The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells Read Free Book Online

and
complicated evolution."
    Dr. Martineau, under his green umbrella, nodded his conceded agreement.
    "This—what shall I call it?—this Dream of Women, grew up in my mind as
I grew up—as something independent of and much more important than the
reality of Women. It came only very slowly into relation with that. That
girl on the Dymchurch beach was one of the first links, but she ceased
very speedily to be real—she joined the women of dreamland at last
altogether. She became a sort of legendary incarnation. I thought of
these dream women not only as something beautiful but as something
exceedingly kind and helpful. The girls and women I met belonged to a
different creation...."
    Sir Richmond stopped abruptly and rowed a few long strokes.
    Dr. Martineau sought information.
    "I suppose," he said, "there was a sensuous element in these dreamings?"
    "Certainly. A very strong one. It didn't dominate but it was a very
powerful undertow."
    "Was there any tendency in all this imaginative stuff to concentrate?
To group itself about a single figure, the sort of thing that Victorians
would have called an ideal?"
    "Not a bit of it," said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There was always
a tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact the thing I liked least
in the real world was the way it was obsessed by the idea of pairing off
with one particular set and final person. I liked to dream of a blonde
goddess in her own Venusberg one day, and the next I would be off over
the mountains with an armed Brunhild."
    "You had little thought of children?"
    "As a young man?"
    "Yes."
    "None at all. I cannot recall a single philoprogenitive moment. These
dream women were all conceived of, and I was conceived of, as being
concerned in some tremendous enterprise—something quite beyond
domesticity. It kept us related—gave us dignity.... Certainly it wasn't
babies."
    "All this is very interesting, very interesting, from the scientific
point of view. A PRIORI it is not what one might have expected.
Reasoning from the idea that all instincts and natural imaginations are
adapted to a biological end and seeing that sex is essentially a method
of procreation, one might reasonably expect a convergence, if not a
complete concentration, upon the idea of offspring. It is almost as
if there were other ends to be served. It is clear that Nature has
not worked this impulse out to any sight of its end. Has not perhaps
troubled to do so. The instinct of the male for the female isn't
primarily for offspring—not even in the most intelligent and farseeing
types. The desire just points to glowing satisfactions and illusions.
Quite equally I think the desire of the female for the male ignores its
end. Nature has set about this business in a CHEAP sort of way. She is
like some pushful advertising tradesman. She isn't frank with us; she
just humbugs us into what she wants with us. All very well in the early
Stone Age—when the poor dear things never realized that their mutual
endearments meant all the troubles and responsibilities of parentage.
But NOW—!"
    He shook his head sideways and twirled the green umbrella like an
animated halo around his large broad-minded face.
    Sir Richmond considered. "Desire has never been the chief incentive of
my relations with women. Never. So far as I can analyze the thing, it
has been a craving for a particular sort of life giving companionship."
    "That I take it is Nature's device to keep the lovers together in the
interest of the more or less unpremeditated offspring."
    "A poor device, if that is its end. It doesn't keep parents together;
more often it tears them apart. The wife or the mistress, so soon as
she is encumbered with children, becomes all too manifestly not the
companion goddess...."
    Sir Richmond brooded over his sculls and thought.
    "Throughout my life I have been an exceedingly busy man. I have done a
lot of scientific work and some of it has been very good work. And
very laborious work. I've travelled much. I've