Works of Ellen Wood, page 1156
Ill-news. No doubt a bad and distressing accident. But now, see how curiously the “power that shapes our ends” brings things about. But for that accident, the mystery and the wrong being played out at Caromel’s Farm might never have had daylight thrown upon it. The accident, like a great many other accidents, must have been sent to this wise and good end. At least, so far as we, poor blind mortals that we all are, down here, might presume to judge.
The horseman, clattering in at a hard pace to Caromel’s Farm, delivered to Miss Gwendolen Nave, and to Grizzel, the old family servant, the tidings he was charged with — improving upon them as a thing of course.
Lawyer Nave, he were groaning awful, all a-bleeding, and unable to move a limb. The young lady, she were dead; leastways, looked like it.
With a scream and a cry, Gwendolen gave orders for her own departure. Seeking the bailiff, she bade him drive her over in the tax-cart, there being no second gig.
“Now mind, Grizzel,” she said, laying hold of the old woman’s arm after flinging on her bonnet and shawl anyhow, “you will lock all the doors as soon as I am gone, and take out the keys. Do you hear?”
“I hear, Miss Gwinny. My will’s good to do it: you know that.”
“Take care that you do do it.”
Fine tidings to go flying about Church Dykely in the twilight! Lawyer Nave half killed, his daughter quite. The news reached us at Dyke Manor; and Squire Todhetley, though holding Caromel’s Farm in little estimation, thought it only neighbourly to walk over there and inquire how much was true, how much not. You remember what happened. That in leaving the farm after interviewing Grizzel, we found ourselves in contact with Dobbs the blacksmith. Dobbs standing stock-still, like a marble pillar, outside the gate under the dark, overhanging trees; Dobbs standing on the watch, in a stealthy, mysterious manner, without his boots.
“But what on earth are you here for, Dobbs?” reiterated the Squire. “Where are your boots?”
And all Dobbs did for answer, was to lay his hand respectfully on the Squire’s coat-sleeve to begin with, so as to prevent his running away. Then he entered upon his whispered tale. Leaning our arms upon the low gate, we listened to it, and to the curious sound of weeping and wailing that stole faintly on our ears from amongst the garden trees. The scene altogether looked weird enough in the moonlight, flickering through the rustling leaves.
Dobbs, naturally an unbeliever in ghosts, had grown to think that this ghost, so long talked of, was no ghost at all, but some one got up to resemble one by Caromel’s Farm, for some mysterious purpose of its own. Remembering his attack of fright, and resenting it excessively, Dobbs determined if possible to unearth the secret: and this was the third night he had come upon the watch.
“But why stand without your boots?” whispered the Squire, who could not get over the shoeless feet.
“That I may make no noise in running to pounce upon him, sir,” Dobbs whispered back. “I take ’em off and hide ’em in the copse behind here. They be just at your back, Master Johnny.”
“Pounce upon whom?” demanded the Squire. “Can’t you speak plainly?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” breathed Dobbs. “I feel nearly sure, Squire, that the — the thing looking like Nash Caromel is not Nash Caromel. Nor his ghost, either.”
“I never saw two faces more alike, and I have just seen it now,” put in the Squire. “At least, as much as a shadow can look like a face.”
“Ay,” assented Dobbs. “I’m as sure, sir, as I am of my own forge, that it is a likeness got up by Nave to scare us. And I’ll eat the forge,” added Dobbs with emphasis, “if there’s not something worse than ghosts at Caromel’s Farm — though I can’t guess what it is.”
“What a villain he must be: and Nave, too!” cried the Squire, rubbing his red nose, while Tod simply stared at the man. “But, look here, Dobbs — how could any man put on the face of Nash Caromel?”
“I don’t know how he does it, Squire, or what he does, but I’m good to find out,” returned the blacksmith. “And if — just hark there again, sirs!”
The same faint sounds of wailing, of entreaty in a woman’s voice, rose again upon the air. Dobbs, with a gesture to ask for silence, went noiselessly down the dark path in his brown woollen stockings, that looked thick enough for boots. Tod, eager for any adventure, stole after him, and I brought up the rear. The Squire remained where he was, and held the gate open, expecting perhaps that we might want to make a rush through it as he had just done.
Two minutes more, and the mystery was solved. Near the house, under the shade of the closely intersecting trees, stood old Grizzel and the figure people had taken to be the ghost of Nash Caromel. It was Grizzel’s voice we heard, full of piteous entreaty to him not to do something.
“Just for this night, master, for the love of Heaven! Don’t do it, just this night that I’m left in charge! They’ve trusted me, you see!”
The words seemed to make no impression. Pushing her hands back, the figure was turning impatiently away, when Dobbs seized upon it.
But, in sheer astonishment, or perhaps in terror, Dobbs let go again to step backwards; and the prize might have escaped but for the strong arms of Tod. It was indeed Nash Caromel. Not his ghost, but himself.
Nash Caromel worn to the veriest shadow mortal eyes ever gazed upon. The Squire came up; we all went into the house together, and explanation ensued.
Nash had not died. When the fever, of which it was feared he would die, reached its crisis, he awoke to life, not to death. But, terrified at his position — the warrant, applied for by Henry Tinkle, being out against him — overwhelmed with a sense of shame, he had feigned death as the only chance of escaping disgrace and punishment. The first thought perhaps was Nave’s; indeed there was no doubt of it — or his and his daughter’s combined. They wanted to keep the income, you see. Any way, they carried the thought out, and had successfully contrived to deceive doctors, undertakers, and the world. Nash, weak as a rat, had got out of bed to watch his own funeral procession wind down the avenue.
And there, in the upper rooms of the house, he had since lived until now, old Grizzel sharing the secret. But a grievous complaint, partly brought on by uneasiness of mind, partly inherited from his father, who had died of it, had speedily attacked Nash, one for which there was no cure. It had worn him to a shadow.
He had walked in the garden sometimes. He had come out in the twilight of the evening or at night; he had now and then passed through the gate and crossed over to the copse; simply because to live entirely without fresh air, to remain inactive indoors, was intolerable to him. His wife and her sister did their best to prevent it. Nave came in the daytime and would blow him up by the hour together; but they could not always keep him in. At last they grew alarmed. For, when they attempted to use force, by locking the doors, he told them that unless he was allowed his way in this, he would declare himself to the world. Life could not have been a bed of roses for any of them.
To look at him, as he sat there to-night by the kitchen fire, his cheeks white and hollow, his sunken eyes encased in dark rims, and his thin lips on the shiver, you’d hardly have given him a week of life. A great pity sat in the blacksmith’s face.
“Don’t reproach yourself, Dobbs: it’s the best thing that could have happened to me,” spoke Nash Caromel, kindly. “I am not sure but I should have gone out this very night and declared myself. Grizzel thought it, and put herself into a paroxysm of fear. Nobody but myself knows the yearning to do it that has been upon me. You won’t go and tell it out in the market-place, will you, Dobbs?”
“I’ll not tell on’t to a single soul, sir,” said Dobbs, earnestly, standing straight in his brown stockings. “Nobody shall know on’t from me. And I’m as glad as glad can be that you be alive and did not die in that fever.”
“We are all safe and sure, Caromel; not a hint shall escape us,” spoke the Squire from the midst of his astonishment.
“The first thing must be to get Duffham here.”
“Duffham can’t do any good; things have gone too far with me,” said poor Nash. “Once this disorder lays regular hold of a man, there’s no hope for him: you know that, Todhetley.”
“Stuff!” said the pater. “I don’t believe it has gone too far, only you’ve got moped here and think so. We’ll have Duffham here at once. You boys can go for him.”
“No,” dissented Caromel. “Duffham may tell the tale abroad. I’d rather die in peace, if I can.”
“Not he. Duffham! Why, you ought to know him better. Duffham will be as secret as ourselves. Do you suppose that he, a family doctor, has not many a weighty secret to keep? Come, be off, lads: and, mind, we trust you.”
Nash Caromel sighed, and said no more. He had been wanting badly enough to see a friend or two, but not to be shown up to the parish. We went out with Dobbs, who rushed into the copse to find his shoes.
This discovery might never have ensued, I take it, had Charlotte Nave and the lawyer not been upset in the gig. They would have stood persistently in his light — perhaps have succeeded in locking him in by force! As it was, we had it all our own way.
“How could you lend yourself to so infamous a deception?” cried the Squire to old Grizzel, following her into the pantry to ask it, when she returned from bolting the door after us. “I’m not at all sure that you could not be punished for it. It’s — it’s a conspiracy. And you, of all people, old Grizzel, to forget the honour of the Caromels! Why, you lived with his father! — and with his brother. All these years!”
“And how could I tell again him when I was asked not to?” contended Grizzel, the tears dropping on to a tin saucepan she was rubbing out. “Master Nash was as dear to me as the others were. Could it be me to speak up and say he was not in the coffin, but only old things to make up weight! Could it be me to tell he was alive and hiding up aloft here, and so get him put in prison? No, sir; the good name of the Caromels was much to me, but Master Nash was more.”
“Now, come, old woman, where’s the use of crying like that? Well, yes; you have been faithful, and it’s a great virtue. And — and there’s a shilling or two for you.”
“Have you been blowing her up?” asked Nash, as the Squire went back to him, and sat down on the other side the wide kitchen hearth, the fire throwing its glow upon the bricks, square and red and shining, and upon Nash Caromel’s wan face, in which it was not very difficult to read death. He had put his out-of-door coat off, a long brown garment, and sat in a grey suit. Tho Squire’s belief was that he wouldn’t have minded getting into the fire itself; he sat there shivering and shaking, and seeming to have no warmth left in him. The room was well guarded from outer observation. The shutters were up, and there was not a chink in them.
“I have,” said the Squire, in answer. “Told her she did not show much regard for the honour of the family — lending herself to such a deception!”
“Poor old Grizzel!” sighed Nash, with a half-smile. “She has lived upon thorns, fearing I should be discovered. As to the family honour, Todhetley, the less said about that the better.”
“How could you do it, Caromel?”
“I don’t know,” answered Nash, with apathy, bringing his face closer to the blaze. “I let it be done, more than did it. All I did, or could do, was just to lie still in my bed. The fever had left me weaker than a child — —”
“Did it really turn to typhus?” interrupted the Squire.
“No, it didn’t. They said so to scare people away. I was weaker than a child,” continued Nash, “both in mind and body. And when I grew stronger — what was done could not be undone. Not that I seek to defend or excuse myself. Don’t think that.”
“And, in the name of all that’s marvellous, what could have put so monstrous an idea into their heads?” demanded the Squire, getting up to face the kitchen.
“Well, I have always fancied that business at Sandstone Torr did,” replied Nash, who had no idea of reticence now, but spoke out as freely as you please. “It had come to light, you know, not long before. Stephen Radcliffe had hidden his brother in the old tower, passing him off to the world as dead; and so, I suppose, it was thought that I could be hidden and passed off as dead.”
“But Stephen Radcliffe never got up a mock funeral. His tale was that Frank had died in London. You were bold people. What will Parson Holland say, when he comes to learn that he read the burial-service over a box of rubbish?”
“I don’t know,” was the helpless reiteration of poor Nash. “The trouble and worry of it altogether, the discomforts of my position, the constant, never-ceasing dread of discovery have — have been to me what you cannot realize. But for going out of the house at night and striding about in the fresh, free air, I should have become mad. It was a taste of freedom. Neither could I always confine myself to the walks in the garden; whether I would nor not, my feet would carry me beyond it and into the shaded copse.”
“Frightening people who met you!”
“When I heard footsteps approach I hid myself — though not always quite in time. I was more put out at meeting people than they were at meeting me.”
“I wonder your keepers here ever let you get out!” cried the Squire, musingly.
“They tried hard to keep me in: and generally succeeded. It was only by fits and starts I gained my way. They were afraid, you see, that I should carry out my threat of disclosing myself but for being yielded to now and then.”
But the Squire did not get over the discovery. He strode about the large kitchen, rubbing his face, giving out sundry Bless my hearts! at intervals. The return to life of Charlotte Tinkle had been marvellous enough, but it was nothing to this.
Meanwhile we were on our road to Duffham’s. Leaving Dobbs at his own forge, we rushed on, and found the doctor in his little parlour at supper; pickled eels and bread-and-cheese: the eels in the wide stone jar they were baked in — which was Nomy’s way of serving pickled fish.
“Will you sit down and take some?” asked Duffham, pointing to the jar: out of which he took the pieces with a fork as he wanted them.
“I should like to, but there’s no time for it,” answered Tod, eyeing the jar wistfully.
Pickled eels are a favourite dish in our parts: and you don’t often eat anything as good.
“Look here, Duffham,” he went on: “we want you to go with us and see — see somebody: and to undertake not to tell tales out of school. The Squire has answered for it that you will not.”
“See who?” asked Duffham, going on with his supper.
“A ghost,” said Tod, grimly. “A dead man.”
“What good can I do them?”
“Well, the man has come to life again. Not for long, though, I should say, judging by his looks. You are not to go and tell about it, mind.”
“Tell what?”
“That he is alive, instead of being, as is supposed, under a gravestone in yonder churchyard. I am not sure but that you went to his funeral.”
Tod’s significant tone, half serious, half mocking, attracted Duffham’s curiosity more even than the words. But he still went on with his eels.
“Who is it?”
“Nash Caromel. There. Don’t fall off in a faint. Caromel has come to life.”
Down went Duffham’s fork. “Why — what on earth do you mean?”
“It is not a joke,” said Tod. “Nash Caromel has been alive all this time, concealed in his house — just as Francis Radcliffe was concealed in the tower. The Squire is with him now — and he is very ill.”
Duffham appealed to me. “Is this true, Johnny Ludlow?”
“Yes, sir, it is. We found him out to-night. He looks as if he were dying. Dobbs is sure he is. You never saw anything so like a ghost.”
Leaving his eels now, calling out to old Nomy that she might take away the supper, Duffham came off with us at once. Dobbs ran up as we passed his forge, and went with us to the turning, talking eagerly.
“If you can cure him, Mr. Duffham, sir, I should take it as a great favour, like, showed to myself,” spoke the blacksmith. “I’d not have pounced upon him for all the world, to give him pain, in the state he’s in. He looks as if he were dying.”
They were in the kitchen still, when Grizzel opened the door to us, the fire bigger and hotter than ever. The first thing Duffham did was to order Caromel to bed, and to have a good fire lighted in his room.
But there was no hope for Nash Caromel. The Squire told us so going home that night. Duffham thought about ten days more would see the end of him.
II.
“And how have things gone during my short absence, Grizzel?” demanded Miss Gwinny Nave, alighting from the tax-cart the following morning, upon her return to Caromel’s Farm.
“Oh, pretty well,” answered Grizzel, who in her heart detested Miss Gwinny and all the Naves. “The master seems weaker. He have took to his bed, and got a fire in his room.”
“When did he do that?”
“He came down last night after you went, Miss Gwinny, and sat over this here kitchen fire for ever so long. Then he went up to bed, and I lighted him a fire and took him up some hot arrowroot with a wine glass o’ brandy in it. Shivering with cold, he was.”
“And he has not got up this morning?”
“No; and he says he does not mean to get up. ‘I’ve taken to my bed for good, Grizzel,’ he says to me this morning when I went in to light the fire again and see what he’d eat for breakfast. And I think he has, Miss Gwinny.”
Which information considerably lightened the doubt which was tormenting Miss Nave’s mind. She wanted, oh how badly, and was wanted, to remain at the Rill, being sorely needed there; but she had not seen her way clear to do it. If Nash was indeed confined to his bed, she might perhaps venture to leave him for a day or two to Grizzel.
But, please don’t think old Grizzel mean for keeping in what had taken place: she was only obeying orders. Duffham and the Squire had laid their heads together and then talked to Caromel; and it was agreed that for the present nothing should be disclosed. They gave their orders to Grizzel, and her master confirmed them.
