A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School
A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School
102"I can't think of the name of the engine. But it has two pistons. What is that engine? Wellanyway, in this engine first one piston sinks, and then the next one sinks. The one holding on tothe trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell."Someone on the platform exclaimed, "The one who moved first shook the other one'sbalance!""I suppose so." Leper seemed to be rapidly losing interest."Was the one who fell," Brinker said slowly, "was Phineas, in other words the one whomoved first or second?"Leper's face became guileful, his voice flat and impersonal. "I don't intend to implicatemyself. I'm no fool, you know. I'm not going to tell you everything and then have it usedagainst me later. You always did take me for a fool, didn't you? But I'm no fool any more. Iknow when I have information that might be dangerous." He was working himself up toindignation. "Why should I tell you! Just because it happens to suit you!""Leper," Brinker pleaded, "Leper, this is very important—""So am I," he said thinly, "I'm important. You've never realized it, but I'm important too. Yoube the fool," he gazed shrewdly at Brinker, "you do whatever anyone wants whenever theywant it. You be the fool now. Bastard."Phineas had gotten up unnoticed from his chair. "I don't care," he interrupted in an evenvoice, so full of richness that it overrode all the others. "I don't care."I tore myself from the bench toward him. "Phineas—!"He shook his head sharply, closing his eyes, and then he turned to regard me with ahandsome mask of face. "I just don't care. Never mind," and he started across the marble floortoward the doors."Wait a minute!" cried Brinker. "We haven't heard everything yet. We haven't got all thefacts!"The words shocked Phineas into awareness. He whirled as though being attacked frombehind. "You get the rest of the facts, Brinker!" he cried. "You get all your facts!" I had neverseen Finny crying, "You collect every f—ing fact there is in the world!" He plunged out thedoors.The excellent exterior acoustics recorded his rushing steps and the quick rapping of his canealong the corridor and on the first steps of the marble stairway. Then these separate soundscollided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the white marble stairs.
10312Everyone behaved with complete presence of mind. Brinker shouted that Phineas must not bemoved; someone else, realizing that only a night nurse would be at the Infirmary, did not wastetime going there but rushed to bring Dr. Stanpole from his house. Others remembered that PhilLatham, the wrestling coach, lived just across the Common and that he was an expert in firstaid. It was Phil who made Finny stretch out on one of the wide shallow steps of the staircase,and kept him still until Dr. Stanpole arrived.The foyer and the staircase of the First Building were soon as crowded as at midday. PhilLatham found the main light switch, and all the marble blazed up under full illumination. Butsurrounding it was the stillness of near-midnight in a country town, so that the hurrying feetand the repressed voices had a hollow reverberance. The windows, blind and black, retainedtheir look of dull emptiness.Once Brinker turned to me and said, "Go back to the Assembly Room and see if there's anykind of blanket on the platform." I dashed back up the stairs, found a blanket and gave it to PhilLatham. He carefully wrapped it around Phineas.I would have liked very much to have done that myself; it would have meant a lot to me.But Phineas might begin to curse me with every word he knew, he might lose his headcompletely, he would certainly be worse off for it. So I kept out of the way.He was entirely conscious and from the glimpses I caught of his face seemed to be fairlycalm. Everyone behaved with complete presence of mind, and that included Phineas.When Dr. Stanpole arrived there was silence on the stairs. Wrapped tightly in his blanket,with light flooding down on him from the chandelier, Finny lay isolated at the center of a tightcircle of faces. The rest of the crowd looked on from above or below on the stairs, and I stoodon the lower edge. Behind me the foyer was now empty.After a short, silent examination Dr. Stanpole had a chair brought from the Assembly Room,and Finny was lifted cautiously into it. People aren't ordinarily carried in chairs in NewHampshire, and as they raised him up he looked very strange to me, like some tragic andexalted personage, a stricken pontiff. Once again I had the desolating sense of having all alongignored what was finest in him. Perhaps it was just the incongruity of seeing him aloft andstricken, since he was by nature someone who carried others. I didn't think he knew how to actor even how to feel as the object of help. He went past with his eyes closed and his mouthtense. I knew that normally I would have been one of those carrying the chair, sayingsomething into his ear as we went along. My aid alone had never seemed to him in the categoryof help. The reason for this occurred to me as the procession moved slowly across the brilliantfoyer to the doors; Phineas had thought of me as an extension of himself.
- Page 52 and 53: 52"I'm not sure, Leper, but I think
- Page 54 and 55: 54After they had gone we laborers l
- Page 56 and 57: 56To enlist. To slam the door impul
- Page 58 and 59: 588"I can see I never should have l
- Page 60 and 61: 60"So," Brinker curled his lip at m
- Page 62 and 63: 62So the war swept over like a wave
- Page 64 and 65: 64We went into the gym, along a mar
- Page 66 and 67: 66you at the Funny Farm.""In a way,
- Page 68 and 69: 68large rambling, doubtfully Coloni
- Page 70 and 71: 709This was my first but not my las
- Page 72 and 73: 72Giraud but Lepellier; we knew, be
- Page 74 and 75: 74"Who wants a Winter Carnival?" he
- Page 76 and 77: 76Still the sleek brown head bent m
- Page 78 and 79: 78ELWIN LEPER LEPELLIER.
- Page 80 and 81: 80escapes from is danger, death, th
- Page 82 and 83: 82"That's what you say. But that's
- Page 84 and 85: 84a good boy underneath," she must
- Page 86 and 87: 86the Mess Hall, I had to eat every
- Page 88 and 89: 88"How's Leper?" he asked in an off
- Page 90 and 91: 90I didn't say anything."He must be
- Page 92 and 93: 92never will.""You're so wrong I ca
- Page 94 and 95: 94I believed you," he added hurried
- Page 96 and 97: 96acoustics in the school. I couldn
- Page 98 and 99: 98the tree did it by itself. It's a
- Page 100 and 101: 100"Here! Go get him," said Brinker
- Page 104 and 105: 104Dr. Stanpole stopped near the do
- Page 106 and 107: 106hurt my stomach and I could feel
- Page 108 and 109: 108and "psycho" and "sulfa," strang
- Page 110 and 111: 110His face had been struggling to
- Page 112 and 113: 11213The quadrangle surrounding the
- Page 114 and 115: 114Brinker slid his fingers into th
- Page 116 and 117: 116At the gym a platoon was undress
102"I can't think of the name of the engine. But it has two pistons. What is that engine? Wellanyway, in this engine first one piston sinks, and then the next one sinks. The one holding on tothe trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank and fell."Someone on the platform exclaimed, "The one who moved first shook the other one'sbalance!""I suppose so." Leper seemed to be rapidly losing interest."Was the one who fell," Brinker said slowly, "was Phineas, in other words the one whomoved first or second?"Leper's face became guileful, his voice flat and impersonal. "I don't intend to implicatemyself. I'm no fool, you know. I'm not going to tell you everything and then have it usedagainst me later. You always did take me for a fool, didn't you? But I'm no fool any more. Iknow when I have information that might be dangerous." He was working himself up toindignation. "Why should I tell you! Just because it happens to suit you!""Leper," Brinker pleaded, "Leper, this is very important—""So am I," he said thinly, "I'm important. You've never realized it, but I'm important too. Yoube the fool," he gazed shrewdly at Brinker, "you do whatever anyone wants whenever theywant it. You be the fool now. Bastard."Phineas had gotten up unnoticed from his chair. "I don't care," he interrupted in an evenvoice, so full of richness that it overrode all the others. "I don't care."I tore myself from the bench toward him. "Phineas—!"He shook his head sharply, closing his eyes, and then he turned to regard me with ahandsome mask of face. "I just don't care. Never mind," and he started across the marble floortoward the doors."Wait a minute!" cried Brinker. "We haven't heard everything yet. We haven't got all thefacts!"The words shocked Phineas into awareness. He whirled as though being attacked frombehind. "You get the rest of the facts, Brinker!" he cried. "You get all your facts!" I had neverseen Finny crying, "You collect every f—ing fact there is in the world!" He plunged out thedoors.The excellent exterior acoustics recorded his rushing steps and the quick rapping of his canealong the corridor and on the first steps of the marble stairway. Then these separate soundscollided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the white marble stairs.
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