The Professor's House. Уилла Кэсер

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СКАЧАТЬ a woman of light behaviour, but she never fooled St. Peter. He had his blind spots, but he had never been taken in by one of her kind!

      Augusta had somehow got it into her head that these forms were unsuitable companions for one engaged in scholarly pursuits, and she periodically apologized for their presence when she came to install herself and fulfil her “time” at the house.

      “Not at all, Augusta,” the Professor had often said. “If they were good enough for Monsieur Bergeret, they are certainly good enough for me.”

      This morning, as St. Peter was sitting in his desk chair, looking musingly at the pile of papers before him, the door opened and there stood Augusta herself. How astonishing that he had not heard her heavy, deliberate tread on the now uncarpeted stair!

      “Why, Professor St. Peter! I never thought of finding you here, or I’d have knocked. I guess we will have to do our moving together.”

      St. Peter had risen—Augusta loved his manners—but he offered her the sewing-machine chair and resumed his seat.

      “Sit down, Augusta, and we’ll talk it over. I’m not moving just yet—don’t want to disturb all my papers. I’m staying on until I finish a piece of writing. I’ve seen your uncle about it. I’ll work here, and board at the new house. But this is confidential. If it were noised about, people might begin to say that Mrs. St. Peter and I had—how do they put it, parted, separated?”

      Augusta dropped her eyes in an indulgent smile. “I think people in your station would say separated.”

      “Exactly; a good scientific term, too. Well, we haven’t, you know. But I’m going to write on here for a while.”

      “Very well, sir. And I won’t always be getting in your way now. In the new house you have a beautiful study downstairs, and I have a light, airy room on the third floor.”

      “Where you won’t smell smoke, eh?”

      “Oh, Professor, I never really minded!” Augusta spoke with feeling. She rose and took up the black bust in her long arms.

      The Professor also rose, very quickly. “What are you doing?”

      She laughed. “Oh, I’m not going to carry them through the street, Professor! The grocery boy is downstairs with his cart, to wheel them over.”

      “Wheel them over?”

      “Why, yes, to the new house, Professor. I’ve come a week before my regular time, to make curtains and hem linen for Mrs. St. Peter. I’ll take everything over this morning except the sewing-machine—that’s too heavy for the cart, so the boy will come back for it with the delivery wagon. Would you just open the door for me, please?”

      “No, I won’t! Not at all. You don’t need her to make curtains. I can’t have this room changed if I’m going to work here. He can take the sewing-machine—yes. But put her back on the chest where she belongs, please. She does very well there.” St. Peter had got to the door, and stood with his back against it.

      Augusta rested her burden on the edge of the chest.

      “But next week I’ll be working on Mrs. St. Peter’s clothes, and I’ll need the forms. As the boy’s here, he’ll just wheel them over,” she said soothingly.

      “I’m damned if he will! They shan’t be wheeled. They stay right there in their own place. You shan’t take away my ladies. I never heard of such a thing!”

      Augusta was vexed with him now, and a little ashamed of him. “But, Professor, I can’t work without my forms. They’ve been in your way all these years, and you’ve always complained of them, so don’t be contrary, sir.”

      “I never complained, Augusta. Perhaps of certain disappointments they recalled, or of cruel biological necessities they imply—but of them individually, never! Go and buy some new ones for your airy atelier, as many as you wish—I’m said to be rich now, am I not?—Go buy, but you can’t have my women. That’s final.”

      Augusta looked down her nose as she did at church when the dark sins were mentioned. “Professor,” she said severely, “I think this time you are carrying a joke too far. You never used to.” From the tilt of her chin he saw that she felt the presence of some improper suggestion.

      “No matter what you think, you can’t have them.” They considered, both were in earnest now. Augusta was first to break the defiant silence.

      “I suppose I am to be allowed to take my patterns?”

      “Your patterns? Oh, yes, the cut-out things you keep in the couch with my old note-books? Certainly, you can have them. Let me lift it for you.” He raised the hinged top of the box-couch that stood against the wall, under the slope of the ceiling. At one end of the upholstered box were piles of notebooks and bundles of manuscript tied up in square packages with mason’s cord. At the other end were many little rolls of patterns, cut out of newspapers and tied with bits of ribbon, gingham, silk, georgette; notched charts which followed the changing stature and figures of the Misses St. Peter from early childhood to womanhood. In the middle of the box, patterns and manuscripts interpenetrated.

      “I see we shall have some difficulty in separating our life work, Augusta. We’ve kept our papers together a long while now.”

      “Yes, Professor. When I first came to sew for Mrs. St. Peter, I never thought I should grow grey in her service.”

      He started. What other future could Augusta possibly have expected? This disclosure amazed him.

      “Well, well, we mustn’t think mournfully of it, Augusta. Life doesn’t turn out for any of us as we plan.” He stood and watched her large slow hands travel about among the little packets, as she put them into his waste-basket to carry them down to the cart. He had often wondered how she managed to sew with hands that folded and unfolded as rigidly as umbrellas—no light French touch about Augusta; when she sewed on a bow, it stayed there. She herself was tall, large-boned, flat and stiff, with a plain, solid face, and brown eyes not destitute of fun. As she knelt by the couch, sorting her patterns, he stood beside her, his hand on the lid, though it would have stayed up unsupported. Her last remark had troubled him.

      “What a fine lot of hair you have, Augusta! You know I think it’s rather nice, that grey wave on each side. Gives it character. You’ll never need any of this false hair that’s in all the shop windows.”

      “There’s altogether too much of that, Professor. So many of my customers are using it now—ladies you wouldn’t expect would. They say most of it was cut off the heads of dead Chinamen. Really, it’s got to be such a frequent thing that the priest spoke against it only last Sunday.”

      “Did he, indeed? Why, what could he say? Seems such a personal matter.”

      “Well, he said it was getting to be a scandal in the Church, and a priest couldn’t go to see a pious woman any more without finding switches and rats and transformations lying about her room, and it was disgusting.”

      “Goodness gracious, Augusta! What business has a priest going to see a woman in the room where she takes off these ornaments—or to see her without them?”

      Augusta grew red, and tried to look angry, but her laugh narrowly missed being a giggle. “He goes to give СКАЧАТЬ