On reaching home he talked about Durham until the fact that he had a friend penetrated into the minds of his family. Ada wondered whether it was brother to a certain Miss Durham—not but what she was an only child—while Mrs Hall confused it with a don named Cumberland. Maurice was deeply wounded. One strong feeling arouses another, and a pro-found irritation against his womenkind set in. His relations with them hitherto had been trivial but stable, but it seemed iniqui-tous that anyone should mispronounce the name of the man who was more to him than all the world. Home emasculated every-thing.
It was the same with his atheism. No one felt as deeply as he expected. With the crudity of youth he drew his mother apart and said that he should always respect her religious prejudices and those of the girls, but that his own conscience permitted him to attend church no longer. She said it was a great misfor-tune.
I knew you would be upset. I cannot help it, mother dearest. I am made that way and it is no good arguing.
Your poor father always went to church.
I'm not my father.
Morrie, Morrie, what a thing to say.
Well, he isn't," said Kitty in her perky way. "Really, mother, come.
Kitty, dear, you here," cried Mrs Hall, feeling that disap-proval was due and unwilling to bestow it on her son. "We were talking about things not suited, and you are perfectly wrong be-sides, for Maurice is the image of his father—Dr Barry said so.
Well, Dr Barry doesn't go to church himself," said Maurice, falling into the family habit of talking all over the shop.
He is a most clever man," said Mrs Hall with finality, "and Mrs Barry's the same.
This slip of their mother's convulsed Ada and Kitty. They would not stop laughing at the idea of Mrs Barry's being a man, and Maurice's atheism was forgotten. He did not communicate on Easter Sunday, and supposed the row would come then, as in Durham's case. But no one took any notice, for the suburbs no longer exact Christianity. This disgusted him; it made him look at society with new eyes. Did society, while professing to be so moral and sensitive, really mind anything
He wrote often to Durham—long letters trying carefully to express shades of feeling. Durham made little of them and said so. His replies were equally long. Maurice never let them out of his pocket, changing them from suit to suit and even pinning them in his pyjamas when he went to bed. He would wake up and touch them and, watching the reflections from the street lamp, remember how he used to feel afraid as a little boy.
Episode of Gladys Olcott.
Miss Olcott was one of their infrequent guests. She had been good to Mrs Hall and Ada in some hydro, and, receiving an in-vitation, had followed it up. She was charming—at least the women said so, and male callers told the son of the house he was a lucky dog. He laughed, they laughed, and having ignored her at first he took to paying her attentions.
Now Maurice, though he did not know it, had become an at-tractive young man. Much exercise had tamed his clumsiness. He was heavy but alert, and his face seemed following the ex-ample of his body. Mrs Hall put it down to his moustache— "Maurice's moustache will be the making of him"—a remark more profound than she realized. Certainly the little black line of it did pull his face together, and show up his teeth when he smiled, and his clothes suited him also: by Durham's advice he kept to flannel trousers, even on Sunday.
He turned his smile on Miss Olcott—it seemed the proper thing to do. She responded. He put his muscles at her service by taking her out in his new side-car. He sprawled at her feet. Find-ing she smoked, he persuaded her to stop behind with him in the dining-room and to look between his eyes. Blue vapour quivered and shredded and built dissolving walls, and Maurice's thoughts voyaged with it, to vanish as soon as a window was opened for fresh air. He saw that she was pleased, and his family, servants and all, intrigued; he determined to go further.
Something went wrong at once. Maurice paid her compli-ments, said that her hair etc. was ripping. She tried to stop him, but he was insensitive, and did not know that he had annoyed her. He had read that girls always pretended to stop men who complimented them. He haunted her. When she excused herself from riding with him on the last day he played the domineering male. She was his guest, she came, and having taken her to some scenery that he considered romantic he pressed her little hand between his own.
It was not that Miss Olcott objected to having her hand pressed. Others had done it and Maurice could have done it had he guessed how. But she knew something was wrong. His touch revolted her. It was a corpse's. Springing up she cried, "Mr Hall, don't be silly. I meandon't be silly. I am not saying it to make you sillier.
Miss Olcott—Gladys—I'd rather die than offend—" growled the boy, trying to keep it up.
I must go back by train," she said, crying a little. "I must, I'm awfully sorry." She arrived home before him with a sensible little story about a headache and dust in her eyes, but his family also knew that something had gone wrong.
Except for this episode the vac passed pleasantly. Maurice did some reading, following his friend's advice rather than his tutor's, and he asserted in one or two ways his belief that he was grown up. At his instigation his mother dismissed the Howells who had long paralyzed the outdoor department, and set up a motor-car instead of a carriage. Everyone was impressed, in-cluding the Howells. He also called upon his father's old partner. He had inherited some business aptitude and some money, and it was settled that when he left Cambridge he should enter the firm as an unauthorized clerk; Hill and Hall, Stock Brokers. Maurice was stepping into the niche that England had prepared for him.