The Gentle, Perfect Knight

A Story

by EDWIN O’CONNOR

IT was the invariable custom of Iris Munro’s friends to speak of her among themselves, and occasionally among others, as “poor” Iris. This was to indicate, not that she was without charm or possessions, but that, at the age of twenty-seven, she was as yet unmarried. This disturbed her friends for a complexity of reasons, not the least of which was the suspicion that in her maidenhood Iris was somehow perfectly happy. The itch to do something about this had been ungovernable, so they had devised an endless series of dinner parties, rather in the spirit of a perpetual novena, hoping that at one of them Iris would meet The Man.

Iris always went to these parties. She was, of course, fully aware of their purpose, but she was a considerate girl, and she did not wish to appear ungrateful to her friends. Also, each time she went, in some deep corner of her mind there stirred the small, barely acknowledged thought that tonight she might fall in love. For her friends, in supposing Iris to be perfectly happy, were quite wrong. She was a fairly intelligent young woman, pretty in a quiet, unradiant way, and she was affectionate and often rather lonely. She had not known many men; she had been carefully, almost preciously reared by a widowed mother, whose mistrust of the pitfalls of life had not been diminished by the fact that she had married one of them. The few men who had filtered through the guarding periphery of Iris’s youth had been pale, awkward, and incapable; in later years, those whom she met had acquired a jarring self-assurance and a frightening aggressiveness. She realized now, half humorously, half sadly, that she probably was in search of some gentle, perfect knight, and although she knew that there was small chance of discovering him in the dining rooms of her friends, nevertheless it was to them she went; and whenever she went, there quickened anew the unobtrusive hope.

Iris remembered the evening at the Chases’ during which she had been paired with “the last one.” He had been an Arthur DiMaggio, a glossy, pneumatic little man with preposterously lustrous eyes. “No relation at all to the athletes, my dear!” Arthur DiMaggio had informed her, with a saucy toss of his head. It had not been a pleasant evening.

“Avery is my cousin, you know,” continued Camilla. “He’s an explorer, dear. In the Arctic. You’ll be wild about him.” She paused, reflecting perhaps on the unhappy episode of Arthur DiMaggio, and then added: “Avery’s all man!”

“That’s nice,” said Iris. “Thank you again, Camilla. I’ll be there at seven.”

In the next four days, Iris thought often of Camilla’s explorer cousin. She wondered if he resembled Camilla; in all charity to her friend, she rather hoped he did not. Explorer— Who could tell ? It was a vocation suited to either romantic or misanthrope; and recalling Camilla’s previous efforts in her behalf, Iris inclined toward the misanthrope. Avery Winton would be a bleak rock: wind-chipped, frosty, and silent as the polar night. She was almost convinced of this as she stood at the Chases’ door on Monday evening, and yet, as always, there lurked the faint and curtained hope. TT was a hope nurtured, in this instance, by the remembrance of the nobility of feature of Richard Evelyn Byrd.

Camilla opened the door. “Darling, he’s here!” she hissed dramatically, her large eyes bulging and alive. She gave Iris a moist and rubbery kiss.

“He’s in the library,” she said, “talking with Douglas, poor soul! ” It was Camilla’s belief, widely expressed, that her husband was an odd sort of man for anyone to be alone with. “He just won’t talk, you know,” she had often complained. “He just sits there like a hick, smiling at nothing. Sometimes he whistles to himself. Honestly, I’ve thought of having the man committed,” Iris, for her part, liked Douglas Chase: he was a strange, prematurely wispy man, with a wry appreciation of his own position.

“Come along,” urged Camilla. “I’ve got to rescue Avery before he goes mad. There’s something about being alone with Douglas that makes everything seem so meaningless.” She rushed Iris along the hall and pushed open the library door. The two men, who, at least to Iris, seemed not to be finding each other uncongenial, arose, and Douglas vaguely raised his glass toward her and wiggled a greeting. Camilla, sliding into her dancing-school voice, pronounced the necessary introductions, and the explorer cousin and Iris smiled, spoke, and met.

2

IN the interval preceding dinner, Iris decided that Avery Winton was an agreeable surprise. Her mental composite of the boreal explorer could not have been more inaccurate; Avery Winton, far from being gaunt and frozen, was a well-tailored man in his middle thirties, with rather dark, attractive features and a quick, pleasant smile. Beyond the few words of greeting, he said little; Iris thought this due both to a becoming reserve and to the real lack of opportunity. For tonight, as always, Camilla kept conversation shooting along her own carefully prepared, embarrassing channels. It was concerned with the virtues to be found in the active, outdoor man — “Well, take yourself, Avery dear!” — as against the disappointments offered by a torpid, indoor type. She advanced no example of this latter class, although at one point Douglas coughed pleasantly. Once or twice, Avery smiled at Iris; it was a brief, mock-helpless smile, an invitation to join him in his grain of salt.

“I know what I want!” cried Camilla suddenly. “I want to hear Avery sing a song.”

The request was an abrupt one, and Avery appeared startled. “No, no,” he protested.

“Yes, yes!” Camilla insisted. “I’ll tell you what., darling. Sing that wonderful one you learned in that Eskimo hut. The one about you and the violets.”

“Not right now, Cam,” said Avery. “Maybe after dinner.”

“All right, then,” said Camilla, assuming a monumental pout; and turning to Iris, “You ask him to sing, Iris dear. Tell him you’d love to hear that picturesque old thing about the violets.”

Iris felt herself reddening; Camilla had a disastrous gift for badgering people into uncomfortable positions. She faced Avery Winton and stretched a smile. “I’d really like to hear you sing,” she said. “That is, if you don’t mind doing it.”

Avery hesitated. “Well,” he said, “I —”

Further urging came from an unexpected quarter. “Go ahead,” said Douglas, hospitably. “Go ahead and sing.”

“My God!” shouted Camilla, in a loud, mocking voice. “The music lover! Maybe you’d like to accompany him with that toothy whistle? Now you’ve simply got to sing, Avery.”

“Well—” said Avery again, and gave in. He walked to the piano and, sitting, spoke apologetically to Iris. “ I suppose this is an odd sort of song for a fellow like myself to sing,” he said. “Actually, it’s an old English love song. But I did learn it, as Cam says, up in the North country: this Englishman and I got caught by the winter and were isolated for quite a spell. He used to sing this all the time, and the words stuck with me. I hope you can stand it.” Smiling again, self-effacingly, he turned to the keyboard and began his song. It was called “I’m Weaving Sweet Violets.”

Iris, listening, thought that it was indeed an odd sort of song for him, and yet he did it very well. He had a warm, if unprofessional, baritone, and he sang the lovely lyric with much feeling. She was suddenly proud of him, for she realized that most men, accustomed to sturdier pursuits, would have dissolved in embarrassment if similarly called upon. Avery’s voice faded huskily through the room, his fingers brushing the final declining chords.

“God!” breathed Camilla. “Every time I hear that song, I feel as if the whole English countryside had hit me right in the face.” She popped her eyes, to suggest the experience. “That was lovely, Avery!” she cried. “Simply lovely!”

“It was beautiful,” said Iris. She said it sincerely: she had enjoyed the song thoroughly.

“Nice little number,” said Douglas, peering confusedly about for his tobacco. “Nice little number.”

Avery wore his honors with modesty. “Nothing like having a few friends in the audience,” he said.

“I’m starved!” announced Camilla, upon whom good music, apparently, wrought multiple effects. “Come on, everybody, let’s go in to dinner.” She sprang from her chair, a healthy woman going to table. “Come on!” she said, waving the others to their feet.

“May I?” inquired Avery, gallantly offering his arm to Iris. Pleased out of proportion by the simple gesture, she walked into the dining room with him, Camilla preceding them, Douglas trailing cheerfully behind.

3

FROM experience, Iris knew that Camilla’s table had its limitations. It aimed at nourishment, little else: there was a steady, boiled-potato touch to all the food. Soup, meat, and great hunks of pastry or pudding formed the unvarying three-course menu, prepared by a puckered little woman in the Chase kitchen. Tonight there was a heavy soup; not, thought Iris, unlike oatmeal. It was not until she had nearly finished hers that she noticed that Avery had taken none; strangely enough, this had drawn no comment from Camilla. Next came the meat, each plate high with a pair of tan croquettes drowned in a sauce of chalk. These were distributed reverently by the puckered woman, who, in a proud whisper, reminded Camilla that there were plenty more where those came from.

“Thank you, Agatha,” said Camilla grandly. “I think that wall be all for now.” Double-checking, her eyes leaped up and down the table in sharp survey. “Oh dear!” she moaned suddenly. “Look at my poor Avery!”

Everyone looked at Avery. Iris, astonished, saw that on his plate, instead of the nesting croquettes, there was a small tin-foiled square resembling a brick of packaged Liederkranz. The puckered woman sniffed in distaste and trotted haughtily from the room.

“Oh my God!” said Camilla, with a vast gesture of despair. “She’s offended again. Avery darling, she just won’t understand your stomach.”

It was Avery’s turn to redden. “It’s not a question of understanding anyone’s stomach, Cam,” he said, a trifle stiffly. “This isn’t a diet for freaks.”

Camilla spun a huge piece of croquette about in the chalk sauce. “I know,” she said, “but Agatha doesn’t. I can’t even begin to explain your ideas to her; she’s not a very scientific person.”

Avery shrugged; then, as if ashamed at having been nettled by so minor a cause, he smiled ruefully at Iris. “ I guess this must seem strange at that,” he said, pointing to the tin foil. “It’s an old story to Cam and Doug, of course, but I have a difficult time convincing strangers that I’m perfectly serious. Can you guess what it is?”

Iris hesitated. For some reason that she could not explain, she hoped that Avery was not eating some kind of skin food. She took the plunge. “Yeast?” she hazarded.

Avery laughed. “No, no!” he said. “No, I should hope not! Actually, Miss Munro, I wouldn’t have expected you to guess. No one ever does. You see,” he explained, unwrapping the foil and revealing a compact brownish block, “this is the famous pemmican.”

“Pemmican?” Searching hard, Iris was unable to place the famous pemmican; the word evoked echoes, imprecise and distant, of red men and early frontiers.

“Pemmican,” he repeated. He pronounced the word with a strange respect: just so might a prospector have spoken of gold, or a whaler of ambergris.

“I know all about that,” volunteered Camilla, chewing steadily. “They call it jerky.”

“No,” said Avery. “No, they don’t, Cam. Jerky is a different food entirely. Jerky,” he said, leaning instructively toward Iris, “is merely lean beef, dried in strips. You wouldn’t like it, Miss Munro; it tastes a little like leather.”

“I see,” murmured Iris. Avery now seemed less withdrawn, more enthusiastic, than he had been in the library. It lent him a fuller personality, thought Iris, and for a moment she wished that the food, as a subject of table talk, interested her more.

“Pemmican,” continued Avery, a friendly, didactic gleam in his eye, “is something else again. It’s extremely palatable, something like roast beef. It’s the finest concentrated food known to man. You see,” he disclosed, lifting the brownish block from his plate, and twisting it in the light, like a goblet of fine wine, “it’s a mixture of lean meat and fat!”

“I see,” said Iris again. There was an expectant pause; unskilled in dietetic small talk, she groped for the pertinent question. “Then,” she asked, “ it’s — just meat ? ‘ ‘

“All meat!” he replied proudly. Iris was reminded of an odd parallel: Camilla, on the telephone, describing her cousin, in the same tone, as “All man!” All meat, all man, she thought.

Camilla spoke up. “Avery’s a nut on meat,” she said.

“That’s one way of putting it, Cam,” said Avery. Again, he seemed slightly annoyed by his cousin. He addressed himself to Iris. “The truth is, Miss Munro, that I prefer an all-meat diet. So do many people who have lived for any length of time in the North. The Eskimos, for example, — those who still live remote from the white man, — have never eaten anything but meat and fish.”

“And that’s all you eat?” asked Iris incredulously.

“That’s all,” he acknowledged. “And for the past few months, I’ve eaten nothing but pemmican. It really began as something of a test: I wanted to find out if pemmican alone was just an emergency food, or whether, here in the United States, it could really satisfy me, day after day. Well,” he said, nodding his head in satisfaction, “it has. I haven’t eaten any other meat for nearly three months.”

It was truly a strange boast, Iris thought, and for the first time a faint, reluctant line of doubt flicked across her mind.

“And,” he announced, saving the best till last, “I haven’t eaten a green vegetable in more than two years.”

“But what that man has eaten!” cried Camilla, shuddering in delighted horror. “My dear, he’s lived for months off the nose of a moose!”

“ Well, hardly one moose, Cam,” chuckled Avery. “I’m afraid that would have to be quite a moose. You remember what Churchill once said about the British Empire, I think it was? He said: ‘Some chicken. Some neck!’ The same thing goes here: Some moose. Some nose!” He led the laughter and then continued. “It’s quite true, though,” he assured Iris. “Boiled moose nose is considered a delicacy by the Eskimos and the Arctic Indians. Actually,” he added, his face wreathed in reminiscence, “it’s quite tasty.”

“Ugh!” screamed Camilla. “Imagine that, darling! And that’s not the worst. Seal flippers!” she said juicily. “They eat them, too.”

“For the oil content,” explained Avery.

“Isn’t that the most disgusting thing you’ve ever heard?” asked Camilla, with a delicious shiver.

Iris nodded, in dumb agreement. It was disgusting; perfectly, appallingly disgusting. The fault, she thought, was not with Avery Winton. At least, not for the most part. It was Camilla, relentlessly sucking out those dreadful details. She prayed, hard, that she would stop.

“And what else?” asked Camilla. “What are some of those other awful things?”

Avery smiled indulgently. “Caribou paunch salad, polar bear paws,” he supplied. “And, of course, marrow.” Earnestly, he turned his attention to Iris once more. “You take the long bones of the caribou and crack them,” he said, with an appropriate gesture to indicate the cracking of bones, “and then you extract the marrow. It comes out in sticks, and you eat it raw, like a candy bar.”

Iris closed her eyes. She heard Douglas surprisingly introduce a more normal note among the esoterica. “Sometimes,” he said, “they just eat rabbits.”

“Well!” said Camilla, smothering this intruder with contempt. “Will you listen to that!”

“As a matter of fact, Cam,” said Avery, “Doug isn’t far wrong. They do eat rabbits a great deal, although of course not exclusively, the way they do other meats.”

“Why?” asked Douglas, almost belligerently. “What’s wrong with rabbits?”

“They’re too lean,” said Avery. “There’s no fat on a rabbit. Let me tell you, Doug, that a man who ate nothing but rabbit for so much as a week would be letting himself in for trouble.”

“For God’s sake!” exclaimed Camilla. “What for?”

“Why,” said Avery, in evident surprise, “he’d get diarrhea!”

Iris gasped; the gasp was blanketed by Camilla’s hooting giggle.

“Avery!” she cried. “Naughty man!”

The naughty man looked puzzled. “But getting back to pemmican,” he said, eagerly. And get back he did, the profligate carnivore joyfully returning to his first affection. “You can’t find anything like it for convenience, for cost, and for taste,” he stated. “I know. And as for health— Well, you take scurvy —”

4

BUT Iris did not take scurvy. She had shut her ears to this man; disappointment had swept over her in a sudden flood. Dispiritedly poking at the cold, repellent food before her, she began to feel ill. It had happened too quickly, and with no preparation for the let-down. One moment, Avery Winton was a reserved attractive gentleman in a library (with a grimace, she remembered “I’m Weaving Sweet Violets”), the next a vulgar monomaniac.

“—and it lasts!” Avery chanted. “Actually, it’s the most preservable food in the world. Why, this piece I have here” — and again the brownish block was elevated, and waved in display— “this piece I know to be at least ten years old.” And, triumphantly, he popped a chunk into his mouth.

Dessert arrived. Avery took none: by this time it was quite clear that pemmican was his dessert, his meal, indeed his everything. “Three quarters of a pound a day,” he announced. “That’s all I need, and it keeps me in tiptop condition.”

The pale mound of pudding quivered in invitation; Iris could not look at it. Her first feeling of disappointment had been superseded by a strong revulsion for this animal-man, who ran around the world, chewing meat and gloating about it so unashamedly. She half expected him to rip off his shirt, like that Macfadden man, so that she might swoon before the awful majesty of his meat-fed biceps. Dazed, she peered across the table. There was an indistinctness to the room: her eyes seemed to focus with clarity only on a pair of lean, accomplished jaws grinding in greedy demolition.

“Caries?” said Avery suddenly. “Caries, Cam? In these teeth?” His head thrust forward in a proud gape; Iris shrank in terror before the vulpine flash. “Stick to all meat,” he advised generally, “and you won’t be bothered by decay.”

It was then that Iris pushed back her chair.

“Iris, darling!” exclaimed Camilla. “What’s the matter? You look ghastly.”

“I feel ghastly,” said Iris, rising. “I don’t really know how it happened. All of a sudden, I seem to have the most awful headache.” She moved, wanly, towards Camilla. “Don’t get up, dear,” she said. “I’ll be all right. It’s just a matter of getting away and resting. I hate spoiling your party, though.” She smiled, in brave apology.

“Don’t think about it, darling,” said Camilla, leaping to her feet. “You just come upstairs to my room and lie down awhile. Agatha will bring you some aspirin or something.”

“No, no,” said Iris, in some alarm. “I mean, thank you, Camilla, but I really think I’ll have to go home. I’ve had this before; it’s sure to be an allnight ache. I’d be miserable company for the rest of the evening.”

“Migraine,” said Avery, with knowing sympathy. “They’re bad. I know. I used to have them.” From the stress on the word “used,” Iris knew without asking that he had been cured; she knew, also, what had cured him. Even her departure was serving the useful purpose of illustration.

“Well, you know best, I suppose,” said Camilla, without enthusiasm. Her compassion was genuine, although hardly of the same intensity as her concern over her disrupted evening. ‘“If you’re sure you must go,” she added, her voice trailing off.

“Quite sure. I’m terribly sorry.” For a quick moment, viewing her hostess, Iris felt the beginnings of guilt; she chased such feelings away in panic. It was true that there was no headache, but that she was ill, irrecoverably so, as long as she remained in the direct presence of Avery Winton, was a greater truth. She had to go, and go immediately.

There was a brief, sympathetic huddle around the table, and then all went into the hallway together. Douglas took Iris’s hand in farewell and looked at her wisely, wistfully. He knew, she thought, and the poor, dear man was envious. With outstretched hand, Avery Winton approached.

“It’s a shame this had to happen, just as we were all having such a good time,” he said. The hand that had cracked the long bones of the caribou now grabbed her hand firmly; perhaps appraisingly. “I wonder if I might see you home?” he asked.

“No!” said Iris. She almost shouted the word. “That is,” she added hastily, “I live just around the corner. Thank you, though; it’s been awfully nice meeting you.”

He nodded. “ I’m going to be around for another couple of days,” he said. “Possibly we might see each other again?”

“That would be fine,” she said, backing gently away. One bridge at a time, she thought; one more door, and she would be out into the night. She reached the door, opened it.

“Good night!” she cried, almost hysterically, she thought. The men chorused a reply, the door closed after her, and she was on the brick step, Camilla by her side. She breathed deeply, fiercely of the fresh, clear, palpably vegetative night: there was not so much as a hint of blood or bones or good red meat in the wonderful air. She breathed again.

“That’ll clear away the cobwebs,” observed Camilla. “You look better already, dear.” Her voice switched key. “He liked you!” she throbbed.

“Ah?” said Iris, not quite comprehending, the night air still flowing through her brain.

“He liked you,” Camilla repeated. “And I could see that you liked him. Damn that headache!” she muttered viciously. “You could have had such a perfect evening.”

“Yes,” said Iris, stepping down on the grass. “Well, good —”

“But he’ll be here for a few more days,” Camilla added hopefully. “You heard him say so. Call me up first thing tomorrow, darling, will you? We’ll make arrangements!” she said archly.

“Yes, yes,” said Iris hurriedly, closing her mind to the dread possibility. “Of course. Good night, Camilla. And thanks. Thanks so much for everything.”

It was on a Thursday morning that Camilla Chase telephoned, to remind her of the dinner the following Monday. “It’s going to be cosy,” she promised, her voice ringing like a good ship’s bell. “Just you, myself and Douglas, and Avery Winton. I’m dying to have you meet him.”

Iris murmured, politely and negligibly.

“He’s not like the last one, darling!” said Camilla.