What Will He Do with It? Part 30

Ability and education! the two worst mantraps that a poor fellow can put his foot into! Aha! Did not you say if you had set up to be clever, you would not be where you now are:' A wise saying; I admire you for it.

Well, well, I and my dog have amused your townsfolk; they have amply repaid us. We are public servants; according as we act in public--hiss us or applaud. Are we to submit to an inquisition into our private character? Are you to ask how many mutton bones has that dog stolen?

how many cats has he worried? or how many s.h.i.+rts has the showman in his wallet? how many debts has he left behind him? what is his rent-roll on earth, and his account with Heaven? Go and put those questions to ministers, philosophers, generals, poets. When they have acknowledged your right to put them, come to me and the other dog."

MR. HARTOPP (rising and drawing on his gloves).--"I beg your pardon! I have done, sir. And yet I conceived an interest in you. It is because I have no talents myself that I admire those who have. I felt a mournful anxiety, too, for your poor little girl,--so young, so engaging. And is it necessary that you should bring up that child in a course of life certainly equivocal, and to females dangerous?"

The Comedian lifted his eyes suddenly, and stared hard at the face of his visitor, and in that face there was so much of benevolent humanity, so much sweetness contending with authoritative rebuke, that the vagabond's hardihood gave way! He struck his breast, and groaned aloud.

MR. HARTOPP (pressing on the advantage he had gained).--"And have you no alarm for her health? Do you not see how delicate she is? Do you not see that her very talent comes from her susceptibility to emotions which must wear her away?"

WAIFE.-"No, no! stop, stop, stop! you terrify me, you break my heart.

Man, man! it is all for her that I toil and show and beg,--if you call it begging. Do you think I care what becomes of this battered hulk? Not a straw. What am I to do? What! what! You tell me to confide in you; wherefore? How can you help me? Would you give me employment? What am I fit for? Nothing! You could find work and bread for an Irish labourer, nor ask who or what he was; but to a man who strays towards you, seemingly from a sphere in which, if Poverty enters, she drops a courtesy, and is called 'genteel,' you cry, 'Hold, produce your pa.s.sport; where are your credentials, references?' I have none. I have slipped out of the world I once moved in. I can no more appeal to those I knew in it than if I had transmigrated from one of yon stars, and said, 'See there what I was once!' Oh, but you do not think she looks ill!--do you? do you? Wretch that I am! And I thought to save her!"

The old man trembled from head to foot, and his cheek was as pale as ashes.

Again the good magistrate took his hand, but this time the clasp was encouraging. "Cheer up: where there is a will there is a way; you justify the opinion I formed in your favour despite all circ.u.mstances to the contrary. When I asked you to confide in me, it was not from curiosity, but because I would serve you if I can. Reflect on what I have said. True, you can know but little of me. Learn what is said of me by my neighbours before you trust me further. For the rest, to-morrow you will have many proposals to renew your performance. Excuse me if I do not actively encourage it. I will not, at least, interfere to your detriment; but--"

"But," exclaimed Waife, not much heeding this address, "but you think she looks ill? you think this is injuring her? you think I am murdering my grandchild,--my angel of life, my all?"

"Not so; I spoke too bluntly. Yet still--"

"Yes, yes, yet still--"

"Still, if you love her so dearly, would you blunt her conscience and love of truth? Were you not an impostor tonight? Would you ask her to reverence and imitate and pray for an impostor?"

"I never saw it in that light!" faltered Waife, struck to the soul; "never, never, so help me Heaven!"

"I felt sure you did not," said the Mayor; "you saw but the sport of the thing; you took to it as a schoolboy. I have known many such men, with high animal spirits like yours. Such men err thoughtlessly; but did they ever sin consciously, they could not keep those high spirits! Good night, Mr. Chapman, I shall hear from you again."

The door closed on the form of the visitor; Waife's head sank on his breast, and all the deep lines upon brow and cheek stood forth, records of mighty griefs revived,--a countenance so altered, now its innocent arch play was gone, that you would not have known it. At length he rose very quietly, took up the candle, and stole into Sophy's room. Shading the light with careful hand, he looked on her face as she slept.

The smile was still upon the parted lip: the child was still in the fairyland of dreams. But the cheek was thinner than it had been weeks ago, and the little hand that rested on the coverlet seemed wasted.

Waife took that hand noiselessly into his own! it was hot and dry. He dropped it with a look of unutterable fear and anguish, and, shaking his head piteously; stole back again. Seating himself by the table at which he had been caught counting his gains, he folded his arms, and rooted his gaze on the floor; and there, motionless, and as if in stupefied suspense of thought itself, he sat till the dawn crept over the sky,--till the sun shone into the windows. The dog, crouched at his feet, sometimes started up and whined as to attract his notice: he did not heed it. The clock struck six; the house began to stir. The chambermaid came into the room. Waife rose and took his hat, brus.h.i.+ng its nap mechanically with his sleeve. "Who did you say was the best here?" he asked with a vacant smile, touching the chambermaid's arm.

"Sir! the best--what?"

"The best doctor, ma'am; none of your parish apothecaries,--the best physician,--Dr. Gill,--did you say Gill? Thank you; his address, High Street. Close by, ma'am." With his grand bow,--such is habit!--Gentleman Waife smiled graciously, and left the room. Sir Isaac stretched himself and followed.

CHAPTER XVI.

In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal, and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food. These interesting but formidable bipeds, having caught their victim, invariably select one part of his body on which to fasten their relentless grinders. The part thus selected is peculiarly susceptible, Providence having made it alive to the least nibble; it is situated just above the hip-joint, it is protected by a tegument of exquisite fibre, vulgarly called "THE BREECHES POCKET." The thoroughbred Anthropophagite usually begins with his own relations and friends; and so long as he confines his voracity to the domestic circle, the law interferes little, if at all, with his venerable propensities. But when he has exhausted all that allows itself to be edible in the bosom of private life, the man-eater falls loose on society, and takes to prowling,--then "Sauve qui peut!" the laws rouse themselves, put on their spectacles, call for their wigs and gowns, and the Anthropophagite turned prowler is not always sure of his dinner. It is when he has arrived at this stage of development that the man- eater becomes of importance, enters into the domain of history, and occupies the thoughts of Moralists.

On the same morning in which Waife thus went forth from the Saracen's Head in quest of the doctor, but at a later hour, a man, who, to judge by the elaborate smartness of his attire, and the jaunty a.s.surance of his saunter, must have wandered from the gay purlieus of Regent Street, threaded his way along the silent and desolate thoroughfares that intersect the remotest districts of Bloomsbury. He stopped at the turn into a small street still more sequestered than those which led to it, and looked up to the angle on the wall whereon the name of the street should have been inscribed. But the wall had been lately whitewashed, and the whitewash had obliterated the expected epigraph. The man muttered an impatient execration; and, turning round as if to seek a pa.s.senger of whom to make inquiry, beheld on the opposite side of the way another man apparently engaged in the same research. Involuntarily each crossed over the road towards the other.

"Pray, sir," quoth the second wayfarer in that desert, "can you tell me if this is a street that is called a Place,--Podden Place, Upper?"

"Sir," returned the sprucer wayfarer, "it is the question I would have asked of you."

"Strange!"

"Very strange indeed that more than one person can, in this busy age, employ himself in discovering a Podden Place! Not a soul to inquire of,--not a shop that I see, not an orange-stall!"

"Ha!" cried the other, in a hoa.r.s.e sepulchral voice, "Ha! there is a pot-boy! Boy! boy! boy! I say. Hold, there! hold! Is this Podden Place,--Upper?"

"Yes, it be," answered the pot-boy, with a sleepy air, caught in that sleepy atmosphere; and chiming his pewter against an area rail with a dull clang, he chanted forth "Pots oho!" with a note as dirge-like as that which in the City of the Plague chanted "Out with the dead!"

Meanwhile the two wayfarers exchanged bows and parted; the sprucer wayfarer whether from the indulgence of a reflective mood, or from an habitual indifference to things and persons not concerning him, ceased to notice his fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry little coquetries appertaining to his own person. He pa.s.sed his hand through his hair, re-arranged the c.o.c.k of his hat, looked complacently at his boots, which still retained the gloss of the morning's varnish, drew down his wristbands, and, in a word, gave sign of a man who desires to make an effect, and feels that he ought to do it. So occupied was he in this self-commune that when he stopped at length at one of the small doors in the small street and lifted his hand to the knocker, he started to see that Wayfarer the Second was by his side. The two men now examined each other briefly but deliberately. Wayfarer the First was still young,--certainly handsome, but with an indescribable look about the eye and lip, from which the other recoiled with an instinctive awe,--a hard look, a cynical look,--a sidelong, quiet, defying, remorseless look. His clothes were so new of gloss that they seemed put on for the first time, were shaped to the prevailing fas.h.i.+on, and of a taste for colours less subdued than is usual with Englishmen, yet still such as a person of good mien could wear without incurring the charge of vulgarity, though liable to that of self-conceit. If you doubted that the man were a gentleman, you would have been puzzled to guess what else he could be. Were it not for the look we have mentioned, and which was perhaps not habitual, his appearance might have been called prepossessing. In his figure there was the grace, in his step the elasticity which come from just proportions and muscular strength.

In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick, slight and innocuous to appearance, but weighted at the handle after the fas.h.i.+on of a life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasing to the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell of it,--the sort of tone men a.s.sume when they desire to seem more frank and off-hand than belongs to their nature,--a sort of rollicking tone which is to the voice what swagger is to, the gait. Still that look! it produced on you the effect which might be created by some strange animal, not without beauty, but deadly to man. Wayfarer the Second was big and burly, middle-aged, large-whiskered, his complexion dirty. He wore a wig,--a wig evident, unmistakable,--a wig curled and rusty,--over the wig a dingy white hat. His black stock fitted tight round his throat, and across his breast he had thrown the folds of a Scotch plaid.

WAYFARER THE FIRST.--"YOU call here, too,--on Mrs. Crane?"

WAYFARER THE SECOND.--"Mrs. Crane? you too? Strange!"

WAYFARER THE FIRST (with constrained civility).--"Sir, I call on business,--private business."

WAYFARER THE SECOND (with candid surliness).--"So do I."

WAYFARER THE FIRST.--"Oh!"

WAYFARER THE SECOND.--"Ha! the locks unbar!"

The door opened, and an old meagre woman-servant presented herself.

WAYFARER THE FIRST (gliding before the big man with a serpent's undulating celerity of movement).--"Mrs. Crane lives here?"--"Yes!"

"She's at home I suppose?"--"Yes!"--"Take up my card; say I come alone, not with this gentleman."

Wayfarer the Second seems to have been rather put out by the manner of his rival. He recedes a step.

"You know the lady of this mansion well, sir?" "Extremely well."

"Ha! then I yield you the precedence; I yield it, sir, but conditionally. You will not be long?"

"Not a moment longer than I can help; the land will be clear for you in an hour or less."

"Or less, so please you, let it be or less. Servant, sir."

"Sir, yours: come, my Hebe, track the dancers; that is, go up the stairs, and let me renew the dreams of youth in the eyes of Bella!"

The old woman meanwhile had been turning over the card in her withered palm, looking from the card to the visitor's face, and then to the card again, and mumbling to herself. At length she spoke:

"You, Mr. Losely! you!--Jasper Losely! how you be changed! what ha' ye done to yourself? where's your comeliness? where's the look that stole ladies' hearts? you, Jasper Losely! you are his goblin!"

"Hold your peace, old hussey!" said the visitor, evidently annoyed at remarks so disparaging. "I am Jasper Losely, more bronzed of cheek, more iron of hand." He raised his switch with a threatening gesture, that might be in play, for the lips wore smiles, or might be in earnest, for the brows were bent; and pus.h.i.+ng into the pa.s.sage, and shutting the door, said, "Is your mistress up stairs? show me to her room, or--"

The old crone gave him one angry glance, which sank frightened beneath the cruel gleam of his eyes, and hastening up the stairs with a quicker stride than her age seemed to warrant, cried out, "Mistress, mistress!

here is Mr. Losely! Jasper Losely himself!" By the time the visitor had reached the landing-place of the first floor, a female form had emerged from a room above, a female face peered over the banisters. Losely looked up and started as he saw it. A haggard face,--the face of one over whose life there has pa.s.sed a blight. When last seen by him it had possessed beauty, though of a masculine rather than womanly character.

Now of that beauty not a trace! the cheeks shrunk and hollow left the nose sharp, long, beaked as a bird of prey. The hair, once glossy in its ebon hue, now grizzled, harsh, neglected, hung in tortured, tangled meshes,--a study for an artist who would paint a fury. But the eyes were bright,--brighter than ever; bright now with a glare that lighted up the whole face bending over the man. In those burning eyes was there love?

was there hate? was there welcome? was there menace? Impossible to distinguish; but at least one might perceive that there was joy.