The Light and the Dark Read Online Free Page A

thought I’d forgotten. Tom’s girl is engaged. It will be in The Times this week.”
    The Boscastles and the Royces all knew the genealogy of “Tom’s girl”. For Mrs Seymour might be scatterbrained, but her breeding was the Boscastles’ own; she had married a Seymour, who was not much of a catch but was eminently “someone one could know”, and Tom was her husband’s brother. So Tom’s girl was taken seriously, even though Lord Boscastle had never met her, and Lady Muriel only once. She was part of the preserve. Abandoning in a hurry all abstract conversation, Lady Muriel plunged in with her whole weight. She sat more upright than ever and called out: “Who is the man?”
    “He’s a man called Houston Eggar.”
    Lord Boscastle filled the chair on his sister’s right. He finished a sip of hock, put down the glass, and asked: “Who?”
    “Houston Eggar.”
    Lady Muriel and Lord Boscastle looked at each other. In a faint, tired, disconsolate tone Lord Boscastle said: “I’m afraid I don’t know the fellow.”
    “I can help,” said the Master briskly from the other end of the table. “He’s a brother-in-law of the Dean of this college. He’s dined in hall once or twice.”
    “I’m afraid,” said Lord Boscastle, “that I don’t know who he is.”
    There was a moment’s silence, and I looked at the faces round the table. Lord Boscastle was holding his glass up to the candlelight and staring unconcernedly through it. Roy watched with an expression solemn, demure, enquiring: but I caught his eye for a second, and saw a gleam of pure glee: each word was passing into his mimic’s ear. By his side, Joan was gazing down fixedly at the table, the poise of her neck and strong shoulders full of anger, scorn and the passionate rebellion of youth. Mrs Seymour seemed vaguely troubled, as though she had mislaid her handbag; she patted her hair, trying to get a strand into place. On my right Lady Boscastle had mounted her lorgnette and focused the others one by one.
    It was she who asked the next question.
    “Could you tell us a little about this Dean of yours, Vernon?” she said to the Master, in a high, delicate, amused voice.
    “He’s quite a good Dean,” said the Master. “He’s very useful on the financial side. Colleges need their Marthas, you know. The unfortunate thing is that one can never keep the Marthas in their place. Before you can look round, you find they’re running the college and regarding you as a frivolous and irresponsible person.”
    “What’s the Dean’s name?” said Lord Boscastle, getting back to the point.
    “Chrystal.”
    “It sounds Scotch,” said Lord Boscastle dubiously.
    “I believe, Lord Boscastle,” Roy put in, seeming tentative and diffident, “that he comes from Bedford.”
    Lord Boscastle shook his head.
    “I know his wife, of course,” said Lady Muriel. “Naturally I have to know the wives of the fellows. She’s a nice quiet little thing. But there’s nothing special about her. She’s an Eggar, whoever they may be.”
    “She’s the sister of this man you’re telling us about,” Lord Boscastle remarked, half to himself. “I should have said he was nothing out of the ordinary, shouldn’t you have said so?”
    His social judgments became more circuitous the nearer they came to anyone the company knew: Lady Muriel, more direct and unperceptive than her brother, had never quite picked up the labyrinthine phrases with which he finally placed an acquaintance of someone in the room; but in effect she and he said the same thing.
    Mrs Seymour, who was still looking faintly distressed, suddenly clapped her hands.
    “Of course, I’d forgotten to tell you. I’ve just remembered about the post office place–”
    “Yes, Doris?” said Lady Muriel inexorably.
    “Houston’s a brilliant young man. He’s in the Foreign Office. They said he was first secretary” – Mrs Seymour gabbled rapidly in case she should forget – “at that place which looks after