‘I never could think so, after all your goodness, sir. But, if you please, I really did promise to keep the thing a secret,’ said the carpenter, looking very much as if he were watching his opportunity to open the door, and run out of the room; ‘I promised, sir; I did, indeed!’
‘Promised a fiddlestick!’ exclaimed the Squire, in a passion. ‘What’s the use of keeping a secret that’s half let out already? I’ll tell you what, you Mr — , what’s your name? There’s some joke about calling you Julius Caesar. What’s your real name, if you really have one?’
‘Martin Blunt, sir. But don’t, pray don’t ask me to tell the secret! I don’t say you would blab it, sir; but if it did leak out, like; and get to Stratford-upon-Avon,’ — here he suddenly became silent, feeling he was beginning to commit himself already.
‘Stop! I’ve got it!’ cried Mr Colebatch. ‘Hang me, if I haven’t got it at last!’
‘Don’t tell me, sir! Pray don’t tell me, if you have!’
‘Stick to your chair, Mr Martin Blunt! No shirking with me! I was a fool not to suspect the thing, the moment I saw it was a portrait of Shakespeare. I’ve seen the Stratford bust, Master Blunt! You’re afraid of Stratford, are you? — Why? I know! Some of you have been taking that cast from the Stratford bust, without leave — it’s as like it, as two peas! Now, young fellow, I’ll tell you what! if you don’t make a clean breast to me at once, I’m off to the office of the ‘Tidbury Mercury’, to put in my version of the whole thing, as a good local anecdote! Will you tell me? or will you not? — I’m asking this in Mr Wray’s interests, or I’d die before I asked you at all!’
Confused, threatened, bullied, bawled at, and outmanoeuvred, the unfortunate carpenter fairly gave way. ‘If it’s wrong in me to tell you, sir, it’s your fault what I do,’ said the simple fellow; and he forthwith retailed, in a very roundabout, stammering manner, the whole of the disclosure he had heard from old Reuben — the Squire occasionally throwing in an explosive interjection of astonishment, or admiration; but, otherwise, receiving the narrative with remarkable calmness and attention.
‘What the deuce is all this nonsense about the Stratford Town Council, and the penalties of the law?’ — cried Mr Colebatch, when the carpenter had done — ’But never mind; we can come to that afterwards. Now tell me about going back to get the mould out of the cupboard, and making the new cast. I know who did it! It’s that dear, darling, incomparable little girl! — but tell me all about it — come! quick, quick! — don’t keep me waiting!’
‘Julius Caesar’ got on with his second narrative much more glibly than with the first. How Annie had suddenly remembered, one night, in her bedroom, about the mould having been left behind — how she was determined to try and restore her grandfather’s health and faculties, by going to seek it; and how he (the carpenter), had gone also, to protect her — how they got to Stratford, by the coach (outside places, in the cold, to save money) — how Annie appealed to the mercy of their former landlord; and instead of inventing some falsehood to deceive him, fairly told her whole story in all its truth — how the landlord pitied them, and promised to keep their secret — how they went up into the bedroom, and found the mould in the old canvas bag, behind the volumes of the Annual Register, just where Mr Wray had left it — how Annie, remembering what her grandfather had told her, about the process of making a cast, bought plaster, and followed out her instructions; failing in the first attempt, but admirably succeeding in the second — how they were obliged, in frightful suspense, to wait till the third day for the return coach; and how they finally got back, safe and sound, not only with the new cast, but with the mould as well. — All these particulars flowed from the carpenter’s lips, in a strain of homely eloquence, which no elocutionary aid could have furnished with one atom of additional effect, that would have done it any good whatever.
‘We’d no notion, sir,’ said ‘Julius Caesar’, in conclusion, ‘that poor Mr Wray was so bad as he really was, when we went away. It was a dreadful trial to Annie, sir, to go. She went down on her knees to the landlady — I saw her do it, half wild, like; she was in such a state — she went down on her knees, sir, to ask the woman to be as a daughter to the old man, till she came back. Well, sir, even after that, it was a toss-up whether she went away, when the morning came. But she was obliged to do it. She durstn’t trust me to go alone, for fear I should let the mould tumble down, when I got it (which I’m afraid, sir, was very likely!) — or get into some scrape, by telling what I oughtn’t, where I oughtn’t; and so be taken up, mould and all, before the Town Council, who were going to put Mr Wray in prison, only we ran off to Tidbury; and so — ’
‘Nonsense! stuff! they could no more put him in prison for taking the cast than I can,’ cried the Squire. ‘Stop! I’ve got a thought! I’ve got a thought at least, that’s worth — Is the mould here? — Yes or No?’
‘Yes, sir! Bless us and save us, what’s the matter!’
‘Run!’ cried Mr Colebatch, pacing up and down the room like mad. ‘No. 15 in the street! Dabbs and Clutton, the lawyers! Fetch one of them in a second! Damn it, run! or I shall burst a blood vessel!’
The carpenter ran to No. 15; and Mr Dabbs, who happened to be in, ran from No. 15. Mr Colebatch met him at the street door, dragged him into the back parlour, pushed him on to a chair, and instantly stated the case between Mr Wray and the authorities at Stratford, in the fewest possible words and the hastiest possible tones. ‘Now,’ said the old gentleman at the end, ‘can they, or can they not, hurt him for what he’s done?’
‘It’s a very nice point,’ said Mr Dabbs, ‘a very nice point indeed, sir.’
‘Hang it, man!’ cried the Squire, ‘don’t talk to me about “nice points”, as if a point was something good to eat! Can they, or can they not, hurt him? Answer that in three words!’
‘They can’t,’ said Dabbs, answering it triumphantly in two.
‘Why?’ asked the Squire, beating him by a rejoinder in one.
‘For this reason,’ said Dabbs. ‘What does Mr Wray take with him into the church? Plaster of his own, in powder. What does he bring out with him? The same plaster, in another form. Does any right of copyright reside in a bust two hundred years old? Impossible. Has Mr Wray hurt the bust? No; or they would have found him out here, and prosecuted directly — for they know where he is. I heard of the thing from a Stratford man, yesterday, who said they knew he was at Tidbury. Under all these circumstances, where’s there a shadow of a case against Mr Wray? Nowhere!’
‘Capital, Dabbs! capital! you’ll be Lord Chancellor some day: never heard a better opinion in my life! Now, Mr Julius Caesar Blunt, do you see what my thought is? No! Look here. Take casts from that mould till your arms ache again; clap them upon slabs of black marble to show off the white face; sell them, at a guinea each, to the loads of people who would give anything to have a portrait of Shakespeare; and then open your breeches’ pockets fast enough to let the gold tumble in, if you can! Tell Mr Wray that; and you tell him he’s a rich man, or — no don’t, you’re no more fit to do it properly than I am! Tell every syllable you’ve heard here to Annie, directly; she’ll know how to break it to him; go! be off!’
‘But what are we to say about how we got the mould here, sir? We can’t tell Mr Wray the truth.’
‘Tell him a flam, of course! Say it’s been found in the cupboard, by the landlord, at Stratford, and sent on here. Dabbs will bear witness that the Stratford people know he’s at Tidbury, and know they can’t touch him: he’s sure to think that a pretty good proof that we are right. Say I bullied you out of the secret, when I saw the mould come here — say anything — but only go, and settle matters at once! I’m off to take my walk, and see about the black slabs at the stone masons.