew 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 hadgiven 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 abouthim a lot. The other affair had given me an idea perhaps of what itmeans to be married to a man. And here I am drifting back to him. Thehorrible thing about him is the steady ENVELOPING way in which he hasalways come at me. Without fellowship. Without any community of ideas. Ready to make the most extraordinary bargains. So long as he can in anyway fix me and get me. What does it mean? What is there behind thosewatching, soliciting eyes of his? I don't in the least love him, andthis desire and service and all the rest of it he offers me--it's notlove. It's not even such love as Caston gave me. It's a game he playswith his imagination. "

She had released a flood of new ideas in Sir Richmond's mind. "Thisis illuminating, " he said. "You dislike Lake acutely. You always havedisliked 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 beforethe war. "

"It came very near to that. "

"And then probably you wouldn't have discovered you disliked him. Youwouldn't have admitted it to yourself. "

"I suppose I shouldn't. I suppose I should have tried to believe I lovedhim. "

"Women do this sort of thing. Odd! I never realized it before. And thereare endless wives suppressing an acute dislike. My wife does. I see nowquite clearly that she detests me. Reasonably enough. From her angle I'mentirely detestable. But she won't admit it, won't know of it. She neverwill. To the end of my life, always, she will keep that detestationunconfessed. She puts a face on the matter. We both do. And this affairof 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 lawsof his being. He seems to me a crawling sort of lover with an immenseself-conceit at the back of his crawlingness. "

"He has, " she endorsed. 

"He backs himself to crawl--until he crawls triumphantly right overyou.... I don't like to think of the dream he has.... I take it he willlose. Is it fair to go into this game with him?"

"In the interests of Lake, " she said, smiling softly at Sir Richmond inthe 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 civilizedwoman may approach one another. Passionate desire is not enough. What iscalled love is not enough. Pledges, rational considerations, all thesethings are worthless. All these things are compatible with hate. The primary essential is friendship, clear understanding, absoluteconfidence. Then within that condition, in that elect relationship, loveis permissible, mating, marriage or no marriage, as you will--all thingsare permissible.... "

Came a long pause between them. 

"Dear old cathedral, " said Miss Grammont, a little irrelevantly. Shehad an air of having concluded something that to Sir Richmond seemedscarcely to have begun. She stood looking at the great dark facade edgedwith 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 thinkwhen I tell her of the final extinction of Mr. Lake. I think she ratherlooked forward to being the intimate friend, secrets and everything, ofMrs. 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 themarriage of true minds. There is no other marriage than the marriage oftrue minds. " He saw her as he had seen her the evening before, light andcool, coming towards him in the moonlight from the hotel. But also inthe inconsistent way of dreams he was very close to her kind, faintlysmiling face, and his eyes were wet with tears and he was kissingher hand. "My dear wife and mate, " he was saying, and suddenly he waskissing her cool lips. 

He woke up and stared at his dream, which faded out only very slowlybefore the fresh sun rise upon the red tiles and tree boughs outside theopen window, and before the first stir and clamour of the birds. 

He felt like a court in which some overwhelmingly revolutionary piece ofevidence had been tendered. All the elaborate defence had broken down atone blow. He sat up on the edge of his bed, facing the new fact. 

"This is monstrous and ridiculous, " he said, "and Martineau judged meexactly. I am in love with her.... I am head over heels in love withher. I have never been so much in love or so truly in love with anyonebefore. "

Section 11

That was the dawn of a long day of tension for Sir Richmond and MissGrammont. Because each was now vividly aware of being in love with theother 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, arestraint that was greatly enhanced by their sense of Belinda, acutelyobservant, ostentatiously tactful and self-effacing, and prepared at theslightest encouragement to be overwhelmingly romantic and sympathetic. Their talk waned, and was revived to an artificial activity and wanedagain. The historical interest had evaporated from the west of Englandand left only an urgent and embarrassing present. 

But the loveliness of the weather did not fail, and the whole day wasset in Severn landscapes. They first saw the great river like a seawith the Welsh mountains hanging in the sky behind as they came over theMendip crest above Shipham. They saw it again as they crossed the hillbefore Clifton Bridge, and so they continued, climbing to hill crestsfor views at Alveston and near Dursley, and so to Gloucester and thelowest bridge and thence back down stream again through fat meadow landsat first and much apple-blossom and then over gentle hills through wide, pale Nownham and Lidney and Alvington and Woolaston to old Chepstow andits brown castle, always with the widening estuary to the left of themand its foaming shoals and shining sand banks. From Chepstow they turnedback north along the steep Wye gorge to Tintern, and there at the snuglittle Beaufort Arms with its prim lawn and flower garden they ended theday's journey. 

Tintern Abbey they thought a poor graceless mass of ruin down besidethe river, and it was fenced about jealously and locked up from theirinvasion. After dinner Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont went for a walk inthe mingled twilight and moonlight up the hill towards Chepstow. Both ofthem were absurdly and nervously pressing to Belinda to come with them, but she was far too wise to take this sudden desire for her companyseriously. Her dinner shoes, she said, were too thin. Perhaps shewould change and come out a little later. "Yes, come later, " said MissGrammont and led the way to the door. 

They passed through the garden. "I think we go up the hill? " said SirRichmond. 

"Yes, " she agreed, "up the hill. "

Followed a silence. 

Sir Richmond made an effort, but after some artificial and disconnectedtalk about Tintern Abbey, concerning, which she had no history ready, and then, still lamer, about whether Monmouthshire is in Englandor Wales, silence fell again. The silence lengthened, assumed asignificance, 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 finda friend... A lover... Perfect companionship.... "

They went on walking side by side, without touching each other orturning to each other. 

"All the things I wanted to think I believe have come alive in me, " shesaid.... 

"Cool and sweet, " said Sir Richmond. "Such happiness as I could not haveimagined. "

The light of a silent bicycle appeared above them up the hill and sweptdown 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 inhis dream.... 

When they returned to the inn Belinda Seyffert offered flat explanationsof why she had not followed them, and enlarged upon the moonlight effectof the Abbey ruins from the inn lawn. But the scared congratulationsin her eyes betrayed her recognition that momentous things had happenedbetween the two. 

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

FULL MOON

Section 1

Sir Richmond had talked in the moonlight and shadows of having foundsuch happiness as he could not have imagined. But when he awoke in thenight that happiness had evaporated. He awoke suddenly out of this lovedream that had lasted now for nearly four days and he awoke in a mood ofastonishment and dismay. 

He had thought that when he parted from Dr. Martineau he had parted alsofrom that process of self-exploration that they had started together, but now he awakened to find it established and in full activity in hismind. Something or someone, a sort of etherealized Martineau-Hardy, anabstracted intellectual conscience, was demanding what he thought he wasdoing with Miss Grammont and whither he thought he was taking her, howhe proposed to reconcile the close relationship with her that he was nowembarked upon with, in the first place, his work upon and engagementswith the Fuel Commission, and, in the second place, Martin Leeds. Curiously enough Lady Hardy didn't come into the case at all. He haddone his utmost to keep Martin Leeds out of his head throughout thedevelopment of this affair. Now in an unruly and determined way that wasextremely characteristic of her she seemed resolute to break in. 

She appeared as an advocate, without affection for her client butwithout any hostility, of the claims of Miss Grammont to be let alone. The elaborate pretence that Sir Richmond had maintained to himself thathe had not made love to Miss Grammont, that their mutual attraction hadbeen irresistible and had achieved its end in spite of their resoluteand complete detachment, collapsed and vanished from his mind. Headmitted to himself that driven by a kind of instinctive necessity hehad led their conversation step by step to a realization and declarationof love, and that it did not exonerate him in the least that MissGrammont had been quite ready and willing to help him and meet him halfway. She wanted love as a woman does, more than a man does, and hehad steadily presented himself as a man free to love, able to love andloving. 

"She wanted a man to love, she wanted perfected fellowship, and you havemade her that tremendous promise. That was implicit in your embrace. Andhow can you keep that promise?"

It was as if Martin spoke; it was her voice; it was the very quality ofher thought. 

"You belong to this work of yours, which must needs be interrupted orabandoned if you take her. Whatever is not mortgaged to your work ismortgaged to me. For the strange thing in all this is that you and Ilove one another--and have no power to do otherwise. In spite of allthis. 

"You have nothing to give her but stolen goods, " said the shadow ofMartin. "You have nothing to give anyone personally any more.... 

"Think of the love that she desires and think of this love that you cangive.... 

"Is there any new thing in you that you can give her that you haven'tgiven me? You and I know each other very well; perhaps I know YOU toowell. Haven't you loved me as much as you can love anyone? Think of allthat there has been between us that you are ready now, eager now to setaside and forget as though it had never been. For four days you havekept me out of your mind in order to worship her. Yet you have knownI was there--for all you would not know. No one else will ever be sointimate 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 myfaults against me as though they were sins. You have treated me at timesunlovingly--never was lover treated so unlovingly as you have sometimestreated me. And yet I have your love--as no other woman can ever haveit. Even now when you are wildly in love with this girl's freshness andboldness 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'sunsparing return. "Your love has never been a steadfast thing. It comesand goes like the wind. You are an extravagantly imperfect lover. ButI have learnt to accept you, as people accept the English weather.... Never in all your life have you loved, wholly, fully, steadfastly--aspeople deserve to be loved--not your mother nor your father, not yourwife nor your children, nor me, nor our child, nor any living thing. Pleasant to all of us at times--at times bitterly disappointing. Youdo not even love this work of yours steadfastly, this work to which yousacrifice us all in turn. You do not love enough. That is why you havethese moods and changes, that is why you have these lassitudes. So it isyou are made.... 

"And that is why you must not take this brave young life, so muchsimpler and braver than your own, and exalt it--as you can do--and thenfail 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 unforeseeinghis treatment of Miss Grammont had been. It had been just a blind driveto 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 imperfectionthat 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 ofmine? 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 immediatequestion. "Perfect love, " the phrase was his point of departure. Wasit true that he could not love passionately and completely? Was thatfundamentally what was the matter with him? Was that perhaps what wasthe matter with the whole world of mankind? It had not yet come tothat power of loving which makes action full and simple and direct andunhesitating. Man upon his planet has not grown up to love, is still aneager, egotistical and fluctuating adolescent. He lacks the courage tolove and the wisdom to love. Love is here. But it comes and goes, itis mixed with greeds and jealousies and cowardice and cowardlyreservations. One hears it only in snatches and single notes. It is likesomething tuning up before the Music begins.... The metaphor altogetherran away with Sir Richmond's half dreaming mind. Some day perhaps alllife would go to music. 

Love was music and power. If he had loved enough he need never havedrifted away from his wife. Love would have created love, would havetolerated and taught and inspired. Where there is perfect love thereis neither greed nor impatience. He would have done his work calmly. He would have won his way with his Committee instead of fighting andquarrelling with it perpetually.... 

"Flimsy creatures, " he whispered. "Uncertain health. Uncertainstrength. A will that comes and goes. Moods of baseness. Moods of utterbeastliness.... Love like April sunshine. April?... "

He dozed and dreamt for a time of spring passing into a high summersunshine, into a continuing music, of love. He thought of a world likesome great playhouse in which players and orchestra and audience allco-operate in a noble production without dissent or conflict. He thoughthe was the savage of thirty thousand years ago dreaming of the greatworld that is still perhaps thirty thousand years ahead. His effort tosee more of that coming world than indistinct and cloudy pinnacles andto hear more than a vague music, dissolved his dream and left him awakeagain and wrestling with the problem of Miss Grammont. 

Section 2

The shadow of Martin stood over him, inexorable. He had to release MissGrammont from the adventure into which he had drawn her. This decisionstood out stern-and inevitable in his mind with no conceivablealternative. 

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 howdeeply, and she was not going to play a merely passive part in thisaffair. She was perhaps as deeply in love with him.... 

He could not bring himself to the idea of confessions and disavowals. Hecould not bear to think of her disillusionment. He felt that he owed itto 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 liketaking her into my arms and suddenly making a grimace at her.... Itwould scar her with a second humiliation.... "

Should he take her on to Bath or Exeter to-morrow and contrive by somesudden arrival of telegrams that he had to go from her suddenly? But amere sudden parting would not end things between them now unless hewent off abruptly without explanations or any arrangements for furthercommunications. At the outset of this escapade there had been a tacitbut evident assumption that it was to end when she joined her father atFalmouth. It was with an effect of discovery that Sir Richmond realizedthat now it could not end in that fashion, that with the whisper of loveand 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 wouldleave a raw and torn end, would leave her perplexed and perhaps evenmore 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 andhe had got into each other's lives to stay: the real problem wasthe terms upon which they were to stay in each other's lives. Closeassociation had brought them to the point of being, in the completestsense, lovers; that could not be; and the real problem was thetransmutation of their relationship to some form compatible with hishonour and her happiness. A word, an idea, from some recent readingfloated into Sir Richmond's head. "Sublimate, " he whispered. "We haveto sublimate this affair. We have to put this relationship upon a HigherPlane. "

His mind stopped short at that. 

Presently his voice sounded out of the depths of his heart. "God! How Iloathe the Higher Plane!.... 

"God has put me into this Higher Plane business like some poor littlekid 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 MissGrammont--Miss Seyffert had probably fallen out--traversing Europe andAsia in headlong flight. To a sunlit beach in the South Seas.... 

His thoughts presently resumed as though these unmannerly and fantasticinterruptions had not occurred. 

"We have to carry the whole affair on to a Higher Plane--and keep itthere. We two love one another--that has to be admitted now. (I oughtnever to have touched her. I ought never to have thought of touchingher. ) But we two are too high, our aims and work and obligations are toohigh for any ordinary love making. That sort of thing would embarrassus, would spoil everything. 

"Spoil everything, " he repeated, rather like a small boy who learns anunpalatable lesson. 

For a time Sir Richmond, exhausted by moral effort, lay staring at thedarkness. 

"It has to be done. I believe I can carry her through with it if I cancarry myself. She's a finer thing than I am.... On the whole I am gladit's only one more day. Belinda will be about.... Afterwards we canwrite to each other.... If we can get over the next day it will be allright. Then we can write about fuel and politics--and there won't beher voice and her presence. We shall really SUBLIMATE.... First classidea--sublimate!.... And I will go back to dear old Martin who's allalone there and miserable; I'll be kind to her and play my part and tellher her Carbuncle scar rather becomes her.... And in a little while Ishall 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 handwith me. 

"Queer that NOW--I love Martin. "

He thought still more profoundly. "By the time the Committee meets againI shall have been tremendously refreshed. "

He repeated:--"Put things on the Higher Plane and keep them there. Thengo back to Martin. And so to the work. That's it.... "

Nothing so pacifies the mind as a clear-cut purpose. Sir Richmond fellasleep during the fourth recapitulation of this programme. 

Section 3

When Miss Grammont appeared at breakfast Sir Richmond saw at once thatshe too had had a restless night. When she came into the little longbreakfast room of the inn with its brown screens and its neat whitetables it seemed to him that the Miss Grammont of his nocturnalspeculations, the beautiful young lady who had to be protected andmanaged and loved unselfishly, vanished like some exorcised intruder. Instead was this real dear young woman, who had been completelyforgotten during the reign of her simulacrum and who now returnedcompletely remembered, familiar, friendly, intimate. She touched hishand for a moment, she met his eyes with the shadow of a smile in herown. 

"Oranges!" said Belinda from the table by the window. "Beautifuloranges. "

She had been preparing them, poor Trans-atlantic exile, after thefashion in which grape fruits are prepared upon liners and in thecivilized 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 morningworld 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 theEnglish flowers come out of Shakespeare. I don't know what we did beforehis time. "

The waiter arrived with the tea spoons for the oranges. 

Belinda, having distributed these, resumed her discourse of enthusiasmfor England. She asked a score of questions about Gloucester andChepstow, the Severn and the Romans and the Welsh, and did not wait forthe answers. She did not want answers; she talked to keep things going. Her talk masked a certain constraint that came upon her companions afterthe 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 easyfor you to train to Falmouth. We will go by Monmouth and then turn backthrough the Forest of Dean, where you will get glimpses of primitivecoal 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 isbetter to go straight to Bath. In the very heart of Bath you willfind yourselves in just the same world you visited at Pompeii. Bath isPompeii overlaid by Jane Austen's England. "

He paused for a moment. "We can wire to your agents from here before westart and we can pick up their reply at Gloucester or Nailsworth or evenBath itself. So that if your father is nearer than we suppose--But Ithink 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 suchmasses of bluebells, ragged Robin, great stitchwort and the like thatBelinda was not to be restrained. She clamoured to stop the car and goup the bank and pick her hands full, and so they drew up by the roadsideand Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont sat down near the car while Belindacarried her enthusiastic onslaught on the flowers up the steep bank andpresently out of earshot. 

The two lovers said unheeded things about the flowers to each otherand then fell silent. Then Miss Grammont turned her head and seemeddeliberately to measure her companion's distance. Evidently she judgedher 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, " hesaid at last. 

"I too. "

"And you think--?"

"That we must part. Just as we arranged it when was it? Three days orthree ages ago? There is nothing else in the world to do except for usto go our ways.... I love you. That means for a woman--It means that Iwant to be with you. But that is impossible.... Don't doubt whether Ilove you because I say--impossible.... "

Sir Richmond, faced with his own nocturnal decision, was now moved tooppose it flatly. "Nothing that one can do is impossible. "

She glanced again at Belinda and bent down towards him. "Suppose, " shesaid, "you got back into that car with me; suppose that instead of goingon 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 inthis New Age of yours will be first of all in the work he does for theworld. And you will leave your work to be just a lover. And the workthat I might do because of my father's wealth; all that would vanishtoo. We should leave all of that, all of our usefulness, all thatmuch of ourselves. But what has made me love you? Just your breadth ofvision, 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 shouldhave to leave behind. We should specialize, in our own scandal. Weshould 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 eyeswere bright with tears. "Don't think I don't love you. It's so hard tosay all this. Somehow it seems like going back on something--somethingsupreme. Our instincts have got us.... Don't think I'd hold myself fromyou, dear. I'd give myself to you with both hands. I love you--When awoman loves--I at any rate--she loves altogether. But this thing--I amconvinced--cannot be. I must go my own way, the way I have to go. Myfather is the man, obstinate, more than half a savage. For me--I knowit--he has the jealousy of ten husbands. If you take me--If our secretbecomes manifest--If you are to take me and keep me, then his life andyour life will become wholly this Feud, nothing but this Feud. You haveto fight him anyhow--that is why I of all people must keep out ofthe quarrel. For him, it would be an immense excitement, full of thepossibility of fierce satisfactions; for you, whether you won me or lostme, it would be utter waste and ruin. "

She paused and then went on:--"And for me too, waste and ruin. I shallbe a woman fought over. I shall be fought over as dogs fight over abone. I shall sink back to the level of Helen of Troy. I shall cease tobe a free citizen, a responsible free person. Whether you win me or loseme it will be waste and ruin for us both. Your Fuel Commission will goto pieces, all the wide, enduring work you have set me dreaming aboutwill go the same way. We shall just be another romantic story.... No!"

Sir Richmond sat still, a little like a sullen child, she thought. "Ihate 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 makesall this harder to give up. And yet, do you know, in the night I wasthinking, I was coming to conclusions, very like yours. For quite otherreasons. I thought we ought not to--We have to keep friends anyhow andhear of each other?"

"That goes without saying. "

"I thought we ought not to go on to be lovers in any way that Wouldaffect 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 havespoken plainly.... Though we have to part. And--"

Her whisper came close to him. "For a whole day yet, all round the clocktwice, 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 alertinterest in their emotions all too thinly and obviously veiled, itseemed more convenient to Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont to talk notof themselves but of Man and Woman and of that New Age according to theprophet Martineau, which Sir Richmond had partly described andmainly invented and ascribed to his departed friend. They talkedanthropologically, philosophically, speculatively, with an absurdpretence of detachment, they sat side by side in the little car, scarcely glancing at one another, but side by side and touching eachother, and all the while they were filled with tenderness and love andhunger for one another. 

In the course of a day or so they had touched on nearly every phase inthe growth of Man and Woman from that remote and brutish past which hasleft its traces in human bones mingled with the bones of hyaenas andcave bears beneath the stalagmites of Wookey Hole near Wells. In thosenearly forgotten days the mind of man and woman had been no more thanan evanescent succession of monstrous and infantile imaginations. Thatbrief journey in the west country had lit up phase after phase in thelong teaching and discipline of man as he had developed depth of memoryand fixity of purpose out of these raw beginnings, through the dreamingchildhood of Avebury and Stonehenge and the crude boyhood of ancientwars and massacres. Sir Richmond recalled those phases now, and how, asthey had followed one another, man's idea of woman and woman's idea ofman had changed with them, until nowadays in the minds of civilized menbrute desire and possession and a limitless jealousy had become almostcompletely overlaid by the desire for fellowship and a free mutualloyalty. "Overlaid, " he said. "The older passions are still there likethe fires in an engine. " He invented a saying for Dr. Martineau that theMan in us to-day was still the old man of Palaeolithic times, with hiswill, his wrath against the universe increased rather than diminished. If to-day he ceases to crack his brother's bones and rape and bully hiswomenkind, it is because he has grown up to a greater game and means tocrack this world and feed upon its marrow and wrench their secrets fromthe stars. 

And furthermore it would seem that the prophet Martineau had declaredthat in this New Age that was presently to dawn for mankind, jealousywas to be disciplined even as we had disciplined lust and anger; insteadof ruling our law it was to be ruled by law and custom. No longer werethe jealousy of strange peoples, the jealousy of ownership and thejealousy of sex to determine the framework of human life. There was tobe one peace and law throughout the world, one economic scheme and auniversal freedom for men and women to possess and give themselves. 

"And how many generations yet must there be before we reach thatUtopia?" 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 religionsand theories and stupidities. There are great lumps of disorderlystrength 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 isthis 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 andI 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 littlewhile the muddled angry mind of Man upon his Planet will grow clear andit will be this idea that will have made it clear. And then life willbe very different for everyone. That tyranny of disorder which oppressesevery life on earth now will be lifted. There will be less and lessinsecurity, less and less irrational injustice. It will be a betterinstructed and a better behaved world. We shall live at our ease, notperpetually anxious, not resentful and angry. And that will alter allthe rules of love. Then we shall think more of the loveliness of otherpeople because it will no longer be necessary to think so much of thedangers and weaknesses and pitifulliesses of other people. We shall nothave 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 endor 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 facetowards her. Her forehead was just visible over the hood of the opencoupe. She appeared to be intelligently intent upon the scenery. Then hebroke out suddenly into a tirade against the world. "But I am boredby this jostling unreasonable world. At the bottom of my heart I ambitterly resentful to-day. This is a world of fools and brutes in whichwe live, a world of idiotic traditions, imbecile limitations, cowardice, habit, greed and mean cruelty. It is a slum of a world, a congesteddistrict, an insanitary jumble of souls and bodies. Every good thing, every sweet desire is thwarted--every one. I have to lead the life of aslum 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 boredby our rotten empire and its empty monarchy. I am bored by its paradesand its flags and its sham enthusiasms. I am bored by London and itslife, by its smart life and by its servile life alike. I am boredby theatres and by books and by every sort of thing that people callpleasure. I am bored by the brag of people and the claims of people andthe feelings of people. Damn people! I am bored by profiteers and by thesnatching they call business enterprise. Damn every business man! I ambored by politics and the universal mismanagement of everything. I ambored by France, by Anglo-Saxondom, by German self-pity, by Bolshevikfanaticism. I am bored by these fools' squabbles that devastate theworld. I am bored by Ireland, Orange and Green. Curse the Irish--northand south together! Lord! how I HATE the Irish from Carson to the lastSinn Feiner! And I am bored by India and by Egypt. I am bored by Polandand by Islam. I am bored by anyone who professes to have rights. Damntheir rights! Curse their rights! I am bored to death by this year andby last year and by the prospect of next year. I am bored--I am horriblybored--by my work. I am bored by every sort of renunciation. I want tolive with the woman I love and I want to work within the limits of mycapacity. 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 hadstopped his spark and pulled up neatly within a yard of the fore-wheelof a waggon that was turning in the road so as to block the waycompletely. 

"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 MissGrammont. 

"I ought--MY dear. I have no right to be ill-tempered. We two areamong the supremely fortunate ones of our time. We have no excuse formisbehaviour. Got nothing to grumble at. Always I am lucky. THAT--withthe waggon--was a very near thing. God spoils us. 

"We two, " he went on, after a pause, "are among the most fortunatepeople alive. We are both rich and easily rich. That gives us freedomsfew 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 getsenough education to have even a glimpse of the world as a whole. Theynever get a chance to get the hang of it. It is really possible for usto 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 andeducated people, are caught in cages of pecuniary necessity; theyare tied to tasks they can't leave, they are driven and compelled andlimited by circumstances they can never master. But we, if we havetasks, have tasks of our own choosing. We may not like the world, butanyhow we are free to do our best to alter it. If I were a clerk inHoxton 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 whoreally 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 refrainfrom doing when there will be no bound and limited clerks in Hoxton andno 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 fathersare civilized. When all these phanton people who intervene on yourside--no! I don't want to know anything about them, but I know of themby instinct--when they also don't matter. "

"Then you and I can have things out with each other--THOROUGHLY, " saidSir Richmond, with a surprising ferocity in his voice, charging thelittle hill before him as though he charged at Time. 

Section 6

They had to wait at Nailsworth for a telegram from Mr. Grammont'sagents; they lunched there and drove on to Bath in the afternoon. Theycame into the town through unattractive and unworthy outskirts, and onlyrealized the charm of the place after they had garaged their car at thePulteney Hotel and walked back over the Pulteney Bridge to see the Avonwith the Pump Room and the Roman Baths. The Pulteney they found hungwith pictures and adorned with sculpture to an astonishing extent; someformer proprietor must have had a mania for replicas and the place iseventful with white marble fauns and sylphs and lions and Caesars andQueen 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 comfortswith an old-fashioned civility. But round and about the Pulteney onehas still the scenery of Georgian England, the white, faintly classicalterraces and houses of the days of Fielding, Smollett, Fanny Burney andJane Austen, the graceful bridge with the bright little shops full of"presents from Bath"; the Pump Room with its water drinkers and a finearray of the original Bath chairs. 

Down below the Pump Room our travellers explored the memories ofthe days when the world was Latin from York to the Tigris, and theCorinthian capital flourished like a weed from Bath to Baalbek. And theyconsidered a little doubtfully the seventeenth century statue of Bladud, who is said to have been healed by the Bath waters and to have foundedthe city in the days when Stonehenge still flourished, eight hundredyears before the Romans came. 

In the afternoon Miss Seyffert came with Sir Richmond and Miss Grammontand was very enthusiastic about everything, but in the evening afterdinner it was clear that her role was to remain in the hotel. SirRichmond and Miss Grammont went out into the moonlit gloaming; theycrossed the bridge again and followed the road beside the river towardsthe old Abbey Church, that Lantern of the West. Away in some sunkengardens ahead of them a band was playing, and a cluster of little lightsabout the bandstand showed a crowd of people down below dancing on thegrass. These little lights, these bobbing black heads and the liltingmusic, this little inflamed Centre of throbbing sounds and ruddyillumination, made the dome of the moonlit world about it seem very vastand cool and silent. Our visitors began to realize that Bath couldbe very beautiful. They went to the parapet above the river and stoodthere, leaning over it elbow to elbow and smoking cigarettes. MissGrammont was moved to declare the Pulteney Bridge, with its noble arch, its effect of height over the swirling river, and the cluster of housesabove, more beautiful than the Ponte Vecchio at Florence. Down below wasa man in waders with a fishing-rod going to and fro along the foamingweir, and a couple of boys paddled a boat against the rush of the waterlower 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 calledLondon which stretches its tentacles all over the world. I am as much ahome-coming tourist as you are. Most of this western country I am seeingfor the first time. "

She said nothing for a space. "I've not a word to say to-night, " shesaid. "I'm just full of a sort of animal satisfaction in being close toyou.... And in being with you among lovely things.... Somewhere--Beforewe 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 ofthe promenaders passing close to them. 

"It's a promise?"

"Yes. "

Very timidly and guiltily his hand sought hers beside it and gripped itand pressed it. "My dear!" he whispered, tritest and most unavoidableof expressions. It was not very like Man and Woman loving upon theirPlanet; it was much more like the shy endearments of the shop boys andwork girls who made the darkling populous about them with their silentinterchanges. 

"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. Butnow--every rational thing seems dissolved in this moonlight.... "

Presently she made an effort to restore the intellectual dignity oftheir relationship. 

"I suppose I ought to be more concerned tonight about the work I have todo in the world and anxious for you to tell me this and that, but indeedI am not concerned at all about it. I seem to have it in outline allperfectly clear. I mean to play a man's part in the world just asmy father wants me to do. I mean to win his confidence and work withhim--like a partner. Then some day I shall be a power in the world offuel. And at the same time I must watch and read and think and learnhow to be the servant of the world.... We two have to live like trustedservants who have been made guardians of a helpless minor. We haveto put things in order and keep them in order against the time whenMan--Man whom we call in America the Common Man--can take hold of hisworld--"

"And release his servants, " said Sir Richmond. 

"All that is perfectly clear in my mind. That is what I am going to livefor; that is what I have to do. "

She stopped abruptly. "All that is about as interesting to-night--incomparison with the touch of your dear fingers--as next month's railwaytime-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. "Thestars and space and time overwhelm my imagination. I cannot imagineanything 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 toadd. "I mean that there is something about human beings--not just theeveryday stuff of them, but something that appears intermittently--asthough a light shone through something translucent. If I believe in anydivinity at all it is a divinity revealed to me by other people--Andeven 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 beensurprised time after time by fine things.... Often in people I dislikedor thought little of.... I can understand that I find you full of divinequality, because I am in love with you and all alive to you. NecessarilyI keep on discovering loveliness in you. But I have seen divine thingsin dear old Martineau, for example. A vain man, fussy, timid--and yetfilled with a passion for truth, ready to make great sacrifices and totoil tremendously for that. And in those men I am always cursing, my Committee, it is astonishing at times to discover what streaks ofgoodness even the really bad men can show.... But one can't make useof just anyone's divinity. I can see the divinity in Martineau but itleaves me cold. He tired me and bored me.... But I live on you. It'sonly through love that the God can reach over from one human being toanother. All real love is a divine thing, a reassurance, a release ofcourage. It is wonderful enough that we should take food and drink andturn them into imagination, invention and creative energy; it is stillmore wonderful that we should take an animal urging and turn it into alight to discover beauty and an impulse towards the utmost achievementsof which we are capable. All love is a sacrament and all lovers arepriests to each other. You and I--"

Sir Richmond broke off abruptly. "I spent three days trying to tell thisto Dr. Martineau. But he wasn't the priest I had to confess to and thewords wouldn't come. I can confess it to you readily enough.... "

"I cannot tell, " said Miss Grammont, "whether this is the last wisdom inlife or moonshine. I cannot tell whether I am thinking or feeling; butthe noise of the water going over the weir below is like the stir inmy heart. And I am swimming in love and happiness. Am I awake or am Idreaming you, and are we dreaming one another? Hold my hand--hold ithard and tight. I'm trembling with love for you and all the world.... IfI say more I shall be weeping. "

For a long time they stood side by side saying not a word to oneanother. 

Presently the band down below and the dancing ceased and the littlelights were extinguished. The silent moon seemed to grow brighter andlarger and the whisper of the waters louder. A crowd of young peopleflowed out of the gardens and passed by on their way home. Sir Richmondand Miss Grammont strolled through the dispersing crowd and over theToll Bridge and went exploring down a little staircase that went downfrom the end of the bridge to the dark river, and then came back totheir old position at the parapet looking upon the weir and the PulteneyBridge. The gardens that had been so gay were already dark and silent asthey returned, and the streets echoed emptily to the few people who werestill abroad. 

"It's the most beautiful bridge in the world, " said Miss Grammont, andgave 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 ofthe 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 belowas though it was the only thing of interest in the world. Then sheturned to Sir Richmond. 

"I would trust Belinda with my life, " she said. "And anyhow--now--we neednot worry about Belinda. "

Section 7

At the breakfast table it was Belinda who was the most nervous of thethree, the most moved, the most disposed to throw a sacramental air overtheir last meal together. Her companions had passed beyond the idea ofseparation; it was as if they now cherished a secret satisfaction at thehigh dignity of their parting. Belinda in some way perceived they hadbecome different. They were no longer tremulous lovers; they seemedsure of one another and with a new pride in their bearing. It would havepleased Belinda better, seeing how soon they were to be torn apart, ifthey had not made quite such excellent breakfasts. She even suspectedthem 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 themcome in. Perhaps then they had passed the climax of their emotions. SirRichmond, she learnt, was to take the party to Exeter, where there wouldbe a train for Falmouth a little after two. If they started from Bathabout nine that would give them an ample margin of time in which to dealwith a puncture or any such misadventure. 

They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mallet, ran through Tilchesterand Ilminster into the lovely hill country about Up-Ottery and soto Honiton and the broad level road to Exeter. Sir Richmond and MissGrammont were in a state of happy gravity; they sat contentedly side byside, talking very little. They had already made their arrangements forwriting to one another. There was to be no stream of love-letters orprotestations. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to beimplicit. They were to write at intervals about political mattersand their common interests, and to keep each other informed of theirmovements about the world. 

"We shall be working together, " she said, speaking suddenly out of atrain of thought she had been following, "we shall be closer togetherthan 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 beaccustomed to meeting and parting. We women will not be tied very muchby domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have children. We shall be goingabout our business like men; we shall have world-wide businesses--manyof 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 theirlovers go away. Even to seeing them go away to other women who haveborne 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 perfectlycivilized woman I shouldn't mind at all. If men and women are not to betied 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 cannotbear the thought that YOU--"

"You need not bear it, my dear. I was just trying to imagine this worldthat 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--andcareless about the other woman. What I love in you I am sure about. Mymind was empty when it came to you and now it is full to overflowing. Ishall feel you moving about in the same world with me. I'm not likely tothink of anyone else for a very long time.... Later on, who knows? I maymarry. I make no vows. But I think until I know certainly that you donot want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have alover. I don't know, but that is how I believe it will be with me. Andmy mind feels beautifully clear now and settled. I've got your idea andmade it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that thework 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 isgood. "

"The best thing in all my life, " he said, and lowered his head and voiceto 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 loweredheads, 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 travellersbefore the train came into the station. He parted from Miss Grammontwith a hand clasp. Belinda was flushed and distressed at the lastbut her friend was quiet and still. "Au revoir, " said Belinda withoutconviction when Sir Richmond shook her hand. 

Section 8. 

Sir Richmond stood quite still on the platform as the train ran out ofthe station. He did not move until it had disappeared round the bend. Then he turned, lost in a brown study, and walked very slowly towardsthe station exit. 

"The most wonderful thing in my life, " he thought. "And already--it isunreal. 

"She will go on to her father whom she knows ten thousand times morethoroughly than she knows me; she will go on to Paris, she will pick upall the threads of her old story, be reminded of endless things in herlife, but never except in the most casual way of these days: they willbe cut off from everything else that will serve to keep them real; andas for me--this connects with nothing else in my life at all.... It isas disconnected as a dream.... Already it is hardly more substantialthan a dream.... 

"We shall write letters. Do letters breathe faster or slower as you readthem?

"We may meet. 

"Where are we likely to meet again?... I never realized before howimprobable it is that we shall meet again. And if we meet?... 

"Never in all our lives shall we be really TOGETHER again. It'sover--With a completeness.... 

"Like death. "

He came opposite the bookstalls and stopped short and stared withunseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering nowwhether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced somethingof the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. Hisgolden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational senseof loss was flooding every other feeling about V. V. If she had loved himtruly and altogether could she have left him like this? Neither of themsurely had intended so complete a separation. He wanted to go back andrecall 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. Whatwas it he had to do now? He had not to be angry, he had not even to besorry. They had done the right thing. Outside the station his car waswaiting. 

He went outside the station and stared at his car. He had to gosomewhere. Of course! down into Cornwall to Martin's cottage. He had togo down to her and be kind and comforting about that carbuncle. Tobe kind?... If this thwarted feeling broke out into anger he might betempted to take it out of Martin. That at any rate he must not do. Hehad always for some inexplicable cause treated Martin badly. Nagged herand blamed her and threatened her. That must stop now. No shadow of thisaffair must lie on Martin.... And Martin must never have a suspicion ofany of this.... 

The image of Martin became very vivid in his mind. He thought of her ashe had seen her many times, with the tears close, fighting with her backto the wall, with all her wit and vigour gone, because she loved himmore steadfastly than he did her. Whatever happened he must not take itout 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 couldgo now and talk to Martin--and face all the facts of life with her, evenas 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 neededreplenishing, and so he would have to go up the hill into Exeter townagain. He got into his car and sat with his fingers on the electricstarter. 

Martin! Old Friend! Eight days were still left before the Committee metagain, eight days for golden kindness. He would distress Martin by noclumsy confession. He would just make her happy as she loved to be madehappy.... Nevertheless. Nevertheless.... 

Was it Martin who failed him or he who failed Martin?

Incessant and insoluble dispute. Well, the thing now was to go toMartin.... And then the work!

He laughed suddenly. 

"I'll take it out of the damned Commission. I'll make old Rumford Brownsit up. "

He was astonished to find himself thinking of the affairs of theCommission with a lively interest and no trace of fatigue. He hadhad his change; he had taken his rest; he was equal to his task againalready. He started his engine and steered his way past a van and awaiting 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 receivedon their first publication with much heat and disputation, but there isalready a fairly general agreement that they are great and significantdocuments, broadly conceived and historically important. They do liftthe questions of fuel supply and distribution high above the level ofparochial jealousies and above the petty and destructive profiteering ofprivate owners and traders, to a view of a general human welfare. Theyform an important link in a series of private and public documentsthat are slowly opening out a prospect of new economic methods, methodsconceived in the generous spirit of scientific work, that may yet arrestthe drift of our western civilization towards financial and commercialsqualor and the social collapse that must ensue inevitably on that. In view of the composition of the Committee, the Majority Report is initself an amazing triumph of Sir Richmond's views; it is astonishingthat he was able to drive his opponents so far and then leave them theresecurely advanced while he carried on the adherents he had altogetherwon, including, of course, the labour representatives, to the furtheraltitudes 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 hadcome back in September in a state of exceptional vigour; for a timehe completely dominated the Committee by the passionate force of hisconvictions and the illuminating scorn he brought to bear on the varioussubterfuges and weakening amendments by which the meaner interestssought to save themselves in whole or in part from the common duty ofsacrifice. But toward the end he fell ill. He had worked to the pitch ofexhaustion. He neglected a cold that settled on his chest. He began tocough persistently and betray an increasingly irritable temper. In thelast fights in the Committee his face was bright with fever and he spokein a voiceless whisper, often a vast angry whisper. His place at tablewas marked with scattered lozenges and scraps of paper torn to theminutest shreds. Such good manners as had hitherto mitigated hisbehaviour on the Committee departed from him, He carried his lastpoints, gesticulating and coughing and wheezing rather than speaking. But he had so hammered his ideas into the Committee that they took theeffect of what he was trying to say. 

He died of pneumonia at his own house three days after the passing ofthe Majority Report. The Minority Report, his own especial creation, henever signed. It was completed by Wast and Carmichael.... 

After their parting at Salisbury station Dr. Martineau heard verylittle of Sir Richmond for a time except through the newspapers, whichcontained frequent allusions to the Committee. Someone told him that SirRichmond had been staying at Ruan in Cornwall where Martin Leeds had acottage, 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 inGlamorganshire. 

But in the interim Dr. Martineau had the pleasure of meeting Lady Hardyat a luncheon party. He was seated next to her and he found her a verypleasing and sympathetic person indeed. She talked to him freely andsimply 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 shedid she did not betray her knowledge. "That holiday did him a world ofgood, " she said. "He came back to his work like a giant. I feel verygrateful to you. "

Dr. Martineau said it was a pleasure to have helped Sir Richmond's workin any way. He believed in him thoroughly. Sir Richmond was inspired bygreat modern creative ideas. 

"Forgive me if I keep you talking about him, " said Lady Hardy. "I wish Icould 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, " shesaid. "I try to smooth his path. But he is a strange silent creature attimes. "

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 isone of those men, " he said, "who are driven by forces they do not fullyunderstand. A man of genius. "

"Yes, " she said in an undertone of intimacy. "Genius.... A greatirresponsible genius.... Difficult to help.... I wish I could do morefor him. "

A very sweet and charming lady. It was with great regret that the doctorfound the time had come to turn to his left-hand neighbour. 

Section 2

It was with some surprise that Dr. Martineau received a fresh appealfor aid from Sir Richmond. It was late in October and Sir Richmond wasalready seriously ill. But he was still going about his business asthough he was perfectly well. He had not mistaken his man. Dr. Martineaureceived him as though there had never been a shadow of offence betweenthem. 

He came straight to the point. "Martineau, " he said, "I must have thosedrugs I asked you for when first I came to you now. I must be bolsteredup. I can't last out unless I am. I'm at the end of my energy. I come toyou because you will understand. The Commission can't go on now for morethan another three weeks. Whatever happens afterwards I must keep goinguntil then. "

The doctor did understand. He made no vain objections. He did what hecould to patch up his friend for his last struggles with the oppositionin the Committee. "Pro forma, " he said, stethoscope in hand, "I mustorder you to bed. You won't go. But I order you. You must know thatwhat you are doing is risking your life. Your lungs are congested, the bronchial tubes already. That may spread at any time. If this openweather lasts you may go about and still pull through. But at any timethis may pass into pneumonia. And there's not much in you just now tostand 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. Ican manage. "

"Go in a closed car from door to door. Wrap up like a mummy. I wishthe Committee room wasn't down those abominable House of Commonscorridors.... "

They parted with an affectionate handshake. 

Section 3

Death approved of Sir Richmond's determination to see the Committeethrough. Our universal creditor gave this particular debtor grace to thevery last meeting. Then he brushed a gust of chilly rain across the faceof Sir Richmond as he stood waiting for his car outside the strangers'entrance to the House. For a couple of days Sir Richmond felt almostintolerably tired, but scarcely noted the changed timbre of the wheezynotes in his throat. He rose later each day and with ebbing vigour, jotted down notes and corrections upon the proofs of the MinorityReport. He found it increasingly difficult to make decisions; he wouldcorrect and alter back and then repeat the correction, perhaps half adozen times. On the evening of the second day his lungs became painfuland his breathing difficult. His head ached and a sense of some greatimpending evil came upon him. His skin was suddenly a detestable garmentto wear. He took his temperature with a little clinical thermometer hekept by him and found it was a hundred and one. He telephoned hastilyfor Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival took a hot bathand got into bed. He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived. 

"Forgive my sending for you, " he said. "Not your line. I know.... Mywife'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 doctorreplaced by one from Lady Hardy's room. He had twisted the bed-clothesinto a hopeless muddle, the sheet was on the floor. 

Sir Richmond's bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed tohave been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose. On onehand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the otherinto the day study. It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man whohad long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocatedhours and habits. There was a desk and reading lamp for night work nearthe fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at night, a silverbiscuit tin; all the apparatus for the lonely intent industry of thesmall hours. There was a bookcase of bluebooks, books of reference andsuchlike material, and some files. Over the mantelpiece was an enlargedphotograph of Lady Hardy and a plain office calendar. The desk waslittered with the galley proofs of the Minority Report upon which SirRichmond 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 lookedat 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 youngAmerican of Stonehenge. How that affair had ended he did not know. Andnow it was not his business to know. 

These various observations printed themselves on Dr. Martineau's mindafter his first cursory examination of his patient and while he castabout for anything that would give this large industrious apartment alittle more of the restfulness and comfort of a sick room. "I mustget in a night nurse at once, " he said. "We must find a small tablesomewhere to put near the bed. 

"I am afraid you are very ill, " he said, returning to the bedside. "Thisis not, as you say, my sort of work. Will you let me call in anotherman, 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 thecase--and everything. "

The second doctor presently came, with the right sort of nurse hard onhis heels. Sir Richmond submitted almost silently to his expert handlingand 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 anddrew Dr. Martineau by the arm towards the study. For a moment or so SirRichmond listened to the low murmur of their voices, but he did not feelvery deeply interested in what they were saying. He began to think whata decent chap Dr. Martineau was, how helpful and fine and forgiving hisprofessional training had made him, how completely he had ignored thesmothered incivilities of their parting at Salisbury. All men oughtto have some such training, Not a bad idea to put every boy and girlthrough a year or so of hospital service.... Sir Richmond must havedozed, for his next perception was of Dr. Martineau standing over himand 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 anybodyabout. "

"But if anything happens-?"

"Send then. "

An expression of obstinate calm overspread Sir Richmond's face. Heseemed to regard the matter as settled. He closed his eyes. 

For a time Dr. Martineau desisted. He went to the window and turned tolook again at the impassive figure on the bed. Did Sir Richmond fullyunderstand? He made a step towards his patient and hesitated. Then hebrought 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 andfatigue, 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--... Ifyou don't want to take risks about that--... One never knows in thesecases. Probably there is a night train. "

Sir Richmond manifested no surprise at the warning. But he stuck to hispoint. His voice was faint but firm. "Couldn't make up anything to sayto her. Anything she'd like. "

Dr. Martineau rested on that for a little while. Then he said: "If thereis 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 likea peevish child's. "They'd want things said to them... Things toremember... 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 awhisper. "Best love... Poor at the best.... " He dozed for a time. Then hemade a great effort. "I can't see them, Martineau, until I've somethingto say. It's like that. Perhaps I shall think of some kind things tosay--after a sleep. But if they came now... I'd say something wrong. Be cross perhaps. Hurt someone. I've hurt so many. Peopleexaggerate... 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. "Secondrate... Poor at the best... Love... Work. All... "

"It had been splendid work, " said Dr. Martineau, and was not sure thatSir 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... Andever... And ever. "

Again he seemed to doze. 

Dr. Martineau stood up softly. Something beyond reason told him thatthis was certainly a dying man. He was reluctant to go and he had anabsurd desire that someone, someone for whom Sir Richmond cared, shouldcome and say good-bye to him, and for Sir Richmond to say good-bye tosomeone. He hated this lonely launching from the shores of life ofone who had sought intimacy so persistently and vainly. It wasextraordinary--he saw it now for the first time--he loved this man. Ifit had been in his power, he would at that moment have anointed him withkindness. 

The doctor found himself standing in front of the untidy writing desk, littered like a recent battlefield. The photograph of the American girldrew his eyes. What had happened? Was there not perhaps some word forher? He turned about as if to enquire of the dying man and found SirRichmond's eyes open and regarding him. In them he saw an expression hehad seen there once or twice before, a faint but excessively irritatinggleam of amusement. 

"Oh!--WELL!" said Dr. Martineau and turned away. He went to the windowand stared out as his habit was. 

Sir Richmond continued to smile dimly at the doctor's back until hiseyes closed again. 

It was their last exchange. Sir Richmond died that night in the smallhours, so quietly that for some time the night nurse did not observewhat had happened. She was indeed roused to that realization by theringing 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 uncomfortablelittle bed in his big bedroom and by the curious effect of lonelinessproduced by the nocturnal desk and by the evident dread felt by SirRichmond of any death-bed partings. He realized how much this man, whohad once sought so feverishly for intimacies, had shrunken back uponhimself, how solitary his motives had become, how rarely he had takencounsel with anyone in his later years. His mind now dwelt apart. Evenif 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 slipout of a crowded assembly, unobserved. Even now he might be going. Thedoctor recalled how he and Sir Richmond had talked of the rage of lifein a young baby, how we drove into life in a sort of fury, how that rageimpelled us to do this and that, how we fought and struggled until therage spent itself and was gone. That eddy of rage that was Sir Richmondwas 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 ofdreams. He saw the figure of Sir Richmond, going as it were away fromhim along a narrow path, a path that followed the crest of a ridge, between great darknesses, enormous cloudy darknesses, above him andbelow. He was going along this path without looking back, without athought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer himon his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some greatpicture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His handswould 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. Hisfigure became dim and dimmer. 

Whither did that figure go? Did that enveloping darkness hide thebeginnings of some strange long journey or would it just dissolve thatfigure into itself?

Was that indeed the end?

Dr. Martineau was one of that large class of people who can neitherimagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the figurebut still it remained visible. As one can continue to see a star at dawnuntil one turns away. Or one blinks or nods and it is gone. 

Vanished now are the beliefs that held our race for countlessgenerations. Where now was that Path of the Dead, mapped so clearly, faced with such certainty, in which the heliolithic peoples believedfrom Avebury to Polynesia? Not always have we had to go alone andunprepared into uncharted darknesses. For a time the dream artist used apalette of the doctor's vague memories of things Egyptian, he painted anew roll of the Book of the Dead, at a copy of which the doctor had beenlooking a day or so before. Sir Richmond became a brown naked figure, crossing a bridge of danger, passing between terrific monsters, ferryinga dark and dreadful stream. He came to the scales of judgment before thevery throne of Osiris and stood waiting while dogheaded Anubis weighedhis conscience and that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead, crouched ready if the judgment went against him. The doctor's attentionconcentrated upon the scales. A memory of Swedengorg's Heaven and Hellmingled with the Egyptian fantasy. Now at last it was possible to knowsomething real about this man's soul, now at last one could look intothe Secret Places of his Heart. Anubis and Thoth, the god with the ibishead, were reading the heart as if it were a book, reading aloud from itto the supreme judge. 

Suddenly the doctor found himself in his own dreams. His anxiety toplead for his friend had brought him in. He too had become a littlepainted figure and he was bearing a book in his hand. He wanted to showthat the laws of the new world could not be the same as those of theold, and the book he was bringing as evidence was his own Psychology ofa New Age. 

The clear thought of that book broke up his dream by releasing a trainof waking troubles.... You have been six months on Chapter Ten; will itever be ready for Osiris?... Will it ever be ready for print?... 

Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windyday in April. Suddenly he saw again that lonely figure on the narrow waywith darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand. But this time it was not Sir Richmond.... Who was it? Surely it wasEveryman. Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road, leaving love, leaving every task and every desire. But was itEveryman?... A great fear and horror came upon the doctor. That littlefigure was himself! And the book which was his particular task in lifewas still undone. He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely pathwith 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. Anoverwhelming conviction had arisen--in his mind that Sir Richmond wasdead. He felt he must know for certain. He switched on his electriclight, mutely interrogated his round face reflected in the lookingglass, got out of bed, shuffled on his slippers and went along thepassage to the telephone. He hesitated for some seconds and then liftedthe receiver. It was his call which aroused the nurse to the fact of SirRichmond's death. 

Section 6

Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr. Martineau's telegram lateon the following evening. He was with her next morning, comfortingand sympathetic. Her big blue eyes, bright with tears, met his verywistfully; her little body seemed very small and pathetic in its simpleblack dress. And yet there was a sort of bravery about her. When he cameinto the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses talking toa serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type. She left her business atonce 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, takingboth her hands in his for a long friendly sympathetic pressure. 

"I might have known that if it had been possible you would have toldme, " she said. 

"You know, " she added, "I don't believe it yet. I don't realize it. I goabout these formalities--"

"I think I can understand that. "

"He was always, you know, not quite here.... It is as if he were alittle more not quite here.... I can't believe it is over.... "

She asked a number of questions and took the doctor's advice uponvarious details of the arrangements. "My daughter Helen comes hometo-morrow afternoon, " she explained. "She is in Paris. But our son isfar, far away in the Punjab. I have sent him a telegram.... It is sokind of you to come in to me. "

Dr. Martineau went more than half way to meet Lady Hardy's dispositionto treat him as a friend of the family. He had conceived a curious, halfmaternal affection for Sir Richmond that had survived even the tryingincident of the Salisbury parting and revived very rapidly during thelast few weeks. This affection extended itself now to Lady Hardy. Herswas a type that had always appealed to him. He could understand so wellthe perplexed loyalty with which she was now setting herself to gathertogether some preservative and reassuring evidences of this man who hadalways been; as she put it, "never quite here. " It was as if she feltthat now it was at last possible to make a definite reality of him. Hecould be fixed. And as he was fixed he would stay. Never more would hebe able to come in and with an almost expressionless glance wither theinterpretation she had imposed upon him. She was finding much comfortin this task of reconstruction. She had gathered together in thedrawingroom 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 pencilsketch done within a couple of years of their marriage; there was anumber of photographs, several of which--she wanted the doctor's adviceupon this point--she thought might be enlarged; there was a statuettedone 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 andsome notes. She flitted among these memorials, going from one to theother, undecided which to make the standard portrait. "That painting, I think, is most like, " she said: "as he was before the war. But the warand the Commission changed him, --worried him and aged him.... I grudgedhim 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. Youknow it is one of my hopes to get some sort of book done, explaining hisideas. He would never write. He despised it--unreasonably. A real thingdone, he said, was better than a thousand books. Nobody read books, hesaid, but women, parsons and idle people. But there must be books. AndI want one. Something a little more real than the ordinary officialbiography.... I have thought of young Leighton, the secretary of theCommission. He seems thoroughly intelligent and sympathetic and reallyanxious to reconcile Richmond's views with those of the big business menon the Committee. He might do.... Or perhaps I might be able to persuadetwo or three people to write down their impressions of him. A sortof memorial volume.... But he was shy of friends. There was no man hetalked to very intimately about his ideas unless it was to you... I wishI had the writer's gift, doctor. "

Section 7

It was on the second afternoon that Lady Hardy summoned Dr. Martineauby telephone. "Something rather disagreeable, " she said. "If you couldspare the time. If you could come round. 

"It is frightfully distressing, " she said when he got round to her, andfor a time she could tell him nothing more. She was having tea and shegave him some. She fussed about with cream and cakes and biscuits. Henoted a crumpled letter thrust under the edge of the silver tray. 

"He talked, I know, very intimately with you, " she said, coming to it atlast. "He probably went into things with you that he never talked aboutwith anyone else. Usually he was very reserved, Even with me there werethings about which he said nothing. "

"We did, " said Dr. Martineau with discretion, "deal a little with hisprivate life. 

"There was someone--"

Dr. Martineau nodded and then, not to be too portentous, took and bit abiscuit. 

"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 nevermet her. Never set eyes on her. For all I know she may want to make ascene. " 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 herreluctant admission. "I know it. I know.... There was much betweenthem. "

Dr. Martineau pressed the limp hand upon the little tea table. "Iunderstand, dear lady, " he said. "I understand. Now ... Suppose _I_ wereto write to her and arrange--I do not see that you need be put to thepain 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 thinkof it again. "

He took over Martin's brief note to Lady Hardy and set to work bytelegram to arrange for her visit. She was in London at her Chelsea flatand easily accessible. She was to come to the house at mid-day on themorrow, and to ask not for Lady Hardy but for him. He would stay by herwhile she was in the house, and it would be quite easy for Lady Hardy tokeep herself and her daughter out of the way. They could, for example, go out quietly to the dressmakers in the closed car, for many littlethings about the mourning still remained to be seen to. 

Section 8

Miss Martin Leeds arrived punctually, but the doctor was well ahead ofhis time and ready to receive her. She was ushered into the drawing roomwhere he awaited her. As she came forward the doctor first perceivedthat she had a very sad and handsome face, the face of a sensitive youthrather than the face of a woman. She had fine grey eyes under veryfine brows; they were eyes that at other times might have laughed veryagreeably, but which were now full of an unrestrained sadness. Her brownhair was very untidy and parted at the side like a man's. Then he notedthat 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 wasshort in proportion to her broad figure and her broad forehead. 

"You are Dr. Martineau?" she said. "He talked of you. " As she spokeher glance went from him to the pictures that stood about the room. Shewalked up to the painting and stood in front of it with her distressedgaze 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 hismemory. Not one has his life in it. How could she do it? Look at thatidiot statuette!... He was extraordinarily difficult to get. I haveburnt 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 havebeen trying to sketch him almost all the time since he died. But I can'tget him back. He's gone. "

She turned to the doctor again. She spoke to him, not as if she expectedhim to understand her, but because she had to say these things whichburthened her mind to someone. "I have done hundreds of sketches. Myroom is littered with them. When you turn them over he seems to belurking among them. But not one of them is like him. "

She was trying to express something beyond her power. "It is as ifsomeone had suddenly turned out the light. "

She followed the doctor upstairs. "This was his study, " the doctorexplained. 

"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, butsomeone had made it quite tidy and the portrait of Aliss Grammont haddisappeared. Miss Leeds walked straight across to the coffin andstood looking down on the waxen inexpressive dignity of the dead. SirRichmond's brows and nose had become sharper and more clear-cut thanthey had ever been in life and his lips had set into a faint inanesmile. She stood quite still for a long time. At length she sigheddeeply. 

She spoke, a little as though she thought aloud, a little as though shetalked at that silent presence in the coffin. "I think he loved, " shesaid. "Sometimes I think he loved me. But it is hard to tell. He waskind. He could be intensely kind and yet he didn't seem to care foryou. He could be intensely selfish and yet he certainly did not care forhimself.... Anyhow, I loved HIM.... There is nothing left in me now tolove anyone else--for ever.... "

She put her hands behind her back and looked at the dead man with herhead a little on one side. "Too kind, " she said very softly. 

"There was a sort of dishonesty in his kindness. He would not let youhave 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. Hetook it seriously because it takes itself seriously. He worked for itand 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--abad joke--made by some cruel little god who has caught a neglectedplanet.... Like torturing a stray cat.... But he took it seriously andhe gave up his life for it. 

"There was much happiness he might have had. He was very capable ofhappiness. But he never seemed happy. This work of his came beforeit. He overworked and fretted our happiness away. He sacrificed hishappiness and mine. "

She held out her hands towards the doctor. "What am I to do now with therest 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 bekind. 

"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 ofself-control. She sank down on her knees beside the trestle. "Why haveyou 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 beather hands upon the coffin. She wept loudly and fiercely as a childdoes.... 

Dr. Martineau drifted feebly to the window. 

He wished he had locked the door. The servants might hear and wonderwhat it was all about. Always he had feared love for the cruel thing itwas, but now it seemed to him for the first time that he realized itsmonstrous cruelty. 

THE END