The Light and the Dark Page 10

  “Between ourselves,” said the Master, “it’s a vulgar error to suppose that distinguished scholars are modest souls who shrink from the glory. Knighthoods and addresses on vellum – that’s the way to please distinguished scholars. I advise you to study the modesty of our venerable friend this afternoon.”

  Roy laughed very loudly. There was something wild in the sound; at once I was worried. I wished I could get him alone.

  “And if you want to observe human nature in the raw,” said the Master, jumping into his favourite topic, “it’s a very interesting point whether you ought to go out and find a pogrom or just watch some of our scientific colleagues competing for honours.”

  “How did Lyall get there?” said Roy, in a piercing insistent tone.

  “Between ourselves,” the Master replied, “I’ve always felt that he was rather an old humbug.”

  “I’ve heard a story about Erzberger. Master, do you remember anything?” said Roy, with abnormal concentration.

  The Master did remember. He was himself modest and humble, his professional life was blameless. But he was always ready to indulge in a detached, abstract and cheerful cynicism. He did not notice that Roy’s glance was preternaturally attentive and acute – or perhaps he was stimulated by it.

  For the rest of our lunch until it was time to walk up to Piccadilly, he told Roy what he knew of Lyall and Erzberger. The Master had actually met Erzberger when they were both young men.

  “He was an astonishingly ugly Jew. I thought he was rather pushful and aggressive. He once asked me – ‘What does an outsider like me have to do to get a fellowship?’” But, so we gathered from the Master, he was brilliantly clever, and had a rarer gift than cleverness, a profound sense of reality. He went to work with Lyall, and they published several papers together on the medieval trade routes in Central Asia. “It was generally thought that the real views were Erzberger’s.” Then there was an interval of several years, in which Erzberger told a good many people that he was preparing a major work. “He never believed in underrating himself.” He had never been healthy, and he died in his thirties of consumption. No unfinished work was ever published, but two years after his death Lyall produced his own magnum opus, the foundation of his fame, on the subject on which they had worked together. In the preface he acknowledged his gratitude to his lamented friend Erzberger for some fruitful suggestions, and regretted his untimely death.

  “Just so,” said Roy. “Just so.”

  It was a dark, foggy afternoon as we walked up Piccadilly. Cars’ headlights were making swathes in the mist, and Roy’s voice sounded more than ever clear as he talked to the Master all the way to Burlington House. He was intensely, brilliantly excited. A laugh kept ringing out. On the Master’s other side, I walked silent and apprehensive in the murk. Could I give him calm, could anyone? Was it sensible or wise to try now? I was tied by doubt and ignorance. I knew he was suffering, but I did not know how justified my apprehensions were.

  As we took off our coats, and the Master left us for a moment, I made one attempt.

  “Are you desperately anxious to attend this pantomime?” I said.

  “Why do you ask?” said Roy sharply.

  “There are other things which might amuse us–”

  “Oh no,” said Roy. “I need to be here.” Then he smiled at me. “Don’t you stay. It was stupid of me to drag you here. You’re certain to be bored. Let’s meet later.”

  I hesitated, and said: “No. I may as well come in.”

  The Academy room was quite small and cosy; the lights were thrown back from the fog-darkened windows. There were half a dozen men on the dais, among them Lyall and Colonel Foulkes. The Master was placed among minor dignitaries in the front row beneath. Perhaps sixty or seventy men were sitting in the room, and it struck me that nearly all of them were old. Bald heads shone, white hair gleamed, under the lights. As the world grew more precarious, rich young men did not take to these eccentric subjects with such confidence: amateurs flourished most, as those old men had flourished, in a tranquil and secure age.

  Roy found me a chair, and then suddenly went off by himself to sit under the window. My concern flared up: but in a moment the meeting began.

  The chairman made a short speech, explaining that we had come to mark Sir Oulstone’s seventieth birthday and express our gratitude for his work. As the speech went on, Sir Oulstone’s head inclined slowly, weightily, with dignity and satisfaction, at each mention of his own name.

  Then came three accounts of Central Asian studies. The first, given by an Oxford professor with a high, fluting voice, struck me as straightforward old-fashioned history – the various conquering races that had swept across the plateau, the rise and fall of dynasties, and so on. The second, by Foulkes, dealt with the deciphering of the linguistic records. Foulkes was a rapid, hopping, almost unintelligible speaker, and much of the content was technical and would have been, even if I could have heard what he said, unintelligible to me: yet one could feel that he was a master of his subject. He paid a gabbling, incoherent and enthusiastic compliment to Roy’s work on Soghdian.

  The third account I found quite fascinating. It was delivered in broken English by a refugee, and it described how the history of Central Asia between 500 bc and ad 1000 had been studied by applying the methods of archaeology and not relying so much on documentary evidence – by measuring areas of towns at different periods, studying the tools men used and their industrial techniques. It was the history of common men in their workaday lives, and it made sense of some of the glittering, burbling, dynastic records. The pioneer work had been done over forty years before, said the speaker vigorously, in the original articles of Lyall and Erzberger: then the real great step forward had been taken by Lyall himself, in his famous and classical book.

  There was steady clapping. Sir Oulstone inclined his head very slowly. The speaker bowed to him, and Sir Oulstone inclined his head again.

  The speech came to an end. It had been a masterpiece of exposition, and the room stirred with applause. There followed a few perfunctory questions, more congratulations to Sir Oulstone from elderly scholars in the front row, one or two more questions. The meeting was warm with congratulation and self-congratulation, feet were just beginning to get restless, it was nearly time to go.

  Then I heard Roy’s voice, very clear.

  “Mr Chairman, may I ask a question?”

  He was standing by the window, with vacant chairs round him. Light fell directly on his face, so that it looked smooth and young. He was smiling, his eyes were brilliant, shining with exaltation.

  “Of course, Mr–”

  “Calvert,” said Roy.

  “Ah yes, Mr Calvert,” said the chairman. Sir Oulstone smiled and bowed.

  “We’ve listened to this conspectus of Asian social history,” said Roy precisely. “I should like to ask – how much credit for the present position should be given to the late Dr Erzberger?”

  No one seemed to feel danger. The chairman smiled at the lecturer, who replied that Erzberger deserved every credit for his share in the original publications.

  “Thank you,” said Roy. “But it does not quite meet my point. This subject has made great progress. Is it possible for no one to say how much we need to thank Dr Erzberger for?”

  The chairman looked puzzled. There was a tension growing in the room. But Sir Oulstone felt nothing of it as he rose heavily and said: “Perhaps I can help Mr Calvert, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said the chairman.

  “Thank you, Sir Oulstone,” came Roy’s voice, clear, resounding with sheer elation.

  “I am grateful to my young friend, Mr Calvert,” said Sir Oulstone, suspecting nothing, “for bringing up the name of my old and respected collaborator. It is altogether appropriate that on this occasion when you are praising me beyond my deserts, my old helper should not be forgotten. Some of you will remember, though it was well before Mr Calvert’s time,” Sir Oulstone smiled, “that poor Erzberger, after helping
me in my first efforts, was cut off in his prime. That was a tragedy for our subject. It can be said of him, as Newton said of Cotes, that if he had lived we should have learned something.”

  “Just so,” said Roy. “So he published nothing except the articles with you, Sir Oulstone?”

  “I am afraid that is the fact.”

  Roy said, quietly, with extreme sharpness: “Could you tell us what he was working on before he died?”

  By now many in the room had remembered the old scandal. Faces were frowning, intent, distressed, curious. But Sir Oulstone was still impervious, self-satisfied, opaque. He still looked at Roy as though he were a young disciple. Sir Oulstone acted as though he had never heard of the scandal: if there were no basis for it, if he were quite innocent, that could have been true.

  As Roy waited for the answer, his glance rested on me. For a second I looked into his flashing, triumphant eyes, begging him to stop. Fiercely, impatiently, he shook his head. He was utterly possessed.

  “Alas,” said Sir Oulstone, “we have no trace of his last years of work.”

  “Did he not work – on the subject of your own book?”

  “There was no trace, I say.” Suddenly Sir Oulstone’s voice was cracked and angry.

  “Did no one publish his manuscripts?”

  “We could find no manuscripts when he died.”

  “You could find no result of years of work?” cried Roy in acute passionate incredulity.

  “He left nothing behind him.”

  “Remarkable.” The single word dropped into the hushed room. It plucked all nerves with its violence, scorn, and extreme abandon.

  Sir Oulstone had turned bitterly angry.

  “I do not consider this is very profitable. Perhaps, as Mr Calvert is a newcomer to our subject, I had better refer to my obituaries of Erzberger in the two journals. I regard these questions as most unnecessary, sir.”

  He sat down. Roy was still on his feet.

  “Thank you, Mr Chairman,” he said in his normal tone, quiet, composed and polite. “I am so sorry to have taken the time of the meeting.”

  He bowed to the chair, and went out alone.

  10: A Moment of Grace

  The meeting broke up, and the Master took me off to tea at the Athenaeum. On the way down St James’s Street, the windows of the clubs glowing comfortably warm through the deepening fog, the Master said: “Roy Calvert seems a little upset, Eliot. I suppose it’s a phase we all go through.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s been overstrained, of course. Between you and me, our judicious colleagues have something to answer for. It was imbecile to make him wait so long for his fellowship.”

  For once the Master was in a thoroughly bad temper. Over the toasted teacakes in the long club morning room, he broke out: “It’s nothing to worry about, Eliot. I did silly things when I was a young man. I suppose he hasn’t got his feet on the earth quite as firmly as I had, but he’s not so different as all that. We must just make sure that all turns out well.”

  In his irritation, he let me see something of what he felt for Roy. The Master believed that Roy was far more gifted than himself; he knew that Roy was capable of the scholarly success he could never have managed – for Roy had the devotion, the almost obsessed devotion, which a scholar needs, as well as the touch of supreme confidence. The Master, who found it easier to go about from meeting to meeting using his quick wits, who in his heart felt diffident and uncreative, admired those gifts which he had never had. But also he felt an attraction of like for like. Roy’s elegance and style – with those the Master could compete. Often among his colleagues he had the illusion that he was just playing at being an ordinary man. At times, in daydreams, he had seen himself like Roy.

  I noticed too that, as though by instinct, he pretended that nothing much was wrong. Often it seemed to him wiser to soften the truth. The worst did not always happen. Before I left, he said, almost in his cheerful whisper: “I don’t think our colleagues need to be worried by any news of this afternoon’s entertainment, do you, Eliot? We know how easily worried they are, and I shouldn’t like to feel that the Bursar was losing sleep because one of the younger fellows has been overworking.”

  The club was filling with men who had been present at the meeting, and the Master went across to them, pleasant-mannered, fresh-faced, not over-troubled.

  I went to see Roy, but found Rosalind alone in the flat. She said he had gone out to buy some wine; they were to dine at home that night.

  “It will be very nice, having the old thing to myself for once,” she said, and I could not help smiling, though this was not the most suitable time for her brand of realism.

  She had seen him since the meeting. “He’s nice and relaxed,” she said. “He’s sweet when there’s nothing on his mind. I wish he weren’t so elusive sometimes.” She added: “I don’t know what’s taken the weight off his mind. He did say that he’d made a frightful ass of himself somewhere.”

  The phrase meant nothing to her, but it was a private joke of his and mine, borrowed from an elderly friend.

  I saw Roy for an instant just before I went away. One glance reassured me. He was himself, composed, gentle, at ease.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Very much all right,” he said.

  As I walked into the foggy street, I heard his voice call cheerfully from the window: “Shan’t be in Cambridge till next week. Come back before then. Need to talk to you.”

  In college I was watching for any sign of the story coming through: I was ready to laugh it off, to explain Roy’s action in terms designed to make it seem matter-of-fact, uninteresting, a mixture of a joke and an academic controversy. It was only to Arthur Brown that I confided there had been a scene; and even with him, stout-hearted, utterly dependable, capable of accepting anything in his friends, I was not quite frank – for by that time in my life I was already broken in to keeping secrets, often more so than was good for me or others. I paled down both Roy’s despondency and his outburst. Arthur Brown said: “We shall have to be very careful about our young friend.” Then, the politician never far away, he wondered what effect the news would have upon the college, and how we could conceal it.

  Curiously enough, very little news arrived, and that we were able to smother. Colonel Foulkes came to Cambridge for a meeting of electors, and I discovered that he thought nothing specially unusual had happened. Whether this was because Roy could do no wrong in his eyes, or because he really did not like Lyall, or because he was abnormally blank to human atmosphere, I could not decide. He said: “Very interesting point, Calvert’s. Perhaps not the best time to bring it up. These scholars aren’t men of the world, you know. They don’t learn tact. Don’t have the corners rubbed off as you do in the army.”

  He was so simple that I was completely at a loss, but I took him into hall, and he talked casually about the Lyall celebratory meeting and enthusiastically about Roy. The most subtle acting would not have been so effective. Some rumour about Roy had reached Despard-Smith, and he began to produce it, with solemn gratification, the next night: but Winslow, fresh from hearing Foulkes, endowed with nothing like the persistence in rancour that vitalised the old clergyman, said: “If you please, Despard. Shall we wait until the young man starts throwing knives about in hall? In point of fact, he seems to have pleasant table manners, which I must say is more than one is accustomed to expect.”

  Within three days of the meeting, the Master was able to forget his first impression and to treat the whole affair as though it had been a mischievous, high-spirited trick, like teasing the doctor after the feast. I seemed the only person who could not domesticate it so.

  Even Roy, when I saw him at his flat the following week, was free from any cloud, full of fun.

  “What have you been doing these days in Cambridge?” he asked.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Covering up tracks?”

  “A little.”

  He gave me a curiously protectiv
e smile.

  “When you took me on, old boy,” he said, “you took all this on yourself.”

  “How are you now?” I said, but there was no need for me to ask. He was entirely tranquil.

  “Better than I’ve been for weeks and months,” he said, with ringing joy.

  He added: “How are you? You’re looking worse than I did. Too much worry. Too much drink. Above all,” his eyes flashed with the purest mischief, “above all, not enough sleep.”

  I grinned. It was hard to resist his spirits, it was hard to retain my fears.

  “We’ll get you better at ‘Monty’.” Roy, precise in his speech, isolated the word to remind me of Lady Muriel; for she and Lord Boscastle, after calling the family mansion “Bossy”, took to nicknames of places with the utmost naturalness.

  “Meanwhile,” said Roy, “I need to give you some fresh air. I need to take you for a walk in the park.”

  We left the flat empty, for Rosalind had returned home: Roy was going to Cambridge next day. We entered the park by the Albion gate. A gusty wind was blowing from the west, the trees soughed, the last leaves were spinning under the lamps in the street. The clouds were low, it was dark early; through the trees one could see the lights of the tall houses in Bayswater Road. The wind blew in our faces as we walked down to the Serpentine. It was fresh as a night by the sea.

  “It’s wonderful not to be wretched,” cried Roy. “It’s all gone! It’s wonderful to be free!”

  He looked at me in the twilight.

  “You’re glum, Lewis. You’ve been pitying me for being wretched, haven’t you? You can pity me for the gloom. That was frightful. Don’t pity me for the time when I broke out. It was very exciting. For a few minutes I was let out of prison. Everything was rosy-edged.”

  “It might be a slightly expensive excitement,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “It won’t do me any good with Oulstone, will it?”

  There was a trace of satisfaction in his tone. “Oh, never mind. I wasn’t cut out to be stuffed. I’ll go on doing my work. But I don’t want anything in return that those people can give me. I need them to leave me alone, that’s all. I’ll go on with the work. It’s become a habit. But it isn’t going to settle me, old boy. Once I hoped it might. Now I know it can’t. I need to search elsewhere. I shall get there in the end.”