THE ELDER BRANCH
In the heated discussions at Grainger’s of the demerits of the painters
of the day, no one ever mentioned the name of Strang except once; and
then the Christian name was not Matthew. Matt did not like to bring up
the name himself, as it was his own, but he soon understood that
artists do not deal in other people’s pictures, and, recalling Madame
Strang’s remark about her husband, he gradually came to the conviction
that his namesake was the dethroned god of an earlier day, discouraged
into sterility and commerce by the indifference of the younger
generation. And as the deity loomed less terrible, and as Matt felt
himself more at home in the art atmosphere of England, so the idea of
making himself known to his uncle began to be shorn of its terrors, and
even to be tinged with the generous thought of inspiring the neglected
artist to fresh work--an inversion of attitude, the humor of which did
not occur to him.
But when one afternoon he did betake himself again to the elegant
emporium off Cavendish Square, and found himself face to face with the
dapper young gentleman and his horseshoe cravat-pearl, the old awe of
the refinement radiating from every quarter of the compass overwhelmed
him, and his tongue refused to ask for Mr. Strang, compromising by a
happy thought in the demand for Madame. Madame appeared forthwith,
flashing upon him a sense of matronly sweetness and silk, and snatching
him from the embarrassment of openings by exclaiming in her charming
accent:
“Ah, you’ve come for your change.”
“What change?” asked Matt.
“You left sixpence on the desk. I noted it down.”
“It is very kind of you,” said Matt. “I had no idea you would remember
me all this time.”
“I never forget clever people,” said Madame, with a bewitching smile.
“How do you know I’m clever?” Matt smiled back.
Madame waved away the question with her plump white hand in silent
smiling reaffirmation. “I’ve always lived with clever people,” she said,
simply. “Talent is the only thing I admire in this world.”
Matt said lamely that he was glad to hear it. The phrase was a poor
expression of his pleasure in at last meeting a soul with his own
ideals.
“Where was it you saw my husband’s pictures?” asked Madame, eagerly.
Matt flushed. “I didn’t see any,” he confessed. “My father told me about
them.”
“Where did your father see them?”
“At home, when they were boys together.”
“What! They were school-fellows?”
“Brothers!” said Matt, and felt the instant relief of criminal
confession.
Madame uttered a little cry of delighted astonishment, and took Matt’s
hands in hers.
“My dear sir, my dear sir!” she cried, shaking them, “I knew you were
clever. Come inside--come inside. Why didn’t you say who you were last
time? You are the boy who wrote to Matthew from Nova Scotia years ago!
What a pity he is out! He will be so charmed.”
And, still holding his hands, she led him up a little flight of stairs
into a daintily furnished sitting-room, resplendent with pictures, and
sat him down in a soft arm-chair, and hung admiringly over him, and
plied him with inquiries as to his past and his projects and things Nova
Scotian (without always waiting for an answer, or ever getting more than
a brief generality), and rang for claret and cake, which were brought in
by a pretty girl in a piquant white cap, but which Matt refused for fear
of seeming to be in want of refreshment.
“I have a son who is also an artist--oh, so clever, the dear boy!” she
told him. “You must know him--you will love each other. He is at work
now in his studio; but he must not be interrupted till the light fails.”
Matt’s eyes kindled. “I shall like to know him,” he cried, fervently.
“Yes, dear Herbert! Oh, you’ve no idea how sweet and good and clever he
is! He’s twenty-three, yet as obedient as a child. We’re so proud of
him--his father and I. He quite consoles us for the failure of the
English to appreciate Matthew’s work.”
“Oh, where can I see uncle’s work?” asked Matt, eagerly.
Madame shook her head sadly. “Oh, he parted with all his pictures ever
so many years ago,” she said.
“But aren’t they exhibited anywhere?”
“We don’t know. They must be some day, if they are not destroyed, for
they are so clever. But the fact is--though, of course, I wouldn’t tell
it to a stranger--we had to--to--pawn them, and they were never
redeemed, and poor Matthew never would paint again, he was so
embittered. Oh, it was such a slow, sad struggle, those early days of
our married life! For years no one would buy poor Matthew’s work, and
when the money he had brought from Nova Scotia gave out we should have
starved if I had not started a little dress-maker’s shop. They still
call me Madame,” she interpolated, with a melancholy smile.
“But you _are_ French, aren’t you?” said Matt, thrilling with the pathos
of those far-away struggles.
“Yes, my parents were French, but I have spoken English almost from
girlhood.”
“There is French blood in our family, too,” murmured Matt, with a sad
recollection of his mother. He wondered what she was doing at the
moment.
“Indeed! Perhaps that was what drew me to Matthew--that and his artistic
genius. Poor Matthew!”
“But you are well off now?” said Matt, dubiously. He did not trouble to
correct her mistake, to explain that the French blood was on the spindle
side.
“Oh, we are rich. We have all we want. When my dress-maker’s business
grew prosperous--in fact, quite a fashionable resort--Matthew, who could
not bear to be out of touch with art, though he had sworn never to paint
again, saw his way to dealing in pictures. Of course, he makes far more
than any of his artist friends who succeeded, but that does not console
me for the pictures the world has lost.”
“But why doesn’t he paint now that he has money?” inquired Matt.
“He says he’s too old,” said Madame, sighing. “And besides, he thinks
he’d only be eclipsed by Herbert. Of course, Herbert _is_ exceptionally
gifted; he took the medal at the Royal Academy Schools, you know, for
the best copy of an Old Master, and he has had advantages which were
denied to his poor father. But still it often makes me cry to think of
how he sinks himself in the dear boy, not caring a jot about his own
reputation. Oh, there are few such fathers, I can tell you. I don’t know
what I have done to deserve such a husband, I who have no cleverness or
talent of any kind.”
And here, as at his cue, Matthew Strang entered, in a soft hat and a
black cloak vastly more impressive than the staid shabbiness of
Tarmigan, than whom his Vandyke beard alone gave him the greater
artistic distinction. He leaned slightly upon a gnarled walking-stick.
Madame sprang up to meet him in the doorway. “Oh, Matthew!” she cried,
ecstatically, “the young man who wanted to see you is your own nephew.
And he is come to study art. And won’t it be delightful for Herbert to
have a companion? I made him wait for you--I knew you wouldn’t be long.”
And radiant beneath her cap, Madame stepped aside, as if to leave the
stage free for the rapturous embrace between the uncle and his long-lost
nephew. But Matthew Strang stood rigid with astonishment, only his eyes
moving in startled examination of the young man, who had risen
respectfully.
For an interval of seconds that seemed numerable in minutes he looked at
Matt without speaking, leaning on his stick, his saturnine face growing
momently darker.
“Davie’s son, I suppose,” he said, slowly, at last.
“Yes, sir,” said Matt.
“H’m! I might have seen it. So you have come to England, after all?”
“Yes, sir. But not till I had the money for my studies.”
Matthew Strang’s face lightened a little. “Sit down! Sit down! No need
to stand,” he said, with uneasy graciousness, placing his disengaged
hand on Matt’s shoulder. “And how are all your folks?”
“Oh, they’re pretty spry, thank you,” said Matt, resuming his chair.
“Let me see--your mother married again, didn’t she?”
Matt nodded.
“She’s still alive, I suppose?”
“Ye-es,” faltered Matt.
“And how’s the Province?”
“It’s about the same,” said Matt, vaguely.
“Ha!” said Mr. Strang, with an all-comprehending air.
He allowed Madame to divest him lovingly of his cloak. Then he said:
“You’re settled in London, then?”
“I shall stay here some time.”
“Humph! You’re not like your father. He could never stay in one place.
Well, well, I’m sure I wish you success, but you know it’s not an easy
line you’ve gone into.”
“So you wrote to me, sir.”
“Ha! Well, I wrote the truth.”
“I was much obliged to you, sir, for your advice,” said Matt, sincerely.
But the elder man, suspecting sarcasm, replied half defiantly: “There’s
not one man in a thousand that makes his bread-and-butter by it. Why,
I’ve just bought a picture from an A.R.A. for fifty pounds; it’s worth
treble. You would have done better at your farm--or was it a saw-mill?”
“It isn’t the money I was thinking of, sir; it’s the joy of painting.”
“Hum! I talked like that once.” Matthew Strang sat down rather peevishly
and crossed his legs.
“And you talk like that now, too,” said Madame, with gentle reproach.
“Not for yourself,” she corrected, hastily, as his eyebrows took their
interrogative altitude. “But you know you don’t care if Herbert doesn’t
make money for years, so long as he makes a reputation eventually.”
“Herbert is in a different position. He doesn’t need to earn anything.”
“Nor does your nephew,” said Madame. “He has ample resources, he tells
me.”
Matt blushed at Madame’s unconscious magnification of his curt statement
on the point, but he did not think it worth while contradicting her.
Matthew uncrossed his legs restlessly. “I suppose your mother married a
well-to-do man?”
“Yes, pretty well-to-do,” Matt stammered.
“Why didn’t you say who you were at first?”
“I didn’t like to. I--I remembered you had advised me not to come to
England.”
“Well, the mischief was done; you might just as well have spoken. I
might have given you some advice.... You could have had the engraving at
trade price.... If you are looking for etchings, or any little things
for your rooms, I couldn’t dream of treating you like a stranger.”
“Thank you,” said Matt, with feeble fervency.
“Don’t mention it,” said his uncle, holding up his right palm
deprecatingly. “By-the-way, what made you address your letter to the
National Gallery?”
Matt colored. “I thought all the London painters lived there,” he said,
with an uneasy smile.
Madame laughed heartily. “Why, Matthew only got it through an official
inquiring among the people copying pictures there. One of them happened
to be a customer of ours, and suggested trying us.”
“Yes, it was all boyish foolishness,” said Matt.
“And where are you living, now that you have come?” said his uncle.
“Not far from here--in Holborn.” He added, hastily, for fear his uncle
might be meditating a visit: “I can bring you some of my work if you
like.”
“Oh yes, do! Won’t that be charming!” interjected Madame, clapping her
hands.
Matthew checked her with a stern glance. “I don’t think I should be able
to do anything with an unknown man,” he said, shaking his head.
“No, I don’t mean that,” said Matt, getting hot. “I thought you might
like to see that I wasn’t quite a duffer. I don’t expect to sell my work
yet, but they think I’m rather promising at the school.”
“What school? Who thinks?”
“Tarmigan.”
“Tarmigan!” echoed Matthew Strang. “Why, I could have picked up one of
his water-colors for a fiver last week. Tarmigan has been going down
steadily for the last four years. He took the gold medal at the Academy,
and at first promised well. Ten years ago I even meditated a corner in
him, but luckily I had the sense to sell out in time, before it was
quite certain he would never even be an Associate. No wonder he’s
reduced to visiting.”
“Oh, but he does that for nothing, they say,” protested Matt, hotly.
“He’s a jolly fine chap!”
“Ha! No wonder he doesn’t get on. Who ever heard of a really good man
wasting his time in that way?”
“Then don’t you think I’m doing any good studying under him?” asked
Matt, in affright.
“Oh, he’s all right for teaching; I haven’t a word against him. He’s one
of the few men in England who are supposed to know their trade. But he’s
too stilted and classical; there’s no sentiment in him; he don’t touch
the heart of the buying public. It’s all science and draughtsmanship,
and he won’t do anything to meet the market half way.”
“It’s spunky of him to stick to his convictions, anyhow,” said Matt, in
low tones, provoked by his uncle’s disparagement into a recrudescent
enthusiasm for Tarmigan, who had recently been weighing upon him like a
nightmare.
“Bah! and how does he know his convictions are right? The public’s the
best judge of art.”
“Oh!” said Matt, deprecatingly. “Should you really think that’s so?”
“Of course I think so. Would the public have _me_? No. And the public
was right.” He looked at Matt half fiercely, as if defying him to deny
it. Madame was smiling and shaking her head. “The public’s always
right,” he went on, emphatically. “It’s the critics that throw the
market into perpetual confusion. Such a babel of voices, all laying down
what is right and what is wrong, what is art and what is not art, that
it’s enough to drive a dealer crazy. For my part, I steer by the
Academy; that’s my polestar, and I’m rarely out, for that’s what the
public take their reckoning by. And it’s an R.A. that my boy is going to
be, please God, for theories may come and theories may go, but the
Academy goes on forever.”
“Dear Herbert!” murmured Madame.
“I suppose he’s awfully advanced,” said Matt, wistfully.
“Years ago he took the medal for the best copy of an Old Master at the
Royal Academy Schools, where he is now just finishing his course,”
explained his uncle. “And you know you can’t even begin the course
without being clever.”
“No, I know,” said Matt, with a sinking of heart, for he had by this
time studied the prospectus of the national art-schools and been
dismayed, not so much by the anatomical information and technical
expertness demanded at the entrance competition as by the slow-dragging
septennial course, the drudgery of still-life and perspective and the
antique, and all the tedious grind of convention. “I thought of trying
to get in myself, but I’m afraid I shall have to give up the idea.”
“Oh, Herbert only drops in there now and then,” said Matthew, loftily.
“He works mostly at home with his own models.”
Matt had a pang of envy.
“And then he has always had the benefit of your experience,” he said.
“Oh, I can’t pretend to have done more than encourage him.”
“Now, Matthew,” said Madame, shaking her finger fondly, “you know it was
at your knee that he made his first studies.”
Matthew smiled faintly, not displeased. “I’m like Tarmigan: I can teach
better than I can paint,” he said, and poured himself out a glass of
wine, fascinating Matt’s eye by the play of light in the diamond on his
forefinger. “If I listened to my wife, I should give up business and set
up an easel again, as in my young and foolish days. Thank God,” he said,
pausing to gulp down the claret, “I had sense to stop in time! What
could be expected of a young man who’d lived on a farm in a God-forsaken
country? Ah, your father was right! He never would allow any merit to my
ships or cows.”
Red sands flitted before Matt’s vision, with lambent pools, and overhead
a diaphanous rosy vapor, beyond which brooded the vast cloudless circle
of the sky. Ah, God! why was the sky so blue and depthless in those
days? As from dim, far-away caverns, the acrid voice of the
picture-dealer reached his ears in complacent exposition: “It’s all
training, and if you don’t get trained young, you might as well attempt
to fly.”
Becoming conscious of a silence, Matt answered, “That’s so.”
“It’s the same with music,” went on his uncle, tapping impressively on
his wineglass with his glittering forefinger. “You can’t expect a
grown-up man to sit down and practise scales like a little girl in a
pinafore; and even if he would, his fingers have lost their suppleness,
his joints are set. I saw this clearly, and was determined my boy
shouldn’t suffer as I’d done. Why, Herbert had a brush put into his hand
before he could write!”
Matt’s heart sank lower.
“I should like to see his work,” he said, anxiously.
“Ha!” said Matthew, a complacent smile hovering about his lips.
“Oh yes, let him see Herbert’s work,” pleaded Madame.
“I don’t think we ought to disturb him,” said Matthew, yieldingly.
“Won’t you take another glass of wine?”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Matt, who was quite faint, for his dinner had
been of the slightest; and feeling the request a signal to take his
leave, he rose.
“Oh yes, do let him see them,” said Madame, hurriedly. “It’s only for
once.”
“Oh, well, as you’re a sort of relation,” said the father, imposingly.
“But I make it a point not to interrupt him. These hours are precious;
there’s not too much light at the best of times.” And, as if following
Matt’s impulse, he rose and turned doorward.
“There’s no need for you to trouble, Josephine,” he said, waving her
back.
As they mounted the soft-carpeted staircase, on which undraped marble
statues looked down from their niches, he explained, gravely, “There’s a
male model up there, you see.”
Matt nodded, awed to silence by the splendor of the staircase, up which
he toiled side by side with the Vandyke beard and the velvet coat.
“Herbert, of course, uses the side door,” vouchsafed his companion,
graciously, to relieve the monotony of the long ascent. “I couldn’t have
his models coming through the shop.”
Matt murmured something negative, but his reply was lost in a dull thud
from above. The elder man cleared the remaining stairs in alarm, and
threw open the door.
“Give us a hand up, you beggar,” a piping girlish voice was saying.
On the rich carpet of the vast, elegant studio, whose glories dazzled
Matt’s vision, a slim young man was sprawling on his back. Over him
stood a stalwart figure, clad only in boxing-gloves.
The saturnine picture-dealer rushed forward and helped his boy up.
“It’s all right, dad,” said Herbert, in unembarrassed amusement as he
was scrambling to his feet. “I just wanted to give the model’s arms a
little movement during the rest. The position’s so difficult for him, I
haven’t been able to get the thing right all day. Look! there’s nothing
at all on the canvas; I’ve had to paint it out.”
The model had somewhat shamefacedly taken off his gloves and struck an
attitude upon the throne.
“Ha!” said Matthew Strang, in vague accents. “You ought to be getting on
faster with those gold-medal studies, now that you have put aside your
picture for this year’s Academy. You will need all your time, you know.
I’ve brought you a visitor.”
Herbert turned his face towards the door--the handsome, glowing face of
a boy, beardless and clean-shaven, with candid blue eyes and tumbled
flaxen hair, and the flash of white teeth accustomed to display
themselves in laughter. There was his father’s interrogative mark about
the arched eyebrows as he caught sight of Matt, hanging back timidly on
the threshold.
The young Nova-Scotian’s heart was leaden, his soul wrapped in a gloom
which had been gathering blackness ever since he had set foot in his
uncle’s shop, and which the sight of the commodious studio, with its
rich properties and luxurious appliances, its crimson lounges and silk
drapings and fleecy rugs and gleaming marbles and bronzes, had darkened
into despair. The penurious past surged back to him through a suffusion
of unshed tears--tears that were salt with the sense of injustice and of
sorrows unforgettable, all the creeping, irremediable years contributing
their quintessence to the bitterness of this supreme moment: the chances
he had missed, the lessons he had not received, the obstacles that had
rather sprung up to beat him back, whose infant fingers no loving hand
had ever guided, whose boyish yearnings no word of encouragement had
ever sweetened, whose youth had been all distasteful labors and mean
tragedies and burdens too great to bear, and whose very triumph would
find none to sympathize with it, if it came, as it never could come to
one so untrained, so alien from the world of art and elegant studios and
all the soft things of life; driven to the scum of the streets for
models at a few pence an hour, and reduced to studying attitudes from
his own contortions before a bleared strip of mirror in a dingy back
room; unregarded, uncared-for, unknown, an atom in that vast
magic-gleaming London which had so cruelly disillusioned him, and in
which even the one heart in which his own blood ran was cold and far
away; his poor pre-eminence at Grainger’s, his primacy among a set of
duffers, no augury of success in that fierce struggle in which Tarmigan
himself had gone to the wall. Was it worth while to vex himself
endlessly, swirled to and fro like a bubble on an ocean? Were it not
sweeter to break, and to be resolved into the vastness and the silence?
His right hand wandered towards his hip-pocket, where his pistol lay.
How good to be done with life! Then he became aware, through a
semi-transparent mist, that the gracious blond boy was holding out his
hand with a frank smile, and instinct drew out his own right hand in
amicable response, and so the temptation was over. The poor children
dependent upon him came up to memory, and he wondered at his spasm of
selfish despair.
His uncle must have said words to which he had been deaf, for Herbert
seemed to know who he was and why he had come.
“Welcome, fair coz,” he said, gripping Matt’s hand heartily. “I feel as
if I were in Shakespeare. A moment ago I scarcely remembered I had a
relation in the world. Confound it! why weren’t you a girl cousin while
you were about it?”
“Herbert, don’t be rude,” said his father.
Herbert elevated his blond eyebrows. “I wish you would cultivate a sense
of humor, dad,” he observed, wearily. Matt, who was responding to his
grip, fascinated instantly by the boyish, sunny charm, loosed his clasp
in sheer astonishment at the transition.
Matthew Strang disregarded his son’s observation, but gruffly told the
model, whose attitudinizing immobility was irritating, that he need not
pose for a moment or two, whereupon Herbert bade him begone altogether.
“I’ve been off color all day,” he observed, explanatorily, as he counted
out the model’s silver, “but the excitement of discovering I am not
alone in the world is the finishing touch.”
Matthew threw a rather reproachful look at Matt, whose eyes drooped
guiltily. He raised them immediately, however, in accordance with his
uncle’s instructions, to admire a study of a draped figure which was
hung on a wall. The coloring struck him agreeably, though he found a
certain feebleness in the drawing which was equally agreeable to his
jealous mood. This not displeasing impression was borne out by the other
pictures and sketches for which his uncle besought his admiration:
always this facile poetic coloring and this indifferent draughtsmanship,
this suggestion of difficulties shirked rather than of difficulties
overcome; at last seen to be due to the conventional composition, most
of the works, whether in chalk or water-color or oil, being pretty
landscapes or single-figure studies in simple attitudes, or, when
complicated by other figures, embracing episodes which seemed to have
been transferred direct from other pictures, some of which, indeed, Matt
had seen either in the originals or in engravings. To his astonishment,
Herbert, who had been yawning widely, drew his attention to one such
little bit.
“Don’t you recognize that?” he said. “Dad did at once. It’s a quotation
from Millais.”
Matt looked puzzled at the phrase.
“‘Cribbing,’ the unwise it call,” expounded Herbert, “and so did dad,
till I explained to him it was only quoting. When a great writer hits
off a phrase it passes into the language, and when a great painter hits
off a new effect of technique, or gets a happy grouping, I contend it
belongs to the craft, as much as the primitive tricks of scumbling or
glazing. We praise the mellow Virgilisms in Tennyson, but we are down
upon the painter who repeats another’s lines. The Old Masters borrowed
unblushingly, but we are such sticklers for originality, which, after
all, only means plagiarizing nature. Didn’t Raphael crib his composition
from Orcagna, and Michael Angelo copy Masaccio, and Tintoretto turn
Michael Angelo’s Samson into Jupiter? Why, in the Academy at Venice I
saw--”
“Have you been to Venice?” cried Matt, eagerly.
“Herbert has been to all the galleries of Europe,” said his father,
impressively. “We travel abroad every year. It’s part of the education
of a painter. How are you to know Bellini and Tintoretto if you don’t go
to Venice? Velasquez and Titian cannot be fully studied by any one who
has not been in Madrid; and the man who is ignorant of the treasures of
the Louvre or of the Uffizi at Florence, where”--he interpolated with
simulated facetiousness, laying his hand on Herbert’s shoulder--“I hope
to see my boy’s portrait painted by his own hand one day--”
“Look at this queer stone scarab,” interrupted Herbert, annoyed. “I
picked it up in Egypt; comes from inside a mummy-case.”
Egypt! The word fell like music on Matt’s ears. The rose-light of
romance illumined the uncouth beetle. Herbert hastened to exhibit his
other curios: coins, medals, cameos, scarves, yataghans, pottery,
ivories, with a cursive autobiographical commentary, passing rapidly to
another object whenever his father threatened to take up the thread of
autobiography.
And as Matt handled these picturesque trophies of travel, that wafted
into the studio the aroma of foreign bazaars, the wave of hopelessness
resurged, swamping even the fresh hopefulness engendered by the
discovery that his cousin’s craftsmanship was not so far beyond his
hand, after all; all those marvellous, far-off old-world places that had
disengaged themselves from his lonely readings, fair mirages thrown upon
a phantasmal sky, not vaguely, but with the sensuous definiteness of a
painter’s vision, jostling one another like the images in a shaken
kaleidoscope in an atmosphere of romantic poetry: Venice, dreaming on
its waters in an enchanted moonlight; Paris, all life and light; Spain,
with cathedrals and gypsies and cavaliers tinkling guitars; Sicily, with
gray olive-trees and sombre cypresses and terraced gardens and
black-eyed peasant women with red snoods; the Rhine, haunted by nixies
and robber-chiefs, meandering ’twixt crumbling castles perched on wooded
crags; Egypt, with its glow and color, all lotus-blossoms and bulrushes
and crocodiles and jasper idols, and bernoused Arabs galloping on silken
chargers in a land of sand and sphinxes and violet shadows; the Indies,
east of the sun and west of the moon, full of palm-trees and
nautch-girls and bayaderes--a shifting panorama of strange exotic
cities, steeped in romance and history and sunshine and semi-barbarian
splendors, where the long desolation of his native winter never came,
nor the clammy vapors of Britain; cities of splendid dream, where
anything might happen and nothing could seem unreal; where Adventure
waited masked at every street corner, and Love waved a white hand from
every lattice. And in a flood of sadness, that had yet something
delicious in it, he pitied himself for having been cut off from all
these delectable experiences, which the happier Herbert had so facilely
enjoyed.
“I know you are bored, father,” said Herbert, pausing amid his
exposition. “You want to get back to business, and Matt and I want to
yarn.”
Matt’s bitterness was soothed. It thrilled him to be called Matt by this
rich, refined, travelled young gentleman.
“Well, good-bye, my young friend,” said his uncle, holding out his hand
for the first time. “I dare say I shall see you again. Ha! Drop in any
time you’re passing. I think your mother will be wanting you presently,
Herbert.”
He moved to the door, then paused, and, turning his head uneasily, said:
“And if you ever want any advice, you know, don’t hesitate to ask me.”
And with a faint friendly nod of his Vandyke beard he went out, closing
the door carefully behind him.
“Awful bore, the governor,” said Herbert, stretching his arms. “He never
knows when he’s _de trop_.”
Matt did not know what _de trop_ was, except when he saw it printed, but
the disrespectful tone jarred upon him.
“You owe him a good deal, it seems to me,” he replied, simply.
“Hullo, hullo, my young Methodist parson!” and Herbert threw back his
head in a ringing laugh which made his white teeth gleam gayly. “Why,
do you think we owe anything to our parents? They didn’t marry to oblige
us. I am only a tool for his ambitions.”
“What do you mean?” murmured Matt.
“Oh, well, I oughtn’t to talk about it, perhaps, but you’re my first
cousin--the first cousin I’ve ever had”--Matt smiled, fascinated
afresh--”and, after all, it’s an open secret that he wants the name of
Strang to live in the annals of painting--if it couldn’t be Matthew
Strang, it must be Herbert Strang, and so he belongs to the minor
artists’ clubs. Of course, he can’t get into the Limners’, though he
contrives to be there on business pretty often, and consoles himself by
using their note-paper; but at the Gillray and the Reynolds’ they dare
not blackball him, because the committee always owe him money, or want
to sell him pictures; but I dare say they laugh at him behind his back
when he jaws to them about art in general, and my talents in particular.
It’s confoundedly annoying. Oh, I’ve been forgetting to smoke. What can
be the matter with me?” And he pulled out a lizard-skin case, from which
Matt, not liking to refuse, drew forth a cigarette.
“But what good does he do by belonging to those clubs?” he asked.
“Oh, he likes it, for one thing,” replied Herbert, striking a match and
holding it to Matt’s cigarette. “My belief is, he only went into the
picture business to rub shoulders with artists, though where the charm
comes in I have never been able to find out, for a duller, a more
illiterate set of fellows I never wish to meet. Shop is all they can
talk. And then, of course, it’s good for business. But in the background
lurks, I feel sure, the idea of advancing my interests, of accumulating
back-stairs influence, of pulling the ropes that shall at last lift me
into the proud position of R.A. Nay, who knows?” he said, puffing out
his first wreath of smoke--“President of the Royal Academy!” And he
laughed melodiously.
“Well, but--” began Matt, inhaling the delicious scent of the tobacco.
“Well, _but_,” echoed Herbert. “That’s just it. My tastes are not
considered in the matter at all. Art! Art! Art! Nothing but Art rammed
down my throat till I’m sick of the sight of a canvas. I was a
connoisseur in my cradle, and sucked a maul-stick instead of a
monkey-on-a-stick, and I live in the midst of Art and out of the profits
of it. It’s pictures, pictures everywhere, and not a--Oh, have a
brandy-and-soda, won’t you? Don’t stand about as if you were going.”
Matt obediently dropped upon a lounge that yielded deliciously to his
pressure. The fragrant smoke curled about his face, while his cousin
made pleasant play with popping corks and gurgling liquids.
“But don’t you really like painting?” he asked, in astonishment.
“I like some things in it well enough,” replied Herbert, “but it’s such
beastly drudgery. All this wretched copying of models is no better than
photography. And a camera would do the tiding in a thousandth part of
the time. I always work from photographs when I can.”
“But is that artistic?” said Matt, slightly shocked.
“It’s the only thing worthy of the artist’s dignity. The bulk of art is
journeyman’s work. Besides, lots of ’em do it nowadays--with
magic-lanterns to boot! Because one man by a fluke happens to be a
better drawing-machine than another, is he to be counted the greater
artist?” Matt felt small before this answer to his secret criticism.
“Did you ever see the camera-obscura at the Crystal Palace? That does
landscapes in a jiffy that we should go messing over for months. And
then think of the looking-glass! They talk of Rembrandt and Franz Hals.
I’ll back a bedroom mirror to put more life into its portraits than
either of ’em. Why, if some process were invented--a sort of magic
mirror to fix the image, living and colored, in the glass--here’s
luck!”--he clinked his glass against Matt’s--”the governor would have to
shut up shop.”
“Yes, but the mirror hasn’t got any imagination,” urged Matt, setting
down his glass refreshed, the glow of brandy in his throat lending added
intellectual charm to the discussion.
“Oh, I don’t know! There are distorting mirrors,” rejoined Herbert,
laughing. “But you are quite right. Art is selection; nature _à travers
d’un tempérament_. Art is autobiography. But painting, which somehow
monopolizes the name of Art, is really the lowest form of Art. Nature
is full of scenes quite as good as Art. Doesn’t Ruskin say an artist has
got to copy Nature? But is there anything in Nature so closely akin to a
poem, or to Ruskin’s own prose, or to a symphony of Beethoven, as a
moonlit sea or a beautiful woman is to a picture? What is the skylark’s
song compared to Shelley’s, or the music of the sea to Mozart’s? The
real creation is in the other arts, which are called literature and
music. They are an addition to Nature--something extra. Painting and
acting--these are mere reduplications of Nature. Perhaps I was unfair to
painting. That, at least, fixes the beauty of Nature, but acting is
merely an evanescent imitation of the temporary.”
The younger man sat half bewildered beneath this torrent of words and
quotations; the respect Herbert had lost in his eyes by his
draughtsmanship (a trifling matter under Herbert’s disdainful analysis)
returning, multiplied to reverence, and with a fresh undercurrent of
humility and envy. How much there was to know in the world, how many
languages and books and arts! How could he mix with Herbert and his set
without being found out?
“That’s why I prefer literature and music,” said Herbert. “But then I’m
not my own master, like you--you lucky beggar. If I had my way, pictures
would be nothing but color-schemes, sheer imagination, with no relation
to truth of Nature. What do I care how her shadows fall, if they don’t
fall gracefully? And then why must my lines imitate Nature’s? That’s
where the Japanese are so great. Don’t smoke that fag-end! Have
another!” And he threw his cigarette-case across to his magnetized
listener. It was the first time in his hard, busy existence Matt had
ever heard any one talk like a book, discussing abstract relations of
Art and Life.
“I wish I knew as much as you,” he said, naïvely.
“I wish I was as free as you,” retorted Herbert, laughingly; “though I
certainly wouldn’t employ my liberty as you do. What in Heaven’s name
made you want to study Art? I did laugh when the governor told the mater
of your letter. I was just in the roughest grind, and felt like writing
you on the sly to warn you.”
“I don’t think I should have taken your advice,” said Matt, with an
embarrassed laugh.
“But what made you come to London, anyhow? Why didn’t you go to Paris?”
“To Paris!”
“Yes; there’s no teaching to be got in London.”
“No?” Matt turned pale.
“No. At least, that’s what everybody says in England. Paris alone has
the tradition. Once it was Holland, once Florence, and now it’s Paris.
Why, in Paris any fellows who club together can get the biggest men to
visit them free, gratis, for nothing. Here the big pots prefer the
society of the swells.”
“Then why are you not in Paris?” asked Matt, rallying.
“Ah! That’s where my governor is such an idiot. He pretends to think
there’s more chance for a man who’s been through the Academy Schools; he
gets known to the R.A.’s, and all that. But his real reason is that he’s
afraid to trust me in Paris by myself.”
“No?” said Matt, in sympathetic incredulity.
“Yes; that’s why he had this room knocked into a studio for me--it
always reminds me of a nursery, at the top of the house-and even selects
my female models, knows their parents, and that sort of thing. It’s all
sheer selfishness, I tell you, and I’m just sick of all this perpetual
fussing and worrying over me, as if I were a prize pig or a race-horse.
A man of twenty-three not allowed to have a studio or chambers of his
own! You don’t realize how lucky you are, my boy. If I could afford it
I’d chuck up the governor to-morrow. But I’m dependent on him for every
farthing. And all he allows me for pocket-money is--well, you’d never
guess--”
Matt did not make the attempt; he judged Herbert might think meanly of
even a pound a week, but he did not dare to hazard a guess.
“Three hundred a year! And out of that I’ve got to get my clothes and
pay my models, confound ’em!”
Matt stared in startled, reverential envy.
“Yes, you may well stare. Why, you know yourself if you buy a woman a
bracelet it runs away with a month’s allowance. But, talking of
clothes, you’ll have to get better than those things, if you ever want
me to be seen with you.”
“These are quite new,” murmured Matt, in alarm.
“_And_ original,” added Herbert. “I’ll have to introduce you to my
tailor.”
“Is--is he dear?” Matt stammered.
“If you pay him,” said Herbert, dryly.
“Oh, I always pay,” protested Matt.
“You’re lucky. _I_ have to economize.”
Matt thought suddenly of William Gregson with a throb of gratitude. At
least his wardrobe boasted of unimpeachable boots. Then he suddenly
espied a small battalion of foot-gear ranged against a wall--black
boots, brown boots, patent shoes, brown shoes, boots with laces, boots
with beautiful buttons--and he relapsed into his primitive humility.
Uneasy lest Herbert should insist on equipping him similarly, he was
glad to remember that Herbert’s mother was expecting her boy, and with a
murmur to that effect rose to go.
“Nonsense!” said Herbert, “I’m not due till dinner-time; but if you must
be going, I think I’ll just stroll a little. You go towards Oxford
Street, don’t you?”
“Ye-es,” faltered Matt, who was a little frightened at the idea that his
dainty cousin might accompany him to his lodging.
“All right. I’ll just go to the club to see if there are any letters.
There’s another of your privileges, confound you! I can’t have any
letters come to my own place.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Do you think I’d have the governor nosing my correspondence?
He’d be always asking questions. It’s a jolly little club--I’ll put you
up for it if you like. Take another cigarette; take half a dozen; put
’em in your pocket.”
As they were going down-stairs, Matt said he would like to say good-bye
to Madame, so they passed into the sitting-room.
“_Au revoir_, my dear nephew, _au revoir_!” said Madame, shaking both
his hands. “I said you and Herbert would love each other. You will find
your sixpence awaiting you on the desk.”