Maurice by E. Forster (most inspirational books .txt) 📕

down, and Risley turned with a titter to Maurice and said, "I simply cant think of any reply to that"; in each of his sentences he accented one word violently. "It is so humiliating. 'No' won't do. 'Yes' won't do. What is to be done?"

"What about saving nothing?" said the Dean.

"To say nothing? Horrible. You must be mad."

"Are you always talking, may one ask?" inquired Chapman.

Risley said he was.

"Never get tired of it?"

"Never."

"Ever tire other people?"

"Never."

"Odd that."

"Do not suggest I've tired you. Untrue, untrue, you're beam-ing."

"It's not at you if I am," said Chapman, who was hot-tempered.

Maurice and the Dean laughed.

"I come to a standstill again. How amazing are the difficulties of conversation."

"You seem to carry on better than most of us can," remarked Maurice. He had not spoken before, and his voice, which was low but very gruff, made Risley shiver.

"Naturally. It is my forte. It is the only thing I care about, conversation."

"Is that serious?"

"Everything I say is serious." And somehow Maurice knew this was true. It had struck him at once that Risley was serious. "And are you serious?"

"Don't ^sk me."

"Then talk until you become so."

"Rubbish," growled the Dean.

Chapman laughed tempestuously.

"Rubbish?" He questioned Maurice, who, when he grasped the point, was understood to reply that deeds are more important than words.

"What is the difference? Words are deeds. Do you mean to say that these five minutes in Cornwallis's rooms have done nothing for you? Will you ever forget you have met me, for instance?"

Chapman grunted.

"Rut he will not, nor will you. And then I am told we ought to be doing something."

The Dean came to the rescue of the two Sunningtonians. He said to his young cousin, "You're unsound about memory. You confuse what's important with what's impressive. No doubt Chapman and Hall always will remember they've met you—"

"And forget this is a cutlet. Quite so."

"Rut the cutlet does some good to them, and you none."

"Obscurantist!"

"This is just like a book," said Chapman. "Eh, Hall?"

"I mean," said Risley, "oh how clearly I mean that the cutlet influences your subconscious lives, and I your conscious, and so I am not only more impressive than the cutlet but more important. Your Dean here, who dwells in Medieval Darkness and wishes you to do the same, pretends that only the subconscious, only the part of you that can be touched without your knowledge is important, and daily he drops soporific—"

"Oh, shut up," said the Dean.

"But I am a child of light—"

"Oh, shut up." And he turned the conversation on to normal lines. Risley was not egotistic, though he always talked about himself. He did not interrupt. Nor did he feign indifference. Gambolling like a dolphin, he accompanied them whithersoever they went, without hindering their course. He was at play, but seriously. It was as important to him to go to and fro as to them to go forward, and he loved keeping near them. A few months earlier Maurice would have agreed with Chapman, but now he was sure the man had an inside, and he wondered whether he should see more of him. He was pleased when, after lunch was over, Risley waited for him at the bottom of the stairs and said, "You didn't see. My cousin wasn't being human."

"He's good enough for us; that's all I know," exploded Chapman. "He's absolutely delightful."

"Exactly. Eunuchs are." And he was gone.

"Well, I'm—" exclaimed the other, but with British self-control suppressed the verb. He was deeply shocked. He didn't mind hot stuff in moderation, he told Maurice, but this was too much, it was bad form, ungentlemanly, the fellow could not have been through a public school. Maurice agreed. You could call your cousin a shit if you liked, but not a eunuch. Rotten style! All the same he was amused, and whenever he was hauled in in the future, mischievous and incongruous thoughts would occur to him about the Dean.

6 All that day and the next Maurice was planning how he could see this queer fish again. The chances were bad. He did not like to call on a senior-year man, and they were at different colleges. Risley, he gathered, was well known at the Union, and he went to the Tuesday debate in the hope of hearing him: perhaps he would be easier to understand in public. He was not attracted to the man in the sense that he wanted him for a friend, but he did feel he might help him—how, he didn't formulate. It was all very obscure, for the mountains still overshadowed Maurice. Risley, surely capering on the summit, might stretch him a helping hand.

Having failed at the Union, he had a reaction. He didn't want anyone's help; he was all right. Besides, none of his friends would stand Risley, and he must stick to his friends. But the reaction soon passed, and he longed to see him more than ever. Since Risley was so odd, might he not be odd too, and break all the undergraduate conventions by calling? One "ought to be human", and it was a human sort of thing to call. Much struck by the discovery, Maurice decided to be Bohemian also, and to enter the room making a witty speech in Risley's own style. "You've bargained for more than you've gained" occurred to him. It didn't sound very good, but Risley had been clever at not letting him feel a fool, so he would fire it off if inspired to nothing better, and leave the rest to luck.

For it had become an adventure. This man who said one ought to "talk, talk" had stirred Maurice incomprehensibly. One night, just before ten o'clock, he slipped into Trinity and waited in the Great Court until the gates were shut behind him. Looking up, he noticed the night. He was indifferent to beauty as a rule, but "what a show of stars!" he thought. And how the fountain splashed when the chimes died away, and the gates and doors all over Cambridge had been