“GOLD MEDAL NIGHT”
With a step that faltered from nervousness even more than from the
weakness due to a diet of one meal per diem, Matt Strang passed across
the clangorous court-yard of Burlington House, nigh turned back by the
imposing bustle of broughams and cabs, whose shadows were thrown sharply
on the stones under the keen, frosty starshine of the December night. In
the warm-lighted hall he shrank back, even more timidly, blinking at the
radiance of the company, the white shirt-fronts of the men, the dazzling
shoulders of the women. Before a counter a block of black figures
struggled to get rid of their hats and coats in exchange for numbers.
Matt hid his hat, fortunately flexible, in the pocket of his overcoat,
which, being the least shabby of his vestments by reason of its summer
vacation, he did not dare to take off; otherwise he would not have dared
to keep it on. There were spots of discoloration on the concealed
garments, for they had suffered from the week’s job, which, together
with the expectation of this gala-night, had kept him alive since he had
met Tarmigan in the fog three weeks before. As a house-painter and
distemperer Matt had still hovered on the verge of Art, and if Butler
was right in his interpretation of the Academy of his day, and the
highest art was indeed to conceal paint, then was the young Nova Scotian
strictly Academic in retaining his overcoat on this most Academic of
occasions. He marched with the courage of desperation up a broad crimson
staircase, keenly conscious of the frayed edges of his trousers, and
mistily aware of overarching palms and bordering flower-pots and
fashionable companions, and surrendered the ticket Tarmigan had given
him to a sumptuous official who seemed a part of the ornamental avenue
to the Academic salons. Once safely past this point the haze cleared,
and he saw, to his joy, less fashionable figures in frock-coats and
ladies in hats and jackets, and though he wished they had been more
numerous and more dowdy, he felt a morsel more at ease. There seemed to
be pictures on view, and he eagerly joined the sparse groups of
spectators that promenaded the rooms, in curious contrast with the crush
of the populace the last time he had walked, at the price of a shilling,
within these historic walls. The exhibition was curious: in one room
dozens of semi-detached heads, some evidently from the same model; in
another, cartoons of draped figures; in a third, sculptures. He saw from
a placard that they had been done in competition for the prizes that
were to be adjudged to-night. He heard scraps of foolish criticism from
the people about him, but his commerce with art-editors had blunted his
once sensitive nerves, and he was only amused. From the pictures his
eyes strayed to the spectators, and he wondered which were celebrities.
It occurred to him, with a pang of dismay, that in the absence of any
cicerone he might go away no wiser than he had come, and he remembered
with regret the personally conducted tour he had made through the
Reynolds Club. Would his uncle be here to-night? he thought, with
apprehensive shrinking. As he moved aimlessly about, thinking of the Old
Gentleman, his heart leaped to see--not Matthew Strang, but “Daniel
before Nebuchadnezzar,” and not the “Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar” he
knew, but other Daniels and other Nebuchadnezzars--a veritable vision of
Daniels and Nebuchadnezzars, a gallery of Daniels and Nebuchadnezzars,
perspectives of Daniels and Nebuchadnezzars, stretching away on both
sides of the room; young clean-shaven Daniels and old gray-bearded
Daniels and middle-aged Daniels with mustaches, Daniels with uplifted
arms and Daniels with downcast eyes, Daniels dressed and Daniels
undressed, Daniels with flashing faces and Daniels with turned backs,
and Nebuchadnezzars analogously assorted, and palaces of equal variety
and backgrounds of similar dissimilarity, each tableau differing in
properties and supernumeraries, but all appearing only the more alike
because of their differences, so conventional were the variations.
Matt divined instantly that the picture Herbert had painted must be
among them, and he looked about ardently for the painted palace in which
he had spent so many happy hours. Ah! there it was, the dear old canvas,
though it had an undreamed-of grandeur in its broad gold frame; there
was Daniel and there was “Nebby,” more finished than when he had last
seen Herbert at work on them that fatal midsummer day, but essentially
unchanged. He felt quite a small proprietary interest in it, unconscious
how much it really owed to him; his touches on the actual final canvas
had been but few, and these mainly suggestions in pastel, and his
remembrance of the scaffolding work that preceded was hopelessly blurred
by the countless discussions. He was shaken by a resurgence of pleasant
memories of these artistic talks and merry lunches, with the bright
sunshine streaming down on the skin rugs and the gleaming busts. He
became absorbed in the painting, seeing episodes of the past in it, like
a magician looking into a pool of ink. And then he was pierced to the
marrow as by an icy wind; he heard an ecstatic voice ejaculating “Isn’t
it beautiful? The dear boy!” in charming foreign accents, and he divined
the Vandyke beard hovering haughtily in his rear. He felt the couple had
come to see their son’s work, and he tried to sidle away unperceived,
but an advancing group forced him to turn round, and he found himself
eye to eye with Madame, whose radiant face of praise was exchanged for
one of smiling astonished welcome when she caught sight of him.
“My dear young--” she began, in accents of lively affection. Then Matt
saw her face freeze suddenly, and he quailed beneath the glooming
eyebrows of her dignified consort, who swept round the other way with
the frozen lady on one arm and Herbert on the other, turning three backs
to his nephew in a sort of triple insult. The semicircular sweep which
veered Madame off brought Herbert near, and Matt’s heart beat more
rapidly as his whilom chum’s dress-coat, with its silk facings, brushed
against his tightly buttoned overcoat. The glimpse he had of Herbert’s
face showed it severe, impassive, and devoid of recognition; but ere the
young gentleman had quite swept past he managed to give his homely
cousin a droll dig in the ribs, which was as balm in Gilead to the
lonely youth, and brought back in a great wave all his fondness for his
dashing relative, with whom he now felt himself a fellow conspirator in
a facetious imbroglio. The last lees of his bitterness were extruded by
the dig; he gazed with affectionate admiration after the solemn
swallow-tails of his cousin, receding staidly and decorously up the
avenue of Daniels, at one or other of which his disengaged hand pointed
with no faintest suggestion of droll digs in its immaculate cuff and
delicately tapering fingers. Presently there was a marked move in a
particular direction, and Matt, joining the current, was floated towards
a great room filled with chairs, and already half full of gentlefolks.
He made instinctively for the rear, but finding himself amid a mob of
young fellows in evening dress, some of them sporting the ivory medal of
studentship, he retreated farther towards the front, ultimately taking
up a position on the last chair of the left extremity of the fourth row
from the back, out of view of the incomers streaming through the oaken
panels. It was a broad oblong room, with skylights in the handsome
ceiling, and large watercolors hanging on the walls. A temporary dais
covered by a crimson baize and ascended by a crimson step faced the
audience, and at its central point stood a reading-desk lighted from the
right by a lamp. Matt heard whispered comments on the new-comers from
his neighbors; now it was a knighted brewer who rolled his corporeal
cask into a front seat, now it was a musical conductor with an air of
exile from the central desk. A few painters of eminence with neither
handles nor tails to their names dotted Art about the audience, while
wives and daughters of the Academically distinguished exhaled an aroma
of fashion, striving to banish all reminiscences of paint from
everything but their complexions; here and there was an actor out of
employment or a strayed nondescript celebrity, and on a plush couch to
the right of the platform a popular author chatted noisily with a
pretty, vivacious lady journalist; the mixture was completed by a few
favored relatives of the students, like Mr. and Madame Strang, whose
anxious faces were clearly visible to Matt in a diagonal direction a few
rows ahead. Herbert himself herded with his fellow-students, who had
taken exclusive possession of the back rows, where they stood in
evening dress, a serried gallery of black-and-white figures, prophesying
“all the winners.”
A great round of applause from their ranks set everybody peering towards
the door, only to encounter the stern gaze of the magnificent beadle,
whose entry had prompted the salvoes, and who, arrayed in what appeared
to be a rich red dressing-gown, showed like a Venetian color-study amid
a collection of engravings.
A more general outburst of clapping, accompanied by a buzz of interest,
greeted the arrival of the less picturesque “train” of Academicians,
headed by the president. The procession, bowing and smiling, defiled
slowly towards the dais, especial enthusiasm being reserved for the more
popular or the newest Academicians and Associates, the students having a
ruling hand or hands in the distribution of the noise. Matt craned
forward eagerly to see these pillars of English Art, whose names flew
from lip to lip. As they only looked like men, he had a flash of
self-confidence.
The president takes his seat on the central chair, flanked and backed by
the faithful forty and the trusty thirty, minus the absentees. The
R.A.’s dispose themselves along the front bench, the A.R.A.’s occupy the
rear--a younger set, on the whole, with more hair on their heads and
less on their chins. The beadle solemnly slides the oak panels to,
cloistering the scene from the world, and a religious silence spreads
from him till it infects even the excited back rows. The president rises
bland and stately. There is a roar of welcome, succeeded by a deeper
hush. It is seen that he has papers on his desk, and is about to declare
the results of the competitions, and to determine the destiny of dozens,
if not the future of English Art. There is no vulgar sensationalism.
With a simple dignity befitting the venerable self-sufficient
institution, which still excludes great newspapers--and great
painters--from its banquets, he disdains working up to a climax, and
starts with the tidbit of the evening, “the gold medal and travelling
studentship for £200,” awarded every two years for the best historical
painting, the subject this year being “Daniel before Nebuchadnezzar.”
The president pauses for a breathless instant. The ranks of
black-and-white figures standing in the background have grown rigid with
excitement. The president imperturbably announces “Herbert Strang.”
There is a brief pause for mental digestion, then a great crash of
applause--the harmonious cacophony of clapping hands, generous lungs,
and frenzied feet. Matt, thrilling through and through with joy and
excitement, shouting frantically, and applauding with all his limbs,
turns to look for Herbert amid the students, but sees only rows of
heaving shirt-fronts and animated black arms. Then he becomes aware of
his cousin strolling leisurely along the near side of the room, through
a mad tempest of cheering, towards the president’s desk, a faint smile
playing about his beautiful boyish lips, which yet tremble a little.
Matt feels proud of being the cousin of the hero of the moment, whose
course he follows with tear-dimmed eyes. He sees him reach the
presidential desk and receive a medal and an envelope from the great
man, who shakes hands with him and evidently offers words of
congratulation. He follows his passage back to his fellow-students
through the undiminished tempest. Then his eye lights suddenly on
Matthew Strang’s face, and sees great tears rolling down towards the
Vandyke beard, while beside him Madame Strang, her face radiating
sunshine, her eyes dancing, throws kisses towards the cynosure of all
eyes, who, carrying his honors, and studiously avoiding the weakness of
a glance in the direction of his parents, ploughs his way amid fraternal
back-thumpings to his place among his cronies. There is a rapid exchange
of criticism and gossip among the students, ejaculations of
commiseration for Flinders, whose friends had convinced him that he
would win, and for Rands, a poor devil of talent, the only hope of a
desperately genteel family in Dalston. But comment must be hushed, for
other prizes, some of them important enough, have to be announced. There
is a steady succession of individual students, more or less blushing,
moving to and from the president’s congratulatory hand, some stumbling
nervously against the crimson step placed in front of his desk, probably
by the beadle to disconcert the shy. Some fortunate prize-winners come
up three times, and stumble three times. Sometimes they are girls. One
wears spectacles and a yellow sash, and has the curved back of the
student; another is pretty and _petite_, and causes a furore by her
multiplex successes and her engaging charm; a third is handsome, but
gawky, with bare red arms. A young man who wins two events attracts
special attention by his poetical head and his rapt air of mystic
reverie, and goes back winking. Then the president commences his
biennial address to an audience of students throbbing with excitement,
afire with the after-glow of all that applause, anxious to canvass the
awards, and dying to run out into the other rooms to look at the winning
pictures, which have, in some instances, been dark horses which nobody
remembers to have noticed.
His theme is the Evolution of Ecclesiastical Art. For half an hour the
audience, always with the exception of the students he is addressing,
listens patiently to the procession of ornate periods, classically
chiselled, hoping to emerge from the dulness and gloom of obscure epochs
into the light of familiar names. Then the seats begin to feel hard. By
the aid of copious shufflings, wrigglings, and whisperings, they drag
through another bad quarter of an hour, relieved only by the mention of
Albrecht Dürer, whose name is unaccountably received with rapturous
cheers, as if he were a political allusion. The next quarter of an hour
is lightened by the feeling that it is to be the last. But, as the
second hour arrives without a harbinger sentence, three brave men arise
and pass through the beadle-guarded portal. There is tremendous cheering
from the back, which is taken up and re-echoed from all parts of the
room, and the president beams and turns over a new page.
The seats become granite, the presidential eloquence flows on as if it
would wear them away; an endlessly trickling stream. He enters into
painful analyses of vanished frescos, painted in churches long since
swept away, and elaborates punctilious appreciations of artists and
architects known only to biographical dictionaries. Some have fancy
without imagination, some imagination without fancy, a few both fancy
and imagination, and the rest neither imagination nor fancy. The stream
strewn with dead names flows on slow and stately, with never a playful
eddy, and another man, greatly daring, fortified by the example of his
gallant predecessors, steals from the room, and blushes to find it fame.
Amid the plaudits that ring around this manful deed, Matt suddenly finds
Herbert at his side. His cousin slips a note into his hand and retreats
hastily to his place. Excited and glad of the relief, he opens it and
reads: “Meet me outside after this rot is over. Don’t let the Old
Gentleman see you.” Matt smiles, proud and happy to resume his old
relations with the hero of the evening, and pleased to find the ancient
password of “the Old Gentleman” supplementing the droll dig in the ribs
in re-setting their camaraderie on its ancient footing. In his eagerness
to talk to Herbert again and to congratulate him personally, the
presidential oration seems to him duller and the seat more adamantine
than ever. He strains his ears to catch instead the babble of the
students, who have finally given up any pretence of interest in mediæval
Flemish cathedrals. His eye, long since satiate with the sight of the
celebrities, roves again over the faces of the Academicians on their
platform, austere in their striving to appear absorbed, and again he
draws confidence from their merely human aspect. He watches the popular
novelist gossiping with the vivacious lady journalist. He examines for
the eighth time the water-colors on the walls, which he gathers, from
one of the many conversations going on in his neighborhood, are by the
competitors for the Turner prize. He sees that the hard-worked newspaper
artist in the row in front of him has given up sketching and gone to
sleep, despairing of escape. The pangs of his own stomach keep him
awake; he looks forward wistfully to the hour of release, resolved to
treat himself to two-pennyworth of supper in honor of Herbert’s triumph.
But the interminable voice goes on, discoursing learnedly and elegantly
of apses and groins and gargoyles. The wrigglings have ceased. All
around, but especially in the quiet front rows under the presidential
eye, apathetic listless beings droop on their chairs. Matt steals a
glance towards his uncle, and finds him the only member of the audience
genuinely alert and interested, his head perked up, his eyes gazing
admiringly towards the rostrum, where perchance in imagination he
already sees his son carrying on the time-honored tradition of the
great Sir Joshua. At his side Madame sustains herself by furtive looks
in the direction of the same young gentleman. Then Matt turns his
attention to the speaker, watching his mouth open and shut, and his
shapely hand turning the perpetual pages. He expects that every moment
will be the orator’s last. But the great man is just warming to his
work. His silvery voice, rising above the buzz and the murmur, descants
dreamily on the spiritual aspirations of uncouthly christened
architects, who had mouldered in their graves long centuries before his
Gracious Majesty George III., patron of arts and letters, gave the
Academy house-room. After an hour and a half he launches lightly into a
treatise on glass-staining. The audience has now given up all hope. It
has the sense of condemnation to an earthly inferno, in which the suave
voice of a fiend of torture, himself everlastingly damned, shall forever
amble on, unwinding endless erudition. A reference to “my young
architectural friends,” greeted with suspicious thunders by all the
students, affords a momentary break in the monotony. The end comes
suddenly, after a “Lastly,” forgotten ten minutes before. There is a
brief interval of incredulity. People awakened by the silence look up
sleepily. Yes, there is no doubt. The president is actually down. Then a
great roar of joy bursts out from all sides. The back benches go
delirious, and then the meeting dissolves in a stampede towards the
oaken panels, at last open in three places. The discharged prisoners
swarm down the grand staircase and besiege the cloak-rooms; some parade
the rooms to inspect the winning pictures, now ticketed, and to express
their surprise at the judges’ decisions.
Outside in the cold air, which immediately began to make him sneeze
through the compulsory imprudence of having worn his overcoat
throughout, Matt lurked about looking for Herbert, and at last the hero
appeared, carefully muffled and wrapped up, and with a murmur of “Wasn’t
it awful? Wait by the Arcade till my people’s cab rolls off,” dashed
back. When he reappeared, smiling sunnily, he explained that he had told
his people he must show up at the Students’ Club in order not to appear
caddish. “I’ve been slobbered over enough,” he added, whimsically
flicking the traces of an imaginary maternal kiss off his fresh, smooth
cheek.
“Oh, but I don’t wonder your people are delighted,” said Matt; “I know I
am. I haven’t congratulated you yet.” And he shook his cousin’s hand
heartily.
“Thank you, old fellow; it’s very good of you. Oh, by-the-way, don’t
mention to anybody I let you see the picture on the easel, will you? One
is supposed to keep it to one’s self, don’t you know. That’s why I
didn’t tell you I was doing it for the Gold Medal.”
“Oh, who should I mention it to?” asked Matt, reassuringly.
“That’s a good chap. You see, if it got out that I talked it over with
you there might be a bother; people are so jealous, especially now that
it has won.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t tell a soul, you may depend,” said Matt. “It was very
good of you to let me come so often and chat about it; and even if I did
save you a little trouble in working out the perspective, I learned a
great deal about composition from you.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Herbert.
“Oh, I won’t,” said Matt, gravely; whereat Herbert laughed, and replied:
“Now _you_ must do an Academy picture, old fellow. There’s three months’
time yet.”
“Would there be any chance of my getting in?” asked Matt, wistfully. He
had been fluttered by the applause of the evening; it seemed impossibly
grand to be the centre of an admiring fashionable assemblage, instead of
a shabby alien hovering on its outside rim. In such company the colossal
self-confidence of his solitary exaltations dwindled to a pitiful sense
of his real insignificance.
“Rather,” replied Herbert. “Why, I thank my stars you weren’t a
competitor. I should never have got the medal if you had been.”
Matt shook his head deprecatingly, but Herbert rattled on with
increasing enthusiasm. “Wouldn’t it be jolly if you got a picture in and
it was hung on the line next to mine? Now that I’ve taught you
composition and educated you up to the Academy’s ideas, you could easily
do something that would take the old buffers’ fancy, and then, once you
got a show in the Academy, the Old Gentleman would take up your work
and run you.”
“I don’t think they’d take what I wanted to do.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t want to do it,” said Herbert. “At least, not till
you can afford it. Besides, I’m not so sure that there isn’t something
in the Academy’s ideas, after all. Candidly, I don’t quite see how
Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar could have been treated any better.”
“I don’t want to treat them at all,” said Matt.
“Well, anyway, do something, you old duffer. You don’t want to go
grubbing along at ten bob a week--or was it tenpence a day? I forget.
Promise me to do a picture for the next show, or I sha’n’t feel easy in
my mind about you.”
“I promise,” Matt murmured.
“That’s right,” said Herbert, considerably relieved. He went on
heartily: “The Academy is the stepping-stone. It’s no good kicking it
out of the way. Put a picture in the Academy, by fair means if thou
canst, but--put a picture in the Academy. You see, even Cornpepper had
to come to us. And even if you _will_ do new-fangled stuff, you can
always get in if you make the picture a certain queer size--just to fit
an awkward corner. I forget the exact measurements, but the Old
Gentleman knows; he took care to find out in case I couldn’t get in
legitimately. I’ll make a point of asking him. Poor old governor! I
don’t suppose he’ll sleep to-night. Why, he was quite blubbery when the
cab drove off. Do you know, there’s a certain pathos about the Old
Gentleman.”
“He’s been very good to you,” said Matt.
“Well, and now he is happy. Virtue rewarded. The cream of the joke is
that now I’ve got to go abroad in spite of him--travelling studentship,
you see--and he can’t possibly chuck business for a year to come with
me.”
“Was the money in that envelope?” Matt asked.
“Only the first quarterly instalment. What a shame I can’t pay you out
of that! Only I must study abroad with the money. It wouldn’t be honest
to use it for any other purpose, would it?”
“Don’t talk of it,” said Matt, flushing from a sense of the
misconstruction of his thoughtless query.
“Oh, don’t be so shocked. You look as if I had already misappropriated
it. I can’t tell you how glad I was to see your dear old phiz to-night.
What have you been doing with yourself? I often wondered why you didn’t
look me up at the club. By-the-way, here we are at the club.”
“Here?” echoed Matt, interrogatively. They had been walking
automatically as they conversed, and had come to a stand-still before a
blank, cheerless building in Golden Square.
“Yes, this is the shanty. Not _my_ club, you duffer. This is only the
students’ little ken. I told my people the truth, you know. It _would_
be snobbish not to drop in to-night. They make rather a night of it,
though I hadn’t intended to go otherwise. Hang it all, I had an
appointment to sup with a girl at half-past ten! I forgot all about
her--she’ll be mad.” He took out his watch. “Ten past eleven. Why,
Ecclesiastical Art must have evolved till close on eleven! It isn’t my
fault, anyhow. Do you mind trotting round to the Imperial? She’s in the
first ballet. We’d better have a hansom.”
The young men drove round to the stage door, but the fair one had
departed after a few impatient instants. “I think I heard her tell the
cabby ‘Rule’s,’” was the sixpenny worth of information obtained from the
janitor.
“Let’s go there,” said Matt, who was now quite faint with hunger, and
who had a lurking wish that Herbert would stand a supper--one of the
olden heroic suppers that he had not tasted for half a year--a wild riot
of a supper, with real meat and wholesome vegetables and goodly
sauces--nay, even red wine, and a crowning cup of coffee made of real
beans, not the charred crust of over-baked loaves, out of which he had
been making his own lately; getting the burned bread cheaper with a
double economy; a supper fit for well-fed gods, which a starving man
having eaten might be well content to die. But Herbert, unaware of what
was going on in Matt’s inner man, replied, cruelly, “No, it’s too late
to look for her at the restaurant. I know her address, but she won’t be
there yet. Besides, I ought to show up at the club.”
So they strolled back to the bleak building (Matt suddenly bethinking
himself that even here supper might lie in wait), and passing through a
dark hall, mounted a stone corkscrew staircase that led to a hubbub of
voices and a piano jingling music-hall tunes. The doorway of the first
room was congested by black backs over-circled with clouds of smoke.
Herbert and Matt peered in unseen for a few moments. The little room,
decorated only by a few sketches from the hands of members, and
separated from the second room by the primitive partition of a screen,
was crowded with young men in evening dress sitting round on chairs or
knees or coal-scuttles, with glasses in their hands and cigars in their
mouths, and new men were squeezing in from the inner room, the advent of
each being greeted by facetious cheers. Plaudits more genuine in their
ring welcomed Flinders, who, it was understood, had been in the final
running. He came in, trying to make his naturally long face look short,
and exclaiming with punctilious carelessness, “Where’s my whiskey?”
Rands, who, it was whispered, had lost by only a few votes, was not
present; he had, apparently, gone home to the heart-broken gentility at
Dalston. Matt caught sight of Cornpepper on the right of the doorway,
and his heart rejoiced as at the sight of a laid supper. The little
painter was clutching the middle of his chair with his most owl-like
expression. His single eye-glass glittered in the gaslight.
“Why, there’s Cornpepper!” Matt whispered, in awed accents.
“Oh, has he come in?” yawned Herbert. “I saw him marching Greme about
among the Daniels, and giving them hell in emulation of Clinch--looking
round after every swear, as if half hoping the ladies hadn’t heard him,
and half hoping they had.” But Matt had only half heard Herbert. He was
listening to the oracles of Cornpepper. But listeners rarely hear any
good of themselves.
“Strang’s not in it with you,” Cornpepper was saying to Flinders.
“There’s no blooming style in his technique. It might have been done by
an R.A.”
“They do say the result would have been very different if more R.A.’s
had come down,” said the semi-consoled Flinders, somewhat illogically.
“But Barbauld had the gout, and Platt is in Morocco, and--”
At this point shouts of “Strang!” made the cousins start, but it was
only the playfulness of the room greeting a new-comer as the victor. The
youth acquiesced humorously in the make-believe, slouching round the
room with a comical shuffle and a bow to each chair. Then a man got up
and began a burlesque lecture on Ecclesiastical Art “to my young
architectural friends.” Every reference to apses, groins, or gargoyles
was received with yells of delight, a demoniac shriek being reserved for
Albrecht Dürer.
“I’m awfully glad I escaped it,” said a youth in front of Matt. “I got
there five minutes late, and the man wouldn’t let me in. At least he
said, ‘I’m not supposed to let you in after nine-fifteen.’ But I didn’t
take the tip--or give it.”
In the middle of the address on Art, Gurney, coming up the staircase in
the wake of a student friend (to whom he had been descanting on the
absurdities of Cornpepperism, from which he had now revolted), perceived
Herbert, and pushed him boisterously into the room, which straightway
became a pandemonium; the pianist banging “See, the Conquering Hero
Comes,” the boys stamping, singing, huzzahing, rattling their glasses,
and shouting, “Cigars!” “Drinks!” “Strang!”
Herbert beamingly ordered boxes of Havanas and “soda-and-whiskies,” and
soon Matt, still in his overcoat, found himself drinking and smoking and
shouting with the rest, exalted by the whiskey into forgetfulness of his
clothes and his fortunes, and partaking in all the rollicking humors of
the evening, in all the devil-may-care gayety of the eternal
undergraduate, roaring with his boon companions over the improper
stories of the ascetic-looking young man with the poetic head, bawling
street choruses, dancing madly in grotesque congested waltzes, wherein
he had the felicity to secure Cornpepper for a partner, and
distinguishing himself in the high-kicking _pas seul_, not departing
till the final “Auld Lang Syne” had been sung with joined hands in a
wildly whirling ring. Herbert had left some time before.
“Good-night, Matt; I want to get away. I don’t often get such an excuse
for being out late. There’s no need for you to go yet, you lucky
beggar,” he whispered, confidentially, as he sallied forth, radiantly
sober, weaving joyous dreams of his travelling studentship future.
When the party broke up in the small hours, Matt Strang, saturated with
whiskey and empty of victual, staggered along the frosty pavements,
singing to the stars, that reeled round, blinking and winking like the
buttons on Herbert’s boots.