I sighed and stood and was about to leave the office when I caught sight of a brown accordion folder with a cloth string tied around it on the floor just beyond the reach of the desk. I bent and picked it up and, as delicately as I could, I undid the string. Inside were letters from a professor at Jesus College, Oxford, inviting Asher to come to that college as a visiting lecturer. I read, from copies of Asher’s own letters, that he had at least considered such a move. I held the illicitly viewed correspondence and began to think in earnest: if I had been disheartened to discover that Phillip Asher, lately of Yale, was indeed that rare thing, a man of greatness, could I not take courage from the fact that such a man might not agree to a post at Thrupp if he had a better offer elsewhere? I contemplated a new line of attack in my politicking. I could suggest to my colleagues that Asher was too good for Thrupp, that such a man would almost certainly grow tired of a provincial college and might therefore allow himself to be hired away by a better-known institution after the board had gone to all the trouble to elect him. Whereas I, Nicholas Van Tassel, was in it for the long haul. I was a man of loyalty. I had dedicated my life to Thrupp, had I not?
Yes, yes, I thought as I left that darkened office with my purloined intelligence, careful to maintain the state of disarray in which I had found the room, this was an excellent line of reasoning and should be communicated, however subtly, to the board as soon as possible. The vote, as of that sunny November afternoon, was only fourteen days away.
* * *
Shortly before Thanksgiving, Etna resumed her charity work. Baker House needed her, she said one morning when I remarked that she was dressed as if to go to the settlement house. She had on a pin-striped suit with a high turned collar. She was, she said; it was time. I concurred heartily, for I was eager to see my wife make a full recovery. Life, after all, must go on. Children could not be inhibited indefinitely, nor would the poor and indigent stop being poor and indigent.
“Very good,” I said.
As I had no classes that day, I decided to spend the morning in my library with my books all about. I had much to do (those endless copybooks), but, as the morning wore on, I found I could not attend to them. I stood in front of a window, looking out at the back garden — all stalks and dried flowers now — and then I meandered into the kitchen to beg of Mary a cup of tea. I made my way back to the library again and hovered over my walnut desk, seeing not the desk at all, but the face of Phillip Asher as he stood behind a podium to deliver his first address to the college faculty as Thrupp’s Dean. I wandered from desk to bookshelves to desk and back to bookshelves again, from time to time shaking off my preoccupation, only to have it reassert itself shortly thereafter. As a result of all this thinking, I was feeling quite exhausted.
I determined that I needed a walk. I should go into town and have lunch there. Yes, yes, good idea, I thought. Perhaps Moxon was around? I needed manly company of an easy sort, someone to take me out of myself. Possibly I was growing ill. One heard of various hysterias in women, of course, but one did not like to think such a state could infect a man; indeed, by definition, an hysteria could not infect a man, being an entirely female condition. But still, one worried that one was becoming a little too lost in one’s daydreams. I telephoned over to Moxon and suggested he meet me at the hotel dining room. He was only too eager to accept. (Poor Moxon. I believe he was always lonely.)
The dining room was crowded that noon hour, and Moxon was seated already when I arrived. He hailed me with a flapping gesture of his arms such as one might make upon being found after several nights lost on a mountaintop. He had on a striped wool suit that had a foreign look to it (not Saville Row foreign, more Bulgaria foreign), and where he had got the thing I have no idea. Moxon often looked as though he had dressed in the dark.
“Nicholas,” he said when I was seated. “How is Etna?”
“Better,” I said. “She is resuming her charity work.” I glanced at the handwritten menu. The day’s special was veal shanks. As it happened, I rather liked veal shanks.
“She looked pale when I called last week,” Moxon said.
“She has had a difficult time of it,” I said, taking a sip of water.
“The waiter said the pot pie was the thing to have.”
“I’ve settled on the veal shanks,” I said, putting the menu aside.
“No classes today?” Moxon asked.
“No. How is your sabbatical?”
“Miss the students,” Moxon said.
“Truly?” I asked, much surprised. A sabbatical away from the students was usually considered to be a prize.
“You are looking as pale as Etna,” Moxon said.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I said.
“You are taking the vote too hard, I think,” Moxon said. Beneath his bumbling exterior, Moxon was a man of great sympathies.
“It is my future,” I said.
“I’ve heard it put about that Asher has a fiancée,” Moxon said helpfully.
“A fiancée?” I asked innocently. “Wherever from?”
“Abroad somewhere. Scandinavia, maybe? Keeps his cards close to the vest, no?”
“He does. Secretive man,” I said. “Not such a good quality in a dean, I should think.”
“I’m taking up snow skiing,” Moxon announced abruptly, much in the same way he was given to gesture.
“This is news,” I said.
“I’m off to Quebec City this afternoon.”
“What fun for you,” I said, and for a few minutes, I contemplated the image of Moxon on snow skis on a mountainside. Despite this highly amusing picture and the blur of conversation that followed, I could scarcely eat the veal shanks I had ordered. I scanned the crowded room, with its waiters deftly carrying trays from kitchen to table and back to kitchen, for Phillip Asher, who might, after all, be dining in the hotel as well. When I was not thus occupied, or trying to attend to Moxon’s benign if endless chatter, I was thinking of Etna and her first venture back to work since her uncle’s death. “Moxon,” I said, putting down my fork. “I have a rather large favor to ask of you.”
“Anything,” he said, his mouth unhappily full.
“Could I borrow your motorcar?”
“Of course,” he said. “Yours is being repaired?”
“No, Etna has it. She’s taken it to Baker House. But I’m worried about her. This is her first day back, and she’s still very shaky. I thought I might just call by the settlement house and see if she is all right.”
“By all means, take my touring car. Take it.” He flapped his hands excitedly. “We can walk together now to the garage. I never use the thing. I never have anywhere to go.”
It was impossible not to like Moxon, both for his honesty and for his lack of pretension. Another man in Moxon’s position — which is to say hardly any position at all — might have found it necessary to invent a life simply to save his public face.
It was a breathtaking day (I mean this literally, the air so cold it hurt the lungs as it was going in) as we walked together to Moxon’s house. I had some trouble getting used to Moxon’s motorcar, a yellow Stevens-Duryea that required some fuss with a primer cup and a choke before one could start the engine. Moxon took the wheel for the first several turns around his frozen side yard until I felt fit enough to move over to the right-hand seat to take the wheel myself and venture onto the street. He lent me his skunk-fur coat for the journey, since it was nearly as frigid inside the motorcar as it was outside.
Over the years, I had been to the settlement house on a number of occasions, five or six, perhaps, for teas and receptions, and so I knew the way. The dirt road was corrugated, however, and I had to get used to the slipping and skidding of the wheels. I was glad that there were few people about, as my driving was erratic and I should not have liked to hit another motorcar along the way. Driving the Stevens-Duryea felt a bit like riding a skittish and undisciplined horse.
The house was located at 18 Norfolk Street in Worthington. In 1880, the
two sisters Baker had opened their home to the poor and sick in the neighborhood. Since there were few such facilities in that part of New Hampshire at that time, the home had been enlarged to encompass the indigent from a number of other towns in the county, including Thrupp. The exterior of the abode belied its usage. It was, in fact, a charming yellow-clapboarded house, of colonial design, with dark green shutters. There were two front doors (I was never sure why), and several stately elms situated along the narrow yard. There was a rather beautiful wrought-iron fence along the street and a wide porch, which on good days usually held a half dozen women and children taking in the sun. It was only in the dress and demeanor of these unfortunates that one could see that this handsome dwelling was a poorhouse and not the abode of an upstanding Worthington family.
I parked across the street from the home. In the driveway, there were three motorcars, one of which was our Cadillac coupe. I crossed the street, holding my hat against the November breeze, unlatched the iron gate, and was on the flagstones when Etna opened one of the doors.
She did not at first see me, since she was still speaking to someone inside the building as she exited. She had on her wool coat with the fox collar and her driving hat, and in her hand she carried a small carpetbag in which I knew she often ferried items from our house to Baker House (hand-me-downs from the children or food-stuffs we had not eaten).
“Etna,” I said.
She gave a small start and turned in the same moment. I cannot exaggerate her surprise; it was the frisson of a sudden shock. Her mouth opened and her eyes widened (why does the body do this, I wonder? to take in more of the thing which alarms?), and there was the tiniest jolt through her shoulders. I watched as her mouth quivered a moment, and then she set her lips together. She attempted a smile.
All of this took place in an instant.
“Nicholas,” was all that she could say.
“My dear,” I said, “I have startled you.”
“Well, yes, you have,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I was worried for you. I’m sorry. I just wanted to make sure that you were all right. You seemed shaky this morning.”
She drew herself up then to her full height. The shock had passed, and she seemed composed. “I’m just on my way home,” she said.
“You’re leaving early today,”
I said. “As you said, I am not myself.”
“Of course not. It’s a wonder you came at all.”
“It was good for me,” she said, pulling the fur collar of her coat under her chin.
“Well,” I said, “now we have two motorcars.”
“Whose did you come in?”
“Gerard Moxon’s.”
She studied the Stevens-Duryea across the street. “You hate to drive,” she said.
“It was actually rather fun,” I said.
“Was it?”
Etna had a habit of lowering the brim of her hat to hide her eyes — a not uncommon feminine gesture. Whereas a man must look another in the eye or risk being thought an untrustworthy character, a woman is always permitted a modest glance to the side or at her feet.
“Shall you follow me home?” I asked. “Or I you?”
“What a nuisance,” she said suddenly, stepping down off the porch.
“Yes, it is. But a small one, no?”
She touched me on the arm. “It was very sweet of you to come to find me,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “And Etna?” I asked as I followed her.
“Yes?”
“I was thinking of inviting Phillip Asher to the house for dinner.”
My wife stopped and turned. “Our house?” she asked.
“Well…yes.”
She shook her head. “I don’t …”
“It is too soon,” I said quickly.
“Yes,” she said with evident relief. “Then I could have him over for drinks — a cigar-and-brandy sort of thing.”
Etna, carpetbag in hand, was silent.
“You wouldn’t have to entertain him,” I went on. “You wouldn’t even have to come downstairs, for that matter.”
She looked away from me toward the Cadillac coupe. “If you feel you must,” she said. She turned back to me. “Whatever have you got on?”
I looked down at the skunk coat, not a thing of beauty, however warm it was. “Moxon’s as well,” I said.
Etna smiled.
“I should get to know the man,” I said.
“Moxon?” she asked.
I took the carpetbag from her and walked around Etna’s car. I set the satchel on the cocoa mat on the floor. I shut the door and looked at my wife over the hood of the car. The sashes of her hat, as yet untied, were blowing in the breeze.
“Asher,” I said.
The following morning, I sent a note around to Asher’s hotel inviting him to drinks that evening at the house. I had Mary set up a tray in the library. The room was small, but there were two comfortable chairs there, giving it a masculine feel. At the appointed hour, I was waiting in that library, pretending to work. I was not sure that Asher would come, as I had not had any reply to my invitation, but just before half past five o’clock, I heard a ring at the door. Though I knew that Abigail was in the house, I thought it would be a friendlier gesture if I went and greeted Asher myself.
Asher stood on the front stoop. Though he was a younger man, one could not help but notice a nest of wrinkles at the corners of each eye, the legacy, I thought, of his weather-beaten expeditions to New Guinea or wherever it was he had gone. Under his overcoat, he wore a formal collar and a dotted red silk tie. His mouth was fixed and serious.
“Come in, come in,” I said, making way for the man, who stepped into the hallway, bringing with him a shiver of cold air. I shut the door quickly. The clock struck half past the hour, and I remarked on his punctuality. Abigail arrived then and took his hat and coat.
Asher patted down his hair. “This is very kind of you,” he said as we stood somewhat awkwardly in the hallway.
“Not at all,”
I said. “I should like to convey my sympathies to your family on the death of William Bliss,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “My wife has taken it particularly hard. She regarded William Bliss as something of a father.”
“Then I should like to convey to her my special sympathy,” Asher said.
“Thank you, Professor Asher,” Etna said from the top of the stairway.
I believe I was even more surprised than Asher to see my wife descending the steps. She moved at a slow and stately pace, the skirt of her dress making a rippling brook behind her. She wore an ivory dress with a lace capelet on her shoulders. She had plumcolored beads threaded through the curls of her hair and knotted at the nape of her neck. Her pendant earrings quivered as she walked.
“Etna,” I said. “May I present Phillip Asher. If you recall, he was introduced at Edward Ferald’s party.”
“Yes,” she said, reaching the bottom step. “Good evening, Professor Asher.”
Asher hesitated just a moment before advancing to take her hand. In that moment, I now believe, he was making a critical decision. “You knew my brother,” he said to Etna. “Samuel.”
Etna nodded. “Yes, I did,” she said, and I could see that this was not news. “And how is Mr. Asher?” Etna asked.
I watched as Phillip Asher let Etna’s hand go. Though her manner was cool, her fingers trembled. I noted that Asher saw this as well.
“He lives in Canada,” Phillip Asher said. “But now he is in London. With the British Admiralty.”
Etna blinked and nodded again.
“Because of the war,” Asher added.
“So you two know each other,” I said, a bit bewildered by this exchange.
“Not well,” Etna said. “I knew Professor Asher’s brother when I lived in Exeter. He was a friend to the family.”
“I see,” I said. “It is not someone you have ever mentioned before.”
This was a
boorish statement on my part, slightly insulting to Phillip Asher and his brother.
“I am just on my way to fetch the children,” Etna said. “They are visiting with their aunt.”
“Just so,” I said, still somewhat confused.
“Good-bye, Professor Asher,” Etna said. “I hope I shall have more time to visit with you when next you come around to our house.”
“I look forward to that,” Asher said.
“Drinks are waiting,” I said with bluff heartiness to Asher as Etna was putting on her hat, and it seemed the man left the hallway only reluctantly.
I led Asher to my study. I had arranged my books and papers on the desk to look as if I had been writing an essay. He glanced at the disarray and then took one of the leather club chairs. “What can I get for you?” I asked. “Brandy?”
“Yes, please,” he said.
“Soda?” I asked, holding the seltzer bottle.
“No, thank you.”
“Very good,” I said, making a drink for myself as well. I sat opposite Asher. I reached for a silver box on my desk. “Cigarette?” I asked. “Or are you a pipe man?”
“Neither, actually.”
We each took sips of our drinks. Asher had his legs crossed at the knee, exaggerating the length of his limbs. But though his posture suggested an easy elegance, I noted that he seemed to have lost a bit of his poise somewhere between the hallway and my study. From time to time, he jiggled his foot.
“Your lectures have been remarkable,” I said. “The entire college has been abuzz with them.”
“Do you think so?” he asked.
“Small debates, like brush fires, have been starting up in the least likely of places as a result of your comments. The lecture series is intended to do this, so I think we can say you have succeeded admirably.”
“I still have one left to give,” he said.
“And then you will be returning to New Haven?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, uncrossing his legs. “There is the vote.”
“You’re still a candidate, then?”
“I believe so,” he said, taking another sip of his brandy. I had kept the lights in the study low. A bit of kindling snapped in the grate.