The Light and the Dark

by C. P. Snow

  I turned my thoughts away from Roy and Joan, and then they tormented me again. Would she see that he was acting? Would she feel the desperate effort of pretence? Did she know that tomorrow he would be half-deranged?

  At last I saw her pass under my window again. She was alone. Her face was pallid, heavy and set, and her feet were dragging.

  29: Realism at a Cricket Match

  Lady Muriel’s observations on Roy might once have amused me. I should like to have told him that, for the first occasion since we met her, she had noticed something she had not been told; and he would have laughed lovingly at her obtuseness, her clumsiness, the pent-in power of her stumbling, hobbled feelings.

  In fact, that afternoon she had made me more alarmed. Roy must be visibly worse than I imagined. Living by his side day after day, I had become acclimatised to much; if one lives in the hourly presence of any kind of suffering, one grows hardened to it in time. I knew that too well, not only from him. It is those who are closest and dearest who see a fatal transformation last of all.

  I reassured myself a little. Apart from Arthur Brown, no one in the college seemed to have detected anything unusual in Roy’s state that summer. He dined in hall two or three nights a week, and, except for his views on Germany, passed under their eyes without evoking any special interest. For some reason he stayed preternaturally silent when he dined (I once taxed him with it, and he whispered “lanthanine is the word for me”), but nevertheless it was curious they should observe so little. They were, of course, more used than most men to occasional displays of extreme eccentricity; most of our society, like any other college at this period, were comfortable, respectable, solid middle-aged men, but they had learned to put up with one or two who had grown grotesquely askew. It was part of the secure, confident air.

  After Lady Muriel talked to me, I was preparing myself for a disaster. I tried to steady myself by facing it in the cold merciless light of early morning: this will be indescribably worse than what has happened before, this will be sheer disaster. I might have to accept any horror. What I feared and expected most was an outburst about Germany and the war – a speech in public, a letter to the press, a public avowal of his feeling for the Reich. I feared it most for selfish reasons – at that period, such an outburst would be an excruciating ordeal for me.

  After he sent Joan away, he was sunk in the abyss of depression. But he did nothing. The day that the Boscastles arrived, he even sustained with Lord Boscastle a level, realistic and sober conversation about the coming war.

  The Boscastles had invited us to lunch, and Lady Muriel and Humphrey were there as well.

  Through the beginning of the meal Lord Boscastle and Roy did all the talking. They found themselves in a strong and sudden sympathy about the prospect of war. They could see no way out, and they were full of a revulsion almost physical in its violence. Lady Muriel looked startled that men should talk so frankly about the miseries of war: but she knew that her brother had been decorated in the last war, and it would never even have occurred to her that men would not fight bravely if it was their duty.

  “It will be frightful,” said Roy. Throughout he had spoken moderately and sensibly; he had said no more than many men were saying; he had remarked quietly that he did not know his own courage – it might be adequate, he could not tell.

  “It will be frightful.” Lord Boscastle echoed the phrase. And I saw his eyes leave Roy and turn with clouded, passionate anxiety upon his son. Humphrey Bevill was still good-looking in his frail, girlish way; his skin was pink, smooth and clear; he had his father’s beaky nose, which somehow did not detract from his delicacy. His eyes were bright china blue, like his mother’s. He had led a disreputable life in Cambridge. He had genuine artistic feeling without, so far as I could discover, a trace of talent.

  Lord Boscastle stared at his son with anxiety and longing; for Lord Boscastle could not restrain his strong instinctive devotion, and for him war meant nothing more nor less than danger to his beloved son.

  I watched Lady Boscastle mount her lorgnette and regard them both, with a faint, charming, contemptuous, coolly affectionate quiver on her lips.

  Then Lord Boscastle took refuge in his own peculiar brand of stoicism. He asked Humphrey to show him again the photograph of that year’s Athenaeum. This bore no relation to the Athenaeum where I had tea with the old Master, the London club of successful professional men. The Cambridge Athenaeum was the ultra-fashionable élite of the most fashionable club for the gilded youth; it was limited to twenty, and on the photograph of twenty youthful, and mainly titled, faces Lord Boscastle cast a scornful and dismissive eye.

  At any rate, he appeared to feel, there was still time to reject these absurd pretensions to be classed among their betters. Several of them had names much more illustrious than that of Bevill; but it took more than centuries of distinction to escape Lord Boscastle’s jehovianic strictures that afternoon. “Who is this boy, Humphrey? I’m afraid I can’t for the life of me remember his name.” He was told “Lord Arthur–” “Oh, perhaps that accounts for it, should you have thought? They have never really quite managed to recover from their obscurity, should you think they have?” He pointed with elaborate distaste to another youth. “Incorrigibly parvenu, I should have said. With a certain primitive cunning in financial matters. Such as they showed when they fleeced my great-grandfather.”

  Lord Boscastle placed the photograph a long way off along the table, as though he might get a less displeasing view.

  “Not a very distinguished collection, I’m afraid, Humphrey. I suppose it was quite necessary for you to join them? I know it’s always easier to take the course of least resistance. I confess that I made concessions most of my life, but I think it’s probably a mistake for us to do so, shouldn’t you have thought?”

  The Boscastles, Lady Muriel and I were all dining with Roy the following night. I did not see any more of him for the rest of that day, and next morning Bidwell brought me no news. Bidwell was, however, full of the preparations for the dinner. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It will be a bit like the old times. Mr Calvert is the only gentleman who makes me think back to the old times, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. It will be a pleasure to wait on you tonight, I don’t mind telling you, sir.”

  So far as I could tell, Roy was keeping to his rooms all day. I hesitated about intruding on him; in the end, I went down to Fenner’s for a few hours’escape. It was the Free Foresters’match. Though it was pleasant to chat and sit in the sunshine, there was nothing noteworthy about the play. Two vigorous ex-blues, neither of them batsmen of real class, were clumping the ball hard to extra cover. If one knew the game, one could immerse oneself in points of detail. There could not have been a more peaceful afternoon.

  Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “They told me I should find you here, but I didn’t really think I should.” The voice had a dying fall; I looked round and saw the smile on Rosalind’s face, diffident, pathetic, impudent. I apologised to my companion, and walked with Rosalind round the ground.

  “I wonder if I could beg a cup of tea?” she said.

  I gave her tea in the pavilion; with the hearty appetite that I remembered, she munched several of the cricketers’ buns. She talked about herself and me, not yet of Roy. Her manner was still humorously plaintive, as though she were ill-used, but she had become more insistent and certain of herself. Her determination was not so far below the surface now. She had been successful in her job, and had schemed effectively for a better one. She was making a good many hundreds a year. Her eyes were not round enough, her voice not enough diminuendo, to conceal as effectively as they used that she was a shrewd and able woman. And there was another development, minor but curious. She was still prudish in her speech, still prudish when her eyes gave a shameless hint of lovemaking – but she had become remarkably profane.

  She looked round the pavilion, and said: “We can’t very well talk here, can we?”

  Which, since several of the Fr
ee Foresters’ team were almost touching us, seemed clear. I took her to a couple of seats in the corner of the ground: on the way, Rosalind said: “I know I oughtn’t to have interrupted you, really. But it is a long time since I saw you, Lewis, isn’t it? Did you realise it, I very nearly tracked you down that day at Boscastle?”

  “It’s a good job you didn’t,” I said. “Lady Muriel was just about ready to take a stick to you.”

  Rosalind swore cheerfully and grinned.

  “She’s in Cambridge now, by the way,” I said.

  “I knew that.”

  “You’d better be careful. If you mean to marry Ralph Udal.”

  “Of course I mean to marry him. Why ever do you say such horrid things?” She opened her eyes wide.

  “Come off it,” I said, copying Roy’s phrase. It was years since I had been her confidant, but at a stroke we had gone back to the old terms.

  “No, I shall marry Ralph, really I shall. Mind you, I’m not really in love with him. I don’t think I shall ever really fall in love again. I’m not sure that I want to. It’s pretty bloody, being too much in love, isn’t it? No, I shall settle down with Ralph all right. You just won’t know me as the vicar’s wife.”

  “That’s true,” I said, and Rosalind looked ill-used.

  We had just sat down under one of the chestnut trees.

  “I shall settle down so that you wouldn’t believe it,” said Rosalind. “But I’m not going to fool myself. After old Roy, other men seem just a tiny little bit dull. It stands to sense that I should want to see the old thing now and again.”

  “It’s dangerous,” I said.

  “I’m not so bad at covering up my traces when I want to,” said Rosalind, who was only willing to think of practical dangers.

  She asked, with a glow of triumph: “Do you think I oughtn’t to have come? The old thing asked me to look him up. When he wrote about me and Ralph. And he did seem rather pleased to see me last night. I really think he was a bit pleased to see me.”

  She laid her hand on my arm, and said, half-guiltily, half-provocatively: “Anyway, he asked me to go to a ball with him tonight.”

  “Are you going?”

  “What do you think? It’s all right, I’ll see that the old gorgon doesn’t find out. I’m not going to have her exploding down in Boscastle. I won’t have Ralph upset. After all,” she grinned at me, “a husband in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

  She and Roy had arranged to go to a ball at one of the smaller colleges, where none of us had close friends. I warned her that it was still a risk.

  She pursed her lips. “Why do you want to stop us?” she said. “You know it might take the old thing out of himself. He’s going through one of his bad patches, isn’t he? It will do him good to have a night on the tiles.”

  I could not prevent myself laughing. Under the chestnut, an expensive lingering scent pervaded the hot afternoon. There was a bead of moisture on her upper lip, but her hair was swept up in a new, a rakish, a startling Empire coiffure. I asked when she had had time to equip herself like the Queen of the May.

  “When do you think?” said Rosalind with lurking satisfaction. “I went up to town first thing this morning and told my hairdresser that she’d got to do her damnedest. The idiot knows me, of course, and when she’d finished she said with a soppy smile that she hoped my fiancé would like it. I nearly asked her why she thought I should care what my fiancé thinks of it. It’s what my young man thinks of it that I’m interested in.”

  What was going through her head, I wondered, as I walked back across Parker’s Piece? She was reckless, but she was also practical. If need be, she would marry Ralph Udal without much heartbreak and without repining. But need it be? I was ready to bet that, in the last few hours, she had asked herself that question. I should be surprised if she was in a hurry to fix the date of her wedding.

  As I was dressing for dinner, Roy threw open my bedroom door. His white tie was accurately tied, his hair smooth, but I was thrown into alarm at the sight of him. His eyes were lit up.

  I was frightened, but in a few minutes I discovered that this had been only a minor outrage. It came as a respite. I even laughed from relief when I found how he had broken out. But I felt that he was on the edge of sheer catastrophe. It could not be far away: perhaps only a few hours. His smile was brilliant, but frantic and bitter; his voice was louder than usual, and a laugh rang out with reedy harshness. The laugh made my pulses throb in tense dismay. This fearful excitement must break soon.

  Yet his actions that afternoon were like hitting out at random, and would not do much harm. They had been set off by an unexpected provocation. The little book on the heresies, by Vernon Royce and R C E Calvert, had been published at last, early in the summer. Since Lyall’s death, Roy’s reputation had increased sharply in English academic circles, owing to the indefatigable herald-like praise by Colonel Foulkes, who was now quite unhampered. But the heresy book had been received grudgingly and bleakly; most of the academic critics seemed to relish dismissing Royce now that he was dead. That morning Roy had read a few sentences about the book in the Journal of Theological Studies: “…Mr Calvert is becoming recognised as a scholar of great power and penetration. But there is little sign of those qualities in this book’s treatment of a subject which requires the most profound knowledge of the sources and origins of religious belief and its perversions. From internal evidence, it is not overdifficult to attribute most of the insufficiently thought-out chapters to the late Mr Royce, who, in all his writings on comparative religion, never revealed the necessary imagination to picture the religious experience of others nor the patient and detailed scholarship which might have given value to his work in the absence of the imaginative gifts…”

  Roy was savagely and fantastically angry. He had sent off letters of which he showed me copies. They were in the Housmanish language of scholarly controversy, bitter, rude, and violent – one to the editor asking why he permitted a man “ignorant, unteachable, stupid, and corrupt” to write in his journal, and one to the reviewer himself. The reviewer was a professor at Oxford, and to him Roy had written: “I have before me your witty review. You are either too old to read: or too venal to see honestly. You attribute some chapters to my collaborator and you have the effrontery to impugn the accuracy of that work, and so malign the reputation of a better man than yourself. I wrote those chapters; I am a scholar; that you failed to see the chapters were precise is enough to unfit you for such tasks as reading proofs. If you are not yet steeped in your love of damaging others you will be so abashed that you will not write scurrilities about Royce again. You should state publicly that you were wrong, and that you stand guilty of incompetence, self-righteousness and malice.”

  Roy was maddened that they should still decry Royce. With the desperate clarity which visited him in his worst hours, he saw them gloating comfortably, solidly, stuffed with their own rectitude, feeling a warm comfortable self-important satisfaction that Royce had never come off, could not even come off after his death: he saw them saying in public what a pity it was that Royce was not more gifted, how they wanted so earnestly to praise him, how only duty and conscience obliged them so reluctantly to tell the truth. He saw the gloating on solid good-natured faces.

  As we walked through the court to his dinner party, he broke out in a clear, passionate tone: “All men are swine.”

  He added, but still without acceptance, charity, or rest: “The only wonder is, the decent things they manage to do now and then. They show a dash of something better, once or twice in their lives. I don’t know how they do it – when I see what we are really like.”

  30: Waiting at Night

  The desks in Roy’s sitting-room had been pushed round the wall, where one noticed afresh their strange shapes and colours. In the middle, the table had been laid for eight – laid with five glasses at each place and a tremendous bowl of orchids in the middle. It was not often Roy indulged in the apolaustic; he used to chuckle even at the sub
dued, comfortable, opulent display of Arthur Brown’s claret parties; extravagant meals were not in Roy’s style, they contained for him something irresistibly comic, a hint of Trimalchio. But that night he was for once giving one himself. Decanters of burgundy and claret stood chambering in a corner of the room; the cork of a champagne bottle protruded from a bucket; on a small table were spread out plates of fruit, marrons glacés, petits fours, cold savouries for aperitifs and after-tastes.

  The person who enjoyed it all most was undoubtedly Bidwell. He took it upon himself to announce the guests; the first we knew of this new act was when Bidwell threw open the door, decorous and rubicund, the perfect servant, and proclaimed with quiet but ringing satisfaction: “Lady Muriel Royce!”

  And then, slightly less vigorously (for Bidwell needed a title to move him to his most sonorous): “Mrs Seymour!”

  “Mrs Houston Eggar!”

  Since Lady Muriel left the Lodge, I had escaped my old dinner-long conversations with Mrs Seymour; in the midst of despondency, Roy had been able to think out that joke; it was time to see that she pestered me again. Before they came in, he had been talking to me with his fierce, frightening excitement. As he greeted her, he was enough himself to give me a glance, sidelong and mocking.

  I attached myself to Mrs Eggar, whom I had only met once before. Eggar had sent her back from Berlin with her baby, and she was staying with Mrs Seymour for the summer. She was a pretty young woman with a beautiful skin and eyes easily amused, but a thin, tight, pinched-in mouth. She had considerable poise, and often seemed to be laughing to herself. I found her rather attractive, somewhat to my annoyance, for she was obstinate, self-satisfied, vain and narrow, far less amiable than her pushing, humble, masterful husband.