The Secret Places of the Heart (26 page)

"It meant very much to him," said Dr. Martineau.

"It meant too much to him. But of course his ideas were splendid. You
know it is one of my hopes to get some sort of book done, explaining his
ideas. He would never write. He despised it—unreasonably. A real thing
done, he said, was better than a thousand books. Nobody read books, he
said, but women, parsons and idle people. But there must be books. And
I want one. Something a little more real than the ordinary official
biography.... I have thought of young Leighton, the secretary of the
Commission. He seems thoroughly intelligent and sympathetic and really
anxious to reconcile Richmond's views with those of the big business men
on the Committee. He might do.... Or perhaps I might be able to persuade
two or three people to write down their impressions of him. A sort
of memorial volume.... But he was shy of friends. There was no man he
talked to very intimately about his ideas unless it was to you... I wish
I had the writer's gift, doctor."

It was on the second afternoon that Lady Hardy summoned Dr. Martineau
by telephone. "Something rather disagreeable," she said. "If you could
spare the time. If you could come round.

"It is frightfully distressing," she said when he got round to her, and
for a time she could tell him nothing more. She was having tea and she
gave him some. She fussed about with cream and cakes and biscuits. He
noted a crumpled letter thrust under the edge of the silver tray.

"He talked, I know, very intimately with you," she said, coming to it at
last. "He probably went into things with you that he never talked about
with anyone else. Usually he was very reserved, Even with me there were
things about which he said nothing."

"We did," said Dr. Martineau with discretion, "deal a little with his
private life.

"There was someone—"

Dr. Martineau nodded and then, not to be too portentous, took and bit a
biscuit.

"Did he by any chance ever mention someone called Martin Leeds?"

Dr. Martineau seemed to reflect. Then realizing that this was a mistake,
he said: "He told me the essential facts."

The poor lady breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad," she said simply.
She repeated, "Yes, I'm glad. It makes things easier now."

Dr. Martineau looked his enquiry.

"She wants to come and see him."

"Here?"

"Here! And Helen here! And the servants noticing everything! I've never
met her. Never set eyes on her. For all I know she may want to make a
scene." There was infinite dismay in her voice.

Dr. Martineau was grave. "You would rather not receive her?"

"I don't want to refuse her. I don't want even to seem heartless.
I understand, of course, she has a sort of claim." She sobbed her
reluctant admission. "I know it. I know.... There was much between
them."

Dr. Martineau pressed the limp hand upon the little tea table. "I
understand, dear lady," he said. "I understand. Now ... suppose
I
were
to write to her and arrange—I do not see that you need be put to the
pain of meeting her. Suppose I were to meet her here myself?

"If you COULD!"

The doctor was quite prepared to save the lady any further distresses,
no matter at what trouble to himself. "You are so good to me," she said,
letting the tears have their way with her.

"I am silly to cry," she said, dabbing her eyes.

"We will get it over to-morrow," he reassured her. "You need not think
of it again."

He took over Martin's brief note to Lady Hardy and set to work by
telegram to arrange for her visit. She was in London at her Chelsea flat
and easily accessible. She was to come to the house at mid-day on the
morrow, and to ask not for Lady Hardy but for him. He would stay by her
while she was in the house, and it would be quite easy for Lady Hardy to
keep herself and her daughter out of the way. They could, for example,
go out quietly to the dressmakers in the closed car, for many little
things about the mourning still remained to be seen to.

Miss Martin Leeds arrived punctually, but the doctor was well ahead of
his time and ready to receive her. She was ushered into the drawing room
where he awaited her. As she came forward the doctor first perceived
that she had a very sad and handsome face, the face of a sensitive youth
rather than the face of a woman. She had fine grey eyes under very
fine brows; they were eyes that at other times might have laughed very
agreeably, but which were now full of an unrestrained sadness. Her brown
hair was very untidy and parted at the side like a man's. Then he noted
that she seemed to be very untidily dressed as if she was that rare and,
to him, very offensive thing, a woman careless of her beauty. She was
short in proportion to her broad figure and her broad forehead.

"You are Dr. Martineau?" she said. "He talked of you." As she spoke
her glance went from him to the pictures that stood about the room. She
walked up to the painting and stood in front of it with her distressed
gaze wandering about her. "Horrible!" she said. "Absolutely horrible!...
Did SHE do this?"

Her question disconcerted the doctor very much. "You mean Lady Hardy?"
he asked. "She doesn't paint."

"No, no. I mean, did she get all these things together?"

"Naturally," said Dr. Martineau.

"None of them are a bit like him. They are like blows aimed at his
memory. Not one has his life in it. How could she do it? Look at that
idiot statuette!... He was extraordinarily difficult to get. I have
burnt every photograph I had of him. For fear that this would happen;
that he would go stiff and formal—just as you have got him here. I have
been trying to sketch him almost all the time since he died. But I can't
get him back. He's gone."

She turned to the doctor again. She spoke to him, not as if she expected
him to understand her, but because she had to say these things which
burthened her mind to someone. "I have done hundreds of sketches. My
room is littered with them. When you turn them over he seems to be
lurking among them. But not one of them is like him."

She was trying to express something beyond her power. "It is as if
someone had suddenly turned out the light."

She followed the doctor upstairs. "This was his study," the doctor
explained.

"I know it. I came here once," she said.

They entered the big bedroom in which the coffined body lay. Dr.
Martineau, struck by a sudden memory, glanced nervously at the desk, but
someone had made it quite tidy and the portrait of Aliss Grammont had
disappeared. Miss Leeds walked straight across to the coffin and
stood looking down on the waxen inexpressive dignity of the dead. Sir
Richmond's brows and nose had become sharper and more clear-cut than
they had ever been in life and his lips had set into a faint inane
smile. She stood quite still for a long time. At length she sighed
deeply.

She spoke, a little as though she thought aloud, a little as though she
talked at that silent presence in the coffin. "I think he loved," she
said. "Sometimes I think he loved me. But it is hard to tell. He was
kind. He could be intensely kind and yet he didn't seem to care for
you. He could be intensely selfish and yet he certainly did not care for
himself.... Anyhow, I loved HIM.... There is nothing left in me now to
love anyone else—for ever...."

She put her hands behind her back and looked at the dead man with her
head a little on one side. "Too kind," she said very softly.

"There was a sort of dishonesty in his kindness. He would not let you
have the bitter truth. He would not say he did not love you....

"He was too kind to life ever to call it the foolish thing it is. He
took it seriously because it takes itself seriously. He worked for it
and killed himself with work for it...."

She turned to Dr. Martineau and her face was streaming with tears.
"And life, you know, isn't to be taken seriously. It is a joke—a
bad joke—made by some cruel little god who has caught a neglected
planet.... Like torturing a stray cat.... But he took it seriously and
he gave up his life for it.

"There was much happiness he might have had. He was very capable of
happiness. But he never seemed happy. This work of his came before
it. He overworked and fretted our happiness away. He sacrificed his
happiness and mine."

She held out her hands towards the doctor. "What am I to do now with the
rest of my life? Who is there to laugh with me now and jest?

"I don't complain of him. I don't blame him. He did his best—to be
kind.

"But all my days now I shall mourn for him and long for him...."

She turned back to the coffin. Suddenly she lost every vestige of
self-control. She sank down on her knees beside the trestle. "Why have
you left me!" she cried.

"Oh! Speak to me, my darling! Speak to me, I TELL YOU! Speak to me!"

It was a storm of passion, monstrously childish and dreadful. She beat
her hands upon the coffin. She wept loudly and fiercely as a child
does....

Dr. Martineau drifted feebly to the window.

He wished he had locked the door. The servants might hear and wonder
what it was all about. Always he had feared love for the cruel thing it
was, but now it seemed to him for the first time that he realized its
monstrous cruelty.