“But you couldn’t anyway,” Miss Parker protested. “He is so queer.”
“It would be worth doing to see how Walter would take it. But the family have banished him somehow; or, perhaps, he has become tired of my crudity.”
The spring sunshine tempted her to stroll homewards through the Bois, which was deserted at this hour except by a few waddling children with their nurses, or an occasional bicyclist on his way to the country. The ground steaming in the midday warmth gave out enticing suggestions of woodland things, of wild fields and rocks, with deep pastures between. For the moment Paris was quite intolerable, and the life of “hanging on the outskirts of art” (as Erard had described her existence) too mortifying to endure. She was almost at the point when it would be more tolerable to return to America, to “become interested in church-work,” or to accept any form of the inevitable commonplace. There was but one distinctly agreeable sensation, beyond the comfort of the day and the pleasure of a cool shirtwaist and rough skirt, and that was in the shape of a letter from Wilbur which sent an invigorating thrill over her egotistical musings. It was an exuberant, yet curt, business letter, written on a broad sheet of paper with an elaborate lithograph head, representing curious machines; a letter dashed off in the sweat and hurly-burly of success when actions were so full that words seemed colourless counters. The initial moves had been properly played. Wilbur had arrived in time.
“I stopped in Boston and saw the Rantoul man on my way out. So I arrived primed. Dinsmore smiled when he saw I had the drop on him and wanted to know how. Then I smiled....” There was a paragraph of hastily sketched plans, a few words about the headquarters in Chicago already started, possible immediate extension into new industrial fields, etc. He was about to start for Kansas. At the close came, “Stock is selling at 50; I bought yours at 30.” Nothing but that scrap of justification tucked in, which he knew would delight her, not for the money gained, but for the justification itself,—the pleasure of triumphing over Mrs. Anthon and Sebastian Anthon. Here in the dainty solitude of the play-wood, it was delightful to follow the details of this man’s rapid, virile action: the conferences, the skilful guidance, the quick judgment, the importance of making a right decision on the moment. Confidence in one’s powers was life, freedom. She breathed more rapidly as her imagination filled in the scant letter. Then she sighed unconsciously.
For she was tied. She was merely a distant spectator at the commercial game. From envy of the male part in it, she began to speculate on this man Wilbur, imaginatively accrediting him with great qualities. Yet, clearly, it was not the moneymaking that she cared for, but the drama,—where dollars were the figures of speech.
“Anyhow, that,” she spoke aloud, meaning the partnership with Wilbur, “has been thoroughly worth while.”
With this consoling reflection she picked up her first business letter, and turned towards the nearest city gate, choosing the least sophisticated paths. As she neared the Porte Maillot, at a bend in the woodpath, she came upon Erard walking slowly, seemingly still on tiptoe, as if eyeing through his little glasses some belle œuvre of nature, yet in puzzlement, tugging thoughtfully at his beard. Her first impulse to wait until Erard had passed on around the next curve, gave way to a quick resolution. If she was to leave Paris in a few days she would want to write or say farewell: why not here, without incurring a further outbreak from her mother? There had been no sentimental flutters in her relations with Erard; indeed, in all she had not seen him so very many times, although each interview had seemed to her to mark a little epoch in her intellectual life. So she kept up her pace and overtook him.
“It is a good place to say good-by in,” she remarked carelessly, as he raised his hat in his awkward schoolboy fashion. “You know my mother has coerced us, Uncle Sebastian and me. We are to be carried to Rome and then to some dreadful baths.”
Erard smiled maliciously. “Mrs. Anthon and I are of the same opinion.”
Miss Anthon laughed pleasantly at the idea of her mother agreeing with any belief advanced by Simeon Erard.