"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.