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What Will He Do with It? — Complete
and was contemplating aspect and position with a painter’s meditative eye-started up, to his great discomposure, and rushed to the window. She returned to her seat with her mind much relieved. Waife was walking in an opposite direction to that which led towards the whilolm quarters of the Norfolk Giant and the Two-headed Calf.
“Come, come,” said Vance, impatiently, “you have broken an idea in half. I beg you will not stir till I have placed you; and then, if all else of you be still, you may exercise your tongue. I give you leave to talk.”
SOPHY (penitentially).—“I am so sorry—I beg pardon. Will that do, sir?”
VANCE.—“Head a little more to the right,—so, Titania watching Bottom asleep. Will you lie on the floor, Lionel, and do Bottom?”
LIONEL (indignantly).—“Bottom! Have I an ass’s head?”
VANCE.—“Immaterial! I can easily imagine that you have one. I want merely an outline of figure,—something sprawling and ungainly.”
LIONEL (sulkily).—“Much obliged to you; imagine that too.”
VANCE.—“Don’t be so disobliging. It is necessary that she should look fondly at something,—expression in the eye.” Lionel at once reclined himself incumbent in a position as little sprawling and ungainly as he could well contrive.
VANCE.—“Fancy, Miss Sophy, that this young gentleman is very dear to you. Have you got a brother?”
SOPHY.—“Ah, no, sir.”
VANCE.—“Hum. But you have, or have had, a doll?”
SOPHY.—“Oh, yes; Grandfather gave me one.”
VANCE.—“And you were fond of that doll?”
SOPHY.—“Very.”
VANCE.—“Fancy that young gentleman is your doll grown big, that it is asleep, and you are watching that no one hurts it; Mr. Rugge, for instance. Throw your whole soul into that thought,—love for doll, apprehension of Rugge. Lionel, keep still, and shut your eyes; do.”
LIONEL (grumbling).—“I did not come here to be made a doll of.”
VANCE.—“Coax him to be quiet, Miss Sophy, and sleep peaceably, or I shall do him a mischief. I can be a Rugge, too, if I am put out.”
SOPHY (in the softest tones).—“Do try and sleep, sir: shall I get you a pillow?”
LIONEL.—“No, thank you: I’m very comfortable now,” settling his head upon his arm; and after one upward glance towards Sophy, the lids closed reluctantly over his softened eyes. A ray of sunshine came aslant through the half-shut window, and played along the boy’s clustering hair and smooth pale cheek. Sophy’s gaze rested on him most benignly.
“Just so,” said Vance; “and now be silent till I have got the attitude and fixed the look.”
The artist sketched away rapidly with a bold practised hand, and all was silent for about half-an-hour, when he said, “You May get up, Lionel; I have done with you for the present.”
SOPHY.—“And me too—may I see?”
VANCE.—“No, but you may talk now. So you had a doll? What has become of it?”
SOPHY.—“I left it behind, sir. Grandfather thought it would distract me from attending to his lessons and learning my part.”
VANCE.—“You love your grandfather more than the doll?”
SOPHY.—“Oh! a thousand million million times more.”
VANCE.—“He brought you up, I suppose? Have you no father,—no mother?”
SOPHY.—“I have only Grandfather.”
LIONEL.—“Have you always lived with him?”
SOPHY.—“Dear me, no; I was with Mrs. Crane till Grandfather came from abroad, and took me away, and put me with some very kind people; and then, when Grandfather had that bad accident, I came to stay with him, and we have been together ever since.”
LIONEL.—“Was Mrs. Crane no relation of yours?”
SOPHY.—“No, I suppose not, for she was not kind; I was so miserable: but don’t talk of it; I forget that now. I only wish to remember from the time Grandfather took me in his lap, and told me to be a good child and love him; and I have been happy ever since.”
“You are a dear good child,” said Lionel, emphatically, “and I wish I had you for my sister.”
VANCE.—“When your grandfather has received from me that exorbitant—not that I grudge it—sum, I should like to ask, What will he do with it? As he said it was a secret, I must not pump you.”
SOPHY.—“What will he do with it? I should like to know, too, sir; but whatever it is I don’t care, so long as I and Grandfather are together.”
Here Waife re-entered. “Well, how goes on the picture?”
VANCE.—“Tolerably, for the first sitting; I require two more.”
WAIFE.—“Certainly; only—only” (he drew aside Vance, and whispered), “only the day after to-morrow, I fear I shall want the money. It is an occasion that never will occur again: I would seize it.”
VANCE.—“Take the money now.”
WAIFE.—“Well, thank you, sir; you are sure now that we shall not run away; and I accept your kindness; it will make all safe.”
Vance, with surprising alacrity, slipped the sovereigns into the old man’s hand; for truth to say, though thrifty, the artist was really generous. His organ of caution was large, but that of acquisitiveness moderate. Moreover, in those moments when his soul expanded with his art, he was insensibly less alive to the value of money. And strange it is that, though States strive to fix for that commodity the most abiding standards, yet the value of money to the individual who regards it shifts and fluctuates, goes up and down half-a-dozen times a day. For any part, I honestly declare that there are hours in the twenty-four—such, for instance, as that just before breakfast, or that succeeding a page of this History in which I have been put out of temper with my performance and myself—when any one in want of five shillings at my disposal would find my value of that sum put it quite out of his reach; while at other times—just after dinner, for instance, or when I have effected what seems to me a happy stroke, or a good bit of colour, in this historical composition—the value of those five shillings is so much depreciated that I might be,—I think so, at least,—I might be almost tempted to give them away for nothing. Under some such mysterious influences in the money-market, Vance therefore felt not the loss of his three sovereigns; and returning to his easel, drove away Lionel and Sophy, who had taken that opportunity to gaze on the canvas.
“Don’t do her justice at all,” quoth Lionel; “all the features exaggerated.”
“And you pretend to paint!” returned Vance, in great scorn, and throwing a cloth over his canvas. “To-morrow, Mr. Waife, the same hour. Now, Lionel, get your hat, and come away.”
Vance carried off the canvas, and Lionel followed slowly. Sophy gazed at their departing forms from the open window; Waife stumped about the room, rubbing his hands, “He’ll do; he ‘ll do: I always thought so.” Sophy turned: “Who’ll do?—the young gentleman? Do what?”
WAIFE.-“The young gentleman?-as if I was thinking of him! Our new companion; I have been with him this last hour. Wonderful natural gifts.”
SOPHY (ruefully).—“It is alive, then?”
WAIFE.—“Alive! yes, I should think so.”
SOPHY (half-crying.)—“I am very sorry; I know I shall hate it.”
WAIFF.—“Tut, darling: get me my pipe; I’m happy.”
SOPHY (cutting short her fit of ill-humour).—“Are you? then I am, and I will not hate it.”
CHAPTER XII
In which it is shown that a man does this or declines to do that for reasons best known to himself,—a reserve which is extremely conducive to the social interests of a community, since the conjecture into the origin and nature of those reasons stimulates the inquiring faculties, and furnishes the staple of modern conversation. And as it is not to be denied that, if their neighbours left them nothing to guess at, three-fourths of civilized humankind, male or female, would have nothing to talk about; so we cannot too gratefully encourage that needful curiosity termed by the inconsiderate tittle-tattle or scandal, which saves the vast majority of our species from being reduced to the degraded condition of dumb animals.
The next day the sitting was renewed: but Waife did not go out, and the conversation was a little more restrained; or rather, Waife had the larger share in it. The Comedian, when he pleased, could certainly be very entertaining. It was not so much in what he said as his manner of saying it. He was a strange combination of sudden extremes, at one while on a tone of easy but not undignified familiarity with his visitors, as if their equal in position, their superior in years; then abruptly, humble, deprecating, almost obsequious, almost servile; and then again, jerked as it were into pride and stiffness, falling back, as if the effort were impossible, into meek dejection. Still the prevalent character of the man’s mood and talk was social, quaint, cheerful. Evidently he was by original temperament a droll and joyous humourist, with high animal spirits; and, withal, an infantine simplicity at times, like the clever man who never learns the world and is always taken in.
A circumstance, trifling in itself, but suggestive of speculation either as to the character or antecedent circumstances of Gentleman Waife, did not escape Vance’s observation. Since his rupture with Mr. Rugge, there was a considerable amelioration in that affection of the trachea, which, while his engagement with Rugge lasted, had rendered the Comedian’s dramatic talents unavailable on the stage. He now expressed himself without the pathetic hoarseness or cavernous wheeze which had previously thrown a wet blanket over his efforts at discourse. But Vance put no very stern construction on the dissimulation which his change seemed to denote. Since Waife was still one-eyed and a cripple, he might very excusably shrink from reappearance on the stage, and affect a third infirmity to save his pride from the exhibition of the two infirmities that were genuine.
That which most puzzled Vance was that which had most puzzled the Cobbler,—What could the man once have been? how fallen so low?—for fall it was, that was clear. The painter, though not himself of patrician extraction, had been much in the best society. He had been a petted favourite in great houses. He had travelled. He had seen the world. He had the habits and instincts of good society.
Now, in what the French term the beau monde, there are little traits that reveal those who have entered it,—certain tricks of phrase, certain modes of expression,—even the pronunciation of familiar words, even the modulation of an accent. A man of the most refined bearing may not have these peculiarities; a man, otherwise coarse and brusque in his manner, may. The slang of the beau monde is quite apart from the code of high breeding. Now and then, something in Waife’s talk seemed to show that he had lighted on that beau-world; now and then, that something wholly vanished. So that Vance might have said, “He has been admitted there, not inhabited it.”
Yet Vance could not feel sure, after all; comedians are such takes in. But was the man, by the profession of his earlier life, a comedian? Vance asked the question adroitly.
“You must have taken to the stage young?” said he.
“The stage!” said Waife; “if you mean the public stage, no. I have acted pretty often in youth, even in childhood, to amuse others, never professionally to support myself, till Mr. Rugge civilly engaged me four years ago.”
“Is it possible,—with your excellent education! But pardon me; I have hinted my surprise at your late vocation before, and it displeased you.”
“Displeased me!” said Waife, with an abject, depressed manner; “I hope I said nothing that would have misbecome a poor broken vagabond like me. I am no prince in disguise,—a good-for-nothing varlet who should be too grateful to have something to keep himself from a dunghill.”
LIONEL.—“Don’t talk so. And but for your accident you might now be the great attraction on the metropolitan stage. Who does not respect a really fine actor?”
WAIFE (gloomily).—“The metropolitan stage! I was talked into it: I am glad even of the accident that saved me; say no more of that, no more of that. But I have spoiled your sitting. Sophy, you see, has left her chair.”
“I have done for to-day,” said Vance; “to-morrow, and my task is ended.”
Lionel came up to Vance and whispered him; the painter, after a pause, nodded silently, and then said to Waife,
“We are going to enjoy the fine weather on the Thames (after I have put away these things), and shall return to our inn—not far hence—to sup, at eight o’clock. Supper is our principal meal; we rarely spoil our days by the ceremonial of a formal dinner. Will you do us the favour to sup with us? Our host has a wonderful whiskey, which when raw is Glenlivat, but refined into toddy is nectar. Bring your pipe, and let us hear John Kemble again.”
Waife’s face lighted up. “You are most kind; nothing I should like so much. But—” and the light fled, the face darkened—“but no; I cannot—you don’t know—that is—I—I have made a vow to myself to decline all such temptations. I humbly beg you’ll excuse me.”
VANCE.—“Temptations! of what kind,—the whiskey toddy?”
WAIFE (puffing away a sigh).—“Ah, yes; whiskey toddy, if you please. Perhaps I once loved a glass too well, and could not resist a glass too much now; and if I once broke the rule and became a tippler, what would happen to Juliet Araminta? For her sake don’t press me.”
“Oh, do go, Grandy; he never drinks,—never anything stronger than tea, I assure you, sir: it can’t be that.”
“It is, silly child, and nothing else,” said Waife, positively, drawing himself up,—“excuse me.”
Lionel began brushing his hat with his sleeve, and his face worked; at last he said, “Well, sir, then may I ask another favour? Mr. Vance and I are going to-morrow, after the sitting, to see Hampton Court; we have kept that excursion to the last before leaving these parts. Would you and little Sophy come with us in the boat? We will have no whiskey toddy, and we will bring you both safe home.”
WAIFE.—“What—I! what—I! You are very young, sir,—a gentleman born and bred, I’ll swear; and you to be seen, perhaps by some of your friends or family, with an old vagrant like me, in the Queen’s palace,—the public gardens! I should be the vilest wretch if I took such advantage of your goodness. ‘Pretty company,’ they would say, ‘you had got into.’ With me! with me! Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Vance not to be thought of.”
The young men were deeply affected.
“I can’t accept that reason,” said Lionel, tremulously, “though I must not presume to derange your habits. But she may go with us, mayn’t she? We’ll take care of her, and she is dressed so plainly and neatly, and looks such a little lady” (turning to Vance).
“Yes, let her come with us,” said the artist, benevolently; though he by no means shared in Lionel’s enthusiastic desire for her company. He thought she would be greatly in their way.
“Heaven bless you both!” answered Waife; “and she wants a holiday; she shall have it.”
“I’d rather stay with you, Grandy: you’ll be so lone.”
“No, I wish to be out all to-morrow,-the investment! I shall not be alone; making friends with our future companion, Sophy.”
“And can do without me already? heigh-ho!”
VANCE.—“So that’s settled; good-by to you.”
CHAPTER XIII
Inspiring effect of the Fine Arts: the vulgar are moved by their exhibition into generous impulses and flights of fancy, checked by the ungracious severities of their superiors, as exemplified in the instance of Cobbler Merle and his servant of-all-work.
The next day, perhaps with the idea of removing all scruple from Sophy’s mind, Waife had already gone after his investment when the friends arrived. Sophy at first was dull and dispirited, but by degrees she brightened up; and when, the sitting over and the picture done (save such final touches as Vance reserved for solitary study), she was permitted to gaze at her own effigy, she burst into exclamations of frank delight. “Am I like that! is it possible? Oh, how beautiful! Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle!” and running out of the room before Vance could stop her, she returned with the Cobbler, followed, too, by a thin gaunt girl, whom he pompously called his housekeeper, but who in sober truth was servant-of-all-work. Wife he had none: his horoscope, he said, having Saturn in square to the Seventh House, forbade him to venture upon matrimony. All gathered round the picture; all admired, and with justice: it was a chef-d’oeuvre. Vance in his maturest day never painted more charmingly. The three pounds proved to be the best outlay of capital he had ever made. Pleased with his work, he was pleased even with that unsophisticated applause.
“You must have Mercury and Venus very strongly aspected,” quoth the Cobbler; “and if you have the Dragon’s Head in the Tenth House, you may count on being much talked of after you are dead.”
“After I am dead!—sinister omen!” said Vance, discomposed. “I have no faith in artists who count on being talked of after they are dead. Never knew a dauber who did not! But stand back: time flies; tie up your hair; put on your bonnet, Titania. You have a shawl?—not tinsel, I hope! quieter the better. You stay and see to her, Lionel.”
Said the gaunt servant-of-all-work to Mr. Merle, “I’d let the gentleman paint me, if he likes: shall I tell him, master?”
“Go back to the bacon, foolish woman. Why, he gave L3 for her likeness, ‘cause of her Benefics! But you’d have to give him three years’ wages afore he’d look you straight in the face, ‘cause, you see, your Aspects are crooked. And,” added the Cobbler, philosophizing, “when the Malefics are dead agin a girl’s mug, man is so constituted by natur’ that he can’t take to that mug unless it has a golden handle. Don’t fret, ‘t is not your fault: born under Scorpio,—coarse-limbed,—dull complexion; and the Head of the Dragon aspected of Infortunes in all your Angles.”
CHAPTER XIV
The historian takes advantage of the summer hours vouchsafed to the present life of Mr. Waife’s grandchild, in order to throw a few gleams of light on her past.—He leads her into the palace of our kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws, by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent and unforeboding Englishman.
Such a glorious afternoon! The capricious English summer was so kind that day to the child and her new friends! When Sophy’s small foot once trod the sward, had she been really Queen of the Green People, sward and footstep could not more joyously have met together. The grasshopper bounded in fearless trust upon the hem of her frock; she threw herself down on the grass and caught him, but, oh, so tenderly! and the gay insect, dear to poet and fairy, seemed to look at her from that quaint sharp face of his with sagacious recognition, resting calmly on the palm of her pretty hand; then when he sprang off, little moth-like butterflies peculiar to the margins of running waters quivered up from the herbage, fluttering round her. And there, in front, lay the Thames, glittering through the willows, Vance getting ready the boat, Lionel seated by her side, a child like herself, his pride of incipient manhood all forgotten; happy in her glee; she loving him for the joy she felt, and blending his image evermore in her remembrance with her first summer holiday,—with sunny beams, glistening leaves, warbling birds, fairy wings, sparkling waves. Oh, to live so in a child’s heart,—innocent, blessed, angel-like,—better, better than the troubled reflection upon woman’s later thoughts, better than that mournful illusion, over which tears so bitter are daily shed,—better than First Love! They entered the boat. Sophy had never, to the best of her recollection, been in a boat before. All was new to her: the lifelike speed of the little vessel; that world of cool green weeds, with the fish darting to and fro; the musical chime of oars; those distant stately swans. She was silent now—her heart was very full.
“What are you thinking of, Sophy?” asked Lionel, resting on the oar.
“Thinking!—I was not thinking.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know,—feeling, I suppose.”
“Feeling what?”
“As if between sleeping and waking; as the water perhaps feels, with the sunlight on it!”
“Poetical,” said Vance, who, somewhat of a poet himself, naturally sneered at poetical tendencies in others; “but not so bad in its way. Ah, have I hurt your vanity? there are tears in your eyes.”
“No, sir,” said Sophy, falteringly. “But I was thinking then.”
“Ah,” said the artist, “that’s the worst of it; after feeling ever comes thought; what was yours?”
“I was sorry poor Grandfather was not here, that’s all.”
“It was not our fault: we pressed him cordially,” said Lionel.
“You did indeed, sir, thank you! And I don’t know why he refused you.” The young men exchanged compassionate glances.
Lionel then sought to make her talk of her past life, tell him more of Mrs. Crane. Who and what was she?
Sophy could not or would not tell. The remembrances were painful; she had evidently tried to forget them. And the people with whom Waife had placed her, and who had been kind?
The Misses Burton; and they kept a day-school, and taught Sophy to read, write, and cipher. They lived near London, in a lane opening on a great common, with a green rail before the house, and had a good many pupils, and kept a tortoise shell cat and a canary. Not much to enlighten her listener did Sophy impart here.
And now they neared that stately palace, rich in associations of storm and splendour,—of the grand Cardinal; the iron-clad Protector; Dutch William of the immortal memory, whom we tried so hard to like, and in spite of the great Whig historian, that Titian of English prose, can only frigidly respect. Hard task for us Britons to like a Dutchman who dethrones his father-in-law, and drinks schnaps! Prejudice certainly; but so it is. Harder still to like Dutch William’s unfilial Fran! Like Queen Mary! I could as soon like Queen Goneril! Romance flies from the prosperous phlegmatic AEneas; flies from his plump Lavinia, his “fidus Achates,” Bentinck; flies to follow the poor deserted fugitive Stuart, with all his sins upon his head. Kings have no rights divine, except when deposed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that belongs to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude,—vicissitude that startles the Epicurean, “insanientis sapientiae consultus,” and strikes from his careless lyre the notes that attest a god! Some proud shadow chases another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder the rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the Fortune that snatches off the diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned take a new majesty to generous natures: in all sleek prosperity there is something commonplace; in all grand adversity, something royal.
The boat shot to the shore; the young people landed, and entered the arch of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the presence-chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits; Vance as an artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering, bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the noble garden, with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed persons. Vance heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London world,—forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people, with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his wanderer’s dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr. Rugge’s show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured print, of a pattern familiar to his observant eye in the windows of many a shop lavish of tickets, and inviting you to come in by the assurance that it is “selling off.” The artist stopped, coloured, bowed, answered the listless questions put to him with shy haste: he then attempted to escape; they would not let him.
