What Will He Do With It | Page 5

passed notes to and fro, the Lieutenant never suspecting that she was
the Bandit's child, and at last got the king's soldier on her side, as the
event proved! And oh, how gayly, and with what mimic art, she stole
into the Baron's castle, disguised as a witch, startled his conscience
with revelations and predictions, frightened all the vassals with blue
lights and chemical illusions, and venturing even into the usurper's own
private chamber, while the tyrant was tossing restless on the couch,
over which hung his terrible sword, abstracted from his coffer the deeds
that proved the better rights of the persecuted Bandit! Then, when he

woke before she could escape with her treasure, and pursued her with
his sword, with what glee she apparently set herself on fire, and
skipped out of the casement in an explosion of crackers! And when the
drama approached its /denouement/, when the Baron's men, and the
royal officers of justice, had, despite all her arts, tracked the Bandit to
the cave, in which, after various retreats, he lay hidden, wounded by
shots, and bruised by a fall from a precipice, --with what admirable
byplay she hovered around the spot, with what pathos she sought to
decoy away the pursuers! it was the skylark playing round the nest.
And when all was vain,--when, no longer to be deceived, the enemies
sought to seize her, how mockingly she eluded them, bounded up the
rock, and shook her slight finger at them in scorn! Surely she will save
that estimable Bandit still! Now, hitherto, though the Bandit was the
nominal hero of the piece, though you were always hearing of him,--his
wrongs, virtues, hairbreadth escapes,--he had never been seen. Not Mrs.
Harris, in the immortal narrative, was more quoted and more mythical.
But in the last scene there was the Bandit, there in his cavern, helpless
with bruises and wounds, lying on a rock. In rushed the enemies, Baron,
High Sheriff, and all, to seize him. Not a word spoke the Bandit, but his
attitude was sublime,--even Vance cried "bravo;" and just as he is
seized, halter round his neck, and about to be hanged, down from the
chasm above leaps his child, holding the title-deeds, filched from the
Baron, and by her side the King's Lieutenant, who proclaims the
Bandit's pardon, with due restoration to his honours and estates, and
consigns to the astounded Sheriff the august person of the Remorseless
Baron. Then the affecting scene, father and child in each other's arms;
and then an exclamation, which had been long hovering about the lips
of many of the audience, broke out, "Waife, Waife!" Yes, the Bandit,
who appeared but in the last scene, and even then uttered not a word,
was the once great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known
through many a fair for his exuberant humour, his impromptu jokes, his
arch eye, his redundant life of drollery, and the strange pathos or
dignity with which he could suddenly exalt a jester's part, and call forth
tears in the startled hush of laughter; he whom the Cobbler had rightly
said, "might have made a fortune at Covent Garden." There was the
remnant of the old popular mime!--all his attributes of eloquence
reduced to dumb show! Masterly touch of nature and of art in this

representation of him,--touch which all who had ever in former years
seen and heard him on that stage felt simultaneously. He came in for
his personal portion of dramatic tears. "Waife, Waife!" cried many a
village voice, as the little girl led him to the front of the stage.
He hobbled; there was a bandage round his eyes. The plot, in
describing the accident that had befallen the Bandit, idealized the
genuine infirmities of the man,--infirmities that had befallen him since
last seen in that village. He was blind of one eye; he had become
crippled; some malady of the trachea or larynx had seemingly broken
up the once joyous key of the old pleasant voice. He did not trust
himself to speak, even on that stage, but silently bent his head to the
rustic audience; and Vance, who was an habitual playgoer, saw in that
simple salutation that the man was an artistic actor. All was over, the
audience streamed out, much affected, and talking one to the other. It
had not been at all like the ordinary stage exhibitions at a village fair.
Vance and Lionel exchanged looks of surprise, and then, by a common
impulse, moved towards the stage, pushed aside the curtain, which had
fallen, and were in that strange world which has so many reduplications,
fragments of one broken mirror, whether in the proudest theatre or the
lowliest barn,--nay, whether in the palace of kings, the cabinet of
statesmen, the home of domestic life,--the