Under the Skylights Part 18

"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 emba.s.sy.

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 circ.u.mstances 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 beat.i.tude 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 circ.u.mference 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 G.o.dsend 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; n.o.body 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 a.s.sociation 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 G.o.ddess 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 cus.h.i.+ons.

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.