What Will He Do with It? — Complete

CHAPTER V.

   The most submissive where they love may be the most stubborn where
   they do not love.—Sophy is stubborn to Mr. Rugge.—That injured man
   summons to his side Mrs. Crane, imitating the policy of those
   potentates who would retrieve the failures of force by the successes
   of diplomacy.

Mr. Rugge has obtained his object. But now comes the question, “What will he do with it?” Question with as many heads as the Hydra; and no sooner does an author dispose of one head than up springs another.

Sophy has been bought and paid for: she is now, legally, Mr. Rugge’s property. But there was a wise peer who once bought Punch: Punch became his property, and was brought in triumph to his lordship’s house. To my lord’s great dismay, Punch would not talk. To Rugge’s great dismay, Sophy would not act.

Rendered up to Jasper Losely and Mrs. Crane, they had lost not an hour in removing her from Gatesboro’ and its neighbourhood. They did not, however, go back to the village in which they had left Rugge, but returned straight to London, and wrote to the manager to join them there.

Sophy, once captured, seemed stupefied: she evinced no noisy passion; she made no violent resistance. When she was told to love and obey a father in Jasper Losely, she lifted her eyes to his face; then turned them away, and shook her head mute and credulous. That man her father! she, did not believe it. Indeed, Jasper took no pains to convince her of the relationship or win her attachment. He was not unkindly rough: he seemed wholly indifferent; probably he was so. For the ruling vice of the man was in his egotism. It was not so much that he had bad principles and bad feelings, as that he had no principles and no feelings at all, except as they began, continued, and ended in that system of centralization which not more paralyzes healthful action in a State than it does in the individual man. Self-indulgence with him was absolute. He was not without power of keen calculation, not without much cunning. He could conceive a project for some gain far off in the future, and concoct, for its realization, schemes subtly woven, astutely guarded. But he could not secure their success by any long-sustained sacrifices of the caprice of one hour or the indolence of the next. If it had been a great object to him for life to win Sophy’s filial affection, he would not have bored himself for five minutes each day to gain that object. Besides, he had just enough of shame to render him uneasy at the sight of the child he had deliberately sold. So after chucking her under the chin, and telling her to be a good girl and be grateful for all that Mrs. Crane had done for her and meant still to do, he consigned her almost solely to that lady’s care.

When Rugge arrived, and Sophy was informed of her intended destination, she broke silence,—her colour went and came quickly,—she declared, folding her arms upon her breast, that she would never act if separated from her grandfather. Mrs. Crane, struck by her manner, suggested to Rugge that it might be as well, now that she was legally secured to the manager, to humour her wish and re-engage Waife. Whatever the tale with which, in order to obtain Sophy from the Mayor, she had turned that worthy magistrate’s mind against the Comedian, she had not gratified Mr. Rugge by a similar confidence to him. To him she said nothing which might operate against renewing engagements with Waife, if he were so disposed. But Rugge had no faith in a child’s firmness, and he had a strong spite against Waife, so he obstinately refused. He insisted, however, as a peremptory condition of the bargain, that Mr. Losely and Mrs. Crane should accompany him to the town to which he had transferred his troupe, both in order by their presence to confirm his authority over Sophy, and to sanction his claim to her, should Waife reappear and dispute it. For Rugge’s profession being scarcely legitimate and decidedly equivocal, his right to bring up a female child to the same calling might be called into question before a magistrate, and necessitate the production of her father in order to substantiate the special contract. In return, the manager handsomely offered to Mr. Losely and Mrs. Crane to pay their expenses in the excursion,—a liberality haughtily rejected by Mrs. Crane for herself, though she agreed at her own charge to accompany Losely if he decided on complying with the manager’s request. Losely at first raised objections, but hearing that there would be races in the neighbourhood, and having a peculiar passion for betting and all kinds of gambling, as well as an ardent desire to enjoy his L100 in so fashionable a manner, he consented to delay his return to the Continent, and attend Arabella Crane to the provincial Elis. Rugge, carried off Sophy to her fellow “orphans.”

AND SOPHY WOULD NOT ACT!

In vain she was coaxed; in vain she was threatened; in vain she was deprived of food; in vain shut up in a dark hole; in vain was the lash held over her. Rugge, tyrant though he was, did not suffer the lash to fall. His self-restraint there might be humanity,—might be fear of the consequences; for the state of her health began to alarm him. She might die; there might be an inquest. He wished now that he had taken Mrs. Crane’s suggestion, and re-engaged Waife. But where was Waife? Meanwhile he had advertised the young Phenomenon; placarded the walls with the name of Juliet Araminta; got up the piece of the Remorseless Baron, with a new rock-scene. Waife had had nothing to say in that drama, so any one could act his part.

The first performance was announced for that night: there would be such an audience! the best seats even now pre-engaged; first night of the race-week. The clock had struck seven; the performance began at eight. AND SOPHY WOULD NOT ACT!

The child was seated in a space that served for the greenroom, behind the scenes. The whole company had been convened to persuade or shame her out of her obstinacy. The king’s lieutenant, the seductive personage of the troupe, was on one knee to her, like a lover. He was accustomed to lovers’ parts, both on the stage and off it. Off it, he had one favoured phrase, hackneyed, but effective. “You are too pretty to be so cruel.” Thrice he now repeated that phrase, with a simper between each repetition that might have melted a heart of stone. Behind Sophy’s chair, and sticking calico-flowers into the child’s tresses, stood the senior matron of the establishment,—not a bad sort of woman,—who kept the dresses, nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack of cards which she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally in parts where age was no drawback and ugliness desirable,—such as a witch, or duenna, or whatever in the dialogue was poetically called “Hag.” Indeed, Hag was the name she usually took from Rugge; that which she bore from her defunct husband was Gormerick. This lady, as she braided the garland, was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with great sweetness, considering that her mouth was full of pins, “Now, deary, now, dovey, look at ooself in the glass; we could beat oo, and pinch oo, and stick pins into oo, dovey, but we won’t. Dovey will be good, I know;” and a great patch of rouge came on the child’s pale cheeks. The clown therewith, squatting before her with his hands on his knees, grinned lustily, and shrieked out, “My eyes, what a beauty!”

Rugge, meanwhile, one hand thrust in his bosom, contemplated the diplomatic efforts of his ministers, and saw, by Sophy’s compressed lips and unwinking eyes, that their cajoleries were unsuccessful. He approached and hissed into her ear, “Don’t madden me! don’t! you will act, eh?”

“No,” said Sophy, suddenly rising; and tearing the wreath from her hair, she set her small foot on it with force. “No, not if you kill me!”

“Gods!” faltered Rugge. “And the sum I have paid! I am diddled! Who has gone for Mrs. Crane?”

“Tom,” said the clown.

The word was scarcely out of the clown’s mouth ere Mrs. Crane herself emerged from a side scene, and, putting off her bonnet, laid both hands on the child’s shoulders, and looked her in the face without speaking. The child as firmly returned the gaze. Give that child a martyr’s cause, and in that frail body there would have been a martyr’s soul. Arabella Crane, not inexperienced in children, recognized a power of will stronger than the power of brute force, in that tranquillity of eye, the spark of calm light in its tender blue, blue, pure as the sky; light, steadfast as the star.

“Leave her to me, all of you,” said Mrs. Crane. “I will take her to your private room, Mr. Rugge;” and she led the child away to a sort of recess, room it could not be rightly called, fenced round with boxes and crates, and containing the manager’s desk and two stools.

“Sophy,” then said Mrs. Crane, “you say you will not act unless your grandfather be with you. Now, hear me. You know that I have been always stern and hard with you. I never professed to love you,—nor do I. But you have not found me untruthful. When I say a thing seriously, as I am speaking now, you may believe me. Act to-night, and I will promise you faithfully that I will either bring your grandfather here, or I will order it so that you shall be restored to him. If you refuse, I make no threat, but I shall leave this place; and my belief is that you will be your grandfather’s death.”

“His death! his death! I!”

“By first dying yourself. Oh, you smile; you think it would be happiness to die. What matter that the old man you profess to care for is broken-hearted! Brat, leave selfishness to boys: you are a girl! suffer!”

“Selfish!” murmured Sophy, “selfish! that was said of me before. Selfish! ah, I understand. No, I ought not to wish to die: what would become of him?” She fell on her knees, and raising both her clasped hands, prayed inly, silently, an instant, not more. She rose. “If I do act, then,—it is a promise: you will keep it. I shall see him: he shall know where I am; we shall meet!”

“A promise,—sacred. I will keep it. Oh, girl, how much you will love some day! how your heart will ache! and when you are my age, look at that heart, then at your glass; perhaps you may be, within and without, like me.”

Sophy, innocent Sophy, stared, awe-stricken, but uncomprehending; Mrs. Crane led her back passive.

“There, she will act. Put on the wreath. Trick her out. Hark ye, Mr. Rugge. This is for one night. I have made conditions with her: either you must take back her grandfather, or—she must return to him.”

“And my L100?”

“In the latter case ought to be repaid to you.”

“Am I never to have the Royal York Theatre? Ambition of my life, ma’am. Dreamed of it thrice! Ha! but she will act; and succeed. But to take back the old vagabond,—a bitter pill. He shall halve it with me! Ma’am, I’m your grateful—”