_Chronicle for December. Second Fortnight._
My gifted relative has made her first appearance in public, and has laid
the foundation of our future fortunes.
On the first night the attendance was larger than I had ventured
to hope. The novelty of an evening's entertainment, conducted from
beginning to end by the unaided exertions of a young lady (see
advertisement), roused the public curiosity, and the seats were
moderately well filled. As good luck would have it, no letter addressed
to Miss Vanstone came that day. She was in full possession of herself
until she got the first dress on and heard the bell ring for the music.
At that critical moment she suddenly broke down. I found her alone in
the waiting-room, sobbing, and talking like a child. "Oh, poor papa!
poor papa! Oh, my God, if he saw me now!" My experience in such matters
at once informed me that it was a case of sal-volatile, accompanied by
sound advice. We strung her up in no time to concert pitch; set her eyes
in a blaze; and made her out-blush her own rouge. The curtain rose when
we had got her at a red heat. She dashed at it exactly as she dashed at
it in the back drawing-room at Rosemary Lane. Her personal appearance
settled the question of her reception before she opened her lips. She
rushed full gallop through her changes of character, her songs, and her
dialogue; making mistakes by the dozen, and never stopping to set them
right; carrying the people along with her in a perfect whirlwind, and
never waiting for the applause. The whole thing was over twenty minutes
sooner than the time we had calculated on. She carried it through to the
end, and fainted on the waiting-room sofa a minute after the curtain
was down. The music-seller having taken leave of his senses from sheer
astonishment, and I having no evening costume to appear in, we sent the
doctor to make the necessary apology to the public, who were calling for
her till the place rang again. I prompted our medical orator with a neat
speech from behind the curtain; and I never heard such applause, from
such a comparatively small audience, before in my life. I felt the
tribute--I felt it deeply. Fourteen years ago I scraped together the
wretched means of existence in this very town by reading the newspaper
(with explanatory comments) to the company at a public-house. And now
here I am at the top of the tree.
It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the
music-seller on the spot. He called the next morning, no doubt with
a liberal proposal for extending the engagement beyond Derby and
Nottingham. My niece was described as not well enough to see him; and,
when he asked for me, he was told I was not up. I happened to be at that
moment engaged in putting the case pathetically to our gifted Magdalen.
Her answer was in the highest degree satisfactory. She would permanently
engage herself to nobody--least of all to a man who had taken sordid
advantage of her position and mine. She would be her own mistress, and
share the profits with me, while she wanted money, and while it suited
her to go on. So far so good. But the reason she added next, for her
flattering preference of myself, was less to my taste. "The music-seller
is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries," she said. "You are
the man." I don't like her steadily remembering those inquiries, in the
first bewilderment of her success. It looks ill for the future; it looks
infernally ill for the future.