All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve Read Free Book Online Page B

bookmaker to place a bet, and he was a keen follower of college athletics, which I was not, but apart from these dissimilarities,
     we got on well enough that we had dined together on more occasions than I could number.
    “Your name is interesting,” Etna said. “Is it…?”
    “Dutch,” I said stiffly. “The Van Tassel, that is. Nicholas, of course, is old English.”
    (It occurs to me now that there may have been an entirely other meaning to my old nickname. Could the student responsible
     for its coinage have meant
wild Boer?
)
    “How many students are at the college?” she asked.
    “Nearly four hundred,” I said.
    “And do you like it there?”
    “Well enough. I hope one day…Well, I shouldn’t say. And I shouldn’t like this repeated, of course.”
    “Of course not.”
    “Only that I should like one day to improve my position within the college. Noah Fitch, the Hitchcock Professor of English
     Literature and Rhetoric, may be moving up to an administrative position in a few years, and I have reason to hope for his
     post. I have many ideas I should like to implement.”
    “I suppose a few years is not a very long time to wait for something one is not certain of receiving?” she said.
    “Don’t most things worth waiting for require patience?” I asked. “You seem to have remarkable patience yourself.”
    “Do I?” As she pondered my comment, there was, beside us, an awkward flutter of limbs. I looked up to see Moxon putting on
     his coat.
    “Van Tassel, have you parsed your Newman?”
    “Miss Bliss, let me introduce my colleague Gerard Moxon. Gerard, this is Miss Etna Bliss, niece of William Bliss, the Physics
     Professor.”
    Moxon raised his eyebrows. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance,” Moxon said.
    “And I yours,” Etna said.
    Moxon had meant, with his question, had I read the volume by John Henry Newman entitled
Essays and Discourses
that had been sitting on the table in my sitting room only the day before?
    “I trust I know the Newman well enough to require it of twentyfive students next term,” I said.
    “You think ‘On Saints and Saintliness’ worth their time?”
    “‘The Illiative Sense,’ surely,” I answered with some impatience, wishing only that the man would leave us.
    “Miss Bliss, are you from Thrupp, or are you visiting?”
    “I am visiting, Professor Moxon.”
    “Well, I hope you are enjoying yourself and that Nicholas here is not too thoroughly a bore.”
    Though the comment had been meant to be a joke, Moxon had failed to deliver the line with any humor; thus the moment was merely
     pained. Etna looked down at her hands, and I beseeched Moxon with my eyes to leave us. Undoubtedly, he read this wish on my
     face, for he began to put on his gloves.
    “I hope we’ll meet again,” Moxon said warmly to Etna, and I do believe he meant it. As I watched him walk away, I reflected
     that Moxon was not a bad man, really; indeed, I do not think he had ever had a malicious thought. Still, I knew that he would
     not be able to refrain from mentioning our encounter to any number of our colleagues. I was seldom seen in the company of
     striking women.
    “Might not ‘The Illiative Sense’ be too difficult for your students?” Etna asked when Moxon had gone.
    I flinched in surprise, a reflexive insult I sought to hide in the next instant by fussing with my cocoa, which had just arrived.
    “So you’ve read Newman?” I asked, attempting a casual tone.
    “Yes, I have.”
    “Do you…? Are you fond of Newman?”
    “You’re shocked, I can see that. It’s perfectly understandable. How, indeed, should I come by such a book, and why should
     a woman of my position, which is to say no position at all, bother her head with such masculine discourse?”
    “No, no,” I said, somewhat flustered. “Not at all.”
    She seemed amused.
    “I’m promiscuous in my reading, Professor Van Tassel,” she said (and how quickly she seemed to have forgotten her promise
     to call