Wilkie Collins

“ 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! ”

“ As her husband removed the drawing, Mrs. Blyth looked at Madonna. The poor girl stood shrinking close to the couch, with her hands clasped tightly together in front of her, and with no trace of their natural lovely color left on her cheeks. Her eyes followed Valentine listlessly to the bookcase, then turned towards Zack, not reproachfully nor angrily—not even tearfully—but again with that same look of patient sadness, of gentle resignation to sorrow, which used to mark their expression so tenderly in the days of her bondage among the mountebanks of the traveling circus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You have been talking a great deal about wanting to be a painter; and now is the time to test your resolution. If I get you an order to draw in the British Museum, to fill up your mornings; and if I enter you at some private Academy, to fill up your evenings (mine at home is not half strict enough for you) —will you stick to it?”
“With all my heart,” replied Zack, resolutely dismissing his dreams of life in the wilds to the limbo of oblivion. “I ask nothing better, Blyth, than to stick to you and your plan for the future.”
“Bravo!” cried Valentine, in his old gay, hearty manner. ”

“ The liver’s a coming,” cried Mat in a voice of martial command, suddenly showing his great red-hot perspiring face at the table, as he wheeled round from the fire, with the hissing frying-pan in one hand and the long toasting-fork in the other. “My dear sir, I’m shocked to see you taking all this trouble,” exclaimed Mr. Blyth; “do pray let me help you!” “No, I’m damned if I do,” returned Mat with the most polite suavity and the most perfect good humor. “Let him have all the trouble, Blyth,” said Zack; “let him help you, and don’t pity him. ”

“ Gimble, come to deal at last for that picture of mine that he has talked of buying so long,” exclaimed Valentine.
“Suppose it should be my father!” cried Zack, suddenly turning round on his knees with a very blank face. “Or that infernal old Yollop, with his gooseberry eyes and his hands full of tracts. They’re both of them quite equal to coming after me and spoiling my pleasure here, just as they spoil it everywhere else.”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Blyth. “The visitor has come in, whoever it is. It can’t be Mr. Gimble, Valentine; he always runs up two stairs at a time.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ She took some of the bread-crumb near her to rub out what he had written—hesitated as her hand approached the lines—colored more deeply than before, and went on with her drawing, leaving the letters beneath it to remain just as young Thorpe had traced them.
“I shall never be able to draw as well as she does,” said Zack, looking at the little he had done with a groan of despair. “The fact is, I don’t think drawing’s my forte. It’s color, depend upon it. Only wait till I come to that; and see how I’ll lay on the paint! Didn’t you find drawing infernally difficult, Blyth, when you first began?” ”

“ Here, live people were the models to study from. Here he was free to use the palette, and to mix up the pinkest possible flesh tints with bran-new brushes. Here were high-spirited students of the fine arts, easy in manners and picturesque in personal appearance, with whom he contrived to become intimate directly. And here, to crown all, was a Model, sitting for the chest and arms, who had been a great prize-fighter, and with whom Zack joyfully cemented the bonds of an eternal (pugilistic) friendship, on the first night of his admission to Mr. Strather’s Academy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ From the studio to the kitchen, she managed every day, through channels of communication invented by herself, to find out the latest domestic news; to be present in spirit at least if not in body, at family consultations which could not take place in her room; to know exactly how her husband was getting on downstairs with his pictures; to rectify in time any omission of which Mr. Blyth or Madonna might be guilty in making the dinner arrangements, or in sending orders to tradespeople; to keep the servants attentive to their work, and to indulge or control them, as the occasion might require. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mat looked down at the mud, the brambles, and the rotting grass that lay over what had once been a living and loving human creature. The dangerous brightness glittered in his eyes, the cold change spread fast over his cheeks, and the scars of the arrow-wounds began to burn redly and more redly, as he whispered to himself—“I’ll be even yet, Mary, with the man who laid you here!”
“Does Mr. Blyth know who you are, sir?” asked Mrs. Peckover, hesitating and trembling as she put this question. “Did he give you the Bracelet?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now Madonna, perceiving that the stranger showed evident signs, on approaching her, of what appeared like confusion to her apprehension, quietly drew her arm out of Zack’s, and, to his unmeasured astonishment, stepped forward in front of him—looked up brightly into the grim, scarred face of Mat—dropped her usual curtsey—wrote a line hurriedly on her slate—then offered it to him with a smile and a nod, to read if he pleased, and to write on in return. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”