Lazy, playing the spoiled brat: “I like to be too much.”
“Ah, I know you do, sir.”
“Don’t you ‘sir’ me.” A swipe of touch across soft, flat belly, with a long-fingered hand.
“What do you regret, then, Maurice?”
“Your letter. Your first letter. Burned.”
“Ah, well. You was tryin’ to get rid of me.” His arms tighten as he says it. It means: as if you could.
“No.” Maurice raises his head, looking deep into soft brown eyes. “No. Not you. The – the tendency. I – I couldn’t, in the end. But I – let him take the letter, and he burned it.”
“Never should’ve gone to him at all,” glowers Alec, and he’s not really angry; or not at Maurice, anyway. “Makin’ you think it a thing to be cured. As if – are we not a fine thing?”
“We are.” Maurice’s voice is deep, and resonant. It vibrates in his own chest and through into Alec’s. “We have made it real.”
“Real. That it is, my dear.” He always says it with an edge of Maurice’s accent, and a smile; Maurice feels the smile against his hair. “Real, and logs to be chopped, and veg to dig out. I’m getting up.”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? Not yet? But s–”
Another swipe of a hand low across his belly, a skim of fingernails over his ribs in just the way that makes him –
“– Maurice, ah, no, you b–”
“I’ll help you. We’ll get it done in half the time.”
“You’re a bad influence upon me, Mr Hall.”
“That, no doubt, is true. And you upon me.”
“Upon you – oh, and there’s that pretty blush –”
“Beast.”
“Come ‘ere.”
*
The next morning, he finds it: an envelope, rumpled, reused, addressed in rough beloved writing to ‘Mr Hall’.
Mr Maurice. Dear Sir. Since the cricket match I have wanted nothing more than to place my arms around you and share with you one more time, which would be sweeter than I can say. I leave by the SS Normannia August 29th and I must share with you again before I go. Come to the boathouse, Penge, Sir without fail.
Yours with love,
A. Scudder
(gamekeeper to C. Durham Esq.)
*
“You did not send me your love,” he says, that night. They have not spoken about the letter, not during dinner, or the evening chores.
“You know that, do you, Maurice?” asks Alec, sounding stern and smiling sweetly, stoking the fire.
“Not in the letter.”
“Not written down, mebbe.” Alec’s gaze slides away, suddenly intent on the fire, the poker, brushing up the ash.
The silence crackles, logs snapping, and the fire shifts and settles.
“He experiences two suicidal daydreams that oddly contrast with each other. In the first of the two scenes, after Caroline’s temporary departure, he places a gun in his mouth …
He does not, however, commit suicide at that time. His second suicidal reverie is after a failed attempt to seduce a woman, the local society reporter. He believes that as a result of his behavior, and the community’s sympathy for Caroline, “no girl in Gibbsville—worth having—would risk the loss of reputation which would be her punishment for getting herself identified with him”. He believes that even if he divorces Caroline he is destined to spend the rest of his life hearing …
After this and other indications that he had misgauged his social status, he commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, running his car in a closed garage.” (x)
Green Violin Bow 