His position at home was anomalous: Mrs Hall wished that someone would decide it for her. He looked like a man and had turned out the Howells last Easter; but on the other hand he had been sent down from Cambridge and was not yet twenty-one. What was his place in her house? Instigated by Kitty, she tried to assert herself, but Maurice, after a genuine look of surprise, laid back his ears. Mrs Hall wavered, and, though fond of her son, took the unwise step of appealing to Dr Barry. Maurice was asked to go round one evening to be talked to.
"Well, Maurice, and how goes the career? Not quite as you expected, eh?"
Maurice was still afraid of their neighbour.
"Not quite as your mother expected, which is more to the point."
"Not quite as anyone expected," said Maurice, looking at his hands.
Dr Barry then said, "Oh, it's all for the best. What do you want with a University Degree? It was never intended for the suburban classes. You're not going to be either a parson or a barrister or a pedagogue. And you are not a county gentleman. Sheer waste of time. Get into harness at once. Quite right to insult the Dean. The city's your place. Your mother — " He paused and lit a cigar, the boy had been offered nothing. "Your mother doesn't understand this, Worrying because you don't apologize. For my own part I think these things right themselves. You got into an atmosphere for which you are not suited, and you've very properly taken the first opportunity to get out of it."
"How do you mean, sir?"
"Oh. Not sufficiently clear? I mean that the county gentleman would apologize by instinct if he found he had behaved like a cad. You've a different tradition."
"I think I must be getting home now," said Maurice, not without dignity.
"Yes, I think you must. I didn't invite you to have a pleasant evening, as I hope you have realized."
"You've spoken straight — perhaps some day I shall too. I know I'd like to."
This set the Doctor off, and he cried:
"How dare you bully your mother, Maurice. You ought to be horsewhipped. You young puppy! Swaggering about instead of asking her to forgive you! I know all about it. She came here with tears in her eyes and asked me to speak. She and your sisters are my respected neighbours, and as long as a woman calls me I'm at her service. Don't answer me, sir, don't answer, I want none of your speech, straight or otherwise. You are a disgrace to chivalry. I don't know what the world is coming to. I don't know what the world — I'm disappointed and disgusted with you."
Maurice, outside at last, mopped his forehead. He was ashamed in a way. He knew he had behaved badly to his mother, and all the snob in him had been touched to the raw. But somehow he could not retract, could not alter. Once out of the rut, he seemed out of it for ever. "A disgrace to chivalry." He considered the accusation. If a woman had been in that side-car, if then he had refused to stop at the Dean's bidding, would Dr Barry have required an apology from him? Surely not. He followed out this train of thought with difficulty. His brain was still feeble. But he was obliged to use it, for so much in current speech and ideas needed translation before he could understand them.
His mother met him, looking ashamed herself; she felt, as he did, that she ought to have done her own scolding. Maurice had grown up, she complained to Kitty; the children went from one; it was all very sad. Kitty asserted her brother was still nothing but a boy, but all these women had a sense of some change in his mouth and eyes and voice since he had faced Dr Barry.
16
The Durhams lived in a remote part of England on the Wilts and Somerset border. Though not an old family they had held land for four generations, and its influence had passed into them. Clive's great-great-uncle had been Lord Chief Justice in the reign of George IV, and the nest he had feathered was Penge. The feathers were inclined to blow about now. A hundred years had nibbled into the fortune, which no wealthy bride had replenished, and both house and estate were marked, not indeed with decay, but with the immobility that precedes it.
The house lay among woods. A park, still ridged with the lines of vanished hedges, stretched around, giving light and air and pasture to horses and Alderney cows. Beyond it the trees began, most planted by old Sir Edwin, who had annexed the common lands. There were two entrances to the park, one up by the village, the other on the clayey road that went to the station. There had been no station in the old days, and the approach from it, which was undignified and led by the back premises, typified an afterthought of England's.
Maurice arrived in the evening. He had travelled straight from his grandfather's at Birmingham, where, rather tepidly, he had come of age. Though in disgrace, he had not been mulcted of his presents, but they were given and received without enthusiasm. He had looked forward so much to being
twenty-one. Kitty implied that he did not enjoy it because he had gone to the bad. Quite nicely he pinched her ear for this and kissed her, which annoyed her a good deal. "You have no sense of things," she said crossly. He smiled.
From Alfriston Gardens, with its cousins and meat teas, the change to Penge was immense. County families, even when intelligent, have something alarming about them, and Maurice approached any seat with awe. True, Clive had met him and was with him in the brougham, but then so was a Mrs Sheepshanks, who had arrived by his train. Mrs Sheepshanks had a maid, following behind with her luggage and his in a cab, and he wondered whether he ought to have brought a servant too. The lodge gate was held by a little girl. Mrs Sheepshanks wished everyone curtsied. Clive trod on his foot when she said this, but he wasn't sure whether accidentally. He was sure of nothing. When they approached he mistook the back for the front, and prepared to open the door. Mrs Sheepshanks said, "Oh, but that's complimentary." Besides, there was a butler to open the door.
Tea, very bitter, was awaiting them, and Mrs Durham looked one way while she poured out the other. People stood about, all looking distinguished or there for some distinguished reason. They were doing things or causing others to do them: Miss Durham booked him to canvass tomorrow for Tariff Reform. They agreed politically; but the cry with which she greeted his alliance did not please him. "Mother, Mr Hall is sound." Major Western, a cousin also stopping in the house, would ask him about Cambridge. Did Army men mind one being sent down?… No, it was worse than the restaurant, for there Clive had been out of his element too.
"Pippa, does Mr Hall know his room?"
'The Blue Room, mama."
"The one with no fireplace," called Clive. "Show him up." He was seeing off some callers.
Miss Durham passed Maurice on to the butler. They went up a side staircase. Maurice saw the main flight to the right, and wondered whether he was being slighted. His room was small, furnished cheaply. It had no outlook. As he knelt down to unpack, a feeling of Sunnington came over him, and he determined, while he was at Penge, to work through all his clothes. They shouldn't suppose he was unfashionable; he was as good as anyone. But he had scarcely reached this conclusion when Clive rushed in with the sunlight behind him. "Maurice, I shall kiss you," he said, and did so.
"Where — what's through there?"
"Our study — " He was laughing, his expression wild and radiant.
"Oh, so that's why —"
"Maurice! Maurice! you've actually come. You're here. This place'll never seem the same again, I shall love it at last."
"It's jolly for me coming," said Maurice chokily: the sudden rush of joy made his head swim.
"Go on unpacking. So I arranged it on purpose. We're up this staircase by ourselves. It's as like college as I could manage."
"It's better."
"I really feel it will be."
There was a knock on the passage door. Maurice started, but Clive though still sitting on his shoulder said, "Come in!" indifferently. A housemaid entered with hot water.
"Except for meals we need never be in the other part of the house," he continued. "Either here or out of doors. Jolly, eh? I've a piano." He drew him into the study. "Look at the view. You may shoot rabbits out of this window. By the way, if
my mother or Pippa tells you at dinner that they want you to do this or that tomorrow, you needn't worry. Say 'yes' to them if you like. You're actually going to ride with me, and they know it. It's only their ritual. On Sunday, when you haven't been to church they'll pretend afterwards you were there."
"But I've no proper riding breeches."
"I can't associate with you in that case," said Clive and bounded off.
When Maurice returned to the drawing-room he felt he had a greater right to be there than anyone. He walked up to Mrs Sheepshanks, opened his mouth before she could open hers, and was encouraging to her. He took his place in the absurd octet that was forming to go in — Clive and Mrs Sheepshanks, Major Western and another woman, another man and Pippa, himself and his hostess. She apologized for the smallness of the party.
"Not at all," said Maurice, and saw Clive glance at him maliciously: he had used the wrong tag. Mrs Durham then put him. through his paces, but he did not care a damn whether he satisfied her or not. She had her son's features and seemed equally able, though not equally sincere. He understood why Clive should have come to despise her.
After dinner the men smoked, then joined the ladies. It was a suburban evening, but with a difference; these people had the air of settling something: they either just had arranged or soon would rearrange England. Yet the gate posts, the roads — he had noticed them on the way up — were in bad repair, and the timber wasn't kept properly, the windows stuck, the boards creaked. He was less impressed than he had expected by Penge.
When the ladies retired Clive said, "Maurice, you look sleepy too." Maurice took the hint, and five minutes afterwards they met again in the study, with all the night to talk into. They lit their pipes. It was the first time they had experienced full tranquillity together, and exquisite words would be spoken. They knew this, yet scarcely wanted to begin.
"I'll tell you my latest now," said Clive. "As soon as I got home I had a row with mother and told her I should stop up a fourth year."
Maurice gave a cry.
"What's wrong?"
"I've been sent down."
"But you're coming back in October."
"I'm not. Cornwallis said I must apologize, and I wouldn't — I thought you wouldn't be up, so I didn't care."
"And I settled to stop because I thought you would be up. Comedy of Errors."
Maurice stared gloomily before him.
"Comedy of Errors, not Tragedy. You can apologize now."
"It's too late."
Clive laughed. "Why too late? It makes it simpler. You didn't like to apologize until the term in which your offence was committed had come to an end. 'Dear Mr Cornwallis: Now that the term is over, I venture to write to you. I'll draft the letter tomorrow."
Maurice pondered and finally exclaimed, "Clive, you're a devil."
"I'm a bit of an outlaw, I grant, but it serves these people right. As long as they talk of the unspeakable vice of the Greeks they can't expect fair play. It served my mother right when I slipped up to kiss you before dinner. She would have no mercy if she knew, she wouldn't attempt, wouldn't want to attempt to understand that I feel to you as Pippa to her fiance, only far more nobly, far more deeply, body and soul, no starved medievalism of course, only a — a particular harmony of body and soul that I don't think women have even guessed. But you know."
"Yes. I'll apologize."
There was a long interval: they discussed the motor bicycle, which had never been heard of again. Clive made coffee.
"Tell me, what made you wake me that night after the Debating Society. Describe."
"I kept on thinking of something to say, and couldn't, so at last I couldn't even think, so I just came."
"Sort of thing you would do."
"Are you ragging?" asked Maurice shyly.
"My God!" There was a silence. "Tell me now about the night I first came up. Why did you make us both so unhappy?"
"I don't know, I say. I can't explain anything. Why did you mislead me with that rotten Plato? I was still in a muddle. A lot of things hadn't joined up in me that since have."
"But hadn't you been getting hold of me for months? Since first you saw me at Risley's, in fact."
"Don't ask me."
"It's a queer business, any way."
"It's that."
Clive laughed delightedly, and wriggled in his chair. "Maurice, the more I think it over the more certain I am that it's you who are the devil."
"Oh, all right."
"I should have gone through life half awake if you'd had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here — " He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. "Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that any way."
"When did you first care about me?"
"Don't ask me," echoed Clive.
"Oh, be a bit serious — well — what was it in me you first cared about?"
"Like really to know?" asked Clive, who was in the mood Maurice adored — half mischievous, half passionate; a mood of supreme affection.
"Yes."
"Well, it was your beauty."
"My what?"
"Beauty… I used to admire that man over the bookcase most."
"I can give points to a picture, I dare say," said Maurice, having glanced at the Michelangelo. "Clive, you're a silly little fool, and since you've brought it up I think you're beautiful, the only beautiful person I've ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you."
Clive went crimson. "Sit up straight and let's change the subject," he said, all the folly out of him.
"I didn't mean to annoy you at all —"
"Those things must be said once, or we should never know they were in each other's hearts. I hadn't guessed, not so much at least. You've done all right, Maurice." He did not change the subject but developed it into another that had interested him recently, the precise influence of Desire upon our aesthetic judgements. "Look at that picture, for instance. I love it because, like the painter himself, I love the subject. I don't judge it with eyes of the normal man. There seem two roads for arriving at Beauty — one is in common, and all the world has reached Michelangelo by it, but the other is private to me and a few more. We come to him by both roads. On the other hand Greuze — his subject matter repels me. I can only get to him down one road. The rest of the world finds two."
Maurice did not interrupt: it was all charming nonsense to him.
"These private roads are perhaps a mistake," concluded Clive. "But as long as the human figure is painted they will be taken. Landscape is the only safe subject — or perhaps something geometric, rhythmical, inhuman absolutely. I wonder whether that is what the Mohammedans were up to and old Moses — I've just thought of this. If you introduce the human figure you at once arouse either disgust or desire. Very faintiy sometimes, but it's there. 'Thou shalt not make for thyself any graven image — because one couldn't possibly make it for all other people too. Maurice, shall we rewrite history? 'The Aesthetic Philosophy of the Decalogue. I've always thought it remarkable of God not to have damned you or me in it. I used to put it down to him for righteousness, though now I suspect he was merely ill-informed. Still I might make out a case. Shall I choose it for a Fellowship Dissertation?"
"I can't follow, you know," said Maurice, a little ashamed.
And their love scene drew out, having the inestimable gain of a new language. No tradition overawed the boys. No convention settled what was poetic, what absurd. They were concerned with a passion that few English minds have admitted, and so created untrammelled. Something of exquisite beauty arose in the mind of each at last, something unforgettable and eternal, but built of the humblest scraps of speech and from the simplest emotions.
"I say, will you kiss me?" asked Maurice, when the sparrows woke in the eaves above them, and far out in the woods the ringdoves began to coo.
Clive shook his head, and smiling they parted, ha
ving established perfection in their lives, at all events for a time.
17
It seems strange that Maurice should have won any respect from the Durham family, but they did not dislike him. They only disliked people who wanted to know them well — it was a positive mania — and the rumour that a man wished to enter county society was a sufficient reason for excluding him from it. Inside (region of high interchange and dignified movements that meant nothing) were to be found several who, like Mr Hall, neither loved their fate nor feared it, and would depart without a sigh if necessary. The Durhams felt they were conferring a favour on him by treating him as one of themselves, yet were pleased he should take it as a matter of course, gratitude being mysteriously connected in their minds with ill breeding.
Wanting only his food and his friend, Maurice did not observe he was a success, and was surprised when the old lady claimed him for a talk towards the end of his visit. She had questioned him about his family and discovered the riakedness thereof, but this time her manner was deferential: she wanted his opinion of Clive.
"Mr Hall, we wish you to help us: Clive thinks so much of you. Do you consider it wise for him to stop up a fourth year at Cambridge?"
Maurice was wanting to wonder which horse he should ride in the afternoon: he only half attended, which gave an appearance of profundity.
"After the deplorable exhibition he has made of himself in the Tripos — is it wise?"
"He means to," said Maurice.
Mrs Durham nodded. "There you have gone to the root of the matter. Clive means to. Well, he is his own master. This place is his. Did he tell you?"
"No."
"Oh, Penge is his absolutely, under my husband's will. I must move to the dower house as soon as he marries —"
Maurice started; she looked at him and saw that he had coloured. "So there is some girl," she thought. Neglecting the point for a moment, she returned to Cambridge, and observed how little a fourth year would profit a "yokel" — she used the word with gay assurance — and how desirable it was that Clive should take his place in the countryside. There was the game, there were his tenants, there were finally politics. "His father represented the division, as you doubtless know."
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