diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:31:07 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:31:07 -0700 |
| commit | ce2739e4fccc2732a43906c427744ba675409b79 (patch) | |
| tree | 7b7dcf9920d879ccc216d40734f5efb95f8718b6 | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8196.txt | 8945 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8196.zip | bin | 0 -> 176766 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/utsky10.txt | 8918 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/utsky10.zip | bin | 0 -> 179497 bytes |
7 files changed, 17879 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8196.txt b/8196.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..481d00b --- /dev/null +++ b/8196.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8945 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Skylights, by Henry Blake Fuller + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Under the Skylights + +Author: Henry Blake Fuller + +Posting Date: August 4, 2012 [EBook #8196] +Release Date: May, 2005 +First Posted: June 30, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger and the Distributed +Proofreaders team. + + + + + + + + + + +HENRY BLAKE FULLER + +UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS + + * * * * * + +PREFATORY NOTE + +The short concluding section of this book--that relating to Dr. Gowdy and +the Squash--is reprinted by permission from _Harper's Magazine_. All the +remaining material appears now for the first time. + + * * * * * + +CONTENTS + + THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + LITTLE O'GRADY _VS._ THE GRINDSTONE + + DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH. + + * * * * * + +THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + * * * * * + +THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + + + +I + +With the publication of his first book, _This Weary World_, Abner Joyce +immediately took a place in literature. Or rather, he made it; the book +was not like other books, and readers felt the field of fiction to be the +richer by one very vital and authentic personality. + +_This Weary World_ was grim and it was rugged, but it was sincere and it +was significant. Abner's intense earnestness had left but little room for +the graces;--while he was bent upon being recognised as a "writer," yet +to be a mere writer and nothing more would not have satisfied him at all. +Here was the world with its many wrongs, with its numberless crying +needs; and the thing for the strong young man to do was to help set +matters right. This was a simple enough task, were it but approached with +courage, zeal, determination. A few brief years, if lived strenuously and +intensely, would suffice. "Man individually is all right enough," said +Abner; "it is only collectively that he is wrong." What was at fault was +the social scheme,--the general understanding, or lack of understanding. +A short sharp hour's work before breakfast would count for a hundred +times more than a feeble dawdling prolonged throughout the whole day. +Abner rose betimes and did his hour's work; sweaty, panting, begrimed, +hopeful, indignant, sincere, self-confident, he set his product full in +the world's eye. + +Abner's book comprised a dozen short stories--twelve clods of earth +gathered, as it were, from the very fields across which he himself, a +farmer's boy, had once guided the plough. The soil itself spoke, the +intimate, humble ground; warmed by his own passionate sense of right, it +steamed incense-like aloft and cried to the blue skies for justice. He +pleaded for the farmer, the first, the oldest, the most necessary of all +the world's workers; for the man who was the foundation of civilized +society, yet who was yearly gravitating downward through new depths of +slighting indifference, of careless contempt, of rank injustice and gross +tyranny; for the man who sowed so plenteously, so laboriously, yet reaped +so scantily and in such bitter and benumbing toil; for the man who lived +indeed beneath the heavens, yet must forever fasten his solicitous eye +upon the earth. All this revolted Abner; the indignation of a youth that +had not yet made its compromise with the world burned on every page. Some +of his stories seemed written not so much by the hand as by the fist, a +fist quivering from the tension of muscles and sinews fully ready to act +for truth and right; and there were paragraphs upon which the intent and +blazing eye of the writer appeared to rest with no less fierceness, +coldly printed as they were, than it had rested upon the manuscript +itself. + +"Men shall hear me--and heed me," Abner declared stoutly. + +A few of those who read his book happened to meet him personally, and one +or two of this number--clever but inconspicuous people--lucidly +apprehended him for what he was: that rare phenomenon, the artist (such +he was already calling himself)--the artist whose personality, whose +opinions and whose work are in exact accord. The reading public--a body +rather captious and blase, possibly--overlooked his rugged diction in +favour of his novel point of view; and when word was passed around that +the new author was actually in town a number of the _illuminati_ +expressed their gracious desire to meet him. + + + + +II + +But Abner remained for some time ignorant of "society's" willingness to +give him welcome. He was lodged in a remote and obscure quarter of the +city and was already part of a little coterie from which earnestness had +quite crowded out tact and in which the development of the energies left +but scant room for the cultivation of the amenities. With this small +group reform and oratory went hand in hand; its members talked to spare +audiences on Sunday afternoons about the Readjusted Tax. Such a +combination of matter and manner had pleased and attracted Abner from the +start. The land question was _the_ question, after all, and eloquence +must help the contention of these ardent spirits toward a final issue in +success. Abner thirstily imbibed the doctrine and added his tongue to the +others. Nor was it a tongue altogether unschooled. For Abner had left the +plough at sixteen to take a course in the Flatfield Academy, and after +some three years there as a pupil he had remained as a teacher; he became +the instructor in elocution. Here his allegiance was all to the old-time +classic school, to the ideal that still survives, and inexpugnably, in +the rustic breast and even in the national senate; the Roman Forum was +never completely absent from his eye, and Daniel Webster remained the +undimmed pattern of all that man--man mounted on his legs--should be. + +Abner, then, went on speaking from the platform or distributing +pamphlets, his own and others', at the door, and remained unconscious +that Mrs. Palmer Pence was desirous of knowing him, that Leverett Whyland +would have been interested in meeting him, and that Adrian Bond, whose +work he knew without liking it, would have been glad to make him +acquainted with their fellow authors. Nor did he enjoy any familiarity +with Clytie Summers and her sociological studies, while Medora Giles, as +yet, was not even a name. + +Mrs. Palmer Pence remained, then, in the seclusion of her "gilded halls," +as Abner phrased it, save for occasional excursions and alarums that +vivified the columns devoted by the press to the doings of the polite +world; and Adrian Bond kept between the covers of his two or three thin +little books--a confinement richly deserved by a writer so futile, +superficial and insincere; but Leverett Whyland was less easily evaded by +anybody who "banged about town" and who happened to be interested in +public matters. Abner came against him at one of the sessions of the Tax +Commission, a body that was hoping--almost against hope--to introduce +some measure of reason and justice into the collection of the public +funds. + +"Huh! I shouldn't expect much from _him_!" commented Abner, as Whyland +began to speak. + +Whyland was a genial, gentlemanly fellow of thirty-eight or forty. He was +in the world and of it, but was little the worse, thus far, for that. He +had been singled out for favours, to a very exceptional degree, by that +monster of inconsistency and injustice, the Unearned Increment, but his +intentions toward society were still fairly good. If he may be +capitalized (and surely he was rich enough to be), he might be described +as hesitating whether to be a Plutocrat or a Good Citizen; perhaps he was +hoping to be both. + +Abner disliked and doubted him from the start. The fellow was almost +foppish;--could anybody who wore such good clothes have also good motives +and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;--what +could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks +delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention +should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able +to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with +a driving swoop into the palm of the other--and repeat as often as +necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of +brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree +upon the great, broad, fundamental principles--principles whose adoption +and enforcement would reshape and glorify human society as nothing else +ever had done or ever could do. No, he fell back on mere expediency, mere +practicability, weakly acquiescing in acknowledged and long-established +evils, and trying for nothing more than fairness and justice on a +foundation utterly unjust and vicious to begin with. + +"Let me get out of this," said Abner. + +But a few of his own intimates detained him at the door, and presently +Whyland, who had ended his remarks and was on his way to other matters, +overtook him. An officious bystander made the two acquainted, and +Whyland, who identified Abner with the author of _This Weary World_, +paused for a few smiling and good-humoured remarks. + +"Glad to see you here," he said, with a kind of bright buoyancy. "It's a +complicated question, but we shall straighten it out one way or another." + +Abner stared at him sternly. The question was not complicated, but it +_was_ vital--too vital for smiles. + +"There is only one way," he said: "our way." + +"Our way?" asked Whyland, still smiling. + +"The Readjusted Tax," pronounced Abner, with a gesture toward two or +three of his supporters at his elbow. + +"Ah, yes," said Whyland quickly, recognising the faces. "If the idea +could only be applied!" + +"It can be," said Abner severely. "It must be." + +"Yes, it is a very complicated question," the other repeated. "I have +read your stories," he went on immediately. "Two or three of them +impressed me very much. I hope we shall become better acquainted." + +"Thank you," said Abner stiffly. Whyland meant to be cordial, but Abner +found him patronizing. He could not endure to be patronized by anybody, +least of all by a person of mental calibre inferior to his own. He +resented too the other's advantage in age (Whyland was ten or twelve +years his senior), and his advantage in experience (for Whyland had lived +in the city all his life, as Abner could not but feel). + +"I should be glad if you could lunch with me at the club," said Whyland +in the friendliest fashion possible. "I am on my way there now." + +"Club"--fatal word; it chilled Abner in a second. He knew about clubs! +Clubs were the places where the profligate children of Privilege drank +improper drinks and told improper stories and kept improper hours. Abner, +who was perfectly pure in word, thought and deed and always in bed +betimes, shrank from a club as from a lazaret. + +"Thank you," he responded bleakly; "but I am very busy." + +"Another time, then," said Whyland, with unimpaired kindliness. "And we +may be able to come to some agreement, after all," he added, in reference +to the tax-levy. + +"We are not likely to agree," said Abner gloomily. + +Whyland went on, just a trifle dashed. Abner presently came to further +knowledge of him--his wealth, position, influence, activity--and hardened +his heart against him the more. He commented openly on the selfishness +and greed of the Money Power in pungent phrases that did not all fall +short of Whyland's ear. And when, later on, Leverett Whyland became less +the "good citizen" and more the "plutocrat"--a course perhaps inevitable +under certain circumstances--he would sometimes smile over those +unsuccessful advances and would ask himself to what extent the +discouraging unfaith of our Abner might be responsible for his choice and +his fall. + + + + +III + +Though Mrs. Palmer Pence kept looking forward, off and on, to the +pleasure of making Abner's acquaintance, it was a full six months before +the happy day finally came round. But when she read _The Rod of the +Oppressor_ that seemed to settle it; her salon would be incomplete +without its author, and she must take steps to find him. + +Abner's second book, in spirit and substance, was a good deal like his +first: the man who has succeeded follows up his success, naturally, with +something of the same sort. The new book was a novel, however,--the first +of the long series that Abner was to put forth with the prodigal ease and +carelessness of Nature herself; and it was as gloomy, strenuous and +positive as its predecessor. + +Abner, by this time, had enlarged his circle. Through the reformers he +had become acquainted with a few journalists, and journalists had led on +to versifiers and novelists, and these to a small clique of artists and +musicians. Abner was now beginning to find his best account in a sort of +decorous Bohemia and to feel that such, after all, was the atmosphere he +had been really destined to breathe. The morals of his new associates +were as correct as even he could have insisted upon, and their manners +were kindly and not too ornate. They indulged in a number of little +practices caught, he supposed, from "society," but after all their modes +were pleasantly trustful and informal and presently quite ceased to irk +and to intimidate him. Many members of his new circle were massed in one +large building whose owner had attempted to name it the Warren Block; but +the artists and the rest simply called it the Warren--sometimes the +Burrow or the Rabbit-Hutch--and referred to themselves collectively as +the Bunnies. + +Abner found it hard to countenance such facetiousness in a world so full +of pain; yet after all these dear people did much to cushion his +discomfort, and before long hardly a Saturday afternoon came round +without his dropping into one studio or another for a chat and a cup of +tea. To tell the truth, Abner could hardly "chat" as yet, but he was +beginning to learn, and he was becoming more reconciled as well to all +the paraphernalia involved in the brewing of the draught. He was boarding +rather roughly with a landlady who, like himself, was from "down state" +and who had never cultivated fastidiousness in table-linen or in +tableware, and he sniffed at the fanciful cups and spoons and pink +candle-shades that helped to insure the attendance of the "desirable +people," as the Burrow phrased it, and at the manifold methods of +tea-making that were designed to turn the desirable people into +profitable patrons. That is, he sniffed at the samovar and the lemons and +so on; but when the rum came along he looked away sternly and in silence. + +Well, the desirable people came in numbers--studios were the fad that +year--and as soon as Mrs. Palmer Pence understood that Abner was to be +met with somewhere in the Burrow she hastened to enroll herself among +them. + +Eudoxia Pence was a robust and vigorous woman in her prime--and by +"prime" I mean about thirty-six. She was handsome and rich and +intelligent and ambitious, and she was hesitating between a career as a +Society Queen and a self-devotion to the Better Things: perhaps she was +hoping to combine both. With her she brought her niece, Miss Clytie +Summers, who had been in society but a month, yet who was enterprising +enough to have joined already a class in sociological science, composed +of girls that were quite the ones to know, and to have undertaken two or +three little excursions into the slums. Clytie hardly felt sure just yet +whether what she most wanted was to gain a Social Triumph or to lend a +Helping Hand. It was Abner's lot to help influence her decision. + + + + +IV + +The Bunnies could hardly believe their eyes when, one day, Mrs. Palmer +Pence came rolling into the Burrow. She was well enough known indeed at +the "rival shop"--by which the Bunnies meant a neighbouring edifice +loftily denominated the Temple of Art, a vast structure full of theatres +and recital-halls and studios and assembly-rooms and dramatic schools; +but this was the first time she had favoured the humbler building, at +least on the formal, official Saturday afternoon. Long had they looked +for her coming, and now at last the most desirable of all the desirable +people was here. + +"Ah-h-h!" breathed Little O'Grady, who made reliefs in plastina. + +It was for Mrs. Palmer Pence that the samovar steamed to-day in the dimly +lighted studio of Stephen Giles, for her that the candles fluttered +within their pink shades, for her that the white peppermints lay in +orderly little rows upon the silver tray, for her that young Medora +Giles, lately back to her brother from Paris, wore her freshest gown and +drew tea with her prettiest smile. Mrs. Pence was building a new house +and there was more than an even chance that Stephen Giles might decorate +it. He held a middle ground between the "artist-architects" on the one +hand and the painters on the other, and with this advantageous footing he +was gradually drawing a strong cordon round "society" and was looking +forward to a day not very distant when he might leave the Burrow for the +Temple of Art itself. + +Mrs. Pence sat liberally cushioned in her old carved pew and amiably +sipped her tea beneath a jewelled censer and admired the dark beauty of +the slender and graceful Medora. Presently she became so taken by the +girl that (despite her own superabundant bulk) she must needs cross over +and sit beside her and pat her hand at intervals. In certain extreme +cases Eudoxia was willing to waive the matter of comparison with other +women; but to find herself seated beside a man of lesser bulk than +herself seriously inconvenienced her, while to realize herself standing +beside a man of lesser stature embarrassed her most cruelly. As she was +fond of mixed society, her liberal figure was on the move most of the +time. + +She was too enchanted with Medora Giles to be able to keep away from her, +but the approach of Adrian Bond--he was a great studio dawdler--presently +put her to rout. For Adrian was much too small. He was spare, he was +meagre; he was sapless, like his books; and the part in his smoothly +plastered black hair scarcely reached to her eyebrows. She felt herself +swelling, distending, filling her place to repletion, to suffocation, and +rose to flee. She was for seeking refuge in the brown beard of Stephen +Giles, which was at least on a level with her own chin, when suddenly she +perceived, in a dark corner of the place, a tower of strength more +promising still--a man even taller, broader, bulkier than herself, a +grand figure that might serve to reduce her to more desirable +proportions. + +"Who is he?" she asked Giles, as she seized him by the elbow. "Take me +over there at once." + +Giles laughed. "Why, that's Joyce," he said. "He's got so that he looks +in on us now and then." + +"Joyce? What Joyce?" + +"Why, Joyce. The one, the only,--as we believe." + +"Abner Joyce? _This Weary World? The Rod of the Oppressor_?" + +"Exactly. Let me bring him over and present him." + +"Whichever you like; arrange it between Mohammed and the Mountain just as +you please." She looked over her shoulder; little Bond was following. +"Waive all ceremony," she begged. "I will go to him." + +Giles trundled her over toward the dusky canopy under which Abner stood +chafing, conscious at once of his own powers and of his own social +inexpertness. In particular had he looked out with bitterness upon the +airy circulations of Adrian Bond--Adrian who smirked here and nodded +there and chaffed a bit now and then with the blonde Clytie and openly +philandered over the tea-urn with the brunette Medora. "That snip! That +water-fly! That whipper-snapper! That----" + +Abner turned with a start. A worldly person, clad voluminously in furs, +was extending a hand that sparkled with many rings and was composing a +pair of smiling lips to say the pleasant thing. This attention was +startlingly, embarrassingly sudden, but it was welcome and it was +appropriate. Abner was little able to realize the quality of aggressive +homage that resided in Mrs. Pence's resolute and unconventional advance, +but it was natural enough that this showy woman should wish to manifest +her appreciation of a gifted and rising author. He took her hand with a +graceless gravity. + +Mrs. Pence, upon a nearer view, found Abner all she had hoped. Confronted +by his stalwart limbs and expansive shoulders, she was no longer a +behemoth,--she felt almost like a sylph. She looked up frankly, and with +a sense of growing comfort, into his broad face where a good strong +growth of chestnut beard was bursting through his ruddy cheeks and +swirling abundantly beneath his nose. She looked up higher, to his wide +forehead, where a big shock of confident hair rolled and tumbled about +with careless affluence. And with no great shyness she appraised his +hands and his feet--those strong forceful hands that had dominated the +lurching, self-willed plough, those sturdy feet that had resolutely +tramped the miles of humpy furrow the ploughshare had turned up blackly +to sun and air. She shrank. She dwindled. Her slender girlhood--that +remote, incredible time--was on her once more. + +"I shall never feel large again," she said. + +How right she was! Nobody ever felt large for long when Abner Joyce +happened to be about. + + + + +V + +Abner regarded Mrs. Pence and her magnificence with a sombre intensity, +far from ready to approve. He knew far more about her than she could know +about him--thanks to the activities of a shamefully discriminating (or +undiscriminating) press--and he was by no means prepared to give her his +countenance. Face to face with her opulence and splendour he set the +figure of his own mother--that sweet, patient, plaintive little presence, +now docilely habituated, at the closing in of a long pinched life, to +unremitting daily toil still unrewarded by ease and comfort or by any +hope or promise or prospect of it. There was his father too--that good +gray elder who had done so much faithful work, yet had so little to show +for it, who had fished all day and had caught next to nothing, who had +given four years out of his young life to the fight for freedom only to +see the reward so shamefully fall elsewhere.... Abner evoked here a +fanciful figure of Palmer Pence himself, whom he knew in a general way to +be high up in some monstrous Trust. He saw a prosperous, domineering man +who with a single turn of the hand had swept together a hundred little +enterprises and at the same time had swept out a thousand of the lesser +fry into the wide spaces of empty ruin, and who had insolently settled +down beside his new machine to catch the rain of coins minted for him +from the wrongs of an injured and insulted people.... + +Abner accepted in awkward silence Mrs. Pence's liberal and fluent praise +of _The Rod of the Oppressor_,--aside from his deep-seated indignation he +had not yet mastered any of those serviceable phrases by means of which +such a volley may be returned; but he found words when she presently set +foot in the roomy field of the betterment of local conditions. What she +had in mind, it appeared, was a training-school--it might be called the +Pence Institute if it went through--and she was ready to listen to any +one who was likely to encourage her with hints or advice. + +"So much energy, so much talent going to waste, so many young people +tumbling up anyhow and presently tumbling over--all for lack of thorough +and systematic training," she said, across her own broad bosom. + +"I know of but one training that is needed," said Abner massively: "the +training of the sense of social justice--such training of the public +conscience as will insist upon seeing that each and every freeman gets an +even chance." + +"An even chance?" repeated Eudoxia, rather dashed. "What I think of +offering is an even start. Doesn't it come to much the same thing?" + +But Abner would none of it. Possessed of the fatalistic belief in the +efficacy of mere legislation such as dominates the rural townships of the +West, he grasped his companion firmly by the arm, set his sturdy legs in +rapid motion, walked her from assembly hall to assembly hall through this +State, that and the other, and finally fetched up with her under the dome +of the national Capitol. Senators and representatives co-operated here, +there and everywhere, the chosen spokesmen of the sovereign people; Abner +seemed almost to have enrolled himself among them. Confronted with this +august company, whose work it was to set things right, Eudoxia Pence felt +smaller than ever. What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and +good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was +marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the +great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and +expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. +Ten to one we shall never see her profile here again!" Yes, Eudoxia was +feeling, with a sudden faintness, that the Better Things might after all +be beyond her reach. She looked about for herself without finding +herself: she had dwindled away to nothingness. + + + + +VI + +"Do you take her money--_such_ money?" Abner asked of Giles with +severity. Eudoxia had returned to Medora and the samovar. + +"_Such_ money?" returned Giles. "Is it different from other money? What +do you mean?" + +"Isn't her husband the head of some trust or other?" + +"Why, yes, I believe so: the Feather-bed Trust, or the Air-and-Sunlight +Trust--something of that sort; I've never looked into it closely." + +"Yet you accept what it offers you." + +"And give a good return for it. Yes, she had paid me already for my +sketches--a prompt and business-like way of doing things that I should be +glad to encounter oftener." + +Abner shook his head sadly. "I thought we might come to be real friends." + +"And I hope so yet. Anyway, it takes a little money to keep the tea-pot +boiling." + +Abner drifted back to the shelter of his canopy and darkly accused +himself for his acceptance of such hospitality. He ought to go, to go at +once, and never to come back. But before he found out how to go, Clytie +Summers came along and hemmed him in. + +Clytie was not at all afraid of big men; she had already found them +easier to manage than little ones. Indeed she had pretty nearly come to +the conclusion that a lively young girl with a trim figure and a bright, +confident manner and a fetching mop of sunlit hair and a pair of wide, +forthputting, blue eyes was predestined to have her own way with about +everybody alike. But Clytie had never met an Abner Joyce. + +And as soon as Clytie entered upon the particulars of her last slumming +trip through the river wards she began to discover the difference. She +chanced to mention incidentally certain low-grade places of amusement. + +"What!" cried Abner; "you go to theatres--and _such_ theatres?" + +"Surely I do!" cried Clytie in turn, no less disconcerted than Abner +himself. "Surely I go to theatres; don't you?" + +"Never," replied Abner firmly. "I have other uses for my money." His +rules of conduct marshalled themselves in a stiff row before him; forlorn +Flatfield came into view. Neither his principles nor his practice of +making monthly remittances to the farm permitted such excesses. + +"Why, it doesn't _cost_ anything," rejoined Clytie. "There's no admission +charge. All you have to do is to buy a drink now and then." + +"Buy a drink?" + +"Beer--that will do. You can stay as long as you want to on a couple of +glasses. Lots of our girls didn't take but one." + +"Lots of----?" + +"Yes, the whole class went. We found the place most interesting--and the +audience. The men sit about with their hats on, you know, in a big hall +full of round tables, drinking and smoking----" + +"And you mixed up in such a----?" + +"Well, no; not exactly. We had a box--as I suppose you would call it; +three of them. Of course that _did_ cost a little something. And then Mr. +Whyland bought a few cigars----" + +"Mr. Whyland----?" + +"Yes, he was with us; he thought there ought to be at least one gentleman +along. He couldn't smoke the cigars, but one of the girls happened to +have some cigarettes----" + +"Cigarettes?" + +"Yes, and we found _their_ smoke much more endurable. That was the worst +about the place--the smoke; unless it was the performance----" + +"Oh!" said Abner, with a groan of disgust. + +"Well, it wasn't as bad as _that!_" returned Clytie. "It was only dull +and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics +you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good--just cheap +imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs +waiting, waiting, waiting for something new and entertaining to happen. I +never felt so sorry for anybody in my life. We girls about made up our +minds that we would get together a little fund and see if we couldn't do +some missionary work in that neighbourhood--hire some real good +artists"--Abner winced at this hideous perversion of the word--"hire some +real good artists to go over there and let those poor creatures see what +a first-class show was like; and Mr. Whyland promised to contribute----" + +"Stop!" said Abner. + +Clytie paused abruptly, astonished by his tone and by the expression on +his face. The flush of innocent enthusiasm and high resolve left her +cheek, her pretty little lips parted in amaze, and her wide blue eyes +opened wider than ever. What a singular man! What a way of accepting her +expression of interest in her kind, of receiving her plan for helping the +other half to lead a happier life! Adrian Bond, a dozen, a hundred other +men would have known how to give her credit for her kindly intentions +toward the less fortunate, would have found a ready way to praise her, to +compliment her.... + +Abner Joyce had a great respect for woman in general, but he entertained +an utter detestation of anything like gallantry; in his chaste anxiety he +leaned the other way. He was brusque; he often rode roughshod over +feminine sensibilities. He was very slightly influenced by considerations +of sex. He viewed everybody asexually, as a generalized human being. He +dealt with women just as he dealt with men, and he treated young women +just as he treated older ones. He treated Clytie just as he treated +Eudoxia Pence, just as he would have treated Whyland himself--but with a +little added severity, called forth by her peculiar presence and her +specific offence. He brought her to book just as she deserved to be +brought to book--a girl who went to low theatres and wore frizzled yellow +hair and made eyes at strangers and took her share in the heartless +amusements of plutocrats. + +"Why, what is it?" asked Clytie. "Don't you think we ought to try to +understand modern social conditions and do what we can to improve them? +If you would only go through some of those streets in the river wards and +into some of the houses--oh, dear me, dear me!" + +But Abner would none of this. "Do you think your river wards, as you call +them, are any worse than our barn-yard in the early days of March? Do you +imagine your cheap vawdyville theatres are any more tiresome than our +Main Street through the winter months?" + +No, Abner's thoughts had been focused too long on the wrongs of the rural +regions to be able to transfer themselves to the sufferings and +injustices of the town. He saw the city collectively as the oppressor of +the country, and Leverett Whyland, by reason of Clytie's innocent +prattle, became the city incarnate in a single figure. + +"I know your Mr. Whyland," he said. "I've met him; I know all about him. +He lives on his rents. His property came to him by inheritance, and half +its value to-day is due to the general rise brought about by the +exertions of others. He is indebted for food, clothing and shelter to the +unearned increment." + +"Lives on his rents? Is there anything wrong in that? So do I, too--when +they can be collected. And if you talk about the unearned increment, let +me tell you there is such a thing as the unearned decrement." + +"Nonsense. That's merely a backward swirl in a rushing stream." + +"Not at all!" cried Clytie, now in the full heat of controversy. "If you +were used to a big growing city, with all its sudden shifts and changes, +you would understand. Even the new neighbourhoods get spoiled before they +are half put together--builders treat one another so unfairly; while, as +for the old ones--why, my poor dear father is coming to have row after +row that he can't find tenants for at all, unless he were to let them +to--to objectionable characters." + +Clytie threw this out with all boldness. The matter was purely economic, +sociological; they were talking quite as man to man. Abner brought every +woman to this point sooner or later. + +As for the troubles of landlords, he had no sympathy with them. And to +him the most objectionable of all "objectionable characters" was the man +who had a strong box stuffed with farm mortgages--town-dwellers, the +great bulk of them. "Oh, the cities, the cities!" he groaned. Then, more +cheerfully: "But never mind: they are passing." + +"Passing? I like that! Do you know that eighteen and two-thirds per cent +of the population of the United States lives in towns of one hundred +thousand inhabitants and above, and that the number is increasing at the +rate of----" + +"They are disintegrating," pursued Abner stolidly. "By their own +bulk--like a big snowball. And by their own badness. People are rolling +back to the country--the country they came from. Improved transportation +will do it." The troubles of the town were ephemeral--he waved them +aside. But his face was set in a frown--doubtless at the thought of the +perdurable afflictions of the country. + +"Don't worry over these passing difficulties that arise from a mere +temporary congestion of population. They will take care of themselves. +Meanwhile, don't sport with them; don't encourage your young friends to +make them a vehicle of their own selfish pleasures; don't----" + +Clytie caught her breath. So she was a mere frivolous, inconsequential +butterfly, after all. Why try longer to lend the Helping Hand--why not +cut things short and be satisfied with the Social Triumph and let it go +at that? "I was meaning to ask you to dine with me some evening next week +at a settlement I know, but now...." + +"I never 'dine,'" said Abner. + + + + +VII + +"I should be so glad to have you call." Mrs. Pence was peering about +among the lanterns and tapestries and the stirring throng with the idea +of picking up Clytie and taking leave. "My niece is staying with me just +now, and I'm sure she would be glad to see you again too." + +Abner looked about to help her find her charge. Clytie had gone over to +the tea-table, where she was snapping vindictively at the half of a +ginger-wafer somebody else had left and was gesticulating in the face of +Medora Giles. + +"I never met such a man in my life!" she was declaring. "I'll never speak +to him again as long as I live! He's a bear; he's a brute!" + +Little O'Grady, bringing forward another sliced lemon, shook in his +shoes. "He'll have everybody scared away before long!" the poor fellow +thought. + +Medora smiled on Clytie. "Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," she said +serenely. "Stephen, now, is beginning to have quite a liking for him. So +earnest; so well-intentioned...." + +"And you yourself?" asked Clytie. + +"I haven't met him yet. I'm only on probation. He has looked me +over--from afar, but has his doubts. I may get the benefit of them, or I +may not." + +"What doubts?" + +"Why, I'm a renegade, a European. I'm effete, contaminate, taboo." + +"Has he said so?" + +"Said so? Do I need to have things 'said'?" + +"Well, if you really are all this, you'll find it out soon enough." + +"He's a touchstone, then?" + +"Yes. And I'm a nonentity, lightly concerning myself about light +nothings. He won't mince matters." + +"Don't worry about me," said Medora confidently. "I shall know how to +handle him." + +Mrs. Pence kept on peering. Dusk was upon the place, and the few dim +lights were more ineffectual than ever. "There she is," said Abner, with +a bob of the head. + +"Good-bye, then," said Eudoxia, grasping his hand effusively, as she took +her first step toward Clytie. "Now, you _will_ come and see us, won't +you?" + +"Thank you; but----" + +Abner paused for the evocation of an instantaneous vision of the +household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, +artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and +indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent +servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best +were questionable! Could he accept such hospitality as this? + +"Thank you. I might come, possibly, if I can find the time. But I warn +you I am very busy." + +"Make time," said Eudoxia good-humouredly, and passed along. + +Abner made a good deal of time for the Burrow, but it was long before he +brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a great +deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the place. +There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon huge +nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed book-plates, +and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many earnest, earnest +persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying ahead on their wet +canvases so that the next exhibition might not be incomplete by reason of +lacking a "Smith," a "Jones," a "Robinson." Abner gave each and every one +of these pleasant people his company and imparted to them his views on +the great principles that underlie all the arts in common. + +"So that's what you call it--a marquise," Abner observed on a certain +occasion to one of the miniature painters. "This creature with a fluffy +white wig and a low-necked dress is a marquise, is she? Do you like that +sort of thing?" + +"Why, yes,--rather," said the artist. + +"Well,_I_ don't," declared Abner, returning the trifle to the girl's +hands. + +"I'll paint my next sitter as a milkmaid--if she'll let me." + +"_As_ a milkmaid? No; paint the milkmaid herself. Deal with the verities. +Like them before you paint them. Paint them _because_ you like them." + +"I don't know whether I should like milkmaids or not. I've never seen +one." + +"They don't exist," chimed in Adrian Bond, who was dawdling in the +background. "The milkmaids are all men. And as for the dairy-farms +themselves----!" He sank back among his cushions. "I visited one in the +suburbs last month--the same time when I was going round among the +markets. I have been of half a mind, lately," he said, more directly to +Abner, "to do a large, serious thing based on local actualities; _The +City's Maw_--something like that. My things so far, I know (none better) +_are_ slight, flimsy, exotic, factitious. The first-hand study of +actuality, thought I----But no, no, no! It was a place fit only for a +reporter in search of a--of a--I don't know what. I shall never drink +coffee again; while as for milk punch----" + +"And what is the artist," asked Abner, "but the reporter sublimated? Why +must the artist go afield to dabble in far-fetched artificialities that +have nothing to do with his own proper time and place? Our people go +abroad for study, instead of staying at home and guarding their native +quality. They return affected, lackadaisical, self-conscious--they bring +the hothouse with them. Why, I have seen such a simple matter as the +pouring of a cup of tea turned into----" + +"You can't mean Medora Giles," said the miniaturist quickly, pausing +amidst the laces of her bodice. "Don't make any mistake about Medora. +When she goes in for all that sort of thing, she's merely 'creating +atmosphere,' as we say,--she's simply after the 'envelopment,' in fact." + +"She is just getting into tone," Bond re-enforced, "with the +candle-shades and the peppermints." + +"Medora," declared the painter, "is as sensible and capable a girl as I +know. Why, the very dress she wore that afternoon----You noticed it?" + +"I--I----" began Abner. + +"No, you didn't--of course you didn't. Well, she made every stitch of it +with her own hands." + +"And those tea-cakes, that afternoon," supplemented Bond. "She made every +stitch of _them_ with her own hands. She told me so herself, when I +stayed afterward, to help wash things up." + +"I may have done her an injustice," Abner acknowledged. "Perhaps I might +like to know her, after all." + +"You might be proud to," said Bond. + +"And the favour would be the other way round," declared the painter +stoutly. + +Abner passed over any such possibility as this. "How long was she +abroad?" he asked Bond. + +"Let's see. She studied music in Leipsic two years; she plays the violin +like an angel--up to a certain point. Then she was in Paris for another +year. She paints a little--not enough to hurt." + +"Leipsic? Two years?" pondered Abner. It seemed more staid, less vicious, +after all, than if the whole time had been spent in Paris. The violin; +painting. Both required technique; each art demanded long, close +application. "Well, I dare say she is excusable." But here, he thought, +was just where the other arts were at a disadvantage compared with +literature: you might stay at home wherever you were, if a writer, and +get your own technique. + +"And you have done it," said Bond. "I admire some of your things so much. +Your instinct for realities, your sturdy central grasp--" + +"What man has done, man may do," rejoined Abner. "Yet what is technique, +after all? There remains, as ever, the problem, the great Social Problem, +to be solved." + +"You think so?" queried Bond. + +"Think that there is a social problem?" + +"Think that it can be solved. I have my own idea there. It is a secret. I +am willing to tell it to one person, but not to more,--I couldn't answer +for the consequences. If Miss Wilbur will just stop her ears----" + +The miniaturist laughed and laid her palms against her cheeks. + +"You are sure you can't hear?" asked Bond, with his eye on her spreading +fingers. "Well, then"--to Abner--"there _is_ the great Human Problem, but +it is not to be solved, nor was it designed that it should be. The world +is only a big coral for us to cut our teeth upon, a proving-ground, a +hotbed from which we shall presently be transplanted according to our +several deserts. No power can solve the puzzle save the power that cut it +up into pieces to start with. Try as we may, the blanket will always be +just a little too small for the bedstead. Meanwhile, the thing for us to +do is to go right along figuring, figuring, figuring on our little +slates,--but rather for the sake of keeping busy than from any hope of +reaching the 'answer' set down in the Great Book above." + +"But----" began Abner; his orthodox sensibilities were somewhat offended. +Miss Wilbur, who had heard every word, laughed outright. + +"I beg," Bond hurried on, "that you won't communicate this to a living +soul. I am the only one who suspects the real truth. If it came to be +generally known all human motives would be lacking, all human activities +would be paralyzed--the whole world would come to a standstill. Mum's the +word. For if the problem is insoluble and meant to be, just as sure is it +that we were not intended to suspect the truth." + +Abner gasped--dredging the air for a word. "Of course," Bond went ahead, +less fantastically, "I know I ought to shut my eyes to all this and start +in to accomplish something more vital, more indigenous--less of the +marquise and more of the milkmaid, in fact----" + +"Write about the things you know and like," said Abner curtly. + +His tone acknowledged his inability to keep pace with such whimsicalities +or to sympathize with them. + +"If to know and to like were one with me, as they appear to be with you! +A boyhood in the country--what a grand beginning! But the things I know +are the things I don't like, and the things I like are not always the +things I know--oftener the things I feel." Bond was speaking with a +greater sincerity than he usually permitted himself. The right touch just +then might have determined his future: he was quite as willing to become +a Veritist as to remain a mere Dilettante. + +Abner tossed his head with a suppressed snort; he felt but little +inclined to give encouragement to this manikin, this tidier-up after +studio teas, this futile spinner of sophistications. No, the curse of a +city boyhood was upon the fellow. Why look for anything great or vital +from one born and bred in the vitiated air of the town? + +"Oh, well," he said, half-contemptuously, and not half trying to hide his +contempt, "you are doing very well as it is. Some of your work is not +without traces of style; and I suppose style is what you are after. But +meat for _me_!" + +Bond lapsed back into his cushions, feeling a little hurt and very feeble +and unimportant. Clearly the big thing, the sincere thing, the +significant thing was beyond his reach. _The City's Maw_ must remain +unwritten. + + + + +VIII + +Abner tramped down the corridor and walked in on Giles. He found the +decorator busy over two or three large sketches for panels. + +"For another Trust man?" he asked. + +"No," replied Giles; "these are for a blameless old gentleman that has +passed a life of honest toil in the wholesale hardware business. Don't +you think he's entitled to a few flowers by this time?" + +"What kind of flowers are they?" + +"Passion-flowers and camellias." + +"Humph! Do they grow round here?" + +"Hardly. My old gentleman hasn't given himself a vacation for twenty-five +years, and he wants to get as far away from 'here' as possible." + +Abner gave another "Humph!" Wigs and brocades; passion-flowers and +camellias. All this in a town that had just seen the completion of the +eighteenth chapter of _Regeneration_. Well, regeneration was coming none +too soon. + +"What's the matter with Bond?" he asked suddenly. + +"I do' know. Is anything?" + +"I've just been talking with him, and he seemed sort of skittish and +dissatisfied and paradoxical." + +"He's often like that. We never notice." + +"He seemed to shilly-shally considerable too. Has he got any convictions, +any principles?" + +"I can't say I've ever thought much about that. He never mentions such +things himself, but I suppose he must have them about him somewhere. He +generally behaves himself and treats other people kindly. Everybody +trusts him and seems to believe in him. I presume he's got _something_ +inside that holds him up--moral framework, so to speak." + +Abner shook his head. If the framework was there it ought to show +through. Every articulation should tell; every rib should count. + +"If a man has got principles and beliefs, why not come out flat-footedly +with them _like_ a man?" + +"I do' know. Dare say Bond doesn't want to wear his heart on his sleeve. +Hates to live in the show-window, you understand." + +"He was fussing most about writing some new thing or other in a new way. +I seem to have kind of started him up." + +"He has been talking like that for quite a little while. He's tenderly +interested--that's the real reason for it. He wants more +reputation--something to lay at the dear one's feet, you know. And he +wants bigger returns--though he _has_ got something in the way of an +independent income, I believe." + +"Who is she?" + +"That little Miss Summers." + +"He may have her," said Abner quickly. "She may 'dine' _him_ at her +settlement." Then, more slowly: "Why, they hardly spoke to each other, +that day--except once or twice to joke. They barely noticed each other." + +"What should they have done? Sit side by side, holding hands?" + +"Oh, the city, the city!" murmured Abner, overcome by the artificiality +of urban society and the mockery in Giles's tone. + +"You should have seen them in the country last summer." + +"Them! In the country!" + +"Why, yes; why not? We had them both out on the farm." + +"Farm? Whose?" + +"My father's. We try to do a little livening up for the old people every +July and August. They got acquainted there; they took to it like ducks to +water. That's where Bond got his idea for his cow masterpiece,--he may +have spoken to you about it." + +"Humph!" said Abner. Why heed such insignificant poachings as these on +his own preserves? + +"We're going out home week after next for the holidays," continued Giles. +"Better go with us." + +"So you're a farmer's boy?" pondered Abner. He looked again at the +camellias, then at Giles's loose Parisian tie, and lastly at his +finger-nails,--all too exquisite by half. + +"Certainly. Brought up on burdock and smart-weed. That's why I'm so fond +of this,"--with a wave toward one of his panels. + +"Well, what do you say? Will you go? We should like first-rate to have +you." + +Abner considered. The invitation was as hearty and informal as he could +have wished, and it would take him within thirty miles of Flatfield +itself. + +"Is your sister going along?" + +"Surely. She will run the whole thing." + +"Well," said Abner slowly, "I don't know but that I might find it +interesting." This, Giles understood, was his rustic manner of accepting. + + + + +IX + +Abner spent Christmas at the Giles farm, as Stephen had understood him to +promise; and Medora, as her brother had engaged, "went along" too, and +"ran the whole thing" from start to finish. Abner, with a secret interest +compounded half of attraction, half of repulsion, promised himself a +careful study of this "new type"--a type so bizarre, so artificial, and +in all probability so thoroughly reprehensible. + +Medora made up the rest of the party to suit herself. She had heard of +Adrian Bond's struggles toward the indigenous, the simplified, and she +was willing enough to give him a chance to see the cows in their winter +quarters. Clytie Summers had begged very prettily for her glimpse too of +the country at this time of year. "It's rather soon, I know, for that +spring barn-yard; but I should so enjoy the ennui of some village Main +Street in the early winter." + +"Come along, then," said Medora. "We'll do part of our Christmas shopping +there." + +Giles accepted these two new recruits gladly. "Good thing for both of +them," he declared to Joyce. "They'll make more progress on our farm in a +week than they could in six months of studio teas." + +This remark admitted of but one interpretation. + +"Why!" said Abner; "do you want her to marry _him_?"--him, a fellow so +slight, frivolous, invertebrate! + +"Oh, he's a very decent little chap," returned Giles. "He'll be kind to +her--he'll see she's taken good care of." + +"But do you want him to marry _her_?"--her, so bold, so improper, so +prone to seek entertainment in the woes of others! + +"Oh, well, she's a very fair little chick," replied Giles patiently. +"She'll get past her notions pretty soon and be just as good a wife as +anybody could ask." + +One of those quiescent, featureless Decembers was on the land--a November +prolonged. The brown country-side, swept and garnished, was still +awaiting the touch of winter's hand. The air was crisp yet passive, and +abundant sunshine flooded alike the heights and hollows of the rolling +uplands that spread through various shades of subdued umber and +meditative blue toward the confines of a wavering, indeterminate horizon. +The Giles homestead stood high on a bluff; and above the last of the +islands that cluttered the river beneath it the spires of the village +appeared, a mile or two down-stream. + +"Now for the barn-yard!" cried Clytie, after the first roundabout view +from the front of the bluff. "Adrian mustn't lose any time with his +cows." + +Giles led the way to a trim inclosure. + +"Why, it's as dry as a bone!" she declared. + +"Would you want us water-logged the whole year through?" asked Abner +pungently. + +"And as for ennui," she pursued, "I'm sure it isn't going to be found +here--no more in winter than in summer. However"--with a wave of the hand +toward the spires--"there is always the town." + +No, the parents of Giles had taken strong measures to keep boredom at +bay. They had their books and magazines; they had a pair of good trotters +and a capacious carryall, with other like aids to locomotion in reserve; +they had a telephone; they had a pianola, with a change of rolls once a +month; they had neighbours of their own sort and were indomitable in +keeping up neighbourly relations. + +"I think you'll be able to stand it for a week," said Medora serenely. + +"We've done it once before," said Bond. + +"Don't be anxious about _us_!" added Clytie. + +Medora Giles took Abner in her own special care. She knew pretty nearly +what he thought of her, and she was inclined to amuse herself--though at +the same time making no considerable concession--by placing herself +before him in a more favourable light. In her dress, her manner, her +bearing there was a certain half-alien delicacy, finesse, aloofness. She +would not lay this altogether aside, even at home, even in the informal +country; but she would provide a homely medium, suited to Abner's rustic +vision, through which her exotic airs and graces might be more tolerantly +perceived. + +The illness of one of the servants came just here to assist her. She +descended upon the kitchen, taking full charge and carrying Abner with +her. She initiated him at the chopping-block, she conferred the second +degree at the pump-handle, and by the time he was beating up eggs in a +big yellow bowl beside the kitchen stove his eyes had come to be focused +on her in quite a different fashion. Surely no one could be more deft, +light-handed, practical. Was this the same young woman who had sat in the +midst of that absurd outfit and had juggled rather affectedly and +self-consciously with tea-urn and sugar-tongs and had palavered in empty +nothings with a troop of overdressed and overmannered feather-heads? She +was still graceful, still fluent, still endowed with that baffling little +air of distinction; but she knew where things were--down to the last +strainer or nutmeg-grater--and she knew how to use them. She was +completely at home. And so--by this time--was he. + +To deepen the impression, Medora asked Abner to help her lay the table. +There were no studio gimcracks, mercifully, to put into place; but the +tableware was as far removed, on the other hand, from the ugly, heavy, +time-scarred things at Flatfield and from the careless crudities of his +own boarding-house. Abner had had a tolerance, even a liking, for his +landlady's indifference toward finicky table-furnishings; but now there +came a sudden vision of her dining-room, and the spots on the +table-cloth, the nicks in the crockery, the shabbiness of the lambrequin +drooping from the mantel-piece, and the slovenliness of the sole +handmaiden had never been so vivid. + +"Shall I be able to go back there?" he asked himself. + +Finally, to seal the matter completely, Medora led Abner to the place of +honour and bade him eat the meal she had prepared. Abner ate and was +hers. Even a good boarding-house, he now felt, was a mistake; the best, +but a makeshift. + +During the day the telephone had made common property of the news of +Abner's arrival, and the next morning, an hour or so after breakfast, the +front yard resounded with the loud cry of, "What ho, neighbours!" and +Leverett Whyland was revealed in a trig cart drawn by a handsome cob. + +"Why, what's that man doing here?" Abner asked Giles, as they stood by +the living-room window. + +"He has a place three or four miles down the river," replied Giles, +casting about for his hat. Clytie, meanwhile, had drubbed a glad welcome +upon the adjoining window and then rushed out bareheaded to give +greeting. + +"He always comes out here with his family for Christmas," said Stephen. + +"His family? Is he married? Has he a wife and children?" + +"Yes." + +"Yet he goes slam-banging around with a lot of young girls into all sorts +of doubtful places?" + +"Oh, I've heard something about that," said Giles. "Well, you wouldn't +have them in charge of a bachelor, would you?" + +"What's he farming for?" asked Abner, left behind with Medora. + +"Sentiment," she replied. "He was born down there, and has never wanted +to let the old place go. Do you think any the worse of him for that?" + +Whyland had come to fetch the men and to show them his model farm. They +spent the forenoon in going over this expensive place. Bond gave vent to +all the "oh's" and "ah's" that indicate the perfect visitor. Abner took +their host's various amateurish doings in glum silence. It was all very +well to indulge in these costly contraptions as a pastime, but if the man +had to get his actual living from the soil where would he be? Almost +anybody could stand on two legs. How many on one? + +"Do you make it pay?" Abner asked bluntly. + +"Pay? I'm a by-word all over the county. Half the town lives on my lack +of 'gumption.'" + +"H'm," said Abner darkly. He was as far as ever from hitting it off with +this smiling, dapper product of artificial city conditions. + +"I came across some of your Readjusters the other day," observed Whyland, +at the door of his hen-house--a prodigal place with a dozen wired-in +"runs" for a dozen different varieties of poultry: "Leghorns, Plymouth +Rocks, Jerseys, Angoras, Hambletonians and what not," as Bond +irresponsibly remarked. "They say they haven't been seeing much of you +lately." + +Abner frowned. Whyland, he felt, was trying to put him at a disadvantage. +But, in truth, it could not be denied that he had practically left one +circle for another,--was showing himself much more disposed to favour the +skylights of the studios than the footlights of the rostrum. + +"I am still for the cause," he said. "But it can be helped from one side +as well as from another. My next book----" + +"I didn't dispute your idea; only its application. I should be glad if +you _could_ make it go. Anything would be better than the present +horrible mess. We have 'equality,' and to spare, in the Declaration and +the Constitution, but whether or not we shall ever get it in our +taxing----" + +"I am glad to hear you speaking a word for the country people----" began +Abner. + +"The country people?" interrupted Whyland quickly, with a stare. Never +more than when among his cattle and poultry was he moved to draw +contrasts between the security of his possessions in the country and the +insecurity of his possessions in town. "What I am thinking of is the city +tax-payer. Urban democracy, working on a large scale, has declared itself +finally, and what we have is the organization of the careless, the +ignorant, the envious, brought about by the criminal and the +semi-criminal, for the spoliation of the well-to-do." + +Abner began to be ruffled by these cross-references to the city--they +were out of place in the uncontaminated country. "I believe in the +people," he declared, with his thoughts on the rustic portion of the +population. + +"So do I--within a certain range, and up to a certain point. But I do not +believe in the populace," declared Whyland, with his thoughts on the +urban portion. + +"All the difference between potatoes and potato-parings," said Bond, +catching at a passing feather. + +"Soon it will be simply dog eat dog," said Whyland. "No course will be +left, even for the best-disposed of us, but to fight the devil with fire. +From the assessor and all his works----" + +"Good Lord deliver us," intoned Bond, who fully shared Whyland's ideas. + +Abner frowned. His religious sensibilities were affronted by this +response. + +"And from all his followers," added Whyland. "They threaten me in my own +office--it comes to that. Well, what shall a man do? Shall he fight or +shall he submit? Shall I go into court or shall I compromise with them?" + +"It comes to one thing in the end," said Bond, "if you value your peace +of mind. But even then you can put the best face on it." + +Whyland sighed. "You mean that there is some choice between my bribing +them and their blackmailing me? Well, I expect I may slip down several +pegs this coming year--morally." + +Abner drew away. He was absolutely without any intimacy with the +intricacies of civic finances. He merely saw a man--his host--who seemed +cynically to be avowing his own corruption and shame,--or at least his +willingness to lean in that direction. + +"Reform," he announced grandly, "will come only from the disinterested +efforts of those who bring to the task pure motives and unimpeachable +practices." + +Whyland sighed again. He thought of his realty interests in town, as they +lay exposed to spoliation, to confiscation. "I am afraid I shall not be a +reformer," he said, in discouragement. + +Abner shook a condemnatory head in full corroboration. And Whyland, who +may have been looking for a prop to wavering principles, shook his own +head too. + + + + +X + +"Don't work so hard at it," said Medora, laying her violin on top of the +pianola. "You shake the house. A minute more and you'll have that lamp +toppling over. And you'll tire yourself out." + +Abner wiped his damp brow and felt of his wilted collar. He never put +less than his whole self into anything he attempted. "Tire myself? I'm +strong enough, I guess." + +"Well, use your strength to better advantage. Let me show you." + +Medora slipped into his place, reset the roll, pulled a stop or two, and +trod out a dozen ringing measures with no particular effort. "Like that." + +"Very well," said Abner, resuming his seat docilely. The rest wondered; +he seldom welcomed suggestions or accepted correction. + +"Now let's try it once more," said Medora. + +An evening devoted to literature was ending with a bit of music. Abner +and Bond had both read unpublished manuscripts with the fierce joy that +authors feel on such occasions, and the others had listened with patience +if not with pleasure. Abner gave two or three of the newest chapters of +_Regeneration_, and Bond read a few pages to show what progress an alien +romanticist was making in homely fields nearer at hand. He had hoped for +Abner's encouragement and approval in this new venture of his, but he got +neither. + +"The way to write about cows in a pasture," commented Abner, "is just to +write about them--in a simple, straightforward style without any slant +toward history or mythology, and without any cross-references to remote +scenes of foreign travel. For instance, you speak of a Ranz----" + +"Ranz des Vaches," said Medora: "a sort of thing the Alpine +what's-his-name sings." + +"It's for atmosphere," said Bond, on the defensive. + +"Let the pasture furnish its own atmosphere. And you had something about +a certain breed of cattle near Rome--Rome, was it?" + +"Roman Campagna. Travel reminiscences." + +"Travel is a mistake," declared Abner. + +"So it is," broke in Clytie. "Squat on your own door-step, as Emerson +says." + +"Does he?--I think not," interposed Giles the elder. "What he does say +is----" + +"We all know," interrupted Stephen, "and ignore the counsel." + +Abner did not know, but he would not stoop to ask. "And there was a +quotation from one of those old authors,--Theocritus?" + +"Theocritus, yes. Historical perspective." + +"Leave the past alone. Live in the present. The past,--bury it, forget +it." + +"So hard. Heir of the ages, you know. Good deal harder to forget than +never to have learned at all. _That's_ easy," jibed Bond, with a touch of +temper. + +"Oh, now!" cried Medora, fearful that another temper might respond. + +"If you must bring in those old Greeks," Abner proceeded, "take their +method and let the rest drop. All they knew, as I understand it, they +learned from men and things close round them and from the nature in whose +midst they lived. They didn't quote; they didn't range the world; they +didn't go for sanction outside of themselves and their own environment." + +"The Greeks didn't know so much," interjected Clytie. + +"Oh, didn't they, though!" cried Adrian, sending a glance of thanks to +counteract his contradiction. "They _finished_ things. The temple wasn't +complete till they had swept all the marble chips off the back stoop, and +had kind of curry-combed down the front yard, and had----" + +"'Sh,'sh!" said Medora. Abner looked about, more puzzled than offended. +"Let's have some music, before our breasts get too savage," said the +girl, starting up. + +Bond followed with the rest. "I'll stick to my regular field," he said to +Clytie, as he thrust his crumpled-up manuscript into his pocket. +"Griffins, gorgons, hydras, chimeras dire,--but no more cows. I was never +meant for a veritist." + +"Samson is pulling down the temple," observed Clytie. "Crash goes the +first pillar. Who will be next?" + +"He'll be caught in the wreck," said Bond, in a shattered voice. "Just +watch and see." + + + + +XI + +Medora, long before Abner had learned to work the pedals of the pianola +and to wrench any expression from its stops, had banished most of her +"rolls" from sight. "Siegfried's Funeral March" was unintelligible to +him; the tawdry, meretricious Italian overtures filled him with disgust. +In the end the two confined themselves to patriotic airs and old-time +domestic ditties. Medora accompanied on her second-best violin (which was +kept at the farm) and Abner enjoyed a heart-warming sense of doing his +full share in "Tenting Tonight" or "Lily Dale." The girl's parents had +advanced far beyond this stage, but willingly relapsed into it now and +then for Auld Lang Syne. + +The final roll wound up with a quick snap. + +"Well, you haven't told me what you thought of that last chapter," said +Abner, putting the roll back in its box. He made no demand on Medora's +interest to the exclusion of that of the others, however. His general +glance around invited comment from any quarter. He had merely looked at +her first. + +"M--no," said Medora. + +The girl, a few weeks before, had looked over _The Rod of the Oppressor_. +_The Rod's_ force had made itself felt most largely on economics; but in +its blossoming it had put forth a few secondary sprigs, and one of these +curled over in the direction of domestic life, of marital relation. +Abner's chivalry--a chivalry totally guiltless of gallantry--had gone out +to the suffering wife doomed to a lifelong yoking with a cruel, +coarse-natured husband: must such a yoking _be_ lifelong? he asked +earnestly. Was it not right and just and reasonable that she should fly +(with or without companion)--nor be too particular over the formalities +of her departure? Medora had smiled and shaken her head; but now the +question somehow seemed less remote than before. She paused over this +bird-like irresponsibility and rather wondered that it should have the +power to detain her. + +The new chapters of _Regeneration_ had taken up the same matter and had +displayed it in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the +idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout +fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting +an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and +conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, +that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the +whole gentler sex. In short, people--such seemed to be his thesis--might +very advantageously separate, and most informally too, as soon as they +discovered they were incompatible. + +"M--no," said Medora. + +"Wouldn't that be rather upsetting?" asked her mother. Mrs. Giles was an +easy-going old soul, from whom art, as personified by her own children, +got slight consideration, and to whom literature, as embodied in a +stranger, was little less than a joke. "Wouldn't it result in a good deal +of a mix-up? What would have happened to you youngsters if your father +and I had all at once taken it into our heads to----" + +"Mother!" said Medora. + +"Oh, well," began Mrs. Giles, with the idea of making a gradual descent +after her sudden aerial flight. "But, then," she resumed, "you must see +that----" + +"Mother!" said Medora again. Abner, eager to defend his thesis, looked +round in surprise. + +"I agree with Mrs. Giles completely," spoke up Clytie, with much +promptitude. "When I get married I want to get married for good. Most of +the people I know are married in that way, and I believe it's the most +satisfactory way in the long run----" + +"But----" began Abner polemically. + +Clytie shook her head. "No, it won't do. You've offered us the ballot, +and we don't want it. And you've offered us--this, and we don't want that +either. Consider it declined." + +Abner stared at Clytie's brazen little face and disliked her more than +ever. + +"But don't _you_ think----" began Abner, turning to Bond. + +Bond shook his head slowly and made no comment. + +Abner looked round at Medora. She was ranging the music-roll boxes in an +orderly row. Nobody could have been more intent upon her work. + +"Well, it stands, all the same," said Abner defiantly. + + + + +XII + +The clear, placid weather had been waiting several days for Sunday to +come and possess it, and now Sunday was here. The young people stood +bareheaded on the porch and looked down toward the village. + +"Do I hear the church bells?" asked Abner. He was a punctilious observer +of Sabbath ordinances and always reached a state of subdued inner bustle +shortly after the finish of the Sunday breakfast. + +"We sometimes make them out," replied Stephen Giles, "when the wind +happens to blow right." + +"We are all going down this morning, I suppose?" observed Abner, +confidently taking the initiative. + +"I expect so," replied Giles. + +"Count me out," said Clytie. + +"You do not go to church?" asked Abner. + +"Not often." + +"You have no religion?" + +"Yes, I have," replied Clytie, with much pomp: "the religion of +humanity." + +"You run and get your things on," said Medora. "You'll find as much +humanity at the First Church as you will anywhere else." + +The party set out in two vehicles. Old Mr. Giles drove one and the "hired +man" the other. Clytie, despite her best endeavours to go in company with +Bond, found herself associated with Abner, and a spirit of unchristian +perversity took complete possession of her. + +She cast her eye about, viewing the prosperous country-side, the +well-kept farms, the modest comfort symbolized in her host's equipage +itself. + +"You're a great sufferer, Mr. Giles," she said suddenly; "aren't you?" + +The old gentleman let the lines fall slackly on the fat backs of his +sleek horses. "How? What's that?" + +"I say you're a great sufferer. You're a downtrodden slave." + +"Why, am I? How do you make that out?" + +"Well, if you don't know without having it explained to you! The world is +against you--it's making a doormat of you." + +Medora looked askant. What was the child up to now? + +"Poor father," she said. "If he hasn't found it out yet, don't tell him." + +"No wonder he hasn't found it out," returned Clytie, making a sudden +veer. "Is he suffering for lack of fresh air and pure water? And does he +have to pay an extra price for sunlight? And must he herd in a filthy +slum full of awful plumbing and crowded by more awful neighbours? Does he +have to put up with municipal neglect and corruption, and worry along on +make-believe milk and doctored bread and adulterated medicines, and +endure long hours in unsanitary places under a tyrannical foreman and in +constant dread of fines----?" + +Abner was beginning to shift uneasily upon his seat. "Clytie, please!" +said Medora, laying her hand upon the other's. + +"Well, they're realities!" declared Clytie stoutly. + +"They're not _my_ realities," growled Abner, without turning round. + +"Can we pick and choose our realities?" asked Clytie sharply. "Well, if +you are at liberty to pick yours, I am at liberty to pick mine. Yes, sir, +I'll go to that settlement right after New-Year's, and I'll have a class +in basket-making and hammock-weaving before I'm a month older." + +"It will take more than basket-making to set the world right," said +Abner. + +"Basket-making is enough to teach boys the use of their hands and to keep +them off the street at night," sputtered Clytie. + +"Clytie, please!" said Medora once more. + +Clytie fell into silence and nursed her wrath through a long service and +through a hearty rustic sermon from the text, "Peace on earth, goodwill +toward men." Abner, in exacerbated mood, watched her narrowly throughout, +that he might tax her, if possible, with a humorous attitude toward the +preacher or a quizzical treatment of his flock. He had not yet pardoned +her "ways" along Main Street, on the occasion of one or two shopping +excursions. She had not hesitated to banter the admiring young clerks +that held their places behind those shop-fronts of galvanized iron in +simulation of red brick and of cut limestone, and she had been +startlingly free in her accosting of several time-honoured worthies +encountered on the dislocated plank walks outside. "Now," said Abner, "if +she sniggers at that old deacon's whiskers or says a single facetious +word about the best bonnets of any of these worthy women round about +us----" But Clytie, outwardly, was propriety itself. Inwardly she was +revolving burning plans to show Abner Joyce that none of his despising, +disparaging, discouraging words could have the least power to move her +from her purpose; and on the way back to the farm she declared +herself--to Bond, in whose company, this time, she had contrived to +be;--they sat on the back seat together. + +"That's what I'll do," she stated, with great positiveness. "I'll go +right over there as soon as I get back to town. I don't care if the +streets _are_ dirty, and the street-cars dirtier; and if I have to look +after my own room, why, I will. I'll take along my biggest trunk and my +full-length mirror and the very pick of my new clothes----You know they +like to have us dress; it interests them,--they take it as a great +compliment----" + +"And all for Abner Joyce!" said Bond. "Another pillar of the temple +tottering, eh? and trying to brace itself against the modern Samson." + +"Not one bit! Not one speck!" cried Clytie. "Only----" + +"Well, there are others," said Bond. "I'm prostrate already, as you know. +And Whyland, only a few mornings back, got a good jar that will help +finish him, I'm thinking." + +"Did he? And there's Aunt Eudoxia too. If you could have seen how +discouraged she was after she came home from that first meeting with him, +when he took the wind out of her training-school----" + +"But he isn't going to jar _you_? He isn't going to cause _you_ to +totter?" + +"Not a jar! Not a tot! You'll see whether----" + +"Your object, then, is to show how much stronger you are than I am?" + +Clytie suddenly paused in her impetuous rush. "Adrian," she breathed, +with plaintive contrition, "I wish you wouldn't say such things--no, nor +even think them." + +Her fierce alertness fled. She leaned a little toward him, droopingly, a +poor, feeble, timid child in need of some strong man to shield her from +the rough world. + +The other carriage reached home first. Medora alighted gaily on the +horse-block. Abner helped her down with an earnest endeavour not to seem +too attentive. + +"Come," she said; "let's see how those pies have turned out--Cordelia is +so absent-minded." + +And Abner followed gladly. + + + + +XIII + +Christmas-Day came with a slight flurry of snow. There was also a slight +flurry in society: the Whylands drove over to the farmhouse for dinner. + +Medora had suggested their presence to her mother, and Clytie had +supported the suggestion: "the more the merrier," she declared. Whyland +himself had jumped at the opportunity eagerly, and his wife, who had met +Medora a number of times at the studio and in Paris and liked her, +acquiesced after the due interposition of a few objections. + +"About the children----" she began. + +"They can take dinner with Murdock and his wife for once in their lives." + +"I don't know whether I can be said to have called regularly on Mrs. +Giles----" + +"Is Christmas-day a time for such sophistications? And do you think that +plain, simple people, like the Gileses----" + +Mrs. Whyland allowed herself to be persuaded--as she had designed from +the start. + +She had no great fancy for a solitary Christmas dinner, such as her +husband's rural tastes had so often condemned her to; besides, this new +arrangement would give her an opportunity to take a look at Miss Clytie +Summers, of whom she had heard things. + +Medora received Edith Whyland with some empressement; she regarded her +guest as the model of all that the young urban matron should be. Mrs. +Whyland was rather languid, rather elegant, rather punctilious, rather +evangelical, and Abner Joyce, before he realized what was happening to +him, was launched upon a conversation with a woman who, as Clytie Summers +intimated at the first opportunity, was really high in good society. + +"One of the swells, I suppose you mean," said Abner. + +"I mean nothing of the kind. Swell society is one thing and good society +is another. If you don't quite manage to get good society, you do the +next best thing and take swell society. _I'm_ swell," said Clyde humbly. +"But I'm going to be something better, pretty soon," she added hopefully. + +Abner had his little talk with Edith Whyland, all unteased by +consideration of the imperceptible nuances and infinitesimal gradations +that characterize the social fabric. He thought her rather quiet and +inexpressive; but he felt her to be a good woman, and was inclined to +like her. She dwelt at some length on Dr. McElroy's Christmas sermon, and +it presently transpired that, whether in town or country, she made it a +point to attend services. Abner, who for some dim reason of his own had +expected little from the wife of Leverett Whyland, put down as mere +calumnies the reports that made her "fashionable." Through the dinner he +talked to her confidently, almost confidentially; with half the bulk of +Eudoxia Pence she made twice the impression; and by the time the feast +had reached the raisins and hickory-nuts his tongue, working +independently of his will, was promising to call upon her in town. + +This outcome was highly gratifying to Medora--it was just the one, in +fact, that she had hoped to bring about. City and country, oil and water +were mixing, and she herself was acting as the third element that made +the emulsion possible. From her place down the other side of the table +she kept her eyes and ears open for all that was going on. She saw with +joy that Abner was almost chatting. He had given over for the present the +ponderous consideration of knotty abstractions; he totally forgot the +unearned increment; and what he was offering to quiet and self-repressed +Edith Whyland was being accepted--thanks to the training and temperament +of his hearer--for "small talk." Yes, Abner had broken a large bill and +was dealing out the change. He knew it; he was a little ashamed of it; +yet at the same time he looked about with a kind of shy triumph to see +whether any one were commenting upon his address. + +To tell the truth, Abner felt his success to such a degree that presently +he began to presume upon it. He had heard about the children, left behind +for a lonely dinner with the farm superintendent, and he began to scent +cruelty and injustice in their progenitors. The wrongs of the child--they +too had their share in keeping our generous Abner in his perennial state +of indignation. He became didactic, judicial, hortatory; Edith Whyland +almost questioned her right to be a mother. But she understood the spirit +that prompted this intense young man's admonitions and exhortations; his +feelings did him credit. She made a brief and quiet defence of herself, +and thought no worse of Abner for his championship, however mistaken, of +distressed childhood. He understood and pardoned her; she understood and +pardoned him. And the more she thought things over, the more--despite his +heckling of her--she liked him. + +"He's a fine, serious fellow, my dear," she said to Medora, "and I'm glad +to have met him." + +Medora flushed, wondering why Edith Whyland should have spoken just--just +like that. And Edith, noting Medora's flush, considerately let the matter +drop. + +Mrs. Whyland also looked over Clytie Summers, and found no serious harm +in her. "She is rather underbred--or 'modern,' I suppose I should call +it, and she's more or less in a state of ferment; but I dare say she will +come out all right in the end. However, my Evelyn shall never be taken +through the slums: I think Leverett will be willing to draw the line +there." And, "Remember!" she said to Abner, as she drove away. + +Medora was delighted. She saw two steps into the future. Abner should +call on Mrs. Whyland. And he should read from his own works at Mrs. +Whyland's house. Why not? He read with much justness and expression; he +was thoroughly accustomed to facing an audience. Indeed he had lately +spoken of meditating a public tour, in order to familiarize the country +with _This Weary World_ and _The Rod of the Oppressor_ and the newer work +still unfinished. Well, then: the reading-tour, like one or two other +things, should begin at home. + +While these generous plans pulsed through the girl's heart and brain +Abner, all unaware of the future now beginning to overshadow him, was out +in the stable considering the case of a lame horse and inveighing against +the general irksomeness of rural conditions. He threw back his abundant +hair as he rose from the study of a dubious hoof,--a Samson unconscious +of the shining shears that threatened him. + + + + +XIV + +Abner, on his return to town, found its unpleasant precincts more crowded +than ever with matters of doubtful expediency and propriety. Not that he +felt the strain of any temptation; he knew that he was fully capable of +keeping himself unspotted from the world--the world of urban society--if +only people would leave him alone. Two dangers stood out before all +others: his impending call upon Mrs. Whyland and the approaching annual +fancy-dress ball of the Art Students' League. He had rashly committed +himself to the one, and his officious friends of the studios were rapidly +pushing him upon the other. He must indeed present himself beneath the +roof of a man whom he could not regard as a "good citizen," and must thus +seem to approve his host's improper composition, now imminent, with the +powers that be; but he should bestir himself to withstand the pressure +exerted by Giles, by Medora herself, by Bond, by mischievous Clytie +Summers, by the whole idle horde of studio loungers to force him into +such an atmosphere of frivolity, license and dissipation as could not but +inwrap one of those wild student "dances." + +"We should so like to have you present," said Medora. "It will be rather +bright and lively, and you would be sure to meet any number of pleasant +people. You would enjoy it, I know." + +Abner shook his head. Fancy him, a serious man, with a reputation to +nourish and to safeguard, caught up in any such fandango as that! + +"I have never attended a dancing-party yet," he said. "I couldn't waltz +if my life depended on it. And I wouldn't, either." + +"You needn't," said Medora. "But you would be interested in the grand +march. It's always very pictorial, and the girls are arranging to have it +more so than ever this year." + +Abner shook his head again. "I have never had any fancy togs on. I--I +_couldn't_ wear anything like that." + +"You needn't. A great many of the gentlemen go in simple evening dress." + +Abner shook his head a third time. "I thought you understood my +principles on that point. Dress is a badge, an index. I could not openly +brand myself as having surrendered to the--to the----" + +Medora sighed. "You are making a great many difficulties," she said. "But +you will call on Mrs. Whyland?" + +"I have promised, and I shall do so," he said, with all the good grace of +a despairing bear caught in a trap. + +"I think she suggested some--some afternoon?" + +"Yes." + +"You will go at about half-past four or five, possibly?" + +"Yes." + +Abner suddenly saw himself as he was six months before: little likelihood +then of his devoting an afternoon--fruitful working hours of a crowded +day--to the demands of mere social observances. Which of his Readjusters +would have had the time or the inclination to do as he had bound himself +to do? But now he was "running" less with reformers than with artists, +and these ill-regulated spendthrift folk were prone to break up the day +and send its fragments broadcast as they would, without forethought, +scruple, compunction. + +One day before long, then, Abner buttoned his handsome double-breasted +frock-coat across his capacious chest and put on a neat white lawn tie +and sallied forth to call on Edith Whyland. The day was sunny--almost +deceptively so--and Abner, who knew the good points in his own figure and +was glad to dispense with a heavy overcoat whenever possible, limited his +panoply to a soft felt hat and a pair of good stout gloves. The wind came +down the lake and sent the waves in small splashes over the gray sea-wall +and teased the bare elms along the wide, winding roadway, and tousled +Abner's abundant chestnut moustache and reddened his ruddy cheeks and +nipped his vigorous nose--all as a reminder that January was here and +ought not to be disregarded. But Abner was thinking less of +meteorological conditions than of Mrs. Whyland's butler. He knew he could +be brusquely haughty toward this menial, but could he be easy and +indifferent? Yet was it right to seem coolly callous toward another human +creature? But, on the other hand, might not a cheery, informal +friendliness, he wondered, as his hand sought the bell-push, be +misconstrued, be ridiculed, be resented, be taken advantage of.... + +The door was opened by a subdued young woman who wore a white cap and +presented a small silver tray. Abner, who dispensed with calling cards on +principle and who would have blushed to read his own name in script on a +piece of white cardboard, asked in a stern voice if Mrs. Whyland was at +home. The maid dropped the tray into the folds of her black dress; she +seemed habituated enough to the sudden appearance of the cardless. She +looked up respectfully, admiringly--she had opened the door for a good +many gentlemen, but seldom for so magnificent and masterful a creature as +Abner--and said yes. But alas for the credit of her mistress and of her +mistress' household: here was a lordly person who had arrived with the +open expectation of meeting a "man" who should "announce" him! + +Abner had come full of subject-matter; he knew just what he was going to +say. And during the interval before Mrs. Whyland's appearance he should +briefly run over his principal points. But he found Mrs. Whyland already +on the ground. Nor was she alone. Two or three other ladies were chatting +with her on minor topics, and before all of these had gone others arrived +to take their places. Not a moment did he spend with her alone; briefly, +it was her "day." + +These ladies referred occasionally to matters musical and +artistic--somebody had given a recital, somebody else was soon to exhibit +certain pictures--but they had little to say about books and they made no +recognition of Abner as an author. "More of this artificial social +repression," he thought. "Why should they be afraid of 'boring' me, as +they word it? They bore Bond--they are always buzzing Giles; I think I +could endure a word or two." His eye roamed over the rich but subdued +furnishings of the room. "No wonder that all spontaneity should be +smothered here!" And when literary topics were finally broached he +experienced less of comfort than of indignation. A sweet little woman +moaned that she had attempted an authors' reading, but that her authors +could not command a proper degree of attention from her guests. Her eyes +flashed indignantly as she called to mind the ways of the people she had +presumptuously ventured to entertain. "They were swells," she murmured +bitterly. "Yes, swells;--it's a harsh word, but not undeserved. I never +tried having so many people of that particular sort before, and they +simply overrode me. They banded against me; being quite in the majority, +they could keep one another in countenance. My poor authors were offended +at the open way in which they were ignored. Poor dear Edward scarcely +knew what to do with such a----" + +The plaintive little creature lapsed into silence; great must have been +her provocation thus to speak of her own guests. Abner's eyes blazed; his +blood boiled with indignation. Such treatment constituted an affront to +all art, to his own art--literature, to himself. + +"I have heard of cases of that sort before," he blurted out. "Mr. Giles +told me of one only yesterday. The victim in this case was a young +gentlewoman"--Abner's lips caressed this taking word--"a young +gentlewoman from the South. She had come to one of those +houses"--everybody, with the help of Abner's tone, saw the insolent front +of the place--"to tell some dialect stories and to sing a few little +songs. The mob--it was nothing less--could hardly be reduced to order. +All those people had seen one another the day before, and they were all +going to see one another the day to follow, yet talk they would and must +and did. Engagements, marriages, acceptances, excuses, compliments, +tittle-tattle, personalities--a rolling flood of chatter and gossip. Mrs. +Pence took her people for what they were, apparently, and kept up with +the best of them herself. Now and then her husband would do a little +feeble something to quiet the tempest, and then the poor girl, half +crying with mortification, would attempt to resume her task. With her +last word the flood would instantly rise and obliterate her once +more----" + +Abner's voice vibrated with a hot anger over this indignity put upon a +fellow "artist." His view of literature was sacramental, sacerdotal. All +should reverence the altar; none should insult the humblest neophyte. +Mrs. Whyland indulgently overlooked his reckless use of names and liked +him none the less; and the little lady who had suffered on a similar +occasion, though in a different role, gave him a glance of thanks. + +"I know the type," said Mrs. Whyland. "It is commoner than it should be; +others of us besides are much too thoughtless. You had too many at a +time, my dear," she went on quietly. "A few scattered grains of gunpowder +do no great harm, but a large number of them massed together will blow +anything to ruin. Our motto should be, 'Few but fit,' eh? Or ought I to +say, 'Fit though few'?" + +Abner stayed on, and finally the last of the ladies rose to go. Abner was +just about to throw open the stable door, preparatory to giving his +hobbies an airing, when a latch-key was heard operating in the front door +of the house itself. Then came a man's quick step, a tussle with a heavy +winter overcoat, and Whyland himself appeared on the threshold. + +He came in, tingling, exhilarated, cordial. His cordiality overflowed at +once; he asked Abner to remain to dinner. + +Abner had not looked for this; a mere call was as far as he had meant to +go. He parried, he evaded, he shuffled toward the door. + +"But where's your overcoat?" asked Whyland, looking about. + +"I didn't wear one." + +"On such a day as this!" exclaimed Edith. + +"I am strong," said Abner. + +"You'll find our winter stronger," said Whyland. "You are not out there +in the country a hundred miles back from the lake. You must stay, of +course." + +Still Abner moved toward the door. _Could_ any city man be as friendly as +Whyland seemed? "It will be colder later on," he submitted. + +"Our welcome will never be warmer." Whyland looked toward his wife--their +rustic appeared to be exacting the observance of all the forms. + +"You will stay, of course," said Edith Whyland; "I have hardly had a word +with you. And when you do go, it must be in a cab." + +Abner succumbed. He was snared, as he felt. Other rooms, still more +handsomely, more lavishly appointed, seemed to yawn for him. And then +came crystal and silver and porcelain and exquisite napery and the rare +smack of new and nameless dishes to help bind him hard and fast. Abner +was in a tremor; his first compromise with Mammon was at hand. + + + + +XV + +Abner accepted his environment; after all, he might force the +conversation to soar far above the mere materialities. His hobbies began +to poke forth their noses, to whinny, to neigh; but some force stronger +or more dexterous than himself seemed to be guiding the talk, and the +name of Medora Giles began to mingle with the click of silver on china +and to weave itself into the progress of the service. + +"A very sweet girl," declared Edith Whyland. "Nothing pleased me more +than her nice domestic ways at the farm. I had got the impression in +Paris that, though she was quite the pride of their little coterie, she +was not exactly looked upon as practical,--not considered particularly +efficient, in a word." + +Abner's thoughts instantly reverted to the farm-house kitchen. What were +the paid services of menials, however deft and practised, compared with +the intimate, personal exertions, the--the--yes, the ministrations of a +woman like Medora Giles? + +"She was probably just waiting for the chance," said Whyland heartily. +"You don't often find talent and real practicality combined in one girl +as they are in Miss Giles. Even little Clytie Summers----" + +"We must not disparage little Clytie," said his wife gravely. + +"Oh, Clytie!" returned Whyland, giving his head a careless, sidelong +jerk. "Still, she's good fun." He laughed. "That child is always breaking +out in some new place. The next place will probably be the students' +ball. You'll be there to see?" he inquired of Abner. + +"No wine, thank you," said Abner to the maid, placing his broad hand on +the foot of a glass already turned down. "At the ball? I hardly think so. +I never----" + +"You might find it amusing," said Mrs. Whyland. "A good many of your +friends will be there--ourselves among them." + +"Yes," said Whyland, turning his eyes away from the uncontaminated glass, +"my wife is a patroness, or whatever they call it. We go to help receive +and to look on during the march and to see the dancing started." + +"I should like to have a hand in helping Medora contrive a costume that +would do her justice," said Mrs. Whyland. "She is really quite a beauty, +and she has a great deal of distinction. Nothing could be better than her +profile and those exquisite black eyebrows." Then, mindful of the +presence of the children, she proceeded by means of graceful periphrase +and carefully studied generalizations to a presentation of Medora's +mental and spiritual attributes. She said many things, in the tone of +kindly, half-veiled patronage; after all she was talking to a country man +about a country maid. She even praised Abner himself by indirection--as +one strand in the general rustic theme. The children, who caught every +word and put this and that together with marvellous celerity and +precision, were vastly impressed by the attributes of the invisible +paragon. They looked at Abner's bigness with their own big eyes--though +ignored by him, his interest being, despite his former championship of +them, less in children than in "the child"--and envied him her +acquaintance; and they began to ask that very evening how soon the +admirable Medora might swim into their ken. + +The first result from Abner's dinner with the Whylands was that Medora, +thus formulated by the sympathetic and appreciative Edith, now became +definitely crystallized in his mind; the second was that he changed his +boarding-house. Mere crudity for its own sake no longer charmed. The +curtains and bedspreads at the farm had served as the earliest prompters +to this step, and the furnishings of the Whyland interior now decided him +to take it. Mrs. Cole's stained and spotted lambrequin became more +offensive than ever, and the industrious hands of Maggie, which did much +more than merely to pass things at table, were now less easy to endure. + +"I know I'm a fastidious, ungrateful wretch," he said to himself, as he +saw his trunk started off to a better neighbourhood and prepared to +follow it. "They've been very kind to me, and little Maggie would do +almost anything for me"--little Maggie, whom he treated as a mere asexual +biped and hectored in the most lordly way, and who yet entertained for +him a puzzled, secret admiration;--"but I can't stand it any longer, +that's all." + +A few days later Bond called at Abner's old address and was referred by a +grieved landlady to his new one. "I don't make out Mr. Joyce," said poor, +hurt Mrs. Cole. + +Bond went down the steps whistling, "They're after me, they're after me!" +in a thoughtful undertone. + + + + +XVI + +"Are you going to dress very much?" grimaced Giles, with a precious +little intonation that caused Bond to laugh outright. + +Abner, who was lounging under the Turkish canopy, pricked up his ears to +catch the reply. Medora tossed aside one of her brother's sketches and +turned her eyes on Abner. + +"I don't know what _to_ do," replied Bond. "We have had such a glut of +Romeos and Mephistos and cowboys. It has occurred to me that I might go +as a rough sketch--a _bozzetto_--of a gentleman." + +"How would you get yourself up for that?" asked Giles. + +"Just as you have often seen me. I should wear that old dress-suit with +the shiny seams and the frayed facings, and a shirt-front seen more +recently by the world than by the laundry, and a pair of shoes already +quite familiar with tweeds and cheviots, and a little black bow--this +last as a sort of sign that I am not fully in society, or if I am, only +briefly at long, uncertain intervals. And a black Derby hat--or possibly +a brown one." + +Medora smiled, well pleased. This easy, jocular treatment of a serious +and formal subject was just what she wanted. It would help show the +listening Abner that the wearing of the social uniform was nothing very +formidable after all, and did not necessarily doom one's moral and +spiritual fibre to utter blight and ruin. + +Abner set his lips. He might indeed go to their wretched "fandango" in +the end--they had all been urging him, Stephen, Medora, everybody--but +never as a cheap imitation of a swell so long as his own good, neat, +well-made, every-day wardrobe existed as it was. He had turned down the +wine-glass at Whyland's, and he would turn down the dress-coat here. + +Medora, unconscious that her precious little seed had fallen, after all, +on stony ground, turned toward Abner with a smile--an intent, observing +one. "Did Mrs. Whyland speak to you about her 'evening'?" + +"Her evening? What evening?" + +"There, I knew she wouldn't dare. You frightened her almost to death." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Why, she had been thinking of having a few friends come in some night +next week for a little reading and some music. But you were so violent in +your comments on the behaviour of society that she didn't dare touch upon +her plan. She was meaning to ask you to read two or three things from +your _Weary World_, but----" + +"Why----" began Abner. + +"Read," put in Bond. "I'm going to." + +"Why," began Abner once more, "I had no notion of offending her. But +everything I said was the truth." + +"She wasn't offended," said Giles, with a smile; "only 'skeered.' You +must have been pretty tart." + +"I can't help it. It makes me so hot to have such things happening----" + +"I know," said Giles. "We're all made hot, now and then, in one way or +another." + +"You _will_ read, won't you?" asked Medora, in accents of subdued +pleading. + +"Well, not _next_ week," replied Abner, in the tone of one who held +postponement to be as good as escape. "That tour of mine is coming off, +after all. They have arranged a number of dates for me, and I shall go +eastward for several readings and possibly a few lectures." + +"How far eastward?" asked Medora eagerly. "As far as New York?" + +"Maybe so," said Abner guardedly. + +"How long shall you be gone?" she asked with great intentness. + +"A fortnight or more," purred Abner complacently, under this show of +interest. "I guess I can open the eyes of those Easterners to a thing or +two." + +Medora dropped her glance thoughtfully to the floor. An exchange of +instruction seemed impending, and she could only hope that the East might +prove a more considerate tutor to Abner than Abner threatened to be to +the East. + + + + +XVII + +The two long winding lines of gaily attired young people joined forces +and the procession came marching down the hall by fours, by eights, by +sixteens, and Abner sat against the wall next to Edith Whyland and +watched the shifting spectacle with a sort of fearful joy. Eudoxia Pence, +seated against the opposite wall, glanced across at him, when occasion +once offered, and nodded and smiled, as if to say, "Isn't it lovely! +Isn't it fascinating!" and Abner, in sudden alarm, recomposed his +tell-tale face and frowningly responded with a grave bow. + +Abner wore his double-breasted frock-coat and his white lawn tie; and +Edith Whyland, who had come in a plain dark reception costume to stand in +a row near the door with the wives of the professors at the Art Academy, +now sat with him and brought him as far into drawing as might be with the +abounding masculine figures in evening dress. Many of these appeared in +the march itself, along with the sailors, the Indian chiefs and the young +blades out of Perugino. Giles passed by as a Florentine noble of the late +Quattrocento, in a black silk robe that muffled his slight indifference +to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his +plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily +announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a +Druid priestess, and Miss Wilbur, the miniaturist, showed forth as Madame +Le Brun, without whose presence no fancy-dress ball could be regarded as +complete. + +High above the marching host rose dozens of the tall conical head-dresses +of mediaeval France with their dependent veils. A great Parisian painter +had just been exhibiting some mural decorations in the galleries of the +Academy, and half the girls, from the life class down, wore +candle-extinguishers on their heads and trailed full robes of startlingly +figured chintz--a material that was expected to effect to the charitable +eye and the friendly imagination the richness of brocade. Many of the +younger men too had succumbed to the same influence and appeared in long +skin-tight hose and bobby little doublets edged with fur. + +"How can they? How can they?" wondered Abner. + +The music abruptly changed its tempo and the march broke up into a waltz. +Through the swirling dancers a single figure, clad in violet and green, +zigzagged across to Eudoxia Pence and bowed over her for a word or two. +Eudoxia moved her lips and spread out her plump hands deprecatingly and +shook her head with a smile. + +"I should hope she _wouldn't_," thought Abner;--"not with a little squirt +like that." + +The figure immediately zigzagged back, with the same effect of eager, +inquiring haste. It paused before Abner and Mrs. Whyland and suddenly +sidled up. Abner recognised Adrian Bond. + +"Clytie?" said Bond. "Has anybody seen or heard anything of Clytie +Summers?" + +"Well, well," said Mrs. Whyland, looking him over; "you are enrolled +among the Boutet de Monvel boys too, are you?" + +Bond ran his eye down his slim legs with fatuous complacency and fingered +the fur fringe of his doublet and pushed his steep flat-topped cap over +to a different angle. Abner looked at him with contemptuous amazement and +would not even speak. + +"Her aunt hasn't heard a word from her for a week," said Bond. "That +settlement has claimed her, body and soul. All she does is to write home +for more clothes. I expect she has completely forgotten all about our +little affair to-night. I thought of course she was going to march with +me, but----" + +And he darted away to resume his quest. + +"She will come," said Mrs. Whyland. "And her cap will be higher and her +veil longer and the pattern of her brocade bigger and more startling than +anybody else can show." + +Little O'Grady moved past with a Maid of Astolat, who wore white +cloth-of-gold and carried a big lily above each ear and dropped a long +full-flowered stalk over her partner's shoulder. Medora drifted by in +company with a Mexican vaquero. Her white garments fluttered famously +against the other's costume of yellow and black. She had let down her +abundant dark hair and then carelessly caught it up again and woven into +it a garland of mistletoe. She smiled on Abner with a plaintive, weary +lifting of her eyebrows; she appeared to be "creating atmosphere" again, +just as on the afternoon when he had first seen her pouring tea. She +seemed a long way off. The occasion itself removed her one stage from +him, and her costume another, and her bearing a third. Was this the same +girl who had so dexterously snatched open the stove door in that +farm-house kitchen and had been so active, as revealed by glimpses from +the corridor, in beating up pillows and in casting sheets and coverlets +to the morning air? + +The waltz suddenly ended and the Mexican renounced Medora only a few +steps beyond Abner. She came along and took a vacant chair next to Edith +Whyland. + +"Are you enjoying it?" she asked Abner. + +"It is very instructive; it is most typical," he replied. + +The orchestra presently began again, but Medora remained in her place. + +"Aren't you dancing this time?" asked Mrs. Whyland. + +"Yes," replied Medora deliberately; "I'm dancing with Mr. Joyce." + +She handed Edith her card. Abner looked across to her with a startled, +puzzled expression. + +"So you are," said Mrs. Whyland. "J-o-y-c-e," she read, and handed the +card back. + +"I don't care for the redowa, anyway," Medora explained; "and I didn't +want to dance with the man that was moving along in my direction to ask +me. It was the only vacant line. What could I do? I looked about and saw +you"--to Abner--"standing by the door----" + +"I suppose I was tall enough to see," said Abner, feeling very huge and +uncomfortable. + +"A tower of strength, a city of refuge," suggested Mrs. Whyland. + +"Precisely," said Medora. "So I snatched a pencil out of Adrian Bond's +hand--he had just put himself down four times----" + +"What impudence!" thought Abner savagely. + +"--and scribbled this,"--dropping her eye on the card. "I hope you don't +mind my having taken your name?" she concluded. + +A sudden gust of gallantry swept over Abner. "Let me have the card," he +said. "I have given my autograph a good many times"--looking at the faint +pencilling--"but I don't recognise this." He drew out a lead-pencil and +rewrote the name big and black above the other. "There," he said,--"a +souvenir of the occasion." He handed the card back with the authentic +autograph of a distinguished author. His name there wiped out not merely +one scribble but all, even to the impertinent four traced by +insignificant Bond. A man who could pen such a signature need have no +regret for not being a carpet-knight besides. + +Medora took back her card, highly gratified; her cavalier had made a long +stride ahead. Abner himself rejoiced at his dexterity in asserting the +man--almost the man of gallantry, at that--under the shield of the +writer. Mrs. Whyland kindly refrained from entering upon an analysis to +determine just what percentage of egotism was to be detected in Abner's +act, and felt emboldened by such unlooked-for graciousness and by the +sustaining presence of Medora to ask a favour for herself--that "evening" +was still in her mind. + +"You _will_ read, won't you?" pleaded Medora. + +"After my return from the East," acquiesced Abner. + +The two women looked at each other, well pleased. + + + + +XVIII + +Presently Leverett Whyland came along. The cares of the urban +property-owner and of the gentleman farmer were alike cast aside; Abner +had never known him to appear so natty, so buoyant, so juvenile. Another +man accompanied him, a man older, larger, heavier, graver, with a +close-clipped gray beard. This newcomer bowed to Mrs. Whyland with a +repression that indicated but a distant acquaintance; and just as Medora +was whisked away by a new partner--it was Bond, claiming the first of his +four--Whyland introduced him to Abner: "Mr. Joyce, Mr. M'm----" Abner, +occupied by Bond's appropriation of Medora, lost the name. + +"And where is Clytie?" asked Whyland, looking about. "Has anybody seen or +heard anything of little Clytie Summers?" + +"No doubt she will appear presently," said his wife drily. + +"And meanwhile----?" he suggested, motioning toward the floor. + +"It might not look amiss," replied his wife, rising. They joined the +dancers. + +Abner was left alone with his new acquaintance, who, arriving at an +instant apprehension of our young man's bulk, seriousness and essential +alienation from the spirit of the affair, seized him as a spent and +bewildered swimmer in strange waters lays hold upon some massive beam +that happens to be drifting past. Abner clung in turn, glad to recognise +a kindred spirit in the midst of this gaudy, frivolous throng. The two +quickly found the common ground of serious interests. The circling, +swinging dancers retired into the background; their place was quietly +taken by the Balance of Trade, by the Condition of the Country, by +Aggregations of Capital, by Land and Labour; and presently Abner was +leading forth, all saddled and bridled, the Readjusted Tax. + +"This is something like," he thought. + +The other made observations and comments in a slow, grave, subdued tone. +"Who is he?" wondered Abner. "What can he be connected with? Anyway, he's +a fine, solid fellow--the kind Whyland might come to be with a little +trying." + +Stephen Giles passed by, guiding the billowy undulations of Eudoxia +Pence. Eudoxia had a buoyancy that more than counteracted her bulk, and +she wafted about, a substantial vision in lemon-coloured silk, for all to +see. She looked at Abner's companion over Giles's shoulder. + +"Enjoying yourself, dear?" she asked. Then she nodded to Abner and +floated away. + +Abner, instantly chilled, looked sidewise at his companion with a dawning +censoriousness in his eyes. He had probably been talking, for a good ten +minutes and in full view of the entire hall, to that arch-magnate of the +trusts, Palmer Pence. He began to cast about for means to break up this +calamitous situation. He welcomed the return of Leverett Whyland with his +wife. + +"Well, Pence," said Whyland, "how has the Amalgamated Association of +Non-Dancers been doing?" + +"Pence," Whyland had said. Yes, this was the Trust man, after all. + +"First-rate," returned the other briefly, rising to go. "That's a fine, +serious young fellow," he added, for Whyland's ear alone. "There's stuff +in him." + +"Been getting on with him, eh?" said Whyland ruefully. "Well, you're in +luck." + +Abner glowered gloomily across the thinning floor. Another dance had just +ended and Whyland had skimmed away once again. Abner, forgetful of the +presence of Edith Whyland, made indignant moan to himself over the +perverse fate that had led him on toward friendliness with a man whose +principles and whose public influence he could not approve. + +There was a sudden stir about the distant doorway. Abner heard the +clapping of hands and a few hearty, jubilant yaps frankly emitted by +young barytone voices. "What now?" he wondered, with a sidelong glance at +Edith Whyland. + +Mrs. Whyland, herself half-risen, was looking toward the door, like +everybody else. "Finally!" she said, with a pleased smile, and sank back +into her place. + +A tall, stalwart figure came through the crowd amidst a storm of +hand-clapping and of cheers. The maids of mediaeval France fluttered +their long veils, and their young male contemporaries waved their velvet +caps. + +It was a gentleman of sixty with a bunch of white whiskers on either jaw +and a pair of flashing steel-gray eyes. He nodded brusquely here and +there and looked about with a tight, fierce smile. "Hurrah! hurrah!" +cried all the students, from the life class down to the cubes and cones. + +"Who is he?" asked Abner. + +"Why, that's Dr. Gowdy," replied his companion. "The ball would hardly +_be_ a ball without him here. He has led the grand march more than +once----" + +"A man of his age and dignity!" mumbled Abner. + +"--but he is late to-night, for some reason. He is one of the Academy +trustees," she added. + +"Perhaps his patients kept him." Abner's tone implied that professional +duties would set much more gracefully on such a figure than social +diversions. + +"His patients?" + +"Yes. You said he was a doctor." + +"But not a doctor of medicine. A doctor of theology." + +"A minister?--a minister of the gospel?" + +"He is, indeed. And I----" + +"And you?" + +"I am one of his parishioners. I sit under him every Sunday." + +Abner was dumb. This professing Christian, this pattern of +evangelicalism, could witness such things without pronouncing a single +word of protest. "Is he going to dance?" he asked finally. + +"I think not. He is coming over here presently to sit with me, just as +you have been doing. You shall meet him." + +Abner was dazed. Palmer Pence, doubtless, was here under protest; but +this man, his superior in age, credit and renown, had apparently come of +his own free will. He sat there staring at the smiling progress of the +Rev. William S. Gowdy through the throng of jubilant students. He felt +stunned, dislocated. It was all too much. + +"Well, well," he heard Mrs. Whyland say. He looked about at her and then +out upon the clearing floor. + +"Well, well," said Mrs. Whyland once again. The wide, empty space before +them was lending itself to a second grand entree, by a party of one. +Clytie Summers had finally arrived. + + + + +XIX + +Clytie came on with the brisk and confident walk that she had cultivated +along the pavements of the shopping district, and she was dressed +precisely as if about to enter upon one of her frequent excursions in +that quarter on some crisp, late-autumn afternoon. She wore a very trig +and jaunty tailor-made suit and a stunning little garnet-velvet toque. +She tripped ahead in a solid but elegant pair of walking-shoes and was +drawing on a tan glove with mannish stitchings over the back. The Boutet +de Monvel girls, the contemporaries of Jeanne d'Arc, were immediately +obliterated; Clytie became the most conspicuous figure in the whole big +place. + +She advanced tapping her heels, smoothing her gloves, and looking every +shirt-front full in the face. Her forehead gathered in a soft little +frown; he whom she sought was not in sight. She got a glimpse of Mrs. +Pence and Medora Giles seated side by side in a far corner, and of Little +O'Grady hovering near, with a covetous eye upon her aunt's profile; and +she took the remaining space in a quick little walk that was almost a +run. + +"Adrian Bond?" she asked. "Tell me; has anybody seen or heard anything of +Adrian Bond?" + +"Well, Clytie child!" exclaimed her aunt, looking her over; "what's all +this?" + +Clytie passed her hand down the side of her thick fawn-coloured skirt and +readjusted her toque. "These things were in that box you sent me day +before yesterday." + +"That box from London?" + +"That box from London. I thought they were never coming. I wrote; I +cabled; I implored friends to go to Regent Street every single day till +they should be done. And here they are, finally--a month late; but I'm +wearing them, all the same." + +"Well, they're worth waiting for," said Medora. "I suppose they are just +about the last word." + +"Just about," replied Clytie complacently. "Meanwhile, where is Adrian +Bond?" + +"Here he comes now," said Medora. + +Clytie turned. She beheld the mediaeval greens and violets. "Why, +Adrian," she protested; "you told me you were coming disguised as a +gentleman." + +"I thought better of it," said Bond. + +"But," she proceeded, "I--I----" She spun round on one heel. "This is all +for you. I thought that if you were coming disguised as a gentleman, it +would be nice for me to come disguised as a lady. No use," she said +regretfully. "Everybody knew me in a minute," she added. + +Bond laughed. "I thought you weren't coming at all." + +"But you got my note?" + +"Not a word." + +"Why, I wrote you how we were having a ball of our own, and how I +couldn't come to this one till I had started off that one." + +"What kind of a ball?" asked Mrs. Pence. + +"One given by our Telephone Girls. I led the grand march with a lovely +young bartender. I struck him all in a heap--can you wonder?--and he told +me just what he thought of me. There wasn't much time to lead up to it. +He was very direct; he took a short cut. Oh, I love the _people_! Why are +the men in our set so shy----!" + +"What did he say?" asked Bond sharply. + +"Oh, never mind! It was one of those cannon-ball compliments that leave +you stunned and breathless, but willing to be stunned again. What do you +think of my togs?" she asked, generally. + +"Look at this jacket while it's a novelty," she went on without waiting +for any response. "The girls were all tremendously taken by it; I noticed +a dozen of them trying to see how it was made.--Oh, how do?" she said +airily to Abner, who came up just then. Having perceived Medora in her +remote corner, he had finally summoned enough resolution to make his +first movement of the evening: leaving Edith Whyland in the company of +Dr. Gowdy, he had succeeded in crossing the intervening leagues alone and +unaided. + +Abner frowned to find this pert little piece cutting in ahead of him in +such a fashion. "How do you do?" he responded stiffly. + +"They'll all be making ones like it," Clytie rattled on. "By next Sunday +every street from Poplar Alley to Flat-iron Park will swarm with them, +and not a milliner's window along the length of Green-gage Road but will +have three or four of these toques on display. Yes, sir; I'm a power in +the Ward already, let me tell you." + +Bond placed his small hand on Abner's broad shoulder. "Isn't she a +winner?" he murmured ecstatically. "If Medora, now, could only have done +something as spirited and unconventional----" + +"I have no fault to find with Miss Giles," retorted Abner in a stern +undertone. "To me she is perfectly satisfactory. She will always do the +right thing in the right way, and always be a lady." + +Bond withdrew his hand. "Oh, come, I say," he began protestingly. + +Abner ignored this. "How about the basket-weaving?" he asked Clytie. + +"Well," Clytie responded hardily, "I found plenty teaching that already. +I have chosen for my department instruction in tact, taste, dress and +manners. Such instruction is badly needed, in more quarters than one." + +Medora flushed. "Clytie Summers," she said, the first moment that the two +were alone, "if ever you speak to Mr. Joyce like that again you need +never come to our studio nor count me any longer among your +acquaintances." + +"Why, dear me----" began Clytie, with an affectation of puzzled +innocence. + +"I mean it," said Medora, with an angry tear starting in her eye. "Mr. +Joyce is too much of a man to be treated so by a child like you." + + + + +XX + +Abner lingered on. He had meant to leave early, but it was as easy to +stay as to go; besides, he felt the stirring of a curiosity to see what +the closing hour of such an occasion might be like. Everything, thus far, +had been most seemly, most decorous, full of a pleasant informality and a +friendly, trustful goodwill; but the crucial point, he had read, always +came about supper-time, after which the rout turned into an orgy. + +Dr. Gowdy came across and launched himself upon Abner, just as he had +done before, when Mrs. Whyland had first made them acquainted. He frankly +admired the strength and the stature of the only man in the room who was +taller and more robust than himself, as well as the intent sobriety of +his glance and the laconic gravity of his speech. + +"An admirable young fellow!" he had exclaimed to Edith Whyland, upon +Abner's leaving them to cross over to Medora. + +"Oh yes, yes!" she had returned with conviction. + +"So serious." + +"Oh yes,"--with less emphasis. She knew Abner was serious because he was +puzzled. + +"So grave." + +"Yes,"--faintly. She knew Abner was grave because he was shocked. + +"A painter?" + +"A--an artist." + +"He has personality. He will make a name for himself, I am sure." + +The good Doctor, now alone with Abner, gave him a chance to celebrate +himself, to make known what there was in him. But Abner remained +inexpressive; and the Doctor, who himself was very ready of tongue and +who, like all fluent people, was much impressed by reserve, presently +went away with a higher opinion of Abner than ever. + +Medora came up, extending her card. "I have secured another dance for +you," she said. "Mr. Bond was kind enough to give it up. He will know +what to do with the time. On this occasion, if you please, we might walk +it out instead of sitting it out. At least we might walk to the +supper-room." + +Abner rose. He had never before offered his arm to a lady and was not +sure that he had offered it now, yet Medora's fingers rested upon his +coat-sleeve. For a few moments he felt himself, half proudly, half +uncomfortably, a part of the spectacle, and then they entered the room +where the spare refreshments were dispensed. + +Medora found a place, and Abner, doing as he saw the other men do, went +forward to traffic across a long table with a coloured waiter. He brought +back to Medora what he saw the other men bringing--a spoonful of +ice-cream with a thin slice of cake, and a cup of coffee of limited size. +Truly the material for an orgy seemed rather scanty. + +"I am glad you promised to read," said Medora. "It is a favour that Mrs. +Whyland will appreciate very much." + +Abner bowed. Surely it was a favour, and appreciation was no more than +his due. + +"I only wish you could have seen your way to being as nice to poor Mrs. +Pence. I overheard her--didn't I?--asking you once more to call. Weren't +you rather non-committal? Were you, strictly speaking, quite civil?" + +"I was as civil as those silly, chattering people round her would let me +be--that niece of hers and the rest. I'm sure I was careful to ask after +her Training School." + +"Oh, _that's_ what made her look so dazed!" + +"Why should it?" asked Abner, his spoon checked in mid-air. + +"She could hardly have expected such an inquiry from _you_. Haven't I +heard that you threw her down on this training-school idea, and threw her +down pretty hard too, the very first time you met her? She wanted help, +sympathy, encouragement, suggestions, and instead of that you gave her +the--the marble heart, as they say. You made her feel so feeble and +flimsy----" + +"Did I?" asked Abner gropingly. Eudoxia loomed before him in all her +largeness. + +"You did. She was disposed to be a noble, useful worker, but now it seems +as if she might drop to the level of a mere social leader. Do, please, +treat Mrs. Whyland more considerately. She means to arrange quite a nice +little programme, and it will be no disadvantage to you to take part in +it. Mr. Bond will read one or two of his travel-sketches, and I may do a +little something myself--a bit in the way of music, perhaps." + +"H'm," said Abner. "Travel-sketches?" He ignored the promise of music. + +"With folk-songs on the violin." + +"I shall hope to offer something better worth while than +travel-sketches," said Abner. "His things will hardly harmonize with +mine, I'm afraid; but possibly they will serve as a sort of contrast." + +"His things will be slight, of course, but the songs will help him out. +Very simple arrangements; people don't care much for anything serious or +heavy." + +"I shall not show myself a mere frivolous entertainer--a simple filler-in +of the leisure moments of the wealthy," said Abner. + +Medora banished the violin--and herself. "What do you think of reading?" +she asked. + +"One or two pieces from my first book, I expect,--_Jim McKay's Defeat_ +and _Less Than the Beasts_, with possibly one of the later chapters in +_Regeneration_." + +"M--m," said Medora. + +"You don't like _Regeneration_, I'm afraid; but there's going to be some +good stuff in it, let me tell you. People will open their eyes and begin +to think. This question of marriage----" + +"You will read that part, then?" + +"Why not? It's a vital question. It concerns everybody, at all times." + +"Yes, it always has--for thousands of years." + +"I don't know that I care for the thousands of years. I care for this +year and next year." + +"And a great deal of good thought has been put into it already." + +"But not the best. The whole subject needs ventilating, shaking up." + +"You would attack the fundamentals, then?" + +"Why not? I'm a radical. I've always called myself such. I go to the +root, without fear, without favour." + +"Still, the present arrangement, resulting from the collective wisdom and +experience of the race ..." said Medora, crumbling her last bit of cake. + +"You make me think of Bond and his 'historical perspective.'" + +"I meant to. It isn't enough to know at just what point in the road we +are; we must know what steps we have taken, what course we have +traversed, to reach it." + +"I never look behind. The hopes and possibilities of the immediate future +are the things that interest _me_. I shall read several chapters of +_Regeneration_--not merely one--on my tour." + +"On your tour, yes. But for Mrs. Whyland substitute something else. There +was a story you wrote at the farm--the one about the girl and her +step-mother--" + +"H'm, yes," said Abner, with less enthusiasm than he usually showed for +his own work. "_In Winter Weather_? H'm." + +This was a short tale, of a somewhat grisly character, which Abner had +composed during the holiday season. Bond had taxed him with using this +work as a buffer to stave off other work of a practical nature such as +was abundantly offered by Giles and his father about the farm; and, to +tell the truth, Abner had limited his physical exertions to half-hour +periods that most other men would have charged to the account of mere +exercise. + +"I _might_ read that, I suppose," he said. + +"And if there is any wild wind in it--why, I should be on hand with my +violin, you know. I might be in white, as I am now, with snow-flakes in +my hair;--they would show, I think, if this mistletoe does----" + +"Not that it represents my best and most characteristic work," he went +on, "or that it bears upon any of the great problems of the day...." + +Medora dashed her spoon against her saucer. Was there no power equal to +teaching this masterful, self-centred creature that a woman was a woman +and not a cold abstraction composed merely of the generalized attributes +of the race, male and female alike? She had been his guide to-night, when +she might have left him to his own helpless flounderings: might he not +try now to show some slight shade of interest in her as an individual, at +least,--as a distinct personality? + +"Shall we be moving?" she suggested. "It should not have taken so long to +eat so little." + + + + +XXI + +"Well, good luck on your trip," said Giles, accompanying Abner to the +door of the studio. + +"And let us hear from you once in a while," added Medora. + +"Surely," said Abner. "Look for a clipping, now and then, to show you +what they are saying of me." + +"And for what you have to say of them we must wait until your return?" +said Medora. + +"Not necessarily," rejoined Abner. "I might"--with the emission of an +obscure, self-conscious sound between a chortle and a gasp, instantly +suppressed--"I might write." + +"Do, by all means," said Stephen. + +"We shall follow your course with the greatest interest," added Medora. + +Almost forthwith began the receipt of newspapers--indifferently printed +sheets from minor cities scattered across Indiana and Ohio. The first two +or three of them came addressed to Giles, but all the subsequent ones +were sent direct to Medora. These publications invariably praised Abner's +presence--for he always towered magnificently on the lecture-platform, +and his delivery--for he read resoundingly with a great deal of clearness +and precision. But they frequently deplored the sombreness of his +subject-matter, and as the tour came to extend farther east, these +objections began to assume a jocular and satirical cast, until the +seaboard itself was reached, when newspapers ceased altogether and +letters began to take their place. These were addressed, with complete +absence of subterfuge, to Medora, and they displayed an increasing +tendency toward the drawing of comparisons between the East and the West, +with the difference more and more in favour of the latter. Abner felt +with growing keenness the formality and insincerity of an old society, +its cynical note, its materialistic ideals, the intrenched injustice +resulting from accumulated and inherited wealth, the conventions that +hampered initiative and froze goodwill. "I shall be glad to get back West +again," he wrote. + +Medora smiled over these observations. "What would the poor dear fellow +think of London or Paris, then, I wonder?" she said. + +"I am glad to see that you will come back to us better satisfied with +us," she wrote,--"if only by comparison. Meanwhile, remember that whether +other audiences may be agreeable or the reverse, there is one audience +waiting for you here with which you ought to feel at home and--by this +time--in sympathy." + +And indeed Abner faced Mrs. Whyland's little circle, when the time +finally came round, with much less sense of irksomeness and repugnance +than he had expected. Some twenty or thirty people assembled in the +Whyland drawing-room on one mid-March evening, and he soon perceived, +with a great relief, that they meant to respect both him and their +hostess. + +"There is every indication that they intend to behave," said Bond in a +reassuring whisper. "Everything will go charmingly." + +People arrived slowly and it was after nine before the slightest evidence +that anything like a programme had been arranged came into view. Abner, +by reason of this delay, would have had serious doubts of any real +interest in his art if a number of ladies had not plied him in the +interval with various little compliments and attentions. He found things +to say in reply; he also engaged in converse with a number of gentlemen, +who possibly had slight regard for literature but who could not help +respecting his size and sincerity. He loomed up impressively in his +frock-coat and steel-gray scarf, and nobody, as in the satiric East, was +heard to comment on his lack of conformity with the customs of "society." + +"Tkh!" said Whyland. "You have come again without your overcoat, they +tell me." + +The lake wind was fiercely hectoring the bare elm-trees before the house, +and the electric globes registered their tortures on the wide reach of +the curving roadway. + +Abner tossed his head carelessly, in proud boast of his own robustness. +"What's three blocks?" he asked. + +"Come into the dining-room and have something," said his host. + +Abner shrank back. "You know I never take wine." + +"Wine!" cried Whyland. "You want something different from wine. You want +a good hot whisky----" + +"No," said Abner. "No." + +The male guests were mostly professional men and representatives of great +corporate interests. They talked together in low undertones about +familiar concerns during their half-hour or so of grace. + +"I see you have begun stringing your wires," said one of them to Whyland. +"We are meeting with them all over town." + +"Yes, yes," replied Whyland, with the sprightly ingenuousness of a boy. +"Whoever looks for a fair return on his money nowadays must keep a little +in advance of legislation." + +"Just what Pence was saying only yesterday." + +"I snatched that great truth from my slight association with the Tax +Commission," burbled Whyland. "Almost everything marked, spotted: +property, real and personal; lands, lots, improvements; bonds, stocks, +mortgages----" + +"Everything, in short, but franchises?" + +"Franchises, yes. Nothing left but to turn one's attention to the public +utilities----" + +"And to hope that legislation may lag as far behind and as long behind as +possible." + +"Precisely," said Whyland. "Meanwhile, we string our wires----" + +"Pence up one pole and you up the next--" + +Whyland shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "And may it be long before +they call us down!" + +Abner listened to all this in silence, shaking his head sadly and +conscious of a deep and growing depression. Here was Whyland, a clever, +likeable fellow--and his host too--disintegrating before his very eyes. + +Whyland looked askant at Abner. "Yes, yes, I know," he almost seemed to +be saying. "But who can tell if a helping hand, extended at the critical +moment, might not have...." + + + + +XXII + +"Is that her? Is that her?" asked the children, the nursery door ajar. + +"Yes, that is 'her,'" said their mother, as Medora, muffled in white and +with her violin-case under her arm, slipped along through the hall. + +"How soon is she going to play? And won't you please let us hear just one +piece, mamma?" + +"You may lean over the banister. But if you let anybody catch you at +it----" + +"How soon is she going to begin?" + +"Not for some time yet." + +"Oh-h! Then won't you bring her in so that----" + +"'Sh! 'sh! And shut the door." + +But the door opened again and the banister was called upon to shield, if +it could, three little figures in white night-dresses as soon as Medora +began to "illustrate" Adrian Bond. The children upstairs were delighted, +and the grown-up children downstairs scarcely less so--for Medora knew +the infirmities of the polite world and never tired its habitues by her +suites and sonatas. She took her cue from Bond's crisp, brief sketches of +amusing travel-types, and gave them a folk-song from the Bavarian +highlands and one or two quaint bits that she had picked up in Brittany. +Abner, who knew her abilities, was vastly disconcerted to find her thus +minimizing herself; as for his own part of the performance, emphasis +should not fail. No, these rich, comfortable, prosperous people should +drink the cup to the dregs--the cup of mire, of slackness, of drudgery, +of dull hopelessness that he alone could mix. To tell the truth, his +auditors tasted of the cup with much docility and appeared to enjoy its +novel flavour. They listened closely and applauded civilly--and waited +for more of Bond and Medora. + +Abner was piqued. The situation did not justify itself. There was no +reason why Medora Giles should lend her talents to promote the success of +Adrian Bond--Bond with his thin hair plastered so pitifully over his poor +little skull and his insignificant face awry with a conventional society +smirk. Yet how, pray, could she contribute to his own? What was there in +any work of his for her to take hold upon? He himself could not claim +charm for it, nor an alluring atmosphere, nor a soft poetical +perspective, nor participation in the consecrated traditions so dear, +apparently, to the sophisticated folk around him. Medora, in fact, had +shaken herself loose from the farmyard, and if he were to follow her must +he not do the same? + +He meant to follow her--he had come to feel sure of that. He was not +certain what it would lead to, he was not certain what he wanted it to +lead to; but if he had not fully realized her to be most rare and +desirable there were many round about him now to help open his eyes. +Hers, after all, was the triumph; everybody was applauding her grace, her +tact, her beauty, her dress, discreetly classical, her distinction; while +she herself parried compliments with smiling good-humour in the very +accents of society itself. + +And he was to follow her with _Less Than the Beasts_. The farm-yard +claimed him for its own once more. He must go in up to his knees, up to +his middle, up to his chin. But as he progressed he forgot his +surroundings, his auditory; all he felt was the fate of his poor heroine, +the pitiful farm-drudge, sunk in hopeless wrong and misery. He read in +his very best manner, with abundant feeling and full conviction, and for +a moment his hearers felt with him. Then came a last elegiac paragraph, +and here Abner's voice grew husky, his throat filled, he coughed, and as +he laid aside his last sheet and turned to rise a quick pain darted +through his chest; he coughed again and involuntarily raised his hand +against his breast, and the acute and sudden pang was signalled clearly +in his face. + +Whyland advanced quickly. "_Now_," he said, in a low tone, "you must let +me have _my_ way--if it isn't too late. Come." He led Abner toward the +dining-room. + +"It is nothing," said Abner, on his return. + +"It is something, I am sure," said Edith Whyland, with great solicitude. + +"It is something serious, I feel certain," said Medora, pale as her +dress. + +"Nonsense!" exclaimed Abner. "I shall know just what to do as soon as I +get home----" He clutched at his breast again. + +"You will not go home to-night," said Whyland. + +Abner did not go home that night, nor the next, nor the next. He was put +to bed in an upper chamber and remained there. Outside was the gray +welter of the lake. Its white-capped waves knocked viciously against the +trembling sea-wall, and their spray, flying across the drenched bed of +the Drive, stung on the window-panes as if to say, in every drop, "It is +we, we who have brought you to this!" + +Medora sent her brother next morning to make inquiries, and at noon she +came herself. + +"The nurse will be here in an hour or two," said Edith Whyland. + +"I will stay till she arrives," said Medora. + +For a fortnight Abner lay muffled in that big, luxurious bed and did as +he was told. + +"Men!" said Medora. "They don't know anything; they have no idea of +looking after themselves. And the bigger they are, the more helpless." + +Abner had his good days and his bad, and suffered the gentle tyranny of +two or three solicitous women, and trusted that his sudden illness was +making due public stir. + +The Readjusters, who had lately been asking after him, first heard of his +plight from the press. The same newspapers that brought them further +details of the adventures of the new Pence-Whyland Franchise in the +Common Council informed them that Abner Joyce--Abner, the one time foe of +privilege--lay ill in Leverett Whyland's own house. + +"He is no longer one of us," pronounced the Readjusters. "We disown him; +we cast him off." + + + + +XXIII + +On one of the earliest days in April, Abner, gaunt and tottering, went +home to Flatfield. Leverett Whyland's own carriage took him to the +station and Medora Giles's own hands arranged his cushions and coverlets. + +"Spring is spring everywhere," said Whyland; "but it's just a little +worse right here than anywhere else. If you're going to pick up now, +home's the place to do it." + +"It's only three hours," said Abner. "I can stand that." + +He shook Whyland's hand gratefully at parting and held Medora's with a +firm pressure as long as he dared and longer than he realized. It was a +pressure that seemed to recognise her at last as an individual woman, and +what his hand did not say his face said and said clearly. And as soon as +he was a man again his tongue should say something too, and say it more +clearly still. + +Medora's image travelled along with him on the dingy window-pane and +intercepted all the well-beloved phenomena of earliest-awakening spring. +One slide followed another, like the pictures of a magic lantern. Now she +was pouring tea, now she was baking bread; sometimes she was playing the +violin, sometimes--and oftenest--she was measuring medicines or on guard +against draughts. In any event the sum total was a matchless assemblage +of grace, charm, talent, sympathy, efficiency. "I am not worthy of her," +he said humbly. "But I must have her," he added, with resolution. He was +not the author of this ruthless masculine paradox. + +After another month of rest and of home nursing Abner undertook a second +tour (in Iowa and Wisconsin, this time) to make sure of his +re-established health and to build up again his shattered finances,--for +sickness, even in the lap of luxury, is expensive. + +He had refused as considerately as he could an offer from Whyland himself +to do literary work. The Pence-Whyland syndicate had lately secured +control of one of the daily newspapers, and Whyland had suggested +semi-weekly articles at Abner's own figure. But Abner could not quite +bring himself to print in a sheet that was the open and avowed champion +of privilege and corruption. + +"You think you won't, then?" asked Whyland, at the door of the Pullman. + +"I don't believe I can," replied Abner mournfully. + +"Oh, yes, you can too," returned Whyland. "In a week or two more you'll +be as strong as ever." + +"I--I think I'd rather not," said Abner, tendering an apologetic hand. + +He wrote to Medora endless plaints about the discomforts of country +hotels; and she, remembering how he had once luxuriated in these very +crudities--he had called them authentic, characteristic, and other long +words ending in _tic_--smiled broadly. It seemed as if that fortnight in +the Whyland house had finally done for him. + +"He will become quite like the rest of us in time," she said;--"and in no +great time, either!" + +In the early days of June Abner spoke. Medora listened and considered. + +"I am like Clytie Summers----" she began slowly. + +"You are not a bit like her!" interrupted Abner, with all haste. + +"In one respect," Medora finished: "when I get married I want to get +married for good. As Clytie says, it is the most satisfactory way in the +long run, and the long run is what I have in mind." + +Abner flushed. "I can promise you that, I think." + +"You must." + +"I do." + +"We will dismiss the new theory." + +"If you demand it." + +The idea of limited matrimonial partnership therefore passed away. Then +there loomed up the question of an engagement-ring. + +"You agree with me, I hope," said Abner, "that all these symbolical +follies might very well be done away with?" + +"No," said Medora firmly; "folly--sheer, utter folly--claims me for a +month at least. And as for symbols, they are the very bread of the race, +and I am as much of the human tribe as anybody else is." + +A few days later Medora was wearing her engagement-ring. + +This step accomplished, Abner felt himself free to scale down to a +minimum the customary attentions of a courtship. + +Medora protested. "You are no more than a man, and I am no less than a +woman. You must give all that a man is expected to give and I must have +all that a woman is accustomed to receive." + +The engagement lasted through the summer, and Medora was married at the +farm in October. Abner's parents came the thirty miles across country to +their son's wedding. His father disclosed a singularly buoyant and +expansive nature; he lived in the blessings the day brought forth, and +considered not too deeply--as the poet once counselled--the questions +that had kept his son in the fume and heat of unquenchable discussion. +Mrs. Joyce was quiet, demure, rock-rooted in her self-respecting +gravity--a sweet, sympathetic, winning little woman. She advanced at once +into the bustle of the household, and it was plain that nature had +endowed her with a fondness for work for work's very sake, and that she +was proud of her own activity and thoroughness. Abner, everybody saw, was +immensely wrapped up in her. "A man who makes such a good son," said +Giles to his wife, "will make a good husband." + +"I expect him to," said Medora, overhearing. "And I intend to put on the +last few finishing touches myself." + + + + +XXIV + +One after another several carriages dismissed their occupants with slams +that carried far and wide on the crisp air of the early December evening, +and a variety of muffled figures toiled up the broad granite steps and +disappeared in the maw of the cavernous round-arched entrance-porch. At +both front and flank of the house a score of curtained windows permitted +the escape of hints of hospitable intentions; and in point of fact Mr. +and Mrs. Palmer Pence were giving a dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Bond. + +Adrian and Clytie were but lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, +after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had +finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of +work at the dear one's feet, but also--by a slight discounting of future +certainties--to put a good deal of money in his purse. He had at last +found a way to turn his "European atmosphere" and his "historical +perspective" to profitable account,--to write something that thousands +were willing to read and to pay for. Thirty thousand was the number thus +far; and that number, reached within six weeks, meant a hundred thousand +before the "run" should be over. His method involved simply a familiar +offhand treatment of royalty, backed up by an excess of beauty, bravery, +sword-play, costume, and irresponsible and impossible incident. "The only +wonder is," he said, "that I shouldn't have taken up with this before. +Anybody can do it; almost everybody else has done it." + +Clytie was delighted by this sudden showy stroke of fortune, and readily +allowed Adrian's long string of hints and intimations--they had come +rolling in thick and fast through the advancing summer--to solidify into +a concrete proposal. + +"With this and my little investments," he said fondly, "we might rub +along very decently." + +"I hope so," said Clytie. + +"Let's try." + +"Let's." + +The Whylands were also of those who climbed the granite steps. Mrs. +Whyland had required a little urging, as on some previous occasions. + +"I hope you won't make difficulties," her husband had said. "Mrs. Pence +is a nice enough woman, as women go; and since my new relations with her +husband...." + +"Well, if you think it necessary," she returned resignedly. At need she +might find the means to avoid anything like a real intimacy; and, after +all, there would be a certain satisfaction in finally seeing, with her +own eyes, Clytie Summers as somebody's actual wife. + +Last to arrive were the Joyces. Medora wore the wedding-gown that had +astonished the country neighbours for ten miles around, and Abner was in +the customary evening dress. + +"A bachelor and a genius," Medora had declared, "may enjoy some latitude, +but a married man must consider his wife." + +Abner had dutifully considered. He who considers is like him who +hesitates--lost. + +"There will be wine," said Medora. "Drink it. There may be toasts. Be +ready to respond." + +Abner could think on his feet--speech would not fail. And his fortnight +with the Whylands had reconciled him to more things than wine. + +"Let me be proud of you," said Medora. + +Abner shook to his centre. Had he married a Delilah and a Beatrice in +one? + +"And don't let's talk any more about our book than they talk of theirs," +she counselled to end with. + +_Regeneration_ had appeared within a week of _My Lady's Honour_ and was +doing well enough among a certain class of hardy readers who did not +shrink from problems. Some of the less grateful passages had been +censored by Medora's own hand and the unfriendlier of the critics thus +partially disarmed in advance. But _Regeneration_ was no longer a burning +matter; Medora's thoughts were on the great, new, different thing that +Abner was now shaping. He had finally come to an apprehension of the +city. In certain of its aspects it was as interestingly crass and crude +as the country, and the deep roar of its wrongs and sufferings was +becoming audible enough to his ears to exact some share of his attention. +In _The Fumes of the Foundry_ he was to show a bold advance into a new +field. This book would depict the modern city in the making: the +strenuous strugglings of traditionless millions; the rising of new +powers, the intrusion of new factors; the hardy scorn of precedent, the +decisive trampling upon conventions; the fight under new conditions for +new objects and purposes, the plunging forward over a novel road toward +some no less novel goal; the general clash of ill-defined, +half-formulated forces. All this study would explain much that was +obscure and justify much that appeared reprehensible. Such a book would +find place and reason for Pences and for Whylands. Indulgence would come +with understanding, and reconciliation to repellent ideals and to the men +that embodied them might not unnaturally follow. + +Full of his own new idea, Abner felt a greater contempt than ever for +Bond's late departure and for the facile success that had attended it. + +"I know how you look upon me," said Bond cheerfully. "Yet who, more than +you yourself, is responsible for my come-down?" + +"I?" + +"You. When the psychological moment was on me and I needed most of all +your encouragement, you dashed me with cold water instead. Now see where +I am!" + +Abner presently disclosed himself as one of the major ornaments of the +feast. He talked, with no lack of ease and dexterity, to three or four +ladies he had never seen before in his life, and even showed his ability +for give-and-take with their husbands, on the basis of mutual tolerance +and consideration. The quiet dignity that was his natural though latent +gift from one parent he had learned how to maintain with less of jealous +and aggressive self-consciousness; and a kind of congenital geniality, +his heritage from the other, had now made its belated appearance and +begun to show forth its tardy glow. Everybody found Abner interesting; +one or two even found him charming. Those who had never liked him before +began to like him now; those who had liked him before now liked him more +than ever. Medora looked across at him; her eyes shone with pleasure and +pride. + +Clytie sat between Pence and Whyland. Whyland's face had already begun to +take on the peculiar hard-finish that follows upon success--success +reached in a certain way. "How about the Settlement?" he asked. + +Clytie shrugged her shoulders. "I have other interests now. Besides, I +felt that my efforts on behalf of the Poor were more or less +misunderstood and unappreciated." She glanced down the table toward +Abner. + +Whyland glanced in the same direction and shrugged his shoulders too. "I +understand. I might have turned out to be an idealist myself if a certain +hand had not pushed me down when it should have raised me up!" + +"Ah!" sighed Clytie, who still saw the old Abner bigger than the new, "I +am sure that both Adrian and I might have continued to be among the +Earnest Ones, but for that ruthless creature!" + +Abner sat on one side of Eudoxia Pence--Eudoxia gorgeous, affluent, +worldly. Never had she disclosed herself at a further remove from all +that was earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic, altruistic. + +"No," she said, shaking her head with a pleasant pretence of melancholy, +"I was presumptuous. I did not realize how little my poor hands could do +toward untangling the tangled web of life." Eudoxia, talking to a +literary man, was faithfully striving to take the literary tone. She had +waited for a year now, but the tone was here and time had not impaired +its quality. "There was a period when I felt the strongest impulse toward +the Higher Things; but now--now my husband's growing success needs my +attending step. I must walk beside him and try to find my satisfactions +in the simple duties of a wife." She dropped her head in the proud +humility of welcome defeat. + +Yes, Abner had brought down, one after another, all the pillars of the +temple. But he had dealt out his own fate along with the fate of the +rest: crushed yet complacent, he lay among the ruins. The glamour of +success and of association with the successful was dazzling him. The pomp +and luxury of plutocracy inwrapped him, and he had a sudden sweet +shuddering vision of himself dining with still others of the wealthy just +because they _were_ wealthy, and prominent, and successful. Yes, Abner +had made his compromise with the world. He had conformed. He had reached +an understanding with the children of Mammon. He--a great, original +genius--had become just like other people. His downfall was complete. + + * * * * * + +LITTLE O'GRADY _vs._ THE GRINDSTONE + + * * * * * + +LITTLE O'GRADY _vs._ THE GRINDSTONE + + + + +I + +Mrs. Palmer Pence was a stock-holder in any number of banks--twenty +shares here, fifty there, a hundred elsewhere; but she was a stock-holder +and nothing more, while what she most desired was to be a director: to +act on the board of one at least of these grandiose institutions would +have given her a great deal of comfort. She was clever, she was forceful, +she was ambitious,--but she was a woman; and however keen her desire, her +fellow stockholders seemed bound by the ancient prejudice that barred +woman from such a position of power and honour and left the whole +flagrant monopoly with man. + +"Such discrimination is miserably unjust," she would remonstrate. + +Amongst her other holdings, Mrs. Pence had forty-five shares in the +Grindstone National. This was her favourite bank. Her accounts with the +great retail houses along Broad Street were always settled by checks on +the Grindstone, as well as her obligations to the insatiable cormorants +that trafficked in "robes and manteaux" farther up town. The bank was +close to the shopping centre, and the paying-teller of the Grindstone was +never happier than on those occasions when Eudoxia Pence would roll in +voluminous and majestic and ask him to break a hundred-dollar bill. + +This had last happened during the press of the Christmas shopping. As +Eudoxia turned away from the window of the complaisant teller, a door +opened for a moment in a near-by partition and gave her a glimpse of +eight or ten elderly men seated round a long solid table whose top bore a +litter of papers--among them, many big sheets of light brown. She saw +what was going on,--a directors' meeting. Her unappeased longing rose and +stirred once more within her, and a shadow crossed her broad handsome +face--the face that Little O'Grady had resolutely pursued all over the +hall the evening she had deigned to show it at the Art Students' dance, +with his long fingers curved and straining as if ready to dig themselves +instantly into the clay itself. + +"I don't care so much about the other banks," she sighed; "but if I could +only be one of the board here!" + +The door closed immediately, but not before she had caught the essential +mass and outline of the situation. This august though limited gathering +was submitting to an harangue--it seemed nothing less--from a little +fellow who stood before the fireplace and wagged a big head covered with +frizzled sandy hair, and gave them glances of humorous determination from +his narrow gray-green eyes, and waved a pair of long supple hands in +their protesting faces. Yes, the faces were protesting all. "Who are you, +to claim our attention in this summary fashion?" asked one. "What do you +mean by thrusting yourself upon us quite unbidden?" asked another. "Why +do you come here to complicate a question that is much too complicated +for us already?" demanded a third. + +Yes, the door closed immediately, yet Eudoxia Pence had a clairvoyant +sense of what was going on behind that rather plebeian partition of black +walnut and frosted glass. She knew how they must all be hesitating, +fumbling, floundering--snared by a problem wholly new and unfamiliar, and +readily falling victims to intimidation from the humblest source. The +entire situation was as clear as sunlight in the gesture with which +Jeremiah McNulty, blinking his ancient eyes, had laid down that sheet of +yellow-brown paper and had scratched his gray old chin. + +"They need _me_," said Eudoxia Pence. "Indeed, they might be glad to have +me. I feel certain that, if left to themselves, they will end by doing +something awful." + +She was perfectly confident that she could be of service in the bank's +affairs. Had she not always been successful with her own? So it pleased +her to think--and indeed nothing had developed in connection with her +private finances to bring her under the shadow of self-doubt. The elderly +hand of her husband, which was deep in vaster concerns, seldom interfered +in hers, and never obtrusively. Now and then he dropped for a moment his +own interests--he was engaged in forming the trustful into trusts and in +massing such combinations into combinations greater still--to steady or +to direct his wife's; but in general Eudoxia was left to regard herself +as the guiding force of her own fortunes, and to believe herself capable +of almost anything in the field of general finance. + +The Grindstone National Bank, after ten years of prosperity in rather +shabby rented quarters, had determined to present a better face to the +world by putting up a building of its own. The day was really past when +an institution of such calibre could fittingly occupy a mere room or two +in a big "block" given over to miscellaneous business purposes. It was +little to the advantage of the Grindstone that it shared its entrance-way +with a steamship company and a fire-insurance concern, and was roofed +over by a dubious herd of lightweight loan brokers, and undermined by +boot-blacking parlours, and barnacled with peanut and banana stands. Such +a situation called loudly for betterment. + +"It's time to leave all that sort of thing behind," decreed Andrew P. +Hill, waggling his short chin beard decisively and shutting his handsome +porcelain teeth with a snap. "What we want is to make a show and +advertise our business." + +Hill was president of the Grindstone and its largest stock-holder. Mr. +McNulty listened to his words, and so did Mr. Rosenberg, and so did Mr. +Gibbons and Mr. Holbrook and the rest of the directors; and they had all +finally agreed--all save Mr. Rosenberg--that the time was come for the +Grindstone to put up its own building and to occupy that building +entirely and exclusively. Mr. Rosenberg imaged a few suites for tenants, +but he was voted down. + +They had found a moderately old young man who knew his Paris and his +Vienna and who could "render" elevations and perspectives with the best. +This clever person gathered together Andrew P. Hill and Simon Rosenberg +and Jeremiah McNulty and all the others of the hesitating little band and +with infinite tact "shood" them gently, step by step, despite multiplied +protests and backdrawings, up the rugged slopes of doubt toward the +summit where stood and shone his own resplendent Ideal. Each of the flock +took the trip as his particular training and temperament dictated. Andrew +was a bit dazed, but none the less exhilarated; Jeremiah shook his head, +yet kept his feet in motion; Simon grumbled that the whole business spelt +little less than ruination. But Roscoe Orlando Gibbons, who had been +about the world not a little and who drew sanction for the young +architect's doings from more quarters of the Continent than one, +instantly rose to the occasion and landed on the topmost pinnacle of the +shining temple at a single swoop. Here he stood tiptoe and beckoned. This +confident pose, this encouraging gesture, had its effect; the others +toiled and scrambled up, each after his own fashion, but they all got +there. Even old Oliver Dowd, who had once been a member of the state +legislature and had won the title of watch-dog of the treasury by +opposing expenditures of any kind for any purpose whatever, finally fell +into line. His name was the last to go down, but down it went after due +delay; and presently the new building began to rise, only a street or two +distant from the old. + +The new Grindstone, of all the Temples of Finance within the town, was to +be the most impressive, the most imposing, the most unmitigatedly +monumental. The bold young architect had loftily renounced all economies +of space, time, material, and had imagined a grandiose facade with a long +colonnade of polished blue-granite pillars, a pompous attic story above, +and a wide flight of marble steps below. The inside was to be quite as +overbearingly classical as the outside. There was to be a sort of arched +and columned court under a vast prismatic skylight; lunettes, spandrels, +friezes and the like were to abound; and the opportunities for interior +decoration were to be lavish, limitless. + +Now these lunettes and spandrels were the things that were making all the +trouble. The building itself was moving on well enough: the walls were +all up; and half the columns--despite the groans of Simon Rosenberg--were +in place. Here no hitch worth speaking of had occurred: merely a running +short of material at the quarry, the bankruptcy of the first contractor, +and a standstill of a month or two when all the bricklayers on the job +had declined to work or to allow anybody else to work. Such trifles as +these could be foreseen and allowed for; but not one of the Grindstone's +devoted little band had ever grappled with a general decorative scheme +for the embellishment of a great edifice raised to the greater glory of +Six-per-cent, or had attempted to adjust the rival claims of a horde of +painters, sculptors, modellers, and mosaickers all eager for a chance to +distinguish themselves and to cut down the surplus and the undivided +profits. No wonder that Jeremiah McNulty scratched his chin, and that +Simon Rosenberg puckered up his yellow old face, and that Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons ran his fingers through his florid side-whiskers as he tried to +find some sanction and guidance in Berlin or in Rome, and that Andrew P. +Hill frowned blackly upon all the rest for being as undecided as he was +himself. + +"This is awful!" he moaned. "We may have to calcimine the whole place in +pale pink and let it go at that!" + +The door opened and a deferential clerk announced the waiting presence of +one of the Morrell Twins. Andrew, giving a sigh of relief, swept the +drawings quickly aside and rose. Here, at last, his feet were back once +more on solid ground. + + + + +II + +While Richard Morrell charmed the ears of the Grindstone's directors with +his tuneful periods, and dazzled their eyes by the slow waving to and fro +of certain elegantly engraved certificates of stock, and made his +determined chin and his big round shoulders say to the assembled body +that there was no chance of his going away before he had carried his +point, Eudoxia Pence was taking tea at the Temple of Art. The early +twilight of mid-December had descended. "It's too late for any more +shopping," said Eudoxia, "and I'm too tired." Though she was still on the +right side of forty by a year or two, this advantage of youth was +counterbalanced by the great effort of pushing her abundant bulk through +the throng of Christmas strugglers that crowded shop and sidewalk alike. +"Only to sit down for half an hour in some quiet place!" she panted. "I +believe I'll just drop up and see Daffingdon for a bit. That will give me +a chance at the same time to keep half an eye on Virgilia," she added +soberly. "A hundred to one she'll be there; and if anybody's to blame +_for_ her being there, I'm that body." + +The Temple of Art, after rooting itself in drama and oratory, after +throwing out a sturdy limb of chaste traffic in bibelots here and +instruments of music there and books and engravings elsewhere, and after +putting forth much foliage in the shape of string-scraping and +key-teasing and anguished vocalizing and determined paper-reading and +indomitable lecture-hearing, blossomed forth at last in a number of +skylights, and under one of these lofty covers Daffingdon Dill carried on +his professional activities. Eudoxia sank down upon his big settle +covered with Spanish leather, and took her tea and her biscuits, and +declined the pink peppermints, and looked around to discover, by the dim +help of the Japanese lantern and the battered old brass lamp from +Damascus, just who might be present. Several people were scattered about +in various dusky corners, and Virgilia Jeffreys was no doubt among them. +"I don't know just how all this is going to end," sighed Eudoxia +dubiously. "I presume I'm as responsible as anybody else," she added, in +a reflective, judicial tone. "More so," she tacked on. "Altogether so," +she added further, as she took a first sip. + +Daffingdon Dill was a newcomer, but he had taken hold of things in a +pretty confident, competent fashion and had made more of an impression in +one year than many of his confreres had made in five or ten. To begin +with, he had unhesitatingly quartered himself in the most desirable +building the town could boast. Many of his colleagues, no less clever +(save in this one respect), still lingered in the old Rabbit-Hutch, a +building which had been good enough in its day but which belonged, like +the building that Andrew P. Hill was preparing to leave, to a day now +past. Fearful of the higher rents that more modern quarters exacted, they +went on paying their monthly stipend to old Ezekiel Warren, with such +regularity as circumstances would admit, and made no effort to escape the +affectionate banter that grouped them under the common name of the +Bunnies. + +Dill kept his studio up to the general level of the Temple, and himself +up to the general level of the studio. There was little trace of Bohemia +about either. Society found his workroom a veritable _salon de +reception_. He himself never permitted the painter to eclipse the +gentleman. People who came late in the afternoon found his tall, slender +figure inclosed in a coat of precisely the right length, shape, cut. +People who came earlier found him in guise more professional but no less +elegant. He took a great deal of pains with his handsome hands, which +many visitors pressed with cautious, admiring respect, as something a +little too good to be true, as something a little too fine for this +workaday world, and with his well-grown beard, which hugged his cheeks +closely to make a telling manifestation upon his chin, after the manner +of Van Dyck. This beard cried, almost clamoured, for picturesque +accessories, and when Daffingdon went to a costume ball he generally wore +a ruff and carried a rapier. All these things had their effect, and when +people said, "How much?" and Daffingdon with unblinking serenity said, +"So much," they quailed sometimes, but they never tried to beat him down. + +"Why, after all, you know," they would say to one another, as +they reconsidered his effective presence and his expensive +surroundings,--"why, after all, it isn't as if----" Then they would think +of the Rabbit-Hutch and acknowledge that here was a great advance. The +poor Bunnies would have blinked--and often had, you may be sure. + +Daffingdon was a bachelor, and he was old enough or young enough for +anything, being just thirty; and his sister Judith, who was some years +his senior, sat behind his tea-urn on most occasions and made it possible +for the young things of society to flutter in as freely as they willed. +The young things came to little in themselves, but some of them had +vainglorious mothers and ambitious, pomp-loving fathers, and who could +tell in what richly promising crevice their light-minded chatter might +lodge and sprout? So Daffingdon and his sister encouraged them to come, +and the young things came gladly, willing enough to meet with a break in +the social round that was already becoming monotonous; and among the +others came Preciosa McNulty,--dear little Preciosa, pretty, +warm-hearted, self-willed----But we will wait a bit for _her_, if you +please. + +Daffingdon had spent many years abroad and still kept _au courant_ with +European art matters in general; he knew what they were doing in Munich +no less than in Paris, and letters with foreign postmarks were always +dropping in on him to tempt his mind to little excursions backward across +the sea. He kept himself more or less in touch too with the kindred arts, +and readily passed in certain circles for a man of the most pronouncedly +intellectual and cultivated type. + +Thus, at least, Virgilia Jeffreys saw him. Virgilia herself was +intellectual to excess and cultivated beyond the utmost bounds of reason; +indeed, her people were beginning to wonder where in the world they were +to find a husband for her. Not that Virgilia intimidated the men, but +that the men disappointed Virgilia. They stayed where they always had +stayed--close to the ground, whereas Virgilia, with each successive +season, soared higher through the blue empyrean of general culture. She +had not stopped with a mere going to college, nor even with a good deal +of post-graduate work to supplement this, nor even with an extended range +of travel to supplement that; she was still reading, writing, studying, +debating as hard as ever, and paying dues to this improving institution +and making copious observations at the other. She too had her foreign +correspondents and knew just what was going on at Florence and what +people were up to in Leipsic and Dresden. She possessed, so she +considered, a wide outlook and the greatest possible breadth of +interests, and she knew she was a dozen times too good for any man she +had ever met. + +There were scores of other girls like her--girls who were forging ahead +while the men were standing still: a phenomenon with all the fine +threatenings of a general calamity. Where should these girls go to find +husbands? Virgilia herself had been very curt with a young real-estate +dealer, who was that and nothing more; and she had been even more summary +with a stock-broker's clerk who, flashing upon her all of a sudden, had +pointed an unwavering forefinger toward a roseate, coruscating future, +but who had finished his schooling at seventeen and had had neither time +nor inclination since to make good his deficiencies. The first had just +installed his bride in a house of significant breadth and pomposity, and +the other, having detached himself from the parent office, was now +executing a comet-like flight that set the entire town astare and agape. + +"Well, that's nothing to me," said Virgilia disdainfully. "I couldn't +have lived with either of them a month. I'm only twenty-six and I don't +feel at all alarmed." + +Then somebody or other had piloted her aunt Eudoxia toward the Temple of +Art, and Eudoxia, after about so much of dawdling and of sipping and of +nibbling and of gentle patronage and of dilettante comment and criticism +through this studio and that, had opened up a like privilege to her +niece. Together they had dawdled and sipped and suggested up one corridor +and down another, and in due course they arrived at the studio of +Daffingdon Dill, and presently they were as good as enrolled among the +habitues of the place. + +Eudoxia peered about among the tapestries and the sombre old furniture. +"Yes, there she is over in the corner with Preciosa McNulty." Then she +looked back toward Dill and sighed lightly. "I wonder how this thing is +coming out? I wonder how I want it to come out? And I wonder how much +responsibility I must really bear for the way it _does_ come out?" + + + + +III + +She handed back her cup to Dill. "What are those two girls giggling +about?" she asked him. + +Dill snatched a moment from his cares as host. Little had he expected to +hear Virgilia Jeffreys taxed with giggling. + +Yet giggling she was,--with some emphasis and spirit too. She seemed to +have slipped back from sedate and dignified young womanhood to mere +flippant girlishness and not to have gained appreciably by the +transition. Preciosa McNulty, still a girl and giving no immediate +promise of developing into anything more, shared with her the +over-cushioned disorder of the Persian canopy and giggled too. + +Preciosa could laugh and chatter easily, volubly, spontaneously--all +this, as yet, was the natural utterance of her being. But Virgilia was +keeping pace with her, was even surpassing her. Yet she showed evidences +of effort, of self-consciousness, of serious intention; now and then the +_arriere pensee_ disclosed its puckered front. + +This, and nothing but this, could excuse Virgilia to-day. For she was too +old to giggle, far too learned, much too sober-minded. Dill himself felt +this, and shook his head in reply to Eudoxia Pence's question, as he +stepped away for a moment to accompany a pair of gracious amateurs to the +door. + +A little figure that was passing rapidly along the corridor stopped on +seeing the door ajar and waved a long supple hand and wagged a frizzly +flaxen poll and gave a humorous wink out of his gray-green eyes and +called unabashedly, before he resumed his skurrying flight: + +"I've got 'em on the run, Daff; I've got 'em on the run!" + +"Oh, that little O'Grady!" sighed Dill genteelly; "he is impossible; he +will end with disgracing us. What can the fellow be up to now?" he +wondered, closing the door, and preparing to return to his study of +Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"Your poor grandfather!--can't I fancy him!" Virgilia was saying to +Preciosa. She gave a light dab at the other's muff with her long slender +hand. "Dear, puzzled old soul!"--and she crinkled up her narrow green +eyes. + +"Can't you?" Preciosa laughed back. "'I don't know anything about such +things,' grandpa insisted. 'Go and see Mr. Hill, young man, or Mr. +Gibbons.' But the young man kept unrolling sheet after sheet. 'Grandpa,' +I said, 'we shall miss the whole of the first act.' Then the young man +_had_ to go. He didn't want to, but he had to." + +"The 'young man'!" laughed Virgilia, dandling a cushion. "Didn't he have +any name?" + +"Some queer one: Ig--Ig----I don't remember." + +"Nor any address?" + +"Some far-away street you never heard of." + +"How ridiculous!" chirped Virgilia, throwing back her head. "Do let them +give you another cup of tea or some more of those biscuits. Ask for what +you want. Don't be backward, even if you are a newcomer." + +"Dear me," said Preciosa; "don't tell me I'm bashful." + +"Did his sketches amount to anything?" asked Virgilia, herself reaching +for the biscuits. + +"Well, there were plenty _of_ them. By a quarter to eight they had +covered all the tables and chairs and about two-thirds of the floor. +There was every evidence of that young man's being after us--a regular +siege. I have no doubt he was waiting outside all through dinner; he rang +the bell the very minute poor unsuspecting grandpa turned up the gas in +the front parlour. But that's nothing to the one just before him." + +"What did _he_ do?" asked Virgilia, with all her fine blonde intentness. + +Preciosa threw back her mop of chestnut hair. "Followed grandpa all the +way home and would hardly let him have his dinner. He had it this time, +however. And then, as I say, he turned up the gas; and then----" + +"And then the shower began?" suggested Virgilia, putting her delicate +eyebrows through their paces. + +"The downpour. I never knew anybody to talk faster, or give out more +ideas, or wave his hands harder,--like this." Preciosa cast her muff away +completely and abandoned her plump little fingers to unbridled pantomime. +"The room was peopled--isn't that the way they say it, peopled?--in no +time; a regular reception. There were ladies in Greek draperies seated on +big cogged wheels with factory chimneys rising behind, and strong young +fellows in leather aprons leaning against anvils and forges, and there +were----" + +"I know, I know," declared Virgilia, ducking her head into her cushion, +with the effect of suppressing a shriek of laughter. "And more 'ladies' +reading from scrolls to children standing at their knee. And all sorts of +folks blowing trumpets and bestowing garlands; Commerce, Industry, Art, +Manufacturing, Education, and the rest of them. Dear child! how good of +you to call all these things 'ideas'! No wonder such novelties puzzled +your poor dear grandfather!" + +She clutched Preciosa's chubby little hand with her long white fingers, +as if to squeeze from it an answering shriek. + +But Preciosa contained herself. "And there was a lady engineer," she went +on, after a short pause, "in a light blue himation--is that what they +call it, himation?--and she was fluttering it out of the cab-window----" + +"The Railway!" declared Virgilia, trying to laugh tears into her eyes. + +"And one drawing showed a lot of Cupids nesting on top of a telegraph +pole----" + +"What did Jeremiah McNulty think of that?" + +"--with their little pink heels dangling down just as cute----" + +"In a bank!" cried Virgilia, in a perfect transport of merriment. +Preciosa, with whom a growing admiration for these abundant decorative +details seemed to be overlaying her sense of fun, stopped in her account +and then complaisantly gave forth the laugh that Virgilia seemed to +expect. + +"Oh, these young men!" exclaimed Virgilia, with a gasp and a gurgle to +indicate that the limit was nearly reached; "these young men whom you +never heard of, whose names you can't pronounce, and who live you don't +know where! They will be too much for your poor grandfather. Let him +escape them while he can. He is too old and too busy for such annoyances. +Let him find some other young man whose name is known and whose studio is +in a civilized part of the town and who has done some rather good work +for some rather nice people." Virgilia crinkled up her eyes in a little +spasm of confidential merriment and then opened them on her +surroundings--the rich sobriety of the furniture; the casual picturesque +groupings of "nice people"; the shining tea-urn flanked by the candles in +their fluted paper shades; the heavy gilded frames inclosing copies made +by Dill in the galleries of Madrid and St. Petersburg; other canvases set +against the base-boards face back so as at once to pique and to balk +curiosity with regard to the host's own work; the graceful dignity of +Dill himself, upon whom Virgilia's eyes rested last yet longest. + +"I might mention Mr. Dill to grandpa," said Preciosa, with returning +seriousness. This, her first intrusion into the strange, rich world of +art, had rather impressed her, after all; such novel hospitality really +required some acknowledgment. + +"Do," said Virgilia, now in quite a gale. "Don't drink his tea for +nothing! And if it's 'ideas' that are wanted," she went on, as she +grasped Preciosa lightly by both shoulders and gave her a humorous shake, +"this is the shop!" + +Preciosa paused for a moment's consideration. She was not sure that +Virgilia knew her well enough to shake her, nor had she supposed that +Virgilia was giddy enough to shake anybody. Neither was she sure that +what she most wanted was to ridicule the facile and voluminous sketches +spread out so widely and so rapidly by that young man with the burning +eyes and the quick, nervous hands and the big shock of wavy black hair. +Still, it was as easy to laugh as not to laugh; besides, which of the two +might better set the tone, and authoritatively? Virgilia, surely; by +reason of her age--she was some six or eight years the senior, by reason +of her stature--she was several inches the taller, and by reason of her +standing as an habituee--surely she must know how to behave in a studio. +So Preciosa tossed her pretty little head, and laughed, as she felt +herself expected to. + +"The shop, yes," she acquiesced gaily. "And if I come again----" + +"If?" repeated Virgilia, raising her eyebrows archly. + +"And when I come again," amended Preciosa, rising, "I might bring grandpa +with me. I'm sure all this would be new to him." + +"Do, by all means," cried Virgilia. "And don't be too long doing it. _We_ +won't keep him from his food and drink; _we_ won't worry his poor tired +brain, if we can help it; _we_ won't give him ladies seated beneath +factory chimneys; _we_ won't----You are going? Goodbye, dear. So glad to +have met you here. Aunt and I drop in quite frequently, and you should +learn to do so too." + +She gave Preciosa a parting smile, then composed her features to a look +of grave intentness and turned about to impose this look upon Daffingdon +Dill wherever found. + +Her eyes found him on the opposite side of the room, in company with her +aunt. Both of them were studying her with some seriousness and some +surprise. Virgilia, having already resumed her customary facial +expression, now took on her usual self-contained manner as well and +crossed over to them. + + + + +IV + +"Well, well, Virgilia," said her aunt, as the door closed on Preciosa, +"you see more in that girl than I do." + +"I see her grandfather," whispered Virgilia, with the obscure brevity of +an oracle. She drew down her brows and looked at the wondering Dill,--or +rather, through him, past him. + +"Oh," replied her aunt softly. It was impossible that she should +misunderstand; McNulty and Hill and the rest of them had just been in her +own thoughts, on her own tongue. "I _shall_ be responsible, after all," +she said within herself. Then she gave Virgilia a slight frown of +disapproval: it was not precisely a maidenly part that her niece had +chosen to play; neither did it show the degree of deference due to an +elder, a chaperon and--if you came right at it--to a stock-holder. "If +this thing must be engineered," thought Eudoxia, "I think I should prefer +to engineer it myself." Heaven pardon her, though, for ever having +brought Virgilia Jeffreys to Daffingdon Dill's studio! + +She herself had come there full of Jeremiah McNulty and Andrew P. Hill +and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. "It's a big undertaking," she had told Dill. +"They're struggling with it now, poor things. They need expert advice. If +I were only one of the board of directors!" + +Dill came up to the mark gingerly. "The air has been full of it for the +last fortnight," he said, struggling between eagerness and professional +dignity. "I know a number of fellows who have thought of going in for +it." + +"I suppose _you_ haven't thought of going in?" + +Dill drew himself up. "How can I?" He suggested the young physician who +will starve but who will not infringe the Code by any practice that +savours in the least of advertising, of soliciting. However, he was a +thousand miles farther away from starvation than was Ignace Prochnow, for +example; much better could he afford to await the arrival of an embassy. + +Eudoxia Pence fumbled her boa. "Does Virgilia really want him? Does he +want Virgilia? Do I want them to have each other? Shall I exert myself in +his behalf?" Such were the questions she submitted to her own +consideration as her eyes roved over the chatting, sipping throng. "Can +he do for her all that a girl in her position would expect? Could such a +fastidious, exacting young woman hope to find anybody she would like +better--or as well?" Eudoxia had three or four swift successive visions +of herself in a variety of circumstances and pleading or discouraging a +variety of causes. Now, for example, she was saying to Virgilia, "Yes, +he's a very nice fellow, I know; but he has only his wits and his brush, +while you must always live as you always have lived--a rich girl to whom +nothing has been denied." Again, she saw herself bent over the desk of +Andrew P. Hill, with her forty-five shares clutched in her resolute hand, +and saying, "I demand to be heard; I demand to have a voice in this +momentous matter; I demand a fair and even chance for my +nephew-in-law-to-be." Once more, she was wringing her hands and asking +Virgilia in tones of piteous protest, "Why, oh why, didn't you take +Richard Morrell when you could have got him?--a fine, promising, pushing +fellow, with his million or more already, and barely thirty-five, just +the right age for you!" Yet again, she was saying to that poor little +vulgarian, Preciosa McNulty, "If Virgilia will, she will, and there's an +end of it; therefore should you, dear child, promise me to use your +influence with that loutish old peasant of a grandfather, you shall have +the beatitude of actually pouring tea at one of my Thursday afternoons, +and I'll even invite your mother to my next large reception----" + +Eudoxia paused, struck suddenly by the earnest scrutiny of both +Daffingdon and Virgilia. She saw that she had tied her boa into a double +knot, and surmised that she had been doing the same with her features +too. + + + + +V + +By this time every "art circle" in the city knew from its centre to its +circumference that the Grindstone National Bank was moving toward the +elaborate decoration of its new building and that the board of directors +was thinking of devoting some twenty thousand dollars or more to this +purpose. The Temple of Art took on its reception smile; the Rabbit-Hutch +began a nervous rummaging for ideas among cobwebs and dusty portfolios +and forgotten canvases; decorators of drawing-rooms and libraries put on +their thinking-caps and stood up their little lightning-rods; and one or +two of the professors at the Art Academy began to overhaul their +mythology and to sketch out broad but hazy schemes for a succession of +thumping big masterpieces, and to wonder whether the directors would call +on them or whether they should be summoned to meet the directors. + +"Gee!" said Little O'Grady (whose _forte_ was reliefs in plastina), as he +hopped around Dill's studio on one leg; "but ain't it a godsend for us!" + +Little O'Grady was celebrated for keeping the most untidy and +harum-scarum quarters throughout the entire Rabbit-Hutch, and for being +wholly beyond the reach of reproof or the range of intimidation. The +stately sobriety of Dill's studio had no deterring effect upon him. +Nothing could impress him; nobody could repress him. He said just what he +thought to anybody and everybody, and acted just as he felt wherever he +happened to be. Just now he felt like dancing a jig--and did so. + +"But, dear me, where do _you_ come in?" asked Dill, moving his easel a +bit farther out of Little O'Grady's range. + +"Where do I come in? Everywhere. I come in on the capitals of the columns +round that court, which will all be modelled after special designs of me +own----" + +"I hadn't heard about them. I should suppose such things would follow +established patterns." + +"So does the architect. But I shall convince him yet that he's mistaken." +O'Grady gave a pirouette in recognition of his own powers of persuasion. + +"And I come in on the mantel-piece in the president's private parlour," +he continued. "It will be a low relief in bronze: 'The Genius of the West +Lighting the Way to Further Progress,' or else, 'Commerce and Finance +Uniting to Do Something or Other'--don't know what just yet, but shall +hit on some notion or other in due time----" + +"You've seen the plans, then? You've been striking up an acquaintance +with the architect himself?" Dill frowned repugnance upon such a bit of +indelicacy, such an indifference to professional etiquette. + +"Well, perhaps I have. Why not? But if there's a president--I s'pose +there is?" + +"I suppose so." + +"Then there'll sure be a parlour. And where there's a parlour there's a +fireplace--see? A large official cavern with never any fire in it. And I +come in on the drinking-fountains at each side of the main entrance: +bronze dolphins twisted upside down and spouting water into marble +basins." + +"They're included too, are they?" + +"Well, I suggested them. Don't those old coupon-clippers ever get +thirsty? Sure they do. Well, can't I wet their whistles for them? I guess +yes--and I told 'em so." + +"Them? Whom?" + +"The directors." + +"You've seen them?" + +"I attended a meeting of the board, as I suppose I might as well tell +you," said Little O'Grady grandly. + +"You did, eh?" returned Dill, balanced between reprobation of Little +O'Grady's push and admiration for his nerve. + +"Yep. I spoke a good word for myself. And one for the others--Gowan and +Giles and you and Stalinski and----" + +"Um," said Dill, none too well pleased. The last thing he desired was +co-operation from the Rabbit-Hutch and association with the band of +erratic, happy-go-lucky Bohemians that peopled it. "You're laying out a +good deal of work for yourself," he remarked coldly, dismissing the +Bunnies. + +"Work? That's what I'm here for," declared O'Grady brightly. "And if I +slip up on any of these little notions, why I'll just take a hand in the +painting itself--didn't I help on a panorama once? Sure thing. There was +a time when I could kind o' swing a brush, and I guess I could do it yet. +Let's see: 'The Goddess of Finance,' in robes of saffron and purple, +'Declaring a Quarterly Dividend.' Gold background. Stock-holders summoned +by the Genius of Thrift blowing fit to kill on a silver trumpet. Scene +takes place in an autumnal grove of oranges and pomegranates--trees +loaded down with golden eagles and half-eagles. Marble pavement strewn +with fallen coupons. Couldn't I do a fairy-scene like that? I should +say!" Little O'Grady threw out his leg again with sudden vehemence and +toppled over among Dill's heaped-up cushions. + +Dill laughed. "How are the other fellows over your way feeling about it?" + +"Same as me--hopeful. We may have to sleep on excelsior for a while yet, +but we shall soon stop eating it. And the first thing we do with the coin +will be to give old Warren heart-disease by going down in a body and +paying up all our back rent. I'm figuring on pulling out about two +thousand for my share. Then if I want pie I can have it, without stopping +to feel in my pocket first." + +Little O'Grady babbled along as he delineated the mental state of the +other Bunnies. They all felt the situation in the air--they all felt it +in their bones. They all wanted a hand in things--a finger in the pie. +There was Festus Gowan, who did little beyond landscapes, but who thought +he could make some headway with faces and draperies if pushed to it. +There was Mordreth, who did little but portraits--and "deaders" at +that--but who fancied he might come out reasonably strong on landscape +and on architectural accessories if somebody would only give him a +chance. There was Felix Stalinski, who had lately left "spot-knocking" +for general designing and who thought that if a man was able to turn out +a good, effective poster he might consider himself equal to almost +anything. And there was Stephen Giles, who had recently been decorating +reception halls and dining-rooms for the high and mighty and who saw no +reason why he shouldn't take a higher flight still and adorn the palaces +where the money was made instead of those where it was spent. "No use in +my talking to you about _him_, though," broke off Little O'Grady. "He +ain't one of us any more. He's one of you, now." + +"I hope you fellows don't feel that way----" began Dill. + +"He's a renegade," declared Little O'Grady. "But never mind; we like him +all the same. Some day he may be glad to leave the Temple and come back +to us again at the Warren. That'll be all right. We'll welcome him; we'll +share our last mouthful of excelsior with him." Little O'Grady gave +another joyful kick into the air. "Well, his room didn't stay empty long; +Gowan moved down right away, and a new man took Gowan's room only day +before yesterday--so old Ezekiel won't lose more'n about fourteen +dollars' rent, after all. Chap's got his name out already: Ignace +Pr--Pr----Well, anyway, it begins with a P. He makes rattling strong +coffee, by the smell, and tinkles now and then on the thing-a-ma-jig. +They say he's terrible smart--full of the real old stuff." + +"Has Gowan been thinking up anything in particular?" + +"Well, he's thinking he sees that money piled up in the bank vaults. We +all do. And we want to get at it. Say, great thing to be working for a +bank, eh? No flighty, shilly-shallying, notional women, but a lot of +steady, sober business-men who'll make a good straight contract and keep +it. No saying, 'Well, my daughter doesn't altogether fancy this,' or, 'I +will take your sketches home to my husband and we will think about +them,'--and then never telling us _what_ they think. Sure pay, too. And +prompt, as well. Quarter down, let us say, on submitting the general +scheme of decoration; another quarter as soon as we begin actual +work----Yes, sir, I almost feel as if I saw my way to meat once a day +right through the week!" + + + + +VI + +"Then I don't see but that he is about the man for us," said Roscoe +Orlando Gibbons;--"at least he seems to provide a point for us to start +from." + +Jeremiah McNulty rescued some loose memoranda from the absent-minded +pokings of his caller's plump forefinger and scratched his chin. + +"You were pretty favourably impressed, weren't you?" asked Roscoe +Orlando, leaning forward across the corner of the other's desk. "_I_ was. +I thought he had something in him, and something behind him. Seemed to me +like a very dependable chap--for one in that line. These artists, you +know,--erratic, notional, irresponsible. You never feel sure how you have +them; you can't treat with them as you can with a downright, sensible, +methodical business-man. I assure you I've heard the most astonishing +tales about them. There's Whistley, for example--sort of sharp, perverse +spoiled child, I should say. And the time my own brother-in-law had over +the portrait painted by that man from Sweden! We've got to make up our +minds to be patient with them, to humour them. But Dill, now----" Roscoe +Orlando Gibbons ran his fingers through his graying whiskers and waited +for Jeremiah's belated observation. + +Jeremiah took his time in making it. He had accompanied his granddaughter +to Daffingdon Dill's studio, but he was in no haste to formulate his +impressions. His eyes were still blinking at the duskiness of the place, +his nose was still sniffing the curious odour of burning pastilles, his +ears were still full of the low-voiced chatter of a swarm of idle +fashionables, and his feet (that humpy tiger-rug once passed) still had a +lingering sense of the shining slipperiness of the brown polished floor. +That floor!--poor Jeremiah had stood upon it as helpless as a cripple on +a wide glare of ice, at a cruelly embarrassing disadvantage and wholly at +the mercy of that original and anomalous person in the brown Van Dyck +beard. Vainly had he cast about for something to lay hold of. None of the +people there had he ever seen before; none of the topics bandied about so +lightly and carelessly had he ever heard broached before. The sole prop +upon which he had tried to repose his sinking spirit had looked indeed +like an oak, but had turned out to be merely a broken reed. "That's the +only man here," he had muttered, on looking across toward a stalwart, +broad-shouldered figure standing half in the shadow of some frayed and +discoloured drapery. "He's sort o' like one of those 'swells,' in that +slick new coat and all, but I'll risk him." However, this robust young +man had shown himself as prompt as any in his use of the teasing jargon +of the place; he assumed on Jeremiah's part some interest and some +knowledge and dogmatized as readily and energetically on the general +concerns of culture as any of the others. Jeremiah, prostrate, soon moved +away. + +"Who is he--that tall young fellow over by that curtain?" he could not +refrain from asking his granddaughter. How, he was thinking to +himself,--how could such a big, vigorous young man betray such a range of +trivial interests? + +"Why, grandpa," Preciosa had returned reproachfully, "that's Mr. +Joyce--Abner Joyce, the great writer. You've heard of him, surely?" + +"H'm," said Jeremiah. He hadn't. + +"And that lovely creature in the long, bottle-green coat," Preciosa went +on, "is his wife. Isn't it stylish, though?--they're just back from +London. Aren't they a splendid couple? And isn't she just the ideal type +of the young matron----?" + +Jeremiah touched bottom. It was all of a piece--everything was growing +worse and worse. "Young matron," indeed!--where had his grandchild picked +up that precious phrase? She was growing all too worldly-wise for his +simple old mind. His abashed eyes turned away from her and began to blink +at the twinkling candles on the tea-table; it stood there like an altar +raised for the celebration of some strange, fearsome ritual--an incident +in the dubious life toward which a heartless and ambitious +daughter-in-law was pushing his poor little Preciosa. He almost felt like +grasping her by the arm and bolting with her from the place. + +But most uncertain of all these uncertainties had been the young painter +himself. He could not be brought down to business. He dodged; he slipped +away; he procrastinated. He wouldn't show his work; he wouldn't talk in +figures; he wouldn't come within a mile of a contract. Instead, he slid +about, asking people if they wouldn't have another biscuit, dropping a +word to a lady here and there about Pater or Morelli (who were probably +somewhere over there in the dark), confabulating determinedly with people +who were pointed out as authors (more of them!), urging other people, who +were musical, in the direction of the piano.... + +Some of these considerations Jeremiah haltingly placed before Roscoe +Orlando. + +"Oh, well," returned Roscoe, twiddling his fingers vaguely in the air, +"you can't expect anything different on an 'afternoon.' There are +occasions when a man must let down, must expand, must cultivate society a +little. It was very much like that the first time I went there myself." + +Roscoe Orlando's "first time" had been but a week before. Preciosa +McNulty had communicated her novel impressions to his daughters, who, in +turn, had commented on Preciosa's naivete in their father's hearing; then +Roscoe Orlando, who had never hurt himself by overwork and who was +developing a growing willingness to leave his maps and his plats and his +subdivisions a little earlier in the afternoon, had determined to step +round and patronize the new man. + +"That we should never have met before!" said Roscoe Orlando to +Daffingdon; "I can hardly credit it. Certainly it is no great thing in my +own favour, for I really claim to know what is going on and to keep in +touch with the better things. In my own defence I must say that I am an +annual member of the Art Academy and that people who have etchings to +sell invariably send me a copy of the catalogue. Your atelier is +charming--most charming." + +Roscoe Orlando was fat, florid and forty-eight, and as he began to expand +he promised to take up a good deal of room. But Dill did not grudge the +space when he learned that Roscoe Orlando was one of the directors of the +Grindstone. Roscoe Orlando declared this with a broad, benevolent smile, +accompanied by a confidential little gesture to indicate that a golden +shower might soon descend and that it was by no means out of his power to +help determine the favoured quarter. + +"But this is no time to talk about that," declared Roscoe Orlando, +casting an eye over the other visitors present. "I may drift in again +before long and look at some of your things more seriously and have a +little chat with you about our project." + +Roscoe Orlando had somehow failed to drift in again, but he was now +having the little chat--or trying to have it--with Jeremiah McNulty. + +He looked across at the old man once more. "Yes, I rather think, after +all, that if we were to try to arrange things with Dill we shouldn't be +going much amiss." + +Jeremiah scratched his chin slowly, and worked the tip of a square-toed +boot against his waste-paper basket. "I dunno. It's a good deal of an +undertaking," he declared. + +"Surely," assented Roscoe Orlando. "Do we want it to be anything less? +Don't we want to do something--a big thing, too--that will be a credit to +ourselves and a real adornment to our city?" + +Jeremiah puckered up his mouth and slowly blinked his little red eyes. +"I've had one or two of those young painter fellows after me lately," he +said in ruminative tone, as he picked at the green baize of his desk-top. +He spoke with a slight querulousness, as if these wily and hardy +adventurers had wilfully hit upon him as the weak spot in the defences, +as the vulnerable point of the Grindstone. In particular he saw a pair of +burning black eyes, a pair of eager, sinewy hands strewing drawings over +the pink and gold brocades of his front parlour suite, and a shock of +dark hair that swished about over a high square forehead as the work of +hurried exposition raged along against a pitiless ticking of the +marble-and-gilt clock and Preciosa's hasty adjustment of the green velvet +toque. + +"Haven't I had them after _me_!" cried Roscoe Orlando, jealous of his +standing as an enlightened and sympathetic amateur. "But we ought to +deal--really, we ought to--with painters of standing and responsibility, +and no others. We must keep in mind such things as position, reputation, +clientele. My partner, for example, once contracted--or tried to--for a +large landscape of his stock-farm out beyond Glenwood Park; and the +artist, sir----Well, you wouldn't believe the trouble we had before we +got through. Our lawyer himself said that never in the whole course of +his professional career had he----" + +Jeremiah blinked and puckered a little more, and sighed as he +abstractedly prodded among his pigeonholes. That slippery floor typified +it all,--that dim room full of dusky corners! Ah, if he could only get +that slim young man with the long coat and the pointed beard out on the +black-and-white chequered pavement of the Grindstone, fair and square in +the honest light of day! In such a situation a downright, straightforward +old contractor could do himself something like justice. It would be +playing a return match on his own ground. + +"I dunno," said Jeremiah. "I'd 'most as soon not have anything to do with +such matters and with that sort of people----" + +He saw Dill as a dog might view a lizard, or a goat a swan; after all, +there was no common ground for them--no way of coming together. + +"But if it's got to be done," he concluded, "perhaps he would do as well +to start with as anybody else." + +"I think so," said Roscoe Orlando. "I'll speak about it in a day or so to +Hill." + + + + +VII + +Preciosa McNulty, after all, lost nothing of _The Princess Pattie_ except +half of the overture--a loss that, as operettas go, might indeed be +counted a gain; but the succeeding activities of the prima donna, the +ponderous basso and the brace of "comedians" were subject to a series of +very sensible impediments and interruptions. Several times--and often at +the most inopportune of moments--a swarthy, earnest young man walked +across the stage, throwing out big sheets of brown paper right and left +and looking at her and her alone. He wore one unvarying expression--a +mingling of reproach and of admiration. His eyes said across the +footlights: "You are a heartless, cruel little creature, but that green +velvet hat looks amazingly well on your chestnut hair--so amazingly well +that I almost forgive you. Yet an hour lost by you from the theatre is +nothing, while an hour gained by me here in your home almost makes the +difference between life and death." Yes, there the young man was, fifty +feet away from her, yet she could plainly see the blood pulsing through +his veined hands and could almost hear the ideas ticking in his brain. +How they had ticked, to be sure, and clicked and clanked and jarred and +rattled and rumbled--a perfect factory, a perfect foundry of ideas! +Preciosa, who had never had a dozen ideas in her life, and had seldom +encountered a human brain running full force and full time, was a good +deal impressed. "I shouldn't wonder but what he _was_ a pretty smart +fellow, after all. It was rather sudden, the way I brought him up. Yes, +I'm afraid I'm a real cruel girl," said Preciosa complacently, and +reverted to the deplorable antics of the "comedians." + +Within a day or two Preciosa began to notice the railway trains. Whenever +she was detained at a "grade crossing" she caught herself looking at the +locomotive to find a lady in a blue himation. Then the telegraph poles +began to trouble her; she got into the habit of glancing aloft for nests +of Cupids, and once or twice she thought she saw them. Then her father's +letter-heads began to affect her. They sometimes lay carelessly about the +house, and whenever she saw the tall chimney of his sash-and-blind +factory looming above the blank date-line she always looked for a female +in Greek drapery seated on a cogged wheel at the base of it. + +"This won't do," she told herself. "Dear me, I don't even know his name. +Why, for heaven's sake, didn't I pay better attention?" + +Not knowing his name did not prevent her from thinking about him, nor +even from talking about him. When Virgilia Jeffreys started her up, she +went on because she couldn't stop and because she didn't want to, anyway. +She would not deny herself _that_ small comfort. + +Preciosa was the pride and the hope of the McNultys--especially of her +mother. This ambitious lady had lived long in obscurity--a prosperous, +well-fed obscurity, but an obscurity all the same--and now she was tired +of it and was rebelling against it and was meaning to emerge from it. +Every inch of her tall, meagre figure was straining with the wish to +attract attention; every feature of her thin, eager, big-eyed face showed +forth the tense desire to shine. She realized that Preciosa was the only +one of them who could raise the family to a higher level and bring it +within range of the glamouring illumination of "society." The child's +grandfather doted on her, true, but had never been quite able to leave +behind him the lusty young peasant of the bogs. He had a regrettable +taste in foot-gear, a teasingly uncertain fashion of lapsing back into +his shirtsleeves at table, and a slight brogue that had stood a good deal +of smothering without ever reaching the point of actually giving up the +ghost. The girl's father lived and thought in terms of blinds and frames +and panellings; he could never bring himself into sympathy with his +wife's social yearnings or even realize the verity of their existence. +Their boy was too young; besides, what can be done with a boy, anyway? As +for herself, she had begun too late; she was a little too stiff, too +diffident; society slightly intimidated her; she felt sure she could +never hope to associate in easy, intimate fashion--even should the most +abundant opportunity present--with the ladies whose names were so often +printed in the papers. She might serve as a chaperon, a supernumerary, +perhaps, but as a leading figure, no. + +There remained only Preciosa. But Preciosa would suffice. So the child +was bundled out at the earliest moment. She was made to fence at the +Young Ladies' Athletic League, where the Gibbons girls went, and rather +enjoyed it. She was made to study and discuss at the Philomathian Club, +of which Virgilia Jeffreys was a shining light, and enjoyed it not at +all. Then she began to go to musicales and dramatic matinees at the +Temple of Art, finding a wide range of novel diversion at these little +functions and making some acquaintances worth while. "And as soon as +spring is fairly here," said her indefatigable mother, "she shall join a +good golf club; and then things will really have begun to move." + +But things had begun to move already. The fairest, topmost blossom on the +family tree had set itself to swaying in the gentle breezes of sentiment, +regardless of the dotings of the gnarled old root, of the indifference of +the sturdy trunk, of the solicitous rustlings of the foliage. The blossom +began to peer over and to look down, as if conscious of the honest, +earthy odour of the dear lowly soil itself--though not, perhaps, the soil +of the links. Preciosa was preparing to revert. + +"No," she said again, "I don't even know his name." + + + + +VIII + +When Ignace Prochnow found himself able to move into the Rabbit-Hutch, he +congratulated himself on having made a marked advance in fortune. + +"Oh, Lord!" thought Little O'Grady, upon Prochnow's venturing this +disclosure, which he made in all sincerity and simplicity and with a +complete absence of false shame; "how must he have lived before!" + +The Rabbit-Hutch, the Warren, the Burrow--it went by all of these +names--was a hapless property that was trying to pay taxes on itself +between the ebbing of one tide of prosperity and the hoped-for flood of +another. Centres were shifting, values were see-sawing, and old Ezekiel +Warren was waiting for the nature of the neighbourhood to declare itself +with something like distinctness. Meanwhile,--as regarded its upper +floors, at least,--broken panes of glass were seldom mended, sagging +doors seldom rehung, smoky ceilings seldom whitewashed, and the corridors +rarely swept, save when the tenants formed themselves into a +street-cleaning brigade, as Little O'Grady called it, and co-operated to +make an immense but futile dust and stir. + +"You're in a palace, sure," declared Little O'Grady, on the occasion of +his first call upon the newcomer. This took place the third day of +Prochnow's tenancy--he had scarcely got his poor belongings into shape +and had barely affixed his name to the door. But Little O'Grady cared +nothing for conventions; he was ready to overstep any boundary, to break +through any barrier. "How did it occur to you to come among us?" he +asked, sitting down on the bed. "What made you want to be a Bunny?" + +"I found I must be where I could reach people, and where I could give +them a chance to reach me." + +Prochnow spoke with a slight accent--slight, but quaint and pungent. To +have come among the Anglo-Saxons three or four years sooner would have +been an advantage; to have deferred coming three or four years longer, a +calamity. + +"Yep, they 'reach' us good and hard," said O'Grady; "processions of +millionairesses and peeresses marching through the halls with gold crowns +on their heads and bags of double-eagles in both hands--nit. We _did_ +have a real swell, though--once. She called when Giles was here--it +convulsed the premises. We all lost our sleep and appetite and thought of +nothing else for a month. It was Mrs. Pence--expect you haven't heard of +her. Money to burn--husband head of some tremendous trust or other--house +as big as a hotel--handsomest profile in six states. 'Stevy,' says I to +Giles, 'Stevy, for the love of heaven, introjooce me. Take a quart of me +heart's blood, but only give me a chance to do her lovely head.' He +wouldn't. She came when he had one of those good big rooms lower +down--very fair, nothing like these of ours up here. He did wonders about +fixing it up, too. But now we've lost him; he's gone, and taken my best +chance with him." Little O'Grady rocked to and fro in melancholy mood and +the cot creaked and swayed in unison. + +"Show me something," he said suddenly, jerking himself back to his own +bright humour. "I've smelt your coffee and I've heard your mandolin, and +now I want to see your pictures." + +"I've just sold one or two of my best ones," said Prochnow. "That's why I +was able to come here." + +"Sold a picture!" cried Little O'Grady, with staring eyes. "Sold +a----Have you spent the money?" + +"Most of it." + +"Well, let it pass. Only we generally look for a supper after the sale of +a picture. We had one six months ago. We're getting hungry again. But let +that pass too. Show me something." + +Prochnow looked at Little O'Grady, openly and unaffectedly appraising +him. Little O'Grady jovially blinked his gray-green eyes and tossed his +fluffy, sandy hair. "Don't make any mistake about me; I can appreciate a +good thing. What's that big roll of brown paper behind the washstand?" + +Prochnow reached for it. "Just a scheme for decoration I got up two or +three years ago. It didn't quite--how do you say?--come off." + +"Such things seldom do," said the other. "That's the trouble. Let's +look." + +"It isn't much," said Prochnow, undoing the roll. "It isn't quite what I +would do now. It's the sort of thing I show to ordinary people." + +"It will do to begin on. H'm, I see; just a lot of ladies playing at +Commerce and Education and Industry and so on. Still, those cherubs up in +the air are well done." He glanced over behind the wood-box. "Bust open +that portfolio." + +Prochnow looked at his visitor again--longer, more studiously. + +"Oh, come now," said Little O'Grady, "you'll have me red-headed in a +minute. I'm no chump; I know a good thing when I see it." + +Prochnow opened the portfolio and handed out several sketches one after +another. "These are more recent," he said;--"all within the last few +months." + +Little O'Grady snatched them, devoured them, immediately took fire. +Prochnow caught the flame and burned and blazed in return. "Whew! this is +warm stuff!" cried Little O'Grady, who had not an envious bone in his +body; "and you--you're a wonder!" Little O'Grady made a last sudden grab. +"Oh, this, this!" He dropped the sheet and threw up both hands. Then, +being still seated on the cot, he threw up both feet. Then he placed his +feet upon the floor and rose on them and gave Ignace Prochnow a set +oratorical appreciation of his qualities as a thinker and a draughtsman, +and then, swept away by a sudden impulse to spread the news of this +magnificent new "find" right under their own roof, he rushed downstairs +to communicate his discovery to Festus Gowan. + +"Will return in half an hour," said the card on Gowan's door; so Little +O'Grady sped back upstairs and burst in on Mordreth. + +Mordreth was sitting composedly before a half-finished portrait of an +elderly man of rustic mien. About him were disposed a number of helps and +accessories: a pair of old-fashioned gold spectacles, an envelope +containing a lock of gray hair, two or three faded photographs, and a +steel engraving extracted from the _Early Settlers of Illinois_. With +these aids he was hoping to hit the taste and satisfy the memory of +certain surviving grandchildren. + +Little O'Grady ignored the presence of any third person and let himself +out. "He's a genius, Mark; he's full of the real stuff. He can draw to +beat the band, and he's got ideas to burn--throws them out as a volcano +does hot stones. And I expect he can paint too, from what little I +saw--says he's just sold off all his best things. Yes, sir, he's an +out-and-out genius and we've got to treat him right; we must let him in +on this bank scheme of ours--that's all there is about it!" + + + + +IX + +"Well, it comes to this, then," said Virgilia. "We must give them +something definite--a fully outlined--_projet_; and we must give it to +them as soon as possible." She cleared away the ruck of evening papers +from the library table, sent her younger sister off with arithmetic and +geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper +from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more +lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that +foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has a chance to +mature." + +She put a pen into Daffingdon's hand, with the open expectation of +immediate results. She herself always thought better with a pen in her +hand and a writing-pad under it; no doubt a painter would respond to the +same stimulus. + +Daffingdon bit at the end of the penholder and made a dog-ear on the +topmost of the steel-gray sheets. + +"Come," said Virgilia. "Whatever follies may have begun to churn in their +poor weak noddles, we will _not_ draw upon the early pages of the local +annals, we will not attempt to reconstruct the odious architecture of the +primitive prairie town. Come; there are twelve large lunettes, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, now, just how shall we handle them?" + +"I had thought of a general colour-scheme in umber and sienna; though +Giles's idea of shading the six on the left into purple and olive and the +six on the right into----" + +"Dear me! Can we hope to impress Andrew P. Hill with any such idea as +that? No; we must have our theme, our subject--our series of subjects." + +"I don't want to be simply pictorial," said Daffingdon reluctantly; "and +surely you can't expect me to let my work run into mere literature." + +"They're business-men," returned Virgilia. "For our own credit--for our +own salvation, indeed--we must be clear-cut and definite. Even if we are +artists we mustn't give those hard-headed old fellows any chance to +accuse us of wabbling, of shilly-shallying. We must try to be as +business-like as they are. So let's get in our work--and get it in +first." + +Daffingdon's eyes roamed the rugs, the hangings, the furniture. "'The +Genius of the City,'" he murmured vaguely, "'Encouraging--Encouraging'--" + +"Yes, yes," spoke Virgilia, doing a little encouraging herself. + +"Or, 'The--The Westward Star of Empire Illuminating the'----" proceeded +Daffingdon mistily, raising his eyes toward the electrolier. + +"Yes, yes," responded Virgilia quickly, by way of further encouragement. + +"Or--or--'The Triumphal March of Progress through Our'----" Daffingdon +confusedly dipped the wrong end of the penholder into the big sprawling +inkstand. + +Virgilia's teeth began to feel for her lips, and her eyebrows to draw +themselves down in an impatient little frown of disappointment. Not +through "Our Midst," she hoped. What was the matter with her idol? What +had he done with all his fund of information? What had become of his +ideas, his imagination? She felt that if she were to approach a bit +closer to his pedestal and sound him with her knuckles he would be found +hollow. What a calamity in such a discovery! She put her hand behind her +back and kept her distance. + +"'The Genius of the City,'" she mused; "'The Star of Empire.' Those might +do for single subjects but not for a general scheme. 'The March of +Progress '--that might be better as a broad working basis, although----" +She saw the "lady" seated on the cogged wheel beneath the factory chimney +and stopped. + +"'The Prairie-Schooner'--'The Bridging of the Mississippi'--'The Last of +the Buffaloes'--' The Corner-Stones of New Capitols'----" pursued +Daffingdon brokenly. + +"Would you care very much for that sort of thing?" asked Virgilia. + +"No." + +"Nor I. Come, let me tell you; I have it: 'The History of Banking in all +Ages'! There, what do you think of that?" she asked, rising with an air +of triumph. + +Dill hesitated. "I don't believe I know so very much about the history of +banking." + +"Don't you? But _I_ do--enough and more than enough for the present +purpose. Come, tell me, isn't that a promising idea? What a series it +would make!--so picturesque, so varied, so magnificent!" + +Daffingdon looked up at his Egeria; her visible inspiration almost cowed +him. "Isn't that a pretty large theme?" he questioned. "Wouldn't it +require a good deal of thought and study----?" + +"Thought? Study? Surely it would. But _I_ think and study all the time! +Let me see; where shall we begin? With the Jews and Lombards in England, +Think what you have!--contrast, costumes, situations, everything. Then +take the 'Lombards' in Italy itself; the founding of the earliest banks +in Venice, Lucca, Genoa, Florence; the glamour of it, the spectacularity +of it, the dealings with popes and with foreign kings! And there were the +Fuggers at Augsburg who trafficked with emperors: houses with those +step-ladder gables, and people with puffed elbows and slashed sleeves and +feathers of all colours in those wide hats. And then the way that kings +and emperors treated the bankers: Edward the Second refusing to repay his +Florentine loans and bringing the whole city to ruin; Charles the First +sallying out to the Mint and boldly appropriating every penny stored +there--plain, barefaced robbery. Then, later, the armies of Revolutionary +France pillaging banks everywhere--grenadiers, musketeers and cuirassiers +in full activity. Among others, the Bank of Amsterdam--the one that +loaned all those millions of florins to the East India Company. And that +brings in, you see, turbans, temples, jewels, palm-trees, and what not +besides----" + +"So much trouble," breathed Daffingdon; "so much effort; such an expense +for costumes." + +"And if you want to enlarge the scheme," pursued Virgilia, waiving all +considerations of trouble, effort and expense, "so as to include coining, +money-changing and all that, why, think what you have then! The brokers +at Corinth, the _mensarii_ in the Roman Forum. And think of the ducats +designed by Da Vinci and by Cellini! And all the Byzantine coins in +Gibbon--the student's edition is full of them! Why, there are even the +Assyrian tablets--you must have heard about the discovery of the records +of that old Babylonian bank. Think of the costumes, the architecture, the +square curled beards, the flat winged lions, and all. Why, dear me, I see +the whole series of lunettes as good as arranged for, and work laid out +for a dozen of you, or more!" cried Virgilia, as she pounced upon a sheet +of paper and snatched the pen from Dill. + +"A dozen?" he murmured. "A hundred!" + +"Nonsense!" she returned. "Four or five of you could manage it very +handily. You, and Giles, and----" + +"The Academy would expect recognition," said Dill. "One of the professors +for a third. And somebody or other from the Warren, I suppose, for a +fourth." + +"Three subjects apiece, then," said Virgilia. "Go in and win!--By the +way, did I mention Phidion of Argos? He was one of the primitive coiners. +And then there was Athelstane, who regulated minting among the early +Saxons...." + + + + +X + +Dill passed out into the cool starry night to recover his breath and to +regain his composure. It was as if he had struggled through a whirlpool +or had wrenched himself away from the downpour of a cataract. Virgilia's +interest, her enthusiasm, her co-operation had reared itself above him +and toppled over on him just like a high, ponderous wall; the bricks +bruised him, the dust of scattered mortar filled his lungs and his eyes. +"Such a mind!" he thought; "such readiness; such a fund of information!" +Never before had anybody offered so panting, so militant a participation +in his doings. He doubted too whether Virgilia could ever have felt so +extreme an interest in the doings of any other man whomsoever. Certainly +it was a fair surmise that Richard Morrell, during the formative period +of the Pin-and-Needle Combine, had never so succeeded in enlisting her +sympathy and support,--otherwise she would not have turned him off in the +summary fashion that had kept society smiling and gossiping for a +fortnight. + +As Daffingdon walked thoughtfully down the quiet street a deep sense of +gratitude stirred within him--he felt himself prompted to the most +chivalrous of acknowledgments. He saw himself taking her hand--with such +deliberation as to preclude any shock of surprise, and looking into her +eyes as ardently and earnestly as good taste would permit; and heard +himself saying, in a voice as tremulous with passion as the voice of a +well-bred gentleman could be allowed to become, such things as should +make quite unmistakable his appreciation of her qualities both as an +amateur and a woman. Certainly if this great undertaking went through he +should be able to say all that was in him and to maintain it to the last +word. She had turned a deaf ear to others, but there was reason to think +she might listen to him. + +Then all at once the magnitude of the scheme rose before him; such a vast +expenditure of time on books of plates in libraries--and weeks and months +to be devoted to sketches, to compositions, to colour-schemes of this +sort and that; such a tremendous outlay for models, for costumes, for +multifarious accessories! But as Daffingdon gradually pulled himself +together, a comforting little sense of flattery came to soothe his +bruises and to clear his eyes. Yes, she believed in him. This brilliant +and learned young woman had impetuously placed her boundless stores of +erudition at his disposal; she had loaded the work of twenty men on his +shoulders and was confidently expecting him to carry off the whole vast +undertaking with jaunty ease. He must not fail. Fortunately, she was +willing to admit the co-operation of a few of his brother artists. + +Dill laid her plan--their plan--before two or three of his own guild, +experimentally. They gaped at it as a plainsman would gape at the +Himalayas. Nor was it, as has been said, the smallest of mouthfuls to +himself. However, the distinguished assistance of a young woman of +fashion, means and cultivation was not a matter to hide under a bushel; +besides, some firm, concrete scheme must be put promptly before the Nine +Old Men of the Bank before they should have glued their desires +undetachably upon some crude, preposterous plan of their own. + +"It would cost like smoke," said Giles, "but it's an idea." + +"Let's try it on," said the Academy professor. "It would show us as on +deck and would help us to take their measure. Who knows but it might be +the means of staving off a series of medallion portraits of the board +themselves!" + +"An idea, yes," reiterated Giles. "But it lays out a terrible lot of work +for us. Such a job would be enormous." + +"Tackle it," said Abner Joyce. He claimed as a matter of course the right +to be present at such conferences. Joyce himself had the strength and the +pluck to tackle anything. + +"Well, _let's_ try it on," assented Giles. "We've got to cut in first, +that's sure--if we can. Come, let's put out our feelers." + +This was more or less in harmony with Virgilia's parting advice. "Show +them to themselves in historical perspective," she had suggested to Dill +in bidding him good-night at the front door,--"the last link in one long, +glittering chain. Flatter them; associate them with the Romans and +Venetians--bring in the Assyrians if need be. Tell them how the Bardi and +the Peruzzi ruled the roost in old Florence. Work in Sir Thomas Gresham +and the Royal Exchange--ruffs, rapiers, farthingales, Drake, Shakespeare +and the whole 'spacious' time of Elizabeth. Make them a part of the +poetry of it--make them a part of the picturesqueness of it. That will +bring Mr. Gibbons around easily enough, and ought to budge two or three +of the others." + +Daffingdon took his great scheme to the bank, but it failed to charm. +Andrew P. Hill poked at Daffingdon's neatly drawn-up memorandum with a +callous finger and blighted it with an indifferent look out of a +lack-lustre eye. The _mensarii_ of Rome and the trapezites of Athens +seemed a long way off. The picturesque beginnings of the Bank of Genoa +left him cold. The raid of the Stuart king on the Tower mint appeared to +have very little to do with the case. And Jeremiah McNulty, who happened +to be about the premises, showed himself but slightly disposed to fan +Hill's feeble interest to a flame. + +"This is not just what we want," said Hill. "It is not at all what any of +us had in mind. It is very little in accord, I must say, with the ideas I +gave you last week. I don't think it will do. Still, if you want to get +up some drawings to show about how it would come out, and bring them +around in a week or so...." + +Daffingdon groaned inwardly; after all, they were wedded to their own +notion. He explained to them the unfairness of their proposal--detailing +the cost of models, the matter of draperies, the time required for study, +the labours and difficulties of composition. To do experimentally what +they were asking him to do would be to execute half the entire work on a +mere chance. + +"Well, we won't buy a pig in a poke," said old Jeremiah sturdily. He was +now on the familiar chequered pavement of black and white and felt a good +deal at home. "We've got to see what we're going to pay for. That's +business." + +"Never mind," said Andrew. "After all, we want something nearer to our +own time and closer to our own town. We want to show ourselves loyal to +the place where we've made our money. We want to put on record the humble +beginnings of this great metropolis. The early days of our own city are +plenty good enough for us." + +"That's right," said Jeremiah. He saw himself a lusty young fellow of +twenty-five, the proud new head of a contractor's shop, with his own +lumber pile, a dozen lengths of sewer pipe, a mortar bed, a wheelbarrow +or two and a horse and cart. No need of going farther back than that. +Those early days were glorious and fully worthy to be immortalized. + +"We want to make our new building talked about," said Hill. "We want +every daily paper in town, and throughout the whole country, to be full +of it. We want to make it an object of interest to every man, woman and +child in our own community. When the little boys and girls come down +Saturday morning to deposit their pennies--for we shall open a savings +department that will welcome the humblest--we want them to learn from our +walls the story of the struggles and the triumphs of their fathers' early +days----" + +"That's right," said Jeremiah again. "If you had lived here as long as I +have, young man, you would understand that there's no need of going +outside our own bor-r-ders for anything we may require." + +"Yes, a great deal of history has been transacted on this site," said +Hill,--"more than enough to meet the requirements of our present purpose. +I have here"--he opened a drawer in one side of his desk and drew out a +paper--"I have here a list of subjects that I think would do. Mr. McNulty +and I drew it up together. Take it and look it over; it might be an----" + +A shadow darkened the door. It was another interruption from the Morrell +Twins. This time it was not Richard Morrell, but Robin, his brother. His +pocket bulged with what seemed to be papers of importance, and his face +signalled to Andrew P. Hill to clear the deck of lesser matters. + +"--it might be an advantage to you," Andrew concluded. "This about +represents our ideas; see what you can do with it." + +Andrew passed the paper over to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah passed it on to +Daffingdon with an expression of unalterable firmness and decision. "You +_must_ do something with this, if you are going to do anything for us at +all," his air said. "It's this or nothing. It is our own idea; we're +proud of it, and we insist upon it. Go." + + + + + +XI + + +The Morrell Twins were among the newer powers. They had rolled up a +surprisingly big fortune--if it _was_ a fortune--in a surprisingly short +time, and were looked up to as very perfect gentle knights by all the +ambitious young fry of the "street." They were the head and front of the +Pin-and-Needle Combine. They did not deal with the Grindstone only; they +had made their business the business of half the banks of the town,--for +how could these institutions be expected to stand out when all the +investors and speculators of the street were pressing forward eager to +add to their collections a few good specimens of the admirably engraved +and printed certificates of the Combine, and more than willing to pay any +price that anybody might ask? Some of the banks--the more fortunate among +them--were attending to this business during business hours; others of +them worked on it overtime, and one or two were beginning to work on it +all night as well as all day. They worried. The Twins were not worrying +nearly so much,--they knew they must be seen through. + +The Twins had been grinding pins and needles for a year or two with +striking acumen and dexterity. Sometimes Richard would turn the handle +and Robin would hold the poor dull pins to the stone; and then again they +would change places. Whichever arrangement happened to be in force, +people said the work had never been done more neatly, more precisely. And +now the Twins had enlarged their field and had begun to grind noses. They +were showing themselves past masters in the art. They had all the +legislation of nose-grinding at their fingers' ends; the lack of +legislation, too, as well as the probabilities of legislation yet to +come. They knew just how fast the wheel might be turned in this State, +and just how close the nose might be held in that, and just how loud the +victim must cry out before the Rescue Band might be moved to issue from +some Committee Room to stop the treatment. They knew where nose-grinding +was prohibited altogether, and they knew where enactments against it had +thus far completely failed. They knew where the penalty was likely to be +enforced, and they knew where it might be evaded. "Learn familiarly the +whole body of legislative enactment, state by state, and then keep a +little in advance of it,"--such was their simple rule. + +No man is to be denied the right to profit by his own discovery, and so, +though the glory of the Twins was envied, their right to luxuriate in it +was seldom questioned. They were seen in all sorts of prominent and +expensive places--at the opera, at the horse-show, on the golf links, and +were very much envied and admired,--envied by other young men that were +trying to do as they had done, but not succeeding; admired by multitudes +of young women who felt pretty sure that to "have things," and to have +them with great abundance and promptness and conspicuousness, was all +that made life worth living. In this environment Richard Morrell could +hardly fail to be fairly well satisfied with himself. To ask and to +receive would come to the same thing. And so he spoke to Virgilia one +crisp October morning, between the fifth and sixth holes in Smoky Hollow, +and awaited in all confidence her reply. But Virgilia quickly made it +plain that he would not do--not for her, at least. She was by no means +one of the kind to be impressed by tally-ho coaches, however loudly and +discordantly the grooms might trumpet, nor to be brought round by +country-club dinners, however deafening the chatter or however +preponderant the phalanx of long-necked bottles. So his raw, red face +turned a shade redder still; and as he sat, later, on the club veranda, +hectoring the waiter and scowling into his empty glass, he growled to +himself in a thick undertone: + +"What's the matter with the girl, anyway? If she doesn't want me, who +does she want?" + +Virgilia wanted, in a general way, an intimate and equal companionship, a +trafficking in the things that interested her--the higher things, she +sometimes called them to herself. She wanted a gentleman; she wanted +cultivation, refinement--even to its last debilitating excess. What she +wanted least of all was a "provider," a steward, an agent, a business +machine. "We must _live_," she would say, looking forward toward her +matrimonial ideal; "we mustn't let our whole life run out in a mere +stupid endeavour to accumulate the means of living, and then find +ourselves only beginning when at the finish:"--an idea held substantially +by so different a young person as Preciosa McNulty, who was preparing to +set aside her mother's careful ambitions and to take a step forward on +her own account. Only, Preciosa was looking less for cultivation and +gentility than for "temperament." Less the dry specialist, however +successful in the accumulation of this world's goods, than the resonant +adventurer that would bring her full chance at all the manifold haps and +mishaps of life as it runs. + +"Nothing more tedious than a set programme," declared Preciosa. "If my +whole future were to be arranged for me to-morrow, I should want to die +the day after. A whole play"--Preciosa was a most persevering little +theatre-goer--"carried through with one stage-setting--how tiresome that +would be!" + + + + +XII + +"Come, now," said Little O'Grady; "help the lame duck over the stile. Be +a good Gowan--give the poor fellow the use of your studio. Mordreth's +isn't enough better to be worth asking for, and Stalinski is working from +the model. Come,--as a personal favour to me. It was I let you in on the +bank scheme and gave you a chance to make big money; and now you must +just let Ignace have the use of your place for a few hours--he can't +paint the girl's picture in that little hole upstairs." + +"Much you let me in!" retorted Gowan with a grin. "Tell me who is in, +anyway, and how far, and for how much, and I'll give you half I get." + +"Haven't I seen them?" returned Little O'Grady. "Didn't I address the +whole board? Didn't I go for them with the architect himself to help me? +Haven't I got the mantel-piece in the president's parlour? And now if +Ignace can only get a chance to paint the fav'rite grandchild of one of +the----Yes, sir; I talked to them as a business-man to business-men, and +it went. They're square; they're solid; they'll treat us right. Never you +fear. In a year from now you'll be wearing diamonds and saying: 'O'Grady, +you're the wan that hung them on me.' _Now_ will you give Ignace your +room?" + +"Why, he's no portrait painter, is he?" + +"She thinks he is. And it's what the girls think of us that makes us what +we are. As for me, I believe he can do anything. Come, give the poor lad +a show." + +"What could he do in an hour or two?" + +"He could get acquainted with her," said Little O'Grady. + +Preciosa, thanks to O'Grady's chatterings through the Temple of Art--he +blew in and out with great freedom and was as much at home there as in +the humbler establishment--had come to some knowledge of Ignace Prochnow. +She learned his name--in itself an immense advance, and the location of +his studio; and she arranged with the Gibbons girls, who, by reason of +their fencing, were developing great self-reliance and a high capacity +for initiative, to search him out in his private haunts. + +"Set the day," chirped Little O'Grady, "and we'll be ready for you." + +Preciosa set the day; Little O'Grady traced Prochnow's name in elaborate +letterings and clapped this new placard over Gowan's own; and all waited +intent to see just what of interest would develop in the countenance of +the daughter of the McNultys, and just what Ignace Prochnow would be able +to make of it. + +Preciosa wore her green velvet toque, and let her chestnut hair stray and +ramble whithersoever it would, and sat in Gowan's best high-backed +mahogany chair with the brass rosettes, and tried to view with kindly +indulgence his flimsy knick-knacks and shabby hangings (they came nowhere +near Dill's) on account of her interest in their supposed proprietor. Nor +did she find in her painter any of Dill's soft suavity. Prochnow was +direct and downright almost to brusqueness, seeming to see no need of +such graduated preliminaries as even O'Grady found place and reason for. +He admired her, and admired her extremely, as she perceived at once; but +he offered none of the appropriate deferences that she had received on +occasion from obscure young men of less than modest fortune. He was +intent, he was earnest, he was even a bit peremptory; but she felt +perfectly certain that he was not treating her as a subject and a subject +merely. His black eyes looked at her with a sort of sharp severity across +the leg of the easel, and his rasping crayon promptly scratched down his +impressions upon the promising blank of his canvas. Preciosa was slightly +puzzled, but on the whole pleased. She knew she was worth looking at, and +felt herself fit to stand the keenest scrutiny. She leaned back easily in +her chair. Let time attend to the rest. + +"Doesn't she _compose_!" said Little O'Grady in a poignant whisper to +Elizabeth Gibbons, as he thrust out his arms akimbo and squinted +learnedly at Preciosa through his fingers. "And hasn't the lad got +_line_!" he presently added in a rapturous undertone, as the black and +white tracing began to take shape. Prochnow was drawing with immense +freedom, decision, confidence; every stroke told, and told the first +time. "He knows how! He knows _how_!" moaned Little O'Grady, locking his +hands and forearms in a strange twist and rocking to and fro with +emotion. "He's got the wrist!--the _wrist_!" he exclaimed further, +liberating his hands and fanning the air with long pendulous fingers. +"There, he's caught her already!" he cried, leaning forward,--"inside of +five minutes. Not a line more, Ignace; not a line more!" + +Prochnow turned on him with a grim tight smile--a smile that slightly +dilated the nostrils of his good firm nose and shifted in ever so small a +degree the smutch of black beneath that was slowly advancing to the +status of a moustache. It was an acknowledgment from one who _could_ to +one who _knew_. "_Ah, si jeunesse_...!" ejaculates the poet; but here +_jeunesse_, by a doubling of forces, both _pouvait_ and _savait_. + +Then Prochnow turned the canvas itself round toward Preciosa. "Does +Mademoiselle recognise herself?" + +"It's you, Preciosa, to the life," said the daughter of Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons. + +"Oh, Ig!" cried Little O'Grady, much moved, "you're the king-pin sure. +People _shall_ know you; people _must_ know you!" He faced about toward +Preciosa. "Ah, my fair young thing, he's got you dead. Why, Daff himself +couldn't have reached this in an hour!" + +Preciosa was like most of the rest of us--inclined to take good +workmanship for granted; where there was nothing to criticise there was +nothing to take hold of. But the words and actions of Little O'Grady--he +was now hopping about on one leg, holding the other in his hand--made the +matter perfectly certain. Her painter had done a notable thing, and done +it easily, promptly, without revisions, without fumblings. His own face +and attitude expressed his consciousness of this. "Nobody could have done +it better," she read in his eyes; "and you, you blooming young creature, +have been the inspiration." He had called her "Mademoiselle" too; could +anything be more charming? Nothing save his accent itself,--a trick of +the tongue, an intonation ever so slightly alien that addressed her ear +just as some perfume's rich but smothered pungency might address the +nose. Yes, the first stage in her apotheosis was an undoubted success. +All that was needed now was her translation from black and white to +colour. Well, the chariot was ready to take her up still higher. + +"I have found you very easily, Mademoiselle,"--Preciosa felt a sugary +little shudder at this repetition of the word,--"I have found you very +easily," said Prochnow, casting about for his palette and brushes; "and +now I may just as easily lose you." + +"Oh no," said Elizabeth Gibbons, with great earnestness. + +"Never fear," said Little O'Grady confidently. "Though the likeness +generally gets submerged at first, it comes to the surface again in the +end." + +"Don't risk it," continued Elizabeth Gibbons. + +"What has been done once," said Prochnow, motioning with a brush-handle +toward the charcoal sketch, "can be done once more." + +Prochnow handled his brushes with the same firmness and confidence that +he had shown in handling his crayon. The "resemblance" soon sank beneath +the waves, as prophesied, but Little O'Grady continued to ride on the +topmost crest with unabated enthusiasm. "Whee! hasn't he got the nerve! +hasn't he got the stroke! Doesn't he just more than slather it on!" he +cried. "Catch the shadows in that green velvet! R-r-rip!--and the high +light on that tan jacket!" he proceeded in a smothered shout, as he +nudged Elizabeth Gibbons in the side. Elizabeth had never been nudged +before, and moved farther down the settle, after giving him a _look_. +Little O'Grady, who never knew when he was squelched--he never, as a +fact, had been squelched by anybody whomsoever--moved along after her. +"Oh, my! Can't he _paint_! Can't he more than lay it _on_! Did you get +that last one, now?" + +Buoyed up by such support as this, Prochnow forged ahead with quadrupled +_brio_, and Preciosa felt the chariot rising heavenward cloud by cloud. +Little O'Grady continued to lead the performance, prompting Preciosa to +look her prettiest and Prochnow to do his best. "Ah, my sweet child," he +declared, "you've fallen into good hands. You're trying to get away, +true: you've nearly lost those bright eyes, and I wouldn't want to swear +to your ears or your chin, just yet; but your blessed old-gold hair is +there all right, and it's put on to stay. The rest of you will be coming +back tomorrow, or next day, or the day after. And then you'll be all on +deck, jew'l. You'll see; you'll hear; you'll speak, by heaven! Won't she, +Lizzie?" + +Miss Gibbons gave Little O'Grady another _look_. Preciosa paused in her +heavenward ascent, and seemed to be wondering with a questioning little +glance just how far along, after all, she had got. When she finally left +her high-backed chair--"That's as far as we will go to-day," Prochnow had +said--she felt herself very close to earth again: the cherished +"resemblance" had vanished altogether. But Prochnow seemed satisfied with +the result, and Little O'Grady was rapturously fluent over the brushwork. +"Ignace is a wunder-kind," he declared to the doubting girl. "I never saw +such swing, such certainty. He'll fish you back, and he'll have you to +the life in less than a week. Or I'll eat my hat." + +There was a knock at the door. O'Grady rushed to open it. "Go right +away," Miss Gibbons thought she heard him say, in a tense undertone. + +The face of Kitty Gowan showed in the doorway, puzzled, protesting. +Medora Joyce was behind, her hands full of parcels. + +"Go away?" repeated Mrs. Gowan. "What does this mean? Let me in at once." + +"Depart!" hissed Little O'Grady. "This is not Mr. Prochnow's day. Come +to-morrow." + +"Step aside, O'Grady," said Kitty Gowan spunkily. "Let me pass." An +afternoon of shopping had tired her and shortened her temper. + +"Well, as a visitor, possibly," said O'Grady condescendingly. "Ignace, do +you feel disposed to----" He glanced back and forth between Prochnow and +the petitioners. + +Prochnow took down the canvas and set its face against the wall. + +Kitty Gowan strode in holding her head high. "How do?" she said +carelessly, by way of general salute. "Sit there, Medora," she directed +Mrs. Joyce, indicating a chair. + +"Sit here, Medora," said O'Grady firmly, placing another. "Prochnow, +Preciosa dear, allow me to present----" and so on. "And you sit here," he +said to Kitty Gowan, placing a third chair. "You're a visitor, remember," +he whispered to her fiercely; "so behave like one. Stay where you're put +and don't own the earth. We have loaned the shop for the day. +Understand?" + +Preciosa passed lightly over Kitty Gowan, whom she found brusque in her +manners and plain in her looks; but she fixed her best attention on +Medora, with whom she was as much charmed as at the first. Idealist and +heroine-worshipper, she was always ready to prostrate herself before a +young married woman of Medora's gracious and fashionable cast. + +O'Grady lingered over Medora's chair. "We've had a wonderful session," he +said, laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder. "You ought to have +come a bit sooner, my dear." + +Preciosa shivered. It was like the profanation of an idol. + +Medora unconcernedly pushed away his hand. Preciosa envied such serenity +and self-poise. + +"Why, how's this?" asked O'Grady, studying his hand curiously, as some +detached thing, some superfluity rejected and returned. "Ain't we +friends? Ain't we old pals? You can't mean to stand me off with your +London clothes and your London manners? Don't say you're trying to do +that, Dodie!" + +Preciosa shuddered. Medora laughed carelessly--oh, how could she! Kitty +Gowan jumped up and boxed O'Grady's ear with one of Medora's long, flat +parcels. "Get away, you saucy child!" she said. + +O'Grady grimaced and nursed his ear. "It serves you right!" said +Elizabeth Gibbons tartly. + +Preciosa was placated; the great retribution had fallen. She banished the +wish that she herself might have had the daring to be a third avenging +fury, and fell to studying the folds of Medora's bottle-green cloak. She +wondered if she herself were not as pretty as Mrs. Joyce--oh, in an +entirely different way!--and if she were glad or sorry that Medora and +her companion had come a little late for seeing the picture. Would it be +a success--this portrait? Was it all that Mr. Prochnow's lively little +friend seemed to think? + +Prochnow, putting away his palette and brushes, grandly overlooked the +late irruption of trivialities. He glanced across to Preciosa, and she +felt that he was thanking her for having held herself quite aloof from +them. + +Preciosa went away not completely reassured, yet on the whole pretty well +pleased. She felt that she had been taken hold of by a strong, decided +hand. She had made an excursion into a new land where feeble compliments +were dispensed with and where meek-eyed ingratiation seemed not to exist. +Yes, he was a forcible, clever fellow. That Virgilia Jeffreys should have +tried to make her think anything else, and that she should have permitted +Virgilia to make the attempt! She should see Virgilia soon, somewhere, +and should regain the lost ground; she should not allow herself to be +walked over a second time. She should probably say something very +cutting, too--if she could but find the right words. Suppose she were +younger than Virgilia and less expert? Was that any reason why she should +be played with, be cajoled into making fun of a----Yes, Ignace Prochnow +was a fine clever fellow; good-looking too, in a way; and masterful, +beyond a doubt. Had she been kind enough to him to cancel her cruelty at +their first meeting? She was afraid not. Should she have been kinder but +for the abundance of company and the absorbing nature of the work? +Probably so. Should she be kinder next time? That would depend on +him;--yes, if he became a little less professional and a little more +personal. Would he become so? She hoped he might. And if he didn't? Then +he might be encouraged to. How? Preciosa opened her purse for her fare +and postponed an answer. + +At that same moment, Prochnow, banished along with the canvas to his own +room by the return of Gowan, sat staring at the portrait as it stood +propped against his trunk. Little O'Grady, if he had been present, +instead of being occupied on the other side of the partition in sweeping +up the dried plaster that littered his floor, would have decided that the +personal interest was in fair proportion to the professional, and would +have rated Prochnow no higher as an artist than as a man. + + + + +XIII + +Virgilia, after dismissing Daffingdon with the detailed memoranda of her +great decorative scheme, went through the vain forms of going upstairs +and getting to bed. But sleep was out of the question. Her brain still +kept at work, elaborating the ideas already proposed and adding still +others to the plan. Why hadn't she laid more stress on the Medici? How +had she contrived to overlook John Law and the South Sea Bubble, with all +its attendant wigs, hooped petticoats and shoe-buckles? Then the +Pine-Tree Shilling jumped to her eyes, and Virginia's use of tobacco as a +currency;--possibly the entire scheme might be arranged on a purely +American basis, in case sympathy for her wider outlook were to fail. + +Virgilia ate her breakfast soberly enough; she checked all tendency +toward expansiveness with her own people, who were sadly earth-bound and +utilitarian. But immediately after breakfast she put on her things and +stepped round the corner to have a confab with her aunt. She found +Eudoxia upstairs, clad in a voluminous dressing-gown and struggling with +her over-plump arms against the rebelliousness of her all but +inaccessible back hair. Virgilia was very vivid and sprightly in her +report on the evening's conference, and Eudoxia, studying her with some +closeness, was barely able to apply the check when she found herself +asking: + +"Has he--has he----?" + +Virgilia dropped her eyes. No, he hadn't. + +But the acceptance of these magnificent proposals might easily make +another proposal possible, and again Eudoxia Pence asked herself: + +"Do I want it, or don't I? Certainly only the bank's acceptance of Daff's +scheme will make possible Virgilia's acceptance of Daff himself." + +That evening Dill called again on Virgilia, bringing the Hill-McNulty +plan. + +"So _this_ is the sort of thing they want?" she cried. "They insist on +it, after all, do they?" She cast her eye over the paper and hardly knew +whether to laugh or to weep. "'The First Fire-Engine House,'" she read. +'"Old Fort Kinzie'; 'The Grape-Vine Ferry'; 'The Early Water-Works'--oh, +this is terrible!" she exclaimed. + +"Read on," said Dill plaintively. + +"'The Wigwam'----" + +"What in heaven's name is that?" + +"A place where they used to hold conventions, I believe. 'The Succotash +Tavern'----" + +"What does that mean?" + +"I've heard it spoken of, I think," said Virgilia faintly. "It was built +of cottonwood logs and stood at the fork in the river. 'The Hard-Shell +Baptist Church,'----" she read on. + +"Do you know anything about that?" + +"I think I've seen it in old photographs. It stood on one side of +Court-House Square." + +"Did it have a steeple?" asked Dill droopingly. + +"I believe it did--quite a tall one." + +"Of course it did!" he groaned. "And so it goes. One building hugs the +ground and the next cleaves the sky. Yet they've all got to be used for +the decorative filling of a lot of spaces precisely alike." + +"What does Giles think of this?" asked Virgilia. + +"He's crazy." + +"And Adams, at the Academy?" + +"He's gone out to buy a rope." + +"And Little O'Grady?" + +"He fell over in a dead faint. He's lying in it yet. But before he lost +consciousness he made one suggestion----" + +"What was it?" + +Dill paused. "Have you ever heard of a painter named Proch--Prochnow?" he +presently asked, with some disrelish. "A newcomer, I believe." + +"I don't think I have." + +"He has lately taken a studio in the Warren. O'Grady has seen his work +and speaks well of it." + +"What particular kind of work?" + +"Decorative. Portraits too, I understand. He has been doing one of that +little Miss McNulty." + +Virgilia frowned. "What!" she was thinking to herself, "have I been taken +in by that viper, that traitress?--by a child who looked like an innocent +flower and is turning out to be the serpent under it? Prochnow!--the hard +name that nobody could pronounce! It's easy enough: Prochnow; Prochnow. +She could have pronounced it fast enough if she had wanted to! And now +she has gone over to the other side and taken O'Grady with her--and her +grandfather too!" Then, aloud: + +"Well?" + +"O'Grady says he's full of--ideas----" + +"And what has O'Grady got to do with it?" asked Virgilia tartly. "Has +anybody asked his help? Why is he mixing up in the matter, anyway? And if +he wants to suggest, let him stop suggesting painters and suggest a few +sculptors. I haven't heard of his doing anything like that!" + +Dill sighed wearily. "You can't keep O'Grady out if he wants to get in. +But I must say I hadn't expected to be loaded down with any more of the +Warren people. Gowan is more a drag than a help, and O'Grady is doing all +he can to bring us under a cloud. The directors can't understand such +freedom, such language, such shabbiness, such Bohemianism. Take it all +around, they are making it a heavier load than I can carry through." + +"And now they want to add another of their miserable crowd to it. Well, +there will be no room for Prochnows and their ideas," declared Virgilia, +wounded in her tenderest point. "_We_ will attend to the ideas. Let us +take Hill's absurd notion, if we must, and rush in and wrench victory +from defeat. Let us take his cabins and taverns and towers and steeples +and use them in the background----" + +"That would be the only way." + +"--and then put in people--Hill and McNulty can't be insisting upon mere +'views.' Fill up your foregrounds with traders and hunters and Indians +and 'early settlers' and 'prairie-schooners'----" + +"Giles has gone out to bring them round to something like that." + +"They really won't have the Bank of Genoa? They won't listen to Phidion +of Argos?" + +"I couldn't bring them within hailing distance of him." + +"Where is Roscoe Orlando Gibbons in such an hour as this?" + +"I haven't been able to find him." + +"_I_ shall find him. Aunt Eudoxia is a large stock-holder in that +wretched bank, and he's the only man of taste and refinement on the +board. If we have lost Jeremiah, that's all the more reason why we should +have Roscoe Orlando. I shall get her and go to his office at once. He +can't refuse support to our plan; he won't let this barbarous notion of +Hill's make any headway." + +Dill looked at Virgilia with mounting appreciation. Where was her equal +for resource, for elasticity, for devotion, for erudition? She was at +home in Grote and Sismondi, and she was just as much at home in the early +local annals of the town itself. She knew about the Parthenon and +Giotto's Tower, and she knew about the Succotash Tavern and the +Hard-Shell Baptist Meeting-House too. With matchless promptitude and +resiliency she began the broad sketching out of an entirely new scheme--a +thoroughly local one. Was there not Pere Marquette and the Sieur Joliet +and La Salle and Governor D'Artaguette? Was there not the Fort Kinzie +Massacre and the Last War-Dance of the Pottawatomies? Was there not the +prairie mail-coach and the arrival of the first vessel in the harbour? +Were there not traders and treaties and Indian commissioners? "There!" +she cried, "you and Stephen Giles just sharpen your teeth on such matters +as those! We have almost got the Nine Old Ogres on the run, and we +mustn't slow up on them for a single minute!" + +Dill stared at her with dazzled eyes. Such vim, such spirit, such +knowledge, such loyalty!--and all for him, all in his service! He felt +confusedly that he was upon the verge of taking her hand and saying in +broken trembling tones that she was his guiding star, his ruling spirit, +his steadfast hope--what lesser expressions could fitly voice his +gratitude, his admiration, his devotion? Then he caught himself: things +were still in the air. His fortune was yet to be made, and who could say +but that its making might yet be marred? Let him once come to an +understanding with those trying old fellows, let him but have a +hard-and-fast agreement with them in downright black and white, and +then--who could tell what might be said and done? + + + + +XIV + +Dill and his coadjutors had two or three more conferences, and a second +detailed scheme was sent over to the bank. History in general was +decisively thrust aside,--the only history worth recording was the +history the Nine themselves had helped to make. "We will go to the +libraries for 'ana,'" said Gowan; "they will help us with the earlier +years of the last century." + +"And to the Historical Association for more," said Giles. "Old Oliver +Dowd is an ex-secretary of it, and him at least we can capture beyond a +doubt." + +"Hurray!" cried Little O'Grady, who had insisted on being present. That +very afternoon he threw his "First Coinage of Venetian Sequins" back into +the clay-box and started in on a relief of "The Earliest Issue of +Wild-Cat Currency." + +"We've got a good thing this time," said Adams. "It's homogeneous; it's +picturesque; it's local. It gives all they want and a great deal more. I +think we can tussle with it successfully and not be ashamed of the +outcome." + +"As business-men they ought to appreciate the completeness of our new +scheme," said Giles, "and our promptness in furnishing it." + +"They will," said Joyce. "This beats the other idea all hollow. Go in and +win." + +Each one of them spoke in terms of unwonted confidence. Little O'Grady +himself was in such a state of irrepressible buoyancy that he left the +earth and fairly sailed among the clouds. All this reacted on Dill. For +the first time he felt the great commission fully within his grasp and +the net profits as safely to be counted upon. He began to warm to his +subjects. To him, who had learned a good deal in regard to shipping and +the handling of water from lounging about the ports of Marseilles and +Leghorn, had fallen the arrival of the first vessel: he would reconstruct +the primitive lighthouse that Mr. Hill had set his heart on, and would +eke out the angular emptiness of the subject by a varied group of +expectant pioneers big in the foreground. He had also taken the Baptist +church, of whose Bible-class Andrew P. Hill had been a member. He would +suppress the spire, and would show the pillared front on some Sunday +morning in midsummer, with an abundance of wide petticoats and deep +bonnets of the period of 1845, or thereabouts, displayed upon its front +steps. And finally, as he was fairly strong on figures in action, he had +intrepidly undertaken the Pottawatomie war-dance; and as soon as the +conference in Giles's studio broke up, he took the express-train out to +the Memorial Museum to see what the ethnological department there could +do for him in the way of moccasins, tomahawks and war-bonnets. + +He made his way through several halls filled with tall glass cases, +skirting the Polynesians, bearing away from the Eskimos and finally +reaching the North Americans. Their room was empty, save for a slender +girl in brown who was making notes on a collection of war-bonnets in a +morocco memorandum-book. It was Virgilia. + +"Why, what are you doing out here?" he asked. + +"Turning the odd moments to account. Collecting data for you on the +aborigines,--I am sure we can put them to use. I ran out to hear the +lecture on Earthquakes in Japan--you know I have a chance to go there +with the Knotts in April--and I thought I might incidentally pick up a +few notions for the War-Dance." + +So authentic and thoroughgoing a piece of loyalty as this affected Dill +tremendously; the hint of an Oriental exodus scarcely less so. Never +should she go to Japan with the Knotts; she should go with him. His share +in the work at the Grindstone would make this the easiest as well as the +most delightful of possibilities. Now was the time; no matter about +waiting for the contract. He felt the flood rising within him. Here at +last was the moment for taking her hand (she had put the memorandum-book +back into her pocket), and for looking earnestly into her eyes with all +the ardour perfect good taste would permit, and for saying in a voice +tremulous with well-bred passion the words that would make her his loyal +coadjutor through life. These different things he now said and did with a +flawless technique (Virgilia recalled how sadly the young real-estate +dealer had boggled), and a row of gaudy Buddhistic idols that looked in +through the wide door leading to the Chinese section stood witnesses to +her unaffected surrender. The pair passed back through the Aztecs and the +South Sea Islanders in a maze of happy murmurs and whisperings, and when +next Eudoxia Pence asked her niece: + +"Has he--has he----?" + +Virgilia, as she again dropped her eyes, was able to reply, this time: + +"He has." + +Daffingdon and Virgilia passed out through the great row of Ionic columns +and down the wide flight of steps into the bare, brown wind-swept +landscapes of the park. + +"And about Japan?" asked Dill. "You can wait a year longer for that, +can't you? We shall find the earthquakes just the same." + +Virgilia laughed happily. "Of course I can. What will such a year count +for as a mere delay?--a year so short, so full, so busy, so happy, so +successful! By _next_ February we shall be famous, we shall be rich, the +whole country will be ringing with our pictures----" + +Dill found it easy to fall in with her mood. He foresaw the immediate +acceptance of a scheme so complete and so well-considered; the early +signing of a binding contract; the receipt, without undue delay, of his +honorarium--a business-like tribute from a methodical and trustworthy +body of business-men; growing fame, increasing prosperity----After all, +why dwell on Japan? The world was beautiful everywhere, even in the bare, +flat rawness of the suburbs. + + + + +XV + +A few days later, and his bold step seemed justified. The directors were +an elusive body, and even when got together they found it hard to act +with anything like unanimity and despatch; but one afternoon Stephen +Giles encountered Mr. Holbrook in the office of one of the hotels and was +told that the plan was receiving favourable consideration and was not +unlikely to be accepted. As Mr. Holbrook was the most passive member of +the directorate, drifting quietly along with the general current, it +seemed safe to accept him as representing the feeling of that body. + +Giles carried the good news to Adams, at the Academy. Adams hurried home +with it to his wife and little Frankie. + +A few days more, and it laboriously transpired that old Jeremiah McNulty +was readjusting himself to the plan as modified and elaborated by Dill +and his associates. Old Jeremiah was particularly taken by the idea of +the First Ferry--suggesting only that the scene be slightly enlarged, so +as to take in the site of his early "yard." + +"At last we're gathering them in!" declared Adams to his wife. They began +to figure up their share of the spoils and to study how they would lay +this immense sum out. + +First of all they would bring a smile to the wan face of a patient +landlord by paying the back rent in full. As for the rest, Frankie must +have a pair of new shoes; and a thousand dollars at least must be placed +on deposit in some good savings bank. + +"For we have never been able to put anything by, and now at last comes +this chance to provide for the rainy day." They looked at each other in +mutual content and admiration--this was prudence, this was thrift. + +Next, word came to Dill that the attorney for the bank was actually +engaged in drawing up the contract. "We may even be able to sign it +to-morrow," he said to Virgilia. "We shall have Japan in good season, and +much more in between. Tell me; are we not selfish in keeping our +happiness to ourselves? Shall you not----" + +"I am ready to let the whole world know, dear Daff," she responded. "And +oh, to think that I have had my part in bringing your great good fortune +about!" + +At the very moment when Daffingdon and Virgilia were taking notes on the +aborigines and planning for Japan, Preciosa McNulty was strolling with +Ignace Prochnow through the galleries of the Art Academy. The portrait +was now finished. The submerged "resemblance" had risen once more to the +surface, as Little O'Grady had foretold, and the canvas had been borne +home in triumph to Preciosa's fond, admiring family. + +"Who did it?" asked her grandfather, boundlessly pleased. + +"That young man," replied Preciosa. + +"What young man?" + +"The one who came here that night and threw those big sheets of paper all +over the furniture." + +"It's you to the life, my child," he said. + +"Grandpa," proceeded Preciosa, "I want him to come here again and throw +some more sheets over the furniture. He's awfully smart, and he's just +bursting with ideas." + +Her grandfather scratched his chin. There were so many smart young men +bursting with ideas--the wrong sort of ideas. "Let him go to Mr. Hill." + +"They're better than those others were." + +Still the old man shook his head. "Let him go to Mr. Hill," he repeated. + +"With a letter or something from you?" + +"Let him go and talk for himself." + +"No. You just sit down and write it now." Then, to herself: "There! I +think Virgilia Jeffreys will find she can't wind me round her finger +quite as easily as she thought she could!" + +Preciosa gave Prochnow his letter in front of the Parthenon pediment +(where the current of visitors was thinnest), and counselled him to +advance on the Grindstone. He was as quick and clever as any of them, she +declared, and was entitled to take his share. + +Prochnow tossed his head. "I don't know that I care for a 'share,'" he +said. + +"Do you want to do it all?" asked Preciosa, awe-struck. + +"All or none," replied Prochnow loftily. "I am not one to co-operate. I +could do the whole as easily as a part." + +They strolled on through one spacious hall after another; none seemed too +roomy for the manoeuvres of this young genius. The largest studio in the +Burrow, Gowan's own, cramped him--most of all on the days when Mrs. Gowan +came down, set forth the tea-pot, lit up her candles and gave her moving +little imitation of the handsomer functions that took place through the +upper tiers of the Temple of Art. Prochnow had scant patience with the +mild hospitalities that accompanied, obbligato-like, art's onward course; +he could not accommodate himself, he could not fit in. There were days +when the streets and the parks themselves seemed none too spacious, and +Preciosa, who was beginning to accompany him abroad, soon got the widest +notion of his limitless expansiveness. He saw things with an eye that was +new, informed, penetrating, and he spread comments acute, critical, +pungent, with the freest possible tongue. He showed her the tawdry, +restless vulgarity of the architecture along the most splendid of her +favourite thoroughfares, and the ludicrousness of much of the sculpture +that cumbered the public parks; and with the mercilessness of youth for +mediocrity in his seniors, the _arrives,_ he would run through the +canvases of current exhibitions, displaying an abrupt arrogance, a bald, +raw, cursory cruelty that only the Uebermensch of art would have ventured +to employ. + +"And what do you think of our front parlour furniture?" asked Preciosa; +"and of all that fancy woodwork on our cupola?" + +Prochnow placed his hand over his mouth and turned away. It seemed as if +these things were too awful for characterization, yet he would spare them +for her sake. Let him laugh, though, if he wished; and she would laugh +with him. + +Thus her world daily became smaller, more insignificant, less to be +regarded, while Ignace himself grew bigger, more preponderant. How could +she refuse confidence in one who had such boundless confidence in +himself? + +In the course of these strolls he told her something about his own early +life. He had been born, she made out, somewhere between the Danube and +the Oder; he spoke familiarly of the frontier of Silesia. He had studied +in Munich and Vienna, and some of his things--sumptuous, highly-charged, +over-luscious--showed clearly enough the influence of Makart and the +lawless vicinity of gipsy Hungary. He had crossed to America with his +family five years before; they were still in New Jersey. "They came +half-way," he declared; "and I have come all the way--an adventurer in a +new land." + +Preciosa tried to realize the newness, which she had always taken for +granted, and the remoteness, which had never made itself particularly +plain to her consciousness; all this that she might reach some +appreciation of his venturesomeness,--a gallant, spirited quality not +misplaced in one so youthful, so self-confident, so fitted for success +and mastery. + +"Well, you're ready for one adventure, anyway," declared Preciosa, +motioning toward the letter still held in Prochnow's brown, veined hand. +She saw herself helping him into the saddle and passing him up his lance. + +"So I am," he acquiesced. He brought his eyes back from the large, pale, +formidable Amazonian figures before him to the warm-hearted, +warm-coloured little creature by his side. Her wealth of chestnut hair +was glowing in its most artful disorder; and there was limitless +enticement in the turn of her long curling eyelashes, just on a level +with his moustache-to-be. Her slim little body was subordinated to her +head and to her spreading hat in precisely the degree imposed by modern +taste and recognised by the canons of modern art; nothing less grandiose, +pallid, remote was to be imagined. Her dress, full of rich, daring +colours and latter-day complications of design, completed the spell; +those very large white women in crinkled draperies might remain where +they were, when such a one as this was here, as close to him as his own +self, as contemporaneous as the last stroke of the clock, as rich and +brilliant in colouring as any of the canvases of his master's master, as +necessary as bread and wine. He must put to its best use the weapon she +had placed in his hand, when there was so much--all the world, in +fact--to gain. + +"Do your best," said Preciosa, mindful of the portfolios that Little +O'Grady had lugged downstairs and had opened in Festus Gowan's studio. +"Leave them all behind," she added, feeling as keenly as ever the smart +of her feeble complaisance toward Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"Can I fail with such encouragement?" asked Prochnow, in an intonation +unwontedly tender, as he tried to look under those long curling lashes. + +Preciosa flushed--a thing those great, over-admired marble women would +have tried in vain to do. Yes, she was no closer to him than she was +necessary to him. He began to look forward to the time when he might take +her by the hand, restraining such modest impulse as she was now showing +to move on to the next room, and reproduce that blush by telling her all +she was to him and must be ever. Only the wills, the whims, the +prejudices of a few unenlightened old men stood in his way; these he must +bend, dissipate, brush aside. He felt himself equal to the task. + + + + +XVI + +Eudoxia Pence, after receiving the news of Virgilia's engagement, felt +more easy in her mind; she knew, now, just what ground she stood on and +saw just what she had to do. She realized that she had rather liked +Daffingdon Dill all along and had secretly been hoping that he and +Virgilia would hit it off. What she must see to was that Daffingdon got +the commission from the Grindstone, or his proper share in it: those nine +old men must accept his ideas and his sketches if this marriage were to +become a fact. Virgilia, who always ran with wealthy people, often gave +the impression of possessing greater means than she really commanded; +this was doubly serious when it came to her taking up with a man who was +altogether dependent on his wits, his skill and his invention, and +subject to the passing whims of a fickle public taste. She went down to +the library, to discuss the affair with her husband. + +"It isn't as if Palmyra had been left with abundant means and only one +daughter," she submitted. "It's different when Virgilia is one of four. +And her brother is too taken up with his own wife and children to be +of----Are you listening, Palmer?" + +"Eh? What's that?" asked her husband, lifting his elderly face from a +mass of papers that lay in the bright circle made by the library lamp. He +was generally deep in his own concerns, and they were large ones. He +seldom gave more than scant attention to such domestic details as +developed from relations through marriage. + +Eudoxia sighed and forbore to tax him further. And when, next morning, +Virgilia came round to report the fate of the second decorative scheme +she sighed again. + +For the new plan had not been successful, after all; it had failed +ignominiously at the eleventh hour. A great deal of effort had been +expended in the private office of this director and that, and a futile +attempt made to bring four or five of them together at the office of the +bank itself, that the matter might be clenched and the contract signed. +But the directors were elusive, and cost a great deal of time; and when +found, evasive, and cost a great deal of patience. But it was the delay +that had worked the ruin. It gave opportunity for tangles and hitches, +for the reconsideration of points already settled, for the insinuation of +doubts as to this, that and the other. Andrew P. Hill developed a sulky +dislike for all the laboured superfluities that now encumbered the chaste +simplicity of his original conception, and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons began +to question (though, to tell the truth, he was just about to bring +forward a candidate of his own) whether the artists thus far considered +were sufficiently skilled to carry out the work. As a matter of fact, the +only striking and convincing demonstration of ability witnessed thus far +was that reported by his daughter from the studio of Festus Gowan. + +No, that overwrought presentation of early local history was not quite +what they wanted. The contract remained unsigned, and presently it slid +off into the waste-paper basket under Andrew P. Hill's desk. + +The whole circle boiled at this outrage. Joyce, who was highly articulate +and who possessed a tremendous capacity for indignation, would have made +himself a mouth-piece to voice the protests of his infuriate friends; but +Little O'Grady wrenched the task from him. + +O'Grady could not contain himself--nor did he try to. "This is +business-dealing with business-men, is it?" he cried to Dill. "This is +what comes of treating with solid citizens of means and method, is it? +Where is my hat? I'll go round to that bank and just tell them what +I----" + +"O'Grady!" protested Dill. "Behave! or you'll have the fat in the fire +for good and all." + +"No, Daff," insisted Little O'Grady. "I got you into this, and now----" + +"I don't understand it so," said Dill coldly. + +"Oh yes, I did. And now I'll see you through. Where is my hat?" + +While Daffingdon was trying to hold O'Grady in check, Virgilia was making +moan to her aunt. + +She sat down on Eudoxia's bed with a desperate flounce. "They don't want +it! What, in heaven's name, do they want?" she asked angrily. "I think it +is time for you, aunt, to make yourself felt. You are as much interested +in the bank as any of them, and as much entitled to speak. Go down there +as a stock-holder and find out what they are trying to do." + +"I will if you wish," said her aunt. "In the meantime, why don't you go +round and talk to Mr. Gibbons? He's an agreeable enough man, and the only +one of the lot that knows anything about such things. Learn from him, if +you can, what the trouble is." + +Virgilia found Roscoe Orlando Gibbons in the midst of his plats and +charts--he was pushing a new subdivision to the northward; but he +gallantly dropped his work at the entrance of a lady. + +Virgilia asked for his support; she appealed to him both as a man of +business who should be willing to carry on things in a business way, and +as a cultivated amateur whose influence should not fail in supporting a +fine scheme contrived by reputable artists. + +"Ah--um, yes," replied Roscoe Orlando vaguely. "The town is developing a +number of strong talents--really, we are pushing ahead wonderfully. +I--ah, in fact, I may say," he went on, with some little grandiloquence, +"that I have just been the means of bringing such a talent to light +myself--an absolute discovery, and one of no little importance." + +"Indeed?" said Virgilia coldly. + +"Yes; a young Pole--a young Bohemian--a young I-don't-know-what." Roscoe +Orlando waved his fingers with a vague, easy carelessness. "His name is +Prochnow. Very, very gifted. I found him living out on the West +Side--incredible distance--impossible neighbourhood--starving in the +midst of masterpieces," pursued Roscoe Orlando complacently. "I bought a +few." + +"Prochnow!" thought Virgilia angrily; "that fellow who painted Preciosa +McNulty's portrait!" He had doubtless won over old Jeremiah by that +stroke, and now he was running off with Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. It was +little less than a landslide; she and her aunt must stop it. + +"One of his pictures is in my own drawing-room," said Gibbons. "The other +I have presented to our club. Such colour!" he cried, rolling his eyes. +"Such composition!" he added, running his fat fingers through his +whiskers. "A talent of the first order; more--an out-and-out genius!" he +concluded. + +Yes, it was Roscoe Orlando who had purchased Prochnow's pictures and thus +enabled him to take quarters in the Burrow. They were large unwieldy +things, painted in the latter days of his Viennese apprenticeship, and +they had cost him cruelly for freight and storage; but he had always +clung to the belief that he could sell them sometime, to somebody: at +least, they would serve to show what he could do. Or rather, what he had +once done and been satisfied to do. He should hardly care to do such +things now; he was not ashamed of them--he had merely left them a little +behind. + +"Oh, Ig, Ig, Ig!" Little O'Grady had cried upon learning of all this, +"why won't you be fair and above-board? Why will you be so secretive, so +self-sufficient? Why didn't you tell me it was Roscoe Orlando Gibbons who +had bought those pictures?" + +"Why, what difference does it make?" asked the other, in wonder. + +"It makes all the difference in the world--to anybody who knows this town +and its people. Has nobody ever told you that Roscoe Orlando Gibbons was +one of the directors of the Grindstone?" + +"No." + +"Well, he is, and you've got him on your side. Did you say he had given +one of 'em to some club?" + +"Yes. Why?" + +"What club?" + +"The----. Is there such a club as the Michigan?" + +"Yes. And old Oliver Dowd is the president of it. Now you can get _him_ +too." + +"Him?" + +"Yes; he's another of the directors. Oh, Ignace, you poor lost lamb, why +haven't you told your Terence all these things before?" + +As a fact, Roscoe Orlando's gift to the club (it had not cost him any +great sum) had been accepted with empressement and given a good place in +the general lounge. The younger members welcomed it gladly. It presented +an odalisque, very small in the waist and with a wealth of tawny hair +black in the shadows; the foreground was a matter of fountain basins and +barbaric rugs; infants with prominent foreheads waved palm-branches in +the corners; and one or two muscular bronzed slaves loomed up in the dim +background. Dill, who had some acquaintance among the members of the club +and was now and then asked in to lunch, was promptly brought up to look +at it. To him it had a public, official aspect, not amiss in that +place--surely the lady offered herself most admirably to the general male +gaze. The thing was done knowingly, and with a certain _brio_, he +acknowledged; but it seemed rather exotic and already slightly out of +date. He saw Roscoe Orlando Gibbons openly gloating over its floridity, +and bringing up other members, old and young, to gloat with him; but he +thought it more than doubtful whether its dripping lusciousness would +prove grateful to the dry mind and sapless person of Oliver Dowd. And he +was glad to notice that Abner Joyce, who had lately joined (in the hope +that the club's well-known interest in public affairs would offer him +some opportunity to work for civic and national betterment), turned away +from Gibbons's ill-judged offering with disdain and disgust. + +"The fellow has training and facility," said Daffingdon; "but a great +monumental scheme conceived in such a spirit as that----No, we have +nothing to fear from him." + +But there was much to fear from the complacency of Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons. Could he, as he asked Virgilia with a maddening, self-satisfied +smile, withdraw his support from a talent that he had introduced into his +own house and indorsed in the eyes of the commercial and professional +public? Virgilia saw that what she had to contend against was vanity, and +she went away in very low spirits. If Prochnow had but come to Roscoe +Orlando's notice through the ordinary channels! If his patron were not +glowing, palpitating, expanding with the conscious joy of discovery! But +crude ore brought to light by our own pick and shovel is more precious to +us than refined gold that enters into circulation through the assayer and +the mint. + +"Ugh!" said Virgilia to her aunt; "you should have heard him. He +simply--_blatted_. It was disgusting. And now, what are we going to do?" + + + + +XVII + +"We must get at the girl herself," declared Eudoxia,--"that is, if it +isn't too late, if she isn't utterly infatuated with him." + +"I don't think I've heard as much as _that_ said," replied Virgilia. She +knew of but one young woman who might justly go to such a length. "What +shall you do first? Shall you ask her to pour tea?" + +"No need, yet, of going as far as that. Can't you get together a little +party and give her a sort of lunch out at the Whip and Spur? Then one of +us, I suppose, might call on her mother--if she's got one." + +"Whatever you suggest," said Virgilia, with a suppressed sob. "You may +think I'm a perpetual fount of ideas, but I'm not." The Grindstone's +rejection of her second scheme had hurt her cruelly. She put her +handkerchief to her eyes--as if she had become, instead, a fount of +tears. + +And as such she next appeared to Dill. "I felt so sure, dear Daff, that +we could put it through," she mourned. "And now--and now----" + +Daffingdon drew her discouraged head down against his shoulder, in his +most noble and manful mode. "Let the lions take us, if they will," he +seemed to say, casting his eyes around the arena. + +Little O'Grady came over, bearing a martyr's palm. The universal sadness +was reflected in his face. Little Frankie Adams was to go along wearing +his old shoes, and Kitty Gowan, who had been figuring on a belated winter +suit, had tearfully thrown a handful of samples in the fire and put the +fond notion aside. + +Little O'Grady wiped a sympathetic eye. "Oh, Daff, I'm so sorry for you; +just at the time, too, when----" He dared not proceed, awed by Dill's +protesting pathos. "Come, now," he ventured presently, "why shouldn't we +let Ignace in on this? He's so inventive; he's so full of ideas----" + +Daffingdon recalled the sensuous Oriental masterpiece at the club and saw +no reason why the possessor of such a particular talent could be expected +to succeed in a bank. He shook his head; no member of another sect--no +heretical Viennese--should share his martyrdom with him. This left +Prochnow free to rush upon the lions on his own account. Little O'Grady, +returning to the Rabbit-Hutch, found his neighbour's loins fully girded +for the task--the fine frenzy of inspiration had already turned the place +upside down. + +"That's right, Ignace!" he called from the threshold; "sail in. What is +the plan this time?" he asked, tiptoeing along over the scattered sheets +that littered the floor. + +Prochnow ran his nervous fingers through his wild black forelock, and +cast on Little O'Grady a piercing, inspirational glance from a pair of +glittering eyes. + +"The two great modern forces," he pronounced, "are Science and Democracy. +I shall show how each has contributed to the progress of society. Science +shall have the six lunettes on the right and Democracy the six on the +left." + +"H'm," said Little O'Grady; "an allegory?" + +"Precisely. No better basis for a grand monumental work." + +"Well, Ignace," declared Little O'Grady, "you'll put it through if +anybody can!" + +He hurried back to his own room, shrugged himself into his +plaster-flecked blouse of robin's-egg blue, threw "The First Issue of +Wild-Cat Currency" (a group of frontier financiers in chokers and high +beaver hats) back into the clay-box, and began at once on a bold relief +of "Science and Democracy Opening the Way for the Car of Progress." + +"Science," he explained to Prochnow, next day, "will be clearing the air +of the bats of ignorance, and Democracy will be clearing the ground of +the imps of aristocracy--or maybe they'll be demons. And between the two, +right in the middle, of course, the Car of Progress will advance in very +low relief. I haven't quite got it all where it will pull together yet, +and I can see the foreshortening of the horses will be something +terrible; but I'm pretty sure I shall find some way out within a week or +so. Let me tell you one thing, though, about your own job, Ignace. Your +allegory will go down easier if----Say, you wouldn't take Hill's hints, +would you?" + +"No," said Prochnow, with the loftiest contempt. + +"It will go down easier, I say, if you'll just work in some portraits of +our Nine Worthies. Ghirlandajo did that racket, for instance; so did +Holbein. So did plenty of others. Wouldn't Andrew P. Hill's chin-beard +come in great on Fortitude? And if you've got any gratitude in your +composition, Roscoe Orlando ought to go in as Prosperity. Give him two +cornucopias, instead of one, to balance those side-whiskers----" + +"Hush!" called Prochnow reprovingly. He never jested about his patrons +and he never made facetious observations about art. + +"Well, don't get mad," said Little O'Grady, slightly abashed. "I'm doing +just that thing with Simon Rosenberg; he's going to be my archdemon of +aristocracy." + +Prochnow remained smilelessly severe; and Little O'Grady, after one or +two more feeble efforts to save his "face," slunk away--vastly impressed, +as he never failed to be when he met the rare person that could put him +down. + +"What makes Ignace so grouchy to-day, I wonder?" he muttered, as he +returned to the Car of Progress. + +Prochnow soon forgot this interruption and jumped back into his work with +redoubled vigour. He took a serious view of himself, of his art, of +things in general; above all, he took a serious view of his immediate +future and of the place that Preciosa McNulty might come to have in it. +Little O'Grady, an easygoing bachelor, everybody's friend, and too much +the champion of the whole gentler sex to set any one of its members apart +from all the rest, might indulge in such jestings about his own life and +his own work as he saw fit. But for himself, a man of the warmest and +highest ambitions, yet with the most restricted means for realizing them, +play by the roadside was quite out of the question. + + + + +XVIII + +While Ignace Prochnow was busy in adjusting science, democracy and +progress to the requirements of finance, Preciosa, in whose behalf this +great work had been undertaken, was lunching with Virgilia Jeffreys at +the Whip and Spur. A mild, snowless season and dry firm roads had induced +the managers of this club to try the experiment of reopening for the +remainder of the winter: surely enough devotees of out-of-door activity, +desirous of filling in the weeks that intervened between now and spring, +must exist to make the step worth while. + +At first Preciosa had had her doubts. But Virgilia had known how to +execute a cordial grasp with her cold slim hand and how to put a warm +friendly look into those cool narrow eyes. After all, Preciosa was not +one to hold a grudge; besides, she could think of none of those cutting +things she had once wished to say. + +Virgilia had asked Elizabeth Gibbons, from whom she had heard the +particulars about the portrait, and whom she hoped to bring round even if +she had not succeeded with the girl's father. She had asked Dill too, and +his sister Judith, both of whom were to show themselves very gracious and +winning with the granddaughter of Jeremiah McNulty and the supporter of a +rival painter. And she had added two or three other young men, who might +be expected to appreciate this chance of making a fresh, youthful +addition to their own limited and tiresome circle. There was a crackling +fire in the big dining-room chimney-place; and three or four other little +parties, scattered about, helped to remove some of the empty chill from +the great, bare, shining place so full of disused chairs and tables. + +Preciosa, who somehow found it impossible to take the thing simply, was +decked out to considerable effect; most of the other young women struck +her as rather underdressed, and she wondered that they could seem so very +much at home. She felt they viewed her, as they passed, first with a +slight curiosity (giving questioning glances that referred the matter to +their sweet, whimsical Virgilia), and then with a slighting indifference. +Clearly, in their eyes, she was here for just this once; she would not +occur again, and they need not bother Virgilia by asking reasons. +Preciosa began to feel very cold and lonely. + +But Virgilia had no idea of permitting any such effect as this. She had +been very gracious all the way out, and now she stared her inquiring +friends into the background and worked with redoubled vigour to restore +Preciosa's circulation. The fire helped; so did the good cheer--including +some excellent bouillon; and so did the rattling remarks of the two or +three young men, who were not at all overcome by Preciosa and who treated +her with an ingenuously condescending informality that she took for the +friendliest goodwill. + +But most of all was the dear child affected by the confidential hints and +whisperings of Virgilia, as they came to her in the wardrobe, or before +the great fireplace, or across the corner of the table itself, or up in +the bay-window, overlooking the gray lake, where they cosily took their +coffee. This delightful function, Virgilia as much as intimated, might be +but the beginning of many; this, if little Preciosa rightly understood, +was only the withdrawal of the first of the filmy, silvery curtains that +intervened between her and the full splendour of society. Virgilia +murmured of the present opening of the golf season--it would come early +this year; and she did not stop with proposing Preciosa for the +Knockabout (which was good enough for a certain sort of people), but even +suggested the possibility of her little friend's reception within her own +club, the Fairview itself. She had charming acquaintances too, it +delicately transpired, who had taken an opera-box for the season, but who +were kept away from it by a sudden death in the family; and she, +Virgilia, had the use of the tickets as freely as another. Certain dear +friends of hers, she added, were expecting to give a cotillon next +month--and why should they call her friend if she were not at liberty to +ask cards for a friend or two of her own? And it was an easy probability, +she intimated further, that Mamma McNulty might receive the honour of a +call from one lady or another of the Pence connection and even be invited +to assist at her aunt's charity bazar for the benefit of the +Well-Connected Poor.... + +Yes, the veils lifted one by one, and the shining heavenly host of +society drew nearer and nearer. And finally, as in the Lohengrin +Vorspiel, the surcharged moment came when the violins, though pushed to +their utmost, could go no further, and the clashing cymbals took up the +bursting tale. The last clouds rolled away, the Ultimate Effulgence was +revealed, and Preciosa McNulty was vouchsafed a vision of herself as the +central figure in a blinding apocalypse: she was pouring tea at one of +Mrs. Palmer Pence's authentic Thursday afternoons, with the curtains +drawn, the candles glimmering, the right girls lending their aid, the +street outside blocked with shimmering carriages, and the great ones of +the earth saying to an alien, inexperienced little nonentity, "No lemon, +thank you," or, "Another lump of sugar, please,"--a palpitating child who +felt that now it but rested with her to readjust her halo and clap her +wings and soar onward and upward with the departing host toward the realm +of glory. + +Preciosa was in a glow. She forgot the nippy ride out through the bare, +bleak suburbs, and the weltering waste of the raw gray lake just below, +and the cold glare from the dozens of disused table-tops, and the cool +stares of people who wondered why she was here. Let them but wait a +little, and they might soon meet her elsewhere. + +Then Virgilia took Preciosa up into the bay-window on the landing and set +her to sipping her coffee and delicately indicated to her the price she +was to pay. She spoke of Mr. Dill's recognised primacy among the city's +painters, and of the exertions by which he had won his place. She +reminded Preciosa that he, as a fact, had been the first to take up and +study the great problem proposed by the Grindstone, and that both +professional courtesy and plain, everyday honesty forbade his summary +supplanting by another. Preciosa listened with lowered eyes,--eyes that +once or twice slid down the stairs and rested upon the prepossessing +young gentleman for whom this plea was made. She felt that she was +trapped; Virgilia Jeffreys had set a snare for her once more. She was +conscious of the sidelong glance out of Virgilia's narrow green eyes, and +of Virgilia's sharp nose and vibrating nostrils and fine intent eyebrows; +they were all at work upon her to subdue her to Virgilia's will. She felt +very feeble, very defenceless, greatly embarrassed, thoroughly +uncomfortable. She thought suddenly of Medora Joyce, with her long +bottle-green cloak and her friendly face. Why were not more of the "nice" +people powers in the social world? Why must the gates be kept by the +selfish, the insincere, the calculating? Medora, she felt sure, would +have lent a hand without asking one to give up, in return, one's own +thumb and forefinger.... + +There was a sudden stir outside--the sound of crunching wheels and +grinding machinery and escaping steam. The two girls looked down from the +bay. A bulky figure got out of an automobile, gave a command or two in a +peremptory tone, entered the house and made his wants known to the +steward. + +"H'm," said Virgilia; "one of the Morrells." + +The newcomer picked up all the men available and invited them to assist +in his libations. Robin Morrell, the second of the Twins, had passed an +active forenoon in the popularization of those unequalled certificates, +and now he was more than willing to spend money freely in the eyes of the +right people. Everybody he had approached earlier had met his views as to +the value of those documents (they were at two-hundred-and-thirty, or +some such incredible figure)--including a bank president or so, who had +accepted them as collateral on this basis; and all whom he invited, or +summoned, now (refusal seemed impossible), must needs show a like +unanimity in sharing his pleasures. He was big and red, and took up a +great deal of room. By contrast, Daffingdon Dill looked more of a +gentleman than ever. + +"He's like his brother--just!" said Virgilia to herself. "Imagine!" she +added elliptically. + +While Morrell collected the men and impressed his very urgent and +particular demands upon the intimidated steward, Virgilia, leaving +Preciosa, bestowed a few moments' exertions upon Elizabeth Gibbons. +Virgilia gently but decidedly held the girl's father up to reprobation. +Elizabeth professed herself utterly shocked by this disclosure of her +parent's divagations and conveyed the impression that he should be +brought back into the right path and should turn from Prochnow and all +his works. + +"What sort of a thing did he make of it?" asked Virgilia, thinking of the +portrait. + +"Why, really, do you know, it came out very well." + +"What kind of a person is he?" + +"Clever enough, I should say; but not by any means what you would call a +gentleman." + +"Um," murmured Virgilia darkly. How could anybody be interested in a +painter that was not a gentleman? This was more than she could +understand. "Don't let it go any further, dear," she counselled gently. + +"Certainly not," said Elizabeth promptly, and put the matter out of her +mind for once and for all. + +After Morrell had imposed himself upon the men he turned his attention to +the women. Virgilia had always impressed him as a trifle meagre and +acidulous, and Elizabeth Gibbons had never impressed him at all; but he +instantly caught at the flamboyant and high-charged beauty of little +Preciosa McNulty. However, she was too chill and lonely once more to be +greatly affected by the blusterous gallantries of this prosperous swain. +She was very subdued in her acceptance of his heavy attentions;--"more so +than I should--well, than I should have expected," as he himself +observed. Really, she was too young for so much poise, too +"temperamental," by every indication of her physiognomy, for such +complete self-control. + +"I say, she has a very good tone, do you know," he took occasion to +remark to Dill. And he spoke as a man whose authority in such delicate +matters was beyond dispute. There is only one way to impress the pusher, +and that way Preciosa had unconsciously taken. The more she repulsed him +the more worthy he thought her. "I must see her again, somewhere," he +decided. + +"Millions," whispered Virgilia to Preciosa, behind Robin Morrell's broad +back. "Quite one of _us_. And you can see for yourself how immensely he +is taken with you." + +Yes, here was something more glorious even than the Thursday tea. + +On the way home Preciosa was quiet and thoughtful. Her mother, devoured +by a hungry curiosity and a sharp solicitude, plied her with questions. +Whom had she met? What had they said and done? How had they dressed and +acted? For the love of heaven, names, descriptions, particulars! + +Preciosa looked back at her mother and held an unbroken silence. + + + + +XIX + +Prochnow spent the whole day working for Preciosa, oblivious of +Virgilia's snares or of the debut of Robin Morrell. He heaved history, +tradition, legend, mythology into the furnace, worked the bellows with +indefatigable hand, blew his brains to a white heat and kept them there, +and dropped down at dusk with his project complete. He had outlined two +or three of his cartoons as well, and had even dashed out, on a small +scale, the colour-scheme of the one that made the most immediate appeal. + +Little O'Grady, who had had all the trouble he anticipated with the +chariot of Progress--and a good deal more--came in for a cup of +Prochnow's potent, bewitching coffee. + +"Ignace!" he cried, wiping his clay-encrusted hands on the blue blouse, +"you beat us all! You'll run away ahead of any one of us! Only, you'll +kill yourself doing it!" + +"My first great chance," replied Prochnow. "I mustn't let it slip by." + +Within a few days this third scheme was brought into intelligible shape +and sent off in pursuit of the scattered sons of finance. "It's a dead +go!" cried Little O'Grady; "this time we get 'em sure!" His confidence +was the light from the blazing furnace, just as Prochnow's intensity was +its heat. When each believed so fully in himself and in the other how +could the thought of failure intrude? + +"Ignace," said Little O'Grady, "this time they'll treat us right. You +must take a better room than you have here. You must move downstairs, +where people can find you, and where you will be able to let them in when +they do. Ladies, now--how could you possibly receive them in such +quarters as these?" + +Prochnow easily allowed himself to be persuaded. He was already beginning +to see about how the cat jumped and to understand how much depended upon +the gentle patronage of the luminaries of society. There was one little +star, surely, whose light he should be glad to focus on himself once +more--nor be indebted to another's kindness for the privilege. He had +indeed ventured to call on Preciosa once or twice at her own home--in +particular there was the evening on which, defying niggardly Fortune, he +had invited her to the theatre, her passion; but Euphrosyne McNulty had +not seemed fully able to understand him. She appeared to view him as a +sort of unclassifiable young artisan and to find slight justification for +his presence. She had other ideas for her daughter. + +"Come, make a stagger," said Little O'Grady encouragingly. "Take that +other big room down there next to Gowan's. I'll cough up a few for you, +and I'll let you have all the traps of mine you need. Take the Aztec jars +and both the priceless Navajos that I have clung to through all my days +of misery and privation." + +Prochnow made the move. Preciosa was among his first callers. His studio +came to little compared with Dill's, and to little more compared with +Gowan's; but the jars and the blankets did their part, the mandolin and +the coffee-pot theirs; the portfolios were broken open to decorate the +walls, and,---- + +"You'll do," said Little O'Grady. + +Preciosa's back missed the tall mahogany chair with the brass rosettes. +"We've loaned it to Gowan," explained Little O'Grady; "we're helping him +out on a portrait." + +Preciosa's feet missed the thick-piled Persian rug. "It was getting full +of moths and dust," said Little O'Grady. "We've given it to some poor +chaps upstairs for a coverlet." + +"Are they very destitute?" asked Preciosa tenderly. + +"Turrible," replied Little O'Grady. "There's one sufferer up there who's +just about cleaned out--nothing left but his bed and one chair. He's +eating his mattress. It'll last a week longer." + +Preciosa leaned back luxuriously on the wood-box, which was covered by +one of the blankets, and tapped her delicate little foot on the other, +spread over the floor. How fortunate that Ignace was spared all these +privations! + +Prochnow himself could not feel that he was poor. _She_ was here; his +drawings were with the bank; his Odalisque was at the club; and his Fall +of Madame Lucifer, in a bright new frame, adorned the chaste walls of +Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. The future was bright with promise. He dared to +speak now. He would. He did. + +As soon as Little O'Grady had the grace to make a move toward departure, +Prochnow hastened it on. O'Grady went upstairs to banish one or two more +obstacles from the way of the Car of Progress, and Prochnow took Preciosa +over to the Academy to see the Winter Exhibition. + +Preciosa, as has already been said, was not a girl of many ideas; yet a +single one, detached, isolated, and presented to her with some ardour and +directness, was easily within her grasp. The idea was now presented, and +Preciosa forgot all about the pictures. For surely he who offered it was +a most complete and admirable mechanism; the pulse of his heart, the beat +of his brain, the flash of his eye, the tremor of his masterful +hands--all these now worked in fullest harmony and told her here was a +man. Preciosa, never inclined to make too much of worldly considerations, +now set them aside altogether. Any idea of mere lucre slipped from her +mind, and if she thought at all of a mother's strained social ambitions +for a favourite child, it was but to feel with a wilful joy that she was +extricating herself from the selfish grasp of Virgilia Jeffreys. Her own +humble and obscure origin stirred within her,--her, the granddaughter of +peasants who had trotted their bogs,--and she gave no heed to her lover's +gentility or lack of it, in her unconscious tendency, even her active +willingness, to "revert." + +Prochnow felt the utmost confidence in his own powers, in his future, in +the great scheme now under the scrutiny of the Grindstone. He glanced +round the walls of the gallery, and here and there a canvas due to one +hand or another that had co-operated in the rival scheme came to his +view. He made silent, acidulous comments on certain manifestations of +mediocrity placed there by men so much better quartered, better known, +better circumstanced than himself. "Never mind," he said; "next year _I_ +shall be here, and then the difference will be seen by everybody." Well +might the director welcome work from one who had distanced all others in +a fair race and who unaided had brought to a triumphal issue the greatest +piece of monumental decoration the town had ever known. And this little +thing close by his side, panting, palpitating, flushing divinely, had +helped him to conquer his success. + +"It will be your triumph, too!" he told her. + +"Mine?" she asked, in self-depreciation. "Why, I have not made you a +single suggestion." Too truly she was no Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"You have had a hand in every drawing," he insisted warmly. "You have +moved the crayon over every sheet. The whole work is full of you--it is +You yourself." + +Preciosa accepted this full, round declaration with easy passivity; she +was not clever, only happy. If he thought thus, and felt thus--why, that +was enough. He was a strong young man--let him have his way. It all fell +in with his "handling" of the whole situation. Little enough had he +depended upon soft seduction, upon gallantry, upon flattery; still less +had he tried to wheedle, to propitiate. He had grasped her with an +intent, smileless severity, and he was not to be opposed. His words, like +his works, were full of sweep and decision, and empty of all light +humours, and they lifted her up and carried her away. + +"Yes," she said, "it will be my triumph too." And she seemed to have said +the words he wished to hear. + + + + +XX + +A week or two went by. The paladins of finance found it as hard as ever +to get together. Nothing moved ahead save the new building itself. Even +the Car of Progress stood stock-still in the roadway, while Little +O'Grady gnawed his nails. Only the contractors and their men had any +advance to show. They had put on the roof and had begun to plaster the +interior. The vagaries and uncertainties of a few struggling, befogged +old gentlemen had no terrors for them--_their_ contracts had been signed +hard and fast months before, and their receipts of money had kept close +and exact step with the progress of the work itself. "I wish I was a +bricklayer--or even a hod-carrier!" said Little O'Grady, throwing a +despairing eye upon the Car, stuck fast in the mire. + +Prochnow was still confident. He saw a bride, a home, a year of +satisfying and profitable activity; he even saw more than one new ring on +Preciosa's dear, overloaded little fingers. Yes, he had fully justified +his summary snatching of this child of luxury from that front parlour +full of contorted chairs with gilded arms and with backs of pink brocade. +He even heard Euphrosyne McNulty say to him in a voice tremulous with +generous feeling: "Dear Ignace, you are all I hoped to find you--and +more. You have made little Preciosa's mother completely content." + +At last the Grindstone made a revolution. Andrew P. Hill, weary of +waiting for the help of his associates, none of whom save Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons could be brought to the scratch, took hold of the handle and +struck out a few sparks. + +Together Hill and Gibbons considered "Science and Democracy." Prochnow +had devised a scheme that was properly severe and monumental; though the +intellectual cherubs and the muscular blacks were present in modified +form, all odalisques and such had been suppressed. Still, the general +tone was too luscious for Andrew, who, even in his young days, had been a +pattern of sapless rectitude; and on the other hand, it was not luscious +enough for Roscoe Orlando, who, in _his_ young days, had been quite the +reverse. Andrew had no affinity for fluttering garments and sensuously +waving palm-fronds--little did they consort with the angular severity of +"business." Roscoe Orlando, on the other hand, had an intense affinity +for such things as the Fall of Madame Lucifer, and was hoping for +something more of the same sort. Madame was falling in red tights and +Parisian slippers, with black bat-wings inserted between her straight, +slim legs and her outstretched arms, while Lucifer himself, a much +smaller figure, fell some distance behind her; and her staring eyes and +open mouth and streaming hair were a sight to see--even upside down. As +Roscoe Orlando turned over Prochnow's sketches with a discontented hand +he asked querulously where was the _chic_, the snap that he had hoped to +see. No, no; the boy had done his best work already; he was on the down +grade--that was plain. + +"And then, all this allegory," objected Andrew. "It's too blind; it's too +complicated. People can't stop to figure it out. Besides, I'm not so sure +that every bit of it is perfectly proper." + +So the Grindstone made another revolution and took off the tip of poor +Prochnow's nose. He came into Little O'Grady's dirty and disorderly +place, and O'Grady, even before he could scramble forward through his +ruck of dusty casts and beplastered scantlings, saw that the blow had +fallen. + +He gave one look at Prochnow's face, drawn, haggard, black with +disappointment and anger, and began to work himself out of his blouse. +"Where is my hat?" he muttered wildly. + +"Where are you going?" asked Prochnow. His voice was hoarse. O'Grady +looked at him a second time, to make sure who was speaking. + +"I got you into this, Ignace; and now I----" + +"You did not," said Prochnow. His pride of intellect, still unhumbled, +forbade his acknowledgment of any such claim. + +"Oh, yes, I did, Ignace; and now I must get you out of it." + +"Are you going to see those men?" + +"I am." + +"Don't. There is still some hope left," said Prochnow thickly, "and you +would only make matters worse. A great deal of unsuspected talent has +been developed, it appears, by these experiments, as I have heard them +called," he went on chokingly, with blazing eyes, in a gallant attempt at +cold irony; "and much more may be waiting still. Enough, in fact, to +justify a _concours_--how do you say?--a competition." He clenched his +fists against his rigid thighs and turned his face away. + +"A competition? They say that now?" Little O'Grady threw off his blouse +and jumped on it with both feet. "Where _is_ my hat?" he cried, running +his fingers through his long, fluffy hair and toppling over a disregarded +cast or two. + +Prochnow caught him by the arm. "You must not go," he said. + +But Little O'Grady was obsessed by a vision of the Grindstone +directors--the whole Nine--assembled round the council-board in that +shabby, out-of-date parlour. It had been hard to get them together for +Dill and Giles and Prochnow and Adams, but there they sat now, waiting +for him. A new figure entered the vision, the little Terence O'Grady they +were expecting: the spokesman for honour, for fair play; the champion of +the poor girls whose tenderest hopes had been blighted; the whip of +scorpions that was to lash the ignorance, the ineptitude and the careless +cruelty that had brought so many hearts and talents to fury and despair. + +"Get out of my way!" cried Little O'Grady. He pushed Prochnow aside, +clapped on his hat and rushed from the room. + +He tumbled down five flights of stairs. At the bottom he met Gowan. + +"A competition!" cried O'Grady, with raging scorn. + +"I know," returned Gowan. "But there's something later. They have formed +a committee, under the lead of an 'expert'--somebody that _I_ never +heard, of--to pass the Winter Exhibition in review. They want to see +which of us do the best work and to determine whether any of us at all +can do good enough for their wants." + +"Ow!" shrieked O'Grady. + +"Furthermore, old Rosenberg has proposed to cut down the appropriation +for decorations from twenty-five thousand to four. If they're bad, after +all, so much less will the loss be." + +"Ow!" shrieked O'Grady again, as he tried to bolt past. + +"Where are you going?" asked Gowan. + +"To the Bank! To the Bank!" It was as if Revolutionary Paris were +yelling, "_A la lanterne! a la lanterne!_" + +Again O'Grady saw the Nine in conference. Again he heard their voices. +"There's nobody here," said Holbrook, making, to do him justice, his +first and only suggestion; "send East." "There's nobody here," said +Gibbons,--oh, how Little O'Grady hated him now!--"send abroad." "No," +came the voice of Hill, "we need not go outside of our own city. Surely +we can find within the corporate limits somebody or other to do our +bidding;" and Jeremiah McNulty agreed with him. "Why spend four thousand +dollars?" asked Simon Rosenberg; "why spend one? Calcimine and have done, +and save the money;" and Oliver Dowd took the same view. All these +enormities rang clearly in Little O'Grady's ears and put wings to his +heels. + +"Get out of my way, Gowan!" he cried, and ran full speed down the street. + + + + +XXI + +"Yes, they're all in there," said the watchman who stood, decorated with +a police star, in front of the partition of black walnut and frosted +glass. "But you can't see them now; they're busy." + +"I can't, eh?" said Little O'Grady. "We'll find out if I can't!" He +dodged the watchman, wrenched open the flimsy door and threw himself upon +the board. + +Yes, they were all there, including the two or three that Little O'Grady +had not seen the time before--that first time of all. And the Morrell +Twins were there too, one of them remorseful and the other defiant. And +Andrew P. Hill, who presided, was in a blue funk--O'Grady could see his +chin-beard waggle and could almost hear his teeth chatter; for it was +Andrew who had amassed all that Pin-and-Needle collateral, accepting it +at the street's own mad valuation. Pin-and-Needle, pushed too far, blown +too big, was now shaky at the knees, and Andrew and all the Nine were +trembling sympathetically from top to toe. The Grindstone might survive +in a single serviceable mass, or it might fly to pieces, dispersed in a +thousand useless fragments. + +Little O'Grady looked round upon the other faces; they were all like +Andrew's. Remorse, shame, contrition sat upon them. Ah, these men knew +they had not given fair treatment to him and to Ignace and to Dill and to +Preciosa and all the rest. "Just see how they're looking at me!" he said +to himself. "Never mind; I won't let up on them. I'll rub it in; I'll +drive it home." + +What drawn faces! What anxious eyes! What sharp noses!--who had been +grinding them? Answer: the Morrell Twins. Not for nothing their long +practice in sharpening pins and needles! It had come into play here. +Richard had turned the crank and Robin had held down each official +proboscis, and the board had winced. Then Richard and Robin had changed +places, and the board had groaned. Now Richard and Robin were changing +back, and soon the board might scream. "I'll take a hand too," said +O'Grady. + +He began at once; he gave the discomfited directors no chance to +forestall him. He taxed them roundly with their delays, their +double-dealings, their invertebrate wabblings. They had blown hot and +cold. They had played fast and loose. He and his friends had worked, had +thought, had studied, had invented, had torn their very brains from their +heads; and what had they to show for it? Nothing; nothing at all. On the +contrary---- + +"Get out of here," said Andrew P. Hill sternly. "This is a business +meeting." + +"Business meeting!" cried Little O'Grady scornfully. "What do any of you +know about business, I'd like to ask? Nobody who wanted to do business by +business methods would come here to do it, I'm thinking! No, sir; he'd go +to _our_ shop, where we do as we say we will, and do it up sharp and +ship-shape, no matter how unreasonable the demands of the +shilly-shallying old grannies we have to deal with. Business! You don't +bluff me!" + +"Take care, young man," said Hill, "or----" + +"Or nothing!" cried Little O'Grady undaunted. "And now, for a finisher, +you offer us a competition. You wind us, and then ask us to run against a +fresh batch that haven't even left the stable! After we've pulled our +brains out of our heads strand by strand, you'd have us stuff them back +and pull them out all over again, would you? Nobody but a man with +cotton-batting _for_ brains could ask a thing like that!" + +"Brains!" said Dowd contemptuously. He had always looked upon himself as +a lofty intellectual force. In his view there was no great play for +intellect outside of finance and law. + +Little O'Grady pounced upon this insolence at once. "There's not one of +you here, I'll venture, that has had an idea in the last twenty years. +You just sit beside your little old machine and turn the crank--why, the +crank almost turns itself. We, on the other hand, live on our ideas. We +keep alive on our own brains and hearts and blood and emotions----" + +"Emotions!" said Dowd, carelessly crumpling up a paper and throwing it +into the waste-basket. He himself had not had an emotion--foolish, +superfluous things--in his life. Little O'Grady looked at his nose. It +was the sharpest of the lot. + +"Get out of here, young man," said Simon Rosenberg. "This is no place for +you." + +O'Grady passed over Rosenberg's nose in contempt. + +"We turn in scheme after scheme," he pursued;--"schemes to be welcomed +and appreciated anywhere--but here. And what is your own? All you can +think of is a mongrel heap of cabins and spires and chimneys and shacks +that would set a tombstone to grinning. What chance is there for art in +such a hotch-potch as that? What could a self-respecting----" + +Up rose Andrew P. Hill. He expressed all his nervous dread, his vexation, +his irritability by one tremendous whack of his fist on the table. + +"To hell with art!" he said. "What I wanted to do was to advertise my +business." + +Dead silence. Nobody had ever heard Andrew P. Hill swear before; nobody +had supposed that he could. But the unlooked-for, the impossible had +happened. + +To Little O'Grady this profanity was no more than the profanity of +anybody else. It did not stop him. + +"To advertise your business?" he mocked. "Then why didn't you say so +before? It ain't too late to do so yet, is it? I'll do it for you myself. +I'll advertise you and your business and your building fit to make you +dizzy. I'll make you celebrated. I'll make you talked about. You won't +have to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for it, either. Nor four. Nor +one. Just give me a week's time and a scaffolding--I worked on a panorama +once--and I'll see that you're advertised. I'll do it with my eyes +bandaged and with one hand--either one--tied behind me. I'll see to it +that you get the Merry Laugh. I'll see that you get the Broad Grin. I'll +see that you get the Unrestrained Cachinnation. I'll get you into the +guide-books and the art journals--nit! Why, you poor creatures"--Little +O'Grady's liberal glance took in the entire assembly--"who do you think +bestow the sort of celebrity you have presumed to hope for? _Your_ kind? +Not on your life. The cheap twaddlers of cheap daily stuff for cheap +people? Never imagine it. Who, then? The few, wherever they may be, who +_know_. Good work by good men; and then a single word from the right +source, however distant, starts the ball rolling and the stream running. +The city feels proud of your taste and liberality, travelling strangers +turn aside to see the fruit of it, and you get praise and celebrity +indeed. But nothing of that kind will ever happen to you, whether you +think yourselves art patrons or not;"--here O'Grady dealt a deadly look +at Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. "Do what you like; people will snicker and +guffaw and hold their sides and pant for somebody to fan them and bring +them to. As for me, I utterly scorn and loathe the whole pack of you. I +curse you; I rue the day when first I----" + +Little O'Grady thrust out his angry hands to rend his garment, but found +that he had left it behind. Balked here, he was about to let them loose +on his hair, when the Morrell Twins, at a sign from Andrew P. Hill, now +speechless with anger, sprang up and seized Little O'Grady by both +shoulders and hustled him out of the room. Robin Morrell gave him a cuff +on the ear to boot--a cuff that was to cost him dearer than any other +action of his life. Little O'Grady paused on the other side of the +partition to curse the board again, but the watchman hustled him out into +the street. He paused on the curbstone to curse the bank, but a policeman +told him to move along. On his way back to the Warren, Little O'Grady +went a block out of his road to curse the new building, now almost ready +for occupancy. He lifted up his arm against it and anathematized it, and +a passing patrol-wagon almost paused, as if wondering whether he were not +best picked up. + +"Don't bother about me," said Little O'Grady to the patrol-wagon. "I'm +all right." He looked again at the long row of columns: they were still +standing. "There yet?" he said. "Well, you'll be down before long, if I'm +any guesser." + + + + +XXII + +The columns were still standing a week later; and the Pin-and-Needle +Combine, too, still managed to hang together. But every moment was +precious, and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons lost no time in giving a dinner for +Preciosa McNulty. + +Robin Morrell's first impression of Preciosa had lost nothing of its +intensity--on the contrary. He had taken every possible occasion for +seeing more of her. He had invaded a stage-box at the theatre where she +happened to be sitting; he had made an invitation to call upon her at +home impossible to withhold, and he had called. Elizabeth Gibbons, who +was hand and glove with Preciosa (except that, like everybody else, she +knew nothing of her engagement), speculated aloud on the probable outcome +of all this, and her father himself, overhearing, had laid these +considerations before old Jeremiah. Briefly, Preciosa must marry Robin, +and Roscoe Orlando himself would help to the extent of bringing them +together once more by means of a dinner. + +Jeremiah blinked solemnly at Roscoe Orlando's florid side-whiskers and +wide sensuous mouth. Both the affairs of the heart and the functions of +society life were far removed from the range of Jeremiah's interests and +sympathies. + +"Save Morrell, and you save the bank," urged Roscoe Orlando. + +Jeremiah blinked again. He was fully able to do this, if he chose. He was +immensely well off. He drew rentals from every quarter of the city. Those +gilded Louis Quinze chairs and sofas in his front parlour were, as +everybody knew, stuffed with bonds and mortgages, and coupons and +interest-notes were always bursting out and having to be crammed back in +place again. Yes, Jeremiah was the richest member of the board; but he +was also one of the smallest among the stock-holders. He shook his head. +Why risk so much to save so little? + +"Then save your grandchild," pursued Roscoe Orlando. + +Jeremiah stopped blinking and opened his eyes to a wide stare. "Aha! this +fetches him!" thought Roscoe Orlando. + +"Will you have her marry a business-man of means and ability," he went +on, "or will you have her tie up to a poor devil of a painter, with no +friends, no position, no influence, no future?" Roscoe Orlando's brief +period of easy patronage was over; no longer was he the caressing +amateur, but the imperilled stockholder (rather a large one, too), and +Ignace Prochnow need look for no further support from his quarter. Roscoe +told Jeremiah bluntly that his granddaughter was as good as engaged (this +was his own daughter's guess) to that obscure young man from nowhere, and +asked him if he wanted the thing to end in matrimony. + +Jeremiah scratched his chin. Roscoe Orlando saw with disappointment that +neither explosion nor panic was to ensue. Yes, Jeremiah remembered +Prochnow; he recalled the bold, brainy young fellow, so full of vigour +and vitality. He himself had reached an age when such things made their +impression, and when he wistfully envied so signally full a repository of +youthful hope, energy, persistence. + +Gibbons eyed him narrowly; clearly his argument was failing. "However," +he went on hurriedly, therefore, "this is no affair for us. Speak to the +child's mother; she will know how to handle it. Meanwhile, my daughters +will arrange for the dinner." + +Euphrosyne McNulty jumped at the dinner. As for Preciosa's infatuation +for Prochnow (upon which Jeremiah had touched very lightly), she refused +to consider any such possibility. At most it was but a passing fancy, due +to the painting of that portrait; it would quickly dissipate: least said, +soonest mended. A girl like Preciosa, brought up so carefully, a girl who +had always had everything and who would always need to have everything, +would know how to choose between two such men. As for Robin Morrell, +Euphrosyne had been greatly taken with him. He blew into her arid parlour +the long-awaited whiff from the golden fields of "society." He was big, +loud, self-confident, tremendously and immediately at home (in a +condescending way, though this she hardly grasped),--a man to open up his +own path and trample through the world, Preciosa by his side, and +Preciosa's mother not far behind. So, up to the very hour of the Gibbons +dinner, she sang his praises in Preciosa's ear. + +Preciosa was preparing to revert; she sought the soil, but she was +determined it should be the soil of her own choosing. She found Morrell +coarse, dry, hard, sandy, gritty. What she sought was some dank, rich +loam, dark, moist, productive. To be sure, great towering things grew in +the sand--pine-trees, for example, with vast trunks and with broad heads +that spread out far above the humbler growths below; but on the whole she +preferred some lustrous-leaved shrub full of buds that would soon open +into beautiful red flowers. She told her mother that she had no interest +in the Gibbons dinner and did not mean to go. + +"But I mean that you shall!" retorted Euphrosyne. "After all that's been +done to get you into society you turn round now, do you, and cut off your +own parents from it? You'll go, make sure of that; and your father and I +will go with you." + + + + +XXIII + +Daffingdon and Virgilia were bidden to the Gibbons dinner, along with the +rest. + +"It's a sop," declared Virgilia; "it's to propitiate us. It's to make +amends--he knows he hasn't treated us fairly. Shall we go?" + +"He has treated us no worse than he has treated everybody else," said +Dill, bent upon the preservation of his _amour propre_. "Look at that +young Prochnow--picked up one day and dropped the next." + +"They say he's really clever," replied Virgilia. "If we failed, we failed +in good company. Just how good, we might see by going. Mr. Gibbons has +something of his at the house, you remember." + +"We haven't failed yet," persisted Daffingdon. "The field is clear--just +as it was to start with. We may be able to bring them round yet. Anyway, +we'll keep up the pretence of good terms. Let's go." + +Virgilia and Daffingdon had given over all mention of Japan, and had left +off the shy, desultory house-hunting that had occupied the spare hours of +their engagement. This great question with the bank must be settled +first. Nor was Virgilia sure that Daff was proving to be all she had +fancied him. He had shown less head than he might have shown in planning +the scheme, and less spunk than he should have shown in pushing it. As +she thought things over she felt that all the ideas and all the efforts +had been her own. And now the question of money. Money; it did not come +in, and yet it was the prime need. These considerations filled her mind +as they bowled along in the cab together, and she was not sure but that +their engagement was a mistake. At Roscoe Orlando's carriage-block their +cab was close behind the livery brougham of the Joyces--Abner and his +wife were going everywhere, now; and she looked after Medora half in +envy, as upon a woman whose future, whether small or great, was at least +assured. Nothing consoled her but Daffingdon's seeming determination not +to give up. Yes, there was room for more ideas, for further efforts. But +whose? His or hers? + +Elizabeth Gibbons welcomed her father's guests, and Madame Lucifer backed +her up bravely. Dill gave this canvas the closest scrutiny. "It _is_ +strong," he said; "it has _chic_ without end." But it had no earthly +bearing on the great problem. Another point in his own favour: he was +here and Prochnow wasn't. + +Yes, he was here, and he tried to take advantage of the fact. Before long +he met Gibbons himself in front of the picture--a juncture he had +privately hoped to bring about--and was speaking of its merits and of its +author and of their common participation in the great scheme and of the +prospects and possibilities of the early future. Roscoe Orlando tried to +seem smiling and cordial and encouraging, but clearly his thoughts were +somewhere else. And his eyes. And his ears. They were wherever Preciosa +McNulty and Robin Morrell happened to be sitting or standing together. It +was no longer a question of decorations, nor of the walls that were to +give them place, nor of the colonnade through which the public would pass +to view them. It was a question of the very vaults themselves; of the +capital, the deposits, the surplus, the undivided profits, of his own +five hundred shares; of safety, of credit, of honour--oh, might this +painter but eat his dinner in quiet and let the matter of art go hang! + +Eudoxia Pence looked at the new picture too, comparing its spirit and +quality with a number she had recently added to her own gallery. She also +attempted a word with her host about the thwarted pageantry at the +Grindstone, but Roscoe Orlando put off her just as he had put off Dill. + +"Very well, sir," said Eudoxia firmly, within herself; "if I can't speak +here, then I will speak elsewhere. If not to you, then to others. Have +eyes and ears if you will for that poor little vulgarian alone; all the +same, I shall know how to make my point." + +Preciosa was in full feather and in high colour; she seemed like a +sumptuous pocket-edition of some work bound more richly, perhaps, than it +deserved to be. She was in yellow tulle, and her mother had clapped an +immense bunch of red roses upon the child's corsage and had crowded +innumerable rings upon her plump little fingers. Her chestnut hair fell +in careless affluence round her neck and blew breezily about her temples, +and a bright spot in each cheek gave her even more than her wonted +colour. Robin Morrell, who was, of course, to take her out to dinner, +seized upon her at the very start. It was as if he had wrenched a peach +from the tree and had hastily set his greedy teeth in it--one almost saw +the juices running down his chin. Yet his satisfaction was not without +its drawbacks; the peach seemed a clingstone, after all; and there was a +bitter tang to its skin. Preciosa's eyes blazed as well as her cheeks, +but not, as some thought, from exhilaration or from gratified vanity; +rather from protestant indignation and a full determination not to be +moved. Virgilia, from her place, saw how Euphrosyne McNulty constantly +watched the child on one side and how Roscoe Orlando Gibbons as +constantly watched her on the other; and when Dill asked her, "What does +it mean?" she replied: "Leave it to me; this is nothing that a mere man +can hope to master. I shall know all about it before I quit this house." + +Roscoe Orlando put the men through their liqueurs and cigars in short +order--more important concerns were at hand; Joyce, who was now beginning +to feel himself an authority in such matters, almost found in his host's +unceremonious haste good cause for resentment. James W. McNulty, who saw +nothing but the surface, supposed himself here by virtue of his growing +importance in the business world, and was fain to acknowledge the +attention by the recital of a number of appropriate "stories." During the +slight delay thus occasioned, the ladies made shift, as usual, to +entertain one another. Preciosa, relieved temporarily of the pressing +attentions of Morrell, sat with Medora Joyce on the drawing-room sofa, +proud and flattered to have the undivided regards of the most charming +"young matron" present. At the same time, Virgilia, in a shaded corner of +the library, was sounding Elizabeth for a clew. Elizabeth had little, +consciously, to tell; but, like many persons in that position, she told +more than she realized. It was not enough for the purpose, but it +dovetailed in with other information that came from other sources the day +following. When Morrell led Preciosa into the conservatory, at the +earliest possible moment, Virgilia was as keen over their exit as +Euphrosyne McNulty or as Roscoe Orlando himself. She knew what was +impending and she almost knew why. + +And when Robin Morrell issued from the conservatory she knew just what +had happened. Nobody could be so dashed, so dumfounded for nothing. Yes, +that incredible child had refused him. Richard had not been good enough +for the one, but surely Robin was good enough for the other. + +Preciosa's no had been without qualification or addition. Morrell knew as +little as her own mother that she considered herself fully pledged to +Ignace Prochnow. + +Roscoe Orlando came up to Eudoxia. His lips were white. + +"A little plan I had set my heart upon," he said, trying to smile +lightly, "has received a slight check. May I not rely on you to help it +through?" + +"A little plan I had set _my_ heart upon," she returned significantly, +"has received a slight check. May I not rely on _you_? In other words, I +have my problem, just as you have yours. I must insist that justice be +done to Mr. Dill." + +Roscoe Orlando bowed--only too glad to acquiesce in anything. + +"One straggler brought back to camp," said Eudoxia. "To-morrow I shall +try to bring back one or two others." + + + + +XXIV + +Eudoxia Pence immediately got herself into motion. During the watches of +the night she evolved plans for such a function as she thought the +present situation required. Her picture gallery, re-enforced by those six +or eight new masterpieces from Paris, she should throw open to the +general public. She would call the thing an afternoon reception, and +there would be tea. People were to be invited with some regard to form, +but the opportunity would be made rather general--almost anybody might +come who was willing to pay a dollar. This crush would supplement her +bazar, and would be announced as for the benefit of--oh, well, of any one +of the half-dozen charities that looked to her for support. She would +throw open the whole house and tea should flow like water. These doings +must take place within three days, at the outside. Time was precious and +none of her friends would take seriously anything of hers given at so +short a notice. No matter, then, who paid; no matter who poured; no +matter about anything, if only her net took in all the different people +she wanted to catch. + +Next morning she rose for a busy day. She had brought back Gibbons, and +now she must bring back Hill. Young Prochnow was off the board, but that +did not put Daffingdon Dill back upon it; nor would he be there till she +should have placed him there. "We _must_ have that commission," said +Virgilia. "You shall, if I've got any influence," replied her aunt. + +She had long foreseen that, one day or another, she must seize her +Grindstone stock in her talons, beat her wings about the head of Andrew +P. Hill, raise a threatening beak against his obdurate front, and ask him +what he meant by behaving so. + +She drove to the bank. The old office stood empty; a last load of ancient +ledgers and of shabby furniture was just driving away. She ordered her +coupe to go to the new building. Here she found Andrew adjusting himself +to his grandiose environment, and delivered her assault. + +What had he and the directors meant by such a game of fast-and-loose? Why +had they treated an artist of Mr. Dill's standing with such +inconsiderateness and injustice? Why had they tried to handle so +important a question by themselves? Why had they not consulted the +stock-holders? Why had they not consulted _her_--a stock-holder since the +foundation of the bank and an amateur of approved standing? And many more +interrogatories no less hard to answer. + +Hill listened to her cowed, intimidated; it was one more trouble in a +time of trouble. He presently found his voice--or a part of it--and +explained in low, trembling tones that concerns of much greater +importance had come to the front; that this entire matter of decoration +must be set aside for the present, perhaps for all time; that some +other---- + +Eudoxia threw an indignant frown upon him and drove off to see his wife. + +Almira Hill was at home--in these latter days she was seldom anywhere +else. Socially speaking, she had evaporated years ago; but there was no +reason why she should not precipitate herself and appear once more in +concrete form. Eudoxia had an intuitive sense that Almira would welcome +the chance. + +"Receive with us," Eudoxia urged her. What easier way for Almira to see +some of her old friends? She considered. She consented. + +Then Eudoxia opened against the bank. "Give me your help for my--nephew," +she said to end with. + +"Mr. Hill has spoken of this to me," replied the old lady slowly; "but he +is so worried, so anxious, about something these days, that I hardly----" + +"_We_ are worried; we are anxious, too, my dear Mrs. Hill. Figure the +situation. Imagine the strain upon two young people----" + +Almira had not lost all her sentiment, nor all her interest in the +concerns of youth. She promised to give what help she could. + +Eudoxia sped on to see Euphrosyne McNulty. She found the household in a +state of suppressed tumult. The servant who opened the door was all at +sea; obscure sounds of sobbing came from somewhere above; and when +Euphrosyne finally washed in she was like the ocean half-subsided after a +storm. She had just learned that Preciosa had refused Robin Morrell. + +"Such a caller at such a time!" she had articulated over Eudoxia's card. +It took away half the sweetness of the triumph. She rushed to her +toilet-table, hoping, meanwhile, that Norah had not boggled with the tray +and that her father-in-law had not left his pipe on top of the piano. + +Eudoxia was brief. She made no vain passes of regret that Euphrosyne had +not taken her place earlier on her invitation-list. She invited her, now, +with all emphasis, to attend her "art reception," and hoped that she +would allow her dear daughter to help pour tea. A sunburst exploded +before Euphrosyne's unready eyes. She recovered herself and accepted for +both. + +Eudoxia drove to the office of the Pin-and-Needle Combine. Like every +other moneyed person in town, she had a finger in that pie. Why shouldn't +she drop in on the cooks? + +Robin Morrell was not there; she was received by Richard. Richard had +heard from Gibbons what was in the wind, but knew nothing as yet, of +course, about his brother's rejection. + +Eudoxia understood that Richard was hand and glove with Hill. She asked +his influence as a matter of justice to Daffingdon Dill. Richard had been +impatient and resentful to begin with; now he became dogged and surly. +She had come at the wrong time and about the wrong business. Virgilia had +dismissed him with no gentle hand--people had smiled over his +discomfiture for a week. The memory of this still rankled. Why in the +world should he exert himself for Daffingdon Dill? + +Let him exert himself for his brother then. But he became more dogged and +surly still. Why should his brother succeed when he himself had failed? +Why should his brother need help anyway? Why must this woman come poking +into a man's most private affairs? Eudoxia surmised, through the medium +of his sullen mood, a house divided against itself. She left Morrell in +anger and drove to her husband's office. + +Every man had rebuffed her. Only the women had been complaisant--and even +these she had had to pay. As she sat by her husband's desk, waiting for +his attention, her wrath rose against the Grindstone and Hill, against +the Morrells and their Combine. + +"I'll take my Grindstone stock," she declared, "and hawk it up and down +the street at eighty--half what it's worth. Let us see where Andrew Hill +will be _then_!" + +Pence turned on her slowly. "I doubt whether you could get eighteen for +it to-day. The street is talking--talking low, but it's talking." + +"Why, is anything wrong with the Grindstone?" + +"Well, rather. Hill, I judge, has come as close to the edge as a man can +without falling over. I'm glad your holdings are no heavier." + +"Ah!" said Eudoxia; "that's why he has choked off Dill! Well," she +resumed with unimpaired energy, "I'll take my Pin-and-Needle and sell it +for next to nothing. I'll give it away. I'll stick it under the cracks of +doors. I'll present it with every pound, or rather every cup of tea. Let +us see, then, how Richard Morrell----" + +"Do that," said her husband, "and half the banks in town will fail. +You're not ready for such a crash as that, are you?" + +"Why, what's the matter with Pin-and-Needle?" asked Eudoxia. + +"It's at death's door. It's gasping. Unless something is injected, unless +somebody galvanizes it----" + +"Ah!" cried Eudoxia; "so that's why Orlando Gibbons gave the McNulty +dinner! Oh, things must hold off a few days longer! Make them, Palmer! +That girl must marry him, so that I can save my Grindstone stock and my +Pin-and-Needle investments, and so that Daff can get those pictures to +paint, and so that Virgilia can get him!" Oh, heavens! She had once +aspired to guide the chariot of finance, yet all she had to offer against +this threatening squadron of calamities was an "art reception" with tea! + + + + +XXV + +"Go? Of course we'll go!" said Little O'Grady spiritedly. "Anybody may go +who's able to pay a dollar and who's got a friend to name him. I hope you +and I can cough up as much as that, Ignace; and then if we have to live +the rest of the week on sawdust, why, we will. Go? I guess yes. If I'm +ever to make the Queen's acquaintance and get her profile, this is no +chance to throw away." + +Prochnow was in a deplorable state and needed all the support Little +O'Grady could give him. He had not seen Preciosa for several days. He had +called at the house once or twice--that vast florid pile, which had +always looked lackadaisical rather than cruel; but it had refused to +admit him. Euphrosyne had repulsed him with the utmost contumely; even +old Jeremiah (who may not have meant to be harsh, but who seemed to be +acting under superior orders) told him he must not appear there again. +Nothing came to console him except three or four tear-stained little +scrawls from Preciosa herself. In these she vowed in simple and slightly +varying phrases to be faithful; nobody should come between them, nobody +should make her untrue, nobody should prevent her from keeping her +promise, nobody should take her away from him, and the like. + +"What does it mean, Terence?" asked Prochnow, vastly perturbed by these +blind reiterations. + +Little O'Grady pondered. "Her folks are against us, that's all," he +replied. "They're trying to marry her to somebody else," he told himself. +"Who can it be?" Then, aloud and cheerfully: "If you can't see her at one +house, why, just see her at another. Come along with you." + +They found the town moving on Eudoxia Pence _en masse_, with several +policemen in front to keep order. On the front steps they grazed elbows +with the Joyces and the Gowans; and with these and other members of the +general public they swept on, joining the vast throng of those who were +so eager to press the great lady's Smyrna rugs with their own feet and +fumble her silk hangings with their own fingers and rap her Japanese jars +with their own knuckles and smell her new paintings with their own noses +and see Mrs. Palmer Pence herself with their own eyes. "Gee! ain't it +swell!" whispered Little O'Grady, who could make swans out of geese or +geese out of swans with equal facility. + +Prochnow ignored the swells, the jars, the pictures and all the rest; he +sought only Preciosa. Little O'Grady was not in a new field for nothing, +and he looked at everybody. First of all, there was the great Eudoxia +herself, and her profile was as lovely as ever. When, when, when should +he reach the point of modelling it? She stood there with a vain pretence +of receiving,--she was too conventional to dispense with the recognised +forms even on the occasion of a mere popular outpouring. Little O'Grady +went up to her boldly and shook hands; he was outside the general +understanding that made her, in so promiscuous a function, something to +be looked at rather than touched--save by a few intimates. Only let him +bring her within range of his aura, he thought, and her subjugation would +inevitably follow. Then he stepped back and watched her. There was still +a determined cordiality in her smile, but a furtive anxiety marked the +glance she sent now and then into the second or third room beyond, where +a pressing crowd and a subdued glare of candle-light seemed to indicate a +focus of interest hardly second to the picture gallery itself. Little +O'Grady caught this anxious look. "Is she afraid for her bric-a-brac or +her spoons?" he wondered. "No, it's something more than that." + +Beside Eudoxia stood Almira Hill,--"a mother in Israel, if ever there was +one," O'Grady commented. "And what's the matter with _her_? Shy? Awkward? +No, she's too old and experienced for that. There, she's looking in the +same direction. Something's up. What is it?" + +It was this: Almira's husband had told her that morning how it all +depended upon Preciosa McNulty. + +Roscoe Orlando Gibbons came through the crowd, with a great effect of +smiling joviality. But he too glanced over the press of heads toward the +glare of candle-light with a strained intensity not to be concealed. + +Roscoe Orlando suddenly turned aside toward an old fellow who sat on a +pink brocade sofa. "See, there's her grandfather," whispered Prochnow. +Old Jeremiah had instinctively taken refuge on the one piece of furniture +that reminded him of home. Here he sat, awkwardly twisting his hands and +blinking every now and then at the great light that shone afar off. "I +could never in the world have got him to anything resembling a dinner," +declared Eudoxia. "He acts like a stray cat," said Little O'Grady. "But +he needn't,--there seem to be plenty of the same sort here, after all." +Yes, at a second glance old Jeremiah appeared to be less the victim of +society than of circumstances; and when Roscoe Orlando Gibbons bowed over +him and whispered and they both looked toward the illumination while +Eudoxia Pence looked at them, Little O'Grady was surer than ever that +something was in the air. + +He felt Prochnow suddenly slipping behind him. "Her mother!" the young +fellow explained. Yes, it was Euphrosyne in full fig and in very active +circulation. She rustled, she swooped, she darted, she was as if on +springs. "Well, she feels her oats," commented Little O'Grady. He looked +at her again. No, what moved her was not vainglory, not a restless sense +of triumph. She was keyed up to the most racking pitch of anxious +expectation. She looked whither Eudoxia and Roscoe Orlando and all the +others had looked, but with an intensified expression, and Little O'Grady +almost felt as if challenged to solve some obscure yet widely ramified +enigma. + +He turned round as if in search of help. In a doorway near-by he saw +another familiar face. "Why, there's Daff!" he cried. "It's Dill, our +hated rival," he explained to Prochnow. "And that girl with him is Miss +Jeffreys, the one he's going to marry." + +Prochnow looked at the tall handsome figure in the long frock-coat with +the bunch of violets, and felt abashed by his own short jacket and +indifferent shoes. He noted too the assumption of ease and suavity with +which the other was entertaining a little knot of ladies. It was this +person, then, an out-and-out man of the world, against whom he, uncouth +and unpractised boy, had presumed to pit himself! + +Little O'Grady was not able immediately to detach Dill's attention from +his associates. Meanwhile he studied both Dill and Virgilia. The general +effect was brilliant enough, yet----Yes, surely they were too loquacious, +too demonstrative; they were talking against time, they were working +under cover, they were kicking up a dust. And, yes--both Daff and +Virgilia, in the midst of this gay chatter, shot certain furtive, +sidelong glances whither so many had been sent before. + +The group in the doorway showed signs of breaking up. "Daff," said Little +O'Grady, "for the Lord's sake, what's on?" + +"Ah, O'Grady," said Dill, in a cool, formal manner; "are you here?" Since +that calamitous episode at the bank, he had cared less than ever for +O'Grady: they had been quite right in throwing him out. He had found it +hard to tolerate his forwardness at the beginning of the negotiations, +and to carry the burden of his Bohemian eccentricity through them; and +harder still to pardon the slap-dash sally that had thrown the common fat +into the fire. Now up popped the fellow, knowing him as intimately and +familiarly as ever. + +"Oh, Daff," said Little O'Grady earnestly, and all unmindful of any +possible rebuff, "what's out in that room?" + +Daffingdon smiled at Virgilia. "Why don't you go and see?" he asked. + +"But don't break off the match!" said Virgilia, with a nervous titter. +What state of overtension could have prompted her to a piece of bravado +so rash, so superfluous? + +Little O'Grady gave her one look and sped away. + +After pushing through two or three roomfuls of tall people, he finally +reached the desired threshold. He felt a hand upon his arm and found +Prochnow beside him. They both saw the same sight together. + +It was a table like Dill's--only larger, with candles on it--five times +as many, and flowers--ten times as handsome, and silver and glass and +china--only a hundred times more brilliant, and girls seated about it--a +thousand times more fetching than poor sister Judith. Among them was +Preciosa, with a big feathered hat toppling on her head and the desperate +look of some hunted creature on her face. Yes, they had hung her with +chains and tied her to the stake. "If she is to pour here, after all," +Eudoxia had said grimly, "let her pay for the privilege." And close to +the girl's elbow sat the chief inquisitor, Robin Morrell, big, bold, +unabashed, persevering, bringing all possible pressure to force her to +recant. People about them--his unconscious familiars--sipped and +chattered, and fluttered up and away, but he remained fixed throughout. +He must have her, he was determined to dominate her; in the end she could +not but yield. There was no other way out for her, and none for him. And +that sole way must be taken at once. + +Little O'Grady recognised the red face, the broad shoulders, the thick +neck, the heavy hand; he still felt those fingers in his collar, that +palm against his ear. "A-a-ah!" he emitted in a long sibilant cry of +repressed rage. + +"Stay where you are a minute," he said to Prochnow, and slipped away. +Ignace stared now at his rival in love just as before he had stared at +his rival in art,--yet held in check both by the intimidating splendour +of the ceremonial and by his own uncertainty as to the precise +significance of the situation. + +O'Grady hurried back to Dill. "Daff, Daff!" he cried with wide eyes and +with a tremulous finger that pointed back toward the tea-table, "is that +the man?" + +"What man?" + +"The big brute sitting beside her." + +"Robin Morrell to a 't,'" said Virgilia. "Or Richard, either." + +"Are they trying to make her marry him?" demanded Little O'Grady, his +gray-green eyes staring their widest. + +"That is the plan, I believe," returned Dill. + +"It won't come off!" cried Little O'Grady, and dashed away. + +He pushed and trampled his course back to Prochnow. In the library he +brushed against Medora Joyce. + +"Oh, Dodie," he panted, "they're sacrificin' our little Preciosa to that +big brute of a Morrell!" + +"I was afraid so," said Medora, with concern. "Stop it." + +"I'm going to!" said O'Grady. + +As he regained Prochnow's side Preciosa was just rising from the table, +and Elizabeth Gibbons was slipping into her place. Preciosa left the room +by another door, and Morrell walked close beside her. + +He looked about the crowded place with an air that was both determined +and desperate. People here, there, everywhere; the rabble swarmed in the +library, the morning-room, the den, chattering, staring, gaping, +wondering. It was disgusting, it was barbarous, it made matters +impossible. Every corner bespoken, every angle occupied. Nothing left +save a nook under the great stairway--a nook shaded by dwarf palms, +however, and not too open to the general eye. He half led, half crowded +Preciosa toward it. He should speak now, a second time, and trust to bear +her down. + +He spoke a second time, and a second time Preciosa refused. She had but +one idea,--an idea a bit obscured by Prochnow's absence,--yet she held it +fast. + +"You will not marry me, then?" + +"No." + +"You have a reason?" + +"The best." + +"What is it?" + +"I am engaged to marry some one else." + +"Who is he?" + +Prochnow appeared in the hall, with Little O'Grady close behind him. +Little O'Grady's mobile face was taxed to the utmost to express all that +was within him, but Preciosa saw sympathy and the promise of instant help +as clearly as Morrell saw detestation and mocking mischievousness. +O'Grady pushed aside a palm-frond and pointed toward Prochnow. "We've +come for you, darlin'," he said. + +Preciosa rose; the one idea to which she had clung throughout came +uppermost and crystallized before her eyes. "Who is he?" Morrell had +asked. She raised her arm, pointed to Ignace like a true little heroine +of the drama, and said: + +"There he stands!" + +She went out to meet them, and the three instinctively began to push +toward the front door. She had her hat--never mind her jacket. Dill saw +them moving away and bit his lip. Roscoe Orlando Gibbons grasped a +door-jamb for support. A smothered scream was heard behind the palms; it +was Euphrosyne McNulty, fainting away, as Preciosa, Prochnow and Little +O'Grady went out through the vestibule and down the front steps together. + + + + +XXVI + +The Pin-and-Needle Combine fell apart the next day. The Grindstone +National Bank followed it the day after. Richard and Robin had turned the +handle a little too briskly and the Grindstone had flown to pieces. Three +or four other banks followed. + +Little O'Grady danced with joy. His curse had told. And the great hulking +bully that had dared to cuff him was flat on his back with the rest. When +O'Grady fully realized what he--_he_--had done his breast heaved proudly. +He ran over to see the fatal placard fastened on one of the Grindstone's +great polished columns, and then tramped on down the avenue of ruin with +the step and mien of a conqueror. All this devastation was due to +him--whatever the foolish newspapers, groping in the dark, might say. He +alone was the Thunderer; he alone wielded the lightning. + +There was but one drawback; never should he get Eudoxia Pence's +profile--now. + +Eudoxia felt that the McNultys had disgraced her,--"as people of that +sort always will if you give them a chance." Virgilia lingered in the +limbo of engagement; impossible to say, now, when matrimony might ensue. +The question of money was the question still. Dill was no Prochnow, to +carry her off by main force, nor was she a Preciosa to permit it. She +could not conceive of existence beyond the pale of society; the impulsive +action of a pair of social outcasts could scarcely serve as a precedent. +"I must wait," said Virgilia. Unconsciously she compared Daffingdon with +Ignace Prochnow and realized how easy it would be for her to wait quite a +while without discomfort, regret or protest. + +Prochnow and Preciosa were married in the midst of the crash. Little +O'Grady and Medora Joyce took the other two seats in their carriage and +saw them through the ceremony. Preciosa knew that her mother would never +forgive her, but she thought it not improbable that her grandfather might +acquiesce. In any event, she would marry the man of her choice. + +Little O'Grady patted Preciosa's hand patronizingly as the carriage +rolled along. He, none other, was the good angel of the whole affair. +"What do we care, darlin'," he said, "for the Morrell Combine?--hasn't it +kept us on pins and needles long enough? What do we care for the +Grindstone, either?--hasn't it ground our noses as long and hard as it +could? Down wid 'em both--and let 'em stay down, too! And let anybody +think twice, my children, before he tries to prick the skin or grind the +nose of little Terence O'Grady!" + + * * * * * + +DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH + + * * * * * + +DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH + + + +I + +When Dr. Gowdy finally yielded to the urgings of Print, Push, and Co.--a +new firm whose youthful persistency made refusal impossible--and agreed +to steal from his sermon-writing the number of half-hours needed for +putting together the book they would and must and did have, he certainly +looked for a reward far beyond any recognisable in the liberal check that +had started up his pen. For _Onward and Upward_ was to do some good in +the world: the years might come and go for an indefinite period, yet +throughout their long procession young men--it was for them he was +writing--would rise up here, there, and everywhere and call him blessed. +To scrimp his sermons in such a cause was surely justifiable; more, it +was commendable. "Where it has been dozens it will now be thousands," +said the good Doctor. "I will guide their feet into the right path, and +the thanks of many earnest strugglers shall be my real recompense." + +_Onward and Upward_ was full of the customary things--things that get +said and believed (said from mere habit and believed from mere +inertia),--things that must be said and believed (said by the few and +believed by a fair proportion of the many) if the world is to keep on +hanging together and moving along in the exercise of its usual functions. +In fact, the book had but one novel feature--a chapter on art. + +Dr. Gowdy was very strong on art. Raphael and Phidias were always getting +into his pulpit. Truth was beauty, and beauty was truth. He never wearied +of maintaining the uplifting quality resident in the Sunday afternoon +contemplation of works of painting and sculpture, and nothing, to his +mind, was more calculated to ennoble and refine human nature than the +practice of art itself. The Doctor was one of the trustees of the Art +Academy; he went to every exhibition, and dragged as many of his friends +with him as could be induced to listen to his orotund commentaries; and +he had almost reached the point where it was a tacit assumption with him +that the regeneration and salvation of the human race came to little more +than a mere matter of putting paint upon canvas. + +These were the notions that coloured the art chapter of _Onward and +Upward_. I hardly know where the good Doctor got them; surely not from +the ordinary run of things in the Paris studios, nor from any familiarity +with the private lives of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, which +show, if anything does, that one may possess a fine and rigorous +conscience as an artist, yet lapse into any irregularity or descend to +any depravity as a man. But Dr. Gowdy ignored all this. Art--the +contemplation of it, the practice of it--worked toward the building up of +character, and promoted all that was noblest in human life. + +These views of his were spread far and wide. They competed with the novel +of adventure on the news-stands, and were tossed into your lap on all the +through trains. One copy penetrated to Hayesville, Illinois, and fell +into the hands of Jared Stiles. + + + + +II + +Jared was an ignorant and rather bumptious young fellow of twenty-four, +who was hoping to make something of himself, and was feeling about for +the means. He had a firm jaw, a canny eye, and vague but determined +ambitions. These sufficed. + +Jared lived on a farm. He liked the farm life, but not the farm work--a +fine distinction that caused his fellow-labourers to look upon him as +something of a shirk. He would rove the fields while the rest were +working in them. He thought his own thoughts, such as they were, and when +a book came his way, as now and then happened, he read it. + +_Onward and Upward_ was lent to him by the daughter of the county +attorney. She thought it would tone him up and bring his nebulousness +toward solidity--she too being anxious that Jared should make something +of himself, and unwilling to wait indefinitely. Jared took the book and +looked at it. He passed quite lightly over the good Doctor's platitudes +on honesty, perseverance, and the like, having already encountered them +elsewhere; but the platitudes on art arrested his attention. "I shouldn't +wonder but what all this might be so," said Jared to himself; "I don't +know but what I should like to try it"--meaning not that he had any +desire to refine and ennoble himself, but only a strong hankering to "get +his hand in," as the phrase goes. + +It was about this time that the Western Art Circuit began to evangelize +Hayesville. The Western Art Circuit had been started up by a handful of +painters and literary men in "the city"; among them, Abner Joyce, notable +veritist; Adrian Bond, aesthete, yet not without praiseworthy leanings +toward the naturalistic; Stephen Giles, decorator of the mansions of the +great, but still not wholly forgetful of his own rustic origins; and one +or two of the professors at the Art Academy. All these too believed that +it was the mission of art to redeem the rural regions. It was their +cardinal tenet that a report on an aspect of nature was a work of art, +and they clung tenaciously to the notion that it would be of inestimable +benefit to the farmers of Illinois to see coloured representations of the +corn-fields of Indiana done by the Indianians themselves. So presently +some thirty or forty canvases that had been pushed along the line through +Bainesville and Miller and Crawford Junction arrived at Hayesville, and +competed in their gilt frames with the canned peaches and the drawn-work +of the county fair. + +"There, Jared," said the county attorney's daughter, who was +corresponding secretary of the woman's club that had brought about this +artistic visitation, "you see now what can be done." + +Jared saw. He walked the farm, and drew beads on the barn-yard, and +indulged in long "sights" over the featureless prairie landscape. The +wish to do, to be at it, was settling in his finger-tips, where the +stores of electric energy seemed to be growing greater every day. + +"I believe I could do something of the kind myself," said Jared. "I like +the country, and I'm handy at light jobs; and if somebody would give me +an idea of how to start in...." + +The Hayesville Seminary had just celebrated the opening of its fifth fall +term by adding an "art department"; a dozen young women were busy +painting a variety of objects under the guidance, good as far as it went, +of an eager lady graduate of Dr. Gowdy's Academy. + +"Why don't you get Miss Webb to show you?" asked the county attorney's +daughter. + +"I can't study with a lot of girls," muttered Jared loutishly. + +"Of course not," quickly replied the other. "Make it a private, +individual matter. Get some ideas from her, and then go ahead alone." + +Jared picked up a few elementary facts about colours, canvas, and +composition in the art atmosphere of the Seminary, and then set to work +by himself. "Something sizable and simple, to start with," he said. +Autumn was over the land; nothing seemed more sizable, more simple, more +accessible, than the winter squash. "Some of 'em do grapes and peaches," +he observed, in reminiscence of the display of the Circuit at the fair, +"but round here it's mostly corn and squashes. I guess I'll stick to the +facts--that is, to the verities," he amended, in accord with the art +jargon whose virus had begun to inoculate the town. + +He elected the squash. And he never went far beyond it. But the squash +sufficed. It led him on to fame (fame of a certain curious kind) and to +fortune (at least a fortune far beyond any ever reached by his associates +on the farm). + + + + +III + +Yes, Jared kept to the squash, and made it famous; and in due course the +squash made him famous. He came to be known all over Ringgold County, and +even beyond, as the "squash man." He painted this rotund and noble +product of the truck-farm in varying aspects and with varying +accessories. Sometimes he posed it, gallantly cleft asunder, on the +corner of the bran-bin, with its umber and chrome standing out boldly +against a background of murky bitumen; and sometimes he placed it on the +threshold of the barn door, with a rake or a pitchfork alongside, and +other squashes (none too certain in their perspective) looming up from +the dusky interior. + +Jared mastered the squash with all the ease of true genius. He painted +industriously throughout the early winter. He had saved two or three of +his best models from the fall crop, and they served him for several +months. Squashes keep. Their expression alters but slowly. This one fact +alone makes them easier to paint than many other things--the human +countenance, for example. By the end of January Jared was emboldened to +exhibit one of his squashes at a church sociable. + +"Well, Jared," said the minister's wife, "you _be_ a genius. I don't know +that I ever see anything more natural." Other ladies were equally +generous in their praise. Jared felt that at last he had found his +life-work. Henceforward it was to be onward and upward indeed. + +The men were more reserved; they did not know what to make of him. But +none of them openly called him a fool--a sort of negative praise not +without its value. Nor was this forbearance misplaced--as was seen when, +along in March, Jared's father ended his fifty unprofitable years of farm +routine by dying suddenly and leaving things more or less at loose ends. +Farming was not his forte--perhaps it is nobody's. He had never been able +to make it pay, and he had gone in seeming willingness to shuffle off the +general unsatisfactoriness of it all on to other shoulders. + +In the settlement that followed, nobody got the better of Jared. There +were itching fingers among the neighbours, and sharp wits too in the +family itself, but Jared shrewdly held his own. He climbed into the +saddle and stuck there. He cajoled when he could, and browbeat when he +must. "No, he ain't no fool," said Cousin Jehiel, who had come up from +Bainesville, with his eye on a certain harvester and binder. "He may make +the farm pay, even if the old man didn't." + +About this time Jared, partly for solace, subscribed to an art journal. +It came once a month, and its revelations astounded him. He took a day +off and went into "the city," and spent eleven dollars to satisfy himself +that such things could really be. + +"I declare, Melissa," he reported to the daughter of the county attorney +on his return to Hayesville, "but it was an eye-opener. The way the +people poured into that place!--and just to look at creeks and +corn-fields and sacks of potatoes!" + +"Of course," replied the girl. "Why not? Doesn't your paper tell you that +the hope of American art is in the West, and that the best thing we can +do is to paint the familiar things of daily life? That's all the cry just +now, and you want to take advantage of it." + +"And there was a sort of book," pursued Jared, "hung up by the door near +the desk where that girl sat and kept track of things. I see people +looking at it, so I looked too. You won't believe me! 'No. 137, two +hundred and fifty dollars. No. 294, six hundred and seventy-five +dollars.' I looked for No. 137, and what do you suppose it was when I +found it? It wasn't more'n two foot by eighteen inches--just a river and +a haystack and a cow or two. No. 294 was some bigger, but there wasn't +nothin' in it except a corn-field--just a plain corn-field, with some +hills 'way off and mebbe a few clouds. And there was a ticket on it, and +it said 'Sold.' What do you think of that?" + +"That's all right," said Melissa. "If you want to get money, you've got +to get it out of the people that have got it. And you've got to go where +they are _to_ get it." + +"And there was another picture that the book said was 'still +life'--apples and ears of corn and a bunch of celery or such and a summer +squash. Not my kind, but a squash all the same. About a foot square--one +hundred and twenty dollars. What do you think of that?" + +"I think the squash has its chance, the same as anything else." + +"I asked the girl who it was painted all these things. 'This is the +second annual ex'bition of the Society of Western Artists,' says she." + +"There!" cried Melissa. "'Western artists'!" + +"'Are they all for sale?' says I. + +"'Cert'nly,' says she. + +"'Are folks interested?' says I. + +"'Look around you,' says she. + +"I did look around. People was walking along close to the wall, one after +another, a-smellin' every picture in turn. In the other rooms there was +women standin' on clouds, and there was children with wings on and +nothin' else; but everybody give them things the complete go-by. Yes, +sir, let me tell you, Melissa Crabb, all those folks was once just +country folks like you and me. Those there city people had all come from +the country some time or other, and they was all a-longin' for country +sights and country smells. They're Western people, too, and they want +Western scenes painted for them by Western artists. There's fame +a-waitin' for the man who can do that--and money too. I guess I'm +beginning to see a way to make the old farm pay, after all." + + + + +IV + +Jared during his visit to the city had not confined his attention to the +display of the Western artists. He had talked with several dealers, and +had visited one or two makers of picture-frames, and had taken note of +the prominence given to "art" in the offices and corridors of the great +hotels. + +"I tell _you_," he declared roundly, "paintin' 's got the call +everywhere. You go into one of them bang-up hotels, and what is the first +thing you notice? A painting--scenery; ten or twelve feet long, too--some +of 'em. Well, that's all right; I can paint as big as they want 'em, and +frame 'em too, I guess." + +He had formed some ideas of his own about framing. The prices mentioned +by the frame-makers astonished him as much as those entered in the sale +catalogue by the fond artists themselves. "No gilt for me. That's clear." +He thought of a wide flat frame he had seen at the exhibition. "It was +just a piece of plain boarding daubed over with some sort of gilt paint. +It had a fish-net kind o' strung round it, I recollect." + +"What was that for?" asked Melissa. + +"It was a sea view, with boats and things. Seemed a pretty good notion to +me." + +"Why, yes." + +"But there was one old codger come along who didn't seem to like it. +Specs and white whiskers standing out. Lot of women with him. 'Well, I +declare,' says he, 'what are we coming to? I can't understand how Mr. +English could have let in such a thing as that!' He was going for the +frame. I stepped over to the girl at the desk----" + +"Seems to me you talked a good deal to that girl." + +"Well, I did. She was from Ringgold County too, it turned out; hadn't +been in town but six months. She was up to all sorts of dodges, +though--knew the whole show like a book." + +"Oh, she did, did she?" + +"Well, she wasn't so very young, nor so very good-looking, if that's what +you're after." + +"Oh, she wasn't, wasn't she?" said Melissa, somewhat mollified. + +"'Who is that funny old feller?' says I to her. He was poking out his +arms every which way and talking like all possessed. + +"'Why,' says she, sort o' scared like, 'that's Doctor Gowdy.' You might +have thought I had let drive at the President himself. I see I had put my +foot in it, so I pulled out as fast as I could." + +"Gowdy," reflected Melissa; "haven't I heard that name before?" + +"It didn't seem altogether new, somehow," acknowledged Jared. + +But neither of them immediately associated this name with the authorship +of _Onward and Upward._ They laid no more stress on the title-page of a +book than you, dear reader, lay on the identity of the restaurant cook +that gets up your dinner. + +"It seemed all right enough," said Jared, reverting to the frame. + +"Why, yes," assented Melissa. "I don't see what could have been more +appropriate." + +"Well, you watch me," said Jared, "and I'll get up something equally as +good." For this choice collocation of words he was indebted to a +political editorial in the county weekly. + +Next morning he was strolling along the roadway, carefully scrutinizing a +stretch of dilapidated fence. + +"What you up to, Jared?" inquired Uncle Nathan Hoskins, who happened to +be driving past. The fresh morning air had a tonic effect upon Uncle +Nathan; he showed himself disposed to be sprightly and facetious. + +"Lookin' after my fences," said Jared shortly. + +"'Bout time, ain't it?--he, he!" continued Uncle Nathan. + +"Just about," assented Jared. + +"Might 'a' begun a little sooner, mebbe," proceeded Uncle Nathan, running +his eye over several rods of flat, four-inch stuff, weather-worn and +lichen-stained, that sagged and wobbled along the road-side. "So far gone +ye hardly know where to begin, eh?" + +"Where would _you_ begin?" + +"Well, that len'th right in front of you has got a little more moss on it +than 'most any of the others." + +"All right; I'll begin here," returned Jared. He struggled up through the +tangled growth of smartweed and bittersweet, tore a length of lichened +boarding from the swaying posts, and walked down the road with it. + +Here at last was a suitable setting for the Squash. + + + + +V + +Yes, _the_ Squash, before which all other squashes were to pale. It was +to be his best and biggest work, and worthy of the post he designed it to +take at the next Exhibition of Western Artists. He enlarged its scope so +as to take in a good part of the barn's interior; he boldly added a +shovel--an implement that he had never attempted before; and he put in +not only bins, but barrels--chancing a faulty perspective in the hoops. +All these things formed a repellent background of chill gray-blue, but +they brought out the Squash. It shone. Yes, it shone like a beacon-light +calling the weary and sophisticate town-dwellers back to the peace and +simplicity of country life. And it was inclosed by four neatly mortised +lengths of fencing, lichened and silvered by a half-century, it may be, +of weather taken as it was sent. Furthermore, the abundance of simulated +seeds developed by his bold halving of his model was re-enforced by a few +real seeds pasted upon the lower part of the frame. + +"If all that don't fetch 'em," said Jared, "what will?" + +But the exhibition jury frowned upon this ingenuous offering. Stephen +Giles pitied it; Daffingdon Dill, an influential member, and a painter +not especially affiliated with the Circuit, derided it cruelly; Abner +Joyce himself, when appealed to as a man and a brother by the +disappointed farmer-artist, bleakly turned away. Not even the proprietors +of the sales-galleries seemed willing to extend a welcome. Jared was +puzzled and indignant. Then he bethought himself of the hotels, with +their canons and jungles and views along the Canadian Pacific. + +"Yes, the hotels--there's where I'll try. That's where you get your +public, anyway." + +But the hotels were cold. One after another they refused him. Just one +was left, and this was so magnificent that he had never even thought of +carrying his proposal into it. + +He did so now--nothing else was left to do. The clerk was even more +magnificent and intimidating than the house, but Jared faced him, and +asked for space in which to show his work. + +Jared had one of his minor works under his arm--style of painting and +style of framing being fully representative of his biggest and best. +"It's this kind, only larger," submitted Jared. + +The clerk condescended to look, and was interested. He even became +affable. His imposing facade was merely for use in the business, and for +cloaking the dire fact that, but two short years back, he himself had +been a raw country boy from a raw country town. He looked at the picture, +and at Jared--his knuckles, his neck-tie, the scalloped hair on his +forehead. "Could _I_ have been anything like that?" he thought. He +refused consideration to such a calamitous possibility, and became a +little more grandly formal as he went on listening to Jared's business. + +"Oh, George!" he presently called across his slab of Mexican onyx; "come +here." + +George came. He was a "drummer": nobody could have supposed for an +instant that he was anything else. + +"What do you think of this?" The clerk took the picture out of Jared's +hands and twirled it round on one corner of its clumsy frame. + +George looked at it studiously. "Why, it ain't so worse," he said. "That +squash is great--big as life and twice as natural." + +"What do you think of the frame?" asked the clerk, venturing with no +little fondness to run a ringer over the lichens. + +"Made out of fencing, ain't it? Why, I like it first-rate. Maybe I +haven't kicked my bare heels on just such a fence many a time!" + +So had the clerk, but refrained from confession. + +"Buying it?" asked George. + +"No; house-room," responded the clerk, with a motion toward Jared. + +"Yours?" asked the drummer. + +"Yes, sir; I painted it." + +"Frame your idea, too?" + +"Yes." + +"From the country, I suppose?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, so are most of the rest of us, I expect. Why, yes, give it +room--why not?" the drummer counselled his friend, and turned on his heel +and walked off. + +The clerk clanged his bell. "Just have Tim come here," he directed. "How +much you expecting to get for it?" he asked Jared. + +"Well, for _this_ one about a hundred and fifty, I should think." + +"Right," commented the clerk. "Put a good price on a thing if you expect +people to look at it. Never mind about Tim," he called, reminded by +Jared's emphasis that the "house-room" was not for this painting, but for +another. "Well, you get your picture round here to-morrow, and I'll have +it put in the writing-room or somewhere." And he turned toward a new +arrival bent over the register. + + + + +VI + +After the squash had triumphed in the rotunda of the Great Western, the +surrender of the other hotels was but a matter of time. They +reconsidered; Jared was able to place a specimen of his handiwork, +varying in size if not in character, with almost every large house of +public entertainment. He walked daily from caravansary to caravansary, +observing the growth of interest, straining his ear for comments, and +proffering commentaries of his own wherever there seemed a possibility of +acceptance. He dwelt upon his aims and ambitions too, and gave to the ear +that promised sympathy the rustic details of his biography. At first +there was some tendency to quiz him, especially among the commercial +travellers, who seemed to be, of all the patrons of the hotels, the most +numerous and authoritative. But they soon came to a better understanding +of him. Beneath all his talk about being a poor farmer boy and a lover of +nature whose greatest desire was to make others share the joy that nature +gave him, they saw that his eye was as firmly set on "business" as +theirs, and a sort of natural freemasonry kept them from making game of +him. He had chosen a singular means, true, but the end in view was in +substantial accord with their own. + +About this time a great synod, or conference, or something of the kind, +flooded the hotels with ministers from town and country alike. One +forenoon the chief clerk of the Pandemonium--these functionaries were all +on familiar terms with Jared by this time, and had begun to class him +with the exhibitors of reclining-chairs and with the inventors of +self-laying railways--called our artist's attention (temporarily +diverted) back to his own work, before which a group of black-clad men +were standing. A stalwart figure in the midst of them, with shining +spectacles and bushy white whiskers, was waving his arms and growing red +in the face as he poured forth a flood of words that, at a moderate +remove, might have passed either for exposition or for expostulation. + +"_There's_ a big gun," said the clerk. + +Jared followed the other's quick nod. + +"Why," said Jared, "it's Doctor--Doctor----" + +"Dr. Gowdy," supplied the clerk. "The Rev. William S. Gowdy, D. D.," he +continued, amplifying. "He's the king-pin." + +"The Rev. William S. Gow----" repeated Jared. The title-page of _Onward +and Upward_ flashed suddenly before his eyes. The man to whom he owed his +earliest quickening impulse, the man whose book had shone before his +vision like a first light in a great darkness, stood there almost within +reach of his grateful hand. He stepped forward to introduce himself and +to voice his obligations. + +But Dr. Gowdy, with what, to a disinterested spectator, would have seemed +a final gesture of utter rejection and condemnation, turned on his heel +and stalked down a long corridor, with his country members (who were +prepared to like the Squash, but now no longer dared) pattering and +shuffling behind. + +"Of all the false and mistaken things! Of all the odious daubs!" purled +Dr. Gowdy to his cowed and abashed following. For Dr. Gowdy, town-bred +and town-born, had no sympathy for ill-considered rusticity, and was too +rigorous a purist to give any quarter to such a discordant mingling of +the simulated and the real. + +"I've never seen anything worse," he continued, as he swept his party on; +"unless it's that." He pointed to another painting past which they were +moving--a den of lions behind real bars. "That's the final depth," he +said. + +The country parsons, left to themselves, would have admired the ingenuity +of this zoological presentation, but Dr. Gowdy's intimidating strictures +froze their appreciation. They pattered and shuffled along all the +faster. + +Meanwhile Jared, proud to have awakened the interest of the "Rev. Gowdy" +(as the reading of the Ringgold County _Gazette_ had taught him to +express it), was busy whirling the leaves of the hotel's directory to +learn the good man's address. + + + + +VII + +Before Jared could catch up with the Doctor a new tidal wave broke upon +the town and slopped through the corridors of the hotels. The provincials +(both clerical and lay) were enticed to the metropolis by a "Trade +Carnival." The Squash met them everywhere. Here, in the midst of the +city's strange and shifting life, was something simple, tangible, +familiar, appealing. Jared had had the happy thought to mount one or two +of his best pieces on easels fitted out with a receptacle for holding a +real squash. "Which is which?" cried the dear people, delightedly. The +country merchants expressed their appreciation to the commercial +travellers, and these factors in modern life, whose business it was to +know what the "public wanted" and to act accordingly, passed on the word +(casually, perhaps) to the heads of the great mercantile houses. In this +way the eminent firm of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. became conscious of the +Squash. + +Now, individually considered, the members of this firm made no great +figure. Nobody knew Meyer from Adam. Nobody knew Van Horn from a hole in +the wall. Who the "Co." might be there was nobody outside of certain +trade circles that had the slightest notion. But collectively these +people were a power. Except the street-railway companies, they were the +greatest influence of the town. They paved the thoroughfares around their +premises to suit themselves; they threw out show-windows and bridged +alleys in complete disregard of the city ordinances; they advertised so +extensively that they dictated the make-up of the newspapers, and almost +their policy. Above all, they were the arbiters of taste, the directors +of popular education. That they sold shoes, hardware, soda-water, and +sofa-pillows to myriads was nothing; that they pulled your teeth, took +your photograph, kept your bank account, was little more. For they +supplied the public with ideas and ideals. They determined the public's +reading by booming this book and barring that; their pianos clanged all +day with the kind of music people ought to like and to buy; and the +display in their fifteen great windows (during the Christmas season +people came from the remotest suburbs expressly to see them) solidified +and confirmed the popular notions on art. + +Well, Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. had set their minds on having a +"ten-thousand-dollar painting." It would be a good advertisement. + +They sent for Jared. + +"Ten thousand dollars!" gasped the young fellow. He saw the heavens +opening. "Why, I could get up a _great_ thing for that!" + +"I guess you could!" retorted old Meyer brusquely. "You could do it for +five hundred. That's what you _will_ do it for, if you do it at all." He +treated Jared with no more consideration than he would have given a +peddler vending shoe-strings and suspenders from the curb. + +"Why," said Jared, abashed, indignant, "you said ten thou----" + +"Let me explain," put in Van Horn, a little less inconsiderately. "We +want a ten-thousand-dollar painting, and we're willing to pay five +hundred dollars for it." + +"Who'd come to see a painting billed at five hundred dollars, do you +think?" snarled Meyer. "Nobody. You can see that kind of thing anywhere, +can't you?" + +"I s'pose you can," assented Jared, mindful of his first exhibition. + +"But ten thousand will fetch 'em." + +"Five hundred dollars, then," said Van Horn; "that's what we'll give you. +And it wants to be bigger than anything you've got on show anywhere, and +the frame wants to be twice as wide. I suppose you've got plenty more of +that fence left?" + +"Yes," assented Jared. + +"Well," said Meyer, "you'll never have a chance to realize any more on it +than you've got right here. And don't economize with your seeds--stick +'em on good and plenty." + +"We'll give you a whole window, or a place at the foot of the main stairs +close to the fountain," proceeded Van Horn. "We put it out as a +ten-thousand-dollar production and bill you big as the artist. Everybody +in town will see it, and the advertising you'll get--why, ten thousand +won't begin to express it." + +"And we want you to put in a lot of farm stuff," said Meyer junior, whose +taste in window-dressing had often roused the admiration of the entire +town. "Vines and grasses, and a lot of squashes--real ones. I suppose +you've got enough faith in your work to face the comparison?" + +"I s'pose I have," said Jared. "I guess I've faced it before this." + +"I want some real squashes on the frame too," said the elder Meyer, from +whom the son's fine taste was directly derived. "Ever tried that?" + +"In a small way," said Jared. + +"Try it now in a large way. Half a squash, like a big rosette, on each +corner of the frame--the half with the handle on it, y'understand." Meyer +saw the squash as a kind of minor pumpkin. + +"If I put it in the window," said the son thoughtfully, "I shall want +some saw-horses and bushel baskets and----" + +"Take 'em right out of stock," said his fond father. + +--"something to make a real country scene, in fact. And possibly a farmer +sitting alongside in jeans. Just the place for the artist himself. It +might be better, though, to put the whole show by the fountain. In that +case I'd have a band, and it would play, 'On the Banks of the Kankakee.'" + +"Have you got that song on hand?" asked his father. + +"It ain't written yet, but it will be inside of a week; and in a week +more the whole town will be going wild over it, or my name----" + +Van Horn cut short the youthful visionary. "Well," he said to Jared, "you +hustle off and get the show together. Check for five hundred on delivery. +And mum's the word," he added, with good-natured vulgarity, "on both +sides." + +"Ain't nobody ever said I talked too much," mumbled Jared, reaching for +his hat. + + + + +VIII + +Soon the Squash dawned on the town--the Last, the Ultimate. Jared had +soothed his ruffled feelings and gone back to his old barn and worked for +a fortnight. The result was in all men's eyes: a "Golden Hubbard"--an +agricultural novelty--backed up by all the pomp and circumstance a +pillaged farm could yield. + +"There it stands, Melissa," he said to the girl, who had come out with an +admiring little company to bid Jared's masterpiece godspeed. "And here +_I_ stand--a ten-thousand-dollar artist, and the only one in the +country." + +"I'm proud of you, Jared," panted Melissa, with little effort to conceal +the affectionate admiration that filled her. + +"And I'm grateful to you. You believed in me--you encouraged me----" + +"Yes, I did, Jared," said Melissa shyly. They were alone, behind the +shelter of the barn door. + +"And next to Dr. Gowdy--" + +"You've seen him? You've thanked him?" + +"Not yet. But I'm going to as soon as I get this picture in place. This +here ain't the end, Melissa; it ain't hardly the beginning. There ain't a +picture of mine all over town that won't be worth double next week what +it is this--and people anxious to pay the money, too. Just wait a little, +Melissa; there's a good deal more to follow yet"--an ambiguous utterance +to which the girl gave the meaning that her most vital hope required. + +A few days later the city press was teeming with matter pertinent to +young Mr. Meyer's newest display--the paper that refused to teem would +have had to tell him why. Jared stood in the calcium-light of absolute +unshaded publicity. "An American Boy's Triumph." "A New Idea in American +Art." "The Western Angelus"--this last from a serf that submitted, +indeed, yet grimaced in submitting. Under head-lines such as these were +detailed his crude ideas and the scanty incidents of his life. And there +were editorials, too, that contrasted the sturdy and wholesome +truthfulness of his genius with the vain imaginings of so-called +idealists. These accounts rolled back to Ringgold County. "Ten thousand +dollars! ten thousand dollars!" rang through township after township. +"Ten thousand dollars! ten thousand dollars!" murmured the crowds that +blocked the street before the big entrance to Meyer, Van Horn, and Co.'s. +All this homage helped Jared to gloss over the paltriness of their actual +check. By reason of this double hosanna he was a ten-thousand-dollar man +in very truth. + +"And _now_," said Jared, "I will go and see Dr. Gowdy." + + + + +IX + +"Dr. Gowdy is not at home this afternoon," they told Jared in response to +his ring; "he is addressing a public meeting down town." + +This would have applied to half the days of every calendar month +throughout the year. When Dr. Gowdy let a day pass without making some +public utterance, he counted that day as good as lost. He spoke at every +opportunity, and was as much at home on the platform as in the pulpit. +Perhaps even more so; there were those who said that he carried the style +of the rostrum and the hustings into the house of prayer. Certainly his +"way" was immensely "popular"--vigorous, nervous, downright, jocular, +familiar. Whether he talked on Armenia, or Indian famines, or +street-railway franchises, or primary-election reform, or the evils of +department stores (he was very strong on this last topic), the +reports--he was invariably reported--were sure to be sprinkled freely +with "laughter" and "applause." To-day Dr. Gowdy was talking on art. + +"It's going to be a hot one!" said the students among themselves. And +they packed the assembly-hall of the Academy half an hour before the +Doctor's arrival. + +The lecturer who was delivering the Wednesday afternoon course on Modern +French Sculpture had failed to come to time, and Dr. Gowdy, almost on the +spur of the moment, had volunteered to fill the breach. He telephoned +down that he would talk on Recent Developments in Art. This meant the +display of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. + +Dr. Gowdy had seen the abominable exhibition--who, during the past week, +had not?--and had been stirred to wrath. He fumed, he boiled, he bubbled. +But it was not merely this that had roused his blood to fever-heat. No; +Jared Stiles, emboldened by his success in the shopping district, had +applied to Mr. English, the director of the Academy, for a room in which +to make a collective exhibit of the masterpieces at present scattered +through various places of public resort and entertainment. Mr. English +had of course refused, and Dr. Gowdy, of course, had warmly backed him +up. But Mr. Hill, the vice-president, and Mr. Dale, the chairman of the +finance committee, had taken the other side. They had both been country +boys--one from Ogle County, the other from the ague belt of Indiana--and +their hearts warmed to Jared's display over on Broad Street. Their eyes +filled, their breasts heaved, their gullets gulped, their rustic boyhood +was with them poignantly once more. They murmured that English was a +hidebound New-Englander who was incapable of appreciating the expansive +ideals of Western life, and that Gowdy, city-born and city-bred, was +wholly out of sympathy with the sturdy aims and wholesome ambitions of +the farm and prairie. For once Art might well take a back seat and give +honest human feeling a fair show. They hinted, too, that the approaching +annual election might bring a general shake-up; English might find +himself supplanted by some other man more in touch with the local life +and with that of the tributary territory; and Gowdy--well, Gowdy might be +asked to resign, for there were plenty of citizens who would make quite +as good a trustee as he had been. + +Some inkling of these sentiments had come to Dr. Gowdy's ears. He scented +the battle afar off. He said "Ha! ha!" to the trumpets. He pranced, he +reared, he caracoled, he went through the whole _manege._ He outdid +himself. The students, his to the last man, simply went mad. + +For the past year there had been a feud between Dr. Gowdy and Andrew P. +Hill. Hill, relying on his own taste and judgment, had presented the city +with a symbolical group of statuary, which had been set up in the open +space before the Academy. This group, done by a jobber and accepted by a +crass lot of city officials, was of an awful, an incredible badness, and +the better sentiment of the community had finally crystallized and +insisted upon its removal. Dr. Gowdy and Professor English stood on the +steps of the Academy and watched the departure of the truck that was +carrying away the last section of this ambitious but mistaken monument. + +"Well," said English, with a quizzical affectation of plaintive patience, +"we learn by doing." + +"And sometimes by undoing," retorted Dr. Gowdy tartly. + +Hill heard of this observation, and came to the scratch with +animadversions on Dr. Gowdy's maladroit management of the finances of the +Famine Fund (a matter that cannot be gone into here). This was blow for +blow, and ever since then Dr. Gowdy had panted to open the second round. + +Jared Stiles, standing on his own merits or demerits, might have got off +more lightly, but Jared Stiles, as a possible protege of Andrew P. Hill, +was marked for slaughter. This new heresy and all its supporters must be +stamped out--especially the supporters. + + + + +X + +Dr. Gowdy stamped it out--and the crowd stamped with him. The fiery +denunciations of the Doctor kindled an answering flame in the breasts of +his youthful auditory. In five minutes hands, lungs, and feet were all at +work. The youths before him awakened the hot, headlong youth still within +him, and he launched forth upon a tirade of invective that was wild and +reckless even for him. + +"This folly, this falsity, this bumptious vulgarity--shall we not put an +end to it?" cried the Doctor. + +"Yes, yes," responded the house. + +"No; go on," said a single voice. + +The Doctor laughed with the rest, and a wave of delighted applause swept +over the place. + +"Shall we not purify the temple of art? Shall we not drive out the +money-changers?" + +"Yes, yes," called the audience. For Jared had never drawn from the +antique--he was trying to climb in like a thief and a robber. + +"Shall we not?" repeated the Doctor, searching the house for that single +voice. + +"Sure," said the voice, and another wave of applause rolled from the +foyer to the rostrum. + +"Ten thousand dollars!" shouted the Doctor. "The man who says he paid ten +thousand dollars for that agglomeration of barn-yard truck is one of two +things: if he did pay it, he's a fool; and if he didn't, he's a liar! +Which is he?" + +"He's a fool!" cried half the men. + +"He's a liar!" cried the other half. + +"Oh--h!" shrilled the young women. + +The Doctor wiped his streaming brow. + +"What kind of a community is this, anyhow?" he resumed, stuffing back his +handkerchief into his pocket. "Here we have this magnificent school +[applause] that for the past fifteen years has been offering the highest +possible grade of art instruction. A corps of thirty earnest and +competent teachers [loud applause and a few cat-calls] are ministering to +the needs of three thousand promising and talented young people, the +flower of our great Northwest----" [Tremendous and long-continued +applause, during which the continuity of the speaker's remarks was lost.] +The Doctor filled in the minutes of tumult by taking several sips of +water. + +"Why, you, we, this Academy, should be the leaven, the yeast, to work +upon our great metropolis; not merely the flower, but the self-raising +flour"--a pause for appreciation of the pun--"the self-raising flour +[loud laughter, easily yielded and unnecessarily prolonged] that is to +lift yourselves, and the city with you, from the abyss of no-art, and +from the still deeper abyss of false art. That's where we're groping; +that's where we're floundering. I declare, when I was elbowing my way +through that struggling, gaping crowd [cries of "Oh, Doctor!" and +laughter], I could only ask myself the question that I have just asked +you here: what kind of a community is this, anyhow?" + +Up popped a shock of black hair from northern Michigan. + +"It's rotten!" Shouts. Cat-calls. + +"I should think it was!" vociferated the Doctor. + +He went ahead for half an hour longer, crowding on more steam, acquiring +a more perilous momentum, throwing out an ever-widening torrent of +reckless personalities, not forgetting the ill-fated monument of Andrew +P. Hill. ("Applause" and "laughter" were very frequent just here.) He +ended his improvisation without the clearest idea in the world of just +what he had said, and went home well pleased. + + + + +XI + +When Dr. Gowdy took up the _Daily Task_ next morning--there were sixteen +pages of it--the first thing that met his eye was a picture of +himself--the familiar two-column cut that had not had an airing for more +than three months. "Gowdy Gives Us Up," said the head-line. + +"What now?" wondered the good Doctor. "Or rather, which?" For he knew +that every public utterance reported in the daily press of the town was +given one of two twists, the local or the personal. This was apparently +the local. The personal was to follow--and it did. + +Yes, the _Daily Task_ had been represented at the Academy, and its young +man, by a marvel of mutilation and misrepresentation, had put together a +column to convey the impression that Dr. Gowdy was a carping Jeremiah, +intent upon inflicting a deadly wound on local pride. "Oh, shucks!" said +the worthy man, and went on with his toast and coffee. + +But the other papers, though unrepresented at the Academy, had quickly +detected the possibilities resident in Dr. Gowdy's abounding +personalities, and the evening sheets were full of interviews. What did +Jared Stiles think of the attack on him as a representative Western +artist? What did Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. think of Dr. Gowdy's +characterization of their enterprise and the pointed alternative it +presented? What did Andrew P. Hill, as the representative of local wealth +and culture, think of Dr Gowdy's strictures on the self-made man's +endeavour to adorn the city that had given him success and fortune? What +did the distinguished members of the Western Art Circuit think of such +treatment toward their most promising and conspicuous protege? All these +people had thoughts, and none of them was slow in expressing them. + +"I can't understand it, nohow; I swan, I'm completely knocked off my +feet," said Jared to the young man of the _Evening Rounder_, in the +rustic dialect of the vaudeville. "Why, that there man--I've allus looked +on him as my best friend. It was that book of his'n that give me my +start, and now he turns agen me. But he's wrong, and I've got the hull +town to prove it. And if he's wrong, by gum, he'll have to pay for it. He +can't trip up the heels of an honest country boy and not get tripped up +hisself. I don't know yet just what I'll do, but----" + +With the _Evening Pattern_ Jared was more academic. "I acknowledge that +this attack comes as a great surprise. I had always regarded the reverend +gentleman as the chief of my friends. His own book for young men [name +not mentioned--Print, Push, and Co. did not advertise in the _Pattern_] +was my earliest inspiration. Such conduct seems as inconsistent as +inconsiderate. The public, I think, will be certain to support me. And if +the words of the address are correctly reported, I shall be found, I +believe, to have good grounds for an action at law. An intelligent jury, +I make no doubt----" + +The two Meyers were delighted. This was advertising indeed! Van Horn, a +shade less thick-skinned, stuck at the animadversions made so spiritedly +by the Doctor and so vociferously supported by his audience. They wore +upon him; they seemed almost actionable. He sent for the son of their +credit man, a youth enrolled at the Academy, where he was learning to +design carpets and curtains, and tried to get from him just what the +Doctor had really said. This solicitude reacted upon the Meyers, and +Meyer junior, who gave the interview, intimated that such language was +actionable beyond a doubt. "Our Mr. Levy will attend to this. We have the +endorsement of the general public, and that makes us still less willing +to have anybody challenge our business acumen"--all this was but an +elegant paraphrase of Sidney Meyer's actual remarks, for he had left +school at sixteen and had never looked into a book since--"or our +business integrity." + +Abner Joyce, on behalf of the Circuit, gave out a grave interview in a +few guarded words. Though Joyce by no means looked upon Jared as a +protege of his organization, yet his essential sympathy with the country +still held full sway, and he felt it possible to regard young Stiles not +as a mere freak, but as a human creature like ourselves, and struggling +upward, like the rest of us and to the best of his powers, toward the +light. But the town did not want restraint and reason just then, and +Joyce's well-considered words went--much to his mortification--for next +to nothing. Bond, who better apprehended the spirit of the hour, let +himself loose in a vein of pure fantasy,--he ventured on the whimsical, +the sprightly, the paradoxical. The poor fellow sent to interview him +might as well have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of +quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, +made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show +himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With +Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the Art +Circuit could hardly be said to shine. It paled, it sickened, it drooped +away, and presently it died. + +As for Andrew P. Hill, he did not wait for the interviewer; he wrote to +his favourite journal over his own signature. If he himself, straying +outside of his legitimate field (banking and investments), had failed +with "Our City Enlightening the Universe," Dr. Gowdy, astray in the field +of finance, had failed no less egregiously. Yes, his handling of the +Famine Fund had been maladroit and eccentric to the point that permitted +doubts as to his own personal integrity: why, then, should he be casting +doubts upon the veracity, the business honour, of others. + +This was a word for Meyer, Van Horn, and Co., who were tenants of Hill's. +Landlord and tenant were just now in the midst of some delicate +negotiations, and Hill hoped that a word of the right kind from him might +help to make adjustment easier. Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. were intending +to arrange a summer garden on their roof. Query: was the roof theirs--was +it included in the lease? Hill felt sure of carrying his +point,--decidedly the roof was an entirely distinct matter from the ten +floors beneath it; but the situation might well stand a little +lubrication if good feeling were to endure. Therefore Meyer, Van Horn, +and Co. had the satisfaction of reading that William S. Gowdy was +altogether too impulsive, erratic and unreliable--happily Hill did not +employ the word "untrustworthy"--for holding a quasi-public position of +some importance. Age was impairing his judgment and setting a term to his +usefulness. + +Dr. Gowdy flew into a passion. Threatened with legal proceedings!--he, +the blameless citizen. Accused of dishonesty!--he, the pattern of +integrity. Taunted with failing powers!--he, the inexhaustible reservoir +of vigour, of energy! What, after all this, were the pin-pricks daily, +hourly inflicted by the press, the post, the tongues of indignant +associates, all intent on vindicating the honour of a community he had so +wantonly attacked? What were squibs, caricatures, saucy verses, anonymous +letters, cold looks from former friends, hot taunts from casual +acquaintances? For art had been attacked in the very home and haunt of +art! The town had been knifed under the ribs by one of her own +sons!--made ridiculous in the eyes of the ribald East, and dubious in the +regard of the trusting, tributary West! + +Well, what would they have? demanded the Doctor. Should we gain anything +whatever by always throwing bouquets at ourselves? Could we go along +forever living on the flubdub of self-praise? + +But a truce to all this!--for Dr. Gowdy was coming to see, to feel, to +consider but one thing--the Squash. Here was the fountain-head of all his +woes. "Perdition take that fellow!" he exclaimed, with his thoughts +fiercely focused on the unseen Jared Stiles. + + + + +XII + +Yes, the Squash had begun to run, and nothing, apparently, had the power +to stop it. It was putting out leaves here, blossoms there, and tendrils +everywhere. Particularly in the press. Interviews continued. Generals, +judges, merchants, capitalists--the whole trying tribe of "prominent +citizens"--were asked what they thought of such an attack on the fair +fame of the city by one of its own sons. Less prominent citizens sent in +their views unasked. Professors of crayon portraiture wrote to tell the +Doctor he knew nothing of art. Lecturers to classes in civics advised him +that he little realized the citizen's duty to his native town. The +_Noonday Worm_, which had more than once praised the Doctor's public +spirit, now turned on him and called him a renegade. The _Early Morning +Fly_, among other buzzings, buzzed this: "If you don't like our city, +Doctor, there is Another--higher up. Good-bye; we'll see you later!" The +Doctor, who had always felt that he had done as much as any for the +town's well-being within, and more than many for its repute abroad, saw +now that he had been taking much too favourable a view of himself. + +Only the staid old _Hourglass_ had a word in his behalf--a sober +editorial on the art conditions actually prevalent. The _Hourglass_ was +in some degree Dr. Gowdy's mouthpiece. It had a yearly contract with him +for the publication of his sermons--they came out every Monday +morning--and Dr. Gowdy handed over the proceeds to the Board of Foreign +Missions. This contract was about to expire, and it was a question +whether it should be renewed. Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. said no. Dr. Gowdy +had a column or two in the _Hourglass_ on one day in the week, but Meyer, +Van Horn, and Co. had a whole page every week-day and a double one on +Sunday. And they paid for it! They disliked the editorial. They +disapproved the sermon. The contract was not renewed, and Dr. Gowdy +raged. + +On the heels of this came a bill from Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. for +tin-ware. It had been purchased but a week before, yet the bill bore +these words, stamped in red ink and set askew with a haste that seemed to +denote a sudden gust of spite: "Please remit." + +"Henrietta!" called the Doctor to his wife; "how's this? You know I never +trade at any of those abominable department stores! You know what I think +of them: they demoralize trade; they take the bread out of the mouth of +the small dealer; they pay sinfully low wages to the poor girls that they +enslave----" + +It was the new cook, it appeared, who had purchased a few pie-pans on her +own initiative. + +"Discharge her!" roared the Doctor. + +Two or three days later the Squash put forth a new tendril. It had +invaded his home, and now it invaded his pulpit, so to speak. Exacerbated +by persecution, Dr. Gowdy had thrown off all restraint. His one real +weakness, his inability to keep from talking when talking was going on, +grew plainer every hour in exact proportion as his invective, his +vituperation, grew stronger. He rushed into print, like some of the +others, and his expressions were made matter for consideration at the +monthly meeting of the ministers of his own denomination. Briefly, his +brethren themselves (brutishly insensible to the abundant provocation) +censured him for language that was violent and unchristian. + +"I'll resign!" said Dr. Gowdy. + +"You'll do nothing of the sort," said his wife. + +"Of course I sha'n't," he returned. + +Then the Squash invaded the Academy. The shake-up came; Professor English +was removed; and Dr. Gowdy was requested to withdraw from the board of +trustees. + +"I'll resign this time, anyway!" said he. + +"I wish you would," said his wife. + +Next day came a letter from "our" Mr. Levy. It as good as asked Dr. +Gowdy's attendance at the store. Dr. Gowdy tore the letter into very +small scraps, thrust them into an envelope, slapped on a stamp with a +furious hand, and sent them back. + +Then "our" Mr. Levy called at the house, accompanied by a Mr. Kahn, whose +particular function was left in some vagueness. + +Mr. Kahn felt around the edge of the thing. "It can be settled, I am +inclined to think," he said, smoothly. + +"So it can," said the Doctor--"by your both going out that door inside of +ten seconds." + +But Mr. Kahn remained. "Your libellous utterances----" he began. + +"Mine? Those students', you mean. Sue _them_--in a body!" + +"We may prefer to sue you." + +"Sue away, then! I'll put my standing against that of any department +store in existence! This is a mere impudent speculation, impossible to +carry out in the face of the public opinion of a Christian community----" + +"Is it?" asked Mr. Kahn blandly. + +This equivoke checked Dr. Gowdy for an instant. "It used to be," he said, +with a fierce smile. The smile vanished and the fierceness remained. +"Go," he said. "I'm stronger than both of you together. There's the door. +Use it!" He towered over them with red face, threatening arm, bristling +white whiskers. + +"Drop it," said Mr. Kahn to Mr. Levy, as they went down the Doctor's +front steps; "he's a fighter." + + + + +XIII + +An hour later the Doctor, looking out of his study window, saw a buggy +drive up and stop at his carriage-block. It contained a rustic-looking +young man, dressed in new and showy garments that had the cachet of the +department store, and a young woman brave in such finery as young women +wear when approaching the most important hour of their lives. +Instinctively the Doctor reached for his prayer-book, an inspired volume +that had a way of opening almost automatically at the marriage service. + +But only the young man alighted. He came up the front walk with an +expression of fell determination about his firm-set mouth. The young +woman, holding the reins, frowned at Dr. Gowdy's house-front--in marked +repugnance and indignation. + +Jared had come to tell Dr. Gowdy what he thought of him--their first and +only meeting. Dr. Gowdy at a distance had impressed him as an abstract +moral force, but Dr. Gowdy close at hand was a mere man like himself. +Jared pushed aside all deference and spoke his mind. + +"You set me up an inch," said Jared hardily, "and then you went to work +to take me down an ell. You've tried to harm me all you could; you've +tried to ruin me. But it couldn't be done. Let me tell you this: I've +sold seventeen hundred dollars' worth of my work here, and the first of +the month I'm going East with a lot more of it. A man with money in his +pocket can get his rights," said Jared truculently. + +Dr. Gowdy, to whom Jared too had been an abstraction--an abstraction +compact of bumptious heresy as regarded art and of crass ignorance as +regarded life in general--finally realized him now as a human being, +faulty and ill-regulated, indeed, but not altogether unlikeable, and by +no means lacking in a sort of rude capacity. He experienced, not for the +first time, the alleviating quality resident sometimes in personal +presence, even the presence of an antagonist. + +But Jared had no sense of this. "You've made fun of me," he went on; +"you've made me ridiculous in my own home. They're all laughin' at me +down there. All but her"--with an awkward gesture toward Melissa, visible +through the front window. "She's stuck to me right along. She believed in +me from the beginning. It was her gave me that book of yours----" + +"That book, that book!" groaned Dr. Gowdy. Alas for the refining and +ennobling influences of art! Threatened and hectored in his own house by +a loutish, daubing plough-boy! + +"You've interfered with my success; you've taken money out of my pocket. +Do you want to know what I'm goin' to do? I'm goin' to sue you, that's +what! Her father is our county attorney, and he'll help me see that I get +my rights!" + +"Sue me? Do, you poor ignorant young cub!" cried the Doctor. "I've just +had one lawsuit to-day, and what I want more than anything else is +another!" + +Jared glowered at him heavily--a look that was not without its effect on +the Doctor. Jared knew nothing of the complexities and delays and +expenses and uncertainties of the law, but he had already taught Dr. +Gowdy that the overbearing power of sheer ignorance was not to be +despised. + +"I may be a poor ignorant young cub," he returned, "but, for all that, I +know how to take care of myself. And of another too--that right will be +mine within half an hour." A second slight gesture toward the window. Dr. +Gowdy's accustomed ear recognised the confident tone of the bridegroom. + +"Now, see here," said he, with a sudden lurch into what seemed an +unceremonious frankness. "Let me make amends." For there was a positive +note in Jared that responded to the positive strain within himself. Jared +was more likeable than Mr. Kahn, and better worthy of cautious heed as an +antagonist. Why, indeed, should he be further antagonized at all? + +"Yes, let me make amends," said the Doctor. "Let me"--here the +prayer-book opened almost of its own accord--"let me--marry you." + +Jared's eyes blazed. "Do you think that Melissa Crabb would----" + +"Yes, I do," said the Doctor. + +"We're going to Mr. Shears, two blocks down the street." said Jared +imperviously. + +"You're going to stop here," said the Doctor. + +The force of personal relation prevailed--as it almost always does when +given a chance. Jared yielded; Melissa acquiesced. She detached her frown +from the Doctor's house-front, climbed down out of the buggy, accompanied +Jared and the Doctor indoors, and he made them one forthwith. + +The Doctor's performance of the marriage ceremony was famous--the town +was full of people who would never let anybody but Dr. Gowdy marry them. +To those who knew, Mr. Shears was nowhere. The Doctor's method was a +wonderful blend of gravity and of intimacy; he made you feel that you +were the one man and woman in the world--the world summed up, indeed, in +a single pair--and that you were going through a ceremony just a shade +more solemn than any other man or woman had ever gone through before. His +voice would be shot through with little tremors that showed his sincerity +and his individual interest--briefly, Jared and Melissa had no cause to +regret Mr. Shears. + +The Doctor kissed the bride in hearty, fatherly fashion--Henrietta kissed +her too--and refused the fee Jared offered him. + +"No," he said; "I've cost you too much already." + +Jared wrung the Doctor's hand, and wondered that any mere man could fill +his heart with such a tremor and such a glow. + +"I'm going to see you again before you leave for the East?" asked the +Doctor. + +"Well, I have two weeks, at three hundred a week, with the Gayety +Theayter," said Jared. "I put the finishing-touches to a picture every +night in full view of the audience, and frame it with my own hands." + +"Good-bye here, then," said the Doctor. + + + + +XIV + +This was the turning of the tide for Dr. Gowdy. From this time on, things +began to run his way once more. The ministerial body, at its next +meeting, reconsidered its resolution of censure; surely their brother had +been sorely tried. The threatened suit of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. was +quashed by the Doctor's own dauntless bearing. The _Hourglass_ agreed to +open its columns to him, though but for a short synopsis and without +remuneration--so that he had to go into his own pocket for the Foreign +Missions. And finally, the students at the Academy refused to hear of his +withdrawal as trustee. They met; they protested; they resolved; they +clamoured. "We want our Gowdy back! we want our Gowdy back!"--such was +their cry. Their cry was heard; they got their Gowdy back. When next he +addressed them (it was only on Ephesian Antiquities--a safe subject) +their cry was heard again--heard, possibly, in the interior of the next +State. It was the proudest moment of the Doctor's public life. + +Jared Stiles's "Golden Autumn," handled and framed in his usual manner, +and "valued at" ten thousand dollars--none of Jared's larger pieces now +falls below that figure--will soon go trailing, exhibitionwise, through +the halls of the Eastern seaboard. But it is an error to assert that the +name of the painting was suggested by the Rev. William S. Gowdy. No; he +still stubbornly ranges all this work, and indeed all similar work in any +other field of art, under the generic name of the Squash. + + * * * * * + +THE END + + * * * * * + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Under the Skylights, by Henry Blake Fuller + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS *** + +***** This file should be named 8196.txt or 8196.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/9/8196/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger and the Distributed +Proofreaders team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at + www.gutenberg.org/license. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809 +North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email +contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the +Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/8196.zip b/8196.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a809e46 --- /dev/null +++ b/8196.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b4053b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #8196 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8196) diff --git a/old/utsky10.txt b/old/utsky10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca8b5c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/utsky10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8918 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Skylights, by Henry Blake Fuller +#3 in our series by Henry Blake Fuller + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Under the Skylights + +Author: Henry Blake Fuller + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8196] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 30, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger +and the Distributed Proofreaders team. + + + + +HENRY BLAKE FULLER + +UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS + + * * * * * + +PREFATORY NOTE + +The short concluding section of this book--that relating to Dr. Gowdy and +the Squash--is reprinted by permission from _Harper's Magazine_. All the +remaining material appears now for the first time. + + * * * * * + +CONTENTS + + THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + LITTLE O'GRADY _VS._ THE GRINDSTONE + + DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH. + + * * * * * + +THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + * * * * * + +THE DOWNFALL OF ABNER JOYCE + + + + +I + +With the publication of his first book, _This Weary World_, Abner Joyce +immediately took a place in literature. Or rather, he made it; the book +was not like other books, and readers felt the field of fiction to be the +richer by one very vital and authentic personality. + +_This Weary World_ was grim and it was rugged, but it was sincere and it +was significant. Abner's intense earnestness had left but little room for +the graces;--while he was bent upon being recognised as a "writer," yet +to be a mere writer and nothing more would not have satisfied him at all. +Here was the world with its many wrongs, with its numberless crying +needs; and the thing for the strong young man to do was to help set +matters right. This was a simple enough task, were it but approached with +courage, zeal, determination. A few brief years, if lived strenuously and +intensely, would suffice. "Man individually is all right enough," said +Abner; "it is only collectively that he is wrong." What was at fault was +the social scheme,--the general understanding, or lack of understanding. +A short sharp hour's work before breakfast would count for a hundred +times more than a feeble dawdling prolonged throughout the whole day. +Abner rose betimes and did his hour's work; sweaty, panting, begrimed, +hopeful, indignant, sincere, self-confident, he set his product full in +the world's eye. + +Abner's book comprised a dozen short stories--twelve clods of earth +gathered, as it were, from the very fields across which he himself, a +farmer's boy, had once guided the plough. The soil itself spoke, the +intimate, humble ground; warmed by his own passionate sense of right, it +steamed incense-like aloft and cried to the blue skies for justice. He +pleaded for the farmer, the first, the oldest, the most necessary of all +the world's workers; for the man who was the foundation of civilized +society, yet who was yearly gravitating downward through new depths of +slighting indifference, of careless contempt, of rank injustice and gross +tyranny; for the man who sowed so plenteously, so laboriously, yet reaped +so scantily and in such bitter and benumbing toil; for the man who lived +indeed beneath the heavens, yet must forever fasten his solicitous eye +upon the earth. All this revolted Abner; the indignation of a youth that +had not yet made its compromise with the world burned on every page. Some +of his stories seemed written not so much by the hand as by the fist, a +fist quivering from the tension of muscles and sinews fully ready to act +for truth and right; and there were paragraphs upon which the intent and +blazing eye of the writer appeared to rest with no less fierceness, +coldly printed as they were, than it had rested upon the manuscript +itself. + +"Men shall hear me--and heed me," Abner declared stoutly. + +A few of those who read his book happened to meet him personally, and one +or two of this number--clever but inconspicuous people--lucidly +apprehended him for what he was: that rare phenomenon, the artist (such +he was already calling himself)--the artist whose personality, whose +opinions and whose work are in exact accord. The reading public--a body +rather captious and blase, possibly--overlooked his rugged diction in +favour of his novel point of view; and when word was passed around that +the new author was actually in town a number of the _illuminati_ +expressed their gracious desire to meet him. + + + + +II + +But Abner remained for some time ignorant of "society's" willingness to +give him welcome. He was lodged in a remote and obscure quarter of the +city and was already part of a little coterie from which earnestness had +quite crowded out tact and in which the development of the energies left +but scant room for the cultivation of the amenities. With this small +group reform and oratory went hand in hand; its members talked to spare +audiences on Sunday afternoons about the Readjusted Tax. Such a +combination of matter and manner had pleased and attracted Abner from the +start. The land question was _the_ question, after all, and eloquence +must help the contention of these ardent spirits toward a final issue in +success. Abner thirstily imbibed the doctrine and added his tongue to the +others. Nor was it a tongue altogether unschooled. For Abner had left the +plough at sixteen to take a course in the Flatfield Academy, and after +some three years there as a pupil he had remained as a teacher; he became +the instructor in elocution. Here his allegiance was all to the old-time +classic school, to the ideal that still survives, and inexpugnably, in +the rustic breast and even in the national senate; the Roman Forum was +never completely absent from his eye, and Daniel Webster remained the +undimmed pattern of all that man--man mounted on his legs--should be. + +Abner, then, went on speaking from the platform or distributing +pamphlets, his own and others', at the door, and remained unconscious +that Mrs. Palmer Pence was desirous of knowing him, that Leverett Whyland +would have been interested in meeting him, and that Adrian Bond, whose +work he knew without liking it, would have been glad to make him +acquainted with their fellow authors. Nor did he enjoy any familiarity +with Clytie Summers and her sociological studies, while Medora Giles, as +yet, was not even a name. + +Mrs. Palmer Pence remained, then, in the seclusion of her "gilded halls," +as Abner phrased it, save for occasional excursions and alarums that +vivified the columns devoted by the press to the doings of the polite +world; and Adrian Bond kept between the covers of his two or three thin +little books--a confinement richly deserved by a writer so futile, +superficial and insincere; but Leverett Whyland was less easily evaded by +anybody who "banged about town" and who happened to be interested in +public matters. Abner came against him at one of the sessions of the Tax +Commission, a body that was hoping--almost against hope--to introduce +some measure of reason and justice into the collection of the public +funds. + +"Huh! I shouldn't expect much from _him_!" commented Abner, as Whyland +began to speak. + +Whyland was a genial, gentlemanly fellow of thirty-eight or forty. He was +in the world and of it, but was little the worse, thus far, for that. He +had been singled out for favours, to a very exceptional degree, by that +monster of inconsistency and injustice, the Unearned Increment, but his +intentions toward society were still fairly good. If he may be +capitalized (and surely he was rich enough to be), he might be described +as hesitating whether to be a Plutocrat or a Good Citizen; perhaps he was +hoping to be both. + +Abner disliked and doubted him from the start. The fellow was almost +foppish;--could anybody who wore such good clothes have also good motives +and good principles? Abner disdained him too as a public speaker;--what +could a man hope to accomplish by a few quiet colloquial remarks +delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention +should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able +to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with +a driving swoop into the palm of the other--and repeat as often as +necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of +brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree +upon the great, broad, fundamental principles--principles whose adoption +and enforcement would reshape and glorify human society as nothing else +ever had done or ever could do. No, he fell back on mere expediency, mere +practicability, weakly acquiescing in acknowledged and long-established +evils, and trying for nothing more than fairness and justice on a +foundation utterly unjust and vicious to begin with. + +"Let me get out of this," said Abner. + +But a few of his own intimates detained him at the door, and presently +Whyland, who had ended his remarks and was on his way to other matters, +overtook him. An officious bystander made the two acquainted, and +Whyland, who identified Abner with the author of _This Weary World_, +paused for a few smiling and good-humoured remarks. + +"Glad to see you here," he said, with a kind of bright buoyancy. "It's a +complicated question, but we shall straighten it out one way or another." + +Abner stared at him sternly. The question was not complicated, but it +_was_ vital--too vital for smiles. + +"There is only one way," he said: "our way." + +"Our way?" asked Whyland, still smiling. + +"The Readjusted Tax," pronounced Abner, with a gesture toward two or +three of his supporters at his elbow. + +"Ah, yes," said Whyland quickly, recognising the faces. "If the idea +could only be applied!" + +"It can be," said Abner severely. "It must be." + +"Yes, it is a very complicated question," the other repeated. "I have +read your stories," he went on immediately. "Two or three of them +impressed me very much. I hope we shall become better acquainted." + +"Thank you," said Abner stiffly. Whyland meant to be cordial, but Abner +found him patronizing. He could not endure to be patronized by anybody, +least of all by a person of mental calibre inferior to his own. He +resented too the other's advantage in age (Whyland was ten or twelve +years his senior), and his advantage in experience (for Whyland had lived +in the city all his life, as Abner could not but feel). + +"I should be glad if you could lunch with me at the club," said Whyland +in the friendliest fashion possible. "I am on my way there now." + +"Club"--fatal word; it chilled Abner in a second. He knew about clubs! +Clubs were the places where the profligate children of Privilege drank +improper drinks and told improper stories and kept improper hours. Abner, +who was perfectly pure in word, thought and deed and always in bed +betimes, shrank from a club as from a lazaret. + +"Thank you," he responded bleakly; "but I am very busy." + +"Another time, then," said Whyland, with unimpaired kindliness. "And we +may be able to come to some agreement, after all," he added, in reference +to the tax-levy. + +"We are not likely to agree," said Abner gloomily. + +Whyland went on, just a trifle dashed. Abner presently came to further +knowledge of him--his wealth, position, influence, activity--and hardened +his heart against him the more. He commented openly on the selfishness +and greed of the Money Power in pungent phrases that did not all fall +short of Whyland's ear. And when, later on, Leverett Whyland became less +the "good citizen" and more the "plutocrat"--a course perhaps inevitable +under certain circumstances--he would sometimes smile over those +unsuccessful advances and would ask himself to what extent the +discouraging unfaith of our Abner might be responsible for his choice and +his fall. + + + + +III + +Though Mrs. Palmer Pence kept looking forward, off and on, to the +pleasure of making Abner's acquaintance, it was a full six months before +the happy day finally came round. But when she read _The Rod of the +Oppressor_ that seemed to settle it; her salon would be incomplete +without its author, and she must take steps to find him. + +Abner's second book, in spirit and substance, was a good deal like his +first: the man who has succeeded follows up his success, naturally, with +something of the same sort. The new book was a novel, however,--the first +of the long series that Abner was to put forth with the prodigal ease and +carelessness of Nature herself; and it was as gloomy, strenuous and +positive as its predecessor. + +Abner, by this time, had enlarged his circle. Through the reformers he +had become acquainted with a few journalists, and journalists had led on +to versifiers and novelists, and these to a small clique of artists and +musicians. Abner was now beginning to find his best account in a sort of +decorous Bohemia and to feel that such, after all, was the atmosphere he +had been really destined to breathe. The morals of his new associates +were as correct as even he could have insisted upon, and their manners +were kindly and not too ornate. They indulged in a number of little +practices caught, he supposed, from "society," but after all their modes +were pleasantly trustful and informal and presently quite ceased to irk +and to intimidate him. Many members of his new circle were massed in one +large building whose owner had attempted to name it the Warren Block; but +the artists and the rest simply called it the Warren--sometimes the +Burrow or the Rabbit-Hutch--and referred to themselves collectively as +the Bunnies. + +Abner found it hard to countenance such facetiousness in a world so full +of pain; yet after all these dear people did much to cushion his +discomfort, and before long hardly a Saturday afternoon came round +without his dropping into one studio or another for a chat and a cup of +tea. To tell the truth, Abner could hardly "chat" as yet, but he was +beginning to learn, and he was becoming more reconciled as well to all +the paraphernalia involved in the brewing of the draught. He was boarding +rather roughly with a landlady who, like himself, was from "down state" +and who had never cultivated fastidiousness in table-linen or in +tableware, and he sniffed at the fanciful cups and spoons and pink +candle-shades that helped to insure the attendance of the "desirable +people," as the Burrow phrased it, and at the manifold methods of +tea-making that were designed to turn the desirable people into +profitable patrons. That is, he sniffed at the samovar and the lemons and +so on; but when the rum came along he looked away sternly and in silence. + +Well, the desirable people came in numbers--studios were the fad that +year--and as soon as Mrs. Palmer Pence understood that Abner was to be +met with somewhere in the Burrow she hastened to enroll herself among +them. + +Eudoxia Pence was a robust and vigorous woman in her prime--and by +"prime" I mean about thirty-six. She was handsome and rich and +intelligent and ambitious, and she was hesitating between a career as a +Society Queen and a self-devotion to the Better Things: perhaps she was +hoping to combine both. With her she brought her niece, Miss Clytie +Summers, who had been in society but a month, yet who was enterprising +enough to have joined already a class in sociological science, composed +of girls that were quite the ones to know, and to have undertaken two or +three little excursions into the slums. Clytie hardly felt sure just yet +whether what she most wanted was to gain a Social Triumph or to lend a +Helping Hand. It was Abner's lot to help influence her decision. + + + + +IV + +The Bunnies could hardly believe their eyes when, one day, Mrs. Palmer +Pence came rolling into the Burrow. She was well enough known indeed at +the "rival shop"--by which the Bunnies meant a neighbouring edifice +loftily denominated the Temple of Art, a vast structure full of theatres +and recital-halls and studios and assembly-rooms and dramatic schools; +but this was the first time she had favoured the humbler building, at +least on the formal, official Saturday afternoon. Long had they looked +for her coming, and now at last the most desirable of all the desirable +people was here. + +"Ah-h-h!" breathed Little O'Grady, who made reliefs in plastina. + +It was for Mrs. Palmer Pence that the samovar steamed to-day in the dimly +lighted studio of Stephen Giles, for her that the candles fluttered +within their pink shades, for her that the white peppermints lay in +orderly little rows upon the silver tray, for her that young Medora +Giles, lately back to her brother from Paris, wore her freshest gown and +drew tea with her prettiest smile. Mrs. Pence was building a new house +and there was more than an even chance that Stephen Giles might decorate +it. He held a middle ground between the "artist-architects" on the one +hand and the painters on the other, and with this advantageous footing he +was gradually drawing a strong cordon round "society" and was looking +forward to a day not very distant when he might leave the Burrow for the +Temple of Art itself. + +Mrs. Pence sat liberally cushioned in her old carved pew and amiably +sipped her tea beneath a jewelled censer and admired the dark beauty of +the slender and graceful Medora. Presently she became so taken by the +girl that (despite her own superabundant bulk) she must needs cross over +and sit beside her and pat her hand at intervals. In certain extreme +cases Eudoxia was willing to waive the matter of comparison with other +women; but to find herself seated beside a man of lesser bulk than +herself seriously inconvenienced her, while to realize herself standing +beside a man of lesser stature embarrassed her most cruelly. As she was +fond of mixed society, her liberal figure was on the move most of the +time. + +She was too enchanted with Medora Giles to be able to keep away from her, +but the approach of Adrian Bond--he was a great studio dawdler--presently +put her to rout. For Adrian was much too small. He was spare, he was +meagre; he was sapless, like his books; and the part in his smoothly +plastered black hair scarcely reached to her eyebrows. She felt herself +swelling, distending, filling her place to repletion, to suffocation, and +rose to flee. She was for seeking refuge in the brown beard of Stephen +Giles, which was at least on a level with her own chin, when suddenly she +perceived, in a dark corner of the place, a tower of strength more +promising still--a man even taller, broader, bulkier than herself, a +grand figure that might serve to reduce her to more desirable +proportions. + +"Who is he?" she asked Giles, as she seized him by the elbow. "Take me +over there at once." + +Giles laughed. "Why, that's Joyce," he said. "He's got so that he looks +in on us now and then." + +"Joyce? What Joyce?" + +"Why, Joyce. The one, the only,--as we believe." + +"Abner Joyce? _This Weary World? The Rod of the Oppressor_?" + +"Exactly. Let me bring him over and present him." + +"Whichever you like; arrange it between Mohammed and the Mountain just as +you please." She looked over her shoulder; little Bond was following. +"Waive all ceremony," she begged. "I will go to him." + +Giles trundled her over toward the dusky canopy under which Abner stood +chafing, conscious at once of his own powers and of his own social +inexpertness. In particular had he looked out with bitterness upon the +airy circulations of Adrian Bond--Adrian who smirked here and nodded +there and chaffed a bit now and then with the blonde Clytie and openly +philandered over the tea-urn with the brunette Medora. "That snip! That +water-fly! That whipper-snapper! That----" + +Abner turned with a start. A worldly person, clad voluminously in furs, +was extending a hand that sparkled with many rings and was composing a +pair of smiling lips to say the pleasant thing. This attention was +startlingly, embarrassingly sudden, but it was welcome and it was +appropriate. Abner was little able to realize the quality of aggressive +homage that resided in Mrs. Pence's resolute and unconventional advance, +but it was natural enough that this showy woman should wish to manifest +her appreciation of a gifted and rising author. He took her hand with a +graceless gravity. + +Mrs. Pence, upon a nearer view, found Abner all she had hoped. Confronted +by his stalwart limbs and expansive shoulders, she was no longer a +behemoth,--she felt almost like a sylph. She looked up frankly, and with +a sense of growing comfort, into his broad face where a good strong +growth of chestnut beard was bursting through his ruddy cheeks and +swirling abundantly beneath his nose. She looked up higher, to his wide +forehead, where a big shock of confident hair rolled and tumbled about +with careless affluence. And with no great shyness she appraised his +hands and his feet--those strong forceful hands that had dominated the +lurching, self-willed plough, those sturdy feet that had resolutely +tramped the miles of humpy furrow the ploughshare had turned up blackly +to sun and air. She shrank. She dwindled. Her slender girlhood--that +remote, incredible time--was on her once more. + +"I shall never feel large again," she said. + +How right she was! Nobody ever felt large for long when Abner Joyce +happened to be about. + + + + +V + +Abner regarded Mrs. Pence and her magnificence with a sombre intensity, +far from ready to approve. He knew far more about her than she could know +about him--thanks to the activities of a shamefully discriminating (or +undiscriminating) press--and he was by no means prepared to give her his +countenance. Face to face with her opulence and splendour he set the +figure of his own mother--that sweet, patient, plaintive little presence, +now docilely habituated, at the closing in of a long pinched life, to +unremitting daily toil still unrewarded by ease and comfort or by any +hope or promise or prospect of it. There was his father too--that good +gray elder who had done so much faithful work, yet had so little to show +for it, who had fished all day and had caught next to nothing, who had +given four years out of his young life to the fight for freedom only to +see the reward so shamefully fall elsewhere.... Abner evoked here a +fanciful figure of Palmer Pence himself, whom he knew in a general way to +be high up in some monstrous Trust. He saw a prosperous, domineering man +who with a single turn of the hand had swept together a hundred little +enterprises and at the same time had swept out a thousand of the lesser +fry into the wide spaces of empty ruin, and who had insolently settled +down beside his new machine to catch the rain of coins minted for him +from the wrongs of an injured and insulted people.... + +Abner accepted in awkward silence Mrs. Pence's liberal and fluent praise +of _The Rod of the Oppressor_,--aside from his deep-seated indignation he +had not yet mastered any of those serviceable phrases by means of which +such a volley may be returned; but he found words when she presently set +foot in the roomy field of the betterment of local conditions. What she +had in mind, it appeared, was a training-school--it might be called the +Pence Institute if it went through--and she was ready to listen to any +one who was likely to encourage her with hints or advice. + +"So much energy, so much talent going to waste, so many young people +tumbling up anyhow and presently tumbling over--all for lack of thorough +and systematic training," she said, across her own broad bosom. + +"I know of but one training that is needed," said Abner massively: "the +training of the sense of social justice--such training of the public +conscience as will insist upon seeing that each and every freeman gets an +even chance." + +"An even chance?" repeated Eudoxia, rather dashed. "What I think of +offering is an even start. Doesn't it come to much the same thing?" + +But Abner would none of it. Possessed of the fatalistic belief in the +efficacy of mere legislation such as dominates the rural townships of the +West, he grasped his companion firmly by the arm, set his sturdy legs in +rapid motion, walked her from assembly hall to assembly hall through this +State, that and the other, and finally fetched up with her under the dome +of the national Capitol. Senators and representatives co-operated here, +there and everywhere, the chosen spokesmen of the sovereign people; Abner +seemed almost to have enrolled himself among them. Confronted with this +august company, whose work it was to set things right, Eudoxia Pence felt +smaller than ever. What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and +good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was +marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the +great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and +expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. +Ten to one we shall never see her profile here again!" Yes, Eudoxia was +feeling, with a sudden faintness, that the Better Things might after all +be beyond her reach. She looked about for herself without finding +herself: she had dwindled away to nothingness. + + + + +VI + +"Do you take her money--_such_ money?" Abner asked of Giles with +severity. Eudoxia had returned to Medora and the samovar. + +"_Such_ money?" returned Giles. "Is it different from other money? What +do you mean?" + +"Isn't her husband the head of some trust or other?" + +"Why, yes, I believe so: the Feather-bed Trust, or the Air-and-Sunlight +Trust--something of that sort; I've never looked into it closely." + +"Yet you accept what it offers you." + +"And give a good return for it. Yes, she had paid me already for my +sketches--a prompt and business-like way of doing things that I should be +glad to encounter oftener." + +Abner shook his head sadly. "I thought we might come to be real friends." + +"And I hope so yet. Anyway, it takes a little money to keep the tea-pot +boiling." + +Abner drifted back to the shelter of his canopy and darkly accused +himself for his acceptance of such hospitality. He ought to go, to go at +once, and never to come back. But before he found out how to go, Clytie +Summers came along and hemmed him in. + +Clytie was not at all afraid of big men; she had already found them +easier to manage than little ones. Indeed she had pretty nearly come to +the conclusion that a lively young girl with a trim figure and a bright, +confident manner and a fetching mop of sunlit hair and a pair of wide, +forthputting, blue eyes was predestined to have her own way with about +everybody alike. But Clytie had never met an Abner Joyce. + +And as soon as Clytie entered upon the particulars of her last slumming +trip through the river wards she began to discover the difference. She +chanced to mention incidentally certain low-grade places of amusement. + +"What!" cried Abner; "you go to theatres--and _such_ theatres?" + +"Surely I do!" cried Clytie in turn, no less disconcerted than Abner +himself. "Surely I go to theatres; don't you?" + +"Never," replied Abner firmly. "I have other uses for my money." His +rules of conduct marshalled themselves in a stiff row before him; forlorn +Flatfield came into view. Neither his principles nor his practice of +making monthly remittances to the farm permitted such excesses. + +"Why, it doesn't _cost_ anything," rejoined Clytie. "There's no admission +charge. All you have to do is to buy a drink now and then." + +"Buy a drink?" + +"Beer--that will do. You can stay as long as you want to on a couple of +glasses. Lots of our girls didn't take but one." + +"Lots of----?" + +"Yes, the whole class went. We found the place most interesting--and the +audience. The men sit about with their hats on, you know, in a big hall +full of round tables, drinking and smoking----" + +"And you mixed up in such a----?" + +"Well, no; not exactly. We had a box--as I suppose you would call it; +three of them. Of course that _did_ cost a little something. And then Mr. +Whyland bought a few cigars----" + +"Mr. Whyland----?" + +"Yes, he was with us; he thought there ought to be at least one gentleman +along. He couldn't smoke the cigars, but one of the girls happened to +have some cigarettes----" + +"Cigarettes?" + +"Yes, and we found _their_ smoke much more endurable. That was the worst +about the place--the smoke; unless it was the performance----" + +"Oh!" said Abner, with a groan of disgust. + +"Well, it wasn't as bad as _that!_" returned Clytie. "It was only dull +and stale and stupid; the same old sort of knockabouts and serio-comics +you can see everywhere down town, only not a quarter so good--just cheap +imitations. And all those poor fellows sat moping over their beer-mugs +waiting, waiting, waiting for something new and entertaining to happen. I +never felt so sorry for anybody in my life. We girls about made up our +minds that we would get together a little fund and see if we couldn't do +some missionary work in that neighbourhood--hire some real good +artists"--Abner winced at this hideous perversion of the word--"hire some +real good artists to go over there and let those poor creatures see what +a first-class show was like; and Mr. Whyland promised to contribute----" + +"Stop!" said Abner. + +Clytie paused abruptly, astonished by his tone and by the expression on +his face. The flush of innocent enthusiasm and high resolve left her +cheek, her pretty little lips parted in amaze, and her wide blue eyes +opened wider than ever. What a singular man! What a way of accepting her +expression of interest in her kind, of receiving her plan for helping the +other half to lead a happier life! Adrian Bond, a dozen, a hundred other +men would have known how to give her credit for her kindly intentions +toward the less fortunate, would have found a ready way to praise her, to +compliment her.... + +Abner Joyce had a great respect for woman in general, but he entertained +an utter detestation of anything like gallantry; in his chaste anxiety he +leaned the other way. He was brusque; he often rode roughshod over +feminine sensibilities. He was very slightly influenced by considerations +of sex. He viewed everybody asexually, as a generalized human being. He +dealt with women just as he dealt with men, and he treated young women +just as he treated older ones. He treated Clytie just as he treated +Eudoxia Pence, just as he would have treated Whyland himself--but with a +little added severity, called forth by her peculiar presence and her +specific offence. He brought her to book just as she deserved to be +brought to book--a girl who went to low theatres and wore frizzled yellow +hair and made eyes at strangers and took her share in the heartless +amusements of plutocrats. + +"Why, what is it?" asked Clytie. "Don't you think we ought to try to +understand modern social conditions and do what we can to improve them? +If you would only go through some of those streets in the river wards and +into some of the houses--oh, dear me, dear me!" + +But Abner would none of this. "Do you think your river wards, as you call +them, are any worse than our barn-yard in the early days of March? Do you +imagine your cheap vawdyville theatres are any more tiresome than our +Main Street through the winter months?" + +No, Abner's thoughts had been focused too long on the wrongs of the rural +regions to be able to transfer themselves to the sufferings and +injustices of the town. He saw the city collectively as the oppressor of +the country, and Leverett Whyland, by reason of Clytie's innocent +prattle, became the city incarnate in a single figure. + +"I know your Mr. Whyland," he said. "I've met him; I know all about him. +He lives on his rents. His property came to him by inheritance, and half +its value to-day is due to the general rise brought about by the +exertions of others. He is indebted for food, clothing and shelter to the +unearned increment." + +"Lives on his rents? Is there anything wrong in that? So do I, too--when +they can be collected. And if you talk about the unearned increment, let +me tell you there is such a thing as the unearned decrement." + +"Nonsense. That's merely a backward swirl in a rushing stream." + +"Not at all!" cried Clytie, now in the full heat of controversy. "If you +were used to a big growing city, with all its sudden shifts and changes, +you would understand. Even the new neighbourhoods get spoiled before they +are half put together--builders treat one another so unfairly; while, as +for the old ones--why, my poor dear father is coming to have row after +row that he can't find tenants for at all, unless he were to let them +to--to objectionable characters." + +Clytie threw this out with all boldness. The matter was purely economic, +sociological; they were talking quite as man to man. Abner brought every +woman to this point sooner or later. + +As for the troubles of landlords, he had no sympathy with them. And to +him the most objectionable of all "objectionable characters" was the man +who had a strong box stuffed with farm mortgages--town-dwellers, the +great bulk of them. "Oh, the cities, the cities!" he groaned. Then, more +cheerfully: "But never mind: they are passing." + +"Passing? I like that! Do you know that eighteen and two-thirds per cent +of the population of the United States lives in towns of one hundred +thousand inhabitants and above, and that the number is increasing at the +rate of----" + +"They are disintegrating," pursued Abner stolidly. "By their own +bulk--like a big snowball. And by their own badness. People are rolling +back to the country--the country they came from. Improved transportation +will do it." The troubles of the town were ephemeral--he waved them +aside. But his face was set in a frown--doubtless at the thought of the +perdurable afflictions of the country. + +"Don't worry over these passing difficulties that arise from a mere +temporary congestion of population. They will take care of themselves. +Meanwhile, don't sport with them; don't encourage your young friends to +make them a vehicle of their own selfish pleasures; don't----" + +Clytie caught her breath. So she was a mere frivolous, inconsequential +butterfly, after all. Why try longer to lend the Helping Hand--why not +cut things short and be satisfied with the Social Triumph and let it go +at that? "I was meaning to ask you to dine with me some evening next week +at a settlement I know, but now...." + +"I never 'dine,'" said Abner. + + + + +VII + +"I should be so glad to have you call." Mrs. Pence was peering about +among the lanterns and tapestries and the stirring throng with the idea +of picking up Clytie and taking leave. "My niece is staying with me just +now, and I'm sure she would be glad to see you again too." + +Abner looked about to help her find her charge. Clytie had gone over to +the tea-table, where she was snapping vindictively at the half of a +ginger-wafer somebody else had left and was gesticulating in the face of +Medora Giles. + +"I never met such a man in my life!" she was declaring. "I'll never speak +to him again as long as I live! He's a bear; he's a brute!" + +Little O'Grady, bringing forward another sliced lemon, shook in his +shoes. "He'll have everybody scared away before long!" the poor fellow +thought. + +Medora smiled on Clytie. "Oh, not so bad as that, I hope," she said +serenely. "Stephen, now, is beginning to have quite a liking for him. So +earnest; so well-intentioned...." + +"And you yourself?" asked Clytie. + +"I haven't met him yet. I'm only on probation. He has looked me +over--from afar, but has his doubts. I may get the benefit of them, or I +may not." + +"What doubts?" + +"Why, I'm a renegade, a European. I'm effete, contaminate, taboo." + +"Has he said so?" + +"Said so? Do I need to have things 'said'?" + +"Well, if you really are all this, you'll find it out soon enough." + +"He's a touchstone, then?" + +"Yes. And I'm a nonentity, lightly concerning myself about light +nothings. He won't mince matters." + +"Don't worry about me," said Medora confidently. "I shall know how to +handle him." + +Mrs. Pence kept on peering. Dusk was upon the place, and the few dim +lights were more ineffectual than ever. "There she is," said Abner, with +a bob of the head. + +"Good-bye, then," said Eudoxia, grasping his hand effusively, as she took +her first step toward Clytie. "Now, you _will_ come and see us, won't +you?" + +"Thank you; but----" + +Abner paused for the evocation of an instantaneous vision of the +household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, +artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and +indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent +servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best +were questionable! Could he accept such hospitality as this? + +"Thank you. I might come, possibly, if I can find the time. But I warn +you I am very busy." + +"Make time," said Eudoxia good-humouredly, and passed along. + +Abner made a good deal of time for the Burrow, but it was long before he +brought himself to make any for Eudoxia Pence. He came to see a great +deal of the Bunnies; in a month or two he quite had the run of the place. +There were friendly fellows who heaved big lumps of clay upon huge +nail-studded scantlings, and nice little girls who designed book-plates, +and more mature ones who painted miniatures, and many earnest, earnest +persons of both sexes who were hurrying, hurrying ahead on their wet +canvases so that the next exhibition might not be incomplete by reason of +lacking a "Smith," a "Jones," a "Robinson." Abner gave each and every one +of these pleasant people his company and imparted to them his views on +the great principles that underlie all the arts in common. + +"So that's what you call it--a marquise," Abner observed on a certain +occasion to one of the miniature painters. "This creature with a fluffy +white wig and a low-necked dress is a marquise, is she? Do you like that +sort of thing?" + +"Why, yes,--rather," said the artist. + +"Well,_I_ don't," declared Abner, returning the trifle to the girl's +hands. + +"I'll paint my next sitter as a milkmaid--if she'll let me." + +"_As_ a milkmaid? No; paint the milkmaid herself. Deal with the verities. +Like them before you paint them. Paint them _because_ you like them." + +"I don't know whether I should like milkmaids or not. I've never seen +one." + +"They don't exist," chimed in Adrian Bond, who was dawdling in the +background. "The milkmaids are all men. And as for the dairy-farms +themselves----!" He sank back among his cushions. "I visited one in the +suburbs last month--the same time when I was going round among the +markets. I have been of half a mind, lately," he said, more directly to +Abner, "to do a large, serious thing based on local actualities; _The +City's Maw_--something like that. My things so far, I know (none better) +_are_ slight, flimsy, exotic, factitious. The first-hand study of +actuality, thought I----But no, no, no! It was a place fit only for a +reporter in search of a--of a--I don't know what. I shall never drink +coffee again; while as for milk punch----" + +"And what is the artist," asked Abner, "but the reporter sublimated? Why +must the artist go afield to dabble in far-fetched artificialities that +have nothing to do with his own proper time and place? Our people go +abroad for study, instead of staying at home and guarding their native +quality. They return affected, lackadaisical, self-conscious--they bring +the hothouse with them. Why, I have seen such a simple matter as the +pouring of a cup of tea turned into----" + +"You can't mean Medora Giles," said the miniaturist quickly, pausing +amidst the laces of her bodice. "Don't make any mistake about Medora. +When she goes in for all that sort of thing, she's merely 'creating +atmosphere,' as we say,--she's simply after the 'envelopment,' in fact." + +"She is just getting into tone," Bond re-enforced, "with the +candle-shades and the peppermints." + +"Medora," declared the painter, "is as sensible and capable a girl as I +know. Why, the very dress she wore that afternoon----You noticed it?" + +"I--I----" began Abner. + +"No, you didn't--of course you didn't. Well, she made every stitch of it +with her own hands." + +"And those tea-cakes, that afternoon," supplemented Bond. "She made every +stitch of _them_ with her own hands. She told me so herself, when I +stayed afterward, to help wash things up." + +"I may have done her an injustice," Abner acknowledged. "Perhaps I might +like to know her, after all." + +"You might be proud to," said Bond. + +"And the favour would be the other way round," declared the painter +stoutly. + +Abner passed over any such possibility as this. "How long was she +abroad?" he asked Bond. + +"Let's see. She studied music in Leipsic two years; she plays the violin +like an angel--up to a certain point. Then she was in Paris for another +year. She paints a little--not enough to hurt." + +"Leipsic? Two years?" pondered Abner. It seemed more staid, less vicious, +after all, than if the whole time had been spent in Paris. The violin; +painting. Both required technique; each art demanded long, close +application. "Well, I dare say she is excusable." But here, he thought, +was just where the other arts were at a disadvantage compared with +literature: you might stay at home wherever you were, if a writer, and +get your own technique. + +"And you have done it," said Bond. "I admire some of your things so much. +Your instinct for realities, your sturdy central grasp--" + +"What man has done, man may do," rejoined Abner. "Yet what is technique, +after all? There remains, as ever, the problem, the great Social Problem, +to be solved." + +"You think so?" queried Bond. + +"Think that there is a social problem?" + +"Think that it can be solved. I have my own idea there. It is a secret. I +am willing to tell it to one person, but not to more,--I couldn't answer +for the consequences. If Miss Wilbur will just stop her ears----" + +The miniaturist laughed and laid her palms against her cheeks. + +"You are sure you can't hear?" asked Bond, with his eye on her spreading +fingers. "Well, then"--to Abner--"there _is_ the great Human Problem, but +it is not to be solved, nor was it designed that it should be. The world +is only a big coral for us to cut our teeth upon, a proving-ground, a +hotbed from which we shall presently be transplanted according to our +several deserts. No power can solve the puzzle save the power that cut it +up into pieces to start with. Try as we may, the blanket will always be +just a little too small for the bedstead. Meanwhile, the thing for us to +do is to go right along figuring, figuring, figuring on our little +slates,--but rather for the sake of keeping busy than from any hope of +reaching the 'answer' set down in the Great Book above." + +"But----" began Abner; his orthodox sensibilities were somewhat offended. +Miss Wilbur, who had heard every word, laughed outright. + +"I beg," Bond hurried on, "that you won't communicate this to a living +soul. I am the only one who suspects the real truth. If it came to be +generally known all human motives would be lacking, all human activities +would be paralyzed--the whole world would come to a standstill. Mum's the +word. For if the problem is insoluble and meant to be, just as sure is it +that we were not intended to suspect the truth." + +Abner gasped--dredging the air for a word. "Of course," Bond went ahead, +less fantastically, "I know I ought to shut my eyes to all this and start +in to accomplish something more vital, more indigenous--less of the +marquise and more of the milkmaid, in fact----" + +"Write about the things you know and like," said Abner curtly. + +His tone acknowledged his inability to keep pace with such whimsicalities +or to sympathize with them. + +"If to know and to like were one with me, as they appear to be with you! +A boyhood in the country--what a grand beginning! But the things I know +are the things I don't like, and the things I like are not always the +things I know--oftener the things I feel." Bond was speaking with a +greater sincerity than he usually permitted himself. The right touch just +then might have determined his future: he was quite as willing to become +a Veritist as to remain a mere Dilettante. + +Abner tossed his head with a suppressed snort; he felt but little +inclined to give encouragement to this manikin, this tidier-up after +studio teas, this futile spinner of sophistications. No, the curse of a +city boyhood was upon the fellow. Why look for anything great or vital +from one born and bred in the vitiated air of the town? + +"Oh, well," he said, half-contemptuously, and not half trying to hide his +contempt, "you are doing very well as it is. Some of your work is not +without traces of style; and I suppose style is what you are after. But +meat for _me_!" + +Bond lapsed back into his cushions, feeling a little hurt and very feeble +and unimportant. Clearly the big thing, the sincere thing, the +significant thing was beyond his reach. _The City's Maw_ must remain +unwritten. + + + + +VIII + +Abner tramped down the corridor and walked in on Giles. He found the +decorator busy over two or three large sketches for panels. + +"For another Trust man?" he asked. + +"No," replied Giles; "these are for a blameless old gentleman that has +passed a life of honest toil in the wholesale hardware business. Don't +you think he's entitled to a few flowers by this time?" + +"What kind of flowers are they?" + +"Passion-flowers and camellias." + +"Humph! Do they grow round here?" + +"Hardly. My old gentleman hasn't given himself a vacation for twenty-five +years, and he wants to get as far away from 'here' as possible." + +Abner gave another "Humph!" Wigs and brocades; passion-flowers and +camellias. All this in a town that had just seen the completion of the +eighteenth chapter of _Regeneration_. Well, regeneration was coming none +too soon. + +"What's the matter with Bond?" he asked suddenly. + +"I do' know. Is anything?" + +"I've just been talking with him, and he seemed sort of skittish and +dissatisfied and paradoxical." + +"He's often like that. We never notice." + +"He seemed to shilly-shally considerable too. Has he got any convictions, +any principles?" + +"I can't say I've ever thought much about that. He never mentions such +things himself, but I suppose he must have them about him somewhere. He +generally behaves himself and treats other people kindly. Everybody +trusts him and seems to believe in him. I presume he's got _something_ +inside that holds him up--moral framework, so to speak." + +Abner shook his head. If the framework was there it ought to show +through. Every articulation should tell; every rib should count. + +"If a man has got principles and beliefs, why not come out flat-footedly +with them _like_ a man?" + +"I do' know. Dare say Bond doesn't want to wear his heart on his sleeve. +Hates to live in the show-window, you understand." + +"He was fussing most about writing some new thing or other in a new way. +I seem to have kind of started him up." + +"He has been talking like that for quite a little while. He's tenderly +interested--that's the real reason for it. He wants more +reputation--something to lay at the dear one's feet, you know. And he +wants bigger returns--though he _has_ got something in the way of an +independent income, I believe." + +"Who is she?" + +"That little Miss Summers." + +"He may have her," said Abner quickly. "She may 'dine' _him_ at her +settlement." Then, more slowly: "Why, they hardly spoke to each other, +that day--except once or twice to joke. They barely noticed each other." + +"What should they have done? Sit side by side, holding hands?" + +"Oh, the city, the city!" murmured Abner, overcome by the artificiality +of urban society and the mockery in Giles's tone. + +"You should have seen them in the country last summer." + +"Them! In the country!" + +"Why, yes; why not? We had them both out on the farm." + +"Farm? Whose?" + +"My father's. We try to do a little livening up for the old people every +July and August. They got acquainted there; they took to it like ducks to +water. That's where Bond got his idea for his cow masterpiece,--he may +have spoken to you about it." + +"Humph!" said Abner. Why heed such insignificant poachings as these on +his own preserves? + +"We're going out home week after next for the holidays," continued Giles. +"Better go with us." + +"So you're a farmer's boy?" pondered Abner. He looked again at the +camellias, then at Giles's loose Parisian tie, and lastly at his +finger-nails,--all too exquisite by half. + +"Certainly. Brought up on burdock and smart-weed. That's why I'm so fond +of this,"--with a wave toward one of his panels. + +"Well, what do you say? Will you go? We should like first-rate to have +you." + +Abner considered. The invitation was as hearty and informal as he could +have wished, and it would take him within thirty miles of Flatfield +itself. + +"Is your sister going along?" + +"Surely. She will run the whole thing." + +"Well," said Abner slowly, "I don't know but that I might find it +interesting." This, Giles understood, was his rustic manner of accepting. + + + + +IX + +Abner spent Christmas at the Giles farm, as Stephen had understood him to +promise; and Medora, as her brother had engaged, "went along" too, and +"ran the whole thing" from start to finish. Abner, with a secret interest +compounded half of attraction, half of repulsion, promised himself a +careful study of this "new type"--a type so bizarre, so artificial, and +in all probability so thoroughly reprehensible. + +Medora made up the rest of the party to suit herself. She had heard of +Adrian Bond's struggles toward the indigenous, the simplified, and she +was willing enough to give him a chance to see the cows in their winter +quarters. Clytie Summers had begged very prettily for her glimpse too of +the country at this time of year. "It's rather soon, I know, for that +spring barn-yard; but I should so enjoy the ennui of some village Main +Street in the early winter." + +"Come along, then," said Medora. "We'll do part of our Christmas shopping +there." + +Giles accepted these two new recruits gladly. "Good thing for both of +them," he declared to Joyce. "They'll make more progress on our farm in a +week than they could in six months of studio teas." + +This remark admitted of but one interpretation. + +"Why!" said Abner; "do you want her to marry _him_?"--him, a fellow so +slight, frivolous, invertebrate! + +"Oh, he's a very decent little chap," returned Giles. "He'll be kind to +her--he'll see she's taken good care of." + +"But do you want him to marry _her_?"--her, so bold, so improper, so +prone to seek entertainment in the woes of others! + +"Oh, well, she's a very fair little chick," replied Giles patiently. +"She'll get past her notions pretty soon and be just as good a wife as +anybody could ask." + +One of those quiescent, featureless Decembers was on the land--a November +prolonged. The brown country-side, swept and garnished, was still +awaiting the touch of winter's hand. The air was crisp yet passive, and +abundant sunshine flooded alike the heights and hollows of the rolling +uplands that spread through various shades of subdued umber and +meditative blue toward the confines of a wavering, indeterminate horizon. +The Giles homestead stood high on a bluff; and above the last of the +islands that cluttered the river beneath it the spires of the village +appeared, a mile or two down-stream. + +"Now for the barn-yard!" cried Clytie, after the first roundabout view +from the front of the bluff. "Adrian mustn't lose any time with his +cows." + +Giles led the way to a trim inclosure. + +"Why, it's as dry as a bone!" she declared. + +"Would you want us water-logged the whole year through?" asked Abner +pungently. + +"And as for ennui," she pursued, "I'm sure it isn't going to be found +here--no more in winter than in summer. However"--with a wave of the hand +toward the spires--"there is always the town." + +No, the parents of Giles had taken strong measures to keep boredom at +bay. They had their books and magazines; they had a pair of good trotters +and a capacious carryall, with other like aids to locomotion in reserve; +they had a telephone; they had a pianola, with a change of rolls once a +month; they had neighbours of their own sort and were indomitable in +keeping up neighbourly relations. + +"I think you'll be able to stand it for a week," said Medora serenely. + +"We've done it once before," said Bond. + +"Don't be anxious about _us_!" added Clytie. + +Medora Giles took Abner in her own special care. She knew pretty nearly +what he thought of her, and she was inclined to amuse herself--though at +the same time making no considerable concession--by placing herself +before him in a more favourable light. In her dress, her manner, her +bearing there was a certain half-alien delicacy, finesse, aloofness. She +would not lay this altogether aside, even at home, even in the informal +country; but she would provide a homely medium, suited to Abner's rustic +vision, through which her exotic airs and graces might be more tolerantly +perceived. + +The illness of one of the servants came just here to assist her. She +descended upon the kitchen, taking full charge and carrying Abner with +her. She initiated him at the chopping-block, she conferred the second +degree at the pump-handle, and by the time he was beating up eggs in a +big yellow bowl beside the kitchen stove his eyes had come to be focused +on her in quite a different fashion. Surely no one could be more deft, +light-handed, practical. Was this the same young woman who had sat in the +midst of that absurd outfit and had juggled rather affectedly and +self-consciously with tea-urn and sugar-tongs and had palavered in empty +nothings with a troop of overdressed and overmannered feather-heads? She +was still graceful, still fluent, still endowed with that baffling little +air of distinction; but she knew where things were--down to the last +strainer or nutmeg-grater--and she knew how to use them. She was +completely at home. And so--by this time--was he. + +To deepen the impression, Medora asked Abner to help her lay the table. +There were no studio gimcracks, mercifully, to put into place; but the +tableware was as far removed, on the other hand, from the ugly, heavy, +time-scarred things at Flatfield and from the careless crudities of his +own boarding-house. Abner had had a tolerance, even a liking, for his +landlady's indifference toward finicky table-furnishings; but now there +came a sudden vision of her dining-room, and the spots on the +table-cloth, the nicks in the crockery, the shabbiness of the lambrequin +drooping from the mantel-piece, and the slovenliness of the sole +handmaiden had never been so vivid. + +"Shall I be able to go back there?" he asked himself. + +Finally, to seal the matter completely, Medora led Abner to the place of +honour and bade him eat the meal she had prepared. Abner ate and was +hers. Even a good boarding-house, he now felt, was a mistake; the best, +but a makeshift. + +During the day the telephone had made common property of the news of +Abner's arrival, and the next morning, an hour or so after breakfast, the +front yard resounded with the loud cry of, "What ho, neighbours!" and +Leverett Whyland was revealed in a trig cart drawn by a handsome cob. + +"Why, what's that man doing here?" Abner asked Giles, as they stood by +the living-room window. + +"He has a place three or four miles down the river," replied Giles, +casting about for his hat. Clytie, meanwhile, had drubbed a glad welcome +upon the adjoining window and then rushed out bareheaded to give +greeting. + +"He always comes out here with his family for Christmas," said Stephen. + +"His family? Is he married? Has he a wife and children?" + +"Yes." + +"Yet he goes slam-banging around with a lot of young girls into all sorts +of doubtful places?" + +"Oh, I've heard something about that," said Giles. "Well, you wouldn't +have them in charge of a bachelor, would you?" + +"What's he farming for?" asked Abner, left behind with Medora. + +"Sentiment," she replied. "He was born down there, and has never wanted +to let the old place go. Do you think any the worse of him for that?" + +Whyland had come to fetch the men and to show them his model farm. They +spent the forenoon in going over this expensive place. Bond gave vent to +all the "oh's" and "ah's" that indicate the perfect visitor. Abner took +their host's various amateurish doings in glum silence. It was all very +well to indulge in these costly contraptions as a pastime, but if the man +had to get his actual living from the soil where would he be? Almost +anybody could stand on two legs. How many on one? + +"Do you make it pay?" Abner asked bluntly. + +"Pay? I'm a by-word all over the county. Half the town lives on my lack +of 'gumption.'" + +"H'm," said Abner darkly. He was as far as ever from hitting it off with +this smiling, dapper product of artificial city conditions. + +"I came across some of your Readjusters the other day," observed Whyland, +at the door of his hen-house--a prodigal place with a dozen wired-in +"runs" for a dozen different varieties of poultry: "Leghorns, Plymouth +Rocks, Jerseys, Angoras, Hambletonians and what not," as Bond +irresponsibly remarked. "They say they haven't been seeing much of you +lately." + +Abner frowned. Whyland, he felt, was trying to put him at a disadvantage. +But, in truth, it could not be denied that he had practically left one +circle for another,--was showing himself much more disposed to favour the +skylights of the studios than the footlights of the rostrum. + +"I am still for the cause," he said. "But it can be helped from one side +as well as from another. My next book----" + +"I didn't dispute your idea; only its application. I should be glad if +you _could_ make it go. Anything would be better than the present +horrible mess. We have 'equality,' and to spare, in the Declaration and +the Constitution, but whether or not we shall ever get it in our +taxing----" + +"I am glad to hear you speaking a word for the country people----" began +Abner. + +"The country people?" interrupted Whyland quickly, with a stare. Never +more than when among his cattle and poultry was he moved to draw +contrasts between the security of his possessions in the country and the +insecurity of his possessions in town. "What I am thinking of is the city +tax-payer. Urban democracy, working on a large scale, has declared itself +finally, and what we have is the organization of the careless, the +ignorant, the envious, brought about by the criminal and the +semi-criminal, for the spoliation of the well-to-do." + +Abner began to be ruffled by these cross-references to the city--they +were out of place in the uncontaminated country. "I believe in the +people," he declared, with his thoughts on the rustic portion of the +population. + +"So do I--within a certain range, and up to a certain point. But I do not +believe in the populace," declared Whyland, with his thoughts on the +urban portion. + +"All the difference between potatoes and potato-parings," said Bond, +catching at a passing feather. + +"Soon it will be simply dog eat dog," said Whyland. "No course will be +left, even for the best-disposed of us, but to fight the devil with fire. +From the assessor and all his works----" + +"Good Lord deliver us," intoned Bond, who fully shared Whyland's ideas. + +Abner frowned. His religious sensibilities were affronted by this +response. + +"And from all his followers," added Whyland. "They threaten me in my own +office--it comes to that. Well, what shall a man do? Shall he fight or +shall he submit? Shall I go into court or shall I compromise with them?" + +"It comes to one thing in the end," said Bond, "if you value your peace +of mind. But even then you can put the best face on it." + +Whyland sighed. "You mean that there is some choice between my bribing +them and their blackmailing me? Well, I expect I may slip down several +pegs this coming year--morally." + +Abner drew away. He was absolutely without any intimacy with the +intricacies of civic finances. He merely saw a man--his host--who seemed +cynically to be avowing his own corruption and shame,--or at least his +willingness to lean in that direction. + +"Reform," he announced grandly, "will come only from the disinterested +efforts of those who bring to the task pure motives and unimpeachable +practices." + +Whyland sighed again. He thought of his realty interests in town, as they +lay exposed to spoliation, to confiscation. "I am afraid I shall not be a +reformer," he said, in discouragement. + +Abner shook a condemnatory head in full corroboration. And Whyland, who +may have been looking for a prop to wavering principles, shook his own +head too. + + + + +X + +"Don't work so hard at it," said Medora, laying her violin on top of the +pianola. "You shake the house. A minute more and you'll have that lamp +toppling over. And you'll tire yourself out." + +Abner wiped his damp brow and felt of his wilted collar. He never put +less than his whole self into anything he attempted. "Tire myself? I'm +strong enough, I guess." + +"Well, use your strength to better advantage. Let me show you." + +Medora slipped into his place, reset the roll, pulled a stop or two, and +trod out a dozen ringing measures with no particular effort. "Like that." + +"Very well," said Abner, resuming his seat docilely. The rest wondered; +he seldom welcomed suggestions or accepted correction. + +"Now let's try it once more," said Medora. + +An evening devoted to literature was ending with a bit of music. Abner +and Bond had both read unpublished manuscripts with the fierce joy that +authors feel on such occasions, and the others had listened with patience +if not with pleasure. Abner gave two or three of the newest chapters of +_Regeneration_, and Bond read a few pages to show what progress an alien +romanticist was making in homely fields nearer at hand. He had hoped for +Abner's encouragement and approval in this new venture of his, but he got +neither. + +"The way to write about cows in a pasture," commented Abner, "is just to +write about them--in a simple, straightforward style without any slant +toward history or mythology, and without any cross-references to remote +scenes of foreign travel. For instance, you speak of a Ranz----" + +"Ranz des Vaches," said Medora: "a sort of thing the Alpine +what's-his-name sings." + +"It's for atmosphere," said Bond, on the defensive. + +"Let the pasture furnish its own atmosphere. And you had something about +a certain breed of cattle near Rome--Rome, was it?" + +"Roman Campagna. Travel reminiscences." + +"Travel is a mistake," declared Abner. + +"So it is," broke in Clytie. "Squat on your own door-step, as Emerson +says." + +"Does he?--I think not," interposed Giles the elder. "What he does say +is----" + +"We all know," interrupted Stephen, "and ignore the counsel." + +Abner did not know, but he would not stoop to ask. "And there was a +quotation from one of those old authors,--Theocritus?" + +"Theocritus, yes. Historical perspective." + +"Leave the past alone. Live in the present. The past,--bury it, forget +it." + +"So hard. Heir of the ages, you know. Good deal harder to forget than +never to have learned at all. _That's_ easy," jibed Bond, with a touch of +temper. + +"Oh, now!" cried Medora, fearful that another temper might respond. + +"If you must bring in those old Greeks," Abner proceeded, "take their +method and let the rest drop. All they knew, as I understand it, they +learned from men and things close round them and from the nature in whose +midst they lived. They didn't quote; they didn't range the world; they +didn't go for sanction outside of themselves and their own environment." + +"The Greeks didn't know so much," interjected Clytie. + +"Oh, didn't they, though!" cried Adrian, sending a glance of thanks to +counteract his contradiction. "They _finished_ things. The temple wasn't +complete till they had swept all the marble chips off the back stoop, and +had kind of curry-combed down the front yard, and had----" + +"'Sh,'sh!" said Medora. Abner looked about, more puzzled than offended. +"Let's have some music, before our breasts get too savage," said the +girl, starting up. + +Bond followed with the rest. "I'll stick to my regular field," he said to +Clytie, as he thrust his crumpled-up manuscript into his pocket. +"Griffins, gorgons, hydras, chimeras dire,--but no more cows. I was never +meant for a veritist." + +"Samson is pulling down the temple," observed Clytie. "Crash goes the +first pillar. Who will be next?" + +"He'll be caught in the wreck," said Bond, in a shattered voice. "Just +watch and see." + + + + +XI + +Medora, long before Abner had learned to work the pedals of the pianola +and to wrench any expression from its stops, had banished most of her +"rolls" from sight. "Siegfried's Funeral March" was unintelligible to +him; the tawdry, meretricious Italian overtures filled him with disgust. +In the end the two confined themselves to patriotic airs and old-time +domestic ditties. Medora accompanied on her second-best violin (which was +kept at the farm) and Abner enjoyed a heart-warming sense of doing his +full share in "Tenting Tonight" or "Lily Dale." The girl's parents had +advanced far beyond this stage, but willingly relapsed into it now and +then for Auld Lang Syne. + +The final roll wound up with a quick snap. + +"Well, you haven't told me what you thought of that last chapter," said +Abner, putting the roll back in its box. He made no demand on Medora's +interest to the exclusion of that of the others, however. His general +glance around invited comment from any quarter. He had merely looked at +her first. + +"M--no," said Medora. + +The girl, a few weeks before, had looked over _The Rod of the Oppressor_. +_The Rod's_ force had made itself felt most largely on economics; but in +its blossoming it had put forth a few secondary sprigs, and one of these +curled over in the direction of domestic life, of marital relation. +Abner's chivalry--a chivalry totally guiltless of gallantry--had gone out +to the suffering wife doomed to a lifelong yoking with a cruel, +coarse-natured husband: must such a yoking _be_ lifelong? he asked +earnestly. Was it not right and just and reasonable that she should fly +(with or without companion)--nor be too particular over the formalities +of her departure? Medora had smiled and shaken her head; but now the +question somehow seemed less remote than before. She paused over this +bird-like irresponsibility and rather wondered that it should have the +power to detain her. + +The new chapters of _Regeneration_ had taken up the same matter and had +displayed it in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the +idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout +fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting +an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and +conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, +that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the +whole gentler sex. In short, people--such seemed to be his thesis--might +very advantageously separate, and most informally too, as soon as they +discovered they were incompatible. + +"M--no," said Medora. + +"Wouldn't that be rather upsetting?" asked her mother. Mrs. Giles was an +easy-going old soul, from whom art, as personified by her own children, +got slight consideration, and to whom literature, as embodied in a +stranger, was little less than a joke. "Wouldn't it result in a good deal +of a mix-up? What would have happened to you youngsters if your father +and I had all at once taken it into our heads to----" + +"Mother!" said Medora. + +"Oh, well," began Mrs. Giles, with the idea of making a gradual descent +after her sudden aerial flight. "But, then," she resumed, "you must see +that----" + +"Mother!" said Medora again. Abner, eager to defend his thesis, looked +round in surprise. + +"I agree with Mrs. Giles completely," spoke up Clytie, with much +promptitude. "When I get married I want to get married for good. Most of +the people I know are married in that way, and I believe it's the most +satisfactory way in the long run----" + +"But----" began Abner polemically. + +Clytie shook her head. "No, it won't do. You've offered us the ballot, +and we don't want it. And you've offered us--this, and we don't want that +either. Consider it declined." + +Abner stared at Clytie's brazen little face and disliked her more than +ever. + +"But don't _you_ think----" began Abner, turning to Bond. + +Bond shook his head slowly and made no comment. + +Abner looked round at Medora. She was ranging the music-roll boxes in an +orderly row. Nobody could have been more intent upon her work. + +"Well, it stands, all the same," said Abner defiantly. + + + + +XII + +The clear, placid weather had been waiting several days for Sunday to +come and possess it, and now Sunday was here. The young people stood +bareheaded on the porch and looked down toward the village. + +"Do I hear the church bells?" asked Abner. He was a punctilious observer +of Sabbath ordinances and always reached a state of subdued inner bustle +shortly after the finish of the Sunday breakfast. + +"We sometimes make them out," replied Stephen Giles, "when the wind +happens to blow right." + +"We are all going down this morning, I suppose?" observed Abner, +confidently taking the initiative. + +"I expect so," replied Giles. + +"Count me out," said Clytie. + +"You do not go to church?" asked Abner. + +"Not often." + +"You have no religion?" + +"Yes, I have," replied Clytie, with much pomp: "the religion of +humanity." + +"You run and get your things on," said Medora. "You'll find as much +humanity at the First Church as you will anywhere else." + +The party set out in two vehicles. Old Mr. Giles drove one and the "hired +man" the other. Clytie, despite her best endeavours to go in company with +Bond, found herself associated with Abner, and a spirit of unchristian +perversity took complete possession of her. + +She cast her eye about, viewing the prosperous country-side, the +well-kept farms, the modest comfort symbolized in her host's equipage +itself. + +"You're a great sufferer, Mr. Giles," she said suddenly; "aren't you?" + +The old gentleman let the lines fall slackly on the fat backs of his +sleek horses. "How? What's that?" + +"I say you're a great sufferer. You're a downtrodden slave." + +"Why, am I? How do you make that out?" + +"Well, if you don't know without having it explained to you! The world is +against you--it's making a doormat of you." + +Medora looked askant. What was the child up to now? + +"Poor father," she said. "If he hasn't found it out yet, don't tell him." + +"No wonder he hasn't found it out," returned Clytie, making a sudden +veer. "Is he suffering for lack of fresh air and pure water? And does he +have to pay an extra price for sunlight? And must he herd in a filthy +slum full of awful plumbing and crowded by more awful neighbours? Does he +have to put up with municipal neglect and corruption, and worry along on +make-believe milk and doctored bread and adulterated medicines, and +endure long hours in unsanitary places under a tyrannical foreman and in +constant dread of fines----?" + +Abner was beginning to shift uneasily upon his seat. "Clytie, please!" +said Medora, laying her hand upon the other's. + +"Well, they're realities!" declared Clytie stoutly. + +"They're not _my_ realities," growled Abner, without turning round. + +"Can we pick and choose our realities?" asked Clytie sharply. "Well, if +you are at liberty to pick yours, I am at liberty to pick mine. Yes, sir, +I'll go to that settlement right after New-Year's, and I'll have a class +in basket-making and hammock-weaving before I'm a month older." + +"It will take more than basket-making to set the world right," said +Abner. + +"Basket-making is enough to teach boys the use of their hands and to keep +them off the street at night," sputtered Clytie. + +"Clytie, please!" said Medora once more. + +Clytie fell into silence and nursed her wrath through a long service and +through a hearty rustic sermon from the text, "Peace on earth, goodwill +toward men." Abner, in exacerbated mood, watched her narrowly throughout, +that he might tax her, if possible, with a humorous attitude toward the +preacher or a quizzical treatment of his flock. He had not yet pardoned +her "ways" along Main Street, on the occasion of one or two shopping +excursions. She had not hesitated to banter the admiring young clerks +that held their places behind those shop-fronts of galvanized iron in +simulation of red brick and of cut limestone, and she had been +startlingly free in her accosting of several time-honoured worthies +encountered on the dislocated plank walks outside. "Now," said Abner, "if +she sniggers at that old deacon's whiskers or says a single facetious +word about the best bonnets of any of these worthy women round about +us----" But Clytie, outwardly, was propriety itself. Inwardly she was +revolving burning plans to show Abner Joyce that none of his despising, +disparaging, discouraging words could have the least power to move her +from her purpose; and on the way back to the farm she declared +herself--to Bond, in whose company, this time, she had contrived to +be;--they sat on the back seat together. + +"That's what I'll do," she stated, with great positiveness. "I'll go +right over there as soon as I get back to town. I don't care if the +streets _are_ dirty, and the street-cars dirtier; and if I have to look +after my own room, why, I will. I'll take along my biggest trunk and my +full-length mirror and the very pick of my new clothes----You know they +like to have us dress; it interests them,--they take it as a great +compliment----" + +"And all for Abner Joyce!" said Bond. "Another pillar of the temple +tottering, eh? and trying to brace itself against the modern Samson." + +"Not one bit! Not one speck!" cried Clytie. "Only----" + +"Well, there are others," said Bond. "I'm prostrate already, as you know. +And Whyland, only a few mornings back, got a good jar that will help +finish him, I'm thinking." + +"Did he? And there's Aunt Eudoxia too. If you could have seen how +discouraged she was after she came home from that first meeting with him, +when he took the wind out of her training-school----" + +"But he isn't going to jar _you_? He isn't going to cause _you_ to +totter?" + +"Not a jar! Not a tot! You'll see whether----" + +"Your object, then, is to show how much stronger you are than I am?" + +Clytie suddenly paused in her impetuous rush. "Adrian," she breathed, +with plaintive contrition, "I wish you wouldn't say such things--no, nor +even think them." + +Her fierce alertness fled. She leaned a little toward him, droopingly, a +poor, feeble, timid child in need of some strong man to shield her from +the rough world. + +The other carriage reached home first. Medora alighted gaily on the +horse-block. Abner helped her down with an earnest endeavour not to seem +too attentive. + +"Come," she said; "let's see how those pies have turned out--Cordelia is +so absent-minded." + +And Abner followed gladly. + + + + +XIII + +Christmas-Day came with a slight flurry of snow. There was also a slight +flurry in society: the Whylands drove over to the farmhouse for dinner. + +Medora had suggested their presence to her mother, and Clytie had +supported the suggestion: "the more the merrier," she declared. Whyland +himself had jumped at the opportunity eagerly, and his wife, who had met +Medora a number of times at the studio and in Paris and liked her, +acquiesced after the due interposition of a few objections. + +"About the children----" she began. + +"They can take dinner with Murdock and his wife for once in their lives." + +"I don't know whether I can be said to have called regularly on Mrs. +Giles----" + +"Is Christmas-day a time for such sophistications? And do you think that +plain, simple people, like the Gileses----" + +Mrs. Whyland allowed herself to be persuaded--as she had designed from +the start. + +She had no great fancy for a solitary Christmas dinner, such as her +husband's rural tastes had so often condemned her to; besides, this new +arrangement would give her an opportunity to take a look at Miss Clytie +Summers, of whom she had heard things. + +Medora received Edith Whyland with some empressement; she regarded her +guest as the model of all that the young urban matron should be. Mrs. +Whyland was rather languid, rather elegant, rather punctilious, rather +evangelical, and Abner Joyce, before he realized what was happening to +him, was launched upon a conversation with a woman who, as Clytie Summers +intimated at the first opportunity, was really high in good society. + +"One of the swells, I suppose you mean," said Abner. + +"I mean nothing of the kind. Swell society is one thing and good society +is another. If you don't quite manage to get good society, you do the +next best thing and take swell society. _I'm_ swell," said Clyde humbly." +But I'm going to be something better, pretty soon," she added hopefully. + +Abner had his little talk with Edith Whyland, all unteased by +consideration of the imperceptible nuances and infinitesimal gradations +that characterize the social fabric. He thought her rather quiet and +inexpressive; but he felt her to be a good woman, and was inclined to +like her. She dwelt at some length on Dr. McElroy's Christmas sermon, and +it presently transpired that, whether in town or country, she made it a +point to attend services. Abner, who for some dim reason of his own had +expected little from the wife of Leverett Whyland, put down as mere +calumnies the reports that made her "fashionable." Through the dinner he +talked to her confidently, almost confidentially; with half the bulk of +Eudoxia Pence she made twice the impression; and by the time the feast +had reached the raisins and hickory-nuts his tongue, working +independently of his will, was promising to call upon her in town. + +This outcome was highly gratifying to Medora--it was just the one, in +fact, that she had hoped to bring about. City and country, oil and water +were mixing, and she herself was acting as the third element that made +the emulsion possible. From her place down the other side of the table +she kept her eyes and ears open for all that was going on. She saw with +joy that Abner was almost chatting. He had given over for the present the +ponderous consideration of knotty abstractions; he totally forgot the +unearned increment; and what he was offering to quiet and self-repressed +Edith Whyland was being accepted--thanks to the training and temperament +of his hearer--for "small talk." Yes, Abner had broken a large bill and +was dealing out the change. He knew it; he was a little ashamed of it; +yet at the same time he looked about with a kind of shy triumph to see +whether any one were commenting upon his address. + +To tell the truth, Abner felt his success to such a degree that presently +he began to presume upon it. He had heard about the children, left behind +for a lonely dinner with the farm superintendent, and he began to scent +cruelty and injustice in their progenitors. The wrongs of the child--they +too had their share in keeping our generous Abner in his perennial state +of indignation. He became didactic, judicial, hortatory; Edith Whyland +almost questioned her right to be a mother. But she understood the spirit +that prompted this intense young man's admonitions and exhortations; his +feelings did him credit. She made a brief and quiet defence of herself, +and thought no worse of Abner for his championship, however mistaken, of +distressed childhood. He understood and pardoned her; she understood and +pardoned him. And the more she thought things over, the more--despite his +heckling of her--she liked him. + +"He's a fine, serious fellow, my dear," she said to Medora, "and I'm glad +to have met him." + +Medora flushed, wondering why Edith Whyland should have spoken just--just +like that. And Edith, noting Medora's flush, considerately let the matter +drop. + +Mrs. Whyland also looked over Clytie Summers, and found no serious harm +in her. "She is rather underbred--or 'modern,' I suppose I should call +it, and she's more or less in a state of ferment; but I dare say she will +come out all right in the end. However, my Evelyn shall never be taken +through the slums: I think Leverett will be willing to draw the line +there." And, "Remember!" she said to Abner, as she drove away. + +Medora was delighted. She saw two steps into the future. Abner should +call on Mrs. Whyland. And he should read from his own works at Mrs. +Whyland's house. Why not? He read with much justness and expression; he +was thoroughly accustomed to facing an audience. Indeed he had lately +spoken of meditating a public tour, in order to familiarize the country +with _This Weary World_ and _The Rod of the Oppressor_ and the newer work +still unfinished. Well, then: the reading-tour, like one or two other +things, should begin at home. + +While these generous plans pulsed through the girl's heart and brain +Abner, all unaware of the future now beginning to overshadow him, was out +in the stable considering the case of a lame horse and inveighing against +the general irksomeness of rural conditions. He threw back his abundant +hair as he rose from the study of a dubious hoof,--a Samson unconscious +of the shining shears that threatened him. + + + + +XIV + +Abner, on his return to town, found its unpleasant precincts more crowded +than ever with matters of doubtful expediency and propriety. Not that he +felt the strain of any temptation; he knew that he was fully capable of +keeping himself unspotted from the world--the world of urban society--if +only people would leave him alone. Two dangers stood out before all +others: his impending call upon Mrs. Whyland and the approaching annual +fancy-dress ball of the Art Students' League. He had rashly committed +himself to the one, and his officious friends of the studios were rapidly +pushing him upon the other. He must indeed present himself beneath the +roof of a man whom he could not regard as a "good citizen," and must thus +seem to approve his host's improper composition, now imminent, with the +powers that be; but he should bestir himself to withstand the pressure +exerted by Giles, by Medora herself, by Bond, by mischievous Clytie +Summers, by the whole idle horde of studio loungers to force him into +such an atmosphere of frivolity, license and dissipation as could not but +inwrap one of those wild student "dances." + +"We should so like to have you present," said Medora. "It will be rather +bright and lively, and you would be sure to meet any number of pleasant +people. You would enjoy it, I know." + +Abner shook his head. Fancy him, a serious man, with a reputation to +nourish and to safeguard, caught up in any such fandango as that! + +"I have never attended a dancing-party yet," he said. "I couldn't waltz +if my life depended on it. And I wouldn't, either." + +"You needn't," said Medora. "But you would be interested in the grand +march. It's always very pictorial, and the girls are arranging to have it +more so than ever this year." + +Abner shook his head again. "I have never had any fancy togs on. I--I +_couldn't_ wear anything like that." + +"You needn't. A great many of the gentlemen go in simple evening dress." + +Abner shook his head a third time. "I thought you understood my +principles on that point. Dress is a badge, an index. I could not openly +brand myself as having surrendered to the--to the----" + +Medora sighed. "You are making a great many difficulties," she said. "But +you will call on Mrs. Whyland?" + +"I have promised, and I shall do so," he said, with all the good grace of +a despairing bear caught in a trap. + +"I think she suggested some--some afternoon?" + +"Yes." + +"You will go at about half-past four or five, possibly?" + +"Yes." + +Abner suddenly saw himself as he was six months before: little likelihood +then of his devoting an afternoon--fruitful working hours of a crowded +day--to the demands of mere social observances. Which of his Readjusters +would have had the time or the inclination to do as he had bound himself +to do? But now he was "running" less with reformers than with artists, +and these ill-regulated spendthrift folk were prone to break up the day +and send its fragments broadcast as they would, without forethought, +scruple, compunction. + +One day before long, then, Abner buttoned his handsome double-breasted +frock-coat across his capacious chest and put on a neat white lawn tie +and sallied forth to call on Edith Whyland. The day was sunny--almost +deceptively so--and Abner, who knew the good points in his own figure and +was glad to dispense with a heavy overcoat whenever possible, limited his +panoply to a soft felt hat and a pair of good stout gloves. The wind came +down the lake and sent the waves in small splashes over the gray sea-wall +and teased the bare elms along the wide, winding roadway, and tousled +Abner's abundant chestnut moustache and reddened his ruddy cheeks and +nipped his vigorous nose--all as a reminder that January was here and +ought not to be disregarded. But Abner was thinking less of +meteorological conditions than of Mrs. Whyland's butler. He knew he could +be brusquely haughty toward this menial, but could he be easy and +indifferent? Yet was it right to seem coolly callous toward another human +creature? But, on the other hand, might not a cheery, informal +friendliness, he wondered, as his hand sought the bell-push, be +misconstrued, be ridiculed, be resented, be taken advantage of.... + +The door was opened by a subdued young woman who wore a white cap and +presented a small silver tray. Abner, who dispensed with calling cards on +principle and who would have blushed to read his own name in script on a +piece of white cardboard, asked in a stern voice if Mrs. Whyland was at +home. The maid dropped the tray into the folds of her black dress; she +seemed habituated enough to the sudden appearance of the cardless. She +looked up respectfully, admiringly--she had opened the door for a good +many gentlemen, but seldom for so magnificent and masterful a creature as +Abner--and said yes. But alas for the credit of her mistress and of her +mistress' household: here was a lordly person who had arrived with the +open expectation of meeting a "man" who should "announce" him! + +Abner had come full of subject-matter; he knew just what he was going to +say. And during the interval before Mrs. Whyland's appearance he should +briefly run over his principal points. But he found Mrs. Whyland already +on the ground. Nor was she alone. Two or three other ladies were chatting +with her on minor topics, and before all of these had gone others arrived +to take their places. Not a moment did he spend with her alone; briefly, +it was her "day." + +These ladies referred occasionally to matters musical and +artistic--somebody had given a recital, somebody else was soon to exhibit +certain pictures--but they had little to say about books and they made no +recognition of Abner as an author. "More of this artificial social +repression," he thought. "Why should they be afraid of 'boring' me, as +they word it? They bore Bond--they are always buzzing Giles; I think I +could endure a word or two." His eye roamed over the rich but subdued +furnishings of the room. "No wonder that all spontaneity should be +smothered here!" And when literary topics were finally broached he +experienced less of comfort than of indignation. A sweet little woman +moaned that she had attempted an authors' reading, but that her authors +could not command a proper degree of attention from her guests. Her eyes +flashed indignantly as she called to mind the ways of the people she had +presumptuously ventured to entertain. "They were swells," she murmured +bitterly. "Yes, swells;--it's a harsh word, but not undeserved. I never +tried having so many people of that particular sort before, and they +simply overrode me. They banded against me; being quite in the majority, +they could keep one another in countenance. My poor authors were offended +at the open way in which they were ignored. Poor dear Edward scarcely +knew what to do with such a----" + +The plaintive little creature lapsed into silence; great must have been +her provocation thus to speak of her own guests. Abner's eyes blazed; his +blood boiled with indignation. Such treatment constituted an affront to +all art, to his own art--literature, to himself. + +"I have heard of cases of that sort before," he blurted out. "Mr. Giles +told me of one only yesterday. The victim in this case was a young +gentlewoman"--Abner's lips caressed this taking word--"a young +gentlewoman from the South. She had come to one of those +houses"--everybody, with the help of Abner's tone, saw the insolent front +of the place--"to tell some dialect stories and to sing a few little +songs. The mob--it was nothing less--could hardly be reduced to order. +All those people had seen one another the day before, and they were all +going to see one another the day to follow, yet talk they would and must +and did. Engagements, marriages, acceptances, excuses, compliments, +tittle-tattle, personalities--a rolling flood of chatter and gossip. Mrs. +Pence took her people for what they were, apparently, and kept up with +the best of them herself. Now and then her husband would do a little +feeble something to quiet the tempest, and then the poor girl, half +crying with mortification, would attempt to resume her task. With her +last word the flood would instantly rise and obliterate her once +more----" + +Abner's voice vibrated with a hot anger over this indignity put upon a +fellow "artist." His view of literature was sacramental, sacerdotal. All +should reverence the altar; none should insult the humblest neophyte. +Mrs. Whyland indulgently overlooked his reckless use of names and liked +him none the less; and the little lady who had suffered on a similar +occasion, though in a different role, gave him a glance of thanks. + +"I know the type," said Mrs. Whyland. "It is commoner than it should be; +others of us besides are much too thoughtless. You had too many at a +time, my dear," she went on quietly. "A few scattered grains of gunpowder +do no great harm, but a large number of them massed together will blow +anything to ruin. Our motto should be, 'Few but fit,' eh? Or ought I to +say, 'Fit though few'?" + +Abner stayed on, and finally the last of the ladies rose to go. Abner was +just about to throw open the stable door, preparatory to giving his +hobbies an airing, when a latch-key was heard operating in the front door +of the house itself. Then came a man's quick step, a tussle with a heavy +winter overcoat, and Whyland himself appeared on the threshold. + +He came in, tingling, exhilarated, cordial. His cordiality overflowed at +once; he asked Abner to remain to dinner. + +Abner had not looked for this; a mere call was as far as he had meant to +go. He parried, he evaded, he shuffled toward the door. + +"But where's your overcoat?" asked Whyland, looking about. + +"I didn't wear one." + +"On such a day as this!" exclaimed Edith. + +"I am strong," said Abner. + +"You'll find our winter stronger," said Whyland. "You are not out there +in the country a hundred miles back from the lake. You must stay, of +course." + +Still Abner moved toward the door. _Could_ any city man be as friendly as +Whyland seemed? "It will be colder later on," he submitted. + +"Our welcome will never be warmer." Whyland looked toward his wife--their +rustic appeared to be exacting the observance of all the forms. + +"You will stay, of course," said Edith Whyland; "I have hardly had a word +with you. And when you do go, it must be in a cab." + +Abner succumbed. He was snared, as he felt. Other rooms, still more +handsomely, more lavishly appointed, seemed to yawn for him. And then +came crystal and silver and porcelain and exquisite napery and the rare +smack of new and nameless dishes to help bind him hard and fast. Abner +was in a tremor; his first compromise with Mammon was at hand. + + + + +XV + +Abner accepted his environment; after all, he might force the +conversation to soar far above the mere materialities. His hobbies began +to poke forth their noses, to whinny, to neigh; but some force stronger +or more dexterous than himself seemed to be guiding the talk, and the +name of Medora Giles began to mingle with the click of silver on china +and to weave itself into the progress of the service. + +"A very sweet girl," declared Edith Whyland. "Nothing pleased me more +than her nice domestic ways at the farm. I had got the impression in +Paris that, though she was quite the pride of their little coterie, she +was not exactly looked upon as practical,--not considered particularly +efficient, in a word." + +Abner's thoughts instantly reverted to the farm-house kitchen. What were +the paid services of menials, however deft and practised, compared with +the intimate, personal exertions, the--the--yes, the ministrations of a +woman like Medora Giles? + +"She was probably just waiting for the chance," said Whyland heartily. +"You don't often find talent and real practicality combined in one girl +as they are in Miss Giles. Even little Clytie Summers----" + +"We must not disparage little Clytie," said his wife gravely. + +"Oh, Clytie!" returned Whyland, giving his head a careless, sidelong +jerk. "Still, she's good fun." He laughed. "That child is always breaking +out in some new place. The next place will probably be the students' +ball. You'll be there to see?" he inquired of Abner. + +"No wine, thank you," said Abner to the maid, placing his broad hand on +the foot of a glass already turned down. "At the ball? I hardly think so. +I never----" + +"You might find it amusing," said Mrs. Whyland. "A good many of your +friends will be there--ourselves among them." + +"Yes," said Whyland, turning his eyes away from the uncontaminated glass, +"my wife is a patroness, or whatever they call it. We go to help receive +and to look on during the march and to see the dancing started." + +"I should like to have a hand in helping Medora contrive a costume that +would do her justice," said Mrs. Whyland. "She is really quite a beauty, +and she has a great deal of distinction. Nothing could be better than her +profile and those exquisite black eyebrows." Then, mindful of the +presence of the children, she proceeded by means of graceful periphrase +and carefully studied generalizations to a presentation of Medora's +mental and spiritual attributes. She said many things, in the tone of +kindly, half-veiled patronage; after all she was talking to a country man +about a country maid. She even praised Abner himself by indirection--as +one strand in the general rustic theme. The children, who caught every +word and put this and that together with marvellous celerity and +precision, were vastly impressed by the attributes of the invisible +paragon. They looked at Abner's bigness with their own big eyes--though +ignored by him, his interest being, despite his former championship of +them, less in children than in "the child"--and envied him her +acquaintance; and they began to ask that very evening how soon the +admirable Medora might swim into their ken. + +The first result from Abner's dinner with the Whylands was that Medora, +thus formulated by the sympathetic and appreciative Edith, now became +definitely crystallized in his mind; the second was that he changed his +boarding-house. Mere crudity for its own sake no longer charmed. The +curtains and bedspreads at the farm had served as the earliest prompters +to this step, and the furnishings of the Whyland interior now decided him +to take it. Mrs. Cole's stained and spotted lambrequin became more +offensive than ever, and the industrious hands of Maggie, which did much +more than merely to pass things at table, were now less easy to endure. + +"I know I'm a fastidious, ungrateful wretch," he said to himself, as he +saw his trunk started off to a better neighbourhood and prepared to +follow it. "They've been very kind to me, and little Maggie would do +almost anything for me"--little Maggie, whom he treated as a mere asexual +biped and hectored in the most lordly way, and who yet entertained for +him a puzzled, secret admiration;--"but I can't stand it any longer, +that's all." + +A few days later Bond called at Abner's old address and was referred by a +grieved landlady to his new one. "I don't make out Mr. Joyce," said poor, +hurt Mrs. Cole. + +Bond went down the steps whistling, "They're after me, they're after me!" +in a thoughtful undertone. + + + + +XVI + +"Are you going to dress very much?" grimaced Giles, with a precious +little intonation that caused Bond to laugh outright. + +Abner, who was lounging under the Turkish canopy, pricked up his ears to +catch the reply. Medora tossed aside one of her brother's sketches and +turned her eyes on Abner. + +"I don't know what _to_ do," replied Bond. "We have had such a glut of +Romeos and Mephistos and cowboys. It has occurred to me that I might go +as a rough sketch--a _bozzetto_--of a gentleman." + +"How would you get yourself up for that?" asked Giles. + +"Just as you have often seen me. I should wear that old dress-suit with +the shiny seams and the frayed facings, and a shirt-front seen more +recently by the world than by the laundry, and a pair of shoes already +quite familiar with tweeds and cheviots, and a little black bow--this +last as a sort of sign that I am not fully in society, or if I am, only +briefly at long, uncertain intervals. And a black Derby hat--or possibly +a brown one." + +Medora smiled, well pleased. This easy, jocular treatment of a serious +and formal subject was just what she wanted. It would help show the +listening Abner that the wearing of the social uniform was nothing very +formidable after all, and did not necessarily doom one's moral and +spiritual fibre to utter blight and ruin. + +Abner set his lips. He might indeed go to their wretched "fandango" in +the end--they had all been urging him, Stephen, Medora, everybody--but +never as a cheap imitation of a swell so long as his own good, neat, +well-made, every-day wardrobe existed as it was. He had turned down the +wine-glass at Whyland's, and he would turn down the dress-coat here. + +Medora, unconscious that her precious little seed had fallen, after all, +on stony ground, turned toward Abner with a smile--an intent, observing +one. "Did Mrs. Whyland speak to you about her 'evening'?" + +"Her evening? What evening?" + +"There, I knew she wouldn't dare. You frightened her almost to death." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Why, she had been thinking of having a few friends come in some night +next week for a little reading and some music. But you were so violent in +your comments on the behaviour of society that she didn't dare touch upon +her plan. She was meaning to ask you to read two or three things from +your _Weary World_, but----" + +"Why----" began Abner. + +"Read," put in Bond. "I'm going to." + +"Why," began Abner once more, "I had no notion of offending her. But +everything I said was the truth." + +"She wasn't offended," said Giles, with a smile; "only 'skeered.' You +must have been pretty tart." + +"I can't help it. It makes me so hot to have such things happening----" + +"I know," said Giles. "We're all made hot, now and then, in one way or +another." + +"You _will_ read, won't you?" asked Medora, in accents of subdued +pleading. + +"Well, not _next_ week," replied Abner, in the tone of one who held +postponement to be as good as escape. "That tour of mine is coming off, +after all. They have arranged a number of dates for me, and I shall go +eastward for several readings and possibly a few lectures." + +"How far eastward?" asked Medora eagerly. "As far as New York?" + +"Maybe so," said Abner guardedly. + +"How long shall you be gone?" she asked with great intentness. + +"A fortnight or more," purred Abner complacently, under this show of +interest. "I guess I can open the eyes of those Easterners to a thing or +two." + +Medora dropped her glance thoughtfully to the floor. An exchange of +instruction seemed impending, and she could only hope that the East might +prove a more considerate tutor to Abner than Abner threatened to be to +the East. + + + + +XVII + +The two long winding lines of gaily attired young people joined forces +and the procession came marching down the hall by fours, by eights, by +sixteens, and Abner sat against the wall next to Edith Whyland and +watched the shifting spectacle with a sort of fearful joy. Eudoxia Pence, +seated against the opposite wall, glanced across at him, when occasion +once offered, and nodded and smiled, as if to say, "Isn't it lovely! +Isn't it fascinating!" and Abner, in sudden alarm, recomposed his +tell-tale face and frowningly responded with a grave bow. + +Abner wore his double-breasted frock-coat and his white lawn tie; and +Edith Whyland, who had come in a plain dark reception costume to stand in +a row near the door with the wives of the professors at the Art Academy, +now sat with him and brought him as far into drawing as might be with the +abounding masculine figures in evening dress. Many of these appeared in +the march itself, along with the sailors, the Indian chiefs and the young +blades out of Perugino. Giles passed by as a Florentine noble of the late +Quattrocento, in a black silk robe that muffled his slight indifference +to a function familiar from many repetitions. Little O'Grady wore his +plaster-flecked blue blouse over his shabby brown suit and hardily +announced himself as Phidias. Medora walked with a languid grace as a +Druid priestess, and Miss Wilbur, the miniaturist, showed forth as Madame +Le Brun, without whose presence no fancy-dress ball could be regarded as +complete. + +High above the marching host rose dozens of the tall conical head-dresses +of mediaeval France with their dependent veils. A great Parisian painter +had just been exhibiting some mural decorations in the galleries of the +Academy, and half the girls, from the life class down, wore +candle-extinguishers on their heads and trailed full robes of startlingly +figured chintz--a material that was expected to effect to the charitable +eye and the friendly imagination the richness of brocade. Many of the +younger men too had succumbed to the same influence and appeared in long +skin-tight hose and bobby little doublets edged with fur. + +"How can they? How can they?" wondered Abner. + +The music abruptly changed its tempo and the march broke up into a waltz. +Through the swirling dancers a single figure, clad in violet and green, +zigzagged across to Eudoxia Pence and bowed over her for a word or two. +Eudoxia moved her lips and spread out her plump hands deprecatingly and +shook her head with a smile. + +"I should hope she _wouldn't_," thought Abner;--"not with a little squirt +like that." + +The figure immediately zigzagged back, with the same effect of eager, +inquiring haste. It paused before Abner and Mrs. Whyland and suddenly +sidled up. Abner recognised Adrian Bond. + +"Clytie?" said Bond. "Has anybody seen or heard anything of Clytie +Summers?" + +"Well, well," said Mrs. Whyland, looking him over; "you are enrolled +among the Boutet de Monvel boys too, are you?" + +Bond ran his eye down his slim legs with fatuous complacency and fingered +the fur fringe of his doublet and pushed his steep flat-topped cap over +to a different angle. Abner looked at him with contemptuous amazement and +would not even speak. + +"Her aunt hasn't heard a word from her for a week," said Bond. "That +settlement has claimed her, body and soul. All she does is to write home +for more clothes. I expect she has completely forgotten all about our +little affair to-night. I thought of course she was going to march with +me, but----" + +And he darted away to resume his quest. + +"She will come," said Mrs. Whyland. "And her cap will be higher and her +veil longer and the pattern of her brocade bigger and more startling than +anybody else can show." + +Little O'Grady moved past with a Maid of Astolat, who wore white +cloth-of-gold and carried a big lily above each ear and dropped a long +full-flowered stalk over her partner's shoulder. Medora drifted by in +company with a Mexican vaquero. Her white garments fluttered famously +against the other's costume of yellow and black. She had let down her +abundant dark hair and then carelessly caught it up again and woven into +it a garland of mistletoe. She smiled on Abner with a plaintive, weary +lifting of her eyebrows; she appeared to be "creating atmosphere" again, +just as on the afternoon when he had first seen her pouring tea. She +seemed a long way off. The occasion itself removed her one stage from +him, and her costume another, and her bearing a third. Was this the same +girl who had so dexterously snatched open the stove door in that +farm-house kitchen and had been so active, as revealed by glimpses from +the corridor, in beating up pillows and in casting sheets and coverlets +to the morning air? + +The waltz suddenly ended and the Mexican renounced Medora only a few +steps beyond Abner. She came along and took a vacant chair next to Edith +Whyland. + +"Are you enjoying it?" she asked Abner. + +"It is very instructive; it is most typical," he replied. + +The orchestra presently began again, but Medora remained in her place. + +"Aren't you dancing this time?" asked Mrs. Whyland. + +"Yes," replied Medora deliberately; "I'm dancing with Mr. Joyce." + +She handed Edith her card. Abner looked across to her with a startled, +puzzled expression. + +"So you are," said Mrs. Whyland. "J-o-y-c-e," she read, and handed the +card back. + +"I don't care for the redowa, anyway," Medora explained; "and I didn't +want to dance with the man that was moving along in my direction to ask +me. It was the only vacant line. What could I do? I looked about and saw +you"--to Abner--"standing by the door----" + +"I suppose I was tall enough to see," said Abner, feeling very huge and +uncomfortable. + +"A tower of strength, a city of refuge," suggested Mrs. Whyland. + +"Precisely," said Medora. "So I snatched a pencil out of Adrian Bond's +hand--he had just put himself down four times----" + +"What impudence!" thought Abner savagely. + +"--and scribbled this,"--dropping her eye on the card. "I hope you don't +mind my having taken your name?" she concluded. + +A sudden gust of gallantry swept over Abner. "Let me have the card," he +said. "I have given my autograph a good many times"--looking at the faint +pencilling--"but I don't recognise this." He drew out a lead-pencil and +rewrote the name big and black above the other. "There," he said,--"a +souvenir of the occasion." He handed the card back with the authentic +autograph of a distinguished author. His name there wiped out not merely +one scribble but all, even to the impertinent four traced by +insignificant Bond. A man who could pen such a signature need have no +regret for not being a carpet-knight besides. + +Medora took back her card, highly gratified; her cavalier had made a long +stride ahead. Abner himself rejoiced at his dexterity in asserting the +man--almost the man of gallantry, at that--under the shield of the +writer. Mrs. Whyland kindly refrained from entering upon an analysis to +determine just what percentage of egotism was to be detected in Abner's +act, and felt emboldened by such unlooked-for graciousness and by the +sustaining presence of Medora to ask a favour for herself--that "evening" +was still in her mind. + +"You _will_ read, won't you?" pleaded Medora. + +"After my return from the East," acquiesced Abner. + +The two women looked at each other, well pleased. + + + + +XVIII + +Presently Leverett Whyland came along. The cares of the urban +property-owner and of the gentleman farmer were alike cast aside; Abner +had never known him to appear so natty, so buoyant, so juvenile. Another +man accompanied him, a man older, larger, heavier, graver, with a +close-clipped gray beard. This newcomer bowed to Mrs. Whyland with a +repression that indicated but a distant acquaintance; and just as Medora +was whisked away by a new partner--it was Bond, claiming the first of his +four--Whyland introduced him to Abner: "Mr. Joyce, Mr. M'm----" Abner, +occupied by Bond's appropriation of Medora, lost the name. + +"And where is Clytie?" asked Whyland, looking about. "Has anybody seen or +heard anything of little Clytie Summers?" + +"No doubt she will appear presently," said his wife drily. + +"And meanwhile----?" he suggested, motioning toward the floor. + +"It might not look amiss," replied his wife, rising. They joined the +dancers. + +Abner was left alone with his new acquaintance, who, arriving at an +instant apprehension of our young man's bulk, seriousness and essential +alienation from the spirit of the affair, seized him as a spent and +bewildered swimmer in strange waters lays hold upon some massive beam +that happens to be drifting past. Abner clung in turn, glad to recognise +a kindred spirit in the midst of this gaudy, frivolous throng. The two +quickly found the common ground of serious interests. The circling, +swinging dancers retired into the background; their place was quietly +taken by the Balance of Trade, by the Condition of the Country, by +Aggregations of Capital, by Land and Labour; and presently Abner was +leading forth, all saddled and bridled, the Readjusted Tax. + +"This is something like," he thought. + +The other made observations and comments in a slow, grave, subdued tone. +"Who is he?" wondered Abner. "What can he be connected with? Anyway, he's +a fine, solid fellow--the kind Whyland might come to be with a little +trying." + +Stephen Giles passed by, guiding the billowy undulations of Eudoxia +Pence. Eudoxia had a buoyancy that more than counteracted her bulk, and +she wafted about, a substantial vision in lemon-coloured silk, for all to +see. She looked at Abner's companion over Giles's shoulder. + +"Enjoying yourself, dear?" she asked. Then she nodded to Abner and +floated away. + +Abner, instantly chilled, looked sidewise at his companion with a dawning +censoriousness in his eyes. He had probably been talking, for a good ten +minutes and in full view of the entire hall, to that arch-magnate of the +trusts, Palmer Pence. He began to cast about for means to break up this +calamitous situation. He welcomed the return of Leverett Whyland with his +wife. + +"Well, Pence," said Whyland, "how has the Amalgamated Association of +Non-Dancers been doing?" + +"Pence," Whyland had said. Yes, this was the Trust man, after all. + +"First-rate," returned the other briefly, rising to go. "That's a fine, +serious young fellow," he added, for Whyland's ear alone. "There's stuff +in him." + +"Been getting on with him, eh?" said Whyland ruefully. "Well, you're in +luck." + +Abner glowered gloomily across the thinning floor. Another dance had just +ended and Whyland had skimmed away once again. Abner, forgetful of the +presence of Edith Whyland, made indignant moan to himself over the +perverse fate that had led him on toward friendliness with a man whose +principles and whose public influence he could not approve. + +There was a sudden stir about the distant doorway. Abner heard the +clapping of hands and a few hearty, jubilant yaps frankly emitted by +young barytone voices. "What now?" he wondered, with a sidelong glance at +Edith Whyland. + +Mrs. Whyland, herself half-risen, was looking toward the door, like +everybody else. "Finally!" she said, with a pleased smile, and sank back +into her place. + +A tall, stalwart figure came through the crowd amidst a storm of +hand-clapping and of cheers. The maids of mediaeval France fluttered +their long veils, and their young male contemporaries waved their velvet +caps. + +It was a gentleman of sixty with a bunch of white whiskers on either jaw +and a pair of flashing steel-gray eyes. He nodded brusquely here and +there and looked about with a tight, fierce smile. "Hurrah! hurrah!" +cried all the students, from the life class down to the cubes and cones. + +"Who is he?" asked Abner. + +"Why, that's Dr. Gowdy," replied his companion. "The ball would hardly +_be_ a ball without him here. He has led the grand march more than +once----" + +"A man of his age and dignity!" mumbled Abner. + +"--but he is late to-night, for some reason. He is one of the Academy +trustees," she added. + +"Perhaps his patients kept him." Abner's tone implied that professional +duties would set much more gracefully on such a figure than social +diversions. + +"His patients?" + +"Yes. You said he was a doctor." + +"But not a doctor of medicine. A doctor of theology." + +"A minister?--a minister of the gospel?" + +"He is, indeed. And I----" + +"And you?" + +"I am one of his parishioners. I sit under him every Sunday." + +Abner was dumb. This professing Christian, this pattern of +evangelicalism, could witness such things without pronouncing a single +word of protest. "Is he going to dance?" he asked finally. + +"I think not. He is coming over here presently to sit with me, just as +you have been doing. You shall meet him." + +Abner was dazed. Palmer Pence, doubtless, was here under protest; but +this man, his superior in age, credit and renown, had apparently come of +his own free will. He sat there staring at the smiling progress of the +Rev. William S. Gowdy through the throng of jubilant students. He felt +stunned, dislocated. It was all too much. + +"Well, well," he heard Mrs. Whyland say. He looked about at her and then +out upon the clearing floor. + +"Well, well," said Mrs. Whyland once again. The wide, empty space before +them was lending itself to a second grand entree, by a party of one. +Clytie Summers had finally arrived. + + + + +XIX + +Clytie came on with the brisk and confident walk that she had cultivated +along the pavements of the shopping district, and she was dressed +precisely as if about to enter upon one of her frequent excursions in +that quarter on some crisp, late-autumn afternoon. She wore a very trig +and jaunty tailor-made suit and a stunning little garnet-velvet toque. +She tripped ahead in a solid but elegant pair of walking-shoes and was +drawing on a tan glove with mannish stitchings over the back. The Boutet +de Monvel girls, the contemporaries of Jeanne d'Arc, were immediately +obliterated; Clytie became the most conspicuous figure in the whole big +place. + +She advanced tapping her heels, smoothing her gloves, and looking every +shirt-front full in the face. Her forehead gathered in a soft little +frown; he whom she sought was not in sight. She got a glimpse of Mrs. +Pence and Medora Giles seated side by side in a far corner, and of Little +O'Grady hovering near, with a covetous eye upon her aunt's profile; and +she took the remaining space in a quick little walk that was almost a +run. + +"Adrian Bond?" she asked. "Tell me; has anybody seen or heard anything of +Adrian Bond?" + +"Well, Clytie child!" exclaimed her aunt, looking her over; "what's all +this?" + +Clytie passed her hand down the side of her thick fawn-coloured skirt and +readjusted her toque. "These things were in that box you sent me day +before yesterday." + +"That box from London?" + +"That box from London. I thought they were never coming. I wrote; I +cabled; I implored friends to go to Regent Street every single day till +they should be done. And here they are, finally--a month late; but I'm +wearing them, all the same." + +"Well, they're worth waiting for," said Medora. "I suppose they are just +about the last word." + +"Just about," replied Clytie complacently. "Meanwhile, where is Adrian +Bond?" + +"Here he comes now," said Medora. + +Clytie turned. She beheld the mediaeval greens and violets. "Why, +Adrian," she protested; "you told me you were coming disguised as a +gentleman." + +"I thought better of it," said Bond. + +"But," she proceeded, "I--I----" She spun round on one heel. "This is all +for you. I thought that if you were coming disguised as a gentleman, it +would be nice for me to come disguised as a lady. No use," she said +regretfully. "Everybody knew me in a minute," she added. + +Bond laughed. "I thought you weren't coming at all." + +"But you got my note?" + +"Not a word." + +"Why, I wrote you how we were having a ball of our own, and how I +couldn't come to this one till I had started off that one." + +"What kind of a ball?" asked Mrs. Pence. + +"One given by our Telephone Girls. I led the grand march with a lovely +young bartender. I struck him all in a heap--can you wonder?--and he told +me just what he thought of me. There wasn't much time to lead up to it. +He was very direct; he took a short cut. Oh, I love the _people_! Why are +the men in our set so shy----!" + +"What did he say?" asked Bond sharply. + +"Oh, never mind! It was one of those cannon-ball compliments that leave +you stunned and breathless, but willing to be stunned again. What do you +think of my togs?" she asked, generally. + +"Look at this jacket while it's a novelty," she went on without waiting +for any response. "The girls were all tremendously taken by it; I noticed +a dozen of them trying to see how it was made.--Oh, how do?" she said +airily to Abner, who came up just then. Having perceived Medora in her +remote corner, he had finally summoned enough resolution to make his +first movement of the evening: leaving Edith Whyland in the company of +Dr. Gowdy, he had succeeded in crossing the intervening leagues alone and +unaided. + +Abner frowned to find this pert little piece cutting in ahead of him in +such a fashion. "How do you do?" he responded stiffly. + +"They'll all be making ones like it," Clytie rattled on. "By next Sunday +every street from Poplar Alley to Flat-iron Park will swarm with them, +and not a milliner's window along the length of Green-gage Road but will +have three or four of these toques on display. Yes, sir; I'm a power in +the Ward already, let me tell you." + +Bond placed his small hand on Abner's broad shoulder. "Isn't she a +winner?" he murmured ecstatically. "If Medora, now, could only have done +something as spirited and unconventional----" + +"I have no fault to find with Miss Giles," retorted Abner in a stern +undertone. "To me she is perfectly satisfactory. She will always do the +right thing in the right way, and always be a lady." + +Bond withdrew his hand. "Oh, come, I say," he began protestingly. + +Abner ignored this. "How about the basket-weaving?" he asked Clytie. + +"Well," Clytie responded hardily, "I found plenty teaching that already. +I have chosen for my department instruction in tact, taste, dress and +manners. Such instruction is badly needed, in more quarters than one." + +Medora flushed. "Clytie Summers," she said, the first moment that the two +were alone, "if ever you speak to Mr. Joyce like that again you need +never come to our studio nor count me any longer among your +acquaintances." + +"Why, dear me----" began Clytie, with an affectation of puzzled +innocence. + +"I mean it," said Medora, with an angry tear starting in her eye. "Mr. +Joyce is too much of a man to be treated so by a child like you." + + + + +XX + +Abner lingered on. He had meant to leave early, but it was as easy to +stay as to go; besides, he felt the stirring of a curiosity to see what +the closing hour of such an occasion might be like. Everything, thus far, +had been most seemly, most decorous, full of a pleasant informality and a +friendly, trustful goodwill; but the crucial point, he had read, always +came about supper-time, after which the rout turned into an orgy. + +Dr. Gowdy came across and launched himself upon Abner, just as he had +done before, when Mrs. Whyland had first made them acquainted. He frankly +admired the strength and the stature of the only man in the room who was +taller and more robust than himself, as well as the intent sobriety of +his glance and the laconic gravity of his speech. + +"An admirable young fellow!" he had exclaimed to Edith Whyland, upon +Abner's leaving them to cross over to Medora. + +"Oh yes, yes!" she had returned with conviction. + +"So serious." + +"Oh yes,"--with less emphasis. She knew Abner was serious because he was +puzzled. + +"So grave." + +"Yes,"--faintly. She knew Abner was grave because he was shocked. + +"A painter?" + +"A--an artist." + +"He has personality. He will make a name for himself, I am sure." + +The good Doctor, now alone with Abner, gave him a chance to celebrate +himself, to make known what there was in him. But Abner remained +inexpressive; and the Doctor, who himself was very ready of tongue and +who, like all fluent people, was much impressed by reserve, presently +went away with a higher opinion of Abner than ever. + +Medora came up, extending her card. "I have secured another dance for +you," she said. "Mr. Bond was kind enough to give it up. He will know +what to do with the time. On this occasion, if you please, we might walk +it out instead of sitting it out. At least we might walk to the +supper-room." + +Abner rose. He had never before offered his arm to a lady and was not +sure that he had offered it now, yet Medora's fingers rested upon his +coat-sleeve. For a few moments he felt himself, half proudly, half +uncomfortably, a part of the spectacle, and then they entered the room +where the spare refreshments were dispensed. + +Medora found a place, and Abner, doing as he saw the other men do, went +forward to traffic across a long table with a coloured waiter. He brought +back to Medora what he saw the other men bringing--a spoonful of +ice-cream with a thin slice of cake, and a cup of coffee of limited size. +Truly the material for an orgy seemed rather scanty. + +"I am glad you promised to read," said Medora. "It is a favour that Mrs. +Whyland will appreciate very much." + +Abner bowed. Surely it was a favour, and appreciation was no more than +his due. + +"I only wish you could have seen your way to being as nice to poor Mrs. +Pence. I overheard her--didn't I?--asking you once more to call. Weren't +you rather non-committal? Were you, strictly speaking, quite civil?" + +"I was as civil as those silly, chattering people round her would let me +be--that niece of hers and the rest. I'm sure I was careful to ask after +her Training School." + +"Oh, _that's_ what made her look so dazed!" + +"Why should it?" asked Abner, his spoon checked in mid-air. + +"She could hardly have expected such an inquiry from _you_. Haven't I +heard that you threw her down on this training-school idea, and threw her +down pretty hard too, the very first time you met her? She wanted help, +sympathy, encouragement, suggestions, and instead of that you gave her +the--the marble heart, as they say. You made her feel so feeble and +flimsy----" + +"Did I?" asked Abner gropingly. Eudoxia loomed before him in all her +largeness. + +"You did. She was disposed to be a noble, useful worker, but now it seems +as if she might drop to the level of a mere social leader. Do, please, +treat Mrs. Whyland more considerately. She means to arrange quite a nice +little programme, and it will be no disadvantage to you to take part in +it. Mr. Bond will read one or two of his travel-sketches, and I may do a +little something myself--a bit in the way of music, perhaps." + +"H'm," said Abner. "Travel-sketches?" He ignored the promise of music. + +"With folk-songs on the violin." + +"I shall hope to offer something better worth while than +travel-sketches," said Abner. "His things will hardly harmonize with +mine, I'm afraid; but possibly they will serve as a sort of contrast." + +"His things will be slight, of course, but the songs will help him out. +Very simple arrangements; people don't care much for anything serious or +heavy." + +"I shall not show myself a mere frivolous entertainer--a simple filler-in +of the leisure moments of the wealthy," said Abner. + +Medora banished the violin--and herself. "What do you think of reading?" +she asked. + +"One or two pieces from my first book, I expect,--_Jim McKay's Defeat_ +and _Less Than the Beasts_, with possibly one of the later chapters in +_Regeneration_." + +"M--m," said Medora. + +"You don't like _Regeneration_, I'm afraid; but there's going to be some +good stuff in it, let me tell you. People will open their eyes and begin +to think. This question of marriage----" + +"You will read that part, then?" + +"Why not? It's a vital question. It concerns everybody, at all times." + +"Yes, it always has--for thousands of years." + +"I don't know that I care for the thousands of years. I care for this +year and next year." + +"And a great deal of good thought has been put into it already." + +"But not the best. The whole subject needs ventilating, shaking up." + +"You would attack the fundamentals, then?" + +"Why not? I'm a radical. I've always called myself such. I go to the +root, without fear, without favour." + +"Still, the present arrangement, resulting from the collective wisdom and +experience of the race ..." said Medora, crumbling her last bit of cake. + +"You make me think of Bond and his 'historical perspective.'" + +"I meant to. It isn't enough to know at just what point in the road we +are; we must know what steps we have taken, what course we have +traversed, to reach it." + +"I never look behind. The hopes and possibilities of the immediate future +are the things that interest _me_. I shall read several chapters of +_Regeneration_--not merely one--on my tour." + +"On your tour, yes. But for Mrs. Whyland substitute something else. There +was a story you wrote at the farm--the one about the girl and her +step-mother--" + +"H'm, yes," said Abner, with less enthusiasm than he usually showed for +his own work. "_In Winter Weather_? H'm." + +This was a short tale, of a somewhat grisly character, which Abner had +composed during the holiday season. Bond had taxed him with using this +work as a buffer to stave off other work of a practical nature such as +was abundantly offered by Giles and his father about the farm; and, to +tell the truth, Abner had limited his physical exertions to half-hour +periods that most other men would have charged to the account of mere +exercise. + +"I _might_ read that, I suppose," he said. + +"And if there is any wild wind in it--why, I should be on hand with my +violin, you know. I might be in white, as I am now, with snow-flakes in +my hair;--they would show, I think, if this mistletoe does----" + +"Not that it represents my best and most characteristic work," he went +on, "or that it bears upon any of the great problems of the day...." + +Medora dashed her spoon against her saucer. Was there no power equal to +teaching this masterful, self-centred creature that a woman was a woman +and not a cold abstraction composed merely of the generalized attributes +of the race, male and female alike? She had been his guide to-night, when +she might have left him to his own helpless flounderings: might he not +try now to show some slight shade of interest in her as an individual, at +least,--as a distinct personality? + +"Shall we be moving?" she suggested. "It should not have taken so long to +eat so little." + + + + +XXI + +"Well, good luck on your trip," said Giles, accompanying Abner to the +door of the studio. + +"And let us hear from you once in a while," added Medora. + +"Surely," said Abner. "Look for a clipping, now and then, to show you +what they are saying of me." + +"And for what you have to say of them we must wait until your return?" +said Medora. + +"Not necessarily," rejoined Abner. "I might"--with the emission of an +obscure, self-conscious sound between a chortle and a gasp, instantly +suppressed--"I might write." + +"Do, by all means," said Stephen. + +"We shall follow your course with the greatest interest," added Medora. + +Almost forthwith began the receipt of newspapers--indifferently printed +sheets from minor cities scattered across Indiana and Ohio. The first two +or three of them came addressed to Giles, but all the subsequent ones +were sent direct to Medora. These publications invariably praised Abner's +presence--for he always towered magnificently on the lecture-platform, +and his delivery--for he read resoundingly with a great deal of clearness +and precision. But they frequently deplored the sombreness of his +subject-matter, and as the tour came to extend farther east, these +objections began to assume a jocular and satirical cast, until the +seaboard itself was reached, when newspapers ceased altogether and +letters began to take their place. These were addressed, with complete +absence of subterfuge, to Medora, and they displayed an increasing +tendency toward the drawing of comparisons between the East and the West, +with the difference more and more in favour of the latter. Abner felt +with growing keenness the formality and insincerity of an old society, +its cynical note, its materialistic ideals, the intrenched injustice +resulting from accumulated and inherited wealth, the conventions that +hampered initiative and froze goodwill. "I shall be glad to get back West +again," he wrote. + +Medora smiled over these observations. "What would the poor dear fellow +think of London or Paris, then, I wonder?" she said. + +"I am glad to see that you will come back to us better satisfied with +us," she wrote,--"if only by comparison. Meanwhile, remember that whether +other audiences may be agreeable or the reverse, there is one audience +waiting for you here with which you ought to feel at home and--by this +time--in sympathy." + +And indeed Abner faced Mrs. Whyland's little circle, when the time +finally came round, with much less sense of irksomeness and repugnance +than he had expected. Some twenty or thirty people assembled in the +Whyland drawing-room on one mid-March evening, and he soon perceived, +with a great relief, that they meant to respect both him and their +hostess. + +"There is every indication that they intend to behave," said Bond in a +reassuring whisper. "Everything will go charmingly." + +People arrived slowly and it was after nine before the slightest evidence +that anything like a programme had been arranged came into view. Abner, +by reason of this delay, would have had serious doubts of any real +interest in his art if a number of ladies had not plied him in the +interval with various little compliments and attentions. He found things +to say in reply; he also engaged in converse with a number of gentlemen, +who possibly had slight regard for literature but who could not help +respecting his size and sincerity. He loomed up impressively in his +frock-coat and steel-gray scarf, and nobody, as in the satiric East, was +heard to comment on his lack of conformity with the customs of "society." + +"Tkh!" said Whyland. "You have come again without your overcoat, they +tell me." + +The lake wind was fiercely hectoring the bare elm-trees before the house, +and the electric globes registered their tortures on the wide reach of +the curving roadway. + +Abner tossed his head carelessly, in proud boast of his own robustness. +"What's three blocks?" he asked. + +"Come into the dining-room and have something," said his host. + +Abner shrank back. "You know I never take wine." + +"Wine!" cried Whyland. "You want something different from wine. You want +a good hot whisky----" + +"No," said Abner. "No." + +The male guests were mostly professional men and representatives of great +corporate interests. They talked together in low undertones about +familiar concerns during their half-hour or so of grace. + +"I see you have begun stringing your wires," said one of them to Whyland. +"We are meeting with them all over town." + +"Yes, yes," replied Whyland, with the sprightly ingenuousness of a boy. +"Whoever looks for a fair return on his money nowadays must keep a little +in advance of legislation." + +"Just what Pence was saying only yesterday." + +"I snatched that great truth from my slight association with the Tax +Commission," burbled Whyland. "Almost everything marked, spotted: +property, real and personal; lands, lots, improvements; bonds, stocks, +mortgages----" + +"Everything, in short, but franchises?" + +"Franchises, yes. Nothing left but to turn one's attention to the public +utilities----" + +"And to hope that legislation may lag as far behind and as long behind as +possible." + +"Precisely," said Whyland. "Meanwhile, we string our wires----" + +"Pence up one pole and you up the next--" + +Whyland shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "And may it be long before +they call us down!" + +Abner listened to all this in silence, shaking his head sadly and +conscious of a deep and growing depression. Here was Whyland, a clever, +likeable fellow--and his host too--disintegrating before his very eyes. + +Whyland looked askant at Abner. "Yes, yes, I know," he almost seemed to +be saying. "But who can tell if a helping hand, extended at the critical +moment, might not have...." + + + + +XXII + +"Is that her? Is that her?" asked the children, the nursery door ajar. + +"Yes, that is 'her,'" said their mother, as Medora, muffled in white and +with her violin-case under her arm, slipped along through the hall. + +"How soon is she going to play? And won't you please let us hear just one +piece, mamma?" + +"You may lean over the banister. But if you let anybody catch you at +it----" + +"How soon is she going to begin?" + +"Not for some time yet." + +"Oh-h! Then won't you bring her in so that----" + +"'Sh! 'sh! And shut the door." + +But the door opened again and the banister was called upon to shield, if +it could, three little figures in white night-dresses as soon as Medora +began to "illustrate" Adrian Bond. The children upstairs were delighted, +and the grown-up children downstairs scarcely less so--for Medora knew +the infirmities of the polite world and never tired its habitues by her +suites and sonatas. She took her cue from Bond's crisp, brief sketches of +amusing travel-types, and gave them a folk-song from the Bavarian +highlands and one or two quaint bits that she had picked up in Brittany. +Abner, who knew her abilities, was vastly disconcerted to find her thus +minimizing herself; as for his own part of the performance, emphasis +should not fail. No, these rich, comfortable, prosperous people should +drink the cup to the dregs--the cup of mire, of slackness, of drudgery, +of dull hopelessness that he alone could mix. To tell the truth, his +auditors tasted of the cup with much docility and appeared to enjoy its +novel flavour. They listened closely and applauded civilly--and waited +for more of Bond and Medora. + +Abner was piqued. The situation did not justify itself. There was no +reason why Medora Giles should lend her talents to promote the success of +Adrian Bond--Bond with his thin hair plastered so pitifully over his poor +little skull and his insignificant face awry with a conventional society +smirk. Yet how, pray, could she contribute to his own? What was there in +any work of his for her to take hold upon? He himself could not claim +charm for it, nor an alluring atmosphere, nor a soft poetical +perspective, nor participation in the consecrated traditions so dear, +apparently, to the sophisticated folk around him. Medora, in fact, had +shaken herself loose from the farmyard, and if he were to follow her must +he not do the same? + +He meant to follow her--he had come to feel sure of that. He was not +certain what it would lead to, he was not certain what he wanted it to +lead to; but if he had not fully realized her to be most rare and +desirable there were many round about him now to help open his eyes. +Hers, after all, was the triumph; everybody was applauding her grace, her +tact, her beauty, her dress, discreetly classical, her distinction; while +she herself parried compliments with smiling good-humour in the very +accents of society itself. + +And he was to follow her with _Less Than the Beasts_. The farm-yard +claimed him for its own once more. He must go in up to his knees, up to +his middle, up to his chin. But as he progressed he forgot his +surroundings, his auditory; all he felt was the fate of his poor heroine, +the pitiful farm-drudge, sunk in hopeless wrong and misery. He read in +his very best manner, with abundant feeling and full conviction, and for +a moment his hearers felt with him. Then came a last elegiac paragraph, +and here Abner's voice grew husky, his throat filled, he coughed, and as +he laid aside his last sheet and turned to rise a quick pain darted +through his chest; he coughed again and involuntarily raised his hand +against his breast, and the acute and sudden pang was signalled clearly +in his face. + +Whyland advanced quickly. "_Now_," he said, in a low tone, "you must let +me have _my_ way--if it isn't too late. Come." He led Abner toward the +dining-room. + +"It is nothing," said Abner, on his return. + +"It is something, I am sure," said Edith Whyland, with great solicitude. + +"It is something serious, I feel certain," said Medora, pale as her +dress. + +"Nonsense!" exclaimed Abner. "I shall know just what to do as soon as I +get home----" He clutched at his breast again. + +"You will not go home to-night," said Whyland. + +Abner did not go home that night, nor the next, nor the next. He was put +to bed in an upper chamber and remained there. Outside was the gray +welter of the lake. Its white-capped waves knocked viciously against the +trembling sea-wall, and their spray, flying across the drenched bed of +the Drive, stung on the window-panes as if to say, in every drop, "It is +we, we who have brought you to this!" + +Medora sent her brother next morning to make inquiries, and at noon she +came herself. + +"The nurse will be here in an hour or two," said Edith Whyland. + +"I will stay till she arrives," said Medora. + +For a fortnight Abner lay muffled in that big, luxurious bed and did as +he was told. + +"Men!" said Medora. "They don't know anything; they have no idea of +looking after themselves. And the bigger they are, the more helpless." + +Abner had his good days and his bad, and suffered the gentle tyranny of +two or three solicitous women, and trusted that his sudden illness was +making due public stir. + +The Readjusters, who had lately been asking after him, first heard of his +plight from the press. The same newspapers that brought them further +details of the adventures of the new Pence-Whyland Franchise in the +Common Council informed them that Abner Joyce--Abner, the one time foe of +privilege--lay ill in Leverett Whyland's own house. + +"He is no longer one of us," pronounced the Readjusters. "We disown him; +we cast him off." + + + + +XXIII + +On one of the earliest days in April, Abner, gaunt and tottering, went +home to Flatfield. Leverett Whyland's own carriage took him to the +station and Medora Giles's own hands arranged his cushions and coverlets. + +"Spring is spring everywhere," said Whyland; "but it's just a little +worse right here than anywhere else. If you're going to pick up now, +home's the place to do it." + +"It's only three hours," said Abner. "I can stand that." + +He shook Whyland's hand gratefully at parting and held Medora's with a +firm pressure as long as he dared and longer than he realized. It was a +pressure that seemed to recognise her at last as an individual woman, and +what his hand did not say his face said and said clearly. And as soon as +he was a man again his tongue should say something too, and say it more +clearly still. + +Medora's image travelled along with him on the dingy window-pane and +intercepted all the well-beloved phenomena of earliest-awakening spring. +One slide followed another, like the pictures of a magic lantern. Now she +was pouring tea, now she was baking bread; sometimes she was playing the +violin, sometimes--and oftenest--she was measuring medicines or on guard +against draughts. In any event the sum total was a matchless assemblage +of grace, charm, talent, sympathy, efficiency. "I am not worthy of her," +he said humbly. "But I must have her," he added, with resolution. He was +not the author of this ruthless masculine paradox. + +After another month of rest and of home nursing Abner undertook a second +tour (in Iowa and Wisconsin, this time) to make sure of his +re-established health and to build up again his shattered finances,--for +sickness, even in the lap of luxury, is expensive. + +He had refused as considerately as he could an offer from Whyland himself +to do literary work. The Pence-Whyland syndicate had lately secured +control of one of the daily newspapers, and Whyland had suggested +semi-weekly articles at Abner's own figure. But Abner could not quite +bring himself to print in a sheet that was the open and avowed champion +of privilege and corruption. + +"You think you won't, then?" asked Whyland, at the door of the Pullman. + +"I don't believe I can," replied Abner mournfully. + +"Oh, yes, you can too," returned Whyland. "In a week or two more you'll +be as strong as ever." + +"I--I think I'd rather not," said Abner, tendering an apologetic hand. + +He wrote to Medora endless plaints about the discomforts of country +hotels; and she, remembering how he had once luxuriated in these very +crudities--he had called them authentic, characteristic, and other long +words ending in _tic_--smiled broadly. It seemed as if that fortnight in +the Whyland house had finally done for him. + +"He will become quite like the rest of us in time," she said;--"and in no +great time, either!" + +In the early days of June Abner spoke. Medora listened and considered. + +"I am like Clytie Summers----" she began slowly. + +"You are not a bit like her!" interrupted Abner, with all haste. + +"In one respect," Medora finished: "when I get married I want to get +married for good. As Clytie says, it is the most satisfactory way in the +long run, and the long run is what I have in mind." + +Abner flushed. "I can promise you that, I think." + +"You must." + +"I do." + +"We will dismiss the new theory." + +"If you demand it." + +The idea of limited matrimonial partnership therefore passed away. Then +there loomed up the question of an engagement-ring. + +"You agree with me, I hope," said Abner, "that all these symbolical +follies might very well be done away with?" + +"No," said Medora firmly; "folly--sheer, utter folly--claims me for a +month at least. And as for symbols, they are the very bread of the race, +and I am as much of the human tribe as anybody else is." + +A few days later Medora was wearing her engagement-ring. + +This step accomplished, Abner felt himself free to scale down to a +minimum the customary attentions of a courtship. + +Medora protested. "You are no more than a man, and I am no less than a +woman. You must give all that a man is expected to give and I must have +all that a woman is accustomed to receive." + +The engagement lasted through the summer, and Medora was married at the +farm in October. Abner's parents came the thirty miles across country to +their son's wedding. His father disclosed a singularly buoyant and +expansive nature; he lived in the blessings the day brought forth, and +considered not too deeply--as the poet once counselled--the questions +that had kept his son in the fume and heat of unquenchable discussion. +Mrs. Joyce was quiet, demure, rock-rooted in her self-respecting +gravity--a sweet, sympathetic, winning little woman. She advanced at once +into the bustle of the household, and it was plain that nature had +endowed her with a fondness for work for work's very sake, and that she +was proud of her own activity and thoroughness. Abner, everybody saw, was +immensely wrapped up in her. "A man who makes such a good son," said +Giles to his wife, "will make a good husband." + +"I expect him to," said Medora, overhearing. "And I intend to put on the +last few finishing touches myself." + + + + +XXIV + +One after another several carriages dismissed their occupants with slams +that carried far and wide on the crisp air of the early December evening, +and a variety of muffled figures toiled up the broad granite steps and +disappeared in the maw of the cavernous round-arched entrance-porch. At +both front and flank of the house a score of curtained windows permitted +the escape of hints of hospitable intentions; and in point of fact Mr. +and Mrs. Palmer Pence were giving a dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Adrian Bond. + +Adrian and Clytie were but lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, +after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had +finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of +work at the dear one's feet, but also--by a slight discounting of future +certainties--to put a good deal of money in his purse. He had at last +found a way to turn his "European atmosphere" and his "historical +perspective" to profitable account,--to write something that thousands +were willing to read and to pay for. Thirty thousand was the number thus +far; and that number, reached within six weeks, meant a hundred thousand +before the "run" should be over. His method involved simply a familiar +offhand treatment of royalty, backed up by an excess of beauty, bravery, +sword-play, costume, and irresponsible and impossible incident. "The only +wonder is," he said, "that I shouldn't have taken up with this before. +Anybody can do it; almost everybody else has done it." + +Clytie was delighted by this sudden showy stroke of fortune, and readily +allowed Adrian's long string of hints and intimations--they had come +rolling in thick and fast through the advancing summer--to solidify into +a concrete proposal. + +"With this and my little investments," he said fondly, "we might rub +along very decently." + +"I hope so," said Clytie. + +"Let's try." + +"Let's." + +The Whylands were also of those who climbed the granite steps. Mrs. +Whyland had required a little urging, as on some previous occasions. + +"I hope you won't make difficulties," her husband had said. "Mrs. Pence +is a nice enough woman, as women go; and since my new relations with her +husband...." + +"Well, if you think it necessary," she returned resignedly. At need she +might find the means to avoid anything like a real intimacy; and, after +all, there would be a certain satisfaction in finally seeing, with her +own eyes, Clytie Summers as somebody's actual wife. + +Last to arrive were the Joyces. Medora wore the wedding-gown that had +astonished the country neighbours for ten miles around, and Abner was in +the customary evening dress. + +"A bachelor and a genius," Medora had declared, "may enjoy some latitude, +but a married man must consider his wife." + +Abner had dutifully considered. He who considers is like him who +hesitates--lost. + +"There will be wine," said Medora. "Drink it. There may be toasts. Be +ready to respond." + +Abner could think on his feet--speech would not fail. And his fortnight +with the Whylands had reconciled him to more things than wine. + +"Let me be proud of you," said Medora. + +Abner shook to his centre. Had he married a Delilah and a Beatrice in +one? + +"And don't let's talk any more about our book than they talk of theirs," +she counselled to end with. + +_Regeneration_ had appeared within a week of _My Lady's Honour_ and was +doing well enough among a certain class of hardy readers who did not +shrink from problems. Some of the less grateful passages had been +censored by Medora's own hand and the unfriendlier of the critics thus +partially disarmed in advance. But _Regeneration_ was no longer a burning +matter; Medora's thoughts were on the great, new, different thing that +Abner was now shaping. He had finally come to an apprehension of the +city. In certain of its aspects it was as interestingly crass and crude +as the country, and the deep roar of its wrongs and sufferings was +becoming audible enough to his ears to exact some share of his attention. +In _The Fumes of the Foundry_ he was to show a bold advance into a new +field. This book would depict the modern city in the making: the +strenuous strugglings of traditionless millions; the rising of new +powers, the intrusion of new factors; the hardy scorn of precedent, the +decisive trampling upon conventions; the fight under new conditions for +new objects and purposes, the plunging forward over a novel road toward +some no less novel goal; the general clash of ill-defined, +half-formulated forces. All this study would explain much that was +obscure and justify much that appeared reprehensible. Such a book would +find place and reason for Pences and for Whylands. Indulgence would come +with understanding, and reconciliation to repellent ideals and to the men +that embodied them might not unnaturally follow. + +Full of his own new idea, Abner felt a greater contempt than ever for +Bond's late departure and for the facile success that had attended it. + +"I know how you look upon me," said Bond cheerfully. "Yet who, more than +you yourself, is responsible for my come-down?" + +"I?" + +"You. When the psychological moment was on me and I needed most of all +your encouragement, you dashed me with cold water instead. Now see where +I am!" + +Abner presently disclosed himself as one of the major ornaments of the +feast. He talked, with no lack of ease and dexterity, to three or four +ladies he had never seen before in his life, and even showed his ability +for give-and-take with their husbands, on the basis of mutual tolerance +and consideration. The quiet dignity that was his natural though latent +gift from one parent he had learned how to maintain with less of jealous +and aggressive self-consciousness; and a kind of congenital geniality, +his heritage from the other, had now made its belated appearance and +begun to show forth its tardy glow. Everybody found Abner interesting; +one or two even found him charming. Those who had never liked him before +began to like him now; those who had liked him before now liked him more +than ever. Medora looked across at him; her eyes shone with pleasure and +pride. + +Clytie sat between Pence and Whyland. Whyland's face had already begun to +take on the peculiar hard-finish that follows upon success--success +reached in a certain way. "How about the Settlement?" he asked. + +Clytie shrugged her shoulders. "I have other interests now. Besides, I +felt that my efforts on behalf of the Poor were more or less +misunderstood and unappreciated." She glanced down the table toward +Abner. + +Whyland glanced in the same direction and shrugged his shoulders too. "I +understand. I might have turned out to be an idealist myself if a certain +hand had not pushed me down when it should have raised me up!" + +"Ah!" sighed Clytie, who still saw the old Abner bigger than the new, "I +am sure that both Adrian and I might have continued to be among the +Earnest Ones, but for that ruthless creature!" + +Abner sat on one side of Eudoxia Pence--Eudoxia gorgeous, affluent, +worldly. Never had she disclosed herself at a further remove from all +that was earnest, thoughtful, philanthropic, altruistic. + +"No," she said, shaking her head with a pleasant pretence of melancholy, +"I was presumptuous. I did not realize how little my poor hands could do +toward untangling the tangled web of life." Eudoxia, talking to a +literary man, was faithfully striving to take the literary tone. She had +waited for a year now, but the tone was here and time had not impaired +its quality. "There was a period when I felt the strongest impulse toward +the Higher Things; but now--now my husband's growing success needs my +attending step. I must walk beside him and try to find my satisfactions +in the simple duties of a wife." She dropped her head in the proud +humility of welcome defeat. + +Yes, Abner had brought down, one after another, all the pillars of the +temple. But he had dealt out his own fate along with the fate of the +rest: crushed yet complacent, he lay among the ruins. The glamour of +success and of association with the successful was dazzling him. The pomp +and luxury of plutocracy inwrapped him, and he had a sudden sweet +shuddering vision of himself dining with still others of the wealthy just +because they _were_ wealthy, and prominent, and successful. Yes, Abner +had made his compromise with the world. He had conformed. He had reached +an understanding with the children of Mammon. He--a great, original +genius--had become just like other people. His downfall was complete. + + * * * * * + +LITTLE O'GRADY _vs._ THE GRINDSTONE + + * * * * * + +LITTLE O'GRADY _vs._ THE GRINDSTONE + + + + +I + +Mrs. Palmer Pence was a stock-holder in any number of banks--twenty +shares here, fifty there, a hundred elsewhere; but she was a stock-holder +and nothing more, while what she most desired was to be a director: to +act on the board of one at least of these grandiose institutions would +have given her a great deal of comfort. She was clever, she was forceful, +she was ambitious,--but she was a woman; and however keen her desire, her +fellow stockholders seemed bound by the ancient prejudice that barred +woman from such a position of power and honour and left the whole +flagrant monopoly with man. + +"Such discrimination is miserably unjust," she would remonstrate. + +Amongst her other holdings, Mrs. Pence had forty-five shares in the +Grindstone National. This was her favourite bank. Her accounts with the +great retail houses along Broad Street were always settled by checks on +the Grindstone, as well as her obligations to the insatiable cormorants +that trafficked in "robes and manteaux" farther up town. The bank was +close to the shopping centre, and the paying-teller of the Grindstone was +never happier than on those occasions when Eudoxia Pence would roll in +voluminous and majestic and ask him to break a hundred-dollar bill. + +This had last happened during the press of the Christmas shopping. As +Eudoxia turned away from the window of the complaisant teller, a door +opened for a moment in a near-by partition and gave her a glimpse of +eight or ten elderly men seated round a long solid table whose top bore a +litter of papers--among them, many big sheets of light brown. She saw +what was going on,--a directors' meeting. Her unappeased longing rose and +stirred once more within her, and a shadow crossed her broad handsome +face--the face that Little O'Grady had resolutely pursued all over the +hall the evening she had deigned to show it at the Art Students' dance, +with his long fingers curved and straining as if ready to dig themselves +instantly into the clay itself. + +"I don't care so much about the other banks," she sighed; "but if I could +only be one of the board here!" + +The door closed immediately, but not before she had caught the essential +mass and outline of the situation. This august though limited gathering +was submitting to an harangue--it seemed nothing less--from a little +fellow who stood before the fireplace and wagged a big head covered with +frizzled sandy hair, and gave them glances of humorous determination from +his narrow gray-green eyes, and waved a pair of long supple hands in +their protesting faces. Yes, the faces were protesting all. "Who are you, +to claim our attention in this summary fashion?" asked one. "What do you +mean by thrusting yourself upon us quite unbidden?" asked another. "Why +do you come here to complicate a question that is much too complicated +for us already?" demanded a third. + +Yes, the door closed immediately, yet Eudoxia Pence had a clairvoyant +sense of what was going on behind that rather plebeian partition of black +walnut and frosted glass. She knew how they must all be hesitating, +fumbling, floundering--snared by a problem wholly new and unfamiliar, and +readily falling victims to intimidation from the humblest source. The +entire situation was as clear as sunlight in the gesture with which +Jeremiah McNulty, blinking his ancient eyes, had laid down that sheet of +yellow-brown paper and had scratched his gray old chin. + +"They need _me_," said Eudoxia Pence. "Indeed, they might be glad to have +me. I feel certain that, if left to themselves, they will end by doing +something awful." + +She was perfectly confident that she could be of service in the bank's +affairs. Had she not always been successful with her own? So it pleased +her to think--and indeed nothing had developed in connection with her +private finances to bring her under the shadow of self-doubt. The elderly +hand of her husband, which was deep in vaster concerns, seldom interfered +in hers, and never obtrusively. Now and then he dropped for a moment his +own interests--he was engaged in forming the trustful into trusts and in +massing such combinations into combinations greater still--to steady or +to direct his wife's; but in general Eudoxia was left to regard herself +as the guiding force of her own fortunes, and to believe herself capable +of almost anything in the field of general finance. + +The Grindstone National Bank, after ten years of prosperity in rather +shabby rented quarters, had determined to present a better face to the +world by putting up a building of its own. The day was really past when +an institution of such calibre could fittingly occupy a mere room or two +in a big "block" given over to miscellaneous business purposes. It was +little to the advantage of the Grindstone that it shared its entrance-way +with a steamship company and a fire-insurance concern, and was roofed +over by a dubious herd of lightweight loan brokers, and undermined by +boot-blacking parlours, and barnacled with peanut and banana stands. Such +a situation called loudly for betterment. + +"It's time to leave all that sort of thing behind," decreed Andrew P. +Hill, waggling his short chin beard decisively and shutting his handsome +porcelain teeth with a snap. "What we want is to make a show and +advertise our business." + +Hill was president of the Grindstone and its largest stock-holder. Mr. +McNulty listened to his words, and so did Mr. Rosenberg, and so did Mr. +Gibbons and Mr. Holbrook and the rest of the directors; and they had all +finally agreed--all save Mr. Rosenberg--that the time was come for the +Grindstone to put up its own building and to occupy that building +entirely and exclusively. Mr. Rosenberg imaged a few suites for tenants, +but he was voted down. + +They had found a moderately old young man who knew his Paris and his +Vienna and who could "render" elevations and perspectives with the best. +This clever person gathered together Andrew P. Hill and Simon Rosenberg +and Jeremiah McNulty and all the others of the hesitating little band and +with infinite tact "shood" them gently, step by step, despite multiplied +protests and backdrawings, up the rugged slopes of doubt toward the +summit where stood and shone his own resplendent Ideal. Each of the flock +took the trip as his particular training and temperament dictated. Andrew +was a bit dazed, but none the less exhilarated; Jeremiah shook his head, +yet kept his feet in motion; Simon grumbled that the whole business spelt +little less than ruination. But Roscoe Orlando Gibbons, who had been +about the world not a little and who drew sanction for the young +architect's doings from more quarters of the Continent than one, +instantly rose to the occasion and landed on the topmost pinnacle of the +shining temple at a single swoop. Here he stood tiptoe and beckoned. This +confident pose, this encouraging gesture, had its effect; the others +toiled and scrambled up, each after his own fashion, but they all got +there. Even old Oliver Dowd, who had once been a member of the state +legislature and had won the title of watch-dog of the treasury by +opposing expenditures of any kind for any purpose whatever, finally fell +into line. His name was the last to go down, but down it went after due +delay; and presently the new building began to rise, only a street or two +distant from the old. + +The new Grindstone, of all the Temples of Finance within the town, was to +be the most impressive, the most imposing, the most unmitigatedly +monumental. The bold young architect had loftily renounced all economies +of space, time, material, and had imagined a grandiose facade with a long +colonnade of polished blue-granite pillars, a pompous attic story above, +and a wide flight of marble steps below. The inside was to be quite as +overbearingly classical as the outside. There was to be a sort of arched +and columned court under a vast prismatic skylight; lunettes, spandrels, +friezes and the like were to abound; and the opportunities for interior +decoration were to be lavish, limitless. + +Now these lunettes and spandrels were the things that were making all the +trouble. The building itself was moving on well enough: the walls were +all up; and half the columns--despite the groans of Simon Rosenberg--were +in place. Here no hitch worth speaking of had occurred: merely a running +short of material at the quarry, the bankruptcy of the first contractor, +and a standstill of a month or two when all the bricklayers on the job +had declined to work or to allow anybody else to work. Such trifles as +these could be foreseen and allowed for; but not one of the Grindstone's +devoted little band had ever grappled with a general decorative scheme +for the embellishment of a great edifice raised to the greater glory of +Six-per-cent, or had attempted to adjust the rival claims of a horde of +painters, sculptors, modellers, and mosaickers all eager for a chance to +distinguish themselves and to cut down the surplus and the undivided +profits. No wonder that Jeremiah McNulty scratched his chin, and that +Simon Rosenberg puckered up his yellow old face, and that Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons ran his fingers through his florid side-whiskers as he tried to +find some sanction and guidance in Berlin or in Rome, and that Andrew P. +Hill frowned blackly upon all the rest for being as undecided as he was +himself. + +"This is awful!" he moaned. "We may have to calcimine the whole place in +pale pink and let it go at that!" + +The door opened and a deferential clerk announced the waiting presence of +one of the Morrell Twins. Andrew, giving a sigh of relief, swept the +drawings quickly aside and rose. Here, at last, his feet were back once +more on solid ground. + + + + +II + +While Richard Morrell charmed the ears of the Grindstone's directors with +his tuneful periods, and dazzled their eyes by the slow waving to and fro +of certain elegantly engraved certificates of stock, and made his +determined chin and his big round shoulders say to the assembled body +that there was no chance of his going away before he had carried his +point, Eudoxia Pence was taking tea at the Temple of Art. The early +twilight of mid-December had descended. "It's too late for any more +shopping," said Eudoxia, "and I'm too tired." Though she was still on the +right side of forty by a year or two, this advantage of youth was +counterbalanced by the great effort of pushing her abundant bulk through +the throng of Christmas strugglers that crowded shop and sidewalk alike. +"Only to sit down for half an hour in some quiet place!" she panted. "I +believe I'll just drop up and see Daffingdon for a bit. That will give me +a chance at the same time to keep half an eye on Virgilia," she added +soberly. "A hundred to one she'll be there; and if anybody's to blame +_for_ her being there, I'm that body." + +The Temple of Art, after rooting itself in drama and oratory, after +throwing out a sturdy limb of chaste traffic in bibelots here and +instruments of music there and books and engravings elsewhere, and after +putting forth much foliage in the shape of string-scraping and +key-teasing and anguished vocalizing and determined paper-reading and +indomitable lecture-hearing, blossomed forth at last in a number of +skylights, and under one of these lofty covers Daffingdon Dill carried on +his professional activities. Eudoxia sank down upon his big settle +covered with Spanish leather, and took her tea and her biscuits, and +declined the pink peppermints, and looked around to discover, by the dim +help of the Japanese lantern and the battered old brass lamp from +Damascus, just who might be present. Several people were scattered about +in various dusky corners, and Virgilia Jeffreys was no doubt among them. +"I don't know just how all this is going to end," sighed Eudoxia +dubiously. "I presume I'm as responsible as anybody else," she added, in +a reflective, judicial tone. "More so," she tacked on. "Altogether so," +she added further, as she took a first sip. + +Daffingdon Dill was a newcomer, but he had taken hold of things in a +pretty confident, competent fashion and had made more of an impression in +one year than many of his confreres had made in five or ten. To begin +with, he had unhesitatingly quartered himself in the most desirable +building the town could boast. Many of his colleagues, no less clever +(save in this one respect), still lingered in the old Rabbit-Hutch, a +building which had been good enough in its day but which belonged, like +the building that Andrew P. Hill was preparing to leave, to a day now +past. Fearful of the higher rents that more modern quarters exacted, they +went on paying their monthly stipend to old Ezekiel Warren, with such +regularity as circumstances would admit, and made no effort to escape the +affectionate banter that grouped them under the common name of the +Bunnies. + +Dill kept his studio up to the general level of the Temple, and himself +up to the general level of the studio. There was little trace of Bohemia +about either. Society found his workroom a veritable _salon de +reception_. He himself never permitted the painter to eclipse the +gentleman. People who came late in the afternoon found his tall, slender +figure inclosed in a coat of precisely the right length, shape, cut. +People who came earlier found him in guise more professional but no less +elegant. He took a great deal of pains with his handsome hands, which +many visitors pressed with cautious, admiring respect, as something a +little too good to be true, as something a little too fine for this +workaday world, and with his well-grown beard, which hugged his cheeks +closely to make a telling manifestation upon his chin, after the manner +of Van Dyck. This beard cried, almost clamoured, for picturesque +accessories, and when Daffingdon went to a costume ball he generally wore +a ruff and carried a rapier. All these things had their effect, and when +people said, "How much?" and Daffingdon with unblinking serenity said, +"So much," they quailed sometimes, but they never tried to beat him down. + +"Why, after all, you know," they would say to one another, as +they reconsidered his effective presence and his expensive +surroundings,--"why, after all, it isn't as if----" Then they would think +of the Rabbit-Hutch and acknowledge that here was a great advance. The +poor Bunnies would have blinked--and often had, you may be sure. + +Daffingdon was a bachelor, and he was old enough or young enough for +anything, being just thirty; and his sister Judith, who was some years +his senior, sat behind his tea-urn on most occasions and made it possible +for the young things of society to flutter in as freely as they willed. +The young things came to little in themselves, but some of them had +vainglorious mothers and ambitious, pomp-loving fathers, and who could +tell in what richly promising crevice their light-minded chatter might +lodge and sprout? So Daffingdon and his sister encouraged them to come, +and the young things came gladly, willing enough to meet with a break in +the social round that was already becoming monotonous; and among the +others came Preciosa McNulty,--dear little Preciosa, pretty, +warm-hearted, self-willed----But we will wait a bit for _her_, if you +please. + +Daffingdon had spent many years abroad and still kept _au courant_ with +European art matters in general; he knew what they were doing in Munich +no less than in Paris, and letters with foreign postmarks were always +dropping in on him to tempt his mind to little excursions backward across +the sea. He kept himself more or less in touch too with the kindred arts, +and readily passed in certain circles for a man of the most pronouncedly +intellectual and cultivated type. + +Thus, at least, Virgilia Jeffreys saw him. Virgilia herself was +intellectual to excess and cultivated beyond the utmost bounds of reason; +indeed, her people were beginning to wonder where in the world they were +to find a husband for her. Not that Virgilia intimidated the men, but +that the men disappointed Virgilia. They stayed where they always had +stayed--close to the ground, whereas Virgilia, with each successive +season, soared higher through the blue empyrean of general culture. She +had not stopped with a mere going to college, nor even with a good deal +of post-graduate work to supplement this, nor even with an extended range +of travel to supplement that; she was still reading, writing, studying, +debating as hard as ever, and paying dues to this improving institution +and making copious observations at the other. She too had her foreign +correspondents and knew just what was going on at Florence and what +people were up to in Leipsic and Dresden. She possessed, so she +considered, a wide outlook and the greatest possible breadth of +interests, and she knew she was a dozen times too good for any man she +had ever met. + +There were scores of other girls like her--girls who were forging ahead +while the men were standing still: a phenomenon with all the fine +threatenings of a general calamity. Where should these girls go to find +husbands? Virgilia herself had been very curt with a young real-estate +dealer, who was that and nothing more; and she had been even more summary +with a stock-broker's clerk who, flashing upon her all of a sudden, had +pointed an unwavering forefinger toward a roseate, coruscating future, +but who had finished his schooling at seventeen and had had neither time +nor inclination since to make good his deficiencies. The first had just +installed his bride in a house of significant breadth and pomposity, and +the other, having detached himself from the parent office, was now +executing a comet-like flight that set the entire town astare and agape. + +"Well, that's nothing to me," said Virgilia disdainfully. "I couldn't +have lived with either of them a month. I'm only twenty-six and I don't +feel at all alarmed." + +Then somebody or other had piloted her aunt Eudoxia toward the Temple of +Art, and Eudoxia, after about so much of dawdling and of sipping and of +nibbling and of gentle patronage and of dilettante comment and criticism +through this studio and that, had opened up a like privilege to her +niece. Together they had dawdled and sipped and suggested up one corridor +and down another, and in due course they arrived at the studio of +Daffingdon Dill, and presently they were as good as enrolled among the +habitues of the place. + +Eudoxia peered about among the tapestries and the sombre old furniture. +"Yes, there she is over in the corner with Preciosa McNulty." Then she +looked back toward Dill and sighed lightly. "I wonder how this thing is +coming out? I wonder how I want it to come out? And I wonder how much +responsibility I must really bear for the way it _does_ come out?" + + + + +III + +She handed back her cup to Dill. "What are those two girls giggling +about?" she asked him. + +Dill snatched a moment from his cares as host. Little had he expected to +hear Virgilia Jeffreys taxed with giggling. + +Yet giggling she was,--with some emphasis and spirit too. She seemed to +have slipped back from sedate and dignified young womanhood to mere +flippant girlishness and not to have gained appreciably by the +transition. Preciosa McNulty, still a girl and giving no immediate +promise of developing into anything more, shared with her the +over-cushioned disorder of the Persian canopy and giggled too. + +Preciosa could laugh and chatter easily, volubly, spontaneously--all +this, as yet, was the natural utterance of her being. But Virgilia was +keeping pace with her, was even surpassing her. Yet she showed evidences +of effort, of self-consciousness, of serious intention; now and then the +_arriere pensee_ disclosed its puckered front. + +This, and nothing but this, could excuse Virgilia to-day. For she was too +old to giggle, far too learned, much too sober-minded. Dill himself felt +this, and shook his head in reply to Eudoxia Pence's question, as he +stepped away for a moment to accompany a pair of gracious amateurs to the +door. + +A little figure that was passing rapidly along the corridor stopped on +seeing the door ajar and waved a long supple hand and wagged a frizzly +flaxen poll and gave a humorous wink out of his gray-green eyes and +called unabashedly, before he resumed his skurrying flight: + +"I've got 'em on the run, Daff; I've got 'em on the run!" + +"Oh, that little O'Grady!" sighed Dill genteelly; "he is impossible; he +will end with disgracing us. What can the fellow be up to now?" he +wondered, closing the door, and preparing to return to his study of +Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"Your poor grandfather!--can't I fancy him!" Virgilia was saying to +Preciosa. She gave a light dab at the other's muff with her long slender +hand. "Dear, puzzled old soul!"--and she crinkled up her narrow green +eyes. + +"Can't you?" Preciosa laughed back. "'I don't know anything about such +things,' grandpa insisted. 'Go and see Mr. Hill, young man, or Mr. +Gibbons.' But the young man kept unrolling sheet after sheet. 'Grandpa,' +I said, 'we shall miss the whole of the first act.' Then the young man +_had_ to go. He didn't want to, but he had to." + +"The 'young man'!" laughed Virgilia, dandling a cushion. "Didn't he have +any name?" + +"Some queer one: Ig--Ig----I don't remember." + +"Nor any address?" + +"Some far-away street you never heard of." + +"How ridiculous!" chirped Virgilia, throwing back her head. "Do let them +give you another cup of tea or some more of those biscuits. Ask for what +you want. Don't be backward, even if you are a newcomer." + +"Dear me," said Preciosa; "don't tell me I'm bashful." + +"Did his sketches amount to anything?" asked Virgilia, herself reaching +for the biscuits. + +"Well, there were plenty _of_ them. By a quarter to eight they had +covered all the tables and chairs and about two-thirds of the floor. +There was every evidence of that young man's being after us--a regular +siege. I have no doubt he was waiting outside all through dinner; he rang +the bell the very minute poor unsuspecting grandpa turned up the gas in +the front parlour. But that's nothing to the one just before him." + +"What did _he_ do?" asked Virgilia, with all her fine blonde intentness. + +Preciosa threw back her mop of chestnut hair. "Followed grandpa all the +way home and would hardly let him have his dinner. He had it this time, +however. And then, as I say, he turned up the gas; and then----" + +"And then the shower began?" suggested Virgilia, putting her delicate +eyebrows through their paces. + +"The downpour. I never knew anybody to talk faster, or give out more +ideas, or wave his hands harder,--like this." Preciosa cast her muff away +completely and abandoned her plump little fingers to unbridled pantomime. +"The room was peopled--isn't that the way they say it, peopled?--in no +time; a regular reception. There were ladies in Greek draperies seated on +big cogged wheels with factory chimneys rising behind, and strong young +fellows in leather aprons leaning against anvils and forges, and there +were----" + +"I know, I know," declared Virgilia, ducking her head into her cushion, +with the effect of suppressing a shriek of laughter. "And more 'ladies' +reading from scrolls to children standing at their knee. And all sorts of +folks blowing trumpets and bestowing garlands; Commerce, Industry, Art, +Manufacturing, Education, and the rest of them. Dear child! how good of +you to call all these things 'ideas'! No wonder such novelties puzzled +your poor dear grandfather!" + +She clutched Preciosa's chubby little hand with her long white fingers, +as if to squeeze from it an answering shriek. + +But Preciosa contained herself. "And there was a lady engineer," she went +on, after a short pause, "in a light blue himation--is that what they +call it, himation?--and she was fluttering it out of the cab-window----" + +"The Railway!" declared Virgilia, trying to laugh tears into her eyes. + +"And one drawing showed a lot of Cupids nesting on top of a telegraph +pole----" + +"What did Jeremiah McNulty think of that?" + +"--with their little pink heels dangling down just as cute----" + +"In a bank!" cried Virgilia, in a perfect transport of merriment. +Preciosa, with whom a growing admiration for these abundant decorative +details seemed to be overlaying her sense of fun, stopped in her account +and then complaisantly gave forth the laugh that Virgilia seemed to +expect. + +"Oh, these young men!" exclaimed Virgilia, with a gasp and a gurgle to +indicate that the limit was nearly reached; "these young men whom you +never heard of, whose names you can't pronounce, and who live you don't +know where! They will be too much for your poor grandfather. Let him +escape them while he can. He is too old and too busy for such annoyances. +Let him find some other young man whose name is known and whose studio is +in a civilized part of the town and who has done some rather good work +for some rather nice people." Virgilia crinkled up her eyes in a little +spasm of confidential merriment and then opened them on her +surroundings--the rich sobriety of the furniture; the casual picturesque +groupings of "nice people"; the shining tea-urn flanked by the candles in +their fluted paper shades; the heavy gilded frames inclosing copies made +by Dill in the galleries of Madrid and St. Petersburg; other canvases set +against the base-boards face back so as at once to pique and to balk +curiosity with regard to the host's own work; the graceful dignity of +Dill himself, upon whom Virgilia's eyes rested last yet longest. + +"I might mention Mr. Dill to grandpa," said Preciosa, with returning +seriousness. This, her first intrusion into the strange, rich world of +art, had rather impressed her, after all; such novel hospitality really +required some acknowledgment. + +"Do," said Virgilia, now in quite a gale. "Don't drink his tea for +nothing! And if it's 'ideas' that are wanted," she went on, as she +grasped Preciosa lightly by both shoulders and gave her a humorous shake, +"this is the shop!" + +Preciosa paused for a moment's consideration. She was not sure that +Virgilia knew her well enough to shake her, nor had she supposed that +Virgilia was giddy enough to shake anybody. Neither was she sure that +what she most wanted was to ridicule the facile and voluminous sketches +spread out so widely and so rapidly by that young man with the burning +eyes and the quick, nervous hands and the big shock of wavy black hair. +Still, it was as easy to laugh as not to laugh; besides, which of the two +might better set the tone, and authoritatively? Virgilia, surely; by +reason of her age--she was some six or eight years the senior, by reason +of her stature--she was several inches the taller, and by reason of her +standing as an habituee--surely she must know how to behave in a studio. +So Preciosa tossed her pretty little head, and laughed, as she felt +herself expected to. + +"The shop, yes," she acquiesced gaily. "And if I come again----" + +"If?" repeated Virgilia, raising her eyebrows archly. + +"And when I come again," amended Preciosa, rising, "I might bring grandpa +with me. I'm sure all this would be new to him." + +"Do, by all means," cried Virgilia. "And don't be too long doing it. _We_ +won't keep him from his food and drink; _we_ won't worry his poor tired +brain, if we can help it; _we_ won't give him ladies seated beneath +factory chimneys; _we_ won't----You are going? Goodbye, dear. So glad to +have met you here. Aunt and I drop in quite frequently, and you should +learn to do so too." + +She gave Preciosa a parting smile, then composed her features to a look +of grave intentness and turned about to impose this look upon Daffingdon +Dill wherever found. + +Her eyes found him on the opposite side of the room, in company with her +aunt. Both of them were studying her with some seriousness and some +surprise. Virgilia, having already resumed her customary facial +expression, now took on her usual self-contained manner as well and +crossed over to them. + + + + +IV + +"Well, well, Virgilia," said her aunt, as the door closed on Preciosa, +"you see more in that girl than I do." + +"I see her grandfather," whispered Virgilia, with the obscure brevity of +an oracle. She drew down her brows and looked at the wondering Dill,--or +rather, through him, past him. + +"Oh," replied her aunt softly. It was impossible that she should +misunderstand; McNulty and Hill and the rest of them had just been in her +own thoughts, on her own tongue. "I _shall_ be responsible, after all," +she said within herself. Then she gave Virgilia a slight frown of +disapproval: it was not precisely a maidenly part that her niece had +chosen to play; neither did it show the degree of deference due to an +elder, a chaperon and--if you came right at it--to a stock-holder. "If +this thing must be engineered," thought Eudoxia, "I think I should prefer +to engineer it myself." Heaven pardon her, though, for ever having +brought Virgilia Jeffreys to Daffingdon Dill's studio! + +She herself had come there full of Jeremiah McNulty and Andrew P. Hill +and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. "It's a big undertaking," she had told Dill. +"They're struggling with it now, poor things. They need expert advice. If +I were only one of the board of directors!" + +Dill came up to the mark gingerly. "The air has been full of it for the +last fortnight," he said, struggling between eagerness and professional +dignity. "I know a number of fellows who have thought of going in for +it." + +"I suppose _you_ haven't thought of going in?" + +Dill drew himself up. "How can I?" He suggested the young physician who +will starve but who will not infringe the Code by any practice that +savours in the least of advertising, of soliciting. However, he was a +thousand miles farther away from starvation than was Ignace Prochnow, for +example; much better could he afford to await the arrival of an embassy. + +Eudoxia Pence fumbled her boa. "Does Virgilia really want him? Does he +want Virgilia? Do I want them to have each other? Shall I exert myself in +his behalf?" Such were the questions she submitted to her own +consideration as her eyes roved over the chatting, sipping throng. "Can +he do for her all that a girl in her position would expect? Could such a +fastidious, exacting young woman hope to find anybody she would like +better--or as well?" Eudoxia had three or four swift successive visions +of herself in a variety of circumstances and pleading or discouraging a +variety of causes. Now, for example, she was saying to Virgilia, "Yes, +he's a very nice fellow, I know; but he has only his wits and his brush, +while you must always live as you always have lived--a rich girl to whom +nothing has been denied." Again, she saw herself bent over the desk of +Andrew P. Hill, with her forty-five shares clutched in her resolute hand, +and saying, "I demand to be heard; I demand to have a voice in this +momentous matter; I demand a fair and even chance for my +nephew-in-law-to-be." Once more, she was wringing her hands and asking +Virgilia in tones of piteous protest, "Why, oh why, didn't you take +Richard Morrell when you could have got him?--a fine, promising, pushing +fellow, with his million or more already, and barely thirty-five, just +the right age for you!" Yet again, she was saying to that poor little +vulgarian, Preciosa McNulty, "If Virgilia will, she will, and there's an +end of it; therefore should you, dear child, promise me to use your +influence with that loutish old peasant of a grandfather, you shall have +the beatitude of actually pouring tea at one of my Thursday afternoons, +and I'll even invite your mother to my next large reception----" + +Eudoxia paused, struck suddenly by the earnest scrutiny of both +Daffingdon and Virgilia. She saw that she had tied her boa into a double +knot, and surmised that she had been doing the same with her features +too. + + + + +V + +By this time every "art circle" in the city knew from its centre to its +circumference that the Grindstone National Bank was moving toward the +elaborate decoration of its new building and that the board of directors +was thinking of devoting some twenty thousand dollars or more to this +purpose. The Temple of Art took on its reception smile; the Rabbit-Hutch +began a nervous rummaging for ideas among cobwebs and dusty portfolios +and forgotten canvases; decorators of drawing-rooms and libraries put on +their thinking-caps and stood up their little lightning-rods; and one or +two of the professors at the Art Academy began to overhaul their +mythology and to sketch out broad but hazy schemes for a succession of +thumping big masterpieces, and to wonder whether the directors would call +on them or whether they should be summoned to meet the directors. + +"Gee!" said Little O'Grady (whose _forte_ was reliefs in plastina), as he +hopped around Dill's studio on one leg; "but ain't it a godsend for us!" + +Little O'Grady was celebrated for keeping the most untidy and +harum-scarum quarters throughout the entire Rabbit-Hutch, and for being +wholly beyond the reach of reproof or the range of intimidation. The +stately sobriety of Dill's studio had no deterring effect upon him. +Nothing could impress him; nobody could repress him. He said just what he +thought to anybody and everybody, and acted just as he felt wherever he +happened to be. Just now he felt like dancing a jig--and did so. + +"But, dear me, where do _you_ come in?" asked Dill, moving his easel a +bit farther out of Little O'Grady's range. + +"Where do I come in? Everywhere. I come in on the capitals of the columns +round that court, which will all be modelled after special designs of me +own----" + +"I hadn't heard about them. I should suppose such things would follow +established patterns." + +"So does the architect. But I shall convince him yet that he's mistaken." +O'Grady gave a pirouette in recognition of his own powers of persuasion. + +"And I come in on the mantel-piece in the president's private parlour," +he continued. "It will be a low relief in bronze: 'The Genius of the West +Lighting the Way to Further Progress,' or else, 'Commerce and Finance +Uniting to Do Something or Other'--don't know what just yet, but shall +hit on some notion or other in due time----" + +"You've seen the plans, then? You've been striking up an acquaintance +with the architect himself?" Dill frowned repugnance upon such a bit of +indelicacy, such an indifference to professional etiquette. + +"Well, perhaps I have. Why not? But if there's a president--I s'pose +there is?" + +"I suppose so." + +"Then there'll sure be a parlour. And where there's a parlour there's a +fireplace--see? A large official cavern with never any fire in it. And I +come in on the drinking-fountains at each side of the main entrance: +bronze dolphins twisted upside down and spouting water into marble +basins." + +"They're included too, are they?" + +"Well, I suggested them. Don't those old coupon-clippers ever get +thirsty? Sure they do. Well, can't I wet their whistles for them? I guess +yes--and I told 'em so." + +"Them? Whom?" + +"The directors." + +"You've seen them?" + +"I attended a meeting of the board, as I suppose I might as well tell +you," said Little O'Grady grandly. + +"You did, eh?" returned Dill, balanced between reprobation of Little +O'Grady's push and admiration for his nerve. + +"Yep. I spoke a good word for myself. And one for the others--Gowan and +Giles and you and Stalinski and----" + +"Um," said Dill, none too well pleased. The last thing he desired was +co-operation from the Rabbit-Hutch and association with the band of +erratic, happy-go-lucky Bohemians that peopled it. "You're laying out a +good deal of work for yourself," he remarked coldly, dismissing the +Bunnies. + +"Work? That's what I'm here for," declared O'Grady brightly. "And if I +slip up on any of these little notions, why I'll just take a hand in the +painting itself--didn't I help on a panorama once? Sure thing. There was +a time when I could kind o' swing a brush, and I guess I could do it yet. +Let's see: 'The Goddess of Finance,' in robes of saffron and purple, +'Declaring a Quarterly Dividend.' Gold background. Stock-holders summoned +by the Genius of Thrift blowing fit to kill on a silver trumpet. Scene +takes place in an autumnal grove of oranges and pomegranates--trees +loaded down with golden eagles and half-eagles. Marble pavement strewn +with fallen coupons. Couldn't I do a fairy-scene like that? I should +say!" Little O'Grady threw out his leg again with sudden vehemence and +toppled over among Dill's heaped-up cushions. + +Dill laughed. "How are the other fellows over your way feeling about it?" + +"Same as me--hopeful. We may have to sleep on excelsior for a while yet, +but we shall soon stop eating it. And the first thing we do with the coin +will be to give old Warren heart-disease by going down in a body and +paying up all our back rent. I'm figuring on pulling out about two +thousand for my share. Then if I want pie I can have it, without stopping +to feel in my pocket first." + +Little O'Grady babbled along as he delineated the mental state of the +other Bunnies. They all felt the situation in the air--they all felt it +in their bones. They all wanted a hand in things--a finger in the pie. +There was Festus Gowan, who did little beyond landscapes, but who thought +he could make some headway with faces and draperies if pushed to it. +There was Mordreth, who did little but portraits--and "deaders" at +that--but who fancied he might come out reasonably strong on landscape +and on architectural accessories if somebody would only give him a +chance. There was Felix Stalinski, who had lately left "spot-knocking" +for general designing and who thought that if a man was able to turn out +a good, effective poster he might consider himself equal to almost +anything. And there was Stephen Giles, who had recently been decorating +reception halls and dining-rooms for the high and mighty and who saw no +reason why he shouldn't take a higher flight still and adorn the palaces +where the money was made instead of those where it was spent. "No use in +my talking to you about _him_, though," broke off Little O'Grady. "He +ain't one of us any more. He's one of you, now." + +"I hope you fellows don't feel that way----" began Dill. + +"He's a renegade," declared Little O'Grady. "But never mind; we like him +all the same. Some day he may be glad to leave the Temple and come back +to us again at the Warren. That'll be all right. We'll welcome him; we'll +share our last mouthful of excelsior with him." Little O'Grady gave +another joyful kick into the air. "Well, his room didn't stay empty long; +Gowan moved down right away, and a new man took Gowan's room only day +before yesterday--so old Ezekiel won't lose more'n about fourteen +dollars' rent, after all. Chap's got his name out already: Ignace +Pr--Pr----Well, anyway, it begins with a P. He makes rattling strong +coffee, by the smell, and tinkles now and then on the thing-a-ma-jig. +They say he's terrible smart--full of the real old stuff." + +"Has Gowan been thinking up anything in particular?" + +"Well, he's thinking he sees that money piled up in the bank vaults. We +all do. And we want to get at it. Say, great thing to be working for a +bank, eh? No flighty, shilly-shallying, notional women, but a lot of +steady, sober business-men who'll make a good straight contract and keep +it. No saying, 'Well, my daughter doesn't altogether fancy this,' or, 'I +will take your sketches home to my husband and we will think about +them,'--and then never telling us _what_ they think. Sure pay, too. And +prompt, as well. Quarter down, let us say, on submitting the general +scheme of decoration; another quarter as soon as we begin actual +work----Yes, sir, I almost feel as if I saw my way to meat once a day +right through the week!" + + + + +VI + +"Then I don't see but that he is about the man for us," said Roscoe +Orlando Gibbons;--"at least he seems to provide a point for us to start +from." + +Jeremiah McNulty rescued some loose memoranda from the absent-minded +pokings of his caller's plump forefinger and scratched his chin. + +"You were pretty favourably impressed, weren't you?" asked Roscoe +Orlando, leaning forward across the corner of the other's desk. "_I_ was. +I thought he had something in him, and something behind him. Seemed to me +like a very dependable chap--for one in that line. These artists, you +know,--erratic, notional, irresponsible. You never feel sure how you have +them; you can't treat with them as you can with a downright, sensible, +methodical business-man. I assure you I've heard the most astonishing +tales about them. There's Whistley, for example--sort of sharp, perverse +spoiled child, I should say. And the time my own brother-in-law had over +the portrait painted by that man from Sweden! We've got to make up our +minds to be patient with them, to humour them. But Dill, now----" Roscoe +Orlando Gibbons ran his fingers through his graying whiskers and waited +for Jeremiah's belated observation. + +Jeremiah took his time in making it. He had accompanied his granddaughter +to Daffingdon Dill's studio, but he was in no haste to formulate his +impressions. His eyes were still blinking at the duskiness of the place, +his nose was still sniffing the curious odour of burning pastilles, his +ears were still full of the low-voiced chatter of a swarm of idle +fashionables, and his feet (that humpy tiger-rug once passed) still had a +lingering sense of the shining slipperiness of the brown polished floor. +That floor!--poor Jeremiah had stood upon it as helpless as a cripple on +a wide glare of ice, at a cruelly embarrassing disadvantage and wholly at +the mercy of that original and anomalous person in the brown Van Dyck +beard. Vainly had he cast about for something to lay hold of. None of the +people there had he ever seen before; none of the topics bandied about so +lightly and carelessly had he ever heard broached before. The sole prop +upon which he had tried to repose his sinking spirit had looked indeed +like an oak, but had turned out to be merely a broken reed. "That's the +only man here," he had muttered, on looking across toward a stalwart, +broad-shouldered figure standing half in the shadow of some frayed and +discoloured drapery. "He's sort o' like one of those 'swells,' in that +slick new coat and all, but I'll risk him." However, this robust young +man had shown himself as prompt as any in his use of the teasing jargon +of the place; he assumed on Jeremiah's part some interest and some +knowledge and dogmatized as readily and energetically on the general +concerns of culture as any of the others. Jeremiah, prostrate, soon moved +away. + +"Who is he--that tall young fellow over by that curtain?" he could not +refrain from asking his granddaughter. How, he was thinking to +himself,--how could such a big, vigorous young man betray such a range of +trivial interests? + +"Why, grandpa," Preciosa had returned reproachfully, "that's Mr. +Joyce--Abner Joyce, the great writer. You've heard of him, surely?" + +"H'm," said Jeremiah. He hadn't. + +"And that lovely creature in the long, bottle-green coat," Preciosa went +on, "is his wife. Isn't it stylish, though?--they're just back from +London. Aren't they a splendid couple? And isn't she just the ideal type +of the young matron----?" + +Jeremiah touched bottom. It was all of a piece--everything was growing +worse and worse. "Young matron," indeed!--where had his grandchild picked +up that precious phrase? She was growing all too worldly-wise for his +simple old mind. His abashed eyes turned away from her and began to blink +at the twinkling candles on the tea-table; it stood there like an altar +raised for the celebration of some strange, fearsome ritual--an incident +in the dubious life toward which a heartless and ambitious +daughter-in-law was pushing his poor little Preciosa. He almost felt like +grasping her by the arm and bolting with her from the place. + +But most uncertain of all these uncertainties had been the young painter +himself. He could not be brought down to business. He dodged; he slipped +away; he procrastinated. He wouldn't show his work; he wouldn't talk in +figures; he wouldn't come within a mile of a contract. Instead, he slid +about, asking people if they wouldn't have another biscuit, dropping a +word to a lady here and there about Pater or Morelli (who were probably +somewhere over there in the dark), confabulating determinedly with people +who were pointed out as authors (more of them!), urging other people, who +were musical, in the direction of the piano.... + +Some of these considerations Jeremiah haltingly placed before Roscoe +Orlando. + +"Oh, well," returned Roscoe, twiddling his fingers vaguely in the air, +"you can't expect anything different on an 'afternoon.' There are +occasions when a man must let down, must expand, must cultivate society a +little. It was very much like that the first time I went there myself." + +Roscoe Orlando's "first time" had been but a week before. Preciosa +McNulty had communicated her novel impressions to his daughters, who, in +turn, had commented on Preciosa's naivete in their father's hearing; then +Roscoe Orlando, who had never hurt himself by overwork and who was +developing a growing willingness to leave his maps and his plats and his +subdivisions a little earlier in the afternoon, had determined to step +round and patronize the new man. + +"That we should never have met before!" said Roscoe Orlando to +Daffingdon; "I can hardly credit it. Certainly it is no great thing in my +own favour, for I really claim to know what is going on and to keep in +touch with the better things. In my own defence I must say that I am an +annual member of the Art Academy and that people who have etchings to +sell invariably send me a copy of the catalogue. Your atelier is +charming--most charming." + +Roscoe Orlando was fat, florid and forty-eight, and as he began to expand +he promised to take up a good deal of room. But Dill did not grudge the +space when he learned that Roscoe Orlando was one of the directors of the +Grindstone. Roscoe Orlando declared this with a broad, benevolent smile, +accompanied by a confidential little gesture to indicate that a golden +shower might soon descend and that it was by no means out of his power to +help determine the favoured quarter. + +"But this is no time to talk about that," declared Roscoe Orlando, +casting an eye over the other visitors present. "I may drift in again +before long and look at some of your things more seriously and have a +little chat with you about our project." + +Roscoe Orlando had somehow failed to drift in again, but he was now +having the little chat--or trying to have it--with Jeremiah McNulty. + +He looked across at the old man once more. "Yes, I rather think, after +all, that if we were to try to arrange things with Dill we shouldn't be +going much amiss." + +Jeremiah scratched his chin slowly, and worked the tip of a square-toed +boot against his waste-paper basket. "I dunno. It's a good deal of an +undertaking," he declared. + +"Surely," assented Roscoe Orlando. "Do we want it to be anything less? +Don't we want to do something--a big thing, too--that will be a credit to +ourselves and a real adornment to our city?" + +Jeremiah puckered up his mouth and slowly blinked his little red eyes. +"I've had one or two of those young painter fellows after me lately," he +said in ruminative tone, as he picked at the green baize of his desk-top. +He spoke with a slight querulousness, as if these wily and hardy +adventurers had wilfully hit upon him as the weak spot in the defences, +as the vulnerable point of the Grindstone. In particular he saw a pair of +burning black eyes, a pair of eager, sinewy hands strewing drawings over +the pink and gold brocades of his front parlour suite, and a shock of +dark hair that swished about over a high square forehead as the work of +hurried exposition raged along against a pitiless ticking of the +marble-and-gilt clock and Preciosa's hasty adjustment of the green velvet +toque. + +"Haven't I had them after _me_!" cried Roscoe Orlando, jealous of his +standing as an enlightened and sympathetic amateur. "But we ought to +deal--really, we ought to--with painters of standing and responsibility, +and no others. We must keep in mind such things as position, reputation, +clientele. My partner, for example, once contracted--or tried to--for a +large landscape of his stock-farm out beyond Glenwood Park; and the +artist, sir----Well, you wouldn't believe the trouble we had before we +got through. Our lawyer himself said that never in the whole course of +his professional career had he----" + +Jeremiah blinked and puckered a little more, and sighed as he +abstractedly prodded among his pigeonholes. That slippery floor typified +it all,--that dim room full of dusky corners! Ah, if he could only get +that slim young man with the long coat and the pointed beard out on the +black-and-white chequered pavement of the Grindstone, fair and square in +the honest light of day! In such a situation a downright, straightforward +old contractor could do himself something like justice. It would be +playing a return match on his own ground. + +"I dunno," said Jeremiah. "I'd 'most as soon not have anything to do with +such matters and with that sort of people----" + +He saw Dill as a dog might view a lizard, or a goat a swan; after all, +there was no common ground for them--no way of coming together. + +"But if it's got to be done," he concluded, "perhaps he would do as well +to start with as anybody else." + +"I think so," said Roscoe Orlando. "I'll speak about it in a day or so to +Hill." + + + + +VII + +Preciosa McNulty, after all, lost nothing of _The Princess Pattie_ except +half of the overture--a loss that, as operettas go, might indeed be +counted a gain; but the succeeding activities of the prima donna, the +ponderous basso and the brace of "comedians" were subject to a series of +very sensible impediments and interruptions. Several times--and often at +the most inopportune of moments--a swarthy, earnest young man walked +across the stage, throwing out big sheets of brown paper right and left +and looking at her and her alone. He wore one unvarying expression--a +mingling of reproach and of admiration. His eyes said across the +footlights: "You are a heartless, cruel little creature, but that green +velvet hat looks amazingly well on your chestnut hair--so amazingly well +that I almost forgive you. Yet an hour lost by you from the theatre is +nothing, while an hour gained by me here in your home almost makes the +difference between life and death." Yes, there the young man was, fifty +feet away from her, yet she could plainly see the blood pulsing through +his veined hands and could almost hear the ideas ticking in his brain. +How they had ticked, to be sure, and clicked and clanked and jarred and +rattled and rumbled--a perfect factory, a perfect foundry of ideas! +Preciosa, who had never had a dozen ideas in her life, and had seldom +encountered a human brain running full force and full time, was a good +deal impressed. "I shouldn't wonder but what he _was_ a pretty smart +fellow, after all. It was rather sudden, the way I brought him up. Yes, +I'm afraid I'm a real cruel girl," said Preciosa complacently, and +reverted to the deplorable antics of the "comedians." + +Within a day or two Preciosa began to notice the railway trains. Whenever +she was detained at a "grade crossing" she caught herself looking at the +locomotive to find a lady in a blue himation. Then the telegraph poles +began to trouble her; she got into the habit of glancing aloft for nests +of Cupids, and once or twice she thought she saw them. Then her father's +letter-heads began to affect her. They sometimes lay carelessly about the +house, and whenever she saw the tall chimney of his sash-and-blind +factory looming above the blank date-line she always looked for a female +in Greek drapery seated on a cogged wheel at the base of it. + +"This won't do," she told herself. "Dear me, I don't even know his name. +Why, for heaven's sake, didn't I pay better attention?" + +Not knowing his name did not prevent her from thinking about him, nor +even from talking about him. When Virgilia Jeffreys started her up, she +went on because she couldn't stop and because she didn't want to, anyway. +She would not deny herself _that_ small comfort. + +Preciosa was the pride and the hope of the McNultys--especially of her +mother. This ambitious lady had lived long in obscurity--a prosperous, +well-fed obscurity, but an obscurity all the same--and now she was tired +of it and was rebelling against it and was meaning to emerge from it. +Every inch of her tall, meagre figure was straining with the wish to +attract attention; every feature of her thin, eager, big-eyed face showed +forth the tense desire to shine. She realized that Preciosa was the only +one of them who could raise the family to a higher level and bring it +within range of the glamouring illumination of "society." The child's +grandfather doted on her, true, but had never been quite able to leave +behind him the lusty young peasant of the bogs. He had a regrettable +taste in foot-gear, a teasingly uncertain fashion of lapsing back into +his shirtsleeves at table, and a slight brogue that had stood a good deal +of smothering without ever reaching the point of actually giving up the +ghost. The girl's father lived and thought in terms of blinds and frames +and panellings; he could never bring himself into sympathy with his +wife's social yearnings or even realize the verity of their existence. +Their boy was too young; besides, what can be done with a boy, anyway? As +for herself, she had begun too late; she was a little too stiff, too +diffident; society slightly intimidated her; she felt sure she could +never hope to associate in easy, intimate fashion--even should the most +abundant opportunity present--with the ladies whose names were so often +printed in the papers. She might serve as a chaperon, a supernumerary, +perhaps, but as a leading figure, no. + +There remained only Preciosa. But Preciosa would suffice. So the child +was bundled out at the earliest moment. She was made to fence at the +Young Ladies' Athletic League, where the Gibbons girls went, and rather +enjoyed it. She was made to study and discuss at the Philomathian Club, +of which Virgilia Jeffreys was a shining light, and enjoyed it not at +all. Then she began to go to musicales and dramatic matinees at the +Temple of Art, finding a wide range of novel diversion at these little +functions and making some acquaintances worth while. "And as soon as +spring is fairly here," said her indefatigable mother, "she shall join a +good golf club; and then things will really have begun to move." + +But things had begun to move already. The fairest, topmost blossom on the +family tree had set itself to swaying in the gentle breezes of sentiment, +regardless of the dotings of the gnarled old root, of the indifference of +the sturdy trunk, of the solicitous rustlings of the foliage. The blossom +began to peer over and to look down, as if conscious of the honest, +earthy odour of the dear lowly soil itself--though not, perhaps, the soil +of the links. Preciosa was preparing to revert. + +"No," she said again, "I don't even know his name." + + + + +VIII + +When Ignace Prochnow found himself able to move into the Rabbit-Hutch, he +congratulated himself on having made a marked advance in fortune. + +"Oh, Lord!" thought Little O'Grady, upon Prochnow's venturing this +disclosure, which he made in all sincerity and simplicity and with a +complete absence of false shame; "how must he have lived before!" + +The Rabbit-Hutch, the Warren, the Burrow--it went by all of these +names--was a hapless property that was trying to pay taxes on itself +between the ebbing of one tide of prosperity and the hoped-for flood of +another. Centres were shifting, values were see-sawing, and old Ezekiel +Warren was waiting for the nature of the neighbourhood to declare itself +with something like distinctness. Meanwhile,--as regarded its upper +floors, at least,--broken panes of glass were seldom mended, sagging +doors seldom rehung, smoky ceilings seldom whitewashed, and the corridors +rarely swept, save when the tenants formed themselves into a +street-cleaning brigade, as Little O'Grady called it, and co-operated to +make an immense but futile dust and stir. + +"You're in a palace, sure," declared Little O'Grady, on the occasion of +his first call upon the newcomer. This took place the third day of +Prochnow's tenancy--he had scarcely got his poor belongings into shape +and had barely affixed his name to the door. But Little O'Grady cared +nothing for conventions; he was ready to overstep any boundary, to break +through any barrier. "How did it occur to you to come among us?" he +asked, sitting down on the bed. "What made you want to be a Bunny?" + +"I found I must be where I could reach people, and where I could give +them a chance to reach me." + +Prochnow spoke with a slight accent--slight, but quaint and pungent. To +have come among the Anglo-Saxons three or four years sooner would have +been an advantage; to have deferred coming three or four years longer, a +calamity. + +"Yep, they 'reach' us good and hard," said O'Grady; "processions of +millionairesses and peeresses marching through the halls with gold crowns +on their heads and bags of double-eagles in both hands--nit. We _did_ +have a real swell, though--once. She called when Giles was here--it +convulsed the premises. We all lost our sleep and appetite and thought of +nothing else for a month. It was Mrs. Pence--expect you haven't heard of +her. Money to burn--husband head of some tremendous trust or other--house +as big as a hotel--handsomest profile in six states. 'Stevy,' says I to +Giles, 'Stevy, for the love of heaven, introjooce me. Take a quart of me +heart's blood, but only give me a chance to do her lovely head.' He +wouldn't. She came when he had one of those good big rooms lower +down--very fair, nothing like these of ours up here. He did wonders about +fixing it up, too. But now we've lost him; he's gone, and taken my best +chance with him." Little O'Grady rocked to and fro in melancholy mood and +the cot creaked and swayed in unison. + +"Show me something," he said suddenly, jerking himself back to his own +bright humour. "I've smelt your coffee and I've heard your mandolin, and +now I want to see your pictures." + +"I've just sold one or two of my best ones," said Prochnow. "That's why I +was able to come here." + +"Sold a picture!" cried Little O'Grady, with staring eyes. "Sold +a----Have you spent the money?" + +"Most of it." + +"Well, let it pass. Only we generally look for a supper after the sale of +a picture. We had one six months ago. We're getting hungry again. But let +that pass too. Show me something." + +Prochnow looked at Little O'Grady, openly and unaffectedly appraising +him. Little O'Grady jovially blinked his gray-green eyes and tossed his +fluffy, sandy hair. "Don't make any mistake about me; I can appreciate a +good thing. What's that big roll of brown paper behind the washstand?" + +Prochnow reached for it. "Just a scheme for decoration I got up two or +three years ago. It didn't quite--how do you say?--come off." + +"Such things seldom do," said the other. "That's the trouble. Let's +look." + +"It isn't much," said Prochnow, undoing the roll. "It isn't quite what I +would do now. It's the sort of thing I show to ordinary people." + +"It will do to begin on. H'm, I see; just a lot of ladies playing at +Commerce and Education and Industry and so on. Still, those cherubs up in +the air are well done." He glanced over behind the wood-box. "Bust open +that portfolio." + +Prochnow looked at his visitor again--longer, more studiously. + +"Oh, come now," said Little O'Grady, "you'll have me red-headed in a +minute. I'm no chump; I know a good thing when I see it." + +Prochnow opened the portfolio and handed out several sketches one after +another. "These are more recent," he said;--"all within the last few +months." + +Little O'Grady snatched them, devoured them, immediately took fire. +Prochnow caught the flame and burned and blazed in return. "Whew! this is +warm stuff!" cried Little O'Grady, who had not an envious bone in his +body; "and you--you're a wonder!" Little O'Grady made a last sudden grab. +"Oh, this, this!" He dropped the sheet and threw up both hands. Then, +being still seated on the cot, he threw up both feet. Then he placed his +feet upon the floor and rose on them and gave Ignace Prochnow a set +oratorical appreciation of his qualities as a thinker and a draughtsman, +and then, swept away by a sudden impulse to spread the news of this +magnificent new "find" right under their own roof, he rushed downstairs +to communicate his discovery to Festus Gowan. + +"Will return in half an hour," said the card on Gowan's door; so Little +O'Grady sped back upstairs and burst in on Mordreth. + +Mordreth was sitting composedly before a half-finished portrait of an +elderly man of rustic mien. About him were disposed a number of helps and +accessories: a pair of old-fashioned gold spectacles, an envelope +containing a lock of gray hair, two or three faded photographs, and a +steel engraving extracted from the _Early Settlers of Illinois_. With +these aids he was hoping to hit the taste and satisfy the memory of +certain surviving grandchildren. + +Little O'Grady ignored the presence of any third person and let himself +out. "He's a genius, Mark; he's full of the real stuff. He can draw to +beat the band, and he's got ideas to burn--throws them out as a volcano +does hot stones. And I expect he can paint too, from what little I +saw--says he's just sold off all his best things. Yes, sir, he's an +out-and-out genius and we've got to treat him right; we must let him in +on this bank scheme of ours--that's all there is about it!" + + + + +IX + +"Well, it comes to this, then," said Virgilia. "We must give them +something definite--a fully outlined--_projet_; and we must give it to +them as soon as possible." She cleared away the ruck of evening papers +from the library table, sent her younger sister off with arithmetic and +geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper +from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more +lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that +foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has a chance to +mature." + +She put a pen into Daffingdon's hand, with the open expectation of +immediate results. She herself always thought better with a pen in her +hand and a writing-pad under it; no doubt a painter would respond to the +same stimulus. + +Daffingdon bit at the end of the penholder and made a dog-ear on the +topmost of the steel-gray sheets. + +"Come," said Virgilia. "Whatever follies may have begun to churn in their +poor weak noddles, we will _not_ draw upon the early pages of the local +annals, we will not attempt to reconstruct the odious architecture of the +primitive prairie town. Come; there are twelve large lunettes, you say?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, now, just how shall we handle them?" + +"I had thought of a general colour-scheme in umber and sienna; though +Giles's idea of shading the six on the left into purple and olive and the +six on the right into----" + +"Dear me! Can we hope to impress Andrew P. Hill with any such idea as +that? No; we must have our theme, our subject--our series of subjects." + +"I don't want to be simply pictorial," said Daffingdon reluctantly; "and +surely you can't expect me to let my work run into mere literature." + +"They're business-men," returned Virgilia. "For our own credit--for our +own salvation, indeed--we must be clear-cut and definite. Even if we are +artists we mustn't give those hard-headed old fellows any chance to +accuse us of wabbling, of shilly-shallying. We must try to be as +business-like as they are. So let's get in our work--and get it in +first." + +Daffingdon's eyes roamed the rugs, the hangings, the furniture. "'The +Genius of the City,'" he murmured vaguely, "'Encouraging--Encouraging'--" + +"Yes, yes," spoke Virgilia, doing a little encouraging herself. + +"Or, 'The--The Westward Star of Empire Illuminating the'----" proceeded +Daffingdon mistily, raising his eyes toward the electrolier. + +"Yes, yes," responded Virgilia quickly, by way of further encouragement. + +"Or--or--'The Triumphal March of Progress through Our'----" Daffingdon +confusedly dipped the wrong end of the penholder into the big sprawling +inkstand. + +Virgilia's teeth began to feel for her lips, and her eyebrows to draw +themselves down in an impatient little frown of disappointment. Not +through "Our Midst," she hoped. What was the matter with her idol? What +had he done with all his fund of information? What had become of his +ideas, his imagination? She felt that if she were to approach a bit +closer to his pedestal and sound him with her knuckles he would be found +hollow. What a calamity in such a discovery! She put her hand behind her +back and kept her distance. + +"'The Genius of the City,'" she mused; "'The Star of Empire.' Those might +do for single subjects but not for a general scheme. 'The March of +Progress '--that might be better as a broad working basis, although----" +She saw the "lady" seated on the cogged wheel beneath the factory chimney +and stopped. + +"'The Prairie-Schooner'--'The Bridging of the Mississippi'--'The Last of +the Buffaloes'--' The Corner-Stones of New Capitols'----" pursued +Daffingdon brokenly. + +"Would you care very much for that sort of thing?" asked Virgilia. + +"No." + +"Nor I. Come, let me tell you; I have it: 'The History of Banking in all +Ages'! There, what do you think of that?" she asked, rising with an air +of triumph. + +Dill hesitated. "I don't believe I know so very much about the history of +banking." + +"Don't you? But _I_ do--enough and more than enough for the present +purpose. Come, tell me, isn't that a promising idea? What a series it +would make!--so picturesque, so varied, so magnificent!" + +Daffingdon looked up at his Egeria; her visible inspiration almost cowed +him. "Isn't that a pretty large theme?" he questioned. "Wouldn't it +require a good deal of thought and study----?" + +"Thought? Study? Surely it would. But _I_ think and study all the time! +Let me see; where shall we begin? With the Jews and Lombards in England, +Think what you have!--contrast, costumes, situations, everything. Then +take the 'Lombards' in Italy itself; the founding of the earliest banks +in Venice, Lucca, Genoa, Florence; the glamour of it, the spectacularity +of it, the dealings with popes and with foreign kings! And there were the +Fuggers at Augsburg who trafficked with emperors: houses with those +step-ladder gables, and people with puffed elbows and slashed sleeves and +feathers of all colours in those wide hats. And then the way that kings +and emperors treated the bankers: Edward the Second refusing to repay his +Florentine loans and bringing the whole city to ruin; Charles the First +sallying out to the Mint and boldly appropriating every penny stored +there--plain, barefaced robbery. Then, later, the armies of Revolutionary +France pillaging banks everywhere--grenadiers, musketeers and cuirassiers +in full activity. Among others, the Bank of Amsterdam--the one that +loaned all those millions of florins to the East India Company. And that +brings in, you see, turbans, temples, jewels, palm-trees, and what not +besides----" + +"So much trouble," breathed Daffingdon; "so much effort; such an expense +for costumes." + +"And if you want to enlarge the scheme," pursued Virgilia, waiving all +considerations of trouble, effort and expense, "so as to include coining, +money-changing and all that, why, think what you have then! The brokers +at Corinth, the _mensarii_ in the Roman Forum. And think of the ducats +designed by Da Vinci and by Cellini! And all the Byzantine coins in +Gibbon--the student's edition is full of them! Why, there are even the +Assyrian tablets--you must have heard about the discovery of the records +of that old Babylonian bank. Think of the costumes, the architecture, the +square curled beards, the flat winged lions, and all. Why, dear me, I see +the whole series of lunettes as good as arranged for, and work laid out +for a dozen of you, or more!" cried Virgilia, as she pounced upon a sheet +of paper and snatched the pen from Dill. + +"A dozen?" he murmured. "A hundred!" + +"Nonsense!" she returned. "Four or five of you could manage it very +handily. You, and Giles, and----" + +"The Academy would expect recognition," said Dill. "One of the professors +for a third. And somebody or other from the Warren, I suppose, for a +fourth." + +"Three subjects apiece, then," said Virgilia. "Go in and win!--By the +way, did I mention Phidion of Argos? He was one of the primitive coiners. +And then there was Athelstane, who regulated minting among the early +Saxons...." + + + + +X + +Dill passed out into the cool starry night to recover his breath and to +regain his composure. It was as if he had struggled through a whirlpool +or had wrenched himself away from the downpour of a cataract. Virgilia's +interest, her enthusiasm, her co-operation had reared itself above him +and toppled over on him just like a high, ponderous wall; the bricks +bruised him, the dust of scattered mortar filled his lungs and his eyes. +"Such a mind!" he thought; "such readiness; such a fund of information!" +Never before had anybody offered so panting, so militant a participation +in his doings. He doubted too whether Virgilia could ever have felt so +extreme an interest in the doings of any other man whomsoever. Certainly +it was a fair surmise that Richard Morrell, during the formative period +of the Pin-and-Needle Combine, had never so succeeded in enlisting her +sympathy and support,--otherwise she would not have turned him off in the +summary fashion that had kept society smiling and gossiping for a +fortnight. + +As Daffingdon walked thoughtfully down the quiet street a deep sense of +gratitude stirred within him--he felt himself prompted to the most +chivalrous of acknowledgments. He saw himself taking her hand--with such +deliberation as to preclude any shock of surprise, and looking into her +eyes as ardently and earnestly as good taste would permit; and heard +himself saying, in a voice as tremulous with passion as the voice of a +well-bred gentleman could be allowed to become, such things as should +make quite unmistakable his appreciation of her qualities both as an +amateur and a woman. Certainly if this great undertaking went through he +should be able to say all that was in him and to maintain it to the last +word. She had turned a deaf ear to others, but there was reason to think +she might listen to him. + +Then all at once the magnitude of the scheme rose before him; such a vast +expenditure of time on books of plates in libraries--and weeks and months +to be devoted to sketches, to compositions, to colour-schemes of this +sort and that; such a tremendous outlay for models, for costumes, for +multifarious accessories! But as Daffingdon gradually pulled himself +together, a comforting little sense of flattery came to soothe his +bruises and to clear his eyes. Yes, she believed in him. This brilliant +and learned young woman had impetuously placed her boundless stores of +erudition at his disposal; she had loaded the work of twenty men on his +shoulders and was confidently expecting him to carry off the whole vast +undertaking with jaunty ease. He must not fail. Fortunately, she was +willing to admit the co-operation of a few of his brother artists. + +Dill laid her plan--their plan--before two or three of his own guild, +experimentally. They gaped at it as a plainsman would gape at the +Himalayas. Nor was it, as has been said, the smallest of mouthfuls to +himself. However, the distinguished assistance of a young woman of +fashion, means and cultivation was not a matter to hide under a bushel; +besides, some firm, concrete scheme must be put promptly before the Nine +Old Men of the Bank before they should have glued their desires +undetachably upon some crude, preposterous plan of their own. + +"It would cost like smoke," said Giles, "but it's an idea." + +"Let's try it on," said the Academy professor. "It would show us as on +deck and would help us to take their measure. Who knows but it might be +the means of staving off a series of medallion portraits of the board +themselves!" + +"An idea, yes," reiterated Giles. "But it lays out a terrible lot of work +for us. Such a job would be enormous." + +"Tackle it," said Abner Joyce. He claimed as a matter of course the right +to be present at such conferences. Joyce himself had the strength and the +pluck to tackle anything. + +"Well, _let's_ try it on," assented Giles. "We've got to cut in first, +that's sure--if we can. Come, let's put out our feelers." + +This was more or less in harmony with Virgilia's parting advice. "Show +them to themselves in historical perspective," she had suggested to Dill +in bidding him good-night at the front door,--"the last link in one long, +glittering chain. Flatter them; associate them with the Romans and +Venetians--bring in the Assyrians if need be. Tell them how the Bardi and +the Peruzzi ruled the roost in old Florence. Work in Sir Thomas Gresham +and the Royal Exchange--ruffs, rapiers, farthingales, Drake, Shakespeare +and the whole 'spacious' time of Elizabeth. Make them a part of the +poetry of it--make them a part of the picturesqueness of it. That will +bring Mr. Gibbons around easily enough, and ought to budge two or three +of the others." + +Daffingdon took his great scheme to the bank, but it failed to charm. +Andrew P. Hill poked at Daffingdon's neatly drawn-up memorandum with a +callous finger and blighted it with an indifferent look out of a +lack-lustre eye. The _mensarii_ of Rome and the trapezites of Athens +seemed a long way off. The picturesque beginnings of the Bank of Genoa +left him cold. The raid of the Stuart king on the Tower mint appeared to +have very little to do with the case. And Jeremiah McNulty, who happened +to be about the premises, showed himself but slightly disposed to fan +Hill's feeble interest to a flame. + +"This is not just what we want," said Hill. "It is not at all what any of +us had in mind. It is very little in accord, I must say, with the ideas I +gave you last week. I don't think it will do. Still, if you want to get +up some drawings to show about how it would come out, and bring them +around in a week or so...." + +Daffingdon groaned inwardly; after all, they were wedded to their own +notion. He explained to them the unfairness of their proposal--detailing +the cost of models, the matter of draperies, the time required for study, +the labours and difficulties of composition. To do experimentally what +they were asking him to do would be to execute half the entire work on a +mere chance. + +"Well, we won't buy a pig in a poke," said old Jeremiah sturdily. He was +now on the familiar chequered pavement of black and white and felt a good +deal at home. "We've got to see what we're going to pay for. That's +business." + +"Never mind," said Andrew. "After all, we want something nearer to our +own time and closer to our own town. We want to show ourselves loyal to +the place where we've made our money. We want to put on record the humble +beginnings of this great metropolis. The early days of our own city are +plenty good enough for us." + +"That's right," said Jeremiah. He saw himself a lusty young fellow of +twenty-five, the proud new head of a contractor's shop, with his own +lumber pile, a dozen lengths of sewer pipe, a mortar bed, a wheelbarrow +or two and a horse and cart. No need of going farther back than that. +Those early days were glorious and fully worthy to be immortalized. + +"We want to make our new building talked about," said Hill. "We want +every daily paper in town, and throughout the whole country, to be full +of it. We want to make it an object of interest to every man, woman and +child in our own community. When the little boys and girls come down +Saturday morning to deposit their pennies--for we shall open a savings +department that will welcome the humblest--we want them to learn from our +walls the story of the struggles and the triumphs of their fathers' early +days----" + +"That's right," said Jeremiah again. "If you had lived here as long as I +have, young man, you would understand that there's no need of going +outside our own bor-r-ders for anything we may require." + +"Yes, a great deal of history has been transacted on this site," said +Hill,--"more than enough to meet the requirements of our present purpose. +I have here"--he opened a drawer in one side of his desk and drew out a +paper--"I have here a list of subjects that I think would do. Mr. McNulty +and I drew it up together. Take it and look it over; it might be an----" + +A shadow darkened the door. It was another interruption from the Morrell +Twins. This time it was not Richard Morrell, but Robin, his brother. His +pocket bulged with what seemed to be papers of importance, and his face +signalled to Andrew P. Hill to clear the deck of lesser matters. + +"--it might be an advantage to you," Andrew concluded. "This about +represents our ideas; see what you can do with it." + +Andrew passed the paper over to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah passed it on to +Daffingdon with an expression of unalterable firmness and decision. "You +_must_ do something with this, if you are going to do anything for us at +all," his air said. "It's this or nothing. It is our own idea; we're +proud of it, and we insist upon it. Go." + + + + + +XI + + +The Morrell Twins were among the newer powers. They had rolled up a +surprisingly big fortune--if it _was_ a fortune--in a surprisingly short +time, and were looked up to as very perfect gentle knights by all the +ambitious young fry of the "street." They were the head and front of the +Pin-and-Needle Combine. They did not deal with the Grindstone only; they +had made their business the business of half the banks of the town,--for +how could these institutions be expected to stand out when all the +investors and speculators of the street were pressing forward eager to +add to their collections a few good specimens of the admirably engraved +and printed certificates of the Combine, and more than willing to pay any +price that anybody might ask? Some of the banks--the more fortunate among +them--were attending to this business during business hours; others of +them worked on it overtime, and one or two were beginning to work on it +all night as well as all day. They worried. The Twins were not worrying +nearly so much,--they knew they must be seen through. + +The Twins had been grinding pins and needles for a year or two with +striking acumen and dexterity. Sometimes Richard would turn the handle +and Robin would hold the poor dull pins to the stone; and then again they +would change places. Whichever arrangement happened to be in force, +people said the work had never been done more neatly, more precisely. And +now the Twins had enlarged their field and had begun to grind noses. They +were showing themselves past masters in the art. They had all the +legislation of nose-grinding at their fingers' ends; the lack of +legislation, too, as well as the probabilities of legislation yet to +come. They knew just how fast the wheel might be turned in this State, +and just how close the nose might be held in that, and just how loud the +victim must cry out before the Rescue Band might be moved to issue from +some Committee Room to stop the treatment. They knew where nose-grinding +was prohibited altogether, and they knew where enactments against it had +thus far completely failed. They knew where the penalty was likely to be +enforced, and they knew where it might be evaded. "Learn familiarly the +whole body of legislative enactment, state by state, and then keep a +little in advance of it,"--such was their simple rule. + +No man is to be denied the right to profit by his own discovery, and so, +though the glory of the Twins was envied, their right to luxuriate in it +was seldom questioned. They were seen in all sorts of prominent and +expensive places--at the opera, at the horse-show, on the golf links, and +were very much envied and admired,--envied by other young men that were +trying to do as they had done, but not succeeding; admired by multitudes +of young women who felt pretty sure that to "have things," and to have +them with great abundance and promptness and conspicuousness, was all +that made life worth living. In this environment Richard Morrell could +hardly fail to be fairly well satisfied with himself. To ask and to +receive would come to the same thing. And so he spoke to Virgilia one +crisp October morning, between the fifth and sixth holes in Smoky Hollow, +and awaited in all confidence her reply. But Virgilia quickly made it +plain that he would not do--not for her, at least. She was by no means +one of the kind to be impressed by tally-ho coaches, however loudly and +discordantly the grooms might trumpet, nor to be brought round by +country-club dinners, however deafening the chatter or however +preponderant the phalanx of long-necked bottles. So his raw, red face +turned a shade redder still; and as he sat, later, on the club veranda, +hectoring the waiter and scowling into his empty glass, he growled to +himself in a thick undertone: + +"What's the matter with the girl, anyway? If she doesn't want me, who +does she want?" + +Virgilia wanted, in a general way, an intimate and equal companionship, a +trafficking in the things that interested her--the higher things, she +sometimes called them to herself. She wanted a gentleman; she wanted +cultivation, refinement--even to its last debilitating excess. What she +wanted least of all was a "provider," a steward, an agent, a business +machine. "We must _live_," she would say, looking forward toward her +matrimonial ideal; "we mustn't let our whole life run out in a mere +stupid endeavour to accumulate the means of living, and then find +ourselves only beginning when at the finish:"--an idea held substantially +by so different a young person as Preciosa McNulty, who was preparing to +set aside her mother's careful ambitions and to take a step forward on +her own account. Only, Preciosa was looking less for cultivation and +gentility than for "temperament." Less the dry specialist, however +successful in the accumulation of this world's goods, than the resonant +adventurer that would bring her full chance at all the manifold haps and +mishaps of life as it runs. + +"Nothing more tedious than a set programme," declared Preciosa. "If my +whole future were to be arranged for me to-morrow, I should want to die +the day after. A whole play"--Preciosa was a most persevering little +theatre-goer--"carried through with one stage-setting--how tiresome that +would be!" + + + + +XII + +"Come, now," said Little O'Grady; "help the lame duck over the stile. Be +a good Gowan--give the poor fellow the use of your studio. Mordreth's +isn't enough better to be worth asking for, and Stalinski is working from +the model. Come,--as a personal favour to me. It was I let you in on the +bank scheme and gave you a chance to make big money; and now you must +just let Ignace have the use of your place for a few hours--he can't +paint the girl's picture in that little hole upstairs." + +"Much you let me in!" retorted Gowan with a grin. "Tell me who is in, +anyway, and how far, and for how much, and I'll give you half I get." + +"Haven't I seen them?" returned Little O'Grady. "Didn't I address the +whole board? Didn't I go for them with the architect himself to help me? +Haven't I got the mantel-piece in the president's parlour? And now if +Ignace can only get a chance to paint the fav'rite grandchild of one of +the----Yes, sir; I talked to them as a business-man to business-men, and +it went. They're square; they're solid; they'll treat us right. Never you +fear. In a year from now you'll be wearing diamonds and saying: 'O'Grady, +you're the wan that hung them on me.' _Now_ will you give Ignace your +room?" + +"Why, he's no portrait painter, is he?" + +"She thinks he is. And it's what the girls think of us that makes us what +we are. As for me, I believe he can do anything. Come, give the poor lad +a show." + +"What could he do in an hour or two?" + +"He could get acquainted with her," said Little O'Grady. + +Preciosa, thanks to O'Grady's chatterings through the Temple of Art--he +blew in and out with great freedom and was as much at home there as in +the humbler establishment--had come to some knowledge of Ignace Prochnow. +She learned his name--in itself an immense advance, and the location of +his studio; and she arranged with the Gibbons girls, who, by reason of +their fencing, were developing great self-reliance and a high capacity +for initiative, to search him out in his private haunts. + +"Set the day," chirped Little O'Grady, "and we'll be ready for you." + +Preciosa set the day; Little O'Grady traced Prochnow's name in elaborate +letterings and clapped this new placard over Gowan's own; and all waited +intent to see just what of interest would develop in the countenance of +the daughter of the McNultys, and just what Ignace Prochnow would be able +to make of it. + +Preciosa wore her green velvet toque, and let her chestnut hair stray and +ramble whithersoever it would, and sat in Gowan's best high-backed +mahogany chair with the brass rosettes, and tried to view with kindly +indulgence his flimsy knick-knacks and shabby hangings (they came nowhere +near Dill's) on account of her interest in their supposed proprietor. Nor +did she find in her painter any of Dill's soft suavity. Prochnow was +direct and downright almost to brusqueness, seeming to see no need of +such graduated preliminaries as even O'Grady found place and reason for. +He admired her, and admired her extremely, as she perceived at once; but +he offered none of the appropriate deferences that she had received on +occasion from obscure young men of less than modest fortune. He was +intent, he was earnest, he was even a bit peremptory; but she felt +perfectly certain that he was not treating her as a subject and a subject +merely. His black eyes looked at her with a sort of sharp severity across +the leg of the easel, and his rasping crayon promptly scratched down his +impressions upon the promising blank of his canvas. Preciosa was slightly +puzzled, but on the whole pleased. She knew she was worth looking at, and +felt herself fit to stand the keenest scrutiny. She leaned back easily in +her chair. Let time attend to the rest. + +"Doesn't she _compose_!" said Little O'Grady in a poignant whisper to +Elizabeth Gibbons, as he thrust out his arms akimbo and squinted +learnedly at Preciosa through his fingers. "And hasn't the lad got +_line_!" he presently added in a rapturous undertone, as the black and +white tracing began to take shape. Prochnow was drawing with immense +freedom, decision, confidence; every stroke told, and told the first +time. "He knows how! He knows _how_!" moaned Little O'Grady, locking his +hands and forearms in a strange twist and rocking to and fro with +emotion. "He's got the wrist!--the _wrist_!" he exclaimed further, +liberating his hands and fanning the air with long pendulous fingers. +"There, he's caught her already!" he cried, leaning forward,--"inside of +five minutes. Not a line more, Ignace; not a line more!" + +Prochnow turned on him with a grim tight smile--a smile that slightly +dilated the nostrils of his good firm nose and shifted in ever so small a +degree the smutch of black beneath that was slowly advancing to the +status of a moustache. It was an acknowledgment from one who _could_ to +one who _knew_. "_Ah, si jeunesse_...!" ejaculates the poet; but here +_jeunesse_, by a doubling of forces, both _pouvait_ and _savait_. + +Then Prochnow turned the canvas itself round toward Preciosa. "Does +Mademoiselle recognise herself?" + +"It's you, Preciosa, to the life," said the daughter of Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons. + +"Oh, Ig!" cried Little O'Grady, much moved, "you're the king-pin sure. +People _shall_ know you; people _must_ know you!" He faced about toward +Preciosa. "Ah, my fair young thing, he's got you dead. Why, Daff himself +couldn't have reached this in an hour!" + +Preciosa was like most of the rest of us--inclined to take good +workmanship for granted; where there was nothing to criticise there was +nothing to take hold of. But the words and actions of Little O'Grady--he +was now hopping about on one leg, holding the other in his hand--made the +matter perfectly certain. Her painter had done a notable thing, and done +it easily, promptly, without revisions, without fumblings. His own face +and attitude expressed his consciousness of this. "Nobody could have done +it better," she read in his eyes; "and you, you blooming young creature, +have been the inspiration." He had called her "Mademoiselle" too; could +anything be more charming? Nothing save his accent itself,--a trick of +the tongue, an intonation ever so slightly alien that addressed her ear +just as some perfume's rich but smothered pungency might address the +nose. Yes, the first stage in her apotheosis was an undoubted success. +All that was needed now was her translation from black and white to +colour. Well, the chariot was ready to take her up still higher. + +"I have found you very easily, Mademoiselle,"--Preciosa felt a sugary +little shudder at this repetition of the word,--"I have found you very +easily," said Prochnow, casting about for his palette and brushes; "and +now I may just as easily lose you." + +"Oh no," said Elizabeth Gibbons, with great earnestness. + +"Never fear," said Little O'Grady confidently. "Though the likeness +generally gets submerged at first, it comes to the surface again in the +end." + +"Don't risk it," continued Elizabeth Gibbons. + +"What has been done once," said Prochnow, motioning with a brush-handle +toward the charcoal sketch, "can be done once more." + +Prochnow handled his brushes with the same firmness and confidence that +he had shown in handling his crayon. The "resemblance" soon sank beneath +the waves, as prophesied, but Little O'Grady continued to ride on the +topmost crest with unabated enthusiasm. "Whee! hasn't he got the nerve! +hasn't he got the stroke! Doesn't he just more than slather it on!" he +cried. "Catch the shadows in that green velvet! R-r-rip!--and the high +light on that tan jacket!" he proceeded in a smothered shout, as he +nudged Elizabeth Gibbons in the side. Elizabeth had never been nudged +before, and moved farther down the settle, after giving him a _look_. +Little O'Grady, who never knew when he was squelched--he never, as a +fact, had been squelched by anybody whomsoever--moved along after her. +"Oh, my! Can't he _paint_! Can't he more than lay it _on_! Did you get +that last one, now?" + +Buoyed up by such support as this, Prochnow forged ahead with quadrupled +_brio_, and Preciosa felt the chariot rising heavenward cloud by cloud. +Little O'Grady continued to lead the performance, prompting Preciosa to +look her prettiest and Prochnow to do his best. "Ah, my sweet child," he +declared, "you've fallen into good hands. You're trying to get away, +true: you've nearly lost those bright eyes, and I wouldn't want to swear +to your ears or your chin, just yet; but your blessed old-gold hair is +there all right, and it's put on to stay. The rest of you will be coming +back tomorrow, or next day, or the day after. And then you'll be all on +deck, jew'l. You'll see; you'll hear; you'll speak, by heaven! Won't she, +Lizzie?" + +Miss Gibbons gave Little O'Grady another _look_. Preciosa paused in her +heavenward ascent, and seemed to be wondering with a questioning little +glance just how far along, after all, she had got. When she finally left +her high-backed chair--"That's as far as we will go to-day," Prochnow had +said--she felt herself very close to earth again: the cherished +"resemblance" had vanished altogether. But Prochnow seemed satisfied with +the result, and Little O'Grady was rapturously fluent over the brushwork. +"Ignace is a wunder-kind," he declared to the doubting girl. "I never saw +such swing, such certainty. He'll fish you back, and he'll have you to +the life in less than a week. Or I'll eat my hat." + +There was a knock at the door. O'Grady rushed to open it. "Go right +away," Miss Gibbons thought she heard him say, in a tense undertone. + +The face of Kitty Gowan showed in the doorway, puzzled, protesting. +Medora Joyce was behind, her hands full of parcels. + +"Go away?" repeated Mrs. Gowan. "What does this mean? Let me in at once." + +"Depart!" hissed Little O'Grady. "This is not Mr. Prochnow's day. Come +to-morrow." + +"Step aside, O'Grady," said Kitty Gowan spunkily. "Let me pass." An +afternoon of shopping had tired her and shortened her temper. + +"Well, as a visitor, possibly," said O'Grady condescendingly. "Ignace, do +you feel disposed to----" He glanced back and forth between Prochnow and +the petitioners. + +Prochnow took down the canvas and set its face against the wall. + +Kitty Gowan strode in holding her head high. "How do?" she said +carelessly, by way of general salute. "Sit there, Medora," she directed +Mrs. Joyce, indicating a chair. + +"Sit here, Medora," said O'Grady firmly, placing another. "Prochnow, +Preciosa dear, allow me to present----" and so on. "And you sit here," he +said to Kitty Gowan, placing a third chair. "You're a visitor, remember," +he whispered to her fiercely; "so behave like one. Stay where you're put +and don't own the earth. We have loaned the shop for the day. +Understand?" + +Preciosa passed lightly over Kitty Gowan, whom she found brusque in her +manners and plain in her looks; but she fixed her best attention on +Medora, with whom she was as much charmed as at the first. Idealist and +heroine-worshipper, she was always ready to prostrate herself before a +young married woman of Medora's gracious and fashionable cast. + +O'Grady lingered over Medora's chair. "We've had a wonderful session," he +said, laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder. "You ought to have +come a bit sooner, my dear." + +Preciosa shivered. It was like the profanation of an idol. + +Medora unconcernedly pushed away his hand. Preciosa envied such serenity +and self-poise. + +"Why, how's this?" asked O'Grady, studying his hand curiously, as some +detached thing, some superfluity rejected and returned. "Ain't we +friends? Ain't we old pals? You can't mean to stand me off with your +London clothes and your London manners? Don't say you're trying to do +that, Dodie!" + +Preciosa shuddered. Medora laughed carelessly--oh, how could she! Kitty +Gowan jumped up and boxed O'Grady's ear with one of Medora's long, flat +parcels. "Get away, you saucy child!" she said. + +O'Grady grimaced and nursed his ear. "It serves you right!" said +Elizabeth Gibbons tartly. + +Preciosa was placated; the great retribution had fallen. She banished the +wish that she herself might have had the daring to be a third avenging +fury, and fell to studying the folds of Medora's bottle-green cloak. She +wondered if she herself were not as pretty as Mrs. Joyce--oh, in an +entirely different way!--and if she were glad or sorry that Medora and +her companion had come a little late for seeing the picture. Would it be +a success--this portrait? Was it all that Mr. Prochnow's lively little +friend seemed to think? + +Prochnow, putting away his palette and brushes, grandly overlooked the +late irruption of trivialities. He glanced across to Preciosa, and she +felt that he was thanking her for having held herself quite aloof from +them. + +Preciosa went away not completely reassured, yet on the whole pretty well +pleased. She felt that she had been taken hold of by a strong, decided +hand. She had made an excursion into a new land where feeble compliments +were dispensed with and where meek-eyed ingratiation seemed not to exist. +Yes, he was a forcible, clever fellow. That Virgilia Jeffreys should have +tried to make her think anything else, and that she should have permitted +Virgilia to make the attempt! She should see Virgilia soon, somewhere, +and should regain the lost ground; she should not allow herself to be +walked over a second time. She should probably say something very +cutting, too--if she could but find the right words. Suppose she were +younger than Virgilia and less expert? Was that any reason why she should +be played with, be cajoled into making fun of a----Yes, Ignace Prochnow +was a fine clever fellow; good-looking too, in a way; and masterful, +beyond a doubt. Had she been kind enough to him to cancel her cruelty at +their first meeting? She was afraid not. Should she have been kinder but +for the abundance of company and the absorbing nature of the work? +Probably so. Should she be kinder next time? That would depend on +him;--yes, if he became a little less professional and a little more +personal. Would he become so? She hoped he might. And if he didn't? Then +he might be encouraged to. How? Preciosa opened her purse for her fare +and postponed an answer. + +At that same moment, Prochnow, banished along with the canvas to his own +room by the return of Gowan, sat staring at the portrait as it stood +propped against his trunk. Little O'Grady, if he had been present, +instead of being occupied on the other side of the partition in sweeping +up the dried plaster that littered his floor, would have decided that the +personal interest was in fair proportion to the professional, and would +have rated Prochnow no higher as an artist than as a man. + + + + +XIII + +Virgilia, after dismissing Daffingdon with the detailed memoranda of her +great decorative scheme, went through the vain forms of going upstairs +and getting to bed. But sleep was out of the question. Her brain still +kept at work, elaborating the ideas already proposed and adding still +others to the plan. Why hadn't she laid more stress on the Medici? How +had she contrived to overlook John Law and the South Sea Bubble, with all +its attendant wigs, hooped petticoats and shoe-buckles? Then the +Pine-Tree Shilling jumped to her eyes, and Virginia's use of tobacco as a +currency;--possibly the entire scheme might be arranged on a purely +American basis, in case sympathy for her wider outlook were to fail. + +Virgilia ate her breakfast soberly enough; she checked all tendency +toward expansiveness with her own people, who were sadly earth-bound and +utilitarian. But immediately after breakfast she put on her things and +stepped round the corner to have a confab with her aunt. She found +Eudoxia upstairs, clad in a voluminous dressing-gown and struggling with +her over-plump arms against the rebelliousness of her all but +inaccessible back hair. Virgilia was very vivid and sprightly in her +report on the evening's conference, and Eudoxia, studying her with some +closeness, was barely able to apply the check when she found herself +asking: + +"Has he--has he----?" + +Virgilia dropped her eyes. No, he hadn't. + +But the acceptance of these magnificent proposals might easily make +another proposal possible, and again Eudoxia Pence asked herself: + +"Do I want it, or don't I? Certainly only the bank's acceptance of Daff's +scheme will make possible Virgilia's acceptance of Daff himself." + +That evening Dill called again on Virgilia, bringing the Hill-McNulty +plan. + +"So _this_ is the sort of thing they want?" she cried. "They insist on +it, after all, do they?" She cast her eye over the paper and hardly knew +whether to laugh or to weep. "'The First Fire-Engine House,'" she read. +'"Old Fort Kinzie'; 'The Grape-Vine Ferry'; 'The Early Water-Works'--oh, +this is terrible!" she exclaimed. + +"Read on," said Dill plaintively. + +"'The Wigwam'----" + +"What in heaven's name is that?" + +"A place where they used to hold conventions, I believe. 'The Succotash +Tavern'----" + +"What does that mean?" + +"I've heard it spoken of, I think," said Virgilia faintly. "It was built +of cottonwood logs and stood at the fork in the river. 'The Hard-Shell +Baptist Church,'----" she read on. + +"Do you know anything about that?" + +"I think I've seen it in old photographs. It stood on one side of +Court-House Square." + +"Did it have a steeple?" asked Dill droopingly. + +"I believe it did--quite a tall one." + +"Of course it did!" he groaned. "And so it goes. One building hugs the +ground and the next cleaves the sky. Yet they've all got to be used for +the decorative filling of a lot of spaces precisely alike." + +"What does Giles think of this?" asked Virgilia. + +"He's crazy." + +"And Adams, at the Academy?" + +"He's gone out to buy a rope." + +"And Little O'Grady?" + +"He fell over in a dead faint. He's lying in it yet. But before he lost +consciousness he made one suggestion----" + +"What was it?" + +Dill paused. "Have you ever heard of a painter named Proch--Prochnow?" he +presently asked, with some disrelish. "A newcomer, I believe." + +"I don't think I have." + +"He has lately taken a studio in the Warren. O'Grady has seen his work +and speaks well of it." + +"What particular kind of work?" + +"Decorative. Portraits too, I understand. He has been doing one of that +little Miss McNulty." + +Virgilia frowned. "What!" she was thinking to herself, "have I been taken +in by that viper, that traitress?--by a child who looked like an innocent +flower and is turning out to be the serpent under it? Prochnow!--the hard +name that nobody could pronounce! It's easy enough: Prochnow; Prochnow. +She could have pronounced it fast enough if she had wanted to! And now +she has gone over to the other side and taken O'Grady with her--and her +grandfather too!" Then, aloud: + +"Well?" + +"O'Grady says he's full of--ideas----" + +"And what has O'Grady got to do with it?" asked Virgilia tartly. "Has +anybody asked his help? Why is he mixing up in the matter, anyway? And if +he wants to suggest, let him stop suggesting painters and suggest a few +sculptors. I haven't heard of his doing anything like that!" + +Dill sighed wearily. "You can't keep O'Grady out if he wants to get in. +But I must say I hadn't expected to be loaded down with any more of the +Warren people. Gowan is more a drag than a help, and O'Grady is doing all +he can to bring us under a cloud. The directors can't understand such +freedom, such language, such shabbiness, such Bohemianism. Take it all +around, they are making it a heavier load than I can carry through." + +"And now they want to add another of their miserable crowd to it. Well, +there will be no room for Prochnows and their ideas," declared Virgilia, +wounded in her tenderest point. "_We_ will attend to the ideas. Let us +take Hill's absurd notion, if we must, and rush in and wrench victory +from defeat. Let us take his cabins and taverns and towers and steeples +and use them in the background----" + +"That would be the only way." + +"--and then put in people--Hill and McNulty can't be insisting upon mere +'views.' Fill up your foregrounds with traders and hunters and Indians +and 'early settlers' and 'prairie-schooners'----" + +"Giles has gone out to bring them round to something like that." + +"They really won't have the Bank of Genoa? They won't listen to Phidion +of Argos?" + +"I couldn't bring them within hailing distance of him." + +"Where is Roscoe Orlando Gibbons in such an hour as this?" + +"I haven't been able to find him." + +"_I_ shall find him. Aunt Eudoxia is a large stock-holder in that +wretched bank, and he's the only man of taste and refinement on the +board. If we have lost Jeremiah, that's all the more reason why we should +have Roscoe Orlando. I shall get her and go to his office at once. He +can't refuse support to our plan; he won't let this barbarous notion of +Hill's make any headway." + +Dill looked at Virgilia with mounting appreciation. Where was her equal +for resource, for elasticity, for devotion, for erudition? She was at +home in Grote and Sismondi, and she was just as much at home in the early +local annals of the town itself. She knew about the Parthenon and +Giotto's Tower, and she knew about the Succotash Tavern and the +Hard-Shell Baptist Meeting-House too. With matchless promptitude and +resiliency she began the broad sketching out of an entirely new scheme--a +thoroughly local one. Was there not Pere Marquette and the Sieur Joliet +and La Salle and Governor D'Artaguette? Was there not the Fort Kinzie +Massacre and the Last War-Dance of the Pottawatomies? Was there not the +prairie mail-coach and the arrival of the first vessel in the harbour? +Were there not traders and treaties and Indian commissioners? "There!" +she cried, "you and Stephen Giles just sharpen your teeth on such matters +as those! We have almost got the Nine Old Ogres on the run, and we +mustn't slow up on them for a single minute!" + +Dill stared at her with dazzled eyes. Such vim, such spirit, such +knowledge, such loyalty!--and all for him, all in his service! He felt +confusedly that he was upon the verge of taking her hand and saying in +broken trembling tones that she was his guiding star, his ruling spirit, +his steadfast hope--what lesser expressions could fitly voice his +gratitude, his admiration, his devotion? Then he caught himself: things +were still in the air. His fortune was yet to be made, and who could say +but that its making might yet be marred? Let him once come to an +understanding with those trying old fellows, let him but have a +hard-and-fast agreement with them in downright black and white, and +then--who could tell what might be said and done? + + + + +XIV + +Dill and his coadjutors had two or three more conferences, and a second +detailed scheme was sent over to the bank. History in general was +decisively thrust aside,--the only history worth recording was the +history the Nine themselves had helped to make. "We will go to the +libraries for 'ana,'" said Gowan; "they will help us with the earlier +years of the last century." + +"And to the Historical Association for more," said Giles. "Old Oliver +Dowd is an ex-secretary of it, and him at least we can capture beyond a +doubt." + +"Hurray!" cried Little O'Grady, who had insisted on being present. That +very afternoon he threw his "First Coinage of Venetian Sequins" back into +the clay-box and started in on a relief of "The Earliest Issue of +Wild-Cat Currency." + +"We've got a good thing this time," said Adams. "It's homogeneous; it's +picturesque; it's local. It gives all they want and a great deal more. I +think we can tussle with it successfully and not be ashamed of the +outcome." + +"As business-men they ought to appreciate the completeness of our new +scheme," said Giles, "and our promptness in furnishing it." + +"They will," said Joyce. "This beats the other idea all hollow. Go in and +win." + +Each one of them spoke in terms of unwonted confidence. Little O'Grady +himself was in such a state of irrepressible buoyancy that he left the +earth and fairly sailed among the clouds. All this reacted on Dill. For +the first time he felt the great commission fully within his grasp and +the net profits as safely to be counted upon. He began to warm to his +subjects. To him, who had learned a good deal in regard to shipping and +the handling of water from lounging about the ports of Marseilles and +Leghorn, had fallen the arrival of the first vessel: he would reconstruct +the primitive lighthouse that Mr. Hill had set his heart on, and would +eke out the angular emptiness of the subject by a varied group of +expectant pioneers big in the foreground. He had also taken the Baptist +church, of whose Bible-class Andrew P. Hill had been a member. He would +suppress the spire, and would show the pillared front on some Sunday +morning in midsummer, with an abundance of wide petticoats and deep +bonnets of the period of 1845, or thereabouts, displayed upon its front +steps. And finally, as he was fairly strong on figures in action, he had +intrepidly undertaken the Pottawatomie war-dance; and as soon as the +conference in Giles's studio broke up, he took the express-train out to +the Memorial Museum to see what the ethnological department there could +do for him in the way of moccasins, tomahawks and war-bonnets. + +He made his way through several halls filled with tall glass cases, +skirting the Polynesians, bearing away from the Eskimos and finally +reaching the North Americans. Their room was empty, save for a slender +girl in brown who was making notes on a collection of war-bonnets in a +morocco memorandum-book. It was Virgilia. + +"Why, what are you doing out here?" he asked. + +"Turning the odd moments to account. Collecting data for you on the +aborigines,--I am sure we can put them to use. I ran out to hear the +lecture on Earthquakes in Japan--you know I have a chance to go there +with the Knotts in April--and I thought I might incidentally pick up a +few notions for the War-Dance." + +So authentic and thoroughgoing a piece of loyalty as this affected Dill +tremendously; the hint of an Oriental exodus scarcely less so. Never +should she go to Japan with the Knotts; she should go with him. His share +in the work at the Grindstone would make this the easiest as well as the +most delightful of possibilities. Now was the time; no matter about +waiting for the contract. He felt the flood rising within him. Here at +last was the moment for taking her hand (she had put the memorandum-book +back into her pocket), and for looking earnestly into her eyes with all +the ardour perfect good taste would permit, and for saying in a voice +tremulous with well-bred passion the words that would make her his loyal +coadjutor through life. These different things he now said and did with a +flawless technique (Virgilia recalled how sadly the young real-estate +dealer had boggled), and a row of gaudy Buddhistic idols that looked in +through the wide door leading to the Chinese section stood witnesses to +her unaffected surrender. The pair passed back through the Aztecs and the +South Sea Islanders in a maze of happy murmurs and whisperings, and when +next Eudoxia Pence asked her niece: + +"Has he--has he----?" + +Virgilia, as she again dropped her eyes, was able to reply, this time: + +"He has." + +Daffingdon and Virgilia passed out through the great row of Ionic columns +and down the wide flight of steps into the bare, brown wind-swept +landscapes of the park. + +"And about Japan?" asked Dill. "You can wait a year longer for that, +can't you? We shall find the earthquakes just the same." + +Virgilia laughed happily. "Of course I can. What will such a year count +for as a mere delay?--a year so short, so full, so busy, so happy, so +successful! By _next_ February we shall be famous, we shall be rich, the +whole country will be ringing with our pictures----" + +Dill found it easy to fall in with her mood. He foresaw the immediate +acceptance of a scheme so complete and so well-considered; the early +signing of a binding contract; the receipt, without undue delay, of his +honorarium--a business-like tribute from a methodical and trustworthy +body of business-men; growing fame, increasing prosperity----After all, +why dwell on Japan? The world was beautiful everywhere, even in the bare, +flat rawness of the suburbs. + + + + +XV + +A few days later, and his bold step seemed justified. The directors were +an elusive body, and even when got together they found it hard to act +with anything like unanimity and despatch; but one afternoon Stephen +Giles encountered Mr. Holbrook in the office of one of the hotels and was +told that the plan was receiving favourable consideration and was not +unlikely to be accepted. As Mr. Holbrook was the most passive member of +the directorate, drifting quietly along with the general current, it +seemed safe to accept him as representing the feeling of that body. + +Giles carried the good news to Adams, at the Academy. Adams hurried home +with it to his wife and little Frankie. + +A few days more, and it laboriously transpired that old Jeremiah McNulty +was readjusting himself to the plan as modified and elaborated by Dill +and his associates. Old Jeremiah was particularly taken by the idea of +the First Ferry--suggesting only that the scene be slightly enlarged, so +as to take in the site of his early "yard." + +"At last we're gathering them in!" declared Adams to his wife. They began +to figure up their share of the spoils and to study how they would lay +this immense sum out. + +First of all they would bring a smile to the wan face of a patient +landlord by paying the back rent in full. As for the rest, Frankie must +have a pair of new shoes; and a thousand dollars at least must be placed +on deposit in some good savings bank. + +"For we have never been able to put anything by, and now at last comes +this chance to provide for the rainy day." They looked at each other in +mutual content and admiration--this was prudence, this was thrift. + +Next, word came to Dill that the attorney for the bank was actually +engaged in drawing up the contract. "We may even be able to sign it +to-morrow," he said to Virgilia. "We shall have Japan in good season, and +much more in between. Tell me; are we not selfish in keeping our +happiness to ourselves? Shall you not----" + +"I am ready to let the whole world know, dear Daff," she responded. "And +oh, to think that I have had my part in bringing your great good fortune +about!" + +At the very moment when Daffingdon and Virgilia were taking notes on the +aborigines and planning for Japan, Preciosa McNulty was strolling with +Ignace Prochnow through the galleries of the Art Academy. The portrait +was now finished. The submerged "resemblance" had risen once more to the +surface, as Little O'Grady had foretold, and the canvas had been borne +home in triumph to Preciosa's fond, admiring family. + +"Who did it?" asked her grandfather, boundlessly pleased. + +"That young man," replied Preciosa. + +"What young man?" + +"The one who came here that night and threw those big sheets of paper all +over the furniture." + +"It's you to the life, my child," he said. + +"Grandpa," proceeded Preciosa, "I want him to come here again and throw +some more sheets over the furniture. He's awfully smart, and he's just +bursting with ideas." + +Her grandfather scratched his chin. There were so many smart young men +bursting with ideas--the wrong sort of ideas. "Let him go to Mr. Hill." + +"They're better than those others were." + +Still the old man shook his head. "Let him go to Mr. Hill," he repeated. + +"With a letter or something from you?" + +"Let him go and talk for himself." + +"No. You just sit down and write it now." Then, to herself: "There! I +think Virgilia Jeffreys will find she can't wind me round her finger +quite as easily as she thought she could!" + +Preciosa gave Prochnow his letter in front of the Parthenon pediment +(where the current of visitors was thinnest), and counselled him to +advance on the Grindstone. He was as quick and clever as any of them, she +declared, and was entitled to take his share. + +Prochnow tossed his head. "I don't know that I care for a 'share,'" he +said. + +"Do you want to do it all?" asked Preciosa, awe-struck. + +"All or none," replied Prochnow loftily. "I am not one to co-operate. I +could do the whole as easily as a part." + +They strolled on through one spacious hall after another; none seemed too +roomy for the manoeuvres of this young genius. The largest studio in the +Burrow, Gowan's own, cramped him--most of all on the days when Mrs. Gowan +came down, set forth the tea-pot, lit up her candles and gave her moving +little imitation of the handsomer functions that took place through the +upper tiers of the Temple of Art. Prochnow had scant patience with the +mild hospitalities that accompanied, obbligato-like, art's onward course; +he could not accommodate himself, he could not fit in. There were days +when the streets and the parks themselves seemed none too spacious, and +Preciosa, who was beginning to accompany him abroad, soon got the widest +notion of his limitless expansiveness. He saw things with an eye that was +new, informed, penetrating, and he spread comments acute, critical, +pungent, with the freest possible tongue. He showed her the tawdry, +restless vulgarity of the architecture along the most splendid of her +favourite thoroughfares, and the ludicrousness of much of the sculpture +that cumbered the public parks; and with the mercilessness of youth for +mediocrity in his seniors, the _arrives,_ he would run through the +canvases of current exhibitions, displaying an abrupt arrogance, a bald, +raw, cursory cruelty that only the Uebermensch of art would have ventured +to employ. + +"And what do you think of our front parlour furniture?" asked Preciosa; +"and of all that fancy woodwork on our cupola?" + +Prochnow placed his hand over his mouth and turned away. It seemed as if +these things were too awful for characterization, yet he would spare them +for her sake. Let him laugh, though, if he wished; and she would laugh +with him. + +Thus her world daily became smaller, more insignificant, less to be +regarded, while Ignace himself grew bigger, more preponderant. How could +she refuse confidence in one who had such boundless confidence in +himself? + +In the course of these strolls he told her something about his own early +life. He had been born, she made out, somewhere between the Danube and +the Oder; he spoke familiarly of the frontier of Silesia. He had studied +in Munich and Vienna, and some of his things--sumptuous, highly-charged, +over-luscious--showed clearly enough the influence of Makart and the +lawless vicinity of gipsy Hungary. He had crossed to America with his +family five years before; they were still in New Jersey. "They came +half-way," he declared; "and I have come all the way--an adventurer in a +new land." + +Preciosa tried to realize the newness, which she had always taken for +granted, and the remoteness, which had never made itself particularly +plain to her consciousness; all this that she might reach some +appreciation of his venturesomeness,--a gallant, spirited quality not +misplaced in one so youthful, so self-confident, so fitted for success +and mastery. + +"Well, you're ready for one adventure, anyway," declared Preciosa, +motioning toward the letter still held in Prochnow's brown, veined hand. +She saw herself helping him into the saddle and passing him up his lance. + +"So I am," he acquiesced. He brought his eyes back from the large, pale, +formidable Amazonian figures before him to the warm-hearted, +warm-coloured little creature by his side. Her wealth of chestnut hair +was glowing in its most artful disorder; and there was limitless +enticement in the turn of her long curling eyelashes, just on a level +with his moustache-to-be. Her slim little body was subordinated to her +head and to her spreading hat in precisely the degree imposed by modern +taste and recognised by the canons of modern art; nothing less grandiose, +pallid, remote was to be imagined. Her dress, full of rich, daring +colours and latter-day complications of design, completed the spell; +those very large white women in crinkled draperies might remain where +they were, when such a one as this was here, as close to him as his own +self, as contemporaneous as the last stroke of the clock, as rich and +brilliant in colouring as any of the canvases of his master's master, as +necessary as bread and wine. He must put to its best use the weapon she +had placed in his hand, when there was so much--all the world, in +fact--to gain. + +"Do your best," said Preciosa, mindful of the portfolios that Little +O'Grady had lugged downstairs and had opened in Festus Gowan's studio. +"Leave them all behind," she added, feeling as keenly as ever the smart +of her feeble complaisance toward Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"Can I fail with such encouragement?" asked Prochnow, in an intonation +unwontedly tender, as he tried to look under those long curling lashes. + +Preciosa flushed--a thing those great, over-admired marble women would +have tried in vain to do. Yes, she was no closer to him than she was +necessary to him. He began to look forward to the time when he might take +her by the hand, restraining such modest impulse as she was now showing +to move on to the next room, and reproduce that blush by telling her all +she was to him and must be ever. Only the wills, the whims, the +prejudices of a few unenlightened old men stood in his way; these he must +bend, dissipate, brush aside. He felt himself equal to the task. + + + + +XVI + +Eudoxia Pence, after receiving the news of Virgilia's engagement, felt +more easy in her mind; she knew, now, just what ground she stood on and +saw just what she had to do. She realized that she had rather liked +Daffingdon Dill all along and had secretly been hoping that he and +Virgilia would hit it off. What she must see to was that Daffingdon got +the commission from the Grindstone, or his proper share in it: those nine +old men must accept his ideas and his sketches if this marriage were to +become a fact. Virgilia, who always ran with wealthy people, often gave +the impression of possessing greater means than she really commanded; +this was doubly serious when it came to her taking up with a man who was +altogether dependent on his wits, his skill and his invention, and +subject to the passing whims of a fickle public taste. She went down to +the library, to discuss the affair with her husband. + +"It isn't as if Palmyra had been left with abundant means and only one +daughter," she submitted. "It's different when Virgilia is one of four. +And her brother is too taken up with his own wife and children to be +of----Are you listening, Palmer?" + +"Eh? What's that?" asked her husband, lifting his elderly face from a +mass of papers that lay in the bright circle made by the library lamp. He +was generally deep in his own concerns, and they were large ones. He +seldom gave more than scant attention to such domestic details as +developed from relations through marriage. + +Eudoxia sighed and forbore to tax him further. And when, next morning, +Virgilia came round to report the fate of the second decorative scheme +she sighed again. + +For the new plan had not been successful, after all; it had failed +ignominiously at the eleventh hour. A great deal of effort had been +expended in the private office of this director and that, and a futile +attempt made to bring four or five of them together at the office of the +bank itself, that the matter might be clenched and the contract signed. +But the directors were elusive, and cost a great deal of time; and when +found, evasive, and cost a great deal of patience. But it was the delay +that had worked the ruin. It gave opportunity for tangles and hitches, +for the reconsideration of points already settled, for the insinuation of +doubts as to this, that and the other. Andrew P. Hill developed a sulky +dislike for all the laboured superfluities that now encumbered the chaste +simplicity of his original conception, and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons began +to question (though, to tell the truth, he was just about to bring +forward a candidate of his own) whether the artists thus far considered +were sufficiently skilled to carry out the work. As a matter of fact, the +only striking and convincing demonstration of ability witnessed thus far +was that reported by his daughter from the studio of Festus Gowan. + +No, that overwrought presentation of early local history was not quite +what they wanted. The contract remained unsigned, and presently it slid +off into the waste-paper basket under Andrew P. Hill's desk. + +The whole circle boiled at this outrage. Joyce, who was highly articulate +and who possessed a tremendous capacity for indignation, would have made +himself a mouth-piece to voice the protests of his infuriate friends; but +Little O'Grady wrenched the task from him. + +O'Grady could not contain himself--nor did he try to. "This is +business-dealing with business-men, is it?" he cried to Dill. "This is +what comes of treating with solid citizens of means and method, is it? +Where is my hat? I'll go round to that bank and just tell them what +I----" + +"O'Grady!" protested Dill. "Behave! or you'll have the fat in the fire +for good and all." + +"No, Daff," insisted Little O'Grady. "I got you into this, and now----" + +"I don't understand it so," said Dill coldly. + +"Oh yes, I did. And now I'll see you through. Where is my hat?" + +While Daffingdon was trying to hold O'Grady in check, Virgilia was making +moan to her aunt. + +She sat down on Eudoxia's bed with a desperate flounce. "They don't want +it! What, in heaven's name, do they want?" she asked angrily. "I think it +is time for you, aunt, to make yourself felt. You are as much interested +in the bank as any of them, and as much entitled to speak. Go down there +as a stock-holder and find out what they are trying to do," + +"I will if you wish," said her aunt. "In the meantime, why don't you go +round and talk to Mr. Gibbons? He's an agreeable enough man, and the only +one of the lot that knows anything about such things. Learn from him, if +you can, what the trouble is." + +Virgilia found Roscoe Orlando Gibbons in the midst of his plats and +charts--he was pushing a new subdivision to the northward; but he +gallantly dropped his work at the entrance of a lady. + +Virgilia asked for his support; she appealed to him both as a man of +business who should be willing to carry on things in a business way, and +as a cultivated amateur whose influence should not fail in supporting a +fine scheme contrived by reputable artists. + +"Ah--um, yes," replied Roscoe Orlando vaguely. "The town is developing a +number of strong talents--really, we are pushing ahead wonderfully. +I--ah, in fact, I may say," he went on, with some little grandiloquence, +"that I have just been the means of bringing such a talent to light +myself--an absolute discovery, and one of no little importance." + +"Indeed?" said Virgilia coldly. + +"Yes; a young Pole--a young Bohemian--a young I-don't-know-what." Roscoe +Orlando waved his fingers with a vague, easy carelessness. "His name is +Prochnow. Very, very gifted. I found him living out on the West +Side--incredible distance--impossible neighbourhood--starving in the +midst of masterpieces," pursued Roscoe Orlando complacently. "I bought a +few." + +"Prochnow!" thought Virgilia angrily; "that fellow who painted Preciosa +McNulty's portrait!" He had doubtless won over old Jeremiah by that +stroke, and now he was running off with Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. It was +little less than a landslide; she and her aunt must stop it. + +"One of his pictures is in my own drawing-room," said Gibbons. "The other +I have presented to our club. Such colour!" he cried, rolling his eyes. +"Such composition!" he added, running his fat fingers through his +whiskers. "A talent of the first order; more--an out-and-out genius!" he +concluded. + +Yes, it was Roscoe Orlando who had purchased Prochnow's pictures and thus +enabled him to take quarters in the Burrow. They were large unwieldy +things, painted in the latter days of his Viennese apprenticeship, and +they had cost him cruelly for freight and storage; but he had always +clung to the belief that he could sell them sometime, to somebody: at +least, they would serve to show what he could do. Or rather, what he had +once done and been satisfied to do. He should hardly care to do such +things now; he was not ashamed of them--he had merely left them a little +behind. + +"Oh, Ig, Ig, Ig!" Little O'Grady had cried upon learning of all this, +"why won't you be fair and above-board? Why will you be so secretive, so +self-sufficient? Why didn't you tell me it was Roscoe Orlando Gibbons who +had bought those pictures?" + +"Why, what difference does it make?" asked the other, in wonder. + +"It makes all the difference in the world--to anybody who knows this town +and its people. Has nobody ever told you that Roscoe Orlando Gibbons was +one of the directors of the Grindstone?" + +"No." + +"Well, he is, and you've got him on your side. Did you say he had given +one of 'em to some club?" + +"Yes. Why?" + +"What club?" + +"The----. Is there such a club as the Michigan?" + +"Yes. And old Oliver Dowd is the president of it. Now you can get _him_ +too." + +"Him?" + +"Yes; he's another of the directors. Oh, Ignace, you poor lost lamb, why +haven't you told your Terence all these things before?" + +As a fact, Roscoe Orlando's gift to the club (it had not cost him any +great sum) had been accepted with empressement and given a good place in +the general lounge. The younger members welcomed it gladly. It presented +an odalisque, very small in the waist and with a wealth of tawny hair +black in the shadows; the foreground was a matter of fountain basins and +barbaric rugs; infants with prominent foreheads waved palm-branches in +the corners; and one or two muscular bronzed slaves loomed up in the dim +background. Dill, who had some acquaintance among the members of the club +and was now and then asked in to lunch, was promptly brought up to look +at it. To him it had a public, official aspect, not amiss in that +place--surely the lady offered herself most admirably to the general male +gaze. The thing was done knowingly, and with a certain _brio_, he +acknowledged; but it seemed rather exotic and already slightly out of +date. He saw Roscoe Orlando Gibbons openly gloating over its floridity, +and bringing up other members, old and young, to gloat with him; but he +thought it more than doubtful whether its dripping lusciousness would +prove grateful to the dry mind and sapless person of Oliver Dowd. And he +was glad to notice that Abner Joyce, who had lately joined (in the hope +that the club's well-known interest in public affairs would offer him +some opportunity to work for civic and national betterment), turned away +from Gibbons's ill-judged offering with disdain and disgust. + +"The fellow has training and facility," said Daffingdon; "but a great +monumental scheme conceived in such a spirit as that----No, we have +nothing to fear from him." + +But there was much to fear from the complacency of Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons. Could he, as he asked Virgilia with a maddening, self-satisfied +smile, withdraw his support from a talent that he had introduced into his +own house and indorsed in the eyes of the commercial and professional +public? Virgilia saw that what she had to contend against was vanity, and +she went away in very low spirits. If Prochnow had but come to Roscoe +Orlando's notice through the ordinary channels! If his patron were not +glowing, palpitating, expanding with the conscious joy of discovery! But +crude ore brought to light by our own pick and shovel is more precious to +us than refined gold that enters into circulation through the assayer and +the mint. + +"Ugh!" said Virgilia to her aunt; "you should have heard him. He +simply--_blatted_. It was disgusting. And now, what are we going to do?" + + + + +XVII + +"We must get at the girl herself," declared Eudoxia,--"that is, if it +isn't too late, if she isn't utterly infatuated with him." + +"I don't think I've heard as much as _that_ said," replied Virgilia. She +knew of but one young woman who might justly go to such a length. "What +shall you do first? Shall you ask her to pour tea?" + +"No need, yet, of going as far as that. Can't you get together a little +party and give her a sort of lunch out at the Whip and Spur? Then one of +us, I suppose, might call on her mother--if she's got one." + +"Whatever you suggest," said Virgilia, with a suppressed sob. "You may +think I'm a perpetual fount of ideas, but I'm not." The Grindstone's +rejection of her second scheme had hurt her cruelly. She put her +handkerchief to her eyes--as if she had become, instead, a fount of +tears. + +And as such she next appeared to Dill. "I felt so sure, dear Daff, that +we could put it through," she mourned. "And now--and now----" + +Daffingdon drew her discouraged head down against his shoulder, in his +most noble and manful mode. "Let the lions take us, if they will," he +seemed to say, casting his eyes around the arena. + +Little O'Grady came over, bearing a martyr's palm. The universal sadness +was reflected in his face. Little Frankie Adams was to go along wearing +his old shoes, and Kitty Gowan, who had been figuring on a belated winter +suit, had tearfully thrown a handful of samples in the fire and put the +fond notion aside. + +Little O'Grady wiped a sympathetic eye. "Oh, Daff, I'm so sorry for you; +just at the time, too, when----" He dared not proceed, awed by Dill's +protesting pathos. "Come, now," he ventured presently, "why shouldn't we +let Ignace in on this? He's so inventive; he's so full of ideas----" + +Daffingdon recalled the sensuous Oriental masterpiece at the club and saw +no reason why the possessor of such a particular talent could be expected +to succeed in a bank. He shook his head; no member of another sect--no +heretical Viennese--should share his martyrdom with him. This left +Prochnow free to rush upon the lions on his own account. Little O'Grady, +returning to the Rabbit-Hutch, found his neighbour's loins fully girded +for the task--the fine frenzy of inspiration had already turned the place +upside down. + +"That's right, Ignace!" he called from the threshold; "sail in. What is +the plan this time?" he asked, tiptoeing along over the scattered sheets +that littered the floor. + +Prochnow ran his nervous fingers through his wild black forelock, and +cast on Little O'Grady a piercing, inspirational glance from a pair of +glittering eyes. + +"The two great modern forces," he pronounced, "are Science and Democracy. +I shall show how each has contributed to the progress of society. Science +shall have the six lunettes on the right and Democracy the six on the +left." + +"H'm," said Little O'Grady; "an allegory?" + +"Precisely. No better basis for a grand monumental work." + +"Well, Ignace," declared Little O'Grady, "you'll put it through if +anybody can!" + +He hurried back to his own room, shrugged himself into his +plaster-flecked blouse of robin's-egg blue, threw "The First Issue of +Wild-Cat Currency" (a group of frontier financiers in chokers and high +beaver hats) back into the clay-box, and began at once on a bold relief +of "Science and Democracy Opening the Way for the Car of Progress." + +"Science," he explained to Prochnow, next day, "will be clearing the air +of the bats of ignorance, and Democracy will be clearing the ground of +the imps of aristocracy--or maybe they'll be demons. And between the two, +right in the middle, of course, the Car of Progress will advance in very +low relief. I haven't quite got it all where it will pull together yet, +and I can see the foreshortening of the horses will be something +terrible; but I'm pretty sure I shall find some way out within a week or +so. Let me tell you one thing, though, about your own job, Ignace. Your +allegory will go down easier if----Say, you wouldn't take Hill's hints, +would you?" + +"No," said Prochnow, with the loftiest contempt. + +"It will go down easier, I say, if you'll just work in some portraits of +our Nine Worthies. Ghirlandajo did that racket, for instance; so did +Holbein. So did plenty of others. Wouldn't Andrew P. Hill's chin-beard +come in great on Fortitude? And if you've got any gratitude in your +composition, Roscoe Orlando ought to go in as Prosperity. Give him two +cornucopias, instead of one, to balance those side-whiskers----" + +"Hush!" called Prochnow reprovingly. He never jested about his patrons +and he never made facetious observations about art. + +"Well, don't get mad," said Little O'Grady, slightly abashed. "I'm doing +just that thing with Simon Rosenberg; he's going to be my archdemon of +aristocracy." + +Prochnow remained smilelessly severe; and Little O'Grady, after one or +two more feeble efforts to save his "face," slunk away--vastly impressed, +as he never failed to be when he met the rare person that could put him +down. + +"What makes Ignace so grouchy to-day, I wonder?" he muttered, as he +returned to the Car of Progress. + +Prochnow soon forgot this interruption and jumped back into his work with +redoubled vigour. He took a serious view of himself, of his art, of +things in general; above all, he took a serious view of his immediate +future and of the place that Preciosa McNulty might come to have in it. +Little O'Grady, an easygoing bachelor, everybody's friend, and too much +the champion of the whole gentler sex to set any one of its members apart +from all the rest, might indulge in such jestings about his own life and +his own work as he saw fit. But for himself, a man of the warmest and +highest ambitions, yet with the most restricted means for realizing them, +play by the roadside was quite out of the question. + + + + +XVIII + +While Ignace Prochnow was busy in adjusting science, democracy and +progress to the requirements of finance, Preciosa, in whose behalf this +great work had been undertaken, was lunching with Virgilia Jeffreys at +the Whip and Spur. A mild, snowless season and dry firm roads had induced +the managers of this club to try the experiment of reopening for the +remainder of the winter: surely enough devotees of out-of-door activity, +desirous of filling in the weeks that intervened between now and spring, +must exist to make the step worth while. + +At first Preciosa had had her doubts. But Virgilia had known how to +execute a cordial grasp with her cold slim hand and how to put a warm +friendly look into those cool narrow eyes. After all, Preciosa was not +one to hold a grudge; besides, she could think of none of those cutting +things she had once wished to say. + +Virgilia had asked Elizabeth Gibbons, from whom she had heard the +particulars about the portrait, and whom she hoped to bring round even if +she had not succeeded with the girl's father. She had asked Dill too, and +his sister Judith, both of whom were to show themselves very gracious and +winning with the granddaughter of Jeremiah McNulty and the supporter of a +rival painter. And she had added two or three other young men, who might +be expected to appreciate this chance of making a fresh, youthful +addition to their own limited and tiresome circle. There was a crackling +fire in the big dining-room chimney-place; and three or four other little +parties, scattered about, helped to remove some of the empty chill from +the great, bare, shining place so full of disused chairs and tables. + +Preciosa, who somehow found it impossible to take the thing simply, was +decked out to considerable effect; most of the other young women struck +her as rather underdressed, and she wondered that they could seem so very +much at home. She felt they viewed her, as they passed, first with a +slight curiosity (giving questioning glances that referred the matter to +their sweet, whimsical Virgilia), and then with a slighting indifference. +Clearly, in their eyes, she was here for just this once; she would not +occur again, and they need not bother Virgilia by asking reasons. +Preciosa began to feel very cold and lonely. + +But Virgilia had no idea of permitting any such effect as this. She had +been very gracious all the way out, and now she stared her inquiring +friends into the background and worked with redoubled vigour to restore +Preciosa's circulation. The fire helped; so did the good cheer--including +some excellent bouillon; and so did the rattling remarks of the two or +three young men, who were not at all overcome by Preciosa and who treated +her with an ingenuously condescending informality that she took for the +friendliest goodwill. + +But most of all was the dear child affected by the confidential hints and +whisperings of Virgilia, as they came to her in the wardrobe, or before +the great fireplace, or across the corner of the table itself, or up in +the bay-window, overlooking the gray lake, where they cosily took their +coffee. This delightful function, Virgilia as much as intimated, might be +but the beginning of many; this, if little Preciosa rightly understood, +was only the withdrawal of the first of the filmy, silvery curtains that +intervened between her and the full splendour of society. Virgilia +murmured of the present opening of the golf season--it would come early +this year; and she did not stop with proposing Preciosa for the +Knockabout (which was good enough for a certain sort of people), but even +suggested the possibility of her little friend's reception within her own +club, the Fairview itself. She had charming acquaintances too, it +delicately transpired, who had taken an opera-box for the season, but who +were kept away from it by a sudden death in the family; and she, +Virgilia, had the use of the tickets as freely as another. Certain dear +friends of hers, she added, were expecting to give a cotillon next +month--and why should they call her friend if she were not at liberty to +ask cards for a friend or two of her own? And it was an easy probability, +she intimated further, that Mamma McNulty might receive the honour of a +call from one lady or another of the Pence connection and even be invited +to assist at her aunt's charity bazar for the benefit of the +Well-Connected Poor.... + +Yes, the veils lifted one by one, and the shining heavenly host of +society drew nearer and nearer. And finally, as in the Lohengrin +Vorspiel, the surcharged moment came when the violins, though pushed to +their utmost, could go no further, and the clashing cymbals took up the +bursting tale. The last clouds rolled away, the Ultimate Effulgence was +revealed, and Preciosa McNulty was vouchsafed a vision of herself as the +central figure in a blinding apocalypse: she was pouring tea at one of +Mrs. Palmer Pence's authentic Thursday afternoons, with the curtains +drawn, the candles glimmering, the right girls lending their aid, the +street outside blocked with shimmering carriages, and the great ones of +the earth saying to an alien, inexperienced little nonentity, "No lemon, +thank you," or, "Another lump of sugar, please,"--a palpitating child who +felt that now it but rested with her to readjust her halo and clap her +wings and soar onward and upward with the departing host toward the realm +of glory. + +Preciosa was in a glow. She forgot the nippy ride out through the bare, +bleak suburbs, and the weltering waste of the raw gray lake just below, +and the cold glare from the dozens of disused table-tops, and the cool +stares of people who wondered why she was here. Let them but wait a +little, and they might soon meet her elsewhere. + +Then Virgilia took Preciosa up into the bay-window on the landing and set +her to sipping her coffee and delicately indicated to her the price she +was to pay. She spoke of Mr. Dill's recognised primacy among the city's +painters, and of the exertions by which he had won his place. She +reminded Preciosa that he, as a fact, had been the first to take up and +study the great problem proposed by the Grindstone, and that both +professional courtesy and plain, everyday honesty forbade his summary +supplanting by another. Preciosa listened with lowered eyes,--eyes that +once or twice slid down the stairs and rested upon the prepossessing +young gentleman for whom this plea was made. She felt that she was +trapped; Virgilia Jeffreys had set a snare for her once more. She was +conscious of the sidelong glance out of Virgilia's narrow green eyes, and +of Virgilia's sharp nose and vibrating nostrils and fine intent eyebrows; +they were all at work upon her to subdue her to Virgilia's will. She felt +very feeble, very defenceless, greatly embarrassed, thoroughly +uncomfortable. She thought suddenly of Medora Joyce, with her long +bottle-green cloak and her friendly face. Why were not more of the "nice" +people powers in the social world? Why must the gates be kept by the +selfish, the insincere, the calculating? Medora, she felt sure, would +have lent a hand without asking one to give up, in return, one's own +thumb and forefinger.... + +There was a sudden stir outside--the sound of crunching wheels and +grinding machinery and escaping steam. The two girls looked down from the +bay. A bulky figure got out of an automobile, gave a command or two in a +peremptory tone, entered the house and made his wants known to the +steward. + +"H'm," said Virgilia; "one of the Morrells." + +The newcomer picked up all the men available and invited them to assist +in his libations. Robin Morrell, the second of the Twins, had passed an +active forenoon in the popularization of those unequalled certificates, +and now he was more than willing to spend money freely in the eyes of the +right people. Everybody he had approached earlier had met his views as to +the value of those documents (they were at two-hundred-and-thirty, or +some such incredible figure)--including a bank president or so, who had +accepted them as collateral on this basis; and all whom he invited, or +summoned, now (refusal seemed impossible), must needs show a like +unanimity in sharing his pleasures. He was big and red, and took up a +great deal of room. By contrast, Daffingdon Dill looked more of a +gentleman than ever. + +"He's like his brother--just!" said Virgilia to herself. "Imagine!" she +added elliptically. + +While Morrell collected the men and impressed his very urgent and +particular demands upon the intimidated steward, Virgilia, leaving +Preciosa, bestowed a few moments' exertions upon Elizabeth Gibbons. +Virgilia gently but decidedly held the girl's father up to reprobation. +Elizabeth professed herself utterly shocked by this disclosure of her +parent's divagations and conveyed the impression that he should be +brought back into the right path and should turn from Prochnow and all +his works. + +"What sort of a thing did he make of it?" asked Virgilia, thinking of the +portrait. + +"Why, really, do you know, it came out very well." + +"What kind of a person is he?" + +"Clever enough, I should say; but not by any means what you would call a +gentleman." + +"Um," murmured Virgilia darkly. How could anybody be interested in a +painter that was not a gentleman? This was more than she could +understand. "Don't let it go any further, dear," she counselled gently. + +"Certainly not," said Elizabeth promptly, and put the matter out of her +mind for once and for all. + +After Morrell had imposed himself upon the men he turned his attention to +the women. Virgilia had always impressed him as a trifle meagre and +acidulous, and Elizabeth Gibbons had never impressed him at all; but he +instantly caught at the flamboyant and high-charged beauty of little +Preciosa McNulty. However, she was too chill and lonely once more to be +greatly affected by the blusterous gallantries of this prosperous swain. +She was very subdued in her acceptance of his heavy attentions;--"more so +than I should--well, than I should have expected," as he himself +observed. Really, she was too young for so much poise, too +"temperamental," by every indication of her physiognomy, for such +complete self-control. + +"I say, she has a very good tone, do you know," he took occasion to +remark to Dill. And he spoke as a man whose authority in such delicate +matters was beyond dispute. There is only one way to impress the pusher, +and that way Preciosa had unconsciously taken. The more she repulsed him +the more worthy he thought her. "I must see her again, somewhere," he +decided. + +"Millions," whispered Virgilia to Preciosa, behind Robin Morrell's broad +back. "Quite one of _us_. And you can see for yourself how immensely he +is taken with you." + +Yes, here was something more glorious even than the Thursday tea. + +On the way home Preciosa was quiet and thoughtful. Her mother, devoured +by a hungry curiosity and a sharp solicitude, plied her with questions. +Whom had she met? What had they said and done? How had they dressed and +acted? For the love of heaven, names, descriptions, particulars! + +Preciosa looked back at her mother and held an unbroken silence. + + + + +XIX + +Prochnow spent the whole day working for Preciosa, oblivious of +Virgilia's snares or of the debut of Robin Morrell. He heaved history, +tradition, legend, mythology into the furnace, worked the bellows with +indefatigable hand, blew his brains to a white heat and kept them there, +and dropped down at dusk with his project complete. He had outlined two +or three of his cartoons as well, and had even dashed out, on a small +scale, the colour-scheme of the one that made the most immediate appeal. + +Little O'Grady, who had had all the trouble he anticipated with the +chariot of Progress--and a good deal more--came in for a cup of +Prochnow's potent, bewitching coffee. + +"Ignace!" he cried, wiping his clay-encrusted hands on the blue blouse, +"you beat us all! You'll run away ahead of any one of us! Only, you'll +kill yourself doing it!" + +"My first great chance," replied Prochnow. "I mustn't let it slip by." + +Within a few days this third scheme was brought into intelligible shape +and sent off in pursuit of the scattered sons of finance. "It's a dead +go!" cried Little O'Grady; "this time we get 'em sure!" His confidence +was the light from the blazing furnace, just as Prochnow's intensity was +its heat. When each believed so fully in himself and in the other how +could the thought of failure intrude? + +"Ignace," said Little O'Grady, "this time they'll treat us right. You +must take a better room than you have here. You must move downstairs, +where people can find you, and where you will be able to let them in when +they do. Ladies, now--how could you possibly receive them in such +quarters as these?" + +Prochnow easily allowed himself to be persuaded. He was already beginning +to see about how the cat jumped and to understand how much depended upon +the gentle patronage of the luminaries of society. There was one little +star, surely, whose light he should be glad to focus on himself once +more--nor be indebted to another's kindness for the privilege. He had +indeed ventured to call on Preciosa once or twice at her own home--in +particular there was the evening on which, defying niggardly Fortune, he +had invited her to the theatre, her passion; but Euphrosyne McNulty had +not seemed fully able to understand him. She appeared to view him as a +sort of unclassifiable young artisan and to find slight justification for +his presence. She had other ideas for her daughter. + +"Come, make a stagger," said Little O'Grady encouragingly. "Take that +other big room down there next to Gowan's. I'll cough up a few for you, +and I'll let you have all the traps of mine you need. Take the Aztec jars +and both the priceless Navajos that I have clung to through all my days +of misery and privation." + +Prochnow made the move. Preciosa was among his first callers. His studio +came to little compared with Dill's, and to little more compared with +Gowan's; but the jars and the blankets did their part, the mandolin and +the coffee-pot theirs; the portfolios were broken open to decorate the +walls, and,---- + +"You'll do," said Little O'Grady. + +Preciosa's back missed the tall mahogany chair with the brass rosettes. +"We've loaned it to Gowan," explained Little O'Grady; "we're helping him +out on a portrait." + +Preciosa's feet missed the thick-piled Persian rug. "It was getting full +of moths and dust," said Little O'Grady. "We've given it to some poor +chaps upstairs for a coverlet." + +"Are they very destitute?" asked Preciosa tenderly. + +"Turrible," replied Little O'Grady. "There's one sufferer up there who's +just about cleaned out--nothing left but his bed and one chair. He's +eating his mattress. It'll last a week longer." + +Preciosa leaned back luxuriously on the wood-box, which was covered by +one of the blankets, and tapped her delicate little foot on the other, +spread over the floor. How fortunate that Ignace was spared all these +privations! + +Prochnow himself could not feel that he was poor. _She_ was here; his +drawings were with the bank; his Odalisque was at the club; and his Fall +of Madame Lucifer, in a bright new frame, adorned the chaste walls of +Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. The future was bright with promise. He dared to +speak now. He would. He did. + +As soon as Little O'Grady had the grace to make a move toward departure, +Prochnow hastened it on. O'Grady went upstairs to banish one or two more +obstacles from the way of the Car of Progress, and Prochnow took Preciosa +over to the Academy to see the Winter Exhibition. + +Preciosa, as has already been said, was not a girl of many ideas; yet a +single one, detached, isolated, and presented to her with some ardour and +directness, was easily within her grasp. The idea was now presented, and +Preciosa forgot all about the pictures. For surely he who offered it was +a most complete and admirable mechanism; the pulse of his heart, the beat +of his brain, the flash of his eye, the tremor of his masterful +hands--all these now worked in fullest harmony and told her here was a +man. Preciosa, never inclined to make too much of worldly considerations, +now set them aside altogether. Any idea of mere lucre slipped from her +mind, and if she thought at all of a mother's strained social ambitions +for a favourite child, it was but to feel with a wilful joy that she was +extricating herself from the selfish grasp of Virgilia Jeffreys. Her own +humble and obscure origin stirred within her,--her, the granddaughter of +peasants who had trotted their bogs,--and she gave no heed to her lover's +gentility or lack of it, in her unconscious tendency, even her active +willingness, to "revert." + +Prochnow felt the utmost confidence in his own powers, in his future, in +the great scheme now under the scrutiny of the Grindstone. He glanced +round the walls of the gallery, and here and there a canvas due to one +hand or another that had co-operated in the rival scheme came to his +view. He made silent, acidulous comments on certain manifestations of +mediocrity placed there by men so much better quartered, better known, +better circumstanced than himself. "Never mind," he said; "next year _I_ +shall be here, and then the difference will be seen by everybody." Well +might the director welcome work from one who had distanced all others in +a fair race and who unaided had brought to a triumphal issue the greatest +piece of monumental decoration the town had ever known. And this little +thing close by his side, panting, palpitating, flushing divinely, had +helped him to conquer his success. + +"It will be your triumph, too!" he told her. + +"Mine?" she asked, in self-depreciation. "Why, I have not made you a +single suggestion." Too truly she was no Virgilia Jeffreys. + +"You have had a hand in every drawing," he insisted warmly. "You have +moved the crayon over every sheet. The whole work is full of you--it is +You yourself." + +Preciosa accepted this full, round declaration with easy passivity; she +was not clever, only happy. If he thought thus, and felt thus--why, that +was enough. He was a strong young man--let him have his way. It all fell +in with his "handling" of the whole situation. Little enough had he +depended upon soft seduction, upon gallantry, upon flattery; still less +had he tried to wheedle, to propitiate. He had grasped her with an +intent, smileless severity, and he was not to be opposed. His words, like +his works, were full of sweep and decision, and empty of all light +humours, and they lifted her up and carried her away. + +"Yes," she said, "it will be my triumph too." And she seemed to have said +the words he wished to hear. + + + + +XX + +A week or two went by. The paladins of finance found it as hard as ever +to get together. Nothing moved ahead save the new building itself. Even +the Car of Progress stood stock-still in the roadway, while Little +O'Grady gnawed his nails. Only the contractors and their men had any +advance to show. They had put on the roof and had begun to plaster the +interior. The vagaries and uncertainties of a few struggling, befogged +old gentlemen had no terrors for them--_their_ contracts had been signed +hard and fast months before, and their receipts of money had kept close +and exact step with the progress of the work itself. "I wish I was a +bricklayer--or even a hod-carrier!" said Little O'Grady, throwing a +despairing eye upon the Car, stuck fast in the mire. + +Prochnow was still confident. He saw a bride, a home, a year of +satisfying and profitable activity; he even saw more than one new ring on +Preciosa's dear, overloaded little fingers. Yes, he had fully justified +his summary snatching of this child of luxury from that front parlour +full of contorted chairs with gilded arms and with backs of pink brocade. +He even heard Euphrosyne McNulty say to him in a voice tremulous with +generous feeling: "Dear Ignace, you are all I hoped to find you--and +more. You have made little Preciosa's mother completely content." + +At last the Grindstone made a revolution. Andrew P. Hill, weary of +waiting for the help of his associates, none of whom save Roscoe Orlando +Gibbons could be brought to the scratch, took hold of the handle and +struck out a few sparks. + +Together Hill and Gibbons considered "Science and Democracy." Prochnow +had devised a scheme that was properly severe and monumental; though the +intellectual cherubs and the muscular blacks were present in modified +form, all odalisques and such had been suppressed. Still, the general +tone was too luscious for Andrew, who, even in his young days, had been a +pattern of sapless rectitude; and on the other hand, it was not luscious +enough for Roscoe Orlando, who, in _his_ young days, had been quite the +reverse. Andrew had no affinity for fluttering garments and sensuously +waving palm-fronds--little did they consort with the angular severity of +"business." Roscoe Orlando, on the other hand, had an intense affinity +for such things as the Fall of Madame Lucifer, and was hoping for +something more of the same sort. Madame was falling in red tights and +Parisian slippers, with black bat-wings inserted between her straight, +slim legs and her outstretched arms, while Lucifer himself, a much +smaller figure, fell some distance behind her; and her staring eyes and +open mouth and streaming hair were a sight to see--even upside down. As +Roscoe Orlando turned over Prochnow's sketches with a discontented hand +he asked querulously where was the _chic_, the snap that he had hoped to +see. No, no; the boy had done his best work already; he was on the down +grade--that was plain. + +"And then, all this allegory," objected Andrew. "It's too blind; it's too +complicated. People can't stop to figure it out. Besides, I'm not so sure +that every bit of it is perfectly proper." + +So the Grindstone made another revolution and took off the tip of poor +Prochnow's nose. He came into Little O'Grady's dirty and disorderly +place, and O'Grady, even before he could scramble forward through his +ruck of dusty casts and beplastered scantlings, saw that the blow had +fallen. + +He gave one look at Prochnow's face, drawn, haggard, black with +disappointment and anger, and began to work himself out of his blouse. +"Where is my hat?" he muttered wildly. + +"Where are you going?" asked Prochnow. His voice was hoarse. O'Grady +looked at him a second time, to make sure who was speaking. + +"I got you into this, Ignace; and now I----" + +"You did not," said Prochnow. His pride of intellect, still unhumbled, +forbade his acknowledgment of any such claim. + +"Oh, yes, I did, Ignace; and now I must get you out of it." + +"Are you going to see those men?" + +"I am." + +"Don't. There is still some hope left," said Prochnow thickly, "and you +would only make matters worse. A great deal of unsuspected talent has +been developed, it appears, by these experiments, as I have heard them +called," he went on chokingly, with blazing eyes, in a gallant attempt at +cold irony; "and much more may be waiting still. Enough, in fact, to +justify a _concours_--how do you say?--a competition." He clenched his +fists against his rigid thighs and turned his face away. + +"A competition? They say that now?" Little O'Grady threw off his blouse +and jumped on it with both feet. "Where _is_ my hat?" he cried, running +his fingers through his long, fluffy hair and toppling over a disregarded +cast or two. + +Prochnow caught him by the arm. "You must not go," he said. + +But Little O'Grady was obsessed by a vision of the Grindstone +directors--the whole Nine--assembled round the council-board in that +shabby, out-of-date parlour. It had been hard to get them together for +Dill and Giles and Prochnow and Adams, but there they sat now, waiting +for him. A new figure entered the vision, the little Terence O'Grady they +were expecting: the spokesman for honour, for fair play; the champion of +the poor girls whose tenderest hopes had been blighted; the whip of +scorpions that was to lash the ignorance, the ineptitude and the careless +cruelty that had brought so many hearts and talents to fury and despair. + +"Get out of my way!" cried Little O'Grady. He pushed Prochnow aside, +clapped on his hat and rushed from the room. + +He tumbled down five flights of stairs. At the bottom he met Gowan. + +"A competition!" cried O'Grady, with raging scorn. + +"I know," returned Gowan. "But there's something later. They have formed +a committee, under the lead of an 'expert'--somebody that _I_ never +heard, of--to pass the Winter Exhibition in review. They want to see +which of us do the best work and to determine whether any of us at all +can do good enough for their wants." + +"Ow!" shrieked O'Grady. + +"Furthermore, old Rosenberg has proposed to cut down the appropriation +for decorations from twenty-five thousand to four. If they're bad, after +all, so much less will the loss be." + +"Ow!" shrieked O'Grady again, as he tried to bolt past. + +"Where are you going?" asked Gowan. + +"To the Bank! To the Bank!" It was as if Revolutionary Paris were +yelling, "_A la lanterne! a la lanterne!_" + +Again O'Grady saw the Nine in conference. Again he heard their voices. +"There's nobody here," said Holbrook, making, to do him justice, his +first and only suggestion; "send East." "There's nobody here," said +Gibbons,--oh, how Little O'Grady hated him now!--"send abroad." "No," +came the voice of Hill, "we need not go outside of our own city. Surely +we can find within the corporate limits somebody or other to do our +bidding;" and Jeremiah McNulty agreed with him. "Why spend four thousand +dollars?" asked Simon Rosenberg; "why spend one? Calcimine and have done, +and save the money;" and Oliver Dowd took the same view. All these +enormities rang clearly in Little O'Grady's ears and put wings to his +heels. + +"Get out of my way, Gowan!" he cried, and ran full speed down the street. + + + + +XXI + +"Yes, they're all in there," said the watchman who stood, decorated with +a police star, in front of the partition of black walnut and frosted +glass. "But you can't see them now; they're busy." + +"I can't, eh?" said Little O'Grady. "We'll find out if I can't!" He +dodged the watchman, wrenched open the flimsy door and threw himself upon +the board. + +Yes, they were all there, including the two or three that Little O'Grady +had not seen the time before--that first time of all. And the Morrell +Twins were there too, one of them remorseful and the other defiant. And +Andrew P. Hill, who presided, was in a blue funk--O'Grady could see his +chin-beard waggle and could almost hear his teeth chatter; for it was +Andrew who had amassed all that Pin-and-Needle collateral, accepting it +at the street's own mad valuation. Pin-and-Needle, pushed too far, blown +too big, was now shaky at the knees, and Andrew and all the Nine were +trembling sympathetically from top to toe. The Grindstone might survive +in a single serviceable mass, or it might fly to pieces, dispersed in a +thousand useless fragments. + +Little O'Grady looked round upon the other faces; they were all like +Andrew's. Remorse, shame, contrition sat upon them. Ah, these men knew +they had not given fair treatment to him and to Ignace and to Dill and to +Preciosa and all the rest. "Just see how they're looking at me!" he said +to himself. "Never mind; I won't let up on them. I'll rub it in; I'll +drive it home." + +What drawn faces! What anxious eyes! What sharp noses!--who had been +grinding them? Answer: the Morrell Twins. Not for nothing their long +practice in sharpening pins and needles! It had come into play here. +Richard had turned the crank and Robin had held down each official +proboscis, and the board had winced. Then Richard and Robin had changed +places, and the board had groaned. Now Richard and Robin were changing +back, and soon the board might scream. "I'll take a hand too," said +O'Grady. + +He began at once; he gave the discomfited directors no chance to +forestall him. He taxed them roundly with their delays, their +double-dealings, their invertebrate wabblings. They had blown hot and +cold. They had played fast and loose. He and his friends had worked, had +thought, had studied, had invented, had torn their very brains from their +heads; and what had they to show for it? Nothing; nothing at all. On the +contrary---- + +"Get out of here," said Andrew P. Hill sternly. "This is a business +meeting." + +"Business meeting!" cried Little O'Grady scornfully. "What do any of you +know about business, I'd like to ask? Nobody who wanted to do business by +business methods would come here to do it, I'm thinking! No, sir; he'd go +to _our_ shop, where we do as we say we will, and do it up sharp and +ship-shape, no matter how unreasonable the demands of the +shilly-shallying old grannies we have to deal with. Business! You don't +bluff me!" + +"Take care, young man," said Hill, "or----" + +"Or nothing!" cried Little O'Grady undaunted. "And now, for a finisher, +you offer us a competition. You wind us, and then ask us to run against a +fresh batch that haven't even left the stable! After we've pulled our +brains out of our heads strand by strand, you'd have us stuff them back +and pull them out all over again, would you? Nobody but a man with +cotton-batting _for_ brains could ask a thing like that!" + +"Brains!" said Dowd contemptuously. He had always looked upon himself as +a lofty intellectual force. In his view there was no great play for +intellect outside of finance and law. + +Little O'Grady pounced upon this insolence at once. "There's not one of +you here, I'll venture, that has had an idea in the last twenty years. +You just sit beside your little old machine and turn the crank--why, the +crank almost turns itself. We, on the other hand, live on our ideas. We +keep alive on our own brains and hearts and blood and emotions----" + +"Emotions!" said Dowd, carelessly crumpling up a paper and throwing it +into the waste-basket. He himself had not had an emotion--foolish, +superfluous things--in his life. Little O'Grady looked at his nose. It +was the sharpest of the lot. + +"Get out of here, young man," said Simon Rosenberg. "This is no place for +you." + +O'Grady passed over Rosenberg's nose in contempt. + +"We turn in scheme after scheme," he pursued;--"schemes to be welcomed +and appreciated anywhere--but here. And what is your own? All you can +think of is a mongrel heap of cabins and spires and chimneys and shacks +that would set a tombstone to grinning. What chance is there for art in +such a hotch-potch as that? What could a self-respecting----" + +Up rose Andrew P. Hill. He expressed all his nervous dread, his vexation, +his irritability by one tremendous whack of his fist on the table. + +"To hell with art!" he said. "What I wanted to do was to advertise my +business." + +Dead silence. Nobody had ever heard Andrew P. Hill swear before; nobody +had supposed that he could. But the unlooked-for, the impossible had +happened. + +To Little O'Grady this profanity was no more than the profanity of +anybody else. It did not stop him. + +"To advertise your business?" he mocked. "Then why didn't you say so +before? It ain't too late to do so yet, is it? I'll do it for you myself. +I'll advertise you and your business and your building fit to make you +dizzy. I'll make you celebrated. I'll make you talked about. You won't +have to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for it, either. Nor four. Nor +one. Just give me a week's time and a scaffolding--I worked on a panorama +once--and I'll see that you're advertised. I'll do it with my eyes +bandaged and with one hand--either one--tied behind me. I'll see to it +that you get the Merry Laugh. I'll see that you get the Broad Grin. I'll +see that you get the Unrestrained Cachinnation. I'll get you into the +guide-books and the art journals--nit! Why, you poor creatures"--Little +O'Grady's liberal glance took in the entire assembly--"who do you think +bestow the sort of celebrity you have presumed to hope for? _Your_ kind? +Not on your life. The cheap twaddlers of cheap daily stuff for cheap +people? Never imagine it. Who, then? The few, wherever they may be, who +_know_. Good work by good men; and then a single word from the right +source, however distant, starts the ball rolling and the stream running. +The city feels proud of your taste and liberality, travelling strangers +turn aside to see the fruit of it, and you get praise and celebrity +indeed. But nothing of that kind will ever happen to you, whether you +think yourselves art patrons or not;"--here O'Grady dealt a deadly look +at Roscoe Orlando Gibbons. "Do what you like; people will snicker and +guffaw and hold their sides and pant for somebody to fan them and bring +them to. As for me, I utterly scorn and loathe the whole pack of you. I +curse you; I rue the day when first I----" + +Little O'Grady thrust out his angry hands to rend his garment, but found +that he had left it behind. Balked here, he was about to let them loose +on his hair, when the Morrell Twins, at a sign from Andrew P. Hill, now +speechless with anger, sprang up and seized Little O'Grady by both +shoulders and hustled him out of the room. Robin Morrell gave him a cuff +on the ear to boot--a cuff that was to cost him dearer than any other +action of his life. Little O'Grady paused on the other side of the +partition to curse the board again, but the watchman hustled him out into +the street. He paused on the curbstone to curse the bank, but a policeman +told him to move along. On his way back to the Warren, Little O'Grady +went a block out of his road to curse the new building, now almost ready +for occupancy. He lifted up his arm against it and anathematized it, and +a passing patrol-wagon almost paused, as if wondering whether he were not +best picked up. + +"Don't bother about me," said Little O'Grady to the patrol-wagon. "I'm +all right." He looked again at the long row of columns: they were still +standing. "There yet?" he said. "Well, you'll be down before long, if I'm +any guesser." + + + + +XXII + +The columns were still standing a week later; and the Pin-and-Needle +Combine, too, still managed to hang together. But every moment was +precious, and Roscoe Orlando Gibbons lost no time in giving a dinner for +Preciosa McNulty. + +Robin Morrell's first impression of Preciosa had lost nothing of its +intensity--on the contrary. He had taken every possible occasion for +seeing more of her. He had invaded a stage-box at the theatre where she +happened to be sitting; he had made an invitation to call upon her at +home impossible to withhold, and he had called. Elizabeth Gibbons, who +was hand and glove with Preciosa (except that, like everybody else, she +knew nothing of her engagement), speculated aloud on the probable outcome +of all this, and her father himself, overhearing, had laid these +considerations before old Jeremiah. Briefly, Preciosa must marry Robin, +and Roscoe Orlando himself would help to the extent of bringing them +together once more by means of a dinner. + +Jeremiah blinked solemnly at Roscoe Orlando's florid side-whiskers and +wide sensuous mouth. Both the affairs of the heart and the functions of +society life were far removed from the range of Jeremiah's interests and +sympathies. + +"Save Morrell, and you save the bank," urged Roscoe Orlando. + +Jeremiah blinked again. He was fully able to do this, if he chose. He was +immensely well off. He drew rentals from every quarter of the city. Those +gilded Louis Quinze chairs and sofas in his front parlour were, as +everybody knew, stuffed with bonds and mortgages, and coupons and +interest-notes were always bursting out and having to be crammed back in +place again. Yes, Jeremiah was the richest member of the board; but he +was also one of the smallest among the stock-holders. He shook his head. +Why risk so much to save so little? + +"Then save your grandchild," pursued Roscoe Orlando. + +Jeremiah stopped blinking and opened his eyes to a wide stare. "Aha! this +fetches him!" thought Roscoe Orlando. + +"Will you have her marry a business-man of means and ability," he went +on, "or will you have her tie up to a poor devil of a painter, with no +friends, no position, no influence, no future?" Roscoe Orlando's brief +period of easy patronage was over; no longer was he the caressing +amateur, but the imperilled stockholder (rather a large one, too), and +Ignace Prochnow need look for no further support from his quarter. Roscoe +told Jeremiah bluntly that his granddaughter was as good as engaged (this +was his own daughter's guess) to that obscure young man from nowhere, and +asked him if he wanted the thing to end in matrimony. + +Jeremiah scratched his chin. Roscoe Orlando saw with disappointment that +neither explosion nor panic was to ensue. Yes, Jeremiah remembered +Prochnow; he recalled the bold, brainy young fellow, so full of vigour +and vitality. He himself had reached an age when such things made their +impression, and when he wistfully envied so signally full a repository of +youthful hope, energy, persistence. + +Gibbons eyed him narrowly; clearly his argument was failing. "However," +he went on hurriedly, therefore, "this is no affair for us. Speak to the +child's mother; she will know how to handle it. Meanwhile, my daughters +will arrange for the dinner." + +Euphrosyne McNulty jumped at the dinner. As for Preciosa's infatuation +for Prochnow (upon which Jeremiah had touched very lightly), she refused +to consider any such possibility. At most it was but a passing fancy, due +to the painting of that portrait; it would quickly dissipate: least said, +soonest mended. A girl like Preciosa, brought up so carefully, a girl who +had always had everything and who would always need to have everything, +would know how to choose between two such men. As for Robin Morrell, +Euphrosyne had been greatly taken with him. He blew into her arid parlour +the long-awaited whiff from the golden fields of "society." He was big, +loud, self-confident, tremendously and immediately at home (in a +condescending way, though this she hardly grasped),--a man to open up his +own path and trample through the world, Preciosa by his side, and +Preciosa's mother not far behind. So, up to the very hour of the Gibbons +dinner, she sang his praises in Preciosa's ear. + +Preciosa was preparing to revert; she sought the soil, but she was +determined it should be the soil of her own choosing. She found Morrell +coarse, dry, hard, sandy, gritty. What she sought was some dank, rich +loam, dark, moist, productive. To be sure, great towering things grew in +the sand--pine-trees, for example, with vast trunks and with broad heads +that spread out far above the humbler growths below; but on the whole she +preferred some lustrous-leaved shrub full of buds that would soon open +into beautiful red flowers. She told her mother that she had no interest +in the Gibbons dinner and did not mean to go. + +"But I mean that you shall!" retorted Euphrosyne. "After all that's been +done to get you into society you turn round now, do you, and cut off your +own parents from it? You'll go, make sure of that; and your father and I +will go with you." + + + + +XXIII + +Daffingdon and Virgilia were bidden to the Gibbons dinner, along with the +rest. + +"It's a sop," declared Virgilia; "it's to propitiate us. It's to make +amends--he knows he hasn't treated us fairly. Shall we go?" + +"He has treated us no worse than he has treated everybody else," said +Dill, bent upon the preservation of his _amour propre_. "Look at that +young Prochnow--picked up one day and dropped the next." + +"They say he's really clever," replied Virgilia. "If we failed, we failed +in good company. Just how good, we might see by going. Mr. Gibbons has +something of his at the house, you remember." + +"We haven't failed yet," persisted Daffingdon. "The field is clear--just +as it was to start with. We may be able to bring them round yet. Anyway, +we'll keep up the pretence of good terms. Let's go." + +Virgilia and Daffingdon had given over all mention of Japan, and had left +off the shy, desultory house-hunting that had occupied the spare hours of +their engagement. This great question with the bank must be settled +first. Nor was Virgilia sure that Daff was proving to be all she had +fancied him. He had shown less head than he might have shown in planning +the scheme, and less spunk than he should have shown in pushing it. As +she thought things over she felt that all the ideas and all the efforts +had been her own. And now the question of money. Money; it did not come +in, and yet it was the prime need. These considerations filled her mind +as they bowled along in the cab together, and she was not sure but that +their engagement was a mistake. At Roscoe Orlando's carriage-block their +cab was close behind the livery brougham of the Joyces--Abner and his +wife were going everywhere, now; and she looked after Medora half in +envy, as upon a woman whose future, whether small or great, was at least +assured. Nothing consoled her but Daffingdon's seeming determination not +to give up. Yes, there was room for more ideas, for further efforts. But +whose? His or hers? + +Elizabeth Gibbons welcomed her father's guests, and Madame Lucifer backed +her up bravely. Dill gave this canvas the closest scrutiny. "It _is_ +strong," he said; "it has _chic_ without end." But it had no earthly +bearing on the great problem. Another point in his own favour: he was +here and Prochnow wasn't. + +Yes, he was here, and he tried to take advantage of the fact. Before long +he met Gibbons himself in front of the picture--a juncture he had +privately hoped to bring about--and was speaking of its merits and of its +author and of their common participation in the great scheme and of the +prospects and possibilities of the early future. Roscoe Orlando tried to +seem smiling and cordial and encouraging, but clearly his thoughts were +somewhere else. And his eyes. And his ears. They were wherever Preciosa +McNulty and Robin Morrell happened to be sitting or standing together. It +was no longer a question of decorations, nor of the walls that were to +give them place, nor of the colonnade through which the public would pass +to view them. It was a question of the very vaults themselves; of the +capital, the deposits, the surplus, the undivided profits, of his own +five hundred shares; of safety, of credit, of honour--oh, might this +painter but eat his dinner in quiet and let the matter of art go hang! + +Eudoxia Pence looked at the new picture too, comparing its spirit and +quality with a number she had recently added to her own gallery. She also +attempted a word with her host about the thwarted pageantry at the +Grindstone, but Roscoe Orlando put off her just as he had put off Dill. + +"Very well, sir," said Eudoxia firmly, within herself; "if I can't speak +here, then I will speak elsewhere. If not to you, then to others. Have +eyes and ears if you will for that poor little vulgarian alone; all the +same, I shall know how to make my point." + +Preciosa was in full feather and in high colour; she seemed like a +sumptuous pocket-edition of some work bound more richly, perhaps, than it +deserved to be. She was in yellow tulle, and her mother had clapped an +immense bunch of red roses upon the child's corsage and had crowded +innumerable rings upon her plump little fingers. Her chestnut hair fell +in careless affluence round her neck and blew breezily about her temples, +and a bright spot in each cheek gave her even more than her wonted +colour. Robin Morrell, who was, of course, to take her out to dinner, +seized upon her at the very start. It was as if he had wrenched a peach +from the tree and had hastily set his greedy teeth in it--one almost saw +the juices running down his chin. Yet his satisfaction was not without +its drawbacks; the peach seemed a clingstone, after all; and there was a +bitter tang to its skin. Preciosa's eyes blazed as well as her cheeks, +but not, as some thought, from exhilaration or from gratified vanity; +rather from protestant indignation and a full determination not to be +moved. Virgilia, from her place, saw how Euphrosyne McNulty constantly +watched the child on one side and how Roscoe Orlando Gibbons as +constantly watched her on the other; and when Dill asked her, "What does +it mean?" she replied: "Leave it to me; this is nothing that a mere man +can hope to master. I shall know all about it before I quit this house." + +Roscoe Orlando put the men through their liqueurs and cigars in short +order--more important concerns were at hand; Joyce, who was now beginning +to feel himself an authority in such matters, almost found in his host's +unceremonious haste good cause for resentment. James W. McNulty, who saw +nothing but the surface, supposed himself here by virtue of his growing +importance in the business world, and was fain to acknowledge the +attention by the recital of a number of appropriate "stories." During the +slight delay thus occasioned, the ladies made shift, as usual, to +entertain one another. Preciosa, relieved temporarily of the pressing +attentions of Morrell, sat with Medora Joyce on the drawing-room sofa, +proud and flattered to have the undivided regards of the most charming +"young matron" present. At the same time, Virgilia, in a shaded corner of +the library, was sounding Elizabeth for a clew. Elizabeth had little, +consciously, to tell; but, like many persons in that position, she told +more than she realized. It was not enough for the purpose, but it +dovetailed in with other information that came from other sources the day +following. When Morrell led Preciosa into the conservatory, at the +earliest possible moment, Virgilia was as keen over their exit as +Euphrosyne McNulty or as Roscoe Orlando himself. She knew what was +impending and she almost knew why. + +And when Robin Morrell issued from the conservatory she knew just what +had happened. Nobody could be so dashed, so dumfounded for nothing. Yes, +that incredible child had refused him. Richard had not been good enough +for the one, but surely Robin was good enough for the other. + +Preciosa's no had been without qualification or addition. Morrell knew as +little as her own mother that she considered herself fully pledged to +Ignace Prochnow. + +Roscoe Orlando came up to Eudoxia. His lips were white. + +"A little plan I had set my heart upon," he said, trying to smile +lightly, "has received a slight check. May I not rely on you to help it +through?" + +"A little plan I had set _my_ heart upon," she returned significantly, +"has received a slight check. May I not rely on _you_? In other words, I +have my problem, just as you have yours. I must insist that justice be +done to Mr. Dill." + +Roscoe Orlando bowed--only too glad to acquiesce in anything. + +"One straggler brought back to camp," said Eudoxia. "To-morrow I shall +try to bring back one or two others." + + + + +XXIV + +Eudoxia Pence immediately got herself into motion. During the watches of +the night she evolved plans for such a function as she thought the +present situation required. Her picture gallery, re-enforced by those six +or eight new masterpieces from Paris, she should throw open to the +general public. She would call the thing an afternoon reception, and +there would be tea. People were to be invited with some regard to form, +but the opportunity would be made rather general--almost anybody might +come who was willing to pay a dollar. This crush would supplement her +bazar, and would be announced as for the benefit of--oh, well, of any one +of the half-dozen charities that looked to her for support. She would +throw open the whole house and tea should flow like water. These doings +must take place within three days, at the outside. Time was precious and +none of her friends would take seriously anything of hers given at so +short a notice. No matter, then, who paid; no matter who poured; no +matter about anything, if only her net took in all the different people +she wanted to catch. + +Next morning she rose for a busy day. She had brought back Gibbons, and +now she must bring back Hill. Young Prochnow was off the board, but that +did not put Daffingdon Dill back upon it; nor would he be there till she +should have placed him there. "We _must_ have that commission," said +Virgilia. "You shall, if I've got any influence," replied her aunt. + +She had long foreseen that, one day or another, she must seize her +Grindstone stock in her talons, beat her wings about the head of Andrew +P. Hill, raise a threatening beak against his obdurate front, and ask him +what he meant by behaving so. + +She drove to the bank. The old office stood empty; a last load of ancient +ledgers and of shabby furniture was just driving away. She ordered her +coupe to go to the new building. Here she found Andrew adjusting himself +to his grandiose environment, and delivered her assault. + +What had he and the directors meant by such a game of fast-and-loose? Why +had they treated an artist of Mr. Dill's standing with such +inconsiderateness and injustice? Why had they tried to handle so +important a question by themselves? Why had they not consulted the +stock-holders? Why had they not consulted _her_--a stock-holder since the +foundation of the bank and an amateur of approved standing? And many more +interrogatories no less hard to answer. + +Hill listened to her cowed, intimidated; it was one more trouble in a +time of trouble. He presently found his voice--or a part of it--and +explained in low, trembling tones that concerns of much greater +importance had come to the front; that this entire matter of decoration +must be set aside for the present, perhaps for all time; that some +other---- + +Eudoxia threw an indignant frown upon him and drove off to see his wife. + +Almira Hill was at home--in these latter days she was seldom anywhere +else. Socially speaking, she had evaporated years ago; but there was no +reason why she should not precipitate herself and appear once more in +concrete form. Eudoxia had an intuitive sense that Almira would welcome +the chance. + +"Receive with us," Eudoxia urged her. What easier way for Almira to see +some of her old friends? She considered. She consented. + +Then Eudoxia opened against the bank. "Give me your help for my--nephew," +she said to end with. + +"Mr. Hill has spoken of this to me," replied the old lady slowly; "but he +is so worried, so anxious, about something these days, that I hardly----" + +"_We_ are worried; we are anxious, too, my dear Mrs. Hill. Figure the +situation. Imagine the strain upon two young people----" + +Almira had not lost all her sentiment, nor all her interest in the +concerns of youth. She promised to give what help she could. + +Eudoxia sped on to see Euphrosyne McNulty. She found the household in a +state of suppressed tumult. The servant who opened the door was all at +sea; obscure sounds of sobbing came from somewhere above; and when +Euphrosyne finally washed in she was like the ocean half-subsided after a +storm. She had just learned that Preciosa had refused Robin Morrell. + +"Such a caller at such a time!" she had articulated over Eudoxia's card. +It took away half the sweetness of the triumph. She rushed to her +toilet-table, hoping, meanwhile, that Norah had not boggled with the tray +and that her father-in-law had not left his pipe on top of the piano. + +Eudoxia was brief. She made no vain passes of regret that Euphrosyne had +not taken her place earlier on her invitation-list. She invited her, now, +with all emphasis, to attend her "art reception," and hoped that she +would allow her dear daughter to help pour tea. A sunburst exploded +before Euphrosyne's unready eyes. She recovered herself and accepted for +both. + +Eudoxia drove to the office of the Pin-and-Needle Combine. Like every +other moneyed person in town, she had a finger in that pie. Why shouldn't +she drop in on the cooks? + +Robin Morrell was not there; she was received by Richard. Richard had +heard from Gibbons what was in the wind, but knew nothing as yet, of +course, about his brother's rejection. + +Eudoxia understood that Richard was hand and glove with Hill. She asked +his influence as a matter of justice to Daffingdon Dill. Richard had been +impatient and resentful to begin with; now he became dogged and surly. +She had come at the wrong time and about the wrong business. Virgilia had +dismissed him with no gentle hand--people had smiled over his +discomfiture for a week. The memory of this still rankled. Why in the +world should he exert himself for Daffingdon Dill? + +Let him exert himself for his brother then. But he became more dogged and +surly still. Why should his brother succeed when he himself had failed? +Why should his brother need help anyway? Why must this woman come poking +into a man's most private affairs? Eudoxia surmised, through the medium +of his sullen mood, a house divided against itself. She left Morrell in +anger and drove to her husband's office. + +Every man had rebuffed her. Only the women had been complaisant--and even +these she had had to pay. As she sat by her husband's desk, waiting for +his attention, her wrath rose against the Grindstone and Hill, against +the Morrells and their Combine. + +"I'll take my Grindstone stock," she declared, "and hawk it up and down +the street at eighty--half what it's worth. Let us see where Andrew Hill +will be _then_!" + +Pence turned on her slowly. "I doubt whether you could get eighteen for +it to-day. The street is talking--talking low, but it's talking." + +"Why, is anything wrong with the Grindstone?" + +"Well, rather. Hill, I judge, has come as close to the edge as a man can +without falling over. I'm glad your holdings are no heavier." + +"Ah!" said Eudoxia; "that's why he has choked off Dill! Well," she +resumed with unimpaired energy, "I'll take my Pin-and-Needle and sell it +for next to nothing. I'll give it away. I'll stick it under the cracks of +doors. I'll present it with every pound, or rather every cup of tea. Let +us see, then, how Richard Morrell----" + +"Do that," said her husband, "and half the banks in town will fail. +You're not ready for such a crash as that, are you?" + +"Why, what's the matter with Pin-and-Needle?" asked Eudoxia. + +"It's at death's door. It's gasping. Unless something is injected, unless +somebody galvanizes it----" + +"Ah!" cried Eudoxia; "so that's why Orlando Gibbons gave the McNulty +dinner! Oh, things must hold off a few days longer! Make them, Palmer! +That girl must marry him, so that I can save my Grindstone stock and my +Pin-and-Needle investments, and so that Daff can get those pictures to +paint, and so that Virgilia can get him!" Oh, heavens! She had once +aspired to guide the chariot of finance, yet all she had to offer against +this threatening squadron of calamities was an "art reception" with tea! + + + + +XXV + +"Go? Of course we'll go!" said Little O'Grady spiritedly. "Anybody may go +who's able to pay a dollar and who's got a friend to name him. I hope you +and I can cough up as much as that, Ignace; and then if we have to live +the rest of the week on sawdust, why, we will. Go? I guess yes. If I'm +ever to make the Queen's acquaintance and get her profile, this is no +chance to throw away." + +Prochnow was in a deplorable state and needed all the support Little +O'Grady could give him. He had not seen Preciosa for several days. He had +called at the house once or twice--that vast florid pile, which had +always looked lackadaisical rather than cruel; but it had refused to +admit him. Euphrosyne had repulsed him with the utmost contumely; even +old Jeremiah (who may not have meant to be harsh, but who seemed to be +acting under superior orders) told him he must not appear there again. +Nothing came to console him except three or four tear-stained little +scrawls from Preciosa herself. In these she vowed in simple and slightly +varying phrases to be faithful; nobody should come between them, nobody +should make her untrue, nobody should prevent her from keeping her +promise, nobody should take her away from him, and the like. + +"What does it mean, Terence?" asked Prochnow, vastly perturbed by these +blind reiterations. + +Little O'Grady pondered. "Her folks are against us, that's all," he +replied. "They're trying to marry her to somebody else," he told himself. +"Who can it be?" Then, aloud and cheerfully: "If you can't see her at one +house, why, just see her at another. Come along with you." + +They found the town moving on Eudoxia Pence _en masse_, with several +policemen in front to keep order. On the front steps they grazed elbows +with the Joyces and the Gowans; and with these and other members of the +general public they swept on, joining the vast throng of those who were +so eager to press the great lady's Smyrna rugs with their own feet and +fumble her silk hangings with their own fingers and rap her Japanese jars +with their own knuckles and smell her new paintings with their own noses +and see Mrs. Palmer Pence herself with their own eyes. "Gee! ain't it +swell!" whispered Little O'Grady, who could make swans out of geese or +geese out of swans with equal facility. + +Prochnow ignored the swells, the jars, the pictures and all the rest; he +sought only Preciosa. Little O'Grady was not in a new field for nothing, +and he looked at everybody. First of all, there was the great Eudoxia +herself, and her profile was as lovely as ever. When, when, when should +he reach the point of modelling it? She stood there with a vain pretence +of receiving,--she was too conventional to dispense with the recognised +forms even on the occasion of a mere popular outpouring. Little O'Grady +went up to her boldly and shook hands; he was outside the general +understanding that made her, in so promiscuous a function, something to +be looked at rather than touched--save by a few intimates. Only let him +bring her within range of his aura, he thought, and her subjugation would +inevitably follow. Then he stepped back and watched her. There was still +a determined cordiality in her smile, but a furtive anxiety marked the +glance she sent now and then into the second or third room beyond, where +a pressing crowd and a subdued glare of candle-light seemed to indicate a +focus of interest hardly second to the picture gallery itself. Little +O'Grady caught this anxious look. "Is she afraid for her bric-a-brac or +her spoons?" he wondered. "No, it's something more than that." + +Beside Eudoxia stood Almira Hill,--"a mother in Israel, if ever there was +one," O'Grady commented. "And what's the matter with _her_? Shy? Awkward? +No, she's too old and experienced for that. There, she's looking in the +same direction. Something's up. What is it?" + +It was this: Almira's husband had told her that morning how it all +depended upon Preciosa McNulty. + +Roscoe Orlando Gibbons came through the crowd, with a great effect of +smiling joviality. But he too glanced over the press of heads toward the +glare of candle-light with a strained intensity not to be concealed. + +Roscoe Orlando suddenly turned aside toward an old fellow who sat on a +pink brocade sofa. "See, there's her grandfather," whispered Prochnow. +Old Jeremiah had instinctively taken refuge on the one piece of furniture +that reminded him of home. Here he sat, awkwardly twisting his hands and +blinking every now and then at the great light that shone afar off. "I +could never in the world have got him to anything resembling a dinner," +declared Eudoxia. "He acts like a stray cat," said Little O'Grady. "But +he needn't,--there seem to be plenty of the same sort here, after all." +Yes, at a second glance old Jeremiah appeared to be less the victim of +society than of circumstances; and when Roscoe Orlando Gibbons bowed over +him and whispered and they both looked toward the illumination while +Eudoxia Pence looked at them, Little O'Grady was surer than ever that +something was in the air. + +He felt Prochnow suddenly slipping behind him. "Her mother!" the young +fellow explained. Yes, it was Euphrosyne in full fig and in very active +circulation. She rustled, she swooped, she darted, she was as if on +springs. "Well, she feels her oats," commented Little O'Grady. He looked +at her again. No, what moved her was not vainglory, not a restless sense +of triumph. She was keyed up to the most racking pitch of anxious +expectation. She looked whither Eudoxia and Roscoe Orlando and all the +others had looked, but with an intensified expression, and Little O'Grady +almost felt as if challenged to solve some obscure yet widely ramified +enigma. + +He turned round as if in search of help. In a doorway near-by he saw +another familiar face. "Why, there's Daff!" he cried. "It's Dill, our +hated rival," he explained to Prochnow. "And that girl with him is Miss +Jeffreys, the one he's going to marry." + +Prochnow looked at the tall handsome figure in the long frock-coat with +the bunch of violets, and felt abashed by his own short jacket and +indifferent shoes. He noted too the assumption of ease and suavity with +which the other was entertaining a little knot of ladies. It was this +person, then, an out-and-out man of the world, against whom he, uncouth +and unpractised boy, had presumed to pit himself! + +Little O'Grady was not able immediately to detach Dill's attention from +his associates. Meanwhile he studied both Dill and Virgilia. The general +effect was brilliant enough, yet----Yes, surely they were too loquacious, +too demonstrative; they were talking against time, they were working +under cover, they were kicking up a dust. And, yes--both Daff and +Virgilia, in the midst of this gay chatter, shot certain furtive, +sidelong glances whither so many had been sent before. + +The group in the doorway showed signs of breaking up. "Daff," said Little +O'Grady, "for the Lord's sake, what's on?" + +"Ah, O'Grady," said Dill, in a cool, formal manner; "are you here?" Since +that calamitous episode at the bank, he had cared less than ever for +O'Grady: they had been quite right in throwing him out. He had found it +hard to tolerate his forwardness at the beginning of the negotiations, +and to carry the burden of his Bohemian eccentricity through them; and +harder still to pardon the slap-dash sally that had thrown the common fat +into the fire. Now up popped the fellow, knowing him as intimately and +familiarly as ever. + +"Oh, Daff," said Little O'Grady earnestly, and all unmindful of any +possible rebuff, "what's out in that room?" + +Daffingdon smiled at Virgilia. "Why don't you go and see?" he asked. + +"But don't break off the match!" said Virgilia, with a nervous titter. +What state of overtension could have prompted her to a piece of bravado +so rash, so superfluous? + +Little O'Grady gave her one look and sped away. + +After pushing through two or three roomfuls of tall people, he finally +reached the desired threshold. He felt a hand upon his arm and found +Prochnow beside him. They both saw the same sight together. + +It was a table like Dill's--only larger, with candles on it--five times +as many, and flowers--ten times as handsome, and silver and glass and +china--only a hundred times more brilliant, and girls seated about it--a +thousand times more fetching than poor sister Judith. Among them was +Preciosa, with a big feathered hat toppling on her head and the desperate +look of some hunted creature on her face. Yes, they had hung her with +chains and tied her to the stake. "If she is to pour here, after all," +Eudoxia had said grimly, "let her pay for the privilege." And close to +the girl's elbow sat the chief inquisitor, Robin Morrell, big, bold, +unabashed, persevering, bringing all possible pressure to force her to +recant. People about them--his unconscious familiars--sipped and +chattered, and fluttered up and away, but he remained fixed throughout. +He must have her, he was determined to dominate her; in the end she could +not but yield. There was no other way out for her, and none for him. And +that sole way must be taken at once. + +Little O'Grady recognised the red face, the broad shoulders, the thick +neck, the heavy hand; he still felt those fingers in his collar, that +palm against his ear. "A-a-ah!" he emitted in a long sibilant cry of +repressed rage. + +"Stay where you are a minute," he said to Prochnow, and slipped away. +Ignace stared now at his rival in love just as before he had stared at +his rival in art,--yet held in check both by the intimidating splendour +of the ceremonial and by his own uncertainty as to the precise +significance of the situation. + +O'Grady hurried back to Dill. "Daff, Daff!" he cried with wide eyes and +with a tremulous finger that pointed back toward the tea-table, "is that +the man?" + +"What man?" + +"The big brute sitting beside her." + +"Robin Morrell to a 't,'" said Virgilia. "Or Richard, either." + +"Are they trying to make her marry him?" demanded Little O'Grady, his +gray-green eyes staring their widest. + +"That is the plan, I believe," returned Dill. + +"It won't come off!" cried Little O'Grady, and dashed away. + +He pushed and trampled his course back to Prochnow. In the library he +brushed against Medora Joyce. + +"Oh, Dodie," he panted, "they're sacrificin' our little Preciosa to that +big brute of a Morrell!" + +"I was afraid so," said Medora, with concern. "Stop it." + +"I'm going to!" said O'Grady. + +As he regained Prochnow's side Preciosa was just rising from the table, +and Elizabeth Gibbons was slipping into her place. Preciosa left the room +by another door, and Morrell walked close beside her. + +He looked about the crowded place with an air that was both determined +and desperate. People here, there, everywhere; the rabble swarmed in the +library, the morning-room, the den, chattering, staring, gaping, +wondering. It was disgusting, it was barbarous, it made matters +impossible. Every corner bespoken, every angle occupied. Nothing left +save a nook under the great stairway--a nook shaded by dwarf palms, +however, and not too open to the general eye. He half led, half crowded +Preciosa toward it. He should speak now, a second time, and trust to bear +her down. + +He spoke a second time, and a second time Preciosa refused. She had but +one idea,--an idea a bit obscured by Prochnow's absence,--yet she held it +fast. + +"You will not marry me, then?" + +"No." + +"You have a reason?" + +"The best." + +"What is it?" + +"I am engaged to marry some one else." + +"Who is he?" + +Prochnow appeared in the hall, with Little O'Grady close behind him. +Little O'Grady's mobile face was taxed to the utmost to express all that +was within him, but Preciosa saw sympathy and the promise of instant help +as clearly as Morrell saw detestation and mocking mischievousness. +O'Grady pushed aside a palm-frond and pointed toward Prochnow. "We've +come for you, darlin'," he said. + +Preciosa rose; the one idea to which she had clung throughout came +uppermost and crystallized before her eyes. "Who is he?" Morrell had +asked. She raised her arm, pointed to Ignace like a true little heroine +of the drama, and said: + +"There he stands!" + +She went out to meet them, and the three instinctively began to push +toward the front door. She had her hat--never mind her jacket. Dill saw +them moving away and bit his lip. Roscoe Orlando Gibbons grasped a +door-jamb for support. A smothered scream was heard behind the palms; it +was Euphrosyne McNulty, fainting away, as Preciosa, Prochnow and Little +O'Grady went out through the vestibule and down the front steps together. + + + + +XXVI + +The Pin-and-Needle Combine fell apart the next day. The Grindstone +National Bank followed it the day after. Richard and Robin had turned the +handle a little too briskly and the Grindstone had flown to pieces. Three +or four other banks followed. + +Little O'Grady danced with joy. His curse had told. And the great hulking +bully that had dared to cuff him was flat on his back with the rest. When +O'Grady fully realized what he--_he_--had done his breast heaved proudly. +He ran over to see the fatal placard fastened on one of the Grindstone's +great polished columns, and then tramped on down the avenue of ruin with +the step and mien of a conqueror. All this devastation was due to +him--whatever the foolish newspapers, groping in the dark, might say. He +alone was the Thunderer; he alone wielded the lightning. + +There was but one drawback; never should he get Eudoxia Pence's +profile--now. + +Eudoxia felt that the McNultys had disgraced her,--"as people of that +sort always will if you give them a chance." Virgilia lingered in the +limbo of engagement; impossible to say, now, when matrimony might ensue. +The question of money was the question still. Dill was no Prochnow, to +carry her off by main force, nor was she a Preciosa to permit it. She +could not conceive of existence beyond the pale of society; the impulsive +action of a pair of social outcasts could scarcely serve as a precedent. +"I must wait," said Virgilia. Unconsciously she compared Daffingdon with +Ignace Prochnow and realized how easy it would be for her to wait quite a +while without discomfort, regret or protest. + +Prochnow and Preciosa were married in the midst of the crash. Little +O'Grady and Medora Joyce took the other two seats in their carriage and +saw them through the ceremony. Preciosa knew that her mother would never +forgive her, but she thought it not improbable that her grandfather might +acquiesce. In any event, she would marry the man of her choice. + +Little O'Grady patted Preciosa's hand patronizingly as the carriage +rolled along. He, none other, was the good angel of the whole affair. +"What do we care, darlin'," he said, "for the Morrell Combine?--hasn't it +kept us on pins and needles long enough? What do we care for the +Grindstone, either?--hasn't it ground our noses as long and hard as it +could? Down wid 'em both--and let 'em stay down, too! And let anybody +think twice, my children, before he tries to prick the skin or grind the +nose of little Terence O'Grady!" + + * * * * * + +DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH + + * * * * * + +DR. GOWDY AND THE SQUASH + + + +I + +When Dr. Gowdy finally yielded to the urgings of Print, Push, and Co.--a +new firm whose youthful persistency made refusal impossible--and agreed +to steal from his sermon-writing the number of half-hours needed for +putting together the book they would and must and did have, he certainly +looked for a reward far beyond any recognisable in the liberal check that +had started up his pen. For _Onward and Upward_ was to do some good in +the world: the years might come and go for an indefinite period, yet +throughout their long procession young men--it was for them he was +writing--would rise up here, there, and everywhere and call him blessed. +To scrimp his sermons in such a cause was surely justifiable; more, it +was commendable. "Where it has been dozens it will now be thousands," +said the good Doctor. "I will guide their feet into the right path, and +the thanks of many earnest strugglers shall be my real recompense." + +_Onward and Upward_ was full of the customary things--things that get +said and believed (said from mere habit and believed from mere +inertia),--things that must be said and believed (said by the few and +believed by a fair proportion of the many) if the world is to keep on +hanging together and moving along in the exercise of its usual functions. +In fact, the book had but one novel feature--a chapter on art. + +Dr. Gowdy was very strong on art. Raphael and Phidias were always getting +into his pulpit. Truth was beauty, and beauty was truth. He never wearied +of maintaining the uplifting quality resident in the Sunday afternoon +contemplation of works of painting and sculpture, and nothing, to his +mind, was more calculated to ennoble and refine human nature than the +practice of art itself. The Doctor was one of the trustees of the Art +Academy; he went to every exhibition, and dragged as many of his friends +with him as could be induced to listen to his orotund commentaries; and +he had almost reached the point where it was a tacit assumption with him +that the regeneration and salvation of the human race came to little more +than a mere matter of putting paint upon canvas. + +These were the notions that coloured the art chapter of _Onward and +Upward_. I hardly know where the good Doctor got them; surely not from +the ordinary run of things in the Paris studios, nor from any familiarity +with the private lives of the painters of the Italian Renaissance, which +show, if anything does, that one may possess a fine and rigorous +conscience as an artist, yet lapse into any irregularity or descend to +any depravity as a man. But Dr. Gowdy ignored all this. Art--the +contemplation of it, the practice of it--worked toward the building up of +character, and promoted all that was noblest in human life. + +These views of his were spread far and wide. They competed with the novel +of adventure on the news-stands, and were tossed into your lap on all the +through trains. One copy penetrated to Hayesville, Illinois, and fell +into the hands of Jared Stiles. + + + + +II + +Jared was an ignorant and rather bumptious young fellow of twenty-four, +who was hoping to make something of himself, and was feeling about for +the means. He had a firm jaw, a canny eye, and vague but determined +ambitions. These sufficed. + +Jared lived on a farm. He liked the farm life, but not the farm work--a +fine distinction that caused his fellow-labourers to look upon him as +something of a shirk. He would rove the fields while the rest were +working in them. He thought his own thoughts, such as they were, and when +a book came his way, as now and then happened, he read it. + +_Onward and Upward_ was lent to him by the daughter of the county +attorney. She thought it would tone him up and bring his nebulousness +toward solidity--she too being anxious that Jared should make something +of himself, and unwilling to wait indefinitely. Jared took the book and +looked at it. He passed quite lightly over the good Doctor's platitudes +on honesty, perseverance, and the like, having already encountered them +elsewhere; but the platitudes on art arrested his attention. "I shouldn't +wonder but what all this might be so," said Jared to himself; "I don't +know but what I should like to try it"--meaning not that he had any +desire to refine and ennoble himself, but only a strong hankering to "get +his hand in," as the phrase goes. + +It was about this time that the Western Art Circuit began to evangelize +Hayesville. The Western Art Circuit had been started up by a handful of +painters and literary men in "the city"; among them, Abner Joyce, notable +veritist; Adrian Bond, aesthete, yet not without praiseworthy leanings +toward the naturalistic; Stephen Giles, decorator of the mansions of the +great, but still not wholly forgetful of his own rustic origins; and one +or two of the professors at the Art Academy. All these too believed that +it was the mission of art to redeem the rural regions. It was their +cardinal tenet that a report on an aspect of nature was a work of art, +and they clung tenaciously to the notion that it would be of inestimable +benefit to the farmers of Illinois to see coloured representations of the +corn-fields of Indiana done by the Indianians themselves. So presently +some thirty or forty canvases that had been pushed along the line through +Bainesville and Miller and Crawford Junction arrived at Hayesville, and +competed in their gilt frames with the canned peaches and the drawn-work +of the county fair. + +"There, Jared," said the county attorney's daughter, who was +corresponding secretary of the woman's club that had brought about this +artistic visitation, "you see now what can be done." + +Jared saw. He walked the farm, and drew beads on the barn-yard, and +indulged in long "sights" over the featureless prairie landscape. The +wish to do, to be at it, was settling in his finger-tips, where the +stores of electric energy seemed to be growing greater every day. + +"I believe I could do something of the kind myself," said Jared. "I like +the country, and I'm handy at light jobs; and if somebody would give me +an idea of how to start in...." + +The Hayesville Seminary had just celebrated the opening of its fifth fall +term by adding an "art department"; a dozen young women were busy +painting a variety of objects under the guidance, good as far as it went, +of an eager lady graduate of Dr. Gowdy's Academy. + +"Why don't you get Miss Webb to show you?" asked the county attorney's +daughter. + +"I can't study with a lot of girls," muttered Jared loutishly. + +"Of course not," quickly replied the other. "Make it a private, +individual matter. Get some ideas from her, and then go ahead alone." + +Jared picked up a few elementary facts about colours, canvas, and +composition in the art atmosphere of the Seminary, and then set to work +by himself. "Something sizable and simple, to start with," he said. +Autumn was over the land; nothing seemed more sizable, more simple, more +accessible, than the winter squash. "Some of 'em do grapes and peaches," +he observed, in reminiscence of the display of the Circuit at the fair, +"but round here it's mostly corn and squashes. I guess I'll stick to the +facts--that is, to the verities," he amended, in accord with the art +jargon whose virus had begun to inoculate the town. + +He elected the squash. And he never went far beyond it. But the squash +sufficed. It led him on to fame (fame of a certain curious kind) and to +fortune (at least a fortune far beyond any ever reached by his associates +on the farm). + + + + +III + +Yes, Jared kept to the squash, and made it famous; and in due course the +squash made him famous. He came to be known all over Ringgold County, and +even beyond, as the "squash man." He painted this rotund and noble +product of the truck-farm in varying aspects and with varying +accessories. Sometimes he posed it, gallantly cleft asunder, on the +corner of the bran-bin, with its umber and chrome standing out boldly +against a background of murky bitumen; and sometimes he placed it on the +threshold of the barn door, with a rake or a pitchfork alongside, and +other squashes (none too certain in their perspective) looming up from +the dusky interior. + +Jared mastered the squash with all the ease of true genius. He painted +industriously throughout the early winter. He had saved two or three of +his best models from the fall crop, and they served him for several +months. Squashes keep. Their expression alters but slowly. This one fact +alone makes them easier to paint than many other things--the human +countenance, for example. By the end of January Jared was emboldened to +exhibit one of his squashes at a church sociable. + +"Well, Jared," said the minister's wife, "you _be_ a genius. I don't know +that I ever see anything more natural." Other ladies were equally +generous in their praise. Jared felt that at last he had found his +life-work. Henceforward it was to be onward and upward indeed. + +The men were more reserved; they did not know what to make of him. But +none of them openly called him a fool--a sort of negative praise not +without its value. Nor was this forbearance misplaced--as was seen when, +along in March, Jared's father ended his fifty unprofitable years of farm +routine by dying suddenly and leaving things more or less at loose ends. +Farming was not his forte--perhaps it is nobody's. He had never been able +to make it pay, and he had gone in seeming willingness to shuffle off the +general unsatisfactoriness of it all on to other shoulders. + +In the settlement that followed, nobody got the better of Jared. There +were itching fingers among the neighbours, and sharp wits too in the +family itself, but Jared shrewdly held his own. He climbed into the +saddle and stuck there. He cajoled when he could, and browbeat when he +must. "No, he ain't no fool," said Cousin Jehiel, who had come up from +Bainesville, with his eye on a certain harvester and binder. "He may make +the farm pay, even if the old man didn't." + +About this time Jared, partly for solace, subscribed to an art journal. +It came once a month, and its revelations astounded him. He took a day +off and went into "the city," and spent eleven dollars to satisfy himself +that such things could really be. + +"I declare, Melissa," he reported to the daughter of the county attorney +on his return to Hayesville, "but it was an eye-opener. The way the +people poured into that place!--and just to look at creeks and +corn-fields and sacks of potatoes!" + +"Of course," replied the girl. "Why not? Doesn't your paper tell you that +the hope of American art is in the West, and that the best thing we can +do is to paint the familiar things of daily life? That's all the cry just +now, and you want to take advantage of it." + +"And there was a sort of book," pursued Jared, "hung up by the door near +the desk where that girl sat and kept track of things. I see people +looking at it, so I looked too. You won't believe me! 'No. 137, two +hundred and fifty dollars. No. 294, six hundred and seventy-five +dollars.' I looked for No. 137, and what do you suppose it was when I +found it? It wasn't more'n two foot by eighteen inches--just a river and +a haystack and a cow or two. No. 294 was some bigger, but there wasn't +nothin' in it except a corn-field--just a plain corn-field, with some +hills 'way off and mebbe a few clouds. And there was a ticket on it, and +it said 'Sold.' What do you think of that?" + +"That's all right," said Melissa. "If you want to get money, you've got +to get it out of the people that have got it. And you've got to go where +they are _to_ get it." + +"And there was another picture that the book said was 'still +life'--apples and ears of corn and a bunch of celery or such and a summer +squash. Not my kind, but a squash all the same. About a foot square--one +hundred and twenty dollars. What do you think of that?" + +"I think the squash has its chance, the same as anything else." + +"I asked the girl who it was painted all these things. 'This is the +second annual ex'bition of the Society of Western Artists,' says she." + +"There!" cried Melissa. "'Western artists'!" + +"'Are they all for sale?' says I. + +"'Cert'nly,' says she. + +"'Are folks interested?' says I. + +"'Look around you,' says she. + +"I did look around. People was walking along close to the wall, one after +another, a-smellin' every picture in turn. In the other rooms there was +women standin' on clouds, and there was children with wings on and +nothin' else; but everybody give them things the complete go-by. Yes, +sir, let me tell you, Melissa Crabb, all those folks was once just +country folks like you and me. Those there city people had all come from +the country some time or other, and they was all a-longin' for country +sights and country smells. They're Western people, too, and they want +Western scenes painted for them by Western artists. There's fame +a-waitin' for the man who can do that--and money too. I guess I'm +beginning to see a way to make the old farm pay, after all." + + + + +IV + +Jared during his visit to the city had not confined his attention to the +display of the Western artists. He had talked with several dealers, and +had visited one or two makers of picture-frames, and had taken note of +the prominence given to "art" in the offices and corridors of the great +hotels. + +"I tell _you_," he declared roundly, "paintin' 's got the call +everywhere. You go into one of them bang-up hotels, and what is the first +thing you notice? A painting--scenery; ten or twelve feet long, too--some +of 'em. Well, that's all right; I can paint as big as they want 'em, and +frame 'em too, I guess." + +He had formed some ideas of his own about framing. The prices mentioned +by the frame-makers astonished him as much as those entered in the sale +catalogue by the fond artists themselves. "No gilt for me. That's clear." +He thought of a wide flat frame he had seen at the exhibition. "It was +just a piece of plain boarding daubed over with some sort of gilt paint. +It had a fish-net kind o' strung round it, I recollect." + +"What was that for?" asked Melissa. + +"It was a sea view, with boats and things. Seemed a pretty good notion to +me." + +"Why, yes." + +"But there was one old codger come along who didn't seem to like it. +Specs and white whiskers standing out. Lot of women with him. 'Well, I +declare,' says he, 'what are we coming to? I can't understand how Mr. +English could have let in such a thing as that!' He was going for the +frame. I stepped over to the girl at the desk----" + +"Seems to me you talked a good deal to that girl." + +"Well, I did. She was from Ringgold County too, it turned out; hadn't +been in town but six months. She was up to all sorts of dodges, +though--knew the whole show like a book." + +"Oh, she did, did she?" + +"Well, she wasn't so very young, nor so very good-looking, if that's what +you're after." + +"Oh, she wasn't, wasn't she?" said Melissa, somewhat mollified. + +"'Who is that funny old feller?' says I to her. He was poking out his +arms every which way and talking like all possessed. + +"'Why,' says she, sort o' scared like, 'that's Doctor Gowdy.' You might +have thought I had let drive at the President himself. I see I had put my +foot in it, so I pulled out as fast as I could." + +"Gowdy," reflected Melissa; "haven't I heard that name before?" + +"It didn't seem altogether new, somehow," acknowledged Jared. + +But neither of them immediately associated this name with the authorship +of _Onward and Upward._ They laid no more stress on the title-page of a +book than you, dear reader, lay on the identity of the restaurant cook +that gets up your dinner. + +"It seemed all right enough," said Jared, reverting to the frame. + +"Why, yes," assented Melissa. "I don't see what could have been more +appropriate." + +"Well, you watch me," said Jared, "and I'll get up something equally as +good." For this choice collocation of words he was indebted to a +political editorial in the county weekly. + +Next morning he was strolling along the roadway, carefully scrutinizing a +stretch of dilapidated fence. + +"What you up to, Jared?" inquired Uncle Nathan Hoskins, who happened to +be driving past. The fresh morning air had a tonic effect upon Uncle +Nathan; he showed himself disposed to be sprightly and facetious. + +"Lookin' after my fences," said Jared shortly. + +"'Bout time, ain't it?--he, he!" continued Uncle Nathan. + +"Just about," assented Jared. + +"Might 'a' begun a little sooner, mebbe," proceeded Uncle Nathan, running +his eye over several rods of flat, four-inch stuff, weather-worn and +lichen-stained, that sagged and wobbled along the road-side. "So far gone +ye hardly know where to begin, eh?" + +"Where would _you_ begin?" + +"Well, that len'th right in front of you has got a little more moss on it +than 'most any of the others." + +"All right; I'll begin here," returned Jared. He struggled up through the +tangled growth of smartweed and bittersweet, tore a length of lichened +boarding from the swaying posts, and walked down the road with it. + +Here at last was a suitable setting for the Squash. + + + + +V + +Yes, _the_ Squash, before which all other squashes were to pale. It was +to be his best and biggest work, and worthy of the post he designed it to +take at the next Exhibition of Western Artists. He enlarged its scope so +as to take in a good part of the barn's interior; he boldly added a +shovel--an implement that he had never attempted before; and he put in +not only bins, but barrels--chancing a faulty perspective in the hoops. +All these things formed a repellent background of chill gray-blue, but +they brought out the Squash. It shone. Yes, it shone like a beacon-light +calling the weary and sophisticate town-dwellers back to the peace and +simplicity of country life. And it was inclosed by four neatly mortised +lengths of fencing, lichened and silvered by a half-century, it may be, +of weather taken as it was sent. Furthermore, the abundance of simulated +seeds developed by his bold halving of his model was re-enforced by a few +real seeds pasted upon the lower part of the frame. + +"If all that don't fetch 'em," said Jared, "what will?" + +But the exhibition jury frowned upon this ingenuous offering. Stephen +Giles pitied it; Daffingdon Dill, an influential member, and a painter +not especially affiliated with the Circuit, derided it cruelly; Abner +Joyce himself, when appealed to as a man and a brother by the +disappointed farmer-artist, bleakly turned away. Not even the proprietors +of the sales-galleries seemed willing to extend a welcome. Jared was +puzzled and indignant. Then he bethought himself of the hotels, with +their canons and jungles and views along the Canadian Pacific. + +"Yes, the hotels--there's where I'll try. That's where you get your +public, anyway." + +But the hotels were cold. One after another they refused him. Just one +was left, and this was so magnificent that he had never even thought of +carrying his proposal into it. + +He did so now--nothing else was left to do. The clerk was even more +magnificent and intimidating than the house, but Jared faced him, and +asked for space in which to show his work. + +Jared had one of his minor works under his arm--style of painting and +style of framing being fully representative of his biggest and best. +"It's this kind, only larger," submitted Jared. + +The clerk condescended to look, and was interested. He even became +affable. His imposing facade was merely for use in the business, and for +cloaking the dire fact that, but two short years back, he himself had +been a raw country boy from a raw country town. He looked at the picture, +and at Jared--his knuckles, his neck-tie, the scalloped hair on his +forehead. "Could _I_ have been anything like that?" he thought. He +refused consideration to such a calamitous possibility, and became a +little more grandly formal as he went on listening to Jared's business. + +"Oh, George!" he presently called across his slab of Mexican onyx; "come +here." + +George came. He was a "drummer": nobody could have supposed for an +instant that he was anything else. + +"What do you think of this?" The clerk took the picture out of Jared's +hands and twirled it round on one corner of its clumsy frame. + +George looked at it studiously. "Why, it ain't so worse," he said. "That +squash is great--big as life and twice as natural." + +"What do you think of the frame?" asked the clerk, venturing with no +little fondness to run a ringer over the lichens. + +"Made out of fencing, ain't it? Why, I like it first-rate. Maybe I +haven't kicked my bare heels on just such a fence many a time!" + +So had the clerk, but refrained from confession. + +"Buying it?" asked George. + +"No; house-room," responded the clerk, with a motion toward Jared. + +"Yours?" asked the drummer. + +"Yes, sir; I painted it." + +"Frame your idea, too?" + +"Yes." + +"From the country, I suppose?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, so are most of the rest of us, I expect. Why, yes, give it +room--why not?" the drummer counselled his friend, and turned on his heel +and walked off. + +The clerk clanged his bell. "Just have Tim come here," he directed. "How +much you expecting to get for it?" he asked Jared. + +"Well, for _this_ one about a hundred and fifty, I should think." + +"Right," commented the clerk. "Put a good price on a thing if you expect +people to look at it. Never mind about Tim," he called, reminded by +Jared's emphasis that the "house-room" was not for this painting, but for +another. "Well, you get your picture round here to-morrow, and I'll have +it put in the writing-room or somewhere." And he turned toward a new +arrival bent over the register. + + + + +VI + +After the squash had triumphed in the rotunda of the Great Western, the +surrender of the other hotels was but a matter of time. They +reconsidered; Jared was able to place a specimen of his handiwork, +varying in size if not in character, with almost every large house of +public entertainment. He walked daily from caravansary to caravansary, +observing the growth of interest, straining his ear for comments, and +proffering commentaries of his own wherever there seemed a possibility of +acceptance. He dwelt upon his aims and ambitions too, and gave to the ear +that promised sympathy the rustic details of his biography. At first +there was some tendency to quiz him, especially among the commercial +travellers, who seemed to be, of all the patrons of the hotels, the most +numerous and authoritative. But they soon came to a better understanding +of him. Beneath all his talk about being a poor farmer boy and a lover of +nature whose greatest desire was to make others share the joy that nature +gave him, they saw that his eye was as firmly set on "business" as +theirs, and a sort of natural freemasonry kept them from making game of +him. He had chosen a singular means, true, but the end in view was in +substantial accord with their own. + +About this time a great synod, or conference, or something of the kind, +flooded the hotels with ministers from town and country alike. One +forenoon the chief clerk of the Pandemonium--these functionaries were all +on familiar terms with Jared by this time, and had begun to class him +with the exhibitors of reclining-chairs and with the inventors of +self-laying railways--called our artist's attention (temporarily +diverted) back to his own work, before which a group of black-clad men +were standing. A stalwart figure in the midst of them, with shining +spectacles and bushy white whiskers, was waving his arms and growing red +in the face as he poured forth a flood of words that, at a moderate +remove, might have passed either for exposition or for expostulation. + +"_There's_ a big gun," said the clerk. + +Jared followed the other's quick nod. + +"Why," said Jared, "it's Doctor--Doctor----" + +"Dr. Gowdy," supplied the clerk. "The Rev. William S. Gowdy, D. D.," he +continued, amplifying. "He's the king-pin." + +"The Rev. William S. Gow----" repeated Jared. The title-page of _Onward +and Upward_ flashed suddenly before his eyes. The man to whom he owed his +earliest quickening impulse, the man whose book had shone before his +vision like a first light in a great darkness, stood there almost within +reach of his grateful hand. He stepped forward to introduce himself and +to voice his obligations. + +But Dr. Gowdy, with what, to a disinterested spectator, would have seemed +a final gesture of utter rejection and condemnation, turned on his heel +and stalked down a long corridor, with his country members (who were +prepared to like the Squash, but now no longer dared) pattering and +shuffling behind. + +"Of all the false and mistaken things! Of all the odious daubs!" purled +Dr. Gowdy to his cowed and abashed following. For Dr. Gowdy, town-bred +and town-born, had no sympathy for ill-considered rusticity, and was too +rigorous a purist to give any quarter to such a discordant mingling of +the simulated and the real. + +"I've never seen anything worse," he continued, as he swept his party on; +"unless it's that." He pointed to another painting past which they were +moving--a den of lions behind real bars. "That's the final depth," he +said. + +The country parsons, left to themselves, would have admired the ingenuity +of this zoological presentation, but Dr. Gowdy's intimidating strictures +froze their appreciation. They pattered and shuffled along all the +faster. + +Meanwhile Jared, proud to have awakened the interest of the "Rev. Gowdy" +(as the reading of the Ringgold County _Gazette_ had taught him to +express it), was busy whirling the leaves of the hotel's directory to +learn the good man's address. + + + + +VII + +Before Jared could catch up with the Doctor a new tidal wave broke upon +the town and slopped through the corridors of the hotels. The provincials +(both clerical and lay) were enticed to the metropolis by a "Trade +Carnival." The Squash met them everywhere. Here, in the midst of the +city's strange and shifting life, was something simple, tangible, +familiar, appealing. Jared had had the happy thought to mount one or two +of his best pieces on easels fitted out with a receptacle for holding a +real squash. "Which is which?" cried the dear people, delightedly. The +country merchants expressed their appreciation to the commercial +travellers, and these factors in modern life, whose business it was to +know what the "public wanted" and to act accordingly, passed on the word +(casually, perhaps) to the heads of the great mercantile houses. In this +way the eminent firm of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. became conscious of the +Squash. + +Now, individually considered, the members of this firm made no great +figure. Nobody knew Meyer from Adam. Nobody knew Van Horn from a hole in +the wall. Who the "Co." might be there was nobody outside of certain +trade circles that had the slightest notion. But collectively these +people were a power. Except the street-railway companies, they were the +greatest influence of the town. They paved the thoroughfares around their +premises to suit themselves; they threw out show-windows and bridged +alleys in complete disregard of the city ordinances; they advertised so +extensively that they dictated the make-up of the newspapers, and almost +their policy. Above all, they were the arbiters of taste, the directors +of popular education. That they sold shoes, hardware, soda-water, and +sofa-pillows to myriads was nothing; that they pulled your teeth, took +your photograph, kept your bank account, was little more. For they +supplied the public with ideas and ideals. They determined the public's +reading by booming this book and barring that; their pianos clanged all +day with the kind of music people ought to like and to buy; and the +display in their fifteen great windows (during the Christmas season +people came from the remotest suburbs expressly to see them) solidified +and confirmed the popular notions on art. + +Well, Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. had set their minds on having a +"ten-thousand-dollar painting." It would be a good advertisement. + +They sent for Jared. + +"Ten thousand dollars!" gasped the young fellow. He saw the heavens +opening. "Why, I could get up a _great_ thing for that!" + +"I guess you could!" retorted old Meyer brusquely. "You could do it for +five hundred. That's what you _will_ do it for, if you do it at all." He +treated Jared with no more consideration than he would have given a +peddler vending shoe-strings and suspenders from the curb. + +"Why," said Jared, abashed, indignant, "you said ten thou----" + +"Let me explain," put in Van Horn, a little less inconsiderately. "We +want a ten-thousand-dollar painting, and we're willing to pay five +hundred dollars for it." + +"Who'd come to see a painting billed at five hundred dollars, do you +think?" snarled Meyer. "Nobody. You can see that kind of thing anywhere, +can't you?" + +"I s'pose you can," assented Jared, mindful of his first exhibition. + +"But ten thousand will fetch 'em." + +"Five hundred dollars, then," said Van Horn; "that's what we'll give you. +And it wants to be bigger than anything you've got on show anywhere, and +the frame wants to be twice as wide. I suppose you've got plenty more of +that fence left?" + +"Yes," assented Jared. + +"Well," said Meyer, "you'll never have a chance to realize any more on it +than you've got right here. And don't economize with your seeds--stick +'em on good and plenty." + +"We'll give you a whole window, or a place at the foot of the main stairs +close to the fountain," proceeded Van Horn. "We put it out as a +ten-thousand-dollar production and bill you big as the artist. Everybody +in town will see it, and the advertising you'll get--why, ten thousand +won't begin to express it." + +"And we want you to put in a lot of farm stuff," said Meyer junior, whose +taste in window-dressing had often roused the admiration of the entire +town. "Vines and grasses, and a lot of squashes--real ones. I suppose +you've got enough faith in your work to face the comparison?" + +"I s'pose I have," said Jared. "I guess I've faced it before this." + +"I want some real squashes on the frame too," said the elder Meyer, from +whom the son's fine taste was directly derived. "Ever tried that?" + +"In a small way," said Jared. + +"Try it now in a large way. Half a squash, like a big rosette, on each +corner of the frame--the half with the handle on it, y'understand." Meyer +saw the squash as a kind of minor pumpkin. + +"If I put it in the window," said the son thoughtfully, "I shall want +some saw-horses and bushel baskets and----" + +"Take 'em right out of stock," said his fond father. + +--"something to make a real country scene, in fact. And possibly a farmer +sitting alongside in jeans. Just the place for the artist himself. It +might be better, though, to put the whole show by the fountain. In that +case I'd have a band, and it would play, 'On the Banks of the Kankakee.'" + +"Have you got that song on hand?" asked his father. + +"It ain't written yet, but it will be inside of a week; and in a week +more the whole town will be going wild over it, or my name----" + +Van Horn cut short the youthful visionary. "Well," he said to Jared, "you +hustle off and get the show together. Check for five hundred on delivery. +And mum's the word," he added, with good-natured vulgarity, "on both +sides." + +"Ain't nobody ever said I talked too much," mumbled Jared, reaching for +his hat. + + + + +VIII + +Soon the Squash dawned on the town--the Last, the Ultimate. Jared had +soothed his ruffled feelings and gone back to his old barn and worked for +a fortnight. The result was in all men's eyes: a "Golden Hubbard"--an +agricultural novelty--backed up by all the pomp and circumstance a +pillaged farm could yield. + +"There it stands, Melissa," he said to the girl, who had come out with an +admiring little company to bid Jared's masterpiece godspeed. "And here +_I_ stand--a ten-thousand-dollar artist, and the only one in the +country." + +"I'm proud of you, Jared," panted Melissa, with little effort to conceal +the affectionate admiration that filled her. + +"And I'm grateful to you. You believed in me--you encouraged me----" + +"Yes, I did, Jared," said Melissa shyly. They were alone, behind the +shelter of the barn door. + +"And next to Dr. Gowdy--" + +"You've seen him? You've thanked him?" + +"Not yet. But I'm going to as soon as I get this picture in place. This +here ain't the end, Melissa; it ain't hardly the beginning. There ain't a +picture of mine all over town that won't be worth double next week what +it is this--and people anxious to pay the money, too. Just wait a little, +Melissa; there's a good deal more to follow yet"--an ambiguous utterance +to which the girl gave the meaning that her most vital hope required. + +A few days later the city press was teeming with matter pertinent to +young Mr. Meyer's newest display--the paper that refused to teem would +have had to tell him why. Jared stood in the calcium-light of absolute +unshaded publicity. "An American Boy's Triumph." "A New Idea in American +Art." "The Western Angelus"--this last from a serf that submitted, +indeed, yet grimaced in submitting. Under head-lines such as these were +detailed his crude ideas and the scanty incidents of his life. And there +were editorials, too, that contrasted the sturdy and wholesome +truthfulness of his genius with the vain imaginings of so-called +idealists. These accounts rolled back to Ringgold County. "Ten thousand +dollars! ten thousand dollars!" rang through township after township. +"Ten thousand dollars! ten thousand dollars!" murmured the crowds that +blocked the street before the big entrance to Meyer, Van Horn, and Co.'s. +All this homage helped Jared to gloss over the paltriness of their actual +check. By reason of this double hosanna he was a ten-thousand-dollar man +in very truth. + +"And _now_," said Jared, "I will go and see Dr. Gowdy." + + + + +IX + +"Dr. Gowdy is not at home this afternoon," they told Jared in response to +his ring; "he is addressing a public meeting down town." + +This would have applied to half the days of every calendar month +throughout the year. When Dr. Gowdy let a day pass without making some +public utterance, he counted that day as good as lost. He spoke at every +opportunity, and was as much at home on the platform as in the pulpit. +Perhaps even more so; there were those who said that he carried the style +of the rostrum and the hustings into the house of prayer. Certainly his +"way" was immensely "popular"--vigorous, nervous, downright, jocular, +familiar. Whether he talked on Armenia, or Indian famines, or +street-railway franchises, or primary-election reform, or the evils of +department stores (he was very strong on this last topic), the +reports--he was invariably reported--were sure to be sprinkled freely +with "laughter" and "applause." To-day Dr. Gowdy was talking on art. + +"It's going to be a hot one!" said the students among themselves. And +they packed the assembly-hall of the Academy half an hour before the +Doctor's arrival. + +The lecturer who was delivering the Wednesday afternoon course on Modern +French Sculpture had failed to come to time, and Dr. Gowdy, almost on the +spur of the moment, had volunteered to fill the breach. He telephoned +down that he would talk on Recent Developments in Art. This meant the +display of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. + +Dr. Gowdy had seen the abominable exhibition--who, during the past week, +had not?--and had been stirred to wrath. He fumed, he boiled, he bubbled. +But it was not merely this that had roused his blood to fever-heat. No; +Jared Stiles, emboldened by his success in the shopping district, had +applied to Mr. English, the director of the Academy, for a room in which +to make a collective exhibit of the masterpieces at present scattered +through various places of public resort and entertainment. Mr. English +had of course refused, and Dr. Gowdy, of course, had warmly backed him +up. But Mr. Hill, the vice-president, and Mr. Dale, the chairman of the +finance committee, had taken the other side. They had both been country +boys--one from Ogle County, the other from the ague belt of Indiana--and +their hearts warmed to Jared's display over on Broad Street. Their eyes +filled, their breasts heaved, their gullets gulped, their rustic boyhood +was with them poignantly once more. They murmured that English was a +hidebound New-Englander who was incapable of appreciating the expansive +ideals of Western life, and that Gowdy, city-born and city-bred, was +wholly out of sympathy with the sturdy aims and wholesome ambitions of +the farm and prairie. For once Art might well take a back seat and give +honest human feeling a fair show. They hinted, too, that the approaching +annual election might bring a general shake-up; English might find +himself supplanted by some other man more in touch with the local life +and with that of the tributary territory; and Gowdy--well, Gowdy might be +asked to resign, for there were plenty of citizens who would make quite +as good a trustee as he had been. + +Some inkling of these sentiments had come to Dr. Gowdy's ears. He scented +the battle afar off. He said "Ha! ha!" to the trumpets. He pranced, he +reared, he caracoled, he went through the whole _manege._ He outdid +himself. The students, his to the last man, simply went mad. + +For the past year there had been a feud between Dr. Gowdy and Andrew P. +Hill. Hill, relying on his own taste and judgment, had presented the city +with a symbolical group of statuary, which had been set up in the open +space before the Academy. This group, done by a jobber and accepted by a +crass lot of city officials, was of an awful, an incredible badness, and +the better sentiment of the community had finally crystallized and +insisted upon its removal. Dr. Gowdy and Professor English stood on the +steps of the Academy and watched the departure of the truck that was +carrying away the last section of this ambitious but mistaken monument. + +"Well," said English, with a quizzical affectation of plaintive patience, +"we learn by doing." + +"And sometimes by undoing," retorted Dr. Gowdy tartly. + +Hill heard of this observation, and came to the scratch with +animadversions on Dr. Gowdy's maladroit management of the finances of the +Famine Fund (a matter that cannot be gone into here). This was blow for +blow, and ever since then Dr. Gowdy had panted to open the second round. + +Jared Stiles, standing on his own merits or demerits, might have got off +more lightly, but Jared Stiles, as a possible protege of Andrew P. Hill, +was marked for slaughter. This new heresy and all its supporters must be +stamped out--especially the supporters. + + + + +X + +Dr. Gowdy stamped it out--and the crowd stamped with him. The fiery +denunciations of the Doctor kindled an answering flame in the breasts of +his youthful auditory. In five minutes hands, lungs, and feet were all at +work. The youths before him awakened the hot, headlong youth still within +him, and he launched forth upon a tirade of invective that was wild and +reckless even for him. + +"This folly, this falsity, this bumptious vulgarity--shall we not put an +end to it?" cried the Doctor. + +"Yes, yes," responded the house. + +"No; go on," said a single voice. + +The Doctor laughed with the rest, and a wave of delighted applause swept +over the place. + +"Shall we not purify the temple of art? Shall we not drive out the +money-changers?" + +"Yes, yes," called the audience. For Jared had never drawn from the +antique--he was trying to climb in like a thief and a robber. + +"Shall we not?" repeated the Doctor, searching the house for that single +voice. + +"Sure," said the voice, and another wave of applause rolled from the +foyer to the rostrum. + +"Ten thousand dollars!" shouted the Doctor. "The man who says he paid ten +thousand dollars for that agglomeration of barn-yard truck is one of two +things: if he did pay it, he's a fool; and if he didn't, he's a liar! +Which is he?" + +"He's a fool!" cried half the men. + +"He's a liar!" cried the other half. + +"Oh--h!" shrilled the young women. + +The Doctor wiped his streaming brow. + +"What kind of a community is this, anyhow?" he resumed, stuffing back his +handkerchief into his pocket. "Here we have this magnificent school +[applause] that for the past fifteen years has been offering the highest +possible grade of art instruction. A corps of thirty earnest and +competent teachers [loud applause and a few cat-calls] are ministering to +the needs of three thousand promising and talented young people, the +flower of our great Northwest----" [Tremendous and long-continued +applause, during which the continuity of the speaker's remarks was lost.] +The Doctor filled in the minutes of tumult by taking several sips of +water. + +"Why, you, we, this Academy, should be the leaven, the yeast, to work +upon our great metropolis; not merely the flower, but the self-raising +flour"--a pause for appreciation of the pun--"the self-raising flour +[loud laughter, easily yielded and unnecessarily prolonged] that is to +lift yourselves, and the city with you, from the abyss of no-art, and +from the still deeper abyss of false art. That's where we're groping; +that's where we're floundering. I declare, when I was elbowing my way +through that struggling, gaping crowd [cries of "Oh, Doctor!" and +laughter], I could only ask myself the question that I have just asked +you here: what kind of a community is this, anyhow?" + +Up popped a shock of black hair from northern Michigan. + +"It's rotten!" Shouts. Cat-calls. + +"I should think it was!" vociferated the Doctor. + +He went ahead for half an hour longer, crowding on more steam, acquiring +a more perilous momentum, throwing out an ever-widening torrent of +reckless personalities, not forgetting the ill-fated monument of Andrew +P. Hill. ("Applause" and "laughter" were very frequent just here.) He +ended his improvisation without the clearest idea in the world of just +what he had said, and went home well pleased. + + + + +XI + +When Dr. Gowdy took up the _Daily Task_ next morning--there were sixteen +pages of it--the first thing that met his eye was a picture of +himself--the familiar two-column cut that had not had an airing for more +than three months. "Gowdy Gives Us Up," said the head-line. + +"What now?" wondered the good Doctor. "Or rather, which?" For he knew +that every public utterance reported in the daily press of the town was +given one of two twists, the local or the personal. This was apparently +the local. The personal was to follow--and it did. + +Yes, the _Daily Task_ had been represented at the Academy, and its young +man, by a marvel of mutilation and misrepresentation, had put together a +column to convey the impression that Dr. Gowdy was a carping Jeremiah, +intent upon inflicting a deadly wound on local pride. "Oh, shucks!" said +the worthy man, and went on with his toast and coffee. + +But the other papers, though unrepresented at the Academy, had quickly +detected the possibilities resident in Dr. Gowdy's abounding +personalities, and the evening sheets were full of interviews. What did +Jared Stiles think of the attack on him as a representative Western +artist? What did Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. think of Dr. Gowdy's +characterization of their enterprise and the pointed alternative it +presented? What did Andrew P. Hill, as the representative of local wealth +and culture, think of Dr Gowdy's strictures on the self-made man's +endeavour to adorn the city that had given him success and fortune? What +did the distinguished members of the Western Art Circuit think of such +treatment toward their most promising and conspicuous protege? All these +people had thoughts, and none of them was slow in expressing them. + +"I can't understand it, nohow; I swan, I'm completely knocked off my +feet," said Jared to the young man of the _Evening Rounder_, in the +rustic dialect of the vaudeville. "Why, that there man--I've allus looked +on him as my best friend. It was that book of his'n that give me my +start, and now he turns agen me. But he's wrong, and I've got the hull +town to prove it. And if he's wrong, by gum, he'll have to pay for it. He +can't trip up the heels of an honest country boy and not get tripped up +hisself. I don't know yet just what I'll do, but----" + +With the _Evening Pattern_ Jared was more academic. "I acknowledge that +this attack comes as a great surprise. I had always regarded the reverend +gentleman as the chief of my friends. His own book for young men [name +not mentioned--Print, Push, and Co. did not advertise in the _Pattern_] +was my earliest inspiration. Such conduct seems as inconsistent as +inconsiderate. The public, I think, will be certain to support me. And if +the words of the address are correctly reported, I shall be found, I +believe, to have good grounds for an action at law. An intelligent jury, +I make no doubt----" + +The two Meyers were delighted. This was advertising indeed! Van Horn, a +shade less thick-skinned, stuck at the animadversions made so spiritedly +by the Doctor and so vociferously supported by his audience. They wore +upon him; they seemed almost actionable. He sent for the son of their +credit man, a youth enrolled at the Academy, where he was learning to +design carpets and curtains, and tried to get from him just what the +Doctor had really said. This solicitude reacted upon the Meyers, and +Meyer junior, who gave the interview, intimated that such language was +actionable beyond a doubt. "Our Mr. Levy will attend to this. We have the +endorsement of the general public, and that makes us still less willing +to have anybody challenge our business acumen"--all this was but an +elegant paraphrase of Sidney Meyer's actual remarks, for he had left +school at sixteen and had never looked into a book since--"or our +business integrity." + +Abner Joyce, on behalf of the Circuit, gave out a grave interview in a +few guarded words. Though Joyce by no means looked upon Jared as a +protege of his organization, yet his essential sympathy with the country +still held full sway, and he felt it possible to regard young Stiles not +as a mere freak, but as a human creature like ourselves, and struggling +upward, like the rest of us and to the best of his powers, toward the +light. But the town did not want restraint and reason just then, and +Joyce's well-considered words went--much to his mortification--for next +to nothing. Bond, who better apprehended the spirit of the hour, let +himself loose in a vein of pure fantasy,--he ventured on the whimsical, +the sprightly, the paradoxical. The poor fellow sent to interview him +might as well have tried to grasp a bundle of sunbeams or a handful of +quicksilver. His report turned out a frightful bungle; the wretched Bond, +made clumsy, fatuous, pointless, sodden, when he had meant to show +himself as witty and brilliant as possible, was completely crushed. With +Joyce going for next to nothing and Bond for worse than nothing, the Art +Circuit could hardly be said to shine. It paled, it sickened, it drooped +away, and presently it died. + +As for Andrew P. Hill, he did not wait for the interviewer; he wrote to +his favourite journal over his own signature. If he himself, straying +outside of his legitimate field (banking and investments), had failed +with "Our City Enlightening the Universe," Dr. Gowdy, astray in the field +of finance, had failed no less egregiously. Yes, his handling of the +Famine Fund had been maladroit and eccentric to the point that permitted +doubts as to his own personal integrity: why, then, should he be casting +doubts upon the veracity, the business honour, of others. + +This was a word for Meyer, Van Horn, and Co., who were tenants of Hill's. +Landlord and tenant were just now in the midst of some delicate +negotiations, and Hill hoped that a word of the right kind from him might +help to make adjustment easier. Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. were intending +to arrange a summer garden on their roof. Query: was the roof theirs--was +it included in the lease? Hill felt sure of carrying his +point,--decidedly the roof was an entirely distinct matter from the ten +floors beneath it; but the situation might well stand a little +lubrication if good feeling were to endure. Therefore Meyer, Van Horn, +and Co. had the satisfaction of reading that William S. Gowdy was +altogether too impulsive, erratic and unreliable--happily Hill did not +employ the word "untrustworthy"--for holding a quasi-public position of +some importance. Age was impairing his judgment and setting a term to his +usefulness. + +Dr. Gowdy flew into a passion. Threatened with legal proceedings!--he, +the blameless citizen. Accused of dishonesty!--he, the pattern of +integrity. Taunted with failing powers!--he, the inexhaustible reservoir +of vigour, of energy! What, after all this, were the pin-pricks daily, +hourly inflicted by the press, the post, the tongues of indignant +associates, all intent on vindicating the honour of a community he had so +wantonly attacked? What were squibs, caricatures, saucy verses, anonymous +letters, cold looks from former friends, hot taunts from casual +acquaintances? For art had been attacked in the very home and haunt of +art! The town had been knifed under the ribs by one of her own +sons!--made ridiculous in the eyes of the ribald East, and dubious in the +regard of the trusting, tributary West! + +Well, what would they have? demanded the Doctor. Should we gain anything +whatever by always throwing bouquets at ourselves? Could we go along +forever living on the flubdub of self-praise? + +But a truce to all this!--for Dr. Gowdy was coming to see, to feel, to +consider but one thing--the Squash. Here was the fountain-head of all his +woes. "Perdition take that fellow!" he exclaimed, with his thoughts +fiercely focused on the unseen Jared Stiles. + + + + +XII + +Yes, the Squash had begun to run, and nothing, apparently, had the power +to stop it. It was putting out leaves here, blossoms there, and tendrils +everywhere. Particularly in the press. Interviews continued. Generals, +judges, merchants, capitalists--the whole trying tribe of "prominent +citizens"--were asked what they thought of such an attack on the fair +fame of the city by one of its own sons. Less prominent citizens sent in +their views unasked. Professors of crayon portraiture wrote to tell the +Doctor he knew nothing of art. Lecturers to classes in civics advised him +that he little realized the citizen's duty to his native town. The +_Noonday Worm_, which had more than once praised the Doctor's public +spirit, now turned on him and called him a renegade. The _Early Morning +Fly_, among other buzzings, buzzed this: "If you don't like our city, +Doctor, there is Another--higher up. Good-bye; we'll see you later!" The +Doctor, who had always felt that he had done as much as any for the +town's well-being within, and more than many for its repute abroad, saw +now that he had been taking much too favourable a view of himself. + +Only the staid old _Hourglass_ had a word in his behalf--a sober +editorial on the art conditions actually prevalent. The _Hourglass_ was +in some degree Dr. Gowdy's mouthpiece. It had a yearly contract with him +for the publication of his sermons--they came out every Monday +morning--and Dr. Gowdy handed over the proceeds to the Board of Foreign +Missions. This contract was about to expire, and it was a question +whether it should be renewed. Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. said no. Dr. Gowdy +had a column or two in the _Hourglass_ on one day in the week, but Meyer, +Van Horn, and Co. had a whole page every week-day and a double one on +Sunday. And they paid for it! They disliked the editorial. They +disapproved the sermon. The contract was not renewed, and Dr. Gowdy +raged. + +On the heels of this came a bill from Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. for +tin-ware. It had been purchased but a week before, yet the bill bore +these words, stamped in red ink and set askew with a haste that seemed to +denote a sudden gust of spite: "Please remit." + +"Henrietta!" called the Doctor to his wife; "how's this? You know I never +trade at any of those abominable department stores! You know what I think +of them: they demoralize trade; they take the bread out of the mouth of +the small dealer; they pay sinfully low wages to the poor girls that they +enslave----" + +It was the new cook, it appeared, who had purchased a few pie-pans on her +own initiative. + +"Discharge her!" roared the Doctor. + +Two or three days later the Squash put forth a new tendril. It had +invaded his home, and now it invaded his pulpit, so to speak. Exacerbated +by persecution, Dr. Gowdy had thrown off all restraint. His one real +weakness, his inability to keep from talking when talking was going on, +grew plainer every hour in exact proportion as his invective, his +vituperation, grew stronger. He rushed into print, like some of the +others, and his expressions were made matter for consideration at the +monthly meeting of the ministers of his own denomination. Briefly, his +brethren themselves (brutishly insensible to the abundant provocation) +censured him for language that was violent and unchristian. + +"I'll resign!" said Dr. Gowdy. + +"You'll do nothing of the sort," said his wife. + +"Of course I sha'n't," he returned. + +Then the Squash invaded the Academy. The shake-up came; Professor English +was removed; and Dr. Gowdy was requested to withdraw from the board of +trustees. + +"I'll resign this time, anyway!" said he. + +"I wish you would," said his wife. + +Next day came a letter from "our" Mr. Levy. It as good as asked Dr. +Gowdy's attendance at the store. Dr. Gowdy tore the letter into very +small scraps, thrust them into an envelope, slapped on a stamp with a +furious hand, and sent them back. + +Then "our" Mr. Levy called at the house, accompanied by a Mr. Kahn, whose +particular function was left in some vagueness. + +Mr. Kahn felt around the edge of the thing. "It can be settled, I am +inclined to think," he said, smoothly. + +"So it can," said the Doctor--"by your both going out that door inside of +ten seconds." + +But Mr. Kahn remained. "Your libellous utterances----" he began. + +"Mine? Those students', you mean. Sue _them_--in a body!" + +"We may prefer to sue you." + +"Sue away, then! I'll put my standing against that of any department +store in existence! This is a mere impudent speculation, impossible to +carry out in the face of the public opinion of a Christian community----" + +"Is it?" asked Mr. Kahn blandly. + +This equivoke checked Dr. Gowdy for an instant. "It used to be," he said, +with a fierce smile. The smile vanished and the fierceness remained. +"Go," he said. "I'm stronger than both of you together. There's the door. +Use it!" He towered over them with red face, threatening arm, bristling +white whiskers. + +"Drop it," said Mr. Kahn to Mr. Levy, as they went down the Doctor's +front steps; "he's a fighter." + + + + +XIII + +An hour later the Doctor, looking out of his study window, saw a buggy +drive up and stop at his carriage-block. It contained a rustic-looking +young man, dressed in new and showy garments that had the cachet of the +department store, and a young woman brave in such finery as young women +wear when approaching the most important hour of their lives. +Instinctively the Doctor reached for his prayer-book, an inspired volume +that had a way of opening almost automatically at the marriage service. + +But only the young man alighted. He came up the front walk with an +expression of fell determination about his firm-set mouth. The young +woman, holding the reins, frowned at Dr. Gowdy's house-front--in marked +repugnance and indignation. + +Jared had come to tell Dr. Gowdy what he thought of him--their first and +only meeting. Dr. Gowdy at a distance had impressed him as an abstract +moral force, but Dr. Gowdy close at hand was a mere man like himself. +Jared pushed aside all deference and spoke his mind. + +"You set me up an inch," said Jared hardily, "and then you went to work +to take me down an ell. You've tried to harm me all you could; you've +tried to ruin me. But it couldn't be done. Let me tell you this: I've +sold seventeen hundred dollars' worth of my work here, and the first of +the month I'm going East with a lot more of it. A man with money in his +pocket can get his rights," said Jared truculently. + +Dr. Gowdy, to whom Jared too had been an abstraction--an abstraction +compact of bumptious heresy as regarded art and of crass ignorance as +regarded life in general--finally realized him now as a human being, +faulty and ill-regulated, indeed, but not altogether unlikeable, and by +no means lacking in a sort of rude capacity. He experienced, not for the +first time, the alleviating quality resident sometimes in personal +presence, even the presence of an antagonist. + +But Jared had no sense of this. "You've made fun of me," he went on; +"you've made me ridiculous in my own home. They're all laughin' at me +down there. All but her"--with an awkward gesture toward Melissa, visible +through the front window. "She's stuck to me right along. She believed in +me from the beginning. It was her gave me that book of yours----" + +"That book, that book!" groaned Dr. Gowdy. Alas for the refining and +ennobling influences of art! Threatened and hectored in his own house by +a loutish, daubing plough-boy! + +"You've interfered with my success; you've taken money out of my pocket. +Do you want to know what I'm goin' to do? I'm goin' to sue you, that's +what! Her father is our county attorney, and he'll help me see that I get +my rights!" + +"Sue me? Do, you poor ignorant young cub!" cried the Doctor. "I've just +had one lawsuit to-day, and what I want more than anything else is +another!" + +Jared glowered at him heavily--a look that was not without its effect on +the Doctor. Jared knew nothing of the complexities and delays and +expenses and uncertainties of the law, but he had already taught Dr. +Gowdy that the overbearing power of sheer ignorance was not to be +despised. + +"I may be a poor ignorant young cub," he returned, "but, for all that, I +know how to take care of myself. And of another too--that right will be +mine within half an hour." A second slight gesture toward the window. Dr. +Gowdy's accustomed ear recognised the confident tone of the bridegroom. + +"Now, see here," said he, with a sudden lurch into what seemed an +unceremonious frankness. "Let me make amends." For there was a positive +note in Jared that responded to the positive strain within himself. Jared +was more likeable than Mr. Kahn, and better worthy of cautious heed as an +antagonist. Why, indeed, should he be further antagonized at all? + +"Yes, let me make amends," said the Doctor. "Let me"--here the +prayer-book opened almost of its own accord--"let me--marry you." + +Jared's eyes blazed. "Do you think that Melissa Crabb would----" + +"Yes, I do," said the Doctor. + +"We're going to Mr. Shears, two blocks down the street." said Jared +imperviously. + +"You're going to stop here," said the Doctor. + +The force of personal relation prevailed--as it almost always does when +given a chance. Jared yielded; Melissa acquiesced. She detached her frown +from the Doctor's house-front, climbed down out of the buggy, accompanied +Jared and the Doctor indoors, and he made them one forthwith. + +The Doctor's performance of the marriage ceremony was famous--the town +was full of people who would never let anybody but Dr. Gowdy marry them. +To those who knew, Mr. Shears was nowhere. The Doctor's method was a +wonderful blend of gravity and of intimacy; he made you feel that you +were the one man and woman in the world--the world summed up, indeed, in +a single pair--and that you were going through a ceremony just a shade +more solemn than any other man or woman had ever gone through before. His +voice would be shot through with little tremors that showed his sincerity +and his individual interest--briefly, Jared and Melissa had no cause to +regret Mr. Shears. + +The Doctor kissed the bride in hearty, fatherly fashion--Henrietta kissed +her too--and refused the fee Jared offered him. + +"No," he said; "I've cost you too much already." + +Jared wrung the Doctor's hand, and wondered that any mere man could fill +his heart with such a tremor and such a glow. + +"I'm going to see you again before you leave for the East?" asked the +Doctor. + +"Well, I have two weeks, at three hundred a week, with the Gayety +Theayter," said Jared. "I put the finishing-touches to a picture every +night in full view of the audience, and frame it with my own hands." + +"Good-bye here, then," said the Doctor. + + + + +XIV + +This was the turning of the tide for Dr. Gowdy. From this time on, things +began to run his way once more. The ministerial body, at its next +meeting, reconsidered its resolution of censure; surely their brother had +been sorely tried. The threatened suit of Meyer, Van Horn, and Co. was +quashed by the Doctor's own dauntless bearing. The _Hourglass_ agreed to +open its columns to him, though but for a short synopsis and without +remuneration--so that he had to go into his own pocket for the Foreign +Missions. And finally, the students at the Academy refused to hear of his +withdrawal as trustee. They met; they protested; they resolved; they +clamoured. "We want our Gowdy back! we want our Gowdy back!"--such was +their cry. Their cry was heard; they got their Gowdy back. When next he +addressed them (it was only on Ephesian Antiquities--a safe subject) +their cry was heard again--heard, possibly, in the interior of the next +State. It was the proudest moment of the Doctor's public life. + +Jared Stiles's "Golden Autumn," handled and framed in his usual manner, +and "valued at" ten thousand dollars--none of Jared's larger pieces now +falls below that figure--will soon go trailing, exhibitionwise, through +the halls of the Eastern seaboard. But it is an error to assert that the +name of the painting was suggested by the Rev. William S. Gowdy. No; he +still stubbornly ranges all this work, and indeed all similar work in any +other field of art, under the generic name of the Squash. + + * * * * * + +THE END + + * * * * * + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Under the Skylights, by Henry Blake Fuller + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE SKYLIGHTS *** + +This file should be named utsky10.txt or utsky10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, utsky11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, utsky10a.txt + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Thomas Berger +and the Distributed Proofreaders team. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/utsky10.zip b/old/utsky10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..65fe710 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/utsky10.zip |