by C. P. Snow
‘When did you know you’d made a discovery?’ cried Jago.
‘I thought a week ago the wretched thing was coming out,’ said Luke, who used a different set of terms. ‘But I’ve thought so before a dozen bloody times. This time though I had a hunch that it was different. I’ve been pretty well living and feeding at the lab ever since. That was why I didn’t come to the meeting on Monday,’ he added affably to Despard-Smith, who gave a bleak nod.
‘The little powwow,’ Roy said to Despard-Smith, by way of explanation.
‘I could almost have sworn it was right that night. But I’ve been bitten by false bloody dawns too many times. I’ve not been to bed since. I wasn’t going to leave off until I knew the answer one way or the other.
‘It’s wonderful,’ he burst out in a voice that carried up and down the table, ‘when you’ve got a problem that is really coming out. It’s like making love – suddenly your unconscious takes control. And nothing can stop you. You know that you’re making old Mother Nature sit up and beg. And you say to her “I’ve got you, you old bitch.” You’ve got her just where you want her. Then to show there’s no ill-feeling, you give her an affectionate pinch on the bottom.’
He leaned back, exhausted, resplendent, cheerful beyond all expression. Getliffe grinned at him with friendly understanding, Jago laughed aloud. Roy Calvert gave me half a wink (for young Luke’s discretion had vanished in one colossal sweep) and took it upon himself to divert Despard-Smith’s attention.
In the combination room, Jago presented a bottle to mark ‘a notable discovery completed this day by the junior fellow’, as he announced for the formal toast. Hearing what was to happen, Nightingale rushed away before the health was drunk. Despard-Smith, who had his own kind of solemn formal courtesy, congratulated Luke and then settled down to the port. Luke took one of the largest cigars and smoked it over his glass, drowsy at last, his head humming with whirling blessedness. And Jago, with a gentle and paternal smile, did what I had never seen him do, and took a cigar himself. The two sat together, the square ruddy boy, happy as he might never be again, and the man whose face bore so much suffering. As each listened to the other, the tip of his cigar glowed. They were talking about the stars. It was thirty-six hours before the election.
Francis Getliffe and I left them together, and walked to the gate. I hesitated about asking him up to my rooms, and then did not.
‘That’s very pretty work of young Luke’s,’ he said.
‘I gathered as much from what you said.’
‘I doubt if you know how good it is,’ he said. He paused. ‘It’s better than anything I’ve done yet. Much better.’
He was so quixotic, so upright, so passionately ambitious: all I could do was pretend to be ironic.
‘It’s time we two had a bit of luck,’ I said. ‘These boys are running off with all the prizes. Look at Roy Calvert’s work by the side of mine. I may catch up if I outlive him twenty years.’
Francis smiled absently, and we stopped under the lantern.
‘I ought to say something else, Lewis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I thought Jago showed up very well tonight. There’s more in him than I allowed for.’
‘It isn’t too late,’ I said very quickly. ‘If you vote for him–’
Francis shook his head.
‘No, I shouldn’t begin to think of altering my vote,’ he said. ‘I know I’m right.’
42: The Last Night
The day before the election, December 19th, passed with dragging slowness. Throughout the morning there was no news: only Roy visited me, and as we chatted we were waiting for the next chime of the clock: time stretched itself silently out between the quarters. It was not raining, but the clouds were a level dun. Before lunch we walked through the streets and Roy bought some more presents; afterwards he left me alone in my room.
There Brown joined me in the middle of the afternoon. It was a relief to see him, rather than go on trying to read. But there was something ominous in his first deliberate question.
‘I was wondering,’ he said, ‘whether you had Chrystal with you.’
‘I’ve not seen him since the meeting,’ I said.
‘I’ve not seen him,’ said Brown, ‘since he approached me afterwards in the sense that I’ve already given you my opinion of. But I thought it might not be unwise if I got into touch with him today. I’ve called round at his house, but they said that they thought he’d gone for a walk early this morning.’
I looked at the darkening window, against which the rain had begun to lash.
‘It seems an odd day to choose,’ I said.
‘I’ve tried his rooms,’ said Brown. ‘But it looks as though they had been empty all day.’
‘What is he doing?’
Brown shook his head.
‘I’m afraid that he’s in great distress of mind,’ he said.
It was for one reason alone that he was searching for Chrystal: he might still be able to influence him: using all the pressure of their friendship, he might still be able to keep him to Jago. On that last day, Brown had no room for other thoughts. He knew as well as I did where Chrystal had been tending. But Brown was enough of a politician never to lose all hope until the end, even though it was forlorn. One could not be a politician without that kind of resilient hope. When Chrystal asked him to be a candidate, Brown had felt for a time it was all lost. But now he had got back into action again. Chrystal was undecided, Chrystal was walking about in ‘distress of mind’ – Brown was ready to throw in all his years of understanding of his friend, there was still a chance of forcing him to vote for Jago next morning.
‘I am rather anxious to see him before tonight,’ said Brown, looking at me with his acute peering glance.
‘If I see him,’ I said, ‘I’ll let you know.’
‘I should be very much obliged if you would,’ said Brown. ‘Of course, I can always catch him at his house late tonight.’
His manner was deliberately prosaic and comfortable. He was showing less outward sign of strain than any of us; when he was frayed inside, he slowed down his always measured speech, brought out the steady commonplaces like an armour, reduced all he could to the matter-of-fact.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think I’d better be off to my rooms soon. I’ve still got some letters to write about the scholarships. Oh, there’s just one thing. I suppose you don’t happen to have talked to Jago today?’
I said that I had seen Jago in hall the night before.
‘How did you think he was?’
‘Hopeful. So hopeful that it frightened me.’
‘I know what you mean. I had an hour with him this morning. He was just the same. I tried to give him a little warning, but I couldn’t make any impression at all.’
‘If he doesn’t get in?–’ I said.
‘If he doesn’t get in,’ said Brown steadily, ‘I don’t believe he’ll ever be the same man again.’
He frowned and said: ‘It’s annoying to think that, if we were certain Chrystal was going to be sensible, we should have a decent prospect of tomorrow turning out all right. It’s a tantalizing thought.’
Then he left me, and I went to have tea with Roy. I returned to my rooms through rain which had set in for the night, and I settled by the fire, not wanting to move until dinner time. But I had not been there half an hour when the door opened.
‘Good evening, Eliot,’ said Chrystal in his sharpest parade ground voice. He was wearing a mackintosh, but it was only slightly damp at the shoulders, and his shoes were clean. He had not been walking much that day.
‘I want a word with you.’
I asked him to sit down, but he would not even take off his coat.
‘I’m busy. I’ve got to have a word with Brown.’ He was brusquer than I had ever heard him.
‘He’s in his rooms,’ I said.
‘I’ll go in three minutes. I shan’t take long with either of you. I shan’t stay long with Brown.’
&nbs
p; He stared at me with bold, assertive, defiant eyes. ‘I’ve decided to vote for Crawford,’ he said. ‘He’s the better man.’
Like all news that one has feared hearing, it sounded flat.
‘It has been a lamentable exhibition,’ said Chrystal. ‘I tell you, Eliot, we’ve only just missed making a serious mistake. I saw it in time. We nearly passed Crawford over. I never liked it. He’s the right man.’
I began to argue, but Chrystal cut me short: ‘I haven’t time to discuss it. I’m satisfied with Crawford. I went round to see him this morning. I’ve been with him all day. I’ve heard his views on the college. I like them. It’s been a satisfactory day.’
‘I remember you saying–’
‘I’m sorry, Eliot. I haven’t time to discuss it. I’ve never been happy about this election. It’s been lamentable. I oughtn’t to have left it so late.’
‘It’s very hard to leave our party at this notice,’ I said angrily.
‘I joined it against my better judgement,’ he snapped.
‘That doesn’t affect it. You’re contracted to Jago. Have you told Brown?’
‘I didn’t want to write to Jago until I’d told Brown. I owe Brown an explanation. We’ve never had to explain anything to each other before. I’m sorry about that. It can’t be helped.’ He looked at me.
‘You don’t think I mind sending a note to Jago, do you? He would never have done. Not in a hundred years. I’m saving us all from a calamity. You don’t see it now, but you’ll thank me later on.’
He kept his coat on, he would not sit down, but he stood talking for some time. He did not wish to face Brown, he longed for the next hour to be past, he was putting off the struggle: not through direct fear, the fear that some men are seized with when they cross their wills against a stronger one, but because he was too soft-hearted to carry bad news, too uncertain of his own part to display it before intimate eyes.
He did not like the part he had insensibly slipped into. Just as Jago hated the path of ambition which, once he had begun it, led him from step to step, each one springing naturally from the last, until he was tempted to humiliate himself in front of Nightingale – in the same way Chrystal hated the path of compromise, which, step by step, each one plausible, enjoyable, almost inevitable, had brought him now to quarrel with his friend and break his contract. It was all so natural. Angrily he justified himself to me, said ‘you’ll all thank me later on’. He had been torn one way and the other, he had drifted into the compromise. He had never been master of the events round him. It was that which he could not forgive.
He had never been fond of Jago, had never liked to think of him as Master, had only joined in to please Arthur Brown. Then, liking the feel of power, he had tried to find ways out. He had revelled in making the candidates vote for each other. Yet even so he had not struggled free from his indecisions. Was he too much under Brown’s influence? His affection was hearty and simple; but his longing to be masterful was intense. Was he right in sacrificing his judgement, just to please Brown? Even here, where he felt each day that Brown had made a mistake?
For Chrystal had come to feel that electing Jago would be a mistake; it would hinder all that Chrystal wanted, for himself and for the college. With Jago, there would be no chance of the college gaining in riches and reputation among solid men.
As the months went on, Chrystal found he could endure the thought of Jago less and less. He felt free in the conferences with the other side: in the pacts with them, the search for a third candidate, he could assert himself. Every time he was with the other side he felt that the whole election lay in his hands. In those meetings, in the hours at night with Jago’s opponents, he came into his own again.
And how much, I wondered, was due to hurt vanity – urgent in all men, and as much so in Chrystal as in most? Had he been piqued so intolerably when Jago defended Winslow and laughed at Sir Horace and the benefaction – had he been piqued so intolerably that it turned the balance? Envy and pique and vanity, all the passions of self-regard: you could not live long in a society of men and not see them often weigh down the rest. How much of my own objection to Crawford was because he once spoke of me as a barrister manqué?
I did not know, perhaps I never should know, on what day Chrystal faced himself and saw that he would not vote for Jago. Certainly not in the first steps which, without his realizing, had started him towards this afternoon. When he began the move to make the candidates vote for each other, his first move to a coalition with the other side, he could still have said to himself, and believed it, that he was pledged to Jago. He did not make any pretence of enthusiasm to Brown or me, and to himself his reluctance, his sheer distaste, kept coming into mind. Yet he would have said to himself that he was going to vote for Jago. He would still have said it when in search of a third candidate – he was going to vote for Jago unless we found another man. On December 17th, when he approached Brown, he would have gone on saying it to himself. He would have said it to himself: but I thought that there are things one says to oneself in all sincerity, statements of intention, which one knows without admitting it that one will never do. I believed it had been like that with Chrystal since the funeral. He believed he would vote for Jago, unless he brought off a coup: in some hidden and inadmissible way, he knew he never would.
Yet it was probably less than forty-eight hours before this afternoon when at last he saw with explicit certainty that he would not vote for Jago. He had tried Brown as a third candidate, to give himself an excuse for throwing away his vote. Brown had turned him down. There would be no third candidate. It must be Jago against Crawford to the end. Chrystal was caught. There was nothing for it now. So, within the last forty-eight hours, it had come to him. Everything became clear at one flash. With relief, with release, with extreme satisfaction, he knew that he would vote for Crawford. It was what he had wanted to do for months.
It was astonishingly like some of the moves in high politics, I thought afterwards when I had a chance of watching personal struggles upon a grander scale. I saw men as tough and dominating as Chrystal, entangled in compromise and in time hypnotized by their own technique: believing that they were being sensible and realistic, taking their steps for coherent practical reasons, while in fact they were moved by vacillations which they did not begin to understand. I saw men enjoying forming coalitions, just as Chrystal did, and revelling in the contact with their opponents. I saw the same impulse to change sides, to resent one’s leader and become fascinated by one’s chief opponent. The more certain men are that they are chasing their own concrete and ‘realistic’ ends, so it often seemed to me, the more nakedly do you see all the strands they could never give a reason for.
Such natures as Chrystal’s are more mixed in action than the man himself would ever admit – more mixed, I sometimes thought, than those of stranger men such as Jago and Roy Calvert. Chrystal thought he was realistic in all he did: you had only to watch him, to hear his curt inarticulate outbursts as he delayed breaking the news to Brown, to know how many other motives were at work: yet it was naive to think he was not being realistic at the same time.
In a sense, he was being just as realistic as he thought. He had his own sensible policy for the college: that was safer with Crawford than with Jago. He wanted to keep his own busy humble power, he wanted his share in running the place. For months, every sign had told Chrystal that with Jago it would not be so easy. His temper and pride over Nightingale, his fury at having his hand forced over his vote, the moods in which he despised riches and rich men – Chrystal had noticed them all. He noticed them more acutely because of his other motives for rejecting Jago: but he also saw them as a politician. He had come to think that, if Jago became Master, his own policy and power would dwindle to nothing within the next five years. And he was absolutely right.
He still stood in his mackintosh in front of the fire. He could not force himself to go out.
‘You’d better come with me, Eliot,’ he broke out. ‘Brown’s got to be
told. He’ll want to talk to you.’
I refused.
‘There’s nothing for me to say,’ I told him. I was too downcast: why should I help spare his feelings?
‘Brown’s got to be told. I shan’t take long about it,’ said Chrystal, standing still.
‘It’s late already – to tell him what you’re going to.’
‘I accept that,’ said Chrystal. ‘Well, I’ll do it. You’d better join us in a few minutes, Eliot. You see eye to eye with Brown on this. He’d like to have you there. I shall have to go. As soon as I’ve told him. I’ve got plenty to do tonight.’
As he spoke he started out of the room. Half an hour later I followed him. Brown was sitting deep in his habitual armchair; his face was sombre. Chrystal, his mackintosh unbuttoned, stood with his back to the fire, and his mouth was drawn down into lines unhappy and ill-treated. When I entered, it seemed as though neither had spoken for minutes past; and it was a time before Brown spoke.
‘I gather that you have an inkling of this change in the situation,’ he said to me.
I said yes.
A moment later, there were light and very rapid footsteps on the stairs. In burst Jago, his eyes blazing.
‘I’m extremely sorry,’ he said to Brown. His tone was wild, and he turned on Chrystal with a naked intensity. His skin was grey, and yet the grimace of his lips was for all the world as though he smiled. ‘It was you I wanted to find,’ he said. ‘It is necessary for me to see you. This note you’ve been good enough to send me – I should like to be quite certain what you mean.’
‘I had not realized,’ said Brown in a quiet, measured voice, ‘that you had informed Jago already. I rather got the impression that you were speaking to me first.’
Chrystal’s chin was sunk into his chest.
‘I wrote before I came,’ he said.
43: Each is Alone
For an instant – was it an illusion – they seemed quite motionless. In that tableau, Brown was sitting with his fingers interlaced on his waistcoat, his eyes fixedly watching the other two: Chrystal’s head was bent, he was staring at the carpet, his forehead shone under the light, his chin rested on his chest: Jago stood a yard away, and there was still a grimace on his lips that looked like a smile.
