“Good. I suppose it’s the end-of-the-year pressure that’s moving in on all of us, isn’t it? Well, first of all, there’s the concert at Collins Hall next week. Your father and I wondered if you would stay in and go with us Saturday evening. You know Ted Bolling, the young assistant in your father’s office? He’s going as our guest, and he very definitely brightened up when I suggested that you might be able to come along.”
I stiffened. Saturday night. They knew I’d have a date with Brett on Saturday night, and they were deliberately trying to hurt him by getting me out with someone else. I wanted to hear that concert; I’d wanted to hear it for weeks, and there was nothing particularly wrong with Ted Bolling, except that he wasn’t Brett Kingsman. But I was not going to be sucked in by intrigue.
“I’m sorry, Alicia, but I can’t possibly. I always have a date with Brett on Saturday night. I thought that you and Father knew that.”
Alicia’s brows moved ever so slightly. “Oh, yes, of course. Well, your father will be sorry; he had been looking forward to seeing you. You haven’t been over to talk with him lately.”
I didn’t say anything, and for just a few seconds there was silence between us. Then Alicia opened a drawer, took out a sheaf of papers and said briskly—artificially, I thought—“Apropos of Brett, I have a number of his papers here, Julie. The later ones have shown quite a lot of improvement over his earlier work; however, it’s rather an erratic improvement. What I mean is that there will be an intelligently stated idea in one paragraph followed by a meaningless string of words that Brett seems to feel I’ll recognize as a sentence. Would you have a theory concerning this discrepancy in quality?”
I knew what was coming. I hadn’t meant to do another person’s work for him at first, but Brett had a way with him, and week after week his papers had become more and more nearly complete copies of my dictation. I had never cheated before, and I was hard put to rationalize the whole sorry business. It helped to remember that Laura had once said that it was a privilege for her to be able to help Bill with his thesis; now, I tried to tell myself, I could understand exactly how she felt. But my message didn’t quite ring true; in my heart I knew there was a difference between Laura’s situation and mine. After all, she had only helped Bill.
It had all commenced quite early in the year. The first time Brett ever noticed me had been one day in class when papers were being returned to us. He had smiled at me rather sourly and asked, “Are you really that good or do you get this kind of grade because her highness is your stepmother?”
I hadn’t liked it that much, but I just said, “I think it’s because I happen to like English. I don’t always make such grades in math.”
He looked friendlier. “Well, congratulations, sugar. You’re pretty smooth, no matter what kind of grades you make.”
When we were dismissed that day, Brett walked close behind me. Out in the hall he said, “Look, baby, how about giving me a hand with this paper? The old girl says I have to correct and return it by tomorrow—” He unfolded a paper that was plastered with red code signs made by Alicia’s pencil.
I said, “Of course, Brett, I’ll be glad to help you.” And that is the way the relationship which I thought of as a romance had started. A lot of very popular girls in high school thought of it as a romance too, and I was suddenly the object of their envy. I hadn’t been particularly envied before; I had been simply a little grind who lived out in the country and who made good grades because a grim old aunt saw to it that every scrap of homework was completed and turned in. Brett Kingsman’s attentions had changed that picture in their minds.
But I had become worried about the help I was giving him. “This is the idea, Brett; now put it into your own words, just as simply and clearly as you can,” I’d tell him. And then I’d get a kiss, a compliment or two, and finally a plea that was almost a command: “Now, what was that again, sugar? How did you say it just now?”
Alicia was speaking again. “I have read your papers for quite a long time, Julie, and I recognize your style of writing, your approach to ideas. What I find here are papers done by you with a few semiliterate lines contributed by Brett. It’s a bit on the shabby side, isn’t it?”
I was close to tears, but I forced them back and tried to summon strength for a counterattack. “I’ve only been trying to give him a lift, Alicia. Your course is difficult, and Brett has lost so much schooling because of his family moving around from place to place. Anyway, everybody is against him. You know that neither you nor Father can stand the sight of him.”
Alicia squared her shoulders, and there was really an air of Aunt Cordelia about her. “Julie, any person in my classes is welcome to come into this office to discuss his difficulties. Any person who takes the trouble to read assigned material, who makes any effort on his own to discover a few ideas and arrange them—that student can depend upon my help whether I like him or not. Kingsman hasn’t made the slightest effort. He is sullen, lazy, smart-alecky, and dishonest.” She paused a minute and looked at me steadily. “What in Heavens’ name do you mean by getting involved with this boy, Julie?”
All the fire that I withheld from Brett was ready for Alicia. “You wouldn’t know, would you, Alicia? You have Father just as Laura has Bill. You have someone to love you and a home where you feel secure, and you don’t have to be lonely and not sure where you really belong. Well, I’m not so lucky as you. I need love very much, and when I find someone who gives it to me, I’m going to hold on to him—and you can tell Father that—and Laura—and everybody.”
I was half-crying, half-shouting at her; even in my overwrought state I noticed that she looked pale. It was a rough session for both of us.
“Julie, believe me, I am not unsympathetic. I know what it means to be lonely, and I know that insecurity is frightening. But you never gain security by selling out for a shoddy something that only resembles love.”
“You’re saying, then, that Brett is shoddy?”
“I think that he is very immature and that he is using you for his own purposes. He is giving you nothing and taking all he can get. He may change someday; I doubt it, but he may. Until he does, yes, he’s shoddy.”
“Not in the same class with Father or Bill or—or—”
“That’s right. Or Dan Trevort or Chris or Ted Bolling. Or a dozen others I could name for you.”
I got up with what I felt was considerable dignity. “Well, Alicia, I’ll say just this: I don’t care whether you or Father or Laura or any of the people you’ve named like Brett or not. I love him, and I’m going to stand by him.”
Alicia also got up with dignity. “Very well, Julie. That is your right. But understand this: if any more papers done by Julie Trelling are handed in by Brett Kingsman, you are both going to the Dean’s office. Brett will flunk the course, and you will be disciplined as the Dean sees fit. You had just as well begin learning what Brett is going to mean for you.”
I walked out of the office without looking at her. It didn’t seem possible that we had ever been friends.
Brett wasn’t there to drive me home; neither was Danny, who probably had thought that I was staying in town when I hadn’t shown up at our usual meeting place for the drive home. I could have asked Father to take me home or I could have called Aunt Cordelia, or have waited an hour for the next bus, but the spirit of martyrdom was strong upon me and I decided to walk the five miles home. I rather hoped that they’d find me along the wayside sometime before dawn, perhaps, in a state of complete exhaustion.
I’d only walked a little over a mile, however, when a car came tearing down the dusty road toward me. It made a U-turn a few yards in front of me and then stopped at the side of the road. A very grim-looking Danny sat behind the wheel and watched me approach.
“You could have told me your plans, Julie,” he said angrily. “How was I to know that you didn’t have a way to get home? Couldn’t gorgeous Kingsman afford the gas to drive you out or is he having his beauty nap?”
“I wasn’t with Brett in
the first place, and I’m under no compulsion to tell you my plans in the second place. I don’t know why you’ve come out here to meet me; I’m nothing to you.”
Danny was pretty furious. He said, “You’ve just made the most doggoned accurate statement that I’ve heard in days. You are absolutely nothing to me. Absolutely. But you’re wrong about my coming out to meet you. It’s just a coincidence—even now I have half a mind to make you walk the rest of the way—” He jerked the car door open. “Get in,” he barked at me and I did, ungraciously accepting his favor while I remembered with satisfaction that I had once blacked his eye.
The world was against me that evening. Alicia was mad. Danny was mad. Aunt Cordelia was irked because I hadn’t told Danny that I was staying after school, thus causing him to make another trip. I told her that he had not come back to meet me, that he was going into town for some other reason—he hadn’t told me what—but she said, nonsense, that he’d called to find out if I was home and a few minutes later had started down the road.
I went up to my room and tried to think of what it would be like when Brett and I were married; I thought about how I would inform my entire family that be it Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other holiday, if Brett were not welcome, then they could count upon it, Julie would not be on hand either. I thought of how I’d stand by him and comfort him with my love and loyalty. But try as I would, I couldn’t get Brett to emerge in my daydream as a wronged but valiant and heroic figure; I kept seeing him behave like a sullen child in spite of all my efforts.
It was getting late when Brett finally called to ask if he could come out for a while and talk over our English assignment. He sounded sleepy and morose; I thought of what Danny had said about his having a beauty nap, but I pushed the thought aside and told him joyfully that yes, he might come out. Aunt Cordelia, who sat beside the table reading, said, “Until ten, Julia; no later.” She didn’t lift her eyes from her book.
Brett and I sat in the living room and talked; Aunt Cordelia did not come in to meet him. If it had been Danny who was calling on me, there would have been a pleasant welcome for him and some sort of refreshment. Not for Brett. She remained seated with her book at hand, her knees crossed, and her foot swinging back and forth with what appeared to be mild agitation after some of Brett’s remarks.
He wanted help, of course, with the paper on Civil Disobedience. He had a notebook ready and his pen poised above it. “Tell me how to begin it, sugar,” he said wearily, knowing, I suspect, that it was going to be tiresome business in getting a clear dictation from me and then expending precious energy in putting my words down on paper.
“I can’t tell you what to say, Brett; I just can’t do that. Why don’t you write in your own words just why you think Thoreau felt that a man is justified at times in not paying his taxes, in not fighting for a cause in which he—”
Brett slammed his notebook shut. “How am I going to say it in my own words? I haven’t read the stupid thing, and I have no intention of reading it. If you don’t want to help me, just say so.”
I thought that foot beside the dining room table was going to fly through the door. Even my love cracked a little.
“Well, I can’t do your paper for you, Brett, if that’s what you mean. I’ve been doing too much as it is. We’re going to get in trouble, both of us; Alicia told me so this afternoon.” Let Aunt Cordelia hear it, I thought; I supposed that it was just as well.
There wasn’t any love in Brett’s eyes as he sat staring at me. Finally he said, “So that’s it, is it? You’re afraid of getting your own neck in the noose. It’s all right if I flunk English again, but you’re not going to get in bad with your precious stepma. Lord, how I hate schoolteachers,” he said, for the second time within twelve hours.
We sat for a while in silence, and Aunt Cordelia’s foot quieted down as if it were waiting. I was so mad at that point that I was ready to tell Brett that our romance was over. But Brett changed his tactics suddenly and swept down my defenses.
He said, “I’m sorry, honey. Forget the whole lousy business. I might just as well flunk English again, because it’s a sure thing that math is down the drain.” He shrugged, and taking both my hands, drew me to my feet. “Don’t be mad, little sugar; come out to the car and say good night,” he whispered.
He was so handsome, so masterful looking with his height and his beautifully wide shoulders. I commenced to melt in the warmth of his sudden tenderness. We went down the long path toward his car, Brett’s arm around my waist, his cheek resting against my hair. When we reached the end of the path he said, “Let’s go for just a little walk, honey; just a few minutes together.”
“I can’t, Brett—it’s getting late. I simply can’t. Aunt Cordelia will—”
There was another flash of anger. “Look, Julie, are you letting that old woman run your life? If you are, you can count me out. I’m not coming out here to be told that you can’t help me out of a tight spot, you can’t take a little walk in the woods, you can’t do anything. I thought you loved me, but if you don’t, all right, say so. I’ll begin looking around somewhere else.”
The next minute we were walking back into the woods—just a short, little walk to show that I loved him.
It was a wonderful night; the world looked as if it had been dipped in some liquid silver poured out of the moon. The woods were so still and radiant that it brought a catch of wistfulness to my throat. Such beauty ought not to be wasted in small talk. I thought of Jessica and young Lorenzo watching that moon together, matching their flashes of imagery, fitting them together into a perfect mosaic of poetry:“The moon shines bright: in such a night as this
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise; in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night.”
I wished that Brett would say those lines to me as we walked in the moonlight, and that I could then say:“In such a night
Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew,
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself
And ran dismay’d away.”
I felt a longing for Brett to understand my feelings, for an affinity between us such as must have existed between Jessica and young Lorenzo that radiant night.
But Brett had not read much of Shakespeare, and even if he had known every play and every sonnet by rote, he would not have been at that moment in a mood to quote any of the immortal lines. His arms were suddenly holding me very tightly. “I love you so much, little honeybun, little sugar—” I didn’t much care for the pet names, but that night he could have run down the entire dessert menu of a well-stocked restaurant and I wouldn’t have objected.
We stood close in one another’s arms and Brett was whispering, “You understand, don’t you, sugar, don’t you, Julie, baby—?”
Julie, baby, was indeed beginning to understand. The word was beginning to come through clearly to her, and Shakespeare was fading away into the background like muted music contrasting with the tumult of a mighty drama.
Then, as if on cue, there emerged from left wing a dapper, slender figure which advanced airily to center stage, laid aside an ancient golf bag, and extended a cordial hand toward the leading man.
“Kingsman, dear boy, what luck to have run across you,” Uncle Haskell exclaimed gaily. He immediately pretended to be chagrined at having burst in upon us, but I knew Uncle Haskell; he did not know the meaning of chagrin.
“So awfully sorry to have intruded upon a tender moment, children,” he said playfully. “Still, it’s my good fortune to have found you, Brett. Do you know that you were the subject of a telephone conversation between me and one of the best known producers in New York not more than two hours ago?”
Brett was staring at Uncle Haskell a little stupidly, but I could see that his interest was beginning to come through the fog. He liked Uncle Haskell; he wouldn’t fo
r very long, but that night my uncle seemed to be opening up new vistas for Brett.
Uncle Haskell disposed of me in a hurry. “Julie, my pet, I think you’d better run along now. Brett can tell you his good news tomorrow. I have an idea that Aunt Cordelia would like you safe inside. Ten o’clock comes on apace, you know.”
I felt weak and ill with humiliation, anger, anxiety, and uncertainty. I lingered a few yards away and listened for a minute or two while Uncle Haskell unfolded his story. He would never have considered merely sending an amorous young man on his way and giving an amorous young niece a brief bedtime lecture. Uncle Haskell’s soul would have revolted at the image of himself as an upholder of morals; he preferred to achieve the same result by means less hackneyed. Thus, his story that a producer in New York, beside himself with joy in producing Uncle Haskell’s play, had telephoned to ask about a prospect for a part—“a minor part, mind you, but not an unimportant one—” My uncle was pouring the soothing unguent on Brett’s bruised feelings. Brett, of course, was young and inexperienced; still, Uncle Haskell had told E. J. that this young fellow was extraordinarily handsome, had a natural grace and flair for the dramatic—
I had heard enough. That Brett was weak, I had to admit, but he didn’t deserve cruelty like this. I ran through the woods and up the steps to the old porch swing where Aunt Cordelia was waiting for me.
I expected a lecture, but she was strangely quiet. Let me forget to dust the living room or mend a torn blouse, and she would hold forth at length; let me run off into the woods with Brett Kingsman, and she had nothing to say. Finally, when she didn’t speak, I said, “I’m sorry, Aunt Cordelia; I shouldn’t have gone out there tonight.”
She put her hand on mine for a second; that was all, just the faintest pressure on my hand. After that we sat in silence.
We heard Brett’s car roar down the road after a while; then later, a long time later, we heard Uncle Haskell emerging from the woods, his pleasant voice humming, My heart at thy sweet voice, and I wondered if he were deliberately hurting himself by remembering that aria which Katy Eltwing had loved to hear him sing. He seemed cheerful enough, however, when he glimpsed us among the shadows and waved to us.