The Widening Stain Read online

  “Tell me,” said Miss Cornwell, “just what does Mr. Casti do in his Phonetics Laboratory?”

  Professor Hyett smiled with pleasure at the opportunity.

  “He has a magnificent lot of machinery there, recording machines with smoked cylinders, artificial larynxes that gobble as if they were human, and things like that. And he carries on long investigations experimentally. For instance, he is now studying the pronunciation of the vowel sounds in the combinations ‘uff’ and ‘ugg.’ He has determined, I believe, that the average subject pronounces the ‘uh’ of ‘uff’ in 169 thousandths of a second, while they take 176 thousandths of a second to pronounce the ‘uh’ of ‘ugg.’ ”

  “But what good does that do?”

  Professor Hyett laughed delightedly.

  “My dear Miss Cornwell, that is a question you must never ask on a university campus. What good, indeed! We seek pure learning, knowledge for its own sake. That knowledge may well be of some practical use to someone some time, but we don’t care whether it is or not. We just seek the fact. It’s the essential difference between pure and applied science. Wouldn’t you rather be pure than applied? And you can’t deny that Casti has got a fact there, about ‘uff’ and ‘ugg,’ that no one has ever known before. Remember the fine aphorism of Dr. Johnson: ‘All knowledge is of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not.’ ”

  “Yes,” said Miss Gorham. “And there is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that it doesn’t need to be catalogued. And if everything didn’t need to be catalogued, what would all the cataloguers be doing?”

  “Housework,” suggested Miss Cornwell.

  “Sh-h-h!” said Professor Hyett, with great glee. “Don’t let any of the profane overhear us. We on the faculty spend our lives delving in the kitchen-middens of space and time, and everything we dig up we want ticketed with our name, whether it’s a nugget of pure gold or a rusty tin can. And your job is to label everything, the tin cans with the gold. Some of my colleagues don’t seem to be able to tell them apart. In the Classics, our field contains a large share of gold—the great thoughts that are still valid after two thousand years. But some of my colleagues’ fields, I fear, are rich in nothing but tin cans.”

  “Question of point of view,” said Miss Gorham diplomatically.

  “A question of method, also. Today people have a blind faith in the machine. So everyone must have a laboratory. All the appropriations go to the departments that have a laboratory full of machines. I didn’t realize that in time. Now, my own little hobby, of reconstructing Greek vases from fragments—I have some very beautiful ones, and some that are very comical. I don’t know if I would dare to show them to you—”

  “I have seen them,” said Miss Gorham.

  “To be sure. And you looked at them, I remember, with the cool, detached eye of the student of civilization. Well, I was going to say that if I had called my little workshop a laboratory, and if I had demanded a lot of expensive machines, the trustees would have given them to me like a flash, instead of grudging me even a little working space in the Liberal Arts basement. Every year they turn down our request for an extra instructor; but I’ll wager they would give me ten thousand dollars to construct an irregular-verb machine that would give the student an electric shock every time he pressed the button for a wrong ending.”

  “That’s quite an idea,” laughed Miss Gorham.

  “It is quite an idea. It is a wonderful idea. It is even more—it is pedagogical. There are millions in it. I think I will make a small model—in my laboratory.”

  “In the meantime,” said Miss Cornwell, “I must be doing a little work myself.”

  “It might work like one of these slot machines that you see in clubs, where a lot of concentric cylinders spin to make a poker hand. It is really quite an idea.”

  “Don’t let us interfere with its construction, Mr. Hyett,” said Miss Gorham.

  “Oh, good-by, my dear Miss Gorham. By the way, who is that pretty little thing at the cataloguers’ desk? The one with the long yellow hair. She’s new, isn’t she?”

  “That’s Miss Loring. Yes, she is new.”

  “A sweet child. She has an attractive little way of walking. You know, that is really quite an idea.”

  Miss Gorham returned to her work with a sigh. She picked up an order slip from the History Department. This was the fourth time they had ordered a copy of Walpole’s Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third, of which a sound copy was already shelved. She dropped the slip in the waste-basket.

  Frowning, she watched Mademoiselle Coindreau approach her desk.

  Mademoiselle Coindreau, Assistant Professor of French, was a black-eyed, black-haired Frenchwoman in her early thirties. She was good-looking, in the smoldering southern incipient-hairy way. She had come to America as a boursière from the University of Montpellier, had taken a very creditable Ph.D. in French literature from the University of Chicago, and had attained her assistant professorship early. Some Frenchmen criticized her accent, saying that when she got excited it took on a flavor of garlic. Americans criticized her temperament; she would fall into month-long fits of sulkiness, obviously hating America and her own misfortune at being cast in the dull routine of elementary teaching. “She reads too much French,” said Professor Parry. But she would emerge from the dumps, to be gay and amusing, to throw herself actively into the organization of French debates, language picnics, and productions of L’Anglais tel qu’on le parle.

  “Good morning, Miss Gorham.”

  “Good morning, Mademoiselle Coindreau.”

  “Tell me, how do you say radiesthésie in English? I do not find it in the card catalogue.”

  “Radiesthésie? If you wait a minute, I’ll look it up.”

  “But I do not find it in the dictionary either.”

  “Then I’m afraid— What is it, anyway?”

  “It is something very important, and perfectly veritable. It has had a great vogue in France in recent years. One has a little ball on a string. But here, I will show you.”

  Mademoiselle Coindreau drew from her bag a small pasteboard box, from which she took a silvered leaden ball, about half an inch in diameter, pierced by a fine string, some eighteen inches long and terminating in a tight-drawn knot. Mademoiselle Coindreau held up the contrivance by the knot.

  “Scientists in France have done wonderful things with radiesthésie. It serves to discover water, or gold, or any hidden thing. It indicates many diseases, such as cancer. The little ball is influenced by the vibrations emanating from all the earth’s substances. It swings so many times to the right, so many times to the left, according to a scale worked out by scientists. I know a man in Paris who discovered by this means stores of concealed stupefying drugs. For the police. The little ball is very sensitive, very delicate. It can determine sex. For a woman, it swings four times to the right, three to the left. For a man, it is the opposite. Only look—”

  Mademoiselle Coindreau held the knot aloft. The leaden ball hung motionless. Slowly it began to swing, pendulum-wise. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Again it was still.

  “Perhaps I remembered it wrongly,” said Mademoiselle Coindreau, doubtfully. “I will look it up in my little book. It remains, however, a remarkable scientific invention. It is strange that in America, which prides itself on science, there are no books on radiesthésie.”

  “You might look under Divining. Or under the general heading of Occult Sciences. See what there is in that big Handwörterbuch des Aberglaubens, by Hoffmann and Krayer. Try looking under Wünschelrute. You know where the Occulta books are shelved, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes. On the top gallery of the Wilmerding Library. You have there some very curious books, very curious. I have been interested in the prophecies of Nostradamus, which are very astonishing, in the light of actual events. And there are books, so bizarre, on medieval torture. That Mr. Wilmerding, he must have been a droll one.” />
  “A great collector,” said Miss Gorham primly.

  “Yes. Certainly. And since we speak of the Occulta section, it is my duty to tell you something I observed from there only yesterday. Something that was going on in one of the graduate students’ cubicles. There was a young man and a young woman in that graduate students’ cubicle, where there is hardly place for one. Yes. There was a young man there. And a young woman.” Mademoiselle Coindreau’s eyes flashed, and her well-furnished bosom heaved.

  Miss Gorham sprang up in alarm. “Don’t tell me—that they were smoking?”

  Mademoiselle Coindreau sneered. “No; they weren’t smoking.”

  “Oh. Thank God. For a moment I thought you meant they were smoking.”

  “Hah!” snorted Mademoiselle Coindreau. A shrug of the left shoulder said: “Ces Américaines!” Aloud she said: “I will go and look for those books of which you tell me. It would be strange that this great library should contain nothing on radiesthésie!”

  Miss Gorham returned to her work. She was, after all, used to interruption. Her tickler noted that Young’s Analytic Concordance to the Holy Scriptures had now been missing for six months from the open shelves of the reference room. The thief, apparently, was not going to return it in a fit of remorse. Better pick up a second-hand copy, she decided, unless there happened to be one among the duplicates in the crypt.

  “Good morning, Miss Gorham.”

  “Why, good morning, Mr. Casti.”

  Assistant Professor Casti was dark and tense, with drawn, sallow skin. Without invitation, he sat down in the chair by Miss Gorham’s desk. He drew from his bulging brief-case a slim pamphlet.

  “I have brought you a present—an off-print of my latest article, from the Phonetic Review. It is on the Displacement of the Point of Articulation of i under the influence of certain plosives and fricatives. It is not for the Library; it is for you personally. You see, I have inscribed it to you.” He pointed to the words on the corner: “To Miss Gilda Gorham, as an inadequate token of the author’s regard. Angelo Casti.” The signature was written twice as large as the dedication, and was ornamented with imposing flourishes of the pen.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Casti. That is very nice of you.”

  “I don’t know if you are interested in phonetics at all. But in this little article I have upset a good many accepted ideas, by the simple process of laboratory experiment. There are certain people whose faces will be very red when they read this little article.”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “Of course, I have sent a copy to the President, but he is so busy I don’t suppose he has time to do more than glance at the productions of the faculty. You are on good terms with the President, aren’t you, Miss Gorham?”

  “Well, we don’t call each other by our first names. At least, not in each other’s presence.”

  “But you are on good terms? I notice that he always stops and gossips with you when he comes into the Library. Well now, if you could manage to glance through this article today, then at the President’s reception tonight you might drop a word to him about it. Say you found it fascinating, or something of the sort. Of course, he will probably say: ‘Ex-tremely int-a-resting! Ex-tremely int-a-resting!’ and not mean a word of it.”

  “You really do the President very well, Mr. Casti.”

  “The phonetician’s habit. It’s my business to notice those things—the forced and faulty syllabication, the excessive value given to the dentals. The platform influence, I sometimes call it in jest.”

  “Well, I won’t promise. But thank you for the offprint. I will put it with the rest of your works.”

  “Thank you. Now about that manuscript—the Filius Getronis. I was wondering—”

  “Yes, I know. I am sorry, but Dr. Sandys doesn’t think it should go out of the Library.”

  “So Mr. Hyett was just telling me. Well, I will have to get along with the microfilm. It is too bad, because some of the surcharged letters are not at all clear on the film. There are some laboratory tests I should have liked to apply. But I suppose I can consult it in the Library. It won’t be quite the same thing. But if those are the rules, I shall merely bow to them. By the way—”

  “Yes?”

  “You haven’t seen Mademoiselle Coindreau about, have you? There was—ah—something I wanted to see her about.”

  “She was in a moment ago. She went up in the stacks. I think you could find her in the Occulta. Or in the French Seminary. That’s where she does most of her work.”

  “Poor dear Mademoiselle Coindreau! Hunting her radiesthésie, I suppose. You know, much as I like and admire Mademoiselle Coindreau, and much as I value the excellent work she is doing here, I do find it strange that anyone with her university training should be the dupe of pseudo-science! Of course, she went to Montpellier, and you know those provincial universities. I was born in the States, of course; but I took my doctorate at the Sorbonne, and I spent a year in the Institut de Phonétique. In France that is quite a different thing from the University of Montpellier.”

  “If you want Mademoiselle Coindreau, you could probably catch her now. I don’t think she was going to stay here long.”

  “Thank you. I shall go and look for her. I shall put myself to her research, as we say in French. Ha-ha!”

  Assistant Professor Casti departed. Miss Gorham dropped his off-print in her waste-basket.

  “Gilda!”

  It was Professor Parry again.

  “Gilda, was that Casti I just saw going out?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was in about the manuscript?”

  “Yes. He was also looking for Mademoiselle Coindreau.”

  “That’s interesting. Did he pronounce her name with a hushed and trembling voice, and with a far-away look in his eye?”

  “I wasn’t looking at his eye. But he seemed to me rather pettish about her.”

  “That’s interesting, too. They have probably returned to normal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think? Lucie Coindreau, you know, is the oomph-girl of the Romance Language Department. She arouses the beast in man. Did you know that?”

  “No. Not to look at her—”

  “Well, she’s a beast-rouser. She’s been reading French novels, scrofulous French novels, since she was twelve, and writing studies on Musset’s Conception of Passion since she was eighteen. And I gather that for some time she’s been ready to make the jump from literature to life. Amour! That’s what she wants. And remember that ‘amour,’ as used in the works of Alfred de Musset, is not exactly translated by the word ‘love’ as it appears in the works of Longfellow.”

  “Very prettily phrased. You think, then—”

  “I think it’s none of your business. But since you urge me, I will break a lifelong rule and tell a little gossip. Last spring she and Casti spent a lot of time in the Phonetics Laboratory, prolonging their research late into the night, and it is suspected that the time was not devoted exclusively to recording each other’s vowels and consonants. But voilà, as we say in France! The trouble is that both of them are due for promotion to associate professor. And the Dean and the President both approve of Mademoiselle’s excellent work with classes, and they think that Casti’s ubble-gubble into phonographs is nonsense, and they just don’t like him much anyway. So Mademoiselle will probably get an up, and Casti won’t. He’s a jealous little squirt, and he hates the idea of having a woman advanced over him. It is noteworthy that he has just bought a car, a massive late-Victorian model, but he doesn’t seem to give poor Lucie any rides. So I think they have returned to a normal state of healthy rivalry and suspicion.”

  “You seem to be very well informed.”

  Miss Gorham rose and took down a volume of the Deutsches Bücherverzeichnis from her reference shelves.

  “I am well informed. I am interested in human behavior, a subject which is relatively neglected in our curriculum. And I find the faculty a good field for observation
. We’re a funny lot. We are picked because we know something, presumably, and then they expect us not only to know, but to set an example of a beautiful life, which means a sexless life. We do our best to satisfy the trustees, but if you could really examine the minds of a lot of people around here, you would certainly be surprised. Or perhaps you wouldn’t.”

  “And as for you, you might even be disappointed.”

  “I don’t think so. You know, one thing I sometimes wonder about is how many of my colleagues are virgins.”

  “Why, Mr. Parry!” Miss Gorham blushed cherry red.

  Professor Parry laughed his ringing, infectious, youthful laugh.

  “What is so shocking about virginity, one of the chief of the Christian virtues? There is Hyett, mentally about as hard-boiled as they come. I’ll bet he’s a virgin. And Belknap, spending his life interpreting the behavior of all those very carnivorous rowdies of the Middle Ages, telling just what made them work. I think he’d learn more about their psychology by taking a floozie to Atlantic City than he ever will from his manuscripts.”

  “And how about Professor Parry, the rakish bachelor of the Department of Dramatics?”

  Professor Parry bowed his head.

  “That is a brutal and a painful question. Gilda—my dear Gilda, there is something I have to tell you.”

  “Well?”

  “Something serious. Something that concerns you very closely. Will you permit me to say something very intimate, my dear Gilda?”

  “Why—why, I suppose so.”

  “Your slip is showing.”

  “You rat!” Gilda’s nervous giggle blended with Professor Parry’s resonant boyish laughter.

  He waved her a whimsical farewell.

  Cameron, the janitor, entered the room, with a box of electric-light globes in his arms. He was a man in his middle sixties, with a certain faded distinction of manner. It was reported that he had come of a good bourgeois family, but had been impatient of education and had set off as a youth to see the world. It appeared from his conversation that he had followed many trades, as sailor, bartender, detective, electrician, and short-order cook. For fifteen years he had been the Library’s head janitor and had served it well as a competent general handyman. The staff had learned to trust him; he had received only occasional reprimands when he was found in a quiet corner of the stacks, reading. His taste ran, apparently, to the more esoteric sort of books.