CHAPTER VII
Themore Miss Anthon thought the matter over, the more completely she came to accept Erard’s bitter lesson. She realized that her blindness had been childish, and that by opening her eyes he had saved her many futile hours. Now that she was content to put away vain personal aspirations Erard condescended to spend more time than ever with her. Mrs. Anthon grumbled insistently at this increasing intimacy, and, as her sneers had little effect on her daughter, inflicted her grievances upon her brother-in-law. “Sebastian,” she warned him, “Adela is fooling away her time with nobodies. She has had about enough of this art business and of your Erard. You know I only want the best for my children, and I have never crossed her anywheres. But that man has altogether too much influence with her. She may start up any day and do some crazy thing, as she did about Wilbur. She may take it into her head to marry Erard!” Mrs. Anthon gasped at the enormity of her own imagination.
“He had the brass,” she explained to her son, “to want Sebastian to take him to Spain this spring, along with Ada and me.”
“You must do him the justice,” the old man smiled,“to admit that he didn’t put it exactly that way; in fact, the proposition was made by me.”
“I knew what he was after,” Mrs. Anthon continued; “he just pulls you around.”
Yet had Mrs. Anthon been aware of the sum of Erard’s preaching, she could hardly have found it heterodox. It was a less practical and blunt phrasing of her own aspirations. For she had dreamed in an ignorant delusion that Europe meant inevitable matrimony for a good-looking American girl with some money. Before her husband’s death she would have been satisfied with a homely domestic match, but travel had expanded her views. She threatened now to remove Adela to Aix-les-Bains when the season opened.
Why Mrs. Anthon had selected Aix-les-Bains was a mystery to every one but her daughter, who knew that on the steamer her mother had become enamoured of a globe-trotting New York woman. In the long hours of confidential chat, when the ennui of steamer life causes women to enter upon the confidences of the deathbed, Mrs. King Hamilton had learned the Anthon situation minutely. Mrs. King Hamilton had advised Aix-les-Bains, and marriage for the daughterviaA. l. B. She cited numerous acquaintances whose daughters had imbibed matrimony at Aix-les-Bains. But if nothing came of that venture, there was Trouville, and then London, where Mrs. Anthon could count on the old intimacy between her husband and the present ambassador. Thus Sebastian Anthon, wistfully looking Spainwards, and Adela Anthon, satisfied to remain indefinitely inParis, were being persistently shoved towards Aix-les-Bains.
“Well, Sebastian,” Mrs. Anthon concluded defiantly on one occasion after they had been over the old ground, “you can give Erard notice thatweshan’t put ourselves in his paws. Ada is off with him now at Durand-Ruell’s to look at some picture no young girl ought to look at with a man. He will entrap her into a low marriage.”
Mrs. Anthon worked on her amiable brother-in-law’s nerves. Few things in life seemed to him worth standing out for against the acid speech of his brother John’s wife. He was tempted to sneak off to Spain by himself after all, but he reflected that such a course would leave Adela in the lurch. Moreover, a marriage with Erard was a possible eccentricity. His niece had begun to explode. She might explode further in this direction—and that would not be best, on the whole. After a few weeks of vacillation, during which his defence of Erard weakened under Mrs. Anthon’s robust attacks, he was driven to take aggressive measures.
It was a dull March day when he betook himself to Erard’s apartment. The boulevards seemed to weep, and the few pedestrians were scuffling along as if abject poverty were their sole excuse for being out on foot in such weather. The old man had made up his mind what to do, painfully, because he disliked change of any kind in itself, and especially did he shrink from taking harsh measures with this protégé. Severity in Erard’s case was like cruelty to his own youth.
Erard was taking his coffee in the salon in companywith Mrs. Warmister and Salters. Sebastian Anthon knew Mrs. Warmister by reputation. She had been married to a quiet iron manufacturer a dozen years ago. Mrs. Warmister had been much in evidence ever since, but no one ever heard of the iron man. It was generally reported that the couple were not divorced,—not from any fault of hers, the less well-informed said; the better informed held that husband and wife understood each other.
“Perhaps she will take him over,” the old man reflected, as he exchanged greetings with the excitable, effusive woman. “How homely, after all the fuss over her,” he concluded, watching the dark lines of the jaded face.
They were discussing some purchase that Mrs. Warmister had in mind. Salters was delivering his opinion in a ponderous voice.
“Really, my dear Mrs. Warmister, you couldn’t take that back with you. It would be positively wicked to hang it. Weknowit isn’t a Vandyke, don’t we, Erard?”
Pity, Mr. Anthon mused, that Erard should be thrown intoherhands. She looked so—cheap. Mrs. Warmister’s face wore a perpetual grimace. She had been told that her power lay in expression, and consequently she had cultivated a distressingly perpetual mobility.
“Don’t let her do it, Erard,” the heavy young man pleaded with pathetic intensity. “Think what it means for our reputation as connoisseurs.”
“Well!” Mrs. Warmister rose, laughing nervously.“Whatever Mr. Erard decides, I suppose I shall do. I am in his hands.” Then she departed, taking the urgent Mr. Salters with her.
“Two idiots gone,” Erard sighed. “Salters is a New York man, a nobody with money, who has been over here a dozen years trying to learn something about fine-art. He knows a lot of people and gives dinners. One has to tolerate the ass—he brings in game. The woman might know something; but she is crazy forréclame. They say she hires the ParisHeraldto publish a paragraph about her once a week, no matter how scandalous. She turns up about every year, and I have to take her around. She buys whatever I tell her to.”
While Erard flung out these biographical items, he was arranging photographs on a large rack that stood like a desk in one corner of the room, where the best daylight reached it.
“These are the things at Madrid,” he explained casually. “Half these Goyas must be spurious. He is an intricate person, though.”
Sebastian Anthon glanced at the photographs nervously. “I am afraid I shan’t be able to take the Spanish trip. My sister-in-law has her mind made up on Rome and then some watering-places, and I am over here this time for her and my niece.”
Although Erard made no sign, his hands came to a pause. Mr. Anthon began again, sighing. “I came over to have a general talk, Erard.”
The young man turned from the rack and motioned his visitor to a chair.
“These other—well, less definite occupations, seem to take more of your time and attention. You don’t paint as much as you did.”
Erard waited, thereby increasing the old man’s embarrassment. “I know your idea—education, but it means less active—accomplishment. You don’t paint, you know.” He ended with this feeble reiteration. Still Erard kept a mouselike silence.
“You may be right. I don’t pretend to know. I shouldn’t want to interfere. But—well—I think we should terminate our—”
Erard moved his hand lightly, as if to spare the further embarrassment of explicit statement. “Of course!”
“I have been tremendously interested in you, my boy,” Mr. Anthon continued more easily, “and I am now. So I thought I wouldn’t write it.” He smiled sweetly. “Now, you mustn’t take it hard or be disturbed. I shall leave a hundred or two at my banker’s—”
Erard protested. “No; that will not be necessary.”
Mr. Anthon’s face clouded over. He had evidently bungled. Yet he was secretly glad to have this evidence of right feeling to throw at his sister-in-law.
“Don’t be in haste about it. You will find the money there in case you need it.”
“I shall not draw another penny. It would be quite impossible—now that I have lost your sympathy.”
Perhaps Mrs. Warmister has already taken him over, the old man reflected uncomfortably. They talked for a few minutes of other matters. Then, as he rose to leave and buttoned up his frockcoat, he glanced about thecharming rooms. The possibility of Erard’s difficulties troubled him.
“My boy,” he said, with a winning smile, as they stood in the hall. “My boy,” he laid his hand lightly on Erard’s thin shoulder. “Believe me, I want to do the best thing for you. And you must take the money, two or three hundred at least, you must—”
Erard shook his head, as if annoyed, and said in his most mincing tones,—
“When you are in Rome, can you find out for me whether they have taken away that Francia in the Borghese? I’ll write you a note of it. Good-by.”
Mr. Anthon went out into the dull March twilight, sad at heart. “He’ll have to beg of others, and that will be worse.” He reflected that his “doing the best” for Erard was due largely to his sister-in-law’s nagging. “Poor John,” he murmured, “what a wife!”
He tried to excuse himself on the score of his niece. “If it hadn’t been for Adela, I wouldn’t have thought of it.” For, however liberally he might regard Erard, he couldn’t welcome him as Adela’s husband.