ToFreda’s perhaps rather prejudiced mind, the contrast between the two cousins seemed even stronger than when she had seen them a fortnight before at their own home. The fact that both were evidently harassed and anxious only emphasised the difference between them; for while Robert looked savage and sullen even under the smile with which he approached her, Dick seemed to Freda’s shy eyes to look haggard, downcast and depressed to an extent which sent a pang through her heart.
Robert came first, cracking his riding-whip and singing, and assuming a jauntiness belied by the expression of his face. He raised his hat again as he came through the ruined window, and greeted Freda with much deference. He made a feint of holding out his hand, but the young lady took no notice of it.
“I am afraid,” began he, in a deprecating tone, “that our acquaintance did not begin in the most auspicious possible manner, Miss Mulgrave.”
“No, and I did not expect to see you again.”
Freda was far too unsophisticated to be otherwise than cruelly direct of speech. Robert Heritage, however, was not easily disconcerted.
“But if the reason of my daring to appear before you again is to make my peace in the humblest manner?”
“There is no need to be humble to me. You said so the last time I saw you.”
“Pray forget everything I said then, and let us begin afresh. I had had a good deal of worry that day, and I spoke to you under a misapprehension.”
“I would rather have you remain under it, and not speak to me again.”
“You are very unforgiving.”
Freda hung her head. They used to tell her that at the convent. It was true too, she felt. She had never been able to humble herself to docile obedience—to the doctrine of forgiveness of enemies. Nothing could be wrong in those she loved, nothing right in those she did not love. And she did not love Robert Heritage. Guiltily, therefore, she said, after a minute’s pause:
“I will hear what you have to say.”
Robert made a grimace to his cousin, to imply that this insignificant little girl was giving herself great airs. As for Dick, Freda had steadily avoided meeting his eyes, and he stood in the background, silently watching the flying sea-mews, without taking any active part in this interview.
“In the first place,” said Robert, still with a great show of deference, “I came—my cousin and I came, to express our regrets at your sad bereavement, at your father’s death, in fact.”
He looked at her rather curiously. Freda blushed.
“Thank you,” she said hurriedly.
“Yes,” he went on slowly, “we were very much shocked to hear about it, and very much surprised too. For I was just coming over here to inquire if Captain Mulgrave could tell me what had become of a servant of mine, a man you saw at our house, Miss Mulgrave; Blewitt, I dare say you remember him?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Freda, who had grown very pale.
“I sent him over here with a letter, a message to your father. From that day to this he has never been seen, and we have been unable to get any tidings of him. In the meantime comes the news of Captain Mulgrave’s having committed suicide. Under the circumstances, your father being known as a violent man, and the message being an unwelcome one, it was impossible to help thinking that the two events might have some connection with each other.”
“Well,” said Freda slowly, “but as both Blewitt and my father are—gone, I don’t see how the truth is ever to be found now; unless, indeed, the person who knows most about it should confess.”
Robert’s face flushed a little.
“I am afraid it will be difficult to clear your father’s name from suspicion. Already I’ve heard these ugly rumors whispered about everywhere. Nothing would set them at rest, unless I were to say that I myself had sent Blewitt away to his home in London.”
“That would not be true.”
“But it would save your father’s reputation.”
Freda said nothing. Her mistrust of this man made her shrewd. After a long pause she turned and looked straight into his face.
“Why do you tellmethis?”
“I wanted to know whether you would care to have your father’s name cleared.”
“Not in such a way as that. I believe the best thing for my poor father would be for the whole truth to come out, and though the falsehood might seem to protect his name for the time, it would do less real good than quietly waiting.”
“Then you wouldn’t do me any little favour, out of gratitude if I tried to shield his name?”
“Little favour! Oh! and what is that?”
“For instance, you wouldn’t get Crispin Bean to deal with us instead of with Josiah Kemm?”
“No!” flashed out the girl, “neither with you, nor Kemm, nor anybody else. The Abbey’s mine now, and I won’t have it used forsmuggling, Mr. Heritage.”
Robert started violently, and his hand shook as he played with his riding-whip.
“You are ready to accuse your own father of doing wrong then?”
“I don’t make any accusations, Mr. Heritage. I only tell you that the Abbey is under my rule, now.”
“You think so, perhaps; but you will find yourself mistaken. The trade will go on just the same whatever orders you may give; and it will make no difference if I have to go away, and if my cousin Dick, who brought you in out of the snow and was so good to you, has to starve.”
Freda moved uneasily and shot a furtive glance at Dick, who was outside the old walls, apparently absorbed in unpleasant thoughts. Robert perceived the expression on the girl’s face, its coy pity and maidenly fear. This vein, so happily struck, would bear a little further working, he thought.
“Yes,” he went on. “Poor Dick! It has always been his lot to have a rough time of it. When he told me this morning of the impression you had made upon him, and asked me to put in a word for him with you if I got a chance, I knew it would be of no use. Not that he isn’t a good-looking, good-hearted fellow enough, but because he is Dick, and never has any luck!”
The girl’s face underwent many changes as she listened to this speech. Compassion, surprise, pleasure, confusion, annoyance—all flitted over her ingenious countenance, until at the end, suddenly perceiving that Robert’s small light eyes were fixed upon her with great intentness, she blushed and turned away from him even haughtily.
“I do not believe that he asked you to speak to me!” she said.
“You don’t? Well, I’ll fetch him and make him speak for himself.”
“No, no, no,” cried the girl, crimson with confusion and distress. “I am going indoors. I—I am tired, cold. Good-morning, Mr. Heritage.”
While Freda was crossing the meadow which lay between the ruin and the Abbey-house, she saw Nell at an upper window, watching her with an uneasy expression of face; by the time she reached the side-door, the housekeeper was there to admit her.
“Who was that I saw you talking to up there in the ruins?” asked Nell sharply. “Come, I know, for I saw you.”
“Why do you ask me then?”
“After all the trouble I’ve taken too, to prevent those young rascals getting at you! Why, they’ve been pulling the bell nearly off every day and sometimes twice a day.”
“Oh, they’ve been to see me before then?”
“Yes, at least Bob Heritage has, and everybody knows what a nice acquaintanceheis for a young girl! But they won’t see any more of you, if I can help it. A pretty mess I should get myself into if they did!”
Freda passed into the house and, without waiting for another word, went straight into the library, which was in the west wing, away from the rest of the inhabited part. The fire was burning very low, and the room looked cold, dusty and forlorn. A great pile of the books with which she had been amusing herself the night before still lay undisturbed on the hearth-rug. The books had almost become living friends to her, in the absence of sympathetic human beings. She threw herself down beside them and rested her arms on a stack of calf-bound histories and biographies.
What had Robert Heritage meant by those words about the “impression,” she had made on Dick, and “putting in a good word for him.” Innocent as she was, Freda could scarcely misunderstand the drift of these expressions, and they roused a thought which brought the blood to her cheeks, all alone as she was, and stirred her strangely. She did not believe Robert; who was she, a little lame girl, to rouse any deep interest in a big, strong, handsome man like Dick? And with a sigh, the girl sat up among her books and tried to stir the log fire into a blaze.
As she did so, a loud knocking on the wall behind her made her look round. The whole of the side of the room from which the sound came was filled with book-shelves from floor to ceiling. The knocking went on, until suddenly Freda saw some of the books begin to shake in a surprising manner, and a minute later six rows of books began to move slowly forward, and then a face peered out from behind them. It was that of Dick Heritage. Then she perceived that the books which he had appeared to disturb were sham ones, mere leather backs pasted on a door introduced among the genuine ones.
“How did you come in?” asked Freda in a husky whisper.
“By a way you don’t know of,” answered the young fellow, looking at his riding-whip.
“You came in to see me?” asked Freda in a softer tone.
“Yes,” said Dick, suddenly standing erect, speaking in a full, firm voice, and looking straight up at the dusty ceiling with flashing blue eyes, “I came to see you, to speak to you about what that rascal Bob said. He told you something about me, didn’t he? He made up some ridiculous nonsense that I’d said about you?”
Freda, with her little head bending lower and lower, nodded an affirmative very slowly.
“Well, there wasn’t a word of truth in it. I never said anything of the sort. He only said it to serve his own interests. I was obliged to come and tell you the moment he confessed to me what he’d done. I didn’t wish you to think me a fool or a knave.”
Freda did not answer. When at last, after a long pause, Dick glanced at her, he perceived that she was quietly crying. Dick looked closer, in surprise and consternation.
“You’re not crying, are you?” asked he uneasily.
Freda shook her head. Rising from her chair, she picked up an armful of the books that were scattered about the floor, and carrying them back to the shelves, began to replace them very deliberately. Dick, putting down his whip, followed with another load, which she took from him so hastily and awkwardly that they all dropped on the floor.
“I hope it’s not anything in what I said, or the way I said it, that made you cry?”
He had gone down on one knee to pick up the fallen books, and he looked up into her face with an expression which seemed to Freda most touching.
“I am not crying, Mr. Heritage,” she said, trying to be very dignified; “and I quite understand that you were not so foolish as to say that I had made a pleasant impression on you.”
Dick dropped the books, and looked up at her with curiosity, compassion, and a little admiration. For although her eyes and nose were red with crying, she looked rather pretty as well as very pitiful.
“Oh,” he said, laughing with some embarrassment, “it’s not fair to put it like that now, is it?”
“That is all that your cousin said to me about you.”
“No! Really? He told me that he said, implied rather, that I was making up to you, wanted you to marry me, in fact.”
Freda blushed crimson.
“He never said anything like that to me,” she said, “if he had, I should have known it was not true.”
Dick sprang up eagerly.
“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? You would have known it was impossible such an idea should enter my head!”
Freda turned away and very quietly re-arranged some of the books she had placed on the shelves.
“Oh, yes;” and she laughed with some bitterness but more sadness. “Did you think it possible that I, who am lame, and fit for nothing but a convent, where I can pray, and can work with my needle as well as the strong ones, should ever put myself on an equality with the girls who can dance, and ride, and row?”
Dick was overwhelmed. In her innocence, as she had misunderstood his cousin, so she was misunderstanding him.
“Now look here, Miss Mulgrave,” said he, as he brought his right hand heavily down on one of the bookshelves. “You are quite wrong. You have mistaken Bob’s meaning and mine altogether. Don’t you see that what he wanted was to get some sort of hold on you through me, since he couldn’t get it in any other way? And can’t you understand how mean it would be of me, and absurd (mean if I had any chance, and absurd as I haven’t) to come to you and talk about admiration and love and marriage, when I am just in the position of a farm-labourer about to be turned off?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that your father’s refusal to—to have anything more to do with us has ruined us; so that Bob and my aunt will have to leave the farm and go to London.”
“And you, what will you do?”
“I shall stay on at the old place.”
“But, you won’t be comfortable!”
“More comfortable than I should be anywhere else. You see I’m not like the others, who just came to the old place when they had to let the Hall. I was brought up at the farm, and used to spend my holidays there. I was only annexed by my aunt and Bob when there was some dirty work to be done and it was seen that I might prove useful.”
Dick’s voice was so sweet and he spoke so very quietly that it was not until some minutes after he had finished this short autobiography that Freda perceived all the bitterness he had expressed in it.
“Oh!” she sighed out at last, in a voice full of soft reproach. “How could you?”
Dick laughed a little.
“I don’t think I could make you understand. You are too good. I wish none of this business had ever come to your ears.”
Freda looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then she said:
“I don’t wish that. You see I’ve been obliged to think a great deal lately, and I see that there is a great deal more wickedness and unhappiness in the world than we in the convent ever thought of. And it seems to me that to shut oneself up out of it all and to try to make a little heaven for oneself and to keep apart from all the difficulties and miseries outside is selfish. So that I’m glad I can’t be so selfish any longer.”
“Now I don’t quite agree with you. By coming out you only add to the general sum of misery in the world by one more miserable unit; where’s the advantage to your fellow-creatures of that?”
“But I don’t intend to be miserable. I am going to try to bring some of the convent’s happiness and peace to the people outside, or at least to—some of them.”
“I should like to know how you propose to set about it.”
“First, I am going to try to persuade—some people to give up doing what is wrong. I am going to try to persuadeyou.”
“To give up——”
“Well, Free Trade.”
“And make a virtue of necessity? You see,ithas givenmeup.”
“Did you like—doing that?”
“Smuggling? You called it smuggling this morning, and now that it has nothing more to do with me, I don’t mind if I give it the same name. I was first mixed up with it when I was seventeen, before the age when one grows either a beard or a conscience, and I can’t honestly say that I felt anything but enjoyment of the excitement.”
“Your cousin led you into it?”
“Well, I suppose so. Somebody else led him.”
Her face fell.
“I know—my father.”
“And it went on for a long time, and one got used to the risk and took that as a set-off against the wrong. And after all, we were only carrying out with logical thoroughness the blessed theory of Free Trade, of which we are told we ought as a nation to be so proud. It has ruined us small land-owners, by making it impossible to cultivate the land remuneratively. Who can blame us then if we try to get compensation by taking a hair out of the tail of the dog that bit us?”
“I can’t argue with you, because I don’t know enough. But I suppose the laws are on the whole good and just, and it is right to obey them. It must be bad for people to live always under the feeling that they have to hide something.”
“Why, what bad effect has it had upon me? Have you found me such a very redoubtable ruffian?”
“Oh, no! Oh, no; you have been very good and kind.”
“Well, certainly I have wished nothing but good to you. I came with Bob this morning only to see that he didn’t bully you, and if in any way I could help you or get you away out of this place, I would. Is that rough brute Crispin kind to you?”
“Yes, and no. He is very strange. Sometimes he is harsh and hard and so disagreeable I scarcely dare speak to him, and then at other times he will be almost tender.”
“He hasn’t got tipsy yet, and frightened you?”
“Tipsy! Oh, no!” cried Freda half in alarm and half in indignation. “I don’t believe he would. I am sure he wouldn’t,” she added warmly.
“You speak as if you were quite fond of him,” said Dick, surprised and laughing.
“So I am, rather. Somehow I can’t help thinking he is fond of me. It is very strange.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it strange that any one seeing a good deal of you should get fond of you. Well,” he added after a pause, during which they both reddened and looked rather embarrassed, “and have you tried yet to convert Crispin to your views upon smuggling?”
“Crispin! Oh, no, I should be afraid.”
“I see, you respect him more than you do me. You think he may smuggle from conscientious conviction? For I may tell you that he is the right hand in all these enterprises, so that they can go on as well without the Captain as with him, if only Crispin is there.”
“I know that.”
She paused a moment and then went on: “I haven’t seen him the last few days. When I do I have something to say to him which will stop his smuggling too, I think.”
“Why, what’s that!”
Freda raised her finger in sign of caution, not without a little air of importance.
“There is a man about here sent by government to look after the smuggling: I’m going to tell him that.”
Dick’s face changed, and became full of excitement and interest.
“Why, how came you to hear of such a thing? Are you sure of it?”
“Quite sure. I have seen him, talked with him. He is a great friend of mine.”
“Then if he is, I warn you most solemnly to tell him not to interfere with these men, nor to let them know what he’s up to. They’re an awfully rough lot, these fellows. Only the Captain, and Crispin Bean, who’s been captain of the yacht so long, can manage them.”
“The yacht!” cried Freda. “Why, that is used for the smuggling then!”
“Oh, I don’t know that,” answered Dick hastily. “But, but—if you don’t want to hear of any more mysterious deaths and disappearances in the neighbourhood, remember to warn your friend. Now I must go; good-bye.”
He held out his hand abruptly, but withdrew it with a shy laugh before Freda could take it.
“Perhaps you would rather not shake hands with such a rascal.”
“Oh,” said Freda naïvely, as she held out both hers, “that doesn’t matter. For all the men I know seem to be rascals.”
Dick laughed, but did not seem to like this observation. He drew himself up a little, and a variety of emotions seemed to chase each other across his face.
“I’m glad my poor mother isn’t alive to hear me calledthat,” he said in a low voice.
Freda ran up to him, but stopped herself shyly as she was going to take his hand.
“You used the word first, and I didn’t mean it seriously,” she whispered, in great distress. “You could not think me so ungrateful.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to put on airs and pretend to be insulted. But perhaps I am not so bad as you think. At any rate, if I do wrong, there’s a comfort in knowing I get punished for it.”
Dickdisappeared through the door by which he had entered so quickly that before Freda had had time to utter more than an exclamation, the rows of real books and sham ones were again unbroken, and the noise of a drawn bolt told her that it was of no use for her to try to follow him.
She sat down again in a tumult of agitated feelings. Her heart felt drawn out to this young fellow with what she thought must be gratitude for his kindness. She looked with vivid interest at the various spots in the room on which he had stood, and tried to imagine his figure in them again. She even crossed to the bookshelves, and laid her hand on the place where his had lain, and touched again the books which he had handed to her. She felt so sorry for him, so sure that in his share of the wicked enterprise of his cousin and her father, Dick had been little more than a victim. And then these musings gave place to more serious thoughts. She had two duties to perform; one was to tell Crispin that there really was a government emissary on the look out, the other was to warn John Thurley not to betray himself. This latter duty was, however, clearly impossible for her to fulfil without the aid of accident; but the former might be easier.
Now during all this time that Crispin had kept himself invisible to her eyes, the night-noises which had alarmed Freda so much at first had been continued regularly, with only this difference: that although she had crept out to watch the panel-door in the gallery, no one had passed through it, and no one had been visible in the courtyard. It seemed clear then, to the girl, that there must be, as Dick had said, some entrance to the house which she did not know of. To ascertain this beyond a doubt, she laid an ingenious plan, and night having by this time fallen, she proceeded to carry it out. For if, she said to herself, she could once find the door by which the nocturnal exits and entrances were made, she would not only be able to waylay Crispin as he came in or went out, but would have a very important weapon in her hand by this knowledge.
Freda had seen, in a corner of Mrs. Bean’s wash-house, a heap of silver sand. Watching her opportunity, she filled her skirt with this, slipped out, and making a careful tour of the house, stables, and outbuildings, she put two narrow lines of the sand before every door, including that by which Crispin had once carried her into the house. The snow had by this time melted or been swept away from the neighbourhood of all buildings, and in such places the ground had dried sufficiently for her purpose. To do her work the more thoroughly, she then went the round of the outer walls of the garden and enclosures, and repeated her sand-strewing before every door she found, and before the iron entrance gates. Then she crept back into the house, feeling pretty sure that she had been unseen in the moonless night, and went to bed, tired but full of excitement.
She was too restless to sleep, so presently she got up again, put on her dressing-gown, and waited eagerly for a repetition of the usual sounds. She was soon satisfied: first the distant mutterings, far underneath her feet, then the mounting of slow feet up stone steps; the voices subdued, but nearer; the moving of heavy burdens; a sound of weights falling; the chink of glasses; a low murmur of talk in men’s voices, the sounds gradually dying away. That was all. An hour, by the little clock on her mantelpiece, from the first sound to the last. Then all was quiet till morning, when Freda, after a disturbed night of short snatches of sleep, woke with a start to the memory of her undertaking. Ah! She had got them now! In an hour she would know all about it; she would be able to waylay and confront them, if she chose. And she almost thought she would choose.
Full of these ideas, Freda dressed hastily and ran downstairs. Nell was busy in the kitchen; the place was as deserted as usual. She stole out of the house with a loudly beating heart, feeling refreshed instead of chilled by the air of the keen March morning. Stealthily, with one eye on Nell’s quarters and one on her task, she began her tour, her excitement increasing as door after door was reached, and there was still no sign.
At last the tour was made, the inspection ended, in bitter disappointment.
For the sand before every door was undisturbed.
Thediscovery of the fact that there was a secret way in and out of the Abbey had a strong and most unhappy effect upon poor Freda. She dared not say anything about it to Nell, and Crispin she never saw: forced, therefore, to bear the burden of the secret alone, she crept about the house day by day, not daring to make any fresh researches, and suffering from a hundred fears. To add to her unhappiness, she now could not but feel sure that Nell had kept back her letter to Sister Agnes. For she got no answer to it. Mrs. Bean seemed to guess that the girl had learned something about which she would want to ask inconvenient questions. So Freda passed a week in silence and solitude such as the convent had not accustomed her to. Even the nocturnal noises had ceased. Once, and once only, she caught sight of Crispin, and ran after him, calling him by name. It was dusk, and she was watching the sea-mews from the courtyard, as they flew screaming about the desolate walls of what had once been the banqueting-room. He did not answer, but disappeared rapidly under the gallery in evident avoidance of her.
Poor Freda felt so desolate that she burst into tears. Her old, fanciful belief in her father was dead. Everything pointed to the fact that he was really Blewitt’s murderer, and that, in order to save himself from detection, he had feigned death and gone away without one thought of the daughter he was deserting. Now that Crispin, whom she had looked upon through all as her friend, was deserting her also, she grew desperate, and recovering all the courage which for the last few days had seemed dead in her, she resolved to make another attempt to fathom the secrets the Abbey still held from her.
To begin with, she must explore the west wing. Now this west wing was so dark and so cold, so honeycombed with narrow little passages which seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and with small rooms meagrely furnished and full of dust, that Freda had always been rather afraid of lingering about it, and had hopped through so much of it as she was obliged to pass on her way to and from the library, with as much speed as possible. Now, however, she got a candle, and boldly proceeded to examine every nook and corner of the west wing. And the result of her researches was to prove that on the ground floor, underneath her own room, there was a chamber surrounded by four solid stone walls without a single doorway or window. The only entrance to this mysterious chamber seemed to be through the panel-door in the storey above. Where, then, did the secret door in the library lead to? That question she would solve at once. It was quite dark and very cold in the narrow passages through which she ran, and the tipity-tap of her crutch frightened her by the echo it awoke. She reached the library panting, and running to the secret door, began pulling it and shaking it with all her might.
Suddenly the door gave way, almost throwing her down as it opened upon her; with a cry she recognised Dick behind it. She had thought of him so much since his last strange appearance, that the sight of him in the flesh made her feel shy. She said nothing, but crept away towards the window, feeling indeed an overwhelming joy at the sight of a friendly face.
“Did I frighten you again?” asked he.
The girl turned and looked up at him, shyly.
“I am always frightened here,” she said.
“Poor child! They are treating you very badly. I was afraid so. I have been to see you twice, to make sure you had come to no harm.”
Freda, who had crept into the window-seat, as far away from him as she could get, looked up in surprise.
“You have been to see me?” she exclaimed.
“Not to see you exactly, because the door was shut between us. But I heard you in here, talking to yourself and turning over the leaves of your books. I didn’t think it worth while to disturb you. I shouldn’t have come in to-night, only I heard you shaking and pulling the door, and I thought you had heard me and were frightened.”
“Oh, no. I wanted to know where it led to.”
“To the floor above by a staircase. See.”
He opened the door through which he had entered, and showed her the lowest steps of a very narrow staircase, which went up along the outer side of the library-wall.
“And how did you get into the floor above?”
“Well, it’s a secret I’m bound not to betray.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Freda coolly, “I shall find it out. I want them to find that I am a meddlesome, inquisitive creature, who must be got rid of.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” asked Dick.
“Crispin and Mrs. Bean.”
“And you want them to send you back to the convent?”
“Yes.”
“I think that would be a pity.”
“You didn’t last time.”
“No-o,” said Dick, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t see it quite so well then. You see I hadn’t thought about it. But I have since; and there’s a lot in what you said about the selfishness of it.”
“Ah, but now I’m just in the only position in the world in which it isn’t selfish. I am quite alone, you see.”
“So you were a week ago.”
“But I had some hope then that I might be able to do some good. Now I haven’t. And you don’t know what it is to be always lonely, to have nobody to speak to even. It makes one feel like an outcast from all the world.”
“Yes, so it does. So that one is glad of the very mice that run behind the wainscot; and when one of the little brutes comes out of its hole and runs about the room, why one wouldn’t disturb it for the world.”
“Oh, yes, I love the mice. Do you know I expect that sometimes when I have listened to a scratching in the wall and thought it was mice, it was really you all the time!”
“Very likely.”
“It was very good of you to come and see that I was all right.”
“Oh, I was glad to come. I’m lonely too now. They’ve gone away, the others.”
“Your aunt, and your cousin? And left you all by yourself?”
“Thatwouldn’t be much of a hardship, if only one could manage to exist. But it is lonely, as you say. I shouldn’t mind it if the dog wouldn’t howl so. Sign of a death, they say; I shouldn’t be sorry if it were mine.”
“Your death! Oh, don’t say that. You didn’t seem at all miserable when I went to your house.”
“No. The fact is,youare at the bottom of my low spirits. It’s your uncanny spells that have done it, Miss Mulgrave. Witches always have little sticks like that.”
He took up her crutch almost reverently. It was leaning against the window-seat between them, for he had sat down beside her.
“What do you mean, Dick?”
It was only a consequence of her extreme ignorance of the world’s ways that she called him by the name by which she had heard others call him. But it came upon the young man as a startling and delicious surprise.
“Why, I mean,” he said, with rather more apparent constraint than before, “that you said things which made me uncomfortable, preached me a little sermon, in fact.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to preach indeed.”
“It’s all right, it did me good. I don’t mind a girl preaching, and I thought over what you said very seriously. I—” he hesitated, and then finished hurriedly, “I thought you’d like to know.”
“Indeed I’m very glad, if you didn’t think me rude. Perhaps if my preaching did you good, it might do Crispin good too—if only I could get hold of him.”
Dick laughed.
“I don’t think I should set my heart too much upon that. Crispin is a thorough-paced old rascal.”
“You don’t know him. You haven’t seen into his heart,” cried Freda, rising from the window-seat in her earnestness, and bending forward so that she might look into the young man’s face. For very little light now came through the old mullioned window.
“Well, I don’t believe he has a heart to see into.”
“Ah, that is because you have been careless, and have neglected your religion. We all, even the worst, have a heart; it may sleep sometimes, so that men think it is dead. But if God sends some one, with love for Him alive and glowing, to speak to that sleeping heart, it awakens, and a little spark of love and goodness will shine bright in it. Don’t you believe that?”
“I believe that if anybody could work miracles through goodness, it would be you. But it would take a thundering big miracle to make Crispin Bean anything but an unprincipled rascal. Why, if you only knew—— But then it’s better you should not know,” said he, pulling himself up hurriedly and getting up to go.
“Oh, tell me, do tell me. I want to know!”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t. But I’m not going to tell you.”
And Dick drew himself up and looked out of the window, with the obstinate look she had seen before on his face. Freda was far too unconscious of her own feminine powers to attempt to move his resolution. She only sighed as he held out his hand.
“Are you very lonely at the farm?” she asked.
“Very. At least I meanrather.”
“You have nobody there at all to speak to?”
“Nobody at all.”
“And you will go on living like that?”
“As long as I can hold out. The love of the old place, and of all this country round, is a passion with me—the only one I’ve ever had, in fact. And you,” he continued, leaving the subject of his own prospects with some abruptness, “you are lonely too. May I come and see you again?”
Freda hesitated.
“May I not come? Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Oh, yes. But——”
“I don’t frighten you, do I, with my rough, uncivilised ways?”
“Oh, no; Oh, no. Frighten me! Of course not.”
“Then, if I don’t frighten you, why did you screw yourself up into a corner of the window-seat just now, to be as far from me as possible?”
He spoke in a low tone, bending towards her.
Freda blushed, but she never thought of denying the accusation. But what had her reason been? She herself did not know.
“I—I think it must have been because I had been crying, and of course nobody likes to be seen crying,” she answered slowly, hoping that she had told the truth.
“Crying, had you? What about? Tell me just this: is it about—Blewitt’s—death?”
“Why, why, do you know anything about that?”
“I know,” said Dick cautiously, “that it had something to do with your father’s—disappearance.”
Freda shivered at the word.
“You know more than that?” she said hoarsely.
“Perhaps. But I swear I can’t tellyouwhat I know, so don’t ask me.”
For a minute there was dead silence, as they stood face to face, but scarcely able to see each other in the gathering darkness. Suddenly both were startled by the sound of a man’s hoarse voice, muffled by distance, which seemed to come from behind the door, through which Dick had entered.
Atfirst both Dick and Freda listened to the faint sounds in silence. Then Dick spoke.
“They’ve come back. I sha’n’t be able to get out that way,” he said.
“Why should you? I can let you out by the front-gate.”
“But—I don’t want to be seen,” he said. “If Captain Mulgrave were to see me——”
Freda was startled by this suggestion, which betrayed how much the young man knew or guessed. She turned from the door, where she had paused with her fingers on the handle.
“Oh, yes,” he said in a low voice and very quickly, understanding her thought, “it did take me in, for a time, and my cousin Bob too, that story about his being dead, although we both knew him very well.”
“But why should he pretend any such thing?”
“That’s what we want to find out. It makes us careful. So Bob’s gone away, and I keep watch.”
“And you are so sure he is alive?”
“I’ve seen him.”
Freda began to tremble. Here was an answer to the question she had so often asked herself, whether her father was not really in hiding about the place after all. She led the way out of the library, along the corridor and out into the courtyard by the nearest door, without a word. It was so dark that there was little fear of their being seen crossing to the gate; though indeed Freda had forgotten that there was need of caution, being absorbed in conjectures about her father. She took the big key from its nail, opened the heavy gate, and led Dick through to the open space before the blank wall of the banqueting-hall. They crossed this, still in silence, and came to the lodge. Here she was about to summon the lodge-keeper, when Dick stopped her.
“Don’t,” said he. “The old woman would recognise me, and you would be made to suffer. I must get out some other way.”
“There is no other way,” said Freda. “And when my friends come to see me they should go out by the front way.”
And, before he could stop her, she had seized the iron bell-handle which hung outside the wall of the lodge and rang it firmly.
The old woman who kept the key looked rather frightened when she saw who was with Freda, but she unlocked the gate, waited, curtseying, while the young people shook hands, and then popped back into her cottage like a rabbit.
But there were eyes about more to be dreaded than the old woman’s. When Freda returned to the inner gate, which she had left open, she found it locked, and had to ring the bell. Mrs. Bean did not answer the summons for some time, and when she did, it was with a frown of ill-omen upon her face.
“So you’ve been receiving visitors, I see,” she began shortly.
“Yes, I’ve had one visitor.”
“One of the young Heritages, whom your father specially wished you not to have anything to do with. Crispin told you that.”
“Yes,” said Freda tremulously, “but since they leave me here all by myself with nobody to speak to, they can’t be surprised if I make any friends when I can.”
“Well, and am I not friend enough for you, without your having to run after any stranger or vagabond that happens to come into the parish?”
“No, you’re not, for I certainly couldn’t say anything I liked to you, as one can to a friend. If I ask you a question, you put me off with an answer that tells me nothing, as if I were a child. But I’m going to show you that I’m grown up, and do some things that will astonish you.”
And Freda hopped quickly away across the court-yard to the entrance of the west wing, leaving Nell a little anxious and perturbed by this new independence.
Freda returned to the study, her little brain actively spinning fancies concerning her late visitor, all of a pretty, harmless kind, dowering him with a great many ideal qualities to which the young man could certainly not lay claim. It was now so dark in the room that she had to feel her way carefully, well as she knew it. She walked along close by the wall, touching the book-laden shelves as she went, until she came to a point where they seemed to yield under her fingers. Her heart leapt up. This was the secret door through which Dick had entered: and he had left it open.
Freda’s first impulse was delight; her second fear. Now that the way was at last open to her to learn the secrets of this guilty house, she began to shrink from the knowledge she was about to gain. She opened the door, listened, and looked in. Pitch-black darkness; utter silence. She knew that Dick had come down by a staircase, so she felt for it and mounted carefully. She counted fourteen rather steep steps, and then she found that she had reached a level floor. It was so cold here that her hands and feet were stiff and benumbed, although her head was burning; she was in a passage the walls of which were of stone, just like those outside her own room. But this passage was narrower, she thought. There was no light whatever, so that she groped her way cautiously, with her left hand outstretched before her face, while with the right she tapped her crutch lightly on the ground in front of her. After a few steps she came to a blank stone wall; it was the end of the passage and she had to turn back. As she retraced her steps, she suddenly came to a slight recess on the right hand, where the stone wall was broken by a wooden door. Something in the sound of this as she rattled it made her believe that this was the panel-door into the gallery. If this were so, the way down was through a trap-door in the floor; for this was the way Crispin had brought her on the day that he found her in the disused stable. Down she went upon her knees, feeling about until her hand touched an end of knotted rope. Pulling this up, she found, as she had expected, that it raised a door in the floor, beneath which was a flight of wooden steps. There was still no sound to be heard, so, after a moment’s hesitation, she decided to continue her explorations, and to trust to luck to hide herself if she heard any one coming. The steps were rickety, but she got down them in safety, and found herself in a stone passage, similar to that on the floor above. At the end of this was a door, which Freda, still groping in the dark, decided to be that which opened into one of the out-houses in the yard outside. It was securely fastened. She felt her way back along the walls until a door on the right suddenly gave way under her hand, and a flash of light, after the darkness in which she had been so long, streamed into her eyes and dazzled her.
Freda thought she was discovered; but the utter silence reassuring her, she presently looked up again, and found that she was standing before the doorway of a big, stone-walled, windowless room, piled high with bales and boxes which reeked with the unmistakable odour of strong tobacco. She was in the smugglers’ storeroom. An oil-lamp, which hung opposite to the door and gave a bright light, enabled her to make an exhaustive survey of the room and its contents. In one corner there was a rope and pulley fastened securely to one of the strong beams which ran from end to end of the roof. There was no ceiling. Directly under this rope and pulley was a square hole in the floor; and Freda, peeping down, saw that a rope-ladder connected this chamber with another underneath, which, however, was unlighted. She had scarcely had time to make these discoveries when she heard dull, muffled sounds which seemed to come from beneath the cellar. Afraid of being caught by one of the unknown men whose coarse voices she had so often heard, Freda hid herself among the bales not far from the opening in the floor. The sounds came nearer, became distinguishable as the tramp of one man’s feet, and then the rope-ladder began to shake.
Freda, peeping out, began to tremble at her own daring. The man was coming up, and already she knew, whether by instinct or by his tread she hardly could tell, that it was not Crispin. She shrank back, with a loudly-beating heart, and crouched behind the bales as the newcomer reached the floor and pulled up the rope-ladder after him. He began to move some of the bales, and Freda was half dead with fear lest he should touch those behind which she was hiding. But presently he desisted from this work, and she heard him drag out a heavy weight from the space he had made, draw a cork, and presently began to take long breaths of pleasure and to smack his lips. Very cautiously, believing him to be too agreeably employed to notice her, she then dared to peep at him. But the sight of his face turned her sick with surprise and dread.
For she saw the grinning, withered face she had seen about the house in the darkness, the face which Nell had tried to persuade her was the creation of her imagination.
Fredafancied that the long-drawn breath which escaped her as she recognised the man must attract his attention. But he was too intent upon the enjoyment of the strong spirit, which he kept pouring from a huge stone bottle into a cracked tumbler, to have eyes or ears for the little eavesdropper in the corner. A horrible idea flashed into her mind as she crouched again in her hiding-place: Was this grinning creature, with the hideous face of an ape, the father she had waited to know so long? A shiver of horror ran through her as she remembered how this would tally with the facts she knew: with the dread in which her father was held, with her belief that he was in hiding about the house, and with the airs of proprietorship which this man was assuming.
Even as these unwelcome thoughts pressed into her mind, the man got up, and confirming her fears by his tone of authority, stamped upon the floor and called down the opening in a loud voice:
“Hallo! Anybody there yet? Kelk! Harrison!”
There was no answer, and he walked up and down, swearing to himself impatiently. Presently a muffled sound came from below, and he called out again.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said a hoarse voice.
“Is that you, Braim?” asked the man above.
“Aye, sir.”
“Anybody else with you?”
“Theer be fower on us, sir.”
“All right. Close up, and I’ll be down with you in a minute.”
There were sounds now in the cellar below of several men moving about and talking in low tones. Then the man above moved back a step or two from the opening in the floor; and Freda, whose curiosity had grown stronger than her caution, peeped out far enough to see him take from a shelf a small revolver, which he secreted about his person. Then he lowered the rope-ladder, let himself down into the cellar by it, and immediately threw it up again so deftly that it landed safely on the floor he had left. Freda heard a chorus of demands for “soomat to warm them,” and by the sounds which followed she could soon tell that drinking had begun. Being now able to lift her head without fear, she could make out a good deal of their talk, although the strong dialect in which all but the leader spoke often puzzled her. As the talk went on and the drink went round, the men seemed to get more and more excited; but just as they had done at the “Barley Mow,” they lowered their voices as they grew warm in discussion, until Freda, whose interest and curiosity had become deeply excited, crept softly out of her hiding-place, and crawling to the opening in the floor, listened with her head only just out of the men’s sight.
They were talking about some person against whom they had a grudge, using oaths and threats which, although strange and new to Freda, shocked her by their coarseness. At last her curiosity to see them grew so great that she was impelled to glance down stealthily at the group below. The men were seated at a rough deal table, over which they leaned and sprawled, with their heads close together, in eager converse. It was some moments before she got a view of any of the faces; at last, however, two of them raised their heads a little, and she instantly recognised one as a little wrinkled, oldish-looking man, who wore rings in his ears and walked with the cat-like tread of one accustomed to go barefoot, whom she had seen at the “Barley Mow.”
“Ah tell ye,” he was now saying, “it’s’ t’ same now as were at t’ ‘Barley Mow’ on t’ neght when train was snawed oop. Barnaby Ugthorpe fund him aht, and tawd me abaht it hissen.”
Freda forgot to draw back; her breath came with difficulty: this man against whom they were using such hideous threats must be her friend, John Thurley. From this moment, every word they uttered assumed for her a terrible significance.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt your information is right enough,” said the leader, who used fewer words than the rest, “the question is whether he hasn’t found out too much for it to be any good interfering with him. You see, he’s been about the neighbourhood some time now, keeping very quiet, and he may have picked up and sent off to London enough information to do for all the lot of us; in that case a bullet or two through his hide would only increase the unpleasantness of our position.”
“Aye, aye, Captain, but Ah’ve kep’ a eye upon him, to see what he were up to. A pal of mine done that business for me, an’ as fur as we mak’ aht, he hasn’t done mooch correspondering, an’ nothing suspicious-loike. Ah’ve a pal in t’ poast-office, as Ah have moast pleaces, an’ ye can tak’ my word for’t.”
“An’ now we’ve fahnd him aht spying at us from t’ scaur, as we did yesterneght, Ah seay it’s high toime as a stop wur put to his goings on, an’ it’s not loike ye, Capt’n, to seay neay to that.”
“I don’t say nay to that,” said the little withered man, with an ugly grin on his face. “You know me better. But no good ever comes of using violent means until you’ve tried all others. I’ll be on the scaur myself to-night and watch.”
Freda stared down at the group, fascinated with horror. There was a brutal callousness of look and tone in these men which made her feel as if she were watching a cageful of wild beasts. Every line of their weather-beaten faces, dimly as she saw them by the light of two flaring tallow candles, seemed to her to be eloquent of the risks and dangers of a hardening and brutalising life. And the face which looked the most repulsive of all was that of the leader. Was he her father? The girl prayed that it might not be true. Although his speech was so much more correct than that of the rest as to mark him as belonging to a higher class, his voice was coarse and thick, and his manner furtive and restless. Even the faint twinkle of humour which was visible in the eyes of the wizened informer, James Braim, was absent from those of his chief. Those few words, in which he said that he would watch on the scaur that night, filled Freda with more anxiety for John Thurley’s safety than all the coarse threats and menacing gestures of the other three men.
“Goin’ to unload to-night, Capt’n?” asked one man.
The leader nodded.
“Must. Here’s three nights we’ve wasted hanging about, on account of the scare about this spy, whoever he is. So to-night you’ll get to work, and I’ll keep the lookout, and if anybody’s fool enough to be loafing about where he’s not wanted when he ought to be in bed, why, he can’t in fairness complain if he gets—sent home.”
He paused significantly before the last two words, and a low murmur of appreciation and amusement went round the group. Then the talk was carried on in short whispers, and Freda was presently seized with the fancy that some of the questions and answers exchanged referred to her. For the men talked about some woman, and all the questions were directed to the repulsive-looking leader, who after some minutes rose, with a remark a little louder than the previous talk.
“She won’t interfere with any of us much longer, at any rate. We can’t afford to keep spies in the camp. Now, lads, it’s time for business. Get off to the yacht, and to business as fast as you can. I’ll be down on the scaur in less than half an hour.”
The men pushed back their seats without delay, Kelk alone venturing on a grumbling word of remonstrance. And then, still watching closely from above, Freda saw a very strange occurrence. The bare, ill-lighted cellar grew empty of all except the leader as if by magic, the men seeming to disappear into the bowels of the earth. As she looked, bending her head lower and lower with straining eyes to spy out the reason of this, Freda involuntarily drew a long breath of amazement. The solitary man left in the cellar looked up, as he was in the act of filling his own glass once more from the stone jar. The girl drew back with a cry, for a look of intense malignity passed over the man’s wrinkled face.
“Hallo!” he exclaimed very quietly, blinking up at her, “so it’s you, is it? Playing the spy as usual?”
He muttered an oath below his breath, and came close under the opening in the floor.
“Just throw down that rope,” he continued peremptorily.
“What rope?” asked Freda, trembling.
“Come, you know well enough. You haven’t got eyes in your head for nothing.” He paused, but Freda remained motionless. “Now then,” he added with a sudden access of anger and a stamp of his foot on the stone floor, “throw down the rope-ladder I came down by. Do you understand that?”
But Freda only attempted to get away. Excited by anger and drink, the man took from his belt a revolver, which he pointed up at her. This action, strangely enough, checked Freda’s impulse to retreat. She looked down at him straightforwardly and fearlessly, eye to eye.
“Do you think you can make me obey you by shooting me?” she asked simply.
“I think you are a d——d ungrateful little chit,” answered the man sullenly. But he lowered the weapon in his hand.
“Ungrateful!” faltered Freda, the great fear rising again in her heart. “Ungrateful!” she repeated. “Then you are—are you—my father?”
“Of course I am,” he answered sullenly. “Pretty filial instincts you seem to have!”
Freda was overwhelmed. For a few moments she sat transfixed, looking down on this newly-found parent with undisguised horror.
“Well, aren’t you going to obey me?” repeated he with rather less ferocity of tone.
“Yes,” whispered Freda hoarsely.
She drew back a step or two from the opening in the floor, and began to grope about with cold, clammy fingers for the rope-ladder. At last she found it and threw it down.
If she had not been so benumbed with amazement and grief at this discovery, she would have been frightened by the savage exclamation with which the man set his foot on the ladder. As it was, she heard nothing, saw nothing until she suddenly felt herself pulled up by the arm. Dragged to her feet against her will, paralysed with alarm, she turned to see the grinning, withered face held close to hers, full of spite and malignity.
“Now,” said he, “I’m going to give you a lesson for your disobedience.”
With a shudder and a low cry, Freda struggled with him, avoiding the meeting with his eyes.
“Don’t,” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t. I wish to remember my obedience, my duty. I can’t if you treat me like a dog.”
He gave a short, rasping laugh.
“I sha’n’t do that,” he said. “I respect a dog.”
At the brutal words and tone, Freda, by a sudden movement, wrenched herself free for an instant, and looked him steadily in the face.
“Now,” she said, “I know that you have been deceiving me. You are not my father!”
“We’ll see about that. Come here.”
He seized her by the right wrist, giving it such a violent twist that she cried out with pain. “Now if you struggle any more or cry out, I’ll just give you a broken arm to match your broken leg.”
He gave her arm another wrench to prove that his threat was not an idle one, and the girl with difficulty suppressed a moan. Just as he gripped her arm more tightly to inflict further punishment for this insubordination, a change came quite suddenly over his face; he dropped her arm at once, and sliding over the floor as stealthily and rapidly as a cat, he ran down the rope-ladder, and disappeared from view just as his four subordinates had done.
Freda was bewildered, and not one whit relieved at his disappearance. It only seemed to augur some fresh misfortune. As she stood where he had left her, dazed, miserable, still nursing her arm for the pain, she heard another step behind her. Her endurance had been tried too much; she could not face a fresh enemy, as she believed the newcomer to be. Putting her hands before her face, she turned and stepped backwards, away from him, murmuring broken entreaties, interrupted by sobs. As she retreated, she felt that the intruder was pursuing her, and fled faster and faster.
“Stop, child, stop,” cried at last a voice she knew. At the same moment she felt that she had gone a step too far, and was falling through the opening in the floor. But even as she felt this, strong arms were thrown round her, and she found herself in a warm clasp of kindliness. Opening her eyes, she saw who her preserver was, saw too that his eyes were full of tenderness.
“Crispin! Crispin!” she cried.
But the next moment, with a wild shriek, she flung her arms round his neck in a passionate embrace.
“No, no, not Crispin, you are not really Crispin! You—are—my father!” she sobbed out with a burst of hysterical tears and laughter.
Noteven the stolid silence with which he received her demonstrative outburst could dissuade Freda from her new belief that this man, whom she had always known as Crispin Bean, was really her father. She wondered, as she looked into his stern, rugged face, and noted the half involuntary tenderness in his eyes as he looked at her, how she could ever have doubted it. She chose to believe now that she had really known it all the time, and that she had only been waiting for him to declare himself. This, however, he was not ready to do even now.
“I am Crispin, Crispin,” he said, while he patted her soothingly on the shoulder, “remember that.”
He did not speak harshly, but even if he had done so she would not have been afraid of him. She was so overjoyed to have found her father, as she still obstinately believed she had done, that she was ready to submit to any condition it might be his fancy to impose.
“Yes, Crispin,” she said meekly, nestling up to his shoulder and looking with shy gladness up in his face, “I will remember anything you tell me, Crispin.”
He put his arm round her with a sudden impulse of tenderness, and Freda fancied, as he looked into her eyes, that he was trying to trace a resemblance to her mother; she fancied, too, by a look of content mingled with sadness which came over his face, that he succeeded.
“I heard you crying out as I came in,” he said at last, abruptly. “Was it my footsteps that frightened you?”
“No,” said Freda hesitatingly.
“What was it, then?”
“A man, a man I have seen about the house before, came up from there,”—she pointed to the hole in the floor—“and frightened me.Hesaid he was my father.”
Crispin looked black.
“How did he frighten you?” he asked shortly.
“He saw me looking through at him and some other men—dreadful looking men—who were talking together; and I think he was angry because I saw them. So he made me throw the rope down to him, and he came up, and he was very angry.”
And Freda shuddered at the recollection.
“He didn’t hurt you, threaten you, did he?”
She hesitated.
“Not much. Perhaps he didn’t mean to hurt me at all, only to frighten me. But Iwasfrightened.”
And she hid her face against Crispin’s shoulder.
“Jealous brute, he shall suffer for this!” he muttered angrily. Turning to her suddenly again he asked: “Did you hear what the other men said? Did they frighten you?”
“I didn’t hear much, and none of them saw me except that one man. But, oh, Crispin, they are dreadful people! Why do you have anything to do with them?”
“Little girls shouldn’t ask questions,” he answered rather grimly.
But Freda would not take his tone as a warning. Indeed she had an object of vital importance at her heart.
“But there was something they said, something I did hear, which I must tell you about, even if I make you angry—Crispin. There is a man whom they want to hurt, perhaps to kill; they said so. They are going to be out on the scaur to-night, and if he is there, as they expect, the wicked man, the worst of them all, said he would be on the watch.”
“Well, a man may watch another without hurting him. Like a foolish girl, who listens to what doesn’t concern her, you have half-heard things, and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.”
But Freda was not to be put off like that. She rose from the bench on which they had been sitting side by side, and stood before him so that she could look straight into his face.
“No, no,” she cried vehemently. “I know more than you think, and I know they meant harm to John Thurley, who was kind to me, and wanted me to go away because he thought I was lonely and not taken care of.”
Crispin glanced up hastily, with a guilty flush on his face.
“Mrs. Bean—Nell looks after you, doesn’t she?” he asked sharply.
“Oh,” said the girl with a little half-bitter laugh, “I am fed all right; but perhaps Mr. Thurley thinks that food isn’t quite all a girl wants.”
Crispin got up abruptly, almost pushing her aside, and began walking about the room, as if in search of something to do, to hide a certain uneasiness which he felt. He kicked a coil of rope into a corner, and shifted one of the bales that had got a little out of place.
“I know,” he burst out suddenly, “that I—that you have not been treated well. You have been neglected, shamefully neglected. Of course you ought never to have come. It was a mistake, a caprice of temper on the part of—your father. Then when you came, of course you ought to have been sent back; it was cruel and wrong to keep you here. But by that time—you had brought—something, a ray of humanity, perhaps, or of sunshine, to—somebody, and so you stayed. And—and of course it was wrong, and somebody—is sorry.”
Freda, touched, breathless, was drinking in every word, with her great brown eyes fixed upon him. She flew up at the last words, and forgetting even her crutch, limped across to him and fell into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered, “but you should have said so, you should have told me! And then if you had wished me to live on here like this for a year, ten years, without ever even seeing your face, I would have done it gladly, if I had only known you cared, that it gave you one spark of comfort or satisfaction. Oh, you believe me, do you not?”
He could not help believing her, for truth and devotion were burning clear in her eyes. But it puzzled, it almost alarmed him.
“You—you are strangely, ridiculously sentimental,” he said, trying to laugh. “How did you come by all these high-flown notions?”
“Whatever I feel God put into my heart, when he sent me to you to make you happy again, as you were when my mother was alive.”
He half-pushed her away, with a sharply-drawn breath of pain; for she had touched the still sensitive place.
“Ah, child,” he said, “they have educated you on fairy tales. There is no going back to peace and happiness and innocence to men like me. The canker has eaten too deep.”
These words gave Freda a sudden chill, recalling to her unwilling mind the mysterious murder of Blewitt. She shuddered, but she did not draw away.
“Well,” said Crispin brusquely, “if you are frightened you can go away. I’m not detaining you.”
She looked up with a flushed face, full of sensitive feeling.
“I am sorry and sad with thinking of things which can’t be undone,” she said softly; “but I am not frightened.”
He put his hand gently upon her head. She fancied that she heard him murmur: “God bless you.” In a few moments, however, he withdrew his hand abruptly, and said that he must “be off.”
“And you must go out of this place,” he continued in his harder tone. “We don’t allow intruders here, you know.”
He led her up the stone staircase to the panel-door, which he unlocked. Then he helped her through into the gallery, and said “Good-night” in his usual matter-of-fact, brusque manner. But Freda was not to be repulsed. Before he could close the door, she caught his hand, and held it firmly, forcing him to listen to her.
“Crispin,” she whispered, “remember what I said. John Thurley was kind to me. Don’t let them hurt him. Promise.”
But he would not promise. His face grew stern again, and he put her off with a laugh as he freed his hand.
“Don’t worry yourself with silly fancies,” he said shortly. “He’s all right.”
He closed the door sharply and fastened it. Freda remained for a few moments listening to his footsteps as he went down the stone stairs. Then remembering with excitement, that “Crispin” had forgotten to ask her how she got in, and that the way through the library into the locked-up portion of the house was still open, she went downstairs, and passed again through the door among the bookshelves.
She would try and get down to the scaur by the secret way the smugglers used.