“Of course not.”
“Only that I should like one day to improve my position within the college. Noah Fitch, the Hitchcock Professor of English Literature and Rhetoric, may be moving up to an administrative position in a few years, and I have reason to hope for his post. I have many ideas I should like to implement.”
“I suppose a few years is not a very long time to wait for something one is not certain of receiving?” she said.
“Don’t most things worth waiting for require patience?” I asked. “You seem to have remarkable patience yourself.”
“Do I?” As she pondered my comment, there was, beside us, an awkward flutter of limbs. I looked up to see Moxon putting on his coat.
“Van Tassel, have you parsed your Newman?”
“Miss Bliss, let me introduce my colleague Gerard Moxon. Gerard, this is Miss Etna Bliss, niece of William Bliss, the Physics Professor.”
Moxon raised his eyebrows. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance,” Moxon said.
“And I yours,” Etna said.
Moxon had meant, with his question, had I read the volume by John Henry Newman entitled Essays and Discourses that had been sitting on the table in my sitting room only the day before?
“I trust I know the Newman well enough to require it of twentyfive students next term,” I said.
“You think ‘On Saints and Saintliness’ worth their time?”
“‘The Illiative Sense,’ surely,” I answered with some impatience, wishing only that the man would leave us.
“Miss Bliss, are you from Thrupp, or are you visiting?”
“I am visiting, Professor Moxon.”
“Well, I hope you are enjoying yourself and that Nicholas here is not too thoroughly a bore.”
Though the comment had been meant to be a joke, Moxon had failed to deliver the line with any humor; thus the moment was merely pained. Etna looked down at her hands, and I beseeched Moxon with my eyes to leave us. Undoubtedly, he read this wish on my face, for he began to put on his gloves.
“I hope we’ll meet again,” Moxon said warmly to Etna, and I do believe he meant it. As I watched him walk away, I reflected that Moxon was not a bad man, really; indeed, I do not think he had ever had a malicious thought. Still, I knew that he would not be able to refrain from mentioning our encounter to any number of our colleagues. I was seldom seen in the company of striking women.
“Might not ‘The Illiative Sense’ be too difficult for your students?” Etna asked when Moxon had gone.
I flinched in surprise, a reflexive insult I sought to hide in the next instant by fussing with my cocoa, which had just arrived.
“So you’ve read Newman?” I asked, attempting a casual tone.
“Yes, I have.”
“Do you…? Are you fond of Newman?”
“You’re shocked, I can see that. It’s perfectly understandable. How, indeed, should I come by such a book, and why should a woman of my position, which is to say no position at all, bother her head with such masculine discourse?”
“No, no,” I said, somewhat flustered. “Not at all.”
She seemed amused.
“I’m promiscuous in my reading, Professor Van Tassel,” she said (and how quickly she seemed to have forgotten her promise to call me by my Christian name). “I read whatever I can obtain, by any means available to me — lending libraries, secondhand-book shops, books borrowed from relatives…”
“Then you are self-schooled.”
She laughed. “If I am, it is an education riddled with holes, though I hope one that will continue for a lifetime. My father, before he passed away, was a teacher of Mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy.”
“An academic family.”
“But I myself know nothing of mathematics or of the sciences. I’m sure that my uncle William thinks me hopelessly dull.”
“Oh, I seriously doubt that,” I said, somewhat recovering my composure and adjusting my portrait of Etna Bliss to include this new information. Such qualities were slightly unnerving in a woman but might prove valuable, I could see, in a wife.
We reached forward together for the silver sugar bowl, and our hands touched. She withdrew hers at once, and there was between us an uncomfortable silence. And that, I was soon to discover, was to be the pattern of our small outings. If we spoke of books or of ideas, Etna was animated, as though she had not had benefit of conversation in some time. But if I tried to speak to her of personal matters, or if I inadvertently touched her, she withdrew so quickly it was as though a cloud had covered the sun, the light going out of her face that swiftly, that absolutely. I had to learn, therefore, to speak so as to draw her out and not allow her to retreat into silence. I was, for the remainder of that first outing, moderately successful in this endeavor, successful enough to put a foot forward when she said, rather abruptly, that it was time for her to return to her uncle’s house.