CHAPTER XX

WALLINGFORD BEGINS TO UTILIZE THE WONDERFUL ETRUSCAN BLACK MUD

Wallingford was just going in to dinner when a tall, thin-visaged young lady, who might have been nearing thirty, but insisted on all the airs and graces of twenty, came boldly up to the Atlas Hotel in search of him, and, by her right of being a public character, introduced herself. She was Miss Forsythe, princ.i.p.al over one other teacher in the Blakeville public school; moreover, she was president of the Women's Culture Club!

"It is about the latter that I came to see you, Mr. Wallingford," she said, pushing back a curl which had been carefully trained to be wayward. "The Women's Culture Club meets this coming Sat.u.r.day afternoon at the residence of Mrs. Moozer. It just happens that we are making an exhaustive study of the Italian Renaissance, and we have nothing, _positively nothing_, about the renaissance of Italian ceramics! I beg of you, Mr. Wallingford, I plead with you, to be our guest upon that afternoon and address us upon Etruscan Pottery."

Wallingford required but one second to adjust himself to this new phase. This was right where he lived. He could out-pretend anybody who ever made pretensions to having a pretense. He expanded his broad chest and beamed.

He knew but little about art, being only the business man of the projected American Etruscan Black Pottery Studios, but he would be more than pleased to tell them that little. He would, in fact, be charmed!

"You don't know how kind, how good you are, and what a treat your practical talk will be, I am sure," gurgled Miss Forsythe, biting first her upper lip and then her lower to make them redder, and then, still gurgling, she swept away, leaving Wallingford chuckling.

Immediately after lunch he went over to the telegraph office and wired to the most exclusive establishment of its sort in New York:

Express three black pottery vases Etruscan preferred but most expensive you have one eighteen inches high and two twelve inches high am wiring fifty dollars to insure transportation send balance C. O. D.

Not the least of J. Rufus' smile was that inserted clause, "Etruscan preferred." He had not the slightest idea that there was such pottery as Etruscan in the world, but his sage conclusion was that the big firm would think they had overlooked something; and his other clause, "most expensive you have," would insure proper results. That night he wrote to Blackie Daw:

Whatever you do, don't buy vase either twelve or eighteen inches high. Send one about nine.

Sat.u.r.day morning the package came, and the excess bill was two hundred and forty-five dollars, exclusive of express charges, all of which J.

Rufus cheerfully paid. He had that box delivered unopened to the residence of Mrs. Henry Moozer. That afternoon he dressed himself with consummate care, his gray frock suit and his gray bow tie, his gray waistcoat and his gray spats, by some subtle personality he threw about them, conveying delicately the idea of an ardent art amateur, but an humble one, because he felt himself insufficiently gifted to take part in actual creation.

Was Miss Forsythe there? Miss Forsythe was there, in her pink silk, with cascade after cascade of ruffled flounces to take away the appalling height and thinness of her figure. Was Mrs. Moozer there?

Dimly discernible, yes, backed into a corner and no longer mistress of her own house, though ineffectually trying to a.s.sert herself above a determined leadership. Also were there Mrs. Ranger, who was trying hard to learn to dote; Mrs. Priestly, who prided herself on a marked resemblance to Madame Melba, and had a high C which shattered chandeliers; and Mrs. Hispin, whose troublesome mustache in nowise interfered with her mad pa.s.sion for the collection of antiques, which, fortunately consisting of early chromos, could be purchased cheaply in the vicinity of Blakeville; and Mrs. Bubble, whose specialty was the avoidance of all subjects connected with domestic science. Many other equally earnest and cultured ladies flocked about J. Rufus, as bees around a buckwheat blossom, until the capable and masterly president, by a careful accident arranging her skirts so that one inch of silken hose was visible, tapped her little silver gavel for order.

There ensued the regular reports of committees, ponderous and grave in their frivolity; there ensued unfinished business--relating to a disputed sum of thirty-nine cents; there ensued new business--relating to a disputed flaw in the const.i.tution; there ensued a discussion of scarcely repressed acidity upon the right of the president to interfere in committee work; and then the gurgling president--with many a reference to the great masters in Italian art, with a wide digression into the fields of ceramics in general and of Italian ceramics in particular, with a complete history of the plastic arts back to the ooze stage of geological formation--introduced the speaker of the day.

J. Rufus, accepting gracefully his prominence, bowed extravagantly three times in response to the Chautauqua salute, and addressed those nineteen a.s.sembled ladies with a charming earnestness which did vast credit to himself and to the Italian ceramic renaissance. He invented for them on the spot a history of Etruscan pottery, a process of making it, a discovery of the wonderful Etruscan under-glaze, and the eye-moistening struggles and triumphs of the great Vittoreo Matteo from obscurity as a poor little barefooted Italian shepherd boy who was caught constructing wonderful figures out of plain mud.

He regretted very much that he had been unable to secure, at such short notice, samples of the famous Etruscan pottery which this same Vittoreo Matteo had made famous, but he had secured the next best thing, and with renewed apologies to Mrs. Moozer, who had kindly consented to have a litter made upon her carpet, he would unpack the vases which had come that morning. With a fine eye for stage effect, Wallingford had had the covers of the boxes loosened, but had not had the excelsior removed. Now he had the box brought in and placed it upon the table, and then, from amid their careful wrappings, the precious vases were lifted!

"Ah!"--"How _ex_-quisite!"--"Bee-yewtiful!" Such was the chorus of the enraptured culture club.

Wallingford, smiling in calm triumph, was able to a.s.sure the almost fainting worshipers that these were but feeble subst.i.tutes for the exquisite creations that were shortly to be turned out in the studios that were to make Blakeville famous. Yes, he might now promise them that definitely! The matter was no longer one of conjecture. That very morning he had received an epoch-making letter from the great Vittoreo Matteo! This letter he read. It fairly exuded with tears--warm, emotional, Latin tears of joy--over the discovery of this priceless, this glorious, this beatific black mud! Already the great Vittoreo was at work upon the sample sent him, modeling a vase after one of his own famous shapes of Etrusca. It would soon be completed, he would have it fired, and then he would send it to his dear friend and successful manager, so that he might himself judge how inexpressibly more than perfect was the wonderful mud of Blakeville.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "How _ex_-quisite!"--"Bee-yewtiful!" chorused the culture club]

Mr. Wallingford was himself transported to nearly as ecstatic heights over the prospect as the redoubtable Vittoreo Matteo, and as a memento of this auspicious day he begged to present the largest of these vases to the Women's Culture Club, to be in the keeping of its charming president. One of the smaller vases he begged to present to the hostess of the afternoon in token of the delightful hour he had spent in that house. The other he retained to present to a very gracious matron, the hospitality of whose home he had already enjoyed, and with whose eminent husband he had already held the most pleasant business relations; whereat Mrs. Jonas Bubble fairly wriggled lest her confusion might not be seen or correctly interpreted.

Close upon the frantic applause which followed these graceful gifts, pale tea and pink wafers were served by the Misses Priestly, Hispin, Moozer and Bubble, and the function was over except for the fluttering. Inadvertently, almost apparently quite inadvertently, when he went away, J. Rufus left behind him the crumpled C. O. D. bill which he had held in his hand while talking. That night Blakeville, from center to circ.u.mference, was talking of nothing but the prices of Etruscan vases. Why, these prices were not only stupendous, they were impossible--and yet there was the receipted bill! To think that anybody would pay real money in such enormous dole for mere earthen vases! It was preposterous; it was incredible--and yet there was the bill! Visions of wealth never before grasped by the minds of the citizens of Blakeville began to loom in the immediate horizon of every man, woman and child, and over all these visions of wealth hovered the beneficent figure of J. Rufus Wallingford.

On Sunday J. Rufus, in solemn black frock-coat and shiny top hat, attended church. From church he went to the Bubble home, by the warm invitation of Jonas, for chicken dinner, and in the afternoon he took Miss Fannie driving behind the handsome bays. While she was making ready, however, he took Jonas Bubble in the rig and drove down to the swamp, where they paused in solemn, sober contemplation of that vast and beautiful expanse of Etruscan black mud. Mr. Bubble had, of course, seen the glowing letter of Vittoreo Matteo shortly after its arrival, and he was not unprepared for J. Rufus' urgency.

"To-morrow," said J. Rufus, as he swept his hand out over the swamp with pride of possession, "to-morrow I shall exercise my option; to-morrow I shall begin drainage operations; to-morrow I shall order plans prepared for the first wing of the Blakeville Etruscan Studios,"

and he pointed out a spot facing the Bubble mansion. "Only one thing worries me. In view of the fact that we shall have a large pay-roll and handle considerable of ready cash, I regret that Blakeville has no bank. Moreover, it grates upon me that the thriving little city of my adoption must depend on a smaller town for all its banking facilities.

Why don't you start a bank, Mr. Bubble, and become its president? If you will start a subscription list to-morrow I'll take five thousand dollars' worth of stock myself."

To become the president of a bank! That was an idea which had not previously presented itself to the pompous Mr. Bubble, but now that it had arrived it made his waistband uncomfortable. Well, the town needed a bank, and a bank was always profitable. His plain civic duty lay before him. President Bubble, of the Blakeville Bank; or, much better still, the Bubble Bank! Why not? He was already the most important man in the community, and his name carried the most weight. President Bubble, of the Bubble Bank! By George! It was a good idea!

Meanwhile, a clean, clear deed and t.i.tle to forty acres of Jonas Bubble's black mud was recorded in the Blake County court-house, and J. Rufus went to the city, returning with a discreet engineer, who surveyed and prodded and waded, and finally installed filtration boxes and a pumping engine; and all Blakeville came down to watch in solemn silence the monotonous jerks of the piston which lifted water from the swamp faster than it flowed in. For hours they stood, first on one foot and then on the other, watching the whir of the shining fly-wheel, the exhaust of the steam, the smoke of the stack, and the gushing of the black water through the big rubber nozzle to the stream which had heretofore merely trickled beneath the rickety wooden road culvert. It watched in awed silence the slow recession of waters, the appearance of unexpected little lakes and islands and slimy streams in the shining black bottom of that swamp.

On the very day, too, that this work was installed, there came from Vittoreo Matteo, in Boston, the Etruscan vase. Wallingford, opening it in the privacy of his own room, was intensely relieved to find that Blackie had bought one of entirely different shape and style of decoration from those he had already shown, and he sent it immediately to the house of Mrs. Hispin, where that week's meeting of the Women's Culture Club was being held. He followed it with his own impressive self to show them the difference between the high-grade Etruscan ware and the inferior ware he had previously exhibited. He placed the two pieces side by side for comparison. Though they had been made by the same factory, the ladies of the Women's Culture Club one and all could see the enormous difference in the exquisiteness of the under-glaze.

The Etruscan ware was infinitely superior, and just think! this beautiful vase was made from Blakeville's own superior article of black mud!

Up in Hen Moozer's General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office Wallingford arranged for a show window, and from behind its dusty panes he had the eternal pyramid of fly-specked canned goods removed.

In its place he constructed a semi-circular amphitheater of pale blue velvet, bought from Moozer's own stock, and in its center he placed the priceless bit of Etruscan ware, the first splendid art object from the to-be-famous Blakeville Etruscan studios!

In the meantime, Jonas Bubble had found willing subscribers to the stock of the Bubble Bank, and already was installing an impregnable vault in his vacant brick building at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Blake Street. By this time every citizen had a new impulse of civic pride, and vast commercial expansion was planned by every business man in Blakeville. Even the women felt the contagion, and it was one of the sorrows of Miss Forsythe's soul that her vacation arrangements had already been made for the summer, and that she should be compelled to go away even for a short time, leaving all this inspiriting progress behind her. It would be just like Mrs. Moozer to take advantage of the situation! Mrs. Moozer was vice-president of the Women's Culture Club.

The Bubble County Bank collected its funds, took possession of its new quarters and made ready for business. Jonas Bubble, changing his attire to a frock suit for good and all, became its president. J.

Rufus had also been offered an office in the bank, but he declined. A directorship had been urged upon him, but he steadfastly refused, with the same firmness that he had denied to Jonas Bubble a share in his pottery or even his drainage project. No, with his five thousand dollars' worth of stock he felt that he was taking as great a share as a stranger might, with modesty, appropriate to himself in their munic.i.p.al advancement. Let the honors go to those who had grown up with the city, and who had furnished the substantial nucleus upon which their prosperity and advancement might be based.

He intended, however, to make free use of the new banking facilities, and by way of showing the earnestness of that intention he drew from his New York bank half of the sum he had cleared on his big horse-racing "frame up," and deposited these funds in the Bubble Bank.

True enough, three days after, he withdrew nearly the entire amount by draft in favor of one Horace G. Daw, of Boston, but a week later he deposited a similar amount from his New York bank, then increased that with the amount previously withdrawn in favor of Horace G. Daw. A few days later he withdrew the entire account, replaced three-fourths of it and drew out one-half of that, and it began to be talked about all over the town that Wallingford's enterprises were by no means confined to his Blakeville investments. He was a man of large financial affairs, which required the frequent transfer of immense sums of money. To keep up this rapid rotation of funds, Wallingford even borrowed money which Blackie Daw had obtained in the same horse-racing enterprise. Sometimes he had seventy-five thousand dollars in the Bubble Bank, and sometimes his balance was less than a thousand.

In the meantime, J. Rufus allowed no opportunities for his reputation to become stale. In the Atlas Hotel he built a model bath-room which was to revert to Jim Ranger, without money and without price, when Wallingford should leave, and over his bath-tub he installed an instantaneous heater which was the pride and delight of the village.

It cost him a pretty penny, but he got tenfold advertising from it.

By the time this sensation had begun to die he was able to display drawings of the quaint and pretty vine-clad Etruscan studio, and to start men to digging trenches for the foundations!

CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT VITTOREO MATTEO, MASTER OF BLACK MUD, ARRIVES! BRAVA! HE DEPARTS! BRAVA!

One day a tall, slender, black-haired, black-mustached and black-eyed young man, in a severely ministerial black frock suit, dropped off the train and inquired in an undoubted foreign accent for the Atlas Hotel.

Even the station loungers recognized him at once as the great and long-expected artist, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, who, save in the one respect of short hair, was thoroughly satisfying to the eye and imagination. Even before the spreading of his name upon the register of the Atlas Hotel, all Blakeville knew that he had arrived.

In the hotel office he met J. Rufus. Instantly he shrieked for joy, embraced Wallingford, kissed that discomfited gentleman upon both cheeks and fell upon his neck, jabbering in most broken English his joy at meeting his dear, dear friend once more. In the privacy of Wallingford's own room, Wallingford's dear Italian friend threw himself upon the bed and kicked up his heels like a boy, stuffing the corner of a pillow in his mouth to suppress his shrieks of laughter.

"Ain't I the regular buya-da-banan Dago for fair?" he demanded, without a trace of his choice Italian accent.

"Blackie," rejoiced Wallingford, wiping his eyes, "I never met your parents, but I've a bet down that they came from Naples as ballast in a cattle steamer. But I'm afraid you'll strain yourself on this. Don't make it too strong."

"I'll make Salvini's acting as tame as a jointed crockery doll,"

a.s.serted Blackie. "This deal is nuts and raisins to me; and say, J.

Rufus, your sending for me was just in the nick of time. Just got a tip from a post-office friend that the federal officers were going to investigate my plant, so I'm glad to have a vacation. What's this new stunt of yours, anyhow?"

"It's a cinch," declared Wallingford, "but I don't want to scramble your mind with anything but the story of your own life."

To his own romantic, personal history, as Vittoreo Matteo, and to the interesting fabrications about the world-famous Etruscan pottery, in the village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy, Blackie listened most attentively.