The House of Velvet and Glass (31 page)

“Harlan Allston,” Professor Friend repeated. “Harlan Allston . . . What year are you, then, Mister Allston?”

Harlan’s eyes shifted left and right, settling uncertainly on Benton Derby’s face before answering. “I was a senior, sir. Class of ’fifteen.”

“
Was
,” Professor Friend said, also glancing to Benton. All at once he seemed to recollect something, and he said, “Oh, yes, now I remember. Well, in any event, a pleasure to see you, my boy. Best of luck to you, and all that.”

“Thanks,” Harlan said, for lack of anything better.

“When are you off on your travels, then, Edwin?” Benton asked, still standing behind his desk.

“I sail from New York on a Saturday, May first. First stop, Liverpool. Can’t wait.”

“Your wife not going with you?” Benton asked.

Professor Friend chuckled. “Not this time,” he said. He paused, as though on the point of imparting some secret to Benton, but then he glanced to the waiting boy. Professor Friend only smiled.

“All right,” Benton said, sliding his spectacles back into place. “I’ll be seeing you before then, I’m sure. Thanks for stopping by.”

Harlan felt a dismal sinking in his entrails, knowing that soon the other professor would leave, and then he would be treated to the full spectacle of Benton’s disappointment. He couldn’t fathom why Benton would care. Fellows left school before graduation all the time. Look at Bickering, he’d left their sophomore year merely out of boredom. The college would have been happy enough to cash Bickering’s father’s checks and issue him his due allotment of gentlemen’s Cs until he slouched his way into a diploma, with rosy memories sufficient to inspire a fat contribution some twenty years down the line. What difference did it make?

“No doubt. Well, onward and upward!” Professor Friend said, rapping his knuckles on the doorjamb in departure. He shambled out of the office, leaving Harlan and Benton to stare at each other across the cluttered expanse of Benton’s desk.

Harlan swallowed, more nervous than he realized. He reminded himself that he didn’t care what this young professor thought of him. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets with the force of the reminding.

“Take a seat, Harley,” Benton said.

A flash of annoyance contorted Harlan’s face. He didn’t appreciate the young professor addressing him as though he were his father. All right, they weren’t peers, but even so. Harlan was only in his office as a courtesy. He wasn’t a student anymore. Benton should speak to him like a man.

“Thanks, Ben,” he said, making his reply deliberately casual, and using a nickname that he knew Benton would fail to appreciate hearing in a professional context.

He settled into the pitted armchair situated at an angle to Benton’s desk, a sturdy and uncomfortable hunk of wood whose back was fashioned into a shield that read veritas. Harlan pulled a pant leg back and brought his ankle up to his knee, slouching, insouciant. He rummaged in his pocket for his cigarette case, pried one out, and slid it into the corner of his mouth. He was on the point of striking a match when he was stayed by Benton’s clearing his throat.

“I’d rather you not smoke, if you don’t mind,” the professor said. Harlan glanced up to Benton’s eyes, drained of the ironic merriment that Harlan was accustomed to finding there.

He paused, looking into Benton’s face for a long, challenging moment. Then he smiled.

“All right,” he said, removing the cigarette from his lower lip and placing it with care back into the case. “Whatever you say. It’s your office.”

A full brass ashtray sat at Benton’s elbow. So it was to be
that
kind of conversation. Well, he supposed he was ready. Harlan folded his arms over his chest and tossed his head back, brushing the flop of hair out of his eyes. Then he waited, keeping what he hoped was an easy, confident smile on his face.

Benton leaned forward, knitting his fingers together and resting his considerable weight on his desk. Benton had been a wrestler at college, and even as he grew from the college boy Harlan had known when he was a child to the man who sat before him, Benton would always have that dense wrestler’s build. His body was compact and muscled, slightly the wrong shape to look fashionable in suits. His shoulders were too broad. There was something unrefined about Benton’s body, though that was offset by the sharpness of his mind. A psychologist, that’s what Sibyl said he was. So Benton Derby liked to study crazy people. Well, bully for him. Harlan had better things to do with his time.

“How’ve you been, Harley?” Benton asked, more gently than Harlan was expecting. He shifted in his chair, made uncomfortable by the care in Benton’s words.

“Why, all right I guess,” Harlan said dubiously. “Rib’s getting better. Been resting up.”

“So I’m told,” Benton said. He paused. “Had a rough few weeks.”

Harlan snorted. “ ’S nothing too much, I don’t think,” he said. He wished that Benton would let him have a cigarette. It was pretty cheap of him, not to allow it when he smoked himself.

“When we ran into each other, outside the Swithin,” Benton said, “you were in an awful hurry to get away, seemed like.”

“Nah.” Harlan waved off the suggestion. “I’d just . . . I was late to meet someone, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” Benton said. The two men stared at each other, neither of them speaking.

“When the trouble started here,” the young professor said, “I wish you’d thought to tell me. Perhaps I could’ve helped.”

“Man’s got to stand on his own two feet, I guess,” Harlan said, flushing.

“Well, sure,” Benton allowed, “but even so. We’ve known each other a long time. Why, I remember when you were born, even.”

“Thought you were away at school when I was born.” Harlan frowned, chafing under the unwelcome intimacy.

“I was, but I remember Father’s letter telling me about it. The Captain was pleased as punch, he said. Come on, Harley. Why didn’t you come to me? You knew I was here.”

Harlan just stared at him, impassive expression covering the simmering anger in his belly. “You’d been away a long time,” he said, at length.

Benton stared into his face, and it occurred to Harlan that the professor looked sort of sad. “I suppose that’s true,” he said, voice quiet.

Harlan waited to see if Benton really understood why he wouldn’t have come to him. He couldn’t be as dense as all that. For at least a year everyone seemed sure that Benton and Sibyl would marry. Especially after Sibyl was rid of that weaselly Coombs fellow. Harlan remembered Eulah monitoring their every interaction, reporting back to Helen the slightest conversation, the merest brush of hands. Everyone was waiting. Eager. Perhaps Harlan most of all.

Harlan had always yearned for a brother. Someone to be in confederacy with him the way that Eulah and Sibyl were with each other, someone to share the weight of their father’s expectations. Sibyl was almost as good as a brother sometimes, especially when he was small. She’d go adventuring with him. She taught him to fish. And the burly son of their father’s shipping partner had been around as long as Harley could remember. Harley used to look forward to Lan’s business dinners with the Derbys at the Beacon Street house. Benton would sit over cigars and cognac with the Captain and Mr. Derby after dinner, one eye on the door where he knew Harlan was hiding. He’d peek around the door, and slowly Benton would cross his eyes at the boy with a grin before going back to the adult conversation.

And then Benton dropped the ball. Jilted his sister for Lydia Pusey! Maybe
Lydia’s
brother would call him up, if he had trouble at school. Did Lydia even have a brother? Who cared? Harlan scowled, hating the young professor for not sensing the wellspring of hurt that still festered in him.

“Now then,” Benton said. “I’ve made a few inquiries into your situation. And I think I see a way through it.”

“Ben,” Harlan interrupted. “Look. It’s real nice of you to be so concerned. But I’m fine. I wasn’t much of a student, anyway. In fact, I was hoping we could just skip the talk. You want to ditch your afternoon classes and catch the Sox game with me instead?”

A shadow passed through Benton’s eyes. “The Sox game,” he said.

Harlan grinned at him and laced his fingers together behind his head. “Rain’s finally letting up. We’d have a fine time.”

Benton shifted his weight on his elbows, looking down at his hands, and then glancing back up to Harlan. “I think you know that’s not going to be possible. Frankly, Harley, it concerns me to see you taking this so lightly.”

The smile melted off of Harlan’s face. “Well, how d’you suggest I take it? I’m out. They’ve made that perfectly clear. And I’m just as happy they did.”

“You’re happy, are you,” Benton said.

“Sure. I hated it, anyway.” Harlan heard the petulance in his voice and was irritated by it, sliding his gaze away from Benton’s face and onto the corner of the desk.

“Didn’t seem like you hated it. From what I can see, you were doing fine. Made some good clubs. Grades all right. A good group of fellows around you. Looks to me like you’d found your way, all things considered. Should’ve been no reason you wouldn’t graduate this spring.”

Harlan frowned, still staring at the corner of the desk. “So what if I did? Doesn’t matter.”

Benton took a deep breath, as through preparing for something unpleasant. “I had some difficulty getting a straight answer from the administration, since I wasn’t inquiring in any official capacity. But it seems as though the real issue was the girl.”

Harlan turned his clear blue eyes back on Benton’s face, his mouth flattening in a defensive line.

“Well?” Benton prodded.

“Well, what?” Harlan said, defiant. The reference to Dovie filled Harlan with an unaccustomed protectiveness, alert to the faintest hint of denigration of her character.

The young professor sighed, shaking his head. His face betrayed a world weariness, even pity, that made Harlan fantasize about smashing his fist into Benton’s face, perhaps connecting right where those damned spectacles sat on his patrician nose, breaking them both at the same time. The fantasy pleased Harlan, and he smiled, a cold, cruel smile, settling his arms more tightly across his chest.

“Look,” Benton began. “Everyone fools around. Am I right? Young fellows such as yourself, no attachments. It’s to be expected.”

“If you say so,” Harlan said, giving away nothing.

Benton cleared his throat and leaned forward, dropping his voice. “But to have her in your
rooms
, Harley . . .”

“Plenty of fellows’ve brought girls back to Westmorly,” Harlan said, dismissive. “You hear about it all the time.”

“Not all the time,” Benton said, voice cool. “And certainly not”—he cleared his throat—“in the condition. In which you two were found.”

Harlan scowled, dropping his pretend-casual foot from his knee back down to the floor with an impatient
thunk
. His gaze transformed from defiant to openly hostile. Benton felt the force of Harlan’s look, and sat back in his desk chair, unknotting his fingers and spreading his hands flat on the desk.

“I only bring it up,” Benton continued, “because the . . . flagrancy . . . with which you flouted the rules of the dormitory would tend to suggest . . .”

The two men locked their eyes across the narrow office. Outside, a sheet of rain washed up against the office window, and Harlan felt, rather than heard, the low rumble of thunder prowling the sky over Cambridge. No game today after all. He waited. Benton clearly wished for him to finish the thought left hanging in the air between them. But Harlan wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction.

“It would tend to suggest,” Benton started again, his voice low, so that it might not be overheard by anyone passing in the hallway outside the office. “Deliberation. On your part.”

“Deliberation? What are you talking about?” Harlan challenged him.

“That you meant to be caught,” the professor clarified. He watched Harlan’s face carefully.

“That’s preposterous!” Harlan burst. He sank lower in the chair, feeling its carved veritas dig into his spine. His gaze tore away from Benton and landed back on the corner of the desk. Harlan was growing intimately acquainted with the whorls of wood grain in that square inch of academic furniture.

“Is it?” Benton pressed, a new gentleness in his tone. His hands knitted themselves together again on the top of his desk, and he lowered his head to look at Harlan over the rims of his spectacles.

“Of course it is,” Harlan growled. “What would I want to get kicked out of school for? You think I
liked
coming home to the Captain like that? You think I
like
being hounded by my sister every minute of the goddamn day? And that housekeeper watching me like a hawk?”

“Well,” the young professor said, drawing the thought out, “sometimes we do things without really knowing why we do them. You’ve certainly gotten a lot more attention from them now that you’re home. They’re concerned about you.”

“Attention!” Harlan exclaimed, sitting forward with his hands gripping the armrests of the office chair. “As if that’s what I were after.
More
attention from them. And what about Miss Whistler? You think I’d have brought this on her willingly? I know what everyone thinks, and she doesn’t deserve any of it. What kind of man do you think I am?”

Benton sat back, keeping his expression mild. “That’s an interesting question, Harley. A very interesting question indeed. What kind of man do
you
think you are?”

Harlan scrambled to his feet, blinded with confusion and anger. There was no reason in the world that he had to sit here and listen to this. Who did Benton think he was talking to? Why, just because he’d known him as a boy was no reason . . . And anyway, he’d disappeared from their lives when he married and left for Italy. Abandoned them. In truth, he didn’t know Harlan at all. Then just because Harlan got into a spot of trouble at school, he thought he could just insert himself in his affairs. He wouldn’t stand for it. These thoughts warred together in Harlan’s mind as he stood, breath coming fast in his chest, fists knotted at his side, piercing gaze zeroed in on Benton’s mild face.