OUTSIDE of the hospital he hailed a taxi, and gave the name of his
hotel.
Coming out of some reverie too deep to remember, he looked out of the
window and saw that he was on Michigan Boulevard, passing the Art
Institute. On an impulse, he stopped the taxi, and went in.
He climbed the wide stair to the large room in which the treasures of
the place were on view--a miscellaneous lot of treasures: some of them,
like Bougereau’s bather, cheapened by time’s changes in the realm of
taste; none but the ignorant now stopped to admire the high lights on
those perfect and polished toe-nails. And poor Gilbert Stuart--what
an irony for a painter to be cherished because of the historical
importance of one of his subjects! But here was, at least, a Van Dyck.
Norman paused in front of it.... And from somewhere out of a memory
whose leisure hours for some years had been given to connoisseurship
in the art of painting, there leaped out the irrelevant fact that Van
Dyck had had an illegitimate child in the Netherlands; the mother being
unknown to history.... He passed on.
He did not know what he was looking for.... Possibly for some proof
that art was as important as he had always taken for granted that
it was. These artists starved and painted, attained--if they were
lucky--the heights of fame, and left pictures that eventually found
their way to some American gallery. That seemed to be the final, ironic
goal of all their striving. It was, no doubt, very improbable that
this willful girl would ever achieve any sort of fame. But if she did,
beyond her wildest dreams--then, some day, a troubled young man would
stand in front of some picture of hers, and remember that she was said
to have had an illegitimate child in America.
“The father,” he murmured half aloud, “being unknown to history.”
Yes, times were changing. Women were taking the privileges of men. And
that careless masculine privilege of leaving behind an illegitimate
child or so in the course of one’s career--that, too. Van Dyck hadn’t
been stopped in his painter’s progress by a mere illegitimate child:
why should Isabel Drury be?
Oh, no doubt there was something to be said for her attitude. And it
was important, doubtless, that she have her chance to paint a picture
that would be bought after her death for a fabulous sum by an American
millionaire. Just why it was important he could not at the moment
seem to be able to tell himself. But he had always known that it was
important....
A fragment of a poem of Gautier’s flickered into his mind. “_Tout
passe. La vers souveraine demeurent._” That had impressed him greatly
when he read it at college. All passes; sovereign verse--or, as in this
case, painting--lasts....
To be sure. Children grow up; become old; die. Paint on canvas stays
young. More or less. Less rather than more, to tell the truth. Paint
ages, too. The gloom into which Whistler’s paintings are already
fading.... An accident, perhaps. Isabel didn’t use that kind of a
palette. She was a post-Impressionist.... But styles decay, too.
_Pointillisme_--how quaint it looks already! Picasso--will he and all
his manners seem to another generation as futile as Meissonier?... This
whole age: was it perhaps afflicted, as some said, with a spiritual
sickness? Was it because of something morbid in his own mind that he
had ever been drawn to it?... A bourgeois thing to think!
But then, he was a bourgeois: no doubt of that. What did he know about
art? He had enjoyed the belief that he knew a great deal. And that did
no harm--it would encourage him to buy some poor devil’s pictures; and
if he guessed right, he could present them to a museum. That was his
function--to buy pictures.... Some day he might have the privilege of
buying some of Isabel’s.
When he was dead, his widow would call in an expert and ask, “Are these
worth anything?” If they weren’t, she would burn them up as trash--the
mere record of a girl’s vain dreams. If the expert said, “Oh, yes,
indeed, madam, those are very fine early Drurys!”--then they would
pass into the possession of some millionaire. They would fetch a good
price.... But the man who bought them wouldn’t know how cheap they were
at any price.... He would be getting, not just paint and canvas and a
name, but the milk that had dried up in Isabel’s breasts, the love that
she had kept from her baby, the hope that she had refused to squander
on a mere living child--all that she had saved up and put into her
masterpieces rather than waste in motherhood: that’s what he would be
getting for his money. And when after dinner he took his guests for a
stroll through his gallery, and-- But this was mere sentimentality....
Norman awoke from his reverie, in front of Millet’s picture of the
new-born calf being brought home by two peasants on a straw-covered
litter, the mother cow following along and licking her baby.... Silly
sentimentalists, cows. Didn’t they know their real business was to
produce cream for the tables of the bourgeoisie? And Millet--a damned
sentimentalist, himself. Any post-impressionist would say so....
Norman remembered suddenly his luncheon engagement with old Gilbert.
They were to meet at the hotel.
He hurried out.