WALLINGFORD BEGINS TO UTILIZE THE WONDERFUL
ETRUSCAN BLACK MUD
Wallingford was just going in to dinner when a tall, thin-visaged
young lady, who might have been nearing thirty, but insisted on all
the airs and graces of twenty, came boldly up to the Atlas Hotel in
search of him, and, by her right of being a public character,
introduced herself. She was Miss Forsythe, principal over one other
teacher in the Blakeville public school; moreover, she was president
of the Women's Culture Club!
"It is about the latter that I came to see you, Mr. Wallingford," she
said, pushing back a curl which had been carefully trained to be
wayward. "The Women's Culture Club meets this coming Saturday
afternoon at the residence of Mrs. Moozer. It just happens that we are
making an exhaustive study of the Italian Renaissance, and we have
nothing, _positively nothing_, about the renaissance of Italian
ceramics! I beg of you, Mr. Wallingford, I plead with you, to be our
guest upon that afternoon and address us upon Etruscan Pottery."
Wallingford required but one second to adjust himself to this new
phase. This was right where he lived. He could out-pretend anybody who
ever made pretensions to having a pretense. He expanded his broad
chest and beamed.
He knew but little about art, being only the business man of the
projected American Etruscan Black Pottery Studios, but he would be
more than pleased to tell them that little. He would, in fact, be
charmed!
"You don't know how kind, how good you are, and what a treat your
practical talk will be, I am sure," gurgled Miss Forsythe, biting
first her upper lip and then her lower to make them redder, and then,
still gurgling, she swept away, leaving Wallingford chuckling.
Immediately after lunch he went over to the telegraph office and wired
to the most exclusive establishment of its sort in New York:
Express three black pottery vases Etruscan preferred but
most expensive you have one eighteen inches high and two
twelve inches high am wiring fifty dollars to insure
transportation send balance C. O. D.
Not the least of J. Rufus' smile was that inserted clause, "Etruscan
preferred." He had not the slightest idea that there was such pottery
as Etruscan in the world, but his sage conclusion was that the big
firm would think they had overlooked something; and his other clause,
"most expensive you have," would insure proper results. That night he
wrote to Blackie Daw:
Whatever you do, don't buy vase either twelve or eighteen
inches high. Send one about nine.
Saturday morning the package came, and the excess bill was two hundred
and forty-five dollars, exclusive of express charges, all of which J.
Rufus cheerfully paid. He had that box delivered unopened to the
residence of Mrs. Henry Moozer. That afternoon he dressed himself with
consummate care, his gray frock suit and his gray bow tie, his gray
waistcoat and his gray spats, by some subtle personality he threw
about them, conveying delicately the idea of an ardent art amateur,
but an humble one, because he felt himself insufficiently gifted to
take part in actual creation.
Was Miss Forsythe there? Miss Forsythe was there, in her pink silk,
with cascade after cascade of ruffled flounces to take away the
appalling height and thinness of her figure. Was Mrs. Moozer there?
Dimly discernible, yes, backed into a corner and no longer mistress of
her own house, though ineffectually trying to assert herself above a
determined leadership. Also were there Mrs. Ranger, who was trying
hard to learn to dote; Mrs. Priestly, who prided herself on a marked
resemblance to Madame Melba, and had a high C which shattered
chandeliers; and Mrs. Hispin, whose troublesome mustache in nowise
interfered with her mad passion for the collection of antiques, which,
fortunately consisting of early chromos, could be purchased cheaply in
the vicinity of Blakeville; and Mrs. Bubble, whose specialty was the
avoidance of all subjects connected with domestic science. Many other
equally earnest and cultured ladies flocked about J. Rufus, as bees
around a buckwheat blossom, until the capable and masterly president,
by a careful accident arranging her skirts so that one inch of silken
hose was visible, tapped her little silver gavel for order.
There ensued the regular reports of committees, ponderous and grave in
their frivolity; there ensued unfinished business--relating to a
disputed sum of thirty-nine cents; there ensued new business--relating
to a disputed flaw in the constitution; there ensued a discussion of
scarcely repressed acidity upon the right of the president to
interfere in committee work; and then the gurgling president--with
many a reference to the great masters in Italian art, with a wide
digression into the fields of ceramics in general and of Italian
ceramics in particular, with a complete history of the plastic arts
back to the ooze stage of geological formation--introduced the speaker
of the day.
J. Rufus, accepting gracefully his prominence, bowed extravagantly
three times in response to the Chautauqua salute, and addressed those
nineteen assembled ladies with a charming earnestness which did vast
credit to himself and to the Italian ceramic renaissance. He invented
for them on the spot a history of Etruscan pottery, a process of
making it, a discovery of the wonderful Etruscan under-glaze, and the
eye-moistening struggles and triumphs of the great Vittoreo Matteo
from obscurity as a poor little barefooted Italian shepherd boy who
was caught constructing wonderful figures out of plain mud.
He regretted very much that he had been unable to secure, at such
short notice, samples of the famous Etruscan pottery which this same
Vittoreo Matteo had made famous, but he had secured the next best
thing, and with renewed apologies to Mrs. Moozer, who had kindly
consented to have a litter made upon her carpet, he would unpack the
vases which had come that morning. With a fine eye for stage effect,
Wallingford had had the covers of the boxes loosened, but had not had
the excelsior removed. Now he had the box brought in and placed it
upon the table, and then, from amid their careful wrappings, the
precious vases were lifted!
"Ah!"--"How _ex_-quisite!"--"Bee-yewtiful!" Such was the chorus of the
enraptured culture club.
Wallingford, smiling in calm triumph, was able to assure the almost
fainting worshipers that these were but feeble substitutes for the
exquisite creations that were shortly to be turned out in the studios
that were to make Blakeville famous. Yes, he might now promise them
that definitely! The matter was no longer one of conjecture. That
very morning he had received an epoch-making letter from the
great Vittoreo Matteo! This letter he read. It fairly exuded with
tears--warm, emotional, Latin tears of joy--over the discovery of this
priceless, this glorious, this beatific black mud! Already the great
Vittoreo was at work upon the sample sent him, modeling a vase after
one of his own famous shapes of Etrusca. It would soon be completed,
he would have it fired, and then he would send it to his dear
friend and successful manager, so that he might himself judge how
inexpressibly more than perfect was the wonderful mud of Blakeville.
[Illustration: "How _ex_-quisite!"--"Bee-yewtiful!" chorused the
culture club]
Mr. Wallingford was himself transported to nearly as ecstatic heights
over the prospect as the redoubtable Vittoreo Matteo, and as a memento
of this auspicious day he begged to present the largest of these vases
to the Women's Culture Club, to be in the keeping of its charming
president. One of the smaller vases he begged to present to the
hostess of the afternoon in token of the delightful hour he had spent
in that house. The other he retained to present to a very gracious
matron, the hospitality of whose home he had already enjoyed, and with
whose eminent husband he had already held the most pleasant business
relations; whereat Mrs. Jonas Bubble fairly wriggled lest her
confusion might not be seen or correctly interpreted.
Close upon the frantic applause which followed these graceful
gifts, pale tea and pink wafers were served by the Misses Priestly,
Hispin, Moozer and Bubble, and the function was over except for the
fluttering. Inadvertently, almost apparently quite inadvertently, when
he went away, J. Rufus left behind him the crumpled C. O. D. bill
which he had held in his hand while talking. That night Blakeville,
from center to circumference, was talking of nothing but the prices
of Etruscan vases. Why, these prices were not only stupendous, they
were impossible--and yet there was the receipted bill! To think that
anybody would pay real money in such enormous dole for mere earthen
vases! It was preposterous; it was incredible--and yet there was the
bill! Visions of wealth never before grasped by the minds of the
citizens of Blakeville began to loom in the immediate horizon of every
man, woman and child, and over all these visions of wealth hovered the
beneficent figure of J. Rufus Wallingford.
On Sunday J. Rufus, in solemn black frock-coat and shiny top hat,
attended church. From church he went to the Bubble home, by the warm
invitation of Jonas, for chicken dinner, and in the afternoon he took
Miss Fannie driving behind the handsome bays. While she was making
ready, however, he took Jonas Bubble in the rig and drove down to the
swamp, where they paused in solemn, sober contemplation of that vast
and beautiful expanse of Etruscan black mud. Mr. Bubble had, of
course, seen the glowing letter of Vittoreo Matteo shortly after its
arrival, and he was not unprepared for J. Rufus' urgency.
"To-morrow," said J. Rufus, as he swept his hand out over the swamp
with pride of possession, "to-morrow I shall exercise my option;
to-morrow I shall begin drainage operations; to-morrow I shall order
plans prepared for the first wing of the Blakeville Etruscan Studios,"
and he pointed out a spot facing the Bubble mansion. "Only one thing
worries me. In view of the fact that we shall have a large pay-roll
and handle considerable of ready cash, I regret that Blakeville has no
bank. Moreover, it grates upon me that the thriving little city of my
adoption must depend on a smaller town for all its banking facilities.
Why don't you start a bank, Mr. Bubble, and become its president? If
you will start a subscription list to-morrow I'll take five thousand
dollars' worth of stock myself."
To become the president of a bank! That was an idea which had not
previously presented itself to the pompous Mr. Bubble, but now that it
had arrived it made his waistband uncomfortable. Well, the town needed
a bank, and a bank was always profitable. His plain civic duty lay
before him. President Bubble, of the Blakeville Bank; or, much better
still, the Bubble Bank! Why not? He was already the most important man
in the community, and his name carried the most weight. President
Bubble, of the Bubble Bank! By George! It was a good idea!
Meanwhile, a clean, clear deed and title to forty acres of Jonas
Bubble's black mud was recorded in the Blake County court-house, and
J. Rufus went to the city, returning with a discreet engineer, who
surveyed and prodded and waded, and finally installed filtration boxes
and a pumping engine; and all Blakeville came down to watch in solemn
silence the monotonous jerks of the piston which lifted water from the
swamp faster than it flowed in. For hours they stood, first on one
foot and then on the other, watching the whir of the shining
fly-wheel, the exhaust of the steam, the smoke of the stack, and the
gushing of the black water through the big rubber nozzle to the
stream which had heretofore merely trickled beneath the rickety wooden
road culvert. It watched in awed silence the slow recession of waters,
the appearance of unexpected little lakes and islands and slimy
streams in the shining black bottom of that swamp.
On the very day, too, that this work was installed, there came from
Vittoreo Matteo, in Boston, the Etruscan vase. Wallingford, opening it
in the privacy of his own room, was intensely relieved to find that
Blackie had bought one of entirely different shape and style of
decoration from those he had already shown, and he sent it immediately
to the house of Mrs. Hispin, where that week's meeting of the Women's
Culture Club was being held. He followed it with his own impressive
self to show them the difference between the high-grade Etruscan ware
and the inferior ware he had previously exhibited. He placed the two
pieces side by side for comparison. Though they had been made by the
same factory, the ladies of the Women's Culture Club one and all could
see the enormous difference in the exquisiteness of the under-glaze.
The Etruscan ware was infinitely superior, and just think! this
beautiful vase was made from Blakeville's own superior article of
black mud!
Up in Hen Moozer's General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office
Wallingford arranged for a show window, and from behind its dusty
panes he had the eternal pyramid of fly-specked canned goods removed.
In its place he constructed a semi-circular amphitheater of pale blue
velvet, bought from Moozer's own stock, and in its center he placed
the priceless bit of Etruscan ware, the first splendid art object from
the to-be-famous Blakeville Etruscan studios!
In the meantime, Jonas Bubble had found willing subscribers to the
stock of the Bubble Bank, and already was installing an impregnable
vault in his vacant brick building at the intersection of Maple Avenue
and Blake Street. By this time every citizen had a new impulse of
civic pride, and vast commercial expansion was planned by every
business man in Blakeville. Even the women felt the contagion, and it
was one of the sorrows of Miss Forsythe's soul that her vacation
arrangements had already been made for the summer, and that she should
be compelled to go away even for a short time, leaving all this
inspiriting progress behind her. It would be just like Mrs. Moozer to
take advantage of the situation! Mrs. Moozer was vice-president of the
Women's Culture Club.
The Bubble County Bank collected its funds, took possession of its new
quarters and made ready for business. Jonas Bubble, changing his
attire to a frock suit for good and all, became its president. J.
Rufus had also been offered an office in the bank, but he declined. A
directorship had been urged upon him, but he steadfastly refused, with
the same firmness that he had denied to Jonas Bubble a share in his
pottery or even his drainage project. No, with his five thousand
dollars' worth of stock he felt that he was taking as great a share as
a stranger might, with modesty, appropriate to himself in their
municipal advancement. Let the honors go to those who had grown up
with the city, and who had furnished the substantial nucleus upon
which their prosperity and advancement might be based.
He intended, however, to make free use of the new banking facilities,
and by way of showing the earnestness of that intention he drew
from his New York bank half of the sum he had cleared on his big
horse-racing "frame up," and deposited these funds in the Bubble Bank.
True enough, three days after, he withdrew nearly the entire amount
by draft in favor of one Horace G. Daw, of Boston, but a week later he
deposited a similar amount from his New York bank, then increased that
with the amount previously withdrawn in favor of Horace G. Daw. A few
days later he withdrew the entire account, replaced three-fourths of
it and drew out one-half of that, and it began to be talked about all
over the town that Wallingford's enterprises were by no means confined
to his Blakeville investments. He was a man of large financial
affairs, which required the frequent transfer of immense sums of
money. To keep up this rapid rotation of funds, Wallingford even
borrowed money which Blackie Daw had obtained in the same horse-racing
enterprise. Sometimes he had seventy-five thousand dollars in the
Bubble Bank, and sometimes his balance was less than a thousand.
In the meantime, J. Rufus allowed no opportunities for his reputation
to become stale. In the Atlas Hotel he built a model bath-room which
was to revert to Jim Ranger, without money and without price, when
Wallingford should leave, and over his bath-tub he installed an
instantaneous heater which was the pride and delight of the village.
It cost him a pretty penny, but he got tenfold advertising from it.
By the time this sensation had begun to die he was able to display
drawings of the quaint and pretty vine-clad Etruscan studio, and to
start men to digging trenches for the foundations!