Hide and Seek

cooler, one tastes the sugar. Whenever I've tried to drink regular grog, I have never been able to get people to give it me sweet enough. The delicious part of this is that there's plenty of sugar in it. And, besides, it has the merit (which real grog has not) of being harmless. It tastes strong to me, to be sure; but then I'm not used to spirits. After what you say, however, of course it must be harmless—perfectly harmless, I have no doubt.' Here he sipped again, pretty freely this time, by way of convincing himself of the innocent weakness of the squaw's mixture.

While Mr. Blyth had been speaking, Mat's hands had been gradually stealing down deeper and deeper into the pockets of his trousers, until his finger and thumb, and a certain plastic substance hidden away in the left-hand pocket came gently into contact, just as Valentine left off speaking. 'Let's have another toast,' cried Mat, quite briskly, the instant the last word was out of his guest's mouth. 'Come on, one of you and give us another toast,' he reiterated, with a roar of barbarous joviality, taking up his glass in his right hand, and keeping his left still in his pocket.

'Give you another toast, you noisy old savage!' repeated Zack, 'I'll give you five, all at once! Mr. Blyth, Mrs. Blyth, Madonna, Columbus, and The Golden Age—three excellent people and two glorious pictures; let's lump them all together, in a friendly way, and drink long life and success to them in beakers of fragrant grog!' shouted the young gentleman, making perilously rapid progress through his second glass, as he spoke.

'Do you know, I'm afraid I must change to some other place, if you have no objection,' said Mr. Blyth, after he had duly honored the composite toast just proposed. 'The fire here, behind me, is getting rather too hot.'

'Change along with me,' said Mat. 'I don't mind heat, nor cold neither, for the matter of that.'

Valentine accepted this offer with great gratitude. 'By-the-bye, Zack,' he said, placing himself comfortably in his host's chair, between the table and the wall—'I was going to ask a favor of our excellent friend here, when you suggested that wonderful and matchless trial of strength which we have just had. You have been of such inestimable assistance to me already, my dear sir,' he continued, turning towards Mat, with all his natural cordiality of disposition now fully developed, under the fostering influence of the Squaw's Mixture. 'You have laid me under such an inexpressible obligation in saving my picture from destruction—'

'I wish you could make up your mind to say what you want in plain words,' interrupted Mat. 'I'm one of your rough-handed, thick-headed sort, I am. I'm not gentleman enough to understand parlarver. It don't do me no good: it only worrits me into a perspiration.' And Mat, shaking down his shirt-sleeve, drew it several times across his forehead, as a proof of the truth of his last assertion.

'Quite right! quite right!' cried Mr. Blyth, patting him on the shoulder in the most friendly manner imaginable. 'In plain words, then, when I mentioned, just now, how much I admired your arms in an artistic point of view, I was only paving the way for asking you to let me make a drawing of them, in black and white, for a large picture that I mean to paint later in the year. My classical figure composition, you know, Zack—you have seen the sketch— Hercules bringing to Eurystheus the Erymanthian boar—a glorious subject; and our friend's arms, and, indeed, his chest, too, if he would kindly consent to sit for it, would make the very studies I most want for Hercules.'

'What on earth is he driving at?' asked Mat, addressing himself to young Thorpe, after staring at Valentine for a moment or two in a state of speechless amazement.

'He wants to draw your arms—of course you will be only too happy to let him—you can't understand anything about it now—but you will when you begin to sit—pass the cigars—thank Blyth for meaning to make a Hercules of you-and tell him you'll come to the painting-room whenever he likes,' answered Zack, joining his sentences together in his most offhand manner, all in a breath.

'What painting-room? Where is it?' asked Mat, still in a densely stupefied condition.

'My painting-room,' replied Valentine. 'Where you saw the pictures, and saved Columbus, yesterday.'

Mat considered for a moment—then suddenly brightened up, and began to look quite intelligent again. 'I'll come,' he said, 'as soon as you like—the sooner the better,' clapping his fist emphatically on the table, and drinking to Valentine with his heartiest nod.

'That's a worthy, good-natured fellow!' cried Mr. Blyth, drinking to Mat in return, with grateful enthusiasm. 'The sooner the better, as you say. Come to-morrow evening.'

'All right. To-morrow evening,' assented Mat. His left hand, as he spoke, began to work stealthily round and round in his pocket, molding into all sorts of strange shapes, that plastic substance, which had lain hidden there ever since his shopping expedition in the morning.

'I should have asked you to come in the day-time,' continued Valentine; 'but, as you know, Zack, I have the Golden Age to varnish, and one or two little things to alter in the lower part of Columbus; and then, by the latter end of the week, I must leave home to do those portraits in the country which I told you of, and which are wanted before I thought they would be. You will come with our friend, of course, Zack? I dare say I shall have the order for you to study at the British Museum, by to-morrow. As for the Private Drawing Academy—'

'No offense; but I can't stand seeing you stirring up them grounds in the bottom of your glass any longer,' Mat broke in here; taking away Mr. Blyth's tumbler as he spoke, throwing the sediment of sugar, the lemon pips, and the little liquor left to cover them, into the grate behind; and then, hospitably devoting himself to the concoction of a second supply of that palatable and innocuous beverage, the Squaw's Mixture.

'Half a glass,' cried Mr. Blyth. 'Weak—remember my wretched head for drinking, and pray make it weak.'

As he spoke, the clock of the neighboring parish church struck.

'Only nine,' exclaimed Zack, referring ostentatiously to the watch which he had taken out of pawn the day before. 'Pass the rum, Mat, as soon as you've done with it—put the kettle on to boil—and now, my lads, we'll begin spending the evening in earnest!'

* * * * * *

If any fourth gentleman had been present to assist in 'spending the evening,' as Zack chose to phrase it, at the small social soiree in Kirk Street; and if that gentleman had deserted the festive board as the clock struck nine—had walked about the streets to enjoy himself in the fresh air—and had then, as the clock struck ten, returned to the society of his convivial companions, he would most assuredly have been taken by surprise, on beholding the singular change which the lapse of one hour had been sufficient to produce in the manners and conversation of Mr. Valentine Blyth.

It might have been that the worthy and simple-hearted gentleman had been unduly stimulated by the reek of hot grog, which in harmonious association with a heavy mist of tobacco smoke, now filled the room; or it might have been that the second brew of the Squaw's Mixture had exceeded half a glassful in quantity, had not been diluted to the requisite weakness, and had consequently got into his head; but, whatever the exciting cause might be, the alteration that had taken place since nine o'clock, in his voice, looks, and manners, was remarkable enough to be of the nature of a moral phenomenon. He now talked incessantly about nothing but the fine arts; he differed with both his companions, and loftily insisted on his own superior sagacity, whenever either of them ventured to speak a word; he was by turns as noisy as Zack, and as gruff as Mat; his hair was crumpled down over his