"No."
"What does he talk to you about?" she laughed. "Anyhow, my husband was a member for seven years, and though a Lib is in now, one knows that cannot last. All our old friends are looking to him. But he must take his place, he must fit himself, and what on earth is the good of all this — I forget what — advanced work. He ought to spend the year travelling instead. He must go to America and if possible the Colonies. It has become absolutely indispensable."
"He speaks of travelling after Cambridge. He wants me to
"I trust you will — but not Greece, Mr Hall. That is travelling for play. Do dissuade him from Italy and Greece."
"I'd prefer America myself."
"Naturally — anyone sensible would; but he's a student — a dreamer — Pippa says he writes verse. Have you seen any?"
Maurice had seen a poem to himself. Conscious that life grew daily more amazing, he said nothing. Was he the same man who eight months back had been puzzled by Risley? What had deepened his vision? Section after section the armies of humanity were coming alive. Alive, but slightly absurd; they misunderstood him so utterly: they exposed their weakness when they thought themselves most acute. He could not help smiling.
"You evidently have. " Then suddenly^ "Mr Hall, is there anyone? Some Newnham girl? Pippa declares there is."
"Pippa had better ask then," Maurice replied.
Mrs Durham was impressed. He had met one impertinence with another. Who would have expected such skill in a young man? He seemed even indifferent to his victory, and was smiling to one of the other guests, who approached over the lawn to tea. In the tones that she reserved for an equal she said, "Impress on him about America anyhow. He needs reality. I noticed that last year."
Maurice duly impressed, when they were riding through the glades alone.
"I thought you were going down," was Clive's comment. "Like them. They wouldn't look at Joey." Clive was in full reaction against his family, he hated the worldliness that they combined with complete ignorance of the World. "These children will be a nuisance," he remarked during a canter.
"What children?"
"Mine! The need of an heir for Penge. My mother calls it marriage, but that was all she was thinking of."
Maurice was silent. It had not occurred to him before that neither he nor his friend would leave life behind them.
"I shall be worried eternally. They've always some girl staying in the house as it is."
"Just go on growing old —"
"Eh, boy?"
"Nothing," said Maurice, and reined up. An immense sadness — he believed himself beyond such irritants — had risen up in his soul. He and the beloved would vanish utterly — would continue neither in Heaven nor on Earth. They had won past the conventions, but Nature still faced them, saying with even voice, "Very well, you are thus; I blame none of my children. But you must go the way of all sterility." The thought that he was sterile weighed on the young man with a sudden shame. His mother or Mrs Durham might lack mind or heart, but they had done visible work; they had handed on the torch their sons would tread out.
He had meant not to trouble Clive, but out it all came as soon as they lay down in the fern. Clive did not agree. "Why children?" he asked. "Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it."
"Yes, but if everyone —"
Clive pulled him back into themselves. He murmured something about Eternity in an hour: Maurice did not understand, but the voice soothed him.
18
During the next two years Maurice and Clive had as much happiness as men under that star can expect. They were affectionate and consistent by nature, and, thanks to Clive, extremely sensible. Clive knew that ecstasy cannot last, but can carve a channel for something lasting, and he contrived a relation that proved permanent. If Maurice made love it was Clive who preserved it, and caused its rivers to water the gar' den. He could not bear that one drop should be wasted, either in bitterness or in sentimentality, and as time went on they abstained from avowals ("we have said everything") and almost from caresses. Their happiness was to be together; they radiated something of their calm amongst others, and could take their place in society.
Clive had expanded in this direction ever since he had understood Greek. The love that Socrates bore Phaedo now lay within his reach, love passionate but temperate, such as only finer natures can understand, and he found in Maurice a nature that was not indeed fine, but charmingly willing. He led the beloved up a narrow and beautiful path, high above either abyss. It went on until the final darkness — he could see no other terror — and when that descended they would at all events have lived more fully than either saint or sensualist, and would have extracted to their utmost the nobility and sweetness of the world. He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
So they proceeded outwardly like other men. Society received them, as she receives thousands like them. Behind Society slumbered the Law. They had their last year at Cambridge together, they travelled in Italy. Then the prison house closed, but on both of them. Clive was working for the bar, Maurice harnessed to an office. They were together still.
19
By this time their families had become acquainted.
"They will never get on," they had agreed. "They belong to different sections of society." But, perhaps out of perversity, the families did get on, and Clive and Maurice found amusement in seeing them together. Both were misogynists, Clive especially. In the grip of their temperaments, they had not developed the imagination to do duty instead, and during their love women had become as remote as horses or cats; all that the creatures did seemed silly. When Kitty asked to hold Pippa's baby, when Mrs Durham and Mrs Hall visited the Royal Academy in unison, they saw a misfit in nature rather than in society, and gave wild explanations. There was nothing strange really: they themselves were sufficient cause. Their passion for each other was the strongest force in either family, and drew everything after it as a hidden current draws a boat. Mrs Hall and Mrs Durham came together because their sons were friends; "and now," said Mrs Hall, "we are friends too."
Maurice was present the day their "friendship" began. The matrons met in Pippa's London house. Pippa had married a Mr London, a coincidence that made a great impression on Kitty, who hoped she would not think of it and laugh during tea. Ada, as too silly for a first visit, had been left at home by Maurice's advice. Nothing happened. Then Pippa and her mother motored out to return the civility. He was in town but again nothing seemed to have happened, except that Pippa had praised Kitty's brains to Ada and Ada's beauty to Kitty, thus offending both girls, and Mrs Hall had warned Mrs Durham against installing hot air at Penge. Then they met again, and as far as he could see it was always like this; nothing, nothing, and still nothing.
Mrs Durham had of course her motives. She was looking out wives for Clive, and put down the Hall girls on her list. She had a theory one ought to cross breeds a bit, and Ada, though suburban, was healthy. No doubt the girl was a fool, but Mrs Durham did not propose to retire to the dower house in practice, whatever she might do in theory, and believed she could best manage Clive through his wife. Kitty had fewer qualifications. She was less foolish, less beautiful, and less rich. Ada would inherit the whole of her grandfather's fortune, which was considerable, and had always inherited his good humour. Mrs Durham met old Mr Grace once, and rather liked him.
Had she supposed the Halls were also planning she would have drawn back. Like Maurice they held her by their indifference. Mrs Hall was too idle to scheme, the girls too innocent. Mrs Durham regarded Ada as a favourable line and invited her to Penge. Only Pippa, into whose mind a breath of modernity had blown, began to think her brother's coldness odd. "Clive, are you going to marry?" she asked suddenly. But his reply, "No, do tell mother," d
ispelled her suspicions: it is the sort of reply a man who is going to marry would make.
No one worried Maurice. He had established his power at home, and his mother began to speak of him in the tones she had reserved for her husband. He was not only the son of the house, but more of a personage than had been expected. He kept the servants in order, understood the car, subscribed to this and not to that, tabooed certain of the girls' acquaintances. By twenty-three he was a promising suburban tyrant, whose rule was the stronger because it was fairly just and mild. Kitty protested, but she had no backing and no experience. In the end she had to say she was sorry and to receive a kiss. She was no match for this good-humoured and slightly hostile young man, and she failed to establish the advantage that his escapade at Cambridge had given her.
Maurice's habits became regular. He ate a large breakfast and caught the 8.36 to town. In the train he read the Daily Telegraph. He worked till 1.0, lunched lightly, and worked again through the afternoon. Returning home, he had some exercise and a large dinner, and in the evening he read the evening paper, or laid down the law, or played billiards or bridge.
But every Wednesday he slept at Clive's little flat in town. Weekends were also inviolable. They said at home, "You must never interfere with Maurice's Wednesdays or with his weekends. He would be most annoyed."
20
Clive got through his bar exams successfully, but just before he was called he had a slight touch of influenza with fever. Maurice came to see him as he was recovering, caught it, and went to bed himself. Thus they saw little of one another for several weeks, and when they did meet Clive was still white and nervy. He came down to the Halls', preferring their house to Pippa's, and hoping that the good food and quiet would set him up. He ate little, and when he spoke his theme was the futility of all things.
"I'm a barrister because I may enter public life," he said in reply to a question of Ada's. "But why should I enter public life? Who wants me?"
"Your mother says the county does."
"If the county wants anyone it wants a Radical. But I've talked to more people than my mother, and they're weary of us leisured classes coasting round in motor-cars and asking for something to do. All this solemn to and fro between great houses — it's a game without gaiety. You don't find it played outside England. (Maurice, I'm going to Greece.) No one wants us, or anything except a comfortable home."
"But to give a comfortable home's what public life is," shrilled Kitty.
"Is, or ought to be?"
"Well, it's all the same."
"Is and ought to be are not the same," said her mother, proud of grasping the distinction. "You ought to be not interrupting Mr Durham, whereas you —"
" — is," supplied Ada, and the family laugh made Clive jump.
"We are and we ought to be," concluded Mrs Hall. "Very different."
"Not always," contradicted Clive.
"Not always, remember that, Kitty," she echoed, vaguely admonitory: on other occasions he had not minded her. Kitty cried back to her first assertion. Ada was saying anything, Maurice nothing. He was eating away placidly, too used to such table talk to see that it worried his friend. Between the courses he told an anecdote. All were silent to listen to him. He spoke slowly, stupidly, without attending to his words or taking the trouble to be interesting. Suddenly Clive cut in with "I say — I'm going to faint," and fell off his chair.
"Get a pillow, Kitty: Ada, eau de cologne," said their brother. He loosened Clive's collar. "Mother, fan him; no; fan him."
"Silly it is," murmured Clive.
As he spoke, Maurice kissed him.
"I'm all right now."
The girls and a servant came running in.
"I can walk," he said, the colour returning to his face.
"Certainly not," cried Mrs Hall. "Maurice'll carry you — Mr Durham, put your arms round Maurice."
"Come along, old man. The doctor: somebody telephone." He picked up his friend, who was so weak that he began to cry.
"Maurice — I'm a fool."
"Be a fool," said Maurice, and carried him upstairs, undressed him, and put him to bed. Mrs Hall knocked, and going out to her he said quickly, "Mother, you needn't tell the others I kissed Durham."
"Oh, certainly not."
"He wouldn't like it. I was rather upset and did it without thinking. As you know, we are great friends, relations almost."
It sufficed. She liked to have little secrets with her son; it reminded her of the time when she had been so much to him. Ada joined them with a hot water bottle, which he took in to the patient.
"The doctor'll see me like this," Clive sobbed.
"I hope he will."
"Why?"
Maurice lit a cigarette, and sat on the edge of the bed. "We want him to see you at your worst. Why did Pippa let you travel?"
"I was supposed to be well."
"Hell take you."
"Can we come in?" called Ada through the door.
"No. Send the doctor alone."
"He's here," cried Kitty in the distance. A man, little older than themselves, was announced.
"Hullo, Jowitt," said Maurice, rising. "Just cure me this chap. He's had influenza, and is supposed to be well. Result he's fainted, and can't stop crying."
"We know all about that," remarked Mr Jowitt, and stuck a thermometer into Clive's mouth. "Been working hard?"
"Yes, and now wants to go to Greece."
"So he shall. You clear out now. I'll see you downstairs."
Maurice obeyed, convinced that Clive was seriously ill. Jowitt followed in about ten minutes, and told Mrs Hall it was nothing much — a bad relapse. He wrote prescriptions, and said he would send in a nurse. Maurice followed him into the garden, and, laying a hand on his arm, said, "Now tell me how ill he is. This isn't a relapse. It's something more. Please tell me the truth."
"He's all right," said the other; somewhat annoyed, for he piqued himself on telling the truth. "I thought you realized that. He's stopped the hysteria and is getting off to sleep. It's just an ordinary relapse. He will have to be more careful this time than the other, that's all."
"And how long will these ordinary relapses, as you call them, go on? At any moment may he have this appalling pain?"
"He's only a bit uncomfortable — caught a chill in the car, he thinks."
"Jowitt, you don't tell me. A grown man doesn't cry, unless he's gone pretty far."
"That is only the weakness."
"Oh, give it your own name," said Maurice, removing his hand. "Besides, I'm keeping you."
"Not a bit, my young friend, I'm here to answer any difficulties."
"Well, if it's so slight, why are you sending in a nurse?"
"To amuse him. I understand he's well off."
"And can't we amuse him?"
"No, because of the infection. You were there when I told your mother none of you ought to go into the room."
"I thought you meant my sisters."
"You equally — more, for you've already caught it from him once."
"I won't have a nurse."
"Mrs Hall has telephoned to the Institute."
"Why is everything done in such a damned hurry?" said Maurice, raising his voice. "I shall nurse him myself."
"Have you wheeling the baby next."
"I beg your pardon?"
Jowitt went off laughing.
In tones that admitted no argument Maurice told his mother he should sleep in the patient's room. He would not have a bed taken in, lest Clive woke up, but lay down on the floor with his head on a foot-stool, and read by the rays of a candle lamp. Before long Clive stirred and said feebly, "Oh damnation, oh damnation."
"Want anything?" Maurice called.
"My inside's all wrong."
Maurice lifted him out of bed and put him on the night stool. When relief had come he lifted him back.
"I can walk: you mustn't do this sort of thing."
"You'd do it for me."
He carried the stool down th
e passage and cleaned it. Now that Clive was undignified and weak, he loved him as never before.
"You mustn't," repeated Clive, when he came back. "It's too filthy."
"Doesn't worry me," said Maurice, lying down. "Get off to sleep again."
"The doctor told me he'd send a nurse."
"What do you want with a nurse? It's only a touch of diarrhoea. You can keep on all night as far as I'm concerned. Honestly it doesn't worry me — I don't say this to please you. It just doesn't."
"I can't possibly — your office —"
"Look here, Clive, would you rather have a trained nurse or me? One's coming tonight, but I left word she was to be sent away again, because I'd rather chuck the office and look after you myself, and thought you'd rather."
Clive was silent so long that Maurice thought him asleep. At last he sighed, "I suppose I'd better have the nurse."
"Right: she will make you more comfortable than I can. Perhaps you're right."
Clive made no reply.
Ada had volunteered to sit up in the room below, and, according to arrangement, Maurice tapped three times, and while waiting for her studied Clive's blurred and sweaty face. It was useless the doctor talking: his friend was in agony. He longed to embrace him, but remembered this had brought on the hysteria, and besides, Clive was restrained, fastidious almost. As Ada did not come he went downstairs, and found that she had fallen asleep. She lay, the picture of health, in a big leather chair, with her hands dropped on either side and her feet stretched out. Her bosom rose and fell, her heavy black hair served as a cushion to her face, and between her lips he saw teeth and a scarlet tongue. "Wake up," he cried irritably.
Ada woke.
"How do you expect to hear the front door when the nurse comes?"
"How is poor Mr Durham?"
"Very ill; dangerously ill."
"Oh Maurice! Maurice!"
"The nurse is to stop. I called you, but you never came. Go off to bed now, as you can't even help that much."
"Mother said I must sit up, because the nurse mustn't be let in by a man — it wouldn't look well."
Maurice Page 8
