Violet never could pinpoint the moment in which her immense regard, her gratitude, and even awe for Dr. Grant transformed into romantic desire. For some reason, this disturbs her. Shouldn’t erotic love make its nature obvious from the beginning? Wasn’t sexual attraction the first basis for attachment between men and women?
Possibly the idea of Dr. Grant as a sexual partner simply didn’t occur to her. She had been exceptionally innocent when she first came to the institute, for all her air of independence. She’d never been kissed, never even held hands with a man. She’d been too busy, too eager to prove herself, and all the boys she knew in college and in New York were just that: boys, callow and conventional, shallow and unimaginative. She imagined herself proudly as a kind of sexless being, her mind too occupied with complex and abstract thoughts to lower itself to base human instincts. To mere physical titillation. So perhaps all that initial awe and gratitude really was a form of sexual desire, sublimated into something the virginal Violet of September 1911 could recognize and accept.
She has an answer ready, though, in case Walter or anyone else should ask.
This is another of the scenes that remains vivid in her brain, mined frequently for details: Dr. Grant standing in his office, two weeks into the start of the term, and offering her a chair. He had already called for tea, and it was arriving right now in all its lavish plenty, borne on a large tray by the gray-suited secretary. Violet heard his words in her ears: I have just finished marking your first paper, and I am stunned by the quality of your thought.
Yes: stunned, he said. His exact word. He sat in the chair next to her—not behind his desk but directly next to her, his woolen knee nearly brushing hers—and fixed her with his blue eyes and repeated the word: stunned.
When Violet rehearses this story for her imaginary audience, she usually tells them that her heart gave a skip when he said this, and it did. Her memory is exact, and she feels the emotion again, simply remembering it. Her blood tingles in her fingertips, and her breath becomes thready in her chest. She recovers that exact sense of her younger self: as if she’s an explorer, catching a glimpse of some new and undiscovered territory, just out of reach.
The scene resumed.
“Thank you,” she said.
The secretary left, and the door clicked shut.
Dr. Grant turned to the tea and poured her a cup, asked her if she took cream and sugar. Violet answered him politely, though her nerves were singing.
She had stunned Dr. Walter Grant by the quality of her thought.
She watched his elegant hands perform before her. She glanced briefly at his lips, full and rather endearingly pink, framed by his short tabby beard. When he gave her the cup and saucer, the tips of his fingers touched the tips of hers.
“I hope I have not seemed cold, this past fortnight.” He took up his own tea. “I was conscious of your peculiar status among the other fellows, and I had no wish to incur their resentment by any particular notice.”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t expect any favorable treatment, not at all. I’m just another fellow here, after all.”
“Not just another fellow, Miss Schuyler. You are by far my most promising student. With your diligence and your elegant mind, you make the others seem like factory drudges.”
Violet looked into her muddy tea. “Thank you.”
“My dear”—his tone shifted, taking on a sympathetic weight—“believe me, I do know how difficult it is for you, surrounded by these men of narrow and conservative attitudes, who don’t understand you. Isn’t it?”
“I have no cause to complain.” Her eyes stung. She kept them trained on her cup.
He shook his head and leaned in a little. “My dear, dear child. I’ve seen how they avoid you, how they refuse to include you in any of the usual social activities, lunch and tea and that sort of thing. Did you think I hadn’t?”
“I hope you haven’t wasted your time with such trivial concerns, Dr. Grant. I’m getting along just fine.”
“Tell me, my dear, has any one of them approached you outside of the institute? Has any one of them perhaps offered you any sort of outstretched hand at all?”
“Nothing of any significance.”
“Something, then?”
“I’ve received a note or two at my room. Invitations to tea.”
“Have you answered them?”
“No. I thought it improper. I didn’t even recognize the names.”
“Ah, Violet.” He placed his tea on the edge of the desk and took her hand. “You must understand, you’re an exceptionally attractive woman, young and quite obviously inexperienced. I’m afraid this university has no shortage of cads wishing to take advantage of that inexperience.”
His hand was warm around hers. “I am perfectly capable of understanding the difference, Dr. Grant. As I said, I haven’t answered the notes. I don’t have the slightest interest that way in any of my colleagues.”
“Good.” He patted their enclosed hands. “Very good. I’m relieved to hear it. I take a particular interest in you, Violet. I see you as a kind of protégé. I intend to look after your interests with all the zeal in my power.”
His kind voice made her eyes prickle with tears. She wouldn’t tell him, she couldn’t tell him how lonely she’d been, nobody saying a word to her, cold glances and cold lunches, her cramped and empty rooms at the end of the day. Studying, studying. Her coffee delivered hot in the morning by her landlady, accompanied by the only smile she would receive until her return that evening. The alien voices and vehicles and architecture, the September drizzle parted at intervals by a fickle sun. At least at Radcliffe she knew a few other girls like her, ambitious and clever girls, who were always happy to commiserate over hot cocoa at midnight. Here she had nobody, she had less than nobody: a negative space of openly hostile company.
“You are so kind,” she said.
“There, now. If you have any trouble, Violet, you’re to come to my office immediately. You may ring me at any time, day or night. You’re to think of me as an uncle, Violet, a very dear uncle who admires you greatly.”
If his words were a little more fulsome than avuncular, Violet was too grateful to notice. She blinked back her tears and returned the squeeze of his warm hands. She looked up into his face—the face of Dr. Grant, brilliant and renowned Dr. Walter Grant, gazing at her with such tenderness! She was overcome with gratitude; she was melting with it. “Thank you, sir.”
He shook his head, smiling. “You must call me Walter, in these rooms. I’m your uncle, remember? Your nearest relation here.”
“Yes, of course.” But she couldn’t quite bring herself to say Walter, not yet.
He gave her hand a last pat and picked up his cup. “You’ll come to me every week like this, Violet. You’re looking rather thin, rather pale; you must eat better. I shall stuff you with cake and sandwiches and send you on your way. Does that sound agreeable?”
And so she and Dr. Grant came to take tea in his sumptuous offices every week, served without comment by his own personal secretary, talking and laughing and calling each other Dr. Grant and Violet, while the leaves changed color and fell from the trees, and the afternoon sky grew darker and darker, until it began to turn quite black by four o’clock, when she knocked punctually on his door. It was then a week before Christmas, and the air smelled of snow. Dr. Grant stood in his office with a pair of workmen, his white shirtsleeves glowing in the lamplight, wires and plaster everywhere; he was having a new telephone installed, he told her, shaking his head, and the case was hopeless.
Perhaps they should take tea at his house in Norham Gardens instead?