“Ah was bringing her oop t’ Abbey,” answered Barnabas, jerking his head and his thumb in the direction of the cart, which, however, was not in sight.
Captain Mulgrave frowned.
“D——d nuisance!” he muttered to himself.
“Eh, but Ah think Ah’ll tak’ her aweay again till ye’re gone, Capt’n,” said Barnabas drily. “T’ owd stoans will give her a better welcome home than ye seem loike to.”
“No, you may as well take her up now. I shall not see her. You don’t want to keep the girl out all day in the cold. I’ll just get across to the house now and tell Mrs. Bean to make a fire for her. By the time the cart comes round to the front I—I——” He hesitated, and Barnabas saw that, under his devil-may-care manner, Captain Mulgrave was agitated. “By that time,” continued he, recovering himself, “it will be all ready for her, and—she’ll see nothing of me—I shall go away—to-night—I shall be glad to. I’m sick of this pestilential country, where one can only breathe by virtue of a special act of parliament. Sha’n’t see you again, Barnabas.” He moved away, and just as he put his hand on the stone wall to vault over, he turned his head to say, “Thanks for your kindness to the little one.”
Then he disappeared from the farmer’s sight hastily, as he heard the cart groaning and squeaking up the hill.
Freda had got tired of waiting for Barnabas, and after much vigorous shaking of the reins, which he had put into her hands, she had succeeded in starting the horse again.
“Barnabas!” she cried, as soon as she caught sight, in the gloom, of the farmer’s figure, “is that you?”
“Aye, lassie,” said he, placing himself between the cart and the dead body on the ground.
“Didn’t I hear you talking?”
“Aye, happen ye did.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Eh, lass?” said he, pretending not to hear her, so that he might gain time for reflection.
“Who—were—you—talking to?” she asked slowly but querulously, for she was cold and tired, and full of misgivings.
“Eh, but Ah was talking to a mon as were passing.”
“Passing? He didn’t pass me.”
“Noa, lass, Ah didn’t seay as he did. Ye’re mighty sharp.”
“It’s because I don’t understand you. There’s something different about your manners. Something’s happened, I believe!”
“Eh, lassie, why, what’s coom over ye?”
“What’s that on the ground?”
She almost shrieked this, guessing something.
“Ye’ve gotten too sharp eyes, lassie. Ye’d better not ask questions.”
“Barnabas, Oh!—Barnabas, it’s not—not—my father!” whispered the poor child, clinging, over the side of the cart, to the rough hands the farmer held out to her.
“Noa, lass, noa.”
“Who is it? Tell me, quick.”
“Why, lass, it’s a poor mon as—as has been hurt.”
“He’s dead. He wouldn’t be there, so still, like that, if he was not—dead,” she whispered. “Who is it? Tell me, Barnabas.”
“Weel, Ah have a noetion—that he’s soommet loike servant Blewitt, oop to Owdcastle Farm.”
“Oh, Barnabas, it’s dreadful! Is he really dead?”
But she wanted no answer. She put her hands before her face, reproaching herself for having disliked the man, almost feeling that she had had a share in his tragic death.
“Who did it?” she asked at last, very suddenly.
Now Barnabas meant most strongly that the girl should not have the least suspicion that her father had a hand in this affair. The farmer’s soft heart had been touched as soon as Captain Mulgrave betrayed, by a momentary breaking of the voice, that he was not so utterly indifferent to his daughter as he wished to appear. Upon that reassuring sign of human feeling, Barnabas instantly resolved to hold his tongue for ever as to what he had seen. But unluckily, his powers of imagination and dissimulation were not great. Feminine wits saw through him, as they had done many a time before. While he was slowly preparing an elaborate answer, Freda had jumped at once to the very conclusion he wished her to avoid.
“Who did it?” she repeated in tones so suddenly tremulous and passionate that they betrayed her thought even to the somewhat slow-witted Yorkshireman.
“Lord have mercy on t’ lass!” cried he below his breath. “But Ah believe she knows.”
“Do you mean to say,” she went on in a low, monotonous voice, “that yousawmy father—kill him?”
Her voice dropped on the last words so that Barnabas could only guess them.
“Noa, lass, noa,” said he quickly, “Ah didn’tseehim do it.”
“Then he didn’t do it!” cried she, with a sudden change to a high key, and in tones of triumphant conviction. “You can tell me all about it now, for I’m quite satisfied.”
“It’s more’n Ah be, though,” said he dubiously. “Ah found him standing over t’ corpse loike this ’ere, wi’ this in his hand.” He produced the revolver from his pocket. “And in t’ other hand he gotten letter ye spoake of, lass, that ye said would enreage him.”
“And what did he say? Did you accuse him?”
“He said he didn’t do it, an’ Ah, why, Ah didn’t believe him.”
“But I do,” said Freda calmly.
“Weel, but who could ha’ done it then?” asked he, hoping that she might have a reason to give which would bring satisfaction to his mind also.
But in Freda’s education faith and authority had been put before reason, and her answer was not one which could carry conviction to a masculine understanding.
“My father,” she said solemnly, “could not commit a murder.”
“Weel, soom folks’ feythers does, why not your feyther? There was nobody else to do it, an’ t’ poor feller couldn’t ha’ done it hissen, for he was shot in t’ back.”
“I will never believe my father did it,” said Freda.
“Happen he’ll tell ye he did.”
Freda shook her head.
“I have been very foolish,” she said at last, “to listen to all the things I have heard said against him. And perhaps it is as a punishment to me that I have heard this. He was good and kind when I was a baby: how can he be bad now? And if he has done bad things since then, the Holy Spirit will come down into his heart again now, if I pray for him.”
“Amen,” said Barnabas solemnly.
This farmer had no more definite religion himself than that there was a Great Being somewhere, a long way off behind the clouds, whom it was no use railing at, though he didn’t encourage honest industry as much as he might, and whom it was the parson’s duty to keep in good humour by baptisms, and sermons, and ringing of the church-bells. But he had, nevertheless, a belief in the more lively religion of women, and thought—always in a vague way—that it brought good luck upon the world. So he took off his hat reverently when the girl was giving utterance to her simple belief, and then he led the horse past the dead body, and jumping up into the cart beside her, took up the reins.
Aftera little more jolting along the highroad they turned to the right up one less used, and soon came in full sight of the Abbey ruins. Just a jagged dark grey mass they looked by the murky light of this dull evening, with here and there a jutting point upwards, the outline of the broken walls softened by the snow.
Freda sat quite silent, awestruck by the circumstances of her arrival, and by the wild loneliness of the place. A little further, and they could see the grey sea and the high cliffs frowning above it. Barnabas glanced down at the grave little face, and made an effort to say something cheering.
“It bean’t all so loansome as what this is, ye know. Theer’s t’ town o’ t’other soide o’ t’ Abbey, at bottom of t’ hill. And from t’ windows o’ Capt’n Mulgrave’s home ye can see roight oop t’ river, as pretty a soight as can be, wi’ boats a-building, an’ red cottages.”
“Oh!” said Freda, in a very peaceful voice, “I don’t mind the loneliness. I like it best. And I have always lived by the sea, where you could hear the waves till you went to sleep.”
“Aye, an’ you’ll hear ’em here sometimes; fit to split t’ owd cliffs oop they cooms crashing in, an’ soonding like thoonder. Ye’ll have a foin toime here, lass, if ye’re fond of t’ soond o’ t’ weaves.”
“My father has a yacht too, hasn’t he?”
“Aye, an a pretty seeght too, to see it scoodding along. But it goes by steam, it isn’t one of yer white booterflies. That sort doan’t go fast enough for t’ Capt’n.”
Freda was no longer listening. They were on the level ground now at the top of the hill. To the right, the fields ran to the edge of the cliff, and there was no building in sight but a poor sort of farm-house, with a pond in front of it, and a few rather dilapidated outhouses round about. But on the left hand hedged off from the road by a high stone wall, and standing in the middle of a field, was the ruined Abbey church, now near enough for Freda to see the tracery left in the windows, and the still perfect turrets of the East end, and of the North transept pointing to heaven, unmindful of the decay of the old altars, and of the old faith that raised them.
Barnabas looked at her intent young face, the great burning eyes, which seemed to be overwhelmed with a strange sorrow.
“Pretty pleace, this owd abbey of ours, isn’t it?” said he with all the pride of ownership.
“It’s beautiful,” said Freda hoarsely, “it makes me want to cry.”
Now the rough farmer could understand sentiment about the old ruin; considering as he did that the many generations of Protestant excursionists who had picknicked in it had purged it pretty clear of the curse of popery, he loved it himself with a free conscience.
“Aye,” said he, “there’s teales aboot it too, for them as loikes to believe ’em. Ah’ve heard as there were another Abbey here, afore this one, an’ not near so fine, wheer there was a leady, an Abbess, Ah think they called her. An’ she was a good leady, kind to t’ poor, an’ not so much to be bleamed for being a Papist, seeing those were dreadful toimes when there was no Protestants. An’ they do seay (mahnd, Ah’m not seaying Ah believe it, not being inclined to them soart o’ superstitious notions myself) they say how on an afternoon when t’ soon shines you can see this Saint Hilda, as they call her, standing in one of t’ windows over wheer t’ Communion table used for to be.” Perceiving, however, that Freda was looking more reverently interested than was quite seemly in a mere legend with a somewhat unorthodox flavour about it, Barnabas, who was going to tell her some more stories of the same sort, changed his mind and ended simply: “An’ theer’s lots more sooch silly feables which sensible fowk doan’t trouble their heads with. Whoa then, Prince!”
The cart drew up suddenly in a sort of inclosure of stone walls. To the right was an ancient and broken stone cross, on a circular flight of rude and worn steps; to the left, a stone-built lodge, a pseudo-Tudor but modern erection, was built over a gateway, the wrought-iron gates of which were shut. In front, a turnstile led into a churchyard. Barnabas got down and pulled the lodge-bell, which gave a startingly loud peal.
“That yonder,” said he, pointing over the wall towards the churchyard, in which Freda could dimly see a shapeless mass of building and a squat, battlemented tower, “is Presterby Choorch. An’ this,” he continued, as an old woman came out of the lodge and unlocked the gate, “is owd Mary Sarbutt, an she’s as deaf as a poast. Now, hark ye, missie,” and he held out his hand to help Freda down, “Ah can’t go no further with ye, but ye’re all reeght now. Joost go oop along t’ wall to t’ left, streight till ye coom to t’ house, an’ pull t’ bell o’ t’ gate an’ Mrs. Bean, or happen Crispin himself will coom an’ open to ye.”
The fact was that Barnabas did not for a moment entertain the idea that Captain Mulgrave would have the heart to leave his newly-recovered daughter, and the farmer meant to come up to the Abbey-house in a day or two and let him know quietly that he had nothing to fear from him as long as he proved a good father to the little lass. But just now Barnabas felt shy of showing himself again, and he shook his head when Freda begged him to come a little way further with her. For a glance through the gates at the house showed her such a bare, gaunt, cheerless building that she began to feel frightened and miserable.
“Noa, missie, Ah woan’t coom in,” said Barnabas, who seemed to have grown both shyer and more deferential when he had landed the young lady at the gates of the big house; “but Ah wish ye ivery happiness, an’ if Ah meay mak’ so bawld, Ah’ll shak’ honds wi’ ye, and seay good-bye.”
Freda with the tears coming, wrung his hand in both hers, and watched him through the gates while he turned the horse, got up in his place in the cart and drove away.
“Barnabas! Barnabas!” she cried aloud.
But the gates were locked, and the old woman, without one word of question or of direction, had gone back into the lodge. Freda turned, blinded with tears, and began to make her way slowly towards the house.
Nothing could be more desolate, more bare, more dreary, than the approach. An oblong, rectangular space, shut in by high stone walls, and without a single shrub or tree, lay between her and the building. Half-way down, to the right, a pillared gateway led to the stables, which were very long and low, and roofed with red tiles. This bit of colour, however, was now hidden by the snow, which lay also, in a smooth sheet, over the whole inclosure. Freda kept close to the left-hand wall, as she had been told to do, her heart sinking within her at every step.
At last, when she had come very near to the façade of the house, which filled the bottom of the inclosure from end to end, a cry burst from her lips. It was shut up, unused, deserted, and roofless. What had once been the front-door, with its classic arch over the top, was now filled up with boards strengthened by bars of iron. The rows of formal, stately Jacobian windows were boarded up, and seemed to turn her sick with a sense of hideous deformity, like eye-sockets without eyes. The sound of her voice startled a great bird which had found shelter in the moss-grown embrasure of one of the windows. Flapping its wings it flew out and wheeled in the air above her.
Shocked, chilled, bewildered, Freda crept back along the front of the house, feeling the walls, from which the mouldy stucco fell in flakes at her touch, and listening vainly for some sound of life to guide her.
Freda Mulgravewas superstitious. While she was groping her way along the front of the dismantled house, she heard a bell tolling fitfully and faintly, and the sound seemed to come from the sea. She flew instantly to the fantastic conclusion that Saint Hilda, in heaven, was ringing the bell of her old church on earth to comfort her in her sore trouble.
“Saint Hilda was always good to wanderers,” she thought. And the next moment her heart sprang up with a great leap of joy, for her hand, feeling every excrescence along the wall, had at last touched the long swinging handle of a rusty bell.
Freda pulled it, and there was a hoarse clang. She heard a man’s footsteps upon a flagged court-yard, and a rough masculine voice asked:
“Who’s that at this time of night?”
“It is Captain Mulgrave’s daughter. And oh! take me in; I am tired, tired.”
The gate was unbolted and one side was opened, enabling the girl to pass in. The man closed the gate, and lifted a lantern he carried so as to throw the light on Freda’s face.
“So you’re the Captain’s daughter, you say?”
“Yes.”
Freda looked at him, with tender eyes full of anxiety and inquiry. He was a tall and rather thickset man with very short greyish hair and a little unshaved stubble on his chin. Her face fell.
“I thought——” she faltered.
“Thought what, miss?”
There was a pause. Then she asked:
“Who areyou?”
She uttered the words slowly, under her breath.
“I am your servant, ma’am.”
“Myservant—you mean my father’s?”
“It is the same thing, is it not?”
“Oh, then you are Crispin Bean!”
The man seemed surprised.
“How did you know my name?”
“They told me about you.”
“What did they tell you?”
“That you were a ‘rough-looking customer.’ ”
The man laughed a short, grim laugh, which showed no amusement.
“Well, yes; I suppose they were about right. But who were ‘they’?”
“The people at Oldcastle Farm.”
The man stopped short just as, after leading her along a wide, stone-paved entry, between the outer wall and the side of the house, he turned into a large square court-yard.
“Oh!” he said, and lifting his lantern again, he subjected the young lady to a second close scrutiny. “So you’ve been making friends with those vermin.”
Freda did not answer for a moment. Presently she said, in a stifled voice:
“I am not able to choose my friends.”
“You mean that you haven’t got any? Poor creature, poor creature, that’s not far from the truth, I suppose. That father of yours didn’t treat you over well, or consider you over much, did he?”
Freda grew cold, and her crutch rattled on the stones.
“What do you mean? ‘Didn’ttreat me well’!” she whispered. “He will, I am sure he will, when he sees me, knows me.”
“Oh, no, you’re mistaken. He’s dead.”
Freda did not utter a sound, did not move. She remained transfixed, benumbed, stupefied by the awful intelligence.
“It isn’t true! It can’t be true!” she whispered at last, with dry lips. “Barnabas saw him to-day—just now.”
“He was alive two hours ago. He went out this afternoon, came in in a great state of excitement and went up to his room. Presently I heard a report, burst open the door, and found him dead—shot through the head.”
“Dead!” repeated Freda hoarsely.
She could not believe it. All the dreams, which she had cherished up to the last moment in spite of disappointments and disillusions, of a tender and loving father whom her affection and dutiful obedience should reconcile to a world which had treated him harshly, were in a moment dashed to the ground.
“Dead!”
It was the knell of all her hopes, all her girlish happiness. Forlorn, friendless, utterly alone, she was stranded upon this unknown corner of the world, in a cheerless house, with no one to offer her even the comfort of a kindly pressure of the hand. The man seemed sorry for her. He stamped on the ground impatiently, as if her grief distressed and annoyed him.
“Come, come,” he said. “You haven’t lost much in losing him. I know all about it; he never went to see you all these years, and didn’t care a jot whether you lived or died, as far as any one could see. And it’s all nonsense to pretend you’re sorry, you know. How can you be sorry for a father you don’t remember?”
“Oh,” said Freda, with a sob, “can’t you understand? You can love a person without knowing him, just as we love God, whom we can never see till we die.”
“Well, but I suppose you love God, because you think He’s good to you.”
“We believe He is, even when He allows things to happen to us which seem cruel. And my father being, as I am afraid he was, an unhappy man, was perhaps afraid of making me unhappy too. And he did send for me at last, remember.”
“Yes, in a fit of annoyance over something—I forget what.”
“How do you know that he hadn’t really some other motive in his heart?” said Freda, down whose cheeks the tears were fast rolling. “He was a stern man, everybody says, who didn’t show his feelings. So that at last he grew perhaps ashamed to show them.”
“More likely hadn’t got any worth speaking of,” said the man gruffly.
“It’s not very nice or right of you to speak ill of your master, when he’s de-ad,” quavered Freda.
“Well, it’s very silly of you to make such a fuss about him when he’s de-ad,” mimicked the man.
Although he spoke without much feeling of his late master, and although he was somewhat uncouth of speech, manner and appearance, Freda did not dislike this man. As might have been expected, she confounded bluntness with honesty in the conventional manner. Therefore she bore even his little jibes without offence. There was a pause, however, after his last words. Then he asked, rather curiously:
“Come, honestly, what is your reason for taking his part through thick and thin like this? Come,” he repeated, getting for the moment no answer, “what is it?”
Freda hesitated, drying her eyes furtively.
“Don’t you see,” she said, tremulously, “that it is my only consolation now to think the very, very best of him?”
The man, instead of answering, turned from her abruptly, and signed to her with his hand to follow him. This she did; and they passed round one side of the court-yard under a gallery, supported by a colonnade, and entering the house, went through a wide, low hall, into an apartment to the right at the front of the building. It was a pretty room, with a low ceiling handsomely moulded, panelled walls, and an elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece, which had been a good deal knocked about. The room had been furnished with solid comfort, if without much regard to congruity, a generation or so back; and the mahogany arm-chairs having been since shrouded in voluminous chintz covers with a pattern of large flowers on a dark ground, the room looked warm and cheerful. Tea was laid on the table for two persons. Freda’s sharp eyes noted this circumstance at once. She turned round quickly.
“Who is this tea for?” she asked.
“Captain Mulgrave’s death was not discovered until it was ready.”
“But it was laid for two. Was it for you also?”
“Yes.”
Freda’s face fell.
“You think it was derogatory to his dignity to have his meals with me?”
“Oh, no, no indeed,” said Freda blushing. “I knew at once, when you said you were a servant, that it was only a way of speaking. You were an officer on board his ship, of course?”
“Yes,” said he.
“But I had hoped,” said Freda wilfully, “that he had expected me, and had tea made ready for me and him together.”
“Ah!” said the man shortly. “Sit down,” he went on, pointing brusquely to a chair without looking at her, “I’ll send Mrs. Bean to you; she must find a room for you somewhere, I suppose.”
“For to-night, yes, if you please. Mrs. Bean—that is your wife?”
He nodded and went out, shutting the door.
Freda heard him calling loudly “Nell, Nell!” in a harsh, authoritative voice, as he went down the passage.
She thought she should be glad to be alone, to have an opportunity to think. But she could not. The series of exciting adventures through which she had passed since she left the quiet convent life had benumbed her, so that this awful discovery of her father’s sudden death, though it agitated her did not impress her with any sense of reality. When she tried to picture him lying dead upstairs, she failed altogether; she must see him by-and-by, kiss his cold face; and then she thought that she would be better able to pray that she might meet him in heaven.
It seemed to her that she had been left alone for hours when a bright young woman’s voice, speaking rather querulously, reached her ears. Freda guessed, before she saw Mrs. Bean, that her father’s fellow-officer or servant (she was uncertain what to call him) had married beneath him. However, when the door opened, it revealed, if not a lady of the highest refinement, a very pleasant-looking, plump little woman, with fair hair and bright eyes, who wore a large apron but no cap, and who looked altogether like an important member of the household, accustomed to have her own way unquestioned.
“Dear me, and is that the little lady?” she asked, in a kind, motherly voice, encircling the girl with a rounded arm of matronly protection. “Bless her poor little heart, she looks half-perished. Crispin,” she went on, in a distant tone, which seemed to betray that she and her husband had been indulging in a little discussion, “go and put the kettle on while I take the young lady upstairs. Come along, my dear. I’ll get you some hot water and some dry clothes, and in two-twos I’ll have you as cosy as can be.”
Mrs. Bean looked a little worried, but she was evidently not the woman to take to heart such a trifle as a suicide in the house, as long as things went all right in the kitchen, and none of the chimneys smoked. Crispin, who seemed to have little trust in her discretion, gave her arm a rough shake of warning as she left the room with the young lady. Mrs. Bean, therefore, kept silence until she and her charge got upstairs. Then she popped her head over the banisters to see that Crispin was out of hearing, and proceeded to unbend in conversation, being evidently delighted to have somebody fresh to speak to.
“Oh,” began Mrs. Bean, with a fat and comfortable sigh, “I am glad to have you here, I declare. Ever since the Captain told me, in his short way, that you were coming, I’ve been that anxious to see you, you might have been my own sister.”
“That was very good of you,” said Freda, who was busily taking in all the details of the house, the wide, shallow stairs, low ceilings, and oaken panelling; the air of neglect which hung about it all; the draughts which made her shiver in the corridors and passages. She compared it with the farm-house she had just left, so much less handsome, so much more comfortable. How wide these passages were! The landing at the top of the staircase was like a room, with a long mullioned window and a wide window-seat. But it was all bare, cold, smelling of mould and dust.
“Isn’t this part of the house lived in?” asked Freda.
“Well, yes and no. The Captain lives in it—at leastdidlive in it,” she corrected, lowering her voice and with a hasty glance around. “No one else. This house would hold thirty people, easy, so that three don’t fill it very well.”
“But doesn’t it take a lot of work to keep it clean?”
“It never is kept clean. What’s the good of sweeping it up for the rats?” asked Mrs. Bean comfortably. “I and a girl who comes in to help just keep our own part clean and the two rooms the Captain uses, and the rest has to go. If the Captain had minded dust he’d have had to keep servants; I don’t consider myself a servant, you know,” she continued with a laugh, “and I’m not going to slave myself to a skeleton for people that save a sixpence where they might spend a pound.”
It would have taken a lot of slaving to make a skeleton of Mrs. Bean, Freda thought.
They passed round the head of the staircase and into a long gallery which overlooked the court-yard. It was panelled and hung with dark and dingy portraits in frames which had once been gilt.
“Does any one live in this part?” asked Freda, shivering.
Mrs. Bean’s candle threw alarming shadows on the walls. The mullioned window, which ran from end to end of the gallery, showed a dreary outlook of dark walls surrounding a stretch of snow.
“Well, no,” admitted her guide reluctantly. “The fact is there isn’t another room in the house that’s fit to put anybody into; they’ve been unused so long that they’re reeking with damp, most of them; some of the windows are broken. And so I thought I’d put you into the Abbot’s room. It’s a long way from the rest of us, but it’s had a fire in it once or twice lately, when the Captain has had young Mulgrave here. It’s a bit gloomy looking and old fashioned, but you mustn’t mind that.”
Freda shivered again. If the room she was to have was more gloomy than the way to it, a mausoleum would be quite as cheerful.
“The Abbot’s room!” exclaimed Freda. “Why is it called that?”
“Why, this house wasn’t all built at the same time, you know. There’s a big stone piece at this end that was built earliest of all. It’s very solid and strong, and they say it was the Abbot’s house. Then in Henry the Eighth’s time it was turned into a gentleman’s house, in what they call the Tudor style. They built two new wings, and carried the gallery all round the three sides. A hundred and fifty years later a banqueting room was built, making the last side of the square; but it was burnt down, and now there’s nothing left of it but the outside walls of the front and sides.”
This explained to Freda the desolate appearance the house had presented as she approached it. The deep interest she felt in this, the second venerable house she had been in since her arrival in England, began to get the better of her alarm at its gloominess. But at the angle of the house, where the gallery turned sharply to the right, Mrs. Bean unlocked a door, and introduced her to a narrow stone passage which was like a charnel-house.
“This,” said Mrs. Bean with some enthusiasm, “is the very oldest part; and I warrant you’ll not find such another bit of masonry, still habitable, mind, in any other house in England!”
Was it habitable? Freda doubted it. The walls of the passage were of great blocks of rough stone. It was so narrow that the two women could scarcely walk abreast. They passed under a pointed arch of rough-hewn stone, and came presently to the end of the passage, where a narrow window, deeply splayed, threw a little line of murky light on to the boards of the floor. On the right was a low and narrow Gothic doorway, with the door in perfect preservation. Mrs. Bean opened it by drawing back a rusty bolt, and ushered Freda, with great pride, into a room which seemed fragrant with the memories of a bygone age. Freda looked round almost in terror. Surely the Abbot must still be lurking about, and would start out presently, in dignified black habit, cowl and sandals, and haughtily demand the reason of her intrusion! For here was the very wide fireplace, reaching four feet from the ground, and without any mantelshelf, where fires had burned for holy Abbot or episcopal guest four hundred years ago. Here were the narrow windows deeply splayed like the one outside from which the prosperous monks had looked out over their wide pasture-lands and well-stocked coverts.
Even in the furniture there was little that was incongruous with the building. The roughly plastered walls were hung with tapestry much less carefully patched and mended than the hangings at Oldcastle Farm. The floor was covered by an old carpet of harmoniously undistinguishable pattern. The rough but solid chairs of unpolished wood, with worn leather seats; the ancient press, long and low, which served at one end as a washhand-stand, and at the other as a dressing-table; a large writing-table, which might have stood in the scriptorium of the Abbey itself, above all, the enormous four-poster bedstead, with faded tapestry to match the walls, and massive worm-eaten carvings of Scriptural subjects: all these combined to make the chamber unlike any that Freda had ever seen.
“There!” said Mrs. Bean, as she plumped down the candlestick upon the writing table, “you’ve never slept in a room like this before!”
“No, indeed I haven’t,” answered Freda, who would willingly have exchanged fourteenth century tapestry and memories of dead Abbots for an apartment a little more draught-tight.
“Ah! There’s plenty of gentlemen with as many thousands as the Captain had hundreds, would give their eyes for the Abbot’s guest chamber in Sea-Mew Abbey. Now I’ll just leave you while I fetch some hot water and some dry clothes. They won’t fit you very well, you being thin and me fat, but we’re not much in the fashion here. Do you mind being left without a light till I come back?”
Freda did mind very much, but she would not own to it. Just as Mrs. Bean was going away with the candle, however, she sprang towards her, and asked, in a trembling voice:
“Mrs. Bean, may I see him—my father?”
The housekeeper gave a great start.
“Bless me, no, child!” she said in a frightened voice. “Who’d ever have thought of your asking such a thing! It’s no sight for you, my dear,” she added hurriedly.
Freda paused for a moment. But she still held Mrs. Bean’s sleeve, and when that lady had recovered her breath, she said:
“That was my poor father’s room, to the right when we reached the top of the stairs, wasn’t it?”
Again the housekeeper started.
“Why, how did you know that?” she asked breathlessly.
“I saw you look towards the door on the left like this,” said Freda, imitating a frightened glance.
Mrs. Bean shook her head, puzzled and rather solemn.
“Those sharp eyes of yours will get you into trouble if you don’t take care,” she said, “unless you’ve got more gumption than girls of your age are usually blest with. We womenfolks,” she went on sententiously, “are always thought more of when we don’t seem over-bright. Take that from me as a word of advice, and if ever you see or hear more than you think you can keep to yourself, why, come and tellme—but nobody else.”
And Mrs. Bean with a friendly nod, and a kindly, rough pat on the cheek which was almost a slap, left the girl abruptly, and went out of the room.
But this warning, after all the mysterious experiences of the last two days, was more than Freda could bear without question. She waited, stupefied, until she could no longer hear the sound of Mrs. Bean’s retreating footsteps, and then, with one hasty glance round her which took in frowning bedstead, yawning fireplace and dim windows, she groped her way to the door, which was unfastened, and fled out along the stone passage. Her crutch seemed to raise strange echoes, which filled her with alarm. She hurt herself against the rough, projecting stones of the wall as she ran. The gallery-door was open: like a mouse she crept through, becoming suddenly afraid lest Mrs. Bean should hear her. For she wanted to see her father’s body. A horrible suspicion had struck her; these people seemed quite unconcerned at his death; did they know more about it than they told her? Had he really shot himself, or had he been murdered? She thought if she could see his dead face that she would know.
Tipity-tap went her crutch and her little feet along the boards of the gallery. The snow in the court-yard outside still threw a white glare on the dingy portraits; she dared not look full at them, lest their eyes should follow her in the darkness. For she did not feel that the dwellers in this gloomy house had been kith and kin to her. She reached the landing, and was frightened by the scampering of mice behind the panelling. Still as a statue she stood outside the door of her father’s room, her heart beating loudly, her eyes fixed on the faint path of light on the floor, listening. She heard no sound above or below: summoning her courage, she turned the handle, which at first refused to move under her clammy fingers, and peeped into the room.
A lamp was burning on a table in the recess of the window, but the curtains were not drawn. There was a huge bed in the room, upon which her eyes at once rested, while she held her breath. The curtains were closely drawn! Freda felt that her limbs refused to carry her. She had never yet looked upon the dead, and the horror of the thought, suddenly overpowered her. Her eyes wandered round the room; she noted, even more clearly than she would have done at a time when her mind was free, the disorder with which clothes, papers and odds and ends of all sorts, were strewn about the furniture and the floor. On two chairs stood an open portmanteau, half-filled. She could not understand it.
Just as, recovering her self-command, she was advancing towards the bed, with her right hand raised to draw back the curtain, she heard a man’s footsteps approaching outside, and turned round in terror. The door was flung suddenly open, and a man entered.
“Who’s in here?” he asked, sharply.
“It is I,” said Freda hoarsely, but boldly. “I have come to see my father. And I will see him too. If you don’t let me, I shall believe you have killed him.”
She almost shrieked these last words in her excitement. But the intruder, in whom she recognised the man she knew as Crispin Bean, took her hand very gently and led her out of the room.
Fredawas so easily led by kindness that when, not heeding her passionate outburst, Crispin pushed her gently out of the room, she made no protest either by word or action. He left her alone on the landing while he went back to get a light, and when he rejoined her, it was with a smile of good-humoured tolerance on his rugged face.
“So you think I murdered your father, do you, eh?” he said, as he turned the key in the lock and then put it in his pocket.
“Why don’t you let me see him?” asked she, pleadingly.
“I have a good reason, you may be sure. I am not a woman, to act out of mere caprice. That’s enough for you. Go downstairs.”
Freda obeyed, carrying her crutch and helping herself down by the banisters.
“Why don’t you use your crutch?” called out Crispin, who was holding the lamp over the staircase head, and watching her closely. “If you can do without it now, I should think you could do without it always?”
He spoke in rather a jeering tone. At least Freda thought so, and she was up in arms in a moment. Turning, and leaning on the banisters, she looked up at him with a gleam of daring spirit in her red-brown eyes.
“It’s a caprice, you may be sure,” she answered slowly. “I am not a man, to act upon mere reason.”
Crispin gave a great roar of derisive laughter, shocking the girl, who hopped down the rest of the stairs as fast as possible and ran, almost breathless, into the room she had been in before. Mrs. Bean was bringing in some cold meat and eggs, and she turned, with an alarmed exclamation at sight of her.
“Bless the girl!” she cried. “Why didn’t you wait till I came to you? I have a bundle of dry clothes waiting outside, and now you’ll catch your death of cold, sitting in those wet things!”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” said Freda, “we were not brought up to be delicate at the convent, and it was only the edge of my dress that was wet.”
Mrs. Bean was going to insist on sending her upstairs again, when Crispin, who had followed them into the room, put an end to the discussion by drawing a chair to the table and making the girl sit down in it.
“Have you had your tea?” asked Freda.
“I don’t want any tea,” said he gruffly. “I’ve got to pack up my things; I’m going away to-night.”
“Going away!” echoed Freda rather regretfully.
“Well, why shouldn’t I? I’m sure you’ll be very happy here without me.” And, without further ceremony, he left the room.
Mrs. Bean made a dart at the table, swooped upon a plate and a knife which were not being used, and with the air of one labouring under a sudden rush of business, bustled out after him.
There was a clock in the room, but it was not going. It seemed to Freda that she was left a very long time by herself. Being so tired that she was restless, she wandered round and round the room, and thought at last that she would go in search of Crispin. So she opened the door softly, stepped out into the wide hall, and by the dim light of a small oil lamp on a bracket, managed to find her way across the wide hall to the back-door leading into the court-yard. This door, however, was locked. To the left was another door leading, as Freda knew, into Mrs. Bean’s quarters. This also was locked. She went back therefore to the room she had left, the door of which she had closed behind her. To her astonishment, she found this also locked. This circumstance seemed so strange that she was filled with alarm; and not knowing what to do, whether to call aloud in the hope that Mrs. Bean or Crispin would hear her, or to go round the hall, trying all the doors once more, she sat down on the lowest steps of the staircase listening and considering the situation.
A slight noise above her head made her turn suddenly, and looking up she saw peering at her through the banisters of the landing, an ugly, withered face. Utterly horrorstruck, and convinced that the apparition was superhuman, Freda, without a word or a cry, sank into a frightened heap at the bottom of the stairs, and hid her eyes. She heard no further sound; and when she looked up again, the face was gone. But the shock she had received was so great that it made her desperate; getting up from her crouching position, she sped across the hall, frightened by the echoes of her crutch and her own feet, and threw herself with all her force against the great door, making the chain swing and rattle.
“What’s that?” cried Mrs. Bean’s cheery voice in the distance.
And in a few moments the door leading to the kitchen was opened, and the buxom housekeeper appeared.
“Oh, Mrs. Bean,” cried Freda, throwing herself into her arms and speaking in a voice hoarse with fear, “this house is haunted!”
“Bless the poor child! you’re overtired, and you fancy things, my dear,” she said soothingly. “All these old places are full of strange noises, but you’ll soon get used to them.”
“Butfaces! I saw a face, a dreadful face, with long sharp teeth like a death’s head; it was looking at me through the banisters, up there!”
And poor Freda, with her head still buried in Mrs. Bean’s plump shoulder, pointed upwards with her finger.
“Oh, no, my dear, you didn’t. It was only your fancy. What you want is to go to bed, and after a good night’s rest you’ll see no more death’s heads.”
Mrs. Bean’s manner was so very quiet and matter-of-fact, and she took the account of the appearance so unemotionally, that it occurred to Freda to ask:
“Haven’t you heard of that face being seen before?”
“Well,” said the housekeeper, rather taken aback, “I believe I have heard something about it.”
“And the doors, why do they lock of themselves?”
“Oh, that’s very simple,” answered the housekeeper quickly. “That’s a patent invented by the Captain for the greater security of the house when he didn’t live here himself. I will show you how to open them.”
She crossed to the door of the dining-room, followed by Freda. But it seemed to the girl that she listened a few moments, before attempting to open it. Then she turned what looked like a little ornamental button above the keyhole, and the door opened.
“That’s how it’s done; you see it’s perfectly simple.”
“Ye-es,” said Freda, “but it all seems to me very strange.”
Mrs. Bean laughed, and wanted the girl to amuse herself with a book while she cleared away the tea-things.
But no sooner was the housekeeper’s broad back turned than Freda was off her chair in a moment, and out of the kitchen to a door which opened into the court-yard. As this door had no secret bolt, she was speedily outside, under the gallery.
Fancying, that she heard voices to the left, Freda turned in that direction, and presently saw Crispin standing ankle-deep in the snow, looking up at the gallery above.
“Were you talking to some one, Crispin?” she cried.
He started at the sound of her voice, and came towards her with impatient steps.
“What the d——l are you doing out here?” he asked angrily, with a stamp of his foot on the ground.
“I came out to talk to you,” she answered. “I sha’n’t catch cold.”
“You’ll catch something worse than cold if you come wandering out here at all hours of the night,” muttered Crispin roughly. “Nell must keep you indoors.”
He came through the sheltered colonnade, stamping the snow off his feet.
“You’re a very disagreeable man, Crispin,” said Freda, watching him gravely. “You must have been very good to my father for him to have kept you about him so long. It shows,” she went on triumphantly, “that he must have been much more amiable than they say. Do you know I think you only talk against him to tease me. But it is horrible, now that he’s dead.”
Her voice sank on the last word, and the tears started again.
When Crispin answered, which was not at once, his voice was scarcely so harsh as before, though he spoke rather scoffingly.
“Women are always full of fancies. I don’t wonder your father couldn’t stand them!”
It was Freda’s turn to laugh now.
“Oh,” she cried, “then I knew him better than you after all. For he loved one woman so well that he could never bear to look at another after she died. And he left his own daughter among women, nothing but women. And I believe that all those years he wouldn’t see me because he thought I could never be good enough for her daughter. I was lame, you see,” she added softly.
There was a long, long pause. Freda had managed to get on the right side of rough Crispin. For he suddenly startled her by taking her in his right arm with a sweeping embrace which nearly took her off her feet, while he said huskily:
“Come in, there’s a dear child; you’re cold. You’re quite right, I’ll be good to you for the sake of—— Well, for your own sake!”
He half led, half carried her along under the gallery and into the house. Mrs. Bean, who was standing at the back door with rather an anxious look upon her face, seemed relieved to see that they returned in amity. Crispin took the girl into a long, low-ceilinged room, where the furniture, in holland bags, was stacked up against the walls. He led her before a large oil-painting of a lady, the charm of whose gracious beauty, even the old-fashioned fourth-rate portrait-painter had not been able wholly to destroy.
“I suppose you can guess who that is,” said Crispin.
“My mother,” said Freda softly.
“I believe the Captain thought a lot of this picture once. But for the last few years his memory had grown a bit dim, and he remembered bitter things better than sweet ones.”
Freda drew a little nearer to Crispin. She perceived by his tone how strong the sympathy had been between him and her father. She gave a little sigh, and they instinctively turned to each other and exchanged glances of growing liking and confidence as they went down the long room and crossed the hall to the dining-room. Crispin turned up the lamp, and was about to refill his pipe when it occurred to him to turn to the girl and say:
“You won’t be able to stand this indoors, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, I shall. They smoked all the time in the kitchen, at the ‘Barley Mow.’ ”
“The ‘Barley Mow,’ eh? How did you get there?”
Freda told him the whole story of her journey, her sojourn at the inn, the mysterious character they gave her father.
When she mentioned her friend who was connected with the government, Crispin grew very attentive, and asked for a minute description of him, at the end of which he said: “The scoundrel! That’s the fellow who was sneaking about here this afternoon. If I’d guessed——”
He did not finish his sentence, but he looked so black that Freda hastened to get off the unpleasant subject, and rushed into a description of her adventures at Oldcastle Farm. This, however, proved even less pleasing. Crispin listened with a frown on his face to her account of the kindness of the Heritages, and at last broke out into open impatience.
“Mind,” said he sharply, “if those two young cubs come carnying about here while I’m away—as they will do, my word on it—you are not to let them inside the door on any pretence, remember that.”
“I wouldn’t let Robert in,” said Freda decidedly.
“No, nor Dick, either.”
“I should let Dick in,” said Freda softly.
Crispin sat back in his chair to look at her face, and perceived upon it a rosy red flush.
“Now look here,” he said, like one trembling on the borders of a great outburst of passion, “if you let Dick Heritage come fooling about you here, I’ll shoot him through the head. Now you understand.”
Freda looked up with a sudden flash of haughtiness.
“I am going back to the convent, Crispin, and these gentlemen are nothing to me. But if I were going to stay in this house, I should see whom I liked, for I should be the mistress here.”
If she had stabbed him he would not have been more surprised. He held his pipe in his hand, and stared at her, unable at first to find words. She, on her side, felt very uncomfortable as soon as the outburst had escaped her. She felt that a confession had slipped out against her will, and she hung her head, and looked into the fire, hoping that the glow would hide her flaming cheeks.
“So you would be mistress here, would you?” he said. “And you intend to go back to the convent? And I suppose you think your father’s wishes nothing.”
“I don’t know what they were; and I shall never know now!”
“Well, I’ll tell you. His wishes were that you should remain here, and call yourself mistress if you like, while I go away to manage his property abroad for him.”
“But, Crispin, what could I do here? I should be miserable. I should like a nun’s life, but not a hermit’s!”
“Oh, well, you’ll get used to it. Your father had a troop of pensioners in the town here: you will have them to look after.”
“Crispin,” she said suddenly after a pause, in a whisper, “who do you think it was that killed Blewitt?”
Crispin was rather startled by the question.
“Well,” he asked in his turn, looking stolidly at the fire, “who did Barnabas Ugthorpe think it was?”
“Oh,” said Freda quickly, “he was wrong, altogether wrong. I told him so.”
“And supposing he had been right, altogether right, your father would be a murderer.”
Freda bent her head, but said nothing.
“What do you say to that?”
The girl burst out fierily:
“Why, that he was not a murderer! he was not, he was not! And I wouldn’t believe it if—if everybody in England had been there!”
She kept her head up, and looked at him steadily, her eyes flashing defiance. After a few moments he got up.
“You’re tired, and you’re very silly,” he said, huskily.
And, with a nod, but without again looking at her he left the room, as Mrs. Bean came in with a candle.
“You’llbe glad to go to bed, I dare say, my dear,” said the housekeeper. “If you hear any noises in the night, don’t be afraid; this old house is full of them. Good-night.”
Freda fled across the hall and hopped up the stairs.
Oh! How long that gallery seemed, skim over the floor as she might! The candle smoked and flared and guttered in her hand, and the boards creaked, and the musty smell seemed to choke her. The row of stately carved oak chairs, ranged along the wall on one side, seemed to be set ready for the midnight hour when the faded ladies and the sombre gentlemen should come down from their frames and hold ghostly converse there. She ran along the stone passage to the door of her room, and threw it open suddenly.
A man sprang up from his knees before the wide, open grate, in which a wood fire now burned. The girl, no longer mistress of herself in her fright and excitement, uttered a cry.
“It’s all right,” said the rough voice which had already begun to grow familiar to her, “I thought you’d like a fire. So I brought some sticks, and a log. It’s cold here after France, I expect. Anyhow, the blaze makes it look more cheerful.”
Freda was touched.
“Oh, thank you—so very much! How kind of you.”
“Stuff! Kind! You’re mistress here now, you know, as you said; and one must make the mistress comfortable.”
He spoke in a jeering tone, but Freda did not mind that now.
“I wish,” she said, looking wistfully at the blazing log, “that you were going to stay here, Crispin.”
He gave one of his short, hard laughs.
“I should get spoilt for work,” he said. “You’d make a ladies’-man of me. Sha’n’t see you again. Good-night.”
Freda held out her hand, and he held it a moment in his, while a gleam almost of tenderness passed over his seamed and rugged face. Then he gave her fingers a sudden, rough squeeze, which left her red girl’s hand for a minute white and helpless.
“Good-night,” he then said again, shortly and as if indifferently. “If I come into these parts again, I’ll give you a look in.”
He left her hardly time to murmur “good-night” in answer, before he was out of the room. He put his head in again immediately, however, to say “Draw the bolt of the door, and you’ll be all right.”
Freda obeyed this direction at once, with another little quiver of the heart. But Crispin’s kindness had so warmed her that what now chiefly troubled her was the fact that she would see no more of him for an indefinite time. The strongest proof of the confidence he had inspired in her was the fact that she accepted implicitly his assurance as to her father’s wishes, and resolved to make no attempt to return to the convent. Indeed, the last three days had been so full of excitement and adventure that the old, calm years seemed to have been passed by some other person.
Freda’s last thought as she fell asleep, watching the dancing light of the fire on the roughly white-washed beams of the ceiling, was, however, neither of quiet nuns at their prayers in the convent by the sea, nor of Crispin Bean with his rugged face and hard voice, but of Oldcastle Farm and one of its occupants.
The girl was tired out; so utterly weary that she was ready to lie like a log till morning. But presently she began to dream, with the leaden drowsiness of a person in whom some outward disturbance struggles with fatigue, of thunder and battling crowds of men. And then she started into wakefulness, and found that the fire had burnt low, and that men’s loud voices were disturbing her rest. They seemed to come, muffled by the massive boards between, from a chamber under hers; they died away into faintness, and she was so overpowered with fatigue that she would have dropped to sleep again almost without troubling herself, when one voice suddenly broke out above the murmur. It was loud and shrill, and high-pitched, a voice Freda had never heard before. She could hear the words it uttered:
“Ye maun stay, ye maun stay. We can’t get on wi’out ye. Do ye want us to starve?”
And a chorus of evidently assenting murmurs followed. The voices dropped again, and again the listening girl’s attention relaxed, as sleep got the better of her senses. But suddenly she was aroused again, this time by sounds which came from behind the head of the bed, and were so plain that they seemed to be in the very room. Sounds as of a man’s footsteps coming up a stone staircase, coming up unsteadily, with many pauses. Sounds, too, as of heavy weights being dragged up, and of suppressed laughter and jeers.
“Eh, but tha’s gotten aboot as much as tha’ can carry, eh, Crispin?” said one voice.
“Tha’ couldn’t climb oop a mast to-night, Crispin,” said another, during the laughter which succeeded the first speech.
The voice of the man who was on the stairs answered, in low and husky tones. Although he was the nearest to her, Freda could not distinguish what he said, except the word “hush.” Then she heard a mumbling sound, like the drawing back of a sliding door, and then the dragging of some heavy weight over the boards, and the opening of a window. Presently the man came back, went down the stone steps, and re-ascended in the same manner as before. This happened three or four times, until the voices below died gradually away, and the sounds ceased. Not until long after all was quiet did Freda fall asleep again, and for the remainder of the night her rest was troubled by all sorts of wild dreams.
Next morning, as a consequence of her broken night’s rest, she did not wake until the housekeeper knocked loudly at the door. Springing up with a sudden rush of confused memories through her brain, Freda ran to the door, drew back the bolt, and pulled Mrs. Bean into the room.
“Oh,” she cried, “this is a dreadful house; how can you stay in it? It is haunted, or——”
Mrs. Bean interrupted her with a peculiar expression on her face.
“Didn’t I tell you to take no notice of anything you heard?” she asked quietly. “What does it matter to you what goes on outside your door, while you’re locked safe inside?”
“But I want to know——” began Freda.
Again Mrs. Bean cut her short.
“Didn’t they teach you, in the place you came from, that curiosity was the worst sin a woman can have?” she asked drily. “A wise woman doesn’t meddle with anything outside her own business, and especially she does not poke her nose into any business where men only are concerned. I see you’ve had a fire,” she went on in a less severe tone.
“Yes, Crispin made it for me.”
Mrs. Bean shook her head good-humouredly.
“You’re making a fool of that man. He was to have gone away last night, and he is still hanging about this morning. And it’s all because of you, I’m certain. Now make haste and get dressed, for I’ve got a tiresome day’s work before me, and I want to get the breakfast done with as soon as I can.”
It was a bright, sunny morning. The numerous windows let in floods of sunshine, the snow outside dazzled the eyes, even the knights and dames in the picture-gallery seemed to be in better spirits. In the dining-room Freda found Crispin, who affected to treat her with marked coldness, and to be grieved that he had had to put off his journey until the following night. Now although she stood in some awe of the housekeeper, Freda had no fear whatever of Crispin; so she very soon opened the dangerous subject.
“Crispin,” she began solemnly, “I heard you last night after I was in bed.”
“Very likely,” he answered quietly.
“There were some men with you.”
“Yes, so there were.”
“The voices seemed to come from under my room.”
“So they did.”
“And some one came up the stairs.”
He nodded.
“Dragging a heavy weight over the floor,” continued she. “And then some one opened a window. And the sounds went on over and over again.”
“Quite right. Well?”
“What did it all mean?”
“That I had some of the men from your father’s yacht here, and told them all about his death. I suppose you don’t wish the yacht sold? It would throw half a dozen men out of work.”
“No-o,” said Freda. “But——”
“Here’s your breakfast,” he interrupted, as Mrs. Bean brought a laden tray into the room.
Crispinhad breakfasted, but he remained in the room, “to wait,” as he said with grim jocularity, “on the mistress of the house.” Whenever she tried to bring the talk again to the subject of the noises of the night, he slid away from it in a most skilful manner, so that she could find out nothing from him, and presently got rather a sharp warning about the value of silence. When she again expressed a wish to see her father, too, he answered very shortly, so that she began to understand that Crispin’s goodwill did not render him pliable. Mrs. Bean was in the room when she made this last request. She stood up suddenly, with a crumb-brush in her hand, and a look of great annoyance upon her face.
“There’ll have to be an inquest!” cried she. “Did you ever think of that?”
And she turned in great agitation to Crispin, who was just lighting his pipe. He only nodded and said quietly:
“Don’t you trouble yourself. I’ve thought of all that. You just put on your bonnet and run down to the town, and tell Eliza Poad that the master’s shot himself. Then it will be all over the county in about three quarters of an hour, and the police will have notice, and the coroner will be sent for without any trouble to you. And within two hours Mr. Staynes will come panting up the hill with religious consolation.”
“I sha’n’t see him, interfering old nuisance!” said Mrs. Bean indignantly.
“No, Miss Freda will. And you, Nell, will go to the undertaker’s; go to John Posgate—we owe him a good turn—and tell him you don’t want any of his measuring: he’s to send a coffin, largest size he makes, up to the house-door by to-night, and leave it there. And then go round to the house of that young doctor that’s just come here (he lives in one of the little new red houses on the other side of the bridge past the station) and tell him what has happened. And you will be glad if he will step up at once. That’s all.”
These details made Freda sick; she retreated, shivering, to the window, and there she perceived a long, much trampled foot-track in the snow across the walled-in garden. She noticed it very particularly, wondering whether it was by this way that the men had entered the house on the preceding evening. Then, as she was by this time alone, she went softly out of the room and upstairs, and turned the handle of the door of her father’s room. It opened. She saw, with a wildly-beating heart, that the curtains of the bed were drawn back, and that on it there lay the body of a man.
Suddenly she was lifted off her feet, and carried back from the door of the room.
“Look here,” said Crispin drily, as he put her down, “haven’t you learnt by this time that it’s of no more use to try to circumvent me than to fight the sea? You will see your father when I please and not before. Now go downstairs and wait till the Vicar comes, and tell the old fool just as little as you can help, if you don’t want to get yourself or anybody else into trouble.”
Freda obeyed, mute and ashamed. She crept downstairs, returned to the dining-room, and fed the hungry birds till the bell sounded. Running out to the court-yard gate, she drew back the two heavy bolts which fastened it. Waiting outside were a lady and gentleman whom she at once guessed to be the Vicar and his wife.
The Reverend Berkley Staynes was generally considered the greatest “character” in Presterby. A member of one of the county families, with a fairly good living and a better private income, he was an autocrat who considered his flock of very small account indeed compared with the well-being of their pastor. Although close upon eighty years of age, and quite unable to perform a tithe of his parish duties, he would never take a curate, partly from motives of economy, and partly because he feared that an assistant might introduce some “crank” of week-day services or early Communion, and wake up some of the parishioners into disconcerting religious activity. Never at any time over-burdened with brains, he had been at one time an exceedingly handsome man, athletic and muscular, and a great encourager of health-giving sports and pastimes. For these former good qualities, and from a natural, loyal conservatism, the good Yorkshire folk bore with him, maintained respectful silence while he droned out his antiquated sermons, and shut their eyes to his inefficiency. Mrs. Staynes belonged to a type of clergyman’s wife sufficiently common. She was much younger than her husband, and slavishly devoted to him, giving him the absurd homage which he believed to be his due, and working like a nigger to shield his deficiencies from the public notice.
Something of this was to be guessed even by inexperienced Freda as she opened the gate to them. A tall, but somewhat bent old gentleman, still handsome in his age, with silver-white hair and a good-looking, rather stupid face, dressed well and with scrupulous neatness, stood before her. Behind him rather than at his side was a small, middle-aged woman dressed in what looked like a black pillow-case, a long narrow black cloth jacket and a rusty black hat of the old mushroom shape. She had a fresh-coloured face and a simple-minded smile, and she habitually carried her left hand planted against her waist in a manner which emphasised the undesirable curves in her “stumpy” figure.
“H’m, a new servant!” said the Reverend Berkley Staynes, looking searchingly at Freda. “Well, what the Captain wanted more servants for, considering that he never received anybody or kept the place up, I’m sure I don’t know! Why don’t you wear a cap, young woman?”
“I’m not a servant,” said Freda. “I’m Captain Mulgrave’s daughter. Will you please come in?”
She led the way, without waiting for any more comments, across the court-yard, through the hall, and into the dining-room; and she noticed as she went how both her visitors peered about them and walked slowly, as if they had not been inside the house before, and were curious about it. In the dining-room they sat down, and the Vicar, glancing round the room inquisitively as he spoke, began a close interrogatory as to Freda’s history. His wife looked uncomfortable and he solemn when she mentioned the convent.
“Ah! Bad places, those convents,” he said, shaking his head, “nests of laziness and superstition.”
“Dear me, yes,” said Mrs. Staynes. “But we’ll cure you of all that. You shall come to the Sunday school and hear Mr. Staynes talking to the girls; and when you feel pretty firm in the doctrine, we’ll have you confirmed.”