All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve Page B

my muffler.
    He turned slowly in my direction.
    He was, as always, impeccably dressed in an expertly tailored suit coat with a long pearl silk scarf. His shirtfront was so
     white and so crisp, I decided it must be new. Ferald had impressive manners as well, though I knew those to be a mask that
     hid a canny nature.
    “No trouble at all, sir.”
    The “sir” that I had employed just minutes earlier with what I hoped was true deference to Noah Fitch sounded faintly mocking
     from Ferald’s lips.
    “Have you been here long?” I asked.
    “Since five.”
    It was now twenty-five minutes after the hour.
    “Then I shall simply go overtime,” I said, opening my case.
    “Sir, I am afraid I cannot. I have promised myself to Merrit.”
    I tried to think. Merrit was a third-year student rumored to be a bookmaker.
    “For what purpose?” I inquired.
    Ferald hesitated. “I do not wish to seem rude, sir, but is that relevant? The fact of the promise would seem to be the point.”
    “Have you read
The Bride of Lammermoor
? I asked, abruptly changing the subject.
    “Yes, sir, but I am having difficulty with your seventh question — that of the historical novel versus the ‘turbid mixture
     of contemporaneousness,’ as you put it. I cannot see how a work not from one’s own time permits the isolation of essentials
     from accidentals. It seems to me a false endeavor, since the author cannot know or ever write authentically about the past.
     We are, of course, referring to
Waverly,
which is just outside Scott’s period. And which rather begs the question, don’t you think?”
    “Perhaps you have not read your text carefully enough,” I said.
    “I have done the work,” he said in an aggrieved tone. “I simply have it all in a muddle and shall need your help in sorting
     it all out. Indeed, I am looking forward to your commentary.” He took no pains to hide his slight smile. “As ever.”
    The gall,
I thought.
    “Very well,” I said. “Take out the text.”
    Ferald’s feigned pedagogical and literary interest irritated me no end, particularly as he had so little need of an education,
     and I doubted he should ever use it. He would, I knew, shortly come into considerable property nearby and would retire, at
     a young age, to the life of a gentleman farmer.
    I told Ferald to take the seat opposite mine. He did so with a languor that, were he not my student and were I not impatient
     to be done with him, I should have admired. I reflected then that there would always be a Ferald. Sometimes his name would
     be Wiles or Mutterson or simply Box, but there would always be one boy who clearly mocked his teachers, though never openly,
     and by his behavior played at a labyrinthine game of wits, one that would necessarily amuse him greatly, and one that he almost
     certainly would win.
    But in the game of teachers and students, the teacher will always have the last word; and I must confess that as I sat there
     and watched Ferald take out his Venetian glass pen and his Italian leather notebook (doubtless souvenirs of tours abroad),
     I began to consider seriously the notion of being unable to find sufficient merit in his final examination and so having perforce
     to fail the boy.
    When Ferald left, I paced in my rooms in an emotionally exhausted state. The monograph Fitch had given me lay on my desk,
     but I ignored it, having no desire to read it or to compare it to mine, for I knew only too well what I should find. It had
     been a clerical misstep only, I told myself, a consequence of being preoccupied and overtired and thus somewhat careless.
     And the sentences were not
precisely
the same, were they? If there seemed a marked similarity in ideas, were ideas the sole property of one mind, one voice? Might
     not a brilliant critic arrive at the same conclusion in the same year as another as a result of normal evolution in a field
     of study? Besides, were not the questionable passages Fitch had referred to but a tiny part of