Charles Snow - The Masters

I said a word or two, but he emptied his glass and faced me with greater anger still.

‘I’ve had a disappointing life, Eliot,’ he said. ‘It’s not been a happy life. I’ve not been given the recognition I had a right to expect. It’s a scandalous story. It would not be to the credit of this college if I let everyone know how I’d been treated. I’m looking back on my life now, and I tell you that it’s been one long disappointment. And I lay it all to the blame of the people here.’

From another man, the cry might have been softened by pathos. But there was nothing soft about Despard-Smith at seventy, drinking in secret, attacking me with his disappointment. ‘I’ve had a disappointing life’: he did not say it with the sad warmth of self-pity, but aggressively, certain that he was in the right.

‘You’re going to let them elect Crawford now?’ I said.

‘They ought to have asked me to take on the burden ten years ago. I tell you, this college would have been a different place.’

‘Wouldn’t Jago be more likely to take your line?’

‘He’s done better as Tutor than I bargained for,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘But he’s got no head for affairs.’

‘That needn’t rule him out—’

‘Royce had no head for affairs, and they chose him,’ said Despard-Smith.

‘I’m still surprised you should vote for Crawford.’

‘He’s made a name for himself. That’s good enough for a Master. They wouldn’t choose me because I wasn’t known outside the college. Crawford will do. No one can deny that he will do. And if people don’t like him when they’ve got him,’ he said, ‘well, they’ll have to l-lump it for the next fifteen years.’

He fetched out the bottle again and poured himself another drink. This time he did not offer me any. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Eliot, that I’ve got a soft spot for Jago. If I were voting on personal grounds, I would choose him before the other man. But the other man has made his name. And Jago hasn’t. He’s sacrificed himself for the college. If a man takes a college office, he makes a disastrous choice. He can’t expect people to recognize him. Jago ought to be prepared to face the consequences of his sacrifice. He ought to know what happened to me.’

My hope had faded. At last I understood something of why he had stuck to Crawford from the beginning — Crawford, the ‘bolshevik’. Despard-Smith had loved power so much in his austere fashion: it thickened the blood in his veins. He had loved his years as bursar, he had done what pleased him most, even though he believed that he was ‘sacrificing himself’. But it rankled still that they had not made him Master. It seemed to have struck him as a surprise, as a physical shock. I wondered whether it was from those days, ten years ago, that he started his solitary evenings with the whisky bottle.

Unluckily for Jago, the old man saw in him his own misfortune re-created. He did like Jago; he was starved of affection, he was not without the power to enjoy friendship, though he could not take the first steps himself. But seeing that Jago might retrace his old distress, Despard-Smith wished simply and starkly that it should happen so. He wished it more because he liked the man. It was right that Jago should sacrifice himself. He thought of his own ‘disappointing life’. He thought of Jago, treated as he had been. And he felt a tinge of sadistic warmth.

There was nothing to do but wait. Both Roy and I had a sense of the end now, but we were tantalized by a fluctuating hope. On paper (if Gay did not fail us) we could still count a majority for Jago. If it were to be broken, we must get news at any hour. It could not be long. What was Chrystal doing, now that even he had to abandon the notion of a third candidate? He had to face the struggle of Jago and Crawford again. No news seemed good news. Throughout the morning of December 18th, forty-eight hours from the election, throughout that whole day, we heard nothing. I did not see either Chrystal or Brown, although Brown’s letter arrived. It was much more mellifluous and stately than his outburst in the flesh, and said that ‘though any member of the college ought to be honoured even to have his name mentioned as a possible candidate for the Mastership, I must after prolonged consideration and with many expressions of thanks ask my friends and colleagues to permit me to withdraw.’

That was all the news that day. It seemed that bargainings and confidential talks had ceased.

In the evening Jago came to my room.

‘Have you heard anything fresh?’ His tone was jaunty, but under his eyes the skin was stained and dry.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘I want you to tell me anything you know. The very moment it happens,’ he said, menacing me with the force of his anxiety. ‘This is a bad enough business without having to wonder whether one’s friends are keeping anything back.’

‘I’ll keep nothing back,’ I promised.

‘I must be an unendurable nuisance to you.’ He smiled. ‘So there really isn’t any news? When I lay awake last night, I thought of all the absolutely inexplicable things I had watched the college do—’

‘Can’t you sleep?’

‘Never mind,’ said Jago. ‘I shall sleep in a couple of nights. So good old Arthur Brown wasn’t prepared to be made a convenience of. That takes us back where we started. They really have got to make the bizarre choice between me and my opponent. And nothing has happened to upset the balance, so far as you know?’

His moods were not stable, he was strained and expectant, fervent and hostile, at odd moments sarcastically detached, all in the same excitement of the nerves. Above all, his optimism had not left him. To his wife I was certain he maintained that he would get in. Some men would have defended themselves by saying that they expected the worst. Jago in his proud and reckless spirit was not able to protect himself by such a dodge. There was something nakedly defenceless about his optimism. He seemed quite without the armour, the thickening of the skin, that most men take on insensibly as the years pass.

I wanted to guard him, but he resisted the slightest word of doubt. He listened and thanked me, but his eyes were flashing with an excitement that I could not touch. He knew very little about what had happened at the meeting in Chrystal’s room, and even less about the cumulative disagreement between Brown and Chrystal. He did not want to know of it. That evening he still had hope, and as he lay sleepless through the long night to come it would steady his heart.

We went in the combination room together before hall; there were several men already waiting, but no one spoke. The constraint took hold of us like a field of force. Despard-Smith was there, Francis Getliffe, Nightingale, Roy Calvert. It was not that they had been talking of Jago, and were embarrassed to see him. It was not the constraint of a conversation left in the air — but simply the paralysing weight that comes upon men at a late stage of their struggle. Even Roy’s sparkle was borne down under it. When we took our places in hall, there was still almost no word spoken. Despard-Smith sat at our head, solemnly asking for toast, muted and grave by contrast to the inflamed old man of the night before.

Then Luke bustled in late. He hurled himself into the seat next Roy Calvert’s, and swallowed a plate of soup at an enormous pace. He looked up and smiled round at us indiscriminately — at me, at Francis, at Nightingale. I had never seen a face more radiant with joy. One did not notice the pleasant youthful features: all one saw was this absolute, certain and effulgent happiness, and it warmed one to the bottom of the heart.

‘Well?’ I could not resist smiling broadly back.