CHAPTER III
Thedéjeuner put them in accord, however. A bottle of good wine brought out evidences of human comradeship in Erard. He talked over his winter’s work, in which he assumed her coöperation. He made her take her notebook and jot down titles and references, laughing at her heedless reading. She was to make the drawings of architectural details for the new book. Then they discussed several excursions, one especially to a chateau near Orleans where there were said to be some Leonardo drawings. As they walked down the avenue to the picture-dealer’s, Mrs. Wilbur was surprised to find how far she had gone. It had not been possible to parley with Erard; he had taken everything for granted.
They passed the Opera House. She remembered the night when Wilbur had carried her off her feet with his plans for making a fortune. That emotion seemed quite dead now; she was thankful to escape so cheaply. Dear Uncle Sebastian had made it possible for her to become a privateer once more,—to take the step in a queenly fashion without haggling. She blessed him for enabling her to trip lightly whither she would.
At last Erard’s talk and her musings ceased at the door of the dealer. Once inside the portières which closed the little gallery, Mrs. Wilbur noticed with ashock of surprise three familiar faces; there were the Mills—father, mother, and daughter. Erard had said nothing about meeting these Chicago patrons of art in the gallery. Perhaps he had neglected to mention the fact through pure indifference; perhaps he had a subtler reason for not warning her.
Mrs. Wilbur advanced timidly, angry at herself for her lack of ease. It was the first time she had actually met any of her old acquaintances since her rupture with her husband. Recovering her self-command quickly, she determined to take the matter in her old aggressive, imposing style. She bowed stiffly, and spoke. Evidently the Mills were disconcerted on their side. The father turned away awkwardly, as if suddenly interested in a small canvas in the corner. Mrs. Mills bowed coldly and advanced to receive Erard with emphatic cordiality. The daughter, putting her lorgnette affectedly to her eyes, swept the room, including Mrs. Wilbur, in a gross stare. Then suddenly perceiving Erard, she brushed past Mrs. Wilbur without a look, and stood beside her mother.
Mrs. Wilbur was stung by the snub. These Mills were good, plain people—he had been one of Remsen’s junior partners—who had only lately had money. She had rather patronized them in Chicago, especially the daughter, whom she had entertained several times. They had built a house a mile above the Wilburs and in the Chicago sense they were close neighbours. Evidently her case was judged in Chicago, and had gone against her by default. Her character was now the property of such people as the Mills, who could take theposition of guardians of society! She walked about the little room with as much indifference and composure as she could assume. She would have liked to flee, but pride held her there in her discomfiture. Erard, she thought, was watching her curiously, all the time talking lightly with Miss Mills. Had he set this trap for her,—the cad! and was he now amusing himself with watching her emotions? Or did he wish to give her an object-lesson in the term “burning your ships”?
The dealer appeared at last, and suggested that the party should enter his private room where the pictures in question were assembled. The Mills followed the dealer, passing directly in front of Mrs. Wilbur without noticing her presence. Mr. Mills did the act clumsily; his wife severely; the daughter airily.
“Won’t you come with us, Mrs. Wilbur?” Erard paused to ask.
“Thank you, no. I find enough to interest me here,” she managed to reply.
Erard shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “You should have calculated the cost of all this beforehand. No use to get into a temper about itnow.” He tiptoed after his patrons.
She thought that she had calculated all the costs, and although the actual experience was more brutal than the imagined, she tried to think that she cared little for the snub itself. But she had meant to be discreet, and now she knew that in ten days Chicago gossips would have a pointed corroboration of their surmises.
She would like to go up to this good Mr. Mills andsay, “I am not this Erard’s mistress; indeed I am not low enough for that!”
Then she smiled at herself, and stilled her tumultuous feelings, pretending to examine a greenish-red Renoir that was propped against the wall. One doesn’t cut a straight path to freedom, she reflected, without paying for it.
Secretly she longed to sneak out of the place before they returned. It caused her such a thumping at the heart to go through with even this ordeal, trifling as it was. But how could she face Erard, if she confessed to a consciousness of all the implications? Yet when she heard Mr. Mills’s honest voice,—“Well, Marthy, seven thousand dollars is a good deal to pay for that red and yellow haystack,”—and Mrs. Mills’s doubtful tones, “But Mr. Erard considers it a paying investment,”—then Miss Mills’s higher notes: “Oh, pa, you mustn’t look at it that way; Monet is making a great stir now; Mrs. Stevans has three of his. We must have at leastone, and some Pissarros, and a lovely red Renoir,”—Mrs. Wilbur fled into a little side cabinet, pressing herself closely into the recess made by the portières. She could see the women dart questioning glances about the empty room, as if expecting to find their victim again. Presently they crossed the gallery and disappeared, Erard following them and caressing each temperament with the suitable argument. After all, she might as well have fled before as to sneak into a corner this way. Erard would think she had given in, and might drive off with the Mills.
When she had given them time enough to get away she walked towards the entrance and met Erard, who was evidently returning for her. He had divined her ruse, and that was worse than all.
“I thought you knew the Mills?” he remarked coolly, as they turned into the crowded boulevards. Mrs. Wilbur hated him violently for one moment. If there were only one phrase which would express contempt, disgust, despair—everything!
“I have met them,” she forced herself to answer indifferently.
“Simple people; quite a comedy,” Erard observed. “Shall we walk up the Champs Elysées? This sunset will be splendid from the arch.”
She walked on in silence at his side for some minutes. The little Paris world was out to enjoy the good moments of November sunlight, gaily forgetful of all the shivering it had endured since the last public appearance of the sun. At the greatbrasseriesalong the boulevards men and women were seated before their untastedbockorcafé, luxuriating in the popular street theatre that could be had for a few sous. Some men with silk hats pushed back on their heads were scribbling letters or journalistic copy, in the casual fashion of Parisian life. There were other little groups of twos, a man and a woman, one of the two generally talking earnestly, while the other listened dumbly. In a way Mrs. Wilbur felt that she and Simeon Erard ought to be seated at such a table, bound together as they were by some kind of a tie. Perhaps the time would come when she shouldbe besieging him over abockon the boulevard, in low, concentrated words.
“Why did you omit to tell me who was to be at the dealer’s?” she said at last, her resentment having cooled.
“It didn’t occur to me,” Erard replied with assurance, “and if it had, I shouldn’t have considered it a matter of enough importance to mention. It was an affair of business for me, an affair of interest and instruction for you. Not a social matter, it seems to me.”
He gave no more attention to her ruffled feelings, and began to talk about what was being done at the studios; the movements in impressionism since her last visit in Paris; the last two salons and the Glasgow school; a new dealer in Dutch and Belgian pictures. He talked well, too glibly in fact, as if he had got into the habit of talking and writing for publication. His conversation, however, was well calculated to soothe any irritability that might be left. She was so eagerly interested in the new ventures in art, that she could not harbour personal pique, especially against the man who roused her mind.
They came out on the Place de la Concorde, which was brilliant in the last light from the west. To Mrs. Wilbur this spot was always an inspiriting sight. As they turned into the broad avenue, where the rush of carriages, the labouring omnibuses slowly toiling up the slippery ascent, filled the vast roadway with life, the human side of Paris burst upon her. It was also a stupendous human machine like Chicago, but somehowvital and vitalizing. It was not grotesque. Once again she was in the current she desired for herself, a current of thoughts, emotions, and theories where the world’s ideal imagery was the essential interest.
Yet something was different in her at the end of this day from the beginning. She was not so sure of herself, so clearly removed from the entangling passions of humanity. She should have been capable of a more lasting resentment. Erard was training her in toleration too fast, and she shrunk from the logical conclusions of the course she had somehow committed herself to. He was not quite master yet. This suspicion of coming degradation, of gradual lapse from her haughty self, troubled her momentarily, and rendered her silent and depressed.
Erard wisely left Mrs. Wilbur to herself for the rest of the week. They had arranged to make the Orleans excursion on the following Sunday. On that expedition a series of petty accidents delayed them until by the time they reached the chateau the sun was already behind the forest-trees. The chateau was full of interesting bric-à-brac, which detained them until the fading light necessitated an immediate examination of the drawings they had come to see. The three yellow sheets were laid reverently upon a green-baize table by the custodian, who hovered near, suspicious of Erard’s irreverent familiarity with the sacred bits of paper.
Erard looked at them hastily, then squatting his elbows on the table, examined each one with a glass, line by line, and lastly, holding the drawing to the lightnoted the signature. “Impudent forgeries,” he muttered at last. Mrs. Wilbur glanced at the faded drawings blankly. “They are called Leonardo, and some one has copied his signature pretty accurately. I didn’t believe they could be authentic, but I supposed they were of the school at least. See here,” he said, instructing his companion, “you can tell by the fingers—they are roughly finished or rather entirely unfinished. The next time you are in the Louvre, look at his drawings, and see how exquisitely each finger is done. That is enough to show they aren’t authentic. But if you want more confirmation, look at the ears—”
Mrs. Wilbur studied the drawings attentively, at a loss to see the deep significance of Erard’s rapid remarks. At last Erard threw down the sheets carelessly, and handing the custodian his fee, sauntered towards the entrance. When they reached the gardens he observed casually, “There’s a gate here somewhere, worth seeing, Moorish they call it.”
By the time they had found the bit of Moorish building encased in the Gothic, it was twilight, and as they proceeded to their carriage, Mrs. Wilbur bethought herself of the distance they were from Paris.
“Is there an express train?” she asked, hastening her steps.
Erard looked at his watch. “Therapideat midnight,” he replied. “I had no idea we should take so long in the chateau!”
“Is there no other train?”
Erard shook his head. “And we can’t take therapide.It’s beastly getting into Paris at fourA.M.There’s a good hotel at this end of the town, and to-morrow we can take an early train and see Chârtres on our way home.”
He spoke unconcernedly, as if on the whole fate had arranged well for them. Mrs. Wilbur still walked on hastily, annoyed at her own carelessness, and perplexed. As they reached the entrance, she said, coldly,—“I think I had best take therapide. We can go to the hotel and dine, and then I can wait at the station. Perhaps they will telegraph for a compartment for me.”
Erard looked at her quizzically. “As you like, but—we shall have a good many expeditions to make sooner or later, and you can’t often manage to return the same day—”
She made no reply, suspecting that whatever she might say would seem foolish and prudish to Erard. It distressed her that she should be caught again so quickly in these petty matters of personal propriety. Yet to insist upon making a disagreeable night for herself by taking therapideseemed also foolish, as if she made too much altogether of convention. And if she did not yield now to Erard’s mode of life, he would force her to it in his own good time. The only alternative would be to break with him entirely; she could not make that sacrifice.
The midnight journey grew more distasteful to her than ever, once in the old hotel, with the kindly hostess bustling in and out, arranging a fire, and making preparations for a comfortable dinner. As they came to thefruit and nuts after a rich,bourgeoismeal, she made up her mind to accept the position and get the fun of it.
“Yon can find another hotel easily, I don’t doubt,” Mrs. Wilbur remarked tentatively. “For I think I shall have madame warm a chamber for me—”
Erard shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Very well, as you wish.”
“As long as I remain Mrs. Wilbur,” she blushed quickly, “I think I can’t bequiteanother ‘good fellow.’ I have some obligations to do the silly things other people do.”
They had no further talk about the matter. Erard had practically won his point; she knew it, and after he had left her before the dying wood-fire, she sat rather despondent in the gloom of the deserted salon. She did not wish to make loneliness and isolation for herself in her efforts to be free, and she was not prepared to discard altogether the observances of conventional society.
To be sure, Erard was not like other men, she comforted herself with reflecting. One could have an entirely neutral, passionless intercourse with him. He was solely concerned with ideas and impressions, and considered persons about as much as the traveller does the furnishing of his lodging. They were either suitable for his convenience or not, and his interest did not extend beyond the limited use he put them to. When she betook herself to the dusty, unused room with its spacious curtained four-poster and creaking board-floor, her mind stilloccupied itself with Erard. Was she satisfied to have him so neutral? If he had been an impulsive, passionate man,—if he had taken his inspiration from the suffering she had undergone at the picture-dealer’s and had demanded—well, more than discipleship, he might have had it. She was not mere intellect, far from it!
She lay awake in the still room pondering that wilful fancy. If he had forgotten nothing, extenuated nothing, counselled nothing; if he had plead for the greatest love that she was capable of giving, he might have been—her heart fluttered at the wild idea—master for a long day. Some little solvent would touch the story of their lives, and transmute the relationship. For there are times when it is better to carry a place by storm than by slow siege. How foolish! He was Erard, and it was absurd to consider him sentimentally.
When Erard called for Mrs. Wilbur the next morning, he found her in thepatronne’s cabinet, chatting vivaciously. The morning was superb, inviting them to a prowl in the city. After déjeuner they took the train for Chârtres. One thing suggested another, these beautiful days of the second autumn, and it was late Wednesday night before Erard left Mrs. Wilbur at her hotel on the Quai. When she entered her salon she found Molly Parker sitting forlornly before the grate.
“Where have you been, Adela? I got in last night,” Molly exclaimed reproachfully.
“I have been—out of the city,” Mrs. Wilbur replied evasively.
“Not with Erard and alone!” Molly’s mobile face showed quick alarm.
“Yes,” her friend replied stonily, “with Mr. Erard and alone.”
They sat looking at one another, afraid to strike the new note. The next day Mrs. Wilbur and her friend left for the villa on Bello Sguardo.