The Secret Places of the Heart

“When they go wrong it is generally her fault,” the doctor sounded.

“Almost always.”

“But if they don’t?” said the psychiatrist.

“It is difficult to describe… The essential incompatibility of the whole thing comes out.”

The doctor maintained his expression of intelligent interest.

“She wants to go on with her work. She is able to work anywhere. All she wants is just cardboard and ink. My mind on the other hand turns back to the Fuel Commission…”

“Then any little thing makes trouble.”

“Any little thing makes trouble. And we always drift round to the same discussion; whether we ought really to go on together.”

“It is you begin that?”

“Yes, I start that. You see she is perfectly contented when I am about. She is as fond of me as I am of her.”

“Fonder perhaps.”

“I don’t know. But she is – adhesive. Emotionally adhesive. All she wants to do is just to settle down when I am there and go on with her work. But then, you see, there is MY work.”

“Exactly… After all it seems to me that your great trouble is not in yourselves but in social institutions. Which haven’t yet fitted themselves to people like you two. It is the sense of uncertainty makes her, as you say, adhesive. Nervously so. If we were indeed living in a new age Instead of the moral ruins of a shattered one – ”

“We can’t alter the age we live in,” said Sir Richmond a little testily.

“No. Exactly. But we CAN realize, in any particular situation, that it is not the individuals to blame but the misfit of ideas and forms and prejudices.”

“No,” said Sir Richmond, obstinately rejecting this pacifying suggestion; “she could adapt herself. If she cared enough.”

“But how?”

“She will not take the slightest trouble to adjust herself to the peculiarities of our position… She could be cleverer. Other women are cleverer. Any other woman almost would be cleverer than she is.”

“But if she was cleverer, she wouldn’t be the genius she is. She would just be any other woman.”

“Perhaps she would,” said Sir Richmond darkly and desperately. “Perhaps she would. Perhaps it would be better if she was.”

Dr. Martineau raised his eyebrows in a furtive aside.

“But here you see that it is that in my case, the fundamental incompatibility between one’s affections and one’s wider conception of duty and work comes in. We cannot change social institutions in a year or a lifetime. We can never change them to suit an individual case. That would be like suspending the laws of gravitation in order to move a piano. As things are, Martin is no good to me, no help to me. She is a rival to my duty. She feels that. She is hostile to my duty. A definite antagonism has developed. She feels and treats fuel – and everything to do with fuel as a bore. It is an attack. We quarrel on that. It isn’t as though I found it so easy to stick to my work that I could disregard her hostility. And I can’t bear to part from her. I threaten it, distress her excessively and then I am overcome by sympathy for her and I go back to her… In the ordinary course of things I should be with her now.”

“If it were not for the carbuncle?”

“If it were not for the carbuncle. She does not care for me to see her disfigured. She does not understand – ” Sir Richmond was at a loss for a phrase – “that it is not her good looks.”

“She won’t let you go to her?”

“It amounts to that… And soon there will be all the trouble about educating the girl. Whatever happens, she must have as good a chance as – anyone…”

“Ah! That is worrying you too!”

“Frightfully at times. If it were a boy it would be easier. It needs constant tact and dexterity to fix things up. Neither of us have any. It needs attention…”

Sir Richmond mused darkly.

Dr. Martineau thought aloud. “An incompetent delightful person with Martin Leeds’s sense of humour. And her powers of expression. She must be attractive to many people. She could probably do without you. If once you parted.”

Sir Richmond turned on him eagerly.

“You think I ought to part from her? On her account?”

“On her account. It might pain her. But once the thing was done – ”

“I want to part. I believe I ought to part.”

“Well?”

“But then my affection comes in.”

“That extraordinary – TENDERNESS of yours?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Anyone might get hold of her – if I let her down. She hasn’t a tithe of the ordinary coolheaded calculation of an average woman… I’ve a duty to her genius. I’ve got to take care of her.”

To which the doctor made no reply.

“Nevertheless the idea of parting has been very much in my mind lately.”

“Letting her go FREE?”

“You can put it in that way if you like.”

“It might not be a fatal operation for either of you.”

“And yet there are moods when parting is an intolerable idea. When one is invaded by a flood of affection… And old habits of association.”

Dr. Martineau thought. Was that the right word, – affection? Perhaps it was.

They had come out on the towing path close by the lock and they found themselves threading their way through a little crowd of boating people and lookers-on. For a time their conversation was broken. Sir Richmond resumed it.

“But this is where we cease to be Man on his Planet and all the rest of it. This is where the idea of a definite task, fanatically followed to the exclusion of all minor considerations, breaks down. When the work is good, when we are sure we are all right, then we may carry off things with a high hand. But the work isn’t always good, we aren’t always sure. We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued. Then the sacrificed affections come in as accusers. Then it is that we want to be reassured.”

“And then it is that Miss Martin Leeds – ?”