Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (157 page)

“There!” cried Zack, pointing triumphantly across the room to “Columbus.” “Cudgel your brains, old boy, and guess what that is a picture of, without coming to me to help you.”

Mat attentively surveyed the figure of Columbus, the rig of his ship, and the wings of the typical female spirits, hovering overhead in the morning clouds — thought a little — then gravely and deliberately answered: —

“Peter Wilkins taking a voyage along with his flying wives.”

Zack pulled out his handkerchief, and stifled his laughter as well as he could, out of consideration for Mat, who, however, took not the smallest notice of him, but added, still staring intently at the picture.

“Peter Wilkins was the only book I had, when I was a lad aboard ship. I used to read it over and over again, at odds and ends of spare time, till I pretty nigh got it by heart. That was many a year ago; and a good lot of what I knowed then I don’t know now. But, mind ye, it’s my belief that Peter Wilkins was something of a sailor.”

“Well?” whispered Zack, humoring him, “suppose he was, what of that?”

“Do you think a man as was anything of a sailor would ever be fool enough to put to sea in such a craft as that?” asked Mr. Marksman, pointing scornfully to Columbus’s ship.

“Hush! old Rough and Tough: the picture hasn’t anything to do with Peter Wilkins,” said Zack. “Keep quiet, and wait here a minute for me. There are some friends of mine at the other end of the room that I must go and speak to. And, I say, if Blyth comes up to you and asks you about the picture, say it’s Columbus, and remarkably like him.”

Left by himself, Mat looked about for better standing-room than he then happened to occupy; and seeing a vacant space left between the door-post and Mr. Blyth’s bureau, retreated to it. Putting his hands in his pockets, he leaned comfortably against the wall, and began to examine the room and everything in it at his leisure. It was not long, however, before he was disturbed. One of his neighbours, seeing that his back was against a large paper sketch nailed on the wall behind him, told him bluntly that he was doing mischief there, and made him change his position. He moved accordingly to the door-post; but even here he was not left in repose. A fresh relay of visitors arrived, and obliged him to make way for them to pass into the room — which he did by politely rolling himself round the door-post into the passage.

As he disappeared in this way, Mr. Blyth bustled up to the place where Mat had been standing, and received his guests there, with great cordiality, but also with some appearance of flurry and perplexity of mind. The fact was, that Lady Brambledown had just remembered that she had not examined Valentine’s works yet, through one of those artistic tubes which effectively concentrate the rays of light on a picture, when applied to the eye. Knowing, by former experience, that the studio was furnished with one of these little instruments, her ladyship now intimated her ardent desire to use it instantly on “Columbus.” Valentine promised to get it, with his usual ready politeness; but he had not the slightest idea where it actually was, for all that. Among the litter of small things that had been cleared out of the way, when the painting-room was put in order, there were several which he vaguely remembered having huddled together for safety in the bottom of his bureau. The tube might possibly have been among them; so in this place he determined to look for it — being quite ignorant, if the search turned out unsuccessful, where he ought to look next.

After begging the new visitors to walk in, he opened the bureau, which was large and old-fashioned, with a little bright key hanging by a chain that he unhooked from his watch-guard; and began searching inside amid infinite confusion — all his attention concentrated in the effort to discover the lost tube. It was not to be found in the bottom of the bureau. He next looked, after a little preliminary hesitation, into a long narrow drawer opening beneath some pigeon-hole recesses at the back.

The tube was not there, either; and he shut the drawer to again, carefully and gently — for inside it was the Hair Bracelet that had belonged to Madonna’s mother, lying on the white handkerchief, which had also been taken from the dead woman’s pocket. Just as he closed the drawer, he heard footsteps at his right hand, and turned in that direction rather suspiciously — locking down the lid of the bureau as he looked round. It was only the civil Mr. Gimble, wanting to know what Mr. Blyth was searching for, and whether he could help him. Valentine mentioned the loss of the tube; and Mr. Gimble immediately volunteered to make one of pasteboard. “Ten thousand thanks,” said Mr. Blyth, hooking the key to his watch-guard again, as he returned to Lady Brambledown with his friend. “Ten thousand thanks; but the worst of it is, I don’t know where to find the pasteboard.”

If, instead of turning to the right hand to speak to Mr. Gimble, Valentine had turned to the left, he would have seen that, just as he opened the bureau and began to search in it, Mr. Marksman finding the way into the painting-room clear once more, had rolled himself quietly round the door-post again; and had then, just as quietly, bent forward a little, so as to look sideways into the bureau with those observant eyes of his which nothing could escape, and which had been trained by his old Indian experience to be always unscrupulously at work, watching something. Little did Mr. Blyth think, as he walked away, talking with Mr. Gimble, and carefully hooking his key on to its swivel again, that Zack’s strange friend had seen as much of the inside of the bureau as he had seen of it himself.

“He shut up his big box uncommon sharp, when that smilin’ little chap come near him,” thought Mat. “And yet there didn’t seem nothing in it that strangers mightn’t see. There wasn’t no money there — at least none that
I
set eyes on. Well! it’s not my business. Let’s have another look at the picter.”

In the affairs of art, as in other matters, important discoveries are sometimes made, and great events occasionally accomplished, by very ignoble agencies. Mat’s deplorable ignorance of Painting in general, and grossly illiterate misunderstanding of the subject represented by Columbus in particular, seemed to mark him out as the last man in the world who could possibly be associated with Art Mystic in the character of guardian genius. Yet such was the proud position which he was now selected by Fate to occupy. In plain words, Mr. Blyth’s greatest historical work had been for some little time in imminent danger of destruction by falling; and Mat’s “look at the picter,” was the all-important look which enabled him to be the first person in the room who perceived that it was in peril.

The eye with which Mr. Marksman now regarded the picture was certainly the eye of a barbarian; but the eye with which he afterwards examined the supports by which it was suspended, was the eye of a sailor, and of a good practical carpenter to boot. He saw directly, that one of the two iron clamps to which the frame-lines of “Columbus” were attached, had been carelessly driven into a part of the wall that was not strong enough to hold it against the downward stress of the heavy frame. Little warning driblets of loosened plaster had been trickling down rapidly behind the canvas; but nobody heard them fall in the general buzz of talking; and nobody noticed the thin, fine crack above the iron clamp, which was now lengthening stealthily minute by minute.

“Just let me by, will you?” said Mat quietly to some of his neighbours. “I want to stop those flying women and the man in the crank ship from coming down by the long run.”

Dozens of alarmed ladies and gentlemen started up from their chairs. Mat pushed through them unceremoniously; and was indebted to his want of politeness for being in time to save the picture. With a grating crack, and an accompanying descent of a perfect slab of plaster, the loose clamp came clean out of the wall, just as Mat seized the unsupported end and side of the frame in his sturdy hands, and so prevented the picture from taking the fatal swing downwards, which would have infallibly torn it from the remaining fastening, and precipitated it on the chairs beneath.

A prodigious confusion and clamoring of tongues ensued; Mr. Blyth being louder, wilder, and more utterly useless in the present emergency than any of his neighbours. Mat, cool as ever, kept his hold of the picture; and, taking no notice of the confused advice and cumbersome help offered to him, called to Zack to fetch a ladder, or, failing that, to “get a hoist” on some chairs, and cut the rope from the clamp that remained firm. Wooden steps, as young Thorpe knew, were usually kept in the painting-room. Where had they been removed to now? Mr. Blyth’s memory was lost altogether in his excitement. Zack made a speculative dash at the flowing draperies which concealed the lumber in one corner, and dragged out the steps in triumph.

“All right; take your time, young ‘un: there’s a knife in my left-hand breeches’ pocket,” said Mat. “Now then, cut away at that bit of rope’s-end, and hold on tight at top, while I lower away at bottom. Steady! Take it easy, and — there you are!” With which words, the guardian genius left Art-Mystic resting safely on the floor, and began to shake his coattails free of the plaster that had dropped on them.

“My dear sir! you have saved the finest picture I ever painted,” cried Valentine, warmly seizing him by both hands. “I can’t find words to express my gratitude and admiration — ”

“Don’t worry yourself about that,” answered Mat; “I don’t suppose I should understand you if you
could
find ‘em. If you want the picter put up again, I’ll do it. And if you want the carpenter’s muddle head punched, who put it up before, I shouldn’t much mind doing that either,” added Mat, looking at the hole from which the clamp had been torn with an expression of the profoundest workmanlike disgust.

A new commotion in the room — near the door this time — prevented Mr. Blyth from giving an immediate answer to the two friendly propositions just submitted to him.

At the first alarm of danger, all the ladies — headed by the Dowager Countess, in whom the instinct of self-preservation was largely developed — had got as far away as they could from the falling picture, before they ventured to look round at the process by which it was at last safely landed on the floor. Just as this had been accomplished, Lady Brambledown — who stood nearest to the doorway — caught sight of Madonna in the passage that led to it. Mrs. Blyth had heard the noise and confusion downstairs, and finding that her bell was not answered by the servants, and that it was next to impossible to overcome her father’s nervous horror of confronting the company alone, had sent Madonna down-stairs with him, to assist in finding out what had happened in the studio.

While descending the stairs with her companion, the girl had anticipated that they might easily discover whether anything was amiss, without going further than the passage, by merely peeping through the studio door. But all chance of escaping the ordeal of the painting-room was lost the moment Lady Brambledown set eyes on her. The Dowager Countess was one of Madonna’s warmest admirers; and now expressed that admiration by pouncing on her with immense affection and enthusiasm from the painting-room door-way. Other people, to whom the deaf and dumb girl was a much more interesting sight than “Columbus,” or the “Golden Age,” crowded round her; all trying together, with great amiability and small intelligence, to explain what had happened by signs which no human being could possibly understand. Fortunately for Madonna, Zack (who ever since he had cut the picture down had been assailed by an incessant fire of questions about his strange friend, from dozens of inquisitive gentlemen) happened to look towards her, over the ladies’ heads, and came directly to explain the danger from which “Columbus” had escaped. She tried hard to get away, and bear the intelligence to Mrs. Blyth; but Lady Brambledown, feeling amiably unwilling to resign her too soon, pitched on the poor engraver standing tremulous in the passage, as being quite clever enough to carry a message up-stairs, and sent him off to take the latest news from the studio to his daughter immediately.

Thus it was that when Mr. Blyth left Zack’s friend to see what was going on near the door, he found Madonna in the painting-room, surrounded by sympathising and admiring ladies. The first words of explanation by which Lady Brambledown answered his mute look of inquiry, reminded him of the anxiety and alarm that his wife must have suffered; and he ran up-stairs directly, promising to be back again in a minute or two.

Mat carelessly followed Valentine to the group at the doorway — carelessly looked over some ladies’ bonnets — and saw Madonna, offering her slate to the Dowager Countess at that moment.

The sweet feminine gentleness and youthful softness of the girl’s face, looked inexpressibly lovely, as she now stood shy and confused under the eager eyes that were all gazing on her. Her dress, too, had never more powerfully aided the natural attractions of her face and figure by its own loveable charms of simplicity and modesty, than now, when the plain grey merino gown, and neat little black silk apron which she always wore, were contrasted with the fashionable frippery of fine colours shining all around her. Was the rough Mr. Marksman himself lured at first sight into acknowledging her influence? If he was, his face and manner showed it very strangely.