The Light and the Dark

1: A Spring Afternoon

I smelt blossom everywhere as I walked through the town that afternoon. The sky was bright, cloudless and pale, and the wind cut coldly down the narrow Cambridge streets. Round Fenner’s the trees flared out in bloom, and the scent was sweet, heady and charged with one’s desires.

I had been walking all the afternoon weighed down by a trouble. It was a trouble I was used to, there was no help for it, it could only be endured. It gnawed acutely that day, and so I had tried to comfort myself, walking alone; but I should have said nothing, if Roy Calvert had not asked me direct.

I had turned towards the college, and was still engrossed in my thoughts; it was not until he called out that I saw him moving towards me with his light, quick, graceful stride. He was over middle height, slightly built but strong; and each physical action was so full of ease and grace that he had only to enter a room for eyes to follow him.

“You look extremely statesman-like, Lewis,” he said, mimicking an acquaintance’s favourite word of praise. His eyes were glinting a clear transparent hazel yellow, and his whole expression was mischievous and gay. It was often otherwise. In repose, his face became sad and grave, and in a moment the brilliant high spirits could be swept away and he would look years older, more handsome, more finely shaped. And once or twice already I had seen his face, not sad, but stricken and haunted by a wild melancholy, inexplicably stricken it seemed for so young a man.

Now he was cheerful, gay and mocking. “Do you need to address your colleagues? Do you need to make something clear to unperceptive persons?”

I said no, and at the sound of my voice he glanced at me sharply. He walked at my side under the trees by the edge of Parker’s Piece. When he next spoke, his tone had changed.

“Lewis, why are you unhappy?”

“There’s nothing the matter.”

“Why are you unhappy?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Not true,” he said. “I can’t get you to smile.”

Then I did smile. To put him off, I asked about a predicament of his own which I had heard about, week by week, for some time past. Roy shook his head and smiled. “No,” he said. “You mustn’t escape by talking about me. It’s very like you. It’s the way you protect yourself, old boy. You mustn’t. You need to talk.”

I was twenty-nine, and Roy five years younger. I was fond of him in a casual, protective fashion, and I expected to be told of his adventures and have him seek me out when he was despondent. I knew a good deal of his life, and he very little of mine. This was the habit I had formed, not only with him but with most people that I cared for. It had become second nature to listen to confidences and not to offer them. And so I was not used to Roy’s insistence, clear, intimate, direct. With another I should have passed it off for ever, but about his affection there was something at the same time disarming and piercing. It seemed quite free from self. To my own surprise, I found myself beginning to talk.

We walked along the back streets to Maid’s Causeway, over Midsummer Common to the river, came back to Christ’s Piece and then, still intent, retraced our steps. It was bitterly cold in the shade, but we walked slowly: the dense snow-white masses of the chestnuts gleamed in the sunshine: there was a first hint of lilac in the wind. Once, after I had fallen silent and Roy had said “just so” and was waiting for me to start again, I heard a series of college clocks clanging out the hour, very faintly, for the wind took the sound away.

The story I told Roy need not be set down until I describe my own life; it would not add anything to this account of him. All I need say here is that I told him about my marriage. No one else knew what I told him, though one or two must have guessed something near the truth. I had been desperately in love with Sheila when I was a very young man; when at twenty-six I married her, I still loved her, and I married her knowing that she did not love me and that her temperament was unstable. This was three years before. I went into it thinking I might have to look after her: it had turned out worse than I feared.

“Just so,” said Roy. “You can’t leave her now, can you? You couldn’t if you tried. You need to go on looking after her. You need to go on looking after her always.”

“Yes,” I said.

He put his arm round my shoulders.

“You know, old boy,” he said, “you’re not the one I pity. Should you be? I’m extremely sorry, things must be made as easy for you as they can. But you’re interested in life, you’ve got tremendous spirits, you can bear anything. No, it’s she whom I pity desperately. I don’t see what she has to hope for.”

He was utterly right. I knew it too well. Again we walked under the fragrant trees. “You mustn’t lose too much,” said Roy. I had forgotten by now how young he was, and he was talking as though we had each been through the same darkness.

“As you’ve just said,” I replied, “there’s nothing to be done. One has to go on, that’s all.”

“Just so,” said Roy. “Life’s very unfair. Why should this happen to you?”

Yet I felt he liked me more because it had happened.

I told him one other thing, which helped explain why I had taken a job in Cambridge at all. As he knew, I had been born poor. Through a mixture of good luck and good management, I had done well in the Bar examinations and in my period as a pupil. By the time I married, I was making a fair living at the Bar. But I was overstrained, my inner life racked me more after marriage than before, I wanted to rest a little. Some of my influential friends made enquiries, and soon Francis Getliffe told me there might be an opening in his college for an academic lawyer. At last, after a long delay, the offer was officially made: I accepted it, and was elected late in 1933, a few months before this talk with Roy. The college did not object to my keeping on a consultant’s job with an industrial firm, and I spent some days each week in London, where my wife was still living in our Chelsea house. I usually stayed in Cambridge from Thursday to Monday, and slept in my college rooms on those nights, as though I had been a bachelor fellow.

It was since I came to live so much in college that Roy began to call on me. I had met him once when he was a boy (his father was a very wealthy man in the provincial town where I was born), and occasionally in his undergraduate days. I knew he was a member of the college when Getliffe first approached me and I had heard several conflicting rumours about him — that he was drinking himself to death, spending all his nights with women, becoming an accomplished oriental scholar. But it was a coincidence that his rooms should be on the next staircase to mine, and that we should be waited on by the same servant. The first weekend I spent in college he ran up to see me, and since then it was very strange if I did not hear his light step on my stairs once or twice a day.

I had come to the end of what I could tell him: we stood under the trees in the bright sunshine; Roy said “just so” again to lead me further, but the clear light reedy voice died away without reply from me, for I had finished. He smiled because he felt I was less careworn, and took me to his rooms for tea.

They were a curious set of rooms, in a turret over the kitchen, right in the middle of the college. From a window on the staircase one could look out over the first court to the front gate, and his sitting-room window gave on to the palladian building in the second court and the high trees in the garden beyond. It was for strictly nepotic reasons that Roy was allowed to live there. He had ceased to be an undergraduate nearly three years before; he would normally have gone out of college then. He was a rich man, and it would have been easy for him to live in comfort anywhere in the town. But he was a favourite pupil of the Master’s and of Arthur Brown’s, the tutor who arranged about rooms: and they decided that it would be good for his researches if he stayed where he was.

The sitting-room itself struck oddly and brightly on the eye. There were all kinds of desks in a glazed and shining white — an upright one, at which he could work standing and read a manuscript against an opalescent screen, several for sitting at, one with three arms like a Greek pi, one curved like a horseshoe, and one very low which he could use by lying on cushions on the floor. For the rumours about him had a knack of containing a scrap of truth, and the one which to many of his acquaintances sounded the most fantastic was less extraordinary than the fact. He had already put a mass of original scholarship behind him; most days he worked in this room for seven or eight hours without a break, and he had struck a field where each day’s work meant a discovery both new and certain.

The whole room was full of gadgets for his work, most of which he had designed. There were holders for his manuscripts, lights to inspect them by, a small X-ray apparatus which he had learned to work, card indexes which stood up and could be used with one hand. Everything glistened in its dazzling white, except for some van Goghs on the walls, a rich russet carpet all over the floor, and a sofa and armchair by the fire.

A kitchen porter brought us a big tray wrapped in green baize; underneath stood a robust silver teapot, a plate of toast, a dish of mulberry jam, a bowl of thick cream.

Roy patted the shining silver.

“You deserve some tea,” he said. “Reward for interesting conversation.”

He gave a smile, intimate and kind. He knew now that he had helped bring me somewhere near a normal state. He was sure enough to laugh at me. As I spread jam and cream on a piece of toast and tasted the tart mulberry flavour through cream, butter, burned bread, I saw he had a mocking glint in his eyes.

“Well?” I said.

“I was only thinking.”

“What of?”

“Women.”

“Well?” I said again.

“Each to his métier,” said Roy. “You’d better leave them to me in future. You take them too seriously.”

In fact, he attracted much love. He had been sought after by women since he was a boy: and he enjoyed making love, and threw it lightly away.

Five o’clock struck, and Roy sprang from his chair. “Not much time,” he said. “We must be off. I need you. I need to buy some books.”

“What is it?” I asked, but he smiled demurely and secretively.

“You’ll know quite soon,” he said.

He led the way to the nearest bookshop. “Quick,” he said as I followed through the press of people on the narrow pavement. “We need to get through them all in half-an-hour.”

He was playing a trick, but there was nothing to worry about. He was cheerful, settled, enjoying himself. When we arrived at the shop, he stared round with an expression serious, eager, keenly anxious. Then he moved over to the shelf of theological works, and said with intensity: “There are still some here. We’re not too late.” He had taken hold of three copies of a thin volume. The dust cover carried a small cross and the words: The Middle Period of Richard Heppenstall by Ralph Udal.

“Who in God’s name was Richard Heppenstall?” I asked.

“Seventeenth century clergyman,” Roy whispered. “Somewhat old-brandy, but very good.” Then in a loud clear voice he greeted the manager of the shop, who was coming to attend to him.

“I see I’ve just got here in time. How many have you sold?”

“None as far as I know, Mr Calvert. It’s only come in today—”

“That’s extremely odd,” said Roy.

“Is it a good book, Mr Calvert?”

“It’s a very remarkable book,” said Roy. “You must read it yourself. Promise me you will, and tell me what you think of it. But you need to buy some more. We shall have to take these three. I’m extremely sorry, but you’ll have to wait before you read it. I want one myself urgently tonight. I need to send one at once to Mr Despard-Smith. And of course Lord Boscastle needs one too. You’d better put that one down to Mr Lewis Eliot—” he walked the manager away from me, whispering confidentially, the manager responding by wise and knowing nods. I never learned for certain what he said; but for the rest of my time in Cambridge, the manager, and the whole of the staff of his shop, treated me with uneasy deference, as though, instead of being an ordinary law don, I might turn out to be a peer incognito.

I was half-ruffled, half-amused, when Roy rushed me away to another shop.

“I’m buying these books,” he said before I could protest. “Just lend me your name. I’ll settle tonight. Talking of names, Lord B. is staying at the Lodge tomorrow” (for Lord Boscastle was a real person, and his sister, Lady Muriel, was the Master’s wife).

Breathlessly we hurried from bookshop to bookshop, buying every copy of Udal’s book before half-past five. Roy sent them as presents, had them put down to my account, asked me to enquire for them myself.

As we left the last shop, Roy grinned.

“Well, that was quite a rush,” he said.

He insisted on paying three pounds for the books that had been put down to me — and, to tell the truth, I did not feel like stopping him.

“I suppose I’m right in thinking that Udal is a friend of yours?” I said.

Roy smiled.

On our way back to the college, he asked:: “Tell me, Lewis, are you extremely tired?”

“Not specially.”

“Nor am I. We need some nets. Let’s have some.”

We changed, and he drove me down to Fenner’s in the cold April evening. The freshman’s match was being played, and we watched the last overs of the day; then Roy bought a new ball in the pavilion, we went over to the nets, and I began to bowl to him. Precisely how good he was I found it difficult to be sure. He had a style, as in most things, of extreme elegance and ease; he seemed to need no practice at all, and the day after a journey abroad or a wild and sleepless night would play the first over with an eye as sure as if he had been batting all the summer. When he first came up, people had thought he might get into the university team, but he used to make beautiful twenties and thirties against first class bowling, and then carelessly give his wicket away.

He was fond of the game, and batted on this cold evening with a sleek lazy physical content. Given the new ball, I was just good enough a bowler to make him play. My best ball, which went away a little off the seam, he met with a back stroke from the top of his height, strong, watchful, leisurely and controlled. When I over-pitched them on the off, he drove with statuesque grace and measured power. He hit the ball very hard — but, when one watched him at the wicket, his strength was not so surprising as if one had only seen him upright and slender in a fashionable suit.

I bowled to him for half-an-hour, but my only success was to get one ball through and rap him on the pads.

“Promising,” said Roy.

Then we had a few minutes during which I batted and he bowled, but at that point the evening lost its decorum, for Roy suddenly ceased to be either graceful or competent when he ran up to bowl.

The ground was empty now, the light was going, chimes from the Catholic church rang out clearly in the quiet. We stopped to listen; it was the hour, it was seven o’clock. We walked across the ground and under the trees in the road outside. The night was turning colder still, and our breath formed clouds in the twilight air. But we were hot with exercise, and Roy did not put on his sweater, but knotted the sleeves under his chin. A few white petals fell on his shoulders on our way towards the car. His eyes were lit up as though he were smiling at my expense, and his face was at rest.

“At any rate, old boy,” he said, “you should be able to sleep tonight.”

2: Inspection at Dinner

The next morning, as I was going out of the college, I met the Master in the court.

“I was wanting to catch you, Eliot,” he said. “I tried to get you by telephone last night, but had no luck.”

He was a man of sixty, but his figure was well preserved, the skin of his cheeks fresh, rosy and unlined. He was continuously and excessively busy, yet his manner stayed brisk and cheerful; he complained sometimes of the books he had left unwritten or had still to write, but he was happier in committees, meetings, selection boards than in any other place. He was a profoundly humble man, and had no faith in anything original of his own. But he felt complete confidence in the middle of any society or piece of business; he went briskly about, cheerful and unaffected, indulging in familiar intimate whispers; he had never quite conquered his tongue, and if he was inspired by an amusing sarcasm he often was impelled to share it. He asked me to the Lodge for dinner the following night, in order to meet the Boscastles. “My wife’s note will follow, naturally, but I was anxious not to miss you.” It was clear that I was being invited to fill a gap, and the Master, whose manners were warm as well as good, wanted to make up for it.

“We’ve already asked young Calvert,” he went on, and dropped into his intimate whisper: “Between ourselves, my brother-in-law never has considered this was the state of life his sister was born to. I fancy she wants to present him with someone who might pass muster. It’s a very singular coincidence that we should possess a remarkably talented scholar who also cuts his hair. It’s much more than we could reasonably expect.”

I chuckled.

“Yes,” said the Master, “our young friend is distinctly presentable. Which is another strong reason for electing him, Eliot. The standard of our colleagues needs raising in that respect.”

I was left in no doubt that Roy had been invited to the original party, and that I was a reserve. The Master could not explain or apologise more, for, indiscreetly as he talked about fellows of the college, he was completely loyal to his wife. Yet it could not have escaped him that she was a formidable and grandiose snob. She was much else besides, she was a woman of character and power, but she was unquestionably a snob. I wondered if it surprised the Master as much as it did me, when I first noticed it. For he, the son of a Scottish lawyer, had not married Lady Muriel until he was middle-aged; he must have come strange to the Boscastles, and with some preconceptions about the aristocracy. In my turn, they were the first high and genuine aristocrats I had met; they were Bevills and the family had been solidly noble since the sixteenth century (which is a long time for a genuine descent); I had expected them to be less interested in social niceties than the middle classes were. I had not found it so. Nothing could be further from the truth. They did it on a grander scale, that was all.

On the night of the dinner party, I was the first guest to arrive, and the Master, Lady Muriel, and their daughter Joan were alone in the great drawing-room when I was announced.

“Good evening, Mr Eliot,” said Lady Muriel. “It is very good of you to come to see us at such short notice.”

I was slightly amused: that sounded like rubbing it in.

I was not allowed to chat; she had discovered that I had an interest in world affairs, and every time I set foot in the Lodge she began by cross-questioning me about the “latest trends”. She was a stiffly built heavy woman, her body seeming cylindrical in a black evening dress; she looked up at me with bold full tawny eyes, and did not let her gaze falter. Yet I had felt, from the first time I met her and she looked at me so, that there was something baffled about her, a hidden yearning to be liked — as though she were a little girl, aggressive and heavy among children smaller than herself, unable to understand why they did not love her.

Seeing her in her own family, one felt most of all that yearning and the strain it caused. In the long drawing-room that night, I looked across at her husband and her daughter. The Master was standing beside one of the lofty fire screens, his hand on a Queen Anne chair, trim and erect in his tails like a much younger man. He and Lady Muriel exchanged some words: there was loyalty between them, but no ease. And Joan, the eldest of the Royces’ children, a girl of eighteen, stood beside him, silent and constrained. Her face at the moment seemed intelligent, strong and sulky. When she answered a direct question from her mother, the friction sounded in each syllable. Lady Muriel sturdily asked another question in a more insistent voice.

The butler called out “Mr Calvert”, and Roy came quickly up the long room, past the small tables, towards the group of us standing by the fire. Lady Muriel’s face lightened, and she cried out: “Good evening, Roy. I almost thought you were going to be late.”

“I’m never late, Lady Muriel,” said Roy. “You should know that, shouldn’t you? I am never late, unless it’s somewhere I don’t want to go. Then I usually appear on the wrong day.”

“You’re quite absurd,” said Lady Muriel, who did not use a hostess’ opening topic with Roy. “I wonder why I allow you in the house.”

“Because you know I like to come,” said Roy. He knew it pleased her — but each word was clear, natural, without pretence.

“You’ve learned to flatter too young,” she said with a happy crow of laughter.

“You’re suspicious of every nice thing you hear, Lady Muriel. Particularly when it’s true,” said Roy. “Now aren’t you?”

“I refuse to argue with you.” She laughed happily. Roy turned to Joan, and began teasing her about what she should do at the university next year: but he did not disarm her as easily as her mother.

Just then the Boscastles entered from one of the inner doors. They were an incongruous pair, but they had great presence and none of us could help watching them. Lord Boscastle was both massive and fat; there was muscular reserve underneath his ample, portly walk, and he was still light on his feet. His face did not match his comfortable body: a great beak of a nose stood out above a jutting jaw, with a stiff grey moustache between them. By his side, by the side of Lady Muriel and Joan, who were both strong women, his wife looked so delicate and frail that it seemed she ought to be carried. She was fragile, thin with an invalid’s thinness, and she helped herself along with a stick. In the other hand she carried a lorgnette, and, while she was limping slowly along, she was studying us all with eyes that, even at a distance, shone a brilliant porcelain blue. She had aged through illness, her skin was puckered and brown, she looked at moments like a delicate, humorous and distinguished monkey; but it was easy to believe that she had once been noted for her beauty.

I watched her as I was being presented to her, and as Roy’s turn came. He smiled at her: as though by instinct, she gave a coquettish flick with the lorgnette. I was sure he felt, as I had felt myself, that she had always been courted, that she still, on meeting a strange man at a party, heard the echoes of gallant words.

Lord Boscastle greeted us with impersonal cordiality, and settled down to his sherry. The last guest came, Mrs Seymour, a cousin of Lady Muriel’s who lived in Cambridge, and soon we set out to walk to the dining-room. This took some time, for the Lodge had been built, reconstructed, patched up and rebuilt for five hundred years, and we had to make our way along narrow passages, down draughty stairs, across landings: Lady Boscastle’s stick tapped away in front, and I talked to Mrs Seymour, who seemed gentle, inane, vague and given to enthusiasms. She was exactly like Lady Muriel’s concept of a suitable dinner partner for one of the younger fellows, I thought. In addition, Lady Muriel, to whom disapproval came as a natural response to most situations, disapproved with particular strength of my leaving my wife in London. She was not going to let me get any advantages through bad conduct, so far as she could help it.

Curiously enough, the first real excitement of the dinner arrived through Mrs Seymour. We sat round the table in the candlelight, admired the table which had come from the family house at Boscastle — “from our house,” said Lady Muriel with some superbity — admired the Bevill silver, and enjoyed ourselves with the food and wine. Both were excellent, for Lady Muriel had healthy appetites herself, and also was not prepared to let her dinners be outclassed by anything the college could do. She sat at the end of the table, stiff-backed, bold-eyed, satisfied that all was well with her side of the evening, inspecting her guests as though she were weighing their more obvious shortcomings.

She began by taking charge of the conversation herself. “Mr Eliot was putting forward an interesting point of view before dinner,” she said in an authoritative voice, and then puzzled us all by describing my opinions on Paul Morand. It seemed that I had a high opinion of his profundity. Joan questioned her fiercely, Roy soothed them both, but it was some time before we realised that she meant Mauriac. It was a kind of intellectual malapropism such as she frequently made. I thought, not for the first time, that she was at heart uninterested in all this talk of ideas and books — but she did it because it was due to her position, and nothing would have deterred her. Not in the slightest abashed, she repeated “Mauriac” firmly twice and was going ahead, when Mrs Seymour broke in: “Oh, I’d forgotten. I meant to tell you straightaway, but that comes of being late. I’ve always said that they ought to put an extra light on your dressing-table. Particularly in strange bedrooms—”

“Yes, Doris?” Lady Muriel’s voice rang out.

“I haven’t told you, have I?”

“You have certainly told us nothing since you arrived.”

“I thought I’d forgotten. Tom’s girl is engaged. It will be in The Times this week.”

The Boscastles and the Royces all knew the genealogy of “Tom’s girl”. For Mrs Seymour might be scatterbrained, but her breeding was the Boscastles’ own; she had married a Seymour, who was not much of a catch but was eminently “someone one could know”, and Tom was her husband’s brother. So Tom’s girl was taken seriously, even though Lord Boscastle had never met her, and Lady Muriel only once. She was part of the preserve. Abandoning in a hurry all abstract conversation, Lady Muriel plunged in with her whole weight. She sat more upright than ever and called out: “Who is the man?”

“He’s a man called Houston Eggar.”

Lord Boscastle filled the chair on his sister’s right. He finished a sip of hock, put down the glass, and asked: “Who?”

“Houston Eggar.”

Lady Muriel and Lord Boscastle looked at each other. In a faint, tired, disconsolate tone Lord Boscastle said: “I’m afraid I don’t know the fellow.”

“I can help,” said the Master briskly from the other end of the table. “He’s a brother-in-law of the Dean of this college. He’s dined in hall once or twice.”

“I’m afraid,” said Lord Boscastle, “that I don’t know who he is.”

There was a moment’s silence, and I looked at the faces round the table. Lord Boscastle was holding his glass up to the candlelight and staring unconcernedly through it. Roy watched with an expression solemn, demure, enquiring: but I caught his eye for a second, and saw a gleam of pure glee: each word was passing into his mimic’s ear. By his side, Joan was gazing down fixedly at the table, the poise of her neck and strong shoulders full of anger, scorn and the passionate rebellion of youth. Mrs Seymour seemed vaguely troubled, as though she had mislaid her handbag; she patted her hair, trying to get a strand into place. On my right Lady Boscastle had mounted her lorgnette and focused the others one by one.

It was she who asked the next question.

“Could you tell us a little about this Dean of yours, Vernon?” she said to the Master, in a high, delicate, amused voice.

“He’s quite a good Dean,” said the Master. “He’s very useful on the financial side. Colleges need their Marthas, you know. The unfortunate thing is that one can never keep the Marthas in their place. Before you can look round, you find they’re running the college and regarding you as a frivolous and irresponsible person.”

“What’s the Dean’s name?” said Lord Boscastle, getting back to the point.

“Chrystal.”

“It sounds Scotch,” said Lord Boscastle dubiously.

“I believe, Lord Boscastle,” Roy put in, seeming tentative and diffident, “that he comes from Bedford.”

Lord Boscastle shook his head.

“I know his wife, of course,” said Lady Muriel. “Naturally I have to know the wives of the fellows. She’s a nice quiet little thing. But there’s nothing special about her. She’s an Eggar, whoever they may be.”

“She’s the sister of this man you’re telling us about,” Lord Boscastle remarked, half to himself. “I should have said he was nothing out of the ordinary, shouldn’t you have said so?”

His social judgments became more circuitous the nearer they came to anyone the company knew: Lady Muriel, more direct and unperceptive than her brother, had never quite picked up the labyrinthine phrases with which he finally placed an acquaintance of someone in the room; but in effect she and he said the same thing.

Mrs Seymour, who was still looking faintly distressed, suddenly clapped her hands.

“Of course, I’d forgotten to tell you. I’ve just remembered about the post office place—”

“Yes, Doris?” said Lady Muriel inexorably.

“Houston’s a brilliant young man. He’s in the Foreign Office. They said he was first secretary” — Mrs Seymour gabbled rapidly in case she should forget — “at that place which looks after the post, the place in Switzerland, I forget—”

“Berne,” Roy whispered.

“Berne.” She smiled at him gratefully.

“How old is your Houston?” asked Lady Boscastle.

“About forty, I should say. And I think that’s a very nice and sensible age,” said Mrs Seymour with unexpected firmness. “I always wished my husband had been older—”

“If he’s only a first secretary at forty, I should not think he was going so terribly far.” Lady Boscastle directed her lorgnette at her husband. “I remember one years younger. We were in Warsaw. Yes, he was clever.” A faint, sarcastic, charming smile crossed her face. Lord Boscastle smiled back — was I imagining it, or was there something humble, unconfident, about that smile?

At any rate, he began to address the table again.

“I shouldn’t have thought that the Foreign Office was specially distinguished nowadays. I’ve actually known one or two people who went in,” he added as though he were straining our credulity.

While he thought no one was looking, Roy could not repress a smile of delight. He could no longer resist taking a hand: his face composed again, he was just beginning to ask Lord Boscastle a question, when Lady Muriel cut across him.

“Of course,” she said, “someone’s obliged to do these things.”

“Someone’s obliged to become civil servants and look after the drains,” said Lord Boscastle with good-natured scorn. “That doesn’t make it any better.”

Roy started again.

“Should you have said, Lord Boscastle,” (the words, the tone, sounded suspiciously like Lord Boscastle’s own) “that the Foreign Office was becoming slightly common?”

Lord Boscastle regarded him, and paused.

“Perhaps that would be going rather far, Calvert. All I can say is that I should never have gone in myself. And I hope my son doesn’t show any signs of wanting to.”

“Oh, it must be wonderful to make treaties and go about in secret—” cried Mrs Seymour, girlish with enthusiasm, her voice trailing off.

“Make treaties!” Lord Boscastle chuckled. “All they do is clerk away in offices and get one out of trouble if one goes abroad. They do it like conscientious fellows, no doubt.”

“Why shouldn’t you like your son to want it, Lord Boscastle?” Roy asked, his eyes very bright.

“I hope that, if he feels obliged to take up a career, he’ll choose something slightly more out of the ordinary.”

“It isn’t because you don’t want him to get into low company?” Lord Boscastle wore a fixed smile. Roy looked more than ever demure.

“Of course,” said Roy, “he might pick up an unfortunate accent from one of those people. One needs to be careful. Do you think,” he asked earnestly, “that is the reason why some of them are so anxious to learn foreign languages? Do you think they hope it will cover up their own?”

“Mr Calvert!” Lady Boscastle’s voice sounded high and gentle. Roy met the gaze behind the lorgnette.

“Mr Calvert, have you been inside an embassy?”

“Only once, Lady Boscastle.”

“I think I must take you to some more. You’ll find they’re quite nice people. And really not unelegant. They talk quite nicely too. I’m just a little surprised you didn’t know that already, Mr Calvert.”

Roy burst into a happy, unguarded laugh: a blush mounted his cheeks. I had not seem him blush before. It was not often people played him at his own game. Usually they did not know what to make of him, they felt befogged, they left him still enquiring, straight-faced, bright-eyed.

The whole table was laughing — suddenly I noticed Joan’s face quite transformed. She had given way completely to her laughter, the sullenness was dissolved; it was the richest of laughs, and hearing it one knew that some day she would love with all her heart.

Lord Boscastle himself was smiling. He was not a slow-witted man, he had known he was being teased. I got the impression that he was grateful for his wife’s support. But his response to being teased was to stick more obstinately to his own line. So now he said, as though summing up: “It’s a pity about Tom Seymour’s girl. She ought to have fished something better for herself.”

“You’ll all come round to him,” said Mrs Seymour. “I know he’ll do.”

“It’s a pity,” said Lord Boscastle with finality, “that one doesn’t know who he is.”

Joan, melted by her laughter, still half-laughing and half-furious, broke out: “Uncle, you mean that you don’t know who his grandfather is.”

“Joan!” Lady Muriel boomed, but, with an indulgent nod, Lord Boscastle went on to discuss in what circumstances Tom’s girl had a claim to be invited to the family house. Boscastle was a great mansion: “my house” as Lord Boscastle called it with an air of grand seigneur, “our house” said Lady Muriel with splendour: but the splendour and the air of grand seigneur disappeared at moments, for they both had a knack of calling the house “Bossy”. Lady Boscastle never did: but to her husband and his sister there seemed nothing incongruous in the nickname.

After port, as soon as I got inside the drawing-room, Lady Boscastle called out: “Mr Eliot! I want you to talk to me, please.” I sat with her in a corner by the fire, and she examined me about my hopes and prospects; she was very shrewd, used to having her own way, accustomed to find pleasure in men’s confidences. We should have gone on, if it had not been that Lord Boscastle, on the largest sofa a few feet away, was asking Roy to describe his work. It was a perfectly serious question, and Roy treated it so. He explained how he had to begin unravelling a language which was two-thirds unknown. Then he passed on to manuscripts in that language — manuscripts battered, often with half the page missing, so faded that much could not be read at all, sometimes copied by incompetent and careless hands. Out of all this medley he was trying to restore the text.

“Tell me, how long will it take you?” said Lord Boscastle.

“Eight years,” said Roy at once.

Lord Boscastle reflected.

“I can imagine starting it,” he said. “I can see it must be rather fun. But I really can’t imagine myself having the patience to go through with it.”

“I think you might,” said Roy simply. “I think you might have enjoyed having something definite to do.”

“Do you think I could have managed it?”

“I’m sure,” said Roy.

“Perhaps I might,” said Lord Boscastle with a trace of regret.

The drawing-room was left with no one speaking. Then Lady Muriel firmly suggested that her brother ought to see Roy’s manuscripts. It was arranged (Lady Muriel pushing from behind) that the Boscastles should lunch with Roy next day.

A few minutes later, though it was only half-past ten, Roy made his apologies to Lady Muriel and left. She watched him walk the length of the room: then we heard his feet running down the stairs.

“He was a little naughty with you at dinner, Hugh,” she said to her brother, “but you must admit that he has real style.”

“Young men ought to get up to monkey tricks,” said Lord Boscastle. “One grows old soon enough. Yes, he’s an agreeable young fellow.”

He paused, drank some whisky, enquired as though compelled to: “Who is his father?”

“A man called Calvert,” said the Master.

“I know that,” said Lord Boscastle irritably.

“He’s distinctly rich and lives in the midlands.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him.”

“No, you wouldn’t have, Hugh,” said the Master, with a fresh smile.

“But I must say,” Lord Boscastle went on, “that if I’d met Calvert anywhere I should really have expected to know who he was.”

This implied, I thought, a curious back-handed social acceptance. But it was not necessary, for the Master said: “He’s got everything in front of him. He’s going to be one of the great orientalists of the day. Between ourselves, I believe that’s putting it mildly.”

“I can believe you,” said Lord Boscastle. “I hope he enjoys himself. We must keep an eye on him.”

That meant definite acceptance. It was not, I thought, that Roy had “real style”, had been to Lord Boscastle’s school, could pass as a gentleman through any tests except Lord Boscastle’s own; it was not only that Roy had struck a human want in him, by making him think of how he might have spent his life. He might have received Roy even if he had liked him less: for Lord Boscastle had a genuine, respectful, straightforward tenderness for learning and the arts. His snobbery was a passion, more devouring as he got older, more triumphant as he found reasons for proving that almost no one came inside his own preserve, could truly be regarded as a gentleman; nevertheless, he continued to have a special entrance which let in his brother-in-law, which let in Roy, which let in some of the rest of us; and he welcomed us more as his snobbery outside grew more colossal and baroque.

Lady Boscastle was trying to resume our conversation, but the others were still talking of Roy. Mrs Seymour was rapt with vague enthusiasm.

“He’s so handsome,” she said.

“Interesting-looking, I think I should say,” commented Lady Boscastle, a shade impatiently.

“He’s not handsome at all,” said Joan. “His nose is much too long.”

“Don’t you like him?” cried Mrs Seymour.

“I can never get him to talk seriously,” the girl replied.

“He’s very lucky.” Mrs Seymour’s enthusiasm grew. “It must be wonderful to be A1 at everything.”

No one could be freer from irony than Mrs Seymour; and yet, even on that night, those words rang through me with a harsh ironic note.

The Master was saying: “One thing is certain. We must elect the young man to a fellowship here before long.”

“I should have thought you would jump at him,” said Lord Boscastle.

“No society of men is very fond of brilliance, Hugh,” said the Master. “We needs must choose the dullest when we see it. However, I hope this time my colleagues will agree with me without undue pressure.”

He smiled confidentially at me.

“Between ourselves, Eliot,” he went on, “when I reflect on the modest accomplishments of some of our colleagues, I think perhaps even undue pressure might not be out of place.”

3: Two Resolves

I woke because of a soft voice above my bed — “beg pardon, sir, beg pardon, sir, beg pardon, sir”. In the half-light I could see Bidwell’s face, round, ruddy, simultaneously deferential and good fellow-like, wide open and cunning.

“I don’t know whether I’m doing right, sir. I know I oughtn’t to disturb you, and” — he inclined his head in the direction of the college clock — “that’s got twenty minutes to go to nine o’clock. But it’s a young lady. I think it’s a young lady of Mr Calvert’s, sir. She seemed what you might call anxious to see you.”

I let him pull up the blind, and the narrow cell-like room seemed bleaker than ever in the bright cold morning sunlight. I had drunk enough at the Lodge the night before to prefer to get up slowly. As I washed in warmish water from a jug, I was too moiled and irritated to wonder much who this visitor might be.

I recognised her, though, as soon as I saw her sitting in an armchair by my sitting-room fire. I had met her once or twice before; she was a young woman of Roy’s own age, and her name was Rosalind Wykes. She came across the room to meet me, and looked up contritely with clear brown eyes.

“I’m frightfully sorry to disturb you,” she said. “I know it’s very wicked of me. But I thought you might be going out to give a lecture. Sit down and I’ll get your breakfast for you.”

Breakfast was strewn about the hearth, in plates with metal covers on top. Rosalind took off the covers, dusted the rim of the plates, dusted a cup, poured out my tea.

“I must say they don’t look after you too well,” she said. “Get on with your breakfast. You won’t feel so much like wringing my neck then, will you?”

She was nervous; there was a dying fall in her voice which sometimes made her seem pathetic. She had an oval face, a longish nose, a big humorous mouth with down just visible on her upper lip. She was dressed in the mode, and it showed how slender she was, though she was wider across the hips than one observed at a first glance. She was often nervous: sometimes she seemed restless and reckless: yet underneath one felt she was tough and healthy and made for a happy physical life. Her hair was dark, and she had done it up from the back, which was unusual at that time: with her oval face, brown eyes, small head, that tier of hair made her seem like a portrait of the First Empire — and in fact to me she frequently brought a flavour of that period, modish, parvenu, proper outside and raffish within, materialistic and yet touching.

I drank two cups of tea. “Better,” I said.

“You look a bit morning afterish, I must say,” said Rosalind. At that time she was very prim in speech, much more so than most of the people among whom she moved: yet she had a singular gift for investing the most harmless remark with an amorous aura. My state that breakfast-time was due, of course, to nothing more disreputable than a number of glasses of claret at dinner and some whiskies afterwards with the Master and Lord Boscastle; but, when Rosalind mentioned it, it might have been incurred through an exhausting night of love.

I began eating some breakfast, and said: “Well, I shall revive soon. What did you get me out of bed for, Rosalind?”

She shook her head. “Nothing very special. I only arrived yesterday and I’m going back tonight, and I shouldn’t have liked to miss you altogether.”

I looked at her. The clear eyes were guileless. She glanced round the room.

“I wish you’d let me do this place up for you,” she said. “It would look lovely with just a bit of care. I could make you so comfortable you wouldn’t credit it, you know.”

I was prepared to believe that she was right. The bedroom was a monk’s cell, but this sitting-room was a large and splendid medieval chamber. I knew that, given a week and a chequebook, she would transform it. She was kind and active, she took pleasure from making one comfortable. But I did not think that she had come that morning to tell me so.

While I went on eating, she stood by the wall and examined the panelling. She asked how old it was, and I told her sixteenth century. Then, over her shoulder, she said: “Did you notice that Roy left the dinner party early last night?”

I said yes.

“Did you know what for?”

I said no.

Still over her shoulder, in a tone with a dying fall, she said: “I’m afraid it was to come and see me.”

It was prim, it was suggestive, shameless and boasting. I burst into laughter, and she turned and looked at me with a lurking, satisfied, triumphant smile.

In a moment Bidwell came in, quiet footed, to clear up. When he had left again, she said: “Your servant has got a very sweet face, hasn’t he?”

“I’m rather fond of him.”

“I’m sure you are.” Her eyes were shrewd. “I must say, I wish you and Roy didn’t leave so much to him. I hope you don’t let him do your ordering.”

I did not mind Bidwell taking a percentage, I said, if it avoided fuss. She frowned, she did not want to let it pass: but there was still something on her mind. It was not only to confess or boast that she had come to see me.

“Did you know,” she said, “that Roy is having Lord and Lady Boscastle to lunch?”

“I heard him invite them.”

“I’m making him have me too. I’m terrified. Are they dreadfully frightening?”

“What did Roy say about that?”

“He said Lord Boscastle’s bark was worse than his bite. And that Lady Boscastle was the stronger of the two.”

“I think that’s true,” I said.

“But what am I going to say to them?” she said. She was genuinely nervous. “I’ve never met people like this before. I haven’t any idea what to say.”

“Don’t worry. And make love to Lord B. as lavishly as you like,” I said.

It was sound advice, for Lord Boscastle’s social standards were drastically reduced in the presence of attractive young women who seemed to enjoy his company.

She smiled absently for a second, then cried again: “I don’t know anything about people like this. I don’t even know what to call an earl. Lewis, what do I call them?”

I told her. I believed this was a reason for her visit. She would rather ask that question of me than of Roy.

“I’m glad I remembered to ask you,” she said disingenuously, her eyes open and clear. “That’s a relief. But I am terrified,” she added.

“Why did you work it then?” I said.

“I was dreadfully silly,” she said. “I thought I should like to see a bit of high life.”

That may have been true, but I was sure there was a wise intuitive purpose behind it. With her recklessness, with the earthy realism that lived behind the prudish speech, she could live as though each day were sufficient to itself: so she had thrown herself at Roy, took what she could get, put up with what she called his “moods”, went to bed with him when she could, schemed no more than a month or two ahead.

But, deep in her fibres, there was another realism, another wisdom, another purpose. Her whole nature was set on marrying him. It did not need thought or calculation, it just took all of herself — though on the way to her end she would think and calculate with every scrap of wits she had. She was nervous, kind, sensitive in her fashion, tender with the good nature of one who is happy with instinctive life: she was also hard, ruthless, determined, singleminded and unscrupulous: or rather she could act as though scruples did not exist. She meant to marry him.

So she knew that she must get on with the Boscastles. Roy was not a snob, no man was less so: but he gave himself to everyone who took his fancy, whether they came from the ill-fated and lost, or from the lucky. Usually they were the world’s derelicts, for I often grumbled that he treated badly any acquaintance who might be of practical use: but if by chance he liked someone eminent, then he was theirs as deeply as though they were humble. He felt no barriers except what his affections told him. Rosalind knew this, and knew that she must acquire the same ease. Hence she had driven herself, despite her diffidence, into this luncheon party.

Hence too, I was nearly certain, she decided she must know me well. So far as anyone had influence over Roy, I had. She must make me into an ally if she could. She must charm me, she must see that I was friendly, she must take a part in my life, even if it only meant decorating my rooms. She had come that morning to ask me how to address an earl: but she would have found another reason, if that had not existed. I strongly suspected that she had bribed Bidwell to wake me up before my time.

Roy brought Rosalind back to my rooms after lunch.

“I hear you met this morning,” said Roy.

“Can you bear the sight of me again?” Rosalind said.

“He’ll pretend to,” said Roy. “He’s famous for his self-control.”

She made a face at him, half-plaintive, half-comic, and said: “I couldn’t stay and see Roy’s tables all littered with plates. I should want to do something about it.” She was talkative and elated, like someone released from strain.

“How did it go?” I said.

“I tried to find a corner to hide in. But it’s not very easy when there are only four.”

“You got a small prize,” Roy said to her. “Not the first prize. Only the second. You did very nicely.”

I guessed that she had been diffident, had not taken much part. But it was not as bad as she feared, and with her indomitable resolve she would try again. Roy was smiling at her, amused, stirred to tenderness because she made such heavy weather of what would, at any age, have been his own native air.

He said to me: “By the way, old boy, you’ve made a great hit with Lady B. I’m extremely jealous.”

“She wanted to know all about you,” said Rosalind.

“I think she likes very weighty men.” Roy chuckled. “Old Lewis is remarkably good at persuading them that he’s extremely weighty.”

He went on to tease Rosalind about Lord Boscastle’s compliments. I noticed that Roy and Rosalind were very easy with each other, light with the innocence that may visit a happy physical love.

The telephone bell rang: it was for Roy, and as he answered he exclaimed with enthusiasm — “excellent”, “of course”, “I’m sure he would”, “I’ll answer for him”, “come straight up”.

“You see, you’ve got to be civil now,” said Roy. “It’s Ralph Udal. He’s just back from Italy. It’s time you met him.”

Roy added, with a secret smile: “Now, I wonder what he wants.”

Udal himself came in as Roy finished speaking. I had found out something about him since the episode of the bookshops: now I saw him in the flesh, I was surprised. I had not expected that he should have such natural and pleasant manners. For the stories I had heard were somewhat odd. He was an exact contemporary of Roy’s at the college, and they had known each other well, though they were never intimate friends. Udal came from a professional family, but he was a poor man, and he and Roy moved in different circles. They had known each other as academic rivals, for Udal had had a brilliant undergraduate career. Then his life became very strange. He spent a year among the seedy figures of Soho — not to indulge himself, not to do good works, but just to “let the wind of God blow through him”. Then he had served another year in a church settlement in Poplar. Afterwards, he had, passively so it seemed, become ordained. But he had not taken a curacy or any kind of job; he had written his little book on Heppenstall, and had gone off to Italy for six months.

He was a big man, tall, loose-framed, dark-haired, and dark-skinned. He looked older than his age; his face was mature, adult and decided. As he greeted us, there was great warmth in his large, dark, handsome eyes. He was dressed in old flannels and a thin calico coat, but he talked to Rosalind as though he also had been to a smart lunch, and he settled down between her and me without any sign that this was a first meeting.

“How’s the book going?” asked Roy.

“It’s very gratifying,” said Udal. “There doesn’t seem to be a copy left in Cambridge.”

“Excellent,” said Roy, without blinking, without a quiver on his solemn face.

Udal had arrived back from Italy the day before.

“Didn’t you adore Italy? Were the women lovely? What were you doing there?” asked Rosalind.

“Looking at churches,” said Udal amiably. Rosalind had just remembered that he was a clergyman. She looked uncomfortable, but Udal was prepared to talk about anything she wanted. He thought the women were beautiful in Venetia and Friulia, but not in the South. He suggested that one required a dash of nordic blood to produce anything more than youthful comeliness. He had gone about with his eyes open, and spoke without inhibition. Rosalind was discomfited.

She was discomfited again when, with the same ease, he began talking of his practical requirements.

“Roy,” he said, “it’s time I found a job.”

“Just so,” said Roy.

“You don’t mind me talking about myself?” Udal said affably to Rosalind and me. “But I wanted to see Roy about my best moves. I’m not much good at these things.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said to Roy. “A country living would suit me down to the ground. I can make do on three hundred a year. And it would mean plenty of leisure. I shouldn’t get so much leisure in any other way.”

“That’s true,” said Roy.

“How do I set about getting one?”

“Difficult,” said Roy. “I don’t think you can straightaway.”

They talked about tactics. Udal knew exactly what he wanted; but he was oddly unrealistic about the means. He seemed to think it would be easy to persuade the college to give him a living. Roy, on the other hand, was completely practical. He scolded Udal for indulging in make-believe, and told him what to do; he must take some other job at once, presumably a curacy; then he must “nurse” the college livings committee, he must become popular with them, he must unobtrusively keep his existence before them. He must also cultivate any bishop either he or Roy could get to know.

Udal took it well. He was not proud; he accepted the fact that Roy was more worldly and acute.

“I’ll talk to people. I’ll spy out the land,” said Roy. He smiled. “I may even make old Lewis get himself put on the livings committee.”

“Do what you can,” said Udal.

Rosalind was upset. She could not understand. She could not help asking Udal: “Doesn’t it worry you?”

“Doesn’t what worry me?”

“Having — to work it all out,” she said.

“I manage to bear it. Would it worry you?”

“No, of course not. But I thought someone in your position—”

“You mean that I’m supposed to be a religious man,” said Udal. “But religious people are still ordinary humans, you know.”

“Does it seem all right to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“I’m afraid I still think it’s peculiar.” She appealed to Roy. “Roy, don’t you think so?”

“No,” he said. “Not in the least.”

His tone was clear and final. Suddenly I realised she was making a mistake in pressing Udal. She was exposing a rift between herself and Roy. In other things she would have felt him getting further away: but here she was obtuse.

“I’m not able to speak from the inside,” said Roy. “But I believe religion can include anything. It can even include,” his face, which had been grave, suddenly broke into a brilliant, malicious smile, “the fact that Ralph hasn’t just called on me — for valuable advice.”

“That’s not fair,” said Udal. For a moment he was put out.

“You need someone to unbelt. I’m sure you do.”

“I am short of money,” said Udal.

“Just so,” said Roy.

Roy’s gibe had been intimate and piercing, but Udal had recovered his composure. He turned to Rosalind.

“You expect too much of us, you know. You expect us to be perfect — and then you think the rest of the world just go about sleeping with each other.”

Rosalind blushed. Earthy as she was, she liked a decent veil: while he had the casual matter-of-fact touch that one sometimes finds in those who have not gone into the world, or have withdrawn from it.

“You’re not correct either way, if you’ll forgive me,” Udal went on. “Roy here wouldn’t let me call him a religious man yet: but do you think he’s done nothing so far but chase his pleasures? He’s already done much odder things than that, you know. And I’m inclined to think he will again. I’m just waiting.”

He spoke lightly, but with immense confidence. Then he smiled to himself.

“This is the right life for me, anyway,” he said. “It will give me all I want.”

“Will it?” said Rosalind sharply.

He was relaxed, strong in his passiveness.

But she opposed her own strength, that of someone who had gone into the world and could imagine no other life. It was not a strength to be despised. Udal looked at her, and his face was no more settled than hers.

Roy watched them with a glance that was penetrating, acute, and, it suddenly seemed to me, envious of each of them.

4: A Nature Marked Out by Fate

From the afternoon when he forced me to confide, my relation with Roy became changed. Before, he had seemed a gifted and interesting young man whose temperament interested me, whom I listened to when he was despondent, whom I liked seeing when I had the time. Now he had reached out to me. He had put self aside, risked snubs, pierced all the defence I could throw in his way. He had made me accept him as an intimate on even terms. Insensibly, perhaps before I knew it, my friendship with him became the deepest of my life.

I had met him first, as I have said, when he was a boy of fifteen. It was only for an hour, but the circumstances were strange, and had stayed in my memory. For Roy had fallen in love, with an innocent and ecstatic adolescent passion, with a young man whom I knew. His innocence made him indiscreet — or perhaps, even then, he cared nothing for what people thought. At any rate, there was a commotion among a group of my acquaintances. Roy was brought in to tell his story: and I remember him, entirely composed, his face already sad when he was not smiling, although his smile was brilliantly and boyishly gay. His speech was curiously precise, and one heard the echoes of that precision years later; as an affirmative when we questioned him, he used a clear “just so”.

The story was hushed up. Roy’s father behaved with a mixture of energy, practical sense, and an obstinate refusal to believe that his son could do anything irregular or eccentric. Roy himself was not embarrassed by the incident either then or later. I sometimes thought, in fact, that it gave him an added and gentler sympathy. He was not the man to respect any conventions but his own. With his first-hand knowledge of life, he knew that any profound friendship must contain a little of the magic of love. And he was always as physically spontaneous as an Italian. He liked physical contact and endearing words. He would slip his arm into a friend’s on the way to hall or as the team went out to field: if anyone had recalled that scandal of the past, he would only have met Roy’s most mischievous and mocking grin.

After that single hour, I did not meet him again until he went to Cambridge. It was only by chance that his outburst had affected my circle, and, in the large town where we were both born, our paths were not likely to cross. I lived in the shabby genteel fringe of the lower middle class, while his father had made a considerable fortune and moved among such society as the town could give. His career and way of life were, as a matter of fact, fairly typical of the rich manufacturers of that day. His father, Roy’s grandfather, had risen from the artisan class, and made enough money out of boots to send his son to a minor public school: then Roy’s father, a man of obstinate inarticulate ability with an obsessional passion for detail, expanded the business and took his chance in the 1914–1918 war. He became really rich, much richer than many of my London friends who were thought wealthy and lived in greater style: by 1934 he cannot have been worth less than £300,000. He did very little with it, except buy a local newspaper and a large house on the outskirts of the town, and take every opportunity of spending money on his only son. He idolised Roy, in a speechless, embarrassed, puzzled fashion; he sent him to the most fashionable preparatory and public schools (it was only by a personal accident that he came to the college, which was not particularly fashionable; his house master, whom Roy liked, happened to be a loyal old member); from the time Roy was twenty-one, his father allowed him £1,500 a year, and settled a substantial sum on him as well.

When I ran across him in his undergraduate days, he was more outwardly eccentric than he later seemed — not in dress, for he was always elegant, but in actions which at the time I thought were only a very young man’s whims. I found him one night sleeping on a seat on the embankment. He did not explain himself, although he was, as usual, polite, easy-mannered, affectionate and direct. He went in for bouts of hard drinking which seemed more abandoned than an undergraduate’s blinds, more deliberately an attempt to escape. And he started his love affairs quite early. Yet each examination was a triumph for him, and he was the outstanding classic of his day.

After taking his degree, he was at a loss. He felt vaguely drawn to some kind of scholarly research, but he did not make any determined start. He drank more, went into more dissipated company, felt a despondency overcome him of which previously he had only known the shadow’s edge. This was the first time that he was forced, without any help or protection at all, to know the burden of self.

In a few weeks that darkness left him, and he tried to forget it. The Master, whose subject was comparative religion, suggested that he should apply himself to oriental languages. To help himself forget the period of melancholy not long past, Roy threw all his attention into Syriac and Aramaic: and then, partly by sheer chance, came the offer of the research which was to occupy so much of his working life.

It was an odd story, how this ever reached him.

Of all the Christian heresies, one spread the furthest, touched imaginations most deeply, and had the richest meaning. Perhaps it should have been called a new religion. It was the heresy of Mani. It began towards the end of the third century ad in the pleasure city of Antioch and the decadent luxurious towns of Syria; it swept through them as a new religion might sweep through California today.

It was a new religion, but it drew its strength from something as old and deep as human feeling; for, just as the sexual impulse is ineluctably strong, so can the hate of it be; the flesh is seductive, beyond one’s power to resist — and one hates the flesh as an enemy, one prays that it will leave one in peace. The religion of the Manichees tried to give men peace against the flesh. In its cosmology, the whole of creation is a battle of the light against the dark. Man’s spirit is part of the light, and his flesh of the dark. The battle sways from side to side, and men are taking part in it, here and now. The religion was the most subtle and complex representation of sexual guilt.

Such a subtle and complex religion must have drawn its believers from the comfortable classes. There was none of the quick simple appeal that helped Christianity to spark from man to man among the hopeless dispossessed of the Roman slums. Manichæism must have been chiefly the religion of those with time to think — and probably of a comfortable leisured class in a dying society, a class with little to do except pursue its sensual pleasures and be tormented by their guilt.

Anyway, through the third and fourth centuries the religion spread. The Manichæan missionaries followed the trade routes, into Egypt, the African coastal fringe, Persia; churches were founded, psalmbooks and liturgies and statements of faith were translated from their original Syriac. And very soon the Manichees were being systematically and ruthlessly persecuted. For some reason, this subtle and gentle faith, or anything resembling it, like that of the Albigenses in Provence or the Bogomils in Bulgaria, always excited the savage hatred of the orthodox. Before long the Manichæan congregations had been exterminated in the Levant and round the Mediterranean; others were driven out of Persia and found a home for a while in what is now Chinese Turkestan. Then they too were finished off by the Moslems.

It is an error, of course, to think that persecution is never successful. More often than not, it has been extremely so. For hundreds of years, this religion, which once had rich churches in the most civilised towns in the world, which attracted to its membership such men as Saint Augustine (for whom Roy had a special and personal veneration), would not have been known to exist except for the writings of its enemies. It was as though communism had been extirpated in Europe in the nineteen twenties, and was only known through what is said of it in Mein Kampf. No words of the Manichees themselves were left to be read.

During the twentieth century, however, the technique and scale of archaeological expeditions were each developed, and there were one or two Manichæan finds. A psalm book and a hymnal, translated into a Coptic dialect, were discovered in upper Egypt; and one of the expeditions to Turkestan brought back what was recognised to be a complete liturgy. But it was written in an unknown variety of Middle Persian called Early Soghdian; and for a year the liturgy stayed unread.

The committee who had charge of it intended to ask an Oxford scholar to make an edition but, just at that time, he fell ill. Quite by accident, Sir Oulstone Lyall and Colonel Foulkes happened to be consulting the Master about other business. He mentioned Roy to them and introduced him. They thought he was intelligent, they knew that he had picked up Syriac at an astonishing speed; it was possible that Colonel Foulkes’ devotion to cricket disposed him to take a favourable view of Roy’s character. There was an amateur flavour about all this esoteric scholarship — anyway, they asked if he would like to have a shot.

Only a man of means could have risked it. If he did not get the language out, he had wasted critical years. Something caught in Roy’s imagination, perhaps the religion itself, and he said yes.

That was over two years before, in the January of 1932. Within eighteen months he had worked out the language, so precisely that no one need touch it again. His Soghdian grammar and lexicon were just in proof, and were to be published during 1934. He had already transcribed part of the liturgy, and he was working faster than ever. It was a remarkable record, unbelievable to those who knew a little of his life, the loves, the drinking, the games and parties. But to me, who saw more of him, the miracle disappeared like a conjuring trick which is explained. I knew how, even in the blackest melancholy, he could throw himself with clear precise attention into his work for seven or eight hours a day. I had seen him drink himself into stupor, sleep it off, recover over breakfast, and be back at work by nine o’clock.

His own attitude to his work was one of the most matter-of-fact things about him. His preoccupation was in the words themselves and what they meant; the slightest hitch in the text, and he was absorbed, with all his imagination and powers in play. He was intent on knowing precisely what the words of that liturgy meant, to the priests who translated it, to the scribe who copied it somewhere in a Central Asian town in the sixth century.

Outside the text his imagination, so active upon the words themselves, so lively in his everyday life, seemed not to be much engaged. He gave only a passing thought to the societies where this religion grew or to the people in the congregations which used his liturgy. There was something in such speculations which offended his taste — “romantic” he called them, as a term of abuse. “Romantic,” said Roy scornfully, who himself was often described in that one word.

Yet, right from the beginning, there were times when his work seemed nothing but a drug. He had thrown himself into it, in revulsion from his first knowledge of despair. Despair: the black night of melancholy: he had already felt the weight of inexplicable misery, the burden of self. I thought that too often his work was a charm against the dark. He did not seem to revel in success, to get any pleasure apart from a mild sense of skill. I watched him when he finished his Soghdian grammar. He knew it was a nice job — “I am rather clever,” he said with a mocking smile. But when others praised him, he became irritated and angry, genuinely, morbidly angry, took to a fit of drinking and then worked such immoderate hours at the liturgy that I was afraid for his health, tough as he was.

At the dinner party Mrs Seymour had cried out how much he was to be envied. She was a silly woman, but she only said what everyone round him thought. Some people resented him because he had so much. Many saw the gaiety and felt that he could not have a worry in the world. None of them saw the weight that crushed him down.

Even Roy himself did not see it. In his boyhood and youth, he had been buoyed up by the animal spirits of the young. His spirits at twenty, like those of any vigorous man, were strong enough to defy fate or death; they drew their strength from the body, and for a time could drive away any affliction that was lying in wait. Now he was a little older he had passed through hours and days of utter blackness, in which his one feeling was self-hatred and his one longing to escape himself. But those hours and days passed off, and he still had the boundless hope of a young man. He hoped he could escape — perhaps in love (though he never counted much on that), perhaps in work, perhaps in a belief in which he could lose himself. He hoped he could escape at last, and come to peace and rest.

He did not know then that he had the special melancholy which belongs to some chosen natures. It did not come through suffering, though it caused him to suffer much. It came by the same fate as endowed him with his gifts — his intelligence, his attraction for women, his ability to strike a human response from anyone he met, his reckless bravery.

By the same fortune, he was inescapably under the threat of this special melancholy, this clear-sighted despair in which, more than anyone I knew, he saw the sadness of man’s condition: this despair which drove him to outbursts of maniacal gaiety. He was born with this melancholy; it was a curse of fate, like an hereditary disease. It shadowed all his life. Perhaps it also deepened him under his caprices, perhaps it helped to make him the most selfless of men. I did not know. But I knew that I should have wished him more commonplace and selfish, if only he could cease to be so haunted.

Since I was close to him, I could see that little distance. But he exhilarated me with his gaiety, pierced me with his selflessness, deepened all I knew of life, gave my spirit wings: so I too did not see much that fate had done to him and I hoped that he would be happy.

5: Lesson in Politics

The Master’s campaign to get Roy elected did not make much progress. All decisions in the college had to be taken by a vote of the fellows, who in 1934 numbered thirteen, including the Master himself: and most formal steps, such as electing a fellow, needed a clear majority of the society, that is seven votes.

For various reasons, the Master was not finding it easy to collect seven votes for Roy. First, one old man was ill and could not come to college meetings. Second, the Master was not such a power in the college as in the university; his intimate sarcasms had a habit of passing round, and he had made several irreconcilable enemies, chief among them the Bursar, Winslow, a bitter disappointed man, acid-tongued in a fashion of his own. Third, the Master, fairminded in most ways, could not conceal his dislike and contempt for scientists, and had recently remarked of one deserving candidate “What rude mechanical are we asked to consider now?” The comment had duly reached the three scientific fellows and did not dispose them in favour of the Master’s protégé.

As a result, the political situation in the college was more than usually fluid. For most questions there existed — though no one spoke of it — a kind of rudimentary party system, with a government party which supported the Master and an opposition whose leader was Winslow. When I first arrived, the government party generally managed to find a small majority, by attracting the two or three floating votes. In all personal choices, particularly in elections to fellowships, the parties were not to be relied on, although there were nearly always two hostile cores: the remainder of the college dissolved into a vigorous, talkative, solemn anarchy. It was an interesting lesson in personal politics, which I sometimes thought should be studied by anyone who wanted to take a part in high affairs.

Through the last half of 1934 Winslow and his allies devoted themselves with some ingenuity to obstruction, for which the college statutes and customs gave considerable opportunity. Could the college afford another fellow? If so, ought it not to discuss whether the first need was not for an official rather than a research fellowship? If a research fellowship, was not the first step to decide in which subject it should be offered? Did the college really need another fellow in an out-of-the-way subject? Could it really afford such luxuries, when it did not possess an engineer?

“Fellowships” occurred on the agenda for meeting after meeting in 1934. By the end of the year, the debate had scarcely reached Roy by name. This did not mean that gossip was not circulating against him at high table or in the combination room. But even in private, arguments were phrased in the same comfortable language: “could the college afford…?” “is it in the man’s own best interests…?” It was the public face, it was the way things were done.

Meanwhile, nothing decisive was showing itself in Roy’s life. The months went by; the grammar was published, highly thought of by a handful of scholars; he tired himself each day at the liturgy. He saw Rosalind sometimes in Cambridge, oftener in London; she persuaded him to take her to Pallanza in September, but she had got no nearer marrying him. There were other affairs, light come, light go.

He became a greater favourite with Lady Muriel as the months passed, was more often at the Lodge, and had spent a weekend at Boscastle.

He knew this roused some rancour in the college, and I told him that it was not improving his chances of election. He grinned. Even if he had not been amused by Lady Muriel and fond of her, the thought of solemn head-shaking would have driven him into her company.

Yet he wanted to be elected. He was not anxious about it, for anxiety in the ordinary sense he scarcely knew: any excitement, anything at stake, merely gave him a heightened sense of living. At times, though, he seemed curiously excited when his fortunes in this election rose or fell. It surprised me, for he lacked his proper share of vanity. Perhaps he wanted the status, I thought, if only to gratify his father: perhaps he wanted, like other rich men, to feel that he could earn a living.

At any rate, it mattered to him, and so I was relieved when Arthur Brown took control. The first I heard of the new manoeuvres was when Brown invited me to his rooms on a January evening. It was wet and cold, and I was sitting huddled by my fire when Brown looked in.

“I suppose,” he said, “that you don’t by any chance feel like joining me in a glass of wine? I might be able to find something a bit special. I can’t help feeling that it would be rather cheering on a night like this.”

I went across to his rooms, which were on the next staircase. Though he lived in domestic comfort with his wife and family, those rooms in college were always warm, always welcoming: that night a fire was blazing in the open grate, electric fires were glowing in the corners of the room, rich curtains were drawn, the armchairs were wide and deep. The fire crackled, and on the windows behind the curtains sounded the tap of rain. Brown brought out glasses and a bottle.

“I hope you like marsala on a cold night,” he said. “I’m rather given to it myself as a change. I find it rather fortifying.”

He was a broad plump well-covered man, with a broad smooth pink face. He wore spectacles, and behind them his eyes were small, acute, dark, watchful and very bright. He was the junior of the two tutors, a man of forty-four, though most of the college, lulled by his avuncular kindness, thought of him as older.

He was a man easy to under-estimate, and his colleagues often did so. He was hospitable, comfort-loving, modestly self-indulgent. He disliked quarrels, and was happy when he could compose one among his colleagues. But he was also a born politician. He loved getting his own way, “running things”, manipulating people, particularly if they never knew.

He was content to leave the appearance of power to others. Some of us, who had benefited through his skill, called him “Uncle Arthur”: “the worthy Brown,” said Winslow contemptuously. Brown did not mind. In his own way, deliberate, never moving a step faster than he wanted, talking blandly, comfortably, and often sententiously, he set about his aims. He was by far the ablest manager among the Master’s party. He was a cunning and realistic, as well as a very warm-hearted, man. And in the long run, deep below the good fellowship, he possessed great obstinacy and fortitude.

We drank our wine, seated opposite each other across the fireplace.

“It is rather consoling, don’t you think?” said Brown amiably, as he took a sip. He went on to talk about some pupils, for most of the young men I supervised came into his tutorial side.

He was watching me with his intent, shrewd eyes and quite casually, as though it were part of the previous conversation, he slipped in the question: “You see something of our young friend Calvert, don’t you? I suppose you don’t feel that perhaps we ought to push ahead a bit with getting him considered?”

I said that I did.

Brown shook his head.

“It’s no use trying to rush things, Eliot. You can’t take these places by storm. I expect you’re inclined to think that it could have been better handled. I’m not prepared to go as far as that. The Master’s in a very difficult situation, running a candidate in what people regard as his own subject. No, I don’t think we should be right to feel impatient.” He gave a jovial smile. “But I think we should be perfectly justified, and we can’t do any harm, if we push a little from our side.”

“I’m ready to do anything,” I said. “But I’m so relatively new to the college, I didn’t think it was wise to take much part.”

“That shows very good judgment,” said Brown approvingly. “Put it another way: it’ll be a year or two before you’ll carry as much weight here as some of us would like. But I believe you can dig in an oar about Calvert, if we set about it in the right way. Mind you, we’ve got to feel our steps. It may be prudent to draw back before we’ve gone too far.”

Brown filled our glasses again.

“I’m inclined to think, Eliot,” he went on, “that our young friend could have been elected last term if there weren’t some rather unfortunate personal considerations in the background. He’s done quite enough to satisfy anyone, even if they don’t believe he’s as good as the Master says. They’d have taken him if they’d wanted to, but somehow or other they don’t like the idea. There’s a good deal of personal animosity somehow. These things shouldn’t happen, of course, but men are as God made them.”

“Some of them dislike the Master, of course,” I said.

“I’m afraid that’s so,” said Brown. “And some of them dislike what they’ve heard of our young friend Calvert.”

“Yes.”

“Has that come your way?” His glance was very sharp.

“A little.”

“It would probably be more likely to come to me. Why, Chrystal—” (the Dean, usually Brown’s inseparable comrade in college politics) — isn’t completely happy about what he hears. Of course,” said Brown steadily, “Calvert doesn’t make things too easy for his friends. But once again men are as God made them, and it would be a damned scandal if the college didn’t take him. I’m a mild man, but I should feel inclined to speak out.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“I’ve been turning it over in my mind,” said Brown. “I can’t help feeling this might be an occasion to take the bull by the horns. It occurs to me that some of our friends won’t be very easy about their reasons for trying to keeping him out. It might be useful to force them into the open. I have known that kind of method take the edge off certain persons’ opposition in a very surprising way. And I think you can be very useful there. You’re not so committed to the Master’s personal way of looking at things as some of us are supposed to be — and also you know Getliffe better than any of us.”

Under his stately, unhurried deliberations Brown had been getting down to detail — as he would say himself, he had been “counting heads”.

“I suggest those might be our tactics for the time being,” said Brown. “We can wait for a convenient night, when some of the others who don’t see eye to eye with us are dining. Then we’ll have a bottle of wine and see just how unreasonable they’re prepared to be. We shall have to be careful about tackling them. I think it would be safer if you let me make the pace.”

Brown smiled: “I fancy there’s a decent chance we shall get the young man in, Eliot.” Then he warned me, as was his habit at the faintest sign of optimism: “Mind you, I shan’t feel justified in cheering until we hear the Master reading out the statute of admission.”

Brown studied the dining list each day, but had to wait, with imperturbable patience, some weeks before the right set of people were dining. At last the names turned up — Despard-Smith, Winslow, Getliffe, and no others. Brown put himself down to dine, and told the kitchen that I should be doing the same.

It was a Saturday night towards the end of term. As we sat in hall, nothing significant was said: from the head of the table, Despard-Smith let fall some solemn comments on the fortunes of the college boats in the Lent races. He was a clergyman of nearly seventy, but he had never left the college since he came up as an undergraduate. He had been Bursar for thirty years, Winslow’s predecessor in the office. His face was mournful, harassed and depressed, and across his bald head were trained a few grey hairs. He was limited, competent, absolutely certain of his judgment, solemn, self-important and self-assured. He could make any platitude sound like a moral condemnation. And, when we went into the combination room after hall, he won a battle of wills upon whether we should drink claret or port that night.

Brown had been at his most emollient in hall, and had not given any hint of his intention. As soon as we arrived in the combination room, he asked permission to present a bottle, “port or claret, according to the wishes of the company”.

Brown himself had a taste in claret, and only drank port to be clubbable. Francis Getliffe and I preferred claret, but were ready to drink port. But none of the three of us had any say.

We had sat ourselves at the end of the long, polished, oval table; glasses were already laid, sparkling in the light, reflected in the polished surface of the wood; the fire was high.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Despard-Smith solemnly, “our c-colleague has kindly offered to present a bottle. I suppose it had better be a bottle of port.”

“Port?” said Winslow. “Correct me if I am wrong, Mr President, but I’m not entirely certain that is the general feeling.”

His mouth had sunk in over his nutcracker jaw, and his nose came down near his upper lip. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his face was hollowed with ill-temper and strain; but his skin was healthy, his long body free and active for a man of nearly sixty. There was a sarcastic twitch to his lips as he spoke: as usual he was caustically polite, even when his rude savage humour was in charge. His manners were formal, he had his own perverse sense of style.

Most of the college disliked him, yet all felt he had a kind of personal distinction. He had done nothing, had not published a book, was not even such a good Bursar as Despard-Smith had been, though he worked long hours in his office. He was a very clever man who had wasted his gifts. Yet everyone in the college was flattered if by any chance they drew a word of praise from him, instead of a polite bitter snub.

“I’ve always considered,” said Despard-Smith, “that claret is not strong enough for a dessert wine.”

“That’s very remarkable,” said Winslow. “I’ve always considered that port is too sweet for any purpose whatsoever.”

“You would s-seriously choose claret, Bursar?”

“If you please, Mr President. If you please.”

Despard-Smith looked round the table lugubriously.

“I suppose no one else follows the Bursar in pressing for claret. No. I think—” he said triumphantly to the butler — “we must have a bottle of port.”

Francis Getliffe grinned at me, the pleasant grim smile which creased his sunburned face. He was two years older than I, and a friend of mine since we met in a large London house years before. It was through him that, as I explained earlier, I came to the college at all. We were not intimates, but we thought alike in most arguments and usually found ourselves at one, without any need to talk it over, over any college question. He was a physicist, with an important series of researches on the upper atmosphere already published: he was a just, thin-skinned, strong-willed, and strenuously ambitious man.

The port went round, Despard-Smith gravely proposed Brown’s health; Brown himself asked one or two quiet, encouraging questions about Winslow’s son — for Winslow was a devoted father, and his son, who had entered the college the previous October, roused in him extravagant hopes: hopes that seemed pathetically extravagant, when one heard his blistering disparagement of others.

Then Brown, methodically twirling his wineglass, went on to ask: “I suppose none of you happen to have thought any more about the matter of electing R C E Calvert, have you? We shall have to decide one way or the other some time. It isn’t fair to the man to leave him hanging in mid-air for ever.”

Winslow looked at him under hooded eyes.

“I take it you’ve gathered, my dear Tutor, that the proposal isn’t greeted with unqualified enthusiasm?”

“I did feel,” said Brown, “that one or two people weren’t altogether convinced. And I’ve been trying to imagine why. On general grounds, I should have expected you to find him a very desirable candidate. Myself, I rather fancy him.”

“I had the impression you were not altogether opposed,” said Winslow.

Brown smiled, completely good-natured, completely undisturbed. “Winslow, I should like to take a point with you. I think you’ll admit that everything we’ve had on paper about Calvert is in his favour. Put it another way: he’s been as well spoken of as anyone can be at that age. What do you feel is the case against him?”

“A great deal of the speaking in his favour,” said Winslow, “has been done by our respected Master. I have considerable faith in the Master as an after-dinner speaker, but distinctly less in his judgment of men. I still remember his foisting O’Brien on us—” It was thirty years since Royce supported O’Brien, and there had been two Masters in between; but O’Brien had been a continual nuisance, and colleges had long memories. I felt all Winslow’s opposition to Roy lived in his antagonism to the Master. He scarcely gave a thought to Roy as a human being, he was just a counter in the game.

“Several other people have written nearly as highly of Calvert,” said Brown. “I know that in a rather obscure subject it’s difficult to amass quite as much opinion as we should all like—”

“That’s just it, Brown,” said Francis Getliffe. “He’s clearly pretty good. But he’s in a field which no one knows about. How can you compare him with a lad like Luke, who’s competing against some of the ablest men in the world? I’m not certain we ought to take anyone in these eccentric lines unless they’re really extraordinarily good.”

“I should go a long way towards agreeing with you,” said Brown. “Before I came down in favour of Calvert, I satisfied myself that he was extraordinarily good.”

“I’m not convinced by the evidence,” said Francis Getliffe.

Despard-Smith intervened, in a tone solemn, authoritative and damning: “I can’t be satisfied that it’s in the man’s own best interests to be elected here. I can’t be satisfied that he’s suited to collegiate life.”

“I don’t quite understand, Despard,” said Brown. “He’d be an asset to any society. He was extremely popular as an undergraduate.”

“That only makes it worse,” said Despard-Smith. “I can’t consider that our fellowships ought to be f-filled by young men of fashion. I’m by no means happy about Calvert’s influence on the undergraduates, if we took the very serious risk of electing him to our society.”

“I can’t possibly take that view,” said Brown. “I believe he’d be like a breath of fresh air.”

“You can’t take Despard’s view, can you?” I asked Francis Getliffe across the table.

“I shouldn’t mind what he was like, within reason,” said Francis, “so long as he was good enough at his stuff.”

“But you’ve met him several times,” I said. “What did you think of him?”

“Oh, he’s good company. But I should like to know what he really values. Or what he really wants to do.”

I realised with a shock, what I should have seen before, that there was no understanding or contact between them. There was an impatient dismissal in Francis’ tone: but suddenly, as though by a deliberate effort of fair-mindedness and responsibility, he turned to Despard-Smith.

“I ought to say,” he remarked sharply, “that I should think it wrong to vote against him on personal grounds. If he’s good enough, we ought to take him. But I want that proved.”

“I cannot think that he’d be an acquisition,” said Despard-Smith. “When he was an undergraduate, I soon decided that he had no sense of humour. He used to come up to me and ask most extraordinary questions. Quite recently he sent me a ridiculous book by an unsatisfactory young man called Udal.”

“I expect he was just showing his respect,” said Brown.

“In that case,” said Despard-Smith, “he should do it in a more sensible fashion. No, I think he would have a l-lamentable effect on the undergraduates. It’s impossible to have a fellow who might attract undesirable notice. He still has women to visit him in his rooms. I can’t think that it would be in his own interests to elect him.”

This was sheer intuitive hostility. Some obscure sense warned the old clergyman that Roy was dangerous. Nothing we could say would touch him: he would stay implacably hostile to the end. Brown, always realistic and never willing to argue without a purpose, gave him up at once.

“Well, Despard,” he said, “we must agree to differ. But I should like to take a point or two with you others.”

“If you please, my dear Tutor,” said Winslow. “I find it more congenial hearing it from you than from our respected Master. Even though you spend a little longer over it.”

Patiently, steadily, never ruffled, Brown went over the ground with them. Neither had shifted by the end of the evening: afterwards, Brown and I agreed that Winslow could only be moved if Roy ceased to be the Master’s protégé, but that Francis Getliffe was fighting a prejudice and was not irretrievably opposed. We also agreed that it was going to be a very tight thing: we needed seven votes, we could see our way to five or six, but it was not certain where the others were coming from.

Through most of the Easter term, Arthur Brown was busy with talks, deliberate arguments, discussions on tactics, and bargains. It became clear that he could count on five votes for certain (the Master, Brown and myself; the senior fellow, who was a very old man; and the Senior Tutor, Jago). Another elderly fellow could almost certainly be relied upon, but he would be abroad all the summer, and votes had to be given in person. In order to get a majority at all, Brown needed either his friend Chrystal or mine, Getliffe; in order to force an issue during the summer, he needed both. There were talks in all our rooms, late into summer nights. Chrystal might come in, reluctantly and ill-temperedly, as a sign of personal and party loyalty: I could not use those ties with Francis Getliffe, who prided himself on his fairness and required to be convinced.

Brown would not be hurried. “More haste, less speed,” he said comfortably. “If we have a misfire now, we can’t bring our young friend up again for a couple of years.” He did not propose to take an official step until he could “see his votes”. By statute, a fellowship had to be declared vacant before there could be any election. Brown could have collected a majority to vote for a vacancy: but it was not sensible to do so, until he was certain it could not be filled by anyone but Roy.

These dignified, broad-bottomed, middle-aged talks went on, seemingly enjoyed by most of those engaged. For they loved this kind of power politics, they knew it like the palm of their hands, it was rich with its own kind of solid human life. It was strange to hear them at work, and then see the subject of it all walk lightly through the college. There was a curious incongruity that he of all men should be debated on in those comfortable, traditional, respectable, guarded words: I felt it often when I looked at him, his white working coat over a handsome suit, reading a manuscript leaf at his upright desk: or watched him leave in his car, driving off to his London flat to meet Rosalind or another: or saw his smile, as I told him Arthur Brown’s latest move — “extremely statesman-like, extremely statesman-like,” mimicked Roy, for it was Brown himself who liked to use the word.

As a research student and ex-scholar, Roy was invited to the college’s summer feast. This took place near the first of June and was not such a great occasion as the two great feasts of the year, the audit and the commemoration of benefactors. The foundation plate was not brought out; nevertheless, on the tables in the hall silver and gold glittered in the candlelight. Well above the zone of candlelight, high towards the roof of the hall, the windows glowed with the light of the summer evening all the time we sat there and ate and drank. The vintages were not the college’s finest, but they were good enough; the food was lavish; as the high windows slowly darkened and the candles flickered down, the faces round one shone out, flushed, bright-eyed, and content.

It was to this feast that the college invited a quota of old members each year, selected at random from the college lists. As junior fellow, I was sitting at the bottom of one of the two lower tables, with an old member on each hand: Roy came next to one of these old members, with a fellow of another college on his left. It seemed that he decided early that the fellow was capable of looking after himself; from the first courses he devoted himself to making the old member happy, so that I could concentrate on the one on my right. With half an ear I kept listening to Roy’s success. His old member was a secondary schoolmaster of fifty, with a sensitive, unprepossessing, indrawn face. One felt that he had wanted much and got almost nothing. There was a streak of plain silliness in him, and failure had made him aggressive, opinionated, demanding. I tried, but he put me off before I could get close: in a few moments, he was giving advice to Roy, as an experienced man to a younger, and there was brilliance in the air. Roy teased him simply, directly, like a brother. It was all spontaneous. Roy had found someone who was naked to life. He laughed at his aggressiveness, stopped him when he produced too many opinions, got him back to his true feeling. Before the end of dinner Roy was promising to visit the school, and I knew he would.

The feast ended, and slowly the hall cleared as men rose and went by twos and threes into the combination room. At my table we were still sitting. Roy smiled at me. His eyes were brilliant, he was gay with wine, he looked at his happiest.

“It’s a pity we need to move, old boy,” he said.

On our way out, we passed the high table on the dais, where a small group was sitting over cigars and a last glass of port. Roy was whispering to me, when Chrystal called out: “Eliot! I want you to meet our guest.”

He noticed Roy, and added: “You too, Calvert! I want you all to meet our guest.”

Chrystal, the Dean, was a bald, beaky, commanding man, and “our guest” had been brought here specially that evening. He was an eminent surgeon to whom the university was giving an honorary degree in two days’ time. He sat by Chrystal’s side, red-complexioned, opulent, self-assured, with protruding eyes that glanced round whenever he spoke to make sure that all were listening. He nodded imperially to Roy and me, and went on talking.

“As I was saying, Dean,” he remarked loudly, “I feel strongly that a man owes certain duties to himself.”

Roy was just sitting down, after throwing his gown over the back of a chair. I caught a glint in his eyes. That remark, the whole atmosphere of Anstruther-Barratt, was a temptation to him.

“And those are?” said Chrystal respectfully, who worshipped success in any form.

“I believe strongly,” said Anstruther-Barratt, “that one ought to accept all the recognition that comes to one. One owes it to oneself.”

He surveyed us all.

“And yet, you wouldn’t believe it,” he said resonantly, “but I am quite nervous about Friday’s performance. I don’t feel I know all there is to be known about your academic things.”

“Oh, I think I should believe it,” said Roy in a clear voice. His expression was dangerously demure.

“Should you?” Anstruther-Barratt looked at him in a puzzled fashion.

“Certainly,” said Roy. “I expect this is the first time you’ve tried it—”

Roy had a grave, friendly look, and spoke as though Anstruther-Barratt was taking an elementary examination.

It was just possible that he did not know that Anstruther-Barratt was receiving an honorary degree. Chrystal must have thought it possible, for, looking on in consternation, he tried to break in.

“Calvert, I suppose you know—”

“Is it the first time?” Roy fixed the bold protruding eyes with a gaze brilliant, steady, acute, from which they seemed unable to escape.

“Of course it is. One doesn’t—”

“Just so. It’s natural for you to be nervous,” said Roy. “Everyone’s nervous when they’re trying something for the first time. But you know, you’re lucky, being a medical — I hope I’m right in thinking you are a medical?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t matter so much, does it? There’s nothing so fatal about it.”

Anstruther-Barratt looked badgered and bewildered. This young man appeared to think that he was a medical student up for an examination. He burst out: “Don’t you think I look a bit old to be—”

“Oh no,” said Roy. “It makes you much more nervous. You need to look after yourself more than you would have done twenty years ago. You oughtn’t to do any work between now and Friday, you know. It’s never worth while, looking at books at the last minute.”

“I wish you’d understand that I haven’t looked at books for years, young man.”

“Calvert,” Chrystal began again.

“You’ve done much more than you think,” said Roy soothingly. “Everyone feels as you do when it comes to the last day.”

“Nonsense. I tell you—”

“You must believe me. It’s not nonsense. We’ve all been through it.” Roy gave him a gentle, serious smile. “You ought to spend the day on the river tomorrow. And don’t worry too much. Then go in and win on Friday. We’ll look out for your name in the Reporter.”

6: The Beginning of a Sleepless Night

Roy’s antic at the end of the feast meant more delay for Brown. He had listened to an indignant outburst from his old ally Chrystal, who was, like so many people, mystified by Roy’s manner. “I don’t know,” Chrystal snapped. “He may have thought Barratt was an old man who was trying to get qualified. In that case he’s a born bloody fool. Or it may be his idea of a joke. But I don’t want that sort of joke made by a fellow of this college. I tell you, Barratt was right up in the air about it. He earns £20,000 a year if he earns a penny, and he’s not used to being made an exhibition of.”

It did not seem as though anything could make Chrystal vote for Roy now, and Brown had to change his tactics. “It’s an infernal nuisance,” he said. “I should almost feel justified in washing my hands of the whole business. I wish you’d keep Calvert in order, the damned ass.”

But, though Brown was annoyed because his particular craft was being interfered with, he was secretly amused; and, like the born politician he was, he did not waste time thinking of opportunity lost. He was committed to getting Calvert in. He believed he was backing a great talent, he had a stubborn and unshakable affection for Roy (behind Brown’s comfortable flesh there was a deep sympathy with the wild), and with all the firmness of his obstinate nature he started on a new plan. Wait for the absentee to return in October: then invite down to the college the only two men in England who were authorities on Roy’s work. “It’s a risk,” said Brown in a minatory voice. “Some people may feel we’re using unfair influence. It’s one thing to write for opinions, it’s quite another to produce the old gentlemen themselves. But I’m anxious to give Getliffe something to think about. Our friends mustn’t be allowed to flatter themselves that we’ve shot our bolt.”

So, in the first week of the Michaelmas term, one of the customary college notes went out: “Those fellows who are interested in Mr R C E Calvert’s candidature may like to know that Sir Oulstone Lyall and Colonel E St G Foulkes, the chief authorities on Mr Calvert’s subject, will be my guests in hall on Sunday night. A B.”

The Master, after talking to Brown, thought it politic not to dine in hall that Sunday night; none of the old men came, though it was by now certain that the two seniors would vote for Roy; Despard-Smith had said, in a solemn grating voice the night before, that he had ordered cold supper for himself in his rooms. Winslow was the next in seniority, and he presided with his own cultivated rudeness.

“It’s a most remarkable occasion that we should have you two distinguished visitors,” he said as soon as dinner began. “We appear to owe this remarkable occasion to the initiative of our worthy Mr Brown.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Foulkes undiplomatically. “We’ve come to talk about Calvert.”

He was in his sixties, but neither his black hair nor his thick, downcurling, ginger moustache showed any grey at all. His cheeks were rubicund, his eyes a bright and startled brown. He always answered at extreme speed, as though the questions were reflected instantaneously off the front of his head. Action came more easily than reflection, one felt as soon as one heard him — and hot-tempered explosions a good deal more easily than comfortable argument. Yet he was fond of explaining the profound difference Yoga had meant in giving him peace beyond this world, since his time in the Indian Army. India had also led him to the study of the early Persian languages, as well as to Yoga — and everyone agreed that he was a fine scholar. He held a great many cranky interests at once, and at heart was fervent, wondering, and very simple.

“Indeed,” said Winslow. “Yes, I remember that we were promised the benefit of your judgment. I had a faint feeling, though, that we had already seen your opinion on paper about this young man. I may be stupid, I’m very ignorant about these things. But I seem to recall that the Master circulated what some of my colleagues would probably call a ‘dossier’.”

“Does no harm to say it twice,” said Colonel Foulkes at once. “You can’t do better.”

“If you please?”

“You can’t do better than Calvert. Impossible to get a better man.”

“It’s most interesting,” said Winslow, “to hear such a favourable opinion.”

“Not just my opinion,” said Colonel Foulkes. “Everyone agrees who’s competent to give one. Listen to Lyall.”

Sir Oulstone Lyall inclined his high, bald, domed head towards Winslow. He wore an impersonal, official, ambassadorial smile. He was used to being the spokesman for Central Asian history. He did it with a lofty gratification and self-esteem. It was noticeable that Foulkes deferred to him with admiration and respect.

“I must begin by covering myself under a warning, Mr President,” said Sir Oulstone in measured tones. “We all try to keep our sense of perspective, but it’s straining humanity not to exaggerate the importance of the subject to which one has devoted one’s small abilities for most of one’s life.”

Heads were nodded. The table was used to this kind of public approach. They could stand more pomp than most bodies of men.

“I must make that qualification,” said Sir Oulstone without any sign of hurry. “I may have a certain partiality for the studies with which I have associated for longer than I sometimes care to think. But, if you will kindly allow for that partiality, I may be able to assist you about Mr Calvert.” He paused. “I think I can say, with a full sense of responsibility, that among the younger workers Mr Calvert is the chief hope that our studies now possess.”

It never occurred to Sir Oulstone that the college might dispute his judgment. For a time, his confidence had a hypnotic effect on all there, and on Brown’s face there grew a comfortable, appreciative smile. Even Winslow did not produce a caustic remark, and it was left for Francis Getliffe to cross-examine Sir Oulstone about his detailed knowledge of Roy’s work. Francis, who was a precise and accurate man, knew that all Roy’s published work was linguistic — and he was right in thinking that Sir Oulstone was a historian, not a linguist at all. But Sir Oulstone was quite unperturbed by the questions: he turned to Foulkes, with the manner of one whistling up a technical assistant, and said with unshaken confidence: “Foulkes, I should like you to deal with that interesting point.” And Foulkes was off the mark at once.

Colonel Foulkes was off the mark even more rapidly when someone made a remark about Roy’s character.

“Splendid fellow. Everything you could wish for,” said Foulkes.

“I have heard reports,” said Winslow, “that the young man finds time for some night life. In the intervals of making his contribution to your subject, Sir Oulstone,” he added caustically, but I fancied that he was reluctant to bring in scandal. He had not done it before, and it was not his line.

“Nonsense,” said Colonel Foulkes instantaneously. “Fine clean-living fellow. He’s got his books and games, he doesn’t want anything else.”

Someone said a word, and Foulkes became incensed. “Listening to women’s gossip.” He glared round with hot, brown eyes. “Utterly unthinkable to anyone who knows Calvert as well as I do.”

Sir Oulstone intervened.

“I cannot pretend to have very intimate knowledge of Mr Calvert personally,” he said. “Though I may say that I’ve formed a very favourable impression. He does not thrust himself forward in the presence of his elders. But my friend Colonel Foulkes has been in constant touch with him—”

“The army teaches you to see the seamy side,” said Foulkes, still irate but simmering down. “Perhaps living in sheltered places makes you see things that aren’t there. Afraid I can’t leave this thing in its present state. I must correct this impression. Absolute nonsense. You couldn’t have a finer specimen of a young man.”

Immediately after we rose from hall, Foulkes went away without going into the combination room. He would not let a minute pass before he “corrected the impression”, and he had gone off, hot-temperedly, loyally, without thinking twice, to see the Master. Sir Oulstone blandly continued his praise of Roy for an hour in the combination room: for all his blandness, for all his impenetrable pomposity, he had a real desire to see his subject grow. As we broke up, I could not decide what had been the effect of this curious evening.

Later that night, I called on Roy. He was alone, the opalescent viewing screen was still lighted at the top of his tall desk, but he was sunk into an armchair. At the little table by his side, books had been pushed out of order, so as to make room for a bottle of brandy and a glass.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Not tired enough.”

He did not smile, he scarcely looked at me, his face was drawn and fixed with sadness.

“Have a drink, Lewis.”

“No.”

“You don’t mind me?” he said with a sad ironic courtesy, poured himself another glass, and took a gulp.

“There’s nothing special the matter, is there?” I asked, but I knew that it was not so.

“How could there be?”

He seemed to struggle from a depth far away, as he asked: “What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been in hall.”

“A good place, hall.”

“We were talking of you.”

“You should have something better to do,” he cried, half-angrily, half-wretchedly.

“It must happen just now, you know.” I tried to soothe him.

“They should forget me.”

“I told you, Oulstone Lyall was coming down—”

“He’s a dreadful man.”

“He’s pretty pompous,” I said. “But he was doing you very proud—”

“He should be told to stop,” said Roy with a grimace, sombre and frowning. “He’s a dreadful man. He’s stuffed. He’s never doubted himself for a minute in his life.”

In any mood, Roy was provoked by the Lyalls, by the self-satisfied, protected, and content; they were the men he could not meet as brothers. But now he was inflamed.

“He never even doubted himself when he pinched Erzberger’s work,” cried Roy.

Roy drank another brandy, and wildly told me of the scandal of thirty years before.

“It’s true,” said Roy angrily. “You don’t believe it, but it’s true.”

“Tell me the whole story some time.”

“You don’t need to humour me. That dreadful man oughtn’t to be talking nonsense about me. I need to stop him.”

I had never seen Roy so overwhelmed by despondency as this. I did not know what to expect, or what to fear next. I was appalled that night by the wild active gleam that kept striking out of the darkness. He did not submit to the despair, but struggled for anything that gave release.

All I could do, I thought, was try to prevent any action that might damage himself. I said that stretches of unhappiness had to be lived through; somehow one emerged from them; they were bad enough in themselves, it was worse if they left consequences when one was calm once again.

Roy listened, his eyes bright, bloodshot. He replied more gently than he had spoken that night.

“Dear old boy, you know what it is to be miserable, don’t you? But you think it ought to be kept in separate compartments, don’t you? You don’t believe that it ought to interfere with really serious things. Such as getting fellowships.”

“It’s better if it doesn’t,” I said.

“I wish I were as stoical as you,” he said. “Yet you’ve been hopeless, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Just so. I’ll try, old boy, I’ll try. I can’t promise much.”

He was quiet for a time, and did not take another drink until Ralph Udal came in. Since I first met him, he had borrowed a considerable sum of money from Roy. He had followed Roy’s advice, and had taken a London curacy. He kept coming up to see Roy, so as to plan support within the college; but I knew he was also watching for Roy to be converted. His watch was patient, effortless, almost sinister. However, he was not so patient about obtaining his country living. Despite Roy’s instructions, he had been trying to hurry things that weekend. He had been calling on the Master, Despard-Smith, the Senior Tutor, Brown, in order to sound them about the next vacancy; he was being much more open than Roy thought wise.

“Wonderful!” shouted Roy as Udal entered. “Old Lewis won’t drink, but you will, won’t you?”

Udal took a sip of brandy, and looked at Roy with passive good-nature.

“Haven’t you had enough?” he said.

“Probably,” said Roy, drinking again. “Well, what did they say to you?”

Udal shrugged his shoulders. He seemed irritated and chagrined.

“They don’t seem anxious to let me retire.”

“The devils,” said Roy.

“They think I’m too young to settle down in comfort. I’ve always had a faint objection,” said Udal, “to people who find it necessary to make one do unpleasant things for the good of one’s soul. Why do they take it on themselves to make life into a moral gymnasium?”

“Why do they, Lewis? You should know,” cried Roy.

I shook my head, and caught his eye. The gleam had come again; but, as he saw my look, anxious and disturbed, he still seemed enough in command to quieten himself.

“At any rate,” he added in a level tone, “you’re spared having a man like old Lyall talking nonsense about you.”

“Who is Lyall?” said Udal.

“You wouldn’t like him. He’s stuffed.” Again Roy told the scandal of Lyall and Erzberger’s work, but this time in a sad, contemptuous voice.

“Yours must be a curious trade,” said Udal.

“It doesn’t signify,” said Roy. “All men are the same, aren’t they?”

He went on drinking, though neither of us kept him company. It was getting late, and soon after midnight Udal and I both wanted to go. Roy begged us to stay a little longer. At last we got up, although he implored us not to leave him.

“You two may sleep, but I shan’t. So why should you go?” There was a trace of a smile. “Please don’t go. What’s the use of going to bed if you can’t sleep? And if you do sleep, you only dream. Dreams are horrible.”

“You’ll sleep now, if you go to bed,” I said.

“You don’t know,” said Roy. “I shan’t sleep tonight. I’ll do anything you like. Let’s do anything. Let’s play cards. Three-handed bezique. Please stay and play bezique with me. Good game, three-handed bezique. It’s a wonderful game. Please stay and play. Please stay with me.”

7: Walk in the Moonlight

Day after day, Roy was left with the darkness on his mind. He read his manuscripts until he was faint, but no relief came to him. He had never been through melancholy that was as dark, that lasted so long. He could not sleep, and his nights were worse than his days.

It was heart-rending to watch, now I saw his affliction clear for the first time. At least once I was cowardly enough to make an excuse not to see him at night. It was agony, not to be able to lift his despair, not even for an hour. It was agony to know his loneliness — and so to know my own.

And I was frightened. I was lost. I had never before felt my way among this kind of darkness. I could read of experiences which here and there resembled it, but books are empty when one is helpless beside such suffering. Nothing I found to read, nothing I had learned myself, could tell me what was likely to come next. Often I was frightened over quite practical things: would he collapse? would he break out in some single irreparable act? I was never afraid that he might kill himself: from a distance, it might have seemed a danger, but in his presence I did not give it a thought. But I imagined most other kinds of disaster.

The melancholy, which fell on him the weekend that Lyall and Foulkes arrived, did not stay uniform like one pitch-black and unchanging night. Occasionally, it was broken by a wild, lurid elation that seemed like a fantastic caricature of his natural gaiety. The mischievous high spirits with which he took me round the bookshops or baited the surgeon at the feast — those spirits seemed suddenly distorted into a frenzy. I feared such moments most: they happened very seldom. I was waiting for them, but I did not know whether sympathy or love could help him then. Sometimes the melancholy lifted for a time much more gradually, for a day or a night, and he became himself at once, though sadder, more tired and more gentle. “I must be an awful bore, old boy,” he said. “You’d better spend your time with Arthur Brown. You’ll find it less exhausting.”

All through, in melancholy or false elation, his intelligence was as lucid as ever: in fact, I sometimes thought that he was more lucid and penetrating than I had ever known him. He was given none of the comfort of illusion. He worked with the same precision and resource; some of his best emendations came during a phase of melancholy. And once or twice, struggling away from his own thoughts, he talked to me about myself as no one else could have done.

Whenever he could lose himself in another, I thought one night, he gained a little ease. It was a night not long after Lyall’s visit, and Roy and I were dining in the Lodge. The Master was in Oxford, and Lady Muriel had asked us to dine en famille with herself and Joan. After I had dressed, I went up to Roy’s room, and found him in shirtsleeves and black waistcoat studying his image in the mirror.

“If I keep out of the light, I may just pass.” He smiled at me ruefully. “I don’t look very bright for Lady Mu.”

Nights of insomnia had left stains under his eyes and taken the colour from his cheeks. There were shadows under his cheekbones, and his face, except when he smiled, was tired and drawn.

“I’ll have to do my best for her,” he said. He gazed again at his reflection. “It’s bad to look like death. It makes them worry, doesn’t it?” He turned away. “I’m also going bald, but that’s quite another thing.”

For once, Lady Muriel had not asked Mrs Seymour as the inevitable partner for me. There were only the four of us, and I was invited just as an excuse for having Roy: for Lady Muriel intended to enjoy his presence without being distracted at all.

She sat straightbacked at the end of the table, but if one had only heard her voice one would have known that Roy was there.

“Why have I been neglected, Roy?” she said.

“That is extremely simple,” said Roy.

“What do you mean, you impertinent young man?” she cried in delight.

“I’ve not been asked, Lady Mu,” he said, using her nickname to her face, which no one else would have dared.

He was using the tone, feline, affectionate, gently rough, which pleased her most. He was trying to hide his wretchedness, he acted a light-hearted mood in order to draw out her crowing laugh.

He smiled as he watched her face, suddenly undignified and unformidable, wrinkled, hearty, joyous as she laughed.

She recovered herself for a moment, however, when she talked of the Christmas vacation. Lord Boscastle had taken a villa outside Monte Carlo, and the Royces were going down “as soon as the Master (as Lady Muriel always called him) has finished the scholarship examination”.

I mentioned that I was arranging to spend a fortnight in Monte Carlo myself.

“How very strange, Mr Eliot,” said Lady Muriel, with recognition rather than enthusiasm. “How very strange indeed.”

I said that I often went to the Mediterranean.

“Indeed,” said Lady Muriel firmly. “I hope we may see something of you there.”

“I hope so, Lady Muriel.”

“And I hope,” she looked at me fixedly, “we may have the pleasure of seeing your wife.”

“I want to take her,” I said. “She may not be well enough to travel, though.”

It was nearly true, but Lady Muriel gave an ominous: “I see, Mr Eliot.”

Lady Muriel still expressed surprise that I should be going to Monte Carlo. She had all the incredulity of the rich that anyone should share their pleasures. Rather as though she expected me to answer with the name of an obscure pension, she asked: “May I ask where you are staying?”

“The Hermitage,” I said.

“Really, Mr Eliot,” she said. “Don’t you think that you will find it very expensive?”

During this conversation, I had noticed that Joan’s glance had remained on Roy. Her own face was intent. It was still too young to show the line of her cheekbones. Her eyes were bright blue, and her hair brown and straight. It struck me that she had small, beautiful ears. But her face was open and harassed; I could guess too easily what had fascinated her: I looked across for a second, away from Lady Muriel, and saw Roy, stricken and remote. Usually he would have hung on to each word of the exchange, and parodied it later at my expense: now he was not listening. It seemed by an unnatural effort that he spoke again. Lady Muriel was remarking, in order to reprove my extravagance: “My brother considers it quite impossibly expensive to live in Monte itself. We find it much more practical to take this place outside.”

“How terrible it must be to be poor, Lady Mu,” broke in Roy’s voice. Joan started as he spoke: it made what she had seen appear ghostly. He was smiling now, he teased Lady Muriel, just as she wanted. She had noticed nothing, and was very happy. She crowed as he made fun of the Boscastle finances — which amused him, for he was enough his father’s son to have a lively interest in money. And she was delighted when he threatened not to be left out of the party at Christmas, but to join me at the hotel. She even regarded me with a kind of second-hand favour.

Her response to Roy was very simple, I thought. Life had never set her free, but underneath the armour she was healthy, vital and coarse-fibred. She had borne three daughters, but no sons. Roy was the son she had never had. And he was an attractive young man, utterly unimpressed by her magnificence, who saw through her, laughed, and shook her now and then. She could never find a way to tell people she liked them, but that did not matter with this young man, who could hear what she was really saying behind the gruff clumsy words.

And Roy? She was a continual pleasure to him in being exactly what she was, splendid in her unperceptive courage, her heavyfootedness, her snobbery, her stiff and monumental gusto. But there was much more. He came into immediate touch with her, as with so many people. He knew how she craved to be liked, how she could never confess her longing for affection, fun and love. It was his nature to give it. He was moved deeply, moved to a mixture of pity and love, by the unexpectedly vulnerable, just as he was by the tormented, the failures, and the strays. The unexpectedly vulnerable, the strong who suffered under a façade — sometimes I thought they moved him most. So he could not resist being fond of Lady Muriel; and even that night, when left to himself he would have known only despair, he was forced to make sure that she enjoyed her party.

Roy and I had not long left the Lodge and were sitting in his rooms, when we heard a woman’s footsteps on the stairs.

“What’s this?” said Roy wearily.

It was Joan. She hesitated when she saw me, but then spoke direct to Roy.

“I’m sorry. But I had to come. At dinner you looked so — ill.”

“It’s nice of you, Joan,” he said, but I felt he was put out. “I’m pretty well.”

She looked at him with steady, intelligent, dark blue eyes.

“In all ways?”

“Oh yes.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Joan.

Roy made a grimace, and leant back.

“Look,” she said, her expression fierce, warm-hearted, painfully diffident, and full of power, “you don’t think I like intruding, do you? But I want to ask something. Is it this wretched fellowship? We’re bound to hear things we shouldn’t, you must know that.”

“It would be extremely surprising if you didn’t,” said Roy with a faint smile.

“We do,” said Joan, transformed by her rich laugh. “Well, I’ve heard about this wretched business. Is it that?”

“Of course not,” said Roy impatiently.

“I should like to ask Lewis Eliot,” she said, and turned to me. “Has that business got on his nerves?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It would be better if it were settled, of course.” I was actually anxious that his election should come through quickly, so as to divert his mind (Brown had been satisfied with the results of Lyall’s and Foulkes’ visit, so much so that he was pressing to have a vacancy declared at the next college meeting).

“Are you sure?” Joan looked stubborn and doubtful. She spoke to Roy again: “You must see that it doesn’t matter. Whatever they do, it can’t really matter to you.”

“Just so,” said Roy. “You need to tell your father that. It would please him if I got in.”

“He worries too much about these people,” said Joan, speaking of her father with scorn and love. “You say you don’t. I hope it’s true.”

She gazed at him steadily.

“Yes?” he said.

“I was trying to imagine why you were looking as you did.”

“I can’t suggest anything,” said Roy. He had been restless all the time she was questioning him: had he not noticed the physical nervousness which had made her tremble as she entered, the utter diffidence which lay behind her fierce direct attack? He felt invaded, and though his words were light they held a sting.

“Some of your young women at Girton might give you some tips. Or you might get an idea if you read enough novels.”

“I’m not so young as you think,” said Joan, and a blush climbed up her strong neck, reddened her cheeks, left her bright-eyed, ashamed, angry and defenceless.

I went away from Roy’s rooms as the clocks were chiming midnight, and was in the depth of sleep when softly, persistently, a hand on my shoulder pulled me half-awake.

“Do you mind very much?” Roy was speaking. “I need to talk to you.”

“Put the light on,” I said crossly.

His face was haggard, and my ill-temper could not survive.

“It’s nothing original,” he said. “I can’t sleep, that’s all. It must be a very useful accomplishment, being able to sleep.”

He had not been to bed, he was still wearing a dinner jacket.

“What do you want to do?”

He shook his head. Then suddenly, almost eagerly, he said: “I think I need to go for a walk. Will you come?” He caught, with poignant, evanescent hope, at anything which would pass the night. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

I got up and dressed. It was just after three when we walked through the silent courts towards the back gate of the college. The roofs gleamed like silver under the harvest moon, and the shadows were dense, black, and sharply edged.

A light shone in an attic window; we knew the room, it was a scholar working late.

“Poor fool,” Roy whispered, as I was unlocking the small back door. “He doesn’t realise where that may lead.”

“Where?”

“It might even keep him here,” said Roy with a faint smile. “If he does too well. So that he’s woken up in the middle of the night and taken out for walks.”

We walked along Regent Street and Hills Road, straight out of the town. It was all quiet under the moon. It was brilliantly quiet. The road spread wide in the moonlight, dominating the houses as on a bright day; the houses stood blank-faced. Roy walked by my side with quick, light, easy steps. He was soothed by the sheer activity, by being able to move without thought, by the beautiful night. He talked, with a trace of his good-natured malice, about some of our friends. We had a good many in common, both men and women, and we talked scandal and Roy imitated them as we made our way along the gleaming, empty road.

But when we turned left at the Strangeways and crossed the fields, he fell more silent. For a quarter of a mile along the Roman road neither of us spoke. Then Roy said, quietly and clearly: “Old boy, I need some rest.”

“Yes,” I said. He did not mean sleep or bodily rest.

“Shall I ever get it?”

I could not answer that.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I think I was born out of my time. I should have been happier when it was easier to believe. Wouldn’t you have been happier? Wouldn’t you?”

He wanted me to agree. I was tempted to fall in, to muffle my answer, to give him a little comfort. Yet he was speaking with absolute nakedness. I could not escape the moment in which we stood.

I hesitated. Then I told the truth.

“I don’t think so.”

He walked on a few yards in silence, then looked me in the face.

“Lewis, have you never longed to believe in God?”

“No,” I said. I added: “Not in any sense which has much meaning. Not in any sense which would mean anything to you.”

“You don’t long to believe in God?” he insisted.

“No.”

“Yet you’re not stuffed.” His smile was intimate, mischievous, sad. “No man is less stuffed. In spite of your business manner. You even feel a good deal, don’t you? Not only about love. That’s the trouble with all those others” — he was dismissing some of our contemporaries — “they can only feel about love. They’re hollow, aren’t they? But I can’t accuse you of that. Yet you don’t long to believe—”

His eyes searched me, bright, puzzled, almost humorous. He had been mystified about it since he first knew me well. So much of our sense of life we felt in common: he could not easily or willingly accept that it led me to different fulfilments, even to different despairs. Most of all, he could not accept that I could get along, with fairly even spirits, and not be driven by the desperate needs that took hold of him in their ineluctable clarity.

He was quiet again. Then he said: “Lewis, I’ve prayed that I might believe in God.”

He looked away from me, down from the ridge; there was a veil of mist on the lower fields.

“I knew,” I said.

“It’s no good,” he said, as though off-handedly. “One can’t make oneself believe. One can’t believe to order.”

“That must be so,” I said.

“Either it comes or it doesn’t. For me it doesn’t. For some — it is as easy as breathing. How lucky they are,” he said softly. “Think of the Master. He’s not a very good scholar, you know, but he’s an extremely clever man. But he believes exactly as he did when he was a child. After reading about all the religions in the world. He’s very lucky.”

He was still looking over the fields.

“Then there’s Ralph Udal.” Suddenly he gave me a glance acute and piercing. “By the way, why do you dislike him so much?”

“I don’t dislike him—”

“Come off it.” Roy smiled. “I’ve not seen you do it with anyone else — but when you meet him you bristle like a cat.”

I had not wanted to recognise it, but it was true. I could not explain it.

“Anyway,” said Roy, “he’s not an empty man. You’d give him that, wouldn’t you? And he believes without a moment’s trouble.”

Slowly we began to walk back along the path. Roy was still thinking of those who did not need to struggle in order to believe in God. He spoke of old Martineau, whose story had caught his imagination. Martineau was a solicitor who had kept open house for me and my friends when I was a very young man. He was cultivated, lively, given to all kinds of interests, and in those days only mildly eccentric. Suddenly, at the age of fifty, he had given away his practice and all his possessions; he joined several quaint religious settlements in turn, and then became a tramp preacher; at that moment he was a pavement artist on the streets of Leeds, drawing pictures with a religious message. I had seen him fairly recently: he was very happy, and surprisingly unchanged.

“He must have been certain of God,” said Roy.

“I’m not at all sure,” I said. “He was never able to explain what he really believed. That was always the hardest thing to understand.”

“Well, I hope he’s certain now,” said Roy. “If anyone deserves to be, he does.”

Then he spoke with intense feeling: “I can’t think what it’s like to be certain. I’m afraid that it’s impossible for me. There isn’t a place for me.”

His voice was tense, excited, full of passion. As he went on, it became louder, louder than the voice I was used to, but still very clear: “Listen, Lewis. I could believe in all the rest. I could believe in the catholic church. I could believe in miracles. I could believe in the inquisition. I could believe in eternal damnation. If only I could believe in God.”

“And yet you can’t,” I said, with his cry still in my ears.

“I can’t begin to,” he said, his tone quiet once more. “I can’t get as far as ‘help Thou mine unbelief’.”

We left the ridge of the Roman road, and began to cross the shining fields.

“The nearest I’ve got is this,” he said. “It has happened twice. It’s completely clear — and terrible. Each time has been on a night when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve had the absolute conviction — it’s much more real than anything one can see or touch — that God and His world exist. And everyone can enter and find their rest. Except me. I’m infinitely far away for ever. I am alone and apart and infinitesimally small — and I can’t come near.”

I looked at his face in the moonlight. It was pale, but less haunted, and seemed to be relaxed into a kind of exhausted peace. Soon he began to sing, very quietly, in a light, true, reedy voice. Quiet though it was, it became the only sound under the sky. There was a slight ironic smile on his face; for he was singing a child’s prayer to be guarded while asleep.

8: Election of a Fellow

For once in his life, Arthur Brown considered that he had been guilty of “premature action”. After the visit of Lyall and Foulkes, he had considered Roy as good as elected, although as a matter of form he warned me against excessive optimism. Getliffe had told him, in his honest fashion, that he had been deeply impressed by the expert evidence. Even Winslow had remarked that, though the case for Calvert rested mainly on nepotism, there did appear to be a trace of merit there. Brown went steadily ahead, persuaded the college to create a vacancy and to perform the statutory rites so that there could be an election on the first Monday in November.

So far, so good. But it happened that young Luke, a scientist two years Roy’s junior, finished a research sooner than anyone expected. Francis Getliffe came in with the news one night. The work was completely sound and definite, he said, though some loose ends needed tying up; it was an important advance in nuclear physics. Getliffe had been intending to bring Luke’s name up the following year, but now he wanted him discussed at the fellowship meeting.

“That puts everything back in the melting pot,” said Arthur Brown. “I don’t wish Luke any harm, but it’s a pity his confounded apparatus didn’t blow up a fortnight ago. Just to give us time to squeeze our young friend in. I daresay Luke is pretty good, I know Getliffe has always thought the world of him. But there’s plenty of time to give him a run next year. Well, Eliot, it’s a great lesson to me never to count my chickens before they’re hatched. I shan’t take anything for granted next time I’m backing someone until I actually see him admitted in the Chapel. I don’t mind telling you that I shall be relieved if we ever see Calvert there. Well, we’ve got to make as good a showing as we can. I’m rather inclined to think this is the time to dig in our heels.”

Brown’s reflection did not prevent him from letting Francis Getliffe know that his “present intention” would be to support Luke next year. I did the same. Francis Getliffe was not the man who would “do a deal”, but he was practical and sensible. He would get Luke in anyway, if he waited a few months: we made sure he knew it, before he went to extravagant lengths to fight an election now.

That was all we could do. Roy was still depressed, though not so acutely as on the night of our walk. About his election, I was far more anxious than he.

The day of the election was damp and dark, with low clouds, and a drizzle of rain. In the courts, red and copper leaves of creepers slithered underfoot; umbrellas glistened in the streets as they passed the lighted shops. The meeting was called for the traditional hour of half-past four, with tea beforehand; to quieten my nerves, I spent the middle of the afternoon walking in the town, looking at bookshops, greeting acquaintances; the streets were busy, the window lights shone under the dark sky. There was the wistful smell of the Cambridge autumn, and in the tailors’ shops gleamed the little handbills, blue letters on white with the names of the week’s university teams.

At four o’clock I entered the college by the great gate. The bell was tolling for the meeting, the curtains of the combination room were already drawn. Through the curtains, the lights of the room glowed orange and drew my eyes from the dark court; like any lighted room on a dusky evening, it tempted me with domestic comfort, even though I was wishing that the meeting were all over or that I need not go.

As soon as I got inside, I knew so much of it by heart — the burnished table reflecting, not wineglasses and decanters, but inkpots and neat piles of paper in front of each of our chairs — old Gay, the senior fellow, aged seventy-nine, tucking with shameless greed and gusto into an enormous tea, and congratulating everyone on its excellence — the great silver teapots, the muffin covers, the solid fruit cakes, the pastries — the little groups of two or three colloguing in corners, with sometimes a word, louder than the rest of their conversation, causing others to frown and wonder.

It did not vary meeting by meeting. Nor indeed did the business itself, when the half hour struck, and the Master, brisk, polite, quick-witted, called us to our places, asked for the minutes, said his opening word about the day’s proceedings. For by tradition the day’s proceedings had to begin first with any questions of college livings and second with financial business. That afternoon there was only a report that someone was considering a call to the one vacant living (“he’ll take it,” said Despard-Smith bleakly): but when the Master, so used to these affairs that his courtesy was second nature, his impatience long since dulled, asked: “Bursar, have you any business for us?” Winslow replied: “If you please, Master. If you please.” We listened to a long account of the difficulty of collecting rents from some of the college farms. We then heard the problem of the lease of one of the Cambridge shops, and discussed how to buy a house owned by another college, which was desirable in order to rectify an unstrategic frontier. It was routine, it was quite unselfconscious, it was what we were used to: it only happened that I could have dispensed with it that afternoon, that was all.

As usual, the financial business tailed away about half-past five. The Master, completely fresh, looked round the table. It was a gift of his to seem formal, and yet natural and relaxed.

“That seems to bring us to our main business, gentlemen,” he said. “As will be familiar to you, we have appointed today for the election of a fellow. I suggest we follow the custom that is becoming habitual — though it wasn’t so when I was a junior fellow” — he smiled at some of the older men, as though there was a story to be told later — “and have a straw vote first, to see if we can reach a majority for any candidate. After that, we will proceed to a formal vote, in which we have been known to put on a somewhat greater appearance of agreement.”

There were a few suppressed smiles.

“Well,” said the Master, “the college is well aware of my own position. I thought it right and proper — in fact I felt obliged — to bring up the name of Mr R C E Calvert for consideration. I have told the college, no doubt at excessive length, that in my own view Mr Calvert is our strongest candidate for years past. The college will be familiar with the written reports on his work, and I understand that some fellows had the opportunity of meeting Sir Oulstone Lyall and Colonel Foulkes in person, who probably expressed to them, as they have expressed to me, their opinions upon Mr Calvert.” For a second a slight smile crossed the Master’s face. “The whole case has been explored, if I may say so, with praiseworthy thoroughness. I seem to recall certain discussions in this room and elsewhere. I do not know whether the college now feels that it has heard enough to vote straightaway, or whether there are some fellows who would prefer to examine the question further.”

“If you please, Master,” began Winslow.

“I am afraid that I should consider it rushing things,” said Despard-Smith, at the same moment.

“You wish for a discussion, Bursar?” said the Master, his colour a shade higher, but still courteous.

“Seniores priores,” Winslow said, inclining his head to Despard-Smith.

“Mr Despard-Smith?” said the Master.

“Master,” Despard-Smith gazed down the table with impressive gloom, “I am afraid that I must impress upon the college the d-disastrous consequences of a risky election. The consequences may be worse than disastrous, they may be positively catastrophic. I must tell the college that my doubts about Mr Calvert are very far from being removed. With great respect, Master, I am compelled to say that nothing I have yet heard has even begun to remove my doubts. I need not tell the college that nothing would please me more than being able conscientiously to support Mr Calvert. But, as I am at present s-situated, I should be forsaking my duty if I did not raise my doubts at this critical juncture.”

“We should all be grateful,” said the Master formally.

“It is a thankless task,” said Despard-Smith, with sombre relish, “but I feel it is in the man’s own best interests. First of all, I am compelled to ask whether any of Mr Calvert’s sponsors can reassure me on this point: if he were to be elected, would he take his share of the” — Despard-Smith stuttered, and then produced one of his descents into solemn anti-climax — “the bread-and-butter work of the college? I cannot see Mr Calvert doing his honest share of the bread-and-butter work, and a college of this size cannot carry passengers.”

“Perhaps I might answer that, Master?” said Arthur Brown, bland, vigilant, his tone conciliatory, stubbornly prepared to argue all through the night.

The Master was glad to hear him.

“Anyone who knows Mr Calvert,” said Brown roundly, “could feel no shadow of doubt about his willingness to undertake any duties the college put upon him. Put it another way: he would never let us down, whatever we asked him to do. But I must reply to Mr Despard-Smith that I myself, and I feel sure I am speaking for several fellows, would feel very dubious about the wisdom of our asking Mr Calvert to undertake these bread-and-butter duties. If he is as good at his research work as some of us are inclined to think he should not be encumbered with more pedestrian activities. We can always find willing horses among ourselves to carry out the more pedestrian activities. As for Mr Calvert, I should be inclined to say that I don’t expect a nightingale to crack nuts.”

Despard-Smith shook his head. He went on: “Many of us have to sacrifice our own interests for the college. I do not see why this young man should be an exception. I am also compelled to ask a second question, to which I attach even more serious importance. Is Mr Calvert sound enough in character to measure up to his responsibilities? We demand from our fellows a high standard of character. It will be scandalous if we ever cease to. It will be the beginning of the end. Speaking from many years’ judgment of men, I cannot conceal grave doubts as to whether Mr Calvert’s character has developed sufficiently to come up to our high standard.”

It was as open as the conventions allowed. All his life Despard-Smith had been used to damning people at this table by the solemn unspoken doubt. And the debate stayed at that level, full of anger, misunderstandings, personal imperialisms, often echoes of echoes that biased men for or against Roy, that made it urgent for them to vote him in or out that afternoon. For an instant, through my fret and anxiety, I thought this was how all humans judged each other. Lightweight, said one. Dilettante, said another (which I said was the least true comment I could imagine). Charming and modest, said one of the old men, who liked his looks. “At any rate, he’s not prosaic,” declared Jago, the Senior Tutor, the dramatic and brilliant, the most striking figure in the college. Chrystal, out of loyalty to Brown, did not discuss the incident at the feast, but said he intended to reserve judgment. Conceited and standoffish, said someone. Brown met all the opinions imperturbably, softened them when he could, gave a picture of Roy — quiet, devoted to his work, anxious to become a don in the old style. The Master’s politeness did not leave him, though it was strained as he heard some of the criticisms; he stayed quick and alert in the chair, and repressed all his sarcasms until the name of Luke came up.

But, when it came, his sarcasm was unfortunate. After the exchange of opinions about Roy’s personality, it became clear that we could not lose that afternoon. There were twelve men present (one was still ill). Of the twelve, six had now declared themselves as immovably determined to vote for Roy in this election — the Master, Brown, Jago, myself and the two senior fellows. There were four votes against for certain, with Chrystal and Getliffe still on the fence. At this point, Winslow, who had so far only interposed a few rude comments, took over the opposition from Despard-Smith. He talked of the needs of the college, gibed at the Master by speaking contemptuously of the “somewhat exotic appeal of esoteric subjects”, and finished by saying that he would like Getliffe to “ventilate” the question of Luke. Brown greeted them both with the blandest of encouragement: it was always his tactic to be most reasonable and amiable when things were going well.

In his taut crisp fashion Getliffe described Luke’s career in research. He was the son of a dockyard riveter — had won a scholarship from his secondary school, taken high firsts in his triposes (“there’s no difference between him and Calvert there,” said Francis), begun research in the Cavendish two years before. “He’s just finished that first bit of work,” said Francis Getliffe. “He’s said the last word on the subject.”

“Isn’t that just the trouble with some of your scientific colleagues, Mr Getliffe?” said the Master in a cheerful whisper. “They’re always saying the last word, but they never seem to say the first.”

There was laughter, but not from the scientists. Francis flushed. He was thin-skinned despite his strong will, and he was never self-forgetful on public occasions.

I was violently angry, on edge, distressed. It was innocent, it carried no meaning except that the Master liked to feel the witticism on his tongue: it was incredible that after all his years of intimate affairs he could not resist a moment’s score. Francis would not forgive him.

But Arthur Brown was on watch.

“I think I should like it known, Master,” he said in his rich, deliberate, fat man’s voice, “that I for one, and I rather fancy several others, are very much interested in Mr Luke’s candidature. If it weren’t for what are in our judgment the absolutely overwhelming claims of Mr Calvert, it would seem to me very difficult not to vote for the other young man today. He hasn’t had the advantages that most of our undergraduates have, and I consider his performance is perfectly splendid. Unfortunately I do feel myself obliged to vote for Mr Calvert this evening, but if Mr Getliffe brings up the other name next term, I rather fancy we can promise him a very sympathetic hearing.”

Brown gave Francis Getliffe, all down the length of the table, his broadest and most affable smile. After a moment, Francis’ cheeks creased with a good-natured grin. Brown was watching him with eyes that, behind the broad smile, did not miss the shadow of an expression: as soon as he saw Francis’ face relax, he spoke, still richly but very quick to get in first.

“I don’t know,” said Brown, “how far Mr Getliffe intends to press us about Luke this afternoon — in all the circumstances and considering what has just been said?”

Francis hesitated, and then said: “No, I won’t go any further. I take the strongest exception, Master, to any suggestion that Luke’s work is not original. It’s as original as any work can be. And I shall propose him at the first opportunity next year. I hope the college doesn’t let him slip. He’s quite first class. But I’m satisfied that Calvert has done distinguished work, and looks like going on with it. I’m ready to vote for him this afternoon.”

There was a hum, a rustle, a shuffle of papers. I glanced at Winslow: he pulled in his mouth in a grimace that was twisted, self-depreciating, not unpleasant. Arthur Brown was writing with great care on a quarter sheet of paper, and did not look up: the Master gave Francis a fresh, intimate, lively smile, and said: “I withdraw completely. Don’t take it amiss.”

Brown folded up his note, and wrote a name on it. It was passed round to me. Inside it read, simply: WE MIGHT HAVE LOST.

The straw vote followed soon after. There were seven votes for Roy, four against. Chrystal did not vote.

Before we made the statutory promises and gave our formal votes in writing, Despard-Smith got in a bleak speech in which he regretted that he could not vote for Calvert even for the sake of a gesture of unanimity. Winslow said that, for his part, he was prepared to give anyone the satisfaction of meaningless concord. At last, Roy was formally elected by ten votes to two, Despard-Smith and another sticking it out to the last.

The Master smiled. It was nearly seven o’clock, he was no more stale than when we began.

“I should like to congratulate everyone,” he said with his brisk courtesy, “on having done a good day’s work for the college.”

I went out of the room to send the butler in search of Roy. When I returned, the college was indefatigably considering the decoration of the hall, a subject which came on each list of agenda, roused the sharpest animosities, and was never settled. The old fellows took a more dominant part than in the election. Some of them had been arguing over college aesthetics for over fifty years, and they still disagreed with much acerbity. They were vigorously at it when the butler opened the door and announced that Mr Calvert was waiting. According to custom, the Master at once adjourned the meeting, and eyes turned towards the door.

Roy came in, lightfooted, his head high. Under his gown, he was wearing a new dark grey suit. Everyone watched him. His face was pale and grave. No one’s eyes could leave him, neither his friends’ nor those who had been decrying him half an hour before. As they saw his face, did he seem, I thought, like someone strange, alien, from another species?

He stood at the table, on the opposite side to the Master. The Master himself stood up, and said: “Mr Calvert, it is my pleasant duty to tell you that you have this day been elected into our society.”

Roy inclined his head.

“If it is agreeable to you,” the Master went on briskly, “I propose to admit you at once.”

“Yes, Master.” They were Roy’s first words.

“Then we will go into chapel this moment,” said the Master. “Those fellows who are free will perhaps follow us.”

The Master and Roy walked together, both slender and upright, out of the combination room into the first court, dark in the November night. We followed them, two by two, along the wet shining path. We carried some wisps of fog in with us, as we passed through the chapel door, and a haze hung over the painted panels. We crowded into the fellows’ stalls, where few of us now attended, except for formal duties such as this — that night Winslow and Francis Getliffe, the doctrinaire unbelievers, did not come.

Roy knelt in the Master’s stall, his palms together, the Master’s hands pressing his. The clear light voice could be heard all over the chapel, as he took the oath. The Master said the final words, and began shaking Roy’s hand. As we moved forward to congratulate him, Brown nudged me and whispered: “Now I really do believe that fate can’t touch us.”

9: Birthday Celebration

Lady Muriel gave an intimate dinner party in the Lodge: Arthur Brown presented three bottles on the night of the election, and some more in the week that followed: the Master went round, excelling himself in cheerful, familiar whispers: Bidwell greeted Roy with his sly, open, peasant smile, and said: “We’re all very glad about that, sir. Of course we knew something was going on. We like to keep our eye on things in our own way. I’m very glad myself, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

With all of them Roy pretended to be light-hearted: their pleasure would be spoilt unless he were himself delighted. He could not take joy away from those he liked. He even simulated cheerfulness with me, for he knew that I was pleased. But it was no good. The melancholy would not let him go. It was heavier than it had ever been.

He thrashed round like an animal in a cage. He increased his hours of work. Bottles of brandy kept coming into his room, and he began drinking whenever he had to leave his manuscripts. There were evenings when he worked with a tumbler of spirits beside him on the upright desk.

One night I found him in an overall, with pots of paint scattered on the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Brightening things up,” he said. His mockery did not leave him for long, even in this state. “I need things bright round me. Otherwise I might get depressed.”

For days he painted the room from the ceiling to the floor. In the end, the walls gleamed in pink, green and terracotta. The desks, once a shining white, he painted also, the platforms pink and the legs green. It picked out their strange shapes. From then on, the whole room was bright with colour, was covered with the vivid desks in their bizarre lines. It took visitors aback, when they called to inspect his manuscripts.

I felt helpless and utterly useless, though he seemed to like having me with him. I feared, with a growing dread, the lightning flashes of elation. I told myself that perhaps this state would pass, and meanwhile tried to prevent him dining in hall or being seen much in the college. I did not want him to do himself harm there — and also I had the selfish and practical reason that I did not want him to do harm to myself or Arthur Brown. I dined with him in the town, we went to see friends in their colleges and houses, I persuaded him to spend several nights in his London flat. Rosalind, who had written to me often during the past eighteen months and who kept sending me presents, only needed a word by telephone: she followed him there, and for the first day or two gave him release — temporary, perhaps, thoughtless, certainly, not the release he himself looked for, but still release.

It was, of course, noticed by the college that he had not dined often in hall since his election. But they concluded that he was indulging in a wild round of celebration. They minded very little; by the custom of their class, and of this particular academic society, they did not take much notice of drinking. They nodded in a matter-of-fact and cheerful way. The Master met him once in the court when his eyes were bright with drink, and said to me next day: “Roy Calvert seems to be going about with vineleaves in his hair. I suppose it’s only natural.”

I wished it were as natural as that.

I paid very little attention when Roy asked me to the meeting in honour of Lyall. It was on one of my usual evenings in London, during Roy’s stay. I had gone round from my house in Chelsea to his flat in Connaught Street, just behind the Bayswater Road. Rosalind let me in. She was busy trying the effect of some new boxes with bright, painted, porcelain lids.

Roy had taken the flat while he was an undergraduate, but Rosalind was the only woman who had left her stamp on it. Soon after she first stayed there, she set about making it into something more ornate, lush, comfortable, and mondain.

“How do you like them?” she said, viewing the boxes.

“A bit boudoir-ish,” I said.

“Oh dear.” Superficially she was easy to discourage. She and I got on very well in an unexacting fashion.

“How is Roy?”

“The old thing’s dressing. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him.”

“Is he cheerful?”

“He’s as cheerful as you bright people usually manage to be. I don’t take too much notice of his moods, Lewis. I’ve been keeping him in bed. There’s plenty of life in the old thing still,” she said with a dying fall. One of her uses to him, I thought suddenly, was that she treated him as though he were a perfectly ordinary man. She loved what to her meant romance, the pink lamp-shades in the restaurant car, the Italian sky, great restaurants, all the world of chic and style: at a distance Roy was romantic because he gave her those: in the flesh, though she loved him dearly, he was a man like other men, who had better be pampered though “there was not much wrong with him”.

Roy entered in a dressing-gown, shaved and fresh.

“You here?” he said to me in mock surprise. And to Rosalind: “What may you be doing, dear?”

“Flirting with Lewis,” she said immediately.

He smacked her lightly, and they discussed where they should go for dinner, so that he might know what clothes to wear. “We’re not taking you, old boy,” said Roy over her shoulder: he gave her just the choice that made her eyes rounder, Claridge’s, the Canton, Monseigneur’s. He seemed far less depressed than when I last saw him, and I was nothing but amused when he asked me to the Lyall celebration.

“We shan’t take you tonight,” he said. “I’m simply jealous of you with Rosalind. But I’ll take you somewhere else on Thursday. You need to come and hear us honour old Lyall.”

“Oulstone Lyall?”

“Just so. I need you to come. You’ll find it funny. He’ll be remarkably stuffed.”

I soon had reason to try to remember that invitation exactly, for I was compelled to learn this state of his right through; but I was almost certain that there was nothing dionysiac about him at all that evening, no lightning flash of unnatural gaiety. It was probable that his ease and pleasure with Rosalind made his spirits appear higher than they were. In reality, he was still borne down, though he could appear carefree as he entertained Rosalind or laughed at me.

Sir Oulstone Lyall was seventy years of age that autumn, and scholars in all the oriental subjects had arranged this meeting as a compliment. It was arranged for the Thursday afternoon in the rooms of the British Academy. There were to be accounts of the contemporary position in various fields of scholarship — with the intention of bringing out, in a discreet and gentlemanly way, the effect and influence of Lyall’s own work. It was a custom borrowed from German scholars, and the oldfashioned did not like it. Nevertheless, most of the orientalists in the country came to the meeting.

The Master travelled up from Cambridge that morning and lunched with Roy and me. Away from the Lodge, he was in his most lively form, and it was he who first made a light remark about Sir Oulstone.

“Between ourselves,” said the Master, “it’s a vulgar error to suppose that distinguished scholars are modest souls who shrink from the glory. Knighthoods and addresses on vellum — that’s the way to please distinguished scholars. I advise you to study the modesty of our venerable friend this afternoon.”

Roy laughed very loudly. There was something wild in the sound; at once I was worried. I wished I could get him alone.

“And if you want to observe human nature in the raw,” said the Master, jumping into his favourite topic, “it’s a very interesting point whether you ought to go out and find a pogrom or just watch some of our scientific colleagues competing for honours.”

“How did Lyall get there?” said Roy, in a piercing insistent tone.

“Between ourselves,” the Master replied, “I’ve always felt that he was rather an old humbug.”

“I’ve heard a story about Erzberger. Master, do you remember anything?” said Roy, with abnormal concentration.

The Master did remember. He was himself modest and humble, his professional life was blameless. But he was always ready to indulge in a detached, abstract and cheerful cynicism. He did not notice that Roy’s glance was preternaturally attentive and acute — or perhaps he was stimulated by it.

For the rest of our lunch until it was time to walk up to Piccadilly, he told Roy what he knew of Lyall and Erzberger. The Master had actually met Erzberger when they were both young men.

“He was an astonishingly ugly Jew. I thought he was rather pushful and aggressive. He once asked me — ‘What does an outsider like me have to do to get a fellowship?’” But, so we gathered from the Master, he was brilliantly clever, and had a rarer gift than cleverness, a profound sense of reality. He went to work with Lyall, and they published several papers together on the medieval trade routes in Central Asia. “It was generally thought that the real views were Erzberger’s.” Then there was an interval of several years, in which Erzberger told a good many people that he was preparing a major work. “He never believed in underrating himself.” He had never been healthy, and he died in his thirties of consumption. No unfinished work was ever published, but two years after his death Lyall produced his own magnum opus, the foundation of his fame, on the subject on which they had worked together. In the preface he acknowledged his gratitude to his lamented friend Erzberger for some fruitful suggestions, and regretted his untimely death.

“Just so,” said Roy. “Just so.”

It was a dark, foggy afternoon as we walked up Piccadilly. Cars’ headlights were making swathes in the mist, and Roy’s voice sounded more than ever clear as he talked to the Master all the way to Burlington House. He was intensely, brilliantly excited. A laugh kept ringing out. On the Master’s other side, I walked silent and apprehensive in the murk. Could I give him calm, could anyone? Was it sensible or wise to try now? I was tied by doubt and ignorance. I knew he was suffering, but I did not know how justified my apprehensions were.

As we took off our coats, and the Master left us for a moment, I made one attempt.

“Are you desperately anxious to attend this pantomime?” I said.

“Why do you ask?” said Roy sharply.

“There are other things which might amuse us—”

“Oh no,” said Roy. “I need to be here.” Then he smiled at me. “Don’t you stay. It was stupid of me to drag you here. You’re certain to be bored. Let’s meet later.”

I hesitated, and said: “No. I may as well come in.”

The Academy room was quite small and cosy; the lights were thrown back from the fog-darkened windows. There were half a dozen men on the dais, among them Lyall and Colonel Foulkes. The Master was placed among minor dignitaries in the front row beneath. Perhaps sixty or seventy men were sitting in the room, and it struck me that nearly all of them were old. Bald heads shone, white hair gleamed, under the lights. As the world grew more precarious, rich young men did not take to these eccentric subjects with such confidence: amateurs flourished most, as those old men had flourished, in a tranquil and secure age.

Roy found me a chair, and then suddenly went off by himself to sit under the window. My concern flared up: but in a moment the meeting began.

The chairman made a short speech, explaining that we had come to mark Sir Oulstone’s seventieth birthday and express our gratitude for his work. As the speech went on, Sir Oulstone’s head inclined slowly, weightily, with dignity and satisfaction, at each mention of his own name.

Then came three accounts of Central Asian studies. The first, given by an Oxford professor with a high, fluting voice, struck me as straightforward old-fashioned history — the various conquering races that had swept across the plateau, the rise and fall of dynasties, and so on. The second, by Foulkes, dealt with the deciphering of the linguistic records. Foulkes was a rapid, hopping, almost unintelligible speaker, and much of the content was technical and would have been, even if I could have heard what he said, unintelligible to me: yet one could feel that he was a master of his subject. He paid a gabbling, incoherent and enthusiastic compliment to Roy’s work on Soghdian.

The third account I found quite fascinating. It was delivered in broken English by a refugee, and it described how the history of Central Asia between 500 bc and ad 1000 had been studied by applying the methods of archaeology and not relying so much on documentary evidence — by measuring areas of towns at different periods, studying the tools men used and their industrial techniques. It was the history of common men in their workaday lives, and it made sense of some of the glittering, burbling, dynastic records. The pioneer work had been done over forty years before, said the speaker vigorously, in the original articles of Lyall and Erzberger: then the real great step forward had been taken by Lyall himself, in his famous and classical book.

There was steady clapping. Sir Oulstone inclined his head very slowly. The speaker bowed to him, and Sir Oulstone inclined his head again.

The speech came to an end. It had been a masterpiece of exposition, and the room stirred with applause. There followed a few perfunctory questions, more congratulations to Sir Oulstone from elderly scholars in the front row, one or two more questions. The meeting was warm with congratulation and self-congratulation, feet were just beginning to get restless, it was nearly time to go.

Then I heard Roy’s voice, very clear.

“Mr Chairman, may I ask a question?”

He was standing by the window, with vacant chairs round him. Light fell directly on his face, so that it looked smooth and young. He was smiling, his eyes were brilliant, shining with exaltation.

“Of course, Mr—”

“Calvert,” said Roy.

“Ah yes, Mr Calvert,” said the chairman. Sir Oulstone smiled and bowed.

“We’ve listened to this conspectus of Asian social history,” said Roy precisely. “I should like to ask — how much credit for the present position should be given to the late Dr Erzberger?”

No one seemed to feel danger. The chairman smiled at the lecturer, who replied that Erzberger deserved every credit for his share in the original publications.

“Thank you,” said Roy. “But it does not quite meet my point. This subject has made great progress. Is it possible for no one to say how much we need to thank Dr Erzberger for?”

The chairman looked puzzled. There was a tension growing in the room. But Sir Oulstone felt nothing of it as he rose heavily and said: “Perhaps I can help Mr Calvert, sir.”

“Thank you,” said the chairman.

“Thank you, Sir Oulstone,” came Roy’s voice, clear, resounding with sheer elation.

“I am grateful to my young friend, Mr Calvert,” said Sir Oulstone, suspecting nothing, “for bringing up the name of my old and respected collaborator. It is altogether appropriate that on this occasion when you are praising me beyond my deserts, my old helper should not be forgotten. Some of you will remember, though it was well before Mr Calvert’s time,” Sir Oulstone smiled, “that poor Erzberger, after helping me in my first efforts, was cut off in his prime. That was a tragedy for our subject. It can be said of him, as Newton said of Cotes, that if he had lived we should have learned something.”

“Just so,” said Roy. “So he published nothing except the articles with you, Sir Oulstone?”

“I am afraid that is the fact.”

Roy said, quietly, with extreme sharpness: “Could you tell us what he was working on before he died?”

By now many in the room had remembered the old scandal. Faces were frowning, intent, distressed, curious. But Sir Oulstone was still impervious, self-satisfied, opaque. He still looked at Roy as though he were a young disciple. Sir Oulstone acted as though he had never heard of the scandal: if there were no basis for it, if he were quite innocent, that could have been true.

As Roy waited for the answer, his glance rested on me. For a second I looked into his flashing, triumphant eyes, begging him to stop. Fiercely, impatiently, he shook his head. He was utterly possessed.

“Alas,” said Sir Oulstone, “we have no trace of his last years of work.”

“Did he not work — on the subject of your own book?”

“There was no trace, I say.” Suddenly Sir Oulstone’s voice was cracked and angry.

“Did no one publish his manuscripts?”

“We could find no manuscripts when he died.”

“You could find no result of years of work?” cried Roy in acute passionate incredulity.

“He left nothing behind him.”

“Remarkable.” The single word dropped into the hushed room. It plucked all nerves with its violence, scorn, and extreme abandon.

Sir Oulstone had turned bitterly angry.

“I do not consider this is very profitable. Perhaps, as Mr Calvert is a newcomer to our subject, I had better refer to my obituaries of Erzberger in the two journals. I regard these questions as most unnecessary, sir.”

He sat down. Roy was still on his feet.

“Thank you, Mr Chairman,” he said in his normal tone, quiet, composed and polite. “I am so sorry to have taken the time of the meeting.”

He bowed to the chair, and went out alone.

10: A Moment of Grace

The meeting broke up, and the Master took me off to tea at the Athenaeum. On the way down St James’s Street, the windows of the clubs glowing comfortably warm through the deepening fog, the Master said: “Roy Calvert seems a little upset, Eliot. I suppose it’s a phase we all go through.”

“Yes.”

“He’s been overstrained, of course. Between you and me, our judicious colleagues have something to answer for. It was imbecile to make him wait so long for his fellowship.”

For once the Master was in a thoroughly bad temper. Over the toasted teacakes in the long club morning room, he broke out: “It’s nothing to worry about, Eliot. I did silly things when I was a young man. I suppose he hasn’t got his feet on the earth quite as firmly as I had, but he’s not so different as all that. We must just make sure that all turns out well.”

In his irritation, he let me see something of what he felt for Roy. The Master believed that Roy was far more gifted than himself; he knew that Roy was capable of the scholarly success he could never have managed — for Roy had the devotion, the almost obsessed devotion, which a scholar needs, as well as the touch of supreme confidence. The Master, who found it easier to go about from meeting to meeting using his quick wits, who in his heart felt diffident and uncreative, admired those gifts which he had never had. But also he felt an attraction of like for like. Roy’s elegance and style — with those the Master could compete. Often among his colleagues he had the illusion that he was just playing at being an ordinary man. At times, in daydreams, he had seen himself like Roy.

I noticed too that, as though by instinct, he pretended that nothing much was wrong. Often it seemed to him wiser to soften the truth. The worst did not always happen. Before I left, he said, almost in his cheerful whisper: “I don’t think our colleagues need to be worried by any news of this afternoon’s entertainment, do you, Eliot? We know how easily worried they are, and I shouldn’t like to feel that the Bursar was losing sleep because one of the younger fellows has been overworking.”

The club was filling with men who had been present at the meeting, and the Master went across to them, pleasant-mannered, fresh-faced, not over-troubled.

I went to see Roy, but found Rosalind alone in the flat. She said he had gone out to buy some wine; they were to dine at home that night.

“It will be very nice, having the old thing to myself for once,” she said, and I could not help smiling, though this was not the most suitable time for her brand of realism.

She had seen him since the meeting. “He’s nice and relaxed,” she said. “He’s sweet when there’s nothing on his mind. I wish he weren’t so elusive sometimes.” She added: “I don’t know what’s taken the weight off his mind. He did say that he’d made a frightful ass of himself somewhere.”

The phrase meant nothing to her, but it was a private joke of his and mine, borrowed from an elderly friend.

I saw Roy for an instant just before I went away. One glance reassured me. He was himself, composed, gentle, at ease.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Very much all right,” he said.

As I walked into the foggy street, I heard his voice call cheerfully from the window: “Shan’t be in Cambridge till next week. Come back before then. Need to talk to you.”

In college I was watching for any sign of the story coming through: I was ready to laugh it off, to explain Roy’s action in terms designed to make it seem matter-of-fact, uninteresting, a mixture of a joke and an academic controversy. It was only to Arthur Brown that I confided there had been a scene; and even with him, stout-hearted, utterly dependable, capable of accepting anything in his friends, I was not quite frank — for by that time in my life I was already broken in to keeping secrets, often more so than was good for me or others. I paled down both Roy’s despondency and his outburst. Arthur Brown said: “We shall have to be very careful about our young friend.” Then, the politician never far away, he wondered what effect the news would have upon the college, and how we could conceal it.

Curiously enough, very little news arrived, and that we were able to smother. Colonel Foulkes came to Cambridge for a meeting of electors, and I discovered that he thought nothing specially unusual had happened. Whether this was because Roy could do no wrong in his eyes, or because he really did not like Lyall, or because he was abnormally blank to human atmosphere, I could not decide. He said: “Very interesting point, Calvert’s. Perhaps not the best time to bring it up. These scholars aren’t men of the world, you know. They don’t learn tact. Don’t have the corners rubbed off as you do in the army.”

He was so simple that I was completely at a loss, but I took him into hall, and he talked casually about the Lyall celebratory meeting and enthusiastically about Roy. The most subtle acting would not have been so effective. Some rumour about Roy had reached Despard-Smith, and he began to produce it, with solemn gratification, the next night: but Winslow, fresh from hearing Foulkes, endowed with nothing like the persistence in rancour that vitalised the old clergyman, said: “If you please, Despard. Shall we wait until the young man starts throwing knives about in hall? In point of fact, he seems to have pleasant table manners, which I must say is more than one is accustomed to expect.”

Within three days of the meeting, the Master was able to forget his first impression and to treat the whole affair as though it had been a mischievous, high-spirited trick, like teasing the doctor after the feast. I seemed the only person who could not domesticate it so.

Even Roy, when I saw him at his flat the following week, was free from any cloud, full of fun.

“What have you been doing these days in Cambridge?” he asked.

“Nothing much.”

“Covering up tracks?”

“A little.”

He gave me a curiously protective smile.

“When you took me on, old boy,” he said, “you took all this on yourself.”

“How are you now?” I said, but there was no need for me to ask. He was entirely tranquil.

“Better than I’ve been for weeks and months,” he said, with ringing joy.

He added: “How are you? You’re looking worse than I did. Too much worry. Too much drink. Above all,” his eyes flashed with the purest mischief, “above all, not enough sleep.”

I grinned. It was hard to resist his spirits, it was hard to retain my fears.

“We’ll get you better at ‘Monty’.” Roy, precise in his speech, isolated the word to remind me of Lady Muriel; for she and Lord Boscastle, after calling the family mansion “Bossy”, took to nicknames of places with the utmost naturalness.

“Meanwhile,” said Roy, “I need to give you some fresh air. I need to take you for a walk in the park.”

We left the flat empty, for Rosalind had returned home: Roy was going to Cambridge next day. We entered the park by the Albion gate. A gusty wind was blowing from the west, the trees soughed, the last leaves were spinning under the lamps in the street. The clouds were low, it was dark early; through the trees one could see the lights of the tall houses in Bayswater Road. The wind blew in our faces as we walked down to the Serpentine. It was fresh as a night by the sea.

“It’s wonderful not to be wretched,” cried Roy. “It’s all gone! It’s wonderful to be free!”

He looked at me in the twilight.

“You’re glum, Lewis. You’ve been pitying me for being wretched, haven’t you? You can pity me for the gloom. That was frightful. Don’t pity me for the time when I broke out. It was very exciting. For a few minutes I was let out of prison. Everything was rosy-edged.”

“It might be a slightly expensive excitement,” I said.

He smiled.

“It won’t do me any good with Oulstone, will it?”

There was a trace of satisfaction in his tone. “Oh, never mind. I wasn’t cut out to be stuffed. I’ll go on doing my work. But I don’t want anything in return that those people can give me. I need them to leave me alone, that’s all. I’ll go on with the work. It’s become a habit. But it isn’t going to settle me, old boy. Once I hoped it might. Now I know it can’t. I need to search elsewhere. I shall get there in the end.”

The wind blew, his voice was clear and happy. He said earnestly: “Pity me for the gloom. But it made me see things — that otherwise I never could have seen. Don’t think that all I told you was nonsense. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what I saw.”

“I believe that,” I said.

He stopped suddenly, and held my arm.

“Lewis, why are you so sombre? What is hurting you?”

I did not reply.

“Are you thinking that this will happen to me again?”

“It may,” I said, half-miserably, half-intoxicated by his hope. “Anyway, you ought to be ready. You won’t always be so happy, will you?”

“It may,” Roy repeated. “It may. I need to take it if it comes.” He had spoken evenly, then his voice rose: “It’s something to know the worst.” He was smiling in the dark, with no cover and no reserve: it seemed as though for a second he were deliberately challenging fate.

The next time he spoke, it was very quietly and intimately. We were getting near the water, as he said: “I shall be all right if I can only find somewhere to rest.”

He added, gently: “I shall find my way there. Dear old boy, it may not be the way you’d choose for me. But that doesn’t matter so much to you, does it?”

We walked along the bank, the gale grew louder, the little waves lapped at our feet. He passed from his hopes to mine, selflessly mischievous, selflessly protective. For a while, in the magic of his spirits and the winter night, I could almost believe as he believed, hope as he hoped, and be as happy.

Yet my heart was rent. Never in my life had I so passionately longed to forget all that life had taught me. I wanted the magic to endure, I wanted to believe that he would find rest.

I could not. All I might do was try not to shorten by a minute this calm and beautiful state. If he must learn, let it not be through me. He was the clearest-sighted of men: for once his eyes were dulled: let them stay dulled, rather than see what I saw. Much of my life I had been in search of truth, of the truth about personalities, about the natures of those round me; I would have rather thrown it all away, lose such insight as I might have, sacrifice what I knew, than that I should be seeing the truth now. And if, and if I were seeing the truth, then I prayed that Roy never would.

For I believed that he would not find peace on this earth. He hoped so calmly that night, with such a calm and beautiful hope, that he could escape the burden of self, struggle from under the weight of life, and so leave melancholy and despair behind for ever; he knew they threatened him, but he could conquer them once he broke loose from the chains of self. He tasted, for the illusory moments that we all know, what it was like to be free — to be free of the confines of one’s personality, through another person, through the enchantments of the many forms of love, through the ecstasy of the flesh (for Roy was freer, less clamped in his own mould, because of the odd secret nights he spent with women he would never see again). He had tasted what it was like to long to believe in God. And that night, while we walked in the winter gale, the Augustinian phrase kept ringing through his mind — “Thou has created us for Thyself and our hearts can never rest until they rest in Thee”.

It sounded not as a threat, but as a promise. Perhaps that was the way he would find rest. That night he felt almost certain that it was the way. But yet, he was so confident and liquid in his hope, if not that way he would find another. There was a state of grace: perhaps it would come to him through God, perhaps in some other fashion. But he would find it, and be safe from the night of despair.

If it could be so, I thought in pain. If it could be so. Yet now I had seen him go through a bout of melancholy to the end, through the desperate sadness to the fantastic release. I believed it was part of his nature to feel that suffering, to undergo that clear-eyed misery, as much a part of him as his mischief, his kindness, his physical elegance, his bone and flesh. It was so deep that nothing could change it. He might think he had escaped, but the melancholy would crush him down once more. It was a curse that no one could take away until he died.

He was teasing me, his laugh was blown away on the wind. I would have given all the future for that moment to stay still. I did not dare to see the future. This was a moment of grace.

If I were right, there must come a time when he would know his nature. Some day his clear eyes would see. When would he know?