Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

At first, no one would dance, some shy, some not yet ready, but eventually they moved: a general forth-issuing onto the floor, with all le donne mobile e nubile in their long white gloves and flouncing dresses looking like so many ortelans-in-papillotes, bell-flowered, orange-flowered, poppy-flowered, curl-flowered. Her eyes star-shining, Alphia Centauri sighed and whispered to Pengwynne Custis at the cloakroom that, gosh, everyone sure looked as fetching as fetching could be. “Bull,” said lovely, spoiled, rich Pengwynne Custis, thrusting her wraps at the black attendant, “I’ve seen prettier faces on a damn oP iodine bottle.” “Why, I just love your gown,” came a voice from behind Pengwynne. She turned. It was beautiful Hypsipyle Poore, mysterious, enveloped in black faille, with a blood-red rose at her waist and a Gainsborough hat framing her perfectly oval face. “But, tell me, where were you when they fitted it?” And, smiling, Hypsipyle tinkled her finger across the room at several boys.

The boys — young beaux sabreurs in the Southern tradition — were mostly overappareled little rakehells from nearby colleges, dashing bucks and guys with names like Reggie Deuceaces, S. Waverly Carter, Guggenheim Grant, Fern Hill, Sheraton Commander, Hampton Court, and Schuyler Colfax or, perhaps, Colfax Schuyler — it didn’t matter. They idled about, smoking and chatting and, periodically, dancing their dates woodenly across the floor toward the outer balcony where they either fell abruptly into gourmandizing kiss sequences or produced flasks which appeared at the ends of their fingers, out of nowhere, like conjurers’ doves. And some couples — some couples went out to their cars.

There was a general mood of excitement, waltzing and whirling, swinging and swirling. Behind, four years of work! Ahead, the future! But now, fun! Most of the girls conservatively kept to the punch, others didn’t, but some, already flown with insolence and wine, were squealing and running niminy-piminy through the arcades, putting the come-hither on their boyfriends and scooting like little grunions into the side-rooms for fumbling but passionate embraces. Heather Tilt’s date, his urgent hand rummaging hopefully toward her dra-geoir , got himself a good slap in the face for it. Mona Lisa Drake and her date were engaged in a long, deep kiss in the shadow of a column when she looked up soulfully and whispered, “Be careful, it’s my heart.” One yahoo with a juggler’s face — her blind date from Washington and Lee — actually proposed to Charlotte Rumpelmeyer who, in spite of his altiloquence, thought it might be a happier marriage if they knew each other longer than five minutes. And in one dark room Poppy Mandragora ineffectually tried to struggle up, as her hot-blooded boyfriend nailed her down on the couch with kisses, sucked her sighs, and cannonaded her with dabs at the lower neck, and she just about managed to gasp through a space in his arm-hold, “Ashley, please , let’s not spoil it.”

It was a perfect night in Quinsyburg; warm and romantic, with the scent of honeysuckle, yarrow, and beebalm heavy in the air. Solitary as a substantive, Darconville crossed the campus, circling as unobtrusively as possible by Bryerly, Harrop, and Fitts dormitories — and noticing, in the latter, the darkness of one particular room. He stood awkwardly by the front walk outside the parlor of Fitts for a moment and called out Isabel’s name several times, but his voice, hollow as the soul of an echo, came back and embarrassed him. He went round behind the building, emerged through a walkway by the greenhouse and saw the lights, heard the music, coming from the student union. All along the street, couples sat in their cars croodling, sipping from bottles, or shifting about with exasperated cries like “You’re on my hair!” or “I’m hitting my head!” or “It’s not a snap, for godsakes, it’s a hook !”

As Darconville crossed the street, he heard from an adjacent car a little squeal, monarticulated and lubricious, which posited, by dint of accompanying coos and whuffs, a diabolicating two, exercitants, clearly, in the rites of Venus Pornokrate. Suddenly, the girl, coming up for air, looked out the car window and skreeked, “ O lord !”

It was Robin Kreutznaer in high apostrophe, mussed, looking unavoidably at — and straight into — Darconville’s face. Both were embarrassed. Her flowery anadem was askew, her long dress unambiguously bunched and disarranged. Beside her, buckling up his suspenders, sat some fat-witted bedmaster or other with a mouth like a cigar-fish and a plastic bowtie clipped to one side of his limp, open collar. Darconville’s student was disconcerted, it turned out, less for having been nobbled not ten seconds previous than for another reason; she produced a rat-tail comb and spoke, apologetically, between shuttles.

“I sure am sorry,” she said, “for not submittin’ my poetry paper, sir. I clean forgot last week, layin’ off, see, to bring it by this week, but then what hap—” Robin hiccuped “—pens? Right. Didn’t I get to ailin’ something awful, sir? Monthlies. You know? Oops!” Robin’s date, snapping open an imperial-size can of beer, sucked in half the can, wheezed manfully and, grinning, lustfully climped her on the thigh, but she pulled away — a bobolink sitting beyond a cat’s jump— and continued. “Point being, I gave out to Dean Barathrum that I’d finished up my work for graduation, see? And what with his notions, I mean, uptrippin’ me tellin’ a lie and all? See what I mean? God, I’m wicked embarrassed!” She groaned and slapped her head back onto the seat. “The question is, see, when can I hand it in, bein’ as tomorrow is Sunday and we all around here”—she gestured backwards with her comb in the direction of Cagliostro—”well, we were plannin’ to cut for Richmond, see, I mean, you dp see, don’t you? Like I say, last week, shoot, I was all intentions. Then Friday came and—”

“Have you seen Isabel Rawsthorne?” asked Darconville with tears in his eyes.

The dance, at a discreet interval, was called to a halt. It was time for some matters of great pith and moment. The student body president, Miss Xystine Chappelle, wearing a honeysuckle-colored linsey dress with puffed-out sleeves and a full-gathered skirt, appeared in a trembling spotlight. Sweetly, she welcomed everybody with a prepared speech, fashioning a metaphorical vase, as it were, into which poetess Iva Ironmonger Dane, clearing her throat, placed a meditative/descriptive flower for the whole class entitled “Where?”—a little piece that ended with a bit of advice:

”Do not follow where the

Path may lead.

Go, instead, where

There is no path

And leave a trail.”

Commemorations followed. Miss Quinsy — Hypsipyle Poore herself, escorted by two white-gloved young men (the others, all watching in silence with thoughts uniform: no more than the delightful sporting of the intellect with the flesh that is its master) — was called upon to do the honors. First, she presented a set of two walleyed Staffordshire dogs to the class adviser and assistant dean, Miss Dessicquint, and then the belated retirement gift of a Jefferson Cup to Miss Thelma Trappe, not in attendance, and who couldn’t have been reached, certainly, if upon such a thing depended the volume of applause. All of this was followed by the Longstreets ambo who, swaying, sang a duet of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” The special sentimental finale having concluded, the young people began to drift away for more dancing, but wait — who was that puffing in through the fire-door, shod in sneakers, a flashlight bulging out of his back pocket?

It was President Greatracks himself who, finger-popping the inside of his acoustical cheek three or four times, recommanded everyone’s attention for a sudden, impromptu speech: