Maurice (22 page)

But Cambridge had left him a hero, Penge a traitor. He had abused his host's confidence and defiled his house in his absence, he had insulted Mrs Durham and Anne. And when he reached home there came a worse blow; he had also sinned against his family. Hitherto they had never counted. Fools to be kind to. They were fools still, but he dare not approach them. Between those commonplace women and himself stretched a gulf that hallowed them. Their chatter, their squabble about precedence, their complaints of the chauffeur, seemed word of a greater wrong. When his mother said, "Morrie, now for a nice talk," his heart stopped. They strolled round the garden, as they had done ten years ago, and she murmured the names of vegetables. Then he had looked up to her, now down; now he knew very well what he wanted with the garden boy. And now Kitty, always a message-bearer, rushed out of the house, and in her hand she held a telegram.

Maurice trembled with anger and fear. "Come back, waiting tonight at boathouse, Penge, Alec": a nice message to be handed in through the local post-office! Presumably one of the house-servants had supplied his address, for the telegram was fully directed. A nice situation! It contained every promise of blackmail, at the best it was incredible insolence. Of course he shouldn't answer, nor could there be any question now of giving Scudder a present. He had gone outside his class, and it served him right.

But all that night his body yearned for Alec's, despite him. He called it lustful, a word easily uttered, and opposed to it his work, his family, his friends, his position in society. In that coalition must surely be included his will. For if the will can overleap class, civilization as we have made it will go to pieces. But his body would not be convinced. Chance had mated it too perfectly. Neither argument nor threat could silence it, so in the morning, feeling exhausted and ashamed, he telephoned to Mr Lasker Jones and made a second appointment. Before he was due to go to it a letter came. It arrived at breakfast and he read it under his mother's eyes. It was phrased as follows.

Mr Maurice. Dear Sir. I waited both nights in the boathouse. I said the boathouse as the ladder as taken away and the woods is to damp to lie down. So please come to "the boathouse" tomorrow night or next, pretend to the other gentlemen you want a stroll, easily managed, then come down to the boathouse. Dear Sir, let me share with you once before leaving Old England if it is not asking to much. I have key, will let you in. I leave per Ss Normannia Aug 29. I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms round you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say. I am perfectly aware I am only a servant that never presume on your loving kindness to take liberties or in any other way.

Yours respectfully,

A. Scudder.

(gamekeeper to C. Durham Esq.)

Maurice, was you taken ill that you left, as the indoors servants say? I hope you feel all as usual by this time. Mind and write if you

can't come, for I get no sleep waiting night after night, so come without fail to "Boathouse Penge" tomorrow night, or failing the after.

Well, what did this mean? The sentence Maurice pounced on to the neglect of all others was
"I
have the key." Yes, he had, and there was a duplicate, kept up at the house, with which an accomplice, probably Simcox—In this light he interpreted the whole letter. His mother and aunt, the coffee he was drinking, the college cups on the sideboard, all said in their different ways, "If you go you are ruined, if you reply your letter will be used to put pressure upon you. You are in a nasty position but you have this advantage: he hasn't a scrap of your handwriting, and he's leaving England in ten days' time. Lie low, and hope for the best." He made a wry face. Butchers' sons and the rest of them may pretend to be innocent and affectionate, but they read the Police Court News, they know. ... If he heard again, he must consult a reliable solicitor, just as he was going to Las-ker Jones for the emotional fiasco. He had been very foolish, but if he played his cards carefully for the next ten days he ought to get through.

41
"Mornin', doctor. Think you can polish me off this time?" he began, very flippant in his manner; then

flung himself down in the chair, half closed his eyes and said, "Well, go ahead." He was in a fury to be cured. The knowledge of this interview had helped him to bear up against the vampire. Once normal, he could settle him. He longed for the trance, wherein his personality would melt and be subtly reformed. At the least he gained five minutes' oblivion, while the will of the doctor strove to penetrate his own.

"I will go ahead in one moment, Mr Hall. First tell me how you have been?"

"Oh, as usual. Fresh air and exercise, as you told me. All serene."

"Have you frequented female society with any pleasure?"

"Some ladies were at Penge. I only stayed one night there. The day after you saw me, Friday, I returned to London— that's to say home."

"You had intended to stop longer with your friends, I think."

"I think I did."

Lasker Jones then sat down on the side of his chair. "Let yourself go now," he said quietly.

"Rather."

He repeated the passes. Maurice looked at the fire irons as before.

"Mr Hall, are you going into a trance?"

There was a long silence, broken by Maurice saying gravely, "I'm not quite sure."

They tried again.

"Is the room at all dark, Mr Hall?"

Maurice said, "A bit," in the hope that it would become so. And it did darken a little.

"What do you see?"

"Well, if it's dark I can't be expected to see."

"What did you see last time?"

"A picture."

"Quite so, and what else?"

"What else?"

"What else? A cr— a cr—"

"Crack in the floor."

"And then?"

Maurice changed his position and said, "I stepped over it."

"And then?"

He was silent.

"And then?" the persuasive voice repeated.

"I hear you all right," said Maurice. "The bother is I've not gone off. I went just a little muzzy at the start, but now I'm as wide awake as you are. You might have another shot."

They tried again, with no success.

"What in Hell can have happened? You could bowl me out last week first ball. What's your explanation?"

"You should not resist me."

"Damn it all, I don't."

"You are less suggestible than you were."

"I don't know what that may mean, not being an expert in the jargon, but I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants—"

They tried again.

"Then am I one of your twenty-five per cent failures?"

"I
could do a little with you last week, but we do have these sudden disappointments."

"Sudden disappointment, am I? Well, don't be beat, don't give up," he guffawed, affectedly bluff.

"I do not propose to give up, Mr Hall."

Again they failed.

"And what's to happen to me?" said Maurice, with a sudden drop in his voice. He spoke in despair, but Mr Lasker Jones had an answer to every question. "I'm afraid I can only advise you to live in some country that has adopted the Code Napoleon," he said.

"I don't understand."

"France or Italy, for instance. There homosexuality is no longer criminal."

"You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?"

"Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly."

"Will the law ever be that in England?"

"I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature."

Maurice understood. He was an Englishman himself, and only his troubles had kept him awake. He smiled sadly. "It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted."

"That is so, Mr Hall; or, as psychiatry prefers to put it, there has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person. And you must remember that your type was once put to death in England."

"Was it really? On the other hand, they could get away. Eng-

land wasn't all built over and policed. Men of my sort could take to the greenwood."

"Is that so? I was not aware."

"Oh, it's only my own notion," said Maurice, laying the fee down. "It strikes me there may have been more about the Greeks—Theban Band—and the rest of it. Well, this wasn't unlike. I don't see how they could have kept together otherwise— especially when they came from such different classes."

"An interesting theory."

Words flying out of him again, he said, "I've not been straight with you."

"Indeed, Mr Hall."

What a comfort the man was! Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

"Since I was last here I went wrong with a—he's nothing but a gamekeeper. I don't know what to do."

"I can scarcely advise you on such a point."

"I know you can't. But you might tell me whether he's pulling me away from sleep. I half wondered."

"No one can be pulled against his will, Mr Hall."

"I'd a notion he'd stopped me going into the trance, and I wished—that seems silly—that I hadn't happened to have a letter from him in my pocket—read it as I've told you so much. I feel simply walking on a volcano. He's an uneducated man; he's got me in his power. In court would he have a case?"

"I am no lawyer," came the unvarying voice, "but I do not think this letter can be construed as containing a menace. It's a matter on which you should consult your solicitor, not me."

"I'm sorry, but it's been a relief. I wonder if you'd be awfully kind—hypnotize me once more. I feel I might go off now I've told you. I'd hoped to get cured without giving myself away. Are there such things as men getting anyone in their power through dreams?"

"I will try on condition your confession is this time exhaustive. Otherwise you waste both my time and your own."

It was exhaustive. He spared neither his lover nor himself. When all was detailed, the perfection of the night appeared as a transient grossness, such as his father had indulged in thirty years before.

"Sit down once again."

Maurice heard a slight noise and swerved.

"It is my children playing overhead."

"I
get half to believe in spooks."

"It is merely the children."

Silence returned. The afternoon sunshine fell yellow through the window upon the roll-top desk. This time Maurice fixed his attention on that. Before recommencing, the doctor took Alec's letter, and solemnly burnt it to ashes before his eyes.

Nothing happened.

41 By pleasuring the body Maurice had confirmed— that very word was used in the final verdict—he had confirmed his spirit in its perversion, and cut himself off from the congregation of normal man. In his irritation he stammered; "What I want to know is—what I can't tell you nor you me— how did a country lad like that know so much about me? Why did he thunder up that special night when I was weakest? I'd never let him touch me with my friend in the house, because, damn it all, I'm more or less a gentleman—public school, varsity, and so on—I can't even now believe that it was with him." Regretting he had not possessed Clive in the hour of their passion, he left, left his last shelter, while the doctor said perfunctorily. "Fresh air and exercise may do wonders yet." The doctor wanted to get on to his next patient, and he did not care for Maurice's type. He was not shocked like Dr Barry, but he was bored, and never thought of the young invert again.

On the doorstep something rejoined Maurice—his old self perhaps, for as he walked along a voice spoke out of his mortification, and its accents recalled Cambridge; a reckless youthful voice that girded at him for being a fool. "You've done for yourself this time," it seemed to say, and when he stopped outside the park, because the King and Queen were passing, he despised them at the moment he bared his head. It was as if the barrier that kept him from his fellows had taken another aspect. He was not afraid or ashamed anymore. After all, the forests and the night were on his side, not theirs; they, not he, were inside a ring fence. He had acted wrongly, and was still being punished—but wrongly because he had tried to get the best of both worlds. "But I must belong to my class, that's fixed," he persisted.

"Very well," said his old self. "Now go home, and tomorrow morning mind you catch the 8.36 up to the office, for your holiday is over, remember, and mind you never turn your head, as I may, towards Sherwood."

"I'm not a poet, I'm not that kind of an ass—"

The King and Queen vanished into their palace, the sun fell behind the park trees, which melted into one huge creature that had fingers and fists of green.

"The life of the earth, Maurice? Don't you belong to that?"

"Well, what do you call the 'life of the earth'—it ought to be the same as my daily life—the same as society. One ought to be built on the other, as Clive once said."

"Quite so. Most unfortunate, that facts pay no attention to Clive."

"Anyhow, I must stick to my class."

"Night is coming—be quick then—take a taxi—be quick like your father, before doors close."

Hailing one, he caught the 6.20. Another letter from Scudder awaited him on the leather tray in the hall. He knew the writing at once, the "Mr M. Hall" instead of "Esq.", the stamps plastered crooked. He was frightened and annoyed, yet not so much as he would have been in the morning, for though science despaired of him he despaired less of himself. After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven? He was not sorry that he had eluded the manipulations of Mr Lasker Jones. He put the letter into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, where it tugged unread, while he played cards, and heard how the chauffeur had given notice; one didn't know what servants were coming to: to his suggestion that servants might be flesh and blood like ourselves