People are apt to say, when telling of a surprise, that a feather would have knocked them down. I nearly fell without the feather and without the touch. To see a dead woman standing straight up before me, and to hear her say “How are you, and is the Squire at home?” might have upset the balance of a giant.

But I could not be mistaken. There, waiting at the front-door to come in, her face within an inch of mine, was Nash Caromel’s first wife, Charlotte Tinkle; who for some two years now had been looked upon as dead and buried over in California.

“Is Mr. Todhetley at home!” she repeated. “And can I see him?”

“Yes,” I answered, coming partially out of my bewilderment. “Do you mind staying here just a minute, while I tell him?”

For, to hand in a dead woman, might take him aback, as it had taken me. The pater stood bolt upright, waiting for Mrs. Scott (as he had supposed it to be) to enter.

“It is not Mrs. Scott,” I whispered, shutting the door and going close up to him. “It—it is some one else. I hardly like to tell you, sir; she may give you a fright.”

“Why, what does the lad mean?—what are you making a mystery of now, Johnny?” cried he, staring at me. “Give me a fright! I should like to see any woman give me that. Is it Mrs. Scott, or is it not?”

“It is some one we thought dead, sir.”

“Now, Johnny, don’t be a muff. Somebody you thought dead! What on earth’s come to you, lad? Speak out!”

“It is Nash Caromel’s first wife, sir: Charlotte Tinkle.”

The pater gazed at me as a man bereft of reason. I don’t believe he knew whether he stood on his head or his heels. “Charlotte Tinkle!” he exclaimed, backing against the curtain. “What, come to life, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir, and she wants to see you. Perhaps she has never been dead.”

“Bless my heart and mind! Bring her in.”

The first thing Charlotte the First did when she came in and the Squire clasped her by her two hands, was to burst into a fit of sobbing. Some wine stood on the sideboard; the Squire poured her out a glass, and she untied the strings of her bonnet as she sat down.

“If I might take it off for a minute?” she said. “I have had it on all the way from Liverpool.”

“Do so, my dear. Goodness me! I think I must be in a dream. And so you are not dead!”

“Yes, I knew it was what you must have all been thinking,” she answered, stifling her sobs. “Poor Nash!—what a dreadful thing it is! I cannot imagine how the misconception can have arisen.”

“What misconception?” asked the pater, whose wits, once gone a wool-gathering, rarely came back in a hurry.

“That I had died.”

“Why, that friend of yours with whom you were staying—Bunn—Munn—which was it, Johnny?—wrote to tell your husband so.”

Mrs. Nash Caromel, sitting there in the twilight, her brown hair as smooth as ever and her eyes as meek, looked at the Squire in surprise.

“Oh no, that could not have been; Mr. Munn would not be likely to write anything of the sort. Impossible.”

“But, my dear lady, I read the letter. Your husband brought it to me as soon as it reached him. You remained at San Francisco, very ill after Nash’s departure, and you got no better, and died at last of low fever.”

She shook her head. “I was very poorly indeed when Nash left, but I grew better shortly. I had no low fever, and I certainly did not die.”

“Then why did Munn write it?”

“He did not write it. He could not have written it. I am quite certain of that. He and his wife are my very good and dear friends, and most estimable people.”

“The letter certainly came to your husband,” persisted the Squire. “I read it with my own eyes. It was dated San Francisco, and signed Francis Munn.”

“Then it was a forgery. But why any one should have written it, or troubled themselves about me and my husband at all, I cannot imagine.”

“And then, Nash—Nash—— Good gracious, what a complication!” cried the Squire, breaking off what he meant to say, as the thought of Charlotte Nave crossed his mind.

“I know,” she quietly put in: “Nash has married again.”

It was a complication, and no mistake, all things considered. The Squire rubbed up his hair and deliberated, and then bethought himself that it might be as well to keep the servants out of the room. So I went to tell old Thomas that the master was particularly engaged with a friend, and no one was to come in unless rung for. Then I ran upstairs to whisper the news to the mother—and it pretty nearly sent her into a fit of hysterics.

Charlotte Caromel was entering on her history to the Squire when I got back. “Yes,” she said, “I and my husband went to California, having found little luck in America. Nash made one or two ventures there also, but nothing seemed to succeed; not as well even as it did in America, and he resolved to go back there, and try at something or other again. He sailed for New York, leaving me in San Francisco with Francis Munn and his wife; for I had been ill, and was not strong enough for the tedious voyage. The Munns kept a dry-goods store at San Francisco, and——”

“A dry-goods store!” interrupted the Squire.

“Yes. You cannot afford to be fastidious over there; and to be in trade is looked upon as an honour, rather than the contrary. Francis Munn was the youngest son of a country gentleman in England; he went to California to make his fortune at anything that might turn up; and it ended in his marrying and keeping a store. They made plenty of money, and were very kind to me and Nash. Well, Nash started for New York, leaving me with them, and he wrote to me soon after his arrival there. Things were looking gloomy in the States, he said, and he felt inclined to take a run over to England, and ask his brother Miles to help him with some money. I wrote back a letter in duplicate, addressing one to the agents’ in New York, the other to Caromel’s Farm—not knowing, you perceive, in which place he might be. No answer reached me—but people think little of the safety of letters out there, so many seem to miscarry. We fancied Nash might be coming back to San Francisco and did not trouble himself to write: like me, he is not much of a scribe. But the months went on, and he did not come; he neither came nor wrote.”

“What did you think hindered him?”

“We did not know what to think—except, as I say, that the letters had miscarried. One day Mr. Munn brought in a file of English newspapers for me and his wife to read: and in one of them I saw an announcement that puzzled me greatly—the marriage of one Nash Caromel, of Caromel’s Farm, to Charlotte Nave. Just at first it startled me; I own that; but I felt so sure it could not be my Nash, my husband, that I remained only puzzled to know what Nash Caromel it could be.”

“There is only one Nash Caromel,” growled the Squire, half inclined to tell her she was a simpleton—taking things in this equable way.

“I only knew of him; but I thought he must have some relative, a cousin perhaps, of the same name, of whom I had not heard. However,” continued Charlotte, “I wrote then to Caromel’s Farm, telling Nash what we had read, and asking him what it meant, and where he was. But that letter shared the fate of the former one, and obtained no reply. In the course of time we saw another announcement—The wife of Nash Caromel of a son. Still I did not believe it could be my Nash, but I could see that Mr. Munn did believe it was. At least he thought there was something strange about it all, especially our not hearing from Nash: and at length I determined to come home and see about it.”

“You must have been a long time coming,” remarked the Squire. “The child is fifteen months old.”

“But you must remember that often we did not get news until six months after its date. And I chose a most unfortunate route—overland from California to New York.”

“What on earth—— Why, people are sometimes a twelvemonth or so doing that!” cried the Squire. “There are rocky mountains to scale, as I’ve heard and read, and Red Indians to encounter, and all sorts of horrors. Those who undertake it travel in bands, do they not? and are called pilgrims, and some of them don’t get to the end of the journey alive.”

“True,” she sighed. “I would never have attempted it had I known what it would be: but I did so dread the sea. Several of us were laid up midway, and had to be left behind at a small settlement: one or two died. It was a long, long time, and only after surmounting great discomforts and difficulties, we reached New York.”

“Well?” said the Squire. It must be remembered that they were speaking of days now gone by, when the journey was just what she described it.

“I could hear nothing of my husband in New York,” she resumed, “except that Abraham Whitter believed him to be at home here. I took the steamer for Liverpool, landed at dawn this morning, and came on by rail. And I find it is my husband who is married. And what am I to do?”

She melted away into tears again. The Squire told her that she must present herself at the farm; she was its legal mistress, and Nash Caromel’s true wife. But she shook her head at this: she wouldn’t bring any such trouble upon Nash for the world, as to show him suddenly that she was living. What he had done he must have done unwittingly, she said, believing her to be dead, and he ought not to suffer for it more than could be helped. Which was a lenient way of reasoning that put the Squire’s temper up.

“He deserves no quarter, ma’am, and I will not give it him if you do. Within a week of the time he heard of your death he went and took that Charlotte Nave. Though I expect it was she who took him—brazen hussy! And I am glad you have come to put her out!”

But, nothing would induce Charlotte the First to assume this view, or to admit that blame could attach to Nash. Once he had lost her by death, he had a right to marry again, she contended. As to the haste—well, she had been dead (as he supposed) a great many months when he heard of it, and that should be considered. The Squire exploded, and walked about the room, and rubbed his hair the wrong way, and thought her no better than an imbecile.

Mrs. Todhetley came in, and there was a little scene. Charlotte declined our offer of a bed and refreshment, saying she would like to go to her mother’s for the night: she felt that she should be received gladly, though they had parted in anger and had held no communication with one another since.

Gladly? ay, joyfully. Little doubt of that. So the Squire put on his hat, and she her bonnet, and away they started, and I with them.

We took the lonely path across the fields: her appearance might have raised a stir in the highway. Charlotte was but little altered, and would have been recognized at once. And I have no space to tell of the scene at Mrs. Tinkle’s, which was as good as a play, or of the way they rushed into one another’s arms.

“Johnny, there’s something on my mind,” said the Squire in a low tone as we were going back towards home: and he was looking grave and silent as a judge. “Do you remember those two foreign letters we chanced to see of Nash Caromel’s, with the odd handwriting, all quavers and tails?”

“Yes, I do, sir. They were ship letters.”

“Well, lad, a very ugly suspicion has come into my head, and I can’t drive it away. I believe those two letters were from Charlotte—the two she speaks of—I believe the handwriting which puzzled me was hers. Now, if so, Nash went to the altar with that other Charlotte, knowing this one was alive: for the first letter came the day before the marriage.”

I did not answer. But I remembered what I had overheard Nave the lawyer say to Nash Caromel: “You must marry her: where there’s a will there’s a way”—or words to that effect. Had Nave concocted the letters which pretended to tell of Mrs. Nash Caromel’s death, and got them posted to Nash from New York?

With the morning, the Squire was at Caromel’s Farm. The old-fashioned low house, the sun shining on its quaint windows, looked still and quiet as he walked up to the front-door across the grass-plat, in the middle of which grew a fine mulberry-tree. The news of Charlotte’s return, as he was soon to find, had travelled to it already; had spread to the village. For she had been recognized the night before on her arrival; and her boxes, left in charge of a porter, bore her full name, Mrs. Nash Caromel.

Nash stood in that little library of his in a state of agitation not to be described; he as good as confessed, when the Squire tackled him, that he had known his wife might have been alive, and that it was all Nave’s doings. At least he suspected that the letter, telling of her death, might be a forgery.

“Anyway, you had a letter from her the day before you married, so you must have known it by that,” cried the Squire; who had so much to do always with the Caromel family that he deemed it his duty to interfere. “What on earth could have possessed you?”

“I—was driven into a corner,” gasped Nash.

“I’d be driven into fifty corners before I’d marry two wives,” retorted the Squire. “And now, sir, what do you mean to do?”

“I can’t tell,” answered Nash.

“A pretty kettle of fish this is! What do you suppose your father would have said to it?”

“I’m sure I can’t tell,” repeated Nash helplessly, biting his lips to get some life into them.

“And what’s the matter with your hands that they are so hot and white?”

Nash glanced at his hands, and hid them away in his pockets. He looked like a man consumed by inward fever.

“I have not been over well for some time past,” said he.

“No wonder—with the consciousness of this discovery hanging over your head! It might have sent some men into their graves.”

Nash drummed upon the window pane. What in the world to do, what to say, evidently he knew not.

“You must put away this Jez—this lady,” went on the Squire. “It was she who bewitched you; ay, and set herself out to do it, as all the parish saw. Let her go back to her father: you might make some provision for her: and instal your wife here in her proper place. Poor thing! she is so meek and patient! She won’t hear a word said against you; thinks you are a saint. I think you a scoundrel, Nash: and I tell you so to your face.”

The door had slowly opened; somebody, who had been outside, listening, put in her head. A very pretty head, and that’s the truth, surmounting a fashionable morning costume of rose-coloured muslin, all flounces and furbelows. It was Charlotte the Second. The Squire had called her a brazen hussy behind her back; he had much ado this morning not to call her so to her face.

“What’s that I hear you saying to my husband, Mr. Todhetley—that he should discard me and admit that creature here! How dare you bring your pernicious counsels into this house?”

“Why, bless my heart, he is her husband, madam; he is not yours. You’d not stay here yourself, surely!”

“This is my home, and he is my husband, and my child is his heir; and that woman may go back over the seas whence she came. Is it not so, Nash? Tell him.”

She put her hand on Nash’s shoulder, and he tried to get out something or other in obedience to her. He was as much under her finger and thumb as Punch in the street is under the showman’s. The Squire went into a purple heat.

“You married him by craft, madam—as I believe from my very soul: you married him, knowing, you and your father also, that his wife was alive. He knew it, too. The motive must have been one of urgency, I should say, but I’ve nothing to do with that——”

“Nor with any other business of ours,” she answered with a brazen face.

“This business is mine, and all Church Dykely’s,” flashed the Squire. “It is public property. And now, I ask you both, what you mean to do in this dilemma you have brought upon yourselves? His wife is waiting to come in, and you cannot keep her out.”

“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.

One afternoon, during a ride, the Squire’s horse fell lame. On his return he sent for Dobbs, the blacksmith and farrier. Dobbs promised to be over about six o’clock; he was obliged to go elsewhere first. When six o’clock struck, the Squire, naturally impatient, began to look out for Dobbs. And if he sent Thomas out of the room once during dinner, to see whether the man had arrived, he sent him half-a-dozen times.

Seven o’clock, and no Dobbs. The pater was in a fume; he did nothing but walk to and fro between the house and the stables, and call Dobbs names as he looked out for him. At last, there came a rush across the fold-yard, and Dobbs appeared, his face looking very peculiar, and his hair standing up in affright, like a porcupine’s quills.

“Why, what on earth has taken you?” began the Squire, surprised out of the reproach that had been upon his tongue.

“I don’t know what has taken me,” gasped Dobbs. “Except that I’ve seen Mr. Nash Caromel.”

“What?” roared the Squire, his surprise changing to anger.

“As true as I’m a living man, I’ve seen him, sir,” persisted Dobbs, wiping his face with a blue cotton handkerchief. “I’ve seen his shadow.”

“Seen the Dickens!” retorted the Squire, slightingly. “One would think he was after you, by the way you flew up here. I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself, Dobbs.”

“Being later than I thought to be, sir, I took the field way; it’s a bit shorter,” went on Dobbs, attempting to explain. “In passing through that little copse at the back of Caromel’s Farm, I met a curious-looking shadow of a figure that somehow startled me. May I never stir from this spot, sir, if it was not Caromel himself.”

“You have been drinking, Dobbs.”

“A strapping pace I was going at, knowing I was being waited for here,” continued Dobbs, too much absorbed in his story to heed the sarcasm. “I never saw Mr. Nash Caromel plainer in his lifetime than I saw him then, sir. Drinking? No, that I had not been, Squire; the place where I went to is teetotal. It was up at the Glebe, and they don’t have nothing stronger in their house than tea. They gave me two good cups of that.”

“Tea plays some people worse tricks than drink, especially if it is green,” observed the Squire: and I am bound to confess that Dobbs, apart from his state of fright, seemed as sober as we were. “I wouldn’t confess myself a fool, Dobbs, if I were you.”

Dobbs put out his brawny right arm. “Master,” said he, with quite a solemn emphasis, “as true as that there moon’s a-shining down upon us, I this night saw Nash Caromel. I should know him among a thousand. And I thought my heart would just ha’ leaped out of me.”

To hear this strong, matter-of-fact man assert this, with his sturdy frame and his practical common sense, sounded remarkable. Any one accustomed to seeing him in his forge, working away at his anvil, would never have believed it of him. Tod laughed. The Squire marched off to the stables with an impatient word. I followed with Dobbs.

“The idea of your believing in ghosts and shadows, Dobbs!”

“Me believe in ’em, Master Johnny! No more I did; I’d have scorned it. Why, do you remember that there stir, sir, about the ghost that was said to haunt Oxlip Dell? Lots of people went into fits over that, a’most lost their heads; but I laughed at it. Now, I never put credit in nothing of the kind; but I have seen Mr. Caromel’s ghost to-night.”

“Was it in white?”

“Bless your heart, sir, no. He was in a sort o’ long-skirted dark cloak that seemed to wrap him well round; and his head was in something black. It might ha’ been a cap; I don’t know. And here we are at the stable, so I’ll say no more: but I can’t ever speak anything truer in my life than I’ve spoke this, sir.”

All this passed. In spite of the blacksmith’s superstitious assertion, made in the impulse of terror, there lay on his mind a feeling of shame that he should have betrayed fear to us (or what bordered upon it) in an unguarded moment; and this caused him to be silent to others. So the matter passed off without spreading further.

Several weeks later, it cropped up again. Francis Radcliffe (if the reader has not forgotten him, and who had not long before been delivered out of his brother’s hands at Sandstone Torr) was passing along at the back of Caromel’s Farm, when he saw a figure that bore an extraordinary resemblance to Nash Caromel. The Squire laughed well when told of it, and Radcliffe laughed too. “But,” said he, “had Nash Caromel not been dead, I could have sworn it was he, or his shadow, before any justice of the peace.”

His shadow! The same word that Dobbs had used. Francis Radcliffe told this story everywhere, and it caused no little excitement.

“What does this silly rumour mean—about Nash Caromel being seen?” demanded the Squire one day when he met Nave, and condescended to stop to speak to him.

And Nave, hearing the question, turned quite blue: the pater told us so when he came home. Just as though Nave saw the apparition before him then, and was frightened at it.

“The rumour is infamous,” he answered, biting his cold lips to keep down his passion. “Infamous and ridiculous both. Emanating from idle fools. I think, sir, as a magistrate, you might order these people before you and punish them.”

“Punish people for thinking they see Caromel’s ghost!” retorted the Squire. “Bless my heart! What an ignorant man (for a lawyer) you must be! No act has been passed against seeing ghosts. But I’d like to know what gives rise to the fancy about Caromel.”

The rumour did not die away. How could it, when from time to time the thing continued to be seen? It frightened Mary Standish into a fit. Going to Caromel’s Farm one night to beg grace for something or other that her ill-doing husband, Jim, then working on the farm, had done or left undone, she came upon a wonderfully thin man standing in the nook by the dairy window, and took him to be the bailiff, who was himself no better than a walking lamp-post. “If you please, sir,” she was beginning, thinking to have it out with him instead of Mrs. Caromel, “if you please, sir——”

When, upon looking into his pale, stony face, she saw the late master. He vanished into air or into the wall, and down fell Mary Standish in a fainting-fit. The parish grew uneasy at all this—and wondered what had been done to Nash, or what he had done, that he could not rest.

One night I was coming, with Tod, across from Mrs. Scott’s, who lived beyond Hyde Stockhausem’s. We took the field way from Church Dykely, as being the shortest route, and that led us through the copse at the back of Caromel’s Farm. It was a very light night, though not moonlight; and we walked on at a good rate, talking of a frightful scrape Sam Scott had got into, and which he was afraid to tell his mother of. All in a moment, just in the middle of the copse, we came upon a man standing amongst the trees, his face towards us. Tod turned and I turned; and we both saw Nash Caromel. Now, of course, you will laugh. As the Squire did when we got home (in a white heat) and told him: and he called us a couple of poltroons. But, if ever I saw the face of Nash Caromel, I saw it then; and if ever I saw a figure that might be called a shadow, it was his.

“Fine gentlemen, both of you!” scoffed the Squire. “Clear and sensible! Seen a ghost, have you, and confess to it! Ho, ho! Running through the back copse, you come upon somebody that you must take for an apparition! Ha, ha! Nice young cowards! I’d write an account of it to the Worcester papers if I were you. A ghost, with glaring eyes and a white face! Death’s head upon a mopstick, lads! I shouldn’t have wondered at Johnny; but I do wonder at you, Joe,” concluded the Squire, smoothing down.

“I am no more afraid of ghosts than you are, father,” quietly answered Joe. “I was not afraid when we saw—what we did see; I can’t answer for Johnny. But I do declare, with all my senses (which you are pleased to disparage) about me, that it was the form and face of Nash Caromel, and that ‘it’ (whatever it might be) seemed to vanish from our sight as we looked.”

“Johnny calls it a shadow,” mocked the Squire, amiably.

“It looked shadowy,” said Tod.

“A tree-trunk, I dare be bound, lads, nothing else,” nodded the Squire. And you might as well have tried to make an impression on a post.

IV.

September came in: which made it a year since Nash died. And on one of its bright days, when the sun was high, and the blue sky cloudless, Church Dykely had a stir given it in the sight of the mistress of Caromel’s Farm. She and her father were in a gig together, driving off on the Worcester road: and it was so very rare a thing to see her abroad now, that folks ran to their windows and doors to stare. Her golden hair, what could be seen of it for her smart blue parasol, shone in the sunlight; but her face looked white and thin through the black crape veil.

“Just like a woman who gets disturbed o’ nights,” pronounced Sam Rimmer, thinking of the ghostly presence that was believed to haunt the house.

Before that day’s beautiful sun had gone down to light the inhabitants of the other hemisphere, ill-omened news reached Church Dykely. An accident had happened to the horse and gig. It was said that both Nave and his daughter were dreadfully injured; one of them nearly killed. Miss Gwinny, left at home to take care of Caromel’s Farm, posted off to the scene of damage.

Holding Caromel’s Farm in small respect now, the Squire yet chose to show himself neighbourly; and he rose up from his dinner to go there and inquire particulars. “You may come with me, lads, if you like,” said he. Tod laughed.

“He’s afraid of seeing Caromel,” whispered he in my ear, as we took down our hats.

And, whether the Squire was afraid of it or not, he did see him. It was a lovely moonlight night, bright and clear as the day had been. Old Grizzel could not tell us much more of the accident than we had heard before; except that it was quite true there had been one, and that Miss Gwinny had gone. And, by the way Grizzel inwardly shook and shivered while she spoke, and turned her eyes to all corners in some desperate fear, one might have thought she had been pitched out of a gig herself.

We had left the door—it was the side-entrance—when the Squire turned back to put some last query to her. Tod and I went on. The path was narrow, the overhanging trees on either side obscured the moonlight, making it dark. Chancing to glance round, I noticed the Squire, at the other end of the path, come soberly after us. Suddenly he seemed to halt, to look sideways at the trees, and then he came on with a bound.

“Boys! Boys!” cried he, in a half-whisper, “come on. There’s Caromel yonder.”

And to see the pater’s face in its steaming consternation, and to watch him rush on to the gate, was better than a play. Seen Caromel! It was not so long since he had mocked at us for saying it.

Through the gate went he, bolt into the arms of some unexpected figure, standing there. We peered at it in the uncertain lights cast by the trees, and made it out to be Dobbs, the blacksmith.

Dobbs, with a big coat on, hiding his shirt-sleeves and his leather apron: Dobbs standing as silent as the grave: arms folded, head bent: Dobbs in stockinged feet, without his shoes.

“Dobbs, my good fellow, what on earth do you put yourself in people’s way for, standing stock-still like a Chinese image?” gasped the Squire. “Dobbs—why, you have no boots on.”

“Hush!” breathed Dobbs, hardly above his breath. “I ask your pardon, Squire. Hush, please! There’s something uncanny in this place; some ugly mystery. I mean to find it out if I can, sirs, and this is the third night I’ve come here on the watch. Hark!”

Sounds, as of a woman’s voice weeping and wailing, reached us faintly from somewhere—down beyond the garden trees. The pater looked regularly flustered.

“Listen!” repeated Dobbs, raising his big hand to entreat for silence. “Yes, Squire; I don’t know what the mystery is; but there is something wrong about the place, and I can’t sleep o’ nights for it. Please hearken, sirs.”

The blacksmith was right. Wrong and mystery, such as the world does not often hear of, lay within Caromel’s Farm. Curious mystery; wicked wrong. Leaning our arms on the gate, watching the moonlight flickering on the trees, we listened to Dobbs’s whispered revelation. It made the Squire’s hair stand on end.