Before Matt Strang bade farewell to the jail, the Frenchman broke off a ventriloquial performance to beseech him with tears in the name of the camaraderie of Art, and for the sake of their ancient affection, now that he was going forth into the free sunshine, to expostulate with that cruel creditor and plead for unhappy genius. The persecutor—Coble by name—would not listen to his own appeals; but if a brother-artist would speak for him, Coble’s better nature—and every man had a better nature—might be touched, and the skylark might soar freely again towards the blue empyrean. He was quite honest—oh, Heaven, yes! He did not really possess two hundred dollars, as Coble imagined, but he could not account for them before the court—one would see why—though privately he could account for them in a way that would satisfy every honest man. Some emissary of Satan had put a bill into his hand which said, “For a hundred dollars we will give you a thousand dollars of our goods.” He had hankered, as any man might, after those thousand dollars, and sought out the coiners (for all the world knew that was their formula), and paid his hundred dollars. But the bag of coin they had given him was snatched from him on his road back by one of their agents. Determined not to be outwitted, he had gone again and invested another hundred dollars, and posted the parcel to himself at a neighboring post-office, but when it arrived he had found only a brick-bat inside. He had been afraid to “swear out” lest Coble should maintain he had the money, and thus get him indicted for perjury.
If the friend of his youth would lay these facts before the cruel Coble, he would no longer languish in a dungeon. Would not the great artist promise him?
The story seemed too strange to be false, and Matt promised, at the risk of a kiss, to recount it to the cruel Coble, though he failed to see how it proved the Frenchman’s honesty. He was, indeed, not sorry to have something definite to do, for with the completion of the jailer’s portrait had come a reaction, and he had lapsed, if not into his first agony, into a listless apathy that was worse—the nerveless, purposeless inertia of a crushed spirit. He had been in jail! Not even a miracle could erase that blot upon his name. How could he take up the burden of life afresh? Unless, perhaps, temporarily, with the sole object of wiping off the debt which he owed morally, though no longer legally. Anyway, he would see this Mr. Coble; the Frenchman seemed—curiously enough—to attach value to life, and if a little bit of his own life could be of any use to the poor weak creature, it was at his disposal. Mr. Coble, too, must be a strange person to derive any satisfaction from keeping the pygmy in prison in revenge for the loss of a few hundred dollars.
Money! Money! Money! How it had cramped and crippled and defiled his life!
He washed himself in the lavatory before leaving, and brushed his clothes, which were in a very fair condition. He was startled to find how many gray hairs streaked the curly locks he combed. “It won’t be a monochrome much longer,” he thought, surveying his mane with bitter merriment.
Outside it was May, but he was not brightened by the great blue sky that roofed him once more. The bustle of life sounded pleasantly about him, but he slunk through the busy quarters of the town with hanging head, as if every passer-by could read his shame in his face. The horrible thought struck him suddenly that Coble would know whence he came, but on top of it came the happy idea of explaining he had only gone to the jail to paint the portrait of an official.
The journey was not very long, though the road was muddy and steep. Mr. Coble lived beyond Citadel Hill, amid whose grassy expanse a path wound towards the more scattered portions of the town. The ice was quite off the sunny fields, except in the shaded parts under the fences, and men were ploughing with yokes of oxen, though here and there heaped-up piles of snow still bordered the route, which they flooded with slush in their gradual deliquescence. Mr. Coble’s suburban residence was a detached, double-fronted wooden cottage, barred from the road by a neat, white-painted picket-fence. There were attics in the roof, which, like its neighbors, was pitched, with broad eaves, for the sliding down of the snow. The front garden had been newly dug up and laid out to receive seed; there was a dirty line round the house, showing where the winter embanking had recently been removed.
Matt pushed open the white picket garden-gate and walked up the gravel path towards the pillared porch; three wooden steps led to the little platform, and then the door was raised one step higher to prevent snow drifting in from without.
Matt knocked. He heard the inner door open, the patter of light footsteps; then the outer door swung back, and a girl—passably pretty—appeared in the little entry between the doors, which were thus duplicated against the frost.
Matt lifted his hat and inquired for Mr. Coble. He had reverted to the drawling accents of the colony, though not altogether to its locutions.