Charles Snow: The Affair

“Not the slightest,” I said.

Tom was beginning another burst of eloquence, but Skeffington stopped him.

“I’ll take that,” he said to me. “We’ve got to take that. You know what’s what. But that doesn’t write us off—”

“What else can you do?” said Martin.

“It’s pretty clear,” said Skeffington. “We start all over again. We beat up a majority of the Fellows, and we send the Court another memorandum. We accept their withdrawal, but we tell them we’re not satisfied. We tell them they’ve got to do the decent thing. We’ll put in the proper terms of reinstatement, just to leave no room for argy-bargy.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” cried Tom.

There was a pause. Martin glanced at me, then at Francis, and began to speak: “No. I’m sorry. You can’t do it.”

“What do you mean, we can’t do it?”

“How do you think you’re going to get your majority?”

“We’ll beat them up just as we did before.”

“You won’t,” said Martin. “Not to put too fine a point on it, you won’t get me.” They were interrupting him, but he said sternly: “Now listen for once. We’ve been in this too, every inch of the way. I haven’t done much. But if it hadn’t been for Lewis, I doubt if we’d have got any sort of satisfaction. If it hadn’t been for Francis Getliffe, I’m quite sure we shouldn’t. Well, we’ve done our piece. And that’s enough.”

Both Skeffington and Tom were speaking, the voices were jangling round the table, when there came an interruption. Howard, who after his first remark had not said a word, who had been sitting with jaw sunk into chest, noisily slammed his hand on the table and pushed back his chair.

He said in a grating tone: “I’m fed up.”

“What?” cried Tom.

“I’m fed up with being talked about. I’m not going to be talked about any more by any of you,” he said. He went on: “They seem to have decided that I’m not a liar. I suppose that’s something. I’m not having any more of it. You can go and tell them that it’s all right with me.”

On heavy feet, he clumped out of the room.

He was innocent in this case, I had no doubt. And he had another kind of innocence. From it came his courage, his hope, and his callousness. It would not have occurred to him to think what Skeffington and Tom had risked; and yet anyone used to small societies would have wondered whether Skeffington stood much chance of getting his Fellowship renewed, or Tom, for years to come, any sort of office. Howard did not care. He still had his major hopes. They were indestructible. Men would become better, once people like him had set the scene. He stamped out of the room, puzzled by what had happened, angry but not cast down, still looking for, not finding, but hoping to find, justice in this world.

Martin, with face impassive, eyes sparkling, said: “Well, that appears to settle it.”

Haughtily Skeffington announced: “I shall write to the Master on my own.”

“I advise you not to, Julian,” said Martin.

“I shall have to,” Skeffington replied, obdurate and sea-green.

“But still,” said Martin, “as far as we’re concerned, that’s settled it?”

Skeffington nodded. He said: “It’s all you can expect of a chap like that. He’s got no guts.” It was the first recognition of Howard’s existence he had made all the evening. He did it seriously, his head uptilted, without a glint of humour, whereas Tom, his great frame shaking, his cheeks moist and roseate in the cool room, was billowing with laughter. He tried to speak, and emitted little squeals. All he could say was: “Give me your hand, Martin. Give me your hand, Lewis.”

When we went down into the court, there was a light shining in the Master’s study. “We’d better get it over,” said Francis, and he, Martin and I walked across to the Lodge. The front door was unlocked, and we went in and climbed the stairs. As soon as I opened the study door, I saw Crawford on one side of the fireplace, Brown on the other.

“Good evening to you, gentlemen,” Crawford said. He offered us a nightcap of whisky, but I said that we had not come to stay.

“Perhaps I can act as spokesman,” I said. “It’s straightforward, Master. We’ve been talking to some of the signatories of the last memorandum. We’ve been talking about today’s decision of the Court. All I need say is that it’s been accepted.”

“Splendid,” said Brown. He got up, stood beside me, and took my arm. He had noticed what I had not said. Quietly, as Crawford was talking to the others, Brown said in my ear, “You’ve done us all a service, you know.”

Crawford was saying at large: “Well, I’m glad this business is settled without breaking too many bones.” He called to me as though he had never had a doubt in his life: “I think I remember saying to you in this room last week, Eliot, perhaps we worry too much about forms of procedure. I think I remember saying that in my experience sensible men usually reach sensible conclusions.”

He said it with invincible content, with the reverence of one producing a new truth. Martin, who was in high spirits, glanced at me.

We went down the study stairs. Crawford pulled back the great oak door. Out in the court the chilly wind was blowing, so strong that the staircase lanterns sprayed and shook in the midsummer dark. Crawford walked out of the Lodge with Brown on his right hand, Getliffe on his left. Following after them, Martin once more glanced at me, eyes sharp, half-sarcastic, half-affectionate. Did he mean what I thought he meant? That, within six months, Crawford would be walking out of the Lodge for good, and one of those two would be walking in?