COBBLER--"It is gone. Ha! there's Rugge,--looks very angry,--savage, indeed."

WAIFE.--"Good sign that! proceed."

COBBLER.--"Shakes his fist; gone. Ha! a young man, boyish, dark hair."

SOPHY (clapping her hands).--"That is the young gentleman--the very young one, I mean--with the kind eyes; is he coming?--is he, is he?"

WAIFE--"Examine his pockets! do you see there three pounds?"

COBBLER (testily).--"Don't be a-interrupting. Ha! he is talking with another gentleman, bearded."

SOPHY (whispering to her grandfather).--"The old young gentleman."

COBBLER (putting down the crystal, and with great decision).--"They are coming here; I see 'd them at the corner of the lane, by the public-house, two minutes' walk to this door." He took out a great silver watch: "Look, Sophy, when the minute-hand gets there (or before, if they walk briskly), you will hear them knock."

Sophy clasped her hands in mute suspense, half-credulous, half-doubting; then she went and opened the room-door, and stood on the landing-place to listen. Merle approached the Comedian, and said in a low voice, "I wish for your sake she had the gift."

WAIFE.--"The gift!--the three pounds!--so do I!"

COBBLER.--"Pooh! worth a hundred times three pounds; the gift,--the spirituous gift."

WAIFE.--"Spirituous! don't like the epithet,--smells of gin!"

COBBLER.--"Spirituous gift to see in the crystal: if she had that, she might make your fortune."

WAIFE (with a 'sudden change of countenance).--"Ah! I never thought of that. But if she has not the gift, I could teach it her,--eh?"

COBBLER (indignantly).--"I did not think to hear this from you, Mr.

Waife. Teach her,--you! make her an impostor, and of the wickedest kind, inventing lies between earth and them as dwell in the seven spheres!

Fie! No, if she hasn't the gift natural, let her alone: what here is not heaven-sent is devil-taught."

WAIFE (awed, but dubious).--"Then you really think you saw all that you described, in that gla.s.s egg?"

COBBLER.--"Think!--am I a liar? I spoke truth, and the proof is--there--!" Rat-tat went the knocker at the door.

"The two minutes are just up," said the Cobbler; and Cornelius Agrippa could not have said it with more wizardly effect.

"They are come, indeed," said Sophy, re-entering the room softly: "I hear their voices at the threshold."

The Cobbler pa.s.sed by in silence, descended the stairs, and conducted Vance and Lionel into the Comedian's chamber; there he left them, his brow overcast. Gentleman Waife had displeased him sorely.

CHAPTER VIII.

Showing the arts by which a man, however high in the air Nature may have formed his nose, may be led by that nose, and in directions perversely opposite to those which, in following his nose, he might be supposed to take; and, therefore, that nations the most liberally endowed with practical good sense, and in conceit thereof, carrying their noses the most horizontally aloof, when they come into conference with nations more skilled in diplomacy and more practised in "stage-play," end by the surrender of the precise object which it was intended they should surrender before they laid their noses together.

We all know that Demosthenes said, Everything in oratory was acting,--stage-play. Is it in oratory alone that the saying holds good? Apply it to all circ.u.mstances of fife, "stage-play, stage-play, stage-play!"--only _ars est celare artem_, conceal the art. Gleesome in soul to behold his visitors, calculating already on the three pounds to be extracted from them, seeing in that hope the crisis in his own checkered existence, Mr. Waife rose from his seat in superb _upocrisia_ or stage-play, and asked, with mild dignity,--"To what am I indebted, gentlemen, for the honour of your visit?"

In spite of his, nose, even Vance was taken aback. Pope says that Lord Bolingbroke had "the n.o.bleman air." A great comedian Lord Bolingbroke surely was. But, ah, had Pope seen Gentleman Waife! Taking advantage of the impression he had created, the actor added, with the finest imaginable breeding,--"But pray be seated;" and, once seeing them seated, resumed his easy-chair, and felt himself master of the situation.

"Hum!" said Vance, recovering his self-possession, after a pause--"hum!"

"Hem!" re-echoed Gentleman Waife; and the two men eyed each other much in the same way as Admiral Napier might have eyed the fort of Cronstadt, and the fort of Cronstadt have eyed Admiral Napier.

Lionel struck in with that youthful boldness which plays the deuce with all dignified strategical science.

"You must be aware why we come, sir; Mr. Merle will have explained. My friend, a distinguished artist, wished to make a sketch, if you do not object, of this young lady's very"--

"Pretty little face," quoth Vance, taking up the dis course. "Mr. Rugge, this morning, was willing,--I understand that your grandchild refused.

We are come here to see if she will be more complaisant under your own roof, or Under Mr. Merle's, which, I take it, is the same thing for the present."--Sophy had sidled up to Lionel. He might not have been flattered if he knew why she preferred him to Vance. She looked on him as a boy, a fellow-child; and an instinct, moreover, told her, that more easily through him than his shrewd-looking bearded guest could she attain the object of her cupidity,--"three pounds!"

"Three pounds!" whispered Sophy, with the tones of an angel, into Lionel's thrilling ear.

MR. WAIFE.--"Sir, I will be frank with you." At that ominous commencement, Mr. Vance recoiled, and mechanically b.u.t.toned his trousers pocket. Mr. Waife noted the gesture with his one eye, and proceeded cautiously, feeling his way, as it were, towards the interior of the recess thus protected. "My grandchild declined your flattering proposal with my full approbation. She did not consider--neither did I--that the managerial rights of Mr. Rugge ent.i.tled him to the moiety of her face--off the stage." The Comedian paused, and with a voice, the mimic drollery of which no hoa.r.s.eness could altogether mar, chanted the old line,--

"'My face is my fortune, sir,' she said."

Vance smiled; Lionel laughed; Sophy nestled still nearer to the boy.

GENTLEMAN WAIFE (with pathos and dignity).--"You see before you an old man: one way of life is the same to me as another. But she,--do you think Mr. Rugge's stage the right place for her?"

VANCE.--"Certainly not. Why did you not introduce her to the London Manager who would have engaged yourself?"

Waife could not conceal a slight change of countenance. "How do I know she would have succeeded? She had never then trod the boards. Besides, what strikes you as so good in a village show may be poor enough in a metropolitan theatre. Gentlemen, I do my best for her; you cannot think otherwise, since she maintains me! I am no OEdipus, yet she is my Antigone."

VANCE.--"You know the cla.s.sics, sir. Mr. Merle said you were a scholar!--read Sophocles in his native Greek, I presume, sir?"

MR. WAIFE.--"You jeer at the unfortunate: I am used to it."

VANCE (confused).--"I did not mean to wound you: I beg pardon. But your language and manner are not what--what one might expect to find in a--in a--Bandit persecuted by a remorseless Baron."

MR. WAIFE.--"Sir, you say you are an artist. Have you heard no tales of your professional brethren,--men of genius the highest, who won fame, which I never did, and failed of fortunes, as I have done? Their own fault, perhaps,--improvidence, wild habits, ignorance of the way how to treat life and deal with their fellow-men; such fault may have been mine too. I suffer for it: no matter; I ask none to save me. You are a painter: you would place her features on your canvas; you would have her rank amongst your own creations. She may become a part of your immortality. Princes may gaze on the effigies of the innocent happy childhood, to which your colours lend imperishable glow. They may ask who and what was this fair creature? Will you answer, 'One whom I found in tinsel, and so left, sure that she would die in rags!'--Save her!"

Lionel drew forth his purse, and poured its contents on the table. Vance covered them with his broad hand, and swept them into his own pocket! At that sinister action Waife felt his heart sink into his shoes; but his face was as calm as a Roman's, only he resumed his pipe with a prolonged and testy whiff.

"It is I who am to take the portrait, and it is I who will pay for it,"

said Vance. "I understand that you have a pressing occasion for"--

"Three pounds!" muttered Sophy, st.u.r.dily, through the tears which her grandfather's pathos had drawn forth from her downcast eyes, "Three pounds--three--three."

"You shall have them. But listen: I meant only to take a sketch; I must now have a finished portrait. I cannot take this by candlelight. You must let me come here to-morrow; and yet to-morrow, I understand, you meant to leave?"

WAIFE.--"If you will generously bestow on us the sum you say, we shall not leave the village till you have completed your picture. It is Mr.

Rugge and his company we will leave."

VANCE.--"And may I venture to ask what you propose to do, towards a new livelihood for yourself and your grandchild, by the help of a sum which is certainly much for me to pay,--enormous, I might say, _quoad_ me,--but small for a capital whereon to set up a business?"