He said good afternoon, and went out of the room.
‘This is distressing,’ said Winslow.
‘He’ll calm down soon.’
‘I never had any idea that Calvert was capable of making an exhibition of himself. Is this the first time it has happened?’
I had two tasks. I had to safeguard Roy as much as I could. And I had to think of politics. I told some of the truth, and some lies. I had never seen Roy lose control until this afternoon, I said. It was a shock to me. Roy was upset over the Master: it had worn his nerves to breaking point to see such suffering.
‘He’s a considerable scholar, from all they say,’ said Winslow. ‘I had my doubts about him once, but I’ve always found him an engaging young man.’
‘There’s nothing whatever to worry about.’
‘You know him well,’ said Winslow. ‘I expect you’re right. I think you should persuade him to take a good long holiday.’
Winslow was studying the sheet of paper. At last he said: ‘So there is something in the stories that have been going round?’
‘I don’t know what he has written there,’ I said. ‘I’ve no doubt that the stories are more highly painted than the facts. Remember they’ve been told you by people who envy him.’
‘Maybe,’ said Winslow. ‘Maybe. If those people have this ammunition, I don’t see how Master Calvert is going to continue in this college. The place will be too hot to hold him.’
‘Do you want to see that happen?’
‘I’m comparatively indifferent about the young man. He can be amusing, and he’s a scholar, which is more than can be said for several of our colleagues.’ Winslow stared at me. ‘I’m comparatively indifferent, as I say. But I’m not indifferent about the possibility of your candidate becoming Master.’
‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that if you let other people see Calvert’s note, you could make a difference to Jago’s chances?’
‘I did mean that,’ said Winslow.
‘You can’t do it,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘You can’t do it. You know some of the reasons that brought Calvert to the state he was in this afternoon. They’re enough to stop you absolutely, by themselves.’
‘If you’d bring it to a point—’
‘I’ll bring it to a point. We both know that Calvert has lost control of himself. He got into a state pretty near despair. And he wouldn’t have got into that state unless he’d seen that you were unhappy and others were pleased at your expense. Who else had any feeling for you?’
‘It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other,’ said Winslow.
Then I asked: ‘Who else had any feeling for your son Dick: You knew that Calvert was upset about him. Who else had any feeling for your son?’
I was taking advantage of his misery. Winslow looked as though he had no strength left. He stared down at the table, and was silent for a long time. At last, in a flat, exhausted mutter, he said: ‘What shall I do with this?’ He pointed to the sheet of paper.
‘I don’t mind,’ I said.
‘Perhaps you’d better have it.’
Winslow did not so much as look when I burnt the paper in the grate.
24: Argument in the Summer Twilight
I went straight from Winslow to Roy’s room. Roy was lying on his sofa, peaceful and relaxed.
‘Have I dished everything?’ he asked.
He was happy. I had seen the course of his affliction often enough to know it by heart. It was, in fact, curiously mechanical. There was first the phase of darkness, the monotonous depression which might last for weeks or months: then that phase passed into another, where the darkness was lit up by flashes of ‘gaiety’ — gaiety which nearly overcame him at Brown’s party, and which we both dreaded so much. The phase of gaiety never lasted very long, and nearly always broke into one frantic act, such as he had just committed. Then he felt a complete release.
For months, perhaps for longer, he knew that he was safe. When I first knew him well, in his early twenties, the melancholy had taken hold of him more often. But for two or three years past the calm and beautiful intervals had been winning over the despair. That afternoon he knew that he would be tranquil for months to come.
I was tired and weighed down. Sometimes I felt that the burden on me was unfair, that I got the worst of it. I told him that I should not always be there to pick up the pieces.
He was anxious to make amends. Soon he asked: ‘I haven’t dished Jago, have I?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘How did you work it? You’re pretty competent, aren’t you?’
I shook my head.
‘It didn’t need much working,’ I said. ‘Winslow may like to think of himself as stark, but he isn’t.’
‘Just so,’ said Roy.
‘I had to hit below the belt, and it wasn’t pretty,’ I said. ‘He hates Jago. But it isn’t the sort of hate that takes up much of one’s life. All his real emotions go into his son.’
‘Just so,’ said Roy again. ‘I think I’m lucky.’
‘You are.’
‘I couldn’t have borne putting paid to Jago’s chances.’ said Roy. ‘I’ll do what I can to make up for it, old boy. I shall be all right now.’
That evening in hall Roy presented a bottle in order to drink Jago’s health. When he was asked the occasion, so that Luke could enter it in the wine book, Roy smiled and said precisely: ‘In order to atone for nearly doing him a disservice.’
‘My dear Roy,’ cried Jago, ‘you couldn’t possibly do me a disservice. You’ve always been too kind to me. It even makes me forgive you your imitations.’
It was not only at the claret party that Roy mimicked Jago; he could not resist the sound of that muffled, sententious, emphatic voice; most of those round the table that night had heard him, and even Despard-Smith grinned.
As we went out that night, Arthur Brown reflected: ‘You heard the reason Roy Calvert gave for presenting a bottle? Now I wonder exactly what he meant by it. Put it another way: a few years ago, whenever he said anything that wasn’t straightforward, I used to expect one of his queer tricks. But I don’t worry much about him now. He’s become very much more stable. I really believe that he’s settling down.’
I did not disagree. It was better for Brown to speculate amiably, just as fellows in the future, studying the wine book, might wonder what that singular entry could mean.
I told Brown that I was taking action to protect Luke. Francis Getliffe had returned for the meeting that morning, and his wife Katherine had asked me to dinner later in the week, for the first time since our quarrel in January. I intended to use the opportunity: it would be easy to let drop the story of Nightingale’s threat, and it was too good a chance to miss.
When I arrived for dinner at their house in the Chaucer Road they welcomed me as in the old days. As Francis poured out sherry and took his wife a glass, he seemed less fine-drawn than in college. He looked at her with love, and his restlessness, his striving, his strenuous ambition, all died away; his nerves were steadied, he was content to the marrow of his bones. And she was happy through and through, with a happiness more continuous than a man could know.
The children were in bed. She talked of them with delight, with a pretence of not wanting to bore me. As she indulged her need to linger over them, she sat with matronly comfort in her chair; it seemed a far cry from the excited, apprehensive, girl of eighteen whom I met in her father’s house at Bryanston Square nearly ten years before. I had been taken there by her brother Charles, the most intimate friend of my London days: it was the first big house I ever entered.
She talked of the past and her family, as we sat at dinner. Had I seen her brother recently? Then with great gusto, the nostalgia of a happy woman, she recalled days at her father’s country house when Francis and I had both been staying there.