“Good. I teach in Sutton College—an extra-special course for these extra-special summer students.” He looked around the room and smiled again. “You know I can’t get used to teaching married men with wives and kids all over the campus—even if I am twice their age.”
“You mean these are students? I thought they must be professors only they looked too young.” She paused for a moment and then asked: “What is so special about what you teach?” She was relieved to see that her dinner was arriving without any fuss. The typed menu was, indeed, only a state of fact.
“Didn’t Miss Hartwell tell you about the college?”
“Well, no. We had a brisk exchange of letters and then she departed at the very moment I got here. Miss Sutton did tell me a little when I arrived yesterday—but not much.”
“Just like Lucy. Well, I’ll be Guide to Ancient Monuments, and fill in the details Philippine may have missed. Sutton College was founded in 1820 by Lucius Edward Sutton in memory of his son who was killed in the war of 1812. This son, James Thayer Sutton, had been travelling to a diplomatic post on a blockade runner which was sunk by the British. For this reason the old man, ancestor of the husband of our own Mrs. Sutton who still lives at the Farm, the family place—what was I saying—oh, yes, the original old man founded Sutton College to train men for the Consular and Diplomatic Service of the U.S.A. The students are sifted carefully and are apt to be older than the usual run of college men, hence the families, and they are apt not to be poor since most men who go into this branch of the service need cash in support of salary.”
“And Lucius Sutton founded the town too,?”
“Oh, yes, that was in 1814. As you may have noticed we have some fine specimens of what I believe the experts call Gothic Victorian architecture. Your new home is a good example. And the college is a copy of Magdalen College, Oxford—even to a made-to-order stream. I find it all very soothing.”
Colonel Mohun seemed in no hurry to leave, and, after a moment of stirring his empty coffee cup absently, he signalled the waitress to refill it. Fredericka looked puzzled. “You teach—er—diplomacy then?”
“I think that would be a tall order. No. I don’t really belong in the original scheme of things. In 1941 the college added a new department—unfortunately housed in prefab huts, still it could be worse—this is called, grandly, The Department of Military Government, and is partly financed by the government. In this department we take only college graduates. They’re our prize specimens.”
“And you teach?” Fredericka persisted.
“I?” The colonel frowned. “Oh, just a vague course in Military Intelligence.” He saw that Fredericka was ready with another question and he went on hurriedly, “I’d much rather spend all my time with the Indians—fighting the nice simple wars in the good old days of border strife before the Civil War.”
“Oh, yes, those books you wanted…” Fredericka said suddenly.
He finished his coffee quickly and stood up. “May I drop by for them later this afternoon? I’m acutely conscious that you’ve heard all about us—or rather me—and I’ve heard nothing about you.”
“I was eating.” Fredericka smiled. “And I’m too New England to talk at the same time. Yes, please do come in. A bookshop is a soulless place without people, especially on a cold, wet Sunday—” She stopped and sneezed suddenly. Searching her pockets for a handkerchief she looked up at him to say: “I don’t suppose you know the rest of that silly rhyme. It’s been teasing me all morning—you know, ‘Sneeze on Sunday…’”
“I’m afraid I do, and we’ll just have to face the fact that it’s the worst day in the week:
Sneeze on Sunday and safety seek,
The devil will have you the rest of the week.”
“Oh dear! And I’m starting a cold. Perhaps I’ll put it right by sneezing again tomorrow.”
“No hope there: ‘Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger.’”
He looked at her with what was meant to be an expression of fierce foreboding and then grinned suddenly. “But if you can produce one on Tuesday—ah, then there’s relief for you. But perhaps you know that one.”
“No. I seem to have forgotten them all.”
“Well, perhaps that’s just as well for the present.” He turned away maddeningly, and walked quickly from the room.
“And that’s that,” Fredericka decided. Tuesday—it must rhyme with “danger.” She felt suddenly depressed and the early morning’s anxiety returned. It’s just this damn cold, she thought. A cold always aggravates every unpleasant thing.
It was at this moment that she heard again the throaty voice of Catherine Clay who had come in with a thickset, heavy man, and was now sitting two tables away. “Can’t,” she was saying, “why can’t I, James? That miserable upstart. God, I could kill her with my own two hands…”
“S-s-h!” Her companion looked around anxiously. Fredericka busied herself with her apple pie and he seemed not to notice her.
“If you weren’t jealous, my dear, you’d see her as others do. She’s a good woman and I don’t know what your mother ever would have done without her.” He, too, sounded angry.
Catherine raised her voice again and fairly spat the next words at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve been charmed, too. Good God, and I thought you loved me!” She lowered her voice, and, as she leant across the table to her companion, her body seemed to quiver with the strength of her feeling. She now spoke rapidly and her thin hands gripped the edge of the table. Fredericka strained her ears and lingered to play with her pie, but she could distinguish no further words. As she looked covertly from the man’s heavy sensuous face to the woman’s, so obviously flushed by anger and passion, she began to tell herself a story worthy of one of her Victorian novelists. She picked up her bill with some impatience and hurried to the door. I wonder who James is, she thought, and then, if I let myself go any more, I’ll be writing an irrelevant chapter in my book, headed, “More Here Than Meets the Eye.”
The “good woman” was obviously Catherine’s cousin, Philippine Sutton who had been found in France by Catherine’s mother. Reason enough for jealousy. And James, whoever he was, had piled fuel on the flames. Fredericka wondered how soon she would see Philippine again. Yes, certainly, if Fredericka were given a chance for judgment, she would choose Philippine every time. But James was obviously smitten—or had been; it was hard to say.
Fredericka was aware that her thoughts were rambling, that she was over-exercising her imagination, and that she had a cold. But as she walked back to her bookshop home under the dripping trees, she was not wholly miserable. There was now the comforting thought that the Colonel would drop by for his books—and perhaps she would ask him to stay for supper. Her tidy mind remembered that there were eggs and cheese for a soufflé.
Chapter 3
The Saturday of South Sutton’s great bazaar dawned clear and hot and the anxious eyes scanning the skies for danger signals were relieved at all the weather signs. There might be a thunderstorm later on in the day, but that was to be expected in July, and would only add a little excitement to the festivities.
Fredericka got up early and sorted the collection of rental library culls promised by Miss Hartwell as the shop’s donation to the bazaar, and she had no sooner finished her task than there was a light knock at the front door. Fredericka waited a moment but her guest was more polite than most, and did not walk in. Fredericka hurried out and was delighted to discover Philippine Sutton on the doorstep. It had been a week since their first meeting on the day of Fredericka’s arrival and she had felt pleased by this first gesture of friendship and then a little hurt to find that she had been welcomed and, it seemed, forgotten.
“I am so sorry I have not been to see you before this. I have never been so busy at the lab and the orders