The Masters (19 page)

‘I’ve heard that before,’ said Chrystal. ‘Listen to me for once.’

Nightingale’s eyes were blank, as he sat there, exposed to Chrystal’s crisp voice and Brown’s rich, placid one: he knew what to expect.

Luke left immediately after hall. His work was occupying him more than ever, and he said that he had to work out some results. Whether or not it was because of his precocious tact I did not know. Brown said: ‘Well, that does make us a nice little party.’

He ordered a bottle of claret and took his place at the head of the table. Nightingale was still standing up. He started to move towards the door. He was leaving, without saying goodnight. We were exchanging glances: suddenly he looked back at us. He turned round, retraced his steps, sat down defiantly at Brown’s right hand. There was something formidable about him at that moment.

The decanter went round, and Brown warmed his glass in his hands.

‘Has Jago been dining recently? I haven’t seen him all the week,’ Brown asked casually.

‘He’s not been here any of the nights I have,’ I said.

‘I’ve only dined once this week,’ said Chrystal. ‘He wasn’t here.’

Nightingale stirred his coffee, and did not reply.

‘Has he coincided with you, Nightingale?’ Brown asked.

‘No.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Brown in the same conversational tone. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for some time. How are you feeling about the Mastership now?’

‘How are you?’ Nightingale retorted.

‘I’m still exactly where I was,’ said Brown. ‘I’m quite happy to go on supporting Jago.’

‘Are you?’ Nightingale asked.

‘Why,’ said Brown, ‘I hope you haven’t had any second thoughts. At least, not enough to upset your commitments–’

‘Commitments!’ Nightingale broke out. ‘I’m not going to be bound because I made a fool of myself. I can tell you, here and now, I’ve thought better of it.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear it,’ said Brown. ‘But perhaps we–’

‘And I can tell you I’ve good reasons to think better of it. I’m glad I had my eyes opened before I’d done the damage. Do you think I’m going to vote for a man who’s taking it for granted that he’s been elected and is behaving like the Master before the present one is dead? And whose wife is putting on airs about it already?’ He stopped, and asked more virulently: ‘Do you think I’m going to put up with a Master who’s backed by people who are getting the college a bad name – ?’

‘Who do you mean?’ I was infuriated.

‘I mean your friend Calvert, for one.’

‘Anything you say about him is worthless,’ I said.

‘There are one or two others,’ said Nightingale, ‘who live apart from their wives. It’s not for me to say whether they want to keep their liberty of action–’

‘Stop that,’ said Chrystal, before I could reply. ‘You’re going too far. I won’t have any more of it, do you hear?’

Nightingale sank back, white-faced. ‘I’m glad I’ve explained to you my reasons for changing,’ he said.

What were his true motives, I thought, as I stared at him through my own anger. He was possessed by envy and frustration. Crawford talking unconcernedly of the ‘Royal’, making it sound like a club to which one belonged as a matter of course, turned the knife in the wound as if he were jealous in love and had just heard his rival’s name. So did Chrystal and Brown, looking happy and prosperous in their jobs, going about to run the college. So did the sound of Mrs Jago’s voice, asking the number of bedrooms in the Lodge or the kind of entertainment that undergraduates preferred. So did the sight of Roy Calvert with a girl. And Nightingale suffered. He did not suffer with nobility, he did not accept it in the grand manner, which, though it does not soften suffering, helps to make the thought of it endurable when the victim is having a respite from pain. Nightingale suffered meanly, struggling like a rat, determined to wound as well as be wounded. There was no detachment from his pain, not a glimmer of irony. He bared his teeth, and felt release through planning a revenge against someone who ‘persecuted’ him. He never felt for a day together serene, free, and confident.

I could understand his suffering. One could not miss it, for it was written in his face. I was not moved by it, for I was cut off by dislike. And I could understand how he struggled with all his force, and went into action, as he was doing now, with the intensity of a single-minded drive. He had the canalized strength of the obsessed.

But I could not begin to know why his envy had driven him first away from Crawford, now back to him. Had he, that night of the Royal results, found in Crawford’s assurance some sort of rest? Was Crawford the kind of man he would, in his heart, have liked to be?

I could not see so far. But I was sure that, as Arthur Brown would remind me, there was a kind of practical veneer on his actions now. When he thought of what he was doing, he gave practical self-seeking reasons to himself. He probably imagined that Crawford would help get him into the Royal next year. He had certainly decided that Jago would not give him the tutorship, would do nothing for him. His calculation about Crawford was, of course, quite ridiculous. Crawford, impersonal even to his friends, would be the last man to think of helping, even if help were possible. Nevertheless, Nightingale was certain that he was being shrewd.

Chrystal was saying: ‘You ought to have told us you were going over.’

‘Ought I?’

‘You owed it to us to tell us first,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t see why.’

‘I take you up on that, Nightingale. You can’t pledge yourself to one candidate and then promise to vote for another. It’s not the way things are done.’

‘If I stick to the etiquette, no one else does. I’m not going to penalize myself any more,’ said Nightingale.

‘It’s not the way to do business.’

‘I leave business to your clique,’ Nightingale replied. He rose and, without saying goodnight, went towards the door. This time he did not turn back.

‘That’s that,’ said Chrystal. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to Nightingale.’

‘Well, there it is,’ said Brown.

‘Shall we get him back?’ Chrystal asked.

‘Not a hope in hell,’ I said.

‘Why are you so sure?’

‘I must say,’ said Brown, ‘that I’m inclined to take Eliot’s view. It’s much safer to regard the worst as inevitable, because then it won’t do us any harm if we turn out to be wrong. But that apart, I confess I shall be surprised if we see Nightingale back again.’

‘You may be right,’ said Chrystal.

‘I haven’t a doubt,’ I said.

‘Have you summed him up right?’ asked Chrystal, still wanting to disbelieve.

‘I’m ready to rely on Eliot’s judgement,’ said Brown.

‘In that case,’ said Chrystal, changing round briskly, ‘we ought to see Jago at once.’

‘Do you want to?’ For once Brown shrank from a task.

‘No. But we can’t leave him in the dark.’

‘I suppose it would be rather tempting providence–’

‘If we don’t tell him tonight,’ said Chrystal, ‘some kind friend will do him the service tomorrow or next day. It’s lamentable, but it will come better from us.’

‘I must say that it’s going to be abominably unpleasant.’

‘I’ll go by myself,’ said Chrystal. ‘If you prefer that.’

‘Thank you.’ Brown smiled at his friend, and hesitated. ‘No, it will be better for him if we all go. It will let him realize that he’s still got most of his party intact.’

Brown and I wanted an excuse for delaying, even if only for ten more minutes, in the combination room. It was Chrystal, buoyed up by action, never despondent when he could get on the move, who forced us out.

As we already knew, Jago was alone. We found him in his study reading. His eyes flashed as soon as he saw us; every nerve was alert; he welcomed us with over-abundant warmth. Chrystal cut him short by saying: ‘We’ve got some bad news for you.’

His face was open in front of us.

‘You must be prepared for changes to happen both ways,’ said Brown, trying to cushion the blow. ‘This isn’t the last disturbance we shall get.’

‘What is it?’ Jago cried. ‘What is it?’

‘Nightingale has gone over,’ said Chrystal.

‘I see.’

‘You mustn’t let it depress you too much,’ Brown said. ‘It was always a surprise to me that you ever attracted Nightingale at all. Put it another way: you can regard Nightingale as being in his natural place now, and you can think of the sides being lined up very much as we might have expected beforehand.’

Jago did not seem to hear the attempt to comfort him.

‘I suppose he’s done it because I didn’t promise him the tutorship. I couldn’t. It was a wretched position to be flung into. It was utterly impossible. I suppose it’s too late to mend matters now. It’s difficult to make a move–’

Brown was looking at him with an anxious glance.

‘Forget Nightingale,’ Brown broke in very quickly. ‘Count him out.’

‘If I’d offered him the tutorship it would have held him.’ There was a passionate appeal in Jago’s voice.

‘I doubt it very much,’ I said.

‘If I could only have made something like a promise.’

‘Jago,’ said Chrystal, ‘if you had promised that man the tutorship, you might have gained one vote – but you would have lost six others. So you can rest easy.’

‘Are we letting him go without an effort?’ cried Jago. ‘Is it utterly impossible to persuade him back?’

‘We think so,’ said Chrystal.

Jago’s whole expression was racked.

‘
Shall I see him?
’ he said.

‘No,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t think it would help much.’ Brown’s tone was as firm as Chrystal’s, though he went on with a friendly explanation: ‘He’s an obstinate man. It might only carry things from bad to worse. There’s no one so bitter as a turncoat, you know. I think it’s very much safer to regard him as an enemy from now on.’

‘If you don’t,’ said Chrystal, ‘I can’t answer for the consequences.’ He and Brown looked solid, earthy men of flesh and bone against Jago, at that moment. Jago’s face seemed only a film in front of the tortured nerves. Yet they were telling him, as each of us in the room perfectly understood without a definite word being spoken, that he must make no attempt – by any suggestion of a promise – to bring Nightingale back.

He had wanted us to encourage him by a hint: he had been appealing for a piece of machiavellian advice ‘you oughtn’t to make Nightingale a promise: but there’s no harm in his thinking you have done so: he’ll be disappointed later, that’s all’. If we had given him the most concealed of hints, he would have rushed to Nightingale, used every charm of which he was capable, safeguarded himself verbally perhaps but in no other way. If he could have made a bargain with Nightingale, whatever it meant letting Nightingale think he had been promised, he would have made it that night. It needed Chrystal’s threat to stop him at last.

Just as he had been more angry than the others at Nightingale’s first approach, now he was tempted to stoop lower than they would ever do. In the garden, on the February morning when Nightingale asked for the tutorship, he thought with disgusted pride – was this how ambition soils one? But that was when his ambition seemed still in his hands. Now it was in danger of being taken away: ashamed, beside himself, tormented, he was tempted to cheat, steal, and lie.

He heard Chrystal’s threat. He looked at the firm, uncompromising face. Then at mine. Then, for a longer time, at Arthur Brown’s, distressed, kindly, but unwavering.

Suddenly Jago’s own face changed. He was thinking of himself without mercy. He was sickened by the temptation.

‘Shall I withdraw from the election?’ he asked with a kind of broken dignity.

Brown smiled in affectionate relief, and showed the depth of his relief by an outburst of scolding.

‘You mustn’t swing from one extreme to the other. We’ve still got an excellent chance. We’ve lost your most unreliable supporter, that’s all. You’re still in the lead. You must keep a sense of proportion.’

‘I agree with Brown,’ said Chrystal. His tone was not so warm as Brown’s, but toughly reassuring. Jago smiled at us, a smile without defence.

‘We shall have to reconsider some of our dispositions,’ said Brown, more contentedly than he had spoken that night. ‘You needn’t worry, you can leave the staff work to us. The other side have got weak spots too, Eliot and Calvert have wanted to tap them, but I think Eliot agrees that it’s still premature. The great thing at present is to take good care not to have any more confounded defections. I don’t know whether you others agree with me, but I should say there was just one more vulnerable spot in our party.’

‘I take it you mean old Eustace Pilbrow,’ said Jago.

‘He’s a weak spot,’ said Chrystal. ‘He’s always being got at by some crank or other.’

‘He turned Winslow and Getliffe down when they spread themselves to persuade him,’ Brown said. ‘I believe we can keep him steady. He’s very fond of you, providentially.’

‘I can never quite believe it,’ Jago replied. ‘But–’

Chrystal broke in: ‘When I look round, he seems to me the only weak spot. The rest are safe.’

Jago said: ‘I believe you three are safe because you know the worst about me. If any of you left me now, I shouldn’t only lose the Mastership. I should lose the confidence you’ve given me.’

Chrystal repeated: ‘The rest are safe. There’s no other weak spot. They’ll never break five of your votes. You can bank on them.’

Jago smiled.

‘Well,’ said Brown, ‘the essential thing for the present is to make sure of Pilbrow. If we hold him, we can’t lose. Six votes for you means that they can’t get a majority, since Crawford is fortunately debarred from voting for himself. Though I confess I feel uncharitable enough to think that he would consider it a reasonable action. And that reminds me that you and Crawford will soon have to settle how you’re going to dispose of your own votes. They may be significant.’

‘They’re certain to be, now,’ said Chrystal.

‘Crawford sent a note this very day suggesting a talk. I was mystified–’

‘The other side have got on to it too. They must have realized how much his vote and yours mean’ – Brown was bright-eyed with vigilance – ‘as soon as this confounded man told them he was ratting.’