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 sleepwalking 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
