The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

was cordial enough, but he gave me bad advice. He was very positive that

  I ought to report to the Indian Commission, and gave me a letter to the

  Commissioner. The Commissioner was out of town, and I wasted three days

  waiting about his office, being questioned by clerks and secretaries.

  They were not very busy, and seemed to find me entertaining. I thought

  they were interested in my mission, and interest was what I wanted to

  arouse. I didn't know how influential these people might be--they talked

  as if they had great authority. I had brought along in my telescope bag

  some good pieces of pottery--not the best, I was afraid of accident, but

  some that were representative--and all the photographs Blake and I had

  taken. We had only a small kodak, and these pictures didn't make much

  show,--looked, indeed, like grubby little 'dobe ruins such as one can

  find almost anywhere. They gave no idea of the beauty and vastness of

  the setting. The clerks at the Indian Commission seemed very curious

  about everything and made me talk a lot. I was green and didn't know any

  better. But when one of the fellows there tried to get me to give him my

  best bowl for his cigarette ashes, I began to suspect the nature of

  their interest.

  At last the Commissioner returned, but he had pressing engagements, and

  I hung around several days more before he would see me. After

  questioning me for about half an hour, he told me that his business was

  with living Indians, not dead ones, and that his office should have

  informed me of that in the beginning. He advised me to go back to our

  Congressman and get a letter to the Smithsonian Institution. I packed up

  my pottery and got out of the place, feeling pretty sore. The head clerk

  followed me down the corridor and asked me what I'd take for that little

  bowl he'd taken a fancy to. He said it had no market value, I'd find

  Washington full of such things; there were cases of them in the cellar

  at the Smithsonian that they'd never taken the trouble to unpack, hadn't

  any place to put them.

  I went back to my Congressman. This time he wasn't so friendly as

  before, but he gave me a letter to the Smithsonian. There I went through

  the same experience. The director couldn't be seen except by

  appointment, and his secretary had to be convinced that your business

  was important before he would give you an appointment with his chief.

  After the first morning I found it difficult to see even the secretary.

  He was always engaged. I was told to take a seat and wait, but when he

  was disengaged he was hurrying off to luncheon. I would sit there all

  morning with a group of unfortunate people: girls who wanted to get

  typewriting to do, nice polite old men who wanted to be taken out on

  surveys and expeditions next summer. The secretary would at last come

  out with his overcoat on, and would hurry through the waiting-room

  reading a letter or a report, without looking up.

  The office assistants cheered me along, and I kept this up for some

  days, sitting all morning in that room, studying the patterns of the

  rugs, and the shoes of the patient waiters who came as regularly as I.

  One day after the secretary had gone out, his stenographer, a nice

  little Virginia girl, came and sat down in an empty chair next to mine

  and began talking to me. She wasn't pretty, but her kind eyes and soft

  Southern voice took hold of me at once. She wanted to know what I had in

  my telescope, and why I was there, and where I came from, and all about

  it. Nearly everyone else had gone out to lunch--that seemed to be the

  one thing they did regularly in Washington--and we had the waiting-room

  to ourselves. I talked to her a good deal. Her name was Virginia Ward.

  She was a tiny little thing, but she had lovely eyes and such gentle

  ways. She seemed indignant that I had been put off so long after having

  come so far.

  "Now you just let me fix it up for you," she said at last. "Mr. Wagner

  is bothered by a great many foolish people who waste his time, and he is

  suspicious. The best way will be for you to invite him to lunch with

  you. I'll arrange it. I keep a list of his appointments, and I know he

  is not engaged for luncheon tomorrow. I'll tell him that he is to lunch

  with a nice boy who has come all the way from New Mexico to inform the

  Department about an important discovery. I'll tell him to meet you at

  the Shoreham, at one. That's expensive, but it would do no good to

  invite him to a cheap place. And, remember, you must ask him to order

  the luncheon. It will maybe cost you ten dollars, but it will get you

  somewhere."

  I felt grateful to the nice little thing,--she wasn't older than I. I

  begged her wouldn't she please come to lunch with me herself to-day, and

  talk to me.

  "Oh, no!" she said, blushing red as a poppy. "Why, I'm afraid you

  think--"

  I told her I didn't think anything but how nice she was to me, and how

  lonesome I was. She went with me, but she wouldn't go to any swell

  place. She told me a great many useful things.

  "If you want to get attention from anybody in Washin'ton," she said,

  "ask them to lunch. People here will do almost anything for a good

  lunch."

  "But the Director of the Smithsonian, for instance," I said, "surely

  you don't mean that the high-up ones like that--? Why would he want

  to bother with a cow-puncher from New Mexico, when he can lunch with

  scientists and ambassadors?"

  She had a pretty little fluttery Southern laugh. "You just name a hotel

  like the Shoreham to the Director, and try it! There has to be somebody

  to pay for a lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don't do that

  when they can avoid it. He'd accept your invitation, and the next time

  he went to dine with the Secretary of State he'd make a nice little

  story of it, and paint you up so pretty you'd hardly know yourself."

  When I asked her whether I'd better take my pottery--it was there under

  the table between us--to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered

  again. "I wouldn't bother. If you show him enough of the Shoreham

  pottery, that will be more effective."

  The next morning, when the secretary arrived at his office, he stopped

  by my chair and said he understood he had an engagement with me for one

  o'clock. That was a good idea, he added: his mind was freer when he was

  away from office routine.

  I had been in Washington twenty-two days when I took the secretary out

  to lunch. It was an excellent lunch. We had a bottle of Ch�teau d'Yquem.

  I'd never heard of such a wine before, but I remember it because it cost

  five dollars. I drank only one glass, and that pleased him too, for he

  drank the rest. Though he was friendly and talked a great deal, my heart

  sank lower, for he wouldn't let me explain my mission to him at all. He

  kept telling me that he knew all about the South-west. He had been sent

  by the Smithsonian to conduct parties of European archaeologists through

  all the show places, Frijoles and Canyon de Chelly, and Taos, and the

  Hopi pueblos. When some Austrian Archduke had gone to hunt in the Pecos

&nb
sp; range, he had been sent by his chief and the German ambassador to manage

  the tour, and he had done it with such success that both he and the

  Director were given decorations from the Austrian Crown, in recognition

  of his services. Then I had to listen to a long story about how well he

  was treated by the Archduke when he went to Vienna with his chief the

  following summer. I had to hear about the balls and receptions, and the

  names and titles of all the people he had met at the Duke's country

  estate. I was amazed and ashamed that a man of fifty, a man of the

  world, a scholar with ever so many degrees, should find it worth his

  while to show off before a boy, and a boy of such humble pretensions,

  who didn't know how to eat the hors d'enticons grol oelig gifvres any

  more than if an assortment of cocoanuts had been set before him with no

  hammer.

  Imagine my astonishment when, as he was drinking his liqueur, he said

  carelessly: "By the way, I was successful in arranging an interview with

  the Director for you. He will see you at four o'clock on Monday."

  That was Thursday. I spent the time between then and Monday trying to

  find out something more about the kind of people I had come among. I

  persuaded Virginia Ward to go to the theatre with me, and she told me

  that it always took a long while to get anything through with the

  Director, that I mustn't lose heart, and she would always be glad to

  cheer me up. She lived with her mother, a widow lady, and they had me

  come to dinner and were very nice to me.

  All this time I was living with a young married couple who interested me

  very much, for they were unlike any people I had ever known. The husband

  was "in office," as they say there, he had some position in the War

  Department. How it did use to depress me to see all the hundreds of

  clerks come pouring out of that big building at sunset! Their lives

  seemed to me so petty, so slavish. The couple I lived with gave me a

  prejudice against that kind of life. I couldn't help knowing a good deal

  about their affairs. They had only a small rented flat, and rented me

  one room of it, so I was very much in their confidence and couldn't help

  overhearing. They asked me not to mention the fact that I paid rent, as

  they had told their friends I was making them a visit. It was like that

  in everything; they spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and

  to make his salary do more than it could. When they weren't discussing

  where she should go in the summer, they talked about the promotions in

  his department; how much the other clerks got and how they spent it, how

  many new dresses their wives had. And there was always a struggle going

  on for an invitation to a dinner or a reception, or even a tea-party.

  When once they got the invitation they had been scheming for, then came

  the terrible question of what Mrs. Bixby should wear.

  The Secretary of War gave a reception; there was to be dancing and a

  great showing of foreign uniforms. The Bixbys were in painful suspense

  until they got a card. Then for a week they talked about nothing but

  what Mrs. Bixby was going to wear. They decided that for such an

  occasion she must have a new dress. Bixby borrowed twenty-five dollars

  from me, and took his lunch hour to go shopping with his wife and choose

  the satin. That seemed to me very strange. In New Mexico the Indian boys

  sometime went to trader's with their wives and bought shawls or calico,

  and we thought it rather contemptible. On the night of the reception the

  Bixbys set off gaily in a cab; the dress they considered a great

  success. But they had bad luck. Somebody spilt claret-cup on Mrs.

  Bixby's skirt before the evening was half over, and when they got home

  that night I heard her weeping and reproaching him for having been so

  upset about it, and looking at nothing but her ruined dress all evening.

  She said he cried out when it happened. I don't doubt it.

  Every cab, every party, was more than they could afford. If he lost an

  umbrella, it was a real misfortune. He wasn't lazy, he wasn't a fool,

  and he meant to be honest; but he was intimidated by that miserable sort

  of departmental life. He didn't know anything else. He thought working

  in a store or a bank not respectable. Living with the Bixbys gave me a

  kind of low-spiritedness I had never known before. During my days of

  waiting for appointments, I used to walk for hours around the fence that

  shuts in the White House grounds, and watch the Washington monument

  colour with those beautiful sunsets, until the time when all the clerks

  streamed out of the treasury building and the War and Navy. Thousands of

  them, all more or less like the couple I lived with. They seemed to me

  like people in slavery, who ought to be free. I remember the city

  chiefly by those beautiful, hazy, sad sunsets, white columns and green

  shrubbery, and the monument shaft still pink while the stars were coming

  out.

  I got my interview with the Director of the Smithsonian at last. He gave

  me his attention, he was interested. He told me to come again in three

  days and meet Dr. Ripley, who was the authority on prehistoric Indian

  remains and had excavated a lot of them. Then came an exciting and

  rather encouraging time for me. Dr. Ripley asked the right sort of

  questions, and evidently knew his business. He said he'd like to take

  the first train down to my mesa. But it required money to excavate, and

  he had none. There was a bill up before Congress for an appropriation.

  We'd have to wait. I must use my influence with my Representative. He

  took my pottery to study it. (I never got it back, by the way.) There

  was a Dr. Fox, connected with the Smithsonian, who was also interested.

  They told me a good many things I wanted to know, and kept me dangling

  about the office. Of course they were very kind to take so much trouble

  with a green boy. But I soon found that the Director and all his staff

  had one interest which dwarfed every other. There was to be an

  International Exposition of some sort in Europe the following summer,

  and they were all pulling strings to get appointed on juries or sent to

  international congresses--appointments that would pay their expenses

  abroad, and give them a salary in addition. There was, indeed, a bill

  before Congress for appropriations for the Smithsonian; but there was

  also a bill for Exposition appropriations, and that was the one they

  were really pushing. They kept me hanging on through March and April,

  but in the end it came to nothing. Dr. Ripley told me he was sorry, but

  the sum Congress had allowed the Smithsonian wouldn't cover an

  expedition to the Southwest.

  Virginia Ward, who had been so kind to me, went out to lunch with me

  that day, and admitted I had been let down. She was almost as much

  disappointed as I. She said the only thing Dr. Ripley really cared about

  was getting a free trip to Europe and acting on a jury, and maybe

  getting a decoration. "And that's what the Director wants, too," she

  said. "They don't care much about dead and gone Indians. What they do

  care about is going to Paris, and g
etting another ribbon on their

  coats."

  The only other person besides Virginia who was genuinely concerned about

  my affair was a young Frenchman, a lieutenant attached to the French

  Embassy, who came to the Smithsonian often on business connected with

  this same International Exposition. He was nice and polite to Virginia,

  and she introduced him to me. We used to walk down along the Potomac

  together. He studied my photographs and asked me such intelligent

  questions about everything that it was a pleasure to talk to him. He had

  a fine attitude about it all; he was thoughtful, critical, and

  respectful. I feel sure he'd have gone back to New Mexico with me if

  he'd had the money. He was even poorer than I.

  I was utterly ashamed to go home to Roddy, dead broke after all the

  money I'd spent, and without a thing to show for it. I hung on in

  Washington through May, trying to get a job of some sort, to at least

  earn my fare home. My letters to Blake had been pretty blue for some

  time back. If I'd been sensible, I'd have kept my troubles to myself. He

  was easily discouraged, and I knew that. At last I had to write him for

  money to go home. It was slow in coming, and I began to telegraph. I

  left Washington at last, wiser than I came. I had no plans, I wanted

  nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe

  free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated

  men pouring out of white buildings. Queer, how much more depressing they

  are than workmen coming out of a factory.

  I was terribly disappointed when I got off the train at Tarpin and Roddy

  wasn't at the station to meet me. It was late in the afternoon, almost

  dark, and I went straight to the livery stable to talk Bill Hook for

  news of Blake. Hook, you remember, had done all our hauling for us, and

  had been a good friend. He gave me a glad hand and said Blake was out on

  the mesa.

  "I expect maybe he's had his feelings hurt here. He's been shy of this

  town lately. You see, Tom, folks weren't bothered none about that mesa

  so long as you fellows were playing Robinson Crusoe out there, digging

  up curios. But when it leaked out that Blake had got a lot of money for

  your stuff, then they begun to feel jealous--said them ruins didn't

  belong to Blake any more than anybody else. It'll blow over in time;

  people are always like that when money changes hands. But right now

  there's a good deal of bad feeling."

  I told him I didn't know what he was talking about.

  "You mean you ain't heard about the German, Fechtig? Well, Rodney's got

  some surprise waiting for you! Why, he's had the damnedest luck! He's

  cleaned up a neat little pile on your stuff."

  I begged him to tell me what stuff he meant.

  "Why, your curios. This German, Fechtig, come along; he'd been buying up

  a lot of Indian things out here, and he bought you whole outfit and paid

  four thousand dollars down for it. The transaction made quite a stir

  here in Tarpin. I'm not kicking. I made a good thing out of it. My mules

  were busy three weeks packing the stuff out of there on their backs, and

  I held the Dutchman up for a fancy price. He had packing cases made at

  the wagon shop and took 'em up to the mesa full of straw and sawdust,

  and packed the curios out there. I lost one of my mules, too. You

  remember Jenny? Well, they were leading her down with a big box on her,

  and right there where the trail runs so narrow around a bump in the

  cliff above Black Canyon, she lost her balance and fell clean to the

  bottom, her load on her. Pretty near a thousand feet, I guess. We never

  went down to hold a post-mortem, but Fechtig paid for her like a

  gentleman."

  I remember I sat down on the sofa in Hook's office because I couldn't

  stand up any longer, and the smell of the horse blankets began to make

  me deathly sick. In a minute I went over, like a girl in a novel. Hook

  pulled me out on the sidewalk and gave me some whisky out of his pocket