The Headmaster's Dilemma (18 page)

After his fourth martini Elias felt a wonderful buzzing in his head. Wonderful because it was attended with a mental view of a splendid horizon as seen from an Alpine peak. He saw himself as the apostle of truth that Ione had so eloquently invoked. He saw himself as the man he might have been had he married her. Another Michael Sayre! Why not? Of course he knew that the vision wouldn't last. Tomorrow he would be Elias Castor again, his same shabby, joking self, except with a hangover. He beckoned now to his old friend, the gently disapproving bartender, to bring him a fifth cocktail. The one thing he could do would be the one decent thing of all his days, something irradicable that no matter how far down he slipped he would never be able to forget. He would be Sydney Carton and Rosina the guillotine!

He laughed his own old laugh at the sentimental fool that he was and went to the telephone booth in the hall and dialed, with some difficulty, his lawyer's home number.

S
OME MONTHS AFTER
the dramatic collapse of the Castors' lawsuit and the state of Massachusetts's grudging settlement of its complaint for a nominal sum, the rehabilitated headmaster of Averhill and his much relieved wife were enjoying a restful weekend in New York as the guests of her parents. They were leisurely dressing for the small dinner the Fletchers were giving in their honor, and had treated themselves to an early cocktail.

Ione was showing a faintly uneasy curiosity about a visit her husband had paid that afternoon to Elias Castor, who, evicted from his home by Rosina, was living at one of his clubs. She had never told her husband about her one-night affair, not because she feared his jealousy but because she was ashamed of her partner.

"Well, I hadn't seen Castor since the day his case blew up," Michael explained. "And I'd never properly thanked him. After all, he gave up a lot for us."

"He righted a wrong he had done. Still, you have a point. Is he absolutely bust? Should we help him out?"

"He told me he had sold the pornographia collection he had bought with Rosina's money for a cracking sum."

"How like him!"

"And he has custody of Elihu half the year. He says the surrogate may award him an allowance out of the trust Rosina set up for the boy in the months that Elihu is with him."

Ione clapped her hands with a laugh. "You know he
is
clever. He's beaten the terrible Rosina at her own game. I guess we won't have to worry about him."

"But he told me something else. He told me that one of his reasons for killing the case was to assuage your feeling of guilt about embroiling me with Spencer. He seems to think that you wanted us to leave Averhill and that this was a way to bring it about. And that you felt responsible for the whole mess. Is that true, darling?
Did
you want to leave Averhill that much?"

Ione twisted her shoulders in discomfort. Why did this wretched thing have to come up when everything was straightened out? "Oh, maybe I did, a bit, back then. But all that's over now. These awful lawsuits have made me appreciate Averhill and what you're doing for the school. We don't know a good thing until it's about to be snatched away from us."

"But you
were
bored to death with life at school?"

"Oh, maybe a bit. But that's over, as I say."

"I knew it. And I think I've found a solution.
If we
stay at the school, which will depend on whether you think it's one. I want you to share my job, not just in theory but in fact. I want you to accept a salaried post as dean of women. The girls will soon make up half the student body, and I want you to be as much in charge of them as I am of the boys. You will have your own office and teach any course you choose. I suggest you might start with history of art. And when we get our little art gallery—I already have a couple of good pledges—you will, of course, be its curator."

"Oh, Michael!" The sudden tears stung her eyes. "You really are the perfect husband." She reached for the glass on her dresser and finished it with a gulp. "You make me feel so ... so inadequate. I think I want another cocktail."

"Well, you're not going to have one. I don't need an alcoholic wife on my hands, like poor Donald."

Ione was too full of grateful emotion not to welcome the opportunity for an abrupt change of subject. "Speaking of whom, I suppose the great sports plaza is down the drain since his resignation from the board."

"That was only to be expected. But some of the trustees are feeling sorry about the way I've been kicked around. There's talk of raising money for a new gym. One of which even I will approve."

Ione rose now from her dressing table and moved to the door, ready to join her parents in the parlor. "Well, one thing, anyway, is clear from this whole nasty business. The Donald Spencers of this world are not going to run schools like Averhill."

Michael buttoned his dinner jacket as he joined her. "Not yet, my dear. Not yet."