So next day I went over to the Lodge alone, and was shown into the empty drawing-room. I stood by the window. Snow had lain on the court for days, and, though it was thawing, the ground still gleamed white against the sombre dusk. The sky was heavy with dense grey clouds. The court was empty, it was still the depth of the vacation, no lights shone from the windows. In the drawing-room there was no light yet except the roaring fire.
Roy joined me there. His face was stricken. “This is dreadful,” he said.
“What did he talk about?”
“The little book on the heresies which we’re to work at in a year or two. After my liturgy is safely out.”
“I know,” I said.
“There was a time,” said Roy, “when I should have jumped at any excuse for getting out of that little book.”
“You invented several good reasons.”
“Just so. Now I shall do it in memory of him.”
I doubted whether I should ever be able to dissuade him. He would do it very well, but not superbly; it would not suit him; as a scholar his gifts were, as the mathematicians say, deep, sharp, and narrow; this kind of broad commentary was not at all in his line. People would suspect that he was losing his scholar’s judgment.
“I’d expected a good deal,” said Roy. “But it is dreadful. Much worse than anyone could guess.”
Lady Muriel threw open the door and switched on the lights. “Good afternoon, Roy,” she said. “I’m very glad you’ve come to see us. It’s so long since you were here. Good afternoon, Mr Eliot.”
Roy went to her, took her hand in his. “I’ve been talking to the Master, you know,” he said. “It’s dreadful to have to pretend, isn’t it? I wish you’d been spared that decision, Lady Mu. No one could have known what to do.”
He alone could have spoken to her so. He alone would take it for granted that she was puzzled and dismayed.
“It was not easy, but—”
“No one could help you. And you’d have liked help, wouldn’t you? Everyone would.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
She was embarrassed, flustered, choked like one unused to crying: soon Roy got her sitting beside him on the sofa, and helped her to tea. She smiled at him, her bold eyes misted and bloodshot.
“I should be filling your cup. In my own drawing-room.”
Roy smiled. “You may, the next time I come.”
She gripped hold of her drawing-room manner — for my benefit, perhaps. Her neck straightened, she made a brave attempt to talk of Roy’s journey from Berlin. He told her that he had had to sleep sitting up in a crowded carriage.
“How could you?” cried Lady Muriel. “I couldn’t bear the thought of being watched when I was asleep.”
“Why not, Lady Mu?”
“One wouldn’t know how one was looking before strangers. One couldn’t control oneself.”
He glanced at her: in a second, her face broke, and she smiled back.
Soon afterwards Joan came into the room. She walked in with her determined, gawky stride: then she saw Roy, and her whole bearing changed. She seemed to shiver. For an instant she went stiff. She came towards him, and he jumped up and welcomed her. He said a word about her father; she looked at him steadily, shook her head, deliberately put it aside and went on to argue with him over living in Germany.
“Don’t you feel pressed down? You must feel that it’s a relief to get to the frontier. I felt it very strongly—”
“The Dutch porters have no necks,” said Roy. He disliked arguments, particularly among intellectual persons.
“Seriously—”
“Seriously—” he mimicked her exactly. She flushed, and then gave her unexpected charming laugh.
“You can’t get away with it by parlour tricks,” she said. “In a police state you’re bound to feel a constant friction, anyone is. And—”
“In any sort of state,” he said, “most lives of most people are much the same.”
“I deny that,” said Joan.
“They’ve got their married lives, they’ve got their children, they’ve got their hobbies. They’ve got their work.”
“Your work wouldn’t be affected.” She seized the chance to talk about Roy himself. “But you’re an unusual man. Your work could go on just the same — in the moon. Imagine that you were a writer, or a civil servant, or a parson, or a lawyer, in Berlin now. Do you deny that the police state would make a difference? You must agree.”
“Just so,” said Roy, giving in to evade the argument. “Just so.”
Both women smiled at him tenderly. They were always amused by the odd affirmative, which seemed so out of keeping. Joan’s tenderness was full of a love deep and clear-eyed for so young a woman.
Roy returned to bantering with Lady Muriel. He was out to give them some relief but he was happy with them, and it was all light and unpretending. He told her of some Junker acquaintances in Berlin, the von Heims. “They reminded me of you so much, Lady Mu.”
“Why ever was that?”
“The Gräfin spent most of her time reading Gotha,” said Roy, sparkling with mischief, malice, fondness. “Just like you, Lady Mu, idly turning over the pages of Debrett.”
She gave her loud crowing laugh, and slapped his hand. Then she said seriously: “Of course, no one has ever called me snobbish.”
She laughed again at Roy. Joan, who knew her mother well and also knew that no one could treat her as Roy did, was melted in a smile of envy, incredulity, and love.
It was a dark rainy night when Roy and I walked out of the Lodge. On the grass in the court there were left a few patches of melting snow, dim in the gloom. The rain pelted down. Roy wanted to go shopping, and soon the rain had soaked his hair and was running down beside his ears.
I said something about Joan being in love with him, but he would not talk of her. It was rare for him to want to talk of love, rarer still of the love he himself received. He was less willing than any man to hint at a new conquest.
That night he was sad over the Master, but otherwise serene. He had come back with his spirits even and tranquil. Despite the shock of the afternoon, he was enjoying our walk in the rain.
He asked me for the latest gossip, he asked gently after my concerns. The rain swirled and gurgled in the gutters, came down like a screen between us and the bright shop windows. Roy took me from shop to shop, water dripping from us on to the floors, in order to buy a set of presents. On the way he told me whom he wanted them for — the strange collection of the shady, the shabbily respectable, the misfits, who lived in the same house in the Knesebeckstrasse. Roy would go back there, though his flat was uncomfortable, whenever he went to Berlin; for the rest, the “little dancer” and the others, had already come to be lost without him. Some thought he was an unworldly professor, a rich simple Englishman, easy to fleece.
“Poor goops.” Roy gave his most mischievous smile. “If I were going to make a living as a shark, I should do it well, shouldn’t you? We should make a pretty dangerous pair, old boy. I must try to instruct them some time.”
Nevertheless, he took the greatest pains about their presents.
16: “I Hate the Stars”
On those winter nights the light in the Master’s bedroom dominated the college. The weeks passed: he had still not been told; we paid our visits, came away with shamefaced relief. We came away into a different, busy, bustling, intriguing life; for, as soon as it was known that the Master must die, the college was set struggling as to who should be his successor. That struggle was exciting and full of human passion, but it need not be described here. It engrossed Arthur Brown completely, me in part, and Roy a little. We were all on the same side, and Winslow on the other. It was the sharpest and most protracted personal conflict that the college went through in my time.