35
The next day was even drearier and the only thing to be said in its favour was that it had the unreality of a nightmare. Archie London chattered, the rain dribbled, and in the sacred name of sport they were urged after rabbits over the Penge estate. Sometimes they shot the rabbits, sometimes missed them, sometimes they tried ferrets and nets. The rabbits needed keeping down and perhaps that was why the entertainment had been forced on them: there was a prudent strain in Clive. They returned to lunch, and Maurice had a thrill: his telegram had arrived from Mr Lasker Jones, granting him an appointment for tomorrow. But the thrill soon passed. Archie thought they had better go after the bunnies again, and he was too depressed to refuse. The rain was now less, on the other hand the mist was thicker, the mud stickier, and towards tea time they lost a ferret. The keeper made out this was their fault, Archie knew better, and explained the matter to Maurice in the smoking-room with the aid of diagrams. Dinner arrived at eight, so did the politicians, and after dinner the drawing-room ceiling dripped into basins and saucers. Then in the Russet Room, the same weather, the same despair, and the fact that now Clive sat on his bed talking intimately did not make any difference. The talk might have moved him had it come earlier, but he had been so pained by the inhospitality, he had spent so lonely and so imbecile a day, that he could respond to the past no longer. His thoughts were all with Mr Lasker Jones, and he wanted to be alone to compose a written statement about his case.
Clive felt the visit had been a failure, but, as he remarked, "Politics can't wait, and you happen to coincide with the rush." He was vexed too at forgetting that today was Maurice's birthday — and was urgent that their guest should stop over the match. Maurice said he was frightfully sorry, but now couldn't, as he had this urgent and unexpected engagement in town.
"Can't you come back after keeping it? We're shocking hosts, but it's such a pleasure having you. Do treat the house as an hotel — go your way, and we'll go ours."
"The fact is I'm hoping to get married," said Maurice, the words flying from him as if they had independent life.
"I'm awfully glad," said Clive, dropping his eyes. "Maurice, I'm awfully glad. It's the greatest thing in the world, perhaps the only one —"
"I know." He was wondering why he had spoken. His sentence flew out into the rain; he was always conscious of the rain and the decaying roofs at Penge.
"I shan't bother you with talk, but I must just say that Anne guessed it. Women are extraordinary. She declared all along that you had something up your sleeve. I laughed, but now I shall have to give in." His eyes rose. "Oh Maurice, I'm so glad. It's very good of you to tell me — it's what I've always wished for you."
"I know you have."
There was a silence. Clive's old manner had come back. He was generous, charming.
"It's wonderful, isn't it? — the — I'm so glad. I wish I could think of something else to say. Do you mind if I just tell Anne?"
"Not a bit. Tell everyone," cried Maurice, with a brutality that passed unnoticed. "The more the better." He courted external pressure. "If the girl I want won't, there's others."
Clive smiled a little at this, but was too pleased to be squeamish. He was pleased partly for Maurice, but also because it rounded off his own position. He hated queerness, Cambridge, the Blue Room, certain glades in the park were — not tainted, there had been nothing disgraceful — but rendered subtly ridiculous. Quite lately he had turned up a poem written during Maurice's first visit to Penge, which might have hailed from the land through the looking-glass, so fatuous it was, so perverse. "Shade from the old hellenic ships." Had he addressed the sturdy undergraduate thus? And the knowledge that Maurice had equally outgrown such sentimentality purified it, and from him also words burst as if they had been alive.
"I've thought more often of you than you imagine, Maurice my dear. As I said last autumn, I care for you in the real sense, and always shall. We were young idiots, weren't we? — but one can get something even out of idiocy. Development. No, more than that, intimacy. You and I know and trust one another just because we were once idiots. Marriage has made no difference. Oh, that's jolly, I do think —"
"You give me your blessing then?"
"I should think so!"
"Thanks."
Clive's eyes softened. He wanted to convey something warmer than development. Dare he borrow a gesture from the past?
"Think of me all tomorrow," said Maurice, "and as for Anne — she may think of me too."
So gracious a reference decided him to kiss the fellow very gently on his big brown hand.
Maurice shuddered.
"You don't mind?"
"Oh no."
"Maurice dear, I wanted just to show I hadn't forgotten the past. I quite agree — don't let's mention it ever again, but I wanted to show just this once."
"All right."
"Aren't you thankful it's ended properly?"
"How properly?"
"Instead of that muddle last year."
"Oh with you."
"Quits, and I'll go."
Maurice applied his lips to the starched cuff of a dress shirt. Having functioned, he withdrew, leaving Clive more friendly than ever, and insistent he should return to Penge as soon as circumstances allowed this. Clive stopped talking late while the water gurgled over the dormer. When he had gone Maurice drew the curtains and fell on his knees, leaning his chin upon the window sill and allowing the drops to sprinkle his hair.
"Come!" he cried suddenly, surprising himself. Whom had he called? He had been thinking of nothing and the word had leapt out. As quickly as possible he shut out the air and the darkness, and re-enclosed his body in the Russet Room. Then he wrote his statement. It took some time, and, though far from imaginative, he went to bed with the jumps. He was convinced that someone had looked over his shoulder while he wrote. He wasn't alone. Or again, that he hadn't personally written. Since coming to Penge he seemed a bundle of voices, not Maurice, and now he could almost hear them quarrelling inside him. But none of them belonged to Clive: he had got that far.
36
Archie London was also returning to town, and very early next morning they stood in the hall together waiting for the brougham, while the man who had taken them after rabbits waited outside for a tip.
"Tell him to boil his head," said Maurice crossly. "I offered him five bob and he wouldn't take it. Damned cheek!"
Mr London was scandalized. What were servants coming to? Was it to be nothing but gold? If so, one might as well shut up shop, and say so. He began a story about his wife's monthly nurse. Pippa had treated that woman more than an equal, but what can you expect with half educated people? Half an education is worse than none.
"Hear, hear," said Maurice, yawning.
All the same, Mr London wondered whether noblesse didn't oblige.
"Oh, try if you want to."
He stretched a hand into the rain.
"Hall, he took it all right, you know."
"Did he, the devil?" said Maurice. "Why didn't he take mine? I suppose you gave more."
With shame Mr London confessed this was so. He had increased the tip through fear of a snub. The fellow was the limit evidently, yet he couldn't think it was good taste in Hall to take the matter up. When servants are rude one should merely ignore it.
But Maurice was cross, tired, and worried about his appointment in town, and he felt the episode part of the ungraciousness of Penge. It was in the spirit of revenge that he strolled to the door, and said in his familiar yet alarming way, "Hullo! So five shillings aren't good enough! So you'll only take gold!" He was interrupted by Anne, who had come to see them off.
"Best of luck," she said to Maurice with a very sweet expression, then paused, as if inviting confidences. None came, but she added, "I'm so glad you're not horrible."
"Are you?"
"Men like to be thought horrible. Clive does. Don't you, Clive? Mr Hall, men are very funny creatures." She took hold of her necklace and smiled. "Very fu
nny. Best of luck." By now she was delighted with Maurice. His situation, and the way he took it, struck her as appropriately masculine. "Now a woman in love," she explained to Clive on the doorstep, as they watched their guests start: "now a woman in love never bluffs — I wish I knew the girl's name."
Interfering with the house-servants, the keeper carried out Maurice's case to the brougham, evidently ashamed. "Stick it in then," said Maurice coldly. Amid wavings from Anne, Clive, and Mrs Durham, they started, and London recommenced the story of Pippa's monthly nurse.
"How about a little air?" suggested the victim. He opened the window and looked at the dripping park. The stupidity of so much rain! What did it want to rain for? The indifference of the universe to man! Descending into woods, the brougham toiled along feebly. It seemed impossible that it should ever reach the station, or Pippa's misfortune cease.
Not far from the lodge there was a nasty little climb, and the road, always in bad condition, was edged with dog roses that scratched the paint. Blossom after blossom crept past them, draggled by the ungenial year: some had cankered, others would never unfold: here and there beauty triumphed, but desperately, flickering in a world of gloom. Maurice looked into one after another, and though he did not care for flowers the failure irritated him. Scarcely anything was perfect. On one spray every flower was lopsided, the next swarmed with caterpillars, or bulged with galls. The indifference of nature! And her incompetence! He leant out of the window to see whether she couldn't bring it off once, and stared straight into the bright brown eyes of a young man.
"God, why there's that keeper chap again!"
"Couldn't be, couldn't have got here. We left him up at the house."
"He could have if he'd run."
"Why should he have run?"
"That's true, why should he have?" said Maurice, then lifted the flap at the back of the brougham and peered through it into the rose bushes, which a haze already concealed.
"Was it?"
"I couldn't see." His companion resumed the narrative at once, and talked almost without ceasing until they parted at Waterloo.
In the taxi Maurice read over his statement, and its frankness alarmed him. He, who could not trust Jowitt, was putting himself into the hands of a quack; despite Risley's assurances, he connected hypnotism with seances and blackmail, and had often growled at it from behind the Daily Telegraph; had he not better retire?
But the house seemed all right. When the door opened, the little Lasker Joneses were playing on the stairs — charming children, who mistook him for "Uncle Peter", and clung to his hands; and when he was shut into the waiting room with Punch the sense of the normal grew stronger. He went to his fate calmly. He wanted a woman to secure him socially and diminish his lust and bear children. He never thought of that woman as a positive joy — at the worst, Dickie had been that — for during the long struggle he had forgotten what Love is, and sought not happiness at the hands of Mr Lasker Jones, but repose.
That gentleman further relieved him by coming up to his idea of what an advanced scientific man ought to be. Sallow and expressionless, he sat in a large pictureless room before a roll-top desk. "Mr Hall?" he said, and offered a bloodless hand. His accent was slightly American. "Well, Mr Hall, and what's the trouble?" Maurice became detached too. It was as if they met to discuss a third party. "It's all down here," he said, producing the statement. "I've consulted one doctor and he could do nothing. I don't know whether you can."
The statement was read.
"I'm not wrong in coming to you, I hope?"
"Not at all, Mr Hall. Seventy-five per cent of my patients are of your type. Is that statement recent?"
"I wrote it last night."
"And accurate?"
"Well, names and place are a bit changed, naturally."
Mr Lasker Jones did not seem to think it natural. He asked several questions about "Mr Cumberland", Maurice's pseudonym for Clive, and wished to know whether they had ever united: on his lips it was curiously inoffensive. He neither praised nor blamed nor pitied: he paid no attention to a sudden outburst of Maurice's against society. And though Maurice yearned for sympathy — he had not had a word of it for a year — he was glad none came, for it might have shattered his purpose.
He asked, "What's the name of my trouble? Has it one?"
"Congenital homosexuality."
"Congenital how much? Well, can anything be done?"
"Oh, certainly, if you consent."
"The fact is I've an old-fashioned prejudice against hypnotism."
"I'm afraid you may possibly retain that prejudice after trying, Mr Hall. I cannot promise a cure. I spoke to you of my other patients — seventy-five per cent — but in only fifty per cent have I been successful."
The confession gave Maurice confidence, no quack would have made it. "We may as well have a shot," he said, smiling. "What must I do?"
"Merely remain where you are. I will experiment to see how deeply the tendency is rooted. You will return (if you wish) for regular treatment later. Mr Hall! I shall try to send you into a trance, and if I succeed I shall make suggestions to you which will (we hope) remain, and become part of your normal state when you wake. You are not to resist me."
"All right, go ahead."
Then Mr Lasker Jones left his desk and sat in an impersonal way on the arm of Maurice's chair. Maurice felt he was going to have a tooth out. For a little time nothing happened, but presently his eye caught a spot of light on the fire irons, and the rest of the room went dim. He could see whatever he was looking at, but little else, and he could hear the doctor's voice and his own. Evidently he was going into a trance, and the achievement gave him a feeling of pride.
"You're not quite off yet, I think."
"No, I'm not."
He made some more passes. "How about now?"
"I'm nearer off now."
"Quite?"
Maurice agreed, but did not feel sure. "Now that you're quite off, how do you like my consulting-room?"
"It's a nice room."
"Not too dark?"
"Rather dark."
"You can see the picture though, can't you?"
Maurice then saw a picture on the opposite wall, yet he knew that there was none.
"Have a look at it, Mr Hall. Come nearer. Take care of that crack in the carpet though."
"How broad is the crack?"
"You can jump it."
Maurice immediately located a crack, and jumped, but he was not convinced of the necessity.
"Admirable — now what do you suppose this picture is of, whom is it of —?"
"Whom is it of —"
"Edna May."
"Mr Edna May."
"No, Mr Hall, Miss Edna May."
"It's Mr Edna May."
"Isn't she beautiful?"
"I want to go home to my mother." Both laughed at this remark, the doctor leading.
"Miss Edna May is not only beautiful, she is attractive."
"She doesn't attract me," said Maurice pettishly.
"Oh Mr Hall, what an ungallant remark. Look at her lovely hair."
"I like short hair best."
"Why?"
"Because I can stroke it — " and he began to cry. He came to himself in the chair. Tears were wet on his cheeks, but he felt as usual, and started talking at once.
"I say, I had a dream when you woke me up. I'd better tell it you. I thought I saw a face and heard someone say, "That's your friend. Is that all right? I often feel it — I can't explain — sort of walking towards me through sleep, though it never gets up to me, that dream."
"Did it get near now?"
"Jolly near. Is that a bad sign?"
"No, oh no — you're open to suggestion, you're open — I made you see a picture on the wall."
Maurice nodded: he had quite forgotten. There was a pause, during which he produced two guineas, and asked for a second appointment. It was arranged that he should telephone next week, and in the interval Mr Lasker Jones wanted him to r
emain where he was in the country, quietly.
Maurice could not doubt that Clive and Anne would welcome him, nor that their influence would be suitable. Penge was an emetic. It helped him to get rid of the old poisonous life that had seemed so sweet, it cured him of tenderness and humanity. Yes, he'd go back, he said: he would wire to his friends and catch the afternoon express.
"Mr Hall, take exercise in moderation. A little tennis, or stroll about with a gun."
Maurice lingered to say, "On second thoughts perhaps I won't go back."
"Why so?"
"Well, it seems rather foolish to make that long journey twice in a day."
"You prefer then to stop in your own home?"
"Yes — no — no, all right, I will go back to Penge."
37
On his return he was amused to find that the young people were just off for twenty-four hours' electioneering. He now cared less for Clive than Clive for him. That kiss had disillusioned. It was such a trivial prudish kiss, and alas! so typical. The less you had the more it was supposed to be — that was Clive's teaching. Not only was the half greater than the whole — at Cambridge Maurice would just accept this — but now he was offered the quarter and told it was greater than the half. Did the fellow suppose he was made of paper?
Clive explained how he wouldn't be going had Maurice held out hopes of returning, and how he would be back for the match any way. Anne whispered, 'Was the luck good?" Maurice replied, "So-so," whereupon she covered him with her wing and offered to invite his young lady down to Penge. "Mr Hall, is she very charming? I am convinced she has bright brown eyes." But Clive called her off, and Maurice was left to an evening with Mrs Durham and Mr Borenius.
Unusual restlessness was on him. It recalled the initial night at Cambridge, when he had been to Risley's rooms. The rain had stopped during his dash to town. He wanted to walk about in the evening and watch the sun set and listen to the dripping trees. Ghostly but perfect, the evening primroses were expanding in the shrubbery, and stirred him by their odours. Clive had shown him evening primroses in the past, but had never told him they smelt. He liked being out of doors, among the robins and bats, stealing hither and thither bare-headed, till the gong should summon him to dress for yet another meal, and the curtains of the Russet Room close. No, he wasn't the same; a rearrangement of his being had begun as surely as at Birmingham, when Death had looked away, and to Mr Lasker Jones be all credit! Deeper than conscious effort there was a change, which might land him with luck in the arms of Miss Tonks.
Maurice Page 14