In the position assumed by Tabbard for his last draught, the bright flame of a suspended lamp flared in his eyes. To him it appeared to swing in a circle, although in fact it was stationary; and the vaulted ceiling seemed rising in air higher and higher, until he looked into the darkness of absolute night. It was his head that swayed instead of the lamp; it was the gradual failure of his eye-sight that raised the phenomenon of the fading ceiling. A violent nausea seized him, so that every fiber of his body shook and his glass fell shivered upon the floor. He groaned so loudly that every one in the room turned his face in his direction. And thus, before staring and startled faces, the quivering man rolled from his chair to the sanded floor. A whisper rose from every lip, except from the pair which grew white in distress. The words were the same from all:
“The plague!”
The stricken man may have heard the two words, but it could have conveyed no new tidings to his mind. Even the shiver of his frame from a draught of cold air would have sprung the belief that the first symptom of the Black Death had appeared. But there was no mistaking the pang that shot through him, like an arrow from a long bow. Could he have seen his face a few moments afterward as Bame saw it, turned upward on the floor, he would have died more suddenly from fright; hæmorrhagic spots discolored it—the unmistakable symbol of internal dissolution. They looked like the black imprints of the fingers of a hand that had been thrust with violence against it.
“Tell him he is safe,” came the broken words from lips moved by a wandering mind.
“Who?” asked Bame, leaning over him.
The dying man did not answer, but the words “Deptford” and the “Earl’s actors” were uttered in his rambling speech.
THE MOLDING OF THE MASK.
Jove sometimes masked in a shepherd’s weed,
And by those steps, that he hath scaled the heavens,
May we become immortal like the gods.
—I Tamburlaine, i, 2.
Conceal me what I am, and be my aid
For such disguise as haply may become
The form of my intent.
—Twelfth Night, i, 2.