Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (139 page)

“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 transferred his superlatives to his fingers, communicating them to Madonna through the medium of the deaf and dumb alphabet, which he had superficially mastered with extraordinary rapidity under Mr. and Mrs. Blyth’s tuition. Whatever Zack’s friends did Zack always admired with the wildest enthusiasm, and without an instant’s previous consideration. Any knowledge of what he praised, or why he praised it, was a slight superfluity of which he never felt the want. If Madonna had been a great astronomer, and had shown him pages of mathematical calculations, he would have overwhelmed her with eulogies just as glibly as — by means of the finger alphabet — he was overwhelming her now.

But Valentine’s pupil was used to be criticized as well as praised; and her head was in no danger of being turned by Zack’s admiration of her drawing. Looking up at him with a sly expression of incredulity, she signed these words in reply: — ”I am afraid it ought to be a much better drawing than it is. Do you really like it?” Zack rejoined impetuously by a fresh torrent of superlatives. She watched his face, for a moment, rather anxiously and inquiringly, then bent down quickly over her drawing. He walked back to Valentine. Her eyes followed him — then returned once more to the paper before her. The colour began to rise again in her cheek; a thoughtful expression stole calmly over her clear, happy eyes; she played nervously with the port-crayon that held her black and white chalk; looked attentively at the drawing; and, smiling very prettily at some fancy of her own, proceeded assiduously with her employment, altering and amending, as she went on, with more than usual industry and care.

What was Madonna thinking of? If she had been willing, and able, to utter her thoughts, she might have expressed them thus: “I wonder whether he likes my drawing? Shall I try hard if I can’t make it better worth pleasing him? I will! it shall be the best thing I have ever done. And then, when it is nicely finished, I will take it secretly to Mrs. Blyth to give from me, as my present to Zack.”

“Look there,” said Valentine, turning from his picture towards Madonna, “look, my boy, how carefully that dear good girl there is working from the Antique! Only copy her example, and you may be able to draw from the life in less than a year’s time.”

“You don’t say so? I should like to sit down and begin at once. But, look here, Blyth, when you say ‘draw from the life,’ there can’t be the smallest doubt, of course, about what you mean — but, at the same time, if you would only be a little less professional in your way of expressing yourself — ”

“Good heavens, Zack, in what barbarous ignorance of art your parents must have brought you up! ‘Drawing from the life,’ means drawing the living human figure from the living human being which sits at a shilling an hour, and calls itself a model.”

“Ah, to be sure! Some of these very models whose names are chalked up here over your fireplace? — Delightful! Glorious! Drawing from the life — just the very thing I long for most. Hullo!” exclaimed Zack, reading the memoranda, which it was Mr. Blyth’s habit to scrawl, as they occurred to him, on the wall over the chimney-piece — ”Hullo! here’s a woman-model; ‘Amelia Bibby’ — Blyth! let me dash at once into drawing from the life, and let me begin with Amelia Bibby.”

“Nothing of the sort, Master Zack,” said Valentine. “You may end with Amelia Bibby, when you are fit to study at the Royal Academy. She’s a capital model, and so is her sister, Sophia. The worst of it is, they quarreled mortally a little while ago; and now, if an artist has Sophia, Amelia won’t come to him. And Sophia of course returns the compliment, and won’t sit to Amelia’s friends. It’s awkward for people who used to employ them both, as I did.”

“What did they quarrel about?” inquired Zack.

“About a tea-pot,” answered Mr. Blyth. “You see, they are daughters of one of the late king’s footmen, and are desperately proud of their aristocratic origin. They used to live together as happy as birds, without a hard word ever being spoken between them, till, one day, they happened to break their tea-pot, which of course set them talking about getting a new one. Sophia said it ought to be earthenware, like the last; Amelia contradicted her, and said it ought to be metal. Sophia said all the aristocracy used earthenware; Amelia said all the aristocracy used metal. Sophia said she was oldest, and knew best; Amelia said she was youngest, and knew better. Sophia said Amelia was an impudent jackanapes; Amelia said Sophia was a plebeian wretch. From that moment, they parted. Sophia sits in her own lodging, and drinks tea out of earthenware; Amelia sits in
her
own lodging, and drinks tea out of metal. They swear never to make it up, and abuse each other furiously to everybody who will listen to them. Very shocking, and very curious at the same time — isn’t it, Zack?”

“Oh, capital! A perfect picture of human nature to us men of the world,” exclaimed the young gentleman, smoking with the air of a profound philosopher. “But tell me, Blyth, which is the prettiest, Amelia or Sophia? Metal or Earthenware? My mind’s made up, beforehand, to study from the best-looking of the two, if you have no objection.”

“I have the strongest possible objection, Zack, to talking nonsense where a serious question is concerned. Are you, or are you not, in earnest in your dislike of commerce and your resolution to be an artist?”

“I mean to be a painter, or I mean to leave home,” answered Zack, resolutely. “If you don’t help me, I’ll be off as sure as fate! I have half a mind to cut the office from this moment. Lend me a shilling, Blyth; and I’ll toss up for it. Heads — liberty and the fine arts! Tails — the tea-merchant!”

“If you don’t go back to the City to-day,” said Valentine, “and stick to your engagements, I wash my hands of you — but if you wait patiently, and promise to show all the attention you can to your father’s wishes, I’ll teach you myself to draw from the Antique. If somebody can be found who has influence enough with your father to get him to enter you at the Royal Academy, you must be prepared beforehand with a drawing that’s fit to show. Now, if you promise to be a good boy, you shall come here, and learn the A B C of Art, every evening if you like. We’ll have a regular little academy,” continued Valentine, putting down his palette and brushes, and rubbing his hands in high glee; “and if it isn’t too much for Lavvie, the evening studies shall take place in her room; and she shall draw, poor dear soul, as well as the rest of us. There’s an idea for you, Zack! Mr. Blyth’s Drawing Academy, open every evening — with light refreshment for industrious students. What do you say to it?”

“Say? by George, sir, I’ll come every night, and get through acres of chalk and miles of drawing paper!” cried Zack, catching all Valentine’s enthusiasm on the instant. “Let’s go up stairs and tell Mrs. Blyth about it directly.”

“Stop a minute, Zack,” interposed Mr. Blyth. “What time ought you to be back in the City? it’s close on two o’clock now.”

“Oh! three o’clock will do. I’ve got lots of time, yet — I can walk it in half-an-hour.”

“You have got about ten minutes more to stay,” said Valentine in his firmest manner. “Occupy them if you like, in going up stairs to Mrs. Blyth, and take Madonna with you. I’ll follow as soon as I’ve put away my brushes.”

Saying those words, Mr. Blyth walked to the place where Madonna was still at work. She was so deeply engaged over her drawing that she had never once looked up from it, for the last quarter-of-an-hour, or more; and when Valentine patted her shoulder approvingly, and made her a sign to leave off, she answered by a gesture of entreaty, which eloquently enough implored him to let her proceed a little longer with her employment. She had never at other times claimed an indulgence of this kind, when she was drawing from the Antique — but then, she had never, at other times, been occupied in making a copy which was secretly intended as a present for Zack.

Valentine, however, easily induced her to relinquish her port-crayon. He laid his hand on his heart, which was the sign that had been adopted to indicate Mrs. Blyth. Madonna started up, and put her drawing materials aside immediately.

Zack, having thrown away the end of his cigar, gallantly advanced and offered her his arm. As she approached, rather shyly, to take it, he also laid his hand on his heart, and pointed up stairs. The gesture was quite enough for her. She understood at once that they were going together to see Mrs. Blyth.

“Whether Zack really turns out a painter or not,” said Valentine to himself, as the door closed on the two young people, “I believe I have hit on the best plan that ever was devised for keeping him steady. As long as he comes to me regularly, he can’t break out at night, and get into mischief. Upon my word, the more I think of that notion of mine the better I like it. I shouldn’t at all wonder if my evening Academy doesn’t end in working the reformation of Zack!”

When Mr. Blyth pronounced those last words, if he could only have looked a little way into the future — if he could only have suspected how strangely the home-interests dearest to his heart were connected with his success in working the reformation of Zack — the smile which was now on his face would have left it in a moment; and, for the first time in his life, he would have sat before one of his own pictures in the character of an unhappy man.

CHAPTER IX. THE TRIBULATIONS OF ZACK.

A week elapsed before Mrs. Blyth’s wavering health permitted her husband to open the sittings of his evening drawing-academy in the invalid room.

During every day of that week, the chances of taming down Zack into a reformed character grew steadily more and more hopeless. The lad’s home-position, at this period, claims a moment’s serious attention. Zack’s resistance to his father’s infatuated severity was now shortly to end in results of the last importance to himself, to his family, and to his friends.

A specimen has already been presented of Mr. Thorpe’s method of religiously educating his son, at six years old, by making him attend a church service of two hours in length; as, also, of the manner in which he sought to drill the child into premature discipline by dint of Sabbath restrictions and Select Bible Texts. When that child grew to a boy, and when the boy developed to a young man, Mr. Thorpe’s educational system still resolutely persisted in being what it had always been from the first. His idea of Religion defined it to be a system of prohibitions; and, by a natural consequence, his idea of Education defined
that
to be a system of prohibitions also.

His method of bringing up his son once settled, no earthly consideration could move him from it an inch, one way or the other. He had two favorite phrases to answer every form of objection, every variety of reasoning, every citation of examples. No matter with what arguments the surviving members of Mrs. Thorpe’s family from time to time assailed him, the same two replies were invariably shot back at them in turn from the parental quiver. Mr. Thorpe calmly — always calmly — said, first, that he “would never compound with vice” (which was what nobody asked him to do), and, secondly, that he would, in no instance, great or small, “consent to act from a principle of expediency:” this last assertion, in the case of Zack, being about equivalent to saying that if he set out to walk due north, and met a lively young bull galloping with his head down, due south, he would not consent to save his own bones, or yield the animal space enough to run on, by stepping aside a single inch in a lateral direction, east or west.

“My son requires the most unremitting parental discipline and control,” Mr. Thorpe remarked, in explanation of his motives for forcing Zack to adopt a commercial career. “When he is not under my own eye at home, he must be under the eyes of devout friends, in whom I can place unlimited confidence. One of these devout friends is ready to receive him into his counting-house; to keep him industriously occupied from nine in the morning till six in the evening; to surround him with estimable examples; and, in short, to share with me the solemn responsibility of managing his moral and religious training. Persons who ask me to allow motives of this awfully important nature to be modified in the smallest degree by any considerations connected with the lad’s natural disposition (which has been a source of grief to me from his childhood) with his bodily gifts of the flesh (which have hitherto only served to keep him from the cultivation of the gifts of the spirit); or with his own desires (which I know by bitter experience to be all of the world, worldly); — persons, I say, who ask me to do any of these things, ask me also to act from a godless principle of expediency, and to violate moral rectitude by impiously compounding with vice.”