Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/42

 the mimic drollery of which no hoarseness could altogether mar, chanted the old line,—

"'My face is my fortune, sir,' she said."

Vance smiled; Lionel laughed; Sophy nestled still nearer to the boy.

GENTLEMAN WAIFE (with pathos and dignity).—"You see before you an old man: one way of life is the same to me as another. But she,—do you think Mr. Rugge's stage the right place for her?"

VANCE.—"Certainly not. Why did you not introduce her to the London Manager who would have engaged yourself?"

Waife could not conceal a slight change of countenance. "How do I know she would have succeeded? She had never then trod the boards. Besides, what strikes you as so good in a village show may be poor enough in a metropolitan theatre. Gentlemen, I do my best for her; you cannot think otherwise, since she maintains me! I am no OEdipus, yet she is my Antigone."

VANCE.—"You know the classics, sir. Mr. Merle said you were a scholar!--read Sophocles in his native Greek, I presume, sir?"

MR. WAIFE.—"You jeer at the unfortunate: I am used to it."

VANCE (confused).—"I did not mean to wound you: I beg pardon. But your language and manner are not what—what one might expect to find in a—in a—Bandit persecuted by a remorseless Baron."

MR. WAIFE.—"Sir, you say you are an artist. Have you heard no tales of your professional brethren,—men of genius the highest, who won fame, which I never did, and failed of fortunes, as I have done? Their own fault, perhaps,—improvidence, wild habits, ignorance of the way how to treat life and deal with their fellow-men; such fault may have been mine too. I suffer for it: no matter; I ask none to save me. You are a painter: you would place her features on your canvas; you would have her rank amongst your own creations. She may become a part of your immortality. Princes may gaze on the effigies of the innocent happy childhood, to which your colours lend imperishable glow. They may ask who and what was this fair creature? Will you answer, 'One whom I found in tinsel, and so left, sure that she would die in rags!'—Save her!"