A quarter of an hour’s rapid walking from his father’s door, took Zack
well out of the neighborhood of Baregrove Square, and launched him in
vagabond independence loose on the world. He had a silk handkerchief and
sevenpence halfpenny in his pockets--his available assets consisted of
a handsome gold watch and chain--his only article of baggage was a
blackthorn stick--and his anchor of hope was the Pawnbroker.
His first action, now that he had become his own master, was to go
direct to the nearest stationer’s shop that he could find, and there to
write the penitent letter to his mother over which his heart had
failed him in the library at Baregrove Square. It was about as awkward,
scrambling, and incoherent an epistolary production as ever was
composed. But Zack felt easier when he had completed it--easier still
when he had actually dropped it into the post-office along with his
other letter to Mr. Valentine Blyth.
The next duty that claimed him was the first great duty of civilized
humanity--the filling of an empty purse. Most young gentlemen in his
station of life would have found the process of pawning a watch in the
streets of London, and in broad daylight, rather an embarrassing one.
But Zack was born impervious to a sense of respectability. He marched
into the first pawnbroker’s he came to with as solemn an air of
business, and marched out again with as serene an expression of
satisfaction, as if he had just been drawing a handsome salary, or just
been delivering a heavy deposit into the hands of his banker.
Once provided with pecuniary resources, Zack felt himself at liberty
to indulge forthwith in a holiday of his own granting. He opened the
festival by a good long ride in a cab, with a bottle of pale ale and a
packet of cigars inside, to keep the miserable state of the weather
from affecting his spirits. He closed the festival with a visit to the
theater, a supper in mixed company, total self-oblivion, a bed at a
tavern, and a blinding headache the next morning. Thus much, in brief,
for the narrative of his holiday. The proceedings, on his part, which
followed that festival, claim attention next; and are of sufficient
importance, in the results to which they led, to be mentioned in detail.
The new morning was the beginning of an important day in Zack’s life.
Much depended on the interviews he was about to seek with his new
friend, Mat, in Kirk Street, and with Mr. Blyth, at the turnpike in the
Laburnum Road. As he paid his bill at the tavern, his conscience was not
altogether easy, when he recalled a certain passage in his letter to
his mother, which had assured her that he was on the high road to
reformation already. “I’ll make a clean breast of it to Blyth, and do
exactly what he tells me, when I meet him at the turnpike.” Fortifying
himself with this good resolution, Zack arrived at Kirk Street, and
knocked at the private door of the tobacconist’s shop.
Mat, having seen him from the window, called to him to come up, as
soon as the door was opened. The moment they shook hands, young Thorpe
noticed that his new friend looked altered. His face seemed to have
grown downcast and weary--heavy and vacant, since they had last met.
“What’s happened to you?” asked Zack. “You have been somewhere in the
country, haven’t you? What news do you bring back, my dear fellow? Good,
I hope?”
“Bad as can be,” returned Mat, gruffly. “Don’t you say another word to
me about it. If you do, we part company again. Talk of something else.
Anything you like; and the sooner the better.”
Forbidden to discourse any more concerning his friend’s affairs, Zack
veered about directly, and began to discourse concerning his own.
Candor was one of his few virtues: and he now confided to Mat the entire
history of his tribulations, without a single reserved point at any part
of the narrative, from beginning to end.
Without putting a question, or giving an answer, without displaying
the smallest astonishment or the slightest sympathy, Mat stood gravely
listening until Zack had quite done. He then went to the corner of the
room where the round table was; pulled the upturned lid back upon the
pedestal; drew from the breast pocket of his coat a roll of beaver-skin;
slowly undid it; displayed upon the table a goodly collection of bank
notes; and pointing to them, said to young Thorpe,--“Take what you
want.”
It was not easy to surprise Zack; but this proceeding so completely
astonished him, that he stared at the bank notes in speechless
amazement. Mat took his pipe from a nail in the wall, filled the bowl
with tobacco, and pointing with the stem towards the table, gruffly
repeated,--“Take what you want.”
This time, Zack found words in which to express himself, and used them
pretty freely to praise his new friend’s unexampled generosity, and to
decline taking a single farthing. Mat deliberately lit his pipe, in the
first place, and then bluntly answered in these terms:--
“Take my advice, young ‘un, and keep all that talking for somebody else:
it’s gibberish to _me._ Don’t bother; and help yourself to what you
want. Money’s what you want--though you won’t own it. That’s money. When
it’s gone, I can go back to California and get more. While it lasts,
make it spin. What is there to stare at? I told you I’d be brothers with
you, because of what you done for me the other night. Well: I’m being
brothers with you now. Get your watch out of pawn, and shake a loose leg
at the world. _Will_ you take what you want? And when you have, just tie
up the rest, and chuck ‘em over here.” With those words the man of
the black skull-cap sat down on his bearskins, and sulkily surrounded
himself with clouds of tobacco smoke.
Finding it impossible to make Mat understand those delicacies and
refinements of civilized life which induce one gentleman (always
excepting a clergyman at Easter time) to decline accepting money from
another gentleman as a gift--perceiving that he was resolved to receive
all remonstrances as so many declarations of personal enmity and
distrust--and well knowing, moreover, that a little money to go on
with would be really a very acceptable accommodation under existing
circumstances, Zack consented to take two ten-pound notes as a loan. At
this reservation Mat chuckled contemptuously; but young Thorpe
enforced it, by tearing a leaf out of his pocket-book, and writing an
acknowledgment for the sum he had borrowed. Mat roughly and resolutely
refused to receive the document; but Zack tied it up along with the
bank-notes, and threw the beaver-skin roll back to its owner, as
requested.
“Do you want a bed to sleep in?” asked Mat next. “Say yes or no at once!
I won’t have no more gibberish. I’m not a gentleman, and I can’t shake
up along with them as are. It’s no use trying it on with me, young ‘un.
I’m not much better than a cross between a savage and a Christian. I’m
a battered, lonesome, scalped old vagabond--that’s what I am! But I’m
brothers with you for all that. What’s mine is yours; and if you tell me
it isn’t again, me and you are likely to quarrel. Do you want a bed to
sleep in? Yes? or No?”
Yes; Zack certainly wanted a bed; but--
“There’s one for you,” remarked Mat, pointing through the folding-doors
into the back room. _“I_ don’t want it. I haven’t slep’ in a bed these
twenty years and more, and I can’t do it now. I take dog’s snoozes in
this corner; and I shall take more dog’s snoozes out of doors in the
day-time, when the sun begins to shine. I haven’t been used to much
sleep, and I don’t want much. Go in and try if the bed’s long enough for
you.”
Zack tried to expostulate again, but Mat interrupted him more gruffly
than ever.
“I suppose you don’t care to sleep next door to such as me,” he said.
“You wouldn’t turn your back on a bit of my blanket, though, if we were
out in the lonesome places together. Never mind! You won’t cotton to me
all at once, I dare say. I cotton to _you_ in spite of that. Damn the
bed! Take or leave it, which you like.”
Zack the reckless, who was always ready at five minutes’ notice to
make friends with any living being under the canopy of heaven--Zack
the gregarious, who in his days of roaming the country, before he was
fettered to an office stool, had “cottoned” to every species of rustic
vagabond, from a traveling tinker to a resident poacher--at once
declared that he would sleep in the offered bed that very night, by way
of showing himself worthy of his host’s assistance and regard, if worthy
of nothing else. Greatly relieved by this plain declaration, Mat crossed
his legs luxuriously on the floor, shook his great shoulders with a
heartier chuckle than usual, and made his young friend free of the
premises in these hospitable words:--
“There! now the bother’s over at last, I suppose,” cried Mat. “Pull in
the buffalo hide, and bring your legs to an anchor anywhere you like.
I’m smoking. Suppose you smoke too.--Hoi! Bring up a clean pipe,” cried
this rough diamond, in conclusion, turning up a loose corner of the
carpet, and roaring through a crack in the floor into the shop below.
The pipe was brought. Zack sat down on the buffalo hide, and began to
ask his queer friend about the life he had been leading in the wilds of
North and South America. From short replies at first, Mat was gradually
beguiled into really relating some of his adventures. Wild,
barbarous fragments of narrative they were; mingling together in one
darkly-fantastic record, fierce triumphs and deadly dangers; miseries
of cold, and hunger, and thirst; glories of hunters’ feasts in mighty
forests; gold-findings among desolate rocks; gallopings for life from
the flames of the blazing prairie; combats with wild beasts and with
men wilder still; weeks of awful solitude in primeval wastes; days and
nights of perilous orgies among drunken savages; visions of meteors in
heaven, of hurricanes on earth, and of icebergs blinding bright, when
the sunshine was beautiful over the Polar seas.
Young Thorpe listened in a fever of excitement. Here was the desperate,
dangerous, roving life of which he had dreamed! He longed already to
engage in it: he could have listened to descriptions of it all day long.
But Mat was the last man in the world to err, at any time, on the side
of diffuseness in relating the results of his own experience. And he now
provokingly stopped, on a sudden, in the middle of an adventure among
the wild horses on the Pampas; declaring that he was tired of feeling
his own tongue wag, and had got so sick of talking of himself, that he
was determined not to open his mouth again--except to put a rump-steak
and a pipe in it--for the rest of the day.
Finding it impossible to make him alter this resolution, Zack thought of
his engagement with Mr. Blyth, and asked what time it was. Mat, having
no watch, conveyed this inquiry into the shop by the same process of
roaring through the crack in the ceiling which he had already employed
to produce a clean pipe. The answer showed Zack that he had barely time
enough left to be punctual to his appointment in the Laburnum Road.
“I must be off to my friend at the turnpike,” he said, rising and
putting on his hat; “but I shall be back again in an hour or two. I say,
have you thought seriously yet about going back to America?” His eyes
sparkled eagerly as he put this question.
“There ain’t no need to think about it,” answered Mat. “I mean to go
back; but I haven’t settled what day yet. I’ve got something to do
first.” His face darkened, and he glanced aside at the box which he
had brought from Dibbledean, and which was now covered with one of his
bearskins. “Never mind what it is; I’ve got it to do, and that’s enough.
Don’t you go asking again whether I’ve brought news from the country,
or whether I haven’t. Don’t you ever do that, and we shall sail along
together easy enough. I like you, Zack, when you don’t bother me. If you
want to go, what are you stopping for? Why don’t you clear out at once?”
Young Thorpe departed, laughing. It was a fine clear day, and the bright
sky showed signs of a return of the frost. He was in high spirits as he
walked along, thinking of Mat’s wild adventures. What was the happiest
painter’s life, after all, compared to such a life as he had just heard
described? Zack was hardly in the Laburnum Road before he began to doubt
whether he had really made up his mind to be guided entirely by Mr.
Blyth’s advice, and to devote all his energies for the future to the
cultivation of the fine arts.
Near the turnpike stood a tall gentleman, making a sketch in a note-book
of some felled timber lying by the road side. This could be no other
than Valentine--and Valentine it really was.
Mr. Blyth looked unusually serious, as he shook hands with young Thorpe.
“Don’t begin to justify yourself, Zack,” he said; “I’m not going to
blame you now. Let’s walk on a little. I have some news to tell you from
Baregrove Square.”
It appeared from the narrative on which Valentine now entered, that,
immediately on the receipt of Zack’s letter, he had called on Mr.
Thorpe, with the kindly purpose of endeavoring to make peace between
father and son. His mission had entirely failed. Mr. Thorpe had grown
more and more irritable as the interview proceeded; and had accused
his visitor of unwarrantable interference, when Valentine suggested the
propriety of holding out some prospect of forgiveness to the runaway
son.
This outbreak Mr. Blyth had abstained from noticing, out of
consideration for the agitated state of the speaker’s feelings. But
when the Reverend Mr. Yollop (who had been talking with Mrs. Thorpe
up stairs) came into the room soon afterwards, and joined in the
conversation, words had been spoken which had obliged Valentine to leave
the house. The reiteration of some arguments on the side of mercy which
he had already advanced, had caused Mr. Yollop to hint, with extreme
politeness and humility, that Mr. Blyth’s profession was not of a nature
to render him capable of estimating properly the nature and consequences
of moral guilt; while Mr. Thorpe had referred almost openly to the
scandalous reports which had been spread abroad in certain quarters,
years ago, on the subject of Madonna’s parentage. These insinuations
had roused Valentine instantly. He had denounced them as false in the
strongest terms he could employ; and had left the house, resolved never
to hold any communication again either with Mr. Yollop or Mr. Thorpe.
About an hour after his return home, a letter marked “Private” had
been brought to him from Mrs. Thorpe. The writer referred, with many
expressions of sorrow, to what had occurred at the interview of the
morning; and earnestly begged Mr. Blyth to take into consideration the
state of Mr. Thorpe’s health, which was such, that the family doctor
(who had just called) had absolutely forbidden him to excite himself in
the smallest degree by receiving any visitors, or by taking any active
steps towards the recovery of his absent son. If these rules were not
strictly complied with for many days to come, the doctor declared
that the attack of palpitation of the heart, from which Mr. Thorpe had
suffered on the night of Zack’s return, might occur again, and might
be strengthened into a confirmed malady. As it was, if proper care was
taken, nothing of an alarming nature need be apprehended.
Having referred to her husband in these terms, Mrs. Thorpe next reverted
to herself. She mentioned the receipt of a letter from Zack; but said it
had done little towards calming her anxiety and alarm. Feeling certain
that Mr. Blyth would be the first friend her son would go to, she now
begged him to use his influence to keep Zack from abandoning himself to
any desperate courses, or from leaving the country, which she greatly
feared he might be tempted to do. She asked this of Mr. Blyth as a favor
to herself, and hinted that if he would only enable her, by granting it,
to tell her husband, without entering into details, that their son was
under safe guidance for the present, half the anxiety from which she
was now suffering would be alleviated. Here the letter ended abruptly; a
request for a speedy answer being added in the postscript.
“Now, Zack,” said Valentine, after he had related the result of his
visit to Baregrove Square, and had faithfully reported the contents
of Mrs. Thorpe’s letter, “I shall only add that whatever has happened
between your father and me, makes no difference in the respect I have
always felt for your mother, and in my earnest desire to do her every
service in my power. I tell you fairly--as between friends--that I think
you have been very much to blame; but I have sufficient confidence and
faith in you, to leave everything to be decided by your own sense of
honor, and by the affection which I am sure you feel for your mother.”
This appeal, and the narrative which had preceded it, had their due
effect on Zack. His ardor for a wandering life of excitement and peril,
began to cool in the quiet temperature of the good influences that
were now at work within him. “It shan’t be my fault, Blyth, if I don’t
deserve your good opinion,” he said warmly. “I know I’ve behaved badly;
and I know, too, that I have had some severe provocations. Only tell me
what you advise, and I’ll do it--I will, upon my honor, for my mother’s
sake.”
“That’s right! that’s talking like a man!” cried Valentine, clapping him
on the shoulder. “In the first place, it would be no use your going back
home at once--even if you were willing, which I am afraid you are not.
In your father’s present state your return to Baregrove Square would do
_him_ a great deal of harm, and do _you_ no good. Employed, however,
you must be somehow while you’re away from home; and what you’re fit
for--unless it’s Art--I’m sure I don’t know. You have been talking a
great deal about wanting to be a painter; and now is the time to test
your resolution. If I get you an order to draw in the British Museum,
to fill up your mornings; and if I enter you at some private Academy,
to fill up your evenings (mine at home is not half strict enough for
you)--will you stick to it?”
“With all my heart,” replied Zack, resolutely dismissing his dreams
of life in the wilds to the limbo of oblivion. “I ask nothing better,
Blyth, than to stick to you and your plan for the future.”
“Bravo!” cried Valentine, in his old gay, hearty manner. “The heaviest
load of anxiety that has been on my shoulders for some time past is off
now. I will write and comfort your mother this very afternoon--”
“Give her my love,” interposed Zack. --“Giving her your love; in the
belief, of course, that you are going to prove yourself worthy to send
such a message,” continued Mr. Blyth. “Let us turn, and walk back at
once. The sooner I write, the easier and happier I shall be. By the
bye, there’s another important question starts up now, which your
mother seems to have forgotten in the hurry and agitation of writing her
letter. What are you going to do about money matters? Have you thought
about a place to live in for the present? Can I help you in any way?”
These questions admitted of but one candid form of answer, which
the natural frankness of Zack’s character led him to adopt without
hesitation. He immediately related the whole history of his first
meeting with Mat, (formally describing him, on this occasion, as Mr.
Mathew Marksman), and of the visit to Kirk Street which had followed it
that very morning.
Though in no way remarkable for excess of caution, or for the possession
of any extraordinary fund of worldly wisdom, Mr. Blyth frowned and shook
his head suspiciously, while he listened to the curious narrative now
addressed to him. As soon as it was concluded, he expressed the most
decided disapprobation of the careless readiness with which Zack had
allowed a perfect stranger to become intimate with him--reminding him
that he had met his new acquaintance (of whom, by his own confession,
he knew next to nothing) in a very disreputable place--and concluded by
earnestly recommending him to break off all connection with so dangerous
an associate, at the earliest possible opportunity.
Zack, on his side, was not slow in mustering arguments to defend his
conduct. He declared that Mr. Marksman had gone into the Snuggery
innocently, and had been grossly insulted before he became the
originator of the riot there. As to his family affairs and his real
name, he might have good and proper reasons for concealing them; which
was the more probable, as his account of himself in other respects was
straightforward and unreserved enough. He might be a little eccentric,
and might have led an adventurous life; but it was surely not fair to
condemn him, on that account only, as a bad character. In conclusion,
Zack cited the loan he had received, as a proof that the stranger could
not be a swindler, at any rate; and referred to the evident familiarity
with localities and customs in California, which he had shown in
conversation that afternoon, as affording satisfactory proof in support
of his own statement that he had gained his money by gold-digging.
Mr. Blyth, however, still held firmly to his original opinion; and,
first offering to advance the money from his own purse, suggested that
young Thorpe should relieve himself of the obligation which he had
imprudently contracted, by paying back what he had borrowed, that very
afternoon.
“Get out of his debt,” said Valentine, earnestly--“Get out of his debt,
at any rate.”
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” replied Zack. “He wouldn’t think
twice about knocking me down, if I showed I distrusted him in that
way--and let me tell you, Blyth, he’s one of the few men alive who could
really do it.”
“This is no laughing matter, Zack,” said Valentine, shaking his head
doubtfully.
“I never was more serious in my life,” rejoined Zack. “I won’t say I
should be afraid, but I will say I should be ashamed to pay him his
money back on the day when I borrowed it. Why, he even refused to accept
my written acknowledgment of the loan! I only succeeded in forcing it on
him unawares, by slipping it in among his banknotes; and, if he finds
it there, I’ll lay you any wager you like, he tears it up, or throws it
into the fire.”
Mr. Blyth began to look a little puzzled. The stranger’s behavior about
the money was rather staggering, to say the least of it.
“Let me bring him to your picture-show,” pursued Zack. “Judge of him
yourself, before you condemn him. Surely I can’t say fairer than that?
May I bring him to see the pictures? Or will you come back at once with
me to Kirk Street, where he lives?”
“I must write to your mother, before I do any thing else; and I have
work in hand besides for to-day and tomorrow,” said Valentine. “All
things considered, you had better bring your friend as you proposed just
now. But remember the distinction I always make between my public studio
and my private house. I consider the glorious mission of Art to apply to
everybody; so I am proud to open my painting room to any honest man who
wants to look at my pictures. But the freedom of my other rooms is only
for my own friends. I can’t have strangers brought up stairs: remember
that.”
“Of course! I shouldn’t think of it, my dear fellow. Only you look at
old Rough and Tough, and hear him talk; and I’ll answer for the rest.”
“Ah, Zack! Zack! I wish you were not so dreadfully careless about whom
you get acquainted with. I have often warned you that you will bring
yourself or your friends into trouble some day, when you least expect
it. Where are you going now?”
“Back to Kirk Street. This is my nearest way; and I promised Mat--”
“Remember what you promised _me,_ and what I am going to promise your
mother--”
“I’ll remember everything, Blyth. Good bye and thank you. Only wait till
we meet on Saturday, and you see my new friend; and you will find it all
right.”
“I hope I shan’t find it all wrong,” said Mr. Blyth, forebodingly, as he
followed the road to his own house.