by Willa Cather
Scott McGregor got on the Blue Bird Express one afternoon, returning
from a business trip for his paper. On entering the smoking-car, he came
upon his father-in-law lying back in a leather chair, his clothes
covered with dust, his eyes closed, a dead cigar hanging between the
relaxed fingers of his dark, muscular hand. It gave Scott a start; he
thought the Professor didn't look well.
"Hello, Doctor! What are you doing here? Oh, yes! the shopping
expedition. Where's Rosamond?"
"In Chicago. At the Blackstone."
"Outlasted you, did she?"
"That's it." The Professor smiled apologetically, as if he were ashamed
to admit it.
Scott sat down beside him and tried to interest him in one subject after
another, without success. It occurred to him that he had never before
seen the Professor when he seemed absolutely flattened out and listless.
That was a bad sign; he was glad they were only half an hour from
Hamilton. "The old chap needs rest," he reflected. "Rosamond's run him
to death in Chicago. He oughtn't to be used as a courier, anyhow! I'm
going to tell Kitty that we must look out for her father a little. The
Marselluses have no mercy, and Lillian has always taken it for granted
that he was as strong as three men."
That evening Mrs. St. Peter was standing by the French windows in the
drawing-room, watching somewhat anxiously for her husband. The Chicago
train was usually punctual, and surely he would have taken a cab from
the station, for it was a raw February night with a freezing wind
blowing off the lake. St. Peter arrived on foot, however. As he came
through the gate, she could see by his walk and the set of his shoulders
that he was very tired. She hurried to open the front door, and asked
him why he hadn't come up in a taxi.
"Didn't think of it, really. I'm a creature of habit, and that's one of
the things I never used to do."
"And in you lightest overcoat! I thought you only wore this one because
you were going to buy a new fur coat in Chicago."
"Well, I didn't," he said rather shortly. "Let's omit the verb 'to buy'
in all forms for a time. Keep dinner back a little, will you, Lillian? I
want to take a warm bath and dress. I did get rather chilled coming up."
Mrs. St. Peter went to the kitchen, and, after a discreet interval,
followed her husband upstairs and into his room.
"I know you're tired, but tell me one thing: did you find the painted
Spanish bedroom set?"
"Oh, dear, yes! Several of them."
"And were they pretty?"
"Very. At least, I think I'd have found them so if I'd come upon them
without so many other things. Too much is certainly worse than too
little--of anything. It turned out to be rather an orgy of
acquisition."
"Rosamond lost her head?"
"Oh, no! Perfectly cool. I should say she had a faultless purchasing
manner. Wonder where a girl who grew up in that old house of ours ever
got it. She was like Napoleon looting the Italian palaces."
"Don't be harsh. You had a nice little vacation, at any rate."
"A very expensive one, for a poor professor. And not much rest."
A look of sharp anxiety came into Mrs. St. Peter's face. "You mean," she
breathed in a hushed voice, "that she let you--"
He cut in sharply. "I mean that I paid my way, as I hope always to be
able to do. Any suggestion to the contrary might have been very
graceful, but it would have been rejected. I am quite ready to permit
myself a little extravagance to be of service to the women of my family.
Any other arrangement is humiliating."
"Then that was why you didn't get your fur coat."
"That may have been one reason. I was not much in the humour for it."
Mrs. St. Peter went swiftly downstairs to make him a cocktail. She
sensed an unusual weariness in him, and felt, as it were, the bitter
taste on his tongue. A man, she knew, could get from his daughter a
peculiar kind of hurt--one of the cruellest that flesh is heir to. Her
heart ached for Godfrey.
When the Professor had been warmed and comforted by a good dinner, he
lit a cigar and sat down before the hearth to read. After a while his
wife saw that the book had slid to his knee, and he was looking into the
fire. Studying his dark profile, she noticed that the corners of his
funny eyebrows rose, as if he were amused by something.
"What are you thinking about, Godfrey?" she said presently. "Just then
you were smiling--quite agreeably!"
"I was thinking," he answered absently, "about Euripides; how, when he
was an old man, he went and lived in a cave by the sea, and it was
thought queer, at the time. It seems that houses had become
insupportable to him. I wonder whether it was because he had observed
women so closely all his life."
Chapter 15
The month of March was the dreariest and bleakest of the year in
Hamilton, and Louie strove to brighten it by opening a discussion of
plans for the summer. He had been hinting for some time that he had a
very attractive project up his sleeve, and though he had not succeeded
in keeping it from Mrs. St. Peter, he said nothing to the Professor
until one night when they were dining at the Marselluses'. All through
dinner Louie kept reminding them of the specialties of this and that
Paris restaurant, so that St. Peter was not altogether unprepared.
As they left the dining-room, Louie burst out with it. He and Rosamond
were to take Doctor and Mrs. St. Peter to France for the summer. Louie
had decided upon the dates, the boat, the itinerary; he was intoxicated
with the pleasure of planning.
"Understand," he said, "it is to be our excursion, from Hamilton back to
Hamilton. We'll travel in the most ample comfort, but not in
magnificence. We'll go down to Biarritz for a little fashionable life,
and stop at Marseilles to see your foster-brother, Charles Thierault.
The rest of the summer we'll lead a scholarly life in Paris. I have my
own reasons for wishing you to go along, Professor. The pleasure of your
company would be quite enough, but I have also other reasons. I want to
see the intellectual side of Paris, and to meet some of the savants and
men of letters whom you know. What a shame Gaston Paris is not living!
We could very nicely make up a little party at Lap�rouse for him. But
there are others."
Mrs. St. Peter developed the argument. "Yes, Louie, you and Godfrey can
lunch with the scholars while Rosamond and I are shopping."
Marsellus looked alarmed. "Not at all, Dearest! It's to be understood
that I always shop with you. I adore the shops in Paris. Besides, we
shall want you with us when we lunch with celebrities. When was a
savant, and a Frenchman, not eager for the company of two charming
ladies at d�jeuner? And you may have too much of the society of your
sposi; very nice for you to have variety. You must keep a little
engagement book: Lundi, d�jeuner, M. Emile Faguet. Mercredi, diner, M.
Anatole France; and so on."
St. Peter chuckled. "I'm afraid you exaggerate the circumference of my
>
social circle, Louie. I haven't the pleasure of knowing Anatole France."
"No matter; we can have M. Paul Bourget for Wednesday."
"You can help us, too, about finding things for the house, Papa," said
Rosamond. "We expect to pick up a good many things. The Thieraults ought
to know good shops down in the South, where prices have not gone up."
"I'm afraid the antiquaries are centralized in Paris. I never saw
anything very interesting in Lyons or the Midi. However, they may
exist."
"Charles Thierault is still interested in a shipping-line that runs to
the City of Mexico for us. They would go in without duty, and Louie
thinks he can get them across the border as household goods."
"That sounds practicable, Rosie. It might be managed."
Marsellus laughed and patted his wife's hand. "Oh-ho, cher Papa, you
haven't begun to find how practical we can be!"
"Well, Louie, it's a tempting idea, and I'll think it over. I'll see
whether I can arrange my work." St. Peter knew at that moment that he
would never be one of this light-hearted expedition, and he hated
himself for the ungracious drawing-back that he felt in the region of
his diaphragm.
The family discussed their summer plans all evening. Louie wanted to
write at once for rooms at the Meurice, but Mrs. St. Peter ruled it out
as too expensive.
That night, after he was in bed, St. Peter tried in vain to justify
himself in his inevitable refusal. He liked Paris, and he liked Louie.
But one couldn't do one's own things in another person's way; selfish or
not, that was the truth. Besides, he would not be needed. He could trust
Louie to take every care of Lillian, and nobody could please her more
than her son-in-law. Beaux-fils, apparently, were meant by Providence to
take the husband's place when husbands had ceased to be lovers.
Marsellus never forgot one of the hundred foolish little attentions that
Lillian loved. Best of all, he admired her extravagantly, her
distinction was priceless to him. Many people admired her, but Louie
more than most. That worldliness, that willingness to get the most out
of occasions and people, which had developed so strongly in Lillian in
the last few years, seemed to Louie as natural and proper as it seemed
unnatural to Godfrey. It was an element that had always been in Lillian,
and as long as it resulted in mere fastidiousness, was not a means to an
end, St. Peter liked it, too. He knew it was due to this worldliness,
even more than to the fact that his wife had a little money of her own,
that she and his daughters had never been drab and a little pathetic,
like some of the faculty women. They hadn't much, but they were never
absurd. They never made shabby compromises. If they couldn't get the
right thing, they went without. Usually they had the right thing, and it
got paid for, somehow. He couldn't say they were extravagant; the old
house had been funny and bare enough, but there were no ugly things in
it.
Since Rosamond's marriage to Marsellus, both she and her mother had
changed bewilderingly in some respects--changed and hardened. But Louie,
who had done the damage, had not damaged himself. It was to him that one
appealed,--for Augusta, for Professor Crane, for the bruised feelings of
people less fortunate. It was less because of Louie than for any other
reason that he would refuse this princely invitation.
He could get out of it without hurting anybody--though he knew Louie
would be sorry. He could simply insist that he must work, and that he
couldn't work away from his old study. There were some advantages about
being a writer of histories. The desk was a shelter one could hide
behind, it was a hole one could creep into.
When St. Peter told his family of his decision, Louie was disappointed;
but he was respectful, and readily conceded that the Professor's first
duty was to his work. Rosamond was incredulous and piqued; she didn't
see how he could be so ungenerous as to spoil an arrangement which would
give pleasure to everyone concerned. His wife looked at him with
thoughtful disbelief.
When they were alone together, she approached the matter more directly
than was her wont nowadays.
"Godfrey," she said slowly and sadly, "I wonder what it is that makes
you draw away from your family. Or who it is."
"My dear, are you going to be jealous?"
"I wish I were going to be. I'd much rather see you foolish about some
woman than becoming lonely and inhuman."
"Well, the habit of living with ideas grows on one, I suppose, just as
inevitably as the more cheerful habit of living with various ladies.
There's something to be said for both."
"I think you ideas were best when you were your most human self."
St. Peter sighed. "I can't contradict you there. But I must go on as I
can. It is not always May."
"You are not old enough for the pose you take. That's what puzzles me.
For so many years you never seemed to grow at all older, though I did.
Two years ago you were an impetuous young man. Now you save yourself in
everything. You're naturally warm and affectionate; all at once you
begin shutting yourself away from everybody. I don't think you'll be
happier for it." Up to this point she had been lecturing him. Now she
suddenly crossed the room and sat down on the arm of his chair, looking
into his face and twisting up the ends of his military eyebrows with her
thumb and middle finger. "Why is it, Godfrey? I can't see any change in
your face, though I watch you so closely. It's in your mind, in your
mood. Something has come over you. Is it merely that you know too much,
I wonder? Too much to be happy? You were always the wisest person in the
world. What is it, can't you tell me?"
"I can't altogether tell myself, Lillian. It's not wholly a matter of
the calendar. It's the feeling that I've put a great deal behind me,
where I can't go back to it again--and I don't really wish to go back.
The way would be too long and too fatiguing. Perhaps, for a home-staying
man, I've lived pretty hard. I wasn't willing to slight anything--you,
or my desk, or my students. And now I seem to be tremendously tired. One
pays, coming or going. A man has got only just so much in him; when it's
gone he slumps. Even the first Napoleon did." They both laughed. That
was an old joke--the Professor's darkest secret. At the font he had been
christened Napoleon Godfrey St. Peter. There had always been a Napoleon
in the family, since a remote grandfather got his discharge from the
Grande Arm�e. Godfrey had abbreviated his name in Kansas, and even his
daughters didn't know what it had been originally.
"I think, you know," he told his wife as he rose to go to bed, "that
I'll get my second wind. But for the present I don't want anything very
stimulating. Paris is too beautiful, and too full of memories."
Chapter 16
One Saturday morning in the spring, when the Professor was at work in
the old house, he heard energetic footsteps running up the uncarpeted
stairway. Louie's voice called:
"Cher Papa, shall I disturb you too much?"
St. Peter rose and opened to him. Louie was wearing his golf stockings,
and a purple jacket with a fur collar.
"No, I'm not going golfing. I changed my mind, but didn't have time to
change my clothes. I want you to take a run out along the lake-shore
with us. Rosie is going to lunch with some friends at the Country Club.
We'll have a drive with her, and then drop her there. It's a glorious
day." Louie's keen, interested eye ran about the shabby little room. He
chuckled. "The old bear, he just likes his old den, doesn't he? I can
readily understand. Your children were born here. Not your
daughters--your sons, your splendid Spanish-adventurer sons! I'm proud
to be related to them, even by marriage. And your blanket, surely that's
a Spanish touch!" Louie pounced upon the purple blanket, threw it across
his chest, and, moving aside the wire lady, studied himself in Augusta's
glass. "And a very proper dressing-gown it would make for Louie,
wouldn't it?"
"It was Outland's--a precious possession. His lost chum brought it up
from Mexico."
"Was it Outland's, indeed?" Louie stroked it and regarded it in the glass
with increased admiration. "I can never forgive destiny that I hadn't
the chance to know that splendid fellow."
The Professor's eyebrows rose in puzzled interrogation. "It might have
been awkward--about Rosie, you know."
"I never think of him as a rival," said Louie, throwing back the blanket
with a wide gesture. "I think of him as a brother, an adored and gifted
brother."
Half an hour later they were spinning along through the country, just
coming green, Rosamond and her father on the back seat, Louie facing
them. It struck the Professor that Louie had something on his mind; his
restless bright eyes watched his wife narrowly, as if to seize an
opportune moment.
"You know, Doctor," he said presently, "we've decided to give up our
house before we go abroad, and cut off the rent. We'll move the books
and pictures up to Outland (and our wedding presents, of course), and
the silver we'll put in the bank. There won't be much of our present
furniture that we'll need. I wonder if you could use any of it? And it
has just occurred to me, Rosie," here he leaned forward and tapped her
knee, "that we might ask Scott and Kathleen to come round and select
anything they like. No use bothering to sell it, we'd get so little."
Rosamond looked at him in astonishment. It was very evident they had not
discussed anything of this sort before. "Don't be foolish, Louie," she
said quietly. "They wouldn't want your things."
"But why not?" he persisted playfully. "They are very nice things. Not
right for Outland, but perfectly right for a little house. We chose them
with care, and we don't want them going into some dirty second-hand
shop."
"They won't have to. We can store them in the attic at Outland, Heaven
knows it's big enough! You don't have to do anything with them just
now."
"It seems a pity, when somebody might be getting the good of them. I
know Scott could do very well with that chiffonier of mine. He admired
it greatly, I remember, and said he'd never had one with proper drawers
for his shirts."
Rosamond's lip curled.
"Don't look like that, Rosie! It's naughty. Stop it!" Louie reached
forward and shook her gently by the elbows. "And how can you be sure the
McGregors wouldn't like our things, when you've never asked them? What
positive ideas she does get into her head!"
"They wouldn't want them because they are ours, yours and mine, if you
will have it," she said coldly, drawing away from him.