by C. P. Snow
Bidwell came to the door again and got our attention. Then he called out in triumph: “The Earl and Countess of Boscastle!”
It was a moment for Bidwell to cherish.
His next call, and the last, was an anticlimax. It was simply: “Mr Winslow!”
I was surprised; I had not known till then who was making up the party. It seemed a curious choice. Roy had not been seeing much of the old man. He was not even active in the college any longer, for he had resigned the bursarship in pride and rage over a year before. Yet in one way he was well-fitted for the party. He had been an enemy of the old Master’s, Lady Muriel had never liked him – but still he had been the only fellow whom she treated as some approximation to a social equal. Winslow was fond of saying that he owed his comfortable fortune to the drapery trade, and in fact his grandfather had owned a large shop in St Paul’s Churchyard; but his grandfather nevertheless had been a younger son of an old county family, a family which had remained in a curiously static position for several hundred years. They had been solid and fairly prosperous country gentlemen in the seventeenth century: in the twentieth, they were still solid country gentlemen, slightly more prosperous. Winslow referred to his ancestors with acid sarcasm, but it did not occur to Lady Muriel, nor apparently to Lord Boscastle, to enquire who they were.
With Roy in the state I knew, I was on edge for the evening to end. (I was strung up enough to suspect that he might have invited Winslow through a self-destructive impulse. Winslow had watched one outburst, and might as well have the chance to see another.) In any other condition, I should have revelled in it. To begin with, Winslow was patently very happy to be there, and there was something affecting about his pleasure. He was, as we knew, cross-grained, rude, bitter with himself and others for being such a failure; yet his pleasure at being asked to dinner was simple and fresh. I had the impression that it was years since he went into society. He did not produce any of the devastating snubs he used on guests in hall; but he was not at all overborne by Lord Boscastle, either socially or as a man. They got on pretty well. Soon they were exchanging memories of Italy (meanwhile Mrs Seymour, who was, of course, seated next to me, confided her latest enthusiasm in an ecstatic breathless whisper. It was for Hitler – which did not make it easier to be patient. “It must be wonderful,” she said raptly, “to know that everyone is obliged to listen to you. Imagine seeing all those faces down below… And no one can tell you to stop.”)
The dinner was elaborate and grand. Roy had set out to beat the apolaustic at their own game. And he had contrived that each person there should take special delight in at least one course – there were oysters for Lady Muriel, whitebait for me, quails for Lady Boscastle. Most of the party, even Lady Boscastle, ate with gusto. I should have been as enthusiastic as any of them, but I was only anxious that the courses should follow more quickly, that we could see the party break up in peace. Roy was not eating and drinking much; I told myself that he had a ball to attend when this was over. But I should have been more reassured to see him drink. His eyes were brighter and fuller than normal, and his voice had changed. It was louder, and without the inflections, the variety, the shades of different tone as he turned from one person to another. Usually his voice played round one. That night it was forced out, and had a brazen hardness.
He spoke little. He attended to his guests. He mimicked one or two people for Winslow’s benefit: it affected me that the imitations were nothing like as exact as usual. The courses dragged by; at last there was a chocolate mousse, to be followed by an ice. Both Lord Boscastle and Winslow, who had strongly masculine tastes, refused the sweet. Lady Muriel felt they should not be left unreproved.
“I am sorry to see that you’re missing this excellent pudding, Hugh,” she said.
“You ought to know by now, Muriel,” said Lord Boscastle, defensively, tiredly, “that I’m not much good at puddings.”
“It has always been considered a college speciality,” said Lady Muriel, clinching the argument. “I remember telling the Master that it should become recognised as the regular sweet at the Audit feast.”
“I’m very forgetful of these matters,” said Winslow, “but I should be slightly surprised if that happened, Lady Muriel. To the best of my belief, this admirable concoction has never appeared at a feast at all.”
He could not resist the gibe: for it was not a function of the Master to prescribe the menus for feasts, much less of Lady Muriel.
“Indeed,” said Lady Muriel. “I am astonished to hear it, Mr Winslow. I think you must be wrong. Let me see, when is the next audit?”
“November.”
“I hope you will pay particular attention.”
“If you please, Lady Muriel. If you please.”
“I think you will find I am right.”
They went on discussing feasts and college celebrations as though they were certain to happen, as though nothing could disturb them. There was a major college anniversary in 1941, two years ahead.
“I hope the college will begin its preparations in good time,” said Lady Muriel. “Two years is not long. You must be ready in two years’ time.”
Suddenly Roy laughed. They were all silent. They had heard that laugh. They did not understand it, but it was discomforting, like the sight of someone maimed. “Two years’ time,” he cried. He laughed again.
The laugh struck into the quiet air. Across the table, across the sumptuous dinner, Lady Boscastle looked at me; I was just going to try. But it was Lady Muriel who awkwardly, hesitatingly, did not shirk her duty.
“I know what you are feeling, Roy,” she said. “We all feel exactly as you do. But it is no use anticipating. One has to go on and trust that things will get better.”
Roy smiled at her.
“Just so, Lady Mu,” he said.
Perhaps it was best that she had spoken. Her very ineptness had gone through him. He became calmer, though his eyes remained fiercely bright.
With ineffable relief, even though it meant only a postponement, I saw the port go round, the sky darken through the open windows. We heard the faint sound of music from the college ball.
Mrs Eggar had to leave early because of her child. Roy escorted her and Mrs Seymour to their taxi and then came back. He was master of himself quite enough to seem unhurried; no one would have thought that he was waiting to go to a young woman. It was between eleven and twelve. Lord Boscastle and Winslow decided to stroll together in the direction of Winslow’s home; Lady Boscastle wished to stop in my rooms for a little; so Roy was free to take Lady Muriel to the hotel.
I helped Lady Boscastle into an armchair beside my fireplace.
“I haven’t had the chance to tell you before, my dear boy,” she said, “but you look almost respectable tonight.”
But she had not settled down into sarcastic badinage before Bidwell, who was on duty at the ball, tapped softly at the door and entered. “Lord Bevill is asking whether he can see Lady Boscastle, sir.” I nodded, and Bidwell showed Humphrey Bevill into the room.
Humphrey had been acting in an undergraduate performance, and there were still traces of paint on his face. He was exhilarated and a little drunk. “I didn’t really want to see you, Lewis,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to discover where my mother is hiding.” He went across to Lady Boscastle. “They’ve kept you from me ever since you arrived, mummy. I won’t let you disappear without saying goodnight.”
He adored her; he would have liked to stay, to have thrown a cushion on the floor and sat at her feet.
“This is very charming of you, Humphrey.” She smiled at him with her usual cool, amused indulgence. “I thought I had invited myself to tea in your rooms tomorrow – tête-à-tête?”
“You’ll come, won’t you, mummy?”
“How could I miss it?” Then she asked: “By the way, have you seen your father tonight?”
“No.”
“He’d like to see you, you know. He has probably got back to the hotel by now.”
>
“Must I?”
“I really think you should. He will like it so much.” Humphrey went obediently away. Lady Boscastle sighed. “The young are exceptionally tedious, Lewis, my dear. They are so preposterously uninformed. They never realise it, of course. They are very shocked if one tells them that they seem rather – unrewarding.”
She smiled.
“Poor Humphrey,” she said.
“He’s very young,” I said.
“Some men,” said Lady Boscastle, “stay innocent whatever happens to them. I have known some quite well-accredited rakes who were innocent all through their lives. They never knew what this world is like.”
“That can be true of women too,” I said.
“Most women are too stupid to count,” said Lady Boscastle indifferently. “No, Lewis, I’m afraid that Humphrey will always be innocent. He’s like his father. They’re quite unfit to cope with what will happen to them.”
“What will happen to them?”
“You know as well as I do. Their day is done. It will finish this time – if it didn’t in 1914, which I’m sometimes inclined to think. It will take someone much stronger than they are to live as they’ve been bred to live. It takes a very strong man nowadays to live according to his own pleasure. Hugh tried, but he hadn’t really the temperament, you see. I doubt whether he’s known much happiness.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I could always manage, my dear. Didn’t you once tell me that I was like a cat?”
She was scrutinising her husband and her son with an anthropologist’s detachment. And she was far more detached than the rest of them about the fate of their world. She liked it; it suited her; it had given her luxury, distinction and renown; now it was passing forever, and she took it without a moan. “I thought,” she said, “that your friend Roy was rather égaré tonight.”
“Yes.”
“What is the matter? Is my niece still refusing to let him go? Or am I out of date?”
She said it airily. She was not much worried or interested. If Roy had been exhibiting some new phase of a love affair, she would have been the first to observe, identify and dissect. As it was, her perception stopped short, and she was ready to ignore it.
She leaned back against the head-rest of the chair. Under the reading-lamp, her face was monkey-like and yet oddly beautiful. The flesh was wizened, but the architecture of the bones could never be anything but exquisite. She looked tired, reflective and amused.
“Lewis!” she asked. “Do you feel that you are doing things for the last time?”
I was too much engrossed in trouble to have speculated much.
“I do,” said Lady Boscastle. “Quite strongly. I suppose the chances are that we shall not dine here again. It tends to give such occasions a certain poignancy.”
She smiled.
“It didn’t happen so last time, you know. It all came from a clear sky. A very clear sky, my dear boy. Have I ever told you? I think I was happier in 1914 than I ever was before or since. I had always thought people were being absurdly extravagant when they talked of being happy. Yet I had to admit it. I was ecstatically happy myself. It was almost humiliating, my dear Lewis. And distinctly unforeseen.”
I had heard something of it before. Of all her conquests, this was the one to which she returned with a hoarding, secretive, astonished pleasure. She would not tell me who he was. “He has made his own little reputation since. I am not quite ungallant enough to boast.” I believed that it was someone I knew, either in person or by name.
The whirr and clang and chimes of midnight broke into a pause. Reluctantly Lady Boscastle felt that she must go. I was just ringing for a taxi, when she stopped me.
“No, my dear,” she said. “I have an envie for you to take me back tonight.”
Very slowly, for she had become more frail since I first met her, she walked on my arm down St Andrew’s Street. The sky had clouded, there was no moon or stars, but the touch of the night air was warm and solacing. Her stick stayed for an interval on the pavement at each step; I had to support her; she smiled and went on talking, as we passed Emmanuel, decked out for a ball. Fairy lights glimmered through the gate, and a tune found its way out. A party of young men and women, in tails and evening frocks and cloaks, made room for us on the pavement and went in to dance. They did not imagine, I thought, that they had just met a great beauty recalling her most cherished lover.
Lord Boscastle was waiting up for her in their sitting-room at the hotel.
“How very nice of you, Hugh,” she said lightly, much as she spoke to her son. “I have been keeping Lewis up. Do you mind if I leave you both now? I think I will go straight to my room. Good night, Hugh, my dear. Good night, Lewis, my dear boy.”
Lord Boscastle did not seem inclined to let me go. He poured out a whisky for me and for himself, and, when I had drunk mine, filled the tumbler again. He was impelled to find out what his wife and I had been saying to each other; he could not ask directly, he shied away from any blunt question, and yet he went too far for either of us to be easy. There was a curious tone about those enquiries, so specific that I was certain I ought to recognise it – but for a time I could not. Then, vividly, it struck me. To think that he was jealous of his wife’s affection for me was, of course, ridiculous. To think he was still consumed by the passionate and possessive love for her which had (as I now knew) darkened much of his manhood – that was ridiculous too. But he was behaving as though the habit of that consuming passion survived, when everything else had died. In his youth he had waited up for her; it was easy to imagine him striding up and down the opulent rooms of Edwardian hotels. In his youth he had been forced to question other men as he had just questioned me; he was forced under the compulsion of rivalry, he was driven to those intimate duels. At long last the hot and turbulent passion had died, as all passions must; but it had trained his heart to habits he could not break.
His was a nature too ardent to have come through lightly; I thought it again when he confronted me with Roy’s demeanour that night.
“I was afraid the man was going to make an exhibition of himself,” he said.
I had no excuse to make.
“He’ll have to learn that he mustn’t embarrass his guests. We’ve all sat through dinners wanting to throw every scrap of crockery on to the floor. But we’ve had to hide it. Damn it, I shall wake up in the night wondering what’s wrong with the young man.”
He added severely: “One will have to think twice about accepting invitations – if there’s a risk of being made miserable. One will just have to refuse.”
It sounded heartless. In a sense, it came from too much heart. It was the cool, like Lady Boscastle, who could bear to look at others’ wretchedness. Her husband became hurt, troubled, angry – angry with the person whose wretchedness embarrassed him so much.
When I went out into the street, I stood undecided, unable to make up my mind. Should I look in at the ball where Roy was dancing – to ease my mind, to see if he was there? Sometimes any action seemed soothing: it was better than waiting passively to hear bad news. It was difficult to check myself, I began to walk to the ball. Then, quite involuntarily, the mood turned within me. I retraced my steps, I went down the empty street towards my rooms.
31: Absolute Calm
I slept fitfully, heard the last dance from the college hall, and then woke late. Bidwell did not wake me at nine o’clock; when he drew up the blind, he told me that he had let me sleep on after last night’s party. He also told me that he had not seen Roy that morning: Roy had not been to bed nor come in to breakfast.
I got up with a veil of dread in front of the bright morning. I ate a little breakfast, read the newspaper without taking it in, read one or two letters. Then Roy himself entered. He was still wearing his dress suit: he was not smiling, but he was absolutely calm. I had never seen him so calm.
“I’ve been waiting about outside,” he said. “Until you’d finished breakfast. Just like a pupil who daren�
��t disturb you.”
“What have you done?” I cried.
“Nothing,” said Roy.
I did not believe him.
“You have finished now, haven’t you? I didn’t want to hurry you, Lewis.” He looked at me with a steady, affectionate glance. “If you’re ready – will you come into the garden?”
Without a word between us, we walked through the courts. Young men were sitting on the window sills, some of them still in evening clothes; through an open window, we heard a breakfast party teasing each other, the women’s voices excited and high.
Roy unlocked the garden gate. The trees and lawns opened to us; no sight had ever seemed so peaceful. The palladian building stood tranquil under a cloudless summer sky.
“What have you done?” I cried again.
“Nothing,” said Roy.
His face was grave, quite without strain, absolutely calm. He said: “I’ve done nothing. You expected me to break out, didn’t you? No, it left me all of a sudden. I’ve done nothing.”
Then I believed him. I had an instant of exhausted ease. But Roy said: “It’s not so good, you know. I’ve done nothing. But I’ve seen it all. Now I know what I need to expect.”
His words were quiet, light, matter-of-fact. Suddenly they pierced me. They came from an affliction greater than any horror. No frantic act could have damaged him like this. Somehow his melancholy had vanished in an instant; during the night it had broken, not into violence, but into this clear sight. At last he had given up struggling. He had seen his fate.
“It’s not easy to take,” said Roy.
He looked at me, and said: “You’ve always known that I should realise it in the end.”
“I was afraid so,” I said.
“That’s why I hid things from you.” He paused, and then went on: “I don’t see it as you do. But I see that I can’t change myself. One must be very fond of oneself not to want to change. I can’t believe that anyone would willingly stay as I am. Well, I suppose I must try to get used to the prospect.”
