CHAPTER V
Miss Anthoncontinued to spend a few desultory hours in the fashionable studio behind the Madeleine. Erard’s raillery made the work appear more futile than ever, yet the engagement was a convenient excuse. At least once a day she could escape from Mrs. Anthon’s rasping companionship, and the dressmakers and milliners and aimless scurryings to and fro. Her uncle Sebastian had hinted, also, that the first sign of restlessness on her part would precipitate a move to Nice, or some other watering-place. And, so long as Erard condescended to take an interest in her case, she was loth to leave Paris.
On brisk days, when the pervasive fog was lifted up and shoved behind the surrounding hills, Miss Anthon gave Jerome’s the slip and snatched a few hours for long walks. In this way she had taken Wilbur out to the little house in Passy where Miss Molly Parker spent the burden of the day over Mrs. Ormiston Dexter’s children. Wilbur and Miss Parker had dashed into a surprising intimacy from the first. Miss Anthon watched enviously the skilful American girl lead Wilbur through his most stalwart paces.
One could not help being intimate with this young woman. She was like a green field in June; when she smiled one felt at home, as one did in nature.
“You are so immensely human,” Miss Anthon had been moved to say, as they left, taking Miss Parker’s hands and looking into her startled eyes.
“Why? I’m just like the others,” Miss Parker replied, troubled.
“With a difference,” Miss Anthon sighed. “It’s all straight to you; there is no doubt, no hesitation.”
“Oh, lots! I am awfully poor, and if it weren’t for Aunt Nan, I’d have to teach school or keep books or—get married.”
“Money is so unimportant!” the other girl announced disdainfully.
“Oh, my lady, nothing, a mere trifle.Comprenez, Monsieur Fifi,” Miss Parker mimicked the air of disdain, taking the little black spaniel into her lap. “C’est rien du tout, du tout, this matter of money.C’est une bagatelle, milady a dite. Que pensez-vous?”
“Au revoir, you child.” Miss Anthon kissed her.
“Bon jour, milady.”
Once out on the grey street, Miss Anthon turned to Wilbur for appreciation. “Well?”
“She’s a good girl,” Wilbur remarked abstractedly.
“That’s all!”
“That’s enough, isn’t it? She’s the sort to go through fire for one, and cook and sew and play with one, too. She’s about right.”
This explanation mollified Miss Anthon a little. “You make her out a companionable animal! Isn’t there anything more?”
“I guess so,” Wilbur replied, swinging his cane. Evidentlyneither Miss Parker nor women in general appealed to him just then. Miss Anthon watched his moody manner sympathetically. He touched her on sides little known to herself, awakening vague instincts, appealing to a primitive nature that did not lie far below the surface of her character. His practical sense, his imagination in material issues, his enjoyment of the hearty meal in daily life, pleased her. She liked the heavy frame, the square face with its ordinary plainness and healthy tints. His tolerance of fine-art tickled her humour. To him Erard’s profound seriousness over these matters of adornment was ridiculous; he never allowed any conventional appreciation to disturbhim. The face value of the world, as he looked at it, was quite satisfactory.
The day was soft for December. Mount Julien towered up beyond the river, close at hand, its fortifications lightly covered by a mantle of snow. As they came out on the Place de l’Etoile the broad avenues seemed alive with cabs. The vivacity of the scene in which she had no real share rendered her sombre.
“You had a great chance,” she said at last, sighing unconsciously.
Wilbur smiled. “There are always plenty more.”
“For a man, for men such as you!”
“I guess for women, too.”
“Nonsense,” she took him up sharply. “A husband, or a vocation badly filled. What chance is there for me?” She gave her egotism rein recklessly.
“You are pretty well off.” Wilbur never wasted emotion over cultivated evils.
“Yes, too well! My brick-stock will always make me incapable of doing anything rash.”
“Oh!” Wilbur turned a more curious eye on his companion. “That’s the rub. You want more?”
“Or less.”
“Why don’t you try our new company? Dinsmore writes that the stock was issued last week. We have put only a little on the market.”
“Perhaps I shall want to take a hand. Could you get me some?”
“Earnest?”
She looked at him defiantly.
“You’ll have to ask your uncle. I know where you could get some—old Rantoul. But you had better stay in bricks. They’re safer.”
The two laughed and changed the subject. She had no very definite idea why she desired to take risks, to be richer than she was at present. It was a longing for the risk itself, as much as anything, for having a share in the palpitations of the world.
After déjeuner, when she broached the subject to her uncle, Sebastian Anthon pooh-poohed; his brother had trained him well. Brick-stock was a family god. To sell it, to dabble in other enterprises, was like trading in the family reputation. Opposition, however, made the girl truculent.
“Uncle Seb, did you never want to do anything but the safe thing?”
The old man smiled at her. “I always want the others to do the safe thing.”
“Do you think it would make a nice world if every one did the safe thing and rested there?”
“I don’t know,” he mused, “there are always plenty to do the unsafe thing, to make the ventures—and the world is not an over-nice place.”
She looked at him without replying.
“Adela, I am afraid you will explode some day. Put the explosion off, lessen it, deaden it. Some one is generally hurt when there is an explosion.”
She laughed at his figure. A few days later, however, the matter came up again unexpectedly. It was between the acts at the opera. Miss Anthon and Wilbur were walking up and down the foyer, having left Mrs. Anthon over a cooling drink.
“Do you want that stock?” Wilbur remarked abruptly. “When you first spoke of it the other day, it meant nothing tome,” he explained. “But Dinsmore has been acting queerly, booming things before they are ripe. Perhaps he thinks he can get out and take his profits before we have had a real trial and are on a safe footing. I must cut home at once, and try to keep my end up. Now Center and I control a third; Rantoul has another third. Dinsmore runs Rantoul. I must run Rantoul—you see?”
The girl nodded.
“This is only a side-show for Dinsmore,” Wilbur continued moodily, “but it’s my chance. I must have a hand on Rantoul; if I can’t bully him, buy him out.”
Miss Anthon understood swiftly the implications. She might become Wilbur’s partner. Boldly stated,such a proposition sounded indelicate, but this imputation amused her.
“How much would that take?”
“About fifty thousand.”
That was a sobering answer. One-third of her brick-stock, and bricks paid their assured twelve per cent. For a moment she trembled and was inclined to take refuge in Uncle Sebastian’s advice. Then her blood leapt again to her pulses. Some bars of Tristan surged through her, inciting her to venture, to play with the world somehow.
“Once in the saddle,” continued Wilbur, speciously, “and given a proper time for development, your fifty thousand ought to more than double.”
“And if I don’t do it,” her eyes questioned him.
“Why! I take my chances of finding somebody else who will,” he retaliated. His assurance in his own control of this world’s affairs made it impossible for him to realize the risk he was urging her to take.
“I’ll do it.” Miss Anthon caught her breath. “I will put fifty thousand in the company. I am of age, twenty-two. All my family are independent. I shall have enough left, in—in case—”
Wilbur looked puzzled at all this confession.
“And I do it because I believe in you. I want to share with you in your fight and feel that I count for something in this world.”
This was also a little vague and childish. Wilbur on his part showed no signs of obligation. He had treated her as openly as he would the best of his friends, andall at once they seemed to grow intimate. He unfolded swiftly his course of action, the reasons for his belief in the future. When the bell sounded, and they were back once more in the crampedloge, Miss Anthon felt indebted to him already for this chance of equality.
The next morning she announced her decision to her mother and uncle, almost indifferently, as they were eating breakfast in their private salon. Mrs. Anthon screamed. “Ada, you are crazed! Sebastian, she shan’t do it. There was my aunt’s husband—he sold his stock at 75 in the panic of eighty-three, against poor John’s advice—” It was a long story, this tale of the aunt’s husband—and well known in the family. Adela Anthon listened dreamily. She had always rather sympathized with Isaac Nash for daring to rebel against the autocrat.
Sebastian Anthon’s protest, backed up by business details, by unfavourable remarks on skyrocket companies, was more weighty. At last he said wearily: “Why do you want to bother with money matters? It’s a tiresome business at best, and when you are pleasantly out of it, all safe, why can’t you use your energies in some other way?”
“How?” the young woman gazed at him searchingly. He shifted uneasily and glanced at his sister-in-law. “In art?” Miss Anthon pursued, “in encouraging young artists instead of young financiers?”
“You have begun to explode, Adela,” the old man replied with gentle humour. “Be careful about it, and remember, it doesn’t pay, it doesn’t pay.”
“Does the other thing pay?”
He was silent.
When Wilbur came by appointment an hour later, Mrs. Anthon restrained herself with difficulty from breaking out in reproaches. Her daughter watched her closely, with a determined face. She had to content herself by rushing past Wilbur brusquely without a word of greeting or good-by.
Wilbur was not too blind to see that he waspersona non grata; Sebastian Anthon’s chill politeness was enough to indicate the family attitude. But his absorption in the plans for the coming campaign made it easy to take Mrs. Anthon’s snub and the old man’s suspicious airs. When the two young people were left alone, Wilbur remarked apologetically,—
“You have been awfully plucky.”
“What about?” Miss Anthon replied shortly.
“The row your new investment has made. I am sorry your mother and uncle don’t see it the way we do; but, then, they couldn’t be expected to.”
“No, they couldn’t.”
“Well, let ’em wait a year,—wait six months,—and they’ll whistle a different tune. But you,” Wilbur looked at her with frank admiration, the first time he had done so without other preoccupation. He had all along taken it for granted that she was “a live girl,” as he would have called her in Michigan. Now she appeared to him as more than that; she was as full of venture, as keenly alive, as he, besides being competent in the woman’s part of knowing how to dress and to talk entertainingly on many topics. He appreciated the factthat she had been able to handle both him and Erard impartially. As they talked over the last details,—he was to leave that night for Southampton,—the idea of her courage and her cleverness brought out his admiration increasingly. She seemed to have mastered the fine details of the irrigation problem. She knew as well as he the ins and outs of Dinsmore’s character, and she gave him shrewd advice how to play his cards.
When all was talked out, Wilbur found it difficult to make the good-by. He was anxious to express many shades of feeling at once, and he felt incapable of the necessary delicacy.
“You have been a sandy friend,” he began.
“Stop,” she laughed. “Remember I am a partner, and we mustn’t have any sentiment.”
“That’s all right,” he rose to her point, “but if I need another spur in my side I’ve got it; and when we’ve made the game, I shall know who gave me the boost at the right moment.”
“And I—who made life interesting when it began to hang heavy; and to whom I owe my princely fortune!”
A woman could be very chummy with Wilbur without opening the way to emotional complexities. His education in a part of the world where women are accepted as comrades (with certain advantages of sex) made him companionable. He had always acted with young women on a frankly human basis at home, or in his university; he had seen so little of them in the conventional attitude that he was never the lover. Nevertheless, this good-by included long pauses. At last he said,—
“When the stock is selling at one twenty-five you will see me again. Not before. And,” he proceeded slowly, “then I shall have another scheme to propose.”
Miss Anthon was vexed with herself at her sudden blush.
“I haven’t any business to be talkingnowabout—well— I can’t help, though, letting you know how it stands.”
“Perhaps it would be best not to complicate affairs,” Miss Anthon responded coldly, having gained control of the situation once more.
“No, no, but,” he added irrelevantly, “you are a great woman. You can get what you have a mind to. Good-by.”
He held out his hand. She shook it cordially, exhilarated by his frank appreciation. “And a quick return, shall I say?”
His face beamed; in a moment she was angry with herself for her unconsidered remark. “Why, of course I am anxious to hear that my stock is selling at one twenty-five. But perhaps a letter would do as well.”
Yet when he had gone, his solid presence and dominating assurance once out of the stuffy little room of rasping red velours, she had a strange sensation of emptiness. Wilbur’s connection with the ordinary facts of existence seemed so immediate and normal. She was more convinced than ever that she had done shrewdly in linking her fortunes with his. Whatever came of the dollars, she would be a larger woman from having grasped hands intimately with this plain person.