CHAPTER VI
Atthat moment the door of the salon opened, and Jennings came forward into the firelight, with his fearlessly erect carriage, as if it were a fine thing to stride through the storms of the world. As Mrs. Wilbur shook hands with him she felt that his face might have been taken from some renaissance bust, so filled it was with the pure fire of life.
Jennings pulled awkwardly at his shrunken travelling coat of pepper and salt, and then perceiving Erard, extended a hand with a frank “How are you?” Mrs. Wilbur ordered candles and fresh tea, curiously pleased with his unexpected appearance, and relieved from the tension of unmotived feeling.
“I met Salters on the street,” Jennings explained. “He told me where to find you. I just escaped from him a few minutes ago. He told me about something he was at work upon. Has he been writing?”
“He has laboured over my cast-off ideas for five years,” Erard replied.
“Well,” the newcomer said kindly, “he’ll write a book some day, I suppose.”
“God knows. It takes only pen, paper, and patience to make a book.”
Mrs. Wilbur remembered the epigram: Erard had used it about Salters four years before.
“You fellows are slanging yourselves in the good old style,” Jennings laughed, as if amused at the gibes of manikins. “And Vivian Vavasour, is she still a prophet with a terrific vocabulary?”
“She has devoured a folio a week for ten years, and put out a lot of drivel each six months. Having exhausted art and letters she is trying her hand on religion now and coquetting with her soul.”
“You are a precious lot!” Jennings laughed again hilariously.
“We attract recruits. Here is a noteworthy example, he implied, whom I am disciplining.”
“Yes,” Jennings admitted, taking a cigarette from the tea-tray, and lighting it judiciously. “So I see. When I was over here last, the neophyte was an ingenuous youth, who was delving into hisego. He changed his opinions with the seasons. What became of him?”
“You mean Hiram Ernst. He recanted, having exhausted Europe, and is married now to a woman in Buffalo. He is practising law. He writes me bumptious letters every now and then.”
“And there was a southern poet, a flabby, fat youth of Plutonic dreariness, who lived on Turkish coffee and cigarettes. He wrote ditties to the infernal gods and emitted hints of mysterious vices.”
“He shut himself up in a villa at Amalfi with a volume of Petrarch, and has not been heard from since.”
“There were the women, too,” Jennings continued,reminiscentially. “Edith Sevan, a golden-haired little Puritan with a temperament. She used to play pretty well when she wasn’t overcome with emotion.”
“Married,” Erard replied, “and lost.”
“The Honourable Miss Vantine was stunning,—the cigarette-smoking, whiskey-and-soda one. She looked like a poppy and swore like a mule-driver. The last time I heard of her she had forsaken cigarettes for cigars and had punched an impertinent cabby. She was—well—tough.”
“Oh, she went off with a German painter and forgot to get married until it was too late. My dear fellow, you are really archaic. We have new constellations now: the lesser luminaries have winked and gone out.”
“It’s all the same,” Jennings protested, throwing away his cigarette half-smoked. “I suppose the flies are a little thicker as our idle classes increase. We need a war,—or a pestilence.”
Mrs. Wilbur winced at this banter about the “aspirants.” The dilettanti, the exclamatory women like herself, came and went. Erard was strong enough to stay, fattened by the incense of the troop. At this pause in the conversation Molly Parker entered, and dropping her wraps with a little exclamation of delight, she sped to meet Jennings.
“Youandhere!” She looked into his face. “Oh! this is so nice. It’s the best thing this winter, isn’t it, Adela?” Mrs. Wilbur laughed, and Erard echoed her merriment disagreeably.
“But you aren’t half glad enough to see us,” she looked at the visitor reproachfully.
“Of course I am.” Jennings was pulling at his suit confusedly. “Didn’t I come round this way to get to London?”
“Well, I don’t care anyway,” Miss Parker beamed, “I am awfully glad you are here. I’ll tell Luisa to make afestafor dinner.”
Jennings was vague about his plans, when the women plied him with questions at dinner. He was on his way somewhere he admitted,—about to make a change. “They got tired of me in Chicago, and I was rather tired of them.” He was also vague about seeing these friends again, for he said bluntly that he didn’t care to meet Americans at present.
“Nasty remark that,” Molly reflected lugubriously after his departure.
“It would be nice to see him often,” Mrs. Wilbur admitted. “I wonder why he is so attractive. He can be verygauche. It must be because he makes such little account ofhimself. The world is all; life is all, no matter where he works or whom he meets. That firm hand will be put to the plough, and those frank eyes will consider seriously.”
“That is very nicely said,” observed Miss Parker slyly, “especially coming from one of your profession.”
Mrs. Wilbur took up a volume hastily and began her reading.
“But I think we shall see him again,” her companion continued, a slight smile creeping over the corners of her mouth.
“Why didn’t you stay in Chicago and bring it about, Molly?” Mrs. Wilbur laid aside her book.
“Because I wanted to be with you.”
“And Thornton Jennings believes in sacrifice.”
“Adela!”
“It will make it all the more romantic to have him follow you to your missionary field and see you caring for the heathen.”
Molly Parker’s eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t be happy, and know that you were over here alone with this set.”
Mrs. Wilbur was already ashamed of her ill-temper. Presently she reflected aloud, “So you ran the chances of losing him to—”
“Youcan’tlose any one you love, who loves you. But it may take a dreadful time to have everything come right.” She sighed. “Adela,” she said with sudden daring. “Did you ever know that Erard had relatives? A father and brother; the brother has just died, Mr. Jennings told me—we knew them.”
Mrs. Wilbur listened quietly until her friend stopped, afraid to continue.
“No! I don’t know anything about Mr. Erard’s family. But when he wants to tell me, he will, and until then they do not interest me.”
Jennings seemed in no great haste to leave Florence. He would disappear for a few days, and when he turned up at the Villa Rosadina he had “merely been off for exercise.” But large slices of the lingering sunny dayshe spent with the two American women. Mrs. Wilbur was conscious that he was watching and studying her. He seemed as much interested in her as in Molly. Indeed they had rather most of the desultory talk on their rambles. Now and then Molly Parker interrupted them in a heatedtête-à-tête.
“Another soulful talk, darn ’em,” she would mutter. “Anyhow Adela has an awful heavy chin, and when she gets excited it is positively ugly.” She had vague fears that Adela was capable of corrupting even Jennings: you never knew how foolish a man could be. So when at one of these ruffled moments Mrs. Wilbur called affectionately,—“Come here, Molly, and kiss me.” Miss Parker shook her head jauntily. “I don’t like being kissed.” And fishing out a stray cigarette, she lit it mischievously.
“Molly!” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed.
“Vivian Vavasour does it: that’s why she is so dried up and sallow. Mr. Erard taught me. Every one smokes in the Circle.” She turned to Jennings. “Adela is squeamish. Then she dislikes new habits.”
Jennings laughed appreciatively.
“By the way, Adela, I am going to write Walter to come on next Easter and take me to Rome for the Carnival. That’s the custom in the Circle,” she explained to Jennings. “We take men instead of maids when we travel. It’s lots nicer; you have some one to lug the bags and to run errands. Besides, it shocks people and makes you talked about.”
Mrs. Wilbur looked at her scornfully, while Jenningsseemed to receive infinite amusement from the situation.
“And you must swear and say nasty things about your family and friends. I met an English girl at Vivian’s the other day, who said she was dining with some people in London, and the daughter of the house remarked at the table before her father and mother,—‘Barr’—that’s the girl’s name—‘Barr, you must come next week when papa and mamma are in the country. We can have some talk then and not such a stupid time.’”
Jennings went away in a gale of laughter, and Miss Parker subsided into silence. Mrs. Wilbur was more hurt by her outbreak than she cared to admit. She realized, moreover, that some recognition was due her friend for her constant devotion. She remarked at last, magnanimously,—
“I think we must go north before long. I will ask Thornton Jennings to join us later, and I am sure you will be glad to see Walter.”
“Thank you,” Miss Parker replied with sweet coolness. “Please don’t urge them—you know I think it’s the men’s business to do the urging.”
“I have fallen pretty low,n’est ce pas, Molly?”
“I didn’t say so.”
“But Ihave; I couldn’t go much lower, it seems to me at times.”
“Have you made yourself happy?” Molly inquired serenely.
Mrs. Wilbur did not care to answer. Molly’s incipientjealousy hardly deserved attention. Her fears were groundless, for Jennings was merely watching the play out, and assisting the action in obtrusive ways. He had told Mrs. Wilbur that his cousin Mrs. Stevans had been in Florence earlier in the winter and that she and Erard were quite chummy. “Erard’s buying her a carload of stuff.” She inferred that Mrs. Stevans was the present deity who made Erard’s course easy, and that Erard was even better informed about her own affairs than she herself. Yet Erard had never alluded to what he had learned from Mrs. Stevans.
One day, moreover, Jennings related the incident of Peter Erard and the old man on Halsted Street. “Peter was a stubborn beast,” he explained. “He refused to be comforted. Yet he took his private’s place in the line, like a man. And Peter had to join the dumb.”
“You are fond of the dumb,” Mrs. Wilbur said wistfully, neglecting to follow out the implications of the Erard tale.
“They are not picturesque, but—” And after a silence he told her of his own dilemma. He had received an offer of the headship of a southern training school for negroes. He was trying now to settle the question of accepting it. Mrs. Wilbur refrained from commenting. She would like to say, “Go,” but that word might sound strangely in her mouth.
In spite of all this influence which Jennings brought, the old life of work with Erard went on. She had no excuse for breaking with him, even though the hot June days sapped her strength, and his demands grewburdensome. And she was afraid of him as well as curious to know what humiliation he had in store for her. What new corners in his nature had she to explore before the end came? Somehow it was in the air that this thing was to be fought out between them to an end. Each recognized the struggle and hesitated.
The Tuscan summer crept on apace over the hills. The leafy woods in the Cascine glowed in the sun; down the river a thin line of stately, flower-like trees threw pictures of an afternoon in the pools of the Arno. The nights on Bello Sguardo were like jewelled velvet. She waited, apathetically, for some sign, some impulse of readjustment.