Babylon. Volume 2

‘My dear Winthrop!’ Colin cried out in exultation, ‘congratulate me! I’ve just got a commission for Autumn and the Breezes!’

‘What, in marble?’ Hiram said, grasping his hand warmly.

‘Yes, in marble.’

‘My dear fellow, I’m delighted. And you deserve it, too, so well. But who from? Not that fat old gentleman with the vacant face that I met just now out there upon the doorstep!’

‘The same, I assure you. Our great Dorsetshire magnate, the Earl of Beaminster!’ Hiram’s face fell a little. ‘The Earl of Beaminster!’ he echoed with a voice of considerable disappointment. ‘You don’t mean to say an earl only looks like that! and dresses like that, too! Why, one would hardly know him from a successful dry-goods man! – Besides,’ he thought to himself silently, ‘she must have sent him. He’s her cousin.’

Colin had no idea what manner of thing a dry-goods man might be, but he recognised that it probably stood for some very prosaic and everyday employment. ‘Yes,’ he said, half laughing, ‘that’s an earl; and as you say, my dear fellow, he hardly differs visibly to the naked eye from you and me poor common mortals.’

‘But, I say, Churchill,’ Hiram put in with American practicality, ‘what are you going to let this Beaminster person have the group for?’

‘Well, I didn’t know exactly what to charge him for it, never having sold a work on my own account before; but I said at a venture, five hundred guineas. I should think that wasn’t bad, you know, for a first commission.’

Hiram raised his eyebrows ominously. ‘Five hundred guineas, Churchill,’ he muttered with obvious mistrust; ‘five hundred guineas! Why, my dear fellow, have you asked yet what would be the cost even of the block of marble?’

‘The block of marble!’ Colin repeated, blankly. ‘The cost of the marble! Why, upon my soul, Winthrop, I never took that at all into consideration.’

‘Let’s go round to Maragliano’s at once,’ Hiram suggested, in some alarm, ‘and ask him what he thinks of your bargain. I’m awfully afraid, do you know, Churchill, that you’ve put your foot in it.’

When the great sculptor heard that Colin had really got a commission for his beautiful group, he was at first extremely jubilant, clapping his hands, laughing, and crying out eagerly many times over, ‘Am I a prophet, then?’ with Italian demonstrativeness. But as soon as Colin went on to say that he had promised to execute the thing in marble for 12,500 lire, Maragliano ceased from his capering immediately, and assumed an expression of the most profound and serious astonishment. ‘Twelve thousand lire!’ he cried in horror, lifting up both his hands with a deprecatory gesture; ‘twelve thousand lire! Why, my dear friend, the marble alone will cost you nearly that, without counting anything for your own time and trouble, or the workmen’s wages. A splendid stroke of business, indeed! If I were you, I’d go and ask the Count of Beaminster at once to let me off the bargain.’

Colin’s disappointment was, indeed, a bitter one; but he had too keen a sense both of commercial honour and of personal dignity to think of begging off a bargain once completed. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘that would never do, master. I shall execute the commission at the price I named, even if I’m actually out of pocket by it. At any rate, it’ll be a good advertisement for me. But, after all, I’m really sorry I ever said I’d let him have it! Just think, Winthrop, of my spending so much loving, patient care upon every twist and fold of the robes of those delightful Breezes, and then having to sell them in the end to a monster of a creature who wanted me to replace the Autumn by a bronze dial. It’s really too distressing!’

‘Ah, my friend,’ Maragliano said sympathetically, ‘that is the Nemesis of art, and you’ll have to get accustomed to it from the beginning. It is the price we pay for the nature of our clientele. We get well paid, because we have to work chiefly for the very wealthy. But after we have worked up some statue or picture till every line and curve of it exactly satisfies our own critical taste, we have to sell it perhaps to some vulgar rich man, who buries it in his own drawing-room in New York or Manchester. The man of letters gets comparatively little, because no rich man can buy his work outright, and keep it for his own personal glorification; but in return, he feels pretty sure that those whose opinion he most wishes to conciliate, those for whose appreciative taste he has polished and repolished his rough diamond, will in the end see and admire the work he has so carefully and lovingly performed for them. We are less lucky in that respect; we have to cast our pearls before swine too often, and all for the sake of filthy lucre.’

As it turned out, however, the group of Autumn and the Breezes, in spite of this unpromising beginning, really formed the foundation of all Colin Churchill’s future fortunes. Colin worked away at it with a will, nothing daunted by the discovery that it would probably cost him something more than he got for it; and in due time he despatched it to the earl in England, at a loss to himself of a little over twenty guineas. Still, the earl, being a fussy, consequential man, sent more than one friend during the progress of the work to see the group that Churchill was making for him. ‘One of my own people, you know – a poor boy off my Dorsetshire estate – conceited I’m afraid, but not without talent; and I’ve taken it into my head to patronise him, just for the sake of the old feudal connection and all that sort of thing.’ Some of the friends were better judges of sculpture than the earl himself, and when the Autumn was nearly finished, Colin was pleased to find that that distinguished connoisseur, Sir Leonard Hawkins, was much delighted with its execution. Next time Sir Leonard came he looked over Colin’s designs carefully, and was greatly struck with the sketch for the Clytemnestra. He asked the price, and Cohn, wise by experience, stipulated for time to consult Maragliano. When he had done so, he said 700L.; and this time he made for himself a clear 250L. That was a big sum for a man in Colin Churchill’s position; but it was only the beginning of a great artist’s successful career. Commissions began to pour in upon him freely; and before Gwen Howard-Russell returned to Rome, Colin was already making far more money than in his wildest anticipation he had ever dreamt of. He must save up, now, to repay Sam; and when Sam’s debt was fairly cancelled, then he must save up again for little Minna.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME