Charles Snow - The Masters

‘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?

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.’