Leaving Wilbur and Mrs. Anthon to find a cab, Miss Anthon and her
uncle proceeded across the Quarter by silent side streets, the old man
turning instinctively here and there, until suddenly they came out on
the Luxembourg gardens.
“I used to live up there,” Mr. Anthon remarked, pointing towards a
deserted alley, “in number 75. That was before your father was married,
when the family were living in New York. Father gave each of us five
thousand dollars when we came of age. John went to St. Louis and began
the brick business. I came over here--”
“Why did you give this up?” his niece asked eagerly, with a renewed
appreciation of the artist’s delights.
Sebastian Anthon turned his blue eyes to her wonderingly. “John thought
it best. Art wasn’t much of a career then, and your father rather
managed all of us. We had good times in _soixante-quinze_,” he added
musingly, standing still to peer up at the maze of broken roofs.
The girl followed his gaze sympathetically. She could suspect a little
more of the story than the old man’s words told. She had felt the iron
will that until two years ago when death stepped in, had governed the
Anthons. The elder brother’s practical power, his intolerance, his
indomitable activity, had bent them all. His little brick business had
expanded, until all the Anthons, root and branch, were brick-makers,
and each member of the family had his block of brick-stock. The boys,
as they came along, were drafted into the business at twenty, and the
women were pensioned off. John Anthon had governed the state in St.
Louis; Sebastian had been his protesting but faithful satrap in New
York.
When John died, leaving bricks at 200, with regular 12 per cent
dividends, the business so ably managed that it might run on until man
had no further need for bricks, or clay was exhausted, Sebastian Anthon
slyly withdrew from his post and looked about for amusement for his
declining years. He remembered wistfully how he had once thought of a
garret room in Paris, of long days in Barbazon; he could not paint now,
and so he had taken to buying pictures.
“And that was why you helped Mr. Erard,” his niece insinuated
thoughtfully.
The old man nodded, and added half apologetically, “He can have the
life, the hope,--even if he doesn’t do much.” Perhaps Erard had grown
to look upon him as a skilful financial agent, who provided both
capital and interest. This attitude might be immoral, but the patron
received his compensation.
“But he has done something; he will do something,” the young woman
replied buoyantly.
“It’s a growth that becomes sterile easily--terribly easily,” her
uncle mused. “Perhaps one can’t assist nature, yet to have the chance,
that is the great thing.” He looked once more wistfully over the
roofs, and then turned into the gardens. He stopped again as they came
out behind the palace, with its gracious façade just visible in the
twilight and fog. “I used to come out here to walk. There was more
going on then everywhere--students and politics. You never knew what
might happen.”
When they reached Foyot’s they found Wilbur and Mrs. Anthon already at
their oysters. Seated at table with them was a blond young man, Mrs.
Anthon’s youngest son, who was examining carefully the wine-card. As
his sister came in, he glanced up with the remark,--
“Well, what did you think of Uncle Seb’s little Jew? Wilbur and mamma
have been slanging him ever since they came in.”
Mrs. Anthon broke out at once. “Your young friend seems to have made
himself comfortable, Sebastian. I suppose painting bath-tubs must pay
pretty well. I must say, and I am no prude, as you know, Sebastian,
that I can’t understand all this loose art. What good is it for
an American to come over here and learn to paint naked women in a
bath-tub, so that you can see the water swashing about? They can’t sell
such things in America. It’s well enough for once in a while to see
’em over here, but we don’t want that kind of picture to hang up in
our homes. I used to say to John, buy good pleasing copies, something
that’s elevating, or nice country scenes, but don’t bring any of that
modern French trash into _my_ parlours.”
The soup arriving just then, Wilbur had his chance.
“That’s so, Mrs. Anthon. But I suppose they are after something. Erard
seems a clever fellow; he believes in himself hard enough, and that’s
the way to get there. I must say, though, that I have never found a
young fellow who got much permanent improvement out of this foreign
business. That wasn’t the way with our fathers, or with our high-class
literary men to-day. They made their way first and came over here later
on to polish off. Isn’t that about so, Mr. Anthon?”
Sebastian Anthon made no reply. He was watching two young fellows
seated on the leather couch near the window. They were gesticulating
and pounding the table, emitting dynamic words,--_la loi_, _morale_,
_vrais enthousiasmes_.
“Mr. Erard is quite the most interesting man I have ever met,” Miss
Anthon pronounced dogmatically, irritated by the bearish atmosphere. “I
can’t quite see why we Americans, who are always whooping for success,
and pardon everything if it only leads to our ends, should have so many
doubts about that same selfishness when used for other things than
getting dollars or going into politics. We are dreadfully moral as soon
as it comes to art or to anything that doesn’t give a bank account. If
I were a man without a cent, I would do precisely what Mr. Erard has
done--make the world support me.”
“Live on charity?” Wilbur exclaimed sharply.
“The eternal discussion,” Walter Anthon put in, as if bored. Hitherto
he had confined himself to ordering and testing his dinner.
“Yes, why not?” Miss Anthon continued pugnaciously. “If I gave them
something back in return, some new sensations or ideas. Don’t you agree
with me, Uncle Seb?”
Sebastian Anthon had been sipping his wine meditatively, ignoring alike
the food and the talk. “I was thinking,” he said tranquilly, “that just
thirty-eight years ago last June, I took my last dinner in Paris over
there where those fellows are sitting. It’s changed since then,--I mean
the world.” This reflection appeased the argumentative temper, and talk
died out.
“I am going to hear Yvette Guilbert,” at last announced young Anthon,
with something of a swagger. “Will you go, Wilbur?”
Wilbur responded by a conscious smile and then glanced at the others.
“What would the ladies say?”
“Walter wouldn’t think it nice if we were to go,” Miss Anthon answered.
“I will go some other time,--when we are all developed.”
Walter looked at his sister suspiciously. “They are doing that kind
of thing in London, but it’s safer not. I shouldn’t care to meet my
friends--”
Miss Anthon waved her hand deprecatingly. She had heard a good deal
about her brother’s friends. He had started “a literary career” in
London, very favorably, with a thin volume of verse, some good letters
of introduction, and a pleasant manner.
“Well, you won’t come, Wilbur? I shall be busy to-morrow, mother. Will
see you some time this week. Good-night.”
Walter Anthon selected his coat and stalked off. Mrs. Anthon looked
after him wistfully, as if half inclined to follow her boy. Instead the
party drifted into a cab and were put down by the boulevards. Their
evenings usually concluded like this at a café, or, more rarely, at the
opera.
The boulevard resounded, like an animated river, coursing on swiftly,
temptingly. The crowd, even on this dull November evening, was hurrying
past, keenly alive about something,--but Miss Anthon was obliged to
sit at the little table beside the throng, an ignorant outsider. The
scene was perpetually alluring her to experiment in new fields, yet she
could never tread the pavement, mistress of herself. This life of idly
running hither and thither was merely irritating. The longing to escape
from her mother, who lived in another kind of world, even from her
uncle and Wilbur, who were not quite in place in Paris, increased until
her nerves were sore.
She had never felt this rebellion in St. Louis. Out of the general blur
of her past life one important figure loomed everywhere, dominated
everything,--her father, John Anthon. That angular, hard-headed man
had in many ways substituted his daughter for his wife. She could
comprehend, now that her mother was cut off from the usual outlets of
neighbourly gossip, how wearisome Mrs. Anthon must have become to the
silent persistent man, who had engineered all their fortunes to such
comfortable ends. She realized that she had gone to this father for
understanding. He was her confidant in her experiences in the little
social pool of St. Louis. He had taught her to read intelligently, had
provided her with tutors; to escape the nonsense of girls’ schools,
he had sent her to Bryn Mawr “in the hope that when middle-life came
she would have a few more resources than her mother.” His standards of
vitriolic common sense had influenced her girlish choice of friends,
had carried her safely through the silly years.
He was honest, she knew, he was direct; he believed in the gospel of
work; he endured much in the family; he never had an idea devoid of
effort. His life had been one prolonged battle that wrung him to the
last reserve of strength. There had been little joy in it but the joy
of success.
It was gaunt, that ideal!
Yet all this she had accepted as a type of what a man should be, of how
he should treat himself. Moreover, she reasoned that a woman should not
be spared the full rigours of the game. Of course the actualities of
daily living were disagreeable, but any one who sought to shirk those
necessities, who sought to take his existence out of the mill where
fate had fixed him, was a mere trifler.
Was she quite sure of that truth, after this day?
When that father died, the demand for sacrifice had come through her
mother, and she had not questioned it. What she had gone to Bryn Mawr
for was not personal gratification--at least, she thought not--but
equipment. She must respond to events, as her father had done many
years ago when he took the Anthon affairs in hand, without disguising
the unpleasant consequences to herself.
It was a primitive religion blindly taught and blindly followed.
Just what could she do for her mother, now that she had made this
sacrifice of her independence? Her brothers had expected it; in the
general emotional drawing together of the family after Mr. Anthon’s
death, it had not seemed so impossible. Had her father, however,
expected it? He had left her an independent fortune. There might be an
implication in that fact.
St. Louis, without that father and without any definite goal except to
make herself companionable to her mother, had soon become intolerable.
The college youths, home for vacation, appeared more childish than
ever; the staid young men in business, more wooden. In desperation,
one day, she found herself on the point of accepting a young lawyer,
for the sole reason, when she paused to reflect, that he agreed with
her in finding St. Louis arid. The fathers and mothers of the present
turbulent generation had toiled out their days, and at night had been
content to sit dully on the great stone stoops, or in the stuffy
parlours, merely idle, until the morrow of renewed effort. The children
had their energy, and yet refused the old task. So, naturally enough,
she had entered into Sebastian Anthon’s plan of a year in Europe,--a
convenient solution for every American family in doubt or distress.
The file of carriages had thinned out; the theatres had opened.
Waiters were standing listlessly in the doors of the cafés. Mrs. Anthon
was saying,--
“Don’t be a fool, Sebastian, over that fellow. He is a worthless young
man. I told you five years ago, ‘Sebastian, you are perverting that
young man. Give him a place in the brick company, and let him earn his
salt, as you have done, as John did.’ But you were weak and amiable,
and the Erard kind get around you.”
Miss Anthon smiled at the idea of Erard in bricks. Moreover, wasn’t all
this talk about Mr. Simeon Erard’s manner of livelihood rather vulgar
and impertinent? Here in Paris it was easy to slip away from her harsh
creed of common prejudices. Erard seemed to her the most interesting
figure on her horizon, and she was tempted to accept him for what he
could give her, for what he had given her already.
She rose hastily, stifled, eager to step out on the boulevard, to
follow the throng. “I will walk back to the hotel, mamma, if Mr. Wilbur
will go with me.”
The young man got up with an air of relief, and the two started down
the boulevard in the direction of the Avenue de l’Opera. He offered
her his arm awkwardly, noticing that the other men and women were
promenading linked together. Miss Anthon laughed: “We’re Americans and
needn’t do it!”
She strode out, every muscle responding joyously, after the inert
hours. Her eyes turned here and there, inspecting the faces in the
cafés, the crowded omnibuses, the idle throng. One need not reflect
here: the river of life coursed swiftly, merrily.