Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - What Will He Do with It? — Complete

“I never said people behaved ill to me, Sophy.”

“Did not they take away the carpets and silk curtains, and all the fine things you had as a little boy?”

“I don’t know,” replied Waife, with a puzzled look, “that people actually took them away; but they melted away.

“However, I had much still to be thankful for: I was so strong, and had such high spirits, Sophy, and found people not behaving ill to me,—quite the contrary, so kind. I found no Crane (she monster) as you did, my little angel. Such prospects before me, if I had walked straight towards them! But I followed my own fancy, which led me zigzag; and now that I would stray back into the high road, you see before you a man whom a Justice of the Peace could send to the treadmill for presuming to live without a livelihood.”

SOPHY.—“Not without a livelihood!—the what did you call it?—independent income,—that is, the Three Pounds, Grandy?”

WAIFE (admiringly).—“Sensible child. That is true. Yes, Heaven is very good to me still. Ah! what signifies fortune? How happy I was with my dear Lizzy, and yet no two persons could live more from hand to mouth.”

SOPHY (rather jealously).—“tizzy?”

WAIFE (with moistened eyes, and looking down).—“My wife. She was only spared to me two years: such sunny years! And how grateful I ought to be that she did not live longer. She was saved—such—such—such shame and misery!” A long pause.

Waife resumed, with a rush from memory, as if plucking himself from the claws of a harpy,—“What’s the good of looking back? A man’s gone self is a dead thing. It is not I—now tramping this road, with you to lean upon—whom I see, when I would turn to look behind on that which I once was: it is another being, defunct and buried; and when I say to myself, ‘that being did so and so,’ it is like reading an epitaph on a tombstone. So, at last, solitary and hopeless, I came back to my own land; and I found you,—a blessing greater than I had ever dared to count on. And how was I to maintain you, and take you from that long-nosed alligator called Crane, and put you in womanly gentle hands; for I never thought then of subjecting you to all you have since undergone with me,—I who did not know one useful thing in life by which a man can turn a penny. And then, as I was all alone in a village ale-house, on my way back from—it does not signify from what, or from whence, but I was disappointed and despairing, Providence mercifully threw in my way—Mr. Rugge, and ordained me to be of great service to that ruffian, and that ruffian of great use to me.”

SOPHY.—“Ah, how was that?”

WAIFE.—“It was fair time in the village wherein I stopped, and Rugge’s principal actor was taken off by delirium tremens, which is Latin for a disease common to men who eat little and drink much. Rugge came into the alehouse bemoaning his loss. A bright thought struck me. Once in my day I had been used to acting. I offered to try my chance on Mr. Rugge’s stage: he caught at me, I at him. I succeeded: we came to terms, and my little Sophy was thus taken from that ringleted crocodile, and placed with Christian females who wore caps and read their Bible. Is not Heaven good to us, Sophy; and to me too—me, such a scamp?”

“And you did all that,—suffered all that for my sake?”

“Suffered, but I liked it. And, besides, I must have done something; and there were reasons—in short, I was quite happy; no, not actually happy, but comfortable and merry. Providence gives thick hides to animals that must exist in cold climates; and to the man whom it reserves for sorrow, Providence gives a coarse, jovial temper. Then, when by a mercy I was saved from what I most disliked and dreaded, and never would have thought of but that I fancied it might be a help to you,—I mean the London stage,—and had that bad accident on the railway, how did it end? Oh! in saving you” (and Waife closed his eyes and shuddered), “in saving your destiny from what might be much worse for you, body and soul, than the worst that has happened to you with me. And so we have been thrown together; and so you have supported me; and so, when we could exist without Mr. Rugge, Providence got rid of him for us. And so we are now walking along the high road; and through yonder trees you can catch a peep of the roof under which we are about to rest for a while; and there you will learn what I have done with the Three Pounds!”

“It is not the Spotted Boy, Grandy?”

“No,” said Waife, sighing; “the Spotted Boy is a handsome income; but let us only trust in Providence, and I should not wonder if our new acquisition proved a monstrous—”

“Monstrous!”

“Piece of good fortune.”

The investment revealed.

Gentleman Waife passed through a turnstile, down a narrow lane, and reached a solitary cottage. He knocked at the door; an old peasant woman opened it, and dropped him a civil courtesy. “Indeed, sir, I am glad you are come. I ‘se most afeared he be dead.”

“Dead!” exclaimed Waife. “Oh, Sophy, if he should be dead!”

“Who?”

Waife did not heed the question. “What makes you think him dead?” said he, fumbling in his pockets, from which he at last produced a key. “You have not been disobeying my strict orders, and tampering with the door?”

“Lor’ love ye, no, sir. But he made such a noise at fust—awful! And now he’s as still as a corpse. And I did peep through the keyhole, and he was stretched stark.”

“Hunger, perhaps,” said the Comedian; “‘t is his way when he has been kept fasting much over his usual hours. Follow me, Sophy.” He put aside the woman, entered the sanded kitchen, ascended a stair that led from it; and Sophy following, stopped at a door and listened: not a sound. Timidly he unlocked the portals and crept in, when, suddenly such a rush,—such a spring, and a mass of something vehement yet soft, dingy yet whitish, whirled past the actor, and came pounce against Sophy, who therewith uttered a shriek. “Stop him, stop him, for heaven’s sake,” cried Waife. “Shut the door below,—seize him.” Downstairs, however, went the mass, and downstairs after it hobbled Waife, returning in a few moments with the recaptured and mysterious fugitive. “There,” he cried triumphantly to Sophy, who, standing against the wall with her face buried in her frock, long refused to look up,—“there,—tame as a lamb, and knows me. See!” he seated himself on the floor, and Sophy, hesitatingly opening her eyes, beheld gravely gazing at her from under a profusion of shaggy locks an enormous—

Denoumente!

POODLE!

Zoology in connection with history.

“Walk to that young lady, sir,—walk, I say.” The poodle slowly rose on his hind legs, and, with an aspect inexpressibly solemn, advanced towards Sophy, who hastily receded into the room in which the creature had been confined.

“Make a bow—no—a bow, sir; that is right: you can shake hands another time. Run down, Sophy, and ask for his dinner.”

“Yes; that I will;” and Sophy flew down the stairs.

The dog, still on his hind legs, stood in the centre of the floor dignified, but evidently expectant.

“That will do; lie down and die. Die this moment, sir.” The dog stretched himself out, closed his eyes, and to all appearance gave up the ghost. “A most splendid investment,” said Waife, with enthusiasm; “and upon the whole, clog cheap. Ho! you are not to bring up his dinner; it is not you who are to make friends with the dog; it is my little girl; send her up; Sophy, Sophy!”

“She be fritted, sir,” said the woman, holding a plate of canine comestibles; “but lauk, sir, bent he really dead?”