by Ellen Wood
“She shall never come in; I tell you that,” flashed Charlotte the Second. “She sent word to him that she was dead, and she must abide by it; from that time she was dead to him, dead for ever. Mr. Caromel married me equally in the eyes of the world: and here I shall stay with him, his true and lawful wife.”
The Squire rubbed his face; the torrent of words and the heat made it glisten.
“Stay here, would you, madam! What luck do you suppose would come of that?”
“Luck! I have quite as much luck as I require. Nash, why do you not request this — this gentleman to leave us?”
“Why, he dare not keep you here,” cried the Squire, passing over the last compliment. “He would be prosecuted for — you know what.”
“Let him be prosecuted! Let the wicked woman do her worst. Let her bring an action, and we’ll defend it. I have more right to him than she has. Mr. Caromel, do you wish to keep up this interview until night?”
“Perhaps you had better go now, Squire,” put in the man pleadingly. “I — I will consult Nave, and see what’s to be done. She may like to go back to California, to the Munns; the climate suited her: and — and an income might be arranged.”
This put the finishing stroke to the Squire’s temper. He flung out of the room with a few unorthodox words, and came home in a tantrum.
We had had times of commotion at Church Dykely before, but this affair capped all. The one Mrs. Nash Caromel waiting to go into her house, and the other Mrs. Nash Caromel refusing to go out of it to make room for her. The Squire was right when saying it was public property: the public made it theirs. Tongues pitched into Nash Caromel in the fields and in the road: but some few of us pitied him, thinking what on earth we could do ourselves in a like position. While old Jones the constable stalked briskly about, expecting to get a warrant for taking up the master of Caromel’s Farm.
But the great drawback to instituting legal proceedings lay with Mrs. Nash Caromel the First. She declined to prosecute. Her husband might refuse to receive her; might hold himself aloof from her; might keep his second wife by his side; but she would never hurt a hair of his head. Heaven might bring things round in its own good time, she said; meanwhile she would submit — and bear.
And she held to this, driving indignant men distracted. They argued, they persuaded, they remonstrated; it was said that one or two strong-minded ones swore. All the same. She stayed on at her mother’s, and would neither injure her husband herself, nor let her family injure him. Henry Tinkle, her brother, chanced to be from home (as he was when she had run away to be married), or he might have acted in spite of her. And, when this state of things had continued for two or three weeks, the world began to call it a “crying scandal.” As to Nash Caromel, he did not show his face abroad.
“Not a day longer shall the fellow retain my money,” said the pater, speaking of the twelve hundred pounds he had lent to Nash: and in fact the term it had been lent for was already up. But it is easier to make such a threat than to enforce it; and it is not everybody who can extract twelve hundred pounds at will from uncertain coffers. Any way the Squire found he could not. He wrote to Nash, demanding its return; and he wrote to Nave.
Nash did not answer him at all. Nave’s clerk sent a semi-insolent letter, saying Mr. Caromel should be communicated with when occasion offered. The Squire wrote in a rage to his lawyer at Worcester, bidding him enforce the repayment.
“You two lads can take the letter to the post,” said he.
But we had not got many yards from home when we heard the Squire coming after us. We all walked into Church Dykely together; and close to the post-office, which was at Dame Chad’s shop, we met Duffham. Of course the Squire, who could not keep anything in had he been bribed to do it, told Duffham what steps he was about to take.
“Going to enforce payment,” nodded Duffham. “The man deserves no quarter. But he is ill.”
“Serve him right. What’s the matter with him?”
“Nervous fever. Has fretted or frightened himself into it. Report says that he is very ill indeed.”
“Don’t you attend him?”
“Not I. I did not please madam at the time the boy was born — would not give in to some of her whims and fancies. They have called in that new doctor who has settled in the next parish, young Bluck.”
“Why, he is no better than an apothecary’s boy, that young Bluck! Caromel can’t be very ill, if they have him.”
“So ill, that, as I have just heard, he is in great danger — likely to die,” replied Duffham, tapping his cane against the ledge of Dame Chad’s window. “Bluck’s young, but he is clever.”
“Bless my heart! Likely to die! What, Nash Caromel! Here, you lads, if that’s it, I won’t annoy him just now about the money, so don’t post the letter.”
“It is posted,” said Tod. “I have just put it in.”
“Go in and explain to Dame Chad, and get it out again. Or, stay; the letter can go, and I’ll write and say it’s not to be acted on until he is well again. Nervous fever! I’m afraid his conscience has been pricking him.”
“I hope it has,” said Duffham.
II.
A few days went on. Nash Caromel lay in the greatest danger. Nave was at the farm day and night. A physician was called in from a distance to aid young Bluck; but it was understood that there remained very little hope of recovery. We began to feel sorry for Nash and to excuse his offences, the Squire especially. It was all that strong-minded young woman’s doings, said he; she had drawn him into her toils, and he had not had the pluck, first or last, to escape from them.
But a change for the better took place; Nash passed the crisis, and would probably, with care, recover. I think every one felt glad; one does not wish a fellow quite to die, though he has misinterpreted the laws on the ticklish subject of matrimony. And the Squire felt vexed later when he learned that his lawyer had disregarded his countermanding letter and sent a peremptory threat to Nash of enforcing instant proceedings, unless the money was repaid forthwith. That was not the only threat conveyed to Caromel’s Farm. Harry Tinkle returned; and, despite his sister’s protestations, took the matter into his own hands, and applied for the warrant that had been so much talked about. As soon as Nash Caromel could leave his bed, he would be taken before the magistrates.
Soon a morning came that we did not forget in a hurry. While dressing with the window open to the white flowers of the trailing jessamine and the sweet perfume of the roses, blooming in the warm September air, Tod came in, fastening his braces.
“I say, Johnny, here’s the jolliest lark! The pater — —”
And what the lark was, I don’t know to this day. At that moment the passing-bell tolled out — three times three; its succession of quick strokes following it. The wind blew in our direction from the church, and it sounded almost as though it were in the room.
“Who can be dead?” cried Tod, stretching his neck out at the window to listen. “Was any one ill, Jenkins?” he called to the head-gardener, then coming up the path with a barrow; “do you know who that bell’s tolling for?”
“It’s for Mr. Caromel,” answered Jenkins.
“What?” shouted Tod.
“It’s tolling for Mr. Caromel, sir. He died in the night.”
It was a shock to us all. The Squire, pocketing his indignation against madam and the Nave family in general, went over to the farm after breakfast, and saw Miss Gwendolen Nave, who was staying with her sister. They called her Gwinny.
“We heard that he was better — going on so well,” gasped the Squire.
“So he was until a day or two ago,” said Miss Gwinny, holding her handkerchief to her eyes. “Very well indeed until then — when it turned to typhus.”
“Goodness bless me!” cried the Squire, an unpleasant feeling running through him. “Typhus!”
“Yes, I am sorry to say.”
“Is it safe to be here? Safe for you all?”
“Of course it is a risk. We try not to be
afraid, and have sent as many out of the house as we could. I and the old servant Grizzel alone remain with Mrs. Caromel. The baby has gone to papa’s.”
“Dear me, dear me! I was intending to ask to look at poor Nash; we have known each other always, you see. But, perhaps it would not be prudent.”
“It would be very imprudent, Mr. Todhetley. The sickness was of the worst type; it might involve not only your own death, but that of others to whom you might in turn carry it. You have a wife and children, sir.”
“Yes, yes, quite right,” rejoined the Squire. “Poor Nash! How is — your sister?” He would not, even at that trying moment for them, call her Mrs. Caromel.
“Oh, she is very ill; shocked and grieved almost to death. For all we know, she has taken the fever and may follow her husband; she attended upon him to the last. I hope that woman, who came here to disturb the peace of a happy family, that Charlotte Tinkle, will reap the fruit of what she has sown, for it is all owing to her.”
“People do mostly reap the fruit of their own actions, whether they are good or bad,” observed the Squire to this, as he got up to leave. But he would not add what he thought — that it was another Charlotte who ought to reap what she had sown. And who appeared to be doing it.
“Did the poor fellow suffer much?”
“Not at the last,” said Miss Gwinny. “His strength was gone, and he lay for many hours insensible. Up to yesterday evening we thought he might recover. Oh, it is a dreadful calamity!”
Indeed it was. The Squire came away echoing the words in his heart.
Three days later the funeral took place: it would not do to delay it longer. The Squire went to it: when a man was dead, he thought animosity should cease. Harry Tinkle would not go. Caromel, he said, had escaped him and the law, to which he had rendered himself amenable, and nobody might grumble at it, for it was the good pleasure of Heaven, but he would not show Caromel respect, dead or living.
All the parish seemed to have been bidden to the funeral. Some went, some did not go. It looked a regular crowd, winding down the lawn and down the avenue. Few ventured indoors; they preferred to assemble outside: for an exaggerated fear of Caromel’s Farm and what might be caught in it, ran through the community. So, when the men came out of the house, staggering under the black velvet pall with its deep white border, followed by Lawyer Nave, the company fell up into line behind.
Little Dun would have been the legal heir to the property had there been no Charlotte the First. That complication stood in his way, and he could no more inherit it than I could. Under the peculiar circumstances there was no male heir living, and Nash Caromel, the last of his name, had the power to make a will. Whether he had done so, or not, was not known; but the question was set at rest after the return from the funeral. Nave had gone strutting next the coffin as chief mourner, and he now produced the will. Half-a-dozen gentlemen had entered, the Squire one of them.
It was executed, the will, all in due form, having been drawn up by a lawyer from a distance; not by Nave, who may have thought it as well to keep his fingers out of the pie. A few days after the return of Charlotte the First, when Nash first became ill, the strange lawyer was called in, and the will was made.
Caromel’s Farm and every stick and stone upon it, and all other properties possessed by Nash, were bequeathed to the little boy, Duncan Nave (as it was worded), otherwise Duncan Nave Caromel. Not to him unconditionally, but to be placed in the hands of trustees for his ultimate benefit. The child’s mother (called in the will Charlotte Nave, otherwise Charlotte Caromel) was to remain at the farm if she pleased, and to receive the yearly income derived from it for the mutual maintenance of herself and child. When the child should be twenty-one, he was to assume full possession, but his mother was at liberty to continue to have her home with him. In short, they took all; Charlotte Tinkle, nothing.
“It is a wicked will,” cried one of the hearers when they came out from listening to it.
“And it won’t prosper them; you see if it does,” added the Squire. “She stands in the place of Charlotte Tinkle. The least Caromel could have done, was to divide the property between them.”
So that was the apparent ending of the Caromel business, which had caused the scandal in our quiet place, and a very unjust ending it was. Charlotte Tinkle, who had not a sixpence of her own in the world, remained on with her mother. She would come to church in her widow’s mourning, a grievous look of sorrow upon her meek face; people said she would never get over the cruelty of not having been sent for to say farewell to her husband when he was dying.
As for Charlotte Nave, she stayed on at the farm without let or hindrance, calling herself, as before, Mrs. Nash Caromel. She appeared at church once in a way; not often. Her widow’s veil was deeper than the other widow’s, and her goffered cap larger. Nobody took the fever: and Nave the lawyer sent back the Squire’s twelve hundred pounds within a month of Nash’s death. And that, I say, was the ending, as we all supposed, of the affair at Caromel’s Farm.
But curious complications were destined to crop up yet.
III.
Nash Caromel died in September. And in how short, or long, a time it was afterwards that a very startling report grew to be whispered, I cannot remember; but I think it must have been at the turn of winter. The two widows were deep in weeds as ever, but over Charlotte Nave a change had come. And I really think I had better call them in future Charlotte Tinkle and Charlotte Nave, or we may get in a fog between the two.
Charlotte Nave grew pale and thin. She ruled the farm, as before, with the deft hand of a capable woman, but her nature appeared to be changing, her high spirits to have flown for ever. Instead of filling the house with company, she secluded herself in it like a hermit, being scarcely ever seen abroad. Ill-natured people, quoting Shakespeare, said the thorns, which in her bosom lay, did prick and sting her.
It was reported that the fear of the fever had taken a haunting hold upon her. She could not get rid of it. Which was on-reasonable, as Nurse Picker phrased it; for if she’d ha’ been to catch it, she’d ha’ caught it at the time. It was not for herself alone she feared it, but for others, though she did fear it for herself still, very much indeed. An impression lay on her mind that the fever was not yet out of the house, and never would be out of it, and that any fresh person, coming in to reside, would be liable to take it. More than once she was heard to say she would give a great deal not to be tied to the place — but the farm could not get on without a head. Before Nash died, when it was known the disorder had turned to typhus, she had sent all the servants (except Grizzel) and little Dun out of the house. She would not let them come back to it. Dun stayed at the lawyer’s; the servants in time got other situations. The gardener’s wife went in by day to help old Grizzel with the work, and some of the out-door men lived in the bailiff’s house. Nave let out one day that he had remonstrated with his daughter in vain. Some women are cowards in these matters; they can’t help being so; and the inward fear, perpetually tormenting them, makes a havoc of their daily lives. But in this case the fear had grown to an exaggerated height. In short, not to mince the matter, it was suspected her brain, on that one point, was unhinged.
Miss Gwinny could not leave her. Another sister, Harriet Nave, had come to her father’s house, to keep it and take care of little Dun. Dun was allowed to go into the grounds of the farm and to play under the mulberry-tree on the lawn; and once or twice on a wet day, it was said, his mother had taken him into the parlour that opened with glass-doors, but she never let him run the risk of going in farther. At last old Nave, as was reported, consulted a mad doctor about her, going all the way to Droitwich to do it.
But all this had nothing to do with the startling rumour I spoke of. Things were in this condition when it first arose. It was said that Nash Caromel “came again.”
At first the whisper was not listened to, was ridiculed, laughed at: but when one or two credible witnesses protested they had seen him, people began to talk, and then to say
there must be something in it.
A little matter that had occurred soon after the funeral, was remembered then. Nash Caromel had used to wear on his watch-chain a small gold locket with his own and his wife’s hair in it. I mean his real wife. Mrs. Tinkle wrote a civil note to the mistress of Caromel’s Farm asking that the locket might be restored to her daughter — whose property it in fact was. She did not receive any answer, and wrote again. The second letter was returned to Mrs. Tinkle in a blank envelope with a wide black border.
Upon this, Harry Tinkle took up the matter. Stretching a point for his sister, who was pining for the locket and Nash’s bit of hair in it, for she possessed no memento at all of her husband, he called at the farm and saw the lady. Some hard words passed between them: she was contemptuously haughty; and he was full of inward indignation, not only at the general treatment accorded to his sister, but also at the unjust will. At last, stung by some sneering contumely she openly cast upon his sister, he retorted in her own coin — answering certain words of hers —
“I hope his ghost will haunt you, you false woman!” Meaning, you know, the ghost of the dead man.
People recalled these words of Harry Tinkle’s now, and began to look upon them (spoken by one of the injured Tinkles) in the light of prophecy. What with this, and what with their private belief that Nash Caromel’s conscience would hardly allow him to rest quietly in his grave, they thought it very likely that his ghost was haunting her, and only hoped it would not haunt the parish.
Was this the cause of the change apparent in her? Could it be that Nash Caromel’s spirit returned to the house in which he died, and that she could not rest for it? Was this the true reason, and not the fever, why she kept the child and the servants out of the house? — lest they should be scared by the sight? Gossips shivered as they whispered to one another of these unearthly doubts, which soon grew into a belief. But you must understand that never a syllable had been heard from herself, or a hint given, that Caromel’s Farm was troubled by anything of the kind; neither did she know, or was likely to hear, that it was talked of abroad. Meanwhile, as the time slipped on, every now and then something would occur to renew the report — that Nash Caromel had been seen.