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

In which everything depends on Sir Isaac’s success in discovering the law of attraction.

On the appointed evening, at eight o’clock, the great room of the Gatesboro’ Athenaeum was unusually well filled. Not only had the Mayor exerted himself to the utmost for that object, but the hand-bill itself promised a rare relief from the prosiness of abstract enlightenment and elevated knowledge. Moreover, the stranger himself had begun to excite speculation and curiosity. He was an amateur, not a cut-and-dry professor. The Mayor and Mr. Williams had both spread the report that there was more in him than appeared on the surface; prodigiously learned, but extremely agreeable, fine manners, too!—Who could he be? Was Chapman his real name? etc.

The Comedian had obtained permission to arrange the room beforehand. He had the raised portion of it for his stage, and he had been fortunate enough to find a green curtain to be drawn across it. From behind this screen he now emerged and bowed. The bow redoubled the first conventional applause. He then began a very short address,—extremely well delivered, as you may suppose, but rather in the conversational than the oratorical style. He said it was his object to exhibit the intelligence of that Universal Friend of Man, the Dog, in some manner appropriate, not only to its sagacious instincts, but to its affectionate nature, and to convey thereby the moral that talents, however great, learning, however deep, were of no avail, unless rendered serviceable to Man. (Applause.) He must be pardoned then, if, in order to effect this object, he was compelled to borrow some harmless effects from the stage. In a word, his dog could represent to them the plot of a little drama. And he, though he could not say that he was altogether unaccustomed to public speaking (here a smile, modest, but august as that of some famous parliamentary orator who makes his first appearance at a vestry), still wholly new to its practice in the special part he had undertaken, would rely on their indulgence to efforts aspiring to no other merit than that of aiding the Hero of the Piece in a familiar illustration of those qualities in which dogs might give a lesson to humanity. Again he bowed, and retired behind the curtain. A pause of three minutes! the curtain drew up. Could that be the same Mr. Chapman whom the spectators beheld before them? Could three minutes suffice to change the sleek, respectable, prosperous-looking gentleman who had just addressed them into that image of threadbare poverty and hunger-pinched dejection? Little aid from theatrical costume: the clothes seemed the same, only to have grown wondrous aged and rusty. The face, the figure, the man,—these had undergone a transmutation beyond the art of the mere stage wardrobe, be it ever so amply stored, to effect. But for the patch over the eye, you could not have recognized Mr. Chapman. There was, indeed, about him, still, an air of dignity; but it was the dignity of woe,—a dignity, too, not of an affable civilian, but of some veteran soldier. You could not mistake. Though not in uniform, the melancholy man must have been a warrior! The way the coat was buttoned across the chest, the black stock tightened round the throat, the shoulders thrown back in the disciplined habit of a life, though the head bent forward in the despondency of an eventful crisis,—all spoke the decayed but not ignoble hero of a hundred fields.

There was something foreign, too, about the veteran’s air. Mr. Chapman had looked so thoroughly English: that tragical and meagre personage looked so unequivocally French.

Not a word had the Comedian yet said; and yet all this had the first sight of him conveyed to the audience. There was an amazed murmur, then breathless stillness; the story rapidly unfolded itself, partly by words, much more by look and action. There sat a soldier who had fought under Napoleon at Marengo and Austerlitz, gone through the snows of Muscovy, escaped the fires of Waterloo,—the soldier of the Empire! Wondrous ideal of a wondrous time! and nowhere winning more respect and awe than in that land of the old English foe, in which with slight knowledge of the Beautiful in Art, there is so reverent a sympathy for all that is grand in Man! There sat the soldier, penniless and friendless, there, scarcely seen, reclined his grandchild, weak and slowly dying for the want of food; and all that the soldier possesses wherewith to buy bread for the day, is his cross of the Legion of Honour. It was given to him by the hand of the Emperor: must he pawn or sell it? Out on the pomp of decoration which we have substituted for the voice of passionate nature on our fallen stage! Scenes so faithful to the shaft of a column,—dresses by which an antiquary can define a date to a year! Is delusion there? Is it thus we are snatched from Thebes to Athens? No; place a really fine actor on a deal board, and for Thebes and Athens you may hang up a blanket! Why, that very cross which the old soldier holds—away from his sight—in that tremulous hand, is but patched up from the foil and cardboard bought at the stationer’s shop. You might see it was nothing more, if you tried to see. Did a soul present think of such minute investigation? Not one. In the actor’s hand that trumpery became at once the glorious thing by which Napoleon had planted the sentiment of knightly heroism in the men whom Danton would have launched upon earth ruthless and bestial, as galley-slaves that had burst their chain.

The badge, wrought from foil and cardboard, took life and soul: it begot an interest, inspired a pathos, as much as if it had been made—oh! not of gold and gems, but of flesh and blood. And the simple broken words that the veteran addressed to it! The scenes, the fields, the hopes, the glories it conjured up! And now to be wrenched away,—sold to supply Man’s humblest, meanest wants,—sold—the last symbol of such a past! It was indeed “ propter vitam vivendi perdere causas .” He would have starved rather,—but the child? And then the child rose up and came into play. She would not suffer such a sacrifice,—she was not hungry,—she was not weak; and when her voice failed her, she looked up into that iron face and smiled,—nothing but a smile. Outcame the pocket-handkerchiefs! The soldier seizes the cross, and turns away. It shall be sold! As he opens the door, a dog enters gravely,—licks his hand, approaches the table, raises itself on its hind legs, surveys the table dolefully, shakes its head, whines, comes to its master, pulls him by the skirt, looks into his face inquisitively.

What does all this mean? It soon comes out, and very naturally. The dog belonged to an old fellow-soldier, who had gone to the Isle of France to claim his share in the inheritance of a brother who had settled and died there, and who, meanwhile, had confided it to the care of our veteran, who was then in comparatively easy circumstances, since ruined by the failure and fraud of a banker to whom he had intrusted his all; and his small pension, including the yearly sum to which his cross entitled him, had been forestalled and mortgaged to pay the petty debts which, relying on his dividend from the banker, he had innocently incurred. The dog’s owner had been gone for months; his return might be daily expected. Meanwhile the dog was at the hearth, but the wolf at the door. Now, this sagacious animal had been taught to perform the duties of messenger and major-domo. At stated intervals he applied to his master for sous, and brought back the supplies which the sous purchased. He now, as usual, came to the table for the accustomed coin—the last sou was gone,—the dog’s occupation was at an end. But could not the dog be sold? Impossible: it was the property of another,—a sacred deposit; one would be as bad as the fraudulent banker if one could apply to one’s own necessities the property one holds in trust. These little biographical particulars came out in that sort of bitter and pathetic humour which a study of Shakspeare, or the experience of actual life, had taught the Comedian to be a natural relief to an intense sorrow. The dog meanwhile aided the narrative by his by-play. Still intent upon the sous, he thrust his nose into his master’s pockets; he appealed touchingly to the child, and finally put back his head and vented his emotion in a lugubrious and elegiacal howl. Suddenly there is heard without the sound of a showman’s tin trumpet! Whether the actor had got some obliging person to perform on that instrument, or whether, as more likely, it was but a trick of ventriloquism, we leave to conjecture. At that note, an idea seemed to seize the dog. He ran first to his master, who was on the threshold about to depart; pulled him back into the centre of the room: next he ran to the child, dragging her towards the same spot, though with great tenderness, and then, uttering a joyous bark, he raised himself on his hind legs and, with incomparable solemnity, performed a minuet step! The child catches the idea from the dog. Was he not more worth seeing than the puppet-show in the streets? might not people give money to see him, and the old soldier still keep his cross? To-day there is a public fete in the gardens yonder: that showman must be going thither; why not go too? What! he the old soldier,—he stoop to show off a dog! he! he! The dog looked at him deprecatingly and stretched himself on the floor—lifeless.