Shivers for Christmas (39 page)

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 someone 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 the housebreaker fiercely. ‘Look alive; and pull it out of his arms. Damn you! do it quick! they're awake, up stairs!'

It was not easy to ‘do it quick'. Weak as he was, Reuben actually held his treasure with the convulsive strength of despair, against the athletic ruffian who was struggling to get it away. Furious at the resistance, Grimes exerted his whole force, and tore the box so savagely from the old man's grasp, that the mask of Shakespeare flew several feet away, through the open lid, before it fell, shattered into fragments on the floor.

For an instant, Grimes stood aghast at the sight of what the contents of the cash box really were. Then, frantic with the savage passions produced by the discovery, he rushed up to the fragments, and, with a horrible oath, stamped his heavy boot upon them, as if the very plaster could feel his vengeance. ‘I'll kill him, if I swing for it!' cried the villain, turning on Mr Wray the next moment, and raising his horse-pistol by the barrel over the old man's head.

But, exactly at the same time, brave as his heroic namesake, ‘Julius Caesar' burst into the room. In the heat of the moment, he struck at Grimes with his wounded hand. Dealt even under that disadvantage, the blow was heavy enough to hurl the fellow right across the room, till he dropped down against the opposite wall. But the triumph of the stout carpenter was a short one. Hardly a second after his adversary had fallen, he himself lay stunned on the floor by the pistol-butt of Chummy Dick.

Even the nerve of the London housebreaker deserted him, at the first discovery of the astounding self-deception of which he and his companion had been the victims. He only recovered his characteristic coolness and self-possession when the carpenter attacked Grimes. Then, true to his system of never making unnecessary noise, or wasting unnecessary powder, he hit ‘Julius Caesar' just behind the ear, with unerring dexterity. The blow made no sound, and seemed to be inflicted by a mere turn of the wrist; but it was decisive—he had thoroughly stunned his man.

And now, the piercing screams of the landlady, from the bedroom floor poured quicker and quicker into the street, through the opened window. They were mingled with the fainter cries of Annie, whom the good woman forcibly detained from going into danger down stairs. The female servant (the only other inmate of the house) rivalled her mistress in shrieking madly and incessantly for help, from the window of the garret above.

‘The whole street will be up in a crack!' cried Chummy Dick, swearing at every third word he uttered, and hauling the partially recovered Grimes into an erect position again, ‘there's no swag to be got here! step out quick, young yokel, or you'll be nabbed!'

He pushed Grimes into the back drawing-room; hustled him over the window-sill on to the wash-house roof, leaving him to find his own way, how he could, to the ground; and then followed, with Mr Wray's watch and purse, and a brooch of Annie's that had been left on the chimney-piece, all gathered into his capacious greatcoat pocket in a moment. They were not worth much as spoils; but the dexterity with which they were taken instantly with one hand, while he had Grimes to hold with the other; and the strength, coolness, and skill he displayed in managing the retreat, were worthy even of the reputation of Chummy Dick. Long before the two Tidbury watchmen had begun to think of a pursuit, the housebreaker and his companion were out of reach—even though the Bow Street Runners themselves had been on the spot to give chase.

How long the old man has kept in that one position!—crouching down there in the corner of the room, without stirring a limb or uttering a word. He dropped on his knees at that place, when the robbers left him; and nothing has moved him from it since.

When Annie broke away from the landlady, and ran down stairs—he never stirred. When the long wail of agony burst from her lips, as she saw the dead look of the brave man lying stunned on the floor—he never spoke. When the street door was opened; and the crowd of terrified, half-dressed neighbours all rushed together into the house, shouting and trampling about, half panic-stricken at the news they heard—he never noticed a single soul. When the doctor was sent for; and, amid an awful hush of expectation, proceeded to restore the carpenter to his senses—even at that enthralling moment, he never looked up. It was only when the room was cleared again—when his granddaughter came to his side, and, putting her arm round his neck, laid her cold cheek close to his—that he seemed to live at all. Then, he just heaved a heavy sigh; his head dropped down lower on his breast; and he shivered throughout his whole frame, as if some icy influence was freezing him to the heart.

All that long, long time he had been looking on one sight—the fragments of the mask of Shakespeare lying beneath him. And there he kept now—when they tried in their various methods to coax him away—still crouching over them; just in the same position; just with the same hard, frightful look about his face that they had seen from the first.

Annie went and fetched the cash box; and tremblingly put it down before him. The instant he saw it, his eyes began to flash. He pounced in a fury of haste upon the fragments of the mask, and huddled them all together into the box, with shaking hands, and quick panting breath. He picked up the least chip of plaster that the robber had ground under his boot; and strained his eyes to look for more, when not an atom more was left. At last, he locked the box, and caught it up tight to his breast; and then he let them raise him up, and lead him gently away from the place.

He never quitted hold of his box, while they got him into bed. Annie, and her lover, and the landlady, all sat up together in his room; and all, in different degrees, felt the same horrible foreboding about him, and shrank from communicating it to one another. Occasionally, they heard him beating his hands strangely on the lid of the box; but he never spoke; and, as far as they could discover, never slept.

The doctor had said he would be better when the daylight came.—Did the doctor really know what was the matter with him?—and had the doctor any suspicion that something precious had been badly injured that night, besides the mask of Shakespeare?

By the next morning the news of the burglary had not only spread all through Tidbury, but all through the adjacent villages as well. The very first person who called at No. 12, to see how they did after the fright of the night before, was Mr Colebatch. The old gentleman's voice was heard louder than ever, as he ascended the stairs with the landlady. He declared he would have both the Tidbury watchmen turned off, as totally unfit to take care of the town. He swore that, if it cost him a hundred pounds, he would fetch the Bow Street Runners down from London, and procure the catching, trying, convicting, and hanging of ‘those two infernal housebreakers' before Christmas came. Invoking vengeance and retribution in this way, at every fresh stair, the Squire's temperament was up at ‘bloodheat', by the time he got into the drawing-room. It fell directly, however, to ‘temperate' again, when he found nobody there; and it sank twenty degrees lower still, at the sight of little Annie's face, when she came down to see him.

‘Cheer up, Annie!' said the old gentleman with a last faint attempt at joviality. ‘It's all over now, you know; how's grandfather? Very much frightened still—eh?'

‘Oh, sir! frightened, I'm afraid out of his mind!' and unable to control herself any longer, poor Annie fairly burst into tears.

‘Don't cry, Annie! no crying! I can't stand it—you mustn't really!' said the Squire in anything but steady tones, ‘I'll talk him back into his mind; I will, as sure as my name's Matthew Colebatch—Stop!' (here he pulled out his voluminous India pocket handkerchief, and began very gently and caressingly to wipe away her tears, as if she had been a little child, and his own daughter). ‘There, now we've dried them up—no we haven't! there's one left—And now that's gone, let's have a little talk about this business, my dear, and see what's to be done. In the first place, what's all this I hear about a plaster cast being broken?'

Annie would have given the world to open her heart about the mask of Shakespeare, to Mr Colebatch; but she thought of her promise, and she thought, also, of the Town Council of Stratford, who might hear of the secret somehow, if it was once disclosed to anybody; and might pursue her grandfather with all the powers of the law, miserable and shattered though he now was, even to his hiding-place, at Tidbury-on-the-Marsh.

‘I've promised, sir, not to say anything about the plaster cast to anybody,' she began, looking very embarrassed and unhappy.

‘And you'll keep your promise,' interposed the Squire; ‘that's right—good, honest little girl! I like you all the better for it; we won't say a word more about the cast; but what have they taken? what have the infernal scoundrels taken?'

‘Grandfather's old silver watch, sir, and his purse with seventeen and sixpence in it, and my brooch—but that's nothing.'

‘Nothing—Annie's brooch nothing!' cried the Squire, recovering his constitutional testiness. ‘But, never mind, I'm determined to have the rascals caught and hung, if it's only for stealing that brooch! And now, look here, my dear; if you don't want to put me into one of my passions, take that, and say nothing about it!'

‘Take' what? gracious powers! ‘take' Golconda! he had crumpled a ten pound note into her hand!

‘I say, again, you obstinate little thing, don't put me in one of my passions!' exclaimed the old gentleman, as poor Annie made some faint show of difficulty in taking the gift. ‘God forbid I should think of hurting your feelings, my dear, for such a paltry reason as having a few more pounds in
my
pocket, than you have in
yours
!' he continued, in such serious, kind tones, that Annie's eyes began to fill again. ‘We'll call that bank note, if you like, payment beforehand, for a large order for lace, from me. I saw you making lace, you know, yesterday; and I mean to consider you my lace manufacturer in ordinary, for the rest of your life. By George!'—he went on, resuming his odd abrupt manner,—‘it's unknown the quantity of lace I shall want to buy! There's my old housekeeper, Mrs Buddle—hang me, Annie, if I don't dress her in nothing but lace, from top to toe, inside and out, all over! Only mind this, you don't set to work at the order till I tell you! We must wait till Mrs Buddle has worn out her old stock of petticoats, before we begin—eh? There! there! there! don't go crying again! Can I see Mr Wray? No?—Quite right! better not disturb him so soon. Give him my compliments, and say I'll call tomorrow. Put up the note! put up the note! and don't be low-spirited—and don't do another thing, little Annie; don't forget you've got a queer old friend, who lives at Cropley Court!'