Part 7 (1/2)
”I was never wholehearted and simple about s.e.xual things,” Sir Richmond resumed presently. ”Never. I do not think any man is. We are too much plastered-up things, too much the creatures of a tortuous 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 G.o.ddess 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 s.e.x 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 fa.r.s.eeing 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 a.n.a.lyze the thing, it has been a craving for a particular sort of life giving companions.h.i.+p.”
”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 enc.u.mbered with children, becomes all too manifestly not the companion G.o.ddess....”
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 organized great business developments. You might think that my time has been fairly well filled without much philandering. And all the time, all the time, I've been--about women--like a thirsty beast looking for water.... Always.
Always. All through my life.”
Dr. Martineau waited through another silence.
”I was very grave about it at first. I married young. I married very simply and purely. I was not one of those young men who sow a large crop of wild oats. I was a fairly decent youth. It suddenly appeared to me that a certain smiling and dainty girl could make herself into all the G.o.ddesses of my dreams. I had but to win her and this miracle would occur. Of course I forget now the exact things I thought and felt then, but surely I had some such persuasion. Or why should I have married her?
My wife was seven years younger than myself,--a girl of twenty. She was charming. She is charming. She is a wonderfully intelligent and understanding woman. She has made a home for me--a delightful home. I am one of those men who have no instinct for home making. I owe my home and all the comfort and dignity of my life to her ability. I have no excuse for any misbehaviour--so far as she is concerned. None at all. By all the rules I should have been completely happy. But instead of my marriage satisfying me, it presently released a storm of long-controlled desires and imprisoned cravings. A voice within me became more and more urgent. 'This will not do. This is not love. Where are your G.o.ddesses?