He wished to God also that he could go home. But Madelaine was perversely enjoying herself and not inclined to leave. He was glad, after a while, that she wasn’t, for it was later that he found Maggie sitting on a stone bench in some shrubbery.
She wasn’t supposed to be there, but there she was. Brad’s finding her was purely accidental, for he had been wandering from group to group with no particular direction except that it was away from Madelaine and Cornelia, and it was on impulse that he slipped around a juniper to get away from all the others too.
The stone bench was behind the juniper, and Maggie was on the bench. Having visited the smaller table frequently, he was at first inclined to think that he was being tricked by a light head, that she was not really there at all, but she smiled as if she were, and spoke as if she were, and gave the impression of expecting to be considered as real as anybody else.
“Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come along. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“How in the devil did you get here?” he said. “Do you know the Nortons?”
“Nortons? Who are they?” Her question was blandly innocent, her shrewdly knowing eyes naive in their inquiring stare.
“Dr. Norton is the head of my department, and he happens to be your host,” Brad told her.
“Well, he’s not properly my host, when it comes to that, for I’m not properly a guest.”
“You mean you weren’t invited?” he asked.
“Yes. I’d scarcely be invited to a party by someone who doesn’t even know me, would I?”
“It seems reasonable that you wouldn’t. It also seems reasonable to wonder, in that case, why you came.”
“That’s easy to explain. I came because I knew you were going to be here. I thought I might be able to see you and talk with you. And that, as you see, is exactly what has happened.” Maggie smiled in almost childish triumph.
“So it has. May I ask how you knew that I was going to be here?”
“Oh, well, that wasn’t quite the truth, but it seemed the simplest way of saying it. The truth it, I saw you and your wife leave your house and start walking this way. I guessed you weren’t going very far, or you wouldn’t have been walking, so I just followed along behind.”
“How did you happen to be outside our house when we left?”
“I didn’t happen to be there. I was there on purpose. Do you remember how it was when you were a child? You got a crush on someone, and you stood all by yourself and looked at his house just for the excitement of being close to where he lived, or you waited on a corner or some place just for the excitement of seeing him pass by. That’s why I was deliberately outside your house this evening when you left, although I’m not a child any longer, of course, and what I have is not merely a crush.”
Brad regarded her with an uneasy mixture of delight and foreboding. He was pleased by what she had done, and intrigued by what she might do, but he was surely in no position to add to the problems he already had.
Knowing quite well that he had better send Maggie away, or turn and walk away himself, he sat down beside her on the stone bench and somehow came immediately into possession of her near hand. He couldn’t remember later whether he had taken it or received it.
“I’m not so sure that you’re not a child any longer,” he said. “At least you have done a childish thing. Suppose someone else had found you here? What would you have said or done?”
“Oh, I haven’t attempted to remain hidden or anything. That would have been a mistake. As a matter of fact, I’ve talked to several people and had something to eat and a couple of drinks. The man in the chef’s hat brought me a plate and was very considerate.”
“Good God! That was old Norton himself. Didn’t he even wonder who you were?”
“Apparently not. That’s an amusing thing about situations like this, you know. No one knows you, but everyone assumes that you were brought by someone else. Sometimes you are asked difficult questions, of course, but it’s easy to evade them if you are careful and clever. Dr. Norton had been drinking quite a lot, which helped. People who have been drinking always accept odd things more readily than people who haven’t.”
“What helped most is that the old idiot is in an early-stage of senility,” Brad stated acidly. “If you have been out mingling with the guests, why didn’t you come and speak to me?”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t think it would be wise.”
“Why not?”
“Because it may be safer later if no one knows we are even acquainted. Outside of class, that is.”
“What’s the harm in being acquainted?”
“Perhaps none. It will depend on what we decide to do.”
“You’re a very cryptic young lady, I must say. Why should we decide to do anything?”
“If you can’t resist me and want to do something, I mean,” she added gravely.
He laughed aloud, feeling the strongest urge to do something at once, right there on the stone bench behind the juniper. There was in the feeling a wild sweetness and excitement that he had not experienced for a long time — or had never, rather, with his limitations, experienced at all.
He did not quite know how or why he now felt as he did, except that he had never before known anyone quite like Maggie, whose strange candor may have been the expression of incredible innocence or subtle device or simple immunity to inhibitions. He didn’t know which it was precisely, but he was reasonably certain that it was not the first, and whatever it was, it was exhilarating even though it might be dangerous.
“Are you sure you know just what you’re saying?” he said.
“Certainly. I’m not very smart or a good student or anything exceptional, as you know, but I’m at least capable of knowing what I mean and saying it directly.”
“I’m inclined to think that your capabilities are considerably more extensive that that. In some respects, you strike me as being positively precocious.”
“Precocious? Doesn’t that mean advanced for your age?” she queried, her eyes directly meeting his.
“Yes, that’s what it means.”
“Then I’m not precocious at all. There’s nothing I can do or want to do that shouldn’t be expected in almost anyone as old as I am.”
“Excuse me. You’re quite right. Precocious isn’t exactly the word for you. What I meant was that you are apparently capable of doing things that are not expected at any age whatever. How old are you, by the way?”
“Well, I’m older than you think, because I look younger than I am.”
“I’d guess you to be about twenty, then, because you look about eighteen.”
“You see? And all the time I’m actually twenty-eight.”
“Nonsense. You couldn’t be.”
“I could, and I am,” Maggie insisted.
“What class are you in?”
“You mean junior or senior or what? I’m not certain, to tell the truth, because I haven’t gone along a class a year as most students do. I’m not truly a student at all, when you come right down to it.”
“If you aren’t a student, what are you?”
“Nothing especially. I just got started going to college, almost accidentally, and I discovered that there are a great many advantages to it, and so I’ve kept going one place and another. It’s a kind of way of life, if you know what I mean. But I suppose I’ll have to give it up eventually, even though I do have the advantage of looking younger than I am.”
“Probably. One can hardly go to college forever. Do your parents support you in this way of life?”