Nor was it only the need of time. Of late a strange languor had grown upon him, against which he was incessantly battling. The image in his strip of glass frightened him; his face was white, his once sturdy frame thin, and so feeble was he become that the three-mile walk, which had been rather a pleasure than an inconvenience, was now a weary, endless drag. He had bilious headaches. But he toiled on at his picture, finding in the fairyland of imagination consolation for existence, and in the anxieties and agonies of artistic travail an antidote to the agonies and anxieties of the daily grind. “The Paradise of the Birds,” though he was conscious it did not equal his conception, still seemed to him far superior to the ordinary Academy picture; it could not fail to redeem him from his own Inferno, reveal him to the world, make him an honored guest in artistic coteries, and give him all the day for Art. Through the sordid life of Stepney and Whitechapel he moved, sustained by an inner vision of beauty and victory, and it was not till he had surreptitiously wheeled his picture to Burlington House in the bird-stuffer’s barrow, at the price of a reprimand for idling about, that his will-power gave way, and he realized that he was but a limp shadow. Hope kept him on his feet a little longer, but the terrifying symptoms developed rapidly, and at last even Ground Junior perceived his condition, and allowed him a morning’s leave to attend a hospital. For two hours and a half he waited on one of the bare benches of a cheerless, dim-lit anteroom amid a grimy crowd of invalids, ranging from decrepit, bandaged old men to wan-faced children, all coughing and groaning and conversing fatuously, and ostentatiously comparing complaints, and finally fading away tediously two by two into the presence of the physician. At last his own turn came, announced by the sharp ting of a hand-bell; and, preceded by a rheumy-eyed stone-mason, he passed through the polished, awe-inspiring portal, and found himself in the presence of an austere gentleman with frosty side-whiskers.
“What’s the matter with you, my man?” the doctor inquired in low tones of the stone-mason.
“All outer sorts,” replied the stone-mason.
“Ah! Any special pain anywhere?” he went on, in the same dulcet accents.
“Eh?” asked the stone-mason, hearing imperfectly in his fluster.
The doctor shouted in a mighty yell: “Any special pain anywhere?”
The appalled stone-mason admitted to a stitch in the side, and the doctor continued his interrogative thunders. He had only two conversational methods—the piano and the fortissimo.
Matt, trembling, awaited his succession to the criminal dock, and, straining his ears when the trying moment came, was fortunate enough to secure the piano treatment.
“Your blood is poisoned,” was the great man’s verdict. “This is the third case I have had from bird-stuffing establishments. When you clean the glass shades and breathe on the insides you imbibe the arsenical and other foul gases that are given off by the skins and collect inside the air-tight glasses. You will take the medicine three times a day, but it won’t do you any good if you go on living in that atmosphere. You want sea-air. You ought to try and get into the country, and have a little holiday.”
And Matt Strang, dazed, but smiling grimly, crawled down into the dispensary and handed in his prescription, and tottered back to the bird-shop with a big bottle of yellow fluid in his hand. He would not let himself think; there was only one point of light—his Academy picture—and he kept his eyes fixed on that as on a star.