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.
CHAPTER V.
FATE WORKS, WITH MR. BLYTH FOR AN INSTRUMENT.
The great day of the year in Valentine's house was always the day on which his pictures for the Royal Academy Exhibition were shown in their completed state to friends and admiring spectators, congregated in his own painting room. His visitor represented almost every variety of rank in the social scale; and grew numerous in proportion as they descended from the higher to the lower degrees. Thus, the aristocracy of race was usually impersonated, in his studio, by his one noble patron, the Dowager Countess of Brambledown; the aristocracy of art by two or three Royal Academicians; and the aristocracy of money by eight or ten highly respectable families, who came quite as much to look at the Dowager Countess as to look at the pictures. With these last, the select portion of the company might be said to terminate; and, after them, flowed in promiscuously the obscure majority of the visitors--a heterogeneous congregation of worshippers at the shrine of art, who were some of them of small importance, some of doubtful importance, some of no importance at all; and who included within their numbers, not only a sprinkling of Mr. Blyth's old-established tradesmen, but also his gardener, his wife's old nurse, the brother of his housemaid, and the father of his cook. Some of his respectable friends deplored, on principle, the "leveling tendencies" which induced him thus to admit a mixture of all classes into his painting-room, on the days when he exhibited his pictures. But Valentine was warmly encouraged in taking this course by no less a person than Lady Brambledown herself, whose perverse pleasure it was to exhibit herself to society as an uncompromising Radical, a reviler of the Peerage, a teller of scandalous Royal anecdotes, and a worshipper of the memory of Oliver Cromwell.
On the eventful Saturday which was to display his works to an applauding public of private friends, Mr. Blyth's studio, thanks to Madonna's industry and attention, looked really in perfect order --as neat and clean as a room could be. A semicircle of all the available chairs in the house--drawing-room and bed-room chairs intermingled--ranged itself symmetrically in front of the pictures. That imaginative classical landscape, "The Golden Age," reposed grandly on its own easel; while "Columbus in Sight of the New World"--the largest canvas Mr. Blyth had ever worked on, encased in the most gorgeous frame he had ever ordered for one of his own pictures--was hung on the wall at an easy distance from the ground, having proved too bulky to be safely accommodated by any easel in Valentine's possession.
Except Mr. Blyth's bureau, all the ordinary furniture and general litter of the room had been cleared out of it, or hidden away behind convenient draperies in corners. Backwards and forwards over the open space thus obtained, Mr. Blyth walked expectant, with the elastic skip peculiar to him; looking ecstatically at his pictures, as he passed and repassed them--now singing, now whistling; sometimes referring mysteriously to a small manuscript which he carried in his hand, jauntily tied round with blue ribbon; sometimes following the lines of the composition in "Columbus," by flourishing his right hand before it in the air, with dreamy artistic grace;--always, turn where he would, instinct from top to toe with an excitable activity which defied the very idea of rest--and always hospitably ready to rush to the door and receive the first enthusiastic visitor with open arms, at a moment's notice.
Above stairs, in the invalid room, the scene was of a different kind. Here also the arrival of the expected visitors was an event of importance; but it was awaited in perfect tranquillity and silence. Mrs. Blyth lay in her usual position on the couch-side of the bed, turning over a small portfolio of engravings; and Madonna stood at the front window, where she could command a full view of the garden gate, and of the approach from it to the house. This was always her place on the days when the pictures were shown; for, while occupying this position, she was able, by signs, to indicate the arrival of the different guests to her adopted mother, who lay too far from the window to see them. On all other days of the year, it was Mrs. Blyth who devoted herself to Madonna's service, by interpreting for her advantage the pleasant conversations that she could not hear. On this day, it was Madonna who devoted herself to Mrs. Blyth's service, by identifying for her amusement the visitors whose approach up the garden walk she could not safely leave her bed to see.
No privilege that the girl enjoyed under Valentine's roof was more valued by her than this; for by the exercise of it, she was enabled to make some slight return in kind for the affectionate attention of which she was the constant object. Mrs. Blyth always encouraged her to indicate who the different guests were, as they followed each other, by signs of her own choosing,--these signs being almost invariably suggested by some characteristic peculiarity of the person represented, which her quick observation had detected at a first interview, and which she copied with the quaintest exactness of imitation. The correctness with which her memory preserved these signs, and retained, after long intervals, the recollection of the persons to whom they alluded, was very extraordinary. The name of any mere acquaintance, who came seldom to the house, she constantly forgot, having only perhaps had it interpreted to her once or twice, and not hearing it as others did, whenever it accidentally occurred in conversation. But if the sign by which she herself had once designated that acquaintance--no matter how long ago--happened to be repeated by those about her, it was then always found that the forgotten person was recalled to her recollection immediately.
From eleven till three had been notified in the invitation cards as the time during which the pictures would be on view. It was now long past ten. Madonna still stood patiently by the window, going on with a new purse which she was knitting for Valentine; and looking out attentively now and then towards the road. Mrs. Blyth, humming a tune to herself, slowly turned over the engravings in her portfolio, and became so thoroughly absorbed in looking at them, that she forgot altogether how time was passing, and was quite astonished to hear Madonna suddenly clap her hands at the window, as a signal that the first punctual visitor had passed the garden-gate.