Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

She burst out: “He put me off. I know men like to keep their secrets. But there are times when it is better for them to talk. If only they would see it. It is so difficult to make them. And one feels that one is only an intruder.”

She faced me again. Then I knew why she had averted her eyes. She was fighting back the tears.

She collected herself, and spoke to me with exaggerated firmness, angry that I had seen her weak.

“There is one thing I can do, Mr Eliot. I shall ring up my daughter Joan. She knows Roy better than I do. Perhaps she will be able to discover what is wrong. Then between us we could assist him.”

I used all my efforts to dissuade her. I argued, persuaded, told her that it was unwise. But the only real reason I could not give: and Lady Muriel stayed invincibly ignorant.

“Mr Eliot, you must allow me to judge when to talk to my daughter about a common friend.” She added superbly: “My family have been brought up to face trouble.”

On the spot, she telephoned Joan, who was in London. There could be only one answer, the answer I had been scheming to avoid, the answer which Joan would want to give from the bottom of her heart. It came, of course. Joan would catch the next train and see Roy that evening.

Lady Muriel said goodbye to me.

“My daughter and I will do our best, Mr Eliot. Thank you for giving me your advice.”

I went straight from the hotel to Roy’s rooms. It was necessary that he should be warned at once. His outer door was not locked, as it was most evenings now — but he himself was lying limp in an armchair. There was no bottle or glass in sight; there was no manuscript under his viewing lamp, and no book open; it was as though he had lain there, inert, for hours.

“Hullo,” he said, from a far distance.

“I think you should know,” I said. “Joan will be here in an hour or two.”

“Who?”

I repeated my message. It was like waking him from sleep.

At last he spoke, but still darkly, wearily, from a depth no one could reach.

“I don’t want to see her.”

Some time afterwards he repeated: “I don’t want to see her. I saw her in Berlin. It made things worse. I’ve done her enough harm.”

“Roy,” I said, pressingly, “I’m afraid you must.”

His answer came after a long interval.

“I won’t see her. It will be worse for her. It will be worse for both of us. I’m not fit to see anyone.”

“You can’t just turn her away,” I said. “She’s trying to care for you. You must be good to her.”

Another long interval.

“I’m not fit to see anyone.”

“You must,” I said. “You’ve meant too much to her, you know.”

Up to then I had had very little hope. In a moment I should have given up. But then I saw an astonishing thing. With a prodigious strain, as though he were calling frantically on every reserve of body and mind, Roy seemed to bring himself back into the world. He did not want to leave his stupor: there he had escaped, perhaps for hours: but somehow he forced himself. The strain lined him with grief and suffering. He returned to searing miseries, to the appalling melancholy. Yet he was himself normal in speech, quiet, sad, able to smile, very gentle.

“I need to put a face on it,” he said. “Poor dear. I shouldn’t have brought her to this.”

He glanced at me, almost mischievously: “Am I fit to be seen now?”

“I think so.”

“I’ve got to look pretty reasonable when Joan comes. It’s important, Lewis. She mustn’t think I’m ill.” He added, with a smile: “She mustn’t think I’m — mad.”

“It will be all right.”

“If she thinks I’m really off it,” again he smiled, “she will want to look after me. And I might want her to. That mustn’t happen, Lewis. I owe her more than the others. I can’t inflict myself upon her now.”

He went on: “She will try to persuade me. But it would do us both in. I was never free with her. And I should get worse. I don’t know why it is.”

Nor did I. Of all women, she was most his equal. Yet she was the only one with whom he was not spontaneous. Somehow she had invaded him, she had not let him lose himself; by the very strength of her devotion, by her knowledge of him, by her share in his struggle, she had brought him back to the self he craved to throw away.

“Poor dear,” he said. “I shall never find anyone like her. I must make her believe that I’m all right without her. If there’s no other way, I must tell her I’m better without her. That’s why I’ve got to look reasonable, Lewis. I’ve done her enough harm. She must get free of me now. It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me.”

He smiled at me with sad and mischievous irony. Then he spoke in a tone that was matter-of-fact, quiet, and utterly and intolerably unguarded.

“I hate myself,” said Roy. “I’ve brought unhappiness to everyone I’ve known. It would have been better if I’d never lived. I should be wiped out so that everyone could forget me.”

I could not go through the pretence of consoling him, I could not reply until he spoke again. He had spoken so quietly and naturally that a shiver ran down my spine. It was anguish to hear such naked, simple anguish. He said: “You would have been much happier if I’d never lived, old boy. You can’t deny it. This isn’t the time to be hearty, is it?”

“Never mind about happiness,” I said. “It can cut one off from too much. My life would have been different without you. I prefer it as it is.”

For a second, his face lit up.

“You’ve done all you could,” he said. “I needed to tell you that — before it’s too late. You’ve done more than anyone. You’ve done more even than she did. Now I must send her away. There will only be you whom I’ve ever talked to.”

He was sitting back in his chair. The limpness had gone, and his whole body was easy and relaxed. His face was smoothed by the golden evening light.

“You won’t sack me just now, will you?” he said. “Whatever I do? I shall need you yet.”

I went back to my rooms, and from the window seat watched Joan enter the court. The undergraduates were in hall, she was alone on the path, walking with her gawky, sturdy step. She passed out of sight on her way to Roy’s staircase. I sat there gazing down; I had missed dinner myself, I could not face high table that night; the court gleamed in the summer evening. The silence was broken as men came out of hall; they shouted to each other, sat on the edge of the grass; then they went away. Lights came on in some of the dark little rooms, though it was not yet sunset and bright in the court. Beside one light I could see a young man reading: the examinations were not yet finished, and the college was quiet for nine o’clock on a summer night.

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.

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.