for only one family to inhabit, would in itself have been a marvel. But happening in this way, it was dwarfed by a vaster event. He was going to spend a whole real-life afternoon with his underground queen.
Herbie reigned each night before falling asleep in a splendid imaginary palace which he had discovered one night by falling through a trapdoor (in imagination) in the floor of the old “haunted house” on Tennyson Avenue—a device borrowed from
Alice in Wonderland
without acknowledgment. The girls with whom he was smitten succeeded one another as queen of this subterranean pleasure dome. Diana Vernon had been dethroned. Lucille's coronation, a spectacle of incredible magnificence, had already taken place, and she now held court nightly beside him.
But it was not only in such fantasies that he had seen her. There had been several meetings on the third-floor landing of the girls' staircase at P.S. 50 since the first one. In the entire maze of the school, that landing was the one space Captain Bookbinder never failed to inspect daily at lunch time, and of all possible posts along six flights of the girls' staircase, it was the one area that Policewoman Glass deemed most likely to be the scene of an outbreak of crime. These two guardians of the law therefore managed to greet each other daily. The conversations were brief and weak. Herbie was rendered speechless by romance—an unlucky foible, since nothing else had the same effect on him except acute tonsillitis.
The strange part was that he found no difficulty at all in having long, tender talks with Lucille when they sat on their golden double throne under the haunted house, eating chocolate frappés on silver salvers and carelessly viewing the gorgeous pageants staged in the great hall for their amusement (the pageants, except for the quantity of gold, diamonds, rubies, and silk in the costumes, were very much like the vaudeville shows at Loew's Boulevard). He not only managed brilliant chatter for himself but also invented the queen's affectionate answers. Something about the light of day, the matter-of-fact iron and concrete of the staircase, and the girl's appearance in street clothes instead of a robe of state, dried up his eloquence.
As he combed and recombed his hair, he pictured himself strolling with Lucille in the gardens of 2645 Mosholu Parkway, an edifice he had never seen. From the grand sound of the words “Mosholu Parkway,” he imagined it to be something like an English castle in the movies. There, under arching old trees, amid the flower beds, deliciously alone, could Herbie and Lucille fail to come at last to the sweet mutual pledges of love?
It suddenly struck Herbert that he would look older if he combed his hair straight back without a part, as Lennie Krieger did. He tried the experiment. The result appeared so strange to him that he hastily erased it with the comb. He next attempted, for the first time in his life, a part on the right side of his face instead of the left. This was hard to do, because the heavy hair, trained in one direction, sprang back from under the comb and stood up defiantly in the middle of his head. By soaking it with water he succeeded in bending it to his will, and surveyed the outcome with satisfaction. It seemed to give his face a new dignity which added years.
In his mother's bedroom he could hear the silk-stocking controversy raging. Since the hour of the arrival of the invitation, Felicia had been waging a campaign for her first pair of ladies' hosiery. The two-year advantage in age she had over Lucille Glass made her feel that she had been insulted by being asked to “a baby's party,” and although she was perishing to go, she felt she could not appear at 2645 Mosholu Parkway without some token of her mature years. With silk stockings on, she reasoned, she could carelessly wander into the playroom and consume all the ice cream, cake, and candy that came to her hand, in the guise of a kindly visitor from the
Herbie reigned each night before falling asleep in a splendid imaginary palace which he had discovered one night by falling through a trapdoor (in imagination) in the floor of the old “haunted house” on Tennyson Avenue—a device borrowed from
Alice in Wonderland
without acknowledgment. The girls with whom he was smitten succeeded one another as queen of this subterranean pleasure dome. Diana Vernon had been dethroned. Lucille's coronation, a spectacle of incredible magnificence, had already taken place, and she now held court nightly beside him.
But it was not only in such fantasies that he had seen her. There had been several meetings on the third-floor landing of the girls' staircase at P.S. 50 since the first one. In the entire maze of the school, that landing was the one space Captain Bookbinder never failed to inspect daily at lunch time, and of all possible posts along six flights of the girls' staircase, it was the one area that Policewoman Glass deemed most likely to be the scene of an outbreak of crime. These two guardians of the law therefore managed to greet each other daily. The conversations were brief and weak. Herbie was rendered speechless by romance—an unlucky foible, since nothing else had the same effect on him except acute tonsillitis.
The strange part was that he found no difficulty at all in having long, tender talks with Lucille when they sat on their golden double throne under the haunted house, eating chocolate frappés on silver salvers and carelessly viewing the gorgeous pageants staged in the great hall for their amusement (the pageants, except for the quantity of gold, diamonds, rubies, and silk in the costumes, were very much like the vaudeville shows at Loew's Boulevard). He not only managed brilliant chatter for himself but also invented the queen's affectionate answers. Something about the light of day, the matter-of-fact iron and concrete of the staircase, and the girl's appearance in street clothes instead of a robe of state, dried up his eloquence.
As he combed and recombed his hair, he pictured himself strolling with Lucille in the gardens of 2645 Mosholu Parkway, an edifice he had never seen. From the grand sound of the words “Mosholu Parkway,” he imagined it to be something like an English castle in the movies. There, under arching old trees, amid the flower beds, deliciously alone, could Herbie and Lucille fail to come at last to the sweet mutual pledges of love?
It suddenly struck Herbert that he would look older if he combed his hair straight back without a part, as Lennie Krieger did. He tried the experiment. The result appeared so strange to him that he hastily erased it with the comb. He next attempted, for the first time in his life, a part on the right side of his face instead of the left. This was hard to do, because the heavy hair, trained in one direction, sprang back from under the comb and stood up defiantly in the middle of his head. By soaking it with water he succeeded in bending it to his will, and surveyed the outcome with satisfaction. It seemed to give his face a new dignity which added years.
In his mother's bedroom he could hear the silk-stocking controversy raging. Since the hour of the arrival of the invitation, Felicia had been waging a campaign for her first pair of ladies' hosiery. The two-year advantage in age she had over Lucille Glass made her feel that she had been insulted by being asked to “a baby's party,” and although she was perishing to go, she felt she could not appear at 2645 Mosholu Parkway without some token of her mature years. With silk stockings on, she reasoned, she could carelessly wander into the playroom and consume all the ice cream, cake, and candy that came to her hand, in the guise of a kindly visitor from the
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