The Masters by C. P. Snow Page A

consolingly. ‘He’s got a good many years’ start, hasn’t he?’
    ‘He reminds me that I’ve been up for election six times, and this year is my seventh.’
    Nightingale’s voice was harsh with envy, with sheer pain. Chrystal left all the talk to Brown.
    ‘Well, I might as well say that at present I don’t feel much like going for Crawford myself,’ said Brown. ‘I’m beginning to doubt whether he’s really the right man. I haven’t thought much about it so far, but I have heard one or two people speak strongly for someone else. How do you regard the idea of Jago?’
    ‘Jago. I’ve got nothing against him,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘People will feel there are certain objections,’ Brown reflected.
    ‘Some people will object to anyone.’
    Brown smiled.
    ‘They’ll say that Jago isn’t so distinguished academically as – for instance, Crawford. And that’s a valid point. The only consideration is just how much weight you give to it. Put it another way – we’re unlikely to get everything we want in one man. Do you prefer Jago, who’s respectable on the academic side but not a flyer – but who seems admirably equipped in every other way? Or do you prefer Crawford, who’s got other limitations that you’ve made me realize very clearly? Wouldn’t those limitations be unfortunate in a Master?’
    ‘I’m ready to support Jago,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘I should sleep on it if I were you,’ said Brown. ‘But I value your opinion–’
    ‘So do I,’ said Chrystal. ‘It’ll help me form my own.’
    He and Brown went off together, and Nightingale and I were left alone.
    ‘Come up to my rooms,’ said Nightingale.
    I was surprised. He was the one man in the college whom I actively disliked, and he disliked me at least as strongly. There was no reason for it; we had not one value or thought in common, but that was true with others whom I warmly liked; this was just an antipathy as specific as love. Anywhere but in the college we should have avoided each other. As it was, we met most nights at dinner, talked across the table, even spent, by the force of social custom, a little time together. It was one of the odd features of a college, I sometimes thought, that one lived in social intimacy with men one disliked: and, more than that, there were times when a fraction of one’s future lay in their hands. For these societies were always making elections from their own members, they filled all their jobs from among themselves, and in those elections one’s enemies took part – for example, Jago disliked Winslow far more intensely than I Nightingale, and at that moment he knew that, until the election was over, he was partially in Winslow’s power.
    We climbed a staircase in the third court to Nightingale’s rooms. He was a teetotaller, the only one in the college, and he had no drink to offer, but he gave me a cigarette. He asked a few uninterested questions about my holidays. But though he tried, he could not keep to his polite behaviour. Suddenly he broke out: ‘What are Chrystal and Brown up to about the Mastership?’
    ‘I thought Brown had been telling us – at some length.’
    ‘I know all about that. What I want to hear is, has one of those two got his eye on it for himself?’
    ‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute,’ I said.
    ‘We’re not going to be rushed into that, are we?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them to try.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ I said. He was irritating me. ‘They made it clear enough – they’ll run Jago.’
    ‘I’ll believe that when I see it. I’ve never noticed them exert themselves much for anyone else. I’ve not forgotten how they squeezed Brown into the tutorship. I was two or three years junior, but there’s no doubt I had the better claim.’
    Suddenly he snapped out the question: ‘What are you going to do?’
    I did not reply at once.
    ‘Are you going to propose Chrystal as a bright idea at the last moment?’
    He was intensely suspicious,