“If you could manage it, my father and myself would be exceedingly grateful to you,” he replied.
Lady Milmo was driving away, her kind head filled with schemes for Ella's extrication, when, at the block at Oxford Circus, she caught sight of a news-vendor wearing as an apron the coloured bill of an early edition of an evening paper. Across it in enormous capitals ran the startling legend, “Sudden Death of Sir Decimus Bland.”
“The best thing the pompous old idiot has ever done in his life!” said Lady Milmo.
CHAPTER XIII—THE USES OF ADVERSITY
It was the music-room in Mr. Bevis Urquhart's mansion in Park Street. The floor was polished, the walls panelled in white and gold, the ceiling painted in the Watteau style. About forty fashionably dressed people sat on gilded chairs in the body of the room. High in front of them towered the organ; beneath it stretched a low platform containing a white and gold grand piano pushed into a corner, and a Louis XV. table, at which sat half a dozen men. Among these was Roderick, looking worn and jaded, and from the front row of the chairs Ella Defries viewed him in some concern. The committee of the Walden Art Colony had called a general meeting of those interested in the project, and Mr. Bevis Urquhart had lent his music-room for the purpose.
Mr. Redmayne, R. A., had been voted into the chair. He was a business-like looking little man, clean-shaven and precise in attire, and he spoke in a dry, sharp way like a barrister. He announced to the meeting what Roderick had heard some days before,—that Sir Decimus Bland had died suddenly and had made no testamentary provision for the Colony. They all had looked to him for the payment of the Director's salary and for the guaranteeing of any pecuniary deficit that might occur in working the concern. Their chief support gone, it was for the meeting to decide whether the scheme should be continued or abandoned. From a memorandum supplied by Roderick he read a statement of accounts. Three thousand and twenty pounds at Mr. Usher's bankers; two thousand promised. Was there any person or combination of persons willing to fill Sir Decimus Bland's place? He sat down. No one responded. Lord Eglington, a withered gentleman with a cracked voice, rose from the committee table, and after expounding the aim of the Colony regretfully proposed the entire abandonment of the scheme. Mr. Bevis Urquhart seconded the resolution.
Roderick caught an appealing glance from Ella and sprang to his feet. He pleaded eloquently. He had worked with heart and soul to organise the Colony; was ready to devote his existence to it. The future of Art was at stake. Here was the one glorious chance the century had offered to free Art from the shackles that had degraded it and through its inexorable influence had degraded modern life. Never had he felt such pain as when he had heard Lord Eglington and Mr. Urquhart propose to dismiss the scheme to that unutterable horror of desolation, the limbo of forsaken ideals. He adjured them to weigh the vast responsibility they had taken upon themselves. He urged those present to respond generously to his appeal for funds to carry on the work.
“I speak as a man,” said he, “fighting for dear life, for all that is sacred and holy to me in existence. I have pledged myself to bring this boon upon the world, and I will do it ere I die.”