In spite of all his resolves and struggles fate had been adverse to him once more. He was in great difficulties, and the necessity of facing an immediate danger was again upon him. It was of course useless and entirely out of the question to write a second letter to the uncle, whom he felt in his anger would willingly see them all slowly die of starvation rather than help them further, provided, of course, they could do so decently and quietly and not make any unpleasant scandal about it.
“I shall not write to him again, whatever happens,” he said, clinching his fists; and then he added, with an altogether ugly look on his usually placid face, “if the worst comes to the worst and we have to shoot ourselves, or otherwise go under, it will make a great deal of unfavorable talk at home and that,” he continued, smiling grimly, “is something he won’t like at all.”
Little Barlow had not been indulging in any such gloomy reflections the month before; on the contrary he had not been so hopeful and light hearted for a long time. He had paid his rent and a big color bill (which threatened to become malignant) with the compensation he had received for a remarkably living portrait of a rich and titled Englishman. “If I receive two more orders of the kind I will be on solid rock,” he triumphantly asserted to his beaming little wife, “and there now seems every prospect that I’ll get them. Lord Richemont was very much pleased with my work—as was his friend Sir Garnet Walton—and they have practically promised me at least one more order apiece. I will probably have to go to London soon to paint Lady Richemont, and who knows what will come out of the connections I may make there.”
Poor little Barlow’s day dreams were short lived, for toward the end of the following week—when he was just upon the point of starting—he received a letter from his patron telling him that Lady Richemont found his portrait wonderfully good and true and liked it immensely, but that she would be unable to pose for him for some time on account of a serious and sudden illness which had pulled her down in strength and temporarily altered her face. Then the bread bill dropped in, and little Barlow, wearing an exceedingly serious and abstracted air, settled it with the money he had reserved for his ticket to England, and the next day (out of an almost cloudless sky) fell an unkind and unexpected thunderbolt, in the shape of a legal summons from his frame-maker to pay one hundred and forty seven francs still due.
Now this was needlessly cruel on the frame-maker’s part, for little Barlow had ordered from him—or recommended his friends to order—nearly six thousand francs worth of work in the past five years. But the frame-maker suddenly “saw red,” as they say in France, and was in financial troubles in his turn, and decided to fall on poor little Barlow’s back with the entire and somewhat massive machinery of the French law.
“This document,” said little Barlow, gazing with mingled awe and curiosity at the officially stamped paper, “calls for our immediate attention. We are coming dangerously near to the point of being seized and sold out, and, if that were ever to take place, it would mean a complete and definite end to us.” While he was reflecting what it was best for him to do under the circumstances, the postman once again passed by and handed in another letter from London which when he had torn it open and read it, eased his mind mightily. It informed him that if he would accept £20 instead of the catalogue price of £30 for a last year Salon picture—then exposed at the Crystal Palace—he could dispose of it immediately.
He was so delighted at this unexpected good fortune that he caught his little wife by the waist—although she held a baby in each arm at the time and was in danger of dropping and injuring them seriously—and waltzed her round and round the studio. Then he told her all about the good news, and sat down and wrote a reply agreeing to let his picture go somewhat reluctantly (for the looks of the thing) provided he was paid at once; after which he sallied out and walked way over across town and deposited it himself in the main post office of the rue du Louvre so that there would be a little less chance of its going astray than by simply dropping it in a branch office letter-box in the next street. Then he went home and patiently waited for the response.