“I kind of think as your mother does. What’s the use of bothering with him any longer? He is either on his legs by this time or ought to be.”
He asked, as a second thought, “Have you been sending him money right along?”
“Oh, yes,” she replied in her usual calm tones. “But I won’t have him here if it troubles you. The lectures will be for women in the mornings, you know.”
“Oh! if he interests you,—I thought we had been travelling different roads these last years—”
“Yes.” Mrs. Wilbur’s tone was slightly ironical, “We have been going different ways, but I still find him—interesting; perhaps more than—well, most things.”
CHAPTER V
The night of the musicale Erard arrived at the Wilbur’s very late. He had driven from his hotel, after a comfortable dinner and a cigar, without taking the trouble to ascertain the distance. When he entered the hall, he could hear the music from an inner room,—a bit from a new Russian symphony, more intricate than melodious. Through the doors opening broadly into the hall, he could see the people, the women seated in irregular bunches fanning themselves and furtively looking about, to inventory the guests and the rooms. As he continued to peep, he was surprised at the brilliancy of the dress. He had vaguely fancied the inhabitants as costumed in something between the conventional blanket of the frontier and the plush absurdities of our grandmothers. Yet these women, many of them so portly that they could carry magnificence, appeared more richly dressed than anything he remembered in London or Paris.
The men were standing about the doors in various uncomfortable attitudes, seemingly unhabituated to this difficult part of the full-dress parade. Erard noticed, as he glanced about, that they were generally middle-aged, solid men, with here and there a bony, wiry specimen. To his European eye, the faces appeared individual, yet curiously undistinguished; “rudimentary types,” he murmured. Every one was silent and serious, as if living up to the decorum of the occasion.
One of the footmen, who had taken his coat and hat, followed him and motioned to a room on the right, away from the music. Erard took the hint, thinking to find a chair where he might make himself comfortable until the music arrived at an intermission. He found himself in a dimly lighted room, which had evidently been planned for a library. He perceived indifferently half-a-dozen other occupants of the room. As his eyes began to wander about, he saw Mrs. Wilbur, who was watching him from the other end. The first thing he noticed about her was the dress: he had painted something like that once, with its delightful folds of white lace and cream-coloured satin. And the face, too, he had painted that. Mrs. Wilbur caught his eyes, and they looked for an instant at each other, examining. Then he noticed Mrs. Anthon, planted firmly in another corner of the room. She seemed a bit dumpier than three years before, and more complex in dress.
The music ceased with an awakening bang. A servant turned on the electric lights. Erard crossed the room to greet his hostess.