“Matrimony,” he added with a slight sneer, “not art, will be your fittest medium of expression.”
Miss Anthon’s face twitched nervously. “I am really too happy this morning to reprove you, over good news.” She explained her letter.
“And I am sad, over news of my immediate bankruptcy!” Erard responded gaily.
Although nothing explicit had been said to her by her mother or uncle, Miss Anthon had gathered from broad hints that Mrs. Anthon had brought about some kind of a catastrophe in Erard’s affairs.
“Why don’t you take your own advice?” Miss Anthon hazarded, assuming his tone of hilarity.
“Matrimony! Passing over the insult you have deftly insinuated, I should say merely that the solution of a rich wife would offer too many difficulties. Of course I have entertained the idea several times, and each time I have definitely put it aside. Between the two evils of a patron and a wife, the first is less limiting. Marriage with the ordinary woman of fortune would spoil my work; it would demand time,—beyond the mere emotional adjustment which might disturb my intellectual processes. I cannot afford to marry even the ideal heiress. If I could find a partner who would be of substantial assistance at the plough as well as provide pottage—like these French women—ah! that would be another thing. But that kind of arrangement, you may conceive, is hard to make.”
“I admire your frankness and your method!” the young woman exclaimed.
“I am not stupid—over stupid, Miss Anthon,” Erard went on coolly. “I understand exactly the contempt a woman like your mother has for me, also the gossip my way of life furnishes my good friends. I am an adventurer. I came from a nasty back street of Jersey City, and according to report, I have managed to make the world support me in luxurious idleness. Why, only last week your uncle, that dear, gentle, old Mr. Anthon, said: ‘See here, my boy, I can’t conscientiously go on supporting you over here and lending my reputation towards getting you patrons. You are enjoying the cream,—just the kind of life dozens of young men, sons of my acquaintances, are sighing for.’ ‘And,’ he implied, ‘you have nothing to show for it. If you were doing like the others, now, something Bohemian, and bringing out results’—you know the story.”
“Well, why not?” Miss Anthon stopped her leisurely pace. “What’s your passport?”
“You, too, can take that tone?” he glanced at her searchingly. “My passport is here,” he tapped himself, half ironically, “which, by the way, is the same passport that carried your young friend Wilbur through his difficulties. Don’t you suppose that I realize all this suspicion and contempt? that I know well enough that the kicking is waiting for me if I fail in the end?