Chapter XIX: Jane Hallet

Greylands lay, calm and monotonous, basking under the morning sun. There were no signs of any of the commotion that had stirred it the previous night: no crowding people surrounding a sad little burden; no women's cries; and John Bent's propriety had come back to him. Greylands had heard the news from one end to the other--the Grey Monk had been abroad again. It had appeared to two of the Sisters and to the landlord of the Dolphin.

The burnt child, an intelligent girl of five years old, lay in the little bed, Sister Phoebe sitting with her. The window of the room faced the road; it had upright iron bars before it: originally placed there, perhaps, to prevent the nuns putting their heads out to take a sly peep at the world. Polly Gleeson was in less pain, and lay quietly. Mr. Parker had looked in, and confirmed Sister Mildred's opinion that she would do well.

The door opened gently, and there entered Sister Mary Ursula and Miss Reene. Ethel, hearing of the accident, had come down from Greylands' Rest. Sister Phoeby rose, smiling and nodding, and they approached the bed.

"She is ever so much better," said the watching Sister. "See, she does not cry at all."

Polly was a pretty little girl. Her brown hair lay around her on the bolster; her dark eyes smiled at the ladies. The face was not touched, and nothing could be seen of the injuries as she lay: the worst of them were about the chest and shoulders. Tears stood in Ethel's eyes.

"Poor little Polly!" she said, stooping gently to kiss her. "How did it happen, little one?"

"Billy took the candle to look for a marble on the floor, and I looked too; and then there come a great light and mother screeched out."

"But were you not in bed before that time, Folly? It was past nine o'clock."

"Mother was undressing of us then: she'd been a busy washing."

"Poor little darling! Well, Polly, you will be well soon; and you must take great care of candles after this."

Polly gave as emphatic a nod as the bolster allowed her; as much as to say she would never go within wide range of a candle again. Miss Castlemaine took Sister Phoeby's place, and the latter went away.

That the child was now at ease, appeared evident; for presently her eyelids, heavy with sleep, gradually closed. She had had no sleep all night. Mary Ursula took some work from her pocket. The Sisters were making garments for this child: all she had--and a poor "all" it was--had been from the floor by the terrified mother, and caught up rolled round her to put the fire out.

"How peaceful it seems here," said Ethel in a low tone. "I think I should like to come and be a Sister with you, Mary."

Miss Castlemaine smiled one of her sad smiles. "That would never do, Ethel."

"It is so useful a life."

"You will find usefulness in another sphere. It would not be right that you should bury yourself here."

"We all told you that, Mary, you know, at Greylands' Rest. But you have done it."

"My dear, the cases are essentially different. My hopes of happiness, my prospects in the world were over: yours, Ethel, are not even yet in the bud. When some good man shall woo and win you, you will find where your proper sphere of usefulness lies."

"I don't want to be won," spoke Ethel: just as young girls are given to say. "I'm sure I would ten times be a Grey Sister than marry Harry Castlemaine."

Mary looked up with unusual quickness. The words brought to her mind one of the incidents of the past night.

"Harry does not continue to tease you, does he, Ethel?"

"Yes he does. I thought he had left it off: but this morning he brought the subject up again--and he let everybody hear him!"

"What did he say?"

"Not very much. It was when he was going out of the room after breakfast. He turned his head to me and said he hoped I should soon be ready with my answer to the question he had put to me more than once. Papa and mamma must have understood what he meant. I could have thrown the loaf after him."

"I think he must be only doing it in joke, Ethel," was the slow, thoughtful rejoinder.

"I don't know whether he is or not. Sometimes I think he is; at others I think he is in earnest: whichever it may he, I dislike it very much. Not for the whole world would I marry Harry Castlemaine."

"Ethel, I fancy--I am not sure, but I fancy--you have no real cause to fear he will press it, or to let it trouble you. Harry is hardly staid enough yet to settle down. He does many random things."

"We have had quite a commotion at home this morning," resumed Ethel, passing to another topic. "Somebody locked Flora in her bedroom last night--when she wanted to run out this morning as usual, the door was fast. Mamma has been so angry: and when the news of Polly Gleeson's accident came up just now, she began again, saying Flora might just as well have been burnt also as not, burnt to death."

"Who locked her in?"

"I don't know--unless it was Madame Guise. Papa and mamma and I were at dinner at Stilborough--at the Barclays', Mary. Harry would not go. It was a nice party. We had singing in the evening."

"But about the door?"

"Well, Madame Guise thought she might have unintentionally done it. She said she went in last night to look at Flora. I can scarcely think she did it, for she had gone in many a time and never turned the key before. Or the keys of other doors, either."

"At least, it does not seem to have been of any consequence.

"No; only mamma made it so. I tell you every little trifle that I can, Mary," she added, laughing quietly. "Shut up here, it seems to me that you must like to hear news from the outer world."

"And so I do," was the answer. "I have not lost all interest in my fellow pilgrims, I assure you, Ethel."

"I wore my black net trimmed with white satin ribbons: you can't think how nice it looked, Mary," said Miss Ethel, some of her vanity creeping to the fore. "And a silver flower in my hair."

"I have no doubt the dress and the flower did look well, considering what a pretty girl it was adorning," was Mary's reply. And Ethel blushed slightly. She knew how nice-looking she was.

"Does Madame Guise continue to suit?"

"Oh, quite well. Mrs. Castlemaine thinks there's nobody to equal her. I like her also; but at times she puzzles me."

"How does she puzzle you?"

"Well, I can hardly explain it. She seems strange at times. But I must be going," added Ethel, rising.

"You are in a hurry, Ethel."

"I have to go up the cliff to Miss Hallet's. Jane is hem-stitching some handkerchiefs for mamma. Mamma had one of them with her last night: Mrs. Barclay saw the work, and said she would like some done for herself. So I am to tell Jane to call at Mrs. Barclay's the next time she goes to Stilborough. The work is really beautiful: it is the broad hem-stitch, you know, Mary: four or five rows of it."

A few more words spoken in the same low tone, lest the sleeping child should be disturbed, and Ethel took her departure. Opposite the beach she encountered Mrs. Bent: who was crossing back home in her cherry-ribboned cap from a purchase at Pike's tea and general shop.

"A nice day again, Miss Ethel!"

"It is a lovely day," said Ethel, stopping; for she and Mrs. Bent were great friends. "I have been in to see poor Polly Gleeson. How badly she is burnt!"

"The only wonder is that it never happened before, with that imbecile of a mother," was Mrs. Bent's tart rejoinder. "Of all incapable women, Nancy Gleeson's about the worst. Fancy her letting the children play with a candle in their night-gowns! Where could her senses have been?"

"Well, it is a sad thing for Polly. But the Sisters say she will do well. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Bent," continued Ethel, turning as she was going onward, "will you let mamma have your receipt for stewed eels again? The new cook does not do them to her mind and mamma cannot tell where the fault lies."

"It's the best receipt for eels in the three kingdoms," spoke Mrs. Bent with pride. "It was my mother's before me."

"Will you step across for it now, Miss Ethel?"

"Not now: as I come back. I am going up the cliff."

"To that Nancy Gleeson's, I suppose," cried Mrs. Bent in her free manner. "She does not deserve it. If I had twenty children about me, I'll be bound not one of 'em should ever set itself alight in my presence."

"Not there," said Ethel slightly laughing at Mrs. Bent's tartness. "I am taking a message from mamma to Jane Hallet."

"I hope it is to warn her not to make herself so free with Mr. Harry," cried Mrs. Bent, speaking on the moment's impulse. Had she taken time for thought she would not have said it.

"Warn her not to make herself so free with Mr. Harry!" repeated Ethel, somewhat haughtily. "Why, Mrs. Bent what can you mean?"

"Well, I have seen them walking together after nightfall," said Mrs. Bent, unable to eat her words.

"They may have met accidentally," returned Ethel after a pause.

"Oh, of course, they may," assented Mrs. Bent in a significant tone.

"Since when have you seen them?" pursued Ethel, feeling surprised and rather scandalized.

"Ah, well, I can't tell that. Since last autumn, though. No harm may be meant, Miss Ethel; I don't say it is; and none may come of it: but young girls in Jane Hallet's position ought to take better care of themselves than to give rise to talk."

Ethel continued her way to the cliff in some annoyance. While Mr. Harry Castlemaine made a pretence of addressing herself, it was not agreeable to hear that he was flirting with the village girls. It's true Ethel did not intend to listen to his suit: she absolutely rejected it; but that made little difference. Neither in itself was this walking with Jane Hallet the right thing. What if he made Ana fond of him? many a possibility was more unlikely than that. As to any "harm" arising, as Mrs. Bent had just phrased it, Ethel did not fear that--did not, in fact, cast a thought to it. Jane Hallet was far superior to the general run of girls at Greylands. She had been well educated by the Grey Ladies, morally and else, having gone to school to them daily for years; she was modest and reticent in manner; and Ethel would as soon believe a breath of scandal could tarnish herself as Jane. Her brother, George Hallet, who was drowned, had been made a sort of companion of by Harry Castlemaine during the last year or two of his life, as Greylands well remembered: and Ethel came to the conclusion that the intimacy Mrs. Bent talked of must be a sort of remnant of that friendship, meaning nothing: and so she dismissed it from her mind. Mrs. Bent, as Ethel knew, was rather given to find fault with her neighbours' doings.

Now it happened that as Ethel was ascending the cliff, Jane Hallet, within the pretty cottage near the top of it, was being taken to task by her aunt for the same fault that Mrs. Bent had spoken of--the staying abroad after nightfall. Miss Hallet had latterly found much occasion to speak on this score; but Jane was invariably ready with some plausible excuse; so that Miss Hallet, naturally unsuspicious, and trusting Jane as she would have trusted herself, never made much by the argument.

After taking the cambric handkerchief to Greylands' Rest the previous evening, Jane had gone home, swallowed her tea hastily, put off the best things that her aunt grumbled at her for having put on and then sat down to work. Some article was wanted in the house; and at dusk Jane ran down in her dark cloak to get it. From which expedition she did not get back until half-past nine was turned: and she seemed to have come up like one running for a wager. Miss Hallet was then ill with an attack of spasms, and Jane remained unreproved. This morning when the housework was done, and they had begun their sewing, Miss Hallet had leisure to recur to it. Jane sat by the window, busy at one of the handkerchiefs. The sun shone on her bright flaxen hair; the light print dress she wore was neat and nice--as Jane's dresses always were.

"How long does it take to get from here to Pike's shop and back again, Jane?"

"From here to Pike's shop and back again, aunt?--I could do it in a short ten minutes," said unsuspicious Jane, fancying her aunt might be wanting to send her there. "It would take you longer, of course."

"How did it happen then last night that it took you two hours and ten minutes?" demanded Miss Hallet. "You left here soon after half past seven, and you did not get back till close upon ten."

The soft colour in Jane's face grew bright on a sudden. She held her work to the window, as though some difficulty had occurred in the cambric.

"After buying the sugar, I went into the parlour to say good evening to Susan Pike, aunt. And then there came that dreadful outcry about Nancy Gleeson's poor burnt child."

The truth, but not the whole truth. Miss Jane had stayed three minutes with Susan Pike; and the commotion about the child had occurred some two hours later. The intervening time she did not allude to, or account for. Miss Hallet, never thinking to inquire minutely into time, so far accepted the explanation.

"If Nancy Gleeson's children had all been burnt, that's no reason why you should stay out all that while."

"Nearly everybody was out, aunt. It was like a fair around the Nunnery gate."

"You go off here; you go off there; pretty nigh every evening you dance out somewhere. I'm sure I never did so when I was a girl."

"When it is too dusk to see to work and too soon to light the candle, a run down the cliff does no harm," returned Jane.

"Yes, but you stay when once you are down. It comes of that propensity of yours for gossip, Jane. Once you get into the company of Susan Pike or that idle Patty Nettleby, you take as much thought of time as you might if all the clocks stopped still for you."

Jane bent to bite off a needleful of cotton--by which her flushed face was hidden.

"There you are! How often have I told you not to bite your thread! Many a set of teeth as good as yours has been ruined by it. I had the habit once; but my lady broke me of it. Use your scissors, and--Dear me! here's Miss Reene."

Ethel came in. Jane stood up to receive her and to hear her message. The girl's face was shy, and her manner was very retiring. Ethel thought of what she had just heard; certainly Jane looked pretty enough to attract Mr. Harry Castlemaine. But the blue eyes, raised to hers, were honest and good; and Ethel believed Jane was good also.

"Thank you: yes, I shall be glad to do the handkerchiefs for Mrs. Barclay," said Jane. "But I shall not be going into Stilborough for a week or so: I was there yesterday. And of course I should not begin them until I have finished Mrs. Castlemaine's."

"Very well; I suppose Mrs. Barclay is in no particular hurry," said Ethel.

"Jane might get through more work if she chose," remarked Miss Hallet. "Not that I wish her to do any: it is her own will entirely. On the other hand, I have no objection to it: and as she is fond of finer clothes than I should purchase for her, she has to get them for herself. Just before you came in, Miss Reene, I was telling her how she fritters away her time. Once dusk has set in, down she goes to her acquaintances in the village, and there she stays with one and another of them, never heeding anything else. It is a great waste of time."

Of all the hot faces, Jane's at that moment was the hottest. She was standing before Miss Reene, going on with her work as she stood. Ethel wondered why she coloured so.

"To-night she stays at Susan Pike's; to-morrow night it's at Martha Nettleby's; the next night it's at old. Mother Dance's, under the cliff!" went on Miss Hallet. "Chattering with one gossip and another, and dancing after burnt children, and what not, Jane never lacks an excuse for idling away her evenings."

"Mrs. Castlemaine said something about having her initials worked on these handkerchiefs: do you know whether she wishes it done, Miss Reene?" interposed Jane, who seemed to be flurried by the lecture. "I did not like to ask about it yesterday afternoon."

"I don't know at all," said Ethel "You had better see Mrs. Castlemaine."

"Very well, ma'am."

Ethel went down the cliff again, tripping along the zigzag path. Other paths branched off to other cottages. She took one that brought her to the door of Tim Gleeson's hut: a poor place of two rooms, with a low roof. Tim, a very idle, improvident, easy, and in general good-tempered man, sat on a stone at the door, his blue cloth legs stretched out, his rough face gloomy. "You are not in the boat to-day, Tim," remarked Ethel.

"Not to-day, Miss Castlemaine," said the man, slowly rising. "I'm a going out with the next tide. This accident have took all strength out of me! When a lot of 'em come fizzing into the Dolphin last night, a saying our Polly was afire, you might ha' knocked me down with a feather. Mrs. Bent she went on at me like anything, she did--as if it was my fault! Telling me she'd like to shut the inn doors again' me, for I went there when I ought to be elsewhere, and that I warn't good for my salt. I'd rather it had been any of 'em nor Polly: she's such a nice little thing, she is."

"Is your wife indoors?"

"No; she's off to the Nunnery. I've vowed to her that if she ever gets another end o' candle in the house, I'll make her eat it," concluded Tim, savagely.

"But she must have a candle to see with."

"I don't care: I won't have the young 'uns burnt like this. Thanks to you, miss, for turning out o' your way to think on us. The brats be a squalling indoors. I've just give 'em a licking all round."

Ethel ran on, and gained the Dolphin, entering it by the more familiar door that stood open opposite the beach. Mr. and Mrs. Bent were both in the room: he, reading his favourite weekly newspaper by the fire, the Stilborough Herald: she, sitting at the table under the window, stoning a plate of raisins. The receipt Ethel had asked for lay ready.

"You'll please tell Mrs. Castlemaine, Miss Ethel, that more or less pounded mace can be put according to taste," observed the landlady, as she handed Ethel the paper. "There's no particular quantity specified. It's strong: and a little of it goes a great way."

Ethel sat down by the table, putting a raisin into her mouth. John, who had risen to greet her, resumed his seat again. To say the truth, Miss Ethel liked running into the Dolphin: it made an agreeable interlude to the general dulness of Greylands' Rest. The screen introduced into the room during the late wintry weather, had been taken away again. Mrs. Bent had a great mind to break it up, and burn it; but for that screen Ethel Reene would not have overheard those dangerous words. But no allusion had been made to the affair since, by any one of them: all three seemed content to ignore it.

"You must excuse my going on with my work, Miss Ethel," said Mrs. Bent. "We've got a dinner on to-night, and I had no notice of it till a few minutes ago. Some grand Inspector-General of the coastguard stations is here to-day; and he and two or three more gentlemen are going to dine here this evening. Mr. Castlemaine, I fancy, is to be one of them."

"Mr. Castlemaine is!" cried Ethel.

"Either him or Mr. Harry. I b'lieve it's him. And me with not a raisin in the house stoned for plum-pudding! I must make haste if I am to get it boiled. It's not often I'm taken unawares like this."

"If you will give me an apron to put on, I'll help you to stone them," said Ethel, taking off her black gloves.

"Now, Miss Ethel! As if I'd let you do anything of the kind! But that's just like you--always ready to do anybody a good turn."

"You give me the apron, please."

"I couldn't. If any of them from Greylands' Rest happened to look in, they'd be fit to snap at me; and at you, too, Miss Ethel. Seeing you stoning plums, indeed! There's no need, either: I am three parts through them."

Ethel began to do a few without the apron, in a desultory kind of way, and eat two or three more. John Bent came to some paragraph in the newspaper that excited his ire.

"Hear this!" he cried in anger. "Hear it, Miss Ethel! What a shame!"

"We have been given to understand that the rumour so freely circulated during this past week, of a matrimonial engagement having been made between Mr. Blake-Gordon and the heiress of Mountsorrel, has had no foundation in fact."

"The villain!" cried Mrs. Bent, momentarily forgetting her work. "He can hardly be bad enough to think of another yet."

Ethel's work was arrested too. She gazed at John Bent, a raisin in one hand, a stone in the other. That any man could be so fickle-hearted as this, she had not believed.

"I knew the tale was going about," said the landlord; "I heard it talked of in Stilborough last market day, Miss Ethel. Any way, true or untrue, they say he is a good deal over at the Mountsorrels, and----"

John Bent brought his words to a standstill; rose, and laid down his newspaper. There had entered a rather peculiar looking elderly gentleman, tall and upright yet, with a stout walking stick in his hand. He wore a long blue coat with wide skirts and brass buttons, drab breeches and top boots. His hair was long and snow white, his dark eyes were fiery.

Taking off his broad-brimmed hat with old fashioned courtesy, he looked round the room, particularly at Mrs. Bent and Ethel stoning the raisins. It is just possible he mistook the latter for a daughter of the house, dressed in her Sunday best.

"This is the Dolphin, I think!" he cried dubiously.

"At your service, sir," said John.

"Ay, I thought so. But the door seems altered. Its a good many years since I was here. Oh--ay,--I see. Front door on the other side. And you are its landlord--John Bent."

"Well, sir, I used to be."

"Just so. We shall do. I have walked over from Stilborough to see you. I want to know the truth of this dreadful report--that has but now reached my ears."

"The report, sir?" returned John--and it was perhaps natural that he should have his head filled at the moment with Mr. Blake-Gordon and the report touching him. "I believe I don't know anything about it."

"Not know anything about it! But I am told that you know all about it. Come!"

Ethel was rubbing her hands on Mrs. Bent's cloth preparatory to drawing on her gloves to depart. To help stone raisins in private at the inn was one thing; to help when visitors came in was a different thing altogether. John Bent, looked back at the stranger.

"Perhaps we are at cross-purposes, sir. If you will tell me what you mean, I may be able to answer you."

"Him that I would ask about is the son of the friend of my early days, Basil the Careless. Young Anthony Castlemaine."

The change of ideas from Mr. Blake-Gordon to the unfortunate Anthony was sudden: John Bent gave a groan, and coughed it down. The gentleman resumed, after turning to look at Ethel as she went out.

"Is it true that he, Basil Castlemaine's son, came over the seas to this place a month or two ago?--and took up his abode at this inn?--and put in a claim to his grandfather's estate, Greylands' Rest? Is that true?"

"Yes, sir."

"And where is he, this young Anthony?"

"I don't know, sir. I wish I did know."

"Is it true that he disappeared in some singular way one night--and that he has never since been seen or heard of?"

"That's true, sir--more's the pity."

The questioner took a step nearer John Bent, and dropped his voice to a low, solemn key.

"I am told that foul play has been at work."

"Foul play?" stammered John, not knowing whether this strange old man might be friend or foe--whether he might have come there to call him to account for his random words. The stranger paused to notice his changing face, and then resumed.

"That the young man has been put out of the way by his uncle--James Castlemaine."