“Look at this queer stone scarab,” interrupted Herbert, annoyed. “I picked it up in Egypt; comes from inside a mummy-case.”
Egypt! The word fell like music on Matt’s ears. The rose-light of romance illumined the uncouth beetle. Herbert hastened to exhibit his other curios: coins, medals, cameos, scarves, yataghans, pottery, ivories, with a cursive autobiographical commentary, passing rapidly to another object whenever his father threatened to take up the thread of autobiography.
And as Matt handled these picturesque trophies of travel, that wafted into the studio the aroma of foreign bazaars, the wave of hopelessness resurged, swamping even the fresh hopefulness engendered by the discovery that his cousin’s craftsmanship was not so far beyond his hand, after all; all those marvellous, far-off old-world places that had disengaged themselves from his lonely readings, fair mirages thrown upon a phantasmal sky, not vaguely, but with the sensuous definiteness of a painter’s vision, jostling one another like the images in a shaken kaleidoscope in an atmosphere of romantic poetry: Venice, dreaming on its waters in an enchanted moonlight; Paris, all life and light; Spain, with cathedrals and gypsies and cavaliers tinkling guitars; Sicily, with gray olive-trees and sombre cypresses and terraced gardens and black-eyed peasant women with red snoods; the Rhine, haunted by nixies and robber-chiefs, meandering ’twixt crumbling castles perched on wooded crags; Egypt, with its glow and color, all lotus-blossoms and bulrushes and crocodiles and jasper idols, and bernoused Arabs galloping on silken chargers in a land of sand and sphinxes and violet shadows; the Indies, east of the sun and west of the moon, full of palm-trees and nautch-girls and bayaderes—a shifting panorama of strange exotic cities, steeped in romance and history and sunshine and semi-barbarian splendors, where the long desolation of his native winter never came, nor the clammy vapors of Britain; cities of splendid dream, where anything might happen and nothing could seem unreal; where Adventure waited masked at every street corner, and Love waved a white hand from every lattice. And in a flood of sadness, that had yet something delicious in it, he pitied himself for having been cut off from all these delectable experiences, which the happier Herbert had so facilely enjoyed.
“I know you are bored, father,” said Herbert, pausing amid his exposition. “You want to get back to business, and Matt and I want to yarn.”
Matt’s bitterness was soothed. It thrilled him to be called Matt by this rich, refined, travelled young gentleman.
“Well, good-bye, my young friend,” said his uncle, holding out his hand for the first time. “I dare say I shall see you again. Ha! Drop in any time you’re passing. I think your mother will be wanting you presently, Herbert.”
He moved to the door, then paused, and, turning his head uneasily, said: “And if you ever want any advice, you know, don’t hesitate to ask me.” And with a faint friendly nod of his Vandyke beard he went out, closing the door carefully behind him.
“Awful bore, the governor,” said Herbert, stretching his arms. “He never knows when he’s de trop.”
Matt did not know what de trop was, except when he saw it printed, but the disrespectful tone jarred upon him.
“You owe him a good deal, it seems to me,” he replied, simply.