A few days later the notice of rejection arrived, and the thin, sickly faced young man, being out with orders, surreptitiously wheeled “The Paradise of the Birds” home on his barrow, and discounted the renewed wrath of his employer by giving a week’s notice. He did his work as usual that afternoon, smiling in uneasy defiance at the oddly intrusive thought that the Cobequid folks would have said it was all through his painting on Sundays, yet not without a shred of their superstition. But when he got home he fell helplessly on his little iron bed, and wept like a child.
He was beaten, broken, shattered in body and soul. He had fought and lost.
And as an ailing child turns yearningly to its mother, so his heart yearned to his native land in a great surge of homesickness. Here the narrow labyrinthine streets were muddy with spring rains, but there the snow would still be on the fields and forests, white and pure and beautiful under the dazzling blue sky. Oh, the keen, tingling cold, the large embrace of the salt breezes, the joy of skating over the frozen flats! His poor poisoned blood glowed at the thought. Here he was ill and lonely, there he would be among loving faces. Poor Billy! How the boy must long for him! It would be humiliating to return a failure, but there would be none to reproach him, and his own pride was gone, vanished with his physical strength. But how to get back? He was too ill to go before the mast, too impoverished to command even the steerage. He had unfortunately sent thirty-six shillings home just before the rejection of his picture, and he was again in arrears of rent, through the extra expense of the canvas and the compulsory gilt frame. Mrs. Lipchild was induced by the splendor of the frame to take “The Paradise of the Birds” in payment for the three weeks (lunar), and the “carver and gilder, over-mantel and picture-frame maker” in Red Lion Street, who had made the frame, purchased all his remaining pictures and school-studies for a sovereign down.
There was nothing for it but to borrow. So feeble was his whole being that the first suggestion of this ignominy carried no sting. He thought first of Herbert, and brushing his garments to a threadbare specklessness, inquired of his club door-keeper, who informed him curtly that Mr. Strang was abroad. This was as he expected, but he was disappointed. Tarmigan was his only other friend, but him he had lost sight of since Christmas, and though he had in these hours of weakness abandoned the hope of Art, he had still a vague paradoxical aversion from applying to a man whose artistic ideas he did not share, and who might hereafter have a sort of right to resent his departure from them. Besides, Tarmigan was poor, was unsuccessful. In his desperation he thought of Madame Strang, and though, in the course of their chat that night at the Students’ Club, Herbert had told him the Old Gentleman had given her an awful wigging, and she had renewed her promise to close her door in the culprit’s face, yet Matt nerved himself to risk insult. So, spying the shop from a sheltered doorway across the street, he hung about till the Vandyke beard and the velvet jacket had issued and disappeared round a corner, then he rang the bell of the side door, and to his joy Madame herself opened it.
“My poor boy! What is the matter with you?” she cried.
The unexpected sympathy of her words clouded the lonely young man’s gaze with hot tears; he staggered into the passage, and Madame, growing pale herself, took him by the arm and helped him into the sitting-room, and in her agitation poured him out a whole tumblerful of brandy, which fortunately he only sipped.
A little recovered, he explained—improving his pallid complexion with blushes when he came to the point—that he was returning to Nova Scotia, as the doctor had ordered him a sea-voyage, and he wanted four or five pounds till he got to the other side, when he would easily be able to repay the loan.
“Certainly, my poor boy, certainly,” said Madame. “The idea of clever people having no money, and people like me having plenty.”
She ran up-stairs, and returned with ten of the sovereigns, that she hoarded—literally—in her stocking.
But Matt would not take more than five. He felt it foolish to burden himself with superfluous temptations.