All He Ever Wanted (8 page)

“My dear Etna,” I began, and there must have been an inadvertently reverential tone to my voice, for she turned to me at once
with a look of puzzlement. She tucked her hands beneath her cloak. In the matted leaves, I could hear the rustle of some wood
animal — a chipmunk? a squirrel?

“I have a matter of the utmost importance to discuss with you,” I said, and then paused, for already this was not going as
planned; already my words had the ring of a business transaction. “That is to say, I wish to confess to you …” I took a quick
breath. “…I love you,” I said.

This pronouncement cannot have been entirely unexpected (after all, what had she imagined the topaz earrings and jet brooch
signified?), and yet she seemed taken aback, astonished in the moment. I suspect the idea of marriage had been very far from
her thoughts just then; certainly her flushed face had been the result of exertion, not of expectation.

But as was so often true for Etna in situations of fright or surprise, she became utterly still. Even her eyelids seemed to
blink more slowly as she regarded me steadily.

“I adore you,” I said with a fervor that must have seemed bizarre in contrast to her quiet. “I cannot sleep at night for thinking
of you. I wish you to be my wife.”

(When I recall this event, I cannot help but see a scene from a play in which one of the principles is overacting as a consequence
of nerves while the other appears entirely to have forgotten her lines.)

Perhaps Etna was truly alarmed at this bold declaration, which I immediately sought to soften. “That is to say,” I continued,
“I should like you for a wife if the prospect pleases you. Indeed, I am asking you to marry me. I know this can be neither
sudden nor entirely unexpected, and, of course, you must take your time deciding; but I tell you now that you would make me
the happiest man on earth if you would say yes.”

For a long time, Etna remained silent. I cannot ever be certain of her thoughts then, but I believe that though the possibility
of marriage had occurred to her, and though she knew that she must in the end say yes if she was to escape the quiet tyranny
of a life lived in exile, she had refused actually to
imagine
it. She had warded it off, so to speak, and thus was at a loss for reply.

I withdrew from my pocket a box that contained a ring I had recently purchased at Johnston & Herrick’s (at considerable expense,
I might inform the reader; I cannot see the harm in mentioning it now). “I wish to give you this,” I said, “as a token of…
to commit myself …” But I was unable to go on. The voluble, at times pedantic, Van Tassel was rendered as silent as a stone
— as silent as Etna Bliss, for that matter. I held the ring, an emerald and white gold confection, in my palm.

She did not reach for it, but did bring her hands out from under her cloak, perhaps to use them in gesture, and I, nearly
desperate lest she refuse me (a possibility that was growing more and more likely with each passing moment), seized one of
those gloved hands and wrapped it over my own, so that the ring lay between us. I wrapped my free arm around her long back.
I felt her stiffen, her limbs unyielding. But then, when it became clear I would not willingly release her, she relaxed enough
to permit the embrace, though I cannot say she responded in any way. She remained motionless, in a state of neither giving
nor receiving. Perhaps she was testing herself, watching herself for a reaction. (I believe an entire story, an entire marriage,
was written in that embrace, though I could not have foreseen it then. And based on that experience, I would advise young
lovers to be as attentive to the first embrace with the beloved as one would be to a soothsayer.)

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.

T
he 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.

Fitch was an impressive man, with tin-colored hair in the muttonchops mode and, improbably, a mouth of perfect teeth — an
attribute of heredity or diet, I cannot say. He was a renowned vegetarian and had not taken meat in twenty years. He dressed
formally on all occasions and held himself erect — even at fifty-five — and I often suspected it was his imposing and appealing
physical presence as much as his scholarship that had garnered for him his post.

“Yes. Van Tassel. Come in.”

He led me into his office, and perhaps it was the drawn drapes at the windows that lent that office such a somber air, even
in the day-light. Needless to say, the walls were lined with books, though here and there a cherished objet interrupted the
monotony: a birdcage, a lead rooster, an orange studded with cloves. There was also a rather good portrait of his wife, which
was later to find its way into the Elliot Collection.

We sat across from each other, a large expanse of cherry wood between us. There was a folder in front of him.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” I asked.

“Yes, Van Tassel, I did.”

He glanced away for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. The urgency of which Moxon had spoken earlier was nowhere in evidence.
I had then, as I had had sometimes in the past, the faint impression that Fitch did not actually like me very much — a feeling,
I must say, he took great pains to hide — and I had long ago decided that the cause of this mild dislike was that I was not
born and bred to my adopted New England heritage and thus lacked a certain authenticity.

“This is a delicate matter,” Fitch began.

The heat came instantly into my face. What might such a “delicate” matter be? Had a student complained about excessively harsh
treatment? Had I, in my current state of distraction, been missing tutorials? Had I been unfair in my grading?

He pushed himself away from his desk. I became aware that I was leaning forward in my own chair in the attitude of a supplicant
and so made an attempt to readjust my posture.

“As you know,” he began, “we share an interest in the writings of Sir Walter Scott.”

“Just so,” I said.

“And we are, as we should be, acquainted with the scholarship regarding this author.”

I nodded, resisting the urge to sniff, as I fancied myself better read in this field than Fitch, whose interests were necessarily
broader, allowing him less opportunity for depth in any one area.

“And so it is that I have come across your monograph on the early novels of Sir Walter Scott.”

( Was there then the briefest jolt of alarm within my breast? I think not. Not yet.)

“Sir,” I said.

“And, just by the merest happenstance, I have also had occasion to come upon a monograph written by Alan Dudley Severence
of Amherst College, which is — how shall I put this? — remarkably similar to yours.”

I was silent.

“And, well, to be frank, Van Tassel, there is, I am afraid, a question of plagiarism.”

The word singed my ears and made my mouth go dry. “Sir, you cannot suggest …” I said.

“But I’m afraid I do,” he said.

“It cannot have happened,” I said.

Fitch fiddled with the gold chain of his pocket watch. “Certain phrases do seem, shall we say, remarkably coincidental.”

“But coincidence, sir, is not a crime.”

“Not if it is unintentional.”

“It is, sir. It is. I cannot think. I have had an impeccable —”

“Yes, yes, so you have.”

Fitch regarded me for some time. The fire in the grate popped suddenly, startling both of us. He rolled himself closer to
the desk and set his elbows upon it.

“I confess I was most surprised,” he said. “You are, after all, a man of extraordinary discipline.”

“I am, sir.”

“You possess a scholarship that rises well above the average.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There should have been no need.”

“There was no need.”

“Yes, well.”

Fitch studied me at great length, and I forced myself to return his scrutiny.

“Perhaps you would like to take this monograph of Severence’s with you to your rooms to review the coincidences for yourself,”
he said. “Certain phrases are, as you shall see…Here, I have marked them:
‘a fey man, living in a remote world of pain.’
And this one:
‘swift, competent and careless narrative.’
And this here:
‘marching fatality unbroken by the awkwardness of invention.’
Need I go on?”

It was some seconds before I found my voice. “But, sir, are not certain phrases, such as
if we admit
and
we make no sufficient allowance
and
at first sight
built into common discourse?”

“Yes, certainly, but I am afraid those are not these.”

“But the principle is the same, is it not?”

Fitch swiveled in his chair, nearly putting his back to me, and gazed for some time into the fire. I guessed that he was pondering
his dilemma and making judgments. I groped wildly for a subject that I might introduce to distract him from the matter at
hand, but my thoughts were too confused. I longed for an open window, a hint of light in that gloomy room. The silence was
so profound that one could hear each tick of the clock over the mantel. After a time (after an agony of time, it seemed to
me), Fitch turned around.