Chapter XXX: Love's Young Dream

Combined With Mr. Walter Dance's remorse for having betrayed to Miss Castlemaine what he did betray, in that paroxysm of fear when he thought the world was closing for him, was a wholesome dread of the consequences to himself. What his father's anger would be and what Mr. Castlemaine's punishment of him might be, when they should learn all that his foolish tongue had said, Walter did not care to contemplate. As he lay that night in the Grey Nunnery after the surgeon's visit, Sister Ann watching by his pallet, he went through nearly as much agony of fear from this source as he had just gone through from the other. While he believed his life was in peril, that that mysterious part of him, the Soul, was about to be summoned to render up its account, earth and earth's interests were as nothing: utterly lost, indeed, beside that momentous hour which he thought was at hand. But, after reassurance had set in, and the doctor had quietly convinced him there was no danger, that he would shortly be well again, then the worldly fear rose to the surface. Sister Ann assumed that his starts and turns in the bed arose from bodily pain or restlessness: in point of fact it was his mind that was tormenting him and would not let him be still.

Of course it was no fault of his that Miss Castlemaine had found him in the cloistered vaults,--or that he had found her, whichever it might be called--or that there was a door that he never knew of opening into them, or a passage between them and the Grey Nunnery, or that the pistol had gone off and shot him. For all this he could not be blamed. But what he could, and would be blamed for was, that he had committed the astounding folly of betraying the secret relating to the Friar's Keep; for it might, so to say, destroy all connected with it. Hence his resolve to undo, so far as he could, the mischief with Miss Castlemaine, by denying to her that his disclosure had reason or foundation in it: and by asserting that it must have been the effect of his disordered brain.

Believing that he had done this, when his morning interview with Sister Mary Ursula was over: believing that he had convinced her his words had been but the result of his sick fancies, he began next to ask himself why he need tell the truth at all, even to his father. The only thing to be accounted for was the shot to himself and his turning up at the Grey Nunnery: but he might just as well stand to the tale that he had told the doctor, to his father, as well as to the world: namely, that he had met with the injury in the chapel ruins, and had crawled to the Grey Nunnery for succour.

This happy thought he carried out; and Tom Dance was no wiser than other people. When once deception is entered upon, the course is comparatively easy: "ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute," say the French: and Mr. Walter Dance, truthful and honest though he loved to be, found himself quite an adept at farce-relating before the first day was over.

Not that Tom Dance, wise in his nearly fifty years, took it all in unquestioningly. There was something about the story, and about Wally's voice and face and shifting eyes when he told it, that rather puzzled him: in short, that created somewhat of a doubt: but the very impossibility (as he looked upon it) of the injuries having occurred in any other way served to dispel suspicion. The idea that there was a secret passage from the Friar's Keep to the Grey Nunnery could no more have entered into Tom Dance's imagination, than that there was a passage to the moon.

When the indoor hubbub and bustle of the removal of Walter home from the Grey Nunnery was over, and the numerous friends, admitted one at a time to see him, had gone again, and Walter had had some refreshing sleep towards sunset, then Tom Dance thought the time and opportunity had come to have a talk with him. The old grandmother, Dame Dance--who lived in her solitary abode under the cliff at some distance, and whose house at high water was not accessible except by boat--had come up to nurse and tend him, bringing her white apron and a nightcap. But Tom Dance sent his mother home again. He was a good son, and he told her that she should not have the trouble: he and Sarah could attend to Wally without further help. Sarah was his daughter, Walter's sister, and several years older than the young man. She was a cripple, poor thing, but very useful in the house; a shy, silent young woman, who could only walk with crutches; so that Greylands scarcely saw her out of doors from year's end to year's end. Now and then, on some fine Sunday she would contrive to get to church, but that was all.

Tom Dance's house was the last in the village and next the beach, its side windows facing the sea. It was twilight, but there was no candle in Walter's room yet, and as Tom Dance sat down at the window, he saw the stars coming out over the grey waters, one by one, and heard the murmuring of the waves.

"D'ye feel that ye could peck a bit, Wally?" asked he, turning his head sideways towards the bed.

"Sarah's gone to make me some arrowroot, father."

"That's poor stuff, lad."

"It's what Dr. Parker said I was to have."

"Look here, Wally," continued Tom, after a pease, during which he had seemed to be looking out to sea again, "I can't make out what should have taken you up on to the chapel ruins. Why didn't you follow us to the Hutt?"

To account feasibly for this one particular item in the tale, was Walter's chief difficulty. He knew that: and while his father was entering upon it in the morning, had felt truly thankful that they were interrupted.

"I don't know what took me," replied Walter, with a sort of semi-wonder in his own voice, as though the fact were just as much of a puzzle to himself as it could be to his father. "I stayed behind to lock up: and the rest of you had all gone on to the Hutt ever so long: and--and so I went up and out by the chapel ruins."

"One would think you must ha' been in a dream, lad."

"It's rare and lonely up that other long passage by oneself," hazarded Walter. "You are up at the chapel ruins and out that way in no time."

"Rare and lonely!" sharply retorted the elder man, as though the words offended him. "Are you turning coward, lad?"

"Not I, father," warmly rejoined Walter, perceiving that plea would not find favour. "Any way, I don't know what it was took me to go up to the chapel ruins. I went; and that seems to be all about it."

"It was an unpardonable hazardous thing to do. Suppose you had been seen coming out o' the Keep at that time? And with a pistol!"

"I wish the pistol had been at the bottom o' the sea, I do!" groaned the invalid.

"What did you take the pistol up for?--why didn't you leave it in the usual place with the other pistols?" Walter groaned again, "I don't know."

"Tell ye what, lad: but that I know you b'ain't given to drink, I should say you'd got a drop of the crew's old Hollands into you."

"Janson did offer me some," said young Walter, from under the bedclothes.

"And you took it! Well you must ha' been a fool. Why, your grandmother 'ud be fit to----"

"I wasn't drunk: don't think that father," interrupted Walter, after a rapid mental controversy as to whether, of the two evils, it might not be better to confess to the Hollands--though, in point of fact, he had not touched a drop. "See here: it's no good talking about it, now it's done and over."

"And--if you did get out by wary of the chapel ruins, what on earth made you go letting off the pistol there?"

"Well, it was an accident, that was: I didn't go to let it off. That there wall in the corner knocked again' my elbow."

"What took you to the corner?"

"I thought I'd just give a look after the boats that were getting off," said Walter, who had spent that day as well as the night, rehearsing difficult items in his mind. "The beastly pistol went off somehow, and down I dropped."

"And of all things," continued the fisherman, "to think you should ha' knocked up the Grey Sisters! It must have been Hollands."

"I was bleeding to death, father. The Grey Nunnery is the nearest place."

"No, it's not. Nettleby's is the nearest."

"As if I should go there!" cried Walter, opening his eyes at the bare suggestion.

"And as near as any is the Hutt. That's where you ought to have come on to. Why did you not? Come!"

"I--I--never thought of the Hutt," said poor Walter, wondering when this ordeal would be over.

"You hadn't got your head upon you: that's what it was. Wally, lad, I'd a'most rather see you drownded in the sea some rough day afore my eyes, nor see you take to drink."

"'Twasn't drink, 'twas the sight of the blood," deprecatingly returned Walter. "The Grey Ladies were rare and good to me, father."

"That don't excuse your having went there. In two or three minutes more you'd have reached your home here--and we might ha' kept it all quiet. As it is, every tongue in the place is a wagging over it."

"Let 'em wag," suggested Walter. "They can't know nothing."

"How do you know what they'll find out, with their prying and their marvelling?" demanded the angry man. "Let 'em wag, indeed!"

"I could hardly get to the Nunnery," pleaded Walter. "I thought I was dying."

"There'll be a rare fuss about it with the Castlemaines! I know that. Every knock that has come to the door this blessed day I've took to be the Master o' Greylands and shook in my shoes. A fine market you'll bring your pigs to, if you be to go on like this, a getting yourself and everybody else into trouble! George Hallet, poor fellow, would never have been such a fool."

Reproached on all sides, self-convicted of worse folly than his father had a notion of, weak in body, fainting in spirit, and at his very wits' end to ward off the home questions, Walter ended by bursting into a flood of tears. That disarmed Tom Dance; and he let the matter drop. Sarah limped in with the arrowroot, and close upon that Mr. Parker arrived.

The bright moon, wanting yet some days to its full, shone down on the chapel ruins. Seated against the high, blank wall of the Grey Nunnery, his sketch-book before him, his pencil in hand, was Mr. North. He had come there to take the Friar's Keep by moonlight: at least, the side portion of it that looked that way. The chapel ruins with its broken walls made the foreground: the half-ruined Keep, with its Gothic door of entrance, the back; to the right the sketch took in a bit of the sea. No doubt it would make an attractive picture when done in watercolours, and one that must bear its own painful interest for George North.

He worked attentively and rapidly, his thoughts meanwhile as busy as his hands. The moon gave him almost as much light as he would have had by day: though it cast dark shades as well as brightness; and that would make the chief beauty of the completed painting.

Somewhere about a week had passed since the accident to Walter Dance, and the young man was three parts well again.

The occurrence had rarely been out of Mr. North's mind since. He had taken the opportunity in an easy and natural manner of calling in at Dance's to pay a visit to the invalid, to inquire after his progress and condole with him; and he that been struck during that interview with the same idea that had come to him before--namely, that the story told was not real. Putting a searching question or two, his eyes intently fixed upon the wounded man's countenance, he was surprised--or, perhaps not surprised--to see the face flush, the eyes turn away, the answering words become hesitating. Nothing, however, came of it, save this impression. Walter parried every question, telling the same tale that he had told others; but the eyes of the speaker, I say, could not look Mr. North in the face, the ring of the voice was not true. Mr.. North asked this and that; but he could not ask too pointedly or persistently, his apparent motive being concern for the accident, slightly tempered with curiosity.

"It was not the ghost of the Grey Friar that shot you, was it?" he questioned at last with a joking smile. Walter evidently took it in earnest, and shook his head gravely.

"I never saw the ghost at all, sir, that night: nor thought of it, either. I was only thinking of the bird."

"You did not get the bird, after all."

"No; he flew away when the pistol went off. It startled him, I know: you should have heard his wings a-flapping. Father says he'll shoot one the first opportunity he gets."

How much was false, and how much true, Mr. North could not discern. So far as the bird went, he was inclined to believe in it--Walter must have had some motive for going to the ruins, and, he fancied, a very strong one. It was the shot itself and the hour of its occurrence that puzzled him. But Mr. North came away from the interview no wiser than he had entered on it: except that his doubts were strengthened.

As if to give colouring to, and confirm his son's story, a day or two subsequent to the accident, Tom Dance, being in the company of some other fishermen at the time, and having his gun with him, aimed at a large grey sea-gull that came screeching over their heads, as they stood on the beach, and brought him down. The next morning, in the face and eyes of all Greylands, he went marching off with the dead bird to Stilborough, and left it with a naturalist to be stuffed: and pedestrians passing the naturalist's shop, were regaled with a sight of Le great bird exhibited there, its wings stretched out to the uttermost. But it turned out upon inquiry--far people, swayed by their curiosity, made very close inquiries, and seemed never to tire of doing it--that the bird had not been ordered by the gentleman at Stilborough, as Walter Dance was at first understood to say. Dance and his son had intended to make a present of one to him. As they would now do.

All these matters, with the various speculations they brought in their train, were swaying Mr. North's mind, as he worked on this evening by moonlight. The occurrence had certainly spurred up his intention to discover Anthony's fate, rendering him more earnest in the pursuit. It could not be said that he was not earnest in it before; but there was nothing he could lay hold of, nothing tangible. In point of fact, there was not anything now.

"Do you belong to me?" he apostrophised, casting his eyes towards the distant chimneys of Greylands' Rest, his thoughts having turned on the Master of Greylands. "Failing poor Anthony to inherit, is the property mine? I would give much to know. My Uncle James seems too honourable a man to keep what is not his own: and yet--why did he not show to Anthony the tenure by which he holds the estate?--why does he not show it now?--for he must know how people talk, and the doubts that are cast on him. I cannot tell what to think. Personally, I like him very much; and he is so like----"

A sudden shade fell on Mr. North's book, and made him look up abruptly. It was caused by a cloud passing over the face of the moon. A succession of light clouds, this cloud the vanguard of them, came sailing quickly up from beyond the sea, obscuring, until they should have dispersed, the silvery brightness of the Queen of night. Mr. North's sketch was, however, nearly done; and a few quick strokes completed it.

Putting it into his portfolio, he rose, took a look out over the sea, and passed into the Friar's Keep. Many a time, by night or by day, since his first arrival at Greylands, had he gone stealthily into that place; but never had found aught to reward him by sight or sound. Thrice he had explored it with a light: but he had seen only the monotonous space of pillared cloisters that all the world might explore at will. Silent and deserted as ever, were they now: and George North was on the point of turning out again, when the sound of light footsteps smote on his ear, and he drew back between the wall and the first pillar near the entrance.

He had left the door wide open--which was, perhaps, an incautious thing to do--and some rays of moonlight came streaming in. He was in the dark: all the darker, perhaps, the nook where he stood, from the contrast presented by these shining rays of light. George North held his breath while he looked and listened.

Darkening the shining moonlight at the entrance came a woman's figure, entering far more stealthily and softly than Mr. North had entered. She stole along amid the pillars, and then stopped suddenly, as though intent on listening. She was not quite beyond the vision of Mr. North: his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and the rays at the open door threw a semi-light beyond: and he saw her push back her hood and bend her ear to listen. Quite two minutes passed thus they seemed like five to George North, he standing still and motionless as the grave. Then she turned, retraced her steps, and went out again. Mr. North stole to the door in her wake, and looked after her.

Yes, he thought so! It was Jane Hallet. She had gone to the edge now, and was gazing straight out to seaward, her hands raised over her eyes to steady their sight. Mr. North knew her only by the outline of her figure, for the hood of her cloak was well on; but he could not be mistaken. Being about himself of an evening, he had seen her about; had seen her more than once come to these ruins and stand as she was standing now: once only before had she entered the Keep. The precise purport of these manoeuvres he could not fathom, but felt sure that she was tracking, and yet hiding herself from, Harry Castlemaine. Another minute, and then she turned.

"Not to-night," Mr. North heard her say aloud to herself as she passed the door of the Keep. And she went through the gate and walked rapidly away towards Greylands.

Mr. North took out his watch to see the time, holding it to the moonlight. Half-past nine. Not too late, he decided, to go to Greylands' Rest and pay a short visit to Madame Guise. The family were out that evening, dining at Stilborough--which information he had picked up from Mrs. Bent: had they been at home, he would not have thought of presenting himself so late. It might be a good opportunity to get a few minutes alone with his sister-in-law, and he wanted to tell her that he had heard from Gap.

Crossing the road, he went striding quickly up the lane, and was nearly run over by Commodore Teague's spring cart, which came with a bolt unexpectedly out of the turning. The Commodore, who was driving, did not see him: he had his head bent down nearly to the off shaft, doing something to the harness. The cart clattered on its way, and Mr. North pursued his.

Turning in at the gate of Greylands' Rest, and passing round to the broad path, he heard a voice singing; a voice that he knew and loved too well. Ethel was not gone to the dinner, then! She sat alone at the piano in the red parlour, its glass doors being thrown wide open, singing a love ditty to herself in the moonlight. Mr. North, every pulse of his heart beating with its sense of bliss, drew himself up against the wall beside the window to listen.

It was a very absurdly-foolish song as to words, just as three parts of the songs mostly are; but its theme was love, and that was enough for Ethel and for him; to both the words were no doubt nothing short of sublime. A kind of refrain followed every verse: the reader shall at least have the benefit of that.

"And if my love prove faithless,
What will be left for me?--
I'll let him think me scathless,
And lay me down and dee."

There were five or six verses in the ballad, and these lines came in after every verse. Ethel had a sweet voice and sang well. Mr. George North stood against the wall outside, his ears and his heart alike taking in the song, the words being as distinct as though they were spoken. The final refrain had two more lines added to it:

"But I know that he is not faithless:
He'll be true to me for aye."

Ethel left the piano with the last word and came to the window, her bright face, raised to look at the moon, glowing with a sweet, hopeful expression that seemed to tell of love.

"But I know that he is not faithless:
He'll be true to me for aye."

These words were repeated over to herself as she stood; not sung but spoken; repeated as though she were making the romance her own; as though the words were a fact, an assurance to herself that somebody would be true to her. George North went forward, and Ethel was startled.

"Oh, Mr. North!" she exclaimed. "How you frightened me!"

He took her hand--both hands--in his contrition, begging pardon for his thoughtlessness, and explaining that he waited there until she finished her song, not to enter and disturb it. It was one of the sweetest moments in the life of either, this unexpected meeting, all around so redolent of poetry and romance. Mr. North had to release her hands, but their pulses were thrilling with the contact.

"I thought you were gone out to dinner," he said.

"No, I was not invited. Only papa and mamma and Harry."

"Or of course I should not have attempted to intrude so late as this. I thought, believing Madame Guise alone, it would be a good opportunity to see her. I suppose she is at home."

"Oh yes; she will be glad to see you," replied Ethel, her heart beating so wildly with its love and his presence that she hardly knew what she did say. "Flora is very troublesome to-night, and Madame has had to go up to her. She will soon be back again."

Very troublesome indeed. The young lady, taking the advantage of Mr. and Mrs. Castlemaine's absence, had chosen to go into one of her wildest moods and promenade the house en robe de =it. At this present moment she was setting Madame at defiance from various turns in the staircases, executing a kind of bo-peep dance.

George North had stepped into the room, and they were standing side by side at the open window in the moonlight, each perfectly conscious of what the companionship was to the other. He began telling her where he had been and what doing; and opened the sketch-book to show her the drawing.

"Sitting in the chapel ruins all that while alone by moonlight!" exclaimed Ethel. "It is plain you are not a native of Greylands, Mr. North. I question whether any other man in the place would do it."

"I am not a poor simple fisherman, Ethel," he laughed. He had called her "Ethel" some time now, led to it by the example of others at Greylands' Rest.

"I was not thinking altogether of the fishermen. I don't fancy even Harry Castlemaine would do it."

"No?" said Mr. North, an amused smile lingering on his

"At least, I have heard him, more than once, express a dislike of the place; that is, of going to it--had he to do such a thing--after dark. Did you see anything?"

"Only----" Mr. North suddenly arrested his words. He had been about to say, Only Jane Hallet. Various reasons prompted him to close his lips on the point to Miss Reene.

"Only shadows," he continued, amending the phrase. "The moon went under a cloud now and then. It is a most beautiful night out at sea."

Her slender fingers were trembling as she held one side of the sketch-book, he holding the other; trembling with sweet emotion. Not a word of his love had Mr. North said to her; not a word could he say to her under present circumstances; but Ethel felt that it was hers, hers for all time. Fate might part them in this life; each, it was possible, might marry apart; but he would never love another as he loved her.

"How exact it is!" she cried, looking at the page, which the bright clear moonlight fell upon. "I should know it anywhere. You have even got that one little dark stone in the middle of the wall that seems to have been put in after the other stones and is so unlike them."

"I made it darker that I may know which it is for the painting," he answered. "It will make a nice picture."

"Oh, very. When shall you paint it?"

"That I don't know. Some of these odd days."

"You are not painting at all now."

"No. I don't feel settled enough at the Dolphin for that."

A pause of silence. In changing the position of his hand, still holding the book, Mr. North somehow let it touch hers. Ethel's voice trembled slightly when next she spoke.

"Shall you be going over to France again?"

"Undoubtedly. In a letter I received this morning from some of my friends there, they inquire when it is to be. I am lingering here long, they think. It was to tell Madame Guise I had heard, for she knows them, that brought me here so late."

"You--you said one day, I remember, that you might probably settle in France," resumed Ethel, inwardly shivering as she spoke it. "Shall you do so?"

"It is quite uncertain, Ethel. If things turn out as--as they ought to turn, I should then settle in England. Probably somewhere in this neighbourhood."

Their eyes met: Ethel looking up, he down. With the yearning love, that sat in each gaze, was mingled an expression of deep sadness.

"Circumstances at present are so very doubtful," resumed Mr. North. "They may turn out well; or very ill----"

"Very ill!" involuntarily interrupted Ethel.

"Yes, they may."

The answer was given in a marked, decisive tone. For the doubt that ran through his mind--that had run through it much lately--was this: If it should indeed prove that the Master of Greylands had dealt ill with Anthony, George North could scarcely bring himself to marry one so closely connected with Greylands' Rest as Ethel.

"And--in that case?" she continued after a pause, during which he seemed to have been lost in thought.

"In that case? Oh, I should become a wandering Arab again roaming the world at large."

"And settle eventually in France?"

"Very likely--if I settled anywhere. It is all so uncertain, Ethel, that I scarcely like to glance at it. I may hold property in England some time: and that might necessitate my living on it."

"Do you mean an estate? Such as this?"

"Yes, such as this," he answered with a passing, curious smile. "Meanwhile I am so happy in the present time, in my idle life--transferring some of the beauties of your country to enrich my portfolio, with the hospitable Dolphin roof over my head, and the grand, ever-moving sea before me like a glorious panorama--that I fear I am too willing to forget the future care which may come."

Not another word did either speak: the silence, with its pleasure and its pain, was all too eloquent. The sketch-book was held between them still: and, in turning over its pages to look at former sketches, their hands could not help--or, rather, did not help--coming in contact. What bliss it was!

"Why, you are quite in the dark, my dear! Why--dear me! who is it?"

They turned at the voice--that of Madame Guise. She had just left Miss Flora.

"Not in the dark, but in the moonlight," said Mr. North, holding out his hand.

"I did not know that you were here," she answered. "It is late."

"Very late: I hope you will forgive me. But I have been here some little time. I was taking a sketch by moonlight not far off, and came on, Madame Guise, to say Bon jour, thinking you were alone."

"It is Bon soir, I think," returned Madame, with a pleasant laugh, as she rang for lights. "Will you take a chair?"

"Thank you no," he replied, putting the sketch-book into the portfolio. "I will take my departure instead, and call again to-morrow at a more seasonable hour. Goodnight to you Miss Ethel."

Ethel put her hand into his and returned the goodnight in a low tone. When he should have left, the sunshine of the evening would have left with him. Madame Guise, as she often did, stepped across the threshold to walk to the gate with him.

"Did you want anything particular with me, George?" she asked in French, waiting until they were beyond hearing--lest the walls of the house should possess ears.

"Only to tell you that I had a letter from Emma this morning. I should not have come up so late but for believing the family were all out."

"What does Emma say?"

"Not much. Emma never does, you know. She sends some kind messages to you and a kiss to Marie: and she asks how much longer I mean to linger at Greylands. That is about all."

"But does she ask nothing about Anthony?"

"She asks in a general way, whether we know more yet. Which of course we do not."

"Have you made anything out of that young Dance, George?"

"Nothing. There's nothing to be made out of him. Except that I feel convinced the tale he tells is not all true. I was in the Friar's Keep to-night----"

"And saw nothing?" she eagerly interrupted.

"And saw nothing. It was dark and silent and lonely as usual. Sometimes I ask myself what it is that I can reasonably expect to see."

"Yes, I know; you have thought that from the first," she said reproachfully. "My brain is at work always I have no rest by night or by day."

"Which is very bad for you, Charlotte: it is wearing you out. This living, restless anxiety will not bring elucidation any the surer or quicker."

"Not bring it! But it will. Will my prayers and my anguish not be heard, think you? God is good."

They parted with the last words. Charlotte Guise, leaning on the side-gate as she looked after him, raised her eyes to the blue canopy of heaven: and there and then, in her simple faith, poured forth a few words of prayer.