“It is all very well to run down the men who make these things,” he cried, “but there’s a something—there’s a haughty, indefinable something about that figure. It’s what I tried for in my ‘Empress Eugénie,’” he added, with a sigh.
And he went home reflecting on the quality. “They don’t teach you that direct appeal in Paris,” he thought. “It’s British. Come, I am going to sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher—aim higher,” cried the little artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at liberty than he hastened with positive exhilaration to his studio.
Not even the sight of the barrel could entirely cast him down. He flung himself with rising zest into his work—a bust of Mr. Gladstone from a photograph; turned (with extraordinary success) the difficulty of the back of the head, for which he had no documents beyond a hazy recollection of a public meeting; delighted himself by his treatment of the collar; and was only recalled to the cares of life by Michael Finsbury’s rattle at the door.
“Well, what’s wrong?” said Michael, advancing to the grate, where, knowing his friend’s delight in a bright fire, Mr. Pitman had not spared the fuel. “I suppose you have come to grief somehow.”
“There is no expression strong enough,” said the artist. “Mr. Semitopolis’s statue has not turned up, and I am afraid I shall be answerable for the money; but I think nothing of that—what I fear, my dear Mr. Finsbury, what I fear—alas that I should have to say it!—is exposure. The Hercules was to be smuggled out of Italy; a thing positively wrong, a thing of which a man of my principles and in my responsible position should have taken (as I now see too late) no part whatever.”
“This sounds like very serious work,” said the lawyer. “It will require a great deal of drink, Pitman.”
“I took the liberty of—in short, of being prepared for you,” replied the artist, pointing to a kettle, a bottle of gin, a lemon, and glasses.
Michael mixed himself a grog, and offered the artist a cigar.
“No, thank you,” said Pitman. “I used occasionally to be rather partial to it, but the smell is so disagreeable about the clothes.”