CHAPTER V
Mrs. Wilbur’sdisappointment rarely expressed itself in words. She worked with seeming interest at the tasks Erard suggested, and at odd times furbished her Latin or read Italian. The grey silver olives about the villa turned to a delicate green; the drab earth yielded to flowers. Each week the sun lay longer on the terrace above the city walls, until at last in early April a blast of heat declared the winter had passed. From time to time Mrs. Wilbur had accompanied Erard in his flittings, and the last of April Molly Parker joined them on an expedition towards Rome, which she described as “a triumphal procession in the cause of art and freedom.”
Erard was apparently testing his power by carrying Mrs. Wilbur away in the face of society. He had finally hoodwinked the virtues through the person of this high-minded and beautiful woman. She should read to him when he was weary, write notes and examine records, make bibliographies and provide the drawings he had decided to use. She should talk and stir him up when he was dull, and above all she should admire him, bear incense, and fear his sharp tongue. That she was tall and impressive and interesting in person was all to his liking. It was pleasant to touch silk, to feel a softness and high-bred delicacy always about one. Even therapid, low speech which was characteristic of her, was suited to his needs. She never touched a nerve disagreeably, except when at rare intervals she lashed out wildly, and then she was like a play. Storm was also good to experience, if he could always still the waters.
John Wilbur had evidently followed his wife’s actions pretty closely. Mrs. Stevans, who was travelling in Europe, had kept him informed, casually, and Erard had let her assume whenever they met all that her imagination could picture. In the meantime Wilbur had begun to prosecute his action for divorce vigorously. Mrs. Anthon had lived in the desolate house all these months, to maintain appearances, which deceived no one. Now her son-in-law informed her bluntly that she had best leave at once; he did not care any longer for her sympathy and “wanted his ruined home to himself.”
Mrs. Wilbur in the course of her wanderings from place to place received the echoes of this final eruption which she had caused. The thought of it disturbed her more than she allowed herself to believe, even here in the midst of earnest regular work which was supposed to satisfy her mind. It would all be over soon, she said to herself, the divorce once granted, but she began to realize that she could not dispose of her unimportant self without making wounds not easily healed.
Mrs. Anthon added her irritant to her daughter’s feelings in the shape of a tempestuous letter. She wrote on black-edged paper with some idea of symbolism in her mind. (To her intimate friends she had often said: “My daughter is dead to me.”) This timeher wail was complex. “You have done what I always said you would do, Adela. You remember I said to Sebastian—‘Ada will disgrace us all some day, I know it, and with that low fellow you have picked up.’ Now your husband is getting a divorce, which he oughtn’t to doyet, and the house is just so beautiful and new and grand,—just made for you to look fine in. I have kept it the best I could, though those English men-servants are real insolent. I had rather have three or four good, clean-looking girls in caps and black gowns as the Remsens do. I suppose you are beyond a mother’s tears and supplications, seeing as you have broken the sacredest laws of man and God. And you christened and took into the church. John would stick to the Episcopal church and have you all baptized when you were babies, though I wanted to go to the Presbyterian church, which you remember was just at the foot of the hill from us. I had a real kind letter from Mrs. King Hamilton about our trouble. She says the scandals in New York are awful, we don’t know how bad peoplecanbe, when they haven’t anything to do but be bad, and she can’t see any more than the rest of us why you didn’t have the taste for a more elevated man. Times are changing, I wrote her, not only in New York, but everywhere: it comes from educating the girls. I managed to live with your father twenty-five years.... John has been as nice as he always was, but silent and away most of the time. I took your best blue lamb’s-wool blankets, those your sister Elsa gave you, you remember. And I’ll give them back to her if you think best. They’ll be just whatshe wants, for your brother John has moved into a new house.”
At this point Mrs. Wilbur dropped the letter impatiently, then laughed, and would have liked to cry. She had returned to her villa from Rome, the day before, and was sitting in the great salon, gazing out over the blue Val d’Arno, and in the intervals of her reverie reading a few of the letters she had found waiting for her. What would Molly say to the news of the divorce? and Erard? The latter was coming soon to take her for their usual afternoon walk. She tossed the letters on her desk and rang for tea. She wouldn’t tell him about the divorce: he would find it out, as he learned most facts about her, by some swift, hidden means of intelligence.
Presently Erard entered the room briskly. Pouring his own tea, he went over by the window to drink it and eyed the landscape between the sips. He certainly had heard nothing about the divorce in his letters, for if he had, he would have watched her more keenly to read the effect in her face. She half suspected that he was waiting for the divorce to—she hardly knew what—to make his appropriation of her more legal. Hitherto he had behaved toward her very circumspectly, evidently not anxious to commit himself. And she had tried him in certain moods, tempting him to forget his caution.
“We will go out by Fiesole,” he remarked at last, putting down his cup. “There is a lovely bit back of the village that will explain to you Leonardo’s landscape.”
For once Mrs. Wilbur was not inclined to continue this uninterrupted course in aesthetics. Her own situation perplexed her and rendered her irritable.
“Yes, but I am tired of running about,” she answered peevishly.
He looked at her for the first time since entering the room.
“Oh! you shouldn’t faint so soon. We must go again to Rome before it gets unbearably hot.”
“And I must follow like a good child.” She rose and stood by his side. “Youaredomineering, like most men. How long must I carry burdens?” She turned her heated face to him and looked as if she would say, “Why don’t you—show that you are a man? Considermefor a moment as a woman. Wouldn’t you like to love me? Do you think you could have me, the rejected Mrs. Wilbur? Try! It will give you an unexpected sensation. Come, you are pedantic, you play the schoolmaster overmuch.”
“No one could call you a child,” he smiled, sitting down below her on the window-sill.
“No, I am better than a child; I can help you make books, and when I am good-natured I amuse you and flatter you. You like flattery so much!”
Her eyes challenged him again. She was imperiously anxious to put him beside himself—and—to spurn him, perhaps.
“You have given me the keenest flattery; you have obeyed me.”
“And if I disobey, and recant?”
“Oh, you won’t do that,” he answered tranquilly. “You are too intelligent to do anything so silly.”
“Suppose I return to my husband and ask him to forgive me?”
Erard shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t be stupid and melodramatic. You ought to know by this time whether you like Wilbur well enough to live with him.”
“Or prefer Erard,” she retorted sarcastically. He looked at her, measuring her, enjoying her passion. “I have been such a good disciple, dear master,” she continued tempestuously. “I have studied your gospel letter by letter.”
“There are some chapters yet unperused,” Erard smiled back, mockingly.
“In good time may your pupil go so far—”
“All in good time.”
He baffled her, and after each period of stormy indulgence he left her lower in her own esteem. Whenever she gave herself free rein, she had a sickening sense of the futility of abandonment. She lost each time a little power.
“Now you had better let me show you some landscape, or will you pack your trunk for—Chicago?” He played with her mood tranquilly.
“I would like to—strike you!” In a moment she gave a little low laugh of scorn. “No, you really aren’t worth tragic displays, Mr. Simeon Erard! Did you ever dream that there are some sensations beyond you?”
“For example?” he walked slowly towards her.
“For example,” she looked down at him. She was now thoroughly reckless and maddened with a cold passion. Her arms, half opened, pressed convulsively together, slowly, involuntarily. Erard blanched, trembled, half moved, and then paused. She swept by him, frightened and aghast. For the first time in her life she was conscious of feebleness: she was not sure of herself.