by C. P. Snow
He wrote his great bold signature, and said with satisfaction: ‘Ah. That’s a fine notice. Now I must fix it.’ Chrystal and Roy Calvert helped him with his overcoat, and as they did so he heard the clock strike. It was six o’clock. He chuckled: ‘Do you know, our old friend Despard wrote to me last night and said this would be a purely formal meeting. And it’s lasted an hour and a quarter. Not bad for a purely formal meeting, Despard, old chap! An hour and a quarter. What do you think of that, Winslow? What do you think of that, Jago?’
It was raining hard outside, and we put on overcoats to follow him. Roy slipped Gay’s arms through the sleeves of his gown again. We followed him out into the court, and Chrystal opened an umbrella and held it over the old man as he shuffled along. The rest of us halted our steps to keep behind him, in the slow procession across the first court to the chapel. The procession moved very slowly through the cold December evening.
When we arrived at the chapel door, it was found there were no drawing pins. Chrystal swore, and, while Luke ran to find some, tried to persuade Gay that it was too chilly for him to stay there in the open.
‘Not a bit of it, my dear chap,’ said Gay. ‘Not a bit of it. There’s life in the old dog yet.’ Luke came back panting with the pins, and Gay firmly pushed in eight of them, one at each corner of the sheet and one in the middle of each side.
Then he stood back and admired the notice.
‘Ah. Excellent. Excellent,’ he said. ‘That’s well done. Anyone can see there’s a vacancy with half an eye.’
Part Three
Notice Of A Vacancy
30: Jago Thinks of Himself as a Young Man
The funeral was arranged for December 8th, and in the days before a sombre truce came over the college. Full term ended on the 7th, and the undergraduates climbed Brown’s stairs to fetch their exeats, walked through the courts to Jago’s house, more quietly than usual; even the scholarship candidates, who came up that day, were greeted by the hush as soon as they asked a question at the porters’ lodge. On the nights of the 5th and 6th, the two nights which followed Gay’s meeting, I did not hear a word spoken about the Mastership. Chrystal was busy arranging for a fellows’ wreath, to add to those we were each sending as individuals; Despard-Smith was talking solemnly about the form of service; there was no wine drunk. Roy Calvert did not dine either night; he was looking after Lady Muriel, and she liked having him eat and sleep in the Lodge.
On the afternoon of the 7th, I wanted to escape from the college for a time and went for a walk alone. It was a dark and lowering day, very warm for December; lights were coming on in the shop windows, a slight rain was blown on the gusty wind, the wind blew down the streets as though they were organ-pipes, umbrellas were bent to meet it.
I walked over Coe Fen to the Grantchester meadows, and on by the bank of the river. There was no one about, the afternoon was turning darker; a single swan moved on the water, and the flat fields were desolate. I was glad to return to the lighted streets and the gas flares in Peas Hill, all spurting furiously in the wind.
While I was looking at the stalls under the gas flares, I heard a voice behind me say: ‘Good Lord, it’s you. What are you doing out on this filthy day?’
Jago was smiling, but his face was so drawn that one forgot the heavy flesh.
‘I’ve been for a walk,’ I said.
‘So have I,’ said Jago. ‘I’ve been trying to think straight.’
We walked together towards the college. After a moment’s silence, Jago broke out: ‘Would it be a nuisance if I begged a cup of tea in your rooms?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts,’ he smiled, ‘and it’s not a specially pleasant process. It hurts my wife to see me, very naturally. If I inflict myself on you, you won’t mind too much, will you?’
‘Come for as long as you like,’ I said.
In the first court, Brown’s windows gleamed out of the dusk, but on the other side of the court the Lodge was dark behind drawn blinds.
‘It is very hard to accept that he is dead,’ said Jago.
We went up to my sitting-room, I ordered tea. And then I asked, feeling it kindest to be direct.
‘You must be worrying about the election now?’
‘Intolerably,’ said Jago.
‘You couldn’t help it,’ I said.
‘I should be on better terms with myself if I could.’
‘You wouldn’t be human,’ I said.
‘I haven’t been able to forget it for an instant this afternoon. I went out to clear my head. I couldn’t put it aside for an instant, Eliot. So I’ve been trying to think it out.’
‘What have you been trying to think out?’
‘How much it means to me.’
He burst out: ‘And I’m quite lost, Eliot, I don’t know where I am.’ He looked at me in a manner naive, piercing, and confiding. ‘I can tell you what I shouldn’t like to tell Chrystal and good old Arthur Brown. There are times when it seems absolutely meaningless. I’m disgusted with myself for getting so excited about something that doesn’t matter in the slightest. There are times when I’d give anything to run away from it altogether.’
‘And those times are when–’
Jago smiled painfully: ‘When it seems quite certain I shall get it,’ he said. ‘Often I feel quite certain. Sometimes I think it will be taken from me at the last. Whenever I think that,’ he added, ‘I want it more than anything in the world. You see, I’ve no use for myself at all.’
‘I should be the same,’ I said.
‘Should you? Do you really know what it is to have no use for yourself?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said.
‘You seem more sensible than I am,’ said Jago. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t want so badly to run away from it altogether.’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said.
‘Chrystal ought to be standing himself. He would have enjoyed it,’ said Jago with a tired and contemptuous shrug.
I was thinking: it was the core of diffidence and pride flaming out again. He would have liked, even now, to escape from the contest. He told himself ‘it did not matter in the slightest’. He assured himself of that, because he could not bear to fail. Then again he revolted from the humiliations he had consented to, in order to gain an end that was beneath him. He had been civil to Nightingale, for months he had submitted himself to Chrystal’s lead. He had just revealed something I had already guessed, something I believed that had worried Arthur Brown all along. Jago had always been far away from Chrystal. In the course of nature, as Chrystal ran the campaign, Jago liked him less. He came to think that Chrystal was a soulless power-crazed businessman, and it irked him to bow: his temper over the candidates’ vote had been an outburst of defiance. Yet even that night he had been forced to retract, he could not bear to ruin his chances, he needed this place more even than he needed his pride.
‘We must get it for you,’ I said, with a feeling I had never had for him before.
There was a pause. Jago said: ‘I think I want it more than anything in the world.’
‘It’s strange,’ he added in a moment. ‘It’s extremely strange. When I was a young man, Eliot, I was ambitious. I wanted everything that a man can want. I wanted honour, riches and the love of women. Yes, I was ambitious. I’ve suffered through it. And now this is what I have come to want. It can’t be long now–’
He passed on to talk, with a curious content, of some appointments he would make as Master. He was enjoying in advance the pleasure of patronage: in his imagination the future was golden: for he pictured the college in years to come looking back upon his reign – ‘the greatest of our Masters’. Then that vision left him. He glanced at me almost fiercely and said: ‘You’ll be surprised how splendid my wife will turn out in the Lodge. She always rises to the occasion. I couldn’t bear to lose it now, on her account. She’s looking forward to it so much.’
I felt he wanted to say more about her, but he could not manage it. It had be
en a relief to talk of his ambition; perhaps it would have been a greater relief to let someone see into his marriage. But it was impossible. Certainly with me, a friendly acquaintance, a supporter, a much younger man. I believed that it would have been impossible with anyone. I believed he had never laid bare his heart about her. He had many friendly acquaintances, but, despite his warmth and candour, he seemed to have no intimate friends. I had the impression that he had not spoken even of his ambition so nakedly before.
Over tea, though he could not confide about his own marriage, he talked of one that would never happen. He had seen that Joan Royce longed to marry Roy. Jago switched from that one challenging remark about his wife to talk of them. Perhaps the switch showed what he was feeling in the depth of his heart. She ought to have been right for Roy, said Jago. Jago had once hoped that she would be. But she simply was not. And so it would be madness for Roy to marry her. No one outside can tell who is right for one. There are no rules. One knows it without help. Sometimes the rest of the world thinks one is wrong, but they cannot know.
Then his thoughts came back to himself. December 20th.
‘It can’t be long now,’ he said.
‘Thirteen days.’
‘Each day is a long time,’ said Jago.
Next afternoon, the bell tolled and the chapel filled up for the funeral. Lady Muriel and Joan sat in the front rows with their backs like pokers, not a tear on their faces, true to their Spartan training: they would not show a sign of grief in public and it was only with Roy that they broke down. All the fellows attended but Pilbrow, from whom there was still no news; even Winslow came into the chapel, for the first time since Royce’s election. Many of the heads of other colleges were there, all the seven professors of divinity, most of the orientalists and theologians in the university; and also a few men who went by habit from college to college for each funeral.
The wind had dropped, but the skies were low outside and a steady rain fell all day. Every light in the chapel was burning, and as they entered people blinked their eyes after the sombre daylight. The flowers on the coffin smelt sweet and sickly. There was a heavy quiet even when the chapel was packed.
Despard-Smith recited the service, and Gay, less dispirited than anyone there, chanted his responses with lusty vigour. ‘Lord, have mercy upon us,’ cried Despard-Smith: and I could distinguish Roy Calvert’s voice, light, reedy, and abnormally clear, as he said Amen.
Despard-Smith put into the service an eulogy of Royce. On the night the news of the death came to the combination room, Despard-Smith had spoken simply and without thinking: ‘he was a very human man’. But by now he had had time to think, and he pronounced the same praise as he had done so often. ‘Our first thoughts must go to his family in their affliction… Greater as their loss must be, we his colleagues know ours to be so catastrophic that only our faith can give us hope of building up this society again. We chiefly mourn this day, not the Master whom we all venerated, not the leader in scholarship who devoted all his life to searching for truth, but the kind and faithful friend. Many of us have had the blessing of his friendship for a lifetime. We know that no one ever turned to him for help in vain; no one ever found him to hold malice in his heart or any kind of uncharitableness; no one even believed he was capable of entertaining an unkind thought, or heard him utter an unkind word.’
I glanced at Roy. He had loved Royce: his eyes lost their sadness for a second as he heard that last singular piece of praise; there was the faint twitch of a smile on his lips.
In the even and unfaltering rain, a cavalcade of taxis rolled out to a cemetery in the suburbs, rolled past the lodging houses of Maid’s Causeway, the blank street front of the Newmarket Road. The fellows were allotted to taxis in order of seniority: Francis Getliffe, Roy Calvert, Luke and I shared the last. None of us spoke much, the heaviness rested on us, we gazed out of the streaming windows.
At the cemetery, we stood under umbrellas round the grave. Despard-Smith spoke the last words, and the earth rattled on the coffin.
We drove back, more quickly now, in the same group. The rain still pelted down without a break, but we all felt an inexplicably strong relief. We chatted with comfort, sometimes with animation: Francis Getliffe and Roy, who rarely had much to say to each other, exchanged a joke about Katherine’s father. There were wild spirits latent in each of us just then, if our conventions had given us any excuse. As it was, when the taxis drew up at the college, knots of fellows stood in the shelter of the great gate. The same pulse of energy was passing round. I expected one result to be that the truce would be broken by dinner time that night.
31: ‘A Good Day for the College’
Actually, it took twenty-four hours for the truce to break in earnest. Then a rumour went round that Nightingale had threatened to ‘speak out’. It was certainly true that Francis Getliffe spent the afternoon arguing with Luke; I heard of the conversation from Luke himself, who could not bear to be separated for an hour from his work just then. His fresh skin had lost most of its colour, there were rings under his eyes, and he said angrily: ‘You’d have thought Getliffe was the last man in the bloody place to keep anyone away from the lab – just when the whole box of tricks may be tumbling out.’
‘You look tired,’ I said.
‘I’m not too tired to work,’ he retorted.
‘What did you tell Getliffe?’
‘Everyone else in this blasted college may change their minds twice a week,’ said young Luke, who was frantic with hope, who had anyway given up being tactful with me. ‘But I bloody well don’t.’
Francis’ attempt was fair enough, and so was another by Winslow to persuade me. Neither caused any comment, in contrast to a ‘flysheet’ which Nightingale circulated to each fellow on December 10th. In the flysheet Nightingale put down a list of Crawford’s claims to the Mastership, and ended with the sentence: ‘Mrs Crawford appears to many members of the college to be well fitted for the position of Master’s wife. This is not necessarily true of a candidate’s wife, and they attach great weight to this consideration.’
He said no more, but I was stopped in the court several times between lunch and dinner: – was this Nightingale’s final shot? was he going further? I was ready for an open scene in hall that night. Roy Calvert and I were the only members of Jago’s party dining, and Nightingale, Winslow, and Despard-Smith were sitting together. I had braced myself to take the offensive – when Jago, who had not come into hall since the Master’s death, walked in after the grace. Nightingale seemed to be waiting for a burst of fury, but there was none. Jago sat through the dinner talking quietly to me and Roy. Occasionally he spoke a civil word to Despard-Smith and Winslow. Nightingale he had come there to ignore, and not a word was spoken about the Mastership, either in hall or in the combination room.
As I was having breakfast next morning, December 11th, Brown came in, pink and businesslike.
‘I’ve been wondering whether to answer Nightingale’s latest effort,’ he said, sitting in the window seat. ‘But I’m rather inclined to leave it alone. Any reply is only likely to make bad worse. And I’ve got a sneaking hope that, now he’s started putting things on paper, he may possibly give us something to take hold of. I did sketch out a letter, but I had last minute qualms. I don’t like it, but it’s wise to leave things as they are.’
‘How are they?’ I asked.
‘I won’t pretend to you that I’m entirely comfortable,’ said Brown. ‘Though mind you it’s necessary for both of us to pretend to the other side. And perhaps’ – he looked at me – ‘it’s even more necessary to pretend to our own. But, between ourselves, things aren’t panning out as they should. I haven’t had a reply from Eustace Pilbrow. I sent off cables to every possible address within an hour after poor Royce died. And I sent off another batch yesterday. I shall believe Pilbrow is coming back to vote when I see him walking through the gate.’ He went on: ‘I had another disappointment last night. I went round with Chrystal to make another try to lobby
old Gay. Well, we didn’t get any distance at all. The old boy is perfectly well up to it, but he won’t talk about anything except his responsibility for presiding over the college during the present period. He read the statutes to us again. But we didn’t begin to get anywhere.’
‘I wish you’d taken me,’ I said sharply.
‘I very much wanted to take Chrystal,’ said Brown. He saw that I was annoyed (for I did not believe they had ever been good at flattering Gay), and he spoke more frankly about his friend than at any time before. ‘I feel it’s a good idea to – keep up his interest in our campaign. He’s never been quite as enthusiastic as I should like. I have had to take it into account that he’s inclined to be temperamental.’
The telephone bell rang. Was Mr Brown with me? Mr Chrystal was trying to trace him urgently. Brown offered to go to Chrystal’s rooms; no, the Dean was already on his way up to mine.
Chrystal entered briskly, his eyes alight with purpose and the sense of action.
‘It’s a good day for the college,’ he said at once.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Brown, quick and suspicious.
‘I don’t think I’m entitled to say much more till this afternoon,’ said Chrystal. He was revelling in this secret. ‘But I can tell you that Despard-Smith received a letter from Sir Horace by the first post today. It’s very satisfactory, and that’s putting it mildly. There’s one thing that’s a bit cranky, but you’ll hear for yourselves soon enough. I’d like to tell you the whole story, but Despard showed me the letter in confidence.’
‘It sounds perfectly splendid,’ said Brown.
‘Despard didn’t see how we could do anything about it until we’d elected a Master. But I insisted that it would be lamentable to hold back the news of something as big as this,’ Chrystal said. ‘I had to tell Despard straight out that I wasn’t prepared to let that happen. If he wouldn’t summon an informal meeting himself, I would do it off my own bat.’