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.”
XVI
One Saturday morning in the spring, when the Professor was at work in the old house, he heard energetic footsteps running up the uncarpeted stairway. Louie’s voice called:
“Cher Papa, shall I disturb you too much?”
St. Peter rose and opened to him. Louie was wearing his golf stockings, and a purple jacket with a fur collar.
“No, I’m not going golfing. I changed my mind, but didn’t have time to change my clothes. I want you to take a run out along the lake-shore with us. Rosie is going to lunch with some friends at the Country Club. We’ll have a drive with her, and then drop her there. It’s a glorious day.” Louie’s keen, interested eye ran about the shabby little room. He chuckled. “The old bear, he just likes his old den, doesn’t he? I can readily
