It was quite dark when they started for the Hill. He drove carefully,
taking his time at intersections. Tansy's gaiety still did no more than
hold in check the other half of his thoughts.
"I might be a witch," she said, "taking you to a hilltop rendezvous.
Our own private Sabbat."
She was smiling impishly. She had changed to a light white sports
dress. She looked like one of his students.
Again he felt the craziness of the situation. The line between
reality and pretense was become harder to distinguish. He must keep
carefully in mind that when she said things like that, she was making a
courageous mockery of her previous behavior. He must on no account let
her see the other half of his thoughts. Or was that what she wanted?
The lights of the town dropped behind. Half a mile out, he turned off
sharply onto the road that wound up the hill. It was bumpier than he
remembered from the last time--was it as much as ten years ago? And the
trees were thicker, brushing the windshield.
When they emerged into the half acre of clearing on the top, the moon,
two days after full, was rising redly.
Tansy pointed to it and said, "Check! I timed it perfectly. But where
are the others? There always used to be two or three cars up here. And
on a night like this!"
He stopped the car close to the edge. "Fashions in lovers' lanes change
like anything else," he told her. "We're traveling a disused folkway."
"Always the sociologist!"
"I guess so. Maybe Mrs. Carr found out about this place. And I suppose
the students range farther afield nowadays, or did until this year."
She rested her head on his shoulder. He switched off the headlights,
and the moon cast soft shadows.
"We used to do this at Gorham," she murmured. "When I was taking your
classes, and you were the serious young instructor. Until I found out
you weren't any different from the college boys--only better. Remember?"
He nodded and took her hand. He looked down at the town, made out the
campus, with its prominent floodlights designed to chase couples out
of dark corners. Those garishly floodlighted Gothic buildings seemed
for the moment to symbolize a whole world of barren intellectual
competition and jealous traditionalism, a world toward which at the
moment he felt as alien as if he were still twenty-six instead of
forty-one and Tansy twenty-one instead of thirty-six.
"I wonder if that's why they hate us so?" he said, almost without
thinking.
"Whatever are you talking about?" But the question sounded lazy.
"I mean the rest of the faculty, or most of them. Is it because we can
do things like this?"
She laughed. "So you're actually coming alive. We don't do things like
this so very often, you know."
He kept on with his idea. "It's a devilishly competitive and jealous
life. The war, doing away with some of it, makes you more conscious of
the rest. And competition in an institution can be nastier than any
other, because it's so tight. Think so?"
"I've lived with it for years," said Tansy, simply.
"Of course, it's all very petty. But petty emotions can come to
outweigh big ones. Their size is better suited to the human mind."
He looked down at Hempnell, and tried to visualize the amount of ill
will and jealousy he had inevitably accumulated for himself. He felt a
slight chill creeping around. He realized where this train of thought
was leading. The darker half of his mind loomed up ominously.
"Here, philosopher," said Tansy, "have a slug."
She was offering him a small silver flask.