“My dear Paul!” he cried. He crossed the room and shook hands with Jago. “How ever long is it since you’ve been in here?”
“Longer than I like to think,” said Jago lightly. “And I mustn’t come in now on false pretences, must I?”
“What’s this?” But Brown had known as soon as he saw Jago.
“I’m afraid I’ve come to add my representations to Eliot’s, you know.”
“Is that fair?” asked Brown.
“Don’t you think it is?” said Jago, without self-consciousness.
“Anyway,” said Brown, “it’s very good to have you here, whatever you’ve come for.”
Brown’s affection and pleasure were genuine. Tactically, he was on his guard. He did not need teaching that Jago would try to work on him; nor that, without a purpose, Jago would not have come. It was he who warmed to the reconciliation, if that was what it was, not Jago. And yet Brown had watched Jago let himself slip; he had watched him contract out of all human obligations, except one. To Brown, whatever his luck, any indulgence like that was outside his nature. He was a stoic to the bones; whatever tragedy came his way, the King’s government, the college, his relations with his friends, had to be carried on. He disapproved of Jago’s abandonments; he scarcely understood them and in a sense he despised them. (Perhaps he also envied someone who could so totally let his emotions rip?) Further, he knew, no one better, that Jago had turned against him. But none of this, though it might have tinged Brown’s affection for him, had uprooted it. Brown’s affections, in spite of — or more truly, because of — their being so realistic, were more tenacious than any of ours. He could not change them as he did a suit of clothes or a set of tactics. It was a handicap to him, I used to think, as a politician: perhaps the only handicap he had.
Brown went through the ritual of drink-offering without hastening his pace.
“I’ve got a little white Burgundy waiting for you,” he said to me. “I had an idea it might be rather restful after the work you’ve had to put in. Paul, unless my memory escapes me, you never cared much for it, did you?”
Brown’s memory did not escape him. Jago asked for a sip of whisky.
“I don’t think that’s very difficult,” Brown replied, going out to his gyp-room and bringing back whisky bottle, siphon and jug of water to put by Jago’s side.
“There we all are!” said Brown, settling into his chair. He told Jago that he was looking well. He asked after his garden. He was ready, just as though he were an American businessman, for an indefinite exchange of cordialities before getting to the point. Whoever first came to the point, it would not be he. But it was not really a battle of patience. Jago would have lost it anyway, but he was not playing. Very soon he gave a smile and said: “I’ve been hearing a good deal about this case tonight.”
“Have you, Paul?”
“And about what’s happened in the Court — of course, I don’t question what Eliot’s told me—”
“I’m sure,” said Brown, “that you’re right not to.”
All of a sudden, Jago’s tone sharpened.
“Am I right, Arthur,” he leaned forward, “that you’ve seen this case all along in terms of people? In terms of your judgment of the people concerned?”
Brown’s stonewall response did not come quite so pat. He said: “That may be fair comment.”
“You have always seen everything that way.”
Jago spoke affectionately, but with weight of knowledge, as though drawing on their associations of the past and on history each could remember, as though he still possessed the moral initiative he had had when they were both young men. If I had used the same words to Brown, they would not have meant the same.
“I shouldn’t regard that,” said Brown, “as entirely unjust.”
“But for once, in this case, it may have made you entirely unjust.”
“You can’t expect me to accept that, Paul.”
“I put it to you,” all Jago’s reserves of force were coming out of him, together with a sadic spirt, “that you’ve never been vain about much except your judgment of people?”
“I shouldn’t have thought that I claim much for myself in that respect.”
“Don’t you?”
“I hope not,” said Brown.
“More than you think, Arthur, more than you think.”
“Only a fool,” said Brown, “claims that he knows much about people.”
“Only a fool,” Jago darted in, “claims it in the open. But I’ve known wise men, including you, who claim it to themselves.”
“I can only say again, I hope that isn’t true.”
“Haven’t you assumed all along that young Howard couldn’t be innocent?”
“That’s not quite fair,” said Brown steadily, “but I don’t want to shilly-shally. Put it another way: everything I know about the man makes me think that he could possibly be guilty.”
Jago had an intent, sharp smile.
“As for Nightingale. Haven’t you assumed all along that Nightingale was above reproach? Haven’t you closed your mind to what Getliffe said? Haven’t you refused to believe it?”
“I should find it very hard to believe.”
“Why do you find it hard?”
Brown’s high colour went higher still. He started in a burst of anger, his first that night.
“I regard it as abominably far-fetched.”
“Were you always so convinced that Nightingale was above reproach?” Jago spoke quietly, but again with weight and knowledge. When Brown had been his closest friend and had run him for the Mastership, it had been Nightingale, so they thought then, who had done them down.
After a pause Brown replied: “You have good reason not to like him, Paul.” He paused again. “But we should never, even then, have thought him capable of this—”
“I should have thought him capable of anything,” said Jago. “And I still do.”
“No.” Brown had recovered his confidence and obstinacy. “I can’t see him like that.”
“You’re being blinder than you used to be—”
“You mustn’t think that I’m specially fond of him. I don’t mind telling you, we haven’t got much in common. But it sticks in my gullet not to do one’s best for the chap with a record like his.”
A military record, Brown meant. Was this one of the reasons, I suddenly thought, for what had baffled me all along — Brown’s loyalty to Nightingale and the origin of it? Brown, who on medical grounds missed the first war, had the veneration for physical courage of those who doubted their own. But, more than that, he had a kind of veneration for the military life. Tory, intensely patriotic, he believed, almost as simply as he might have done as a child, that, while he was sitting in his college rooms during two wars, men like Nightingale had kept him safe. He was one of those rare men who liked recognising their debts. Most of us were disposed to deny our gratitude. Arthur Brown was singular because he actually liked not denying his.
“I feel,” Brown said, “a man like that deserves a bit of looking after.”
“You mean, that you won’t let yourself see him as straight as you let yourself see anyone else?”
“I mean,” Brown replied, unmoved, “that when I sit next to him in hall I am prepared to make a few allowances.”
“Arthur,” said Jago, “do you realise how much you’re evading me?”
“He’s not an easy man. And I like an easy man,” said Brown, with impenetrable obstinacy. “But I feel he’s entitled to a bit of protection.”
“You mean, you won’t let yourself entertain any suspicion of him, however reasonable?”
“I do not admit for a second that this is reasonable.”
“You won’t even admit the possibility, not even the possibility, that he did this?” Jago said with violence.