The Secret Places of the Heart (23 page)

In the afternoon Miss Seyffert came with Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont
and was very enthusiastic about everything, but in the evening after
dinner it was clear that her role was to remain in the hotel. Sir
Richmond and Miss Grammont went out into the moonlit gloaming; they
crossed the bridge again and followed the road beside the river towards
the old Abbey Church, that Lantern of the West. Away in some sunken
gardens ahead of them a band was playing, and a cluster of little lights
about the bandstand showed a crowd of people down below dancing on the
grass. These little lights, these bobbing black heads and the lilting
music, this little inflamed Centre of throbbing sounds and ruddy
illumination, made the dome of the moonlit world about it seem very vast
and cool and silent. Our visitors began to realize that Bath could
be very beautiful. They went to the parapet above the river and stood
there, leaning over it elbow to elbow and smoking cigarettes. Miss
Grammont was moved to declare the Pulteney Bridge, with its noble arch,
its effect of height over the swirling river, and the cluster of houses
above, more beautiful than the Ponte Vecchio at Florence. Down below was
a man in waders with a fishing-rod going to and fro along the foaming
weir, and a couple of boys paddled a boat against the rush of the water
lower 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 called
London which stretches its tentacles all over the world. I am as much a
home-coming tourist as you are. Most of this western country I am seeing
for the first time."

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

"It's a promise?"

"Yes."

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

"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. But
now—every rational thing seems dissolved in this moonlight...."

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

"I suppose I ought to be more concerned tonight about the work I have to
do in the world and anxious for you to tell me this and that, but indeed
I am not concerned at all about it. I seem to have it in outline all
perfectly clear. I mean to play a man's part in the world just as
my father wants me to do. I mean to win his confidence and work with
him—like a partner. Then some day I shall be a power in the world of
fuel. And at the same time I must watch and read and think and learn
how to be the servant of the world.... We two have to live like trusted
servants who have been made guardians of a helpless minor. We have
to put things in order and keep them in order against the time when
Man—Man whom we call in America the Common Man—can take hold of his
world—"

"And release his servants," said Sir Richmond.

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

She stopped abruptly. "All that is about as interesting to-night—in
comparison with the touch of your dear fingers—as next month's railway
time-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. "The
stars and space and time overwhelm my imagination. I cannot imagine
anything 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 to
add. "I mean that there is something about human beings—not just the
everyday stuff of them, but something that appears intermittently—as
though a light shone through something translucent. If I believe in any
divinity at all it is a divinity revealed to me by other people—And
even 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 been
surprised time after time by fine things.... Often in people I disliked
or thought little of.... I can understand that I find you full of divine
quality, because I am in love with you and all alive to you. Necessarily
I keep on discovering loveliness in you. But I have seen divine things
in dear old Martineau, for example. A vain man, fussy, timid—and yet
filled with a passion for truth, ready to make great sacrifices and to
toil tremendously for that. And in those men I am always cursing,
my Committee, it is astonishing at times to discover what streaks of
goodness even the really bad men can show.... But one can't make use
of just anyone's divinity. I can see the divinity in Martineau but it
leaves me cold. He tired me and bored me.... But I live on you. It's
only through love that the God can reach over from one human being to
another. All real love is a divine thing, a reassurance, a release of
courage. It is wonderful enough that we should take food and drink and
turn them into imagination, invention and creative energy; it is still
more wonderful that we should take an animal urging and turn it into a
light to discover beauty and an impulse towards the utmost achievements
of which we are capable. All love is a sacrament and all lovers are
priests to each other. You and I—"

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."

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.

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.