"Capital idea," exclaimed Irons, to whose grat.i.tude for Greenfield"s aid in the railroad matter was added the politic forecast that he might some time need his help again; "there"s Hubbard over there now; I"ll go and ask him whether our committee chooses the orator."
He started to make his way through the crowd, followed by the admiring looks of various young women who had been frankly listening to the conversation, although they were strangers.
"Oh, isn"t the statue just too lovely for anything," gushingly remarked one of them, with startling originality; "it"s so n.o.ble and--. And, oh," she broke off suddenly, the light of a new discovery shining in her face, "just see, girls, that"s corn in her hand."
"Oh, yes, and cotton," responded her companion. "See, it really is cotton, and something else."
"Yes, that must be maize," returned the other, oracularly; "it"s all so beautifully American."
The crowd moved and swayed and changed, until Ethel Mott stood close to the _America_, with her back turned squarely upon the figure. She evidently found more pleasure in looking at her companion than in studying the work of the sculptor, which she had nominally come to see.
"I think it will be too cold, Thayer, to go out in the dog-cart," she said, with one of those glances whose meaning not even a poet could put into words.
"Oh, no," Kent answered. "I have a tremendously heavy rug, and you can wrap up."
"Well," was her answer, "if it"s pleasant, and the sun shines, and I don"t change my mind, and I feel like it, perhaps I"ll go. At any rate you may come round about ten o"clock."
Rangely was too far away to catch, amid the babble of the crowd, a single word of this conversation, but he noted the looks which the pair exchanged.
"Oh, do come along," a corpulent lady in the crowd observed to her companion. "We"ve seen everybody here that we know, and I want to go down to Winter Street and get some b.u.t.tons for my grey dress. Miranda wanted me to have them covered with the cloth, but I think steel ones would be prettier."
"Yes, they say steel"s going to be awfully fashionable this spring. Are they going to put that statue up just as it is?"
"Oh, they bake it or paint it or something," was the lucid answer, as the corpulent lady threw herself against Mr. Hubbard, nearly annihilating him in her effort to clear a path through the crowd.
"I think, my dear," Hubbard observed to his wife, "unless you"ve designs on my life insurance, you"d better take me out of this crowd."
"But we haven"t seen the statue," she returned.
"I have," he retorted grimly, "and I a.s.sure you you haven"t lost anything. You"ll see it enough when it"s set up, and you"ll go about perjuring your soul by denying that I was ever on the committee."
"Hush," she said, "do be quiet; people will think you"re cross because you were overruled."
On the other side of the statue the sculptor had been receiving congratulations all the afternoon, and now Mr. Calvin and Mrs.
Frostwinch chanced to approach him at the same time to take their leave.
"I am so glad to have seen the statue," was the latter"s form of adieu, "it is distinctly inspiring. Thank you so much."
He bowed awkwardly enough, stammering some unintelligible reply, and the lady moved away with Mr. Calvin, who observed as the pair emerged into the open air:
"It is such a relief to me that this statue has turned out so well.
There has really been a good deal of feeling and wire-pulling, and some New York friends of mine will never forgive me that the commission was not given to one of their men. I really feel as if the thing had been made almost a personal matter."
"It must be a great satisfaction to you," his companion returned, "that he has succeeded."
"It is," was Calvin"s reply. "I meant to see Mr. Rangley and ask him to say a good word in the _Observer,_ but everybody is so much pleased that I think he may be trusted to be."
"Oh, he must be," she answered.
And as she spoke Tom Bently pa.s.sed by, quietly smiling to himself.
x.x.x
THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED.
Merchant of Venice; iii.--2.
On the evening following his reception, Orin Stanton presented himself at the rooms of Melissa. He was fairly beaming with self-complacency and gratification. He had been awarded the commission, the exhibition of his model had been attended, as he a.s.sured Melissa, "by no end of swells," and five thousand dollars had been paid over to him as an advance upon which to begin his work. He felt as if the world were under his feet and he spoke to Melissa with an air of lofty condescension which should have amused her, but which she received with the utmost humility.
"Well," he said, "what do you think of that for a crowd? Wasn"t that a swell mob? Didn"t you notice what a lot of bang-up people there were at the studio this afternoon?"
"Of course I didn"t know many of them," Melissa returned humbly; "but I could see that there were a lot of people that everybody seemed to know. I"m glad that you were pleased."
Orin pulled out a big cigar and bit the end off it excitedly.
"Pleased!" he echoed. "I was more than pleased--I was delighted. All the committee were there, of course, and half the fashionable women of Boston."
"I heard a lady telling another who the artists were," Milly observed, glad to find a subject upon which she could talk to Orin easily.
"O yes, there were a lot of artists there, but they don"t count for much in getting a fellow commissions."
Stanton had evidently no intention of being satirical, but spoke with straightforward plainness what he would have regarded, had he given the matter any thought at all, as being a truth too obvious to need any disguises. His Philistinism was of the perfectly ingrained, inborn sort, which never having appreciated that it is naked has never felt the need of being ashamed; and he let it be seen on any occasion with a frankness which arose from the fact that it had never occurred to him that there was any reason why he should conceal it. He was one of those artists who never would be able wholly to separate his idea of the muse from that of a serving-maid; and he viewed art from the strictly utilitarian standpoint which considers it a means toward the payment of butcher and baker and candlestick maker. He was not indifferent to the opinion of his fellow sculptors; but the criticism of Alfred Irons, which he knew to be backed by a substantial bank account, would have outweighed in his mind the judgment of Michael Angelo or Phidias.
Milly, of course, had no ideas about art beyond a faint sentimental tendency to regard it as a mysterious and glorious thing which one could not wholly escape in Boston; while her thrifty New England nurture enabled her to appreciate perfectly the force of the considerations Orin brought forward.
"I am glad you are getting commissions," she said, "but it must be nice to have the artists like your work, for after all, don"t you think rich people depend a good deal upon what the artists say?"
"Oh yes, they do, some," admitted the sculptor.
He puffed his cigar, and with the aid of a penknife performed upon his nails certain operations of the toilet which are more usually attended to in private. Milly sat nervously trying to think of something to say, and wondering what had brought the sculptor to visit her. She was too kindly to suspect that possibly he had come because in her company he could enjoy the pleasure of giving free rein to his self-conceit. The words of her companion of the afternoon had given her a new sense of the honor of a visit from her prospective brother-in-law, although this increased her diffidence rather than her pleasure.
"Was Mr. Fenton there this afternoon?" she asked, at length, simply for the sake of saying something.
The face of her companion darkened.
"d.a.m.n Fenton!" he returned, with coa.r.s.e brutality. "He"s a cad and a sn.o.b; he says Herman ought to have made the _America_, and he abuses my model without ever having seen it."
The remark of Fenton"s which had given offence to Stanton had been made at the club in comment upon a photograph of the model which somebody was showing.
"The only capitol thing about it," Fenton had said, "is the headgear."
The remark was severe rather than witty, and it was its severity which had given it wings to bear it to the sculptor"s ears.
"I don"t like Mr. Fenton very well," Milly admitted, "but Mrs. Fenton is perfectly lovely; she"s been awfully good to me."
By way of reply the sculptor, with a somewhat ponderous air, unb.u.t.toned his coat and produced a red leather pocket-book. This he opened, took out a handful of bills, and proceeded to count them with great deliberation. Melissa watched while he counted out a sum which seemed to have been fixed in his mind. He smoothed the package of bills in his hand, then he glanced up at her furtively as if to ascertain whether she knew how much he had laid out. She involuntarily averted her glance. Instantly Orin gathered up several of the bills quickly, conveying them out of sight with a guilty air as if he were purloining them. Then he held the remainder toward his companion.