Chapter XXXV: The Last Cargo

At the window of her bedroom in the Grey Nunnery, steadily gazing out to sea, stood Mary Ursula Castlemaine. The night was almost as light as though the moon were shining: for a sort of light haze, partially covering the skies, seemed to illumine the earth and make things visible.

December had come in, but the weather was still balmy: people said to one another that they were going to have no winter. It had been one of those exceptional years when England seems to have borrowed some more genial climate: since the changeable spring there had been only smiles and sunshine.

As the days and weeks had gone on since that communication made to Miss Castlemaine by Walter Dance the night of his accident (to be retracted by him in the morning), the doubt in her mind and the uneasiness it caused rarely gave her rest. She had not dared to speak of it to Mr. Castlemaine: had she been perfectly sure that he was in ignorance in regard to it--in short, to speak out plainly, that he was not implicated, she would have told him all; but the uncertainty withheld her. The evidence of her own senses she could not question, therefore she did believe, that the wholesale smuggling, confessed to by young Dance in his fear of death, was an actual fact--that cargoes of lace, and what not, were periodically run. The question agitating her was--had, or had not, this treason the complicity of the Master of Greylands? If it had, she must be silent on the subject for ever; if it had not, why then she would like to communicate with himself upon it. For an idea had taken firm hold of her, arising she knew not from what instinct, that the ill-fate of Anthony--had any ill-fate in truth overtaken him--must have arisen through the doings of one of these disturbed nights when the Friar's Keep was invaded by lawless bands of sailors.

It was for this reason she could not rest; it was this never-forgotten thought that disturbed her peace by day and her sleep by night. The smuggling and the smugglers she would only have been too glad to forget; but the mysterious fate of Anthony lay on her mind like a chronic nightmare. Another thing, too, added to her disquietude. The Grey Monk, about which nothing had been heard for some weeks past, was now, according to public rumour, appearing again.

In her heart she suspected that this Grey Monk and all the rest of the mystery had to do with the smuggling and with that only. Reason told her, or strove to tell her, that Commodore Teague was the principal in it all, the cunning man, for whom the goods were run; and she tried to put down that latent doubt of Mr. Castlemaine that would rise up unbidden. If she could but set that little doubt at rest! she was ever saying to herself. If she could but once ascertain that her uncle had nothing to do with the unlawful practices, why then she would disclose to him what she knew, and leave him to search out this clue to the disappearance of Anthony.

Many a night had she stood at her casement window as she was standing now; though not always, perhaps oftener than not. But not until to-night had she seen the same two-masted vessel--or what she took to be the same. It had certainly not been visible at sunset: but there it lay now, its masts tapering upwards, and its shape distinctly visible in the white haze, just in the same spot that it had been that other night.

Mary wrapped herself up, and put her casement window open, and sat down and watched. Watched and waited. As the clocks told midnight, some stir was discernible on board; and presently the small boats, as before, came shooting out from the ship through the water. There could be no mistake: another of those nefarious cargoes was about to be run.

With a pale face but resolute heart, Mary Ursula Castlemaine rose up. She would go forth again through the secret passage, and look on at these men. Not to denounce them; not to betray her presence or her knowledge of what they were about; but simply to endeavour to ascertain whether her uncle made one at the work.

Procuring the keys and the dark lantern, Mary started. There was some delay at setting out, in consequence of her being unable to open the first door. Try with all her force, though she would and did, she could not turn the key in the lock. And she was on the point of giving it up as hopeless, when the key yielded. At least a quarter of an hour must have been hindered over this.

It was colder by far in the passage than it had been those other nights, for the time of the year was later: cold, and damp, and wofully dreary. Mary's courage oozed out at every step. Once she paused, questioning whether she could go on with this, but she reasoned herself into it. She reached the other end, set her light on the floor, and put the key into this second door.

Meanwhile the boats had come in, been hauled up on the beach, and the goods were being landed. The men worked with a will. They wore sea-boots and waded through the water with the bales on their shoulders. Much jabbering was carried on, for some of the sailors were foreigners; but all spoke in covert tones. No one could be near enough to hear them, by land or by sea; they felt well assured of that; but it was always best to be prudent. The sailors were working as they worked on board ship, open and undisguised; Commodore Teague was undisguised; but the other three men--for there were three others--wore capes and had huge caps tied on over their ears and brows; and in the uncertain light their best friends might not have known them. Two of these, it is as well to say it, were Tom Dance and his son; the other was a tall, slender, fine-figured young man, who seemed to look on, rather than to work, and who had not the heavy sea-boots on. But there was no sign of the Master of Greylands. The bales were carried up and put down in the dry, close to the walls of the Keep. When all the goods that were to come out of the ship should be landed, then the sailors would help to carry them through the passage to the cellars of the Hutt, before finally returning on board.

"Where you lay de pistols?" asked a sailor in imperfect English, as he slung down a huge bale from his shoulder.

"Down there as usual, Jansen," replied another, pointing to some raised stone-work projecting from the walls of the Keep. "And the cutlasses too. Where should they be!"

"What do Jansen ask that for, Bill?" questioned one, of the last speaker.

"I get a bad dream last night," said Jansen, answering for himself. "I dream we all fighting, head, tail, wi' dem skulking coastguard. 'Jack,' he says to me in dream, 'where de knives, where de pistols?'--and we search about and we not find no knives, no pistols, and dey overpower us, and I call out, an' den I wake."

"I don't like them dreams," cried one of the ship's crew. "Dreams be hanged; there's nothing in 'em," struck in Tom Dance. "I dreamed one night, years ago, as my old mother was lying dead afore me: stead o' that, she told me next day she'd get married again if I didn't behave myself."

"Bear a hand here, Dance," said the Commodore.

At this moment, there was heard the sounds of a boat, clashing up through the waters.

Before the men could well look out, or discover what it meant, she was close in, and upon them. A boat that had stolen silently out from under the walls of the Grey Nunnery, where she had been lying concealed, waiting to pounce upon her prey. It was a boat belonging to the preventive service, and it contained Mr. Superintendent Nettleby and his coastguardsmen. After years of immunity the smugglers were discovered at last.

"In the King's name!" shouted the superintendent, as he sprung into the shallow water.

M. Jansen's dream had not told him true; inasmuch as the pistols and cutlasses lay ready to hand, and were at once snatched up by their owners. A desperate fight ensued; a hand-to-hand struggle: pistols were fired, oaths were hissed out, knives were put to work. But though the struggle was fierce it was very short: all the efforts of the smugglers, both sailors and landsmen, were directed to securing their own safety by escaping to the ship. And just as Mary Ursula appeared upon the scene, they succeeded in pushing the boats off, and scrambling into them.

Mary was horror-struck. She had bargained for seeing rough men running packages of goods; but she had never thought of fighting and cries and murder. Once within the vaults of the Friar's Keep the noise had guided her to the open door she had seen before, open again now; and she stood there sick and trembling.

They did not see her; she took care of that: hiding behind a pillar, her lantern darkened, she peeped out, shivering, on the scene. In the confusion she understood very little; she saw very little; though the cause of it all was plain enough to her mind--the smugglers had been surprised by the preventive men. In the preventive-service boat lay a bound and wounded sailor-prisoner, and also one of the customs' men who had been shot through the leg: not to speak of minor wounds and contusions on both sides. Of all that, however, Mary knew nothing until later. There she stood close to the scene of turmoil, hearing the harsh voices, the rough words, glancing out at the pile of goods, and at the dusky figures before her, moving about in the night. It was like a panoramic picture dimly seen.

Almost as by sleight of hand, for Mary did not see how or where they went, the men and the commotion disappeared together. The ship's boats, unfollowed, were hastening away to the ship; but what became of Mr. Nettleby and his staff? A moment ago, the small portion of the beach close before her, that was not under water, had been alive with the preventive men; Mary had recognised the superintendent's voice as he shouted out some order, and now not a soul was visible. No doubt they were exploring the inner corners of this bit of beach, never suspected of fraud, never visited by his Majesty's servants until now. She cautiously advanced a step or two and looked out. There lay, hauled up on the beach halfway, the waiting boat, which she supposed to be unoccupied: the two wounded men, one of them having fainted from loss of blood, were lying down flat in it, invisible to her.

A short while, and the officers reappeared. Mary drew back and went behind a pillar. Some of them got into the boat, and it was pushed off; three of them remained, either from want of space in the boat, or to keep guard over the goods; one of them was Mr. Nettleby.

Of what use for Mary to stay? None. She could not solve the doubt touching her uncle. Oh, that she had never come! she kept thinking to herself; that she had not had this most dreadful scene portrayed to her! Never again, she felt all too certain of it, should she attempt to enter the Keep by the subterranean passage.

Pushing up the slide of one side of the lantern to guide her steps, she was retracing her way through the vaults, when a ray of the light flashed upon a figure. A moving figure in woman's clothes, that seemed to be endeavouring to hide itself. Mary lifted her lantern, and saw the face of Jane Hallet.

Of Jane Hallet! Just for a moment or two a sickness as of some supernatural fear seized upon Miss Castlemaine. For Jane had never been heard of yet in Greylands, and very little doubt existed that she had found her bed at the bottom of the sea. The dark hood she was in the habit of wearing at night had fallen back from her face: her eyes wore a strange, terrified, appealing look in the sudden and startling light.

Recovering her better reason, Mary laid her detaining hand upon her before she could escape. Which of the two faces was the whiter, it were hard to say.

"It is you, Jane Hallet!"

"Yes, madam, it is me," gasped Jane in answer.

"Where have you been all this while, and whence do you come? And what brings you in this place now?"

The explanation was given in a few brief sentences. Jane, alarmed at the idea presented to her by the Grey Ladies of going out to service, against which step there existed private reasons, had taken straight refuge in Dame Dance's cottage under the cliff; she had been there ever since and was there still. Old Mrs. Dance was like a mother to her, she added; and had been in her entire confidence for a long while. As to what brought her in that place to-night, why--she was watching,--she told Miss Castlemaine with much emotion--watching for the dreadful evil that had to-night occurred.

"I have been dreading it always, madam," she said, her breath short in its agitation. "I knew, through my brother, of the work that was sometimes done here--though he betrayed it to me by accident, not intentionally. I have come to the chapel ruins of a night to see if there were preparations being made for running a cargo, and to look whether the vessel, whose shape I knew, was standing out at sea. One night in the autumn I saw them run the goods: I was watching all the while. It was one o'clock when I got home, and my aunt was fit to strike me: for I could not tell her why I stayed out."

"Watching for what?" imperiously spoke Miss Castlemaine.

"Oh, madam, don't you see?--for the preventive men. I was ever fearing that they would discover the work some night, and surprise it--as they have now done. I thought if I were on the watch for this (which nobody else, so far as I could guess, seemed to fear or think of) I might be in time to warn--to warn those who were doing it. But the officers were too cunning for me, too quick: as I stood just now looking over the low brink in the chapel ruins, I saw a boat shoot past from underneath the walls of the Nunnery, and I knew what it was. Before I got down here the fight had begun."

Jane had gone into a fit of trembling. Somehow Miss Castlemaine's heart was hardening to her.

"At nine o'clock this evening I thought I saw the vessel standing off in the far distance," resumed Jane: "so I came out later and watched her move up to her usual place, and have been watching since in the chapel ruins."

"May I inquire who knew of this watching of yours?" asked Mary Ursula, her tone full of resentment.

"Not any one, madam. Not any one in the world."

"Not Mr. Harry Castlemaine?"

"Oh, no. I should not dare to speak of the subject to him, unless he first spoke of it to me. I have wished he would."

"As there is nothing more that can be done here to-night, of watching or else, I think you had better return home, Jane Hallet," spoke Miss Castlemaine in the same proud, cold tone: though she inwardly wondered which way of egress Jane would take.

"I was just going," spoke the trembling girl. "There--there is not--oh! forgive me, madam!--any one lying wounded on the beach, I hope?"

"I presume not," replied Miss Castlemaine. "The superintendent and his men are there."

Jane Hallet turned meekly, and disappeared amid the pillars. Miss Castlemaine rightly conjectured that there must be some stairs leading from these lower cloisters to the cloisters above that opened on the chapel ruins. By these Jane had no doubt descended, and would now ascend. In point of fact, it was so. George Hallet had eventually made a clean breast of all the secret to Jane, including the openings and passages. But the underground passage to the Grey Nunnery neither he nor any one else had known of.

Miss Castlemaine turned to it now. She was crossing towards it, her dim lantern held aloft to steer her between the pillars, when her foot stumbled against something. Pacing slowly, she did not fall, and recovered herself at once. Bringing the light to bear, she stooped down and saw a man lying there on his back. He looked immensely tall, and wore a big cape, and had a cap muffled over his forehead and eyes, and lay still as one dead. With another faint sickness of heart, Mary pulled the cap upwards, for she thought she recognised the handsome features. Alas, yes! they were those of Harry Castlemaine: and they were set in what looked like the rigidness of death.

With a shrill cry--for her feelings got the better of her--Mary called him by name, and shook him gently. No, there was no response: he was surely dead! She tore the cape and cap off, flinging them aside; she put her hand to his heart, and could feel no pulse; she lifted one of his hands, and it fell again like a heavy weight. There could be little doubt that he must have been wounded during the fight, had run into the vaults, intending to make his escape by the chapel ruins, and had fallen down exhausted. Panting with fear and emotion, all considerations lost sight of in this one great shock, Mary went back to the beach crying for aid, and supremely astonishing Mr. Superintendent Nettleby.

Mr. Harry Castlemaine! Mr. Harry Castlemaine lying inside there as one dead! Why, how did that come about? What had brought him down there? unless, indeed, he had heard the row and the fighting? But then--how did he get down?

Mr. Nettleby spoke these problems aloud, as he proceeded by Miss Castlemaine's side to the spot, guided by her lantern, and followed by his two men. He assumed that the Grey Nunnery must have been aroused by the noise, and that the Lady Superior had come forth to see what it meant: and he politely apologised for having been the cause of disturbance to the Sisters. Mary allowed him to think this: and made no answer to his further expressed wonder of how she found her way down.

When they reached the spot where lay Harry Castlemaine, the first object the rays of the lantern flashed on was Jane Hallet. Aroused by Miss Castlemaine's cry, she had hastened back again and was now kneeling beside him, her trembling hands chafing his lifeless ones, her face a distressing picture of mute agony.

"Move away," spoke Miss Castlemaine.

Jane rose instantly, with a catching of the breath, and obeyed. Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, asking for the lantern to be held by one of his men, and to have its full light turned on, knelt down and proceeded to make what examination he could.

"I don't think he is dead, madam," he said to Mary Ursula, "but I do fear he is desperately wounded. How the dickens can it have come about?" he added, in a lower tone, meant for himself, and rising from his knees. "Could one of the fools have fired off a shot in here, and caught him as he was coming on to us? Well, we must get him up to land somehow--and my boat's gone off!"

"He had better be brought to the Grey Nunnery: it is the nearest place," spoke Mary.

"True," said the officer. "But which on earth is the way to it out of here?"

"Up these stairs. I will show you," said Jane Hallet, stepping forward again. "Please let me go on with the lantern."

She caught it up: she seemed nearly beside herself with grief and distress; and the officer and men raised Harry Castlemaine. Mary remembered the cape she had thrown aside, and could not see it, or the cap either. It was just as well, she thought, for the things had looked to her like garments worn for disguise, and they might have told tales. Even then an idea was crossing her that the worst--the complicity of the Castlemaines with the smuggling--might be kept from the world. Yes, it was just as well: that cape and cap might have been recognised by the superintendent and his men as being the same sort that were worn by the iniquitous offenders they had surprised. No such sinners in the whole decalogue of the world's crimes, according to the estimation of Mr. Nettleby, as those who defrauded his Majesty's revenues.

"He must have come out without his hat, or else lost it," spoke the superintendent, looking down at the head he supported. "Take care, my men, that's--blood."

The stairs were soon reached: some winding steps cut in stone. Jane Hallet held the lantern to show the way; Miss Castlemaine, saying never a word of the secret passage, followed her; the men with their burden bringing up the rear. It was a difficult job to bring him up, for the staircase was very narrow. They came out by a concealed door at the end of the upper cloisters, and had to walk through them to the chapel ruins. Mr. Nettleby never supposed but that the two women, as well as Harry Castlemaine, had come down by this route.

"To think that I should never have suspected any stairs were there! or that there was another set of cloisters under these!" he exclaimed in self-humiliation, as he walked on through with the rest, avoiding the pillars. "Had I known it, and that there was a door opening to that strip of beach below, it would have been enough to tell me what might be going on. But how the deuce do they contrive to get rid of the goods after they are run?"

For Mr. Superintendent Nettleby was still ignorant of on thing--the secret passage to Commodore Teague's house. He would not be likely to discover or suspect that until the official search took place that would be made on the morrow.

Once more the Nunnery was about to be disturbed to admit a wounded man at midnight: this second man, alas! wounded unto death. Tom Dance's son had gone forth to the world again, little the worse for his wounds; for the son and heir of the Master of Greylands, earth was closing.

The clanging night-bell aroused the inmates; and Sister Rachel, who was that week portress, went down accompanied by Sister Caroline. To describe their astonishment when they saw the line of those waiting to enter, would be impossible. Harry Castlemaine, whom the motion and air had revived, borne by Mr. Nettleby and two of the coastguardsmen; the Superior, Mary Ursula; and the resuscitated Jane Hallet! Jane the erring, with the Nunnery lantern!

"Business called me abroad to-night: I did not disturb you," quietly observed Sister Mary Ursula to the round-eyed Sisters; and it was all the explanation she gave, then or later.

Harry was taken into the same room that Walter Dance had been, and laid upon the same flat, wide sofa. One of the men ran off for Mr. Parker. The other went back with the superintendent to the scene of the struggle. The captured goods, so many of them as had been landed, had to be zealously guarded: Mr. Superintendent Nettleby had never gained such a feather in his official cap as this.

Harry Castlemaine lay where he had been placed, his once fresh face bereft of its fine colour, his eyes open to the movements around.

A patient like this was altogether different from young Dance the fisherman, and the Sisters had gone to awaken and amaze the Nunnery with the news. Only Mary Ursula was with him.

"Mr. Parker will soon be here, Harry," she said gently, bending over him.

A faint smile crossed his lips. "He can do nothing for me, Mary."

"Nay, you must not think that. You feel ill, faint; I know it; but----"

Some slight stir behind her had caught Mary's senses, and caused her to turn. There was Jane Hallet, standing half in, half out at the door, a mute, deprecatory appeal for permission to enter, shining unmistakably on her sad white face.

"Back!" said Mary with calm authority, advancing to the door with her most stately step, her hand raised to repel the intruder. "I told you to go home, Jane Hallet: it is the only thing you can do. You have no right to intrude yourself into the Nunnery. Go."

And she quietly closed the door, shutting Jane out, and returned to the bedside.

Harry's hand was feebly stretched out: it fell on her arm. "Let her come in, Mary: she is my wife."

"Your wife!"

"Yes; my wife. She has been my wife all along."

"I do not understand," faltered Mary Ursula, feeling she hardly knew how.

"We were married at the beginning of last winter. Fear of my father's displeasure has prevented my declaring it."

Mary was silent. Her heart throbbed unpleasantly.

"Jane is too good a girl for aught else," he resumed, the subject seeming to impart to him some fictitious strength. "She has borne all the obloquy in patience and silence for my sake. Did you suppose, Mary, that the favourite pupil of the Grey Ladies, trained by them, could have turned out unworthily?"

"You should, at least, have confided this to Miss Hallet, Harry."

"No; to her the least of all. Miss Hallet has her pride and her notions, and would have proclaimed it in the marketplace."

"I seem not to comprehend yet," replied Mary, many remembrances crowding upon her. In point of fact, she scarcely knew whether to believe him. "Last winter--yes, and since then, Harry--you appeared to be seeking Ethel Reene for your wife."

"I once had an idea of Ethel. I knew not that the warm affection I felt for her was but that of a brother: when I fell in love with Jane I learnt the truth. My teasings of Ethel have been but jest, Mary: pursued to divert attention from my intimacy with my real love, my wife."

Mary Ursula sighed. Harry had always been random and blamable in some way or other. What a blow this would be for the Master of Greylands!

"You will let her come in, Mary! Are you doubting still?" he resumed, noting her perplexed countenance. "Why, Mary Ursula, had my relations with Jane been what the world assumed, can you imagine I should have had the hardihood to intrude my brazen face here amid the Sisters when she was taken ill? I have my share of impudence, I am told; but I have certainly not enough for that. I sought that minute's interview with Jane to bid her be firm--to bear all reproaches, spoken and unspoken, for my sake and my father's peace. The only wonder to me and to Jane also, has been that nobody ever suspected the truth."

Mary Ursula left the room. Jane was leaning against the wall outside in the semi-darkness, a picture of quiet tribulation. Too conscious of the estimation in which she was held, she did not dare assert herself. The lantern, which nobody had put out, stood on the passage slab: there was no other light. Mary drew her into the parlour--which was wholly dark, save for the reflected light that came in from the lantern. So much the better. Jealous for the honour of her family, Mary Ursula was feeling the moment bitterly, and her face would have shown that she was.

"Mr. Harry Castlemaine has been making a strange communication to me," she began. "He says he has married you."

"Oh, madam, it is true," returned Jane hysterically, the sudden revulsion of feeling at finding it was known, the relief from her miserable concealment, taking vent in a flood of tears. "We were married last November."

"By whom?"

"Parson Marston," sobbed Jane. "He married us in his church at Stilborough."

Surprise, resentment, condemnation of Parson Marston, overpowered Miss Castlemaine and kept her silent. Thinking of this inferior girl--very inferior as compared with The Castlemaines--as they had all been thinking lately, it was not in human nature that Mary should not feel it strongly. She had her share of the Castlemaine pride; though she had perhaps thought that it was laid down within her when she came out of her home at Stilborough to enter the Grey Nunnery.

"It was very strange of Mr. Marston; very wrong."

Jane's sobs did not allow her to make any rejoinder. Of course it was wrong: nobody felt more assured of that than Jane. She did not dare to tell how Harry Castlemaine's masterful will had carried all with him, including herself and the parson. Jane had perhaps been quite willing to be carried; and the parson yielded to "You must," and was besides reprehensibly indifferent. "He would only have taken the girl off to a distance and got tied up by a strange parson," was Mr. Marston's excuse later, when speaking of it. "I am not to blame; I didn't set afloat the marriage."

"How long should you have kept it secret?" asked Miss Castlemaine, looking at Jane in her distress.

"As long as my husband had wished me to keep it, madam," was the sobbing answer. "He was always hoping some occasion might arise for declaring it; but he did not like to vex Mr. Castlemaine. It was my aunt's not knowing it that grieved me most."

"I almost wonder you did not tell Sister Mildred when you were here," observed Mary, musing on the past.

"Oh if I had been able to tell her!" returned the girl, impulsively clasping her hands. "It was very hard to bear, madam, all that blame; but I tried to be patient. And many might have thought nearly as ill of me for letting one so much above me make me his wife."

"Has no one at all known it?" asked Mary.

"Only old Mrs. Dance. She has known it from the first. We used to meet at her cottage."

"Well, Jane, what is done cannot be undone. You are his wife, it seems, and have been undeserving of the reproach of light conduct passed upon you. So far I am, for your sake, glad. He has asked to see you. You can go in."

So Jane Hallet--no longer Hallet, however,--crept into the chamber, where her husband lay dying, and stood by his side, her heart breaking.

"Don't grieve, Jane, more than you can help," he said, clasping her hand. "This will answer one good end: you will be cleared."

She fell on her knees, weeping silent tears. "To save your life I would remain under the cloud for ever," she sighed. "Oh, is there no hope?--is there no hope?"

"Well, we shall see: the doctor will be here soon," said Harry evasively. "There! dry your tears, Jane; take heart, my dear."

And the doctor came without much further delay, and examined his patient, and found that a bullet had lodged itself within him.

"There must be an operation," said he, smoothing over his grave face. And he hastened to despatch a messenger on a fleet horse for Surgeon Croft, the most clever operating surgeon in Stilborough.

But Mr. Parker knew quite well that there remained no hope in this world for Harry Castlemaine.