When he reached the dining-room Lillian was already at the table, behind the percolator. “Good morning, Godfrey. I hope you had a good night.” Her tone just faintly implied that he hadn’t deserved one.
“Excellent. And you?”
“I had a good conscience.” She smiled ruefully at him. “How can you let yourself be ungracious in your own house?”
“Oh, dear! And I went to sleep happy in the belief that I hadn’t said anything amiss the whole evening.”
“Nor anything aright, that I heard. Your disapproving4 silence can kill the life of any company.”
“It didn’t seem to last night. You’re entirely5 wrong about Marsellus. He doesn’t notice.”
“He’s too polite to take notice, but he feels it. He’s very sensitive, under a well-schooled impersonal6 manner.”
St. Peter laughed. “Nonsense, Lillian!” If he were, he couldn’t pick up a dinner party and walk off with it, as he almost always does. I don’t mind when it’s our dinner, but I hate seeing him do it in other people’s houses.”
“Be fair, Godfrey. You know that if you’d once begun to talk about your work in Spain, Louie would have followed it up with enthusiasm. Nobody is prouder of you than he.”
“That’s why I kept quiet. Support can be too able — certainly too fluent.”
“There you are; the dog in the manger! You won’t let him discuss your affairs, and you are annoyed when he talks about his own.”
“I admit I can’t bear it when he talks about Outland as his affair. (I mean Tom, of course, not their confounded place!) This calling it after him passes my comprehension. And Rosamond’s standing7 for it! It’s brazen8 impudence9.”
Mrs. St. Peter frowned pensively11. “I knew you wouldn’t like it, but they were so pleased about it, and their motives12 are so generous — ”
“Hang it, Outland doesn’t need their generosity13! They’ve got everything he ought to have had, and the least they can do is to be quiet about it, and not convert his very bones into a personal asset. It all comes down to this, my dear: one likes the florid style, or one doesn’t. You yourself used not to like it. And will you give me some more coffee, please?”
She refilled his cup and handed it across the table. “Nice hands,” he murmured, looking critically at them as he took it, “always such nice hands.”
“Thank you. I dislike floridity when it is beaten up to cover the lack of something, to take the place of something. I never disliked it when it came from exuberance14. Then it isn’t floridness, it’s merely strong colour.”
“Very well; some people don’t care for strong colour. It fatigues15 them.” He folded his napkin. “Now I must be off to my desk.”
“Not quite yet. You never have time to talk to me. Just when did it begin, Godfrey, in the history of manners — that convention that if a man were pleased with his wife or his house or his success, he shouldn’t say so, frankly16?” Mrs. St. Peter spoke17 thoughtfully, as if she had considered this matter before.
“Oh, it goes back a long way. I rather think it began in the Age of Chivalry18 — King Arthur’s knights19. Whoever it was lived in that time, some feeling grew up that a man should do fine deeds and not speak of them, and that he shouldn’t speak the name of his lady, but sing of her as a Phyllis or a Nicolette. It’s a nice idea, reserve about one’s deepest feelings: keeps them fresh.”
“The Oriental peoples didn’t have an Age of Chivalry. They didn’t need one,” Lillian observed. “And this reserve — it becomes in itself ostentatious, a vain-glorious vanity.”
“Oh, my dear, all is vanity! I don’t dispute that. Now I must really go, and I wish I could play the game as well as you do. I have no enthusiasm for being a father-inlaw. It’s you who keep the ball rolling. I fully3 appreciate that.”
“Perhaps,” mused20 his wife, as he rose, “it’s because you didn’t get the son-inlaw you wanted. And yet he was highly coloured, too.”
The Professor made no reply to this. Lillian had been fiercely jealous of Tom Outland. As he left the house, he was reflecting that people who are intensely in love when they marry, and who go on being in love, always meet with something which suddenly or gradually makes a difference. Sometimes it is the children, or the grubbiness of being poor, sometimes a second infatuation. In their own case it had been, curiously21 enough, his pupil, Tom Outland.
St. Peter had met his wife in Paris, when he was but twenty-four, and studying for his doctorate22. She too was studying there. French people thought her an English girl because of her gold hair and fair complexion23. With her really radiant charm, she had a very interesting mind — but it was quite wrong to call it mind, the connotation was false. What she had was a richly endowed nature that responded strongly to life and art, and very vehement24 likes and dislikes which were often quite out of all proportion to the trivial object or person that aroused them. Before his marriage, and for years afterward25, Lillian’s prejudices, her divinations about people and art (always instinctive26 and unexplained, but nearly always right), were the most interesting things in St. Peters life. When he accepted almost the first position offered him, in order to marry at once, and came to take the chair of European history at Hamilton, he was thrown upon his wife for mental companionship. Most of his colleagues were much older than he, but they were not his equals either in scholarship or in experience of the world. The only other man in the faculty27 who was carrying on important research work was Doctor Crane, the professor of physics. St. Peter saw a good deal of him, though outside his specialty28 he was uninteresting — a narrow-minded man, and painfully unattractive. Years ago Crane had begun to suffer from a malady29 which in time proved incurable30, and which now sent him up for an operation periodically. St. Peter had had no friend in Hamilton of whom Lillian could possibly be jealous until Tom Outland came along, so well fitted by nature and early environment to help him with his work on the Spanish Adventurers.
When he had almost reached his old house and his study, the Professor remembered that he really must have an understanding with his landlord, or the place would be rented over his head. He turned and went down into another part of the city, by the car shops, where only workmen lived, and found his landlord’s little toy house, set on a hillside, over a basement faced up with red brick and covered with hop2 vines. Old Appelhoff was sitting on a bench before his door, making a broom. Raising broom corn was one of his economies. Beside him was his dachshund bitch, Minna.
St. Peter explained that he wanted to stay on in the empty house, and would pay the full rent each month. So irregular a project annoyed Appelhoff. “I like fine to oblige you, Professor, but dey is several parties looking at de house already, an’ I don’t like to lose a year’s rent for maybe a few months.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Fred. I’ll take it for the year, to simplify matters. I want to finish my new book before I move.”
Fred still looked uneasy. “I better see de insurance man, eh? It says for purposes of domestic dwelling31.”
“He won’t object. Let’s have a look at your garden. What a fine crop of apples and sickle32 pears you have!”
“I don’t like dem trees what don’t bear not’ing,” said the old man with sly humour, remembering the Professor’s glistening33, barren shrubs34 and the good ground wasted behind his stucco wall.
“How about your linden-trees?”
“Oh, dem flowers is awful good for de headache!”
“You don’t look as if you were subject to it, Fred.”
“Not me, but my woman always had.”
“Pretty lonesome without her, Appelhoff?”
“I miss her, Professor, but I ain’t just lonesome.” The old man rubbed his bristly chin. “My Minna here is most like a person, and den10 I got so many t’ings to t’ink about.”
“Have you? Pleasant things, I hope?”
“Well, all kinds. When I was young, in de old country, I had it hard to git my wife at all, an’ I never had time to t’ink. When I come to dis country I had to work so turrible hard on dat farm to make crops an’ pay debts, dat I was like a horse. Now I have it easy, an’ I take time to t’ink about all dem t’ings.”
St. Peter laughed. “We all come to it, Applehoff. That’s one thing I’m renting your house for, to have room to think. Good morning.”
Crossing the public park, on his way back to the old house, he espied35 his professional rival and enemy, Professor Horace Langtry, taking a Sunday morning stroll — very well got up in English clothes he had brought back from his customary summer in London, with a bowler36 hat of unusual block and a horn-handled walking-stick. In twenty years the two men had scarcely had speech with each other beyond a stiff “good morning.” When Langtry first came to the university he looked hardly more than a boy, with curly brown hair and such a fresh complexion that the students called him Lily Langtry. His round pink cheeks and round eyes and round chin made him look rather like a baby grown big. All these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now quite grey, his rosy37 cheeks even rosier38, and his mouth dropped a little at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and rather cross about it.
Seeing St. Peter, the younger man turned abruptly39 into a side alley40, but the Professor overtook him.
“Good morning, Langtry. These elms are becoming real trees at last. They’ve changed a good deal since we first came here.”
Doctor Langtry moved his rosy chin sidewise over his high double collar. “Good morning, Doctor St. Peter. I really don’t remember much about the trees. They seem to be doing well now.”
St. Peter stepped abreast41 of him. “There have been many changes, Langtry, and not all of them are good. Don’t you notice a great difference in the student body as a whole, in the new crop that comes along every year now — how different they are from the ones of our early years here?”
The smooth chin turned again, and the other professor of European history blinked. “In just what respect?”
“Oh, in the all-embracing respect of quality! We have hosts of students, but they’re a common sort.”
“Perhaps. I can’t say I’ve noticed it.” The air between the two colleagues was not thawing42 out any. A church-bell rang. Langtry started hopefully. “You must excuse me, Doctor St. Peter, I am on my way to service.”
The Professor gave it up with a shrug43. “All right, all right, Langtry, as you will. Quelle folie!”
Langtry half turned back, hesitated on the ball of his suddenly speeding foot, and said with faultless politeness: “I beg your pardon?”
St. Peter waved his hand with a gesture of negation44, and detained the church-goer no longer. He sauntered along slackly through the hot September sunshine, wondering why Langtry didn’t see the absurdity45 of their long grudge46. They had always been directly opposed in matters of university policy, until it had almost become a part of their professional duties to outwit and cramp47 each other.
When young Langtry first came there, his specialty was supposed to be American history. His uncle was president of the board of regents, and very influential48 in State politics; the institution had to look to him, indeed, to get its financial appropriations49 passed by the Legislature. Langtry was a Tory in his point of view, and was considered very English in his tone and manner. His lectures were dull, and the students didn’t like him. Every inducement was offered to make his courses popular. Liberal credits were given for collateral50 reading. A student could read almost anything that had ever been written in the United States and get credit for it in American history. He could charge up the time spent in perusing51 “The Scarlet52 Letter” to Colonial history, and “Tom Sawyer” to the Missouri Compromise, it was said. St. Peter openly criticized these lax methods, both to the faculty and to the regents. Naturally, “Madame Langtry” paid him out. During the Professor’s second Sabbatical year in Spain, Horace and his uncle together very nearly got his department away from him. They worked so quietly that it was only at the eleventh hour that St. Peter’s old students throughout the State got wind of what was going on, dropped their various businesses and professions for a few days, and came up to the capital in dozens and saved his place for him. The opposition53 had been so formidable that when it came time for his third year away, the Professor had not dared ask for it, but had taken an extension of his summer vacation instead. The fact that he was carrying on another line of work than his lectures, and was publishing books that weren’t strictly54 text-books, had been used against him by Langtry’s uncle.
As Langtry felt that the unpopularity of his course was due to his subject, a new chair was created for him. There couldn’t be two heads in European history, so the board of regents made for him a chair of Renaissance55 history, or, as St. Peter said, a Renaissance chair of history. Of late years, for reasons that had not much to do with his lectures, Langtry had prospered56 better. To the new generations of country and village boys now pouring into the university in such large numbers, Langtry had become, in a curious way, an instructor57 in manners, — what is called an “influence.” To the football-playing farmer boy who had a good allowance but didn’t know how to dress or what to say, Langtry looked like a short cut. He had several times taken parties of undergraduates to London for the summer, and they had come back wonderfully brushed up. He introduced a very popular fraternity into the university, and its members looked after his interests, as did its affiliated58 sorority. His standing on the faculty was now quite as good as St. Peter’s own, and the Professor wondered what Langtry still had to be sore about.
What was the use of keeping up the feud59? They had both come there young men, fighting for their places and their lives; now they were not very young any more; they would neither of them, probably, ever hold a better position. Couldn’t Langtry see it was a draw, that they had both been beaten?
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1
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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hop
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| n.单脚跳，跳跃；vi.单脚跳，跳跃；着手做某事；vt.跳跃，跃过 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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disapproving
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| adj.不满的，反对的v.不赞成( disapprove的现在分词 ) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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pensively
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| adv.沉思地，焦虑地 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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exuberance
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| n.丰富；繁荣 | |
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fatigues
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| n.疲劳( fatigue的名词复数 )；杂役；厌倦；（士兵穿的）工作服 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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18
chivalry
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| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
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knights
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| 骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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doctorate
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| n.(大学授予的)博士学位 | |
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23
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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sickle
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| n.镰刀 | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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espied
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| v.看到( espy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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rosier
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| Rosieresite | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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thawing
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| n.熔化，融化v.（气候）解冻( thaw的现在分词 )；（态度、感情等）缓和；（冰、雪及冷冻食物）溶化；软化 | |
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43
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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44
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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grudge
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| n.不满，怨恨，妒嫉；vt.勉强给，不情愿做 | |
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47
cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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48
influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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49
appropriations
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| n.挪用（appropriation的复数形式） | |
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50
collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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51
perusing
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| v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的现在分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字） | |
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52
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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55
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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56
prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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instructor
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| n.指导者，教员，教练 | |
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affiliated
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| adj. 附属的, 有关连的 | |
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feud
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| n.长期不和；世仇；v.长期争斗；世代结仇 | |
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