I have read the book and I definitely don't remember any suggestion that he's gay.
I don't know. Check out these excerpts (Penguin Classics edition, 1978)
p. 104, Freddy is talking to his mother about Mr Beebe:
'You know Mr Beebe's funny way, when you never quite know what he means. He said: "Mr Vyse is an ideal bachelor." I was very cute. I asked him what he meant. He said: "Oh, he's like me - better detached." I couldn't make him say any more, but it set me thinking. Since Cecil has come after Lucy he hasn't been so pleasant, at least - I can't explain'
' You never can, dear. But I can. You are jealous of Cecil because he may stop Lucy knitting you silk ties.'
The explanation seemed plausible, and freddy tried to accept it. But at the back of his brain there lurked a dim mistrust. Cecil praised one too much for being athletic. Was that it? Cecil made one talk in his way, instead of letting one talk in one's one way. This tired one. Was that it? And Cecil was the kind of fellow ho would never wear another fellow's cap. Unaware of his own profundity, Freddy checked himself. He must be jealous, or he would not dislike a man for such foolish reasons.
But maybe he's just asexual - p. 106
He was medieval. Like a Gothic statue. Tall and refined, with shoulders tha seemed braced square by an effort of the will, and a hed that was tilted a little higher than the usual level of vision, he resembled tthose fastidious saints who guard the portals of a French cathedral. Well, educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision, worshipped as asceticism. A Gothic statue umplies celibacy, just as a Greek statue implies fruition, and perhaps this was what Mr Beebe meant. And Freddy, who ignored history and art, perhaps meant the same when he failed to imagine Cecil wearing another fellow's cap.
So, whichever, gay or celibate, it doesn't seem likely that Lucy is going to be getting much.
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