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 English men-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.
CHAPTER VII
The lectures went admirably. Mrs. Wilbur’s house was crowded every Wednesday morning for the eight weeks of the course with “the most prominent and fashionable leaders among Chicago women.” The new house did something to attract; the lecturer himself more, having the skill to hold the curiosity of his audience with his novel point of view, while he tickled the sensibilities of the most intelligent. Then the gossip about Erard’s old intimacy with Mrs. Wilbur added sauce to the affair. Given that basis for elaboration in any other great city, an acrid scandal would have fermented rapidly; Chicago was sensible and tolerant. For the irrationality of any serious entanglement between the clever, prosperous, and rising Mrs. Wilbur and the personally unprepossessing and penniless young man, who in professional standing was rather like a dancing-master, was too apparent to need statement.
As the lectures drew to a close, other matters occupied Mrs. Wilbur’s attention. Her child gave her anxiety. Then a letter from her Uncle Sebastian, a pathetic arrangement of his affairs on paper, had disturbed her. A telegram from St. Louis summoned her the eve of the last lecture. She hurried away with a forlorn feeling at the heart. Somehow Uncle Sebastian, sparing of words as he had been, was a pillar of sympathy. How much alone she should be without him!
She found him very feeble—placid as ever, with an increased distance of abstraction in his face. He smiled on seeing her, and the next day collected himself enough to say something about his affairs.
“You will have most of it—a respectable fortune.” Later he said with a sigh, “I’ve had misgivings about Erard,—the way I treated him. Perhaps I drove him to give up doing anything worth while.”
His niece comprehended this wistful thought, and the desire to give Erard help even if he should make nothing of himself. As the old man got ready to die, the eternal desirability of success, of making a stir in this patchy world of ours, seemed less self-evident. To know something beautiful, to make others know it,—best of all to create a new beautiful thing, a bit of colour, a union of tones, a fine line, that was perhaps the only solace for much pain.
Mrs. Anthon had taken her brother-in-law in hand more vigorously since her daughter’s marriage. And at seventy Sebastian Anthon felt that it was hardly worth while to protest against his environment. He had compromised with himself for his life of ineffective respectability by leaving his money largely to his niece, whom he regarded as the most enlightened member of his family.
“You can throw it away somehow,” he explained, weakly.