The Squire had caught sight of some one turning to the door from the covered path. I saw the f.a.g-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 pa.s.sed 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.
I.
People are apt to say, when telling of a surprise, that a feather would have knocked them down. I nearly fell without the feather and without the touch. To see a dead woman standing straight up before me, and to hear her say "How are you, and is the Squire at home?" might have upset the balance of a giant.
But I could not be mistaken. There, waiting at the front-door to come in, her face within an inch of mine, was Nash Caromel"s first wife, Charlotte Tinkle; who for some two years now had been looked upon as dead and buried over in California.
"Is Mr. Todhetley at home!" she repeated. "And can I see him?"
"Yes," I answered, coming partially out of my bewilderment. "Do you mind staying here just a minute, while I tell him?"
For, to hand in a dead woman, might take him aback, as it had taken me.
The pater stood bolt upright, waiting for Mrs. Scott (as he had supposed it to be) to enter.
"It is not Mrs. Scott," I whispered, shutting the door and going close up to him. "It--it is some one else. I hardly like to tell you, sir; she may give you a fright."
"Why, what does the lad mean?--what are you making a mystery of now, Johnny?" cried he, staring at me. "Give me a fright! I should like to see any woman give me that. Is it Mrs. Scott, or is it not?"
"It is some one we thought dead, sir."
"Now, Johnny, don"t be a m.u.f.f. Somebody you thought dead! What on earth"s come to you, lad? Speak out!"
"It is Nash Caromel"s first wife, sir: Charlotte Tinkle."
The pater gazed at me as a man bereft of reason. I don"t believe he knew whether he stood on his head or his heels. "Charlotte Tinkle!" he exclaimed, backing against the curtain. "What, come to life, Johnny?"
"Yes, sir, and she wants to see you. Perhaps she has never been dead."
"Bless my heart and mind! Bring her in."
The first thing Charlotte the First did when she came in and the Squire clasped her by her two hands, was to burst into a fit of sobbing. Some wine stood on the sideboard; the Squire poured her out a gla.s.s, and she untied the strings of her bonnet as she sat down.
"If I might take it off for a minute?" she said. "I have had it on all the way from Liverpool."
"Do so, my dear. Goodness me! I think I must be in a dream. And so you are not dead!"
"Yes, I knew it was what you must have all been thinking," she answered, stifling her sobs. "Poor Nash!--what a dreadful thing it is! I cannot imagine how the misconception can have arisen."
"What misconception?" asked the pater, whose wits, once gone a wool-gathering, rarely came back in a hurry.
"That I had died."
"Why, that friend of yours with whom you were staying--Bunn--Munn--which was it, Johnny?--wrote to tell your husband so."
Mrs. Nash Caromel, sitting there in the twilight, her brown hair as smooth as ever and her eyes as meek, looked at the Squire in surprise.
"Oh no, that could not have been; Mr. Munn would not be likely to write anything of the sort. Impossible."
"But, my dear lady, I read the letter. Your husband brought it to me as soon as it reached him. You remained at San Francisco, very ill after Nash"s departure, and you got no better, and died at last of low fever."
She shook her head. "I was very poorly indeed when Nash left, but I grew better shortly. I had no low fever, and I certainly did not die."
"Then why did Munn write it?"
"He did not write it. He could not have written it. I am quite certain of that. He and his wife are my very good and dear friends, and most estimable people."
"The letter certainly came to your husband," persisted the Squire. "I read it with my own eyes. It was dated San Francisco, and signed Francis Munn."
"Then it was a forgery. But why any one should have written it, or troubled themselves about me and my husband at all, I cannot imagine."
"And then, Nash--Nash---- Good gracious, what a complication!" cried the Squire, breaking off what he meant to say, as the thought of Charlotte Nave crossed his mind.
"I know," she quietly put in: "Nash has married again."
It was a complication, and no mistake, all things considered. The Squire rubbed up his hair and deliberated, and then bethought himself that it might be as well to keep the servants out of the room. So I went to tell old Thomas that the master was particularly engaged with a friend, and no one was to come in unless rung for. Then I ran upstairs to whisper the news to the mother--and it pretty nearly sent her into a fit of hysterics.
Charlotte Caromel was entering on her history to the Squire when I got back. "Yes," she said, "I and my husband went to California, having found little luck in America. Nash made one or two ventures there also, but nothing seemed to succeed; not as well even as it did in America, and he resolved to go back there, and try at something or other again.
He sailed for New York, leaving me in San Francisco with Francis Munn and his wife; for I had been ill, and was not strong enough for the tedious voyage. The Munns kept a dry-goods store at San Francisco, and----"
"A dry-goods store!" interrupted the Squire.
"Yes. You cannot afford to be fastidious over there; and to be in trade is looked upon as an honour, rather than the contrary. Francis Munn was the youngest son of a country gentleman in England; he went to California to make his fortune at anything that might turn up; and it ended in his marrying and keeping a store. They made plenty of money, and were very kind to me and Nash. Well, Nash started for New York, leaving me with them, and he wrote to me soon after his arrival there.
Things were looking gloomy in the States, he said, and he felt inclined to take a run over to England, and ask his brother Miles to help him with some money. I wrote back a letter in duplicate, addressing one to the agents" in New York, the other to Caromel"s Farm--not knowing, you perceive, in which place he might be. No answer reached me--but people think little of the safety of letters out there, so many seem to miscarry. We fancied Nash might be coming back to San Francisco and did not trouble himself to write: like me, he is not much of a scribe. But the months went on, and he did not come; he neither came nor wrote."
"What did you think hindered him?"
"We did not know what to think--except, as I say, that the letters had miscarried. One day Mr. Munn brought in a file of English newspapers for me and his wife to read: and in one of them I saw an announcement that puzzled me greatly--the marriage of one Nash Caromel, of Caromel"s Farm, to Charlotte Nave. Just at first it startled me; I own that; but I felt so sure it could not be my Nash, my husband, that I remained only puzzled to know what Nash Caromel it could be."
"There is only one Nash Caromel," growled the Squire, half inclined to tell her she was a simpleton--taking things in this equable way.
"I only knew of him; but I thought he must have some relative, a cousin perhaps, of the same name, of whom I had not heard. However," continued Charlotte, "I wrote then to Caromel"s Farm, telling Nash what we had read, and asking him what it meant, and where he was. But that letter shared the fate of the former one, and obtained no reply. In the course of time we saw another announcement--The wife of Nash Caromel of a son.