‘My character, sir!’ interposed Mr Wray.
‘Stop, Mr Wray! I beg your pardon; but I must tell you how I trounced him. Half an hour after the thing had been taken down, I dropped into the shop. Dunball, smiling like a fool, tells me about the business. “Put it up again, directly!” said I; “I won’t have any man’s character bowled down like that by people who don’t know him!” Dunball makes a wry face and hesitates. I pull out my watch, and say to him, “I give you a minute to decide between my custom and interest, and Daubeny Daker’s.” I happen to be what’s called a rich man, Mr Wray; so Dunball decided in about two seconds, and up went your advertisement again, just where it was before!’
‘I have no words, sir, to thank you for your kindness,’ said poor old Reuben.
‘Hear how I trounced Daubeny Daker, sir — hear that! I met him out at dinner, the same night. He was talking about you, and what he’d done — as proud as a peacock! “In fact,” says he, at the end of his speech, “I considered it my duty, as a clergyman, to have the advertisement taken down.” “And I considered it my duty, as a gentleman,” said I, “to have it put up again.” Then, we began the argument (he hates me, because I once wrote a play — I know he does). I won’t tell you what he said, because it would distress you. But it ended, after we’d been at it, hammer and tongs, for about an hour, by my saying that his conduct in setting you down as a disreputable character, without making a single enquiry about you, showed a want of Christianity, justice, and common sense. “I can bear with your infirmities of temper, Mr Colebatch,” says he, in his nasty, sneering way; “but allow me to ask, do you, who defend Mr Wray so warmly, know any more of him than I do?” He thought this was a settler; but I was at him again, quick as lightning. “No, sir; but I’ll set you a proper example, by going tomorrow morning, and judging of the man from the man himself!” That was a settler for him: and now, here I am this morning, to do what I said.’
‘I will show you, Mr Colebatch, that I have deserved the honour of being defended by you,’ said Mr Wray, with a mixture of artless dignity and manly gratitude in his manner, which became him wonderfully; ‘I have a letter, sir, from the late Mr Kemble—’
‘What, my old friend, John Philip!’ cried the Squire; ‘let’s see it instantly! He, Mr Wray, was “the noblest Roman of them all”, as Shakespeare says.’
Here was an inestimable friend indeed! He knew Mr Kemble and quoted Shakespeare. Old Reuben could actually have embraced the Squire at that moment; but he contented himself with producing the great Kemble letter.
Mr Colebatch read it, and instantly declared that, as a certificate of character, it beat all other certificates that ever were written completely out of the field; and established Mr Wray’s reputation as above the reach of all calumny. ‘It’s the most tremendous crusher for Daubeny Daker that ever was composed, sir!’ Just as the old gentleman said this, his eyes encountered little Annie, who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the room, going on with her lace. He had hardly allowed himself leisure enough to look at her, in the first heat of his introductory address, but he made up for lost time now, with characteristic celerity.
‘Who’s that pretty little girl?’ said he; and his bright eyes twinkled more than ever as he spoke.
‘My granddaughter, Annie,’ answered Mr Wray, proudly.
‘Nice little thing! how pretty and quiet she sits making her lace!’ cried Mr Colebatch, enthusiastically. ‘Don’t move, Annie; don’t go away! I like to look at you! You won’t mind a queer old bachelor, like me — will you? You’ll let me look at you — won’t you? Go on with your lace, my dear, and Mr Wray and I will go on with our chat.’
This ‘chat’ completed what the Kemble letter had begun. Encouraged by the Squire, old Reuben artlessly told the little story of his life, as if to an intimate friend; and told it with all the matchless pathos of simplicity and truth. What time Mr Colebatch could spare from looking at Annie — and that was not much — he devoted to anathematising his implacable enemy, Daubeny Daker, in a series of violent expletives; and anticipating, with immense glee, the sort of consummate ‘trouncing’ he should now be able to inflict on that reverend gentleman, the next time he met with him. Mr Wray only wanted to take one step more after this in the Squire’s estimation, to be considered the phoenix of all professors of elocution, past, present, and future: and he took it. He actually recollected the production of Mr Colebatch’s play — a tragedy all bombast and bloodshed — at Drury Lane Theatre; and, more than that, he had himself performed one of the minor characters in it!
The Squire seized his hand immediately. This play (in virtue of which he considered himself a dramatic author,) was his weak point. It had enjoyed a very interrupted ‘run’ of one night; and had never been heard of after. Mr Colebatch attributed this circumstance entirely to public misappreciation; and, in his old age, boasted of his tragedy wherever he went, utterly regardless of the reception it had met with. It has often been asserted that the parents of sickly children are the parents who love their children best. This remark is sometimes, and only sometimes, true. Transfer it, however, to the sickly children of literature, and it directly becomes a rule which the experience of the whole world is powerless to confute by a single exception!
‘My dear sir!’ cried Mr Colebatch, ‘your remembrance of my play is a new bond between us! It was entitled — of course you recollect — The Mysterious Murderess. Gad, sir, do you happen to call to mind the last four lines of the guilty Lindamira’s death scene? It ran thus, Mr Wray: —
‘Murder and midnight hail! Come all ye horrors!
My soul’s congenial darkness quite defies ye!
I’m sick with guilt! — What is to cure me? — This! (Stabs herself)
Ha! ha! I’m better now — (smiles faintly) — I’m comfortable!’ (Dies)
‘If that’s not pretty strong writing, sir, my name’s not Matthew Colebatch! and yet the besotted audience failed to appreciate it! Bless my soul!’ (pulling out his watch) ‘one o’clock, already! I ought to be at home! I must go directly. Goodbye, Mr Wray. I’m so glad to have seen you, that I could almost thank Daubeny Daker for putting me in the towering passion that sent me here. You remind me of my young days, when I used to go behind the scenes, and sup with Kemble and Matthews. Goodbye, little Annie! I’m a wicked old fellow, and I mean to kiss you some day! Not a step further, Mr Wray; not a step, by George, sir; or I’ll never come again. I mean to make the Tidbury people employ your talents; they’re the most infernal set of asses under the canopy of heaven; but they shall employ them! I engage you to read my play, if nothing else will do, at the Mechanics’ Institution. We’ll make their flesh creep, sir; and their hair stand on end, with a little tragedy of the good old school. Goodbye, till I see you again, and God bless you!’ And away the talkative old Squire went, in a mighty hurry, just as he had come in.
‘Oh, grandfather! what a nice old gentleman!’ exclaimed Annie, looking up for the first time from her lace cushion.
‘What unexampled kindness to me! What perfect taste in everything! Did you hear him quote Shakespeare?’ cried old Reuben, in an ecstasy. They went on alternately, in this way, with raptures about Mr Colebatch, for something like an hour. After that time, Annie left her work, and walked to the window.
‘It’s raining — raining fast,’ she said. ‘Oh, dear me! we can’t have our walk today!’
‘Hark! there’s the wind moaning,’ said the old man. ‘It’s getting colder, too. Annie! we are going to have a stormy night.’
Four o’clock! And the carpenter still at his work in the back kitchen. Faster, ‘Julius Caesar’; faster. Let us have that mask of Shakespeare out of Mr Wray’s cash box, and snugly ensconced in your neat wooden casket, before anybody goes to bed tonight. Faster, man! — Faster!
VII
For some household reason not worth mentioning, they dined later that day than usual at No. 12. It was five o’clock before they sat down to table. The conversation all turned on the visitor of
the morning; no terms in Mr Wray’s own vocabulary being anything like choice enough to characterize the eccentric old squire, he helped himself to Shakespeare, even more largely than usual, every time he spoke of Mr Colebatch. He managed to discover some striking resemblance to that excellent gentleman (now in one particular, and now in another), in every noble and venerable character, throughout the whole series of the plays — not forgetting either, on one or two occasions, to trace the corresponding likeness between the more disreputable and intriguing personages, and that vindictive enemy to all plays, players, and playhouses, the Reverend Daubeny Daker. Never did any professed commentator on Shakespeare (and the assertion is a bold one) wrest the poet’s mighty meaning more dexterously into harmony with his own microscopic ideas, than Mr Wray now wrested it, to furnish him with eulogies on the goodness and generosity of Mr Matthew Colebatch, of Cropley Court.
Meanwhile, the weather got worse and worse, as the evening advanced. The wind freshened almost to a gale; and dashed the fast-falling rain against the window, from time to time, with startling violence. It promised to be one of the wildest, wettest, darkest nights they had had at Tidbury since the winter began.
Shortly after the table was cleared, having pretty well exhausted himself on the subject of Mr Colebatch, for the present, old Reuben fell asleep in his chair. This was rather an unusual indulgence for him, and was probably produced by the especial lateness of the dinner. Mr Wray generally took that meal at two o’clock, and set off for his walk afterwards, reckless of all the ceremonial observances of digestion. He was a poor man, and could not afford the luxurious distinction of being dyspeptic.
The behaviour of Mr ‘Julius Caesar’, the carpenter, when he appeared from the back kitchen to take his place at dinner, was rather perplexing. He knocked down a salt-cellar; spurted some gravy over his shirt; and spilt a potato, in trying to transport it a distance of about four inches, from the dish to Annie’s plate. This, to begin with, was rather above the general average of his number of table accidents at one meal. Then, when dinner was over, he announced his intention of returning to the back kitchen for the rest of the evening, in tones of such unwonted mystery, that Annie’s curiosity was aroused, and she began to question him. Had he not done the new box yet? No! Why, he might have made such a box in an hour, surely? Yes, he might. And why had he not? ‘Wait a bit, Annie, and you’ll see!’ And having said that, he laid his large finger mysteriously against the side of his large nose, and walked out of the room forthwith.
In half-an-hour afterwards he came in again, looking very sheepish and discomposed, and trying, unsuccessfully, to hide an enormous poultice — a perfect loaf of warm bread and water — which decorated the palm of his right hand. This time, Annie insisted on an explanation.
It appeared that he had conceived the idea of ornamenting the lid of the new box with some uncouth carvings of his own, in compliment to Mr Wray and the mask of Shakespeare. Being utterly unpractised in the difficult handiwork he proposed to perform, he had run a splinter into the palm of his hand. And there the box was now in the back kitchen, waiting for lock and hinges, while the only person in the house who could put them on, was not likely to handle a hammer again for days to come. Miserable ‘Julius Caesar!’ Never was well-meant attention more fatally misdirected than this attention of yours! Of all the multifarious accidents of your essentially accidental life, this special casualty, which has hindered you from finishing the new box tonight, is the most ill-timed and the most irreparable!
When the tea came in Mr Wray woke up; and as it usually happens with people who seldom indulge in the innocent sensuality of an after-dinner nap, changed at once, from a state of extreme somnolence to a state of extreme wakefulness. By this time the night was at its blackest; the rain fell fierce and thick, and the wild wind walked abroad in the darkness, in all its might and glory. The storm began to affect Annie’s spirits a little, and she hinted as much to her grandfather, when he awoke. Old Reuben’s extraordinary vivacity immediately suggested a remedy for this. He proposed to read a play of Shakespeare’s as the surest mode of diverting attention from the weather; and, without allowing a moment for the consideration of his offer, he threw open the book, and began Macbeth.
As he not only treated his hearers to every one of the Kemble pauses, and every infinitesimal inflection of the Kemble elocution, throughout the reading; but also exhibited a serious parody of Mrs Siddons’ effects in Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene, with the aid of a white pocket-handkerchief, tied under his chin, and a japanned bedroom candlestick in his hand — and as, in addition to these special and strictly dramatic delays, he further hindered the progress of his occupation by vigilantly keeping his eye on ‘Julius Caesar’, and unmercifully waking up that ill-starred carpenter every time he went to sleep, (which, by the way, was once in every ten minutes,) nobody can be surprised to hear that Macbeth was not finished before eleven o’clock. The hour was striking from Tidbury Church, as Mr Wray solemnly declaimed the last lines of the tragedy, and shut up the book.
‘There!’ said old Reuben, ‘I think I’ve put the weather out of your head, Annie, by this time! You look sleepy, my dear; go to bed. I had a few remarks to make, about the right reading of Macbeth’s dagger-scene, but I can make them tomorrow morning, just as well. I won’t keep you up any longer. Good night, love!’
Was Mr Wray not going to bed, too? No: he never felt more awake in his life; he would sit up a little, and have a good ‘warm’ over the fire. Should Annie bear him company? By no means! he would not keep poor Annie from her bed, on any account. Should ‘Julius Caesar’? — Certainly not! he was sure to go to sleep immediately; and to hear him snore, Mr Wray said, was worse than hearing him sneeze. So the two young people wished the old man goodnight, and left him to have his ‘warm’, as he desired. This was the way in which he prepared himself to undergo that luxurious process: —
He drew his armchair in front of the fire, then put a chair on either side of it, then unlocked the cupboard, and took out the cash box that contained the mask of Shakespeare. This he deposited upon one of the side chairs; and upon the other he put his copy of the Plays, and the candle. Finally, he sat down in the middle — cosy beyond all description — and slowly inhaled a copious pinch of snuff.
‘How it blows, outside!’ said old Reuben, ‘and how snug I am, in here!’
He unlocked the cash box, and taking it on his knee, looked down on the mask that lay inside. Gradually, the pride and pleasure at first appearing in his eyes, gave place to a dreamy fixed expression. He gently closed the lid, and reclined back in his chair; but he did not shut up the cash box for the night, for he never turned the key in the lock.
Old recollections were crowding on him, revived by his conversation of the morning with Mr Colebatch; and now evoked by many a Shakespeare association of his own, always connected with the treasured, the inestimable mask. Tender remembrances spoke piteously and solemnly within him. Poor Columbine — lost, but never forgotten — moved loveliest and holiest of all those memory shadows, through the dim world of his waking visions. How little the grave can hide of us! The love that began before it, lasts after it. The sunlight to which our eyes looked, while it shone on earth, changes but to the star that guides our memories when it passes to heaven!
Hark! the church clock chimes the quarters; each stroke sounds with the ghostly wildness of all bell-tones, when heard amid the tumult of a storm, but fails to startle old Reuben now. He is far away in other scenes; living again in other times. Twelve strikes; and then, when the clock bell rings its long midnight peal, he rouses — he hears that.
The fire has died down to one, dull, red spot: he feels chilled; and sitting up in his chair, yawning, tries to summon resolution enough to rise and go upstairs to bed. His expression is just beginning to grow utterly listless and weary, when it suddenly alters. His eyes look eager again; his lips close firmly; his cheeks get pale all at once — he is listening.
He fancies that, when the wind b
lows in the loudest gusts, or when the rain dashes heaviest against the window, he hears a very faint, curious sound — sometimes like a scraping noise, sometimes like a tapping noise. But in what part of the house — or even whether outside or in — he cannot tell. In the calmer moments of the storm, he listens with especial attention to find this out; but it is always at that very time that he hears nothing.
It must be imagination. And yet, that imagination is so like a reality that it has made him shudder all over twice in the last minute.
Surely he hears that strange noise now! Why not get up, and go to the window, and listen if the faint tapping comes by any chance from outside, in front of the house? Something seems to keep him in his chair, perfectly motionless — something makes him afraid to turn his head, for fear of seeing a sight of horror close at his side —
Hush! it sounds again, plainer and plainer. And now it changes to a cracking noise — close by — at the shutter of the back drawing-room window.
What is that, sliding along the crack between the folding doors and the floor? — a light! — a light in that empty room which nobody uses. And now, a whisper — footsteps — the handle on the lock of the door moves —
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