Shivers for Christmas

by Richard Dalby

  His weakness was so great, that his eyelids closed at his first effort to look round him. When they opened again, his eyes seemed strangely liquid and soft—almost like the eyes of a young girl. Perhaps this was partly because they turned on Annie the moment they could see.

  Soon, his lips moved; but his voice was so faint, that the doctor was obliged to listen close at his mouth to hear him. He said, in fluttering accents, that he had had a dreadful dream, which had made him very ill, he was afraid; but that it was all over, and he was better now, though not quite strong enough to receive so many visitors yet. Here his strength for speaking failed, and he looked round on Annie again in silence. In a minute more he whispered to her. She went to the table and fetched the new mask; and, kneeling down, held it before him to look at.

  The doctor beckoned Mr Colebatch, the landlady, and the carpenter, to follow him into the back-room.

  ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I’ve one, and only one, important direction to give you all; and you must communicate it to Miss Wray when she is a little less agitated. On no account let the patient imagine he’s wrong in thinking that all his troubles have been the troubles of a dream. That will be the weak point in his intellectual consciousness for the rest of his life. When he gets stronger, he is sure to question you curiously about his dream; keep him in his self-deceit, as you value his sanity! He’s only got his reason back by getting it out of the very jaws of death, I can tell you—give it full time to strengthen! You know, I dare say, that a joint which is dislocated by a jerk, is also replaced by a jerk. Consider his mind, in the same way, to have been dislocated by one shock, and now replaced by another; and treat his intellect as you would treat a limb that had only just been slipped back into its proper place—treat it tenderly. By the bye,’ added the doctor, after a moment’s consideration, ‘if you can’t get the key of his box, without suspicion, pick the lock; and throw away the fragments of the old cast (which he was always talking about in his delirium)—destroy them altogether. If he ever sees them again, they may do him dreadful mischief. He must always imagine what he imagines at present, that the new cast is the same cast that he has had all along. It’s a very remarkable case, Mr Colebatch, very remarkable; I really feel indebted to you for enabling me to study it. Compose yourself, sir, you’re a little shaken and startled by this, I see; but there’s no danger for him now. Look there: that man, except on one point, is as sane as ever he was in his life!’

  They looked, as the doctor spoke. Mr Wray was still on the sofa, gazing at the mask of Shakespeare, which Annie supported before him, as she knelt by his side. His arm was round her neck; and, from time to time, he whispered to her, smiling faintly, but very happily, as she replied in whispers also. The sight was simple enough; but the landlady, thinking on all that had passed, began to weep as she beheld it. The honest carpenter looked very ready to follow her example; and Mr Colebatch probably shared the same weakness at that moment, though he was less candid in betraying it. ‘Come,’ said the Squire, very huskily and hastily, ‘we are only in the way here; let us leave them together!’

  ‘Quite right, sir,’ observed the doctor; ‘that pretty little girl is the only medical attendant fit to be with him now! I wait for you, Mr Colebatch!’

  ‘I say, young fellow,’ said the Squire to the carpenter, as they went down stairs, ‘be in the way tomorrow morning: I’ve a good deal to ask you in private when I’m not all over in a twitter, as I am at present. Now our good old friend’s getting round, my curiosity’s getting round too. Be in the way tomorrow, at ten, when I come here. Quite ready, doctor! No! after you, if you please. Ah, thank God! we came into this house mourners, and we go out of it to rejoice. It will be a happy Christmas, doctor, and a merry New Year, after all!’

  X

  When ten o’clock came, the Squire came—punctual to a minute. Instead of going up stairs, he mysteriously sent for the carpenter into the back parlour.

  ‘Now, in the first place, how is Mr Wray?’—said the old gentleman, as anxiously as if he had not already sent three times the night before, and twice earlier in the morning, to ask that very question.

  ‘Lord bless you, sir!’—answered the carpenter with a grin, and a very expressive rubbing of the hands—‘He’s coming to again, after his nice sleep last night, as brave as ever. He’s dreadful weak still, to be sure; but he’s got like himself again, already. He’s been down on me twice in the last half hour, sir, about my elocution; he’s making Annie read Shakespeare to him; and he’s asking whether any new pupils are coming—all just in the old way again. Oh, sir, it is so jolly to see him like that once more—if you’ll only come up stairs—’

  ‘Stop, till we’ve had our talk’—said the Squire—‘sit down. By the bye! has he said anything yet about that infernal cash box?’

  ‘I picked the lock of the box this morning, sir, as the gentleman told me; and buried every bit of plaster out of it, deep in the kitchen garden. He saw the box afterwards, and gave a tremble, like. “Take it away,” says he, “never let me see it again: it reminds me of that dreadful dream.” And then, sir, he told us about what had happened, just as if he really had dreamt it; saying he couldn’t get the subject quite out of his head, the whole thing was so much as if it had truly taken place. Afterwards, sir, he thanked me for making the new box for the cast—he remembered my promising to do that, though it was only just before all our trouble!’

  ‘And of course, you humour him in everything, and let him think he’s right?’—said the Squire—‘He must never know that he hasn’t been dreaming, to his dying day.’

  And he never did know it—never, in this world, had even a suspicion of what he owed to Annie! It was but little matter; they could not have loved each other better, if he had discovered everything.

  ‘Now, master carpenter,’ pursued the Squire, ‘you’ve answered very nicely hitherto. Just answer as nicely the next question I ask. What’s the whole history of this mysterious plaster cast? It’s no use fidgeting! I’ve seen the cast; I know it’s a portrait of Shakespeare! and I’ve made up my mind to find out all about it. Do you mean to say you think I’m not a friend fit to be trusted? Eh, you sir?’

  ‘I never could think so, after all your goodness, sir. But, if you please, I really did promise to keep the thing a secret,’ said the carpenter, looking very much as if he were watching his opportunity to open the door, and run out of the room; ‘I promised, sir; I did, indeed!’

  ‘Promised a fiddlestick!’ exclaimed the Squire, in a passion. ‘What’s the use of keeping a secret that’s half let out already? I’ll tell you what, you Mr—, what’s your name? There’s some joke about calling you Julius Caesar. What’s your real name, if you really have one?’

  ‘Martin Blunt, sir. But don’t, pray don’t ask me to tell the secret! I don’t say you would blab it, sir; but if it did leak out, like; and get to Stratford-upon-Avon,’—here he suddenly became silent, feeling he was beginning to commit himself already.

  ‘Stop! I’ve got it!’ cried Mr Colebatch. ‘Hang me, if I haven’t got it at last!’

  ‘Don’t tell me, sir! Pray don’t tell me, if you have!’

  ‘Stick to your chair, Mr Martin Blunt! No shirking with me! I was a fool not to suspect the thing, the moment I saw it was a portrait of Shakespeare. I’ve seen the Stratford bust, Master Blunt! You’re afraid of Stratford, are you?—Why? I know! Some of you have been taking that cast from the Stratford bust, without leave—it’s as like it, as two peas! Now, young fellow, I’ll tell you what! if you don’t make a clean breast to me at once, I’m off to the office of the ‘Tidbury Mercury’, to put in my version of the whole thing, as a good local anecdote! Will you tell me? or will you not?—I’m asking this in Mr Wray’s interests, or I’d die before I asked you at all!’

  Confused, threatened, bullied, bawled at, and out-manoeuvred, the unfortunate carpenter fairly gave way. ‘If it’s wrong in me to tell you, sir, it’s your fault what I do,’ said the simple fellow; and he forthwith retailed, i
n a very roundabout, stammering manner, the whole of the disclosure he had heard from old Reuben—the Squire occasionally throwing in an explosive interjection of astonishment, or admiration; but, otherwise, receiving the narrative with remarkable calmness and attention.

  ‘What the deuce is all this nonsense about the Stratford Town Council, and the penalties of the law?’—cried Mr Colebatch, when the carpenter had done—‘But never mind; we can come to that afterwards. Now tell me about going back to get the mould out of the cupboard, and making the new cast. I know who did it! It’s that dear, darling, incomparable little girl!—but tell me all about it—come! quick, quick!— don’t keep me waiting!’

  ‘Julius Caesar’ got on with his second narrative much more glibly than with the first. How Annie had suddenly remembered, one night, in her bedroom, about the mould having been left behind—how she was determined to try and restore her grandfather’s health and faculties, by going to seek it; and how he (the carpenter), had gone also, to protect her—how they got to Stratford, by the coach (outside places, in the cold, to save money)—how Annie appealed to the mercy of their former landlord; and instead of inventing some falsehood to deceive him, fairly told her whole story in all its truth—how the landlord pitied them, and promised to keep their secret—how they went up into the bed-room, and found the mould in the old canvas bag, behind the volumes of the Annual Register, just where Mr Wray had left it—how Annie, remembering what her grandfather had told her, about the process of making a cast, bought plaster, and followed out her instructions; failing in the first attempt, but admirably succeeding in the second—how they were obliged, in frightful suspense, to wait till the third day for the return coach; and how they finally got back, safe and sound, not only with the new cast, but with the mould as well.—All these particulars flowed from the carpenter’s lips, in a strain of homely eloquence, which no elocutionary aid could have furnished with one atom of additional effect, that would have done it any good whatever.

  ‘We’d no notion, sir,’ said ‘Julius Caesar’, in conclusion, ‘that poor Mr Wray was so bad as he really was, when we went away. It was a dreadful trial to Annie, sir, to go. She went down on her knees to the landlady—I saw her do it, half wild, like; she was in such a state—she went down on her knees, sir, to ask the woman to be as a daughter to the old man, till she came back. Well, sir, even after that, it was a toss-up whether she went away, when the morning came. But she was obliged to do it. She durstn’t trust me to go alone, for fear I should let the mould tumble down, when I got it (which I’m afraid, sir, was very likely!)—or get into some scrape, by telling what I oughtn’t, where I oughtn’t; and so be taken up, mould and all, before the Town Council, who were going to put Mr Wray in prison, only we ran off to Tidbury; and so—’

  ‘Nonsense! stuff! they could no more put him in prison for taking the cast than I can,’ cried the Squire. ‘Stop! I’ve got a thought! I’ve got a thought at least, that’s worth—Is the mould here?—Yes or No?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Bless us and save us, what’s the matter!’

  ‘Run!’ cried Mr Colebatch, pacing up and down the room like mad. ‘No. 15 in the street! Dabbs and Clutton, the lawyers! Fetch one of them in a second! Damn it, run! or I shall burst a blood vessel!’

  The carpenter ran to No. 15; and Mr Dabbs, who happened to be in, ran from No. 15. Mr Colebatch met him at the street door, dragged him into the back parlour, pushed him on to a chair, and instantly stated the case between Mr Wray and the authorities at Stratford, in the fewest possible words and the hastiest possible tones. ‘Now,’ said the old gentleman at the end, ‘can they, or can they not, hurt him for what he’s done?’

  ‘It’s a very nice point,’ said Mr Dabbs, ‘a very nice point indeed, sir.’

  ‘Hang it, man!’ cried the Squire, ‘don’t talk to me about “nice points”, as if a point was something good to eat! Can they, or can they not, hurt him? Answer that in three words!’

  ‘They can’t,’ said Dabbs, answering it triumphantly in two.

  ‘Why?’ asked the Squire, beating him by a rejoinder in one.

  ‘For this reason,’ said Dabbs. ‘What does Mr Wray take with him into the church? Plaster of his own, in powder. What does he bring out with him? The same plaster, in another form. Does any right of copyright reside in a bust two hundred years old? Impossible. Has Mr Wray hurt the bust? No; or they would have found him out here, and prosecuted directly—for they know where he is. I heard of the thing from a Stratford man, yesterday, who said they knew he was at Tidbury. Under all these circumstances, where’s there a shadow of a case against Mr Wray? Nowhere!’

  ‘Capital, Dabbs! capital! you’ll be Lord Chancellor some day; never heard a better opinion in my life! Now, Mr Julius Caesar Blunt, do you see what my thought is? No! Look here. Take casts from that mould till your arms ache again; clap them upon slabs of black marble to show off the white face; sell them, at a guinea each, to the loads of people who would give anything to have a portrait of Shakespeare; and then open your breeches’ pockets fast enough to let the gold tumble in, if you can! Tell Mr Wray that; and you tell him he’s a rich man, or—no don’t, you’re no more fit to do it properly than I am! Tell every syllable you’ve heard here to Annie, directly; she’ll know how to break it to him; go! be off!’

  ‘But what are we to say about how we got the mould here, sir? We can’t tell Mr Wray the truth.’

  ‘Tell him a flam, of course! Say it’s been found in the cupboard, by the landlord, at Stratford, and sent on here. Dabbs will bear witness that the Stratford people know he’s at Tidbury, and know they can’t touch him; he’s sure to think that a pretty good proof that we are right. Say I bullied you out of the secret, when I saw the mould come here—say anything—but only go, and settle matters at once! I’m off to take my walk, and see about the black slabs at the stone masons. I’ll be back in an hour, and see Mr Wray.’

  The next moment, the impetuous old Squire was out of the house; and before the hour was up, he was in it again, rather more impetuous than ever.

  When he entered the drawing-room, the first sight that greeted him was the carpenter, hanging up a box containing the mask (with the lid taken off) boldly and publicly over the fireplace.

  ‘I’m glad to see that, sir,’ said Mr Colebatch, shaking hands with Mr Wray. ‘Annie has told you my good news—eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered the old man; ‘the best news I’ve heard for some time: I can hang up my treasure there, now, where I can see it all day. It was rather too bad, sir, of those Stratford people to go frightening me, by threatening what they couldn’t do. The best man among them is the man who was my landlord; he’s an honest, careful fellow, to send me back my old canvas bag, and the mould (which must have seemed worthless to him), just because they were belonging to me, and left in my bedroom. I’m rather proud, sir, of making that mask. I can never repay you for your kindness in defending my character, and taking me up as you’ve done—but if you would accept a copy of the cast, now we have the mould to take it from, as Annie says—’

  ‘That I will, and thankfully,’ said the Squire, ‘and I order five more copies, as presents to my friends, when you begin to sell to the public’

  ‘I really don’t know, sir, about that,’ said Mr Wray, rather uneasily. ‘Selling the cast is like making my great treasure very common; it’s like giving up my particular possession to everybody.’

  Mr Colebatch parried this objection instantly. Could Mr Wray, he asked, seriously mean to be so selfish as to deny to other lovers of Shakespeare the privilege he prized so much himself, of possessing Shakespeare’s portrait?—to say nothing of as good as plumply refusing a pretty round sum of money at the same time. Could he be selfish enough, and inconsiderate enough to do that? No: Mr Wray, on consideration, allowed he could not. He saw the subject in a new light now; and begging Mr Colebatch’s pardon, if he had seemed selfish or unthankful, he would take the Squire’s advice.

  ‘That’s right!’ said the old
gentleman. ‘Now I’m happy. You’ll soon be strong enough, my good friend, to take the cast yourself.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Mr Wray. ‘It’s very odd that a mere dream should make me feel so weak as I do—I suppose they told you, sir, what a horrible dream it was. If I didn’t see the mask hanging up there now, as whole as ever, I should really believe it had been broken to pieces, just as I dreamt it. It must have been a dream, you know, sir of course; for I dreamt that Annie had gone away and left me; and I found her at home as usual, when I woke up. It seems, too, that I’m a week or more behind-hand, in my notion about the day of the month. In short, sir, I should almost think myself bewitched,’ he added, pressing his trembling hand over his forehead, ‘if I didn’t know it was near Christmas time, and didn’t believe what sweet Will Shakespeare says in Hamlet—a passage, by-the-by, sir, which Mr Kemble always regretted to see struck out of the acting copy.’

  Here he began to declaim—faintly, but still with all the old Kemble cadences—the exquisite lines to which he referred; the Squire beating time to each modulation, with his forefinger:—

  ‘Some say, that ever ’gainst that season comes,

  Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

  This bird of dawning singeth all night long:

  And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad;

  The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

  No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

  So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.’

  ‘There’s poetry!’ exclaimed Mr Colebatch, looking up at the mask. ‘That’s a cut above my tragedy of the Mysterious Murderess, I’m afraid. Eh, sir? And how you recite,—splendid! Hang it! we haven’t had half our talk, yet, about Shakespeare and John Kemble. A chat with an old stager like you, is new life to me, in such a barbarous place as this! Ah, Mr Wray!’ (and here the Squire’s voice lowered, and grew strangely tender for such a rough old gentleman), ‘you are a happy man, to have a grandchild to keep you company at all times, but especially at Christmas time. I’m a lonely old bachelor, and must eat my Christmas dinner without wife or child to sweeten the taste to me of a single morsel!’