It was absolutely quiet now, and absolutely dark. Maurice walked to and fro on the hallowed grass, himself noiseless, his heart glowing. The rest of him fell asleep, bit by bit, and first of all his brain, his weakest organ. His body followed, then his feet carried him upstairs to escape the dawn. But his heart had lit never to be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.
Next morning he was calmer. He had a cold for one thing, the rain having soaked him unnoticed, and for another he had overslept to the extent of missing a chapel and two lectures. It was impossible to get his life straight. After lunch he changed for football, and being in good time flung himself on his sofa to sleep till tea. But he was not hungry. Refusing an invitation, he strolled out into the town and, meeting a Turkish bath, had one. It cured his cold, but made him late for another lecture. When hall came, he felt he could not face the mass of Old Sunningtonians, and, though he had not signed off, absented himself, and dined alone at the Union. He saw Risley there, but with indifference. Then the evening began again, and he found to his surprise that he was very clear-headed, and could do six hours' work in three. He went to bed at his usual time, and woke up healthy and very happy. Some instinct, deep below his consciousness, had advised him to let Durham and his thoughts about Durham have a twenty-four-hours' rest.
They began to see a little of one another. Durham asked him to lunch, and Maurice asked him back, but not too soon. A caution alien to his nature was at work. He had always been cautious pettily, but this was on a large scale. He became alert, and all his actions that October term might be described in the language of battle. He would not venture on to difficult ground. He spied out Durham's weaknesses as well as his strength. And above all he exercised and cleaned his powers.
If obliged to ask himself, "What's all this?" he would have replied, "Durham is another of those boys in whom I was interested at school," but he was obliged to ask nothing, and merely went ahead with his mouth and his mind shut. Each day with its contradictions slipped into the abyss, and he knew that he was gaining ground. Nothing else mattered. If he worked well and was nice socially, it was only a by-product, to which he had devoted no care. To ascend, to stretch a hand up the mountainside until a hand catches it, was the end for which he had been bom. He forgot the hysteria of his first night and his stranger recovery. They were steps which he kicked behind him. He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durham didn't dislike him, he was sure. That was all he wanted. One thing at a time. He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to.
Next term they were intimate at once. "Hall, I nearly wrote a letter to you in the vac," said Durham, plunging into a conversation.
"That so?"
"But an awful screed. I'd been having a rotten time."
His voice was not very serious, and Maurice said, "What went wrong? Couldn't you keep down the Christmas pudding?"
It presently appeared that the pudding was allegorical; there had been a big family row.
"I don't know what you'll say — I'd rather like your opinion on what happened if it doesn't bore you."
"Not a bit," said Maurice.
"We've had a bust up on the religious question."
At that moment they were interrupted by Chapman.
"I'm sorry, we're fixing something," Maurice told him.
Chapman withdrew.
"You needn't have done that, any time would do for my rot," Durham protested. He went on more earnestly.
"Hall, I don't want to worry you with my beliefs, or rather with their absence, but to explain the situation I must just tell you that I'm unorthodox. I'm not a Christian."
Maurice held unorthodoxy to be bad form and had remarked last term in a college debate that if a man had doubts he might have the grace to keep them to himself. But he only said to Durham that it was a difficult question and a wide one.
"I know — it isn't about that. Leave it aside." He looked for a little into the fire. "It is about the way my mother took it. I told her six months ago — in the summer — and she didn't mind. She made some foolish joke, as she does, but that was all. It just passed over. I was thankful, for it had been on my mind for years. I had never believed since I found something that did me better, quite as a kid, and when I came to know Risley and his crew it seemed imperative to speak out. You know what a point they make of that — it's really their main point. So I spoke out. She said, 'Oh yes, you'll be wiser when you are as old as me': the mildest form of the thing conceivable, and I went away rejoicing. Now it's all come up again."
"Why?"
"Why? On account of Christmas. I didn't want to communicate. You're supposed to receive it three times a year —"
"Yes, I know. Holy Communion."
" — and at Christmas it came round. I said I wouldn't. Mother wheedled me in a way quite unlike her, asked me to do it this once to please her — then got cross, said I would damage her reputation as well as my own — we're the local squires and the neighbourhood's uncivilized. But what I couldn't stand was the end. She said I was wicked. I could have honoured her if she had said that six months before, but now! now to drag in holy words like wickedness and goodness in order to make me do what I disbelieved. I told her I have my own communions. If I went to them as you and the girls are doing to yours my gods would kill me! I suppose that was too strong."
Maurice, not well understanding, said, "So did you go?"
"Where?"
"To the church."
Durham sprang up. His face was disgusted. Then he bit his lip and began to smile.
"No, I didn't go to church, Hall. I thought that was plain."
"I'm sorry — I wish you'd sit down. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm rather slow at catching."
Durham squatted on the rug close to Maurice's chair. "Have you known Chapman long?" he asked after a pause.
"Here and at school, five years."
"Oh." He seemed to reflect. "Give me a cigarette. Put it in my mouth. Thanks." Maurice supposed the talk was over, but after the swirl he went on. "You see — you mentioned you had a mother and two sisters, which is exactly my own allowance, and all through the row I was wondering what you would have done in my position."
"Your mother must be very different to mine."
"What is yours like?"
"She never makes a row about anything."
"Because you've never yet done anything she wouldn't approve, I expect — and never will."
"Oh no, she wouldn't fag herself."
"You can't tell, Hall, especially with women. I'm sick with her. That's my real trouble that I want your help about."
"She'll come round."
"Exactly, my dear chap, but shall I? I must have been pretending to like her. This row has shattered my he. I did think I had stopped building lies. I despise her character, I am disgusted with her. There, I have told you what no one else in the world knows."
Maurice clenched his fist and hit Durham lightly on the head with it. "Hard luck," he breathed.
"Tell me about your home life."
"There's nothing to tell. We just go on."
"Lucky devils."
"Oh, I don't know. Are you ragging, or was your vac really beastly, Durham?"
"Absolute Hell, misery and Hell."
Maurice's fist unclenched to reform with a handful of hair in its grasp.
"Waou, that hurts!" cried the other joyously.
"What did your sisters say about Holy Communion?"
"One's married a clerg — No, that hurts."
"Absolute Hell, eh?"
"Hall, I never knew you were a fool — " he possessed himself of Maurice's hand — "and the other's engaged to Archibald London, Esquire, of the — Waou! Ee! Shut up, I'm going." He fell between Maurice's knees.
"Well, why don't you go if you're going?"