Student and Teacher Ch. 01

Nobody pays much attention to Westminster College: in Charlottesville, all eyes are focused on the University of Virginia, the storied institution of higher learning founded in the eighteenth century by Thomas Jefferson and attended by Edgar Allan Poe and many other luminaries. But Westminster itself dates its origins to the tumultuous post-Civil War period, when a new generation of Southerners was attempting to put the humiliation of defeat in battle behind it and establish a "New South" that could compete both economically and culturally with the victorious North.

Some years ago Westminster duly celebrated its sesquicentennial and in its quiet way continued to operate as the classic "small liberal arts college." With a student body numbering less than a thousand and its campus retaining the classic architecture of ivy-covered brick buildings (grudgingly upgraded for modern technology), it was easy to think of Westminster as a relic of the past with little to offer to the distracted denizens of the twenty-first century. But most of the students, faculty, and administration took pride in catering to an old-fashioned way of life that to them still had value—so long as it didn't descend into the disreputable sins of racism, sexism, and classism.

Twenty-year-old Damon Whittier, now starting his junior year, felt as comfortable at Westminster as he ever had. Coming from a small town in rural Virginia where learning was not highly valued (and where, he was forced to admit, he didn't apply himself to his studies as ardently as he should have), he felt unprepared for the rigors of college life; during his freshman year he frankly floundered, fishing around for some discipline to focus on while at the same time striving to resist the temptations that even this staid institution offered—notably free-flowing alcohol at the all too frequent frat parties and the bevy of beautiful Southern belles that seemed to populate every one of his classes. The former temptation he did resist, and he was proud that (almost) no alcohol had ever passed his lips. The latter temptation he wasn't quite so successful in combating.

While acknowledging that his wandering eye couldn't help devouring the sight of gorgeous girls at every street corner, he nevertheless knew that females of all ages must be treated with the respect they deserved; he was proud that he had never laid a hand on any woman or girl who did not welcome his advances. And yet, he recognized that a fair number of women did welcome those advances. At five foot ten and with a solid musculature from head to toe, he could take justifiable pride in his appearance. He felt that his face, with its clean, honest features and topped with a mass of curly blond hair, was his greatest asset. He had quickly become captain of the college's baseball team, his expertise at the plate and at first base propelling the team to preeminence in the modest league where Westminster played with colleges of similar stature.

Given his athletic prowess and other qualities, it was no surprise that Damon had bedded down with a good many female students during his first two years of college; but none of them—to say nothing of the several girls whose bodies he had similarly explored in high school—really suited him. It was not that he was excessively particular, and in some cases he had to confess that he had been dumped by the female in question. It was just that he hadn't found exactly the right girl.

But now, he thought, maybe he had.

All summer he had thought of Iris Farquhar, whose very name proclaimed her a proper scion of an old and distinguished Virginia family. He had been hypnotized by her physical assets: an hourglass figure that (in spite of her relatively conservative clothing) emphasized her swelling breasts, flaring hips, flat stomach, exquisitely curved bottom, strong thighs, and tapered calves. But most of all (as in his own case), it was her face that entranced him. How could he describe, short of poetry, those deep green eyes, slender nose, Cupid's-bow mouth, high cheekbones, and gentle jawline, all framed by well-styled tresses of auburn hair? At about five foot six she was a good height for him, and he yearned to wrap that heavenly frame in his arms and paste a wet kiss on that sensuous mouth.

But Damon's interest extended far beyond her appearance. There was an indefinable delicacy, grace, and fragility about Iris that contrasted sharply with the loud, brazen manner of most of his female classmates. To him she embodied a classic feminine sensibility that was in no way submissive. It was, he felt, a rare quality in today's environment.

There was only one problem. Iris Farquhar was a professor.

True, she was a fairly young professor. He had done his research on her, and various Internet sources had established that she was thirty-two years old, unmarried, and relatively new to the college, as she was starting her fourth year as a professor of history. The class he had taken with her in the spring semester of his sophomore year—on the Civil War (what else?)—had been stimulating in more ways than one, and he recognized that he had done his best on papers, quizzes, and class discussion for the sole purpose of pleasing her and making her notice him.

How much she had really noticed him, however, was frustratingly unclear to Damon. Every now and then, as she handed a term paper back to him, he thought he detected a little gleam in her eyes that went beyond mere approval of his work. But getting Iris to smile at him had proved unusually difficult—and not only because Professor Farquhar seemed perennially bathed in a kind of wistful melancholy that only enhanced Damon's fascination with her.

His feelings, he sensed, went way beyond a mere "crush." For God's sake, he wasn't a kid anymore! He had had enough other involvements with women to tell the difference between a crush, a mere craving for the satisfaction of lust, and something far deeper and more intimate.

He had to get to the bottom of these feelings—and the only way to do that was to get to know Iris Farquhar better.

But how to do that? Well, there were various ways. It would, for example, help to know where she lived. But the Internet was, irritatingly enough, no use in that regard. He could have tried to follow her home after her last class, but he felt that was too creepy: he was no stalker! So he chose a slightly more roundabout method.

The secretary of the history department was a middle-aged woman, Carrie Branscom, whom Damon knew had gone through a pretty tough divorce—lots of bitterness (her husband, curse him, had cheated on her) and with a bitter custody battle over their two children. Damon felt bad about taking advantage of Ms. Branscom during this difficult time in her life, but the need to establish a bond with Iris was inexorable.

And so, one late afternoon toward the end of September, Damon sauntered over to her desk, as she was getting ready to shut the office down for the day. He knew that she liked him—knew also that she had given him more than a few covert looks at his butt and chest whenever he walked into the office. So now, as she greeted him with a flushed face, he sat himself down at the corner of her desk and said:

"Say, Ms. Branscom, I wonder if you could help me."

She had trouble looking up at his face. "Um, yes, Damon? What is it?"

"I really need to talk to Professor Farquhar."

Carrie frowned. "You're not taking a class with her this semester, are you?"

"Well, no," Damon admitted. "But I'm thinking I might want to write an honors thesis with her next year, and I'd like to sound her out on some topics that might be suitable."

"Damon," Carrie chided, "you won't have to think about that for another year! What's your hurry?"

Damon wasn't ready to admit defeat just yet. "But I wanted to get a head start on the research! There's been a lot written on some of these subjects, so I wanted to get some advice from her. Could you give me her home address? I'd like to talk to her right away."

Carrie froze, her face going blank. "Damon, I'm not allowed to give out that information. Privacy, you know."

"Oh, Carrie," Damon said, boldly using the secretary's first name, "it's just me! She knows who I am: I took a class with her last semester, and we got to be real good friends."

That was a considerable exaggeration, and Carrie detected it at once. She became even more officious than before, locking her desk firmly and getting up to turn off the lights in the office.

"I think you'd better go home now, Damon," she snapped.

Damon's shoulders drooped in defeat as she shuffled off the desk and began following Carrie out of the room.

But as they approached the door, he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him. Carrie, quite a bit shorter than Damon and a little on the heavy side, let out a gasp as she gazed up at his face. She placed a hand on his chest, but otherwise didn't pull away.

"Are you sure you can't help me?" Damon said, peering into her eyes.

"Damon," she breathed, "you're being very naughty. Please let go of me."

But Damon didn't let go of her. Instead, he lowered his head and gently melded his lips with hers.

Carrie let out a kind of mewing sound and unconsciously wrapped one arm around his neck. She also pressed her body against Damon's strong frame, and he felt her heavy breasts against his chest, even through the silk blouse and bra she was wearing.

It was only after several seconds that Carrie finally pulled away.

"Shame on you!" she whispered, although Damon felt that what she was really thinking was: Shame on me for yielding to this fatally succulent boy! "You mustn't do that."

"Oh, Carrie," Damon said, nuzzling her cheek, the side of her neck, and even her earlobe, "I just wanna know where she lives." He began slipping his hand from the small of her back to points south.

"Damon, stop that at once!" she said sharply, reaching around her back to tug at his arm. "If you really want to know, I'll tell you."

"You will?" he said, his eyes staring brightly at hers. "That's great! Do you need to open up your desk again?"

"No, I know the address," she said, giving a location on Westover Lane, not far from campus.

"You're the best, Carrie!" Damon cried, giving her another kiss on the mouth and, to her outrage, giving her a pat on the rump as he rushed out of the room.

*

Damon was inclined to rush right over to Iris's house, but realized that was inadvisable. It was getting toward dinnertime, and it would be better to drop in on her after she had had time to prepare and consume her evening meal. But as Damon headed toward the college cafeteria to devour his own dinner, all manner of thoughts and conjectures flitted through his mind.

He was reasonably certain that Iris wasn't married. But what if she was divorced? What if she was trying to reconcile with this phantom ex-husband, who must have treated her very badly? Then an even more horrible thought occurred to him: what if she was a widow? Good God! She was pretty young to be a widow, but it had been known to happen. Mightn't that account for her air of perpetual gloom?

More realistically, Damon wondered if she had a boyfriend. How could such a lovely and wondrous creature be totally unattached? And what if this loathsome fellow actually lived in her house? What if, at this very moment, she was dutifully whipping up a dinner for him like some female drudge waiting hand and foot on some small-time pasha? The very thought of it made Damon's blood boil; but also made him doubt the wisdom of bearding her—and him—in their own den.

But as he cheerlessly finished his largely untasted meal, he decided to cast caution to the winds and head over to Iris's house. He had idled over his meal long enough so that it would be getting toward eight p.m. by the time he got to Westover Lane—plenty of time for her to have finished eating and cleaning up. The prospect that she could actually be going out on the town on this Wednesday night was something he refused to consider.

As he made his way to the address that Carrie Branscom had given him, he saw that it was a surprisingly large and venerable structure: two full stories with, apparently, a basement, if the narrow windows at the ground level were any indication. There was a well-kept garden in the front yard, and Damon's heart was squeezed at the thought of Iris tending carefully and lovingly to the plants and flowers strewn artistically all around the yard. Did she get little streaks of dirt on her face while bending down to pluck weeds? Did her hair get prettily disarrayed when she trimmed the rosebushes, lilacs, and hydrangeas? It would have been too wonderful if there had been some irises in the garden, but offhand he didn't see any.

He was encouraged by the fact that a few lights seemed to be on—some on the main floor, and at least one upstairs. So someone must be home. He hoped it was only one person.

It was with increasing trepidation that he strode up to the front door and, after a nervous pause, knocked on the door.

He thought he heard a little cry of surprise from inside the house, but that could have been his imagination. It felt like an eternity before the door finally opened.

Iris Farquhar was standing before him.

Damon wasn't sure whether she had changed clothes after coming home, for he had not seen her on campus that day. But she was wearing attire that, while seemingly comfortable, still seemed a bit on the formal side: a cotton blouse, wool skirt, and flat shoes (not slippers). When she saw him, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open a little. That created a picture of mild apprehension that almost made Damon rush up to embrace her and reassure her with professions of his devotion—but he knew that any action like that would be fatal to his cause.

"H-hello, ma'am—I mean, professor," he stammered like a dopey middle schooler. And when she failed to respond, remaining stock-still in frozen wonderment, he went on: "Do you remember me? Damon Whittier? From last semester?"

Suddenly a smile broke out over her face, to Damon's elation. "Why, of course! Damon . . . you were one of the best students in my Civil War class."

The praise, mild as it was, caused Damon to blush all over and made him even more tongue-tied. Before he could utter she continued:

"What brings you here? Something the matter?"

Thankfully, it didn't occur to her to wonder how he had learned where she lived.

"Um, well," he blundered, "I was just hoping to talk to you about stuff."

Stuff! Could he have been any more stupid? This wasn't going at all the way he had intended; and yet, he realized he couldn't just blurt out his feelings to her without laying some sort of groundwork.

"Okay," she said uncertainly, and after some further hesitation said: "Would you like to come inside?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and almost pushed his way past her.

He found himself in a long corridor that, he could see, led all the way to the kitchen at the back of the house. To his immediate left was a small room that appeared to serve as a study, if the computer on the desk and the array of bookshelves was any guide. A little ways beyond that, on the left, was a set of stairs leading to the upper floor. To his right was an archway leading to the living room—or, as he discovered when he stalked wide-eyed into the room, a combined living and dining room of immense length, perhaps thirty feet. A table with six chairs was at the back of the long area, and another, smaller archway led to the kitchen. The living room was sparsely but tastefully furnished with a comfortable sofa, loveseat (he tried not to think of the two of them sharing that cozy spot), and several easy chairs surrounding a low, glass-surfaced coffee table. A few bookshelves lined the wall—filled not with books but with carefully chosen knickknacks that probably had profound sentimental value to her. Damon was impressed that Iris refused to have some immense flatscreen TV dominating the room. Maybe she didn't watch TV at all—bully for her!

She gestured with one delicate arm toward the sofa. "Please sit down."

He did so, glorying in the softness of the cushions and the faint feminine perfume that seemed to arise from them when he sat down. This was her smell, and it almost intoxicated him on the spot.

Iris made her way to a long sideboard that had a few bottles on it.

"Would you care for a drink?" she said. Then she paused in doubt. "Um, do you drink? Are you old enough?"

He answered all the questions with a single answer. "No, ma'am. I don't care for any refreshments right now."

With a brief nod, Iris made her way back to the sofa and gingerly sat down on it, at least two feet away from Damon. She gazed at him expectantly.

All Damon could do was drink the glorious beauty of her face and figure. The cotton blouse couldn't conceal her heavy breasts, and the knee-length skirt rose up just a little when she seated herself, exposing her knees and even an inch or two of her thighs. His mouth went so dry that he doubted whether he could even speak. He now kicked himself for not asking for a soft drink or other beverage.

"What would you like to talk about?" she said in that faintly lilting, musical voice of hers.

Damon licked his lips and swallowed. "Well, ma'am, I'm really thinking that I want to major in history. It's so fascinating."

Another dopey thing to say! But she smiled again and said, "You're quite right about that."

"So," he said, dredging up the silly lie that he had told Carrie, "I was wondering about what subject I might do for an honors thesis. I'd really like to study with you."

She looked indulgently at him. "Oh, Damon, I think you're getting ahead of yourself. There's lots of time to think about an honors thesis—you wouldn't do that until senior year. Right now you should focus on the credits you need to get your history major."

He really didn't want to talk about academics and didn't know how much longer he could keep up the charade. The inclination to tell her how he felt was becoming irresistible, and he felt himself covered with nervous perspiration. He desperately looked around the room to find some way of changing the topic of conversation. Then an inspiration hit him.

"This is such a big house!" he said, trying to convey how impressed he was at the grandeur of the place. "Do you really live her all by yourself?"

That was, he felt, a clever move. Now he would definitively know if there was some vile live-in boyfriend on the premises.

Iris's expression became clouded for some reason. "It's my family home," she said slowly. "I grew up here."

At once, Damon's mind was filled with images of Iris as a little girl running around the house, up and down the stairs, and out into the back yard. I'm sure she was just the cutest little girl imaginable! Could she really have spent her whole life in this house? But no: he knew, from his various researches, that she had gotten her B.A. in history from Villanova and her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr. Why she had returned here, to lowly Westminster College, was beyond his understanding—but it was lucky for him that she did!

Her answer still didn't resolve the question of who (else) actually lived here. "So your parents . . .?" he probed, hoping he wasn't broaching some awkward subject. For God's sake, they weren't dead, were they?

To his relief she said, "They've retired to Florida. They finally got tired of the cold winters here."

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

She didn't seem to mind his nosiness. "I have an older sister. She and her family live a little ways away, in Waynesboro."