The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

weather-dried little sea captain from the Hautes-Pyr�n�es, half a dozen

  spry seamen, and a line of gleaming snow peaks, agonizingly high and

  sharp, along the southern coast of Spain.

  Louie arranged the birthday dinner in the public dining-room of the

  hotel, and three of the Professor's colleagues dined with them on that

  occasion. Louie had gone out to the university to hear St. Peter

  lecture, had met some of the faculty, and immediately invited them to

  dinner. They accepted--when was a professor known to refuse a good

  dinner? Rosamond was presented with her emeralds, and, as St. Peter

  afterward observed to his wife, practically all the guests in the

  dining-room were participants in the happy event. Lillian was doubtless

  right when she told him that, all the same, his fellow professors went

  away from the Blackstone that night respecting Godfrey St. Peter more

  than they had ever done before, and if they had marriageable daughters,

  they were certainly envying him his luck.

  "That," her husband replied, "is my chief objection to public

  magnificence; it seems to show everybody up in the worst possible light.

  I'm not finding fault with anyone but myself, understand. When I

  consented to occupy an apartment I couldn't afford, I let myself in for

  whatever might follow."

  They got back to Hamilton in bitter weather. The lake winds were

  scourging the town, and Scott had laryngitis and was writing prose poems

  about the pleasures of tending your own furnace when the thermometer is

  twenty below.

  "Godfrey," said Mrs. St. Peter when he set off for his class-room on the

  morning after their return, "surely you're not going to the old house

  this afternoon. It will be like a refrigerating-plant. There's no way of

  heating your study except by that miserable little stove."

  "There never was, my dear. I got along a good many years."

  "It was very different when the house below was heated. That stove isn't

  safe when you keep the window open. A gust of wind might blow it out at

  any moment, and if you were at work you'd never notice until you were

  half poisoned by gas. You'll get a fine headache one of these days."

  "I've got headaches that way before, and survived them," he said

  stubbornly.

  "How can you be so perverse? You know things are different now, and you

  ought to take more care of your health."

  "Why so? It's not worth half so much as it was then."

  His wife disregarded this. "And don't you think it's foolish

  extravagance to go on paying the rent of an entire house, in order to

  spend a few hours a day in one very uncomfortable room of it?"

  The Professor's dark skin reddened, and the ends of his formidable

  eyebrows ascended toward his black hair. "It's almost my only

  extravagance," he muttered fiercely.

  "How irritable and unreasonable he is becoming!" his wife reflected, as

  she heard him putting on his overshoes in the hall.

  Chapter 9

  For Christmas day the weather turned mild again. There would be a family

  dinner in the evening, but St. Peter was going to have the whole day to

  himself, in the old house. He asked his wife to put him up some

  sandwiches, so that he needn't come back for lunch. He kept a few

  bottles of sherry in his study, in the old chest under the forms.

  Fortunately he had brought back a great deal of it from his last trip to

  Spain. It wasn't foresight--Prohibition was then unthinkable--but a

  lucky accident. He had gone with his innkeeper to an auction, and bought

  in a dozen dozens of a sherry that went very cheap. He came home by the

  City of Mexico and got the wine through without duty.

  As he was crossing the park with his sandwiches, he met Augusta coming

  back from Mass. "Are you still going to the old house, Professor?" she

  asked reproachfully, her face smiling at him between her stiff black fur

  collar and her stiff black hat.

  "Oh, yes Augusta, but it's not the same. I miss you. There are never any

  new dresses on my ladies in the evening now. Won't you come in sometime

  and deck them out, as a surprise for me? I like to see them looking

  smart."

  Augusta laughed. "You are a funny man, Doctor St. Peter. If anyone else

  said the things you do to your classes, I'd be scandalized. But I always

  tell people you don't mean half you say."

  "And how do you know what I say to my classes, may I ask?"

  "Why, of course, they go out and talk about it when you say slighting

  things about the Church," she said gravely.

  "But, really, Augusta, I don't think I ever do."

  "Well, they take it that way. They are not as smart as you, and you

  ought to be careful."

  "It doesn't matter. What they think to-day, they'll forget to-morrow."

  He was walking beside Augusta, with a slack, indifferent stride, very

  unlike the step he had when he was full of something. "That reminds me:

  I've been wanting to ask you a question. That passage in the service

  about the Mystical Rose, Lily of Zion, Tower of Ivory--is that the

  Magnificat?"

  Augusta stopped and looked at him. "Why, Professor! Did you receive no

  religious instruction at all?"

  "How could I, Augusta? My mother was a Methodist, there was no Catholic

  church in our town in Kansas, and I guess my father forgot his

  religion."

  "That happens, in mixed marriages." Augusta spoke meaningly.

  "Ah, yes, I suppose so. But tell me, what is the Magnificat, then?"

  "The Magnificat begins, My soul doth magnify the Lord; you must know

  that."

  "But I thought the Magnificat was about the Virgin?"

  "Oh, no, Professor! The Blessed Virgin composed the Magnificat."

  St. Peter became intensely interested. "Oh, she did?"

  Augusta spoke gently, as if she were prompting him and did not wish to

  rebuke his ignorance too sharply. "Why, yes, just as soon as the angel

  had announced to her that she would be the mother of our Lord, the

  Blessed Virgin composed the Magnificat. I always think of you as knowing

  everything, Doctor St. Peter!"

  "And you're always finding out how little I know. Well, you don't give

  me away. You are very discreet."

  Their ways parted, and both went on more cheerful than when they met.

  The Professor climbed to his study feeling quite as though Augusta had

  been there and brightened it up for him. (Surely she had said that the

  Blessed Virgin sat down and composed the Magnificat!) Augusta had been

  with them often in the holiday season, back in the years when holidays

  were holidays indeed. He had grown to like the reminders of herself that

  she left in his workroom--especially the toilettes upon the figures.

  Sometimes she made those terrible women entirely plausible!

  In the early years, no matter how hard he was working, he had always

  felt the sense of holiday, of a special warmth and fragrance in the air,

  steal up to his study from the house below. When he was writing his

  best, he was conscious of pretty little girls in fresh dresses--of

  flowers and greens in the comfortable, shabby sitting-room--of his

  wife's good looks and good taste--even of a better dinner t
han usual

  under preparation downstairs. All the while he had been working so

  fiercely at his eight big volumes, he was not insensible to the domestic

  drama that went on beneath him. His mind had played delightedly with all

  those incidents. Just as, when Queen Mathilde was doing the long

  tapestry now shown at Bayeux,--working her chronicle of the deeds of

  knights and heroes,--alongside the big pattern of dramatic action she

  and her women carried the little playful pattern of birds and beasts

  that are a story in themselves; so, to him, the most important chapters

  of his history were interwoven with personal memories.

  On this Christmas morning, with that sense of the past in his mind, the

  Professor went mechanically to work, and the morning disappeared. Before

  he knew it was passing, the bells from Augusta's church across the park

  rang out and told him it was gone. He pushed back his papers and

  arranged his writing-table for lunch.

  He had been working hard, he judged, because he was so hungry. He peered

  with interest into the basket his wife had given him--a wicker bag, it

  was, really, that he had once bought full of strawberries at Gibraltar.

  Chicken sandwiches with lettuce leaves, red California grapes, and two

  shapely, long-necked russet pears. That would do very well; and Lillian

  had thoughtfully put in one of her best dinner napkins, knowing he hated

  ugly linen. From the chest he took out a round of cheese, and a bottle

  of his wine, and began to polish a sherry glass.

  While he was enjoying his lunch, he was thinking of certain holidays he

  had spent alone in Paris, when he was living at Versailles, with the

  Thieraults, as tutor to their boys. There was one All Souls' Day when he

  had gone into Paris by an early train and had a magnificent breakfast on

  the Rue de Vaugirard--not at Foyot's, he hadn't money enough in those

  days to put his nose inside the place. After breakfast he went out to

  walk in the soft rainfall. The sky was of such an intense silvery grey

  that all the grey stone buildings along the Rue St. Jacques and the Rue

  Sufflot came out in that silver shine stronger than in sunlight. The

  shop windows were shut; on the bleak ascent to the Pantheon there was

  not a spot of colour, nothing but wet, shiny, quick-silvery grey,

  accented by black crevices, and weatherworn bosses white as wood-ash.

  All at once, from somewhere behind the Pantheon itself, a man and woman,

  pushing a hand-cart, came into the empty street. The cart was full of

  pink dahlias, all exactly the same colour. The young man was fair and

  slight, with a pale face; the woman carried a baby. Both they and the

  heels of their barrow were splashed with mud. They must have come from a

  good way in the country, and were a weary, anxious-looking pair. They

  stopped at a corner before the Pantheon and fearfully scanned the bleak,

  silvery, deserted streets. The man went into a bakery, and his wife

  began to spread out the flowers, which were done up in large bouquets

  with fresh green chestnut-leaves. Young St. Peter approached and asked

  the price.

  "Deux francs cinquante, Monsieur," she said with a kind of desperate

  courage.

  He took a bunch and handed her a five-franc note. She had no change. Her

  husband, watching from the bakery, came running across with a loaf of

  bread under his arm.

  "Deux francs cinquante," she called to him as he came up. He put his

  hand into his pocket and fumbled.

  "Deux francs cinquante," she repeated with painful tension. The price

  agreed upon had probably been a franc or a franc fifty. The man counted

  out the change to the student and looked at his wife with admiration.

  St. Peter was so pleased with his flowers that it hadn't occurred to him

  to get more; but all his life he had regretted that he didn't buy two

  bunches, and push their fortunes a little further. He had never again

  found dahlias of such a beautiful colour, or so charmingly arranged with

  bright chestnut-leaves.

  A moment later he was strolling down the hill, wondering to whom he

  could give his bouquet, when a pathetic procession filed past him

  through the rain. The girls of a charity school came walking two and

  two, in hideous dark uniforms and round felt hats without ribbon or bow,

  marshalled by four black-bonneted nuns. They were all looking down, all

  but one--the pretty one, naturally--and she was looking sidewise,

  directly at the student and his flowers. Their eyes met, she smiled, and

  just as he put out his hand with the bouquet, one of the sisters flapped

  up like a black crow and shut the girl's pretty face from him. She would

  have to pay for that smile, he was afraid. Godfrey spent his day in the

  Luxembourg Gardens and walked back to the Gare St. Lazare at evening

  with nothing but his return ticket in his pocket, very glad to get home

  to Versailles in time for the family dinner.

  When he first went to live with the Thieraults, he had found Madame

  Thierault severe and exacting, stingy about his laundry and grudging

  about the cheese and fruit he ate for dinner. But in the end she was

  very kind to him; she never pampered him, but he could depend upon her.

  Her three sons had always been his dearest friends. Gaston, the one he

  loved best, was dead--killed in the Boxer uprising in China. But Pierre

  still lived at Versailles, and Charles had a business in Marseilles.

  When he was in France their homes were his. They were much closer to him

  than his own brothers. It was one summer when he was in France, with

  Lillian and the two little girls, that the idea of writing a work upon

  the early Spanish explorers first occurred to him, and he had turned at

  once to the Thieraults. After giving his wife enough money to finish the

  summer and get home, he took the little that was left and went down to

  Marseilles to talk over his project with Charles Thierault fils, whose

  mercantile house did a business with Spain in cork. Clearly St. Peter

  would have to be in Spain as much as possible for the next few years,

  and he would have to live there very cheaply. The Thieraults were always

  glad of a chance to help him. Not with money,--they were too French and

  too logical for that. But they would go to any amount of trouble and no

  inconsiderable expense to save him a few thousand francs.

  That summer Charles kept him for three weeks in his oleander-buried

  house in the Prado, until his little brig, L'Espoir, sailed out of the

  new port with a cargo for Algeciras. The captain was from the

  Hautes-Pyr�n�es, and his spare crew were all Proven�als, seamen trained

  in that hard school of the Gulf of Lyons. On the voyage everything

  seemed to feed the plan of the work that was forming in St. Peter's

  mind; the skipper, the old Catalan second mate, the sea itself. One day

  stood out above the others. All day long they were skirting the south

  coast of Spain; from the rose of dawn to the gold of sunset the ranges

  of the Sierra Nevadas towered on their right, snow peak after snow peak,

  high beyond the flight of fancy, gleaming like crystal and topaz. St.

  Peter lay looking u
p at them from a little boat riding low in the purple

  water, and the design of his book unfolded in the air above him, just as

  definitely as the mountain ranges themselves. And the design was sound.

  He had accepted it as inevitable, had never meddled with it, and it had

  seen him through.

  It was late on Christmas afternoon when the Professor got back to the

  new house, but he was in such a happy frame of mind that he feared

  nothing, not even a family dinner. He quite looked forward to it, on the

  contrary. His wife heard him humming his favorite air from Matrimonio

  Segreto while he was dressing.

  That evening the two daughters of the house arrived almost at the same

  moment. When Rosamond threw off her cloak in the hall, her father

  noticed that she was wearing her new necklace. Kathleen stood looking at

  it, and was evidently trying to find courage to say something about it,

  when Louie helped her by breaking in.

  "And, Kitty, you haven't seen our jewels! What do you think? Just look

  at it."

  "I was looking. It's too lovely!"

  "It's very old, you see, the gold. What a work I had finding it! She

  doesn't like anything showy, you know, and she doesn't care about

  intrinsic values. It must be beautiful, first of all."

  "Well, it is that, surely."

  Louie walked up and down, admiring his wife. "She carries off things

  like that, doesn't she? And yet, you know, I like her in simple things,

  too." He dropped into reflection, just as if her were alone and talking

  to himself. "I always remember a little bracelet she wore the night I

  first met her. A turquoise set in silver, wasn't it? Yes, a turquoise

  set in dull silver. Have you it yet, Rosie?"

  "I think so." There was a shade of displeasure in Rosamond's voice, and

  she turned back into the hall to look for something. "Where are the

  violets you brought for Mamma?"

  Mrs. St. Peter came in, followed by the maid and the cocktails. Scott

  began the usual Prohibition lament.

  "Why don't you journalists tell the truth about it in print?" Louie

  asked him. "It's a case where you could do something."

  "And lose my job? Not much! This country's split in two, socially, and I

  don't know if it's ever coming together. It's not so hard on me, I can

  drink hard liquor. But you and the Professor like wine and fancy stuff."

  "Oh, it's nothing to us! We're going to France for the summer," Louie

  put his arm round his wife and rubbed his cheek against hers, saying

  caressingly, "and drink Burgundy, Burgundy, Burgundy!"

  "Please take me with you, Louie," Mrs. St. Peter pleaded, to distract

  him from his wife. Nothing made the McGregors so uncomfortable and so

  wrathful as the tender moments which sometimes overtook the Marselluses

  in public.

  "We are going to take you, and Papa too. That's our plan. I take him for

  safety. If I travelled on the Continent alone with two such handsome

  women, it wouldn't be tolerated. There would be a trumped-up quarrel,

  and a stiletto, and then somebody would be a widow," turning again to

  his wife.

  "Come here, Louie." Mrs. St. Peter beckoned him. "I have a confession to

  make. I'm afraid there's no dinner for you tonight."

  "No dinner for me?"

  "No. There's nothing either you or Godfrey will like. It's Scott's

  dinner to-night. Your tastes are so different, I can't compromise. And

  this is his, from the cream soup to the frozen pudding."

  "But who said I didn't like cream soup and frozen pudding?" Louie held

  out his hands to show their guiltlessness. "And are there haricots verts

  in the cream sauce? I thought so! And I like those, too. The truth is,

  Dearest," he stood before her and tapped her chin with his finger, "the

  truth is that I like all Scott's dinners, it's he who doesn't like mine!