Charles Snow - The Masters

‘We’ve got the nucleus of a nice little party,’ said Brown. ‘I think the time may almost have come to ask Jago whether he’ll give us permission to canvass his name.’

‘You don’t think that’s premature?’ said Roy, anxiously solemn.

‘He may find certain difficulties,’ said Brown, refusing to be put out of his stride. ‘He may not be able to afford it. Put it another way — he’d certainly drop a bit over the exchange. With his university lectureship and his college teaching work, as Senior Tutor, he must make all of £1,800 a year, and the house rent free. As Master he’ll have to give up most of the other things, and the stipend of the Master is only £1,500. I’ve always thought it was disgracefully low, it’s scarcely decent. Of course, he gets the Lodge free, but the upkeep will run him into a lot more than the Tutor’s house. I really don’t know how he’s going to manage it.’

I was smiling: with Roy present, I found it harder to take part in these stately minuets. ‘Somehow I think he’ll find a way,’ I said. ‘Look, Brown, you know perfectly well that he’s chafing to be asked.’

‘I think we might be able to persuade him,’ Brown said. ‘But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry. You don’t get round difficulties by ignoring them. Still, I think we’ve got far enough to approach Jago now.’

‘The first step, of course,’ he added, ‘is to get Chrystal. He may think we’re anticipating things a bit.’

He telephoned to Chrystal, who was at home but left at once for the college. When he arrived, he was short-tempered because we had talked so much without him. He was counter-suggestible, moved to say no instead of yes, anxious to find reasons why we should not go at once to Jago. Brown used his automatic tact; and, as usual, Chrystal was forming sensible decisions underneath his short pique-ridden temper (he had the kind of pique which one calls ‘childish’ — though in fact it is shown most clearly by grave and adult men). Suddenly he said: ‘I’m in favour of seeing Jago at once.’

‘Shall I fix a time tomorrow?’ said Brown.

‘I’m against waiting. There’s bound to be talk, I want to get our feet in first. I’m in favour of going tonight.’

‘He may be busy.’

‘He won’t be too busy for what we’re coming to say,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, pleasant, ironic smile.

‘I’ll ring up and see how he’s placed,’ said Brown. ‘But we mustn’t forget Nightingale. It would be nice to take him round as well.’ He rang up at once, on the internal exchange through the porter’s lodge: there was no answer. He asked for a porter to go to Nightingale’s rooms: the report came that his rooms were shut.

‘This is awkward,’ said Brown.

‘We’ll go without him,’ said Chrystal impatiently.

‘I don’t like it much.’ Brown had a slight frown. ‘It would be nice to bring everyone in. It’s important for everyone to feel they’re in the picture. I attach some value to taking Nightingale round.’

‘I’ll explain it to Nightingale. I want to get started before the other side.’

Reluctantly, Brown rang up the Tutor’s house. He was sure it was an error of judgement not to wait for Nightingale — whom he wanted to bind to the party. On the other hand, he had had trouble bringing Chrystal ‘up to the boil’. He did not choose to risk putting him off now. He rang up, his voice orotund, confidential, cordial; from his replies, one could guess that Jago was welcoming us round without a second’s delay.

‘Yes, he’d like to see us now,’ said Brown, as he hung the receiver up.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ said Chrystal, rising to go out.

‘Wait just a minute,’ said Brown. ‘The least I can do is send a note to Nightingale, explaining that we tried to find him.’

He sat down to write.

‘It might help if I took the note round to Nightingale,’ said Roy Calvert. ‘I’ll drop the word that I’m going to vote for Jago, but haven’t gone round on the deputation.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Brown.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Roy. ‘I very much doubt whether the next but one junior fellow ought to be included in such a deputation as this.’

Chrystal did not know whether he was being serious or not. ‘I don’t know about that, Calvert, I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘Still, we can tell Jago you’re one of us, can we?’

‘Just so,’ said Roy. ‘Just so.’

The Tutor’s house lay on the other side of the college, and Brown, Chrystal and I began walking through the courts. Chrystal made a remark about Roy Calvert: ‘Sometimes I don’t know where I am with that young man.’

‘He’ll be a very useful acquisition to our side,’ said Brown.

In Jago’s house we were shown, not into his study, but into the drawing-room. There Mrs Jago received us, with an air of grande dame borrowed from Lady Muriel.

‘Do sit down, Dean,’ she said to Chrystal. ‘Do sit down, Tutor,’ she said to Brown. ‘A parent has just chosen this time to call on my husband, which I feel is very inconsiderate.’

But Mrs Jago’s imitation of Lady Muriel was not exact. Lady Muriel, stiff as she was, would never have called men by their college titles. Lady Muriel would never have picked on the youngest there and said: ‘Mr Eliot, please help me with the sherry. You know it’s your duty, and you ought to like doing your duty.’

For Mrs Jago wanted to be a great lady, wanted also the attention of men, and was never certain of herself, for an instant. She was a big, broad-shouldered woman, running to fat, physically graceless apart from her smile. It was a smile one seldom saw, but when it came it was brilliant, open, defenceless, like an adoring girl’s. Otherwise she was plain.

That night, she could not keep up her grand manner. Suddenly she broke out: ‘I’m afraid you will all have to put up with my presence till Paul struggles free.’

‘That’s very nice for us all,’ said Arthur Brown.

‘Thank you, Tutor,’ said Mrs Jago, back for a second on her pedestal again.

She had embarrassed Jago’s friends ever since he married her. She became assertive in any conversation. She was determined not to be overlooked. She seized on insults, tracked them down, recounted them with a masochistic gusto that never flagged. She had cost her husband great suffering.

She had cost him great suffering, but not in the way one might expect. He was a man who gained much admiration from women. With his quick sympathy, his emotional power, he could have commanded all kinds of love. He liked the compliment, but he wanted none of them. He had loved his wife for twenty-five years. They had had no children. He loved her still. He could still be jealous of that woman, who, to everyone outside, seemed so grotesque. I had seen her play on that jealousy and give him pain.

But that was not his deepest suffering about her. They had married when he was a young don, and she his pupil. That relation, which can always so easily fill itself with emotion, had never died. He wanted people to recognize her quality, how gifted she was, how much held back by her crippling sensitiveness. He wanted us to see that she was gallant, and misjudged; he was burning to explain that she went through acuter pain than anyone, when the temperament she could not control drove his friends away. His love remained love, and added pity: and the sight of her in a mood which others dismissed as grotesque still had the power to take and rend his heart.

He suffered for her, and for himself. He loathed having to make apologies for his wife. He loathed all his imagination could invent of the words that were spoken behind his back — ‘poor Jago…’ But even those wounds to his pride he could have endured, if she had been happier. He would still, after twenty-five years, have humbled himself for her as for no one else — just to see her content. As he told me on the night we first knew the Master was dying, ‘one is dreadfully vulnerable through those one loves’.