CHAPTER II
LeavingWilbur 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 insoixante-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 theAnthons. 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—terriblyeasily,” 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, butdon’t bring any of that modern French trash intomyparlours.”
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 thisfather 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 fatherhad 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 theatreshad 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.