Chapter 7

Next in rank to him in the Department was Mr. Brainerd, a gentleman who was nearly as much Professor Dawson's senior as Dawson was Tom's. Mr. Brainerd was, however, only an Assistant Professor, and it was now understood by all that he would never be anything higher. Fifteen years ago when he produced his chef-d'oeuvre on Smollett his hopes had run high. At that time his fate hung in the balance. He could no longer be regarded as one of the "younger men," and his status was to be determined once and for all. The crowning glory of a Full Professorship could only go to one who had made some significant contribution to his subject. Would _Tobias Smollett_ be that? Into it had gone all that Brainerd could give, and it had, after a brief and generally indifferent appearance in the reviews, dropped out of sight. Then it was recognized that good old Burt Brainerd would have to putter through life as best he could. Mr. Brainerd felt no particular bitterness about it, certainly no bitterness towards the College. He had been disappointed in his publisher. He should have gone to Beeson, Pancoast with it; instead of to Trull. Trull hadn't pushed it at all: they merely announced it with a string of books on very dull subjects. Then, too, they had used a cursed small type. He had protested against this and had been told that a larger type would have made it much more expensive, would probably have necessitated doing the work in two volumes. They had had the calm assurance to talk to him of expense when he had consented to waive his royalties on the first five hundred copies!--an exemption, by the way, which they had not yet succeeded in working off. Well, that had been his main chance, and he now watched the rise of younger men with equanimity. And it must be confessed that he got a certain amount of cold comfort from the remembrance that on three several occasions good things had come to him from out of the west, and that he need not have remained "assistant" had he not elected to do so.

Were it not for his wife, he might have become content. The library was a strong one, particularly in his field, and what more delightful end for a scholar than to browse at will in his period and write essays for the literary magazines? But Mrs. Brainerd chafed. Not having been a woman of means or of any particular position, she had been somewhat self-conscious in mixing with the great ones of the place. She had, at length, however, after a residence of nearly twenty years, decided that to live so was nothing; and she had boldly called upon Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee. She had found the great lady all charm and friendliness; but when, upon leaving, she had expressed the hope that Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee might be inclined to return her call, Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee had replied, "Thank you." "Is it 'Thank you, yes' or 'Thank you, no'?" the rash woman had persisted. To which Mrs. Robert Lee-Satterlee had bowed, "Well, since you insist, I'm afraid it will have to be 'Thank you, no.'" Mr. Brainerd had felt the snub perhaps more than his wife, although he was most convincing in reassuring her that upon trying again, say with some one of the Whitman family, there would be small danger of such a rebuff. Mrs. Brainerd, however, had not tried again and had, with what stoicism she could command, resigned herself to the path God had ordered for her feet. So Mr. Brainerd's end at Woodbridge was not a brilliant one, but he did not shrink or cry aloud, and it was generally recognized that dear old Burt Brainerd was a good sport.

The other Assistant Professor in Freshman English has already been mentioned--Jerome Furbush. He was a young man, a classmate of Henry Whitman, and rather intimate in consequence. He was, quite decidedly, a striking figure. Whereas the average member of the Faculty might have been taken for an ordinary business man in his working clothes, Furbush was obviously a man of temperament. Tall and lean, he had allowed his beard to grow into something of patriarchal proportions, or, more exactly, into one of those healthy spade-like growths which the French know so well how to develop. That it was a rich red only added to its distinction, and to his. He was noted for being a hard worker and a wit, but feeling about him was sharply divided. One could not be neutral; either one hailed him as a prophet and seer, or one hated him as an abandoned cynic, a vicious and arbitrary egoist whose presence in the community was a menace. There appeared to be evidence in support of either view. It was true that the Dean's office was frequently absorbed by problems of his making. He had a weakness, to illustrate, for calling his students liars and cheats upon, frequently, tenuous evidence; and the discussions that ensued were never amiable. On the other hand, a certain number of the most promising men in the class were invariably drawn to him and, taking up his battles, defended him against all detractors. The Permanent Officers had to admit that he got "results," but they shook their heads. Jerome Furbush was notoriously a "case."

Phil Meyers, instructor, had been graduated from a small western college and had taken his Ph.D. at a large eastern university. He was what is known as a "monographist," a thesis-writer; and it had become apparent to all that he was not long for the Woodbridge world. Word had repeatedly come through the somewhat devious channels of information that he was "no good." His classes were doing shockingly bad work and they were articulate in their disapproval of him. The coming June would close his first appointment, and it had been tactfully broken to him that he need not expect another.

Such was the personnel of the meeting in Mr. Dawson's office.

"I have called you together today, gentlemen," said Mr. Dawson after the preliminary pleasantries, "to consider the advisability of changing our course next year. It has been brought to my attention that there has been some criticism of the course as it now stands. Although," he continued, gazing at the blotter before him, "I could have wished that this criticism might have been made first to me, rather than have reached me indirectly, I am grateful for it at any time and welcome this opportunity for discussing it."

The air had become electrified. Everyone understood that the criticism referred to had come from only one source, Furbush, and that Dawson was administering to him a public rebuke. Dawson remained staring at his blotter when he finished, and there was complete silence for several seconds. "Well?" he asked, raising his eyes. "Don't hesitate, gentlemen. Although the course is largely of my making at present, there is no reason why it should remain so, and I'm sure no one will welcome an improvement more than I." Another pause. "Come, Jerry, won't you lead the discussion?"

Furbush, who seemed to be waiting to be thus addressed, rather than to presume to take the floor from his superior, Mr. Brainerd, smiled charmingly. "I should frankly wish," he said, "that the discussion be opened by one of you gentlemen, for I feel that my judgment in such a matter is possibly not of much value. I confess that I am not in as warm sympathy as any of you"--by singling out Meyers at this point he lent a quietly insulting tone to his remarks--"with the present course. Were it left to me, I should do away with Wordsworth, substituting, possibly, Swinburne. I have sometimes wondered if we weren't underestimating the potential strength of the Freshman's mind by feeding him on too much pap. By the same token I am inclined to think that I should drop Carlyle and Hawthorne for Matthew Arnold and, perhaps, Cardinal Newman." (Furbush was a High Churchman of a militant dye.) "What I should, of course, do would be to divide the present first term between Spenser and Milton, instead of giving it all to Shakespeare." This last was said directly to Dawson. It had been Mr. Dawson's particular joy that he could give one whole term to Shakespeare.

Tom was sitting keen-eyed and alert, but it would obviously be madness worse confounded to risk a contribution to this discussion, which was for Titans only. But he was thrilled by the duel before him, even though the outcome was never in doubt, since a show of hands would give a unanimous vote to Dawson whatever the issue. Mr. Dawson, however, declined the gage of battle altogether. He apparently merely wished Furbush to make public confession of the iniquity that was in him; and after noting out loud the changes recommended, he abruptly closed the meeting.

"Well, Jerry, we shall think over what you have said, and a week from today we'd better get together again and act on it. At that time, too, I wish you people would come prepared with your questions for the final examination paper." He looked around pleasantly at the little group. "I guess that will be all today," he said.

Tom had been nothing but a spectator at that meeting; but after the next he emerged radiant. The discussion of the first one had taken only a few minutes. It happened that Mr. Furbush was not able to be present; and it was announced incidentally, that he had been transferred to Sophomore English. Of his proposed changes nothing had been said, although another change was made. It appeared that Mr. Dawson had been teaching _The Winter's Tale_ for the past six years and that he wished the Department's permission to drop it for _Cymbeline_. Mr. Dawson explained that he was getting a little stale on _The Winter's Tale_, and the change was hurriedly made.

What an object lesson was this for the keen-eyed young instructor! On the one hand was the Scylla of Mr. Brainerd and on the other was the Charybdis of Mr. Furbush. Lucky was he who could sail safely past the two; and he was a wise young instructor who determined to follow in the Dawsonian wake.

The final examination paper was then discussed; and Tom, who had come fully prepared and was extremely wide-awake, had contributed the "spot" passage in Wordsworth in its entirety--the couplet,

"A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet,"

was included--and he had, furthermore, lent a most constructive hand in the framing of the Carlyle-transcendental question--a performance which he retailed to Mrs. Norris at the earliest moment, and which made the Assistant Professorship and Nancy seem definitely within his grasp.

XII

Mrs. Norris was pleased with Tom's account of his success in the writing of the examination paper. Certain unsatisfactory rumours had come to her ears recently about his work. Henry Whitman, for example, had stated that Tom was loafing and that unless he picked up and showed improvement he might not receive a reappointment when his present term had expired. It is curious how everyone knows everyone else's business at Woodbridge. Each man has his grade stamped clearly upon him, for all, with the possible exception of the man himself, to see. A young man can raise this grade; and Mrs. Norris--who loved Tom almost as though he were her own--was hopeful for him.

"All he needs, Julian," she said to the Dean when she told him of Tom's triumph, "is a guiding hand. I can't do it, because I'm too old, but I know someone who can." She was "straightening out" the library at the time, and as she said this she gave a chair a shove with her knee, which sent it flying into the books on the wall.

"Mercy on us," cried the Dean, annoyed by this display of vigour, "who is it?"

"Nancy."

"Oh, pshaw, you're always trying to marry her off. You're the worst match-maker I know."

Mrs. Norris laughed quietly. "You wait and see," was all she said; but she had settled in her mind upon a picnic.

Mary, when approached upon the subject, had not been at all enthusiastic. "Why, it's much too early for a picnic," she had objected.

"It is not at all. Everything is three weeks early this year, and that makes it about the middle of May. We'll have a lovely moon, too. It will be grand." And she proceeded to invite the guests, Nancy and Tom, and Furbush, for it was true that he had been most attentive to Mary of late. Mrs. Norris at first refused to go, but Mary insisted.

"You will have to watch the fire, Gumgum, while we are off looking for sticks and things." And so she had gone, after all.

Mrs. Norris's ideas of a picnic were large, the heritage of a day that knew few tins and miraculous powders that bloom into omelettes. She scorned them and brought along a generous store of raw steak and bacon and potatoes. A picnic without a fire and roasting meat was too namby-pamby for words; and though she would not now undertake to cook the food herself, because of a certain eccentricity of the knee joints, and since her daughter, despite her domestic science, declined to do so, she had brought along Julia the cook. Nothing but the big limousine would do for such an undertaking, and, as it was, Furbush had to nurse the steak in his lap. Mrs. Norris would have reached the picnicking ground in a procession of buggies, but at that Mary protested so vigorously that she was forced to resign.

The picnic place was a pretty, slightly inaccessible rock overlooking a creek. Though actually not far from Woodbridge, as the road was overgrown and the turns sharp the motor had to proceed with a deliberation which made the trip justifiably difficult. The rock itself was about a hundred yards from the road; and since there was scarcely any path through the woods to it, there were made possible the pretty callings and hallooings, fallings-down and pickings-up, without which no picnic is quite perfect. Mrs. Norris, as a matter of fact, did more than her share of this. She had not gone more than thirty steps into the wood before she was completely lost; and by the time she had been safely brought to the rock her hat was well over on one side, her hair streaming down, and the torn fringe of her petticoat dragging along behind in the dirt. Julia and Horace, the chauffeur, however, had gone directly to the rock without the preliminary vagaries vouchsafed to their superiors, and by the time Mrs. Norris was finally captured they had succeeded in getting the supper well under way.

Upon her arrival Mrs. Norris announced her intention of roasting a potato.

"Gumgum, please sit down," begged her daughter. "You are only upsetting everything," and she laid an unfilial hand upon her mother's arm.

"I am going to roast a potato," Mrs. Norris cried, shaking herself free and seizing upon a pared potato. "Tommy, get me a stick."

"Isn't she awful," laughed Mary. "Don't you dare give her a stick, Tom." But Tom did dare, and Mrs. Norris, with her smiling benignity, stood waving the stick back and forth over the fire in time with the andante movement of her favourite Brahms sonata.

"Well, we might as well get ready to eat that old stuff," said Nancy to Furbush. "Don't you dread it?"

"I would not dread it, dear, so much, dreaded I not mother more," he replied, to Mary's intense gratification. But Tom, who heard the low-spoken words, thought them decidedly forced and disliked Furbush the more for them.

Furbush's presence was undoubtedly a drawback to Tom's pleasure. How could he be natural with a person whom he disliked as much as he did Furbush and who he knew disliked him? Besides, he did not feel like being sprightly and picnicky with Nancy beside him. Instead, he felt homesick, or at least that is the way it seemed to him. Still, how could it be genuine homesickness when the object of his yearning was beside him? Nevertheless, there had been in his thoughts recently the picture of a certain small colonial house in Tutors' Lane, a house now for rent or for sale. Possibly, however, the contrast of such a life--the house would be furnished with highboys and gate-leg tables and oval, woven mats--with his present one at Mrs. Ruddel's furnished him with a genuine case of homesickness, after all. How perfect would life be in such surroundings! He liked to think of breakfast: He and Nancy, alone, except, of course, for the pretty, efficient maid--at their mahogany breakfast table. Nancy, busy with the coffee things at one end and he at the other--no, at the side--tucking away his grapefruit and bacon and hot buttered muffins and jam in the last few minutes before he dashed off up the hill to his eight-thirty. Good heavens, what a life that would be! He saw Nancy with the morning light on her hair and her pleasant, lively face--the nose with only the faintest possible trace of powder--bending over his cup; and then he realized that he was gazing at her now in the same position, only with the sunset light in her hair, and with a white porcelain cup receiving the coffee out of a thermos bottle, instead of a china cup from a swelling-silver pot.

"Careful Tommy, you are dribbling it all over me."

"Oh, Nancy, I'm so sorry. I ask you, isn't that stupid. Please excuse me."

"A little lemon or a hot iron or soap and water will fix it, probably," said Furbush.

Tom looked over at Furbush. He hated his liquid tones, like honey dripping on a blue plush sofa. "How the hell do you get that way?" he wanted to ask--then he rounded out the sentence with certain phrases which had been current among our heroes along all war fronts from Kamchatka to Trieste. Even a milder remark was happily averted, for at this point the potato which Mrs. Norris had been steadily roasting, burst into flame and had to be plunged into the fire; a grateful accident, for now she was willing to sit down on the camp stool brought for her and to confine herself to the slicing of the bread.

What passed until the meal was finished was of slight significance. It was a decidedly detached party, the two couples being brought together chiefly through Mrs. Norris; and when Nancy and Tom had finished a banana which they had divided in the jolly picnic way, Tom stood up. "Do you realize," he asked Nancy, "that this is a wishing carpet we've been sitting on? Let's take it down by the creek and see where it will take us."

"Oh, dear," said Mrs. Norris, not at all displeased. "And now where are you and Mary going?"

"We're going to look for crocuses in the garden of the Queen of the Fairies," replied Furbush. "They ought to be up now."

"Well, take along this flashlight: it's getting awfully bosky-wosky in there." And then Mrs. Norris was left alone with Julia, whom she entertained with an animated and brilliant account of Titania and Oberon.

"Where shall we go?" asked Tom when they were seated on the magic motor rug.

"Let's go to Libya!" said Nancy promptly.

"Libya! Well, I suppose we might as well go there as anywhere. You realize, of course, that we won't go until I put my foot on the carpet"--his left foot was straggling over the edge.

"Perhaps you'd better keep it there for a few minutes, then, until we are sure that we really want to go. As a matter of fact, I think it is rather nice right here in Woodbridge," and she smiled up at him.

Nancy had, of course, smiled upon a great many young men without precipitating a proposal of marriage, but then, the young men had probably not woven her image into their future hopes and fears as thoroughly as he had. Also the hour and the place lent their potency to her smile. The soft spring evening, happily extended by Daylight Saving, the noisy little creek running by their feet, and the staunch ally of all such projects, the great round moon, all combined to weave a spell, just as Mrs. Norris planned that they should.

Tom had come to the picnic prepared to speak his mind, not doubting that an opportunity would be given him. He had not memorized a speech, but was ready to trust to the inspiration of the moment. His cause was an honest one; he might expect the gift of tongues, but the starting gun had now been fired, the race was on, and he was not granted the gift of tongues. A little preparation might not have been amiss, after all.

"I agree with you about Woodbridge. In fact, I think had rather go on living here than anywhere else in the world, provided one thing." He had plunged in without the gift of tongues.

It was not so dark but that Tom could see the colour come into her face. "Provided what, Tom?"

"Provided I can have you, Nancy. Provided you can love me as I love you." He had come nearer her, and although he had brought both feet upon the magic carpet, they remained stationary. "You mean more to me than anything I have ever known. I used to wonder how I could ever think more of anyone than I thought of Woodbridge and the Star and the different boys in college, but that was nothing compared to this." Nancy was tracing a series of geometrical patterns upon the magic carpet with a bit of stick. "I wish I could do something to show you how much I care now." Still Nancy said nothing. "And, oh, Nancy, what you could do for me! With you to help me, I think I could do anything. But I know I need you. Nancy, will you marry me?"

Nancy was hardly prepared for this. She had, since the social service fiasco, acknowledged to herself that she had grown in that short space very fond of Tom. She looked forward to seeing him, and when he was gone she went over with pleasure what he had said and how he had looked. She liked his drollery and his strength, she admired his poise and self-reliance; and she had the greatest respect for his teaching ability, of which she had received direct proof. Still, she was not at all sure that she wished to marry him. After all, she had really known him only something over a month, and it was not the Whitman way to hurry into anything--least of all into matrimony.

"You mustn't ask me that, Tom."

"Why not, Nancy?"

"Because I cannot accept; not now."

"You mean that perhaps you can later? For of course I shall never grow tired of asking you."

The moon had climbed a little and had turned a silvery yellow. It flooded the rock and the people moving about on it, but Nancy and Tom remained in shadow. "Tell me, Nancy," he said, leaning over and covering with his own the hand upon which she was resting, "tell me that I may ask you again, for, dear Nancy, I cannot lose you." She did not draw her hand away immediately and when she did so she did it gently.

"You're awfully good, Tom," she said and Tom's heart swelled at the softness of her tone. Then she climbed to her feet, and--Tom picking up the magic carpet, which had become soaked through with the dampness of the creek bank--they made their way back to the rock.

And so ended their first love scene. That Tom's behaviour will appear tepid, in these vigorous days, is to be feared. His own contemporaries, of both sexes, will almost certainly be the first to point out that had they been in his place nothing would have kept them from proceeding from the tame seizure of Nancy's hand to some bolder action. Tom, however, helping Nancy along over the rocks and sticks was happily oblivious of his unconventionality. The beauteous evening did, in very truth, seem calm and free to him, though the party on the rock was making a little too much noise to have the holy time quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration. His mind turned to the scrap of Wordsworth he had lately memorized, and though he was a trifle annoyed to find that he couldn't, even now, perhaps when he most wanted it, remember all, the phrase "comfort and command" stayed with him and did nicely for the whole.

XIII

Tom telephoned to Mrs. Norris the next day to make certain that he might see her. He felt that she was an ally in the matter of Nancy, and it was important to get her advice.

He found her knitting by the yellow lamp in the library. "Well, Tommy dear," she said, looking at him with a quizzical smile, "was the picnic a success?"

"Mrs. Norris, you are wonderful. When I think how much I owe to your generation. After all, I think a woman is loveliest at fifty."

"Oh, flatterer!"

"But you know you cannot get that fine _savoir vivre_ before."