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What Will He Do With It, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Book 4 - Chapter 6 |
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_ BOOK IV CHAPTER VI Threadbare is the simile which compares the world to a stage. Schiller, less complimentary than Shakspeare, lowers the illustration from a stage to a puppet-show. But ever between realities and shows there is a secret communication, an undetected interchange,--sometimes a stern reality in the heart of the ostensible actor, a fantastic stage-play in the brain of the unnoticed spectator. The bandit's child on the proscenium is still poor little Sophy, in spite of garlands and rouge. But that honest rough-looking fellow to whom, in respect for services to sovereign and country, the apprentice yields way, may he not be--the crafty Comedian? TARAN-TARANTARA! rub-a-dub-dub! play up horn! roll drum! a quarter to eight; and the crowd already thick before Rugge's Grand Exhibition,--" Remorseless Baron and Bandit's Child! Young Phenomenon,--Juliet Araminta,--Patronized by the Nobility in general, and expecting daily to be summoned to perform before the Queen,--_Vivat Regina!_"--Ruba-dub-dub! The company issue from the curtain, range in front of the proscenuim. Splendid dresses. The Phenomenon!--'t is she! "My eyes, there's a beauty!" cries the clown. The days have already grown somewhat shorter; but it is not yet dusk. How charmingly pretty she still is, despite that horrid paint; but how wasted those poor bare snowy arms! A most doleful lugubrious dirge mingles with the drum and horn. A man has forced his way close by the stage,--a man with a confounded cracked hurdy-gurdy. Whine! whine! creaks the hurdy-gurdy. "Stop that! stop that mu-zeek!" cries a delicate apprentice, clapping his hands to his ears. "Pity a poor blind--" answers the man with the hurdygurdy. "Oh, you are blind, are you? but we are not deaf. There's a penny not to play. What black thing have you got there by a string?" "My dog, sir!" "Deuced ugly one; not like a dog; more like a bear with horns!" "I say, master," cries the clown, "here's a blind man come to see the Phenomenon!" The crowd laugh; they make way for the blind man's black dog. They suspect, from the clown's address, that the blind man has something to do with the company. You never saw two uglier specimens of their several species than the blind man and his black dog. He had rough red hair and a red beard, his face had a sort of twist that made every feature seem crooked. His eyes were not bandaged, but the lids were closed, and he lifted them up piteously as if seeking for light. He did not seem, however, like a common beggar: had rather the appearance of a reduced sailor. Yes, you would have bet ten to one he had been a sailor; not that his dress belonged to that noble calling, but his build, the roll of his walk, the tie of his cravat, a blue anchor tattooed on that great brown hand: certainly a sailor; a British tar! poor man. The dog was hideous enough to have been exhibited as a _lusus naturae_; evidently very aged,--for its face and ears were gray, the rest of it a rusty reddish black; it had immensely long ears, pricked up like horns; it was a dog that must have been brought from foreign parts; it might have come from Acheron, sire by Cerberus, so portentous, and (if not irreverent the epithet) so infernal was its aspect, with that gray face, those antlered ears, and its ineffably weird demeanour altogether. A big dog, too, and evidently a strong one. All prudent folks would have made way for a man led by that dog. Whine creaked the hurdy-gurdy, and bow-wow all of a sudden barked the dog. Sophy stifled a cry, pressed her hand to her breast, and such a ray of joy flashed over her face that it would have warmed your heart for a month to have seen it. But do you mean to say, Mr. Author, that that British tar (gallant, no doubt, but hideous) is Gentleman Waife, or that Stygian animal the snowy-curled Sir Isaac? Upon my word, when I look at them myself, I, the Historian, am puzzled. If it had not been for that bow-bow, I am sure Sophy would not have suspected. Taratarantara! Walk in, ladies and gentlemen, walk in; the performance is about to commence! Sophy lingers last. "Yes, sir," said the blind man, who had been talking to the apprentice, "yes, sir," said he, loud and emphatically, as if his word had been questioned. "The child was snowed up, but luckily the window of the hut was left open: exactly at two o'clock in the morning, that dog came to the window, set up a howl, and--" Soppy could hear no more--led away behind the curtain by the King's Lieutenant. But she had heard enough to stir her heart with an emotion that set all the dimples round her lip into undulating play. _ |
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