CHAPTER VI.

Threadbare is the simile which compares the world to a stage. Schiller, less complimentary than Shakspeare, lowers the ill.u.s.tration from a stage to a puppet-show. But ever between realities and shows there is a secret communication, an undetected interchange,--sometimes a stern reality in the heart of the ostensible actor, a fantastic stage-play in the brain of the unnoticed spectator. The bandit's child on the proscenium is still poor little Sophy, in spite of garlands and rouge. But that honest rough-looking fellow to whom, in respect for services to sovereign and country, the apprentice yields way, may he not be--the crafty Comedian?

TARAN-TARANTARA! rub-a-dub-dub! play up horn! roll drum! a quarter to eight; and the crowd already thick before Rugge's Grand Exhibition,--"

Remorseless Baron and Bandit's Child! Young Phenomenon,--Juliet Araminta,--Patronized by the n.o.bility in general, and expecting daily to be summoned to perform before the Queen,--_Vivat Regina!_"--Ruba-dub-dub! The company issue from the curtain, range in front of the proscenuim. Splendid dresses. The Phenomenon!--'t is she!

"My eyes, there's a beauty!" cries the clown.

The days have already grown somewhat shorter; but it is not yet dusk.

How charmingly pretty she still is, despite that horrid paint; but how wasted those poor bare snowy arms!

A most doleful lugubrious dirge mingles with the drum and horn. A man has forced his way close by the stage,--a man with a confounded cracked hurdy-gurdy. Whine! whine! creaks the hurdy-gurdy. "Stop that! stop that mu-zeek!" cries a delicate apprentice, clapping his hands to his ears.

"Pity a poor blind--" answers the man with the hurdygurdy.

"Oh, you are blind, are you? but we are not deaf. There's a penny not to play. What black thing have you got there by a string?"

"My dog, sir!"

"Deuced ugly one; not like a dog; more like a bear with horns!"

"I say, master," cries the clown, "here's a blind man come to see the Phenomenon!"

The crowd laugh; they make way for the blind man's black dog. They suspect, from the clown's address, that the blind man has something to do with the company.

You never saw two uglier specimens of their several species than the blind man and his black dog. He had rough red hair and a red beard, his face had a sort of twist that made every feature seem crooked. His eyes were not bandaged, but the lids were closed, and he lifted them up piteously as if seeking for light. He did not seem, however, like a common beggar: had rather the appearance of a reduced sailor. Yes, you would have bet ten to one he had been a sailor; not that his dress belonged to that n.o.ble calling, but his build, the roll of his walk, the tie of his cravat, a blue anchor tattooed on that great brown hand: certainly a sailor; a British tar! poor man.

The dog was hideous enough to have been exhibited as a _lusus naturae_; evidently very aged,--for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, p.r.i.c.ked up like horns; it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face, those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether. A big dog, too, and evidently a strong one. All prudent folks would have made way for a man led by that dog. Whine creaked the hurdy-gurdy, and bow-wow all of a sudden barked the dog. Sophy stifled a cry, pressed her hand to her breast, and such a ray of joy flashed over her face that it would have warmed your heart for a month to have seen it.

But do you mean to say, Mr. Author, that that British tar (gallant, no doubt, but hideous) is Gentleman Waife, or that Stygian animal the snowy-curled Sir Isaac?

Upon my word, when I look at them myself, I, the Historian, am puzzled.

If it had not been for that bow-bow, I am sure Sophy would not have suspected. Taratarantara! Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, walk in; the performance is about to commence! Sophy lingers last.

"Yes, sir," said the blind man, who had been talking to the apprentice, "yes, sir," said he, loud and emphatically, as if his word had been questioned. "The child was snowed up, but luckily the window of the hut was left open: exactly at two o'clock in the morning, that dog came to the window, set up a howl, and--"

Soppy could hear no more--led away behind the curtain by the King's Lieutenant. But she had heard enough to stir her heart with an emotion that set all the dimples round her lip into undulating play.

CHAPTER VII.

A sham carries off a reality.

And she did act, and how charmingly! with what glee and what gusto!

Rugge was beside himself with pride and rapture. He could hardly perform his own Baronial part for admiration. The audience, a far choicer and more fastidious one than that in the Surrey village, was amazed, enthusiastic. "I shall live to see my dream come true! I shall have the great York theatre!" said Rugge, as he took off his wig and laid his head on his pillow. "Restore her for the L100! not for thousands!"

Alas, my sweet Sophy, alas! Has not the joy that made thee perform so well undone thee? Ah, hadst thou but had the wit to act horribly, and be hissed!

"Uprose the sun and uprose Baron Rugge."

Not that ordinarily he was a very early man; but his excitement broke his slumbers. He had taken up his quarters on the ground-floor of a small lodging-house close to his exhibition; in the same house lodged his senior matron, and Sophy herself. Mrs. Gormerick, being ordered to watch the child and never lose sight of her, slept in the same room with Sophy, in the upper story of the house. The old woman served Rugge for housekeeper, made his tea, grilled his chop, and for company's sake shared his meals. Excitement as often sharpens the appet.i.te as takes it away. Rugge had supped on hope, and he felt a craving for a more substantial breakfast. Accordingly, when he had dressed, he thrust his head into the pa.s.sage, and seeing there the maid-of-all-work unbarring the street-door, bade her go upstairs and wake the Hag, that is, Mrs. Gormerick. Saying this he extended a key; for he ever took the precaution, before retiring to rest, to lock the door of the room to which Sophy was consigned on the outside, and guard the key till the next morning.

The maid nodded, and ascended the stairs. Less time than he expected pa.s.sed away before Mrs. Gormerick made her appearance, her gray hair streaming under her nightcap, her form indued in a loose wrapper,--her very face a tragedy.

"Powers above! What has happened?" exclaimed Rugge, prophetically.

"She is gone," sobbed Mrs. Gormerick; and, seeing the lifted arm and clenched fist of the manager, prudently fainted away.

CHAPTER VIII.

Corollaries from the problems suggested in chapters VI. and VII.

Broad daylight, nearly nine o'clock indeed, and Jasper Losely is walking back to his inn from the place at which he had dined the evening before.

He has spent the night drinking, gambling, and though he looks heated, there is no sign of fatigue. Nature, in wasting on this man many of her most glorious elements of happiness, had not forgotten an herculean const.i.tution,--always restless and never tired, always drinking and never drunk. Certainly it is some consolation to delicate invalids that it seldom happens that the sickly are very wicked. Criminals are generally athletic; const.i.tution and conscience equally tough; large backs to their heads; strong suspensorial muscles; digestions that save them from the over-fine nerves of the virtuous. The native animal must be vigorous in the human being, when the moral safeguards are daringly overleapt. Jasper was not alone, but with an acquaintance he had made at the dinner, and whom he invited to his inn to breakfast; they were walking familiarly arm-in-arm. Very unlike the brilliant Losely,--a young man under thirty, who seemed to have washed out all the colours of youth in dirty water. His eyes dull, their whites yellow; his complexion sodden. His form was thickset and heavy; his features pug, with a cross of the bull-dog. In dress, a specimen of the flash style of sporting man, as exhibited on the Turf, or more often perhaps in the Ring; Belcher neckcloth, with an immense pin representing a jockey at full gallop; cut-away coat, corduroy breeches, and boots with tops of a chalky white. Yet, withal, not the air and walk of a genuine born and bred sporting man, even of the vulgar order. Something about him which reveals the pretender. A would-be hawk with a pigeon's liver,--a would-be sportsman with a c.o.c.kney's nurture.

Samuel Adolphus Poole is an orphan of respectable connections. His future expectations chiefly rest on an uncle from whom, as G.o.dfather, he takes the loathed name of Samuel. He prefers to sign himself Adolphus; he is popularly styled Dolly. For his present existence he relies ostensibly on his salary as an a.s.sistant in the house of a London tradesman in a fashionable way of business. Mr. Latham, his employer, has made a considerable fortune, less by his shop than by discounting the bills of his customers, or of other borrowers whom the loan draws into the net of the custom. Mr. Latham connives at the sporting tastes of Dolly Poole. Dolly has often thus been enabled to pick up useful pieces of information as to the names and repute of such denizens of the sporting world as might apply to Mr. Latham for temporary accommodation.

Dolly Poole has many sporting friends; he has also many debts. He has been a dupe, he is now a rogue; but he wants decision of character to put into practice many valuable ideas that his experience of dupe and his development into rogue suggest to his ambition. Still, however, now and then, wherever a shabby trick can be safely done, he is what he calls "lucky." He has conceived a prodigious admiration for Jasper Losely, one cause for which will be explained in the dialogue about to be recorded; another cause for which is a.n.a.logous to that loving submission with which some ill-conditioned brute acknowledges a master in the hand that has thrashed it. For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting just concluded, being nettled at the imperious airs of superiority which that roysterer a.s.sumed, mistaking for effeminacy Jasper's elaborate dandyism, and not recognizing in the bravo's elegant proportions the tiger-like strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should have warned him, Dolly Poole provoked a quarrel, and being himself a stout fellow, nor unaccustomed to athletic exercises, began to spar; the next moment he was at the other end of the room full sprawl on the floor; and two minutes afterwards, the quarrel made up by conciliating banqueters, with every bone in his skin seeming still to rattle, he was generously blubbering out that he never bore malice, and shaking hands with Jasper Losely as if he had found a benefactor. But now to the dialogue.

JASPER.--"Yes, Poole, my hearty, as you say, that fellow trumping my best club lost me the last rubber. There's no certainty in whist, if one has a spoon for a partner."

POOLE.--"No certainty in every rubber, but next to certainty in the long run, when a man plays as well as you do, Mr. Losely. Your winnings to-night must have been pretty large, though you had a bad partner almost every hand; pretty large, eh?"

JASPER (carelessly).--"Nothing to talk of,--a few ponies!"

POOLE.--"More than a few; I should know."

JASPER.--"Why? You did not play after the first rubber."

POOLE.--"No, when I saw your play on that first rubber, I cut out, and bet on you; and very grateful to you I am. Still you would win more with a partner who understood your game."

The shrewd Dolly paused a moment, and leaning significantly on Jasper's arm, added, in a half whisper, "I do; it is a French one."

Jasper did not change colour, but a quick rise of the eyebrow, and a slight jerk of the neck, betrayed some little surprise or uneasiness: however, he rejoined without hesitation, "French, ay! In France there is more dash in playing out trumps than there is with English players."

"And with a player like you," said Poole, still in a half whisper, "more trumps to play out."

Jasper turned round sharp and short; the hard, cruel expression of his mouth, little seen of late, came back to it. Poole recoiled, and his bones began again to ache. "I did not mean to offend you, Mr. Losely, but to caution."

"Caution!"

"There were two knowing coves, who, if they had not been so drunk, would not have lost their money without a row, and they would have seen how they lost it; they are sharpers: you served them right; don't be angry with me. You want a partner; so do I: you play better than I do, but I play well; you shall have two-thirds of our winnings, and when you come to town I'll introduce you to a pleasant set of young fellows--green."

Jasper mused a moment. "You know a thing or two, I see, Master Poole, and we'll discuss the whole subject after breakfast. Ar'n't you hungry?

No! I am! Hillo! who 's that?"