Yet even Etna’s passivity was bliss (I apologize to the reader, but no other word will do): to feel her breath on my neck, to feel the rise and fall of her breast next to my hand. Slowly, so as to give her a chance to pull away (but she did not!) I allowed my face to slide along hers so that I might kiss her on the mouth, a highlight of my hourly imaginings. I had nearly achieved my goal when a great bird came fluttering along the path, that bird being Moxon in his coat — his hair and arms and tails flapping vigorously. Etna and I instinctively twisted apart. Moxon stopped abruptly.
“Van Tassel, what a surprise!” he said.
“Moxon,” I said.
“Miss Bliss. How nice to see you again.”
Etna turned slightly in his direction but kept her eyes averted.
Moxon seemed oblivious to the scene he had stumbled upon.
I was trembling, as much from rage as from the dashing of expectation.
“I am taking exercise,” Moxon said, stating the perfectly obvious, wiping his damp forehead with a handkerchief pulled from his coat. “My doctor tells me it’s the only antidote to college food. To keep the bowels moving and so forth.”
I was speechless, appalled that the man would discuss so boorish a subject in Etna’s presence.
(Wild boor?)
“Oh, by the way, good luck I ran into you,” Moxon said, replacing the damp handkerchief in his pocket. “Fitch has been searching for you all afternoon. He seems most exercised and has left messages everywhere for you to appear at his office at your earliest convenience.”
“Fitch,” I said distractedly. “Looking for me? Today?”
“Most assuredly.”
“Whatever for?”
“I have no idea.”
Etna was as still as a deer that has heard the snap of a twig. I rather loved that quality in her — of not dissembling, of not pretending something was acceptable when clearly it was not.
“I should be off,” Moxon said. “My doctor tells me I mustn’t allow the blood to slow on these outings.”
“By all means,” I said, waving him away.
I still held the emerald ring and was anxious to deliver it to its future owner. But when I turned to Etna, I could see that Moxon had ruined the mood of passivity.
“Etna, I am sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I’m chilled now, and I think I’d better return home. I don’t want to risk another fever.”
“No, of course not,” I said.
“We’ve come rather a distance.”
“It seemed no distance at all to me,” I said.
In desultory conversation and (for me) dismal silence, we walked back to the Bliss house, my frustration and my fury given vent only in my silent imprecations. When we arrived at Etna’s door, she turned and put out her hand in the ordinary way. I was in turmoil, for I was anxious to give her the ring, but I was loath to do so in so public a setting, since I feared that an inopportune moment would almost certainly facilitate a refusal. Thus, I couldn’t speak. But she did, somewhat easing my rattling heart.
“Professor Van Tassel,” she said, employing my surname, which I took to be a bad omen, “I know that an offer of marriage is not easily tendered.” (Oh, but it was, I so wanted to say; and perhaps she sensed this, for she held up her hand to stay my speech.) “But neither can such an offer, if it is sincere, be easily accepted,” she continued. “And so you must allow me time to think about this so that I can make an honest and clear decision.”
“I’ll call in two days,” I said, eager to mark the boundaries of this decision-making.
“No, let it be a week before we see each other again. I need time to contemplate my future.”
“You wish leisure to think,” I said.
“Not leisure, Professor Van Tassel. But time for meditation. I cannot make such a momentous decision in a hurry.”
“Shall I speak to your uncle?”
“Not at this time.”
“Please,” I said, unable to keep the desperation from my voice, “don’t take too much time. I doubt I’ll have a restful night until I hear from you.”
And I think that naked confession moved her somewhat, for she nodded — not in amusement or with pity, but with true sympathy, an emotion to which, I would shortly discover, Etna Bliss had ready and ample access.
The office of Noah Fitch was located at the end of a long stone corridor, so that to reach it, one had to walk that corridor’s distance, each boot step echoing between the polished mahogany panels of the walls and announcing the visitor well in advance of arrival. The journey’s reward was but a lone white bust of Franklin Pierce on a plinth before a massive window that overlooked the college quadrangle. Familiar with Fitch’s office (and somewhat out of breath from both exertion and anxiety), I knocked confidently to dispel an aura of timidity. Hearing a tentative knock upon one’s door, I knew only too well from having often been on the other side, put one in an unnecessarily superior frame of mind; and though Fitch was, as Hitchcock Professor, my natural superior, I did not like him to think me cowed by the summons.