CHAPTER IX
WhenMiss Anthon reached the hotel, she found her mother and the newly imported maid bustling over trunks.
“Your uncle received a cable this morning that calls him home on important business,” Mrs. Anthon explained, “and I thought we might as well move on at the same time. Just as well for Sebastian to be out of that fellow’s way.”
“Does uncle mean to leave him to starve?” Miss Anthon inquired quickly.
“Starve or work, I guess. That’s the law in this world.”
Miss Anthon went into her own room without further words. Her mother’s remark suddenly gave point to the vague impulses of the hour’s talk with Erard. She must come to a decision at once.
As she sat down by her table with a sheet of letter-paper ready, she paused, for the act which she meditated might cost her much more than money. Should she offer him support bluntly, or try some other means—her uncle, perhaps? What gossip might say did not trouble her. But a draft sent and accepted, that closed any other possibility. There was no other possibilitynow. She might never love him. Should she love him, why need thefact that she had helped him, alter their relations? In the gamble of life she happened to have superfluous advantages. Might she not share these, in a simple, objective manner, without compromising herself? She was giving tolife, not to Simeon Erard, and they must be able to rise above the mean considerations involved.
Finally she wrote, deliberately:—
“My dear Mr. Erard:—I feel that I must have a share, even a very little share, in your work, in your ambitions and theories. Where I cannot hope to go, you may, perhaps, more easily through my help. So I have taken the liberty to place at your disposal, at the Messrs. Munro, a draft to be used in ‘going on.’ Every six months that will be renewed. You see, my first venture succeeded, giving me a surplus which I wish to invest again. And I owe to you so much real interest in life that I feel I must show a little gratitude. You need not acknowledge this.“Believe me, ever sincerely yours,“Adela Anthon.”
“My dear Mr. Erard:—I feel that I must have a share, even a very little share, in your work, in your ambitions and theories. Where I cannot hope to go, you may, perhaps, more easily through my help. So I have taken the liberty to place at your disposal, at the Messrs. Munro, a draft to be used in ‘going on.’ Every six months that will be renewed. You see, my first venture succeeded, giving me a surplus which I wish to invest again. And I owe to you so much real interest in life that I feel I must show a little gratitude. You need not acknowledge this.
“Believe me, ever sincerely yours,
“Adela Anthon.”
She had no sooner posted this note than she was impatient to receive a reply. Would he possibly refuse? She was amazed to find herself hoping that he would. If he accepted—and she had sent the note in all sincerity—therewouldbe a bar to any other relation. This scruple was conventional, irrational, but she felt that she could not rise above it.
The next two days were full of preparations, and when on the day of departure, just as they were about to driveto the station, the reply came, she waited until they were settled in their coupé to read it at leisure. It was above reproach, self-respecting and yet cordial. He did not make too much of her gift, nor did he belittle the kindness. He placed the whole matter in a simple, objective light, as she had wished. The gift was not to him, but to be used by him. The note closed with a paragraph on a new book he was sending her.
She had read the note at one breath; then leaning back with a sigh, she passed it out of the window to her uncle, who had come to see them off.
“We have changed places, uncle,” she whispered, slyly. “When you are in America you can’t be bothered with all this.”
Sebastian Anthon’s face expressed astonishment and in a moment merriment. The joke in the situation evidently made the deeper impression, but as the engine snorted, he whispered back, “Take care, you are exploding pretty fast!”
She watched him walk up the platform, laughing unrestrainedly, probably in appreciation of Mrs. Anthon’s remarks when she discovered the event. Miss Anthon allowed her mother to get comfortably settled. Then, anxious to have the matter out of her mind, she said quietly, “Mother, I have offered Mr. Erard four hundred pounds a year to continue his work with, and he has accepted it.”
If she had said that she had offered herself, Mrs. Anthon might have been less surprised.
“This comes of John’s queer will,” she moaned atlast. “You are going to support that fellow? It’s disgraceful. You had better marry him, that wouldn’t be any worse.”
“Perhaps he wouldn’t marry me. At any rate there will be no chance of thatnow,” she explained soothingly. “Please don’t let us make ourselves uncomfortable over it. If I happen to have a large income, why shouldn’t I give it away as I like? You wouldn’t have said anything if I had given it here and there to washerwomen or hospitals.”
The subject occupied Mrs. Anthon’s mind until it was banished by the irritation of the Italian customhouse. When she got back to it, the next day, she comforted herself with the reflection that, God willing, this unmanageable daughter should be married before Erard reappeared on her horizon.
The six nomadic months that followed were a queer jumble of hotels and people and “points of interest.” Miss Anthon said to herself during the three months of vagrancy in Italy: ‘Patience, now! Some day a differentIwill return to understand and possess.’
In the same manner of passive sufferance she endured for another three months the little vaudeville of the various spas, which was played over and over each day with a sameness that rasped the nerves. She grew accustomed to the trim gardens with the glaring contrast between hot gravel and metallic green lawn, the stereotyped idle men and overfed women, the endless tinkle of hotel bands, and the hours spent with her maid contrivinghow to make the most of her tall, individual self.
The sultry weeks as they wore on gradually sapped her energy, even her desire to rebel. The reading suggested by Erard, which she had attacked at first with the fervour of a novice, seemed in the air and useless. Letters from Erard filled with details of his studies in Spain barely aroused her. She envied him the career, and was proud to have him deal with her as he would with a man, lecturing her on his hobbies, asking her help in verifying facts at Rome, or in judging delicate questions. “It is very hot,” he wrote once casually, “but I manage to work early mornings and nights and lose little. Six weeks more will take me back to Paris.” Then a month passed without letters, and, when he wrote next he mentioned briefly, “I have been ill, but I have my work nearly finished, and some sketches that aren’t bad. Will you be in Paris to see them next winter?”
She carried on another correspondence, about her “business” as she was fond of calling her new investments. Wilbur “kept her posted” almost daily of the doings of the Water-Hoister and Improvement Co. Whole broadsides of newspapers came, filled with bombastic accounts of “the future of the arid lands.” It seemed that Wilbur’s invention could be turned to a number of purposes. “Through its instrumentality,” solemnly concluded one Kansas City paragraphist, “we are about to open up an era in this country hitherto undreamed of, an era when the desolate plains of themighty Rockies shall flow with milk and honey, and the seat of the national capital shall be moved westward to the centre of a new civilization.” The newspapers gave minute accounts of Wilbur’s life from his earliest childhood, with accompanying photographs of him at every stage of development. He was pictured—in theOmaha Hawk—as a young man, musing profoundly on a desolate field, a black line in the far distance indicating water, and in one corner a small cut of the Hoister. Wilbur sent everything that appeared (marked with a broad blue pencil) to his “silent partner” as he called Miss Anthon. A “ten cent magazine” with a vast circulation published a profusely illustrated article on “The New American Inventor,” with autobiographical notes at the head, containing information on Wilbur’s personal habits, his hour of rising, the number of cups of coffee he indulged in, his temperance principles, etc., etc.
All this fuss and gossip seemed to amuse Wilbur, so far as he paid attention to it, yet he realized its serious side. Stock in the company continued to rise. Subsidiary companies for placer-mining in cañons and for fruit-raising on the reclaimed lands were being formed. Wilbur had already embarked on new schemes. In spite of his belief in the divine service of the Hoister, he was never imposed on by noise. At the very time when all was “booming merrily,” he took part in a syndicate formed to buy forest lands in Alaska, and soberly recommended his partner to “join in the deal.” He was about to make a short expedition to examine the ground (and also to look into some mines near Juneau), and if shecabled him at once, he would sell part of her stock in the Hoister and place the proceeds in his new schemes. He had the prices of the various stocks which she owned, cabled her at the close of each week, and it added zest to the Sunday morning coffee to receive a little blue despatch, to know each week that she was richer than the week before.
Money gives power and freedom, she told herself again and again. It had freed Wilbur. Instead of spending his days as a small lawyer or clerk, he was striding on, growing each month in shrewdness, in experience, in grasp. Money had freed Erard, assured him the priceless leisure for tranquil, unharassed work. Would it free her? enrich her? cut through circumstances so that the restless, savage beast in her could grow and possess and be satisfied? Not yet, she reflected bitterly, and again the word must bepatience.