The Masters (2 page)

At this time – it was 1937 – he had been Senior Tutor of the college for ten years. I had met him three years before, in 1934, when Francis Getliffe, knowing that I wished to spend most of my time in academic law, proposed to the college that they should give me a fellowship. Jago had supported me (with his quick imagination, he guessed the reason that led me to change my career when I was nearly thirty), and ever since had borne me the special grateful affection that one feels towards a protégé.

‘I’m relieved to find you in, Eliot,’ he said, looking at me across the fireplace. ‘I had to see you tonight. I shouldn’t have rested if I’d had to wait until the morning.’

‘What has happened?’

‘You know,’ said Jago, ‘that they were examining the Master today?’

I nodded. ‘I was going to ask at the Lodge tomorrow morning.’

‘I can tell you,’ said Jago. ‘I wish I couldn’t!’

He paused, and went on: ‘He went into hospital last night. They put a tube down him this morning and sent him home. The results came through just before dinner. It is utterly hopeless. At the very most – they give him six months.’

‘What is it?’

‘Cancer. Absolutely inoperable.’ Jago’s face was dark with pain. He said: ‘I hope that when my time comes it will come in a kinder way.’

We sat silent. I thought of the Master, with his confidential sarcasms, his spare and sophisticated taste, his simple religion. I thought of the quarrels he and Jago had had for so many years.

Though I had not spoken, Jago said: ‘It’s intolerable to me, Eliot, to think of Vernon Royce going like this. I can’t pretend that everything has always been easy between us. You know that, don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘Yet he went out of his way to help me last term,’ said Jago. ‘You know, my wife was ill, and I was utterly distracted. I couldn’t help her, I was useless, I was a burden to everyone and to myself. Then one afternoon the Master asked me if I would like to go a walk with him. And he’d asked me for a very definite reason. He wanted to tell me how anxious he was about my wife and how much he thought of her. He must have known that I’ve always felt she wasn’t appreciated enough here. It’s been a grief to me. He said all he’d set out to say in a couple of dozen words on the way to Waterbeach, and it touched me very much. Somehow one’s dreadfully vulnerable through those one loves.’ Suddenly he smiled at me with great kindness. ‘You know that as well as anyone alive, Eliot. I felt it when you let me meet your wife. When she’s better, you must ask me to Chelsea again. You know how much I enjoyed it. She’s gone through too much, hasn’t she?’ He went on: ‘That afternoon made a difference to all I felt for Royce. Do you wonder that it’s intolerable for me to hear this news tonight?’

He burst out: ‘And do you know? I went for another walk with him exactly a month ago. I was under the weather, and he jogged along as he always used to, and I was very tired. I should have said, I believe anyone would have said, that he was the healthier man.’

He paused, and added: ‘Tonight we’ve heard his sentence.’

He was moved by a feeling for the dying man powerful, quick, imaginative, and deep. At the same time he was immersed in the drama, showing the frankness which embarrassed so many. No man afraid of expressing emotion could have been so frank.

‘Yes, we’ve heard his sentence,’ said Jago. ‘But there is one last thing which seems to me more ghastly than the rest. For there is someone who has not heard it.’

He paused. Then he said: ‘That is the man himself. They are not going to tell him yet.’

I exclaimed.

‘For some reason that seems utterly inhuman,’ said Jago, ‘these doctors have not told him. He’s been given to understand that in two or three months he will be perfectly well. When any of us see him, we are not to let him know any different.’

He looked into my eyes, and then into the fire. For a moment I left him, opened my door, went out into the glacial air, turned into the gyp room, collected together a bottle of whisky, a syphon, a jug of water. The night had gone colder; the jug felt as though the water inside had been iced. As I brought the tray back to the fireside, I found Jago standing up. He was standing up, with his elbows on the mantelpiece and his head bent. He did not move while I put the tray on the little table by my chair. Then he straightened himself and said, looking down at me: ‘This news has shaken me, Eliot. I can’t think of everything it means.’ He sat down. His cheeks were tinged by the fire. His expression was set and brooding. A weight of anxiety hung on each of those last words.

I poured out the whisky. After he took his glass, he held it for an instant to the firelight, and through the liquid watched the image of the flames.

‘This news has shaken me,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t think of everything it means. Can you,’ he asked me suddenly, ‘think of everything it means?’

I shook my head. ‘It has come as a shock,’ I said.

‘You haven’t thought of any consequences at all?’ He gazed at me intently. In his eyes there was a question, almost an appeal.

‘Not yet.’

He waited. Then he said: ‘I had to break the news to one or two of our colleagues in hall tonight. I hadn’t thought of it myself; but they pointed out there was a consequence we couldn’t put aside.’

He waited again, then said quickly: ‘In a few weeks, in a few months at most, the college will have to elect a new Master.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘When the time arrives, we shall have to do it in a hurry,’ said Jago. ‘I suppose before then we shall have made up our minds whom we are going to elect.’

I had known, for minutes past, that this was coming: I had not wanted to talk of it that night. Jago was longing for me to say that he ought to be the next Master, that my own mind was made up, that I should vote for him. He had longed for me to say it without prompting; he had not wanted even to mention the election. It was anguish to him to make the faintest hint without response. Yet he was impelled to go on, he could not stop. It harassed me to see this proud man humiliating himself.

Yet that night I could not do as he wanted. A few years before I should have said yes on the spot. I liked him, he had captured my imagination, he was a deeper man than his rivals. But my spontaneity had become masked by now; I had been too much knocked about, I had grown to be guarded.

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a certain amount of time.’

‘This business in the Lodge may go quicker even than they threaten,’ said Jago. ‘And it would be intolerable to have to make a rush election with the college utterly divided as to what it wants.’

‘I don’t see,’ I said slowly, ‘why we should be so much divided.’

‘We often are,’ said Jago with a sudden smile. ‘If fourteen men are divided about most things, they’re not specially likely to agree about choosing a new Master.’

‘They’re not,’ I agreed. I added: ‘I’m afraid the fourteen will have become thirteen.’

Jago inclined his head. A little later, in a sharp staccato manner, he said: ‘I should like you to know something, Eliot. It was suggested to me tonight that I must make a personal decision. I must decide whether I can let my own name be considered.’

‘I’ve always taken it for granted,’ I said, ‘that whenever the Mastership fell vacant you’d be asked that.’

‘It’s extraordinarily friendly of you to say so,’ he burst out, ‘but, do you know, before tonight I’ve scarcely thought of it for a single moment.’

Sometimes he was quite naked to life, I thought; sometimes he concealed himself from his own eyes.

Soon after, he looked straight at me and said: ‘I suppose it’s too early to ask whether you’ve any idea whom you prefer yourself?’

Slowly, I raised my eyes to meet his.

‘Tonight is a bit too early. I will come and tell you as soon as I am certain.’

‘I understand.’ Jago’s smile was hurt, but warm and friendly. ‘I understand. I shall trust you to tell me, whoever you prefer.’

After that we talked casually and easily; it was not till the college clock struck midnight that Jago left. As he went down the stairs, I walked across to my window and pulled the curtains. The sky had cleared, the moon was shining on the snow. The lines of the building opposite stood out simple and clear; on the steep roofs the snow was brilliant. All the windows were dark under the moon, except for the great bedroom of the Lodge, where the Master lay. There a light glowed, warm, tawny, against the stark brightness of the night.

The last chimes of twelve were still falling on the court. On the ground the snow was scarcely marked. Across it Jago was walking fast towards the gate. His gown blew behind him as he moved with light steps through the bitter cold.

When I woke next morning, the bedroom seemed puzzlingly bright. Round the edges of the blind a white sheen gleamed. Then, half-awake, I felt the chill against my face, remembered the snow, drew the bedclothes higher. Like a pain returning after sleep, the heavy thought came back that that morning I was obliged to call at the Lodge.

The quarters chimed, first from a distance away, then from Great St Mary’s, then from the college clock, then from a college close by. The last whirr and clang were not long over when, soft-footedly, Bidwell came in. The blind flew up, the room was all a-glare; Bidwell studied his own watch, peered at the college clock, uttered his sacramental phrase: ‘That’s nine o’clock, sir.’

I muttered. From beneath the bedclothes I could see his rubicund cunning peasant face, open and yet sly. He said: ‘It’s a sharp old morning, sir. Do you lie warm enough in bed?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It was true. That bedroom, niche-like and narrow as a monastic cell, had not been dried or heated in 500 years. When I returned to it from some of our food and wine, it seemed a curious example of the mixture of luxury and bizarre discomfort in which the college lived. Yet, in time, one missed the contrast between the warmth in bed and the frigid air one breathed, and it was not so easy to sleep elsewhere.

I put off ringing up the Lodge until the middle of the morning, but at last I did so. I asked for Lady Muriel (the Master came from a Scottish professional family; in middle age he married the daughter of an earl), and soon heard her voice. It was firm and loud. ‘We shall be glad to see you, Mr Eliot. And I know my husband will be.’

I walked across the court to the Lodge, and in the drawing-room found Joan, the Royces’ daughter. She interrupted me, as I tried to sympathize. She said: ‘The worst thing is this make-believe. Why don’t they tell him the truth?’

She was nearly twenty. In girlhood her face had been sullen; she was strong and clever, and longed only to be pretty, But now she was just at the age when the heaviness was lifting, and all but she could see that her good looks would soon show through.

That morning she was frowning in her distress. She was so direct that it was harder to comfort her.

Her mother entered; the thick upright figure bore towards us over the deep carpet, past the Chinese screens, past the Queen Anne chairs, past the lavish bric-a-brac of the long and ornate drawing-room.

‘Good morning, Mr Eliot. I know that we all wish this were a happier occasion.’

Her manner was authoritative and composed, her eyes looked steadily into mine. They were tawny, full and bold; in their boldness lay a curious innocence.

‘I only learned late last night,’ I said. ‘I did not want to bother you then.’

‘We only learned ourselves before dinner,’ said Lady Muriel. ‘We had not expected anything so drastic. There was a great deal to decide in a short time.’

‘I cannot think of anything I can do,’ I said. ‘But if there is–’

‘You are very kind, Mr Eliot. The college is being most kind. There may be matters connected with my husband’s manuscripts where Roy Calvert could help us. In the meantime, you can do one great service. I hope you’ve already been told that my husband does not realize the true position. He believes that the doctors have overhauled him and found him pretty sound. He has been told that he has the trace of an ulcer, and he believes he will soon be well. I ask you to think before every word, so that you leave him with the same conviction.’

‘It won’t be easy, Lady Muriel,’ I said. ‘But I’ll try.’

‘You will understand that I am already acting as I ask you to act. It is not easy for me.’

There was grandeur in her ramrod back. She did not give an inch. ‘I am positive,’ she said, ‘that we are doing right. It is the last comfort we can give him. He can have a month or two in peace.’

‘I completely disagree,’ Joan cried. ‘Do you think comfort is all he wants? Do you think he would take comfort at that price?’

‘My dear Joan. I have listened to your views–’

‘Then for God’s sake don’t go on with this farce.’ The girl was torn with feeling, the cry welled out of her. ‘Give him his dignity back.’

‘His dignity is safe,’ said Lady Muriel. She got up. ‘I must apologize to you, Mr Eliot, for forcing a family disagreement upon you. You will not wish to hear more of it. Perhaps you would care to see the Master now.’

As I followed Lady Muriel upstairs, I thought about her; how she was strong and unperceptive, snobbish and coarse-fibred, downright and brave. Beneath the brassy front there lingered still an inarticulate desire for affection. But she had not the insight to see why, even in her own family, she threw it away.

She went before me into the bedroom, which was as wide, and nearly as long, as the drawing-room below. Her words rang loudly in the great room. ‘Mr Eliot has come to pay you a visit. I’ll leave you together.’

‘This is nice of you,’ came the Master’s voice from the bed. It sounded exactly as I had last heard it, before his illness – brisk, cheerful, intimate. It sounded like the voice of a gay and healthy man.

‘I’ve told Mr Eliot that you ought to be back at college meetings by the end of term. But he mustn’t tire you this morning.’ Lady Muriel spoke in the same tone to me. ‘I shall leave you with the Master for half an hour.’

She left us. ‘Do come and sit down,’ said the Master, and I brought a chair by the bedside. He was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling, where there was embossed a gigantic coloured bas-relief of the college arms. He looked a little thinner, but the cheeks were still full; his dark hair was only just turning grey over the ears, his comely face was little lined, his lips were fresh. He was sixty-two, but that morning he looked much younger. He was in extraordinarily high spirits.