THE
PROFESSOR'S
HOUSE
by
WILLA CATHER
wasn't it? . . . Yes, a turquoise
set in dull silver."
ALFRED A KNOPF
New York MCMXXV
For Jan, because he likes narrative
CONTENTS
BOOK I—THE FAMILY
BOOK II—TOM OUTLAND'S STORY
BOOK III—THE PROFESSOR
BOOK ONE
THE FAMILY
I
The moving was over and done. Professor St. Peter was alone in thedismantled house where he had lived ever since his marriage, where hehad worked out his career and brought up his two daughters. It wasalmost as ugly as it is possible for a house to be; square, threestories in height, painted the colour of ashes—the front porch justtoo narrow for comfort, with a slanting floor and sagging steps. As hewalked slowly about the empty, echoing rooms on that bright Septembermorning, the Professor regarded thoughtfully the needless inconvenienceshe had put up with for so long; the stairs that were too steep, thehalls that were too cramped, the awkward oak mantles with thick roundposts crowned by bumptious wooden balls, over green-tiled fire-places.
Certain wobbly stair treads, certain creaky boards in the upstairs hall,had made him wince many times a day for twenty-odd years—and theystill creaked and wobbled. He had a deft hand with tools, he couldeasily have fixed them, but there were always so many things to fix, andthere was not time enough to go round. He went into the kitchen, wherehe had carpentered under a succession of cooks, went up to the bath-roomon the second floor, where there was only a painted tin tub; the tapswere so old that no plumber could ever screw them tight enough to stopthe drip, the window could only be coaxed up and down by wriggling, andthe doors of the linen closet didn't fit. He had sympathized with hisdaughters' dissatisfaction, though he could never quite agree with themthat the bath should be the most attractive room in the house. He hadspent the happiest years of his youth in a house at Versailles where itdistinctly was not, and he had known many charming people who had nobath at all. However, as his wife said: "If your country has contributedone thing, at least, to civilization, why not have it?" Many a night,after blowing out his study lamp, he had leaped into that tub, clad inhis pyjamas, to give it another coat of some one of the many paints thatwere advertised to behave like porcelain, and didn't.
The Professor in pyjamas was not an unpleasant sight; for looks, thefewer clothes he had on, the better. Anything that clung to his bodyshowed it to be built upon extremely good bones, with the slender hipsand springy shoulders of a tireless swimmer. Though he was born on LakeMichigan, of mixed stock (Canadian French on one side, and Americanfarmers on the other), St. Peter was commonly said to look like aSpaniard. That was possibly because he had been in Spain a good deal,and was an authority on certain phases of Spanish history. He had a longbrown face, with an oval chin over which he wore a close-trimmed VanDyke, like a