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.”