The Headmaster's Dilemma by Louis Auchincloss Page B

have been the key. You should learn to be more suspicious, my dear. It would stand you in good stead if you ever found yourself in the position of a foundation head having to give away large sums of money."
    "Now what in the world made you think of that?"
    "Something I've been waiting all day to tell you. I've a letter from the chairman of the Gladwin Foundation asking me if you were interested enough in their directorship to come down to New York for a preliminary interview."
    He gave her a long hard stare. "Ione, what have you been up to?"
    "I simply told him at the wedding anniversary party that you were well qualified for the job. He was the one who brought the matter up. I didn't commit you in any way. I didn't even say you were interested."
    "I'm not. But obviously you are. That's what troubles me. Oh, my poor darling, are you so wretched at Averhill?"
    "No, no! I'm only thinking of you and your future. Really, I am! Won't you go down, even for just an interview?"
    "I could not think of leaving the school at this juncture. Even for you, my dearest!"
    "Oh, I'd hate it if you did it only for me!" And to his dismay, she burst into tears. "Oh, we'll stay in Averhill forever, of course. For ever and ever! And I'm going to be good about it, too. I mean that!"
    Michael did the only thing he could do: he made love to her. But he was beginning to wonder if he might be becoming a bit of a Bossy Caldwell. As Bossy Caldwell seemed already to suspect.

6

    M ICHAEL AFTERWARD always told himself that it might have worked. The thing that wrecked it was something he could never have guessed and something to which the answer was never found. How did Bossy find out that Elihu had accused him of rape? Had he simply divined it from the fact that no disciplinary action was taken? Was he subtle enough to have gleaned the fact that no headmaster could afford the publicity that such an accusation would arouse? He was certainly very subtle.
    It later appeared that Caldwell had snarled at Elihu, "I'm going to get you for what you did, you little fairy sneak. You won't know when or how until it happens, but you'll know every minute of the day and night it's surely coming! Oh, yes, we'll get you!"
    "We," poor Elihu wondered. Who were "we"? Perhaps the whole mighty sixth form, uniting to avenge one of their own? Would they "pump" him, as the terrible term was, for a revenge carried out while a sympathetic faculty turned its back? Mightn't they even drown him by mistake?
    Elihu lived now in such panic that he could hardly concentrate on his studies. In his dormitory the boys didn't know just what had happened on the night when Mr. Smithers had found Bossy Caldwell in his cubicle and sent him sharply back to his own, but the speculation was rife and lewd. What they did surmise from Bossy's sly wink and shoulder shrug and malevolent glance at Elihu was that the latter had been guilty of some dishonorable "snitch" for which nemesis was waiting. In a matter of only a week Elihu was assigned to the infirmary with some kind of undiagnosed nervous disorder, and the next his dormmates knew was that he had been sent home for an indefinite period to effect a cure.
    Elihu's panic dissolved behind the thick walls of the protecting Beaux Arts mansion on Seventieth Street, but he knew that his salvation depended on his never returning to Averhill, at least while Bossy was there. There was obviously only one way to assure himself of this, and at last he gathered the courage to tell his story to his anxious mother, who had had him under constant interrogation as to just what had occurred at school to upset him so. In his version of the episode, of course, Bossy appeared as a lustful ape and himself as the chaste and violated victim.
    The result was even more than he had hoped. His mother's eyes widened as he had never seen them do, and her scream tore his eardrums.
    "Oh, my poor darling ravished child! What can I do to make up for this dreadful thing? Tell me, tell