‘I don’t follow you,’ said Crawford.
‘I mean,’ Jago cried, ‘that we’re exchanging a fine Bursar for a rich man’s charity. And I don’t like it.’
‘It’s not our fault,’ said Chrystal sharply.
‘That doesn’t make it any more palatable.’ Jago turned to his old enemy and his eyes were blazing. ‘Winslow, I want you to believe that we’re more distressed than we can say. If this choice had lain with us, you mustn’t be in any doubt what we should have chosen. Sir Horace would have had to find another use for his money. We can’t forget what you’ve done for us. In one office or another, you’ve guided this college all your life. And in your ten years as Bursar the college has never been so rich.’
Winslow’s caustic smile had left him, and he looked abashed and downcast.
‘That’s no thanks to me,’ he said.
‘Won’t you reconsider it?’ cried Jago.
Winslow shook his head.
The meeting broke up soon after, and Roy Calvert and I went for a stroll in the garden. A thick mist was gathering in the early evening, and the trees stood out as though in a Japanese print. We talked over the afternoon. Roy had enough trace of malice to feel triumphant; he imitated the look on some of their faces, as they heard of the bequest to him. ‘Sir Timberlake’s a bit of a humorist,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, I shall have to become respectable and stuffed. They’ve got me at last.’
We walked into the ‘wilderness’, and I mentioned Winslow. Roy frowned. We were both uncomfortable; we shared a perverse affection for him, we had not liked to watch his fall, we had admired Jago’s piece of bravura at the end. But we were uneasy. Somehow we felt that he had been reckless and indiscreet; we wished he would be quiet until the election. Roy showed an unusual irritation. ‘He will overdo things,’ he said. ‘He never will learn sense. All this enthusiasm about Winslow’s work as Bursar. Absurd. Winslow’s been dim as a Bursar. Chrystal would be much better. I should be an extremely good Bursar myself. They’d never let me be. They wouldn’t think I was sound.’
It seemed odd, but all he said was true.
Then we saw Winslow himself walking through the mist, his long heavy-footed stride noiseless on the sodden grass.
‘Hullo, Winslow,’ said Roy. ‘We were talking about you.’
‘Were you?’ said Winslow. ‘Is there much to say?’
‘Quite a lot,’ said Roy.
‘What shall you do, now you’ve got some leisure?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. I can’t start anything new.’
‘There’s plenty of time,’ I said.
‘I’ve never lacked for time,’ he said. ‘Somehow, I’ve never had the gift of bringing things off. I don’t know why. I used to think I wasn’t a fool. Sometimes, by the side of our colleagues, I thought I was a remarkably intelligent man. But everything I’ve touched has come to nothing.’
Roy and I looked at each other, and knew it was worse to speak than to stay silent. It would not have consoled him if we spoke. It was better to watch him, stoically facing the truth.
Together the three of us walked in silence through the foggy twilight. Bushes and trees loomed at us, as we took another turn at the bottom of the garden. We had covered the whole length twice before Roy spoke again, to ask a question about Dick Winslow. He had just got engaged, said Winslow. ‘We scarcely know the girl,’ he added. ‘I only hope it’s all right.’
His tone was warm and unguarded. His son had been the bitterest of his disappointments, but his love glowed on. And that afternoon the thought of the marriage refreshed him and gave him pleasure.
32: The Virtues of the Other Side
While we were walking round the garden, Roy Calvert asked Winslow to go with him to the pictures. Winslow was puzzled by the invitation, grumbled that he had not been for years, and yet was touched. In the end, they went off together and I was left in search of Brown.
I wanted to talk to him alone, for I still thought it might be worth while for me to go round to Gay’s. But, when I arrived, Chrystal was just sitting down. He was smoking a pipe, and his expression was not as elated as it had been that morning. Even when Brown produced a bottle of madeira — ‘it needs something rather out of the ordinary to drink Sir Horace’s health’ — Chrystal responded with a smile that was a little twisted, a little wan. He was dispirited because his triumph, like all triumphs, had not been as intoxicating as he had imagined it.
He emptied his glass absently, and smoked away. He interrupted a conversation with a sharp question: ‘What was your impression of this afternoon?’
‘My impression was,’ said Brown, who sensed that his friend needed heartening, ‘that everyone realizes you’ve done the best day’s work for the college that anyone has ever done.’
‘Not they. They just take it for granted,’ said Chrystal.
‘Everyone was full of it,’ said Brown.
‘I believe they think we’ve treated Winslow badly. That’s the thought they’ve gone away with.’ Chrystal added, with hurt and angry force: ‘Jago is amusing.’
‘He wanted to soften the blow,’ said Brown.
‘There may have been a bit of policy in it,’ I suggested. ‘He may have wanted to make a gesture. He’s bound to be thinking of the election.’
‘Certainly. I was glad to see him showing some political sense at last,’ said Brown. He had followed my lead with his unceasing vigilance: he knew it was untrue, as well as I did: we were trying to take Chrystal’s attention away.
‘I don’t believe it, Eliot,’ retorted Chrystal.
‘He’s not a simple character,’ I went on.
‘I give you that,’ Chrystal said. ‘By God, I give you that. And there’s something I wouldn’t confess outside this room.’ He paused and looked at us. ‘There are times,’ he said slowly, ‘when I see the other side’s case against Jago. He’s too much up and down. He’s all over you one minute. Then he discovers some reason for getting under one’s skin as he did this afternoon. I say, I wouldn’t confess it outside this room, but there are times when I have my doubts. Don’t you? Either of you?’
‘No,’ said Brown with absolute firmness.
‘Some of what you say is true,’ I said. ‘But I thought it over when I decided on Jago. I didn’t believe it mattered enough to count against him. I still don’t.’
‘Not more than you did?’
‘No, less,’ I said.
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Chrystal.
Then Chrystal said, with a pretence of offhandedness: ‘Anyway, it doesn’t look as though we’re going to get him in.’
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ said Brown, but his eyes were piercing.
‘Has Pilbrow cabled back to you yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There you are. I shall expect him when I see him. Sometime next year.’
‘I’ve never known you rush to conclusions so fast,’ Brown said, ‘as you have done over this election.’ A deep frown had settled on his face.
‘I knew we shouldn’t get over it,’ said Chrystal, ‘the day I heard about Royce’s cancer. People still don’t know what we’ve lost.’
‘I can’t regard that as a reason,’ Brown said, ‘for not settling down to play our hand.’
Chrystal said: ‘You haven’t denied the facts. You can’t deny them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you’ve had no reply from Pilbrow. It’s a bad sign. And the votes are 6–6.’
‘There’s nothing at all sensible to be done.’