CHAPTER VI
MeanwhileErard, in company with Molly Parker, whom he had offered to escort around the corner, had gained the silent boulevard. The arc-lights cast circular patches of bluish white on the gravel walks and the frosty lawns before the big houses. The line of electric lamps extended, like a citified milky way, into the indefinite distance of the metropolis, which slept now for a few minutes. Above hung the soft edges of the smoke-pall.
“Ugh!” shivered Erard. “It is beastly empty, this never-ending city of yours. Down one of these straight perpetual streets one might expect to be chased by an army of ghosts. If I saw a man in the distance—”
“You needn’t be afraid,” his companion interrupted lightly. “To be sure, there are a good many ‘hold-ups’ on the streets. A man was almost killed on that corner a month ago, and all he had was seventy-five cents. But if any one comes, I will scream, and you can run to the nearest house for assistance.”
Suddenly Miss Parker whisked around the corner of a vacant lot into a cross street as desolate as it was lonely. The defective boarding of the rotting plank walk necessitated gingerly progress.
“This new cosmopolis has been in such a hurry that it has neglected to make its toilette,” Erard remarked.
“I wish that you hadn’t come to Chicago!” Miss Parker flamed out.
“Why! I am a most perfervid admirer of all I have seen except the lonely stretches in the streets and the holes in the sidewalks.”
“You are only amusing yourself and getting material for a bundle of epigrams. You haven’t any sympathy or understanding. I hate to see you using your eye-glass on the people who made all this and are making it!”
“Am I so lost?” Erard replied with an amused laugh.
“You people in art and lovers of new ideas really talk a lot of nonsense. I have heard enough of it to know. But here we are. Thank you for your escort, and good-night.”
Erard turned back to the boulevard. Plunging his hands into his pockets and tying the hood of his cape over his head, he prepared for a long tramp through the silent city. On, on he sauntered, at the loitering pace of a Parisian, past the huge isolated houses with tidy front walks of patented concrete, each block squared artificially to resemble stone, but carrying somewhere the tell-tale firm-mark in brass; past the narrow wedges of high apartment houses, faced with pretentious stone and finished in the frank homeliness of unburnt brick, with scaffolded ends looming barrack-like in the alleys; past the rows of low brick stores, built out like booths from the old line of retiring wood-cottages. This section of compromise between business and home was most disfiguring of all in its ragged expression. Erard felt relieved whenthe square fronts of the business blocks began to loom up in the fog and smoke of the lower city. Here an enormous windowless wall of an armoury; next door the thin sides of a carriage factory; further on the spidery lines of a hotel. Thus for two miles until the sky-scrapers towered in the chill fog.
“Superb, superb,” he murmured to himself. “I must have walked five miles, and not a building, not a dog-hutch, where there is an idea expressed beyond size, convenience, and either the possession of money or the desire for it. It is a new race, a new world.”
It had roused his curiosity, this Chicago, from the first peep he had had on the train of the roaring city. Miss Parker was quite wrong in imagining him hostile to the place or its people. He was wondering over them perpetually, as a man would wonder who is enabled by a powerful lens to take into his consciousness a new planet where he finds that his ideas of propriety have been entirely reversed. Such a novel discovery could cause inhimneither pain nor pleasure. If some one should come along the shore of this new world and bellow at him that he was beholding the last utterance of creation, he would laugh good-humouredly at the newcomer’s provinciality.
What a pother they made, these women especially, over duties and enjoyments! His certainties were hard and sure, thank God! An exquisite curve, a subtle mixture of colour in a landscape, the power expressed in a moulded limb, or the richness of a flesh tint—that senthisblood rushing a little faster, gave him a fullersense of actual existence. He sneered at all transcendental or religious interpretation of these pleasures. He was willing to place his delight in the woman of paint along with the delights that a merely sensual and gross man might find in the same woman. His were more delicate, more lingering sensations—that was all. In the same way he was willing to grant the business man his sphere—let him be a gourmand of action; or the religious man, his emotion over the fate of the world. But beyond the sensation—whatever it might be—nothing. Only stupid, crude people or hypocrites pretended there was a beyond.
And so Adela Wilbur gave him no romantic excitement. She was an interesting combination of nerves. Possibly she would find out, after trying life all round, that her greatest vitality came through cultivating her æsthetic sensorium. If she did, he could be of help to her. That such a discovery at this point might produce a smash, some turmoil in the affections and relationships of life, did not concern him. This was a jarring world,—one must expect to dodge boulders,—but to consider as the boulders, even when they were so-called duties and affections, that was stupid. It was a pity that she hadn’t found out earlier what was best for her, that she should go blundering about with her fine powers. Four years ago he had thought her too raw; had, indeed, advised her to do just what she had done—and possibly found tedious. If she should seek his opinion again, however, he should tell her to start once more, with her eyes open.
Erard was not without the male satisfaction in bearing rule over women. Other men, he reflected, would have exulted at the thought of her beautiful self, at the mystery of her restless face,—but he was tranquil over mere flesh and blood. He preferred to own her mind, rather than her person. The delight of binding her will, of leading her across the laws of convention, of conqueringher, was keener to him than any vulgar emotion of possession.
His revery was disturbed by the night-clerk in the hotel, who handed him his key, with a confidential leer.
“You’ve made a night of it, sir.”
“Now,” Erard mused, “hercrowd have the same ideas as this smart young fellow. They suspect I want to run away with Mrs. Wilbur in a buggy. That was what the little Parker wanted to say to me.”
“There’s a young fellow been hanging around here for you most of the night,” the clerk continued. “He was over there by the window.”
Erard turned sharply, scowling. But the young man had gone. As he entered the elevator, he muttered.
“But it is about time to close money matters withher.”
The next day at luncheon Erard had a better opportunity to study Mrs. Wilbur. Sebastian Anthon, who was developing the irritability of age, had held that there was no peace in Chicago, and hearing that Erard was expected for luncheon he had slipped away home. Mrs. Anthon had remained at Field’s absorbed in shopping. So the two were left to themselves.
Erard was delighted with this morning view of Mrs. Wilbur,—her serious face alert, her rich dark dress fitting close to the white neck and curling hair. She gave him a charming sensation of being a woman, neither a girl nor a case in social psychology. He would like to paint her again as she sat, her luncheon untouched, eagerly outlining her scheme for the lectures. He also appreciated the capable manner in which she treated the social and financial sides of the affair.
After luncheon, she took him into her private library. The portrait, he noticed, had been removed. When the lecture-course had been settled, Mrs. Wilbur led the talk to his work.
“Of course,” she remarked abruptly, “I understood your plans only generally when we talked about them in Paris. But I have been thinking a lot about your painting less. It has made me sad. Almost like losing one of my own faculties.”
Erard hastened to extenuate his course, and ended lightly. “You have stood by me four years almost. Now I think I can go it alone, as you would say over here.”
Mrs. Wilbur, remembering with a start her promise to her husband, felt relieved, yet protested until Erard explained that his writings brought him a small income. He did not state that the amount thus received was not large enough to keep him in cigarettes and note-paper. She was grateful to him for having saved them both from an unpleasant topic, which must have left sordid reflections.
“And your book,” Mrs. Wilbur continued. “It was impossible over here to follow you closely. One grows so rusty in a few months, not seeing things to train the eye. Then the importance of a new Liberale or Mazo seems less vital here than one might expect.”
That led them on into a long talk, in which Mrs. Wilbur betrayed with less and less restraint her irritation with her environment, her disgust with “drawing-room art,” and with democratic ideals and joys. Erard amused himself by gaily defending her old aspirations. “You should go in for immense charities, civic organizations, education—and the rest of the housekeeping for the ‘people.’ We over there,” he tweaked his head in the direction of Lake Michigan, “are nearly played out. They will either smash all the good buildings, or pull them down piecemeal in the process of ‘restoring’; the pictures will be gone in another hundred years—there’s almost nothing that is original paint now left on the old masters. Sculpture will be locked up safely in museums for archæologists. And Science—that refuge for the commonplace mind—will reign Supreme in a mighty democracy. Science will then go forth with its tin dinner-pail, the emblem of equality, not annoyed by the twaddle of sentimentalists like you and me. Decidedly, you should get in line with your times.”
“Don’t sneer at me, please. I could make every sacrifice—almost—for something beautiful. One great valley, all green at its feet, with a barrier of hills in the clouds and snow, or just one peaceful old Englishfield with a lot of trees. Or a sight of that—this is so silly!” She felt as if tears stood in her eyes.
“No,” Erard paused, leaning over the back of a chair and searching her face. “That is the distressing part of us Americans; we all apologize for such emotions, as if we should be ashamed of having them.”
“I shall not have them long. I am a woman and take on the colour of my habitation.”
“You are a woman and will die hard—unless you make a dash for the open air, for freedom.” He spoke tranquilly, with calculation. Mrs. Wilbur started as though he had blundered upon a secret, not confessed even to herself.
“Freedom! I have been making disturbances all my life to be free. And what have I done? I am not worth it.”
“Some people must get their freedom, no matter how they take it!”
“It isn’t merely the art, or the excitement of intellectual life, which I crave so much. There are other things no one can know. I am sinking, sinking—”
“Why struggle so futilely? Isn’t there a simpler, more direct way?” Erard fixed his eyes on her face while he made his proposal of mastership. Mrs. Wilbur flushed slowly without speaking. He continued after a momentary pause, “If you crave theotherlife.” And the silence seemed to say, if you would consent to the adultery of minds; if you would become once more my follower, my pupil. “Thisismephitic for some people, you and me for example,” Erard went on slowly,“who have the necessity to think and feel, who care only for thought and feeling.”
How far her pent-up soul would have pushed her it is hard to say, if Molly Parker, looking about the house for Mrs. Wilbur, had not found them at this juncture, with intent, serious faces, hushed with their talk. She slipped over to her friend, and taking the earnest face daintily between her hands, kissed it here and there.
“Getting yourself all fussed up over art and emotions,” she commented with imperturbable freedom. “You don’t know that there’s been a great fire over in the stockyards district; burned out four blocks. A whole village full of people are homeless. You can still see the light in the sky from the west windows.”
From the dining-room windows the angry glow against the dull sky seemed only a few blocks away. Now and then a stream of full-bodied, serpentlike fire leapt up to lick a stretch of wall still standing. Then as a black stream of water fell on the fire, there was a momentary darkness until the caldron light from the interior shot the ascending smoke and steam with a lovely, controlled glow.
“It looks so near,” Molly Parker shivered. “Oh! the poor people!”
“It must be four miles away,” Mrs. Wilbur answered.
“Rebellious nature,” murmured Erard, glancing at Mrs. Wilbur. “An uncaged element goes roaring forth, hotly devouring the idle works of man.”
“A year ago,” Mrs. Wilbur remarked, “when the strikers set fire to the cars on the Panhandle tracks,it was more awful. It was a hot July night and the city had been lowering all day; no one knew what might happen. Suddenly at dusk the whole horizon flamed up with a fierce streak of red. Imagine the mobs of men and women hooting about the flaming cars and the soldiers driving them back. Such terrible naked passions came to the surface!”
“Yes,” Molly Parker assented. “I never knew before how necessary it is for us all to behave ourselves; how little it would need to smash this civilization we take for granted.”
“Chicago had a chance to see what democracy really is,” Erard scoffed. “It’s like dynamite. Everything is placid until you drop it; then there is an upheaval and the sky gets lurid. The question is how much of this social dynamite you can carry without dropping it.”
“I can’t see what Chicago has to do with it,” Molly Parker retorted defiantly.
“Only that there is rather more dynamite here than in most places. The average man is your tin-god. When some day there are too many average men, and they all think stupidly that they have the same rights to an average kind of easy living, why, you’re going to have a portentous row, for a democracy is at the bottom irreligious and unidealistic. The ‘people’ will not starve patiently and pathetically while the successful neighbour builds his palace.”
“Well,” Miss Parker announced finally, “the less talk about it the better. I guess Chicago will find a way out of its troubles. And I like the men who put their shouldersto the democratic wheel; it’s the only one that goes to-day anyhow.”
Erard laughed indifferently. The smoke was rolling up now a purple black, shot occasionally with cardinal red.
“I believe I will wander over there. I should like to get the effect of that tawny colour near at hand.”
When he had left them Miss Parker broke out impatiently, tapping her foot against the floor.
“Such an inhuman way to take things! To watch that awful fire merely to get a sensation in reds and blacks! He would come to my funeral just to see the effect of the black coffin, the green sward, and the minister’s white gown. He makes me think of a mushy green caterpillar, stuffed out with nice sensations, improperly assimilated. There he goes down Forty-fourth street, picking his way and squinting at the houses.”
“You shouldn’t begrudge anybody a glimpse of beauty here in Chicago, even if it takes four blocks and a million to make it,” Mrs. Wilbur laughed in a hard, set manner. “We were talking about that—what sacrifices to make for the mind and the sense of the beautiful—when you came in.”
Molly Parker seized her hand impulsively.
“Adela,don’t,—don’t indulge yourself in sentiment of that sort.”
“What?”
“About being unhappy here in this strong new world. You have chosen to live here, and you have shown how able you are. Do let yourself be happy.” She glanced involuntarily at the rich room.
“I hate it,” Mrs. Wilbur said coldly, noticing her glance. “But how stirred up you are. I am not contemplating anything desperate.”
“You will. You are just the kind to shock the whole world, to make yourself wretched for life and your friends too, because you have worked yourself into some exalted fancy. Why can’t you drop problems and sensations and the ends of life—and live like a good human being from hour to hour. Sometime you will find that in your anxiety to get just the best, you have lost even the common good. Here is your house, your child, your husband—”
“Yes,” the older woman agreed wearily. “Why do I make such a fuss? Why do you and the others bother about me?”
“I suppose because we love you. You don’t deserve it, but there it is, the mystery. Your friends are anxious that you should have all the bothers taken away, that you should be at your best and happy.”
“My friends! They had better give up trying.”
“Your Uncle Sebastian, Mr. Jennings, and I—”
“Thornton Jennings!” Mrs. Wilbur repeated the name wistfully. “There is a soul—I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
“Promise me that you will let me know if you ever think of doing anything desperate.”
Mrs. Wilbur laughed and kissed her. “I’ll take you along too, to look after me.”
While they made ready for the dinner-party of the evening, the talk ran on in the commonplace channels ofdress and dinner guests. Mrs. Wilbur’s face cleared, and she became that object rarely seen of men,—a woman’s woman absorbed in trivialities. From dress they got to the kindergarten, to Molly’s latest suitors,—especially to Thornton Jennings. Him they discussed from every point of view, Molly detailing bits of conversation, his personal habits, gossip about him by other women. All the odds and ends which, unknown to a man, go to make the picture he presents to the woman of his adoration.
“I don’t know him!” the younger woman exclaimed at last. “How is this, Adela,bien porté?” She shook herself into her evening dress. “When he begins to make love I shall know,—it would be nicer if they had made the skirt the least bit fuller.”
“I don’t think so, but if you want, Jane can let it out. John says Ikel and Wren are awfully clever and successful.”
“One doesn’t marry a man’s brains altogether,—yes, do send Jane,—one runs off with clever men.”
They could hear already the slight commotion of the household, preparing itself for the function of the day. Mrs. Wilbur at last hurried away to her own dressing-room.
There was talk that night at dinner of the fire and the severe loss it meant to Packington; of the new tariff bill, which was dragging its soiled body tediously through the weeks; of the tremulous condition of the money market; and, among the women sitting lethargically over coffee in the library, some gossip of the coming lectures, of Calve’s latest escapade, and lastly of the difficulties of Englishmen-servants. Mrs. Wilbur’s mind wandered back to Erard and the interrupted talk of the afternoon. Even the money market, with the prospect of another hard year threatened by the scandalous ignorance of a number of irresponsible little men at Washington, could not seem to her as vital as the strange evening glow in a half-faded picture that hung in a room four thousand miles away. Until that glow faded entirely from the lovely fields, and the warm flesh tints of the naked figures went out altogether into the darkness of unconceived things, there would exist in the world a comforting, happy idea for all who passed that way heedingly.