Charles Snow - The Masters

‘You’ve always tried to make Paul love you more,’ said Roy. ‘You’ve never believed that he really loves you, have you? Yet he does.’

‘How can he?’

Roy smiled: ‘And you love him very much.’

‘I’ve never been good enough for him,’ she cried.

She was wretched beyond anything we could say to her: disappointment pierced her, then shame, then self-disgust. She had looked forward so naively, so snobbishly to the Lodge; she had boasted of it, she had planned her parties, she had written to her family. Could it still be taken away? We guessed that Jago had shielded her from all the doubts so far. Could it be taken away through her follies? She was sickened by shame; she had ‘made a fool of herself’ and now they might bring it against her. She did not feel guilty remorse, she was too deeply innocent at heart for that. She felt instead shame and self-hatred, because men spoke ill of her. She had never believed that she could be loved — that was the pain which twisted her nature. Now she felt persecuted, unloved, lost, alone. Had Paul always pretended to love her out of pity? She believed even that — despite the devotion, despite the proofs.

No one could love her, she knew ever since she was a girl, she never had the faintest confidence of being loved. If she could have had a little confidence, she thought, she might have given Paul some comfort; she would not have been driven to inflict on him the woes of a hypochondriac, the venom of a shrew, the faithlessness of one who had to find attention. He would never know how abjectly she worshipped him. All she had done was damage him (she saw the letter in her hand) so much that she could never make it up.

It was long past the time when Roy and I had planned to start for Gay’s, and we had to give up our project for that day. Nothing we said was any help, but it was unthinkable to leave her alone. At last she invited us back to her house for tea. She walked between us through the courts. On our way, we were confronted by Nightingale, walking out of college. His hand moved up to his hat, but she looked away, with a fixed stare. We heard his footsteps dying away. She said almost triumphantly: ‘They’ve cut me often enough.’

In their drawing-room Jago was standing, and the moment we entered he put his arm round her shoulders.

‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you leave word where you’d gone? You mustn’t disappear without trace What is the trouble?’

‘What is the trouble with you?’ she cried. He had been standing in the twilight, but she had switched on the light as we went in. His face was haggard, his eyes sunken: even his lips were pallid.

‘You two know by now?’ said Jago. We nodded. He turned to his wife, his arm resting on her.

‘Dearest, I’m afraid that I’m going to make you unhappy. It seems that I shall be rejected by the college.’

‘Is this my fault?’

‘How could it be your fault?’ Jago replied, but her question, which pierced one like a scream, was not addressed to him. I answered: ‘It’s nothing to do with anyone we’ve been talking about. It’s quite different. Old Eustace Pilbrow has crossed over — for political reasons. He can’t even have read the flysheet when he decided, and he’d be the last to take any notice—’

‘Thank God,’ she said, laying her head on Jago’s shoulder. ‘If they don’t give it to you after all, Paul, I couldn’t bear it to be because of me.’

‘Does it concern us,’ asked Jago bitterly, ‘the precise reason why I may be thrown aside?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ she said. She rounded on me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

I said: ‘I couldn’t — until I was sure Paul knew.’

‘Do you realize what it means? Do you realize that they’re hoping to humiliate me now?’ Jago cried.

‘They couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Nothing could. Nothing could touch you. You’re big enough to laugh at anything they do. They know you’re bigger than they are. That’s why they fear you so.’

Jago smiled — was it to relieve her, as a parent pretends to an anxious child? Or had she brought him comfort?

He kissed her, and then said to Roy and me: ‘I am sorry to receive you like this. But the news has knocked me out more than I expected.’

‘We’re not giving up,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Jago, ‘that I shouldn’t ask you to.’

He seemed suddenly tired, passive, and resigned. He sat down in his armchair as though the suffering had lost its edge but had worn him out. He enquired after tea, and Alice rang for it. Suddenly he said to her: ‘Why did you ask whether it was your fault? What do you know about the flysheet?’

She began to speak, then said: ‘No, Paul, I can’t—’ and turned to us for aid. I told Jago that someone, presumably Nightingale, had made sure that she should see the flysheet: she was afraid there might be more attacks upon her: she thought they wanted her to persuade Jago to withdraw; she had been in anguish for Jago’s sake.

Very softly, Jago exclaimed.

Then he spoke to her in a quiet, familiar tone.

‘I expect to be rejected now. Would you like me to withdraw?’

Tears had come to her eyes, but she did not cry. She could hardly speak. At last she managed to say: ‘No. You must go on.’

‘You knew what you had to say.’ Jago gave her a smile of love.

When that smile faded, his expression was still sad and exhausted: but in his eyes, as he spoke again, this time to Roy and me, there was a flash of energy, a glitter of satanic pride.

‘I’ve cursed the day that I ever exposed myself to these humiliations,’ he said. ‘I knew you and my other friends meant well, but you were not doing me a kindness when you persuaded me to stand. Whether the college rejects me or takes me, I am certain that I will not stand for another office so long as I live.’ He paused. ‘But I am equally certain that if those people hope to get me to withdraw through doing harm to my wife, I will stay in this election while I’ve got one single man to vote for me.’

He added: ‘And I shall leave nothing to chance. I shall tell my rival so.’

After Jago cried out that he ‘would tell his rival so,’ he asked Roy to find from the kitchens whether Crawford was dining that night. The answer was yes. ‘That is convenient,’ said Jago.

Crawford arrived in the combination room at the same time as I did, and several of his party were already there. They were drinking their sherry in front of the fire, and there was an air of well-being, of triumph, of satisfied gloating. Crawford greeted them with his impersonal cordiality, and me as well. He seemed more than ever secure, not in the least surprised by what had happened; he took it for granted that it was right.

‘Eliot,’ Nightingale addressed me. He had not spoken to me directly for months.

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose you’ve heard about Pilbrow.’

‘Of course.’

‘I had a note from him this afternoon,’ Crawford announced.

‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘It’s very civil of him to have written,’ said Crawford — and went on to talk without hurry of a new theory of electrical impulses in nerves. Francis Getliffe was making a suggestion for an experiment, Nightingale was listening with the strained attention that nowadays came over him in Crawford’s presence, when Jago threw open the door and said: ‘Crawford. I should like you to spare me a minute.’

Everyone looked up at Jago. He did not say good evening, his eyes did not leave Crawford.

‘Very well,’ said Crawford, not quite at ease. ‘Can we talk here, or would you prefer to go outside?’

‘Nothing I have to say is secret,’ Jago replied. ‘I’m obliged to say it to you, because I’m not certain to whom it should be said by right.’