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 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 world we call "Behind the Scenes."
