Chapter VI: The Outcast

It was midsummer, and everybody who was anybody was pent in the sweltering city.

“The sort of weather to make one want to be a figure-model,” Herbert said, wearily, as he flicked finically at “Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar,” now well on its way to completion. “But it seems to suit the Old Gentleman. You might laugh, Matt. I’m too languid myself.”

Matt did not reply; he was leaning against the marble mantel-piece, pale and perspiring.

“What do you think is his latest move?” pursued Herbert. “Though that’s rather a bull, for the mischief is that he refuses to go on our annual autumn jaunt abroad, lest it should interfere with Daniel and Nebby. However, I am to have a horse of my own, and that’s some consolation. Talking of horses, how do you like Nebby’s left leg? You see I’ve repainted it as you marked it.” He got up, walked backward, and surveyed the picture approvingly, brush in hand. “By Jove, it’s coming on splendidly! I could imagine I was in the palace. There _is_ something in following Nature, after all. The creative part lies in the invention and color.... What’s the matter with you this morning, Matt? You don’t say a word. Are you sunstruck? or moonstruck?”

“Both,” said Matt, with a ghastly smile.

“Why, what’s up?” Herbert scrutinized his cousin’s face for the first time.

Matt looked towards the model.

“You know his English is limited,” Herbert remarked, reassuringly. “Unless you are bent on talking Arabic.” But Matt still hesitated. At last, as in desperation, he extracted a letter from his breast-pocket and tendered it to Herbert, who took it wonderingly, cast a glance at it, and frowned.

“The scoundrel!” he said. “How dare he send it in so soon? I shall never recommend him to anybody again.”

“It isn’t soon,” corrected Matt; “it’s more than three months.”

“You’re not going to take any notice of him yet?”

“Oh, I must.”

“Oh, nonsense! Why, the shock would drive him silly. He only sends it in as a matter of form.”

“I don’t like not to pay.”

“All right,” said Herbert, sulkily; “only you’ll spoil the market for us poor devils who’re not Crœsuses, that’s all. But don’t give him the fifteen guineas at once; give him five on account.”

Matt struggled with himself. “I can’t even do that,” he faltered at last, “unless you can manage to pay me something.”

“Oh, by Jove!” said Herbert, whistling lugubriously. “I’d forgotten you were among my creditors. But I’m stony-broke just now. So the old scoundrel will have to wait, after all. Ha! ha! ha! When do you expect to be flush again? I suppose you draw interest on bonds or something. All Americans do.”

“I--I don’t,” said Matt, his head drooping shame-stricken. Then, with the courage of despair, he burst out, “I’ve only got tenpence in the world; that’s a fact.”

Herbert gave a shrill whistle of surprise and dismay, and let himself drop upon his painting-stool. “Here, go and play a little, Haroun al Raschid,” he called over to the model; and Nebuchadnezzar, shedding his purpureal splendors, cantered joyously down-stairs.

“Now then,” he said, sternly. “What in the devil have you been up to, my Methodist parson? Gambling, horse-racing, women?”

Matt shook his head, a wan smile struggling with his shame-faced expression. He already felt happier--the false atmosphere in which he had moved was dissipated forever. “I’ve never had any money to lose,” he confessed. “I only saved up fifty or sixty pounds to study in London for a year, and now it’s all gone--unless you can manage to repay me the twenty-five pounds.”

“Well, of all the--” cried Herbert, and did not finish the mysterious phrase. He leaned his elbows on his knees, and supporting his face upon his palms, stared severely at his cousin. “So this is the man who thinks Art should be moral,” he said, half musingly, half indignantly. “To go and let us all think you were a capitalist! And to let me in for borrowing money of a man who was practically a pauper! Why, I must have taken almost your last penny!”

Matt, flushing afresh under his reproachful gaze, did not attempt to deny it.

“Well, if that’s your idea of cousinly behavior, or even decent behavior--” said Herbert, witheringly.

“I--I didn’t mean to deceive you,” Matt stammered, apologetically. “You all took it for granted I was well-to-do. All I said was I had money enough to go along with, and so I thought I had.”

“Yes, but when I asked you for the pony, you consented at once. I gave you an opportunity to explain, but instead of that you intensified the original false impression.”

Matt was silent.

“And now you’ve put me into the wretched position of owing money, which I can’t pay, to a poor relation from whom I never would have borrowed it, had he been frank and truthful.”

Now both were silent, meditating the painful situation.

“Then you’ve got no money at all?” said Herbert at last, in stern accents, in which a note of astonishment still lingered.

Matt shook his head. His throat felt parched. “Unless you can pay me,” he murmured.

Herbert’s face softened, his tones became sympathetic.

“Then what are you going to do?” he asked, anxiously.

Matt was touched by the transition from reproach to solicitude.

“Oh, I shall manage somehow,” he said, huskily. “I don’t want to worry you--you’ve always been very good to me.”

“Yes, that’s all very well, but suppose you starve?” said Herbert, sharply.

“Oh, I shall find something to do,” said Matt. “In fact, I’ve already done some illustrations for the _Christian Home_, though they haven’t paid yet. I wouldn’t have told you if it hadn’t been for this tailor’s bill.”

“Confound him!” cried Herbert, savagely. “I’ll never recommend him another customer as long as I live.” He started promenading the studio angrily, muttering maledictions against the snip as the source of all the mischief.

“What a pity the governor won’t touch a new man’s work!” he said, pausing.

“Oh, I’d rather not trouble him,” said Matt, shrinking from a supplementary explanation with the Vandyke beard.

Herbert resumed his promenade with knitted brow. “I wonder if Drücker would take them. If you did sea-pieces--”

“Oh, please don’t worry,” pleaded Matt, concerned at his cousin’s anxiety. “I dare say I shall fall on my feet.”

“Yes, but while falling? Tenpence isn’t enough to fall with. You don’t owe any money into the bargain, I hope.”

Matt turned red. “Three weeks’ rent,” he murmured.

“How much is that?”

Matt shrank weakly from shredding his last rag of dignity.

“Not much,” he said. “She hasn’t said anything yet; I always paid her so regularly. But I don’t see any reason to despair; it looks as if I can make my bread and cheese by black and white. They were all agreed that that was the most paying kind of Art. You remember that night at Cornpepper’s?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Herbert, curtly. “But I can’t let you go away with tenpence in your pocket. I wonder if I’ve got anything.” He drew a handful of silver and copper coins out of his trousers-pocket. “Eight and fourpence halfpenny,” he announced, dolefully. “And I shall want seven for Haroun al Raschid this evening. I told you I was stony-broke. I suppose it’s no use offering you one and fourpence halfpenny.”

“No; then _you’d_ have nothing,” said Matt. “Don’t bother.”

“Oh, but I must bother. I wish I knew how to raise a little cash for you to keep you going till you get work.”

The grave anxiety of his tones troubled Matt sympathetically. He was pained to see Herbert so distressed. Suddenly his eyes fell on Herbert’s battalion of boots ranged against the wall--brown boots, black boots, patent boots, riding boots, shoes, slippers--and a wild, impish idea flew into his brain, breathing malicious suggestion, and even kindling a flash of resentment: “Why should not Herbert sell some of those serried boots if he was really in earnest?” But the impish idea was extruded in a moment. It savored of ungenerous cynicism, and, in so far as it meditated diminishing Herbert’s wardrobe, touched indecency; it was impossible to imagine Herbert with only a single pair of breeches or without sub-varieties of ornamental shoes. He moved in a large atmosphere of discriminate waistcoats and superfluous neckties.

“I’ll give you an introduction to Drücker, if you like,” said Herbert. “I dare say you have some little things by you.”

“I--I’ve already been to Drücker,” Matt admitted. “A fellow at Grainger’s told me about him. But he won’t look at my work.”

There was another embarrassing pause. Matt’s eyes wandered distractedly towards Herbert’s boots. The spotless battalion fascinated him; the buttons winked maliciously.

“How about portraits?” said Herbert, suddenly. “I thought you did portraits in Nova Scotia. Was that also--was that, er--true?”

Matt did not at once answer; it had suddenly occurred to him that there was probably another battalion of boots in Herbert’s dressing-room. When Herbert’s question at last penetrated to his consciousness, he replied with a start:

“Oh yes. Perhaps I may get sitters here, too. The only thing that really worries me is that bill.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all, you can make your mind easy. He can’t touch you; you’ve no money.” Herbert laughed gleefully. “It’ll serve him right, the scoundrel!”

“But he can put me in prison,” said Matt, blanching at the mere idea; “and that I could never survive.”

Herbert’s laugh became more boisterous.

“Oh, you innocent!” he gasped. “We’re not living in the dark ages. A man without a farthing is the king of creation. Nothing can touch him.”

“Oh, but they put people in prison for debt in Nova Scotia,” said Matt, surprised.

“Really?” ejaculated Herbert, surprised in his turn. “Well, I had no idea the country was so uncivilized as that. No, don’t funk. And even suppose you _were_ put into quod for debt? What then? Why, debt is the breath of the artistic nostril. Read your Bankruptcy Court daily in your paper, and cheer up, d’ye hear? Why should you take other people’s worries on your shoulders?”

“Other people’s?” quoth Matt, puzzled.

“Yes; the worry is for the tailor who can’t get his money, not for you,” explained Herbert, with the gay smile that showed his white teeth.

“I _must_ pay him,” Matt repeated, stolidly, and, lunch coming up, he took himself off in spite of every protest. Now that Herbert knew him in his true colors, his pride would not endure sitting as a pauper at the mid-day banquet, though he had eaten nothing all day except a halfpenny roll. He saw Haroun al Raschid in the street luxuriating in the sultry sunshine, and sent him up to luncheon, then dragged himself along the hot pavements to his back room, brightened now with unsaleable sketches, and threw himself upon the little iron bed, and abandoned himself to bitter reflection. Why, indeed, could he not take life as lightly as the artistic temperament demanded?

He had already tried other dealers than Drücker, with as little success. The Irishman at Grainger’s was wont to boast that he always sold his work by pawning it. Matt had essayed to imitate him, speculating the outlay for a gold frame; but either his face betrayed him to the pawnbrokers, or his picture, and it eventually went for less than the price of the frame. And--O vanity of resolutions and ideals!--his horror at doing Art to order had dwindled daily. In the actual imminence of starvation, in the impossibility of sending any further subsidies to his family, he had broached to other students his desire to get on this or that paper, but could gain no sympathetic information from them, except that they had already refused the positions he coveted. On the strength of some specimens sent by post he had been permitted to illustrate five short stories for the _Christian Home_, but only two had yet been published, and none had yet been paid for. And so the dregs of his savings had dripped away, slowly, slowly, like honey from an inverted pot, more and more slowly the less there remained, till only twenty drops (for he had come down to counting in halfpennies) divided him from starvation. The arrears of rent had been an agony more gnawing than that at his stomach, and now this tailor’s bill had come as the crowning catastrophe.

Yet none of his bitterness was for Herbert, despite the impish suggestions of the buttons; he did not even blame himself much. In a sense he had had value for his money, he had bought experience, if not quite of the kind for which he had saved up his dollars. But for those frightful fifteen guineas he might have weathered starvation-point, even though by the practice of a form of art he had not contemplated. To pawn or sell the unfortunate clothes would be but to cut himself off from gentility without surmounting the crisis. His hopeless reverie was interrupted by a tap at the door, and the landlady entered, bearing a letter. He jumped up from the bed in excitement--it must be his check for the drawings. But the letter bore an American stamp, and was in Billy’s writing, and he tore it open, fearful of new evils.

DEAR MATT,--I write not because there is anything fresh, but
because there isn’t. Life here is so dreary and monotonous I can no
longer endure it. It isn’t my health, for that is better, and the
fits are very rare now, thank God; but sometimes I think I shall go
mad or cut my throat if something doesn’t happen. Don’t you think I
could come over and stay with you? You’ve seen so much of the
world, and always enjoyed yourself, and I have always been tied
down to one wretched little village. The people are so dismally
religious, and between you and me I am losing faith in everything,
the more I think of it, and how bad the good people are. Deacon
Hailey and Ruth have quarrelled, and she has gone away to the
States. She came to see us before she left--she is just lovely--I
like to picture her before me. I should not be much extra expense,
dear Matt, because you could deduct something from the amount you
are soon going to send us monthly. I have mentioned this to Abner,
and he is willing. I am very little use here in the fields, and in
London I might perhaps earn money by writing. I feel I have it in
me to write tales; I have already written one called “The Whale
Hunters,” and another called “In the Burning Desert.” I do so long
to be famous. We should be a pair, dear Matt. Do you think you
could get these tales printed in a paper? I should not want money
at first. I did not like to send them to you without asking, as the
postage would be heavy, and the winter has been so unusually
protracted we are delayed with the crops. Do please send me some
books if you can; I have read everything in the school library
twice over. Novels and books of travel are what I like best. The
last we heard from Halifax was that mother was less violent. Do
write and say I may come, and if you can let me have the fare I
will repay you out of my tales. Abner and Harriet send their love,
and so do all the boys and girls (Amy is getting quite podgy), and
with the same from me, I remain,

Your affectionate brother,

BILLY.

P.S.--Don’t you think “William Strang” would look fine on the cover
of a book?

Matt suddenly felt faint and dizzy. Raising his eyes, he perceived that the landlady had not gone, that she was effervescing with unuttered speech.

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Lipchild,” he said, “I thought that your rent would have been in this letter.”

The lank, elderly woman looked grieved.

“Lor’ bless you, sir,” said she, “I’m not worryin’ about the rent. Don’t I know an honest face when I see it? Us landladies are always made out so bad. We’re always stealin’ the lodgers’ provisions and what not, and we can’t speak proper. I should like to see a book written on the other side. Why, last year I had an old maid in this very room--she took her meals here, and said I wasn’t to charge for attendance because she’d be always out; but bless me if the bell didn’t go tinkely-tinkely every minute, like an alarm-clock gone wrong in its inside. Believe me, Mr. Strang, it isn’t the lodgers as is always taken in. I’ve often wished my son was a writer instead of an artist; I’d get him to write the book.”

“Your son is an artist?” said Matt, in astonishment.

“Yes, Mr. Strang, though not near so clever as you. I could show you some of his work if you didn’t mind.”

“Oh, I should like to see it,” said Matt, half amused at this unexpected interlude, though his temples throbbed with a shooting pain.

“Would you mind comin’ down into the parlor, sir?”

“With pleasure,” said Matt.

He followed his landlady down the narrow stairs into the musty little room, resplendent with oleographs and a gilt mirror and two fruit-shades.

“There,” said Mrs. Lipchild, proudly. “Me and my husband in uniform.”

Matt surveyed the large colored presentments of Mr. and Mrs. Lipchild in their oval mounts, further astonished to discover that his landlord was a policeman.

“What did he do them with?” asked Matt, rather puzzled.

“With his own hand,” replied the proud mother. “They were taken quite plain, but he colored them lifelike, as you see. They would have charged half a crown more each, but for a shilling he bought a book telling him how to do it himself. My cousin Bob, who is in the Post-office, said he ought to be an artist, but I wouldn’t let him give up his place at Brown

Brothers. He’s in the grocery department, and earnin’ good money, and I’ve seen such a heap of artists sittin’ on the pavement, with the risk any moment of the rain washin’ all the pictures out; don’t you think I was right, sir?”

“Quite right,” said Matt, heartily.

Mrs. Lipchild thereupon produced a bottle of brandy and what she called a “seedy-cake” from a cupboard under a sideboard, and insisted on Matt’s partaking of the same. To refuse would pain her, to accept would refresh him, so he accepted. In the conversation which ensued it transpired that Mrs. Lipchild’s daughter was about to marry a young man from Brown Brothers (haberdashery department), that the young couple were now furnishing, and that it had occurred to Mrs. Lipchild that they might get their parlor pictures from Matt instead of from a shop, if they could get them any cheaper.

So Matt and his art patroness remounted again to the bedroom studio and haggled over prices, Mrs. Lipchild pointing out that his pictures were far inferior to shop pictures, not only by their unsympathetic subjects, but by their absence of frames and glass, and that she could get much bigger sizes than any of his for five shillings apiece. But as it came to be understood that ready money would not be required, and that the price was to be reckoned off the rent, Mrs. Lipchild ultimately departed in possession of a month’s worth of pictures--six of the prettiest landscapes and ladies in the collection, with Rapper’s “Library” thrown in. The poetic street-scenes she scorned, much to Matt’s relief, for he set no value on the earlier Nova Scotian work she had carried off.

This was Matt’s first sale of pictures in the great Metropolis of Art.

Considerably exhilarated by the change in his fortunes, and revived by the brandy and the “seedy-cake,” he reviewed the situation again, proof even against Billy’s letter, which he put by for later consideration. He found himself actually smiling, for a phrase of Cornpepper’s kept vibrating in his brain--“Art’s neither moral nor immoral, any more than it’s lunar or calendar.” Mrs. Lipchild’s last words had been: “Very well, we’ll reckon it a month,” and he wondered whimsically whether the month was to be lunar or calendar.

Under the impulse of these gayer sentiments, he resolved to raise money by pawning whatever he could part with, and by persisting in the search for an adventurous dealer; and reflecting that, after all, the tailor would be satisfied with an instalment, he wound himself up to the pitch of applying to Herbert by letter, though he could not bring himself to a verbal request.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am sorry to bother you again, but if you could
let me have only five guineas to offer the tailor I should be very
grateful. I hope soon to find work, or sell some things; and you
will be pleased to hear that I have got over the difficulty with
the rent--at least for the moment.

Yours sincerely,

MATT STRANG.

P.S.--Don’t put yourself out if you cannot. You have been very kind
to me, and I shall never forget it. I dare say I shall pull through
somehow.”

Matt carried this request to the pillar-box through the stuffy splendor of a summer night in Holborn back streets. As he heard the slight thud of the letter in the box he had a sense of something achieved, and had no compunction in spending one of his nine remaining pennies on his supper of “baked fagot” in a muggy pork-butcher’s shop. Nightmare, followed by a giddy uprising with furred tongue and aching forehead, was the sequel of this devil-may-care diet, and early in the afternoon the nightmare seemed to resume its riot in the guise of a reply from Herbert.

DEAR MATT,--What in the name of all that is unholy made you send
that letter to my house instead of to the club? There’s been a
devil of a row. The Old Gentleman opened the letter. He pretends he
did so without noticing, as it came mixed up with his, and so few
come for me to the house. When I got down to breakfast the mater
was in tears and the Old Gentleman in blazes. Of course, he’d
misread it altogether--imagined you wanted to borrow money instead
of to get it back (isn’t it comical? It’s almost an idea for a
farce for our dramatic society), and insisted you had been draining
me all along (you did write you were sorry to bother me again, you
old duffer). Of course I did my best to dispel the misconception,
but it was no use my swearing till all was blue that this was the
first application, he wouldn’t believe a word of it. He said he had
had his suspicions all along, and he called the mater to witness
that the first time he saw you in the shop he said you were a
rogue. And at last the mater, who’d been standing up for you--I
never thought she had so much backbone of her own--was converted,
and confessed with tears that you had been here pretty nigh every
day and swore you should never set foot here again, and the Old
Gentleman dilated on the pretty return you had made for his
kindness (sucking his boy’s blood, he called it, in an unusual
burst of poetry), and he likewise offered some general observations
on the comparative keenness of a serpent’s tooth and ingratitude.
And that’s how it stands. There’s nothing to be done, I fear, but
to let the thing blow over--he’ll cool down after a time.
Meanwhile, you will have to write to me at the club if you want to
meet me. I am awfully sorry, as I enjoyed your visits immensely. Do
let me know if I can do anything for you. I’m in a frightful
financial mess, but I might give you introductions here or there. I
know chaps on papers and that sort of thing. I am sure you have
sufficient talent to get along--and you can snap your fingers at
creditors, as you haven’t got anything they can seize, and can flit
any day you like. I wish I was you. With every good wish,

Yours always,

HERBERT STRANG.

Matt took this letter more stoically than he would have predicted. He even grinned like a Red Indian at the stake. In truth, he was already so prostrated by illness, hunger, and above all by the heat, that there was nothing left in him to be prostrated. He crawled out soon after the receipt of the letter, and recklessly bought a halfpenny currant loaf, which he washed down with water.