The Masters (36 page)

His face was fresh, he was smiling, he was obscurely satisfied. He looked at his clock on the mantelpiece.

‘I shan’t have to wait long,’ he said. ‘It is the morning already.’

Chrystal had kept us up so late that I slept until the middle of the morning. It was December 17th, a dark and stormy day: the wind was howling again, for the westerly gales had returned; it was not cold, but the heavy clouds hung over the roofs, and in the afternoon Roy and I built up the fire in my sitting-room for the sake of the blaze. We compared impressions of Chrystal’s tactics and manner on the night before. Why had he persisted against all rational sense? Why had he gone away so pleased? Was it because he wanted to prove to Brown that, whatever he did in this election, he was still completely affectionate and loyal? That was part of it, we felt sure: but we did not believe it was the end.

As we were talking across the fire, a double and deliberate knock sounded on the door. ‘Uncle Arthur in person,’ said Roy, and we both smiled as Brown came in. But Brown’s smile in return was only formal.

He sat down, looked into the fire, and said in a constrained tone: ‘I wanted to see you both. I am told that, without my consent, I was mentioned as a candidate last night. Did you have anything to do with this?’

He was grimly indignant. We told him what we had each promised. ‘I was glad to do it,’ I said. ‘I should enjoy voting for you. It would be admirable to see you in the Lodge.’

He did not respond. After a time he said: ‘I suppose you all intended it kindly.’

‘I don’t know about kindly,’ I said. ‘It was intended to show what we feel about you.’

‘I hope you all intended it kindly,’ said Brown.

‘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.’

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.