Conjure Wife

by Fritz Leiber

  In taking a quick glance around before he started across again, he thought he saw a girl student behind him, either very late for chapel or else cutting it altogether. The next moment he realized that it was Mrs. Carr. He waited for her to catch up with him.

  The mistake was a natural one. In spite of her surely seventy years, the silver-haired Dean of Women had a remarkably youthful figure and carriage. Her gait was always brisk and almost supple. Only the second glance revealed the darkened neck, the network of heavy wrinkles, showed you that the slimness was of age not youth. Her manner didn’t seem an affectation of girlishness or a pathetic clinging to sex — or, if it were, a very subtle one — but rather a hungry infatuation with youthfulness, with dewiness, with freshness, so great that it influenced the very cells and electrical tensions of her body.

  There is a cult of youth among the faculty members of our colleges, Norman began to think, a special form of the great American cult of youth, an almost vampiristic feeding on young eager feelings… .

  Mrs. Carr’s arrival cut him short.

  “And how is Tansy?” she asked, with such sweet solicitude that for a moment Norman wondered if the Dean of Women had even more of an inside wire on the private lives of the faculty than was generally surmised. But only for a moment. After all, sweet solicitude was the Dean of Women’s stockin-trade.

  “We missed her at our last faculty wives’ meeting,” Mrs. Carr continued, “She’s such a gay soul. And we do need gaiety these days.” Cold morning sunlight glinted on her thick glasses and glowed frostily on her apple-red cheeks. She put her hand on his arm. “Hempnell appreciates Tansy, Professor Saylor.”

  Norman’s “And why not?” changed to “I think that shows good judgment” as he said it. He derived sardonic amusement from recalling how ten years ago Mrs. Carr was a charter member of The-Saylors- are-a-demoralizing-influence Club.

  Mrs. Carr’s silvery laughter trilled in the chilly air. “I must get on to my student conferences,” she said. “But remember, Hempnell appreciates you too, Professor Saylor.”

  He watched her hurry off, wondering if her last remark meant there had been an unexpected improvement in his chances of getting the vacant chairmanship of the Sociology Department. Then he turned into Morton Hall.

  When he had climbed to his office, the phone was ringing. It was Thompson, who handled Hempnell’s public relations — almost the only administrative duty considered too vital to be entrusted to a mere professor.

  Thompson’s greeting was exceptionally affable. As always, Norman had the vision of a man who would be much happier selling soap. It would take a psychoanalyst, he thought, to discover what weird compulsion made Thompson cling to the fringes of the academic world. We only know that some potentially great salesmen feel impelled to do so.

  “A rather delicate matter,” Thompson was saying. Delicate matters were one of his fortes. “Just now one of the trustees phoned me. It seems he had heard a very odd story — he wouldn’t tell me the source of his information — concerning you and Mrs. Saylor. That over Christmas vacation in New York you had attended a party given by some prominent but… er… very gay theatrical people. He couldn’t be quite straight about where it happened, the party seemed to have wandered all over New York. In fact it all sounded very unlikely. There was something about an impromptu act staged in a night club, and an academic gown, and an… er… strip-tease dancer. I told him I’d look into it. But naturally I thought… and I was wondering if you’d…” . .

  “If I’d issue a denial? Sorry, but it wouldn’t be honest. The story’s substantially true.”

  “Oh… I see. Well, that’s all there is to it then,” Thompson answered bravely after a moment. “I thought you’d like to know though. The trustee… Fenner… was very hot under the collar. Talked my ear off about how these particular theatrical people were conspicuous for drunkenness and divorce.”

  “He was right about the former, not the latter. Mona and Welby Utell are faithful to each other after their fashion. Nice folk. I’ll introduce you to them some time.”

  “Oh! … That would be interesting, yes,” replied Thompson. “Good-by.”

  The warning buzzer sounded for classes. Norman stopped fingering the little obsidian knife he used for slitting envelopes, swiveled his chair away from the desk and leaned back, amusedly irritated at this latest manifestation of the Hempnell “hush-hush” policy. Not that he had made any particular attempt to conceal the Utell party, which had been a trifle crazier than he had expected. Still, he had said nothing about it to anyone on campus. No use in being a fool. Now, after a matter of months, it had all come out anyway.

  From where he sat, the roof ridge of Estrey Hall neatly bisected his office window along the diagonal. There was a medium-size cement dragon frozen in the act of clambering down it. For the tenth time this morning he reminded himself that what had happened last night had really happened. It was not so easy. And yet, when you got down to it, Tansy’s lapse into medievalism was not so very much stranger than Hempnell’s architecture, with its sprinkling of gargoyles and other fabulous monsters designed to scare off evil spirits. The second buzzer sounded and he got up.

  His class in “Primitive Societies” quieted down leisurely as he strode in. He set a student to explaining the sib as a factor in tribal organization, then put in the next five minutes organizing his thoughts and noting late arrivals and absentees. When the explanation, supplemented by blackboard diagrams of marriage groups, had become so complicated that Bronstein, the prize student, was twitching with eagerness to take a hand, he called for comments and criticisms, and succeeded in getting a first-class argument going.

  Finally the cocksure fraternity president in the second row said, “But all those ideas of social organization were based on ignorance, tradition and superstition. Unlike modern society.”

  That was Norman’s cue. He lit in joyously, pulverized the defender of modern society with a point-by-point comparison of fraternities and primitive “young men’s houses” down to the details of initiation ceremonies, which he dissected with scientific relish, and then launched into a broad analysis of present-day customs as they would appear to a hypothetical ethnologist from Mars. In passing, he drew a facetious analogy between sororities and primitive seclusion of girls at puberty.

  The minutes raced pleasantly by as he demonstrated instances of cultural lag in everything from table manners to systems of measurements. Even the lone sleeper in the last row woke up and listened.

  “Certainly we’ve made important innovations, chief among them the systematic use of the scientific method,” he said at one point, “but the primitive groundwork is still there, dominating the pattern of our lives. We’re modified anthropoid apes inhabiting night clubs and battleships. What else could you expect us to be?”

  Marriage and courtship got special attention. With Bronstein grinning delightedly, Norman drew detailed modern parallels to marriage by purchase, marriage by capture, and symbolic marriage to a deity. He showed that trial marriage is no mere modern conception but a well-established ancient custom, successfully practiced by the Polynesians and others.

  At this point he became aware of a beet-red, angry face toward the back of the room — that of Gracine Pollard, daughter of Hempnell’s president. She glared at him, pointedly ignoring the interest taken by the neighboring students in her blushes.

  Automatically it occurred to him, “Now I suppose the little neurotic will go yammering to Papa that Professor Saylor is advocating free love.” He shrugged the idea aside and continued the discussion without modification. The buzzer cut it short.

  But he was feeling irritated with himself. He only half listened to the enthusiastic comments and questions of Bronstein and a couple of others.

  Back at the office he found a note from Harold Gunnison, the Dean of Men. Having the next hour free, he set out across the quadrangle for the Administration Building, Bronstein still tagging along to expound some theory of his own.

&n
bsp; But Norman was wondering why he had let himself go. Admittedly, some of his remarks had been a trifle raw. He had long ago adjusted his classroom behavior to Hempnell standards, without losing intellectual integrity, and this morning’s ill-advised though trivial deviation bothered him.

  Mrs. Carr swept by him without a word, her face slightly averted, cutting him cold. A moment later he guessed a possible explanation. In his abstraction, he had lighted a cigarette. Moreover, Bronstein had followed suit, obviously delighted at faculty infraction of a firmly established Hempnell taboo. The faculty were only supposed to smoke in their dingy clubroom or, on the quiet, in their offices.

  He frowned, but continued to smoke. Evidently the events of the previous night had disturbed his mind more than he had realized. He ground out the butt on the steps of the Administration Building.

  In the doorway to the outer office he collided with the stylishly stout form of Mrs. Gunnison.

  “Lucky I had a good hold on my camera,” she grumbled, as he stopped to recover her bulging handbag. “I’d hate to have to try to replace these lenses.” Then brushing back an untidy wisp of reddish hair from her forehead, “You look worried. How’s Tansy.”

  He answered briefly, sliding past her. Now there was a woman who really ought to be a witch. Expensive clothes worn sloppily; bossy, snobbish, and gruff; good-humored in a beefy fashion, but capable of riding roughshod over anyone else’s desires. The only person in whose presence her husband’s authority seemed quite ridiculous.

  Harold Gunnison cut short a telephone call and motioned Norman to come in and shut the door.

  “Norman,” Gunnison began, scowling, “this is a pretty delicate matter.”

  Norman became attentive. When Harold Gunnison said something was a delicate matter, unlike Thompson, he really meant it. He and Norman played squash together and got on pretty well.

  Norman’s only serious objection to Gunnison was the latter’s mutual admiration society with President Pollard, wherein solemn references to Pollard’s political ideas and exaggerations of his friendship with national political figures were traded for occasional orotund commendations of the Dean of Men’s Office.

  But Harold had said, “a delicate matter.” Norman braced himself to hear an account of eccentric, indiscreet, or even criminal behavior on the part of Tansy. That suddenly seemed the obvious explanation.

  “You have a girl from the Student Employment Agency working for you? A Margaret Van Nice?”

  Abruptly Norman realized who had made the second telephone call last night. Covering his shock, he waited a moment and said, “A rather quiet kid. Does mimeographing.” Then, with an involuntary look of enlightenment, “Always talks in a whisper.”

  “Well, a little while ago, she threw an hysterical fit in Mrs. Carr’s office. Claimed that you had seduced her. Mrs. Carr immediately dumped the whole business in my lap.”

  Norman fought the impulse to tell about the phone conversation, contented himself with, “Well?”

  Gunnison frowned and cocked a sad eye at him.

  “I know things like that have happened,” Norman said. “Right here at Hempnell. But not this time.”

  “Of course, Norman.”

  “Sure. There was opportunity though. We worked late several nights over at Morton.”

  Gunnison reached for a folder. “On a chance I got out her neurotic index. She ranks way up near the top. A regular bundle of complexes. We’ll just have to handle it smoothly.”

  “I’ll want to hear her accuse me,” said Norman. “Soon as possible.”

  “Of course. I’ve arranged for a meeting at Mrs. Carr’s office. Four o’clock this afternoon, Meantime she’s seeing Dr. Gardner. That should sober her up.”

  “Four o’clock,” repeated Norman, standing up. “You’ll be there?”

  “Certainly. I’m sorry about this whole business, Norman. Frankly, I think Mrs. Carr botched it. Got panicky. She’s a pretty old lady.”

  In the outer office Norman stopped to glance at a small display case of items concerned with Gunnison’s work in physical chemistry. The present display was of Prince Rupert drops and other high-tension oddities. He stared moodily at the shiny dark globules with their stiff, twisted tails, vaguely noting the card which told how they were produced by dripping molten glass into hot oil. It occurred to him that Hempnell was something like a Prince Rupert drop. Hit the main body with a hammer and you only jarred your hand. But flick with a fingernail the delicate filament in which the drop ended, and it would explode in your face.

  Fanciful.

  He glanced at the other objects, among them a tiny mirror, which, the legend explained, would fly to powder at the slightest scratch or sudden uneven change in temperature.

  Yet it wasn’t so fanciful, when you got to thinking about it. Any over-organized, tension-shot, somewhat artificial institution such as a small college, tends to develop danger points. And the same would be true of a person or a career. Flick the delicate spot in the mind of a neurotic girl, and she would erupt with wild accusations. Or take a saner person, like himself. Suppose someone were studying him secretly, looking for the vulnerable filament, finger poised to flick — But that was really getting fanciful, He hurried off to his last morning class.

  Coming out of it, Hervey Sawtelle buttonholed him.

  Norman’s departmental colleague resembled an unfriendly caricature of a college professor. Little older than Norman, but with the personality of a septuagenarian, or a frightened adolescent. He was always in a hurry, nervous to the point of twitching, and he sometimes carried two brief cases. Norman saw in him one of the all too many victims of intellectual vanity. Very likely during his own college days Hervey Sawtelle had been goaded by arrogant instructors into believing that he ought to know everything about everything, be familiar with all the authorities on all the subjects, including medieval music, differential equations, and modern poetry, be able to produce an instant knowing rejoinder to any conceivable intellectual remark, including those made in dead and foreign languages, and never under any circumstances ask a question. Failing in his subsequent frantic efforts to become much more than a modern Bacon, Hervey Sawtelle had presumably conceived a deep conviction of his intellectual inadequacy, which he tried to conceal, or perhaps forget, by a furious attention to detail.

  All this showed in his narrow, shrunken, thin-lipped, highbrowed face. Routine worries ceaselessly chased themselves up and down it.

  But at the moment he was in the grip of one of his petty excitements.

  “Say, Norman, the most interesting thing! I was down in the stacks this morning, and I happened to pull out an old doctor’s thesis — 1930 — by someone I never heard of — with the title Superstition and Neurosis.” He produced a bound, typewritten manuscript that looked as if it had aged without ever being opened. “Almost the same title as your Parallelisms in Superstition and Neurosis. An odd coincidence, eh? I’m going to look it over tonight.”

  They were hurrying together toward the dining hall down a walk flooded with jabbering, laughing students, who curtsied smilingly out of their way. Norman studied Sawtelle’s face covertly. Surely the fool must remember that his Parallelisms had been published in 1931, giving an ugly suggestion of plagiarism. But Sawtelle’s nervous toothy grin was without guile.

  He had the impulse to pull Sawtelle aside and tell him that there was something odder than a coincidence involved, and that it did not reflect in any way on his own integrity of scholarship. But this seemed hardly the place.

  Yet there was no denying the incident bothered him a trifle. Why, it was years since he had even thought of that stupid business of Cunningham’s thesis. It had lain buried in the past — a hidden vulnerability, waiting for the flick of the fingernail.

  Asinine fancifulness! It could all be very well explained, to Sawtelle or anyone else, at a more suitable time.

  Sawtelle’s mind was back to habitual anxieties. “You know, we should be having our conference on the social-science
program for next year. On the other hand, I suppose we should wait until —” He paused embarrassedly.

  “Until it’s decided whether you or I get the chairmanship of the department?” Norman finished for him. “I don’t see why. We’ll be working together in any case.”

  “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to suggest —”

  They were joined by some other faculty members on the steps of the dining hall. The deafening clatter of trays from the student section was subdued to a slightly fainter din as they entered the faculty sanctum.

  Conversation revolved among the old familiar topics, with an undercurrent of speculation as to what reorganizations and expansions of staff the new year might bring to Hempnell. There was some reference to the political ambitions of President Pollard — Harold Gunnison confided that a certain powerful political group was attempting to persuade him to run for governor; discreet silences here and there around the table substituted for adverse criticisiris on this possibility. Sawtelle’s Adam’s apple twitched convulsively at a chance reference to the vacant chairmanship in sociology.

  Norman managed to get a fairly interesting conversation going, with Holstrom of psychology. He was glad he would be busy with classes and conferences until four o’clock. He knew he could work half again as hard as someone like Sawtelle, but if he had to do one quarter of the worrying that man did —

  Yet the four o’clock meeting proved to be an anticlimax. He had no sooner put his hand on the door leading to Mrs. Carr’s office, when — as if that had provided the necessary stimulus — a shrill, tearful voice burst out with: “It’s all a lie! I made it up!”

  Gunnison was sitting near the window, face a trifle averted, arms folded, looking like a slightly bored, slightly embarrassed elephant. In a chair in the center of the room was huddled a delicate, fairhaired girl, tears dribbling down her fiat cheeks and hysterical sobs racking her shoulders. Mrs. Carr was trying to calm her in a fluttery way.