‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Chrystal.
‘If there are no other candidates, we shall vote for each other,’ said Crawford imperturbably. ‘Speaking as a private person, I don’t think one can take much exception to what you want us to do. I think I do take a mild exception to the way you’ve done it, but not so strongly as my colleague. However, that’s past history, and it’s neither here nor there.’ He smiled.
Jago leaned forward in his chair, and slight as the movement was, we all looked at him. ‘For my part, I wish to say something more,’ he said.
‘I should leave it alone,’ said Crawford. ‘What’s done can’t be undone. You’ll only take it out of yourself.’
In fact, Jago was looking tired to breaking point. His face had no colour left, and the lines were deep — with sombre anger, with humiliation, with the elation that he might be safe again.
‘It’s good of you,’ said Jago to Crawford, ‘but I should be less than honest if I didn’t speak. I take the strongest exception to the way this has been done. It was unnecessary to expose us to this kind of compulsion. Apparently you’ — his eyes went round the table — ‘consider that one of the two of us is fit to be your Master: I should have hoped that you might in the meantime treat us like responsible persons. I should have hoped that was not asking too much. Why couldn’t this have been settled decently amongst us?’
‘We don’t all share your optimism, my dear Senior Tutor,’ said Winslow.
‘We were anxious to get everything in order,’ said Brown, eager to smooth things down. ‘We didn’t want to leave any loose ends, because none of us know how much time we’ve got left.’
‘That’s no reason for treating Crawford and me like college servants,’ said Jago.
‘Since when have college servants been required to vote for each other?’ Winslow asked.
Jago looked at him. His anger appeared to quieten. His white and furrowed face became still.
‘You are taking advantage of my position as a candidate,’ he said. ‘A candidate is fair play for any kind of gibe. You know that he’s not at liberty to speak his mind. No doubt he deserves any gibes you care to offer him. Anyone who is fool enough to stand for office deserves anything that comes his way.’
Winslow did not reply, and no one spoke. Crawford smoked impassively on, but all our attention was on Jago. He dominated the room.
‘You have taught me that lesson,’ he said. ‘I shall vote for Crawford at the election.’
As we were leaving, Jago spoke in a low voice to Chrystaclass="underline" ‘I should like to say something to you and Brown and Eliot.’
‘We can go back,’ said Chrystal. So, standing in the combination room, Jago faced three of his supporters.
‘I should have been told about this.’ His voice was quiet, but his anger had caught fire again.
‘I passed the word along as soon as we had decided to push forward,’ said Brown.
‘I should have been told. I should have been told at the first mention of this piece of — persuasion.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Chrystal.
‘When I find my party is negotiating behind my back—’
‘This isn’t a party matter, Jago,’ Chrystal broke in. ‘It’s a college matter.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jago, in a tone as brusque as Chrystal’s, ‘but I’m not used to having my actions dictated. Before my friends arrange to do so, I expect them to tell me first.’
‘Perhaps the circumstances are a little unfortunate,’ said Brown, ‘but I’m inclined to suggest that we’re all losing our sense of proportion. I think you’re forgetting that something very notable has been achieved. I’m not saying that it’s all over bar the counting of the votes, but I do put it to you that things look brighter than they have done since Nightingale got angry with us. You’re standing with a clear majority again, and the sensible course for us all is to keep it intact until we walk into the chapel.’
He went on: ‘I expect you know that you owe it entirely to the Dean. Put it another way: the Dean is the only man who could have forced a vote out of the other side. It was a wonderful night’s work.’
Beneath the round, measured, encouraging words there was strength and warning. Jago knew they were intended for him. He gazed into Brown’s eyes; there was a pause, in which I thought I saw a quiver pass through his body; then he said: ‘Your heads are cooler than mine. You must make allowances, as I know you’re only too willing to do. I know Chrystal appreciates that I admire everything he does. This was an astonishing manoeuvre, I know. I’m very grateful, Chrystal.’
‘I’m glad it came off,’ Chrystal replied.
I walked back with Jago to his house to fetch a book. He scarcely spoke a word. He was at the same time elated, anxious, and bitterly ashamed.
I was thinking of him and Crawford. That night, Crawford had been sensible, had even been kind to his rival. I could understand the feeling that he was the more dependable. It was true. Yet, of the two, which was born to live in men’s eyes?
And Jago knew it. He knew his powers, and how they were never used. The thought wounded him — and also made him naked to life. He had been through heartbreak because of his own frailty. He had seen his frailty without excuses or pity. I felt it was that — not his glamour, not his sympathy, not his bouts of generous passion — it was that nakedness to life which made me certain we must have him instead of Crawford. He was vulnerable in his own eyes.
Why had he never used his powers? Why had he done nothing? Sometimes I thought he was too proud to compete — and also too diffident. Perhaps at the deepest level pride and diffidence became the same. He could not risk a failure. He was born to be admired from below, but he could not bear the rough-and-tumble, the shame, the breath of the critics. His pride was mountainous, his diffidence intense. Even that night he had been forced to clown before he scarified his enemies. He despised what others said of him, and yet could not endure it.
There was one other thing. Through pride, through diffidence, he had spent his life among men whose attention he captured without an effort, with whom he did not have to compete. But it was the final humiliation if they would not recognize him. That was why the Mastership lived in his mind like an obsession. He ought to have been engaged in a struggle for great power; he blamed himself that he was not, but it sharpened every desire of his for this miniature power. He ought to have been just Paul Jago, known to all the world with no title needed to describe him, his name more glowing than any title. But his nature had forced him to live all his life in the college: at least, at least, he must be Master of it.
29: ‘A Vacancy in the Office of Master’
In November we heard that the Master was near his death.
On December 2nd, Joan told Roy Calvert: ‘The doctor has just told us that he’s got pneumonia. This is the end.’ As we were going into hall on December 4th, the news was brought that the Master had just died. Despard-Smith made an announcement to the undergraduates, and there was a hush throughout the meal. In the combination room afterwards coffee was served at once, and we listened to a simple and surprising eulogy from old Despard-Smith.
Soon, however, he and Winslow and Brown were occupied with procedure.
‘I am no longer Deputy,’ said Despard-Smith. ‘I ceased to be Deputy the moment the Master died. The statutes are explicit on this point. The responsibility for announcing the vacancy passes to the senior fellow. I must say I view with apprehension having to rely on Gay to steer us through this business. It places us in a very serious position.’
They studied the statutes again, but they had done so frequently in the past weeks, and there was no way out. The governing statute was the one which Despard-Smith had read out at the first meeting of the Lent term.