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.”