Toby had received, though not yet digested, one of the earliest lessons of adult life: that one is never secure. At any moment one can be removed from a state of guileless serenity and plunged into its opposite, without any intermediate condition, so high about us do the waters rise of our own and other people’s imperfection. Toby had passed, it seemed to him in an instant, from a joy that had seemed impregnable into an agitation which he scarcely understood. He could not, during the long night and when he awoke from intermittent sleep in the morning, quite make out whether anything very important had happened or not; at least, at the surface of his mind he debated this. Deeper down he knew that something extraordinary had occurred though he did not yet know what it was.
As he walked back with Nick to the Lodge, after Michael’s abrupt departure, he had felt extreme confusion, but had managed all the same to speak calmly to Nick and answer with cheerful casualness his questions about their journey. He wondered if Nick could possibly have seen the incident, but decided that he had not. Toby and Michael had been well behind the headlights, and Nick, even if he had emerged from the gates in time, would have been dazzled by the strong beam. He might have guessed from Michael’s odd manner that something was up; but there was no reason why he should guess it to be something as remarkable asthat. Nick was possibly curious: and showed, Toby observed, during their conversation that followed, a sharpened interest in him and a desire to keep him talking. But Toby maintained his composure, and cut their talk short, though not too short, and hurried up to bed. He wanted passionately to be by himself.
When he was alone he sat down on his bed and covered his face. His first emotion was sheer amazement. He could hardly think of anything he would have expected less. Toby’s knowledge of homosexuality was slight. His day school had yielded him no experience of this sort, nor even the remotest approach to such experience. The matter had been the subject of certain simple jokes among his school-fellows, but their ignorance was as great as his and little information could be obtained from this source. As his education had included Latin but no Greek his acquaintance with the excesses of the ancients was fragmentary; but in any case it was all different for them. What he did know came mainly from the more popular newspapers, and from remarks he had heard his father make about “pansies”. In so far as he had up to now reflected on this propensity at all he had regarded it as a strange sickness or perversion, with mysterious and disgusting refinements, from which a small number of unfortunate persons suffered. He also knew, and differed here from his father, that it was more proper to regard these persons as subjects for the doctor than as subjects for the police. And there his knowledge ended.
Like all inexperienced people, Toby tended to make all-or-nothing judgements. Whereas previously he had regarded Michael as a paragon of virtue and had not dreamt of speculating about whether his life could contain blemishes or failures, he now attributed to him homosexuality tout court with all that it involved of the unnatural and the nameless. At least this was his first reaction. He found that his thoughts moved fast and in the direction of greater complexity. His immediate emotion had been surprise. It was soon succeeded by disgust and an alarming sort of fear. He felt a definite physical repugnance at having been touched in that way. He felt himself menaced. Perhaps he ought to tell someone. Did the others know about it? Obviously not. Oughtn’t they to be told? Yet it was certainly not for him to speak. Besides, it was a matter also of protecting himself. He was thoroughly alarmed to find that he was the sort of person who attracted attention of that sort. He wondered if that showed that there was something wrong with him, an unconscious tendency that way which another person so afflicted would divine?
It was at this point that he began to accuse himself of exaggeration. Surely the thing wasn’t as important as all that; and was he not, by becoming so idiotically upset, just displaying his nai”vety and lack of sophistication? Toby had a horror of being thought naïve. He began to undress and resolved to think no more about it till the next morning. He turned the light out. But sleep did not come. And as he lay there in the darkness Toby found that after all what had happened had its interesting side. It certainly constituted an adventure, though a somewhat rébarbative one. And what he then experienced, though he did not at the time recognize it as such, was a feeling of pleasure at being suddenly in a position of power vis-à-vis someone whom he had so unques-tioningly accepted as his spiritual superior.
This thought led him back toward considerations which were more humane: and it was here that the complexities began in earnest. He began really to envisage Michael. What was it like to be Michael? What was Michael thinking now? Was he lying awake, miserable, wishing that that hadn’t happened? What would he do tomorrow? Would he speak to Toby about it? Or would he ignore it completely and behave as if it hadn’t been? Toby felt he couldn’t bear that. The sense of something needing to be completed began already to be strong in him. He was feeling, for the first time, intensely interested in Michael. He felt too, as he conjured up the image of that obviously rather complicated person, a new emotion about him. He found himself feeling, towards Michael, curiously protective. And with this thought at last he fell asleep.
The next morning he just felt wretched. His disgust had returned, but now it was directed for some obscure reason against himself. He felt as if he had taken part, on the previous night, in some exhausting orgy. Yet although he recalled with undiminished repugnance the incident in question, it seemed that what had constituted the orgy was chiefly his own thoughts. Yet he was far from wanting to turn his mind to other things. Whereas before he had wholeheartedly enjoyed his work in the garden, it seemed today burdensome and time-wasting in that it distracted him from thinking about Michael. He would have liked to spend the morning walking in the woods. Instead he had to sustain a conversation with James, and then with Patchway, and then with Mrs Mark, with whom he was detailed to spend the last part of the morning packing vegetables into nets and boxes. Michael avoided him.
It seemed possible that Michael might take an opportunity at lunch-time to call him aside. But the meal passed off without their having even looked at each other. Toby was anxious not to appear to invite a tête-à-tête, and he vanished during the short interval after lunch to a remote corner of the fruit garden where there was a job of attaching wires to the wall which he had been asked to do when a spare moment came. But when he got there he could not bring himself to do the job. He sat on the path, turning the little stones over with his fingers, until it was time to start work officially again.
In the afternoon he was employed, once more on the perennial hoeing. At least here he was alone. The weather had continued very hot and his vigorous efforts soon made him perspire freely. He worked on doggedly with his head down. From farther away he could hear the purr of the mechanical cultivator, which had gone into action immediately under the control of Patchway, who had experienced in its respect a lightning conversion. As the afternoon wore on Toby began to feel totally miserable, and the confusion of his thoughts was resolved into one intense need: to talk to Michael.
He went through high tea in a daze, and after sitting about for some time conspicuously in the common-room, forced himself to return to the fruit garden to do the wiring. It was here that Mrs Mark found him round about eight o’clock with the message that Michael would like to see him at once.