Charles Snow - The Masters

‘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.’