Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “And what news have you brought from the Rill, ma’am?” questioned Grizzel, who was making a custard pudding at the kitchen table. “I hope you found things better than you feared.”

  “They could not well be worse,” sighed Miss Gwinny, untying her bonnet. She had not the beauty of Charlotte. Her light complexion was like brick-dust, and her hair was straw-coloured. Not but that she was proud of her hair, wearing it in twists, with one ringlet trailing over the left shoulder. “Your mistress lies unconscious still; it is feared the brain is injured; and papa’s leg is broken in two places.”

  “Alack a-day?” cried Grizzel, lifting her hands in consternation. “Oh, but I am sorry to hear it, Miss Gwendolen! And the pretty little boy?”

  Miss Gwendolen shook her head. “The croup came on again last night worse than ever,” she said, with a rising sob. “They don’t know whether they will save him.”

  Grizzel brushed away some tears as she began to beat up her eggs. She was a tender-hearted old thing, and loved little Dun. Miss Nave put aside her bonnet and shawl, and turned to the staircase to pay a visit to Nash. But she looked back to ask a question.

  “Then, I am to understand that you had no trouble with the master last night, Grizzel? He did not want to force himself out?”

  “The time for that has gone by, ma’am, I think,” answered Grizzel, evasively; not daring and not wishing to confess that he had forced himself out, and what the consequences were. “He seems a deal weaker to-day, Miss Gwinny, than I’ve ever seen him.”

  And when Miss Gwinny got into Nash’s room she found the words true. Weak, inert, fading, there lay poor Nash. With the discovery, all struggle had ceased; and it is well known that to resign one’s self to weakness quietly, makes weakness ten times more apparent. One thing struck her greatly: the hollow sound in the voice. Had it come on suddenly? If not, how was it she had never noticed it before? It struck her with a sort of unpleasant chill: for she believed that peculiar hollowness is generally the precursor of death.

  “You are feeling worse, Nash, Grizzel says,” she observed; and she thought she had never seen him looking half so ill.

  “Oh, I am all right, Gwendolen,” answered he. “What of Charlotte and the child?”

  Sitting down on the edge of the large bed, Gwendolen told him all there was to tell. Her papa would get well in time, though he could not be moved yet awhile; but Charlotte and the child were lying in extreme danger.

  “Dear me! dear me!” he said, and began to cry, as Grizzel had begun. When a man is reduced, as Nash was, faint in mind and in body, the tears are apt to lie near the eyes.

  “And there’s nobody to attend upon them but Mrs. Smith and her maids — two of the stupidest country wenches you ever saw,” said Gwendolen. “I did not know how to come away this morning. The child is more than one person’s work.”

  “Why did you come?”

  “Because I could not trust you; you know that, Nash. You want to be up to your tricks too often.”

  “My tricks!”

  “Yes. Going out of doors at night. I’m sure it is a dreadful responsibility that’s thrown upon me. And all for your own sake!”

  “You need no longer fear that — if you call my going out the responsibility. I shall never get out of this bed again, Gwinny.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Look at me,” answered Nash. “See if you think it likely. I do not.”

  She shook her head doubtingly. He certainly did look too ill to stir — but she remembered the trouble there had been with him; the fierce, wild yearning for exit, that could not be controlled.

  “Are you not satisfied? Listen, then: I give you my solemn word of honour not to go out of doors; not to attempt to do so. You must go back to Charlotte and the boy.”

  “I’ll see later,” decided Gwinny. “I shall stay here till the afternoon, at any rate.”

  And when the afternoon came she took her departure for the Rill. Convinced by Nash’s state that he could not quit his bed, and satisfied at length by his own solemn and repeated assurances that he would not, Gwinny Nave consigned him to the care of Grizzel, and quitted Caromel’s Farm.

  Which left the field open again, you perceive. And the Squire and Duffham were there that evening as they had been the previous one.

  It was a curious time — the few days that ensued. Gwendolen Nave came over for an hour or two every other day, but otherwise Caromel’s Farm was a free house. Her doubts and fears were gone, for Nash grew worse very rapidly; and, though he sat up in his room sometimes, he could hardly have got downstairs though the house were burning — as Grizzel put it. And he seemed so calm, so tranquil, so entirely passive under his affliction, so resigned to his enfeebled state, so averse to making exertion of any kind, that Miss Gwinny could not have felt much easier had he been in the burial-ground where Church Dykely supposed him to be.

  What with his past incarceration, which had endured twelve months, and what with the approach of death, which he had seen looming for pretty nearly half that time, Nash Caromel’s conscience had come back to him. It was pricking him in more corners than one. As his love for Charlotte Nave weakened — and it had been going down a long time, for he saw what the Naves were now, and what they had done for him — his love for Charlotte Tinkle came back, and he began to wish he could set wrongs to rights. That never could be done; he had put it out of his power; but he meant to make some little reparation, opportunity being allowed him.

  “I want to make a will, Todhetley,” he said one evening to the Squire, as he sat by the fire, dressed, a huge carriage-rug thrown on his knees for warmth. “I wonder if my lawyer could be induced to come to me?”

  “Do you mean Nave?” retorted the Squire, who could not for the life of him help having a fling at Caromel once in a way. “He has been your lawyer of late years.”

  “You know I don’t mean Nave; and if I did mean him he could not come,” said poor Nash. “I mean our family lawyer, Crow. Since I discarded him for Nave he has turned the cold shoulder upon me. When I’ve met him in the street at Evesham, he has either passed me with a curt nod or looked another way. I would rather have Crow than anybody, for he’d be true, I know, if he could be induced to come.”

  “I’ll see about it,” said the Squire.

  “And you’ll be executor, won’t you, Todhetley? you and Duffham.”

  “No,” said the Squire. “And what sort of a will are you going to make?”

  “I should like to be just,” sighed Nash. “As just as I know how. As just as I can be under the unfortunate circumstances I am placed in.”

  “That you have placed yourself in, Caromel.”

  “True. I think of it night and day. But she ought to be provided for. And there’s the boy!”

  “Who ought to be?”

  “My second wife.”

  “I don’t say to the contrary. But there is somebody else, who has a greater and prior claim upon you.”

  “I know. My heart would be good to leave her all. But that would hardly be just. Poor Charlotte, how patient she has been!”

  “Ah, you threw off a good woman when you threw her off. And when you made that other infamous will, leaving her name out of it — —”

  “It was Nave made it,” interrupted Nash, as hotly as his wasted condition allowed him to speak. “He got another lawyer to draw it up, for look’s sake — but he virtually made it. And, Todhetley, I must — I must get another one made,” he added, getting more and more excited; “and there’s no time to be lost. If I die to-night that will would have to stand.”

  With the morning light the Squire went off to Evesham, driving Bob and Blister, and saw the lawyer, Crow — an old gentleman with a bald head. The two shut themselves up in a private room, and it seemed as if they never meant to come out again.

  First of all, old Crow had to recover his astonishment at hearing Nash Caromel was living, and that took him some time; next, he had to get over his disinclination and refusal — t
o act again for Nash, and that took him longer.

  “Mind,” said he at last, “if I do consent to act — to see the man and make his will — it will be done out of the respect I bore his father and his brother, and because I don’t like to stand in the way of an act of justice. Mrs. Nash Caromel was here yesterday — —”

  “Mrs. Nash Caromel!” interrupted the Squire, in a puzzle, for his thoughts had run over to Charlotte Nave. Which must have been very foolish, seeing she was in bed with a damaged head.

  “I speak of his wife,” said the old gentleman, loftily. “I have never called any other woman Mrs. Nash Caromel. Her uncle, Tinkle, of Inkberrow, called about the transfer of some of his funded property, and she was with him. I respect that young woman, Squire Todhetley.”

  “Ay, to be sure. So do I. Well, now, you will let me drive you back this afternoon, and you’ll take dinner with me, and we’ll go to Caromel’s Farm afterwards. We never venture there before night; that Miss Gwinny Nave makes her appearance sometimes in the daytime.”

  “It must be late in the afternoon then,” said the lawyer, rather crossly — for he did not enter into the business with a good grace yet.

  “All the same to me,” acquiesced the pater, pleased at having got his consent on any terms.

  And when the Squire drove in that evening just at the dinner-hour and brought Lawyer Crow with him, we wondered what was agate. Old Jacobson, who had called in, and been invited to stay by the mater, was as curious as anything over it, and asked the Squire aside, what he was up to, that he must employ Crow instead of his own man.

  The will Nash Caromel wished to make was accomplished, signed and sealed, himself and this said Evesham lawyer being alone privy to its contents. Dobbs the blacksmith was fetched in, and he and Grizzel witnessed it.

  And, as if Nash Caromel had only lived to make the will, he went galloping on to death at railroad speed directly it was done. A change took place in him the same night. His bell rang for Grizzel, and the old woman thought him dying.

  But he rallied a bit the next day: and when the Squire got there in the evening, he was sitting up by the fire dressed. And terribly uneasy.

  “I want to see her,” he began, before the Squire had time to say, How are you, or How are you not. “I can’t die in peace unless I see her. And it will not be long first now. I am a bit better, but I thought I was dying in the night: has Grizzel told you?”

  The Squire nodded in silence. He was struck with the change in Nash.

  “Who is it you want to see? Charlotte Tinkle?”

  “Ay, you’ve guessed it. ’Twasn’t hard to guess, was it? I want to see her, Todhetley. I know she’d come.”

  Little doubt of that. Had Nash wanted her to visit him in the midst of a fiery furnace, she’d have rushed into it headlong.

  But there were difficulties in the way. Charlotte Tinkle was not one of your strong-minded women who are born without nerves; and to tell her that Nash Caromel was living, and not dead, might send her into hysterics for a week. Besides that, Harry Tinkle was Nash Caromel’s bitter enemy: if he learnt the truth he might be for handing him over, dying or living, to old Jones the constable.

  “I don’t see how she is to be got here, and that’s the truth, Caromel,” spoke the Squire, awaking from his reverie. “It’s not a thing I should like to undertake. Here comes Duffham.”

  “I know what you are thinking of — Harry Tinkle,” returned Nash, as Duffham felt his pulse. “When I was supposed to have died, balking him of his revenge, he grew mad with rage. For a month afterwards he abused me to everybody in the most atrocious terms: in public rooms, in — —”

  “Who told you that?” interrupted the Squire. “Nave?”

  “Nave. I saw no one else to tell me.” Duffham laughed.

  “Then it was just as false as Nave is. You might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

  Nash looked up. “False! — was it?”

  “Why, of course it was,” repeated the Squire. “I say you might have known Harry Tinkle better.”

  Nash sighed. “Well, I suppose you think he might give me trouble now. But he would hardly care to apprehend a dying man.”

  “We’ll see about it,” they said. Duffham undertook this expedition — if you can call it one. He found it easier than he anticipated. That same evening, upon quitting Caromel’s Farm, Duffham went mooning along, deep in thought, as to how he should make the disclosure to Charlotte, when he overtook her near his home. Her crape veil was thrown back; her face looked pale and quiet in the starlight.

  “You are abroad late,” said Duffham.

  “I went to see old Miss Pinner this afternoon, and stayed tea with her,” answered Charlotte. “And now I am going to run home.”

  “Would you mind coming in for a few minutes, Mrs. Caromel?” he asked, as they reached his door. “I have something to say to you.”

  “Can you say it another time? It is nine o’clock, and my mother will be wondering.”

  “No; another time may not do,” said Duffham. “Come in. I won’t detain you long.”

  And being just one of those yielding people that never assert a will of their own, in she went.

  Shut up in Duffham’s surgery, which was more remote from Nomy’s ears than the parlour, Duffham disclosed to her by degrees the truth. Whether he had to get out his sal-volatile over it, or to recover her from fits, we did not hear. One thing was certain: that when Mrs. Nash Caromel recommenced her walk homewards, she was too bewildered to know whether she went on her feet or her head. By that time on the following evening she would have seen her husband.

  At least, such was the programme Duffham carved out. But to that bargain, as he found the next day, there might be two words.

  Eleven was striking in the morning by the kitchen clock at Caromel’s Farm, when Grizzel saw Miss Gwinny driving in. The damaged gig had been mended, and she now drove backwards and forwards herself.

  “How’s the master?” asked she, when she entered the kitchen.

  “Very ill,” answered Grizzel. “He won’t be with us long, now, ma’am.”

  And when Miss Gwinny saw Nash, and saw how greatly he was altered in the last two days, she thought as Grizzel did — that death was close at hand. Under these circumstances, she sat down to reflect on what she ought to do: whether to remain herself in the house, or whether to go back to the Rill and report to her father and sister. For the latter had come out of her insensibility; the doctors said there was no permanent injury, and she could soon be removed home if she wished to be.

  “What do you think, Grizzel?” she inquired, condescending to ask counsel. “It does not seem right to leave him — and you won’t like to be left alone, either, at the last. And I don’t see that any end will be gained by my hastening back to tell them. They’ll know it soon enough: and they cannot come to him.”

  “As you please, Miss Gwinny,” replied Grizzel, trembling lest she should remain and complicate matters, but not daring to urge her departure; Gwinny Nave being given, as a great many more ladies are, to act by the rules of contrary in the matter of advice. “It seems hardly right, though, not to let the mistress know he is dying. And I am glad the child’s well: dear little thing!”

  Gwinny Nave sat pulling at her one straw ringlet, her brow knitted in abstraction. Various reflections, suggesting certain unpleasant facts, passed rapidly through her mind. That Nash would not be here many days longer, perhaps not many hours, was a grave fact: and then, what of the after-necessities that would arise? A sham funeral had gone out of that house not very long ago: but how was the real funeral to go out, and who was to make the arrangements for it? The truth of Nash Caromel’s being alive, and of the trick which had been played, would have to be disclosed then. And Mr. Nave was incapacitated; he could do nothing, and her sister could do as little; and it seemed to be all falling upon herself, Gwinny; and who was to know but she might be punished for letting Nash lie and die without calling in a doctor to him?

  With every
fresh moment of thought, some darker complication presented itself. Miss Gwinny began to see that she had better get away, and leave old Grizzel to it. The case must be laid before her father. He might invent some scheme to avoid exposure: for though Lawyer Nave was deprived for the present of action, his mind was not less keen and fertile than usual.

  “I think, Grizzel, that the mistress ought to be told how ill he is,” said she, at length. “I shall go back to the Rill. Do all you can for the master: I dare say he will rally.”

  “That he never will,” spoke Grizzel, on impulse.

  “Now don’t you be obstinate,” returned Miss Gwinny.

  Gwendolen Nave drove back to the Rill. Leaving, as she thought, all responsibility upon old Grizzel. And, that evening, the coast being clear again, Charlotte Tinkle, piloted by Duffham, came to Caromel’s Farm and had an interview with her once recreant husband. It lasted longer than Duffham had bargained for; every five minutes he felt inclined to go and knock at the door. Her sobs and his dying voice, which seemed to be sobbing too, might be heard by all who chose to listen. At last Duffham went in and said that it must end: the emotion was bad for Nash. She was kneeling before the sofa on which he lay, her tears dropping.

  “Good-bye, good-bye, Charlotte,” he whispered. “I have never cared for any one as I cared for you. Believe that. God bless you, my dear — and forgive me!”

  And the next to go in was Harry Tinkle — to clasp Caromel’s hand, and to say how little he had needed to fear him. And the next was the Reverend Mr. Holland; Nash had asked for the parson to be sent for.

  Grizzel had a surprise the next day. She had just taken some beef-tea up to the master, which Duffham had called out for — for the end was now so near that the doctor had not chosen to defer his visit till dark — when a closed fly drove up, out of which stepped Miss Gwinny and her sister. Old Grizzel dropped the waiter, thinking it must be her mistress’s ghost.