It was in the early summer that he told her he could not marry her.
Rosalind let herself go. She had been crying, reproaching him, imploring him, for some days when I first heard what had happened. I went round to Connaught Street one night, and found Roy lying on the sofa, his face pale and tired. Rosalind was sitting in an armchair; the skin under her eyes was heavily powdered, but even so one could see that she had not long since been in tears.
They were in silence when I entered.
“Hallo, old boy,” said Roy. He was relieved to see me.
“I’d better tell Lewis,” said Rosalind.
“You needn’t,” said Roy. “It would be better if you didn’t.”
“You’ll only tell him yourself the minute you’ve got rid of me,” she said, angrily, pathetically.
Roy turned his face away. She faced me with open, brimming eyes.
“He’s got tired of me,” she said.
“Not true,” said Roy, without turning round.
“He won’t marry me. He’s told me that he won’t marry me.” She spoke to Roy. “You can’t deny that you’ve told me that, can you?”
Roy did not reply.
“I’m no good to him,” said Rosalind. She took out a crumpled handkerchief and began to cry, very quietly.
In time she said to me: “What do you think of it, Lewis? I expect you think it’s right.”
“I’m very sorry: that’s all one can ever say.”
“You think he’ll be better off without me, don’t you?” she cried.
I shook my head. “It’s for you two only,” I said.
She made a pretence of smiling.
“You’re a nice old thing, Lewis. If you don’t think he will be better off without me, everyone else will. All the people who think I’m a little bitch — they’ll all feel I’ve got what I deserve. Oh, what do I care what they all think? They don’t matter, now he’s turning me out.”
“I’m not turning you out.”
Roy’s voice was flat and exhausted, and Rosalind found it easier to talk to him through me. She looked at his back and said: “I’ve told him that I’ve got to get married some time. I can’t wait for ever. And someone quite nice is rather anxious to marry me.”
Whether it was an invention or not, I could not guess. In any case, she had used it in order to force Roy’s hand. She had thrust it in front of him: he could not be elusive any more, she thought. She had first mentioned it, hopefully, plaintively, three days before, and since then she had been blackmailing and begging. She had not reckoned that he would be so firm.
At this point Roy broke in: “I can only say it again. If you need to marry, you should marry him.”
It was very harsh. But it was harsh through a cause I had not expected. He was jealous. As a rule he was the least jealous of men. He was resolved not to marry her, yet he was jealous that she should marry another.
“I don’t know whether I could bear it.”
“I expect he will make you happier than I ever could.”
“You’re horrible,” said Rosalind, and sobbed again.
She did not move him, either then or later. He stayed firm, though he became more gentle when the first shock wore off. He wanted to go on living with her, but he would not marry her. Rosalind still kept coming to see him, though more fitfully. I heard nothing more about her engagement to the other man.
The scene left Roy quiet and saddened. For some days I dreaded that he was being overcome by another wave of depression. But it fell away. It was good to see him light-hearted with relief. Yet I thought, as the summer passed, that he was never as carefree after the scene with Rosalind; even at his gayest, he never reached the irresponsible, timeless content of Monte Carlo. He became more active, impatient, eager, more set on his own search. He spent much more time with Ralph Udal in Lewisham. He persuaded me to try to trace old Martineau for him: but Martineau had moved from the Leeds pavement, no one knew where.
One afternoon in August I saw something which surprised me and set me thinking. I was being driven over the Vauxhall bridge, when through the car window I saw Rosalind and Ralph Udal walking together. Neither was speaking, and they were walking slowly to the north side of the river. What was she doing now, I thought? Did she think that he had become the most powerful influence on Roy? Was she playing the same game that she had once played with me?
The first part of the liturgy was published in the summer. In due course, often after months of delay, there followed respectful reviews in three or four scholarly periodicals. Colonel Foulkes, as usual putting in his word without a pause, got in first with his review in the Journal of Theological Studies; he wrote that the complete edition of the liturgy looked like being the most authoritative piece of oriental scholarship for a generation. But apart from him English scholars did not go out of their way to express enthusiasm. The reviews were good enough, but there was none of the under-current of gossipy personal praise. I had no doubt that, if Roy had kept quiet at the December meeting, he would have had different luck, his reputation would have been as good as made; Sir Oulstone would have paid a state visit to the college, all Sir Oulstone’s friends would have been saying that Roy had once for all “arrived”. But none of those things happened. Sir Oulstone and his school were cold and silent.
The Master was painfully disappointed. Arthur Brown said to me with sturdy resignation: “I want to tell them, Eliot, that our young friend is the best scholar this college has had since the war. But it looks as though I shall have to wait for a few years.” He warned me comfortably: “It’s never wise to claim more than we can put on the table. People remember that you’ve inflated the currency, and they hold it against you next time.”
We were downcast and angry. Roy’s own response was peculiar. He was amused, he treated it as a good joke at his own expense — and also at ours, who wanted him to be famous. “It’s a flop, old boy,” he said mischievously in his room one afternoon. He developed the habit of referring to his work as though he were a popular writer. “It’s a flop. I shan’t be able to live on the royalties. I’m really very worried about the sales.”
I wanted him to make his peace with Lyall, but he smiled.
“Too late. Too late. Unsuccessful author, that’s what I shall be. I shall need to work harder to make ends meet.” He jumped to his feet, and went towards the upright reading desk. He was busy with a particularly difficult psalm. “Can’t stay talking,” he said. “That won’t buy Auntie a new frock.”
He was gaining a perverse satisfaction. I realised at last that he did not want the fame we wanted for him. He would do the work — that was a need, a drug, an attempt at escape — but if he could choose he would prefer to be left obscure.
Most men, I thought, are content to stay clamped within the bonds of their conscious personality. They may break out a little — in their daydreams, their play, sometimes in their prayers and their thoughts of love. But in their work they stay safely in the main stream of living. They want success on the ordinary terms, they scheme for recognition, titles, position, the esteem of solid men. They want to go up step by step within their own framework. Among such men one finds the steadily and persistently ambitious — the Lyalls and the Houston Eggars.
Roy always shied from them. He thought of them as “stuffed”. It had been obtuse of us to imagine he would seek a career as they might seek it. Arthur Brown and I were more ordinary men than he was. We were trying to impose on him the desires we should have had, if we had been as gifted. But one could not separate his gifts from the man he was.