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.{35}
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 fastened up. Trinity men were around him—all of enormous intellect and culture. Maurice’s set had laughed at Trinity, but they could not ignore its disdainful radiance, or deny the superiority it scarcely troubles to affirm. He had come to it without their knowledge, humbly, to ask its help. His witty speech faded in its atmosphere; and his heart beat violently. He was ashamed and afraid.
Risley’s rooms were at the end of a short passage; which since it contained no obstacle was unlighted, and visitors slid along the wall until they hit the door. Maurice hit it sooner than he expected—a most awful whack—and exclaimed “Oh damnation” loudly, while the panels quivered.
“Come in,” said a voice. Disappointment awaited him. The speaker was a man of his own college, by name Durham. Risley was out.
“Do you want Mr Risley? Hullo, Hall!”
“Hullo! Where’s Risley?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll go.”
“Are you going back into college?” asked Durham without looking up: he was kneeling over a castle of pianola records on the floor.
“I suppose so, as he isn’t here. It wasn’t anything particular.”
“Wait a sec, and I’ll come too. I’m sorting out the Pathetic Symphony.{36}”
Maurice examined Risley’s room and wondered what would have been said in it, and then sat on the table and looked at Durham. He was a small man—very small—with simple manners and a fair face, which had flushed when Maurice blundered in. In the college he had a reputation for brains and also for exclusiveness. Almost the only thing Maurice had heard about him was that he “went out too much”, and this meeting in Trinity confirmed it.
“I can’t find the March,” he said. “Sorry.”
“All right.”
“I’m borrowing them to play on Fetherstonhaugh’s pianola.”
