I could scarcely get in a word. He had been flown most of the way home. He had been travelling for two days: his cheeks shone, he did not seem in the least tired.
Soon he said, earnestly and without introduction: ‘Eliot, things are worse in Europe than they have been in my time.’
‘You mean politically?’
‘All our friends are in danger. Everything you and I believe in is going… Our people are just sitting by and watching. And dining in the best houses. Bloody fools. Snobs. Snobbery will make this country commit suicide. These bloody snobs can’t see who their enemies are. Or who are their friends. When a country is blinding itself to that, it’s in a bad way.’
He told me of some of his doings. He had somehow managed to visit his friends in a concentration camp. He was a very brave old man. He was also an acute one, underneath the champagne-like gaiety.
‘I came to tell you,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s why I was glad to see your light. I wanted to tell you before anyone else. I can’t vote for Jago. I can’t vote for someone who won’t throw his weight in on our side. It’s your side as well as mine. That’s why I came to tell you first…’
I was taken aback. I should not have been so surprised at the outset. I knew it had worried him, but I thought he had come to terms and satisfied himself. It would not have astonished me if he had found some reasonable excuse and stayed away. But I was not prepared for his journey home, his ebullient entry, and then this. I had not recovered myself when I asked flatly: ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Vote for the other man,’ said Pilbrow without a pause. ‘He’s on the right side. He’s always been on the right side. We can trust him in that way.’
I tried to shake off the shock, and do my best. I retraced the arguments I had had with Francis Getliffe. I searched for anything that might influence him: I told him that the three youngest fellows in the college were all supporting Jago — it was not like Pilbrow, I reproached him, to leave the side of youth. But he was obdurate — sometimes a little flustered in speech, but quite unshaken.
I tried once more.
‘You know I feel about the world as strongly as you,’ I said. ‘If that’s possible.’
Pilbrow smiled, pleased by the remark.
‘You do know, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Pilbrow replied. ‘Of course. More than any of those…’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not more than Getliffe or young Luke. But as much. Anyway, I take an even blacker view than you. I’m beginning to feel it like a personal sorrow.’
‘Yes! Yes!’ cried Pilbrow. ‘Things outside have got to be very bad before they make one feel like that. But they are—’
‘Even so,’ I said, ‘I can’t believe that it ought to affect us here. We’re choosing from two human beings.’ I waited, in the hope it would sink in. ‘You’ve always liked Jago, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Pilbrow at once. ‘He’s warm. He’s got a great gift of warmth.’
‘You don’t care for Crawford?’
‘I’m neutral to him,’ said Pilbrow.
‘He’s on the right side in politics,’ I said, ‘but you know very well that most of your kind of civilization he doesn’t begin to touch. If the books you’ve devoted your life to disappeared tomorrow, he wouldn’t notice the difference.’
‘No. But—’ Pilbrow’s bright brown eyes were troubled.
‘You’ve always set a value on human beings. Surely you’re not going to pass over the difference between those two? You’re saying that you’ll just vote for a programme. Are you really ready to forget what human beings mean?’
‘We’ve got to sacrifice something.’ Pilbrow had found his tongue, and spoke with vigour. ‘If we don’t sacrifice something, there’ll be nothing left at all.’
I made a last attempt.
‘You know what it means for Jago,’ I said.
‘Disappointing…’
‘You know it will be far worse than that.’
‘Yes.’
‘For you it wouldn’t have mattered much — at any time. Would it? You’re not such a diffident man as Paul Jago, you know. You couldn’t pin your self-esteem on to a job. You’ve never given a damn whether people elected you to masterships or presidencies of buffaloes’ clubs. It’s not people like you who are ambitious for positions, Eustace. It is people like Jago — who need some support from outside. And he needs it intolerably. If he doesn’t get the Mastership, it will hurt him more than anyone imagines. It won’t be just disappointing. It will break his heart.’
I added: ‘Don’t you agree?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Doesn’t it affect you?’
‘It’s a pity,’ said Pilbrow. ‘He’ll recover in time. They always…’ He broke off. His tone was almost light-hearted, and I knew it was no good. Then he said, with extraordinary vigour, his eyes shining like brown beads, his whole body clenched with energy: ‘I can’t bear to have anyone say that I helped the wrong side. I can’t do as much as I should like, but I shall throw in my weight wherever I can. I hope I have a few years left to do it.’
I knew it was no good. There was nothing to be done. No one could move Pilbrow now. He would vote for Crawford to the end.
And I felt something else. His vigour was marvellous and enviable: I wished I could imagine being so radiant at seventy-four; and yet, for the first time, I saw him overtaken by age.
A few years before he would not have said of Jago, as though human feelings were tiresome, ‘he’ll recover in time’. But in fact he had come to the point where human feelings were tiresome — no, not tiresome so much as remote, trivial, a little comic. That was the sign of age. Pilbrow had been a man of strong affections. But those affections died off, except the strongest of all; as he became old, he could only feel moved by the great themes of his life; all else cooled down, although he struck no one as old, certainly not himself. And where he did not feel himself, he lost his sympathy for others’ feelings. They did not seem important. Very little seemed important. Just as a mature man dismisses calf love with a smile, because he can no longer feel it (though it may once have caused him the sharpest pain), so Pilbrow, that vigorous old man, smiled indifferently at the triumphs and sufferings of the middle-aged. Suddenly one encountered blankness at a point where one expected sympathy and response. He looked just as he had looked ten years before; he could still feel passionately about his deepest concerns; but those concerns were narrowing, and one knew at last that he was growing old.
At times he knew it. At times he could not help but know it. So be clung more ardently to that which moved him still. It was that which died last. For Pilbrow, who had befriended so many, who had spent a lifetime in good causes, who had fought with body and mind, it was the picture of himself still ‘throwing in his weight’ on the side of light. That rang out of his last words. In them one heard the essence of the man: he was stripped by age of all that did not matter: and age revealed his vital core. In a sense, he was self-centred — more so than many men whose lives were selfish by the side of his. He was sweet-dispositioned, he was the most generous of men, but nothing could make him forget his picture of himself. That night I was too much upset to care, but later on it made me feel more brotherlike towards him. I did not see in him the goodness that some did; but I felt the comradeship of common flesh, as well as great tenderness, for the gallant, lubricious, indomitable, and generous old man, with the sturdy self-regard that nothing on earth could move.
He did not realize that I was deeply upset by his news. He went on talking about a Croatian writer, and it was getting on for four when he said that he was looking forward to a good long night.