Ingenious persons have shown that a five-pound note rightly guided will liquidate an almost unlimited amount of liability. Let it be granted, says the mathematician, that A owes B; B owes C; C owes D, and D owes A,—one hundred shillings in each case. A gives a five-pound note to B, who gives it to C, who gives it to D, who gives it to A. The peregrinations of the same note wipes out twenty pounds of debt, and A has the original bit of paper he started with.

In like manner a clever person can bestow a great favour upon another and at the same time accommodate several others, leaving all under obligations to him; while a blunderer, instead of making everybody happy, would have accomplished nothing beyond creating enemies for himself.

The shrewd Haldiman, bringing some promised work to the editor of “Our National Art,” casually mentioned that Barnard Hope had been invited to send some of his paintings to Paris.

“What! Do you mean the Chelsea giant? Why, that ass doesn’t understand the rudiments of drawing, and as for colour—great heavens! there isn’t a pavement chalk artist who is not his superior.”

Haldiman looked puzzled; then he said with some hesitation:

“I confess I used to think that; but of course we studied together in Paris, and we students always underestimate each other. There is something in Barney’s paintings that I don’t pretend to understand.”

“Understand! Bosh! There’s nothing in them but the vilest and most ignorant smearing ever put upon canvas.”

“Then how do you account for the fact that some of the most advanced critics are beginning to consider Barney seriously, as a new factor in the art world?”

“I hadn’t heard of it. Who, for instance?”

“Well, I’m told that Viellieme simply raves over his work—says it’s a distinctive new note, and that Barney is the only original genius England has ever produced.”

“You amaze me! It can’t be true! Whatever any one may say of Viellieme’s morale nature, no one can deny that he knows a picture when he sees it.”

“Of course; I’m simply giving what I have heard. As I say, I don’t admire Barney’s work myself. However, I’m just off for Paris, and I’ll find out for you, on the quiet, just what Viellieme thinks. If Barney is a coming man you’d want to know it, and at least give the first inkling of the new craze, if there is to be one, wouldn’t you?”

“Certainly. But I can’t believe it!”

“I’m not sure that I ought to mention it, but I know that a number of Barney’s paintings are going over to France, and I believe especially for Viellieme’s inspection.”

“I say, Haldiman, just find out for me all you can, will you? It seems incredible! Still, art is full of surprises, and I should like to know. If it is true, try to induce Viellieme to write an article on the new era in art for me.”

“Would you print an article on Barney, if I get Viellieme to write it? I thought you didn’t care for Barney’s work.”

“I don’t, but I’ll gladly print anything Viellieme will sign. Of course, among the different schools I endeavour to maintain absolute impartiality. I believe in letting every side be heard.”

“Well, I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks, Haldiman. I’ll be very much obliged to you, and any expense you——”

“Oh, don’t mention it. I’m going to Paris anyhow, so there won’t be any extra expense.”

The article, marvellously illustrated, appeared in due course. The result quite justified Barney’s expectations and expenditure, and the Barnard Hope boom raged up and down the land. He was interviewed, and photographed, and paragraphed. For a time it was hardly possible to pick up a sixpenny illustrated weekly without seeing the latest photograph of Barney in it, for the young man developed a genius for posing before a camera that would have done credit to our greatest actor. The picture representing him standing with arms folded across his breast, a stern commanding expression upon his countenance, was the one perhaps most sought after by young ladies, although the one in which he looked like Rembrandt was also very popular. Exhibitors begged for his paintings, nabobs bought them, and nobody understood them, which fact made the boom a permanency. Real painters looked at each other in amazement, and asked, “What is this world coming to?”—a question often propounded and never adequately answered.

His great fame did not change Barney a particle; he was the same hail-fellow he had always been, and an invitation to his “At Home” became a distinction. America was especially lavish in its purchases of his work, and he was offered fabulous sums to go there and lecture. The adulation he received would have turned the head of almost any man; but it had little effect on him, because he never had the slightest misgiving that his great reputation was entirely undeserved, and he had looked upon himself as the foremost man of the age long before the world had recognized the fact. He received letters from all parts of the country, whose writers, in most gushing phrase, said they had been privileged to look upon his work at such and such an exhibition, and they hoped to live better and nobler lives in consequence. Some of these epistles affected Barney almost to tears, and he read them to his friends, humbly thankful that the gift of bestowing such pleasure, and wielding such an influence for good upon his fellow-creatures, had been granted him.

Imitators arose, of course, but they did little to tarnish his reputation; for, as Haldiman had said, there was only one Barney, and it is never given to two men in any one generation to paint as badly as Barney did. Art-critics scored the imitators mercilessly, and were in the habit of saying that if Barnard Hope had not lived such and such a picture would not have been painted,—which statement was probably quite true.

Barney’s people were naturally very proud of him. His father had always admired him with the intense admiration which a very little man has for a very big relative; his mother referred to him as, “My son, Barnard Hope, the celebrated painter.”

To all appearances Barney was a man greatly to be envied, but, alas! how little does the public know the inner life of even its greatest favourite! All may be fair to outward view, while within sits brooding care. Barney had a secret trouble which he confided to no one, and it caused him serious mental dissatisfaction. He had told Edna Sartwell that she had blighted his life, and he fully believed this at the time he made the gloomy statement. He sombrely pictured himself in the future as a disappointed man—successful, perhaps, but cynically bitter with existence, living the life of a recluse, and cherishing his broken heart. As the victim of a hopeless passion, he pitied himself, and yet took a melancholy pleasure in ruminating over the wreck of what might have been a joyful career. To his dismay he found it impossible to live up to his ideal. The forced laugh; the pessimistic smile; the dark mantle of a great reserve which he hoped to fold around himself, did not come natural to him, and he was continually backsliding into being his own hilarious boisterous self, and having a good time, when he should have been moping alone over an aching void. Above all things he expected himself to forswear ladies’ society, and never again indulge in the light, flippant, and complimentary talk in which he had been an acknowledged master; but it grieved him to discover that he still took a keen delight in their presence, while they, poor dears! unblushingly adored Barney as they had always done. His arrival in any room immediately brightened the occasion, and he was by all odds the most popular young man in his set. His failure in the tragic rÔle he had marked out for himself at first worried Barney, and led him to suspect that he was not so deep as he had imagined; but this disquieting thought gave way under his ultimate realization that the taciturn recluse of fiction and the drama was merely a melancholy humbug who did not exist in real life. This comforting discovery did much to place Barney once more on good terms with himself, and by-and-by he abandoned the attempt to pose as a stricken victim of woman’s inappreciation, and was once more the genial host and the welcome guest.

As time went on, and his fame continued to spread, he fell more and more under the gentle influence of Lady Mary Fanshaw, who was a modest, refined, and altogether charming girl. She had an unbounded admiration for Barney’s strength and manliness; and his many deeds of kindness and lavish generosity, which he himself was at no particular pains to conceal, won her deep regard. She did not pretend to understand his paintings, but was quite willing to believe what appeared to be the universal estimate, that they were works of the very highest genius.

In the company of Lady Mary, Barney’s heroic determination to lead a monastic life became fainter and fainter. When Barney saw whither he was drifting, he held a serious consultation with himself. Six months had elapsed since the episode at Eastbourne, and this half year had been the most fateful in his whole existence. Even though there was a lingering disappointment over the now self-admitted fact that his life had not been wrecked, yet he felt he owed it to his dignity not to propose to Lady Mary until a year at least had intervened between the two matrimonial excursions. To propose sooner would be to admit that he did not know his own mind—and he particularly prided himself on his strength of mind. An action that is indecent haste in six months may be the epitome of calm deliberation in twelve. Instances are on record where a man’s most cherished political convictions have changed completely within a year, and a grateful country has testified its appreciation of the honesty of the transformation by bestowing a peerage or a knighthood upon the man. Why, then, should not a great painter be deeply in love with two charming girls, if a reasonable interval separated the declarations of affection? Barney said to himself that it was undoubtedly wrong to be in love with two or more at the same time, and he had to admit that in former days he had come dangerously near that complicated condition; but he was young at the time, and youth is an excuse which covers a multitude of errors. “This day six months,” said Barney, definitely, “I shall ask Lady Mary to be my wife.” Having thus reached finality in his meditations, he felt that sense of satisfaction which a man always experiences when a perplexing problem is authoritatively settled one way or another. Nothing is so demoralizing as indecision. Hitherto he had been almost afraid to meet Lady Mary, much as he delighted in her companionship; but now there was no reason why he should hold aloof from her. Therefore, having written down the date on which the momentous proposal was to take place, he arose with a joyful exuberance of spirits, and resolved to celebrate his decision by driving down to the pretty Surrey village near which Lady Mary’s father lived. The tandem was a thing of the past.

He found that the sight of it brought up painful recollections of Eastbourne; so he sold it, and acquired a most stylish four-wheeled vehicle which he called his “growler,” drawn by two spirited black horses. He spoke to his friends apologetically about his growler, and said it gave no particular scope for a man’s driving powers, but would serve until the coach which he had ordered from the most noted builders in London was finished. A four-in-hand, he held, was the only thing a man could drive with credit to himself and satisfaction to all beholders. So with the black span dancing before him, held by a firm hand, he rattled across Chelsea bridge and made for the interior of Surrey.