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?