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    The Professor's House

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    was cordial enough, but he gave me bad advice. He was very positive that

      I ought to report to the Indian Commission, and gave me a letter to the

      Commissioner. The Commissioner was out of town, and I wasted three days

      waiting about his office, being questioned by clerks and secretaries.

      They were not very busy, and seemed to find me entertaining. I thought

      they were interested in my mission, and interest was what I wanted to

      arouse. I didn't know how influential these people might be--they talked

      as if they had great authority. I had brought along in my telescope bag

      some good pieces of pottery--not the best, I was afraid of accident, but

      some that were representative--and all the photographs Blake and I had

      taken. We had only a small kodak, and these pictures didn't make much

      show,--looked, indeed, like grubby little 'dobe ruins such as one can

      find almost anywhere. They gave no idea of the beauty and vastness of

      the setting. The clerks at the Indian Commission seemed very curious

      about everything and made me talk a lot. I was green and didn't know any

      better. But when one of the fellows there tried to get me to give him my

      best bowl for his cigarette ashes, I began to suspect the nature of

      their interest.

      At last the Commissioner returned, but he had pressing engagements, and

      I hung around several days more before he would see me. After

      questioning me for about half an hour, he told me that his business was

      with living Indians, not dead ones, and that his office should have

      informed me of that in the beginning. He advised me to go back to our

      Congressman and get a letter to the Smithsonian Institution. I packed up

      my pottery and got out of the place, feeling pretty sore. The head clerk

      followed me down the corridor and asked me what I'd take for that little

      bowl he'd taken a fancy to. He said it had no market value, I'd find

      Washington full of such things; there were cases of them in the cellar

      at the Smithsonian that they'd never taken the trouble to unpack, hadn't

      any place to put them.

      I went back to my Congressman. This time he wasn't so friendly as

      before, but he gave me a letter to the Smithsonian. There I went through

      the same experience. The director couldn't be seen except by

      appointment, and his secretary had to be convinced that your business

      was important before he would give you an appointment with his chief.

      After the first morning I found it difficult to see even the secretary.

      He was always engaged. I was told to take a seat and wait, but when he

      was disengaged he was hurrying off to luncheon. I would sit there all

      morning with a group of unfortunate people: girls who wanted to get

      typewriting to do, nice polite old men who wanted to be taken out on

      surveys and expeditions next summer. The secretary would at last come

      out with his overcoat on, and would hurry through the waiting-room

      reading a letter or a report, without looking up.

      The office assistants cheered me along, and I kept this up for some

      days, sitting all morning in that room, studying the patterns of the

      rugs, and the shoes of the patient waiters who came as regularly as I.

      One day after the secretary had gone out, his stenographer, a nice

      little Virginia girl, came and sat down in an empty chair next to mine

      and began talking to me. She wasn't pretty, but her kind eyes and soft

      Southern voice took hold of me at once. She wanted to know what I had in

      my telescope, and why I was there, and where I came from, and all about

      it. Nearly everyone else had gone out to lunch--that seemed to be the

      one thing they did regularly in Washington--and we had the waiting-room

      to ourselves. I talked to her a good deal. Her name was Virginia Ward.

      She was a tiny little thing, but she had lovely eyes and such gentle

      ways. She seemed indignant that I had been put off so long after having

      come so far.

      "Now you just let me fix it up for you," she said at last. "Mr. Wagner

      is bothered by a great many foolish people who waste his time, and he is

      suspicious. The best way will be for you to invite him to lunch with

      you. I'll arrange it. I keep a list of his appointments, and I know he

      is not engaged for luncheon tomorrow. I'll tell him that he is to lunch

      with a nice boy who has come all the way from New Mexico to inform the

      Department about an important discovery. I'll tell him to meet you at

      the Shoreham, at one. That's expensive, but it would do no good to

      invite him to a cheap place. And, remember, you must ask him to order

      the luncheon. It will maybe cost you ten dollars, but it will get you

      somewhere."

      I felt grateful to the nice little thing,--she wasn't older than I. I

      begged her wouldn't she please come to lunch with me herself to-day, and

      talk to me.

      "Oh, no!" she said, blushing red as a poppy. "Why, I'm afraid you

      think--"

      I told her I didn't think anything but how nice she was to me, and how

      lonesome I was. She went with me, but she wouldn't go to any swell

      place. She told me a great many useful things.

      "If you want to get attention from anybody in Washin'ton," she said,

      "ask them to lunch. People here will do almost anything for a good

      lunch."

      "But the Director of the Smithsonian, for instance," I said, "surely

      you don't mean that the high-up ones like that--? Why would he want

      to bother with a cow-puncher from New Mexico, when he can lunch with

      scientists and ambassadors?"

      She had a pretty little fluttery Southern laugh. "You just name a hotel

      like the Shoreham to the Director, and try it! There has to be somebody

      to pay for a lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don't do that

      when they can avoid it. He'd accept your invitation, and the next time

      he went to dine with the Secretary of State he'd make a nice little

      story of it, and paint you up so pretty you'd hardly know yourself."

      When I asked her whether I'd better take my pottery--it was there under

      the table between us--to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered

      again. "I wouldn't bother. If you show him enough of the Shoreham

      pottery, that will be more effective."

      The next morning, when the secretary arrived at his office, he stopped

      by my chair and said he understood he had an engagement with me for one

      o'clock. That was a good idea, he added: his mind was freer when he was

      away from office routine.

      I had been in Washington twenty-two days when I took the secretary out

      to lunch. It was an excellent lunch. We had a bottle of Ch�teau d'Yquem.

      I'd never heard of such a wine before, but I remember it because it cost

      five dollars. I drank only one glass, and that pleased him too, for he

      drank the rest. Though he was friendly and talked a great deal, my heart

      sank lower, for he wouldn't let me explain my mission to him at all. He

      kept telling me that he knew all about the South-west. He had been sent

      by the Smithsonian to conduct parties of European archaeologists through

      all the show places, Frijoles and Canyon de Chelly, and Taos, and the

      Hopi pueblos. When some Austrian Archduke had gone to hunt in the Pecos

    &nb
    sp; range, he had been sent by his chief and the German ambassador to manage

      the tour, and he had done it with such success that both he and the

      Director were given decorations from the Austrian Crown, in recognition

      of his services. Then I had to listen to a long story about how well he

      was treated by the Archduke when he went to Vienna with his chief the

      following summer. I had to hear about the balls and receptions, and the

      names and titles of all the people he had met at the Duke's country

      estate. I was amazed and ashamed that a man of fifty, a man of the

      world, a scholar with ever so many degrees, should find it worth his

      while to show off before a boy, and a boy of such humble pretensions,

      who didn't know how to eat the hors d'enticons grol oelig gifvres any

      more than if an assortment of cocoanuts had been set before him with no

      hammer.

      Imagine my astonishment when, as he was drinking his liqueur, he said

      carelessly: "By the way, I was successful in arranging an interview with

      the Director for you. He will see you at four o'clock on Monday."

      That was Thursday. I spent the time between then and Monday trying to

      find out something more about the kind of people I had come among. I

      persuaded Virginia Ward to go to the theatre with me, and she told me

      that it always took a long while to get anything through with the

      Director, that I mustn't lose heart, and she would always be glad to

      cheer me up. She lived with her mother, a widow lady, and they had me

      come to dinner and were very nice to me.

      All this time I was living with a young married couple who interested me

      very much, for they were unlike any people I had ever known. The husband

      was "in office," as they say there, he had some position in the War

      Department. How it did use to depress me to see all the hundreds of

      clerks come pouring out of that big building at sunset! Their lives

      seemed to me so petty, so slavish. The couple I lived with gave me a

      prejudice against that kind of life. I couldn't help knowing a good deal

      about their affairs. They had only a small rented flat, and rented me

      one room of it, so I was very much in their confidence and couldn't help

      overhearing. They asked me not to mention the fact that I paid rent, as

      they had told their friends I was making them a visit. It was like that

      in everything; they spent their lives trying to keep up appearances, and

      to make his salary do more than it could. When they weren't discussing

      where she should go in the summer, they talked about the promotions in

      his department; how much the other clerks got and how they spent it, how

      many new dresses their wives had. And there was always a struggle going

      on for an invitation to a dinner or a reception, or even a tea-party.

      When once they got the invitation they had been scheming for, then came

      the terrible question of what Mrs. Bixby should wear.

      The Secretary of War gave a reception; there was to be dancing and a

      great showing of foreign uniforms. The Bixbys were in painful suspense

      until they got a card. Then for a week they talked about nothing but

      what Mrs. Bixby was going to wear. They decided that for such an

      occasion she must have a new dress. Bixby borrowed twenty-five dollars

      from me, and took his lunch hour to go shopping with his wife and choose

      the satin. That seemed to me very strange. In New Mexico the Indian boys

      sometime went to trader's with their wives and bought shawls or calico,

      and we thought it rather contemptible. On the night of the reception the

      Bixbys set off gaily in a cab; the dress they considered a great

      success. But they had bad luck. Somebody spilt claret-cup on Mrs.

      Bixby's skirt before the evening was half over, and when they got home

      that night I heard her weeping and reproaching him for having been so

      upset about it, and looking at nothing but her ruined dress all evening.

      She said he cried out when it happened. I don't doubt it.

      Every cab, every party, was more than they could afford. If he lost an

      umbrella, it was a real misfortune. He wasn't lazy, he wasn't a fool,

      and he meant to be honest; but he was intimidated by that miserable sort

      of departmental life. He didn't know anything else. He thought working

      in a store or a bank not respectable. Living with the Bixbys gave me a

      kind of low-spiritedness I had never known before. During my days of

      waiting for appointments, I used to walk for hours around the fence that

      shuts in the White House grounds, and watch the Washington monument

      colour with those beautiful sunsets, until the time when all the clerks

      streamed out of the treasury building and the War and Navy. Thousands of

      them, all more or less like the couple I lived with. They seemed to me

      like people in slavery, who ought to be free. I remember the city

      chiefly by those beautiful, hazy, sad sunsets, white columns and green

      shrubbery, and the monument shaft still pink while the stars were coming

      out.

      I got my interview with the Director of the Smithsonian at last. He gave

      me his attention, he was interested. He told me to come again in three

      days and meet Dr. Ripley, who was the authority on prehistoric Indian

      remains and had excavated a lot of them. Then came an exciting and

      rather encouraging time for me. Dr. Ripley asked the right sort of

      questions, and evidently knew his business. He said he'd like to take

      the first train down to my mesa. But it required money to excavate, and

      he had none. There was a bill up before Congress for an appropriation.

      We'd have to wait. I must use my influence with my Representative. He

      took my pottery to study it. (I never got it back, by the way.) There

      was a Dr. Fox, connected with the Smithsonian, who was also interested.

      They told me a good many things I wanted to know, and kept me dangling

      about the office. Of course they were very kind to take so much trouble

      with a green boy. But I soon found that the Director and all his staff

      had one interest which dwarfed every other. There was to be an

      International Exposition of some sort in Europe the following summer,

      and they were all pulling strings to get appointed on juries or sent to

      international congresses--appointments that would pay their expenses

      abroad, and give them a salary in addition. There was, indeed, a bill

      before Congress for appropriations for the Smithsonian; but there was

      also a bill for Exposition appropriations, and that was the one they

      were really pushing. They kept me hanging on through March and April,

      but in the end it came to nothing. Dr. Ripley told me he was sorry, but

      the sum Congress had allowed the Smithsonian wouldn't cover an

      expedition to the Southwest.

      Virginia Ward, who had been so kind to me, went out to lunch with me

      that day, and admitted I had been let down. She was almost as much

      disappointed as I. She said the only thing Dr. Ripley really cared about

      was getting a free trip to Europe and acting on a jury, and maybe

      getting a decoration. "And that's what the Director wants, too," she

      said. "They don't care much about dead and gone Indians. What they do

      care about is going to Paris, and g
    etting another ribbon on their

      coats."

      The only other person besides Virginia who was genuinely concerned about

      my affair was a young Frenchman, a lieutenant attached to the French

      Embassy, who came to the Smithsonian often on business connected with

      this same International Exposition. He was nice and polite to Virginia,

      and she introduced him to me. We used to walk down along the Potomac

      together. He studied my photographs and asked me such intelligent

      questions about everything that it was a pleasure to talk to him. He had

      a fine attitude about it all; he was thoughtful, critical, and

      respectful. I feel sure he'd have gone back to New Mexico with me if

      he'd had the money. He was even poorer than I.

      I was utterly ashamed to go home to Roddy, dead broke after all the

      money I'd spent, and without a thing to show for it. I hung on in

      Washington through May, trying to get a job of some sort, to at least

      earn my fare home. My letters to Blake had been pretty blue for some

      time back. If I'd been sensible, I'd have kept my troubles to myself. He

      was easily discouraged, and I knew that. At last I had to write him for

      money to go home. It was slow in coming, and I began to telegraph. I

      left Washington at last, wiser than I came. I had no plans, I wanted

      nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe

      free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated

      men pouring out of white buildings. Queer, how much more depressing they

      are than workmen coming out of a factory.

      I was terribly disappointed when I got off the train at Tarpin and Roddy

      wasn't at the station to meet me. It was late in the afternoon, almost

      dark, and I went straight to the livery stable to talk Bill Hook for

      news of Blake. Hook, you remember, had done all our hauling for us, and

      had been a good friend. He gave me a glad hand and said Blake was out on

      the mesa.

      "I expect maybe he's had his feelings hurt here. He's been shy of this

      town lately. You see, Tom, folks weren't bothered none about that mesa

      so long as you fellows were playing Robinson Crusoe out there, digging

      up curios. But when it leaked out that Blake had got a lot of money for

      your stuff, then they begun to feel jealous--said them ruins didn't

      belong to Blake any more than anybody else. It'll blow over in time;

      people are always like that when money changes hands. But right now

      there's a good deal of bad feeling."

      I told him I didn't know what he was talking about.

      "You mean you ain't heard about the German, Fechtig? Well, Rodney's got

      some surprise waiting for you! Why, he's had the damnedest luck! He's

      cleaned up a neat little pile on your stuff."

      I begged him to tell me what stuff he meant.

      "Why, your curios. This German, Fechtig, come along; he'd been buying up

      a lot of Indian things out here, and he bought you whole outfit and paid

      four thousand dollars down for it. The transaction made quite a stir

      here in Tarpin. I'm not kicking. I made a good thing out of it. My mules

      were busy three weeks packing the stuff out of there on their backs, and

      I held the Dutchman up for a fancy price. He had packing cases made at

      the wagon shop and took 'em up to the mesa full of straw and sawdust,

      and packed the curios out there. I lost one of my mules, too. You

      remember Jenny? Well, they were leading her down with a big box on her,

      and right there where the trail runs so narrow around a bump in the

      cliff above Black Canyon, she lost her balance and fell clean to the

      bottom, her load on her. Pretty near a thousand feet, I guess. We never

      went down to hold a post-mortem, but Fechtig paid for her like a

      gentleman."

      I remember I sat down on the sofa in Hook's office because I couldn't

      stand up any longer, and the smell of the horse blankets began to make

      me deathly sick. In a minute I went over, like a girl in a novel. Hook

      pulled me out on the sidewalk and gave me some whisky out of his pocket

     


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