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.
