The Professors House | Page 3

-- smoking was very distasteful to Augusta -- and to open the
hinged window back as far as it would go, on the second hook, so that the night wind
might carry away the smell of his pipe as much as possible. The unfinished dresses which
she left hanging on the forms, however, were often so saturated with smoke that he knew
she found it a trial to work on them the next morning.

These "forms" were the subject of much banter between them. The one which Augusta
called "the bust" stood in the darkest corner of the room, upon a high wooden chest in
which blankets and winter wraps were yearly stored. It was a headless, armless female
torso, covered with strong black cotton, and so richly developed in the part for which it
was named that the Professor once explained to Augusta how, in calling it so, she
followed a natural law of language, termed, for convenience, metonymy. Augusta
enjoyed the Professor when he was risque since she was sure of his ultimate delicacy.
Though this figure looked so ample and billowy (as if you might lay your head upon its
deep-breathing softness and rest safe forever), if you touched it you suffered a severe
shock, no matter how many times you had touched it before. It presented the most
unsympathetic surface imaginable. Its hardness was not that of wood, which responds to
concussion with living vibration and is stimulating to the hand, nor that of felt, which
drinks something from the fingers. It was a dead, opaque, lumpy solidity, like chunks of
putty, or tightly packed sawdust -- very disappointing to the tactile sense, yet somehow
always fooling you again. For no matter how often you had bumped up against that torso,
you could never believe that contact with it would be as bad as it was.
The second form was more self-revelatory; a full-length female figure in a smart wire
skirt with a trim metal waist line. It had no legs, as one could see all too well, no viscera
behind its glistening ribs, and its bosom resembled a strong wire bird-cage. But St. Peter
contended that it had a nervous system. When Augusta left it clad for the night in a new
party dress for Rosamond or Kathleen, it often took on a sprightly, tricky air, as if it were
going out for the evening to make a great show of being harum-scarum, giddy, folle. It
seemed just on the point of tripping downstairs, or on tiptoe, waiting for the waltz to
begin. At times the wire lady was most convincing in her pose as 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