XIV
At the end of the semester, St. Peter went to Chicago with Rosamond to help her buy things for her country house. He had very much wanted to stay at home and rest—the university work seemed to take it out of him that winter more than ever before; but Rosamond had set her mind on his going, and Mrs. St. Peter told him he couldn’t refuse. A Chicago merchant had brought over a lot of old Spanish furniture, and on this nobody’s judgment would be better than St. Peter’s. He was supposed to know a good deal about rugs, too. When his wife said a thing must be done, the Professor usually did it, from long-established habit. Her instincts about what one owed to other people were better than his.
Louie accompanied them to Chicago, where he was to join his brother, the one who was in the silk trade in China, and go on to New York with him for a family reunion. St. Peter was amused, and pleased, to see that Louie sincerely hated to leave them—with very little encouragement he would have sent his brother on alone and remained in Chicago with his wife and father-in-law. They all lunched together, after which the Professor and Rosamond took the Marsellus brothers to the LaSalle Street station. When Louie had again and again kissed his hand to them from the rear platform of the Twentieth Century observation car, and was rolled away in the very act of shouting something to his wife, St. Peter, who had so often complained that there was too much Louie in his life, now felt a sudden drop, a distinct sense of loss.
He took Rosamond’s arm, and they turned away from the shining rails. “We must be diligent, Rosie. He expects wonders of us.”
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 lingers 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 your 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.”
XV
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 Lapérouse 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 déjeuner? 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, déjeuner, 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, isn’t he? He could perfectly well send our purchases from Marseilles 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 had 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 your 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 Armée. 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.”