Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (170 page)

Mat listened intently till the sound of Zack’s rapid footsteps died away upstairs — then walked quickly and softly down the studio to the garden door — gently unlocked it — gently drew the bolts back — gently opened it, and ascertained that it could also be opened from without, merely by turning the handle — then, quietly closing it again, left it, to all appearance, as fast for the night as before; provided no one went near enough, or had sufficiently sharp eyes, to observe that it was neither bolted nor locked.

“Now for the big chest!” thought Mat, taking the false key out of his pocket, and hastening back to the bureau. “If Zack or the Painter Man come down before I’ve time to get at the drawer inside, I’ve made sure of my second chance with the garden door.”

He had the key in the lock of the bureau, as this thought passed through his mind. He was just about to turn it, when the sound of rapidly-descending footsteps upon the stairs struck on his quick ear.

“Too late!” muttered Mat. “I must chance it, after all, with the garden door.”

Putting the key into his pocket again, as he said this, he walked back to the fireplace. The moment after he got there, Mr. Blyth entered the studio.

“I am quite shocked that you should have been so unceremoniously left alone,” said Valentine, whose naturally courteous nature prompted him to be just as scrupulously polite in his behavior to his rough guest, as if Mat had been a civilized gentleman of the most refined feeling and the most exalted rank. “I am so sorry you should have been left, through Zack’s carelessness, without anybody to ask you to take a little supper,” continued Valentine, turning to the table. “Mrs. Blyth, my dear sir (do take a sandwich!), desires me to express her best thanks for your very pretty present (that is the brandy in the bottle next to you). She admires the design (spongecake? Ah! you don’t care about sweets), and thinks the colour of the centre feathers — ”

At this moment the door opened, and Mr. Blyth, abruptly closing his lips, looked towards it with an expression of the blankest astonishment; for he beheld Madonna entering the painting-room in company with Zack.

Valentine had been persuaded to let the deaf and dumb girl accept the scarlet pouch by his wife; but neither she nor Zack had said a word before him upstairs about taking Madonna into the studio. When the painter was well out of earshot, young Thorpe had confided to Mrs. Blyth the new freak in which he wanted to engage; and, signing unscrupulously to Madonna that she was wanted in the studio, to be presented to the “generous man who had given her the tobacco-pouch,” took her out of the room without stopping to hear to the end the somewhat faint remonstrance by which his proposition was met. To confess the truth, Mrs. Blyth — seeing no great impropriety in the girl’s being introduced to the stranger, while Valentine was present in the room, and having moreover a very strong curiosity to hear all she could about Zack’s odd companion — was secretly anxious to ascertain what impressions Madonna would bring away of Mat’s personal appearance and manners. And thus it was that Zack, by seizing his opportunity at the right moment, and exerting a little of that cool assurance in which he was never very deficient, now actually entered the painting-room in a glow of mischievous triumph with Madonna on his arm.

Valentine gave him a look as he entered which he found it convenient not to appear to see. The painter felt strongly inclined, at that moment, to send his adopted child upstairs again directly; but he restrained himself out of a feeling of delicacy towards his guest — for Mat had not only seen Madonna, but had hesitatingly advanced a step or two to meet her, the instant she came into the room.

Few social tests for analyzing female human nature can be more safely relied on than that which the moral investigator may easily apply, by observing how a woman conducts herself towards a man who shows symptoms of confusion on approaching her for the first time. If she has nothing at all in her, she awkwardly forgets the advantage of her sex, and grows more confused than he is. If she has nothing but brains in her, she cruelly abuses the advantage, and treats him with quiet contempt. If she has plenty of heart in her, she instinctively turns the advantage to its right use, and forthwith sets him at his ease by the timely charity of a word or the mute encouragement of a look.

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.

“Who would ever have thought it?” cried Zack, giving vent to his amazement; “she has taken to old Rough and Tough, and made him a prime favorite at first sight!”

Valentine was standing near, but he did not appear to hear this speech. He was watching the scene before him closely and curiously. Accustomed as he was to the innocent candor with which the deaf and dumb girl always showed her approval or dislike of strangers at a first interview — as also to her apparent perversity in often displaying a decided liking for the very people whose looks and manners had been previously considered certain to displease her — he was now almost as much surprised as Zack, when he witnessed her reception of Mat. It was an infallible sign of Madonna’s approval, if she followed up an introduction by handing her slate of her own accord to a stranger. When she was presented to people whom she disliked, she invariably kept it by her side until it was formally asked for.

Eccentric in everything else, Mat was consistently eccentric even in his confusion. Some men who are bashful in a young lady’s presence show it by blushing — Mat’s colour sank instead of rising. Other men, similarly affected, betray their burdensome modesty by fidgeting incessantly. — Mat was as still as a statue. His eyes wandered heavily and vacantly over the girl, beginning with her soft brown hair, then resting for a moment on her face, then descending to the gay pink ribbon on her breast, and to her crisp black silk apron with its smart lace pockets — then dropping at last to her neat little shoes, and to the thin bright line of white stocking that just separated them from the hem of her favorite grey dress. He only looked up again, when she touched his hand and put her slate pencil into it. At that signal he raised his eyes once more, read the line she had written to thank him for the scarlet pouch, and tried to write something in return. But his hand shook, and his thoughts seemed to fail him, he gave her back the slate and pencil, looking her full in the eyes as he did so. A curious change came over his face at the same time — a change like that which had altered him so remarkably in the hosier’s shop at Dibbledean.

“Zack might, after all, have made many a worse friend than this man,” thought Mr. Blyth, still attentively observing Mat. “Vagabonds don’t behave in the presence of young girls as he is behaving now.”

With this idea in his mind, Valentine advanced to help his guest by showing Mat how to communicate with Madonna. The painter was interrupted, however, by young Thorpe, who, the moment he recovered from his first sensations of surprise began to talk nonsense again, at the top of his voice, with the mischievous intention of increasing Mat’s embarrassment.

While Mr. Blyth was attempting to silence Zack by leading him to the supper table, Madonna was trying her best to reassure the great bulky, sunburnt man who seemed to be absolutely afraid of her! She moved to a stool, which stood near a second table in a corner by the fireplace; and sitting down, produced the scarlet pouch, intimating by a gesture that Mat was to look at what she was now doing. She then laid the pouch open on her lap, and put into it several little work-box toys, a Tonbridge silk-reel, an ivory needle case, a silver thimble with an enameled rim, a tiny pair of scissors, and other things of the same kind — which she took first from one pocket of her apron and then from another. While she was engaged in filling the pouch, Zack, standing at the supper-table, drummed on the floor with his foot to attract her attention, and interrogatively held up a decanter of wine and a glass. She started as the sound struck on her delicate nerves; and, looking at young Thorpe directly, signed that she did not wish for any wine. The sudden movement of her body thus occasioned, shook off her lap a little mother-of-pearl bodkin case, which lay more than half out of one of the pockets of her apron. The bodkin case rolled under the stool, without her seeing it, for she was looking towards the supper-table: without being observed by Mat, for his eyes were following the direction of her’s: without being heard by Mr. Blyth, for Zack was, as usual, chattering and making a noise.

When she had put two other little toys that remained in her pockets into the pouch, she drew the mouth of it tight, passed the loops of the loose thongs that fastened it, over one of her arms, and then, rising to her feet, pointed to it, and looked at Mat with a very significant nod. The action expressed the idea she wished to communicate, plainly enough: — ”See,” it seemed to say, “see what a pretty work-bag I can make of your tobacco-pouch!”

But Mat, to all appearance, was not able to find out the meaning of one of her gestures, easy as they were to interpret. His senses seemed to grow more and more perturbed the longer he looked at her. As she curtseyed to him again, and moved away in despair, he stepped forward a little, and suddenly and awkwardly held out his hand. “The big man seems to be getting a little less afraid of me,” thought Madonna, turning directly, and meeting his clumsy advance towards her, with a smile. But the instant he took her hand, her lips closed, and she shivered through her whole body as if dead fingers had touched her. “Oh!” she thought now, “how cold his hand is! how cold his hand is!”

“If I hadn’t felt her warm to touch, I should have been dreaming to-night that I’d seen Mary’s ghost.” This was the grim fancy which darkly troubled Mat’s mind, at the very same moment when Madonna was thinking how cold his hand was. He turned away impatiently from some wine offered to him just then by Zack; and, looking vacantly into the fire, drew his coat-cuff several times over his eyes and forehead.

The chill from the strange man’s hand still lingered icily about Madonna’s fingers, and made her anxious, though she hardly knew why, to leave the room. She advanced hastily to Valentine, and made the sign which indicated Mrs. Blyth, by laying her hand on her heart; she then pointed up-stairs. Valentine, understanding what she wanted, gave her leave directly to return to his wife’s room. Before Zack could make even a gesture to detain her, she had slipped out of the studio, after not having remained in it much longer than five minutes.

“Zack,” whispered Mr. Blyth, as the door closed, “I am anything but pleased with you for bringing Madonna down-stairs. You have broken through all rule in doing so; and, besides that, you have confused your friend by introducing her to him without any warning or preparation.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” interrupted young Thorpe. “He’s not the sort of man to want warning about anything. I apologize for breaking rules; but as for Mat — why, hang it, Blyth, it’s plain enough what has been wrong with him since supper came in! He’s fairly knocked up with doing Hercules for you. You have kept the poor old Guy for near two hours standing in one position, without a rag on his back; and then you wonder — ”

“Bless my soul! that never occurred to me. I’m afraid you’re right,” exclaimed Valentine. “Do let us make him take something hot and comfortable! Dear, dear me! how ought one to mix grog?”

Mr. Blyth had been for some little time past trying his best to compound a species of fiery and potential Squaw’s Mixture for Mat. He had begun the attempt some minutes before Madonna left the studio; having found it useless to offer any explanations to his inattentive guest of the meaning of the girl’s signs and gestures with the slate and tobacco-pouch. He had persevered in his hospitable endeavor all through the whispered dialogue which had just passed between Zack and himself; and he had now filled the glass nearly to the brim, when it suddenly occurred to him that he had put sherry in at the top of the tumbler, after having begun with brandy at the bottom; also that he had altogether forgotten some important ingredient which he was, just then, perfectly incapable of calling to mind.

“Here, Mat!” cried Zack. “Come and mix yourself something hot. Blyth’s been trying to do it for you, and can’t.”

Mat, who had been staring more and more vacantly into the fire all this time, turned round again at last towards his friends at the supper table. He started a little when he saw that Madonna was no longer in the room — then looked aside from the door by which she had departed, to the bureau. He had been pretty obstinately determined to get possession of the Hair Bracelet from the first: but he was doubly and trebly determined now.

“It’s no use looking about for the young lady,” said Zack; “you behaved so clumsily and queerly, that you frightened her out of the room.”