The Masters by C. P. Snow

original about Gay’s work.’
    ‘I’ll take you up on that, Nightingale,’ Chrystal said. ‘He’s better known outside the college than anyone we’ve got. It will be time enough for us to talk when we’ve done as much.’
    ‘I agree,’ said Brown.
    ‘If anyone sat down to his sagas for four hours a day for sixty years, I should have thought they were bound to get somewhere,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘I wish I could feel sure there is one man among us,’ Chrystal retorted, ‘who’ll have as much to his credit – if he lives to be Gay’s age.’
    ‘From what the German professors have written,’ Brown put in, ‘I don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt that Calvert will make as big a name before he’s done.’
    Nightingale looked more strained. ‘These gentlemen are lucky in their subjects,’ he said. ‘It must be very nice not to need an original idea.’
    ‘You don’t know anything about their subjects,’ said Chrystal. He said it sharply but amicably enough, for he had a hidden liking for Nightingale. Another thought was, however, troubling him. ‘I don’t like to hear old Gay criticized. I’ve got as great a respect for him as anyone in the college. But it is lamentable to think that we shall soon have to elect a Master, and the old chap will have his vote. How can you expect a college to do its business, when you’ve got people who have lost their memories but are only too willing to take a hand?’
    ‘I’ve always thought they should be disfranchised,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘No,’ said Brown. ‘If we cut them off at sixty-five or seventy, and didn’t let them vote after that, we should lose more than we gained.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I think I mean this: a college is a society of men, and we have to take the rough with the smooth.’
    ‘If you try to make it too efficient,’ I said, ‘you’ll suddenly find that you haven’t a college at all.’
    ‘I thought you were a man of advanced opinions,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Sometimes I am,’ I said.
    ‘I don’t know where I come down,’ said Chrystal. He was torn, torn as he often was, torn as he would have hated anyone to perceive. His passion to domineer, his taste for clean efficiency, all his impulses as a party boss with the college to run, made him want to sweep the old men ruthlessly away – take away their votes, there would be so much less dead wood, they impeded all he wanted to do. Yet there was the other side, the soft romantic heart which felt Gay as larger than life-size, which was full of pious regard for the old, which shrank from reminding them that they were spent. ‘But I don’t mind telling you that there are times when I consider the college isn’t a fit body to be entrusted with its money. Do you really mean to tell me that the college is fit to handle a capital endowment of a million pounds?’
    ‘I’ll give you an answer,’ said Brown cheerfully, ‘when I see how we manage about electing a Master.’
    ‘Is anything being done about that?’ Nightingale asked.
    ‘Nothing can be done yet, of course,’ said Brown. ‘I suppose people are beginning to mention names. I’ve heard one or two already.’ As he talked blandly on, he was watching Nightingale. He was usually an opponent, he was likely to be so now, and Brown was feeling his way. ‘I think that Winslow may rather fancy the idea of Crawford. I wonder how you’d regard him?’
    There was a pause.
    ‘I’m not specially enthusiastic,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘I’m interested to hear you say that,’ said Brown. His eyes were bright. ‘I thought it would be natural if you went for someone like Crawford on the scientific side.’
    Suddenly Nightingale’s careful manner broke.
    ‘I might if it weren’t Crawford,’ he said. His voice was bitter: ‘There’s not been a day pass in the last three years when he hasn’t reminded me that he is a Fellow of the Royal, and that I am not.’
    ‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Brown