Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

Brown pleaded this man’s cause. “It’s wretched luck,” he said. “Can’t we find a way round? I should regard it as legitimate to put in someone for a decent interval, say a year or two—”

“I’m afraid that would be a scandalous dereliction of duty,” said Despard-Smith. No one ever got more relish out of moral judgments. No one was more certain of them.

Winslow drank another glass of claret, and took no part. He used, in his style as a nineteenth-century unbeliever, to make caustic interjections on “appointments in this mysterious profession”. He used to point out vinegarishly that he had not once attended chapel. Now he had not the heart for satire.

Despard-Smith looked at Roy with gloomy satisfaction.

“I seem to remember that Udal was a friend of yours, Calvert. He was your exact contemporary, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Just so,” said Roy.

“I needn’t say that we have carefully considered whether we could invite him to take Melton. He is a man of higher intellectual quality than we are accustomed to get in the Church in its present disastrous condition. We have given Udal’s name the most careful consideration, Calvert. I am very sorry to say that we don’t feel able to approach him. It would only do him harm to give him exceptional promotion at his age. I was very sorry, but naturally we were thinking entirely of the man himself.”

Roy was looking at him with bright, piercing, steady eyes.

“You must not say that, Despard,” said Roy, in a clear and deliberate tone. “It is not so.”

“What do you mean, Calvert?” said Despard-Smith, with grating anger.

“I mean that you’ve not thought of Udal at all. You don’t know him. He is a very difficult man to know. You have no idea what is best for him. And you do not care. You must not say these things.”

“I’m not prepared to listen,” Despard-Smith was choking. “Scandalous to think that my responsibility—”

Roy’s eyes were fixed on the old clergyman’s, which were bleared, full, inflamed.

“You like your responsibility,” said Roy. “You like power very much. You must not disguise things so much, Despard. You must not pretend.”

Roy had spoken throughout calmly, simply, and with extreme authority. It was exactly — I suddenly remembered — as he had spoken to Willy Romantowski; he had even used the same words. I had seen him with many kinds of human beings, in many circumstances: those two, the old clergyman and the young blackmailing spy, were the only ones I had ever heard him judge.

Arthur Brown hurriedly filled Despard-Smith’s glass. I thought there was a faint appreciative twinkle under Winslow’s hooded lids. The party got back to ordinary small talk. That room was used to hard words. The convention was strong that, after a quarrel, the room made an attempt at superficial peace.

So, for a few minutes, we did now. Then we broke up, and Arthur Brown took Roy and me to his rooms. He finished off his treat for us by giving us glasses of his best brandy.

Then he settled himself down to give a warning.

“I must say,” he scolded Roy, “that I wish you hadn’t gone for old Despard. I know he’s maddening. But he’ll stick about in this college for a long time yet, you know, and he still might be able to put a spoke in your wheel. There’s no point in making an unnecessary enemy. I wish you’d wait till you’ve absolutely arrived.”

“No, Arthur.” Roy smiled. “We wait too long, you know. There isn’t so much time.”

“I expect you think I’m a cautious old woman,” said Arthur Brown, “but I’m only anxious to see you getting all the honours this place can give you. I am anxious to have that happiness before I die.”

“I know, Arthur,” said Roy. “But I shall need to say a word now and then.”

He said it with affection and gratitude, to the man who had guarded his career with such unselfishness and so much worldly skill. But he meant more than he said. He meant that his pupilage was quite over. He was mature now. He had learned from his life. For the rest of his time, he would know what mattered to him, whom and what to take risks for, and when to speak.

Roy took another brandy, and set Arthur Brown talking about his water colours. Roy was in no hurry to be left alone with me; he had sensed what I had come to ask, and was avoiding it. Brown liked staying with us, and it was reluctantly that he pressed our hands, said how splendid it would be when we both returned for good, promised to save “something special” to celebrate the occasion.

Roy and I went up to my sitting-room. It struck dank through being empty for so long; there was a low smouldering fire, built up of slack.

“The old devil,” said Roy, grinning at the thought of Bidwell: since I went away, my rooms were being slowly and methodically stripped of their smaller objects.

I pulled down the old iron draught-screen to its lowest socket. Soon the flames began to roar. Roy pushed the sofa in front of the fireplace, and lay with his legs crossed, his hands behind his head.

I sat in my armchair. Those had been our habitual places in that room. I looked at him, and said: “I want to talk a little.”

“Better leave it,” he said. “Much better to leave it,” he repeated insistently.

“No,” I said. “I must know.”

“Just so,” said Roy.

“I didn’t say much when you chose to—”

I hesitated, and Roy said, in a light, quiet tone: “Try to get myself killed.”

“It was too clear,” I said.

“I got tired of struggling,” he said. “I thought it was time for me to resign.”

“I knew that,” I said. “I hadn’t the heart to speak.”

“I told you once,” he said with desperate feeling, “you’d done all you could. Believe me. No one on earth could have done as much.”

I shook my head.

“I was no use to you in the end,” I said.

“Everyone is alone. Dreadfully alone,” said Roy. “You’ve thought that often enough, haven’t you? One hates it. But it’s true.”

“Sometimes,” I said, in pain, “it does not seem so true.”

“Often,” Roy repeated, “it does not seem so true.” Suddenly he smiled brilliantly. “I’m not as tough as you. Sometimes it wasn’t true. I’ve not been alone always. You may have been — but I’ve not.”

I could not smile back.

“I hadn’t the heart to speak,” I said slowly. “It was too clear what had happened to you. But I didn’t understand one thing. Why did you make that particular choice? Why did you decide to go and fly?”

With one quick move he sat upright. His eyes met mine, but they were troubled, distraught, almost — shifty.

He was for once not ready with a word.

“Was it,” I said, “because of that night in Dolphin Square? When you asked me what was the most dangerous thing to do?”

“Oh God,” said Roy, “that was why I kept it from you. I was afraid you’d guess. I didn’t want you to learn from other people. But if I’d told you myself what I was doing, I should have given it away. You’d have remembered that night.”

“I remember it now,” I said.

“It was only a chance,” he said violently. “We happened to be talking. If I hadn’t seen you that night, I should have asked someone else. We happened to be talking, that was all.”

“What I said — decided you?”

“Yes.”

“You might have spared me that,” I cried.

We looked at each other; quite suddenly, reproach, remorse, guilt, all died away; the moment could hold them no more. There was no room for anything but the understanding which had sustained us for so long. We had the comfort of absolute acceptance.

In a tone that was simple and natural, Roy said: “I wasn’t mad when I decided to resign, you know. I couldn’t struggle any more, but I wasn’t a bit mad. Did you think I should be?”