Works of Ellen Wood, page 1152
“I wish I could,” returned Nash; and his wavering, irresolute tone was just a contrast to the other’s keen one. “I want to. But how can I? I’m heartily sorry.”
“And as soon as may be. You must. Attentions paid to young ladies cannot be allowed to end in smoke. And you will find her thousand pounds useful.”
“But how can I, I say?” cried Nash ruefully. “You know how impracticable it is — the impediment that exists.”
“Stuff and nonsense, Caromel! Where there’s a will there’s a way. Impediments only exist to be got over.”
“It would take a cunning man to get over the one that lies between me and her. I assure you, and you may know I say it in all good faith, that I should ask nothing better than to be a free man to-morrow — for this one sole cause.”
“Leave things to me. For all you know, you are free now.”
The opening of their door by the maid, who had taken her own time to do it, and the announcement that I waited to see Mr. Caromel, stopped the rest. Nash came in, and I gave him the note.
“Wants to see me before twelve to-morrow, does he? — something he forgot to say,” cried he, running his eyes over it. “Tell the Squire I will be there, Johnny.”
Caromel was very busy after that, getting into his house — for he took the Squire’s advice, and did not linger much longer at Nave’s. And I think two or three weeks only had passed, after he was in it, when news reached him of his wife’s death.
It came from his agent in New York, Abraham B. Whitter, who had received the information from San Francisco. Mr. Whitter enclosed the San Francisco letters. They were written by a Mr. Munn: one letter to himself, the other (which was not as yet unsealed) to Nash Caromel.
We read them both: Nash brought them to the Squire before sending them to Mrs. Tinkle — considerate as ever, he would not let her see them until she had been prepared. The letters did not say much. Mrs. Nash Caromel had grown weaker and weaker after Nash departed from San Francisco for New York, and she finally sank under low fever. A diary, which she had kept the last few weeks of her life, meant only for her husband’s own eye, together with a few letters and sundry other personal trifles, would be forwarded the first opportunity to Abraham B. Whitter and Co., who would hold the box at Mr. Caromel’s disposal.
“Who is he, this Francis Munn, who writes to you?” asked the Squire. “A friend of your wife’s? — she appears to have died at his house.”
“A true friend of hers and of mine,” answered Nash. “It was with Mr. and Mrs. Munn that I left Charlotte, when I was obliged to go to New York. She was not well enough to travel with me.”
“Well — look here, Caromel — don’t go and marry that other Charlotte,” advised the Squire. “She is as different from your wife as chalk is from cheese. Poor thing! it was a hard fate — dying over there away from everybody!”
But now — would any one believe it? — instead of taking the Squire’s advice and not marrying her at all, instead even of allowing a decent time to elapse, in less than a week Nash went to church with Charlotte the Second. Shame, said Parson Holland under his breath; shame, said the parish aloud; but Nash Caromel heeded them not.
We only knew it on the day before the wedding was to be. On Wednesday morning, a fine, crisp, October day, a shooting party was to meet at old Appleton’s, who lived over beyond Church Dykely. The Squire and Tod started for it after an early breakfast, and they let me go part of the way with them. Just after passing Caromel’s Farm, we met Pettipher the postman.
“Anything for the Manor?” asked the pater.
“Yes, sir,” answered the man; and, diving into his bundle, he handed a letter.
“This is not mine,” said the Squire, looking at the address; “this is for Mr. Caromel.”
“Oh! I beg your pardon, sir; I took out the wrong letter. This is yours.”
“What a thin letter! — come from foreign parts,” remarked the pater, reading the address, “Nash Caromel, Esq.” “I seem to know the handwriting: fancy I’ve seen it before. Here, take it, Pettipher.”
In passing the letter to Pettipher, which was a ship’s letter, I looked at the said writing. Very small poor writing indeed, with long angular tails to the letters up and down, especially the capitals. The Squire handed me his gun and was turning to walk on, opening his letter as he did so; when Pettipher spoke and arrested him.
“Have you heard what’s coming off yonder, to-morrow, sir?” asked he, pointing with his thumb to Caromel’s Farm.
“Why no,” said the Squire, wondering what Pettipher meant to be at. “What should be coming off!”
“Mr. Caromel’s going to bring a wife home. Leastways, going to get married.”
“I don’t believe it,” burst forth the pater, after staring angrily at the man. “You’d better take care what you say, Pettipher.”
“But it’s true, sir,” reasoned Pettipher, “though it’s not generally known. My niece is apprentice to Mrs. King the dressmaker, as perhaps you know, sir, and they are making Miss Nave’s wedding-dress and bonnet. They are to be married quite early, sir, nine o’clock, before folks are about. Well yes, sir, it is not seemly, seeing he has but now heard of his wife’s death, poor Miss Charlotte Tinkle, that grew up among us — but you’ll find it’s true.”
Whether the Squire gave more hot words to Nash Caromel, or to Charlotte the Second, or to Pettipher for telling it, I can’t say now. Pettipher touched his hat, said good-morning, and turned up the avenue to Caromel’s Farm to leave the letter for Nash.
And, married they were on the following morning, amidst a score or two of spectators. What was agate had slipped out to others as well as ourselves. Old Clerk Bumford looked more fierce than a raven when he saw us flocking into the church, after Nash had fee’d him to keep it quiet.
As the clock struck nine, the party came up. The bride and one of her sisters, both in white silk; Nave and some strange gentleman, who might be a friend of his; and Caromel, pale as a ghost. Charlotte the Second was pale too, but uncommonly pretty, her mass of beautiful hair shining like threads of gold.
The ceremony over, they filed out into the porch; Nash leading his bride, and Nave bringing up the rear alone; when an anxious-looking little woman with a chronic redness of face was seen coming across the churchyard. It was Mrs. Tinkle, wearing the deep mourning she had put on for Charlotte. Some one had carried her the tidings, and she had come running forth to see whether they could be true.
And, to watch her, poor thing, with her scared face raised to Nash, and her poor hands clasped in pain, as he and his bride passed her on the pathway, was something sad. Nash Caromel’s face had grown white again; but he never looked at her; never turned his eyes, fixed straight out before him, a hair’s point to the right or left.
“May Heaven have mercy upon them — for surely they’ll need it!” cried the poor woman. “No luck can come of such a wedding as this.”
III.
The months went on. Mrs. Nash was ruling the roast at Caromel’s Farm, being unquestionably both mistress and master. Nash Caromel’s old easy indolence had grown now to apathy. It almost seemed as though the farm might go as it liked for him; but his wife was energetic, and she kept servants of all kinds to their work.
Nash excused himself for his hasty wedding when people reproached him — and a few had done that on his return from the honeymoon. His first wife had been dead for some months, he said, and the farm wanted a mistress. She had only been dead to him a week, was the answer he received to this: and, as to the farm, he was quite as competent to manage that himself without a mistress as with one. After all, where was the use of bothering about it when the thing was done? — and the offence concerned himself, not his neighbours. So the matter was condoned at length; Nash was taken into favour again, and the past was dropped.
But Nash, as I have told you, grew apathetic. His spirits were low; the Squire remarked one day that he was like a man who had some inward care upon him. Mrs. Nash, on the contrary, was cheerful as a summer’s day; she filled the farm with visitors, and made the money fly.
All too soon, a baby arrived. It was in May, and he must have travelled at railroad speed. Nurse Picker, called in hastily on the occasion, could not find anything the matter with him. A beautiful boy, she said, as like his father, Master Nash (she had known Nash as a boy), as one pea was like another. Mrs. Nash told a tale of having been run after by a cow; Duffham, when attacked by the parish on the point, shut his lips, and would say never a word, good or bad. Anyway, here he was; a fine little boy and the son and heir: and if he had mistaken the proper time to appear, why, clearly it must be his own fault or the cow’s: other people were not to be blamed for it. Mrs. Nash Caromel, frantic with delight at its being a boy, sent an order to old Bumford to set the bells a-ringing.
But now, it was a singular thing that the Squire should chance to be present at the delivery of another of those letters that bore the handwriting with the angular tails. Not but that very singular coincidences do take place in this life, and I often think it would not hurt us if we paid more heed to them. Caromel’s Farm was getting rather behind-hand with its payments. Whether through its master’s apathy or its mistress’s extravagance, ready money grew inconveniently short, and the Squire could not get his interest paid on the twelve hundred pounds.
“I’ll go over and jog his memory,” said he one morning, as we got up from breakfast. “Put on your cap, Johnny.”
There was a pathway to Caromel’s across the fields, and that was the way we took. It was a hot, lovely day, early in July. Some wheat on the Caromel land was already down.
“Splendid weather it has been for the corn,” cried the Squire, turning himself about, “and we shall have a splendid harvest. Somehow I always fancy the crops ripen on this land sooner than on any other about here, Johnny.”
“So they do, sir.”
“Fine rich land it is; shouldn’t grumble if it were mine. We’ll go in at this gate, lad.”
“This gate” was the side-gate. It opened on a path that led direct to the sitting-room with glass-doors. Nash was standing just inside the room, and of all the uncomfortable expressions that can sit on a man’s face, the worst sat on his. The Squire noticed it, and spoke in a whisper.
“Johnny, lad, he looks just as though he had seen a ghost.”
It’s just what he did look like — a ghost that frightened him. We were close up before he noticed us. Giving a great start, he smoothed his face, smiled, and held out his hand.
“You don’t look well,” said the Squire, as he sat down. “What’s amiss?”
“Nothing at all,” answered Nash. “The heat pothers me, as usual: can’t sleep at night for it. Why, here’s the postman! What makes him so late, I wonder?”
Pettipher was coming straight down to the window, letters in hand. Something in his free, onward step seemed to say that he must be in the habit of delivering the letters to Nash at that same window.
“Two, sir, this morning,” said Pettipher, handing them in.
As Nash was taking the letters, one of them fell, either by his own awkwardness or by Pettipher’s. I picked it up and gave it to him, address upwards. The Squire saw it.
“Why, that’s the same handwriting that puzzled me,” cried he, speaking on the impulse of the moment. “It seemed familiar to me, but I could not remember where I had seen it. It’s a ship letter, as was the other.”
Nash laughed — a lame kind of laugh — and put both letters into his pocket. “It comes from a chum of mine that I picked up over yonder,” said he to the Squire, nodding his head towards where the sea might be supposed to lie. “I don’t think you could ever have been familiar with it.”
They went away to talk of business, leaving me alone. Mrs. Nash Caromel came in with her baby. She wore a white dress and light green ribbons, a lace cap half shading her bright hair. Uncommonly pretty she looked — but I did not like her.
“Is it you, Johnny Ludlow?” said she, pausing a moment at the door, and then holding out her hand. “I thought my husband was here alone.”
“He is gone into the library with the Squire.”
“Sit down. Have you seen my baby before? Is he not a beauty?”
It was a nice little fellow, with fat arms and blue knitted shoes, a good deal like Nash. They had named him Duncan, after some relative of hers, and the result was that he was never called anything but “Dun.” Mrs. Caromel was telling me that she had “short-coated” him early, as it was hot weather, when the others appeared, and the Squire marched me off.
“Johnny,” said he, thoughtfully, as we went along, “how curiously Nash Caromel is altered!”
“He seems rather — down, sir,” I answered, hesitating for a word.
“Down!” echoed the Squire, slightingly; “it’s more than that. He seems lost.”
“Lost, sir?”
“His mind does. When I told him what I had come about: that it was time, and long ago, too, that my interest was paid, he stared at me more like a lunatic than a farmer — as if he had forgotten all about it, interest, and money, and all. When his wits came to him, he said it ought to have been paid, and he’d see Nave about it. Nave’s his father-in-law, Johnny, and I suppose will take care of his interests; but I know I’d as soon entrust my affairs to Old Scratch as to him.”
The Squire had his interest paid. The next news we heard was that Caromel’s Farm was about to give an entertainment on a grand scale; an afternoon fête out-of-doors, with a sumptuous cold collation that you might call by what name you liked — dinner, tea, or supper — in the evening. An invitation printed on a square card came to us, which we all crowded round Mrs. Todhetley to look at. Cards had not come much into fashion then, except for public ceremonies, such as the Mayor’s Feast at Worcester. In our part of the world we were still content to write our invitations on note-paper.
The mother would not go. She did not care for fêtes, she said to us. In point of fact she did not like Mrs. Nash Caromel any better than she had liked Charlotte Nave, and she had never believed in the cow. So she sent a civil note of excuse for herself. The Squire accepted, after some hesitation. He and the Caromels had been friends for so many years that he did not care to put the slight of a refusal upon Nash; besides, he liked parties, if they were jolly.
But now, would any rational being believe that Mrs. Nash had the cheek to send an invitation to Mrs. Tinkle and her son Henry? It was what Harry Tinkle called it — cheek. When poor Mrs. Tinkle broke the red seal of the huge envelope, and read the card of invitation, from Mr. and Mrs. Caromel, her eyes were dim.
“I think they must have sent it as a cruel joke,” remarked Mrs. Tinkle, meeting the Squire a day or two before the fête. “She has never spoken to me in her life. When we pass each other she picks up her skirts as if they were too good to touch mine. Once she laughed at me, rudely.”
“Don’t believe she knows any better,” cried the Squire in his hot partisanship. “Her skirts were not fit to touch your own Charlotte’s.”
“Oh, Charlotte! poor Charlotte!” cried Mrs. Tinkle, losing her equanimity. “I wish I could hear the particulars of her last moments,” she went on, brushing away the tears. “If Mr. Caromel has had details — and that letter, telling of her death, promised them, you know — he does not disclose them to me.”
“Why don’t you write a note and ask him, Mrs. Tinkle?”
“I hardly know why,” she answered. “I think he cannot have heard, or he would surely tell me; he is not bad-hearted.”
“No, only too easy; swayed by anybody that may be at his elbow for the time being,” concluded the Squire. “Nash Caromel is one of those people who need to be kept in leading-strings all their lives. Good-morning.”
It was a fête worth going to. The afternoon as sunny a one as ever August turned out, and the company gay, if not numerous. Only a sprinkling of ladies could be seen; but amongst them was Miles Caromel’s widow, with her four daughters. Being women of consideration, deserving the respect of the world, their presence went for much, and Mrs. Nash had reason to thank them. They scorned and despised her in their hearts, but they countenanced her for the sake of the honour of the Caromels.
Archery, dancing, promenading, and talking took up the afternoon, and then came the banquet. Altogether it must have cost Caromel’s Farm a tidy sum.
“It is well for you to be able to afford this,” cried the Squire confidentially to Nash, as they stood together in one of the shady paths beyond the light of the coloured lanterns, when the evening was drawing to an end. “Miles would never have done it.”
“Oh, I don’t know — it’s no harm once in a way,” answered Nash, who had exerted himself wonderfully, and finished up by drinking his share of wine. “Miles had his ways, and I have mine.”
“All right: it is your own affair. But I wouldn’t have done one thing, my good friend — sent an invitation to your mother-in-law.”
“What mother-in-law?” asked Nash, staring.
“Your ex-mother-in-law, I ought to have said — Mrs. Tinkle. I wouldn’t have done it, Caromel, under the circumstances. It pained her.”
“But who did send her an invitation? Is it likely? I don’t know what you are talking about, Squire.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” returned the Squire, perceiving that the act was madam’s and not his. “Have you ever had those particulars of Charlotte’s death?”
Nash Caromel’s face changed from red to a deadly pallor: the question unnerved him — took his wits out of him.
“The particulars of Charlotte’s death,” he stammered, looking all abroad. “What particulars?”
“Why, those promised you by the man who wrote from San Francisco — Munn, was his name? Charlotte’s diary, and letters, and things, that he was sending off to New York.”
“Oh — ay — I remember,” answered Nash, pulling his senses together. “No, they have not come.”
“Been lost on the way, do you suppose? What a pity!”
“They may have been. I have not had them.”
