Meanwhile, Roy spent more time in the Lodge than the rest of us put together. He sat for whole afternoons with the Master, planning their book on the heresies, and he became Lady Muriel’s only support. In the Lodge he forgot himself entirely. He devoted himself, everything he was, to each of the three of them. But he knew that he was in danger of paying a bitter price. Outside he remembered what he was watching there. It filled him with dread. At times he waited for the first sign of melancholy to take hold of him. I was waiting too. I watched him turn to his work with savage absorption: and there came nights when he drank for relief.
It was harrowing for anyone to watch, even for those far tougher-skinned than Roy. We saw the Master getting a little more tired each time we visited him; and each time he was more surprised that his appetite and strength were not coming back. For a few days after he had been told that all was well, the decline seemed to stop. He even ate with relish. Then slowly, imperceptibly to himself, the false recovery left him. By February he was so much thinner that one could see the smooth cheeks beginning to sag. He no longer protested about not being allowed up. The deterioration was so visible that we wondered when he would suspect, or whether he had already done so. Yet there was not a sign of it. He complained once or twice that “this wretched ulcer is taking a lot of getting rid of”, but his spirits stayed high and he confided his sarcastic indiscretions with the utmost vivacity. It was astonishing to see, as he grew worse under our eyes, what faith and hope could do.
Everyone knew that he would have to be told soon. The disease appeared to be progressing very fast, and Lady Muriel told Roy that he must be given time to settle his affairs. She was dreading her duty, dreading it perhaps more than an imaginative person would have done; we knew that she would not shirk it for an hour once she decided that the time had come.
One February afternoon, I met Joan in the court. I asked first about her mother. She looked at me with her direct, candid gaze: then her face, which had been heavy with sadness, lost it all as she laughed.
“That’s just like Roy,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Asking the unexpected question. Particularly when it’s right. Of course, she’s going through more than he is at present. She will, until she’s told him. After that, I don’t know, Lewis. I haven’t seen enough of death to be sure. It may still be worse for her.” She spoke gravely, with a strange authority, as though she were certain of her reserves of emotional power. Then she smiled, but looked at me like an enemy. She said: “Has Roy learned some of his tricks from you?”
“I have learned them from him,” I said. She did not believe it. She resented me, I knew. She resented the times he agreed with me; she thought I over-persuaded him. She envied the casual intimacy between us which I took for granted, for which she would have given so much. She would have given so much to have, as I did, the liberty of his rooms. Think of seeing him whenever she wanted! She loved him from the depth of her warm and powerful nature. Her love was already romantic, sacrificial, dedicated. Yet she longed too for the dear prosaic domestic nearnesses of everyday.
It was a Sunday when I spoke to Joan; the Wednesday after Roy’s name was on the dining list for hall, but he did not come. Late at night, long after the porter’s last round at ten o’clock, he entered my room without knocking and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at me. His face was drawn and set.
“Where have you been?” I said.
“In the lodge. Looking after Lady Mu.”
“She told him this afternoon,” he added, in a flat, exhausted voice. “She needed someone to look after her. She wouldn’t have been able to cope.”
“Joan?”
“Joan was extremely good. She’s very strong.”
He paused, and said quietly: “I’ll tell you later, old boy. I need to do something now. Let’s go out. I’d like to drive over to—” the town where we had both lived — “and have a blind with old George. I can’t. They may want me tomorrow. Let’s go to King’s. There’s bound to be a party in King’s. I need to get out of the college.”
We found a party in King’s, or at least some friends to talk and drink with. Roy drank very little, but was the gayest person there. I was watching for the particular glitter of which I was afraid, the flash in which his gaiety turned sinister and frantic. But it did not come. He quietened down, and young men clustered round to ask him to next week’s parties. He was gentle to the shy ones, and by the time we set off home was resigned, quiet and composed.
We let ourselves into college by the side door, and walked through the court. When we came in sight of the Lodge windows, one light was still shining.
“I wonder,” said Roy, “if he can sleep tonight.”
It was a fine clear night, not very cold. We stood together gazing at the lighted window.
Roy said quietly: “I’ve never seen such human misery and loneliness as I did today.”
I glanced up at the stars, innumerable, brilliant, inhumanly calm. Roy’s eyes followed mine, and he spoke with desolating sadness.
“I hate the stars,” he said.
We went to his rooms in silence, and he made tea. He began to talk, in a subdued and matter-of-fact tone, about the Master and Lady Muriel. They had never got on. It had not been a happy marriage. They had never known each other. Both Roy and I had guessed that for a long time past, and Joan knew it. I had once heard Joan talk of it to Roy. And he, who knew so much of sexual love, accepted the judgment of this girl, who was technically “innocent”. “I don’t believe,” said Joan, direct and uncompromising, “that they ever hit it off physically.”
Yet, as Roy said that night, they had lived together for twenty-five years. They had had children. They had had some kind of life together. They had not been happy, but each was the other’s only intimate. Perhaps they felt more intimate in the supreme crisis just because of the unhappiness they had known in each other. It was not always those who were flesh of each other’s flesh who were most tied together.
So, with that life behind them, she had to tell him. She screwed up her resolve, “and if I know Lady Mu at all, poor dear,” said Roy, “she rushed in and blurted it out. She hated it too much to be able to tell him gently. Poor dear, how much she would have liked to be tender.”
He did not reproach her for not having told him before, he did not hate her, he scarcely seemed aware of her presence. He just said: “This alters things. There’s no future then. It’s hard to think without a future.”
He had had no suspicion, but he did not mind being fooled. He did not say a word about it. He was thinking of his death.
She could not reach him to comfort him. No one could reach him. She might as well not be there.
That was what hurt her most, said Roy, and he added, with a sad and bitter protest, “we’re all egotists and self-regarding to the last, aren’t we? She didn’t like not mattering. And yet when she left him, it was intolerable to see a human being as unhappy as she was. I told you before, I’ve never seen such misery and loneliness. How could I comfort her? I tried, but whatever could I do? She’s not been much good to him. She feels that more than anyone thinks. Now, at the end, all she can do is to tell him this news. And he didn’t seem to mind what she said.”
Roy was speaking very quietly. He was speaking from the depth of his dark sense of life.
Silently, we sat by the dying fire. At last Roy said: “We’re all alone, aren’t we? Each one of us. Quite alone.” He asked: “Old boy — how does one reach another human being?”