Hide and Seek Part 32

Mat's spirits seemed to rise immensely at this announcement. He lit his pipe, and took up his gla.s.s of grog; nodded to Valentine and young Thorpe, just as he had nodded to the northwest point of the compa.s.s 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 a.s.sistance from the spoon.

"All our good healths!" chimed in Zack, draining his gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 ac.u.men 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.

"Astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 grat.i.tude. "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 a.s.sistance 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 s.h.i.+rt-sleeve, drew it several times across his forehead, as a proof of the truth of his last a.s.sertion.

"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 cla.s.sical 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--pa.s.s 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," a.s.sented 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s," 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 p.a.w.n the day before. "Pa.s.s 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.suredly 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 a.s.sociation 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 gla.s.sful in quant.i.ty, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 l.u.s.ty 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.