‘What is the trouble with you?’ she cried. He had been standing in the twilight, but she had switched on the light as we went in. His face was haggard, his eyes sunken: even his lips were pallid.
‘You two know by now?’ said Jago. We nodded. He turned to his wife, his arm resting on her.
‘Dearest, I’m afraid that I’m going to make you unhappy. It seems that I shall be rejected by the college.’
‘Is this my fault?’
‘How could it be your fault?’ Jago replied, but her question, which pierced one like a scream, was not addressed to him. I answered: ‘It’s nothing to do with anyone we’ve been talking about. It’s quite different. Old Eustace Pilbrow has crossed over — for political reasons. He can’t even have read the flysheet when he decided, and he’d be the last to take any notice—’
‘Thank God,’ she said, laying her head on Jago’s shoulder. ‘If they don’t give it to you after all, Paul, I couldn’t bear it to be because of me.’
‘Does it concern us,’ asked Jago bitterly, ‘the precise reason why I may be thrown aside?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ she said. She rounded on me. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I said: ‘I couldn’t — until I was sure Paul knew.’
‘Do you realize what it means? Do you realize that they’re hoping to humiliate me now?’ Jago cried.
‘They couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Nothing could. Nothing could touch you. You’re big enough to laugh at anything they do. They know you’re bigger than they are. That’s why they fear you so.’
Jago smiled — was it to relieve her, as a parent pretends to an anxious child? Or had she brought him comfort?
He kissed her, and then said to Roy and me: ‘I am sorry to receive you like this. But the news has knocked me out more than I expected.’
‘We’re not giving up,’ I said.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Jago, ‘that I shouldn’t ask you to.’
He seemed suddenly tired, passive, and resigned. He sat down in his armchair as though the suffering had lost its edge but had worn him out. He enquired after tea, and Alice rang for it. Suddenly he said to her: ‘Why did you ask whether it was your fault? What do you know about the flysheet?’
She began to speak, then said: ‘No, Paul, I can’t—’ and turned to us for aid. I told Jago that someone, presumably Nightingale, had made sure that she should see the flysheet: she was afraid there might be more attacks upon her: she thought they wanted her to persuade Jago to withdraw; she had been in anguish for Jago’s sake.
Very softly, Jago exclaimed.
Then he spoke to her in a quiet, familiar tone.
‘I expect to be rejected now. Would you like me to withdraw?’
Tears had come to her eyes, but she did not cry. She could hardly speak. At last she managed to say: ‘No. You must go on.’
‘You knew what you had to say.’ Jago gave her a smile of love.
When that smile faded, his expression was still sad and exhausted: but in his eyes, as he spoke again, this time to Roy and me, there was a flash of energy, a glitter of satanic pride.
‘I’ve cursed the day that I ever exposed myself to these humiliations,’ he said. ‘I knew you and my other friends meant well, but you were not doing me a kindness when you persuaded me to stand. Whether the college rejects me or takes me, I am certain that I will not stand for another office so long as I live.’ He paused. ‘But I am equally certain that if those people hope to get me to withdraw through doing harm to my wife, I will stay in this election while I’ve got one single man to vote for me.’
He added: ‘And I shall leave nothing to chance. I shall tell my rival so.’
35: Crawford Behaves Sensibly
After Jago cried out that he ‘would tell his rival so,’ he asked Roy to find from the kitchens whether Crawford was dining that night. The answer was yes. ‘That is convenient,’ said Jago.
Crawford arrived in the combination room at the same time as I did, and several of his party were already there. They were drinking their sherry in front of the fire, and there was an air of well-being, of triumph, of satisfied gloating. Crawford greeted them with his impersonal cordiality, and me as well. He seemed more than ever secure, not in the least surprised by what had happened; he took it for granted that it was right.
‘Eliot,’ Nightingale addressed me. He had not spoken to me directly for months.
‘Yes?’
‘I suppose you’ve heard about Pilbrow.’
‘Of course.’
‘I had a note from him this afternoon,’ Crawford announced.
‘Good work,’ said Francis Getliffe.
‘It’s very civil of him to have written,’ said Crawford — and went on to talk without hurry of a new theory of electrical impulses in nerves. Francis Getliffe was making a suggestion for an experiment, Nightingale was listening with the strained attention that nowadays came over him in Crawford’s presence, when Jago threw open the door and said: ‘Crawford. I should like you to spare me a minute.’
Everyone looked up at Jago. He did not say good evening, his eyes did not leave Crawford.
‘Very well,’ said Crawford, not quite at ease. ‘Can we talk here, or would you prefer to go outside?’
‘Nothing I have to say is secret,’ Jago replied. ‘I’m obliged to say it to you, because I’m not certain to whom it should be said by right.’
Crawford rose and said. ‘Very well’ again. By the fire Despard-Smith and Getliffe made a pretence at conversation, but none of us could shut our ears to Jago’s words.
‘I do not hold you responsible for the outrages of your supporters, but I hope that you cannot be utterly indifferent to them.’
‘You’re going too fast for me,’ said Crawford. ‘I don’t begin to know what you’re referring to.’
‘I shall explain myself.’
‘I should much prefer it,’ said Crawford, looking up into Jago’s eyes, ‘if we could keep this business on a friendly basis.’
‘When you hear what I have to say,’ said Jago, ‘you will realize that is no longer easy.’
Jago’s temper smouldered and suddenly flared out and smouldered again. It was different from one of his outbursts of indignation; no one in that room had seen this consuming rage. As they faced it, most men would have been uneasy; Crawford may have been, but his voice was steady and sensible. Angrily, I had to confess that he was holding his own.
‘If that turns out to be true, I shall be very sorry for it, Jago,’ he remarked.
‘If you are elected, none of my friends would suggest that your wife was not entirely fit to adorn the Lodge,’ Jago said.
‘I should be very much surprised to hear it.’
‘I was a little surprised to hear that my wife had received a copy of the flysheet written by your supporter Nightingale.’
Jago’s words were not loud, but Crawford stood silent in front of him.
‘You have seen the flysheet I mean?’
‘I am afraid that I have,’ said Crawford.
‘Can you faintly imagine what it would mean to a woman?’
Crawford stirred.
‘Jago, I very much regret that this should have happened. I shall write to your wife personally, and tell her so.’
‘That is not enough.’
‘It is all I can do, unfortunately.’
‘No,’ said Jago. ‘You can discover through what source the flysheet reached her. I may tell you that it was deliberately sent.’
Jago was at the limit of his anger. Crawford shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can understand your feelings, but you exaggerate my responsibility. I am sincerely sorry that your wife should suffer through any circumstances in which I am even remotely concerned. I consider it my duty to tell her so. But I don’t consider it my duty to become a private detective. I have consented to be a candidate at this election, but I have taken no part whatever in any of the personal complications which have taken place, and I might take this opportunity of saying that I deprecate them.’