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Updated: June 25, 2025
Tadman stood a little way behind him, in a merino gown, and a new bonnet, extorted somehow from the reluctant Stephen. She was full of smiles and cordial greetings for the bride, who did not even see her. Neither did Ellen Carley see the awkward figure of her bridegroom. A mist was before her eyes, as if there had been an atmosphere of summer blight or fog in the village church.
"It was your own wish, Stephen," answered Mrs. Tadman. "My own fiddlesticks! Of course I didn't care to see my wood and coals burning to waste when the sun was shining enough to melt any one. But when a man comes home wet to the skin, he doesn't want to come into a room like an ice-house. Call the girl, and tell her to light a blazing fire while I go and change my clothes.
Tadman had only carried out his commands in a modified degree, and he immediately ordered the servant to put a couple of logs on the fire, and then drew the table close up to the hearth, and sat down to his tea with some appearance of satisfaction.
It was not a conscience very difficult to appease. And as for his daughter's pallid looks, those of course were only natural to the occasion. Mr. Whitelaw and Mrs. Tadman were at the church when the bailiff and his daughter arrived.
Having submitted to be the scapegoat of her father's sin, she bore her burden very calmly, and fulfilled the sacrifice without any outward mark of martyrdom. She went about the work of the farm-house with a resolute active air that puzzled Mrs. Tadman, who had fully expected the young wife would play the fine lady, and leave all the drudgery of the household to her.
"Quite right, Nell," he said; "we don't want any foolish fuss, or a pack of people making themselves drunk at our expense. You and your father can come quietly to Crosber church, and Mrs. Tadman and me will meet you there, and the thing's done. The marriage wouldn't be any the tighter if we had a hundred people looking on, and the Bishop of Winchester to read the service."
"Perhaps not," answered the widow, shaking her head with mysterious significance; "but his wife won't think that; and when he's got a wife he'll want her to be his housekeeper, and to pinch and scrape as I've pinched and scraped for him. Lord help her!" concluded Mrs. Tadman, with a faint groan, which was far from complimentary to her relative's character.
Whitelaw and his companion were alighting. The stranger was rather a handsome man, Mrs. Tadman saw at the first glance, tall and broad-shouldered, clad in dark-gray trousers, a short pilot-coat, and a wide-awake hat; but with a certain style even in this rough apparel which was not the style of agricultural Malsham, an unmistakable air that belongs to a dweller in great cities.
Martha came and lighted a fire under Mrs. Tadman's direction. That lady was inclined to look somewhat uneasily upon the operation; for the grate had been used constantly throughout a long winter, and the chimney had not been swept since last spring, whereby Mrs. Tadman was conscious of a great accumulation of soot about the massive old brickwork and ponderous beams that spanned the wide chimney.
Tadman laughed a shrill hard laugh, and rubbed her skinny hands with an air of satisfaction. "You're not easy to please, Miss Carley," she said; "most folks think a deal of Wyncomb; for, you see, it's only them that live in a house as can know how dull it is; and as to the place being haunted, I never heard tell of anything of that kind.
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