“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 daughter via A. 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 in Paris, 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 that we shan’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 company with 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.