Government mails, never efficient and always expensive, being one of the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic post limited to local areas, I dispatched the letters by Wells, Fargo to a comprehensive list of colleges. I can’t say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for though I knew the company’s system of heavily armed guards would insure delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation of any answers. As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out of my mind, dredging it up at rarer intervals, always a trifle more embarrassed by my presumption.
It was several months later, toward the end of September, that the telegram came signed Thomas K Haggerwells. It read, ACCEPT NO OFFER TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN.
I hadnt sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania, where the telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I knew of no colleges in that vicinity. And I had never heard of Mr (or Doctor or Professor) Haggerwells. I might have thought the message a mean joke, except that Tyss’s nature didnt run to such humor and no one else knew of the letters except those to whom they were addressed.
I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories I consulted, which wasnt too surprising considering the slovenly way these were put together. I decided that if such a place existed I could only wait patiently until the “representative,” if there really was one, arrived.
Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some, straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to arrange the stock would have been futile—and took up a recent emendation of Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles by one Captain Eisenhower.
I was so deep in the good captain’s analysis (he might have made a respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity) that I heard no customer enter, sensed no impatient presence. I was only recalled from my book by a rather sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”
“No maam,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the page. “He’s out for the moment. Can I help you?”
My eyes, accustomed to the store’s poor light, had the advantage over hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street. Secure in my audacity, I measured her vital femininity, a quality which seemed, if such a thing is possible, impersonal. There was nothing overtly bold or provocative about her, though I’m sure my mother would have thinned her lips at the black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized the contour of her breasts. At a time when women used every device to call attention to their helplessness and consequently their desirability and the implied need for men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to say, Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or incidentally but primarily; what are you going to do about it?
I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact that she was bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather large-boned; certainly there was nothing related to me about it. Nor was it connected with surface attributes; she was not beautiful and still further from being pretty, though she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair, ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply; her eyes appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could vary from pale gray to blue-green.) The fleshly greediness was betrayed, if at all, only by the width and set of her lips, and that insolent expression.
She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells. I’m looking for a Mr Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”