The Secret Places of the Heart

by Herbert George Wells

  Sir Richmond broke off abruptly. “I spent three days trying to tell this to Dr. Martineau. But he wasn’t the priest I had to confess to and the words wouldn’t come. I can confess it to you readily enough … .”

  “I cannot tell,” said Miss Grammont, “whether this is the last wisdom in life or moonshine. I cannot tell whether I am thinking or feeling; but the noise of the water going over the weir below is like the stir in my heart. And I am swimming in love and happiness. Am I awake or am I dreaming you, and are we dreaming one another? Hold my hand—hold it hard and tight. I’m trembling with love for you and all the world… . If I say more I shall be weeping.”

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

  Presently the band down below and the dancing ceased and the little lights were extinguished. The silent moon seemed to grow brighter and larger and the whisper of the waters louder. A crowd of young people flowed out of the gardens and passed by on their way home. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont strolled through the dispersing crowd and over the Toll Bridge and went exploring down a little staircase that went down from the end of the bridge to the dark river, and then came back to their old position at the parapet looking upon the weir and the Pulteney Bridge. The gardens that had been so gay were already dark and silent as they returned, and the streets echoed emptily to the few people who were still abroad.

  “It’s the most beautiful bridge in the world,” said Miss Grammont, and gave him her hand again.

  Some deep-toned clock close by proclaimed the hour eleven.

  The silence healed again.

  “Well?” said Sir Richmond.

  “Well?” said Miss Grammont smiling very faintly.

  “I suppose we must go out of all this beauty now, back to the lights of the hotel and the watchful eyes of your dragon. ”

  “She has not been a very exacting dragon so far, has she?”

  “She is a miracle of tact.”

  “She does not really watch. But she is curious—and very sympathetic. ”

  “She is wonderful.” … .

  “That man is still fishing,” said Miss Grammont.

  For a time she peered down at the dark figure wading in the foam below as though it was the only thing of interest in the world. Then she turned to Sir Richmond.

  “I would trust Belinda with my life, she said. “And anyhow-now—we need not worry about Belinda.”

  Section 7

  At the breakfast table it was Belinda who was the most nervous of the three, the most moved, the most disposed to throw a sacramental air over their last meal together. Her companions had passed beyond the idea of separation; it was as if they now cherished a secret satisfaction at the high dignity of their parting. Belinda in some way perceived they had become different. They were no longer tremulous lovers; they seemed sure of one another and with a new pride in their bearing. It would have pleased Belinda better, seeing how soon they were to be torn apart, if they had not made quite such excellent breakfasts. She even suspected them of having slept well. Yet yesterday they had been deeply stirred. They had stayed out late last night, so late that she had not heard them come in. Perhaps then they had passed the climax of their emotions. Sir Richmond, she learnt, was to take the party to Exeter, where there would be a train for Falmouth a little after two. If they started from Bath about nine that would give them an ample margin of time in which to deal with a puncture or any such misadventure.

  They crested the Mendips above Shepton Mallet, ran through Tilchester and Ilminster into the lovely hill country about Up-Ottery and so to Honiton and the broad level road to Exeter. Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont were in a state of happy gravity; they sat contentedly side by side, talking very little. They had already made their arrangements for writing to one another. There was to be no stream of love-letters or protestations. That might prove a mutual torment. Their love was to be implicit. They were to write at intervals about political matters and their common interests, and to keep each other informed of their movements about the world.

  “We shall be working together,” she said, speaking suddenly out of a train of thought she had been following, “we shall be closer together than many a couple who have never spent a day apart for twenty years.”

  Then presently she said: “In the New Age all lovers will have to be accustomed to meeting and parting. We women will not be tied very much by domestic needs. Unless we see fit to have children. We shall be going about our business like men; we shall have world-wide businesses—many of us—just as men will… .

  “It will be a world full of lovers’ meetings.”

  Some day—somewhere—we two will certainly meet again.”

  “Even you have to force circumstances a little,” said Sir Richmond.

  “We shall meet, she said, “without doing that.”

  “But where?” he asked unanswered… .

  “Meetings and partings,” she said. “Women will be used to seeing their lovers go away. Even to seeing them go away to other women who have borne them children and who have a closer claim on them.”

  “No one-” began Sir Richmond, startled.

  “But I don’t mind very much. It’s how things are. If I were a perfectly civilized woman I shouldn’t mind at all. If men and women are not to be tied to each other there must needs be such things as this.”

  “But you,” said Sir Richmond. I at any rate am not like that. I cannot bear the thought that YOU—”

  “You need not bear it, my dear. I was just trying to imagine this world that is to be. Women I think are different from men in their jealousy. Men are jealous of the other man; women are jealous for their man—and careless about the other woman. What I love in you I am sure about. My mind was empty when it came to you and now it is full to overflowing. I shall feel you moving about in the same world with me. I’m not likely to think of anyone else for a very long time… . Later on, who knows? I may marry. I make no vows. But I think until I know certainly that you do not want me any more it will be impossible for me to marry or to have a lover. I don’t know, but that is how I believe it will be with me. And my mind feels beautifully clear now and settled. I’ve got your idea and made it my own, your idea that we matter scarcely at all, but that the work we do matters supremely. I’ll find my rope and tug it, never fear. Half way round the world perhaps some day you will feel me tugging.”

  “I shall feel you’re there,” he said, “whether you tug or not… .”

  “Three miles left to Exeter,” he reported presently.

  She glanced back at Belinda.

  “It is good that we have loved, my dear,” she whispered. “Say it is good.”

  “The best thing in all my life,” he said, and lowered his head and voice to say: “My dearest dear.”

  “Heart’s desire—still—?”

  “Heart’s delight… . Priestess of life… . Divinity.”

  She smiled and nodded and suddenly Belinda, up above their lowered heads, accidentally and irrelevantly, no doubt, coughed.

  At Exeter Station there was not very much time to spare after all. Hardly had Sir Richmond secured a luncheon basket for the two travellers before the train came into the station. He parted from Miss Grammont with a hand clasp. Belinda was flushed and distressed at the last but her friend was quiet and still. “Au revoir,” said Belinda without conviction when Sir Richmond shook her hand.

  Section 8.

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

  “The most wonderful thing in my life,” he thought. “And already—it is unreal.

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

  “We shall write letters. Do letters breathe faster or slower as you read them?

  “We may meet.

  “Where are we likely to meet again? … I never realized before how improbable it is that we shall meet again. And if we meet? …

  “Never in all our lives shall we be really TOGETHER again. It’s over—With a completeness… .

  “Like death.”

  He came opposite the bookstalls and stopped short and stared with unseeing eyes at the display of popular literature. He was wondering now whether after all he ought to have let her go. He experienced something of the blank amazement of a child who has burst its toy balloon. His golden globe of satisfaction in an instant had gone. An irrational sense of loss was flooding every other feeling about V.V. If she had loved him truly and altogether could she have left him like this? Neither of them surely had intended so complete a separation. He wanted to go back and recall that train.

  A few seconds more, he realized, and he would give way to anger. Whatever happened that must not happen. He pulled himself together. What was it he had to do now? He had not to be angry, he had not even to be sorry. They had done the right thing. Outside the station his car was waiting.

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

  The image of Martin became very vivid in his mind. He thought of her as he had seen her many times, with the tears close, fighting with her back to the wall, with all her wit and vigour gone, because she loved him more steadfastly than he did her. Whatever happened he must not take it out of Martin. It was astonishing how real she had become now—as V.V. became a dream. Yes, Martin was astonishingly real. And if only he could go now and talk to Martin—and face all the facts of life with her, even as he had done with that phantom Martin in his dream… .

  But things were not like that.

  He looked to see if his car was short of water or petrol; both needed replenishing, and so he would have to go up the hill into Exeter town again. He got into his car and sat with his fingers on the electric starter.

  Martin! Old Friend! Eight days were still left before the Committee met again, eight days for golden kindness. He would distress Martin by no clumsy confession. He would just make her happy as she loved to be made happy… . Nevertheless. Nevertheless… .

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

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

  He laughed suddenly.

  “I’ll take it out of the damned Commission. I’ll make old Rumford Brown sit up.”

  He was astonished to find himself thinking of the affairs of the Commission with a lively interest and no trace of fatigue. He had had his change; he had taken his rest; he was equal to his task again already. He started his engine and steered his way past a van and a waiting cab.

  “Fuel,” he said.

  CHAPTER THE NINTH

  THE LAST DAYS OF SIR RICHMOND HARDY

  Section 1

  The Majority and Minority Reports of the Fuel Commission were received on their first publication with much heat and disputation, but there is already a fairly general agreement that they are great and significant documents, broadly conceived and historically important. They do lift the questions of fuel supply and distribution high above the level of parochial jealousies and above the petty and destructive profiteering of private owners and traders, to a view of a general human welfare. They form an important link in a series of private and public documents that are slowly opening out a prospect of new economic methods, methods conceived in the generous spirit of scientific work, that may yet arrest the drift of our western civilization towards financial and commercial squalor and the social collapse that must ensue inevitably on that. In view of the composition of the Committee, the Majority Report is in itself an amazing triumph of Sir Richmond’s views; it is astonishing that he was able to drive his opponents so far and then leave them there securely advanced while he carried on the adherents he had altogether won, including, of course, the labour representatives, to the further altitudes of the Minority Report.

  After the Summer recess the Majority Report was discussed and adopted. Sir Richmond had shown signs of flagging energy in June, but he had come back in September in a state of exceptional vigour; for a time he completely dominated the Committee by the passionate force of his convictions and the illuminating scorn he brought to bear on the various subterfuges and weakening amendments by which the meaner interests sought to save themselves in whole or in part from the common duty of sacrifice. But toward the end he fell ill. He had worked to the pitch of exhaustion. He neglected a cold that settled on his chest. He began to cough persistently and betray an increasingly irritable temper. In the last fights in the Committee his face was bright with fever and he spoke in a voiceless whisper, often a vast angry whisper. His place at table was marked with scattered lozenges and scraps of paper torn to the minutest shreds. Such good manners as had hitherto mitigated his behaviour on the Committee departed from him, He carried his last points, gesticulating and coughing and wheezing rather than speaking. But he had so hammered his ideas into the Committee that they took the effect of what he was trying to say.

  He died of pneumonia at his own house three days after the passing of the Majority Report. The Minority Report, his own especial creation, he never signed. It was completed by Wast and Carmichael… .

  After their parting at Salisbury station Dr. Martineau heard very little of Sir Richmond for a time except through the newspapers, which contained frequent allusions to the Committee. Someone told him that Sir Richmond had been staying at Ruan in Cornwall where Martin Leeds had a cottage, and someone else had met him at Bath on his way, he said, in his car from Cornwall to a conference with Sir Peter Davies in Glamorganshire.

  But in the interim Dr. Martineau had the pleasure of meeting Lady Hardy at a luncheon party. He was seated next to her and he found her a very pleasing and sympathetic person indeed. She talked to him freely and simply of her husband and of the journey the two men had taken together. Either she knew nothing of the circumstances of their parting or if she did she did not betray her knowledge. “That holiday did him a world of good,” she said. “He came back to his work like a giant. I feel very grateful to you.”

  Dr. Martineau said it was a pleasure to have helped Sir Richmond’s work in any way. He believed in him thoroughly. Sir Richmond was inspired by great modern creative ideas.

  “Forgive me if I keep you talking about him,” said Lady Hardy. “I wish I could feel as sure that I had been of use to him.”

  Dr. Martineau insisted. “I know very well that you are.”

  “I do what I can to help him carry his enormous burthen of toil” she said. “I try to smooth his path. But he is a strange silent creature at times. ”

  Her eyes scrutinized the doctor’s face.

  It was not the doctor’s business to supplement Sir Richmond’s silences. Yet he wished to meet the requirements of this lady if he could. “He is one of those men,” he said, “who are driven by forces they do not fully understand. A man of genius.”

  “Yes,” she said in an undertone of intimacy. Genius… . A great irresponsible genius… . Difficult to help… . I wish I could do more for him.”

  A very sweet and c
harming lady. It was with great regret that the doctor found the time had come to turn to his left-hand neighbour.

  Section 2

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

  He came straight to the point. “Martineau,” he said, “I must have those drugs I asked you for when first I came to you now. I must be bolstered up. I can’t last out unless I am. I’m at the end of my energy. I come to you because you will understand. The Commission can’t go on now for more than another three weeks. Whatever happens afterwards I must keep going until then.”

  The doctor did understand. He made no vain objections. He did what he could to patch up his friend for his last struggles with the opposition in the Committee. “Pro forma,” he said, stethoscope in hand, “I must order you to bed. You won’t go. But I order you. You must know that what you are doing is risking your life. Your lungs are congested, the bronchial tubes already. That may spread at any time. If this open weather lasts you may go about and still pull through. But at any time this may pass into pneumonia. And there’s not much in you just now to stand up against pneumonia… .”