The Last Gentleman

minutes?”
    â€œLook. Jamie wants to go and I think we ought to go with him.”
    â€œ Why does he want to go?” She was peevish still, but there was a settling under her peevishness. Though one foot was still out of the car and her books cradled in her arm, she had settled back half a millimeter.
    â€œWe can be married in Louisiana tomorrow.”
    â€œNow I have heard it all. I don’t mind saying that I have heard it all. ”
    â€œPut your book down.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œGive me your book.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    But she gave it to him and he threw it into the back seat and took hold of her while the warm Lincoln ticked away in the resounding garage. Oh, damnable straight upstanding Lincoln seat. He was almost beside himself with tenderness at the eight o’clock splendor of her. “I’m in love,” he said, kissing her and taking hold of the warm pad back of her knee, which he loved best of all when she was leading cheers. But the angles were bad and contrived against him.
    â€œGood God,” cried Kitty, breaking free. “What in the world has happened to you and Jamie this morning! You’re crazy!”
    â€œCome here and let me hold you tight.”
    â€œHold me tight, my foot.”
    â€œYou didn’t answer my question.”
    â€œWhat question?”
    â€œWill you marry me?”
    â€œJeezum,” she said in a new expression of hers, something she got from the Chi O’s. And retrieving her world anthology from the back seat, she left him alone in the garage.
    10 .
    Jamie became cheerful and red-cheeked as they fitted out the Trav-L-Aire. While the engineer set about laying in his usual grits and buttermilk and slab bacon and filling the tank with the sweet artesian water of the valley against the day of the evil alkali water of the desert, Jamie staked out the upper forward bunk as his private domain. It was a broad bed lying athwart the trim ship, with a fine view forward over the top of the cab. There was a shelf for his radio, a recessed reading light something like the old Pullman upper berth. Jamie hit on the idea of replacing the mattress with a cot pad which not only gave him the narrow hard corner he wanted but left a gutter just wide enough to hold his books.
    â€œLet’s take plenty of fresh milk with us,” said Jamie.
    â€œO.K.”
    â€œI’ve drunk a lot of milk lately. I’ve gained three pounds.”
    â€œGood.”
    Jamie stretched out on the hard bed and watched the engineer store away the staples Lugurtha had given him from the kitchen. “You know I truly believe that if I could live a simple life, I could actually conserve my energy and therefore gain strength. I honestly think it’s a question of living simply and conserving your energy. I’ll live right here, get up, go to class, come back, get up, eat, come back, etcetera. Don’t you agree?”
    â€œYes.” To tell the truth, it didn’t seem unreasonable.
    â€œAre you really going to marry Kitty?”
    â€œI asked her. But if I do and she does come along, it will be just the same for you. These are your quarters if we are married, yours and mine if we’re not.”
    â€œWhat if she won’t, ah—go? Will you still come?”
    â€œIf you want me to.”
    â€œO.K.,” said Jamie and began to arrange his books in alphabetical order. “Where do you keep your telescope?”
    â€œHere.”
    â€œOh yes. I remember. Look. I’m bringing my Freylinghausen star charts along. I understand the atmosphere is a great deal clearer in New Mexico.”
    â€œThat’s right. Now, Jamie, I think you’d better go find your parents. It is not enough for you to tell me that you have their permission. They must tell me too.”
    â€œO.K.”
    â€œWe’ll drive till we get tired and start out again when we feel like it.”
    11 .
    It turned out to be a morning for dealing with practical matters. Two letters awaited him on the refectory table in the castle hall. He never received mail from anywhere. They had been written more than two weeks earlier and addressed to the Y.M.C.A. in New York, forwarded to General Delivery in Williamsburg and thence to the Vaughts’ home address. Both had to do with money. One was from his Uncle Fannin, who lived in Shut Off, Louisiana. His uncle wrote to remind him that although the “place” had been sold many years