The winter season was coming in, but not yet winter weather, for it was mild and balmy: more like a fine September than the close of November.
The glass doors of the red parlour at Greylands' Rest were thrown open to the garden, and to the very few autumn flowers that yet lingered around the window. Dinner was over, and the ladies were back in the parlour again. Little Marie Guise was spending the day there, and was now playing at cat's-cradle with Flora: her mother was talking with Mrs. Castlemaine. Ethel sat drawing.
"Dear me! I think this is Miss Castlemaine."
The words were Madame's, and they all looked up. Yes; advancing round from the wide garden-path in her grey dress and with her stately step, came Mary Ursula. Seeing them sitting there, and the doors open, she had turned aside on her way to the front entrance. Ethel ran out.
"How good of you, Mary! Have you come to stay the afternoon?"
"No, Ethel, dear. I want to see my uncle. Is he at home?"
"I think so. We left him at table. Come in."
Mrs. Castlemaine made much of the visitor. Disliking Mary Ursula at heart, thankful that she had joined the Grey Sisterhood for good and was out of the way of Greylands' Rest, Mrs. Castlemaine made a great show of welcome at these chance visits.
"And why can you not stay now you are here?" asked Mrs. Castlemaine, purring upon Mary as she sat down. "Do take your bonnet off."
"I would stay if I could," said Mary, "but I must be back again by four o'clock. Mr. Knivett sent me a note this morning to say he should be over at that hour with some papers that require my signature."
"Then, Mary, why did you not come some afternoon when you were not expecting Mr. Knivett?" sensibly asked Ethel.
"Because I had to come to-day, Ethel. I wish to see my uncle."
"I suppose you have been busy with your money and your executorship," spoke Mrs. Castlemaine. "You must feel quite rich."
"I do," said Mary, with earnest truth. Looking back, she had not thought herself so rich in her anticipated many, many thousands a year then, as she felt now with these two or three bequeathed hundreds of additional income. "We are rich or poor by comparison, you know," she said, smiling. "And what is Marie doing?--learning to play at cat's cradle?"
Marie snatched the thread from Flora, and ran up to her: she could speak a little English now.
"Lady play wi' Marie!
"Why, my dear little child, I think I have forgotten how to play," returned Mary. "Flora can play better than I can. Flora is none the worse for that accident, I hope?" she added to Mrs. Castlemaine. "But how serious it might have been!"
"Oh, don't, don't talk of it," cried Mrs. Castlemaine, putting her hands before her eyes to shut out the mental vision. "I shall never see a furious sea again without shuddering."
"It is beautifully calm to-day," said Mary, rising to go into the dining-room to her uncle. "Like a mill-pond."
Mr. Castlemaine was no longer in the dining-room. Miles putting the wine and dessert away, said his master had gone up to his room to write letters. So Mary went after him.
Several days had passed now since the departure of Jane Hallet from the Nunnery. And the longer the time elapsed without news of her, the greater grew the marvel of Greylands. The neighbours asked one another whether Jane had mysteriously disappeared for good, after the fashion of Anthony Castlemaine. It was rumoured that the affair altogether, connected with Jane, had much annoyed the Master of Greylands. He was supposed to have talked sharply to his son on the subject; but how Harry received it, or what he replied, was not known. Harry rather shunned home just then, and made pretext for excursions to distant places, which kept him out for a day or two at a time.
But a worse doubt than any was gaining ground: the same doubt that had crossed Sister Mildred the night of the disappearance. Had Jane committed any rash act? In short, to speak out boldly, for it is what Greylands did, people thought that Jane must have flung herself into the sea. The way to the Limpet rocks--once old Dame Dance's cottage was passed--led to nowhere but the rocks: and nobody in their senses would seek them at night if they wanted to come away alive. Clearly there was but one inference to be drawn: Jane was under the water.
Of course, it was entirely inconsistent with Greylands' neighbourly outspokenness that this dismal conviction should long be concealed from Miss Hallet. Perhaps it was considered a matter of conscience to make it known to her. Mrs. Pike at the shop was the first to run up, and undertake the communication.
Miss Hallet received it in cold silence: for all the world as if she had been a stock or a stone, as Mrs. Pike related afterwards: and for a day or two she held on in her course of high-mightiness. But it could not last. She had human feelings, as well as other people: it might have been that they were all the keener from her outward shell of impassive coldness; and they made themselves heard in spite of her injured pride. The news shocked her; the more she tried to drive it from her mind, the more persistently it came back to take up its abode there: and at length a whole flood-tide of remorse and repentance set in: for she asked herself whether she--she--had helped to drive Jane to her dreadful fate. It is one thing to browbeat our friends to within an inch of their lives: but quite another thing to shut them into their coffins.
On the second evening, when twilight was sufficiently dim to enfold her within its shade, Miss Hallet went down to seek an interview with Sister Mildred at the Nunnery; and was admitted to her. Mary Ursula Castlemaine was also in the room, writing at a table apart: but she did not interfere in any way, or take part in the conversation.
"I have come to know the truth of this," gasped Miss Hallet, whose every effort to suppress her agitation and to appear cold as usual, served to impede her breath. "At least, madam, so far as you can tell it me."
"But, my dear, good woman, I can't tell you anything," briskly returned Sister Mildred, speaking with her trumpet to her ear. "We don't know what to think ourselves. I wish we did."
They were sitting side by side on the well-worn horsehair sofa, which was drawn close to the fire. Mary was in the further corner behind them, a shade on the candle by which she wrote. Miss Hallet untied the strings of her bonnet, as if in need of air.
"Janecannothave put an end to her life!" spoke Miss Hallet, her trembling lips betokening that she felt less assured of the fact than the words implied. "She was too religious a girl for anything so desperately wicked; too well-principled."
"That is what I tell myself ten times a day," returned Sister Mildred. "Or try to."
"Try to!" echoed Miss Hallet.
"Well, you see--you see--" Sister Mildred spoke with hesitation, between wishing to tell just the truth and dislike to say what must inflict pain--"you see, the thought that keeps intruding on me is this: having been deceived in my estimation of Jane's good principles on one point, one is obliged to feel less sure of them on another."
A groan broke from Miss Hallet; she coughed to cover it. But in another moment her misery got the better of her, and all reticence was thrown away.
"Oh, if you can help me to find her--if you can give me a hope that she is still living, do so, dear lady, for heaven's sake," she implored, placing her hands, in her irrepressible agitation, on the arm of Sister Mildred. "Let me not have her death upon my conscience!"
The good Sister took both the hands and held them in hers. "For my own sake, I would do it if I could," she gently said. "To find Jane, I would forfeit a good deal that is precious to me."
"It is killing me," said Miss Hallet. "It will kill me speedily unless this incertitude can be ended. For the past two days, I have not had one moment's peace. Night and day, night and day, the one dreadful doubt is upon me with a harrowing torment. Where is Jane?"
"We cannot think where she can be," said Sister Mildred, shaking her head. "Nobody seems to know."
A moment's silence, and then the sound of hysterics burst upon the room: cries, and sobs, and catchings of the breath. Miss Hallet had not given way like this even when her nephew died.
But, alas, they could give her no satisfaction, no comfort. Sister Mildred, shaking hands with her before departure, spoke cheerfully of hope, of "looking on the bright side of things," but it was very negative consolation.
"My dear, did you take note of what passed?" questioned Sister Mildred of Mary Ursula, when they were alone. "How distressing this is!"
Mary rose from her desk and came forward. "My heart was aching for her all the time," she said. "Miss Hallet may have acted somewhat harshly; but she has my greatest pity. I wish I could relieve her!"
"If anyone in this world knows where Jane is, it must be Mr. Harry Castlemaine," observed Sister Mildred in a cold, subdued whisper. "That is, if she be still alive. I wonder, my dear, whether we might ask him."
"Whether he would give any information, you mean," replied Mary Ursula. "He ought to; and I think he would. Though, perhaps, it might be better got at through his father."
"Through his father!" echoed Sister Mildred, quickly. "Oh, my dear, we should never dare to question the Master of Greylands."
"I would: and will," concluded Mary Ursula.
It was in pursuance of this resolve that Mary had come up this afternoon to Greylands' Rest. Harry had gone to Newerton for a day or two, this time really upon business. Mary went upstairs and knocked at her uncle's door.
The Master of Greylands was doing nothing. He had apparently been writing at his bureau, for the flap was down, one drawer stood out and some papers were lying open. He had quitted it, and sat back in a chair near the window; his eyes resting on the calm sea stretched out in the distance. Which sea, however, he never saw; his thoughts were far away.
"Nothing has gone right since that fatal night," he said to himself, his brow knitted into lines of pain. "Teague has said all the summer that suspicions are abroad--though I think he must be wrong; and now there's this miserable trouble about Harry and that girl! For myself, I seem to be treading on a volcano. The stir after Anthony is not at an end yet: I am sure of it; instinct warns me that it is not: and should a comprehensive search be instituted, who can tell where it would end, or what might come to light?"
A log of blazing wood fell on the hearth with a splutter and crash. Mr. Castlemaine looked round mechanically: but all was safe. The room was just as lonely and bare as usual: no signs of life or occupation in it, save the master himself and the papers in the open bureau.
"When men look askance at me," ran on his thoughts, "it makes my blood boil. I am living it down; I shall live it down; but I have not dared to openly resent it and that has told against me. And if the stir should arise again, and unpleasant facts come out--why then it would be all over with the good name of the Master of Greylands. The world calls me proud: and I am proud. Heaven knows, though, that I have had enough this year to take pride out of me."
A deep sigh, telling of the inward trouble, escaped him. Men whose minds are at ease cannot sigh like that.
"It has been an unlucky year for the Castlemaines: a fatal year. After a long tide of prosperity such years do come, I suppose, to a family. Peter's trouble first, and his uncertain death:--and what a near shave it was, the staving off disgrace from his name! Anthony's intrusion and the trouble he gave me, and thenhisdeath: that, unfortunately, had nothing uncertain about it. The cloud that fell upon me, and that lasts still; and now, Teague's doubts; and now again, Harry! Better for me, perhaps, to get out of it all, while the opportunity remains."
A heavy sigh broke from him, coming apparently from the very depth of his heart. He put his elbow on the arm of his chair, and leaned his brow upon his hand.
"Poor Anthony," he moaned, after a pause. "Oh, if the doings of that night could but be recalled! I would give the best years of my remaining life to undo its fatal work. Just one moment of mad, impetuous passion, and it was all over! What can his friends be about, I wonder, that they have not come to see after him? I thought he said he had a brother, at that first interview; but I have never been sure, for I was feeling resentful, half checkmated, and I would not listen to him. I am certain he said he had a sister--married, I think, to a Frenchman. They have not come; they do not write: French people don't care for their relatives, perhaps--and they must be French rather than English. If Anthony----"
A gentle knock at the door had been unheard by Mr. Castlemaine: a second knock was followed by the entrance of Mary Ursula in her Sister's dress. So entirely was Mr. Castlemaine buried in these unpleasant, far away scenes, that just for a moment he stared at the intruder, his mind completely absent. Mary could not help noticing his haggard look and the pain that sat in his eyes.
"Why, Mary Ursula, is it you?" he cried, starting up. "Come in, my dear."
With a rapid movement, as he advanced to meet her, he swept the papers back and closed the bureau. Taking her hands in his he kissed her, and put a chair for her near the fire. But Mary would not sit down. She had not time, she said: and she went and stood by the window.
It was not a pleasant matter for her to enter upon, and she spoke very slightly and briefly. Just saying that if he, her uncle, had learnt anything through his son of Jane Hallet, it would be a relief to the Grey Ladies if he would impart it, and especially to the aunt, who was in a distressing state of suspense; fears, that Jane had made away with herself, existing in Greylands.
"My dear, I know nothing whatever of her," said Mr. Castlemaine, standing at the window by the side of his niece. "The whole of the affair has been most grievous to me, most annoying--as you may well conceive. I had some words with Harry at the time; sharp ones; and it has created a sort of coolness between us. Since then, we have mutually avoided the subject."
Mary sighed. "I cannot help being sorry for Jane," she said, "whatever may be the end. She is too good to have lost herself. You do not know, Uncle James, how nice she is."
"'Sorry' is not the word for it," emphatically spoke the Master of Greylands, his stern tone meant for his absent son. "I always held the Hallets in respect."
Mary turned from the window to depart. Other things were perplexing her as well as this unfortunate business. It struck her more and more how ill her uncle looked; ill, and full of care. Lines had begun to indent themselves on his once smooth brow.
"Are you well, Uncle James?" she stayed to say.
"Why do you ask?"
"You do not look well. There is something in your face now that--that----"
"That what, child?"
"That reminds me of papa. As he looked the last month or two of his life."
"Ay. I have had some worry lately, from more sources than one. And that tries a man's looks, Mary, worse than all."
He attended her downstairs. She said farewell to the red parlour, and commenced her walk back to the Nunnery.
Somewhat later, before the dusk of the November evening came on, Madame Guise attired herself to take home Marie. The little girl was showing symptoms of a delicate chest, and the Sisters had begged her mother to let her be in betimes. To please the child they went on through the back buildings, which were at some distance from the house, that she might see the ducks, and cocks and hens.
Quitting the fold-yard to cross the meadow, which would bring them round to the avenue, they came upon Mr. North. He sat on the stump of a tree, sketching a bit of the old barn.
"Are you here, George!" spoke Madame. "What are you doing?"
He held out the sketch to show her: pulling little Marie to him at the same time, to give her a kiss.
"Why you not come to see me?" asked the child in French. For she had taken a great fancy to this pleasant gentleman, who sometimes had bonbons in his pocket for her, calling him, at the Nunnery, little incipient coquette, le joli monsieur.
"Ah, I think I must come and see Miss Marie one of these fine days. Does Marie like dolls?"
"I like four, five dolls," said Marie.
"Four, five!" laughed George. "Why it would be an army. We shall have to dismantle a shop.
"I must be going, Marie," said her mother. "And you will have to make haste with that drawing, George. You will not see very much longer."
"Oh, I shall finish it."
"Have you heard anything, George--gathered anything--that can throw light on poor Anthony?" she looked back, to ask in a whisper.
"Never a word," he answered.
"Nor I. I begin almost to despair. Au revoir."
Meanwhile, indoors, Mr. Castlemaine had gone up to his room again, and Flora in the red parlour was making herself disagreeable as usual. The young lady's insistence that Marie should stay to tea had met with no response, and she was sulky in consequence.
For some little time she relieved herself by kicking her feet about, throwing down the fire-irons, and giving shakes to the table to disturb Ethel. By-and-by, when it grew dusk, and Mrs. Castlemaine had to hold her book very close to her eyes and Ethel to put up her drawing, the young lady saw a larger field for annoyance. Advancing to the piano, she brought both her hands down on the keys with her whole might. The result was a crash that might have aroused the seven sleepers.
"How dare you, Flora?" exclaimed Ethel. "Don't you know the piano was tuned this week?"
A derisive laugh: and another crash.
"Mamma, will you speak to her?"
Crash the third. Mrs. Castlemaine, absorbed by her book of romance, took no notice whatever.
"Do you think I will have my piano served in that way and the wires broken?" cried Ethel, starting up. "What a dreadful child you are!"
A tussle--for the young lass was strong, and was leaning with her whole weight and her two arms on the keys--and then Ethel succeeded in shutting and locking it. It was Ethel's own piano: a present to her from Mr. Castlemaine, and a beautiful instrument. Mademoiselle la méchante turned to the table, took up Ethel's drawing-book and began rumpling the leaves.
"Oh, mamma, mamma, why do you not speak to her?" cried Ethel, in distress, as she tried to get possession of the book, and failed. "Mamma!"
"How tiresome you are, Ethel!" exclaimed Mrs. Castlemaine explosively: for her story was at a most interesting part, and she could not be disturbed during these last few moments of daylight. "Sit down and be quiet. The dear child would do no harm, if you only let her alone."
The dear child had retreated to the open part of the room beyond the table, and was dancing there like a little maniac, flirting over the leaves at Ethel in derision. These petty annoyances are hard to bear. Injustice is hard to bear, even where the temper is naturally as sweet as Ethel's.
"Give me that book," said Ethel, going up to Flora.
"I shan't."
"I tell you, Flora, to give it to me."
Flora was holding the book open above her head, a cover stretched in each hand, and laughing an ugly, mocking laugh. Suddenly, without warning, she dashed it full in Ethel's face: a pretty sharp blow.
Smarting, angry, Ethel seized the tiresome child by the arms. Flora shrieked, and called out in a rage that Ethel was pinching her. Very likely it might be so, for the grasp was a tight one. Flora dropped the book, and struck Ethel in the face with all the force of her wrathful hand. Her pale face tingling with the smart, agitated, indignant, but the book secured, Ethel stood before Mrs. Castlemaine.
"Am I to bear this, mamma?--and you look on and say nothing!"
"You should let her alone: it is your own fault," contemptuously retorted Mrs. Castlemaine.
Justice in that house for her!--unless Mr. Castlemaine was at hand!--Ethel had long ceased to hope for it. But the present moment was unusually bitter; it tried her terribly. She quitted the room; and, seeing the hall-door open, ran out in a storm of tears and sobs, and dashed along the path.
It was dusk but not dark; the bared trees, the wintry shrubs, the cold beds telling of the departed flowers, all spoke of loneliness. But not more lonely, they, than Ethel.
She stood when she came to the outer gate and flung her arms upon it, sobbing bitterly; gazing down the avenue, as if longing to go forth into the world for ever. Alas, there was no chance of that; she was tied to this home, so oftentimes made miserable. Had Ethel been poor she might have gone out as governess: but that plea could not be raised.
Bending her face upon her hands, which rested still upon the gate, she gave way to all the minute's gloomy anguish, weeping aloud. Not a living being was in sight or hearing; she believed herself as much alone as though it had been some unpeopled desert and could indulge her passionate grief at will.
"Oh Ethel, what is this?"
It was a soft, low, pained voice that spoke the words in her ear; a fond hand was laid upon her head; the only voice, the only hand that could have thrilled her heart.
Mr. North, passing into the avenue on his way home from sketching the piece of the old barn, his portfolio being under his arm, had come upon her thus. Opening the gate, he drew her on to the bench under the high laurel trees and sat down by her.
"Now, tell me what it is?"
Beguiled by the seduction of the moment, smarting still under the treatment she had received, contrasting his loving, gentle kindness with the cruel indifference of the only mother she had ever known, Ethel sobbed out a brief account of what had passed. His breast heaved with angry passion.
"Is it often so, Ethel?"
"Oh yes, very. It has been so for years. I have never had any one to really love me since my father died; I have never known what it is to have a securely happy home: only this one of frequent turbulence. I wish I could run away from it!"
He was no more prudent than she. He forgot wisdom, circumstances, reason: all. His breath short, his words unchosen, he poured forth the tale of his love, and asked her if she would be his wife. Ethel bent her face on his coat-sleeve, and cried silent, happy tears.
"You know, you must know, how I have loved you, Ethel. I should have spoken long ago, but that circumstances held me back. Even now I fear that I cannot speak openly to Mr. Castlemaine: it may be some little time first. But oh, my darling, you have not, you cannot have mistaken my love."
Not a word. It was early yet for confession from her. But her face was still on his arm.
"For one thing, I am not rich, Ethel. I have quite enough for comfort, but not that which would give you a home like this. And Mr. Castlemaine----"
"I would rather be in a cottage with bread, than here," she interrupted, all her candour rising to the surface.
"And Mr. Castlemaine may not choose that you shall pit this house for one less well set-up, I was about to say, my love," he went on. "What we might find sufficient competence, he might deem poverty."
"I have plenty of money of my own," said Ethel simply.
"Have you?" cried Mr. North, in a surprised and anything but a gratified tone. He had certainly never known or suspected that she had money; and he foresaw that the fact might be only an additional reason for Mr. Castlemaine's rejection of him. "It may be so much the worse for us, Ethel. I may come into money myself; quite sufficient to satisfy even Mr. Castlemaine; or I may not. It is this uncertainty that has helped to keep me silent. But come what will now, we cannot part."
No, they could never part. Heart beating against heart, knew and ratified it. He gathered her face to his, whispering his sweet love-vows as he kissed off its tears.
And, for Ethel, the lonely surroundings, the dreary paths, the bare beds, the wintry trees, seemed suddenly to have changed into the Garden of Paradise.
At the window of her bedroom in the Grey Nunnery, steadily gazing out to sea, stood Mary Ursula Castlemaine. The night was almost as light as though the moon were shining: for a sort of light haze, partially covering the skies, seemed to illumine the earth and make things visible.
December had come in, but the weather was still balmy: people said to one another that they were going to have no winter. It had been one of those exceptional years when England seems to have borrowed some more genial climate: since the changeable spring there had been only smiles and sunshine.
As the days and weeks had gone on since that communication made to Miss Castlemaine by Walter Dance the night of his accident (to be retracted by him in the morning), the doubt in her mind and the uneasiness it caused rarely gave her rest. She had not dared to speak of it to Mr. Castlemaine: had she been perfectly sure that he was in ignorance in regard to it--in short, to speak out plainly, that he was not implicated, she would have told him all; but the uncertainty withheld her. The evidence of her own senses she could not question, therefore she did believe, that the wholesale smuggling, confessed to by young Dance in his fear of death, was an actual fact--that cargoes of lace, and what not, were periodically run. The question agitating her was--had, or had not, this treason the complicity of the Master of Greylands? If it had, she must be silent on the subject for ever; if it had not, why then she would like to communicate with himself upon it. For an idea had taken firm hold of her, arising she knew not from what instinct, that the ill-fate of Anthony--had any ill-fate in truth overtaken him--must have arisen through the doings of one of these disturbed nights when the Friar's Keep was invaded by lawless bands of sailors.
It was for this reason she could not rest; it was this never-forgotten thought that disturbed her peace by day and her sleep by night. The smuggling and the smugglers she would only have been too glad to forget; but the mysterious fate of Anthony lay on her mind like a chronic nightmare. Another thing, too, added to her disquietude. The Grey Monk, about which nothing had been heard for some weeks past, was now, according to public rumour, appearing again.
In her heart she suspected that this Grey Monk and all the rest of the mystery had to do with the smuggling and with that only. Reason told her, or strove to tell her, that Commodore Teague was the principal in it all, the cunning man, for whom the goods were run; and she tried to put down that latent doubt of Mr. Castlemaine that would rise up unbidden. If she could but set that little doubt at rest! she was ever saying to herself. If she could but once ascertain that her uncle had nothing to do with the unlawful practices, why then she would disclose to him what she knew, and leave him to search out this clue to the disappearance of Anthony.
Many a night had she stood at her casement window as she was standing now; though not always, perhaps oftener than not. But not until to-night had she seen the same two-masted vessel--or what she took to be the same. It had certainly not been visible at sunset: but there it lay now, its masts tapering upwards, and its shape distinctly visible in the white haze, just in the same spot that it had been that other night.
Mary wrapped herself up, and put her casement window open, and sat down and watched. Watched and waited. As the clocks told midnight, some stir was discernible on board; and presently the small boats, as before, came shooting out from the ship through the water. There could be no mistake: another of those nefarious cargoes was about to be run.
With a pale face but resolute heart, Mary Ursula Castlemaine rose up. She would go forth again through the secret passage, and look on at these men. Not to denounce them; not to betray her presence or her knowledge of what they were about; but simply to endeavour to ascertain whether her uncle made one at the work.
Procuring the keys and the dark lantern, Mary started. There was some delay at setting out, in consequence of her being unable to open the first door. Try with all her force, though she would and did, she could not turn the key in the lock. And she was on the point of giving it up as hopeless, when the key yielded. At least a quarter of an hour must have been hindered over this.
It was colder by far in the passage than it had been those other nights, for the time of the year was later: cold, and damp, and wofully dreary. Mary's courage oozed out at every step. Once she paused, questioning whether she could go on with this, but she reasoned herself into it. She reached the other end, set her light on the floor, and put the key into this second door.
Meanwhile the boats had come in, been hauled up on the beach, and the goods were being landed. The men worked with a will. They wore sea-boots and waded through the water with the bales on their shoulders. Much jabbering was carried on, for some of the sailors were foreigners; but all spoke in covert tones. No one could be near enough to hear them, by land or by sea; they felt well assured of that; but it was always best to be prudent. The sailors were working as they worked on board ship, open and undisguised; Commodore Teague was undisguised; but the other three men--for there were three others--wore capes and had huge caps tied on over their ears and brows; and in the uncertain light their best friends might not have known them. Two of these, it is as well to say it, were Tom Dance and his son; the other was a tall, slender, fine-figured young man, who seemed to look on, rather than to work, and who had not the heavy sea-boots on. But there was no sign of the Master of Greylands. The bales were carried up and put down in the dry, close to the walls of the Keep. When all the goods that were to come out of the ship should be landed, then the sailors would help to carry them through the passage to the cellars of the Hutt, before finally returning on board.
"Where you lay de pistols?" asked a sailor in imperfect English, as he slung down a huge bale from his shoulder.
"Down there as usual, Jansen," replied another, pointing to some raised stone-work projecting from the walls of the Keep. "And the cutlasses too. Where should they be!"
"What do Jansen ask that for, Bill?" questioned one, of the last speaker.
"I get a bad dream last night," said Jansen, answering for himself. "I dream we all fighting, head, tail, wi' dem skulking coastguard. 'Jack,' he says to me in dream, 'where de knives, where de pistols?'--and we search about and we not find no knives, no pistols, and dey overpower us, and I call out, an' den I wake."
"I don't like them dreams," cried one of the ship's crew. "Dreams be hanged; there's nothing in 'em," struck in Tom Dance. "I dreamed one night, years ago, as my old mother was lying dead afore me: stead o' that, she told me next day she'd get married again if I didn't behave myself."
"Bear a hand here, Dance," said the Commodore.
At this moment, there was heard the sounds of a boat, clashing up through the waters.
Before the men could well look out, or discover what it meant, she was close in, and upon them. A boat that had stolen silently out from under the walls of the Grey Nunnery, where she had been lying concealed, waiting to pounce upon her prey. It was a boat belonging to the preventive service, and it contained Mr. Superintendent Nettleby and his coastguardsmen. After years of immunity the smugglers were discovered at last.
"In the King's name!" shouted the superintendent, as he sprung into the shallow water.
M. Jansen's dream had not told him true; inasmuch as the pistols and cutlasses lay ready to hand, and were at once snatched up by their owners. A desperate fight ensued; a hand-to-hand struggle: pistols were fired, oaths were hissed out, knives were put to work. But though the struggle was fierce it was very short: all the efforts of the smugglers, both sailors and landsmen, were directed to securing their own safety by escaping to the ship. And just as Mary Ursula appeared upon the scene, they succeeded in pushing the boats off, and scrambling into them.
Mary was horror-struck. She had bargained for seeing rough men running packages of goods; but she had never thought of fighting and cries and murder. Once within the vaults of the Friar's Keep the noise had guided her to the open door she had seen before, open again now; and she stood there sick and trembling.
They did not see her; she took care of that: hiding behind a pillar, her lantern darkened, she peeped out, shivering, on the scene. In the confusion she understood very little; she saw very little; though the cause of it all was plain enough to her mind--the smugglers had been surprised by the preventive men. In the preventive-service boat lay a bound and wounded sailor-prisoner, and also one of the customs' men who had been shot through the leg: not to speak of minor wounds and contusions on both sides. Of all that, however, Mary knew nothing until later. There she stood close to the scene of turmoil, hearing the harsh voices, the rough words, glancing out at the pile of goods, and at the dusky figures before her, moving about in the night. It was like a panoramic picture dimly seen.
Almost as by sleight of hand, for Mary did not see how or where they went, the men and the commotion disappeared together. The ship's boats, unfollowed, were hastening away to the ship; but what became of Mr. Nettleby and his staff? A moment ago, the small portion of the beach close before her, that was not under water, had been alive with the preventive men; Mary had recognised the superintendent's voice as he shouted out some order, and now not a soul was visible. No doubt they were exploring the inner corners of this bit of beach, never suspected of fraud, never visited by his Majesty's servants until now. She cautiously advanced a step or two and looked out. There lay, hauled up on the beach halfway, the waiting boat, which she supposed to be unoccupied: the two wounded men, one of them having fainted from loss of blood, were lying down flat in it, invisible to her.
A short while, and the officers reappeared. Mary drew back and went behind a pillar. Some of them got into the boat, and it was pushed off; three of them remained, either from want of space in the boat, or to keep guard over the goods; one of them was Mr. Nettleby.
Of what use for Mary to stay? None. She could not solve the doubt touching her uncle. Oh, that she had never come! she kept thinking to herself; that she had not had this most dreadful scene portrayed to her! Never again, she felt all too certain of it, should she attempt to enter the Keep by the subterranean passage.
Pushing up the slide of one side of the lantern to guide her steps, she was retracing her way through the vaults, when a ray of the light flashed upon a figure. A moving figure in woman's clothes, that seemed to be endeavouring to hide itself. Mary lifted her lantern, and saw the face of Jane Hallet.
Of Jane Hallet! Just for a moment or two a sickness as of some supernatural fear seized upon Miss Castlemaine. For Jane had never been heard of yet in Greylands, and very little doubt existed that she had found her bed at the bottom of the sea. The dark hood she was in the habit of wearing at night had fallen back from her face: her eyes wore a strange, terrified, appealing look in the sudden and startling light.
Recovering her better reason, Mary laid her detaining hand upon her before she could escape. Which of the two faces was the whiter, it were hard to say.
"It is you, Jane Hallet!"
"Yes, madam, it is me," gasped Jane in answer.
"Where have you been all this while, and whence do you come? And what brings you in this place now?"
The explanation was given in a few brief sentences. Jane, alarmed at the idea presented to her by the Grey Ladies of going out to service, against which step there existed private reasons, had taken straight refuge in Dame Dance's cottage under the cliff; she had been there ever since and was there still. Old Mrs. Dance was like a mother to her, she added; and had been in her entire confidence for a long while. As to what brought her in that place to-night, why--she was watching,--she told Miss Castlemaine with much emotion--watching for the dreadful evil that had to-night occurred.
"I have been dreading it always, madam," she said, her breath short in its agitation. "I knew, through my brother, of the work that was sometimes done here--though he betrayed it to me by accident, not intentionally. I have come to the chapel ruins of a night to see if there were preparations being made for running a cargo, and to look whether the vessel, whose shape I knew, was standing out at sea. One night in the autumn I saw them run the goods: I was watching all the while. It was one o'clock when I got home, and my aunt was fit to strike me: for I could not tell her why I stayed out."
"Watching for what?" imperiously spoke Miss Castlemaine.
"Oh, madam, don't you see?--for the preventive men. I was ever fearing that they would discover the work some night, and surprise it--as they have now done. I thought if I were on the watch for this (which nobody else, so far as I could guess, seemed to fear or think of) I might be in time to warn--to warn those who were doing it. But the officers were too cunning for me, too quick: as I stood just now looking over the low brink in the chapel ruins, I saw a boat shoot past from underneath the walls of the Nunnery, and I knew what it was. Before I got down here the fight had begun."
Jane had gone into a fit of trembling. Somehow Miss Castlemaine's heart was hardening to her.
"At nine o'clock this evening I thought I saw the vessel standing off in the far distance," resumed Jane: "so I came out later and watched her move up to her usual place, and have been watching since in the chapel ruins."
"May I inquire who knew of this watching of yours?" asked Mary Ursula, her tone full of resentment.
"Not any one, madam. Not any one in the world."
"Not Mr. Harry Castlemaine?"
"Oh, no. I should not dare to speak of the subject to him, unless he first spoke of it to me. I have wished he would."
"As there is nothing more that can be done here to-night, of watching or else, I think you had better return home, Jane Hallet," spoke Miss Castlemaine in the same proud, cold tone: though she inwardly wondered which way of egress Jane would take.
"I was just going," spoke the trembling girl. "There--there is not--oh! forgive me, madam!--any one lying wounded on the beach, I hope?"
"I presume not," replied Miss Castlemaine. "The superintendent and his men are there."
Jane Hallet turned meekly, and disappeared amid the pillars. Miss Castlemaine rightly conjectured that there must be some stairs leading from these lower cloisters to the cloisters above that opened on the chapel ruins. By these Jane had no doubt descended, and would now ascend. In point of fact, it was so. George Hallet had eventually made a clean breast of all the secret to Jane, including the openings and passages. But the underground passage to the Grey Nunnery neither he nor any one else had known of.
Miss Castlemaine turned to it now. She was crossing towards it, her dim lantern held aloft to steer her between the pillars, when her foot stumbled against something. Pacing slowly, she did not fall, and recovered herself at once. Bringing the light to bear, she stooped down and saw a man lying there on his back. He looked immensely tall, and wore a big cape, and had a cap muffled over his forehead and eyes, and lay still as one dead. With another faint sickness of heart, Mary pulled the cap upwards, for she thought she recognised the handsome features. Alas, yes! they were those of Harry Castlemaine: and they were set in what looked like the rigidness of death.
With a shrill cry--for her feelings got the better of her--Mary called him by name, and shook him gently. No, there was no response: he was surely dead! She tore the cape and cap off, flinging them aside; she put her hand to his heart, and could feel no pulse; she lifted one of his hands, and it fell again like a heavy weight. There could be little doubt that he must have been wounded during the fight, had run into the vaults, intending to make his escape by the chapel ruins, and had fallen down exhausted. Panting with fear and emotion, all considerations lost sight of in this one great shock, Mary went back to the beach crying for aid, and supremely astonishing Mr. Superintendent Nettleby.
Mr. Harry Castlemaine! Mr. Harry Castlemaine lying inside there as one dead! Why, how did that come about? What had brought him down there? unless, indeed, he had heard the row and the fighting? But then--how did he get down?
Mr. Nettleby spoke these problems aloud, as he proceeded by Miss Castlemaine's side to the spot, guided by her lantern, and followed by his two men. He assumed that the Grey Nunnery must have been aroused by the noise, and that the Lady Superior had come forth to see what it meant: and he politely apologised for having been the cause of disturbance to the Sisters. Mary allowed him to think this: and made no answer to his further expressed wonder of howshefound her way down.
When they reached the spot where lay Harry Castlemaine, the first object the rays of the lantern flashed on was Jane Hallet. Aroused by Miss Castlemaine's cry, she had hastened back again and was now kneeling beside him, her trembling hands chafing his lifeless ones, her face a distressing picture of mute agony.
"Move away," spoke Miss Castlemaine.
Jane rose instantly, with a catching of the breath, and obeyed. Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, asking for the lantern to be held by one of his men, and to have its full light turned on, knelt down and proceeded to make what examination he could.
"I don't think he is dead, madam," he said to Mary Ursula, "but I do fear he is desperately wounded. How the dickens can it have come about?" he added, in a lower tone, meant for himself, and rising from his knees. "Could one of the fools have fired off a shot in here, and caught him as he was coming on to us? Well, we must get him up to land somehow--and my boat's gone off!"
"He had better be brought to the Grey Nunnery: it is the nearest place," spoke Mary.
"True," said the officer. "But which on earth is the way to it out of here?"
"Up these stairs. I will show you," said Jane Hallet, stepping forward again. "Please let me go on with the lantern."
She caught it up: she seemed nearly beside herself with grief and distress; and the officer and men raised Harry Castlemaine. Mary remembered the cape she had thrown aside, and could not see it, or the cap either. It was just as well, she thought, for the things had looked to her like garments worn for disguise, and they might have told tales. Even then an idea was crossing her that the worst--the complicity of the Castlemaines with the smuggling--might be kept from the world. Yes, it was just as well: that cape and cap might have been recognised by the superintendent and his men as being the same sort that were worn by the iniquitous offenders they had surprised. No such sinners in the whole decalogue of the world's crimes, according to the estimation of Mr. Nettleby, as those who defrauded his Majesty's revenues.
"He must have come out without his hat, or else lost it," spoke the superintendent, looking down at the head he supported. "Take care, my men, that's--blood."
The stairs were soon reached: some winding steps cut in stone. Jane Hallet held the lantern to show the way; Miss Castlemaine, saying never a word of the secret passage, followed her; the men with their burden bringing up the rear. It was a difficult job to bring him up, for the staircase was very narrow. They came out by a concealed door at the end of the upper cloisters, and had to walk through them to the chapel ruins. Mr. Nettleby never supposed but that the two women, as well as Harry Castlemaine, had come down by this route.
"To think that I should never have suspected any stairs were there! or that there was another set of cloisters under these!" he exclaimed in self-humiliation, as he walked on through with the rest, avoiding the pillars. "Had I known it, and that there was a door opening to that strip of beach below, it would have been enough to tell me what might be going on. But how the deuce do they contrive to get rid of the goods after they are run?"
For Mr. Superintendent Nettleby was still ignorant of on thing--the secret passage to Commodore Teague's house. He would not be likely to discover or suspect that until the official search took place that would be made on the morrow.
Once more the Nunnery was about to be disturbed to admit a wounded man at midnight: this second man, alas! wounded unto death. Tom Dance's son had gone forth to the world again, little the worse for his wounds; for the son and heir of the Master of Greylands, earth was closing.
The clanging night-bell aroused the inmates; and Sister Rachel, who was that week portress, went down accompanied by Sister Caroline. To describe their astonishment when they saw the line of those waiting to enter, would be impossible. Harry Castlemaine, whom the motion and air had revived, borne by Mr. Nettleby and two of the coastguardsmen; the Superior, Mary Ursula; and the resuscitated Jane Hallet! Jane the erring, with the Nunnery lantern!
"Business called me abroad to-night: I did not disturb you," quietly observed Sister Mary Ursula to the round-eyed Sisters; and it was all the explanation she gave, then or later.
Harry was taken into the same room that Walter Dance had been, and laid upon the same flat, wide sofa. One of the men ran off for Mr. Parker. The other went back with the superintendent to the scene of the struggle. The captured goods, so many of them as had been landed, had to be zealously guarded: Mr. Superintendent Nettleby had never gained such a feather in his official cap as this.
Harry Castlemaine lay where he had been placed, his once fresh face bereft of its fine colour, his eyes open to the movements around.
A patient like this was altogether different from young Dance the fisherman, and the Sisters had gone to awaken and amaze the Nunnery with the news. Only Mary Ursula was with him.
"Mr. Parker will soon be here, Harry," she said gently, bending over him.
A faint smile crossed his lips. "He can do nothing for me, Mary."
"Nay, you must not think that. You feel ill, faint; I know it; but----"
Some slight stir behind her had caught Mary's senses, and caused her to turn. There was Jane Hallet, standing half in, half out at the door, a mute, deprecatory appeal for permission to enter, shining unmistakably on her sad white face.
"Back!" said Mary with calm authority, advancing to the door with her most stately step, her hand raised to repel the intruder. "I told you to go home, Jane Hallet: it is the only thing you can do. You have no right to intrude yourself into the Nunnery. Go."
And she quietly closed the door, shutting Jane out, and returned to the bedside.
Harry's hand was feebly stretched out: it fell on her arm. "Let her come in, Mary: she is my wife."
"Your wife!"
"Yes; my wife. She has been my wife all along."
"I do not understand," faltered Mary Ursula, feeling she hardly knew how.
"We were married at the beginning of last winter. Fear of my father's displeasure has prevented my declaring it."
Mary was silent. Her heart throbbed unpleasantly.
"Jane is too good a girl for aught else," he resumed, the subject seeming to impart to him some fictitious strength. "She has borne all the obloquy in patience and silence for my sake. Did you suppose, Mary, that the favourite pupil of the Grey Ladies, trained bythem, could have turned out unworthily?"
"You should, at least, have confided this to Miss Hallet, Harry."
"No; to her the least of all. Miss Hallet has her pride and her notions, and would have proclaimed it in the marketplace."
"I seem not to comprehend yet," replied Mary, many remembrances crowding upon her. In point of fact, she scarcely knew whether to believe him. "Last winter--yes, and since then, Harry--you appeared to be seeking Ethel Reene for your wife."
"I once had an idea of Ethel. I knew not that the warm affection I felt for her was but that of a brother: when I fell in love with Jane I learnt the truth. My teasings of Ethel have been but jest, Mary: pursued to divert attention from my intimacy with my real love, my wife."
Mary Ursula sighed. Harry had always been random and blamable in some way or other. What a blow this would be for the Master of Greylands!
"You will let her come in, Mary! Are you doubting still?" he resumed, noting her perplexed countenance. "Why, Mary Ursula, had my relations with Jane been what the world assumed, can you imagine I should have had the hardihood to intrude my brazen face here amid the Sisters when she was taken ill? I have my share of impudence, I am told; but I have certainly not enough for that. I sought that minute's interview with Jane to bid her be firm--to bear all reproaches, spoken and unspoken, for my sake and my father's peace. The only wonder to me and to Jane also, has been that nobody ever suspected the truth."
Mary Ursula left the room. Jane was leaning against the wall outside in the semi-darkness, a picture of quiet tribulation. Too conscious of the estimation in which she was held, she did not dare assert herself. The lantern, which nobody had put out, stood on the passage slab: there was no other light. Mary drew her into the parlour--which was wholly dark, save for the reflected light that came in from the lantern. So much the better. Jealous for the honour of her family, Mary Ursula was feeling the moment bitterly, and her face would have shown that she was.
"Mr. Harry Castlemaine has been making a strange communication to me," she began. "He says he has married you."
"Oh, madam, it is true," returned Jane hysterically, the sudden revulsion of feeling at finding it was known, the relief from her miserable concealment, taking vent in a flood of tears. "We were married last November."
"By whom?"
"Parson Marston," sobbed Jane. "He married us in his church at Stilborough."
Surprise, resentment, condemnation of Parson Marston, overpowered Miss Castlemaine and kept her silent. Thinking of this inferior girl--very inferior as compared with The Castlemaines--as they had all been thinking lately, it was not in human nature that Mary should not feel it strongly. She had her share of the Castlemaine pride; though she had perhaps thought that it was laid down within her when she came out of her home at Stilborough to enter the Grey Nunnery.
"It was very strange of Mr. Marston; very wrong."
Jane's sobs did not allow her to make any rejoinder. Of course it was wrong: nobody felt more assured of that than Jane. She did not dare to tell how Harry Castlemaine's masterful will had carried all with him, including herself and the parson. Jane had perhaps been quite willing to be carried; and the parson yielded to "You must," and was besides reprehensibly indifferent. "He would only have taken the girl off to a distance and got tied up by a strange parson," was Mr. Marston's excuse later, when speaking of it. "I am not to blame; I didn't set afloat the marriage."
"How long should you have kept it secret?" asked Miss Castlemaine, looking at Jane in her distress.
"As long as my husband had wished me to keep it, madam," was the sobbing answer. "He was always hoping some occasion might arise for declaring it; but he did not like to vex Mr. Castlemaine. It was my aunt's not knowing it that grieved me most."
"I almost wonder you did not tell Sister Mildred when you were here," observed Mary, musing on the past.
"Oh if I had been able to tell her!" returned the girl, impulsively clasping her hands. "It was very hard to bear, madam, all that blame; but I tried to be patient. And many might have thought nearly as ill of me for letting one so much above me make me his wife."
"Has no one at all known it?" asked Mary.
"Only old Mrs. Dance. She has known it from the first. We used to meet at her cottage."
"Well, Jane, what is done cannot be undone. You are his wife, it seems, and have been undeserving of the reproach of light conduct passed upon you. So far I am, for your sake, glad. He has asked to see you. You can go in."
So Jane Hallet--no longer Hallet, however,--crept into the chamber, where her husband lay dying, and stood by his side, her heart breaking.
"Don't grieve, Jane, more than you can help," he said, clasping her hand. "This will answer one good end: you will be cleared."
She fell on her knees, weeping silent tears. "To save your life I would remain under the cloud for ever," she sighed. "Oh, is there no hope?--is there no hope?"
"Well, we shall see: the doctor will be here soon," said Harry evasively. "There! dry your tears, Jane; take heart, my dear."
And the doctor came without much further delay, and examined his patient, and found that a bullet had lodged itself within him.
"There must be an operation," said he, smoothing over his grave face. And he hastened to despatch a messenger on a fleet horse for Surgeon Croft, the most clever operating surgeon in Stilborough.
But Mr. Parker knew quite well that there remained no hope in this world for Harry Castlemaine.