The Masters (17 page)

He relished the power of giving or withholding money. It was always a wrench for him to relinquish it. He liked men waiting on him for a decision. There was sometimes a hidden chuckle beneath the anticlimax. Like Chrystal, he loved the feel of power.

It was after two o’clock, but he returned happily to the talk on education. He had great stamina and no sense of time, and another hour passed before he thought of bed.

When I went into my sitting-room next morning, half an hour before my usual time, there was Sir Horace, bright and trim and ready for his breakfast. He had had less than five hours’ sleep, but he was as conversational as ever. He referred to our common acquaintances, such as Francis Getliffe’s brother; he asked questions about the men he had met the night before. He was much taken with Jago. ‘There’s an unusual man,’ said Sir Horace. ‘Anyone could see that in five minutes. Remarkable head he’s got. Will he be your next Master?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Brown and Chrystal want him, don’t they?’

I said yes.

‘Good chaps, those.’ Sir Horace paused. ‘If they were in industry they’d drive a hard bargain.’

I put in the thin edge of a question. But, though he had begun the day so talkative and affable, Sir Horace was no more communicative than the night before. His intention became masked at once in a loquacious stream about how much his nephew owed to Brown’s tutoring. ‘I want him to get an honours degree. I don’t believe these places ought to be open to the comfortably off, unless the comfortably off can profit by them,’ said Sir Horace, surprisingly unless one knew his streak of unorganized radicalism. ‘I hope you agree with me? If this boy doesn’t get his honours degree, I shall cross off the experiment as a failure. But he’d never have touched it if it hadn’t been for Brown. I’ll tell you frankly, Mr Eliot, there have been times when I wished the boy didn’t require so much help on the examination side.’

We had not long finished breakfast when Roy Calvert came in. They had met for a moment after the feast. Sir Horace was automatically cordial. Then he went to the window, and looked out at the court, lit by the mild sunshine of a February morning.

‘How peaceful it all is,’ Sir Horace observed. ‘You don’t realize what a temptation it would be to quit the rough-and-tumble and settle down here in peace.’

He smiled with his puzzled, lost, friendly look, and Roy smiled back, his eyes glinting with fun.

‘I don’t think we do,’ said Roy. ‘I’ll change with you, Sir Horace.’

‘You wouldn’t get such peace.’

‘I don’t know. Are some of your colleagues on speaking terms? Ours just manage it. Should you call that specially peaceful?’

Sir Horace laughed uneasily; he was not used to affectionate malice from young men half his age. But he had an eye for quality. Up to that moment he had placed Roy as an ornament and a
flâneur
; now he captured his interest, just as Jago had done. He began asking Roy about his work. He was mystified by most of Roy’s explanation, but he felt something here that he had not met. I saw him studying Roy’s face when it was not smiling.

Soon he was asking if he could be shown Roy’s manuscripts. They went off together, and I did not see them until midday. Then Roy ran up the stairs to say that the ‘old boy’ was going; he fetched Brown and Chrystal and we all met at the side door of the college, where the car was garaged. The chauffeur had just arrived, and Sir Horace was standing by the car in a tremendous fur coat, looking like an Imperial Russian general.

‘I’m sorry I’ve not seen anything of you this morning, Mr Chrystal,’ said Sir Horace. ‘I’ve had a very interesting time looking at Mr Calvert’s wonderful things. There were several points last night I should like to explore with you again, you know what I mean? I very much hope we shall have the opportunity some time.’

The car drove off, Sir Horace waving cordially. As it turned out of sight, Roy Calvert asked: ‘Is he going to unbelt?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Chrystal. He added loyally: ‘Of course, men in his position have to make a hundred decisions a day. I expect he looks on this as very small beer – and just puts it off until he’s got important things finished. It’s unfortunate for us.’

‘I’m not giving up hope yet,’ said Brown, robust against disappointment. ‘I can’t believe he’d lead us up the garden path.’

‘It would be funny if he did,’ said Roy. ‘And took a series of dinners off us. Never getting to the point.’

‘I don’t call that funny, Calvert,’ Chrystal said irritably.

‘I believe it may come right,’ said Brown. He added, in a hurry: ‘Mind you, I shan’t feel inclined to celebrate until I see a cheque arrive on the bursary table.’ He said aside to Chrystal: ‘We’ve just got to think of ways and means again. I should be in favour of letting him lie fallow for a month or two. In the meantime, we shall have time to consider methods of giving him a gentle prod.’

The sky was cloudless and china-blue, there was scarcely a breath of wind. The sun was just perceptibly warm on the skin, and we thought of taking a turn round the garden before lunch. Roy Calvert and Chrystal went in front. They were talking about investments. Roy was the only child of a rich man, and Chrystal liked talking to him about money. Brown and I followed on behind. Our way to the garden was overlooked by the windows of the tutor’s house, and as we walked I heard my name called in Jago’s voice.

I stayed on the path, Brown strolled slowly on. Jago came out from his house – and with him was Nightingale.

‘Can you spare us a moment, Eliot?’ Jago cried. His tone was apologetic, almost hostile.

‘Of course.’

‘Nightingale and I have been discussing the future of the college. Naturally, we all think the future of the college depends on the men we attract to college offices.’ Jago’s words were elaborate, his mouth drawn down, his eyes restless. ‘So that we’ve been speculating a little on which of our colleagues might consider taking various college offices.’

‘These things have a way of being settled in advance,’ said Nightingale.

‘I hope it doesn’t embarrass you to mention your own future,’ Jago had to go on.

‘Not in the slightest,’ I said.

‘I know it’s difficult. No one can pledge themselves too far ahead. But I’ve just been telling Nightingale that, so far as I know, you wouldn’t feel free to think of a college office in the next few years.’

‘I shouldn’t. I can be ruled out,’ I said.

‘Why? Why can we rule you out?’ Nightingale broke out in suspicion.

I had to give a reason for Jago’s sake.

‘Because I don’t want to break my London connection. I can’t spend two days a week in London and hold an office here.’

‘Your two days must be exceptionally well paid.’ Nightingale smiled.

‘It’s valuable for the college,’ said Jago with an effort to sound undisturbed, ‘to have its young lawyers taught by a man with a successful practice.’

‘It seems to be rather valuable for Eliot,’ Nightingale smiled again. But his suspicions had temporarily abated, and he parted from us.

‘Good God,’ muttered Jago, as Nightingale disappeared at the bottom of his staircase.

‘I hope you contained yourself,’ said Brown, who had been waiting for us to join him. We all three walked towards the garden.

‘I was very tactful,’ said Jago. ‘I was
despicably
tactful, Brown. Do you know that he doubted my word when I said that Eliot here couldn’t take a tutorship if it was offered him? He said he might believe it if he heard it from Eliot himself. I ought to have kicked the man out of my study. Instead of that, I inflicted him on Eliot, so that he could have the satisfaction of hearing it. I am so sorry, Eliot.’

‘You had to do it,’ I said.

‘I call it statesmanlike,’ said Brown.

‘I call it despicable,’ said Jago.

The garden was quiet with winter, the grass shone emerald in the sunlight, the branches of the trees had not yet begun to thicken. In the wash of greens and sepias and browns stood one blaze of gold from a forsythia bush. Roy and Chrystal were standing under a great beech, just where the garden curved away to hide the inner ‘wilderness’.

‘God forgive me,’ said Jago bitterly, as we stepped on to the soft lawn. ‘I’ve never prevaricated so shamefully. The man asked me outright what my intentions were. I replied – yes, I’ll tell you what I replied – I told him that it might put us both in a false position if I gave a definite answer. But I said that none of those I knew best in the college could possibly take a tutorship. That’s where your name came in, Eliot. He insisted on discussing you all one by one.’

‘I hope you let him,’ said Brown.

‘I let him.’

‘I hope you didn’t give him the impression that you’d never offer him the job,’ said Brown.

‘I should be less ashamed,’ said Jago, ‘if I could think I had.’

Jago was angry and anxious. He was angry at what he had been forced to do: anxious that it might not be enough. But, most of all that morning in the sunny garden, he was angry, bitterly angry, at the insult to his pride. He had lowered himself, he had thrown his pride in front of his own eyes and this other man’s, and now, ten minutes later, it had arisen and was dominating him. He was furious at the humiliation which policy imposed: was this where ambition had taken him? was this the result of his passion? was this the degradation which he had to take?

Brown would not have minded. A less proud man would have accepted it as part of the game: knowing it, Jago looked at his supporter’s kind, shrewd, and worldly face, and felt alone. The shame was his alone, the wound was his alone. When he next spoke, he was drawn into himself, he was speaking from a height.

‘I assure you, Brown, I don’t think you need fear a defection,’ he said, with a mixture of anxiety, self-contempt, and scorn. ‘I handled him pretty well. I was as tactful as a man could be.’

After lunch that day Roy Calvert stopped me in the court. His lips twitched in a smile.

‘Everyone was worried whether we should have the feast, weren’t they?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Just so. Well, I heard a minute ago that it wasn’t necessary. Joan and her mother never intended to tell him before the feast. They’d marked down the date weeks ago. They knew the old boy was coming down to unbelt – which he didn’t – and they decided that we mustn’t be disturbed. Isn’t that just like the appalling sense of women?’

I could not help laughing.

‘We’ve been sold,’ said Roy. ‘Not only you and me – but all those sensible blokes. We’ve been absolutely and completely and magnificently sold.’

But, though he was smiling, he was already sad, for he had guessed what was to happen that day. I did not see him again all afternoon and evening. His name was on the dining list for hall, but he did not come. Late at night, he entered my room and told me that he had been with Lady Muriel for hours. She had broken the news to the Master early in the afternoon.

I was distressed not only on their account, but on Roy’s. He was beginning to have the look and manner which came upon him during a wave of depression. And I was not reassured when, instead of telling me anything that had been said in the Lodge, he insisted on going to a party. For, as he and I knew too well, there was a trace of the manic-depressive about his moods. I was more afraid for him in a state of false hilarity than in sadness.

However, he was genial at the party, although he did not speak of the Master until we had returned to college and were standing in sight of the Lodge windows. It was well into the small hours, but one light was still shining.

‘I wonder,’ Roy said, ‘if he can sleep tonight.’

We stood looking at the window. The court was quiet beneath the stars.

Roy said: ‘I’ve never seen such human misery and loneliness as I did today.’

Beside the fire in his sitting-room, he went on telling of the Master and Lady Muriel, and he spoke with the special insight of grief. Theirs had not been a joyous marriage. The Master might have brought happiness to many women, Roy said, but somehow he had never set her free. As for her, there was a terrible story that, when the Master was engaged to her, an aunt of hers said to him: ‘I warn you, she has no tenderness.’ That showed what her facade was like, and yet, Roy had told me and I believed him, it was the opposite of the truth. Perhaps few husbands could have called her tenderness to the surface, and that the Master had never done. She had given him children, they had struggled on for twenty-five years. ‘She’s never had any idea what he’s really like,’ said Roy. ‘Poor dear, she’s always been puzzled by his jokes.’

Yet they had trusted each other; and so, that afternoon, it was her task to tell him that he was going to die. Roy was certain that she had screwed herself up and gone straight to the point. ‘She’s always known that she’s failed him. Now she felt she was failing him worst of all. Because anyone else would have known what to say, and she’s never been able to put one word in front of another.’

Occasionally we had imagined that the Master saw through the deception, but it was not true. The news came as a total shock. He did not reproach her. She could not remember what he said, but it was very little.

‘It’s hard to think without a future.’ That was the only remark she could recall.

But the hardest blow for her was that, in looking towards his death, he seemed to have forgotten her. ‘I was less use than ever,’ Lady Muriel had cried to Roy.

It was that cry which had seared Roy with the spectacle of human egotism and loneliness. They had lived their lives together. She had to tell him this news. She saw him thinking only of his death – and she could not reach him. It did not matter whether she was there or not.

After she had gone out, and Joan had visited him for a few minutes, he had asked to be left to himself.

Roy said: ‘We’re all alone, aren’t we? Each one of us. Quite alone.’

Later, he asked: ‘If she was miserable and lonely today, what was it like to be him? Can anyone imagine what it’s like to know your death is
fixed
?’