CHAPTER X
Octoberfound the Anthons in Paris at a new Americanized hotel just off the Avenue de l’Opera. Mrs. Anthon talked of London, of taking a house for the winter, “where Walter could be at home.” Miss Anthon threatened in that case to run off to Egypt with Molly Parker and a maid. They spent the brilliant days of the early fall in the usual round of shops and dressmakers, in company with the flight of tourists returning from their summer roosts in Europe, who were tarrying for feathers before swooping back to America.
Adela Anthon’s curiosity to see Erard was gratified finally at a little “gathering” in his rooms. She had gone with Mrs. Ormiston Dexter and Molly Parker and had met Mrs. Warmister and the heavy Mr. Salters. They had praised Erard’s sketches until the sallow little man gave the word to halt. While the others were drinking chocolate and listening to Salters, Miss Anthon went back to the bare studio with Erard.
His deferential attitude had piqued and irritated her. Couldn’t he forget that she was his benefactress, see her merely as a woman and an attractive one? Even when she had him to herself his talk annoyed her. He expressed enthusiasm over her friend.
“It is marvellous how that Miss Parker, so untrained and unacquainted with even thea b c’s of Art, shouldfeel delicately and get hold instinctively of the right things to feel about. It puts us all to shame! She is a delicious companion, like a translucent lake in the heart of the mountains which reflects every passing image.”
Miss Anthon looked at him ironically.
“Or, in other words, a kind of jelly that shakes when you poke it.”
“Well, the great thing,” Erard retorted, “is to have your sensorium delicate, impressionable,—educate it to be so, if you aren’t like that young girl. How I should like to have her about always, to test impressions for me! I could put her before a picture or a piece of music, and—”
“Register the gush!” Miss Anthon mocked. “Tell me something more about Salters,” she wrenched the conversation away from her friend. “He talks like a bundle of extracts from all the books you ought to have read.”
“He’s a stupid, rich young man. He steals all his ideas from me and mangles them too.”
“He told me he was writing a book.”
“Perhaps so! It takes only paper and ink to make a book.”
Miss Anthon laughed. Erard was so sure in his judgments that he gave a companion a sense of fellow-superiority.
“And Mrs. Warmister?”
Erard’s furtive eyes gleamed maliciously. “She wants badly to be wicked, but some remote, inherited scruplekeeps her to the letter of virtue. She catches a few ideas and phrases here and works them off over there. She would do anything for a sensation, forréclame!”
“Do you treat all of us in the same way?” Miss Anthon questioned awkwardly. “Use us and then sneer at us?”
“Do you put yourself in the same category with Salters and Mrs. Warmister?”
“But I don’t remember to have heard you say anything civil of any one—except, possibly, Uncle Sebastian. And you always mention him with tolerant compassion.” She was wondering, as she spoke, if this were an inevitable condition of the Napoleonic genius, to admit no worth except one’s own.
“Yousurely need not complain.” Erard lowered his voice deferentially. “Haven’t I treated you as an equal? I have had it in mind to ask you to read the manuscript of my new book on the late Spanish renaissance.”
“Oh, how I should like to!” she exclaimed enthusiastically, once more loyal to her admiration.
“And there are some manuscripts here in Paris in the National Library that you could work over for me, if Mrs. Anthon would permit.” Her face lighted responsively. “You see, my dear Miss Anthon, that you can be of more service in our work than as a mere source of supplies.”
She recognized a little sadly the evident tact of this stroke. He kept clear of all sentiment, apparently realizing that in accepting her money he had put himself beyond her social pale. She was now the liberal patroness, thegrande dame, with whose private life he hadnothing to do. That was, of course, the right attitude for him to take, yet it irritated her. She broke into personalities again.
“What is the good of my doing all this, if I am to be hawked about Europe for a few months more and then carried back to America disgraced, shopworn, because I haven’t been a large bait for the European market! It is all scraps, everything I do, and I am tired of it! A woman’s life is like a garment pinned together—there is no whole piece in it.”
“There is always marriage of one sort or another.”
Miss Anthon looked at him contemptuously. Why didn’t he make love to her, as he probably did to Miss Parker, to Mrs. Warmister? Was she too conventional? What ought she to do? Go to his studio accompanied only by a maid as this woman did, make herself nude of all proprieties, smoke and drink with him, and discuss the physiological aspects of passion and art? And yet if he should advance that way, she would snub him, taking pleasure in showing him that however much he might interest her, she despised his personal habits.
She rose abruptly and walked back to the salon where Salters was lecturing Mrs. Warmister and Miss Parker on some Japanese water-colours. Mrs. Warmister glanced up as they entered, measuring Miss Anthon swiftly with a disagreeable smile on her lips.
Miss Anthon, in chance intervals of leisure, accomplished some of the work on manuscripts that Erard had suggested. This occupation served as an excuse to bringthem together, and, in order to escape from Mrs. Anthon, they took long walks in parts of Paris she had not known before. Paris this autumn was to her altogether a new city, a strange, complex being with a human heart in rebellion with fate and law. It seemed to say, ‘Wewillto be irresponsible, O God! We know not the morrow,yourmorrow, and we care not for it. Thou, God, hast given us a few poor nerves, some dying passions, and many evil fancies. With these we will play out your little game of dreams in our own manner, thus using up our vilely inadequate bodies.’
They roamed through the black alleys of Montmartre: she had the rebellion of the socialist. Beyond the Invalides lay the domain of artificial peace, of nuns and monks: she would settle the personal confusion of life by a perpetual, fixed idea. Nearer the river the old cathedral raised its towers, out of a past, lusty age into the trivial present. The little insects who manufactured petty art for this present world swarmed near by: she would join them and play at making an Apollo come forth from acafé-chantant.
“No, no,” she proclaimed to herself, “not marriage, but absorption in some effort. That will give freedom!”
Then she remembered Erard’s remark, “There is no freedom, except the freedom to feel: the nerves must be watched, too, lest they fail.”
And she had a sudden desire to abjure her master.