Clair De Lune

by Jetta Carleton

  “It seems I am, at last.”

  So they had done it, Pickering and his gang. “But Mr. Frawley!”

  “There comes a time,” he said, “to step down.”

  “Surely the board won’t let you!”

  He smiled. “They very kindly protested.”

  “I should think they would! After all you’ve done—” She paused, openmouthed. “What’ll we do without you?”

  The dean turned pink, looked pleased and embarrassed. “Oh, you’ll do very well.”

  “I shan’t.”

  The old man smiled again. “You’ll get along nicely, you’ll see.”

  “But it won’t be the same,” she said, knowing how little would stay the same if Pick had his way about things. “Things will change. And it’s a fine school the way it is. If it weren’t for you—”

  “Well, you mustn’t give me too much credit for it. I’ve done what I could, but we’ve built it together, all of us, teachers and regents and the students together, and the townspeople. We’re here because the people of the community wanted us. We have a special responsibility to them in all we do. Even to stepping down when the time comes.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t come yet.”

  “I think I have served my purpose,” he said. “It’s time for someone new.” He looked up cheerfully. “And time for me to go fishing.”

  “Like the president,” she said, attempting a laugh. “I can’t quite see that you’d be happy—”

  “Oh, I’m quite a good fisherman. And I’d like to travel some, if the situation permits. Though I’m afraid”—he paused and picked up the crystal globe—“it doesn’t look encouraging. Maybe another year. Maybe we have that long.”

  “No more than that?” she said.

  “And less, I fear.”

  “But surely if we send supplies to Britain—”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be enough, things as they are. And all of Western Europe fallen, North Africa…”

  She said, fearful of asking, “Do you think the United States will be—? Will our boys be sent overseas? Into battle?”

  There was a pause as the snow fell. “Yes,” he said and set the round globe down.

  For a moment neither of them spoke.

  “But,” he said, “we’ll face it as well as we can, if it comes to that. Meanwhile, we have our work to do.”

  “But you’re leaving.”

  “I’ll find plenty to do, never fear. There’s so much to read, new books and old ones again. My education may just be beginning.”

  “We’ll miss you, sir.”

  “Well, thank you. And I’ll miss all of you, teachers and students, the environment. I’ve been at it a long time. But we’ll adjust, all of us. We have a new man coming in, young man from Springfield, from the college over there. Nice family, two children. And well qualified. More experience than I’ve got in administration. I’m a teacher, primarily.”

  “Can’t you stay on and just teach, without the other responsibilities?”

  “I think not,” he said slowly, his arms on the desk.

  She knew, of course. He was no longer wanted. They had pushed him out. And the school as Mr. Frawley envisioned it would take another direction. The old man seemed to droop as he looked out the window. She tried to think of something to say, some way to restore him to his rightful place. “There must be something we can do!”

  He tilted back, facing the window again. He seemed not to have heard her. And then he said something she had not expected to hear. He said, “I never wanted to teach.” Quite simply, as if it had just slipped out. “Nor to be part of the educational system. It was not what I would have chosen.” He said, “There was something else....”

  She waited for the rest of the sentence. She could see him as nothing except what he was, for he was so excellently that. What was it that held him so contemplative as he gazed out at the sun-spattered leaves? What had he wanted to do? Be a writer? Paint a mural? Go to sea, like Conrad? She glanced up at the sailing ship locked in ice, and around the wall at the gleaming instruments of weather. What was it he wanted to do—her gaze swept back to the Arctic map—see the top of the world?

  “We fall into conditions,” he said, “one way or another. And it was all right. It’s only that ‘there was a road not taken’—” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Robert Frost, is it? Yes. And I suppose we never stop wondering what lay down the other road.”

  He said it serenely, as casually, almost, as if he were remarking on the weather. But there was a touch of wistfulness in his tone, and regret.

  Her compassion for him, already brimming, spilled over. Oh, she knew! And she found herself, with her own longings imposed on his, weeping for Mr. Frawley that he had not danced in Spain.

  “Goodness gracious!” The old man swiveled around, half rose, flustered and looking contrite, as if it were all his fault. “My goodness, now! You’ve been working too hard, Miss Liles. The end of school, so much to do. A stressful time.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “I don’t know why I should do this.” The tension had been enormous, but it was more than that. She dabbed at her eyes with a soggy Kleenex and fumbled in her pocket for another. The dean came around the desk with the wastebasket, like an old deacon with the collection plate. She dropped the wet tissues and looked up expectantly. “I guess it was what you said about something else. Something you’d rather have done?”

  But the old man had allowed himself one lapse, and he turned aside from it now. “Yes,” he said, putting the basket back in place. “There’s always something else we think we want to do, at some stage in our lives. But we get over it, we outgrow it. And after a while we realize that where we are is where we are meant to be.”

  “With no regrets?” she said, reluctant to give up Spain.

  “Oh no,” he said cheerfully, “there are regrets.” He batted at the moth, which had come down from somewhere to flit around them again. “Can’t help a few regrets now and then. They’re natural. But we have to keep in mind that early ambitions are sometimes deceiving, and make the best of what comes. Although you never forget the other, quite. Goodness me,” he said as the moth grazed his ear, “he’s getting to be a nuisance. I wish he’d find his way out.” The moth landed on the desk. Cupping his hand, the dean brushed it toward the window. The creature hit the floor, rose, and fluttered to the windowsill. “Ah!” said the dean. He pulled open a drawer, took out a swatter and, advancing on the moth, cautiously raised his hand. Then with a quick flick he flipped the moth out the window. “There now,” he said with satisfaction, “he landed in the vines. He’ll be all right now. For such time as he has. Some of them live no more than a day. Well, Miss Liles,” he said as he put the swatter away, “I’m very happy that you’re going to be here another year.”

  “So am I. And I thank you for your help. Without it—”

  “I was glad to do what I could. I wouldn’t want you to have any mark on your record that could be troublesome.”

  “I’m very grateful, sir.”

  “You’ve been a conscientious member of our staff, an asset to us, I should say. I wouldn’t want to see your career destroyed by misstep or misunderstanding. You bring a freshness and enthusiasm to your work. Maybe a little too much at times, but that will temper. You’re young yet, with time and experience you’ll develop in judgment. I’ve observed you through the year, the way you conduct your classes, the ideas you bring out in the students. You have a good sense of the direction our school has been going, the way I felt was right for us. There are a few who would like to change it.”

  And they would, if they had their way.

  “What they want to offer is what I call training, not enlightenment. I believe in the classical education. History and the arts, all the richness and moral truth of great literature and philosophy. They may not seem relevant to times such as these. In a time of war there will be a need for the practical skills. But I think such training will be a
vailable and very quickly. It’s the classical values that will fall by the wayside unless we prevent it. It is this that we must hold out to the young. Whether they accept it or not, we must hold it out.”

  She listened, sitting very still.

  “Of course, we’re limited, a small college such as ours. But we can point the way. We can place the emphasis where it belongs. Now that I’m leaving, I have to trust to those of you who believe in the classic values, as I do. You are among them, I think. From all I can tell, you lean more than others toward the same goals I have striven for. I’m glad you’ll be here to defend them.”

  “For your sake—” she said.

  “I have great faith in you, Miss Liles. It pleases me to leave you as … earnest, so to speak, to carry on what we believe in.”

  It was a moment before the full import of his speech took hold. “Thank you,” she said then and felt the mantle settle on her shoulders.

  Twenty-four

  She walked out of the office in a daze. Not an hour ago she had gone up this hall on the way to execution. Now here she was—acquitted, her head, addled though it was, still on her shoulders and filled with the old dean’s praise.

  Could it be that the ordeal was over? She did not have to face Mrs. Medgar, she did not have to go before the board, and she had not lost her job. It was more than she could take in.

  She stood at her desk in wonderment, gazing at the room. It was hers again. These chairs would be filled again with her students. She would guide them again through the beauty and complexities of grammar and poetry. (And she wouldn’t let them come near her after hours.) On winter afternoons she would conduct her seminars. One on the Greeks, for Mr. Frawley. (Although, she would have to work hard learning about them this summer, if she were to know enough to impart anything to anyone.) She would try to be worthy of Mr. Frawley, and of her professors at the university, three or four of the best, whom she thought of now: scholarly and persuasive, able to communicate with wit and wisdom and without pedantry. She would have to work very hard.

  The warm, early June air drifted in through the open windows, carrying a hint of roses. It was lovely outside. Leaves, light, sparrows in the street—everything danced. The ordeal was over. She had weathered it, thanks to Mr. Frawley and thanks to him in triumph.

  Beginning to believe it, she wanted to exult a little, throw her hat in the air, jump over the moon. At the very least she wanted to tell somebody. Her first thought was her mother. She would write to her immediately. No, the letter wouldn’t get there before she did. She would go down to the Bonne Terre to a telephone booth and call her! But what would she say? That she had not lost her job after all? She had never told Mother that she might lose it. If she called home now, exulting, it would sound mighty suspicious. Dalton? But what if Mother were at the farm, as she so often was? That would raise too many questions. No, all she could say was that she had made up her mind to stay on. And that could wait till she got home.

  But she wanted to share the news now, and how could she, without admitting that there had indeed been trouble. She hadn’t admitted that to anyone but Dalton. Except, in a way, to Ansel. Poor Dr. Ansel. She had not thought of him all day. Old Ansel, crying and slobbering in her kitchen, with his pants undone and candy all over his chin. How could he stand himself? He probably couldn’t.

  Who was there to tell? The Ladies, of course, but that would mean admission, and be damned if she would. What they didn’t know they didn’t need to know. Anyway, in the mysterious ways of such words, the word was probably out already that she had not been fired.

  She laughed and, heeding the clutter on her desk, sat down to finish her work. She had been ridding out for the summer when Roberta came to fetch her and had left the desk piled high with papers, odds and ends accumulated through the year. As she sorted through them, one of the odds and ends slipped off onto the floor. She picked it up, glancing at it as she dropped it into the wastebasket. Rules for Teachers. 1872. Something Ansel had come across in the course of his research and had brought in to show her. They had laughed over it one afternoon after school. Amused, she pulled it out of the basket and read it again.

  Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.... Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings if they go to church regularly.... Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.... Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty....

  She laughed and dropped the list back into the basket. Things had changed a little since 1872.

  A few moments went by and a few more scraps into the basket before she paused again and looked up. But had they changed that much? She did not have to bring a scuttle of coal, and she hadn’t been shaved in a barbershop. But conduct unseemly was unseemly, no matter what the year, and conduct immoral, immoral. Hers had been both. Mrs. Medgar knew. Toby and George knew. Mr. Frawley refused to know. And yet, she had not been dismissed. Not only that—she had been rewarded. She had accepted the dean’s praise and his faith, though she was guilty of the rumored sins and a few unrumored, and she had not confessed. She was guilty of duplicity, of concealment amounting to a lie!

  Still, she reasoned, trying to quiet her conscience, there had been punishment. Though she was spared the wrath of Mrs. Medgar and saved from the Inquisition, she had not been spared the tortures of remorse. It had cauterized her. And perhaps it had taught her something, something painfully learned from the students. Wasn’t it enough that they had seen her descent from the pedestal where their respect had placed her? She had betrayed their respect. And wasn’t it enough that in that descent she had lost the two she loved most? She had paid for her transgressions. She would go on paying for a long time yet. So perhaps repentance, even in silence, was enough, and she could be worthy of Mr. Frawley’s trust.

  She sat for a long time thinking. Then she sighed deeply. She had better be worthy of that trust. Without it, she would be on the streets selling The Book of Knowledge!

  With one drawer emptied, she pulled out another and dumped the contents on the desk. But in spite of her guilt, the urge to rejoice caught her up again and she thought again of Ansel. She had scarcely seen him since that night in her apartment. No wonder; he was probably too embarrassed to live and probably still hung over. Silly old Phud. She couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  She was going through outdated lesson plans, carefully removing paper clips, when the bell rang for four o’clock. But the kids were already gone. She scooped the paper clips into a box and went on sorting odd pieces of paper.

  Presently she heard Mae Dell and Gladys coming up the hall and the lounge door swing open. A moment later there was a polite cough in her doorway, and Verna, with a glance over her shoulder, stepped quickly into the room.

  “Oh, hi, Verna, come on in.”

  “Haven’t got but a minute.” Verna glanced over her shoulder again and said, almost in a whisper, “I just wanted to say I’m glad you’re coming back next fall.”

  So the news was out. “Thank you, Verna.”

  “Just thought I’d tell you.”

  “That’s nice of you. Thank you very much.”

  Verna smiled and, looking embarrassed, sidled to the door and went out.

  The lounge door swung open and shut another time or two, and after a bit the Ladies went off down the hall. She could hear Mae Dell asking why they had to go to the Show-Me again and Verna explaining that it was quicker.

  As the voices faded, Allen turned back to her work. It was good of Verna to welcome her back, but they hadn’t asked her to go out to supper with them. It was all right though. For all their avoidance of her in the last few weeks, she couldn’t hold it against them. They were only protecting themselves. They had to; even less than the men could they afford a hint of s
uspicion. It was unfair.

  She worked on for another twenty minutes. Then, with the desk cleared, she took her handbag out of the bottom drawer and pushed back her chair. But she lingered, watching the light break on the maple leaves outside the windows. There had been a time the other night when a different Ansel appeared. A man of some brilliance, who knew what he knew and loved it greatly. She had liked that man. That one did a great deal to redeem the other. Though not without a struggle. She rose with a shake of her head. Too bad it had to be so hard.

  Turning to the blackboard, she erased the last chalk marks and stacked the erasers. She wiped her hands on a Kleenex and picked up her bag. But again she hesitated, and after a moment she set the bag down and went across to the windows. Though the sun was still high, the sky was beginning to turn gold over the red brick house. It would be a pretty night—clear, with a first-quarter moon. She turned quickly and picked up the bag. Then she set it down again. Well, both of them had suffered humiliation. And she too, knew something about mothers and the hammerlock they put on you in the name of love. She hesitated a moment longer, then went out and up the stairs to the second floor.

  He was still at his desk, working. “Hello,” she said from the doorway.

  He looked up, startled, and jumped to his feet, upsetting the chair. “Goddammit!” he said, setting it straight, and he turned to her, white-faced and defenseless.

  “May I come in?”

  “Yeah—sure—come on in.”

  “I didn’t know if you’d still be here.”

  “I’m still here.” Too paralyzed to move, even to look away.

  “It’s kind of late. What are you working on, final reports?”

  “Yeah, reports.”

  “Tiresome, isn’t it? Well, don’t let me interrupt. I just wanted to tell you—”

  “You’re not interrupting.”

  “—that I had a talk with Mr. Frawley this afternoon.”

  The look on his face turned to horror. “You didn’t say anything about—”