The Groves of Academe: A Novel (Transaction Large Print Books) by Mary McCarthy Page B
Authors: Mary McCarthy
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Domna, shown to a chair, assuring him that his pipe did not bother her, felt at the same time a reluctance to begin on her narrative and a queer conviction that with this eager listener she had an absolutely free hand; owing to his personal security and remoteness from political conspiracy, he would accept whatever she told him as an attested marvel. “You don’t say?” he would interject from time to time and sit back to be regaled with the details. This prediction, she remarked to herself parenthetically, while clearing her throat to commence, would hold good for the greater part of the Jocelyn faculty—with two or three exceptions, they would believe anything you told them touching political entanglements. And with this a terrible temptation came to her, who was a model of honesty: why not involve Maynard Hoar? As even Aristide knew, Jocelyn’s “liberal” spokesman had tuned his guitar more than once to the Russian balalaika and was far more guilty, really, than the misled and hapless Mulcahy, who had not known how to disengage himself from an embarrassing commitment. Why not say that Henry, just now, in confessing his Party membership had also implicated Maynard in the Party tie? Easy to assert, in confidence, and no more, in a sense, than the truth. As soon as this devilish idea reached her full consciousness, she expelled it as wicked and useless—it could only end in ineffectually or in both men’s losing their jobs. Yet the fact that it could have proposed itself to her so readily, easily, and naturally gave her a disturbing shock. What had happened to make her so ready to embark on a course of opportunistic lying? Are we less scrupulous when we plead for others than when we work for ourselves? And how in the course of a few minutes had she come to hate Maynard to the point where she would see him ruined, gladly, and think it a just desert? These questions remained troublingly in her mind, as she began to relate to Aristide, as truthfully as possible, and yet with great anger and conviction, the story of Henry’s dismissal. “You don’t say!” he presently ejaculated. “Incroyable!”
Chapter V
In Camera
A T ONE O’CLOCK IN Mr. Poncy’s office, Domna was tensely retelling the story to a group which now consisted of Mr. Poncy himself, Mrs. Fortune, young Mr. Bentkoop of Comparative Religion, Mr. Kantorowitz of Art, Mr. Van Tour, who had put his round head in, crying, “ Here you all are!” and Mrs. Legendre of the Theatre. Sympathy and shock were instant; a sense of vicarious outrage—the vocational endowment of all educators—fused them like a Greek chorus behind their colleague as protagonist; strophic interjections of pity and disgust broke into the narrative before it was halfway finished. Even Mr. Poncy, who had thought to hold aloof from the affair, found himself with a capital stake in it by sheer virtue of seniority; as the first to have heard the story, he automatically assumed charge of it and kept interrupting Domna to underscore a point or add a detail which had made a strong impression on his own imagination, and very often, in doing so, he slightly altered the original, which in turn had been colored by Domna with the dye of her own temperament. Thus, in the telling and the response, the story became a living thing—the joint possession of the group—and was to some extent already alienated from its hero, of whom everyone agreed that, whatever was to be done (and on this there was great disagreement), he must be kept in the background, lest he do damage to his own case as they saw fit to administer it. In short, as usually happens in such affairs, the Mulcahy cause was immediately expropriated from its owner and taken over by a group which viewed it somewhat in the light of a property or a trust to be handled by an inner circle in accordance with its own best judgment; the element of secrecy enhanced this proprietary illusion; by common consent, lines were drawn between
Domna, shown to a chair, assuring him that his pipe did not bother her, felt at the same time a reluctance to begin on her narrative and a queer conviction that with this eager listener she had an absolutely free hand; owing to his personal security and remoteness from political conspiracy, he would accept whatever she told him as an attested marvel. “You don’t say?” he would interject from time to time and sit back to be regaled with the details. This prediction, she remarked to herself parenthetically, while clearing her throat to commence, would hold good for the greater part of the Jocelyn faculty—with two or three exceptions, they would believe anything you told them touching political entanglements. And with this a terrible temptation came to her, who was a model of honesty: why not involve Maynard Hoar? As even Aristide knew, Jocelyn’s “liberal” spokesman had tuned his guitar more than once to the Russian balalaika and was far more guilty, really, than the misled and hapless Mulcahy, who had not known how to disengage himself from an embarrassing commitment. Why not say that Henry, just now, in confessing his Party membership had also implicated Maynard in the Party tie? Easy to assert, in confidence, and no more, in a sense, than the truth. As soon as this devilish idea reached her full consciousness, she expelled it as wicked and useless—it could only end in ineffectually or in both men’s losing their jobs. Yet the fact that it could have proposed itself to her so readily, easily, and naturally gave her a disturbing shock. What had happened to make her so ready to embark on a course of opportunistic lying? Are we less scrupulous when we plead for others than when we work for ourselves? And how in the course of a few minutes had she come to hate Maynard to the point where she would see him ruined, gladly, and think it a just desert? These questions remained troublingly in her mind, as she began to relate to Aristide, as truthfully as possible, and yet with great anger and conviction, the story of Henry’s dismissal. “You don’t say!” he presently ejaculated. “Incroyable!”
Chapter V
In Camera
A T ONE O’CLOCK IN Mr. Poncy’s office, Domna was tensely retelling the story to a group which now consisted of Mr. Poncy himself, Mrs. Fortune, young Mr. Bentkoop of Comparative Religion, Mr. Kantorowitz of Art, Mr. Van Tour, who had put his round head in, crying, “ Here you all are!” and Mrs. Legendre of the Theatre. Sympathy and shock were instant; a sense of vicarious outrage—the vocational endowment of all educators—fused them like a Greek chorus behind their colleague as protagonist; strophic interjections of pity and disgust broke into the narrative before it was halfway finished. Even Mr. Poncy, who had thought to hold aloof from the affair, found himself with a capital stake in it by sheer virtue of seniority; as the first to have heard the story, he automatically assumed charge of it and kept interrupting Domna to underscore a point or add a detail which had made a strong impression on his own imagination, and very often, in doing so, he slightly altered the original, which in turn had been colored by Domna with the dye of her own temperament. Thus, in the telling and the response, the story became a living thing—the joint possession of the group—and was to some extent already alienated from its hero, of whom everyone agreed that, whatever was to be done (and on this there was great disagreement), he must be kept in the background, lest he do damage to his own case as they saw fit to administer it. In short, as usually happens in such affairs, the Mulcahy cause was immediately expropriated from its owner and taken over by a group which viewed it somewhat in the light of a property or a trust to be handled by an inner circle in accordance with its own best judgment; the element of secrecy enhanced this proprietary illusion; by common consent, lines were drawn between
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