The Secret Places of the Heart (24 page)

"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.

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 charming lady. It was with great regret that the doctor
found the time had come to turn to his left-hand neighbour.

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...."

"I'll take all reasonable care."

"Is your wife at home!"

"She is in Wales with her people. But the household is well trained. I
can manage."

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

They parted with an affectionate handshake.

Death approved of Sir Richmond's determination to see the Committee
through. Our universal creditor gave this particular debtor grace to the
very last meeting. Then he brushed a gust of chilly rain across the face
of Sir Richmond as he stood waiting for his car outside the strangers'
entrance to the House. For a couple of days Sir Richmond felt almost
intolerably tired, but scarcely noted the changed timbre of the wheezy
notes in his throat. He rose later each day and with ebbing vigour,
jotted down notes and corrections upon the proofs of the Minority
Report. He found it increasingly difficult to make decisions; he would
correct and alter back and then repeat the correction, perhaps half a
dozen times. On the evening of the second day his lungs became painful
and his breathing difficult. His head ached and a sense of some great
impending evil came upon him. His skin was suddenly a detestable garment
to wear. He took his temperature with a little clinical thermometer he
kept by him and found it was a hundred and one. He telephoned hastily
for Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival took a hot bath
and got into bed. He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived.

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

Sir Richmond's bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed to
have been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose. On one
hand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the other
into the day study. It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man who
had long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocated
hours and habits. There was a desk and reading lamp for night work near
the fireplace, an electric kettle for making tea at night, a silver
biscuit tin; all the apparatus for the lonely intent industry of the
small hours. There was a bookcase of bluebooks, books of reference and
suchlike material, and some files. Over the mantelpiece was an enlarged
photograph of Lady Hardy and a plain office calendar. The desk was
littered with the galley proofs of the Minority Report upon which Sir
Richmond 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 looked
at 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 young
American of Stonehenge. How that affair had ended he did not know. And
now it was not his business to know.

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

"I am afraid you are very ill," he said, returning to the bedside. "This
is not, as you say, my sort of work. Will you let me call in another
man, a man we can trust thoroughly, to consult?"