Charles Snow - The Masters

And I felt something else. His vigour was marvellous and enviable: I wished I could imagine being so radiant at seventy-four; and yet, for the first time, I saw him overtaken by age.

A few years before he would not have said of Jago, as though human feelings were tiresome, ‘he’ll recover in time’. But in fact he had come to the point where human feelings were tiresome — no, not tiresome so much as remote, trivial, a little comic. That was the sign of age. Pilbrow had been a man of strong affections. But those affections died off, except the strongest of all; as he became old, he could only feel moved by the great themes of his life; all else cooled down, although he struck no one as old, certainly not himself. And where he did not feel himself, he lost his sympathy for others’ feelings. They did not seem important. Very little seemed important. Just as a mature man dismisses calf love with a smile, because he can no longer feel it (though it may once have caused him the sharpest pain), so Pilbrow, that vigorous old man, smiled indifferently at the triumphs and sufferings of the middle-aged. Suddenly one encountered blankness at a point where one expected sympathy and response. He looked just as he had looked ten years before; he could still feel passionately about his deepest concerns; but those concerns were narrowing, and one knew at last that he was growing old.

At times he knew it. At times he could not help but know it. So be clung more ardently to that which moved him still. It was that which died last. For Pilbrow, who had befriended so many, who had spent a lifetime in good causes, who had fought with body and mind, it was the picture of himself still ‘throwing in his weight’ on the side of light. That rang out of his last words. In them one heard the essence of the man: he was stripped by age of all that did not matter: and age revealed his vital core. In a sense, he was self-centred — more so than many men whose lives were selfish by the side of his. He was sweet-dispositioned, he was the most generous of men, but nothing could make him forget his picture of himself. That night I was too much upset to care, but later on it made me feel more brotherlike towards him. I did not see in him the goodness that some did; but I felt the comradeship of common flesh, as well as great tenderness, for the gallant, lubricious, indomitable, and generous old man, with the sturdy self-regard that nothing on earth could move.

He did not realize that I was deeply upset by his news. He went on talking about a Croatian writer, and it was getting on for four when he said that he was looking forward to a good long night.

I was too much disturbed to go to bed myself. I decided to wake Roy Calvert; it was a strange reversal of roles, when I recalled the nights of melancholy in which he had woken me. In his sitting-room the embers were still glowing. He must have had a large fire and sat up late. Proofs of the liturgy lay stacked on his lowest table, and I noticed the dedicatory page IN MEMORY OF VERNON ROYCE.

He was peacefully asleep. He had not known insomnia since the summer, and always when he slept it was as quietly as a child. It took some time to waken him.

‘Are you part of a dream?’ he asked. They were his first coherent words.

‘No.’

‘Let me go to sleep. Rescue my books yourself. Is it a fire? I need to go to sleep.’

He looked tousled and flushed, and, though his hair was already thinning, very young.

‘I’m very worried,’ I said, and he shook himself into consciousness. He jumped out of bed, and put on a dressing-gown while I told him of Pilbrow.

‘Bad. Bad,’ said Roy.

He was still sleepy, but we moved into the sitting-room, and he warmed himself over the remnants of the fire.

‘What is our move, old boy?’

‘We may be losing. I’m afraid for Jago now.’

‘Just so. That gets us nowhere. What is our move?’

He took out his box of bricks and arranged the sides again. ‘7–6 for Crawford. That’s the worst it’s been.’

‘We’ve got nothing to lose if we tackle any of them. I wish we had before. We certainly ought to try everything we know on old Gay,’ I said.

‘Just so. I like the sound of that. Ah. Indeed,’ said Roy. He smiled at me. ‘Don’t be too worried, old boy.’

‘We’ll try anything, but the chances are against us.’

‘I’m sorry for poor old Jago. You’re frightfully sorry, aren’t you? He’s got hold of your imagination. Never mind. We’ll do our damnedest.’ Roy was enjoying the prospect of action. Then he smiled at me again. ‘It’s extremely funny for me to be consoling you.’

Although I had had only a few hours’ sleep, I was lying wakeful when Bidwell called me. He drew the blind and let in the grey half-light of the December morning: I turned away, longing for sleep again, I wanted to shirk the day.

Bidwell had not lit the fire in my sitting-room early enough; there were only spurts of flame among the great lumps of coal. Smoke blew out of the grate, and it struck cold and raw in the lofty room. I sat down heavy-heartedly to my breakfast. With an effort, I roused myself to call down the stairs for Bidwell. He entered with his usual smile, intimate, deferential, and sly. I sent him to find whether Pilbrow was up yet, and he returned with news that Pilbrow had pinned a note on his door saying he proposed to sleep until midday and was not to be disturbed.

I knew that, as soon as he was about, he would be punctilious in warning his former side of his change of vote. His views were eccentric for an old man, but his manners had stayed gentle and nineteenth century; the only grumble I had ever heard him make about his young friends of the left was that, though he was sure there was some good reason for it, he could not for the life of him understand why they found it necessary to be so rude.

It was certain that Jago, Brown, and Chrystal would receive his note of apology by the end of the day. I did not want to break more bad news to Brown; over breakfast, I decided to leave it, he would find out from Pilbrow’s note soon enough. Then I thought I had better face the trouble, and sent out Bidwell with another message, asking Brown to visit me as soon as he came into college.

He was busy with the scholarship examination, and it was not until eleven o’clock that he arrived.

‘Is it anything serious? Have you heard about a meeting?’ he asked at once.

I told him of Pilbrow’s visit. His face flushed an angry purple, and he cursed with a virulence I had never heard before. He ended up: ‘It’s all his confounded politics. I always thought that he’d never grow up. It’s bad enough having people with cranky opinions in the college, saving your presence, Eliot, but it’s a damned scandal when they interfere with serious things. It’s a damned scandal. I shall never think the same of Pilbrow.’

It was the first time in the whole year that he had lost his balance. At last he said, with regretful bitterness: ‘I suppose we may as well tell Chrystal. I should have hoped at one time that he would take it as much amiss as I do.’

Chrystal listened to the news with attention, and received it quite differently from Brown.

‘Well. That’s that,’ he said. ‘I can’t say I’m much surprised.’

His response was mixed from the first moment — mixed, with his soft-hearted concern for his friend’s misery, his guilt at his friend’s anger, his delight at a hidden plan, his strong but obscure gratification.

‘It’s just as well I established contact yesterday,’ he said triumphantly. ‘We hadn’t told you, Eliot. Brown was not happy about going on. But some people on the other side would welcome a meeting. Of everyone who wants to come. Throwing everything into the melting pot. I told Brown yesterday it was our best way out. Now I’m sure of it.’