Government mails, never efficient and always expensive, being one of the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic post limited to local areas, I dispatched the letters by Wells-Fargo to a comprehensive list of colleges. I can't say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for though I knew the company's system of heavily armed guards would insure delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation of any answers. As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out of my mind, dredging it up at rarer intervals, always a trifle more embarrassed by my presumption.
It was several months later, toward the end of September, that the telegram came signed Thomas K. Haggerwells. It read, ACCEPT NO OFFER TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN.
I hadn't sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania, where the telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I knew of no colleges in that vicinity. And I had never heard of Mr. (or Doctor or Professor) Haggerwells. I might have thought the message a mean joke, except that Tyss's nature didn't run to such humor and no one else knew of the letters except those to whom they were addressed.
I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories I consulted, which wasn't too surprising considering the slovenly way these were put together. I decided that if such a place existed I could only wait patiently until the “representative,” if there really was one, arrived.
Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some, straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to arrange the stock would have been futile—and took up a recent emendation of Greasy's
I was so deep in the good captain's analysis (he might have made a respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity) that I heard no customer enter, sensed no impatient presence. I was only recalled from my book by a rather sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”
“No ma'am,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the page. “He's out for the moment. Can I help you?”
My eyes, accustomed to the store's poor light, had the advantage over hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street. Secure in my audacity, I measured her vital femininity, a quality which seemed, if such a thing is possible, impersonal. There was nothing overtly bold or provocative about her, though I'm sure my mother would have thinned her lips at the black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized the contour of her breasts. At a time when women used every device to call attention to their helplessness and consequently their desirability and the implied need for men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to say, Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or incidentally, but primarily; what are you going to do about it?
I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact that she was bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather large-boned; certainly there was nothing related to me about it. Nor was it connected with surface attributes; she was not beautiful and still further from being pretty, though she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair, ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply; her eyes appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could vary from pale gray to blue green.) The fleshly greediness was betrayed, if at all, only by the width and set of her lips, and that insolent expression.
She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her tone peremptory. “I'm Barbara Haggerwells. I'm looking for a Mr. Backmaker'—she glanced at a slip of paper—'a Hodgins M. Backmaker who evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”
“I'm Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket did not match, that my shirt was not clean.
I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if you've run across
“Uh—I… Is it a mystery story?”
“I'm afraid not. It's a book on mathematics by a mathematician very much out of favor. It's hard to find, I suppose because the author is bolder than he is tactful.”
So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative” of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and ignorance of Mr. Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I'm a physicist. But mathematics is my tool.”
I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read a few books and set himself up as a historian; to be a physicist means genuine learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.
She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about you.”
I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is Thomas Haggerwells?”
“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.
“I'm dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I'm afraid I'm as ignorant of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”
“I thought you said you'd been reading history. Odd you've come upon no reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”
I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.” Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a college?”
“No. Haggershaven is… Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity, her air of smiling tolerance. “It's hardly a college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the Haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”
She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be one of the elect, even if I hadn't offended her by never having heard of Haggershaven. I knew I couldn't pass the most lenient of entrance examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she represented.
“There aren't any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on, “beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows, and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There! That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“Oh, it's true enough.” She moved close, and I caught the scent of her hair and skin. “But there's another side. The Haven is neither wealthy nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend; they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.”
“I've read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought they'd all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”
“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “You'll be surprised to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are not fanatics nor saviors. We don't live in phalansteries, practice group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is voluntary, and we are not concerned with each other's private lives.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didn't mean to annoy you.”
“It's all right. Perhaps I'm touchy; all my life I've seen the squinty suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure we were up to something immoral, or at least illegal. You've no idea what a prickly armor you build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling, 'There goes one of them; I bet they…' whatever unconventional practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the Haven may indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit into the civilization around us?”
“I'm prejudiced. I certainly haven't fitted in myself.”
She didn't answer, and I felt I had gone too far in daring an impulsive identification. Awkwardness made me blurt out further, “Do you... do you think there's any chance Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever reserve I'd tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only childish longing.
“I couldn't say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or rejection depends entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship. All I'm here to offer is train fare. Neither you nor the Haven is bound.”
“I'm perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.
