The Professors House | Page 2

of his life -- and it was the one thing his
neighbours held against him. He started to make it soon after the birth of his first
daughter, when his wife began to be unreasonable about his spending so much time at the
lake and on the tennis court. In this undertaking he got help and encouragement from his
landlord, a retired German farmer,good-natured and lenient about everything but
spending money. If the Professor happened to have a new baby at home, or a faculty
dinner, or an illness in the family, or any unusual expense, Appelhoff cheerfully waited
for the rent; but pay for repairs he would not. When it was a question of the garden,
however, the old man sometimes stretched a point. He helped his tenant with seeds and
slips and sound advice, and with his twisted old back. He even spent a little money to
bear half the expense of the stucco wall.
The Professor had succeeded in making a French garden in Hamilton. There was not a
blade of grass; it was a tidy half-acre of glistening gravel and glistening shrubs and bright
flowers. There were trees, of course; a spreading horse-chestnut, a row of slender
Lombardy poplars at the back, along the white wall, and in the middle two symmetrical,
round-topped linden-trees. Masses of green-brier grew in the corners, the prickly stems
interwoven and clipped until they were like great bushes. There was a bed for salad herbs.
Salmon-pink geraniums dripped over the wall. The French marigolds and dahlias were

just now at their best -- such dahlias as no one else in Hamilton could grow. St. Peter had
tended this bit of ground for over twenty years, and had got the upper hand of it. In the
spring, when home-sickness for other lands and the fret of things unaccomplished awoke,
he worked off his discontent here. In the long hot summers, when he could not go abroad,
he stayed at home with his garden, sending his wife and daughters to Colorado to escape
the humid prairie heat, so nourishing to wheat and corn, so exhausting to human beings.
In those months when he was a bachelor again, he brought down his books and papers
and worked in a deck chair under the linden-trees; breakfasted and lunched and had his
tea in the garden. And it was there he and Tom Outland used to sit and talk half through
the warm, soft nights.
On this September morning, however, St. Peter knew that he could not evade the
unpleasant effects of change by tarrying among his autumn flowers. He must plunge in
like a man, and get used to the feeling that under his work-room there was a dead, empty
house. He broke off a geranium blossom, and with it still in his hand went resolutely up
two flights of stairs to the third floor where, under the slope of the mansard roof, there
was one room still furnished -- that is, if it had ever been furnished.
The low ceiling sloped down on three sides, the slant being interrupted on the east by a
single square window, swinging outward on hinges and held ajar by a hook in the sill.
This was the sole opening for light and air. Walls and ceiling alike were covered with a
yellow paper which had once been very ugly, but had faded into inoffensive neutrality.
The matting on the floor was worn and scratchy. Against the wall stood an old walnut
table, with one leaf up, holding piles of orderly papers. Before it was a cane-backed
office chair that turned on a screw. This dark den had for many years been the Professor's
study.
Downstairs, off the back parlour, he had a show study, with roomy shelves where his
library was housed, and a proper desk at which he wrote letters. But it was a sham. This
was the place where he worked. And not he alone. For three weeks in the fall, and again
three in the spring, he shared his cuddy with Augusta, the sewing-woman, niece of his old
landlord, a reliable, methodical spinster, a German Catholic and very devout.
Since Augusta finished her day's work at five o'clock, and the Professor, on week-days,
worked here only at night, they did not elbow each other too much. Besides, neither was
devoid of consideration. Every evening, before she left, Augusta swept up the scraps
from the floor, rolled her patterns, closed the sewing-machine, and picked ravellings off
the box-couch, so that there would be no threads to stick to the Professor's old smoking-
jacket if he should happen to lie down for a moment in working-hours.
St. Peter, in his turn, when he put out his lamp after midnight, was careful to brush away
ashes and tobacco crumbs