Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

The Professor’s Awakening-1

The Professor’s Awakening––––––––

How I ever come to hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never knew. Not that there was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as putting up a bluff at being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found out afterwards it was, or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just about the biggest house in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind o' place with them n***d iron heathens in the front yard and a brick stable behind that it ain't no use to go up against unless you're looking for a lemon. If you need real food and need it sudden and ain't prospecting around town for no other kind of an opening you better make for the nearest public works like a canal being dug, or a railroad g**g. Hit the little tin dinner buckets, men that does the unskilled labor on jobs like that, except Swedes and Dagos, knowing what it is to be up against it themselves now and then and not inclined to ask no fool questions.

Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face I guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the first look they give you after they open the door. If that look's right they're coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your digestive ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about sawing wood neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; and into the kitchen I went.

“It's Minnesota you're working towards,” says Biddy, pouring me out a cup of coffee.

She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't.

“I been across the river into I'way,” I says, “working at my trade, and I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more.”

“And what may your trade be?” says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was I going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, which I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a regular thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't stand it very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place too long, especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy I thinks I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before.

“I'm an agnostic by trade,” I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it.

“I see,” says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen she didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed herself than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that whether they is kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, pouring me out some more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full of watermelon rinds boiled in with molasses and things, she says:

“And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!”

“It is,” I says, and says nothing further.

She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, watching my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with a sigh:

“Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!”

She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So being through eating I says:

“Did it fly up and hit him?”

She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says:

“No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them is, after!”

“What is it, then?” says I.

“Then you don't know,” says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the c***k of it with superiousness all over her face.

So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how the Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a job sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to Omaha and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or shall I go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I thinks: “Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and what are you going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular hobo, which some folks can't distinguish you ain't now.” And then I thinks I'll go down to the river and take a swim and lazy around in the grass a while and think things over and maybe something will happen. Anyways, you can always join the army. And just when I was thinking that I got by one of them n***d stone heathens that was squirting water out of a sea shell and a guy comes down the front steps on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar. I seen he was a doctor or else a piano tuner by the satchel he dropped when he grabbed me.

“Did you come out of this house?” he says.

“I did,” I says, wondering what next.

“Back in you goes,” he says, marching me towards the front steps. “They've got smallpox in there.”

I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat collar and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use pulling back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the solid citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on principle. I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with none of them professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work making some people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I couldn't fight and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says:

“Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc.”

“No?” says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened it, she drew back when she seen me.

“Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him,” says the doc, not letting loose of me.

And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a pair of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so he could see me better, and he says:

“What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?”

“A guest for you,” says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. “I caught him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me being secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him here until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again,” he says. Or they was words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you.

“Dear me,” says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike.

And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free museum. “Dear me,” he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the time. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a voice that was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just like him if you could a-saw it—“Estelle,” he says, “O Estelle!”

I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot of high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the answer is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on.

Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver, while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening she says to the perfessor: “You had better go back to your laboratory.” And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.

“What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?” the kid asks her.

“What would you suggest, William Dear?” asks his aunt. I ain't feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, me being temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a mistake in the police court.

William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn as if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted calves from the goats and the prodigals, and he says:

“Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and get him some clothes the first thing?”

“William is my friend,” thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of them serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their heads.

So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next to his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush at me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all right so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding the rest of the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if little Billy knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the guest of this family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't be one according to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. Will I stay in this one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it next? And then William Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through with it he gives it to Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours when, maybe, my country needs me, just for accommodation? But I thinks it's all right for a day or two and then I'll leave my regrets and go on down to Saint Looey or somewheres. And then James he buttles back into the room like a funeral procession and says the perfessor says he wants to see me in the laboratory.

That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it smelt strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago s*******r house. It smelt like a d**g store had died of old age and got buried in a glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and the things to hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of been several brands of science being mixed up there all to once. They was dinky little stoves, they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes labeled with Dago names standing around on shelves like in one of them Dutch delicatessen stores; they was straight glass tubes and they was glass tubes that had the spinal contortions; they was bones and they was whole skeletons, and they was things that looked like whisky stills; they was a bookcase full of bugs and butterflies against one wall; they was chunks of things that might have been human for all I know floating around in vats like pickled pork in a barrel; they was beer schooners with twisted spouts to them; they was microscopes and telescopes and twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; they was crates of stuff that was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and they was tables with things just piled and spilled over 'em, every which way, and the looks of everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not allowing any one in there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And whether you knowed anything about them different brands of science or not you could see the perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to do things and then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked as if the operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop and a people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and oneeyed calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, and wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except they had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there unseparated and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for evermore. And every time you turned around you stepped on something new, and if you saw a rat or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone for how was you going to tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up you?