What Will He Do with It? — Complete

The historian, in pursuance of his stern duties, reveals to the scorn of future ages some of the occult practices which discredit the march of light in the nineteenth century.

“May I come in?” asked the Cobbler, outside the door. “Certainly come in,” said Gentleman Waife. Sophy looked wistfully at the aperture, and sighed to see that Merle was alone. She crept up to him.

“Will they not come?” she whispered. “I hope so, pretty one; it be n’t ten yet.”

“Take a pipe, Merle,” said Gentleman Waife, with a Grand Comedian air.

“No, thank you kindly; I just looked in to ask if I could do anything for ye, in case—in case ye must go tomorrow.”

“Nothing: our luggage is small, and soon packed. Sophy has the money to discharge the meaner part of our debt to you.”

“I don’t value that,” said the Cobbler, colouring.

“But we value your esteem,” said Mr. Waife, with a smile that would have become a field-marshal. “And so, Merle, you think, if I am a broken-down vagrant, it must be put to the long account of the celestial bodies!”

“Not a doubt of it,” returned the Cobbler, solemnly. “I wish you would give me date and place of Sophy’s birth that’s what I want; I’d take her horryscope. I’m sure she’d be lucky.”

“I’d rather not, please,” said Sophy, timidly.

“Rather not?—very odd. Why?”

“I don’t want to know the future.”

“That is odder and odder,” quoth the Cobbler, staring; “I never heard a girl say that afore.”

“Wait till she’s older, Mr. Merle,” said Waife: “girls don’t want to know the future till they want to be married.”

“Summat in that,” said the Cobbler. He took up the crystal. “Have you looked into this ball, pretty one, as I bade ye?”

“Yes, two or three times.”

“Ha! and what did you see?”

“My own face made very long,” said Sophy,—“as long as that—,” stretching out her hands.

The Cobbler shook his head dolefully, and screwing up one eye, applied the other to the mystic ball.

MR. WAIFE.—“Perhaps you will see if those two gentlemen are coming.”

SOPHY.—“Do, do! and if they will give us three pounds!”

COBBLER (triumphantly).—“Then you do care to know the future, after all?”

SOPHY.—“Yes, so far as that goes; but don’t look any further, pray.”

COBBLER (intent upon the ball, and speaking slowly, and in jerks).—“A mist now. Ha! an arm with a besom—sweeps all before it.”

SOPHY (frightened).—“Send it away, please.”

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 glass 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 passed 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 circumstances 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 nobleman 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!”