‘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 been 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.’