Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

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.”

Nash Caromel walked straight away with the last words. Either to get rid of the subject, or to join some people who had just then crossed the top of the path.

“Caromel does not like talking of her: I can see that, Johnny,” remarked the Squire to me later. “I don’t believe he’d have done as he did, but for this second Charlotte throwing her wiles across his path. He fell into the snare and his conscience pricks him.”

“I dare say, sir, it will come right with time. She is very pretty.”

“Yes, most crooked things come straight with time,” assented the Squire. “Perhaps this one will.”

Would it, though!

The weeks and the months went on. Caromel’s Farm seemed to prosper, its mistress being a most active manager, ruling with an apparently soft will, but one firm as iron; and little Dun grew to be about fifteen months old. The cow might have behaved ungenteelly to him, as Miss Bailey’s ghost says to Captain Smith, but it had not hurt the little fellow, or his stout legs either, which began now to be running him into all kinds of mischief. And so the time came round again to August—just a year after the fête, and nearly twenty-two months after Nash’s second marriage.

One evening, Tod being out and Mrs. Todhetley in the nursery, I was alone with the Squire in the twilight. The great harvest moon was rising behind the trees; and the Squire, talking of some parish grievance that he had heard of from old Jones the constable, let it rise: while I was wishing he would call for lights that I might get on with “The Old English Baron,” which I was reading for about the seventeenth time.

“And you see, Johnny, if Jones had been firm, as I told him this afternoon, and taken the fellow up, instead of letting him slope off and be lost, the poachers– Who’s this coming in, lad?”

The Squire had caught sight of some one turning to the door from the covered path. I saw the fag-end of a petticoat.

“I think it must be Mrs. Scott, sir. The mother said she had promised to come over one of these first evenings.”

“Ay,” said the Squire. “Open the door for her, Johnny.”

I had the front-door open in a twinkling, and saw a lady with a travelling-cloak on her arm. But she bore no resemblance to Mrs. Scott.

“Is Mr. Todhetley at home?”

The soft voice gave me a thrill and a shock, though years had elapsed since I heard it. A confused doubt came rushing over me; a perplexing question well-nigh passed my lips: “Is it a living woman or a dead one?” For there, before me, stood Nash Caromel’s dead wife, Charlotte the First.

CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE