“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?