Round the Block Part 20

"But how the deuce," asked Matthew Maltboy, "are you, or anybody else, going to paint what has not been discovered?"

Tiffles could hardly suppress a smile at the simplicity of the question.

"Why," said he, "that's easy enough. Don't all the geographers tell us that the interior of Africa is made up, so far as known, of alternate deserts and jungles, like the patches on a coverlet? Very well. I conform to this general principle of the continent. I put half of the canvas in desert, and the rest in jungle, and I can't be far out of the way. Take the idea?"

"Perfectly," said Matthew Maltboy; "but if you have nothing but alternate, deserts and jungles, it strikes me your panorama will be a little monotonous. Perhaps I am wrong." (Maltboy always offered suggestions timidly.)

"I have thought of that, and guarded against it. I shall fill the jungles with animated life--elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, crocodiles, boa constrictors, and other specimens of natural history indigenous to that delightful region."

"Good!" cried Overtop; "and if you will take a hint from me, you will show your elephants in the act of being caught by natives, or engaged in combats with each other; your lions fighting your tigers or your rhinoceroses; your hippopotamuses engaged in death struggles with your crocodiles; and your boa constrictors gobbling down your natives--or, if that is objectionable on the score of humanity, your monkeys."

"Thank you for the hint; but the expense, and the necessity of completing the panorama at an early day, put it out of the question. To paint accurate representations of these animals engaged in their innocent sports, would occupy the time of a first-cla.s.s artist for months, and cost an enormous sum."

"Ah, I see," interrupted Overtop, who liked to show that he s.n.a.t.c.hed the meaning; "you will put your animals in rec.u.mbent att.i.tudes--sleeping, perhaps, in the depth of jungles, shaded from the fierce rays of the equatorial sun."

"You have guessed it," said Tiffles, with a broad smile. "Most of them will be just there--out of sight. The others will be suggested rather than introduced. Elephants will be signified by their trunks appearing above the tops of the dense undergrowth. Lions, tigers, and other quadrupeds, by the tips of their tails. A boa constrictor will be expressed by a head, a coil, and a bit of tail showing at intervals. The one horn of the rhinoceros will always tell where _he_ is. I shall have two small lakes (they are scarce in Africa) for my hippopotamuses and crocodiles. If they exhibit only small portions of their heads above the surface, that is not my fault. It is the nature of the beasts, you know."

"Ha! ha! That is what I call Art concealing Art," said Overtop.

"So it is," returned Tiffles; "and it will be appreciated, I doubt not, by those who affect the school of Severe Simplicity in painting."

"One thing more," said Marcus Wilkeson. "Do you intend to take the panorama through the country, and lecture on it?"

"I do. And here let me say, that I read up the law of false pretences long ago. I shall style myself Professor Wesley on the bills. That I have a right to do, as my full name doesn't look well in type. Actors and singers do the same thing every day. I shall call myself a great traveller. This is strictly true. I have been North to Boston, West to Detroit, and South to Baltimore. I shall not say that I have been in Africa, or that the sketches were taken on the spot. If my audience choose to infer _that_, that is their business. If any one doubts the accuracy of my panorama, I can say triumphantly, 'Prove it!'"

"Excellent, but a little risky," said Marcus Wilkeson, who could not help admiring the audacity of the plan. "Your next great difficulty will be to satisfy audiences after you have got them together, as I dare say you will, by some brilliant system of advertising. I have heard--perhaps you have--of audiences breaking furniture, smas.h.i.+ng chandeliers, and tarring and feathering people."

"All that has been thought of," was the reply. "Before I leave the city, I shall give a private exhibition of the panorama to a few ministers of various denominations, in the lecture room of some up-town church.

Ministers, you know, are debarred by their profession from attending the opera and theatres, and will catch at the chance to see a panorama for nothing. In private life, they are capital people, as a cla.s.s--I have known several of them--and will willingly certify that the panorama is a highly moral, instructive, and interesting exhibition. I think I can rely on my persuasive powers for that much. These certificates I shall print on my posters and handbills. They will draw moral audiences. Moral audiences do not break furniture, &c., &c. Comprehend my line of argument?"

"Perfectly," said Marcus; "and very ingenious, _as_ an argument."

"I thought you would like it. And now, to drop the subject, I want you three fellows to come up to my rooms, No. 121, third floor, Bartholomew Buildings, Broadway--you remember--and see this great work of art, early next week."

"Is it nearly finished?" asked Marcus.

"Yes--in my mind's eye. That is the main thing. The painting has not yet been begun. It will be a very simple matter. The canvas will be about four hundred feet long. One half of it will be a dead level of yellow paint, for desert; and the rest, perpendicular stripes of green paint, for jungle. A good artist, with a whitewash brush and two tubsful of paint, ought to do up the whole panorama in two days. The heads and tails of animated life, the two small lakes, and a few other objects of interest, such as the sun, the moon, birds flying in the air, &c., could be put in afterward by an artist of higher grade. And, by the way, now I think of it, I may as well open with a sunrise off Cape Guardafui, and a distant view of the Straits of Babel Mandel, give a pa.s.sing glance at the sources of the Nile, which lie in that undiscovered region, a brief glimpse at the Mountains of the Moon, and wind up with a splendid sunset in the Bight of Benin. It--"

Mr. Tiffles's observations were cut short by the sudden entrance of Miss Philomela Wilkeson. She shot rapidly into the room, but, when her eyes rested on Mr. Tiffles, she recoiled with maiden modesty, and stepped back as if to beat a retreat. Then, recovering her self-possession in a small measure, she stepped forward again, and said, in the blandest of tones, with just the least virgin coyness:

"I thought perhaps I had left my scissors here this afternoon."

Messrs. Wilkeson, Overtop, and Maltboy a.s.serted, without rising from their seats, that they had not seen her scissors, and doubted very much whether the scissors were in that room. But Wesley Tiffles, who was the most polite and obliging of mortals when there was a lady in the case, rose respectfully upon her entrance, and insisted upon searching the apartment for the missing tool.

Miss Wilkeson, thus being placed under obligations to Mr. Tiffles, was compelled to take personal cognizance of him, which she did with the nearest approach to a blush that she was ever known to make. "I beg, sir, that you will not trouble yourself. I--I do not think the scissors are here, after all."

"That can be ascertained only by searching, miss," replied Tiffles. Then he glided about the room in his own nimble fas.h.i.+on, looking behind the two vases on the mantelpiece, raking over the littered burden of the table in the corner, and peering and poking into every place where there was the least likelihood of finding a stray pair of scissors; Miss Wilkeson all the while deprecating any further search.

Mr. Tiffles suddenly stopped, like a dragonfly in the midst of his angular dartings, and said: "Since your scissors are not to be found, it is fortunate that I have a pocket pair, which are always at your service." Mr. Tiffles produced the ill-omened article, and handed it to her. This called out a new lot of thanks, regrets for having troubled him, apologies, and a peremptory refusal to take his scissors, immediately followed by their acceptance, and a promise that she would take the best care of them, and return them to the owner on his next visit.

Then was the auspicious moment for Miss Wilkeson to have retired with dignity; but she stood at the door, twirling the fatal scissors in her hand, and waiting either to say something which did not come spontaneously, or to have something said to her.

Marcus Wilkeson saw a subtle motive in this awkward tarrying at the door, and, having no objection to gratifying it, he straightway introduced Mr. Wesley Tiffles to Miss Philomela Wilkeson. Mr. Tiffles put himself into the form of an L, like a professional acrobat; and Miss Wilkeson executed a courtesy in the old, exploded style. Then, as if appalled at what she had done, she backed into the entry as fast as she had come from it.

Mr. Tiffles, upon whom the small events of life made no impression, thought no more of Miss Wilkeson that evening, but smoked three pipes, told two funny stories, sang one comic song, and then went home, having previously exacted from the three bachelors a promise to call at his rooms and see at least one half of the panorama completed, on the following day week.

Since Miss Wilkeson had been an inmate of that house, she had seen Wesley Tiffles perhaps a dozen times, in the entry or on the doorsteps, and had been impressed with his gentlemanlike air, his quick black eyes, and his deferential manner toward her. Everybody is supposed to have a realized ideal somewhere, if he or she could only find it. Such was Wesley Tiffles to Philomela Wilkeson. Let it be confessed at once. The lost scissors were all the time quietly resting at the bottom of Miss Wilkeson's workbag, and she knew it. The prevalent frailty of human nature must be her excuse.

She had-obtained not only an introduction to Wesley Tiffles, but a pair of scissors which must be returned to him, and were therefore a bond of friends.h.i.+p. But Miss Wilkeson forgot the fatality which the proverb attaches to gifts or loans of that particular article of cutlery.

BOOK FIFTH.

MANOEUVRES.

CHAPTER I.

STOLEN--MOKE THAN A PURSE.

One morning, as Marcus Wilkeson was idly turning the pages of a blue-and-gold favorite, the doorbell rang. In accordance with some mysterious law of acoustics, the sound was full three minutes descending the kitchen staircase, entering the keyhole of the kitchen door, and striking on the tympanum of Mash, the cook, who was sitting by the fire, reading the twenty-fifth chapter of "The b.u.t.tery and the Boudoir: A Tale of Real Life." When Mash became fully conscious (which was not till the end of the chapter) that the bell had rung, she expelled a sigh from her fat chest, and wiped the tears from her eyes with the end of her clean ap.r.o.n, and then went to the door with a n.o.ble resignation to her lot.

There she found a stout elderly woman, bearing a note for "Marcus Wilkeson, Esq."

"Lor'! how slow you are!" said the stout woman, handing the letter to her.

Mash, who had read, in the twenty-third chapter, of the overwhelming way in which the heroine cook had answered an insult by dignified silence, said not a word in reply, but took the note, and slammed the door in the stout woman's face.

The exclamation "Bah!" and certain indistinct mutterings which were audible through the panels, convinced Mash that, by her self-denial, she had won a moral victory. It was with a feeling of excusable pride that she walked into the back parlor, and delivered the note to Marcus Wilkeson.

"Thank you, Mash," said he. It was a singular ill.u.s.tration of his excessive politeness, that he was no less grateful for paid services than for free.

Mash retired, thinking to herself that, if Mr. Wilkeson were only a pirate, a smuggler, a guerilla chieftain, or a das.h.i.+ng fellow in some unlawful, dangerous business, a few years younger, he would be a perfect hero.

Marcus did not recognize the handwriting of the address. Tearing open the envelope, he read the following lines, hastily scrawled on a bit of blue paper:

Wednesday, A.M.

MARCUS WILKESON, ESQ.:

SIR: Please come over and see me immediately. I have something important to communicate.

Your obedient servant,

ELIPHALET MINFORD."

"Something must be wrong," said Marcus; and startling thoughts then occurred to him. "Has her hard studying brought on illness? It can't be.

She was well enough last evening. What can be the matter?"