“Great legs!” he cried; and repeated: “Great legs!”
And as he finished laying the fire, a continual grin of humorous and vengeful expectancy covered his face.
That afternoon he made his simple preparations. They consisted of a trip to the paint shop on Eighth Avenue, where he procured a ten-cent can of black paint and a small brush. He carried them to the cellar and concealed them in an old barrel.
Thursday morning came, and with it a display of unexampled energy on the part of Mr. Chidden. The furnace ashes were attended to before breakfast, and by nine o’clock he had completed all the tasks that usually took him till noon. This was a mistake, but it was perceived by no one.
At twenty minutes past nine, Mr. Comicci came down the stairs and went into the street for his morning walk. Mr. Chidden witnessed his departure from the dining-room window. He waited five minutes, then went to the cellar for his paint and brush. As he came back up, he threw a hasty glance into the kitchen, where his sister Maria and Minnie were busied in the preparation of dainties for the expected guests. Then he passed swiftly upstairs to the third floor and entered Mr. Comicci’s room.
Straight to the table in the corner he went, and drew off the dark cloth. He had no time to be embarrassed by the nudity of the marble lady; he had work to do. He took his brush and paint and went at it. In ten minutes he had finished. He replaced the cloth, hid the brush and paint under his coat, and returned to the cellar, where he buried the implements under a pile of wood.
“There!” he breathed, his heart still thumping from a sensation of perilous adventure. “If only the dago don’t lift that cloth! Well, it’s a chance!”
There was nothing to do now but wait for afternoon and the arrival of the Help a Little Club. But the wait was not so tedious as it might have been, after Mr. Comicci had returned from his walk, for he spent most of the time loitering about the lower hall, expecting momentarily to hear a door thrown violently open upstairs and the voice of the Italian raised in wrath. But neither of these sounds came, though the guests did.
At the appearance of the first of them, a little after two o’clock, Mr. Chidden retreated to the floor above, having been instructed by Maria to keep out of the way. By three the parlor was full, and Mr. Chidden could hear the confused hum of their voices through the closed door. He could imagine them — old ladies, middle-aged ladies, fat ladies, lean ladies, amiable ladies, sour ladies, sitting in two or three circles, with both their tongues and needles running at the rate of two hundred strokes a second.
He had decided to wait till four o’clock before beginning operations, but half an hour before that time arrived, he was frightfully impatient; and he kept listening fearfully for indications of the discovery of his plot upstairs. At length he could bear it no longer. He made his way, with a strange reluctance, to the door of the third-floor front. There he hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked sharply. The Italian’s voice came:
“Come in!”
As he opened the door, Mr. Chidden couldn’t help sending a quick glance toward the rear corner, and he gave a little sigh of relief as he saw that the table and its cloth-covered statue were in their normal position. He turned to Mr. Comicci, who stood in an attitude of polite inquiry.
“My sister Maria sent me up,” said he. “She’s got some lady friends visiting, and she wants to know if she can bring them up to look at your things.”
Of course, Mr. Comicci made no difficulty about it. He said it would make him very happy to show the ladies his poor things, only the room was very untidy — But that was to be expected of an artist.
“Sure,” Mr. Chidden agreed. “They’ll be right up.”
He turned and went back downstairs. At the parlor door, he did not hesitate. Time was precious now. The Italian might begin to uncover things. His knock brought Maria herself to the door.
“What do you want?” she demanded impatiently, when she saw her brother.
“Mr. Comicci sent me,” he replied, “to ask if you would like to bring the ladies up to look at his things. I think he expects he might sell something. Trashy stone!”
“Why, certainly,” she replied, after a second’s thought. “Of course! It’s very kind of him. Tell him we’ll be up — let’s see — in half an hour.”
Mr. Chidden was ready for this.
“He said,” he continued calmly, “that he has to go out right away, and would be obliged if you’d come at once.”
“Well... I don’t know—” Miss Maria hesitated; then added: “All right. Tell him we’ll be up right away.”
Mr. Chidden remounted the stairs. His heart was thumping violently.
“Subtle mashination,” he breathed to himself. “Machiavelli. Italian work. I’ll show the dago!”
He found Mr. Comicci trying to straighten up the room, throwing pieces of clothing into the wardrobe, picking bits of paper and clay from the floor, hiding the disreputable grate with a still more disreputable square of drapery. Mr. Chidden pitched in to help him. He brought a broom from the closet in the hall and swept the floor, while the Italian wiped off the chairs with a rag. Then together they arranged the objects for display on two boxes placed together in the middle of the room. There were dozens of them — clay models, plaster casts, white and mongrel marble, in all stages approaching completion. They had not quite finished emptying the bottom drawer of the wardrobe when they heard steps and voices on the stairs.
“They’re coming!” whispered Mr. Chidden, throwing the broom under the bed and retreating precipitately to a corner — the one farthest away from the table with the cloth-covered statue. The Italian threw on his coat, opened the door, and stood bowing on the threshold as the ladies approached, led by Miss Maria. He met her eyes with a tender glance.
“This is so kind of you, Mr. Comicci!” said she meltingly.
They entered. What a crew! Confusion! There was Mrs. Rankin, gray, but aggressive, with quick, dark eyes that darted continually; Mrs. Manger, with humble air and sharp tongue; the three Misses Bipp, echoes of the past and of one another; Mrs. Paulton, who had once lived on Riverside Drive; Mrs. Judson, grandmotherly sweet; and a dozen others. Mr. Chidden watched them from his corner as they trooped in, jostling one another at the door, and standing foolishly still when they got in, just as they do in a street car. He wanted to cry: “Move forward; plenty of room in front!” but he was occupied principally with speculations of his own.
They grouped themselves around the two boxes, after a general introduction to Mr. Comicci, with little ejaculations of pleasure and foolish remarks. Mrs. Rankin asked if they might handle, and picked up a piece before Mr. Comicci had time to reply. The others followed suit. They carried the things nearer the windows, for a better light, and pointed out to one another the more subtle excellences. But Mr. Chidden chuckled to himself as he observed that certain figures — those without drapery — remained untouched and uncriticized.
“Now, this tiger!” said Mrs. Paulton. “Such beautiful lines!”
“It is very fine,” agreed some one, “but the tail appears to be elongated.”
They gathered around the tiger.
“It is a long tail,” said Mrs. Rankin.
“Tigers have long tails,” retorted Miss Maria in the tone of a champion.
“Still, this tail is so very long!”
“Quite too long, I should say.”
“It is a long tail.”
“For a tail, it does seem too long.”