The trigger was well-oiled. The shot rang out over the water. The rebound jerked his hand up.
Shoot? sure it does. Quick, now, there'll be somebody coming. Spread out your bed for me, Nan Ellen death.
He climbed to his feet on the parapet and pressed the muzzle of the gun under his chin. Warm it was. Black terror shrieked through him. He was breathing hard. With cold, firm hands he made sure the barrel pointed straight through his throat to his brain. He pulled the trigger.
His body pitched from the parapet of the bridge, struck the snowcovered slant of the pier, and slid into the river.
[VII]
Fanshaw opened his eyes, stretched himself in bed, and was aware hazily of luminous grey sheets of rain outside the window. He reached for his watch and his glasses. Seven-forty-three; that means ten minutes more of delicious languor. He took off his glasses again and lay staring at the ceiling, happily thinking of nothing. The steam pipes were popping and cracking, and there was a dribble of water from the bathroom. Ought to have them fix that faucet. His mind was groping to remember what the nine o'clock section meeting would be about. Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, Gozzoli, names of Italian painters streamed through his head. But we're through with them; must be about the Dutch, some Fleming. Why cudgel his brains? This was April: April, May, June, then the treadmill stopped. Freedom. Imagine living always free like a Chinese sage in a hut of rice-matting beside a waterfall; to retire to an exquisite pavillion ornamented with red and black lacquer, living on rice and tea and trout from the stream. The mist steaming up out of the valleys and the constant shimmer of moisture on the green, delicate leaves of ferns. And Wenny for an attendant to carry the begging bowl, or Wenny, brown from the sun, gleaming with sweat as he worked the rice fields with a piece of scarlet cloth about his loins. Days eternal with quiet to elaborate thoughts of such subtlety that ... How delicious to lie here and let his mind ramble. And Nan. Only five thousand a year would do amply for a villa in Italy somewhere, perhaps on the shore near Sorrento. The old dream of love; roses handed over supper-tables at Capri, on a terrace with low music ... Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea ... and the moon rising out of the dark sea. No, Capri would be too crowded, full of noisy, fast people. A grey old house somewhere with a courtyard. Mr. and Mrs. J. Fanshaw Macdougan, at home. Nan the way she had looked that night at the fancy dress party at the Logans, her hair caught back from her forehead under a jewelled net, playing the violin in a long-raftered hall, a little musty with the smell of the old incense-drenched tapestries, and through the windows in great, cool gusts the smell of jessamine from the garden. Little trips to hilltowns to look at frescoes, caffe con latte in station restaurants, jokes about Karl Baedeker, a cab rattling pleasantly over the cobblestones driven by a brown youth with a flower behind his ear... Then he thought of his mother's wrinkled cheeks against the pillow and the peevish lines at the ends of her mouth. Poor lamb.
He jumped up with a jerk and looked at his watch. Lord, a quarter past eight. I shan't have time to shave. He ran, shivering a little, to shut the window. What beastly weather to be having in April.
The coffee at the cafeteria had a sour taste that morning, hastily swallowed amid a rattle of dishes on tin trays and shrill talk. Fanshaw was peevishly telling himself this was the last year he'd lead this dog's life, getting up out of bed this way every morning to hear a lot of young nincompoops make themselves ridiculous about the history of painting. If only it weren't for Mother, all the things he would be able to do! Crossing the yard, he began to feel better. His unbuckled arctics clinked cheerfully as he walked. The groups of boys in brown hats at the doors of the lecture halls, the tattoo of springy footsteps on the boardwalks, the ringing voices and the softmoulded cheeks flushed by the rain spun a net about him warm and full of freshness that gave him a sense of being within protecting walls and proceeding nonchalantly towards some aim. What else could he do that would give him such pleasant surroundings, and freedom for part of the year. And this youth always welling up about him. He sat down at the yellow-varnished desk in the semicircular lecture hall that smelt of chalk and turpentine that drifted in from the Museum, pushed off his arctics and strolled about, chatting with students and giving an occasional glance at his watch. Of course he might try being agent for some dealer, he was thinking as he talked. There was money to be made that way. Awfully low, of course. Still, for a year in Italy, to talk endlessly with good friends like Wenny and Nan at supper-tables in the moonlight in a smell of roses. The class was under way, would soon be over. That story overheard in a smoker about a rose. How disgusting, nauseating; one couldn't keep things like that out of one's head. "Rubens," he was saying. "No, I don't see why we should waste much time on Rubens, Mr. Jones; more acreage than intensity in Rubens, and all of it smeared with raspberry jam." The class laughed.
After the lecture hall had emptied, Fanshaw stood a moment behind the desk thoughtfully plucking at the elastic round a bundle of papers. Let's see, he'd have time to go over to Wenny's for a moment before starting to sort those photographs. Pulling on his arctics again, he walked down the road towards Conant. The snow had nearly vanished under the beat of the warm rain. Now there'd be some spring. It was time he and Wenny and Nan were going to Nahant again. He climbed the stairs and knocked at the room door. The door was unlatched and swung open. The bed had not been slept in. There were no papers on the desk. Fanshaw felt a sudden catch of excitement in his throat. Could he be out with some woman? Wenny, with drunken eyes and flushed cheeks, in the arms of a fat, painted blonde. Horrible. He was too fine for that sort of thing. Poor kid. On the mantelpiece was a little snapshot of Nan propped against some volumes of the Golden Bough. Fanshaw barely glanced at it and flushed as if he had caught himself intruding into some inner privacy. Poor Wenny, he probably is crazy about her.