的人交谈，他用一种屈尊俯就的腔调跟他们说话。接着，话题一转，“那是新来的小园丁吗？”
“是的，莫瑞斯少爷。”
“乔治年龄太大了吗？”
“不是的，莫瑞斯少爷。他找到了一份更好的工作。”
“哦，你的意思是说，是他自己辞工的。”
“可不是嘛。”
“妈妈说，你嫌他年龄太大了，就把他辞掉了。”
“不是这么回事，莫瑞斯少爷。”
“这下子我那堆可怜的柴火就高兴了。”豪厄尔大婶说。莫瑞斯和原先那个园丁总是将柴火垛当游戏场。“那是我妈妈的柴火垛，不是你的。”莫瑞斯说罢，掉头进屋去了。尽管豪厄尔夫妇相互间假装对此耿耿于怀，其实他们并没有感到不快。他们做了一辈子仆人，喜欢自命不凡的主人。
“少爷已经蛮有派头儿啦，”他们对厨师说，“越来越像老爷了。”
应邀来吃晚饭的巴里夫妇有着同样的看法。巴里大夫是这家人的老朋友，或者说是邻居，对他们有一定的兴趣。谁也不会深切关注霍尔家族。他喜欢吉蒂一她有那么一股刚毅劲头——然而女孩们都已经上床了。事后他告诉自己的妻子，莫瑞斯也该待在床上。“在那儿结束他的一生。他会这样的，就像他的父亲一样。这种人到底有什么用呢？”
莫瑞斯终于勉勉强强地上了床，那间卧室一向使他害怕。整个晚上他都做出一个男人的样子，然而当他的母亲道晚安吻别他的时候，原来的感觉又回来了。是那面镜子在作怪。他并不介意照在镜子里的自己的脸，也不在乎天花板上映着自己的投影，然而他却怕天花板上自己那个投影映现在镜中。他把蜡烛挪开，以便拆散这种组合，随后又鼓起勇气将蜡烛放回原处，顿时又惊恐万状。他知道那究竟是怎么回事，它并没使他联想到任何可怕的事，但是他很害怕。最后，他扑灭蜡烛，跳进被窝里。他能忍受伸手不见五指的黑暗，但这间屋子有着比镜子还严重的缺点：面对着一盏街灯。有些夜晚运气好，灯光丝毫不令人惊恐地透过窗帘照射进来。然而有时头盖骨般的黑斑会落在家具上，他的心脏就怦怦地猛跳，他惊慌失措地躺着，其实全家人近在咫尺。
他睁开眼睛看看那些黑斑是否缩小了。这时他想起了乔治。心中那不可测的深处，不知何物在蠕动。他喃喃自语：“乔治，乔治。”乔治是谁呢？无足轻重的人——一个普普通通的仆人而已。妈妈、艾达和吉蒂比他重要多了。然而他毕竟太小，考虑不周。他甚至不曾意识到，当自己沉浸在悲哀中时，竟制服了心里的鬼怪，进入了梦乡。
Chapter 3
Sunnington was the next stage in Maurice's career.
He traversed it without attracting attention. He was not good at work, though better than he pretended, nor colos-sally good at games. If people noticed him they liked him, for he had a bright friendly face and responded to attention; but there were so many boys of his type—they formed the back-bone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra. He did the usual things—was kept in, once caned, rose from form to form on the classical side till he clung precariously to the sixth, and he became a house prefect, and later a school prefect and member of the first fifteen. Though clumsy, he had strength and physical pluck: at cricket he did not do so well. Having been bullied as a new boy, he bullied others when they seemed un-happy or weak, not because he was cruel but because it was the proper thing to do. In a word, he was a mediocre member of a mediocre school, and left a faint and favourable impression be-hind. "Hall? Wait a minute, which was Hall? Oh yes, I remem-ber; clean run enough."__
Beneath it all, he was bewildered. He had lost the precocious clearness of the child which transfigures and explains the uni-verse, offering answers of miraculous insight and beauty. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings . . ." But not out of the mouth of the boy of sixteen. Maurice forgot he had ever been sexless, and only realized in maturity how just and clear the
sensations of his earliest days must have been. He sank far below them now, for he was descending the Valley of the Shadow of Life. It lies between the lesser mountains and the greater, and without breathing its fogs no one can come through. He groped about in it longer than most boys.
Where all is obscure and unrealized the best similitude is a dream. Maurice had two dreams at school; they will interpret him.
In the first dream he felt very cross. He was playing football against a nondescript whose existence he resented. He made an effort and the nondescript turned into George, that garden boy. But he had to be careful or it would reappear. George headed down the field towards him, naked and jumping over the wood-stacks. "I shall go mad if he turns wrong now," said Maurice, and just as they collared this happened, and a brutal disappoint-ment woke him up. He did not connect it with Mr Ducie's homily, still less with his second dream, but he thought he was going to be ill, and afterwards that it was somehow a punish-ment for something.
The second dream is more difficult to convey. Nothing hap-pened. He scarcely saw a face, scarcely heard a voice say, "That is your friend," and then it was over, having filled him with beauty and taught him tenderness. He could die for such a friend, he would allow such a friend to die for him; they would make any sacrifice for each other, and count the world nothing, neither death nor distance nor crossness could part them, be-cause "this is my friend." Soon afterwards he was confirmed and tried to persuade himself that the frien