The Masters (32 page)

It was long past the time when Roy and I had planned to start for Gay’s, and we had to give up our project for that day. Nothing we said was any help, but it was unthinkable to leave her alone. At last she invited us back to her house for tea. She walked between us through the courts. On our way, we were confronted by Nightingale, walking out of college. His hand moved up to his hat, but she looked away, with a fixed stare. We heard his footsteps dying away. She said almost triumphantly: ‘They’ve cut me often enough.’

In their drawing-room Jago was standing, and the moment we entered he put his arm round her shoulders.

‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you leave word where you’d gone? You mustn’t disappear without trace What is the trouble?’

‘What is the trouble with you?’ she cried. He had been standing in the twilight, but she had switched on the light as we went in. His face was haggard, his eyes sunken: even his lips were pallid.

‘You two know by now?’ said Jago. We nodded. He turned to his wife, his arm resting on her.

‘Dearest, I’m afraid that I’m going to make you unhappy. It seems that I shall be rejected by the college.’

‘Is this my fault?’

‘How could it be your fault?’ Jago replied, but her question, which pierced one like a scream, was not addressed to him. I answered: ‘It’s nothing to do with anyone we’ve been talking about. It’s quite different. Old Eustace Pilbrow has crossed over – for political reasons. He can’t even have read the flysheet when he decided, and he’d be the last to take any notice–’

‘Thank God,’ she said, laying her head on Jago’s shoulder. ‘If they don’t give it to you after all, Paul, I couldn’t bear it to be because of me.’

‘Does it concern us,’ asked Jago bitterly, ‘the precise reason why I may be thrown aside?’

‘Yes! Yes!’ she said. She rounded on me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

I said: ‘I couldn’t – until I was sure Paul knew.’

‘Do you realize what it means? Do you realize that they’re hoping to humiliate me now?’ Jago cried.

‘They couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Nothing could. Nothing could touch you. You’re big enough to laugh at anything they do. They know you’re bigger than they are. That’s why they fear you so.’

Jago smiled – was it to relieve her, as a parent pretends to an anxious child? Or had she brought him comfort?

He kissed her, and then said to Roy and me: ‘I am sorry to receive you like this. But the news has knocked me out more than I expected.’

‘We’re not giving up,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Jago, ‘that I shouldn’t ask you to.’

He seemed suddenly tired, passive, and resigned. He sat down in his armchair as though the suffering had lost its edge but had worn him out. He enquired after tea, and Alice rang for it. Suddenly he said to her: ‘Why did you ask whether it was your fault? What do you know about the flysheet?’

She began to speak, then said: ‘No, Paul, I can’t–’ and turned to us for aid. I told Jago that someone, presumably Nightingale, had made sure that she should see the flysheet: she was afraid there might be more attacks upon her: she thought they wanted her to persuade Jago to withdraw; she had been in anguish for Jago’s sake.

Very softly, Jago exclaimed.

Then he spoke to her in a quiet, familiar tone.

‘I expect to be rejected now. Would you like me to withdraw?’

Tears had come to her eyes, but she did not cry. She could hardly speak. At last she managed to say: ‘No. You must go on.’

‘You knew what you had to say.’ Jago gave her a smile of love.

When that smile faded, his expression was still sad and exhausted: but in his eyes, as he spoke again, this time to Roy and me, there was a flash of energy, a glitter of satanic pride.

‘I’ve cursed the day that I ever exposed myself to these humiliations,’ he said. ‘I knew you and my other friends meant well, but you were not doing me a kindness when you persuaded me to stand. Whether the college rejects me or takes me, I am certain that I will not stand for another office so long as I live.’ He paused. ‘But I am equally certain that if those people hope to get me to withdraw through doing harm to my wife, I will stay in this election while I’ve got one single man to vote for me.’

He added: ‘And I shall leave nothing to chance. I shall tell my rival so.’

After Jago cried out that he ‘would tell his rival so,’ he asked Roy to find from the kitchens whether Crawford was dining that night. The answer was yes. ‘That is convenient,’ said Jago.

Crawford arrived in the combination room at the same time as I did, and several of his party were already there. They were drinking their sherry in front of the fire, and there was an air of well-being, of triumph, of satisfied gloating. Crawford greeted them with his impersonal cordiality, and me as well. He seemed more than ever secure, not in the least surprised by what had happened; he took it for granted that it was right.

‘Eliot,’ Nightingale addressed me. He had not spoken to me directly for months.

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose you’ve heard about Pilbrow.’

‘Of course.’

‘I had a note from him this afternoon,’ Crawford announced.

‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘It’s very civil of him to have written,’ said Crawford – and went on to talk without hurry of a new theory of electrical impulses in nerves. Francis Getliffe was making a suggestion for an experiment, Nightingale was listening with the strained attention that nowadays came over him in Crawford’s presence, when Jago threw open the door and said: ‘Crawford. I should like you to spare me a minute.’

Everyone looked up at Jago. He did not say good evening, his eyes did not leave Crawford.

‘Very well,’ said Crawford, not quite at ease. ‘Can we talk here, or would you prefer to go outside?’

‘Nothing I have to say is secret,’ Jago replied. ‘I’m obliged to say it to you, because I’m not certain to whom it should be said by right.’

Crawford rose and said. ‘Very well’ again. By the fire Despard-Smith and Getliffe made a pretence at conversation, but none of us could shut our ears to Jago’s words.

‘I do not hold you responsible for the outrages of your supporters, but I hope that you cannot be utterly indifferent to them.’

‘You’re going too fast for me,’ said Crawford. ‘I don’t begin to know what you’re referring to.’

‘I shall explain myself.’

‘I should much prefer it,’ said Crawford, looking up into Jago’s eyes, ‘if we could keep this business on a friendly basis.’

‘When you hear what I have to say,’ said Jago, ‘you will realize that is no longer easy.’

Jago’s temper smouldered and suddenly flared out and smouldered again. It was different from one of his outbursts of indignation; no one in that room had seen this consuming rage. As they faced it, most men would have been uneasy; Crawford may have been, but his voice was steady and sensible. Angrily, I had to confess that he was holding his own.

‘If that turns out to be true, I shall be very sorry for it, Jago,’ he remarked.

‘If you are elected, none of my friends would suggest that your wife was not entirely fit to adorn the Lodge,’ Jago said.

‘I should be very much surprised to hear it.’

‘I was a little surprised to hear that my wife had received a copy of the flysheet written by your supporter Nightingale.’

Jago’s words were not loud, but Crawford stood silent in front of him.

‘You have seen the flysheet I mean?’

‘I am afraid that I have,’ said Crawford.

‘Can you faintly imagine what it would mean to a woman?’

Crawford stirred.

‘Jago, I very much regret that this should have happened. I shall write to your wife personally, and tell her so.’

‘That is not enough.’

‘It is all I can do, unfortunately.’

‘No,’ said Jago. ‘You can discover through what source the flysheet reached her. I may tell you that it was deliberately sent.’

Jago was at the limit of his anger. Crawford shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can understand your feelings, but you exaggerate my responsibility. I am sincerely sorry that your wife should suffer through any circumstances in which I am even remotely concerned. I consider it my duty to tell her so. But I don’t consider it my duty to become a private detective. I have consented to be a candidate at this election, but I have taken no part whatever in any of the personal complications which have taken place, and I might take this opportunity of saying that I deprecate them.’

Jago was quietened for an instant, by the solidity of that reply. Then he said: ‘This attack on my wife is intended to make me withdraw.

‘I can’t express any view on intentions in which I am not interested,’ said Crawford.

‘If you are not interested, your supporters may be,’ said Jago. ‘I shall protect my wife in all ways open to reason but also, while any of my colleagues are prepared to give me their votes, I shall remain a candidate for the Mastership.’

There was no reply from Crawford, and the whole room was silent, for the conversation round the fire had died right away.

The bell began to peal for dinner, and Crawford said, as though anxious for a cordial commonplace: ‘Are you coming into hall, Jago?’

‘No,’ said Jago. ‘I shall dine with my wife.’

There was a constrained hush as he walked out. Crawford was frowning, the smooth composed impassive look had gone. He sat next to me in hall, did not speak until the fish, and then complained: ‘Speaking as a reasonably even-tempered person, I have the strongest possible objection to being forced to listen to those who insist on flying off the handle.’

‘I’m glad he spoke to you,’ I said.

‘It’s no concern of mine. He ought to know that I have never lent an ear to local tittle-tattle. I’m not prepared to begin now, and I shall wash my hands of the whole stupid business.’

But Crawford was, in his fashion, a man of justice and fair dealing, and he was shaken. He took the chair in the combination room with a preoccupied expression, when Despard-Smith left the hall. None of us asked for wine that night, and Crawford lit his pipe over the coffee.

‘It does look,’ he said, ‘as though somehow Mrs Jago has come into possession of that circular of yours, Nightingale. I must say that it is an unfortunate business.’

‘Very unfortunate – but I fancy she might have benefited if she’d learned what people thought of her before.’ Nightingale smiled.

‘Naturally,’ said Crawford, ‘it can’t have been sent to her by anyone connected with the college. Every one of us would take a grave view of an action of that kind.’

His tone was uncomfortable, and no one replied for some moments. Then Nightingale said again.

‘Is there anything to show,’ he asked, ‘that she wasn’t looking through her husband’s letters on the quiet, and found one that wasn’t meant for her?’

I looked at him.

‘I believe she did not read your note by accident,’ I said.

‘How did you form that opinion?’ he said.

‘I spent the afternoon with her just after she’d read it.’

‘That’s as may be. What does it prove?’

‘She was so miserable that I believe what she said,’ I replied.

‘Do you really expect us to be impressed by that?’

‘I expect you to know that it was the truth.’

His eyes stared past mine, he did not move or blench. Nothing touched him except his own conflict. Find the key to that, and one could tear him open with a word. Touch his envy, remind him of the Royal Society, his other failures, and he was stabbed by suffering. But to everything else he was invulnerable. He did not see any of his actions as ‘bad’. So long as he did not feel ‘put upon’ as weak, he did not worry about his actions. He regarded his attempts to blacken Jago’s circle as a matter of course. He was not at peace enough to go in for the luxuries of conscience.

‘I can’t say your claim is completely convincing, Eliot,’ said Crawford. ‘She may have enemies, nothing to do with the college, who wanted to play an unpleasant practical joke.’

‘Is that how you see it?’ I said.

‘Perhaps it is a storm in a teacup,’ said Crawford. ‘After all she is just going through an awkward time of life. And Jago has always been over-emotional. Still we must try and calm things down. I have occasionally felt that this election has generated more heat than light. We’ve got to see that people know where to stop.’

Then he laid down his pipe, and went on: ‘I always think that the danger with any group of men like a college is that we tend to get on each other’s nerves. I believe that everyone, particularly the unmarried fellows, ought to be compelled by statute to spend three months abroad each year. And also – and this I do suggest to you all as a practicable proposition – I think we ought to set for ourselves an almost artificially high standard of manners and behaviour. I suggest to you that, in any intimate body of men, it is important to have the rules laid down.’

I noticed that as Crawford delivered his steady impersonal reproof, Nightingale was watching him with anxious attention and nodding his head. It was more than attention, it was devoted deference.

As Crawford rose to go, he said: ‘Nightingale, are you busy? You might walk part of the way home with me.’

The moment he heard the invitation, Nightingale’s harsh, strained face broke into a smile that held charm, pleasure, and a youthful desire to please.

I was to blame, I told myself, for not having seen it before. No doubt he still craved Crawford’s support for getting into the Royal Society, but somehow that longing for a favour had become transmuted into a genuine human feeling. He would do anything for Crawford now.

‘I hope,’ said Francis Getliffe, when we were left alone, ‘that Crawford tells him to shut up.’

I could not resist saying satirically: ‘I thought that Crawford was remarkably judicious.’

‘I thought he was pretty good. If he always handles situations as well as that, I shan’t complain,’ said Francis, with irritation.

‘Some people would have gone further.’

‘No responsible person could have gone further, on that evidence,’ said Francis. ‘Damn it, man, she’s an unbalanced woman. Do you expect Crawford to take as absolute fact every word she says?’