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