What Will He Do with It? — Complete

Mop was equally mute to Aristotle. He pricked up his cars at Plato, perhaps because the sound was not wholly dissimilar from that of Ponto,—a name of which he might have had vague reminiscences. The Romans not having cultivated an original philosophy, though they contrived to produce great men without it, Waife passed by that perished people. He crossed to China, and tried Confucius. Mop had evidently never heard of him.

“I am at the end of my list, so far as the wise men are concerned,” said Waife, wiping his forehead. “If Mop were to distinguish himself by valour, one would find heroes by the dozen,—Achilles, and Hector, and Julius Caesar, and Pompey, and Bonaparte, and Alexander the Great, and the Duke of Marlborough. Or, if he wrote poetry, we could fit him to a hair. But wise men certainly are scarce, and when one has hit on a wise man’s name it is so little known to the vulgar that it would carry no more weight with it than Spot or Toby. But necessarily some name the dog must have, and take to sympathetically.”

Sophy meanwhile had extracted the dominos from Waife’s bundle, and with the dominos an alphabet and a multiplication-table in printed capitals. As the Comedian’s one eye rested upon the last, he exclaimed, “But after all, Mop’s great strength will probably be in arithmetic, and the science of numbers is the root of all wisdom. Besides, every man, high and low, wants to make a fortune, and associations connected with addition and multiplication are always pleasing. Who, then, is the sage at computation most universally known? Unquestionably Cocker! He must take to that, Cocker, Cocker” (commandingly),—“C-o-c-k-e-r” (with persuasive sweetness).

Mop looked puzzled; he put his head first on one side, then on the other.

SOPHY (with mellifluous endearment).—“Cocker, good Cocker; Cocker dear!”

BOTH.—“Cocker, Cocker, Cocker!”

Excited and bewildered, Mop put up his head, and gave vent to his perplexities in a long and lugubrious howl, to which certainly none who heard it could have desired addition or multiplication.

“Stop this instant, sir,—stop; I shoot you! You are dead,—down!” Waife adjusted his staff to his shoulder gun-wise; and at the word of command, “Down,” Mop was on his side, stiff and lifeless. “Still,” said Waife, “a name connected with profound calculation would be the most appropriate; for instance, Sir Isaac—”

Before the Comedian could get out the word Newton, Mop had sprung to his four feet, and, with wagging tail and wriggling back, evinced a sense of beatified recognition.

“Astounding!” said Waife, rather awed. “Can it be the name? Impossible. Sir Isaac, Sir Isaac!”

“Bow-wow!” answered Mop, joyously.

“If there be any truth in the doctrine of metempsychosis,” faltered Gentleman Waife, “if the great Newton could have transmigrated into that incomparable animal! Newton, Newton!” To that name Mop made no obeisance, but, evidently still restless, walked round the room, smelling at every corner, and turning to look back with inquisitive earnestness at his new master.

“He does not seem to catch at the name of Newton,” said Waife, trying it thrice again, and vainly, “and yet he seems extremely well versed in the principle of gravity. Sir Isaac!” The dog bounded towards him, put his paws on his shoulder, and licked his face. “Just cut out those figures carefully, my dear, and see if we can get him to tell us how much twice ten are—I mean by addressing him as Sir Isaac.”

Sophy cut the figures from the multiplication table, and arranged them, at Waife’s instruction, in a circle on the floor. “Now, Sir Isaac.” Mop lifted a paw, and walked deliberately round the letters. “Now, Sir Isaac, how much are ten times two?” Mop deliberately made his survey and calculation, and, pausing at twenty, stooped, and took the letters in his mouth.

“It is not natural,” cried Sophy, much alarmed. “It must be wicked, and I’d rather have nothing to do with it, please.”

“Silly child! He was but obeying my sign. He had been taught that trick already under the name of Mop. The only strange thing is, that he should do it also under the name of Sir Isaac, and much more cheerfully too. However, whether he has been the great Newton or not, a live dog is better than a dead lion. But it is clear that, in acknowledging the name of Sir Isaac, he does not encourage us to take that of Newton; and he is right: for it might be thought unbecoming to apply to an animal, however extraordinary, who by the severity of fortune is compelled to exhibit his talents for a small pecuniary reward, the family name of so great a philosopher. Sir Isaac, after all, is a vague appellation; any dog has a right to be Sir Isaac—Newton may be left conjectural. Let us see if we can add to our arithmetical information. Look at me, Sir Isaac.” Sir Isaac looked and grinned affectionately; and under that title learned a new combination with a facility that might have relieved Sophy’s mind of all superstitious belief that the philosopher was resuscitated in the dog, had she known that in life that great master of calculations the most abstruse could not accurately cast up a simple sum in addition. Nothing brought him to the end of his majestic tether like dot and carry one. Notable type of our human incompleteness, where men might deem our studies had made us most complete! Notable type, too, of that grandest order of all human genius which seems to arrive at results by intuition, which a child might pose by a row of figures on a slate, while it is solving the laws that link the stars to infinity! But revenons a nos moutons, what was the astral attraction that incontestably bound the reminiscences of Mop to the cognominal distinction of Sir Isaac? I had prepared a very erudite and subtle treatise upon this query, enlivened by quotations from the ancient Mystics,—such as Iamblicus and Proclus,—as well as by a copious reference to the doctrine of the more modern Spiritualists, from Sir Kenelm Digby and Swedenborg, to Monsieur Cahagnet and Judge Edwards. It was to be called Inquiry into the Law of Affinities, by Philomopsos: when, unluckily for my treatise, I arrived at the knowledge of a fact which, though it did not render the treatise less curious, knocked on the head the theory upon which it was based. The baptismal name of the old soldier, Mop’s first proprietor and earliest preceptor, was Isaac; and his master being called in the homely household by that Christian name, the sound had entered into Mop’s youngest and most endeared associations. His canine affections had done much towards ripening his scholastic education. “Where is Isaac?” “Call Isaac!” “Fetch Isaac his hat,” etc. Stilled was that name when the old soldier died; but when heard again, Mop’s heart was moved, and in missing the old master, he felt more at home with the new. As for the title, “Sir,” it was a mere expletive in his ears. Such was the fact, and such the deduction to be drawn from it. Not that it will satisfy every one. I know that philosophers who deny all that they have not witnessed, and refuse to witness what they resolve to deny, will reject the story in toto; and will prove, by reference to their own dogs, that a dog never recognizes the name of his master,—never yet could be taught arithmetic. I know also that there are Mystics who will prefer to believe that Mop was in direct spiritual communication with unseen Isaacs, or in a state of clairvoyance, or under the influence of the odic fluid. But did we ever yet find in human reason a question with only one side to it? Is not truth a polygon? Have not sages arisen in our day to deny even the principle of gravity, for which we bad been so long contentedly taking the word of the great Sir Isaac? It is that blessed spirit of controversy which keeps the world going; and it is that which, perhaps, explains why Mr. Waife, when his memory was fairly put to it, could remember, out of the history of the myriads who have occupied our planet from the date of Adam to that in which I now write, so very few men whom the world will agree to call wise, and out of that very few so scant a percentage with names sufficiently known to make them more popularly significant of pre-eminent sagacity than if they had been called—Mops.

CHAPTER VI

The vagrant having got his dog, proceeds to hunt fortune with it, leaving behind him a trap to catch rats.—What the trap does catch is “just like his luck.”

Sir Isaac, to designate him by his new name, improved much upon acquaintance. He was still in the ductile season of youth, and took to learning as an amusement to himself. His last master, a stupid sot, had not gained his affections; and perhaps even the old soldier, though gratefully remembered and mourned, had not stolen into his innermost heart, as Waife and Sophy gently contrived to do. In short, in a very few days he became perfectly accustomed and extremely attached to them. When Waife had ascertained the extent of his accomplishments, and added somewhat to their range in matters which cost no great trouble, he applied himself to the task of composing a little drama which might bring them all into more interesting play, and in which though Sophy and himself were performers the dog had the premier role. And as soon as this was done, and the dog’s performances thus ranged into methodical order and sequence, he resolved to set off to a considerable town at some distance, and to which Mr. Rugge was no visitor.

His bill at the cottage made but slight inroad into his pecuniary resources; for in the intervals of leisure from his instructions to Sir Isaac, Waife had performed various little services to the lone widow with whom they lodged, which Mrs. Saunders (such was her name) insisted upon regarding as money’s worth. He had repaired and regulated to a minute an old clock which had taken no note of time for the last three years; he had mended all the broken crockery by some cement of his own invention, and for which she got him the materials. And here his ingenuity was remarkable, for when there was only a fragment to be found of a cup and a fragment or two of a saucer, he united them both into some pretty form, which, if not useful, at all events looked well on a shelf. He bound, in smart showy papers, sundry tattered old books which had belonged to his landlady’s defunct husband, a Scotch gardener, and which she displayed on a side table, under the japan tea-tray. More than all, he was of service to her in her vocation; for Mrs. Saunders eked out a small pension—which she derived from the affectionate providence of her Scotch husband, in insuring his life in her favour—by the rearing and sale of poultry; and Waife saved her the expense of a carpenter by the construction of a new coop, elevated above the reach of the rats, who had hitherto made sad ravage amongst the chickens; while he confided to her certain secrets in the improvement of breed and the cheaper processes of fattening, which excited her gratitude no less than her wonder. “The fact is,” said Gentleman Waife, “that my life has known makeshifts. Once, in a foreign country, I kept poultry, upon the principle that the poultry should keep me.”

Strange it was to notice such versatility of invention, such readiness of resource, such familiarity with divers nooks and crannies in the practical experience of life, in a man now so hard put to it for a livelihood. There are persons, however, who might have a good stock of talent, if they did not turn it all into small change. And you, reader, know as well as I do, that when a sovereign or a shilling is once broken into, the change scatters and dispends itself in a way quite unaccountable. Still coppers are useful in household bills; and when Waife was really at a pinch, somehow or other, by hook or by crook, he scraped together intellectual halfpence enough to pay his way.

Mrs. Saunders grew quite fond of her lodgers. Waife she regarded as a prodigy of genius; Sophy was the prettiest and best of children. Sir Isaac, she took for granted, was worthy of his owners. But the Comedian did not confide to her his dog’s learning, nor the use to which he designed to put it. And in still greater precaution, when he took his leave, he extracted from Mrs. Saunders a solemn promise that she would set no one on his track in case of impertinent inquiries.

“You see before you,” said he, “a man who has enemies, such as rats are to your chickens: chickens despise rats when raised, as yours are now, above the reach of claws and teeth. Some day or other I may so raise a coop for that little one: I am too old for coops. Meanwhile, if a rat comes sneaking here after us, send it off the wrong way, with a flea in its ear.”

Mrs. Saunders promised, between tears and laughter; blessed Waife, kissed Sophy, patted Sir Isaac, and stood long at her threshold watching the three, as the early sun lit their forms receding in the narrow green lane,—dewdrops sparkling on the hedgerows, and the skylark springing upward from the young corn.

Then she slowly turned indoors, and her home seemed very solitary. We can accustom ourselves to loneliness, but we should beware of infringing the custom. Once admit two or three faces seated at your hearthside, or gazing out from your windows on the laughing sun, and when they are gone, they carry off the glow from your grate and the sunbeam from your panes. Poor Mrs. Saunders! in vain she sought to rouse herself, to put the rooms to rights, to attend to the chickens to distract her thoughts. The one-eyed cripple, the little girl, the shaggy-faced dog, still haunted her; and when at noon she dined all alone off the remnants of the last night’s social supper, the very click of the renovated clock seemed to say, “Gone, gone;” and muttering, “Ah! gone,” she reclined back on her chair, and indulged herself in a good womanlike cry. From this luxury she was startled by a knock at the door. “Could they have come back?” No; the door opened, and a genteel young man, in a black coat and white neckcloth, stepped in.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am—your name ‘s Saunders—sell poultry?”

“At your service, sir. Spring chickens?” Poor people, whatever their grief, must sell their chickens, if they have any to sell.

“Thank you, ma’am; not at this moment. The fact is, that I call to make some inquiries Have not you lodgers here?”

Lodgers! at that word the expanding soul of Mrs. Saunders reclosed hermetically; the last warning of Waife revibrated in her ears this white neckclothed gentleman, was he not a rat?

“No, sir, I ha’n’t no lodgers.”

“But you have had some lately, eh? a crippled elderly man and a little girl.”

“Don’t know anything about them; leastways,” said Mrs. Saunders, suddenly remembering that she was told less to deny facts than to send inquirers upon wrong directions, “leastways, at this blessed time. Pray, sir, what makes you ask?”

“Why, I was instructed to come down to ———, and find out where this person, one William Waife, had gone. Arrived yesterday, ma’am. All I could hear is, that a person answering to his description left the place several days ago, and had been seen by a boy, who was tending sheep, to come down the lane to your house, and you were supposed to have lodgers (you take lodgers sometimes, I think, ma’am), because you had been buying some trifling articles of food not in your usual way of custom. Circumstantial evidence, ma’am: you can have no motive to conceal the truth.”

“I should think not indeed, sir,” retorted Mrs. Saunders, whom the ominous words “circumstantial evidence” set doubly on her guard. “I did see a gentleman such as you mention, and a pretty young lady, about ten days agone, or so, and they did lodge here a night or two, but they are gone to—”

“Yes, ma’am,—gone where?”

“Lunnon.”

“Really—very likely. By the train or on foot?”

“On foot, I s’pose.”

“Thank you, ma’am. If you should see them again, or hear where they are, oblige me by conveying this card to Mr. Waife. My employer, ma’am, Mr. Gotobed, Craven Street, Strand,—eminent solicitor. He has something of importance to communciate to Mr. Waife.”

“Yes, sir,—a lawyer; I understand.” And as of all ratlike animals in the world Mrs. Saunders had the ignorance to deem a lawyer was the most emphatically devouring, she congratulated herself with her whole heart on the white lies she had told in favour of the intended victims.

The black-coated gentleman having thus obeyed his instructions and attained his object, nodded, went his way, and regained the fly which he had left at the turnstile. “Back to the inn,” cried he, “quick: I must be in time for the three o’clock train to London.”

And thus terminated the result of the great barrister’s first instructions to his eminent solicitor to discover a lame man and a little girl. No inquiry, on the whole, could have been more skilfully conducted. Mr. Gotobed sends his head clerk; the head clerk employs the policeman of the village; gets upon the right track; comes to the right house; and is altogether in the wrong,—in a manner highly creditable to his researches.

“In London, of course: all people of that kind come back to London,” said Mr. Gotobed. “Give me the heads in writing, that I may report to my distinguished client. Most satisfactory. That young man will push his way,—businesslike and methodical.”

CHAPTER VII

The cloud has its silver lining.

Thus turning his back on the good fortune which he had so carefully cautioned Mrs. Saunders against favouring on his behalf, the vagrant was now on his way to the ancient municipal town of Gatesboro’, which, being the nearest place of fitting opulence and population, Mr. Waife had resolved to honour with the debut of Sir Isaac as soon as he had appropriated to himself the services of that promising quadruped. He had consulted a map of the county before quitting Mr. Merle’s roof, and ascertained that he could reach Gatesboro’ by a short cut for foot-travellers along fields and lanes. He was always glad to avoid the high road: doubtless for such avoidance he had good reasons. But prudential reasons were in this instance supported by vagrant inclinations. High roads are for the prosperous. By-paths and ill-luck go together. But by-paths have their charm, and ill-luck its pleasant moments.

They passed then from the high road into a long succession of green pastures, through which a straight public path conducted them into one of those charming lanes never seen out of this bowery England,—a lane deep sunk amidst high banks with overhanging oaks, and quivering ash, gnarled wych-elm, vivid holly and shaggy brambles, with wild convolvulus and creeping woodbine forcing sweet life through all. Sometimes the banks opened abruptly, leaving patches of green sward, and peeps through still sequestered gates, or over moss-grown pales, into the park or paddock of some rural thane. New villas or old manor-houses on lawny uplands, knitting, as it were, together England’s feudal memories with England’s freeborn hopes,—the old land with its young people; for England is so old, and the English are so young! And the gray cripple and the bright-haired child often paused, and gazed upon the demesnes and homes of owners whose lots were cast in such pleasant places. But there was no grudging envy in their gaze; perhaps because their life was too remote from those grand belongings. And therefore they could enjoy and possess every banquet of the eye. For at least the beauty of what we see is ours for the moment, on the simple condition that we do not covet the thing which gives to our eyes that beauty. As the measureless sky and the unnumbered stars are equally granted to king and to beggar; and in our wildest ambition we do not sigh for a monopoly of the empyrean, or the fee-simple of the planets: so the earth too, with all its fenced gardens and embattled walls, all its landmarks of stern property and churlish ownership, is ours too by right of eye. Ours to gaze on the fair possessions with such delight as the gaze can give; grudging to the unseen owner his other, and, it may be, more troubled rights, as little as we grudge an astral proprietor his acres of light in Capricorn. Benignant is the law that saith, “Thou shalt not covet.”

When the sun was at the highest our wayfarers found a shadowy nook for their rest and repast. Before them ran a shallow limpid trout-stream; on the other side its margin, low grassy meadows, a farmhouse in the distance, backed by a still grove, from which rose a still church tower and its still spire. Behind them, a close-shaven sloping lawn terminated the hedgerow of the lane; seen clearly above it, with parterres of flowers on the sward, drooping lilacs and laburnums farther back, and a pervading fragrance from the brief-lived and rich syringas. The cripple had climbed over a wooden rail that separated the lane from the rill, and seated himself under the shade of a fantastic hollow thorn-tree. Sophy, reclined beside him, was gathering some pale scentless violets from a mound which the brambles had guarded from the sun. The dog had descended to the waters to quench his thirst, but still stood knee-deep in the shallow stream, and appeared lost in philosophical contemplation of a swarm of minnows, which his immersion had disturbed, but which now made itself again visible on the farther side of the glassy brook, undulating round and round a tiny rocklet which interrupted the glide of the waves, and caused them to break into a low melodious murmur. “For these and all thy mercies, O Lord, make us thankful,” said the victim of ill-luck, in the tritest words of a pious custom. But never, perhaps, at aldermanic feasts was the grace more sincerely said.

And then he untied the bundle, which the dog, who had hitherto carried it by the way, had now carefully deposited at his side. “As I live,” ejaculated Waife, “Mrs. Saunders is a woman in ten thousand. See, Sophy, not contented with the bread and cheese to which I bade her stint her beneficence, a whole chicken,—a little cake too for you, Sophy; she has not even forgotten the salt. Sophy, that woman deserves the handsomest token of our gratitude; and we will present her with a silver teapot the first moment we can afford it.”

His spirits exhilarated by the unexpected good cheer, the Comedian gave way to his naturally blithe humour; and between every mouthful he rattled or rather drolled on, now infant-like, now sage-like. He cast out the rays of his liberal humour, careless where they fell,—on the child, on the dog, on the fishes that played beneath the wave, on the cricket that chirped amidst the grass; the woodpecker tapped the tree, and the cripple’s merry voice answered it in bird-like mimicry. To this riot of genial babble there was a listener, of whom neither grandfather nor grandchild was aware. Concealed by thick brushwood a few paces farther on, a young angler, who might be five or six and twenty, had seated himself, just before the arrival of our vagrant to those banks and waters, for the purpose of changing an unsuccessful fly. At the sound of voices, perhaps suspecting an unlicensed rival, for that part of the stream was preserved,—he had suspended his task, and noiselessly put aside the clustering leaves to reconnoitre. The piety of Waife’s simple grace seemed to surprise him pleasingly, for a sweet approving smile crossed his lips. He continued to look and to listen. He forgot the fly, and a trout sailed him by unheeded. But Sir Isaac, having probably satisfied his speculative mind as to the natural attributes of minnows, now slowly reascended the bank, and after a brief halt and a sniff, walked majestically towards the hidden observer, looked at him with great solemnity, and uttered an inquisitive bark,—a bark not hostile, not menacing; purely and dryly interrogative. Thus detected, the angler rose; and Waife, whose attention was directed that way by the bark, saw him, called to Sir Isaac, and said politely, “There is no harm in my dog, sir.”

The young man muttered some inaudible reply, and, lifting up his rod as in sign of his occupation or excuse for his vicinity, came out from the intervening foliage, and stepped quietly to Waife’s side. Sir Isaac followed him, sniffed again, seemed satisfied; and seating himself on his haunches, fixed his attention upon the remains of the chicken which lay defenceless on the grass. The new comer was evidently of the rank of gentleman; his figure was slim and graceful, his face pale, meditative, refined. He would have impressed you at once with the idea of what he really was,—an Oxford scholar; and you would perhaps have guessed him designed for the ministry of the Church, if not actually in orders.