Day after day, Roy was left with the darkness on his mind. He read his manuscripts until he was faint, but no relief came to him. He had never been through melancholy that was as dark, that lasted so long. He could not sleep, and his nights were worse than his days.
It was heart-rending to watch, now I saw his affliction clear for the first time. At least once I was cowardly enough to make an excuse not to see him at night. It was agony, not to be able to lift his despair, not even for an hour. It was agony to know his loneliness – and so to know my own.
And I was frightened. I was lost. I had never before felt my way among this kind of darkness. I could read of experiences which here and there resembled it, but books are empty when one is helpless beside such suffering. Nothing I found to read, nothing I had learned myself, could tell me what was likely to come next. Often I was frightened over quite practical things: would he collapse? would he break out in some single irreparable act? I was never afraid that he might kill himself: from a distance, it might have seemed a danger, but in his presence I did not give it a thought. But I imagined most other kinds of disaster.
The melancholy, which fell on him the weekend that Lyall and Foulkes arrived, did not stay uniform like one pitch-black and unchanging night. Occasionally, it was broken by a wild, lurid elation that seemed like a fantastic caricature of his natural gaiety. The mischievous high spirits with which he took me round the bookshops or baited the surgeon at the feast – those spirits seemed suddenly distorted into a frenzy. I feared such moments most: they happened very seldom. I was waiting for them, but I did not know whether sympathy or love could help him then. Sometimes the melancholy lifted for a time much more gradually, for a day or a night, and he became himself at once, though sadder, more tired and more gentle. “I must be an awful bore, old boy,” he said. “You’d better spend your time with Arthur Brown. You’ll find it less exhausting.”
All through, in melancholy or false elation, his intelligence was as lucid as ever: in fact, I sometimes thought that he was more lucid and penetrating than I had ever known him. He was given none of the comfort of illusion. He worked with the same precision and resource; some of his best emendations came during a phase of melancholy. And once or twice, struggling away from his own thoughts, he talked to me about myself as no one else could have done.
Whenever he could lose himself in another, I thought one night, he gained a little ease. It was a night not long after Lyall’s visit, and Roy and I were dining in the Lodge. The Master was in Oxford, and Lady Muriel had asked us to dine en famille with herself and Joan. After I had dressed, I went up to Roy’s room, and found him in shirtsleeves and black waistcoat studying his image in the mirror.
“If I keep out of the light, I may just pass.” He smiled at me ruefully. “I don’t look very bright for Lady Mu.”
Nights of insomnia had left stains under his eyes and taken the colour from his cheeks. There were shadows under his cheekbones, and his face, except when he smiled, was tired and drawn.
“I’ll have to do my best for her,” he said. He gazed again at his reflection. “It’s bad to look like death. It makes them worry, doesn’t it?” He turned away. “I’m also going bald, but that’s quite another thing.”
For once, Lady Muriel had not asked Mrs Seymour as the inevitable partner for me. There were only the four of us, and I was invited just as an excuse for having Roy: for Lady Muriel intended to enjoy his presence without being distracted at all.
She sat straightbacked at the end of the table, but if one had only heard her voice one would have known that Roy was there.
“Why have I been neglected, Roy?” she said.
“That is extremely simple,” said Roy.
“What do you mean, you impertinent young man?” she cried in delight.
“I’ve not been asked, Lady Mu,” he said, using her nickname to her face, which no one else would have dared.
He was using the tone, feline, affectionate, gently rough, which pleased her most. He was trying to hide his wretchedness, he acted a light-hearted mood in order to draw out her crowing laugh.
He smiled as he watched her face, suddenly undignified and unformidable, wrinkled, hearty, joyous as she laughed.
She recovered herself for a moment, however, when she talked of the Christmas vacation. Lord Boscastle had taken a villa outside Monte Carlo, and the Royces were going down “as soon as the Master (as Lady Muriel always called him) has finished the scholarship examination”.
I mentioned that I was arranging to spend a fortnight in Monte Carlo myself.
“How very strange, Mr Eliot,” said Lady Muriel, with recognition rather than enthusiasm. “How very strange indeed.”
I said that I often went to the Mediterranean.
“Indeed,” said Lady Muriel firmly. “I hope we may see something of you there.”
“I hope so, Lady Muriel.”
“And I hope,” she looked at me fixedly, “we may have the pleasure of seeing your wife.”
“I want to take her,” I said. “She may not be well enough to travel, though.”
It was nearly true, but Lady Muriel gave an ominous: “I see, Mr Eliot.”
Lady Muriel still expressed surprise that I should be going to Monte Carlo. She had all the incredulity of the rich that anyone should share their pleasures. Rather as though she expected me to answer with the name of an obscure pension, she asked: “May I ask where you are staying?”
“The Hermitage,” I said.
“Really, Mr Eliot,” she said. “Don’t you think that you will find it very expensive?”
During this conversation, I had noticed that Joan’s glance had remained on Roy. Her own face was intent. It was still too young to show the line of her cheekbones. Her eyes were bright blue, and her hair brown and straight. It struck me that she had small, beautiful ears. But her face was open and harassed; I could guess too easily what had fascinated her: I looked across for a second, away from Lady Muriel, and saw Roy, stricken and remote. Usually he would have hung on to each word of the exchange, and parodied it later at my expense: now he was not listening. It seemed by an unnatural effort that he spoke again. Lady Muriel was remarking, in order to reprove my extravagance: “My brother considers it quite impossibly expensive to live in Monte itself. We find it much more practical to take this place outside.”
“How terrible it must be to be poor, Lady Mu,” broke in Roy’s voice. Joan started as he spoke: it made what she had seen appear ghostly. He was smiling now, he teased Lady Muriel, just as she wanted. She had noticed nothing, and was very happy. She crowed as he made fun of the Boscastle finances – which amused him, for he was enough his father’s son to have a lively interest in money. And she was delighted when he threatened not to be left out of the party at Christmas, but to join me at the hotel. She even regarded me with a kind of second-hand favour.
Her response to Roy was very simple, I thought. Life had never set her free, but underneath the armour she was healthy, vital and coarse-fibred. She had borne three daughters, but no sons. Roy was the son she had never had. And he was an attractive young man, utterly unimpressed by her magnificence, who saw through her, laughed, and shook her now and then. She could never find a way to tell people she liked them, but that did not matter with this young man, who could hear what she was really saying behind the gruff clumsy words.
And Roy? She was a continual pleasure to him in being exactly what she was, splendid in her unperceptive courage, her heavyfootedness, her snobbery, her stiff and monumental gusto. But there was much more. He came into immediate touch with her, as with so many people. He knew how she craved to be liked, how she could never confess her longing for affection, fun and love. It was his nature to give it. He was moved deeply, moved to a mixture of pity and love, by the unexpectedly vulnerable, just as he was by the tormented, the failures, and the strays. The unexpectedly vulnerable, the strong who suffered under a façade – sometimes I thought they moved him most. So he could not resist being fond of Lady Muriel; and even that night, when left to himself he would have known only despair, he was forced to make sure that she enjoyed her party.
Roy and I had not long left the Lodge and were sitting in his rooms, when we heard a woman’s footsteps on the stairs.
“What’s this?” said Roy wearily.
It was Joan. She hesitated when she saw me, but then spoke direct to Roy.
“I’m sorry. But I had to come. At dinner you looked so – ill.”
“It’s nice of you, Joan,” he said, but I felt he was put out. “I’m pretty well.”
She looked at him with steady, intelligent, dark blue eyes.
“In all ways?”
“Oh yes.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Joan.
Roy made a grimace, and leant back.
“Look,” she said, her expression fierce, warm-hearted, painfully diffident, and full of power, “you don’t think I like intruding, do you? But I want to ask something. Is it this wretched fellowship? We’re bound to hear things we shouldn’t, you must know that.”
“It would be extremely surprising if you didn’t,” said Roy with a faint smile.
“We do,” said Joan, transformed by her rich laugh. “Well, I’ve heard about this wretched business. Is it that?”
“Of course not,” said Roy impatiently.
“I should like to ask Lewis Eliot,” she said, and turned to me. “Has that business got on his nerves?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It would be better if it were settled, of course.” I was actually anxious that his election should come through quickly, so as to divert his mind (Brown had been satisfied with the results of Lyall’s and Foulkes’ visit, so much so that he was pressing to have a vacancy declared at the next college meeting).
“Are you sure?” Joan looked stubborn and doubtful. She spoke to Roy again: “You must see that it doesn’t matter. Whatever they do, it can’t really matter to you.”
“Just so,” said Roy. “You need to tell your father that. It would please him if I got in.”
“He worries too much about these people,” said Joan, speaking of her father with scorn and love. “You say you don’t. I hope it’s true.”
She gazed at him steadily.
“Yes?” he said.
“I was trying to imagine why you were looking as you did.”
“I can’t suggest anything,” said Roy. He had been restless all the time she was questioning him: had he not noticed the physical nervousness which had made her tremble as she entered, the utter diffidence which lay behind her fierce direct attack? He felt invaded, and though his words were light they held a sting.
“Some of your young women at Girton might give you some tips. Or you might get an idea if you read enough novels.”
“I’m not so young as you think,” said Joan, and a blush climbed up her strong neck, reddened her cheeks, left her bright-eyed, ashamed, angry and defenceless.
I went away from Roy’s rooms as the clocks were chiming midnight, and was in the depth of sleep when softly, persistently, a hand on my shoulder pulled me half-awake.
“Do you mind very much?” Roy was speaking. “I need to talk to you.”
“Put the light on,” I said crossly.
His face was haggard, and my ill-temper could not survive.
“It’s nothing original,” he said. “I can’t sleep, that’s all. It must be a very useful accomplishment, being able to sleep.”
He had not been to bed, he was still wearing a dinner jacket.
“What do you want to do?”
He shook his head. Then suddenly, almost eagerly, he said: “I think I need to go for a walk. Will you come?” He caught, with poignant, evanescent hope, at anything which would pass the night. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
I got up and dressed. It was just after three when we walked through the silent courts towards the back gate of the college. The roofs gleamed like silver under the harvest moon, and the shadows were dense, black, and sharply edged.
A light shone in an attic window; we knew the room, it was a scholar working late.
“Poor fool,” Roy whispered, as I was unlocking the small back door. “He doesn’t realise where that may lead.”
“Where?”
“It might even keep him here,” said Roy with a faint smile. “If he does too well. So that he’s woken up in the middle of the night and taken out for walks.”
We walked along Regent Street and Hills Road, straight out of the town. It was all quiet under the moon. It was brilliantly quiet. The road spread wide in the moonlight, dominating the houses as on a bright day; the houses stood blank-faced. Roy walked by my side with quick, light, easy steps. He was soothed by the sheer activity, by being able to move without thought, by the beautiful night. He talked, with a trace of his good-natured malice, about some of our friends. We had a good many in common, both men and women, and we talked scandal and Roy imitated them as we made our way along the gleaming, empty road.
But when we turned left at the Strangeways and crossed the fields, he fell more silent. For a quarter of a mile along the Roman road neither of us spoke. Then Roy said, quietly and clearly: “Old boy, I need some rest.”
“Yes,” I said. He did not mean sleep or bodily rest.
“Shall I ever get it?”
I could not answer that.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think I was born out of my time. I should have been happier when it was easier to believe. Wouldn’t you have been happier? Wouldn’t you?”
He wanted me to agree. I was tempted to fall in, to muffle my answer, to give him a little comfort. Yet he was speaking with absolute nakedness. I could not escape the moment in which we stood.
I hesitated. Then I told the truth.
“I don’t think so.”
He walked on a few yards in silence, then looked me in the face.
“Lewis, have you never longed to believe in God?”
“No,” I said. I added: “Not in any sense which has much meaning. Not in any sense which would mean anything to you.”
“You don’t long to believe in God?” he insisted.
“No.”
“Yet you’re not stuffed.” His smile was intimate, mischievous, sad. “No man is less stuffed. In spite of your business manner. You even feel a good deal, don’t you? Not only about love. That’s the trouble with all those others” – he was dismissing some of our contemporaries – “they can only feel about love. They’re hollow, aren’t they? But I can’t accuse you of that. Yet you don’t long to believe–”
His eyes searched me, bright, puzzled, almost humorous. He had been mystified about it since he first knew me well. So much of our sense of life we felt in common: he could not easily or willingly accept that it led me to different fulfilments, even to different despairs. Most of all, he could not accept that I could get along, with fairly even spirits, and not be driven by the desperate needs that took hold of him in their ineluctable clarity.
He was quiet again. Then he said: “Lewis, I’ve prayed that I might believe in God.”
He looked away from me, down from the ridge; there was a veil of mist on the lower fields.
“I knew,” I said.
“It’s no good,” he said, as though off-handedly. “One can’t make oneself believe. One can’t believe to order.”
“That must be so,” I said.
“Either it comes or it doesn’t. For me it doesn’t. For some – it is as easy as breathing. How lucky they are,” he said softly. “Think of the Master. He’s not a very good scholar, you know, but he’s an extremely clever man. But he believes exactly as he did when he was a child. After reading about all the religions in the world. He’s very lucky.”
He was still looking over the fields.
“Then there’s Ralph Udal.” Suddenly he gave me a glance acute and piercing. “By the way, why do you dislike him so much?”
“I don’t dislike him–”
“Come off it.” Roy smiled. “I’ve not seen you do it with anyone else – but when you meet him you bristle like a cat.”
I had not wanted to recognise it, but it was true. I could not explain it.
“Anyway,” said Roy, “he’s not an empty man. You’d give him that, wouldn’t you? And he believes without a moment’s trouble.”
Slowly we began to walk back along the path. Roy was still thinking of those who did not need to struggle in order to believe in God. He spoke of old Martineau, whose story had caught his imagination. Martineau was a solicitor who had kept open house for me and my friends when I was a very young man. He was cultivated, lively, given to all kinds of interests, and in those days only mildly eccentric. Suddenly, at the age of fifty, he had given away his practice and all his possessions; he joined several quaint religious settlements in turn, and then became a tramp preacher; at that moment he was a pavement artist on the streets of Leeds, drawing pictures with a religious message. I had seen him fairly recently: he was very happy, and surprisingly unchanged.
“He must have been certain of God,” said Roy.
“I’m not at all sure,” I said. “He was never able to explain what he really believed. That was always the hardest thing to understand.”
“Well, I hope he’s certain now,” said Roy. “If anyone deserves to be, he does.”
Then he spoke with intense feeling: “I can’t think what it’s like to be certain. I’m afraid that it’s impossible for me. There isn’t a place for me.”
His voice was tense, excited, full of passion. As he went on, it became louder, louder than the voice I was used to, but still very clear: “Listen, Lewis. I could believe in all the rest. I could believe in the catholic church. I could believe in miracles. I could believe in the inquisition. I could believe in eternal damnation. If only I could believe in God.”
“And yet you can’t,” I said, with his cry still in my ears.
“I can’t begin to,” he said, his tone quiet once more. “I can’t get as far as ‘help Thou mine unbelief’.”
We left the ridge of the Roman road, and began to cross the shining fields.
“The nearest I’ve got is this,” he said. “It has happened twice. It’s completely clear – and terrible. Each time has been on a night when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve had the absolute conviction – it’s much more real than anything one can see or touch – that God and His world exist. And everyone can enter and find their rest. Except me. I’m infinitely far away for ever. I am alone and apart and infinitesimally small – and I can’t come near.”
I looked at his face in the moonlight. It was pale, but less haunted, and seemed to be relaxed into a kind of exhausted peace. Soon he began to sing, very quietly, in a light, true, reedy voice. Quiet though it was, it became the only sound under the sky. There was a slight ironic smile on his face; for he was singing a child’s prayer to be guarded while asleep.