Chapter 8
Mark Torrance had done his best to forget Jacqueline Mobry, even when the Chicago papers ran the story of the lavish Rome wedding between his former inamorata and suave Ricardo Frascati, with photographs taken in Rome. Tall and white and lovely in organdy wedding gown and floating veil, she wasn't the same girl he had known so intimately; in fact, the wedding photos helped blot out the anguish of loss, because he pretended it was an entirely different girl who was marrying Frascati. The Jacqueline he had known had been gloriously and honestly wanton, abetting his every desire. But the Signora Frascati was inaccessible and forever removed from his sphere.
So he plunged into his work, and he wrote a short story for an Eastern slick magazine, ironic and sophisticated, and it was accepted and the editor wrote to ask for more. By mid-October, he had sold three stories and the editor had put him in touch with a friend who headed the editorial staff of a large paperback book publisher. Correspondence and some phone calls had been exchanged, and Mark Torrance began to try his skill at a novel. Naturally it was autobiographical, as all novels are in one way or another, and in its pages he could rhapsodically describe his frustrated love for Jacqueline. Better still, he could turn it into the happy ending that had been denied him in real life. And so this became a wholesome sublimation which eased the pangs of permanent separation.
Eleanor Landers, having received her engraved invitation to the selective tea a week after the initial meeting with her peers, basked in the smug glow of ego. She accepted Deeana Mason's invitation to move into the DGT house, paid the requisite rental and board fee, and promptly bequeathed her luxurious private room at Comstock Hall to Suzy Mersh, who was involved not only with her studies, but with the problem of getting Sam Grunnerson to be less circumspect about their relationship. Indeed, instead of the usual male approach that "if we're going to be married, we ought to try to see if we're congenial in love-making," Suzy found herself wishing she herself could use that direct appeal instead of thinking up devious and convincing ways to make Sam see the light and stop treating her like a vestal virgin. But so far, she hadn't made much headway. And when Eleanor facetiously suggested that Suzy try her own trick of inviting Sam to shinny up the convenient drainpipe, silver-haired Suzy very nearly became profane. "Mi-Gawd, if I tried to get Sam to do a thing like that, he'd be off me for life. Besides, the big clumsy goof would make so much noise the whole campus would hear him. Don't even mention such a thing!"
Eleanor really didn't care one way or another. Suzy Mersh had served her purpose, so let her work out her own love problems. It took a week to adjust to the routine at the DGT house, and soon Eleanor was inveigling herself into friendship with the girls as if she had been a member all her life. Deeana Mason, who was her Big Sister, made it easy for her, because Deeana wanted to give her spoiled prot‚g‚e every possible break. Besides, next month would be the initiation, and if Eleanor acted up too noticeably, the ordeal would be arranged to subdue her down to proper hat size. Moreover, the easygoing Deeana was amused to see just how far this campus novice would go. And so far, the redhead hadn't really been out of line. She'd seemed respectful and deferential to all the girls, especially to Marian Johler and Deeana herself, and she told some hilarious stories about the Left Bank in Paris. True, she liked to wear her most expensive clothes to supper, when most of the regular members were at their most casual. And she always managed to sneak in some reference to her father's clever stock manipulations or to their elite address of Briarwood Terrace back in Chicago. But those were minor sins, and Deeana Mason believed they could also be attributed to Eleanor's essential loneliness. For the truth of the matter was that she really didn't have a close friend on campus, because she was the kind who took everything and gave nothing in return.
But now that her primary objective of sorority membership had been attained, Eleanor Landers entered upon the fallow period of her sojourn at Marwell. It was high time, she decided, to arrange a more exciting emotional life for herself. And after having appraised most of the young men on campus, she devastatingly condemned them as rustics and country bumpkins. There was really only one interesting and mature male on her horizon-and that was Professor Mark Torrance.
Accordingly, she began her campaign on a Monday afternoon the third week of October by arriving a few minutes earlier than was her wont and installing herself in a front-row seat to his left. The scrawny dishwater blonde she replaced looked unhappy, but Eleanor gave her a withering, silent look, and that was that. The blonde retreated to another row, and the first step of the campaign had been gracefully effected.
English literature had always been a rather boring subject for Eleanor Landers; for that matter, practically any part of the curriculum which didn't directly refer to her life and her personality would have affected her the same way. But she was clever enough to realize that if she hoped to attract Mark Torrance's roving eye-assuming he was uninhibited and reasonably liberal, and from his looks there seemed to be no reason why he should be an ascetic-, she would have to display a certain amount of erudition along with an abundance of sensual appeal. So for the next two weeks she diligently visited Cobb Hall and faithfully carried out the reading assignments which he gave the class. Somewhat to his surprise-for he had already noticed her bold emergence into the front row of his classroom-she even turned in several commendable essays concerning analysis of the style and creative aspirations of John Donne and Alexander Pope.
But it was Kathy Edward's themes that Professor Mark Torrance most quoted from; twice a week, he spent the hour reading from his students' papers, turning the class into an open forum of criticism and exchange of ideas, which the lovely brunette found most stimulating. Eleanor didn't, mainly because, though she had got good marks on her papers, he still hadn't deemed them good enough to read for others to hear. And so, on Friday in the last week of October, she lingered after class just behind the scrawny blonde whose seat she had usurped and Kathy Edwards herself. Kathy had a legitimate question to ask of Professor Torrance, and he took pains to answer it explicitly, while Eleanor fumed and shifted from glossy high-heeled pump to pump. She wore a brown satin dress which would have been more in place at The Pump Room or the Camelia Room of the Drake than in a small college classroom, and the skirt ended just an inch above her delightfully dimpled, softly rounded knees, which were resplendently sheathed in her very finest exatra-denier charcoal-brown nylons.
Mark Torrance had, from his podium, observed those classically dimpled, enticing knees and not a little of the elegant rondure of thigh which the adjustment of Eleanor's skirt afforded. A normally healthy and virile male, he was beginning to find abstinence trying, the more so when he recalled-which he tried not to do these lonely fall nights-how Jacqueline Mobry had used to fulfill his desires. It was time, he concluded, that he began to think seriously about marriage, remembering St. Paul's precept that it is far better to marry than to burn. But at first glance, seeking a mate from among the infatuated girls of his own class appeared to be the height of folly. Most of these giddy young things were in college for a single purpose: to entrap a suitable spouse. They had very little to offer besides their bodies, and there is no marriage so dull to an intellectual as one which involves only physical infatuation, because it soon wanes and there is no common meeting-ground besides it.
To take a mistress or an occasional transient sweetheart from such a group was folly too, and even more risky. It could well cost him his professorship, and he had worked hard enough and made enough sacrifices not to care for the odds of such a gamble.
At last Kathy left the classroom, and Eleanor found herself alone with the handsome professor.
"What can I do for you, Miss Landers?" he briskly inquired.
Eleanor laughed huskily and favored him with a long sultry look from beneath lowered lashes. "A very great deal, if you weren't a coward."
She had made up her mind to attempt so audacious an approach that he couldn't help paying attention to her. There was, after all was said and done, nothing to lose and everything to gain. Last weekend she had taken the train back to Chicago, and Dad and Laura had been insufferably insistent that she stay right where she was and pursue her studies and make something of herself. Dad had even agreed to increase her allowance, which was something, but he had stood firm on the subject of her coming back to Chicago. "You'd only gad about and get yourself involved, the way you did in Paris, young lady," he had sermonized her, much to her disgust, and Laura had just stood there nodding and smiling fatuously as if Dad were speaking gospel truth. "I personally think that being cooped up in a small town and having to devote your time to your studies is the best thing that could have happened to you."
So if she had to spend three long dreary years, exiled in this rural retreat and denied the Windy City's bright lights and gayety, she was going to play it her way. All Professor Mark Torrance could say was no and banish her abruptly to the back row for the rest of the term.
But since the beginning of the fall semester, he had been doing a lot of thinking about his own future. The sudden literary success he had earned had helped him to a complete revision. Prior to that, he had been ready to renounce Jacqueline Mobry and go back to a severely monastic life. But now there wasn't any need; all it required was discretion. And the taunting challenge of the redhead before him was just piquant enough to make him want to call her bluff.
"Now that's a strange accusation to make of a man you hardly even know, Miss Landers," was his swift parry.
"I guess I was just making conversation and trying to make it more interesting than what you're accustomed from your students, Professor Torrance." Eleanor Landers stood straight and tall before him, arms calmly folded across her bosom, that inimitable mocking little smile curving her petulantly ripe mouth.
"All right, let's start all over again, Miss Landers. Your work is quite adequate for my course, and I've no doubt you'll get a better than average grade. I don't think you wanted to ask me why I consider George Meredith one of the first great original novelists, and I'm sure you haven't the slightest interest in what Thomas Hardy was trying to do when he wrote Tess of the d'Ubervilles. Am I correct?"
"More or less, yes, Professor Torrance." Her smile deepened and her green eyes had ambery flecks at their irises, an infallible emotional sign that she had come across an adversary worthy of her mettle.
"Then may I ask for a frank answer as to why you find it necessary to stay after class? Was there anything in today's discussion you didn't quite understand?"
"Not really," she shook her coppery head, the smile less cynical now. She felt she was beginning to reach him at long last, and the experiment had been well worth it.
He sat down at his desk, opened the top drawer, took out a pack of Pall Malls, offered her one, then lit it, then one for himself. Leaning back, he took a long puff and sent a wreath of smoke rising to the ceiling. His candid blue eyes regarded her impartially. There was no doubt she was a tasty morsel; also, there was no doubt she was reasonably experienced, and certainly mature enough to be well over the age of consent. Also, she had a superior opinion of herself-but that didn't discredit her in his eyes, for Mark Torrance felt that if a person had no ego or confidence, that person lacked initiative.
"All right. I've a few minutes for small talk, if you're so inclined, Miss Landers," he said jovially.
"Wouldn't it be nicer over cocktails and dinner?"
"Very much nicer," he blandly agreed. "But hardly in this vicinity."
"Oh, Professor. I suppose you're afraid I'd compromise you."
"Just the other way around. I don't think our Dean of Women would very much approve of a bachelor professor taking one of his most attractive pupils out for cocktails and dinner. All sorts of nasty inferences would follow, and both of us would have occasion to regret an otherwise very pleasant interlude."
"Is that all you think it would be, an interlude?" She took a step forward, arching out her bosom, the ambery flecks in her eyes very luminous now. She found Mark Torrance extremely exciting, and quite surprisingly sophisticated. It wasn't going to be as easy as she'd thought. He wasn't entirely a diamond in the rough; there was much more polish to him than met the casual eye.
"Perhaps not. But what else could it possibly lead to?" he bantered, taking another puff at his cigarette.
"Whatever you cared to have it lead to, Professor Torrance."
"You know, I'm going to call your bluff, Miss Landers," he said after a lengthy pause. "Either you're doing this on a dare-maybe it's part of the sorority initiation for all I know-or else you enjoy embarrassing a man who happens to be more vulnerable than most. As a professor, I refuse to dine and wine you. As a man, I could very easily do it, but, as I said before, not around these parts. Only let's get one thing straight, Miss Landers."
"Whatever you say-Mark," her voice was low and husky, and it wasn't entirely affected this time. Eleanor Landers was experiencing strange new sensations; she was being trapped by her own trap. Because this very personable professor hadn't backed down or blushed or acted at all as she'd expected him to.
"All right. Do you happen to own a car?"
"As it happens, I do." She was glad she had persuaded her stuffy father to let her take her Ford Thunderbird along to Marwell, though he had made her promise she'd park it at a garage somewhere in town and use it only on weekends. He'd told her that he'd feel she wasn't gallivanting around every night riding college wolves in it and neglecting her studies. And since she hadn't been really interested in any of the men on campus till right now, she'd kept her promise. Now she was glad she had.
"Fine. Well, about twenty miles south of here, there's a town called Hanneford. They have a pretty fair restaurant there because the Illinois Central discharges lots of passengers at the station, and they do a nice business. When I get tired of so-called home-cooked meals, I drive over there for an evening. Why don't you meet me there at, say, seven-thirty tonight? But let's get this one thing straight first before we meet."
"I already agreed to it in advance, if you remember."
"So you did. All right, here it is. like I said, I propose to call your bluff. But we'll meet as boy meets girl. And don't think that because I'm escorting you tonight, you're to get any advantages as a pupil in my class. Just let me catch you making any overt gestures like sweet smiles or wrigglings in my direction during my lectures, young lady, and I'll flunk you and that's a promise. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly. And I'm not that obvious."
"Aren't you?" he chuckled as he regarded her. "You were just now, waiting to be last to see me."
"That, Professor," she purred as she walked slowly to the door, "was because it says somewhere in my book of maxims that the last shall be first. See you tonight at seven-thirty."