The Masters

by C. P. Snow

  ‘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.’

  17: ‘We’re All Alone’

  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?’

  18: Result of an Anxiety

  After his demand on Jago, Nightingale seemed to be satisfied or to have lost interest. Brown’s explanation was that he was enough open to reason to realize that he could go no further; for his own practical ends, it was sensible to stop. Brown did not let us forget Nightingale’s practical ends: ‘He may be unbalanced,’ said Brown, ‘he may be driven by impulses which I am sure you understand better than I do, but somehow he manages to give them a direction. And that concerns me most. He wants some very practical things, and he’s going to be a confounded nuisance.�
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  That was entirely true. I learned a lot about men in action, I learned something of when to control a psychological imagination, from Arthur Brown. But it was also true that Nightingale was right in the middle of one of those states of anxiety which is like a vacuum in the mind: it fills itself with one worry, such as the tutorship; that is worried round, examined, explored, acted upon, for the time being satisfied: the vacuum is left, and fills immediately with a new worry. In this case it was the March recommendations of the council of the Royal Society: would he get in at last? would his deepest hope come off?

  This anxiety came to Nightingale each spring. It was the most painful of all. And it seemed sharper because, unlike his worry over the tutorship, there was nothing he could do to satisfy himself. He could only wait.

  Crawford had just been put on the council of the Royal Society for the second time, owing to someone dying. Crawford told us this news himself, with his usual imperturbability. Nightingale heard him with his forehead corrugated, but he could not resist asking: ‘Do you know when the results will be out?’ Crawford looked at his pocket-book.

  ‘The council will make its recommendations on Thursday, March–’ He told Nightingale the date. ‘Of course, they’re not public for a couple of months after. Is there anyone you’re interested in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The intense answer got through even to Crawford.

  ‘You’re not up yourself, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t realize it,’ said Crawford, making an unconcerned apology. ‘Of course your subject is a long way from mine. I don’t think I’ve heard anything about the chemists’ list. If I did, I’m afraid I paid no attention. If I knew anything definite, I should be tempted to tell you. I’m not a believer in unnecessary secrecy.’

  Francis Getliffe had been listening to the conversation, and we went out of the room together. As the door closed behind us, he said: ‘I wish someone would put Nightingale out of his misery.’

  ‘Do you know the result?’

  ‘I’ve heard the lists. He’s not in, of course. But the point is, he’s never even thought of. He never will get in,’ said Francis.

  ‘I doubt if anyone could tell him,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Francis.

  ‘When are you going to get in, by the way?’ I asked, forgetting our opposition, as though our ease had returned.

  ‘I shan’t let myself be put up until I stand a good chance. I mean, until I’m certain of getting in within three or four years. I’m not inclined to go up on the off chance.’

  ‘Does that mean the first shot next year?’

  ‘I’d hoped so. I’d hoped that, if I was put up next year, I was bound to be elected by 1940. But things haven’t gone as fast as they should,’ he said with painful honesty.

  ‘You’ve been unlucky, haven’t you?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Francis. ‘I might have got a shade more notice. But that isn’t the whole truth. I haven’t done as much as I ought.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ I said.

  ‘There’s got to be time,’ said Francis.

  None of us, I thought, was as just as he was, or made such demands on his will.

  About three weeks later, as I went into the porter’s lodge one day after lunch, I heard Nightingale giving instructions. A special note in his tone caught my attention: it occurred to me that it must be the day of the Royal results. ‘If a telegram comes for me this afternoon,’ he repeated, ‘I want the boy sent to my rooms without a minute’s delay. I shall be in till hall. Have you got that? I don’t want a minute’s delay.’

  The afternoon was harshly cold; the false spring of February had disappeared, and before teatime it was dark, the sky overhung with inky clouds. I stayed by my fire reading, and then sent for tea before a pupil arrived. As I waited for the kitchen porter, I stood looking out of the window into the court. A few flakes of snow were falling. Some undergraduates came clanking through in football boots, their knees a livid purple, their breath steaming in the bitter air. Then I saw Nightingale walking towards the porter’s lodge. The young men were shouting heartily: Nightingale went past them as though they did not exist.

  In a moment, he was on his way back. He had found no telegram. He was walking quite slowly: the cold did not touch him.

  In hall that night his face was dead white and so strained that the lines seemed rigid, part of the structure of his brow. Every few seconds he put a hand to the back of his head, and the tic began to fascinate Luke, who was sitting next to him. Several times Luke looked at the pale, grim, harassed face, started to speak, and then thought better of it. At last his curiosity was too strong, and he said: ‘Are you all right, Nightingale?’

  ‘What do you mean, all right?’ Nightingale replied. ‘Of course I’m all right. What do you think you’re talking about?’

  Luke blushed, but would not be shouted down.

  ‘I thought you might have been overworking. You were looking pretty tired–’

  ‘Overworking,’ Nightingale said. ‘I suppose you think that’s the worst thing that can happen.’

  Luke shrugged his shoulders, muttered a curse under his breath and caught my eye. He had a rueful, self-mocking sense of humour; his work was in a hopeful phase, and he lived at the laboratory from nine in the morning until it closed at night. It was hard to have his head bitten off for laziness.

  We were already through the soup and fish when Crawford came into hall. He slipped into the seat next mine, but before he sat down called up the table to Winslow: ‘My apologies for being late. I’ve had to attend the council of the Royal. And this weather wasn’t very good for the train.’

  He ate his way methodically through the first courses and had caught us up at the sweet. All the time Nightingale’s eyes were fixed on him with a last desperate question of anxiety. But Crawford was untroubled, and, having levelled up in eating, talked reflectively to me. It was like him that his conversation did not alter with the person he was addressing; if there was anything he wanted to deliver, I served to receive it as well as Francis Getliffe.

  ‘Selecting people for honorific purposes is a very interesting job. But it’s not as easy as you might suppose. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of the choice of Fellows of the Royal – which I happen just to have been concerned with. Speaking as a man of science, I should be happier if there were sharper criteria to help us make the choice. I’m not meaning the choice is made unfairly: no, I should say that on the conscious level they’re as fair as human choices can be. But the criteria are not sharp, and it’s no use pretending they can be. “Original work of distinction” – how can you compare one man with a new theory on the interior of the stars with someone else who has painstakingly measured the movements of a fish?’

  The rest had finished the meal, Winslow was waiting to say grace, but Crawford finished saying what he had to say. On our way into the combination room, he suddenly noticed Nightingale, and called out: ‘Oh, Nightingale. Just a minute.’

  We passed on, leaving the two of them together. But we heard Crawford’s audible, impersonally friendly voice saying clearly: ‘No luck for you this time.’

  They followed us at once. Most of those dining went away without sitting down to wine, but Crawford said that he had had a busy day and needed a glass of port. So Winslow and I shared a bottle with him, and listened to his views on the organization of science, the place of the Royal Society, the revolution in scientific technology. Nightingale hung on to every word.

  Crawford enjoyed talking; some were put off by his manner and could not bear to listen, but they lost something. He had not the acute penetrating intellect of Roy Calvert; in an intelligence test he would not have come out as high as, say, the Master or Winslow; and he had no human insight at all. But he had a broad, strong, powerful mind, not specially apt for entertaining but made to wear.

  Nightingale sat outside the little circle of three round which the bottle passed. Since he le
arned the news, his expression was still taut with strain, but his eyes had become bright and fierce. There was nothing crushed about him; his whole manner was active, harsh, and determined as he listened to Crawford. He listened without speaking. He did not once give his envious smile. But, once as I watched him, his eyes left Crawford for an instant and stared inimically at mine. They were feverishly bright.

  When I went away, the three of them were still at the table, and Crawford and Winslow were emptying the bottle.

  The next evening, half an hour before dinner, I heard Francis Getliffe’s firm, plunging, heavy step on the stairs. He used to call in often on his way to hall; but he had not done so since our quarrel.

  ‘Busy?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good work.’ He sat in the armchair across the fire, took a cigarette, cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable and constrained, but he was looking at me with mastery.

  ‘Look, Lewis, I think it’s better for me to tell you,’ he said. ‘Your majority for Jago has been broken.’

  He was triumphant, he enjoyed telling me – yet he felt a streak of friendly pity.

  ‘Who’s gone over?’ I said, but I did not need to ask.

  ‘Nightingale. He told Crawford himself last night. Winslow was there too.’

  I blamed myself for having left them together with Nightingale in that condition. Then I thought that was not realistic: it could have made no difference. And I did not want to show concern in front of Francis Getliffe.

  ‘If it weren’t for the vote, which is a nuisance,’ I said, ‘I should wish you joy of him.’

  Francis gave a grim smile.

  ‘That makes it 6–5. Neither side has a clear majority. I hadn’t reckoned on that. I don’t know whether you had.’

  19: ‘A Nice Little Party’

  As soon as Francis Getliffe left me, I rang up Brown. He said that he was kept by a pupil, but would get rid of him and come. The moment he entered, I told him the news.