Under the Skylights Part 24

"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-Sh.e.l.l Baptist Meeting-House too. With matchless prompt.i.tude 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 Ma.s.sacre 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 grat.i.tude, 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?

XIV

Dill and his coadjutors had two or three more conferences, and a second detailed scheme was sent over to the bank. History in general was decisively thrust aside,--the only history worth recording was the history the Nine themselves had helped to make. "We will go to the libraries for 'ana,'" said Gowan; "they will help us with the earlier years of the last century."

"And to the Historical a.s.sociation for more," said Giles. "Old Oliver Dowd is an ex-secretary of it, and him at least we can capture beyond a doubt."

"Hurray!" cried Little O'Grady, who had insisted on being present. That very afternoon he threw his "First Coinage of Venetian Sequins" back into the clay-box and started in on a relief of "The Earliest Issue of Wild-Cat Currency."

"We've got a good thing this time," said Adams. "It's h.o.m.ogeneous; it's picturesque; it's local. It gives all they want and a great deal more. I think we can tussle with it successfully and not be ashamed of the outcome."

"As business-men they ought to appreciate the completeness of our new scheme," said Giles, "and our promptness in furnis.h.i.+ng it."

"They will," said Joyce. "This beats the other idea all hollow. Go in and win."

Each one of them spoke in terms of unwonted confidence. Little O'Grady himself was in such a state of irrepressible buoyancy that he left the earth and fairly sailed among the clouds. All this reacted on Dill. For the first time he felt the great commission fully within his grasp and the net profits as safely to be counted upon. He began to warm to his subjects. To him, who had learned a good deal in regard to s.h.i.+pping and the handling of water from lounging about the ports of Ma.r.s.eilles and Leghorn, had fallen the arrival of the first vessel: he would reconstruct the primitive lighthouse that Mr. Hill had set his heart on, and would eke out the angular emptiness of the subject by a varied group of expectant pioneers big in the foreground. He had also taken the Baptist church, of whose Bible-cla.s.s Andrew P. Hill had been a member. He would suppress the spire, and would show the pillared front on some Sunday morning in midsummer, with an abundance of wide petticoats and deep bonnets of the period of 1845, or thereabouts, displayed upon its front steps. And finally, as he was fairly strong on figures in action, he had intrepidly undertaken the Pottawatomie war-dance; and as soon as the conference in Giles's studio broke up, he took the express-train out to the Memorial Museum to see what the ethnological department there could do for him in the way of moccasins, tomahawks and war-bonnets.

He made his way through several halls filled with tall gla.s.s cases, skirting the Polynesians, bearing away from the Eskimos and finally reaching the North Americans. Their room was empty, save for a slender girl in brown who was making notes on a collection of war-bonnets in a morocco memorandum-book. It was Virgilia.

"Why, what are you doing out here?" he asked.

"Turning the odd moments to account. Collecting data for you on the aborigines,--I am sure we can put them to use. I ran out to hear the lecture on Earthquakes in j.a.pan--you know I have a chance to go there with the Knotts in April--and I thought I might incidentally pick up a few notions for the War-Dance."

So authentic and thoroughgoing a piece of loyalty as this affected Dill tremendously; the hint of an Oriental exodus scarcely less so. Never should she go to j.a.pan with the Knotts; she should go with him. His share in the work at the Grindstone would make this the easiest as well as the most delightful of possibilities. Now was the time; no matter about waiting for the contract. He felt the flood rising within him. Here at last was the moment for taking her hand (she had put the memorandum-book back into her pocket), and for looking earnestly into her eyes with all the ardour perfect good taste would permit, and for saying in a voice tremulous with well-bred pa.s.sion the words that would make her his loyal coadjutor through life. These different things he now said and did with a flawless technique (Virgilia recalled how sadly the young real-estate dealer had boggled), and a row of gaudy Buddhistic idols that looked in through the wide door leading to the Chinese section stood witnesses to her unaffected surrender. The pair pa.s.sed back through the Aztecs and the South Sea Islanders in a maze of happy murmurs and whisperings, and when next Eudoxia Pence asked her niece:

"Has he--has he----?"

Virgilia, as she again dropped her eyes, was able to reply, this time:

"He has."

Daffingdon and Virgilia pa.s.sed out through the great row of Ionic columns and down the wide flight of steps into the bare, brown wind-swept landscapes of the park.

"And about j.a.pan?" asked Dill. "You can wait a year longer for that, can't you? We shall find the earthquakes just the same."

Virgilia laughed happily. "Of course I can. What will such a year count for as a mere delay?--a year so short, so full, so busy, so happy, so successful! By _next_ February we shall be famous, we shall be rich, the whole country will be ringing with our pictures----"

Dill found it easy to fall in with her mood. He foresaw the immediate acceptance of a scheme so complete and so well-considered; the early signing of a binding contract; the receipt, without undue delay, of his honorarium--a business-like tribute from a methodical and trustworthy body of business-men; growing fame, increasing prosperity----After all, why dwell on j.a.pan? The world was beautiful everywhere, even in the bare, flat rawness of the suburbs.

XV

A few days later, and his bold step seemed justified. The directors were an elusive body, and even when got together they found it hard to act with anything like unanimity and despatch; but one afternoon Stephen Giles encountered Mr. Holbrook in the office of one of the hotels and was told that the plan was receiving favourable consideration and was not unlikely to be accepted. As Mr. Holbrook was the most pa.s.sive member of the directorate, drifting quietly along with the general current, it seemed safe to accept him as representing the feeling of that body.

Giles carried the good news to Adams, at the Academy. Adams hurried home with it to his wife and little Frankie.

A few days more, and it laboriously transpired that old Jeremiah McNulty was readjusting himself to the plan as modified and elaborated by Dill and his a.s.sociates. Old Jeremiah was particularly taken by the idea of the First Ferry--suggesting only that the scene be slightly enlarged, so as to take in the site of his early "yard."

"At last we're gathering them in!" declared Adams to his wife. They began to figure up their share of the spoils and to study how they would lay this immense sum out.

First of all they would bring a smile to the wan face of a patient landlord by paying the back rent in full. As for the rest, Frankie must have a pair of new shoes; and a thousand dollars at least must be placed on deposit in some good savings bank.

"For we have never been able to put anything by, and now at last comes this chance to provide for the rainy day." They looked at each other in mutual content and admiration--this was prudence, this was thrift.

Next, word came to Dill that the attorney for the bank was actually engaged in drawing up the contract. "We may even be able to sign it to-morrow," he said to Virgilia. "We shall have j.a.pan in good season, and much more in between. Tell me; are we not selfish in keeping our happiness to ourselves? Shall you not----"

"I am ready to let the whole world know, dear Daff," she responded. "And oh, to think that I have had my part in bringing your great good fortune about!"

At the very moment when Daffingdon and Virgilia were taking notes on the aborigines and planning for j.a.pan, Preciosa McNulty was strolling with Ignace Prochnow through the galleries of the Art Academy. The portrait was now finished. The submerged "resemblance" had risen once more to the surface, as Little O'Grady had foretold, and the canvas had been borne home in triumph to Preciosa's fond, admiring family.

"Who did it?" asked her grandfather, boundlessly pleased.

"That young man," replied Preciosa.

"What young man?"

"The one who came here that night and threw those big sheets of paper all over the furniture."

"It's you to the life, my child," he said.

"Grandpa," proceeded Preciosa, "I want him to come here again and throw some more sheets over the furniture. He's awfully smart, and he's just bursting with ideas."

Her grandfather scratched his chin. There were so many smart young men bursting with ideas--the wrong sort of ideas. "Let him go to Mr. Hill."

"They're better than those others were."

Still the old man shook his head. "Let him go to Mr. Hill," he repeated.

"With a letter or something from you?"

"Let him go and talk for himself."

"No. You just sit down and write it now." Then, to herself: "There! I think Virgilia Jeffreys will find she can't wind me round her finger quite as easily as she thought she could!"

Preciosa gave Prochnow his letter in front of the Parthenon pediment (where the current of visitors was thinnest), and counselled him to advance on the Grindstone. He was as quick and clever as any of them, she declared, and was ent.i.tled to take his share.