The Masters

13: Progress of an Illness

The light in the Master’s bedroom shone over the court each night; the weeks passed, and we still had to pay our visits, talking of next year’s fellowships and how soon it would be before he could come into hall. Chrystal could not bear it, and made some ill-tempered excuse for not going into the Lodge. Hearing the excuse and taking it at its face value, Lady Muriel was contemptuous: ‘I always knew he was common,’ Roy Calvert reported her as saying.

Roy had become Lady Muriel’s mainstay. He was the only man from whom she would ask for help. It fell to him to spend hours at the Master’s bedside, keeping up the deception — and afterwards to sit with Lady Muriel in the great drawing-room, listening to doubts and sorrows that she could never manage to articulate.

Roy loved them both, and did it for love, but he was being worn down. For any of us, this service would have been nerve-racking; for Roy, with melancholia never far away, it was dangerous. But it was he who had to watch the Master’s astonishment, as, after weeks of pseudo-recovery, he found himself getting thinner and more exhausted.

We all knew that soon Lady Muriel would have to tell him the truth. Many of us wanted her to do it, just to be saved the pretence at the bedside. Men as kind as Brown and Pilbrow could not help thinking of themselves, and wanted to be saved embarrassment even at the cost of agony for the Master and his wife. Theirs was the healthy selfishness which one needs for self-protection in the face of death. If one sees another’s death with clear eyes, one suffers as Roy Calvert was suffering. Most of us see it through a veil of our own concerns: even Brown wanted Lady Muriel to tell the Master, so that Brown himself need no longer screw up his self-control before he went into the Lodge. Even Brown wanted her to tell him — but not before the feast, with everything arranged to receive Sir Horace Timberlake. As Brown said, with his usual lack of humbug: ‘It can’t make things worse for the Master if we have the feast. And we may not find another chance of getting Sir Horace down. So I do hope Lady Muriel doesn’t have to break the news till afterwards.’

As the day of the feast came near, that hope became strong all over the college. Some of us were ashamed of it; one’s petty selfishnesses are sometimes harder to face than major sins. Yet we did not want to have to cancel the feast. As though by common consent, although we did not discuss it, not a hint was dropped in the Lodge. They were not likely to have remembered the date, or to have heard of Sir Horace’s visit. We were too much ashamed to mention it. Lady Muriel must be left, we thought, to choose her own time.

The feast was fixed for Shrove Tuesday, and on the Sunday before I met Joan Royce in the court, both of us on our way to the Jagos for tea. She made a pretext for bringing in Roy’s name with the first words she spoke: and I thought how we had all done the same, in love.

The Jagos kept open house for fellows at Sunday teatime, but when we arrived they were still alone. Mrs Jago welcomed us with a greater assumption of state than ever: she had been telling herself that no one wished to see her, that Jago’s house was deserted because of her. In return, she mounted to great heights of patronage towards Joan and me.

Jago was patiently chaffing her — he was too patient, I thought — as he handed us our cups. The tea, like all the amenities which Mrs Jago chose, was the best in college; her taste was as fine as Brown’s, though not as rich. Joan, who was not domesticated but enjoyed her food, asked her about some shortbread. Mrs Jago was feeling too umbraged to take the question as a compliment. But then, by luck, Joan admired the china.

‘Ah, that was one of our wedding-presents,’ said Mrs Jago.

‘I suppose,’ said Joan thoughtfully, ‘there are some arguments in favour of a formal wedding.’

Mrs Jago forgot her complaint, and said with businesslike vigour: ‘Of course there are. You must never think of anything else.’

‘She means,’ said Jago, ‘that you’ll miss the presents.’

Mrs Jago laughed out loud, quite happily: ‘Well, they were very useful to us, and you can’t deny it.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ said Joan, ‘I was thinking the same myself.’ Jago’s eyes were glinting with sadistic relish.

‘You two!’ he said. ‘You pretend to like books. But you can’t get away from your sex, neither of you. How dreadfully realistic women are.’

They both liked it. They liked being bracketed together, the ageing malcontent and the direct, fierce girl. They were both melted by him; his wife, for all her shrewishness, still could not resist him, and Joan smiled as she did for Roy.

Then the two women smiled at each other with a curious tenderness, and Mrs Jago asked gently and naturally about the Master’s state.

‘Is he in any pain?’

‘No, none at all. Nothing more than discomfort sometimes.’

‘I’m relieved to hear that,’ said Mrs Jago.

Joan said: ‘He’s losing weight each day. And he’s getting a little weaker. My mother knows that the truth oughtn’t to be kept from him any longer.’

‘When will she tell him?’

‘Almost at once.’

Jago and I exchanged a glance. We did not know, could not ask, whether that meant before Tuesday.

‘It must be a terrible thing to do,’ said Mrs Jago.

‘It’s worse for them both now,’ said Joan, ‘than if she had told him that first night. I’m sure she should have done. I’m sure one should not hold back anything vital — we’re not wise enough to know.’

‘That’s a curious remark,’ said Jago, ‘for a girl your age. When I was twenty, I was certain I knew everything—’

‘You’re a man,’ said Joan, biting back after his gibe. ‘Men grow up very late.’

‘Very late,’ said Jago. He smiled at her. ‘But I’ve grown up enough now to know how completely right you are about — your mother’s mistake. She should have told him then.’

‘I hope I shouldn’t have shirked telling you, Paul,’ said Mrs Jago, ‘if it had happened to you.’

‘I should be surer of your courage,’ said Jago, ‘than I should of my own.’

She smiled, simply and winningly. ‘I hope I should be all right,’ she said.

Perhaps she would always rise, I wondered, to the great crises of their life. I wondered it still, after Joan left suddenly to go to a party and Mrs Jago was once more affronted. When Joan had gone out, Jago said: ‘There’s fine stuff in that young woman. I wish she didn’t look so sulky. But there’s wonderfully fine stuff in her.’

‘I dare say there is,’ said Mrs Jago. ‘But she must learn not to show that she’s so bored with her entertainment.’

‘It’s ten to one that she’s going to this party on the off-chance that Roy Calvert will be there,’ I said.

‘I hope she gets him,’ said Jago. ‘She would supply everything he lacks.’

‘No woman ought to get him,’ cried Mrs Jago. ‘He’s too attractive to be tamed.’

Jago frowned, and for a second she was pleased. Then she began to nag. She had been cherishing snubs all afternoon, and now she let them out. Lady Muriel, cried Mrs Jago, was too much a snob, was too much above the wives of the fellows, for anyone like herself to know the inside of the Lodge.

She could not very well ask Joan: but how did Jago expect her to make plans for furnishing it ready for them to move in?

It was then I wondered again how she would rise to the great moments.

‘I can’t think, Paul,’ she was saying, ‘how you can expect me to have the Lodge fit to live in for six months after we move. I shall be a burden on you in the Lodge anyway, but I want a fair chance to get the place in order. That’s the least I can do for you.’

It would be awkward if she spoke in that vein to others, I thought as I walked back to my rooms. Nothing would give more offence, nothing was more against the rules of that society: I decided Brown, as manager of Jago’s caucus, must know at once. As I was telling him, he flushed. ‘That woman’s a confounded nuisance,’ he said. For once he showed real irritation. Jago would have to be warned, but of all subjects it was the one where Jago was least approachable. ‘I’m extremely vexed,’ said Brown.

His composure had returned when he and Chrystal called on me after hall.

‘It’s nothing to do with the Mastership,’ he said affably. ‘We just want to make sure that we’ve got everything comfortable for Sir Horace.’

‘Can you give us a line on his tastes?’ said Chrystal.

‘We noticed last time that he took an intelligent interest in his dinner,’ said Brown. ‘We thought you might have picked up some points that we missed.’

They were competent and thorough. They took as much trouble over putting up Sir Horace as over the campaign for the Mastership. No detail was too trivial for them to attend to. I could not help at all: anything I could have told them they had docketed and acted on already. Chrystal asked me to have Sir Horace to breakfast on the Wednesday morning.

‘He’ll have got tired of our faces by then,’ he said. ‘I want him to feel he’s moving about without us following him.’ He gave his tough smile. ‘But I don’t intend him to get into the wrong hands.’

‘Winslow was asking,’ said Brown, ‘whether Sir Horace was down for any particular purpose. And if not why we should upset the seating arrangements for the feast. He wondered whether we had mistaken Sir Horace for a person of distinction.’

‘Winslow is amusing,’ said Chrystal. He made the word sound sinister. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘things are pretty well tied up for Sir Horace now.’

‘If we get him down, that is,’ said Brown. ‘There are forty-eight hours before Tuesday, and the last I heard from the Lodge wasn’t very reassuring.’

I told them what Joan had said that afternoon.

‘I’m not ready to say we’ve got Sir Horace down here,’ said Brown, ‘until I see the feast begin and him sitting at table.’

‘It’s lamentable,’ said Chrystal.

There was a rap on the door. With surprise I saw Nightingale come in. He was looking harassed, pale and intent. In a strained effort to keep the proprieties, he said good night to me, and asked if I minded him intruding. Then he addressed himself to Brown.

‘I looked in your rooms last night and tonight. You weren’t there, so I had to try your friends.’

‘Ah well,’ said Brown, ‘you’ve found me now.’

‘Is it anything private?’ I said. ‘We can easily leave you together.’

‘It may be private,’ said Nightingale. ‘But it’s nothing that Chrystal and you won’t know.’

He had sat down, and leant over the arm of his chair towards Brown and Chrystal.

‘I want to find out,’ he said, ‘how the offices will go round, once Jago is Master.’

Chrystal looked at him, and then at Brown. There was a pause.

‘Well, Nightingale,’ said Chrystal, ‘you know as much as we do.’

‘No, not quite,’ said Nightingale.

‘You know as much as we do, Nightingale,’ Chrystal repeated. ‘The only office that can possibly be affected is a tutorship. You know as well as we do that tutors are appointed by the Master.’

‘You’re only telling me pieces out of the statutes,’ said Nightingale. ‘I can read them for myself.’

‘I’m telling you the position.’

‘I know all about that. Now I want to know how everything has been arranged behind the scenes,’ Nightingale smiled, with the dreadful suspiciousness of the unworldly: it is the unworldly who see neat, black, conscious designs hidden under all actions.

‘I take you up on that, Nightingale,’ said Chrystal, but Brown interrupted him.

‘If Jago becomes Master, as we hope, you’ll find that he’ll have a completely open mind about the appointment. Not a word has been said — either by him or anyone else.’

‘That’s the fact,’ said Chrystal. ‘The normal practice is for the Master to ask for advice—’

‘I know all about that,’ said Nightingale again.

‘But he needn’t follow it.’ Chrystal’s temper was very near breaking. ‘I’ve known cases where it wasn’t followed. If you’re asking me what Jago will do, I can only tell you what I think. It won’t take you very far. I assume he will make Brown Senior Tutor. That doesn’t need saying. For the other tutor he’ll have to look round.’

‘No, it doesn’t need saying,’ said Nightingale, looking at Brown.

‘It would be an outrage if it did need saying. Anyone in his senses would offer Brown that job if he had the chance,’ I burst out angrily.

For a moment Nightingale was quiet. Then he said: ‘I’ll take your word for it that the other tutorship isn’t earmarked yet. I want you to know that I expect to be considered for it myself.’

We looked at him. He went on: ‘I’m a long way senior of all the people without offices in this college. Except for Crawford who doesn’t need them. I’ve been done out of every office since I was elected. I want to prevent it happening again.’

Brown said, knowing that he had to be soothed: ‘I’m sure you can be absolutely certain that Jago will consider you very seriously. Put it another way: your standing in the college means that you’re bound to be the first person considered. So now I shouldn’t worry if I were you, until the vacancy has really happened.’

‘I’ve been fobbed off like that before,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s too vague by half.’

‘No one can be any more definite,’ said Chrystal crisply.

‘Is that as much as you can tell me?’ Nightingale asked, half-threatening, half-pleading.

‘It is,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t think anyone could possibly go any further,’ said Brown, anxious to conciliate him. ‘We couldn’t conceivably commit Jago in any shape or form. You must see that that is quite unreasonable. If, when he had to make the appointment, he happened to ask our advice (as I dare say he might feel inclined to do), you can rest assured that we are the last persons to overlook your claim. We can guarantee that you’ll receive an absolutely fair hearing.’

‘It’s not good enough,’ said Nightingale.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Chrystal.

‘I’m very sorry indeed,’ said Brown. ‘We’re really going to the extreme limit, you know. I don’t quite see what more we can possibly do.’

‘I see what I can do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I shall go and tackle Jago myself,’ said Nightingale.

It was late, too late for him to go round that night, I thought with relief, but he left at once.

14: Commemoration of Benefactors

I woke early next morning, and lay listening to the series of quarter chimes, thinking of the alignment in the college. The parties had stayed constant since the two caucus meetings: no one had changed sides, although Francis Getliffe and Winslow had made an attempt to seduce Eustace Pilbrow. That was the only open attempt at persuasion so far made. Roy Calvert and I had wanted to have a go at old Gay, but Brown said wait. Both sides, in fact, were holding back; it was taken for granted that one or two in each caucus were waverers, but it was not yet time to attack them. In secret, Brown felt content because Pilbrow had been approached too early.

But, from the beginning, Nightingale had been our weakest spot. Waiting for Bidwell to announce nine o’clock that morning, I doubted whether we should ever hold him. How could one handle him in his present state? Last night he had wanted a promise. He would not be satisfied with less.

Looking down into the court after breakfast, I saw Jago walking through. I thought he should be warned at once, and so went down to meet him. I asked if he had seen Nightingale recently. He said no, and asked me why.

‘He’s coming to see you,’ I said.

‘What for?’

‘He wants you to promise that, when you become Master, you’ll offer him the tutorship.’

Jago’s face was shadowed with anger: but, before he had done more than curse, we heard a tapping from one of the ground-floor windows. It was Brown beckoning us in.

He was standing in the bedroom of the set which the college used for guests. There was a fire burning in the grate, and he had put some books on the bedside table. One of them was a large history of the college, and another a volume of reminiscences of Cambridge in the eighteenth century.

‘Whatever are you doing, Brown?’ said Jago.

‘I’m just seeing that things are ready for Sir Horace tomorrow night.’

Jago exclaimed.

‘I think it’s a mistake to have it too luxurious,’ Brown explained. ‘People like Sir Horace might get a wrong idea. They might think we weren’t completely poverty stricken. So one’s got to be careful. But I think there’s no harm in seeing that the room is reasonably decent.’

‘You oughtn’t to be doing it,’ said Jago. Angry at the news of Nightingale, his hurt pride broke out here. ‘The college oughtn’t to be an antiquarian hotel for wealthy men. And I don’t like seeing them waited on by their betters.’

‘For God’s sake don’t tell Chrystal that,’ Brown said quickly, looking flushed and troubled. ‘I don’t mind. I’m always ready to accept things. But some people aren’t. I don’t mind what you think of Sir Horace, though mark you I’m quite convinced you’re wrong. But, even if you were right, I should be prepared to use the instruments that providence puts in our hands.’ He smiled at Jago with concern. ‘Oh, by the way, I was going to talk to you this morning about another of those instruments — actually our friend Nightingale.’

‘I’ve just mentioned it,’ I said.

‘I’ve never heard of such insolence,’ Jago said fiercely.

‘You must be statesmanlike,’ said Brown.

‘He’s the last person I should think of making tutor.’

‘I hope you won’t consider it necessary to tell him so,’ said Brown.

‘I should dearly like to.’

‘No. You can be perfectly correct — without giving him the impression that the door is absolutely closed. Remember, indignation is a luxury which we can’t afford just at present.’

‘We’re not all as sensible as you, my dear friend.’ But Jago’s temper was simmering down, and shortly after he asked us who should be tutor. ‘If I am lucky enough to be elected,’ he said, ‘I think I shall feel obliged to offer it to Getliffe.’ Brown did not believe Francis would look at it (Brown was always inclined to see reasons why it was difficult for men to take jobs): he had only taken the stewardship under protest, he was ‘snowed under’ with his two kinds of research.

‘Then it looks,’ said Jago, ‘as if I should have to come to you, Eliot.’

‘I couldn’t do it without giving up my practice in London,’ I said. ‘And I can’t afford to do that yet.’

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ said Jago.

‘Don’t meet trouble halfway,’ said Brown, settling down to give a caution. ‘We can cross that bridge when we come to it. And I know you won’t take it amiss if I say something that’s been rather on my mind. It would be quite fatal to give people the impression that the Mastership was a foregone conclusion.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll be very careful,’ said Jago with an easy, repentant smile.

‘And you won’t mind my saying one more thing. Will you make sure that everyone connected with you is careful too?’

Jago’s smile left him on the instant. He stiffened, and replied with a dignity that was unfriendly, lofty, and remote: ‘I am already sure of that.’

Soon he went away and Brown gave me a rueful look.

‘Confound the woman. We can only hope that he’ll talk to her in private. People do make things difficult for themselves. When I talk about the instruments of providence, and then think of Nightingale and that woman, I must say that I sometimes feel we might have had better luck. It’s not going to be an easy row to hoe, is it?’ He looked round the room again, and marshalled the books in a neat line.

‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve got things shipshape for Sir Horace. I fancied it might encourage him if he read a bit about the history of the college. Always provided that we get him here. I suppose there’s no fresh news from the Lodge this morning?’

There was, in fact, no fresh news that day. On the morning of Tuesday, the day of the feast, we learned that the Master had still not been told. Sir Horace had arrived by car at teatime, Brown told me in the evening, just as I was beginning to dress. ‘I think it’s all right,’ said Brown. ‘I think it’s reasonably certain now that we shall get safely through the feast.’

He added that Jago had so far contrived to evade Nightingale.

The chapel bell began to peal at a quarter past six. From my window I saw the light over the chapel door bright against the February dusk. Some of the fellows were already on their way to the service. This was the commemoration of benefactors, and in the thirties the only service in the year to which most of the fellows went.

That change, like many others in the college, had been sharp and yet not paraded. In Gay’s young days, the fellows were clergymen who went to chapel as a matter of course; chapel was part of the routine of their lives, very much like hall. Sixty years after, most of the fellows were agnostics of one kind or another. Despard-Smith officiated at the ordinary services in chapel, the Master went regularly, Brown and Chrystal at times. Many of us attended only at commemoration. I put a gown over my tailcoat, and went myself that night.

Everyone was there except the doctrinaire unbelievers, Winslow and Francis Getliffe. By Roy Calvert’s side stood Luke, who would have liked to keep away and was there simply not to offend. Crawford came in smoothly, a CBE cross glinting under his white tie. On the coats of several men, when they pulled their gowns aside, glittered medals of the 1914–18 war. It struck me how inexplicable a thing was bravery. Nightingale was wearing a DSO and an MC and bar, Pilbrow rows of medals of miscellaneous Balkan wars. They were both brave men, by any human standard. Who would have picked them out for courage, if he did not know the facts?

Brown and Chrystal entered, with Sir Horace Timberlake between them. They had decided it would be pleasant for Sir Horace to hear benefactors commemorated. He was the only man in chapel without a gown; one noticed his well-kept, well-washed, well-fed figure in his evening suit; his face was smooth, fresh, open and he had large blue eyes, which often looked ingenuous; he was older than Chrystal or Jago, but the only line in his face was a crease of fixed attention between his eyes. The chapel was full. Rain pattered against the stained glass windows, but no radiance came through them at night, they were opaque and closed us in like the panelled walls. On this winter night, as the chapel filled with fellows, scholars and the choir, it contracted into a room small, cosy and confined.

We sang a psalm and a hymn. Gay’s sonorous voice rang out jubilantly from the backmost stall, Despard-Smith, aged and solemn in his surplice, intoned some prayers in a gloomy voice: and, in a prose version of the same voice, he read the list of benefactions. It was a strange jumble of gifts, going back to the foundation, arranged not in value but in order of receipt. A bequest from the sixth Master to provide five shillings for each fellow at the audit feast was read out at inexorable length, sandwiched between a great estate and the patronage of the college’s most valuable living. It was strange to hear those names and to know that some of the benefactors had listened to the beginning of that higgledy piggledy list and had wished their own names to follow. I thought how the sound of ‘Next —, twelfth Master, who left to the college five hundred pounds, together with his collection of plate’ would affect Jago that night — Jago, who was sitting there with the threat of Nightingale still on his mind.

But the only response I actually heard was from Gay, who at the end, as we went into the ante-chapel, said resoundingly: ‘Ah. I congratulate you, Despard. A splendid service, splendid. I particularly liked that lesson “Let us now praise famous men”. Perhaps we hear slightly too much nowadays about praising the obscure. Often very fine people in their way, no doubt, but they shouldn’t get all the praise.’

In little groups we hurried through the rain to the combination room. Some of our guests were already waiting there, and they asked about the Master, for that news was all round Cambridge. In the gossipy closeness of the university, other high tables kept hearing on and off about the progress of the illness and the choice of his successor.

‘No change,’ said Chrystal sharply to the room. ‘They’ve not told him yet. They can’t avoid it soon.’

The combination room was becoming crowded, and men were pushing past us, sherry glass in hand, to get a sight of the order of seating. I had already seen it; it was unfamiliar, simply because Chrystal had insisted that Sir Horace must sit at the principal table. Winslow had already seen it also; but he came in late that evening, and studied it again with a sour face.

Chrystal plucked him by the gown.

‘Winslow, may I introduce Sir Horace Timberlake?’

‘If you please. If you please.’

Winslow greeted Sir Horace with his usual sarcastic courtesy. The conversation spurted and floundered. Sir Horace turned uneasily to the chapel service.

‘I was very much impressed by your service, Mr Winslow. There was nothing showy about it, you know what I mean?’

‘Indeed?’ said Winslow.

‘I thought the chapel was very fine,’ Sir Horace persisted. ‘It’s a very good bit of eighteenth-century panelling you’ve got — I suppose it must be eighteenth century, mustn’t it?’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Sir Horace,’ said Winslow. ‘But you’re bound to be a far better authority than I am. I’ve only been inside the chapel to elect masters.’

Immediately after, Winslow asked Sir Horace to excuse him, so that he could join his guest, who had just arrived, together with Pilbrow and his French writer. Sir Horace looked downcast.

Jago did not enter the combination room until just on eight o’clock. Although he had a guest with him, the Master of another college, Nightingale approached him at once. I heard him say: ‘I should like a word with you tonight, Jago.’

Jago replied, his tone over-friendly, upset, over-considerate: ‘I’m extremely sorry. I’m up to the ears with work. I’m completely booked for tonight.’ He paused, and I heard him go on unwillingly: ‘Perhaps we could fix something for tomorrow?’

15: Negotiations After a Feast

The wall lights in the hall were turned off for the feast, and the tables were lit by candles. The candlelight shone on silver salts, candlesticks, great ornamental tankards, and on gold cups and plates, all arranged down the middle of the tables. Silver and gold shone under the flickering light; as one looked above the candlesticks, the linen fold was half in darkness and the roof was lost.

In order to seat Sir Horace as Chrystal insisted, Winslow had been brought down from the high table, and so had Pilbrow and Pilbrow’s French writer. I sat opposite Winslow and started to talk across the table to the Frenchman. He was, as it turned out, very disappointing.

I recalled the excitement with which I heard Pilbrow was bringing him, and the cultural snobbery with which we had piqued Chrystal and dismissed Sir Horace. How wrong we were. An evening by Sir Horace’s side would have been far more rewarding.

The Frenchman sat stolidly while Pilbrow had a conversational fling. ‘Pornograms,’ Pilbrow burst out. ‘An absolutely essential word — Two meanings. Something written, as in telegram. Something drawn, as in diagram.’ The Frenchman was not amused, and went on talking like a passage from his own books.

But, if he did not enjoy himself others made up for it. All through the feast we heard a commentary from Gay, who sat at the end of the high table, not far away from us.

‘Oysters? Excellent. You never did relish oysters, did you, Despard? Waiter, bring me Mr Despard-Smith’s oysters. Capital. I remember having some particularly succulent oysters in Oxford one night when they happened to be giving me an honorary degree. Do you know, those oysters slipped down just as though they were taking part in the celebration.’

He did not follow our modern fashion in wines. Champagne was served at feasts, but it had become the habit to pass it by and drink the hocks and moselles instead. Not so Gay. ‘There’s nothing like a glass of champagne on a cold winter night. I’ve always felt better for a glass of champagne. Ah. Let me see, I’ve been coming to these feasts now for getting on for sixty years. I’m happy to say I’ve never missed a feast through illness, and I’ve always enjoyed my glass of champagne.’

He kept having his glass filled, and addressed not only the end of his own table, but also ours.

‘My saga-men never had a meal like this. Grand old Njal never had such a meal. My saga-men never had a glass of champagne. It was a very hard, dark, strenuous life those men lived, and they weren’t afraid to meet their fates. Grand chaps they were. I’m glad I’ve been responsible for making thousands of people realize what grand chaps they were. Why, when I came on the scene, they were almost unknown in this country. And now, if a cultivated man does not know as much about them as he knows about the heroes of the Iliad, he’s an ignoramus. You hear that, Despard? You hear that, Eustace? I repeat, he’s an ignoramus.’

We sat a long time over the port and claret, the fruit and coffee and cigars. There were no speeches at all. At last — it was nearly half-past ten — we moved into the combination room again. Roy Calvert was starting some concealed badinage at the expense of Crawford and Despard-Smith. Like everyone else, he was rosy, bright-eyed, and full of well-being. Like everyone except Nightingale, that is: Nightingale had brought no guest, was indifferent to food, and always hated drinking or seeing others drink. He stood in the crush of the combination room, looking strained in the midst of the elation. Winslow came up to Gay, who was making his way slowly — the press of men parted in front of him — to his special chair.

‘Ah, Winslow. What a magnificent feast this has been!’

‘Are you going to congratulate me on it?’ asked Winslow.

‘Certainly not,’ said Gay. ‘You gave up being Steward a great number of years ago. I shall congratulate the man responsible for this excellent feast. Getliffe is our present Steward. That’s the man. Where is Getliffe? I congratulate him. Splendid work these young scientists do, splendid.’

Chrystal and Brown did not mean to stay long in the combination room: it was time to get down to business. They caught Jago’s eye and mine. We said goodbye to our guests, and followed the others and Sir Horace up to Brown’s rooms.

‘I wonder,’ said Brown, after he had established Sir Horace in a chair by the fire, ‘if anyone would like a little brandy? I always find it rather settling after a feast.’

When each of us had accepted our drink, Sir Horace began to talk: but he was a long time, a deliberately long time, in getting to the point. First of all, he discussed his ‘nephew’, as he called young Timberlake, who was actually his second cousin.

‘I want to thank all you gentlemen, and particularly Mr Brown, for what you’ve done for the boy. I’m very grateful for all your care. I know he’s not first class academically, and there was a time when it worried me, but now I’ve realized that he’s got other qualities, you know what I mean?’

‘I don’t think you need worry about him,’ said Brown.

‘He’s an extremely good lad,’ said Jago, overdoing it a little. ‘Everyone likes him. It’s a miracle that he’s not hopelessly spoiled.’

‘I’m interested to hear you say that,’ said Sir Horace. ‘I haven’t got the slightest worry on that account. I’ve always been certain about his character. I saw that his mother took all the trouble she could about his education in that respect.’

‘I’m sure that we all regard him as doing you the greatest credit,’ said Brown.

‘And speaking with due respect as a stupid sort of person in front of first-class minds, character does count, don’t you agree with me?’

‘There are times, Sir Horace,’ Jago broke out, ‘when I think young men like your nephew are our most valuable products. The first-class man can look after himself. But the man of personality who isn’t much interested in learning — believe me, they’re often the salt of the earth.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that, Dr Jago.’

So it went on. Sir Horace pursued the subjects of his nephew, education, character versus intelligence, the advantages of the late developer, the necessity of a good home background, enthusiastically and exhaustively. Jago was his chief conversational partner, though Brown now and then put in a bland, emollient word. Chrystal tried once or twice to make the conversation more practical.

‘I must apologize for the old chap I introduced to you,’ said Chrystal.

‘Mr Winslow?’ said Sir Horace, who did not forget names.

‘Yes. He’s one of our liabilities. He’s impossible. By the way, he’s the Bursar, and if he weren’t so impossible we should have asked him to meet you. In case we had a chance of continuing where we left off last time.’

‘Every organization has its difficult men, you know,’ Sir Horace replied. ‘It’s just the same in my own organization. And that’s why’ — he turned to Jago — ‘I do attach the greatest importance to these universities turning out—’ Indefatigably he continued to exhaust the subject of education. I wanted to see Brown and Chrystal successful, wanted to go to bed, but I was also amused. Sir Horace was showing no effects of wine; he was tireless and oblivious of time. He was as much a master of tactics as Brown and Chrystal, and he was used to men trying to pump him for money. It was like him to cloud his manoeuvres behind a smokescreen of words, and when he was using this technique he did not much mind what he said. He called it ‘thinking aloud’. Often, as was the case that night, he talked a lot of humbug. He was genuinely fond of his nephew, and was himself diffident in societies like the college which he did not know. But his own sons had real ability, and that was what Sir Horace valued. The idea that he had a veneration for stupid men of high character, or thought himself to be anything but intelligent, was absurd — and alone, in cold blood, he knew it was absurd.

Even Jago’s vitality was flagging. Brown’s eyes were not as bright as usual, Chrystal had fallen silent. The midnight chimes had sounded some time before. In the short lulls between Sir Horace’s disquisitions, one heard the rain tapping on the windows. Sir Horace had worn us all down, and went on uninterrupted. Suddenly he asked, quite casually: ‘Have you thought any more of expanding your activities?’

‘Certainly we have,’ said Chrystal, coming alertly to life.

‘I think someone suggested — correct me if I’m wrong — that for certain lines of development you might need a little help. I think you suggested that, Mr Chrystal.’

‘I did.’

‘We can’t do anything substantial placed as we are,’ said Brown. ‘We can only keep going quietly on.’

‘I see that,’ Sir Horace reflected. ‘If your college is going to make a bigger contribution, it will need some financial help.’

‘Exactly,’ said Chrystal.

‘I think you said, Mr Chrystal, that you needed financial help with no conditions attached to it. So that you could develop along your own lines. Well, I’ve been turning that over in my mind. I dare say you’ve thought about it more deeply than I have, but I can’t help feeling that some people wouldn’t be prepared to exert themselves for you on those terms. You know what I mean? Some people might be inclined to see if financial help could be forthcoming, but would be put off at just making it over to you for general purposes. Do you agree with me or don’t you?’

Brown got in first: ‘I’m sure I should be speaking for the college in saying that it would be foolish — it would be worse than that, it would be presumptuous — only to accept money for general purposes. But you see, Sir Horace, we have suffered quite an amount from benefactions which are tied down so much that we can’t really use them. We’ve got the income on £20,000 for scholarships for the sons of Protestant clergymen in Galway. And that’s really rather tantalizing, you know.’

‘I see that,’ said Sir Horace again. ‘But let me put a point of view some people might take. Some people — and I think I include myself among them — might fancy that institutions like this are always tempted to put too much capital into bricks and mortar, do you know what I mean? We might feel that you didn’t need to put up a new building, for instance.’

‘It’s the go-ahead colleges who are building,’ said Chrystal. ‘Take some examples. There are two colleges whose reputation is going up while we stay flat—’

Chrystal showed great deference to Sir Horace, a genuine humble deference, but he argued crisply. Just as Sir Horace’s tactics formed behind a cloud of vague words, Chrystal’s and Brown’s were hidden in detail. Sharp, precise, confusing details were their chosen weapon. Complete confidence in the value of the college: their ability to treat Sir Horace as the far more gifted man, but at the same time to rely on the absolute self-confidence of the college as a society: their practice at handling detail so that any course but their own became impossible: those were the means they opposed to Sir Horace’s obstinate imagination.

The argument became lively, and we all took a hand. Sir Horace shook his head: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Chrystal. For once I don’t agree with you.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, pleasant, almost filial smile.

Sir Horace had guessed completely right. If the college secured a benefaction, Chrystal and Brown were eager to put up a building: they were eager to see the college of their time — their college — leave its irremovable mark.

At the beginning Brown had, as he used to say, ‘flown a kite’ for compromise, and now Chrystal joined him. Clearly, any college would welcome thankfully a benefaction for a special purpose — provided it could be fitted into the general frame. Sir Horace was assenting cordially, his eyes at their most open and naive. All of a sudden, he looked at Chrystal, and his eyes were not in the least naive. ‘I also shouldn’t be very happy about thinking of financial help which might be used to release your ordinary funds for building,’ he said in his indefatigable, sustained, rich-sounding, affable voice. ‘I can imagine other people taking the same line. They might be able to think out ways of preventing it, don’t you agree with me? If people of my way of thinking got together some financial help, I’m inclined to believe it would be for men. This country is short of first-class men.’

‘What had you in mind?’ asked Brown.

‘I’m only thinking aloud, you know what I mean. But it seems to an outsider that you haven’t anything like your proper number of fellowships. Particularly on what I might call the side of the future. You haven’t anything like enough fellowships for scientists and engineers. And this country is dead unless your kind of institutions can bring out the first-rate men. I should like to see you have many more young scientific fellows. I don’t mind much what happens to them so long as they have their chance. They can stay in the university, or we shall be glad to take them in industry. But they are the people you want — I hope you agree with me.’

‘That’s most interesting,’ said Jago.

‘I’m afraid you’re doubtful, Dr Jago.’

‘I’m a little uncertain how much you want to alter us.’ Jago was becoming more reserved. ‘If you swamped us with scientific fellows — you see, Sir Horace, I’m at a disadvantage. I haven’t the faintest idea of the scale of benefaction you think we need.’

‘I was only thinking aloud,’ said Sir Horace. In all his negotiations, as Chrystal and Brown perfectly understood, an exact figure was the last thing to be mentioned. Sums of money were, so to speak, hidden away behind the talk: partly as though they were improper, partly as though they were magic. ‘Imagine though,’ Sir Horace went on, ‘people of my way of thinking were trying to help the college with — a fairly considerable sum. Do you see what I mean?’

‘A fellowship,’ said Chrystal briskly, ‘costs £20,000.’

‘What was that, Mr Chrystal?’

‘It needs a capital endowment of £20,000 to pay for a fellowship. If you add on all the perquisites.’

‘I fancied that must be about the figure,’ said Sir Horace vaguely. ‘Imagine that a few people could see their way to providing a few of those units—’ His voice trailed off. There was a pause.

‘If they were giving them for fellowships in general,’ said Chrystal at last, ‘it would be perfect. There are no two ways about that. If the fellowships were restricted to science—’

‘I am interested to hear what you think, Mr Chrystal.’

‘If they were, it might raise difficulties.’

‘I don’t quite see them.’

‘Put it another way,’ said Brown. ‘On the book, today, Sir Horace, we’ve got four scientific fellows out of thirteen. I wouldn’t maintain that was the right proportion, we should all agree it wasn’t enough. But if we changed it drastically at a single stroke, it would alter the place overnight. I should be surprised if you regarded that as statesmanlike.’

‘Even the possibility of a benefaction is exciting,’ said Jago. ‘But I do agree with my colleagues. If the fellowships were limited to one subject, it would change the character of our society.’

‘You will have to change the character of your society in twenty years,’ said Sir Horace, with a sudden dart of energy and fire. ‘History will make you. Life will make you. You won’t be able to stop it, Dr Jago, you know what I mean?’

He had heard from the others that Jago was likely to be the next Master, and all the evening had treated him with respect. Sir Horace was charmed, Jago had for him the fascination of the unfamiliar, he wanted to be sure of Jago’s unqualified approval. Brown and Chrystal he was more used to, he got on well with them, but they were not foreign, exciting, ‘up in the air’.

All of us were waiting for a concrete bargain. Sir Horace, however, was willing to let a talk like this fade inconclusively away. He said: ‘Well, I can’t tell you how valuable I’ve found it to have all your opinions. It’s most stimulating, I hope you agree with me? It gives us all plenty to think about.’

He relished the power of giving or withholding money. It was always a wrench for him to relinquish it. He liked men waiting on him for a decision. There was sometimes a hidden chuckle beneath the anticlimax. Like Chrystal, he loved the feel of power.

It was after two o’clock, but he returned happily to the talk on education. He had great stamina and no sense of time, and another hour passed before he thought of bed.

16: An Hour of Pride

When I went into my sitting-room next morning, half an hour before my usual time, there was Sir Horace, bright and trim and ready for his breakfast. He had had less than five hours’ sleep, but he was as conversational as ever. He referred to our common acquaintances, such as Francis Getliffe’s brother; he asked questions about the men he had met the night before. He was much taken with Jago. ‘There’s an unusual man,’ said Sir Horace. ‘Anyone could see that in five minutes. Remarkable head he’s got. Will he be your next Master?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Brown and Chrystal want him, don’t they?’

I said yes.

‘Good chaps, those.’ Sir Horace paused. ‘If they were in industry they’d drive a hard bargain.’

I put in the thin edge of a question. But, though he had begun the day so talkative and affable, Sir Horace was no more communicative than the night before. His intention became masked at once in a loquacious stream about how much his nephew owed to Brown’s tutoring. ‘I want him to get an honours degree. I don’t believe these places ought to be open to the comfortably off, unless the comfortably off can profit by them,’ said Sir Horace, surprisingly unless one knew his streak of unorganized radicalism. ‘I hope you agree with me? If this boy doesn’t get his honours degree, I shall cross off the experiment as a failure. But he’d never have touched it if it hadn’t been for Brown. I’ll tell you frankly, Mr Eliot, there have been times when I wished the boy didn’t require so much help on the examination side.’

We had not long finished breakfast when Roy Calvert came in. They had met for a moment after the feast. Sir Horace was automatically cordial. Then he went to the window, and looked out at the court, lit by the mild sunshine of a February morning.

‘How peaceful it all is,’ Sir Horace observed. ‘You don’t realize what a temptation it would be to quit the rough-and-tumble and settle down here in peace.’

He smiled with his puzzled, lost, friendly look, and Roy smiled back, his eyes glinting with fun.

‘I don’t think we do,’ said Roy. ‘I’ll change with you, Sir Horace.’

‘You wouldn’t get such peace.’

‘I don’t know. Are some of your colleagues on speaking terms? Ours just manage it. Should you call that specially peaceful?’

Sir Horace laughed uneasily; he was not used to affectionate malice from young men half his age. But he had an eye for quality. Up to that moment he had placed Roy as an ornament and a flâneur; now he captured his interest, just as Jago had done. He began asking Roy about his work. He was mystified by most of Roy’s explanation, but he felt something here that he had not met. I saw him studying Roy’s face when it was not smiling.

Soon he was asking if he could be shown Roy’s manuscripts. They went off together, and I did not see them until midday. Then Roy ran up the stairs to say that the ‘old boy’ was going; he fetched Brown and Chrystal and we all met at the side door of the college, where the car was garaged. The chauffeur had just arrived, and Sir Horace was standing by the car in a tremendous fur coat, looking like an Imperial Russian general.

‘I’m sorry I’ve not seen anything of you this morning, Mr Chrystal,’ said Sir Horace. ‘I’ve had a very interesting time looking at Mr Calvert’s wonderful things. There were several points last night I should like to explore with you again, you know what I mean? I very much hope we shall have the opportunity some time.’

The car drove off, Sir Horace waving cordially. As it turned out of sight, Roy Calvert asked: ‘Is he going to unbelt?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Chrystal. He added loyally: ‘Of course, men in his position have to make a hundred decisions a day. I expect he looks on this as very small beer — and just puts it off until he’s got important things finished. It’s unfortunate for us.’

‘I’m not giving up hope yet,’ said Brown, robust against disappointment. ‘I can’t believe he’d lead us up the garden path.’

‘It would be funny if he did,’ said Roy. ‘And took a series of dinners off us. Never getting to the point.’

‘I don’t call that funny, Calvert,’ Chrystal said irritably.

‘I believe it may come right,’ said Brown. He added, in a hurry: ‘Mind you, I shan’t feel inclined to celebrate until I see a cheque arrive on the bursary table.’ He said aside to Chrystal: ‘We’ve just got to think of ways and means again. I should be in favour of letting him lie fallow for a month or two. In the meantime, we shall have time to consider methods of giving him a gentle prod.’

The sky was cloudless and china-blue, there was scarcely a breath of wind. The sun was just perceptibly warm on the skin, and we thought of taking a turn round the garden before lunch. Roy Calvert and Chrystal went in front. They were talking about investments. Roy was the only child of a rich man, and Chrystal liked talking to him about money. Brown and I followed on behind. Our way to the garden was overlooked by the windows of the tutor’s house, and as we walked I heard my name called in Jago’s voice.

I stayed on the path, Brown strolled slowly on. Jago came out from his house — and with him was Nightingale.

‘Can you spare us a moment, Eliot?’ Jago cried. His tone was apologetic, almost hostile.

‘Of course.’

‘Nightingale and I have been discussing the future of the college. Naturally, we all think the future of the college depends on the men we attract to college offices.’ Jago’s words were elaborate, his mouth drawn down, his eyes restless. ‘So that we’ve been speculating a little on which of our colleagues might consider taking various college offices.’

‘These things have a way of being settled in advance,’ said Nightingale.

‘I hope it doesn’t embarrass you to mention your own future,’ Jago had to go on.

‘Not in the slightest,’ I said.

‘I know it’s difficult. No one can pledge themselves too far ahead. But I’ve just been telling Nightingale that, so far as I know, you wouldn’t feel free to think of a college office in the next few years.’

‘I shouldn’t. I can be ruled out,’ I said.

‘Why? Why can we rule you out?’ Nightingale broke out in suspicion.

I had to give a reason for Jago’s sake.

‘Because I don’t want to break my London connection. I can’t spend two days a week in London and hold an office here.’

‘Your two days must be exceptionally well paid.’ Nightingale smiled.

‘It’s valuable for the college,’ said Jago with an effort to sound undisturbed, ‘to have its young lawyers taught by a man with a successful practice.’

‘It seems to be rather valuable for Eliot,’ Nightingale smiled again. But his suspicions had temporarily abated, and he parted from us.

‘Good God,’ muttered Jago, as Nightingale disappeared at the bottom of his staircase.

‘I hope you contained yourself,’ said Brown, who had been waiting for us to join him. We all three walked towards the garden.

‘I was very tactful,’ said Jago. ‘I was despicably tactful, Brown. Do you know that he doubted my word when I said that Eliot here couldn’t take a tutorship if it was offered him? He said he might believe it if he heard it from Eliot himself. I ought to have kicked the man out of my study. Instead of that, I inflicted him on Eliot, so that he could have the satisfaction of hearing it. I am so sorry, Eliot.’

‘You had to do it,’ I said.

‘I call it statesmanlike,’ said Brown.

‘I call it despicable,’ said Jago.

The garden was quiet with winter, the grass shone emerald in the sunlight, the branches of the trees had not yet begun to thicken. In the wash of greens and sepias and browns stood one blaze of gold from a forsythia bush. Roy and Chrystal were standing under a great beech, just where the garden curved away to hide the inner ‘wilderness’.

‘God forgive me,’ said Jago bitterly, as we stepped on to the soft lawn. ‘I’ve never prevaricated so shamefully. The man asked me outright what my intentions were. I replied — yes, I’ll tell you what I replied — I told him that it might put us both in a false position if I gave a definite answer. But I said that none of those I knew best in the college could possibly take a tutorship. That’s where your name came in, Eliot. He insisted on discussing you all one by one.’

‘I hope you let him,’ said Brown.

‘I let him.’

‘I hope you didn’t give him the impression that you’d never offer him the job,’ said Brown.

‘I should be less ashamed,’ said Jago, ‘if I could think I had.’

Jago was angry and anxious. He was angry at what he had been forced to do: anxious that it might not be enough. But, most of all that morning in the sunny garden, he was angry, bitterly angry, at the insult to his pride. He had lowered himself, he had thrown his pride in front of his own eyes and this other man’s, and now, ten minutes later, it had arisen and was dominating him. He was furious at the humiliation which policy imposed: was this where ambition had taken him? was this the result of his passion? was this the degradation which he had to take?

Brown would not have minded. A less proud man would have accepted it as part of the game: knowing it, Jago looked at his supporter’s kind, shrewd, and worldly face, and felt alone. The shame was his alone, the wound was his alone. When he next spoke, he was drawn into himself, he was speaking from a height.

‘I assure you, Brown, I don’t think you need fear a defection,’ he said, with a mixture of anxiety, self-contempt, and scorn. ‘I handled him pretty well. I was as tactful as a man could be.’

17: ‘We’re All Alone’

After lunch that day Roy Calvert stopped me in the court. His lips twitched in a smile.

‘Everyone was worried whether we should have the feast, weren’t they?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Just so. Well, I heard a minute ago that it wasn’t necessary. Joan and her mother never intended to tell him before the feast. They’d marked down the date weeks ago. They knew the old boy was coming down to unbelt — which he didn’t — and they decided that we mustn’t be disturbed. Isn’t that just like the appalling sense of women?’

I could not help laughing.

‘We’ve been sold,’ said Roy. ‘Not only you and me — but all those sensible blokes. We’ve been absolutely and completely and magnificently sold.’

But, though he was smiling, he was already sad, for he had guessed what was to happen that day. I did not see him again all afternoon and evening. His name was on the dining list for hall, but he did not come. Late at night, he entered my room and told me that he had been with Lady Muriel for hours. She had broken the news to the Master early in the afternoon.

I was distressed not only on their account, but on Roy’s. He was beginning to have the look and manner which came upon him during a wave of depression. And I was not reassured when, instead of telling me anything that had been said in the Lodge, he insisted on going to a party. For, as he and I knew too well, there was a trace of the manic-depressive about his moods. I was more afraid for him in a state of false hilarity than in sadness.

However, he was genial at the party, although he did not speak of the Master until we had returned to college and were standing in sight of the Lodge windows. It was well into the small hours, but one light was still shining.

‘I wonder,’ Roy said, ‘if he can sleep tonight.’

We stood looking at the window. The court was quiet beneath the stars.

Roy said: ‘I’ve never seen such human misery and loneliness as I did today.’

Beside the fire in his sitting-room, he went on telling of the Master and Lady Muriel, and he spoke with the special insight of grief. Theirs had not been a joyous marriage. The Master might have brought happiness to many women, Roy said, but somehow he had never set her free. As for her, there was a terrible story that, when the Master was engaged to her, an aunt of hers said to him: ‘I warn you, she has no tenderness.’ That showed what her facade was like, and yet, Roy had told me and I believed him, it was the opposite of the truth. Perhaps few husbands could have called her tenderness to the surface, and that the Master had never done. She had given him children, they had struggled on for twenty-five years. ‘She’s never had any idea what he’s really like,’ said Roy. ‘Poor dear, she’s always been puzzled by his jokes.’

Yet they had trusted each other; and so, that afternoon, it was her task to tell him that he was going to die. Roy was certain that she had screwed herself up and gone straight to the point. ‘She’s always known that she’s failed him. Now she felt she was failing him worst of all. Because anyone else would have known what to say, and she’s never been able to put one word in front of another.’

Occasionally we had imagined that the Master saw through the deception, but it was not true. The news came as a total shock. He did not reproach her. She could not remember what he said, but it was very little.

‘It’s hard to think without a future.’ That was the only remark she could recall.

But the hardest blow for her was that, in looking towards his death, he seemed to have forgotten her. ‘I was less use than ever,’ Lady Muriel had cried to Roy.

It was that cry which had seared Roy with the spectacle of human egotism and loneliness. They had lived their lives together. She had to tell him this news. She saw him thinking only of his death — and she could not reach him. It did not matter whether she was there or not.

After she had gone out, and Joan had visited him for a few minutes, he had asked to be left to himself.

Roy said: ‘We’re all alone, aren’t we? Each one of us. Quite alone.’

Later, he asked: ‘If she was miserable and lonely today, what was it like to be him? Can anyone imagine what it’s like to know your death is fixed?’

18: Result of an Anxiety

After his demand on Jago, Nightingale seemed to be satisfied or to have lost interest. Brown’s explanation was that he was enough open to reason to realize that he could go no further; for his own practical ends, it was sensible to stop. Brown did not let us forget Nightingale’s practical ends: ‘He may be unbalanced,’ said Brown, ‘he may be driven by impulses which I am sure you understand better than I do, but somehow he manages to give them a direction. And that concerns me most. He wants some very practical things, and he’s going to be a confounded nuisance.’

That was entirely true. I learned a lot about men in action, I learned something of when to control a psychological imagination, from Arthur Brown. But it was also true that Nightingale was right in the middle of one of those states of anxiety which is like a vacuum in the mind: it fills itself with one worry, such as the tutorship; that is worried round, examined, explored, acted upon, for the time being satisfied: the vacuum is left, and fills immediately with a new worry. In this case it was the March recommendations of the council of the Royal Society: would he get in at last? would his deepest hope come off?

This anxiety came to Nightingale each spring. It was the most painful of all. And it seemed sharper because, unlike his worry over the tutorship, there was nothing he could do to satisfy himself. He could only wait.

Crawford had just been put on the council of the Royal Society for the second time, owing to someone dying. Crawford told us this news himself, with his usual imperturbability. Nightingale heard him with his forehead corrugated, but he could not resist asking: ‘Do you know when the results will be out?’ Crawford looked at his pocket-book.

‘The council will make its recommendations on Thursday, March—’ He told Nightingale the date. ‘Of course, they’re not public for a couple of months after. Is there anyone you’re interested in?’

‘Yes.’

The intense answer got through even to Crawford.

‘You’re not up yourself, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t realize it,’ said Crawford, making an unconcerned apology. ‘Of course your subject is a long way from mine. I don’t think I’ve heard anything about the chemists’ list. If I did, I’m afraid I paid no attention. If I knew anything definite, I should be tempted to tell you. I’m not a believer in unnecessary secrecy.’

Francis Getliffe had been listening to the conversation, and we went out of the room together. As the door closed behind us, he said: ‘I wish someone would put Nightingale out of his misery.’

‘Do you know the result?’

‘I’ve heard the lists. He’s not in, of course. But the point is, he’s never even thought of. He never will get in,’ said Francis.

‘I doubt if anyone could tell him,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Francis.

‘When are you going to get in, by the way?’ I asked, forgetting our opposition, as though our ease had returned.

‘I shan’t let myself be put up until I stand a good chance. I mean, until I’m certain of getting in within three or four years. I’m not inclined to go up on the off chance.’

‘Does that mean the first shot next year?’

‘I’d hoped so. I’d hoped that, if I was put up next year, I was bound to be elected by 1940. But things haven’t gone as fast as they should,’ he said with painful honesty.

‘You’ve been unlucky, haven’t you?’

‘A bit,’ said Francis. ‘I might have got a shade more notice. But that isn’t the whole truth. I haven’t done as much as I ought.’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ I said.

‘There’s got to be time,’ said Francis.

None of us, I thought, was as just as he was, or made such demands on his will.

About three weeks later, as I went into the porter’s lodge one day after lunch, I heard Nightingale giving instructions. A special note in his tone caught my attention: it occurred to me that it must be the day of the Royal results. ‘If a telegram comes for me this afternoon,’ he repeated, ‘I want the boy sent to my rooms without a minute’s delay. I shall be in till hall. Have you got that? I don’t want a minute’s delay.’

The afternoon was harshly cold; the false spring of February had disappeared, and before teatime it was dark, the sky overhung with inky clouds. I stayed by my fire reading, and then sent for tea before a pupil arrived. As I waited for the kitchen porter, I stood looking out of the window into the court. A few flakes of snow were falling. Some undergraduates came clanking through in football boots, their knees a livid purple, their breath steaming in the bitter air. Then I saw Nightingale walking towards the porter’s lodge. The young men were shouting heartily: Nightingale went past them as though they did not exist.

In a moment, he was on his way back. He had found no telegram. He was walking quite slowly: the cold did not touch him.

In hall that night his face was dead white and so strained that the lines seemed rigid, part of the structure of his brow. Every few seconds he put a hand to the back of his head, and the tic began to fascinate Luke, who was sitting next to him. Several times Luke looked at the pale, grim, harassed face, started to speak, and then thought better of it. At last his curiosity was too strong, and he said: ‘Are you all right, Nightingale?’

‘What do you mean, all right?’ Nightingale replied. ‘Of course I’m all right. What do you think you’re talking about?’

Luke blushed, but would not be shouted down.

‘I thought you might have been overworking. You were looking pretty tired—’

‘Overworking,’ Nightingale said. ‘I suppose you think that’s the worst thing that can happen.’

Luke shrugged his shoulders, muttered a curse under his breath and caught my eye. He had a rueful, self-mocking sense of humour; his work was in a hopeful phase, and he lived at the laboratory from nine in the morning until it closed at night. It was hard to have his head bitten off for laziness.

We were already through the soup and fish when Crawford came into hall. He slipped into the seat next mine, but before he sat down called up the table to Winslow: ‘My apologies for being late. I’ve had to attend the council of the Royal. And this weather wasn’t very good for the train.’

He ate his way methodically through the first courses and had caught us up at the sweet. All the time Nightingale’s eyes were fixed on him with a last desperate question of anxiety. But Crawford was untroubled, and, having levelled up in eating, talked reflectively to me. It was like him that his conversation did not alter with the person he was addressing; if there was anything he wanted to deliver, I served to receive it as well as Francis Getliffe.

‘Selecting people for honorific purposes is a very interesting job. But it’s not as easy as you might suppose. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of the choice of Fellows of the Royal — which I happen just to have been concerned with. Speaking as a man of science, I should be happier if there were sharper criteria to help us make the choice. I’m not meaning the choice is made unfairly: no, I should say that on the conscious level they’re as fair as human choices can be. But the criteria are not sharp, and it’s no use pretending they can be. “Original work of distinction” — how can you compare one man with a new theory on the interior of the stars with someone else who has painstakingly measured the movements of a fish?’

The rest had finished the meal, Winslow was waiting to say grace, but Crawford finished saying what he had to say. On our way into the combination room, he suddenly noticed Nightingale, and called out: ‘Oh, Nightingale. Just a minute.’

We passed on, leaving the two of them together. But we heard Crawford’s audible, impersonally friendly voice saying clearly: ‘No luck for you this time.’

They followed us at once. Most of those dining went away without sitting down to wine, but Crawford said that he had had a busy day and needed a glass of port. So Winslow and I shared a bottle with him, and listened to his views on the organization of science, the place of the Royal Society, the revolution in scientific technology. Nightingale hung on to every word.

Crawford enjoyed talking; some were put off by his manner and could not bear to listen, but they lost something. He had not the acute penetrating intellect of Roy Calvert; in an intelligence test he would not have come out as high as, say, the Master or Winslow; and he had no human insight at all. But he had a broad, strong, powerful mind, not specially apt for entertaining but made to wear.

Nightingale sat outside the little circle of three round which the bottle passed. Since he learned the news, his expression was still taut with strain, but his eyes had become bright and fierce. There was nothing crushed about him; his whole manner was active, harsh, and determined as he listened to Crawford. He listened without speaking. He did not once give his envious smile. But, once as I watched him, his eyes left Crawford for an instant and stared inimically at mine. They were feverishly bright.

When I went away, the three of them were still at the table, and Crawford and Winslow were emptying the bottle.

The next evening, half an hour before dinner, I heard Francis Getliffe’s firm, plunging, heavy step on the stairs. He used to call in often on his way to hall; but he had not done so since our quarrel.

‘Busy?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Good work.’ He sat in the armchair across the fire, took a cigarette, cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable and constrained, but he was looking at me with mastery.

‘Look, Lewis, I think it’s better for me to tell you,’ he said. ‘Your majority for Jago has been broken.’

He was triumphant, he enjoyed telling me — yet he felt a streak of friendly pity.

‘Who’s gone over?’ I said, but I did not need to ask.

‘Nightingale. He told Crawford himself last night. Winslow was there too.’

I blamed myself for having left them together with Nightingale in that condition. Then I thought that was not realistic: it could have made no difference. And I did not want to show concern in front of Francis Getliffe.

‘If it weren’t for the vote, which is a nuisance,’ I said, ‘I should wish you joy of him.’

Francis gave a grim smile.

‘That makes it 6–5. Neither side has a clear majority. I hadn’t reckoned on that. I don’t know whether you had.’

19: ‘A Nice Little Party’

As soon as Francis Getliffe left me, I rang up Brown. He said that he was kept by a pupil, but would get rid of him and come. The moment he entered, I told him the news.

‘So that’s it,’ said Brown. He accepted it at once.

‘Things happen as they must,’ he added in a round, matter-of-fact tone. ‘They’ve gone pretty smoothly for us so far. We’ve got to be ready for our setbacks. I don’t say this isn’t a confounded nuisance, because it obviously is. Still, repining won’t get us anywhere, and there’s plenty to do if we’re going to retrieve the position.’

‘I shall be astonished,’ I said, ‘if Nightingale changes sides again.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ said Brown. ‘But we’ve got other people to look after, too, you know. Mind you,’ he went on, with a trace of irritation, ‘I always thought we handled Nightingale badly. We ought to have taken him round to Jago’s that first afternoon. It would have been well worth waiting for him. I was wrong not to stick in my heels.’

But Brown did not spend much time blaming Chrystal or himself. He was thinking realistically of what it meant. 6–5 now. For Crawford — Winslow, Despard-Smith, Getliffe, Gay, and Nightingale. For Jago — Brown, Chrystal, Calvert, Eliot, Pilbrow, and Luke. ‘It’s bad to lose a clear majority. It affects your own party,’ Brown reflected. ‘Just at the moment, I should guess they’re more confident than we are. We must take care that a rot doesn’t set in.’

‘Shall you do anything tonight?’

‘No,’ said Brown. ‘We’ve got to wait. We needn’t tell Jago yet. There’s no point in worrying him unnecessarily. You see, we’ve only learned this from the other side. It explains a dig Winslow gave Chrystal today, by the way. But we shall be well advised not to take any action until we hear from Nightingale himself. Remember, he’s always tried to do the proper thing, and he’s bound to let Jago know. A decent man couldn’t just cross over without sending some sort of explanation. And there’s always the bare chance that he may think better of it.’

For once, Brown’s patience guided him wrong. Gossip was going round the college that night and next morning; apparently Nightingale had already spoken with venom against Jago and ‘his clique’. Jago had heard nothing of it, but I received accounts from several sources, differing a good deal from one another. Brown spoke to Chrystal, went back on his tactics laid down the previous night, and decided it was time to ‘have it out’. They were planning to get Nightingale alone after hall, as though by chance. As it happened, Saturday, that very night, was made for their purpose. The number of men dining varied regularly with the days of the week; Sunday was always a full night — ‘married men escaping the cold supper at home’, old Despard-Smith used to complain. Saturday, on the other hand, was a sparse one, usually only attended by bachelors living in college. That particular Saturday happened to be specially sparse, for Despard-Smith had a cold, and there was a concert in the town which removed Pilbrow and also Roy Calvert, who was escorting Mrs Jago. Chrystal and Brown put their names down to dine that night, and there arrived in hall only the three of us, Nightingale and Luke.

Nightingale was silent during dinner. Brown kept up a stream of comfortable, unexacting conversation, but all the time, through the amiable remarks on college games, his glance was constantly coming back to Nightingale’s defensive mask.

‘How long is it since you saw the Lent races, Nightingale?’ Chrystal asked directly.

‘I haven’t time for anything like that,’ said Nightingale. They were his first words since we sat down.

‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Chrystal, with genuine sympathy. ‘Come on the towpath with me next week. It will do you good.’

‘I can look after myself’ said Nightingale. Up to that night, he had held on to his politeness, but now it slipped away.

‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Chrystal. ‘Listen to me for once.’

Nightingale’s eyes were blank, as he sat there, exposed to Chrystal’s crisp voice and Brown’s rich, placid one: he knew what to expect.

Luke left immediately after hall. His work was occupying him more than ever, and he said that he had to work out some results. Whether or not it was because of his precocious tact I did not know. Brown said: ‘Well, that does make us a nice little party.’

He ordered a bottle of claret and took his place at the head of the table. Nightingale was still standing up. He started to move towards the door. He was leaving, without saying goodnight. We were exchanging glances: suddenly he looked back at us. He turned round, retraced his steps, sat down defiantly at Brown’s right hand. There was something formidable about him at that moment.

The decanter went round, and Brown warmed his glass in his hands.

‘Has Jago been dining recently? I haven’t seen him all the week,’ Brown asked casually.

‘He’s not been here any of the nights I have,’ I said.

‘I’ve only dined once this week,’ said Chrystal. ‘He wasn’t here.’

Nightingale stirred his coffee, and did not reply.

‘Has he coincided with you, Nightingale?’ Brown asked.

‘No.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Brown in the same conversational tone. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time. How are you feeling about the Mastership now?’

‘How are you?’ Nightingale retorted.

‘I’m still exactly where I was,’ said Brown. ‘I’m quite happy to go on supporting Jago.’

‘Are you?’ Nightingale asked.

‘Why,’ said Brown, ‘I hope you haven’t had any second thoughts. At least, not enough to upset your commitments—’

‘Commitments!’ Nightingale broke out. ‘I’m not going to be bound because I made a fool of myself. I can tell you, here and now, I’ve thought better of it.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ said Brown. ‘But perhaps we—’

‘And I can tell you I’ve good reasons to think better of it. I’m glad I had my eyes opened before I’d done the damage. Do you think I’m going to vote for a man who’s taking it for granted that he’s been elected and is behaving like the Master before the present one is dead? And whose wife is putting on airs about it already?’ He stopped, and asked more virulently: ‘Do you think I’m going to put up with a Master who’s backed by people who are getting the college a bad name —?’

‘Who do you mean?’ I was infuriated.

‘I mean your friend Calvert, for one.’

‘Anything you say about him is worthless,’ I said.

‘There are one or two others,’ said Nightingale, ‘who live apart from their wives. It’s not for me to say whether they want to keep their liberty of action—’

‘Stop that,’ said Chrystal, before I could reply. ‘You’re going too far. I won’t have any more of it, do you hear?’

Nightingale sank back, white-faced. ‘I’m glad I’ve explained to you my reasons for changing,’ he said.

What were his true motives, I thought, as I stared at him through my own anger. He was possessed by envy and frustration. Crawford talking unconcernedly of the ‘Royal’, making it sound like a club to which one belonged as a matter of course, turned the knife in the wound as if he were jealous in love and had just heard his rival’s name. So did Chrystal and Brown, looking happy and prosperous in their jobs, going about to run the college. So did the sound of Mrs Jago’s voice, asking the number of bedrooms in the Lodge or the kind of entertainment that undergraduates preferred. So did the sight of Roy Calvert with a girl. And Nightingale suffered. He did not suffer with nobility, he did not accept it in the grand manner, which, though it does not soften suffering, helps to make the thought of it endurable when the victim is having a respite from pain. Nightingale suffered meanly, struggling like a rat, determined to wound as well as be wounded. There was no detachment from his pain, not a glimmer of irony. He bared his teeth, and felt release through planning a revenge against someone who ‘persecuted’ him. He never felt for a day together serene, free, and confident.

I could understand his suffering. One could not miss it, for it was written in his face. I was not moved by it, for I was cut off by dislike. And I could understand how he struggled with all his force, and went into action, as he was doing now, with the intensity of a single-minded drive. He had the canalized strength of the obsessed.

But I could not begin to know why his envy had driven him first away from Crawford, now back to him. Had he, that night of the Royal results, found in Crawford’s assurance some sort of rest? Was Crawford the kind of man he would, in his heart, have liked to be?

I could not see so far. But I was sure that, as Arthur Brown would remind me, there was a kind of practical veneer on his actions now. When he thought of what he was doing, he gave practical self-seeking reasons to himself. He probably imagined that Crawford would help get him into the Royal next year. He had certainly decided that Jago would not give him the tutorship, would do nothing for him. His calculation about Crawford was, of course, quite ridiculous. Crawford, impersonal even to his friends, would be the last man to think of helping, even if help were possible. Nevertheless, Nightingale was certain that he was being shrewd.

Chrystal was saying: ‘You ought to have told us you were going over.’

‘Ought I?’

‘You owed it to us to tell us first,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t see why.’

‘I take you up on that, Nightingale. You can’t pledge yourself to one candidate and then promise to vote for another. It’s not the way things are done.’

‘If I stick to the etiquette, no one else does. I’m not going to penalize myself any more,’ said Nightingale.

‘It’s not the way to do business.’

‘I leave business to your clique,’ Nightingale replied. He rose and, without saying goodnight, went towards the door. This time he did not turn back.

‘That’s that,’ said Chrystal. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to Nightingale.’

‘Well, there it is,’ said Brown.

‘Shall we get him back?’ Chrystal asked.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ I said.

‘Why are you so sure?’

‘I must say,’ said Brown, ‘that I’m inclined to take Eliot’s view. It’s much safer to regard the worst as inevitable, because then it won’t do us any harm if we turn out to be wrong. But that apart, I confess I shall be surprised if we see Nightingale back again.’

‘You may be right,’ said Chrystal.

‘I haven’t a doubt,’ I said.

‘Have you summed him up right?’ asked Chrystal, still wanting to disbelieve.

‘I’m ready to rely on Eliot’s judgement,’ said Brown.

‘In that case,’ said Chrystal, changing round briskly, ‘we ought to see Jago at once.’

‘Do you want to?’ For once Brown shrank from a task.

‘No. But we can’t leave him in the dark.’

‘I suppose it would be rather tempting providence—’

‘If we don’t tell him tonight,’ said Chrystal, ‘some kind friend will do him the service tomorrow or next day. It’s lamentable, but it will come better from us.’

‘I must say that it’s going to be abominably unpleasant.’

‘I’ll go by myself,’ said Chrystal. ‘If you prefer that.’

‘Thank you.’ Brown smiled at his friend, and hesitated. ‘No, it will be better for him if we all go. It will let him realize that he’s still got most of his party intact.’

Brown and I wanted an excuse for delaying, even if only for ten more minutes, in the combination room. It was Chrystal, buoyed up by action, never despondent when he could get on the move, who forced us out.

20: The Depth of Ambition

As we already knew, Jago was alone. We found him in his study reading. His eyes flashed as soon as he saw us; every nerve was alert; he welcomed us with over-abundant warmth. Chrystal cut him short by saying: ‘We’ve got some bad news for you.’

His face was open in front of us.

‘You must be prepared for changes to happen both ways,’ said Brown, trying to cushion the blow. ‘This isn’t the last disturbance we shall get.’

‘What is it?’ Jago cried. ‘What is it?’

‘Nightingale has gone over,’ said Chrystal.

‘I see.’

‘You mustn’t let it depress you too much,’ Brown said. ‘It was always a surprise to me that you ever attracted Nightingale at all. Put it another way: you can regard Nightingale as being in his natural place now, and you can think of the sides being lined up very much as we might have expected beforehand.’

Jago did not seem to hear the attempt to comfort him.

‘I suppose he’s done it because I didn’t promise him the tutorship. I couldn’t. It was a wretched position to be flung into. It was utterly impossible. I suppose it’s too late to mend matters now. It’s difficult to make a move—’

Brown was looking at him with an anxious glance.

‘Forget Nightingale,’ Brown broke in very quickly. ‘Count him out.’

‘If I’d offered him the tutorship it would have held him.’ There was a passionate appeal in Jago’s voice.

‘I doubt it very much,’ I said.

‘If I could only have made something like a promise.’

‘Jago,’ said Chrystal, ‘if you had promised that man the tutorship, you might have gained one vote — but you would have lost six others. So you can rest easy.’

‘Are we letting him go without an effort?’ cried Jago. ‘Is it utterly impossible to persuade him back?’

‘We think so,’ said Chrystal.

Jago’s whole expression was racked.

‘Shall I see him?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t think it would help much.’ Brown’s tone was as firm as Chrystal’s, though he went on with a friendly explanation: ‘He’s an obstinate man. It might only carry things from bad to worse. There’s no one so bitter as a turncoat, you know. I think it’s very much safer to regard him as an enemy from now on.’

‘If you don’t,’ said Chrystal, ‘I can’t answer for the consequences.’ He and Brown looked solid, earthy men of flesh and bone against Jago, at that moment. Jago’s face seemed only a film in front of the tortured nerves. Yet they were telling him, as each of us in the room perfectly understood without a definite word being spoken, that he must make no attempt — by any suggestion of a promise — to bring Nightingale back.

He had wanted us to encourage him by a hint: he had been appealing for a piece of machiavellian advice ‘you oughtn’t to make Nightingale a promise: but there’s no harm in his thinking you have done so: he’ll be disappointed later, that’s all’. If we had given him the most concealed of hints, he would have rushed to Nightingale, used every charm of which he was capable, safeguarded himself verbally perhaps but in no other way. If he could have made a bargain with Nightingale, whatever it meant letting Nightingale think he had been promised, he would have made it that night. It needed Chrystal’s threat to stop him at last.

Just as he had been more angry than the others at Nightingale’s first approach, now he was tempted to stoop lower than they would ever do. In the garden, on the February morning when Nightingale asked for the tutorship, he thought with disgusted pride — was this how ambition soils one? But that was when his ambition seemed still in his hands. Now it was in danger of being taken away: ashamed, beside himself, tormented, he was tempted to cheat, steal, and lie.

He heard Chrystal’s threat. He looked at the firm, uncompromising face. Then at mine. Then, for a longer time, at Arthur Brown’s, distressed, kindly, but unwavering.

Suddenly Jago’s own face changed. He was thinking of himself without mercy. He was sickened by the temptation.

‘Shall I withdraw from the election?’ he asked with a kind of broken dignity.

Brown smiled in affectionate relief, and showed the depth of his relief by an outburst of scolding.

‘You mustn’t swing from one extreme to the other. We’ve still got an excellent chance. We’ve lost your most unreliable supporter, that’s all. You’re still in the lead. You must keep a sense of proportion.’

‘I agree with Brown,’ said Chrystal. His tone was not so warm as Brown’s, but toughly reassuring. Jago smiled at us, a smile without defence.

‘We shall have to reconsider some of our dispositions,’ said Brown, more contentedly than he had spoken that night. ‘You needn’t worry, you can leave the staff work to us. The other side have got weak spots too, Eliot and Calvert have wanted to tap them, but I think Eliot agrees that it’s still premature. The great thing at present is to take good care not to have any more confounded defections. I don’t know whether you others agree with me, but I should say there was just one more vulnerable spot in our party.’

‘I take it you mean old Eustace Pilbrow,’ said Jago.

‘He’s a weak spot,’ said Chrystal. ‘He’s always being got at by some crank or other.’

‘He turned Winslow and Getliffe down when they spread themselves to persuade him,’ Brown said. ‘I believe we can keep him steady. He’s very fond of you, providentially.’

‘I can never quite believe it,’ Jago replied. ‘But—’

Chrystal broke in: ‘When I look round, he seems to me the only weak spot. The rest are safe.’

Jago said: ‘I believe you three are safe because you know the worst about me. If any of you left me now, I shouldn’t only lose the Mastership. I should lose the confidence you’ve given me.’

Chrystal repeated: ‘The rest are safe. There’s no other weak spot. They’ll never break five of your votes. You can bank on them.’

Jago smiled.

‘Well,’ said Brown, ‘the essential thing for the present is to make sure of Pilbrow. If we hold him, we can’t lose. Six votes for you means that they can’t get a majority, since Crawford is fortunately debarred from voting for himself. Though I confess I feel uncharitable enough to think that he would consider it a reasonable action. And that reminds me that you and Crawford will soon have to settle how you’re going to dispose of your own votes. They may be significant.’

‘They’re certain to be, now,’ said Chrystal.

‘Crawford sent a note this very day suggesting a talk. I was mystified—’

‘The other side have got on to it too. They must have realized how much his vote and yours mean’ — Brown was bright-eyed with vigilance — ‘as soon as this confounded man told them he was ratting.’

‘I’m compelled to discuss it if he wishes to,’ said Jago. ‘I can’t decently do less than that.’

‘But go carefully whatever you do. Examine any proposal he puts forward. It may seem harmless, but it’s wiser not to commit yourself at once. Whatever you do, don’t say yes on the spot.’ Brown was settling down to an exhaustive, enjoyable warning: then his expression became more brooding.

‘There’s something else you ought to guard against.’ He hesitated. Jago did not speak, and sat with his head averted. Brown went on, speaking slowly and with difficulty: ‘We shouldn’t be reliable supporters or friends unless we asked you to guard against something which might damage your prospects irretrievably. Put it another way: it has helped to lose us Nightingale, and unless you stop, it might do you more harm than that.’

Jago still did not speak.

Brown continued: ‘I know we didn’t manage Nightingale very cleverly, any of us. We’ve made him angry between us. And one mistake we fell into that infuriated him was — I gave you a hint before — he thought some of us were acting as though you had the Mastership in your pocket. That’s bound to be dangerous. I don’t like doing it, but I’m compelled to warn you again.’ He hesitated for some moments, then said: ‘There seem to have been some women talking over the teacups.’

Brown was embarrassed but determined and intent. He looked at Jago, whose head had stayed bent down. Brown remembered that morning when, at a hint far slighter than this, Jago had drawn himself aloof and answered with a hostile snub. It had taken all Brown’s stubborn affection to try again — and to try on this night, when Jago had suffered a bitter disappointment, had lost his self-respect, had condemned himself.

‘I am grateful for your friendship,’ said Jago without looking up. ‘I will accept your advice so far as I can.’

Suddenly he glanced at Brown, his eyes lit up.

‘I want to ask one thing of my friends,’ he said quietly. ‘I trust you to take care that not a sign of these strictures reaches my wife. She would be more distressed than I could bear.’

‘Will you have a word with her yourself?’ Brown persisted.

I thought Jago was not going to reply. At last he said: ‘If I can do it without hurting her.’

As we heard him, we seemed within touching distance of a deep experience. We were all quiet. None of us, not even Brown, dared to say more. Not even Brown could speak to him in this way again.

Soon afterwards, Mrs Jago came in from the concert, with Roy Calvert attending her. Ironically, she was happier than I had ever seen her. She had been exalted by the music, she had been mixing with fashionable Cambridge and people had talked to her kindly, she had been seen in the company of one of the most sought-after young men in the town.

She flirted with Roy, looking up at him as he stood by her chair with his heels on the fender.

‘Think of all the young women you might have taken out tonight.’

‘Women are boring when they’re too young,’ said Roy.

‘We should all like to believe that was true,’ she said.

‘You all know it’s true,’ he said. ‘Confess.’

His tone was playful, half-kind, half-gallant, and, just for a moment, she was basking in confidence. She neither asserted herself nor shrieked out apologies. A quality, vivacious, naive, delicate, scintillated in her, as though it were there by nature. Perhaps it was the quality which Jago saw when she was a girl.

It was a strange spectacle, her sitting happily near to Roy. Her black evening dress made her look no slighter, and her solid shoulders loomed out of her chair: while Roy stood beside her, his shoulders pressed against the mantelpiece, his toes on the carpet, his figure cleanly arched.

She smiled at her husband.

‘I’m positive you haven’t had such a perfect evening,’ she said.

‘Not quite,’ said Jago, smiling fondly back.

21: Propaganda

Since Lady Muriel broke the news, the Master had wished to see none of his friends, except Roy. But towards the end of term, he began to ask us one by one to visit him. The curious thing was, he was asking us to visit him not for his own sake, but for ours. ‘I don’t think,’ Roy said sadly, ‘he wants to see anyone at all. He’s just asking out of consideration for our feelings. He’s becoming very kind.’ He knew that we should be hurt if he seemed indifferent to our company. So he put up with it. It was a sign of the supreme consideration which filled him as his life was ending.

It was strange to go into his bedroom, and meet the selflessness of this dying man. It was stranger still to leave him, and return into the rancour of the college.

For Nightingale had already become a focus of hate, and had started a campaign against Jago. It was a campaign of propaganda, concentrated with all his animosity and force. He was devoting himself to finding usable facts; and each night, unless one of Jago’s active friends was near, he would grind them out.

The sneers did not aim at Jago himself, but at those round him. First his wife. Nightingale brought out, night after night, stories of her assuming that the Lodge was already hers: how she had enquired after eighteenth-century furniture, to suit the drawing-room: how she had called for pity because she did not know where they were going to find more servants. He jeered at her accent and her social origin: ‘the suburbs of Birmingham will be a comedown after Lady Muriel’.

That particular gibe made Brown very angry, but probably, both he and I agreed, did little harm.

Others were more insidious. Nightingale harped away about her absurd flirtations. It was true. They had been common in the past. They were the flirtations of a woman with not a shred of confidence in her attractions, trying to prove them — so much more innocent, yet sometimes more unbalanced, than the flirtations which spring up through desire.

After Mrs Jago, Nightingale’s next point of attack was Jago’s supporters and friends, and most of all Roy Calvert. I came in for a share of obloquy, but the resentment he felt for me seemed to become transferred to Roy. Roy’s love affairs — for the first time they were discussed across the combination room table. Joan’s name was mentioned. Someone said she would soon be engaged to Roy. Engaged? Nightingale smiled.

This gossip went seething round. Despard-Smith said one night in my hearing: ‘Extraordinary young man Calvert is. I’m worried about him. I saw him in the court this afternoon and, after what I’ve heard recently, I asked if he was thinking of marriage. He made a most extraordinary reply. He said: “The Calverts are not the marrying kind. My father was, of course, but he was an exception.” I’m worried about the young man. I’m beginning to be afraid he has no sense of humour.’ Despard-Smith frowned. ‘And I’m beginning to wonder whether, in his own best interests, he oughtn’t to be advised to apply for a post in the British Museum.’

The propaganda began to endow Jago’s side with a colour of raffishness. It was a curious result, when one thought of Brown and Chrystal, the leaders of the party and the solidest people in the college. Nevertheless, that was the result, and we in Jago’s party were ourselves affected by it. In a short time, Nightingale had driven the two sides further apart. By the end of term, high table was often uncomfortable to dine at. Men formed the habit of looking at the names of those down for dinner, and crossing off their own if there were too many opponents present. It became less a custom to stay for wine after hall.

Among the gossip and faction, there was one man who stayed impervious. Crawford was not sensitive to atmosphere. He sat down self-assuredly to dinner with a party consisting entirely of Jago’s supporters; he talked to me with sober, complacent sense about the state of Europe; he offered Roy Calvert a glass of sherry in the combination room, and gave his opinions of Germany. Either Crawford did not hear Nightingale’s slanders or he took no notice of them. Once I heard Nightingale speak to him in a low voice in hall.

‘I’m afraid,’ said Crawford, cordially, loudly, but without interest, ‘that I’m very stupid when it comes to personalia.’

After the last college meeting of the term, which had been dull but cantankerous, Crawford said, as we were stirring to go: ‘Mr Deputy, may I be allowed to make an unusual suggestion?’

‘Dr Crawford.’

‘I should like your permission to retire with the Senior Tutor for five minutes. We shall then possibly be in a position to make a joint statement.’

Jago and Crawford left the room, and the rest of us talked, smoked, or doodled. On my right hand Nightingale turned ostentatiously away, and I chatted to Luke about his research. He had been chasing a red herring, he said: the last month’s work was useless; it was like a ‘blasted game of snakes and ladders’; he had just struck a gigantic snake. Then Jago and Crawford returned. They were talking as they entered, Jago excited, his eyes smiling, Crawford self-contained, his expression quite unmoved. None of us, after the Saturday night at Jago’s, had heard whether Crawford’s invitation had come to anything. Chrystal was annoyed, Brown concerned that Jago might commit a tactical mistake.

Crawford slid into his seat.

‘Mr Deputy.’

‘Dr Crawford.’

‘Speaking as a fellow, I assume that I’m out of order in referring to the impending vacancy,’ said Crawford. ‘But if we dissolve ourselves into an informal committee, I suggest that difficulty can be overcome. Perhaps I can take the transformation as completed.’ He gave a broad smile, enjoying the forms of business, as he always did. ‘Speaking then as a member of this informal committee, I can go on to suggest that it may be useful if the Senior Tutor and I make a statement of intention.’

He stared impassively at Despard-Smith.

‘I take it,’ Crawford went on, ‘that we are not going beyond reasonable common knowledge in regarding ourselves as candidates when the vacancy in the mastership occurs. Further, I take it, from such expressions of current feeling as reach me, that we are justified in regarding ourselves as the most likely candidates. Finally, I take it that it is also reasonably common knowledge that a clear majority has not yet found itself to express the will of the college. In the circumstances, the votes which the Senior Tutor and I dispose, by virtue of being fellows, may be relevant. We have discussed whether we can reach agreement between ourselves on the use we make of them. The greatest measure of agreement we can reach is this: we do not feel it incumbent upon us to intervene in the college’s choice. We do not consider ourselves justified in voting for one another. As matters stand at present, we shall abstain from voting.’

There was a silence.

‘Ah. Indeed,’ said Gay. ‘Very well spoken, Crawford. I congratulate you.’

Jago said: ‘I should like to add a word to my colleague’s admirable précis. I am sure we should both choose to be frank with the society.’

Crawford gave a cordial assent.

‘We both feel uncomfortably certain,’ said Jago, with a malicious smile, ‘that the other would not be our natural first choice. I know my colleague will correct me if I am misrepresenting him. We don’t feel that it’s reasonable for us to give our votes to each other, against our own natural judgement, just because we appear to be the only candidates.’

‘Exactly,’ said Crawford.

They were drawn close in their rivalry. Even as they said they would not vote for the other, they felt an inexplicable intimacy. They found real elation in making a statement together; they enjoyed setting themselves apart from the rest of us. It was not the first time I had noticed the electric attraction of rivalry: rivals, whether competing for a job, opposing each other in politics, struggling for the same woman, are for mysterious moments closer than any friends.

As we left the meeting, Chrystal and Brown drew me aside.

‘Jago is amusing,’ said Chrystal angrily. ‘How can he expect us to get him in if he plays this sort of game without warning?’

‘I don’t suppose he had any option,’ said Brown in a soothing tone. ‘It looks pretty certain on the face of it that Crawford just sat smugly down and said nothing on earth would make him vote for Jago, I’m satisfied Jago did the best thing in the circumstances by giving no change himself.’

‘We ought to have been told. It’s lamentable,’ said Chrystal. ‘It looks as though we shall never get a majority for either. They’ve just presented us with a stalemate. There are times when I feel inclined to wash my hands of the whole business.’

‘I can’t follow you there.’ Brown was for once short with his friend. ‘This looks like a tight thing, I give you that. But there’s one advantage. I don’t see how Crawford can possibly get a majority now.’

‘What use is that? If we can’t get a majority ourselves.’

‘If we’re certain of avoiding the worst, I shall be happier. And we haven’t started serious persuasion yet,’ said Brown firmly. ‘The first thing is to close our own ranks.’

Chrystal agreed, a little shamefacedly, but left it to Brown to spend an hour with Pilbrow that night. For a fortnight, ever since Nightingale’s defection, Brown had been trying to arrange a talk with Pilbrow. But Pilbrow’s round of concerts and parties did not allow him much free time; and he was bored with college politics, and was not above dissimulating to avoid them. This day, at the college meeting, Brown had pinned him down.

I rather wished I had accompanied Brown myself, for I was Pilbrow’s favourite among the younger fellows. He was attracted by Roy Calvert, but could not understand his political ambivalence; he could not understand how anyone so good-hearted could have friends of influence in the third Reich. Whereas the old man knew that I was on the left of centre, and stayed there.

I wished decidedly that I had gone, when Brown told me what Pilbrow had said. I knew at once that Brown was not quite at ease.

‘I think he’ll come up to scratch,’ Brown said. ‘But I must say he’s getting crankier as he grows older. Would you believe it, but he wanted me to sign a letter about the confounded Spanish war? I know you support that gang of cut-throats too, Eliot. I’ve never been able to understand why you lose your judgement when it comes to politics.

‘Well,’ he went on. ‘I hope he didn’t take it amiss when I turned him down. I’ve never known Eustace Pilbrow to bear a grudge. And he made just the same kind of promise as he made at our caucus. He’s still for Jago, just because he’s rather fond of him.’ He told me, word for word, what Pilbrow had said. It was, as Brown admitted, ‘on the target’ for an old man. He had replied in the same terms to the other side, telling them that he preferred Jago for personal reasons. It seemed satisfactory.

Yet Brown was wearing a stubborn frown. ‘He’s further away from this election than any of us,’ he said. ‘I wish we could bring him more into the swim of things.’

He added: ‘Still I don’t see how he can help coming up to scratch.’ He reflected. ‘One thing I’m sure of. The other side aren’t going to humbug the old man against his will. I’ve never realized before how obstinate he is. And that takes a load off my mind.’

22: The Scent of Acacia

Then something happened which none of us had reckoned on. The course of the Master’s disease seemed to have slowed down. Just after the Easter vacation, we began to suspect that the election might not be held that summer. Sitting in the combination room, the smell of wisteria drifting through the open window, we heard Crawford expound: in his judgement, the Master would not die until the early autumn. He had been just as positive in forecasting a quick end, I remembered, but he commented on the new situation without humbug. ‘Speaking as a friend of Royce’s, I take it one should be glad. He’s only in discomfort, he’s not in pain, and I get the impression that he’s still interested in living. I expect he’d prefer to go on even as he is than have anyone accelerate the process. Speaking as a fellow, it upsets our arrangements, which is a nuisance and I’m not going to pretend otherwise,’ said Crawford. ‘I had hoped we should have made all our dispositions by next academic year, and it doesn’t look like that now.’

Imperturbably, Crawford gave us a physiological explanation of the slowing-down of the disease.

After that news, the air was laden with emotion. Each time I passed the wisteria in the court, I thought of the Master, who, Roy said, was amused at his reprieve: that odour was reaching him for the last time in his life. The college smelt of flowers all through the early summer: I thought of Joan, eating her heart out with love, and Roy, so saddened that I was constantly afraid.

As the news went round that the Master would live months longer, the college became more tense. Some people, such as Chrystal, were glad to forget the election altogether. Chrystal’s interest passed entirely to the negotiations with Sir Horace, which had not gone much further since the night of the feast; Sir Horace wrote frequently to Brown, but the letters were filled with questions about his nephew’s chances in the Tripos; occasionally he asked for a piece of information about the college, but Brown saw no hope of ‘bringing him to the boil’ until the boy’s examination was over. Brown himself was coaching him several hours a week during that term. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘whether Sir Horace is ever going to turn up trumps. But I do know that our prospects vanish, presuming they exist at all, if our young friend has to go down without a degree.’

But Chrystal, along with Pilbrow, was an exception in shelving the Mastership. With most men, the antagonism became sharper just because of the delay. Nerves were on edge, there was no release in any kind of action, there seemed no end to this waiting. Nightingale’s gossip about Roy went inexorably on. It infected even Winslow, who normally showed a liking for Roy. Winslow was heard to say, ‘I used to think that my colleagues were more distinguished for character than for the more superficial gifts of intelligence. The Senior Tutor appears to have chosen supporters who seem determined to remove part of that impression.’

The gossip came round to Roy, though we tried to shield him. His spirits had been darker since the day he comforted Lady Muriel, and now, as he heard how he was being traduced, there were nights when he sank into despondency. Usually he would have cared less than most men what others said, but just then the sky had gone black for him. His was a despondency which others either did not notice or passed over; it would have struck no one as specially frightening, except him and me. Often we walked round the streets at night. The whole town smelt of gilliflower and lilac. The skies were luminous, windows were thrown open in the hot May evenings. I tried to lift Roy from sadness, if only for a minute: almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.

Nightingale was making other attacks, not only those on Roy. One night towards the end of May, Luke asked if he could talk to me. I took him up to my room, and he burst out: ‘I’ve had about as much as I can stand of this man Nightingale. I’m beginning to think I’ve been quiet in this college for almost long enough. One of these days I shall do the talking, and by God they’ll get a surprise.’

‘What’s Nightingale done now?’

‘He’s as good as told me that unless I switch over to Crawford they’ll see that I’m not made a permanency.’

‘I shouldn’t pay too much attention—’

‘Do you think I should pay attention? I told him as politely as I could — and I wished I hadn’t got to be so blasted polite — that I’d see him damned first. Do they think I’m the sort of lad they can bully into going through any bloody hoop?’

‘They probably do.’ I smiled, though I was angry myself. I was growing very fond of him. When he was angry, he was angry from head to toe, angry in every inch of his tough, square, powerful body. It was the same with every mood — his hopes or disappointments about his work, even his passionate discretion. He threw the whole of his nature into each of them. On this night he was angry as one whole human integer of flesh and bone. ‘They probably do. They’re wrong.’

‘They’ll be surprised how wrong they are,’ Luke fumed. ‘I should like to be kept in this college, it’s much nicer than the old dockyard, but do they think they’ve only got to whistle and I’m theirs? They can do their damnedest, and I shan’t starve. A decent scientist will get some sort of job. They’re just trying to blackmail me because I’m afraid to lose my comforts.’

I told him that ‘they’ could only be Nightingale himself. I could not believe that Francis Getliffe knew anything of this move, and I said that I would confront him with it. Luke, still angry, went off to his laboratory in the summer evening.

I should have spoken to Francis Getliffe the following night, but found that he had left Cambridge (the examinations had begun, and lectures were over for the year) for some Air Ministry experiments. He was not expected back for a fortnight, and so I told Brown about Luke.

‘Confound those people,’ he said. ‘I’m a mild man, but they’re going too far. I’m not prepared to tolerate many more of these outrages. I don’t know about you, but it makes me more determined to stick in my heels against Crawford. I’m damned if I’ll see them get away with it.’

We each found ourselves holding the other side collectively responsible for Nightingale’s doings. Just as young Luke stormed about what ‘they’ had threatened, so did Arthur Brown: and I felt the same. There were times when we all saw the other side through a film of enmity. We forgot who they were and what they were truly like. We were becoming victims of something like war hysteria. And that happened to Brown, who was as sensible, tolerant, and level-headed as a man can be: it happened to me, who was not a partisan by nature.

At that time we were a little ashamed of ourselves, and I thought, when I next saw Brown, that he was going a roundabout way to atone. ‘I’m wondering about enlarging the claret party this year.’

Brown’s claret party took place each year at the beginning of June. ‘I’m inclined to think it would be rather statesmanlike. After all, we’ve got to live with the present society even if we slide Jago in. Mind you, I’m all against trying to make arrangements with the other side over the election. But I should regard it as reasonable to remind them that we’re still capable of enjoying their company. It would be a decent gesture to invite some of them to the party.’

And so the claret party consisted of Winslow, Crawford, Pilbrow, Roy Calvert, me and Brown himself. Like so much of that summer, it tantalized me. The night was tranquil, the college had never looked more beautiful. I should be lucky if I had the chance to drink wine so good again. But Roy’s melancholy had got worse, and all the time I was fearing one of his outbursts. Most of that night, I could think of nothing else.

Twice I managed to signal to Roy that he must keep quiet. He was enough in control of himself to do so, though he was affected by the sight of another unhappy man. For Winslow was worried by his son’s examination, which had just finished. As soon as the party began, Brown asked him how the boy had got on, and Winslow snubbed him: ‘My dear Tutor, I cannot answer for the prospects of the semi-illiterate. I hope the wretched youth managed to read the questions.’

Roy heard the sadness in that answer, and it nearly touched the trigger of his own. But, to my momentary relief, we settled down to wine. It was ten o’clock, but the sun had only just set, and over the roof opposite Brown’s window there was a brilliant afterglow. From one of the May week balls, we could just hear the throbbing of a band. There was the slightest of breezes stirring, and on it came the scent of acacia from the court beneath.

Pilbrow took charge of the party. He was an authority on wine, and had been Brown’s master. His bald head gleamed in the fading light, shone when, towards midnight, Brown switched on the lamps; the ruddy cheeks flushed, but otherwise Pilbrow did not change at all as one decanter after another was left empty. He fixed one of us with a lively brown eye and asked what we noticed at each sip — at the beginning, middle, and end of each sip. The old man rang all the changes possible with ten bottles of claret. When we were halfway through, he said with extreme firmness: ‘I don’t think any of you would ever be quite first-class. I give our host the benefit of the doubt—’

‘I don’t claim it,’ said Brown. ‘I shall never be anything like as good as you.’

Meanwhile, Roy had been drinking faster than the rest of us. The dangerous glint had come into his eyes. He began to talk to Winslow — and it was then I had to signal. Roy’s smile was pathetic as he fell into silence.

Winslow was speaking again about his son, this time in a different tone.

‘I shall be relieved,’ he said with humility, ‘if the examiners let him through.’

‘Oh, they’ll let him through,’ said Brown.

‘I don’t know what will happen to him if they don’t,’ said Winslow. ‘He’s a stupid child. But I believe there’s something in him. He’s a very nice person. If they gave him a chance now, I honestly believe he may surprise you all in ten years’ time.’

No one there had heard Winslow speak so openly. It was some moments before he regained his sardonic tone. Then he made himself say to Brown: ‘My dear Tutor, you’ve had the singular misfortune to teach the foolish creature. I drink to you in commiseration.’

Brown insisted on drinking to young Winslow’s success. ‘Let me fill your glass. Which shall it be? You’ve gone a bit light on the Latour ’24.’

We each had ten glasses in front of us, labelled to match the decanters. Brown selected the right one from Winslow’s set.

‘That will do very nicely. If you please. If you please.’

Crawford surveyed the glasses, the decanters, the gleam of crystal and silver, the faces all flushed, the scene of luxury and ease. Out of the window there was still a faint glow in the west. Girls’ laughter came up from the court, as a party moved out of college to a ball.

‘It’s very hard to realize what the world is really like tonight — when one’s enjoying your hospitality, Brown,’ he announced. ‘Speaking as a scientific observer, I should have to say that the world tonight is more unstable than it’s ever been in human experience. But it’s impossible to believe that, sitting with the present spectacle in front of us.’

‘That’s always so,’ said Pilbrow unexpectedly. ‘I’ve been caught in two revolutions, or not exactly caught, but… One sees a woman in the garden by the railway line, just digging on a sunny morning. One can’t believe that it’s actually begun.’

‘One can’t believe tonight,’ said Crawford, ‘that one ought to be fighting against this mess Brown’s political friends are plunging us into. I expect I shall remember very vividly tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ cried Pilbrow, his eyes gleaming like buttons. He joined in Crawford’s reflections, as the decanters were put away one by one. He talked about the ‘mess’; he was off to the Balkans in three weeks to see for himself. At the age of seventy-four, he was as excited as a boy about his expedition. Brown had had a moment’s anxiety when he saw how Pilbrow was vigorously applauding Crawford. But now the old man was safely talking of his travels and Brown was rubicund; though Roy was silent, Winslow subdued, Brown felt that this party had been a success.

After the party, Roy and I walked in the garden. The breeze had dropped, and on the great beeches no leaf stirred. The full moon hung like a lantern, and the scent of acacia pierced the air. Roy was very quiet, and we walked round in silence. Then he said, as though it were a consolation: ‘I shall sleep tonight.’

When he was in a phase of depression, I had known him insomniac for four or five nights together. He would lie open-eyed through the minutes of a night, and then another, having to face his own thoughts. Until, his control broken, he would come to my room and wake me up: should we drive over to George Passant and make a night of it? Or to our friends in London? Or should we go for a walk all night?

The melancholy, the melancholy shot through with sinister gaiety, had been creeping upon him during the past few weeks. He could not throw it off, any more than a disease. When it seized him, he felt that it would never go.

We walked round, not talking, in a night so warm that the air seemed palpable. I thought that we had been lucky to escape that party scot-free. I did not know how to stop him damaging himself.

I thought that, so long as I lived, I should be mocked by the scents of that summer. They might have come along with peace of mind, the wisteria, the gilliflower, the lilac, the acacia.

23: Affliction

I had expected an outbreak from Roy at the claret party, but, when it did come, I was not prepared.

It was a fortnight later, a Saturday morning, and I woke early. There was a college meeting that day to consider examination results. Some were already published, sent round to tutors, stuck in the tailors’ windows; most did not come out till this Saturday.

I knew that the envelopes reached the porters’ lodge by a quarter to nine, so I did not wait for Bidwell’s ritual awakening. I walked through the court in the cloudless morning, and found a large packet addressed to me. I was opening it when Brown entered the lodge, panting a little, still wearing trouser clips after cycling in from his house.

‘I hope we haven’t had too many disasters,’ he said. He opened his own envelope, spread the sheets on the counter.

‘Thank God for that!’ he exclaimed in a moment. ‘Thank God for that!’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Young Timberlake’s got through. They’ve given him a third. Which between you and me, is probably slightly more than abstract justice required. Still, I think Sir Horace will be satisfied. If the young man had crashed, it might have been the most expensive failure in the history of the college. I’m breathing a great deal more freely, I can tell you.’

His cleverest pupil had been given a starred first. ‘I always said he was our next real flyer,’ said Brown triumphantly.

He turned back, pencil in hand, to tick off the names on the history sheet. In a moment he gave a shrill whistle.

‘I can’t find Dick Winslow’s name. He seems to have failed absolutely. They don’t seem even to have allowed him the ordinary degree. They don’t seem to have made him any allowance at all. It’s scarcely credible. I think I’d better ring up the examiners straightaway. I did once find a name left off a list by mistake.’

He put through his call, and came back shaking his head.

‘Absolutely hopeless,’ he said. ‘They say they just couldn’t find any signs of intelligence at all. Well, I knew he was dense, but I shouldn’t have believed that he was as dense as that.’

The meeting was called for half-past eleven. As the room filled up, one kept hearing whispers about young Winslow. In the midst of the bustle, men asked each other if they had heard. Some were speaking in malice, some in good nature, some in a mixture of the two. At last Winslow himself entered, heavy-footed, carrying his cap but not swinging it in his normal fashion. He was looking down, and went straight to his place.

‘Ah, good morning, Winslow,’ cried Gay, who had not grasped the news.

‘Good morning to you,’ said Winslow. His voice was deadened. He was immersed in his wretchedness.

Despard-Smith was just opening the meeting when Gay said: ‘I have a small presentation to make, before we begin our discussion on these excellent agenda. I wish to present to the society, for inclusion in the library, this copy of my latest publication. I hope and expect that most fellows have already bought it. I hope you’ve bought yours, Brown? I hope you have, Crawford?’

He rose precariously to his feet, and laid a copy in front of Despard-Smith.

‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t yet,’ said Crawford. ‘I’ve noticed one or two reviews.’

‘Ah. Reviews,’ said Gay. ‘Those first reviews have a lukewarm tendency that I don’t like to see.’

Suddenly, distracted from Winslow, I saw how nervous the old man was about his book’s reception. Gay, the least diffident of men, had never lost that nervousness. It did not die with age: perhaps it became sharper.

The meeting began at last. There was only two minutes’ business over livings, but under finance there were several items down. Despard-Smith asked the Bursar if he would ‘take us through’ his business.

Winslow’s head was sunk down.

‘I don’t think it’s necessary,’ he muttered. He did not raise his eyes. Everyone was looking at him.

Then it came to Jago to describe the examination results. He passed from subject to subject in the traditional Cambridge order, mathematics, classics, natural sciences… Most people at the meeting knew only a handful of the young men he was talking about; but his interest in each was so sharp that he kept a hold upon the meeting. He came to history. The table was very quiet. ‘One brilliant and altogether deserved success,’ he said in his thick voice. ‘Some of us know the struggle that young man had to come here at all. I’m prepared to bet, Mr Deputy, that he’s going to write his name in the story of this college.’ Then with a grin, he said how much the society ought to congratulate Brown on squeezing Timberlake through. Jago then studied his papers, and paused. ‘I think there’s nothing else to report about the historians.’ Very quickly, he turned to the next subject.

It was intended as chivalry, perhaps as more. I could not tell how Winslow received it. He still sat with his head sunk down. There was no sign that he had heard anything of the meeting. He did not speak himself: even for a formal vote, he had to be asked.

We broke off at one o’clock for a cold lunch, and most people ate with zest. Winslow stood apart, with his back to the room. I saw Roy’s eyes upon him, glinting with wild pity. Since the party, his depression had grown heavier still, and he had kept himself alone. I was at once anxious as I saw him watching Winslow, but then someone offered him a decanter of wine and he refused. I thought that he was taking care, and I had no sense of danger.

When we resumed the meeting, Jago dealt with the results of the preliminary examinations. There were enquiries, one or two rotund criticisms, some congratulations.

‘Of course,’ said Despard-Smith, summing up, ‘for a scholar of the college only to get a third class in a university examination is nothing short of s-scandalous. But I think the general feeling of the college is that, taking the rough with the smooth, we can be reasonably satisfied with the achievements of the men. I gather that is your opinion, Senior Tutor?’

‘I should go further. We ought to be proud of them.’

‘You don’t dissent, Tutor?’ Despard-Smith asked Brown.

‘I agree with my senior colleague,’ said Brown. ‘And I should like to draw the college’s attention to the remarkable results that the Dean has once more secured.’

Before the meeting ended, which was not long after, I was set thinking of Despard-Smith’s use of the phrase ‘the men’. That habit went back to the ‘90s: most of us at this table would say ‘the young men’ or ‘the undergraduates’. But at this time, the late 1930s, the undergraduates themselves would usually say ‘the boys’. It was interesting to hear so many strata of speech round one table. Old Gay, for example, used ‘absolutely’, not only in places where the younger of us might quite naturally still, but also in the sense of ‘actually’ or even ‘naturally’ — exactly as though he were speaking in the 1870s. Pilbrow, always up to the times, used an idiom entirely modern, but Despard-Smith still brought out slang that was fresh at the end of the century — ‘crab’, and ‘josser’, and ‘by Jove’. Crawford said ‘man of science’, keeping to the Edwardian usage which we had abandoned. So, with more patience it would have been possible to construct a whole geological record of idioms, simply by listening word by word to a series of college meetings.

This one closed. The fellows filed out, and I waited for Roy. Winslow was still sitting at the table, with the order-book and files in front of him; he seemed not to have the spirit to move. The three of us were left alone in the room. Roy did not glance at me or say a word: he went straight to Winslow, and sat down by his side.

‘I am dreadfully sorry about Dick,’ he said.

‘That’s nice of you.’

‘And I am dreadfully sorry you’ve had to sit here today. When one’s unhappy, it’s intolerable to have people talking about one. It’s intolerable to be watched.’

His tone was full of pain, and Winslow looked up from the table.

‘You don’t care what they say,’ Roy cried, ‘but you want them to leave you alone. But none of us are capable of that much decency. I haven’t much use for human beings. Have you, Winslow, have you? You know what people are feeling now, don’t you? They’re feeling that you’ve been taken down a peg or two. They’re remembering the times you’ve snubbed them. They’re saying how arrogant and rude you’ve been. But they don’t matter. None of us matter.’

His voice was very clear, throbbing with a terrible elation. Winslow stared at him.

‘There is something in what they say, young man,’ he said.

‘Of course there is. There’s something in most things that they say about anyone.’ Roy laughed.

I went round the table to stop him. Roy was talking about the slanders on himself. I had him by the shoulder, but he shook me off. He told Winslow there was something in what Nightingale said.

‘Would you like to know how much there is in it?’ he cried. ‘We’re both miserable. It may relieve you just a bit.’

Winslow raised his voice: ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Calvert. It’s no concern of mine.’

‘That’s why I shall do it.’ There was a sheet of blank paper in front of Winslow. Roy seized it, and began to write quickly. I took hold of his arm, and jogged his pen. He cursed. ‘Go away, Lewis. I’m giving Winslow a little evidence.’ His face was wild with pure elation. ‘This is only for Winslow and me.’ He wrote more, then signed the page. He gave it to Winslow with a smile.

‘This has been a frightful day for you,’ Roy cried. ‘Keep this to remind you that people don’t matter.’

He said good afternoon, and went out of the room.

‘This is distressing,’ said Winslow.

‘He’ll calm down soon.’

‘I never had any idea that Calvert was capable of making an exhibition of himself. Is this the first time it has happened?’

I had two tasks. I had to safeguard Roy as much as I could. And I had to think of politics. I told some of the truth, and some lies. I had never seen Roy lose control until this afternoon, I said. It was a shock to me. Roy was upset over the Master: it had worn his nerves to breaking point to see such suffering.

‘He’s a considerable scholar, from all they say,’ said Winslow. ‘I had my doubts about him once, but I’ve always found him an engaging young man.’

‘There’s nothing whatever to worry about.’

‘You know him well,’ said Winslow. ‘I expect you’re right. I think you should persuade him to take a good long holiday.’

Winslow was studying the sheet of paper. At last he said: ‘So there is something in the stories that have been going round?’

‘I don’t know what he has written there,’ I said. ‘I’ve no doubt that the stories are more highly painted than the facts. Remember they’ve been told you by people who envy him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Winslow. ‘Maybe. If those people have this ammunition, I don’t see how Master Calvert is going to continue in this college. The place will be too hot to hold him.’

‘Do you want to see that happen?’

‘I’m comparatively indifferent about the young man. He can be amusing, and he’s a scholar, which is more than can be said for several of our colleagues.’ Winslow stared at me. ‘I’m comparatively indifferent, as I say. But I’m not indifferent about the possibility of your candidate becoming Master.’

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that if you let other people see Calvert’s note, you could make a difference to Jago’s chances?’

‘I did mean that,’ said Winslow.

‘You can’t do it,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘You can’t do it. You know some of the reasons that brought Calvert to the state he was in this afternoon. They’re enough to stop you absolutely, by themselves.’

‘If you’d bring it to a point—’

‘I’ll bring it to a point. We both know that Calvert has lost control of himself. He got into a state pretty near despair. And he wouldn’t have got into that state unless he’d seen that you were unhappy and others were pleased at your expense. Who else had any feeling for you?’

‘It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,’ said Winslow.

Then I asked: ‘Who else had any feeling for your son Dick: You knew that Calvert was upset about him. Who else had any feeling for your son?’

I was taking advantage of his misery. Winslow looked as though he had no strength left. He stared down at the table, and was silent for a long time. At last, in a flat, exhausted mutter, he said: ‘What shall I do with this?’ He pointed to the sheet of paper.

‘I don’t mind,’ I said.

‘Perhaps you’d better have it.’

Winslow did not so much as look when I burnt the paper in the grate.

24: Argument in the Summer Twilight

I went straight from Winslow to Roy’s room. Roy was lying on his sofa, peaceful and relaxed.

‘Have I dished everything?’ he asked.

He was happy. I had seen the course of his affliction often enough to know it by heart. It was, in fact, curiously mechanical. There was first the phase of darkness, the monotonous depression which might last for weeks or months: then that phase passed into another, where the darkness was lit up by flashes of ‘gaiety’ — gaiety which nearly overcame him at Brown’s party, and which we both dreaded so much. The phase of gaiety never lasted very long, and nearly always broke into one frantic act, such as he had just committed. Then he felt a complete release.

For months, perhaps for longer, he knew that he was safe. When I first knew him well, in his early twenties, the melancholy had taken hold of him more often. But for two or three years past the calm and beautiful intervals had been winning over the despair. That afternoon he knew that he would be tranquil for months to come.

I was tired and weighed down. Sometimes I felt that the burden on me was unfair, that I got the worst of it. I told him that I should not always be there to pick up the pieces.

He was anxious to make amends. Soon he asked: ‘I haven’t dished Jago, have I?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘How did you work it? You’re pretty competent, aren’t you?’

I shook my head.

‘It didn’t need much working,’ I said. ‘Winslow may like to think of himself as stark, but he isn’t.’

‘Just so,’ said Roy.

‘I had to hit below the belt, and it wasn’t pretty,’ I said. ‘He hates Jago. But it isn’t the sort of hate that takes up much of one’s life. All his real emotions go into his son.’

‘Just so,’ said Roy again. ‘I think I’m lucky.’

‘You are.’

‘I couldn’t have borne putting paid to Jago’s chances.’ said Roy. ‘I’ll do what I can to make up for it, old boy. I shall be all right now.’

That evening in hall Roy presented a bottle in order to drink Jago’s health. When he was asked the occasion, so that Luke could enter it in the wine book, Roy smiled and said precisely: ‘In order to atone for nearly doing him a disservice.’

‘My dear Roy,’ cried Jago, ‘you couldn’t possibly do me a disservice. You’ve always been too kind to me. It even makes me forgive you your imitations.’

It was not only at the claret party that Roy mimicked Jago; he could not resist the sound of that muffled, sententious, emphatic voice; most of those round the table that night had heard him, and even Despard-Smith grinned.

As we went out that night, Arthur Brown reflected: ‘You heard the reason Roy Calvert gave for presenting a bottle? Now I wonder exactly what he meant by it. Put it another way: a few years ago, whenever he said anything that wasn’t straightforward, I used to expect one of his queer tricks. But I don’t worry much about him now. He’s become very much more stable. I really believe that he’s settling down.’

I did not disagree. It was better for Brown to speculate amiably, just as fellows in the future, studying the wine book, might wonder what that singular entry could mean.

I told Brown that I was taking action to protect Luke. Francis Getliffe had returned for the meeting that morning, and his wife Katherine had asked me to dinner later in the week, for the first time since our quarrel in January. I intended to use the opportunity: it would be easy to let drop the story of Nightingale’s threat, and it was too good a chance to miss.

When I arrived for dinner at their house in the Chaucer Road they welcomed me as in the old days. As Francis poured out sherry and took his wife a glass, he seemed less fine-drawn than in college. He looked at her with love, and his restlessness, his striving, his strenuous ambition, all died away; his nerves were steadied, he was content to the marrow of his bones. And she was happy through and through, with a happiness more continuous than a man could know.

The children were in bed. She talked of them with delight, with a pretence of not wanting to bore me. As she indulged her need to linger over them, she sat with matronly comfort in her chair; it seemed a far cry from the excited, apprehensive, girl of eighteen whom I met in her father’s house at Bryanston Square nearly ten years before. I had been taken there by her brother Charles, the most intimate friend of my London days: it was the first big house I ever entered.

She talked of the past and her family, as we sat at dinner. Had I seen her brother recently? Then with great gusto, the nostalgia of a happy woman, she recalled days at her father’s country house when Francis and I had both been staying there.

After dinner we moved into the garden at the back of the house. There we sat in the last of the light, as the western sky turned from flaming yellow to a lambent apple-green. The air caressed our faces. And languorous and heavy in the warm night wafted the scent of syringa, which brought back, with a voluptuous pain, the end of other summer terms.

Drowsy in the scented air, I was just going to drop a hint about Luke when, to my astonishment, Katherine got in before me.

‘I have been wanting a word with you, Lewis.’

‘Have you?’

‘You do agree that Francis is right about the Mastership, don’t you? It is essential for us to have a liberal-minded Master, don’t you agree?’

So they had invited me to play the same game. I was curiously saddened, as one is saddened when the gulf of marriage divides one from a friend. Once Katherine had listened to each word that her brother and I spoke, she had been friend and disciple, she saw things with our eyes. Now she was happy with her husband, and everyone else’s words were alien.

‘I think Francis is quite wrong,’ I said.

‘If we get saddled with a reactionary Master,’ said Francis, ‘Lewis will be responsible.’

‘That’s unfair.’

‘Be honest, man,’ said Francis. ‘If you did what we should have expected you to do, Crawford would walk in. Several people would come over with you.’

‘I must say,’ Katherine broke in, ‘it seems rather gross, Lewis. This is important, don’t you admit that it is important? And we’ve got a right to expect you not to desert our side. It’s no use pretending, it does seem pretty monstrous to me.’

I knew they felt that I was being ungrateful. When I was in distress, so that I wanted a refuge to hide in, Francis had set to work to bring me to the college. He had done it with great delicacy, for three years they had felt possessively pleased whenever I dined at their house — and now, at the first major conflict, I betrayed him. I thought how much one expects from those to whom one does a good turn; it takes a long while to learn that, by the laws of human nature, one does not often get it.

‘Look,’ I said to Katherine, ‘your brother Charles has got as much insight as anyone I’ve ever known. When you let yourself go, you’re nearly as good. You know something of Crawford and Jago. Tell me, which is the more remarkable man?’

There was a pause.

‘Jago,’ she said reluctantly. Then she recovered herself, and asked: ‘But do you want a remarkable man as Master, don’t you admit that other things come first?’

‘Good work,’ said Francis. ‘Lewis likes human frailty for its own sake.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I like imagination rather than ordinariness.’

‘I’m afraid at times,’ said Francis stiffly, ‘that you forget about the solid virtues.’

‘If you prefer it,’ I spoke with anger, ‘I like self-torment rather than conceit.’

They were profoundly out of sympathy with me, and I with them. We knew each other well enough to know there was no give on the other side. They became more obdurate in resisting any claim I made for Jago: my tongue got harsher when I replied about Crawford.

‘Anyway,’ said Katherine at last, ‘she is appalling.’

‘She’s pathetic,’ I said. ‘There’s much humanity in her.’

‘That’s monstrously far-fetched, don’t you admit it?’

‘If you’d watched Jago take care of her, you might understand what I’ve been telling you about him,’ I said.

‘She’d be an intolerable nuisance in the Lodge,’ said Katherine.

‘We’re not electing her,’ I said. ‘We’re electing her husband.’

‘You can’t get out of it as though she didn’t exist,’ said Francis.

For a moment we broke off the argument. Without our having noticed the light go, the garden now lay in deep twilight; the apple-green sky had changed to an illuminated, cerulean blue; the first stars had come out.

It was then that I spoke of Luke — not, as I had planned, in the way of friendly talk, but at the moment when we had got tired of our barbed voices.

‘I resent some of the comments that your side have made about her,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to talk about that now. There’s something more important. It’s another piece of tactics by one of your side. Did you know that Nightingale has been trying to coerce young Luke?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Francis.

I gave them the story.

‘Is this true?’ cried Francis. ‘Are those the facts?’

‘I’ve told you exactly what Luke told me,’ I said. ‘Would you believe him?’

‘Yes,’ said Francis, with no warmth towards me, angry with me for intruding this complaint, and yet disturbed by it.

‘If you believe him,’ I said, ‘then it’s quite true.’

‘It’s nasty,’ Francis broke out. I could only see him dimly in the crepuscular light, but I was sure that his face had flushed and that the vein in his forehead was showing. ‘I don’t like it. These things can’t be allowed to happen. It’s shameful.’ He went on: ‘I needn’t tell you that nothing of this kind will affect Luke’s future. I ought to say that his chances of being kept by the college can’t be very strong, so long as I stay. But that has nothing to do with this shameful business. Luke’s very good. He ought to be kept in Cambridge somehow.’

‘He’s a very nice boy,’ said Katherine. She was not three years older, but she spoke like a mature woman of a child.

‘By the way, it won’t make the slightest difference to the election,’ I said. ‘Luke may be young, but he’s not the first person one would try to cow. But I wanted to make sure you knew. I wasn’t ready to sit by and see him threatened.’

‘I’ll stop it,’ said Francis with angry dignity. ‘I’ll stop it,’ he repeated. Yet his tone to me was not softened, but harder than it had been that night. His whole code of behaviour, his self-respect, his uprightness and sense of justice, made him promise what he had done; and I was certain, as certain as I should be of any man, that he would carry it out. But he did not embrace me for making him do so. I had caused him to feel responsible for a piece of crooked dealing; it would not have mattered so much if I had still been an ally, but now it stiffened him against me. ‘You ought to remember,’ he said, ‘that some of your side are none too scrupulous. I’m not convinced that you’ve been too scrupulous yourself. Didn’t you offer Nightingale that you wouldn’t be a candidate for the tutorship, if only he’d vote for Jago? While you know as well as I do that Nightingale stands as much chance of becoming tutor as I do of becoming a bishop.’

Soon after I thanked them for dinner and walked back into the town through the midsummer night. We had parted without the glow and ease of friendship. Walking back under the stars, at the mercy of the last scents of early summer, I remembered a May week four years before, on just such a night as this. Those two and I had danced in the same party; we had loved our partners, and there had been delight to spare for our friends. Yet, a few minutes past, I had said goodnight to Francis and Katherine with no intimacy at all. Was it only this conflict between us? Or was it a sign of something inevitable, like the passing of time itself? The memory of anyone one had truly loved stayed distinct always and with a special fragrance, quite unaffected by the years. And the memory of one’s deepest friendships had a touch of the same magic. But nothing less was invulnerable to time, or chance, or one’s private trouble. Lesser friendships needed more care than the deepest ones; they needed attention and manners — and there were times, in the midst of private trouble, when those one could not give. Was it my fault that I could not meet Francis and Katherine as I once did?

25: An Observer’s Smile

Throughout the long vacation most of the fellows did not go far away. We all knew that, as soon as the Master died, there would be a last series of talks, confidences, negotiations, until the day of the election, and we wanted to be at hand. Only two went out of England. Roy Calvert was giving a course of lectures in Berlin, and had to leave by the end of July; he went in cheerful spirits, promising to fly back at a day’s notice if I sent for him. Pilbrow had departed for the Balkans shortly after Brown’s claret party, and no one had heard a word from him since. He had guaranteed to return in time for the election, but when I last saw him he had no thoughts to spare for college conflicts.

During the summer no one changed his party. The bricks in Roy Calvert’s room did not require moving; the score was still 6–5 for Jago, but not a clear majority of the whole 13 electors. Brown kept on persuading us to wait before we tried an attempt on Gay, or any other move. Chrystal, however, did make the first signs of an approach about Jago, one night when the old man was dining; he found him aware of the position but stubborn, and so went no further. In fact Chrystal was frustrated for lack of action, and his temper became shorter; they had heard nothing fresh from Sir Horace, apart from a long, effusive letter thanking Brown for his nephew’s success. In that letter, for the first time, there appeared no encouraging hints about the college’s future at all, and Chrystal and Brown were at a loss.

At the end of August the Master sent for me. He had a special message he wanted to give me, and he told me, almost as soon as I arrived, that I was to remind him of it if he rambled. He wanted to give me the message before I went.

His face was now an old man’s. The flesh was dried and had a waxy sheen. His eyes were sunken. Yet his voice was a good imitation of its old self, and, with his heightened insight, he knew the tone which would distress me least. And he spoke, with his old sarcastic humour, of his reasons for changing the position of his bed. It stood by the window now.

‘I prefer to lie here,’ said the Master, ‘because I got tired of the remarkable decoration’ — he meant the painted college arms — ‘which we owe to the misguided enthusiasm of one of my predecessors who had somewhat grandiloquent tastes. And, between you and me, I also like to look out of the window and see our colleagues walking about in twos and threes.’ He smiled without sadness and with an extraordinary detachment. ‘It makes me wonder how they are grouping themselves about the coming vacancy.’

I looked into the emaciated, wasted, peaceful face. ‘It is surprisingly easy to face that kind of fact,’ he said. ‘It seems quite natural, I assure you. So you can tell me the truth. How much has been done about choosing my successor: I have only heard that Jago might be in the running — which, between ourselves, I could have guessed for myself. Will he get it?’

‘Either he or Crawford.’

‘Crawford. Scientists are too bumptious.’ It was strange to hear him, even when so many of the vanities of self had gone, clinging to the prejudice of a lifetime.

I described the present position of the parties. It kept his attention and amused him. As I spoke, I did not feel anything macabre about his interest; it was more as though an observer from another world was watching the human comedy.

‘I hope you get Jago in,’ he said. ‘He’ll never become wise, of course. He’ll always be a bit of an ass. Forget that, and get him in.’

Then he asked: ‘I expect there’s a good deal of feeling?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘It’s remarkable. People always believe that, if only they support the successful candidate, they’ve got his backing for ever. It’s an illusion, Eliot, it’s an illusion. I assure you, one feels a certain faint irritation at the faces of one’s loyal supporters. They catch one’s eye and smirk.’

A recollection of the Getliffe’s garden came to me, and I said: ‘Gratitude plays some queer tricks.’

‘Gratitude isn’t an emotion,’ he said, watching the human comedy. ‘But the expectation of gratitude is a very lively one.’

His mind was very active, but began to leap from point to point.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Did they think I was going to die before this?’

‘Yes.’

‘They expected to get the election over before next academic year?’

‘Yes.’

He smiled.

Soon after his mind began to wander, and I had to remind him about his message. Setting his will, his thoughts drifting, he forced himself to remember. At last it came back. He talked of Roy Calvert, his protégé and pupil, who had already outstripped him. He praised Roy’s work. He wanted me to promise to look after him.

26: Stalemate

At the beginning of October, the great red leaves of Virginia creeper flamed on the walls and blew opulently about the court. In the garden the leaves blazed on the trees. The mornings were misty, the days bright in a golden haze; in the evenings, the lights in the streets and the college were aureoled in the autumnal mists. In the evenings, a light still shone from the great bedroom of the Lodge.

The fellows came back from their September holidays: the freshmen waited in queues on Brown’s staircase and walked round the courts in search of Jago’s house. The college became noisy, the street trilled with cycle bells as young men rode off to games in the afternoon. High table filled up: Brown presented a bottle to greet the new academic year: the whole society had returned to residence, except for Pilbrow and Roy Calvert.

It was only a few days later that Roy Calvert came back. He ran up my staircase one afternoon, looking very well. He had been free of depression since June, often he had managed to forget it. I had never seen him so settled. He was anxious to amuse me, concerned to help Brown and his other friends, eager to intrigue for Jago.

Tension in the college soon mounted again. Winslow had recovered some of his bite, and Nightingale ground away at his attacks with the stamina of a passion. Whispers, rumours, scandals, came to us at second- or third-hand. Roy Calvert figured in them less than in the summer; his actual presence as he was that autumn, equable, full of high spirits, prepared to devote himself to the shyest diner at high table, seemed to take away their sting — though once or twice I saw Winslow regarding him with a caustic glance. But the slanders were fuller than ever of ‘that impossible woman’. Nightingale had the intuitive sense of propaganda that one sometimes finds in obsessed men; he knew how to reiterate that phrase, smiling it out when anyone else would have got tired; gradually all his outcries gathered round her. Even the sober members of his side, like Winslow and Francis Getliffe, were heard to say ‘it’s unthinkable to have that woman in the Lodge’, and Brown and Chrystal were perturbed in private and did not know how to reply.

Brown, Roy, and I considered how to stop every hole by which these slanders might get through to Jago. We were as thorough as we knew how to be; but there were nights when Jago sat silently in hall, his face white, ravaged. The long anxiety had worn him down, his outbursts of nervous emotion were more unpredictable. But it was the sight of him, his face engraved with his own thoughts, intolerably vulnerable, that distressed us most.

Did he know what was being said? Neither Roy nor I had any doubt.

The Master was spending more time asleep now; one still saw his room lit up when one came back to college on those hazy October nights under the serene and brilliant moon. An Indian summer had visited the town, and the buildings rested in the warmth. It made Jago’s pallor more visible, as he walked through an evening so tranquil that the lines of the palladian building seemed to quiver in the haze.

It was strange to leave the combination room, and walk into such an evening. But the strain was growing more acute. There had been only one action which took away from it in the slightest; Francis Getliffe had been as good as his word, and, by what means I did not know, had stopped the threats to Luke.

One night when Brown and I were both dining, Chrystal sharply asked if we could spare half an hour after hall. Brown and I each looked at him; we knew from his expression that he had something active to propose. I thought Brown even at that moment was a shade uneasy; but he took us to his rooms, and opened a bottle of hock, saying: ‘I’ve a feeling it will be rather refreshing in this weather.’

He went on to talk of Sir Horace. At the end of the long vacation, they had persevered with schemes to get in touch with him again; finally they settled that Brown should write a letter, telling Sir Horace that they had been discussing his nephew’s future and wondered whether it would not be wise for him to have a fourth year — ‘not necessarily reading for a Tripos’ — Brown said he could not endure that risk again. This letter had been sent and evoked several telephone calls from Sir Horace. For once they had got him undecided. He nearly sent the young man back, and then thought again; in the end he decided against, but there was a long telephone conversation, thanks of unprecedented cordiality, and a half-promise to visit the college during the winter.

Brown was willing to speculate on that visit, but for the first time Chrystal brushed all talk of Sir Horace aside.

‘We’ve shot our bolt there. It’s up to him now,’ he said. ‘I want to hear your views about this mess we’re in.’

‘You mean we haven’t succeeded in making things safe for Jago?’

‘It’s not our fault. I don’t accept any blame,’ said Chrystal. ‘But we’re in a mess.’

‘Well,’ said Brown. ‘We’ve still got a lead of one. It’s 6–5 providing Pilbrow troubles to come back. There’s always a chance we might win someone over at the last minute. I’ve always thought there might be a chance with Gay.’

‘I didn’t get any change from him. I regard him as fixed,’ said Chrystal.

‘Well, then, it’s 6–5.’

‘And 6–5 is stalemate. It’s lamentable.’

‘I’m certain our wisest course,’ said Brown firmly, determined to get in first, ‘is to sit tight and see how things pan out. Funny things may happen before we actually get into the chapel. I know it’s a confounded nuisance, but we’ve got to sit tight and have some patience. We’re not in such a bad position.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Chrystal. ‘The place is more like a beargarden than ever. And it’s stalemate. I don’t see how you can hope to make any progress.’

‘It’s worth trying Gay again,’ I said.

‘You’ll be wasting your time. I rule him out,’ said Chrystal.

‘At the very last,’ I said, ‘we ought to try old Despard. We haven’t shown our hand completely.’

‘You can try,’ said Chrystal with scorn.

He went on: ‘I see it like this. The present position is the best we can hope for. We may lose a vote. We shan’t gain one. Do you take me up on that? We can’t expect anything better than the present voting.’

‘I don’t admit that it’s certain,’ said Brown, ‘but I should regard it as a probability.’

I agreed.

‘I’m glad you see it the same way,’ said Chrystal. ‘Where does it get us?’

‘If the voting does stay in the present position,’ Brown replied, ‘and I admit we haven’t any right to expect better, then the decision goes to the Visitor, of course.’

By statute, if the fellows could not find a clear majority of their number for one candidate, it was left for the Visitor to appoint. The Visitor had always been, right back to the foundation, the bishop of a northern diocese. I was sure, by the way, that Brown and Chrystal must have thought of this possibility as soon as Jago’s majority was broken. I had myself at moments, though it took time for any of us to believe that a stalemate was the likely end.

‘What happens then?’ said Chrystal, pressing his point.

‘I shouldn’t like to guess,’ said Brown. ‘I suppose the greatest danger is that he would prefer the one who is more distinguished outside the college.’

‘He couldn’t appoint Jago,’ said Chrystal. ‘He’s not a churchman, and he hasn’t got any reputation for his work.’

‘Surely Crawford’s politics would be against him,’ I remarked.

‘I wish I were absolutely certain of that,’ said Brown. ‘Isn’t the Bishop a bit of a crank himself? Isn’t he one of those confounded Churchill men who want to make trouble? I’ve heard that he’s not sound. We can’t rely on him to do the statesmanlike thing.’

‘He’ll never give it to Crawford,’ Chrystal announced. ‘Everyone knows that he’s an unbeliever too. He’s never kept it dark. I can’t credit that he’d give it to Crawford. You can rule that out.’

‘I very much hope you’re right. It’s extremely reassuring to hear,’ said Brown, smiling but with his watchful eyes on his friend. ‘I’m becoming quite reconciled to the idea of the Visitor.’

‘I don’t intend you to be. In my view, he’s certain to bring in an outsider.’

Chrystal spoke with assurance, almost as though he had inside knowledge. In fact, I suspected later that he had actually heard something from the other side.

It puzzled me, and it also puzzled me that he had asked me to join him and Brown that evening. Normally he would have discussed it in secret with Brown, and they would have decided their policy before any of the party, or anyone else in the college, had a chance to know their minds. It puzzled me: I could see that it disconcerted Brown. But soon I felt that Chrystal knew, right from the beginning, that he and Brown were bound to disagree. In his curiously soft-hearted way, Chrystal fought shy of a scene; he did not want to quarrel; he was afraid of the claims of friendship.

So he had asked me to be present. He had avoided an intimate scene. He could not have borne to be prevented. He had seen a chance to act, and all his instincts drove him on.

He said: ‘He’s certain to bring in an outsider. That would be the biggest disaster.’

‘I don’t agree with you there,’ said Brown. ‘I could tolerate most outsiders in front of Crawford.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Chrystal. ‘I like to know whom we’re getting. If it came to the worst, I should prefer the devil we know. With Crawford, we should be certain where we were from the start. No, I don’t want an outsider. I don’t want it to go to the Visitor.’

‘Nor do I,’ I said. I turned to Brown. ‘It would mean that we had lost it for Jago.’

‘I see that,’ said Brown reluctantly.

‘It’s just conceivable the Visitor might put Crawford in,’ I said. ‘But he’d never give us Jago over Crawford’s head. Jago’s junior and less distinguished. If it goes to the Visitor, it will either be Crawford or a third person.’

‘I don’t see any way out of that,’ said Brown.

‘There isn’t,’ said Chrystal. ‘But there’s one thing we’ve never tackled. There are the two candidates themselves. I come back to them. We’ve got to force them to vote for each other.’

‘Well,’ said Brown, ‘I don’t for the life of me see how you’re going to do that. You can’t expect Crawford to make a present of the Mastership to Jago. That’s all you’re asking him to do. I don’t see Crawford suddenly becoming a public benefactor.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Chrystal. ‘Suppose he’s convinced that a stalemate means that he’s out. He knows there’s only one vote in it. As you said, funny things happen in elections. Don’t you think he might gamble? It’s the only chance he’s got. It only means he has to win another vote. He may.’ Chrystal looked with his full commanding eyes at Brown, and repeated: ‘He may. Someone may cross over. Are you dead certain of Pilbrow?’

‘No. But I shall be disappointed if we can’t hold him.’

‘I repeat,’ said Chrystal, ‘Crawford knows it’s pretty even. He knows this way is his only chance. Why shouldn’t he chance it?’

‘What about Jago?’

‘If we brought it off, we should be presenting him with a decent chance of victory on a plate,’ said Chrystal fiercely. ‘I shouldn’t have much use for Jago if he raised difficulties.’

‘That’s all very well,’ Brown was frowning, ‘but they’re both strong men in their different fashions. And they’ve gone out of their way to tell us definitely that they refuse to vote for each other.’

‘We’ll threaten them with a third candidate.’

Chrystal’s plan was simple. The college was divided between two men, and did not wish for an outsider. It had a right to ask those two to save them from an outsider. Just one step was needed — for the ‘solid people’ on both sides to get together and threaten to switch to a third candidate if the other two refused. Chrystal had already heard something from Getliffe and Despard-Smith; they were no happier about the Visitor than he was; he was convinced that they would take part in his plan.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Brown.

‘What’s the matter?’ Chrystal challenged him.

‘I like being as friendly with the other side as I can. But I don’t like arrangements with them. You never know where they lead.’

They were speaking with all the difference of which they were capable. Brown, the genial, the peacemaker, became more uncompromising the more deeply he was probed. Both his rock-like stubbornness and his wary caution held him firm. While Chrystal, behind his domineering beak, was far more volatile, more led by his moods, more adventurous and willing to take a risk. The long stagnation had bored him; he was, unlike Brown, not fitted by nature for a conflict of attrition. Now all his interest was alive again. He was stimulated by the prospect of new talks, moves, combinations, and coalitions. He was eager to use his nerve and will.

‘It’s worth trying,’ said Chrystal. ‘If we want to win, we’ve no option.’

‘I’m convinced we ought to wait.’

‘It ought to be done tomorrow.’

‘I shall always feel that if we hadn’t rushed things about seeing Jago, we might have Nightingale in our pocket to this day,’ said Brown.

It was the first time I had heard him reproach his friend.

‘I don’t accept that. I don’t think it’s a fair criticism. Nothing would have kept Nightingale sweet. Don’t you think so, Eliot?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Chrystal asked me another question: ‘Do you agree that we ought to have a discussion with some of the other side?’

‘Can you bring it off?’ I replied. ‘If not, I should have thought it was better not to try. We shall have exposed ourselves.’

‘I’ll bring it off,’ said Chrystal, and his voice rang with zest.

‘Then it might win the Mastership for Jago,’ I said.

‘It’s worth trying,’ said Chrystal. ‘It must be tried.’

Brown had been watching me as I answered. Then he watched Chrystal, and sank into silence, his chin set so that one noticed the heavy, powerful jowl. He thought for some time before he spoke.

‘I’ll join a discussion if you arrange one. I don’t like it but I’ll join in.’ He had weighed it up. He saw that, with skill and luck, it might turn out well for Jago. He saw the danger more clearly than anyone there. But he was apprehensive that, if he did not join, Chrystal might make an overture on his own account.

He added: ‘I shan’t feel free to express myself enthusiastically if we do meet the other side. Unless they put it all plain and above board. And I shall not want to bring any pressure on the two candidates.’

‘So much the better. If you and I disagree, they’ll feel there isn’t a catch in it,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, active, friendly smile.

27: Conference of Six

Next morning Chrystal was busy paying visits to some of the other side. He saw Brown and me before lunch, and announced that he had arranged a conference for the coming Sunday night. There was a crowd dining that Sunday, and I heard Despard-Smith’s usual grating protest — ‘all avoiding the cold supper at home’; the number of diners that night helped to disguise the gap when six of us left after hall, but even so I wondered whether any suspicious eyes had noticed us.

We walked through the second court to Chrystal’s rooms. It was an autumn night of placid loveliness; an unlighted window threw back a reflection of the hunter’s moon; our shadows were black before us, and the old building rested in the soft radiance of the night.

It was warm, but Chrystal had a bright fire burning. His sitting-room was comfortable, rather in the fashion of a club; on a small table, a pile of periodicals was stacked with Chrystal’s unexpected, old-maidish tidiness; upon the walls stood out several cases with stuffed birds inside, which he had shot himself.

‘Do you want to bring chairs by the fire?’ said Chrystal. ‘Or shall we get round the table?’

‘I suggest round the table, if you please,’ said Winslow. ‘Your fire is so remarkably hospitable, my dear Dean. Almost excessively hospitable for this particular night, perhaps.’

Chrystal did not reply. He seemed resolved from the beginning not to be drawn by Winslow. With a plan in his mind, his temper had become much more level. So we sat round the table away from the fire — Despard-Smith, Winslow, and Francis Getliffe on one side, Brown and I on the other. Before Chrystal took the chair at the head, he said he could not offer us Brown’s variety of drinks, and filled for each of us a stiffish tumbler of whisky.

We all drank, no one had begun to talk, while Chrystal packed and lit his pipe. Suddenly he said: ‘We’ve reached a stalemate over this election. Do you agree?’

‘It looks like it,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘How do you all regard it?’ said Chrystal.

‘I regard it as disastrous,’ Despard-Smith replied. His expression was lugubrious, his voice solemn; but he had already nearly finished his glass, and he was watching each word and movement on our side of the table.

‘It makes me think slightly less warmly than usual,’ said Winslow, ‘of the mental equipment of some of my colleagues.’

‘That is amusing,’ said Chrystal, but he did not pronounce the word with his customary venom. ‘But it doesn’t get us anywhere, Winslow. We shan’t get far if we start scoring points off one another.’

‘I associate myself with you, Dean,’ said Despard-Smith, with bleak authority.

‘I am still unenlightened as to where we are trying to get,’ said Winslow. ‘Perhaps others know the purpose of this meeting better than I do.’

‘It’s simple.’ Chrystal looked at the three of them. ‘This election may go to the Visitor. Are you content?’

‘The possibility hadn’t escaped us,’ said Winslow.

‘I expect that most of us have thought of it occasionally,’ said Brown. ‘But somehow we haven’t really believed that it would happen.’

‘I have found it only too easy to believe,’ said Despard-Smith.

‘Are you content?’ asked Chrystal.

‘To be honest,’ said Winslow, ‘I could only answer that — if I knew the mysterious ways in which the Bishop’s mind would work.’

‘I should consider it a c-catastrophe,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘If we can’t settle our own business without letting the Bishop take a hand, I look upon it as a scandalous state of affairs.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ said Chrystal. ‘Now I’m going to put our cards on the table. If this election does go to the Visitor, I’ve got a view as to what will happen. It won’t mean your candidate getting in. It won’t mean ours. It will mean a third party foisted on us.’

‘What do you think?’ Francis Getliffe asked Despard-Smith.

‘I’m reluctantly bound to say that the Dean is right,’ said Despard-Smith. He spoke, like Chrystal a few days before, as though he had the certainty of inside knowledge. I wondered if he had discovered anything through his clerical acquaintances. I wondered also if it was from him that Chrystal had picked up the hint. They were supporting each other at this table. And Despard — Smith’s support was still, at the age of seventy, worth having. He was completely certain of his judgement. He poured himself another large whisky, and delivered an unshakeable opinion. ‘I deeply regret to say it,’ said the old clergyman, ‘but the Dean is right. The way the Bench is appointed nowadays is of course disastrous. The average is wretchedly low. Even judged by that low average, this man doesn’t carry a level dish. He can be relied upon to inflict some unsuitable person upon us.’

‘Do you want that?’ said Chrystal vigorously.

‘I don’t,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘I don’t myself,’ said Chrystal.

‘It doesn’t sound specially inviting,’ I said.

Winslow gave a sarcastic smile.

‘It somewhat depends,’ he said, ‘whether one would prefer either of our candidates to an unknown. I dare say some of you might. It may not be a completely universal view.’

‘You mean there may be people who won’t mind it going to the Visitor, Winslow,’ said Chrystal. ‘If they’re determined to keep one of the candidates out at any costs.’

‘Precisely, my dear Dean,’ said Winslow.

Brown looked from Winslow to Chrystal: his eyes were sharp but troubled as they moved from his opponent to his ally.

‘I think the time has almost come to explain where we stand,’ he said. ‘My own position hasn’t altered since last January. I’m convinced that Jago is the right man for us, and so I’ve never thought any further. I think I can say that Crawford wouldn’t be my second choice, if I’m forced to speak offhand.’

‘My dear Brown,’ said Winslow, ‘Jago wouldn’t be my third choice. I don’t find it easy to decide what number of choice he actually would be.’

‘That being my position,’ said Brown, ‘I shouldn’t be averse to passing the decision to the Visitor, if we couldn’t scrape up a majority for Jago.’

‘My reason is the exact opposite,’ said Winslow. ‘But I find myself surprisingly in agreement with the Tutor. I shan’t worry if the Bishop has to use his wisdom.’

‘I shall,’ I said. ‘For once I disagree with Brown. I’d rather have either of those two than anyone in the field. I’d certainly rather have either than anyone the Bishop is likely to choose.’

‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe, in a quick, comradely manner, as in the days when we were always on the same side. ‘I’m with Eliot there. I’m not in favour of Jago, but I’d rather put up with him than the Bishop’s nominee.’

We all turned to Despard-Smith. He took a long sip from his glass, and said with deep solemnity: ‘I too find myself among the Laodiceans.’ He added, so gravely that no one took account of the anticlimax: ‘I’ve never been ready to buy a p-pig in a poke.’

‘Yes,’ said Chrystal. ‘Well, none of you will be surprised to hear how I feel.’ He was addressing himself to Brown. ‘I’m not voting for Jago to keep Crawford out. I’m voting for him because I think he’s the better man. But either will do.’ He went on: ‘So that’s four of us flat against letting it go to the Visitor. I regard that as enough reason to explore a bit further.’

Brown was looking flushed and concerned, but he said: ‘I have made my reservations, but I am sure we should all like to hear what the Dean has in mind. We all know that it’s bound to be valuable.’ He was uneasy, I knew, but his affability covered him. I wondered whether it was friendship for Chrystal or party loyalty which had caused him to give help at this point. Almost certainly both — it was like him to mix policy and warm-heartedness without thinking, it was just that mixture which made him so astute.

‘Would you like to stay and hear it, Winslow?’ said Despard-Smith.

‘If you please,’ Winslow said indifferently. ‘If you please.’

‘Right,’ said Chrystal. ‘First of all I want to count heads. I regard Jago as having five votes certain as far as votes can be certain in a college — I mean three of us here and our two young men, Calvert and Luke. Pilbrow has promised to vote several times — but I’m not going to mince matters either way. He may even not come back, he’s not specially interested in this election.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ said Francis Getliffe with a sudden creased smile.

Chrystal went on: ‘I regard your side as having four votes certain. Yourselves and Nightingale. Nightingale can’t cross over again, or he’ll make the place too hot to hold him. You’re also counting on Gay, but I set him off against Pilbrow. He may have forgotten the name of your candidate before the election. He may vote for himself.’

‘I have no doubt,’ said Despard-Smith, ‘that Gay will weigh his vote.’

‘No, we’ve got to be fair,’ said Francis Getliffe. ‘We can’t rely on him. Chrystal has been quite objective.’

‘Remarkably so,’ Winslow added. ‘But what does it all lead to? Bring it to a point, my dear Dean.’

‘I shall get there in one minute,’ said Chrystal. ‘But I didn’t want to hide the facts. Jago is in the stronger position. There are no two ways about it. I don’t want to hide it: if I did, you would have a right to think I was going in for sharp practice. What I’m going to suggest may put Jago in. It will almost certainly put one of the two in. It will save us from the Visitor.’ He paused and then said with extreme crispness: ‘I suggest that we make ourselves clear to the two candidates. We tell them that four of us — or five or six if Brown or Winslow like to come in — will not tolerate this matter going to the Visitor. We tell them that they must vote for each other. It’s the only way to bring a majority within reach. If they refuse, we say that we’ll form a majority for another person. This will be someone we decide on. Not an outsider fobbed off on us by the Bishop. If we’re forced to have a third candidate, we’ll choose him ourselves.’ Chrystal broke into a smile. ‘But it will never come to that.’

‘I must say that it’s a beautiful thought,’ said Winslow.

‘It doesn’t look unreasonable,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘I take it that it hasn’t escaped you, Dean,’ said Winslow, ‘that your candidate commands a probable six votes — and Crawford’s will neatly get him home?’

‘I went out of my way to explain that,’ said Chrystal. ‘I said perfectly clearly that it might happen. I repeat: this is a way to escape the Visitor. So far as I can see; it’s the only way.’

‘That may very well be true,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘I cannot remember any step of this kind during my association with the college. It is a grave step even to consider. It is absolutely unprecedented,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘But I feel we owe it to the college to consider the suggestion with the utmost seriousness. To let the Visitor s-saddle us with some incubus of his own would in my judgement be an unmitigated disaster.’

From those first moments it was certain that Despard-Smith and Francis would support Chrystal’s move in the long run. Their first response was ‘yes!’, however much they wrapped it round later. They seemed to be saying yes spontaneously even though it looked like giving Jago the game. They seemed to have lost their heads. Yet they were each of them strong-willed and hard-headed men.

I had no illusion that they were not calculating the chances. They thought, rightly or wrongly, that this was the best move for Crawford, although I could not imagine how they arrived at it.

I felt more than ever certain that they must have learned at least some piece of gossip about the Bishop’s intention. They must have become quite certain that, if the Bishop had the power, Crawford would stand no chance. For a second, I suspected also that they had some information, unknown to us, about one of Jago’s side. But later I doubted it. It did not seem that they had any well-backed hope. It seemed most likely that in secret they were sure of Gay, and had a vague hope of Pilbrow and even (so I gathered with incredulity from a chance remark) of Roy Calvert, some of whose comments Despard-Smith took literally and misunderstood. So far as I could detect, they knew nothing definite that we did not know.

Those seemed their motives on the plane of reason. But they were also moved by some of the inexplicable currents that sweep through any intricate politics. Despard-Smith and Francis, just like Chrystal and I myself, suddenly panicked at the idea of an outsider for Master. It was as though our privacy were threatened: magic was being taken from us: this intimate world would not be so much in our power. It was nonsense when we thought of it in cold blood, but we shied violently from the mere idea. And also we enjoyed — there was no escaping the satisfaction — the chance of asserting ourselves against our candidate. There are some hidden streaks in any politics, which only flash to the surface in an intense election such as this. Suddenly they leap out: one finds to one’s astonishment that there are moments when one loves one’s rival — despises one’s supporters — hates one’s candidate. Usually these streaks do not make any difference in action, but in a crisis it is prudent to watch them.

Despard-Smith let fall some solemn misgivings and qualifications; Francis Getliffe was guarded, though anxious to seem open to reason; but Chrystal knew he had won them over. He took it as a triumph of his own. And in fact it had been an impressive display. For the first time in this election, he had thrown his whole will into the struggle. He had something definite to achieve; and, even against men as tough as his opponents, his will told.

The talk went on. Winslow said: ‘Even the idyllic spectacle of the lion lying down with the lamb does not entirely reconcile me to the Dean’s ingenious idea.’

Later, Brown finished up for the night: ‘In any case, before I come to any conclusion, I shall certainly want to sleep on it.’

‘That goes without saying,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘It would be nothing less than s-scandalous for any of us to commit ourselves tonight.’

I was surprised to hear a couple of days later that Winslow had decided to join. He had talked to his party: what had been said, I did not know: I was uneasy, but I noticed that so was Francis Getliffe. I was surprised that Winslow had not pushed his dislike of Jago to the limit. Was there a shade of affection, underneath the contempt? Once Jago had supported him: was there some faint feeling of obligation? Or was it simply that, despite his exterior, despite all his attempts to seem it, Winslow was really not a ruthless man?

Winslow’s decision made it hard for Brown to stay outside. He felt his hand was forced, and he acquiesced with a good grace. But he was too cautious, too shrewd, too suspicious, and too stubborn a man to be pleased about it. ‘I still don’t like it,’ he confided to me in private. ‘I know it improves Jago’s chances, but I can’t come round to liking it. I’d rather it had come later after we’d had one stalemate vote in the chapel. I’d rather Chrystal was thinking more about getting Jago in and less about shutting the Visitor out. I wish he were a bit stronger against Crawford.

‘Nevertheless,’ Brown added, ‘I admit it gives Jago a great chance. It ought to establish him in as strong a position as we’ve reached so far. It gives him a wonderful chance.’

The six of us met again, and drafted a note to the two candidates. Despard-Smith did most of the writing, but Brown, for all his reluctance to join the ‘memorialists’ (as Despard-Smith kept calling us), could not resist turning a sentence or two. After a long period of writing, rewriting, editing, and patching up, we agreed on a final draft:

In the view of those signing this note, it is most undesirable that the forthcoming election to the Mastership should be decided by the Visitor. So far as the present intentions of fellows are known to us, it seems that neither of the candidates whose names we have heard mentioned is supported by a clear majority of the college. We accordingly feel that, in conformity with the spirit of college elections and the desire of the college that this forthcoming election shall be decided internally, it would assist our common purpose if each candidate voted for the other. If they can see their way to take this step, it is possible that a clear majority may be found to declare itself for one or other candidate. If, on the other hand they find themselves unable to cast their votes in this manner, the signatories are so convinced of the necessity of an internal decision that they will feel compelled to examine the possibility of whether a third candidate can be found who might command a clear majority of the college.

A T D-S

G H W

A B

C P C

E G

L S E

Oct. 29, 1937

‘In other words,’ said Chrystal, ‘there’ll be the hell of a row.’ He winked. There was often something of the gamin about him.

28: Clowning and Pride

The note was sent to all fellows. It caused great stir at once, and within a few hours we learned that Jago and Crawford wished to meet the six. Roy Calvert said: ‘I must say it’s a coup for Chrystal.’ Jago had said nothing to Brown or me, not a telephone message, not a note. Later that day, Roy brought news that Jago was brooding over the ultimatum. He was half-delighted, so Roy said, because of his chances — and also so much outraged that he intended to speak out.

The two candidates arranged to meet us after hall, at half-past eight. Both came in to dinner, and Jago’s face was so white with feeling that I expected an outburst straightaway. But in fact he began by clowning. It was disconcerting, but I had seen him do it before when he was strung up and about to take the centre of the stage. He pretended — I did not know whether it was a turn or a true story — that some undergraduate had that afternoon mistaken him for an assistant in a bookshop. ‘Do I look like a shop assistant? I’m rather glad that I’m not completely branded as a don.’

‘You’re not quite smart enough,’ said Roy, and in fact Jago was usually dressed in an old suit.

Jago went on with his turn. No one noticed the change in him when we were sitting in the combination room.

Word had gone round that the ‘memorialists’ were to confer with Crawford and Jago, and so by halfpast eight the room was left to us. The claret was finished, and Crawford lit a cigar.

‘I think we can now proceed to business, Mr Deputy,’ he said.

‘Certainly,’ said Despard-Smith.

‘Our answer is a tale that’s soon told.’ Crawford leaned back, and the end of his cigar glowed. ‘The Senior Tutor and I have had a word about your ultimatum. We haven’t any option but to accept it.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Chrystal.

‘If there are no other candidates, we shall vote for each other,’ said Crawford imperturbably. ‘Speaking as a private person, I don’t think one can take much exception to what you want us to do. I think I do take a mild exception to the way you’ve done it, but not so strongly as my colleague. However, that’s past history, and it’s neither here nor there.’ He smiled.

Jago leaned forward in his chair, and slight as the movement was, we all looked at him. ‘For my part, I wish to say something more,’ he said.

‘I should leave it alone,’ said Crawford. ‘What’s done can’t be undone. You’ll only take it out of yourself.’

In fact, Jago was looking tired to breaking point. His face had no colour left, and the lines were deep — with sombre anger, with humiliation, with the elation that he might be safe again.

‘It’s good of you,’ said Jago to Crawford, ‘but I should be less than honest if I didn’t speak. I take the strongest exception to the way this has been done. It was unnecessary to expose us to this kind of compulsion. Apparently you’ — his eyes went round the table — ‘consider that one of the two of us is fit to be your Master: I should have hoped that you might in the meantime treat us like responsible persons. I should have hoped that was not asking too much. Why couldn’t this have been settled decently amongst us?’

‘We don’t all share your optimism, my dear Senior Tutor,’ said Winslow.

‘We were anxious to get everything in order,’ said Brown, eager to smooth things down. ‘We didn’t want to leave any loose ends, because none of us know how much time we’ve got left.’

‘That’s no reason for treating Crawford and me like college servants,’ said Jago.

‘Since when have college servants been required to vote for each other?’ Winslow asked.

Jago looked at him. His anger appeared to quieten. His white and furrowed face became still.

‘You are taking advantage of my position as a candidate,’ he said. ‘A candidate is fair play for any kind of gibe. You know that he’s not at liberty to speak his mind. No doubt he deserves any gibes you care to offer him. Anyone who is fool enough to stand for office deserves anything that comes his way.’

Winslow did not reply, and no one spoke. Crawford smoked impassively on, but all our attention was on Jago. He dominated the room.

‘You have taught me that lesson,’ he said. ‘I shall vote for Crawford at the election.’

As we were leaving, Jago spoke in a low voice to Chrystal: ‘I should like to say something to you and Brown and Eliot.’

‘We can go back,’ said Chrystal. So, standing in the combination room, Jago faced three of his supporters.

‘I should have been told about this.’ His voice was quiet, but his anger had caught fire again.

‘I passed the word along as soon as we had decided to push forward,’ said Brown.

‘I should have been told. I should have been told at the first mention of this piece of — persuasion.’

‘I don’t see why,’ said Chrystal.

‘When I find my party is negotiating behind my back—’

‘This isn’t a party matter, Jago,’ Chrystal broke in. ‘It’s a college matter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jago, in a tone as brusque as Chrystal’s, ‘but I’m not used to having my actions dictated. Before my friends arrange to do so, I expect them to tell me first.’

‘Perhaps the circumstances are a little unfortunate,’ said Brown, ‘but I’m inclined to suggest that we’re all losing our sense of proportion. I think you’re forgetting that something very notable has been achieved. I’m not saying that it’s all over bar the counting of the votes, but I do put it to you that things look brighter than they have done since Nightingale got angry with us. You’re standing with a clear majority again, and the sensible course for us all is to keep it intact until we walk into the chapel.’

He went on: ‘I expect you know that you owe it entirely to the Dean. Put it another way: the Dean is the only man who could have forced a vote out of the other side. It was a wonderful night’s work.’

Beneath the round, measured, encouraging words there was strength and warning. Jago knew they were intended for him. He gazed into Brown’s eyes; there was a pause, in which I thought I saw a quiver pass through his body; then he said: ‘Your heads are cooler than mine. You must make allowances, as I know you’re only too willing to do. I know Chrystal appreciates that I admire everything he does. This was an astonishing manoeuvre, I know. I’m very grateful, Chrystal.’

‘I’m glad it came off,’ Chrystal replied.

I walked back with Jago to his house to fetch a book. He scarcely spoke a word. He was at the same time elated, anxious, and bitterly ashamed.

I was thinking of him and Crawford. That night, Crawford had been sensible, had even been kind to his rival. I could understand the feeling that he was the more dependable. It was true. Yet, of the two, which was born to live in men’s eyes?

And Jago knew it. He knew his powers, and how they were never used. The thought wounded him — and also made him naked to life. He had been through heartbreak because of his own frailty. He had seen his frailty without excuses or pity. I felt it was that — not his glamour, not his sympathy, not his bouts of generous passion — it was that nakedness to life which made me certain we must have him instead of Crawford. He was vulnerable in his own eyes.

Why had he never used his powers? Why had he done nothing? Sometimes I thought he was too proud to compete — and also too diffident. Perhaps at the deepest level pride and diffidence became the same. He could not risk a failure. He was born to be admired from below, but he could not bear the rough-and-tumble, the shame, the breath of the critics. His pride was mountainous, his diffidence intense. Even that night he had been forced to clown before he scarified his enemies. He despised what others said of him, and yet could not endure it.

There was one other thing. Through pride, through diffidence, he had spent his life among men whose attention he captured without an effort, with whom he did not have to compete. But it was the final humiliation if they would not recognize him. That was why the Mastership lived in his mind like an obsession. He ought to have been engaged in a struggle for great power; he blamed himself that he was not, but it sharpened every desire of his for this miniature power. He ought to have been just Paul Jago, known to all the world with no title needed to describe him, his name more glowing than any title. But his nature had forced him to live all his life in the college: at least, at least, he must be Master of it.

29: ‘A Vacancy in the Office of Master’

In November we heard that the Master was near his death.

On December 2nd, Joan told Roy Calvert: ‘The doctor has just told us that he’s got pneumonia. This is the end.’ As we were going into hall on December 4th, the news was brought that the Master had just died. Despard-Smith made an announcement to the undergraduates, and there was a hush throughout the meal. In the combination room afterwards coffee was served at once, and we listened to a simple and surprising eulogy from old Despard-Smith.

Soon, however, he and Winslow and Brown were occupied with procedure.

‘I am no longer Deputy,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘I ceased to be Deputy the moment the Master died. The statutes are explicit on this point. The responsibility for announcing the vacancy passes to the senior fellow. I must say I view with apprehension having to rely on Gay to steer us through this business. It places us in a very serious position.’

They studied the statutes again, but they had done so frequently in the past weeks, and there was no way out. The governing statute was the one which Despard-Smith had read out at the first meeting of the Lent term.

‘There’s no escape,’ said Brown. ‘We can only hope that he’ll get through it all right. Perhaps he’ll feel the responsibility is too much for him and ask to be excused. If so, as Pilbrow isn’t here, it will devolve on you, Despard, and everything will be safe. But we shouldn’t be in order in passing over Gay. The only thing remaining is to let him know at once.’

Despard-Smith at once wrote a note to Gay, telling him the Master had died at 7.20 that night, explaining that it was Gay’s duty to call a meeting the following day, telling him that the business was purely formal and a meeting at the usual time need only take ten minutes. ‘If you feel it is too dangerous to come down to college in this weather,’ Despard-Smith added, ‘send me a note in reply to this and we will see the necessary steps are taken.’

The head porter was called into the combination room, and asked to take the letter to Gay’s house. He was told to see that it reached Gay’s hands at once, whether he was in bed or not, and to bring back a reply.

I went off to see Roy Calvert: the others stayed in the combination room, waiting for Gay’s reply.

The night was starless and a cold rain was spattering down. As I looked round the court, I felt one corner was strangely dark. No light shone from the bedroom window of the Lodge.

I found Roy alone, sitting at his table with one of the last pages of the proofs.

‘You know, of course?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Roy. ‘I can’t be sorry for him. He must have gone out without knowing it. But it’s the others who have to face what death means now, haven’t they?’

Soon Joan came into the room, and he had to devote himself to her and her mother.

I returned to the combination room, where Brown, Winslow, and Despard-Smith were still waiting.

‘It is nothing less than a disaster,’ Despard-Smith was saying, ‘that our statutes entrust these duties to the senior fellow.’ He proceeded to expound the advantages of a permanent vice-master, such as some colleges had; from Winslow’s expression, I guessed this ground had been covered several times already.

Before long the head porter arrived, his top hat tarnished from the rain. He handed Despard-Smith a large envelope, which bore on the back a large red blob of sealing-wax.

‘Did you find Professor Gay up?’ asked Brown.

‘Certainly, sir.’

I wondered if there was the faintest subterranean flicker behind that disciplined face.

Despard-Smith read the reply with a bleak frown. ‘This confirms me in my view,’ he said, and passed the letter to us. It was written in a good strong nineteenth-century hand, and read:

Dear Despard,

Your news was not unexpected, but nevertheless I grieve for poor Royce and his family. He is the fifth Master who has been taken from us since I became a fellow.

I am, of course, absolutely capable of fulfilling the duties prescribed to me by statute, and I cannot even consider asking the college to exempt me from them. It was not necessary for you to remind me of the statute, my dear chap, nor to send me a copy of the statutes: during the last weeks I have regularly refreshed my memory of them, and am now confident of being able to master my duties.

I do not share your opinion that tomorrow’s proceedings are purely formal. I think that such a meeting would not show sufficient respect for our late Master. However, I concur that the meeting need not detain us overlong, and I therefore request that it be called for 4.45 p.m. I have never seen the virtue of our present hour of 4.30 p.m. I request also that tea be served as usual at 4.0 p.m.

Yours ever,

M H L Gay

‘The old man is asserting himself,’ said Brown. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it but to obey orders.’

Next afternoon most of the society, apart from Gay, arrived later than usual for tea in the combination room. They ate less and talked more quietly. Yet most of them were quiet through decorum, not through grief. The night before, there had been a pang of feeling through many there; but grief for an acquaintance cannot last long, the egotisms of healthy men revive so quickly that they can never admit it, and so put on decorum together with their black ties and act gravely in front of each other. All the fellows were present but Pilbrow; but only three bore the marks of strain that afternoon.

There was Chrystal, brusque and harsh so that people avoided his company; Roy Calvert, who had dark pouches under his eyes after a night in the Lodge; Jago, whose face looked at its most ravaged.

Even of those, I thought, Jago was tormented by anxiety and hope. Perhaps only two mourned Royce enough to forget the excitement round them.

At half-past four many of us began to sit down in our places, but Gay finished his tea at leisure, talking loudly to anyone near. The clock struck the quarter before he said: ‘Ah. The time I fixed for our meeting. Let us make a start. Yes, this is the time.’

He took the chair, and looked round at us. The hum died away. Then slowly and with difficulty Gay rose unstably to his feet, and supported himself by gripping the table with his hands.

‘Remain seated, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘But I should like to stand, while I speak of what I have summoned you to hear today.’ He looked handsome and impressive; his beard was freshly trimmed, it took years from his age to be presiding there that day. ‘I have grievous news. Indeed I have grievous news. Yesterday evening our late Master passed away. In accordance with the statute I have requested you to meet on this the following day. First I wish to say a few words in honour of his memory.’ Gay went on to make a speech lasting over half an hour. His voice rang out resonantly; he did not seem in the least tired. Actually, it was a good speech. Once or twice his memory failed him and he attributed to Royce qualities and incidents which belonged to earlier Masters. But that happened seldom; his powers had revived that afternoon; he was an eloquent man who enjoyed speaking, and he remembered much about Royce which was fresh to many of us. The uncomfortable nature of the speech was that he made it with such tremendous gusto; he was enjoying himself too much.

‘And so,’ he finished, ‘he was stricken with the disease, which, as my old saga-men would say, was his bane. Ah indeed, it was his bane. He bore it as valiantly as they would have borne it. He had indeed one consolation not granted to many of them. He died in the certainty of our Christian faith, and his life was so blessed that he did not need to fear his judgement in the hereafter.’

Then Gay let himself back into his chair. There was whispering round the table, and he banged energetically with his fist.

‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said briskly and chidingly, ‘we must set ourselves to our task. We cannot look back always. We must look forward. Forward! That’s the place to look. It is part of my duties to make arrangements for the election of a new Master. I will read the statutes.’

He did read the statutes, not only that on the election of the Master, which he kept till last, but also those on the authority, qualifications, residence, and emoluments. He read very audibly and well, and a good many more minutes passed. At last he came to the statute on the election. He read very slowly and with enormous emphasis. ‘“When the fellows are duly assembled the fellow first in order of precedence attending shall announce to them the vacancy…”’ He looked up from his book, and paused.

‘I hereby announce to you,’ said Gay resoundingly, ‘a vacancy in the office of Master.’

He went back to his reading ‘“…and shall before midnight on the same day authorize a notice of the vacancy and of the time hereby regulated for the election of the new Master, and cause this notice to be placed in full sight on the chapel door.”’

‘Cause to be placed! Cause to be placed!’ cried Gay. ‘I shall fix it myself. I shall certainly fix it myself. Shall I write the notice?’

‘I’ve got one here,’ said Winslow. ‘I had it typed ready in the Bursary this morning.’

‘Ah. I congratulate you. Let me read it. I can’t get out of the responsibility for any slips, you know. “Owing to the death of Mr Vernon Royce, there is a vacancy in the office of Master of this college. The fellows will meet in the chapel to elect a Master, according to statutes D — F, at ten o’clock in the morning of December the twentieth, 1937.”

‘That seems fair enough,’ Gay went on, as though unwilling to pass it. ‘December the twentieth? No one’s made a slip there, I suppose?’

‘The vacancy occurred in term,’ said Winslow impatiently. ‘It is fifteen days from today.’

‘Indeed. Indeed. Well, it seems fair enough. Does everyone understand? Shall I sign it?’

‘Is that necessary?’ said Despard-Smith. ‘It’s not in the statutes.’

‘It’s fitting that I should sign it,’ said Gay. ‘When people see my signature at the bottom, they won’t doubt that everything is in order. I shall certainly sign it.’

He wrote his great bold signature, and said with satisfaction: ‘Ah. That’s a fine notice. Now I must fix it.’ Chrystal and Roy Calvert helped him with his overcoat, and as they did so he heard the clock strike. It was six o’clock. He chuckled: ‘Do you know, our old friend Despard wrote to me last night and said this would be a purely formal meeting. And it’s lasted an hour and a quarter. Not bad for a purely formal meeting, Despard, old chap! An hour and a quarter. What do you think of that, Winslow? What do you think of that, Jago?’

It was raining hard outside, and we put on overcoats to follow him. Roy slipped Gay’s arms through the sleeves of his gown again. We followed him out into the court, and Chrystal opened an umbrella and held it over the old man as he shuffled along. The rest of us halted our steps to keep behind him, in the slow procession across the first court to the chapel. The procession moved very slowly through the cold December evening.

When we arrived at the chapel door, it was found there were no drawing pins. Chrystal swore, and, while Luke ran to find some, tried to persuade Gay that it was too chilly for him to stay there in the open.

‘Not a bit of it, my dear chap,’ said Gay. ‘Not a bit of it. There’s life in the old dog yet.’ Luke came back panting with the pins, and Gay firmly pushed in eight of them, one at each corner of the sheet and one in the middle of each side.

Then he stood back and admired the notice.

‘Ah. Excellent. Excellent,’ he said. ‘That’s well done. Anyone can see there’s a vacancy with half an eye.’