CHAPTER III.
Freda watched the opening of the farmhouse door with dread, as there peeped out a man’s face, pale, flat, puffy, with light eyes and colourless light eyelashes. Freda took an instantaneous dislike to him, and tried to draw her companion back by the sleeve.
“What do you want at this time of night?” asked, the man pompously.
And Freda knew, by his speech and manner, that he was a man-servant, and that he was not a Yorkshireman. He now opened the door wider, and she saw that he was dressed in very shabby livery, that he was short and stout, and that a lady was standing in the narrow entrance-hall behind him. Barnabas caught sight of her too, and he hailed her without ceremony.
“Hey theer, missus,” he cried cheerily, “can Ah have a word with ’ee?”
Rather under than above the middle height, dressed plainly in a black silk gown, Mrs. Heritage was a woman who had been very pretty, and who would have been so still but for a certain discontented, worried look, which seemed to have eaten untimely furrows into her handsome features.
“Well, Mr. Ugthorpe, and what do you want?”
“Here’s a young gentlewoman without a shelter for her head, an’ Ah thowt ye would be t’ person to give it her.”
“Young gentlewoman—without shelter!” echoed the lady in slow, solemn, strident tones. “Why, how’s that?”
“I was snowed up in the train, madam, on my way to my father’s. And we are very sorry to have troubled you. Good-night.”
Very proudly the girl uttered these last words, in the high, tremulous tones that tell of tears not far off. While Barnabas stopped at the door to argue and explain, Freda was hopping back through the snow towards the lane as fast as she could, with bitter mortification in her heart, and a weary numbness creeping through her limbs.
Suddenly through the night air there rang a cry in a deep, full, man’s voice, a voice that thrilled Freda to the heart, calling to something within her, stirring her blood.
“Aunt, she’s lame! Don’t you see she’s lame?”
She heard rapid footsteps in the snow. As she turned to see who it was that was pursuing her, and at the same time raised her hand to dash away the rising tears and clear her sight, her little crutch fell. She stooped to grope in the snow, and instantly felt a pair of strong arms around her. Not Barnabas Ugthorpe’s. There was no impetuous acting upon impulse about Barnabas. And in the pressure of these unknown arms there seemed to Freda to be a kindly, protecting warmth and comfort such as she had never felt before.
“Who is it? Who are you?” she cried tremulously.
“Never mind, I’ve been sent to take care of you,” answered the voice.
Again it thrilled Freda; and she was silent, rather frightened. She gave one feeble struggle, seeing nothing through her tears in the darkness, and her ungloved hand touched a man’s moustache. To the convent-bred girl this seemed a shocking accident: she was dumb from that moment with shame and confusion. The good-humoured remonstrance of the unseen one caused her the keenest anguish.
“Oh, you ungrateful little thing. You’ve scratched my face most horribly, and I don’t believe there’s a bit of sticking-plaster in the house. Next time I shall leave you to sleep in the snow.”
“I—I am sorry. I beg your pardon,” she faltered. “I did not see.”
“All right. I’ll forgive you this once. Not that I think you’ve apologised half enough.”
At first she took this as a serious reproach, and wondered what she could say to soothe his wounded feelings. But the next moment, being quick-witted, she began dimly to understand that she was being laughed at, and she resolved to hold her peace until she could see the face of this creature, who was evidently of a kind quite new to her experience, with puzzling manners and a way of looking at things which was not that of the nuns of the Sacred Heart.
In a few moments Freda heard the voice of Barnabas thanking Mrs. Heritage for her good cheer as he came out of the house. Then she found herself put gently down on her feet inside the doorway, while she heard the strident tones of the lady of the house, asking her not unkindly whether she was wet and cold. But even her kindness grated on Freda; it was hard, perfunctory, she thought. There was all the time, behind the thoughtful hospitality for her unexpected guest, some black care sitting, engrossing the best of her. Mrs. Heritage hurried on, through a labyrinth of rooms and passages, to an oaken door, old and worm-eaten, studded with rusty nails.
“This room,” she said, turning back as the door rolled slowly inwards, “is the one wreck of decent life on which we pride ourselves. It is the old banqueting-hall of the castle. We took it into use, after an hundred and fifty years’ neglect, when we were obliged to come and bury ourselves here.”
It was a long and lofty room with a roof of oak so ancient that many of the beams were eaten away by age. The walls were of rough stone, hung, to a height of six feet from the ground, with worn tapestry, neatly patched and mended. The hall was lighted by six Gothic windows on each side, all of them ten feet from the ground. The furniture, of shabby and worm-eaten oak, consisted chiefly of a number of presses and settles, quaintly shaped and heavy-looking, which lined the walls. On one end of a long table in the middle, supper was spread, while at the further end of the hall a log-fire burned in a large open fireplace.
“Where is Richard?” asked Mrs. Heritage solemnly, just as the door was pushed open, and three or four dogs bounded in, followed by a tall young man in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, with a dog-whip sticking out of his pocket. It was Freda’s unknown friend.
“Let me introduce you,” said his aunt. “My nephew, Mr. Richard Heritage to—— What is your name, child?”
Freda hesitated. Then, with the blood surging in her head, she answered in a clear voice:
“Freda Mulgrave.”
She had expected to give them a surprise; but she had not reckoned upon giving such a shock to Mrs. Heritage as the announcement plainly caused her. Dick, whose careless glance had, for some reason which she did not understand, pained her, at once turned to her with interest.
“You know my father. What is he like?” she ventured presently, in a timid voice, to Mrs. Heritage, when she had explained how she came to be travelling alone to Presterby.
“He is a tall, dignified-looking gentleman, my dear, with a silver-grey beard and handsome eyes.”
“And does he live all by himself?”
“I believe his establishment consists of a housekeeper, and her husband, who was one of his crew.”
“And decidedly a rough-looking customer, as you will say when you see him, Miss Mulgrave,” chimed in Dick. “This Crispin Bean, who belonged to Captain Mulgrave’s ship at the time of the—the little difficulty which ended in his withdrawing from the Navy, has followed him like a dog ever since. It’s no ordinary man who can inspire such enthusiasm as that,” he went on, as he stood by the big fireplace, and kicked one of the burning logs into a fresh blaze. “You must have noticed,” he said presently, “that the discovery of your being your father’s daughter had some special interest for us?”
“Yes, I did think so,” said Freda.
“You see,” Dick went on, pulling his moustache and twisting up the ends ferociously, “we’re very poor, poor as rats. It’s Free Trade has done it. We—my cousin and I—have to farm our own land; and as we can’t afford the railway rates, we sell what we produce to our neighbours. If they left off buying we couldn’t live. Well, my cousin and your father have had a quarrel, and we’re afraid Captain Mulgrave won’t buy of us any more. You understand, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Freda slowly, struggling with her sleepy senses. “He has quarrelled with your cousin, and so you’re afraid he’ll buy what he wants not from you but from Josiah Kemm.”
Both her hearers started violently, and Freda perceived that she had let out something he had not known.
“I stayed for an hour at an inn called the ‘Barley Mow,’ ” she explained, “and I heard something there which I think must have had some meaning like that. But perhaps I am wrong. I am tired, confused—I——”
Her voice grew faint and drowsy. Dick glanced at Mrs. Heritage.
“Don’t trouble your head about it to-night,” said he. “You are tired. Aunt, take Miss Mulgrave to her room. Good-night.”
And poor Freda, sleepy, contrite, was hurried off to bed.
Next morning she was down early, but she saw nothing of Dick. The mistress of the house read prayers in a tone of command rather than of supplication; and, as the servants filed out afterwards, she called the butler, and asked:
“What is this I hear about Master Richard’s going off on ‘Roan Mary’ at this time in the morning?”
“It’s a telegram he wants to send to Master Robert; and he has to ride to Pickering because the snow’s broken down the wires on this side,” answered Blewitt sullenly. “I saw the message. It said: ‘He is on with Kemm. Call on your way back.’ ”
Freda caught the name “Kemm.” She felt very uncomfortable, but nobody noticed her, and she was suddenly startled by an outbreak of sobs and moans from Mrs. Heritage, who had begun to pace up and down the room.
“That’ll do,” said Blewitt sullenly, “I’m going to have a talk with you, ma’am. We’d best have things square before your precious son Robert comes back. I want to know when I’m to have my wages. I don’t mean my thirty-five pounds a year for waiting at table, but the wages I was promised for more important work.”
“I will speak to Mr. Robert as soon as he returns, Blewitt,” said Mrs. Heritage, who was evidently in a paroxysm of terror. “I am quite sure——”
“That I shall get no good out of him,” went on Blewitt, doggedly. “Do you think I don’t know Mr. Robert? Why, miss,” and the man turned, with a sudden change of manner to deprecating respect, to Freda, “your father, Captain Mulgrave, knows what Mr. Robert is, and that’s why he’s made up his mind, like the wise gentleman he is, not to have anything more to do with him. And I’ve made up my mind,” he went on with vicious emphasis, heeding neither Mrs. Heritage’s spasmodic attempts to silence him, nor the young girl’s timid remonstrances, “either to have my due or to follow his example.”
Freda had crept up, with her little crutch, to Mrs. Heritage’s side, and was offering the mute comfort of a sympathetic hand thrust into that of the lady.
“Run away, my dear child, run away,” whispered the latter eagerly.
The man went on in a brutal tone:
“I’m not such a fool as Master Dick, to stay here and be made a catspaw of, while your precious son goes off to enjoy himself. Why should some do all the work, and others——”
The rest of his sentence was lost to Freda, who had got outside the door into a great bare apartment beyond. Here, lifting the latch of a little modern door which most inappropriately filled an old Gothic doorway, she found herself, as she had expected, in the courtyard.