Maurice E. Forster (best novels for students TXT) 📖

"Mr Abrahams told me to copy my father, sir."

"Anything else?"

"I am never to do anything I should be ashamed to have mother see me do. No one can go wrong then, and the public school will be very different from this."

"Did Mr Abrahams say how?"

"All kinds of difficulties—more like the world."

"Did he tell you what the world is like?"

"No."

"Did you ask him?"

"No, sir."

"That wasn't very sensible of you, Hall. Clear things up. Mr Abrahams and I are here to answer your questions. What do you suppose the world—the world of grown-up people is like?"

"I can't tell. I'm a boy," he said, very sincerely. "Are they very treacherous, sir?"

Mr Ducie was amused and asked him what examples of treachery he had seen. He replied that grown-up people would not be unkind to boys, but were they not always cheating one another? Losing his schoolboy manner, he began to talk like a child, and became fanciful and amusing. Mr Ducie lay down on the sand to listen to him, lit his pipe, and looked up to the sky. The little watering-place where they lived was now far behind, the rest of the school away in front. The day was gray and windless, with little distinction between clouds and sun.

"You live with your mother, don't you?" he interrupted, seeing that the boy had gained confidence.

"Yes, sir."

"Have you any elder brothers?"

"No, sir—only Ada and Kitty."

"Any uncles?"

"No."

"So you don't know many men?"

"Mother keeps a coachman and George in the garden, but of course you mean gentlemen. Mother has three maid-servants to look after the house, but they are so idle that they will not mend Ada's stockings. Ada is my eldest little sister."

"How old are you?"

"Fourteen and three quarters."

"Well, you're an ignorant little beggar." They laughed. After a pause he said, "When I was your age, my father told me something that proved very useful and helped me a good deal." This was untrue: his father had never told him anything. But he needed a prelude to what he was going to say.

"Did he, sir?"

"Shall I tell you what it was?"

"Please, sir."

"I am going to talk to you for a few moments as if I were your father, Maurice! I shall call you by your real name." Then, very simply and kindly, he approached the mystery of sex. He spoke of male and female, created by God in the beginning in order that the earth might be peopled, and of the period when the male and female receive their powers. "You are just becoming a man now, Maurice; that is why I am telling you about this. It is not a thing that your mother can tell you, and you should not mention it to her nor to any lady, and if at your next school boys mention it to you, just shut them up; tell them you know. Have you heard about it before?"

"No, sir."

"Not a word?"

"No, sir."

Still smoking his pipe, Mr Ducie got up, and choosing a smooth piece of sand drew diagrams upon it with his walking-stick. "This will make it easier," he said to the boy, who watched dully: it bore no relation to his experiences. He was attentive, as

was natural when he was the only one in the class, and he knew that the subject was serious and related to his own body. But he could not himself relate it; it fell to pieces as soon as Mr Ducie put it together, like an impossible sum. In vain he tried. His torpid brain would not awake. Puberty was there, but not intelligence, and manhood was stealing on him, as it always must, in a trance. Useless to break in upon that trance. Useless to describe it, however scientifically and sympathetically. The boy assents and is dragged back into sleep, not to be enticed there before his hour.

Mr Ducie, whatever his science, was sympathetic. Indeed he was too sympathetic; he attributed cultivated feelings to Maurice, and did not realize that he must either understand nothing or be overwhelmed. "All this is rather a bother," he said, 'Taut one must get it over, one mustn't make a mystery of it. Then come the great things—Love, Life." He was fluent, having talked to boys in this way before, and he knew the kind of question they would ask. Maurice would not ask: he only said, "I see, I see, I see," and at first Mr Ducie feared he did not see. He examined him. The replies were satisfactory. They boy's memory was good and—so curious a fabric is the human—he even developed a spurious intelligence, a surface flicker to respond to the beaconing glow of the man's. In the end he did ask one or two questions about sex, and they were to the point. Mr Ducie was much pleased. "That's right," he said. "You need never be puzzled or bothered now."

Love and life still remained, and he touched on them as they strolled forward by the colourless sea. He spoke of the ideal man —chaste with asceticism. He sketched the glory of Woman. Engaged to be married himself, he grew more human, and his eyes coloured up behind the strong spectacles; his cheek flushed. To love a noble woman, to protect and serve her—this, he told the

little boy, was the crown of life. "You can't understand now, you will some day, and when you do understand it, remember the poor old pedagogue who put you on the track. It all hangs together—all—and God's in his heaven, All's right with the world. Male and female! Ah wonderful!"

"I think I shall not marry," remarked Maurice.

"This day ten years hence—I invite you and your wife to dinner with my wife and me. Will you accept?"

"Oh sir!" He smiled with pleasure.

"It's a bargain, then!" It was at all events a good joke to end with. Maurice was nattered and began to contemplate marriage. But while they were easing off Mr Ducie stopped, and held his cheek as though every