Charles Snow - The Masters

‘I am rather anxious to see him before tonight,’ said Brown, looking at me with his acute peering glance.

‘If I see him,’ I said, ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘I should be very much obliged if you would,’ said Brown. ‘Of course, I can always catch him at his house late tonight.’

His manner was deliberately prosaic and comfortable. He was showing less outward sign of strain than any of us; when he was frayed inside, he slowed down his always measured speech, brought out the steady commonplaces like an armour, reduced all he could to the matter-of-fact.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I’d better be off to my rooms soon. I’ve still got some letters to write about the scholarships. Oh, there’s just one thing. I suppose you don’t happen to have talked to Jago today?’

I said that I had seen Jago in hall the night before.

‘How did you think he was?’

‘Hopeful. So hopeful that it frightened me.’

‘I know what you mean. I had an hour with him this morning. He was just the same. I tried to give him a little warning, but I couldn’t make any impression at all.’

‘If he doesn’t get in? — ’ I said.

‘If he doesn’t get in,’ said Brown steadily, ‘I don’t believe he’ll ever be the same man again.’

He frowned and said: ‘It’s annoying to think that, if we were certain Chrystal was going to be sensible, we should have a decent prospect of tomorrow turning out all right. It’s a tantalizing thought.’

Then he left me, and I went to have tea with Roy. I returned to my rooms through rain which had set in for the night, and I settled by the fire, not wanting to move until dinner time. But I had not been there half an hour when the door opened.

‘Good evening, Eliot,’ said Chrystal in his sharpest parade ground voice. He was wearing a mackintosh, but it was only slightly damp at the shoulders, and his shoes were clean. He had not been walking much that day.

‘I want a word with you.’

I asked him to sit down, but he would not even take off his coat.

‘I’m busy. I’ve got to have a word with Brown.’ He was brusquer than I had ever heard him.

‘He’s in his rooms,’ I said.

‘I’ll go in three minutes. I shan’t take long with either of you. I shan’t stay long with Brown.’

He stared at me with bold, assertive, defiant eyes. ‘I’ve decided to vote for Crawford,’ he said. ‘He’s the better man.’

Like all news that one has feared hearing, it sounded flat.

‘It has been a lamentable exhibition,’ said Chrystal. ‘I tell you, Eliot, we’ve only just missed making a serious mistake. I saw it in time. We nearly passed Crawford over. I never liked it. He’s the right man.’

I began to argue, but Chrystal cut me short: ‘I haven’t time to discuss it. I’m satisfied with Crawford. I went round to see him this morning. I’ve been with him all day. I’ve heard his views on the college. I like them. It’s been a satisfactory day.’

‘I remember you saying—’

‘I’m sorry, Eliot. I haven’t time to discuss it. I’ve never been happy about this election. It’s been lamentable. I oughtn’t to have left it so late.’

‘It’s very hard to leave our party at this notice,’ I said angrily.

‘I joined it against my better judgement,’ he snapped.

‘That doesn’t affect it. You’re contracted to Jago. Have you told Brown?’

‘I didn’t want to write to Jago until I’d told Brown. I owe Brown an explanation. We’ve never had to explain anything to each other before. I’m sorry about that. It can’t be helped.’ He looked at me.

‘You don’t think I mind sending a note to Jago, do you? He would never have done. Not in a hundred years. I’m saving us all from a calamity. You don’t see it now, but you’ll thank me later on.’

He kept his coat on, he would not sit down, but he stood talking for some time. He did not wish to face Brown, he longed for the next hour to be past, he was putting off the struggle: not through direct fear, the fear that some men are seized with when they cross their wills against a stronger one, but because he was too soft-hearted to carry bad news, too uncertain of his own part to display it before intimate eyes.

He did not like the part he had insensibly slipped into. Just as Jago hated the path of ambition which, once he had begun it, led him from step to step, each one springing naturally from the last, until he was tempted to humiliate himself in front of Nightingale — in the same way Chrystal hated the path of compromise, which, step by step, each one plausible, enjoyable, almost inevitable, had brought him now to quarrel with his friend and break his contract. It was all so natural. Angrily he justified himself to me, said ‘you’ll all thank me later on’. He had been torn one way and the other, he had drifted into the compromise. He had never been master of the events round him. It was that which he could not forgive.

He had never been fond of Jago, had never liked to think of him as Master, had only joined in to please Arthur Brown. Then, liking the feel of power, he had tried to find ways out. He had revelled in making the candidates vote for each other. Yet even so he had not struggled free from his indecisions. Was he too much under Brown’s influence? His affection was hearty and simple; but his longing to be masterful was intense. Was he right in sacrificing his judgement, just to please Brown? Even here, where he felt each day that Brown had made a mistake?

For Chrystal had come to feel that electing Jago would be a mistake; it would hinder all that Chrystal wanted, for himself and for the college. With Jago, there would be no chance of the college gaining in riches and reputation among solid men.

As the months went on, Chrystal found he could endure the thought of Jago less and less. He felt free in the conferences with the other side: in the pacts with them, the search for a third candidate, he could assert himself. Every time he was with the other side he felt that the whole election lay in his hands. In those meetings, in the hours at night with Jago’s opponents, he came into his own again.

And how much, I wondered, was due to hurt vanity — urgent in all men, and as much so in Chrystal as in most? Had he been piqued so intolerably when Jago defended Winslow and laughed at Sir Horace and the benefaction — had he been piqued so intolerably that it turned the balance? Envy and pique and vanity, all the passions of self-regard: you could not live long in a society of men and not see them often weigh down the rest. How much of my own objection to Crawford was because he once spoke of me as a barrister manqué ?

I did not know, perhaps I never should know, on what day Chrystal faced himself and saw that he would not vote for Jago. Certainly not in the first steps which, without his realizing, had started him towards this afternoon. When he began the move to make the candidates vote for each other, his first move to a coalition with the other side, he could still have said to himself, and believed it, that he was pledged to Jago. He did not make any pretence of enthusiasm to Brown or me, and to himself his reluctance, his sheer distaste, kept coming into mind. Yet he would have said to himself that he was going to vote for Jago. He would still have said it when in search of a third candidate — he was going to vote for Jago unless we found another man. On December 17th, when he approached Brown, he would have gone on saying it to himself. He would have said it to himself: but I thought that there are things one says to oneself in all sincerity, statements of intention, which one knows without admitting it that one will never do. I believed it had been like that with Chrystal since the funeral. He believed he would vote for Jago, unless he brought off a coup: in some hidden and inadmissible way, he knew he never would.