Youth and the Bright Medusa

Youth and the Bright Medusa, by
Willa Cather

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Title: Youth and the Bright Medusa
Author: Willa Cather
Release Date: September 30, 2004 [eBook #13555]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA

by
WILLA CATHER
1920

"We must not look at Goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits;
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry, thirsty roots?"

CONTENTS
COMING, APHRODITE!
THE DIAMOND MINE
A GOLD SLIPPER
SCANDAL
PAUL'S CASE
A WAGNER MATINÉE
THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT"

The author wishes to thank McClure's Magazine, The Century
Magazine and Harper's Magazine for their courtesy in permitting the
re-publication of three stories in this collection.

The last four stories in the volume, Paul's Case, A Wagner Matinée,
The Sculptor's Funeral, "A Death in the Desert," are re-printed from
the author's first book of stories, entitled "The Troll Garden," published
in 1905.

Coming, Aphrodite!
I
Don Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of an old house on
the south side of Washington Square, and nobody had ever disturbed
him. He occupied one big room with no outside exposure except on the
north, where he had built in a many-paned studio window that looked
upon a court and upon the roofs and walls of other buildings. His room
was very cheerless, since he never got a ray of direct sunlight; the south
corners were always in shadow. In one of the corners was a clothes
closet, built against the partition, in another a wide divan, serving as a
seat by day and a bed by night. In the front corner, the one farther from
the window, was a sink, and a table with two gas burners where he
sometimes cooked his food. There, too, in the perpetual dusk, was the
dog's bed, and often a bone or two for his comfort.
The dog was a Boston bull terrier, and Hedger explained his surly
disposition by the fact that he had been bred to the point where it told
on his nerves. His name was Caesar III, and he had taken prizes at very
exclusive dog shows. When he and his master went out to prowl about
University Place or to promenade along West Street, Caesar III was
invariably fresh and shining. His pink skin showed through his mottled
coat, which glistened as if it had just been rubbed with olive oil, and he
wore a brass-studded collar, bought at the smartest saddler's. Hedger, as
often as not, was hunched up in an old striped blanket coat, with a
shapeless felt hat pulled over his bushy hair, wearing black shoes that
had become grey, or brown ones that had become black, and he never
put on gloves unless the day was biting cold.
Early in May, Hedger learned that he was to have a new neighbour in

the rear apartment--two rooms, one large and one small, that faced the
west. His studio was shut off from the larger of these rooms by double
doors, which, though they were fairly tight, left him a good deal at the
mercy of the occupant. The rooms had been leased, long before he
came there, by a trained nurse who considered herself knowing in old
furniture. She went to auction sales and bought up mahogany and dirty
brass and stored it away here, where she meant to live when she retired
from nursing. Meanwhile, she sub-let her rooms, with their precious
furniture, to young people who came to New York to "write" or to
"paint"--who proposed to live by the sweat of the brow rather than of
the hand, and who desired artistic surroundings.
When Hedger first moved in, these rooms were occupied by a young
man who tried to write plays,--and who kept on trying until a week ago,
when the nurse had put him out for unpaid rent.
A few days after the playwright left, Hedger heard an ominous murmur
of voices through the bolted double doors: the lady-like intonation of
the nurse--doubtless exhibiting her treasures--and another voice, also a
woman's, but very different; young, fresh, unguarded, confident. All the
same, it would be very annoying to have a woman in there. The only
bath-room on the floor was at the top of the