All He Ever Wanted(24)

“Sir, I am afraid I cannot. I have promised myself to Merrit.”

I tried to think. Merrit was a third-year student rumored to be a bookmaker.

“For what purpose?” I inquired.

Ferald hesitated. “I do not wish to seem rude, sir, but is that relevant? The fact of the promise would seem to be the point.”

“Have you read The Bride of Lammermoor? I asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“Yes, sir, but I am having difficulty with your seventh question — that of the historical novel versus the ‘turbid mixture of contemporaneousness,’ as you put it. I cannot see how a work not from one’s own time permits the isolation of essentials from accidentals. It seems to me a false endeavor, since the author cannot know or ever write authentically about the past. We are, of course, referring to Waverly, which is just outside Scott’s period. And which rather begs the question, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps you have not read your text carefully enough,” I said.

“I have done the work,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “I simply have it all in a muddle and shall need your help in sorting it all out. Indeed, I am looking forward to your commentary.” He took no pains to hide his slight smile. “As ever.”

The gall, I thought.

“Very well,” I said. “Take out the text.”

Ferald’s feigned pedagogical and literary interest irritated me no end, particularly as he had so little need of an education, and I doubted he should ever use it. He would, I knew, shortly come into considerable property nearby and would retire, at a young age, to the life of a gentleman farmer.

I told Ferald to take the seat opposite mine. He did so with a languor that, were he not my student and were I not impatient to be done with him, I should have admired. I reflected then that there would always be a Ferald. Sometimes his name would be Wiles or Mutterson or simply Box, but there would always be one boy who clearly mocked his teachers, though never openly, and by his behavior played at a labyrinthine game of wits, one that would necessarily amuse him greatly, and one that he almost certainly would win.

But in the game of teachers and students, the teacher will always have the last word; and I must confess that as I sat there and watched Ferald take out his Venetian glass pen and his Italian leather notebook (doubtless souvenirs of tours abroad), I began to consider seriously the notion of being unable to find sufficient merit in his final examination and so having perforce to fail the boy.


When Ferald left, I paced in my rooms in an emotionally exhausted state. The monograph Fitch had given me lay on my desk, but I ignored it, having no desire to read it or to compare it to mine, for I knew only too well what I should find. It had been a clerical misstep only, I told myself, a consequence of being preoccupied and overtired and thus somewhat careless. And the sentences were not precisely the same, were they? If there seemed a marked similarity in ideas, were ideas the sole property of one mind, one voice? Might not a brilliant critic arrive at the same conclusion in the same year as another as a result of normal evolution in a field of study? Besides, were not the questionable passages Fitch had referred to but a tiny part of the whole? Nevertheless, I reminded myself, I should have to guard against haste and distraction in the future and return at once to my disciplined ways.


The week did not improve. Etna sent a brief note saying she deeply regretted that she would not be able to see me on Wednesday, as we had planned, since she was otherwise engaged with an unexpected visit from her sister and brother-in-law, but she would be happy to see me the following week. This meant I should have to wait more than a week for an answer to my question, a wait that seemed agonizing. I suffered through an interminable weekend, trying to catch up on all of my course work, which I had much neglected, only to receive a nasty shock at an all-college faculty luncheon on Monday, when William Bliss surprised me at my table in the dining hall.

“Van Tassel,” he said as he passed my table. “I am surprised to see you with such a hearty appetite, considering our sad news.”

I did not understand the man. I noted that he did not seem sad, however.

“What sad news?”

“Did Etna not write you? No, perhaps not. It was very sudden. Her sister and brother-in-law came abruptly to fetch her back to the family house in Exeter. I gather Keep, the brother-in-law, thought it unseemly to have Etna board elsewhere, even though he seems to have snatched the family homestead right out from under her. Quite frankly, I rather think the man has it in mind to make a governess of her for his children.”

“Etna gone?” I asked, stupefied.

“I’m afraid so.”