Produced by James Rusk
HIDE AND SEEK
By Wilkie Collins
TO
CHARLES DICKENS,
THIS STORY IS INSCRIBED,
AS A
TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION,
BY HIS FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
This novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of
fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its
first appearance, is soon told.
Unfortunately for me, “Hide And Seek” was originally published in the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, at the outbreak of the Crimean
War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious
national event; and new books--some of them books of far higher
pretensions than mine--found the minds of readers in general
pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in fiction
necessarily felt the adverse influence of the time. The demand among
the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and
there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated.
Since that period, the book has been, in the technical phrase, “out
of print.” Proposals have reached me, at various times, for its
republication; but I have resolutely abstained from availing myself of
them for two reasons.
In the first place, I was anxious to wait until “Hide And Seek” could
make its re-appearance on a footing of perfect equality with my other
works. In the second place, I was resolved to keep it back until it
might obtain the advantage of a careful revisal, guided by the light of
the author’s later experience. The period for the accomplishment of
both these objects has now presented itself. “Hide And Seek,” in this
edition, forms one among the uniform series of my novels, which has
begun with “Antonina,” “The Dead Secret,” and “The Woman In White;”
and which will be continued with “Basil,” and “The Queen Of Hearts.”
My project of revisal has, at the same time, been carefully and rigidly
executed. I have abridged, and in many cases omitted, several passages
in the first edition, which made larger demands upon the reader’s
patience than I should now think it desirable to venture on if I were
writing a new book; and I have, in one important respect, so altered the
termination of the story as to make it, I hope, more satisfactory and
more complete than it was in its original form.
With such advantages, therefore, as my diligent revision can give it,
“Hide And Seek” now appeals, after an interval of seven years, for
another hearing. I cannot think it becoming--especially in this age of
universal self-assertion--to state the grounds on which I believe my
book to be worthy of gaining more attention than it obtained, through
accidental circumstances, when it was first published. Neither can I
consent to shelter myself under the favorable opinions which many of my
brother writers--and notably, the great writer to whom “Hide And Seek”
is dedicated--expressed of these pages when I originally wrote them. I
leave it to the reader to compare this novel--especially in reference
to the conception and delineation of character--with the two novels
(“Antonina” and “Basil”) which preceded it; and then to decide whether
my third attempt in fiction, with all its faults, was, or was not, an
advance in Art on my earlier efforts. This is all the favor I ask for a
work which I once wrote with anxious care--which I have since corrected
with no sparing hand--which I have now finally dismissed to take its
second journey through the world of letters as usefully and prosperously
as it can.
HARLEY STREET, LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1861.
OPENING CHAPTER. A CHILD’S SUNDAY.
At a quarter to one o’clock, on a wet Sunday afternoon, in November
1837, Samuel Snoxell, page to Mr. Zachary Thorpe, of Baregrove Square,
London, left the area gate with three umbrellas under his arm, to meet
his master and mistress at the church door, on the conclusion of
morning service. Snoxell had been specially directed by the housemaid
to distribute his three umbrellas in the following manner: the new silk
umbrella was to be given to Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe; the old silk umbrella
was to be handed to Mr. Goodworth, Mrs. Thorpe’s father; and the heavy
gingham was to be kept by Snoxell himself, for the special protection
of “Master Zack,” aged six years, and the only child of Mr. Thorpe.
Furnished with these instructions, the page set forth on his way to the
church.
The morning had been fine for November; but before midday the clouds had
gathered, the rain had begun, and the inveterate fog of the season had
closed dingily over the wet streets, far and near. The garden in the
middle of Baregrove Square--with its close-cut turf, its vacant beds,
its bran-new rustic seats, its withered young trees that had not yet
grown as high as the railings around them--seemed to be absolutely
rotting away in yellow mist and softly-steady rain, and was deserted
even by the cats. All blinds were drawn down for the most part over all
windows; what light came from the sky came like light seen through
dusty glass; the grim brown hue of the brick houses looked more
dirtily mournful than ever; the smoke from the chimney-pots was lost
mysteriously in deepening superincumbent fog; the muddy gutters gurgled;
the heavy rain-drops dripped into empty areas audibly. No object great
or small, no out-of-door litter whatever appeared anywhere, to break
the dismal uniformity of line and substance in the perspective of
the square. No living being moved over the watery pavement, save the
solitary Snoxell. He plodded on into a Crescent, and still the awful
Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He next entered a
street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last, some
consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He now saw the
crossing-sweeper of the district (off duty till church came out) smoking
a pipe under the covered way that led to a mews. He detected, through
half closed shutters, a chemist’s apprentice yawing over a large book.
He passed a navigator, an ostler, and two costermongers wandering
wearily backwards and forwards before a closed public-house door. He
heard the heavy _clop clop_ of thickly-booted feet advancing behind him,
and a stern voice growling, “Now then! be off with you, or you’ll get
locked up!”--and, looking round, saw an orange-girl, guilty of having
obstructed an empty pavement by sitting on the curb-stone, driven along
before a policeman, who was followed admiringly by a ragged boy gnawing
a piece of orange-peel. Having delayed a moment to watch this Sunday
procession of three with melancholy curiosity as it moved by him,
Snoxell was about to turn the corner of a street which led directly to
the church, when a shrill series of cries in a child’s voice struck on
his ear and stopped his progress immediately.
The page stood stock-still in astonishment for an instant--then pulled
the new silk umbrella from under his arm, and turned the corner in a
violent hurry. His suspicions had not deceived him. There was Mr. Thorpe
himself walking sternly homeward through the rain, before church was
over. He led by the hand “Master Zack,” who was trotting along under
protest, with his hat half off his head, hanging as far back from his
father’s side as he possibly could, and howling all the time at the
utmost pitch of a very powerful pair of lungs.
Mr. Thorpe stopped as he passed the page, and snatched the umbrella out
of Snoxell’s hand, with unaccustomed impetuity; said sharply, “Go to
your mistress, go on to the church;” and then resumed his road home,
dragging his son after him faster than ever.
“Snoxy! Snoxy!” screamed Master Zack, turning round towards the page, so
that he tripped himself up and fell against his father’s legs at every
third step; “I’ve been a naughty boy at church!”
“Ah! you look like it, you do,” muttered Snoxell to himself
sarcastically, as he went on. With that expression of opinion, the
page approached the church portico, and waited sulkily among his fellow
servants and their umbrellas for the congregation to come out.
When Mr. Goodworth and Mrs. Thorpe left the church, the old gentleman,
regardless of appearances, seized eagerly on the despised gingham
umbrella, because it was the largest he could get, and took his daughter
home under it in triumph. Mrs. Thorpe was very silent, and sighed
dolefully once or twice, when her father’s attention wandered from her
to the people passing along the street.
“You’re fretting about Zack,” said the old gentleman, looking round
suddenly at his daughter. “Never mind! leave it to me. I’ll undertake to
beg him off this time.”
“It’s very disheartening and shocking to find him behaving so,” said
Mrs. Thorpe, “after the careful way we’ve brought him up in, too!”
“Nonsense, my love! No, I don’t mean that--I beg your pardon. But who
can be surprised that a child of six years old should be tired of a
sermon forty minutes long by my watch? I was tired of it myself I know,
though I wasn’t candid enough to show it as the boy did. There! there!
we won’t begin to argue: I’ll beg Zack off this time, and we’ll say no
more about it.”
Mr. Goodworth’s announcement of his benevolent intentions towards Zack
seemed to have very little effect on Mrs. Thorpe; but she said nothing
on that subject or any other during the rest of the dreary walk home,
through rain, fog, and mud, to Baregrove Square.
Rooms have their mysterious peculiarities of physiognomy as well as men.
There are plenty of rooms, all of much the same size, all furnished
in much the same manner, which, nevertheless, differ completely
in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the other;
reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such fine
varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to all,
as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and
mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr.
Thorpe’s house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished.
It was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table,
looking-glass, scroll fender, marble chimney-piece with a clock on it,
carpet with a drugget over it, and wire window-blinds to keep people
from looking in, characteristic of all respectable London parlors of the
middle class. And yet it was an inveterately severe-looking room--a room
that seemed as if it had never been convivial, never uproarious,
never anything but sternly comfortable and serenely dull--a room which
appeared to be as unconscious of acts of mercy, and easy unreasoning
over-affectionate forgiveness to offenders of any kind--juvenile or
otherwise--as if it had been a cell in Newgate, or a private torturing
chamber in the Inquisition. Perhaps Mr. Goodworth felt thus affected
by the parlor (especially in November weather) as soon as he entered
it--for, although he had promised to beg Zack off, although Mr. Thorpe
was sitting alone by the table and accessible to petitions, with a book
in his hand, the old gentleman hesitated uneasily for a minute or two,
and suffered his daughter to speak first.
“Where is Zack?” asked Mrs. Thorpe, glancing quickly and nervously all
round her.
“He is locked up in my dressing-room,” answered her husband without
taking his eyes off the book.
“In your dressing-room!” echoed Mrs. Thorpe, looking as startled and
horrified as if she had received a blow instead of an answer; “in your
dressing-room! Good heavens, Zachary! how do you know the child hasn’t
got at your razors?”
“They are locked up,” rejoined Mr. Thorpe, with the mildest reproof in
his voice, and the mournfullest self-possession in his manner. “I took
care before I left the boy, that he should get at nothing which could do
him any injury. He is locked up, and will remain locked up, because”--
“I say, Thorpe! won’t you let him off this time?” interrupted Mr.
Goodworth, boldly plunging head foremost, with his petition for mercy,
into the conversation.
“If you had allowed me to proceed, sir,” said Mr. Thorpe, who always
called his father-in-law _Sir,_ “I should have simply remarked that,
after having enlarged to my son (in such terms, you will observe, as I
thought best fitted to his comprehension) on the disgrace to his parents
and himself of his behavior this morning, I set him as a task three
verses to learn out of the ‘Select Bible Texts for Children;’ choosing
the verses which seemed most likely, if I may trust my own judgment
on the point, to impress on him what his behavior ought to be for the
future in church. He flatly refused to learn what I told him. It was, of
course, quite impossible to allow my authority to be set at defiance by
my own child (whose disobedient disposition has always, God knows, been
a source of constant trouble and anxiety to me); so I locked him up, and
locked up he will remain until he has obeyed me. My dear,” (turning to
his wife and handing her a key), “I have no objection, if you wish, to
your going and trying what _you_ can do towards overcoming the obstinacy
of this unhappy child.”
Mrs. Thorpe took the key, and went up stairs immediately--went up to do
what all women have done, from the time of the first mother; to do
what Eve did when Cain was wayward in his infancy, and cried at her
breast--in short, went up to coax her child.
Mr. Thorpe, when his wife closed the door, carefully looked down
the open page on his knee for the place where he had left off--found
it--referred back a moment to the last lines of the preceding leaf--and
then went on with his book, not taking the smallest notice of Mr.
Goodworth.
“Thorpe!” cried the old gentleman, plunging head-foremost again, into
his son-in-law’s reading this time instead of his talk, “You may say
what you please; but your notion of bringing up Zack is a wrong one
altogether.”
With the calmest imaginable expression of face, Mr. Thorpe looked up
from his book; and, first carefully putting a paper-knife between the
leaves, placed it on the table. He then crossed one of his legs over the
other, rested an elbow on each arm of his chair, and clasped his
hands in front of him. On the wall opposite hung several
lithographed portraits of distinguished preachers, in and out of the
Establishment--mostly represented as very sturdily-constructed men with
bristly hair, fronting the spectator interrogatively and holding thick
books in their hands. Upon one of these portraits--the name of the
original of which was stated at the foot of the print to be the Reverend
Aaron Yollop--Mr. Thorpe now fixed his eyes, with a faint approach to
a smile on his face (he never was known to laugh), and with a look and
manner which said as plainly as if he had spoken it: “This old man is
about to say something improper or absurd to me; but he is my wife’s
father, it is my duty to bear with him, and therefore I am perfectly
resigned.”
“It’s no use looking in that way, Thorpe,” growled the old gentleman;
“I’m not to be put down by looks at my time of life. I may have my own
opinions I suppose, like other people; and I don’t see why I shouldn’t
express them, especially when they relate to my own daughter’s boy. It’s
very unreasonable of me, I dare say, but I think I ought to have a voice
now and then in Zack’s bringing up.”
Mr. Thorpe bowed respectfully--partly to Mr. Goodworth, partly to the
Reverend Aaron Yollop. “I shall always be happy, sir, to listen to any
expression of your opinion--”
“My opinion’s this,” burst out Mr. Goodworth. “You’ve no business to
take Zack to church at all, till he’s some years older than he is now.
I don’t deny that there may be a few children, here and there, at six
years old, who are so very patient, and so very--(what’s the word for
a child that knows a deal more than he has any business to know at his
age? Stop! I’ve got it!--_precocious_--that’s the word)--so very patient
and so very precocious that they will sit quiet in the same place for
two hours; making believe all the time that they understand every word
of the service, whether they really do or not. I don’t deny that there
may be such children, though I never met with them myself, and should
think them all impudent little hypocrites if I did! But Zack isn’t one
of that sort: Zack’s a genuine child (God bless him)! Zack--”
“Do I understand you, my dear sir,” interposed Mr. Thorpe, sorrowfully
sarcastic, “to be praising the conduct of my son in disturbing the
congregation, and obliging me to take him out of church?”
“Nothing of the sort,” retorted the old gentleman; “I’m not praising
Zack’s conduct, but I _am_ blaming yours. Here it is in plain
words:--_You_ keep on cramming church down his throat; and _he_ keeps on
puking at it as if it was physic, because he don’t know any better,
and can’t know any better at his age. Is that the way to make him take
kindly to religious teaching? I know as well as you do, that he roared
like a young Turk at the sermon. And pray what was the subject of the
sermon? Justification by Faith. Do you mean to tell me that he, or any
other child at his time of life, could understand anything of such a
subject as that; or get an atom of good out of it? You can’t--you know
you can’t! I say again, it’s no use taking him to church yet; and what’s
more, it’s worse than no use, for you only associate his first ideas
of religious instruction with everything in the way of restraint and
discipline and punishment that can be most irksome to him. There! that’s
my opinion, and I should like to hear what you’ve got to say against
it?”
“Latitudinarianism,” said Mr. Thorpe, looking and speaking straight at
the portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.
“You can’t fob me off with long words, which I don’t understand, and
which I don’t believe you can find in Johnson’s Dictionary,” continued
Mr. Goodworth doggedly. “You would do much better to take my advice, and
let Zack go to church, for the present, at his mother’s knees. Let his
Morning Service be about ten minutes long; let your wife tell him, out
of the New Testament, about Our Savior’s goodness and gentleness to
little children; and then let her teach him, from the Sermon on the
Mount, to be loving and truthful and forbearing and forgiving, for Our
Savior’s sake. If such precepts as those are enforced--as they may be
in one way or another--by examples drawn from his own daily life; from
people around him; from what he meets with and notices and asks about,
out of doors and in--mark my words, he’ll take kindly to his religious
instruction. I’ve seen that in other children: I’ve seen it in my own
children, who were all brought up so. Of course, you don’t agree with
me! Of course you’ve got another objection all ready to bowl me down
with?”
“Rationalism,” said Mr. Thorpe, still looking steadily at the
lithographed portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.
“Well, your objection’s a short one this time at any rate; and that’s a
blessing!” said the old gentleman rather irritably. “Rationalism--eh? I
understand that _ism,_ I rather suspect, better than the other. It
means in plain English, that you think I’m wrong in only wanting to give
religious instruction the same chance with Zack which you let all other
kinds of instruction have--the chance of becoming useful by being first
made attractive. You can’t get him to learn to read by telling him
that it will improve his mind--but you can by getting him to look at a
picture book. You can’t get him to drink senna and salts by reasoning
with him about its doing him good--but you can by promising him a lump
of sugar to take after it. You admit this sort of principle so far,
because you’re obliged; but the moment anybody wants (in a spirit of
perfect reverence and desire to do good) to extend it to higher things,
you purse up your lips, shake your head, and talk about Rationalism--as
if that was an answer! Well! well! it’s no use talking--go your own
way--I wash my hands of the business altogether. But now I _am_ at
it I’ll just say this one thing more before I’ve done:--your way of
punishing the boy for his behavior in church is, in my opinion, about as
bad and dangerous a one as could possibly be devised. Why not give him
a thrashing, if you _must_ punish the miserable little urchin for
what’s his misfortune as much as his fault? Why not stop his pudding, or
something of that sort? Here you are associating verses in the Bible, in
his mind, with the idea of punishment and being locked up in the cold!
You may make him get his text by heart, I dare say, by fairly tiring him
out; but I tell you what I’m afraid you’ll make him learn too, if you
don’t mind--you’ll make him learn to dislike the Bible as much as other
boys dislike the birch-rod!”
“Sir,” cried Mr. Thorpe, turning suddenly round, and severely
confronting Mr. Goodworth, “once for all, I must most respectfully
insist on being spared for the future any open profanities in
conversation, even from your lips. All my regard and affection for you,
as Mrs. Thorpe’s father, shall not prevent me from solemnly recording my
abhorrence of such awful infidelity as I believe to be involved in the
words you have just spoken! My religious convictions recoil--”
“Stop, sir!” said Mr. Goodworth, seriously and sternly.
Mr. Thorpe obeyed at once. The old gentleman’s manner was generally
much more remarkable for heartiness than for dignity; but it altered
completely while he now spoke. As he struck his hand on the table, and
rose from his chair, there was something in his look which it was not
wise to disregard.
“Mr. Thorpe,” he went on, more calmly, but very decidedly, “I refrain
from telling you what my opinion is of the ‘respect’ and ‘affection’
which have allowed _you_ to rebuke _me_ in such terms as you have
chosen. I merely desire to say that I shall never need a second reproof
of the same kind at your hands; for I shall never again speak to you
on the subject of my grandson’s education. If, in consideration of this
assurance, you will now permit me, in my turn--not to rebuke--but to
offer you one word of advice, I would recommend you not to be too ready
in future, lightly and cruelly to accuse a man of infidelity because
his religious opinions happen to differ on some subjects from yours. To
infer a serious motive for your opponent’s convictions, however wrong
you may think them, can do _you_ no harm: to infer a scoffing motive can
do _him_ no good. We will say nothing more about this, if you please.
Let us shake hands, and never again revive a subject about which we
disagree too widely ever to discuss it with advantage.”
At this moment the servant came in with lunch. Mr. Goodworth poured
himself out a glass of sherry, made a remark on the weather, and soon
resumed his cheerful, everyday manner. But he did not forget the pledge
that he had given to Mr. Thorpe. From that time forth, he never by word
or deed interfered again in his grandson’s education.
*****
While the theory of Mr. Thorpe’s system of juvenile instruction was
being discussed in the free air of the parlor, the practical working
of that theory, so far as regarded the case of Master Zack, was being
exemplified in anything but a satisfactory manner, in the prison-region
of the dressing-room.
While she ascended the first flight of stairs, Mrs. Thorpe’s ears
informed her that her son was firing off one uninterrupted volley of
kicks against the door of his place of confinement. As this was by no
means an unusual circumstance, whenever the boy happened to be locked up
for bad behavior, she felt distressed, but not at all surprised at what
she heard; and went into the drawing-room, on her way up stairs, to
deposit her Bible and Prayerbook (kept in a morocco case, with gold
clasps) on the little side-table, upon which they were always placed
during week-days. Possibly, she was so much agitated that her hand
trembled; possibly, she was in too great a hurry; possibly, the
household imp who rules the brittle destinies of domestic glass and
china, had marked her out as his destroying angel for that day; but
however it was, in placing the morocco case on the table, she knocked
down and broke an ornament standing near it--a little ivory model of a
church steeple in the florid style, enshrined in a glass case. Picking
up the fragments, and mourning over the catastrophe, occupied some
little time, more than she was aware of, before she at last left the
drawing-room, to proceed on her way to the upper regions.
As she laid her hand on the banisters, it struck her suddenly and
significantly, that the noises in the dressing-room above had entirely
ceased.
The instant she satisfied herself of this, her maternal imagination,
uninfluenced by what Mr. Thorpe had said below stairs, conjured up an
appalling vision of Zack before his father’s looking-glass, with his
chin well lathered, and a bare razor at his naked throat. The child
had indeed a singular aptitude for amusing himself with purely adult
occupations. Having once been incautiously taken into church by his
nurse, to see a female friend of hers married, Zack had, the very next
day, insisted on solemnizing the nuptial ceremony from recollection,
before a bride and bridegroom of his own age, selected from his
playfellows in the garden of the square. Another time, when the gardener
had incautiously left his lighted pipe on a bench while he went
to gather a flower for one of the local nursery-maids, whom he was
accustomed to favor horticulturally in this way, Zack contrived,
undetected, to take three greedy whiffs of pigtail in close succession;
was discovered reeling about the grass like a little drunkard; and had
to be smuggled home (deadly pale, and bathed in cold perspiration) to
recover, out of his mother’s sight, in the congenial gloom of the back
kitchen. Although the precise infantine achievements here cited were
unknown to Mrs. Thorpe, there were plenty more, like them, which she had
discovered; and the warning remembrance of which now hurried the poor
lady up the second flight of stairs in a state of breathless agitation
and alarm.
Zack, however, had not got at the razors; for they were all locked up,
as Mr. Thorpe had declared. But he had, nevertheless, discovered in
the dressing-room a means of perpetrating domestic mischief, which his
father had never thought of providing against. Finding that kicking,
screaming, stamping, sobbing, and knocking down chairs, were quite
powerless as methods of enforcing his liberation, he suddenly suspended
his proceedings; looked all round the room; observed the cock which
supplied his father’s bath with water; and instantly resolved to flood
the house. He had set the water going in the bath, had filled it to
the brim, and was anxiously waiting, perched up on a chair, to see it
overflow--when his mother unlocked the dressing-room door, and entered
the room.
“Oh, you naughty, wicked, shocking child!” cried Mrs. Thorpe, horrified
at what she beheld, but instantly stopping the threatened deluge from
motives of precaution connected with the drawing-room ceiling. “Oh,
Zack! Zack! what will you do next? What _would_ your papa say if he
heard of this? You wicked, wicked, wicked child, I’m ashamed to look at
you!”
And, in very truth, Zack offered at that moment a sufficiently
disheartening spectacle for a mother’s eyes to dwell on. There stood the
young imp, sturdy and upright in his chair, wriggling his shoulders in
and out of his frock, and holding his hands behind him in unconscious
imitation of the favorite action of Napoleon the Great. His light hair
was all rumpled down over his forehead; his lips were swelled; his nose
was red; and from his bright blue eyes Rebellion looked out frankly
mischievous, amid a surrounding halo of dirt and tears, rubbed circular
by his knuckles. After gazing on her son in mute despair for a minute
or so, Mrs. Thorpe took the only course that was immediately open to
her--or, in other words, took the child off the chair.
“Have you learnt your lesson, you wicked boy?” she asked.
“No, I havn’t,” answered Zack, resolutely.
“Then come to the table with me: your papa’s waiting to hear you. Come
here and learn your lesson directly,” said Mrs. Thorpe, leading the way
to the table.
“I won’t!” rejoined Zack, emphasizing the refusal by laying tight hold
of the wet sides of the bath with both hands.
It was lucky for this rebel of six years old that he addressed those
two words to his mother only. If his nurse had heard them, she would
instantly have employed that old-established resource in all educational
difficulties, familiarly known to persons of her condition under the
appellation of “a smack on the head;” if Mr. Thorpe had heard them, the
boy would have been sternly torn away, bound to the back of a chair, and
placed ignominiously with his chin against the table; if Mr. Goodworth
had heard them, the probability is that he would instantly have lost his
temper, and soused his grandson head over ears in the bath. Not one of
these ideas occurred to Mrs. Thorpe, who possessed no ideas. But she
had certain substitutes which were infinitely more useful in the present
emergency: she had instincts.
“Look up at me, Zack,” she said, returning to the bath, and sitting in
the chair by its side; “I want to say something to you.”
The boy obeyed directly. His mother opened her lips, stopped suddenly,
said a few words, stopped again, hesitated--and then ended her first
sentence of admonition in the most ridiculous manner, by snatching at
the nearest towel, and bearing Zack off to the wash-hand basin.
The plain fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe was secretly vain of her child. She
had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait-waistcoats of
prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but this--of all
vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely the most
pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome,
church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding Zack! If he had been
a plain-featured boy, she could have gone on more sternly with her
admonition: but to look coolly on his handsome face, made ugly by dirt,
tears, and rumpled hair; to speak to him in that state, while soap,
water, brush and towel, were all within reach, was more than the mother
(or the woman either, for that matter) had the self-denial to do! So,
before it had well begun, the maternal lecture ended impotently in the
wash-hand basin.
When the boy had been smartened and brushed up, Mrs. Thorpe took him on
her lap; and suppressing a strong desire to kiss him on both his round,
shining cheeks, said these words:--
“I want you to learn your lesson, because you will please _me_ by
obeying your papa. I have always been kind to _you,_--now I want you to
be kind to _me.”_
For the first time, Zack hung down his head, and seemed unprepared with
an answer. Mrs. Thorpe knew by experience what this symptom meant. “I
think you are beginning to be sorry for what you have done, and are
going to be a good boy,” she said. “If you are, I know you will give me
a kiss.” Zack hesitated again--then suddenly reached up, and gave his
mother a hearty and loud-sounding kiss on the tip of her chin. “And now
you will learn your lesson?” continued Mrs. Thorpe. “I have always tried
to make _you_ happy, and I am sure you are ready, by this time, to try
and make _me_ happy--are you not, Zack?”
“Yes, I am,” said Zack manfully. His mother took him at once to the
table, on which the “Select Bible Texts for Children” lay open, and
tried to lift him into a chair “No!” said the boy, resisting and shaking
his head resolutely; “I want to learn my lesson on your lap.”
Mrs. Thorpe humored him immediately. She was not a handsome, not even a
pretty woman; and the cold atmosphere of the dressing-room by no means
improved her personal appearance. But, notwithstanding this, she looked
absolutely attractive and interesting at the present moment, as she
sat with Zack in her arms, bending over him while he studied his three
verses in the “Bible Texts.” Women who have been ill-used by nature have
this great advantage over men in the same predicament--wherever there
is a child present, they have a means ready at hand, which they can all
employ alike, for hiding their personal deficiencies. Who ever saw an
awkward woman look awkward with a baby in her arms? Who ever saw an ugly
woman look ugly when she was kissing a child?
Zack, who was a remarkably quick boy when he chose to exert himself,
got his lesson by heart in so short a time that his mother insisted on
hearing him twice over, before she could satisfy herself that he was
really perfect enough to appear in his father’s presence. The second
trial decided her doubts, and she took him in triumph down stairs.
Mr. Thorpe was reading intently, Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly,
the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and
the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its
most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson
at his father’s knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his
childish manner, during this third trial, altered from frankness to
distrustfulness; and he looked much oftener, while he said his task, at
Mr. Goodworth than at his father. When the texts had been repeated, Mr.
Thorpe just said to his wife, before resuming his book--“You may tell
the nurse, my dear, to get Zachary’s dinner ready for him--though he
doesn’t deserve it for behaving so badly about learning his lesson.”
“Please, grandpapa, may I look at the picture-book you brought for me
last night, after I was in bed?” said Zack, addressing Mr. Goodworth,
and evidently feeling that he was entitled to his reward now he had
suffered his punishment.
“Certainly not on a Sunday,” interposed Mr. Thorpe; “your grandpapa’s
book is not a book for Sundays.”
Mr. Goodworth started, and seemed about to speak; but recollecting what
he had said to Mr. Thorpe, contented himself with poking the fire. The
book in question was a certain romance, entitled “Jack and the Bean
Stalk,” adorned with illustrations in the freest style of water-color
art.
“If you want to look at picture-books, you know what books you may have
to-day; and your mamma will get them for you when she comes in again,”
continued Mr. Thorpe.
The works now referred to were, an old copy of the “Pilgrim’s Progress”
containing four small prints of the period of the last century; and a
“Life of Moses,” illustrated by severe German outlines in the manner of
the modern school. Zack knew well enough what books his father meant,
and exhibited his appreciation of them by again beginning to wriggle his
shoulders in and out of his frock. He had evidently had more than enough
already of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” and the “Life of Moses.”
Mr. Thorpe said nothing more, and returned to his reading. Mr. Goodworth
put his hands in his pockets, yawned disconsolately, and looked, with
a languidly satirical expression in his eyes, to see what his grandson
would do next. If the thought passing through the old gentleman’s mind
at that moment had been put into words, it would have been exactly
expressed in the following sentence:--“You miserable little boy! When I
was your age, how I should have kicked at all this!”
Zack was not long in finding a new resource. He spied Mr. Goodworth’s
cane standing in a corner; and, instantly getting astride of it,
prepared to amuse himself with a little imaginary horse-exercise up and
down the room. He had just started at a gentle canter, when his father
called out, “Zachary!” and brought the boy to a stand-still directly.
“Put back the stick where you took it from,” said Mr. Thorpe; “you
mustn’t do that on Sunday. If you want to move about, you can walk up
and down the room.”
Zack paused, debating for an instant whether he should disobey or burst
out crying.
“Put back the stick,” repeated Mr. Thorpe.
Zack remembered the dressing-room and the “Select Bible Texts for
Children,” and wisely obeyed. He was by this time completely crushed
down into as rigid a state of Sunday discipline as his father could
desire. After depositing the stick in the corner, he slowly walked up to
Mr. Goodworth, with a comical expression of amazement and disgust in his
chubby face, and meekly laid down his head on his grandfather’s knee.
“Never say die, Zack,” said the kind old gentleman, rising and taking
the boy in his arms. “While nurse is getting your dinner ready, let’s
look out of window, and see if it’s going to clear up.”
Mr. Thorpe raised his head disapprovingly from his book, but said
nothing this time.
“Ah, rain! rain! rain!” muttered Mr. Goodworth, staring desperately out
at the miserable prospect, while Zack amused himself by rubbing his nose
vacantly backwards and forwards against a pane of glass. “Rain!
rain! Nothing but rain and fog in November. Hold up, Zack! Ding-dong,
ding-dong; there go the bells for afternoon church! I wonder whether it
will be fine to-morrow? Think of the pudding, my boy!” whispered the old
gentleman with a benevolent remembrance of the consolation which that
thought had often afforded to him, when he was a child himself.
“Yes,” said Zack, acknowledging the pudding suggestion, but declining to
profit by it. “And, please, when I’ve had my dinner, will somebody put
me to bed?”
“Put you to bed!” exclaimed Mr. Goodworth. “Why, bless the boy! what’s
come to him now? He used always to be wanting to stop up.”
“I want to go to bed, and get to to-morrow, and have my picture-book,”
was the weary and whimpering answer.
“I’ll be hanged, if I don’t want to go to bed too!” soliloquized the old
gentleman under his breath, “and get to to-morrow, and have my ‘Times’
at breakfast. I’m as bad as Zack, every bit!”
“Grandpapa,” continued the child, more wearily than before, “I want to
whisper something in your ear.”
Mr. Goodworth bent down a little. Zack looked round cunningly towards
his father--then putting his mouth close to his grandfather’s ear,
communicated the conclusion at which he had arrived, after the events of
the day, in these words--
_“I say, granpapa, I hate Sunday!”_
BOOK I. THE HIDING.
CHAPTER I. A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD, AND A STRANGE CHARACTER.
At the period when the episode just related occurred in the life of Mr.
Zachary Thorpe the younger--that is to say, in the year 1837--Baregrove
Square was the farthest square from the city, and the nearest to the
country, of any then existing in the north-western suburb of London.
But, by the time fourteen years more had elapsed--that is to say, in
the year 1851--Baregrove Square had lost its distinctive character
altogether; other squares had filched from it those last remnants of
healthy rustic flavor from which its good name had been derived; other
streets, crescents, rows, and villa-residences had forced themselves
pitilessly between the old suburb and the country, and had suspended
for ever the once neighborly relations between the pavement of Baregrove
Square and the pathways of the pleasant fields.
Alexander’s armies were great makers of conquests; and Napoleon’s armies
were great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla regiments of the
hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest conquerors of all;
for they hold the longest the soil that they have once possessed. How
mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of these tremendous
aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of nature, triumphantly
bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What dismantled castle, with the
enemy’s flag flying over its crumbling walls, ever looked so utterly
forlorn as a poor field-fortress of nature, imprisoned on all sides by
the walled camp of the enemy, and degraded by a hostile banner of pole
and board, with the conqueror’s device inscribed on it--“THIS GROUND TO
BE LET ON BUILDING LEASES?” What is the historical spectacle of
Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage, but a trumpery theatrical
set-scene, compared with the mournful modern sight of the last tree
left standing, on the last few feet of grass left growing, amid the
greenly-festering stucco of a finished Paradise Row, or the naked
scaffolding poles of a half-completed Prospect Place? Oh, gritty-natured
Guerilla regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln! the
town-pilgrim of nature, when he wanders out at fall of day into the
domains which you have spared for a little while, hears strange things
said of you in secret, as he duteously interprets the old, primeval
language of the leaves; as he listens to the death-doomed trees,
still whispering mournfully around him the last notes of their ancient
even-song!
But what avails the voice of lamentation? What new neighborhood
ever stopped on its way into the country, to hearken to the passive
remonstrance of the fields, or to bow to the indignation of outraged
admirers of the picturesque? Never was suburb more impervious to any
faint influences of this sort, than that especial suburb which grew
up between Baregrove Square and the country; removing a walk among
the hedge-rows a mile off from the resident families, with a ruthless
rapidity at which sufferers on all sides stared aghast. First stories
were built, and mortgaged by the enterprising proprietors to get
money enough to go on with the second; old speculators failed and were
succeeded by new; foundations sank from bad digging; walls were blown
down in high winds from hasty building; bricks were called for in such
quantities, and seized on in such haste, half-baked from the kilns,
that they set the carts on fire, and had to be cooled in pails of water
before they could be erected into walls--and still the new suburb defied
all accidents, and grew irrepressibly into a little town of houses,
ready to be let and lived in, from the one end to the other.
The new neighborhood offered house-accommodation--accepted at the higher
prices as yet only to a small extent--to three distinct subdivisions
of the great middle class of our British population. Rents and premises
were adapted, in a steeply descending scale, to the means of the middle
classes with large incomes, of the middle classes with moderate incomes,
and of the middle classes with small incomes. The abodes for the large
incomes were called “mansions,” and were fortified strongly against the
rest of the suburb by being all built in one wide row, shut in at either
end by ornamental gates, and called a “park.” The unspeakable desolation
of aspect common to the whole suburb, was in a high state of perfection
in this part of it. Irreverent street noises fainted dead away on
the threshold of the ornamental gates, at the sight of the hermit
lodge-keeper. The cry of the costermonger and the screech of the
vagabond London boy were banished out of hearing. Even the regular
tradesman’s time-honored business noises at customers’ doors, seemed as
if they ought to have been relinquished here. The frantic falsetto
of the milkman, the crash of the furious butcher’s cart over the
never-to-be pulverized stones of the new road through the “park,”
always sounded profanely to the passing stranger, in the spick-and-span
stillness of this Paradise of the large incomes.
The hapless small incomes had the very worst end of the whole locality
entirely to themselves, and absorbed all the noises and nuisances, just
as the large incomes absorbed all the tranquillities and luxuries of
suburban existence. Here were the dreary limits at which architectural
invention stopped in despair. Each house in this poor man’s purgatory
was, indeed, and in awful literalness, a brick box with a slate top to
it. Every hole drilled in these boxes, whether door-hole or window-hole,
was always overflowing with children. They often mustered by forties
and fifties in one street, and were the great pervading feature of the
quarter. In the world of the large incomes, young life sprang up like
a garden fountain, artificially playing only at stated periods in the
sunshine. In the world of the small incomes, young life flowed out
turbulently into the street, like an exhaustless kennel-deluge, in all
weathers. Next to the children of the inhabitants, in visible numerical
importance, came the shirts and petticoats, and miscellaneous linen of
the inhabitants; fluttering out to dry publicly on certain days of the
week, and enlivening the treeless little gardens where they hung, with
lightsome avenues of pinafores, and solemn-spreading foliage of stout
Welsh flannel. Here that absorbing passion for oranges (especially
active when the fruit is half ripe, and the weather is bitter cold),
which distinguishes the city English girl of the lower orders,
flourished in its finest development; and here, also, the poisonous
fumes of the holyday shop-boy’s bad cigar told all resident nostrils
when it was Sunday, as plainly as the church bells could tell it to all
resident ears. The one permanent rarity in this neighborhood, on week
days, was to discover a male inhabitant in any part of it, between the
hours of nine in the morning and six in the evening; the one sorrowful
sight which never varied, was to see that every woman, even to the
youngest, looked more or less unhappy, often care-stricken, while youth
was still in the first bud; oftener child-stricken before maturity was
yet in the full bloom.
As for the great central portion of the suburb--or, in other words,
the locality of the moderate incomes--it reflected exactly the lives of
those who inhabited it, by presenting no distinctive character of its
own at all.
In one part, the better order of houses imitated as pompously as they
could, the architectural grandeur of the mansions owned by the large
incomes; in another, the worst order of houses respectably, but
narrowly, escaped a general resemblance to the brick boxes of the
small incomes. In some places, the “park” influences vindicated their
existence superbly in the persons of isolated ladies who, not having a
carriage to go out in for an airing, exhibited the next best thing, a
footman to walk behind them: and so got a pedestrian airing genteelly in
that way. In other places, the obtrusive spirit of the brick boxes
rode about, thinly disguised, in children’s carriages, drawn by
nursery-maids; or fluttered aloft, delicately discernible at angles
of view, in the shape of a lace pocket-handkerchief or a fine-worked
chemisette, drying modestly at home in retired corners of back gardens.
Generally, however, the hostile influences of the large incomes and the
small mingled together on the neutral ground of the moderate incomes;
turning it into the dullest, the dreariest, the most oppressively
conventional division of the whole suburb. It was just that sort of
place where the thoughtful man looking about him mournfully at the
locality, and physiologically observing the inhabitants, would be prone
to stop suddenly, and ask himself one plain, but terrible question: “Do
these people ever manage to get any real enjoyment out of their lives,
from one year’s end to another?”
To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate
incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies
seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the
civilized world. Is it not obviously true that, while the upper
classes and the lower classes of English society have each their own
characteristic recreations for leisure hours, adapted equally to their
means and to their tastes, the middle classes, in general, have (to
expose the sad reality) nothing of the sort? To take an example from
those eating and drinking recreations which absorb so large a portion
of existence:--If the rich proprietors of the “mansions” in the “park”
could give their grand dinners, and be as prodigal as they pleased with
their first-rate champagne, and their rare gastronomic delicacies;
the poor tenants of the brick boxes could just as easily enjoy their
tea-garden conversazione, and be just as happily and hospitably
prodigal, in turn, with their porter-pot, their teapot, their plate
of bread-and-butter, and their dish of shrimps. On either side, these
representatives of two pecuniary extremes in society, looked for what
recreations they wanted with their own eyes, pursued those recreations
within their own limits, and enjoyed themselves unreservedly in
consequence. Not so with the moderate incomes: they, in their social
moments, shrank absurdly far from the poor people’s porter and shrimps;
crawled contemptibly near to the rich people’s rare wines and luxurious
dishes; exposed their poverty in imitation by chemical champagne from
second-rate wine merchants, by flabby salads and fetid oyster-patties
from second-rate pastry-cooks; were, in no one of their festive
arrangements, true to their incomes, to their order, or to themselves;
and, in very truth, for all these reasons and many more, got no real
enjoyment out of their lives, from one year’s end to another.
On the outskirts of that part of the new suburb appropriated to these
unhappy middle classes with moderate incomes, there lived a gentleman
(by name Mr. Valentine Blyth) whose life offered as strong a practical
contradiction as it is possible to imagine to the lives of his
neighbors.
He was by profession an artist--an artist in spite of circumstances.
Neither his father, nor his mother, nor any relation of theirs, on
either side, had ever practiced the Art of Painting, or had ever derived
any special pleasure from the contemplation of pictures. They were all
respectable commercial people of the steady fund-holding old school,
who lived exclusively within their own circle; and had never so much as
spoken to a live artist or author in the whole course of their lives.
The City-world in which Valentine’s boyhood was passed, was as destitute
of art influences of any kind as if it had been situated on the coast
of Greenland; and yet, to the astonishment of everybody, he was always
drawing and painting, in his own rude way, at every leisure hour. His
father was, as might be expected, seriously disappointed and amazed at
the strange direction taken by the boy’s inclinations. No one (including
Valentine himself) could ever trace them back to any recognizable
source; but everyone could observe plainly enough that there was no hope
of successfully opposing them by fair means of any kind. Seeing this,
old Mr. Blyth, like a wise man, at last made a virtue of necessity; and,
giving way to his son, entered him, under strong commercial protest, as
a student in the Schools of the Royal Academy.
Here Valentine remained, working industriously, until his twenty-first
birthday. On that occasion, Mr. Blyth had a little serious talk with
him about his prospects in life. In the course of this conversation, the
young man was informed that a rich merchant-uncle was ready to take him
into partnership; and that his father was equally ready to start him
in business with his whole share, as one of three children, in the
comfortable inheritance acquired for the family by the well-known City
house of Blyth and Company. If Valentine consented to this arrangement,
his fortune was secured, and he might ride in his carriage before he was
thirty. If, on the other hand, he really chose to fling away a fortune,
he should not be pinched for means to carry on his studies as a painter.
The interest of his inheritance on his father’s death, should be paid
quarterly to him during his father’s lifetime: the annual independence
thus secured to the young artist, under any circumstances, being
calculated as amounting to a little over four hundred pounds a year.
Valentine was not deficient in gratitude. He took a day to consider
what he should do, though his mind was quite made up about his choice
beforehand; and then persisted in his first determination; throwing away
the present certainty of becoming a wealthy man, for the sake of the
future chance of turning out a great painter.
If he had really possessed genius, there would have been nothing very
remarkable in this part of his history, so far; but having nothing of
the kind, holding not the smallest spark of the great creative fire
in his whole mental composition, surely there was something very
discouraging to contemplate, in the spectacle of a man resolutely
determining, in spite of adverse home circumstances and strong home
temptation, to abandon all those paths in life, along which he might
have walked fairly abreast with his fellows, for the one path in which
he was predestinated by Nature to be always left behind by the way. Do
the announcing angels, whose mission it is to whisper of greatness
to great spirits, ever catch the infection of fallibility from their
intercourse with mortals? Do the voices which said truly to Shakespeare,
to Raphael, and to Mozart, in their youth-time,--You are chosen to
be gods in this world--ever speak wrongly to souls which they are
not ordained to approach? It may be so. There are men enough in all
countries whose lives would seem to prove it--whose deaths have not
contradicted it.
But even to victims such as these, there are pleasant resting-places on
the thorny way, and flashes of sunlight now and then, to make the
cloudy prospect beautiful, though only for a little while. It is not all
misfortune and disappointment to the man who is mentally unworthy of a
great intellectual vocation, so long as he is morally worthy of it; so
long as he can pursue it honestly, patiently, and affectionately, for
its own dear sake. Let him work, though ever so obscurely, in this
spirit towards his labor, and he shall find the labor itself its own
exceeding great reward. In that reward lives the divine consolation,
which, though Fame turn her back on him contemptuously, and Affluence
pass over unpitying to the other side of the way, shall still pour
oil upon all his wounds, and take him quietly and tenderly to the hard
journey’s end. To this one exhaustless solace, which the work, no matter
of what degree, can yield always to earnest workers, the man who has
succeeded, and the man who has failed, can turn alike, as to a common
mother--the one, for refuge from mean envy and slanderous hatred, from
all the sorest evils which even the thriving child of Fame is heir to;
the other, from neglect, from ridicule, from defeat, from all the petty
tyrannies which the pining bondman of Obscurity is fated to undergo.
Thus it was with Valentine. He had sacrificed a fortune to his Art;
and his Art--in the world’s eye at least--had given to him nothing
in return. Friends and relatives who had not scrupled, on being made
acquainted with his choice of a vocation, to call it in question,
and thereby to commit that worst and most universal of all human
impertinences, which consists of telling a man to his face, by the
plainest possible inference, that others are better able than he is
himself to judge what calling in life is fittest and worthiest for
him--friends and relatives who thus upbraided Valentine for his refusal
to accept the partnership in his uncle’s house, affected, on discovering
that he made no public progress whatever in Art, to believe that he was
simply an idle fellow, who knew that his father’s liberality placed him
beyond the necessity of working for his bread, and who had taken up the
pursuit of painting as a mere amateur amusement to occupy his leisure
hours. To a man who labored like poor Blyth, with the steadiest industry
and the highest aspirations, such whispered calumnies as these were of
all mortifications the most cruel, of all earthly insults the hardest to
bear.
Still he worked on patiently, never losing faith or hope, because
he never lost the love of his Art, or the enjoyment of pursuing it,
irrespective of results, however disheartening. Like most other men of
his slight intellectual caliber, the works he produced were various, if
nothing else. He tried the florid style, and the severe style; he was by
turns devotional, allegorical, historical, sentimental, humorous. At one
time, he abandoned figure-painting altogether, and took to landscape;
now producing conventional studies from Nature,--and now, again,
reveling in poetical compositions, which might have hung undetected in
many a collection as doubtful specimens of Berghem or Claude.
But whatever department of painting Valentine tried to excel in, the
same unhappy destiny seemed always in reserve for each completed effort.
For years and years his pictures pleaded hard for admission at the
Academy doors, and were invariably (and not unfairly, it must be
confessed) refused even the worst places on the walls of the Exhibition
rooms. Season after season he still bravely struggled on, never
depressed, never hopeless while he was before his easel, until at
last the day of reward--how long and painfully wrought for!--actually
arrived. A small picture of a very insignificant subject--being only a
kitchen “interior,” with a sleek cat on a dresser, stealing milk from
the tea-tray during the servant’s absence--was benevolently marked
“doubtful” by the Hanging Committee; was thereupon kept in reserve, in
case it might happen to fit any forgotten place near the floor--did fit
such a place--and was really hung up, as Mr. Blyth’s little unit of a
contribution to the one thousand and odd works exhibited to the public,
that year, by the Royal Academy.
But Valentine’s triumph did not end here. His picture of the treacherous
cat stealing the household milk--entitled, by way of appealing jocosely
to the strong Protestant interest, “The Jesuit in the Family,”--was
really sold to an Art-Union prize-holder for ten pounds. Once furnished
with a bank note won by his own brush, Valentine indulged in the most
extravagant anticipations of future celebrity and future wealth; and
proved, recklessly enough, that he believed as firmly as any other
visionary in the wildest dreams of his own imagination, by marrying, and
setting up an establishment, on the strength of the success which had
been achieved by “The Jesuit in the Family.”
He had been for some time past engaged to the lady who had now become
Mrs. Valentine Blyth. She was the youngest of eight sisters, who formed
part of the family of a poor engraver, and who, in the absence of any
mere money qualifications, were all rich alike in the ownership of most
magnificent Christian names. Mrs. Blyth was called Lavinia-Ada; and hers
was by far the humblest name to be found among the whole sisterhood.
Valentine’s relations all objected strongly to this match, not only
on account of the bride’s poverty, but for another and a very serious
reason, which events soon proved to be but too well founded.
Lavinia had suffered long and severely, as a child, from a bad spinal
malady. Constant attention, and such medical assistance as her father
could afford to employ, had, it was said, successfully combated the
disorder; and the girl grew up, prettier than any of her sisters, and
apparently almost as strong as the healthiest of them. Old Mr. Blyth,
however, on hearing that his son was now just as determined to become
a married man as he had formerly been to become a painter, thought it
advisable to make certain inquiries about the young lady’s constitution;
and addressed them, with characteristic caution, to the family doctor,
at a private interview.
The result of this conference was far from being satisfactory. The
doctor was suspiciously careful not to commit himself: he said that he
hoped the spine was no longer in danger of being affected; but that he
could not conscientiously express himself as feeling quite sure about
it. Having repeated these discouraging words to his son, old Mr. Blyth
delicately and considerately, but very plainly, asked Valentine whether,
after what he had heard, he still honestly thought that he would
be consulting his own happiness, or the lady’s happiness either, by
marrying her at all? or, at least, by marrying her at a time when the
doctor could not venture to say that the poor girl might not be even yet
in danger of becoming an invalid for life?
Valentine, as usual, persisted at first in looking exclusively at the
bright side of the question, and made light of the doctor’s authority
accordingly.
“Lavvie and I love each other dearly,” he said with a little trembling
in his voice, but with perfect firmness of manner. “I hope in God that
what you seem to fear will never happen; but even if it should, I shall
never repent having married her, for I know that I am just as ready to
be her nurse as to be her husband. I am willing to take her in sickness
and in health, as the Prayer-Book says. In my home she would have such
constant attention paid to her wants and comforts as she could not have
at her father’s, with his large family and his poverty, poor fellow! And
this is reason enough, I think, for my marrying her, even if the worst
should take place. But I always have hoped for the best, as you know,
father: and I mean to go on hoping for poor Lavvie, just the same as
ever!”
What could old Mr. Blyth, what could any man of heart and honor,
oppose to such an answer as this? Nothing. The marriage took place; and
Valentine’s father tried hard, and not altogether vainly, to feel as
sanguine about future results as Valentine himself.
For several months--how short the time seemed, when they looked back on
it in after-years!--the happiness of the painter and his wife more than
fulfilled the brightest hopes which they had formed as lovers. As for
the doctor’s cautious words, they were hardly remembered now; or, if
recalled, were recalled only to be laughed over. But the time of
bitter grief, which had been appointed, though they knew it not, came
inexorably, even while they were still lightly jesting at all medical
authority round the painter’s fireside. Lavinia caught a severe cold.
The cold turned to rheumatism, to fever, then to general debility, then
to nervous attacks--each one of these disorders, being really but so
many false appearances, under which the horrible spinal malady was
treacherously and slowly advancing in disguise.
When the first positive symptoms appeared, old Mr. Blyth acted with
all his accustomed generosity towards his son. “My purse is yours,
Valentine,” said he; “open it when you like; and let Lavinia, while
there is a chance for her, have the same advice and the same remedies as
if she was the greatest duchess in the land.” The old man’s affectionate
advice was affectionately followed. The most renowned doctors in England
prescribed for Lavinia; everything that science and incessant attention
could do, was done; but the terrible disease still baffled remedy after
remedy, advancing surely and irresistibly, until at last the doctors
themselves lost all hope. So far as human science could foretell events,
Mrs. Blyth, in the opinion of all her medical advisers, was doomed for
the rest of her life never to rise again from the bed on which she lay;
except, perhaps, to be sometimes moved to the sofa, or, in the event of
some favorable reaction, to be wheeled about occasionally in an invalid
chair.
What the shock of this intelligence was, both to husband and wife, no
one ever knew; they nobly kept it a secret even from each other. Mrs.
Blyth was the first to recover courage and calmness. She begged, as an
especial favor, that Valentine would seek consolation, where she knew he
must find it sooner or later, by going back to his studio, and resuming
his old familiar labors, which had been suspended from the time when her
illness had originally declared itself.
On the first day when, in obedience to her wishes, he sat before
his picture again--the half-finished picture from which he had been
separated for so many months--on that first day, when the friendly
occupation of his life seemed suddenly to have grown strange to him;
when his brush wandered idly among the colors, when his tears dropped
fast on the palette every time he looked down on it; when he tried
hard to work as usual, though only for half an hour, only on simple
background places in the composition; and still the brush made false
touches, and still the tints would not mingle as they should, and still
the same words, repeated over and over again, would burst from his lips:
“Oh, poor Lavvie! oh, poor, dear, dear Lavvie!”--even then, the spirit
of that beloved art, which he had always followed so humbly and so
faithfully, was true to its divine mission, and comforted and upheld him
at the last bitterest moment when he laid down his palette in despair.
While he was still hiding his face before the very picture which he and
his wife had once innocently and secretly glorified together, in those
happy days of its beginning that were never to come again, the sudden
thought of consolation shone out on his heart, and showed him how he
might adorn all his afterlife with the deathless beauty of a pure and
noble purpose. Thenceforth, his vague dreams of fame, and of rich men
wrangling with each other for the possession of his pictures, took
the second place in his mind; and, in their stead, sprang up the new
resolution that he would win independently, with his own brush, no
matter at what sacrifice of pride and ambition, the means of surrounding
his sick wife with all those luxuries and refinements which his own
little income did not enable him to obtain, and which he shrank with
instinctive delicacy from accepting as presents bestowed by his father’s
generosity. Here was the consoling purpose which robbed affliction of
half its bitterness already, and bound him and his art together by a
bond more sacred than any that had united them before. In the very hour
when this thought came to him, he rose without a pang to turn the great
historical composition, from which he had once hoped so much, with
its face to the wall, and set himself to finish an unpretending little
“Study” of a cottage courtyard, which he was certain of selling to a
picture-dealing friend. The first approach to happiness which he had
known for a long, long time past, was on the evening of that day, when
he went upstairs to sit with Lavinia; and, keeping secret his purpose
of the morning, made the sick woman smile in spite of her sufferings, by
asking her how she should like to have her room furnished, if she were
the lady of a great lord, instead of being only the wife of Valentine
Blyth.
Then came the happy day when the secret was revealed, and afterwards the
pleasant years when poor Mrs. Blyth’s most splendid visions of luxury
were all gradually realized through her husband’s exertions in his
profession. But for his wife’s influence, Valentine would have been in
danger of abandoning high Art and Classical Landscape altogether, for
cheap portrait-painting, cheap copying, and cheap studies of Still Life.
But Mrs. Blyth, bedridden as she was, contrived to preserve all her old
influence over the labors of the Studio, and would ask for nothing
new, and receive nothing new, in her room, except on condition that her
husband was to paint at least one picture of High Art every year, for
the sake (as she proudly said) of “asserting his intellect and his
reputation in the eyes of the public.” Accordingly, Mr. Blyth’s time
was pretty equally divided between the production of great unsaleable
“compositions,” which were always hung near the ceiling in the
Exhibition, and of small marketable commodities, which were as
invariably hung near the floor.
Valentine’s average earnings from his art, though humble enough in
amount, amply sufficed to fulfill the affectionate purpose for which,
to the last farthing, they were rigorously set aside. “Lavvie’s
Drawing-Room” (this was Mr. Blyth’s name for his wife’s bed-room) really
looked as bright and beautiful as any royal chamber in the universe. The
rarest flowers, the prettiest gardens under glass, bowls with gold and
silver fish in them, a small aviary of birds, an Aeolian harp to put on
the window-sill in summertime, some of Valentine’s best drawings from
the old masters, prettily-framed proof-impressions of engravings done
by Mrs. Blyth’s father, curtains and hangings of the tenderest color and
texture, inlaid tables, and delicately-carved book-cases, were among
the different objects of refinement and beauty which, in the course of
years, Mr. Blyth’s industry had enabled him to accumulate for his
wife’s pleasure. No one but himself ever knew what he had sacrificed in
laboring to gain these things. The heartless people whose portraits he
had painted, and whose impertinences he had patiently submitted to; the
mean bargainers who had treated him like a tradesman; the dastardly men
of business who had disgraced their order by taking advantage of his
simplicity--how hardly and cruelly such insect natures of this world had
often dealt with that noble heart! how despicably they had planted their
small gad-fly stings in the high soul which it was never permitted to
them to subdue!
No! not once to subdue, not once to tarnish! All petty humiliations were
forgotten in one look at “Lavvie’s Drawing-Room;” all stain of insolent
words vanished from Valentine’s memory in the atmosphere of the Studio.
Never was a more superficial judgment pronounced than when his friends
said that he had thrown away his whole life, because he had chosen a
vocation in which he could win no public success. The lad’s earliest
instincts had indeed led him truly, after all. The art to which he had
devoted himself was the only earthly pursuit that could harmonize as
perfectly with all the eccentricities as with all the graces of his
character, that could mingle happily with every joy, tenderly with every
grief; belonging to the quiet, simple, and innocent life, which,
employ him anyhow, it was in his original nature to lead. But for
this protecting art, under what prim disguises, amid what foggy social
climates of class conventionality, would the worlds clerical, legal,
mercantile, military, naval, or dandy, have extinguished this man, if
any one of them had caught him in its snares! Where would then have been
his frolicsome enthusiasm that nothing could dispirit; his inveterate
oddities of thought, speech, and action, which made all his friends
laugh at him and bless him in the same breath; his affections, so manly
in their firmness, so womanly in their tenderness, so childlike in their
frank, fearless confidence that dreaded neither ridicule on the one
side, nor deception on the other? Where, and how, would all these
characteristics have vanished, but for his art--but for the abiding
spirit, ever present to preserve their vital warmth against the outer
and earthly cold? The wisest of Valentine’s friends, who shook their
heads disparagingly whenever his name was mentioned, were at least wise
enough in _their_ generation never to ask themselves such embarrassing
questions as these.
Thus much for the history of the painter’s past life. We may now make
his acquaintance in the appropriate atmosphere of his own Studio.
CHAPTER II. MR. BLYTH IN HIS STUDIO.
It was wintry weather--not such a November winter’s day as some of us
may remember looking at fourteen years ago, in Baregrove Square, but a
brisk frosty morning in January. The country view visible from the back
windows of Mr. Blyth’s house, which stood on the extreme limit of the
new suburb, was thinly and brightly dressed out for the sun’s morning
levee, in its finest raiment of pure snow. The cold blue sky was
cloudless; every sound out of doors fell on the ear with a hearty and
jocund ring; all newly-lit fires burnt up brightly and willingly without
coaxing; and the robin-redbreasts hopped about expectantly on balconies
and windowsills, as if they only waited for an invitation to walk in
and warm themselves, along with their larger fellow creatures, round the
kindly hearth.
The Studio was a large and lofty room, lighted by a skylight, and
running along the side of the house throughout its whole depth. Its
walls were covered with plain brown paper, and its floor was only
carpeted in the middle. The most prominent pieces of furniture were two
large easels placed at either extremity of the room; each supporting a
picture of considerable size, covered over for the present with a
pair of sheets which looked woefully in want of washing. There was a
painting-stand with quantities of shallow little drawers, some too full
to open, others, again, too full to shut; there was a movable platform
to put sitters on, covered with red cloth much disguised in dust;
there was a small square table of new deal, and a large round table
of dilapidated rosewood, both laden with sketch-books, portfolios,
dog’s-eared sheets of drawing paper, tin pots, scattered brushes,
palette-knives, rags variously defiled by paint and oil, pencils,
chalks, port-crayons--the whole smelling powerfully at all points of
turpentine.
Finally, there were chairs in plenty, no one of which, however, at all
resembled the other. In one corner stood a moldy antique chair with a
high back, and a basin of dirty water on the seat. By the side of the
fireplace a cheap straw chair of the beehive pattern was tilted over
against a dining-room chair, with a horse-hair cushion. Before the
largest of the two pictures, and hard by a portable flight of steps,
stood a rickety office-stool. On the platform for sitters a modern easy
chair, with the cover in tatters, invited all models to picturesque
repose. Close to the rosewood table was placed a rocking-chair, and
between the legs of the deal table were huddled together a camp-stool
and a hassock. In short, every remarkable variety of the illustrious
family of Seats was represented in one corner or another of Mr. Blyth’s
painting-room.
All the surplus small articles which shelves, tables, and chairs were
unable to accommodate, reposed in comfortable confusion on the floor.
One half at least of a pack of cards seemed to be scattered about in
this way. A shirt-collar, three gloves, a boot, a shoe, and half a
slipper; a silk stocking, and a pair of worsted muffetees; three
old play-bills rolled into a ball; a pencil-case, a paper-knife, a
tooth-powder-box without a lid, and a superannuated black-beetle trap
turned bottom upwards, assisted in forming part of the heterogeneous
collection of rubbish strewed about the studio floor. And worse than
all--as tending to show that the painter absolutely enjoyed his own
disorderly habits--Mr. Blyth had jocosely desecrated his art, by making
it imitate litter where, in all conscience, there was real litter enough
already. Just in the way of anybody entering the room, he had painted,
on the bare floor, exact representations of a new quill pen and a very
expensive-looking sable brush, lying all ready to be trodden upon by
entering feet. Fresh visitors constantly attested the skillfulness of
these imitations by involuntarily stooping to pick up the illusive pen
and brush; Mr. Blyth always enjoying the discomfiture and astonishment
of every new victim, as thoroughly as if the practical joke had been a
perfectly new one on each successive occasion.
Such was the interior condition of the painting-room, after the owner
had inhabited it for a period of little more than two months!
The church-clock of the suburb has just struck ten, when quick, light
steps approach the studio door. A gentleman enters--trips gaily over the
imitative pen and brush--and, walking up to the fire, begins to warm his
back at it, looking about him rather absently, and whistling “Drops of
Brandy” in the minor key. This gentleman is Mr. Valentine Blyth.
He looks under forty, but is really a little over fifty. His face is
round and rosy, and not marked by a single wrinkle in any part of it.
He has large, sparkling black eyes; wears neither whiskers, beard, nor
mustache; keeps his thick curly black hair rather too closely cut; and
has a briskly-comical kindness of expression in his face, which it is
not easy to contemplate for the first time without smiling at him. He
is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally keeps
his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat. All his movements
are quick and fidgety. He appears to walk principally on his toes,
and seems always on the point of beginning to dance, or jump, or run
whenever he moves about, either in or out of doors. When he speaks he
has an odd habit of ducking his head suddenly, and looking at the person
whom he addresses over his shoulder. These, and other little personal
peculiarities of the same undignified nature, all contribute to make him
exactly that sort of person whom everybody shakes hands with, and nobody
bows to, on a first introduction. Men instinctively choose him to be the
recipient of a joke, girls to be the male confidant of all flirtations
which they like to talk about, children to be their petitioner for the
pardon of a fault, or the reward of a half-holiday. On the other hand,
he is decidedly unpopular among that large class of Englishmen, whose
only topics of conversation are public nuisances and political abuses;
for he resolutely looks at everything on the bright side, and has never
read a leading article or a parliamentary debate in his life. In brief,
men of business habits think him a fool, and intellectual women with
independent views cite him triumphantly as an excellent specimen of the
inferior male sex.
Still whistling, Mr. Blyth walks towards an earthen pipkin in one corner
of the studio, and takes from it a little china palette which he has
neglected to clean since he last used it. Looking round the room for
some waste paper, on which he can deposit the half-dried old paint that
has been scraped off with the palette knife, Mr. Blyth’s eyes happen
to light first on the deal table, and on four or five notes which lie
scattered over it.
These he thinks will suit his purpose as well as anything else, so he
takes up the notes, but before making use of them, reads their contents
over for the second time--partly by way of caution, partly though a
dawdling habit, which men of his absent disposition are always too ready
to contract. Three of these letters happen to be in the same scrambling,
blotted handwriting. They are none of them very long, and are the
production of a former acquaintance of the reader’s, who has somewhat
altered in height and personal appearance during the course of the last
fourteen years. Here is the first of the notes which Valentine is now
reading:--
“Dear Blyth,--My father says Theaters are the Devil’s Houses, and I
must be home by eleven o’clock. I’m sure I never did anything wrong at a
Theater, which I might not have done just the same anywhere else; unless
laughing over a good play is one of the _national sins_ he’s always
talking about. I can’t stand it much longer, even for my mother’s sake!
You are my only friend. I shall come and see you to-morrow, so mind and
be at home. How I wish I was an artist! Yours ever, Z. THORPE, JUN.”
Shaking his head and smiling at the same time, Mr. Blyth finishes this
letter--drops a perfect puddle of dirty paint and turpentine in the
middle, over the words “national sins,” throws the paper into the
fire--and goes on to note number two:
“Dear Blyth,--I couldn’t come yesterday, because of another quarrel at
home, and my mother crying about it, of course. My father smelt tobacco
smoke at morning prayers. It was my coat, which I forgot to air at the
fire the night before; and he found it out, and said he wouldn’t have
me smoke, because it led to dissipation--but I told him (which is true)
that lots of parsons smoked. I wish you visited at our house, and could
come and say a word on my side. Dear Blyth, I am perfectly wretched;
for I have had all my cigars taken from me; and I am, yours truly, Z.
THORPE, JUN.”
A third note is required before the palette can be scraped clean.
Mr. Blyth reads the contents rather gravely on this occasion; rapidly
plastering his last morsels of waste paint upon the paper as he goes on,
until at length it looks as if it had been well peppered with all the
colors of the rainbow.
Zack’s third letter of complaint certainly promised serious domestic
tribulation for the ruling power at Baregrove Square:--
“Dear Blyth,--I have given in--at least for the present. I told my
father about my wanting to be an artist, and about your saying that I
had a good notion of drawing, and an eye for a likeness; but I might
just as well have talked to one of your easels. He means to make a man
of business of me. And here I have been, for the last three weeks, at
a Tea Broker’s office in the city, in consequence. They all say it’s
a good opening for me, and talk about the respectability of commercial
pursuits. I don’t want to be respectable, and I hate commercial
pursuits. What is the good of forcing me into a merchant’s office, when
I can’t say my Multiplication table? Ask my mother about that: _she’ll_
tell you! Only fancy me going round tea warehouses in filthy Jewish
places like St. Mary-Axe, to take samples, with a blue bag to carry them
about in; and a dirty junior clerk, who cleans his pen in his hair, to
teach me how to fold up parcels! Isn’t it enough to make my blood boil
to think of it? I can’t go on, and I won’t go on in this way! Mind
you’re at home to-morrow; I’m coming to speak to you about how I’m to
begin learning to be an artist. The junior clerk is going to do all
my sampling work for me in the morning; and we are to meet in the
afternoon, after I have come away from you, at a chop-house; and then
go back to the office as if we had been together all day, just as usual.
Ever yours, Z. THORPE, JUN.--P. S. My mind’s made up: if the worst comes
to the worst, I shall leave home.”
“Oh, dear me! oh, dear! dear me!” says Valentine, mournfully rubbing his
palette clean with a bit of rag. “What will it all end in, I wonder. Old
Thorpe’s going just the way, with his obstinate severity, to drive Zack
to something desperate. Coming here to-morrow, he says?” continues Mr.
Blyth, approaching the smallest of the two pictures, placed on easels at
opposite extremities of the room. “Coming to-morrow! He never dates
his notes; but I suppose, as this one came last night, to-morrow means
to-day.”
Saying these words with eyes absently fixed on his picture, Valentine
withdraws the sheet stretched over the canvas, and discloses a Classical
Landscape of his own composition.
If Mr. Blyth had done nothing else in producing the picture which now
confronted him, he had at least achieved one great end of all Classic
Art, by reminding nobody of anything simple, familiar, or pleasing to
them in nature. In the foreground of his composition, were the three
lanky ruined columns, the dancing Bacchantes, the musing philosopher,
the mahogany-colored vegetation, and the bosky and branchless trees,
with which we have all been familiar, from our youth upwards, in
“classical compositions.” Down the middle of the scene ran that
wonderful river, which is always rippling with the same regular waves;
and always bearing onward the same capsizable galleys, with the same
vermilion and blue revelers striking lyres on the deck. On the bank
where there was most room for it, appeared our old, old friend, the
architectural City, which nobody could possibly live in; and which is
composed of nothing but temples, towers, monuments, flights of steps,
and bewildering rows of pillars. In the distance, our favorite blue
mountains were as blue and as peaky as ever, on Valentine’s canvas; and
our generally-approved pale yellow sun was still disfigured by the
same attack of aerial jaundice, from which he has suffered ever since
classical compositions first forbade him to take refuge from the sight
behind a friendly cloud.
After standing before his picture in affectionate contemplation of its
beauties for a minute or so, Valentine resumes the business of preparing
his palette.
As the bee comes and goes irregularly from flower to flower; as the
butterfly flutters in a zig-zag course from one sunny place on the
garden wall to another--or, as an old woman runs from wrong omnibus to
wrong omnibus, at the Elephant and Castle, before she can discover the
right one; as a countryman blunders up one street, and down another,
before he can find the way to his place of destination in London--so
does Mr. Blyth now come and go, flutter, run, and blunder in a mighty
hurry about his studio, in search of missing colors which ought to be in
his painting-box, but which are not to be found there. While he is still
hunting through the room, his legs come into collision with a large
drawing-board on which there is a blank sheet of paper stretched. This
board seems to remind Mr. Blyth of some duty connected with it. He
places it against two chairs, in a good light; then approaching a shelf
on which some plaster-casts are arranged, takes down from it a bust of
the Venus de Medici--which bust he next places on his old office
stool, opposite to the two chairs and the drawing-board. Just as these
preparations are completed, the door of the studio opens, and a very
important member of the painter’s household--who has not yet been
introduced to the reader, and who is in no way related either to
Valentine or his wife--enters the room.
This mysterious resident under Mr. Blyth’s roof is a Young Lady.
She is dressed in very pretty, simple, Quaker-like attire. Her gown is
of a light-gray color, covered by a neat little black apron in front,
and fastened round the throat over a frill collar. The sleeves of this
dress are worn tight to the arm, and are terminated at the wrists by
quaint-looking cuffs of antique lace, the only ornamental morsels of
costume which she has on. It is impossible to describe how deliciously
soft, bright, fresh, pure, and delicate, this young lady is, merely
as an object to look at, contrasted with the dingy disorder of the
studio-sphere through which she now moves. The keenest observers,
beholding her as she at present appears, would detect nothing in her
face or figure, her manner or her costume, in the slightest degree
suggestive of impenetrable mystery, or incurable misfortune. And yet,
she happens to be the only person in Mr. Blyth’s household at whom
prying glances are directed, whenever she walks out; whose very
existence is referred to by the painter’s neighbors with an invariable
accompaniment of shrugs, sighs, and lamenting looks; and whose “case” is
always compassionately designated as “a sad one,” whenever it is brought
forward, in the course of conversation, at dinner-tables and tea-tables
in the new suburb.
Socially, we may be all easily divided into two classes in this
world--at least in the civilized part of it. If we are not the people
whom others talk about, then we are sure to be the people who talk about
others. The young lady who had just entered Mr. Blyth’s painting-room,
belonged to the former order of human beings.
She seemed fated to be used as a constant subject of conversation by
her fellow-creatures. Even her face alone--simply as a face--could not
escape perpetual discussion; and that, too, among Valentine’s friends,
who all knew her well, and loved her dearly. It was the oddest thing in
the world, but no one of them could ever agree with another (except on
a certain point, to be presently mentioned) as to which of her personal
attractions ought to be first selected for approval, or quoted as
particularly asserting her claims to the admiration of all worshippers
of beauty.
To take three or four instances of this. There was Mr. Gimble, the civil
little picture-dealers and a very good friend in every way to Valentine:
there was Mr. Gimble, who declared that her principal charm was in her
complexion--her fair, clear, wonderful complexion--which he would defy
any artist alive to paint, let him try ever so hard, or be ever so great
a man. Then came the Dowager Countess of Brambledown, the frolicsome
old aristocrat, who was generally believed to be “a little cracked;”
who haunted Mr. Blyth’s studio, after having once given him an order to
paint her rare China tea-service, and her favorite muff, in one
group; and who differed entirely from the little picture-dealer.
“Fiddle-de-dee!” cried her ladyship, scornfully, on hearing Mr. Gimble’s
opinion quoted one day. “The man may know something about pictures, but
he is an idiot about women. Her complexions indeed! I could make as
good a complexion for myself (we old women are painters too, in our
way, Blyth). Don’t tell me about her complexion--it’s her eyes! her
incomparable blue eyes, which would have driven the young men of _my_
time mad--mad, I give you my word of honor! Not a gentleman, sir, in my
youthful days--and they _were_ gentlemen then--but would have been too
happy to run away with her for her eyes alone; and what’s more, to have
shot any man who said as much as ‘Stop him!’ Complexion, indeed,
Mr. Gimble? I’ll complexion you, next time I find my way into your
picture-gallery! Take a pinch of snuff, Blyth; and never repeat nonsense
in my hearing again.”
There was Mr. Bullivant, the enthusiastic young sculptor, with the mangy
flow of flaxen hair, and the plump, waxy face, who wrote poetry, and
showed, by various sonnets, that he again differed completely about the
young lady from the Dowager Countess of Brambledown and Mr. Gimble. This
gentleman sang fluently, on paper--using, by the way, a professional
epithet--about her “chiselled mouth”,
“Which breathed of rapture and the balmy South.”
He expatiated on
“Her sweet lips smiling at her dimpled chin,
Whose wealth of kisses gods might long to win--”
and much more to the same maudlin effect. In plain prose, the ardent
Bullivant was all for the lower part of the young lady’s face, and
actually worried her, and Mr. Blyth, and everybody in the house, until
he got leave to take a cast of it.
Lastly, there was Mrs. Blyth’s father; a meek old gentleman, with a
continual cold in the head; who lived on marvelously to the utmost verge
of human existence--as very poor men, with very large families, who
would be much better out of this world than in it, very often do.
There was this low-speaking, mildly-infirm, and perpetually-snuffling
engraver, who, on being asked to mention what he most admired in her,
answered that he thought it was her hair, “which was of such a nice
light brown color; or, perhaps, it might be the pleasant way in which
she carried her head, or, perhaps, her shoulders--or, perhaps, her head
_and_ shoulders, both together. Not that his opinion was good for much
in tasty matters of this kind, for which reason he begged to apologize
for expressing it at all.” In speaking thus of his opinion, the worthy
engraver surely depreciated himself most unjustly: for, if the father of
eight daughters cannot succeed in learning (philoprogenitively speaking)
to be a good judge of women, what man can?
However, there was one point on which Mr. Gimble, Lady Brambledown, Mr.
Bullivant, Mrs. Blyth’s father, and hosts of friends besides, were all
agreed, without one discordant exception.
They unanimously asserted that the young lady’s face was the nearest
living approach they had ever seen to that immortal “Madonna” face,
which has for ever associated the idea of beauty with the name of
RAPHAEL. The resemblance struck everybody alike, even those who were
but slightly conversant with pictures, the moment they saw her. Taken in
detail, her features might be easily found fault with. Her eyes might be
pronounced too large, her mouth too small, her nose not Grecian enough
for some people’s tastes. But the general effect of these features,
the shape of her head and face, and especially her habitual expression,
reminded all beholders at once, and irresistibly, of that image of
softness, purity, and feminine gentleness, which has been engraven on
all civilized memories by the “Madonnas” of Raphael.
It was in consequence of this extraordinary resemblance, that her own
English name of Mary had been, from the first, altered and Italianized
by Mr. and Mrs. Blyth, and by all intimate friends, into “Madonna.” One
or two extremely strict and extremely foolish people objected to any
such familiar application of this name, as being open, in certain
directions, to an imputation of irreverence. Mr. Blyth was not generally
very quick at an answer; but, on this occasion, he had three answers
ready before the objections were quite out of his friends’ mouths.
In the first place, he said that he and his friends used the name only
in an artist-sense, and only with reference to Raphael’s pictures.
In the next place, he produced an Italian dictionary, and showed that
“Madonna” had a second meaning in the language, signifying simply and
literally, “My lady.” And, in conclusion, he proved historically, that
“Madonna” had been used in the old times as a prefix to the names of
Italian women; quoting, for example, “Madonna Pia,” whom he happened to
remember just at that moment, from having once painted a picture from
one of the scenes of her terrible story. These statements silenced all
objections; and the young lady was accordingly much better known in the
painter’s house as “Madonna” than as “Mary.”
On now entering the studio, she walked up to Valentine, laid a hand
lightly on each of his shoulders, and so lifted herself to be kissed on
the forehead. Then she looked down on his palette, and observing
that some colors were still missing from it, began to search for them
directly in the painting-box. She found them in a moment, and appealed
to Mr. Blyth with an arch look of inquiry and triumph. He nodded,
smiled, and held out his palette for her to put the colors on it
herself. Having done this very neatly and delicately, she next looked
round the room, and at once observed the bust of Venus placed on the
office stool.
At the same time, Mr. Blyth, who saw the direction taken by her eyes,
handed to her a port-crayon with some black chalk, which he had been
carefully cutting to a point for the last minute or two. She took it
with a little mock curtsey, pouting her lip slightly, as if drawing
the Venus was work not much to her taste--smiled when she saw Valentine
shaking his head, and frowning comically at her--then went away at once
to the drawing-board, and sat down opposite Venus, in which position
she offered as decided a living contradiction as ever was seen to the
assertion of the classical idea of beauty, as expressed in the cast that
she was about to copy.
Mr. Blyth, on his side, set to work at last on the Landscape; painting
upon the dancing Bacchantes in the foreground of his picture, whose
scanty dresses stood sadly in need of a little brightening up. While
the painter and the young lady are thus industriously occupied with
the business of the studio, there is leisure to remark on one rather
perplexing characteristic of their intercourse, so far as it has yet
proceeded on this particular winter’s morning.
Ever since Madonna has been in the room, not one word has she spoken to
Valentine; and not one word has Valentine (who can talk glibly enough
to himself) spoken to her. He never said “Good morning,” when he kissed
her--or, “Thank you for finding my lost colors,”--or, “I have set the
Venus, my dear, for your drawing lesson to-day.” And she, woman as she
is, has actually not asked him a single question, since she entered the
studio! What can this absolute and remarkable silence mean between two
people who look as affectionately on each other as these two look, every
time their eyes meet!
Is this one of the Mysteries of the painter’s fireside?
Who is Madonna?
What is her real name besides Mary?
Is it Mary Blyth?
*****
Some years ago, an extraordinary adventure happened to Valentine in the
circus of an itinerant Equestrian Company. In that adventure, and in the
strange results attending it, the clue lies hidden, which leads to the
Mystery of the painter’s fireside, and reveals the story of this book.
CHAPTER III. MADONNA’S CHILDHOOD.
In the autumn of 1838, Mrs. Blyth’s malady had for some time past
assumed the permanent form from which it seldom afterwards varied. She
now suffered little actual pain, except when she quitted a recumbent
posture. But the general disorganization produced by almost exclusive
confinement to one position, had, even at this early period, begun
to work sad changes in her personal appearance. She suffered that
mortifying misfortune just as bravely and resignedly as she had suffered
the first great calamity of her incurable disorder. Valentine never
showed that he thought her altered; Valentine’s kindness was just as
affectionate and as constant as it had ever been in the happier days of
their marriage. So encouraged, Lavinia had the heart to bear all burdens
patiently; and could find sources of happiness for herself, where others
could discover nothing but causes for grief.
The room she inhabited was already, through Valentine’s self-denying
industry, better furnished than any other room in the house; but was far
from presenting the same appearance of luxury and completeness to which
it attained in the course of after-years.
The charming maple-wood and ivory bookcase, with the prettily-bound
volumes ranged in such bright regularity along its shelves, was there
certainly, as early as the autumn of 1838. It would not, however, at
that time have formed part of the furniture of Mrs. Blyth’s room, if
her husband had not provided himself with the means of paying for it,
by accepting a certain professional invitation to the country, which
he knew before, and would enable him to face the terrors of the
upholsterer’s bill.
The invitation in question had been sent to him by a clerical
friend, the Reverend Doctor Joyce, Rector of St. Judy’s, in the large
agricultural town of Rubbleford. Valentine had produced a water-color
drawing of one of the Doctor’s babies, when the family at the Rectory
were in London for a season, and this drawing had been shown to all the
neighbors by the worthy clergyman on his return. Now, although Mr. Blyth
was not over-successful in the adult department of portrait-art, he was
invariably victorious in the infant department. He painted all babies
on one ingenious plan; giving them the roundest eyes, the chubbiest
red cheeks, the most serenely good-humored smiles, and the neatest
and whitest caps ever seen on paper. If fathers and their male friends
rarely appreciated the fidelity of his likenesses, mothers and nurses
invariably made amends for their want of taste. It followed, therefore,
almost as a matter of course, that the local exhibition of the Doctor’s
drawing must bring offers of long-clothes-portrait employment to
Valentine. Three resident families decided immediately to have portraits
of their babies, if the painter would only travel to their houses to
take the likenesses. A bachelor sporting squire in the neighborhood also
volunteered a commission of another sort. This gentleman arrived (by
a logical process which it is hopeless to think of tracing) at the
conclusion, that a man who was great at babies, must necessarily be
marvelous at horses; and determined, in consequence, that Valentine
should paint his celebrated cover-hack. In writing to inform his friend
of these offers, Doctor Joyce added another professional order on his
own account, by way of appropriate conclusion to his letter. Here, then,
were five commissions, which would produce enough--cheaply as Valentine
worked--to pay, not only for the new bookcase, but for the books to put
in it when it came home.
Having left his wife in charge of two of her sisters, who were forbidden
to leave the house till his return, Mr. Blyth started for the rectory;
and once there, set to work on the babies with a zeal and good-humor
which straightway won the hearts of mothers and nurses, and made him a
great Rubbleford reputation in the course of a few days. Having done the
babies to admiration, he next undertook the bachelor squire’s hack. Here
he had some trouble. The sporting gentleman would look over him while he
painted; would bewilder him with the pedigree of the horse; would have
the animal done in the most unpicturesque view; and sternly forbade
all introduction of “tone,” “light and shade,” or purely artistic
embellishment of any kind, in any part of the canvas. In short, the
squire wanted a sign-board instead of a picture, and he at last got what
he wanted to his heart’s content.
One evening, while Valentine--still deeply immersed in the difficulties
of depicting the cover-hack--was returning to the Rectory, after a day’s
work at the Squire’s house, his attention was suddenly attracted in the
high street of Rubbleford, by a flaming placard pasted up on a dead wall
opposite the market-house.
He immediately joined the crowd of rustics congregated round the
many-colored and magnificent sheet of paper, and read at the top of
it, in huge blue letters:--“JUBBER’S CIRCUS. THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE
WORLD.” After this came some small print, which nobody lost any time
in noticing. But below the small print appeared a perfect galaxy of
fancifully shaped scarlet letters, which fascinated all eyes, and
informed the public that the equestrian company included “MISS FLORINDA
BEVERLEY, known,” (here the letters turned suddenly green) “wherever
the English language was known, as The Amazonian Empress of Equitation.”
This announcement was followed by the names of inferior members of the
Company; by a program of the evening’s entertainments; by testimonials
extracted from the provincial press; by illustrations of gentlemen with
lusty calves and spangled drawers, and of ladies with smiling faces,
shameless petticoats, and pirouetting legs. These illustrations, and
the particulars which preceded them were carefully digested by all Mr.
Blyth’s neighbors; but Mr. Blyth himself passed them over unnoticed.
His eye had been caught by something at the bottom of the placard, which
instantly absorbed his whole attention.
In this place the red letters appeared again, and formed the following
words and marks of admiration:--
THE MYSTERIOUS FOUNDLING!
AGED TEN YEARS!!
TOTALLY DEAF AND DUMB!!!
Underneath came an explanation of what the red letters referred to,
occupying no less than three paragraphs of stumpy small print, every
word of which Valentine eagerly devoured. This is what he read:--
“Mr. Jubber, as proprietor of the renowned Circus, has the honor of
informing the nobility, gentry, and public, that the above wonderful
Deaf and Dumb Female Child will appear between the first and second
parts of the evening’s performances. Mr. J. has taken the liberty
of entitling this Marvel of Nature, The Mysterious Foundling; no one
knowing who her father is, and her mother having died soon after her
birth, leaving her in charge of the Equestrian Company, who have been
fond parents and careful guardians to her ever since.
“She was originally celebrated in the annals of Jubber’s Circus, or
Eighth Wonder of the World, as The Hurricane Child of the Desert; having
appeared in that character, whirled aloft at the age of seven years in
the hand of Muley Ben Hassan, the renowned Scourer of Sahara, in his
daring act of Equitation, as exhibited to the terror of all England,
in Jubber’s Circus. At that time she had her hearing and speech quite
perfect. But Mr. J. deeply regrets to state that a terrific accident
happened to her soon afterwards. Through no fault on the part of
The Scourer (who, overcome by his feelings at the result of the
above-mentioned frightful accident, has gone back to his native wilds a
moody and broken-hearted man), she slipped from his hand while the three
horses bestrode by the fiery but humane Arab were going at a gallop, and
fell, shocking to relate, outside the Ring, on the boarded floor of the
Circus. She was supposed to be dead. Mr. Jubber instantly secured the
inestimable assistance of the Faculty, who found that she was still
alive, and set her arm, which had been broken. It was only afterwards
discovered that she had utterly lost her sense of hearing. To use the
emphatic language of the medical gentlemen (who all spoke with tears in
their eyes), she had been struck stone deaf by the shock. Under these
melancholy circumstances, it was found that the faculty of speech
soon failed her altogether; and she is now therefore Totally Deaf AND
Dumb--but Mr. J. rejoices to say, quite cheerful and in good health
notwithstanding.
“Mr. Jubber being himself the father of a family, ventures to think that
these little particulars may prove of some interest to an Intelligent,
a Sympathetic, and a Benevolent Public. He will simply allude, in
conclusion, to the performances of the Mysterious Foundling, as
exhibiting perfection hitherto unparalleled in the Art of Legerdemain,
with wonders of untraceable intricacy on the cards, originally the
result of abstruse calculations made by that renowned Algebraist,
Mohammed Engedi, extending over a period of ten years, dating from the
year 1215 of the Arab Chronology. More than this Mr. Jubber will not
venture to mention, for ‘Seeing is Believing,’ and the Mysterious
Foundling must be seen to be believed. For prices of admission consult
bottom of bill.”
Mr. Blyth read this grotesquely shocking narrative with sentiments which
were anything rather than complimentary to the taste, the delicacy, and
the humanity of the fluent Mr. Jubber. He consulted the bottom of the
bill, however, as requested; and ascertained what were the prices
of admission--then glanced at the top, and observed that the first
performance was fixed for that very evening--looked about him absently
for a minute or two--and resolved to be present at it.
Most assuredly, Valentine’s resolution did not proceed from that dastard
insensibility to all decent respect for human suffering which could
feast itself on the spectacle of calamity paraded for hire, in the
person of a deaf and dumb child of ten years old. His motives for going
to the circus were stained by no trace of such degradation as this. But
what were they then? That question he himself could not have answered:
it was a common predicament with him not to know his own motives,
generally from not inquiring into them. There are men who run
breathlessly--men who walk cautiously--and men who saunter easily
through the journey of life. Valentine belonged to the latter class;
and, like the rest of his order, often strayed down a new turning,
without being able to realize at the time what purpose it was which
first took him that way. Our destinies shape the future for us out
of strange materials: a traveling circus sufficed them, in the first
instance, to shape a new future for Mr. Blyth.
He first went on to the Rectory to tell them where he was going, and to
get a cup of tea, and then hurried off to the circus, in a field outside
the town.
The performance had begun some time when he got in. The Amazonian
Empress (known otherwise as Miss Florinda Beverley) was dancing
voluptuously on the back of a cantering piebald horse with a Roman nose.
Round and round careered the Empress, beating time on the saddle with
her imperial legs to the tune of “Let the Toast be Dear Woman,” played
with intense feeling by the band. Suddenly the melody changed to “See
the Conquering Hero Comes;” the piebald horse increased his speed; the
Empress raised a flag in one hand, and a javelin in the other, and began
slaying invisible enemies in the empty air, at full (circus) gallop. The
result on the audience was prodigious; Mr. Blyth alone sat unmoved. Miss
Florinda Beverley was not even a good model to draw legs from, in the
estimation of this anti-Amazonian painter!
When the Empress was succeeded by a Spanish Guerilla, who robbed,
murdered, danced, caroused, and made love on the back of a cream-colored
horse--and when the Guerilla was followed by a clown who performed
superhuman contortions, and made jokes by the yard, without the
slightest appearance of intellectual effort--still Mr. Blyth exhibited
no demonstration of astonishment or pleasure. It was only when a bell
rang between the first and second parts of the performance, and the band
struck up “Gentle Zitella,” that he showed any symptoms of animation.
Then he suddenly rose; and, moving down to a bench close against the
low partition which separated the ring from the audience, fixed his eyes
intently on a doorway opposite to him, overhung by a frowzy red curtain
with a tinsel border.
From this doorway there now appeared Mr. Jubber himself, clothed in
white trousers with a gold stripe, and a green jacket with military
epaulettes. He had big, bold eyes, a dyed mustache, great fat, flabby
cheeks, long hair parted in the middle, a turn-down collar with a
rose-colored handkerchief; and was, in every respect, the most atrocious
looking stage vagabond that ever painted a blackguard face. He led with
him, holding her hand, the little deaf and dumb girl, whose misfortune
he had advertised to the whole population of Rubbleford.
The face and manner of the child, as she walked into the center of the
circus, and made her innocent curtsey and kissed her hand, went to the
hearts of the whole audience in an instant. They greeted her with such
a burst of applause as might have frightened a grown actress. But not a
note from those cheering voices, not a breath of sound from those loudly
clapping hands could reach her; she could see that they were welcoming
her kindly, and that was all!
When the applause had subsided, Mr. Jubber asked for the loan of a
handkerchief from one of the ladies present, and ostentatiously bandaged
the child’s eyes. He then lifted her upon the broad low wall which
encircled the ring, and walked her round a little way (beginning from
the door through which he had entered), inviting the spectators to test
her total deafness by clapping their hands, shouting, or making any
loud noise they pleased close at her ear. “You might fire off a cannon,
ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Jubber, “and it wouldn’t make her start
till after she’d smelt the smoke!”
To the credit of the Rubbleford audience, the majority of them declined
making any practical experiments to test the poor child’s utter
deafness. The women set the example of forbearance, by entreating that
the handkerchief might be taken off so that they might see her pretty
eyes again. This was done at once, and she began to perform her
conjuring tricks with Mr. Jubber and one of the ring-keepers on either
side of her, officiating as assistants. These tricks, in themselves,
were of the simplest and commonest kind; and derived all their
attraction from the child’s innocently earnest manner of exhibiting
them, and from the novelty to the audience of communicating with her
only by writing on a slate. They never tired of scrawling questions, of
saying “poor little thing!” and of kissing her whenever they could get
the opportunity, while she slowly went round the circus. “Deaf and dumb!
ah, dear, dear, deaf and dumb!” was the general murmur of sympathy which
greeted her from each new group, as she advanced; Mr. Jubber invariably
adding with a smile: “And as you see, ladies and gentlemen, in excellent
health and spirits, notwithstanding: as hearty and happy, I pledge you
my sacred word of honor, as the very best of us!”
While she was thus delighting the spectators on one side of the circus,
how were the spectators on the other side, whose places she had not yet
reached, contriving to amuse themselves?
From the moment of the little girl’s first appearance, ample recreation
had been unconsciously provided for them by a tall, stout, and florid
stranger, who appeared suddenly to lose his senses the moment he set
eyes on the deaf and dumb child. This gentleman jumped up and sat down
again excitably a dozen times in a minute; constantly apologizing on
being called to order, and constantly repeating the offense the moment
afterwards. Mad and mysterious words, never heard before in Rubbleford,
poured from his lips. “Devotional beauty,” “Fra Angelico’s angels,”
“Giotto and the cherubs,” “Enough to bring the divine Raphael down from
heaven to paint her.” Such were a few fragments of the mad gentleman’s
incoherent mutterings, as they reached his neighbors’ ears. The
amusement they yielded was soon wrought to its climax by a joke from an
attorney’s clerk, who suggested that this queer man, with the rosy face,
must certainly be the long-lost father of the “Mysterious Foundling!”
Great gratification was consequently anticipated from what might
take place when the child arrived opposite the bench occupied by the
excitable stranger.
Slowly, slowly, the little light figure went round upon the broad
partition wall of the ring, until it came near, very near, to the place
where Valentine was sitting.
Ah, woeful sight! so lovely, yet so piteous to look on! Shall she never
hear kindly human voices, the song of birds, the pleasant murmur of
the trees again? Are all the sweet sounds that sing of happiness to
childhood, silent for ever to _her?_ From those fresh, rosy lips shall
no glad words pour forth, when she runs and plays in the sunshine? Shall
the clear, laughing tones be hushed always? the young, tender life be
for ever a speechless thing, shut up in dumbness from the free world of
voices? Oh! Angel of judgment! hast thou snatched her hearing and her
speech from this little child, to abandon her in helpless affliction to
such profanation as she now undergoes? Oh, Spirit of mercy! how long thy
white-winged feet have tarried on their way to this innocent sufferer,
to this lost lamb that cannot cry to the fold for help! Lead, ah, lead
her tenderly to such shelter as she has never yet found for herself!
Guide her, pure as she is now, from this tainted place to pleasant
pastures, where the sunshine of human kindness shall be clouded no more,
and Love and Pity shall temper every wind that blows over her with the
gentleness of perpetual spring!
Slowly, slowly, the light figure went round the great circle of gazers,
ministering obediently to their pleasure, waiting patiently till their
curiosity was satisfied. And now, her weary pilgrimage was well nigh
over for the night. She had arrived at the last group of spectators who
had yet to see what she looked like close, and what tricks she could
exhibit with her cards.
She stopped exactly opposite to Valentine; and when she looked up, she
looked on him alone.
Was there something in the eager sympathy of his eyes as they met hers,
which spoke to the little lonely heart in the sole language that could
ever reach it? Did the child, with the quick instinct of the deaf and
dumb, read his compassionate disposition, his pity and longing to help
her, in his expression at that moment? It might have been so. Her pretty
lips smiled on him as they had smiled on no one else that night; and
when she held out some cards to be chosen from, she left unnoticed
the eager hands extended on either side of her, and presented them to
Valentine only.
He saw the small fingers trembling as they held the cards; he saw the
delicate little shoulders and the poor frail neck and chest bedizened
with tawdry mock jewelry and spangles; he saw the innocent young face,
whose pure beauty no soil of stage paint could disfigure, with the smile
still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the sad
blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense that was left, mourned always for the
hearing and speaking senses that were gone--he marked all these things
in an instant, and felt that his heart was sinking as he looked. A
dimness stole over his sight; a suffocating sensation oppressed his
breathing; the lights in the circus danced and mingled together; he
bent down over the child’s hand, and took it in his own; twice kissed it
fervently; then, to the utter amazement of the laughing crowd about him,
rose up suddenly, and forced his way out as if he had been flying for
his life.
There was a momentary confusion among the audience. But Mr. Jubber was
too old an adept in stage-business of all kinds not to know how to stop
the growing tumult directly, and turn it into universal applause.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, with a deep theatrical quiver in his
voice--“I implore you to be seated, and to excuse the conduct of the
party who has just absented himself. The talent of the Mysterious
Foundling has overcome people in that way in every town of England. Do I
err in believing that a Rubbleford audience can make kind allowances for
their weaker fellow-creatures? Thanks, a thousand thanks in the name of
this darling and talented child, for your cordial, your generous, your
affectionate, your inestimable reception of her exertions to-night!”
With this peroration Mr. Jubber took his pupil out of the ring, amid the
most vehement cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. He was
too much excited by his triumph to notice that the child, as she walked
after him, looked wistfully to the last in the direction by which
Valentine had gone out.
“The public like excitement,” soliloquized Mr. Jubber, as he disappeared
behind the red curtain. “I must have all this in the bills to-morrow.
It’s safe to draw at least thirty shillings extra into the house at
night.”
In the meantime, Valentine, after some blundering at wrong doors, at
last found his way out of the circus, and stood alone on the cool grass,
in the cloudless autumn moonlight. He struck his stick violently on the
ground, which at that moment represented to him the head of Mr. Jubber;
and was about to return straight to the rectory, when he heard a
breathless voice behind him, calling:--“Stop, sir! oh, do please stop
for one minute!”
He turned round. A buxom woman in a tawdry and tattered gown was running
towards him as fast as her natural impediments to quick progression
would permit.
“Please, sir,” she cried--“Please, sir, wasn’t you the gentleman that
was taken queer at seeing our little Foundling? I was peeping through
the red curtain, sir, just at the time.”
Instead of answering the question, Valentine instantly began to
rhapsodize about the child’s face.
“Oh, sir! if you know anything about her,” interposed the woman, “for
God’s sake don’t scruple to tell it to me! I’m only Mrs. Peckover,
sir, the wife of Jemmy Peckover, the clown, that you saw in the circus
to-night. But I took and nursed the little thing by her poor mother’s
own wish; and ever since that time--”
“My dear, good soul,” said Mr. Blyth, “I know nothing of the poor
little creature. I only wish from the bottom of my heart that I could do
something to help her and make her happy. If Lavvie and I had had such
an angel of a child as that,” continued Valentine, clasping his hands
together fervently, “deaf and dumb as she is, we should have thanked God
for her every day of our lives!”
Mrs. Peckover was apparently not much used to hear such sentiments as
these from strangers. She stared up at Mr. Blyth with two big tears
rolling over her plump cheeks.
“Mrs. Peckover! Hullo there, Peck! where are you?” roared a stern voice
from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown’s wife
seemed about to speak again.
Mrs. Peckover started, curtsied, and, without uttering another word,
went back even faster than she had come out. Valentine looked after her
intently, but made no attempt to follow: he was thinking too much of
the child to think of that. When he moved again, it was to return to the
rectory.
He penetrated at once into the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling
over the “Rubbleford Mercury,” while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him,
knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside
the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the
subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love
with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a
gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male
human beings, in all three capacities, he was enslaved by that little
innocent, sad face. He made the Doctor’s head whirl again; he fairly
stopped Mrs. Joyce’s progress with the fancy jacket, as he sang the
child’s praises, and compared her face to every angel’s face that had
ever been painted, from the days of Giotto to the present time. At last,
when he had fairly exhausted his hearers and himself, he dashed abruptly
out of the room, to cool down his excitement by a moonlight walk in the
rectory garden.
“What a very odd man he is!” said Mrs. Joyce, taking up a dropped stitch
in the fancy jacket.
“Valentine, my love, is the best creature in the world,” rejoined the
doctor, folding up the Rubbleford Mercury, and directing it for the
post; “but, as I often used to tell his poor father (who never would
believe me), a little cracked. I’ve known him go on in this way about
children before--though I must own, not quite so wildly, perhaps, as he
talked just now.”
“Do you think he’ll do anything imprudent about the child? Poor thing!
I’m sure I pity her as heartily as anybody can.”
“I don’t presume to think,” answered the doctor, calmly pressing the
blotting-paper over the address he had just written. “Valentine is one
of those people who defy all conjecture. No one can say what he will do,
or what he won’t. A man who cannot resist an application for shelter and
supper from any stray cur who wags his tail at him in the street; a man
who blindly believes in the troubles of begging-letter impostors; a man
whom I myself caught, last time he was down here, playing at marbles
with three of my charity-boys in the street, and promising to treat them
to hardbake and gingerbeer afterwards, is--in short, is not a man whose
actions it is possible to speculate on.”
Here the door opened, and Mr. Blyth’s head was popped in, surmounted
by a ragged straw hat with a sky-blue ribbon round it. “Doctor,”
said Valentine, “may I ask an excellent woman, with whom I have made
acquaintance, to bring the child here to-morrow morning for you and Mrs.
Joyce to see?”
“Certainly,” said the good-humored rector, laughing. “The child by all
means, and the excellent woman too.”
“Not if it’s Miss Florinda Beverley!” interposed Mrs. Joyce (who had
read the Circus placard). “Florinda, indeed! Jezebel would be a better
name for her!”
“My dear Madam, it isn’t Florinda,” cried Valentine, eagerly. “I quite
agree with you; her name ought to be Jezebel. And, what’s worse, her
legs are out of drawing.”
“Mr. Blyth!!!” exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, indignant at this professional
criticism on Jezebel’s legs.
“Why don’t you tell us at once who the excellent woman is?” cried the
doctor, secretly tickled by the allusion which had shocked his wife.
“Her name’s Peckover,” said Valentine; “she’s a respectable married
woman; she doesn’t ride in the circus at all; and she nursed the poor
child by her mother’s own wish.”
“We shall be delighted to see her to-morrow,” said the warm-hearted
rector--“or, no--stop! Not to-morrow; I shall be out. The day after.
Cake and cowslip wine for the deaf and dumb child at twelve o’clock--eh,
my dear?”
“That’s right! God bless you! you’re always kindness itself,” cried
Valentine; “I’ll find out Mrs. Peckover, and let her know. Not a wink
of sleep for me to-night--never mind!” Here Valentine suddenly shut the
door, then as suddenly opened it again, and added, “I mean to finish
that infernal horse-picture to-morrow, and go to the circus again in
the evening.” With these words he vanished; and they heard him soon
afterwards whistling his favorite “Drops of Brandy,” in the rectory
garden.
“Cracked! cracked!” cried the doctor. “Dear old Valentine!”
“I’m afraid his principles are very loose,” said Mrs. Joyce, whose
thoughts still ran on the unlucky professional allusion to Jezebel’s
legs.
The next morning, when Mr. Blyth presented himself at the stables, and
went on with the portrait of the cover-hack, the squire had no longer
the slightest reason to complain of the painter’s desire to combine
in his work picturesqueness of effect with accuracy of resemblance.
Valentine argued no longer about introducing “light and shade,” or
“keeping the background subdued in tone.” His thoughts were all with the
deaf and dumb child and Mrs. Peckover; and he smudged away recklessly,
just as he was told, without once uttering so much as a word of protest.
By the evening he had concluded his labor. The squire said it was one of
the best portraits of a horse that had ever been taken: to which piece
of criticism the writer of the present narrative is bound in common
candor to add, that it was also the very worst picture that Mr. Blyth
had ever painted.
On returning to Rubbleford, Valentine proceeded at once to the circus;
placing himself, as nearly as he could, in the same position which he
had occupied the night before.
The child was again applauded by the whole audience, and again went
through her performance intelligently and gracefully, until she
approached the place where Valentine was standing. She started as she
recognized his face, and made a step forward to get nearer to him; but
was stopped by Mr. Jubber, who saw that the people immediately in front
of her were holding out their hands to write on her slate, and have her
cards dealt round to them in their turn. The child’s attention appeared
to be distracted by seeing the stranger again who had kissed her hand so
fervently--she began to look confused--and ended by committing an open
and most palpable blunder in the very first trick that she performed.
The spectators good-naturedly laughed, and some of them wrote on her
slate, “Try again, little girl.” Mr. Jubber made an apology, saying that
the extreme enthusiasm of the reception accorded to his pupil had shaken
her nerves; and then signed to her, with a benevolent smile, but with
a very sinister expression in his eyes, to try another trick. She
succeeded in this; but still showed so much hesitation, that Mr. Jubber,
fearing another failure, took her away with him while there was a chance
of making a creditable exit.
As she was led across the ring, the child looked intently at Valentine.
There was terror in her eyes--terror palpable enough to be remarked
by some of the careless people near Mr. Blyth. “Poor little thing! she
seems frightened at the man in the fine green jacket,” said one. “And
not without cause, I dare say,” added another. “You don’t mean that
he could ever be brute enough to ill use a child like that?--it’s
impossible!” cried a third.
At this moment the clown entered the ring. The instant before he shouted
the well-known “Here we are!” Valentine thought he heard a strange cry
behind the red curtain. He was not certain about it, but the mere doubt
made his blood run chill. He listened for a minute anxiously. There was
no chance now, however, for testing the correctness of his suspicion.
The band had struck up a noisy jig tune, and the clown was capering and
tumbling wonderfully, amid roars of laughter.
“This may be my fault,” thought Valentine. _“This!_ What?” He was afraid
to pursue that inquiry. His ruddy face suddenly turned pale; and he left
the circus, determined to find out what was really going on behind the
red curtain.
He walked round the outside of the building, wasting some time before he
found a door to apply at for admission. At last he came to a sort of
a passage, with some tattered horse-cloths hanging over its outer
entrance.
“You can’t come in here,” said a shabby lad, suddenly appearing from the
inside in his shirt sleeves.
Mr. Blyth took out half-a-crown. “I want to see the deaf and dumb child
directly!”
“Oh, all right! go in,” muttered the lad, pocketing the money greedily.
Valentine hastily entered the passage. As soon as he was inside, a sound
reached his ears at which his heart sickened and turned faint. No words
can describe it in all the horror of its helplessness--it was the moan
of pain from a dumb human creature.
He thrust aside a curtain, and stood in a filthy place, partitioned off
from the stables on one side, and the circus on the other, with canvas
and old boards. There, on a wooden stool, sat the woman who had accosted
him the night before, crying, and soothing the child, who lay shuddering
on her bosom. The sobs of the clown’s wife mingled with the inarticulate
wailing, so low, yet so awful to hear; and both sounds were audible with
a fearful, unnatural distinctness, through the merry melody of the jig,
and the peals of hearty laughter from the audience in the circus.
“Oh, my God!” cried Valentine, horror-struck at what he heard, “stop
her! don’t let her moan in that way!”
The woman started from her seat, and put the child down, then recognized
Mr. Blyth and rushed up to him.
“Hush!” she whispered eagerly, “don’t call out like that! The villain,
the brutal, heartless villain is somewhere about the stables. If he
hears you, he’ll come in and beat her again.--Oh, hush! hush, for God’s
sake! It’s true he beat her--the cowardly, hellish brute!--only for
making that one little mistake with the cards. No! no! no! don’t speak
out so loud, or you’ll ruin us. How did you ever get in here?--Oh!
you must be quiet! There, sit down--Hark! I’m sure he’s coming! Oh! go
away--go away!”
She tried to pull Valentine out of the chair into which she had thrust
him but the instant before. He seized tight hold of her hand and refused
to move. If Mr. Jubber had come in at that moment, he would have been
thrashed within an inch of his life.
The child had ceased moaning when she saw Valentine. She anxiously
looked at him through her tears--then turned away quickly--took out her
little handkerchief--and began to dry her eyes.
“I can’t go yet--I’ll promise only to whisper--you must listen to me,”
said Mr. Blyth, pale and panting for breath; “I mean to prevent this
from happening again--don’t speak!--I’ll take that injured, beautiful,
patient little angel away from this villainous place: I will, if I go
before a magistrate!”
The woman stopped him by pointing suddenly to the child.
She had put back the handkerchief, and was approaching him. She came
close and laid one hand on his knee, and timidly raised the other as
high as she could towards his neck. Standing so, she looked up quietly
into his face. The pretty lips tried hard to smile once more; but they
only trembled for an instant, and then closed again. The clear, soft
eyes, still dim with tears, sought his with an innocent gaze of inquiry
and wonder. At that moment, the expression of the sad and lovely little
face seemed to say--“You look as if you wanted to be kind to me; I wish
you could find out some way of telling me of it.”
Valentine’s heart told him what was the only way. He caught her up in
his arms, and half smothered her with kisses. The frail, childish hands
rose trembling, and clasped themselves gently round his neck; and
the fair head drooped lower and lower, wearily, until it lay on his
shoulder.
The clown’s wife turned away her face, desperately stifling with
both hands the sobs that were beginning to burst from her afresh. She
whispered, “Oh, go, sir,--pray go! Some of the riders will be in here
directly; you’ll get us into dreadful trouble!”
Valentine rose, still holding the child in his arms. “I’ll go if you
promise me--”
“I’ll promise you anything, sir!”
“You know the rectory! Doctor Joyce’s--the clergyman--my kind friend--”
“Yes, sir; I know it. Do please, for little Mary’s sake be quick as you
can!”
“Mary! Her name’s Mary!” Valentine drew back into a corner, and began
kissing the child again.
“You must be out of your senses to keep on in that way after what I’ve
told you!” cried the clown’s wife, wringing her hands in despair, and
trying to drag him out of the corner. “Jubber will be in here in another
minute. She’ll be beaten again, if you’re caught with her; oh Lord! oh
Lord! will nothing make you understand that?”
He understood it only too well, and put the child down instantly, his
face turning pale again; his agitation becoming so violent that he never
noticed the hand which she held out towards him, or the appealing look
that said so plainly and pathetically: “I want to bid you good-bye; but
I can’t say it as other children can.” He never observed this; for he
had taken Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and had drawn her away hurriedly
after him into the passage.
The child made no attempt to follow them: she turned aside, and, sitting
down in the darkest corner of the miserable place, rested her head
against the rough partition which was all that divided her from the
laughing audience. Her lips began to tremble again: she took out the
handkerchief once more, and hid her face in it.
“Now, recollect your promise,” whispered Valentine to the clown’s wife,
who was slowly pushing him out all the time he was speaking to her.
“You must bring little Mary to the Rectory to-morrow morning at twelve
o’clock exactly--you must! or I’ll come and fetch her myself--”
“I’ll bring her, sir, if you’ll only go now. I’ll bring her--I will, as
true as I stand here!”
“If you don’t!” cried Valentine, still distrustful, and trembling all
over with agitation--“If you don’t!”--He stopped; for he suddenly felt
the open air blowing on his face. The clown’s wife was gone, and nothing
remained for him to threaten, but the tattered horse-cloths that hung
over the empty doorway.
CHAPTER IV. MADONNA’S MOTHER.
It is a quarter to twelve by the hall clock at the Rectory, and one of
the finest autumn mornings of the whole season. Vance, Doctor Joyce’s
middle-aged man servant, or “Bishop” Vance, as the small wits of
Rubbleford call him, in allusion to his sleek and solemn appearance,
his respectable manner, his clerical cravat, and his speckless black
garments, is placing the cake and cowslip wine on the dining-table, with
as much formality and precision as if his master expected an archbishop
to lunch, instead of a clown’s wife and a little child of ten years old.
It is quite a sight to see Vance retiring and looking at the general
effect of each knife and fork as he lays it down; or solemnly strutting
about the room, with a spotless napkin waving gently in his hand; or
patronisingly confronting the pretty housemaid at the door, and taking
plates and dishes from her with the air of a kitchen Sultan who can
never afford to lose his dignity for a moment in the presence of the
female slaves.
The dining-room window opens into the Rectory garden. The morning
shadows cast by the noble old elm-trees that grow all round, are fading
from the bright lawn. The rich flower-beds gleam like beds of jewels in
the radiant sunshine. The rookery is almost deserted, a solitary sleepy
_caw_ being only heard now and then at long intervals. The singing
of birds, and the buzzing of busy insects sound faint, distant, and
musical. On a shady seat, among the trees, Mrs. Joyce is just visible,
working in the open air. One of her daughters sits reading on the turf
at her feet. The other is giving the younger children a ride by turns
on the back of a large Newfoundland dog, who walks along slowly with his
tongue hanging out, and his great bushy tail wagging gently. A prettier
scene of garden beauty and family repose could not be found in all
England, than the scene which the view through the Rectory window
now presents. The household tranquillity, however, is not entirely
uninterrupted. Across the picture, of which Vance and the luncheon-table
form the foreground, and the garden with Mrs. Joyce and the young ladies
the middle-distance and background, there flits from time to time
an unquiet figure. This personage is always greeted by Leo, the
Newfoundland dog, with an extra wag of the tail; and is apostrophized
laughingly by the young ladies, under the appellation of “funny Mr.
Blyth.”
Valentine has in truth let nobody have any rest, either in the house or
the garden, since the first thing in the morning. The rector having
some letters to write, has bolted himself into his study in despair, and
defies his excitable friend from that stronghold, until the arrival of
Mrs. Peckover with the deaf and dumb child has quieted the painter’s
fidgety impatience for the striking of twelve o’clock, and the presence
of the visitors from the circus. As for the miserable Vance, Mr. Blyth
has discomposed, worried, and put him out, till he looks suffocated
with suppressed indignation. Mr. Blyth has invaded his sanctuary to ask
whether the hall clock is right, and has caught him “cleaning himself”
in his shirt sleeves. Mr. Blyth has broken one of his tumblers, and has
mutinously insisted on showing him how to draw the cork of the cowslip
wine bottle. Mr. Blyth has knocked down a fork and two spoons, just as
they were laid straight, by whisking past the table like a madman on his
way into the garden. Mr. Blyth has bumped up against the housemaid in
returning to the dining-room, and has apologized to Susan by a joke
which makes her giggle ecstatically in Vance’s own face. If this sort
of thing is to go on for a day or two longer, though he has been twenty
years at the Rectory, Vance will be goaded into giving the doctor
warning.
It is five minutes to twelve. Valentine has skipped into the garden for
the thirtieth time at least, to beg that Mrs. Joyce and the young ladies
will repair to the dining-room, and be ready to set Mrs. Peckover and
her little charge quite at their ease the moment they come in. Mrs.
Joyce consents to this proposal at last, and takes his offered arm;
touching it, however, very gingerly, and looking straight before her,
while he talks, with an air of matronly dignity and virtuous reserve.
She is still convinced that Mr. Blyth’s principles are extremely loose,
and treats him as she might have treated Don Juan himself under similar
circumstances.
They all go into the dining-room. Mrs. Joyce and her daughters take
their places, looking deliciously cool and neat in their bright morning
dresses. Leo drops down lazily on the rug inside the window, with a
thump of his great heavy body that makes the glasses ring. The doctor
comes in with his letters for the post, and apostrophizes Valentine with
a harmless clerical joke. Vance solemnly touches up the already perfect
arrangement of the luncheon table. The clock strikes twelve. A faint
meek ring is heard at the Rectory bell.
Vance struts slowly to the door, when--Heaven and earth! are no
conventions held sacred by these painters of pictures?--Mr. Blyth dashes
past him with a shout of “Here they are!” and flies into the hall to
answer the gate himself. Vance turns solemnly round towards his master,
trembling and purple in the face, with an appealing expression, which
says plainly enough:--“If _you_ mean to stand this sort of outrage, sir,
I beg most respectfully to inform you that _I_ don’t.” The rector bursts
out laughing; the young ladies follow his example; the Newfoundland dog
jumps up, and joins in with his mighty bark. Mrs. Joyce sits silent, and
looks at Vance, and sympathizes with him.
Mr. Blyth is soon heard again in the hall, talking at a prodigious rate,
without one audible word of answer proceeding from any other voice. The
door of the dining-room, which has swung to, is suddenly pushed open,
jostling the outraged Vance, who stands near it, into such a miserably
undignified position flat against the wall, that the young ladies begin
to titter behind their handkerchiefs as they look at him. Valentine
enters, leading in Mrs. Peckover and the deaf and dumb child, with such
an air of supreme happiness, that he looks absolutely handsome for the
moment. The rector, who is, in the best and noblest sense of the word, a
gentleman, receives Mrs. Peckover as politely and cordially as he would
have received the best lady in Rubbleford. Mrs. Joyce comes forward with
him, very kind too, but a little reserved in her manner, nevertheless;
being possibly apprehensive that any woman connected with the circus
must be tainted with some slight flavor of Miss Florinda Beverley. The
young ladies drop down into the most charming positions on either side
of the child, and fall straightway into fits of ecstasy over her
beauty. The dog walks up, and pokes his great honest muzzle among them
companionably. Vance stands rigid against the wall, and disapproves
strongly of the whole proceeding.
Poor Mrs. Peckover! She had never been in such a house as the Rectory,
she had never spoken to a doctor of divinity before in her life. She was
very hot and red and trembling, and made fearful mistakes in grammar,
and clung as shyly to Mr. Blyth as if she had been a little girl. The
rector soon contrived, however, to settle her comfortably in a seat by
the table. She curtseyed reverentially to Vance, as she passed by him;
doubtless under the impression that he was a second doctor of divinity,
even greater and more learned than the first. He stared in return
straight over her head, with small unwinking eyes, his cheeks turning
slowly from deep red to dense purple. Mrs. Peckover shuddered inwardly,
under the conviction that she had insulted a dignitary, who was hoisted
up on some clerical elevation, too tremendous to be curtseyed to by such
a social atom as a clown’s wife.
Mrs. Joyce had to call three times to her daughters before she could get
them to the luncheon-table. If she had possessed Valentine’s eye for the
picturesque and beautiful, she would certainly have been incapable of
disturbing the group which her third summons broke up.
In the center stood the deaf and dumb child, dressed in a white frock,
with a little silk mantilla over it, made from a cast-off garment
belonging to one of the ladies of the circus. She wore a plain straw
hat, ornamented with a morsel of narrow white ribbon, and tied under
the chin with the same material. Her clear, delicate complexion was
overspread by a slight rosy tinge--the tender coloring of nature,
instead of the coarsely-glaring rouge with which they disfigured her
when she appeared before the public. Her wondering blue eyes, that
looked so sad in the piercing gas-light, appeared to have lost that
sadness in the mellow atmosphere of the Rectory dining-room. The tender
and touching stillness which her affliction had cast over her face,
seemed a little at variance with its childish immaturity of feature and
roundness of form, but harmonized exquisitely with the quiet smile which
seemed habitual to her when she was happy--gratefully and unrestrainedly
happy, as she now felt among the new friends who were receiving her, not
like a stranger and an inferior, but like a younger sister who had been
long absent from them.
She stood near the window, the center figure of the group, offering a
little slate that hung by her side, with a pencil attached to it, to the
rector’s eldest daughter, who was sitting at her right hand on a stool.
The second of the young ladies knelt on the other side, with both her
arms round the dog’s neck; holding him back as he stood in front of the
child, so as to prevent him from licking her face, which he had made
several resolute attempts to do, from the moment when she first entered
the room. Both the Doctor’s daughters were healthy, rosy English
beauties in the first bloom of girlhood; and both were attired in
the simplest and prettiest muslin dresses, very delicate in color and
pattern. Pity and admiration, mixed with some little perplexity and
confusion, gave an unusual animation to their expressions; for they
could hardly accustom themselves as yet to the idea of the poor child’s
calamity. They talked to her eagerly, as if she could hear and answer
them--while she, on her part, stood looking alternately from one to the
other, watching their lips and eyes intently, and still holding out
the slate, with her innocent gesture of invitation and gentle look of
apology, for the eldest girl to write on. The varying expressions of the
three; the difference in their positions, the charming contrast between
their light, graceful figures and the bulky strength and grand solidity
of form in the noble Newfoundland dog who stood among them; the lustrous
background of lawn and flowers and trees, seen through the open window;
the sparkling purity of the sunshine which fell brightly over one
part of the group; the transparency of the warm shadows that lay so
caressingly, sometimes on a round smooth cheek, sometimes over ringlets
of glistening hair, sometimes on the crisp folds of a muslin dress--all
these accidental combinations of the moment, these natural and elegant
positions of nature’s setting, these accessories of light and shade and
background garden objects beautifully and tenderly filling up the scene,
presented together a picture which it was a luxury to be able to look
on, which it seemed little short of absolute profanation to disturb.
Mrs. Joyce, nevertheless, pitilessly disarranged it. In a moment the
living picture was destroyed; the young ladies were called to their
mother’s side; the child was placed between Valentine and Mrs. Peckover,
and the important business of luncheon began in earnest.
It was wonderful to hear how Mr. Blyth talked; how he alternately
glorified the clown’s wife for the punctual performance of her promise,
and appealed triumphantly to the rector to say, whether he had not
underrated rather than exaggerated little Mary’s beauty. It was also
wonderful to see Mrs. Peckover’s blank look of astonishment when she
found the rigid doctor of divinity, who would not so much as notice her
curtsey, suddenly relax into blandly supplying her with everything she
wanted to eat or drink. But a very much more remarkable study of human
nature than either of these, was afforded by the grimly patronizing and
profoundly puzzled aspect of Vance, as he waited, under protest, upon a
woman from a traveling circus. It is something to see the Pope serving
the Pilgrims their dinner, during the Holy Week at Rome. Even that
astounding sight, however, fades into nothing, as compared with the
sublimer spectacle of Mr. Vance waiting upon Mrs. Peckover.
The rector, who was a sharp observer in his own quiet, unobtrusive way,
was struck by two peculiarities in little Mary’s behavior during lunch.
In the first place, he remarked with some interest and astonishment,
that while the clown’s wife was, not unnaturally, very shy and
embarrassed in her present position, among strangers who were greatly
her social superiors, little Mary had maintained her self-possession,
and had unconsciously adapted herself to her new sphere from the moment
when she first entered the dining-room. In the second place, he observed
that she constantly nestled close to Valentine; looked at him oftener
than she looked at any one else; and seemed to be always trying,
sometimes not unsuccessfully, to guess what he was saying to others by
watching his expression, his manner, and the action of his lips. “That
child’s character is no common one,” thought Doctor Joyce; “she is older
at heart than she looks; and is almost as fond of Blyth already as he is
of her.”
When lunch was over, the eldest Miss Joyce whispered a petition in her
mother’s ear, “May Carry and I take the dear little girl out with us to
see our gardens, mamma?”
“Certainly, my love, if she likes to go. You had better ask her--Ah,
dear! dear! I forgot--I mean, write on her slate. It’s so hard to
remember she’s deaf and dumb, when one sees her sitting there looking
so pretty and happy. She seems to like the cake. Remind me, Emmy, to tie
some up for her in paper before she goes away.”
Miss Emily and Miss Caroline went round to the child directly, and
made signs for the slate. They alternately wrote on it with immense
enthusiasm, until they had filled one side; signing their initials in
the most business-like manner at the end of each line, thus:--
“Oh, do come and see my gardens. E. J.”--“We will gather you such a
nice nosegay. C. J.”--“I have got some lovely little guinea-pigs. B.
J.”--“And Mark, our gardener, has made me a summer-house, with such
funny chairs in it. C. J.”--“You shall have my parasol to keep the sun
off. B. J.”--“And we will send Leo into the water as often as you like
him to go. C. J.”--Thus they went on till they got to the bottom of the
slate.
The child, after nodding her head and smiling as she read each fresh
invitation, turned the slate over, and, with some little triumph at
showing that she could write too, began slowly to trace some large text
letters in extremely crooked lines. It took her a long time--especially
as Mr. Blyth was breathlessly looking over her shoulder all the
while--to get through these words: “Thank you for being so kind to me. I
will go with you anywhere you like.”
In a few minutes more the two young ladies and little Mary were walking
over the bright lawn, with Leo in close attendance, carrying a stick in
his mouth.
Valentine started up to follow them; then appeared suddenly to remember
something, and sat down again with a very anxious expression on his
face. He and Doctor Joyce looked at one another significantly. Before
breakfast, that morning, they had been closeted at a private interview.
Throughout the conversation which then took place, Mr. Blyth had been
unusually quiet, and very much in earnest. The doctor had begun by
being incredulous and sarcastic in a good-humored way; but had ended by
speaking seriously, and making a promise under certain conditions. The
time for the performance of that promise had now arrived.
“You needn’t wait, Vance,” said the rector. “Never mind about taking the
things away. I’ll ring when you’re wanted.”
Vance gloomily departed.
“Now the young people have left us, Mrs. Peckover,” said Doctor Joyce,
turning to the clown’s wife, “there is a good opportunity for my making
a proposition to you, on behalf of my old and dear friend here, Mr.
Blyth, who, as you must have noticed, feels great sympathy and fondness
for your little Mary. But, before I mention this proposal (which I am
sure you will receive in the best spirit, however it may surprise you),
I should wish--we should all wish, if you have no objection--to hear any
particulars you can give us on the subject of this poor child. Do you
feel any reluctance to tell us in confidence whatever you know about
her?”
“Oh dear no, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, very much amazed. “I should
be ashamed of myself if I went making any objections to anything you
wanted to know about little Mary. But it’s strange to me to be in a
beautiful place like this, drinking wine with gentlefolks--and I’m
almost afraid--”
“Not afraid, I hope, that you can’t tell us what we are so anxious
to know, quite at your ease, and in your own way?” said the rector,
pleasantly. “Pray, Mrs. Peckover, believe I am sincere in saying that we
meet on equal terms here. I have heard from Mr. Blyth of your motherly
kindness to that poor helpless child; and I am indeed proud to take your
hand, and happy to see you here, as one who should always be an honored
guest in a clergyman’s house--the doer of a good and charitable deed. I
have always, I hope, valued the station to which it has pleased God
to call me, because it especially offers me the privilege of being the
friend of all my fellow-christians, whether richer or poorer, higher or
lower in worldly rank, than am myself.”
Mrs. Peckover’s eyes began to fill. She could have worshipped Doctor
Joyce at that moment.
“Mr. Blyth!” exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, sharply, before another word could be
spoken--“excuse me, Mr. Blyth; but really--”
Valentine was trying to pour out a glass of sherry for Mrs. Peckover.
His admiration of the doctor’s last speech, and his extreme anxiety to
reassure the clown’s wife, must have interfered with his precision of
eye and hand; for one-half of the wine, as he held the decanter, was
dropping into the glass, and the other half was dribbling into a
little river on the cloth. Mrs. Joyce thought of the walnut-wood table
underneath, and felt half distracted as she spoke. Mrs. Peckover,
delighted to be of some use, forgot her company manners in an instant,
pulled out her red cotton pocket-handkerchief and darted at the spilt
sherry. But the rector was even quicker with his napkin. Mrs. Peckover’s
cheeks turned the color of her handkerchief as she put it back in her
pocket, and sat down again.
“Much obliged--no harm done--much obliged, ma’am,” said Doctor Joyce.
“Now, Valentine, if you don’t leave off apologizing, and sit down
directly in that arm-chair against the wall, I shall take Mrs. Peckover
into my study, and hear everything she has to say, at a private
interview. There! we are all comfortable and composed again at last, and
ready to be told how little Mary and the good friend who has been like a
mother to her first met.”
Thus appealed to, Mrs. Peckover began her narrative; sometimes
addressing it to the Doctor, sometimes to Mrs. Joyce, and sometimes
to Valentine. From beginning to end, she was only interrupted at rare
intervals by a word of encouragement, or sympathy, or surprise, from her
audience. Even Mr. Blyth sat most uncharacteristically still and silent;
his expression alone showing the varying influences of the story on him,
from its strange commencement to its melancholy close.
“It’s better than ten years ago, sir,” began the clown’s wife, speaking
first to Doctor Joyce, “since my little Tommy was born; he being now,
if you please, at school and costing nothing, through a presentation, as
they call it I think, which was given us by a kind patron to my husband.
Some time after I had got well over my confinement, I was out one
afternoon taking a walk with baby and Jemmy; which last is my husband,
ma’am. We were at Bangbury, then, just putting up the circus: it was a
fine large neighborhood, and we hoped to do good business there. Jemmy
and me and the baby went out into the fields, and enjoyed ourselves very
much; it being such nice warm spring weather, though it was March at the
time. We came back to Bangbury by the road; and just as we got near the
town, we see a young woman sitting on the bank, and holding her baby in
her arms, just as I had got my baby in mine.
“‘How dreadful ill and weak she do look, don’t she?’ says Jemmy. Before
I could say as much as ‘Yes,’ she stares up at us, and asks in a wild
voice, though it wasn’t very loud either, if we can tell her the way to
Bangbury workhouse. Having pretty sharp eyes of our own, we both of us
knew that a workhouse was no fit place for her. Her gown was very dusty,
and one of her boots was burst, and her hair was draggled all over her
face, and her eyes was sunk in her head, like; but we saw somehow that
she was a lady--or, if she wasn’t exactly a lady, that no workhouse was
proper for her, at any rate. I stooped down to speak to her; but her
baby was crying so dreadful she could hardly hear me. ‘Is the poor thing
ill?’ says I. ‘Starving,’ says she, in such a desperate, fierce way,
that it gave me a turn. ‘Is that your child?’ says I, a bit frightened
about how she’d answer me. ‘Yes,’ she says in quite a new voice, very
soft and sorrowful, and bending her face away from me over the child.
‘Then why don’t you suckle it?’ says I. She looks up at me, and then at
Jemmy and shakes her head, and says nothing. I give my baby to Jemmy
to hold, and went and sat down by her. He walked away a little; and I
whispered to her again, ‘Why don’t you suckle it?’ and she whispered to
me, ‘My milk’s all dried up. I couldn’t wait to hear no more till I’d
got her baby at my own breast.
“That was the first time I suckled little Mary, ma’am. She wasn’t
a month old then, and oh, so weak and small! such a mite of a baby
compared to mine!
“You may be sure, sir, that I asked the young woman lots of questions,
while I was sitting side by side with her. She stared at me with a dazed
look in her face, seemingly quite stupefied by weariness or grief,
or both together. Sometimes she give me an answer and sometimes she
wouldn’t. She was very secret. She wouldn’t say where she come from, or
who her friends were, or what her name was. She said she should never
have name or home or friends again. I just quietly stole a look down at
her left hand, and saw that there was no wedding-ring on her finger, and
guessed what she meant. ‘Does the father know you are wandering about in
this way?’ says I. She flushes up directly; ‘No;’ says she, ‘he doesn’t
know where I am. He never had any love for me, and he has no pity for
me now. God’s curse on him wherever he goes!’--‘Oh, hush! hush!’ says
I, ‘don’t talk like that!’ ‘Why do you ask me questions?’ says she more
fiercely than ever. ‘What business have you to ask me questions that
make me mad?’ ‘I’ve only got one more to bother you with,’ says I, quite
cool; ‘and that is, haven’t you got any money at all with you?’ You see,
ma’am, now I’d got her child at my own bosom, I didn’t care for what she
said, or fear for what she might do to me. The poor mite of a baby was
sure to be a peacemaker between us, sooner or later.
“It turned out she’d got sixpence and a few half-pence--not a farthing
more, and too proud to ask help from any one of her friends. I
managed to worm out of her that she had run away from home before her
confinement, and had gone to some strange place to be confined, where
they’d ill-treated and robbed her. She hadn’t long got away from the
wretches who’d done it. By the time I’d found out all this, her baby
was quite quiet, and ready to go to sleep. I gave it her back. She said
nothing, but took and kissed my hand, her lips feeling like burning
coals on my flesh. ‘You’re kindly welcome,’ says I, a little flustered
at such a queer way of thanking me. ‘Just wait a bit while I speak to my
husband.’ Though she’d been and done wrong, I couldn’t for the life
of me help pitying her, for her fierce ways. She was so young, and so
forlorn and ill, and had such a beautiful face (little Mary’s is the
image of it, ‘specially about the eyes), and seemed so like a lady,
that it was almost a sin, as I thought, to send her to such a place as a
workhouse.
“Well: I went and told Jemmy all I had got out of her--my own baby
kicking and crowing in my arms again, as happy as a king, all the time I
was speaking. ‘It seems shocking,’ says I, ‘to let such as her go into a
workhouse. What had we better do?’--Says Jemmy, ‘Let’s take her with us
to the circus and ask Peggy Burke.’
“Peggy Burke, if you please, sir, was the finest rider that ever stepped
on a horse’s back. We’ve had nothing in our circus to come near her,
since she went to Astley’s. She was the wildest devil of an Irish
girl--oh! I humbly beg your pardon, sir, for saying such a word; but she
really _was_ so wild, I hope you’ll excuse it. She’d go through fire
and water, as they say, to serve people she liked; but as for them she
didn’t, she’d often use her riding-whip among ‘em as free as her tongue.
That cowardly brute Jubber would never have beaten my little Mary, if
Peggy had been with us still! He was so frightened of her that she could
twist him round her finger; and she did, for he dursn’t quarrel with the
best rider in England, and let other circuses get hold of her. Peggy was
a wonderful sharp girl besides, and was always fond of me, and took
my part; so when Jemmy said he thought it best to ask her what we had
better do, you may be sure that I thought it best too. We took the young
woman and the baby with us to the circus at once. She never asked any
questions; she didn’t seem to care where she went, or what she did; she
was dazed and desperate--a sight, Ma’am, to make your heart ache.
“They were just getting tea in the circus, which was nearly finished.
We mostly have tea and dinner there, sir; finding it come cheaper in the
end to mess together when we can. Peggy Burke, I remember, was walking
about on the grass outside, whistling (that was one of her queer ways)
‘The girl I left behind me.’ ‘Ah! Peck,’ says she, ‘what have you been
after now? Who’s the company lady ye’ve brought to tea with us?’ I told
her, sir, all I have told you; while Jemmy set the young woman down on
one of our trunks, and got her a cup of tea. ‘It seems dreadful,’ says
I when I’d done, ‘to send such as her to the workhouse, don’t it?’
‘Workhouse!’ says Peggy, firing up directly; ‘I only wish we could
catch the man who’s got her in that scrape, and put him in there on
water-gruel for the rest of his life. I’d give a shillin’ a wheal out of
my own pocket for the blessed privilege of scoring the thief’s face with
my whip, till his own mother wouldn’t know him!’ And then she went on,
sir, abusing all the men in her Irish way, which I can’t repeat. At last
she stops, and claps me on the back. ‘You’re a darlin’ old girl, Peck!’
says she, ‘and your friends are my friends. Stop where you are, and let
me speak a word to the young woman on the trunk.’
“After a little while she comes back, and says, ‘I’ve done it,
Peck! She’s mighty close, and as proud as Lucifer; but she’s only a
dressmaker, for all that.’ ‘A dressmaker!’ says I; ‘how did you find
out she was a dressmaker?’ ‘Why, I looked at her forefinger, in course,’
says Peggy, ‘and saw the pricks of the needle on it, and soon made her
talk a bit after that. She knows fancy-work and cuttin’ out--would ye
ever have thought it? And I’ll show her how to give the workhouse the
go-by to-morrow, if she only holds out, and keeps in her senses. Stop
where you are, Peck! I’m going to make Jubber put his dirty hand into
his pocket and pull out some money; and that’s a sight worth stoppin’ to
see any day in the week.’
“I waited as she told me; and she called for Jubber, just as if he’d
been her servant; and he come out of the circus. ‘I want ten shillings
advance of wages for that lady on the trunk,’ says Peggy. He laughed at
her. ‘Show your ugly teeth at me again,’ says she, ‘and I’ll box your
ears. I’ve my light hand for a horse’s mouth, and my heavy hand for
a man’s cheek; you ought to know that by this time! Pull out the ten
shillings.’ ‘What for?’ said he, frowning at her. ‘Just this,’ says she.
‘I mean to leave your circus, unless I get those six character dresses
you promised me; and the lady there can do them up beautiful. Pull
out the ten shillings! for I’ve made up my mind to appear before the
Bangbury public on Garryowen’s back, as six women at once.’
“What she meant by this, sir, was, that she was to have six different
dresses on, one over another; and was to go galloping round the ring on
Garryowen (which was a horse), beginning, I think it was, as Empress of
Roossia; and then throwing off the top dress without the horse stopping,
and showing next as some famous Frenchwoman, in the dress underneath;
and keeping on so with different nations, till she got down to the last
dress, which was to be Britannia and the Union-Jack. We’d got bits
of remnants, and old dresses and things to make and alter, but hadn’t
anybody clever enough at cutting out, and what they call ‘Costoom,’ to
do what Peggy wanted--Jubber being too stingy to pay the regular people
who understand such things. The young woman, knowing as she did about
fancy work, was just what was wanted, if she could only get well enough
to use her needle. ‘I’ll see she works the money out,’ says Peggy; ‘but
she’s dead beat to-night, and must have her rest and bit o’ supper,
before she begins to-morrow.’ Jubber wanted to give less than ten
shillings; but between threatening, and saying it should buy twenty
shillings’ worth of tailor’s work, she got the better of him. And he
gave the money, sulky enough.
“‘Now,’ says Peggy, ‘you take her away, and get her a lodging in the
place where you’re staying; and I’ll come tomorrow with some of the
things to make up.’ But, ah dear me! sir, she was never to work as much
as sixpence of that ten shillings out. She was took bad in the night,
and got so much worse in the morning that we had to send for the doctor.
“As soon as he’d seen her, he takes me into the passage, and says he to
me, ‘Do you know who her friends are?’ ‘No, sir,’ says I; ‘I can’t get
her to tell me. I only met her by accident yesterday.’ ‘Try and find
out again,’ says he; ‘for I’m afraid she won’t live over the night. I’ll
come back in the evening and see if there is any change.’
“Peggy and me went into her room together; but we couldn’t even get her
to speak to us for ever so long a time. All at once she cries out, ‘I
can’t see things as I ought. Where’s the woman who suckled my baby when
I was alone by the roadside?’ ‘Here,’ says I--‘here; I’ve got hold
of your hand. Do tell us where we can write to about you.’ ‘Will you
promise to take care of my baby, and not let it go into the workhouse?’
says she. ‘Yes, I promise,’ says I; ‘I do indeed promise with my whole
heart.’ ‘We’ll all take care of the baby,’ says Peggy; ‘only you try
and cheer up, and you’ll get well enough to see me on Garryowen’s back,
before we leave Bangbury--you will for certain, if you cheer up a bit.’
‘I give my baby,’ she says, clutching tight at my hand, ‘to the woman
who suckled it by the roadside; and I pray God to bless _her_ and
forgive _me,_ for Jesus Christ’s sake.’ After that, she lay quiet for
a minute or two. Then she says faintly, ‘Its name’s to be Mary. Put it
into bed to me again; I should like to touch its cheek, and feel how
soft and warm it is once more.’ And I took the baby out of its crib, and
lifted it, asleep as it was, into the bed by her side, and guided her
hand up to its cheek. I saw her lips move a little, and bent down over
her. ‘Give me one kiss,’ she whispered, ‘before I die.’ And I kissed
her, and tried to stop crying as I did it. Then I says to Peggy, ‘You
wait here while I run and fetch the doctor back; for I’m afraid she’s
going fast.’ He wasn’t at home when I got to his house. I did’n’t know
what to do next, when I see a gentleman in the street who looked like a
clergyman, and I asked him if he was one; and he said ‘Yes;’ and he
went back with me. I heard a low wailing and crying in the room, and
saw Peggy sitting on the bundle of dresses she’d brought in the morning,
rocking herself backwards and forwards as Irish people always do when
they’re crying. I went to the bed, and looked through the curtains. The
baby was still sleeping as pretty as ever, and its mother’s hand was
touching one of its arms. I was just going to speak to her again, when
the clergyman said ‘Hush,’ and took a bit of looking-glass that was set
up on the chimney-piece, and held it over her lips. She was gone. Her
poor white wasted hand lay dead on the living baby’s arm.
“I answered all the clergyman’s questions quite straightforward, telling
him everything I knew from beginning to end. When I’d done, Peggy starts
up from the bundle and says, ‘Mind, sir, whatever you do, the child’s
not to be took away from this person here, and sent to the workhouse.
The mother give it to her on that very bed, and I’m a witness of it.’
‘And I promised to be a mother to the baby, sir,’ says I. He turns round
to me, and praises me for what I done, and says nobody shall take it
away from me, unless them as can show their right comes forward to claim
it. ‘But now,’ says he, ‘we must think of other things. We must try
and find out something about this poor woman who has died in such a
melancholy way.’
“It was easier to say that than to do it. The poor thing had nothing
with her but a change of linen for herself and the child, and that
gave us no clue. Then we searched her pocket. There was a cambric
handkerchief in it, marked ‘M. G.;’ and some bits of rusks to sop for
the child; and the sixpence and halfpence which she had when I met her;
and beneath all, in a corner, as if it had been forgotten there, a small
hair bracelet. It was made of two kinds of hair--very little of one
kind, and a good deal of the other. And on the flat clasp of the
bracelet there was cut in tiny letters, _‘In memory of S. G.’_ I
remember all this, sir, for I’ve often and often looked at the bracelet
since that time.
“We found nothing more--no letters, or cards, or anything. The clergyman
said that the ‘M. G.’ on the handkerchief must be the initials of
her name; and the ‘S. G.’ on the bracelet must mean, he thought, some
relation whose hair she wore as a sort of keepsake. I remember Peggy and
me wondering which was S. G.’s hair; and who the other person might be,
whose hair was wove into the bracelet. But the clergyman he soon cut us
short by asking for pen, ink, and paper directly. ‘I’m going to write
out an advertisement,’ says he, ‘saying how you met with the young
woman, and what she was like, and how she was dressed.’ ‘Do you mean to
say anything about the baby, sir?’ says I. ‘Certainly,’ says he; ‘it’s
only right, if we get at her friends by advertising, to give them the
chance of doing something for the child. And if they live anywhere in
county, I believe we shall find them out; for the _Bangbury Chronicle,_
into which I mean to put the advertisement, goes everywhere in our part
of England.’
“So he sits down, and writes what he said he would, and takes it away to
be printed in the next day’s number of the newspaper. ‘If nothing
comes of this,’ says he, ‘I think I can manage about the burial with a
charitable society here. I’ll take care and inform you the moment the
advertisement’s answered.’ I hardly know how it was, sir; but I almost
hoped they wouldn’t answer it. Having suckled the baby myself, and
kissed its mother before she died, I couldn’t make up my mind to the
chance of its being took away from me just then. I ought to have thought
how poor we were, and how hard it would be for us to bring the child up.
But, somehow, I never did think of that--no more did Peggy--no more did
Jemmy; not even when we put the baby to bed that night along with our
own.
“Well, sir, sure enough, two days after the advertisement come out, it
was answered in the cruelest letter I ever set eyes on. The clergyman he
come to me with it. ‘It was left this evening,’ says he, ‘by a strange
messenger, who went away directly. I told my servant to follow him; but
it was too late--he was out of sight.’ The letter was very short, and
we thought it was in a woman’s handwriting--a feigned handwriting, the
clergyman said. There was no name signed, and no date at top or bottom.
Inside it there was a ten-pound bank-note; and the person as sent it
wrote that it was enclosed to bury the young woman decently. ‘She was
better dead than alive’--the letter went on--‘after having disgraced her
father and her relations. As for the child, it was the child of sin,
and had no claim on people who desired to preserve all that was left of
their good name, and to set a moral example to others. The parish must
support it if nobody else would. It would be useless to attempt to trace
them, or to advertise again. The baby’s father had disappeared, they
didn’t know where; and they could hold no communication now with such a
monster of wickedness, even if he was found. She was dead in her shame
and her sin; and her name should never be mentioned among them she
belonged to henceforth for ever.’
“This was what I remember in the letter, sir. A shocking and unchristian
letter I said; and the clergyman he said so too.
“She was buried in the poor corner of the churchyard. They marked out
the place, in case anybody should ever want to see it, by cutting the
two letters M. G., and the date of when she died, upon a board of wood
at the head of the grave. The clergyman then give me the hair bracelet
and the handkerchief, and said, ‘You keep these as careful as you keep
the child; for they may be of great importance one of these days. I
shall seal up the letter (which is addressed to me) and put it in
my strong box.’ He’d asked me, before this, if I’d thought of what a
responsibility it was for such as me to provide for the baby. And I
told him I’d promised, and would keep my promise, and trust to God’s
providence for the rest. The clergyman was a very kind gentleman, and
got up a subscription for the poor babe; and Peggy Burke, when she had
her benefit before the circus left Bangbury, give half of what she got
as her subscription. I never heard nothing about the child’s friends
from that time to this; and I know no more who its father is now than I
did then. And glad I am that he’s never come forward--though, perhaps,
I oughtn’t to say so. I keep the hair bracelet and the handkerchief as
careful as the clergyman told me, for the mother’s sake as well as the
child’s. I’ve known some sorrow with her since I took her as my own; but
I love her only the dearer for it, and still think the day a happy day
for both of us, when I first stopped and suckled her by the road-side.
“This is all I have to say, if you please, sir, about how I first met
with little Mary; and I wish I could have told it in a way that was more
fit for such as you to hear.”
CHAPTER V. MADONNA’S MISFORTUNE.
As the clown’s wife ended her narrative, but little was said in the way
of comment on it by those who had listened to her. They were too much
affected by what they had heard to speak, as yet, except briefly and
in low voices. Mrs. Joyce more than once raised her handkerchief to her
eyes. Her husband murmured some cordial words of sympathy and thanks--in
an unusually subdued manner, however. Valentine said nothing; but he
drew his chair close to Mrs. Peckover, and turning his face away as if
he did not wish it to be seen, took her hand in one of his and patted it
gently with the other. There was now perfect silence in the room for a
few minutes. Then they all looked out with one accord, and as it seemed
with one feeling, towards the garden.
In a shady place, just visible among the trees, the rector’s daughters,
and little Mary, and the great Newfoundland dog were all sitting
together on the grass. The two young ladies appeared to be fastening
a garland of flowers round the child’s neck, while she was playfully
offering a nosegay for Leo to smell at. The sight was homely and simple
enough; but it was full of the tenderest interest--after the narrative
which had just engaged them--to those who now witnessed it. They looked
out on the garden scene silently for some little time. Mrs. Joyce was
the first to speak again.
“Would it be asking too much of you, Mrs. Peckover,” said she, “to
inquire how the poor little thing really met with the accident that
caused her misfortune? I know there is an account of it in the bills of
the circus but--”
“It’s the most infamous thing I ever read!” interrupted Mr. Blyth
indignantly. “The man who wrote it ought to be put in the pillory.
I never remember wanting to throw a rotten egg at any of my
fellow-creatures before; but I feel certain that I should enjoy having a
shy at Mr. Jubber!”
“Gently, Valentine--gently,” interposed the rector. “I think, my love,”
he continued, turning to Mrs. Joyce, “that it is hardly considerate to
Mrs. Peckover to expect her to comply with your request. She has already
sacrificed herself once to our curiosity; and, really, to ask her now
to recur a second time to recollections which I am sure must distress
her--”
“It’s worse than distressing, indeed, sir, even to think of that
dreadful accident,” said Mrs. Peckover, “and specially as I can’t help
taking some blame to myself for it. But if the lady wishes to know how
it happened, I’m sure I’m agreeable to tell her. People in our way of
life, ma’am--as I’ve often heard Peggy Burke say--are obliged to dry
the tear at their eyes long before it’s gone from their hearts. But pray
don’t think, sir, I mean that now about myself and in your company. If I
_do_ feel low at talking of little Mary’s misfortune, I can take a look
out into the garden there, and see how happy she is--and that’s safe to
set me right again.”
“I ought to tell you first, sir,” proceeded the clown’s wife, after
waiting thoughtfully for a moment or two before she spoke again, “that I
got on much better with little Mary than ever I thought I should for the
first six years of her life. She grew up so pretty that gentlefolks was
always noticing her, and asking about her; and nearly in every place the
circus went to they made her presents, which helped nicely in her keep
and clothing. And our own people, too, petted her and were fond of her.
All those six years we got on as pleasantly as could be. It was not till
she was near her seventh birthday that I was wicked and foolish enough
to consent to her being shown in the performances.
“I was sorely tried and tempted before I did consent. Jubber first
said he wanted her to perform with the riders; and I said ‘No’ at once,
though I was awful frightened of him in those days. But soon after,
Jemmy (who wasn’t the clown then that he is now, sir; there was others
to be got for his money, to do what he did at that time)--Jemmy comes to
me, saying he’s afraid he shall lose his place, if I don’t give in about
Mary. This staggered me a good deal; for I don’t know what we should
have done then, if my husband had lost his engagement. And, besides,
there was the poor dear child herself, who was mad to be carried up in
the air on horseback, always begging and praying to be made a little
rider of. And all the rest of ‘em in the circus worried and laughed
at me; and, in short, I give in at last against my conscience, but I
couldn’t help it.
“I made a bargain, though, that she should only be trusted to the
steadiest, soberest man, and the best rider of the whole lot. They
called him ‘Muley’ in the bills, and stained his face to make him look
like a Turk, or something of that sort; but his real name was Francis
Yapp, and a very good fatherly sort of man he was in his way, having
a family of his own to look after. He used to ride splendid, at full
straddle, with three horses under him--one foot, you know, sir, being on
the outer horse’s back, and one foot on the inner. Him and Jubber made
it out together that he was to act a wild man, flying for his life
across some desert, with his only child, and poor little Mary was to
be the child. They darkened her face to look like his; and put an
outlandish kind of white dress on her; and buckled a red belt round her
waist, with a sort of handle in it for Yapp to hold her by. After first
making believe in all sorts of ways, that him and the child was in
danger of being taken and shot, he had to make believe afterwards that
they had escaped; and to hold her up, in a sort of triumph, at the full
stretch of his arm--galloping round and round the ring all the while. He
was a tremendous strong man, and could do it as easy as I could hold up
a bit of that plum cake.
“Poor little love! she soon got over the first fright of the thing,
and had a sort of mad fondness for it that I never liked to see, for it
wasn’t natural to her. Yapp, he said, she’d got the heart of a lion, and
would grow up the finest woman-rider in the world. I was very unhappy
about it, and lived a miserable life, always fearing some accident. But
for some time nothing near an accident happened; and lots of money come
into the circus to see Yapp and little Mary--but that was Jubber’s luck
and not ours. One night--when she was a little better than seven year
old--
“Oh, ma’am, how I ever lived over that dreadful night I don’t know! I
was a sinful, miserable wretch not to have starved sooner than let the
child go into danger; but I was so sorely tempted and driven to it, God
knows!--No, sir! no, ma’am; and many thanks for your kindness, I’ll go
on now I’ve begun. Don’t mind me crying; I’ll manage to tell it somehow.
The strap--no, I mean the handle; the handle in the strap gave way
all of a sudden--just at the last too! just at the worst time, when he
couldn’t catch her--!
“Never--oh, never, never, to my dying day shall I forget the horrible
screech that went up from the whole audience; and the sight of the white
thing lying huddled dead-still on the boards! We hadn’t such a number in
as usual that night; and she fell on an empty place between the benches.
I got knocked down by the horses in running to her--I was clean out
of my senses, and didn’t know where I was going--Yapp had fallen among
them, and hurt himself badly, trying to catch her--they were running
wild in the ring--the horses was--frantic-like with the noise all round
them. I got up somehow, and a crowd of people jostled me, and I saw my
innocent darling carried among them. I felt hands on me, trying to pull
me back; but I broke away, and got into the waiting-room along with the
rest.
“There she was--my own, own little Mary, that I’d promised her poor
mother to take care of--there she was, lying all white and still on
an old box, with my cloak rolled up as a pillow for her. And people
crowding round her. And a doctor feeling her head all over. And Yapp
among them, held up by two men, with his face all over blood. I wasn’t
able to speak or move; I didn’t feel as if I was breathing even, till
the doctor stopped, and looked up; and then a great shudder went through
all of us together, as if we’d been one body, instead of twenty or more.
“‘It’s not killed her,’ says the doctor. ‘Her brain’s escaped injury.’
“I didn’t hear another word.
“I don’t know how long it was before I seemed to wake up like, with a
dreadful feeling of pain and tearing of everything inside me. I was
on the landlady’s bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle
of salts. ‘They’ve put her to bed,’ he says to me, ‘and the doctor’s
setting her arm.’ I didn’t recollect at first; but when I did, it was
almost as bad as seeing the dreadful accident all over again.
“It was some time before any of us found out what had really happened.
The breaking of her arm, the doctor said, had saved her head; which was
only cut and bruised a little, not half as bad as was feared. Day after
day, and night after night, I sat by her bedside, comforting her through
her fever, and the pain of the splints on her arm, and never once
suspecting--no more, I believe, than she did--the awful misfortune that
had really happened. She was always wonderful quiet and silent for
a child, poor lamb, in little illnesses that she’d had before; and
somehow, I didn’t wonder--at least, at first--why she never said a word,
and never answered me when I spoke to her.
“This went on, though, after she got better in her health; and a
strange look came over her eyes. They seemed to be always wondering and
frightened, in a confused way, about something or other. She took, too,
to rolling her head about restlessly from one side of the pillow to the
other; making a sort of muttering and humming now and then, but still
never seeming to notice or to care for anything I said to her. One day,
I was warming her a nice cup of beef-tea over the fire, when I heard,
quite sudden and quite plain, these words from where she lay on the bed,
‘Why are you always so quiet here? Why doesn’t somebody speak to me?’
“I knew there wasn’t another soul in the room but the poor child at that
time; and yet, the voice as spoke those words was no more like little
Mary’s voice, than my voice, sir, is like yours. It sounded, somehow,
hoarse and low, and deep and faint, all at the same time; the strangest,
shockingest voice to come from a child, who always used to speak so
clearly and prettily before, that ever I heard. If I was only cleverer
with my words, ma’am, and could tell you about it properly--but I
can’t. I only know it gave me such a turn to hear her, that I upset the
beef-tea, and ran back in a fright to the bed. ‘Why, Mary! Mary!’ says
I, quite loud, ‘are you so well already that you’re trying to imitate
Mr. Jubber’s gruff voice?’
“There was the same wondering look in her eyes--only wilder than I had
ever seen it yet--while I was speaking. When I’d done, she says in the
same strange way, ‘Speak out, mother; I can’t hear you when you whisper
like that.’ She was as long saying these words, and bungled over them as
much, as if she was only just learning to speak. I think I got the first
suspicion then, of what had really happened. ‘Mary!’ I bawled out as
loud as I could, ‘Mary! can’t you hear me?’ She shook her head, and
stared up at me with the frightened, bewildered look again: then seemed
to get pettish and impatient all of a sudden--the first time I ever saw
her so--and hid her face from me on the pillow.
“Just then the doctor come in. ‘Oh, sir!’ says I, whispering to
him--just as if I hadn’t found out a minute ago that she couldn’t hear
me at the top of my voice--‘I’m afraid there’s something gone wrong with
her hearing--.’ ‘Have you only just now suspected that?’ says he; ‘I’ve
been afraid of it for some days past, but I thought it best to say
nothing till I’d tried her; and she’s hardly well enough yet, poor
child, to be worried with experiments on her ears.’ ‘She’s much better,’
says I; ‘indeed, she’s much better to-day, sir! Oh, do try her now, for
it’s so dreadful to be in doubt a moment longer than we can help.’
“He went up to the bedside, and I followed him. She was lying with her
face hidden away from us on the pillow, just as it was when I left her.
The doctor says to me, ‘Don’t disturb her, don’t let her look round, so
that she can see us--I’m going to call to her.’ And he called ‘Mary’ out
loud, twice; and she never moved. The third time he tried her, it was
with such a shout at the top of his voice, that the landlady come up,
thinking something had happened. I was looking over his shoulder, and
saw that my dear child never started in the least. ‘Poor little thing,’
says the doctor, quite sorrowful, ‘this is worse than I expected.’ He
stooped down and touched her, as he said this; and she turned round
directly, and put out her hand to have her pulse felt as usual. I tried
to get out of her sight, for I was crying, and didn’t wish her to see
it; but she was too sharp for me. She looked hard in my face and the
landlady’s, then in the doctor’s, which was downcast enough; for he had
got very fond of her, just as everybody else did who saw much of little
Mary.
“‘What’s the matter?’ she says, in the same sort of strange unnatural
voice again. We tried to pacify her, but only made her worse. ‘Why do
you keep on whispering?’ she asks. ‘Why don’t you speak out loud, so
that I can--,’ and then she stopped, seemingly in a sort of helpless
fright and bewilderment. She tried to get up in bed, and her face turned
red all over. ‘Can she read writing?’ says the doctor. ‘Oh, yes, sir,
says I; ‘she can read and write beautiful for a child of her age; my
husband taught her.’ ‘Get me paper and pen and ink directly,’ says he
to the landlady; who went at once and got him what he wanted. ‘We must
quiet her at all hazards,’ says the doctor, ‘or she’ll excite herself
into another attack of fever. She feels what’s the matter with her, but
don’t understand it; and I’m going to tell her by means of this paper.
It’s a risk,’ he says, writing down on the paper in large letters, _You
Are Deaf;_ ‘but I must try all I can do for her ears immediately; and
this will prepare her,’ says he, going to the bed, and holding the paper
before her eyes.
“She shrank back on the pillow, as still as death, the instant she saw
it; but didn’t cry, and looked more puzzled and astonished, I should
say, than distressed. But she was breathing dreadful quick--I felt that,
as I stooped down and kissed her. ‘She’s too young,’ says the doctor,
‘to know what the extent of her calamity really is. You stop here and
keep her quiet till I come back, for I trust the case is not hopeless
yet.’ ‘But whatever has made her deaf, sir?’ says the landlady, opening
the door for him. ‘The shock of that fall in the circus,’ says he, going
out in a very great hurry. I thought I should never have held up my head
again, as I heard them words, looking at little Mary, with my arm round
her neck all the time.
“Well, sir, the doctor come back; and he syringed her ears first--and
that did no good. Then he tried blistering, and then he put on leeches;
and still it was no use. ‘I’m afraid it is a hopeless case,’ says he;
‘but there’s a doctor who’s had more practice than I’ve had with deaf
people, who comes from where he lives to our Dispensary once a week.
To-morrow’s his day, and I’ll bring him here with me.’
“And he did bring this gentleman, as he promised he would--an old
gentleman, with such a pleasant way of speaking that I understood
everything he said to me directly. ‘I’m afraid you must make up your
mind to the worst,’ says he. ‘I have been hearing about the poor child
from my friend who’s attended her; and I’m sorry to say I don’t think
there’s much hope.’ Then he goes to the bed and looks at her. ‘Ah,’ says
he, ‘there’s just the same expression in her face that I remember seeing
in a mason’s boy--a patient of mine--who fell off a ladder, and lost his
hearing altogether by the shock. You don’t hear what I’m saying, do you,
my dear?’ says he in a hearty cheerful way. ‘You don’t hear me saying
that you’re the prettiest little girl I ever saw in my life?’ She looked
up at him confused, and quite silent. He didn’t speak to her again, but
told me to turn her on the bed, so that he could get at one of her ears.
“He pulled out some instruments, while I did what he asked, and put them
into her ear, but so tenderly that he never hurt her. Then he looked in,
through a sort of queer spy-glass thing. Then he did it all over again
with the other ear; and then he laid down the instruments and pulled
out his watch. ‘Write on a piece of paper,’ says he to the other doctor:
_‘Do you know that the watch is ticking?’_ When this was done, he makes
signs to little Mary to open her mouth, and puts as much of his watch in
as would go between her teeth, while the other doctor holds up the paper
before her. When he took the watch out again, she shook her head, and
said ‘No,’ just in the same strange voice as ever. The old gentleman
didn’t speak a word as he put the watch back in his fob; but I saw by
his face that he thought it was all over with her hearing, after what
had just happened.
“‘Oh, try and do something for her, sir!’ says I. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,
don’t give her up, sir!’ ‘My good soul,’ says he, ‘you must set her an
example of cheerfulness, and keep up her spirits--that’s all that can be
done for her now.’ ‘Not _all,_ sir,’ says I, ‘surely not _all!’_ ‘Indeed
it is,’ says he; ‘her hearing is completely gone; the experiment with my
watch proves it. I had an exactly similar case with the mason’s boy,’
he says, turning to the other doctor. ‘The shock of that fall has,
I believe, paralyzed the auditory nerve in her, as it did in him.’ I
remember those words exactly, sir, though I didn’t quite understand them
at the time. But he explained himself to me very kindly; telling me over
again, in a plain way, what he’d just told the doctor. He reminded me,
too, that the remedies which had been already tried had been of no use;
and told me I might feel sure that any others would only end in the same
way, and put her to useless pain into the bargain. ‘I hope,’ says he,
‘the poor child is too young to suffer much mental misery under her
dreadful misfortune. Keep her amused, and keep her talking, if you
possibly can--though I doubt very much whether, in a little time, you
won’t fail completely in getting her to speak at all.’
“‘Don’t say that, sir,’ says I; ‘don’t say she’ll be dumb as well as
deaf; it’s enough to break one’s heart only to think of it.’ ‘But I
_must_ say so,’ says he; ‘for I’m afraid it’s the truth.’ And then
he asks me whether I hadn’t noticed already that she was unwilling to
speak; and that, when she did speak, her voice wasn’t the same voice it
used to be. I said ‘Yes,’ to that; and asked him whether the fall had
had anything to do with it. He said, taking me up very short, it had
everything to do with it, because the fall had made her, what they call,
stone deaf, which prevented her from hearing the sound of her own voice.
So it was changed, he told me, because she had no ear now to guide
herself by in speaking, and couldn’t know in the least whether the few
words she said were spoken soft or loud, or deep or clear. ‘So far as
the poor child herself is concerned,’ says he, ‘she might as well be
without a voice at all; for she has nothing but her memory left to tell
her that she has one.’
“I burst out a-crying as he said this; for somehow I’d never thought of
anything so dreadful before. ‘I’ve been a little too sudden in telling
you the worst, haven’t I?’ says the old gentleman kindly; ‘but you
must be taught how to make up your mind to meet the full extent of this
misfortune for the sake of the child, whose future comfort and happiness
depend greatly on you.’ And then he bid me keep up her reading and
writing, and force her to use her voice as much as I could, by every
means in my power. He told me I should find her grow more and more
unwilling to speak every day, just for the shocking reason that she
couldn’t hear a single word she said, or a single tone of her own voice.
He warned me that she was already losing the wish and the want to speak;
and that it would very soon be little short of absolute pain to her to
be made to say even a few words; but he begged and prayed me not to let
my good nature get the better of my prudence on that account, and not
to humor her, however I might feel tempted to do so--for if I did, she
would be dumb as well as deaf most certainly. He told me my own common
sense would show me the reason why; but I suppose I was too distressed
or too stupid to understand things as I ought. He had to explain it
to me in so many words, that if she wasn’t constantly exercised in
speaking, she would lose her power of speech altogether, for want of
practice--just the same as if she’d been born dumb. ‘So, once again,’
says he, ‘mind you make her use her voice. Don’t give her her dinner,
unless she asks for it. Treat her severely in that way, poor little
soul, because it’s for her own good.’
“It was all very well for _him_ to say that, but it was impossible
for _me_ to do it. The dear child, ma’am, seemed to get used to her
misfortune, except when we tried to make her speak. It was the saddest,
prettiest sight in the world to see how patiently and bravely she bore
with her hard lot from the first. As she grew better in her health, she
kept up her reading and writing quite cleverly with my husband and me;
and all her nice natural cheerful ways come back to her just the same
as ever. I’ve read or heard somewhere, sir, about God’s goodness in
tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. I don’t know who said that first;
but it might well have been spoken on account of my own darling little
Mary, in those days. Instead of us being the first to comfort her,
it was she that was first to comfort us. And so she’s gone on ever
since--bless her heart! Only treat her kindly, and, in spite of her
misfortune, she’s the merriest, happiest little thing--the easiest
pleased and amused, I do believe, that ever lived.
“If we were wrong in not forcing her to speak more than we did, I must
say this much for me and my husband, that we hadn’t the heart to make
her miserable and keep on tormenting her from morning to night, when
she was always happy and comfortable if we would only let her alone. We
tried our best for some time to do what the gentleman told us; but it’s
so hard--as you’ve found I dare say, ma’am--not to end by humoring them
you love! I never see the tear in her eye, except when we forced her to
speak to us; and then she always cried, and was fretful and out of sorts
for the whole day. It seemed such a dreadful difficulty and pain to her
to say only two or three words; and the shocking husky moaning voice
that sounded somehow as if it didn’t belong to her, never changed. My
husband first gave up worrying her to speak. He practiced her with her
book and writing, but let her have her own will in everything else; and
he teached her all sorts of tricks on the cards, for amusement, which
was a good way of keeping her going with her reading and her pen
pleasantly, by reason, of course, of him and her being obliged to put
down everything they had to say to each other on a little slate that we
bought for her after she got well.
“It was Mary’s own notion, if you please, ma’am, to have the slate
always hanging at her side. Poor dear! she thought it quite a splendid
ornament, and was as proud of it as could be. Jemmy, being neat-handed
at such things, did the frame over for her prettily with red morocco,
and got our propertyman to do it all round with a bright golden
border. And then we hung it at her side, with a nice little bit of silk
cord--just as you see it now.
“I held out in making her speak some time after my husband: but at last
I gave in too. I know it was wrong and selfish of me; but I got a fear
that she wouldn’t like me as well as she used to do, and would take
more kindly to Jemmy than to me, if I went on. Oh, how happy she was
the first day I wrote down on her slate that I wouldn’t worry her about
speaking any more! She jumped up on my knees--being always as nimble as
a squirrel--and kissed me over and over again with all her heart. For
the rest of the day she run about the room, and all over the house,
like a mad thing, and when Jemmy came home at night from performing, she
would get out of bed and romp with him, and ride pickaback on him, and
try and imitate the funny faces she’d seen him make in the ring. I do
believe, sir, that was the first regular happy night we had all had
together since the dreadful time when she met with her accident.
“Long after that, my conscience was uneasy though, at times, about
giving in as I had. At last I got a chance of speaking to another doctor
about little Mary; and he told me that if we had kept her up in her
speaking ever so severely, it would still have been a pain and a
difficulty to her to say her words, to her dying day. He said too, that
he felt sure--though he couldn’t explain it to me--that people afflicted
with such stone deafness as hers didn’t feel the loss of speech, because
they never had the want to use their speech; and that they took to
making signs, and writing, and such like, quite kindly as a sort of
second nature to them. This comforted me, and settled my mind a good
deal. I hope in God what the gentleman said was true; for if I was in
fault in letting her have her own way and be happy, it’s past mending
by this time. For more than two years, ma’am, I’ve never heard her say
a single word, no more than if she’d been born dumb, and it’s my belief
that all the doctors in the world couldn’t make her speak now.
“Perhaps, sir, you might wish to know how she first come to show her
tricks on the cards in the circus. There was no danger in her doing
that, I know--and yet I’d have given almost everything I have, not to
let her be shown about as she is. But I was threatened again, in the
vilest, wickedest way--I hardly know how to tell it, gentlemen, in the
presence of such as you--Jubber, you must know--”
Just as Mrs. Peckover, with very painful hesitation, pronounced the
last words, the hall clock of the Rectory struck two. She heard it, and
stopped instantly.
“Oh, if you please, sir, was that two o’clock?” she asked, starting up
with a look of alarm.
“Yes, Mrs. Peckover,” said the rector; “but really, after having been
indebted to you for so much that has deeply interested and affected us,
we can’t possibly think of letting you and little Mary leave the Rectory
yet.”
“Indeed we must, sir; and many thanks to you for wanting to keep us
longer,” said Mrs. Peckover. “What I was going to say isn’t much; it’s
quite as well you shouldn’t hear it--and indeed, indeed, ma’am, we must
go directly. I told this gentleman here, Mr. Blyth, when I come in, that
I’d stolen to you unawares, under pretense of taking little Mary out for
a walk. If we are not back to the two o’clock dinner in the circus,
it’s unknown what Jubber may not do. This gentleman will tell you how
infamously he treated the poor child last night--we must go, sir, for
her sake; or else--”
“Stop!” cried Valentine, all his suppressed excitability bursting bounds
in an instant, as he took Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and pressed her back
into her chair. “Stop!--hear me; I must speak, or I shall go out of my
senses! Don’t interrupt me, Mrs. Peckover; and don’t get up. All I want
to say is this: you must never take that little angel of a child near
Jubber again--no, never! By heavens! if I thought he was likely to touch
her any more, I should go mad, and murder him!--Let me alone, doctor! I
beg Mrs. Joyce’s pardon for behaving like this; I’ll never do it again.
Be quiet, all of you! I must take the child home with me--oh, Mrs.
Peckover, don’t, don’t say no! I’ll make her as happy as the day is
long. I’ve no child of my own: I’ll watch over her, and love her, and
teach her all my life. I’ve got a poor, suffering, bedridden wife at
home, who would think such a companion as little Mary the greatest
blessing God could send her. My own dear, patient Lavvie! Oh, doctor,
doctor! think how kind Lavvie would be to that afflicted little child;
and try if you can’t make Mrs. Peckover consent. I can’t speak any
more--I know I’m wrong to burst out in this way; and I beg all your
pardons for it, I do indeed! Speak to her, doctor--pray speak to her
directly, if you don’t want to make me miserable for the rest of my
life!”
With those words, Valentine darted precipitately into the garden, and
made straight for the spot where the little girls were still sitting
together in their shady resting-place among the trees.
CHAPTER VI. MADONNA GOES TO LONDON.
The clown’s wife had sat very pale and very quiet under the whole
overwhelming torrent of Mr. Blyth’s apostrophes, exclamations, and
entreaties. She seemed quite unable to speak, after he was fairly gone;
and only looked round in a bewildered manner at the rector, with fear as
well as amazement expressed vividly in her hearty, healthy face.
“Pray compose yourself, Mrs. Peckover,” said Doctor Joyce; “and kindly
give me your best attention to what I am about to say. Let me beg you,
in the first place, to excuse Mr. Blyth’s odd behavior, which I see has
startled and astonished you. But, however wildly he may talk, I assure
you he means honorably and truthfully in all that he says. You will
understand this better if you will let me temperately explain to you the
proposal, which he has just made so abruptly and confusedly in his own
words.”
“Proposal, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover faintly, looking more
frightened than ever--“Proposal! Oh, sir! you don’t mean to say that
you’re going to ask me to part from little Mary?”
“I will ask you to do nothing that your own good sense and kind heart
may not approve,” answered the rector. “In plain terms then, and not to
waste time by useless words of preface, my friend, Mr. Blyth, feels such
admiration for your little Mary, and such a desire to help her, as far
as may be, in her great misfortune, that he is willing and eager to make
her future prospects in life his own peculiar care, by adopting her as
his daughter. This offer, though coming, as I am aware, from a perfect
stranger, can hardly astonish you, I think, if you reflect on the
unusually strong claims which the child has to the compassion and
kindness of all her fellow-creatures. Other strangers, as you have told
us, have shown the deepest interest in her on many occasions. It is not
therefore at all wonderful that a gentleman, whose Christian integrity
of motive I have had opportunities of testing during a friendship of
nearly twenty years, should prove the sincerity of his sympathy for the
poor child, by such a proposal as I have now communicated to you.”
“Don’t ask me to say yes to it, sir!” pleaded Mrs. Peckover, with
tears in her eyes. “Don’t ask me to do that! Anything else to prove my
gratitude for your kindness to us; but how can I part from my own little
Mary? You can’t have the heart to ask it of me!”
“I have the heart, Mrs. Peckover, to feel deeply for your distress at
the idea of parting from the child; but, for her sake, I must again ask
you to control your feelings. And, more than that, I must appeal to you
by your love to her, to grant a fair hearing to the petition which I now
make on Mr. Blyth’s behalf.”
“I would, indeed, if I could, sir,--but it’s just because I love her so,
that I can’t! Besides, as you yourself said, he’s a perfect stranger.”
“I readily admit the force of that objection on your part, Mrs.
Peckover; but let me remind you, that I vouch for the uprightness of his
character, and his fitness to be trusted with the child, after twenty
years’ experience of him. You may answer to that, that I am a stranger,
too; and I can only ask you, in return, frankly to accept my character
and position as the best proofs I can offer you that I am not unworthy
of your confidence. If you placed little Mary for instruction (as you
well might) in an asylum for the deaf and dumb, you would be obliged to
put implicit trust in the authorities of that asylum, on much the same
grounds as those I now advance to justify you in putting trust in me.”
“Oh, sir! don’t think--pray don’t think I am unwilling to trust you--so
kind and good as you have been to us to-day--and a clergyman too--I
should be ashamed of myself, if I could doubt--”
“Let me tell you, plainly and candidly, what advantages to the child Mr.
Blyth’s proposal holds out. He has no family of his own, and his wife
is, as he has hinted to you, an invalid for life. If you could only see
the gentleness and sweet patience with which she bears her affliction,
you would acknowledge that little Mary could appeal for an affectionate
welcome to no kinder heart than Mrs. Blyth’s. I assure you most
seriously, that the only danger I fear for the child in my friend’s
house, is that she would be spoilt by excessive indulgence. Though by no
means a rich man, Mr. Blyth is in an independent position, and can offer
her all the comforts of life. In one word, the home to which he is ready
to take her, is a home of love and happiness and security, in the best
and purest meaning of those words.”
“Don’t say any more, sir! Don’t break my heart by making me part with
her!”
“You will live, Mrs. Peckover, to thank me for trying your fortitude as
I try it now. Hear me a little longer, while I tell you what terms Mr.
Blyth proposes. He is not only willing but anxious--if you give the
child into his charge--that you should have access to her whenever you
like. He will leave his address in London with you. He desires, from
motives alike honorable to you and to himself, to defray your traveling
expenses whenever you wish to see the child. He will always acknowledge
your prior right to her affection and her duty. He will offer her every
facility in his power for constantly corresponding with you; and if
the life she leads in his house be, even in the slightest respect,
distasteful to her, he pledges himself to give her up to you again--if
you and she desire it--at any sacrifice of his own wishes and his own
feelings. These are the terms he proposes, Mrs. Peckover, and I can most
solemnly assure you on my honor as a clergyman and a gentleman, that
he will hold sacred the strict performance of all and each of these
conditions, exactly as I have stated them.”
“I ought to let her go, sir--I know I ought to show how grateful I am
for Mr. Blyth’s generosity by letting her go--but how can I, after all
the long time she’s been like my own child to me? Oh, ma’am, say a word
for me!--I seem so selfish for not giving her up--say a word for me!”
“Will you let me say a word for little Mary, instead?” rejoined Mrs.
Joyce. “Will you let me remind you that Mr. Blyth’s proposal offers her
a secure protection against that inhuman wretch who has ill-used her
already, and who may often ill-use her again, in spite of everything you
can do to prevent him. Pray think of that, Mrs. Peckover--pray do!”
Poor Mrs. Peckover showed that she thought of it bitterly enough, by a
fresh burst of tears.
The rector poured out a glass of water, and gave it to her. “Do not
think us inconsiderate or unfeeling,” he said, “in pressing Mr. Blyth’s
offer on you so perseveringly. Only reflect on Mary’s position, if she
remains in the circus as she grows up! Would all your watchful kindness
be sufficient to shield her against dangers to which I hardly
dare allude?--against wickedness which would take advantage of her
defenselessness, her innocence, and even her misfortune? Consider all
that Mr. Blyth’s proposal promises for her future life; for the sacred
preservation of her purity of heart and mind. Look forward to the day
when little Mary will have gown up to be a young woman; and I will
answer, Mrs. Peckover, for your doing full justice to the importance of
my friend’s offer.”
“I know it’s all true, sir; I know I’m an ungrateful, selfish
wretch--but only give me a little time to think; a little time longer to
be with the poor darling that I love like my own child!”
Doctor Joyce was just drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Peckover before
he answered, when the door opened, and the respectable Vance softly
entered the room.
“What do you want here?” said the rector, a little irritably. “Didn’t I
tell you not to come in again till I rang for you?’
“I beg your pardon, sir,” answered Vance, casting rather a malicious
look at the clown’s wife as he closed the door behind him--“but there’s
a person waiting in the hall, who says he comes on important business,
and must see you directly.”
“Who is he? What’s his name?”
“He says his name is Jubber, if you please, sir.”
Mrs. Peckover started from her chair with a scream. “Don’t--pray, for
mercy’s sake, sir, don’t let him into the garden where Mary is!” she
gasped, clutching Doctor Joyce by the arm in the extremity of her
terror. “He’s found us out, and come here in one of his dreadful
passions! He cares for nothing and for nobody, sir: he’s bad enough
to ill-treat her even before you. What am I to do? Oh, good gracious
heavens! what am I to do?”
“Leave everything to me, and sit down again,” said the rector kindly.
Then, turning to Vance, he added:--“Show Mr. Jubber into the cloak-room,
and say I will be with him directly.”
“Now, Mrs. Peckover,” continued Doctor Joyce, in the most perfectly
composed manner, “before I see this man (whose business I can guess at)
I have three important questions to ask of you. In the first place,
were you not a witness, last night, of his cruel ill-usage of that poor
child? (Mr. Blyth told me of it.) The fellow actually beat her, did he
not?”
“Oh, indeed he did, sir!--beat her most cruelly with a cane.”
“And you saw it all yourself?”
“I did, sir. He’d have used her worse, if I hadn’t been by to prevent
him.”
“Very well. Now tell me if you or your husband have signed any
agreement--any papers, I mean, giving this man a right to claim the
child as one of his performers?”
_“Me_ sign an agreement, sir! I never did such a thing in all my life.
Jubber would think himself insulted, if you only talked of his signing
an agreement with such as me or Jemmy.”
“Better and better. Now, my third question refers to little Mary
herself. I will undertake to put it out of this blackguard’s power ever
to lay a finger on her again--but I can only do so on one condition,
which it rests entirely with you to grant.”
“I’ll do anything to save her, sir; I will indeed.”
“The condition is that you consent to Mr. Blyth’s proposal; for I can
only ensure the child’s safety on those terms.”
“Then, sir, I consent to it,” said Mrs. Peckover, speaking with a sudden
firmness of tone and manner which almost startled Mrs. Joyce, who stood
by listening anxiously. “I consent to it; for I should be the vilest
wretch in the world, if I could say ‘no’ at such a time as this. I will
trust my precious darling treasure to you, sir, and to Mr. Blyth; from
this moment. God bless _her,_ and comfort _me!_ for I want comfort badly
enough. Oh, Mary! Mary! my own little Mary! to think of you and me ever
being parted like this!” The poor woman turned towards the garden as she
pronounced those words; all her fortitude forsook her in an instant; and
she sank back in her chair, sobbing bitterly.
“Take her out into the shrubbery where the children are, as soon as she
recovers a little,” whispered the rector to his wife, as he opened the
dining-room door.
Though Mr. Jubber presented, to all appearance, the most scoundrelly
aspect that humanity can assume, when he was clothed in his evening
uniform, and illuminated by his own circus lamplight, he nevertheless
reached an infinitely loftier climax of blackguard perfection when he
was arrayed in his private costume, and was submitted to the tremendous
ordeal of pure daylight. The most monstrous ape that could be picked
from the cages of the Zoological Gardens would have gained by comparison
with him as he now appeared, standing in the Rectory cloak-room, with
his debauched bloodshot eyes staring grimly contemptuous all about him,
with his yellow flabby throat exposed by a turn-down collar and a light
blue neck-tie, with the rouge still smeared over his gross unhealthy
cheeks, with his mangy shirt-front bespattered with bad embroidery
and false jewelry that had not even the politic decency to keep itself
clean. He had his hat on, and was sulkily running his dirty fingers
through the greasy black ringlets that flowed over his coat-collar, when
Doctor Joyce entered the cloak-room.
“You wished to speak with me?” said the rector, not sitting down
himself, and not asking Mr. Jubber to sit down.
“Oh! you’re Doctor Joyce?” said the fellow, assuming his most insolent
familiarity of manner directly.
“That is my name,” said Dr. Joyce very quietly. “Will you have the
goodness to state your business with me immediately, and in the fewest
possible words?”
“Hullo! You take that tone with me, do you?” said Jubber, setting his
arms akimbo, and tapping his foot fiercely on the floor; “you’re trying
to come Tommy Grand over me already, are you? Very good! I’m the man
to give you change in your own coin--so here goes! What do you mean by
enticing away my Mysterious Foundling? What do you mean by this private
swindle of talent that belongs to my circus?”
“You had better proceed a little,” said the rector, more quietly than
before. “Thus far I understand nothing whatever, except that you wish to
behave offensively to me; which, in a person of your appearance, is, I
assure you, of not the slightest consequence. You had much better save
time by stating what you have to say in plain words.”
“You want plain words--eh?” cried Jubber, losing his temper. “Then, by
God, you shall have them, and plain enough!”
“Stop a minute,” said Doctor Joyce. “If you use oaths in my presence
again, I shall ring for my servant, and order him to show you out of the
house.”
“You will?”
“I will, most certainly.”
There was a moment’s pause, and the blackguard and the gentleman looked
one another straight in the face. It was the old, invariable struggle,
between the quiet firmness of good breeding, and the savage obstinacy
of bad; and it ended in the old, invariable way. The blackguard flinched
first.
“If your servant lays a finger on me, I’ll thrash him within an inch
of his life,” said Jubber, looking towards the door, and scowling as he
looked. “But that’s not the point, just now--the point is, that I charge
you with getting my deaf and dumb girl into your house, to perform
before you on the sly. If you’re too virtuous to come to my circus--and
better than you have been there--you ought to have paid the proper
price for a private performance. What do you mean by treating a public
servant, like me, with your infernal aristocratic looks, as if I was
dirt under your feet, after such shabby doings as you’ve been guilty
of--eh?”
“May I ask how you know that the child you refer to has been at my house
to-day?” asked Doctor Joyce, without taking the slightest notice of Mr.
Jubber’s indignation.
“One of my people saw that swindling hypocrite of a Peckover taking her
in, and told me of it when I missed them at dinner. There! that’s good
evidence, I rather think! Deny it if you can.”
“I have not the slightest intention of denying it. The child is now in
my house.”
“And has gone through all her performances, of course? Ah! shabby!
shabby! I should be ashamed of myself, if _I’d_ tried to do a man out of
his rights like that.”
“I am most unaffectedly rejoiced to hear that you are capable, under
any circumstances, of being ashamed of yourself at all,” rejoined the
rector. “The child, however, has gone through no performances here, not
having been sent for with any such purpose as you suppose. But, as you
said just now, that’s not the point. Pray, why did you speak of the
little girl, a moment ago, as _your_ child?”
“Because she’s one of my performers, of course. But, come! I’ve had
enough of this; I can’t stop talking here all day; I want the child--so
just deliver her up at once, will you?--and turn out Peck as soon as you
like after. I’ll cure them both of ever doing this sort of thing again!
I’ll make them stick tight to the circus for the future! I’ll show
them--”
“You would be employing your time much more usefully,” said Doctor
Joyce, “if you occupied it in altering the bills of your performance,
so as to inform the public that the deaf and dumb child will not appear
before them again.”
“Not appear again?--not appear to-night in my circus? Why, hang me! if
I don’t think you’re trying to be funny all of a sudden! Alter my
bills--eh? Not bad! Upon my soul, not at all bad for a parson! Give us
another joke, sir; I’m all attention.” And Mr. Jubber put his hand to
his ear, grinning in a perfect fury of sarcasm.
“I am quite in earnest,” said the rector. “A friend of mine has adopted
the child, and will take her home with him tomorrow morning. Mrs.
Peckover (the only person who has any right to exercise control over
her) has consented to this arrangement. If your business here was to
take the child back to your circus, it is right to inform you that
she will not leave my house till she goes to London to-morrow with my
friend.”
“And you think I’m the sort of man to stand this?--and give up the
child?--and alter the bills?--and lose money?--and be as mild as
mother’s milk all the time? Oh! yes, of course! I’m so devilish fond of
you and your friend! You’re such nice men, you can make me do anything!
Damn all this jabber and nonsense!” roared the ruffian, passing suddenly
from insolence to fury, and striking his fist on the table. “Give me the
child at once, do you hear? Give her up, I say. I won’t leave the house
till I’ve got her!”
Just as Mr. Jubber swore for the second time, Doctor Joyce rang the
bell. “I told you what I should do, if you used oaths in my presence
again,” said the rector.
“And _I_ told _you_ I’d kill the servant, if he laid a finger on me,”
said Jubber, knocking his hat firmly on his head, and tucking up his
cuffs.
Vance appeared at the door, much less pompous than usual and displaying
an interesting paleness of complexion. Jubber spat into the palm of each
of his hands, and clenched his fists.
“Have you done dinner down stairs?” asked Doctor Joyce, reddening a
little, but still very quiet.
“Yes, sir,” answered Vance, in a remarkably conciliating voice.
“Tell James to go to the constable, and say I want him; and let the
gardener wait with you outside there in the hall.”
“Now,” said the rector, shutting the door again after issuing these
orders, and placing himself once more face to face with Mr. Jubber. “Now
I have a last word or two to say, which I recommend you to hear quietly.
In the first place, you have no right over the child whatever; for I
happen to know that you are without a signed agreement promising you her
services. (You had better hear me out for your own sake.) You have
no legal right, I say, to control the child in any manner. She is a
perfectly free agent, so far as you are concerned.--Yes! yes! you deny
it, of course! I have only to say that, if you attempt to back that
denial by still asserting your claim to her, and making a disturbance in
my house, as sure as you stand there, I’ll ruin you in Rubbleford and in
all the country round. (It’s no use laughing--I can do it!) You beat the
child in the vilest manner last night. I am a magistrate; and I have my
prosecutor and my witness of the assault ready whenever I choose to call
them. I can fine or imprison you, which I please. You know the public;
you know what they think of people who ill-use helpless children. If you
appeared in that character before me, the Rubbleford paper would report
it; and, so far as the interests of your circus are concerned, you would
be a ruined man in this part of the country--you would, you know it!
Now I will spare you this--not from any tenderness towards _you_--on
condition that you take yourself off quietly, and never let us hear from
you again. I strongly advise you to go at once; for if you wait till the
constable comes, I will not answer for it that my sense of duty may not
force me into giving you into custody.” With which words Doctor Joyce
threw open the door, and pointed to the hall.
Throughout the delivery of this speech, violent indignation,
ungovernable surprise, abject terror, and impotent rage ravaged by
turns the breast of Mr. Jubber. He stamped about the room, and uttered
fragments of oaths, but did not otherwise interrupt Dr. Joyce, while
that gentleman was speaking to him. When the rector had done, the
fellow had his insolent answer ready directly. To do him justice, he was
consistent, if he was nothing else--he was bully and blackguard to the
very last.
“Magistrate or parson,” he cried, snapping his fingers, “I don’t care a
damn for you in either capacity. You keep the child here at your peril!
I’ll go to the first lawyer in Rubbleford, and bring an action against
you. I’ll show you a little legal law! _You_ ruin me indeed! I can prove
that I only thrashed the little toad, the nasty deaf idiot, because she
deserved it. I’ll be even with you! I’ll have the child back wherever
you take her to. I’ll show you a little legal law! (Here he stepped
to the hall door.) I’ll be even with you, damme! I’ll charge you with
setting on your menial servants to assault me. (Here he looked fiercely
at the gardener, a freckled Scotch giant of six feet three, and
instantly descended five steps.) Lay a finger on me, if you dare! I’m
going straight from this house to the lawyer’s. I’m a free Englishman,
and I’ll have my rights and my legal law! I’ll bring my action! I’ll
ruin you! I’ll strip your gown off your back I’ll stop your mouth in
your own pulpit!” Here he strutted into the front garden; his words grew
indistinct, and his gross voice became gradually less and less audible.
The coachman at the outer gate saw the last of him, and reported that
he made his exit striking viciously at the flowers with his cane, and
swearing that he would ruin the rector with “legal law.”
After leaving certain directions with his servants, in the very
improbable event of Mr. Jubber’s return, Doctor Joyce repaired
immediately to his dining-room. No one was there, so he went on into the
garden.
Here he found the family and the visitors all assembled together; but
a great change had passed over the whole party during his absence. Mr.
Blyth, on being informed of the result of the rector’s conversation
with Mrs. Peckover, acted with his usual impetuosity and utter want of
discretion; writing down delightedly on little Mary’s slate, without the
slightest previous preparation or coaxing, that she was to go home with
him to-morrow, and be as happy as the day was long, all the rest of her
life. The result of this incautious method of proceeding was that the
child became excessively frightened, and ran away from everybody to take
refuge with Mrs. Peckover. She was still crying, and holding tight by
the good woman’s gown with both hands; and Valentine was still loudly
declaring to everybody that he loved her all the better for showing
such faithful affection to her earliest and best friend, when the rector
joined the party under the coolly-murmuring trees.
Doctor Joyce spoke but briefly of his interview with Mr. Jubber,
concealing much that had passed at it, and making very light of the
threats which the fellow had uttered on his departure. Mrs. Peckover,
whose self-possession seemed in imminent danger of being overthrown by
little Mary’s mute demonstrations of affection, listened anxiously to
every word the Doctor uttered; and, as soon as he had done, said that
she must go back to the circus directly, and tell her husband the truth
about all that had occurred, as a necessary set-off against the slanders
that were sure to be spoken against her by Mr. Jubber.
“Oh, never mind me, ma’am!” she said, in answer to the apprehensions
expressed by Mrs. Joyce about her reception when she got to the circus.
“The dear child’s safe; and that’s all I care about. I’m big enough and
strong enough to take my own part; and Jemmy, he’s always by to help
me when I can’t. May I come back, if you please, sir, this evening; and
say--and say?--”
She would have added, “and say good-bye;” but the thoughts which now
gathered round that one word, made it too hard to utter. She silently
curtseyed her thanks for the warm invitation that was given to her to
return; stooped down to the child; and, kissing her, wrote on the
slate, “I shall be back, dear, in the evening, at seven o’clock”--then
disengaged the little hands that still held fast by her gown, and
hurried from the garden, without once venturing to look behind her as
she crossed the sunny lawn.
Mrs. Joyce, and the young ladies, and the rector, all tried their best
to console little Mary; and all failed. She resolutely, though very
gently, resisted them; walking away into corners by herself, and looking
constantly at her slate, as if she could only find comfort in reading
the few words which Mrs. Peckover had written on it. At last, Mr. Blyth
took her up on his knee. She struggled to get away, for a moment--then
looked intently in his face; and, sighing very mournfully, laid her
head down on his shoulder. There was a world of promise for the future
success of Valentine’s affectionate project in that simple action, and
in the preference which it showed.
The day wore on quietly--evening came--seven o’clock struck--then
half-past--then eight--and Mrs. Peckover never appeared. Doctor Joyce
grew uneasy, and sent Vance to the circus to get some news of her.
It was again Mr. Blyth--and Mr. Blyth only--who succeeded in partially
quieting little Mary under the heavy disappointment of not seeing Mrs.
Peckover at the appointed time. The child had been restless at first,
and had wanted to go to the circus. Finding that they tenderly, but
firmly, detained her at the Rectory, she wept bitterly--wept so long,
that at last she fairly cried herself asleep in Valentine’s arms. He sat
anxiously supporting her with a patience that nothing could tire. The
sunset rays, which he had at first carefully kept from falling on her
face, vanished from the horizon; the quiet luster of twilight overspread
the sky--and still he refused to let her be taken from him; and said
he would sit as he was all through the night rather than let her be
disturbed.
Vance came back, and brought word that Mrs. Peckover would follow him
in half an hour. They had given her some work to do at the circus, which
she was obliged to finish before she could return to the Rectory.
Having delivered this message, Vance next produced a handbill, which he
said was being widely circulated all over Rubbleford; and which proved
to be the composition of Mr. Jubber himself. That ingenious ruffian,
having doubtless discovered that “legal law” was powerless to help him
to his revenge, and that it would be his wisest proceeding to keep clear
of Doctor Joyce in the rectory’s magisterial capacity, was now artfully
attempting to turn the loss of the child to his own profit, by dint of
prompt lying in his favorite large type, sprinkled with red letters.
He informed the public, through the medium of his hand-bills, that
the father of the Mysterious Foundling had been “most providentially”
discovered, and that he (Mr. Jubber) had given the child up immediately,
without a thought of what he might personally suffer, in pocket as well
as in mind, by his generosity. After this, he appealed confidently
to the sympathy of people of every degree, and of “fond parents”
especially, to compensate him by flocking in crowds to the circus;
adding, that if additional stimulus were wanting to urge the public into
“rallying round the Ring,” he was prepared to administer it forthwith,
in the shape of the smallest dwarf in the world, for whose services
he was then in treaty, and whose first appearance before a Rubbleford
audience would certainly take place in the course of a few days.
Such was Mr. Jubber’s ingenious contrivance for turning to good
pecuniary account the ignominious defeat which he had suffered at the
hands of Dr. Joyce.
After much patient reasoning and many earnest expostulations, Mrs. Joyce
at last succeeded in persuading Mr. Blyth that he might carry little
Mary upstairs to her bed, without any danger of awakening her.
The moonbeams were streaming through the windows over the broad,
old-fashioned landings of the rectory stair-case, and bathed the child’s
sleeping face in their lovely light, as Valentine carefully bore her in
his own arms to her bedroom. “Oh!” he whispered to himself as he paused
for an instant where the moon shone clearest on the landing; and looked
down on her--“Oh! if my poor Lavvie could only see little Mary now.”
They laid her, still asleep, on the bed, and covered her over lightly
with a shawl--then went down stairs again to wait for Mrs. Peckover.
The clown’s wife came in half an hour, as she had promised. They saw
sorrow and weariness in her face, as they looked at her. Besides a
bundle with the child’s few clothes in it, she brought the hair bracelet
and the pocket-handkerchief which had been found on little Mary’s
mother.
“Wherever the child goes,” she said, “these two things must go with
her.” She addressed Mr. Blyth as she spoke, and gave the hair bracelet
and the handkerchief into his own hands.
It seemed rather a relief than a disappointment to Mrs. Peckover to hear
that the child was asleep above stairs. All pain of parting would now be
spared, on one side at least. She went up to look at her on her bed, and
kissed her--but so lightly that little Mary’s sleep was undisturbed by
that farewell token of tenderness and love.
“Tell her to write to me, sir,” said poor Mrs. Peckover, holding
Valentine’s hand fast, and looking wistfully in his face through her
gathering tears. “I shall prize my first letter from her so much, if
it’s only a couple of lines. God bless you, sir; and good-bye. It ought
to be a comfort to me, and it is, to know that you will be kind to
her--I hope I shall get up to London some day, and see her myself. But
don’t forget the letter, sir: I shan’t fret so much after her when once
I’ve got that!”
She went away, sadly murmuring these last words many times over, while
Valentine was trying to cheer and reassure her, as they walked together
to the outer gate. Doctor Joyce accompanied them down the front-garden
path, and exacted from her a promise to return often to the Rectory,
while the circus was at Rubbleford; saying also that he and his family
desired her to look on them always as her fast and firm friends in any
emergency. Valentine entreated her, over and over again, to remember
the terms of their agreement, and to come and judge for herself of the
child’s happiness in her new home. She only answered “Don’t forget the
letter, sir!” And so they parted.
Early the next morning, Mr. Blyth and little Mary left the Rectory, and
started for London by the first coach.
CHAPTER VII. MADONNA IN HER NEW HOME.
The result of Mr. Blyth’s Adventure in the traveling Circus, and of the
events which followed it, was that little Mary at once became a member
of the painter’s family, and grew up happily, in her new home, into the
young lady who was called “Madonna” by Valentine, by his wife, and by
all intimate friends who were in the habit of frequenting the house.
Mr. Blyth’s first proceeding, after he had brought the little girl home
with him, was to take her to the most eminent aural surgeon of the
day. He did this, not in the hope of any curative result following the
medical examination, but as a first duty which he thought he owed to
her, now that she was under his sole charge. The surgeon was deeply
interested in the case; but, after giving it the most careful attention,
he declared that it was hopeless. Her sense of hearing, he said, was
entirely gone; but her faculty of speech, although it had been totally
disused (as Mrs. Peckover had stated) for more than two years past,
might, he thought, be imperfectly regained, at some future time, if a
tedious, painful, and uncertain process of education were resorted to,
under the direction of an experienced teacher of the deaf and dumb. The
child, however, had such a horror of this resource being tried, when
it was communicated to her, that Mr. Blyth instinctively followed Mrs.
Peckover’s example, and consulted the little creature’s feelings, by
allowing her in this particular--and indeed in most others--to remain
perfectly happy and contented in her own way.
The first influence which reconciled her almost immediately to her
new life, was the influence of Mrs. Blyth. The perfect gentleness and
patience with which the painter’s wife bore her incurable malady, seemed
to impress the child in a very remarkable manner from the first. The
sight of that frail, wasted life, which they told her, by writing, had
been shut up so long in the same room, and had been condemned to the
same weary inaction for so many years past, struck at once to Mary’s
heart and filled her with one of those new and mysterious sensations
which mark epochs in the growth of a child’s moral nature. Nor did these
first impressions ever alter. When years had passed away, and when Mary,
being “little” Mary no longer, possessed those marked characteristics of
feature and expression which gained for her the name of “Madonna,” she
still preserved all her child’s feeling for the painter’s wife. However
playful her manner might often be with Valentine, it invariably changed
when she was in Mrs. Blyth’s presence; always displaying, at such times,
the same anxious tenderness, the same artless admiration, and the
same watchful and loving sympathy. There was something secret and
superstitious in the girl’s fondness for Mrs. Blyth. She appeared
unwilling to let others know what this affection really was in all its
depth and fullness: it seemed to be intuitively preserved by her in the
most sacred privacy of her own heart, as if the feeling had been part of
her religion, or rather as if it had been a religion in itself.
Her love for her new mother, which testified itself thus strongly and
sincerely, was returned by that mother with equal fervor. From the day
when little Mary first appeared at her bedside, Mrs. Blyth felt, to use
her own expression, as if a new strength had been given her to enjoy her
new happiness. Brighter hopes, better health, calmer resignation,
and purer peace seemed to follow the child’s footsteps and be always
inherent in her very presence, as she moved to and fro in the sick room.
All the little difficulties of communicating with her and teaching her,
which her misfortune rendered inevitable, and which might sometime
have been felt as tedious by others, were so many distinct sources of
happiness, so many exquisite occupations of once-weary time to Mrs.
Blyth. All the friends of the family declared that the child had
succeeded where doctors, and medicines, and luxuries, and the sufferer’s
own courageous resignation had hitherto failed--for she had succeeded in
endowing Mrs. Blyth with a new life. And they were right. A fresh object
for the affections of the heart and the thoughts of the mind, is a fresh
life for every feeling and thinking human being, in sickness even as
well as in health.
In this sense, indeed, the child brought fresh life with her to all who
lived in her new home--to the servants, as well as to the master and
mistress. The cloud had rarely found its way into that happy dwelling
in former days: now the sunshine seemed fixed there for ever. No more
beautiful and touching proof of what the heroism of patient dispositions
and loving hearts can do towards guiding human existence, unconquered
and unsullied, through its hardest trials, could be found anywhere than
was presented by the aspect of the painter’s household. Here were two
chief members of one little family circle, afflicted by such incurable
bodily calamity as it falls to the lot of but few human beings to
suffer--yet here were no sighs, no tears, no vain repinings with each
new morning, no gloomy thoughts to set woe and terror watching by the
pillow at night. In this homely sphere, life, even in its frailest
aspects, was still greater than its greatest trials; strong to conquer
by virtue of its own innocence and purity, its simple unworldly
aspirations, its self-sacrificing devotion to the happiness and the
anxieties of others.
As the course of her education proceeded, many striking peculiarities
became developed in Madonna’s disposition, which seemed to be all more
or less produced by the necessary influence of her affliction on
the formation of her character. The social isolation to which that
affliction condemned her, the solitude of thought and feeling into which
it forced her, tended from an early period to make her mind remarkably
self-reliant, for so young a girl. Her first impression of strangers
seemed invariably to decide her opinion of them at once and for ever.
She liked or disliked people heartily; estimating them apparently
from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or personal
appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to
attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her--sometimes,
people, who, in Mr. Blyth’s opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors
to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took
a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure
or uneasiness in the society of others with the most diverting
candor--showing the extremest anxiety to conciliate and attract those
whom she liked; running away and hiding herself like a child, from those
whom she disliked. There were some unhappy people, in this latter class,
whom no persuasion could ever induce her to see a second time.
She could never give any satisfactory account of how she proceeded in
forming her opinions of others. The only visible means of arriving at
them, which her deafness and dumbness permitted her to use, consisted
simply in examination of a stranger’s manner, expression, and play of
features at a first interview. This process, however, seemed always
amply sufficient for her; and in more than one instance events proved
that her judgment had not been misled by it. Her affliction had tended,
indeed, to sharpen her faculties of observation and her powers of
analysis to such a remarkable degree, that she often guessed the general
tenor of a conversation quite correctly, merely by watching the minute
varieties of expression and gesture in the persons speaking--fixing her
attention always with especial intentness on the changeful and rapid
motions of their lips.
Exiled alike from the worlds of sound and speech, the poor girl’s
enjoyment of all that she could still gain of happiness, by means of the
seeing sense that was left her, was hardly conceivable to her speaking
and hearing fellow-creatures. All beautiful sights, and particularly the
exquisite combinations that Nature presents, filled her with an artless
rapture, which it affected the most unimpressible people to witness.
Trees were beyond all other objects the greatest luxuries that her eyes
could enjoy. She would sit for hours, on fresh summer evenings, watching
the mere waving of the leaves; her face flushed, her whole nervous
organization trembling with the sensations of deep and perfect happiness
which that simple sight imparted to her. All the riches and honors which
this world can afford, would not have added to her existence a tithe of
that pleasure which Valentine easily conferred on her, by teaching
her to draw; he might almost be said to have given her a new sense in
exchange for the senses that she had lost. She used to dance about the
room with the reckless ecstasy of a child, in her ungovernable delight
at the prospect of a sketching expedition with Mr. Blyth in the
Hampstead fields.
At a very early date of her sojourn with Valentine, it was discovered
that her total deafness did not entirely exclude her from every effect
of sound. She was acutely sensitive to the influence of percussion--that
is to say (if so vague and contradictory an expression may be allowed),
she could, under certain conditions, _feel_ the sounds that she could
not hear. For example, if Mr. Blyth wished to bring her to his side when
they were together in the painting-room, and when she happened neither
to be looking at him nor to be within reach of a touch he used to rub
his foot, or the end of his mahl-stick gently against the floor. The
slight concussion so produced, reached her nerves instantly; provided
always that some part of her body touched the floor on which such
experiments were tried.
As a means of extending her facilities of social communication, she was
instructed in the deaf and dumb alphabet by Valentine’s direction; he
and his wife, of course, learning it also; and many of their intimate
friends, who were often in the house, following their example for
Madonna’s sake. Oddly enough, however, she frequently preferred to
express herself, or to be addressed by others, according to the clumsier
and slower system of signs and writing, to which she had been accustomed
from childhood. She carefully preserved her little slate, with its
ornamented frame, and kept it hanging at her side, just as she wore it
on the morning of her visit to the Rectory-house at Rubbleford.
In one exceptional case, and one only, did her misfortune appear to
have the power of affecting her tranquillity seriously. Whenever, by any
accident, she happened to be left in the dark, she was overcome by the
most violent terror. It was found, even when others were with her, that
she still lost her self-possession at such times. Her own explanation
of her feelings on these occasions, suggested the simplest of reasons to
account for this weakness in her character. “Remember,” she wrote on her
slate, when a new servant was curious to know why she always slept with
a light in her room--“Remember that I am deaf _and blind too_ in the
darkness. You, who can hear, have a sense to serve you instead of sight,
in the dark--your ears are of use to you then, as your eyes are in the
light. _I_ hear nothing, and see nothing--I lose all my senses together
in the dark.”
It was only by rare accidents, which there was no providing against,
that she was ever terrified in this way, after her peculiarity had first
disclosed itself. In small things as well as in great, Valentine
never forgot that her happiness was his own especial care. He was more
nervously watchful over her than anyone else in the house--for she cost
him those secret anxieties which make the objects of our love doubly
precious to us. In all the years that she had lived under his roof,
he had never conquered his morbid dread that Madonna might be one day
traced and discovered by her father, or by relatives, who might have
a legal claim to her. Under this apprehension he had written to Doctor
Joyce and Mrs. Peckover a day or two after the child’s first entry under
his roof, pledging both the persons whom he addressed to the strictest
secrecy in all that related to Madonna and to the circumstances which
had made her his adopted child. As for the hair bracelet, if his
conscience had allowed him, he would have destroyed it immediately; but
feeling that this would be an inexcusable breach of trust, he was fain
to be content with locking it up, as well as the pocket-handkerchief,
in an old bureau in his painting-room, the key of which he always kept
attached to his own watch chain.
Not one of his London friends ever knew how he first met with Madonna.
He boldly baffled all forms of inquiry by requesting that they would
consider her history before she came into his house as a perfect blank,
and by simply presenting her to them as his adopted child. This method
of silencing troublesome curiosity succeeded certainly to admiration;
but at the expense of Mr. Blyth’s own moral character. Persons who knew
little or nothing of his real disposition and his early life, all shook
their heads, and laughed in secret; asserting that the mystery was plain
enough to the most ordinary capacity, and that the young lady could be
nothing more nor less than a natural child of his own.
Mrs. Blyth was far more indignant at this report than her husband, when
in due time it reached the painter’s house. Valentine rather approved of
the scandal than not, because it was likely to lead inquisitive people
in the wrong direction. He might have been now perfectly easy about the
preservation of his secret, but for the distrust which still clung to
him, in spite of himself, on the subject of Mrs. Peckover’s discretion.
He never wearied of warning that excellent woman to be careful in
keeping the important secret, every time she came to London to see
Madonna. Whether she only paid them a visit for the day, and then went
away again; or whether she spent her Christmas with them,
Valentine’s greeting always ended nervously with the same distrustful
question:--“Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Peckover, but are you quite sure
you have kept what you know about little Mary and her mother, and dates
and places and all that, properly hidden from prying people, since you
were here last?” At which point Mrs. Peckover generally answered by
repeating, always with the same sarcastic emphasis:--“Properly hidden,
did you say, sir? Of course I keep what I know properly hidden, for of
course I can hold my tongue. In my time, sir, it used always to take two
parties to play at a game of Hide and Seek. Who in the world is seeking
after little Mary, I should like to know?”
Perhaps Mrs. Peckover’s view of the case was the right one; or, perhaps,
the extraordinary discretion observed by the persons who were in the
secret of Madonna’s history, prevented any disclosure of the girl’s
origin from reaching her father or friends--presuming them to be still
alive and anxiously looking for her. But, at any rate, this much at
least is certain:--Nobody appeared to assert a claim to Valentine’s
adopted child, from the time when he took her home with him as his
daughter, to the time when the reader first made his acquaintance, many
pages back, in the congenial sphere of his own painting-room.*
* See note at the end of the book.
CHAPTER VIII. MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS.
It is now some time since we left Mr. Blyth and Madonna in the studio.
The first was engaged, it may be remembered, in the process of brushing
up Bacchanalian Nymphs in the foreground of a Classical landscape. The
second was modestly occupied in making a copy of the head of the Venus
de’ Medici.
The clock strikes one--and a furious ring is heard at the house-bell.
“There he is!” cries Mr. Blyth to himself. “There’s Zack! I know his
ring among a thousand; it’s worse even than the postman’s; it’s like an
alarm of fire!”
Here Valentine drums gently with his mahl-stick on the floor. Madonna
looks towards him directly; he waves his hand round and round rapidly
above his head. This is the sign which means “Zack.” The girl smiles
brightly, and blushes as she sees it. Zack is apparently one of her
special favorites.
While the young gentleman is being admitted at the garden gate, there is
a leisure moment to explain how he became acquainted with Mr. Blyth.
Valentine’s father, and Mrs. Thorpe’s father (the identical Mr.
Goodworth who figures at the beginning of this narrative as one of
the actors in the Sunday Drama at Baregrove Square), had been intimate
associates of the drowsy-story-telling and copious-port-drinking
old school. The friendly intercourse between these gentlemen spread,
naturally enough, to the sons and daughters who formed their respective
families. From the time of Mr. Thorpe’s marriage to Miss Goodworth,
however, the connection between the junior Goodworths and Blyths began
to grow less intimate--so far, at least, as the new bride and Valentine
were concerned. The rigid modern Puritan of Baregrove Square, and the
eccentric votary of the Fine Arts, mutually disapproved of each
other from the very first. Visits of ceremony were exchanged at long
intervals; but even these were discontinued on Madonna’s arrival under
Valentine’s roof: Mr. Thorpe being one of the first of the charitable
friends of the family who suspected her to be the painter’s natural
child. An almost complete separation accordingly ensued for some years,
until Zack grew up to boy’s estate, and was taken to see Valentine,
one day in holiday time, by his grandfather. He and the painter became
friends directly. Mr. Blyth liked boys, and boys of all degrees
liked him. From this time, Zack frequented Valentine’s house at every
opportunity, and never neglected his artist-friend in after years. At
the date of this story, one of the many points in his son’s conduct of
which Mr. Thorpe disapproved on the highest moral grounds, was the firm
determination the lad showed to keep up his intimacy with Mr. Blyth.
We may now get back to the ring at the bell.
Zack’s approach to the painting-room was heralded by a scuffling of
feet, a loud noise of talking, and a great deal of suspicious giggling
on the part of the housemaid, who had let him in. Suddenly these sounds
ceased--the door was dashed open--and Mr. Thorpe, junior, burst into the
room.
“Dear old Blyth! how are you?” cried Zack. “Have you had any leap-frog
since I was here last? Jump up, and let’s celebrate my return to the
painting-room with a bit of manly exercise in our old way. Come on! I’ll
give the first back. No shirking! Put down your palette; and one, two,
three--and over!”
Pronouncing these words, Zack ran to the end of the room opposite to
Valentine; and signalized his entry into the studio by the extraordinary
process of giving its owner, what is termed in the technical language of
leap-frog, “a capital back.”
Mr. Blyth put down his palette, brushes, and mahl-stick--tucked up his
cuffs and smiled--took a little trial skip into the air--and, running
down the room with the slightly tremulous step of a gentleman of fifty,
cleared Zack in gallant style; fell over on the other side, all in a
lump on his hands and feet; gave the return “back” conscientiously, at
the other end of the studio; and was leapt over in an instant, with a
shout of triumph, by Zack. The athletic ceremonies thus concluded, the
two stood up together and shook hands heartily.
“Too stiff, Blyth--too stiff and shaky by half,” said young Thorpe. “I
haven’t kept you up enough in your gymnastics lately. We must have some
more leap-frog in the garden; and I’ll bring my boxing gloves next time,
and open your chest by teaching you to fight. Splendid exercise, and so
good for your sluggish old liver.”
Delivering this opinion, Zack ran off to Madonna, who had been keeping
the Venus de’ Medici from being shaken down, while she looked on at the
leap-frog. “How is the dearest, prettiest, gentlest love in the world?”
cried Zack, taking her hand, and kissing it with boisterous fondness.
“Ah! she lets other old friends kiss her cheek, and only lets me kiss
her hand!--I say, Blyth, what a little witch she is--I’ll lay you two to
one she’s guessed what I’ve just been saying to her.”
A bright flush overspread the girl’s face while Zack addressed her. Her
tender blue eyes looked up at him, shyly conscious of the pleasure that
their expression was betraying; and the neat folds of her pretty grey
dress, which had lain so still over her bosom when she was drawing,
began to rise and fall gently now, when Zack was holding her hand. If
young Thorpe had not been the most thoughtless of human beings--as much
a boy still, in many respects, as when he was locked up in his father’s
dressing-room for bad behavior at church--he might have guessed long ago
why he was the only one of Madonna’s old friends whom she did not permit
to kiss her on the cheek!
But Zack neither guessed, nor thought of guessing, anything of this
sort. His flighty thoughts flew off in a moment from the young lady
to his cigar-case; and he walked away to the hearth-rug, twisting up a
piece of waste paper into a lighter as he went.
When Madonna returned to her drawing, her eyes wandered timidly once or
twice to the place where Zack was standing, when she thought he was
not looking at her; and, assuredly, so far as personal appearance was
concerned, young Thorpe was handsome enough to tempt any woman into
glancing at him with approving eyes. He was over six feet in height;
and, though then little more than nineteen years old, was well developed
in proportion to his stature. His boxing, rowing, and other athletic
exercises had done wonders towards bringing his naturally vigorous,
upright frame to the perfection of healthy muscular condition. Tall and
strong as he was, there was nothing stiff or ungainly in his movements,
He trod easily and lightly, with a certain youthful suppleness and hardy
grace in all his actions, which set off his fine bodily formation to the
best advantage. He had keen, quick, mischievous grey eyes--a thoroughly
English red and white complexion--admirably bright and regular
teeth--and curly light brown hair, with a very peculiar golden tinge
in it, which was only visible when his head was placed in a particular
light. In short, Zack was a manly, handsome fellow, a thorough Saxon,
every inch of him; and (physically speaking at least) a credit to the
parents and the country that had given him birth.
“I say, Blyth, do you and Madonna mind smoke?” asked Zack, lighting his
cigar before there was time to answer him.
“No--no,” said Valentine. “But, Zack, you wrote me word that your father
had taken all your cigars away from you--”
“So he has, and all my pocket-money too. But I’ve taken to helping
myself, and I’ve got some splendid cigars. Try one, Blyth,” said the
young gentleman, luxuriously puffing out a stream of smoke through each
nostril.
“Taken to helping yourself!” exclaimed Mr. Blyth. “What do you mean?”
“Oh!” said Zack, “don’t be afraid. It’s not thieving--it’s only barter.
Look here, my dear fellow, this is how it is. A friend of mine, a junior
clerk in our office, has three dozen cigars, and I have two staring
flannel shirts, which are only fit for a snob to wear. The junior clerk
gives me the three dozen cigars, and I give the junior clerk the two
staring flannel shirts. That’s barter, and barter’s commerce, old boy!
it’s all my father’s fault; he will make a tradesman of me. Dutiful
behavior, isn’t it, to be doing a bit of commerce already on my own
account?”
“I’ll tell you what, Zack,” said Mr. Blyth, “I don’t like the way you’re
going on in at all. Your last letter made me very uneasy, I can promise
you.”
“You can’t be half as uneasy as I am,” rejoined Zack. “I’m jolly enough
here, to be sure, because I can’t help it somehow; but at home I’m the
most miserable devil on the face of the earth. My father baulks me in
everything, and makes me turn hypocrite, and take him in, in all sorts
of ways--which I hate myself for doing; and yet can’t help doing,
because he forces me to it. Why does he want to make me live in the same
slow way that he does himself? There’s some difference in our ages, I
rather think! Why does he bully me about being always home by eleven
o’clock? Why does he force me into a tea-merchant’s office, when I want
to be an artist, like you? I’m a perfect slave to commerce already.
What do you think? I’m supposed to be sampling in the city at this very
moment. The junior clerk’s doing the work for me; and he’s to have
one of my dress-waistcoats to compensate him for the trouble. First
my shirts; then my waistcoat; then my--confound it, sir, I shall be
stripped to the skin, if this sort of thing goes on much longer!”
“Gently, Zack, gently. What would your father say if he heard you?”
“Oh, yes! it’s all very well, you old humbug, to shake your head at me;
but you wouldn’t like being forced into an infernal tea-shop, and having
all your pocket-money stopped, if it was your case. I won’t stand it--I
have the patience of Job--but I won’t stand it! My mind’s made up:
I want to be an artist, and I _will_ be an artist. Don’t lecture,
Blyth--it’s no use; but just tell me how I’m to begin learning to draw.”
Here Zack cunningly touched Valentine on his weak point. Art was his
grand topic; and to ask his advice on that subject was to administer the
sweetest flattery to his professional pride. He wheeled his chair round
directly, so as to face young Thorpe. “If you’re really set on being an
artist,” he began enthusiastically, “I rather fancy, Master Zack, I’m
the man to help you. First of all, you must purify your taste by copying
the glorious works of Greek sculpture--in short, you must form yourself
on the Antique. Look there!--just what Madonna’s doing now; _she’s_
forming herself on the Antique.”
Zack went immediately to look at Madonna’s drawing, the outline of
which was now finished. “Beautiful! Splendid! Ah! confound it! yes! the
glorious Greeks, and so forth, just as you say, Blyth. A most wonderful
drawing! the finest thing of the kind I ever saw in my life!” Here
he transferred his superlatives to his fingers, communicating them to
Madonna through the medium of the deaf and dumb alphabet, which he had
superficially mastered with extraordinary rapidity under Mr. and Mrs.
Blyth’s tuition. Whatever Zack’s friends did Zack always admired with
the wildest enthusiasm, and without an instant’s previous consideration.
Any knowledge of what he praised, or why he praised it, was a slight
superfluity of which he never felt the want. If Madonna had been a great
astronomer, and had shown him pages of mathematical calculations, he
would have overwhelmed her with eulogies just as glibly as--by means of
the finger alphabet--he was overwhelming her now.
But Valentine’s pupil was used to be criticized as well as praised; and
her head was in no danger of being turned by Zack’s admiration of her
drawing. Looking up at him with a sly expression of incredulity, she
signed these words in reply:--“I am afraid it ought to be a much better
drawing than it is. Do you really like it?” Zack rejoined impetuously
by a fresh torrent of superlatives. She watched his face, for a moment,
rather anxiously and inquiringly, then bent down quickly over her
drawing. He walked back to Valentine. Her eyes followed him--then
returned once more to the paper before her. The color began to rise
again in her cheek; a thoughtful expression stole calmly over her clear,
happy eyes; she played nervously with the port-crayon that held her
black and white chalk; looked attentively at the drawing; and, smiling
very prettily at some fancy of her own, proceeded assiduously with her
employment, altering and amending, as she went on, with more than usual
industry and care.
What was Madonna thinking of? If she had been willing, and able, to
utter her thoughts, she might have expressed them thus: “I wonder
whether he likes my drawing? Shall I try hard if I can’t make it better
worth pleasing him? I will! it shall be the best thing I have ever done.
And then, when it is nicely finished, I will take it secretly to Mrs.
Blyth to give from me, as my present to Zack.”
“Look there,” said Valentine, turning from his picture towards Madonna,
“look, my boy, how carefully that dear good girl there is working from
the Antique! Only copy her example, and you may be able to draw from the
life in less than a year’s time.”
“You don’t say so? I should like to sit down and begin at once. But,
look here, Blyth, when you say ‘draw from the life,’ there can’t be the
smallest doubt, of course, about what you mean--but, at the same
time, if you would only be a little less professional in your way of
expressing yourself--”
“Good heavens, Zack, in what barbarous ignorance of art your parents
must have brought you up! ‘Drawing from the life,’ means drawing the
living human figure from the living human being which sits at a shilling
an hour, and calls itself a model.”
“Ah, to be sure! Some of these very models whose names are chalked
up here over your fireplace?--Delightful! Glorious! Drawing from the
life--just the very thing I long for most. Hullo!” exclaimed Zack,
reading the memoranda, which it was Mr. Blyth’s habit to scrawl, as they
occurred to him, on the wall over the chimney-piece--“Hullo! here’s a
woman-model; ‘Amelia Bibby’--Blyth! let me dash at once into drawing
from the life, and let me begin with Amelia Bibby.”
“Nothing of the sort, Master Zack,” said Valentine. “You may end with
Amelia Bibby, when you are fit to study at the Royal Academy. She’s a
capital model, and so is her sister, Sophia. The worst of it is, they
quarreled mortally a little while ago; and now, if an artist has Sophia,
Amelia won’t come to him. And Sophia of course returns the compliment,
and won’t sit to Amelia’s friends. It’s awkward for people who used to
employ them both, as I did.”
“What did they quarrel about?” inquired Zack.
“About a tea-pot,” answered Mr. Blyth. “You see, they are daughters
of one of the late king’s footmen, and are desperately proud of their
aristocratic origin. They used to live together as happy as birds,
without a hard word ever being spoken between them, till, one day, they
happened to break their tea-pot, which of course set them talking about
getting a new one. Sophia said it ought to be earthenware, like the
last; Amelia contradicted her, and said it ought to be metal. Sophia
said all the aristocracy used earthenware; Amelia said all the
aristocracy used metal. Sophia said she was oldest, and knew best;
Amelia said she was youngest, and knew better. Sophia said Amelia was an
impudent jackanapes; Amelia said Sophia was a plebeian wretch. From that
moment, they parted. Sophia sits in her own lodging, and drinks tea out
of earthenware; Amelia sits in _her_ own lodging, and drinks tea out of
metal. They swear never to make it up, and abuse each other furiously
to everybody who will listen to them. Very shocking, and very curious at
the same time--isn’t it, Zack?”
“Oh, capital! A perfect picture of human nature to us men of the world,”
exclaimed the young gentleman, smoking with the air of a profound
philosopher. “But tell me, Blyth, which is the prettiest, Amelia or
Sophia? Metal or Earthenware? My mind’s made up, beforehand, to study
from the best-looking of the two, if you have no objection.”
“I have the strongest possible objection, Zack, to talking nonsense
where a serious question is concerned. Are you, or are you not, in
earnest in your dislike of commerce and your resolution to be an
artist?”
“I mean to be a painter, or I mean to leave home,” answered Zack,
resolutely. “If you don’t help me, I’ll be off as sure as fate! I have
half a mind to cut the office from this moment. Lend me a shilling,
Blyth; and I’ll toss up for it. Heads--liberty and the fine arts!
Tails--the tea-merchant!”
“If you don’t go back to the City to-day,” said Valentine, “and stick to
your engagements, I wash my hands of you--but if you wait patiently, and
promise to show all the attention you can to your father’s wishes, I’ll
teach you myself to draw from the Antique. If somebody can be found who
has influence enough with your father to get him to enter you at the
Royal Academy, you must be prepared beforehand with a drawing that’s fit
to show. Now, if you promise to be a good boy, you shall come here, and
learn the A B C of Art, every evening if you like. We’ll have a regular
little academy,” continued Valentine, putting down his palette and
brushes, and rubbing his hands in high glee; “and if it isn’t too much
for Lavvie, the evening studies shall take place in her room; and she
shall draw, poor dear soul, as well as the rest of us. There’s an idea
for you, Zack! Mr. Blyth’s Drawing Academy, open every evening--with
light refreshment for industrious students. What do you say to it?”
“Say? by George, sir, I’ll come every night, and get through acres of
chalk and miles of drawing paper!” cried Zack, catching all Valentine’s
enthusiasm on the instant. “Let’s go up stairs and tell Mrs. Blyth about
it directly.”
“Stop a minute, Zack,” interposed Mr. Blyth. “What time ought you to be
back in the City? it’s close on two o’clock now.”
“Oh! three o’clock will do. I’ve got lots of time, yet--I can walk it in
half-an-hour.”
“You have got about ten minutes more to stay,” said Valentine in his
firmest manner. “Occupy them if you like, in going up stairs to Mrs.
Blyth, and take Madonna with you. I’ll follow as soon as I’ve put away
my brushes.”
Saying those words, Mr. Blyth walked to the place where Madonna was
still at work. She was so deeply engaged over her drawing that she had
never once looked up from it, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, or more;
and when Valentine patted her shoulder approvingly, and made her a sign
to leave off, she answered by a gesture of entreaty, which eloquently
enough implored him to let her proceed a little longer with her
employment. She had never at other times claimed an indulgence of this
kind, when she was drawing from the Antique--but then, she had never, at
other times, been occupied in making a copy which was secretly intended
as a present for Zack.
Valentine, however, easily induced her to relinquish her port-crayon. He
laid his hand on his heart, which was the sign that had been adopted to
indicate Mrs. Blyth. Madonna started up, and put her drawing materials
aside immediately.
Zack, having thrown away the end of his cigar, gallantly advanced and
offered her his arm. As she approached, rather shyly, to take it, he
also laid his hand on his heart, and pointed up stairs. The gesture
was quite enough for her. She understood at once that they were going
together to see Mrs. Blyth.
“Whether Zack really turns out a painter or not,” said Valentine to
himself, as the door closed on the two young people, “I believe I have
hit on the best plan that ever was devised for keeping him steady. As
long as he comes to me regularly, he can’t break out at night, and get
into mischief. Upon my word, the more I think of that notion of mine
the better I like it. I shouldn’t at all wonder if my evening Academy
doesn’t end in working the reformation of Zack!”
When Mr. Blyth pronounced those last words, if he could only have
looked a little way into the future--if he could only have suspected how
strangely the home-interests dearest to his heart were connected with
his success in working the reformation of Zack--the smile which was now
on his face would have left it in a moment; and, for the first time
in his life, he would have sat before one of his own pictures in the
character of an unhappy man.
CHAPTER IX. THE TRIBULATIONS OF ZACK.
A week elapsed before Mrs. Blyth’s wavering health permitted her husband
to open the sittings of his evening drawing-academy in the invalid room.
During every day of that week, the chances of taming down Zack into
a reformed character grew steadily more and more hopeless. The lad’s
home-position, at this period, claims a moment’s serious attention.
Zack’s resistance to his father’s infatuated severity was now shortly to
end in results of the last importance to himself, to his family, and to
his friends.
A specimen has already been presented of Mr. Thorpe’s method of
religiously educating his son, at six years old, by making him attend a
church service of two hours in length; as, also, of the manner in
which he sought to drill the child into premature discipline by dint of
Sabbath restrictions and Select Bible Texts. When that child grew to a
boy, and when the boy developed to a young man, Mr. Thorpe’s educational
system still resolutely persisted in being what it had always been
from the first. His idea of Religion defined it to be a system of
prohibitions; and, by a natural consequence, his idea of Education
defined _that_ to be a system of prohibitions also.
His method of bringing up his son once settled, no earthly consideration
could move him from it an inch, one way or the other. He had two
favorite phrases to answer every form of objection, every variety of
reasoning, every citation of examples. No matter with what arguments
the surviving members of Mrs. Thorpe’s family from time to time assailed
him, the same two replies were invariably shot back at them in turn from
the parental quiver. Mr. Thorpe calmly--always calmly--said, first, that
he “would never compound with vice” (which was what nobody asked him
to do), and, secondly, that he would, in no instance, great or small,
“consent to act from a principle of expediency:” this last assertion, in
the case of Zack, being about equivalent to saying that if he set out
to walk due north, and met a lively young bull galloping with his head
down, due south, he would not consent to save his own bones, or yield
the animal space enough to run on, by stepping aside a single inch in a
lateral direction, east or west.
“My son requires the most unremitting parental discipline and control,”
Mr. Thorpe remarked, in explanation of his motives for forcing Zack to
adopt a commercial career. “When he is not under my own eye at home, he
must be under the eyes of devout friends, in whom I can place unlimited
confidence. One of these devout friends is ready to receive him into
his counting-house; to keep him industriously occupied from nine in
the morning till six in the evening; to surround him with estimable
examples; and, in short, to share with me the solemn responsibility of
managing his moral and religious training. Persons who ask me to allow
motives of this awfully important nature to be modified in the
smallest degree by any considerations connected with the lad’s natural
disposition (which has been a source of grief to me from his childhood)
with his bodily gifts of the flesh (which have hitherto only served to
keep him from the cultivation of the gifts of the spirit); or with his
own desires (which I know by bitter experience to be all of the world,
worldly);--persons, I say, who ask me to do any of these things, ask me
also to act from a godless principle of expediency, and to violate moral
rectitude by impiously compounding with vice.”
Acting on such principles of parental discipline as these, Mr. Thorpe
conscientiously believed that he had done his duty, when he had at last
forced his son into the merchant’s office. He had, in truth, perpetrated
one of the most serious mistakes which it is possible for a wrong-headed
father to commit. For once, Zack had not exaggerated in saying that his
aversion to employment in a counting-house amounted to absolute horror.
His physical peculiarities, and the habits which they had entailed on
him from boyhood, made life in the open air, and the constant use of his
hardy thews and sinews a constitutional necessity. He felt--and there
was no self-delusion in the feeling--that he should mope and pine, like
a wild animal in a cage, under confinement in an office, only varied
from morning to evening by commercial walking expeditions of a miserable
mile or two in close and crowded streets. These forebodings--to say
nothing of his natural yearning towards adventure, change of scene, and
exhilarating bodily exertion--would have been sufficient of themselves
to have decided him to leave his home, and battle his way through the
world (he cared not where or how, so long as he battled it freely), but
for one consideration. Reckless as he was, that consideration stayed his
feet on the brink of a sacred threshold which he dared not pass, perhaps
to leave it behind him for ever--the threshold of his mother’s door.
Strangely as it expressed itself, and irregularly as it influenced
his conduct, Zack’s love for his mother was yet, in its own nature, a
beautiful and admirable element in his character; full of promise for
the future, if his father had been able to discover it, and had been
wise enough to be guided by the discovery. As to outward expression, the
lad’s fondness for Mrs. Thorpe was a wild, boisterous, inconsiderate,
unsentimental fondness, noisily in harmony with his thoughtless,
rattle-pated disposition. It swayed him by fits and starts; influencing
him nobly to patience and forbearance at one time; abandoning him, to
all appearance, at another. But it was genuine, ineradicable fondness,
nevertheless--however often heedlessness and temptation might overpower
the still small voice in which its impulses spoke to his conscience, and
pleaded with his heart.
Among other unlucky results of Mr. Thorpe’s conscientious imprisonment
of his son in a merchant’s office, was the vast increase which Zack’s
commercial penance produced in his natural appetite for the amusements
and dissipations of the town. After nine hours of the most ungrateful
daily labor that could well have been inflicted on him, the sight
of play-bills and other wayside advertisements of places of public
recreation appealed to him on his way home, with irresistible
fascination.
Mr. Thorpe drew the line of demarcation between permissible and
forbidden evening amusements at the lecture-rooms of the Royal and
Polytechnic Institutions, and the oratorio performances in Exeter Hall.
All gates opening on the outer side of the boundary thus laid down, were
gates of Vice--gates that no son of his should ever be allowed to pass.
The domestic laws which obliged Zack to be home every night at eleven
o’clock, and forbade the possession of a door-key, were directed
especially to the purpose of closing up against him the forbidden
entrances to theaters and public gardens--places of resort which Mr.
Thorpe characterized, in a strain of devout allegory, as “Labyrinths of
National Infamy.” It was perfectly useless to suggest to the father (as
some of Zack’s maternal relatives did suggest to him), that the son
was originally descended from Eve, and was consequently possessed of
an hereditary tendency to pluck at forbidden fruit; and that his
disposition and age made it next to a certainty, that if he were
restrained from enjoying openly the amusements most attractive to him,
he would probably end in enjoying them by stealth. Mr. Thorpe met
all arguments of this kind by registering his usual protest against
“compounding with vice;” and then drew the reins of discipline tighter
than ever, by way of warning off all intrusive hands from attempting to
relax them for the future.
Before long, the evil results predicted by the opponents of the father’s
plan for preventing the son from indulging in public amusements,
actually occurred. At first, Zack gratified his taste for the drama, by
going to the theater whenever he felt inclined; leaving the performances
early enough to get home by eleven o’clock, and candidly acknowledging
how he had occupied the evening, when the question was asked at
breakfast the next morning. This frankness of confession was always
rewarded by rebukes, threats, and reiterated prohibitions, administered
by Mr. Thorpe with a crushing assumption of superiority to every
mitigating argument, entreaty, or excuse that his son could urge, which
often irritated Zack into answering defiantly, and recklessly repeating
his offense. Finding that all menaces and reproofs only ended in making
the lad ill-tempered and insubordinate for days together, Mr. Thorpe so
far distrusted his own powers of correction as to call in the aid of his
prime clerical adviser, the Reverend Aaron Yollop; under whose ministry
he sat, and whose portrait, in lithograph, hung in the best light on the
dining-room wall at Baregrove Square.
Mr. Yollop’s interference was at least weighty enough to produce a
positive and immediate result: it drove Zack to the very last limits of
human endurance. The reverend gentleman’s imperturbable self possession
defied the young rebel’s utmost powers of irritating reply, no matter
how vigorously he might exert them. Once vested with the paternal
commission to rebuke, prohibit, and lecture, as the spiritual pastor and
master of Mr. Thorpe’s disobedient son, Mr. Yollop flourished in his new
vocation in exact proportion to the resistance offered to the exercise
of his authority. He derived a grim encouragement from the wildest
explosions of Zack’s fury at being interfered with by a man who had
no claim of relationship over him, and who gloried, professionally, in
experimenting on him, as a finely-complicated case of spiritual disease.
Thrice did Mr. Yollop, in his capacity of a moral surgeon, operate on
his patient, and triumph in the responsive yells which his curative
exertions elicited. At the fourth visit of attendance, however, every
angry symptom suddenly and marvelously disappeared before the first
significant flourish of the clerical knife. Mr. Yollop had triumphed
where Mr. Thorpe had failed! The case which had defied lay treatment had
yielded to the parsonic process of cure; and Zack, the rebellious, was
tamed at last into spending his evenings in decorous dullness at home!
It never occurred to Mr. Yollop to doubt, or to Mr. Thorpe to ascertain,
whether the young gentleman really went to bed, after he had retired
obediently, at the proper hour, to his sleeping room. They saw him come
home from business sullenly docile and speechlessly subdued, take his
dinner and his book in the evening, and go up stairs quietly, after the
house door had been bolted for the night. They saw him thus acknowledge,
by every outward proof, that he was crushed into thorough submission;
and the sight satisfied them to their heart’s content. No men are so
short-sighted as persecuting men. Both Mr. Thorpe and his coadjutor were
persecutors on principle, wherever they encountered opposition; and both
were consequently incapable of looking beyond immediate results. The sad
truth was, however, that they had done something more than discipline
the lad. They had fairly worried his native virtues of frankness and
fair-dealing out of his heart; they had beaten him back, inch by inch,
into the miry refuge of sheer duplicity. Zack was deceiving them both.
Eleven o’clock was the family hour for going to bed at Baregrove Square.
Zack’s first proceeding on entering his room was to open his window
softly, put on an old traveling cap, and light a cigar. It was December
weather at that time; but his hardy constitution rendered him as
impervious to cold as a young Polar bear. Having smoked quietly for
half an hour, he listened at his door till the silence in Mr. Thorpe’s
dressing-room below assured him that his father was safe in bed, and
invited him to descend on tiptoe--with his boots under his arm--into
the hall. Here he placed his candle, with a box of matches by it, on a
chair, and proceeded to open the house door with the noiseless dexterity
of a practiced burglar--being always careful to facilitate the safe
performance of this dangerous operation by keeping lock, bolt, and
hinges well oiled. Having secured the key, blown out the candle, and
noiselessly closed the door behind him, he left the house, and started
for the Haymarket, Covent Garden, or the Strand, a little before
midnight--or, in other words, set forth on a nocturnal tour of
amusement, just at the time when the doors of respectable places of
public recreation (which his father prevented him from attending) were
all closed, and the doors of disreputable places all thrown open.
One precaution, and one only, did Zack observe while enjoying the
dangerous diversions into which paternal prohibitions, assisted by
filial perversity, now thrust him headlong, He took care to keep sober
enough to be sure of getting home before the servants had risen, and
to be certain of preserving his steadiness of hand and stealthiness of
foot, while bolting the door and stealing up stairs for an hour or two
of bed. Knowledge of his own perilous weakness of brain, as a drinker,
rendered him thus uncharacteristically temperate and self-restrained,
so far as indulgence in strong liquor was concerned. His first glass of
grog comforted him; his second agreeably excited him; his third (as
he knew by former experience) reached his weak point on a sudden, and
robbed him treacherously of his sobriety.
Three or four times a week, for nearly a month, had he now enjoyed his
unhallowed nocturnal rambles with perfect impunity--keeping them secret
even from his friend Mr. Blyth, whose toleration, expansive as it was,
he well knew would not extend to viewing leniently such offenses as
haunting night-houses at two in the morning, while his father believed
him to be safe in bed. But one mitigating circumstance can be urged in
connection with the course of misconduct which he was now habitually
following. He had still grace enough left to feel ashamed of his own
successful duplicity, when he was in his mother’s presence.
But circumstances unhappily kept him too much apart from Mrs. Thorpe,
and so prevented the natural growth of a good feeling, which flourished
only under her influence: and which, had it been suffered to arrive at
maturity, might have led to his reform. All day he was at the office,
and his irksome life there only inclined him to look forward with
malicious triumph to the secret frolic of the night. Then, in the
evening, Mr. Thorpe often thought it advisable to harangue him
seriously, by way of not letting the reformed rake relapse for want of
a little encouraging admonition of the moral sort. Nor was Mr. Yollop at
all behindhand in taking similar precautions to secure the new convert
permanently, after having once caught him. Every word these two
gentlemen spoke only served to harden the lad afresh, and to deaden the
reproving and reclaiming influence of his mother’s affectionate looks
and confiding words. “I should get nothing by it, even if I _could_ turn
over a new leaf;” thought Zack, shrewdly and angrily, when his father
or his father’s friend favored him with a little improving advice: “Here
they are, worrying away again already at their pattern good boy, to make
him a better.”
Such was the point at which the Tribulations of Zack had arrived, at the
period when Mr. Valentine Blyth resolved to set up a domestic Drawing
Academy in his wife’s room; with the double purpose of amusing his
family circle in the evening, and reforming his wild young friend by
teaching him to draw from the “glorious Antique.”
CHAPTER X. MR. BLYTH’S DRAWING ACADEMY.
When the week of delay had elapsed, and when Mrs. Blyth felt strong
enough to receive company in her room, Valentine sent the promised
invitation to Zack which summoned him to his first drawing-lesson.
The locality in which the family drawing academy was to be held deserves
a word of preliminary notice. It formed the narrow world which bounded,
by day and night alike, the existence of the painter’s wife.
By throwing down a partition-wall, Mrs. Blyth’s room had been so
enlarged, as to extend along the whole breadth of one side of the house,
measuring from the front to the back garden windows. Considerable as the
space was which had been thus obtained, every part of it from floor to
ceiling was occupied by objects of beauty proper to the sphere in which
they were placed: some, solid and serviceable, where usefulness
was demanded; others light and elegant, where ornament alone was
necessary--and all won gloriously by Valentine’s brush; by the long,
loving, unselfish industry of many years. Mrs. Blyth’s bed, like
everything else that she used in her room, was so arranged as to offer
her the most perfect comfort and luxury attainable in her suffering
condition. The framework was broad enough to include within its
dimensions a couch for day and a bed for night. Her reading easel and
work-table could be moved within reach, in whatever position she lay.
Immediately above her hung an extraordinary complication of loose cords,
which ran through ornamental pulleys of the quaintest kind, fixed at
different places in the ceiling, and communicating with the bell, the
door, and a pane of glass in the window which opened easily on hinges.
These were Valentine’s own contrivances to enable his wife to summon
attendance, admit visitors, and regulate the temperature of her room at
will, by merely pulling at any one of the loops hanging within reach
of her hand, and neatly labeled with ivory tablets, inscribed “Bell,”
“Door,” “Window.” The cords comprising this rigging for invalid use were
at least five times more numerous than was necessary for the purpose
they were designed to serve; but Mrs. Blyth would never allow them to be
simplified by dexterous hands. Clumsy as their arrangement might appear
to others, in her eyes it was without a fault: every useless cord was
sacred from the reforming knife, for Valentine’s sake.
Imprisoned to one room, as she had now been for years, she had not lost
her natural womanly interest in the little occupations and events of
household life. From the studio to the kitchen, she managed every day,
through channels of communication invented by herself, to find out the
latest domestic news; to be present in spirit at least if not in body,
at family consultations which could not take place in her room; to know
exactly how her husband was getting on downstairs with his pictures;
to rectify in time any omission of which Mr. Blyth or Madonna might
be guilty in making the dinner arrangements, or in sending orders to
tradespeople; to keep the servants attentive to their work, and to
indulge or control them, as the occasion might require. Neither by look
nor manner did she betray any of the sullen listlessness or fretful
impatience sometimes attendant on long, incurable illness. Her voice,
low as its tones were, was always cheerful, and varied musically and
pleasantly with her varying thoughts. On her days of weakness, when she
suffered much under her malady, she was accustomed to be quite still
and quiet, and to keep her room darkened--these being the only signs by
which any increase in her disorder could be detected by those about
her. She never complained when the bad symptoms came on; and never
voluntarily admitted, even on being questioned, that the spine was more
painful to her than usual.
She was dressed very prettily for the opening night of the Drawing
Academy, wearing a delicate lace cap, and a new silk gown of Valentine’s
choosing, made full enough to hide the emaciation of her figure. Her
husband’s love, faithful through all affliction and change to the
girlish image of its first worship, still affectionately exacted from
her as much attention to the graces and luxuries of dress as she might
have bestowed on them of her own accord, in the best and gayest days
of youth and health. She had never looked happier and better in any
new gown than in that, which Mr. Blyth had insisted on giving her, to
commemorate the establishment of the domestic drawing school in her own
room.
Seven o’clock had been fixed as the hour at which the business of
the academy was to begin. Always punctual, wherever his professional
engagements were concerned, Valentine put the finishing touch to his
preparations as the clock struck; and perching himself gaily on a corner
of Mrs. Blyth’s couch, surveyed his drawing-boards, his lamps, and the
plaster cast set up for his pupils to draw from, with bland artistic
triumph.
“Now, Lavvie,” he said, “before Zack comes and confuses me, I’ll just
check off all the drawing things one after another, to make sure that
nothing’s left down stairs in the studio, which ought to be up here.”
As her husband said these words, Mrs. Blyth touched Madonna gently
on the shoulder. For some little time the girl had been sitting
thoughtfully, with her head bent down, her cheek resting on her hand,
and a bright smile just parting her lips very prettily. The affliction
which separated her from the worlds of hearing and speech--which set her
apart among her fellow-creatures, a solitary living being in a sphere of
death-silence that others might approach, but might never enter--gave
a touching significance to the deep, meditative stillness that often
passed over her suddenly, even in the society of her adopted parents,
and of friends who were all talking around her. Sometimes, the thoughts
by which she was thus absorbed--thoughts only indicated to others by
the shadow of their mysterious presence, moving in the expression that
passed over her face--held her long under their influence: sometimes,
they seemed to die away in her mind almost as suddenly as they had
arisen to life in it. It was one of Valentine’s many eccentric fancies
that she was not meditating only, at such times as these, but that, deaf
and dumb as she was with the creatures of this world, she could talk
with the angels, and could hear what the heavenly voices said to her in
return.
The moment she was touched on the shoulder, she looked up, and nestled
close to her adopted mother; who, passing one arm round her neck,
explained to her, by means of the manual signs of the deaf and dumb
alphabet, what Valentine was saying at that moment.
Nothing was more characteristic of Mrs. Blyth’s warm sympathies and
affectionate consideration for Madonna than this little action. The
kindest people rarely think it necessary, however well practiced in
communicating by the fingers with the deaf, to keep them informed of any
ordinary conversation which may be proceeding in their presence. Wise
disquisitions, witty sayings, curious stories, are conveyed to their
minds by sympathizing friends and relatives, as a matter of course; but
the little chatty nothings of everyday talk, which most pleasantly and
constantly employ our speaking and address our hearing faculties,
are thought too slight and fugitive in their nature to be worthy of
transmission by interpreting fingers or pens, and are consequently
seldom or never communicated to the deaf. No deprivation attending their
affliction is more severely felt by them than the special deprivation
which thus ensues; and which exiles their sympathies, in a great
measure, from all share in the familiar social interests of life around
them.
Mrs. Blyth’s kind heart, quick intelligence, and devoted affection for
her adopted child, had long since impressed it on her, as the first
of duties and pleasures, to prevent Madonna from feeling the excluding
influences of her calamity, while in the society of others, by keeping
her well informed of every one of the many conversations, whether
jesting or earnest, that were held in her presence, in the invalid-room.
For years and years past, Mrs. Blyth’s nimble fingers had been
accustomed to interpret all that was said by her bedside before the deaf
and dumb girl, as they were interpreting for her now.
“Just stop me, Lavvie, if I miss anything out, in making sure that I’ve
got all that’s wanted for everybody’s drawing lesson,” said Valentine,
preparing to reckon up the list of his materials correctly, by placing
his right forefinger on his left thumb. “First, there’s the statue that
all my students are to draw from--the Dying Gladiator. Secondly,
the drawing-boards and paper. Thirdly, the black and white chalk.
Fourthly,--where are the port-crayons to hold the chalk? Down in the
painting-room, of course. No! no! don’t trouble Madonna to fetch them.
Tell her to poke the fire instead: I’ll be back directly.” And Mr. Blyth
skipped out of the room as nimbly as if he had been fifteen instead of
fifty.
No sooner was Valentine’s back turned than Mrs. Blyth’s hand was passed
under the pretty swan’s-down coverlet that lay over her couch, as if in
search of something hidden beneath it. In a moment the hand reappeared,
holding a chalk drawing very neatly framed. It was Madonna’s copy from
the head of the Venus de’ Medici--the same copy which Zack had honored
with his most superlative exaggeration of praise, at his last visit
to the studio. She had not since forgotten, or altered her purpose of
making him a present of the drawing which he had admired so much. It
had been finished with the utmost care and completeness which she could
bestow upon it; had been put into a very pretty frame which she had paid
for out of her own little savings of pocket-money; and was now hidden
under Mrs. Blyth’s coverlet, to be drawn forth as a grand surprise for
Zack, and for Valentine too, on that very evening.
After looking once or twice backwards and forwards between the copyist
and the copy, her pale kind face beaming with the quiet merriment that
overspread it, Mrs. Blyth laid down the drawing, and began talking with
her fingers to Madonna.
“So you will not even let me tell Valentine who this is a present for?”
were the first words which she signed.
The girl was sitting with her back half turned on the drawing; glancing
at it quickly from time to time with a strange shyness and indecision,
as if the work of her own hands had undergone some transformation which
made her doubt whether she was any longer privileged to look at it.
She shook her head in reply to the question just put to her, then moved
round suddenly on her chair; her fingers playing nervously with the
fringes of the coverlet at her side.
“We all like Zack,” proceeded Mrs. Blyth, enjoying the amusement which
her womanly instincts extracted from Madonna’s confusion; “but you
must like him very much, love, to take more pains with this particular
drawing than with any drawing you ever did before.”
This time Madonna neither looked up nor moved an inch in her chair, her
fingers working more and more nervously amid the fringe; her treacherous
cheeks, neck, and bosom answered for her.
Mrs. Blyth touched her shoulder gaily, and, after placing the drawing
again under the coverlet, made her look up, while signing these words;
“I shall give the drawing to Zack very soon after he comes in. It is
sure to make him happy for the rest of the evening, and fonder of you
than ever.”
Madonna’s eyes followed Mrs. Blyth’s fingers eagerly to the last
letter they formed; then rose softly to her face with the same wistful
questioning look which they had assumed before Valentine, years and
years ago, when he first interfered to protect her in the traveling
circus. There was such an irresistible tenderness in the faint smile
that wavered about her lips; such a sadness of innocent beauty in
her face, now growing a shade paler than it was wont to be, that Mrs.
Blyth’s expression became serious the instant their eyes met. She drew
the girl forward and kissed her. The kiss was returned many times, with
a passionate warmth and eagerness remarkably at variance with the usual
gentleness of all Madonna’s actions. What had changed her thus? Before
it was possible to inquire or to think, she had broken away from the
kind arms that were round her, and was kneeling with her face hidden in
the pillows that lay over the head of the couch.
“I must quiet her directly. I ought to make her feel that this is
wrong,” said Mrs. Blyth to herself; looking startled and grieved as
she withdrew her hand wet with tears, after trying vainly to raise
the girl’s face from the pillows. “She has been thinking too much
lately--too much about that drawing; too much, I am afraid, about Zack.”
Just at that moment Mr. Blyth opened the door. Feeling the slight shock,
as he let it bang to after entering, Madonna instantly started up and
ran to the fireplace. Valentine did not notice her when he came in.
He bustled about the neighborhood of the Dying Gladiator, talking
incessantly, arranging his port-crayons by the drawing-boards, and
trimming the lamps that lit the model. Mrs. Blyth cast many an anxious
look towards the fireplace. After the lapse of a few minutes Madonna
turned round and came back to the couch. The traces of tears had almost
entirely disappeared from her face. She made a little appealing gesture
that asked Mrs. Blyth to be silent about what had happened while they
were alone; kissed, as a sign that she wished to be forgiven, the
hand that was held out to her; and then sat down quietly again in her
accustomed place.
At the same moment a voice was heard talking and laughing boisterously
in the hall. Then followed a long whispering, succeeded by a burst of
giggling from the housemaid, who presently ascended to Mrs. Blyth’s room
alone, and entered--after an explosion of suppressed laughter behind the
door--holding out at arm’s length a pair of boxing-gloves.
“If you please, sir,” said the girl, addressing Valentine, and tittering
hysterically at every third word, “Master Zack’s down stairs on the
landing, and he says you’re to be so kind as put on these things (he’s
putting another pair on hisself) and give him the pleasure of your
company for a few minutes in the painting-room.”
“Come on, Blyth,” cried the voice from the stairs. “I told you I should
bring the gloves, and make a fighting man of you, last time I was here,
you know. Come on! I only want to open your chest by knocking you about
a little in the painting-room before we begin to draw.”
The servant still held the gloves away from her at the full stretch
of her arm, as if she feared they were yet alive with the pugilistic
energies that had been imparted to them by their last wearer. Mrs. Blyth
burst out laughing, Valentine followed her example. The housemaid began
to look bewildered, and begged to know if her master would be so kind as
to take “the things” away from her.
“Did you say, come up stairs?” continued the voice outside. “All right;
I have no objection, if Mrs. Blyth hasn’t.” Here Zack came in with his
boxing-gloves fitted on. “How are you, Blyth? These are the pills for
that sluggish old liver of yours that you’re always complaining of. Put
‘em on. Stand with your left leg forward--keep your right leg easily
bent--and fix your eye on me!”
“Hold your tongue!” cried Mr. Blyth, at last recovering breath enough to
assert his dignity as master of the new drawing-school. “Take off those
things directly! What do you mean, sir, by coming into my academy, which
is devoted to the peaceful arts, in the attitude of a prize-fighter?”
“Don’t lose your temper, my dear fellow,” rejoined Zack; “you will never
learn to use your fists prettily if you do. Here, Patty, the boxing
lesson’s put off till to-morrow. Take the gloves up-stairs into your
master’s dressing-room, and put them in the drawer where his clean
shirts are, because they must be kept nice and dry. Shake hands, Mrs.
Blyth: it does one good to see you laugh like that, you look so much the
better for it. And how is Madonna? I’m afraid she’s been sitting before
the fire, and trying to spoil her pretty complexion. Why, what’s the
matter with her? Poor little darling, her hands are quite cold!”
“Come to your lesson, sir, directly,” said Valentine, assuming his most
despotic voice, and leading the disorderly student by the collar to his
appointed place.
“Hullo!” cried Zack, looking at the Dying Gladiator. “The gentleman in
plaster’s making a face--I’m afraid he isn’t quite well. I say, Blyth,
is that the statue of an ancient Greek patient, suffering under the
prescription of an ancient Greek physician?”
_“Will_ you hold your tongue and take up your drawing-board?” cried Mr.
Blyth. “You young barbarian, you deserve to be expelled my academy for
talking in that way of the Dying Gladiator. Now then; where’s Madonna?
No! stop where you are, Zack. I’ll show her her place, and give her the
drawing-board. Wait a minute, Lavvie! Let me prop you up comfortably
with the pillows before you begin. There! I never saw a more beautiful
effect of light and shade, my dear, than there is on your view of the
model. Has everybody got a port-crayon and two bits of chalk? Yes,
everybody has. Order! order! order!” shouted Valentine, suddenly
forgetting his assumed dignity in the exultation of the moment. “Mr.
Blyth’s drawing academy for the promotion of family Art is now open, and
ready for general inspection. Hooray!”
“Hooray!” echoed Zack, “hooray for family Art! I say, Blyth, which chalk
do I begin with--the white or the black? The black--eh? Do I start with
the what’s his name’s wry face? and if so, where am I to begin? With his
eyes, or his nose, or his mouth, or the top of his head, or the bottom
of his chin--or what?”
“First sketch in the general form with a light and flowing stroke,
and without attention to details,” said Mr. Blyth, illustrating these
directions by waving his hand gracefully about his own person. “Then
measure with the eye, assisted occasionally by the port-crayon, the
proportion of the parts. Then put dots on the paper; a dot where his
head comes; another dot where his elbows and knees come, and so forth.
Then strike it all in boldly--it’s impossible to give you better advice
than that--strike it in, Zack; strike it in boldly!”
“Here goes at his head and shoulders to begin with,” said Zack, taking
one comprehensive and confident look at the Dying Gladiator, and drawing
a huge half circle, with a preliminary flourish of his hand on the
paper. “Oh, confound it, I’ve broken the chalk!”
“Of course you have,” retorted Valentine. “Take another bit; the Academy
grants supplementary chalk to ignorant students, who dig their lines
on the paper, instead of drawing them. Now, break off a bit of that
bread-crumb, and rub out what you have done. ‘Buy a penny loaf, and rub
it all out,’ as Mr. Fuseli once said to me in the Schools of the
Royal Academy, when I showed him my first drawing, and was excessively
conceited about it.”
“I remember,” said Mrs. Blyth, “when my father was working at his great
engraving, from Mr. Scumble’s picture of the ‘Fair Gleaner Surprised,’
that he used often to say how much harder his art was than drawing,
because you couldn’t rub out a false line on copper, like you could on
paper. We all thought he never would get that print done, he used to
groan over it so in the front drawing-room, where he was then at work.
And the publishers paid him infamously, all in bills, which he had to
get discounted; and the people who gave him the money cheated him. My
mother said it served him right for being always so imprudent; which I
thought very hard on him, and I took his part--so harassed too as he was
by the tradespeople at that time.”
“I can feel for him, my love,” said Valentine, pointing a piece of chalk
for Zack. “The tradespeople have harassed _me_--not because I could not
pay them certainly, but because I could not add up their bills. Never
owe any man enough, Zack, to give him the chance of punishing you for
being in his debt, with a sum to do in simple addition. At the time when
I had bills (go on with your drawing; you can listen, and draw too), I
used, of course, to think it necessary to check the tradespeople, and
see that their Total was right. You will hardly believe me, but I don’t
remember ever making the sum what the shop made it, on more than about
three occasions. And, what was worse, if I tried a second time, I could
not even get it to agree with what I had made it myself the first time.
Thank Heaven, I’ve no difficulties of that sort to grapple with now!
Everything’s paid for the moment it comes in. If the butcher hands a leg
of mutton to the cook over the airey railings, the cook hands him back
six and nine--or whatever it is--and takes his bill and receipt. I eat
my dinners now, with the blessed conviction that they won’t all disagree
with me in an arithmetical point of view at the end of the year. What
are you stopping and scratching your head for in that way?”
“It’s no use,” replied Zack; “I’ve tried it a dozen times, and I find I
can’t draw a Gladiator’s nose.”
“Can’t!” cried Mr. Blyth, “what do you mean by applying the word ‘can’t’
to any process of art in _my_ presence? There, that’s the line of the
Gladiator’s nose. Go over it yourself with this fresh piece of chalk.
No; wait a minute. Come here first, and see how Madonna is striking in
the figure; the front view of it, remember, which is the most difficult.
She hasn’t worked as fast as usual, though. Do you find your view of
the model a little too much for you, my love?” continued Valentine,
transferring the last words to his fingers, to communicate them to
Madonna.
She shook her head in answer. It was not the difficulty of drawing from
the cast before her, but the difficulty of drawing at all, which was
retarding her progress. Her thoughts would wander to the copy of the
Venus de Medici that was hidden under Mrs. Blyth’s coverlid; would
vibrate between trembling eagerness to see it presented without longer
delay, and groundless apprehension that Zack might, after all, not
remember it, or not care to have it when it was given to him. And as her
thoughts wandered, so her eyes followed them. Now she stole an anxious,
inquiring look at Mrs. Blyth, to see if her hand was straying towards
the hidden drawing. Now she glanced shyly at Zack--only by moments at
a time, and only when he was hardest at work with his port-crayon--to
assure herself that he was always in the same good humor, and likely
to receive her little present kindly, and with some appearance of
being pleased to see what pains she had taken with it. In this way her
attention wandered incessantly from her employment; and thus it was
that she made so much less progress than usual, and caused Mr. Blyth to
suspect that the task he had set her was almost beyond her abilities.
“Splendid beginning, isn’t it?” said Zack, looking over her drawing.
“I defy the whole Royal Academy to equal it,” continued the young
gentleman, scrawling this uncompromising expression of opinion on the
blank space at the bottom of Madonna’s drawing, and signing his name
with a magnificent flourish at the end.
His arm touched her shoulder while he wrote. She colored a little, and
glanced at him, playfully affecting to look very proud of his sentence
of approval--then hurriedly resumed her drawing as their eyes met. He
was sent back to his place by Valentine before he could write anything
more. She took some of the bread-crumb near her to rub out what he had
written--hesitated as her hand approached the lines--colored more deeply
than before, and went on with her drawing, leaving the letters beneath
it to remain just as young Thorpe had traced them.
“I shall never be able to draw as well as she does,” said Zack, looking
at the little he had done with a groan of despair. “The fact is, I don’t
think drawing’s my forte. It’s color, depend upon it. Only wait till I
come to that; and see how I’ll lay on the paint! Didn’t you find drawing
infernally difficult, Blyth, when you first began?”
“I find it difficult still, Master Zack,” replied Mr. Blyth. “Art
wouldn’t be the glorious thing it is, if it wasn’t all difficulty from
beginning to end; if it didn’t force out all the fine points in a man’s
character as soon as he takes to it. Just eight o’clock,” continued
Valentine, looking at his watch. “Put down your drawing-boards for the
present. I pronounce the sitting of this Academy to be suspended till
after tea.”
“Valentine, dear,” said Mrs. Blyth, smiling mysteriously, as she slipped
her hand under the coverlid of the couch, “I can’t get Madonna to look
at me, and I want her here. Will you oblige me by bringing her to my
bedside?”
“Certainly, my love,” returned Mr. Blyth, obeying the request. “You have
a double claim on my services to-night, for you have shown yourself the
most promising of my pupils. Come here, Zack, and see what Mrs. Blyth
has done. The best drawing of the evening--just what I thought it would
be--the best drawing of the evening!”
Zack, who had been yawning disconsolately over his own copy, with his
fists stuck into his cheeks, and his elbows on his knees, bustled up to
the couch directly. As he approached, Madonna tried to get back to her
former position at the fireplace, but was prevented by Mrs. Blyth, who
kept tight hold of her hand. Just then, Zack fixed his eyes on her and
increased her confusion.
“She looks prettier than ever to-night, don’t she, Mrs. Blyth?” he said,
sitting down and yawning again. “I always like her best when her eyes
brighten up and look twenty different ways in a minute, just as they’re
doing now. She may not be so like Raphael’s pictures at such times, I
dare say (here he yawned once more); but for my part--What’s she wanting
to get away for? And what are you laughing about, Mrs. Blyth? I say,
Valentine, there’s some joke going on here between the ladies!”
“Do you remember this, Zack?” asked Mrs. Blyth, tightening her hold of
Madonna with one hand, and producing the framed drawing of the Venus de’
Medici with the other.
“Madonna’s copy from my bust of the Venus!” cried Valentine, interposing
with his usual readiness, and skipping forward with his accustomed
alacrity.
“Madonna’s copy from Blyth’s bust of the Venus,” echoed Zack, coolly;
his slippery memory not having preserved the slightest recollection of
the drawing at first sight of it.
“Dear me! how nicely it’s framed, and how beautifully she has finished
it!” pursued Valentine, gently patting Madonna’s shoulder, in token of
his high approval and admiration.
“Very nicely framed, and beautifully finished, as you say, Blyth,”
glibly repeated Zack, rising from his chair, and looking rather
perplexed, as he noticed the expression with which Mrs. Blyth was
regarding him.
“But who got it framed?” asked Valentine. “She would never have any of
her drawings framed before. I don’t understand what it all means.”
“No more do I,” said Zack, dropping back into his chair in lazy
astonishment. “Is it some riddle, Mrs. Blyth? Something about why is
Madonna like the Venus de’ Medici, eh? If it is, I object to the riddle,
because she’s a deal prettier than any plaster face that ever was made.
Your face beats Venus’s hollow,” continued Zack, communicating this
bluntly sincere compliment to Madonna by the signs of the deaf and dumb
alphabet.
She smiled as she watched the motion of his fingers--perhaps at his
mistakes, for he made two in expressing one short sentence of five
words--perhaps at the compliment, homely as it was.
“Oh, you men, how dreadfully stupid you are sometimes!” exclaimed Mrs.
Blyth. “Why, Valentine, dear, it’s the easiest thing in the world to
guess what she has had the drawing framed for. To make it a present to
somebody, of course! And who does she mean to give it to?”
“Ah! who indeed?” interrupted Zack, sliding down cozily in his chair,
resting his head on the back rail, and spreading his legs out before him
at full stretch.
“I have a great mind to throw the drawing at your head, instead of
giving it to you!” cried Mrs. Blyth, losing all patience.
“You don’t mean to say the drawing’s a present to _me!”_ exclaimed Zack,
starting from his chair with one prodigious jump of astonishment.
“You deserve to have your ears well boxed for not having guessed that it
was long ago!” retorted Mrs. Blyth. “Have you forgotten how you praised
that very drawing, when you saw it begun in the studio? Didn’t you tell
Madonna--”
“Oh! the dear, good, generous, jolly little soul!” cried Zack, snatching
up the drawing from the couch, as the truth burst upon him at last in a
flash of conviction. “Tell her on _your_ fingers, Mrs. Blyth, how proud
I am of my present. I can’t do it with mine, because I can’t let go of
the drawing. Here, look here!--make her look here, and see how I like
it!” And Zack hugged the copy of the Venus de’ Medici to his waistcoat,
by way of showing how highly he prized it.
At this outburst of sentimental pantomime, Madonna raised her head and
glanced at young Thorpe. Her face, downcast, anxious, and averted
even from Mrs. Blyth’s eyes during the last few minutes (as if she had
guessed every word that could pain her, out of all that had been said in
her presence), now brightened again with pleasure as she looked up--with
innocent, childish pleasure, that affected no reserve, dreaded no
misconstruction, foreboded no disappointment. Her eyes, turning quickly
from Zack, and appealing gaily to Valentine, beamed with triumph when he
pointed to the drawing, and smilingly raised his hands in astonishment,
as a sign that he had been pleasantly surprised by the presentation of
her drawing to his new pupil. Mrs. Blyth felt the hand which she still
held in hers, and which had hitherto trembled a little from time to
time, grow steady and warm in her grasp, and dropped it. There was no
fear that Madonna would now leave the side of the couch and steal away
by herself to the fireplace.
“Go on, Mrs. Blyth--you never make mistakes in talking on your fingers,
and I always do--go on, please, and tell her how much I thank her,”
continued Zack, holding out the drawing at arm’s length, and looking at
it with his head on one side, by way of imitating Valentine’s manner
of studying his own pictures. “Tell her I’ll take such care of it as I
never took of anything before in my life. Tell her I’ll hang it up in my
bed-room, where I can see it every morning as soon as I wake. Have you
told her that?--or shall I write it on her slate? Hullo! here comes the
tea. And, by heavens, a whole bagful of muffins! What!!! the kitchen
fire’s too black to toast them. _I’ll_ undertake the whole lot in the
drawing academy. Here, Patty, give us the toasting-fork: I’m going to
begin. I never saw such a splendid fire for toasting muffins before in
my life! Rum-dum-diddy-iddy-dum-dee, dum-diddy-iddy-dum!” And Zack fell
on his knees at the fireplace, humming “Rule Britannia,” and toasting
his first muffin in triumph; utterly forgetting that he had left
Madonna’s drawing lying neglected, with its face downwards, on the end
of Mrs. Blyth’s couch.
Valentine, who in the innocence of his heart suspected nothing, burst
out laughing at this new specimen of Zack’s inveterate flightiness.
His kind instincts, however, guided his hand at the same moment to the
drawing. He took it up carefully, and placed it on a low bookcase at
the opposite side of the room. If any increase had been possible in his
wife’s affection for him, she would have loved him better than ever at
the moment when he performed that one little action.
As her husband removed the drawing, Mrs. Blyth looked at Madonna. The
poor girl stood shrinking close to the couch, with her hands clasped
tightly together in front of her, and with no trace of their natural
lovely color left on her cheeks. Her eyes followed Valentine listlessly
to the bookcase, then turned towards Zack, not reproachfully nor
angrily--not even tearfully--but again with that same look of patient
sadness, of gentle resignation to sorrow, which used to mark their
expression so tenderly in the days of her bondage among the mountebanks
of the traveling circus. So she stood, looking towards the fireplace and
the figure kneeling at it, bearing her new disappointment just as she
had borne many a former mortification that had tried her sorely while
she was yet a little child. How carefully she had labored at that
neglected drawing in the secrecy of her own room! How happy she had been
in anticipating the moment when it would be given to young Thorpe;
in imagining what he would say on receiving it, and how he would
communicate his thanks to her; in wondering what he would do with it
when he got it: where he would hang it, and whether he would often look
at his present after he had got used to seeing it on the wall! Thoughts
such as these had made the moment of presenting that drawing the moment
of a great event in her life--and there it was now, placed on one side
by other hands than the hands into which it had been given; laid down
carelessly at the mere entrance of a servant with a tea-tray; neglected
for the childish pleasure of kneeling on the hearth-rug, and toasting a
muffin at a clear coal-fire!
Mrs. Blyth’s generous, impulsive nature, and sensitively tempered
affection for her adopted child, impelled her to take instant and not
very merciful notice of Zack’s unpardonable thoughtlessness. Her face
flushed, her dark eyes sparkled, as she turned quickly on her couch
towards the fire-place. But, before she could utter a word, Madonna’s
hand was on her lips, and Madonna’s eyes were fixed with a terrified,
imploring expression on her face. The next instant, the girl’s trembling
fingers rapidly signed these words:
“Pray--pray don’t say anything! I would not have you speak to him just
now for the world!”
Mrs. Blyth hesitated, and looked towards her husband; but he was away at
the other end of the room, amusing himself professionally by casting
the drapery of the window-curtains hither and thither into all sorts of
picturesque folds. She looked next at Zack. Just at that moment he
was turning his muffin and singing louder than ever. The temptation
to startle him out of his provoking gaiety by a good sharp reproof
was almost too strong to be resisted; but Mrs. Blyth forced herself
to resist it, nevertheless, for Madonna’s sake. She did not, however,
communicate with the girl, either by signs or writing, until she had
settled herself again in her former position; then her fingers expressed
these sentences of reply:
“If you promise not to let his thoughtlessness distress you, my love, I
promise not to speak to him about it. Do you agree to that bargain? If
you do, give me a kiss.”
Madonna only paused to repress a sigh that was just stealing from her,
before she gave the required pledge. Her cheeks did not recover their
color, nor her lips the smile that had been playing on them earlier in
the evening; but she arranged Mrs. Blyth’s pillow even more carefully
than usual, before she left the couch, and went away to perform as
neatly and prettily as ever, her own little household duty of making the
tea.
Zack, entirely unconscious of having given pain to one lady and cause of
anger to another, had got on to his second muffin, and had changed his
accompanying song from “Rule Britannia” to the “Lass o’ Gowrie,” when
the hollow, ringing sound of rapidly-running wheels penetrated into the
room from the frosty road outside; advancing nearer and nearer, and then
suddenly ceasing opposite Mr. Blyth’s own door.
“Dear me!--surely that’s at our gate,” exclaimed Valentine; “who can
be coming to see us so late, on such a cold night as this? And in a
carriage, too!”
“It’s a cab, by the rattling of the wheels, and it brings us the ‘Lass
o’ Gowrie,’” sang Zack, combining the original text of his song, and the
suggestion of a possible visitor, in his concluding words.
“Do leave off singing nonsense out of tune, and let us listen when the
door opens,” said Mrs. Blyth, glad to seize the slightest opportunity of
administering the smallest reproof to Zack.
“Suppose it should be Mr. Gimble, come to deal at last for that picture
of mine that he has talked of buying so long,” exclaimed Valentine.
“Suppose it should be my father!” cried Zack, suddenly turning round on
his knees with a very blank face. “Or that infernal old Yollop, with his
gooseberry eyes and his hands full of tracts. They’re both of them quite
equal to coming after me and spoiling my pleasure here, just as they
spoil it everywhere else.”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Blyth. “The visitor has come in, whoever it is. It
can’t be Mr. Gimble, Valentine; he always runs up two stairs at a time.”
“And this is one of the heavy-weights. Not an ounce less than sixteen
stone, I should say, by the step,” remarked Zack, letting his muffin
burn while he listened.
“It can’t be that tiresome old Lady Brambledown come to worry you again
about altering her picture,” said Mrs. Blyth.
“Stop! surely it isn’t--” began Valentine. But before he could say
another word, the door opened; and, to the utter amazement of everybody
but the poor girl whose ear no voice could reach, the servant announced:
“MRS. PECKOVER.”
CHAPTER XI. THE BREWING OF THE STORM.
Time had lavishly added to Mrs. Peckover’s size, but had generously
taken little or nothing from her in exchange. Her hair had certainly
turned grey since the period when Valentine first met her at the circus;
but the good-humored face beneath was just as hearty to look at now, as
ever it had been in former days. Her cheeks had ruddily expanded;
her chin had passed from the double to the triple stage of jovial
development--any faint traces of a waist which she might formerly have
possessed were utterly obliterated--but it was pleasantly evident, to
judge only from the manner of her bustling entry into Mrs. Blyth’s room,
that her active disposition had lost nothing of its early energy, and
could still gaily defy all corporeal obstructions to the very last.
Nodding and smiling at Mr. and Mrs. Blyth, and Zack, till her vast
country bonnet trembled aguishly on her head, the good woman advanced,
shaking every moveable object in the room, straight to the tea-table,
and enfolded Madonna in her capacious arms. The girl’s light figure
seemed to disappear in a smothering circumambient mass of bonnet ribbons
and unintelligible drapery, as Mrs. Peckover saluted her with a rattling
fire of kisses, the report of which was audible above the voluble
talking of Mr. Blyth and the boisterous laughter of Zack.
“I’ll tell you all about how I came here directly, sir; only I couldn’t
help saying how-d’ye-do in the old way to little Mary to begin with,”
said Mrs. Peckover apologetically. It had been found impossible to
prevail on her to change the familiar name of “little Mary,” which she
had pronounced so often and so fondly in past years, for the name which
had superseded it in Valentine’s house. The truth was, that this worthy
creature knew nothing whatever about Raphael; and, considering “Madonna”
to be an outlandish foreign word intimately connected with Guy Fawkes
and the Gunpowder Plot, firmly believed that no respectable Englishwoman
ought to compromise her character by attempting to pronounce it.
“I’ll tell you, sir--I’ll tell you directly why I’ve come to London,”
repeated Mrs. Peckover, backing majestically from the tea-table, and
rolling round easily on her own axis in the direction of the couch, to
ask for the fullest particulars of the state of Mrs. Blyth’s health.
“Much better, my good friend--much better,” was the cheerful answer;
“but do tell us (we are so glad to see you!) how you came to surprise us
all in this way?”
“Well, ma’am,” began Mrs. Peckover, “it’s almost as great a surprise to
me to be in London, as it is--Be quiet, young Good-for-Nothing; I won’t
even shake hands with you if you don’t behave yourself!” These last
words she addressed to Zack, whose favorite joke it had always been,
from the day of their first acquaintance at Valentine’s house, to
pretend to be violently in love with her. He was now standing with his
arms wide open, the toasting-fork in one hand and the muffin he had
burnt in the other, trying to look languishing, and entreating Mrs.
Peckover to give him a kiss.
“When you know how to toast a muffin properly, p’raps I may give you
one,” said she, chuckling as triumphantly over her own small retort as
if she had been a professed wit. “Do, Mr. Blyth, sir, please to keep him
quiet, or I shan’t be able to get on with a single word of what I’ve got
to say. Well, you see, ma’am, Doctor Joyce--”
“How is he?” interrupted Valentine, handing Mrs. Peckover a cup of tea.
“He’s the best gentleman in the world, sir, but he will have his glass
of port after dinner; and the end of it is, he’s laid up again with the
gout.”
“And Mrs. Joyce?”
“Laid up too, sir--it’s a dreadful sick house at the Rectory--laid up
with the inferlenzer.”
“Have any of the children caught the influenza too?” asked Mrs. Blyth.
“I hope not.”
“No, ma’am, they’re all nicely, except the youngest; and it’s on account
of her--don’t you remember her, sir, growing so fast, when you was last
at the Rectory?--that I’m up in London.
“Is the child ill?” asked Valentine anxiously. “She’s such a picturesque
little creature, Lavvie! I long to paint her.”
“I’m afraid, sir, she’s not fit to be put into a picter now,” said Mrs.
Peckover. “Mrs. Joyce is in sad trouble about her, because of one of her
shoulders which has growed out somehow. The doctor at Rubbleford don’t
doubt but what it may be got right again; but he said she ought to be
shown to some great London doctor as soon as possible. So, neither her
papa nor her mamma being able to take her up to her aunt’s house, they
trusted her to me. As you know, sir, ever since Doctor Joyce got my
husband that situation at Rubbleford, I’ve been about the Rectory,
helping with the children and the housekeeping, and all that:--and Miss
Lucy being used to me, we come along together in the railroad quite
pleasant and comfortable. I was glad enough, you may be sure, of the
chance of getting here, after not having seen little Mary for so long.
So I just left Miss Lucy at her aunt’s, where they were very kind,
and wanted me to stop all night. But I told them that, thanks to your
goodness, I always had a bed here when I was in London; and I took the
cab on, after seeing the little girl safe and comfortable up-stairs.
That’s the whole story of how I come to surprise you in this way,
ma’am,--and now I’ll finish my tea.”
Having got to the bottom of her cup, and to the end of a muffin
amorously presented to her by the incorrigible Zack, Mrs. Peckover had
leisure to turn again to Madonna; who, having relieved her of her bonnet
and shawl, was now sitting close at her side.
“I didn’t think she was looking quite so well as usual, when I first
come in,” said Mrs. Peckover, patting the girl’s cheek with her chubby
fingers; “but she seems to have brightened up again now.” (This was
true: the sad stillness had left Madonna’s face, at sight of the friend
and mother of her early days.) “Perhaps she’s been sticking a little too
close to her drawing lately--”
“By the bye, talking of drawings, what’s become of my drawing?” cried
Zack, suddenly recalled for the first time to the remembrance of
Madonna’s gift.
“Dear me!” pursued Mrs. Peckover, looking towards the three
drawing-boards, which had been placed together round the pedestal of
the cast; “are all those little Mary’s doings? She’s cleverer at it, I
suppose, by this time, than ever. Ah, Lord! what an old woman I feel,
when I think of the many years ago--”
“Come and look at what she has done to-night,” interrupted Valentine,
taking Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and pressing it very significantly as
he glanced at the part of the table where young Thorpe was sitting.
“My drawing--where’s my drawing?” repeated Zack. “Who put it away when
tea came in? Oh, there it is, all safe on the book case.”
“I congratulate you, sir, on having succeeded at last in remembering
that there is such a thing in the world as Madonna’s present,” said Mrs.
Blyth sarcastically.
Zack looked up bewildered from his tea, and asked directly what those
words meant.
“Oh, never mind,” said Mrs. Blyth in the same tone, “they’re not worth
explaining. Did you ever hear of a young gentleman who thought more of
a plate of muffins than of a lady’s gift? I dare say not! I never did.
It’s too ridiculously improbable to be true, isn’t it? There! don’t
speak to me; I’ve got a book here that I want to finish. No, it’s no
use; I shan’t say another word.”
“What have I done that’s wrong?” asked Zack, looking piteously perplexed
as he began to suspect that he had committed some unpardonable mistake
earlier in the evening. “I know I burnt a muffin; but what has that got
to do with Madonna’s present to me?” (Mrs. Blyth shook her head; and,
opening her book, became quite absorbed over it in a moment.) “Didn’t I
thank her properly for it? I’m sure I meant to.” (Here he stopped; but
Mrs. Blyth took no notice of him.) “I suppose I’ve got myself into some
scrape? Make as much fun as you like about it; but tell me what it is.
You won’t? Then I’ll find out all about it from Madonna. She knows, of
course; and she’ll tell me. Look here, Mrs. Blyth; I’m not going to get
up till she’s told me everything.” And Zack, with a comic gesture of
entreaty, dropped on his knees by Madonna’s chair; preventing her from
leaving it, which she tried to do, by taking immediate possession of the
slate that hung at her side.
While young Thorpe was scribbling questions, protestations, and
extravagances of every kind, in rapid succession, on the slate; and
while Madonna, her face half smiling, half tearful, as she felt that he
was looking up at it--was reading what he wrote, trying hard, at first,
not to believe in him too easily when he scribbled an explanation,
and not to look down on him too leniently when he followed it up by an
entreaty; and ending at last, in defiance of Mrs. Blyth’s private signs
to the contrary, in forgiving his carelessness, and letting him take her
hand again as usual, in token that she was sincere,--while this little
scene of the home drama was proceeding at one end of the room, a scene
of another kind--a dialogue in mysterious whispers--was in full progress
between Mr. Blyth and his visitor from the country, at the other.
Time had in no respect lessened Valentine’s morbid anxiety about the
strict concealment of every circumstance attending Mrs. Peckover’s first
connection with Madonna, and Madonna’s mother. The years that had now
passed and left him in undisputed possession of his adopted child, had
not diminished that excess of caution in keeping secret all the little
that was known of her early history, which had even impelled him to
pledge Doctor and Mrs. Joyce never to mention in public any particulars
of the narrative related at the Rectory. Still, he had not got over his
first dread that she might one day be traced, claimed, and taken away
from him, if that narrative, meagre as it was, should ever be trusted
to other ears than those which had originally listened to it. Still,
he kept the hair bracelet and the handkerchief that had belonged to her
mother carefully locked up out of sight in his bureau; and still, he
doubted Mrs. Peckover’s discretion in the government of her tongue,
as he had doubted it in the bygone days when the little girl was first
established in his own home.
After making a pretense of showing her the drawings begun that evening,
Mr. Blyth artfully contrived to lead Mrs. Peckover past them into a
recess at the extreme end of the room.
“Well,” he said, speaking in an unnecessarily soft whisper, considering
the distance which now separated him from Zack. “Well, I suppose you’re
quite sure of not having let out anything by chance, since I last saw
you, about how you first met with our darling girl? or about her poor
mother? or--?”
“What, you’re at it again, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Peckover loftily, but
dropping her voice in imitation of Mr. Blyth,--“a clever man, too, like
you! Dear, dear me! how often must I keep on telling you that I’m old
enough to be able to hold my tongue? How much longer are you going to
worrit yourself about hiding what nobody’s seeking after?”
“I’m afraid I shall always worry myself about it,” replied Valentine
seriously. “Whenever I see you, my good friend, I fancy I hear all that
melancholy story over again about our darling child, and that poor lost
forsaken mother of hers, whose name even we don’t know. I feel,
too, when you come and see us, almost more than at other times, how
inexpressibly precious the daughter whom you have given to us is to
Lavvie and me; and I think with more dread than I well know how to
describe, of the horrible chance, if anything was incautiously said, and
carried from mouth to mouth--about where you met with her mother, for
instance, or what time of the year it was, and so forth--that it might
lead, nobody knows how, to some claim being laid to her, by somebody who
might be able to prove the right to make it.”
“Lord, sir! after all these years, what earthly need have you to be
anxious about such things as that?”
“I’m never anxious long, Mrs. Peckover. My good spirits always get the
better of every anxiety, great and small. But while I don’t know that
relations of hers--perhaps her vile father himself--may not be still
alive, and seeking for her--”
“Bless your heart, Mr. Blyth, none of her relations are alive; or if
they are, none of them care about her, poor lamb; I’ll answer for it.”
“I hope in God you are right,” said Valentine, earnestly. “But let us
think no more about it now,” he added, resuming his usual manner. “I
have asked my regular question, that I can’t help asking whenever I see
you; and you have forgiven me, as usual, for putting it; and now I am
quite satisfied. Take my arm, Mrs. Peckover: I mean to give the students
of my new drawing academy a holiday for the rest of the night, in honor
of your arrival. What do you say to devoting the evening in the old way
to a game at cards?”
“Just what I was thinking I should like myself as long as it’s
only sixpence a game, sir,” said Mrs. Peckover gaily. “I say, young
gentleman,” she continued, addressing Zack after Mr. Blyth had left her
to look for the cards, “what nonsense are you writing on our darling’s
slate that puts her all in a flutter, and makes her blush up to the
eyes, when she’s only looking at her poor old Peck? Bless her heart!
she’s just as easily amused now as when she was a child. Give us another
kiss, my own little love. You understand what I mean, don’t you, though
you can’t hear me? Ah, dear, dear! when she stands and looks at me with
her eyes like that, she’s the living image of--”
“Cribbage,” cried Mr. Blyth, knocking a triangular board for three
players on the table, and regarding Mrs. Peckover with the most
reproachful expression that his features could assume.
She felt that the look had been deserved, and approached the card-table
rather confusedly, without uttering another word. But for Valentine’s
second interruption she would have declared, before young Thorpe, that
“little Mary” was the living image of her mother.
“Madonna’s going to play, as usual. Will you make the third, Lavvie?”
inquired Valentine, shuffling the cards. “It’s no use asking Zack; he
can’t even count yet.”
“No, thank you, dear. I shall have quite enough to do in going on with
my book, and trying to keep master Mad-Cap in order while you play,”
replied Mrs. Blyth.
The game began. It was a regular custom, whenever Mrs. Peckover came
to Mr. Blyth’s house, that cribbage should be played, and that Madonna
should take a share in it. This was done, on her part, principally in
affectionate remembrance of the old times when she lived under the care
of the clown’s wife, and when she had learnt cribbage from Mr. Peckover
to amuse her, while the frightful accident which had befallen her in
the circus was still a recent event. It was characteristic of the
happy peculiarity of her disposition that the days of suffering and
affliction, and the after-period of hard tasks in public, with
which cards were connected in her case, never seemed to recur to her
remembrance painfully when she saw them in later life. The pleasanter
associations which belonged to them, and which reminded her of homely
kindness that had soothed her in pain, and self-denying affection that
had consoled her in sorrow, were the associations instinctively dwelt on
by her heart to the exclusion of all others.
To Mrs. Blyth’s great astonishment, Zack, for full ten minutes, required
no keeping in order whatever while the rest were playing at cards. It
was the most marvelous of human phenomena, but there he certainly was,
standing quietly by the fireplace with the drawing in his hand, actually
thinking! Mrs. Blyth’s amazement at this unexampled change in his manner
so completely overcame her, that she fairly laid down her book to look
at him. He noticed the action, and approached the couch directly.
“That’s right,” he said; “don’t read any more. I want to have a serious
consultation with you.”
First a visit from Mrs. Peckover, then a serious consultation with Zack.
This is a night of wonders!--thought Mrs. Blyth.
“I’ve made it all right with Madonna,” Zack continued. “She don’t think
a bit the worse of me because I went on like a fool about the muffins at
tea-time. But that’s not what I want to talk about now: it’s a sort of
secret. In the first place--”
“Do you usually mention your secrets in a voice that everybody can
hear?” asked Mrs. Blyth, laughing.
“Oh, never mind about that,” he replied, not lowering his tone in the
least; “it’s only a secret from Madonna, and we can talk before _her,_
poor little soul, just as if she wasn’t in the room. Now this is the
thing: she’s made me a present, and I think I ought to show my gratitude
by making her another in return.” (He resumed his ordinary manner as he
warmed with the subject, and began to walk up and down the room in his
usual flighty way.) “Well, I have been thinking what the present ought
to be--something pretty, of course. I can’t do her a drawing worth a
farthing; and even if I could--”
“Suppose you come here and sit down, Zack,” interposed Mrs. Blyth.
“While you are wandering backwards and forwards in that way before the
card-table, you take Madonna’s attention off the game.”
No doubt he did. How could she see him walking about close by her, and
carrying her drawing with him wherever he went--as if he prized it too
much to be willing to put it down--without feeling gratified in more
than one of the innocent little vanities of her sex, without looking
after him much too often to be properly alive to the interests of her
game?
Zack took Mrs. Blyth’s advice, and sat down by her, with his back
towards the cribbage players.
“Well, the question is, What present am I to give her?” he went on.
“I’ve been twisting and turning it over in my mind, and the long and the
short of it is--”
(“Fifteen two, fifteen four, and a pair’s six,” said Valentine,
reckoning up the tricks he had in his hand at that moment.)
“Did you ever notice that she has a particularly pretty hand and arm?”
proceeded Zack, somewhat evasively. “I’m rather a judge of these things
myself; and of all the other girls I ever saw--”
“Never mind about other girls,” said Mrs. Blyth. “Tell me what you mean
to give Madonna.”
(“Two for his heels,” cried Mrs. Peckover, turning up a knave with great
glee.)
“I mean to give her a Bracelet,” said Zack.
Valentine looked up quickly from the card table.
(“Play, please sir,” said Mrs. Peckover; “little Mary’s waiting for
you.”)
“Well, Zack,” rejoined Mrs. Blyth, “your idea of returning a present
only errs on the side of generosity. I should recommend something less
costly. Don’t you know that it’s one of Madonna’s oddities not to care
about jewelry? She might have bought herself a bracelet long ago, out of
her own savings, if trinkets had been things to tempt her.”
“Wait a bit, Mrs. Blyth,” said Zack, “you haven’t heard the best of my
notion yet: all the pith and marrow of it has got to come. The bracelet
I mean to give her is one that she will prize to the day of her death,
or she’s not the affectionate, warm-hearted girl I take her for. What do
you think of a bracelet that reminds her of you and Valentine, and jolly
old Peck there--and a little of me, too, which I hope won’t make her
think the worse of it. I’ve got a design against all your heads,” he
continued, imitating the cutting action of a pair of scissors with two
of his fingers, and raising his voice in high triumph. “It’s a splendid
idea: I mean to give Madonna a Hair Bracelet!”
Mrs. Peckover and Mr. Blyth started back in their chairs, and stared at
each other as amazedly as if Zack’s last words had sprung from a charged
battery, and had struck them both at the same moment with a smart
electrical shock.
“Of all the things in the world, how came he ever to think of giving her
that!” ejaculated Mrs. Peckover under her breath; her memory reverting,
while she spoke, to the mournful day when strangers had searched the
body of Madonna’s mother, and had found the Hair Bracelet hidden away in
a corner of the dead woman’s pocket.
“Hush! let’s go on with the game,” said Valentine. He, too, was thinking
of the Hair Bracelet--thinking of it as it now lay locked up in his
bureau down stairs, remembering how he would fain have destroyed it
years ago, but that his conscience and sense of honor forbade him;
pondering on the fatal discoveries to which, by bare possibility, it
might yet lead, if ever it should fall into strangers’ hands.
“A Hair Bracelet,” continued Zack, quite unconscious of the effect he
was producing on two of the card-players behind him; “and _such_ hair,
too, as I mean it to be made of!--Why, Madonna will think it more
precious than all the diamonds in the world. I defy anybody to have hit
on a better idea of the sort of present she’s sure to like; it’s elegant
and appropriate, and all that sort of thing--isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes! very nice and pretty indeed,” replied Mrs. Blyth, rather
absently and confusedly. She knew as much of Madonna’s history as her
husband did; and was wondering what he would think of the present which
young Thorpe proposed giving to their adopted child.
“The thing I want most to know,” said Zack, “is what you think would be
the best pattern for the bracelet. There will be two kinds of hair in
it, which can be made into any shape, of course--your hair and Mrs.
Peckover’s.”
(“Not a morsel of my hair shall go towards the bracelet!” muttered
Mrs. Peckover, who was listening to what was said, while she went on
playing.)
“The difficult hair to bring in, will be mine and Valentine’s,” pursued
Zack. “Mine’s long enough, to be sure; I ought to have got it cut a
month ago; but it’s so stiff and curly; and Blyth keeps his cropped so
short--I don’t see what they can do with it (do you?), unless they make
rings, or stars, or knobs, or something stumpy, in the way of a cross
pattern of it.”
“The people at the shop will know best,” said Mrs. Blyth, resolving to
proceed cautiously.
“One thing I’m determined on, though, beforehand,” cried Zack,--“the
clasp. The clasp shall be a serpent, with turquoise eyes, and a
carbuncle tail; and all our initials scored up somehow on his scales.
Won’t that be splendid? I should like to surprise Madonna with it this
very evening.”
(“You shall never give it to her, if _I_ can help it,” grumbled Mrs.
Peckover, still soliloquizing under her breath. “If anything in this
world can bring her ill-luck, it will be a Hair Bracelet!”)
These last words were spoken with perfect seriousness; for they were the
result of the strongest superstitious conviction.
From the time when the Hair Bracelet was found on Madonna’s mother, Mrs.
Peckover had persuaded herself--not unnaturally, in the absence of any
information to the contrary--that it had been in some way connected with
the ruin and shame which had driven its unhappy possessor forth as an
outcast, to die amongst strangers. To believe, in consequence, that a
Hair Bracelet had brought “ill-luck” to the mother, and to derive from
that belief the conviction that a Hair Bracelet would therefore also
bring “ill-luck” to the child, was a perfectly direct and inevitable
deductive process to Mrs. Peckover’s superstitious mind. The motives
which had formerly influenced her to forbid her “little Mary” ever to
begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity
by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she
was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young
Thorpe’s ill-omened gift.
Although Valentine had only caught a word here and there, to guide him
to the subject of Mrs. Peckover’s mutterings to herself while the
game was going on, he guessed easily enough the general tenor of her
thoughts, and suspected that she would, ere long, begin to talk louder
than was at all desirable, if Zack proceeded much further with his
present topic of conversation. Accordingly, he took advantage of a pause
in the game, and of a relapse into another restless fit of walking about
the room on young Thorpe’s part, to approach his wife’s couch, as if he
wanted to find something lying near it, and to whisper to her, “Stop
his talking any more about that present to Madonna; I’ll tell you why
another time.”
Mrs. Blyth very readily and easily complied with this injunction, by
telling Zack (with perfect truth) that she had been already a little too
much excited by the events of the evening; and that she must put off all
further listening or talking, on her part, till the next night, when she
promised to advise him about the bracelet to the best of her power.
He was, however, still too full of his subject to relinquish it easily
under no stronger influence than the influence of a polite hint. Having
lost one listener in Mrs. Blyth, he boldly tried the experiment of
inviting two others to replace her, by addressing himself to the players
at the card-table.
“I dare say you have heard what I have been talking about to Mrs.
Blyth?” he began.
“Lord, Master Zack!” said Mrs. Peckover, “do you think we haven’t had
something else to do here, besides listening to you? There, now, don’t
talk to us, please, till we are done, or you’ll throw us out altogether.
Don’t, sir, on any account, because we are playing for money--sixpence a
game.”
Repelled on both sides, Zack was obliged to give way. He walked off
to try and amuse himself at the book-case. Mrs. Peckover, with a very
triumphant air, nodded and winked several times at Valentine across the
table; desiring, by these signs, to show him that she could not only
be silent herself when the conversation was in danger of approaching a
forbidden subject, but could make other people hold their tongues too.
The room was now perfectly quiet, and the game at cribbage proceeded
smoothly enough, but not so pleasantly as usual on other occasions.
Valentine did not regain his customary good spirits; and Mrs. Peckover
relapsed into whispering discontentedly to herself--now and then looking
towards the bookcase, where young Thorpe was sitting sleepily, with
a volume of engravings on his knee. It was, more or less, a relief to
everybody when the supper-tray came up, and the cards were put away for
the night.
Zack, becoming quite lively again at the prospect of a little eating and
drinking, tried to return to the dangerous subject of the Hair Bracelet;
addressing himself, on this occasion, directly to Valentine. He was
interrupted, however, before he had spoken three words. Mr. Blyth
suddenly remembered that he had an important communication of his own to
make to young Thorpe.
“Excuse me, Zack,” he said, “I have some news to tell you, which Mrs.
Peckover’s arrival drove out of my head; and which I must mention at
once, while I have the opportunity. Both my pictures are done--what
do you think of that?--done, and in their frames. I settled the titles
yesterday. The classical landscape is to be called ‘The Golden Age,’
which is a pretty poetical sort of name; and the figure-subject is to
be ‘Columbus in Sight of the New World;’ which is, I think, simple,
affecting, and grand. Wait a minute! the best of it has yet to come. I
am going to exhibit both the pictures in the studio to my friends, and
my friends’ friends, as early as Saturday next.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Zack. “Why, it’s only January now; and
you always used to have your private view of your own pictures, in
April, just before they were sent into the Academy Exhibition.”
“Quite right,” interposed Valentine, “but I am going to make a change
this year. The fact is, I have got a job to do in the provinces, which
will prevent me from having my picture-show at the usual time. So I
mean to have it now. The cards of invitation are coming home from the
printer’s tomorrow morning. I shall reserve a packet, of course, for you
and your friends, when we see you to-morrow night.”
Just as Mr. Blyth spoke those words, the clock on the mantel-piece
struck the half hour after ten. Having his own private reasons for
continuing to preserve the appearance of perfect obedience to his
father’s domestic regulations, Zack rose at once to say good night, in
order to insure being home before the house-door was bolted at eleven
o’clock. This time he did not forget Madonna’s drawing; but, on
the contrary, showed such unusual carefulness in tying his
pocket-handkerchief over the frame to preserve it from injury as he
carried it through the streets, that she could not help--in the fearless
innocence of her heart--unreservedly betraying to him, both by look and
manner, how warmly she appreciated his anxiety for the safe preservation
of her gift. Never had the bright, kind young face been lovelier in its
artless happiness than it appeared at the moment when she was shaking
hands with Zack.
Just as Valentine was about to follow his guest out of the room, Mrs.
Blyth called him back, reminding him that he had a cold, and begging him
not to expose himself to the wintry night air by going down to the door.
“But the servants must be going to bed by this time; and somebody ought
to fasten the bolts,” remonstrated Mr. Blyth.
“I’ll go, sir,” said Mrs. Peckover, rising with extraordinary alacrity.
“I’ll see Master Zack out, and do up the door. Bless your heart! it’s no
trouble to me. I’m always moving about at home from morning to night, to
prevent myself getting fatter. Don’t say no, Mr. Blyth, unless you are
afraid of trusting an old gossip like me alone with your visitors.”
The last words were intended as a sarcasm, and were whispered
into Valentine’s ear. He understood the allusion to their private
conversation together easily enough; and felt that unless he let her
have her own way without further contest, he must risk offending an old
friend by implying a mistrust of her, which would be simply ridiculous,
under the circumstances in which they were placed. So, when his wife
nodded to him to take advantage of the offer just made, he accepted it
forthwith.
“Now, I’ll stop his giving Mary a Hair Bracelet!” thought Mrs. Peckover,
as she bustled out after young Thorpe, and closed the room door behind
her.
“Wait a bit, young gentleman,” she said, arresting his further progress
on the first landing. “Just leave off talking a minute, and let me
speak. I’ve got something to say to you. Do you really mean to give Mary
that Hair Bracelet?”
“Oho! then you did hear something at the card-table about it, after
all?” said Zack. “Mean? Of course I mean--”
“And you want to put some of my hair in it?”
“To be sure I do! Madonna wouldn’t like it without.”
“Then you had better make up your mind at once to give her some other
present; for not one morsel of my hair shall you have. There now! what
do you think of that?”
“I don’t believe it, my old darling.”
“It’s true enough, I can tell you. Not a hair of my head shall you
have.”
“Why not?”
“Never mind why. I’ve got my own reasons.”
“Very well: if you come to that, I’ve got my reasons for giving the
bracelet; and I mean to give it. If you won’t let any of your hair be
plaited up along with the rest, it’s Madonna you will disappoint--not
me.”
Mrs. Peckover saw that she must change her tactics, or be defeated.
“Don’t you be so dreadful obstinate, Master Zack, and I’ll tell you the
reason,” she said in an altered tone, leading the way lower down into
the passage. “I don’t want you to give her a Hair Bracelet, because I
believe it will bring ill-luck to her--there!”
Zack burst out laughing. “Do you call that a reason? Who ever heard of a
Hair Bracelet being an unlucky gift?”
At this moment, the door of Mrs. Blyth’s room opened.
“Anything wrong with the lock?” asked Valentine from above. He was
rather surprised at the time that elapsed without his hearing the
house-door shut.
“All quite right, sir,” said Mrs. Peckover; adding in a whisper to
Zack:--“Hush! don’t say a word!”
“Don’t let him keep you in the cold with his nonsense,” said Valentine.
“My nonsense!--” began Zack, indignantly.
“He’s going, sir,” interrupted Mrs. Peckover. “I shall be upstairs in a
moment.”
“Come in, dear, pray! You’re letting all the cold air into the room,”
exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Blyth.
The door of the room closed again.
“What _are_ you driving at?” asked Zack, in extreme bewilderment.
“I only want you to give her some other present,” said Mrs. Peckover, in
her most persuasive tones. “You may think it all a whim of mine, if you
like--I dare say I’m an old fool; but I don’t want you to give her a
Hair Bracelet.”
“A whim of yours!!!” repeated Zack, with a look which made Mrs.
Peckover’s cheeks redden with rising indignation. “What! a woman at
your time of life subject to whims! My darling Peckover, it won’t do! My
mind’s made up to give her the Hair Bracelet. Nothing in the world can
stop me--except, of course, Madonna’s having a Hair Bracelet already,
which I know she hasn’t.”
“Oh! you know that, do you, you mischievous Imp? Then, for once in a
way, you just know wrong!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, losing her temper
altogether.
“You don’t mean to say so? How very remarkable, to think of her having
a Hair Bracelet already, and of my not knowing it!--Mrs. Peckover,”
continued Zack, mimicking the tone and manner of his old clerical
enemy, the Reverend Aaron Yollop, “what I am now about to say grieves me
deeply; but I have a solemn duty to discharge, and in the conscientious
performance of that duty, I now unhesitatingly express my conviction
that the remark you have just made is--a flam.”
“It isn’t--Monkey!” returned Mrs. Peckover, her anger fairly boiling
over, as she nodded her head vehemently in Zack’s face.
Just then, Valentine’s step became audible in the room above; first
moving towards the door, then suddenly retreating from it, as if he had
been called back.
“I hav’n’t let out what I oughtn’t, have I?” thought Mrs. Peckover;
calming down directly, when she heard the movement upstairs.
“Oh, you stick to it, do you?” continued Zack. “It’s rather odd,
old lady, that Mrs. Blyth should have said nothing about this
newly-discovered Hair Bracelet of yours while I was talking to her.
But she doesn’t know, of course: and Valentine doesn’t know either, I
suppose? By Jove! he’s not gone to bed yet: I’ll run back, and ask him
if Madonna really _has_ got a Hair Bracelet!”
“For God’s sake don’t!--don’t say a word about it, or you’ll get me into
dreadful trouble!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, turning pale as she thought
of possible consequences, and catching young Thorpe by the arm when he
tried to pass her in the passage.
The step up stairs crossed the room again.
“Well, upon my life,” cried Zack, “of all the extraordinary old women
“Hush! he’s going to open the door this time; he is indeed!”
“Never mind if he does; I won’t say anything,” whispered young Thorpe,
his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover’s
distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.
“That’s a good chap! that’s a dear good chap!” exclaimed Mrs. Peckover,
squeezing Zack’s hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.
The door of Mrs. Blyth’s room opened for the second time.
“He’s gone, sir; he’s gone at last!” cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the
house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking
it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.
“I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night;
though I don’t believe I have said a single word I oughtn’t to say,”
thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. “But Mr. Blyth makes such
fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being
traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that
he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master
Zack. Not that it’s so much what I said to _him,_ as what he made out
somehow and said to _me._ But they’re so sharp, these young London
chaps--they are so awful sharp!”
Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to
herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth’s door:
“But one thing I’m determined on; little Mary shan’t have that Hair
Bracelet!”
* * * * *
Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack
walk wondering all the way home.
What the deuce could these extraordinary remonstrances about his present
to Madonna possibly mean? Was it not at least clear from Mrs. Peckover’s
terror when he talked of asking Blyth whether Madonna really had a Hair
Bracelet, that she had told the truth after all? And was it not even
plainer still that she had let out a secret in telling that truth, which
Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious
Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna’s
past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from
everybody? Very likely it was--but why cudgel his brains about what
didn’t concern him? Was it not--considering the fact, previously
forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of
disposable money in the world--rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs.
Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he
hadn’t the means of paying for? What other present could he buy for
Madonna that was pretty, and cheap enough to suit the present state
of his pocket? Would she like a thimble? or an almanack? or a pair of
cuffs? or a pot of bear’s grease?
Here Zack suddenly paused in his mental interrogatories; for he had
arrived within sight of his home in Baregrove Square.
A change passed over his handsome face: he frowned, and his color
deepened as he looked up at the light in his father’s window.
“I’ll slip out again to-night, and see life,” he muttered doggedly
to himself, approaching the door. “The more I’m bullied at home, the
oftener I’ll go out on the sly.”
This rebellious speech was occasioned by the recollection of a domestic
scene, which had contributed, early that evening, to swell the list of
the Tribulations of Zack. Mr. Thorpe had moral objections to Mr. Blyth’s
profession, and moral doubts on the subject of Mr. Blyth himself--these
last being strengthened by that gentleman’s own refusal to explain
away the mystery which enveloped the birth and parentage of his adopted
child. As a necessary consequence, Mr. Thorpe considered the painter
to be no fit companion for a devout young man; and expressed, severely
enough, his unmeasured surprise at finding that his son had accepted an
invitation from a person of doubtful character. Zack’s rejoinder to
his father’s reproof was decisive, if it was nothing else. He denied
everything alleged or suggested against his friend’s reputation--lost
his temper on being sharply rebuked for the “indecent vehemence” of
his language--and left the paternal tea-table in defiance, to go and
cultivate the Fine Arts in the doubtful company of Mr. Valentine Blyth.
“Just in time, sir,” said the page, grinning at his young master as he
opened the door. “It’s on the stroke of eleven.”
Zack muttered something savage in reply, which it is not perhaps
advisable to report. The servant secured the lock and bolts, while he
put his hat on the hall table, and lit his bedroom candle.
* * * * *
Rather more than an hour after this time--or, in other words, a little
past midnight--the door opened again softly, and Zack appeared on the
step, equipped for his nocturnal expedition.
He hesitated, as he put the key into the lock from outside, before he
closed the door behind him. He had never done this on former occasions;
he could not tell why he did it now. We are mysteries even to ourselves;
and there are times when the Voices of the future that are in us, yet
not ours, speak, and make the earthly part of us conscious of their
presence. Oftenest our mortal sense feels that they are breaking their
dread silence at those supreme moments of existence, when on the choice
between two apparently trifling alternatives hangs suspended the whole
future of a life. And thus it was now with the young man who stood on
the threshold of his home, doubtful whether he should pursue or abandon
the purpose which was then uppermost in his mind. On his choice between
the two alternatives of going on, or going back--which the closing of a
door would decide--depended the future of his life, and of other lives
that were mingled with it.
He waited a minute undecided, for the warning Voices within him were
stronger than his own will: he waited, looking up thoughtfully at the
starry loveliness of the winter’s night--then closed the door behind him
as softly as usual--hesitated again at the last step that led on to the
pavement--and then fairly set forth from home, walking at a rapid pace
through the streets.
He was not in his usual good spirits. He felt no inclination to sing
as was his wont, while passing through the fresh, frosty air: and he
wondered why it was so.
The Voices were still speaking faintly and more faintly within him.
But we must die before we can become immortal as they are; and their
language to us in this life is often as an unknown tongue.
BOOK II. THE SEEKING.
CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BLACK SKULL-CAP.
The Roman poet who, writing of vice, ascribed its influence entirely to
the allurement of the fair disguises that it wore, and asserted that
it only needed to be seen with the mask off to excite the hatred of all
mankind, uttered a very plausible moral sentiment, which wants nothing
to recommend it to the admiration of posterity but a seasoning of
practical truth. Even in the most luxurious days of old Rome, it may
safely be questioned whether vice could ever afford to disguise itself
to win recruits, except from the wealthier classes of the population.
But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that
vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no
disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead
of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of
the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous
congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together
by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of
mankind.
That famous place of public amusement known, a few years since, to the
late-roaming youth of London by the name of the Snuggery, affords, among
hosts of other instances which might be cited, a notable example to
refute the assertion of the ancient poet. The place was principally
devoted to the exhibition of musical talent, and opened at a period
of the night when the performances at the theaters were over. The
orchestral arrangements were comprised in one bad piano, to which were
occasionally added, by way of increasing the attractions, performances
on the banjo and guitar. All the singers were called “ladies and
gentlemen;” and the one long room in which the performances took place
was simply furnished with a double row of benches, bearing troughs at
their backs for the reception of glasses of liquor.
Innocence itself must have seen at a glance that the Snuggery was an
utterly vicious place. Vice never so much as thought of wearing any
disguise here. No glimmer of wit played over the foul substance of the
songs that were sung, and hid it in dazzle from too close observation.
No relic of youth and freshness, no artfully-assumed innocence and
vivacity, concealed the squalid deterioration of the worn-out human
counterfeits which stood up to sing, and were coarsely painted and
padded to look like fine women. Their fellow performers among the men
were such sodden-faced blackguards as no shop-boy who applauded them at
night would dare to walk out with in the morning. The place itself
had as little of the allurement of elegance and beauty about it as the
people. Here was no bright gilding on the ceiling--no charm of ornament,
no comfort of construction even, in the furniture. Here were no
viciously-attractive pictures on the walls--no enervating sweet odors
in the atmosphere--no contrivances of ventilation to cleanse away the
stench of bad tobacco-smoke and brandy-flavored human breath with
which the room reeked all night long. Here, in short, was vice wholly
undisguised; recklessly showing itself to every eye, without the varnish
of beauty, without the tinsel of wit, without even so much as the
flavor of cleanliness to recommend it. Were all beholders instinctively
overcome by horror at the sight? Far from it. The Snuggery was crammed
to its last benches every night; and the proprietor filled his pockets
from the purses of applauding audiences. For, let classical moralists
say what they may, vice gathers followers as easily, in modern times,
with the mask off, as ever it gathered them in ancient times with the
mask on.
It was two o’clock in the morning; and the entertainments in the
Snuggery were fast rising to the climax of joviality. A favorite comic
song had just been sung by a bloated old man with a bald head and a
hairy chin. There was a brief lull of repose, before the amusements
resumed their noisy progress. Orders for drink were flying abroad in
all directions. Friends were talking at the tops of their voices, and
strangers were staring at each other--except at the lower end of
the room, where the whole attention of the company was concentrated
strangely upon one man.
The person who thus attracted to himself the wandering curiosity of
all his neighbors had come in late, had taken the first vacant place he
could find near the door, and had sat there listening and looking about
him very quietly. He drank and smoked like the rest of the company; but
never applauded, never laughed, never exhibited the slightest symptom
of astonishment, or pleasure, or impatience, or disgust--though it
was evident, from his manner of entering and giving his orders to the
waiters, that he visited the Snuggery that night for the first time.
He was not in mourning, for there was no band round his hat; but he was
dressed nevertheless in a black frock-coat, waistcoat, and trousers, and
wore black kid gloves. He seemed to be very little at his ease in
this costume, moving his limbs, whenever he changed his position, as
cautiously and constrainedly as if he had been clothed in gossamer
instead of stout black broadcloth, shining with its first new gloss on
it. His face was tanned to a perfectly Moorish brown, was scarred in
two places by the marks of old wounds, and was overgrown by coarse,
iron-grey whiskers, which met under his chin. His eyes were light, and
rather large, and seemed to be always quietly but vigilantly on the
watch. Indeed the whole expression of his face, coarse and heavy as it
was in form, was remarkable for its acuteness, for its cool, collected
penetration, for its habitually observant, passively-watchful look. Any
one guessing at his calling from his manner and appearance would have
set him down immediately as the captain of a merchantman, and would have
been willing to lay any wager that he had been several times round the
world.
But it was not his face, or his dress, or his manner, that drew on him
the attention of all his neighbors; it was his head. Under his hat,
(which was bran new, like everything else he wore), there appeared,
fitting tight round his temples and behind his ears, a black velvet
skull-cap. Not a vestige of hair peeped from under it. All round his
head, as far as could be seen beneath his hat, which he wore far back
over his coat collar, there was nothing but bare flesh, encircled by a
rim of black velvet.
From a great proposal for reform, to a small eccentricity in costume,
the English are the most intolerant people in the world, in their
reception of anything which presents itself to them under the form of a
perfect novelty. Let any man display a new project before the Parliament
of England, or a new pair of light-green trousers before the inhabitants
of London, let the project proclaim itself as useful to all listening
ears, and the trousers eloquently assert themselves as beautiful to all
beholding eyes, the nation will shrink suspiciously, nevertheless, both
from the one and the other; will order the first to “lie on the table,”
and will hoot, laugh, and stare at the second; will, in short, resent
either novelty as an unwarrantable intrusion, for no other discernible
reason than that people in general are not used to it.
Quietly as the strange man in black had taken his seat in the Snuggery,
he and his skull-cap attracted general attention; and our national
weakness displayed itself immediately.
Nobody paused to reflect that he probably wore his black velvet
head-dress from necessity; nobody gave him credit for having objections
to a wig, which might be perfectly sensible and well founded; and
nobody, even in this free country, was liberal enough to consider that
he had really as much right to put on a skull-cap under his hat if
he chose, as any other man present had to put on a shirt under his
waistcoat. The audience saw nothing but the novelty in the way of a
head-dress which the stranger wore, and they resented it unanimously,
because it was a novelty. First, they expressed this resentment by
staring indignantly at him, then by laughing at him, then by making
sarcastic remarks on him. He bore their ridicule with the most perfect
and provoking coolness. He did not expostulate, or retort, or look
angry, or grow red in the face, or fidget in his seat, or get up to go
away. He just sat smoking and drinking as quietly as ever, not taking
the slightest notice of any of the dozens of people who were all taking
notice of him.
His unassailable composure only served to encourage his neighbors
to take further liberties with him. One rickety little man, with a
spirituous nose and watery eyes, urged on by some women near him,
advanced to the stranger’s bench, and, expressing his admiration of a
skull-cap as a becoming ornamental addition to a hat, announced, with a
bow of mock politeness, his anxiety to feel the quality of the velvet.
He stretched out his hand as he spoke, not a word of warning or
expostulation being uttered by the victim of the intended insult; but
the moment his fingers touched the skull-cap, the strange man, still
without speaking, without even removing his cigar from his mouth, very
deliberately threw all that remained of the glass of hot brandy and
water before him in the rickety gentleman’s face.
With a scream of pain as the hot liquor flew into his eyes, the
miserable little man struck out helplessly with both his fists, and fell
down between the benches. A friend who was with him, advanced to avenge
his injuries, and was thrown sprawling on the floor. Yells of “Turn him
out!” and “Police!” followed; people at the other end of the room jumped
up excitably on their seats; the women screamed, the men shouted and
swore, glasses were broken, sticks were waved, benches were cracked,
and, in one instant, the stranger was assailed by every one of his
neighbors who could get near him, on pretense of turning him out.
Just as it seemed a matter of certainty that he must yield to numbers,
in spite of his gallant resistance, and be hurled out of the door down
the flight of stairs that led to it, a tall young gentleman, with a
quantity of light curly hair on his hatless head, leapt up on one of the
benches at the opposite side of the gangway running down the middle of
the room, and apostrophized the company around him with vehement fistic
gesticulation. Alas for the tranquillity of parents with pleasure-loving
sons!--alas for Mr. Valentine Blyth’s idea of teaching his pupil to be
steady, by teaching him to draw!--this furious young gentleman was no
other than Mr. Zachary Thorpe, Junior, of Baregrove Square.
“Damn you all, you cowardly counter-jumping scoundrels!” roared Zack,
his eyes aflame with valor, generosity, and gin-and-water. “What do you
mean by setting on one man in that way? Hit out, sir--hit out right and
left! I saw you insulted; and I’m coming to help you!”
With these words Zack tucked up his cuffs, and jumped into the crowd
about him. His height, strength, and science as a boxer carried him
triumphantly to the opposite bench. Two or three blows on the ribs, and
one on the nose which drew blood plentifully, only served to stimulate
his ardor and increase the pugilistic ferocity of his expression. In
a minute he was by the side of the man with the skull-cap; and the two
were fighting back to back, amid roars of applause from the audience at
the upper end of the room, who were only spectators of the disturbance.
In the meantime the police had been summoned. But the waiters
down-stairs, in their anxiety to see a struggle between two men on one
side, and somewhere about two dozen on the other, had neglected to close
the street door. The consequence was, that all the cabmen on the stand
outside, and all the vagabond night-idlers in the vagabond neighborhood
of the Snuggery, poured into the narrow passage, and got up an impromptu
riot of their own with the waiters, who tried, too late, to turn them
out. Just as the police were forcing their way through the throng below,
Zack and the stranger had fought their way out of the throng above, and
had got clear of the room.
On the right of the landing, as they approached it, was a door, through
which the man with the skull-cap now darted, dragging Zack after him.
His temper was just as cool, his quick eye just as vigilant as ever.
The key of the door was inside. He locked it, amid a roar of applauding
laughter from the people on the staircase, mixed with cries of “Police!”
and “Stop ‘em in the Court!” from the waiters. The two then descended
a steep flight of stairs at headlong speed, and found themselves in a
kitchen, confronting an astonished man cook and two female servants.
Zack knocked the man down before he could use the rolling-pin which he
had snatched up on their appearance; while the stranger coolly took a
hat that stood on the dresser, and jammed it tight with one smack of his
large hand on young Thorpe’s bare head. The next moment they were out
in a court into which the kitchen opened, and were running at the top of
their speed.
The police, on their side, lost no time; but they had to get out of the
crowd in the passage and go round the front of the house, before they
could arrive at the turning which led into the court from the street.
This gave the fugitives a start; and the neighborhood of alleys, lanes,
and by-streets in which their flight immediately involved them, was the
neighborhood of all others to favor their escape. While the springing of
rattles and the cries of “Stop thief!” were rending the frosty night air
in one direction, Zack and the stranger were walking away quietly, arm
in arm, in the other.
The man with the skull-cap had taken the lead hitherto, and he took it
still; though, from the manner in which he stared about him at corners
of streets, and involved himself and his companion every now and then in
blind alleys, it was clear enough that he was quite unfamiliar with
the part of the town through which they were now walking. Zack, having
treated himself that night to his fatal third glass of grog, and having
finished half of it before the fight began, was by this time in no
condition to care about following any particular path in the great
labyrinth of London. He walked on, talking thickly and incessantly to
the stranger, who never once answered him. It was of no use to applaud
his bravery; to criticize his style of fighting, which was anything but
scientific; to express astonishment at his skill in knocking his hat on
again, all through the struggle, every time it was knocked off; and to
declare admiration of his quickness in taking the cook’s hat to cover
his companion’s bare head, which might have exposed him to suspicion and
capture as he passed through the streets. It was of no use to speak on
these subjects, or on any others. The imperturbable hero who had not
uttered a word all through the fight, was as imperturbable as ever, and
would not utter a word after it.
They strayed at last into Fleet Street, and walked to the foot of
Ludgate Hill. Here the stranger stopped--glanced towards the open space
on the right, where the river ran--gave a rough gasp of relief and
satisfaction--and made directly for Blackfriars bridge. He led Zack,
who was still thick in his utterance, and unsteady on his legs, to the
parapet wall; let go of his arm there, and looking steadily in his face
by the light of the gas-lamp, addressed him, for the first time, in a
remarkably grave, deliberate voice, and in these words:
“Now, then, young ‘un, suppose you pull a breath, and wipe that bloody
nose of yours.”
Zack, instead of resenting this unceremonious manner of speaking to
him--which he might have done, had he been sober--burst into a frantic
fit of laughter. The remarkable gravity and composure of the stranger’s
tone and manner, contrasted with the oddity of the proposition by which
he opened the conversation, would have been irresistibly ludicrous even
to a man whose faculties were not in an intoxicated condition.
While Zack was laughing till the tears rolled down his cheeks, his odd
companion was leaning over the parapet of the bridge, and pulling
off his black kid gloves, which had suffered considerably during the
progress of the fight. Having rolled them up into a ball, he jerked them
contemptuously into the river.
“There goes the first pair of gloves as ever I had on, and the last as
ever I mean to wear,” he said, spreading out his brawny hands to the
sharp night breeze.
Young Thorpe heaved a few last expiring gasps of laughter; then became
quiet and serious from sheer exhaustion.
“Go it again,” said the man of the skull-cap, staring at him as gravely
as ever, “I like to hear you.”
“I can’t go it again,” answered Zack faintly; “I’m out of breath. I say,
old boy, you’re quite a character! Who are you?”
“I ain’t nobody in particular; and I don’t know as I’ve got a single
friend to care about who I am, in all England,” replied the other. “Give
us your hand, young ‘un! In the foreign parts where I come from, when
one man stands by another, as you’ve stood by me to-night, them two are
brothers together afterwards. You needn’t be a brother to me, if you
don’t like. I mean to be a brother to you, whether you like it or not.
My name’s Mat. What’s your’s?”
“Zack,” returned young Thorpe, clapping his new acquaintance on the back
with brotherly familiarity already. “You’re a glorious fellow; and I
like your way of talking. Where do you come from, Mat? And what do you
wear that queer cap under your hat for?”
“I come from America last,” replied Mat, as grave and deliberate as
ever. “And I wear this cap because I haven’t got no scalp on my head.”
“What do you mean?” cried Zack, startled into temporary sobriety, and
taking his hand off his new friend’s shoulder as quickly as if he had
put it on red-hot iron.
“I always mean what I say,” continued Mat; “I’ve got that much good
about me, if I haven’t got no more. Me and my scalp parted company years
ago. I’m here, on a bridge in London, talking to a young chap of the
name of Zack. My scalp’s on the top of a high pole in some Indian
village, anywhere you like about the Amazon country. If there’s any
puffs of wind going there, like there is here, it’s rattling just now,
like a bit of dry parchment; and all my hair’s a flip-flapping about
like a horse’s tail, when the flies is in season. I don’t know nothing
more about my scalp or my hair than that. If you don’t believe me, just
lay hold of my hat, and I’ll show you--”
“No, thank you!” exclaimed Zack, recoiling from the offered hat.
“I don’t want to see it. But how the deuce do you manage without a
scalp?--I never heard of such a thing before in my life--how is it
you’re not dead? eh?”
“It takes a deal more to kill a tough man than you London chaps think,”
said Mat. “I was found before my head got cool, and plastered over with
leaves and ointment. They’d left a bit of scalp at the back, being in
rather too great a hurry to do their work as handily as usual; and a new
skin growed over, after a little--a babyish sort of skin, that wasn’t
half thick enough, and wouldn’t bear no new crop of hair. So I had to
eke out and keep my head comfortable with an old yellow handkercher;
which I always wore till I got to San Francisco, on my way back here.
I met with a priest at San Francisco, who told me that I should look a
little less like a savage, if I wore a skull-cap like his, instead of a
handkercher, when I got back into what he called the civilized world. So
I took his advice, and bought this cap. I suppose it looks better than
my old yellow handkercher; but it ain’t half as comfortable.”
“But how did you lose your scalp?” asked Zack--“tell us all about it.
Upon my life, you’re the most interesting fellow I ever met with! And,
I say, let’s walk about, while we talk. I feel steadier on my legs now;
and it’s so infernally cold standing here.”
“Which way can we soonest get out of this muck of houses and streets?”
asked Mat, surveying the London view around him with an expression of
grim disgust. “There ain’t no room, even on this bridge, for the wind
to blow fairly over a man. I’d just as soon be smothered up in a bed, as
smothered up in smoke and stink here.”
“What a delightful fellow you are! so entirely out of the common way!
Steady, my dear friend. The grog’s not quite out of my head yet; and
I find I’ve got the hiccups. Here’s my way home, and your way into the
fresh air, if you really want it. Come along; and tell me how you lost
your scalp.”
“There ain’t nothing particular to tell. What’s your name again?”
“Zack.”
“Well, Zack, I was out on the tramp, dodging about after any game that
turned up, on the banks of the Amazon--”
“Amazon? what’s that? a woman? or a place?”
“Did you ever hear of South America?”
“I can’t positively swear to it; but, to the best of my belief, I think
I have.”
“Well; the Amazon’s a longish bit of a river in those parts. I was out,
as I told you, on the tramp.”
“So I should think! you look like the sort of man who has tramped
everywhere, and done everything.”
“You’re about right there, for a wonder! I’ve druv cattle in Mexico;
I’ve been out with a gang that went to find an overland road to the
North Pole; I’ve worked through a season or two in catching wild horses
on the Pampas; and another season or two in digging gold in California.
I went away from England, a tidy lad aboard ship; and here I am back
again now, an old vagabond as hasn’t a friend to own him. If you want
to know exactly who I am, and what I’ve been up to all my life, that’s
about as much as I can tell you.”
“You don’t say so! Wait a minute, though; there’s one thing--you’re not
troubled with the hiccups, are you, after eating supper? (I’ve been a
martyr to hiccups ever since I was a child.) But, I say, there’s one
thing you haven’t told me yet; you haven’t told me what your other name
is besides Mat. Mine’s Thorpe.”
“I haven’t heard the sound of the other name you’re asking after for a
matter of better than twenty year: and I don’t care if I never hear it
again.” His voice sank huskily, and he turned his head a little away
from Zack, as he said those words. “They nicknamed me ‘Marksman,’ when I
used to go out with the exploring gangs, because I was the best shot of
all of them. You call me Marksman, too, if you don’t like Mat. Mister
Mathew Marksman, if you please: everybody seems to be a ‘Mister’ here.
You’re one, of course. I don’t mean to call you ‘Mister’ for all that. I
shall stick to Zack; it’s short, and there’s no bother about it.”
“All right, old fellow! and I’ll stick to Mat, which is shorter still by
a whole letter. But, I say, you haven’t told the story yet about how you
lost your scalp.”
“There’s no story in it, Do you know what it is to have a man dodging
after you through these odds and ends of streets here? I dare say you
do. Well, I had three skulking thieves of Indians dodging after me, over
better than four hundred miles of lonesome country, where I might have
bawled for help for a whole week on end, and never made anybody hear
me. They wanted my scalp, and they wanted my rifle, and they got both at
last, at the end of their man-hunt, because I couldn’t get any sleep.”
“Not get any sleep. Why not?”
“Because they was three, and I was only one, to be sure! One of them
kep’ watch while the other two slept. I hadn’t nobody to keep watch for
me; and my life depended on my eyes being open night and day. I took a
dog’s snooze once, and was woke out of it by an arrow in my face. I
kep’ on a long time after that, before I give out; but at last I got
the horrors, and thought the prairie was all a-fire, and run from it.
I don’t know how long I run on in that mad state; I only know that the
horrors turned out to be the saving of my life. I missed my own trail,
and struck into another, which was a trail of friendly Indians--people
I’d traded with, you know. And I came up with ‘em somehow, near enough
for the stragglers of their hunting party to hear me skreek when my
scalp was took. Now you know as much about it as I do; I can’t tell you
no more, except that I woke up like, in an Indian wigwam, with a crop of
cool leaves on my head, instead of a crop of hair.”
“A crop of leaves! What a jolly old Jack-in-the-Green you must have
looked like! Which of those scars on your face is the arrow-wound, eh?
Oh, that’s it--is it? I say, old boy, you’ve got a black eye! Did any of
those fellows in the Snuggery hit hard enough to hurt you?”
“Hurt me? Chaps like them _hurt Me!!”_ Tickled by the extravagance of
the idea which Zack’s question suggested to him, Mat shook his sturdy
shoulders, and indulged himself in a gruff chuckle, which seemed to
claim some sort of barbarous relationship with a laugh.
“Ah! of course they haven’t hurt you;--I didn’t think they had,” said
Zack, whose pugilistic sympathies were deeply touched by the contempt
with which his new friend treated the bumps and bruises received in
the fight. “Go on, Mat, I like adventures of your sort. What did you do
after your head healed up?”
“Well, I got tired of dodging about the Amazon, and went south, and
learnt to throw a lasso, and took a turn at the wild horses. Galloping
did my head good.”
“It’s just what would do my head good too. Yours is the sort of life,
Mat, for me! How did you first come to lead it? Did you run away from
home?”
“No. I served aboard ship, where I was put out, being too idle a
vagabond to be kep’ at home. I always wanted to run wild somewheres for
a change; but I didn’t really go to do it, till I picked up a letter
which was waiting for me in port, at the Brazils. There was news in that
letter which sickened me of going home again; so I deserted, and went
off on the tramp. And I’ve been mostly on the tramp ever since, till I
got here last Sunday.”
“What! have you only been in England since Sunday?”
“That’s all. I made a good time of it in California, where I’ve been
last, digging gold. My mate, as was with me, got a talking about the old
country, and wrought on me so that I went back with him to see it again.
So, instead of gambling away all my money over there” (Mat carelessly
jerked his hand in a westerly direction), “I’ve come to spend it over
here; and I’m going down into the country to-morrow, to see if anybody
lives to own me at the old place.”
“And suppose nobody does? What then?”
“Then I shall go back again. After twenty years among the savages, or
little better, I’m not fit for the sort of thing as goes on among
you here. I can’t sleep in a bed; I can’t stop in a room; I can’t be
comfortable in decent clothes; I can’t stray into a singing-shop, as
I did to-night, without a dust being kicked up all round me, because I
haven’t got a proper head of hair like everybody else. I can’t shake
up along with the rest of you, nohow; I’m used to hard lines and a
wild country; and I shall go back and die over there among the lonesome
places where there’s plenty of room for me.” And again Mat jerked his
hand carelessly in the direction of the American continent.
“Oh, don’t talk about going back!” cried Zack; “you’re sure to find
somebody left at home--don’t you think so yourself, old fellow?”
Mat made no answer. He suddenly slackened; then, as suddenly, increased
his pace; dragging young Thorpe with him at a headlong rate.
“You’re sure to find somebody,” continued Zack, in his offhand, familiar
way. “I don’t know--gently! we’re not walking for a wager--I don’t know
whether you’re married or not?” (Mat still made no answer, and walked
faster than ever.) “But if you havn’t got wife or child, every fellow’s
got a father and mother, you know; and most fellows have got brothers or
sisters--”
“Good night,” said Mat, stopping short, and abruptly holding out his
hand.
“Why! what’s the matter now?” asked Zack, in astonishment. “What do you
want to part company for already? We are not near the end of the streets
yet. Have I said anything that’s offended you?”
“No, you havn’t. You can come and talk to me if you like, the day after
to-morrow. I shall be back then, whatever happens. I said I’d be like
a brother to you; and that means, in my lingo, doing anything you ask.
Come and smoke a pipe along with me, as soon as I’m back again. Do you
know Kirk Street? It’s nigh on the Market. Do you know a ‘bacco shop in
Kirk Street? It’s got a green door, and Fourteen written on it in yaller
paint. When I _am_ shut up in a room of my own, which isn’t often, I’m
shut up there. I can’t give you the key of the house, because I want it
myself.”
“Kirk Street? That’s my way. Why can’t we go on together? What do you
want to say good-night here for?”
“Because I want to be left by myself. It’s not your fault; but you’ve
set me thinking of something that don’t make me easy in my mind. I’ve
led a lonesome life of it, young ‘un; straying away months and months
out in the wilderness, without a human being to speak to, I dare say
that wasn’t a right sort of life for a man to take up with; but I _did_
take up with it; and I can’t get over liking it sometimes still. When
I’m not easy in my mind, I want to be left lonesome as I used to be. I
want it now. Good night.”
Before Zack could enter his new friend’s address in his pocket-book, Mat
had crossed the road, and had disappeared in the dark distance dotted
with gaslights. In another moment, the last thump of his steady footstep
died away on the pavement, in the morning stillness of the street.
“That’s rather an odd fellow”--thought Zack as he pursued his own
road--“and we have got acquainted with each other in rather an odd way.
I shall certainly go and see him though, on Thursday; something may come
of it, one of these days.”
Zack was a careless guesser; but, in this case, he guessed right.
Something _did_ come of it.