Charles Snow - The Masters

‘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.

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.