What Will He Do with It? — Volume 03

"The old man! She is with him! And where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Humph; how does he live? Can he have got any money?"

"I don't know."

"Did any old friends take him up?"

"Would he go to old friends?"

Mr. Losely tossed off two fresh glasses of brandy, one after the other, and, rising, walked to and fro the room, his hands buried in his pockets, and in no comfortable vein of reflection. At length he paused and said, "Well, upon the whole, I don't see what I could do with the girl just at present, though, of course, I ought to know where she is, and with whom. Tell me, Mrs. Crane, what is she like,—pretty or plain?"

"I suppose the chit would be called pretty,—by some persons at least."

"Very pretty? handsome?" asked Losely, abruptly. "Handsome or not, what does it signify? what good comes of beauty? You had beauty enough; what have you done with it?"

At that question, Losely drew himself up with a sudden loftiness of look and gesture, which, though prompted but by offended vanity, improved the expression of the countenance, and restored to it much of its earlier character. Mrs. Crane gazed on him, startled into admiration, and it was in an altered voice, half reproachful, half bitter, that she continued,

"And now that you are satisfied about her, have you no questions to ask about me?—what I do? how I live?" "My dear Mrs. Crane, I know that you are comfortably off, and were never of a mercenary temper. I trust you are happy, and so forth: I wish I were; things don't prosper with me. If you could conveniently lend me a five-pound note—"

"You would borrow of me, Jasper? Ah! you come to me in your troubles. You shall have the money,—five pounds, ten pounds, what you please, but you will call again for it: you need me now; you will not utterly desert me now?"

"Best of creatures!—never!" He seized her hand and kissed it. She withdrew it quickly from his clasp, and, glancing over him from head to foot, said, "But are you really in want?—you are well-dressed, Jasper; that you always were."

"Not always; three days ago very much the reverse: but I have had a trifling aid, and—"

"Aid in England? from whom? where? Not from him whom you say you had the courage to seek?"

"From whom else? Have I no claim? A miserable alms flung to me. Curse him! I tell you that man's look and language so galled me,—so galled," echoed Losely, shifting his hold from the top of his switch to the centre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm of his other hand, "that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I think I must have brained him, and been—"

"Hanged!" said Mrs. Crane.

"Of course, hanged," returned Losely, resuming the reckless voice and manner in which there was that peculiar levity which comes from hardness of heart, as from the steel's hardness comes the blade's play. "But if a man did not sometimes forget consequences, there would be an end of the gallows. I am glad that his eye never left mine." And the leaden head of the switch fell with a dull dumb sound on the floor.

Mrs. Crane made no immediate rejoinder, but fixed on her lawless visitor a gaze in which there was no womanly fear (though Losely's aspect and gesture might have sent a thrill through the nerves of many a hardy man), but which was not without womanly compassion, her countenance gradually softening more and more, as if under the influence of recollections mournful but not hostile. At length she said in a low voice, "Poor Jasper! Is all the vain ambition that made you so false shrunk into a ferocity that finds you so powerless? Would your existence, after all, have been harder, poorer, meaner, if your faith had been kept to me?"

Evidently disliking that turn in the conversation, but checking a reply which might have been rude had no visions of five pounds, ten pounds, loomed in the distance, Mr. Losely said, "Pshaw! Bella, pshaw! I was a fool, I dare say, and a sad dog, a very sad dog; but I had always the greatest regard for you, and always shall! Hillo, what's that? A knock at the door! Oh, by the by, a queer-looking man, in a white hat, called at the same time I did, to see you on private business, gave way to me, said he should come again; may I ask who he is?"

"I cannot guess; no one ever calls here on business except the tax- gatherer."

The old woman-servant now entered. "A gentleman, ma'am; says his name is Rugge."

"Rugge,—Rugge; let me think."

"I am here, Mrs. Crane," said the manager, striding in. "You don't, perhaps, call me to mind by name; but—oho! not gone, sir! Do I intrude prematurely?"

"No, I have done; good-day, my dear Mrs. Crane."

"Stay, Jasper. I remember you now, Mr. Rugge; take a chair."

She whispered a few words into Losely's ear, then turned to the manager, and said aloud, "I saw you at Mr. Waife's lodging, at the time he had that bad accident."

"And I had the honour to accompany you home, ma'am, and—but shall I speak out before this gentleman?"

"Certainly; you see he is listening to you with attention. This gentleman and I have no secrets from each other. What has become of that person? This gentleman wishes to know."

LOSELY.—"Yes, sir, I wish to know-particularly."

RUGGE.—"So do I; that is partly what I came about. You are aware, I think, ma'am, that I engaged him and Juliet Araminta, that is, Sophy."

LOSELY.—"Sophy? engaged them, sir,—how?"

RUGGE.—"Theatrical line, sir,—Rugge's Exhibition; he was a great actor once, that fellow Waife."

LOSELY.—"Oh, actor! well, sir, go on."

RUGGE (who in the course of his address turns from the lady to the gentleman, from the gentleman to the lady, with appropriate gesture and appealing look).—"But he became a wreck, a block of a man; lost an eye and his voice too. How ever, to serve him, I took his grandchild and him too. He left me—shamefully, and ran off with his grandchild, sir. Now, ma'am, to be plain with you, that little girl I looked upon as my property,—a very valuable property. She is worth a great deal to me, and I have been done out of her. If you can help me to get her back, articled and engaged say for three years, I am willing and happy, ma'am, to pay something handsome,—uncommon handsome."

MRS. CRANE (loftily).—"Speak to that gentleman; he may treat with you."

LOSELY.—"What do you call uncommon handsome, Mr.—Mr. Tugge?"

RUGGE.—"Rugge! Sir; we sha'n't disagree, I hope, provided you have the power to get Waife to bind the girl to me."

LOSELY.—"I may have the power to transfer the young lady to your care— young lady is a more respectful phrase than girl—and possibly to dispense with Mr. Waife's consent to such arrangement. But excuse me if I say that I must know a little more of yourself, before I could promise to exert such a power on your behalf."

RUGGE.—"Sir, I shall be proud to improve our acquaintance. As to Waife, the old vagabond, he has injured and affronted me, sir. I don't bear malice, but I have a spirit: Britons have a spirit, sir. And you will remember, ma'am, that when I accompanied you home, I observed that Mr. Waife was a mysterious man, and had apparently known better days, and that when a man is mysterious, and falls into the sear and yellow leaf, ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a right to suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other, ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his whereabout, sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was suspicious; but you said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing to me what Mr. Waife had once been, so long as he was of use to me at that particular season. Since then, sir, he has ceased to be of use,—ceased, too, in the unhandsomest manner. And if you would, ma'am, from a sense of justice, just unravel the mystery, put me in possession of the secret, it might make that base man of use to me again, give me a handle over him, sir, so that I might awe him into restoring my property, as, morally speaking, Juliet Araminta most undoubtedly is. That's why I call,— leaving my company, to which I am a father, orphans for the present. But I have missed that little girl,—that young lady, sir. I called her a phenomenon, ma'am; missed her much: it is natural, sir, I appeal to you. No man can be done out of a valuable property and not feel it, if he has a heart in his bosom. And if I had her back safe, I should indulge ambition. I have always had ambition. The theatre at York, sir,—that is my ambition; I had it from a child, sir; dreamed of it three tunes, ma'am. If I had back my property in that phenomenon, I would go at the thing, slap-bang, take the York, and bring out the phenomenon with A CLAW!"

LOSELY (musingly).—"You say the young lady is a phenomenon, and for this phenomenon you are willing to pay something handsome,—a vague expression. Put it into L. s. d."

RUGGE.—"Sir, if she can be bound to me legally for three years, I would give L100. I did offer to Waife L50,—to you, sir, L100."

Losely's eyes flashed, and his hands opened restlessly. "But, confound it, where is she? Have you no clew?"

RUGGE.—"No, but we can easily find one; it was not worth my while to hunt them up before I was quite sure that, if I regained my property in that phenomenon, the law would protect it."

MRS. CRANE (moving to the door).—"Well, Jasper Losely, you will sell the young lady, I doubt not; and when you have sold her, let me know." She came back and whispered, "You will not perhaps now want money from me, but I shall see you again; for, if you would find the child, you will need my aid."

"Certainly, my dear friend, I will call again; honour bright."

Mrs. Crane here bowed to the gentlemen, and swept out of the room.

Thus left alone, Losely and Rugge looked at each other with a shy and yet cunning gaze,—Rugge's hands in his trouser's pockets, his head thrown back; Losely's hands in voluntarily expanded, his head bewitchingly bent forward, and a little on one side.

"Sir," said Rugge, at length, "what do you say to a chop and a pint of wine? Perhaps we could talk more at our ease elsewhere. I am only in town for a day; left my company thirty miles off,—orphans, as I said before."

"Mr. Rugge," said Losely, "I have no desire to stay in London, or indeed in England; and the sooner we can settle this matter the better. Grant that we find the young lady, you provide for her board and lodging; teach her your honourable profession; behave, of course, kindly to her."