LITMIR.BIZ

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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 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 blows 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 —

      ‘Help! Help! for God’s sake! — Murder! Mur — ’

      Just as that cry for help passed the old man’s lips, the two robbers, masked and armed, appeared in the room; and the next instant, Chummy Dick’s gag was fast over his mouth.

      He had the cash box clasped tight to his breast. Mad with terror, his eyes glared like a dead man’s, while he struggled in the powerful arms that held him.

      Grimes, unused to such scenes, was so petrified by astonishment at finding the old man out of bed, and the room lit up, that he stood with his pistol extended, staring helplessly through the eyeholes of his mask. Not so with his experienced leader. Chummy Dick’s ears and eyes were as quick as his hands — the first informed him that Reuben’s cry for help (skilfully as he had stifled it with the gag) had aroused some one in the house: the second instantly detected the cash box, as Mr Wray clasped it to his breast.

      ‘Put up your pop-gun, you precious yokel, you!’ whispered

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