“I can feel for him, my love,” said Valentine, pointing a piece of chalk for Zack. “The tradespeople have harassed me—not because I could not pay them certainly, but because I could not add up their bills. Never owe any man enough, Zack, to give him the chance of punishing you for being in his debt, with a sum to do in simple addition. At the time when I had bills (go on with your drawing; you can listen, and draw too), I used, of course, to think it necessary to check the tradespeople, and see that their Total was right. You will hardly believe me, but I don’t remember ever making the sum what the shop made it, on more than about three occasions. And, what was worse, if I tried a second time, I could not even get it to agree with what I had made it myself the first time. Thank Heaven, I’ve no difficulties of that sort to grapple with now! Everything’s paid for the moment it comes in. If the butcher hands a leg of mutton to the cook over the airey railings, the cook hands him back six and nine—or whatever it is—and takes his bill and receipt. I eat my dinners now, with the blessed conviction that they won’t all disagree with me in an arithmetical point of view at the end of the year. What are you stopping and scratching your head for in that way?”
“It’s no use,” replied Zack; “I’ve tried it a dozen times, and I find I can’t draw a Gladiator’s nose.”
“Can’t!” cried Mr. Blyth, “what do you mean by applying the word ‘can’t’ to any process of art in my presence? There, that’s the line of the Gladiator’s nose. Go over it yourself with this fresh piece of chalk. No; wait a minute. Come here first, and see how Madonna is striking in the figure; the front view of it, remember, which is the most difficult. She hasn’t worked as fast as usual, though. Do you find your view of the model a little too much for you, my love?” continued Valentine, transferring the last words to his fingers, to communicate them to Madonna.
She shook her head in answer. It was not the difficulty of drawing from the cast before her, but the difficulty of drawing at all, which was retarding her progress. Her thoughts would wander to the copy of the Venus de Medici that was hidden under Mrs. Blyth’s coverlid; would vibrate between trembling eagerness to see it presented without longer delay, and groundless apprehension that Zack might, after all, not remember it, or not care to have it when it was given to him. And as her thoughts wandered, so her eyes followed them. Now she stole an anxious, inquiring look at Mrs. Blyth, to see if her hand was straying towards the hidden drawing. Now she glanced shyly at Zack—only by moments at a time, and only when he was hardest at work with his port-crayon—to assure herself that he was always in the same good humor, and likely to receive her little present kindly, and with some appearance of being pleased to see what pains she had taken with it. In this way her attention wandered incessantly from her employment; and thus it was that she made so much less progress than usual, and caused Mr. Blyth to suspect that the task he had set her was almost beyond her abilities.
“Splendid beginning, isn’t it?” said Zack, looking over her drawing. “I defy the whole Royal Academy to equal it,” continued the young gentleman, scrawling this uncompromising expression of opinion on the blank space at the bottom of Madonna’s drawing, and signing his name with a magnificent flourish at the end.
His arm touched her shoulder while he wrote. She colored a little, and glanced at him, playfully affecting to look very proud of his sentence of approval—then hurriedly resumed her drawing as their eyes met. He was sent back to his place by Valentine before he could write anything more. 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?”
“I find it difficult still, Master Zack,” replied Mr. Blyth. “Art wouldn’t be the glorious thing it is, if it wasn’t all difficulty from beginning to end; if it didn’t force out all the fine points in a man’s character as soon as he takes to it. Just eight o’clock,” continued Valentine, looking at his watch. “Put down your drawing-boards for the present. I pronounce the sitting of this Academy to be suspended till after tea.”
“Valentine, dear,” said Mrs. Blyth, smiling mysteriously, as she slipped her hand under the coverlid of the couch, “I can’t get Madonna to look at me, and I want her here. Will you oblige me by bringing her to my bedside?”
“Certainly, my love,” returned Mr. Blyth, obeying the request. “You have a double claim on my services to-night, for you have shown yourself the most promising of my pupils. Come here, Zack, and see what Mrs. Blyth has done. The best drawing of the evening—just what I thought it would be—the best drawing of the evening!”