The Small Room (14 page)

“Some mistakes are irrevocable.” Maria was flushed with anger. “For some mistakes you have to pay.”

“You see what I mean about Medea? Relentless woman!” There was now a flicker of real hostility in Jack's tone.

It was Jennifer once more who slipped gently into the breach. “Things are complicated by the unfortunate fact that Jane is not loved—admired, perhaps—not loved. I'm afraid she has aroused envy and there seems to be an ineradicable streak in human nature that enjoys the fall of the mighty. Carryl herself is not immune.” Again she sighed. “So we return by all these paths to the theme Jack suggested to be the key: the price of excellence. Odd that in one semester we should be faced with two such different examples of the same problem! Perhaps,” she ended with an ironic smile, “we are being tried for some purpose we wot not of.”

“Henry, get us another drink!” Debby came in now with a tray of pizza, and olives.

“Yes, if our spirits are to be tried, let us try them in the most favorable circumstances possible!” Henry disappeared into the kitchen where he could be heard whistling and clattering ice cubes.

Jennifer continued to spin out her monologue. “The trouble is, of course, that the college may be represented
in essence
by Carryl Cope and Jane Seaman, the most brilliant of professors and the most brilliant of students, locked in what must seem to them a private struggle, but the fact remains that the college is a community …”

“Of course,” Maria interrupted brusquely. “The students are in an uproar; so are the faculty. There has been no peace in our household since this damn thing happened.” Lucy caught the misery as well as the anger here for the first time. It had evidently become a real war between Jack and Maria, and they were both suffering.

“So my point: what Carryl has chosen to do may be right, but it is not
possible
, was perhaps not too far from the mark, after all.”

“Darling Jennifer, you are always right,” Maria said warmly. It was evident that she was close to tears.

“Heavens, I trust not! That would make me quite impossible, wouldn't it?”

“If all this is so,” Debby said, “what's going to happen next? I had no idea of all that could be involved in what seemed a simple case of plagiarism!”

“At some point,” Lucy said, “some clarification will have to take place. It can't be avoided, can it, Professor Finch?”

“Jennifer, please! I hate being ‘professored'; the mantle falls and the role must be played. This is a holiday from all our roles!” Her face had grown quite pink. “I cannot tell you what is going to happen. I wish I knew!”

“It could all simmer down, I suppose,” Lucy said without conviction.

“Not likely!” Maria said. “Not without some catharsis.”

Jennifer smiled. “The terms of Greek tragedy may seem slightly exaggerated, but on the other hand, they may not. I would be inclined to fear that there will be an explosion.”

“Jane might break down, for one thing,” Lucy said. “She is, from what I gather, being ostracized by the students. Like Henry I can only say that I feel desperately sorry for her.”

“Yes …” Jennifer put her hands to her forehead, pressing them against it as if she too were feeling the strain. “Yes …”

For the moment, they had reached the end of what there was to say. And everyone, no doubt, felt as Lucy did, exhausted by the complexity, longing only to be relieved of having to consider it for another moment. Would it be possible to change the subject? It was rather like a toothache; they had to keep feeling round the tooth, trying to diagnose the pain.

“How do you know Jane has been ostracized?” Maria asked Lucy. “From what I hear she goes around as if nothing had happened, her nose in the air!”

“We hear so many things …” Jennifer murmured.

“One of my students came to me to tell me she and her friends felt that the student council was being emasculated.”

“Naturally!” Maria snorted. “Of course!”

“Whew, that was a tough nut to crack. How did you crack it?” Jack asked with the greatest interest. “If I am not being indiscreet, or merely intoxicated?”

“I told her that the council should call on the President and present their case to him … and I tried to make her see the other side, Carryl's side, a little. Was that wrong, I wonder?”

“You see!” Maria said triumphantly. “The most natural human relationships are being poisoned at the roots, just as I said. A professor hesitates to be honest with a troubled student who asks for help. Is this education?” She rose clumsily to her feet, to stand like an alarming slightly-larger-than-life-size goddess, and glared at them all.

“Poor Blake,” Jack murmured to himself. “When the whole business stinks like a piece of rotten meat in a garbage can, when the maggots are at it, it will finally reach him, and he will have to deal with it.”

“My guess is,” Jennifer said quietly, “that Blake knows pretty well what is going on. Blake is no fool. I don't suppose any of you were in chapel yesterday, but I was—Blake chose to speak on the text
‘O sancta simplicitas!'
Jane is hardly a saint, but still some of those who were so eagerly bringing faggots to the fire may have stopped to think twice.”

“Good old Blake!” Jack gave a shout of happy laughter. “Occasionally the Unitarian Minister comes out in a rush, I almost said ‘rash.' So he, at least, is on the side of the angels,” he said, chuckling again, and giving Maria a teasing glance.

“Your angel, maybe, not mine,” she said bitterly. “No doubt Carryl Cope had a little talk with him.”

Henry came back from the kitchen with a new supply of martinis just as Lucy caught Jack's look of icy dislike of his wife.

“Maria,” he said. “It is time we went home. Thank you, Henry, but we really must leave this pleasant gathering before the explosion we have foretold happens right here.”

“Ah!” Maria said, her eyes blazing. “He is angry.
At last
, he is angry!”

“Shut up, Maria!” Jack pushed her roughly toward the door. The gesture, so violent for him, was shocking.

“I won't be pushed out!” Maria cried, struggling. For a second it looked as if they might fall.

“Don't you think,” Jennifer dominated them without raising her voice and without moving, “we might all sit down and try to achieve a calmer climate before we part? ‘Teach me to heare, Mermaides singing, Or to keep off envies stinging.…' Do sit down, Jack dear. We cannot let you go in anger.”

She was irresistible enough to stop the lightning as it flashed out. And Lucy longed to ask, What is your power, you so detached, you so gentle, you so subtly intelligent, you spinster held in thrall by your mother, yet, to us, safety and a continuous act of grace, the refuge of every one of our tormented minds—what is your power? But though the martinis might bring out hostility in the most reserved of men, they did not loosen the social bonds to the point where such deep feeling could be spoken.

Jack sat down again, so did Maria. But Lucy was dismayed to see that tears poured down from those defiant eyes; the most natural person among them was weeping uncontrollably.

“It is h-h-hell,” she said. “Henry, give me another drink!”

“Your wish is my command,” Henry said, arriving with his jug like a messenger a little too late with his message.

“Only, I have lost my glass.”

“Maria, darling, please …” Jack handed his wife a new glass with a gesture as gentle and loving as his earlier one had been brutal.

“I feel mildly intoxicated,” Jennifer announced, “a state my mother will not condone, and quite rightly. But it is a state that moves me to speak of Carryl. Our dear and noble Maria is suffering before our eyes, and may not this suffering spring in part from a—perhaps—I do feel tentative here—partial understanding of what Carryl Cope
is
, as a human being. And how she has become what she is? Am I speaking out of turn?” She turned to Jack with a luminous smile.

“Please go on,” he said.

“I simply hate her.” Maria spoke thickly through her tears.

“Yet you do not inhabit opposite poles of the universe of the soul. You have a great deal in common, you know.”

“I—and Carryl Cope!” The tone was pure disdain.

“You and Carryl Cope. I read you, Maria, though perhaps I am—as they say—crazy, as an undisciplined passionate nature. In this occasionally fossilized atmosphere, you burn like a great exploding star. We are grateful. Carryl Cope is also a passionate nature, only one that has been severely disciplined.”

“She has always had things her own way,” said Maria, not softened.

“This is a small puddle and she is a big frog in it,” Jennifer granted with one of her swallowed smiles. “But how is this kind of power achieved, would you guess?”

“By being Olive Hunt's pet, for one thing.”

“No, Maria!” Jack flushed a furious red.

“Maria is only saying aloud what a great many people think, Jack. Please let me go on to the end of these probably irrelevant remarks.”

“By all means.”

“Are you aware that Carryl is one of perhaps five living historians of the pre-Renaissance who amounts to anything? Do you know, Maria, for instance, that she has been translated into Persian, Arabic, Japanese? If she had been a man instead of a woman …”

“As she obviously should have been,” Debby broke in.

“That is possible. If she had been, there is no doubt that she would have been given the Haskins Chair at Harvard. Ten years ago Carryl faced the fact that she would stay here.”

“At Harvard she would have been one of many big frogs—it might have taught her not to be so arrogant,” Maria challenged.

Lucy had listened with increasing nervousness; the air was becoming too charged for Jennifer's subtle means to subdue, and she felt forced now to commit herself, to take a stand. “I must say I don't see the arrogance. She is a dedicated teacher, one senses, and it must be rather rare to find someone who can command two fields as she does. I suppose it must have caused her considerable conflict, one way and another. But why do people feel so bitterly about Olive Hunt? Why do you?” She turned to Maria now. “I should have thought this was a private matter.”

For once Jennifer launched into speech without a second's hesitation. “Whatever Olive has done for Carryl has been repaid in full. Olive is an old woman now and it is she who has become dependent and demanding.”

“Besides,” Jack said with icy emphasis, “it happens to be a real relationship. The fact is that they love each other and have done so for twenty years. Beyond our recognition of that fact, I quite agree with Lucy, it is none of our damned business.”

“Well,” the adamant Maria pursued her course, “the question was, where does she get her power? You can't tell me that Olive Hunt's money has nothing to do with it—or that in the case of Jane Seaman the fact that Olive can choose to leave her money elsewhere may have influenced ‘poor Blake,' as you call him.”

There was a second's pause when they all realized that even Jennifer was powerless to prevent the explosion.

“What you need,” Jack said, getting up violently, “is a good spanking!”

“If so, you are hardly the man to administer it.”

The moment was so naked and painful that Lucy did not know where to look. Jennifer rose to her feet. “Perhaps it is time we retired to our separate lairs,” she said. “I do not think, dear Jack, that Maria needs a spanking. She is too unhappy.”

A great sob burst from the recumbent figure at her back. “Don't leave us, Jennifer. Don't go …”

“My dear, my mother is now in the middle of writing down in her still-elegant hand a prepared speech of recrimination which she will deliver when I get back over half an hour later than I had promised.”

“Not really?” Lucy found this statement nearly impossible to believe. “Are you serious, Jennifer?”

“Perfectly serious. Come, Jack, take me home, will you? You can come back and pick Maria up later …”

When they had left, the room looked disorganized as if the focussing center had fallen away. Debby got up and began to empty ashtrays and take the dirty glasses out. Henry, who had been very quiet, sat down and looked nervously at Maria, who was blowing her nose in silent withdrawal and grief.

“However did Jennifer Finch become what she is?” Lucy mused aloud, more to herself than to anyone else.

“Some people are born wise, I guess,” Henry said.

“No one is born wise,” Maria sat up. “What she must have endured from that dreadful old woman, I cannot imagine!”

“But there must be
something,
” Lucy said, glad they had stumbled on a change of subject, “some redeeming quality …”

Maria's eyes were flashing again. “Let me give you an instance of what Mrs. Finch is like: she is arthritic, you know, and eats like a pig so she is very heavy. Last year she fell, and Jennifer had to call the police to help lift her into bed—it was late at night. Naturally Jennifer was anxious and got up several times to see that her mother was all right. So when, the next morning, Mrs. Finch announced that she had not slept a wink, Jennifer made the mistake of telling her that she had looked in once or twice and found her fast asleep. At this, the old woman rose up in a fury and shouted, ‘I will not be looked at by people I
own
, while I am asleep!'”

“Whew!” Henry rubbed his hand across his forehead.

“So that golden detachment has been bought dearly,” Lucy said, thinking aloud. “Actual slavery—for that is what it amounts to—yet inner freedom.”

“No,” Maria answered, “not perfect inner freedom. Jennifer is detached about everything except this one thing. There she is frozen into the ethos of her generation.”

The post-martini exhaustion was setting in. “Human relations …” Lucy gave a sigh.