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Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

I might as well admit that I’ve always felt somewhat silly when you called me Johnnie. No one but you has called me that since I was a child. And yet, to be absolutely honest with myself—and to you—I can’t help feeling a little flattered, too.

J.G.

He descended the stairs to the lobby, left the letter in the Haumans’ box and went back up to his room again, to spend a sleepless night.

XII

XII

After the Haumans had left the island, he did not know what to do with himself. The Bill Howards seemed too preoccupied with their own excursions to have any time for him. Nor did he need or want their company. He missed Ethel keenly; that is, he worried about her—she was so much on his mind—yet he did not once write a letter to Maine, not even to his sons. Most of all, and passionately, he missed Cliff. He felt his presence everywhere, avoided those places and scenes where they had been happy together, and found himself dreaming of him at night. It was a not unpleasant indulgence, the more so because Cliff Hauman had paid his matter-­of-­fact farewell and nothing would ever come, now, of that impossible, upsetting relationship.

A few days after the Haumans had gone, John Grandin knew—as surely as if he had received a telegram to that effect—that Cliff Hauman had passed his examination in Brooklyn, was once more the Marine Captain which had long been his ideal in life and was probably already lost to Grandin forever. So the melancholy days passed—not ungrateful, not unhappy, till his last night on the island. After dinner he cornered the Howards long enough to say good-­bye and even went out of his way to bid farewell to Arne Eklund, toward whom, he found, he had become utterly indifferent, even to say good-­bye to. It was a formality, nothing more; worst of all, his polite farewell to Sarah and Bill Howard was a formality too.

The Sunday before his summer-­school classes were to start, a taxi drove him from Sconset to the Nantucket steamer at dawn; and by seven o’clock he was on the ocean again, sailing back to the mainland. He sat in his chair on the cold open deck and watched the island fading away in the early morning mist, the island where he had been so happy and unhappy. But luckily, Sconset and all that had happened there (or not happened) were farthest from his mind; he found himself preoccupied with thoughts of school. The shrieking cries of the sea gulls, sounding like chalk scraping on a blackboard, went unheard; he concentrated on the duties which awaited him tomorrow, and still more on the new but not unpleasant responsibilities of the school year that would commence in September.