All He Ever Wanted (16 page)

“When is the vote?”

“December fourth.”

“Why so long a wait?”

“The date is stipulated in the bylaws. It must be precisely four months after the search has begun.”

“Perhaps this would be a good day to have the painter in to finish the hallway,” Etna said, putting the top of her pen to
her chin. “He could work undisturbed through the late afternoon and evening.”

“Yes,” I said, “that might be wise.”

And then she said, in a quieter voice, “I shall be needing some more money, Nicholas.”

I looked up at her. “For…?”

“Fuel for the motorcar,” she said. “And there are other expenses I have. Of a more personal nature.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, not wishing to inquire further what these expenses of a “more personal” nature might be.

“And Clara has a cough,” she added.

“Clara does not have a cough,” I said, glancing at the letters Mary had just put by my plate.

“You heard her this morning,” Etna said.

“It is my opinion,” I said, opening the first envelope on the stack, “that our daughter is a remarkably gifted actress when
it suits her.”

“Our daughter does not lie.”

“I love her dearly, Etna, but I happen to know that Clara has a particularly odious examination on plane geometry this afternoon
and that she would resort to any ruse to get out of it. Tell me you didn’t say she could stay home from school.”

“I’m afraid I might have,” my wife said.

“You are altogether too soft,” I said, not unkindly. I stood and walked to the hallway and called up the stairs. “Clara, come
down here, please,” I said, reading what was not a letter after all but rather an invoice. “This can’t possibly be right,”
I said.

“What is it?” Etna asked.

“It’s a bill for a chandelier,” I said, turning to her. “White iron, six sconces. From March’s in Hanover. Did we order a
chandelier?”

“Let me see that,” Etna said. After a moment, she added, in what I took to be an annoyed tone, “I sent it back. I don’t understand
why we should have received a bill.”

“Then we
did
order a chandelier.”

“I did,” she said. “I thought it might look pretty in the side entrance. But it was far too big. I sent it back.”

“I’ll just telephone the man and remind him.”

“Let me,” Etna said. “You have enough to do. This is a household item. I will see to it.”

I cannot say whether or not we discussed the matter further, for Clara, whose presence was always vivid (even when she was
feigning illness), came down the stairs and into the room. She had been born a year and two days after our wedding and was
growing into a comely girl. For some time, I had thought that she would be a frail and slender child, since she could hardly
keep any weight on her bones, but lately she had become sturdier. Clara had inherited Etna’s height and the blond, blue-eyed
coloring of my Dutch ancestors (though I myself had brown hair), and she had exquisitely textured skin. I had to suppress
a smile when she entered the room, for she had misbuttoned the sweater she wore over her uniform.

“Clara, are you ill?” I asked. “I warn you that you must tell me the truth.”

Our daughter opened her mouth to reply, but something in my voice, or perhaps in my face, gave her pause. She had entered
the room with a wan demeanor imperfectly masking the bloom of good health. Now she seemed more confused than sickening from
a cough.

“My dear,” I said, softening my tone, “do you think that you might try extra hard to make it to school today because of the
importance of the geometry examination?”

She pondered this request and glanced at her mother.

“Clara, I agree with your father,” Etna said. “Perhaps you are feeling better now.”

Clara coughed once feebly, but even she could see that the game was lost. And it being lost, there was now no reason to pretend
to no appetite. She gazed longingly at the spread on the buffet. “Is there jam today with bread?” she asked.

I set off for the college on foot, as I did every weekday morning that the weather was hospitable, though even in inclemency
I tried to make the journey. The walk was my only form of exercise. As I may have mentioned, I did not, as did so many of
my colleagues, exercise for sport. I did not ride, for example, or bowl or play base-ball. But my step was brisk, nevertheless,
abetted by the nearly translucent color of the autumn leaves — golden ochre and tulip red, interspersed with grass green.
The New England soil and air and water produced this rampant color, and no matter how much one anticipated it, it was always
a surprise (and that surprise a further surprise, since I had been a New Englander for well over twenty years). The mind forgot,
through the white winter and the humid summer, just how brilliant nature could be. Indeed, one could scarcely credit the color,
nor the blue above it, and I thought how seldom it was that nature was accurately described in literature. (Wordsworth, possibly,
though then again it was more the
idea
of nature than nature itself that had so engaged that poet.) It was enough to put one in mind of one’s maker (autumn in New
England being one of God’s better creations), despite my tepid acquaintance with God — though I thanked him often enough for
the miracle of my children and the more unlikely miracle of my fourteen years of marriage to Etna Bliss.

My journey that morning took me past two dairy farms, neither picturesque, and then along the outskirts of the village where
the modest houses were not pleasing to the eye (the houses of college staff and village shopkeepers and so forth), and then
finally to the foot of Wheelock, ablaze with a canopy overhead that produced a fiery tunnel through which one yearned to walk.
I recalled then my autumn walks with Clara not so many years previous and the manner in which she would clap her hands, and
her mouth would form an astonished O. She would sprint ahead, gathering up the loveliest blots of color — scarlet and tangerine
and butter yellow — so that when we returned home, our pockets would crinkle with dried leaves. (How I adored those walks
and adore the memory of them now!)

I strode up Wheelock Street with somewhat more decorum than Clara would have done. Though the world had changed considerably
since 1899, the houses on that street had not. I paused in front of the home of William Bliss, who until recently had been
a frequent visitor to our house; our children called him Papa, as one would a beloved grandfather. But now, sadly, the man
had been diagnosed with the cancer and was, I knew, resting in an upstairs bedroom. Etna and William had grown closer over
the years, and she visited him several times a week. I believe she looked upon him as a father, a role he was only too happy
to play. I often visited myself, and thought of doing so that day, but after a few seconds’ consideration, decided to move
on, reluctant, on such a sparkling morning, to enter the darkened rooms of death. And as with nearly all such selfish decisions,
I found, as I made my way to the college, that I could think of little else but the thing I had hoped to avoid, which was
death, Bliss’s and my own one day. That line of thought led almost immediately to a seizure of thought such as might produce
a sudden intake of breath: Were I to die before the end of the semester (which was Bliss’s sentence), what would be my legacy?
Where would Nicholas Van Tassel have left his mark?

I stood in an attitude of contemplation and thought about the ambitious Van Tassel who had arrived at Thrupp so many years
ago. Other men of the college had written better than I, had published more, had garnered more awards and prizes. The trajectories
of their careers had been swifter, the ascent steeper. Mine had not been an altogether insignificant career — I had taught
hundreds of students and perhaps even inspired one or two; and I had proved myself an able administrator (indeed, it was the
successful supervision of what was now a full-fledged English Department that spoke most eloquently in favor of my ascending
to the post of Dean of Faculty) — but still, these small successes did not add up to greatness. No, I thought as I stood in
the quadrangle, if I had come close to greatness in my life, it was in loving the woman who was my wife. I knew that few men
of my acquaintance would have said that greatness could be had simply in loving another: it was too easy, too common, too
uxorious,
they would doubtless have argued. Indeed, I had seldom heard a man speak of love; it was understood to be a discourse reserved
exclusively for women and poets. Yet I knew, as I stood there, that I had, in loving Etna, touched something extraordinary
in myself. It was the one occupation that had engaged all of me: my senses, my intellect, and my emotions.

I took a step forward and walked on for a bit and then stopped abruptly, assaulted by a new and troubling thought. Would it
not be necessary to have that extraordinary love returned in order to have achieved true greatness? Etna had never spoken
the words of love to me, and I had been disinclined, after those two previous (and distressing) encounters, to press her on
this point. She was more fond of me than she had been at the beginning of our marriage — of this I was quite certain — but
did she love me? It is with some heartache — even now, after all these years, even after all that was to follow — that I must
write here that she did not. Not as I loved her. This was the bargain we had made, was it not? She had agreed to be my wife
in exchange for the freedom to be a mother and mistress of her own home, and, more recently, to come and go in an automobile
to a place where she was able to find some satisfaction in her charitable work. For a long moment, as I watched the students
bisect the quadrangle’s green — that brisk autumnal geometry — I felt sad, quite out of keeping with the glorious day. But
then I reminded myself that I did, in fact, actually
have
Etna Bliss for a wife. Were not such questions irrelevant in the face of so great a truth? I shook off my fleeting melancholy
and set off for my classroom.

I heard the voices even before I had turned the corner. There was no mistaking Ferald’s self-satisfied drawl or Moxon’s high-pitched
queries (the very voice of sincerity), though there was a third voice I could not identify, a voice with an English accent
that had perhaps blurred over the years. I thought of slipping unseen into a classroom, since I did not welcome an encounter
with Edward Ferald under any circumstances, but it was already too late. Indeed, had I not pressed myself against the wall,
there might have been a collision.

“Van Tassel,” Ferald said, and even in that greeting an entire universe was hinted at: a pecking order, mild amusement, and,
of course, dismissal. “I’d like you to meet Phillip Asher, lately of Yale.”

Asher stood a head taller than I and had a leaner frame. He wore a suit of gray worsted that matched his eyes (though perhaps
it was the other way around, and the eyes had taken on the coloration of the cloth). He smiled slightly, but unlike Ferald’s
grin, Asher’s contained nothing of malice or of mischief. He wore his pale hair longish and brushed straight back from a young
man’s forehead. He had a pleasing aspect — one might even have said handsome — and radiated, in addition to general decency,
a keen intelligence. I could well believe the man from Yale.

“What brings you to Thrupp?” I asked.

“Professor Asher will deliver the Kitchner Lectures,” Ferald answered for him.

“Congratulations,” I said.

The Kitchner Lectures were a series of talks structured around the eternal conflict between the common good and private gain.
Senior students in the departments of Philosophy, History, and English Literature were required to attend, though all students
and faculty were invited. Typically, the talks were given by a distinguished man of letters, and they lent the college a bit
of prestige. As might have been expected, they often provoked intense, college-wide debate as well.

“Asher is a man of many talents,” Ferald said. “In addition to being a Professor of Philosophy, he is a scholar of Milton,
an economist, and a poet.”

“Truly,” I said.

“I believe I know your work,” Asher said. “Your field is Scott?”

I could not help but be pleased that my work had come to Phillip Asher’s attention. I could not, however — to my chagrin —
put Asher’s name to any critical work I could think of. It was Moxon who came to my rescue. “Asher’s particular field is Nietzche,”
he said.

I thought a moment.

“‘I am afraid we are not rid of God,’”
I quoted, the pedant in me rising to the fore,
“‘because we still have faith in grammar.’”

Ferald actually laughed. “Van Tassel, you impress us with your scholarship.”

Ferald had grown only more insufferable over the years, if such a thing be possible. What had been incipient in Ferald at
nineteen was, at thirty-four, fully fledged. He had developed an elegance matched only by his arrogance. His clothes, imported
from England, were of the finest that could be made at the time. He had cultivated an ironic drawl, one that I thought had
quite twisted the shape of his mouth; in repose, he appeared to be sneering. I detested the man — his ostentatious wealth
in the face of so much genteel academic poverty, his unearned authority (though he was clever, he had been a poor student
— indeed, he rather prided himself on this fact), his nattering interference in college matters (he favored the addition of
a medical school, a proposal I violently opposed, as it would all but exhaust the fragile resources of the college). Mostly,
however, I loathed his half-lidded gaze, a look he fixed upon me as we stood in that hallway.

“Will you travel back and forth from Yale?” I asked Asher.

“I’m on sabbatical,” he said. “Actually, I’m staying at the Hotel Thrupp.”

Beside us, Moxon was a choreography of nervous tics — ruffling his hair, putting his hands in and out of his pockets, removing
bits of lint from his lapel. Even Ferald seemed anxious to move on. Only Asher had poise.

“Professor Asher,” Ferald said, nudging his guest forward. “We mustn’t delay Professor Van Tassel any longer.”