Walter Dance's situation appeared to be critical. Miss Castlemaine (entirely unused to accidents) feared it was so, and he himself fully believed it. He thought that great common conqueror of us all, who is called the King of Terrors, was upon him, Death, and it brought to him indeed a terror belonging not to this world.
"I am dying," he moaned; "I am dying." And his frame shook as with an awful ague, and his teeth chattered, and great beads of water stood on his livid face. "Lord, pardon me! Oh, ma'am, pray for me."
The young man had been all his life so especially undemonstrative that his agitation was the more notable now from the very contrast. Mary, full of fear herself and little less agitated than he, could only strive to appear calm, as she bent over him and took his hands.
"Nay, Walter, it may not be as serious as you fear; I think it is not," she gently said. "Mr. Parker will be here presently. Don't excite yourself, my good lad; don't."
"I am dying," he reiterated; "I shall never get over this. Oh, ma'am, you ladies be like parsons for goodness: couldn't you say a prayer?"
She knelt down and put up her hands to say a few words of earnest prayer; just what she thought might best comfort him. One of his hands lay still, but he stretched the other up, suffering it to touch hers. These ladies of the Nunnery were looked upon by the fishermen as being very near to Heaven nearer (let it be said under the breath) than was Parson Marston.
"I've done a many wicked things, lady," he began when her voice ceased, apparently saying it in the light of a confession. "I've often angered father and grandmother beyond bearing: and this night work, I've never liked it. I suppose it's a wrong thing in God's sight: but father, he brought me in to't, as 'twere, and what was I to do?"
"What night work?" she asked.
But there came no answer. Mary would not repeat the question. He was lying in extreme agitation, shaking painfully. She put the brandy-and-water to his lips.
"I must tell it afore I go," he resumed, as if in response to some battle with himself. "Ma'am you'll promise me never to repeat it again?"
"I never will," she replied earnestly, remembering that death-bed confessions, made under the seal of secrecy, should, of all things, be held sacred. "If you have aught to confess, Walter, that it may comfort you to speak, tell it me with every confidence, for I promise you that it shall never pass my lips."
"It's not for my sake, you see, that it must be kept, but for their sakes: the Castlemaines."
"The what?" she cried, not catching the words.
"And for father's and the Commodore's, and all the rest of 'em. It would spoil all, you see, ma'am, for the future--and they'd never forgive me as I lay in my grave."
She wondered whether he was wandering. "I do not understand you, Walter."
"It all belongs to Mr. Castlemaine, father thinks, though the Commodore manages it, and makes believe it's his. Sometimes he comes down, the master, and sometimes Mr. Harry; but it's Teague and us that does it all."
"What is it that you are talking of?" she reiterated.
"The smuggling work," he whispered.
"The smuggling work?"
"Yes, the smuggling work. Oh, ma'am, don't ever tell of it! It would just be the ruin of father and the men, and anger Mr. Castlemaine beyond bearing."
Her thoughts ran off to Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, and to the poor fishermen, whom it was that officer's mission to suspect of possessing drams of unlawful brandy and pouches of contraband tobacco. She certainly believed the sick brain had lost its balance.
"We've run a cargo to-night," he whispered; "a good one too. The rest had cleared off, and there was only me left to lock the doors. When I see the glimmer of your light, ma'am, and somebody moving, I thought it was one of the men left behind, but when I got up and found it was a woman's garments, I feared it was a spy of the preventive officers come to betray us."
"What cargo did you run?" she inquired, putting the one question from amid her mind's general chaos.
"I fancy 'twas lace. It generally is lace, father thinks. Nothing pays like that."
Curious ideas were crowding on her, as she remembered the boats putting backwards and forwards that night from the two-masted vessel, lying at anchor. Of what strange secret was she being made cognisant? Could it be that some of the mystery attaching to the Friar's Keep was about to be thus strangely and most unexpectedly cleared to her?
"Walter, let me understand. Do you mean to say that smuggling is carried on in connection with the Friar's Keep?"
"Yes, it is. It have been for years. Once a month, or so, there's a cargo run: sometimes it's oftener. An underground passage leads from the Keep to the Hutt, and the goods are stowed away in the cellar there till the Commodore can take 'em away to the receivers in his spring cart."
"And who knows of all this?" she asked, after a pause. "I mean in Greylands."
"Only father and me," he faintly said, for he was getting exhausted. "They've not dared to trust anybody else. That's quite enough to know it--us. The sailors bring in the goods, and we wheel 'em up the passage: Teague, and me, and father. I've seen Mr. Harry put his hand to the barrow afore now. George Hallet--Jane's brother--he knew of it, and helped too. We had to be trusted with it, him and me, being on father's boat."
In the midst of her compassion and pity for this young man, a feeling of resentment at his words arose in Mary's heart. There might be truth in the tale he told in regard to the smuggling--nay, the manoeuvres of the boats that night and the unsuspected door she had seen open to the narrow beach, seemed to confirm it: but that this nefarious work was countenanced by, or even known to, the Master of Greylands, she rejected utterly. If there was, in her belief, one man more honourable than any other on the face of the earth, more proudly conscious of his own rectitude, it was her Uncle James. Pride had always been his failing. Walter Dance must be either partially wandering in mind to say it; or else must have taken up a fallacious fancy: perhaps been imposed upon by his father from some private motive. The work must be Teague's, and his only.
"Walter, you are not in a condition to be contradicted," she said gently, "but I know you are mistaken as to Mr. Castlemaine. He could not hold any cognisance of such an affair of cheating as this--or his son either."
"Why, the business is theirs, ma'am; their very own: father don't feel a doubt of it. The Commodore only manages it for 'em."
"You may have been led to suppose that: but it is not, cannot be true. My Uncle James is the soul of honour. Can you suppose it likely that a gentleman like Mr. Castlemaine would lend himself to a long continued system of fraud?"
"I've always thought 'twas his," groaned Walter. "I've seen him there standing to look on."
"You must have been mistaken. Did you see him there to-night?"
"No, ma'am."
"Nor any other night, my poor lad, as I will venture to answer for."
"He might have been there to-night, though, without my seeing him," returned the young man, who seemed scarcely conscious of her words.
"How should you have left the vaults, but for this accident?" she asked, the question striking her.
"I had locked the door on the sea, and was going straight up the passage to the Hutt," he groaned, the pain in his side getting intolerable.
"One question, Walter, and then I will not trouble you with more," she breathed, and her voice took a trembling sound as she spoke. "Carry your thoughts back to that night, last February, when young Mr. Anthony was said to disappear within the Friar's Keep----"
"I know," he interrupted.
"Was any cargo run that night?"
"I can't tell," he answered, lifting his eyes for a moment to hers. "I was ill abed with a touch of the ague; I get it sometimes. I don't think father was abroad that night, either."
"Have you ever known, ever heard any hint, or rumour, from your father or the Commodore or the sailors who run these cargoes, that could throw light on Mr. Anthony's fate?"
"Never. Never a word."
"Who are the sailors that come?"
"Mostly foreigners. Is itverysinful?" he added in an access of agony, more bodily than mental, putting out his one hand to touch hers. "Very sinful to have helped at this, though father did lead me? Will God forgive it?"
"Oh yes, yes," she answered. "God is so merciful that He forgives every sin repented of--sins that are a vast deal blacker than this. Besides, you have not acted from your own will, it seems, but in obedience to authority."
"I think I'm dying," he murmured. "I can't bear this pain long."
She wiped the dew from his face, and again held the brandy-and-water to his lips. Walter Dance had always been in the highest degree sensitive, it may be said excruciatingly sensitive, to physical pain. Many another man, lying as he was now with these same injuries, would not have uttered a moan. Brave Tom Dance, his father, was wont to tell him that if ever he met with a sharpish hurt he'd turn out a very woman.
"If Doctor Parker would but come!" he cried restlessly. "Lady, you are sure he is sent for?"
As if to answer the doubt, the gate-bell rang out, and Mr. Parker's voice was heard, as he entered the Nunnery. Sister Ann had brought not only him, but John Bent also. Miss Castlemaine felt vexed and much surprised to see the latter: some faint idea, or hope, had been lying within her of keeping this untoward affair secret, at least for a few hours; and nobody had a longer tongue in a quiet way than the landlord of the Dolphin. She cast a look of reproach on the Sister.
"It was not my fault, madam," whispered Sister Ann, interpreting the glance. "Mr. Bent came over with us without as much as asking."
"Bless my heart, Walter Dance, here's a pretty kettle o' fish," began the surgeon, looking down on the patient. "You have shot yourself, Sister Ann says. And now, how did that come to happen?"
"Pistol went off unawares," groaned Walter. "I think I'm dying."
"Not just yet, let us hope," said the doctor cheerily, as he began to take off his coat and turn up his shirt-sleeves.
Sending Miss Castlemaine from the room, the doctor called for Sister Ann, who had helped him before in attending to accidents, and had as good a nerve as he. Mary, glad enough to be dismissed, went into the kitchen to Sister Phoeby, and there indulged in a sudden burst of tears. The events of the night had strangely unnerved her.
If Sister Ann exercised any speculation as to the cause of the displeasure visible in the Superior's face at the sight of John Bent, she set it down solely to the score of possible excitement to the patient. As she hastened to whisper, it was not her fault. Upon returning back from fetching Mr. Parker, he and she were bending their hasty steps across the road from the corner of the inn, when, to the astonishment of both, the voice of John Bent accosted them, sounding loud and clear in the silence of the night. Turning their heads, they saw the landlord standing at his open door.
"Keeping watch to see the sun rise, John?" asked the doctor jestingly.
"I am keeping watch for my lodger," replied the landlord in a grumbling tone, for he was feeling the want of his bed and, resented the being kept out of it. "Mr. North went off this afternoon to a distance with his sketch-book and things, ordering some supper to be ready at nine o'clock, as he should miss his dinner, and he has never come back again. It is to be hoped he will come; that we are not to have a second edition of the disappearance of young Anthony Castlemaine."
"Pooh!" quoth the doctor. "Mr. North has only lost his way."
"I hope it may prove so!" replied the landlord grimly: for his fears were at work, though at present they took no definite shape. "What sickness is calling you abroad at this hour, doctor?"
"Young Walter Dance has shot himself," interposed Sister Ann, who had been bursting with the strange news, and felt supremely elated at having somebody to tell it to.
"Walter Dance shot himself!" echoed the landlord, following them, upon impulse, to hear more. "How?--where? How did he do it?"
"Goodness knows!" returned Sister Ann. "He must have done it somewhere--and come to the Nunnery somehow. Sister Mary Ursula was still sitting up, we conclude--which was fortunate, as no time was lost. When we went to bed after prayers, she remained in the parlour to write letters."
In the astonishment created by the tidings, John Bent went with them to the Nunnery, leaving his own open door uncared for--but at that dead hour of the morning there was little fear of strangers finding it so. That was the explanation of his appearance. And there they were, the doctor and Sister Ann, busy with the wounded man, and John Bent satisfying his curiosity by listening to the few unconnected words of enlightenment that Walter chose to give as to the cause of the accident, and by fingering the pistol, which lay on the table.
"Will the injuries prove fatal?" asked Miss Castlemaine of the surgeon, when the latter at length came forth.
"Dear me, no!" was the reply, as he entered the parlour, at the door of which she stood. "Don't distress yourself by thinking of such a thing, my dear young lady. Blood makes a great show, you know; and no doubt the pain in the side is acute. There's no real cause for fear; not much damage, in fact: and he feels all reassured, now I have put him to rights."
"The ball was not in him?"
"Nothing of the kind. The side was torn a little and burnt, and of course was, for one who feels pain as he does, intolerably painful. When I tell you that the longest job will be the broken arm, and that it is the worse of the two, you may judge for yourself how slight it all is. Slight, of course, in comparison with what might have been, and with graver injuries."
"Did the ball go through the arm?"
"Only through the flesh. The bone no doubt snapped in falling: the arm must have got awkwardly doubled wader him somehow. We shall soon have him well again."
Mary gave vent to a little sob of thankfulness. It would have been an awful thing for her had his life been sacrificed. She felt somewhat faint herself, and sat down on the nearest chair.
"This has been too much for you," said the doctor; "you are not used to such things. And you must have been sitting up very late, my dear young lady--which is not at all right. Surely you could write your letters in the day-time!"
"I do things sometimes upon impulse; without reason," she answered with a faint smile. "Hearing sad news of an old friend of mine from Mrs. Hunter, whom I met at Greylands' Rest last evening, I sat down to write to her soon after my return."
"And spun your letter out unconsciously--it is always the case. For my part, I think there's a fascination in night work. Sit down when the house is still to pen a few minutes' letter to a friend, and ten to one but you find yourself still at it at the small hours of the morning. Well, it was lucky for young Dance that you were up. You heard him at the door at once, he says, and hastened to him."
A deep blush suffused her face. She could only tacitly uphold the deceit.
"His is rather a lame tale, though, by the way--what I can understand of it," resumed Mr. Parker. "However, it did not do to question him closely, and the lad was no doubt confused besides. We shall come to the bottom of it to-morrow."
"You are going home?" she asked.
"There's no necessity whatever for me to stay. We have made him comfortable for the rest of the night with pillows and blankets. Sister Ann means to sit up with him: not that she need do it. To-morrow we will move him to his own home."
"Will he be well enough for that?"
"Quite. He might have been carried there now had means been at hand. And do you go up to your bed at once, and get some rest," concluded the doctor, as he shook hands and took his departure.
John Bent had already gone home. To his great relief, the first object he saw was Mr. North, who arrived at the inn door, just as he himself did. The surgeon's supposition, spoken carelessly though it was proved to be correct. George North had missed his way in returning; had gone miles and miles out of the road, and then had to retrace his steps.
"I'm dead beat," he said to the landlord, with a half laugh. "Fearfully hungry, but too tired to eat. It all comes of my not knowing the country; and there was nobody up to enquire the way of. By daylight, I should not have made so stupid a mistake."
"Well, I have been worrying myself with all sorts of fancies, Sir," said John. "It seemed just as though you had gone off for good in the wake of young Mr. Anthony Castlemaine."
"I wish to goodness I had!" was the impulsive, thoughtless rejoinder, spoken with ringing earnestness.
"Sir!"
Mr. North recollected himself, and did what he could to repair the slip.
"I should at least have had the pleasure of learning where this Mr. Anthony Castlemaine had gone--and that would have been a satisfaction to you all generally," he said carelessly.
"You are making a joke of it, sir," said the landlord, in a tone of reproach. "With some of us it is a matter all too solemn: I fear it was so with him. What will you take, sir?"
"A glass of ale--and then I will go up to bed. I am, as I say, too tired to eat. And I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Bent, to have kept you up."
"That's nothing, now you've come back in safety," was the hearty reply. "Besides, I'm not sorry it has happened so, sir, for I've had an adventure. That young Walter Dance has gone and shot himself to-night; he is lying at the Grey Nunnery, and I have but now been over there with Mr. Parker.
"Why, how did he manage to do that?" cried Mr. North, who knew young Dance very well.
"I hardly know, sir. We couldn't make top or tail of what he said: and the doctor wouldn't have him bothered. It was something about shooting a night-bird with a pistol, and he shot himself instead."
"Where?"
"In the chapel ruins."
"In the chapel ruins!" echoed Mr. North--and he had it on the tip of his tongue to say that Walter Dance would not go to the chapel ruins at night for untold gold: but the landlord went on and interrupted the words.
"He seemed to say it was the chapel ruins, sir; but we might have misunderstood him. Any way, it sounds a bit mysterious. He was in a fine tremor of pain when the doctor got in, thinking he was dying."
"Poor fellow! It was only yesterday morning I went for a sail with him. Is he seriously injured?"
"No, sir; the damages turn out to be nothing much, now they are looked into."
"I am glad of that," said Mr. North; "I like young Dance. Goodnight to you, landlord. Or, rather, good-morning," he called back, as he went up the staircase.
Miss Castlemaine also went to her bed. The first thing she did on reaching her room was to look out for the two-masted vessel. Not a trace of it remained. It must have heaved its anchor and sailed away in the silence of the night.
Mr. Parker was over betimes at the Grey Nunnery in the morning. His patient was going on quite satisfactorily.
Reassured upon the point of there being no danger, and in considerably less pain than at first, Walter Dance's spirits had gone up in a proportionate ratio. He said he felt quite well enough to be removed home--which would be done after breakfast.
"Passato il pericolo, gabbato il santo," says the Italian proverb. We have ours somewhat to the same effect, beginning "When the devil was sick"--which being well known to the reader, need not be quoted. Young Mr. Walter Dance presented an apt illustration of the same. On the previous night, when he believed himself to be dying, he was ready and eager to tell every secret pressing on his soul: this morning, finding he was going to live, his mood had changed, and he could have bitten out his unfortunate tongue for its folly.
He was well disposed, as young men go, truthful, conscientious. It would have gone against the grain with him to do an injury to any living man. He lay dwelling on the injury he might now have done, by this disclosure, to many people--and they were just those people whom, of all the world, he would most care to cherish and respect. Well, there was but one thing to do now, he thought truthful though he was by nature, he must eat his words, and so try and repair the mischief.
Mary Ursula rose rather late. Walter Dance had had his breakfast when she got down, and she was told of the doctor's good report. Much commotion had been excited in the Nunnery when the Grey Ladies heard what had happened. They had their curiosity, just as other people have theirs; and Sister Ann gave them the version of the story which she had gathered. The young man had been up at the chapel ruins to shoot a night-bird, the pistol had gone off, wounding him in the arm and side, and he came crawling on all fours to the Grey Nunnery. The superior, Sister Mary Ursula, sitting up late at her letters, heard him at the door, helped him in, and called for assistance.
Well, it was a strange affair, the ladies decided; stranger than anything that had happened at the Grey Nunnery before: but they trusted he would get over it. And did not all events happen for the best! To think that it should be just that night, of all others, that Sister Mary Ursula should have remained below!
Mary Ursula went into the sick-room, and was surprised at the improved looks of the patient. His face had lost its great anxiety and was bright again. He looked up at her gratefully, and smiled.
"They are so kind to me, lady!--and I owe it all to you."
Mary Ursula sat down by the couch. Late though it was when she went to rest, she had been unable to sleep, and had got up with one of the bad headaches to which she was occasionally subject. The strange disclosure made to her by Walter Dance, added to other matters, had troubled her brain and kept her awake. While saying to herself that so disgraceful an aspersion on the Castlemaines was worse than unjustifiable, outrageously improbable, some latent fear in her heart kept suggesting the idea--what if it should be true! With the broad light of day, she had intended to throw it quite to the winds--but she found that she could not. The anxiety was tormenting her.
"Walter," she began in a low tone, after cheerily talking a little with him about his injuries, "I want to speak to you of what you disclosed to me last night. When I got up this morning I thought in truth I had dreamt it--that it could not be true."
"Dreamt what?" he asked.
"About the smuggling," she whispered. "And about what you said, reflecting on my uncle. You are more collected this morning; tell me what is truth and what is not."
"I must have talked a deal of nonsense last night, ma'am," spoke the young man after a pause, as he turned his uneasy face to the wall--for uneasy it was growing. "I'm sure I can't remember it a bit."
She told him what he did say.
"What a fool I must have been! 'Twas the pain, lady, made me fancy it. Smugglers in the Friar's Keep! Well, thatisgood!"
"Do you mean to say it is not true?" she cried eagerly.
"Not a word on't, ma'am. I had a fever once, when I was a little 'un--I talked a rare lot o' nonsense then. Enough to set the place afire, grandmother said."
"And there is no smuggling carried on?--and what you said to implicate Mr. Castlemaine has no foundation save in your brain?" she reiterated, half bewildered with this new aspect.
"If I said such outrageous things, my wits must have gone clean out of me," asserted Walter. "Mr. Castlemaine would be fit to hang me, ma'am, if it came to his ears."
"But--if there is nothing of the kind carried on, what of the boats last night?" asked Mary Ursula, collecting her senses a little. "What were they doing?"
"Boats, lady!" returned Walter, showing the most supreme unconsciousness. "What boats?"
"Some boats that put off from an anchored vessel, and kept passing to and fro between it and the Keep."
"If there was boats, they must have come off for some purpose of their own," asserted the young man, looking as puzzled as you please. "And what did I do, down where you found me, you ask, ma'am? Well, I did go there to shoot a bird; that little strip o' beach is the quietest place for 'em."
Was he wandering now?--or had he been wandering then? Miss Castlemaine really could not decide the question. But for having seen and heard the boats herself, she would have believed the whole to be a disordered dream, induced by the weakness arising from loss of blood.
"But how did you get there, Walter?"
"Down that there slippery zigzag from the chapel ruins. The tide was partly up, you say, ma'am? Oh, I don't mind wet legs, I don't. The door? Well, I've always known about that there door, and I pushed it open: it don't do to talk of it, and so wedon'ttalk of it: it mightn't be liked, you see, ma'am. 'Twas hearing a stir inside it made me go in: I said to myself, had a bird got there? and when I saw your light, ma'am, I was nigh frightened to death. As to boats--I'm sure there was none."
And that was all Mary could get from Mr. Walter Dance this morning. Press him as she might now--though she did not dare to press him too much for fear of exciting fever--she could get no other answer, no confirmatory admission of any kind. And he earnestly begged her, for the love of heaven, never to repeat a word of his "tattle" to his father, or elsewhere.
In the course of the morning, Tom Dance and two or three fishermen-friends of his came to the Grey Nunnery to convey Walter home. The rumour of what had happened had caused the greatest commotion abroad, and all the village, men and women, turned out to look for the removal. Fishermen, for that tide, abandoned their boats, women their homes and their household cares. No such excitement had arisen for Greylands since the vanishing of Anthony Castlemaine as this. The crowd attended him to Tom Dance's door with much hubbub; and after his disappearance within it, stayed to make their comments: giving praises to those good Grey Ladies who had received and succoured him.
"Now then," cried the doctor to his patient, when he had placed him comfortably in bed at his father's house and seen him take some refreshment, no one being present but themselves, "what is the true history of this matter, Walter? I did not care to question you much before."
"The true history?" faltered Walter; who was not the best hand at deception that the world could produce.
"What brought you in the chapel ruins with a loaded pistol at that untoward time of night?"
"I wanted to shoot a sea-bird: them that come abroad at night," was the uneasy answer. "A gentleman at Stilborough gave me an order for one. He's a-going to get him stuffed."
Mr. Parker looked at the speaker keenly. He detected the uneasiness at being questioned.
"And you thought that hour of the morning and that particular spot the best to shoot the bird?" he asked.
"Them birds are always hovering about the ruins there," spoke Walter, shifting his eyes in all directions. "Always a'most. One can only get at 'em at pitch dark, when things are dead still."
"I thought, too, that birds were generally shot with guns, not pistols," said the surgeon; and the young man only; groaned in answer to this: in explanation of which groan he volunteered the information that his "arm gave him a twitch."
"Where did you get the pistol?"
"Father lent it to me," said Walter, apparently in much torment, "to shoot the bird."
"And how came the pistol to go off as it did?"
"I was raising it to shoot one, a big fellow he was, and my elbow knocked again that there piece of sticking-out wall in the corner. Oh, doctor! I'm feeling rare and faint again."
Mr. Parker desisted from his investigation and went away whistling, taking in just as much as he liked of the story, and no more. There was evidently some mystery in the matter that he could not fathom.
Mr. and Mrs. Bent were in their sitting-room, facing the sea, as many guests around them as the room could conveniently accommodate. Much excitement prevailed: every tongue was going.
Upon the occasion of any unusual commotion at Greylands, the Dolphin, being the only inn in the place, was naturally made the centre point of the public, where expressions of marvel were freely given vent to and opinions exchanged.
Since the disappearance of Anthony Castlemaine, no event had occurred to excite the people like unto this--the shooting himself of young Walter Dance. To the primitive community this affair seemed nearly as unaccountable as that. The bare fact of the pistol's having gone off through the young man's inadvertently knocking his elbow against that bit of projecting wall, sticking itself out in the corner of the chapel ruins, was nothing extraordinary; it might have happened to anybody; but the wonder manifested lay in the attendant circumstances.
After the stir and bustle of seeing Walter Dance conveyed from the Grey Nunnery to his home had somewhat subsided, and the litter with its bearers, and the patient, and the doctor had fairly disappeared within doors, and they were barred out, the attendant spectators stayed a few minutes to digest the sight, and then moved off slowly by twos and threes to the Dolphin. The privileged among them went into Mr. and Mrs. Bent's room: the rest stayed outside. Marvel the first was, that young Dance should have gone out to shoot a bird at that uncanny hour of the morning; marvel the second was, that he should have chosen that haunted place, the chapel ruins, for nobody had evinced more fear in a silent way of the superstitions attending the Keep and the ghost that walked there than Walter Dance; marvel the third was, that he should have taken a pistol to shoot at the sea-bird, instead of a gun.
"Why couldn't he have got the bird at eight or nine o'clock at night?" debated Ben Little, quite an old oracle in the village and the father of young Ben. "That's the best hour for them sea-birds: nobody in their senses would wait till a'most the dawn."
"And look here," cried out Mrs. Bent shrilly: but she was obliged to be shrill to get a general hearing. "Why did he have a pistol with him? Tom Dance keeps a gun: he takes it out in his boat sometimes; but he keeps no pistol."
"Young Walter said in the night, to me and the doctor, that it was his father's pistol when we asked him about it," interposed John Bent.
"Rubbish!" returned the landlady. "I know better. Tom Dance never owned a pistol yet: how should he, and me not see it There's not a man in the whole place that keeps a pistol."
"Except Mr. Superintendent Nettleby," put in old Ben.
"Nobody was bringinghimin," retorted the landlady, "it's his business to keep a pistol. My husband, as you all know, thought it was a pistol he heard go off the night that young Mr. Castlemaine was missed, though the Commodore stood to it that it was his gun--and, as we said then, if it was a pistol, where did the pistol come from? Pistols here, pistols there: I should like to ask what we are all coming to! We sha'n't be able to step out of our door after dark next, if pistols jump into fashion."
"At any rate, it seems it was a pistol last night, wherever he might have got it from," said Ben Little. "And downright careless it must have been of him to let it go off in the way he says it did--just for knocking his elbow again' the wall. Its to be known yet whether that there's not a lame tale; invented to excuse hisself."
Several faces were turned on old Ben Little at this. His drift was scarcely understood.
"Excuse himself from what?" demanded Mrs. Bent sharply. "Do you suppose the young fellow would shoot himself purposely, Ben Little?"
"What I think," said Ben, with calmness, "if one could come to the bottom of it, is this: that there young fellow got a fright last night--see the Grey Friar most probable; and his hand shook so that the pistol went off of itself."
This was so entirely new a view of probabilities, that the room sunk into temporary silence to revolve it. And not altogether an agreeable one. The Grey Friar did enough mischief as it was, in the matter of terrifying timid spirits: if it came to causing dreadful personal injuries with pistols and what not, Greylands was at a pretty pass!
"Now I shouldn't wonder but that was it," cried John Bent, bringing down his hand on the table emphatically. "He saw the Grey Friar, or thought he did: and it put him into more fright than mortal man could stand. You should just have seen him last night, and the terror he was in, when me and the doctor got to him--shaking the very board he lay upon."
"I'm sure he causedusfright enough," meekly interposed Sister Ann, who had been drawn into the inn (nothing loth) with the crowd. "When the Lady Superior, Sister Mary Ursula, came up to awake me and Sister Phoeby, and we saw her trembling white face, and heard that Walter Dance had taken refuge at the Nunnery, all shot about, neither of us knew how we flung our things on, to get down to him."
"Walter Dance don't like going anigh the Friar's Keep any more nor the rest of us likes it; and I can't think what should have took him there last night," spoke up young Mr. Pike from the general shop. "I was talking to him yesterday evening for a good half hour if I was talking a minute; 'twas when I was shutting up: he said nothing then about going out to shoot a bird."
"But he must have went to shoot one," insisted Ben Little. "Why say he did it if he didn't? What else took him to the ruins at all?"
A fresh comer appeared upon the scene at this juncture in the person of Mr. Harry Castlemaine. In passing the inn, he saw signs of the commotion going on, inside and outside, and turned in to see and hear. The various doubts and surmises, agitating the assembly, were poured freely into his ear.
"Oh, it's all right--that's what young Dance went up for," said he, speaking lightly. "A day or two ago I chanced to hear him say he wanted to shoot a sea-bird for stuffing."
"Well, sir that may be it; no doubt it is, else why should he say it--as I've just asked," replied Ben Little. "But what we'd like to know is--why he should ha' stayed to the little hours of morning before he went out. Why not have went just after dark?"
"He may have been busy," said Mr. Harry carelessly. "Or out in the boat."
"He wasn't out in the boat last night, sir, for I was talking to him as late as nine o'clock at our door," said young Pike. "The boat couldn't have went out after that and come back again."
"Well, I don't think it can concern us whether he went out after this bird a little later or a little earlier; or in fact that it signifies at all which it was, to the matter in question," returned the Master of Greylands' son: and it might have been noticed that his tone bore a smattering of the haughty reserve that sometimes characterised his father's. "The poor fellow has met with the accident; and that's quite enough for him without being worried with queries as to the precise half hour it happened.'
"What he says is this here, Mr. Harry: that a great big sea-bird came flying off the sea, flapping its wings above the ruins; Dance cocked his pistol and raised it to take aim, when his elbow struck again' the corner wall there, and the charge went off."
"Just so, Ben; that's what Tom Dance tells me," responded Mr. Harry to old Little, for he had been the speaker. "It will be a lesson to him, I dare say, not to go out shooting birds in the dark again."
"Not to shoot 'emthere, at any rate," rejoined Ben. "The conclusion we've just been and drawed is this here, Mr. Harry, sir: that the Grey Friar's shade appeared to him and set him trembling, and the dratted pistol went off of itself."
Mr. Harry's face grew long at once. "Poor fellow! it may have been so," he said: "and that alone would make his account confused. Well, my friends, the least we can do, as it seems to me, is to leave Walter Dance alone and not bother him," he continued in conclusion: and out he went as grave as a judge. Evidently the Grey Friar was not sneered at by Mr. Harry Castlemaine.
Sitting in a quiet corner of the room, obscured by the people and by the hubbub, was the Dolphin's guest, George North. Not a word, spoken, had escaped him. To every suggestive supposition, to every remark, reasonable and unreasonable, he had listened attentively. For this affair had made more impression on him than the facts might seem to warrant: and in his own mind he could not help connecting this shot and this mysterious pistol--that seemed to have come into Walter Dance's possession unaccountably--with the shot of that past February night, that had been so fatal to his brother.
Fatal, at least, in the conviction of many a one at Greylands. From John Bent to Mr. George North's sister-in-law, Charlotte Guise, and with sundry intermediate persons the impression existed and could not be shaken off. Mr. North had never given in to the belief: he had put faith in Mr. Castlemaine: he had persistently hoped that Anthony might not be dead; that he would reappear some time and clear up the mystery: but an idea had now taken sudden hold of him that this second edition of a shot, or rather the cause of it, would be found to hold some connection with the other shot: and that the two might proceed from the Grey Friar. Not the ghost of a Grey Friar, but a living and substantial one, who might wish to keep his precincts uninvaded. We, who are in the secret of this later shot, can see how unfounded the idea was: but Mr. North was not in the secret, and it had taken (he knew not why) firm hold of him.
First of all, he had no more faith in the lame account of Mr. Walter Dance than the doctor had. It may be remembered that when the landlord was telling him of the accident the previous night, Mr. North remarked that he had been with Dance for a sail only that same morning. During this sail, which had lasted about two hours, the conversation had turned on the Friar's Keep--Mr. North frequently, in an apparently indirect manner, did turn his converse on it--and Walter Dance had expressed the most unequivocal faith in the Grey Monk that haunted it, and protested, with a shake of superstitions terror, that he would not go "anigh them parts" after dark for all the world. Therefore Mr. North did not take in the report that he had voluntarily gone to the chapel ruins to shoot a bird in the dead of the night.
The talkers around Mr. North all agreed, receiving their version of the affair from Sister Ann and John Bent, that Walter Dance's account was imperfect, confused, and not clearly to be understood; and that he was three parts beside himself with nervous fear when he gave it. All food for Mr. George North: but he listened on, saying nothing.
When Harry Castlemaine quitted the Dolphin, he turned in the direction of Stilborough; he was going to walk thither--which was nothing for his long legs. In ascending the hill past the church, which was a narrow and exceedingly lonely part of the road, the yew-trees overshadowing the gloomy churchyard on one side, the dark towering cliff on the other, he encountered Jane Hallet. She had been to Stilborough on some errand connected with her knitting-work, and was now coming back again. They met just abreast of the churchyard gate, and simultaneously stopped: as if to stop was with both of them a matter of course.
"Where have you been, Jane?" asked Mr. Harry.
"To Stilborough," she answered.
"You must have gone early."
"Yes, I went for wool"--indicating a brown-paper parcel in her hand.
"For wool!" he repeated, in a somewhat annoyed tone. "I have told you not to worry yourself with more of that needless work, Jane."
"And make my aunt more displeased than she is with me!" returned Jane sadly. "I must keep on with it as long as I can, while in her sight."
"Well, I think you must have enough to do without that," he answered, dropping the point. "How pale you are, Jane."
"I am tired. It is a long walk, there and back, without rest. I sat down on one of the shop stools while they weighed the wool, but it was not much rest."
"There again! I have told you the walk is too far. Why don't you attend to me, Jane?"
"I wish I could: but it is so difficult. You know what my aunt is."
"I am not sure, Jane, but it will be better to--to--" he stopped, seemingly intent on treading a stone into the path--"to make the change now," he went on, "and get the bother over. It must come, you know."
"Not yet; no need to do it yet," she quickly answered. "Let it be put off as long as it can be. I dread it frightfully."
"Yes, that's it: you are tormenting yourself into fiddle-strings. Don't be foolish, Jane. It is I who shall have to bear the storm, not you: and my back's broad enough, I hope."
She sighed deeply: her pale, thoughtful, pretty face cast up in sad apprehension towards the blue autumn sky. A change came over its expression: some remembrance seemed suddenly to occur to her.
"Have you heard any news about Walter Dance?" she asked with animation. "As I came down the cliff this morning, Mrs. Bent was leaving the baker's with some hot rolls in her apron, and she crossed over to tell me that Walter had shot himself accidentally at the chapel ruins in the middle of the night. Is it true?"
"Shot himself instead of a sea-bird," slightingly responded Mr. Harry.
"And in the chapel ruins?"
"I hear he says so."
"But--that is not likely to be the truth, is it?"
"How should I know, Jane?"
She lodged the paper parcel on the top of the gate, holding it with one hand, and looked wistfully across the graveyard. Harry Castlemaine whistled to a sparrow that was chirping on a branch of the nearest yew-tree.
"Was it Mr. Nettleby who did it?" she inquired, in a low, hesitating whisper.
"Mr. Nettleby!" repeated Harry Castlemaine in astonishment, breaking of his whistle to the bird. "What in the world makes you ask that Jane?"
A faint colour passed over her thin face, and she paused before answering.
"Mrs. Bent said she thought nobody in the place possessed a pistol except Superintendent Nettleby."
He looked keenly at Jane: at her evident uneasiness. She was growing pale again; paler than before; with what looked like an unnatural pallor. Mr. Harry Castlemaine's brow knitted itself into lines, with the effort to make Jane out.
"I don't like the chapel ruins: or the Friar's Keep," she went on, in the same low tone. "I wish nobody ever went near them. I wishyouwould not go!"
"WishIwould not go!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, Jane?"
"It may be your turn next to be shot," she said with rising emotion, so much so that the words came out jerkingly.
"I cannot tell what it is that you are driving at," he answered, regarding searchingly the evidently tired frame, the unmistakable agitation and anxiety of the thin, white face. "What have I to do with the chapel ruins? I don't go roaming about at night with a pistol to shoot sea-birds."
"If you would but make a confidante of me!" she sighed.
"What have I to confide? If you will tell me what it is, perhaps I may.Idon't know."
She glanced up at him, flushing again slightly. His countenance was unembarrassed, open, and kind in its expression; but the decisive lips were set firmly. Whether he knew what she meant, or whether he did not, it was evident that he would not meet her in the slightest degree.
"Please do not be angry with me," faltered Jane.
"When am I angry with you? Simply, though, I do not understand you this morning, Jane. I think you must have tired yourself too much."
"I am tired," she replied; "and I shall be glad to get home to rest. My aunt, too, will be thinking it is time I was back."
She moved her parcel of wool off the gate, and, after another word or two, they parted: Jane going down hill, Harry Castlemaine up. Before he was quite beyond view, he stood to look back at her, and saw she had turned to look after him. A bright smile illumined his handsome face, and he waved his hand to her gaily. Few, very few, were there, so attractive as Harry Castlemaine.
Jane's lips parted with a farewell word, though he could not hear it, and her pretty dimples were all smiles as she went onwards. At the foot of the cliff she came upon little Bessy Gleeson in trouble. The child had fallen, goodness knew from what height, had cut both her knees, and was sobbing finely. Jane took the little thing up tenderly, kissed and soothed her, and then carried her up the cliff to the Gleesons' cottage. What with Bessy and what with the parcel, she could not breathe when she got there. Down she dropped on the stone by the door, her face whiter than ever.
"Where's mother?" she asked, as some of the little ones, Polly included, came running out.
But Nancy Gleeson had seen the ascent from the side window, and came forward, her hands all soap-suds. She was struck with Jane's exhausted look.
"Bessy has fallen down, Mrs. Gleeson. Her knees are bleeding."
"And how could you think of lugging her all up the cliff, Miss Jane! I declare you be as white as a sheet. A fat, heavy child like her! Fell down on your knees, have you, you tiresome little grub. There's one or another on you always a-doing of it."
"It is a warm morning, and I have been walking to and from Stilborough," remarked Jane, as she rose to go on, and not choosing to be told she looked white without accounting for it. "Wash her knees with some hot water please, Mrs. Gleeson: I dare say she is in pain, poor little thing."
"Lawk a me, Miss Jane," the woman called after her, "if you had half-a-dozen of 'em about you always you'd know better nor to take notice o' such trifles as knees." But Jane was already nearly out of hearing.
Harry was not the only one of the Castlemaine family who went that day to Stilborough. In the full brightness of the afternoon, the close carriage of the Master of Greylands, attended by its liveried servants, might have been seen bowling on its way thither, and one lady, attired in the dress of the Grey Sisters, seated inside it. A lady who was grand, and noble, and beautiful, in spite of the simple attire--Mary Ursula.
She was about to pay a visit to that friend of hers on whom misfortune had fallen--Mrs. Ord. The double calamity--loss of husband and loss of fortune--reaching Mrs. Ord by the same mail, had thrown her upon a sick-bed; and she was at all times delicate. The letter that Mary had sat up to write was despatched by a messenger early in the morning: and she had craved the loan of her uncle's close carriage to convey her on a personal visit. Theclosecarriage: Mary shrunk (perhaps from the novelty of it) from showing herself this first time in her changed dress among her native townspeople.
The carriage left her at Mrs. Ord's house, and was directed to return for her in an hour; and Mary was shown up to the sick-chamber. It was a sad interview: this poor Mrs. Ord--whose woes, however, need not be entered upon here in detail, as she has nothing to do with the story--was but a year or two older than Mary Ursula. They had been girls together. She was very ill now: and Mary felt that at this early stage little or no consolation could be offered. She herself had had her sorrows since they last met, and it was a trying hour to both of them. Before the hour had expired, Mary took her leave and went do wn to the drawing-room to wait for the carriage.
She had closed the door, and was halfway across the richly-carpeted floor, before she became aware that any one was in the room. It was a gentleman--who rose from the depths of a lounging-chair at her approach. Every drop of blood in Mary's veins seemed to stand still, and then rush wildly on: her sight momentarily failed her, her senses were confused: and but that she had shut the door behind her, and come so far, she might have retreated again. For it was William Blake-Gordon.
They stood facing each other for an instant in silence, both painfully agitated. Mary's grey bonnet was in her hand; she had taken it off in the sick-chamber; he held an open letter, that he had been apparently reading to pass away the time, while the servants should carry his message to their sick mistress and bring back an answer. Mary saw the writing of the letter and recognized it for Agatha Mountsorrel's. In his confusion, as he hastily attempted to refold the letter, it escaped his hand, and fluttered to the ground. The other hand he was holding out to her.
She met it, scarcely perhaps conscious of what she did. He felt the trembling of the fingers he saw the agitation of the wan white face. Not a word did either of them speak. Mary sat down on a sofa, he took a chair near, after picking up his letter.
"What a terrible calamity this is that has fallen on Mrs. Ord!" he exclaimed, seizing upon it as something to say.
"Two calamities," answered Mary.
"Yes indeed. Her husband dead, and her fortune gone! My father sent me here to inquire personally after her; to see her if possible. He and Colonel Ord were good friends."
"I do not think she can see you. She said that I was the only one friend who would have been admitted to her."
"I did not expect she would: but Sir Richard made me come. You know his way."
Mary slightly nodded assent. She raised her hand and gently pushed from her temple the braid of her thick brown hair; as though conscious of the whiteness of her face, she would fain cover it until the colour returned. Mr. Blake-Gordon, a very bad hand at deception at all times, suffered his feelings to get the better of conventionality now, and burst forth into truth.
"Oh, Mary! how like this is to the old days! To have you by me alone!--to be sitting once more together."
"Like unto them?" she returned sadly. "No. That can never be."
"Would to heaven it could!" he aspirated.
"A strange wish, that, to hear from you now."
"And, perhaps you think, one I should not have spoken. It is always in my heart, Mary."
"Then it ought not to be."
"I see," he said. "You have been hearing tales about me."
"I have heard one tale. I presume it to be a true one. And I--I--" her lips were trembling grievously--"I wish you both happiness with all my heart."
Mr. Blake-Gordon pushed his chair back and began to pace the room restlessly. At that moment a servant came in with a message to him from her mistress. He merely nodded a reply, and the girl went away again.
"Do you know what it has all been for me, Mary?" he asked, halting before her, his brow flushed, his lips just as much agitated as hers. "Do you guess what itis?Every ray of sunshine went out of my life with you."
"At the time you--you may have thought that," she tremblingly answered. "But why recall it? The sun has surely begun to shine for you again."
"Never in this world. Never will it shine as it did then."
"Nay, but that, in the face of facts, is scarcely credible," she rejoined, striving to get up as much calmness, and to speak as quietly, as though Mr. Blake-Gordon had never been more to her than an acquaintance or friend; nerving herself to answer him now as such. "You are, I believe, about to"--a cough took her just there, and she suddenly put her hand to her throat--"marry Agatha."
"It is true. At least, partially true."
"Partially?"
"For Heaven's sake, Mary, don't speak to me in that coldly indifferent tone!" he passionately broke in. "I cannot bear it from you."
"How would you have me speak?" she asked, rapidly regaining her self-possession; and her tone was certainly kind, rather than cold, though her words were redolent of calm reasoning. "The past is past, you know, and circumstances have entirely changed. It will be better to meet them as such: to regard them as they are."
"Yes, they are changed," he answered bitterly. "You have made yourself into a lay-nun----"
"Nay, not that," she interrupted with a smile.
"A Sister of Charity, then"--pointing to her grey dress. "And I, as the world says, am to espouse Agatha Mountsorrel."
"But surely that is true."
"It is true in so far as that I have asked her to be my wife: That I should live to say that to you of another woman, Mary! She has accepted me. But, as to the marriage, I hope it will not take place yet awhile.Ido not press for it."
"You shall both have my best and truest prayers for your happiness," rejoined Mary, her voice again slightly trembling. "Agatha will make you a good wife. The world calls her haughty; but she will not be haughty to her husband."
"How coolly you can contemplate it!" he cried, in reproach and pain.
Just for one single moment, in her heart's lively anguish, the temptation assailed her to tell him what it really was to her, and how deeply she loved him still. She threw it behind her, a faint smile parting her lips.
"William, you know well that what I say is all I can say. I am wedded to the life I have chosen; you will soon be wedded actually to another than me. Nothing remains for us in common: save the satisfaction of experiencing good wishes for the welfare of the other."
"It is not love, or any feeling akin to it, that has caused me to address Agatha Mountsorrel----" he was beginning; but she interrupted him with decision.
"I would rather not hear this. It is not right of you to say it."
"I will say it. Mary, be still. It is but a word or two; and I will have my way in this. It is in obedience to my father that I have addressed Miss Mountsorrel. Since the moment when you and I parted, he has never ceased to urge her upon me, to throw us together in every possible way. I resisted for a long while; but my nature is weakly yielding--as you have cause to know--and at length I was badgered into it. Forgive the word, Mary. Badgered by Sir Richard, until I went to her and said, Will you be my wife? The world had set the rumour running long before that; but the world was in haste. And now that I have told you so much, I am thankful. I meant to make the opportunity of telling you had one not offered: for the worst pain of all, to me, would be, that you should fancy I could love another. The hearing that I have engaged myself again in this indecent haste--yourhearing it--is enough shame for me."
The handsome chariot of the Master of Greylands, its fine horses prancing and curvetting, passed the window and drew up at the house. Mary rose.
"I hope with all my heart that you will love her as you once loved. me," she said to him in a half whisper, as she rang the bell and caught up her bonnet. "To know that, William, will make my own life somewhat less lonely."
"Did youevercare for me?" broke from him.
"Yes. But the past is past."
He stood in silence while she tied on her grey bonnet, watching her slender fingers as they trembled with the silk strings. A servant appeared in answer to the ring. Mary was drawing on her gloves.
"The door," said Mr. Blake-Gordon.
"Good-bye," she said to him, holding out her hand.
He wrung it almost to pain. "You will allow me to see you to your carriage?"
She took the arm he held out to her and they went through the hall and down the steps together. The footman had the carriage door open, and he, her ex-lover, placed her in. Not another word was spoken. The man sprang up to his place behind, and the chariot rolled away. For a full minute after its departure, William Blake-Gordon was still standing looking after it, forgetting to put his hat on: forgetting, as it seemed, all created things.