On her return from one of these walks with Erard, Miss Anthon found at
the hotel a large card, with the name John Foster Wilbur scrawled in
an untidy hand. He had left word that he should return after dinner.
She was surprised at his arrival. Had the Hoister Company “gone up,”
and had he come to break the news to her? Only this morning she had
received the weekly bulletin of prosperity. Whatever brought him, she
felt a thrill of unexpected pleasure in the thought of seeing him once
more, and of listening to his convincing tale of life. He would be a
relief, a refreshing vision of the concrete commonplace.
She dressed with unusual precision and care,--in a queer anxiety
to make an impression on his inexperienced eyes. When he arrived
punctually at eight, he gave her another surprise, for he appeared ten
years older than when he was lounging about Paris a year ago. He was
better dressed, though he had come in his travelling suit, as if in a
hurry, on some business that did not permit forms. His square, brown
face with its heavy nose wore an indomitable, convinced expression.
Even his thick arm seemed to grip a possession when he shook her hand.
“How are you? Tired of Europe yet?” He drew up a chair and sat down
ungracefully, bending forward, his powerful hands bedded on his knees.
“Your card was a genuine surprise,” she laughed back. “I had heard from
you from Chicago only this morning.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied hastily. “I found I could squeeze out three
weeks, a steamer sailed just so I could catch it,--the _St. Paul_, a
fine boat,--and I packed my grip and came over.”
This laconic account of his journey exhilarated her. She laughed again.
“Is there anything wrong with the company?”
“No! I guess not. I shouldn’t be here if there was! Not that all your
eggs or mine are in that basket now. We are settling down to a steady
rush of business. You got all the papers and my letters. That blow
in the papers was Jim Center’s work. I got him a good place on the
_Chicago Thunderer_, and he’s done smart work for us. He’s coming
over here, by the way. He wants to go in for literature, the drama
specially, and he’s comfortably off now. No, things are all right over
there.”
He waited, as if blanks in the conversation might be as expressive as
words. But Miss Anthon did not help him.
“You haven’t forgotten our last talk in Paris?” he began afresh,
twisting awkwardly to the side of his chair. “I said when stock reached
one twenty-five, I should be back here with a new proposition. The
first of the month the figure for the main company was one twenty-six
five eighths,--that’s the day I started. I got a cable this morning,
and it hasn’t dropped since.”
The woman felt her breath taken away, as if a hurricane had come
booming into the room full of dead air, in which she was living. Her
pulses began to beat rapidly.
“That must be very gratifying to you.” Her words sounded to her
needlessly flippant. They were like a blow in the face to a man who is
taking a fence at one leap.
“Well, rather,” Wilbur gathered himself together undaunted. “I am a
pretty rich man for a fellow who got his chance hardly a year ago. I
guess I can get what money I want before I die. I bought up nearly half
a township, up where father lives, and gave it to him just before I
started, and built him a nice brick house with a French roof, turned
the old house into a barn. That was gratifying to me. But what I came
four thousand miles to talk about, wasn’t exactly this. You don’t
remember, perhaps, that I said I should have another scheme to propose
when you saw me next. It’s just this. Will you, will you,”--his voice
broke a moment. Then as if ashamed of his weakness he cleared his
throat and said distinctly,--“Will you marry me?”
She had known that his proposal was coming for the past three minutes.
It occurred to her that she might have headed it off, but instead she
had sat nervelessly, almost anxious to have the shock. Now that it had
come, she was at a loss how to take it.
“How can I tell? I haven’t thought of it,” she found herself stammering.
“I know,” he replied disappointedly. “It didn’t seem quite right to
mention it in my letters. But you see we have worked along shoulder to
shoulder, like real partners, through the first big crisis I have had.
And I have learned to know you so well and trust you, if you haven’t
me. I feel that marriage would be a closer partnership, longer you
know, and more intimate. Of course you are bigger as a woman than I
am as a man, have broader interests, but I must get those too, and I
can--with you. What I want first and most is _you_. We two can work
together.”
Then he stopped with unexpected tact, just as his attitude showed
unexpected humility. He urged no more, but sat quietly while she
thought with desperate swiftness. Of course her feeling about it ought
to be spontaneous and instinctive,--novelists and poets made it out so
in every case. She should be able to say yes or no on the spot. But the
experience did not come to her in quite that way: she felt enormously
drawn to the man, and more than ever from the form in which he had put
his offer. A partnership, stronger and deeper in meaning than mere
business, yet two-headed and two-working, with absolute trust and
confidence on either side--wasn’t that rational and ideal? And _that_
would mean freedom. His every act indicated freedom, a large, hopeful
way of life, full of plans and the realizing of plans by constant,
swift, clever calculation. How much more vital _that_, than the dead
groping into one’s interior self after expression or some faint
representation of that inadequate self,--called art! It is better to
live than to paint, some one said; it is best to make life your art.
Freedom! The very word had an impelling charm; freedom from this
endless division of herself that present conditions imposed. How much
Mrs. Anthon and Aix-les-Bains had to do with her decision it would
be hard to say. For at last, as the still moments escaped while she
faltered there before the intent man, all logical thoughts fled, and in
their place came confused longings and impulses.
Wilbur rose and walked slowly over to the fireplace.
“If I should give you more time--” he began.
“No, no,” she interrupted him, anxious to take herself at full tide,
and feeling for him that delay would be a pain she need not inflict. “I
think we know one another.” She went up to him and frankly put her hand
in his. “A partnership for life,” she said slowly.
His eyes had a suspicion of mistiness in them as he answered earnestly:
“God help me to make it prosperous for you.”
Her face flushed. “And for you.”
Then as he kissed her, drawing her head gently to him, a new train of
feelings rushed over her; an intimation of other sides to this affair;
of personal, emotional considerations she had never suspected. She
looked at him wonderingly, amazed, uncertain. He kissed her again.
Mrs. Anthon appeared just then, quite breathless over the excitement of
Wilbur’s sudden arrival.
“Mother,” Miss Anthon said quickly, “I have promised to marry Mr.
Wilbur.”
“Well,” Mrs. Anthon gasped, “well, Ady, you might have done worse, and
you have been so curious of late in your goings-on I didn’t know just
how you would end.” With that she relapsed into sentiment and tears
over losing her only daughter.
“But, mamma,” Miss Anthon interposed maliciously, “this is what you
have been planning for months, plotting with Uncle Seb and Mrs. Dexter.
You ought to have known your own mind.”
“Whatever I have done, Adela,” Mrs. Anthon summoned her dignity, “I
have done it always for your true happiness; some day when you have a
daughter, you will understand how many sacrifices a mother makes!”
Wilbur smiled emphatically; that sentiment was quite proper.