CHAPTER VIII
WhenMrs. Wilbur returned after the death of her child to the world of clubs and visits, she learned that Erard had been invited to Minneapolis and Omaha to deliver lectures. She heard rumours that he was considering “taking up a permanent residence” in America as curator for a museum of art in some western city. The idea struck her as so ideally humorous that she felt it must have emanated from Erard. In the early spring he appeared in Chicago, this time visiting Mrs. Stevans and “getting acquainted” quite thoroughly. When he attended the opera in Mrs. Stevans’s box, the vast hall of knowing neighbours remarked: “There’s Mrs. Wilbur’s Erard.”
Public opinion over Erard was divided. He did not create such a sensation as his advent before the Fair might have excited. Chicago had become cloyed with real celebrities that came and stayed and dined for long weeks. When the men met him at dinners and receptions, they treated him well enough, but without cordiality. They thought him a kind of adventurer who dealt in the frills of life. Therefore, he was consigned to the women as an emasculated specimen.
Mrs. Wilbur’s mind came back to Erard frequently. She envied his air of detachment, and she scrutinizedminutely all his enigmatic talk to her in half-phrases of tantalizing irony. He was identified with the other life of the mind and spirit, the craving for which was getting hold of her again. He was a repository of elusive sensations towards which she looked and hungered.
She met him at this period, inadvertently, on an occasion that gave emphasis to his power. She had driven to a distant point on the North Side, and on the return her carriage was stopped as the coachman attempted to turn into Michigan Avenue. It was well past noon, yet the streets were thronged with people. Soon the strains of a military band could be heard from the north. Then she remembered that her husband had said something about a monument to be dedicated on the Lake front, and she recalled the fact that tickets had been sent them for the ceremonies. These she had handed over to Molly Parker, not caring to broil for an hour in the sun for the sake of hearing the windy eloquence of war oratory. That she should have forgotten the event, which had been talked about for months, showed how little interest her neighbours’ affairs had for her. It was too late to turn back now; the street had packed in close behind with vehicles and spectators. She settled herself to the delay with a languid curiosity. Fortunately her carriage had been intercepted at the verge of the avenue where the procession was to pass, and through the lowered window she could easily survey the whole scene.
The high buildings about were black with people. At her right the large casements of the Metropolis Clubwere swung open, and she caught sight of a number of gentlemen smoking comfortably in armchairs. On the street the people jammed up to the wheels of the carriage—a motley crowd of business men, clerks, boys, and women. They stared into her brougham with frank curiosity and exchanged remarks about the equipage. Mrs. Wilbur felt as if she ought to alight and stand with the others; somehow in this city and at this ceremony the luxury of her horses and carriage was misplaced. But her eyes were held by the soft blue sky, and the lake-water freshening in the gentle wind. Between her and the lake, off a little to one side, was the scaffolding for ticket-holders, already black with people, and in the centre the canvas tent surrounding the new statue of the warrior.
The music came nearer; the banks of spectators on the avenue surged back before the platoon of police. In the jam that resulted she caught sight of Erard’s thin figure, swayed back into a doorway near her carriage. He soon detected her, and edging his way into the press, he succeeded in gaining the carriage, where he stood by the open window, resting his body against the wheel. By this time the police had passed, and the first band; next came a few irregular lines of veterans who were cheered enthusiastically.
“I wonder how they’ll do it,” Erard shouted into the carriage. “Mrs. Stevans gave me a ticket, but I was too late to secure my seat.”
Mrs. Wilbur nodded. The veterans had been succeeded by the barouches in which the officials of theoccasion were driven. Then came the governors of the neighbouring states, surrounded by their suites,—civilians who sat awkwardly on their horses. Each state was cheered, by the boisterous crowd, as its representative passed. Suddenly the cheers changed to derisive howls, laughter, and hoots.
“What is the matter?” Mrs. Wilbur leaned out of her carriage as far as possible to see what had disturbed the decorum of the occasion.
“They’ve got a kind of buffoon,” Erard answered. “The gentleman hasn’t a good seat.”
“That is the governor of Illinois,” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed, blushing unconsciously at the spectacle. “Oh, it’s a shame—here of all times—before the people.”
“They don’t seem to like it—the people,” Erard remarked, as low cries of “Shame, shame,” rose on all sides.
“Why, this is a public disgrace before the world!” Mrs. Wilbur seemed to take the affair personally.
“He has other bad habits, I have heard.” Erard spoke jauntily. Mrs. Wilbur looked at him with startled eyes. “What have you heard?”
“If all one hears is only a quarter true, your governor should be accompanied by his familiar spirit, his Mephisto of the golden touch.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Wilbur had an irrational apprehension in her voice.
“Why, they name the exact figure he received from Mephisto for his soul—if he has one. TheThunderercame out with it this morning in dollars and cents, one hundred thousand odd.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Wilbur turned her face away as if personally relieved. “Mere newspaper stories. Dick doesn’t like him.”
Erard shrugged his shoulders sceptically. “Others say it beside ‘Capitalist Dick.’ And it is a picturesque fable anyway: it all suits.” He motioned down the avenue whither the reeling figure of the governor had disappeared. “Drunk with wine and wealth: your democracy has reached a wallowing era.”
“That cannot be true.” Mrs. Wilbur returned to theThunderer’saccusation. Erard looked at her ironically, as if amused at her earnestness.
“One hears it elsewhere. It comes pretty straight. Your fat Mephisto selected an agent, a young society man, who let it out overhiscups.”
Mrs. Wilbur was silent. The procession wound on, with companies of regular troops and boyish-looking militia, then endless organizations of labour in black suits, carrying many little banners. By this time the press about the carriage relaxed; the street became once more passable.
“I am on my way home,” Mrs. Wilbur remarked. “If you are going south, I will take you.”
Erard accepted the offered seat, and the coachman began the intricate process of retreat. “I have not seen you for a long time.” Erard looked at his companion closely.
“No! It’s been a strange year! And now I hear news of your accepting us permanently.”
Erard smiled. “I shall spend next winter in Rome.”
She sighed.
“Andyou?”
“Here, I suppose, unless the impossible happens.”
The carriage had gained the avenue once more beyond the procession. They could hear the booming of the cannon from the ships in the harbour: the speeches had begun.
“I thought,” Erard continued slowly, “you were arranging yourself for another career.”
Mrs. Wilbur blushed unreasonably.
“I had almost begun to count on your help in my next work.” She said nothing, thus inviting him to explain his meaning. “You mustn’t throw yourself away. You are too fine for—this.” His gesture was expressive.
“Too feeble, rather,” she protested.
“You will never gain peace until your mind is satisfied.”
He seemed to read her thoughts, to have accompanied her these past months, and now to say the fitting, final word.
“It would take a great deal—a catastrophe—to move me. Woman’s modesty is one-half inertia.”
“The catastrophe has come, perhaps.”
Mrs. Wilbur shook her head. “I don’t know. Yet sometimes I think so.”
They were silent until the carriage reached the boulevard where the Wilburs’ house was situated.
“You have given up painting!” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed irrelevantly. “I am so sorry for that. Doing,even feeble doing, seems to me so much more real than all this criticism.”
“On the contrary,” Erard remarked, “the critic is the comprehensive, the understanding, the sensuous soul. The desire to ‘do,’ as you call it, is an egotistical conceit, and generally a desire for notoriety.”
“Perhaps in part,” Mrs. Wilbur admitted, thinking momentarily of her husband.
“The one thing in life is to enjoy.” Erard watched her closely to observe how she would take this frank hedonism.
“No, not that,” she protested. “I cannot accept your view.”
“Make all the pretty phrases about it you can,”—Erard shrugged his shoulders,—“it comes to that. You know it.”
Mrs. Wilbur shook her head. “Then we are beasts!”
“Superior beasts, yes.”
The carriage drew up at the door of the great house. In the dazzling atmosphere of this June day the stone seemed whiter, harder than ever. It had taken on very little stain or age.
“I have brought you a mile beyond your destination. The man will drive you back.”
“No!” Erard refused. “The air is really too fine.”
Mrs. Wilbur turned to mount the white steps, then lingered. She looked at Erard, her mind passing over his shambling figure and lustreless features on to the sweet garden of delights with which somehow she had, strangely enough, identified him. A rush of feeling, oflonging unutterable for the beautiful, for the dream, surged through her heart. Oh! for one moment of escape from these endless avenues, from this flaunting city, from Wrightington and money, and, yes, her husband! To hold once more the holy peace of beauty and with it to still her rebellious heart.
Erard seemed to wait for something.
“You will call?” she asked at length.
He looked annoyed; he had expected a more significant result from their talk.
“Yes, I think so, very soon. In a fortnight I shall be shaking the dust—”
“Imustsee you again. It is all such a tangle!”
As Erard turned down the boulevard, he met Wilbur, and raised his hat, rather vacantly.