“I gave him a quarter of my third. He is teaching school up Minnesota way. Some day he will be a rich man and won’t know what has struck him.”
“How can you be spared?” Miss Anthon asked, as the story seemed to end in the air. “How did you dare to run over here for three months and be so far away from your schemes?”
Wilbur laughed and was silent for a moment, with that look of seeing around a corner which comes into the faces of shrewd, new men.
“Well, Miss Anthon,” he gazed at her frankly, as if she would compel his inmost secrets, “I’m not quite fit for what’s ahead, not even with what I got over there at the old school. I mean to get into bigger things than this water-hoister affair. So it won’t hurt me to have a look around; it’s about the last time I shall have a chance. And I worked hard at the job, got Rantoul’s affairs all cleared up, his creditors satisfied. There’s nothing to do now, but wait for the factory to turn out the machines. I shall be starting back soon when the time comes to boom. And,” he added jocularly, “Paris is good enough for me when I’m not in shirtsleeves.”
Miss Anthon’s face glowed with her excitement over the story. It touched her imagination: money-getting, it seemed, might be another affair than taciturn, reserved old John Anthon had made it. Wilbur brought out the romance. And she pardoned the hero’s genial complacency in his own cleverness, his colossal confidence that the world and he had been made just so that he might bring about his combinations. His tolerance of the old world, in spite of his suspicion, was also fine. She got up, regretfully, aware for the first time that it was not quite the place for her,—the Boulevard des Capucines at ten o’clock, sitting with a young man who sipped a bock.
A few moments later she bade him good-night, and shook hands heartily, with a kind of recognition for the interest he had given her. Life must be made to march, and whoever gratified this craving would get his meed of generous acknowledgment. And Wilbur felt a little of the elation of the dominant male. He was not making love; he had too little submissiveness to be a lover. Rather, he had impressed himself, and that was a necessity of his nature.
CHAPTER IV
Mr. Walter Anthon had cultivated his little garden of aspirations industriously and with flattering results. He had lately been taken on as an occasional writer for the Standard and was intimate with the younger gods who supported the New National review. To his surprise his American birth had facilitated his course: it was easier to be nice to an American (as Lady Dorant had frankly told him) than to one of your own people, for you weren’t responsible for the stranger if you took him up. Again to his surprise he had found that the London world took seriously his newspaper articles on European traits. These outpourings of his first two years in London had just appeared in book form. And he had come to his family straight from Norwood, the home of the great novelist Maxwell.
Neither his family, nor Yvette Guilbert,—nor yet the custom of showing himself in Paris once in so often,—had brought him across the channel. He was eager to see Miss Molly Parker, who had occupied his heart intermittently during his calf years in America. One visit, he reflected as he waited in the chill salon of the Passy villa, would probably satisfy whatever sentiment had survived.
“Well, well, it is so nice to see you, and here in Europe,” Miss Parker emitted her welcome as she half ran down the long room. The clear, soft tones that seemed always to carry a caress, or rather a pervading sensation of warmth, invigorated the most commonplace words. Walter Anthon had always felt the immediate charm, but when once away he recalled the words, it was impossible to find anything not merely ordinary. The woman created something original out of the simple events and words of dull life. When she had disappeared the creation fell into emptiness.