The single-stick player looked like Pizarro, who, when he did kill a friend occasionally—“his custom i’ th’ afternoon”—always went to the funeral in a mourning suit and a droop of the eye—intended for sympathy. In the meantime the mayor, who had been fancying himself in a balloon, and that he was being whirled away from his native town, began to think that the balloon was settling to earth again, and that the representation of chaos had been indefinitely deferred. He continued, however, holding on by the rail, as if the balloon was yet unsteady, and he only complained of a drumming in the ears.
At that moment the not-to-be-mistaken sound of a real drum fell in harsh accompaniment upon his singing-ears, and it had one good effect, that of bringing back the magistrate and the man. Both looked through the rather shaken windows of the one body, and indignation speedily lighted up from within.
The sound came from the suburb of Fisherton, but it swelled insultingly nearer and nearer, as though announcing that it was about to be beaten in the borough, despite the lack of magisterial sanction. The great depository of authority began to gaze in speechless horror, as the bearer of the noisy instrument made his appearance in the market-place at the head of a small procession, which was at once seen to consist of a party of strolling actors.
The drummer was a thick-set man, with nothing healthy looking about him but his nose, and that looked too healthy. He was the low comedian, and was naturally endowed to assume that distinctive line.
He was followed by three or four couple of “the ladies and gentlemen of the company,” of some of whom it might be said, that shoes were things they did not much stand upon. They had a shabby genteel air about them, looked hungry and happy; and one or two wore one hand in the pocket, upon an economizing principle in reference to gloves. The light comedian cut jokes with the spectators, and was soon invited to the consequence he aimed at—an invitation to “take a glass of wine.” The women were more tawdry-looking than the men, but they wore a light-hearted, romping aspect—all, except the young lady who played Ophelia and Columbine, who carried a baby, and looked as if she had not been asleep since it was born, which was probably the case.
The cortège was closed by a fine, gentleman-like man, who led by the hand a little girl some ten years old. No one could look for a moment at them, without at once feeling assured that there was something in them which placed them above the fellows with whom they consorted. They were father and daughter. He manager; she a species of infant phenomenon. In his face were to be traced the furrows of disappointment, and in his eye the gleam of hope. Her face was as faces of the young should ever be, full of enjoyment, love, and feeling. The last two were especially there for the father, whose hand she held, and into whose face she looked, ever and anon, with a smile which never failed to be repaid in similar currency.
The refined air of the father, and the graceful bearing of the modest daughter, won commendations from all beholders. He was an ex-surgeon of Cork, who had given up his profession in order to follow the stage. People set him down as insane, and so he was, but it was an insanity which made a countess of his daughter. His name was Farren, and his child, pet daughter of a pretty mother, was the inimitable Lizzy.
If the mayor could have read into history, he would have knelt down and kissed Lizzy Farren’s shoe-buckles. As he could not so read, he only saw in the sire a vagabond, and in the child a mountebank. On the former he hurled down the whole weight of his magisterial wrath. It was in vain that the manager declared he was on his way to solicit the mayor’s license to act in Salisbury. That official gentleman declared that it was an infraction of the law to pass from the suburb of Fisherton into the borough of Salisbury before the mayor’s permission had been previously signified.
“And that permission I will never give,” said his worship. “We are a godly people here, and have no taste for rascal-players. As his majesty’s representative, I am bound to encourage no amusements that are not respectable.”
“But our young king,” interrupted Mr. Farren, “is himself a great patron of the theatre.”