by Ward Moore
Additionally I wanted to search the real, the original sources: unpublished manuscripts of participants or onlookers, old diaries and letters, wills or accountbooks, which might shade a meaning or subtly change the interpretation of old, forgotten actions.
My problems could be solved ideally by an instructorship at some college, but how was this to be achieved without the patronage of a Tolliburr or an Enfandin? I had no credentials worth a second’s consideration. Though the immigration bars kept out graduates of foreign universities, no college in the United States would accept a self-taught young man who had not only little Latin and less Greek, but no mathematics, languages, or sciences at all. For a long time I considered possible ways and means, both drab and dramatic; at last, more in a spirit of whimsical absurdity than sober hope, I wrote out a letter of application, setting forth the qualifications I imagined myself to possess, assaying the extent of my learning with a generosity only ingenuousness could palliate, and outlining the work I projected for my future. With much care and many revisions I set this composition in type. It was undoubtedly a foolish gestures, but not having access to so costly a machine as a typewriter, and not wanting to reveal this by penning the letters by hand, I resorted to this transparent device.
Tyss picked up one of the copies I struck off and glanced over it. His expression was critical. “Is it too bad?” I asked despondently.
“You should have used more leading. And lined it up and justified the lines and eliminated hyphens. Setting type can never be done mechanically or half-heartedly—that’s why no one yet has been able to invent a practical typesetting machine. I’m afraid you’ll never make a passable printer, Hodgins.”
He was concerned only with typesetting, uninterested in the outcome. Or satisfied, since it was predetermined, that comment was superfluous.
Government mails, never efficent and always expensive, being one of the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic post limited to local areas, I dispatched the letters by Wells, Fargo to a comprehensive list of colleges. I can’t say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for though I knew the company’s system of heavily armed guards would insure delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation of any answers. As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out of my mind, dredging it up at rarer intervals, always a trifle more embarrassed by my presumption.
It was several months later, toward the end of September, that the telegram came signed Thomas K Haggerwells. It read, ACCEPT NO OFFER TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN.
I hadnt sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania, where the telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I knew of no colleges in that vicinity. And I had never heard of Mr (or Doctor or Professor) Haggerwells. I might have thought the message a mean joke, except that Tyss’s nature didnt run to such humor and no one else knew of the letters except those to whom they were addressed.
I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories I consulted, which wasnt too surprising considering the slovenly way these were put together. I decided that if such a place existed I could only wait patiently until the “representative,” if there really was one, arrived.
Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some, straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to arrange the stock would have been futile—and took up a recent emendation of Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles by one Captain Eisenhower.
I was so deep in the good captain’s analysis (he might have made a respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity) that I heard no customer enter, sensed no impatient presence. I was only recalled from my book by a rather sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”
“No maam,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the page. “He’s out for the moment. Can I help you?”
My eyes, accustomed to the store’s poor light, had the advantage over hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street. Secure in my audacity, I measured her vital femininty, a quality which seemed, if such a thing is possible, impersonal. There was nothing overtly bold or provocative about her, though I’m sure my mother would have thinned her lips at the black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized the contour of her breasts. At a time when women used every device to call attention to their helplessness and consequently their desirability and the implied need for men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to say, Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or incidentally but primarily; what are you going to do about it?
I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact that she was bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather large-boned; certainly there was nothing related to me about it. Nor was it connected with surface attributes; she was not beautiful and still further from being pretty, though she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair, ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply; her eyes appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could vary from pale gray to blue-green.) The fleshly greediness was betrayed, if at all, only by the width and set of her lips, and that insolent expression.
She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells. I’m looking for a Mr Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”
“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket did not match, that my shirt was not clean.
I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if youve run across The Properties of X by Whitehead? Ive been trying to get a copy for a long time.”
“Uh—I … Is it a mystery story?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician very much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose because the author is bolder than he is tactful.”
So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative” of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But mathematics is my tool.”
I looked at her with respect Anyone, I thought, can read a few books and set himself up as an historian; to be a physicist means genuine learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.
She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about you.”
I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is Thomas Haggerwells?”
“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid I’m as ignorant of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”
“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd youve come upon no reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”
I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.” Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a college?”
“No. Haggershaven is … Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity, her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”
She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her by never having heard of Haggershaven
. I knew I couldn’t pass the most lenient of entrance examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she represented.
“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on, “beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows, and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There! That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the scent of her hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The haven is neither wealthy nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend; they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.”
“Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”
“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “Youll be surprised to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are not fanatics nor saviors. We don’t live in phalansteries, practice group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s private lives.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didn’t mean to annoy you.”
“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen the squinty suspiciousness of the farmers all around sure we were up to something immoral, or at least illegal. Youve no idea what a prickly armor you build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling, ‘There goes one of them; I bet they …’ whatever unconventional practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the haven may indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit into the civilization around us?”
“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”
She didnt answer and I felt I had gone too far in daring an impulsive identification. Awkwardness made me blurt out further, “Do you … do you think there’s any chance Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever reserve I’d tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only childish longing.
“I couldnt say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or rejection depends entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship. All I’m here to offer is train fare. Neither you nor the haven is bound.”
“I’m perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.
“You may not be so rash after a few weeks.”
I was about to reply when Little Aggie—so called to distinguish her from Fat Aggie who was in much the same trade, but more successful—came in. Little Aggie supplemented her nocturnal earnings around Astor Place by begging in the same neighborhood during the day.
“Sorry, Aggie,” I said; “Mr Tyss didnt leave anything for you.”
“Maybe the lady would help a poor working girl down on her luck,” she suggested, coming close. “My, that’s a pretty outfit you have. Looks like real silk, too.”
Barbara Haggerwells drew away with anger and loathing on her face. “No,” she refused sharply. “No, nothing!” She turned to me. “I must be going. I’ll leave you to entertain your friend.”
“Oh, I’ll go,” said little Aggie cheerfully, “no need to get in an uproar. Bye-bye.”
I was frankly puzzled; the puritanical reaction didnt seem consistent. I would have expected condescending amusement, disdainful tolerance or even haughty annoyance, but not this furious aversion. “I’m sorry Little Aggie bothered you. She’s really not a wicked character and she does have a hard time getting along.”
“I’m sure you must enjoy her company immensely. I’m sorry we can’t offer similar attractions at the haven.”
Apparently she thought my relations with Aggie were professional. Even so her attitude was odd. I could hardly flatter myself she was interested in me as a man, yet her flare-up seemed to indicate jealousy, a strange kind of jealousy, perhaps like the sensuality I attributed to her, as though the mere presence of another woman was an affront.
“Please don’t go yet. For one thing—” I cast around for something to hold her till I could restore a more favorable impression. “—for one thing you havent told me how Haggershaven happened to get my application.”
She gave me a cold, angry look. “Even though we’re supposed to be cranks, orthodox educators often turn such letters over to us. After all, they may want to apply themselves someday.”
The picture this suddenly presented, of a serene academic life which was not so serene and secure after all, but prepared for a way to escape if necessary, was startling to me. I had taken it for granted that our colleges, even though they were far inferior to those of other countries, were stable and sheltered.
When I expressed something of this, she laughed. “Hardly. The colleges have not only decayed, they have decayed faster than other institutions. They are mere hollow shells, ruined ornaments of the past. Instructors spy on each other to curry favor with the trustees and assure themselves of reappointment when the faculty is out periodically. Loyalty is the touchstone, but no one knows any more what the object of loyalty is supposed to be. Certainly it is no longer toward learning, for that is the least of their concerns.”
She slowly allowed herself to be coaxed back into her previous mood, and again we talked of books. And now I thought there was a new warmth in her voice and glance, as though she had won some kind of victory, but how or over whom there was no indication.
When she left I hoped she was not too prejudiced against me. For myself I readily admitted it would be easy enough to want her—if one were not afraid of the humiliations it was in her nature to inflict.
10. THE HOLDUP
This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice. “Well Hodgins, I made all the appropriate valedictory remarks on a previous occasion, so I’ll not repeat them, except to say the precision of the script is extraordinary.”
It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that everything was for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss as slightly pathetic rather than sinister; extreme pessimism and vulgar optimism evidently met, like his circular time. I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely for all his kindness.
In 1944 almost a hundred years had passed since New York and eastern Pennsylvania were first linked in a railroad network, yet I don’t suppose my journey differed much in speed or comfort from one which might have been taken by Granpa Hodgins’ father. The steam ferry carried me across the Hudson to Jersey. I had heard there were only financial, not technical obstacles to a bridge or tunnel. If the English and French could burrow under the Channel, as they had early in the century, and the Japanese complete their great tube beneath the Korea Strait, it was hard to see why a lesser work here was dismissed as the impractical suggestion of dreamers who believed the cost would be saved in a few years by running trains directly to Manhattan.
Nor was the ferry the only antique survival on the trip. The cars were all ancient, obvious discards from Confederate or British American lines. Flat wheels were common; the wornout locomotives dragged them protestingly over the wobbly rails and uneven roadbed. First class passengers sat on napless plush or grease-glazed straw seats; second class passengers stood in the aisles or on the platforms; third class rode the roofs—safe enough at the low speed except for sudden jerks or jolts.
There were so many different lines, each jealous of exclusive rights of way, that the traveler hardly got used to his particular car before he had to snatch up his baggage and hustle for the connecting train, which might be on the same track or at the same sooty depot, but was more likely to be a mile away. Even the adjective “connecting” was often ironical for
it was not unusual to find timetables arranged so a departure preceded an arrival by minutes, necessitating a stopover of anywhere from one hour to twelve.
If anything could have quieted my excitement on the trip it was the view through the dirt-sprayed windows. “Fruitless” and “unfulfilled” were the words coming oftenest to my mind. I had forgotten during the past six years just how desolate villages and towns could look when their jerrybuilt structures were sunk in apathetic age without even the false rejuvenation of newer jerrybuilding. I had forgotten the mildewed appearance of tenant farmhouses, the unconvincing attempt to appear businesslike of false-fronted stores with clutters of hopeless merchandise in their dim windows, or the inadequate bluff of factories too small for any satisfactory production.
Once away from New York it was clear how atypical the city was in its air of activity and usefulness. The countryside through which the tracks ran, between fields and pastures or down the center of main streets, should have been the industrial heart of a country bustling and vigorous. Instead one saw potentialities denied, projects withered, poverty and dilapidation.
We crossed the Susquehanna on an old, old stone bridge that made one think of Meade’s valiant men, bloodily bandaged many of them, somnambulistically marching northward, helpless and hopeless after the Confederate triumph at Gettysburg, their only thought to escape Jeb Stuart’s pursuing cavalry. Indeed, every square mile now carried on its surface an almost visible weight of historical memories.
York seemed old, gray and crabbed in the afternoon, but when I got off the train there I was too agitated with the prospect of being soon at Haggershaven to take any strong impression of the town. I inquired the way, and the surly response confirmed Barbara Haggerwells’ statement of local animosity. The distance, if my informant was accurate, was a matter of some ten miles.
