The Light and the Dark (19 page)

Most people in the college thought it was a mistake to lie to the Master. Round the table in the combination room there were arguments whether he should or should not have been told the truth. The day I went to the Lodge, I heard Joan disagree violently with her mother.

But Lady Muriel, even if all thought her wrong, had taken her decision and stood her ground. When he was demonstrably worse, when he could no longer think he would get better, he would have to be told. Meanwhile he would get a few weeks of hope and peace. It would be the last comfort he would enjoy while he was alive. Whatever they said, she would give it to him. Her daughter passionately protested. If he could choose, cried Joan, there was no doubt what he would say.

“I am positive that we are doing right,” said Lady Muriel. Her voice was firm and unyielding. There was grandeur in her bold eyes, her erect head, her stiff back.

Roy returned from Berlin a couple of days later. He had heard the news before he ran up my stairs, but he was looking well and composed. It was too late to see the Master that night, but he arranged to visit him the next afternoon, and for us both to have tea with Lady Muriel.

So next day I went over to the Lodge alone, and was shown into the empty drawing-room. I stood by the window. Snow had lain on the court for days, and, though it was thawing, the ground still gleamed white against the sombre dusk. The sky was heavy with dense grey clouds. The court was empty, it was still the depth of the vacation, no lights shone from the windows. In the drawing-room there was no light yet except the roaring fire.

Roy joined me there. His face was stricken. “This is dreadful,” he said.

“What did he talk about?”

“The little book on the heresies which we’re to work at in a year or two. After my liturgy is safely out.”

“I know,” I said.

“There was a time,” said Roy, “when I should have jumped at any excuse for getting out of that little book.”

“You invented several good reasons.”

“Just so. Now I shall do it in memory of him.”

I doubted whether I should ever be able to dissuade him. He would do it very well, but not superbly; it would not suit him; as a scholar his gifts were, as the mathematicians say, deep, sharp, and narrow; this kind of broad commentary was not at all in his line. People would suspect that he was losing his scholar’s judgment.

“I’d expected a good deal,” said Roy. “But it is dreadful. Much worse than anyone could guess.”

Lady Muriel threw open the door and switched on the lights. “Good afternoon, Roy,” she said. “I’m very glad you’ve come to see us. It’s so long since you were here. Good afternoon, Mr Eliot.”

Roy went to her, took her hand in his. “I’ve been talking to the Master, you know,” he said. “It’s dreadful to have to pretend, isn’t it? I wish you’d been spared that decision, Lady Mu. No one could have known what to do.”

He alone could have spoken to her so. He alone would take it for granted that she was puzzled and dismayed.

“It was not easy, but–”

“No one could help you. And you’d have liked help, wouldn’t you? Everyone would.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

She was embarrassed, flustered, choked like one unused to crying: soon Roy got her sitting beside him on the sofa, and helped her to tea. She smiled at him, her bold eyes misted and bloodshot.

“I should be filling your cup. In my own drawing-room.”

Roy smiled. “You may, the next time I come.”

She gripped hold of her drawing-room manner – for my benefit, perhaps. Her neck straightened, she made a brave attempt to talk of Roy’s journey from Berlin. He told her that he had had to sleep sitting up in a crowded carriage.

“How could you?” cried Lady Muriel. “I couldn’t bear the thought of being watched when I was asleep.”

“Why not, Lady Mu?”

“One wouldn’t know how one was looking before strangers. One couldn’t control oneself.”

He glanced at her: in a second, her face broke, and she smiled back.

Soon afterwards Joan came into the room. She walked in with her determined, gawky stride: then she saw Roy, and her whole bearing changed. She seemed to shiver. For an instant she went stiff. She came towards him, and he jumped up and welcomed her. He said a word about her father; she looked at him steadily, shook her head, deliberately put it aside and went on to argue with him over living in Germany.

“Don’t you feel pressed down? You must feel that it’s a relief to get to the frontier. I felt it very strongly–”

“The Dutch porters have no necks,” said Roy. He disliked arguments, particularly among intellectual persons.

“Seriously–”

“Seriously–” he mimicked her exactly. She flushed, and then gave her unexpected charming laugh.

“You can’t get away with it by parlour tricks,” she said. “In a police state you’re bound to feel a constant friction, anyone is. And–”

“In any sort of state,” he said, “most lives of most people are much the same.”

“I deny that,” said Joan.

“They’ve got their married lives, they’ve got their children, they’ve got their hobbies. They’ve got their work.”

“
Your
work wouldn’t be affected.” She seized the chance to talk about Roy himself. “But you’re an unusual man. Your work could go on just the same – in the moon. Imagine that you were a writer, or a civil servant, or a parson, or a lawyer, in Berlin now. Do you deny that the police state would make a difference? You must agree.”

“Just so,” said Roy, giving in to evade the argument. “Just so.”

Both women smiled at him tenderly. They were always amused by the odd affirmative, which seemed so out of keeping. Joan’s tenderness was full of a love deep and clear-eyed for so young a woman.

Roy returned to bantering with Lady Muriel. He was out to give them some relief but he was happy with them, and it was all light and unpretending. He told her of some Junker acquaintances in Berlin, the von Heims. “They reminded me of you so much, Lady Mu.”

“Why ever was that?”

“The Gräfin spent most of her time reading Gotha,” said Roy, sparkling with mischief, malice, fondness. “Just like you, Lady Mu, idly turning over the pages of Debrett.”

She gave her loud crowing laugh, and slapped his hand. Then she said seriously: “Of course, no one has ever called me snobbish.”

She laughed again at Roy. Joan, who knew her mother well and also knew that no one could treat her as Roy did, was melted in a smile of envy, incredulity, and love.

It was a dark rainy night when Roy and I walked out of the Lodge. On the grass in the court there were left a few patches of melting snow, dim in the gloom. The rain pelted down. Roy wanted to go shopping, and soon the rain had soaked his hair and was running down beside his ears.

I said something about Joan being in love with him, but he would not talk of her. It was rare for him to want to talk of love, rarer still of the love he himself received. He was less willing than any man to hint at a new conquest.

That night he was sad over the Master, but otherwise serene. He had come back with his spirits even and tranquil. Despite the shock of the afternoon, he was enjoying our walk in the rain.

He asked me for the latest gossip, he asked gently after my concerns. The rain swirled and gurgled in the gutters, came down like a screen between us and the bright shop windows. Roy took me from shop to shop, water dripping from us on to the floors, in order to buy a set of presents. On the way he told me whom he wanted them for – the strange collection of the shady, the shabbily respectable, the misfits, who lived in the same house in the Knesebeckstrasse. Roy would go back there, though his flat was uncomfortable, whenever he went to Berlin; for the rest, the “little dancer” and the others, had already come to be lost without him. Some thought he was an unworldly professor, a rich simple Englishman, easy to fleece.

“Poor goops.” Roy gave his most mischievous smile. “If I were going to make a living as a shark, I should do it well, shouldn’t you? We should make a pretty dangerous pair, old boy. I must try to instruct them some time.”

Nevertheless, he took the greatest pains about their presents.

On those winter nights the light in the Master’s bedroom dominated the college. The weeks passed: he had still not been told; we paid our visits, came away with shamefaced relief. We came away into a different, busy, bustling, intriguing life; for, as soon as it was known that the Master must die, the college was set struggling as to who should be his successor. That struggle was exciting and full of human passion, but it need not be described here. It engrossed Arthur Brown completely, me in part, and Roy a little. We were all on the same side, and Winslow on the other. It was the sharpest and most protracted personal conflict that the college went through in my time.

Meanwhile, Roy spent more time in the Lodge than the rest of us put together. He sat for whole afternoons with the Master, planning their book on the heresies, and he became Lady Muriel’s only support. In the Lodge he forgot himself entirely. He devoted himself, everything he was, to each of the three of them. But he knew that he was in danger of paying a bitter price. Outside he remembered what he was watching there. It filled him with dread. At times he waited for the first sign of melancholy to take hold of him. I was waiting too. I watched him turn to his work with savage absorption: and there came nights when he drank for relief.

It was harrowing for anyone to watch, even for those far tougher-skinned than Roy. We saw the Master getting a little more tired each time we visited him; and each time he was more surprised that his appetite and strength were not coming back. For a few days after he had been told that all was well, the decline seemed to stop. He even ate with relish. Then slowly, imperceptibly to himself, the false recovery left him. By February he was so much thinner that one could see the smooth cheeks beginning to sag. He no longer protested about not being allowed up. The deterioration was so visible that we wondered when he would suspect, or whether he had already done so. Yet there was not a sign of it. He complained once or twice that “this wretched ulcer is taking a lot of getting rid of”, but his spirits stayed high and he confided his sarcastic indiscretions with the utmost vivacity. It was astonishing to see, as he grew worse under our eyes, what faith and hope could do.

Everyone knew that he would have to be told soon. The disease appeared to be progressing very fast, and Lady Muriel told Roy that he must be given time to settle his affairs. She was dreading her duty, dreading it perhaps more than an imaginative person would have done; we knew that she would not shirk it for an hour once she decided that the time had come.

One February afternoon, I met Joan in the court. I asked first about her mother. She looked at me with her direct, candid gaze: then her face, which had been heavy with sadness, lost it all as she laughed.

“That’s just like Roy,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Asking the unexpected question. Particularly when it’s right. Of course, she’s going through more than he is at present. She will, until she’s told him. After that, I don’t know, Lewis. I haven’t seen enough of death to be sure. It may still be worse for her.” She spoke gravely, with a strange authority, as though she were certain of her reserves of emotional power. Then she smiled, but looked at me like an enemy. She said: “Has Roy learned some of his tricks from you?”

“I have learned them from him,” I said. She did not believe it. She resented me, I knew. She resented the times he agreed with me; she thought I over-persuaded him. She envied the casual intimacy between us which I took for granted, for which she would have given so much. She would have given so much to have, as I did, the liberty of his rooms. Think of seeing him whenever she wanted! She loved him from the depth of her warm and powerful nature. Her love was already romantic, sacrificial, dedicated. Yet she longed too for the dear prosaic domestic nearnesses of everyday.

It was a Sunday when I spoke to Joan; the Wednesday after Roy’s name was on the dining list for hall, but he did not come. Late at night, long after the porter’s last round at ten o’clock, he entered my room without knocking and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at me. His face was drawn and set.

“Where have you been?” I said.

“In the lodge. Looking after Lady Mu.”

“She told him this afternoon,” he added, in a flat, exhausted voice. “She needed someone to look after her. She wouldn’t have been able to cope.”

“Joan?”

“Joan was extremely good. She’s very strong.”

He paused, and said quietly: “I’ll tell you later, old boy. I need to do something now. Let’s go out. I’d like to drive over to–” the town where we had both lived – “and have a blind with old George. I can’t. They may want me tomorrow. Let’s go to King’s. There’s bound to be a party in King’s. I need to get out of the college.”

We found a party in King’s, or at least some friends to talk and drink with. Roy drank very little, but was the gayest person there. I was watching for the particular glitter of which I was afraid, the flash in which his gaiety turned sinister and frantic. But it did not come. He quietened down, and young men clustered round to ask him to next week’s parties. He was gentle to the shy ones, and by the time we set off home was resigned, quiet and composed.

We let ourselves into college by the side door, and walked through the court. When we came in sight of the Lodge windows, one light was still shining.

“I wonder,” said Roy, “if he can sleep tonight.”

It was a fine clear night, not very cold. We stood together gazing at the lighted window.

Roy said quietly: “I’ve never seen such human misery and loneliness as I did today.”

I glanced up at the stars, innumerable, brilliant, inhumanly calm. Roy’s eyes followed mine, and he spoke with desolating sadness.

“I hate the stars,” he said.

We went to his rooms in silence, and he made tea. He began to talk, in a subdued and matter-of-fact tone, about the Master and Lady Muriel. They had never got on. It had not been a happy marriage. They had never known each other. Both Roy and I had guessed that for a long time past, and Joan knew it. I had once heard Joan talk of it to Roy. And he, who knew so much of sexual love, accepted the judgment of this girl, who was technically “innocent”. “I don’t believe,” said Joan, direct and uncompromising, “that they ever hit it off physically.”