The Secret Places of the Heart (13 page)

"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 any
more. They've got to be cleared away."

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

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

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

The lady who was called V.V. smiled as if she smiled at herself, and
explained herself to Sir Richmond. "When one is travelling about, one
gets to think of history and politics in terms of architecture. I do
anyhow. And those columns with Corinthian capitals have got to be a sort
of symbol for me for everything in Europe that I don't want and have no
sort of use for. It isn't a bad sort of capital in its way, florid and
pretty, but not a patch on the Doric;—and that a whole continent should
come 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 the
Romans all over western Europe."

"And it smothers the history of Europe. You can't see Europe because
of it. Europe is obsessed by Rome. Everywhere Marble Arches and ARCS DE
TRIOMPHE. You never get away from it. It is like some old gentleman who
has lost his way in a speech and keeps on repeating the same thing. And
can't sit down. 'The empire, gentlemen—the Empire. Empire.' Rome itself
is perfectly frightful. It stares at you with its great round stupid
arches as though it couldn't imagine that you could possibly want
anything else for ever. Saint Peter's and that frightful Monument are
just the same stuff as the Baths of Caracalla and the palaces of the
Caesars. Just the same. They will make just the same sort of ruins. It
goes on and goes on."

"AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS," said Dr. Martineau.

"This Roman empire seems to be Europe's first and last idea. A fixed
idea. And such a poor idea!... America never came out of that. It's no
good-telling me that it did. It escaped from it.... So I said to Belinda
here, 'Let's burrow, if we can, under all this marble and find out what
sort of people we were before this Roman empire and its acanthus weeds
got hold of us.'"

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

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

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

"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 was
older than this. And older still is Avebury. Have you heard in America
of Avebury? It may have predated this place, they think, by another
thousand 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 upon
an account of the glory and wonder of Avebury. Possibly he exaggerated
Avebury....

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

But this action had scarcely the effect he had intended it to have. It
set the young lady who was called Belinda asking about ways and means of
getting 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 they
moved much too quickly for the doctor to deflect their course. He
found himself called upon to make personal sacrifices to facilitate the
painless transport of the two ladies to Salisbury, where their luggage
awaited 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 Old
George 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 with
Sir Richmond, while the lady named Belinda, for whom Dr. Martineau
was already developing a very strong dislike, was to be thrust into an
extreme proximity with him and the balance of the luggage in the dicky
seat behind.

Sir Richmond had never met with a young woman with a genuine historical
imagination before, and he was evidently very greatly excited and
resolved to get the utmost that there was to be got out of this
encounter.

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

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

This charming young woman had seized upon the imagination of Sir
Richmond to the temporary exclusion of all other considerations. The
long Downland gradients, quivering very slightly with the vibration of
the road, came swiftly and easily to meet and pass the throbbing little
car as he sat beside her and talked to her. He fell into that expository
manner which comes so easily to the native entertaining the visitor from
abroad.

"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 our
right as we come over one of these crests. Each of them represents
about a thousand years. Old Sarum was Keltic; it, saw the Romans and the
Saxons through, and for a time it was a Norman city. Now it is pasture
for sheep. Latest as yet is Salisbury,—English, real English. It may
last a few centuries still. It is little more than seven hundred years
old. 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 will
fly to the ends of, in a week or so. Our world still. Our people, your
people and mine, who are going to take wing so soon now, were made in
all these places. We are visiting the old homes. I am glad I came back
to 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 history
didn'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 come
over to Europe as if it hadn't anything to do with us except to supply
us with old pictures and curios generally. We come sight-seeing. It's
romantic. It's picturesque. We stare at the natives—like visitors at
a Zoo. We don't realize that we belong.... I know our style.... But we
aren'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's
Professor Breasted for instance. He comes sometimes to my father's
house. 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 and
all sorts of interesting things happen there nowadays. And we are waking
up to history. Quite fast. We shan't always be the most ignorant people
in the world. We are beginning to realize that quite a lot of things
happened 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 of
those men you read about in the papers who go away from home and turn up
in some distant place with their memories gone. They've forgotten what
their names were or where they lived or what they did for a living;
they've forgotten everything that matters. Often they have to begin
again 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 Corinthian
capitals."

"You feel all this country belongs to you?"

"As much as it does to you." Sir Richmond smiled radiantly at her. "But
if 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 long
time. 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 American
for some time. I want to know very badly what you think you are up to
with the world,—our world."

"I'm equally anxious to know what England thinks she is doing. Her
ways recently have been a little difficult to understand. On any
hypothesis—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 of
ownership in England. It's like finding your dearest aunt torturing the
cat."

"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. And
poor Aunt Britannia almost deliberately lost her temper. But I admit she
hits 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 of
showing you Salisbury and Avebury. If you are free?"

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

"We are," said Sir Richmond.

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

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

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

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

"The oil Grammont?"

"He is rather deep in oil, I believe. He is coming over to Europe
because he does not like the way your people are behaving in
Mesopotamia. He is on his way to Paris now. Paris it seems is where
everything is to be settled against you. Belinda is a sort of companion
I have acquired for the purposes of independent travel. She was Red
Cross too. I must have somebody and I cannot bear a maid. Her name is
Belinda 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 Old
Sarum. The little ancient city that faded away when Salisbury lifted its
spire into the world. We will stop here for a little while...."

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

The sudden prospect which now opened out before Sir Richmond of talking
about history and suchlike topics with a charming companion for perhaps
two whole days instead of going on with this tiresome, shamefaced,
egotistical business of self-examination was so attractive to him that
it took immediate possession of his mind, to the entire exclusion
and disregard of Dr. Martineau's possible objections to any such
modification of their original programme. When they arrived in
Salisbury, the doctor did make some slight effort to suggest a different
hotel from that in which the two ladies had engaged their rooms, but
on the spur of the moment and in their presence he could produce no
sufficient reason for refusing the accommodation the Old George had
ready for him. He was reduced to a vague: "We don't want to inflict
ourselves—" He could not get Sir Richmond aside for any adequate
expression of his feelings about Miss Seyffert, before the four of them
were seated together at tea amidst the mediaeval modernity of the Old
George smoking-room. And only then did he begin to realize the depth and
extent of the engagements to which Sir Richmond had committed himself.