The Secret Places of the Heart (3 page)

"The modern man has to be master in his own house. He has to take stock
and know what is there."

"Three weeks of self vivisection."

"To begin with. Three weeks of perfect honesty with yourself. As an
opening.... It will take longer than that if we are to go through with
the job."

"It is a considerable—process."

"It is."

"Yet you shrink from simple things like drugs!"

"Self-knowledge—without anaesthetics."

"Has this sort of thing ever done anyone any good at all?"

"It has turned hundreds back to sanity and steady work."

"How frank are we going to be? How full are we going to be? Anyhow—we
can break off at any time.... We'll try it. We'll try it.... And so for
this journey into the west of England.... And—if we can get there—I'm
not sure that we can get there—into the secret places of my heart."

The patient left the house with much more self possession than he had
shown when entering it. Dr. Martineau had thrust him back from his
intenser prepossessions to a more generalized view of himself, had made
his troubles objective and detached him from them. He could even find
something amusing now in his situation. He liked the immense scope of
the theoretical duet in which they had indulged. He felt that most of it
was entirely true—and, in some untraceable manner, absurd. There were
entertaining possibilities in the prospect of the doctor drawing him
out—he himself partly assisting and partly resisting.

He was a man of extensive reservations. His private life was in some
respects exceptionally private.

"I don't confide.... Do I even confide in myself? I imagine I do.... Is
there anything in myself that I haven't looked squarely in the face?...
How much are we going into? Even as regards facts?

"Does it really help a man—to see himself?..."

Such thoughts engaged him until he found himself in his study. His desk
and his writing table were piled high with a heavy burthen of work.
Still a little preoccupied with Dr. Martineau's exposition, he began to
handle this confusion....

At half past nine he found himself with three hours of good work behind
him. It had seemed like two. He had not worked like this for many weeks.
"This is very cheering," he said. "And unexpected. Can old Moon-face
have hypnotized me? Anyhow—... Perhaps I've only imagined I was ill....
Dinner?" He looked at his watch and was amazed at the time. "Good Lord!
I've been at it three hours. What can have happened? Funny I didn't hear
the gong."

He went downstairs and found Lady Hardy reading a magazine in a
dining-room armchair and finely poised between devotion and martyrdom. A
shadow of vexation fell athwart his mind at the sight of her.

"I'd no idea it was so late," he said. "I heard no gong."

"After you swore so at poor Bradley I ordered that there should be no
gongs when we were alone. I did come up to your door about half past
eight. I crept up. But I was afraid I might upset you if I came in."

"But you've not waited—"

"I've had a mouthful of soup." Lady Hardy rang the bell.

"I've done some work at last," said Sir Richmond, astride on the
hearthrug.

"I'm glad," said Lady Hardy, without gladness. "I waited for three
hours."

Lady Hardy was a frail little blue-eyed woman with uneven shoulders and
a delicate sweet profile. Hers was that type of face that under even
the most pleasant and luxurious circumstances still looks bravely and
patiently enduring. Her refinement threw a tinge of coarseness over his
eager consumption of his excellent clear soup.

"What's this fish, Bradley?" he asked.

"Turbot, Sir Richmond."

"Don't you have any?" he asked his wife.

"I've had a little fish," said Lady Hardy.

When Bradley was out of the room, Sir Richmond remarked: "I saw that
nerves man, Dr. Martineau, to-day. He wants me to take a holiday."

The quiet patience of the lady's manner intensified. She said nothing.
A flash of resentment lit Sir Richmond's eyes. When he spoke again, he
seemed to answer unspoken accusations. "Dr. Martineau's idea is that he
should come with me."

The lady adjusted herself to a new point of view.

"But won't that be reminding you of your illness and worries?"

"He seems a good sort of fellow.... I'm inclined to like him. He'll
be as good company as anyone.... This TOURNEDOS looks excellent. Have
some."

"I had a little bird," said Lady Hardy, "when I found you weren't
coming."

"But I say—don't wait here if you've dined. Bradley can see to me."

She smiled and shook her head with the quiet conviction of one who knew
her duty better. "Perhaps I'll have a little ice pudding when it comes,"
she said.

Sir Richmond detested eating alone in an atmosphere of observant
criticism. And he did not like talking with his mouth full to an
unembarrassed interlocutor who made no conversational leads of her own.
After a few mouthfuls he pushed his plate away from him. "Then let's
have up the ice pudding," he said with a faint note of bitterness.

"But have you finished—?"

"The ice pudding!" he exploded wrathfully. "The ice pudding!"

Lady Hardy sat for a moment, a picture of meek distress. Then, her
delicate eyebrows raised, and the corners of her mouth drooping, she
touched the button of the silver table-bell.

No wise man goes out upon a novel expedition without misgivings. And
between their first meeting and the appointed morning both Sir Richmond
Hardy and Dr. Martineau were the prey of quite disagreeable doubts about
each other, themselves, and the excursion before them. At the time
of their meeting each had been convinced that he gauged the other
sufficiently for the purposes of the proposed tour. Afterwards each
found himself trying to recall the other with greater distinctness
and able to recall nothing but queer, ominous and minatory traits.
The doctor's impression of the great fuel specialist grew ever darker,
leaner, taller and more impatient. Sir Richmond took on the likeness of
a monster obdurate and hostile, he spread upwards until like the Djinn
out of the bottle, he darkened the heavens. And he talked too much. He
talked ever so much too much. Sir Richmond also thought that the doctor
talked too much. In addition, he read into his imperfect memory of the
doctor's face, an expression of protruded curiosity. What was all this
problem of motives and inclinations that they were "going into" so
gaily? He had merely consulted the doctor on a simple, straightforward
need for a nervous tonic—that was what he had needed—a tonic. Instead
he had engaged himself for—he scarcely knew what—an indiscreet,
indelicate, and altogether undesirable experiment in confidences.

Both men were considerably reassured when at last they set eyes on
each other again. Indeed each was surprised to find something almost
agreeable in the appearance of the other. Dr. Martineau at once
perceived that the fierceness of Sir Richmond was nothing more than the
fierceness of an overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glance
that the curiosity of Dr. Martineau's bearing had in it nothing personal
or base; it was just the fine alertness of the scientific mind.

Sir Richmond had arrived nearly forty minutes late, and it would have
been evident to a much less highly trained observer than Dr. Martineau
that some dissension had arisen between the little, ladylike, cream and
black Charmeuse car and its owner. There was a faint air of resentment
and protest between them. As if Sir Richmond had been in some way rude
to it.

The cap of the radiator was adorned with a little brass figure of a
flying Mercury. Frozen in a sprightly attitude, its stiff bound and its
fixed heavenward stare was highly suggestive of a forced and tactful
disregard of current unpleasantness.

Nothing was said, however, to confirm or dispel this suspicion of a
disagreement between the man and the car. Sir Richmond directed and
assisted Dr. Martineau's man to adjust the luggage at the back, and Dr.
Martineau watched the proceedings from his dignified front door. He was
wearing a suit of fawn tweeds, a fawn Homburg hat and a light Burberry,
with just that effect of special preparation for a holiday which betrays
the habitually busy man. Sir Richmond's brown gauntness was, he noted,
greatly set off by his suit of grey. There had certainly been some sort
of quarrel. Sir Richmond was explaining the straps to Dr. Martineau's
butler with the coldness a man betrays when he explains the uncongenial
habits of some unloved intimate. And when the moment came to start and
the little engine did not immediately respond to the electric starter,
he said: "Oh! COME up, you—!"

His voice sank at the last word as though it was an entirely
confidential communication to the little car. And it was an extremely
low and disagreeable word. So Dr. Martineau decided that it was not his
business to hear it....

It was speedily apparent that Sir Richmond was an experienced and
excellent driver. He took the Charmeuse out into the traffic of
Baker Street and westward through brisk and busy streets and roads
to Brentford and Hounslow smoothly and swiftly, making a score of
unhesitating and accurate decisions without apparent thought. There
was very little conversation until they were through Brentford. Near
Shepherd's Bush, Sir Richmond had explained, "This is not my own
particular car. That was butted into at the garage this morning and
its radiator cracked. So I had to fall back on this. It's quite a good
little car. In its way. My wife drives it at times. It has one or two
constitutional weaknesses—incidental to the make—gear-box over the
back axle for example—gets all the vibration. Whole machine rather on
the flimsy side. Still—"

He left the topic at that.

Dr. Martineau said something of no consequence about its being a very
comfortable little car.

Somewhere between Brentford and Hounslow, Sir Richmond plunged into
the matter between them. "I don't know how deep we are going into these
psychological probings of yours," he said. "But I doubt very much if we
shall get anything out of them."

"Probably not," said Dr. Martineau.

"After all, what I want is a tonic. I don't see that there is anything
positively wrong with me. A certain lack of energy—"

"Lack of balance," corrected the doctor. "You are wasting energy upon
internal friction."

"But isn't that inevitable? No machine is perfectly efficient. No man
either. There is always a waste. Waste of the type; waste of the
individual idiosyncrasy. This little car, for instance, isn't pulling as
she ought to pull—she never does. She's low in her class. So with
myself; there is a natural and necessary high rate of energy waste.
Moods of apathy and indolence are natural to me. (Damn that omnibus! All
over the road!)"

"We don't deny the imperfection—" began the doctor.

"One has to fit oneself to one's circumstances," said Sir Richmond,
opening up another line of thought.

"We don't deny the imperfection" the doctor stuck to it. "These new
methods of treatment are based on the idea of imperfection. We begin
with that. I began with that last Tuesday...."

Sir Richmond, too, was sticking to his argument. "A man, and for
that matter the world he lives in, is a tangle of accumulations. Your
psychoanalyst starts, it seems to me, with a notion of stripping down
to something fundamental. The ape before was a tangle of accumulations,
just as we are. So it was with his forebears. So it has always been. All
life is an endless tangle of accumulations."

"Recognize it," said the doctor.

"And then?" said Sir Richmond, controversially.

"Recognize in particular your own tangle."

"Is my particular tangle very different from the general tangle? (Oh!
Damn this feeble little engine!) I am a creature of undecided will,
urged on by my tangled heredity to do a score of entirely incompatible
things. Mankind, all life, is that."

"But our concern is the particular score of incompatible things you are
urged to do. We examine and weigh—we weigh—"

The doctor was still saying these words when a violent and ultimately
disastrous struggle began between Sir Richmond and the little Charmeuse
car. The doctor stopped in mid-sentence.

It was near Taplow station that the mutual exasperation of man and
machine was brought to a crisis by the clumsy emergence of a laundry
cart from a side road. Sir Richmond was obliged to pull up smartly and
stopped his engine. It refused an immediate obedience to the electric
starter. Then it picked up, raced noisily, disengaged great volumes of
bluish smoke, and displayed an unaccountable indisposition to run on any
gear but the lowest. Sir Richmond thought aloud, unpleasing thoughts.
He addressed the little car as a person; he referred to ancient disputes
and temperamental incompatibilities. His anger betrayed him a coarse,
ill-bred man. The little car quickened under his reproaches. There were
some moments of hope, dashed by the necessity of going dead slow behind
an interloping van. Sir Richmond did not notice the outstretched arm
of the driver of the van, and stalled his engine for a second time. The
electric starter refused its office altogether.

For some moments Sir Richmond sat like a man of stone.

"I must wind it up," he said at last in a profound and awful voice. "I
must wind it up."

"I get out, don't I?" asked the doctor, unanswered, and did so. Sir
Richmond, after a grim search and the displacement and replacement of
the luggage, produced a handle from the locker at the back of the car
and prepared to wind.

There was a little difficulty. "Come UP!" he said, and the small engine
roared out like a stage lion.

The two gentlemen resumed their seats. The car started and then by an
unfortunate inadvertency Sir Richmond pulled the gear lever over from
the first speed to the reverse. There was a metallic clangour beneath
the two gentlemen, and the car slowed down and stopped although the
engine was still throbbing wildly, and the dainty veil of blue smoke
still streamed forward from the back of the car before a gentle breeze.
The doctor got out almost precipitately, followed by a gaunt madman,
mouthing vileness, who had only a minute or so before been a decent
British citizen. He made some blind lunges at the tremulous but obdurate
car, but rather as if he looked for offences and accusations than for
displacements to adjust. Quivering and refusing, the little car was
extraordinarily like some recalcitrant little old aristocratic lady
in the hands of revolutionaries, and this made the behaviour of Sir
Richmond seem even more outrageous than it would otherwise have done. He
stopped the engine, he went down on his hands and knees in the road to
peer up at the gear-box, then without restoring the spark, he tried
to wind up the engine again. He spun the little handle with an insane
violence, faster and faster for—as it seemed to the doctor—the better
part of a minute. Beads of perspiration appeared upon his brow and ran
together; he bared his teeth in a snarl; his hat slipped over one eye.
He groaned with rage. Then, using the starting handle as a club, he
assailed the car. He smote the brazen Mercury from its foothold and sent
it and a part of the radiator cap with it flying across the road. He
beat at the wings of the bonnet, until they bent in under his blows.
Finally, he hurled the starting-handle at the wind-screen and smashed
it. The starting-handle rattled over the bonnet and fell to the
ground....