I
"But I don't think I want to, Cham."
"Come along, Fanshaw, you've got to."
"But I wouldn't know what to say to them."
"They'll do the talking.... Look, you've got to come, date's all made
an' everything."
Cham Mason stood in his drawers in the middle of the floor, eagerly
waving a shirt into which he was fitting cuff-links. He was a
pudgy-faced boy with pink cheeks and wiry light hair like an Irish
terrier's. He leaned forward with pouting lips towards Fanshaw, who sat,
tall and skinny, by the window, with one finger scratching his neck
under the high stiff collar from which dangled a narrow necktie, blue,
the faded color of his eyes.
"But jeeze, man," Cham whined.
"Well, what did you go and make it for?"
"Hell, Fanshaw, I couldn't know that Al Winslow was going to get scarlet
fever.... Most fellers 'ld be glad of the chance. It isn't everybody
Phoebe Sweeting'll go out with."
"But why don't you go alone?"
"What could I do with two girls in a canoe? And she's got to have her
friend along. You don't realize how respectable chorus girls are."
"I never thought they were respectable at all."
"That shows how little you know about it."
Cham put on his shirt with peevish jerks and went into the next room.
Fanshaw looked down at Bryce's American Commonwealth that lay spread out
on his knees and tried to go on reading: This decision of the Supreme
Court, however... But why shouldn't he? Fanshaw stretched himself
yawning. The sunlight seeped through the brownish stencilled curtains
and laid a heavy warm hand on his left shoulder. This decision of the
Supreme ... He looked down into Mount Auburn Street. It was June and
dusty. From the room below came the singsong of somebody playing Sweet
and Low on the mandolin. And mother needn't know, and I'm in college ...
see life. A man with white pants on ran across the street waving a
tennis racket. Stoddard, on the Lampoon, knows all the chorines.
Cham, fully dressed in a tweed suit, stood before him with set lips,
blinking his eyes to keep from crying.
"Fanshaw, I don't think you're any kind of a..."
"All right, I'll go, Cham, but I won't know what to say to them."
"Gee, that's great." Cham's face became cherubic with smiles. "Just act
natural."
"Like when you have your photograph taken," said Fanshaw, laughing
shrilly.
"Gee, you're a prince to do it.... I think Phoebe likes me.... It's just
that I've never had a chance to get her alone."
Their eyes met suddenly. They both blushed and were silent. Fanshaw got
to his feet and walked stiffly to the bookcase to put away his book.
"But Cham." He was hoarse; he cleared his throat. "I don't want to carry
on with those girls. I don't ... I don't do that sort of thing."
"Don't worry, they won't eat you. I tell you they are very respectable
girls. They don't want to carry on with anybody. They like to have a
good time, that's all."
"But all day seems so long."
"We won't start till eleven or so. Phoebe won't be up. Just time to get
acquainted."
From far away dustily came the bored strokes of the college bell.
"Ah, there's my three-thirty," said Fanshaw.
It was hot in the room. There was a faint smell of stale sweat from some
soiled clothes that made a heap in the center of the floor. The strokes
of the bell beat on Fanshaw's ears with a dreary, accustomed weight.
"How about walking into town instead?"
Fanshaw picked up a notebook out of a patch of sun on the desk. The book
was warm. The beam of sunlight was full of bright, lazy motes. Fanshaw
put the book up to his mouth and yawned. Still yawning, he said:
"Gee, I'd like to but I can't."
"I don't see why you took a course that came at such a damn-fool time."
"Can't argue now," said Fanshaw going out the door and tramping down the
scarred wooden stairs.
* * * *
"You ask the clerk to call up and see if they're ready," said Cham. They
stood outside the revolving door of the hotel, the way people linger
shivering at the edge of a pool before diving in. Cham wore a straw hat
and white flannel pants and carried a corded luncheon basket in one
hand.
"But Cham, that's your business. You ought to do that." Fanshaw felt a
stiff tremor in his voice. His hands were cold.
"Go ahead, Fanshaw, for crissake, we can't wait here all day," Cham
whispered hoarsely.
Fanshaw found himself engaged in the revolving door with Cham pushing
him from behind. From rocking chairs in the lobby he could see the
moonfaces of two drummers, out of which eyes like oysters stared at him.
He was blushing; he felt his forehead tingle under his new tweed cap.
The clock over the desk said fifteen of eleven. He walked firmly over to
the desk and stood leaning over the registry book full of blotted
signatures and dates. He cleared his throat. He could feel the eyes of
the drummers, of the green bellboy, of people passing along the street
boring into his back. At last the clerk came to him, a greyfaced man
with a triangular mouth and eyeglasses, and said in a squeaky voice:
"Yessir."
"Are Miss ... Is Miss ...? Say, Cham, what are their names, Cham?"
Guilty perspiration was trickling on Fanshaw's temples and behind his
ears. He felt furiously angry at Cham for having got him into this, at
Cham's back and straw hat tipped in the contemplation of the Selkirk
Glacier over the fireplace. "Cham!"
"Miss Montmorency and Miss Sweeting," said Cham coolly in a businesslike
voice.
The clerk had tipped up one corner of his mouth. Leaving Cham to talk to
him, Fanshaw walked over to a rocker by the fireplace and hunched up in
it sulkily. With relief he heard the clerk say:
"The young ladies will be down in a few minutes; would you please wait?"
Fanshaw stared straight ahead of him. He'd never speak to Cham again
after this. When the bellboy leaned over the desk to say something to
the clerk, the eight brass buttons on his coattails flashed in the
light. The clerk laughed creakily. Fanshaw clenched his fists. Damn
them, what had he let himself be inveigled into this for? He looked at
the floor; balanced on the edge of a spittoon a cigar stub still gave
off a little wisp of smoke. The temptations of college life; as he sat
with his neatly polished oxfords side by side, making the chair rock by
a slight movement of the muscles of his thin calves, he thought of the
heart-to-heart talk Mr. Crownsterne had given the sixth form this time
last year about the temptations of college life. The soapy flow of Mr.
Crownsterne's voice booming in his ears: You are now engaged, fellows,
in that perilous defile through which all of us have to pass to reach
the serene uplands of adult life. You have put behind you the pleasant
valleys and problems of boyhood, and before you can assume the duties
and responsibilities of men you have to undergo--we all of us have had
to undergo--the supreme test. You all know, fellows, the beautiful story
of the Holy Grail ... Galahad ... purity and continence ... safest often
the best course ... shun not the society of the lovely girls of our own
class ... honest and healthy entertainment ... dances and the beautiful
flow of freshness and youth ... but remember to beware in whatever
circle of life the duties and responsibilities of your careers may call
you to move, of those unfortunate women who have rendered themselves
unworthy of the society of our mothers and sisters ... of those
miserable and disinherited creatures who, although they do not rebuff
and disgust us immediately with their loathsomeness as would common
prostitutes, yet ... Remember that even Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
prayed not to be led into temptation. O, fellows, when you go out from
these walls I want you to keep the ideals you have learned and that you
have taught by your example as sixth formers ... the spotless armor of
Sir Galahad ...
The rocking chair creaked. The clock above the desk had ticked its way
to eleven fifteen. Old Crowny's phrases certainly stayed in your mind.
Suppose we met mother on the trolley? No, she'd be at church. Nonsense,
and these were respectable girls anyway; they wouldn't lead into
temptation. A heap lot more respectable than lots of the girls you met
at dances. Why don't they come?
"Gee, I bet they weren't up yet," said Cham giggling.
"What, at eleven o'clock?"
"They don't usually get up till one or two."
"I suppose being up so late every night." Fanshaw could not get his
voice above a mysterious whisper. He sat in the rocking chair without
moving and stared at the clock. Eleven thirty-six. The bellboy stood in
front of the desk, his eyes fixed on vacancy. The bellboy grinned and
drew a red hand across his slick black hair.
"Did ye think we'd passed out up there?" came a gruff girl's voice
behind him, interrupted by a giggle. He smelt perfume. Then he was on
his feet, blushing.
They were shaking hands with Cham. One had curly brown hair and a doll's
pink organdy dress and showed her teeth, even as the grains on an ear of
sweet corn, in a continual smile. The other had a thin face and tow hair
and wore the same dress in blue.
"I was coming up to help," shouted Cham.
"Ou, what's that?"
"It's a present." The blue dress hovered over the lunch basket.
"A case of Scotch!" They all shrieked with laughter.
"That's our eats," said Cham solemnly.
"And this is Mr.----?"
"Beg pardon, this is my friend, Mr. Macdougan ... answers to the name
of Fanshaw."
Fanshaw shook their hands that they held up very high.
"This is Miss Phoebe Sweeting and this is Miss Elise Montmorency."
"We'll never be able to eat all that," said the blue girl tittering.
"We'll drink some of it," said Cham. "There's some Champagny water."
"My Gawd!"
"You carry it now, Fanshaw," said Cham in a hurried undertone, and
pushed the pink girl out in front of him through the revolving door.
Fanshaw picked up the basket. It was heavy and rattled.
"O, I just do love canoeing," said the blue girl as they followed. "Don't
you?"
* * * *
They stood on the landing at Norumbega. A man in a seedy red sweater
torn at the elbows was bringing a canoe out of the boathouse. A cool
weedy smell teasing to the nostrils came up out of the river.
"Ou, isn't it deep?" said Elise, pressing her fluffy dress against
Fanshaw's leg.
"Stop it, I tell you ... You'll push me in the water ... Ow!" Cham was
brandishing a bullrush at the pink girl, tickling her with it. She was
protesting in a gruff baby lisp full of titters. "If you spoil my
dress ..."
"I'm sure you paddle beautifully ... D'you mind if I call you Fanshaw
... It's a funny name like a stage name. Look at them!"
Phoebe had snatched the bullrush and was beating Cham over the head. The
brown fluff fell about them bright in the streaming sunlight. Fanshaw
found himself picking up Cham's straw hat, palping a dent in the rim
with his finger. Cham's hair shone yellow; he grabbed the pink girl's
hand. The bullrush broke off and the head fell into the river, floated
in the middle of brown bright rings.
"Ow, damn it, you hurt," she cried shrilly. "There now, you made me
say damn."
"Momma kiss it an' make it well."
Fanshaw found the blue girl's grey glance wriggling into his eyes.
"Silly, ain't they? Kids, are they not?"
The ain't stung in Fanshaw's ears. The girl was common. The thought
made him blush.
"Come along, let's get started. Man the boats," cried Cham.
"I'm scared o' canoes. You can paddle all right, can't you, Fanshaw?"
The blue girl pressed his hand tight as they stood irresolute a moment
looking down into the canoe. The other canoe was off, upstream into the
noon dazzle.
"Come along," shouted Cham. The sun flashed on his paddle. He began
singing off key:
I know a place where the sun is like gold
And the cherryblooms burst with snow
And down underneath ...
"All right, Missy, step in," said the man in the red sweater who was
holding the canoe to the landing with a paddle. "Easy now."
"Let m-m-me get in first," said Fanshaw stuttering a little. "I hope
this isn't a tippy one."
"I'll help you in Missy," said the man in the red sweater. Fanshaw, from
the stern seat he had plunked down in, saw the man's big red hand, like
a bunch of sausages against the blue dress, clasp her arm, press against
the slight curve of her breast as he let her down among the cushions.
"Thanks," she said, as she tucked her dress in around her legs, giving
the man a long look from under the brim of her hat.
"Ou, I'm scared to death, she said, leaning back gingerly. If you tip
me over ..."
Fanshaw had pushed the canoe out from the landing. Over his shoulder he
caught a glimpse of a grin on the face of the man with the red sweater.
He paddled desperately. The other canoe was far ahead, black in the
broad shimmering reach of the river. He was sweating. He splashed some
water into the canoe.
"Ou you naughty ... Don't. You've gotten me all wet."
"I think I'll take my coat off if you don't mind."
"Don't mind me, go as far as you like," giggled Elise.
Fanshaw took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. He was trying not
to look at the pink legs in stockings of thin black silk with clocks on
them that stretched towards him in the canoe, ending in crossed ankles
and bronze high heel slippers.
"Warm, isn't it?"
"Hot, I call it. I hope they don't go awfully far. I don't want to get
all sunburned ... A boy swiped my parasol." Her grey eyes flashed in
his. She was giggling with her lips apart.
"How was that?" How solemn I sound, thought Fanshaw.
"I dunno, one o' them souvenir hunters out at the Roadside Inn." She
pulled down her babyish-looking hat that had blue and pink roses on it
so that it shaded her eyes.
"Whew, smell that!" she cried.
"Must be a sewer, or marshgas."
"Clothespins! Clothespins!" Elise was holding her nose and wriggling in
the bottom of the canoe. Then she burst into giggles again and cried:
"Gee, this little girl loves the country, nit!"
"Now it's better, isn't it?"
"I want to eat. Cham's crazy to go so far."
"They've got the picnic basket, so I don't see what we can do but
follow."
"Follow on, follow on," sang Elise derisively. Upstream Cham's canoe had
drawn up to the bank under a fringe of trees grey in the noon glare.
Behind it a figure in white and a figure in pink, close together, were
disappearing into the shadow.
"They'll have every single thing eaten up," wailed Elise.
"I'm afraid I'm not a very good paddler," said Fanshaw through clenched
teeth.
"There you go again."
"Well, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."
"You'll have to get me a new dress, that's all."
The canoe ran into the bank with a sliding thump.
Phoebe was looking at them from behind a clump of maples. She cooed at
them in her most dollish voice.
"What have you kids been doing all by yourselves out in the river?"
"We saw you, don't you worry dearest," said Elise balancing to step out
of the canoe. "O murder, I got my foot in it!"
"Bring the cushions, Fanshaw," shouted Cham, who was kneeling beside the
open picnic basket with a bottle in his hand.
Fanshaw's hands were sticky. The warm champagne had made him feel a
little sick. He sat with his back against a tree, his knees drawn up to
his chin, looking across the gutted lunch basket at Cham and Phoebe, who
lay on their backs and shrieked with laughter. Beside him he was
conscious of the blue girl sitting stiff on a cushion, bored, afraid of
spoiling her dress. Overhead the afternoon sun beat heavily on the broad
maple leaves; patches of sunlight littered the ground like bright torn
paper. Through the trees came the mud smell and the restless sheen of
the river. Fanshaw was trying to think of something to say to the girl
beside him; he daren't turn towards her until he had thought of
something to say.
"Doggone it I've got an ant down my back," cried Cham, sitting up
suddenly, his face pink.
"Momma catch it," spluttered Phoebe in the middle of a gust of laughter.
Cham was scratching himself all over, under his arm, round his neck,
making an anxious monkey face till at last he ran his hand down the back
of his neck.
"Yea, I got him."
"He's a case, he is," tittered Elise.
Cham was on his hands and knees whispering something in Phoebe's ear,
his nose pressed into her frizzy chestnut hair.
"Stop blowin' in my ear," said the pink girl, pushing him away.
"Wouldn't that jar you?"
"What we need is juss a lil more champagny water." Cham picked the two
bottles out of the basket and tipped them up to the light. "There's juss
a lil drop for everybody."
"Not for me ... I think you're trying to get us silly," said the blue
girl.
"God did that."
"Well, I never."
"Ou somethin's ticklin' me ... Did you put that ant on me?" The pink
girl scrambled to her feet and made for Cham.
"Honest, I didn't ..." cried Cham, jumping out of her way and doubling
up with glee: "Honest, I didn't. Cross my heart, hope I may die, I
didn't."
"Cham, you're lyin' like a fish. I got an ant down my dress. Ou, it
tickles!"
"I'll catch it, Phoebe."
"Boys, don't look now. I'm goin' fishin' ... Ou ... I got him. O it's
just a leaf ... O he looked. He's a cool one. I'm goin' to smack your
face."
"Catch me first, Phoebe deary," cried Cham, running off up a path. She
lit out after him. "Look out for your dress on them bushes," cried
Elise.
"I should worry."
Fanshaw watched the pink dress disappear down the path, going bright and
dull in the patches of sun and shadow among the maple trees. Their
laughing rose to a shriek and stopped suddenly. Fanshaw and Elise looked
at each other.
"Children must play," said Fanshaw stiffly.
"What time are we goin' home, d'you know?" said Elise yawning.
"You don't like--er--picnicking."
There was a silence. From down river came the splash of paddles and the
sound of a phonograph playing "O Waltz Me Around Again Willie." Fanshaw
sat still in the same position with his knees drawn up to his chin, as
if paralyzed. With tightening throat he managed to say:
"What can they be doing ... They don't seem to be coming back."
"Ask me something hard," said the blue girl jeeringly.
Fanshaw felt himself blushing. He clasped his hands tighter round his
knees. He felt the sweat making little beads on his forehead. Ought he
to kiss her? He didn't want to kiss her with her rouged lips and her
blonde hair all fuzzy like that, peroxide probably. A fool to come
along, anyway. What on earth shall I say to her?
She got to her feet.
"I'm goin' to walk around a bit ... Ou, my foot's gone to sleep."
Fanshaw jumped up as if a spring had been released inside him.
"Which way shall we go?"
"I guess we'd better go the other way," said Elise tittering and
smoothing out the back of her fluffy dress.
They walked beside the water; along the path were mashed cracker boxes,
orange peel, banana skins. The river was full of canoes now. Above the
sound of paddles occasionally splashing and the grinding undertone of
phonographs came now and then a giggle or a man's voice shouting. Elise
was humming School Days, walking ahead of him with mincing steps. He saw
a woodpecker run down the trunk of an oak.
"Look, there's a woodpecker." Elise walked ahead, still humming, now and
then taking a little dance step. "It's a red-headed woodpecker." As she
still paid no attention, he walked behind her without saying anything,
listening to the tapping of the woodpecker in the distance, watching her
narrow hips sway under the pleats of her dress as she walked. A rank,
heavy smell came from the muddy banks. He looked at his watch. Only four
o'clock. She caught sight of the watch and turned round.
"What time is it, please?"
"It's only four o'clock.... We have lots of time yet."
"Don't I realize it? Say, what's the name of this old damn-fool park?"
"Norumbega."
"It's never again for me," she cried giggling. Then all at once she
dropped down on the ground at the foot of a tree and began to sob with
her dress all puffed up about her.
"But what's the matter?"
"Nothing ... My God, shut up and go away!" she whined through her sobs.
"All right, I'll go and see nobody swipes the canoe."
Biting his lips, Fanshaw started slowly back along the path.
* * * *
The air of the examination room was heavy and smelt of chalk. Through
the open windows from the yard drifted the whir of lawnmowers and the
fragrance of cut grass. Fanshaw had just finished three hundred words on
The Classical Subject in Racine. He found himself listening to the
lawnmowers and breathing in the rifts of warm sweetness that came from
the mashed grass. It almost made him cry. The spring of Freshman year,
the end of Freshman year. The fragrance of years mown down by the
whirring, singsong blades. He stared at the printed paper: Comparative
Literature 1. Devote one hour to one of the following subjects.... And
the girl in the blue dress had plunked herself down under a tree and
cried. What a fool I was to walk away like that. "What's that perfume?
Mary Garden," she had said, and her grey glance had wriggled into his
eyes and his hands had moved softly across the fluffy dress, feeling the
whalebone corsets under the blue fluff. No, that's when I helped her
back into the canoe. Elise Montmorency, the girl in the blue dress, had
plunked herself down under a tree and cried because he hadn't kissed
her. But he had kissed her; he had come back and lain on the grass
beside her and kissed her till she wriggled in his arms under the blue
fluff and the sunshine had lain a hot tingling coverlet over his back.
He sat stiff in his chair staring in front of him, his hands clasped
tight under the desk. All his flesh was hot and tingling. He breathed
deep of the smell of cut grass that drifted in through the window, under
the smell of mashed grass and cloverblossoms, sweetness, heaviness, Mary
Garden perfume. Gee, am I going to faint?
And there on beds of violets blue
And freshblown roses washed in dew,
Filled her with thee a daughter fair
So buxom blithe and debonair.
Fanshaw felt the blood suddenly rush to his face. If the proctor sees me
blushing he'll think I've been cribbing. He hung his head over his paper
again.
Devote one hour ... She was common and said ain't. That was not the sort
of girl. He was glad he hadn't kissed her... The spotless armor of Sir
Galahad. Maybe that was temptation. Maybe he'd resisted temptation. And
lastly, Mr. Crownsterne's voice was booming in his ears: And lastly,
fellows, let me wish each one of you the best and loveliest and most
flower-like girl in the world for your wife. A lot old Crowny knew about
it. Marriage was for ordinary people, but for him, love, two souls
pressed each to each, consumed with a single fire.
Not the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
The moth's kiss, dearest. He was in a boat with red sails, in the stern
of a boat with red lateen sails and she was in his arms and her hair was
fluffy against his cheek, and the boat leapt on the waves and they were
drenched in droning fragrance off the island to windward, wet rose
gardens, clover fields, fresh-cut hay, tarry streets, Mary Garden
perfume. That perfume was common like saying ain't.
Sudden panic seized him. The clock was at twenty-five past. Gosh, only
thirty-five minutes for those two questions! The nib of his fountain pen
was dry. He shook a drop out on the floor before he began to write.