Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

I reassured myself a little. Apart from Arthur Brown, no one in the college seemed to have detected anything unusual in Roy’s state that summer. He dined in hall two or three nights a week, and, except for his views on Germany, passed under their eyes without evoking any special interest. For some reason he stayed preternaturally silent when he dined (I once taxed him with it, and he whispered “lanthanine is the word for me”), but nevertheless it was curious they should observe so little. They were, of course, more used than most men to occasional displays of extreme eccentricity; most of our society, like any other college at this period, were comfortable, respectable, solid middle-aged men, but they had learned to put up with one or two who had grown grotesquely askew. It was part of the secure, confident air.

After Lady Muriel talked to me, I was preparing myself for a disaster. I tried to steady myself by facing it in the cold merciless light of early morning: this will be indescribably worse than what has happened before, this will be sheer disaster. I might have to accept any horror. What I feared and expected most was an outburst about Germany and the war — a speech in public, a letter to the press, a public avowal of his feeling for the Reich. I feared it most for selfish reasons — at that period, such an outburst would be an excruciating ordeal for me.

After he sent Joan away, he was sunk in the abyss of depression. But he did nothing. The day that the Boscastles arrived, he even sustained with Lord Boscastle a level, realistic and sober conversation about the coming war.

The Boscastles had invited us to lunch, and Lady Muriel and Humphrey were there as well.

Through the beginning of the meal Lord Boscastle and Roy did all the talking. They found themselves in a strong and sudden sympathy about the prospect of war. They could see no way out, and they were full of a revulsion almost physical in its violence. Lady Muriel looked startled that men should talk so frankly about the miseries of war: but she knew that her brother had been decorated in the last war, and it would never even have occurred to her that men would not fight bravely if it was their duty.

“It will be frightful,” said Roy. Throughout he had spoken moderately and sensibly; he had said no more than many men were saying; he had remarked quietly that he did not know his own courage — it might be adequate, he could not tell.

“It will be frightful.” Lord Boscastle echoed the phrase. And I saw his eyes leave Roy and turn with clouded, passionate anxiety upon his son. Humphrey Bevill was still good-looking in his frail, girlish way; his skin was pink, smooth and clear; he had his father’s beaky nose, which somehow did not detract from his delicacy. His eyes were bright china blue, like his mother’s. He had led a disreputable life in Cambridge. He had genuine artistic feeling without, so far as I could discover, a trace of talent.

Lord Boscastle stared at his son with anxiety and longing; for Lord Boscastle could not restrain his strong instinctive devotion, and for him war meant nothing more nor less than danger to his beloved son.

I watched Lady Boscastle mount her lorgnette and regard them both, with a faint, charming, contemptuous, coolly affectionate quiver on her lips.

Then Lord Boscastle took refuge in his own peculiar brand of stoicism. He asked Humphrey to show him again the photograph of that year’s Athenaeum. This bore no relation to the Athenaeum where I had tea with the old Master, the London club of successful professional men. The Cambridge Athenaeum was the ultra-fashionable élite of the most fashionable club for the gilded youth; it was limited to twenty, and on the photograph of twenty youthful, and mainly titled, faces Lord Boscastle cast a scornful and dismissive eye.

At any rate, he appeared to feel, there was still time to reject these absurd pretensions to be classed among their betters. Several of them had names much more illustrious than that of Bevill; but it took more than centuries of distinction to escape Lord Boscastle’s jehovianic strictures that afternoon. “Who is this boy, Humphrey? I’m afraid I can’t for the life of me remember his name.” He was told “Lord Arthur—” “Oh, perhaps that accounts for it, should you have thought? They have never really quite managed to recover from their obscurity, should you think they have?” He pointed with elaborate distaste to another youth. “Incorrigibly parvenu, I should have said. With a certain primitive cunning in financial matters. Such as they showed when they fleeced my great-grandfather.”

Lord Boscastle placed the photograph a long way off along the table, as though he might get a less displeasing view.

“Not a very distinguished collection, I’m afraid, Humphrey. I suppose it was quite necessary for you to join them? I know it’s always easier to take the course of least resistance. I confess that I made concessions most of my life, but I think it’s probably a mistake for us to do so, shouldn’t you have thought?”

The Boscastles, Lady Muriel and I were all dining with Roy the following night. I did not see any more of him for the rest of that day, and next morning Bidwell brought me no news. Bidwell was, however, full of the preparations for the dinner. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It will be a bit like the old times. Mr Calvert is the only gentleman who makes me think back to the old times, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. It will be a pleasure to wait on you tonight, I don’t mind telling you, sir.”

So far as I could tell, Roy was keeping to his rooms all day. I hesitated about intruding on him; in the end, I went down to Fenner’s for a few hours’escape. It was the Free Foresters’match. Though it was pleasant to chat and sit in the sunshine, there was nothing noteworthy about the play. Two vigorous ex-blues, neither of them batsmen of real class, were clumping the ball hard to extra cover. If one knew the game, one could immerse oneself in points of detail. There could not have been a more peaceful afternoon.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“They told me I should find you here, but I didn’t really think I should.” The voice had a dying fall; I looked round and saw the smile on Rosalind’s face, diffident, pathetic, impudent. I apologised to my companion, and walked with Rosalind round the ground.

“I wonder if I could beg a cup of tea?” she said.

I gave her tea in the pavilion; with the hearty appetite that I remembered, she munched several of the cricketers’ buns. She talked about herself and me, not yet of Roy. Her manner was still humorously plaintive, as though she were ill-used, but she had become more insistent and certain of herself. Her determination was not so far below the surface now. She had been successful in her job, and had schemed effectively for a better one. She was making a good many hundreds a year. Her eyes were not round enough, her voice not enough diminuendo, to conceal as effectively as they used that she was a shrewd and able woman. And there was another development, minor but curious. She was still prudish in her speech, still prudish when her eyes gave a shameless hint of lovemaking — but she had become remarkably profane.

She looked round the pavilion, and said: “We can’t very well talk here, can we?”

Which, since several of the Free Foresters’ team were almost touching us, seemed clear. I took her to a couple of seats in the corner of the ground: on the way, Rosalind said: “I know I oughtn’t to have interrupted you, really. But it is a long time since I saw you, Lewis, isn’t it? Did you realise it, I very nearly tracked you down that day at Boscastle?”

“It’s a good job you didn’t,” I said. “Lady Muriel was just about ready to take a stick to you.”