Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

I was anxious for her, for about that time I got the impression that something had broken. She did not seem to know, except that she was becoming more hungry for marriage; but I felt sure that for him the light had gone out. Why, I could not tell or even guess. It did not show itself in any word he spoke to her, for he was loving, attentive, insistent on giving her some respite from the Lodge, always ready to sit with her there in the last weeks of her father’s life.

He was good at dissimulating, though he did it seldom; yet I was certain that I was right. For lack of ease in a love affair is one of the hardest things to conceal — and this was particularly true for Roy, who in love or intimacy moved as freely as through the evening air.

I was anxious and puzzled. One night in late November I heard him make a remark which sounded entirely strange, coming from him. It was said in fun, but I felt that it was forced out, endowed with an emotion he could not control. The occasion was quite trivial. The three of us had been to a theatre, and Roy had mislaid the tickets for our coats. It took us some time, and a little explanation, to redeem them. Joan scolded him as we walked to the college along the narrow street.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said.

“You’re quite absurd,” said Joan. “It was very careless.”

Then Roy said: “Think as well of me as you can.” He was smiling, and so was she, but his voice rang out clear. “Think as well of me as you can.”

I had never before heard him, either in play or earnest, show that kind of concern. He was the least self-conscious of men. It was a playful cry, and she hugged his arm and laughed. Yet it came back to my ears, clear and thrilling, long after outbursts of open feeling had gone dead.

Through November the Master became weaker and more drowsy. He was eating very little, he was always near the borderline of sleep. Joan said that she thought he was now dying. The end came suddenly. On December 2nd the doctor told Lady Muriel and Joan that he had pneumonia, and that it would soon be over. Two days later, just as we were going into hall for dinner, the news came that the Master had died.

After hall, I went to see Roy, who had not been dining. I found him alone in his rooms, sitting at a low desk with a page of proofs. He had already heard the news.

He spoke, sadly and gently, of Joan and her mother. He said that he would complete the “little book” on heresies as soon as he was clear of the liturgy. He would bring it out as a joint publication by Royce and himself. “Would that have pleased him?” said Roy. “Perhaps it would please them a little.”

A woman’s footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Joan came in. She looked at me, upset to see me there. Without a word, Roy took her in his arms and kissed her. For a moment she rested with her head against his shoulder, but she heard me get up to go.

“Don’t bother, Lewis,” she said. She was quite dry-eyed. “I’ve come to take Roy away, if he will. Won’t you come to mother?” she asked him, her eyes candid with love. “You’re the only person who can be any use to her tonight.”

“I was coming anyway,” said Roy.

“You’re very tired yourself,” I said to Joan. “Hadn’t you better take a rest?”

“Let me do what’s got to be done before I think about it,” she said.

She was staunch right through. Roy went to eat and sleep in the Lodge until after the funeral. Joan made no claims on him; she asked him to look after her mother, who needed him more.

Lady Muriel was inarticulately glad of his presence. She could not say that she was grateful, she could not speak of loss or grief or any regret. She could not even cry. She sat up until dawn each night before the funeral, with Roy beside her. And each night, as she went at last to bed, she visited the room where lay her husband’s body.

At the funeral service in the chapel, she and Joan sat in the stalls nearest the altar. Their faces were white but tearless, their backs rigid, their heads erect.

And, after we had returned from the cemetery to the college, word came that Lady Muriel wished to see all the fellows in the Lodge. The blinds of the drawing-room were drawn back now; we filed in and stood about while Lady Muriel shook hands with us one by one. Her neck was still unbent, her eyes pitiably bold. She spoke to each of us in her firm, unyielding voice, and her formula varied little. She said to me: “I should like to thank you for joining us on this sad occasion. I appreciate your sign of respect to my husband’s memory. I am personally grateful for your kindness during his illness. My daughter and I are going to my brother, and our present intention is to stay there in our house. We may be paying a visit to Cambridge next year, and I hope you will be able to visit us.”

Roy and I walked away together.

“Poor thing,” he said gently.

He went back to the Lodge to see them through another night. At last Lady Muriel broke down. “I shall never see him again,” she cried. “I shall never see him again.” In the drawing-room, where she had bidden us goodbye so formally, that wild, animal cry burst out; and then she wept passionately in Roy’s arms, until she was worn out.

For hours Joan left them together. Her own fortitude still kept her from being another drag on Roy. She remained staunch, trying to help him with her mother. Yet that night words were trembling on her lips; she came to the edge of begging him to love her for ever, of telling him how she hungered for him to marry her. She did not speak.

Roy was working all through the spring in the Vatican Library, and then moved on to Berlin. I only saw him for a few hours on his way through London, but I heard that he was meeting Joan. He had not mentioned her in his letters to me, which were shorter and more stylised than they used to be, though often lit up by stories of his acquaintances in Rome. When I met him, he was affectionate, but neither high-spirited nor revealing. I did not see him again until he returned to England for the summer: as soon as he got back, we were both asked down to Boscastle.

I had twice visited Boscastle by myself, though not since Lady Muriel and Joan had gone to live there. Lady Boscastle had invited me so that she could indulge in two pleasures — tell stories of love affairs, and nag me subtly into being successful as quickly as might be. She had an adamantine will for success, and among the Boscastles she had found no chance to use it. So I came in for it all. She was resolved that I should not leave it too late. She approved the scope of my ambitions, but thought I was taking too many risks. She counted on me to carve out something realisable within the next three years. She was sarcastic, flattering, insidious and shrewd. She even invited eminent lawyers, whom she had known through her father, down to Boscastle so that I could talk to them.

Since the Royces arrived at the house, I had had no word from her or them. It was June when she wrote to say that Roy was going straight there: she added, the claws just perceptible beneath the velvet, “I hope this will be acceptable to our dear Joan. It is pleasant to think that it will be almost a family party.”

I arrived in Camelford on a hot midsummer afternoon. A Boscastle car met me, and we drove down the valley. From the lower road, as it came round by the sea, one got a dramatic view of the house, “our house”, “Bossy” itself.

It stood on the hill, a great pilastered classical front, with stepped terraces leading up from the lawns. When I first went, I was a little surprised that not a stone had been put there earlier than the eighteenth century: but the story explained it all.

Like good whig aristocrats with an eye to the main chance, the Boscastles had taken a step up after 1688. They had been barons for the last two centuries: now they managed to become earls. At the same time — it may not have been a coincidence — they captured a great heiress by marriage. Suitably equipped with an earldom and with money, it was time to think about the house. And so they indulged in the eighteenth-century passion for palatial building.