With much inward satisfaction the baronet folded the letter. He was wise enough not to show it to his son; who, honourable in thought and feeling as he was weak in nature, might have been prompted to tear it into shreds, and declare that come good, come ill, he would stand true to his plighted word.
"There!" said Sir Richard, with a grunt of relief, as he affixed his seal, "I have accomplished that task for you, William. As I said before, write to her yourself if you will, but be quick about it. In half an hour I shall send back my answer."
"Give me that time to myself," said William, rising to leave the room. "If I have anything to say I will write it."
At the end of the half-hour he had written the following words; and the note was despatched with his father's:--
"My Darling, I suppose we must separate; but all happiness for me is over in this world. You will, however, accord me a final interview; a moment for explanation; I cannot part without that. I will be with you this afternoon at four o'clock.
"In spite of all,
"I am for ever yours--and yours only,
"WILLIAM."
Unlike his father's letter, there was no hypocrisy in this, no stupid form of words. When he wrote that all happiness for him was over, he meant it; and he wrote truly. Perhaps he deserved no less: but, if he merited blame, judgment might accord him some pity with it.The afternoon was drawing to itsWhen Mary received the letters, she felt certain of their contents before a word was seen. Sir Richard would not himself have written but to break off the engagement. He had not even called upon her in all these long weary days of desolation and misery: and there could be but one motive for this unkind neglect. His note would now explain it.
But when she came to read its contents: its hollow hypocrisy, its plausible, specious argument, its profession of friendship and devotion; the pang of the death-blow gave place to the highest anger and indignation.
At that moment of bitterness the letter sounded to her desperately hollow and cruel, worse perhaps than it even was. The pain was more than her wounded spirit--so tried in the past few weeks--could bear; and with a brief but violent storm of sobs, with which no tears came, she tore the letter in two and threw it into the fire.
"At least he might have done it differently," she said to herself in her anguish. "He might have written in a manner that would have made me feel it less."
It was one of her first lessons in the world's harshness, in the selfish nature of man. Happy for her if in her altered circumstances she had not many such to learn!
Presently, when she had grown a little calm, she opened the other note, almost wondering whether it would be a repetition of the cool falsity of Sir Richard's. Ah no, no!
"I will see him," she said, when she read the few words. "But the interview shall be brief. Of what use to prolong the agony?" So when William Blake-Gordon, true to his appointment, reached the bank at four o'clock, he was admitted.
How different an aspect the house presented from the bustle and the sociality of the days gone by! A stillness, as of a dead city, reigned. Rooms that had re-echoed with merry voices and light footsteps above, with the ring of gold and the tones of busy men below, were now silent and deserted. No change of any kind had yet been made in the household arrangements, but that was soon to come. The servants would be discharged, the costly furniture was already marked for the hammer; Mrs. Webb must leave, and--what was to be the course of Miss Castlemaine? She had not even asked herself the question, while the engagement with Mr. Blake-Gordon remained officially unbroken.
The butler opened the door to him and ushered him into the drawing-room. Mary came forward to greet him with her pale, sad face--a face that startled her lover. He clasped her to him, and she burst into sobs and tears. There are moments of anguish when pride gives way.
"Oh, my darling!" he cried, scarcely less agitated than herself, "you are feeling this cruel decision almost unto death! Why did you write that letter?--why did you not remain firm?--and thereby tacitly insist on our engagement being fulfilled?"
Never had his weakness of nature been more betrayed than then. "Why did notsheinsist?"--as if conscious that he was powerless to do it! She felt it keenly: she felt that in this, at least, a gulf lay between them.
"What I have done is for the best," she said, gently disengaging herself, and suppressing the signs of her emotion, as she motioned him to a seat. "In my altered circumstances I felt--at least I feared--that no happiness could await our marriage. Your father, in the first place, would never have given his consent."
"There are times when duty to a father should give place to duty to one's self," he returned, forgetting how singularly this argument was contradicted by his own conduct. "All my happiness in life is over."
"As you wrote to me," she said. "But by-and-by, when you shall have forgotten all this, William, and time has brought things round, you will meet with some one who will be able to make you happy: perhaps as much so as I should have done: and you will look back on these days as a dream."
"Mary!"
"And it will be better so."
"And you?" he asked, with a stifled groan of remorse.
"I?" she returned, with a smile half sad, half derisive. "I am nobody now. You have a place to fill in the world; I shall soon be heard of no more."
"But where are you going to live, Mary? You have nothing left out of the wreck."
"I have a little. Enough for my future wants. At present I shall go on a visit to Greylands' Rest. My uncle urges it, and he is the nearest representative of my father. Depend upon it, I shall meet with some occupation in life that will make me contented if not happy."
"Until you marry," he said. "Marry some man more noble than I; more worthy of you."
For a moment she looked steadily at him, and then her face flushed hot with pain. But she would not contradict it. She began to think that she had never quite understood the nature of Mr. Blake-Gordon.
"In the future, you and I will probably not meet often, William; if at all," she resumed. "But you will carry with you my best wishes, and I shall always rejoice to hear of your happiness and prosperity. The past we must, both of us, try to forget."
"I shall never forget it," was the impulsive answer.
"Do you remember my dream?" she sadly asked. "The one I told you of that ball night. How strangely it is being fulfilled! And, do you know, I think that beautiful Dresden vase, that papa broke, must have been an omen of the evil in store for the house."
He stood up now, feeling how miserable it all was, feeling his own littleness. For a short while longer they talked together: but Mary wished the interview over.
When it came to the actual parting she nearly broke down. It was very hard and bitter. Her life had not so long ago promised to be so bright! Now all was at an end. As to marriage--never for her: of that kind of happiness the future contained none. Calmness, patience in suffering, resignation, and in time even contentment, she might find in some path of duty; but beyond that, nothing.
They stood close together, her hands held in his, their hearts aching with pain and yearning, each to each, with that sad yearning that is born of utter hopelessness. A parting like this seems to be more cruel than the parting of death.
"Come what may, Mary, I shall love you, and you alone, to the end. You tell me I shall marry: it may be so; I know not: but if so, my wife, whomsoever she may be, will never have my love; never, never. We do not love twice in a lifetime. And, if those who have loved on earth are permitted to meet in Heaven, you and I, my best and dearest, shall assuredly find together in Eternity the happiness denied us here."
She was but mortal, after all; and the words sent a strange thrill of pleasure through her heart. Ah, no! he would never love another as he had loved her; she knew it: and it might be--it might be--that they should recognise each other in the bliss of a never-ending Hereafter!
And so they parted, each casting upon the other a long, last, lingering look, just as Mary had already imagined in her foreboding dream.
That evening, as Miss Castlemaine was sitting alone, musing on the past, the present, and the future, nursing her misery and her desolation, the door opened and Thomas Hill was shown in. She had seen more of him than of any one else, save Mrs. Webb, since the ruin.
"Miss Mary," said he, when they had shaken hands, "I've come to ask you whether the report can be true?"
"What report?" inquired Mary: but a suspicion of what he must mean rushed over her, ere the words had well passed her lips.
"Perhaps it is hardly a report," said the clerk, correcting himself; "for I doubt if any one else knows of it. I met Sir Richard to-day, my dear young lady," he continued, advancing and taking her hands, his tone full of indignant commiseration; "and in answer to some remark I made about your marriage, he said the marriage was not to take place; it was at an end. I did not believe him."
"It is quite true," replied Mary, with difficulty controlling her voice. "I am glad that it is at an end."
"Glad?" he repeated, looking into her face with his kindly old eyes.
"Yes. It is much better so. Sir Richard, in the altered state of my fortunes, would never think me a sufficiently good match for his son."
"But the honour, Miss Mary! Or rather thedishonour of their breaking it off! And your happiness? Is that not to be thought of?"
"All things that are wrong will right themselves," she replied with a quiet smile. "At least, Sir Richard thinks so.
"And Mr. Blake-Gordon, is he willing to submit to the separation quietly? Pardon me, Miss Mary. If your father were alive, I should know my place too well to say a word on the subject: but--but I seem to have been drawn very close to you since that time of desolation, and my heart resents all slight on you ashewould have resented it. I could not rest until I knew the truth."
"Say no more about it," breathed Mary. "Let the topic be between us as one that had never had existence. It will be for my happiness."
"But can nothing be done?" persisted Thomas Hill. "Should not your uncle go and expostulate with them and expose their villainy--for I can call it by no other name?"
"Not for worlds," she said, hastily. "It is I who have broken the engagement, Mr. Hill; not they. I wrote this morning and restored Mr. Blake-Gordon his freedom: this afternoon I bade him farewell for ever. It is all over and done with: never mention it again to me."
"And you--what are your plans for the future?--And, oh, forgive me for being anxious, my dear young lady! I had you on my knee often as a little one, and in my heart you have been as dear to me and seemed to grow up as my own daughter. Where shall you live?"
"I cannot yet tell where. I am poor, you know," she added, with one of her sweet, sad smiles. "For the present I am going on a visit to my Uncle James."
"Greylands' Rest would be your most suitable home now," spoke Thomas Hill slowly and dubiously. "But--I don't know that you would like it. Mrs. Castlemaine----"
He stopped, hardly liking to say what was in his mind--that Mrs. Castlemaine was not the most desirable of women to live with. Mary understood him.
"Only on a visit," she said. "While there, I shall have leisure to think of the future. My hundred and fifty pounds a year--and that much you all say will be secured to me----"
"And the whole of what I possess, Miss Mary."
"My hundred and fifty pounds a year will seem as a sufficient income to me, once I have brought my mind down from its heights," she continued, with another faint smile, as though unmindful of the interruption. "Trust me, my dear old friend, the future shall not be as gloomy as, by the expression of your face, you seem to anticipate. I am not weak enough to throw away my life in repining, and in wishing for what Heaven sees fit to deny me."
"Heaven?" he repeated in an accent of reproof.
"Let us say circumstances, then. But in the very worst fate, it may be, that Heaven's hand may be working--overruling all for our eventual good. My future life can be a useful one; and I, if not happy, at least contented."
But that night, in the solitude of her chamber, she opened a small box, containing nothing but a few faded white rose-leaves. It was the first trembling offering William Blake-Gordon had given her, long before he dared to tell of his love. Before they were again put away out of sight, tears, bitter as any shed in her whole life, had fallen upon them.
The time had gone on at Greylands; and its great theme of excitement, the disappearance of Anthony Castlemaine, was an event of the past. Not an iota of evidence had arisen to tell how he disappeared: but an uneasy suspicion of Mr. Castlemaine lurked in corners. John Bent had been the chief instigator in this. As truly as he believed the sun shone in the heavens, so did he believe that Anthony Castlemaine had been put out of the way by his uncle; sent out of the world, in fact, that the young man might not imperil his possession of Greylands' Rest. He did not say to the public, in so many words, Mr. Castlemaine has killed his nephew; that might not have been prudent; but the bent of his conviction could not be mistaken; and when alone with his wife he scrupled not to talk freely. All Greylands did not share in the opinion. The superstitious villagers attributed the disappearance to be due in some unconjectural manner to the dreaded spirit of the Grey Monk, haunting the Friar's Keep. The fears of the place were augmented tenfold. Not one would go at night in sight of it, save on the greatest compulsion; and Commodore Teague (a brave, fearless man, as was proved by his living so near the grim building alone) had whispered that the Grey Friar was abroad again with his lamp, for he had twice seen him glide past the casements. What with one fear and another, Greylands was not altogether in a state of calmness.
Mary Ursula had come to Greylands' Rest. The once happy home at Stilborough was given up, the furniture sold: and the affairs of the bank were virtually settled. A sufficient sum had been saved from the wreck to bring her in about a hundred and fifty pounds per annum; that income was secured to her for life and would be at her disposal at death. All claims were being paid to the uttermost shilling; liberal presents were given to the clerks and servants thrown suddenly out of employment; and not a reproach, or shadow of it, could be cast on the house of Castlemaine.
Before Mary had been a week at Greylands' Rest, she was mentally forming her plans for leaving it. Mr. Castlemaine would fain have kept her there always: he was loud and proud of her; he thought there was no other woman like her in the world. Not so Mrs. Castlemaine. She resented her husband's love and reverence for his niece; and she, little-minded, fall of spite, was actually jealous of her. She had always felt a jealousy of the banker's daughter, living in her luxurious home at Stilborough, keeping the high society that Mrs. Castlemaine did not keep; she had a shrewd idea that she herself, with her little tempers, and her petty frivolities, was sometimes compared unfavourably with Mary Ursula by her husband, wife though she was; and she had far rather some disagreeable animal had taken up its abode at Greylands' Rest for good, than this grand, noble, beautiful girl. Now and again even in those first few days, she contrived to betray this feeling: and it may be that this served to hasten Mary's plans. Flora, too, was a perpetual source of annoyance to everybody but her mother; and the young lady was as rude to Miss Castlemaine as to other people.
Since her parting with Mr. Blake-Gordon, an idea had dawned upon and been growing in Mary Ursula's mind. It was, that she should join the sisterhood of the Grey Ladies. The more she dwelt upon it, the greater grew her conviction that it would be just the life now suited to her. Unlike Mr. Castlemaine, she had always held the sisters in reverence and respect. They were self-denying; they led a useful life before Heaven; they were of no account in the world: what better career could she propose, or wish, for herself, now that near and dear social ties were denied her? And she formed her resolution: though she almost dreaded to impart it to her uncle.
Mr. Castlemaine stood one morning at the window of his study, looking out on the whitened landscape, for snow covered the ground. The genial weather that came in so early had given place to winter again: not often is spring so changeable as they had it that year. The sad, worn look that might be seen lately on the Master of Greylands' face, though rarely when in company, sat on it now. He pushed his dark hair from his brow with a hasty hand, as some thought, worse than the rest, disturbed him, and a heavy groan escaped his lips. Drowning it with a cough, for at that moment somebody knocked at the study door, he held his breath but did not answer. The knock came again, and he did not know the knock: certainly it was not Miles's.
He strode to open the door with a frown. It was an understood thing in the house that this room was sacred to its master. There stood Mary, in her deep mourning.
"I have ventured to come to you here, Uncle James," she said, "as I wish to speak with you alone. Can you spare me some minutes?"
"Any number to you, Mary. And remember, my dear, thatyouare always welcome here."
He gave her a chair, shut down his bureau and locked it, and took a seat himself. For a moment she paused, and then began in some hesitation.
"Uncle James, I have been forming my plans."
"Plans?" he echoed.
"And I have come to tell them to you before I tell any one else."
"Well?" said Mr. Castlemaine, wondering what was coming.
"I should like--I must have some occupation in life, you know?"
"Occupation? Well?"
"And I have not been long in making up my mind what it shall be. I shall join the Sisterhood."
"Join the what?"
"The Sisters at the Grey Nunnery, uncle."
Mr. Castlemaine pushed back his chair in angry astonishment when the sense of the words fully reached him. "The Sisters at the Grey Nunnery!" he indignantly cried. "Join those Grey women who lead such an idle, gossiping, meddling life, that I have no patience when I think of them! Never shall you do that, Mary Ursula!"
"It seems to me that you have always mistaken them, uncle," she said; "have done them wrong in your heart; They are noble women, and they are leading a noble life----"
"A petty, obscure life," he interrupted.
"It is obscure; but in its usefulness and self-sacrifice it must be noble. What would Greylands be without their care?"
"A great deal better than with it."
"They help the poor, they tend the sick, they teach the young ones; they try to make the fishermen think a little of God. Who would do it if they were not here, uncle? Do you know, I have thought so much of it in the past few days that Ilongto join them."
"This is utter folly!" cried Mr. Castlemaine; and he had never felt so inclined to be angry with his niece. "To join this meddling Sisterhood would be to sacrifice all your future prospects in life."
"I have no prospects left to sacrifice," returned Mary. "You know that, Uncle James."
"No prospects? Nonsense! Because that dishonourable rascal, William Blake-Gordon, has chosen to forfeit his engagement, and make himself a by-word in the mouths of men, are you to renounce the world? Many a better gentleman than he, my dear, will be seeking you before a few months have gone by."
"I shall never marry," was her firm answer. "Never, never. Whether I joined the Sisters, or not; whether I retired from the world, or mixed to my dying day in all its pomps and gaieties; still I should never marry. So you see, Uncle James, I have now to make my future, and to create for myself an object in life."
"Well, we'll leave the question of marrying. Meanwhile your present home must be with me, Mary Ursula. I cannot spare you. I should like you to make up your mind to stay in it always, unless other and nearer ties shall call you forth."
"You are very kind, Uncle James; you always have been kind. But I--I must be independent," she added with a smile and a slight flush. "Forgive the seeming ingratitude, uncle dear."
"Very independent you would be, if you joined those living-by-rule women!"
"In one sense I should be thoroughly independent, uncle. My income will be most welcome to them, for they are, as you know, very poor----"
"Yourincome!" he interrupted, half scoffingly. "I wish--Iwish, Mary--you would allow me to augment it!"
"And I shall be close to Greylands' Rest," she continued, with a slight shake of the head, for this proposal to settle money upon her had become quite a vexations question. "I shall be able to come here to see you often."
"Mary Ursula, I will hear no more of this," he cried, quite passionately. "You shall never do it with my consent."
She rose and laid her pleading hands upon his. "Uncle, pardon me, but my mind is made up. I have not decided hastily, or without due consideration. By day and by night I have dwelt upon it--I--I haveprayedover it, uncle--and I plainly see it is the best thing for me. I would sooner spend my days there than anywhere, because I shall be near you."
"And I want you to be near me. But not in a nunnery."
"It is not a nunnery now you know, Uncle James, though the building happens still to bear the name. If I take up my abode there, I take no vows, remember. I do not renounce the world. Should any necessity arise--though I think it will not--for me to resume my place in society, I am at full Liberty to put off my grey gown and bonnet and do so."
"What do you think your father would have said to this, Mary Ursula?"
"Were my father alive, Uncle James, the question never could have arisen; my place would have been with him. But I think--if he could see me now under all these altered circumstances--I think he would say to me Go."
There was no turning her. James Castlemaine saw it: and when she quitted the room he felt that the step, unless some special hindrance intervened, would be carried out.
"The result of being clever enough to have opinions of one's own!" muttered Mr. Castlemaine, in reference to the, to him, most unwelcome project.
Turning to the window again, he stood there, looking out. Looking out, but seeing nothing. The Friar's Keep opposite, rising dark and grim from contrast with the intervening white landscape; the sparkling blue sea beyond, glittering in the frosty sunshine: he saw none of it. The snow must be blinding his sight, or some deep trouble his perceptive senses. Mr. Castlemaine had other motives than the world knew of for wishing to keep his niece out of the Grey Nunnery: but he did not see how it was to be done.
Mary Ursula had passed into her own chamber: the best room in the house, and luxuriously furnished. It was generally kept for distinguished guests; and Mrs. Castlemaine had thought a plainer one might have served the young lady, their relative; but, as she muttered resentfully to the empty air, if Mr. Castlemaine could load the banker's daughter with gold and precious stones, he'd go out of his way to do it.
Drawing her chair to the fire, Mary sat down and thought out her plan. And the longer she dwelt upon it, the more did she feel convinced that she was right in its adoption. A few short weeks before, and had any Nunnery and become one of the Grey Sisters, she had started back in aversion. But ideas change with circumstances. Then she had a happy home of splendour, an indulgent father, riches that seemed unbounded at command, the smiles of the gay world, and a lover to whom she was shortly to be united. Now she had none of these: all had been wrested from her at one fell swoop. To the outward world she had seemed to take her misfortunes calmly: but none knew how they had wrung her very soul. It had seemed to her that her heart was broken: it seemed to her as though some retired and quiet place to rest in were absolutely needful while she recovered, if she ever did recover, the effects of these calamities. But she did not want to sit down under her grief and nourish it: she had prayed earnestly, and did still pray, that it would please Heaven to enable her to find consolation in her future life, and that it might be one of usefulness to others, as it could not be one of happiness to herself. But a latent prevision sometimes made itself apparent, that happiness would eventually come; that in persevering in her laid-out path, she should find it.
"The sooner I enter upon it, the better," she said, rising from her chair and shaking out the crape folds of her black silk dress. "And there's nothing to wait for, now that I have broken it to my uncle."
Glancing at her own face as she passed a mirror, she halted to look at the change that trouble had made in it. Others might not notice it, but to herself it was very perceptible. The beautiful features were thinner than of yore, the cheeks bore a fainter rose-colour; her stately form had lost somewhat of its roundness. Ah, it was not her own sorrow that had mostly told upon Mary Castlemaine; it was the sudden death of her father, and the agonizing doubt attending on it.
"If I could but know that it was God's will that he should die!" she exclaimed, raising her hands in an attitude of supplication. "And there's that other dreadful trouble--that awful doubt--about poor Anthony!"
Descending the stairs, she opened the door of the red parlour, and entered on a scene of turbulence. Miss Flora was in one of her most spiteful and provoking humours. She was trying to kick Ethel, who held her at arms' length. Her pretty face was inflamed, her pretty hair hung wild--and Flora's face and hair were both as pretty as they could well be.
"Flora!" said Miss Castlemaine, advancing to the rescue. "Flora, for shame! Unless I had seen you in this passion, I had not believed it."
"Iwillkick her, then! It's through her I did not go with mamma in the carriage to Stilborough ."
"It was mamma who would not take you," said Ethel. "She said she had some private business there, and did not want you with her."
"She would have taken me: you know she would; but for your telling her I had not done my French exercise, you ugly, spiteful thing."
"Mamma asked me whether you had done it, and I said no."
"And you ought to have said yes! You ill-natured, wicked, interfering dromedary!"
"Be still, Flora," interposed Miss Castlemaine. "Unless you are, I will call your papa. How can you so forget yourself?"
"Youhave no business to interfere, Mary Ursula! The house is not yours; you are only staying in it."
"True," said Miss Castlemaine, calmly. "And I shall not be very much longer in it, Flora. I am going away soon."
"I shall be glad of that," retorted the rude child; "and I am sure mamma will be. She says it is a shame that you should be let take up the best bedroom."
"Oh, Flora!" interposed Ethel.
"And she says----"
What further revelations the damsel might be contemplating, in regard to her mother, were summarily cut short. Harry Castlemaine had entered in time to hear what she was saying, and he quietly lifted her from the room. Outside, he treated her to what she dreaded, though it was not often she got it from him--a severe shaking--and she ran away howling.
"She is being ruined," said Harry. "Mrs. Castlemaine never corrects her, or allows her to be corrected. I wish my father would take it seriously in hand! She ought to be at school."
Peace restored, Mary told them what she had just been telling Mr. Castlemaine. She was about to become a Grey Sister. Harry laughed: he did not believe a syllable of it; Ethel, more clear-sighted, burst into tears.
"Don't, don't leave us!" she whispered, clinging to Mary, in her astonishment and distress. "You see what my life is here! I am without love, without sympathy. I have only my books and my music and my drawings and the sea! but for them my heart would starve. Oh, Mary; it has been so different since you came: I have had you to love."
Mary Ursula put her arm round Ethel. She herself standing in so much need of love, had felt the tender affection of this fresh young girl, already entwining itself around her heart, as the grateful tree feels the tendrils of the clinging vine.
"You will be what I shall most regret in leaving Greylands' Rest, Ethel. But, my dear, we can meet constantly. You can see me at the Nunnery when you will; and I shall come here sometimes."
"Look here, Mary Ursula," said Harry, all his lightness checked. "Sooner than you should go to that old Nunnery, I'll burn it down."
"No, you will not, Harry."
"I will. The crazy old building won't be much loss to the place, and the ruins would be picturesque."
He was so speaking only to cover his real concern. The project was no less displeasing to him than to his father.
"You do not mean this, Mary Ursula!" But the grave look of her earnest face effectually answered him.
"It is I who shall miss you," bewailed Ethel. "Oh, can nothing be done?"
"Nothing," said Mary, smiling. "Our paths, Ethel, will probably lie far apart in life. You will marry, and social ties will form about you. I----" she broke off suddenly.
"I intend to marry Ethel myself," said Harry, kicking hack a large live coal that flew far out into the hearth.
"Be quiet, Harry," said Ethel, a shade of annoyance in her tone.
"Why, you know it's true," he returned, without looking at her.
"True! When we are like brother and sister!"
Miss Castlemaine glanced from one to the other. She did not know how to take this. That Harry liked Ethel and was in the habit of paying her attention, told nothing; for he did the same by many other young ladies.
"It was only last week I asked her to fix the day," said Harry.
"And I told you to go and talk nonsense elsewhere; not to me," retorted Ethel, her tone betraying her real vexation.
"If you won't have me, Ethel, you'll drive me to desperation. I might go off and marry one of the Grey Sisters in revenge. It should be Sister Ann. She is a charming picture; one to take a young man's heart by storm."
Mary Ursula looked keenly at him. In all this there was a semblance of something not real. It struck her that he waswanting to make it appearhe wished for Ethel, when in fact he did not.
"Harry," she cried, speaking upon impulse, "you have not, I hope, been falling in love with anybody undesirable?"
"But I have," said Harry, his face flushing. "Don't I tell you who it is?--Sister Ann. Mark you though, cousin mine,youshall never be allowed to make one of those Grey Sisters."
"You are very random, you know, Harry," said Miss Castlemaine, slowly. "You talk to young ladies without meaning anything--but they may not detect that. Take care you do not go too far some day, and find yourself in a mesh." Harry Castlemaine turned his bright face on his cousin. "I never talk seriously but to one person, Mary Ursula. And that's Ethel."
"Harry," cried the young girl, with flashing eyes, "you are not fair to me."
"And now, have you any commands for the Commodore?" went on Harry lightly, and taking no notice of Ethel's rebuke. "I am going to the Hutt."
They said they had none; and he left the room. Mary turned to Ethel.
"My dear--if you have no objection to confide in me--isthere anything between you and Harry?"
"Nothing, Mary," was the answer, and Ethel blushed the soft blush of girlish modesty as she said it. "Last year he teased me very much, making me often angry; but latterly he has been better. The idea of my marrying him!--when we have grown up together like brother and sister! It would seem hardly proper. I like Harry very much indeed as a brother; but as to marrying him, why, I'd rather never be married at all. Here's the carriage coming back! Mamma must have forgotten something."
Mrs. Castlemaine's carriage was seen winding round the drive. They heard her get out at the door and hold a colloquy with Flora. She came to the red parlour looking angry.
"Where's Harry?" she demanded, in the sharp, unkindly tones that so often grated on the ear of those offending her, as she threw her eyes round the room.
"Harry is not here, mamma," replied Ethel.
"I understood he was here," suspiciously spoke Mrs. Castlemaine.
"He went out a minute or two ago," said Ethel. "I think he is gone to Commodore Teague's."
"He is like an eel," was the pettish rejoinder. "You never know when you have him. As to that vulgar, gossiping old Teague, that they make so much of and are always running after, I can't think what they see in him."
"Perhaps it is his gossip that they like," suggested Ethel.
"Well, I want Harry. He has been beating Flora."
"I don't think he beat her, mamma."
"Oh, you great story-teller!" exclaimed Flora, putting in her head. "He shook me till all my bones rattled."
Mrs. Castlemaine shut the door with a click. And the next that they saw, was Miss Flora dressed in her best and going off with her mamma in the carriage.
"With this injudicious treatment the child has hardly a chance to become better," murmured Mary Ursula. "Ethel, have you a mind for a walk?"
"Yes: with you."
They dressed themselves and started for the village, walking lightly over the crisp snow, under the clear blue sky. Miss Castlemaine was bound for the Grey Nunnery; Ethel protesting she would do no act or part towards helping her to enter it, went off to see some of the fishermen's wives on the cliff.
Passing through the outer gate, Mary Ursula rang at the bell, and was admitted by Sister Phoeby. A narrow passage took her into the hall. Opening from it on the left hand was a moderate-sized room, plain and comfortable. It was called the reception parlour, but was the one usually sat in by the Grey Ladies: in fact, they had no other sitting room that could be called furnished. Dinner was taken in a bare, bleak room, looking to the sea; it was used also as the schoolroom, and contained chiefly a large table and some forms. Miss Castlemaine was shown into the reception parlour. Two of the ladies were in it: Sister Margaret writing, Sister Betsey making lint.
An indication of Miss Castlemaine's wish to join the Sisters had already reached the Nunnery, and they knew not how to make enough of her. It had caused quite a commotion of delight. To number a Castlemaine amidst them, especially one so much esteemed, so high, and grand, and good as the banker's daughter, was an honour hardly to be believed in; the small fortune she would bring seemed, like riches in itself, and they coveted the companionship of the sweet and gentle lady for their own sakes. Her joining them would swell the number of the community to thirteen; but no reason existed against that.
Sister Margaret put down her pen, Sister Betsey her linen, as their visitor entered. They gave her the one arm-chair by the fire--Sister Mildred's own place--and Mary put back her crape veil as she sat down. Calm, quiet, good, looked the ladies in their simple grey gowns, their hair smoothly braided under the white cap of worked muslin; and Mary Ursula seemed to feel a foretaste of peace in the time when the like dress, the like serene life, would be hers. The Superior Sisters came flocking in on hearing she was there; all were present save sister Mildred: Margaret, Charlotte, Betsey, Grizzel, and Mona. The working Sisters were Phoeby, Ann, Rachel, Caroline, Lettice, and Ruth.
The ladies hastened to tell Miss Castlemaine of a hope, or rather project, they had been entertaining--namely, that when she joined the community, she should become its head. Sister Mildred, incapacitated by her tedious illness, had long wished to resign control; and would have done so before, but that Sister Margaret, on whom it ought to descend, declined to take it. Miss Castlemaine sat in doubt: the proposal came upon her by surprise.
"I do all the writing that has to be done, and keep the accounts; and you see that's all I'm good for," said Sister Margaret to Miss Castlemaine, in a tone of confidence. "If I were put in Sister Mildred's place, and had to order this and decide that, I should be lost. Why, if they came and asked me whether the dinner for the day should consist of fresh herrings, or pork and pease-pudding, I should never know which to say."
"Sister Mildred may regain her health," observed Miss Castlemaine.
"But she'll never regain her hearing," put in Sister Grizzel, a little quick, fresh-coloured, talkative woman. "And that tells very much against her as Superioress. In fact, her continuing as such is like a farce."
"Besides, she herself wants to give it up," said Sister Charlotte. "Oh, Miss Castlemaine, if you would but accept it in her place! You would make us happy."
Mary Ursula said she must take time for consideration. She was invited to go up to Sister Mildred, who would be sure to think it a slight if she did not. So she was conducted upstairs by the ladies, Charlotte and Mona, and found herself in a long, dark, narrow corridor, which had doors on either side--the nuns' cells of old. The Head Sister's room was at the extreme end--a neat little chamber, whose casement looked out on to the sea with a small bed in a corner. Sister Mildred was dressed and sat by the fire. She was a fair-complexioned, pleasant-looking, talkative woman, slightly deformed, and past fifty, but still very light and active. Of her own accord, she introduced the subject of resigning her post to Miss Castlemaine, and pressed her urgently to take it.
"The holding it has become a trouble to me, my dear," she said. "Instead of lying here at peace with nothing to think of--and some days I can't get up at all--I am being referred to perpetually. Sister Margaret refuses to take it; she says she's of more good for writing and account keeping. As to Sister Charlotte, she is always amid the little ones in the school; she likes teaching--and so there it is. Your taking it, my dear, would solve a difficulty; and we could hardly let one, bearing the honoured name of Castlemaine, be among us, and not be placed at our head."
"You may get better; you may regain your health," said Mary.
"And, please God, I shall," cheerfully returned Sister Mildred, when she could be made to comprehend the remark. "Mr. Parker tells me so. But I shall be none the more competent for my post. My deafness has become so much worse since health failed that that of itself unfits me for it. The Sisters will tell you so. Why, my dear, you don't know the mistakes it leads to. I hear just the opposite of what's really said, and give orders accordingly. Sister Margaret wrote a letter and transacted some business all wrong through this, and it has caused ever so much trouble to set it to rights. It is mortifying to her and to me."
"To all of us," put in Sister Charlotte.
"Why, my dear Miss Castlemaine, just look at my facility for misapprehension! Only the other day," continued the Superioress, who dearly loved a gossip when she could get it, "Sister Ann came running up here in a flurry, her eyes sparkling, saying Parson Marston was below. 'What, below then?' I asked. 'Yes,' she said, 'below then,' and ran off again. I wondered what could have brought the parson here, for we don't see him at the Nunnery from year's end to year's end, but was grateful to him for thinking of us, and felt that I ought to get down, if possible, to receive and thank him. So I turned out of bed and scuffled into my petticoats, slipping on my best gown and a new cap, and down stairs I went. Would you believe it, my dear young lady, that it was not Parson Marston at all, but a fine sucking pig!"
Mary could not avoid a laugh.
"A beautiful sucking-pig, that lasted us two days when cooked. It came, a present, from Farmer Watson, a good, grateful man, whose little boy Sister Mona went to nurse through a fever. I had mistaken what she said, you see, and got up for nothing. But that's the way it is with me; and the sooner I am superseded by somebody who can hear, the better."
"I have said lately that you ought to change your room," cried Sister Margaret to her. "In this one you are sometimes exposed to a sharp breeze."
"Cheese?" returned the deaf lady, mistaking the word. "Bread and cheese! By all means order it into the parlour if Miss Castlemaine would like some. Dear me, I am very remiss!"
"No, no," returned Sister Margaret, laughing at the mistake, and speaking in her ear, "I only suggested it might be better for your deafness if you exchanged this room for a warmer one: one on the other side."
"Is that all! Then why did you mention cheese? No, no; I am not going to change my room. I like this one, this aspect; the sea is as good to me as a friend. And what does Miss Castlemaine say?"
Mary stood at the casement window. The grand, expansive sea lay below and around. She could see nothing else. An Indiaman was sailing majestically in the distance; on the sails of one of the fishing boats, dotting the surface nearer, some frosted snow had gathered and was sparkling in the sunshine. There she stood, reflecting.
"For the sake of constantly enjoying this scene of wondrous beauty, it would be almost worth while to come, let alone other inducements!" she exclaimed mentally in her enthusiasm. "As to acceding to their wish of taking the lead, I believe it is what I should like, what I am fitted for."
And when she quitted Sister Mildred's room she left her promise of acceptation within it.
Meanwhile an unpleasant adventure had just happened to Ethel. Her visits to the wives of the fishermen on the cliff concluded, and seeing no sign yet of Mary Ursala's leaving the Nunnery, she thought she would make a call on Mrs. Bent, and wait there: which, in truth, she was rather fond of doing. But to-day she arrived at an inopportune moment. Mr. and Mrs. Bent were enjoying a dispute.
It appeared that a letter had been delivered at the inn that morning, addressed to Anthony Castlemaine: the third letter that had come for him since his disappearance. The two first bore the postmark of Gap, this one the London postmark, and all were addressed in the same handwriting.
Mrs. Bent had urged her husband to hand over the others to the Master of Greylands: she was now urging the like as to this one. John Bent, though in most matters under his wife's finger and thumb, had wholly refused to listen to her in this: he should keep the letters in his own safe custody, he said, until the writer, or some one of Mr. Anthony's connections from over the water, appeared to claim them.
Mrs. Bent was unable to stir his decision: since the fatal night connected with the Friar's Keep, she could but notice that John had altered. He was more silent than of yore; yielded to her less, and maintained his own will better: which was, of course, not an agreeable change to Mrs. Bent.
They were in their ordinary room, facing the sea. The door stood open as usual, but a screen of two folds now intervened between the fire-place and the draught. John sat in his carved elbow-chair; Mrs. Bent stood by, folding clothes at the table; which was drawn near the fire from its place under the window.
"I tell you, then, John Bent, you might be taken up and prosecuted for it," she said, sprinkling the linen so vigorously that some splashes went on his face. "Keeping other people's letters!"
"The letters are directed here, to my house, Dorothy woman; and I shall keep them till some proper person turns up to receive them," was John's answer, delivered without irritation as he wiped his face with his pocket-handkerchief.
"The proper person is Mr. Castlemaine. Just take your elbow away: you'll be upsetting the basin. He is the young man's uncle."
"Now look here, wife. You've said that before, and once for all I tell you I'll not do it. Mr. Castlemaine is the last person in the world I'd hand the letters to. What would he do with them!--Put 'em in the fire, I dare be bound. If, as I believe; I believe it to my very heart; Mr. Castlemaine took his nephew's life that night in the Friar's Keep----"
"Hist!" said Mrs. Bent, the rosy colour on her face fading as a sound caught her ear; "hist, man!"
And, for once, more alarmed than angry, she looked behind the screen, and found herself face to face with Ethel Reene.
"Mercy be good to us!" she exclaimed, seeing by the young lady's white face that they had been overheard. And, scarcely knowing what she did, she dragged the horror-stricken girl round to the hearth, before John.
"Now you've done it!" she cried, turning upon him. "You'd better pack up and be off to jail: for if Miss Ethel tells the Master of Greylands what she has heard, he'll put you there."
"No, he won't," said John, full of contrition for the mischief he had done, but nevertheless determined not to eat his words, and believing the suspicion must have reached the young lady sooner or later.
"You cannot think this of papa!" said Ethel, sinking into a chair.
"Well, Miss Ethel, it is a great mystery, as you must know," said the landlord, who had risen. "I think the Master of Greylands could solve it if he liked."
"But--but, Mr. Bent, what you said is most dreadful!"
"I'm heartily sorry you chanced to overhear it, Miss Ethel."
"There's no cause to wink at me like that, wife. The words are said, and I cannot unsay them."
"But--do--you---believe it?" gasped Ethel.
"Yes, he does believe it," burst forth Mrs. Bent, losing sight of prudence in her anger against her husband. "If he does not get into some awful trouble one of these days through his tongue, his name's not John Bent--And there's Miss Castlemaine of Stilborough crossing over the road!"
Not less overcome by terror and dismay than Mrs. Bent had been by anger, Ethel rushed out of the house and burst into a storm of hysterical sobs. Mary Ursula, wondering much and full of concern, drew her arm within her own and went over to the little solitary bench that stood by the sea.
"Now, my dear, tell me what this means," she said, as they sat down.
But Ethel hesitated: it was not a thing to be told to Miss; Castlemaine. She stammered an incoherent word or two between her sobs, and at the best was indistinct.
"I understand, Ethel. Be calm. John Bent has been making a terrible charge against my Uncle James."
Ethel clung to her. She admitted that it was so: telling how she had unintentionally overheard the private conversation between the landlord and his wife. She said it had frightened and confused her, though she did not believe it.
"Neither do I believe it," returned Miss Castlemaine calmly. "I heard this some time ago--I mean the suspicion that is rife in Greylands--but I am sorry that you should have been startled with it. That my uncle is incapable of anything of the kind--and only to have to say as much in refutation seems a cruel insult on him--I am perfectly sure of; and I am content to wait the elucidation that no doubt time will bring."
"Bat how wicked of John Bent!" cried Ethel.
"Ethel, dear, I have gone through so much misery of late that it hassubduedme, and I think I have learnt the great precept not to judge another," said Mary Ursula sadly. "I do not blame John Bent. I respect him. That a strange mystery does encompass the doings of that February night--so fatal for me as well as for poor Anthony--I cannot ignore: and I speak not now of the disappearance only. There's reason in what John Bent says--that Mr. Castlemaine is not open about it, that it might be fancied he knows more than he will say. It is so. Perhaps he will not speak because it might implicate some one--not himself, Ethel; never himself; I do not fear that."
"No, no," murmured Ethel.
"It is Mr. Castlemaine's pride, I think, that prevents his speaking. He must have heard these rumours, and naturally resents them----"
"Do you think Anthony is really dead?" interrupted Ethel.
"I have never had any hope from the first that he is not. Now and then my imagination runs away with me and suggests he may be here, he may be there, he may have done this or done that--but of real hope, that he is alive, I have none. Next to the death of my dear father, it has been the greatest weight I have had to bear. I saw him but once, Ethel, but I seemed to take to him as to a brother. I am sure he was honourable and generous, a good man and a gentleman."
"You know what they are foolish enough to say here?" breathed Ethel. "That the ghost of the Grey Friar, angry at his precincts being invaded----"
"Hush!" reproved Miss Castlemaine.