On Tuesday night after school they both were in the silent room again, he sponging the board contentedly as if this time might go on forever, and she seated working on her papers as if she, too, would be in this room and this particular peace and happiness forever, when suddenly the court-house clock struck.
It was a block away and its great bronze boom shuddered one’s body, making you seem older by the minute. Stunned by that clock, you could not but sense the crashing flow of time, and as the clock said five o’clock Miss Taylor looked up at it for a long time. Then she put down her pen.
“Bob,” she said.
He turned, startled. Neither of them had spoken in the peaceful hour before.
“Will you come here?” she asked.
He put down the sponge slowly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Bob, I want you to sit down.”
“Yes’m.”
She looked at him intently for a moment until he looked away. “Bob, I wonder if you know what I’m going to talk to you about? Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me first.”
“About us.” he said at last.
“How old are you, Bob?”
“Going on fifteen.”
“You’re fourteen years old.”
He winced. “Yes’m.”
“And do you know how old I am?”
“Yes’m. I heard. Twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four.”
“I’ll be twenty-four in ten years,” he said.
“But unfortunately you’re not twenty-four now.”
“No, but sometimes I feel twenty-four.”
“Yes, and sometimes you act it.”
“Do I, really?”
“Now sit still there; we’ve a lot to discuss. It’s very important that we understand what is happening, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“FIRST, LET’S admit we are the greatest and best friends in the world. Let’s admit that I have never had a student like you, nor have I had as much affection for any boy I’ve ever known. And let me speak for you, you’ve found me to be the nicest of all the teachers you’ve ever known.”
“Oh, more than that,” he said.
“Perhaps more than that, but there are facts to be faced and an entire way of life to be examined, and a town and its people and you and I to be considered. I’ve thought this over for a good many days, Bob.
Don’t think I’ve been unaware of my own feelings in the matter. Under some circumstances our friendship would be odd indeed. But then you are no ordinary boy. I know myself pretty well, I think, and I know that I’m not sick, either mentally or physically, and that what I feel is a true regard for your character. But that is not what we consider in this world, Bob, except in a man of a certain age. I don’t know if I’m saying this right.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s just that if I were ten years older, and about fifteen inches taller it’d make all the difference. And that’s silly, to go by how tall a person is.”
“I know it seems foolish,” she said, “when you feel very grown-up and right and have nothing to be ashamed of. You have nothing at all to be ashamed of, Bob—remember that. You have been very honest and good, and I hope that I have been too.”
“You have,” he said.
“Maybe someday people will judge the oldness of a person’s mind accurately enough to say, ‘This is a man, though his body is only fourteen. By some miracle of circumstance and fortune, this is a man, with a man’s recognition of responsibility and position and duty.’ But until that day, Bob, I’m afraid we’re going to have to go by ages and heights in the ordinary way.”
“I don’t like that,” he said.
“Perhaps I don’t like it either, but do you want to end up far unhappier than you are now? Do you want both of us to be unhappy? Which we would certainly be. There really is no way to do anything about us; it is strange even to try to talk about us.”
“Yes’m.”
“But at least we know all about us and that we have been right and fair and good, and that there is nothing wrong with our knowing each other. But we both understand how impossible it is, don’t we?”
“Yes—but I can’t help it.”
“We must decide what to do about it,” she said. “Now only you and I know about this. Later others might know. I can transfer from this school to another one—”
“No!”
“Or I can have you transferred.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“Why?”
“We’re moving. My folks and I, we’re going to live in Madison. We’re leaving next week.”
“It has nothing to do with all this, has it?”
“No, no, everything’s all right. It’s just my father has a new job there. It’s only fifty miles away. I can see you, can’t I, when I come to town?”
“Do you think that would be a good idea?”
“No, I guess not.”
They sat a while in the silent school room.
“How did all of this happen?” he said helplessly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody ever knows. They haven’t known for thousand of years, and I don’t think they ever will. People either like each other or don’t, and sometimes two people like each other who shouldn’t. I can’t explain myself, and certainly you can’t explain you.”
“I guess I’d better get home,” he said.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Oh, gosh no, I could never be mad at you.”
“There’s one more thing. I want you to remember—there are compensations in life. There always are, or we wouldn’t go on living. You don’t feel happy now; neither do I. But something will happen to fix that. Do you believe that?”
“I’d like to.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“If only—” he said.
“What?”
“If only you’d wait for me,” he blurted.
“Ten years?”
“I’d be twenty-four then.”
But I’d be thirty-four and another person entirely, perhaps. No, I don’t think it can be done.”
“Wouldn’t you like it to be done?” he cried.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s silly and it wouldn’t work, but I would like it very much.”
He sat there for a long time. “I’ll never forget you,” he said.
“It’s nice for you to say that, even though it can’t be true, because life isn’t that way. You’ll forget.”
“I’ll never forget. I’ll find a way of never forgetting you,” he said.
She got up and went to the board.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “You can go on now, and no more tending to the boards after school. I’ll assign Helen Stevens to do it.”
He left the room. Looking back, outside, he saw Miss Ann Taylor for the last time. She was standing at the board, slowly erasing it.
HE MOVED away from town the next week and he was gone for sixteen years. He never got down to Green Bluff again until he was thirty and married. And then one spring he and his wife were driving through on their way to Chicago and stopped off there.
Alone, he took a walk around town and finally asked about Miss Ann Taylor. No one remembered at first and then one of them did.
“Oh, yes, the pretty teacher. She died not long after you left.”
Had she ever married? No, come to think of it, she never had.
He walked out to the cemetery in the afternoon and found her stone, which said, “Ann Taylor, born 1910, died 1936.” And he thought, Twenty-six years old. Why, I’m four years older than you are now, Miss Taylor.
Later in the day the people in the town saw Bob Markham’s wife strolling to meet him and they all turned to watch her pass, for her face shifted with bright shadows as she walked. She was the fine peaches of summer in the snow of winter, and she was cool milk for cereal on a hot early summer morning.
And this was one of those rare few days in time when the climate was balanced like a maple leaf between winds that blow just right, one of those days that should have been named, everyone agreed, after Bob Markham’s wife.
The end
