A_Separate_Peace_-_Full_Text

44
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