Chapter X: Art Alone Endures

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.