October found the Anthons in Paris at a new Americanized hotel just off
the Avenue de l’Opera. Mrs. Anthon talked of London, of taking a house
for the winter, “where Walter could be at home.” Miss Anthon threatened
in that case to run off to Egypt with Molly Parker and a maid. They
spent the brilliant days of the early fall in the usual round of shops
and dressmakers, in company with the flight of tourists returning from
their summer roosts in Europe, who were tarrying for feathers before
swooping back to America.
Adela Anthon’s curiosity to see Erard was gratified finally at a little
“gathering” in his rooms. She had gone with Mrs. Ormiston Dexter and
Molly Parker and had met Mrs. Warmister and the heavy Mr. Salters. They
had praised Erard’s sketches until the sallow little man gave the word
to halt. While the others were drinking chocolate and listening to
Salters, Miss Anthon went back to the bare studio with Erard.
His deferential attitude had piqued and irritated her. Couldn’t he
forget that she was his benefactress, see her merely as a woman and an
attractive one? Even when she had him to herself his talk annoyed her.
He expressed enthusiasm over her friend.
“It is marvellous how that Miss Parker, so untrained and unacquainted
with even the _a b c_’s of Art, should feel delicately and get hold
instinctively of the right things to feel about. It puts us all to
shame! She is a delicious companion, like a translucent lake in the
heart of the mountains which reflects every passing image.”
Miss Anthon looked at him ironically.
“Or, in other words, a kind of jelly that shakes when you poke it.”
“Well, the great thing,” Erard retorted, “is to have your sensorium
delicate, impressionable,--educate it to be so, if you aren’t like
that young girl. How I should like to have her about always, to test
impressions for me! I could put her before a picture or a piece of
music, and--”
“Register the gush!” Miss Anthon mocked. “Tell me something more about
Salters,” she wrenched the conversation away from her friend. “He talks
like a bundle of extracts from all the books you ought to have read.”
“He’s a stupid, rich young man. He steals all his ideas from me and
mangles them too.”
“He told me he was writing a book.”
“Perhaps so! It takes only paper and ink to make a book.”
Miss Anthon laughed. Erard was so sure in his judgments that he gave a
companion a sense of fellow-superiority.
“And Mrs. Warmister?”
Erard’s furtive eyes gleamed maliciously. “She wants badly to be
wicked, but some remote, inherited scruple keeps her to the letter of
virtue. She catches a few ideas and phrases here and works them off
over there. She would do anything for a sensation, for _réclame_!”
“Do you treat all of us in the same way?” Miss Anthon questioned
awkwardly. “Use us and then sneer at us?”
“Do you put yourself in the same category with Salters and Mrs.
Warmister?”
“But I don’t remember to have heard you say anything civil of any
one--except, possibly, Uncle Sebastian. And you always mention him with
tolerant compassion.” She was wondering, as she spoke, if this were an
inevitable condition of the Napoleonic genius, to admit no worth except
one’s own.
“_You_ surely need not complain.” Erard lowered his voice
deferentially. “Haven’t I treated you as an equal? I have had it in
mind to ask you to read the manuscript of my new book on the late
Spanish renaissance.”
“Oh, how I should like to!” she exclaimed enthusiastically, once more
loyal to her admiration.
“And there are some manuscripts here in Paris in the National Library
that you could work over for me, if Mrs. Anthon would permit.” Her face
lighted responsively. “You see, my dear Miss Anthon, that you can be of
more service in our work than as a mere source of supplies.”
She recognized a little sadly the evident tact of this stroke. He
kept clear of all sentiment, apparently realizing that in accepting
her money he had put himself beyond her social pale. She was now the
liberal patroness, the _grande dame_, with whose private life he had
nothing to do. That was, of course, the right attitude for him to take,
yet it irritated her. She broke into personalities again.
“What is the good of my doing all this, if I am to be hawked about
Europe for a few months more and then carried back to America
disgraced, shopworn, because I haven’t been a large bait for the
European market! It is all scraps, everything I do, and I am tired of
it! A woman’s life is like a garment pinned together--there is no whole
piece in it.”
“There is always marriage of one sort or another.”
Miss Anthon looked at him contemptuously. Why didn’t he make love to
her, as he probably did to Miss Parker, to Mrs. Warmister? Was she too
conventional? What ought she to do? Go to his studio accompanied only
by a maid as this woman did, make herself nude of all proprieties,
smoke and drink with him, and discuss the physiological aspects of
passion and art? And yet if he should advance that way, she would snub
him, taking pleasure in showing him that however much he might interest
her, she despised his personal habits.
She rose abruptly and walked back to the salon where Salters
was lecturing Mrs. Warmister and Miss Parker on some Japanese
water-colours. Mrs. Warmister glanced up as they entered, measuring
Miss Anthon swiftly with a disagreeable smile on her lips.
* * * * *
Miss Anthon, in chance intervals of leisure, accomplished some of the
work on manuscripts that Erard had suggested. This occupation served
as an excuse to bring them together, and, in order to escape from
Mrs. Anthon, they took long walks in parts of Paris she had not known
before. Paris this autumn was to her altogether a new city, a strange,
complex being with a human heart in rebellion with fate and law. It
seemed to say, ‘We _will_ to be irresponsible, O God! We know not the
morrow, _your_ morrow, and we care not for it. Thou, God, hast given
us a few poor nerves, some dying passions, and many evil fancies. With
these we will play out your little game of dreams in our own manner,
thus using up our vilely inadequate bodies.’
They roamed through the black alleys of Montmartre: she had the
rebellion of the socialist. Beyond the Invalides lay the domain of
artificial peace, of nuns and monks: she would settle the personal
confusion of life by a perpetual, fixed idea. Nearer the river the old
cathedral raised its towers, out of a past, lusty age into the trivial
present. The little insects who manufactured petty art for this present
world swarmed near by: she would join them and play at making an Apollo
come forth from a _café-chantant_.
“No, no,” she proclaimed to herself, “not marriage, but absorption in
some effort. That will give freedom!”
Then she remembered Erard’s remark, “There is no freedom, except the
freedom to feel: the nerves must be watched, too, lest they fail.”
And she had a sudden desire to abjure her master.