The Masters (38 page)

‘You don’t think I mind sending a note to Jago, do you? He would never have done. Not in a hundred years. I’m saving us all from a calamity. You don’t see it now, but you’ll thank me later on.’

He kept his coat on, he would not sit down, but he stood talking for some time. He did not wish to face Brown, he longed for the next hour to be past, he was putting off the struggle: not through direct fear, the fear that some men are seized with when they cross their wills against a stronger one, but because he was too soft-hearted to carry bad news, too uncertain of his own part to display it before intimate eyes.

He did not like the part he had insensibly slipped into. Just as Jago hated the path of ambition which, once he had begun it, led him from step to step, each one springing naturally from the last, until he was tempted to humiliate himself in front of Nightingale – in the same way Chrystal hated the path of compromise, which, step by step, each one plausible, enjoyable, almost inevitable, had brought him now to quarrel with his friend and break his contract. It was all so natural. Angrily he justified himself to me, said ‘you’ll all thank me later on’. He had been torn one way and the other, he had drifted into the compromise. He had never been master of the events round him. It was that which he could not forgive.

He had never been fond of Jago, had never liked to think of him as Master, had only joined in to please Arthur Brown. Then, liking the feel of power, he had tried to find ways out. He had revelled in making the candidates vote for each other. Yet even so he had not struggled free from his indecisions. Was he too much under Brown’s influence? His affection was hearty and simple; but his longing to be masterful was intense. Was he right in sacrificing his judgement, just to please Brown? Even here, where he felt each day that Brown had made a mistake?

For Chrystal had come to feel that electing Jago would be a mistake; it would hinder all that Chrystal wanted, for himself and for the college. With Jago, there would be no chance of the college gaining in riches and reputation among solid men.

As the months went on, Chrystal found he could endure the thought of Jago less and less. He felt free in the conferences with the other side: in the pacts with them, the search for a third candidate, he could assert himself. Every time he was with the other side he felt that the whole election lay in his hands. In those meetings, in the hours at night with Jago’s opponents, he came into his own again.

And how much, I wondered, was due to hurt vanity – urgent in all men, and as much so in Chrystal as in most? Had he been piqued so intolerably when Jago defended Winslow and laughed at Sir Horace and the benefaction – had he been piqued so intolerably that it turned the balance? Envy and pique and vanity, all the passions of self-regard: you could not live long in a society of men and not see them often weigh down the rest. How much of my own objection to Crawford was because he once spoke of me as a barrister
manqué
?

I did not know, perhaps I never should know, on what day Chrystal faced himself and saw that he would not vote for Jago. Certainly not in the first steps which, without his realizing, had started him towards this afternoon. When he began the move to make the candidates vote for each other, his first move to a coalition with the other side, he could still have said to himself, and believed it, that he was pledged to Jago. He did not make any pretence of enthusiasm to Brown or me, and to himself his reluctance, his sheer distaste, kept coming into mind. Yet he would have said to himself that he was going to vote for Jago. He would still have said it when in search of a third candidate – he was going to vote for Jago unless we found another man. On December 17th, when he approached Brown, he would have gone on saying it to himself. He would have said it to himself: but I thought that there are things one says to oneself in all sincerity, statements of intention, which one knows without admitting it that one will never do. I believed it had been like that with Chrystal since the funeral. He believed he would vote for Jago, unless he brought off a coup: in some hidden and inadmissible way, he knew he never would.

Yet it was probably less than forty-eight hours before this afternoon when at last he saw with explicit certainty that he would not vote for Jago. He had tried Brown as a third candidate, to give himself an excuse for throwing away his vote. Brown had turned him down. There would be no third candidate. It must be Jago against Crawford to the end. Chrystal was caught. There was nothing for it now. So, within the last forty-eight hours, it had come to him. Everything became clear at one flash. With relief, with release, with extreme satisfaction, he knew that he would vote for Crawford. It was what he had wanted to do for months.

It was astonishingly like some of the moves in high politics, I thought afterwards when I had a chance of watching personal struggles upon a grander scale. I saw men as tough and dominating as Chrystal, entangled in compromise and in time hypnotized by their own technique: believing that they were being sensible and realistic, taking their steps for coherent practical reasons, while in fact they were moved by vacillations which they did not begin to understand. I saw men enjoying forming coalitions, just as Chrystal did, and revelling in the contact with their opponents. I saw the same impulse to change sides, to resent one’s leader and become fascinated by one’s chief opponent. The more certain men are that they are chasing their own concrete and ‘realistic’ ends, so it often seemed to me, the more nakedly do you see all the strands they could never give a reason for.

Such natures as Chrystal’s are more mixed in action than the man himself would ever admit – more mixed, I sometimes thought, than those of stranger men such as Jago and Roy Calvert. Chrystal thought he was realistic in all he did: you had only to watch him, to hear his curt inarticulate outbursts as he delayed breaking the news to Brown, to know how many other motives were at work: yet it was naive to think he was not being realistic at the same time.

In a sense, he was being just as realistic as he thought. He had his own sensible policy for the college: that was safer with Crawford than with Jago. He wanted to keep his own busy humble power, he wanted his share in running the place. For months, every sign had told Chrystal that with Jago it would not be so easy. His temper and pride over Nightingale, his fury at having his hand forced over his vote, the moods in which he despised riches and rich men – Chrystal had noticed them all. He noticed them more acutely because of his other motives for rejecting Jago: but he also saw them as a politician. He had come to think that, if Jago became Master, his own policy and power would dwindle to nothing within the next five years. And he was absolutely right.

He still stood in his mackintosh in front of the fire. He could not force himself to go out.

‘You’d better come with me, Eliot,’ he broke out. ‘Brown’s got to be told. He’ll want to talk to you.’

I refused.

‘There’s nothing for me to say,’ I told him. I was too downcast: why should I help spare his feelings?

‘Brown’s got to be told. I shan’t take long about it,’ said Chrystal, standing still.

‘It’s late already – to tell him what you’re going to.’

‘I accept that,’ said Chrystal. ‘Well, I’ll do it. You’d better join us in a few minutes, Eliot. You see eye to eye with Brown on this. He’d like to have you there. I shall have to go. As soon as I’ve told him. I’ve got plenty to do tonight.’

As he spoke he started out of the room. Half an hour later I followed him. Brown was sitting deep in his habitual armchair; his face was sombre. Chrystal, his mackintosh unbuttoned, stood with his back to the fire, and his mouth was drawn down into lines unhappy and ill-treated. When I entered, it seemed as though neither had spoken for minutes past; and it was a time before Brown spoke.

‘I gather that you have an inkling of this change in the situation,’ he said to me.

I said yes.

A moment later, there were light and very rapid footsteps on the stairs. In burst Jago, his eyes blazing.

‘I’m extremely sorry,’ he said to Brown. His tone was wild, and he turned on Chrystal with a naked intensity. His skin was grey, and yet the grimace of his lips was for all the world as though he smiled. ‘It was you I wanted to find,’ he said. ‘It is necessary for me to see you. This note you’ve been good enough to send me – I should like to be quite certain what you mean.’

‘I had not realized,’ said Brown in a quiet, measured voice, ‘that you had informed Jago already. I rather got the impression that you were speaking to me first.’

Chrystal’s chin was sunk into his chest.

‘I wrote before I came,’ he said.

For an instant – was it an illusion – they seemed quite motionless. In that tableau, Brown was sitting with his fingers interlaced on his waistcoat, his eyes fixedly watching the other two: Chrystal’s head was bent, he was staring at the carpet, his forehead shone under the light, his chin rested on his chest: Jago stood a yard away, and there was still a grimace on his lips that looked like a smile.

‘I must have got hold of the wrong impression,’ said Brown.

‘Many of us,’ Jago flared out, ‘have got hold of wrong impressions. It would have been extraordinary if we hadn’t. I’ve seen some remarkable behaviour from time to time–’

Chrystal raised his head and faced Jago with a bold assertive gaze. What had passed between him and Brown I did not know; but I felt that he had said little, he had not tried to explain himself, he had stood there in silence.

‘I’m not taking those strictures from you, Jago,’ he said.

‘At last I can say what I think,’ said Jago.

‘We can all say what we think,’ said Chrystal.

‘This isn’t very profitable,’ said Brown.

At the sound of that steady, monitory voice, Jago frowned. Then quite suddenly he began to talk to Chrystal in an urgent, reasonable seeming, almost friendly manner.

‘I think we’ve always understood each other,’ Jago said to Chrystal. ‘You’ve never made any pretence that you wanted me as Master on my own merits, such as they are. You were presented with two distinctly unpleasing candidates, and you decided that I was slightly the less unpleasing of the two. You mustn’t think it was a specially grateful position for me to be placed in – but at any rate there was no pretence about it. We both knew where we stood and made the best of it. Isn’t that true?’

‘There’s something in it,’ said Chrystal. ‘But–’

‘There’s everything in it,’ cried Jago. ‘We’ve had a working understanding that wasn’t very flattering to me. We both of us knew that we had very little in common. But we managed to adjust ourselves to this practical arrangement. You disliked the idea of my opponent more than you did me – and we took that as our common ground. It’s lasted us all these months until tonight. And it seems to me sheer abject folly that it shouldn’t last us a few hours longer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This will all be over tomorrow morning. Why have you suddenly let your patience get the better of you? I know only too clearly that you’re not very pleased at the idea of me as Master. We’ve both known that all along. Chrystal, I know we don’t get on at heart. I’m not going to pretend: I know we never shall. But we’ve made shift for long enough now. It’s too serious for us to indulge our likes and dislikes at the last minute. I’m ready now to talk over all the practical arrangements that we can conceivably make for the future. I’m asking you to think again.’

‘There’s no point in that.’

‘I’m asking you to think again,’ said Jago, with feverish energy. ‘We can make a working plan. I’m prepared to leave certain things in the college to you. It won’t remove the misunderstanding between us – but it will save us from the things we want most of all to avoid.’

‘What do I want most of all to avoid?’ asked Chrystal.

‘Having my opponent inflicted on you.’

‘You’re wrong, Jago.’ Chrystal shook his head.

‘How am I wrong?’

‘I don’t mind Crawford being Master. I did once. It was my mistake. He’ll make a good Master.’

Jago heard but seemed not to understand. His expression remained strained to the limit of the nerves, angry and yet lit by his nervous hope. It remained so, just as when one reads a letter and the words spell out bad news, one’s smile takes some time to go. Jago had not yet realized in his heart what Chrystal had said.

‘You know as well as I do,’ said Jago, ‘that seeing him elected is the last thing any of us want.’

‘I take you up on that.’

‘Do you seriously deny it?’

‘I do,’ said Chrystal.

‘I’m very much afraid that you’re–’

‘I’m sorry, Jago,’ said Chrystal. ‘I’d better make it clear. Crawford will be a good Master. You’ve got the advantage over him in some respects. I’ve always said that, and I stick to it.’

He paused. He kept his gaze on Jago: it was firm, satisfied, and curiously kindly.

‘That’s not the whole story,’ he went on. ‘I don’t like saying this, Jago, but I’ve got to. You’ve got the advantage over him in some respects – but by and large he will make a better Master than you would have done.’

Jago gasped. It seemed that that was the moment when he began to know and suffer.

‘Don’t worry too much,’ said Chrystal, with his curt, genuine, almost physical concern. ‘It isn’t everyone who’s suitable to be a Master. It isn’t always the best–’

‘Now you want to patronize me,’ said Jago, very quietly.

A faint flush tinged the thick-skinned pallor of Chrystal’s cheeks.

It was only then, when Jago was defeated, beginning to feel the first empty pang, knowing that the shame and suffering would grow, that he succeeded in touching Chrystal.

‘You never give anyone credit for decent intentions,’ snapped Chrystal. ‘If you had done, you might have more support.’

‘I regard it as useless,’ Brown intervened, ‘for either of you to say more.’

The two confronted each other. For an instant it felt as though they would clash with accusations of all they found alien in each other. They were on the point of denouncing what they hated because they could not share.