Sophy let fall the crystal—a mercy it was not brokenand gazed vacantly on the Baron.
“Your vile scamp of a grandfather?”
SOPHY (with spirit).—“He is not vile. You ought to be ashamed of yourself speaking so, Mr. Rugge!”
Here simultaneously, Mr. Waife, hastily indued in his gray dressing-gown, presented himself at the aperture of the bedroom door, and the Cobbler on the threshold of the sitting-room. The Comedian stood mute, trusting perhaps to the imposing effect of his attitude. The Cobbler, yielding to the impulse of untheatric man, put his head doggedly on one side, and with both hands on his hips said,
“Civil words to my lodgers, master, or out you go!”
The Remorseless Baron glared vindictively, first at one and then at the other; at length he strode up to Waife, and said, with a withering grin, “I have something to say to you; shall I say it before your landlord?”
The Comedian waved his hand to the Cobbler.
“Leave us, my friend; I shall not require you. Step this way, Mr. Rugge.” Rugge entered the bedroom, and Waife closed the door behind him.
“Anan,” quoth the Cobbler, scratching his head. “I don’t quite take your grandfather’s giving in. British ground here! But your Ascendant cannot surely be in such malignant conjunction with that obstreperous tyrant as to bind you to him hand and foot. Let’s see what the crystal thinks of it. ‘Take it up gently, and come downstairs with me.”
“Please, no; I’ll stay near Grandfather,” said Sophy, resolutely. “He sha’n’t be left helpless with that rude man.”
The Cobbler could not help smiling. “Lord love you,” said he; “you have a spirit of your own, and if you were my wife I should be afraid of you. But I won’t stand here eavesdropping; mayhap your grandfather has secrets I’m not to hear: call me if I’m wanted.” He descended. Sophy, with less noble disdain of eavesdropping, stood in the centre of the room, holding her breath to listen. She heard no sound; she had half a mind to put her ear to the keyhole, but that seemed even to her a mean thing, if not absolutely required by the necessity of the case. So there she still stood, her head bent down, her finger raised: oh, that Vance could have so painted her!
CHAPTER X
Showing the causes why men and nations, when one man or nation wishes to get for its own arbitrary purposes what the other man or nation does not desire to part with, are apt to ignore the mild precepts of Christianity, shock the sentiments and upset the theories of Peace Societies.
“Am I to understand,” said Mr. Rugge, in a whisper, when Waife had drawn him to the farthest end of the inner room, with the bed-curtains between their position and the door, deadening the sound of their voices,—“am I to understand that, after my taking you and that child to my theatre out of charity, and at your own request, you are going to quit me without warning,—French leave; is that British conduct?”
“Mr. Rugge,” replied Waife, deprecatingly, “I have no engagement with you beyond an experimental trial. We were free on both sides for three months,—you to dismiss us any day, we to leave you. The experiment does not please us: we thank you and depart.”
RUGGE.—“That is not the truth. I said I was free to dismiss you both, if the child did not suit. You, poor helpless creature, could be of no use. But I never heard you say you were to be free too. Stands to reason not! Put my engagements at a Waife’s mercy! I, Lorenzo Rugge!—stuff! But I am a just man, and a liberal man, and if you think you ought to have a higher salary, if this ungrateful proceeding is only, as I take it, a strike for wages, I will meet you. Juliet Araminta does play better than I could have supposed; and I’ll conclude an engagement on good terms, as we were to have done if the experiment answered, for three years.” Waife shook his head. “You are very good, Mr. Rugge, but it is not a strike. My little girl does not like the life at any price; and, since she supports me, I am bound to please her. Besides,” said the actor, with a stiffer manner, “you have broken faith with me. It was fully understood that I was to appear no more on your stage; all my task was to advise with you in the performances, remodel the plays, help in the stage-management; and you took advantage of my penury, and, when I asked for a small advance, insisted on forcing these relics of what I was upon the public pity. Enough: we part. I bear no malice.”
RUGGE.—“Oh, don’t you? No more do I. But I am a Briton, and I have the spirit of one. You had better not make an enemy of me.”
WAIFE.—“I am above the necessity of making enemies. I have an enemy ready made in myself.”
Rugge placed a strong bony hand upon the cripple’s arm. “I dare say you have! A bad conscience, sir. How would you like your past life looked into, and blabbed out?”
GENTLEMAN WAIFE (mournfully).—“The last four years of it have been spent in your service, Mr. Rugge. If their record had been blabbed out for my benefit, there would not have been a dry eye in the house.”
RUGGE. “I disdain your sneer. When a scorpion nursed at my bosom sneers at me, I leave it to its own reflections. But I don’t speak of the years in which that scorpion has been enjoying a salary and smoking canaster at my expense. I refer to an earlier dodge in its checkered existence. Ha, sir, you wince! I suspect I can find out something about you which would—”
WAIFE (fiercely).—“Would what?”
RUGGE.—“Oh, lower your tone, sir; no bullying me. I suspect! I have good reason for suspicion; and if you sneak off in this way, and cheat me out of my property in Juliet Araminta, I will leave no stone unturned to prove what I suspect: look to it, slight man! Come, I don’t wish to quarrel; make it up, and” (drawing out his pocket-book) “if you want cash down, and will have an engagement in black and white for three years for Juliet Araminta, you may squeeze a good sum out of me, and go yourself where you please: you’ll never be troubled by me. What I want is the girl.”
All the actor laid aside, Waife growled out, “And hang me; sir, if you shall have the girl!”
At this moment Sophy opened the door wide, and entered boldly. She had heard her grandfather’s voice raised, though its hoarse tones did not allow her to distinguish his words. She was alarmed for him. She came in, his guardian fairy, to protect him from the oppressor of six feet high. Rugge’s arm was raised, not indeed to strike, but rather to declaim. Sophy slid between him and her grandfather, and, clinging round the latter, flung out her own arm, the forefinger raised menacingly towards the Remorseless Baron. How you would have clapped if you had seen her so at Covent Garden! But I’ll swear the child did not know she was acting. Rugge did, and was struck with admiration and regretful rage at the idea of losing her.
“Bravo!” said he, involuntarily. “Come, come, Waife, look at her: she was born for the stage. My heart swells with pride. She is my property, morally speaking; make her so legally; and hark, in your ear, fifty pounds. Take me in the humour,—Golconda opens,—fifty pounds!”
“No,” said the vagrant.
“Well,” said Rugge, sullenly; “let her speak for herself.”
“Speak, child. You don’t wish to return to Mr. Rugge,—and without me, too,—do you, Sophy?”
“Without you, Grandy! I’d rather die first.”
“You hear her; all is settled between us. You have had our services up to last night; you have paid us up to last night; and so good morning to you, Mr. Rugge.”
“My dear child,” said the manager, softening his voice as much as he could, “do consider. You shall be so made of without that stupid old man. You think me cross, but ‘t is he who irritates and puts me out of temper. I ‘m uncommon fond of children. I had a babe of my own once,—upon my honour, I had,—and