Like the vast majority of those persons who are favored by Nature with,
what is commonly termed, “a high flow of animal spirits,” Zack was
liable, at certain times and seasons, to fall from the heights of
exhilaration to the depths of despair, without stopping for a moment,
by the way, at any intermediate stages of moderate cheerfulness, pensive
depression, or tearful gloom. After he had parted from his mother,
he presented himself again at Mr. Blyth’s house, in such a prostrate
condition of mind, and talked of his delinquencies and their effect on
his father’s spirits, with such vehement bitterness of self-reproach,
as quite amazed Valentine, and even alarmed him a little on the lad’s
account. The good-natured painter was no friend to contrite desperation
of any kind, and no believer in repentance, which could not look
hopefully forward to the future, as well as sorrowfully back at
the past. So he laid down his brush, just as he was about to begin
varnishing the “Golden Age;” and set himself to console Zack, by
reminding him of all the credit and honor he might yet win, if he was
regular in attending to his new studies--if he never flinched from work
at the British Museum, and the private Drawing School to which he was
immediately to be introduced--and if he ended as he well might end, in
excusing to his father his determination to be an artist, by showing
Mr. Thorpe a prize medal, won by the industry of his son’s hand in the
Schools of the Royal Academy.
A necessary characteristic of people whose spirits are always running
into extremes, is that they are generally able to pass from one change
of mood to another with unusual facility. By the time Zack had exhausted
Mr. Blyth’s copious stores of consolation, had partaken of an excellent
and plentiful hot lunch, and had passed an hour up stairs with the
ladies, he predicted his own reformation just as confidently as he had
predicted his own ruin about two hours before; and went away to Kirk
Street, to see that his friend Mat was at home to receive Valentine that
evening, stepping along as nimbly and swinging his stick as cheerfully,
as if he had already vindicated himself to his father by winning every
prize medal that the Royal Academy could bestow.
Seven o’clock had been fixed as the hour at which Mr. Blyth was to
present himself at the lodgings in Kirk Street. He arrived punctual to
the appointed time, dressed jauntily for the occasion in a short blue
frock coat, famous among all his acquaintances for its smartness of cut
and its fabulous old age. From what Zack had told him of Mat’s lighter
peculiarities of character, he anticipated a somewhat uncivilized
reception from the elder of his two hosts; and when he got to Kirk
Street, he certainly found that his expectations were, upon the whole,
handsomely realized.
On mounting the dark and narrow wooden staircase of the tobacconist’s
shop, his nose was greeted by a composite smell of fried liver and
bacon, brandy and water, and cigar smoke, pouring hospitably down to
meet him through the crevices of the drawing-room door. When he got into
the room, the first object that struck his eyes at one end of it, was
Zack, with his hat on, vigorously engaged in freshening up the dusty
carpet with a damp mop; and Mat, at the other, presiding over the
frying-pan, with his coat off, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his
shoulders, a glass of steaming hot grog on the chimney-piece above him,
and a long pewter toasting-fork in his hand.
“Here’s the honored guest of the evening arrived before I’ve swabbed
down the decks,” cried Zack, jogging his friend in the ribs with the
long handle of the mop.
“How are you, to-night?” said Mat, with familiar ease, not moving from
the frying-pan, but getting his right hand free to offer to Mr. Blyth
by taking the pewter toasting-fork between his teeth. “Sit down anywhere
you like; and just holler through the crack in the floor, under
the bearskins there, if you want anything out of the Bocker-shop,
below.”--(“He means Tobacco when he says Bocker,” interposed Zack,
parenthetically.) “Can you set your teeth in a baked tater or two?”
continued Mat, tapping a small Dutch oven before the fire with his
toasting-fork. “We’ve got you a lot of fizzin’ hot liver and bacon to
ease down the taters with what you call a relish. Nice and streaky,
ain’t it?” Here the host of the evening stuck his fork into a slice
of bacon, and politely passed it over his shoulder for Mr. Blyth to
inspect, as he stood bewildered in the middle of the room.
“Oh, delicious, delicious!” cried Valentine, smelling as daintily at the
outstretched bacon as if it had been a nosegay. “Really, my dear sir--.”
He said no more; for at that moment he tripped himself up upon one of
some ten or a dozen bottle-corks which lay about on the carpet where
he was standing. There is very little doubt, if Zack had not been by
to catch him, that Mr. Blyth would just then have concluded his polite
remarks on the bacon by measuring his full length on the floor.
“Why don’t you put him into a chair?” growled Mat, looking round
reproachfully from the frying-pan, as Valentine recovered his erect
position again with young Thorpe’s assistance.
“I was just going to swab up that part of the carpet when you came in,”
said Zack, apologetically, as he led Mr. Blyth to a chair.
“Oh don’t mention it,” answered Valentine, laughing. “It was all my
awkwardness.”
He stopped abruptly again. Zack had placed him with his back to the
fire, against a table covered with a large and dirty cloth which flowed
to the floor, and under which, while he was speaking, he had been gently
endeavoring to insinuate his legs. Amazement bereft him of the power of
speech when, on succeeding in this effort, he found that his feet came
in contact with a perfect hillock of empty bottles, oyster-shells, and
broken crockery, heaped under the table. “Good gracious me! I hope I’m
doing no mischief!” exclaimed Valentine, as a miniature avalanche of
oyster-shells clattered down on his intruding foot, and a plump bottle
with a broken neck rolled lazily out from under the table-cloth, and
courted observation on the open floor.
“Kick about, dear old fellow, kick about as much as you please,” cried
Zack, seating himself opposite Mr. Blyth, and bringing down a second
avalanche of oyster-shells to encourage him. “The fact is, we are rather
put to it for space here, so we keep the cloth always laid for dinner,
and make a temporary lumber-room of the place under the table. Rather
a new idea that, I think--not tidy perhaps, but original and ingenious,
which is much better.”
“Amazingly ingenious!” said Valentine, who was now beginning to be
amused as well as surprised by his reception in Kirk Street. “Rather
untidy, perhaps, as you say, Zack; but new, and not disagreeable I
suppose when you’re used to it. What I like about all this,” continued
Mr. Blyth, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and kicking into view another
empty bottle, as he settled himself in his chair--“What I like about
this is, that it’s so thoroughly without ceremony. Do you know I
really feel at home already, though I never was here before in my
life?--Curious, Zack, isn’t it?”
“Look out for the taters!” roared Mat suddenly from the fireplace.
Valentine started, first at the unexpected shout just behind him, next
at the sight of a big truculently-knobbed potato which came flying over
his head, and was dexterously caught, and instantly deposited on the
dirty table-cloth by Zack. “Two, three, four, five, six,” continued
Mat, keeping the frying-pan going with one hand, and tossing the baked
potatoes with the other over Mr. Blyth’s head, in quick succession
for young Thorpe to catch. “What do you think of our way of dishing up
potatoes in Kirk Street?” asked Zack in great triumph. “It’s a little
sudden when you’re not used to it,” stammered Valentine, ducking his
head as each edible missile flew over him--“but it’s free and easy--it’s
delightfully free and easy.” “Ready there with your plates. The liver’s
a coming,” cried Mat in a voice of martial command, suddenly showing his
great red-hot perspiring face at the table, as he wheeled round from the
fire, with the hissing frying-pan in one hand and the long toasting-fork
in the other. “My dear sir, I’m shocked to see you taking all this
trouble,” exclaimed Mr. Blyth; “do pray let me help you!” “No, I’m
damned if I do,” returned Mat with the most polite suavity and the most
perfect good humor. “Let him have all the trouble, Blyth,” said Zack;
“let him help you, and don’t pity him. He’ll make up for his hard work,
I can tell you, when he sets in seriously to his liver and bacon. Watch
him when he begins--he bolts his dinner like the lion in the Zoological
Gardens.”
Mat appeared to receive this speech of Zack’s as a well-merited
compliment, for he chuckled at young Thorpe and winked grimly at
Valentine, as he sat down bare-armed to his own mess of liver and bacon.
It was certainly a rare and even a startling sight to see this singular
man eat. Lump by lump, without one intervening morsel of bread, he
tossed the meat into his mouth rather than put it there--turned it
apparently once round between his teeth--and then voraciously and
instantly swallowed it whole. By the time a quarter of Mr. Blyth’s
plateful of liver and bacon, and half of Zack’s had disappeared, Mat had
finished his frugal meal; had wiped his mouth on the back of his hand,
and the back of his hand on the leg of his trousers; had mixed two
glasses of strong hot rum-and-water for himself and Zack; and had set
to work on the composition of a third tumbler, into which sugar, brandy,
lemon-juice, rum, and hot water all seemed to drop together in such
incessant and confusing little driblets, that it was impossible to tell
which ingredient was uppermost in the whole mixture. When the tumbler
was full, he set it down on the table, with an indicative bang, close to
Valentine’s plate.
“Just try a toothful of that to begin with,” said Mat. “If you like it,
say Yes; if you don’t, say No; and I’ll make it better next time.”
“You are very kind, very kind indeed,” answered Mr. Blyth, eyeing the
tumbler by his side with some little confusion and hesitation; “but
really, though I should be shocked to appear ungrateful, I’m afraid I
must own--Zack, you ought to have told your friend--”
“So I did,” said Zack, sipping his rum-and-water with infinite relish.
“The fact is, my dear sir,” continued Valentine, “I have the most
wretched head in the world for strong liquor of any kind--”
“Don’t call it strong liquor,” interposed Mat, emphatically tapping the
rim of his guest’s tumbler with his fore-finger.
“Perhaps,” pursued Mr. Blyth, with a polite smile, “I ought to have said
grog.”
“Don’t call it grog,” retorted Mat, with two disputatious taps on the
rim of the glass.
“Dear me!” asked Valentine, amazedly, “what is it then?”
“It’s Squaw’s Mixture,” answered Mat, with three distinct taps of
asseveration.
Mr. Blyth and Zack laughed, under the impression that their queer
companion was joking with them. Mat looked steadily and sternly from one
to the other; then repeated with the gruffest gravity--“I tell you, it’s
Squaw’s Mixture.”
“What a very curious name! how is it made?” asked Valentine.
“Enough Brandy to spile the Water. Enough Rum to spile the Brandy and
Water. Enough Lemon to spile the Rum _and_ Brandy _and_ Water. Enough
Sugar to spile everything. That’s ‘Squaw’s Mixture,’” replied Mat with
perfect calmness and deliberation.
Zack began to laugh uproariously. Mat became more inflexibly grave than
ever. Mr. Blyth felt that he was growing interested on the subject of
the Squaw’s Mixture. He stirred it diffidently with his spoon, and asked
with great curiosity how his host first learnt to make it.
“When I was out, over there, in the Nor’-West,” began Mat, nodding
towards the particular point of the compass that he mentioned.
“When he says Nor’-West, and wags his addled old head like that at the
chimney-pots over the way, he means North America,” Zack explained.
“When I was out Nor’-West,” repeated Mat, heedless of the interruption,
“working along with the exploring gang, our stock of liquor fell short,
and we had to make the best of it in the cold with a spirt of spirits
and a pinch of sugar, drowned in more hot water than had ever got down
the throat of e’er a man of the lot of us before. We christened the
brew ‘Squaw’s Mixture,’ because it was such weak stuff that even a woman
couldn’t have got drunk on it if she tried. Squaw means woman in those
parts, you know; and Mixture means--what you’ve got afore you now. I
knowed you couldn’t stand regular grog, and that’s why I cooked it up
for you. Don’t keep on stirring of it with a spoon like that, or you’ll
stir it away altogether. Try it.”
“Let _me_ try it--let’s see how weak it is,” cried Zack, reaching over
to Valentine.
“Don’t you go a-shoving of your oar into another man’s rollocks,”
said Mat, dexterously knocking Zack’s spoon out of his hand just as it
touched Mr. Blyth’s tumbler. “You stick to _your_ grog; I’ll stick to
_my_ grog; and _he’ll_ stick to Squaw’s Mixture.” With those words,
Mat leant his bare elbows on the table, and watched Valentine’s first
experimental sip with great curiosity.
The result was not successful. When Mr. Blyth put down the tumbler, all
the watery part of the Squaw’s Mixture seemed to have got up into his
eyes, and all the spirituous part to have stopped short at his lungs. He
shook his head, coughed, and faintly exclaimed--“Too strong.”
“Too hot you mean?” said Mat.
“No, indeed,” pleaded poor Mr. Blyth, “I really meant too strong.”
“Try again,” suggested Zack, who was far advanced towards the bottom of
his own tumbler already. “Try again. Your liquor all went the wrong way
last time.”
“More sugar,” said Mat, neatly tossing two lumps into the glass from
where he sat. “More lemon (squeezing one or two drops of juice, and
three or four pips, into the mixture). More water (pouring in about a
tea-spoonful, with a clumsy flourish of the kettle). Try again.”
“Thank you, thank you a thousand times. Really, do you know, it tastes
much nicer now,” said Mr. Blyth, beginning cautiously with a spoonful of
the squaw’s mixture at a time.
Mat’s spirits seemed to rise immensely at this announcement. He lit
his pipe, and took up his glass of grog; nodded to Valentine and young
Thorpe, just as he had nodded to the northwest point of the compass a
minute or two before; muttered gruffly, “Here’s all our good healths;”
and finished half his liquor at a draught.
“All our good healths!” repeated Mr. Blyth, gallantly attacking the
squaw’s mixture this time without any intermediate assistance from the
spoon.
“All our good healths!” chimed in Zack, draining his glass to the
bottom. “Really, Mat, it’s quite bewildering to see how your dormant
social qualities are waking up, now you’re plunged into the vortex of
society. What do you say to giving a ball here next? You’re just the
man to get on with the ladies, if you could only be prevailed on to wear
your coat, and give up airing your tawny old arms in public.”
“Don’t, my dear sir! I particularly beg you won’t,” cried Valentine, as
Mat, apparently awakened to a sense of polite propriety by Zack’s last
hint, began to unroll one of his tightly-tucked-up shirt-sleeves. “Pray
consult your own comfort, and keep your sleeves as they were--pray do!
As an artist, I have been admiring your arms from the professional point
of view ever since we first sat down to table. I never remember, in all
my long experience of the living model, having met with such a splendid
muscular development as yours.”
Saying those words, Mr. Blyth waved his hand several times before his
host’s arms, regarding them with his eyes partially closed, and his
head very much on one side, just as he was accustomed to look at
his pictures. Mat stared, smoked vehemently, folded the objects of
Valentine’s admiration over his breast, and, modestly scratching his
elbows, looked at young Thorpe with an expression of utter bewilderment.
“Yes! decidedly the most magnificent muscular development I ever
remember studying,” reiterated Mr. Blyth, drumming with his fingers on
the table, and concentrating the whole of his critical acumen in one eye
by totally closing the other.
“Hang it, Blyth!” remonstrated Zack, “don’t keep on looking at his arms
as if they were a couple of bits of prize beef! You may talk about
his muscular development as much as you please, but you can’t have the
smallest notion of what it’s really equal to till you try it. I say, old
Rough-and-Tough! jump up, and show him how strong you are. Just lift him
on your toe, like you did me. (Here Zack pulled Mat unceremoniously out
of his chair.) Come along, Blyth! Get opposite to him--give him hold
of your hand--stand on the toe part of his right foot--don’t wriggle
about--stiffen your hand and aim, and--there!--what do you say to
his muscular development now?” concluded Zack, with an air of supreme
triumph, as Mat slowly lifted from the ground the foot on which Mr.
Blyth was standing, and, steadying himself on his left leg, raised the
astonished painter with his right nearly two feet high in the air.
Any spectator observing the performance of this feat of strength, and
looking only at Mat, might well have thought it impossible that any
human being could present a more comical aspect than he now exhibited,
with his black skull-cap pushed a little on one side, and showing an
inch or so of his bald head, with his grimly-grinning face empurpled by
the violent physical exertion of the moment, and with his thick heavy
figure ridiculously perched on one leg. Mr. Blyth, however, was beyond
all comparison the more laughable object of the two, as he soared
nervously into the air on Mat’s foot, tottering infirmly in the strong
grasp that supported him, till he seemed to be trembling all over, from
the tips of his crisp black hair to the flying tails of his frock-coat.
As for the expression of his round rosy face, with the bright eyes
fixed in a startled stare, and the plump cheeks crumpled up by an uneasy
smile, it was so exquisitely absurd, as young Thorpe saw it over his
fellow-lodger’s black skull-cap, that he roared again with laughter.
“Oh! look up at him!” cried Zack, falling back in his chair. “Look at
his face, for heaven’s sake, before you put him down!”
But Mat was not to be moved by this appeal. All the attention his eyes
could spare during those few moments, was devoted, not to Mr. Blyth’s
face but to Mr. Blyth’s watch-chain. There hung the bright little key
of the painter’s bureau, dangling jauntily to and fro over his
waistcoat-pocket. As the right foot of the Sampson of Kirk Street
hoisted him up slowly, the key swung temptingly backwards and forwards
between them. “Come take me! come take me!” it seemed to say, as Mat’s
eyes fixed greedily on it every time it dangled towards him.
“Wonderful! wonderful!” cried Mr. Blyth, looking excessively relieved
when he found himself safely set down on the floor again.
“That’s nothing to some of the things he can do,” said Zack. “Look
here! Put yourself stomach downwards on the carpet; and if you think
the waistband of your trousers will stand it, he’ll take you up in his
teeth.”
“Thank you, Zack, I’m perfectly satisfied without risking the waistband
of my trousers,” rejoined Valentine, returning in a great hurry to the
table.
“The grog’s getting cold,” grumbled Mat. “Do you find it slip down
easy now?” he continued, handing the squaw’s mixture in the friendliest
manner to Mr. Blyth.
“Astonishingly easy!” answered Valentine, drinking this time almost with
the boldness of Zack himself. “Now it’s cooler, one tastes the sugar.
Whenever I’ve tried to drink regular grog, I have never been able to get
people to give it me sweet enough. The delicious part of this is that
there’s plenty of sugar in it. And, besides, it has the merit (which
real grog has not) of being harmless. It tastes strong to me, to be
sure; but then I’m not used to spirits. After what you say, however, of
course it must be harmless--perfectly harmless, I have no doubt.” Here
he sipped again, pretty freely this time, by way of convincing himself
of the innocent weakness of the squaw’s mixture.
While Mr. Blyth had been speaking, Mat’s hands had been gradually
stealing down deeper and deeper into the pockets of his trousers, until
his finger and thumb, and a certain plastic substance hidden away in the
left-hand pocket came gently into contact, just as Valentine left off
speaking. “Let’s have another toast,” cried Mat, quite briskly, the
instant the last word was out of his guest’s mouth. “Come on, one of
you and give us another toast,” he reiterated, with a roar of barbarous
joviality, taking up his glass in his right hand, and keeping his left
still in his pocket.
“Give you another toast, you noisy old savage!” repeated Zack, “I’ll
give you _five,_ all at once! Mr. Blyth, Mrs. Blyth, Madonna, Columbus,
and The Golden Age--three excellent people and two glorious pictures;
let’s lump them all together, in a friendly way, and drink long life
and success to them in beakers of fragrant grog!” shouted the young
gentleman, making perilously rapid progress through his second glass, as
he spoke.
“Do you know, I’m afraid I must change to some other place, if you have
no objection,” said Mr. Blyth, after he had duly honored the composite
toast just proposed. “The fire here, behind me, is getting rather too
hot.”
“Change along with me,” said Mat. “I don’t mind heat, nor cold neither,
for the matter of that.”
Valentine accepted this offer with great gratitude. “By-the-bye, Zack,”
he said, placing himself comfortably in his host’s chair, between the
table and the wall--“I was going to ask a favor of our excellent friend
here, when you suggested that wonderful and matchless trial of strength
which we have just had. You have been of such inestimable assistance to
me already, my dear sir,” he continued, turning towards Mat, with all
his natural cordiality of disposition now fully developed, under the
fostering influence of the Squaw’s Mixture. “You have laid me under such
an inexpressible obligation in saving my picture from destruction--”
“I wish you could make up your mind to say what you want in plain
words,” interrupted Mat. “I’m one of your rough-handed, thick-headed
sort, _I_ am. I’m not gentleman enough to understand parlarver. It don’t
do me no good: it only worrits me into a perspiration.” And Mat, shaking
down his shirt-sleeve, drew it several times across his forehead, as a
proof of the truth of his last assertion.
“Quite right! quite right!” cried Mr. Blyth, patting him on the shoulder
in the most friendly manner imaginable. “In plain words, then, when I
mentioned, just now, how much I admired your arms in an artistic point
of view, I was only paving the way for asking you to let me make a
drawing of them, in black and white, for a large picture that I mean
to paint later in the year. My classical figure composition, you know,
Zack--you have seen the sketch--Hercules bringing to Eurystheus the
Erymanthian boar--a glorious subject; and our friend’s arms, and,
indeed, his chest, too, if he would kindly consent to sit for it, would
make the very studies I most want for Hercules.”
“What on earth _is_ he driving at?” asked Mat, addressing himself to
young Thorpe, after staring at Valentine for a moment or two in a state
of speechless amazement.
“He wants to draw your arms--of course you will be only too happy to let
him--you can’t understand anything about it now--but you will when
you begin to sit--pass the cigars--thank Blyth for meaning to make a
Hercules of you-and tell him you’ll come to the painting-room whenever
he likes,” answered Zack, joining his sentences together in his most
offhand manner, all in a breath.
“What painting-room? Where is it?” asked Mat, still in a densely
stupefied condition.
“My painting-room,” replied Valentine. “Where you saw the pictures, and
saved Columbus, yesterday.”
Mat considered for a moment--then suddenly brightened up, and began
to look quite intelligent again. “I’ll come,” he said, “as soon as you
like--the sooner the better,” clapping his fist emphatically on the
table, and drinking to Valentine with his heartiest nod.
“That’s a worthy, good-natured fellow!” cried Mr. Blyth, drinking to Mat
in return, with grateful enthusiasm. “The sooner the better, as you say.
Come to-morrow evening.”
“All right. To-morrow evening,” assented Mat. His left hand, as he
spoke, began to work stealthily round and round in his pocket, molding
into all sorts of strange shapes, that plastic substance, which had lain
hidden there ever since his shopping expedition in the morning.
“I should have asked you to come in the day-time,” continued Valentine;
“but, as you know, Zack, I have the Golden Age to varnish, and one or
two little things to alter in the lower part of Columbus; and then, by
the latter end of the week, I must leave home to do those portraits in
the country which I told you of, and which are wanted before I thought
they would be. You will come with our friend, of course, Zack? I dare
say I shall have the order for you to study at the British Museum, by
to-morrow. As for the Private Drawing Academy--”
“No offense; but I can’t stand seeing you stirring up them grounds in
the bottom of your glass any longer,” Mat broke in here; taking away Mr.
Blyth’s tumbler as he spoke, throwing the sediment of sugar, the lemon
pips, and the little liquor left to cover them, into the grate behind;
and then, hospitably devoting himself to the concoction of a second
supply of that palatable and innocuous beverage, the Squaw’s Mixture.
“Half a glass,” cried Mr. Blyth. “Weak--remember my wretched head for
drinking, and pray make it weak.”
As he spoke, the clock of the neighboring parish church struck.
“Only nine,” exclaimed Zack, referring ostentatiously to the watch which
he had taken out of pawn the day before. “Pass the rum, Mat, as soon as
you’ve done with it--put the kettle on to boil--and now, my lads, we’ll
begin spending the evening in earnest!”
* * * * * *
If any fourth gentleman had been present to assist in “spending the
evening,” as Zack chose to phrase it, at the small social _soiree_ in
Kirk Street; and if that gentleman had deserted the festive board as the
clock struck nine--had walked about the streets to enjoy himself in
the fresh air--and had then, as the clock struck ten, returned to the
society of his convivial companions, he would most assuredly have been
taken by surprise, on beholding the singular change which the lapse of
one hour had been sufficient to produce in the manners and conversation
of Mr. Valentine Blyth.
It might have been that the worthy and simple-hearted gentleman had
been unduly stimulated by the reek of hot grog, which in harmonious
association with a heavy mist of tobacco smoke, now filled the room;
or it might have been that the second brew of the Squaw’s Mixture
had exceeded half a glassful in quantity, had not been diluted to
the requisite weakness, and had consequently got into his head; but,
whatever the exciting cause might be, the alteration that had taken
place since nine o’clock, in his voice, looks, and manners, was
remarkable enough to be of the nature of a moral phenomenon. He now
talked incessantly about nothing but the fine arts; he differed with
both his companions, and loftily insisted on his own superior sagacity,
whenever either of them ventured to speak a word; he was by turns as
noisy as Zack, and as gruff as Mat; his hair was crumpled down over his
forehead, his eyes were dimmed, his shirt collar was turned rakishly
over his cravat: in short, he was not the genuine Valentine Blyth at
all,--he was only a tipsy counterfeit of him.
As for young Thorpe, any slight steadiness of brain which he might
naturally possess, he had long since parted with, as a matter of course,
for the rest of the evening. Mat alone remained unchanged. There he sat,
reckless of the blazing fire behind him, still with that left hand of
his dropping stealthily every now and then into his pocket; smoking,
drinking, and staring at his two companions, just as gruffly
self-possessed as ever.
“There’s ten,” muttered Mat, as the clock struck. “I said we should be
getting jolly by ten. So we are.”
Zack nodded his head solemnly, and stared hard at one of the empty
bottles on the floor, which had rolled out from the temporary store-room
under the table.
“Hold your tongues, both of you!” cried Mr. Blyth. “I insist on clearing
up that disputed point about whether artists are not just as hardy and
strong as other men. I’m an artist myself, and I say they are. I’ll
agree with you in everything else; for you’re the two best fellows in
the world; but if you say a word against artists, I’m your enemy for
life. You may talk to me, by the hour together about admirals, generals,
and prime ministers--I mention the glorious names of Michael Angelo and
Raphael; and down goes your argument directly. When Michael Angelo’s
nose was broken do you think he minded it? Look in his Life, and see
if he did--that’s all! Ha! ha! My painting-room is forty feet long
(now this is an important proof). While I was painting Columbus and
the Golden Age, one was at one end--north; and the other at the
other--south. Very good. I walked backwards and forwards between those
two pictures incessantly; and never sat down all day long. This is a
fact--and the proof is, that I worked on both of them at once. A
touch on Columbus--a walk into the middle of the room to look at the
effect--turn round--walk up to The Golden Age opposite--a touch on The
Golden Age--another walk into the middle of the room to look at the
effect-another turn round--and back again to Columbus. Fifteen
miles a-day of in-door exercise, according to the calculation of a
mathematical friend of mine; and _not_ including the number of times I
had to go up and down my portable wooden steps to get at the top parts
of Columbus. Isn’t a man hardy and strong who can stand that? Ha! ha!
Just feel my legs, Zack. Are they hard and muscular, or are they not?”
Here Mr. Blyth, rapping young Thorpe smartly on the head with his spoon,
tried to skip out of his chair as nimbly as usual; but only succeeded
in floundering awkwardly into an upright position, after he had knocked
down his plate with all the greasy remains of the liver and bacon on
it. Zack roused himself from muddled meditation with a start; and, under
pretense of obeying his friend’s injunction, pinched Valentine’s leg
with such vigorous malice, that the painter fairly screamed again under
the infliction. All this time Mat sat immovably serene in his place next
to the fire. He just kicked Mr. Blyth’s broken plate, with the scraps of
liver and bacon, and the knife and fork that had fallen with them, into
the temporary storeroom under the table--and then pushed towards him
another glass of the squaw’s mixture, quietly concocted while he had
been talking.
The effect on Valentine of this hospitable action proved to be
singularly soothing and beneficial. He had been getting gradually more
and more disputatious for the last ten minutes; but the moment the
steaming glass touched his hand, it seemed to change his mood with the
most magical celerity. As he looked down at it, and felt the fragrant
rum steaming softy into his nostrils, his face expanded, and while his
left hand unsteadily conveyed the tumbler to his lips, his right reached
across the table and fraternally extended itself to Mat. “My dear
friend,” said Mr. Blyth affectionately, “how kind you are! Pray how do
you make the Squaw’s mixture?”
“I say, Mat, leave off smoking, and tell us something,” interposed Zack.
“Bowl away at once with one of your tremendous stories, or Blyth will
be bragging again about his rickety old legs. Talk, man! Tell us your
famous story of how you lost your scalp.”
Mat laid down his pipe, and for a moment looked very attentively at
Mr. Blyth--then, with the most uncharacteristic readiness and docility,
began his story at once, without requiring another word of persuasion.
In general, the very reverse of tedious when he related any experiences
of his own, he seemed, on this occasion, perversely bent on letting his
narrative ooze out to the most interminable length. Instead of adhering
to the abridged account of his terrible adventure, which he had given
Zack when they first talked together on Blackfriars Bridge, he now dwelt
drowsily on the minutest particulars of the murderous chase that had so
nearly cost him his life, enumerating them one after the other in the
same heavy droning voice which never changed its tone in the slightest
degree as he went on. After about ten minutes’ endurance of the
narrative-infliction which he had himself provoked, young Thorpe was
just beginning to feel a sensation of utter oblivion stealing over
him, when a sound of lusty snoring close at his back startled him into
instant wakefulness. He looked round. There was Mr. Blyth placidly and
profoundly asleep, with his mouth wide open and his head resting against
the wall.
“Stop!” whispered Mat, as Zack seized on a half-squeezed lemon and took
aim at Valentine’s mouth. “Don’t wake him yet. What do you say to some
oysters?”
“Give us a dish, and I’ll show you,” returned young Thorpe. “Sally’s in
bed by this time--I’ll fetch the oysters myself from over the way. But,
I say, I must have a friendly shot with something or other, at dear old
Blyth’s gaping mouth.”
“Try him with an oyster, when you come back,” said Mat, producing from
the cupboard behind him a large yellow pie-dish. “Go on! I’ll see you
down stairs, and leave the candle on the landing, and the door on the
jar, so as you can get in quietly. Steady, young ‘un! and mind the dish
when you cross the road.” With these words Mat dismissed Zack from the
street-door to the oyster shop; and then returned immediately to his
guest upstairs.
Valentine was still fast asleep and snoring vehemently. Mat’s hand
descended again into his pocket, reappearing, however, quickly enough
on this occasion, with the piece of wax which he had purchased that
morning. Steadying his arms coolly on the table, he detached the little
chain which held the key of Mr. Blyth’s bureau, from the watchguard to
which it was fastened, took off on his wax a perfect impression of
the whole key from the pipe to the handle, attached it again to the
sleeper’s watchguard, pared away the rough ends of the piece of wax
till it fitted into an old tin tobacco-box which he took from the
chimney-piece, pocketed this box, and then quietly resumed his original
place at the table.
“Now,” said Mat, looking at the unconscious Mr. Blyth, after he had lit
his pipe again; “Now, Painter-Man! wake up as soon as you like.”
It was not long before Zack returned. A violent bang of the street-door
announced his entry into the passage--a confused clattering and
stumbling marked his progress up stairs--a shrill crash, a heavy thump,
and a shout of laughter indicated his arrival on the landing. Mat ran
out directly, and found him prostrate on the floor, with the yellow
pie-dish in halves at the bottom of the stairs, and dozens of
oyster.-shells scattered about him in every direction.
“Hurt?” inquired Mat, pulling him up by the collar, and dragging him
into the room.
“Not a bit of it,” answered Zack. “I’ve woke Blyth, though (worse luck!)
and spoilt our shot with the oyster, havn’t I? Oh, Lord! how he stares!”
Valentine certainly did stare. He was standing up, leaning against the
wall, and looking about him in a woefully dazed condition. Either his
nap, or the alarming manner in which he had been awakened from it, had
produced a decided change for the worst in him. As he slowly recovered
what little sense he had left to make use of, all his talkativeness and
cordiality seemed to desert him. He shook his head mournfully; refused
to eat or drink anything; declared with sullen solemnity, that his
digestion was “a perfect wreck in consequence of his keeping drunken
society;” and insisted on going home directly, in spite of everything
that Zack could say to him. The landlord, who had been brought from his
shop below by the noise, and who thought it very desirable to take the
first opportunity that offered of breaking up the party before any more
grog was consumed, officiously ran down stairs, and called a cab--the
result of this maneuver proving in the sequel to be what the tobacconist
desired. The moment the sound of wheels was heard at the door, Mr.
Blyth clamored peremptorily for his hat and coat; and, after some
little demur, was at last helped into the cab in the most friendly and
attentive manner by Mat himself.
“Just see the lights out upstairs, and the young ‘un in bed, will ye?”
said Mat to his landlord, as they stood together on the door-step. “I’m
going to blow some of the smoke out of me by taking a turn in the fresh
air.”
He walked away briskly, as he said the last words; but when he got to
the end of the street, instead of proceeding northwards towards
the country, and the cool night-breeze that was blowing from it, he
perversely turned southwards towards the filthiest little lanes and
courts in the whole neighborhood.
Stepping along at a rapid pace, he directed his course towards that
particular row of small and vile houses which he had already visited
early in the day; and stopped, as before, at the second-hand iron
shop. It was shut up for the night; but a dim light, as of one farthing
candle, glimmered through the circular holes in the tops of the
shutters; and when Mat knocked at the door with his knuckles; it was
opened immediately by the same hump-backed shopman with whom he had
conferred in the morning.
“Got it?” asked the hunch-back in a cracked querulous voice the moment
the door was ajar.
“All right,” answered Mat in his gruffest bass tones, handing to the
little man the tin tobacco-box.
“We said to-morrow evening, didn’t we?” continued the squalid shopman.
“Not later than six,” added Mat.
“Not later than six,” repeated the other, shutting the door softly as
his customer walked away--northward this time--to seek the fresh air in
good earnest.