you ten shillings for your picture of ‘Julius Caesar considering whether he should cross the Rubicon.’ But when the manager had declared her to be his property, and appointed you to call to-morrow,—implying that he was to be paid for allowing her to sit,—her countenance became overcast, and she muttered sullenly, ‘I’ll not sit; I’ll not!’ Then she turned to her grandfather, and something very quick and close was whispered between the two; and she pulled me by the sleeve, and said in my ear—oh, but so eagerly!—‘I want three pounds, sir,—three pounds!—if he would give three pounds; and come to our lodgings,—Mr. Merle, Willow Lane. Three pounds,—three!’ And with those words hissing in my ear, and coming from that fairy mouth, which ought to drop pearls and diamonds, I left her,” added Lionel, as gravely as if he were sixty, “and lost an illusion!”
“Three pounds!” cried Vance, raising his eyebrows to the highest arch of astonishment, and lifting his nose in the air towards the majestic moon,—“three pounds!—a fabulous sum! Who has three pounds to throw away? Dukes, with a hundred thousand a year in acres, have not three pounds to draw out of their pockets in that reckless, profligate manner. Three pounds!—what could I not buy for three pounds? I could buy the Dramatic Library, bound in calf, for three pounds; I could buy a dress coat for three pounds (silk lining not included); I could be lodged for a month for three pounds! And a jade in tinsel, just entering on her teens, to ask three pounds for what? for becoming immortal on the canvas of Francis Vance?—bother!”
Here Vance felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned round quickly, as a man out of temper does under similar circumstances, and beheld the sweat face of the Cobbler.
“Well, master, did not she act fine?—how d’ye like her?”
“Not much in her natural character; but she sets a mighty high value on herself.”
“Anan, I don’t take you.”
“She’ll not catch me taking her! Three pounds!—three kingdoms! Stay,” cried Lionel to the Cobbler; “did not you say she lodged with you? Are you Mr. Merle?”
“Merle’s my name, and she do lodge with me,—Willow Lane.”
“Come this way, then, a few yards down the road,—more quiet. Tell me what the child means, if you can;” and Lionel related the offer of his friend, the reply of the manager, and the grasping avarice of Miss Juliet Araminta.
The Cobbler made no answer; and when the young friends, surprised at his silence, turned to look at him, they saw he was wiping his eyes with his sleeves.
“Poor little thing!” he said at last, and still more pathetically than he had uttered the same words at her appearance in front of the stage; “‘tis all for her grandfather; I guess,—I guess.”
“Oh,” cried Lionel, joyfully, “I am so glad to think that. It alters the whole case, you see, Vance.”
“It don’t alter the case of the three pounds,” grumbled Vance. “What’s her grandfather to me, that I should give his grandchild three pounds, when any other child in the village would have leaped out of her skin to have her face upon my sketch-book and five shillings in her pocket? Hang her grandfather!”
They were now in the main road. The Cobbler seated himself on a lonely milestone, and looked first at one of the faces before him, then at the other; that of Lionel seemed to attract him the most, and in speaking it was Lionel whom he addressed.
“Young master,” he said, “it is now just four years ago, when Mr. Rugge, coming here, as he and his troop had done at fair-time ever sin’ I can mind of, brought with him the man you have seen to-night, William Waife; I calls him Gentleman Waife. However that man fell into sick straits, how he came to join sich a caravan, would puzzle most heads. It puzzles Joe Spruce, uncommon; it don’t puzzle me.”
“Why?” asked Vance.
“Cos of Saturn!”
“Satan?”
“Saturn,—dead agin his Second and Tenth House, I’ll swear. Lord of Ascendant, mayhap; in combustion of the Sun,—who knows?”
“You’re not an astrologer?” said Vance, suspiciously, edging off.
“Bit of it; no offence.”
“What does it signify?” said Lionel, impatiently; “go on. So you called Mr. Waife ‘Gentleman Waife;’ and if you had not been an astrologer you would have been puzzled to see him in such a calling.”
“Ay, that’s it; for he warn’t like any as we ever see on these boards hereabouts; and yet he warn’t exactly like a Lunnon actor, as I have seen ‘em in Lunnon, either, but more like a clever fellow who acted for the spree of the thing. He had sich droll jests, and looked so comical, yet not commonlike, but always what I calls a gentleman,—just as if one o’ ye two were doing a bit of sport to please your friends. Well, he drew hugely, and so he did, every time he came, so that the great families in the neighbourhood would go to hear him; and he lodged in my house, and had pleasant ways with him, and was what I call a scollard. But still I don’t want to deceive ye, and I should judge him to have been a wild dog in his day. Mercury ill-aspected,—not a doubt of it. Last year it so happened that one of the great gents who belong to a Lunnon theatre was here at fair-time. Whether he had heard of Waife chanceways, and come express to judge for hisself, I can’t say; like eno’. And when he had seen Gentleman Waife act, he sent for him to the inn—Red Lion—and offered him a power o’ money to go to Lunnon,—Common Garden. Well, sir, Waife did not take to it all at once, but hemmed and hawed, and was at last quite coaxed into it, and so he went. But bad luck came on it; and I knew there would, for I saw it all in my crystal.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Vance, “a crystal, too; really it is getting late, and if you had your crystal about you, you might see that we want to sup.”
“What happened?” asked Lionel, more blandly, for he saw the Cobbler, who had meant to make a great effect by the introduction of the crystal, was offended.
“What happened? why, just what I foreseed. There was an accident in the railway ‘tween this and Lunnon, and poor Waife lost an eye, and was a cripple for life: so he could not go on the Lunnon stage at all; and what was worse, he was a long time atwixt life and death, and got summat bad on his chest wi’ catching cold, and lost his voice, and became the sad object you have gazed on, young happy things that ye are.”
“But he got some compensation from the railway, I suppose?” said Vance, with the unfeeling equanimity of a stoical demon.
“He did, and spent it. I suppose the gentleman broke out in him as soon as he had money, and, ill though he was, the money went. Then it seems he had no help for it but to try and get back to Mr. Rugge. But Mr. Rugge was sore and spiteful at his leaving; for Rugge counted on him, and had even thought of taking the huge theatre at York, and bringing out Gentleman Waife as his trump card. But it warn’t fated, and Rugge thought himself ill-used, and so at first he would have nothing more to say to Waife. And truth is, what could the poor man do for Rugge? But then Waife produces little Sophy.”
“You mean Juliet Araminta?” said Vance.
“Same—in private life she be Sophy. And Waife taught her to act, and put together the plays for her. And Rugge caught at her; and she supports Waife with what she gets; for Rugge only gives him four shillings a week, and that goes on ‘baccy and such like.”
