CHAPTER XI
Onher return from one of these walks with Erard, Miss Anthon found at the hotel a large card, with the name John Foster Wilbur scrawled in an untidy hand. He had left word that he should return after dinner. She was surprised at his arrival. Had the Hoister Company “gone up,” and had he come to break the news to her? Only this morning she had received the weekly bulletin of prosperity. Whatever brought him, she felt a thrill of unexpected pleasure in the thought of seeing him once more, and of listening to his convincing tale of life. He would be a relief, a refreshing vision of the concrete commonplace.
She dressed with unusual precision and care,—in a queer anxiety to make an impression on his inexperienced eyes. When he arrived punctually at eight, he gave her another surprise, for he appeared ten years older than when he was lounging about Paris a year ago. He was better dressed, though he had come in his travelling suit, as if in a hurry, on some business that did not permit forms. His square, brown face with its heavy nose wore an indomitable, convinced expression. Even his thick arm seemed to grip a possession when he shook her hand.
“How are you? Tired of Europe yet?” He drewup a chair and sat down ungracefully, bending forward, his powerful hands bedded on his knees.
“Your card was a genuine surprise,” she laughed back. “I had heard from you from Chicago only this morning.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied hastily. “I found I could squeeze out three weeks, a steamer sailed just so I could catch it,—theSt. Paul, a fine boat,—and I packed my grip and came over.”
This laconic account of his journey exhilarated her. She laughed again.
“Is there anything wrong with the company?”
“No! I guess not. I shouldn’t be here if there was! Not that all your eggs or mine are in that basket now. We are settling down to a steady rush of business. You got all the papers and my letters. That blow in the papers was Jim Center’s work. I got him a good place on theChicago Thunderer, and he’s done smart work for us. He’s coming over here, by the way. He wants to go in for literature, the drama specially, and he’s comfortably off now. No, things are all right over there.”
He waited, as if blanks in the conversation might be as expressive as words. But Miss Anthon did not help him.
“You haven’t forgotten our last talk in Paris?” he began afresh, twisting awkwardly to the side of his chair. “I said when stock reached one twenty-five, I should be back here with a new proposition. The first of the month the figure for the main company wasone twenty-six five eighths,—that’s the day I started. I got a cable this morning, and it hasn’t dropped since.”
The woman felt her breath taken away, as if a hurricane had come booming into the room full of dead air, in which she was living. Her pulses began to beat rapidly.
“That must be very gratifying to you.” Her words sounded to her needlessly flippant. They were like a blow in the face to a man who is taking a fence at one leap.
“Well, rather,” Wilbur gathered himself together undaunted. “I am a pretty rich man for a fellow who got his chance hardly a year ago. I guess I can get what money I want before I die. I bought up nearly half a township, up where father lives, and gave it to him just before I started, and built him a nice brick house with a French roof, turned the old house into a barn. That was gratifying to me. But what I came four thousand miles to talk about, wasn’t exactly this. You don’t remember, perhaps, that I said I should have another scheme to propose when you saw me next. It’s just this. Will you, will you,”—his voice broke a moment. Then as if ashamed of his weakness he cleared his throat and said distinctly,—“Will you marry me?”
She had known that his proposal was coming for the past three minutes. It occurred to her that she might have headed it off, but instead she had sat nervelessly, almost anxious to have the shock. Now that it had come, she was at a loss how to take it.
“How can I tell? I haven’t thought of it,” she found herself stammering.
“I know,” he replied disappointedly. “It didn’t seem quite right to mention it in my letters. But you see we have worked along shoulder to shoulder, like real partners, through the first big crisis I have had. And I have learned to know you so well and trust you, if you haven’t me. I feel that marriage would be a closer partnership, longer you know, and more intimate. Of course you are bigger as a woman than I am as a man, have broader interests, but I must get those too, and I can—with you. What I want first and most isyou. We two can work together.”
Then he stopped with unexpected tact, just as his attitude showed unexpected humility. He urged no more, but sat quietly while she thought with desperate swiftness. Of course her feeling about it ought to be spontaneous and instinctive,—novelists and poets made it out so in every case. She should be able to say yes or no on the spot. But the experience did not come to her in quite that way: she felt enormously drawn to the man, and more than ever from the form in which he had put his offer. A partnership, stronger and deeper in meaning than mere business, yet two-headed and two-working, with absolute trust and confidence on either side—wasn’t that rational and ideal? Andthatwould mean freedom. His every act indicated freedom, a large, hopeful way of life, full of plans and the realizing of plans by constant, swift, clever calculation. How much more vitalthat, than the dead groping into one’s interior selfafter expression or some faint representation of that inadequate self,—called art! It is better to live than to paint, some one said; it is best to make life your art.
Freedom! The very word had an impelling charm; freedom from this endless division of herself that present conditions imposed. How much Mrs. Anthon and Aix-les-Bains had to do with her decision it would be hard to say. For at last, as the still moments escaped while she faltered there before the intent man, all logical thoughts fled, and in their place came confused longings and impulses.
Wilbur rose and walked slowly over to the fireplace.
“If I should give you more time—” he began.
“No, no,” she interrupted him, anxious to take herself at full tide, and feeling for him that delay would be a pain she need not inflict. “I think we know one another.” She went up to him and frankly put her hand in his. “A partnership for life,” she said slowly.
His eyes had a suspicion of mistiness in them as he answered earnestly: “God help me to make it prosperous for you.”
Her face flushed. “And for you.”
Then as he kissed her, drawing her head gently to him, a new train of feelings rushed over her; an intimation of other sides to this affair; of personal, emotional considerations she had never suspected. She looked at him wonderingly, amazed, uncertain. He kissed her again.
Mrs. Anthon appeared just then, quite breathless over the excitement of Wilbur’s sudden arrival.
“Mother,” Miss Anthon said quickly, “I have promised to marry Mr. Wilbur.”
“Well,” Mrs. Anthon gasped, “well, Ady, you might have done worse, and you have been so curious of late in your goings-on I didn’t know just how you would end.” With that she relapsed into sentiment and tears over losing her only daughter.
“But, mamma,” Miss Anthon interposed maliciously, “this is what you have been planning for months, plotting with Uncle Seb and Mrs. Dexter. You ought to have known your own mind.”
“Whatever I have done, Adela,” Mrs. Anthon summoned her dignity, “I have done it always for your true happiness; some day when you have a daughter, you will understand how many sacrifices a mother makes!”
Wilbur smiled emphatically; that sentiment was quite proper.