“Hullo, hullo, my young Methodist parson!” and Herbert threw back his head in a ringing laugh which made his white teeth gleam gayly. “Why, do you think we owe anything to our parents? They didn’t marry to oblige us. I am only a tool for his ambitions.”
“What do you mean?” murmured Matt.
“Oh, well, I oughtn’t to talk about it, perhaps, but you’re my first cousin—the first cousin I’ve ever had”—Matt smiled, fascinated afresh—”and, after all, it’s an open secret that he wants the name of Strang to live in the annals of painting—if it couldn’t be Matthew Strang, it must be Herbert Strang, and so he belongs to the minor artists’ clubs. Of course, he can’t get into the Limners’, though he contrives to be there on business pretty often, and consoles himself by using their note-paper; but at the Gillray and the Reynolds’ they dare not blackball him, because the committee always owe him money, or want to sell him pictures; but I dare say they laugh at him behind his back when he jaws to them about art in general, and my talents in particular. It’s confoundedly annoying. Oh, I’ve been forgetting to smoke. What can be the matter with me?” And he pulled out a lizard-skin case, from which Matt, not liking to refuse, drew forth a cigarette.
“But what good does he do by belonging to those clubs?” he asked.
“Oh, he likes it, for one thing,” replied Herbert, striking a match and holding it to Matt’s cigarette. “My belief is, he only went into the picture business to rub shoulders with artists, though where the charm comes in I have never been able to find out, for a duller, a more illiterate set of fellows I never wish to meet. Shop is all they can talk. And then, of course, it’s good for business. But in the background lurks, I feel sure, the idea of advancing my interests, of accumulating back-stairs influence, of pulling the ropes that shall at last lift me into the proud position of R.A. Nay, who knows?” he said, puffing out his first wreath of smoke—“President of the Royal Academy!” And he laughed melodiously.
“Well, but—” began Matt, inhaling the delicious scent of the tobacco.
“Well, but,” echoed Herbert. “That’s just it. My tastes are not considered in the matter at all. Art! Art! Art! Nothing but Art rammed down my throat till I’m sick of the sight of a canvas. I was a connoisseur in my cradle, and sucked a maul-stick instead of a monkey-on-a-stick, and I live in the midst of Art and out of the profits of it. It’s pictures, pictures everywhere, and not a—Oh, have a brandy-and-soda, won’t you? Don’t stand about as if you were going.” Matt obediently dropped upon a lounge that yielded deliciously to his pressure. The fragrant smoke curled about his face, while his cousin made pleasant play with popping corks and gurgling liquids.
“But don’t you really like painting?” he asked, in astonishment.
“I like some things in it well enough,” replied Herbert, “but it’s such beastly drudgery. All this wretched copying of models is no better than photography. And a camera would do the tiding in a thousandth part of the time. I always work from photographs when I can.”
“But is that artistic?” said Matt, slightly shocked.