So it was with a troubled heart that he applied himself to more rigorous professional endeavor. Like most architects he had pursued certain lines of work because orders had come to him, and the chances of employment had ordained that his services should be sought for small churches, school-houses and kindred buildings in the surrounding country rather than for more elaborate and costly structures. On these undertakings it was his habit to expend abundant thought and devotion. The class of work was to his taste, for, though the funds at his disposal were not always so large as he desired for artistic effects, yet he enjoyed the opportunity of showing that simplicity need not be homely and disenchanting, but could wear the aspect of grace and poetry. Latterly he had been requested to furnish designs for some blocks of houses in the outlying wards of the city, where the owners sought to provide attractive, modern flats for people with moderate means. Various commissions had come to him, also, to design decorative work, which interested him and gave scope to his refined and aspiring imagination, and he was enthusiastically absorbed in preparing his competitive plans for the building of Wetmore College. His time was already well occupied by the matters which he had in hand. That is, he had enough to do and yet did not feel obliged to deny himself the luxury of deliberate thoroughness in connection with each professional undertaking. Save for the thought that he must needs earn more in order to please Selma, he would have been completely happy in the slow but flattering growth of his business, and in feeling his way securely toward greater success. Now, however, he began to ask himself if it were not possible to hasten this or that piece of work in order to afford himself the necessary leisure for new employment. He began also to consider whether he might not be able, without loss of dignity, to put himself in the way of securing more important clients. To solicit business was not to be thought of, but now and again he put the question to himself whether he had not been too indifferent as to who was who, and what was what, in the development of his business.
While Littleton was thus mulling over existing conditions, and subjecting his conduct to the relentless lens of his own conscience and theories, Selma announced to him jubilantly, about a fortnight subsequent to their conversation, that her secret was a secret no longer, and that Mr. Parsons desired to employ him to build an imposing private residence on Fifth Avenue near the Park. Mr. Parsons confirmed this intelligence on the following day in a personal interview. He informed Littleton that he was going to build in order to please his wife and daughter, and intimated that expense need not stand in the way of the gratification of their wishes. After the business matters were disposed of he was obviously ready to intrust all the artistic details to his architect. Consequently Littleton enjoyed an agreeable quarter of an hour of exaltation. He was pleased at the prospect of building a house of this description, and the hope of being able to give free scope to his architectural bent without molestation made that prospect roseate. He could desire no better opportunity for expressing his ideas and proving his capacity. It was an ideal chance, and his soul thrilled as he called up the shadowy fabric of scheme after scheme to fill the trial canvas of his fantasy. Nor did he fail to award due credit to Selma for her share in the transaction; not to the extent, perhaps, of confessing incapacity on his own part, but by testifying lovingly to her cleverness. She was in too good humor at her success to insist on his humiliation in set terms. The two points in which she was most vitally interested—the advantage of her own interference and the consequent prompt extension of her husband's field of usefulness—had been triumphantly proved, and there was no need that the third—Wilbur's lack of capacity to battle and discriminate for himself—should be emphasized. Selma knew what she thought in her own mind, and she entertained the hope that this lesson might be a lamp to his feet for future illumination. She was even generous enough to exclaim, placing her hands on his shoulders and looking into his face with complacent fervor:
"You might have accomplished it just as well yourself, Wilbur."
Littleton shook his head and smiled. "It was a case of witchery and fascination. He probably divined how eager you were to help me, and he was glad to yield to the agreeable spell of your wifely devotion."
"Oh, no," said Selma. "I am sure he never guessed for one moment of what I was thinking. Of course, I did try to make him like me, but that was only sensible. To make people like one is the way to get business, I believe."
Littleton's quarter of an hour of exaltation was rudely checked by a note from Mrs. Parsons, requesting an interview in regard to the plans. When he presented himself he found her and her daughter imbued with definite ideas on the subject of architects and architecture. In the eyes of Mrs. Parsons the architect of her projected house was nothing but a young man in the employ of her husband, who was to guide them as to measurements, carpentry, party-walls and plumbing, but was otherwise to do her bidding for a pecuniary consideration, on the same general basis as the waiter at the hotel or the theatre ticket-agent. As to architecture, she expected him to draw plans just as she expected dealers in carpets or wall-papers to show her patterns in easy succession. "I don't care for that; take it away." "That is rather pretty, but let me see something else." What she said to Littleton was, "We haven't quite decided yet what we want, but, if you'll bring some plans the next time you call, we'll let you know which we like best. There's a house in Vienna I saw once, which I said at the time to Lucretia I would copy if I ever built. I've mislaid the photograph of it, but I may be able to tell you when I see your drawings how it differed from yours. Lucretia has a fancy for something Moorish or Oriental. I guess Mr. Parsons would prefer brown-stone, plain and massive, but he has left it all to us, and both daughter and I think we'd rather have a house which would speak for itself, and not be mixed up with everybody else's. You'd better bring us half a dozen to choose from, and between me and you and Lucretia, we'll arrive at something elegant and unique."
This was sadly disillusionizing to Littleton, and the second experience was no less so. The refined outline sketches proffered by him were unenthusiastically surveyed and languidly discarded like so many wall-papers. It was evident that both the mother and daughter were disappointed, and Littleton presently divined that their chief objection was to the plainness of the several designs. This was made unmistakably obvious when Mrs. Parsons, after exhibiting a number of photographs of foreign public buildings with which she had armed herself, surveyed the most ornate, holding it out with her head on one side, and exclaimed impressively, "This is more the sort of thing we should like. I think Mr. Parsons has already explained to you that he desired our house to be as handsome as possible."
"I had endeavored to bear that in mind," Littleton retorted with spirit. "I believe that either of these plans would give you a house which would be handsome, interesting and in good taste."
"It does not seem to me that there is anything unique about any of them," said Mrs. Parsons, with a cold sniff intended to be conclusive. Nor did Littleton's efforts to explain that elaboration in a private residence was liable to detract from architectural dignity and to produce the effect of vulgarity fall upon receptive soil. The rich man's wife listened in stony silence, at times raising her lorgnette to examine as a curiosity this young man who was telling her—an American woman who had travelled around the world and seen everything to be seen—how she ought to build her own house. The upshot of this interview was that Littleton was sent away with languid instructions to try again. He departed, thinking melancholy thoughts and with fire in his soul, which, for Selma's sake, he endeavored to keep out of his eyes.