English fiction -- 19th century; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Smugglers -- Fiction
The village street--if it could be called a street--continued to wind
on, up the village, the Dolphin Inn making a corner, as it were,
between the street and the inland coach-road. Let us follow this
street. It is steep and winding, and for a short distance solitary.
Halfway up the ascent, on the left, and built on the sea-coast, rises
the pile of old buildings called the Grey Nunnery. This pile stands
back from the road across a narrow strip of waste land on which grass
grows. The cliff is low there, understand, and the Grey Nunnery's
built right at the edge, so that the waves dash against its lower
walls at high water. The back of the building is to the road, the
front to the sea. A portion of it is in ruins; but this end is quite
habitable, and in it live some ladies, twelve, who are called the Grey
Sisters, or sometimes the Grey Ladies, and who devote themselves to
charity and to doing good. In spite of the appellation, they are of
the Reformed Faith; strict, sound Protestants: a poor community as to
funds, but rich in goodness. They keep a few beds for the sick among
the villagers, or for accidents; and they have a day school for the
village children. If they could get better children to educate, they
would be glad; and some of the ladies are accomplished gentlewomen.
Mr. Castlemaine, who is, so to say, head and chief of the village of
Greylands, looking down on it from his mansion, Greylands' Rest, does
not countenance these Sisters: he discountenances them, in fact, and
has been heard to ridicule the ladies. The Master of Greylands, the
title generally accorded him, is no unmeaning appellation, for in most
things his will is law. Beyond the part of the building thus
inhabited, there is a portion that lies in complete ruin; it was the
chapel in the days of the monks, but its walls are but breast-high
now; and beyond it comes another portion, still in tolerable
preservation, called the Friar's Keep. The Friar's Keep was said to
have gained its appellation from the fact that the confessor to the
convent lived in it, together with some holy men, his brethren. A vast
pile of buildings it must have been in its prime; and some of the
traditions said that this Friar's Keep was in fact a monastery,
divided from the nunnery by the chapel. A wild, desolate, grand place
it must have been, looking down on the turbulent sea. Tales and
stories were still told of those days: of the jolly monks, of the
secluded nuns, some tales good, some bad--just as tales in the
generations to come will be told of the present day. But, whatever
scandal may have been whispered, whatever dark deeds of the dark and
rude ages gone by, none could be raised of the building now. The only
inhabited part of it, that occupied by the good Sisters, who were
blameless and self-denying in their lives, who lived but to do good,
was revered by all. That portion of it was open, and fair, and
above-board; but some mysterious notions existed in regard to the other
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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