“Do you really want me to tell you?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“I’m not so sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t. I’m determined to tell you the truth, if I tell you at all, and it’s possible that it would only make everything worse.”
“Come, Miss McCall. I’m quite capable of facing the truth. I even prefer it on most occasions.”
“First you must promise not to be angry or amused or tolerant or anything disgusting.”
“I have no intention whatever of being anything disgusting.”
“Well, it was only because I wanted to be near you, of course, and have a time when I could simply sit and watch you do all the little things that are sometimes important in connection with a particular person, although they are not important at all in connection with anyone else.
“I had seen you on the campus before the term began, you see, and right away I fell in love with you and couldn’t help myself, no matter how I tried and kept telling myself that you were married, which someone told me, and were an older important person and all that. So I decided to enroll in whatever one of your classes was possible, which turned out to be trig, and I knew from the beginning that I would surely flunk it, but I didn’t care.
“I still don’t care, not in the least, but what I care about is that I will be put out of the class before the end of the term. I wish that you would let me stay, but I suppose you won’t.”
She was silent, watching him closely with grave apprehension. He arose slowly from his chair with the gaseous sensation of having had his cords cut.
In a lengthy career of major and minor conquests, he had never felt half so exhilarated as he did now. Certainly he had never been made to feel so absolutely heady by a college girl, many of whom had, naturally, been ready to offer what he had scorned to take.
Moving around his desk to a front corner, he hooked a thigh over it and leaned forward, half sitting and half standing, in the casual position he frequently took when he was inviting a bit of intimacy into a class discussion.
“Miss McCall,” he said, “you are truly a remarkable young woman.”
“Oh, no. I’m quite ordinary, really. As you know, I can’t even learn mathematics or any of the difficult things clever people are always learning.”
“You’re utterly ignorant of mathematics, that’s true, but in your case I’m bound to admit that it hardly matters.”
“But it does matter, in a way, for I’ll surely receive an F in trig.”
“You surely will. You will undoubtedly receive the lowest F I’ve ever given in my entire career as a teacher.”
“Well, there you are. I was afraid you’d do it, and you are doing it. You’re putting me out.”
“Nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t dream of it. If you wish to stay until the end of the term and take your F philosophically, I have no objection whatever. Indeed, I implore you to do so.”
“Honestly? Why?”
“Because you are, however ignorant, delightful and exciting, qualities rarely found in serious students of mathematics, and I should hate like the devil to lose you.”
“That’s settled, then,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
She rose and was suddenly standing quite close to him. She was, in fact, so close that she could have easily, by leaning a little forward, put her arms around his neck and kissed him. Which is precisely what she did, all at once as if by compulsion. It was not a cool kiss or a chaste kiss or a promissory peck, but an accomplished kiss that had in it heat and artistry and a merest touch of tongue. This went on for perhaps half a minute. Then she stopped kissing him as suddenly as she had begun, standing quietly between his knees and observing him with her special gravity.
“Now I ve really torn it,” she said. “Now you will certainly put me out. I’ve spoiled everything as usual.”
“Are you always so impetuous?” he inquired, feeling oddly shaken.
“Not always. Only about things that I want very much to do. When I want to do something very much, I keep thinking about it, and then when an opportunity arrives to do it, I simply go ahead all of a sudden without thinking any more. It’s a kind of weakness.”
“It’s certainly a good way to make trouble for yourself. Don’t you know that?”
“Well, it hasn’t seemed to work out that way. I’ve never been in any trouble of any consequences.” Her voice was bland and artless.
“You’re fortunate. And in this case, so am I. We might both have been in trouble of some consequence if someone had happened to come into the room just now.”
“There you are. That’s what I mean about myself. I didn’t think of that at all, but just went right ahead and kissed you. If I had got myself into trouble, it would have been no more than I deserved. But it would have been too bad if I had got you into trouble with me, for it was in no way your fault.”
“Never mind. No harm has been done, and I must admit that I feel flattered by your demonstration. It was quite thorough, to say the least.”
“Do you think so? I’m glad. In my opinion, if you want to kiss someone, you had better do it thoroughly or not at all. I simply can’t stand being pecked at, or pecking at someone else. It’s so disappointing, I mean, and gets no one anywhere.”
“Yes. I see what you mean. But now, unfortunately, I must end this interview. Thank you for coming in, Miss McCall. Now that we understand each other, I’m sure we’ll make out very well until the end of the term.”
“I wish you would call me Maggie. It seems silly to keep calling me Miss McCall after we have become friends. We are friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, indeed, Maggie. Friends we are.”
“It just goes to show you, doesn’t it? You might think, since you are so clever and all at mathematics while I am so ignorant, that we would have nothing at all in common, or any reason for being friends, but it isn’t true in the least, as we have discovered.”
“True. A common devotion to mathematics may not be the most satisfactory basis for friendship after all.”
“That’s what I mean. Other things are important, too. Well, I had better go now. Good-by, Professor Cannon. After a while maybe you will let me call you Brad. That’s what you’re called by your friends, isn’t it? It’s such a fine name, I think. Much better for a man than Maggie is for a girl. Thank you for not putting me out.”
“Don’t mention it. I greatly prefer having you in.”
At the door, she hesitated and looked back with her grave and provocative smile, and then she was gone. He leaned back in his chair and made a tent, fingers tip to tip, and considered the implications.
Soon, reluctantly, he sighed and stood up and began to gather books and papers, for there was someplace else he had to go and someone else he had to meet.
4
KANSAS CITY WAS WHERE, and Cornelia York was who. Meeting Cornelia was not in any way essential to Brad’s main purpose in going to Kansas City, but was something incidental that he and Cornelia had worked out between them to add interest and a bit of excitement to what would otherwise have been, for him, a rather dull chore.
In the beginning, at least, it had added interest and excitement, not to say drama, but now unfortunately, again for him, it was becoming more of a bother and a complication than a pleasure.
As Peermont’s most glamorous mathematician, he had been selected to conduct a television class in college algebra. This was flattering to his physical presence, as well as to his professional skill, and he had accepted readily enough in the beginning. However, he had been chagrined to discover that the televised session was scheduled for seven o’clock on Saturday morning, which was a bad day and a worse hour.
In order to reach the studio on time, he was forced to arise at five-thirty at the latest, if he drove to KC the same morning of the telecast, and this was not nearly late enough, especially on Saturday, when he might have lain abed as long as he pleased.
He had mitigated this dreary disadvantage to some extent by driving to the
city Friday evening and spending the night in a hotel near the studio, and that was why Cornelia had become incidentally involved. They had decided that it was really a waste of time and opportunity for him to spend the night alone, and so she had been driving in independently and spending it with him.
Cornelia had been first a challenge and later a most satisfactory conquest. A member of the Peermont faculty in the department of foreign languages, appropriately Romance, she was a tall woman who had reached an age somewhere between thirty and forty without appearing to have reached any specific age at all. That is to say, one could have accepted without much question either of alternate contentions that she was a remarkably preserved forty or a mature twenty-five.
Rather tall, she was somewhat too amply endowed to be called willowy, but she succeeded, nevertheless, by tricks of dress and locomotion, to appear to be what she was really not. She wore her black hair bound in braids around her head, sometimes for variety in a knot on her neck, and she affected an air of sophisticated reserve that contrived subtly to suggest banked fires.
It was this subtle paradox of cold and heat that had initially tickled Brad’s fancy. He was both intrigued and challenged. He met her occasionally at faculty functions and devised occasions to meet her casually elsewhere.
To his surprise, she did not seem to be impressed by him, or even to like him very much. This was, of course, intolerable, and he began to develop in connection with her an almost frantic sense of frustration.
He was not the man to bear this philosophically, and if it was far too late for Cornelia’s virginity to suffer assault, her chastity, such as it was, was definitely imperiled.
The peril, if she had known it, would not have disturbed her. She was willing to risk it, even to invite it. What did disturb her, on the contrary, was the oppressive feeling that Brad was, after all, a fraud who was never going to make the pass she had sensed and expected and wanted.
She spent quite a bit of time wondering in both French and English how she could incite him to action without appearing to do so. Finally, after an interval during which they both suffered needlessly, they discovered that they had a common enthusiasm which not only brought them together unexpectedly at a favorable time and place, but also made it possible for them to arrange naturally other times and places equally favorable.
The enthusiasm was for walking in the country — a simple kind of exercise which, when enjoyed together by a comparatible pair, affords all sorts of opportunities for supplementary exercises and enthusiasms. Brad did a great deal of walking because it helped to keep his belly flat and because it was one of the few forms of physical exertion that he honestly enjoyed.
For her part, Cornelia did a great deal because it was part of a picture she had of herself. Anyhow, it had happened one raw, wet Sunday afternoon in early March of this year that they had met beside a hedge of Osage Orange along a country road, and it would have been impossible to imagine a pair more surprised and delighted and covertly calculative of the other’s virtue.
“Why, Brad!” she said. “How delightful to meet you so unexpectedly!”
“How are you, Cornelia? You’re looking exceptionally fine.”
“So are you, for that matter. It must be the country air.”
“If so, I’d like to recommend it for all women. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess you at the moment to be about eighteen.”
“How charming we are today, aren’t we? You ought to walk in the country more often, Brad.”
“But I’m forever tramping about the country. I’m positively addicted to it.”
“Really? So am I. How has it happened, I wonder, that we have never come across each other before?” There was a sparkle in her eyes and her voice.
“However it happened, it was damned bad luck. Now that we have met at last, however, I suggest that we set a better precedent for the future.”
“Agreed. Shall we begin by walking along together?”
He responded by offering his arm, which she accepted and held lightly and released after a minute or two because she wished to avoid the impression of clinging, which was in conflict with her assumed role of a woman sharing equally his masculine pleasure.
They walked briskly along the road in the shadow of the Osage Orange. After a while, at the end of the hedge, he crawled over a barbed wire fence and parted two strands with a foot and hands for her to follow, admiring as she did so the fine flowing swell of her flanks and behind as tweed tightened over them in her strained position.
He felt a powerful urge to pat the behind and get things begun or ended without further preliminaries, but experience in such matters qualified the urge, and they walked on together across a pasture toward a thin line of timber that grew along a creek on the other side.
The sod beneath their sturdy shoes was soft and springy after the March thaw. Overhead, the sky was low and gray, a lusterless course for blown clouds. The thin timber, when they reached it, was little or no shelter from the biting wind. She began to shiver a little when they stopped to catch breath, he filling his pipe from a leather pouch and she lighting a cigarette from the match he struck for the pipe.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice solicitous.
“A little, now that we’ve stopped. It’s all right, though. I refuse absolutely to be delicate. I love this time of year, don’t you? The short, sad time between seasons.”
“Yes, indeed. I’m always reminded of Swinburne’s lines: ‘When the hounds of Spring are on Winter’s traces, the mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.’ ”
“Why, Brad, you’re simply the most astonishing man. Who’d have dreamed that you could quote off-hand from Atlanta in Caly don?”
“Oh, please. I hope you don’t think I have nothing in my head but equations and formulas.” He smiled almost boyishly.
“Well, mathematicians are so forbidding, you know. One somehow never suspects them of being quite human.”
“You’ll find me human enough if you care to try me.”
“Perhaps I shall,” she answered archly.
“You already have, to be candid.”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware of it. How?”
“By crawling through a barbed wire fence. My thoughts, I assure you, were human enough to be censorable.”
“Truly? I’m thoroughly flattered and delighted.”
“I was tempted to pat your pretty bottom.”
“I’d surely have snagged my stocking if you had, but I shouldn’t have cared. You must promise to submit to temptation the very next time we come to a fence.”
“I promise with pleasure. Now you are cold, though. I see you shivering. We need more shelter from the wind than these trees afford.”
“There’s a little hay barn over there in the field beyond the creek. I’ve stopped there before when I’ve walked this way. We could go there and rest and get warm, if you like.”
“I’ve already confessed to being a licentious sort of fellow. Do you feel that you can trust me in a hay barn?”
“My dear Brad! Do you actually think I’m so dull?
Whoever would want to go into a hay barn with a man she could trust?”
“Excuse me. I see that I’ve done you an injustice. How do we get across this damned creek? ”
“There’s a log fallen across to the opposite bank downstream a bit. I’ll show you.”
She took him by the hand and led him, as if the way were obscure and endangered. There was a kind of childish innocence in this that seemed to him very appealing, although later her tendency to behave this way in moments of excitement was to strike him as incongruous and ridiculous, like a matron in a pinafore.
Downstream a few yards, they came to the fallen log, bridging the stream at what seemed to him a rather threatening angle, and she released his hand and scampered across with reckless bravado — another bit of retrogression.
He followed more cautiously but with a casual air
that disguised successfully his genuine fear of falling and becoming in an instant a comic figure, which was something he could never bear to be, and they went on together from the opposite bank toward the small hay barn that was visible in the field beyond.
The raw, wet air was suddenly full of a drizzle of rain, and they ran, hand in hand, the last thirty yards, tumbling through the door and into the hay with shouts of breathless laughter and an irrational conviction of having become, in the thirty yards, at least half as many years younger.
Somehow they could not recover from this exhilarating delusion in time to develop a more sophisticated approach to what they both wanted and meant to have — insofar, that is, as sophistication can function in a hay barn. Accordingly they fell upon each other in a fierce and abandoned frolic.
Her big body was wild with wanton charity, throwing itself upon him and demanding reciprocity with shameless hands. He went under her skirt and beneath her blouse with the reckless compulsion of a novice, claiming almost brutally her ultimate intimacy, and she responded with hoarse sounds of incitement and a frantic and rhythmic thrusting of her pelvis. Soon there was a hysterical discarding of tweeds and then not a single sound except gutturals and aspirants and the threshing of hay and a strange word that Cornelia kept repeating wildly at the end, apparently French.
Afterward, Cornelia was palpably prepared to rest and repeat the performance, but Brad was cold and was suffering, besides goose pimples, the familiar stale redundancy of disappointment.
It required almost a quarter of an hour, in which the gray rain fell and tweedless Cornelia lay lush in the hay, to achieve a proper appreciation of his nth triumph, which had been, after all, somewhat easier than conjugating a French verb or solving for x.
Oh, well. That had been in March, and it was now October, getting on toward November, and in a matter of hours in a KC bar he would again be meeting Cornelia, who was becoming something of a bore, a familiar formula. Meanwhile, he would have to go home and pack a bag and have dinner with his wife, who was also a bore and a problem besides.
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