Hart\'s design for the school had finally been accepted by the trustees, and the plans were placed on exhibition in the Art Institute. Little knots of people—students, draughtsmen, and young architects—gathered in the room on the second floor, where the elevations had been hung, and had their say about the plans. Occasionally a few older men and women, interested in the nobler aspects of civic life, drifted into the room, having stolen some moments from their busy days to see what the architect had done with his great opportunity.
"Gee! Ain\'t it a hummer, now!" exclaimed one of Wright\'s men, who had known Hart in the old days. "He\'s let himself out this time, sure. It will cover most two blocks."
"The main part of the design is straight from the Hotel de Ville," one of the young architects objected disdainfully. He and his friends thought there were many better architects in the city than F. Jackson Hart, and grumbled accordingly. "I bet I could find every line in the design from some French thing or other. Hart\'s an awful thief; he can\'t think for himself."
"Where is the purpose of the structure expressed?" another demanded severely. "It would do just as well for the administration building of a fair as for a school!"
"A voluptuous and ornamental design; the space is wickedly wasted in mere display. The money that ought to go into education will be eaten up in this pretentious, flaunting building that will cover all the land." ...
"What have I been telling you?" commented an admiring citizen to his neighbor. "Chicago ain\'t a village any more. A few buildings like this and the university ones, and the world will begin to see what we are doing out here!"
"What\'s the dome for?" ...
"I say the people should have the best there is."
"Pull, pull—that\'s what\'s written all over this plan! The architect was some sort of relation to the man who gave the school, wasn\'t he?"
Even Wright, who happened to be in the city, stepped into the Institute to look at the plans. He studied them closely for a few minutes, and then, with a smile on his face, moved off.
Hart had, indeed, "let himself out." It was to be a master work, and by its achievement raise him at once into the higher ranks of his profession. For the first time he had felt perfectly free to create. As often happens, when the artist comes to this desired point and looks into his soul, he finds nothing there. The design was splendid, in a sense—very large and imposing: an imperial flight of steps, a lofty dome which fastened the spectator\'s eyes, and two sweeping wings to support the central mass. Nevertheless, the architect had not escaped from his training; it was another one of the Beaux Arts exercises that Wright used to "trim." Years hence the expert would assign it to its proper place in the imitative period of our arts, as surely as the literary expert has already placed there the poet Longfellow. Though Hart had learned much in the past six years, it had been chiefly in the mechanics of his art: he was a cleverer architect, but a more wooden artist. For the years he had spent in the workshop of the great city had deadened his sense of beauty. The clamor and excitement and gross delight of living had numbed his sense of the fine, the noble, the restrained. He had never had time to think, only to contrive, and facility had supplied the want of ideas. Thus he had forgotten Beauty, and been content to live without that constant inner vision of her which deadens bodily hunger and feeds the soul of the artist.
So Wright read the dead soul beneath the ambitious design.
Mrs. Phillips came rustling in with friends, to whom she exhibited the plans with an air of ownership in the architect.
"It\'s the cleverest thing that has been done in this city; every one says so. I tell Harrison that he has me to thank for this. It was a case of poetic justice, too. You know the story? One forgets so easily here; it\'s hard to remember who died last month. Why, the old man Jackson left pretty nearly every cent of his money to found this school. I think he was crazy, and I should have fought the will if I had been a relative. At any rate, it was a nasty joke on this Mr. Hart, who was his nephew and every one thought would be his heir.
"But he has made such a plucky fight, got the respect of every one, gone right along, and succeeded splendidly in his profession. He married foolishly, too. Poor girl, not a cent, and not the kind to help him one bit, you know,—no style, can\'t say a word for herself. She\'s done a good deal to keep him back, but he has managed to survive even that. I wonder he hasn\'t broken with her. I do, really! They haven\'t a thing in common. They had a pleasant home out in the Park, you know, and a good position—every one knew them there. He is the kind to make friends everywhere. And what do you think? She made him give up his house and come into town to live! The Park was too far away from her friends, or something of the sort—wanted to educate her children in the city, and all that. I believe it was jealousy of him. He was popular, and she wasn\'t. No woman will stand that sort of thing, of course.
"So now they have taken a house on Scott Street,—a little, uncomfortable box, the kind of place that is all hall and dining-room. Of course they don\'t have to live like that; he\'s making money. But she says she doesn\'t want to be bothered—has ideas about simple living. The trouble is, she hasn\'t any ambition, and he\'s brimful of it. He could get anywhere if it weren\'t for her. It\'s a shame! I don\'t believe she half appreciates even this. Isn\'t it splendid? He has such large ideas!
"Venetia is thick with her, of course. You might know she would be. It\'s through Mrs. Hart she meets those queer, tacky people. I tell you, the woman counts much more than the man when it comes to making your way in the world; don\'t you think so?" ...
And with further words of praise for the plans and commiseration for the architect, the widow wandered into the next room with her friends, then descended to her carriage, dismissing art and life together in the prospect of dinner.
Helen made a point of taking the boys to see their father\'s work, and explained carefully to them what it all meant. They followed her open-eyed, tracing with their little fingers the main features of the design as she pointed them out, and saying over the hard names. It was there Venetia Phillips found her, seated before the large sketch of the south elevation, dreaming, while the boys, their lesson finished, had slipped into the next room to look at the pictures.
"Have you seen my mother?" she asked breathlessly, seating herself beside Helen. "I brought Dr. Coburn, and we almost ran into Mrs. Phillips the first thing. So I dodged into the Greek room and left him there to study anatomy. She had that horrid Rainbow woman with her and would have been nasty to the doctor. Mother is such a splendid snob!" she explained frankly.
"Well, well, our Jackie has done himself proud this time, hasn\'t he? He\'s a little given to the splurge, though, don\'t you think?"
Helen did not answer. She did not like to admit even to herself that her husband\'s greatest effort was a failure. Yet she was a terribly honest woman, and there was no glow in her heart. Indeed, the school and all about it had become unpleasant to her, covered as it was with sordid memories of her husband\'s efforts to get the work. Latterly there had been added to these the almost daily bickerings with the trustees, which the architect reported. The plans had not been accepted easily.
"All the same, Jack\'s got some good advertising out of it," Venetia continued encouragingly, noticing Helen\'s silence. "The newspapers are throwing him polite remarks, I see. But I want to talk to you about something else. Mamma has been losing a lot of money; bad investments made in boom times; sure things, you know, like copper and steel. She\'s very much pressed, and she wants............