A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

62So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us,overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a wordfrom Phineas; I had simply ducked, that was all, and the wave's concentrated power hadhurtled harmlessly overhead, no doubt throwing others roughly up on the beach, but leavingme peaceably treading water as before. I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitablyfollowed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in."I like the winter," Finny assured me for the fourth time, as we came back from chapel thatmorning."Well, it doesn't like you." Wooden plank walks had been placed on many of the schoolpaths for better footing, but there were icy patches everywhere on them. A crutch misplacedand he could be thrown down upon the frozen wooden planking, or into the ice-encrustedsnow.Even indoors Devon was a nest of traps for him. The school had been largely rebuilt with amassive bequest from an oil family some years before in a peculiar style of Puritan grandeur,as though Versailles had been modified for the needs of a Sunday school. This opulent sobrietybetrayed the divided nature of the school, just as in a different way the two rivers that itstraddled did. From the outside the buildings were reticent, severe straight lines of red brick orwhite clapboard, with shutters standing sentinel beside each window, and a few unassumingwhite cupolas placed here and there on the roofs because they were expected and not pretty,like Pilgrim bonnets.But once you passed through the Colonial doorways, with only an occasional fan window orlow relief pillar to suggest that a certain muted adornment was permissible, you entered anextravaganza of Pompadour splendor. Pink marble walls and white marble floors wereenclosed by arched and vaulted ceilings; an assembly room had been done in the manner of theHigh Italian Renaissance, another was illuminated by chandeliers flashing with crystalteardrops; there was a wall of fragile French windows overlooking an Italian garden of marblebric-à-brac; the library was Provençal on the first floor, rococo on the second. And everywhere,except in the dormitories, the floors and stairs were of smooth, slick marble, more treacherouseven than the icy walks."The winter loves me," he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added,"I mean as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when youreally love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love." I didn't think thatthis was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false thantrue, but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true. So Ididn't argue.The board walk ended and he moved a little ahead of me as we descended a sloping pathtoward our first class. He picked his way with surprising care, surprising in anyone who beforehad used the ground mainly as a point of departure, as the given element in a suspended world