Candy (2 page)

He looked at her, expectantly, his great round, somewhat red, face overflowing with the joy of his full, rich life.

“Well, I—” Candy began, but the professor was already pouring her out a small glass.

“Yes, I always have some sherry and a bit of cheese about this time of day. Some people prefer tea, but I find it lacking—a habit, I suppose, acquired during my student days at Heidelberg, and at Oxford, no doubt—still I
do
find a good sherry has body
and
edge, while tea is such a messy affair at best, don’t you agree?”

“Well—” said Candy, taking the chair indicated by the professor. The girl was quite flushed for the moment—she had never had sherry in the afternoon, though she had read of such practices in the fashionable novels and knew it to be quite proper. Also, she had heard, of course, of certain students being occasionally invited to Professor Mephesto’s office and “having a drop,” as it was expressed; naturally, it was mostly confined to senior and graduate students, and, even among them, it was considered a signal honor to have done so.

“This sherry was sent to me by Lucci Locco, the Portuguese humanist-symbolist poet—now living in Paris, of course—I
think
you’ll find it rather good.”

He took a swig himself, then encouraged the girl to do so, by raising his glass.

“A la tienne,”
he said, “to the soul of our childhood and its sinful joys—lost forever, alas! To
youth
then! And to
beauty!”

He allowed the last of the toast to linger on his tongue, and he gave Candy a piercing look. The girl flushed terribly and sipped in obedience.

“It’s about your thesis, my dear,” said Professor Mephesto, turning to his paper-strewn desk, and drawing off one of those on top, “the one on ‘Contemporary Human Love,’” and he leafed through two or three pages to a place where the margin was marked with a large red X.

‘Good Grief,’ said Candy to herself, preparing for the worst, and she started to blurt out some foolish defense in advance, but Professor Mephesto quickly went on, clearing his throat, and shaking the papers once or twice:

“Here we are. Now here, you say: ‘To give of oneself—fully—is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and thrilling privilege.’”

He put down the paper and looked at the girl expectantly, raising his glass of sherry again.

“Just what did you mean there, my dear?”

Candy squirmed a bit in her chair.

“But—but,” she stammered, “isn’t it right? Isn’t that what
you
said? I was almost sure that—”

Professor Mephesto rose from his seat, clasping his hands together and looking at the ceiling.

“Isn’t it
right?”
he marveled. “Oh my dear! My dear precious girl—of course, it’s
right!
So very right!”

He paced about the office, intoning:

“‘To give of oneself—
fully—
is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and
thrilling
privilege!’”

He sat down again, and put a hand out to the girl, as though in an effort to express some extremely abstract feeling, but then finding it ineffable, let it drop, as though it were useless to try, onto her knee.

“And the burdens—the needs of man,” he said with soft directness to her, “are so
deep
and so—
aching.”

Candy involuntarily shuddered just slightly and looked down at the big fat hand on her leg—though, of course, she did not see it as that, but as the great, expressive hand of the Master—the hand she had seen so often raised from the podium in the beautiful extolling gestures to human worth and dignity, which did, of course, include her; and she was very ashamed of having shuddered. Professor Mephesto gave her knee a little squeeze before withdrawing his hand.

“It’s an ‘A’ paper, my dear, an
‘
A-
plus’
paper. Absolutely top-drawer!”

Candy’s heart gave a little leap. It was certainly a well-known fact that Professor Mephesto never allowed more than one “A-plus” paper to his entire class for any particular thesis.

“Thank you,” she managed to breathe.

“I’ve no doubt,” said Professor Mephesto gently, rising from his chair again, “that you are sincere.” He frowned before continuing. “There are so many who profess noble beliefs and insights, without really
feeling
them.”

He walked about the office as he spoke, pausing here and there to touch, in reverence, a book, or to raise a hand to emphasize his meaning.

“Very few people are capable of
feeling
things today—I suppose it is our commercial way of life; it has destroyed the capacity to
feel . .
. the
art
to feel—for it requires an artist . . . to
truly feel.
Yet talk is cheap. And that is, of course, what accounts for the pathetic failure of organized religion . . . the mere lip-service to the eternal values. Insincerity! A greater disservice to humankind could not be imagined!”

He stopped near the back of Candy’s chair, where the girl sat, quite stiffly, staring ahead; she recalled seeing him with the other students, how relaxed and informal they had seemed together, and she made a tremendous effort to emulate their behavior by leaning back now in her chair and having another sip of the sherry, her mind meanwhile racing desperately through the pages she had read this term, trying to find something smart and appropriate to say. She could think of nothing however, for her mind was filled with the recurrent thought, A truly great man. I’m in the presence of a truly great man. And, as she heard behind her now the heavy breathing of the professor, she imagined that the sounds were just the same as those of a man in a story of long ago, after he had carried his burden up Calvary Hill. And she managed to subdue her impulse to flinch this time, when the professor laid his hand on her shoulder, and moved it then to the back of her neck.

“I really believe,” he said gently, “that you have the . . . true insight, the true wisdom, the
true feeling”
pausing before he added . . . in a whisper, “. . . and I believe you know
my
great need of
you!”

As he spoke he gradually slipped his hand around her neck, along her throat and toward her breast, and Candy dropped her glass of sherry.

“Oh, my goodness,” she wailed, going forward at once from her chair to pick the pieces off the floor, for the glass had broken and scattered. She was so embarrassed she could scarcely speak for the moment.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I—”

“Never mind about that,” said Professor Mephesto huskily, coming down beside her, “it’s nothing, only a material object—the merest chimera of existence!”

On the floor next to her, he put his face to the back of her neck and one hand under her sweater.

“You won’t deny me,” he pleaded, “I know you are too wise and too good to be selfish. . . . Surely you meant what you wrote.” And he began to quote urgently “‘. . . the beautiful, thrilling privilege of giving fully,’” meanwhile pressing forward against her. But as he did, Candy sprang to her feet again and the professor lost his balance and fell sideways, rolling in the spilled sherry, trying to soften his fall with one hand and to pull the girl down with the other, but he failed in both these efforts; and now, having taken a nasty bump in the fall and, perhaps too, because of his unwieldy bulk, he merely lay for the moment in the pool of sherry, wallowing and groaning.

Candy was startled almost to alarm, standing now, one hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Professor Mephesto, I—”

“Comfort those whose needs are greatest, my dear,” he implored her from where he lay, arms outstretched to take her fully would she but come to him. “Remember the ‘thrilling privilege’!”

But the poor girl was too frightened, and still terribly upset about having broken the glass.

“Oh, I don’t know—” she stammered, almost tearfully, “I—I’m so afraid—I only wish—”

She stopped short as the door burst open and in came the young sullen-faced boy who had so begrudgingly conveyed the invitation to her. His eyes went wild and his face pale as he looked from one to the other of them.

“Excuse
me!”
he said then haughtily and turned on his heel to leave.

“Wait, Holly!” cried the professor, struggling to his feet, “Wait . . . it’s only—” He got up, brushing himself awkwardly; he was clearly embarrassed, and the boy meanwhile had stopped in the half-open door, waiting, indeed.

“I’d
better be going,” said the boy, when no further explanation came.

“No, no, Holly,” said Professor Mephesto, collecting himself and coming to the boy. “Go into the inner office,” he said firmly.

The boy looked at him, no longer pale now, sulky and dark.

“Go,” repeated the professor; then he laid a hand on the boy’s arm. “I’ll go with you,” he said gently, “come.”

He turned to Candy just before closing the inner-office door. “Excuse us for a minute, please,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” said the bewildered girl, and she sat down again in the chair. For a moment she could hear the murmur of their voices, then something like a door slamming and she knew the young man had left. She waited a minute but the professor did not return. Selfish! Selfish! she was thinking of herself. To be needed by this great man! And to be only concerned with my material self! She was horribly ashamed. How he needs me! And I deny him!
I
deny
him!
Oh, how did I
dare?

She listened, and her heart grew swollen and soft within her as she heard what was unmistakably a sob. “Oh Prof—” She could not bear it; he was alone, weeping in his need for her—”Oh, Meph, Meph,” she started up, and toward the door. She would go to him, give herself to him—fully. She recalled the image of her nakedness in the glass as she had stepped from the bath this morning. Yes, she was lovely; she would give him that—fully. Fleetingly now, as she put her hand on the knob of the inner-office door, she wished that she had worn her finest underthings, but she knew with satisfaction that these were fresh and sweet. And then she heard another sob, a moan. “I’m coming,
Meph”
she whispered, and softly opened the door.

But the young man had
not
left, and Candy was confronted with an extraordinary scene. The two of them were dancing about the clothes-strewn room, stark naked, flailing each other wildly with wet hand towels, moaning and sobbing, their bodies reddened and welted.

They didn’t see her, or if they did, were not distracted, so intense their engagement as they lashed out in great frenzy. Candy closed the door quickly and rushed out o£ the office and down the long quiet hall, finally bursting into tears, only conscious now of her swift little footsteps, and of her terrible selfishness, how it had driven Professor Mephesto, in his frustration, to . . . goodness knows what!
“Oh, how could I?”
she kept demanding of herself.
“How could I?”

By the time she reached home, however, she was more composed; at least she was eager to tell her father about the A-plus thesis she had done.

Mr. Christian was sitting in his armchair, reading the paper.

“Hi!” he said, glancing at his watch as she came in. “Have a nice day?” He knew enough to alternate his salutation from “Learn anything?” to “Have a nice day?” and he did this with clocklike regularity.

“Well,” said Candy, coming forward to give him a kiss on the forehead, which he received with a grunt. “An
A-plus
on my last philosophy thesis! From Professor Mephesto! He never gives more than one for the whole class! Isn’t it wonderful?”

Mr. Christian’s questions were, of course, rhetorical, but so was his interest, so he could sustain the line of them easily enough.

“Oh?”
he said, in slightly rising inflection, continuing to look at his paper, though with a frown which showed he was just scanning, and was, certainly, listening to his daughter too, “what was the
subject
of the thesis?”

“‘Contemporary Human Love,’” said Candy, putting her things away.

Mr. Christian shook his paper, clearing his throat. “That sounds practical,” he said. He tried to force a little laugh to show that philosophy courses weren’t serious, but he was too basically ill-tempered to manage it, so he shook his paper again, clearing his throat and frowning a bit more darkly than before.

Candy ignored it; she was determined to salvage something of her triumph, and she wasn’t going to let him spoil it.

“And—”
she said, coming over to sit down near him, “I was invited to a conference with Professor Mephesto! To ‘have a drop.’”

The name of Professor Mephesto had come up previously, and Mr. Christian loathed it with the most simple-minded unrestrained jealousy. He took his pipe and began to empty it vigorously against the nearest ashtray. “What did
he
want?” he asked, in frank contempt. “Oh, Daddy! Really! It’s the greatest
honor
to be invited to Professor Mephesto’s office, and have a drop! I’ve
told
you that a dozen times! Good Grief!”

“Have-a-drop-of-what?” asked Mr. Christian slowly, feigning the patience of a saint.

“Of sherry, of course! I
told
you that a hundred times!”

“Sherry
wine?”
asked her father, making his frown one great black hole.

“No, sherry banana-split! Silly! Of course, sherry wine! He has a glass of sherry and a bit of cheese in the afternoon—some people prefer tea, but others find tea lacking. Whereas sherry has body
and
edge, and tea is so messy at best, don’t you . . . well, Good Grief, I mean it’s a taste he acquired in the best possible circles!”

“And he gives this wine to
students?”
That was the big point with Mr. Christian.

“Oh, Daddy!”

Candy got up and walked over to the window. Where she had begun by feeling just slightly ambiguous about her conference with Mephesto, now she felt in it the strength and rightness of the world itself.