“And yet he hasn’t a bad head for a bust!” rejoined Mr. Bullivant.
“Pray, Mr. Blyth,” pleaded the polite and ever-admiring Mr. Gimble—“pray let me beg you, in the name of the company to proceed with your most interesting and suggestive explanations and views on art!”
“Indeed, Mr. Gimble,” said Valentine, a little crest-fallen under the anatomical castigation inflicted on him by the Doctor, “I am very much delighted and gratified by your approval; but I have nothing more to read. I thought that point about Columbus a good point to leave off with, and considered that I might safely allow the rest of the picture to explain itself to the intelligent spectator.”
Hearing this, some of the spectators, evidently distrusting their own intelligence, rose to take leave—new visitors making their appearance, however, to fill the vacant chairs and receive Mr. Blyth’s hearty welcome. Meanwhile, through all the bustle of departing and arriving friends, and through all the fast-strengthening hum of general talk, the voice of the unyielding doctor still murmured solemnly of “capsular ligaments,” “adjacent tendons,” and “corracoid processes” to Lady Brambledown, who listened to him with satirical curiosity, as a species of polite medical buffoon whom it rather amused her to become acquainted with.
Among the next applicants for admission at the painting-room door were two whom Valentine had expected to see at a much earlier period of the day—Mr. Matthew Marksman and Zack.
“How late you are!” he said, as he shook hands with young Thorpe.
“I wish I could have come earlier, my dear fellow,” answered Zack, rather importantly; “but I had some business to do” (he had been recovering his watch from the pawnbroker); “and my friend here had some business to do also” (Mr. Marksman had been toasting red herrings for an early dinner); “and so somehow we couldn’t get here before. Mat, let me introduce you. This is my old friend, Mr. Blyth, whom I told you of.”
Valentine had barely time to take the hand of the new guest before his attention was claimed by fresh visitors. Young Thorpe did the honors of the painting-room in the artist’s absence. “Lots of people, as I told you. My friend’s a great genius,” whispered Zack, wondering, as he spoke, whether the scene of civilized life now displayed before Mr. Marksman would at all tend to upset his barbarian self-possession.
No: not in the least. There stood Mat, just as grave, cool, and quietly observant of things about him as ever. Neither the pictures, nor the company, nor the staring of many eyes that wondered at his black skull-cap and scarred swarthy face, were capable of disturbing the Olympian serenity of this Jupiter of the back-woods.
“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.”