Clair De Lune (24 page)

“Oh, I'll be busy!” she said, opening the screen door.

“It doesn't take long to drive up there.”

“I've got an awful schedule.” She reached inside for the light switch. “Education courses—you know how they are.”

“But I guess you'll be back in the fall. You are coming back, aren't you?”

She took her hand off the switch, leaving the kitchen dark. One more step and she would have been home free. Ansel knew all about it. Give him a rumor and he would research it. She was regional history to him. “They—gave me a contract,” she said.

“I—uh—heard they were trying to make some trouble for you.”

“Who was?”

“That Medgar woman. Some gossip she picked up.”

“She never did approve of me.”

“Why not?” he said, with one foot across the doorsill.

“Oh, she thinks I'm too young. And she doesn't like my name.”

“That's not enough to fire you for. I don't know just what it's all about....” He waited for her to say. “Guess you know what it is.”

“Sort of.”

“You sure are tops with the students. Everybody knows that.”

“They're nice kids.”

“They sure think you're nice—especially the boys! Can't say I blame t'em.” He hesitated and, when she said nothing, went off at another angle. “I like it when students want to know more than we have time to teach them in class. They're worth a little extra attention. I reckon you've found that too.”

“Sometimes.”

“It doesn't take much to start people thinking the wrong thing.”

“No.”

“I bet Mrs. Medgar imagines all kinds of things going on up here, you with your own apartment. Wild parties and all that.”

“She'd like to think so.”

“Stories get started. You know how it is. I certainly don't believe it.”

“I should hope not.”

“I don't know about the rest of them—Pickering and them. Lord's okay. He says if you want to go wild that's your business, long as it doesn't rub off on him. But Pickering and them… Some folks like to talk. You know how it is. Especially about someone as young and cute as you are.”

“Oh, come on!” she said crossly.

“Well, you are cute. All of them think so whether they say so or not. Some of them just want to believe everything they hear.”

“Seems like it. Well, good night again.”

“I tell them it's not so. I do, I tell them. You've got more sense than that. And I can vouch for it. We've had too many good conversations for me not to know you're pretty smart. I tell them that too.”

She turned to him slowly. “Thank you, Dr. Ansel.”

“You don't have to call me Doctor.”

“It's good of you to speak up for me. Not everyone would.”

“I do. You know I'll do it, anytime.”

“I appreciate it. Thank you,” she said, humbled. “Thank you very much.” She held out her hand. “Well, good night.”

“Say, I sure did enjoy this evening.”

“So did I,” she said, pulling her hand away. “See you in the morning.”

“Maybe we can do this again before you leave.”

But he was faced with the door gently closing.

Twenty-two

I
t had not been a bad evening, not bad at all. He had acquitted himself very nicely. And he had not laid a hand on her. She was grateful for that. She would not have wanted to have to rebuff Dr. Ansel. After all, he alone, of all her colleagues, had the courage to defend her. She wanted with all her heart to like him.

She worked at it all the following Monday, as she wrote out her class reports and began cleaning out her room for the summer. She willed herself to see him as distinguished and urbane, even, in a way, handsome. His hair, now that she gave it a second thought, was quite dark and glossy. It even curled a little at the edges. Or would have if he hadn't tried to paste it down with so much hair oil. She was nice to him, very nice. The nicer she was, the easier it became, until by the end of the day, after he had been in and out of her room half a dozen times, she had begun quite to enjoy it. It was like a game one learns to play well, that gets into the blood. She went home that night, if not altogether happy, at least for the first time in many days modestly pleased with herself.

She was therefore not precisely displeased, though certainly taken aback, when that evening a little after eight Dr. Ansel appeared at her door.

“I was just passing,” he said, “and saw your light.”

“Oh!” she said brightly. And they stood, he outside the screen, she inside, looking at each other.

“Would you mind if I came in?”

She lifted the hook. He stepped inside, smelling of lotion and Sen-Sen. He carried a white box under his arm. “I don't want to bother you if you're busy.”

“I was just finishing supper.”

“Go right ahead, don't let me interrupt.”

“No, I'm through.” She seemed to have taken root in the linoleum.

“Could I help you wash dishes? I help Mother sometimes.”

“Oh, thanks, I'll just leave them. Again,” she added, with a glance at the many left undone before. “Come on in. The place is a wreck.” Shoes and books lay scattered on the floor. She had left the ironing board up with a skirt draped over the end.

Dr. Ansel looked hesitant. “I should have asked—maybe I shouldn't be here like this.”

“It's all right. If you don't mind the clutter. I wasn't expecting anyone.”

“I was just going by. Oh—here,” he handed her the package, “I thought you might like these.”

“Why, thank you! My goodness,” she said, opening the box, “how nice!” Chocolates. The ritual offering. “They look delicious. Thank you very much.” She held out the box. “Won't you?”

“Thanks.” He lifted a candy from its paper cup and ate it in one bite.

“Will you sit for a minute?” she said.

He sat down on the sofa, she across the room in the big chair, and they waited. It was easier at school, with a desk between them.

“You've got a nice place here,” he said.

“It's nicer when I clean it up. I've been pretty busy.”

“Yes, it's a busy time of year.” Another pause. “You've got a Victrola,” he told her.

“Yes,” she said, jumping up. “Want to hear some music?”

“That'd be just fine. Is it all right to play it this time of night?”

“Of course. Why not?”

“Your landlord won't object?”

“He doesn't live here. And I don't think the other tenants can hear a thing. This is a penthouse, nothing under it but attic. And the apartments downstairs. But they're too far away. What would you like to hear?”

“I don't care. Anything. I don't know too much about music. Got anything by that guy—you know, the one that wrote, ‘I—must—go'?”

“Rachmaninoff, ‘Prelude in C Sharp Minor.'”

“I like that one all right. You have that one?”

“I don't happen to have that, but here's another one of his. It's called ‘The Isle of the Dead.'”

She had once seen a photograph of an island said to be the one Rachmaninoff had in mind; a small, steep rockbound island, gloomy with cypress. It was thrilling, and she bought the record because of that. The music, she found, was disappointing. But if she kept the picture in mind, it helped.

Dr. Ansel listened with a conscientious frown, his gaze studiously abstract, wandering from the phonograph to the candy box, up the wall to the Renoir dancer, and down again to the box.

She held it out. “Help yourself.” She left the box on the table beside him.

Absently, he ate one piece and then another, his attention still on the music. Finally he shook his head. “I don't know, I'm afraid this kind of music is beyond me.”

“It isn't one of my favorites. Let's play something else.”

She would not play Debussy for Ansel, nor Gershwin. No, not “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” either. But she would let him have Tchaikovsky. She drew a record out of the jacket and set the needle on the First Concerto.

Dr. Ansel said he liked this one better. “This is mighty nice,” he said, leaning back against the cushions. “You really know how to live, don't you? Books, classical music, flowers—”

His glance slid quickly past the withered tulips left in a vase, and up to the Renoir. “And pictures—that looks like real art. Boy, you know how to do it!” He smiled at her across the room and something a little sly crept into the smile. “There's only one thing missing right now,” he said. To her astonishment, he drew a brown bottle from an inner pocket. “Good books and good music and good conversation need a little whiskey to go with them.”

“Oh brother!” she said, laughing. “I'm in enough trouble without that! What would Mrs. Medgar say?”

“What's she got to do with it?”

“I'd never keep my job!”

“How's she going to know? She's not looking in the window.” But he glanced over his shoulder to make sure. “Look, we're free, white, and over twenty-one. If we want to have a civilized drink together, that's our business. That's how I look at it.”

“Yes, but—”

“Who's going to know? A civilized drink among friends. It's just like up at the university. The faculty get together and relax, have a few highballs. You know they do. Had one offer me a drink once. I bet you did too. I figure any graduate student did. It's nice. Really brings out the conversation.”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly.

“Why don't you get us a couple of glasses? Or tell me where they are.”

“I'll get them.” She took down the little tray she sometimes used on Sunday mornings when she had breakfast in bed. She covered it with a paper napkin, washed out two glasses, filled them with ice, and carried them in.

“Now that's what I call swank!” Dr. Ansel jumped to his feet, swallowing a mouthful of candy. “You really know how to do things. I hope you like bourbon,” he said, pouring. “I could have got something else.”

“Bourbon's fine. Just a little for me—that's enough.”

But he poured the glasses half full and sat down again, looking pleased with himself. “Well, what is it they say? Here's to your health.”

“Thank you.”

He took a long pull at the drink and leaned back. “This is swell. Good literature and good company and whiskey.” He smiled, raised his glass to her, and drank again.

Ill at ease, she sat holding the glass. Mrs. Medgar might not be at the window, but things had a way of being found out. Still, this was not quite the same; this was not a schoolkid across the room from her. It was a Ph.D., the most distinguished member of the faculty—who at this moment had opened a book from her table and was reading aloud from Walt Whitman. He read dramatically, as if from a platform, and rather too loud. But he read well and she said so.

It pleased him. “I read aloud to my classes a lot,” he said. “I think it helps them get the meaning.”

He then read a passage from Sandburg and from there, by way of the prairie poets and this one and that, got off on the frontier movement and its effect on American letters. Leaning back on the cushions, his legs stretched comfortably, he talked of the nineteenth century and the forces, political and geographic, that had shaped its writing. He was in familiar territory, and as he talked his assurance grew. Gone was the studious self-importance he wore around school like a barrel. Without it he wasn't so clumsy.

“The Frontier was the purifying agent,” he said. “It settled out the dross as it moved west.”

“The dross?”

“European influence. You might say it was like a big threshing machine.” He laughed and drained his glass. “It separated the wheat from the chaff. Cleansing, defining. American writing wasn't thoroughly American until there was an America, and there was no real America until we went inland, away from Europe.”

“How about Cooper? Wouldn't you consider him thoroughly American?”

“Well, yes, certainly,” he said, rising to fill his glass again.

“The European dross sure wasn't purified out of him. Look at old Leatherstocking—right out of French Romanticism, except for the rawhide. And those Indians!”

“Well, I have to admit many of the early writers found the Noble Savage hard to resist. Even Cooper went a little overboard.”

“I'll say he did!”

“But bear in mind, Cooper had a great deal more.”

“Yes—anarchy.”

“But also a sense of social order. That's the thing we have to remember. He might deplore the need of social order, but he knew it had to be. He had the Romantic viewpoint of uncorrupted values.”