“The Frontier was the purifying agent,” he said. “It settled out the dross as it moved west.”
“The dross?”
“European influence. You might say it was like a big threshing machine.” He laughed and drained his glass. “It separated the wheat from the chaff. Cleansing, defining. American writing wasn’t thoroughly American until there was an America, and there was no real America until we went inland, away from Europe.”
“How about Cooper? Wouldn’t you consider him thoroughly American?”
“Well, yes, certainly,” he said, rising to fill his glass again.
“The European dross sure wasn’t purified out of him. Look at old Leatherstocking—right out of French Romanticism, except for the rawhide. And those Indians!”
“Well, I have to admit many of the early writers found the Noble Savage hard to resist. Even Cooper went a little overboard.”
“I’ll say he did!”
“But bear in mind, Cooper had a great deal more.”
“Yes—anarchy.”
“But also a sense of social order. That’s the thing we have to remember. He might deplore the need of social order, but he knew it had to be. He had the Romantic viewpoint of uncorrupted values.”
“The ones he saw fading. Like Faulkner,” she added for the hell of it.
“Like who? Get outta here! How can you compare James Fenimore Cooper with a distortionist like that!”
“Easy,” she said, and they were off on a fine argument, each in hot defense of his own man, until at last she retired from the field because Ansel had out-talked her.
Flushed with conviction, he had left Cooper as well as Faulkner well behind and was into American literature in general and its progress across the country. “‘Thou Mother with thy equal brood,’” he declaimed, “‘Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only…’” Names of people and movements began to tumble out, and ideas that had not occurred to her before. Nothing seemed to have escaped him, not Jefferson and the physiocrats, nor the Letters of Crevecoeur, nor obscure lady novelists known only to candidates for the Third Degree.
She had never heard him so impassioned. Ansel tonight was a far cry from the lunch-hour defender of Harold Bell Wright. He made sense, even though in the outflow of verbiage she wasn’t always sure she was getting the point. She listened in surprise as he rushed headlong across the continent, stumbling over words as his tongue tried to keep pace with his thoughts. He was all over the map, jumping from the East to the North and West, from the Bay Psalm Book to the Veritists and West again to fetch up Ramona and plunk her down in Tocqueville along with Uncle Tom. It was a torrent of words poured out pell-mell, one over the other, his speech slurring in his haste to overtake his vision: America as he loved it through its literature, America in the beginning—infinite, abundant, and sublime.
“There’s never been anything like the exuberance, the—the en-nergy of the American mind. I don’t care if you talk about Cotton Mather or—Bret Harte—it doesn’t make any difference.... Those writers in the South, what they’ve come to now, but at first… It doesn’t make any difference.... Ol’ Cotton Mather and ol’ Increase…” He stumbled and stopped, a look of confusion on his face. “I lost the point I was going to make.”
“You’ve made some good ones already.”
“What I was going to say—” He gave his head a little shake. “It doesn’t matter. By God, Miss Liles—” Smiling, he hunched forward, his hands dangling between his knees. “I never can talk like this to anybody else. I didn’t mean to m’nopolize the conversation.”
“You were wonderful.”
“Was I?”
“You must have read everything in the Expansionist period.”
“Not all of it.”
“The Colonial period too, and remembered it. I wish I had retained as much. I’m not sure I agree with everything—”
“You don’t have to agree.”
“—but you make a very good case.”
“I don’t know....” He sighed heavily and leaned back. “It’s funny: Miss Boatwright, Miss Maxine Boatwright … doesn’t know beans about literature,” he said, with a try at nonchalance. “I took her out once, before she got engaged. Try and talk to her about anything.” He drank from the empty glass.
The bottle was dry and it was more than apparent that the whiskey, as well as the vision, had overtaken Dr. Ansel.
“I like you, Miss Liles… Allen. Thass a funny name for a girl. I really like you. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“You need some coffee,” she said, rising.
“All those times we talked after school—you knew I didn’t come in just to talk about James Fenimore William Faulkner.” He laughed, catching himself as he tipped sideways. “Where you goin’?”
“I’m going to make coffee.”
“Aw, don’t go.” He stood up and caught her by the arm, lurched sideways, and fell backward onto the couch, pulling her with him. In the struggle that followed, books and pillows hit the floor. One of her shoes came off. She was pinned against the back of the couch, dodging his mouth, when a sharp rap from the kitchen drew him up short.
“Wha’s that?” Dr. Ansel struggled to his feet. “Somebody’s knockin’.” He gave a terrified glance around the room and bolted for the first door in sight.
There was no one on the landing. And no one in the alley below, though she ran halfway down to listen for a footfall or a snicker under the steps. No one. And up in her room, only Dr. Ansel, drunk as a goat and hiding in her closet.
“It’s safe,” she said, opening the closet door. “You can come out.”
The dresses parted. “Did they hear me? Did they know I was here?”
“Nobody was there. It was only the ice tray—it slid off in the sink. That’s all you heard.”
“I thought somebody knocked. Maybe the landlord?”
“It wasn’t the landlord. It wasn’t anybody. Come on out.”
He hesitated. Then, with a glance left and right, he threshed his way through a snarl of hangers, one foot in the laundry bag. “Whew! That was a close one!” He popped a chocolate into his mouth and collapsed onto the couch. “You’re not expecting anybody, are you?”
“No,” she said, picking up books.
“Nobody’s liable to drop in on you?”
“Nobody’s going to drop in.”
“That’s good. You don’t care if I stay a little longer, do you? We were having a good time—boy, I don’t very often—it was a good conversation, wasn’t it?”
She had gone to the kitchen. Without bothering to measure, she ran water into the pot and poured in coffee. She wasn’t sure he could find his way home or even stay on his feet. She turned the burner up high.
In the other room Dr. Ansel was mumbling on about conversation and people who didn’t know beans. He broke off with a chuckle. “Allen? Where’d you go to? Come on back… Allen? Tha’s a funny name for a girl. You know what my name is? Clarence. Dr. Clarence Ansel, Ph.D.” He laughed drunkenly, mumbled something else to himself, and fell silent. After a moment, a wistful murmur: “You said I was wonderful. Am I wonderful, Allen?”
She was setting out cups and the sugar bowl. Dr. Ansel liked his coffee sweet, three spoonfuls at the Show-Me Cafe. Dead quiet in the other room. Lord help her if he passed out. She was afraid to look. She stood by the coffeepot, urging it on.
“What you doin’?”
She turned quickly. He stood in the doorway, his hair sticking up on the sides, his glasses missing, a dribble of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. He was all rumpled and bleary and askew. “What you doin’ in here?”
“Making coffee.”
“I don’t want any coffee. What you tryin’ to do, sober me up? Come back in here.”
“You’d better go home, Dr. Ansel.”
“I don’t want to go home. Aw, Miss Liles—” He swayed a little, holding to the doorjamb. “Why don’t you be nice to me? Give me a break.”
“Now please—”
“We been good friends. Come on in here.”
“You’ve got to go home!”
“Be nice,” he said, lurching toward her. “Come ’ere.”
“Dr. Ansel—” She picked up the coffee pot like a weapon. “Go home. Please!”
“Aw, what’s the matter?”
“You’re drunk.”
“I can’t help it.” The smeared chin suddenly trembled. “I didn’t mean to be—I mean, I never—” The pale eyes without the spectacles peered across the table, trying to focus on her. “We were having a good time and I—aw, shit! Something always goes wrong—I mean every time I try to—oh, God damn!”
And slumped against the icebox door, Dr. Ansel just came apart. He stood there all rumpled and chocolate-covered and poured out his burden of woe. The whole story of skimped pleasures and shattered hopes, clumsiness, frustration, and failure. A jumbled, untidy inventory. It gushed out from a bottomless well, pumped up by his strenuous sobbing.
Hypnotized, she listened to the blunders and humiliation, the small triumphs, honors so bitterly won, and the girls who had failed him. And always, over and over, the mother, the constant, incomparable mother. Who had scrimped and mended and fried country ham on coal-oil stoves in dark rented kitchens. Who had broken her health and paid the taxes and given him her life. The loving, beloved, pluperfect mother, whom he would risk death to escape.
“A bullet’ll get me, I know it will. A bomb—I’ll get killed, it’ll kill her too. But I’m going—she’s not going to stop me. If they call me and want me to go, I’m going to go. If we get mixed up in the war—she says we will—I’m going to enlist. I don’t care if it kills her. It’ll kill me too. I don’t care. With my luck… I never could win anything. I couldn’t do … anything right.”
He wept without shame against the icebox door, the tyrannized child, weeping with fear and remorse.
She turned away to spare him her watching. “Let me pour you some coffee,” she said gently. “You’ll feel better.”
Gradually the weeping subsided.
“Here, can you drink this now?”
“No, thanks.”
“I put sugar in it.”
“I don’t think I could.” He blew his nose. “Maybe,” he said, a little calmer, “they might send me to officers’ training school.”
“They just might, with your qualifications. You’d make a good officer.”
“But I haven’t got the pull he’s got, that fellow that’s marrying Miss Boatwright. Maybe, though—I’ve got a doctorate—that ought to count for something—” He broke off abruptly, a horrified look spreading across his face.
“What is it?” She glanced quickly over her shoulder. “There’s nobody there.”
Dr. Ansel’s cheeks puffed out. “Bathroom,” he mumbled.
She had barely time to shove him through the door.
She stood on the landing in the cool spring dampness until the sounds from the bathroom stopped. Chocolate, whiskey, frustration, and failure. Dr. Ansel had sickened for a long time. When he came out, white-faced and sobered, she went back into the kitchen.
“Can I get you anything?” she said.
“No, thank you. I got to go home.”
“Maybe if you drink some milk… Can you get it down?”
He drank. For a moment she thought the milk was coming up too. Then he belched mightily and looked happier, like a burped baby. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Button your pants.”
“Oh!” He turned his back.
She went off to the living room and found his glasses. When she came back he was buttoned and buckled, the shirt tucked in. “I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her. “I didn’t mean to—I don’t know—I always louse up.”
“It’s all right, don’t worry about it. Here, put your glasses on. Go home now and get some sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“Everything will be all right. Nobody’s going to find out.”
He wavered, walked to the door, and said without turning, “But I do know something about American literature.”
“Yes, you do, you know a great deal.”
“The nineteenth century, and the sources.”
“You were wonderful.”
He hesitated, about to say something more. “Sorry,” he said then in a low voice, and went out.
Twenty-three
Finally, on Wednesday the dean sent Roberta to fetch her. “Have you got a minute, Allen? Himself would like to see you.”
More than two weeks had gone by since he first called her in. She went up the hall with Roberta as if to an execution. Things had been bad enough before, but now, added to her other crimes, was Dr. Ansel. If Toby and George had been seen going up and down her stairs, he could have been seen—the scrupulous Dr. Ansel, Ph.D., reeling out of her alley, stinking to heaven. She would be accused of corrupting him too.
“They say it’ll hold for the next several days,” said Roberta. “Be wonderful if it stays this nice for the wedding. Everybody will be so gussied up. What are you wearing?”
“New dress.”
“Chiffon, like the rest of ’em?”
“Pique. Sort of plain.”
“I bought a summer suit. I hate it already. All I could find I could fit into. I’ve got to shed some of these pounds. I always put ’em on during the winter. Sit at a desk too much. Go on in, he’s waiting for you.”
Mr. Frawley sat at his desk, peering intently through a magnifying glass. It was trained on a large gray moth, spread-winged on the blotter. “He’s been flying around in here—have a seat, Miss Liles. The light must have roused him. Very interesting markings. Care to have a look?”
She rose and bent over the glass. Chocolate brown upper wings, light brown below, traces of pink, dark eyespots. “Pretty. What kind is it?”
“I’m not too expert on lepidoptera. But I would guess perhaps a spotted sphinx. He’s a beauty, isn’t he?” He touched a wing gently with the tip of a pencil. The moth quivered and rose, flopping off the desk like a hen too heavy to fly. “Ah, there he goes.” They watched it rise to the top of a bookshelf and stick there. “Interesting insect,” he said, putting the magnifying glass in a drawer. “Well, now.”
The respite was over, and for the second time in five minutes, dread bit into her like the snap of a steel trap.
The dean folded his arms on the desk and looked across at her. “I’m sorry—” he said, and at that moment the moth fluttered down from the shelf, brushing the top of his bald head. “Mercy me!” he said, fanning it away. “Restless creature. If I could catch him—” The moth flitted across the desk, the dean chasing it with light slaps of his cupped hand. “Don’t want to squash him.... There! If he’ll sit still—no, missed him again.”
She watched dumbly, without moving. He was sorry. Mr. Frawley had lost. And he was sorry.
“Ah, maybe this time. He’s on your hair. If you could just—no, there he goes, on the barometer. Maybe he’ll stay up there now for a while and stop bothering.”
Nothing he said now could matter.
“Well, as I was starting to say, I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. I had hoped to see Mrs. Medgar right after we talked. But something happened—she had to be out of town—and it wasn’t until last Thursday that I was finally able to meet with her. We had quite a long talk.” He picked up the crystal paperweight and turned it so that the snow would fall. “I told her about our meeting and my opinion of the matter after talking with you. She wanted to think it over for a few days.”
“Yes,” Allen said faintly.
“We met again yesterday afternoon. And I believe”—he set the paperweight down carefully and looked up—“that Mrs. Medgar is satisfied with your explanation.”
She hung for a moment longer.
“She accepts my judgment. And you will be with us again next year.”
Still she hung. The rope had not yet been cut.
“We’re not
going to call in the board or carry it any further. So the matter is closed. No more need be said about it.”
Then she let her breath out slowly and her feet touch ground. “Thank you,” she murmured, half afraid to say it, afraid to believe.
But the dean, looking pleased, tipped back in his chair and swiveled toward the window, looking out at the sunny afternoon as he went on talking. Though her posture was attentive, she picked up only bits of what he was saying. She was afraid to let go of the dread. But the voice was comforting, reassuring, and she began cautiously to believe that this might indeed be acquittal.
“And so we can look forward,” he said, turning to face her, “to having you with us another year. As many years, I’m sure, as you choose to stay here. Though you’ll want to move on, in time. You’ll grow in the profession.”
“I shall try.”
“It’s a worthy profession, and a good life, if one addresses oneself to it … with devotion.” He was talking to the window again, in his fashion. “You work at it, as one does, say, at a marriage … not only for personal satisfaction, but for the ideal of what a school should be, what education means. A dry word, education. There’s much more to it than meets the ear. I’m sure you’re aware of that,” he said over his shoulder. “You seem to comprehend it better than some. I’m glad I could say that to Mrs. Medgar.”
She smiled.
“My only regret is”—he turned to face her—“that I’ll not have the privilege of working with you again.”
“Oh?” she said.
“Some weeks ago—maybe you’ll say nothing about it, it won’t be announced officially for a few days yet. Early in the spring I offered my resignation.”
She stared blankly for a moment before the words struck. “You’re resigning?”
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