She continued to lie streatched out in front of the fire without embarrassment in nothing but stockings that had somehow not got removed. This lush lassitude proved, after a while, to be almost a major misfortune, for she was still there in that condition when a car turned suddenly into the drive outside.
Brad, as good luck would have it, was not quite so denuded, and he managed to get himself presentable in record time, while Fern scurried upstairs with her arms full of clothing.
When Mrs. Tillery, Fern’s mother, sailed into the living room a minute or two later, she discovered Brad sitting alone before the fire, neatly arranged and a perfect picture of rectitude.
He stood up, facing her, and flashed his dimples as he made the slightest bow from the waist. Mrs. Tillery, for her part, thought only what a ravishingly handsome boy Brad was, and she was absurdly glad, considering the long gap of time between them, that she was herself still slim and sleek enough to stir a wanton thought.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tillery,” Brad said.
“Oh, it’s you, Bradley. How are you? Have you been having tea with Fern?”
“Yes, ma’m. She just went upstairs for something. When she comes down, I’ll have to be leaving.”
“Did you have a pleasant time?”
“Oh, yes. It was very nice. We listened to the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier.”
“Those are nice, aren’t they? I think it’s so important for young people to learn to appreciate fine music.”
“I think so, too,” said Brad, who didn’t and never would.
At that moment Fern came into the room, repaired and composed, and Brad was compelled to admire an attitude of innocence so readily and perfectly assumed that it did not, as innocence must, seem assumed at all.
“Hello, Mother,” she said. “How was bridge?”
“Wonderful, darling. I had the most incredible run of good cards.”
“Brad and I have been having tea. It was fun, wasn’t it, Brad?”
“It surely was,” Brad agreed.
“Well,” Mrs. Tillery said, “I must change clothes and start thinking about dinner. Bradley, you must come for tea again sometime.”
“Thank you,” Braid said. “I’d like to.”
Fern took him to the door and showed him out, at the last moment giving his arm a firm squeeze and pursing her lips into the shape of a silent kiss. Returning after a minute to the living room, she found her mother still there.
“What a charming boy,” Mrs. Tillery said.
“He is, isn’t he?” Fern said.
“What a shame that he’s so much younger than you, darling.”
“He’s much more mature than most boys his age.”
“I could see that. Quite intelligent, too, I understand.”
“Well, he’s very interesting, I’ll say that for him.”
Saying it, however, she did not say precisely what she meant, and Mrs. Tillery, who had in fact been prompted by circumstances to recall a certain memorable episode among tea cups before a fire in her own past, did not, somehow, consider for a moment that anything remotely similar might have happened in the present instance.
Brad, making his way slowly toward his home in the next block, was considering with detachment a remarkable discovery that was later to be confirmed and reconfirmed and accepted as a significant and secret deficiency in the kind of person he was and had to be.
The discovery he had made with the fervent cooperation of Fern was simply that, while the imposition of his personality and the definitive capitulation of a partner in the act of love were enormously exciting and absolutely essential to his special ego, the act itself, for his part, was a flat disappointment. But he did not actually consider this a deficiency.
Eventually, indeed, he came to think of it as a peculiar strength. It helped him, in the end, to avoid becoming all mixed up and messy in a confusion of glands and brains.
3
Now, a quarter of a century after Fern, at three o’clock in the afternoon of a Friday in his classroom at Peermont College, Brad was waiting for Maggie McCall.
It is hardly exact to say that he was waiting at three o’clock, however, for he had just dismissed his last class of the day, and Maggie could hardly have been expected to arrive on the instant from wherever she herself was required to be at that hour, conceding that she was required to be anywhere at all.
By ten minutes after, though, Brad certainly considered himself to be waiting, and he didn’t like it. By a quarter after he was definitely annoyed and feeling considerably less amiable than he had formerly felt. But then she arrived, at precisely a quarter after, a little flushed and breathless, and Brad began immediately to feel amiable again, and rather amused in a patronizing way.
She came in and stood at something like attention in front of his desk, like a private before his captain. He told her to sit down and relax, for God’s sake, and she did, crossing her legs and showing her knees, which he observed and admired.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Professor Cannon,” she said, “but I was on my way here, and would have been here at three or just a little after, as I promised, but then I met Buddy outside the library on the way, and he was even more difficult than usual. I had to stop and talk with him and explain why I couldn’t do something we had planned to do, which took simply forever, and that’s why I got here late instead of getting here on time, as I really intended.”
She completed this explanation, miraculously, with a reserve of breath, and he watched her for a few seconds afterward with his amused expression, one of his best that involved the precise cocking of the left eyebrow, while she waited quietly for whatever judgment he would decide to pronounce.
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I only meant as near to three as you could make it. Who’s Buddy?”
“Buddy? Buddy’s a boy I know. Buddy Jensen. He’s a student here. I don’t suppose you’ve ever met him because he never takes anything like mathematics that might turn out to be difficult.”
“I do hope that he’s not the reason for your having neglected to prepare a single trigonometry assignment since the term began.”
“No, no. You mustn’t blame Buddy. He’s persistent and often a bother, but I never permit him to interfere with anything I really want to do.”
“Am I to deduce that you didn’t really want to be here on time?”
“Oh, no. Why should you think so?”
“You said you never permitted Buddy to interfere with anything you really wanted to do, but you did, I believe, permit him to delay you.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it to be taken quite like that. I often have trouble saying exactly what I mean, to tell the truth, and some clever person like you is always twisting me up to mean something that I didn’t intend at all. Anyhow, Buddy was all upset because I couldn’t do this thing we had planned to do. I didn’t think a few minutes one way or the other would be very important.”
“Quite right. I rather suspect that Buddy himself isn’t very important. What do you say to disposing of him?” Brad picked up her paper, which had been lying at hand, and opened it. “This is a most charming little note, Miss McCall. I agree with you completely that stealing the top thirty-one feet of a pyramid was an exceptional piece of vandalism.”
“Besides removing the outer limestone casing.”
“True. Besides removing the outer limestone casing.
I’m flattered, since we apparently cannot communicate trigonometrically, so to speak, that you have devised this means of reaching me.”