Miss Anthon continued to spend a few desultory hours in the fashionable
studio behind the Madeleine. Erard’s raillery made the work appear
more futile than ever, yet the engagement was a convenient excuse.
At least once a day she could escape from Mrs. Anthon’s rasping
companionship, and the dressmakers and milliners and aimless scurryings
to and fro. Her uncle Sebastian had hinted, also, that the first sign
of restlessness on her part would precipitate a move to Nice, or some
other watering-place. And, so long as Erard condescended to take an
interest in her case, she was loth to leave Paris.
On brisk days, when the pervasive fog was lifted up and shoved behind
the surrounding hills, Miss Anthon gave Jerome’s the slip and snatched
a few hours for long walks. In this way she had taken Wilbur out to the
little house in Passy where Miss Molly Parker spent the burden of the
day over Mrs. Ormiston Dexter’s children. Wilbur and Miss Parker had
dashed into a surprising intimacy from the first. Miss Anthon watched
enviously the skilful American girl lead Wilbur through his most
stalwart paces.
One could not help being intimate with this young woman. She was like
a green field in June; when she smiled one felt at home, as one did in
nature.
“You are so immensely human,” Miss Anthon had been moved to say, as
they left, taking Miss Parker’s hands and looking into her startled
eyes.
“Why? I’m just like the others,” Miss Parker replied, troubled.
“With a difference,” Miss Anthon sighed. “It’s all straight to you;
there is no doubt, no hesitation.”
“Oh, lots! I am awfully poor, and if it weren’t for Aunt Nan, I’d have
to teach school or keep books or--get married.”
“Money is so unimportant!” the other girl announced disdainfully.
“Oh, my lady, nothing, a mere trifle. _Comprenez, Monsieur Fifi_,” Miss
Parker mimicked the air of disdain, taking the little black spaniel
into her lap. “_C’est rien du tout, du tout_, this matter of money.
_C’est une bagatelle, milady a dite. Que pensez-vous?_”
“_Au revoir_, you child.” Miss Anthon kissed her.
“_Bon jour, milady._”
Once out on the grey street, Miss Anthon turned to Wilbur for
appreciation. “Well?”
“She’s a good girl,” Wilbur remarked abstractedly.
“That’s all!”
“That’s enough, isn’t it? She’s the sort to go through fire for one,
and cook and sew and play with one, too. She’s about right.”
This explanation mollified Miss Anthon a little. “You make her out a
companionable animal! Isn’t there anything more?”
“I guess so,” Wilbur replied, swinging his cane. Evidently neither
Miss Parker nor women in general appealed to him just then. Miss
Anthon watched his moody manner sympathetically. He touched her on
sides little known to herself, awakening vague instincts, appealing
to a primitive nature that did not lie far below the surface of her
character. His practical sense, his imagination in material issues, his
enjoyment of the hearty meal in daily life, pleased her. She liked the
heavy frame, the square face with its ordinary plainness and healthy
tints. His tolerance of fine-art tickled her humour. To him Erard’s
profound seriousness over these matters of adornment was ridiculous; he
never allowed any conventional appreciation to disturb _him_. The face
value of the world, as he looked at it, was quite satisfactory.
The day was soft for December. Mount Julien towered up beyond the
river, close at hand, its fortifications lightly covered by a mantle
of snow. As they came out on the Place de l’Etoile the broad avenues
seemed alive with cabs. The vivacity of the scene in which she had no
real share rendered her sombre.
“You had a great chance,” she said at last, sighing unconsciously.
Wilbur smiled. “There are always plenty more.”
“For a man, for men such as you!”
“I guess for women, too.”
“Nonsense,” she took him up sharply. “A husband, or a vocation badly
filled. What chance is there for me?” She gave her egotism rein
recklessly.
“You are pretty well off.” Wilbur never wasted emotion over cultivated
evils.
“Yes, too well! My brick-stock will always make me incapable of doing
anything rash.”
“Oh!” Wilbur turned a more curious eye on his companion. “That’s the
rub. You want more?”
“Or less.”
“Why don’t you try our new company? Dinsmore writes that the stock was
issued last week. We have put only a little on the market.”
“Perhaps I shall want to take a hand. Could you get me some?”
“Earnest?”
She looked at him defiantly.
“You’ll have to ask your uncle. I know where you could get some--old
Rantoul. But you had better stay in bricks. They’re safer.”
The two laughed and changed the subject. She had no very definite idea
why she desired to take risks, to be richer than she was at present. It
was a longing for the risk itself, as much as anything, for having a
share in the palpitations of the world.
After déjeuner, when she broached the subject to her uncle, Sebastian
Anthon pooh-poohed; his brother had trained him well. Brick-stock was
a family god. To sell it, to dabble in other enterprises, was like
trading in the family reputation. Opposition, however, made the girl
truculent.
“Uncle Seb, did you never want to do anything but the safe thing?”
The old man smiled at her. “I always want the others to do the safe
thing.”
“Do you think it would make a nice world if every one did the safe
thing and rested there?”
“I don’t know,” he mused, “there are always plenty to do the unsafe
thing, to make the ventures--and the world is not an over-nice place.”
She looked at him without replying.
“Adela, I am afraid you will explode some day. Put the explosion off,
lessen it, deaden it. Some one is generally hurt when there is an
explosion.”
She laughed at his figure. A few days later, however, the matter came
up again unexpectedly. It was between the acts at the opera. Miss
Anthon and Wilbur were walking up and down the foyer, having left Mrs.
Anthon over a cooling drink.
“Do you want that stock?” Wilbur remarked abruptly. “When you first
spoke of it the other day, it meant nothing to _me_,” he explained.
“But Dinsmore has been acting queerly, booming things before they
are ripe. Perhaps he thinks he can get out and take his profits
before we have had a real trial and are on a safe footing. I must cut
home at once, and try to keep my end up. Now Center and I control a
third; Rantoul has another third. Dinsmore runs Rantoul. I must run
Rantoul--you see?”
The girl nodded.
“This is only a side-show for Dinsmore,” Wilbur continued moodily, “but
it’s my chance. I must have a hand on Rantoul; if I can’t bully him,
buy him out.”
Miss Anthon understood swiftly the implications. She might become
Wilbur’s partner. Boldly stated, such a proposition sounded
indelicate, but this imputation amused her.
“How much would that take?”
“About fifty thousand.”
That was a sobering answer. One-third of her brick-stock, and bricks
paid their assured twelve per cent. For a moment she trembled and was
inclined to take refuge in Uncle Sebastian’s advice. Then her blood
leapt again to her pulses. Some bars of Tristan surged through her,
inciting her to venture, to play with the world somehow.
“Once in the saddle,” continued Wilbur, speciously, “and given a proper
time for development, your fifty thousand ought to more than double.”
“And if I don’t do it,” her eyes questioned him.
“Why! I take my chances of finding somebody else who will,” he
retaliated. His assurance in his own control of this world’s affairs
made it impossible for him to realize the risk he was urging her to
take.
“I’ll do it.” Miss Anthon caught her breath. “I will put fifty thousand
in the company. I am of age, twenty-two. All my family are independent.
I shall have enough left, in--in case--”
Wilbur looked puzzled at all this confession.
“And I do it because I believe in you. I want to share with you in your
fight and feel that I count for something in this world.”
This was also a little vague and childish. Wilbur on his part showed
no signs of obligation. He had treated her as openly as he would the
best of his friends, and all at once they seemed to grow intimate.
He unfolded swiftly his course of action, the reasons for his belief
in the future. When the bell sounded, and they were back once more in
the cramped _loge_, Miss Anthon felt indebted to him already for this
chance of equality.
The next morning she announced her decision to her mother and uncle,
almost indifferently, as they were eating breakfast in their private
salon. Mrs. Anthon screamed. “Ada, you are crazed! Sebastian, she
shan’t do it. There was my aunt’s husband--he sold his stock at 75 in
the panic of eighty-three, against poor John’s advice--” It was a long
story, this tale of the aunt’s husband--and well known in the family.
Adela Anthon listened dreamily. She had always rather sympathized with
Isaac Nash for daring to rebel against the autocrat.
Sebastian Anthon’s protest, backed up by business details, by
unfavourable remarks on skyrocket companies, was more weighty. At last
he said wearily: “Why do you want to bother with money matters? It’s a
tiresome business at best, and when you are pleasantly out of it, all
safe, why can’t you use your energies in some other way?”
“How?” the young woman gazed at him searchingly. He shifted uneasily
and glanced at his sister-in-law. “In art?” Miss Anthon pursued, “in
encouraging young artists instead of young financiers?”
“You have begun to explode, Adela,” the old man replied with gentle
humour. “Be careful about it, and remember, it doesn’t pay, it doesn’t
pay.”
“Does the other thing pay?”
He was silent.
When Wilbur came by appointment an hour later, Mrs. Anthon restrained
herself with difficulty from breaking out in reproaches. Her daughter
watched her closely, with a determined face. She had to content herself
by rushing past Wilbur brusquely without a word of greeting or good-by.
Wilbur was not too blind to see that he was _persona non grata_;
Sebastian Anthon’s chill politeness was enough to indicate the family
attitude. But his absorption in the plans for the coming campaign
made it easy to take Mrs. Anthon’s snub and the old man’s suspicious
airs. When the two young people were left alone, Wilbur remarked
apologetically,--
“You have been awfully plucky.”
“What about?” Miss Anthon replied shortly.
“The row your new investment has made. I am sorry your mother and uncle
don’t see it the way we do; but, then, they couldn’t be expected to.”
“No, they couldn’t.”
“Well, let ’em wait a year,--wait six months,--and they’ll whistle a
different tune. But you,” Wilbur looked at her with frank admiration,
the first time he had done so without other preoccupation. He had all
along taken it for granted that she was “a live girl,” as he would have
called her in Michigan. Now she appeared to him as more than that; she
was as full of venture, as keenly alive, as he, besides being competent
in the woman’s part of knowing how to dress and to talk entertainingly
on many topics. He appreciated the fact that she had been able to
handle both him and Erard impartially. As they talked over the last
details,--he was to leave that night for Southampton,--the idea of her
courage and her cleverness brought out his admiration increasingly. She
seemed to have mastered the fine details of the irrigation problem. She
knew as well as he the ins and outs of Dinsmore’s character, and she
gave him shrewd advice how to play his cards.
When all was talked out, Wilbur found it difficult to make the good-by.
He was anxious to express many shades of feeling at once, and he felt
incapable of the necessary delicacy.
“You have been a sandy friend,” he began.
“Stop,” she laughed. “Remember I am a partner, and we mustn’t have any
sentiment.”
“That’s all right,” he rose to her point, “but if I need another spur
in my side I’ve got it; and when we’ve made the game, I shall know who
gave me the boost at the right moment.”
“And I--who made life interesting when it began to hang heavy; and to
whom I owe my princely fortune!”
A woman could be very chummy with Wilbur without opening the way to
emotional complexities. His education in a part of the world where
women are accepted as comrades (with certain advantages of sex) made
him companionable. He had always acted with young women on a frankly
human basis at home, or in his university; he had seen so little
of them in the conventional attitude that he was never the lover.
Nevertheless, this good-by included long pauses. At last he said,--
“When the stock is selling at one twenty-five you will see me again.
Not before. And,” he proceeded slowly, “then I shall have another
scheme to propose.”
Miss Anthon was vexed with herself at her sudden blush.
“I haven’t any business to be talking _now_ about--well-- I can’t help,
though, letting you know how it stands.”
“Perhaps it would be best not to complicate affairs,” Miss Anthon
responded coldly, having gained control of the situation once more.
“No, no, but,” he added irrelevantly, “you are a great woman. You can
get what you have a mind to. Good-by.”
He held out his hand. She shook it cordially, exhilarated by his frank
appreciation. “And a quick return, shall I say?”
His face beamed; in a moment she was angry with herself for her
unconsidered remark. “Why, of course I am anxious to hear that my stock
is selling at one twenty-five. But perhaps a letter would do as well.”
Yet when he had gone, his solid presence and dominating assurance once
out of the stuffy little room of rasping red velours, she had a strange
sensation of emptiness. Wilbur’s connection with the ordinary facts
of existence seemed so immediate and normal. She was more convinced
than ever that she had done shrewdly in linking her fortunes with his.
Whatever came of the dollars, she would be a larger woman from having
grasped hands intimately with this plain person.