The Professor's House

by Willa Cather

certainly deserved more than one reading. He used to carry them out to

  the lake to read them over again. After coming out of the water he would

  lie on the sand, holding them in his hand, but somehow never taking his

  eyes off the pine-trees, appliqu�ed against the blue water, and their

  ripe yellow cones, dripping with gum and clustering on the pointed tips

  like a mass of golden bees in swarming-time. Usually he carried his

  letters home unread.

  His family wrote constantly about their plans for next summer, when they

  were going to take him over with them. Next summer? The Professor

  wondered...Sometimes he thought he would like to drive up in front of

  Notre Dame, in Paris, again, and see it standing there like the Rock of

  Ages, with the frail generation breaking about its base. He hadn't seen

  it since the war.

  But if he went anywhere next summer, he thought it would be down into

  Outland's country, to watch the sunrise break on sculptured peaks and

  impassable mountain passes--to look off at those long, rugged, untamed

  vistas dear to the American heart. Dear to all hearts, probably--at

  least, calling to all. Else why had his grandfather's grandfather, who

  had tramped so many miles across Europe into Russia with the Grande

  Arm�e, come out to the Canadian wilderness to forget the chagrin of his

  Emperor's defeat?

  Chapter 4

  The fall term of the university opened, and now the Professor went to

  his lectures instead of to the lake. He supposed he did his work, he

  heard no complaints from his assistants, and the students seemed

  interested. He found, however, that he wasn't willing to take the

  trouble to learn the names of several hundred new students. It wasn't

  worth while. He felt that his relations with them would be of short

  duration.

  The McGregors got home from their vacation in Oregon, and Scott was much

  amused to find the Professor so doggedly anchored in the old house.

  "It never struck me, Doctor, that you were a man who would be keeping up

  two establishments. They'll be coming home pretty soon, and then you'll

  have to decide where you are going to live."

  "I can't leave my study, Scott. That's flat."

  "Don't then! Darn it, you've a right to two houses if you want 'em."

  This encounter took place on the street in front of the house. The

  Professor went wearily upstairs and lay down on the couch, his refuge

  from this ever-increasing fatigue. He really didn't see what he was

  going to do about the matter of domicile. He couldn't make himself

  believe that he was ever going to live in the new house again. He didn't

  belong there. He remembered some lines of a translation from the Norse

  he used to read long ago in one of his mother's few books, a little

  two-volume Ticknor and Fields edition of Longfellow, in blue and gold,

  that used to lie on the parlour table: For thee a house was built Ere

  thou was born; For thee a mould was made Ere thou of woman camest.

  Lying on his old couch, he could almost believe himself in that house

  already. The sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put

  in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious

  facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last

  hard bed?

  He could remember a time when the loneliness of death had terrified him,

  when the idea of it was insupportable. He used to feel that if his wife

  could but lie in the same coffin with him, his body would not be so

  insensible that the nearness of hers would not give it comfort. But now

  he thought of eternal solitude with gratefulness; as a release from

  every obligation, from every form of effort. It was the Truth.

  One morning, just as St. Peter was leaving the house to go to his

  class-room, the postman handed him two letters, one addressed in

  Lillian's hand and one in Louie's. He put them into his pocket. The feel

  of them disturbed him. They were of a suspicious thinness--as if they

  didn't contain amusing gossip, but announced sudden decisions. He set

  off down the street, sniffing the lake-cooled morning air and trying to

  overcome a feeling of nervous dread.

  All the morning those two letters lay in his breast pocket. Though they

  were so light, their effect was to make him drop his shoulders and look

  woefully tired. The weather, too, had changed, come on suddenly hot and

  sultry at noon, as if getting ready for a storm. When his classes were

  over and he was back in his study again, St. Peter felt no interest in

  lunch. He took out the two letters and ripped them open with his

  forefinger to have it over. Yes, all plans were changed, and by the

  happiest of expectations. The family were hurrying home to prepare for

  the advent of a young Marsellus. They would sail on the sixteenth, on

  the Berengaria.

  Lillian added a postscript to the effect that by this same mail she was

  getting off a letter to Augusta, who would come to him for the keys of

  the new house. She would be the best person to open the house and

  arrange to have the cleaning done. She would take it entirely off his

  shoulders and see that everything was properly put in order.

  They were sailing on the sixteenth, and this was the seventeenth; they

  were already on the water. The Berengaria was a five-day boat. St. Peter

  caught up his hat and light overcoat and started down the stairs.

  Halfway down, he stopped short, went back to his study, and softly shut

  the door behind him. He sat down, forgetting to take off his overcoat,

  though the afternoon was so hot and his face was damp with perspiration.

  He sat motionless, breathing unevenly, one dark hand lying clenched on

  his writing-table. There must, he was repeating to himself, there must

  be some way in which a man who had always tried to live up to his

  responsibilities could, when the hour of desperation came, avoid meeting

  his own family.

  He loved his family, he would make any sacrifice for them, but just now

  he couldn't live with them. He must be alone. That was more necessary,

  even, than his marriage had been in his vehement youth. He could not

  live with his family again--not even with Lillian. Especially not with

  Lillian! Her nature was intense and positive; it was like a chiselled

  surface, a die, a stamp upon which he could not be beaten out any

  longer. If her character were reduced to an heraldic device, it would be

  a hand (a beautiful hand) holding flaming arrows--the shafts of her

  violent loves and hates, her clear-cut ambitions.

  "In great misfortunes," he told himself, "people want to be alone. They

  have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the

  greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of

  love--if once one has ever fallen in."

  Falling out, for him, seemed to mean falling out of all domestic and

  social relations, out of his place in the human family, indeed.

  St. Peter did not go out of the house that afternoon. He did not leave

  his study. He sat at his desk with bent head, reviewing his life, trying

  to see where he had made his mistake, to account for the fact that he


  now wanted to run away from everything he had intensely cared for.

  Late in the afternoon the heaviness of the air in the room drove him to

  the window. He saw that a storm was coming on. Great orange and purple

  clouds were blowing up from the lake, and the pine-trees over about the

  Physics laboratory were blacker than cypresses and looked contracted, as

  if they were awaiting something. The rain broke, and it turned cold.

  The rain-storm was over in half and hour, but a heavy blow had set in

  for the night. The wind would be a protection, he thought. Even Augusta

  would hardly come plodding up the stairs to-night. It seemed strange to

  be dreading Augusta, but just now he did dread her. He believed he was

  safe, for to-night. Though it was only five o'clock, the sky was black,

  and the room was dusky and chilly. He lit the stove and lay down on the

  couch. The fire made a flickering pattern of light on the wall. He lay

  watching it, vacantly; without meaning to, he fell asleep. For a long

  while he slept deeply and peacefully. Then the wind, increasing in

  violence, disturbed him. He began to be aware of noises--things banging

  and slamming about. He turned over on his back and slept deeper still.

  When St. Peter at last awoke, the room was pitch-black and full of gas.

  He was cold and numb, felt sick and rather dazed. The long-anticipated

  coincidence had happened, he realized. The storm had blown the stove out

  and the window shut. The thing to do was to get up and open the window.

  But suppose he did not get up--? How far was a man required to exert

  himself against accident? How would such a case be decided under English

  law? He hadn't lifted his hand against himself--was he required to lift

  it for himself?

  Chapter 5

  At midnight St. Peter was lying in his study, on his box-couch, covered

  up with blankets, a hot water bottle at his feet; he knew it was

  midnight, for the clock of Augusta's church across the park was ringing

  the hour. Augusta herself was there in the room, sitting in her old

  sewing-chair by the kerosene lamp, wrapped up in a shawl. She was

  reading a little much-worn religious book that she always carried in her

  handbag. Presently he spoke to her.

  "Just when did you come in, Augusta?"

  She got up and came over to him.

  "Are you feeling comfortable, Doctor St. Peter?"

  "Oh, very thank you. When did you happen in?"

  "Not any too soon, sir," she said gravely, with a touch of reproof. "You

  never would take my cautions about that old stove, and it very nearly

  asphyxiated you. I was barely in time to pull you out."

  "You pulled me out, literally? Where to?"

  "Into the hall. I came over in the storm to ask you for the keys of the

  new house--I didn't get Mrs. St. Peter's letter until I got home from

  work this evening, and I came right over. When I opened the front door I

  smelled gas, and I knew that stove had been up to its old tricks. I

  supposed you'd gone out and forgot to turn it off. When I got to the

  second floor I heard a fall overhead, and it flashed across me that you

  were up here and had been overcome. I ran up and opened the two windows

  at the head of the stairs and dragged you out into the wind. You were

  lying on the floor." She lowered her voice. "It was perfectly frightful

  in here."

  "I seem to remember Dudley's being here."

  "Yes, after I'd turned off the stove and opened everything up, I went

  next door and telephoned for Doctor Dudley. I thought I'd better not say

  what the trouble was, but I asked him to come at once, as you'd been

  taken ill. You soon came round, but you were flighty." Augusta hurried

  over her recital. She was evidently embarrassed by the behaviour of the

  stove and the condition in which she had found him. It was an ugly

  accident, and she didn't want the neighbours to know of it.

  "You must have great presence of mind, Augusta, and a strong arm as

  well. You say you found me on the floor? I thought I was lying here on

  the couch. I remember waking up and smelling gas."

  "You were stupefied, but you must have got up and tried to get to the

  door before you were overcome. I was on the second floor when I heard

  you fall. I'd never heard anyone fall before, that I can remember, but I

  seemed to know just what it was.

  "I'm sorry to have given you a fright. I hope the gas hasn't made your

  head ache."

  "All's well that ends well, as they say. But I doubt if you ought to be

  talking, sir. Could you go to sleep again? I can stay till morning, if

  you prefer."

  "I'd be greatly obliged if you would stay the night with me, Augusta. It

  would be a comfort. I seem to feel rather lonely--for the first time in

  months."

  "That's because your family are coming home. Very well, sir."

  "You do a good deal of this sort of thing--watching and sitting up with

  people, don't you?"

  "Well, when happen to be sewing in a house where there's sickness, I am

  sometimes called upon."

  Augusta sat down by the table and again took up little religious book.

  St. Peter, with half-closed eyes, lay watching her--regarding in her

  humankind, as if after a definite absence from the world of men and

  women. If he had thought of Augusta sooner, he would have got up from

  the couch sooner. Her image would have at once suggested the proper

  action.

  Augusta, he reflected, had always been a corrective, a remedial

  influence. When she sewed for them, she breakfasted at the house--that

  was part of the arrangement. She came early, often directly from church,

  and had her breakfast with the Professor, before the rest of the family

  were up. Very often she gave him some wise observation or discreet

  comment to begin the day with. She wasn't at all afraid to say things

  that were heavily, drearily true, and though he used to wince under

  them, he hurried off with the feeling that they were good for him, that

  he didn't have to hear such sayings half often enough. Augusta was like

  the taste of bitter herbs; she was the bloomless side of life that he

  had always run away from,--yet when he had to face it, he found that it

  wasn't altogether repugnant. Sometimes she used to telephone Mrs. St.

  Peter that she would be a day late, because there had been a death in

  the family where she was sewing just then, and she was "needed." When

  she met him at the table the next morning, she would look just a little

  more grave than usual. While she ate a generous breakfast, she would

  reply to his polite questions about the illness or funeral with

  befitting solemnity, and then go readily to another topic, not holding

  the dolorous note. He used to say that he didn't mind hearing Augusta

  announce these deaths which seemed to happen so frequently along her

  way, because her manner of speaking about it made death seem less

  uncomfortable. She hadn't any of the sentimentality that comes from a

  fear of dying. She talked about death as she spoke of a hard winter or a

  rainy March, or any of the sadnesses of nature.

  It occurred to St. Peter, as he lay warm and relaxed but und
esirous of

  sleep, that he would rather have Augusta with him just now than anyone

  he could think of. Seasoned and sound and on the solid earth she surely

  was, and, for all her matter-of-factness and hard-handedness, kind and

  loyal. He even felt a sense of obligation toward her, instinctive,

  escaping definition, but real. And when you admitted that a thing was

  real, that was enough--now.

  He didn't, on being quite honest with himself, feel any obligations

  toward his family. Lillian had had the best years of his life, nearly

  thirty, and joyful years they had been, nothing could ever change that.

  But they were gone. His daughters had outgrown any great need of him. In

  certain wayward moods Kitty would always come to him. But Rosamond, on

  that shopping expedition in Chicago had shown him how painful the

  paternal relation could be. There was still Augusta, however; a world

  full of Augustas, with whom one was outward bound.

  All the afternoon he had sat there at the table where now Augusta was

  reading, thinking over his life, trying to see where had made his

  mistake. Perhaps the mistake was merely in an attitude of mind. He had

  never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to,

  just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to

  live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, may be

  even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never

  occurred to him that he might have to live like that.

  Though he had been low-spirited all summer, he told the truth when he

  told Dr. Dudley that he had not been melancholy. He had no more thought

  of suicide than he had thought of embezzling. He had always regarded it

  as a grave social misdemeanour--except when it occurred in very evil

  times, as a form of protest. Yet when he was confronted by accidental

  extinction, he had felt no will to resist, but had let chance take its

  way, as it had done with him so often. He did not remember springing up

  from the couch, though he did remember a crisis, a moment of acute,

  agonized strangulation.

  His temporary release from consciousness seemed to have been beneficial.

  He had let something go--and it was gone: something very precious, that

  he could not consciously have relinquished, probably. He doubted whether

  his family would ever realize that he was not the same man they had said

  good-bye to; they would be too happily preoccupied with their own

  affairs. If his apathy hurt them, they could not possibly be so much

  hurt as he had been already. At least, he felt the ground under his

  feet. He thought he knew where he was, and that he could face with

  fortitude the Berengaria and the future.

  THE END