did. From the outside the buildings were reticent, severe straight lines of red brick or white
clapboard, with shutters standing sentinel beside each window, and a few unassuming white
cupolas placed here and there on the roofs because they were expected and not pretty, like
Pilgrim bonnets.
But once you passed through the Colonial doorways, with only an occasional fan window or low
relief pillar to suggest that a certain muted adornment was permissible, you entered an
extravaganza of Pompadour splendor. Pink marble walls and white marble floors were enclosed
by arched and vaulted ceilings; an assembly room had been done in the manner of the High
Italian Renaissance, another was illuminated by chandeliers flashing with crystal teardrops; there
was a wall of fragile French windows overlooking an Italian garden of marble bric-à-brac; the
library was Provençal on the first floor, rococo on the second. And everywhere, except in the
dormitories, the floors and stairs were of smooth, slick marble, more treacherous even than the
icy walks.
“The winter loves me,” he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added, “I
mean as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you
really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.” I didn’t think that
this was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true,
but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny’s: it should have been true. So I didn’t
argue.
The board walk ended and he moved a little ahead of me as we descended a sloping path toward
our first class. He picked his way with surprising care, surprising in anyone who before had used
the ground mainly as a point of departure, as the given element in a suspended world of leaps in
space. And now I remembered what I had never taken any special note of before: how Phineas
used to walk. Around Devon we had gaits of every description; gangling shuffles from boys who
had suddenly grown a foot taller, swinging cowboy lopes from those thinking of how wide their
shoulders had become, ambles, waddles, light trippings, gigantic Bunyan strides. But Phineas
had moved in continuous flowing balance, so that he had seemed to drift along with no effort at
all, relaxation on the move. He hobbled now among the patches of ice. There was the one
certainty that Dr. Stanpole had given—Phineas would walk again. But the thought was there
before me that he would never walk like that again.
“Do you have a class?” he said as we reached the steps of the building.
“Yes.”
“So do I. Let’s not go.”
“Not go? But what’ll we use for an excuse?”
“Well say I fainted from exertion on the way from chapel,” he looked at me with a phantom’s
smile, “and you had to tend me.”
“This is your first day back, Finny. You’re no one to cut classes.”