What Will He Do with It? Part 8

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 cl.u.s.tering 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 att.i.tude 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 t.i.ttle-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 circ.u.mstance, trifling in itself, but suggestive of speculation either as to the character or antecedent circ.u.mstances 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 hoa.r.s.eness 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 p.r.o.nunciation of familiar words, even the modulation of an accent. A man of the most refined bearing may not have these peculiarities; a man, otherwise coa.r.s.e 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.