The Secret Places of the Heart (25 page)

"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 the
case—and everything."

The second doctor presently came, with the right sort of nurse hard on
his heels. Sir Richmond submitted almost silently to his expert handling
and 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 and
drew Dr. Martineau by the arm towards the study. For a moment or so Sir
Richmond listened to the low murmur of their voices, but he did not feel
very deeply interested in what they were saying. He began to think what
a decent chap Dr. Martineau was, how helpful and fine and forgiving his
professional training had made him, how completely he had ignored the
smothered incivilities of their parting at Salisbury. All men ought
to have some such training, Not a bad idea to put every boy and girl
through a year or so of hospital service.... Sir Richmond must have
dozed, for his next perception was of Dr. Martineau standing over him
and 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 anybody
about."

"But if anything happens-?"

"Send then."

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

For a time Dr. Martineau desisted. He went to the window and turned to
look again at the impassive figure on the bed. Did Sir Richmond fully
understand? He made a step towards his patient and hesitated. Then he
brought 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 and
fatigue, 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—... If
you don't want to take risks about that—... One never knows in these
cases. Probably there is a night train."

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

Dr. Martineau rested on that for a little while. Then he said: "If there
is 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 like
a peevish child's. "They'd want things said to them...Things to
remember...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 a
whisper. "Best love...Poor at the best...." He dozed for a time. Then he
made a great effort. "I can't see them, Martineau, until I've something
to say. It's like that. Perhaps I shall think of some kind things to
say—after a sleep. But if they came now...I'd say something wrong.
Be cross perhaps. Hurt someone. I've hurt so many. People
exaggerate...People exaggerate—importance these occasions."

"Yes, yes," whispered Dr. Martineau. "I quite understand."

For a time Sir Richmond dozed. Then he stirred and muttered. "Second
rate... Poor at the best... Love... Work. All..."

"It had been splendid work," said Dr. Martineau, and was not sure that
Sir 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... and
ever... and ever."

Again he seemed to doze.

Dr. Martineau stood up softly. Something beyond reason told him that
this was certainly a dying man. He was reluctant to go and he had an
absurd desire that someone, someone for whom Sir Richmond cared, should
come and say good-bye to him, and for Sir Richmond to say good-bye to
someone. He hated this lonely launching from the shores of life of
one who had sought intimacy so persistently and vainly. It was
extraordinary—he saw it now for the first time—he loved this man. If
it had been in his power, he would at that moment have anointed him with
kindness.

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

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

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

It was their last exchange. Sir Richmond died that night in the small
hours, so quietly that for some time the night nurse did not observe
what had happened. She was indeed roused to that realization by the
ringing of the telephone bell in the adjacent study.

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 uncomfortable
little bed in his big bedroom and by the curious effect of loneliness
produced by the nocturnal desk and by the evident dread felt by Sir
Richmond of any death-bed partings. He realized how much this man, who
had once sought so feverishly for intimacies, had shrunken back upon
himself, how solitary his motives had become, how rarely he had taken
counsel with anyone in his later years. His mind now dwelt apart. Even
if 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 slip
out of a crowded assembly, unobserved. Even now he might be going. The
doctor recalled how he and Sir Richmond had talked of the rage of life
in a young baby, how we drove into life in a sort of fury, how that rage
impelled us to do this and that, how we fought and struggled until the
rage spent itself and was gone. That eddy of rage that was Sir Richmond
was 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 of
dreams. He saw the figure of Sir Richmond, going as it were away from
him along a narrow path, a path that followed the crest of a ridge,
between great darknesses, enormous cloudy darknesses, above him and
below. He was going along this path without looking back, without a
thought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him
on his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking,
without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great
picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands
would 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. His
figure became dim and dimmer.

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

Was that indeed the end?

Dr. Martineau was one of that large class of people who can neither
imagine nor disbelieve in immortality. Dimmer and dimmer grew the figure
but still it remained visible. As one can continue to see a star at dawn
until one turns away. Or one blinks or nods and it is gone.

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

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

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

Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windy
day in April. Suddenly he saw again that lonely figure on the narrow way
with darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand.
But this time it was not Sir Richmond.... Who was it? Surely it was
Everyman. Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road,
leaving love, leaving every task and every desire. But was it
Everyman?... A great fear and horror came upon the doctor. That little
figure was himself! And the book which was his particular task in life
was still undone. He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely path
with 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. An
overwhelming conviction had arisen—in his mind that Sir Richmond was
dead. He felt he must know for certain. He switched on his electric
light, mutely interrogated his round face reflected in the looking
glass, got out of bed, shuffled on his slippers and went along the
passage to the telephone. He hesitated for some seconds and then lifted
the receiver. It was his call which aroused the nurse to the fact of Sir
Richmond's death.

Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr. Martineau's telegram late
on the following evening. He was with her next morning, comforting
and sympathetic. Her big blue eyes, bright with tears, met his very
wistfully; her little body seemed very small and pathetic in its simple
black dress. And yet there was a sort of bravery about her. When he came
into the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses talking to
a serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type. She left her business at
once 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, taking
both her hands in his for a long friendly sympathetic pressure.

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

"You know," she added, "I don't believe it yet. I don't realize it. I go
about these formalities—"

"I think I can understand that."

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

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

Dr. Martineau went more than half way to meet Lady Hardy's disposition
to treat him as a friend of the family. He had conceived a curious, half
maternal affection for Sir Richmond that had survived even the trying
incident of the Salisbury parting and revived very rapidly during the
last few weeks. This affection extended itself now to Lady Hardy. Hers
was a type that had always appealed to him. He could understand so well
the perplexed loyalty with which she was now setting herself to gather
together some preservative and reassuring evidences of this man who had
always been; as she put it, "never quite here." It was as if she felt
that now it was at last possible to make a definite reality of him. He
could be fixed. And as he was fixed he would stay. Never more would he
be able to come in and with an almost expressionless glance wither the
interpretation she had imposed upon him. She was finding much comfort
in this task of reconstruction. She had gathered together in the
drawingroom 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 pencil
sketch done within a couple of years of their marriage; there was a
number of photographs, several of which—she wanted the doctor's advice
upon this point—she thought might be enlarged; there was a statuette
done 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 and
some notes. She flitted among these memorials, going from one to the
other, undecided which to make the standard portrait. "That painting,
I think, is most like," she said: "as he was before the war. But the war
and the Commission changed him,—worried him and aged him.... I grudged
him to that Commission. He let it worry him frightfully."