Under the Skylights Part 21

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 cuira.s.siers 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 a.s.syrian 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 fas.h.i.+on that had kept society smiling and gossiping for a fortnight.

As Daffingdon walked thoughtfully down the quiet street a deep sense of grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sistance of a young woman of fas.h.i.+on, 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," a.s.sented 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; a.s.sociate them with the Romans and Venetians--bring in the a.s.syrians 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 's.p.a.cious' 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-l.u.s.tre 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 st.u.r.dily. 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 l.u.s.ty 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sed the paper over to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah pa.s.sed 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 inst.i.tutions 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 ac.u.men 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 mult.i.tudes 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 gla.s.s, 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 companions.h.i.+p, 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 acc.u.mulate 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 acc.u.mulation 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