Then Maurice said in affectionate yet dejected tones, ‘All right. To Hell with it,’ and they passed on together in the rain.
This was ’oliday, London with Maurice, all troubles over, and he wanted to drowse and waste time, and tease and make love.
Pray don’t waste time mourning over me. There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to invent it. Good-bye.
During this Lent term Maurice came out as a theologian. It was not humbug entirely. He believed that he believed, and felt genuine pain when anything he was accustomed to met criticism – the pain that masquerades among the middle classes as Faith. It was not Faith, being inactive. It gave him no support, no wider outlook. It didn’t exist till opposition touched it, when it ached like a useless nerve.
To Margaret this life was to remain a real force. She could not despise it, as Helen and Tibby affected to do. It fostered such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilisation. They form character, too; Margaret could not doubt it; they keep the soul from becoming sloppy. How dare Schlegels despise Wilcoxes, when it takes all sorts to make a world?
It was a land of facilities, where nothing had to be striven for, and success was indistinguishable from failure.
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.
He was a mediocre member of a mediocre school.
But all that night his body yearned for Alec’s, despite him.
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.
Clive pulled him back into themselves. He murmured something about Eternity in an hour: Maurice did not understand, but the voice soothed him.
Yes: the heart of his agony would be loneliness. He took time to realize this, being slow. The incestuous jealousy, the mortification, the rage at his past obtuseness – these might pass, and having done much harm they did pass. Memories of Clive might pass. But the loneliness remained. He would wake and gasp “I’ve no one!” or “Oh Christ, what a world!
Then he changed the subject, and, being without memory, she recovered her temper.
It’s a chance in a thousand we’ve met, we’ll never have the chance again and you know it. Stay with me. We love each other.
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.
At this she grew angry. ‘I worship nothing!’ she cried. ‘I am most advanced. I don’t think you irreligious, for there is no such thing as religion left. All the fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed by the Machine. I only meant that to find out a way of your own was – -Besides, there is no new way out.
For if the will can overlap class, civilization as we have made it will go to pieces.
Nor did he realize a more important point – that if she was too great for this society she was too great for all society, and had reached the stage where personal intercourse would alone satisfy her.
Mother, who toom?
I have shared with Alec,’ he said after deep thought. ‘Shared what?’ ‘All I have. Which includes my body.