Miss Molly Parker was a unifying force in the Anthon family. Mrs.
Anthon and Molly had discovered two common passions, dress and food.
They would spend long mornings driving about to shops, discussing
bargains and prices and subtleties of style. And they had tested and
classified a long list of restaurants. Molly was a gourmand; Mrs.
Anthon called herself “a hearty eater.” Whatever was amiable and
warm-hearted in Mrs. Anthon, the enthusiastic young woman brought out.
“Molly really likes her,” Miss Anthon admitted gratefully, “and mamma
behaves better when she is about.”
Sebastian Anthon, also, in his quiet fashion, paid tribute to the new
friend. He took her on long walks, and frequently of a Sunday morning
he appeared in Passy with large boxes of chocolate from the _Coupe
d’Or_. The two roamed over old Paris, followed the shop windows, and
knew the recesses of many a print-shop. “Your dear old uncle has walked
his feet off,” Miss Parker would exclaim on their return. “He’s such a
dear!”
Molly Parker knew all about Erard and Wilbur, about the Water-Hoister
and the new company. Miss Anthon spent many a morning, these early
spring days, in the little garden behind the Passy house, finding
there a peaceful atmosphere of rest and naturalness. The studio had
grown loathsome since Erard had delivered his opinion on her case.
A few days after the family conference Miss Anthon brought out with
her Wilbur’s first report of affairs in Chicago. It was buoyant. Miss
Parker sighed a little enviously.
“How nice it must be to be rich!”
“What would you do if you were rich?”
Miss Parker opened her eyes enthusiastically.
“I’d buy trunkfuls of these fascinating things,” she held up a chemise
they had been examining. “And some dresses, I suppose, though I
don’t care for dresses so much as all the white things, with lace
and embroidery.” Then her eyes grew thoughtful as she contemplated
more permanent acquisitions. “I would have a cottage in the country,
somewhere in the woods, and I would have pigs and horses and cows and
chickens and roses and dogs. And have all white dimity, you know.
Coffee in bed and nothing to do all the morning but putter around.”
Adela Anthon laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to be a man?”
Miss Parker opened a pair of astonished eyes. “Why? I should have
to work, and I couldn’t wear dresses. Do you know the story about
the monkeys? If they showed they could work they would have to do
something. See? So they have never let on what they could do. Terrible
wise, the monkeys.”
“Well, I suppose you will marry.”
“I suppose so,” she sighed. “Mrs. Dexter thinks I am hard to suit. They
say I am flirtatious and not serious; but I have to let the men talk.
I can’t tell whether a man will be _the right one_ until he has made
love to me. You see when a nice young man comes along I think he may
be _the one_, and he interests me terribly. I let him talk and talk,
and then when he proposes he scares me, for I find I don’t want him.
It’s so hard to get rid of them nicely without hurting their pride too
much. Mrs. Dexter says I shall be an old maid, and it will all be my
own fault. I haven’t any money, she says, and only enough good looks to
carry me a little way, and no accomplishments. I shouldn’t be so stuck
on myself. But I can’t help it, and I suppose I may be an old maid.
Wouldn’t it be awful, though, not to be married in the end, and not to
have any kids?”
Miss Anthon kissed her laughingly. “No danger! What did you do with
Walter? Did he propose this time?”
Miss Parker looked at her friend slyly, until the two laughed again
nervously. “He doesn’t really want to do anything so rash. It would be
nice to be your sister. Not if you should marry Erard, though.”
Miss Anthon moved nervously. “There’s little danger! He has dismissed
me from serious consideration, told me I was an idiot.”
“But you couldn’t anyway,” Miss Parker protested. “He is so _queer_.”
“It would be worth doing to see how Walter would take it. But the
family have banished him somehow; or, perhaps, he has become tired of
my crudity.”
The spring sunshine tempted her to stroll homewards through the Bois,
which was deserted at this hour except by a few waddling children with
their nurses, or an occasional bicyclist on his way to the country. The
ground steaming in the midday warmth gave out enticing suggestions of
woodland things, of wild fields and rocks, with deep pastures between.
For the moment Paris was quite intolerable, and the life of “hanging
on the outskirts of art” (as Erard had described her existence) too
mortifying to endure. She was almost at the point when it would be more
tolerable to return to America, to “become interested in church-work,”
or to accept any form of the inevitable commonplace. There was but
one distinctly agreeable sensation, beyond the comfort of the day and
the pleasure of a cool shirtwaist and rough skirt, and that was in
the shape of a letter from Wilbur which sent an invigorating thrill
over her egotistical musings. It was an exuberant, yet curt, business
letter, written on a broad sheet of paper with an elaborate lithograph
head, representing curious machines; a letter dashed off in the sweat
and hurly-burly of success when actions were so full that words seemed
colourless counters. The initial moves had been properly played. Wilbur
had arrived in time.
“I stopped in Boston and saw the Rantoul man on my way out. So I
arrived primed. Dinsmore smiled when he saw I had the drop on him and
wanted to know _how_. Then I smiled....” There was a paragraph of
hastily sketched plans, a few words about the headquarters in Chicago
already started, possible immediate extension into new industrial
fields, etc. He was about to start for Kansas. At the close came,
“Stock is selling at 50; I bought yours at 30.” Nothing but that scrap
of justification tucked in, which he knew would delight her, not for
the money gained, but for the justification itself,--the pleasure of
triumphing over Mrs. Anthon and Sebastian Anthon. Here in the dainty
solitude of the play-wood, it was delightful to follow the details of
this man’s rapid, virile action: the conferences, the skilful guidance,
the quick judgment, the importance of making a right decision on the
moment. Confidence in one’s powers was life, freedom. She breathed more
rapidly as her imagination filled in the scant letter. Then she sighed
unconsciously.
For she was tied. She was merely a distant spectator at the commercial
game. From envy of the male part in it, she began to speculate on
this man Wilbur, imaginatively accrediting him with great qualities.
Yet, clearly, it was not the moneymaking that she cared for, but the
drama,--where dollars were the figures of speech.
“Anyhow, _that_,” she spoke aloud, meaning the partnership with Wilbur,
“has been thoroughly worth while.”
With this consoling reflection she picked up her first business
letter, and turned towards the nearest city gate, choosing the least
sophisticated paths. As she neared the Porte Maillot, at a bend in
the woodpath, she came upon Erard walking slowly, seemingly still on
tiptoe, as if eyeing through his little glasses some _belle œuvre_ of
nature, yet in puzzlement, tugging thoughtfully at his beard. Her first
impulse to wait until Erard had passed on around the next curve, gave
way to a quick resolution. If she was to leave Paris in a few days she
would want to write or say farewell: why not here, without incurring
a further outbreak from her mother? There had been no sentimental
flutters in her relations with Erard; indeed, in all she had not seen
him so very many times, although each interview had seemed to her to
mark a little epoch in her intellectual life. So she kept up her pace
and overtook him.
“It is a good place to say good-by in,” she remarked carelessly, as he
raised his hat in his awkward schoolboy fashion. “You know my mother
has coerced us, Uncle Sebastian and me. We are to be carried to Rome
and then to some dreadful baths.”
Erard smiled maliciously. “Mrs. Anthon and I are of the same opinion.”
Miss Anthon laughed pleasantly at the idea of her mother agreeing with
any belief advanced by Simeon Erard.
“Matrimony,” he added with a slight sneer, “not art, will be your
fittest medium of expression.”
Miss Anthon’s face twitched nervously. “I am really too happy this
morning to reprove you, over good news.” She explained her letter.
“And I am sad, over news of my immediate bankruptcy!” Erard responded
gaily.
Although nothing explicit had been said to her by her mother or uncle,
Miss Anthon had gathered from broad hints that Mrs. Anthon had brought
about some kind of a catastrophe in Erard’s affairs.
“Why don’t you take your own advice?” Miss Anthon hazarded, assuming
his tone of hilarity.
“Matrimony! Passing over the insult you have deftly insinuated, I
should say merely that the solution of a rich wife would offer too
many difficulties. Of course I have entertained the idea several
times, and each time I have definitely put it aside. Between the two
evils of a patron and a wife, the first is less limiting. Marriage
with the ordinary woman of fortune would spoil my work; it would
demand time,--beyond the mere emotional adjustment which might
disturb my intellectual processes. I cannot afford to marry even the
ideal heiress. If I could find a partner who would be of substantial
assistance at the plough as well as provide pottage--like these French
women--ah! that would be another thing. But that kind of arrangement,
you may conceive, is hard to make.”
“I admire your frankness and your method!” the young woman exclaimed.
“I am not stupid--over stupid, Miss Anthon,” Erard went on coolly.
“I understand exactly the contempt a woman like your mother has for
me, also the gossip my way of life furnishes my good friends. I am
an adventurer. I came from a nasty back street of Jersey City, and
according to report, I have managed to make the world support me in
luxurious idleness. Why, only last week your uncle, that dear, gentle,
old Mr. Anthon, said: ‘See here, my boy, I can’t conscientiously go
on supporting you over here and lending my reputation towards getting
you patrons. You are enjoying the cream,--just the kind of life dozens
of young men, sons of my acquaintances, are sighing for.’ ‘And,’ he
implied, ‘you have nothing to show for it. If you were doing like the
others, now, something Bohemian, and bringing out results’--you know
the story.”
“Well, why not?” Miss Anthon stopped her leisurely pace. “What’s your
passport?”
“You, too, can take that tone?” he glanced at her searchingly. “My
passport is _here_,” he tapped himself, half ironically, “which, by the
way, is the same passport that carried your young friend Wilbur through
his difficulties. Don’t you suppose that I realize all this suspicion
and contempt? that I know well enough that the kicking is waiting for
me if I fail in the end?
“But there will be no failure,” he continued, impressively. “I have
taken the right road. I haven’t any time for silly scruples--for
money-getting. That faculty of scraping up dollars is an inferior
one, and those who have it must contribute to _me_. The world _shall_
support me; it shall give me my time--that’s the great luxury--and my
peace, too, until in my own way I have completed my work. Some century
hence your uncle will be known by a footnote in my biography. And one
should not grudge a heavy payment for fame, however it may come or
however modest it may be.”
Miss Anthon was impressed by the fervour of the man’s passion for his
own life, by his unbounding egotism, by his force. It excited her in
much the same way that Wilbur’s little epic had excited her; only,
with this difference: here was a creed, a consistent valuation of
facts. And this creed seemed grander, vaguer, with limitless ends. It
demanded more faith from its believers, but for that reason it was not
unacceptable to a woman.
“The world must believe in you, like a prophet without works, at
present. Success is its own justification. Yet that is a brutal
doctrine,” the girl mused.
“It is a great law of life,” Erard asserted, “both for the despot and
the stock-broker.”
“I believe it,” she assented. “I believe you. Of course accidents may
come, such as disease or death, leaving you a wreck with a broken
reputation. But that is the risk you take voluntarily, as well as the
pain of always being a dependent. You have no time to make compromises
with life, to spend your strong, creative years earning your freedom.
You are right!”
Her sympathy, always so ready to go out to anything which promised
relief from triviality, invested Erard with the interest of a hero.
What he might accomplish ultimately, its value to himself, to others,
intrinsically, was a small matter. He despised the world, treated it
haughtily, and that was enough for her. It was pleasant, too, to know
that she might possibly have a share in this large venture, just as she
had taken part in Wilbur’s crisis. Erard was still within her range.
And Erard, himself, was the most interesting man she had ever known.
Her pride was exquisitely flattered at the thought of her own
emancipation in sympathizing with him thus instead of despising him.
She could hold him, as it were, aloof, and judge him as the others,
morally, according to the old code; and then accept him when he tickled
her intellect.
Erard took her into his confidence as one who was liberal enough to
understand his case. He took pains to explain his reasons for drawing
away from painting and enlarging his critical field--some of the
reasons. He talked freely, without irony now, partly from a natural
yearning to justify and magnify his sinuous existence, and partly
because this eager-minded woman was the much-beloved niece of Sebastian
Anthon. He charmed her with intimate confessions.
“The thing that must stand out from me embodied--mine, yet not
mine,--cannot be born from nothing, from unconscious nature. Into me
must enter a knowledge of past experiments ... man cannot cut himself
off from the tradition; he can only push on a step beyond.”
To her excited imagination this vague doctrine implied a new great art.
He described his manner of approach in large phrases, and with bravado
told how he had “cultivated his receptive powers as delicately as a
French market-garden. To have a most finely sensitive sensorium--that
is the first necessity. Now I am schooled,” he ended cynically, “they
tell me, ‘Use yourself in teaching or painting portraits of corpses
like Mrs. Warmister. Turn your nicely sharpened sword to whittling
wood.’ Never!”
“Cutting beefsteaks would be a truer figure,” Miss Anthon suggested,
with a laugh to lower the tension.
“You have let me make a fool of myself!”
“No--I have almost made a fool of _myself_.” She quickened her pace;
both speculated for a silent minute on what she meant. She felt that
she was dangerously near another explosion, and she was struggling for
time to take a calm look.
“But one doesn’t mind playing the fool before you, for you are so
superbly tolerant,” Erard ventured.
She flushed. “Horribly crude, though, you told me the other day.”
“To set you on the right road,” he answered quickly, “and not let you
run to waste.”
“Then I am some good?” she stopped and faced him nervously.
“You have the great rebellion,” he answered impressively.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, surprised at his divination. “Something makes
me sympathetic with any rebellion. I feel as if I wanted to take
the present in my hands and crush it. And you are responsible for
unchaining the animal in me, for rousing an appetite. I shall die if I
can’t feed the animal somehow!”
He looked at her quietly, reassuringly. Then they continued on their
way to the Porte Maillot. Erard had added another member to his chorus.