‘No. But I shall be disappointed if we can’t hold him.’
‘I repeat,’ said Chrystal, ‘Crawford knows it’s pretty even. He knows this way is his only chance. Why shouldn’t he chance it?’
‘What about Jago?’
‘If we brought it off, we should be presenting him with a decent chance of victory on a plate,’ said Chrystal fiercely. ‘I shouldn’t have much use for Jago if he raised difficulties.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Brown was frowning, ‘but they’re both strong men in their different fashions. And they’ve gone out of their way to tell us definitely that they refuse to vote for each other.’
‘We’ll threaten them with a third candidate.’
Chrystal’s plan was simple. The college was divided between two men, and did not wish for an outsider. It had a right to ask those two to save them from an outsider. Just one step was needed — for the ‘solid people’ on both sides to get together and threaten to switch to a third candidate if the other two refused. Chrystal had already heard something from Getliffe and Despard-Smith; they were no happier about the Visitor than he was; he was convinced that they would take part in his plan.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Brown.
‘What’s the matter?’ Chrystal challenged him.
‘I like being as friendly with the other side as I can. But I don’t like arrangements with them. You never know where they lead.’
They were speaking with all the difference of which they were capable. Brown, the genial, the peacemaker, became more uncompromising the more deeply he was probed. Both his rock-like stubbornness and his wary caution held him firm. While Chrystal, behind his domineering beak, was far more volatile, more led by his moods, more adventurous and willing to take a risk. The long stagnation had bored him; he was, unlike Brown, not fitted by nature for a conflict of attrition. Now all his interest was alive again. He was stimulated by the prospect of new talks, moves, combinations, and coalitions. He was eager to use his nerve and will.
‘It’s worth trying,’ said Chrystal. ‘If we want to win, we’ve no option.’
‘I’m convinced we ought to wait.’
‘It ought to be done tomorrow.’
‘I shall always feel that if we hadn’t rushed things about seeing Jago, we might have Nightingale in our pocket to this day,’ said Brown.
It was the first time I had heard him reproach his friend.
‘I don’t accept that. I don’t think it’s a fair criticism. Nothing would have kept Nightingale sweet. Don’t you think so, Eliot?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Chrystal asked me another question: ‘Do you agree that we ought to have a discussion with some of the other side?’
‘Can you bring it off?’ I replied. ‘If not, I should have thought it was better not to try. We shall have exposed ourselves.’
‘I’ll bring it off,’ said Chrystal, and his voice rang with zest.
‘Then it might win the Mastership for Jago,’ I said.
‘It’s worth trying,’ said Chrystal. ‘It must be tried.’
Brown had been watching me as I answered. Then he watched Chrystal, and sank into silence, his chin set so that one noticed the heavy, powerful jowl. He thought for some time before he spoke.
‘I’ll join a discussion if you arrange one. I don’t like it but I’ll join in.’ He had weighed it up. He saw that, with skill and luck, it might turn out well for Jago. He saw the danger more clearly than anyone there. But he was apprehensive that, if he did not join, Chrystal might make an overture on his own account.
He added: ‘I shan’t feel free to express myself enthusiastically if we do meet the other side. Unless they put it all plain and above board. And I shall not want to bring any pressure on the two candidates.’
‘So much the better. If you and I disagree, they’ll feel there isn’t a catch in it,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, active, friendly smile.
27: Conference of Six
Next morning Chrystal was busy paying visits to some of the other side. He saw Brown and me before lunch, and announced that he had arranged a conference for the coming Sunday night. There was a crowd dining that Sunday, and I heard Despard-Smith’s usual grating protest — ‘all avoiding the cold supper at home’; the number of diners that night helped to disguise the gap when six of us left after hall, but even so I wondered whether any suspicious eyes had noticed us.
We walked through the second court to Chrystal’s rooms. It was an autumn night of placid loveliness; an unlighted window threw back a reflection of the hunter’s moon; our shadows were black before us, and the old building rested in the soft radiance of the night.
It was warm, but Chrystal had a bright fire burning. His sitting-room was comfortable, rather in the fashion of a club; on a small table, a pile of periodicals was stacked with Chrystal’s unexpected, old-maidish tidiness; upon the walls stood out several cases with stuffed birds inside, which he had shot himself.
‘Do you want to bring chairs by the fire?’ said Chrystal. ‘Or shall we get round the table?’
‘I suggest round the table, if you please,’ said Winslow. ‘Your fire is so remarkably hospitable, my dear Dean. Almost excessively hospitable for this particular night, perhaps.’
Chrystal did not reply. He seemed resolved from the beginning not to be drawn by Winslow. With a plan in his mind, his temper had become much more level. So we sat round the table away from the fire — Despard-Smith, Winslow, and Francis Getliffe on one side, Brown and I on the other. Before Chrystal took the chair at the head, he said he could not offer us Brown’s variety of drinks, and filled for each of us a stiffish tumbler of whisky.
We all drank, no one had begun to talk, while Chrystal packed and lit his pipe. Suddenly he said: ‘We’ve reached a stalemate over this election. Do you agree?’
‘It looks like it,’ said Francis Getliffe.
‘How do you all regard it?’ said Chrystal.
‘I regard it as disastrous,’ Despard-Smith replied. His expression was lugubrious, his voice solemn; but he had already nearly finished his glass, and he was watching each word and movement on our side of the table.
‘It makes me think slightly less warmly than usual,’ said Winslow, ‘of the mental equipment of some of my colleagues.’
‘That is amusing,’ said Chrystal, but he did not pronounce the word with his customary venom. ‘But it doesn’t get us anywhere, Winslow. We shan’t get far if we start scoring points off one another.’
‘I associate myself with you, Dean,’ said Despard-Smith, with bleak authority.
‘I am still unenlightened as to where we are trying to get,’ said Winslow. ‘Perhaps others know the purpose of this meeting better than I do.’
‘It’s simple.’ Chrystal looked at the three of them. ‘This election may go to the Visitor. Are you content?’
‘The possibility hadn’t escaped us,’ said Winslow.
‘I expect that most of us have thought of it occasionally,’ said Brown. ‘But somehow we haven’t really believed that it would happen.’
‘I have found it only too easy to believe,’ said Despard-Smith.
‘Are you content?’ asked Chrystal.
‘To be honest,’ said Winslow, ‘I could only answer that — if I knew the mysterious ways in which the Bishop’s mind would work.’
‘I should consider it a c-catastrophe,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘If we can’t settle our own business without letting the Bishop take a hand, I look upon it as a scandalous state of affairs.’