The dousing extinguished Quackenbush’s rage, and he let go of me. I scrambled back onto the float, still seared by what he had said. “The next time you call anybody maimed,” I bit off the words harshly so he would understand all of them, “you better make sure they are first.”

“Get out of here, Forrester,” he said bitterly from the water, “you’re not wanted around here, Forrester. Get out of here.”

I fought that battle, that first skirmish of a long campaign, for Finny. Until the back of my hand cracked against Quackenbush’s face I had never pictured myself in the role of Finny’s defender, and I didn’t suppose that he would have thanked me for it now. He was too loyal to anything connected with himself—his roommate, his dormitory, his class, his school, outward in vastly expanded circles of loyalty until I couldn’t imagine who would be excluded. But it didn’t feel exactly as though I had done it for Phineas. It felt as though I had done it for myself.

If so I had little profit to show as I straggled back toward the dormitory dripping wet, with the job I had wanted gone, temper gone, mind circling over and over through the whole soured afternoon. I knew now that it was fall all right; I could feel it pressing clammily against my wet clothes, an unfriendly, discomforting breath in the air, an edge of wintery chill, air that shriveled, soon to put out the lights on the countryside. One of my legs wouldn’t stop trembling, whether from cold or anger I couldn’t tell. I wished I had hit him harder.

Someone was coming toward me along the bent, broken lane which led to the dormitory, a lane out of old London, ancient houses on either side leaning as though soon to tumble into it, cobblestones heaving underfoot like a bricked-over ocean squall—a figure of great height advanced down them toward me. It could only be Mr. Ludsbury; no one else could pass over these stones with such contempt for the idea of tripping.

The houses on either side were inhabited by I didn’t know who; wispy, fragile old ladies seemed most likely. I couldn’t duck into one of them. There were angles and bumps and bends everywhere, but none big enough to conceal me. Mr. Ludsbury loomed on like a high-masted clipper ship in this rocking passage, and I tried to go stealthily by him on my watery, squeaking sneakers.

“Just one moment, Forrester, if you please.” Mr. Ludsbury’s voice was bass, British, and his Adam’s apple seemed to move as much as his mouth when he spoke. “Has there been a cloudburst in your part of town?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, sir, I fell into the river.” I apologized by instinct to him for this mishap which discomforted only me.

“And could you tell me how and why you fell into the river?”

“I slipped.”

“Yes.” After a pause he went on. “I think you have slipped in any number of ways since last year. I understand for example that there was gaming in my dormitory this summer while you were living there.” He was in charge of the dormitory; one of the dispensations of those days of deliverance, I realized now, had been his absence.

“Gaming? What kind of gaming, sir?”

“Cards, dice,” he shook his long hand dismissingly, “I didn’t inquire. It didn’t matter. There won’t be any more of it.”

“I don’t know who that would have been.” Nights of black-jack and poker and unpredictable games invented by Phineas rose up in my mind; the back room of Leper’s suite, a lamp hung with a blanket so that only a small blazing circle of light fell sharply amid the surrounding darkness; Phineas losing even in those games he invented, betting always for what should win, for what would have been the most brilliant successes of all, if only the cards hadn’t betrayed him. Finny finally betting his icebox and losing it, that contraption, to me.

I thought of it because Mr. Ludsbury was just then saying, “And while I’m putting the dormitory back together I’d better tell you to get rid of that leaking icebox. Nothing like that is ever permitted in the dormitory, of course. I notice that everything went straight to seed during the summer and that none of you old boys who knew our standards so much as lifted a finger to help Mr. Prud’homme maintain order. As a substitute for the summer he couldn’t have been expected to know everything there was to be known at once. You old boys simply took advantage of the situation.”

I stood there shaking in my wet sneakers. If only I had truly taken advantage of the situation, seized and held and prized the multitudes of advantages the summer offered me; if only I had.

I said nothing, on my face I registered the bleak look of a defendant who knows the court will never be swayed by all the favorable evidence he has. It was a schoolboy look; Mr. Ludsbury knew it well.

“There’s a long-distance call for you,” he continued in the tone of the judge performing the disagreeable duty of telling the defendant his right. “I’ve written the operator’s number on the pad beside the telephone in my study. You may go in and call.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

He sailed on down the lane without further reference to me, and I wondered who was sick at home.

But when I reached his study—low-ceilinged, gloomy with books, black leather chairs, a pipe rack, frayed brown rug, a room which students rarely entered except for a reprimand—I saw on the pad not an operator’s number from my home town, but one which seemed to interrupt the beating of my heart.

I called this operator, and listened in wonder while she went through her routine as though this were just any long-distance call, and then her voice left the line and it was pre-empted, and charged, by the voice of Phineas. “Happy first day of the new academic year!”

“Thanks, thanks a lot, it’s a—you sound—I’m glad to hear your—”

“Stop stuttering, I’m paying for this. Who’re you rooming with?”

“Nobody. They didn’t put anyone else in the room.”

“Saving my place for me! Good old Devon. But anyway, you wouldn’t have let them put anyone else in there, would you?” Friendliness, simple outgoing affection, that was all I could hear in his voice.

“No, of course not.”

“I didn’t think you would. Roommates are roommates. Even if they do have an occasional fight. God you were crazy when you were here.”

“I guess I was. I guess I must have been.”

“Completely over the falls. I wanted to be sure you’d recovered. That’s why I called up. I knew that if you’d let them put anybody else in the room in my place then you really were crazy. But you didn’t, I knew you wouldn’t. Well, I did have just a trace of doubt that was because you talked so crazy here. I have to admit I had just a second when I wondered. I’m sorry about that, Gene. Naturally I was completely wrong. You didn’t let them put anyone else in my spot.”

“No, I didn’t let them.”

“I could shoot myself for thinking you might. I really knew you wouldn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“And I spent my money on a long-distance call! All for nothing. Well, it’s spent, on you too. So start talking, pal. And it better be good. Start with sports. What are you going out for?”

“Crew. Well, not exactly crew. Managing crew. Assistant crew manager.”

“Assistant crew manager!”

“I don’t think I’ve got the job—”

“Assistant crew manager!”

“I got in a fight this after—”

“Assistant crew manager! ” No voice could course with dumfoundment like Finny’s “You are crazy!”

“Listen, Finny, I don’t care about being a big man on the campus or anything.”

“Whaaat?” Much more clearly than anything in Mr. Ludsbury’s study I could see his face now, grimacing in wide, obsessed stupefaction. “Who said anything about whoever they are!”

“Well then what are you so worked up for?”

“What do you want to manage crew for? What do you want to manage for? What’s that got to do with sports?”