Charles Snow - The Masters

Crawford rose and said. ‘Very well’ again. By the fire Despard-Smith and Getliffe made a pretence at conversation, but none of us could shut our ears to Jago’s words.

‘I do not hold you responsible for the outrages of your supporters, but I hope that you cannot be utterly indifferent to them.’

‘You’re going too fast for me,’ said Crawford. ‘I don’t begin to know what you’re referring to.’

‘I shall explain myself.’

‘I should much prefer it,’ said Crawford, looking up into Jago’s eyes, ‘if we could keep this business on a friendly basis.’

‘When you hear what I have to say,’ said Jago, ‘you will realize that is no longer easy.’

Jago’s temper smouldered and suddenly flared out and smouldered again. It was different from one of his outbursts of indignation; no one in that room had seen this consuming rage. As they faced it, most men would have been uneasy; Crawford may have been, but his voice was steady and sensible. Angrily, I had to confess that he was holding his own.

‘If that turns out to be true, I shall be very sorry for it, Jago,’ he remarked.

‘If you are elected, none of my friends would suggest that your wife was not entirely fit to adorn the Lodge,’ Jago said.

‘I should be very much surprised to hear it.’

‘I was a little surprised to hear that my wife had received a copy of the flysheet written by your supporter Nightingale.’

Jago’s words were not loud, but Crawford stood silent in front of him.

‘You have seen the flysheet I mean?’

‘I am afraid that I have,’ said Crawford.

‘Can you faintly imagine what it would mean to a woman?’

Crawford stirred.

‘Jago, I very much regret that this should have happened. I shall write to your wife personally, and tell her so.’

‘That is not enough.’

‘It is all I can do, unfortunately.’

‘No,’ said Jago. ‘You can discover through what source the flysheet reached her. I may tell you that it was deliberately sent.’

Jago was at the limit of his anger. Crawford shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can understand your feelings, but you exaggerate my responsibility. I am sincerely sorry that your wife should suffer through any circumstances in which I am even remotely concerned. I consider it my duty to tell her so. But I don’t consider it my duty to become a private detective. I have consented to be a candidate at this election, but I have taken no part whatever in any of the personal complications which have taken place, and I might take this opportunity of saying that I deprecate them.’

Jago was quietened for an instant, by the solidity of that reply. Then he said: ‘This attack on my wife is intended to make me withdraw.

‘I can’t express any view on intentions in which I am not interested,’ said Crawford.

‘If you are not interested, your supporters may be,’ said Jago. ‘I shall protect my wife in all ways open to reason but also, while any of my colleagues are prepared to give me their votes, I shall remain a candidate for the Mastership.’

There was no reply from Crawford, and the whole room was silent, for the conversation round the fire had died right away.

The bell began to peal for dinner, and Crawford said, as though anxious for a cordial commonplace: ‘Are you coming into hall, Jago?’

‘No,’ said Jago. ‘I shall dine with my wife.’

There was a constrained hush as he walked out. Crawford was frowning, the smooth composed impassive look had gone. He sat next to me in hall, did not speak until the fish, and then complained: ‘Speaking as a reasonably even-tempered person, I have the strongest possible objection to being forced to listen to those who insist on flying off the handle.’

‘I’m glad he spoke to you,’ I said.

‘It’s no concern of mine. He ought to know that I have never lent an ear to local tittle-tattle. I’m not prepared to begin now, and I shall wash my hands of the whole stupid business.’

But Crawford was, in his fashion, a man of justice and fair dealing, and he was shaken. He took the chair in the combination room with a preoccupied expression, when Despard-Smith left the hall. None of us asked for wine that night, and Crawford lit his pipe over the coffee.

‘It does look,’ he said, ‘as though somehow Mrs Jago has come into possession of that circular of yours, Nightingale. I must say that it is an unfortunate business.’

‘Very unfortunate — but I fancy she might have benefited if she’d learned what people thought of her before.’ Nightingale smiled.

‘Naturally,’ said Crawford, ‘it can’t have been sent to her by anyone connected with the college. Every one of us would take a grave view of an action of that kind.’

His tone was uncomfortable, and no one replied for some moments. Then Nightingale said again.

‘Is there anything to show,’ he asked, ‘that she wasn’t looking through her husband’s letters on the quiet, and found one that wasn’t meant for her?’

I looked at him.

‘I believe she did not read your note by accident,’ I said.

‘How did you form that opinion?’ he said.

‘I spent the afternoon with her just after she’d read it.’

‘That’s as may be. What does it prove?’

‘She was so miserable that I believe what she said,’ I replied.

‘Do you really expect us to be impressed by that?’

‘I expect you to know that it was the truth.’

His eyes stared past mine, he did not move or blench. Nothing touched him except his own conflict. Find the key to that, and one could tear him open with a word. Touch his envy, remind him of the Royal Society, his other failures, and he was stabbed by suffering. But to everything else he was invulnerable. He did not see any of his actions as ‘bad’. So long as he did not feel ‘put upon’ as weak, he did not worry about his actions. He regarded his attempts to blacken Jago’s circle as a matter of course. He was not at peace enough to go in for the luxuries of conscience.

‘I can’t say your claim is completely convincing, Eliot,’ said Crawford. ‘She may have enemies, nothing to do with the college, who wanted to play an unpleasant practical joke.’

‘Is that how you see it?’ I said.

‘Perhaps it is a storm in a teacup,’ said Crawford. ‘After all she is just going through an awkward time of life. And Jago has always been over-emotional. Still we must try and calm things down. I have occasionally felt that this election has generated more heat than light. We’ve got to see that people know where to stop.’

Then he laid down his pipe, and went on: ‘I always think that the danger with any group of men like a college is that we tend to get on each other’s nerves. I believe that everyone, particularly the unmarried fellows, ought to be compelled by statute to spend three months abroad each year. And also — and this I do suggest to you all as a practicable proposition — I think we ought to set for ourselves an almost artificially high standard of manners and behaviour. I suggest to you that, in any intimate body of men, it is important to have the rules laid down.’

I noticed that as Crawford delivered his steady impersonal reproof, Nightingale was watching him with anxious attention and nodding his head. It was more than attention, it was devoted deference.

As Crawford rose to go, he said: ‘Nightingale, are you busy? You might walk part of the way home with me.’

The moment he heard the invitation, Nightingale’s harsh, strained face broke into a smile that held charm, pleasure, and a youthful desire to please.

I was to blame, I told myself, for not having seen it before. No doubt he still craved Crawford’s support for getting into the Royal Society, but somehow that longing for a favour had become transmuted into a genuine human feeling. He would do anything for Crawford now.