Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

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.”

“I have never heard of him,” Lady Muriel replied in dudgeon. Then, using the same technique, she turned on her sister-in-law: “Or is he some sort of lawyer? Would your father have known him, Helen?”

“I scarcely think so,” said Lady Boscastle.

“Don’t I remember one of your father’s cases having something to do with the name of Woolston?”

“Perhaps you do, Muriel,” said Lady Boscastle, smiling with charm and sarcasm. “In that case you remember more than I.”

A moment later, Lady Boscastle said to me: “It is such a beautiful sunset, Lewis. I should like to take a little walk in the garden. Will you come with me, my dear?”

She rang for her maid, who brought her coat and wraps and dressed her. She took my arm, leaned on me, and her stick tapped slowly along the terrace. It was a magnificent evening. The sun had already set behind the hills, but the sky above was a startling luminous green, which darkened to velvet blue and indigo, so dense that it seemed tangible, as one looked over the sea towards Italy. The lights of Mentone sparkled across the water, and the first stars had come out.