The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

Louie sank back into his seat and gave it up. "Why do you think such

  naughty things? I don't believe it, you know! You are so touchy. Scott

  and Kitty may be a little stand-offish, but it might very possibly make

  them feel better if you went at them nicely about this." He rallied and

  began to coax again. "She's got it into her head that the McGregors have

  a grudge, Doctor. There's nothing to it."

  Rosamond had grown quite pale. Her upper lip, that was so like her

  mother's when she was affable, so much harder when she was not, came

  down like a steel curtain. "I happen to know, Louie, that Scott

  blackballed you for the Arts and Letters. You can call that a grudge or

  not, as you please."

  Marsellus was visibly shaken. He looked sad. "Well, if he did, it wasn't

  very nice of him, certainly. But are you sure, Rosie? Rumours do go

  about, and people like to stir up family differences."

  "It isn't people, and it's not rumour. I know it positively. Kathleen's

  best friend told me."

  Louie lay back and shook with laughter. "Oh, the ladies, the ladies!

  What they do to each other, Professor!"

  St. Peter was very uncomfortable. "I don't think I'd accept such

  evidence, Rosamond. I don't believe it of Scott, and I think Louie has

  the right idea. People are like children, and Scott's poor and proud. I

  think Louie's chiffonier would go to his heart, if Louie offered it to

  him. I'm afraid you wouldn't do it very graciously."

  "Professor, I'll go to McGregor's office and put it up to him. If he

  scorns it, so much the worse for him. He'll lose a very handy piece of

  furniture."

  Rosamond's paleness changed to red. Fortunately they were spinning over

  the gravel loops that led through shaven turf to the Country Club. "You

  can do as you like with your own things, Louie. But I don't want any of

  mine in the McGregors' bungalow. I know Scott's brand of humour too

  well, and the kind of jokes that would be made about them."

  The car stopped. Louie sprang out and gave his arm to his wife. He

  walked up the steps to the door with her, and his back expressed such

  patient, protecting kindness that the Professor bit his lower lip with

  indignation. Louie came back looking quite grey and tired, and sank into

  the seat beside the Professor with a sadder-and-wiser smile.

  "Louie," St. Peter spoke with deep feeling, "do you happen to have read

  a novel of Henry James, The American? There's rather a nice scene in it,

  in which a young Frenchman, hurt in a duel, apologizes for the behaviour

  of his family. I'd like to do something of the sort. I apologize to you

  for Rosamond, and for Scott, if he has done such a mean thing."

  Louie's downcast face brightened at once. He squeezed the Professor's

  arm warmly. "Oh, that's all right, sir! As for Scott, I can understand.

  He was the first son of the family, and he was the whole thing. Then I

  came along, a stranger, and carried off Rosie, and this patent began to

  pay so well--it's enough to make any man jealous, and he a Scotchman!

  But I think Scott will come around in the end; people usually do, if you

  treat them well, and I mean to. I like the fellow. As for Rosamond, you

  mustn't give that a thought. I love her when she's naughty. She's a bit

  unreasonable sometimes, but I'm always hoping for a period of utter, of

  fantastic unreasonableness, which will be the beginning of a great

  happiness for us all."

  "Louie, you are magnanimous and magnificent!" murmured his vanquished

  father-in-law.

  Chapter 17

  Lillian and the Marselluses sailed for France early in May. The

  Professor, left alone, had plenty of time to spray his rose-vines, and

  his garden had never been so beautiful as it was that June. After his

  university duties were over, he smuggled his bed and clothing back to

  the old house and settled down to a leisurely bachelor life. He realized

  that he ought to be getting to work. The garden, in which he sat all

  day, was no longer a valid excuse to keep him from his study. But the

  task that awaited him up there was difficult. It was a little thing, but

  one of those little things at which the hand becomes self-conscious,

  feels itself stiff and clumsy.

  It was his plan to give part of this summer to Tom Outland's diary--to

  edit and annotate it for publication. The bother was that he must write

  an introduction. The diary covered only about six months of the boy's

  life, a summer he spent on the Blue Mesa, and in it there was almost

  nothing about Tom himself. To mean anything, it must be prefaced by a

  sketch of Outland, and some account of his later life and achievements.

  To write of his scientific work would be comparatively easy. But that

  was not all the story; his was a many-sided mind, though a simple and

  straightforward personality.

  Of course Mrs. St. Peter had insisted that he was not altogether

  straightforward; but that was merely because he was not altogether

  consistent. As an investigator he was clear-sighted and hard-headed; but

  in personal relations he was apt to be exaggerated and quixotic. He

  idealized the people he loved and paid his devoir to the ideal rather

  than to the individual, so that his behaviour was sometimes a little too

  exalted for the circumstances--"chivalry of the cinema," Lillian used to

  say. One of his sentimental superstitions was that he must never on any

  account owe any material advantage to his friends, that he must keep

  affection and advancement far apart, as if they were chemicals that

  would disintegrate each other. St. Peter thought this the logical result

  of Tom's strange bringing-up and his early associations. There is, he

  knew, this dream of self-sacrificing friendship and disinterested love

  down among the day-labourers, the men who run the railroad trains and

  boats and reapers and thrashers and mine-drills of the world. And Tom

  had brought it along to the university, where advancement through

  personal influence was considered honourable.

  It was not until Outland was a senior that Lillian began to be jealous

  of him. He had been almost a member of the family for two years, and she

  had never found fault with the boy. But after the Professor began to

  take Tom up to the study and talk over his work with him, began to make

  a companion of him, then Mrs. St. Peter withdrew her favour. She could

  change like that; friendship was not a matter of habit with her. And

  when she was through with anyone, she of course found reasons for her

  fickleness. Tom, she reminded her husband, was far from frank, though he

  had such an open manner. He had been consistently reserved about his own

  affairs, and she could not believe the facts he withheld were altogether

  creditable. They had always known he had a secret, something to do with

  the mysterious Rodney Blake and the bank account in New Mexico upon

  which he was not at liberty to draw. The young man must have felt the

  change in her, for he began that winter to make his work a pretext for

  coming to the house less often. He and St. Peter now met in the alcove

  behind the Professor's lecture room at the university.
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  One Sunday, shortly before Tom's Commencement, he came to the house to

  ask Rosamond to go to the senior dance with him. The family were having

  tea in the garden; a few days of intensely warm weather had come on and

  hurried the roses into bloom. Rosamond happened to ask Tom, who sat in

  his white flannels, fanning himself with his straw hat, if spring in the

  South-west was as warm as this.

  "Oh, no," he replied. "May is usually chilly down there--bright sun, but

  a kind of edge in the wind, and cool nights. Last night reminded me of

  smothery May nights in Washington."

  Mrs. St. Peter glanced up. "You mean Washington City? I didn't know you

  had ever been so far east."

  There was no denying that the young man looked uncomfortable. He frowned

  and said in a low voice: "Yes, I've been there. I suppose I don't speak

  of it because I haven't very pleasant recollections of it."

  "How long were you there?" his hostess asked.

  "A winter and spring, more than six months. Long enough to get very

  home-sick." He went away almost at once, as if he were afraid of being

  questioned further.

  The subject came up again a few weeks later, however. After Tom's

  graduation, two courses were open to him. He was offered an instructorship,

  with a small salary, in the Physics department under Dr. Crane,

  and a graduate scholarship at Johns Hopkins University. St. Peter

  strongly urged him to accept the latter. One evening when the family

  were discussing Tom's prospects, the Professor summed up all the reasons

  why he ought to go to Baltimore and work in the laboratory made famous

  by Dr. Rowland. He assured him, moreover, that he would find the

  atmosphere of an old Southern city delightful.

  "Yes, I know something about the atmosphere," Tom broke out at last. "It

  is delightful, but it's all wrong for me. It discourages me dreadfully.

  I used to go over there when I was in Washington, and it always made me

  blue. I don't believe I could ever work there."

  "But can you trust a child's impression to guide you now, in such an

  important decision?" asked Mrs. St. Peter gravely.

  "I wasn't a child, Mrs. St. Peter. I was as much grown up as I am

  now--older, in some ways. It was only about a year before I came here."

  "But, Tom, you were on the section gang that year! Why do you mix us

  all` up?" Kathleen caught his hand and squeezed the knuckles together,

  as she did when she wanted to punish him.

  "Well, maybe it was two years before. It doesn't matter. It was long

  enough to count for two ordinary years," he muttered abstractedly.

  Again he went away abruptly, and a few days later he told St. Peter that

  he had definitely accepted the instructorship under Crane, and would

  stay on in Hamilton.

  During that summer after Outland's graduation, St. Peter got to know all

  there was behind his reserve. Mrs. St. Peter and the two girls were in

  Colorado, and the Professor was alone in the house, writing on volumes

  three and four of his history. Tom was carrying on some experiments of

  his own, over in the Physics laboratory. He and St. Peter were often

  together in the evening, and on fine afternoons they went swimming.

  Every Saturday the Professor turned his house over to the cleaning-woman,

  and he and Tom went to the lake and spent the day in his sail-boat.

  It was just the sort of summer St. Peter liked, if he had to be in

  Hamilton at all. He was his own cook, and had laid in a choice

  assortment of cheeses and light Italian wines from a discriminating

  importer in Chicago. Every morning before he sat down at his desk he

  took a walk to the market and had his pick of the fruits and salads. He

  dined at eight o'clock. When he cooked a fine leg of lamb, saignant,

  well rubbed with garlic before it went into the pan, then he asked

  Outland to dinner. Over a dish of steaming asparagus, swathed in a

  napkin to keep it hot, and a bottle of sparkling Asti, they talked and

  watched night fall in the garden. If the evening happened to be rainy or

  chilly, they sat inside and read Lucretius.

  It was on one of those rainy nights, before the fire in the dining-room,

  that Tom at last told the story he had always kept back. It was nothing

  very incriminating, nothing very remarkable; a story of youthful defeat,

  the sort of thing a boy is sensitive about--until he grows older.

  "TOM OUTLAND'S STORY"

  Chapter 1

  The thing that side-tracked me and made me so late coming to college was

  a somewhat unusual accident, or string of accidents. It began with a

  poker game, when I was a call boy in Pardee, New Mexico.

  One cold, clear night in the fall I started out to hunt up a freight

  crew that was to go out soon after midnight. It was just after pay day,

  and one of the fellows had tipped me off that there would be a poker

  game going on in the card-room behind the Ruby Light saloon. I knew most

  of my crew would be there, except Conductor Willis, who had a sick baby

  at home. The front windows were dark, of course. I went up the back

  alley, through a tumble-down ice house and a court, into a 'dobe room

  that didn't open into the saloon proper at all. It was crowded, and hot

  and stuffy enough. There were six or seven in the game, and a crowd of

  fellows were standing about the walls, rubbing the white-wash off on to

  their coat shoulders. There was a bird-cage hanging in one window,

  covered with an old flannel shirt, but the canary had wakened up and was

  singing away for dear life. He was a beautiful singer--an old Mexican

  had trained him--and he was one of the attractions of the place.

  I happened along when a jack-pot was running. Two of the fellows I'd

  come for were in it, and they naturally wanted to finish the hand. I

  stood by the door with my watch, keeping time for them. Among the

  players I saw two sheep men who always liked a lively game, and one of

  the bystanders told me you had to buy a hundred dollars' worth of chips

  to get in that night. The crowd was fussing about one fellow, Rodney

  Blake, who had come in from his engine without cleaning up. That wasn't

  customary; the minute a man got in from his run, he took a bath, put on

  citizen's clothes, and went to the barber. This Blake was a new fireman

  on our division. He'd come up town in his greasy overalls and sweaty

  blue shirt, with his face streaked up with smoke. He'd been drinking; he

  smelled of it, and his eyes were out of focus. All the other men were

  clean and freshly shaved, and they were sore at Blake--said his hands

  were so greasy they marked the cards. Some of them wanted to put him out

  of the game, but he was a big, heavy-built fellow, and nobody wanted to

  be the man to do it. It didn't please them any better when he took the

  jack-pot.

  I got my two men and hurried them out, and two others from the row along

  the wall took their places. One of the chaps who left with me asked me

  to go up to his house and get his grip with his work clothes. He's lost

  every cent of his pay cheque and didn't want to face his wife. I asked

  him who was winning.

  "Blake. The dirty boomer's b
een taking everything. But the fellows will

  clean him out before morning."

  About two o'clock, when my work for that night was over and I was going

  home to sleep, I just dropped in at the card-room to see how things had

  come out. The game was breaking up. Since I left them at midnight, they

  had changed to stud poker, and Blake, the fireman, had cleaned everybody

  out. He was cashing in his chips when I came in. The bank was a little

  short, but Blake made no fuss about it. He had something over sixteen

  hundred dollars lying on the table before him in bank-notes and gold.

  Some of the crowd were insulting him, trying to get him into a fight and

  loot him. He paid no attention and began to put the money away, not

  looking at anybody. The bills he folded and put inside the band of his

  hat. He filled his overall pockets with the gold, and swept the rest of

  it into his big red neckerchief.

  I'd been interested in this fellow ever since he came on our division;

  he was close-mouthed and unfriendly. He was one of those fellows with a

  settled, mature body and a young face, such as you often see among

  working-men. There was something calm, and sarcastic, and mocking about

  his expression--that, too, you often see among workingmen. When he had

  put all his money away, he got up and walked toward the door without a

  word, without saying good-night to anybody.

  "Manners of a hog, and a dirty hog!" little Barney Shea yelled after

  him. Blake's back was just in the doorway; he hitched up one shoulder,

  but didn't turn or make a sound.

  I slipped out after him and followed him down the street. His walk was

  unsteady, and the gold in his baggy overalls pockets clinked with every

  step he took. I ran a little way and caught up with him. "What are you

  going to do with all that money, Blake?" I asked him.

  "Lose it, to-morrow night. I'm no hog for money. Damned barber-pole

  dudes!"

  I thought I'd better follow him home. I knew he lodged with an old

  Mexican woman, in the yellow quarter, behind the round-house. His room

  opened on to the street, by a sky-blue door. He went in, didn't strike a

  light or make a stab at undressing, but threw himself just as he was on

  the bed and went to sleep. His hat stuck between the iron rods of the

  bed-head, the gold ran out of his pockets and rolled over the bare floor

  in the dark.

  I struck a match and lit a candle. The bed took up half the room; on the

  dresser was a grip with his clean clothes in it, just as he'd brought it

  in from his run. I took out the clothes and began picking up the money;

  got the bills out of his hat, emptied his pockets, and collected the

  coins that lay in the hollow of the bed about his hips, and put it all

  into the grip. Then I blew out the light and sat down to listen. I

  trusted all the boys who were at the Ruby Light that night, except

  Barney Shea. He might try to pull something off on a stranger, down in

  Mexican town. We had a quiet night, however, and a cold one. I found

  Blake's winter overcoat hanging on the wall and wrapped up in it. I

  wasn't a bit sorry when the roosters began to crow and the dogs began

  barking all over Mexican town. At last the sun came up and turned the

  desert and the 'dobe town red in a minute. I began to shake the man on

  the bed. Waking men who didn't want to get up was part of my job, and I

  didn't let up on him until I had him on his feet.

  "Hello, kid, come to call on me?"

  I told him I'd come to call him to a Harvey House breakfast. "You owe me

  a good one. I brought you home last night."

  "Sure, I'm glad to have company. Wait till I wash up a bit." He took his

  soap and towel and comb and went out into the patio, a neat little

  sanded square with flowers and vines all around, and washed at the