What Will He Do With It | Page 4

simple
child's unconsciousness that there was anything in her situation to
induce you to sigh, "Poor thing!"
"You should see her act, young gents," said the Cobbler: "she plays
uncommon. But if you had seen him as taught her,--seen him a year
ago."
"Who's he?"
"Waife, sir; mayhap you have heard speak of Waife?"
"I blush to say, no."
"Why, he might have made his fortune at Common Garden; but that's a
long story. Poor fellow! he's broke down now, anyhow. But she takes
care of him, little darling: God bless thee!" and the Cobbler here
exchanged a smile and a nod with the little girl, whose face brightened
when she saw him amidst the crowd.
"By the brush and pallet of Raphael!" cried the elder of the young men,
"before I am many hours older I must have that child's head!"

"Her head, man!" cried the Cobbler, aghast.
"In my sketch-book. You are a poet,--I a painter. You know the little
girl?"
"Don't I! She and her grandfather lodge with me; her grandfather,--
that's Waife,--marvellous man! But they ill-uses him; and if it warn't
for her, he'd starve. He fed them all once: he can feed them no longer;
he'd starve. That's the world: they use up a genus, and when it falls on
the road, push on; that's what Joe Spruce calls a-progressing. But
there's the drum! they're a-going to act; won't you look in, gents?"
"Of course," cried Lionel,--"of course. And, hark ye, Vance, we'll toss
up which shall be the first to take that little girl's head."
"Murderer in either sense of the word!" said Vance, with a smile that
would have become Correggio if a tyro had offered to toss up which
should be the first to paint a cherub.
CHAPTER II.
The historian takes a view of the British stage as represented by the
irregular drama, the regular having (ere the date of the events to which
this narrative is restricted) disappeared from the vestiges of creation.
They entered the little theatre, and the Cobbler with them; but the last
retired modestly to the threepenny row. The young gentlemen were
favoured with reserved seats, price one shilling. "Very dear,"
murmured Vance, as he carefully buttoned the pocket to which he
restored a purse woven from links of steel, after the fashion of chain
mail. Ah, Messieurs and Confreres the Dramatic Authors, do not flatter
yourselves that we are about to give you a complacent triumph over the
Grand Melodrame of "The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child."
We grant it was horrible rubbish, regarded in an aesthetic point of view,
but it was mighty effective in the theatrical. Nobody yawned; you did
not even hear a cough, nor the cry of that omnipresent baby, who is
always sure to set up an unappeasable wail in the midmost interest of a
classical five-act piece, represented for the first time on the

metropolitan boards. Here the story rushed on, /per fas aut nefas/, and
the audience went with it. Certes, some man who understood the stage
must have put the incidents together, and then left it to each illiterate
histrio to find the words, --words, my dear confreres, signify so little in
an acting play. The movement is the thing. Grand secret! Analyze,
practise it, and restore to grateful stars that lost Pleiad the British
Acting Drama.
Of course the Bandit was an ill-used and most estimable man. He had
some mysterious rights to the Estate and Castle of the Remorseless
Baron. That titled usurper, therefore, did all in his power to hunt the
Bandit out in his fastnesses and bring him to a bloody end. Here the
interest centred itself in the Bandit's child, who, we need not say, was
the little girl in the wreath and spangles, styled in the playbill "Miss
Juliet Araminta Wife," and the incidents consisted in her various
devices to foil the pursuit of the Baron and save her father. Some of
these incidents were indebted to the Comic Muse, and kept the
audience in a broad laugh. Her arch playfulness here was exquisite.
With what vivacity she duped the High Sheriff, who had the commands
of his king to take the Bandit alive or dead, into the belief that the very
Lawyer employed by the Baron was the criminal in disguise, and what
pearly teeth she showed when the Lawyer was seized and gagged! how
dexterously she ascertained the weak point in the character of the
"King's Lieutenant" (jeune premier), who was deputed by his royal
master to aid the Remorseless Baron in trouncing the Bandit! how
cunningly she learned that he was in love with the Baron's ward (jeune
amoureuse), whom that unworthy noble intended to force into a
marriage with himself on account of her fortune! how prettily she