“They are all much alike, these sighers after art and beauty. A poor lot, take them as a whole, who decide to eat honey all their lives! I have seen more of them than anything else in Europe,—dilettantes, connoisseurs, little artists, lazy scholars. Chiefly Americans, who, finding America too incomplete, come here and accomplish nothing. In every centre in Europe you can find two or three of them in the various stages of decay. The environment they run after atrophies their faculties; the very habits of life which are best for these people hurt them; they sink into laziness. Erard is the leader of the tribe,—the grand high-priest of the mysteries of the higher senses!”
He ended his declamation with a laugh. His cold contempt shut her heart and drove her back to defence.
“But he has made it worth while; you are not fair to him. He has lived in the only way he could and reach his ends. And he has done something; he knows.”
“Perhaps,” Jennings agreed dubiously, thinking his own thoughts aloud with brutal disregard for her inferences. “What a bloodless, toady existence, sucking in the joys of his paradise! And for what? A few books to be replaced by a new set in another generation, a few epigrams, and a little quivering of his ‘sensorium.’ Better a day in an Indiana town, than a year of that!”
Mrs. Wilbur turned her face away. Even he was so pitiless! She had come to him in her distress for comfort, and instead of soothing her, of leading her out of her tangle, he heaped up this stern indictment against all her past ideals.
“You didn’t know Peter Erard.” He began to tell that story again. “You see, there was the mother. She died, saving her pennies to give Simeon a new suit when he was tutoring Mr. Anthon’s daughter. Then there were the father and Peter. The father was too old to work, and Peter kept him comfortable and I believe sent Erard money, first by a job in Jersey City, then by one in Chicago. Over a year ago Peter met with an accident and lost his job—Miss Parker knows these facts—and, finally a little while ago, died. When he was ill, Erard, Simeon, that is to say, was in Chicago, giving lectures and visiting. Peter saw him once. And the old man might die in the poor-house now, if it weren’t for Miss Parker.”
Mrs. Wilbur listened with compressed lips. She had been fighting off this disagreeable tale for a long time.
“That Peter Erard—he was a man!” Jennings continued, his face lighting up. “He had it in him to do something, and he knew it, and he never talked slush. He took his place in the ranks, like a man. And now he is dumb, as he was in life!”
“Perhaps the other one showed his genius by defying all these claims and making his way in spite of them,” Mrs. Wilbur stammered, remembering the Napoleonic glory of Simeon’s first confessions to her. Jennings looked at her pityingly.
“Do you think so? now that you know the story in all its sordid detail? And can you still think that the result is worth while? Is it any better than the grab, and the coarse perception about traction stocks, and the rest of the unpleasant side of Chicago which annoys our nostrils? Merely because you work in pictures or books, and not in pork and dry-goods. Ah, Peter was the man, and he was a private!”