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HIDE AND SEEK
by Wilkie Collins
--
TO
CHARLES DICKENS,
THIS STORY IS INSCRIBED,
AS A
TOKEN OF ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION,
BY HIS FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
--
PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION
THIS novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of
fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its
first appearance, is soon told.
Unfortunately for me, "Hide And Seek" was originally published in the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, at the outbreak of the Crimean
War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious
national event; and new books--some of them books of far higher
pretensions than mine--found the minds of readers in general
pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in fiction
necessarily felt the adverse influence of the time. The demand among
the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and
there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated.
Since that period, the book has been, in the technical phrase, "out of
print." Proposals have reached me, at various times, for its
republication; but I have resolutely abstained from availing myself of
them for two reasons.
In the first place, I was anxious to wait until "Hide And Seek" could
make its re-appearance on a footing of perfect equality with my other
works. In the second place, I was resolved to keep it back until it
might obtain the advantage of a careful revisal, guided by the light of
the author's later experience. The period for the accomplishment of
both these objects has now presented itself. "Hide And Seek," in this
edition, forms one among the uniform series of my novels, which has
begun with "Antonina," "The Dead Secret," and "The Woman In White;" and
which will be continued with "Basil," and "The Queen Of Hearts." My
project of revisal has, at the same time, been carefully and rigidly
executed. I have abridged, and in many cases omitted, several passages
in the first edition, which made larger demands upon the reader's
patience than I should now think it desirable to venture on if I were
writing a new book; and I have, in one important respect, so altered
the termination of the story as to make it, I hope, more satisfactory
and more complete than it was in its original form.
With such advantages, therefore, as my diligent revision can give it,
"Hide And Seek" now appeals, after an interval of seven years, for
another hearing. I cannot think it becoming--especially in this age of
universal self-assertion--to state the grounds on which I believe my
book to be worthy of gaining more attention than it obtained, through
accidental circumstances, when it was first published. Neither can I
consent to shelter myself under the favorable opinions which many of my
brother writers--and notably, the great writer to whom "Hide And Seek"
is dedicated--expressed of these pages when I originally wrote them. I
leave it to the reader to compare this novel--especially in reference
to the conception and delineation of character--with the two novels
("Antonina" and "Basil") which preceded it; and then to decide whether
my third attempt in fiction, with all its faults, was, or was not, an
advance in Art on my earlier efforts. This is all the favor I ask for a
work which I once wrote with anxious care--which I have since corrected
with no sparing hand--which I have now finally dismissed to take its
second journey through the world of letters as usefully and
prosperously as it can.
HARLEY STREET, LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1861.
OPENING CHAPTER.
A CHILD'S SUNDAY.
AT a quarter to one o'clock, on a wet Sunday afternoon, in November
1837, Samuel Snoxell, page to Mr. Zachary Thorpe, of Baregrove Square,
London, left the area gate with three umbrellas under his arm, to meet
his master and mistress at the church door, on the conclusion of
morning service. Snoxell had been specially directed by the housemaid
to distribute his three umbrellas in the following manner: the new silk
umbrella was to be given to Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe; the old silk umbrella
was to be handed to Mr. Goodworth, Mrs. Thorpe's father; and the heavy
gingham was to be kept by Snoxell himself, for the special protection
of "Master Zack," aged six years, and the only child of Mr. Thorpe.
Furnished with these instructions, the page set forth on his way to the
church.
The morning had been fine for November; but before midday the clouds
had gathered, the rain had begun, and the inveterate fog of the season
had closed dingily over the wet streets, far and near. The garden in
the middle of Baregrove Square--with its close-cut turf, its vacant
beds, its bran-new rustic seats, its withered young trees that had not
yet grown as high as the railings around them--seemed to be absolutely
rotting away in yellow mist and softly-steady rain, and was deserted
even by the cats. All blinds were drawn down for the most part over all
windows; what light came from the sky came like light seen through
dusty glass; the grim brown hue of the brick houses looked more dirtily
mournful than ever; the smoke from the chimney-pots was lost
mysteriously in deepening superincumbent fog; the muddy gutters
gurgled; the heavy rain-drops dripped into empty areas audibly. No
object great or small, no out-of-door litter whatever appeared
anywhere, to break the dismal uniformity of line and substance in the
perspective of the square. No living being moved over the watery
pavement, save the solitary Snoxell. He plodded on into a Crescent, and
still the awful Sunday solitude spread grimly humid all around him. He
next entered a street with some closed shops in it; and here, at last,
some consoling signs of human life attracted his attention. He now saw
the crossing-sweeper of the district (off duty till church came out)
smoking a pipe under the covered way that led to a mews. He detected,
through half closed shutters, a chemist's apprentice yawing over a
large book. He passed a navigator, an ostler, and two costermongers
wandering wearily backwards and forwards before a closed public-house
door. He heard the heavy _clop clop_ of thickly-booted feet advancing
behind him, and a stern voice growling, "Now then! be off with you, or
you'll get locked up!"--and, looking round, saw an orange-girl, guilty
of having obstructed an empty pavement by sitting on the curb-stone,
driven along before a policeman, who was followed admiringly by a
ragged boy gnawing a piece of orange-peel. Having delayed a moment to
watch this Sunday procession of three with melancholy curiosity as it
moved by him, Snoxell was about to turn the corner of a street which
led directly to the church, when a shrill series of cries in a child's
voice struck on his ear and stopped his progress immediately.
The page stood stock-still in astonishment for an instant--then pulled
the new silk umbrella from under his arm, and turned the corner in a
violent hurry. His suspicions had not deceived him. There was Mr.
Thorpe himself walking sternly homeward through the rain, before church
was over. He led by the hand "Master Zack," who was trotting along
under protest, with his hat half off his head, hanging as far back from
his father's side as he possibly could, and howling all the time at the
utmost pitch of a very powerful pair of lungs.
Mr. Thorpe stopped as he passed the page, and snatched the umbrella out
of Snoxell's hand, with unaccustomed impetuity; said sharply, "Go to
your mistress, go on to the church;" and then resumed his road home,
dragging his son after him faster than ever.
"Snoxy! Snoxy!" screamed Master Zack, turning round towards the page,
so that he tripped himself up and fell against his father's legs at
every third step; "I've been a naughty boy at church!"
"Ah! you look like it, you do," muttered Snoxell to himself
sarcastically, as he went on. With that expression of opinion, the page
approached the church portico, and waited sulkily among his fellow
servants and their umbrellas for the congregation to come out.
When Mr. Goodworth and Mrs. Thorpe left the church, the old gentleman,
regardless of appearances, seized eagerly on the despised gingham
umbrella, because it was the largest he could get, and took his
daughter home under it in triumph. Mrs. Thorpe was very silent, and
sighed dolefully once or twice, when her father's attention wandered
from her to the people passing along the street.
"You're fretting about Zack," said the old gentleman, looking round
suddenly at his daughter. "Never mind! leave it to me. I'll undertake
to beg him off this time."
"It's very disheartening and shocking to find him behaving so," said
Mrs. Thorpe, "after the careful way we've brought him up in, too!"
"Nonsense, my love! No, I don't mean that--I beg your pardon. But who
can be surprised that a child of six years old should be tired of a
sermon forty minutes long by my watch? I was tired of it myself I know,
though I wasn't candid enough to show it as the boy did. There! there!
we won't begin to argue: I'll beg Zack off this time, and we'll say no
more about it."
Mr. Goodworth's announcement of his benevolent intentions towards Zack
seemed to have very little effect on Mrs. Thorpe; but she said nothing
on that subject or any other during the rest of the dreary walk home,
through rain, fog, and mud, to Baregrove Square.
Rooms have their mysterious peculiarities of physiognomy as well as
men. There are plenty of rooms, all of much the same size, all
furnished in much the same manner, which, nevertheless, differ
completely in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the
other; reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such
fine varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to
all, as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and
mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr.
Thorpe's house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished. It
was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table,
looking-glass, scroll fender, marble chimney-piece with a clock on it,
carpet with a drugget over it, and wire window-blinds to keep people
from looking in, characteristic of all respectable London parlors of
the middle class. And yet it was an inveterately severe-looking room--a
room that seemed as if it had never been convivial, never uproarious,
never anything but sternly comfortable and serenely dull--a room which
appeared to be as unconscious of acts of mercy, and easy unreasoning
over-affectionate forgiveness to offenders of any kind--juvenile or
otherwise--as if it had been a cell in Newgate, or a private torturing
chamber in the Inquisition. Perhaps Mr. Goodworth felt thus affected by
the parlor (especially in November weather) as soon as he entered
it--for, although he had promised to beg Zack off, although Mr. Thorpe
was sitting alone by the table and accessible to petitions, with a book
in his hand, the old gentleman hesitated uneasily for a minute or two,
and suffered his daughter to speak first.
"Where is Zack?" asked Mrs. Thorpe, glancing quickly and nervously all
round her.
"He is locked up in my dressing-room," answered her husband without
taking his eyes off the book.
"In your dressing-room!" echoed Mrs. Thorpe, looking as startled and
horrified as if she had received a blow instead of an answer; "in your
dressing-room! Good heavens, Zachary! how do you know the child hasn't
got at your razors?"
"They are locked up," rejoined Mr. Thorpe, with the mildest reproof in
his voice, and the mournfullest self-possession in his manner. "I took
care before I left the boy, that he should get at nothing which could
do him any injury. He is locked up, and will remain locked up,
because"--
"I say, Thorpe! won't you let him off this time?" interrupted Mr.
Goodworth, boldly plunging head foremost, with his petition for mercy,
into the conversation.
"If you had allowed me to proceed, sir," said Mr. Thorpe, who always
called his father-in-law _Sir,_ "I should have simply remarked that,
after having enlarged to my son (in such terms, you will observe, as I
thought best fitted to his comprehension) on the disgrace to his
parents and himself of his behavior this morning, I set him as a task
three verses to learn out of the 'Select Bible Texts for Children;'
choosing the verses which seemed most likely, if I may trust my own
judgment on the point, to impress on him what his behavior ought to be
for the future in church. He flatly refused to learn what I told him.
It was, of course, quite impossible to allow my authority to be set at
defiance by my own child (whose disobedient disposition has always, God
knows, been a source of constant trouble and anxiety to me); so I
locked him up, and locked up he will remain until he has obeyed me. My
dear," (turning to his wife and handing her a key), "I have no
objection, if you wish, to your going and trying what _you_ can do
towards overcoming the obstinacy of this unhappy child."
Mrs. Thorpe took the key, and went up stairs immediately--went up to do
what all women have done, from the time of the first mother; to do what
Eve did when Cain was wayward in his infancy, and cried at her
breast--in short, went up to coax her child.
Mr. Thorpe, when his wife closed the door, carefully looked down the
open page on his knee for the place where he had left off--found
it--referred back a moment to the last lines of the preceding leaf--and
then went on with his book, not taking the smallest notice of Mr.
Goodworth.
"Thorpe!" cried the old gentleman, plunging head-foremost again, into
his son-in-law's reading this time instead of his talk, "You may say
what you please; but your notion of bringing up Zack is a wrong one
altogether."
With the calmest imaginable expression of face, Mr. Thorpe looked up
from his book; and, first carefully putting a paper-knife between the
leaves, placed it on the table. He then crossed one of his legs over
the other, rested an elbow on each arm of his chair, and clasped his
hands in front of him. On the wall opposite hung several lithographed
portraits of distinguished preachers, in and out of the
Establishment--mostly represented as very sturdily-constructed men with
bristly hair, fronting the spectator interrogatively and holding thick
books in their hands. Upon one of these portraits--the name of the
original of which was stated at the foot of the print to be the
Reverend Aaron Yollop--Mr. Thorpe now fixed his eyes, with a faint
approach to a smile on his face (he never was known to laugh), and with
a look and manner which said as plainly as if he had spoken it: "This
old man is about to say something improper or absurd to me; but he is
my wife's father, it is my duty to bear with him, and therefore I am
perfectly resigned."
"It's no use looking in that way, Thorpe," growled the old gentleman;
"I'm not to be put down by looks at my time of life. I may have my own
opinions I suppose, like other people; and I don't see why I shouldn't
express them, especially when they relate to my own daughter's boy.
It's very unreasonable of me, I dare say, but I think I ought to have a
voice now and then in Zack's bringing up."
Mr. Thorpe bowed respectfully--partly to Mr. Goodworth, partly to the
Reverend Aaron Yollop. "I shall always be happy, sir, to listen to any
expression of your opinion--"
"My opinion's this," burst out Mr. Goodworth. "You've no business to
take Zack to church at all, till he's some years older than he is now.
I don't deny that there may be a few children, here and there, at six
years old, who are so very patient, and so very--(what's the word for a
child that knows a deal more than he has any business to know at his
age? Stop! I've got it!--_precocious_--that's the word)--so very
patient and so very precocious that they will sit quiet in the same
place for two hours; making believe all the time that they understand
every word of the service, whether they really do or not. I don't deny
that there may be such children, though I never met with them myself,
and should think them all impudent little hypocrites if I did! But Zack
isn't one of that sort: Zack's a genuine child (God bless him)! Zack--"
"Do I understand you, my dear sir," interposed Mr. Thorpe, sorrowfully
sarcastic, "to be praising the conduct of my son in disturbing the
congregation, and obliging me to take him out of church?"
"Nothing of the sort," retorted the old gentleman; "I'm not praising
Zack's conduct, but I _am_ blaming yours. Here it is in plain
words:--_You_ keep on cramming church down his throat; and _he_ keeps
on puking at it as if it was physic, because he don't know any better,
and can't know any better at his age. Is that the way to make him take
kindly to religious teaching? I know as well as you do, that he roared
like a young Turk at the sermon. And pray what was the subject of the
sermon? Justification by Faith. Do you mean to tell me that he, or any
other child at his time of life, could understand anything of such a
subject as that; or get an atom of good out of it? You can't--you know
you can't! I say again, it's no use taking him to church yet; and
what's more, it's worse than no use, for you only associate his first
ideas of religious instruction with everything in the way of restraint
and discipline and punishment that can be most irksome to him. There!
that's my opinion, and I should like to hear what you've got to say
against it?"
"Latitudinarianism," said Mr. Thorpe, looking and speaking straight at
the portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.
"You can't fob me off with long words, which I don't understand, and
which I don't believe you can find in Johnson's Dictionary," continued
Mr. Goodworth doggedly. "You would do much better to take my advice,
and let Zack go to church, for the present, at his mother's knees. Let
his Morning Service be about ten minutes long; let your wife tell him,
out of the New Testament, about Our Savior's goodness and gentleness to
little children; and then let her teach him, from the Sermon on the
Mount, to be loving and truthful and forbearing and forgiving, for Our
Savior's sake. If such precepts as those are enforced--as they may be
in one way or another--by examples drawn from his own daily life; from
people around him; from what he meets with and notices and asks about,
out of doors and in--mark my words, he'll take kindly to his religious
instruction. I've seen that in other children: I've seen it in my own
children, who were all brought up so. Of course, you don't agree with
me! Of course you've got another objection all ready to bowl me down
with?"
"Rationalism," said Mr. Thorpe, still looking steadily at the
lithographed portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.
"Well, your objection's a short one this time at any rate; and that's a
blessing!" said the old gentleman rather irritably. "Rationalism--eh? I
understand that _ism,_ I rather suspect, better than the other. It
means in plain English, that you think I'm wrong in only wanting to
give religious instruction the same chance with Zack which you let all
other kinds of instruction have--the chance of becoming useful by being
first made attractive. You can't get him to learn to read by telling
him that it will improve his mind--but you can by getting him to look
at a picture book. You can't get him to drink senna and salts by
reasoning with him about its doing him good--but you can by promising
him a lump of sugar to take after it. You admit this sort of principle
so far, because you're obliged; but the moment anybody wants (in a
spirit of perfect reverence and desire to do good) to extend it to
higher things, you purse up your lips, shake your head, and talk about
Rationalism--as if that was an answer! Well! well! it's no use
talking--go your own way--I wash my hands of the business altogether.
But now I _am_ at it I'll just say this one thing more before I've
done:--your way of punishing the boy for his behavior in church is, in
my opinion, about as bad and dangerous a one as could possibly be
devised. Why not give him a thrashing, if you _must_ punish the
miserable little urchin for what's his misfortune as much as his fault?
Why not stop his pudding, or something of that sort? Here you are
associating verses in the Bible, in his mind, with the idea of
punishment and being locked up in the cold! You may make him get his
text by heart, I dare say, by fairly tiring him out; but I tell you
what I'm afraid you'll make him learn too, if you don't mind--you'll
make him learn to dislike the Bible as much as other boys dislike the
birch-rod!"
"Sir," cried Mr. Thorpe, turning suddenly round, and severely
confronting Mr. Goodworth, "once for all, I must most respectfully
insist on being spared for the future any open profanities in
conversation, even from your lips. All my regard and affection for you,
as Mrs. Thorpe's father, shall not prevent me from solemnly recording
my abhorrence of such awful infidelity as I believe to be involved in
the words you have just spoken! My religious convictions recoil--"
"Stop, sir!" said Mr. Goodworth, seriously and sternly.
Mr. Thorpe obeyed at once. The old gentleman's manner was generally
much more remarkable for heartiness than for dignity; but it altered
completely while he now spoke. As he struck his hand on the table, and
rose from his chair, there was something in his look which it was not
wise to disregard.
"Mr. Thorpe," he went on, more calmly, but very decidedly, "I refrain
from telling you what my opinion is of the 'respect' and 'affection'
which have allowed _you_ to rebuke _me_ in such terms as you have
chosen. I merely desire to say that I shall never need a second reproof
of the same kind at your hands; for I shall never again speak to you on
the subject of my grandson's education. If, in consideration of this
assurance, you will now permit me, in my turn--not to rebuke--but to
offer you one word of advice, I would recommend you not to be too ready
in future, lightly and cruelly to accuse a man of infidelity because
his religious opinions happen to differ on some subjects from yours. To
infer a serious motive for your opponent's convictions, however wrong
you may think them, can do _you_ no harm: to infer a scoffing motive
can do _him_ no good. We will say nothing more about this, if you
please. Let us shake hands, and never again revive a subject about
which we disagree too widely ever to discuss it with advantage."
At this moment the servant came in with lunch. Mr. Goodworth poured
himself out a glass of sherry, made a remark on the weather, and soon
resumed his cheerful, everyday manner. But he did not forget the pledge
that he had given to Mr. Thorpe. From that time forth, he never by word
or deed interfered again in his grandson's education.
-----------
While the theory of Mr. Thorpe's system of juvenile instruction was
being discussed in the free air of the parlor, the practical working of
that theory, so far as regarded the case of Master Zack, was being
exemplified in anything but a satisfactory manner, in the prison-region
of the dressing-room.
While she ascended the first flight of stairs, Mrs. Thorpe's ears
informed her that her son was firing off one uninterrupted volley of
kicks against the door of his place of confinement. As this was by no
means an unusual circumstance, whenever the boy happened to be locked
up for bad behavior, she felt distressed, but not at all surprised at
what she heard; and went into the drawing-room, on her way up stairs,
to deposit her Bible and Prayerbook (kept in a morocco case, with gold
clasps) on the little side-table, upon which they were always placed
during week-days. Possibly, she was so much agitated that her hand
trembled; possibly, she was in too great a hurry; possibly, the
household imp who rules the brittle destinies of domestic glass and
china, had marked her out as his destroying angel for that day; but
however it was, in placing the morocco case on the table, she knocked
down and broke an ornament standing near it--a little ivory model of a
church steeple in the florid style, enshrined in a glass case. Picking
up the fragments, and mourning over the catastrophe, occupied some
little time, more than she was aware of, before she at last left the
drawing-room, to proceed on her way to the upper regions.
As she laid her hand on the banisters, it struck her suddenly and
significantly, that the noises in the dressing-room above had entirely
ceased.
The instant she satisfied herself of this, her maternal imagination,
uninfluenced by what Mr. Thorpe had said below stairs, conjured up an
appalling vision of Zack before his father's looking-glass, with his
chin well lathered, and a bare razor at his naked throat. The child had
indeed a singular aptitude for amusing himself with purely adult
occupations. Having once been incautiously taken into church by his
nurse, to see a female friend of hers married, Zack had, the very next
day, insisted on solemnizing the nuptial ceremony from recollection,
before a bride and bridegroom of his own age, selected from his
playfellows in the garden of the square. Another time, when the
gardener had incautiously left his lighted pipe on a bench while he
went to gather a flower for one of the local nursery-maids, whom he was
accustomed to favor horticulturally in this way, Zack contrived,
undetected, to take three greedy whiffs of pigtail in close succession;
was discovered reeling about the grass like a little drunkard; and had
to be smuggled home (deadly pale, and bathed in cold perspiration) to
recover, out of his mother's sight, in the congenial gloom of the back
kitchen. Although the precise infantine achievements here cited were
unknown to Mrs. Thorpe, there were plenty more, like them, which she
had discovered; and the warning remembrance of which now hurried the
poor lady up the second flight of stairs in a state of breathless
agitation and alarm.
Zack, however, had not got at the razors; for they were all locked up,
as Mr. Thorpe had declared. But he had, nevertheless, discovered in the
dressing-room a means of perpetrating domestic mischief, which his
father had never thought of providing against. Finding that kicking,
screaming, stamping, sobbing, and knocking down chairs, were quite
powerless as methods of enforcing his liberation, he suddenly suspended
his proceedings; looked all round the room; observed the cock which
supplied his father's bath with water; and instantly resolved to flood
the house. He had set the water going in the bath, had filled it to the
brim, and was anxiously waiting, perched up on a chair, to see it
overflow--when his mother unlocked the dressing-room door, and entered
the room.
"Oh, you naughty, wicked, shocking child!" cried Mrs. Thorpe, horrified
at what she beheld, but instantly stopping the threatened deluge from
motives of precaution connected with the drawing-room ceiling. "Oh,
Zack! Zack! what will you do next? What _would_ your papa say if he
heard of this? You wicked, wicked, wicked child, I'm ashamed to look at
you!"
And, in very truth, Zack offered at that moment a sufficiently
disheartening spectacle for a mother's eyes to dwell on. There stood
the young imp, sturdy and upright in his chair, wriggling his shoulders
in and out of his frock, and holding his hands behind him in
unconscious imitation of the favorite action of Napoleon the Great. His
light hair was all rumpled down over his forehead; his lips were
swelled; his nose was red; and from his bright blue eyes Rebellion
looked out frankly mischievous, amid a surrounding halo of dirt and
tears, rubbed circular by his knuckles. After gazing on her son in mute
despair for a minute or so, Mrs. Thorpe took the only course that was
immediately open to her--or, in other words, took the child off the
chair.
"Have you learnt your lesson, you wicked boy?" she asked.
"No, I havn't," answered Zack, resolutely.
"Then come to the table with me: your papa's waiting to hear you. Come
here and learn your lesson directly," said Mrs. Thorpe, leading the way
to the table.
"I won't!" rejoined Zack, emphasizing the refusal by laying tight hold
of the wet sides of the bath with both hands.
It was lucky for this rebel of six years old that he addressed those
two words to his mother only. If his nurse had heard them, she would
instantly have employed that old-established resource in all
educational difficulties, familiarly known to persons of her condition
under the appellation of "a smack on the head;" if Mr. Thorpe had heard
them, the boy would have been sternly torn away, bound to the back of a
chair, and placed ignominiously with his chin against the table; if Mr.
Goodworth had heard them, the probability is that he would instantly
have lost his temper, and soused his grandson head over ears in the
bath. Not one of these ideas occurred to Mrs. Thorpe, who possessed no
ideas. But she had certain substitutes which were infinitely more
useful in the present emergency: she had instincts.
"Look up at me, Zack," she said, returning to the bath, and sitting in
the chair by its side; "I want to say something to you."
The boy obeyed directly. His mother opened her lips, stopped suddenly,
said a few words, stopped again, hesitated--and then ended her first
sentence of admonition in the most ridiculous manner, by snatching at
the nearest towel, and bearing Zack off to the wash-hand basin.
The plain fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe was secretly vain of her child.
She had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait-
waistcoats of prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but
this--of all vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely
the most pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome,
church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding Zack! If he had been a
plain-featured boy, she could have gone on more sternly with her
admonition: but to look coolly on his handsome face, made ugly by dirt,
tears, and rumpled hair; to speak to him in that state, while soap,
water, brush and towel, were all within reach, was more than the mother
(or the woman either, for that matter) had the self-denial to do! So,
before it had well begun, the maternal lecture ended impotently in the
wash-hand basin.
When the boy had been smartened and brushed up, Mrs. Thorpe took him on
her lap; and suppressing a strong desire to kiss him on both his round,
shining cheeks, said these words:--
"I want you to learn your lesson, because you will please _me_ by
obeying your papa. I have always been kind to _you,_--now I want you to
be kind to _me."_
For the first time, Zack hung down his head, and seemed unprepared with
an answer. Mrs. Thorpe knew by experience what this symptom meant. "I
think you are beginning to be sorry for what you have done, and are
going to be a good boy," she said. "If you are, I know you will give me
a kiss." Zack hesitated again--then suddenly reached up, and gave his
mother a hearty and loud-sounding kiss on the tip of her chin. "And now
you will learn your lesson?" continued Mrs. Thorpe. "I have always
tried to make _you_ happy, and I am sure you are ready, by this time,
to try and make _me_ happy--are you not, Zack?"
"Yes, I am," said Zack manfully. His mother took him at once to the
table, on which the "Select Bible Texts for Children" lay open, and
tried to lift him into a chair "No!" said the boy, resisting and
shaking his head resolutely; "I want to learn my lesson on your lap."
Mrs. Thorpe humored him immediately. She was not a handsome, not even a
pretty woman; and the cold atmosphere of the dressing-room by no means
improved her personal appearance. But, notwithstanding this, she looked
absolutely attractive and interesting at the present moment, as she sat
with Zack in her arms, bending over him while he studied his three
verses in the "Bible Texts." Women who have been ill-used by nature
have this great advantage over men in the same predicament--wherever
there is a child present, they have a means ready at hand, which they
can all employ alike, for hiding their personal deficiencies. Who ever
saw an awkward woman look awkward with a baby in her arms? Who ever saw
an ugly woman look ugly when she was kissing a child?
Zack, who was a remarkably quick boy when he chose to exert himself,
got his lesson by heart in so short a time that his mother insisted on
hearing him twice over, before she could satisfy herself that he was
really perfect enough to appear in his father's presence. The second
trial decided her doubts, and she took him in triumph down stairs.
Mr. Thorpe was reading intently, Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly,
the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and
the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its
most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson
at his father's knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his
childish manner, during this third trial, altered from frankness to
distrustfulness; and he looked much oftener, while he said his task, at
Mr. Goodworth than at his father. When the texts had been repeated, Mr.
Thorpe just said to his wife, before resuming his book--"You may tell
the nurse, my dear, to get Zachary's dinner ready for him--though he
doesn't deserve it for behaving so badly about learning his lesson."
"Please, grandpapa, may I look at the picture-book you brought for me
last night, after I was in bed?" said Zack, addressing Mr. Goodworth,
and evidently feeling that he was entitled to his reward now he had
suffered his punishment.
"Certainly not on a Sunday," interposed Mr. Thorpe; "your grandpapa's
book is not a book for Sundays."
Mr. Goodworth started, and seemed about to speak; but recollecting what
he had said to Mr. Thorpe, contented himself with poking the fire. The
book in question was a certain romance, entitled "Jack and the Bean
Stalk," adorned with illustrations in the freest style of water-color
art.
"If you want to look at picture-books, you know what books you may have
to-day; and your mamma will get them for you when she comes in again,"
continued Mr. Thorpe.
The works now referred to were, an old copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress"
containing four small prints of the period of the last century; and a
"Life of Moses," illustrated by severe German outlines in the manner of
the modern school. Zack knew well enough what books his father meant,
and exhibited his appreciation of them by again beginning to wriggle
his shoulders in and out of his frock. He had evidently had more than
enough already of the "Pilgrim's Progress" and the "Life of Moses."
Mr. Thorpe said nothing more, and returned to his reading. Mr.
Goodworth put his hands in his pockets, yawned disconsolately, and
looked, with a languidly satirical expression in his eyes, to see what
his grandson would do next. If the thought passing through the old
gentleman's mind at that moment had been put into words, it would have
been exactly expressed in the following sentence:--"You miserable
little boy! When I was your age, how I should have kicked at all this!"
Zack was not long in finding a new resource. He spied Mr. Goodworth's
cane standing in a corner; and, instantly getting astride of it,
prepared to amuse himself with a little imaginary horse-exercise up and
down the room. He had just started at a gentle canter, when his father
called out, "Zachary!" and brought the boy to a stand-still directly.
"Put back the stick where you took it from," said Mr. Thorpe; "you
mustn't do that on Sunday. If you want to move about, you can walk up
and down the room."
Zack paused, debating for an instant whether he should disobey or burst
out crying.
"Put back the stick," repeated Mr. Thorpe.
Zack remembered the dressing-room and the "Select Bible Texts for
Children," and wisely obeyed. He was by this time completely crushed
down into as rigid a state of Sunday discipline as his father could
desire. After depositing the stick in the corner, he slowly walked up
to Mr. Goodworth, with a comical expression of amazement and disgust in
his chubby face, and meekly laid down his head on his grandfather's
knee.
"Never say die, Zack," said the kind old gentleman, rising and taking
the boy in his arms. "While nurse is getting your dinner ready, let's
look out of window, and see if it's going to clear up."
Mr. Thorpe raised his head disapprovingly from his book, but said
nothing this time.
"Ah, rain! rain! rain!" muttered Mr. Goodworth, staring desperately out
at the miserable prospect, while Zack amused himself by rubbing his
nose vacantly backwards and forwards against a pane of glass. "Rain!
rain! Nothing but rain and fog in November. Hold up, Zack! Ding-dong,
ding-dong; there go the bells for afternoon church! I wonder whether it
will be fine to-morrow? Think of the pudding, my boy!" whispered the
old gentleman with a benevolent remembrance of the consolation which
that thought had often afforded to him, when he was a child himself.
"Yes," said Zack, acknowledging the pudding suggestion, but declining
to profit by it. "And, please, when I've had my dinner, will somebody
put me to bed?"
"Put you to bed!" exclaimed Mr. Goodworth. "Why, bless the boy! what's
come to him now? He used always to be wanting to stop up."
"I want to go to bed, and get to to-morrow, and have my picture-book,"
was the weary and whimpering answer.
"I'll be hanged, if I don't want to go to bed too!" soliloquized the
old gentleman under his breath, "and get to to-morrow, and have my
'Times' at breakfast. I'm as bad as Zack, every bit!"
"Grandpapa," continued the child, more wearily than before, "I want to
whisper something in your ear."
Mr. Goodworth bent down a little. Zack looked round cunningly towards
his father--then putting his mouth close to his grandfather's ear,
communicated the conclusion at which he had arrived, after the events
of the day, in these words--
_"I say, granpapa, I hate Sunday!"_
BOOK I
THE HIDING.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW NEIGHBORHOOD, AND A STRANGE CHARACTER.
AT the period when the episode just related occurred in the life of Mr.
Zachary Thorpe the younger--that is to say, in the year 1837--Baregrove
Square was the farthest square from the city, and the nearest to the
country, of any then existing in the north-western suburb of London.
But, by the time fourteen years more had elapsed--that is to say, in
the year 1851--Baregrove Square had lost its distinctive character
altogether; other squares had filched from it those last remnants of
healthy rustic flavor from which its good name had been derived; other
streets, crescents, rows, and villa-residences had forced themselves
pitilessly between the old suburb and the country, and had suspended
for ever the once neighborly relations between the pavement of
Baregrove Square and the pathways of the pleasant fields.
Alexander's armies were great makers of conquests; and Napoleon's
armies were great makers of conquests; but the modern Guerilla
regiments of the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln, are the greatest
conquerors of all; for they hold the longest the soil that they have
once possessed. How mighty the devastation which follows in the wake of
these tremendous aggressors, as they march through the kingdom of
nature, triumphantly bricklaying beauty wherever they go! What
dismantled castle, with the enemy's flag flying over its crumbling
walls, ever looked so utterly forlorn as a poor field-fortress of
nature, imprisoned on all sides by the walled camp of the enemy, and
degraded by a hostile banner of pole and board, with the conqueror's
device inscribed on it--"THIS GROUND TO BE LET ON BUILDING LEASES?"
What is the historical spectacle of Marius sitting among the ruins of
Carthage, but a trumpery theatrical set-scene, compared with the
mournful modern sight of the last tree left standing, on the last few
feet of grass left growing, amid the greenly-festering stucco of a
finished Paradise Row, or the naked scaffolding poles of a
half-completed Prospect Place? Oh, gritty-natured Guerilla regiments of
the hod, the trowel, and the brick-kiln! the town-pilgrim of nature,
when he wanders out at fall of day into the domains which you have
spared for a little while, hears strange things said of you in secret,
as he duteously interprets the old, primeval language of the leaves; as
he listens to the death-doomed trees, still whispering mournfully
around him the last notes of their ancient even-song!
But what avails the voice of lamentation? What new neighborhood ever
stopped on its way into the country, to hearken to the passive
remonstrance of the fields, or to bow to the indignation of outraged
admirers of the picturesque? Never was suburb more impervious to any
faint influences of this sort, than that especial suburb which grew up
between Baregrove Square and the country; removing a walk among the
hedge-rows a mile off from the resident families, with a ruthless
rapidity at which sufferers on all sides stared aghast. First stories
were built, and mortgaged by the enterprising proprietors to get money
enough to go on with the second; old speculators failed and were
succeeded by new; foundations sank from bad digging; walls were blown
down in high winds from hasty building; bricks were called for in such
quantities, and seized on in such haste, half-baked from the kilns,
that they set the carts on fire, and had to be cooled in pails of water
before they could be erected into walls--and still the new suburb
defied all accidents, and grew irrepressibly into a little town of
houses, ready to be let and lived in, from the one end to the other.
The new neighborhood offered house-accommodation--accepted at the
higher prices as yet only to a small extent--to three distinct
subdivisions of the great middle class of our British population. Rents
and premises were adapted, in a steeply descending scale, to the means
of the middle classes with large incomes, of the middle classes with
moderate incomes, and of the middle classes with small incomes. The
abodes for the large incomes were called "mansions," and were fortified
strongly against the rest of the suburb by being all built in one wide
row, shut in at either end by ornamental gates, and called a "park."
The unspeakable desolation of aspect common to the whole suburb, was in
a high state of perfection in this part of it. Irreverent street noises
fainted dead away on the threshold of the ornamental gates, at the
sight of the hermit lodge-keeper. The cry of the costermonger and the
screech of the vagabond London boy were banished out of hearing. Even
the regular tradesman's time-honored business noises at customers'
doors, seemed as if they ought to have been relinquished here. The
frantic falsetto of the milkman, the crash of the furious butcher's
cart over the never-to-be pulverized stones of the new road through the
"park," always sounded profanely to the passing stranger, in the
spick-and-span stillness of this Paradise of the large incomes.
The hapless small incomes had the very worst end of the whole locality
entirely to themselves, and absorbed all the noises and nuisances, just
as the large incomes absorbed all the tranquillities and luxuries of
suburban existence. Here were the dreary limits at which architectural
invention stopped in despair. Each house in this poor man's purgatory
was, indeed, and in awful literalness, a brick box with a slate top to
it. Every hole drilled in these boxes, whether door-hole or
window-hole, was always overflowing with children. They often mustered
by forties and fifties in one street, and were the great pervading
feature of the quarter. In the world of the large incomes, young life
sprang up like a garden fountain, artificially playing only at stated
periods in the sunshine. In the world of the small incomes, young life
flowed out turbulently into the street, like an exhaustless
kennel-deluge, in all weathers. Next to the children of the
inhabitants, in visible numerical importance, came the shirts and
petticoats, and miscellaneous linen of the inhabitants; fluttering out
to dry publicly on certain days of the week, and enlivening the
treeless little gardens where they hung, with lightsome avenues of
pinafores, and solemn-spreading foliage of stout Welsh flannel. Here
that absorbing passion for oranges (especially active when the fruit is
half ripe, and the weather is bitter cold), which distinguishes the
city English girl of the lower orders, flourished in its finest
development; and here, also, the poisonous fumes of the holyday
shop-boy's bad cigar told all resident nostrils when it was Sunday, as
plainly as the church bells could tell it to all resident ears. The one
permanent rarity in this neighborhood, on week days, was to discover a
male inhabitant in any part of it, between the hours of nine in the
morning and six in the evening; the one sorrowful sight which never
varied, was to see that every woman, even to the youngest, looked more
or less unhappy, often care-stricken, while youth was still in the
first bud; oftener child-stricken before maturity was yet in the full
bloom.
As for the great central portion of the suburb--or, in other words, the
locality of the moderate incomes--it reflected exactly the lives of
those who inhabited it, by presenting no distinctive character of its
own at all.
In one part, the better order of houses imitated as pompously as they
could, the architectural grandeur of the mansions owned by the large
incomes; in another, the worst order of houses respectably, but
narrowly, escaped a general resemblance to the brick boxes of the small
incomes. In some places, the "park" influences vindicated their
existence superbly in the persons of isolated ladies who, not having a
carriage to go out in for an airing, exhibited the next best thing, a
footman to walk behind them: and so got a pedestrian airing genteelly
in that way. In other places, the obtrusive spirit of the brick boxes
rode about, thinly disguised, in children's carriages, drawn by
nursery-maids; or fluttered aloft, delicately discernible at angles of
view, in the shape of a lace pocket-handkerchief or a fine-worked
chemisette, drying modestly at home in retired corners of back gardens.
Generally, however, the hostile influences of the large incomes and the
small mingled together on the neutral ground of the moderate incomes;
turning it into the dullest, the dreariest, the most oppressively
conventional division of the whole suburb. It was just that sort of
place where the thoughtful man looking about him mournfully at the
locality, and physiologically observing the inhabitants, would be prone
to stop suddenly, and ask himself one plain, but terrible question: "Do
these people ever manage to get any real enjoyment out of their lives,
from one year's end to another?"
To the looker-on at the system of life prevailing among the moderate
incomes in England, the sort of existence which that system embodies
seems in some aspects to be without a parallel in any other part of the
civilized world. Is it not obviously true that, while the upper classes
and the lower classes of English society have each their own
characteristic recreations for leisure hours, adapted equally to their
means and to their tastes, the middle classes, in general, have (to
expose the sad reality) nothing of the sort? To take an example from
those eating and drinking recreations which absorb so large a portion
of existence:--If the rich proprietors of the "mansions" in the "park"
could give their grand dinners, and be as prodigal as they pleased with
their first-rate champagne, and their rare gastronomic delicacies; the
poor tenants of the brick boxes could just as easily enjoy their
tea-garden conversazione, and be just as happily and hospitably
prodigal, in turn, with their porter-pot, their teapot, their plate of
bread-and-butter, and their dish of shrimps. On either side, these
representatives of two pecuniary extremes in society, looked for what
recreations they wanted with their own eyes, pursued those recreations
within their own limits, and enjoyed themselves unreservedly in
consequence. Not so with the moderate incomes: they, in their social
moments, shrank absurdly far from the poor people's porter and shrimps;
crawled contemptibly near to the rich people's rare wines and luxurious
dishes; exposed their poverty in imitation by chemical champagne from
second-rate wine merchants, by flabby salads and fetid oyster-patties
from second-rate pastry-cooks; were, in no one of their festive
arrangements, true to their incomes, to their order, or to themselves;
and, in very truth, for all these reasons and many more, got no real
enjoyment out of their lives, from one year's end to another.
On the outskirts of that part of the new suburb appropriated to these
unhappy middle classes with moderate incomes, there lived a gentleman
(by name Mr. Valentine Blyth) whose life offered as strong a practical
contradiction as it is possible to imagine to the lives of his
neighbors.
He was by profession an artist--an artist in spite of circumstances.
Neither his father, nor his mother, nor any relation of theirs, on
either side, had ever practiced the Art of Painting, or had ever
derived any special pleasure from the contemplation of pictures. They
were all respectable commercial people of the steady fund-holding old
school, who lived exclusively within their own circle; and had never so
much as spoken to a live artist or author in the whole course of their
lives. The City-world in which Valentine's boyhood was passed, was as
destitute of art influences of any kind as if it had been situated on
the coast of Greenland; and yet, to the astonishment of everybody, he
was always drawing and painting, in his own rude way, at every leisure
hour. His father was, as might be expected, seriously disappointed and
amazed at the strange direction taken by the boy's inclinations. No one
(including Valentine himself) could ever trace them back to any
recognizable source; but everyone could observe plainly enough that
there was no hope of successfully opposing them by fair means of any
kind. Seeing this, old Mr. Blyth, like a wise man, at last made a
virtue of necessity; and, giving way to his son, entered him, under
strong commercial protest, as a student in the Schools of the Royal
Academy.
Here Valentine remained, working industriously, until his twenty-first
birthday. On that occasion, Mr. Blyth had a little serious talk with
him about his prospects in life. In the course of this conversation,
the young man was informed that a rich merchant-uncle was ready to take
him into partnership; and that his father was equally ready to start
him in business with his whole share, as one of three children, in the
comfortable inheritance acquired for the family by the well-known City
house of Blyth and Company. If Valentine consented to this arrangement,
his fortune was secured, and he might ride in his carriage before he
was thirty. If, on the other hand, he really chose to fling away a
fortune, he should not be pinched for means to carry on his studies as
a painter. The interest of his inheritance on his father's death,
should be paid quarterly to him during his father's lifetime: the
annual independence thus secured to the young artist, under any
circumstances, being calculated as amounting to a little over four
hundred pounds a year.
Valentine was not deficient in gratitude. He took a day to consider
what he should do, though his mind was quite made up about his choice
beforehand; and then persisted in his first determination; throwing
away the present certainty of becoming a wealthy man, for the sake of
the future chance of turning out a great painter.
If he had really possessed genius, there would have been nothing very
remarkable in this part of his history, so far; but having nothing of
the kind, holding not the smallest spark of the great creative fire in
his whole mental composition, surely there was something very
discouraging to contemplate, in the spectacle of a man resolutely
determining, in spite of adverse home circumstances and strong home
temptation, to abandon all those paths in life, along which he might
have walked fairly abreast with his fellows, for the one path in which
he was predestinated by Nature to be always left behind by the way. Do
the announcing angels, whose mission it is to whisper of greatness to
great spirits, ever catch the infection of fallibility from their
intercourse with mortals? Do the voices which said truly to
Shakespeare, to Raphael, and to Mozart, in their youth-time,--You are
chosen to be gods in this world--ever speak wrongly to souls which they
are not ordained to approach? It may be so. There are men enough in all
countries whose lives would seem to prove it--whose deaths have not
contradicted it.
But even to victims such as these, there are pleasant resting-places on
the thorny way, and flashes of sunlight now and then, to make the
cloudy prospect beautiful, though only for a little while. It is not
all misfortune and disappointment to the man who is mentally unworthy
of a great intellectual vocation, so long as he is morally worthy of
it; so long as he can pursue it honestly, patiently, and
affectionately, for its own dear sake. Let him work, though ever so
obscurely, in this spirit towards his labor, and he shall find the
labor itself its own exceeding great reward. In that reward lives the
divine consolation, which, though Fame turn her back on him
contemptuously, and Affluence pass over unpitying to the other side of
the way, shall still pour oil upon all his wounds, and take him quietly
and tenderly to the hard journey's end. To this one exhaustless solace,
which the work, no matter of what degree, can yield always to earnest
workers, the man who has succeeded, and the man who has failed, can
turn alike, as to a common mother--the one, for refuge from mean envy
and slanderous hatred, from all the sorest evils which even the
thriving child of Fame is heir to; the other, from neglect, from
ridicule, from defeat, from all the petty tyrannies which the pining
bondman of Obscurity is fated to undergo.
Thus it was with Valentine. He had sacrificed a fortune to his Art; and
his Art--in the world's eye at least--had given to him nothing in
return. Friends and relatives who had not scrupled, on being made
acquainted with his choice of a vocation, to call it in question, and
thereby to commit that worst and most universal of all human
impertinences, which consists of telling a man to his face, by the
plainest possible inference, that others are better able than he is
himself to judge what calling in life is fittest and worthiest for
him--friends and relatives who thus upbraided Valentine for his refusal
to accept the partnership in his uncle's house, affected, on
discovering that he made no public progress whatever in Art, to believe
that he was simply an idle fellow, who knew that his father's
liberality placed him beyond the necessity of working for his bread,
and who had taken up the pursuit of painting as a mere amateur
amusement to occupy his leisure hours. To a man who labored like poor
Blyth, with the steadiest industry and the highest aspirations, such
whispered calumnies as these were of all mortifications the most cruel,
of all earthly insults the hardest to bear.
Still he worked on patiently, never losing faith or hope, because he
never lost the love of his Art, or the enjoyment of pursuing it,
irrespective of results, however disheartening. Like most other men of
his slight intellectual caliber, the works he produced were various, if
nothing else. He tried the florid style, and the severe style; he was
by turns devotional, allegorical, historical, sentimental, humorous. At
one time, he abandoned figure-painting altogether, and took to
landscape; now producing conventional studies from Nature,--and now,
again, reveling in poetical compositions, which might have hung
undetected in many a collection as doubtful specimens of Berghem or
Claude.
But whatever department of painting Valentine tried to excel in, the
same unhappy destiny seemed always in reserve for each completed
effort. For years and years his pictures pleaded hard for admission at
the Academy doors, and were invariably (and not unfairly, it must be
confessed) refused even the worst places on the walls of the Exhibition
rooms. Season after season he still bravely struggled on, never
depressed, never hopeless while he was before his easel, until at last
the day of reward--how long and painfully wrought for!--actually
arrived. A small picture of a very insignificant subject--being only a
kitchen "interior," with a sleek cat on a dresser, stealing milk from
the tea-tray during the servant's absence--was benevolently marked
"doubtful" by the Hanging Committee; was thereupon kept in reserve, in
case it might happen to fit any forgotten place near the floor--did fit
such a place--and was really hung up, as Mr. Blyth's little unit of a
contribution to the one thousand and odd works exhibited to the public,
that year, by the Royal Academy.
But Valentine's triumph did not end here. His picture of the
treacherous cat stealing the household milk--entitled, by way of
appealing jocosely to the strong Protestant interest, "The Jesuit in
the Family,"--was really sold to an Art-Union prize-holder for ten
pounds. Once furnished with a bank note won by his own brush, Valentine
indulged in the most extravagant anticipations of future celebrity and
future wealth; and proved, recklessly enough, that he believed as
firmly as any other visionary in the wildest dreams of his own
imagination, by marrying, and setting up an establishment, on the
strength of the success which had been achieved by "The Jesuit in the
Family."
He had been for some time past engaged to the lady who had now become
Mrs. Valentine Blyth. She was the youngest of eight sisters, who formed
part of the family of a poor engraver, and who, in the absence of any
mere money qualifications, were all rich alike in the ownership of most
magnificent Christian names. Mrs. Blyth was called Lavinia-Ada; and
hers was by far the humblest name to be found among the whole
sisterhood. Valentine's relations all objected strongly to this match,
not only on account of the bride's poverty, but for another and a very
serious reason, which events soon proved to be but too well founded.
Lavinia had suffered long and severely, as a child, from a bad spinal
malady. Constant attention, and such medical assistance as her father
could afford to employ, had, it was said, successfully combated the
disorder; and the girl grew up, prettier than any of her sisters, and
apparently almost as strong as the healthiest of them. Old Mr. Blyth,
however, on hearing that his son was now just as determined to become a
married man as he had formerly been to become a painter, thought it
advisable to make certain inquiries about the young lady's
constitution; and addressed them, with characteristic caution, to the
family doctor, at a private interview.
The result of this conference was far from being satisfactory. The
doctor was suspiciously careful not to commit himself: he said that he
hoped the spine was no longer in danger of being affected; but that he
could not conscientiously express himself as feeling quite sure about
it. Having repeated these discouraging words to his son, old Mr. Blyth
delicately and considerately, but very plainly, asked Valentine
whether, after what he had heard, he still honestly thought that he
would be consulting his own happiness, or the lady's happiness either,
by marrying her at all? or, at least, by marrying her at a time when
the doctor could not venture to say that the poor girl might not be
even yet in danger of becoming an invalid for life?
Valentine, as usual, persisted at first in looking exclusively at the
bright side of the question, and made light of the doctor's authority
accordingly.
"Lavvie and I love each other dearly," he said with a little trembling
in his voice, but with perfect firmness of manner. "I hope in God that
what you seem to fear will never happen; but even if it should, I shall
never repent having married her, for I know that I am just as ready to
be her nurse as to be her husband. I am willing to take her in sickness
and in health, as the Prayer-Book says. In my home she would have such
constant attention paid to her wants and comforts as she could not have
at her father's, with his large family and his poverty, poor fellow!
And this is reason enough, I think, for my marrying her, even if the
worst should take place. But I always have hoped for the best, as you
know, father: and I mean to go on hoping for poor Lavvie, just the same
as ever!"
What could old Mr. Blyth, what could any man of heart and honor, oppose
to such an answer as this? Nothing. The marriage took place; and
Valentine's father tried hard, and not altogether vainly, to feel as
sanguine about future results as Valentine himself.
For several months--how short the time seemed, when they looked back on
it in after-years!--the happiness of the painter and his wife more than
fulfilled the brightest hopes which they had formed as lovers. As for
the doctor's cautious words, they were hardly remembered now; or, if
recalled, were recalled only to be laughed over. But the time of bitter
grief, which had been appointed, though they knew it not, came
inexorably, even while they were still lightly jesting at all medical
authority round the painter's fireside. Lavinia caught a severe cold.
The cold turned to rheumatism, to fever, then to general debility, then
to nervous attacks--each one of these disorders, being really but so
many false appearances, under which the horrible spinal malady was
treacherously and slowly advancing in disguise.
When the first positive symptoms appeared, old Mr. Blyth acted with all
his accustomed generosity towards his son. "My purse is yours,
Valentine," said he; "open it when you like; and let Lavinia, while
there is a chance for her, have the same advice and the same remedies
as if she was the greatest duchess in the land." The old man's
affectionate advice was affectionately followed. The most renowned
doctors in England prescribed for Lavinia; everything that science and
incessant attention could do, was done; but the terrible disease still
baffled remedy after remedy, advancing surely and irresistibly, until
at last the doctors themselves lost all hope. So far as human science
could foretell events, Mrs. Blyth, in the opinion of all her medical
advisers, was doomed for the rest of her life never to rise again from
the bed on which she lay; except, perhaps, to be sometimes moved to the
sofa, or, in the event of some favorable reaction, to be wheeled about
occasionally in an invalid chair.
What the shock of this intelligence was, both to husband and wife, no
one ever knew; they nobly kept it a secret even from each other. Mrs.
Blyth was the first to recover courage and calmness. She begged, as an
especial favor, that Valentine would seek consolation, where she knew
he must find it sooner or later, by going back to his studio, and
resuming his old familiar labors, which had been suspended from the
time when her illness had originally declared itself.
On the first day when, in obedience to her wishes, he sat before his
picture again--the half-finished picture from which he had been
separated for so many months--on that first day, when the friendly
occupation of his life seemed suddenly to have grown strange to him;
when his brush wandered idly among the colors, when his tears dropped
fast on the palette every time he looked down on it; when he tried hard
to work as usual, though only for half an hour, only on simple
background places in the composition; and still the brush made false
touches, and still the tints would not mingle as they should, and still
the same words, repeated over and over again, would burst from his
lips: "Oh, poor Lavvie! oh, poor, dear, dear Lavvie!"--even then, the
spirit of that beloved art, which he had always followed so humbly and
so faithfully, was true to its divine mission, and comforted and upheld
him at the last bitterest moment when he laid down his palette in
despair.
While he was still hiding his face before the very picture which he and
his wife had once innocently and secretly glorified together, in those
happy days of its beginning that were never to come again, the sudden
thought of consolation shone out on his heart, and showed him how he
might adorn all his afterlife with the deathless beauty of a pure and
noble purpose. Thenceforth, his vague dreams of fame, and of rich men
wrangling with each other for the possession of his pictures, took the
second place in his mind; and, in their stead, sprang up the new
resolution that he would win independently, with his own brush, no
matter at what sacrifice of pride and ambition, the means of
surrounding his sick wife with all those luxuries and refinements which
his own little income did not enable him to obtain, and which he shrank
with instinctive delicacy from accepting as presents bestowed by his
father's generosity. Here was the consoling purpose which robbed
affliction of half its bitterness already, and bound him and his art
together by a bond more sacred than any that had united them before. In
the very hour when this thought came to him, he rose without a pang to
turn the great historical composition, from which he had once hoped so
much, with its face to the wall, and set himself to finish an
unpretending little "Study" of a cottage courtyard, which he was
certain of selling to a picture-dealing friend. The first approach to
happiness which he had known for a long, long time past, was on the
evening of that day, when he went upstairs to sit with Lavinia; and,
keeping secret his purpose of the morning, made the sick woman smile in
spite of her sufferings, by asking her how she should like to have her
room furnished, if she were the lady of a great lord, instead of being
only the wife of Valentine Blyth.
Then came the happy day when the secret was revealed, and afterwards
the pleasant years when poor Mrs. Blyth's most splendid visions of
luxury were all gradually realized through her husband's exertions in
his profession. But for his wife's influence, Valentine would have been
in danger of abandoning high Art and Classical Landscape altogether,
for cheap portrait-painting, cheap copying, and cheap studies of Still
Life. But Mrs. Blyth, bedridden as she was, contrived to preserve all
her old influence over the labors of the Studio, and would ask for
nothing new, and receive nothing new, in her room, except on condition
that her husband was to paint at least one picture of High Art every
year, for the sake (as she proudly said) of "asserting his intellect
and his reputation in the eyes of the public." Accordingly, Mr. Blyth's
time was pretty equally divided between the production of great
unsaleable "compositions," which were always hung near the ceiling in
the Exhibition, and of small marketable commodities, which were as
invariably hung near the floor.
Valentine's average earnings from his art, though humble enough in
amount, amply sufficed to fulfill the affectionate purpose for which,
to the last farthing, they were rigorously set aside. "Lavvie's
Drawing-Room" (this was Mr. Blyth's name for his wife's bed-room)
really looked as bright and beautiful as any royal chamber in the
universe. The rarest flowers, the prettiest gardens under glass, bowls
with gold and silver fish in them, a small aviary of birds, an Aeolian
harp to put on the window-sill in summertime, some of Valentine's best
drawings from the old masters, prettily-framed proof-impressions of
engravings done by Mrs. Blyth's father, curtains and hangings of the
tenderest color and texture, inlaid tables, and delicately-carved
book-cases, were among the different objects of refinement and beauty
which, in the course of years, Mr. Blyth's industry had enabled him to
accumulate for his wife's pleasure. No one but himself ever knew what
he had sacrificed in laboring to gain these things. The heartless
people whose portraits he had painted, and whose impertinences he had
patiently submitted to; the mean bargainers who had treated him like a
tradesman; the dastardly men of business who had disgraced their order
by taking advantage of his simplicity--how hardly and cruelly such
insect natures of this world had often dealt with that noble heart! how
despicably they had planted their small gad-fly stings in the high soul
which it was never permitted to them to subdue!
No! not once to subdue, not once to tarnish! All petty humiliations
were forgotten in one look at "Lavvie's Drawing-Room;" all stain of
insolent words vanished from Valentine's memory in the atmosphere of
the Studio. Never was a more superficial judgment pronounced than when
his friends said that he had thrown away his whole life, because he had
chosen a vocation in which he could win no public success. The lad's
earliest instincts had indeed led him truly, after all. The art to
which he had devoted himself was the only earthly pursuit that could
harmonize as perfectly with all the eccentricities as with all the
graces of his character, that could mingle happily with every joy,
tenderly with every grief; belonging to the quiet, simple, and innocent
life, which, employ him anyhow, it was in his original nature to lead.
But for this protecting art, under what prim disguises, amid what foggy
social climates of class conventionality, would the worlds clerical,
legal, mercantile, military, naval, or dandy, have extinguished this
man, if any one of them had caught him in its snares! Where would then
have been his frolicsome enthusiasm that nothing could dispirit; his
inveterate oddities of thought, speech, and action, which made all his
friends laugh at him and bless him in the same breath; his affections,
so manly in their firmness, so womanly in their tenderness, so
childlike in their frank, fearless confidence that dreaded neither
ridicule on the one side, nor deception on the other? Where, and how,
would all these characteristics have vanished, but for his art--but for
the abiding spirit, ever present to preserve their vital warmth against
the outer and earthly cold? The wisest of Valentine's friends, who
shook their heads disparagingly whenever his name was mentioned, were
at least wise enough in _their_ generation never to ask themselves such
embarrassing questions as these.
Thus much for the history of the painter's past life. We may now make
his acquaintance in the appropriate atmosphere of his own Studio.
CHAPTER II.
MR. BLYTH IN HIS STUDIO.
IT was wintry weather--not such a November winter's day as some of us
may remember looking at fourteen years ago, in Baregrove Square, but a
brisk frosty morning in January. The country view visible from the back
windows of Mr. Blyth's house, which stood on the extreme limit of the
new suburb, was thinly and brightly dressed out for the sun's morning
levee, in its finest raiment of pure snow. The cold blue sky was
cloudless; every sound out of doors fell on the ear with a hearty and
jocund ring; all newly-lit fires burnt up brightly and willingly
without coaxing; and the robin-redbreasts hopped about expectantly on
balconies and windowsills, as if they only waited for an invitation to
walk in and warm themselves, along with their larger fellow creatures,
round the kindly hearth.
The Studio was a large and lofty room, lighted by a skylight, and
running along the side of the house throughout its whole depth. Its
walls were covered with plain brown paper, and its floor was only
carpeted in the middle. The most prominent pieces of furniture were two
large easels placed at either extremity of the room; each supporting a
picture of considerable size, covered over for the present with a pair
of sheets which looked woefully in want of washing. There was a
painting-stand with quantities of shallow little drawers, some too full
to open, others, again, too full to shut; there was a movable platform
to put sitters on, covered with red cloth much disguised in dust; there
was a small square table of new deal, and a large round table of
dilapidated rosewood, both laden with sketch-books, portfolios,
dog's-eared sheets of drawing paper, tin pots, scattered brushes,
palette-knives, rags variously defiled by paint and oil, pencils,
chalks, port-crayons--the whole smelling powerfully at all points of
turpentine.
Finally, there were chairs in plenty, no one of which, however, at all
resembled the other. In one corner stood a moldy antique chair with a
high back, and a basin of dirty water on the seat. By the side of the
fireplace a cheap straw chair of the beehive pattern was tilted over
against a dining-room chair, with a horse-hair cushion. Before the
largest of the two pictures, and hard by a portable flight of steps,
stood a rickety office-stool. On the platform for sitters a modern easy
chair, with the cover in tatters, invited all models to picturesque
repose. Close to the rosewood table was placed a rocking-chair, and
between the legs of the deal table were huddled together a camp-stool
and a hassock. In short, every remarkable variety of the illustrious
family of Seats was represented in one corner or another of Mr. Blyth's
painting-room.
All the surplus small articles which shelves, tables, and chairs were
unable to accommodate, reposed in comfortable confusion on the floor.
One half at least of a pack of cards seemed to be scattered about in
this way. A shirt-collar, three gloves, a boot, a shoe, and half a
slipper; a silk stocking, and a pair of worsted muffetees; three old
play-bills rolled into a ball; a pencil-case, a paper-knife, a
tooth-powder-box without a lid, and a superannuated black-beetle trap
turned bottom upwards, assisted in forming part of the heterogeneous
collection of rubbish strewed about the studio floor. And worse than
all--as tending to show that the painter absolutely enjoyed his own
disorderly habits--Mr. Blyth had jocosely desecrated his art, by making
it imitate litter where, in all conscience, there was real litter
enough already. Just in the way of anybody entering the room, he had
painted, on the bare floor, exact representations of a new quill pen
and a very expensive-looking sable brush, lying all ready to be trodden
upon by entering feet. Fresh visitors constantly attested the
skillfulness of these imitations by involuntarily stooping to pick up
the illusive pen and brush; Mr. Blyth always enjoying the discomfiture
and astonishment of every new victim, as thoroughly as if the practical
joke had been a perfectly new one on each successive occasion.
Such was the interior condition of the painting-room, after the owner
had inhabited it for a period of little more than two months!
The church-clock of the suburb has just struck ten, when quick, light
steps approach the studio door. A gentleman enters--trips gaily over
the imitative pen and brush--and, walking up to the fire, begins to
warm his back at it, looking about him rather absently, and whistling
"Drops of Brandy" in the minor key. This gentleman is Mr. Valentine
Blyth.
He looks under forty, but is really a little over fifty. His face is
round and rosy, and not marked by a single wrinkle in any part of it.
He has large, sparkling black eyes; wears neither whiskers, beard, nor
mustache; keeps his thick curly black hair rather too closely cut; and
has a briskly-comical kindness of expression in his face, which it is
not easy to contemplate for the first time without smiling at him. He
is tall and stout, always wears very tight trousers, and generally
keeps his wristbands turned up over the cuffs of his coat. All his
movements are quick and fidgety. He appears to walk principally on his
toes, and seems always on the point of beginning to dance, or jump, or
run whenever he moves about, either in or out of doors. When he speaks
he has an odd habit of ducking his head suddenly, and looking at the
person whom he addresses over his shoulder. These, and other little
personal peculiarities of the same undignified nature, all contribute
to make him exactly that sort of person whom everybody shakes hands
with, and nobody bows to, on a first introduction. Men instinctively
choose him to be the recipient of a joke, girls to be the male
confidant of all flirtations which they like to talk about, children to
be their petitioner for the pardon of a fault, or the reward of a
half-holiday. On the other hand, he is decidedly unpopular among that
large class of Englishmen, whose only topics of conversation are public
nuisances and political abuses; for he resolutely looks at everything
on the bright side, and has never read a leading article or a
parliamentary debate in his life. In brief, men of business habits
think him a fool, and intellectual women with independent views cite
him triumphantly as an excellent specimen of the inferior male sex.
Still whistling, Mr. Blyth walks towards an earthen pipkin in one
corner of the studio, and takes from it a little china palette which he
has neglected to clean since he last used it. Looking round the room
for some waste paper, on which he can deposit the half-dried old paint
that has been scraped off with the palette knife, Mr. Blyth's eyes
happen to light first on the deal table, and on four or five notes
which lie scattered over it.
These he thinks will suit his purpose as well as anything else, so he
takes up the notes, but before making use of them, reads their contents
over for the second time--partly by way of caution, partly though a
dawdling habit, which men of his absent disposition are always too
ready to contract. Three of these letters happen to be in the same
scrambling, blotted handwriting. They are none of them very long, and
are the production of a former acquaintance of the reader's, who has
somewhat altered in height and personal appearance during the course of
the last fourteen years. Here is the first of the notes which Valentine
is now reading:--
"Dear Blyth,--My father says Theaters are the Devil's Houses, and I
must be home by eleven o'clock. I'm sure I never did anything wrong at
a Theater, which I might not have done just the same anywhere else;
unless laughing over a good play is one of the _national sins_ he's
always talking about. I can't stand it much longer, even for my
mother's sake! You are my only friend. I shall come and see you
to-morrow, so mind and be at home. How I wish I was an artist! Yours
ever, Z. THORPE, JUN."
Shaking his head and smiling at the same time, Mr. Blyth finishes this
letter--drops a perfect puddle of dirty paint and turpentine in the
middle, over the words "national sins," throws the paper into the
fire--and goes on to note number two:
"Dear Blyth,--I couldn't come yesterday, because of another quarrel at
home, and my mother crying about it, of course. My father smelt tobacco
smoke at morning prayers. It was my coat, which I forgot to air at the
fire the night before; and he found it out, and said he wouldn't have
me smoke, because it led to dissipation--but I told him (which is true)
that lots of parsons smoked. I wish you visited at our house, and could
come and say a word on my side. Dear Blyth, I am perfectly wretched;
for I have had all my cigars taken from me; and I am, yours truly, Z.
THORPE, JUN."
A third note is required before the palette can be scraped clean. Mr.
Blyth reads the contents rather gravely on this occasion; rapidly
plastering his last morsels of waste paint upon the paper as he goes
on, until at length it looks as if it had been well peppered with all
the colors of the rainbow.
Zack's third letter of complaint certainly promised serious domestic
tribulation for the ruling power at Baregrove Square:--
"Dear Blyth,--I have given in--at least for the present. I told my
father about my wanting to be an artist, and about your saying that I
had a good notion of drawing, and an eye for a likeness; but I might
just as well have talked to one of your easels. He means to make a man
of business of me. And here I have been, for the last three weeks, at a
Tea Broker's office in the city, in consequence. They all say it's a
good opening for me, and talk about the respectability of commercial
pursuits. I don't want to be respectable, and I hate commercial
pursuits. What is the good of forcing me into a merchant's office, when
I can't say my Multiplication table? Ask my mother about that: _she'll_
tell you! Only fancy me going round tea warehouses in filthy Jewish
places like St. Mary-Axe, to take samples, with a blue bag to carry
them about in; and a dirty junior clerk, who cleans his pen in his
hair, to teach me how to fold up parcels! Isn't it enough to make my
blood boil to think of it? I can't go on, and I won't go on in this
way! Mind you're at home to-morrow; I'm coming to speak to you about
how I'm to begin learning to be an artist. The junior clerk is going to
do all my sampling work for me in the morning; and we are to meet in
the afternoon, after I have come away from you, at a chop-house; and
then go back to the office as if we had been together all day, just as
usual. Ever yours, Z. THORPE, JUN.--P. S. My mind's made up: if the
worst comes to the worst, I shall leave home."
"Oh, dear me! oh, dear! dear me!" says Valentine, mournfully rubbing
his palette clean with a bit of rag. "What will it all end in, I
wonder. Old Thorpe's going just the way, with his obstinate severity,
to drive Zack to something desperate. Coming here to-morrow, he says?"
continues Mr. Blyth, approaching the smallest of the two pictures,
placed on easels at opposite extremities of the room. "Coming
to-morrow! He never dates his notes; but I suppose, as this one came
last night, to-morrow means to-day."
Saying these words with eyes absently fixed on his picture, Valentine
withdraws the sheet stretched over the canvas, and discloses a
Classical Landscape of his own composition.
If Mr. Blyth had done nothing else in producing the picture which now
confronted him, he had at least achieved one great end of all Classic
Art, by reminding nobody of anything simple, familiar, or pleasing to
them in nature. In the foreground of his composition, were the three
lanky ruined columns, the dancing Bacchantes, the musing philosopher,
the mahogany-colored vegetation, and the bosky and branchless trees,
with which we have all been familiar, from our youth upwards, in
"classical compositions." Down the middle of the scene ran that
wonderful river, which is always rippling with the same regular waves;
and always bearing onward the same capsizable galleys, with the same
vermilion and blue revelers striking lyres on the deck. On the bank
where there was most room for it, appeared our old, old friend, the
architectural City, which nobody could possibly live in; and which is
composed of nothing but temples, towers, monuments, flights of steps,
and bewildering rows of pillars. In the distance, our favorite blue
mountains were as blue and as peaky as ever, on Valentine's canvas; and
our generally-approved pale yellow sun was still disfigured by the same
attack of aerial jaundice, from which he has suffered ever since
classical compositions first forbade him to take refuge from the sight
behind a friendly cloud.
After standing before his picture in affectionate contemplation of its
beauties for a minute or so, Valentine resumes the business of
preparing his palette.
As the bee comes and goes irregularly from flower to flower; as the
butterfly flutters in a zig-zag course from one sunny place on the
garden wall to another--or, as an old woman runs from wrong omnibus to
wrong omnibus, at the Elephant and Castle, before she can discover the
right one; as a countryman blunders up one street, and down another,
before he can find the way to his place of destination in London--so
does Mr. Blyth now come and go, flutter, run, and blunder in a mighty
hurry about his studio, in search of missing colors which ought to be
in his painting-box, but which are not to be found there. While he is
still hunting through the room, his legs come into collision with a
large drawing-board on which there is a blank sheet of paper stretched.
This board seems to remind Mr. Blyth of some duty connected with it. He
places it against two chairs, in a good light; then approaching a shelf
on which some plaster-casts are arranged, takes down from it a bust of
the Venus de Medici--which bust he next places on his old office stool,
opposite to the two chairs and the drawing-board. Just as these
preparations are completed, the door of the studio opens, and a very
important member of the painter's household--who has not yet been
introduced to the reader, and who is in no way related either to
Valentine or his wife--enters the room.
This mysterious resident under Mr. Blyth's roof is a Young Lady.
She is dressed in very pretty, simple, Quaker-like attire. Her gown is
of a light-gray color, covered by a neat little black apron in front,
and fastened round the throat over a frill collar. The sleeves of this
dress are worn tight to the arm, and are terminated at the wrists by
quaint-looking cuffs of antique lace, the only ornamental morsels of
costume which she has on. It is impossible to describe how deliciously
soft, bright, fresh, pure, and delicate, this young lady is, merely as
an object to look at, contrasted with the dingy disorder of the
studio-sphere through which she now moves. The keenest observers,
beholding her as she at present appears, would detect nothing in her
face or figure, her manner or her costume, in the slightest degree
suggestive of impenetrable mystery, or incurable misfortune. And yet,
she happens to be the only person in Mr. Blyth's household at whom
prying glances are directed, whenever she walks out; whose very
existence is referred to by the painter's neighbors with an invariable
accompaniment of shrugs, sighs, and lamenting looks; and whose "case"
is always compassionately designated as "a sad one," whenever it is
brought forward, in the course of conversation, at dinner-tables and
tea-tables in the new suburb.
Socially, we may be all easily divided into two classes in this
world--at least in the civilized part of it. If we are not the people
whom others talk about, then we are sure to be the people who talk
about others. The young lady who had just entered Mr. Blyth's
painting-room, belonged to the former order of human beings.
She seemed fated to be used as a constant subject of conversation by
her fellow-creatures. Even her face alone--simply as a face--could not
escape perpetual discussion; and that, too, among Valentine's friends,
who all knew her well, and loved her dearly. It was the oddest thing in
the world, but no one of them could ever agree with another (except on
a certain point, to be presently mentioned) as to which of her personal
attractions ought to be first selected for approval, or quoted as
particularly asserting her claims to the admiration of all worshippers
of beauty.
To take three or four instances of this. There was Mr. Gimble, the
civil little picture-dealers and a very good friend in every way to
Valentine: there was Mr. Gimble, who declared that her principal charm
was in her complexion--her fair, clear, wonderful complexion--which he
would defy any artist alive to paint, let him try ever so hard, or be
ever so great a man. Then came the Dowager Countess of Brambledown, the
frolicsome old aristocrat, who was generally believed to be "a little
cracked;" who haunted Mr. Blyth's studio, after having once given him
an order to paint her rare China tea-service, and her favorite muff, in
one group; and who differed entirely from the little picture-dealer.
"Fiddle-de-dee!" cried her ladyship, scornfully, on hearing Mr.
Gimble's opinion quoted one day. "The man may know something about
pictures, but he is an idiot about women. Her complexions indeed! I
could make as good a complexion for myself (we old women are painters
too, in our way, Blyth). Don't tell me about her complexion--it's her
eyes! her incomparable blue eyes, which would have driven the young men
of _my_ time mad--mad, I give you my word of honor! Not a gentleman,
sir, in my youthful days--and they _were_ gentlemen then--but would
have been too happy to run away with her for her eyes alone; and what's
more, to have shot any man who said as much as 'Stop him!' Complexion,
indeed, Mr. Gimble? I'll complexion you, next time I find my way into
your picture-gallery! Take a pinch of snuff, Blyth; and never repeat
nonsense in my hearing again."
There was Mr. Bullivant, the enthusiastic young sculptor, with the
mangy flow of flaxen hair, and the plump, waxy face, who wrote poetry,
and showed, by various sonnets, that he again differed completely about
the young lady from the Dowager Countess of Brambledown and Mr. Gimble.
This gentleman sang fluently, on paper--using, by the way, a
professional epithet--about her "chiselled mouth,"
"Which breathed of rapture and the balmy South."
He expatiated on
"Her sweet lips smiling at her dimpled chin,
Whose wealth of kisses gods might long to win--"
and much more to the same maudlin effect. In plain prose, the ardent
Bullivant was all for the lower part of the young lady's face, and
actually worried her, and Mr. Blyth, and everybody in the house, until
he got leave to take a cast of it.
Lastly, there was Mrs. Blyth's father; a meek old gentleman, with a
continual cold in the head; who lived on marvelously to the utmost
verge of human existence--as very poor men, with very large families,
who would be much better out of this world than in it, very often do.
There was this low-speaking, mildly-infirm, and perpetually-snuffling
engraver, who, on being asked to mention what he most admired in her,
answered that he thought it was her hair, "which was of such a nice
light brown color; or, perhaps, it might be the pleasant way in which
she carried her head, or, perhaps, her shoulders--or, perhaps, her head
_and_ shoulders, both together. Not that his opinion was good for much
in tasty matters of this kind, for which reason he begged to apologize
for expressing it at all." In speaking thus of his opinion, the worthy
engraver surely depreciated himself most unjustly: for, if the father
of eight daughters cannot succeed in learning (philoprogenitively
speaking) to be a good judge of women, what man can?
However, there was one point on which Mr. Gimble, Lady Brambledown, Mr.
Bullivant, Mrs. Blyth's father, and hosts of friends besides, were all
agreed, without one discordant exception.
They unanimously asserted that the young lady's face was the nearest
living approach they had ever seen to that immortal "Madonna" face,
which has for ever associated the idea of beauty with the name of
RAPHAEL. The resemblance struck everybody alike, even those who were
but slightly conversant with pictures, the moment they saw her. Taken
in detail, her features might be easily found fault with. Her eyes
might be pronounced too large, her mouth too small, her nose not
Grecian enough for some people's tastes. But the general effect of
these features, the shape of her head and face, and especially her
habitual expression, reminded all beholders at once, and irresistibly,
of that image of softness, purity, and feminine gentleness, which has
been engraven on all civilized memories by the "Madonnas" of Raphael.
It was in consequence of this extraordinary resemblance, that her own
English name of Mary had been, from the first, altered and Italianized
by Mr. and Mrs. Blyth, and by all intimate friends, into "Madonna." One
or two extremely strict and extremely foolish people objected to any
such familiar application of this name, as being open, in certain
directions, to an imputation of irreverence. Mr. Blyth was not
generally very quick at an answer; but, on this occasion, he had three
answers ready before the objections were quite out of his friends'
mouths.
In the first place, he said that he and his friends used the name only
in an artist-sense, and only with reference to Raphael's pictures. In
the next place, he produced an Italian dictionary, and showed that
"Madonna" had a second meaning in the language, signifying simply and
literally, "My lady." And, in conclusion, he proved historically, that
"Madonna" had been used in the old times as a prefix to the names of
Italian women; quoting, for example, "Madonna Pia," whom he happened to
remember just at that moment, from having once painted a picture from
one of the scenes of her terrible story. These statements silenced all
objections; and the young lady was accordingly much better known in the
painter's house as "Madonna" than as "Mary."
On now entering the studio, she walked up to Valentine, laid a hand
lightly on each of his shoulders, and so lifted herself to be kissed on
the forehead. Then she looked down on his palette, and observing that
some colors were still missing from it, began to search for them
directly in the painting-box. She found them in a moment, and appealed
to Mr. Blyth with an arch look of inquiry and triumph. He nodded,
smiled, and held out his palette for her to put the colors on it
herself. Having done this very neatly and delicately, she next looked
round the room, and at once observed the bust of Venus placed on the
office stool.
At the same time, Mr. Blyth, who saw the direction taken by her eyes,
handed to her a port-crayon with some black chalk, which he had been
carefully cutting to a point for the last minute or two. She took it
with a little mock curtsey, pouting her lip slightly, as if drawing the
Venus was work not much to her taste--smiled when she saw Valentine
shaking his head, and frowning comically at her--then went away at once
to the drawing-board, and sat down opposite Venus, in which position
she offered as decided a living contradiction as ever was seen to the
assertion of the classical idea of beauty, as expressed in the cast
that she was about to copy.
Mr. Blyth, on his side, set to work at last on the Landscape; painting
upon the dancing Bacchantes in the foreground of his picture, whose
scanty dresses stood sadly in need of a little brightening up. While
the painter and the young lady are thus industriously occupied with the
business of the studio, there is leisure to remark on one rather
perplexing characteristic of their intercourse, so far as it has yet
proceeded on this particular winter's morning.
Ever since Madonna has been in the room, not one word has she spoken to
Valentine; and not one word has Valentine (who can talk glibly enough
to himself) spoken to her. He never said "Good morning," when he kissed
her--or, "Thank you for finding my lost colors,"--or, "I have set the
Venus, my dear, for your drawing lesson to-day." And she, woman as she
is, has actually not asked him a single question, since she entered the
studio! What can this absolute and remarkable silence mean between two
people who look as affectionately on each other as these two look,
every time their eyes meet!
Is this one of the Mysteries of the painter's fireside?
Who is Madonna?
What is her real name besides Mary?
Is it Mary Blyth?
-------
Some years ago, an extraordinary adventure happened to Valentine in the
circus of an itinerant Equestrian Company. In that adventure, and in
the strange results attending it, the clue lies hidden, which leads to
the Mystery of the painter's fireside, and reveals the story of this
book.
CHAPTER III.
MADONNA'S CHILDHOOD.
In the autumn of 1838, Mrs. Blyth's malady had for some time past
assumed the permanent form from which it seldom afterwards varied. She
now suffered little actual pain, except when she quitted a recumbent
posture. But the general disorganization produced by almost exclusive
confinement to one position, had, even at this early period, begun to
work sad changes in her personal appearance. She suffered that
mortifying misfortune just as bravely and resignedly as she had
suffered the first great calamity of her incurable disorder. Valentine
never showed that he thought her altered; Valentine's kindness was just
as affectionate and as constant as it had ever been in the happier days
of their marriage. So encouraged, Lavinia had the heart to bear all
burdens patiently; and could find sources of happiness for herself,
where others could discover nothing but causes for grief.
The room she inhabited was already, through Valentine's self-denying
industry, better furnished than any other room in the house; but was
far from presenting the same appearance of luxury and completeness to
which it attained in the course of after-years.
The charming maple-wood and ivory bookcase, with the prettily-bound
volumes ranged in such bright regularity along its shelves, was there
certainly, as early as the autumn of 1838. It would not, however, at
that time have formed part of the furniture of Mrs. Blyth's room, if
her husband had not provided himself with the means of paying for it,
by accepting a certain professional invitation to the country, which he
knew before, and would enable him to face the terrors of the
upholsterer's bill.
The invitation in question had been sent to him by a clerical friend,
the Reverend Doctor Joyce, Rector of St. Judy's, in the large
agricultural town of Rubbleford. Valentine had produced a water-color
drawing of one of the Doctor's babies, when the family at the Rectory
were in London for a season, and this drawing had been shown to all the
neighbors by the worthy clergyman on his return. Now, although Mr.
Blyth was not over-successful in the adult department of portrait-art,
he was invariably victorious in the infant department. He painted all
babies on one ingenious plan; giving them the roundest eyes, the
chubbiest red cheeks, the most serenely good-humored smiles, and the
neatest and whitest caps ever seen on paper. If fathers and their male
friends rarely appreciated the fidelity of his likenesses, mothers and
nurses invariably made amends for their want of taste. It followed,
therefore, almost as a matter of course, that the local exhibition of
the Doctor's drawing must bring offers of long-clothes-portrait
employment to Valentine. Three resident families decided immediately to
have portraits of their babies, if the painter would only travel to
their houses to take the likenesses. A bachelor sporting squire in the
neighborhood also volunteered a commission of another sort. This
gentleman arrived (by a logical process which it is hopeless to think
of tracing) at the conclusion, that a man who was great at babies, must
necessarily be marvelous at horses; and determined, in consequence,
that Valentine should paint his celebrated cover-hack. In writing to
inform his friend of these offers, Doctor Joyce added another
professional order on his own account, by way of appropriate conclusion
to his letter. Here, then, were five commissions, which would produce
enough--cheaply as Valentine worked--to pay, not only for the new
bookcase, but for the books to put in it when it came home.
Having left his wife in charge of two of her sisters, who were
forbidden to leave the house till his return, Mr. Blyth started for the
rectory; and once there, set to work on the babies with a zeal and
good-humor which straightway won the hearts of mothers and nurses, and
made him a great Rubbleford reputation in the course of a few days.
Having done the babies to admiration, he next undertook the bachelor
squire's hack. Here he had some trouble. The sporting gentleman would
look over him while he painted; would bewilder him with the pedigree of
the horse; would have the animal done in the most unpicturesque view;
and sternly forbade all introduction of "tone," "light and shade," or
purely artistic embellishment of any kind, in any part of the canvas.
In short, the squire wanted a sign-board instead of a picture, and he
at last got what he wanted to his heart's content.
One evening, while Valentine--still deeply immersed in the difficulties
of depicting the cover-hack--was returning to the Rectory, after a
day's work at the Squire's house, his attention was suddenly attracted
in the high street of Rubbleford, by a flaming placard pasted up on a
dead wall opposite the market-house.
He immediately joined the crowd of rustics congregated round the
many-colored and magnificent sheet of paper, and read at the top of it,
in huge blue letters:--"JUBBER'S CIRCUS. THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE
WORLD." After this came some small print, which nobody lost any time in
noticing. But below the small print appeared a perfect galaxy of
fancifully shaped scarlet letters, which fascinated all eyes, and
informed the public that the equestrian company included "MISS FLORINDA
BEVERLEY, known," (here the letters turned suddenly green) "wherever
the English language was known, as The Amazonian Empress of
Equitation." This announcement was followed by the names of inferior
members of the Company; by a program of the evening's entertainments;
by testimonials extracted from the provincial press; by illustrations
of gentlemen with lusty calves and spangled drawers, and of ladies with
smiling faces, shameless petticoats, and pirouetting legs. These
illustrations, and the particulars which preceded them were carefully
digested by all Mr. Blyth's neighbors; but Mr. Blyth himself passed
them over unnoticed. His eye had been caught by something at the bottom
of the placard, which instantly absorbed his whole attention.
In this place the red letters appeared again, and formed the following
words and marks of admiration:--
THE MYSTERIOUS FOUNDLING!
AGED TEN YEARS!!
TOTALLY DEAF AND DUMB!!!
Underneath came an explanation of what the red letters referred to,
occupying no less than three paragraphs of stumpy small print, every
word of which Valentine eagerly devoured. This is what he read:--
"Mr. Jubber, as proprietor of the renowned Circus, has the honor of
informing the nobility, gentry, and public, that the above wonderful
Deaf and Dumb Female Child will appear between the first and second
parts of the evening's performances. Mr. J. has taken the liberty of
entitling this Marvel of Nature, The Mysterious Foundling; no one
knowing who her father is, and her mother having died soon after her
birth, leaving her in charge of the Equestrian Company, who have been
fond parents and careful guardians to her ever since.
"She was originally celebrated in the annals of Jubber's Circus, or
Eighth Wonder of the World, as The Hurricane Child of the Desert;
having appeared in that character, whirled aloft at the age of seven
years in the hand of Muley Ben Hassan, the renowned Scourer of Sahara,
in his daring act of Equitation, as exhibited to the terror of all
England, in Jubber's Circus. At that time she had her hearing and
speech quite perfect. But Mr. J. deeply regrets to state that a
terrific accident happened to her soon afterwards. Through no fault on
the part of The Scourer (who, overcome by his feelings at the result of
the above-mentioned frightful accident, has gone back to his native
wilds a moody and broken-hearted man), she slipped from his hand while
the three horses bestrode by the fiery but humane Arab were going at a
gallop, and fell, shocking to relate, outside the Ring, on the boarded
floor of the Circus. She was supposed to be dead. Mr. Jubber instantly
secured the inestimable assistance of the Faculty, who found that she
was still alive, and set her arm, which had been broken. It was only
afterwards discovered that she had utterly lost her sense of hearing.
To use the emphatic language of the medical gentlemen (who all spoke
with tears in their eyes), she had been struck stone deaf by the shock.
Under these melancholy circumstances, it was found that the faculty of
speech soon failed her altogether; and she is now therefore Totally
Deaf AND Dumb--but Mr. J. rejoices to say, quite cheerful and in good
health notwithstanding.
"Mr. Jubber being himself the father of a family, ventures to think
that these little particulars may prove of some interest to an
Intelligent, a Sympathetic, and a Benevolent Public. He will simply
allude, in conclusion, to the performances of the Mysterious Foundling,
as exhibiting perfection hitherto unparalleled in the Art of
Legerdemain, with wonders of untraceable intricacy on the cards,
originally the result of abstruse calculations made by that renowned
Algebraist, Mohammed Engedi, extending over a period of ten years,
dating from the year 1215 of the Arab Chronology. More than this Mr.
Jubber will not venture to mention, for 'Seeing is Believing,' and the
Mysterious Foundling must be seen to be believed. For prices of
admission consult bottom of bill."
Mr. Blyth read this grotesquely shocking narrative with sentiments
which were anything rather than complimentary to the taste, the
delicacy, and the humanity of the fluent Mr. Jubber. He consulted the
bottom of the bill, however, as requested; and ascertained what were
the prices of admission--then glanced at the top, and observed that the
first performance was fixed for that very evening--looked about him
absently for a minute or two--and resolved to be present at it.
Most assuredly, Valentine's resolution did not proceed from that
dastard insensibility to all decent respect for human suffering which
could feast itself on the spectacle of calamity paraded for hire, in
the person of a deaf and dumb child of ten years old. His motives for
going to the circus were stained by no trace of such degradation as
this. But what were they then? That question he himself could not have
answered: it was a common predicament with him not to know his own
motives, generally from not inquiring into them. There are men who run
breathlessly--men who walk cautiously--and men who saunter easily
through the journey of life. Valentine belonged to the latter class;
and, like the rest of his order, often strayed down a new turning,
without being able to realize at the time what purpose it was which
first took him that way. Our destinies shape the future for us out of
strange materials: a traveling circus sufficed them, in the first
instance, to shape a new future for Mr. Blyth.
He first went on to the Rectory to tell them where he was going, and to
get a cup of tea, and then hurried off to the circus, in a field
outside the town.
The performance had begun some time when he got in. The Amazonian
Empress (known otherwise as Miss Florinda Beverley) was dancing
voluptuously on the back of a cantering piebald horse with a Roman
nose. Round and round careered the Empress, beating time on the saddle
with her imperial legs to the tune of "Let the Toast be Dear Woman,"
played with intense feeling by the band. Suddenly the melody changed to
"See the Conquering Hero Comes;" the piebald horse increased his speed;
the Empress raised a flag in one hand, and a javelin in the other, and
began slaying invisible enemies in the empty air, at full (circus)
gallop. The result on the audience was prodigious; Mr. Blyth alone sat
unmoved. Miss Florinda Beverley was not even a good model to draw legs
from, in the estimation of this anti-Amazonian painter!
When the Empress was succeeded by a Spanish Guerilla, who robbed,
murdered, danced, caroused, and made love on the back of a
cream-colored horse--and when the Guerilla was followed by a clown who
performed superhuman contortions, and made jokes by the yard, without
the slightest appearance of intellectual effort--still Mr. Blyth
exhibited no demonstration of astonishment or pleasure. It was only
when a bell rang between the first and second parts of the performance,
and the band struck up "Gentle Zitella," that he showed any symptoms of
animation. Then he suddenly rose; and, moving down to a bench close
against the low partition which separated the ring from the audience,
fixed his eyes intently on a doorway opposite to him, overhung by a
frowzy red curtain with a tinsel border.
From this doorway there now appeared Mr. Jubber himself, clothed in
white trousers with a gold stripe, and a green jacket with military
epaulettes. He had big, bold eyes, a dyed mustache, great fat, flabby
cheeks, long hair parted in the middle, a turn-down collar with a
rose-colored handkerchief; and was, in every respect, the most
atrocious looking stage vagabond that ever painted a blackguard face.
He led with him, holding her hand, the little deaf and dumb girl, whose
misfortune he had advertised to the whole population of Rubbleford.
The face and manner of the child, as she walked into the center of the
circus, and made her innocent curtsey and kissed her hand, went to the
hearts of the whole audience in an instant. They greeted her with such
a burst of applause as might have frightened a grown actress. But not a
note from those cheering voices, not a breath of sound from those
loudly clapping hands could reach her; she could see that they were
welcoming her kindly, and that was all!
When the applause had subsided, Mr. Jubber asked for the loan of a
handkerchief from one of the ladies present, and ostentatiously
bandaged the child's eyes. He then lifted her upon the broad low wall
which encircled the ring, and walked her round a little way (beginning
from the door through which he had entered), inviting the spectators to
test her total deafness by clapping their hands, shouting, or making
any loud noise they pleased close at her ear. "You might fire off a
cannon, ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Jubber, "and it wouldn't make
her start till after she'd smelt the smoke!"
To the credit of the Rubbleford audience, the majority of them declined
making any practical experiments to test the poor child's utter
deafness. The women set the example of forbearance, by entreating that
the handkerchief might be taken off so that they might see her pretty
eyes again. This was done at once, and she began to perform her
conjuring tricks with Mr. Jubber and one of the ring-keepers on either
side of her, officiating as assistants. These tricks, in themselves,
were of the simplest and commonest kind; and derived all their
attraction from the child's innocently earnest manner of exhibiting
them, and from the novelty to the audience of communicating with her
only by writing on a slate. They never tired of scrawling questions, of
saying "poor little thing!" and of kissing her whenever they could get
the opportunity, while she slowly went round the circus. "Deaf and
dumb! ah, dear, dear, deaf and dumb!" was the general murmur of
sympathy which greeted her from each new group, as she advanced; Mr.
Jubber invariably adding with a smile: "And as you see, ladies and
gentlemen, in excellent health and spirits, notwithstanding: as hearty
and happy, I pledge you my sacred word of honor, as the very best of
us!"
While she was thus delighting the spectators on one side of the circus,
how were the spectators on the other side, whose places she had not yet
reached, contriving to amuse themselves?
From the moment of the little girl's first appearance, ample recreation
had been unconsciously provided for them by a tall, stout, and florid
stranger, who appeared suddenly to lose his senses the moment he set
eyes on the deaf and dumb child. This gentleman jumped up and sat down
again excitably a dozen times in a minute; constantly apologizing on
being called to order, and constantly repeating the offense the moment
afterwards. Mad and mysterious words, never heard before in Rubbleford,
poured from his lips. "Devotional beauty," "Fra Angelico's angels,"
"Giotto and the cherubs," "Enough to bring the divine Raphael down from
heaven to paint her." Such were a few fragments of the mad gentleman's
incoherent mutterings, as they reached his neighbors' ears. The
amusement they yielded was soon wrought to its climax by a joke from an
attorney's clerk, who suggested that this queer man, with the rosy
face, must certainly be the long-lost father of the "Mysterious
Foundling!" Great gratification was consequently anticipated from what
might take place when the child arrived opposite the bench occupied by
the excitable stranger.
Slowly, slowly, the little light figure went round upon the broad
partition wall of the ring, until it came near, very near, to the place
where Valentine was sitting.
Ah, woeful sight! so lovely, yet so piteous to look on! Shall she never
hear kindly human voices, the song of birds, the pleasant murmur of the
trees again? Are all the sweet sounds that sing of happiness to
childhood, silent for ever to _her?_ From those fresh, rosy lips shall
no glad words pour forth, when she runs and plays in the sunshine?
Shall the clear, laughing tones be hushed always? the young, tender
life be for ever a speechless thing, shut up in dumbness from the free
world of voices? Oh! Angel of judgment! hast thou snatched her hearing
and her speech from this little child, to abandon her in helpless
affliction to such profanation as she now undergoes? Oh, Spirit of
mercy! how long thy white-winged feet have tarried on their way to this
innocent sufferer, to this lost lamb that cannot cry to the fold for
help! Lead, ah, lead her tenderly to such shelter as she has never yet
found for herself! Guide her, pure as she is now, from this tainted
place to pleasant pastures, where the sunshine of human kindness shall
be clouded no more, and Love and Pity shall temper every wind that
blows over her with the gentleness of perpetual spring!
Slowly, slowly, the light figure went round the great circle of gazers,
ministering obediently to their pleasure, waiting patiently till their
curiosity was satisfied. And now, her weary pilgrimage was well nigh
over for the night. She had arrived at the last group of spectators who
had yet to see what she looked like close, and what tricks she could
exhibit with her cards.
She stopped exactly opposite to Valentine; and when she looked up, she
looked on him alone.
Was there something in the eager sympathy of his eyes as they met hers,
which spoke to the little lonely heart in the sole language that could
ever reach it? Did the child, with the quick instinct of the deaf and
dumb, read his compassionate disposition, his pity and longing to help
her, in his expression at that moment? It might have been so. Her
pretty lips smiled on him as they had smiled on no one else that night;
and when she held out some cards to be chosen from, she left unnoticed
the eager hands extended on either side of her, and presented them to
Valentine only.
He saw the small fingers trembling as they held the cards; he saw the
delicate little shoulders and the poor frail neck and chest bedizened
with tawdry mock jewelry and spangles; he saw the innocent young face,
whose pure beauty no soil of stage paint could disfigure, with the
smile still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the
sad blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense that was left, mourned always for
the hearing and speaking senses that were gone--he marked all these
things in an instant, and felt that his heart was sinking as he looked.
A dimness stole over his sight; a suffocating sensation oppressed his
breathing; the lights in the circus danced and mingled together; he
bent down over the child's hand, and took it in his own; twice kissed
it fervently; then, to the utter amazement of the laughing crowd about
him, rose up suddenly, and forced his way out as if he had been flying
for his life.
There was a momentary confusion among the audience. But Mr. Jubber was
too old an adept in stage-business of all kinds not to know how to stop
the growing tumult directly, and turn it into universal applause.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he cried, with a deep theatrical quiver in his
voice--"I implore you to be seated, and to excuse the conduct of the
party who has just absented himself. The talent of the Mysterious
Foundling has overcome people in that way in every town of England. Do
I err in believing that a Rubbleford audience can make kind allowances
for their weaker fellow-creatures? Thanks, a thousand thanks in the
name of this darling and talented child, for your cordial, your
generous, your affectionate, your inestimable reception of her
exertions to-night!" With this peroration Mr. Jubber took his pupil out
of the ring, amid the most vehement cheering and waving of hats and
handkerchiefs. He was too much excited by his triumph to notice that
the child, as she walked after him, looked wistfully to the last in the
direction by which Valentine had gone out.
"The public like excitement," soliloquized Mr. Jubber, as he
disappeared behind the red curtain. "I must have all this in the bills
to-morrow. It's safe to draw at least thirty shillings extra into the
house at night."
In the meantime, Valentine, after some blundering at wrong doors, at
last found his way out of the circus, and stood alone on the cool
grass, in the cloudless autumn moonlight. He struck his stick violently
on the ground, which at that moment represented to him the head of Mr.
Jubber; and was about to return straight to the rectory, when he heard
a breathless voice behind him, calling:--"Stop, sir! oh, do please stop
for one minute!"
He turned round. A buxom woman in a tawdry and tattered gown was
running towards him as fast as her natural impediments to quick
progression would permit.
"Please, sir," she cried--"Please, sir, wasn't you the gentleman that
was taken queer at seeing our little Foundling? I was peeping through
the red curtain, sir, just at the time."
Instead of answering the question, Valentine instantly began to
rhapsodize about the child's face.
"Oh, sir! if you know anything about her," interposed the woman, "for
God's sake don't scruple to tell it to me! I'm only Mrs. Peckover, sir,
the wife of Jemmy Peckover, the clown, that you saw in the circus
to-night. But I took and nursed the little thing by her poor mother's
own wish; and ever since that time--"
"My dear, good soul," said Mr. Blyth, "I know nothing of the poor
little creature. I only wish from the bottom of my heart that I could
do something to help her and make her happy. If Lavvie and I had had
such an angel of a child as that," continued Valentine, clasping his
hands together fervently, "deaf and dumb as she is, we should have
thanked God for her every day of our lives!"
Mrs. Peckover was apparently not much used to hear such sentiments as
these from strangers. She stared up at Mr. Blyth with two big tears
rolling over her plump cheeks.
"Mrs. Peckover! Hullo there, Peck! where are you?" roared a stern voice
from the stable department of the circus, just as the clown's wife
seemed about to speak again.
Mrs. Peckover started, curtsied, and, without uttering another word,
went back even faster than she had come out. Valentine looked after her
intently, but made no attempt to follow: he was thinking too much of
the child to think of that. When he moved again, it was to return to
the rectory.
He penetrated at once into the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling
over the "Rubbleford Mercury," while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him,
knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside
the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the
subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love
with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as a
gentleman of refined tastes, and as the softest-hearted of male human
beings, in all three capacities, he was enslaved by that little
innocent, sad face. He made the Doctor's head whirl again; he fairly
stopped Mrs. Joyce's progress with the fancy jacket, as he sang the
child's praises, and compared her face to every angel's face that had
ever been painted, from the days of Giotto to the present time. At
last, when he had fairly exhausted his hearers and himself, he dashed
abruptly out of the room, to cool down his excitement by a moonlight
walk in the rectory garden.
"What a very odd man he is!" said Mrs. Joyce, taking up a dropped
stitch in the fancy jacket.
"Valentine, my love, is the best creature in the world," rejoined the
doctor, folding up the Rubbleford Mercury, and directing it for the
post; "but, as I often used to tell his poor father (who never would
believe me), a little cracked. I've known him go on in this way about
children before--though I must own, not quite so wildly, perhaps, as he
talked just now."
"Do you think he'll do anything imprudent about the child? Poor thing!
I'm sure I pity her as heartily as anybody can."
"I don't presume to think," answered the doctor, calmly pressing the
blotting-paper over the address he had just written. "Valentine is one
of those people who defy all conjecture. No one can say what he will
do, or what he won't. A man who cannot resist an application for
shelter and supper from any stray cur who wags his tail at him in the
street; a man who blindly believes in the troubles of begging-letter
impostors; a man whom I myself caught, last time he was down here,
playing at marbles with three of my charity-boys in the street, and
promising to treat them to hardbake and gingerbeer afterwards, is--in
short, is not a man whose actions it is possible to speculate on."
Here the door opened, and Mr. Blyth's head was popped in, surmounted by
a ragged straw hat with a sky-blue ribbon round it. "Doctor," said
Valentine, "may I ask an excellent woman, with whom I have made
acquaintance, to bring the child here to-morrow morning for you and
Mrs. Joyce to see?"
"Certainly," said the good-humored rector, laughing. "The child by all
means, and the excellent woman too."
"Not if it's Miss Florinda Beverley!" interposed Mrs. Joyce (who had
read the Circus placard). "Florinda, indeed! Jezebel would be a better
name for her!"
"My dear Madam, it isn't Florinda," cried Valentine, eagerly. "I quite
agree with you; her name ought to be Jezebel. And, what's worse, her
legs are out of drawing."
"Mr. Blyth!!!" exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, indignant at this professional
criticism on Jezebel's legs.
"Why don't you tell us at once who the excellent woman is?" cried the
doctor, secretly tickled by the allusion which had shocked his wife.
"Her name's Peckover," said Valentine; "she's a respectable married
woman; she doesn't ride in the circus at all; and she nursed the poor
child by her mother's own wish."
"We shall be delighted to see her to-morrow," said the warm-hearted
rector--"or, no--stop! Not to-morrow; I shall be out. The day after.
Cake and cowslip wine for the deaf and dumb child at twelve
o'clock--eh, my dear?"
"That's right! God bless you! you're always kindness itself," cried
Valentine; "I'll find out Mrs. Peckover, and let her know. Not a wink
of sleep for me to-night--never mind!" Here Valentine suddenly shut the
door, then as suddenly opened it again, and added, "I mean to finish
that infernal horse-picture to-morrow, and go to the circus again in
the evening." With these words he vanished; and they heard him soon
afterwards whistling his favorite "Drops of Brandy," in the rectory
garden.
"Cracked! cracked!" cried the doctor. "Dear old Valentine!"
"I'm afraid his principles are very loose," said Mrs. Joyce, whose
thoughts still ran on the unlucky professional allusion to Jezebel's
legs.
The next morning, when Mr. Blyth presented himself at the stables, and
went on with the portrait of the cover-hack, the squire had no longer
the slightest reason to complain of the painter's desire to combine in
his work picturesqueness of effect with accuracy of resemblance.
Valentine argued no longer about introducing "light and shade," or
"keeping the background subdued in tone." His thoughts were all with
the deaf and dumb child and Mrs. Peckover; and he smudged away
recklessly, just as he was told, without once uttering so much as a
word of protest. By the evening he had concluded his labor. The squire
said it was one of the best portraits of a horse that had ever been
taken: to which piece of criticism the writer of the present narrative
is bound in common candor to add, that it was also the very worst
picture that Mr. Blyth had ever painted.
On returning to Rubbleford, Valentine proceeded at once to the circus;
placing himself, as nearly as he could, in the same position which he
had occupied the night before.
The child was again applauded by the whole audience, and again went
through her performance intelligently and gracefully, until she
approached the place where Valentine was standing. She started as she
recognized his face, and made a step forward to get nearer to him; but
was stopped by Mr. Jubber, who saw that the people immediately in front
of her were holding out their hands to write on her slate, and have her
cards dealt round to them in their turn. The child's attention appeared
to be distracted by seeing the stranger again who had kissed her hand
so fervently--she began to look confused--and ended by committing an
open and most palpable blunder in the very first trick that she
performed.
The spectators good-naturedly laughed, and some of them wrote on her
slate, "Try again, little girl." Mr. Jubber made an apology, saying
that the extreme enthusiasm of the reception accorded to his pupil had
shaken her nerves; and then signed to her, with a benevolent smile, but
with a very sinister expression in his eyes, to try another trick. She
succeeded in this; but still showed so much hesitation, that Mr.
Jubber, fearing another failure, took her away with him while there was
a chance of making a creditable exit.
As she was led across the ring, the child looked intently at Valentine.
There was terror in her eyes--terror palpable enough to be remarked by
some of the careless people near Mr. Blyth. "Poor little thing! she
seems frightened at the man in the fine green jacket," said one. "And
not without cause, I dare say," added another. "You don't mean that he
could ever be brute enough to ill use a child like that?--it's
impossible!" cried a third.
At this moment the clown entered the ring. The instant before he
shouted the well-known "Here we are!" Valentine thought he heard a
strange cry behind the red curtain. He was not certain about it, but
the mere doubt made his blood run chill. He listened for a minute
anxiously. There was no chance now, however, for testing the
correctness of his suspicion. The band had struck up a noisy jig tune,
and the clown was capering and tumbling wonderfully, amid roars of
laughter.
"This may be my fault," thought Valentine. _"This!_ What?" He was
afraid to pursue that inquiry. His ruddy face suddenly turned pale; and
he left the circus, determined to find out what was really going on
behind the red curtain.
He walked round the outside of the building, wasting some time before
he found a door to apply at for admission. At last he came to a sort of
a passage, with some tattered horse-cloths hanging over its outer
entrance.
"You can't come in here," said a shabby lad, suddenly appearing from
the inside in his shirt sleeves.
Mr. Blyth took out half-a-crown. "I want to see the deaf and dumb child
directly!"
"Oh, all right! go in," muttered the lad, pocketing the money greedily.
Valentine hastily entered the passage. As soon as he was inside, a
sound reached his ears at which his heart sickened and turned faint. No
words can describe it in all the horror of its helplessness--it was the
moan of pain from a dumb human creature.
He thrust aside a curtain, and stood in a filthy place, partitioned off
from the stables on one side, and the circus on the other, with canvas
and old boards. There, on a wooden stool, sat the woman who had
accosted him the night before, crying, and soothing the child, who lay
shuddering on her bosom. The sobs of the clown's wife mingled with the
inarticulate wailing, so low, yet so awful to hear; and both sounds
were audible with a fearful, unnatural distinctness, through the merry
melody of the jig, and the peals of hearty laughter from the audience
in the circus.
"Oh, my God!" cried Valentine, horror-struck at what he heard, "stop
her! don't let her moan in that way!"
The woman started from her seat, and put the child down, then
recognized Mr. Blyth and rushed up to him.
"Hush!" she whispered eagerly, "don't call out like that! The villain,
the brutal, heartless villain is somewhere about the stables. If he
hears you, he'll come in and beat her again.--Oh, hush! hush, for
God's sake! It's true he beat her--the cowardly, hellish brute!--only
for making that one little mistake with the cards. No! no! no! don't
speak out so loud, or you'll ruin us. How did you ever get in
here?--Oh! you must be quiet! There, sit down--Hark! I'm sure he's
coming! Oh! go away--go away!"
She tried to pull Valentine out of the chair into which she had thrust
him but the instant before. He seized tight hold of her hand and
refused to move. If Mr. Jubber had come in at that moment, he would
have been thrashed within an inch of his life.
The child had ceased moaning when she saw Valentine. She anxiously
looked at him through her tears--then turned away quickly--took out her
little handkerchief--and began to dry her eyes.
"I can't go yet--I'll promise only to whisper--you must listen to me,"
said Mr. Blyth, pale and panting for breath; "I mean to prevent this
from happening again--don't speak!--I'll take that injured, beautiful,
patient little angel away from this villainous place: I will, if I go
before a magistrate!"
The woman stopped him by pointing suddenly to the child.
She had put back the handkerchief, and was approaching him. She came
close and laid one hand on his knee, and timidly raised the other as
high as she could towards his neck. Standing so, she looked up quietly
into his face. The pretty lips tried hard to smile once more; but they
only trembled for an instant, and then closed again. The clear, soft
eyes, still dim with tears, sought his with an innocent gaze of inquiry
and wonder. At that moment, the expression of the sad and lovely little
face seemed to say--"You look as if you wanted to be kind to me; I wish
you could find out some way of telling me of it."
Valentine's heart told him what was the only way. He caught her up in
his arms, and half smothered her with kisses. The frail, childish hands
rose trembling, and clasped themselves gently round his neck; and the
fair head drooped lower and lower, wearily, until it lay on his
shoulder.
The clown's wife turned away her face, desperately stifling with both
hands the sobs that were beginning to burst from her afresh. She
whispered, "Oh, go, sir,--pray go! Some of the riders will be in here
directly; you'll get us into dreadful trouble!"
Valentine rose, still holding the child in his arms. "I'll go if you
promise me--"
"I'll promise you anything, sir!"
"You know the rectory! Doctor Joyce's--the clergyman--my kind friend--"
"Yes, sir; I know it. Do please, for little Mary's sake be quick as you
can!"
"Mary! Her name's Mary!" Valentine drew back into a corner, and began
kissing the child again.
"You must be out of your senses to keep on in that way after what I've
told you!" cried the clown's wife, wringing her hands in despair, and
trying to drag him out of the corner. "Jubber will be in here in
another minute. She'll be beaten again, if you're caught with her; oh
Lord! oh Lord! will nothing make you understand that?"
He understood it only too well, and put the child down instantly, his
face turning pale again; his agitation becoming so violent that he
never noticed the hand which she held out towards him, or the appealing
look that said so plainly and pathetically: "I want to bid you
good-bye; but I can't say it as other children can." He never observed
this; for he had taken Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and had drawn her away
hurriedly after him into the passage.
The child made no attempt to follow them: she turned aside, and,
sitting down in the darkest corner of the miserable place, rested her
head against the rough partition which was all that divided her from
the laughing audience. Her lips began to tremble again: she took out
the handkerchief once more, and hid her face in it.
"Now, recollect your promise," whispered Valentine to the clown's wife,
who was slowly pushing him out all the time he was speaking to her.
"You must bring little Mary to the Rectory to-morrow morning at twelve
o'clock exactly--you must! or I'll come and fetch her myself--"
"I'll bring her, sir, if you'll only go now. I'll bring her--I will, as
true as I stand here!"
"If you don't!" cried Valentine, still distrustful, and trembling all
over with agitation--"If you don't!"--He stopped; for he suddenly felt
the open air blowing on his face. The clown's wife was gone, and
nothing remained for him to threaten, but the tattered horse-cloths
that hung over the empty doorway.
CHAPTER IV.
MADONNA'S MOTHER.
IT is a quarter to twelve by the hall clock at the Rectory, and one of
the finest autumn mornings of the whole season. Vance, Doctor Joyce's
middle-aged man servant, or "Bishop" Vance, as the small wits of
Rubbleford call him, in allusion to his sleek and solemn appearance,
his respectable manner, his clerical cravat, and his speckless black
garments, is placing the cake and cowslip wine on the dining-table,
with as much formality and precision as if his master expected an
archbishop to lunch, instead of a clown's wife and a little child of
ten years old. It is quite a sight to see Vance retiring and looking at
the general effect of each knife and fork as he lays it down; or
solemnly strutting about the room, with a spotless napkin waving gently
in his hand; or patronisingly confronting the pretty housemaid at the
door, and taking plates and dishes from her with the air of a kitchen
Sultan who can never afford to lose his dignity for a moment in the
presence of the female slaves.
The dining-room window opens into the Rectory garden. The morning
shadows cast by the noble old elm-trees that grow all round, are fading
from the bright lawn. The rich flower-beds gleam like beds of jewels in
the radiant sunshine. The rookery is almost deserted, a solitary sleepy
_caw_ being only heard now and then at long intervals. The singing of
birds, and the buzzing of busy insects sound faint, distant, and
musical. On a shady seat, among the trees, Mrs. Joyce is just visible,
working in the open air. One of her daughters sits reading on the turf
at her feet. The other is giving the younger children a ride by turns
on the back of a large Newfoundland dog, who walks along slowly with
his tongue hanging out, and his great bushy tail wagging gently. A
prettier scene of garden beauty and family repose could not be found in
all England, than the scene which the view through the Rectory window
now presents. The household tranquillity, however, is not entirely
uninterrupted. Across the picture, of which Vance and the
luncheon-table form the foreground, and the garden with Mrs. Joyce and
the young ladies the middle-distance and background, there flits from
time to time an unquiet figure. This personage is always greeted by
Leo, the Newfoundland dog, with an extra wag of the tail; and is
apostrophized laughingly by the young ladies, under the appellation of
"funny Mr. Blyth."
Valentine has in truth let nobody have any rest, either in the house or
the garden, since the first thing in the morning. The rector having
some letters to write, has bolted himself into his study in despair,
and defies his excitable friend from that stronghold, until the arrival
of Mrs. Peckover with the deaf and dumb child has quieted the painter's
fidgety impatience for the striking of twelve o'clock, and the presence
of the visitors from the circus. As for the miserable Vance, Mr. Blyth
has discomposed, worried, and put him out, till he looks suffocated
with suppressed indignation. Mr. Blyth has invaded his sanctuary to ask
whether the hall clock is right, and has caught him "cleaning himself"
in his shirt sleeves. Mr. Blyth has broken one of his tumblers, and has
mutinously insisted on showing him how to draw the cork of the cowslip
wine bottle. Mr. Blyth has knocked down a fork and two spoons, just as
they were laid straight, by whisking past the table like a madman on
his way into the garden. Mr. Blyth has bumped up against the housemaid
in returning to the dining-room, and has apologized to Susan by a joke
which makes her giggle ecstatically in Vance's own face. If this sort
of thing is to go on for a day or two longer, though he has been twenty
years at the Rectory, Vance will be goaded into giving the doctor
warning.
It is five minutes to twelve. Valentine has skipped into the garden for
the thirtieth time at least, to beg that Mrs. Joyce and the young
ladies will repair to the dining-room, and be ready to set Mrs.
Peckover and her little charge quite at their ease the moment they come
in. Mrs. Joyce consents to this proposal at last, and takes his offered
arm; touching it, however, very gingerly, and looking straight before
her, while he talks, with an air of matronly dignity and virtuous
reserve. She is still convinced that Mr. Blyth's principles are
extremely loose, and treats him as she might have treated Don Juan
himself under similar circumstances.
They all go into the dining-room. Mrs. Joyce and her daughters take
their places, looking deliciously cool and neat in their bright morning
dresses. Leo drops down lazily on the rug inside the window, with a
thump of his great heavy body that makes the glasses ring. The doctor
comes in with his letters for the post, and apostrophizes Valentine
with a harmless clerical joke. Vance solemnly touches up the already
perfect arrangement of the luncheon table. The clock strikes twelve. A
faint meek ring is heard at the Rectory bell.
Vance struts slowly to the door, when--Heaven and earth! are no
conventions held sacred by these painters of pictures?--Mr. Blyth
dashes past him with a shout of "Here they are!" and flies into the
hall to answer the gate himself. Vance turns solemnly round towards his
master, trembling and purple in the face, with an appealing expression,
which says plainly enough:--"If _you_ mean to stand this sort of
outrage, sir, I beg most respectfully to inform you that _I_ don't."
The rector bursts out laughing; the young ladies follow his example;
the Newfoundland dog jumps up, and joins in with his mighty bark. Mrs.
Joyce sits silent, and looks at Vance, and sympathizes with him.
Mr. Blyth is soon heard again in the hall, talking at a prodigious
rate, without one audible word of answer proceeding from any other
voice. The door of the dining-room, which has swung to, is suddenly
pushed open, jostling the outraged Vance, who stands near it, into such
a miserably undignified position flat against the wall, that the young
ladies begin to titter behind their handkerchiefs as they look at him.
Valentine enters, leading in Mrs. Peckover and the deaf and dumb child,
with such an air of supreme happiness, that he looks absolutely
handsome for the moment. The rector, who is, in the best and noblest
sense of the word, a gentleman, receives Mrs. Peckover as politely and
cordially as he would have received the best lady in Rubbleford. Mrs.
Joyce comes forward with him, very kind too, but a little reserved in
her manner, nevertheless; being possibly apprehensive that any woman
connected with the circus must be tainted with some slight flavor of
Miss Florinda Beverley. The young ladies drop down into the most
charming positions on either side of the child, and fall straightway
into fits of ecstasy over her beauty. The dog walks up, and pokes his
great honest muzzle among them companionably. Vance stands rigid
against the wall, and disapproves strongly of the whole proceeding.
Poor Mrs. Peckover! She had never been in such a house as the Rectory,
she had never spoken to a doctor of divinity before in her life. She
was very hot and red and trembling, and made fearful mistakes in
grammar, and clung as shyly to Mr. Blyth as if she had been a little
girl. The rector soon contrived, however, to settle her comfortably in
a seat by the table. She curtseyed reverentially to Vance, as she
passed by him; doubtless under the impression that he was a second
doctor of divinity, even greater and more learned than the first. He
stared in return straight over her head, with small unwinking eyes, his
cheeks turning slowly from deep red to dense purple. Mrs. Peckover
shuddered inwardly, under the conviction that she had insulted a
dignitary, who was hoisted up on some clerical elevation, too
tremendous to be curtseyed to by such a social atom as a clown's wife.
Mrs. Joyce had to call three times to her daughters before she could
get them to the luncheon-table. If she had possessed Valentine's eye
for the picturesque and beautiful, she would certainly have been
incapable of disturbing the group which her third summons broke up.
In the center stood the deaf and dumb child, dressed in a white frock,
with a little silk mantilla over it, made from a cast-off garment
belonging to one of the ladies of the circus. She wore a plain straw
hat, ornamented with a morsel of narrow white ribbon, and tied under
the chin with the same material. Her clear, delicate complexion was
overspread by a slight rosy tinge--the tender coloring of nature,
instead of the coarsely-glaring rouge with which they disfigured her
when she appeared before the public. Her wondering blue eyes, that
looked so sad in the piercing gas-light, appeared to have lost that
sadness in the mellow atmosphere of the Rectory dining-room. The tender
and touching stillness which her affliction had cast over her face,
seemed a little at variance with its childish immaturity of feature and
roundness of form, but harmonized exquisitely with the quiet smile
which seemed habitual to her when she was happy--gratefully and
unrestrainedly happy, as she now felt among the new friends who were
receiving her, not like a stranger and an inferior, but like a younger
sister who had been long absent from them.
She stood near the window, the center figure of the group, offering a
little slate that hung by her side, with a pencil attached to it, to
the rector's eldest daughter, who was sitting at her right hand on a
stool. The second of the young ladies knelt on the other side, with
both her arms round the dog's neck; holding him back as he stood in
front of the child, so as to prevent him from licking her face, which
he had made several resolute attempts to do, from the moment when she
first entered the room. Both the Doctor's daughters were healthy, rosy
English beauties in the first bloom of girlhood; and both were attired
in the simplest and prettiest muslin dresses, very delicate in color
and pattern. Pity and admiration, mixed with some little perplexity and
confusion, gave an unusual animation to their expressions; for they
could hardly accustom themselves as yet to the idea of the poor child's
calamity. They talked to her eagerly, as if she could hear and answer
them--while she, on her part, stood looking alternately from one to the
other, watching their lips and eyes intently, and still holding out the
slate, with her innocent gesture of invitation and gentle look of
apology, for the eldest girl to write on. The varying expressions of
the three; the difference in their positions, the charming contrast
between their light, graceful figures and the bulky strength and grand
solidity of form in the noble Newfoundland dog who stood among them;
the lustrous background of lawn and flowers and trees, seen through the
open window; the sparkling purity of the sunshine which fell brightly
over one part of the group; the transparency of the warm shadows that
lay so caressingly, sometimes on a round smooth cheek, sometimes over
ringlets of glistening hair, sometimes on the crisp folds of a muslin
dress--all these accidental combinations of the moment, these natural
and elegant positions of nature's setting, these accessories of light
and shade and background garden objects beautifully and tenderly
filling up the scene, presented together a picture which it was a
luxury to be able to look on, which it seemed little short of absolute
profanation to disturb.
Mrs. Joyce, nevertheless, pitilessly disarranged it. In a moment the
living picture was destroyed; the young ladies were called to their
mother's side; the child was placed between Valentine and Mrs.
Peckover, and the important business of luncheon began in earnest.
It was wonderful to hear how Mr. Blyth talked; how he alternately
glorified the clown's wife for the punctual performance of her promise,
and appealed triumphantly to the rector to say, whether he had not
underrated rather than exaggerated little Mary's beauty. It was also
wonderful to see Mrs. Peckover's blank look of astonishment when she
found the rigid doctor of divinity, who would not so much as notice her
curtsey, suddenly relax into blandly supplying her with everything she
wanted to eat or drink. But a very much more remarkable study of human
nature than either of these, was afforded by the grimly patronizing and
profoundly puzzled aspect of Vance, as he waited, under protest, upon a
woman from a traveling circus. It is something to see the Pope serving
the Pilgrims their dinner, during the Holy Week at Rome. Even that
astounding sight, however, fades into nothing, as compared with the
sublimer spectacle of Mr. Vance waiting upon Mrs. Peckover.
The rector, who was a sharp observer in his own quiet, unobtrusive way,
was struck by two peculiarities in little Mary's behavior during lunch.
In the first place, he remarked with some interest and astonishment,
that while the clown's wife was, not unnaturally, very shy and
embarrassed in her present position, among strangers who were greatly
her social superiors, little Mary had maintained her self-possession,
and had unconsciously adapted herself to her new sphere from the moment
when she first entered the dining-room. In the second place, he
observed that she constantly nestled close to Valentine; looked at him
oftener than she looked at any one else; and seemed to be always
trying, sometimes not unsuccessfully, to guess what he was saying to
others by watching his expression, his manner, and the action of his
lips. "That child's character is no common one," thought Doctor Joyce;
"she is older at heart than she looks; and is almost as fond of Blyth
already as he is of her."
When lunch was over, the eldest Miss Joyce whispered a petition in her
mother's ear, "May Carry and I take the dear little girl out with us to
see our gardens, mamma?"
"Certainly, my love, if she likes to go. You had better ask her--Ah,
dear! dear! I forgot--I mean, write on her slate. It's so hard to
remember she's deaf and dumb, when one sees her sitting there looking
so pretty and happy. She seems to like the cake. Remind me, Emmy, to
tie some up for her in paper before she goes away."
Miss Emily and Miss Caroline went round to the child directly, and made
signs for the slate. They alternately wrote on it with immense
enthusiasm, until they had filled one side; signing their initials in
the most business-like manner at the end of each line, thus:--
"Oh, do come and see my gardens. E. J."---"We will gather you such a
nice nosegay. C. J."--"I have got some lovely little guinea-pigs. B.
J."--"And Mark, our gardener, has made me a summer-house, with such
funny chairs in it. C. J."--"You shall have my parasol to keep the sun
off. B. J."--"And we will send Leo into the water as often as you like
him to go. C. J."--Thus they went on till they got to the bottom of the
slate.
The child, after nodding her head and smiling as she read each fresh
invitation, turned the slate over, and, with some little triumph at
showing that she could write too, began slowly to trace some large text
letters in extremely crooked lines. It took her a long time--especially
as Mr. Blyth was breathlessly looking over her shoulder all the
while--to get through these words: "Thank you for being so kind to me.
I will go with you anywhere you like."
In a few minutes more the two young ladies and little Mary were walking
over the bright lawn, with Leo in close attendance, carrying a stick in
his mouth.
Valentine started up to follow them; then appeared suddenly to remember
something, and sat down again with a very anxious expression on his
face. He and Doctor Joyce looked at one another significantly. Before
breakfast, that morning, they had been closeted at a private interview.
Throughout the conversation which then took place, Mr. Blyth had been
unusually quiet, and very much in earnest. The doctor had begun by
being incredulous and sarcastic in a good-humored way; but had ended by
speaking seriously, and making a promise under certain conditions. The
time for the performance of that promise had now arrived.
"You needn't wait, Vance," said the rector. "Never mind about taking
the things away. I'll ring when you're wanted."
Vance gloomily departed.
"Now the young people have left us, Mrs. Peckover," said Doctor Joyce,
turning to the clown's wife, "there is a good opportunity for my making
a proposition to you, on behalf of my old and dear friend here, Mr.
Blyth, who, as you must have noticed, feels great sympathy and fondness
for your little Mary. But, before I mention this proposal (which I am
sure you will receive in the best spirit, however it may surprise you),
I should wish--we should all wish, if you have no objection--to hear
any particulars you can give us on the subject of this poor child. Do
you feel any reluctance to tell us in confidence whatever you know
about her?"
"Oh dear no, sir!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, very much amazed. "I should
be ashamed of myself if I went making any objections to anything you
wanted to know about little Mary. But it's strange to me to be in a
beautiful place like this, drinking wine with gentlefolks--and I'm
almost afraid--"
"Not afraid, I hope, that you can't tell us what we are so anxious to
know, quite at your ease, and in your own way?" said the rector,
pleasantly. "Pray, Mrs. Peckover, believe I am sincere in saying that
we meet on equal terms here. I have heard from Mr. Blyth of your
motherly kindness to that poor helpless child; and I am indeed proud to
take your hand, and happy to see you here, as one who should always be
an honored guest in a clergyman's house--the doer of a good and
charitable deed. I have always, I hope, valued the station to which it
has pleased God to call me, because it especially offers me the
privilege of being the friend of all my fellow-christians, whether
richer or poorer, higher or lower in worldly rank, than am myself."
Mrs. Peckover's eyes began to fill. She could have worshipped Doctor
Joyce at that moment.
"Mr. Blyth!" exclaimed Mrs. Joyce, sharply, before another word could
be spoken--"excuse me, Mr. Blyth; but really--"
Valentine was trying to pour out a glass of sherry for Mrs. Peckover.
His admiration of the doctor's last speech, and his extreme anxiety to
reassure the clown's wife, must have interfered with his precision of
eye and hand; for one-half of the wine, as he held the decanter, was
dropping into the glass, and the other half was dribbling into a little
river on the cloth. Mrs. Joyce thought of the walnut-wood table
underneath, and felt half distracted as she spoke. Mrs. Peckover,
delighted to be of some use, forgot her company manners in an instant,
pulled out her red cotton pocket-handkerchief and darted at the spilt
sherry. But the rector was even quicker with his napkin. Mrs.
Peckover's cheeks turned the color of her handkerchief as she put it
back in her pocket, and sat down again.
"Much obliged--no harm done--much obliged, ma'am," said Doctor Joyce.
"Now, Valentine, if you don't leave off apologizing, and sit down
directly in that arm-chair against the wall, I shall take Mrs. Peckover
into my study, and hear everything she has to say, at a private
interview. There! we are all comfortable and composed again at last,
and ready to be told how little Mary and the good friend who has been
like a mother to her first met."
Thus appealed to, Mrs. Peckover began her narrative; sometimes
addressing it to the Doctor, sometimes to Mrs. Joyce, and sometimes to
Valentine. From beginning to end, she was only interrupted at rare
intervals by a word of encouragement, or sympathy, or surprise, from
her audience. Even Mr. Blyth sat most uncharacteristically still and
silent; his expression alone showing the varying influences of the
story on him, from its strange commencement to its melancholy close.
"It's better than ten years ago, sir," began the clown's wife, speaking
first to Doctor Joyce, "since my little Tommy was born; he being now,
if you please, at school and costing nothing, through a presentation,
as they call it I think, which was given us by a kind patron to my
husband. Some time after I had got well over my confinement, I was out
one afternoon taking a walk with baby and Jemmy; which last is my
husband, ma'am. We were at Bangbury, then, just putting up the circus:
it was a fine large neighborhood, and we hoped to do good business
there. Jemmy and me and the baby went out into the fields, and enjoyed
ourselves very much; it being such nice warm spring weather, though it
was March at the time. We came back to Bangbury by the road; and just
as we got near the town, we see a young woman sitting on the bank, and
holding her baby in her arms, just as I had got my baby in mine.
"'How dreadful ill and weak she do look, don't she?' says Emmy. Before
I could say as much as 'Yes,' she stares up at us, and asks in a wild
voice, though it wasn't very loud either, if we can tell her the way to
Bangbury workhouse. Having pretty sharp eyes of our own, we both of us
knew that a workhouse was no fit place for her. Her gown was very
dusty, and one of her boots was burst, and her hair was draggled all
over her face, and her eyes was sunk in her head, like; but we saw
somehow that she was a lady--or, if she wasn't exactly a lady, that no
workhouse was proper for her, at any rate. I stooped down to speak to
her; but her baby was crying so dreadful she could hardly hear me. 'Is
the poor thing ill?' says I. 'Starving,' says she, in such a desperate,
fierce way, that it gave me a turn. 'Is that your child?' says I, a bit
frightened about how she'd answer me. 'Yes,' she says in quite a new
voice, very soft and sorrowful, and bending her face away from me over
the child. 'Then why don't you suckle it?' says I. She looks up at me,
and then at Jenny and shakes her head, and says nothing. I give my baby
to Jemmy to hold, and went and sat down by her. He walked away a
little; and I whispered to her again, 'Why don't you suckle it?' and
she whispered to me, 'My milk's all dried up. I couldn't wait to hear
no more till I'd got her baby at my own breast.
"That was the first time I suckled little Mary, ma'am. She wasn't a
month old then, and oh, so weak and small! such a mite of a baby
compared to mine!
"You may be sure, sir, that I asked the young woman lots of questions,
while I was sitting side by side with her. She stared at me with a
dazed look in her face, seemingly quite stupefied by weariness or
grief, or both together. Sometimes she give me an answer and sometimes
she wouldn't. She was very secret. She wouldn't say where she come
from, or who her friends were, or what her name was. She said she
should never have name or home or friends again. I just quietly stole a
look down at her left hand, and saw that there was no wedding-ring on
her finger, and guessed what she meant. 'Does the father know you are
wandering about in this way?' says I. She flushes up directly; 'No;'
says she, 'he doesn't know where I am. He never had any love for me,
and he has no pity for me now. God's curse on him wherever he goes!'--
'Oh, hush! hush!' says I, 'don't talk like that!' 'Why do you ask me
questions?' says she more fiercely than ever. 'What business have you
to ask me questions that make me mad?' 'I've only got one more to
bother you with,' says I, quite cool; 'and that is, haven't you got any
money at all with you?' You see, ma'am, now I'd got her child at my own
bosom, I didn't care for what she said, or fear for what she might do
to me. The poor mite of a baby was sure to be a peacemaker between us,
sooner or later.
"It turned out she'd got sixpence and a few half-pence--not a farthing
more, and too proud to ask help from any one of her friends. I managed
to worm out of her that she had run away from home before her
confinement, and had gone to some strange place to be confined, where
they'd ill-treated and robbed her. She hadn't long got away from the
wretches who'd done it. By the time I'd found out all this, her baby
was quite quiet, and ready to go to sleep. I gave it her back. She said
nothing, but took and kissed my hand, her lips feeling like burning
coals on my flesh. 'You're kindly welcome,' says I, a little flustered
at such a queer way of thanking me. 'Just wait a bit while I speak to
my husband.' Though she'd been and done wrong, I couldn't for the life
of me help pitying her, for her fierce ways. She was so young, and so
forlorn and ill, and had such a beautiful face (little Mary's is the
image of it, 'specially about the eyes), and seemed so like a lady,
that it was almost a sin, as I thought, to send her to such a place as
a workhouse.
"Well: I went and told Jemmy all I had got out of her--my own baby
kicking and crowing in my arms again, as happy as a king, all the time
I was speaking. 'It seems shocking,' says I, 'to let such as her go
into a workhouse. What had we better do?'--Says Jemmy, 'Let's take her
with us to the circus and ask Peggy Burke.'
"Peggy Burke, if you please, sir, was the finest rider that ever
stepped on a horse's back. We've had nothing in our circus to come near
her, since she went to Astley's. She was the wildest devil of an Irish
girl--oh! I humbly beg your pardon, sir, for saying such a word; but
she really _was_ so wild, I hope you'll excuse it. She'd go through
fire and water, as they say, to serve people she liked; but as for them
she didn't, she'd often use her riding-whip among 'em as free as her
tongue. That cowardly brute Jubber would never have beaten my little
Mary, if Peggy had been with us still! He was so frightened of her that
she could twist him round her finger; and she did, for he dursn't
quarrel with the best rider in England, and let other circuses get hold
of her. Peggy was a wonderful sharp girl besides, and was always fond
of me, and took my part; so when Jemmy said he thought it best to ask
her what we had better do, you may be sure that I thought it best too.
We took the young woman and the baby with us to the circus at once. She
never asked any questions; she didn't seem to care where she went, or
what she did; she was dazed and desperate--a sight, Ma'am, to make your
heart ache.
"They were just getting tea in the circus, which was nearly finished.
We mostly have tea and dinner there, sir; finding it come cheaper in
the end to mess together when we can. Peggy Burke, I remember, was
walking about on the grass outside, whistling (that was one of her
queer ways) 'The girl I left behind me.' 'Ah! Peck,' says she, 'what
have you been after now? Who's the company lady ye've brought to tea
with us?' I told her, sir, all I have told you; while Jemmy set the
young woman down on one of our trunks, and got her a cup of tea. 'It
seems dreadful,' says I when I'd done, 'to send such as her to the
workhouse, don't it?' 'Workhouse!' says Peggy, firing up directly; 'I
only wish we could catch the man who's got her in that scrape, and put
him in there on water-gruel for the rest of his life. I'd give a
shillin' a wheal out of my own pocket for the blessed privilege of
scoring the thief's face with my whip, till his own mother wouldn't
know him!' And then she went on, sir, abusing all the men in her Irish
way, which I can't repeat. At last she stops, and claps me on the back.
'You're a darlin' old girl, Peck!' says she, 'and your friends are my
friends. Stop where you are, and let me speak a word to the young woman
on the trunk.'
"After a little while she comes back, and says, 'I've done it, Peck!
She's mighty close, and as proud as Lucifer; but she's only a
dressmaker, for all that.' 'A dressmaker!' says I; 'how did you find
out she was a dressmaker?' 'Why, I looked at her forefinger, in
course,' says Peggy, 'and saw the pricks of the needle on it, and soon
made her talk a bit after that. She knows fancy-work and cuttin'
out--would ye ever have thought it? And I'll show her how to give the
workhouse the go-by to-morrow, if she only holds out, and keeps in her
senses. Stop where you are, Peck! I'm going to make Jubber put his
dirty hand into his pocket and pull out some money; and that's a sight
worth stoppin' to see any day in the week.'
"I waited as she told me; and she called for Jubber, just as if he'd
been her servant; and he come out of the circus. 'I want ten shillings
advance of wages for that lady on the trunk,' says Peggy. He laughed at
her. 'Show your ugly teeth at me again,' says she, 'and I'll box your
ears. I've my light hand for a horse's mouth, and my heavy hand for a
man's cheek; you ought to know that by this time! Pull out the ten
shillings.' 'What for?' said he, frowning at her. 'Just this,' says
she. 'I mean to leave your circus, unless I get those six character
dresses you promised me; and the lady there can do them up beautiful.
Pull out the ten shillings! for I've made up my mind to appear before
the Bangbury public on Garryowen's back, as six women at once.'
"What she meant by this, sir, was, that she was to have six different
dresses on, one over another; and was to go galloping round the ring on
Garryowen (which was a horse), beginning, I think it was, as Empress of
Roossia; and then throwing off the top dress without the horse
stopping, and showing next as some famous Frenchwoman, in the dress
underneath; and keeping on so with different nations, till she got down
to the last dress, which was to be Britannia and the Union-Jack. We'd
got bits of remnants, and old dresses and things to make and alter, but
hadn't anybody clever enough at cutting out, and what they call
'Costoom,' to do what Peggy wanted--Jubber being too stingy to pay the
regular people who understand such things. The young woman, knowing as
she did about fancy work, was just what was wanted, if she could only
get well enough to use her needle. 'I'll see she works the money out,'
says Peggy; 'but she's dead beat to-night, and must have her rest and
bit o' supper, before she begins to-morrow.' Jubber wanted to give less
than ten shillings; but between threatening, and saying it should buy
twenty shillings' worth of tailor's work, she got the better of him.
And he gave the money, sulky enough.
"'Now,' says Peggy, 'you take her away, and get her a lodging in the
place where you're staying; and I'll come tomorrow with some of the
things to make up.' But, ah dear me! sir, she was never to work as much
as sixpence of that ten shillings out. She was took bad in the night,
and got so much worse in the morning that we had to send for the
doctor.
"As soon as he'd seen her, he takes me into the passage, and says he to
me, 'Do you know who her friends are?' 'No, sir,' says I; 'I can't get
her to tell me. I only met her by accident yesterday.' 'Try and find
out again,' says he; 'for I'm afraid she won't live over the night.
I'll come back in the evening and see if there is any change.'
"Peggy and me went into her room together; but we couldn't even get her
to speak to us for ever so long a time. All at once she cries out, 'I
can't see things as I ought. Where's the woman who suckled my baby when
I was alone by the roadside?' 'Here,' says I--'here; I've got hold of
your hand. Do tell us where we can write to about you.' 'Will you
promise to take care of my baby, and not let it go into the workhouse?'
says she. 'Yes, I promise,' says I; 'I do indeed promise with my whole
heart.' 'We'll all take care of the baby,' says Peggy; 'only you try
and cheer up, and you'll get well enough to see me on Garryowen's back,
before we leave Bangbury--you will for certain, if you cheer up a bit.'
'I give my baby,' she says, clutching tight at my hand, 'to the woman
who suckled it by the roadside; and I pray God to bless _her_ and
forgive _me,_ for Jesus Christ's sake.' After that, she lay quiet for a
minute or two. Then she says faintly, 'Its name's to be Mary. Put it
into bed to me again; I should like to touch its cheek, and feel how
soft and warm it is once more.' And I took the baby out of its crib,
and lifted it, asleep as it was, into the bed by her side, and guided
her hand up to its cheek. I saw her lips move a little, and bent down
over her. 'Give me one kiss,' she whispered, 'before I die.' And I
kissed her, and tried to stop crying as I did it. Then I says to Peggy,
'You wait here while I run and fetch the doctor back; for I'm afraid
she's going fast.' He wasn't at home when I got to his house. I did'n't
know what to do next, when I see a gentleman in the street who looked
like a clergyman, and I asked him if he was one; and he said 'Yes;' and
he went back with me. I heard a low wailing and crying in the room, and
saw Peggy sitting on the bundle of dresses she'd brought in the
morning, rocking herself backwards and forwards as Irish people always
do when they're crying. I went to the bed, and looked through the
curtains. The baby was still sleeping as pretty as ever, and its
mother's hand was touching one of its arms. I was just going to speak
to her again, when the clergyman said 'Hush,' and took a bit of
looking-glass that was set up on the chimney-piece, and held it over
her lips. She was gone. Her poor white wasted hand lay dead on the
living baby's arm.
"I answered all the clergyman's questions quite straightforward,
telling him everything I knew from beginning to end. When I'd done,
Peggy starts up from the bundle and says, 'Mind, sir, whatever you do,
the child's not to be took away from this person here, and sent to the
workhouse. The mother give it to her on that very bed, and I'm a
witness of it.' 'And I promised to be a mother to the baby, sir,' says
I. He turns round to me, and praises me for what I done, and says
nobody shall take it away from me, unless them as can show their right
comes forward to claim it. 'But now,' says he, 'we must think of other
things. We must try and find out something about this poor woman who
has died in such a melancholy way.'
"It was easier to say that than to do it. The poor thing had nothing
with her but a change of linen for herself and the child, and that gave
us no clue. Then we searched her pocket. There was a cambric
handkerchief in it, marked 'M. G.;' and some bits of rusks to sop for
the child; and the sixpence and halfpence which she had when I met her;
and beneath all, in a corner, as if it had been forgotten there, a
small hair bracelet. It was made of two kinds of hair--very little of
one kind, and a good deal of the other. And on the flat clasp of the
bracelet there was cut in tiny letters, _'In memory of S. G.'_ I
remember all this, sir, for I've often and often looked at the bracelet
since that time.
"We found nothing more--no letters, or cards, or anything. The
clergyman said that the 'M. G.' on the handkerchief must be the
initials of her name; and the 'S. G.' on the bracelet must mean, he
thought, some relation whose hair she wore as a sort of keepsake. I
remember Peggy and me wondering which was S. G.'s hair; and who the
other person might be, whose hair was wove into the bracelet. But the
clergyman he soon cut us short by asking for pen, ink, and paper
directly. 'I'm going to write out an advertisement,' says he, 'saying
how you met with the young woman, and what she was like, and how she
was dressed.' 'Do you mean to say anything about the baby, sir?' says
I. 'Certainly,' says he; 'it's only right, if we get at her friends by
advertising, to give them the chance of doing something for the child.
And if they live anywhere in county, I believe we shall find them out;
for the _Bangbury Chronicle,_ into which I mean to put the
advertisement, goes everywhere in our part of England.'
"So he sits down, and writes what he said he would, and takes it away
to be printed in the next day's number of the newspaper. 'If nothing
comes of this,' says he, 'I think I can manage about the burial with a
charitable society here. I'll take care and inform you the moment the
advertisement's answered.' I hardly know how it was, sir; but I almost
hoped they wouldn't answer it. Having suckled the baby myself, and
kissed its mother before she died, I couldn't make up my mind to the
chance of its being took away from me just then. I ought to have
thought how poor we were, and how hard it would be for us to bring the
child up. But, somehow, I never did think of that--no more did
Peggy--no more did Jemmy; not even when we put the baby to bed that
night along with our own.
"Well, sir, sure enough, two days after the advertisement come out, it
was answered in the cruelest letter I ever set eyes on. The clergyman
he come to me with it. 'It was left this evening,' says he, 'by a
strange messenger, who went away directly. I told my servant to follow
him; but it was too late--he was out of sight.' The letter was very
short, and we thought it was in a woman's handwriting--a feigned
handwriting, the clergyman said. There was no name signed, and no date
at top or bottom. Inside it there was a ten-pound bank-note; and the
person as sent it wrote that it was enclosed to bury the young woman
decently. 'She was better dead than alive'--the letter went on--'after
having disgraced her father and her relations. As for the child, it was
the child of sin, and had no claim on people who desired to preserve
all that was left of their good name, and to set a moral example to
others. The parish must support it if nobody else would. It would be
useless to attempt to trace them, or to advertise again. The baby's
father had disappeared, they didn't know where; and they could hold no
communication now with such a monster of wickedness, even if he was
found. She was dead in her shame and her sin; and her name should never
be mentioned among them she belonged to henceforth for ever.'
"This was what I remember in the letter, sir. A shocking and
unchristian letter I said; and the clergyman he said so too.
"She was buried in the poor corner of the churchyard. They marked out
the place, in case anybody should ever want to see it, by cutting the
two letters M. G., and the date of when she died, upon a board of wood
at the head of the grave. The clergyman then give me the hair bracelet
and the handkerchief, and said, 'You keep these as careful as you keep
the child; for they may be of great importance one of these days. I
shall seal up the letter (which is addressed to me) and put it in my
strong box.' He'd asked me, before this, if I'd thought of what a
responsibility it was for such as me to provide for the baby. And I
told him I'd promised, and would keep my promise, and trust to God's
providence for the rest. The clergyman was a very kind gentleman, and
got up a subscription for the poor babe; and Peggy Burke, when she had
her benefit before the circus left Bangbury, give half of what she got
as her subscription. I never heard nothing about the child's friends
from that time to this; and I know no more who its father is now than I
did then. And glad I am that he's never come forward--though, perhaps,
I oughtn't to say so. I keep the hair bracelet and the handkerchief as
careful as the clergyman told me, for the mother's sake as well as the
child's. I've known some sorrow with her since I took her as my own;
but I love her only the dearer for it, and still think the day a happy
day for both of us, when I first stopped and suckled her by the
road-side.
"This is all I have to say, if you please, sir, about how I first met
with little Mary; and I wish I could have told it in a way that was
more fit for such as you to hear."
CHAPTER V
MADONNA'S MISFORTUNE.
As the clown's wife ended her narrative, but little was said in the way
of comment on it by those who had listened to her. They were too much
affected by what they had heard to speak, as yet, except briefly and in
low voices. Mrs. Joyce more than once raised her handkerchief to her
eyes. Her husband murmured some cordial words of sympathy and
thanks--in an unusually subdued manner, however. Valentine said
nothing; but he drew his chair close to Mrs. Peckover, and turning his
face away as if he did not wish it to be seen, took her hand in one of
his and patted it gently with the other. There was now perfect silence
in the room for a few minutes. Then they all looked out with one
accord, and as it seemed with one feeling, towards the garden.
In a shady place, just visible among the trees, the rector's daughters,
and little Mary, and the great Newfoundland dog were all sitting
together on the grass. The two young ladies appeared to be fastening a
garland of flowers round the child's neck, while she was playfully
offering a nosegay for Leo to smell at. The sight was homely and simple
enough; but it was full of the tenderest interest--after the narrative
which had just engaged them--to those who now witnessed it. They looked
out on the garden scene silently for some little time. Mrs. Joyce was
the first to speak again.
"Would it be asking too much of you, Mrs. Peckover," said she, "to
inquire how the poor little thing really met with the accident that
caused her misfortune? I know there is an account of it in the bills of
the circus but--"
"It's the most infamous thing I ever read!" interrupted Mr. Blyth
indignantly. "The man who wrote it ought to be put in the pillory. I
never remember wanting to throw a rotten egg at any of my
fellow-creatures before; but I feel certain that I should enjoy having
a shy at Mr. Jubber!"
"Gently, Valentine--gently," interposed the rector. "I think, my love,"
he continued, turning to Mrs. Joyce, "that it is hardly considerate to
Mrs. Peckover to expect her to comply with your request. She has
already sacrificed herself once to our curiosity; and, really, to ask
her now to recur a second time to recollections which I am sure must
distress her--"
"It's worse than distressing, indeed, sir, even to think of that
dreadful accident," said Mrs. Peckover, "and specially as I can't help
taking some blame to myself for it. But if the lady wishes to know how
it happened, I'm sure I'm agreeable to tell her. People in our way of
life, ma'am--as I've often heard Peggy Burke say--are obliged to dry
the tear at their eyes long before it's gone from their hearts. But
pray don't think, sir, I mean that now about myself and in your
company. If I _do_ feel low at talking of little Mary's misfortune, I
can take a look out into the garden there, and see how happy she
is--and that's safe to set me right again."
"I ought to tell you first, sir," proceeded the clown's wife, after
waiting thoughtfully for a moment or two before she spoke again, "that
I got on much better with little Mary than ever I thought I should for
the first six years of her life. She grew up so pretty that gentlefolks
was always noticing her, and asking about her; and nearly in every
place the circus went to they made her presents, which helped nicely in
her keep and clothing. And our own people, too, petted her and were
fond of her. All those six years we got on as pleasantly as could be.
It was not till she was near her seventh birthday that I was wicked and
foolish enough to consent to her being shown in the performances.
"I was sorely tried and tempted before I did consent. Jubber first said
he wanted her to perform with the riders; and I said 'No' at once,
though I was awful frightened of him in those days. But soon after,
Jemmy (who wasn't the clown then that he is now, sir; there was others
to be got for his money, to do what he did at that time)--Jemmy comes
to me, saying he's afraid he shall lose his place, if I don't give in
about Mary. This staggered me a good deal; for I don't know what we
should have done then, if my husband had lost his engagement. And,
besides, there was the poor dear child herself, who was mad to be
carried up in the air on horseback, always begging and praying to be
made a little rider of. And all the rest of 'em in the circus worried
and laughed at me; and, in short, I give in at last against my
conscience, but I couldn't help it.
"I made a bargain, though, that she should only be trusted to the
steadiest, soberest man, and the best rider of the whole lot. They
called him 'Muley' in the bills, and stained his face to make him look
like a Turk, or something of that sort; but his real name was Francis
Yapp, and a very good fatherly sort of man he was in his way, having a
family of his own to look after. He used to ride splendid, at full
straddle, with three horses under him--one foot, you know, sir, being
on the outer horse's back, and one foot on the inner. Him and Jubber
made it out together that he was to act a wild man, flying for his life
across some desert, with his only child, and poor little Mary was to be
the child. They darkened her face to look like his; and put an
outlandish kind of white dress on her; and buckled a red belt round her
waist, with a sort of handle in it for Yapp to hold her by. After first
making believe in all sorts of ways, that him and the child was in
danger of being taken and shot, he had to make believe afterwards that
they had escaped; and to hold her up, in a sort of triumph, at the full
stretch of his arm--galloping round and round the ring all the while.
He was a tremendous strong man, and could do it as easy as I could hold
up a bit of that plum cake.
"Poor little love! she soon got over the first fright of the thing, and
had a sort of mad fondness for it that I never liked to see, for it
wasn't natural to her. Yapp, he said, she'd got the heart of a lion,
and would grow up the finest woman-rider in the world. I was very
unhappy about it, and lived a miserable life, always fearing some
accident. But for some time nothing near an accident happened; and lots
of money come into the circus to see Yapp and little Mary--but that was
Jubber's luck and not ours. One night--when she was a little better
than seven year old--
"Oh, ma'am, how I ever lived over that dreadful night I don't know! I
was a sinful, miserable wretch not to have starved sooner than let the
child go into danger; but I was so sorely tempted and driven to it, God
knows!--No, sir! no, ma'am; and many thanks for your kindness, I'll go
on now I've begun. Don't mind me crying; I'll manage to tell it
somehow. The strap--no, I mean the handle; the handle in the strap gave
way all of a sudden--just at the last too! just at the worst time, when
he couldn't catch her!--
"Never--oh, never, never, to my dying day shall I forget the horrible
screech that went up from the whole audience; and the sight of the
white thing lying huddled dead-still on the boards! We hadn't such a
number in as usual that night; and she fell on an empty place between
the benches. I got knocked down by the horses in running to her--I was
clean out of my senses, and didn't know where I was going--Yapp had
fallen among them, and hurt himself badly, trying to catch her--they
were running wild in the ring--the horses was--frantic-like with the
noise all round them. I got up somehow, and a crowd of people jostled
me, and I saw my innocent darling carried among them. I felt hands on
me, trying to pull me back; but I broke away, and got into the
waiting-room along with the rest.
"There she was--my own, own little Mary, that I'd promised her poor
mother to take care of--there she was, lying all white and still on an
old box, with my cloak rolled up as a pillow for her. And people
crowding round her. And a doctor feeling her head all over. And Yapp
among them, held up by two men, with his face all over blood. I wasn't
able to speak or move; I didn't feel as if I was breathing even, till
the doctor stopped, and looked up; and then a great shudder went
through all of us together, as if we'd been one body, instead of twenty
or more.
"'It's not killed her,' says the doctor. 'Her brain's escaped injury.'
"I didn't hear another word.
"I don't know how long it was before I seemed to wake up like, with a
dreadful feeling of pain and tearing of everything inside me. I was on
the landlady's bed, and Jemmy was standing over me with a bottle of
salts. 'They've put her to bed,' he says to me, 'and the doctor's
setting her arm.' I didn't recollect at first; but when I did, it was
almost as bad as seeing the dreadful accident all over again.
"It was some time before any of us found out what had really happened.
The breaking of her arm, the doctor said, had saved her head; which was
only cut and bruised a little, not half as bad as was feared. Day after
day, and night after night, I sat by her bedside, comforting her
through her fever, and the pain of the splints on her arm, and never
once suspecting--no more, I believe, than she did--the awful misfortune
that had really happened. She was always wonderful quiet and silent for
a child, poor lamb, in little illnesses that she'd had before; and
somehow, I didn't wonder--at least, at first--why she never said a
word, and never answered me when I spoke to her.
"This went on, though, after she got better in her health; and a
strange look came over her eyes. They seemed to be always wondering and
frightened, in a confused way, about something or other. She took, too,
to rolling her head about restlessly from one side of the pillow to the
other; making a sort of muttering and humming now and then, but still
never seeming to notice or to care for anything I said to her. One day,
I was warming her a nice cup of beef-tea over the fire, when I heard,
quite sudden and quite plain, these words from where she lay on the
bed, 'Why are you always so quiet here? Why doesn't somebody speak to
me?'
"I knew there wasn't another soul in the room but the poor child at
that time; and yet, the voice as spoke those words was no more like
little Mary's voice, than my voice, sir, is like yours. It sounded,
somehow, hoarse and low, and deep and faint, all at the same time; the
strangest, shockingest voice to come from a child, who always used to
speak so clearly and prettily before, that ever I heard. If I was only
cleverer with my words, ma'am, and could tell you about it
properly--but I can't. I only know it gave me such a turn to hear her,
that I upset the beef-tea, and ran back in a fright to the bed. 'Why,
Mary! Mary!' says I, quite loud, 'are you so well already that you're
trying to imitate Mr. Jubber's gruff voice?'
"There was the same wondering look in her eyes--only wilder than I had
ever seen it yet--while I was speaking. When I'd done, she says in the
same strange way, 'Speak out, mother; I can't hear you when you whisper
like that.' She was as long saying these words, and bungled over them
as much, as if she was only just learning to speak. I think I got the
first suspicion then, of what had really happened. 'Mary!' I bawled out
as loud as I could, 'Mary! can't you hear me?' She shook her head, and
stared up at me with the frightened, bewildered look again: then seemed
to get pettish and impatient all of a sudden--the first time I ever saw
her so--and hid her face from me on the pillow.
"Just then the doctor come in. 'Oh, sir!' says I, whispering to
him--just as if I hadn't found out a minute ago that she couldn't hear
me at the top of my voice--'I'm afraid there's something gone wrong
with her hearing--.' 'Have you only just now suspected that?' says he;
'I've been afraid of it for some days past, but I thought it best to
say nothing till I'd tried her; and she's hardly well enough yet, poor
child, to be worried with experiments on her ears.' 'She's much
better,' says I; 'indeed, she's much better to-day, sir! Oh, do try her
now, for it's so dreadful to be in doubt a moment longer than we can
help.'
"He went up to the bedside, and I followed him. She was lying with her
face hidden away from us on the pillow, just as it was when I left her.
The doctor says to me, 'Don't disturb her, don't let her look round, so
that she can see us--I'm going to call to her.' And he called 'Mary'
out loud, twice; and she never moved. The third time he tried her, it
was with such a shout at the top of his voice, that the landlady come
up, thinking something had happened. I was looking over his shoulder,
and saw that my dear child never started in the least. 'Poor little
thing,' says the doctor, quite sorrowful, 'this is worse than I
expected.' He stooped down and touched her, as he said this; and she
turned round directly, and put out her hand to have her pulse felt as
usual. I tried to get out of her sight, for I was crying, and didn't
wish her to see it; but she was too sharp for me. She looked hard in my
face and the landlady's, then in the doctor's, which was downcast
enough; for he had got very fond of her, just as everybody else did who
saw much of little Mary.
"'What's the matter?' she says, in the same sort of strange unnatural
voice again. We tried to pacify her, but only made her worse. 'Why do
you keep on whispering?' she asks. 'Why don't you speak out loud, so
that I can--,' and then she stopped, seemingly in a sort of helpless
fright and bewilderment. She tried to get up in bed, and her face
turned red all over. 'Can she read writing?' says the doctor. 'Oh, yes,
sir, says I; 'she can read and write beautiful for a child of her age;
my husband taught her.' 'Get me paper and pen and ink directly,' says
he to the landlady; who went at once and got him what he wanted. 'We
must quiet her at all hazards,' says the doctor, 'or she'll excite
herself into another attack of fever. She feels what's the matter with
her, but don't understand it; and I'm going to tell her by means of
this paper. It's a risk,' he says, writing down on the paper in large
letters, _You Are Deaf;_ 'but I must try all I can do for her ears
immediately; and this will prepare her,' says he, going to the bed, and
holding the paper before her eyes.
"She shrank back on the pillow, as still as death, the instant she saw
it; but didn't cry, and looked more puzzled and astonished, I should
say, than distressed. But she was breathing dreadful quick--I felt
that, as I stooped down and kissed her. 'She's too young,' says the
doctor, 'to know what the extent of her calamity really is. You stop
here and keep her quiet till I come back, for I trust the case is not
hopeless yet.' 'But whatever has made her deaf, sir?' says the
landlady, opening the door for him. 'The shock of that fall in the
circus,' says he, going out in a very great hurry. I thought I should
never have held up my head again, as I heard them words, looking at
little Mary, with my arm round her neck all the time.
"Well, sir, the doctor come back; and he syringed her ears first--and
that did no good. Then he tried blistering, and then he put on leeches;
and still it was no use. 'I'm afraid it is a hopeless case,' says he;
'but there's a doctor who's had more practice than I've had with deaf
people, who comes from where he lives to our Dispensary once a week.
To-morrow's his day, and I'll bring him here with me.'
"And he did bring this gentleman, as he promised he would--an old
gentleman, with such a pleasant way of speaking that I understood
everything he said to me directly. 'I'm afraid you must make up your
mind to the worst,' says he. 'I have been hearing about the poor child
from my friend who's attended her; and I'm sorry to say I don't think
there's much hope.' Then he goes to the bed and looks at her. 'Ah,'
says he, 'there's just the same expression in her face that I remember
seeing in a mason's boy--a patient of mine--who fell off a ladder, and
lost his hearing altogether by the shock. You don't hear what I'm
saying, do you, my dear?' says he in a hearty cheerful way. 'You don't
hear me saying that you're the prettiest little girl I ever saw in my
life?' She looked up at him confused, and quite silent. He didn't speak
to her again, but told me to turn her on the bed, so that he could get
at one of her ears.
"He pulled out some instruments, while I did what he asked, and put
them into her ear, but so tenderly that he never hurt her. Then he
looked in, through a sort of queer spy-glass thing. Then he did it all
over again with the other ear; and then he laid down the instruments
and pulled out his watch. 'Write on a piece of paper,' says he to the
other doctor: _'Do you know that the watch is ticking?'_ When this was
done, he makes signs to little Mary to open her mouth, and puts as much
of his watch in as would go between her teeth, while the other doctor
holds up the paper before her. When he took the watch out again, she
shook her head, and said 'No,' just in the same strange voice as ever.
The old gentleman didn't speak a word as he put the watch back in his
fob; but I saw by his face that he thought it was all over with her
hearing, after what had just happened.
"'Oh, try and do something for her, sir!' says I. 'Oh, for God's sake,
don't give her up, sir!' 'My good soul,' says he, 'you must set her an
example of cheerfulness, and keep up her spirits--that's all that can
be done for her now.' 'Not _all,_ sir,' says I, 'surely not _all!'_
'Indeed it is,' says he; 'her hearing is completely gone; the
experiment with my watch proves it. I had an exactly similar case with
the mason's boy,' he says, turning to the other doctor. 'The shock of
that fall has, I believe, paralyzed the auditory nerve in her, as it
did in him.' I remember those words exactly, sir, though I didn't quite
understand them at the time. But he explained himself to me very
kindly; telling me over again, in a plain way, what he'd just told the
doctor. He reminded me, too, that the remedies which had been already
tried had been of no use; and told me I might feel sure that any others
would only end in the same way, and put her to useless pain into the
bargain. 'I hope,' says he, 'the poor child is too young to suffer much
mental misery under her dreadful misfortune. Keep her amused, and keep
her talking, if you possibly can--though I doubt very much whether, in
a little time, you won't fail completely in getting her to speak at
all.'
"'Don't say that, sir,' says I; 'don't say she'll be dumb as well as
deaf; it's enough to break one's heart only to think of it.' 'But I
_must_ say so,' says he; 'for I'm afraid it's the truth.' And then he
asks me whether I hadn't noticed already that she was unwilling to
speak; and that, when she did speak, her voice wasn't the same voice it
used to be. I said 'Yes,' to that; and asked him whether the fall had
had anything to do with it. He said, taking me up very short, it had
everything to do with it, because the fall had made her, what they
call, stone deaf, which prevented her from hearing the sound of her own
voice. So it was changed, he told me, because she had no ear now to
guide herself by in speaking, and couldn't know in the least whether
the few words she said were spoken soft or loud, or deep or clear. 'So
far as the poor child herself is concerned,' says he, 'she might as
well be without a voice at all; for she has nothing but her memory left
to tell her that she has one.'
"I burst out a-crying as he said this; for somehow I'd never thought of
anything so dreadful before. 'I've been a little too sudden in telling
you the worst, haven't I?' says the old gentleman kindly; 'but you must
be taught how to make up your mind to meet the full extent of this
misfortune for the sake of the child, whose future comfort and
happiness depend greatly on you.' And then he bid me keep up her
reading and writing, and force her to use her voice as much as I could,
by every means in my power. He told me I should find her grow more and
more unwilling to speak every day, just for the shocking reason that
she couldn't hear a single word she said, or a single tone of her own
voice. He warned me that she was already losing the wish and the want
to speak; and that it would very soon be little short of absolute pain
to her to be made to say even a few words; but he begged and prayed me
not to let my good nature get the better of my prudence on that
account, and not to humor her, however I might feel tempted to do
so--for if I did, she would be dumb as well as deaf most certainly. He
told me my own common sense would show me the reason why; but I suppose
I was too distressed or too stupid to understand things as I ought. He
had to explain it to me in so many words, that if she wasn't constantly
exercised in speaking, she would lose her power of speech altogether,
for want of practice--just the same as if she'd been born dumb. 'So,
once again,' says he, 'mind you make her use her voice. Don't give her
her dinner, unless she asks for it. Treat her severely in that way,
poor little soul, because it's for her own good.'
"It was all very well for _him_ to say that, but it was impossible for
_me_ to do it. The dear child, ma'am, seemed to get used to her
misfortune, except when we tried to make her speak. It was the saddest,
prettiest sight in the world to see how patiently and bravely she bore
with her hard lot from the first. As she grew better in her health, she
kept up her reading and writing quite cleverly with my husband and me;
and all her nice natural cheerful ways come back to her just the same
as ever. I've read or heard somewhere, sir, about God's goodness in
tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. I don't know who said that first;
but it might well have been spoken on account of my own darling little
Mary, in those days. Instead of us being the first to comfort her, it
was she that was first to comfort us. And so she's gone on ever
since--bless her heart! Only treat her kindly, and, in spite of her
misfortune, she's the merriest, happiest little thing--the easiest
pleased and amused, I do believe, that ever lived.
"If we were wrong in not forcing her to speak more than we did, I must
say this much for me and my husband, that we hadn't the heart to make
her miserable and keep on tormenting her from morning to night, when
she was always happy and comfortable if we would only let her alone. We
tried our best for some time to do what the gentleman told us; but it's
so hard--as you've found I dare say, ma'am--not to end by humoring them
you love! I never see the tear in her eye, except when we forced her to
speak to us; and then she always cried, and was fretful and out of
sorts for the whole day. It seemed such a dreadful difficulty and pain
to her to say only two or three words; and the shocking husky moaning
voice that sounded somehow as if it didn't belong to her, never
changed. My husband first gave up worrying her to speak. He practiced
her with her book and writing, but let her have her own will in
everything else; and he teached her all sorts of tricks on the cards,
for amusement, which was a good way of keeping her going with her
reading and her pen pleasantly, by reason, of course, of him and her
being obliged to put down everything they had to say to each other on a
little slate that we bought for her after she got well.
"It was Mary's own notion, if you please, ma'am, to have the slate
always hanging at her side. Poor dear! she thought it quite a splendid
ornament, and was as proud of it as could be. Jemmy, being neat-handed
at such things, did the frame over for her prettily with red morocco,
and got our propertyman to do it all round with a bright golden border.
And then we hung it at her side, with a nice little bit of silk
cord--just as you see it now.
"I held out in making her speak some time after my husband: but at last
I gave in too. I know it was wrong and selfish of me; but I got a fear
that she wouldn't like me as well as she used to do, and would take
more kindly to Jemmy than to me, if I went on. Oh, how happy she was
the first day I wrote down on her slate that I wouldn't worry her about
speaking any more! She jumped up on my knees--being always as nimble as
a squirrel--and kissed me over and over again with all her heart. For
the rest of the day she run about the room, and all over the house,
like a mad thing, and when Jemmy came home at night from performing,
she would get out of bed and romp with him, and ride pickaback on him,
and try and imitate the funny faces she'd seen him make in the ring. I
do believe, sir, that was the first regular happy night we had all had
together since the dreadful time when she met with her accident.
"Long after that, my conscience was uneasy though, at times, about
giving in as I had. At last I got a chance of speaking to another
doctor about little Mary; and he told me that if we had kept her up in
her speaking ever so severely, it would still have been a pain and a
difficulty to her to say her words, to her dying day. He said too, that
he felt sure--though he couldn't explain it to me--that people
afflicted with such stone deafness as hers didn't feel the loss of
speech, because they never had the want to use their speech; and that
they took to making signs, and writing, and such like, quite kindly as
a sort of second nature to them. This comforted me, and settled my mind
a good deal. I hope in God what the gentleman said was true; for if I
was in fault in letting her have her own way and be happy, it's past
mending by this time. For more than two years, ma'am, I've never heard
her say a single word, no more than if she'd been born dumb, and it's
my belief that all the doctors in the world couldn't make her speak
now.
"Perhaps, sir, you might wish to know how she first come to show her
tricks on the cards in the circus. There was no danger in her doing
that, I know--and yet I'd have given almost everything I have, not to
let her be shown about as she is. But I was threatened again, in the
vilest, wickedest way--I hardly know how to tell it, gentlemen, in the
presence of such as you--Jubber, you must know--"
Just as Mrs. Peckover, with very painful hesitation, pronounced the
last words, the hall clock of the Rectory struck two. She heard it, and
stopped instantly.
"Oh, if you please, sir, was that two o'clock?" she asked, starting up
with a look of alarm.
"Yes, Mrs. Peckover," said the rector; "but really, after having been
indebted to you for so much that has deeply interested and affected us,
we can't possibly think of letting you and little Mary leave the
Rectory yet."
"Indeed we must, sir; and many thanks to you for wanting to keep us
longer," said Mrs. Peckover. "What I was going to say isn't much; it's
quite as well you shouldn't hear it--and indeed, indeed, ma'am, we must
go directly. I told this gentleman here, Mr. Blyth, when I come in,
that I'd stolen to you unawares, under pretense of taking little Mary
out for a walk. If we are not back to the two o'clock dinner in the
circus, it's unknown what Jubber may not do. This gentleman will tell
you how infamously he treated the poor child last night--we must go,
sir, for her sake; or else--"
"Stop!" cried Valentine, all his suppressed excitability bursting
bounds in an instant, as he took Mrs. Peckover by the arm, and pressed
her back into her chair. "Stop!--hear me; I must speak, or I shall go
out of my senses! Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Peckover; and don't get up.
All I want to say is this: you must never take that little angel of a
child near Jubber again--no, never! By heavens! if I thought he was
likely to touch her any more, I should go mad, and murder him!--Let me
alone, doctor! I beg Mrs. Joyce's pardon for behaving like this; I'll
never do it again. Be quiet, all of you! I must take the child home
with me--oh, Mrs. Peckover, don't, don't say no! I'll make her as happy
as the day is long. I've no child of my own: I'll watch over her, and
love her, and teach her all my life. I've got a poor, suffering,
bedridden wife at home, who would think such a companion as little Mary
the greatest blessing God could send her. My own dear, patient Lavvie!
Oh, doctor, doctor! think how kind Lavvie would be to that afflicted
little child; and try if you can't make Mrs. Peckover consent. I can't
speak any more--I know I'm wrong to burst out in this way; and I beg
all your pardons for it, I do indeed! Speak to her, doctor--pray speak
to her directly, if you don't want to make me miserable for the rest of
my life!"
With those words, Valentine darted precipitately into the garden, and
made straight for the spot where the little girls were still sitting
together in their shady resting-place among the trees.
CHAPTER VI.
MADONNA GOES TO LONDON.
THE clown's wife had sat very pale and very quiet under the whole
overwhelming torrent of Mr. Blyth's apostrophes, exclamations, and
entreaties. She seemed quite unable to speak, after he was fairly gone;
and only looked round in a bewildered manner at the rector, with fear
as well as amazement expressed vividly in her hearty, healthy face.
"Pray compose yourself, Mrs. Peckover," said Doctor Joyce; "and kindly
give me your best attention to what I am about to say. Let me beg you,
in the first place, to excuse Mr. Blyth's odd behavior, which I see has
startled and astonished you. But, however wildly he may talk, I assure
you he means honorably and truthfully in all that he says. You will
understand this better if you will let me temperately explain to you
the proposal, which he has just made so abruptly and confusedly in his
own words."
"Proposal, sir!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover faintly, looking more
frightened than ever--"Proposal! Oh, sir! you don't mean to say that
you're going to ask me to part from little Mary?"
"I will ask you to do nothing that your own good sense and kind heart
may not approve," answered the rector. "In plain terms then, and not to
waste time by useless words of preface, my friend, Mr. Blyth, feels
such admiration for your little Mary, and such a desire to help her, as
far as may be, in her great misfortune, that he is willing and eager to
make her future prospects in life his own peculiar care, by adopting
her as his daughter. This offer, though coming, as I am aware, from a
perfect stranger, can hardly astonish you, I think, if you reflect on
the unusually strong claims which the child has to the compassion and
kindness of all her fellow-creatures. Other strangers, as you have told
us, have shown the deepest interest in her on many occasions. It is not
therefore at all wonderful that a gentleman, whose Christian integrity
of motive I have had opportunities of testing during a friendship of
nearly twenty years, should prove the sincerity of his sympathy for the
poor child, by such a proposal as I have now communicated to you."
"Don't ask me to say yes to it, sir!" pleaded Mrs. Peckover, with tears
in her eyes. "Don't ask me to do that! Anything else to prove my
gratitude for your kindness to us; but how can I part from my own
little Mary? You can't have the heart to ask it of me!"
"I have the heart, Mrs. Peckover, to feel deeply for your distress at
the idea of parting from the child; but, for her sake, I must again ask
you to control your feelings. And, more than that, I must appeal to you
by your love to her, to grant a fair hearing to the petition which I
now make on Mr. Blyth's behalf."
"I would, indeed, if I could, sir,--but it's just because I love her
so, that I can't! Besides, as you yourself said, he's a perfect
stranger."
"I readily admit the force of that objection on your part, Mrs.
Peckover; but let me remind you, that I vouch for the uprightness of
his character, and his fitness to be trusted with the child, after
twenty years' experience of him. You may answer to that, that I am a
stranger, too; and I can only ask you, in return, frankly to accept my
character and position as the best proofs I can offer you that I am not
unworthy of your confidence. If you placed little Mary for instruction
(as you well might) in an asylum for the deaf and dumb, you would be
obliged to put implicit trust in the authorities of that asylum, on
much the same grounds as those I now advance to justify you in putting
trust in me."
"Oh, sir! don't think--pray don't think I am unwilling to trust you--so
kind and good as you have been to us to-day--and a clergyman too--I
should be ashamed of myself, if I could doubt--"
"Let me tell you, plainly and candidly, what advantages to the child
Mr. Blyth's proposal holds out. He has no family of his own, and his
wife is, as he has hinted to you, an invalid for life. If you could
only see the gentleness and sweet patience with which she bears her
affliction, you would acknowledge that little Mary could appeal for an
affectionate welcome to no kinder heart than Mrs. Blyth's. I assure you
most seriously, that the only danger I fear for the child in my
friend's house, is that she would be spoilt by excessive indulgence.
Though by no means a rich man, Mr. Blyth is in an independent position,
and can offer her all the comforts of life. In one word, the home to
which he is ready to take her, is a home of love and happiness and
security, in the best and purest meaning of those words."
"Don't say any more, sir! Don't break my heart by making me part with
her!"
"You will live, Mrs. Peckover, to thank me for trying your fortitude as
I try it now. Hear me a little longer, while I tell you what terms Mr.
Blyth proposes. He is not only willing but anxious--if you give the
child into his charge--that you should have access to her whenever you
like. He will leave his address in London with you. He desires, from
motives alike honorable to you and to himself, to defray your traveling
expenses whenever you wish to see the child. He will always acknowledge
your prior right to her affection and her duty. He will offer her every
facility in his power for constantly corresponding with you; and if the
life she leads in his house be, even in the slightest respect,
distasteful to her, he pledges himself to give her up to you again--if
you and she desire it--at any sacrifice of his own wishes and his own
feelings. These are the terms he proposes, Mrs. Peckover, and I can
most solemnly assure you on my honor as a clergyman and a gentleman,
that he will hold sacred the strict performance of all and each of
these conditions, exactly as I have stated them."
"I ought to let her go, sir--I know I ought to show how grateful I am
for Mr. Blyth's generosity by letting her go--but how can I, after all
the long time she's been like my own child to me? Oh, ma'am, say a word
for me!--I seem so selfish for not giving her up--say a word for me!"
"Will you let me say a word for little Mary, instead?" rejoined Mrs.
Joyce. "Will you let me remind you that Mr. Blyth's proposal offers her
a secure protection against that inhuman wretch who has ill-used her
already, and who may often ill-use her again, in spite of everything
you can do to prevent him. Pray think of that, Mrs. Peckover--pray do!"
Poor Mrs. Peckover showed that she thought of it bitterly enough, by a
fresh burst of tears.
The rector poured out a glass of water, and gave it to her. "Do not
think us inconsiderate or unfeeling," he said, "in pressing Mr. Blyth's
offer on you so perseveringly. Only reflect on Mary's position, if she
remains in the circus as she grows up! Would all your watchful kindness
be sufficient to shield her against dangers to which I hardly dare
allude?--against wickedness which would take advantage of her
defenselessness, her innocence, and even her misfortune? Consider all
that Mr. Blyth's proposal promises for her future life; for the sacred
preservation of her purity of heart and mind. Look forward to the day
when little Mary will have gown up to be a young woman; and I will
answer, Mrs. Peckover, for your doing full justice to the importance of
my friend's offer."
"I know it's all true, sir; I know I'm an ungrateful, selfish
wretch--but only give me a little time to think; a little time longer
to be with the poor darling that I love like my own child!"
Doctor Joyce was just drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Peckover before
he answered, when the door opened, and the respectable Vance softly
entered the room.
"What do you want here?" said the rector, a little irritably. "Didn't I
tell you not to come in again till I rang for you?'
"I beg your pardon, sir," answered Vance, casting rather a malicious
look at the clown's wife as he closed the door behind him--"but there's
a person waiting in the hall, who says he comes on important business,
and must see you directly."
"Who is he? What's his name?"
"He says his name is Jubber, if you please, sir."
Mrs. Peckover started from her chair with a scream. "Don't--pray, for
mercy's sake, sir, don't let him into the garden where Mary is!" she
gasped, clutching Doctor Joyce by the arm in the extremity of her
terror. "He's found us out, and come here in one of his dreadful
passions! He cares for nothing and for nobody, sir: he's bad enough to
ill-treat her even before you. What am I to do? Oh, good gracious
heavens! what am I to do?"
"Leave everything to me, and sit down again," said the rector kindly.
Then, turning to Vance, he added:--"Show Mr. Jubber into the
cloak-room, and say I will be with him directly."
"Now, Mrs. Peckover," continued Doctor Joyce, in the most perfectly
composed manner, "before I see this man (whose business I can guess at)
I have three important questions to ask of you. In the first place,
were you not a witness, last night, of his cruel ill-usage of that poor
child? (Mr. Blyth told me of it.) The fellow actually beat her, did he
not?"
"Oh, indeed he did, sir!--beat her most cruelly with a cane."
"And you saw it all yourself?"
"I did, sir. He'd have used her worse, if I hadn't been by to prevent
him."
"Very well. Now tell me if you or your husband have signed any
agreement--any papers, I mean, giving this man a right to claim the
child as one of his performers?"
_"Me_ sign an agreement, sir! I never did such a thing in all my life.
Jubber would think himself insulted, if you only talked of his signing
an agreement with such as me or Jemmy."
"Better and better. Now, my third question refers to little Mary
herself. I will undertake to put it out of this blackguard's power ever
to lay a finger on her again--but I can only do so on one condition,
which it rests entirely with you to grant."
"I'll do anything to save her, sir; I will indeed."
"The condition is that you consent to Mr. Blyth's proposal; for I can
only ensure the child's safety on those terms."
"Then, sir, I consent to it," said Mrs. Peckover, speaking with a
sudden firmness of tone and manner which almost startled Mrs. Joyce,
who stood by listening anxiously. "I consent to it; for I should be the
vilest wretch in the world, if I could say 'no' at such a time as this.
I will trust my precious darling treasure to you, sir, and to Mr.
Blyth; from this moment. God bless _her,_ and comfort _me!_ for I want
comfort badly enough. Oh, Mary! Mary! my own little Mary! to think of
you and me ever being parted like this!" The poor woman turned towards
the garden as she pronounced those words; all her fortitude forsook her
in an instant; and she sank back in her chair, sobbing bitterly.
"Take her out into the shrubbery where the children are, as soon as she
recovers a little," whispered the rector to his wife, as he opened the
dining-room door.
Though Mr. Jubber presented, to all appearance, the most scoundrelly
aspect that humanity can assume, when he was clothed in his evening
uniform, and illuminated by his own circus lamplight, he nevertheless
reached an infinitely loftier climax of blackguard perfection when he
was arrayed in his private costume, and was submitted to the tremendous
ordeal of pure daylight. The most monstrous ape that could be picked
from the cages of the Zoological Gardens would have gained by
comparison with him as he now appeared, standing in the Rectory
cloak-room, with his debauched bloodshot eyes staring grimly
contemptuous all about him, with his yellow flabby throat exposed by a
turn-down collar and a light blue neck-tie, with the rouge still
smeared over his gross unhealthy cheeks, with his mangy shirt-front
bespattered with bad embroidery and false jewelry that had not even the
politic decency to keep itself clean. He had his hat on, and was
sulkily running his dirty fingers through the greasy black ringlets
that flowed over his coat-collar, when Doctor Joyce entered the
cloak-room.
"You wished to speak with me?" said the rector, not sitting down
himself, and not asking Mr. Jubber to sit down.
"Oh! you're Doctor Joyce?" said the fellow, assuming his most insolent
familiarity of manner directly.
"That is my name," said Dr. Joyce very quietly. "Will you have the
goodness to state your business with me immediately, and in the fewest
possible words?"
"Hullo! You take that tone with me, do you?" said Jubber, setting his
arms akimbo, and tapping his foot fiercely on the floor; "you're trying
to come Tommy Grand over me already, are you? Very good! I'm the man to
give you change in your own coin--so here goes! What do you mean by
enticing away my Mysterious Foundling? What do you mean by this private
swindle of talent that belongs to my circus?"
"You had better proceed a little," said the rector, more quietly than
before. "Thus far I understand nothing whatever, except that you wish
to behave offensively to me; which, in a person of your appearance, is,
I assure you, of not the slightest consequence. You had much better
save time by stating what you have to say in plain words."
"You want plain words--eh?" cried Jubber, losing his temper. "Then, by
God, you shall have them, and plain enough!"
"Stop a minute," said Doctor Joyce. "If you use oaths in my presence
again, I shall ring for my servant, and order him to show you out of
the house."
"You will?"
"I will, most certainly."
There was a moment's pause, and the blackguard and the gentleman looked
one another straight in the face. It was the old, invariable struggle,
between the quiet firmness of good breeding, and the savage obstinacy
of bad; and it ended in the old, invariable way. The blackguard
flinched first.
"If your servant lays a finger on me, I'll thrash him within an inch of
his life," said Jubber, looking towards the door, and scowling as he
looked. "But that's not the point, just now--the point is, that I
charge you with getting my deaf and dumb girl into your house, to
perform before you on the sly. If you're too virtuous to come to my
circus--and better than you have been there--you ought to have paid the
proper price for a private performance. What do you mean by treating a
public servant, like me, with your infernal aristocratic looks, as if I
was dirt under your feet, after such shabby doings as you've been
guilty of--eh?"
"May I ask how you know that the child you refer to has been at my
house to-day?" asked Doctor Joyce, without taking the slightest notice
of Mr. Jubber's indignation.
"One of my people saw that swindling hypocrite of a Peckover taking her
in, and told me of it when I missed them at dinner. There! that's good
evidence, I rather think! Deny it if you can."
"I have not the slightest intention of denying it. The child is now in
my house."
"And has gone through all her performances, of course? Ah! shabby!
shabby! I should be ashamed of myself, if _I'd_ tried to do a man out
of his rights like that."
"I am most unaffectedly rejoiced to hear that you are capable, under
any circumstances, of being ashamed of yourself at all," rejoined the
rector. "The child, however, has gone through no performances here, not
having been sent for with any such purpose as you suppose. But, as you
said just now, that's not the point. Pray, why did you speak of the
little girl, a moment ago, as _your_ child?"
"Because she's one of my performers, of course. But, come! I've had
enough of this; I can't stop talking here all day; I want the child--so
just deliver her up at once, will you?--and turn out Peck as soon as
you like after. I'll cure them both of ever doing this sort of thing
again! I'll make them stick tight to the circus for the future! I'll
show them----"
"You would be employing your time much more usefully," said Doctor
Joyce, "if you occupied it in altering the bills of your performance,
so as to inform the public that the deaf and dumb child will not appear
before them again."
"Not appear again?--not appear to-night in my circus? Why, hang me! if
I don't think you're trying to be funny all of a sudden! Alter my
bills--eh? Not bad! Upon my soul, not at all bad for a parson! Give us
another joke, sir; I'm all attention." And Mr. Jubber put his hand to
his ear, grinning in a perfect fury of sarcasm.
"I am quite in earnest," said the rector. "A friend of mine has adopted
the child, and will take her home with him tomorrow morning. Mrs.
Peckover (the only person who has any right to exercise control over
her) has consented to this arrangement. If your business here was to
take the child back to your circus, it is right to inform you that she
will not leave my house till she goes to London to-morrow with my
friend."
"And you think I'm the sort of man to stand this?--and give up the
child?--and alter the bills?--and lose money?--and be as mild as
mother's milk all the time? Oh! yes, of course! I'm so devilish fond of
you and your friend! You're such nice men, you can make me do anything!
Damn all this jabber and nonsense!" roared the ruffian, passing
suddenly from insolence to fury, and striking his fist on the table.
"Give me the child at once, do you hear? Give her up, I say. I won't
leave the house till I've got her!"
Just as Mr. Jubber swore for the second time, Doctor Joyce rang the
bell. "I told you what I should do, if you used oaths in my presence
again," said the rector.
"And _I_ told _you_ I'd kill the servant, if he laid a finger on me,"
said Jubber, knocking his hat firmly on his head, and tucking up his
cuffs.
Vance appeared at the door, much less pompous than usual and displaying
an interesting paleness of complexion. Jubber spat into the palm of
each of his hands, and clenched his fists.
"Have you done dinner down stairs?" asked Doctor Joyce, reddening a
little, but still very quiet.
"Yes, sir," answered Vance, in a remarkably conciliating voice.
"Tell James to go to the constable, and say I want him; and let the
gardener wait with you outside there in the hall."
"Now," said the rector, shutting the door again after issuing these
orders, and placing himself once more face to face with Mr. Jubber.
"Now I have a last word or two to say, which I recommend you to hear
quietly. In the first place, you have no right over the child whatever;
for I happen to know that you are without a signed agreement promising
you her services. (You had better hear me out for your own sake.) You
have no legal right, I say, to control the child in any manner. She is
a perfectly free agent, so far as you are concerned.--Yes! yes! you
deny it, of course! I have only to say that, if you attempt to back
that denial by still asserting your claim to her, and making a
disturbance in my house, as sure as you stand there, I'll ruin you in
Rubbleford and in all the country round. (It's no use laughing--I can
do it!) You beat the child in the vilest manner last night. I am a
magistrate; and I have my prosecutor and my witness of the assault
ready whenever I choose to call them. I can fine or imprison you, which
I please. You know the public; you know what they think of people who
ill-use helpless children. If you appeared in that character before me,
the Rubbleford paper would report it; and, so far as the interests of
your circus are concerned, you would be a ruined man in this part of
the country--you would, you know it! Now I will spare you this--not
from any tenderness towards _you_--on condition that you take yourself
off quietly, and never let us hear from you again. I strongly advise
you to go at once; for if you wait till the constable comes, I will not
answer for it that my sense of duty may not force me into giving you
into custody." With which words Doctor Joyce threw open the door, and
pointed to the hall.
Throughout the delivery of this speech, violent indignation,
ungovernable surprise, abject terror, and impotent rage ravaged by
turns the breast of Mr. Jubber. He stamped about the room, and uttered
fragments of oaths, but did not otherwise interrupt Dr. Joyce, while
that gentleman was speaking to him. When the rector had done, the
fellow had his insolent answer ready directly. To do him justice, he
was consistent, if he was nothing else--he was bully and blackguard to
the very last.
"Magistrate or parson," he cried, snapping his fingers, "I don't care a
damn for you in either capacity. You keep the child here at your peril!
I'll go to the first lawyer in Rubbleford, and bring an action against
you. I'll show you a little legal law! _You_ ruin me indeed! I can
prove that I only thrashed the little toad, the nasty deaf idiot,
because she deserved it. I'll be even with you! I'll have the child
back wherever you take her to. I'll show you a little legal law! (Here
he stepped to the hall door.) I'll be even with you, damme! I'll charge
you with setting on your menial servants to assault me. (Here he looked
fiercely at the gardener, a freckled Scotch giant of six feet three,
and instantly descended five steps.) Lay a finger on me, if you dare!
I'm going straight from this house to the lawyer's. I'm a free
Englishman, and I'll have my rights and my legal law! I'll bring my
action! I'll ruin you! I'll strip your gown off your back I'll stop
your mouth in your own pulpit!" Here he strutted into the front garden;
his words grew indistinct, and his gross voice became gradually less
and less audible. The coachman at the outer gate saw the last of him,
and reported that he made his exit striking viciously at the flowers
with his cane, and swearing that he would ruin the rector with "legal
law."
After leaving certain directions with his servants, in the very
improbable event of Mr. Jubber's return, Doctor Joyce repaired
immediately to his dining-room. No one was there, so he went on into
the garden.
Here he found the family and the visitors all assembled together; but a
great change had passed over the whole party during his absence. Mr.
Blyth, on being informed of the result of the rector's conversation
with Mrs. Peckover, acted with his usual impetuosity and utter want of
discretion; writing down delightedly on little Mary's slate, without
the slightest previous preparation or coaxing, that she was to go home
with him to-morrow, and be as happy as the day was long, all the rest
of her life. The result of this incautious method of proceeding was
that the child became excessively frightened, and ran away from
everybody to take refuge with Mrs. Peckover. She was still crying, and
holding tight by the good woman's gown with both hands; and Valentine
was still loudly declaring to everybody that he loved her all the
better for showing such faithful affection to her earliest and best
friend, when the rector joined the party under the coolly-murmuring
trees.
Doctor Joyce spoke but briefly of his interview with Mr. Jubber,
concealing much that had passed at it, and making very light of the
threats which the fellow had uttered on his departure. Mrs. Peckover,
whose self-possession seemed in imminent danger of being overthrown by
little Mary's mute demonstrations of affection, listened anxiously to
every word the Doctor uttered; and, as soon as he had done, said that
she must go back to the circus directly, and tell her husband the truth
about all that had occurred, as a necessary set-off against the
slanders that were sure to be spoken against her by Mr. Jubber.
"Oh, never mind me, ma'am!" she said, in answer to the apprehensions
expressed by Mrs. Joyce about her reception when she got to the circus.
"The dear child's safe; and that's all I care about. I'm big enough and
strong enough to take my own part; and Jemmy, he's always by to help me
when I can't. May I come back, if you please, sir, this evening; and
say--and say?--"
She would have added, "and say good-bye;" but the thoughts which now
gathered round that one word, made it too hard to utter. She silently
curtseyed her thanks for the warm invitation that was given to her to
return; stooped down to the child; and, kissing her, wrote on the
slate, "I shall be back, dear, in the evening, at seven o'clock"--then
disengaged the little hands that still held fast by her gown, and
hurried from the garden, without once venturing to look behind her as
she crossed the sunny lawn.
Mrs. Joyce, and the young ladies, and the rector, all tried their best
to console little Mary; and all failed. She resolutely, though very
gently, resisted them; walking away into corners by herself, and
looking constantly at her slate, as if she could only find comfort in
reading the few words which Mrs. Peckover had written on it. At last,
Mr. Blyth took her up on his knee. She struggled to get away, for a
moment--then looked intently in his face; and, sighing very mournfully,
laid her head down on his shoulder. There was a world of promise for
the future success of Valentine's affectionate project in that simple
action, and in the preference which it showed.
The day wore on quietly--evening came--seven o'clock struck--then
half-past--then eight--and Mrs. Peckover never appeared. Doctor Joyce
grew uneasy, and sent Vance to the circus to get some news of her.
It was again Mr. Blyth--and Mr. Blyth only--who succeeded in partially
quieting little Mary under the heavy disappointment of not seeing Mrs.
Peckover at the appointed time. The child had been restless at first,
and had wanted to go to the circus. Finding that they tenderly, but
firmly, detained her at the Rectory, she wept bitterly--wept so long,
that at last she fairly cried herself asleep in Valentine's arms. He
sat anxiously supporting her with a patience that nothing could tire.
The sunset rays, which he had at first carefully kept from falling on
her face, vanished from the horizon; the quiet luster of twilight
overspread the sky--and still he refused to let her be taken from him;
and said he would sit as he was all through the night rather than let
her be disturbed.
Vance came back, and brought word that Mrs. Peckover would follow him
in half an hour. They had given her some work to do at the circus,
which she was obliged to finish before she could return to the Rectory.
Having delivered this message, Vance next produced a handbill, which he
said was being widely circulated all over Rubbleford; and which proved
to be the composition of Mr. Jubber himself. That ingenious ruffian,
having doubtless discovered that "legal law" was powerless to help him
to his revenge, and that it would be his wisest proceeding to keep
clear of Doctor Joyce in the rectory's magisterial capacity, was now
artfully attempting to turn the loss of the child to his own profit, by
dint of prompt lying in his favorite large type, sprinkled with red
letters. He informed the public, through the medium of his hand-bills,
that the father of the Mysterious Foundling had been "most
providentially" discovered, and that he (Mr. Jubber) had given the
child up immediately, without a thought of what he might personally
suffer, in pocket as well as in mind, by his generosity. After this, he
appealed confidently to the sympathy of people of every degree, and of
"fond parents" especially, to compensate him by flocking in crowds to
the circus; adding, that if additional stimulus were wanting to urge
the public into "rallying round the Ring," he was prepared to
administer it forthwith, in the shape of the smallest dwarf in the
world, for whose services he was then in treaty, and whose first
appearance before a Rubbleford audience would certainly take place in
the course of a few days.
Such was Mr. Jubber's ingenious contrivance for turning to good
pecuniary account the ignominious defeat which he had suffered at the
hands of Dr. Joyce.
After much patient reasoning and many earnest expostulations, Mrs.
Joyce at last succeeded in persuading Mr. Blyth that he might carry
little Mary upstairs to her bed, without any danger of awakening her.
The moonbeams were streaming through the windows over the broad,
old-fashioned landings of the rectory stair-case, and bathed the
child's sleeping face in their lovely light, as Valentine carefully
bore her in his own arms to her bedroom. "Oh!" he whispered to himself
as he paused for an instant where the moon shone clearest on the
landing; and looked down on her--"Oh! if my poor Lavvie could only see
little Mary now."
They laid her, still asleep, on the bed, and covered her over lightly
with a shawl--then went down stairs again to wait for Mrs. Peckover.
The clown's wife came in half an hour, as she had promised. They saw
sorrow and weariness in her face, as they looked at her. Besides a
bundle with the child's few clothes in it, she brought the hair
bracelet and the pocket-handkerchief which had been found on little
Mary's mother.
"Wherever the child goes," she said, "these two things must go with
her." She addressed Mr. Blyth as she spoke, and gave the hair bracelet
and the handkerchief into his own hands.
It seemed rather a relief than a disappointment to Mrs. Peckover to
hear that the child was asleep above stairs. All pain of parting would
now be spared, on one side at least. She went up to look at her on her
bed, and kissed her--but so lightly that little Mary's sleep was
undisturbed by that farewell token of tenderness and love.
"Tell her to write to me, sir," said poor Mrs. Peckover, holding
Valentine's hand fast, and looking wistfully in his face through her
gathering tears. "I shall prize my first letter from her so much, if
it's only a couple of lines. God bless you, sir; and good-bye. It ought
to be a comfort to me, and it is, to know that you will be kind to
her--I hope I shall get up to London some day, and see her myself. But
don't forget the letter, sir: I shan't fret so much after her when once
I've got that!"
She went away, sadly murmuring these last words many times over, while
Valentine was trying to cheer and reassure her, as they walked together
to the outer gate. Doctor Joyce accompanied them down the front-garden
path, and exacted from her a promise to return often to the Rectory,
while the circus was at Rubbleford; saying also that he and his family
desired her to look on them always as her fast and firm friends in any
emergency. Valentine entreated her, over and over again, to remember
the terms of their agreement, and to come and judge for herself of the
child's happiness in her new home. She only answered "Don't forget the
letter, sir!" And so they parted.
Early the next morning, Mr. Blyth and little Mary left the Rectory, and
started for London by the first coach.
CHAPTER VII.
MADONNA IN HER NEW HOME.
THE result of Mr. Blyth's Adventure in the traveling Circus, and of the
events which followed it, was that little Mary at once became a member
of the painter's family, and grew up happily, in her new home, into the
young lady who was called "Madonna" by Valentine, by his wife, and by
all intimate friends who were in the habit of frequenting the house.
Mr. Blyth's first proceeding, after he had brought the little girl home
with him, was to take her to the most eminent aural surgeon of the day.
He did this, not in the hope of any curative result following the
medical examination, but as a first duty which he thought he owed to
her, now that she was under his sole charge. The surgeon was deeply
interested in the case; but, after giving it the most careful
attention, he declared that it was hopeless. Her sense of hearing, he
said, was entirely gone; but her faculty of speech, although it had
been totally disused (as Mrs. Peckover had stated) for more than two
years past, might, he thought, be imperfectly regained, at some future
time, if a tedious, painful, and uncertain process of education were
resorted to, under the direction of an experienced teacher of the deaf
and dumb. The child, however, had such a horror of this resource being
tried, when it was communicated to her, that Mr. Blyth instinctively
followed Mrs. Peckover's example, and consulted the little creature's
feelings, by allowing her in this particular--and indeed in most
others--to remain perfectly happy and contented in her own way.
The first influence which reconciled her almost immediately to her new
life, was the influence of Mrs. Blyth. The perfect gentleness and
patience with which the painter's wife bore her incurable malady,
seemed to impress the child in a very remarkable manner from the first.
The sight of that frail, wasted life, which they told her, by writing,
had been shut up so long in the same room, and had been condemned to
the same weary inaction for so many years past, struck at once to
Mary's heart and filled her with one of those new and mysterious
sensations which mark epochs in the growth of a child's moral nature.
Nor did these first impressions ever alter. When years had passed away,
and when Mary, being "little" Mary no longer, possessed those marked
characteristics of feature and expression which gained for her the name
of "Madonna," she still preserved all her child's feeling for the
painter's wife. However playful her manner might often be with
Valentine, it invariably changed when she was in Mrs. Blyth's presence;
always displaying, at such times, the same anxious tenderness, the same
artless admiration, and the same watchful and loving sympathy. There
was something secret and superstitious in the girl's fondness for Mrs.
Blyth. She appeared unwilling to let others know what this affection
really was in all its depth and fullness: it seemed to be intuitively
preserved by her in the most sacred privacy of her own heart, as if the
feeling had been part of her religion, or rather as if it had been a
religion in itself.
Her love for her new mother, which testified itself thus strongly and
sincerely, was returned by that mother with equal fervor. From the day
when little Mary first appeared at her bedside, Mrs. Blyth felt, to use
her own expression, as if a new strength had been given her to enjoy
her new happiness. Brighter hopes, better health, calmer resignation,
and purer peace seemed to follow the child's footsteps and be always
inherent in her very presence, as she moved to and fro in the sick
room. All the little difficulties of communicating with her and
teaching her, which her misfortune rendered inevitable, and which might
sometime have been felt as tedious by others, were so many distinct
sources of happiness, so many exquisite occupations of once-weary time
to Mrs. Blyth. All the friends of the family declared that the child
had succeeded where doctors, and medicines, and luxuries, and the
sufferer's own courageous resignation had hitherto failed--for she had
succeeded in endowing Mrs. Blyth with a new life. And they were right.
A fresh object for the affections of the heart and the thoughts of the
mind, is a fresh life for every feeling and thinking human being, in
sickness even as well as in health.
In this sense, indeed, the child brought fresh life with her to all who
lived in her new home--to the servants, as well as to the master and
mistress. The cloud had rarely found its way into that happy dwelling
in former days: now the sunshine seemed fixed there for ever. No more
beautiful and touching proof of what the heroism of patient
dispositions and loving hearts can do towards guiding human existence,
unconquered and unsullied, through its hardest trials, could be found
anywhere than was presented by the aspect of the painter's household.
Here were two chief members of one little family circle, afflicted by
such incurable bodily calamity as it falls to the lot of but few human
beings to suffer--yet here were no sighs, no tears, no vain repinings
with each new morning, no gloomy thoughts to set woe and terror
watching by the pillow at night. In this homely sphere, life, even in
its frailest aspects, was still greater than its greatest trials;
strong to conquer by virtue of its own innocence and purity, its simple
unworldly aspirations, its self-sacrificing devotion to the happiness
and the anxieties of others.
As the course of her education proceeded, many striking peculiarities
became developed in Madonna's disposition, which seemed to be all more
or less produced by the necessary influence of her affliction on the
formation of her character. The social isolation to which that
affliction condemned her, the solitude of thought and feeling into
which it forced her, tended from an early period to make her mind
remarkably self-reliant, for so young a girl. Her first impression of
strangers seemed invariably to decide her opinion of them at once and
for ever. She liked or disliked people heartily; estimating them
apparently from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or
personal appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain
to attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her--sometimes,
people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors
to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took a
violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure or
uneasiness in the society of others with the most diverting
candor--showing the extremest anxiety to conciliate and attract those
whom she liked; running away and hiding herself like a child, from
those whom she disliked. There were some unhappy people, in this latter
class, whom no persuasion could ever induce her to see a second time.
She could never give any satisfactory account of how she proceeded in
forming her opinions of others. The only visible means of arriving at
them, which her deafness and dumbness permitted her to use, consisted
simply in examination of a stranger's manner, expression, and play of
features at a first interview. This process, however, seemed always
amply sufficient for her; and in more than one instance events proved
that her judgment had not been misled by it. Her affliction had tended,
indeed, to sharpen her faculties of observation and her powers of
analysis to such a remarkable degree, that she often guessed the
general tenor of a conversation quite correctly, merely by watching the
minute varieties of expression and gesture in the persons
speaking--fixing her attention always with especial intentness on the
changeful and rapid motions of their lips.
Exiled alike from the worlds of sound and speech, the poor girl's
enjoyment of all that she could still gain of happiness, by means of
the seeing sense that was left her, was hardly conceivable to her
speaking and hearing fellow-creatures. All beautiful sights, and
particularly the exquisite combinations that Nature presents, filled
her with an artless rapture, which it affected the most unimpressible
people to witness. Trees were beyond all other objects the greatest
luxuries that her eyes could enjoy. She would sit for hours, on fresh
summer evenings, watching the mere waving of the leaves; her face
flushed, her whole nervous organization trembling with the sensations
of deep and perfect happiness which that simple sight imparted to her.
All the riches and honors which this world can afford, would not have
added to her existence a tithe of that pleasure which Valentine easily
conferred on her, by teaching her to draw; he might almost be said to
have given her a new sense in exchange for the senses that she had
lost. She used to dance about the room with the reckless ecstasy of a
child, in her ungovernable delight at the prospect of a sketching
expedition with Mr. Blyth in the Hampstead fields.
At a very early date of her sojourn with Valentine, it was discovered
that her total deafness did not entirely exclude her from every effect
of sound. She was acutely sensitive to the influence of
percussion--that is to say (if so vague and contradictory an expression
may be allowed), she could, under certain conditions, _feel_ the sounds
that she could not hear. For example, if Mr. Blyth wished to bring her
to his side when they were together in the painting-room, and when she
happened neither to be looking at him nor to be within reach of a touch
he used to rub his foot, or the end of his mahl-stick gently against
the floor. The slight concussion so produced, reached her nerves
instantly; provided always that some part of her body touched the floor
on which such experiments were tried.
As a means of extending her facilities of social communication, she was
instructed in the deaf and dumb alphabet by Valentine's direction; he
and his wife, of course, learning it also; and many of their intimate
friends, who were often in the house, following their example for
Madonna's sake. Oddly enough, however, she frequently preferred to
express herself, or to be addressed by others, according to the
clumsier and slower system of signs and writing, to which she had been
accustomed from childhood. She carefully preserved her little slate,
with its ornamented frame, and kept it hanging at her side, just as she
wore it on the morning of her visit to the Rectory-house at Rubbleford.
In one exceptional case, and one only, did her misfortune appear to
have the power of affecting her tranquillity seriously. Whenever, by
any accident, she happened to be left in the dark, she was overcome by
the most violent terror. It was found, even when others were with her,
that she still lost her self-possession at such times. Her own
explanation of her feelings on these occasions, suggested the simplest
of reasons to account for this weakness in her character. "Remember,"
she wrote on her slate, when a new servant was curious to know why she
always slept with a light in her room--"Remember that I am deaf _and
blind too_ in the darkness. You, who can hear, have a sense to serve
you instead of sight, in the dark--your ears are of use to you then, as
your eyes are in the light. _I_ hear nothing, and see nothing--I lose
all my senses together in the dark."
It was only by rare accidents, which there was no providing against,
that she was ever terrified in this way, after her peculiarity had
first disclosed itself. In small things as well as in great, Valentine
never forgot that her happiness was his own especial care. He was more
nervously watchful over her than anyone else in the house--for she cost
him those secret anxieties which make the objects of our love doubly
precious to us. In all the years that she had lived under his roof, he
had never conquered his morbid dread that Madonna might be one day
traced and discovered by her father, or by relatives, who might have a
legal claim to her. Under this apprehension he had written to Doctor
Joyce and Mrs. Peckover a day or two after the child's first entry
under his roof, pledging both the persons whom he addressed to the
strictest secrecy in all that related to Madonna and to the
circumstances which had made her his adopted child. As for the hair
bracelet, if his conscience had allowed him, he would have destroyed it
immediately; but feeling that this would be an inexcusable breach of
trust, he was fain to be content with locking it up, as well as the
pocket-handkerchief, in an old bureau in his painting-room, the key of
which he always kept attached to his own watch chain.
Not one of his London friends ever knew how he first met with Madonna.
He boldly baffled all forms of inquiry by requesting that they would
consider her history before she came into his house as a perfect blank,
and by simply presenting her to them as his adopted child. This method
of silencing troublesome curiosity succeeded certainly to admiration;
but at the expense of Mr. Blyth's own moral character. Persons who knew
little or nothing of his real disposition and his early life, all shook
their heads, and laughed in secret; asserting that the mystery was
plain enough to the most ordinary capacity, and that the young lady
could be nothing more nor less than a natural child of his own.
Mrs. Blyth was far more indignant at this report than her husband, when
in due time it reached the painter's house. Valentine rather approved
of the scandal than not, because it was likely to lead inquisitive
people in the wrong direction. He might have been now perfectly easy
about the preservation of his secret, but for the distrust which still
clung to him, in spite of himself, on the subject of Mrs. Peckover's
discretion. He never wearied of warning that excellent woman to be
careful in keeping the important secret, every time she came to London
to see Madonna. Whether she only paid them a visit for the day, and
then went away again; or whether she spent her Christmas with them,
Valentine's greeting always ended nervously with the same distrustful
question:--"Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Peckover, but are you quite sure
you have kept what you know about little Mary and her mother, and dates
and places and all that, properly hidden from prying people, since you
were here last?" At which point Mrs. Peckover generally answered by
repeating, always with the same sarcastic emphasis:--"Properly hidden,
did you say, sir? Of course I keep what I know properly hidden, for of
course I can hold my tongue. In my time, sir, it used always to take
two parties to play at a game of Hide and Seek. Who in the world is
seeking after little Mary, I should like to know?"
Perhaps Mrs. Peckover's view of the case was the right one; or,
perhaps, the extraordinary discretion observed by the persons who were
in the secret of Madonna's history, prevented any disclosure of the
girl's origin from reaching her father or friends--presuming them to be
still alive and anxiously looking for her. But, at any rate, this much
at least is certain:--Nobody appeared to assert a claim to Valentine's
adopted child, from the time when he took her home with him as his
daughter, to the time when the reader first made his acquaintance, many
pages back, in the congenial sphere of his own painting-room.*
* See note at the end of the book.
CHAPTER VIII.
MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS.
IT is now some time since we left Mr. Blyth and Madonna in the studio.
The first was engaged, it may be remembered, in the process of brushing
up Bacchanalian Nymphs in the foreground of a Classical landscape. The
second was modestly occupied in making a copy of the head of the Venus
de' Medici.
The clock strikes one--and a furious ring is heard at the house-bell.
"There he is!" cries Mr. Blyth to himself. "There's Zack! I know his
ring among a thousand; it's worse even than the postman's; it's like an
alarm of fire!"
Here Valentine drums gently with his mahl-stick on the floor. Madonna
looks towards him directly; he waves his hand round and round rapidly
above his head. This is the sign which means "Zack." The girl smiles
brightly, and blushes as she sees it. Zack is apparently one of her
special favorites.
While the young gentleman is being admitted at the garden gate, there
is a leisure moment to explain how he became acquainted with Mr. Blyth.
Valentine's father, and Mrs. Thorpe's father (the identical Mr.
Goodworth who figures at the beginning of this narrative as one of the
actors in the Sunday Drama at Baregrove Square), had been intimate
associates of the drowsy-story-telling and copious-port-drinking old
school. The friendly intercourse between these gentlemen spread,
naturally enough, to the sons and daughters who formed their respective
families. From the time of Mr. Thorpe's marriage to Miss Goodworth,
however, the connection between the junior Goodworths and Blyths began
to grow less intimate--so far, at least, as the new bride and Valentine
were concerned. The rigid modern Puritan of Baregrove Square, and the
eccentric votary of the Fine Arts, mutually disapproved of each other
from the very first. Visits of ceremony were exchanged at long
intervals; but even these were discontinued on Madonna's arrival under
Valentine's roof: Mr. Thorpe being one of the first of the charitable
friends of the family who suspected her to be the painter's natural
child. An almost complete separation accordingly ensued for some years,
until Zack grew up to boy's estate, and was taken to see Valentine, one
day in holiday time, by his grandfather. He and the painter became
friends directly. Mr. Blyth liked boys, and boys of all degrees liked
him. From this time, Zack frequented Valentine's house at every
opportunity, and never neglected his artist-friend in after years. At
the date of this story, one of the many points in his son's conduct of
which Mr. Thorpe disapproved on the highest moral grounds, was the firm
determination the lad showed to keep up his intimacy with Mr. Blyth.
We may now get back to the ring at the bell.
Zack's approach to the painting-room was heralded by a scuffling of
feet, a loud noise of talking, and a great deal of suspicious giggling
on the part of the housemaid, who had let him in. Suddenly these sounds
ceased--the door was dashed open--and Mr. Thorpe, junior, burst into
the room.
"Dear old Blyth! how are you?" cried Zack. "Have you had any leap-frog
since I was here last? Jump up, and let's celebrate my return to the
painting-room with a bit of manly exercise in our old way. Come on!
I'll give the first back. No shirking! Put down your palette; and one,
two, three--and over!"
Pronouncing these words, Zack ran to the end of the room opposite to
Valentine; and signalized his entry into the studio by the
extraordinary process of giving its owner, what is termed in the
technical language of leap-frog, "a capital back."
Mr. Blyth put down his palette, brushes, and mahl-stick--tucked up his
cuffs and smiled--took a little trial skip into the air--and, running
down the room with the slightly tremulous step of a gentleman of fifty,
cleared Zack in gallant style; fell over on the other side, all in a
lump on his hands and feet; gave the return "back" conscientiously, at
the other end of the studio; and was leapt over in an instant, with a
shout of triumph, by Zack. The athletic ceremonies thus concluded, the
two stood up together and shook hands heartily.
"Too stiff, Blyth--too stiff and shaky by half," said young Thorpe. "I
haven't kept you up enough in your gymnastics lately. We must have some
more leap-frog in the garden; and I'll bring my boxing gloves next
time, and open your chest by teaching you to fight. Splendid exercise,
and so good for your sluggish old liver."
Delivering this opinion, Zack ran off to Madonna, who had been keeping
the Venus de' Medici from being shaken down, while she looked on at the
leap-frog. "How is the dearest, prettiest, gentlest love in the world?"
cried Zack, taking her hand, and kissing it with boisterous fondness.
"Ah! she lets other old friends kiss her cheek, and only lets me kiss
her hand!--I say, Blyth, what a little witch she is--I'll lay you two
to one she's guessed what I've just been saying to her."
A bright flush overspread the girl's face while Zack addressed her. Her
tender blue eyes looked up at him, shyly conscious of the pleasure that
their expression was betraying; and the neat folds of her pretty grey
dress, which had lain so still over her bosom when she was drawing,
began to rise and fall gently now, when Zack was holding her hand. If
young Thorpe had not been the most thoughtless of human beings--as much
a boy still, in many respects, as when he was locked up in his father's
dressing-room for bad behavior at church--he might have guessed long
ago why he was the only one of Madonna's old friends whom she did not
permit to kiss her on the cheek!
But Zack neither guessed, nor thought of guessing, anything of this
sort. His flighty thoughts flew off in a moment from the young lady to
his cigar-case; and he walked away to the hearth-rug, twisting up a
piece of waste paper into a lighter as he went.
When Madonna returned to her drawing, her eyes wandered timidly once or
twice to the place where Zack was standing, when she thought he was not
looking at her; and, assuredly, so far as personal appearance was
concerned, young Thorpe was handsome enough to tempt any woman into
glancing at him with approving eyes. He was over six feet in height;
and, though then little more than nineteen years old, was well
developed in proportion to his stature. His boxing, rowing, and other
athletic exercises had done wonders towards bringing his naturally
vigorous, upright frame to the perfection of healthy muscular
condition. Tall and strong as he was, there was nothing stiff or
ungainly in his movements, He trod easily and lightly, with a certain
youthful suppleness and hardy grace in all his actions, which set off
his fine bodily formation to the best advantage. He had keen, quick,
mischievous grey eyes--a thoroughly English red and white
complexion--admirably bright and regular teeth--and curly light brown
hair, with a very peculiar golden tinge in it, which was only visible
when his head was placed in a particular light. In short, Zack was a
manly, handsome fellow, a thorough Saxon, every inch of him; and
(physically speaking at least) a credit to the parents and the country
that had given him birth.
"I say, Blyth, do you and Madonna mind smoke?" asked Zack, lighting his
cigar before there was time to answer him.
"No--no," said Valentine. "But, Zack, you wrote me word that your
father had taken all your cigars away from you--"
"So he has, and all my pocket-money too. But I've taken to helping
myself, and I've got some splendid cigars. Try one, Blyth," said the
young gentleman, luxuriously puffing out a stream of smoke through each
nostril.
"Taken to helping yourself!" exclaimed Mr. Blyth. "What do you mean?"
"Oh!" said Zack, "don't be afraid. It's not thieving--it's only barter.
Look here, my dear fellow, this is how it is. A friend of mine, a
junior clerk in our office, has three dozen cigars, and I have two
staring flannel shirts, which are only fit for a snob to wear. The
junior clerk gives me the three dozen cigars, and I give the junior
clerk the two staring flannel shirts. That's barter, and barter's
commerce, old boy! it's all my father's fault; he will make a tradesman
of me. Dutiful behavior, isn't it, to be doing a bit of commerce
already on my own account?"
"I'll tell you what, Zack," said Mr. Blyth, "I don't like the way
you're going on in at all. Your last letter made me very uneasy, I can
promise you."
"You can't be half as uneasy as I am," rejoined Zack. "I'm jolly enough
here, to be sure, because I can't help it somehow; but at home I'm the
most miserable devil on the face of the earth. My father baulks me in
everything, and makes me turn hypocrite, and take him in, in all sorts
of ways--which I hate myself for doing; and yet can't help doing,
because he forces me to it. Why does he want to make me live in the
same slow way that he does himself? There's some difference in our
ages, I rather think! Why does he bully me about being always home by
eleven o'clock? Why does he force me into a tea-merchant's office, when
I want to be an artist, like you? I'm a perfect slave to commerce
already. What do you think? I'm supposed to be sampling in the city at
this very moment. The junior clerk's doing the work for me; and he's to
have one of my dress-waistcoats to compensate him for the trouble.
First my shirts; then my waistcoat; then my--confound it, sir, I shall
be stripped to the skin, if this sort of thing goes on much longer!"
"Gently, Zack, gently. What would your father say if he heard you?"
"Oh, yes! it's all very well, you old humbug, to shake your head at me;
but you wouldn't like being forced into an infernal tea-shop, and
having all your pocket-money stopped, if it was your case. I won't
stand it--I have the patience of Job--but I won't stand it! My mind's
made up: I want to be an artist, and I _will_ be an artist. Don't
lecture, Blyth--it's no use; but just tell me how I'm to begin learning
to draw."
Here Zack cunningly touched Valentine on his weak point. Art was his
grand topic; and to ask his advice on that subject was to administer
the sweetest flattery to his professional pride. He wheeled his chair
round directly, so as to face young Thorpe. "If you're really set on
being an artist," he began enthusiastically, "I rather fancy, Master
Zack, I'm the man to help you. First of all, you must purify your taste
by copying the glorious works of Greek sculpture--in short, you must
form yourself on the Antique. Look there!--just what Madonna's doing
now; _she's_ forming herself on the Antique."
Zack went immediately to look at Madonna's drawing, the outline of
which was now finished. "Beautiful! Splendid! Ah! confound it! yes! the
glorious Greeks, and so forth, just as you say, Blyth. A most wonderful
drawing! the finest thing of the kind I ever saw in my life!" Here he
END
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