Johnny Ludlow, Third Series

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.

THE LAST OF THE CAROMELS

I

When a house is popularly allowed to be haunted, and its inmates grow thin and white and restless, it is not the best place in the world for children: and this was supposed by Church Dykely to be the reason why Mrs. Nash Caromel the Second had never allowed her child to come home since the death of its father. At first it was said that she would not risk having him lest he should catch the fever Nash had died of: but, when the weeks went on, and the months went on, and years (so far as could be seen) were likely to go on, and still the child was kept away, people put it down to the other disagreeable fact.

Any way, Mrs. Nash Caromel—or Charlotte Nave, as you please—did not have the boy home. Little Dun was kept at his grandfather’s, Lawyer Nave; and Miss Harriet Nave took care of him: the other sister, Gwinny, remaining at Caromel’s Farm. Towards the close of spring, the spring which followed the death of Nash, when Dun was about two years old, he caught whooping-cough and had it badly. In August he was sent for change of air to a farm called the Rill, on the other side of Pershore, Miss Harriet Nave taking the opportunity to go jaunting off elsewhere. The change of air did the child good, and he was growing strong quickly, when one night early in September croup attacked him, and he lay in great danger. News of it was sent to his mother in the morning. It drove her nearly wild with fear, and she set off for the Rill in a gig, her father driving it: as already spoken of. So rare was the sight of her now, for she kept indoors at Caromel’s Farm as a snail keeps to its shell, that no wonder Church Dykely thought it an event, and talked of it all the day.

Mr. Nave and his daughter reached the Rill—which lay across country, somewhere between Pershore and Wyre—in the course of the morning, and found little Dun gasping with croup, and inhaling steam from a kettle. Moore told us there was nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream; but to Charlotte Nave, otherwise Caromel, there was nothing sweet at all except this little Dun. He was the light of her existence; the apple of her eye, to put it poetically. She sat down by the bed-side, her pale face (so pale and thin to what it used to be) bent lovingly upon him, and wiping away the tears by stealth that came into her eyes. In the afternoon Dun was better; but the doctor would not say he was out of danger.

“If I could but stay here for the night! I can’t bear to leave him,” Charlotte snatched an opportunity to say to her father, when their friends, the farmer and his wife, were momentarily occupied.

“But you can’t, you know,” returned Lawyer Nave. “You must be home by sunset.”

“By sunset? Nay, an hour after that would do.”

“No, it will not do. Better be on the safe side.”

“It seems cruel that I should have to leave him,” she exclaimed, with a sob.

“Nonsense, Charlotte! The child will do as well without you as with you. You may see for yourself how much better he is. The farm cannot be left to itself at night: remember that. We must start in half-an-hour.”

No more was said. Nave went to see about getting ready the gig; Charlotte, all down in the dumps, stayed with the little lad, and let him pull about as he would her golden hair, and drank her tea by his side. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (good hospitable people, who had stood by Charlotte Nave through good report and ill report, believing no ill of her) pressed her to stay all night, promising, however, that every care should be taken of Duncan, if she did not.