The Light and the Dark (16 page)

“She’s a very personable young woman,” said Lord Boscastle, approvingly. “We’d better have them over here, Helen.”

“I don’t think that would be at all suitable,” said Lady Muriel.

“Why not? I remember meeting her. Young Calvert’s got an eye for a pretty woman.”

“She is rather untravelled perhaps for tonight, my dear Hugh,” said Lady Boscastle.

“Have you just discovered that? I got on perfectly well with her,” said Lord Boscastle. He was annoyed. “And I regard Calvert as someone I know.”

Lady Boscastle, with heavy support from Lady Muriel, maintained her opposition. Lord Boscastle became nettled. One could feel the crystalline strength of Lady Boscastle’s will. In that marriage, I thought, she had had the upper hand all the way through. He had been jealous, she had gone her own way, she had never sacrificed that unscratchable diamond-hard will. Yet Lord Boscastle was accustomed to being the social arbiter. In the long run, even Lady Muriel deferred to his judgment on what could and could not be done. That night he was unusually persistent. Mainly because he did not mean to be deprived of a pretty girl’s company – but also he had a masculine sympathy with Roy’s enjoyments.

In the end, they agreed on a compromise rather in his favour. Roy and Rosalind were to be left to have dinner alone, but were to be invited to visit our table afterwards. Lady Boscastle wrote a note: it was like her that it should be delicately phrased. “My dear Roy, It is so nice, and such a pleasant surprise, to see you here tonight. Will you give us the pleasure of bringing your friend Miss Wykes to this table when you have finished your dinner? We are all anxious to wish you a happy new year.”

They came. Rosalind was overawed until she was monopolised for half-an-hour by Lord Boscastle. Afterwards I heard her talking clothes with Mrs Seymour. As the night went on, her eyes became brighter, more victorious, more resolved. She talked to everyone but Lady Muriel. She did not want the glorious night to end.

Roy did not show, perhaps he did not feel, a glimmer of triumph. He exerted himself to be his most gentle, teasing and affectionate with the other women, particularly with Lady Muriel.

Within a few hours of the party, I heard the rumour that Roy and Rosalind were engaged. It came first from Mrs Seymour, who had been driven in alone and marked me down across the square.

“I think it’s perfectly certain,” she said.

“Why do you think so?”

“I seem to remember something,” she said vaguely. “I seem to remember that young woman giving me to understand–”

Joan came in with her father later that morning, and asked me point-blank if I knew anything.

“Nothing at all,” I said.

“Are you being honest?” she said. She was suspicious, and yet as soon as I answered her face was lightened with relief.

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s likely?”

“I should have thought not.”

She looked at me with a troubled and hopeful smile.

Another member of the New Year’s party found it necessary to talk to me that morning, but on quite a different subject. Houston Eggar took me for a walk in the gardens, and there in the bright sunlight told me of an embarrassment about that day’s honours list. “You won’t have seen it yet, of course,” he said. “But they happen to have given me a little recognition. If these things come, they come.” But what had come, he felt, needed some knowledgeable explanation. Before he was appointed to Rome, he had been seconded for two years to another ministry. He considered, as an aside, that this had temporarily slowed down his promotion in the Foreign Office, but he assured me that it ought to pay in the long run. As a reward for this work, he was now being given a CBE: whereas anyone of his seniority in the Foreign Office would expect, in the ordinary course of things, to be getting near a CMG – “which has more cachet, needless to say,” said Houston Eggar. “You see, Eliot,” he went on earnestly, “to anyone who doesn’t know the background, this C of mine might seem like a slap in the face. Instead of being a nice little compliment. I’d be very much obliged if you’d explain the situation to the Boscastles. Don’t go out of your way, but if you get a chance you might just remove any misconceptions. I’ll do the same for you some day.”

Several more rumours about the engagement reached me during the next twenty-four hours, and I knew that Roy had heard what was bubbling round him. But I scarcely saw him; he did not eat a meal in our hotel; it was from someone else I learned that Rosalind had been invited out to the villa on January 3rd – but only for tea, apparently as another compromise between Lord and Lady Boscastle.

It was the day before, January 2nd, when Lady Muriel announced that she would make “tactful enquiries” of Roy himself. “I shall not embarrass him,” she said. “I shall merely use a little finesse.”

Lady Boscastle raised her lorgnette, but said nothing. We had met for tea at our usual place in the window of the Café de Paris; we were a little early, and Roy was expected.
The Times
of the day before had been delivered after lunch; Lady Muriel had studied it and made comments on the honours list, which Mrs Seymour was now reading through.

“Muriel,” she cried excitedly, “did you see that Houston has got a CBE?”

“No, Doris,” said Lady Muriel with finality. “I never read as low in the list as that.”

Roy joined us and made a hearty tea.

“I must say, Roy,” said Lady Muriel in due course, with heavy-footed casualness, “that you’re looking very well.”

It happened to be true. Roy smiled at her.

“So are you, Lady Mu,” he said demurely.

“Am I?” Lady Muriel was thrown out of her stride.

“I have never seen you look better,” Roy assured her. “Coming back to the scene of your conquests, isn’t it?”

“You’re a very naughty young man.” Lady Muriel gave her crowing laugh. Then she remembered her duty, and stiffened. “You’re looking very well, Roy,” she began again. “Have you by chance had any good news?”

“Any good news, Lady Mu?”

“Anything really exciting?”

Roy reflected.

“One of my investments has gone up three points since Christmas,” he said. “I wonder if it could be that?”

Lady Muriel plunged desperately.

“I suppose none of our friends are getting engaged just now, are they?”

“I expect they are,” said Roy. “But I haven’t seen
The Times
. There’s always a batch on New Year’s Day, isn’t there? I wonder why? Could I borrow
The Times
, Mrs Seymour?”

Under Lady Muriel’s baffled eyes, Roy worked down a column and a half of engagements. He took his time over it. There were nearly fifty couples in the paper; and the party at tea knew at least a third of them by name, and half-a-dozen personally.

“There you are, Lady Mu,”said Roy at last. “I’ve put a cross against two or three. Those are the ones you need to write to.”

Lady Muriel gave up.

“By the way,” Roy asked, “is anyone going to the ballet tonight?”

We all said no.

“I think we will go,” said Roy. “I think I should take Rosalind.”

Roy did not, however, find it pleasant to fend off the Master. Lady Muriel made her “tactful enquiries” on the Saturday afternoon; next morning, the Master, Roy and I went for a walk along the hill road. The Master used no finesse; he asked no questions with a double meaning: he walked briskly between us, upright and active as a young man, breathing confidential whispers about Cambridge acquaintances, but he let it be seen that he felt Roy’s silence was a denial of affection.

Roy was in a difficult position. For he was not cherishing a secret. He had not proposed to Rosalind. Yet it was awkward to contradict the rumour. For he guessed, as I had, that Rosalind had set it going herself.

He was not willing to put her to shame. He was too fond of women to romanticise them. He knew she was determined to marry him, and would, if she thought it useful, lie and cheat and steal until she brought it off. He did not think the worse of her. Nor did he think the worse of Lady Muriel because, if she could lie in ambush in the dark and cease to be a great lady, she would with relish have pulled Rosalind’s hair out by the roots. He was fond of them all. But for Rosalind he felt the special animal tenderness that comes from physical delight, and he would not consent to see her humiliated among those who hated her.

So there was nothing for it but to take her round Monte Carlo, dine with her each night, ignore all hints and questions, and go on as though the rumour did not exist.

But I did not believe for a minute that Rosalind would win: she had miscalculated completely if she thought those were the best tactics. Probably she knew that, whatever happened, he would not give her away before the Royces and the Boscastles. Down to a certain level, she understood him well. But below that, I thought, she must be living with a stranger, if she imagined that she could take him by storm.

We turned back down the hill. In the distance, down below the white patches of houses, the sea shone like a polished shield. I made an excuse and stayed behind, taking off a shoe, so that they could have a word together. I watched their faces turn to each other, their profiles sharp against the cloudless sky. The Master was talking, Roy listening, they were near together, their faces were softened by seriousness and intimacy. In profile Roy’s nose ran too long for beauty: the Master looked more regularly handsome, with trim clear lines of forehead, chin and mouth; his skin had been tinged a little by the January sun, and he seemed as healthy as Roy, and almost as young.

After we had seen his car drive away in the direction of Roquebrune, I said to Roy: “What did he ask you?”

“He didn’t ask me anything. But he told me something.” Roy was smiling, a little sadly.

“What?”

“He told me that, if ever I thought of getting married, I was to consider nothing but my own feelings. It was the only occasion in life when one needed to be absolutely selfish in one’s choice. Otherwise one brings misery to others as well as to oneself.”

Roy looked at me.

“It cost him an effort to say that,” he said. “It was brave of him.”

He added, as though off-handedly: “You know, old boy, if he had let himself go he could have had a high old time with the women. It’s almost not too late for him to start.”

Roy spoke with the deep and playful ease of a profound personal affection. For his relation with the Master had nothing of the strain that comes between a protégé and his patron – where all emotion is ambivalent, unless both parties are magnanimous beyond the human limits: if they are ordinary humans, there is the demand for gratitude on one side, resentment on the other, and those forces must drive them further apart. Roy’s feeling was different in kind. It was deep, it had nothing to do with their positions. It was more like a successful younger brother’s for an elder who has had a bad time. And underneath there was a strong current of loving envy; for, whatever had happened to the Master, his essential self had been untouched. He might regret that he had done little, he might be painfully lonely, but in his heart there was repose. Roy envied him, even that morning, when he was himself free of any shadow; in the dark nights Roy envied him passionately, above all for his simple, childish faith in God. He was cynical in his speech, sceptical in his human reflections, observant and disinterested: how had he kept that faith?

The Boscastle cars were busy that day, carrying out guests for lunch, bringing them back; and one called in the afternoon for Roy, Rosalind and me. Rosalind was spectacular in black and white.

“I’ve worn ten different outfits in four days,” she said. “Do you think this will get by?”

She was excited, full of zest, apprehensive but not too much so to enjoy herself. She exclaimed rapturously as we drove round the beautiful stretch of coast. It did not matter to her that it had been praised before. She thought it was romantically beautiful; she said so, and gasped with pleasure.

Both the dress and Rosalind “got by” with Lord Boscastle. Lady Boscastle was delicately polite, Lady Muriel gave what she regarded as a civil greeting; but Lord Boscastle was an obstinate man, and here was a decorative young woman asking only to sit at his feet and be impressed. He was happy to oblige. Her taste in dress might be bold, but she was incomparably better turned out than any of the women of his party, except his own wife. And each time he met her, he felt her admiration lapping round him like warm milk. He felt, as other men felt in her presence, a size larger than life.

He placed her in the chair next to his. Tea was brought in.

“I’m afraid I’m not much good at tea,” said Lord Boscastle to Rosalind, as though it were a very difficult game. “But I expect you are, aren’t you?” He pressed her to take some strawberry jam. “From my house,” he said. “We grow a few little things at my house, you know.”

Roy, sitting between Lady Muriel and Joan, was watching with the purest glee. It did not need his prompting that afternoon to send Lord Boscastle through his hoops.

“We have always grown a few things at my house,” said Lord Boscastle.

“Have you, Lord Boscastle?” said Rosalind.

They discussed the horticultural triumphs of the house for the past two hundred years, Lord Boscastle taking all the credit, Rosalind giving him all the applause.

Then he remembered a displeasing fact. “The trouble is,” he said to her, “that one never knows who is coming to live near one’s house nowadays. I heard from my steward only today that someone is going to squat himself down ten miles away. His name appears to be” – Lord Boscastle reached for a letter and held it at arm’s length – “Woolston. A certain Sir Arthur Woolston.”

He pronounced the name with such painful emphasis that Lady Muriel and the rest of us waited for his next words.

“I’m afraid I don’t know the fellow,” he said. “I think,” he added, in a tone of tired dismissal, “I think he must be some baronet or other.”

He stared across at his sister, and said: “I suppose you probably know him, Muriel.”