Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  Each in his own mind was sorting out the arguments at his disposal and setting them aside, provisionally, in hopes that the other would take the initiative. They did not know each other well, but the constraint of their detention was beginning to draw them together, like pupils called before the Principal, and to invoke in each a silent trust that the other was the bolder and stronger of the two. John’s wife had just had a baby, so that he did not go out much, and he met Domna now, as if for the first time, in the intricacies of the Mulcahy case, like a man meeting a girl in a grand right and left and finding that their steps agreed. Though an ocean and a gulf of class had separated their childhoods, their upbringing had much in common in strictness and isolation; both held the advanced ideas that had been current in the eighteen-sixties and that remained advanced in the present era, though with a certain pathos, like an old hat that has never been worn.

  Ten days had passed since they had written to Maynard, asking for a date for an interview; he had answered, begging them to postpone it until the beginning of the field-period, when all concerned would be freer. This morning the college was deserted, save for the Administration Building, the Library, and one wing of a dormitory kept open for the five or six students who remained. Thanks to this postponement, Mulcahy’s supporters were already scattered: Ivy Legendre had taken a train to Florida; Aristide, with a group of French majors, was en route to Quebec with his ice-skates; Alma had gone to New York. This left no one for the deputation to report to but Van Tour and Kantorowitz and, of course, Mulcahy himself, who justifiably felt that he had been let down, despite the fact that before leaving, Ivy and Aristide had penned hasty notes to the President, questioning the termination of the appointment. Mulcahy prophesied to Domna, whom he came to see every night, that the whole movement would evaporate during the four weeks’ hiatus; he was in a baleful mood, privately ruing the day when he had let himself be tricked into squelching the student petition, and vowing vengeance on Bentkoop, whom he only spared temporarily, till the conclusion of this morning’s interview. Domna, though she did not say so, feared that he might be right, in the main—she was ignorant of his sentiments toward Bentkoop and did not know how to interpret certain darkenings of the visage when the young man’s name was spoken. She too felt that those others, if they were serious, might have sacrificed a day or two of pleasure to stand by in the crisis. Even the writing of those notes, as she murmured to Bentkoop, had become suddenly a concession bestowed on her like a papal indulgence. Like most people intent on selfish ends—she swiftly continued, looking sidewise at him, through lowered eyelashes—they had an air of strained concentration, as though on a higher duty, as though the obligation to catch a train were a species of martyrdom, exacted from them by the schedule, by nameless people who were waiting for them, i.e., hotel-keepers and the like. John nodded.

  “ ‘You and John will handle it; everything will be all right; don’t worry,’ ” she quoted the guilty ones, broodily. “And such an outing suit, I assure you! Such veils and toques!” John’s noiseless laugh was tolerant; he perceived that she needed to work herself up by gloomy prognostication, and this inspired in him a protective feeling both toward her and the others. “It’s not going to be so easy!” she threw out with a foreboding look at the closed oak door into Maynard’s sanctum. The truth was, she felt abandoned by her colleagues and had begun to have doubts, not only of the outcome but of the justice of the cause, which she turned into blame of the deserters. What she longed to confide in John and dared not was that Mulcahy had been acting most strangely, coming to her house late at night, letting his satirical laugh ring out over the snowy fields till the neighbors wondered, talking excitedly over the phone in a crazy code-language, which must surely be audible to Cathy, making friends with Mr. Mahmoud Ali Jones and demanding that he be added to the deputation, confabbing with Herbert Ellison, whom he named his “new disciple.” Like most Russian women of her class, she had a horror of the bizarre that could only be tamed by mirth and she feared to laugh at Henry. She had the feeling that he was slipping away from under her influence and wondered even whether she really knew him as well as she asserted to herself. The idea that she was in too deep to get out was becoming her sole reassurance, embodying all her fatalism. At the same time, of course, she reproached herself for disloyalty: these doubts, she crisply declared, were marshaled in her by selfishness and a social dread of identification with another person’s conduct.

  As she sat there, on the sofa, brushing her hair back, smoothing her skirt, she kept trying to restore the image of Henry, as he had seemed to her before he became, so to speak, her dependent, but only an image of a rather colorless man whom she had first seen at a department meeting came at her behest. When she first met Henry, she desperately admitted, she had not liked him at all. “Now it is too late,” she said to herself, relievedly, as the oak door began slowly to open, and John, gripping her arm, whispered, “Now,” and pushed her gently ahead of him. As she rose, she observed for the first time that he was wearing what must be his best suit, also a white shirt and staunch, dark, conservative tie.

  “Now,” said Maynard, seating them in two chairs on either side of his desk, “I infer that you two children have come to give me a scolding.” John stole a glance at Domna, who looked woefully pale and tense. “Right,” he said coolly, folding his arms and settling himself into a more comfortable position, as though he did not intend to be budged. As a Jocelyn alumnus, he had memories of this room, with its high dark oak wainscoting, white plastered walls, and heavy oak window embrasures, that well anteceded the President’s. This was the only Victorian building on the campus, and the room remained what it had always been, a Protestant minister’s study, with brown leather-covered chairs, a bay window looking out over the main drive, glassed-in bookcases of golden oak. It was an atmosphere into which John fitted rather more easily than Maynard, who this morning was wearing a tan jersey with a little collar, open at the throat, and a pair of khaki trousers. He was one of those rugged men who looked exactly like their photographs—dark, resilient, keen-eyed, buoyant, yet thoughtful. Like all such official types, he specialized in being his own antithesis: strong but understanding, boisterous but grave, pragmatic but speculative when need be. The necessity of encompassing such opposites had left him with a little wobble of uncertainty in the center of his personality, which made other people, including his present auditors, feel embarrassed by him. He was much preoccupied with youth, with America as a young country; he tried to have up-to-date opinions which were as sound as grandpa’s digestion. He had a strong true voice and liked to sing folk songs, especially work songs and prison chants.

  At Jocelyn, he was somewhat of an anomaly and half knew it, being the first of Jocelyn’s presidents who was a political progressive and neither an intellectual, strictly speaking, nor an esthete. This made him placatory to his faculty and dependent on them to “sell” him to the student-body, whose subversive streak he did not at all understand and who, in turn, regarded him rather warily, like a group of native coolies confronted with the new type of promotion-conscious colonial administrator. John Bentkoop more than once had counseled him through an incipient student rebellion.

  “I’m not going to be stuffy,” he announced, having taken out a folder, put on his glasses, and glanced through it. He looked up at them over his glasses and pushed it aside. “I recognize the right of this faculty to oppose what I do and if they can to amend it.” The echo of the Declaration brought a faint, curving smile to Domna’s lips; she breathed easier. “I want you and Domna to know, John, that I’m grateful to you for coming to me man to man about this. What Alma has done”—he tapped the folder—“seems to me unforgivable.” His handsome face slightly reddened and his voice rose. “It speaks to me of a basic disloyalty to the college and the ideas of free exchange it stands for.” Domna opened her mouth to put in a word of objection but closed it as the President flashed his dark eyes on her in a histrionic blaze. One does not argue with the
atricals, she told herself; one submits and deafens one’s ears. He knocked out his pipe and slowly filled it. “Now in the case of Henry Mulcahy, which I presume you’re here to plead”—he lit the pipe, as they eagerly nodded, and puffed a few puffs—“I don’t want to be hasty. I want to hear everything you have to tell me about him. From where I sit”—he gazed ruefully out down the drive—“one is apt to get a narrow view. I was surprised, to tell you the truth, when these letters came to me. And now you two, whom I respect and admire. I had supposed that everyone would agree that poor Hen, whatever his merits, had neither the desire nor the aptitude to fit in here at Jocelyn.”

  John interrupted. “For your information, Maynard,” he declared in his deep cool voice, “Domna and myself are here officially as delegates. We’ve been empowered to speak for Ivy, Kantorowitz, Van Tour, Aristide, and now, I hear, Mr. Ali Jones.” The President smiled. “Ah,” he said, good-humored, “the humanist faction. I ought to have known there was ideology behind this. That’s the nigger in the woodpile.” “The Negro in the woodpile,” murmured Domna and was instantly ashamed of the joke. The President threw back his head and roared. “Touché!” he cried and grew thoughtful. “It’s an ugly thing how our language is defaced with expressions of prejudice. ‘Catch a nigger by the toe’—did you use to chant that as a boy, John? Sometimes I think we ought to make a clean sweep and invent a new world-language. I guess our friend Hen would have something to contribute there.” This “courtesy” reference to the Book was not understood by Bentkoop. “Joyce,” telegraphed Domna, across the desk, silently moving her lips. She was not able to make out what this after-dinner tone of the President’s portended; nevertheless, she felt encouraged. “So,” inquired Maynard, “the wicked scientists, headed by myself, a renegade philosopher, have set out to ‘get’ one of your persuasion?” John nodded, imperturbable; this was precisely what he felt.

  But Domna grew hot. “No,” she said, “Dr. Hoar, that is not our contention at all. I do not defend Henry as a humanist but as a human being.” Bentkoop tried to deter her with a slight shake of his head. “And a distinguished mind,” she threw in. “The outstanding homme de lettres on your faculty.” Maynard puffed on his pipe. “ ‘A human being?’ ” he mused. “What do you mean, Domna? We’re all human beings, I think; at least until proved otherwise.” He sighed, and Domna was startled by the heavy fatigue in his voice; this interview, she suddenly suspected, was an ordeal for him, which he had apparently undertaken on principle. “I mean Cathy’s situation,” she murmured, lowering her eyes. “Dr. Hoar, how can you defend what you are doing?” He stared at her, rather warily. “What do you refer to, my dear girl?” John cleared his throat. “Cathy is in bad shape,” he declared, on a grave note of admonishment. “The doctor has told Hen that any shock may kill her.”

  Maynard clasped his chair-arms and sat dynamically forward, his dark eyes turning from one set, shut face to the other. “So,” he said, in a flattened tone, having probed them. “There was naturally bound to be something like that. What is it, do you know?” John repeated what he had been told. “And a secondary anemia,” capped Domna. The idea that the President was acting seemed scarcely tenable to her, and yet, as she knew, Henry had told Esther Hoar all this himself. “We have been assured that you knew this,” she prompted. Maynard shook his head with decision. “I? Not a word,” he affirmed. “Henry told your wife some time ago?” “No,” he repeated. “At the time, surely you remember,” she insisted, “when he was asked to bring her on here from Louisville?” Maynard slowly knocked out his pipe. “I remember the occasion very clearly, Domna,” he assured her. “There had been, so we were told, some little trouble of the kind you mention, after the birth of the baby. Esther urged Hen not to try to bring Cathy here till she was perfectly well. Hen promised us that she was.”

  Domna had turned very pale. “But it was my understanding,” she cried, “that you insisted on his bringing her. No?” Maynard laughed richly and easily at her alarmed, disoriented expression; he had regained his control of the talk. “Far from it,” he proclaimed. “Esther and I both begged him not to bring her unless and until I could promise him something permanent in the way of an appointment.” He edged himself forward in his chair and raised a forefinger. “Let’s get this straight between the three of us. There was nothing permanent for Hen, then or now. I offered him the job as a stop-gap, at the instance of certain friends of his who happen to be friends of mine. Hen knows that perfectly well, knew it all along; I took care to see that he should. I believe I can even show you letters, explaining our position. Our budget for Literature-Languages doesn’t allow for another salary at the professorial level, which is what Hen needs at his time of life, with his family to consider. I could carry him as an instructor, pro tem, but I couldn’t promise him promotion and tenure; there were no vacancies higher up. I had my three full salaries: Aristide, Alma, Furness. Hen, for all his reading knowledge, isn’t equipped to teach languages as you are, Domna, for instance, and Alma was, when she used to give Goethe in German. Even at the instructorial level, Hen has been nothing but a luxury for us. He gives a course that Howard Furness can give, and always has given, in Proust-Joyce-Mann, and Furness, to oblige him, teaches the freshman Introduction, which Hen ought to be giving and hasn’t the patience for. He gives another course in Critical Theory, for which at present two students are registered, one having dropped out at midterm. And of course, he has the usual tutees. For one term last year he gave a course in Contemporary Literature, which turned out to be a replica of Proust-Joyce-Mann and brought us a lot of complaints: the kids say Hen wouldn’t teach the authors they were interested in, Hemingway, Farrell, Steinbeck, Mailer, you know what I mean, the red-blooded American authors, no offense, Domna, that kids today want to hear about. Right now—I could show you the books—Hen isn’t being paid out of department funds; he’s on a special stipend, borrowed from the emergency reserve. That sort of thing can’t go on; I’ve warned him of it from the beginning, and he’s pretended to be perfectly reconciled to a short-term appointment, to get him on his feet again. Naturally, I resisted the notion of his bringing Cathy here; I did everything short of forbidding it. I foresaw, as it turns out, exactly what would happen. With the wife and kids installed here, he’d fight like an old-time squatter,” he concluded, smiling, “for his title in the job.”

  “Then how,” said Domna, breathing quickly, “did you come to dismiss him now, so suddenly, without consulting the department?” She stared meaningfully at John and waited.

  Maynard took off his glasses and rubbed the indentation left by them carefully between thumb and forefinger. To her surprise, he did not appear to take offense at the pointedness of her query. “Why, Domna,” he mildly countered, “how would you have managed it in my place? Hen was slated to go; the bursar and I talked it over some time ago; the enrollment has been dropping—I’ve been told to cut down to the bone. The normal procedure would have been to let him out in May or June, when the new contracts were made up. Instead, I tried to make it easier on him by giving him a little notice. It seemed to me that during our field-period he would have time to look around, in New York and elsewhere, get a head-start on his competitors. I assumed that he would prefer to keep the department out of it. No point in broadcasting that a teacher is being let out; he stands a better chance if he tells potential employers that he is thinking of making a change. You know the formula, and Hen’s whole career here would support it. God knows,” he laughed, “he’s made no secret of his disapproval of us and our teaching methods.”

  He sat back with an air of having said the conclusive word. The two young teachers stared at each other; John’s Adam’s apple moved under his collar, and he shifted his long jaw. “I believe you,” he said, earnestly. “How about you, Domna?” Domna nodded, with a stricken face. “I should like, please, to see the letters, though,” she ventured. Maynard picked up the telephone. “The Mulcahy correspondence, Miss Crewes—may we have it here in my office?” T
he idea that these two stony youngsters were sitting in judgment on him appeared to amuse the President. “What did Hen tell you?” he asked, with a quizzical look, while they waited. “That I’d promised him a permanent place here if he stuck it out as an instructor?” They remained silent, not wishing to betray their colleague. “Worse?” he pressed them, gaily, and when they did not yield he sobered. “You couldn’t shock me, I promise you. During my day in teaching, I’ve heard many a tall tale and told many a whopper myself. There’s never been a poor devil yet that doesn’t get it into his head some way that the President has made him promises. The wish is father to the thought. Hen, with his Irish imagination, is just a more striking example of the common teacher character-type. We’re essentially public servants spiced with a dash of the rebel. Hence the common fixation on tenure; we feel that we serve for life like civil-service employees; we accept low wages and poor housing conditions in exchange for the benefits of a security that we consider implicit in the bargain. And for some of us, like Hen and myself, this security usually covers the right, from time to time, to be agin the government.” While he twinkled, a rapid look passed between John and Domna. Miss Crewes hurried in with the correspondence, which he glanced over and distributed between the two teachers. “I’ve fought all my life,” he went on, idly watching them as they scanned the carbons and passed them back and forth across the big desk to each other, “for better teaching conditions, more benefits, recognition of seniority along trade-union lines, and yet sometimes I wonder whether we’re on the right track, whether as creative persons we shouldn’t live with more daring. Can you have creative teaching side by side with this preoccupation with security, with the principle of regular promotion and recognition of seniority? God knows, in the big universities, this system has fostered a great many academic barnacles. What do you think, you two? Give me your fresh young views. Suppose we allowed Hen tenure, would it furnish him with the freedom he needs to let that tense personality of his expand and grow or would he settle down to the grind and become another old fossil? I don’t know the answer. I’ve observed in the course of my career that a teacher grows stale after a maximum of three years with his subject, and nowhere, by golly, is it truer than in an experimental college like our own, where a teacher’s excitement is the spark-plug behind the whole system. In two years, John, I’ll warrant you, your Kierkegaard-Barth-Tillich course won’t be worth listening to, and yet we’ll continue to offer it because of the requirements of the curriculum.” John had long since replaced the papers in the folder and laid it on the desk, but Maynard paid him no heed; like most administrators, he was a man who felt himself to be misunderstood and welcomed any opportunity, like the present one, of displaying his broad humanity to a relatively captive audience; John, who had had a good deal of experience with his ability to slip into free-wheeling, hastily applied the brakes. He coughed and tapped lightly on the folder.