by Willa Cather
Spanish Adventurers.
When he had almost reached his old house and his study, the Professor
remembered that he really must have an understanding with his landlord,
or the place would be rented over his head. He turned and went down into
another part of the city, by the car shops, where only workmen lived,
and found his landlord's little toy house, set on a hillside, over a
basement faced up with red brick and covered with hop vines. Old
Appelhoff was sitting on a bench before his door, making a broom.
Raising broom corn was one of his economies. Beside him was his
dachshund bitch, Minna.
St. Peter explained that he wanted to stay on in the empty house, and
would pay the full rent each month. So irregular a project annoyed
Appelhoff. "I like fine to oblige you, Professor, but dey is several
parties looking at de house already, an' I don't like to lose a year's
rent for maybe a few months."
"Oh, that's all right, Fred. I'll take it for the year, to simplify
matters. I want to finish my new book before I move."
Fred still looked uneasy. "I better see de insurance man, eh? It says
for purposes of domestic dwelling."
"He won't object. Let's have a look at your garden. What a fine crop of
apples and sickle pears you have!"
"I don't like dem trees what don't bear not'ing," said the old man with
sly humour, remembering the Professor's glistening, barren shrubs and
the good ground wasted behind his stucco wall.
"How about your linden-trees?"
"Oh, dem flowers is awful good for de headache!"
"You don't look as if you were subject to it, Fred."
"Not me, but my woman always had."
"Pretty lonesome without her, Appelhoff?"
"I miss her, Professor, but I ain't just lonesome." The old man rubbed
his bristly chin. "My Minna here is most like a person, and den I got so
many t'ings to t'ink about."
"Have you? Pleasant things, I hope?"
"Well, all kinds. When I was young, in de old country, I had it hard to
git my wife at all, an' I never had time to t'ink. When I come to dis
country I had to work so turrible hard on dat farm to make crops an' pay
debts, dat I was like a horse. Now I have it easy, an' I take time to
t'ink about all dem t'ings."
St. Peter laughed. "We all come to it, Applehoff. That's one thing I'm
renting your house for, to have room to think. Good morning."
Crossing the public park, on his way back to the old house, he espied
his professional rival and enemy, Professor Horace Langtry, taking a
Sunday morning stroll--very well got up in English clothes he had
brought back from his customary summer in London, with a bowler hat of
unusual block and a horn-handled walking-stick. In twenty years the two
men had scarcely had speech with each other beyond a stiff "good
morning." When Langtry first came to the university he looked hardly
more than a boy, with curly brown hair and such a fresh complexion that
the students called him Lily Langtry. His round pink cheeks and round
eyes and round chin made him look rather like a baby grown big. All
these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now
quite grey, his rosy cheeks even rosier, and his mouth dropped a little
at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and
rather cross about it.
Seeing St. Peter, the younger man turned abruptly into a side alley, but
the Professor overtook him.
"Good morning, Langtry. These elms are becoming real trees at last.
They've changed a good deal since we first came here."
Doctor Langtry moved his rosy chin sidewise over his high double collar.
"Good morning, Doctor St. Peter. I really don't remember much about the
trees. They seem to be doing well now."
St. Peter stepped abreast of him. "There have been many changes,
Langtry, and not all of them are good. Don't you notice a great
difference in the student body as a whole, in the new crop that comes
along every year now--how different they are from the ones of our early
years here?"
The smooth chin turned again, and the other professor of European
history blinked. "In just what respect?"
"Oh, in the all-embracing respect of quality! We have hosts of students,
but they're a common sort."
"Perhaps. I can't say I've noticed it." The air between the two
colleagues was not thawing out any. A church-bell rang. Langtry started
hopefully. "You must excuse me, Doctor St. Peter, I am on my way to
service."
The Professor gave it up with a shrug. "All right, all right, Langtry,
as you will. Quelle folie!"
Langtry half turned back, hesitated on the ball of his suddenly speeding
foot, and said with faultless politeness: "I beg your pardon?"
St. Peter waved his hand with a gesture of negation, and detained the
church-goer no longer. He sauntered along slackly through the hot
September sunshine, wondering why Langtry didn't see the absurdity of
their long grudge. They had always been directly opposed in matters of
university policy, until it had almost become a part of their
professional duties to outwit and cramp each other.
When young Langtry first came there, his specialty was supposed to be
American history. His uncle was president of the board of regents, and
very influential in State politics; the institution had to look to him,
indeed, to get its financial appropriations passed by the Legislature.
Langtry was a Tory in his point of view, and was considered very English
in his tone and manner. His lectures were dull, and the students didn't
like him. Every inducement was offered to make his courses popular.
Liberal credits were given for collateral reading. A student could read
almost anything that had ever been written in the United States and get
credit for it in American history. He could charge up the time spent in
perusing "The Scarlet Letter" to Colonial history, and "Tom Sawyer" to
the Missouri Compromise, it was said. St. Peter openly criticized these
lax methods, both to the faculty and to the regents. Naturally, "Madame
Langtry" paid him out. During the Professor's second Sabbatical year in
Spain, Horace and his uncle together very nearly got his department away
from him. They worked so quietly that it was only at the eleventh hour
that St. Peter's old students throughout the State got wind of what was
going on, dropped their various businesses and professions for a few
days, and came up to the capital in dozens and saved his place for him.
The opposition had been so formidable that when it came time for his
third year away, the Professor had not dared ask for it, but had taken
an extension of his summer vacation instead. The fact that he was
carrying on another line of work than his lectures, and was publishing
books that weren't strictly text-books, had been used against him by
Langtry's uncle.
As Langtry felt that the unpopularity of his course was due to his
subject, a new chair was created for him. There couldn't be two heads in
European history, so the board of regents made for him a chair of
Renaissance history, or, as St. Peter said, a Renaissance chair of
history. Of late years, for reasons that had not much to do with his
lectures, Langtry had prospered better. To the new generations of
country and village boys now pouring into the university in such large
numbers, Langtry had become, in a curious way, an instructor in
manners,--what is called an "influence." To the football-playing farmer
boy who had a good allowance but didn't know how to dress or what to
say, Langtry looked like a short cut. He had several times taken parties
of undergraduates to London for the summer, and they had come back
wonderfully brushed up. He introduced a very popular fraternity into the
university, and its members looked after his interests, as did its
affiliated sorority. His standing on the faculty was now quite as good
as St. Peter's own, and the Professor wondered what Langtry still had to
be sore about.
What was the use of keeping up the feud? They had both come there young
men, fighting for their places and their lives; now they were not very
young any more; they would neither of them, probably, ever hold a better
position. Couldn't Langtry see it was a draw, that they had both been
beaten?
Chapter 4
On Monday afternoon St. Peter mounted to his study and lay down on the
box-couch, tired out with his day at the university. The first few weeks
of the year were very fatiguing for him; there were so many exhausting
things besides his lectures and all the new students; long faculty
meetings in which almost no one was ever frank, and always the old fight
to keep up the standard of scholarship, to prevent the younger
professors, who had a sharp eye to their own interests, from farming the
whole institution out to athletics, and to the agricultural and
commercial schools favoured and fostered by the State Legislature.
The September heat, too, was hard on him. He wanted to be out at the
lake every day--it was never so fine as in late September. He was lying
with closed eyes, resting his mind on the picture of intense autumn-blue
water, when he heard a tap at the door and his daughter Rosamond
entered, very handsome in a silk suit of a vivid shade of lilac,
admirably suited to her complexion and showing that in the colour of her
cheeks there was actually a tone of warm lavender. In that low room she
seemed very tall indeed, a little out of drawing, as, to her father's
eye, she so often did. Usually, however, people were aware only of her
rich complexion, her curving, unresisting mouth and mysterious eyes. Tom
Outland had seen nothing else, and he was a young man who saw a great
deal.
"Am I interrupting something important, Papa?"
"No, not at all, my dear. Sit down."
On his writing-table she caught a glimpse of pages in a handwriting not
his--a script she knew very well.
"Not much choice of chairs, is there?" she smiled. "Papa, I don't like
to have you working in a place like this. It's not fitting."
"Much easier than to break in a new room, Rosie. A work-room should be
like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one."
"That's really what I came to see you about." Rosamond traced the edge
of a hole in the matting with the tip of her lilac sunshade. "Won't you
let me build you a little study in the back yard of the new house? I
have such good ideas for it, and you would have no bother about it at
all."
"Oh, thank you, Rosamond. It's most awfully nice of you to think of it.
But keep it just an idea--it's better so. Lots of things are. For the
present I'll plod on here. It's absurd, but it suits me. Habit is such a
big part of work."
"With Augusta's old things lying about, and those dusty old forms? Why
didn't she at least get those out of your way?"
"Oh, they have a right here, by long tenure. It's their room, too. I
don't want to come upon them lying in some dump-heap on the road to the
lake. They remind me of the times when you were little girls, and your
first party frocks used to hang on them at night, when I worked."
Rosamond smiled, unconvinced. "Papa, don't joke with me. I've come to
talk about something serious, and it's very difficult. You know I'm a
little afraid of you." She dropped her shadowy, bewitching eyes.
"Afraid of me? Never!"
"Oh, yes, I am when you're sarcastic. You mustn't be to-day, please.
Louie and I have often talked this over. We feel strongly about it. He's
often been on the point of blurting out with it, but I've curbed him.
You don't always approve of Louie and me. Of course it was only Louie's
energy and technical knowledge that ever made Tom's discovery succeed
commercially, but we don't feel that we ought to have all the returns
from it. We think you ought to let us settle an income on you, so that
you could give up your university work and devote all your time to
writing and research. That is what Tom would have wanted."
St. Peter rose quickly, with the light, supple spring he had when he was
very nervous, crossed to the window, wide on its hook, and half closed
it. "My dear daughter," he said decisively, when he had turned round to
her, "I couldn't possibly take any of Outland's money."
"But why not? You were the best friend he had in the world, he owed more
to you than to anyone else, and he hated having you hampered by
teaching. He admired your mind, and nothing would have pleased him more
than helping you to do the work you do better than anyone else. If he
were alive, that would be one of the first things he would use this
money for."
"But he is not alive, and there was no word about me in his will, and so
there is nothing to build your pretty theory upon. It's wonderfully nice
of you and Louie, and I'm very pleased, you know."
"But Tom was so impractical, Father. He never thought it would mean more
than a liberal dress allowance for me, if he thought at all. I don't
know--he never spoke to me about it."
St. Peter smiled quizzically. "I'm not so sure about his
impracticalness. When he was working on that gas, he once remarked to me
that there might be a fortune in it. To be sure he didn't wait to find
out whether there was a fortune, but that had to do with quite another
side of him. Yes, I think he knew his idea would make money and he
wanted you to have it, with him or without him."
The young woman's face grew troubled. "Even if I married?"
"He wanted you to have whatever would make you happy."
She sighed luxuriously. "Louie has done that. The only thing that
troubles me is, I feel you ought to have some of this money, that he
would wish it. He was so full of gratitude, felt that he owed you so
much."
Her father again rose, with that guarded, nervous movement. "Once and
for all, Rosamond, understand that he owed me no more than I owed him.
Nothing hurts me so much as to have any member of my family talk as if
we had done something fine for that young man, brought him out, produced
him. In a lifetime of teaching, I've encountered just one
remarkable
mind; but for that, I'd consider my good years largely wasted. And there
can be no question of money between me and Tom Outland. I can't explain
just how I feel about it, but it would somehow damage my recollections
of him, would make that episode in my life commonplace like everything
else. And that would be a great loss to me. I'm purely selfish in
refusing your offer; my friendship with Outland is the one thing I will
not have translated into the vulgar tongue."
His daughter looked perplexed and a little resentful.
"Sometimes," she murmured, "I think you feel I oughtn't to have taken
it, either."
"You had no choice. For you it was settled by his own hand. Your bond
with him was social, and it follows the laws of society, and they are
based on property. Mine wasn't, and there was no material clause in it.
He empowered you to carry out all his wishes, and I realize that you
have responsibilities--but none toward me. There is Rodney Blake, of
course, if he should ever turn up. You keep up some search for him?"
"Louie attends to it. He has investigated and rejected several
impostors."
"Then, of course, there are other friends of Tom's. The Cranes, for
instance?"
Rosamond's face grew hard. "I won't bother you about the Cranes, Papa.
We will attend to them. Mrs. Crane is a common creature, and she is
advised by that dreadful shyster brother of hers, Homer Bright. You know
what he is."
"Oh, yes! He was about the greatest bluffer I ever had in my classes."
Rosamond had risen to go. "I want you to be awfully happy, daughter,"
St. Peter went on, "and Tom did. It's only young people like you and
Louie who can get any fun out of money. And there is enough to cover the
fine, the almost imaginary obligations. You won't be sorry if you are
generous with people like the Cranes."
"Thank you, Papa. I shan't forget." Rosamond went down the narrow
stairway, leaving behind her a faint, fresh odour of lavender and
orrisroot, and her father lay down again on the box-couch. "A hint
about the Cranes will be enough," he was thinking.
He didn't in the least understand his older daughter. Not that he
pretended to understand Kathleen, either; but he usually knew how she
would feel about things, and she had always seemed to need his
protection more than Rosamond. When she was a student at the university,
he used sometimes to see her crossing the campus alone, her head and
shoulders lowered against the wind, her muff beside her face, her narrow
skirt clinging close. There was something too plucky, too
"I-can-go-it-alone," about her quick step and jaunty little head; he
didn't like it, it gave him a sudden pang. He would always call to her
and catch up with her, and make her take his arm and be docile.
She had been much quicker at her lessons than Rosie, and very clever at
water-colour portrait sketches. She had done several really good
likenesses of her father--one, at least, was the man himself. With her
mother she had no luck. She tried again and again, but the face was
always hard, the upper lip longer than it seemed in life, the nose long
and severed, and she made something cold and plaster-like of Lillian's
beautiful complexion.
"No, I don't see Mamma like that," she used to say, throwing out her
chin. "Of course I don't! It just comes like that." She had done many
heads of her sister, all very sentimental and curiously false, though
Louie Marsellus protested to them. Her drawing-teacher at the university
had urged Kathleen to go to Chicago and study in the life classes at the
Art Institute, but she said resolutely: "No, I can't really do anybody
but Papa, and I can't make a living painting him."
"The only unusual thing about Kitty," her father used to tell his