Charles Snow - The Masters

‘Chrystal wanted the chance to say you ought to be Master,’ said Roy.

‘So he told me.’

‘It’s quite true.’

‘It should have been obvious to him that I could not conceivably be a candidate in these circumstances,’ said Brown. ‘The only result of my name being mentioned is to stand in Jago’s light. It can only mean dissensions in Jago’s party and no responsible man can see it otherwise. I am very sorry that Chrystal should have seen fit to use my name for that purpose. And I am obliged to tell you that I am sorry you two associated yourselves with it.’

‘You ought to believe that we mean what we say,’ I replied.

‘I realize you didn’t mind paying me a compliment,’ said Brown, as though making an effort to be fair. ‘What I can’t make out is how anyone as astute as you can have lost your head and behaved in this irresponsible fashion. Surely you can see that nothing is gained by paying useless compliments when things are as delicate as they are now, three days away from the event. It is nothing more nor less than playing into the hands of the other side. It looks as though I was being made a tool of.’

‘Have you told Chrystal?’

‘I have. I’m not prepared to have people think that I’m being made a tool of.’

I had never seen him so completely shaken out of reason and tolerance and charity — not even when Pilbrow defected. His whole picture of ‘decent behaviour’ had been thrown aside. He liked to think of himself as the manager of the college, the power behind the meetings; but, as I had often noticed, as for instance in the first approach to Luke, he was always scrupulous in keeping within the rules; he was not easy unless he was well thought of and in good repute. It upset him to imagine that people were not thinking that he had planned an intrigue with his friend, so as to get in as a last-minute compromise. It upset him equally if they thought he was just a cats-paw. In the end, he had an overwhelmingly strong sense of his own proper dignity and of the behaviour he wanted the world to see.

He was also, of course, the most realistic of men: he saw the position with clear eyes, and it made him angrier still with Chrystal. He knew very well that he was not being offered even a remote chance: he felt he was just being asked to save Chrystal’s conscience. And that was the most maddening of his thoughts: that was the one which made him come and reproach Roy and me as though he could not forgive us. For Brown could see — no one more sharply — the conflict, vacillation, temptation, and gathering purpose of his friend. He could not control him now; for the first time in twenty years he found his own will being crossed by Chrystal. Chrystal might do more yet: in moments of foresight Brown could see the worst of ends. When Chrystal came to him with this gesture, Brown felt that he had lost.

He went away without any softening towards Roy or me, telling us that he must write round to each fellow, in order to say that in no circumstances would he let his name be considered. I suspected that he had shown his anger more nakedly to us than to Chrystal. He had controlled himself with Chrystal — then had to come and take it out of us.

As soon as he had gone, Roy looked at me.

‘Old boy,’ he said, ‘I fancy Jago’s dished.’

‘Yes.’

‘We need to do what we can. If we can entice someone over, we might save it.’

We decided to try Despard-Smith and Pilbrow that same day, and went together to Pilbrow’s rooms after tea. We had no success at all. Roy used all his blandishments, the blandishments which came to him by nature, but which he could also use by art. He was as lively and varied as he was to women, in turns teasing, serious, attentive, flattering, mocking. He invited Pilbrow to visit him in Berlin in the spring. Pilbrow enjoyed the performance, he liked handsome young men, but he did not give a foot: it seemed to him impossible now to vote for anyone but Crawford. I took up the political argument, Roy lapped the old man with all his tricks of charm. But we got nowhere, except that he pressed us both to dine with an exiled writer in London, the night after the election.

We walked through the court. Roy was grinning at his own expense.

‘I’ve lost face,’ he said.

‘You’re getting old,’ I said.

‘You’d better try Despard by yourself,’ said Roy. ‘If I can’t get off with old Eustace, I’m damned if I can with Despard.’

It was a fact that Despard-Smith looked on him with mystified suspicion, and so after hall I went alone. Despard-Smith’s rooms were in the third court, on the next staircase to Nightingale’s and near Jago’s house. He had not been to hall that night, and on the chest outside the door lay the dishes of a meal sent up from the kitchen. His outer door was not closed, but there was no one in his main room, and the fire had gone out. I tapped on the inside door: there was a gruff shout ‘who’s there?’ When I answered, no reply came for some while: then there were movements inside, and a key turned in the lock. Despard-Smith looked out at me with bloodshot, angry eyes.

‘I’m very busy. I’m very busy, Eliot.’

‘I only want to keep you five minutes.’

‘You don’t realize how busy I am. People here have never shown me the slightest consideration.’

His breath smelt of liquor; instead of being solemn, grave, minatory, he was just angry.

‘I should like a word about the election,’ I said. He glared at me. ‘You’d better come in for two minutes,’ he said in a grating tone.

His inner room was dark, over-furnished by the standards of the twentieth century, packed with cupboards, tables, glass-fronted cases full of collections of pottery. Photographs, many of them of the undergraduates of his youth, in boaters and wearing large moustaches, hung all over the walls. By his old armchair, which had projecting headrests, stood a table covered with green baize, and on the table were a book and an empty tumbler. Bleakly he said: ‘Can I offer you a n-nightcap?’ and opened a cupboard by the fireplace. I had a glimpse of a great array of empty whisky bottles; he brought out one half-full and another glass.

He poured me a small whisky and himself a very large one, and he took a long gulp while we were still standing up.

He was not drunk but he was inflamed by drink. There had been rumours for years that he drank heavily in private, but he had no friends in college, his life was lonely, no one knew for certain how he lived it. Gossip had a knack of not touching him closely; perhaps he was too spare and harsh a figure to be talked about much. His natural authority seemed to protect him, even in his absence.

‘I wondered if you were happy about the election,’ I said.

‘Certainly not,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘I take an extremely grave view of the future of this college.’

‘It isn’t too late—’ I began.

‘It has been too late for many years,’ said Despard-Smith ominously.

I said something about Crawford and Jago, and for a moment my hopes sprang up at his reply.

‘Jago has sacrificed himself for the college, Eliot. Just as every college officer has to. Whereas Crawford has not sacrificed himself, he has become a distinguished man of science. On academic grounds his election will do us good in the outside world. I needn’t say that I’ve always been seriously disturbed at the prospect of electing a bolshevik.’

I had not time to be amused by that term for Crawford, the sturdy middle-class scientific liberal: I had seized on the gleam of hope, was forcing the comparison between the two, when Despard-Smith brushed my question aside, and stared at me with fierce bloodshot eyes.

‘The college has brought it upon itself,’ he said. ‘They’ve chosen not to pay attention to my warnings, and they can only expect disastrous consequences. They did it with their eyes open when they chose Royce. That was the f-first step down the slippery slope.’ He put a finger inside his dog collar and then took it out with a click. He said in a grating, accusing tone: ‘They ought to have asked me to take on the burden. They said I wasn’t known outside the college. That was the thanks I got for sacrificing myself for thirty years.’