His manner was so evidently belligerent that Mr. Hubbard hastened to interpose.
"That is pretty well defined for us, isn't it?" he said. "We were directed to give a commission for a single figure representing America, to be executed in bronze and not to exceed a fixed sum in cost. That does not leave much latitude, so far as I can see, beyond the right of selecting or rejecting models shown us. For my own part, I may as well say at once, I am in favor of giving Mr. Herman whatever terms he wants to make a model, and trusting everything to him. Of course we should still have the right to veto the arrangement if the figure he made should not prove satisfactory."
Mr. Hubbard spoke with a certain elegant deliberation and precision which Irons supposed himself to regard as affected, while secretly he thoroughly envied it.
"Oh, we all know what Herman would do," Irons retorted. "He'd make one of those things that nobody could understand, and then say it was artistic. We want something to please folks."
Irons was more concerned about his popularity than even in regard to the reputation as an art patron he was laboriously striving to build up. He was an inordinately vain man, but he was an exceedingly shrewd one. His self-esteem was gratified by seeing his name among those of men influential in art matters; he bought pictures largely for the pleasure of being talked of as a man who patronized the proper painters, and he was looked upon as likely at no distant day to become president of a club which Fenton dubbed the Discourager of Art; but he realized that for a man who still had some political aspirations there was a substantial value in popular favor not to be found in any reputation for culture, however delightful the latter might be. He distinctly intended to please the public by his action in regard to the statue, a resolution which was rendered the more firm by the fact that he vastly over-estimated the interest which the public was likely to take in the matter. He trimmed the ashes from his cigar as he spoke, with an air which was intended to convey the idea that he would stand no nonsense.
"Won't Mr. Herman enter a competitive trial?" Calvin asked. "We might ask two or three others and then select the best model."
"He won't go into a competition. He says it's beneath an artist's dignity."
"Damned nonsense!" blustered Irons, sitting up in his chair in excitement over such an extraordinary proposition. "Don't we all go into competitions whenever we send in sealed proposals? Beneath his dignity! Great Scott! The cockiness of artists is enough to take away a man's breath."
Mr. Hubbard, who was a lawyer chiefly occupied, as far as business went, in managing his own large property and certain trust funds, and Mr. Calvin, who had never in his life soiled his aristocratic hands with any business whatever, smiled in the mutual consciousness that "sealed proposals" were as much outside their experience as competitions were foreign to that of Grant Herman. The thought, passing and trivial as it was, moved their sympathy a little toward the sculptor's view of the matter, although since secretly Mr. Calvin was determined that the commission should be given to Orin Stanton, the fact made little difference.
"You evidently don't want to undergo the general condemnation that has fallen on whoever has had a share in the Boston statues thus far," Mr. Calvin observed, glancing at Irons with a genial smile. "If you are going to set yourself to hit the popular taste and keep yourself clear of the claws of the critics at the same time, I fear you've a heavy task laid out."