The Secret Places of the Heart (12 page)

"When Westminster is as dead as Avebury," said the doctor, unhelpfully.
He added after some seconds, "Milton knew of these troubles. 'Not
without dust and heat' he wrote—a great phrase."

"But the dust chokes me," said Sir Richmond.

He took up a copy of THE GREEN ROADS OF ENGLAND that lay beside him on
the table. But he did not open it. He held it in his hand and said the
thing he had had in mind to say all that evening. "I do not think that
I shall stir up my motives any more for a time. Better to go on into
the west country cooling my poor old brain in these wide shadows of the
past."

"I can prescribe nothing better," said Dr. Martineau. "Incidentally,
we may be able to throw a little more light on one or two of your minor
entanglements."

"I don't want to think of them," said Sir Richmond. "Let me get right
away from everything. Until my skin has grown again."

Next day in the early afternoon after a farewell walk over the downs
round Avebury they went by way of Devizes and Netheravon and Amesbury to
Stonehenge.

Dr. Martineau had seen this ancient monument before, but now, with
Avebury fresh in his mind, he found it a poorer thing than he had
remembered it to be. Sir Richmond was frankly disappointed. After the
real greatness and mystery of the older place, it seemed a poor little
heap of stones; it did not even dominate the landscape; it was some way
from the crest of the swelling down on which it stood and it was further
dwarfed by the colossal air-ship hangars and clustering offices of the
air station that the great war had called into existence upon the slopes
to the south-west. "It looks," Sir Richmond said, "as though some old
giantess had left a discarded set of teeth on the hillside." Far more
impressive than Stonehenge itself were the barrows that capped the
neighbouring crests.

The sacred stones were fenced about, and our visitors had to pay for
admission at a little kiosk by the gate. At the side of the road stood
a travel-stained middle-class automobile, with a miscellany of dusty
luggage, rugs and luncheon things therein—a family automobile with
father no doubt at the wheel. Sir Richmond left his own trim coupe at
its tail.

They were impeded at the entrance by a difference of opinion between the
keeper of the turnstile and a small but resolute boy of perhaps five or
six who proposed to leave the enclosure. The custodian thought that it
would be better if his nurse or his mother came out with him.

"She keeps on looking at it," said the small boy. "It isunt anything. I
want to go and clean the car."

"You won't SEE Stonehenge every day, young man," said the custodian, a
little piqued.

"It's only an old beach," said the small boy, with extreme conviction.
"It's rocks like the seaside. And there isunt no sea."

The man at the turnstile mutely consulted the doctor.

"I don't see that he can get into any harm here," the doctor advised,
and the small boy was released from archaeology.

He strolled to the family automobile, produced an EN-TOUT-CAS
pocket-handkerchief and set himself to polish the lamps with great
assiduity. The two gentlemen lingered at the turnstile for a moment or
so to watch his proceedings. "Modern child," said Sir Richmond. "Old
stones are just old stones to him. But motor cars are gods."

"You can hardly expect him to understand—at his age," said the
custodian, jealous for the honor of Stonehenge....

"Reminds me of Martin's little girl," said Sir Richmond, as he and Dr.
Martineau went on towards the circle. "When she encountered her first
dragon-fly she was greatly delighted. 'Oh, dee' lill' a'eplane,' she
said."

As they approached the grey old stones they became aware of a certain
agitation among them. A voice, an authoritative bass voice, was audible,
crying, "Anthony!" A nurse appeared remotely going in the direction of
the aeroplane sheds, and her cry of "Master Anthony" came faintly on the
breeze. An extremely pretty young woman of five or six and twenty became
visible standing on one of the great prostrate stones in the centre of
the place. She was a black-haired, sun-burnt individual and she stood
with her arms akimbo, quite frankly amused at the disappearance of
Master Anthony, and offering no sort of help for his recovery. On the
greensward before her stood the paterfamilias of the family automobile,
and he was making a trumpet with his hands in order to repeat the name
of Anthony with greater effect. A short lady in grey emerged from among
the encircling megaliths, and one or two other feminine personalities
produced effects of movement rather than of individuality as they
flitted among the stones. "Well," said the lady in grey, with that
rising intonation of humorous conclusion which is so distinctively
American, "those Druids have GOT him."

"He's hiding," said the automobilist, in a voice that promised
chastisement to a hidden hearer. "That's what he is doing. He ought not
to play tricks like this. A great boy who is almost six."

"If you are looking for a small, resolute boy of six," said Sir
Richmond, addressing himself to the lady on the rock rather than to the
angry parent below, "he's perfectly safe and happy. The Druids haven't
got him. Indeed, they've failed altogether to get him. 'Stonehenge,' he
says, 'is no good.' So he's gone back to clean the lamps of your car."

"Aa-oo. So THAT'S it!" said Papa. "Winnie, go and tell Price he's
gone back to the car.... They oughtn't to have let him out of the
enclosure...."

The excitement about Master Anthony collapsed. The rest of the people
in the circles crystallized out into the central space as two apparent
sisters and an apparent aunt and the nurse, who was packed off at
once to supervise the lamp cleaning. The head of the family found some
difficulty, it would seem, in readjusting his mind to the comparative
innocence of Anthony, and Sir Richmond and the young lady on the rock
sought as if by common impulse to establish a general conversation.
There were faint traces of excitement in her manner, as though there
had been some controversial passage between herself and the family
gentleman.

"We were discussing the age of this old place," she said, smiling in the
frankest and friendliest way. "How old do YOU think it is?"

The father of Anthony intervened, also with a shadow of controversy in
his manner. "I was explaining to the young lady that it dates from
the early bronze age. Before chronology existed.... But she insists on
dates."

"Nothing of bronze has ever been found here," said Sir Richmond.

"Well, when was this early bronze age, anyhow?" said the young lady.

Sir Richmond sought a recognizable datum. "Bronze got to Britain
somewhere between the times of Moses and Solomon."

"Ah!" said the young lady, as who should say, 'This man at least talks
sense.'

"But these stones are all shaped," said the father of the family. "It is
difficult to see how that could have been done without something harder
than stone."

"I don't SEE the place," said the young lady on the stone. "I can't
imagine how they did it up—not one bit."

"Did it up!" exclaimed the father of the family in the tone of one
accustomed to find a gentle sport in the intellectual frailties of his
womenkind.

"It's just the bones of a place. They hung things round it. They draped
it."

"But what things?" asked Sir Richmond.

"Oh! they had things all right. Skins perhaps. Mats of rushes. Bast
cloth. Fibre of all sorts. Wadded stuff."

"Stonehenge draped! It's really a delightful idea;" said the father of
the family, enjoying it.

"It's quite a possible one," said Sir Richmond.

"Or they may have used wicker," the young lady went on, undismayed. She
seemed to concede a point. "Wicker IS likelier."

"But surely," said the father of the family with the expostulatory voice
and gesture of one who would recall erring wits to sanity, "it is
far more impressive standing out bare and noble as it does. In lonely
splendour."

"But all this country may have been wooded then," said Sir Richmond. "In
which case it wouldn't have stood out. It doesn't stand out so very much
even now."

"You came to it through a grove," said the young lady, eagerly picking
up the idea.

"Probably beech," said Sir Richmond.

"Which may have pointed to the midsummer sunrise," said Dr. Martineau,
unheeded.

"These are NOVEL ideas," said the father of the family in the reproving
tone of one who never allows a novel idea inside HIS doors if he can
prevent it.

"Well," said the young lady, "I guess there was some sort of show here
anyhow. And no human being ever had a show yet without trying to shut
people out of it in order to make them come in. I guess this was covered
in all right. A dark hunched old place in a wood. Beech stems, smooth,
like pillars. And they came to it at night, in procession, beating
drums, and scared half out of their wits. They came in THERE and went
round the inner circle with their torches. And so they were shown. The
torches were put out and the priests did their mysteries. Until dawn
broke. That is how they worked it."

"But even you can't tell what the show was, V.V." said the lady in grey,
who was standing now at Dr. Martineau's elbow.

"Something horrid," said Anthony's younger sister to her elder in a
stage whisper.

"BLUGGY," agreed Anthony's elder sister to the younger, in a noiseless
voice that certainly did not reach father. "SQUEALS!...."

This young lady who was addressed as "V.V." was perhaps one or two and
twenty, Dr. Martineau thought,—he was not very good at feminine ages.
She had a clear sun-browned complexion, with dark hair and smiling lips.
Her features were finely modelled, with just that added touch of breadth
in the brow and softness in the cheek bones, that faint flavour of the
Amerindian, one sees at times in American women. Her voice was a very
soft and pleasing voice, and she spoke persuasively and not assertively
as so many American women do. Her determination to make the dry bones of
Stonehenge live shamed the doctor's disappointment with the place. And
when she had spoken, Dr. Martineau noted that she looked at Sir Richmond
as if she expected him at least to confirm her vision. Sir Richmond was
evidently prepared to confirm it.

With a queer little twinge of infringed proprietorship, the doctor saw
Sir Richmond step up on the prostrate megalith and stand beside her, the
better to appreciate her point of view. He smiled down at her. "Now why
do you think they came in THERE?" he asked.

The young lady was not very clear about her directions. She did not know
of the roadway running to the Avon river, nor of the alleged race course
to the north, nor had she ever heard that the stones were supposed to be
of two different periods and that some of them might possibly have been
brought from a very great distance.

Neither Dr. Martineau nor the father of the family found the imaginative
reconstruction of the Stonehenge rituals quite so exciting as the two
principals. The father of the family endured some further particulars
with manifest impatience, no longer able, now that Sir Richmond was
encouraging the girl, to keep her in check with the slightly derisive
smile proper to her sex. Then he proclaimed in a fine loud tenor, "All
this is very imaginative, I'm afraid." And to his family, "Time we were
pressing on. Turps, we must go-o. Come, Phoebe!"

As he led his little flock towards the exit his voice came floating
back. "Talking wanton nonsense.... Any professional archaeologist would
laugh, simply laugh...."

He passed out of the world.

With a faint intimation of dismay Dr. Martineau realized that the two
talkative ladies were not to be removed in the family automobile with
the rest of the party. Sir Richmond and the younger lady went on very
cheerfully to the population, agriculture, housing and general scenery
of the surrounding Downland during the later Stone Age. The shorter,
less attractive lady, whose accent was distinctly American, came now and
stood at the doctor's elbow. She seemed moved to play the part of chorus
to the two upon the stone.

"When V.V. gets going," she remarked, "she makes things come alive."

Dr. Martineau hated to be addressed suddenly by strange ladies. He
started, and his face assumed the distressed politeness of the moon at
its full. "Your friend," he said, "interested in archaeology?"

"Interested!" said the stouter lady. "Why! She's a fiend at it. Ever
since we came on Carnac."

"You've visited Carnac?"

"That's where the bug bit her." said the stout lady with a note of
querulous humour. "Directly V.V. set eyes on Carnac, she just turned
against all her up-bringing. 'Why wasn't I told of this before?' she
said. 'What's Notre Dame to this? This is where we came from. This is
the real starting point of the MAYFLOWER. Belinda,' she said, 'we've got
to see all we can of this sort of thing before we go back to America.
They've been keeping this from us.' And that's why we're here right
now instead of being shopping in Paris or London like decent American
women."

The younger lady looked down on her companion with something of the calm
expert attention that a plumber gives to a tap that is misbehaving, and
like a plumber refrained from precipitate action. She stood with the
backs of her hands resting on her hips.

"Well," she said slowly, giving most of the remark to Sir Richmond and
the rest to the doctor. "It is nearer the beginnings of things than
London or Paris."

"And nearer to us," said Sir Richmond.

"I call that just—paradoxical," said the shorter lady, who appeared to
be called Belinda.

"Not paradoxical," Dr. Martineau contradicted gently. "Life is always
beginning again. And this is a time of fresh beginnings."