Chapter XVIII: Out to Shoot a Night-Bird

Walter Dance's situation appeared to be critical. Miss Castlemaine (entirely unused to accidents) feared it was so, and he himself fully believed it. He thought that great common conqueror of us all, who is called the King of Terrors, was upon him, Death, and it brought to him indeed a terror belonging not to this world.

"I am dying," he moaned; "I am dying." And his frame shook as with an awful ague, and his teeth chattered, and great beads of water stood on his livid face. "Lord, pardon me! Oh, ma'am, pray for me."

The young man had been all his life so especially undemonstrative that his agitation was the more notable now from the very contrast. Mary, full of fear herself and little less agitated than he, could only strive to appear calm, as she bent over him and took his hands.

"Nay, Walter, it may not be as serious as you fear; I think it is not," she gently said. "Mr. Parker will be here presently. Don't excite yourself, my good lad; don't."

"I am dying," he reiterated; "I shall never get over this. Oh, ma'am, you ladies be like parsons for goodness: couldn't you say a prayer?"

She knelt down and put up her hands to say a few words of earnest prayer; just what she thought might best comfort him. One of his hands lay still, but he stretched the other up, suffering it to touch hers. These ladies of the Nunnery were looked upon by the fishermen as being very near to Heaven nearer (let it be said under the breath) than was Parson Marston.

"I've done a many wicked things, lady," he began when her voice ceased, apparently saying it in the light of a confession. "I've often angered father and grandmother beyond bearing: and this night work, I've never liked it. I suppose it's a wrong thing in God's sight: but father, he brought me in to't, as 'twere, and what was I to do?"

"What night work?" she asked.

But there came no answer. Mary would not repeat the question. He was lying in extreme agitation, shaking painfully. She put the brandy-and-water to his lips.

"I must tell it afore I go," he resumed, as if in response to some battle with himself. "Ma'am you'll promise me never to repeat it again?"

"I never will," she replied earnestly, remembering that death-bed confessions, made under the seal of secrecy, should, of all things, be held sacred. "If you have aught to confess, Walter, that it may comfort you to speak, tell it me with every confidence, for I promise you that it shall never pass my lips."

"It's not for my sake, you see, that it must be kept, but for their sakes: the Castlemaines."

"The what?" she cried, not catching the words.

"And for father's and the Commodore's, and all the rest of 'em. It would spoil all, you see, ma'am, for the future--and they'd never forgive me as I lay in my grave."

She wondered whether he was wandering. "I do not understand you, Walter."

"It all belongs to Mr. Castlemaine, father thinks, though the Commodore manages it, and makes believe it's his. Sometimes he comes down, the master, and sometimes Mr. Harry; but it's Teague and us that does it all."

"What is it that you are talking of?" she reiterated.

"The smuggling work," he whispered.

"The smuggling work?"

"Yes, the smuggling work. Oh, ma'am, don't ever tell of it! It would just be the ruin of father and the men, and anger Mr. Castlemaine beyond bearing."

Her thoughts ran off to Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, and to the poor fishermen, whom it was that officer's mission to suspect of possessing drams of unlawful brandy and pouches of contraband tobacco. She certainly believed the sick brain had lost its balance.

"We've run a cargo to-night," he whispered; "a good one too. The rest had cleared off, and there was only me left to lock the doors. When I see the glimmer of your light, ma'am, and somebody moving, I thought it was one of the men left behind, but when I got up and found it was a woman's garments, I feared it was a spy of the preventive officers come to betray us."

"What cargo did you run?" she inquired, putting the one question from amid her mind's general chaos.

"I fancy 'twas lace. It generally is lace, father thinks. Nothing pays like that."

Curious ideas were crowding on her, as she remembered the boats putting backwards and forwards that night from the two-masted vessel, lying at anchor. Of what strange secret was she being made cognisant? Could it be that some of the mystery attaching to the Friar's Keep was about to be thus strangely and most unexpectedly cleared to her?

"Walter, let me understand. Do you mean to say that smuggling is carried on in connection with the Friar's Keep?"

"Yes, it is. It have been for years. Once a month, or so, there's a cargo run: sometimes it's oftener. An underground passage leads from the Keep to the Hutt, and the goods are stowed away in the cellar there till the Commodore can take 'em away to the receivers in his spring cart."

"And who knows of all this?" she asked, after a pause. "I mean in Greylands."

"Only father and me," he faintly said, for he was getting exhausted. "They've not dared to trust anybody else. That's quite enough to know it--us. The sailors bring in the goods, and we wheel 'em up the passage: Teague, and me, and father. I've seen Mr. Harry put his hand to the barrow afore now. George Hallet--Jane's brother--he knew of it, and helped too. We had to be trusted with it, him and me, being on father's boat."

In the midst of her compassion and pity for this young man, a feeling of resentment at his words arose in Mary's heart. There might be truth in the tale he told in regard to the smuggling--nay, the manoeuvres of the boats that night and the unsuspected door she had seen open to the narrow beach, seemed to confirm it: but that this nefarious work was countenanced by, or even known to, the Master of Greylands, she rejected utterly. If there was, in her belief, one man more honourable than any other on the face of the earth, more proudly conscious of his own rectitude, it was her Uncle James. Pride had always been his failing. Walter Dance must be either partially wandering in mind to say it; or else must have taken up a fallacious fancy: perhaps been imposed upon by his father from some private motive. The work must be Teague's, and his only.

"Walter, you are not in a condition to be contradicted," she said gently, "but I know you are mistaken as to Mr. Castlemaine. He could not hold any cognisance of such an affair of cheating as this--or his son either."

"Why, the business is theirs, ma'am; their very own: father don't feel a doubt of it. The Commodore only manages it for 'em."

"You may have been led to suppose that: but it is not, cannot be true. My Uncle James is the soul of honour. Can you suppose it likely that a gentleman like Mr. Castlemaine would lend himself to a long continued system of fraud?"

"I've always thought 'twas his," groaned Walter. "I've seen him there standing to look on."

"You must have been mistaken. Did you see him there to-night?"

"No, ma'am."

"Nor any other night, my poor lad, as I will venture to answer for."

"He might have been there to-night, though, without my seeing him," returned the young man, who seemed scarcely conscious of her words.

"How should you have left the vaults, but for this accident?" she asked, the question striking her.

"I had locked the door on the sea, and was going straight up the passage to the Hutt," he groaned, the pain in his side getting intolerable.

"One question, Walter, and then I will not trouble you with more," she breathed, and her voice took a trembling sound as she spoke. "Carry your thoughts back to that night, last February, when young Mr. Anthony was said to disappear within the Friar's Keep----"

"I know," he interrupted.

"Was any cargo run that night?"

"I can't tell," he answered, lifting his eyes for a moment to hers. "I was ill abed with a touch of the ague; I get it sometimes. I don't think father was abroad that night, either."

"Have you ever known, ever heard any hint, or rumour, from your father or the Commodore or the sailors who run these cargoes, that could throw light on Mr. Anthony's fate?"

"Never. Never a word."

"Who are the sailors that come?"

"Mostly foreigners. Is it very sinful?" he added in an access of agony, more bodily than mental, putting out his one hand to touch hers. "Very sinful to have helped at this, though father did lead me? Will God forgive it?"

"Oh yes, yes," she answered. "God is so merciful that He forgives every sin repented of--sins that are a vast deal blacker than this. Besides, you have not acted from your own will, it seems, but in obedience to authority."

"I think I'm dying," he murmured. "I can't bear this pain long."

She wiped the dew from his face, and again held the brandy-and-water to his lips. Walter Dance had always been in the highest degree sensitive, it may be said excruciatingly sensitive, to physical pain. Many another man, lying as he was now with these same injuries, would not have uttered a moan. Brave Tom Dance, his father, was wont to tell him that if ever he met with a sharpish hurt he'd turn out a very woman.

"If Doctor Parker would but come!" he cried restlessly. "Lady, you are sure he is sent for?"

As if to answer the doubt, the gate-bell rang out, and Mr. Parker's voice was heard, as he entered the Nunnery. Sister Ann had brought not only him, but John Bent also. Miss Castlemaine felt vexed and much surprised to see the latter: some faint idea, or hope, had been lying within her of keeping this untoward affair secret, at least for a few hours; and nobody had a longer tongue in a quiet way than the landlord of the Dolphin. She cast a look of reproach on the Sister.

"It was not my fault, madam," whispered Sister Ann, interpreting the glance. "Mr. Bent came over with us without as much as asking."

"Bless my heart, Walter Dance, here's a pretty kettle o' fish," began the surgeon, looking down on the patient. "You have shot yourself, Sister Ann says. And now, how did that come to happen?"

"Pistol went off unawares," groaned Walter. "I think I'm dying."

"Not just yet, let us hope," said the doctor cheerily, as he began to take off his coat and turn up his shirt-sleeves.

Sending Miss Castlemaine from the room, the doctor called for Sister Ann, who had helped him before in attending to accidents, and had as good a nerve as he. Mary, glad enough to be dismissed, went into the kitchen to Sister Phoeby, and there indulged in a sudden burst of tears. The events of the night had strangely unnerved her.

If Sister Ann exercised any speculation as to the cause of the displeasure visible in the Superior's face at the sight of John Bent, she set it down solely to the score of possible excitement to the patient. As she hastened to whisper, it was not her fault. Upon returning back from fetching Mr. Parker, he and she were bending their hasty steps across the road from the corner of the inn, when, to the astonishment of both, the voice of John Bent accosted them, sounding loud and clear in the silence of the night. Turning their heads, they saw the landlord standing at his open door.

"Keeping watch to see the sun rise, John?" asked the doctor jestingly.

"I am keeping watch for my lodger," replied the landlord in a grumbling tone, for he was feeling the want of his bed and, resented the being kept out of it. "Mr. North went off this afternoon to a distance with his sketch-book and things, ordering some supper to be ready at nine o'clock, as he should miss his dinner, and he has never come back again. It is to be hoped he will come; that we are not to have a second edition of the disappearance of young Anthony Castlemaine."

"Pooh!" quoth the doctor. "Mr. North has only lost his way."

"I hope it may prove so!" replied the landlord grimly: for his fears were at work, though at present they took no definite shape. "What sickness is calling you abroad at this hour, doctor?"

"Young Walter Dance has shot himself," interposed Sister Ann, who had been bursting with the strange news, and felt supremely elated at having somebody to tell it to.

"Walter Dance shot himself!" echoed the landlord, following them, upon impulse, to hear more. "How?--where? How did he do it?"

"Goodness knows!" returned Sister Ann. "He must have done it somewhere--and come to the Nunnery somehow. Sister Mary Ursula was still sitting up, we conclude--which was fortunate, as no time was lost. When we went to bed after prayers, she remained in the parlour to write letters."

In the astonishment created by the tidings, John Bent went with them to the Nunnery, leaving his own open door uncared for--but at that dead hour of the morning there was little fear of strangers finding it so. That was the explanation of his appearance. And there they were, the doctor and Sister Ann, busy with the wounded man, and John Bent satisfying his curiosity by listening to the few unconnected words of enlightenment that Walter chose to give as to the cause of the accident, and by fingering the pistol, which lay on the table.

"Will the injuries prove fatal?" asked Miss Castlemaine of the surgeon, when the latter at length came forth.

"Dear me, no!" was the reply, as he entered the parlour, at the door of which she stood. "Don't distress yourself by thinking of such a thing, my dear young lady. Blood makes a great show, you know; and no doubt the pain in the side is acute. There's no real cause for fear; not much damage, in fact: and he feels all reassured, now I have put him to rights."

"The ball was not in him?"

"Nothing of the kind. The side was torn a little and burnt, and of course was, for one who feels pain as he does, intolerably painful. When I tell you that the longest job will be the broken arm, and that it is the worse of the two, you may judge for yourself how slight it all is. Slight, of course, in comparison with what might have been, and with graver injuries."

"Did the ball go through the arm?"

"Only through the flesh. The bone no doubt snapped in falling: the arm must have got awkwardly doubled wader him somehow. We shall soon have him well again."

Mary gave vent to a little sob of thankfulness. It would have been an awful thing for her had his life been sacrificed. She felt somewhat faint herself, and sat down on the nearest chair.

"This has been too much for you," said the doctor; "you are not used to such things. And you must have been sitting up very late, my dear young lady--which is not at all right. Surely you could write your letters in the day-time!"

"I do things sometimes upon impulse; without reason," she answered with a faint smile. "Hearing sad news of an old friend of mine from Mrs. Hunter, whom I met at Greylands' Rest last evening, I sat down to write to her soon after my return."

"And spun your letter out unconsciously--it is always the case. For my part, I think there's a fascination in night work. Sit down when the house is still to pen a few minutes' letter to a friend, and ten to one but you find yourself still at it at the small hours of the morning. Well, it was lucky for young Dance that you were up. You heard him at the door at once, he says, and hastened to him."

A deep blush suffused her face. She could only tacitly uphold the deceit.

"His is rather a lame tale, though, by the way--what I can understand of it," resumed Mr. Parker. "However, it did not do to question him closely, and the lad was no doubt confused besides. We shall come to the bottom of it to-morrow."

"You are going home?" she asked.

"There's no necessity whatever for me to stay. We have made him comfortable for the rest of the night with pillows and blankets. Sister Ann means to sit up with him: not that she need do it. To-morrow we will move him to his own home."

"Will he be well enough for that?"

"Quite. He might have been carried there now had means been at hand. And do you go up to your bed at once, and get some rest," concluded the doctor, as he shook hands and took his departure.

John Bent had already gone home. To his great relief, the first object he saw was Mr. North, who arrived at the inn door, just as he himself did. The surgeon's supposition, spoken carelessly though it was proved to be correct. George North had missed his way in returning; had gone miles and miles out of the road, and then had to retrace his steps.

"I'm dead beat," he said to the landlord, with a half laugh. "Fearfully hungry, but too tired to eat. It all comes of my not knowing the country; and there was nobody up to enquire the way of. By daylight, I should not have made so stupid a mistake."

"Well, I have been worrying myself with all sorts of fancies, Sir," said John. "It seemed just as though you had gone off for good in the wake of young Mr. Anthony Castlemaine."

"I wish to goodness I had!" was the impulsive, thoughtless rejoinder, spoken with ringing earnestness.

"Sir!"

Mr. North recollected himself, and did what he could to repair the slip.

"I should at least have had the pleasure of learning where this Mr. Anthony Castlemaine had gone--and that would have been a satisfaction to you all generally," he said carelessly.

"You are making a joke of it, sir," said the landlord, in a tone of reproach. "With some of us it is a matter all too solemn: I fear it was so with him. What will you take, sir?"

"A glass of ale--and then I will go up to bed. I am, as I say, too tired to eat. And I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Bent, to have kept you up."

"That's nothing, now you've come back in safety," was the hearty reply. "Besides, I'm not sorry it has happened so, sir, for I've had an adventure. That young Walter Dance has gone and shot himself to-night; he is lying at the Grey Nunnery, and I have but now been over there with Mr. Parker.

"Why, how did he manage to do that?" cried Mr. North, who knew young Dance very well.

"I hardly know, sir. We couldn't make top or tail of what he said: and the doctor wouldn't have him bothered. It was something about shooting a night-bird with a pistol, and he shot himself instead."

"Where?"

"In the chapel ruins."

"In the chapel ruins!" echoed Mr. North--and he had it on the tip of his tongue to say that Walter Dance would not go to the chapel ruins at night for untold gold: but the landlord went on and interrupted the words.

"He seemed to say it was the chapel ruins, sir; but we might have misunderstood him. Any way, it sounds a bit mysterious. He was in a fine tremor of pain when the doctor got in, thinking he was dying."

"Poor fellow! It was only yesterday morning I went for a sail with him. Is he seriously injured?"

"No, sir; the damages turn out to be nothing much, now they are looked into."

"I am glad of that," said Mr. North; "I like young Dance. Goodnight to you, landlord. Or, rather, good-morning," he called back, as he went up the staircase.

Miss Castlemaine also went to her bed. The first thing she did on reaching her room was to look out for the two-masted vessel. Not a trace of it remained. It must have heaved its anchor and sailed away in the silence of the night.

Mr. Parker was over betimes at the Grey Nunnery in the morning. His patient was going on quite satisfactorily.

Reassured upon the point of there being no danger, and in considerably less pain than at first, Walter Dance's spirits had gone up in a proportionate ratio. He said he felt quite well enough to be removed home--which would be done after breakfast.

"Passato il pericolo, gabbato il santo," says the Italian proverb. We have ours somewhat to the same effect, beginning "When the devil was sick"--which being well known to the reader, need not be quoted. Young Mr. Walter Dance presented an apt illustration of the same. On the previous night, when he believed himself to be dying, he was ready and eager to tell every secret pressing on his soul: this morning, finding he was going to live, his mood had changed, and he could have bitten out his unfortunate tongue for its folly.

He was well disposed, as young men go, truthful, conscientious. It would have gone against the grain with him to do an injury to any living man. He lay dwelling on the injury he might now have done, by this disclosure, to many people--and they were just those people whom, of all the world, he would most care to cherish and respect. Well, there was but one thing to do now, he thought truthful though he was by nature, he must eat his words, and so try and repair the mischief.

Mary Ursula rose rather late. Walter Dance had had his breakfast when she got down, and she was told of the doctor's good report. Much commotion had been excited in the Nunnery when the Grey Ladies heard what had happened. They had their curiosity, just as other people have theirs; and Sister Ann gave them the version of the story which she had gathered. The young man had been up at the chapel ruins to shoot a night-bird, the pistol had gone off, wounding him in the arm and side, and he came crawling on all fours to the Grey Nunnery. The superior, Sister Mary Ursula, sitting up late at her letters, heard him at the door, helped him in, and called for assistance.

Well, it was a strange affair, the ladies decided; stranger than anything that had happened at the Grey Nunnery before: but they trusted he would get over it. And did not all events happen for the best! To think that it should be just that night, of all others, that Sister Mary Ursula should have remained below!

Mary Ursula went into the sick-room, and was surprised at the improved looks of the patient. His face had lost its great anxiety and was bright again. He looked up at her gratefully, and smiled.

"They are so kind to me, lady!--and I owe it all to you."

Mary Ursula sat down by the couch. Late though it was when she went to rest, she had been unable to sleep, and had got up with one of the bad headaches to which she was occasionally subject. The strange disclosure made to her by Walter Dance, added to other matters, had troubled her brain and kept her awake. While saying to herself that so disgraceful an aspersion on the Castlemaines was worse than unjustifiable, outrageously improbable, some latent fear in her heart kept suggesting the idea--what if it should be true! With the broad light of day, she had intended to throw it quite to the winds--but she found that she could not. The anxiety was tormenting her.

"Walter," she began in a low tone, after cheerily talking a little with him about his injuries, "I want to speak to you of what you disclosed to me last night. When I got up this morning I thought in truth I had dreamt it--that it could not be true."

"Dreamt what?" he asked.

"About the smuggling," she whispered. "And about what you said, reflecting on my uncle. You are more collected this morning; tell me what is truth and what is not."

"I must have talked a deal of nonsense last night, ma'am," spoke the young man after a pause, as he turned his uneasy face to the wall--for uneasy it was growing. "I'm sure I can't remember it a bit."

She told him what he did say.

"What a fool I must have been! 'Twas the pain, lady, made me fancy it. Smugglers in the Friar's Keep! Well, that is good!"

"Do you mean to say it is not true?" she cried eagerly.

"Not a word on't, ma'am. I had a fever once, when I was a little 'un--I talked a rare lot o' nonsense then. Enough to set the place afire, grandmother said."

"And there is no smuggling carried on?--and what you said to implicate Mr. Castlemaine has no foundation save in your brain?" she reiterated, half bewildered with this new aspect.

"If I said such outrageous things, my wits must have gone clean out of me," asserted Walter. "Mr. Castlemaine would be fit to hang me, ma'am, if it came to his ears."

"But--if there is nothing of the kind carried on, what of the boats last night?" asked Mary Ursula, collecting her senses a little. "What were they doing?"

"Boats, lady!" returned Walter, showing the most supreme unconsciousness. "What boats?"

"Some boats that put off from an anchored vessel, and kept passing to and fro between it and the Keep."

"If there was boats, they must have come off for some purpose of their own," asserted the young man, looking as puzzled as you please. "And what did I do, down where you found me, you ask, ma'am? Well, I did go there to shoot a bird; that little strip o' beach is the quietest place for 'em."

Was he wandering now?--or had he been wandering then? Miss Castlemaine really could not decide the question. But for having seen and heard the boats herself, she would have believed the whole to be a disordered dream, induced by the weakness arising from loss of blood.

"But how did you get there, Walter?"

"Down that there slippery zigzag from the chapel ruins. The tide was partly up, you say, ma'am? Oh, I don't mind wet legs, I don't. The door? Well, I've always known about that there door, and I pushed it open: it don't do to talk of it, and so we don't talk of it: it mightn't be liked, you see, ma'am. 'Twas hearing a stir inside it made me go in: I said to myself, had a bird got there? and when I saw your light, ma'am, I was nigh frightened to death. As to boats--I'm sure there was none."

And that was all Mary could get from Mr. Walter Dance this morning. Press him as she might now--though she did not dare to press him too much for fear of exciting fever--she could get no other answer, no confirmatory admission of any kind. And he earnestly begged her, for the love of heaven, never to repeat a word of his "tattle" to his father, or elsewhere.

In the course of the morning, Tom Dance and two or three fishermen-friends of his came to the Grey Nunnery to convey Walter home. The rumour of what had happened had caused the greatest commotion abroad, and all the village, men and women, turned out to look for the removal. Fishermen, for that tide, abandoned their boats, women their homes and their household cares. No such excitement had arisen for Greylands since the vanishing of Anthony Castlemaine as this. The crowd attended him to Tom Dance's door with much hubbub; and after his disappearance within it, stayed to make their comments: giving praises to those good Grey Ladies who had received and succoured him.

"Now then," cried the doctor to his patient, when he had placed him comfortably in bed at his father's house and seen him take some refreshment, no one being present but themselves, "what is the true history of this matter, Walter? I did not care to question you much before."

"The true history?" faltered Walter; who was not the best hand at deception that the world could produce.

"What brought you in the chapel ruins with a loaded pistol at that untoward time of night?"

"I wanted to shoot a sea-bird: them that come abroad at night," was the uneasy answer. "A gentleman at Stilborough gave me an order for one. He's a-going to get him stuffed."

Mr. Parker looked at the speaker keenly. He detected the uneasiness at being questioned.

"And you thought that hour of the morning and that particular spot the best to shoot the bird?" he asked.

"Them birds are always hovering about the ruins there," spoke Walter, shifting his eyes in all directions. "Always a'most. One can only get at 'em at pitch dark, when things are dead still."

"I thought, too, that birds were generally shot with guns, not pistols," said the surgeon; and the young man only; groaned in answer to this: in explanation of which groan he volunteered the information that his "arm gave him a twitch."

"Where did you get the pistol?"

"Father lent it to me," said Walter, apparently in much torment, "to shoot the bird."

"And how came the pistol to go off as it did?"

"I was raising it to shoot one, a big fellow he was, and my elbow knocked again that there piece of sticking-out wall in the corner. Oh, doctor! I'm feeling rare and faint again."

Mr. Parker desisted from his investigation and went away whistling, taking in just as much as he liked of the story, and no more. There was evidently some mystery in the matter that he could not fathom.