CHAPTER IV.
Freda crossed the courtyard to one of the ruined corner-towers, and finding the staircase still practicable, continued her wanderings, with cautious steps, along the top of the broken castle-wall. She got along easily as far as the thatched roof of a big barn. But here her crutch slipped on the snow and went crashing through a tarpaulin-covered hole in the thatch, carrying its owner with it, into a loft half-filled with hay. There was no way of escape until somebody came by to rescue her. Freda therefore could do nothing but look down into the hazy light of the barn below; and presently, nursed into a comfortable warmth by the hay, she fell asleep.
She was awakened by being shaken pretty roughly, while a voice cried close to her ear:
“Now, then, I’ve got you; and if I let you get home with a whole bone in your little thievish body, you may think yourself jolly lucky, I can tell you.”
Having recognised the voice as Dick’s, Freda was not alarmed by the assumed ferocity of his tone. Besides, he had evidently mistaken her for somebody else. So she shook herself free from the hay, and sat up and looked at him. By that time he had got used to the gloom of the loft, and to her surprise, he drew back so quickly that he risked falling off the ladder. A little more contemplation, and then he murmured:
“Of course—it’s the hair!”
The net in which, in primitive fashion, she was accustomed to tuck away her hair, had been lost in her tumble through the roof, and her red-brown locks, which had a pretty, natural wave, had fallen about her ears and given to her pale face quite a new character. Dick, however, was not a young fellow looking idly at a pretty girl, but a man full of responsibilities and anxieties.
“You said last night,” he began abruptly, “that you had heard something at the ‘Barley Mow’ about us and your father. What was it?”
She answered in a low, modest voice, but without any fear.
“You say my father is quarrelling with you. You wish to find out all his movements. Then if I tell you about them, I am betraying my own father!”
“I warn you that your principles won’t agree with his any more than they do with mine. Do as you would be done by is what you were taught at the convent, I suppose. Do as you are done by is the motto we live by here.”
“It seems very dreadful,” whispered Freda, “to do things that are wrong and not to mind!”
And the young man perceived that she had tears in her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” said he gently. “I shouldn’t have said what I have to you but that I wanted you to go back to your convent before you hear anything more to pain you. I want to take you to Presterby this afternoon, without your seeing my cousin Bob.”
“Ah!” cried Freda with a start. “Your cousin! Tell me, is he good to you? Are you fond of him?”
“Not particularly. That answer will do to both questions.”
“Then why do you stay here? Would it not be better for you to go away? They say—do they not say, that he makes you work for his advantage?”
He paused a few moments, and his face grew graver. Then he said abruptly: “Supposing I were to tell you that I am content to be taken advantage of, and that I’d rather live on here anyhow than like a prince anywhere else. I tell you,” he went on, with the ring of passion in his voice, “I love every foot of ground about here as you love your convent and your nuns; the stones of this old place are my religion. And so I shall live on here in some sort of hole-and-corner fashion, bringing grist to a mill that gives me neither honour nor profit, until——”
He stopped short. Freda was deeply moved; but she only asked him, in a constrained voice, if he would let her come down the ladder. He ran rapidly down, held the ladder firm for her, and gently assisted her as she came near the ground, taking her crutch and returning it to her when her feet touched the floor.
“Poor little lame girl!” said he softly, and the words brought sobs into her throat. “Why, you’re crying! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No-o, no,” said Freda, drawing herself away. “Let me go, please.”
“Well, say that we’re friends first.”
Freda raised her eyes, but her glance passed Dick and remained fixed on a face that appeared at the window beyond. A young man, with sandy hair and moustache, was looking in with a cynical grin. Dick turned quickly, when he saw the change on the girl’s face. His own expression altered also.
“Bob! Back already!” he cried.
The young man had climbed in. Nodding at his cousin, with a glance at Freda which she found exceedingly offensive, he asked:
“Well, and who is the little girl?”
Perhaps the girl’s mind, having retained a child-like purity, was able at once to detect the taint in that of Robert Heritage; but certainly the persistent stare of his small grey eyes, which he honestly believed to be irresistible, affected her no more than the gleam of a couple of marbles; while every other feature of his face, from the obtrusively pointed nose to the thin-lipped mouth, seemed to her to betray ugly qualities, the names of which she scarcely knew. He, on his side, regarded her face with a bold, critical stare, which changed into contempt the moment he caught sight of her crutch. Dick grew red with anger.
“You didn’t get my telegram then?” he said shortly, interposing his person to shield the girl from his cousin’s impudent gaze.
“No, I got no telegram. What was it about?”
“Come into the house and I’ll tell you.”
He moved to the door. Robert would not let him open it.
“What! and interrupt your studies of the maim, the halt, and the blind?” he asked, in a low voice which, however, the girl’s quick ears caught.
Freda had been reprimanded at the convent for occasional outbursts of passion. But she had never yet felt the force of such a torrent of indignation as seemed to sweep through her frame at this, the first sneer at her infirmity she had ever heard. She scarcely noticed Dick’s angry remonstrance; but raising her flushed face to Robert, she said:
“You can sneer at me now. Perhaps you will not when I am in the house of my father, Captain Mulgrave.”
“Come, that’s rather strong, little girl,” he said coolly. “To be Mulgrave’s daughter—which you may be for anything I know—is one thing, but to live in his house is another. I can assure you he has made no preparations for your reception.”
His insolent tone stung Freda to a greater heat of passion.
“Perhaps you are not in my father’s confidence,” she said in a voice which shook a little. “If you had been, you might have known that he was going to visit Josiah Kemm.”
Without waiting to see the effect of her words, Freda ran out of the barn, across the court-yard, and up to the room she had slept in. There she put on her hat and cloak, and after waiting some time in fear lest she might be hunted out, stole out of the room and came, to her disgust, face to face with Blewitt. He had on a thick coat and riding-boots.
“I beg pardon, ma’am, but I was a-coming to inform you that I have been hordered by Mr. ’Eritage to go to the Abbey with a letter for your respected father, Captain Mulgrave. Now, ma’am, I should esteem it a honour to be sent to a gentleman like Captain Mulgrave on any hordinary errand. But knowing, as I happen to do, the himport of the letter, I feel it very different, I assure you, ma’am.”
Freda was too unsophisticated to guess by what simple means Blewitt had arrived at the knowledge he alluded to. But she was afraid he wanted to tell her something she ought not to hear, and she interrupted him hurriedly.
“Yes, I’m sure that all you say is quite—quite right,” she said nervously. “But I—I am going out, and I cannot——”
“You cannot stay under the roof of such people as them. Which I was sure, ma’am, that such would be your feelings. Barnabas Ugthorpe, the farmer, has been here with his cart a-inquiring after you; and I know where he is to be found now, if so be as you would like me to show you how to get out by a private door.”
“Oh, yes, please show me out,” cried Freda piteously, delighted at the thought of seeing her rough friend, whom she hoped to persuade to take her on to the Abbey.
“I will do so, ma’am,” answered Blewitt, who by this promise forced her to listen to him. “And if you could say a good word to the Captain for me that would induce him for to take a hard-working man into his service, why, I could tell him a many little tales about the goings on in this house which would astonish him, and just show him how he misplaced his confidence in some people I could name.”
“How can you think my father could listen to such things!” Freda broke out indignantly.
“Well, ma’am, gentlemen’s ways is not always straight ways, when they wants pertic’ler to know things,” said Blewitt, drily though respectfully. “But the Captain’s a ’asty and ’aughty sort of gentleman as you don’t always quite know where to have him! and when he gets this letter, which threatens to do for him if he don’t give up all dealings with Josiah Kemm immediate, why he’ll be in such a taking that he’ll be more likely to do for me than to listen to anything what I can say.”
“Why do you take the letter then?”
The fact was that Mr. Blewitt did not wish to be off with the old love until he was quite sure of being on with the new. He put this to Freda, however, in a nobler light.
“You see, ma’am,” said he, “so long as I take Mr. ’Eritage’s wages, I must carry out his horders.”
“Yes, of course, of course,” said Freda, with almost a shriek of delight as Blewitt opened a little side-door and she found herself out of the house, standing in the snow under the grey old outer wall.
She found Barnabas just driving off from one of a group of cottages at the bottom of the lane. At her cry he stopped, waiting for her to come up.
“Barnabas!” she cried, quivering with anxiety, “won’t you drive me over to the Abbey? Oh, do, do! You will, won’t you?”
The farmer scratched his ear.
“Happen one o’ t’ young gentlemen ’ll droive ye over.”
“Oh no,” said Freda quickly. “I wouldn’t go back there for anything in the world!”
The farmer grinned, nodded, helped Freda into his cart, and started off at a much better pace than they had made with Josiah Kemm’s old mare the night before.
“Weel, lassie,” he said, as they jogged along, “ye’ve made a better conquest nor any scapegrace of a Heritage. That theer swell that was so kind to ye at t’ ‘Barley Mow,’ he’s gone clear creazed about ye. When Ah left ye at t’ farm last neght, Ah fahnd him on t’ road, mahnding for to get to Presterby. Ah towd him he couldn’t the neght, an’ Ah tuck him back; an’ t’ missus, when she’d satisfied herself he warn’t a woman in disguise, was moighty civil. An’ he said sooch things abaht yer having a sweet little feace, an’ he said he should call at t’ Abbey to see ye.”
“Barnabas,” said Freda suddenly, “why did you look so mysterious last night when I told you that he had something to do with the government?”
The farmer gave her an alarmed glance, as he had done the night before, and said in a cautious tone:
“Ye’ve gotten a pair of sharp ears, an’ they hear more’n there’s ony need. Ye didn’t reeghtly unnerstand, lass.”
After this there came a long pause, during which Freda puzzled herself as to what the inhabitants of this district had been doing, to have such a fear of the government. It was getting dark when Barnabas broke the long silence by saying, as he pointed with his whip to the summit of a hill they were about to ascend:
“T’ Abbey’s oop top o’ theer.”
Freda was too much agitated to answer except by a long-drawn breath. The Abbey! Her father’s home! A terrible presentiment, natural enough after the scant experience she had had of his care, told her that there was no welcome waiting. She crouched down in the cart and clung to the farmer’s arm.
“Barnabas,” she whispered, “I’m afraid to go on. Drive slowly; oh, do drive slowly!”
But the robust farmer only laughed and jogged on at the same pace. The road, however, grew in a few minutes so steep that they could only proceed very slowly, and Barnabas got down to lead the horse and lighten his burden as he ploughed his way up. Traffic between the little town of Presterby and its neighbours had been so much hindered by the blockade of snow, that there were no wheel-marks on the white mass before them.
“Soomun’s been riding oop a horseback, though,” said Barnabas, as he looked at the print of hoofs.
“Perhaps the man Blewitt from the farm,” suggested Freda. “He said he was going to ride to the Abbey.”
“Oh, ay,” said the farmer with interest. “If he was cooming, noa doubt it’s him. Hey,” he went on, in a different tone, “Ah think Ah hear his voice oop top theer! He’s fell aht wi’ soomun by t’ sounds, Ah fancy.”
He stopped the cart a moment to listen. Plainly both Freda and he could hear the voices of men in angry discussion, the one coarse and loud, the other lower and less distinguishable.
“My father!” cried Freda, trembling.
“A’ reeght, lass, a’ reeght; doan’t ye be afraid. We’ll be oop wi ’em in a breace o’ sheakes.”
“Barnabas! Make haste, make haste! They’re quarrelling, fighting perhaps!” cried the girl in passionate excitement.
“Weel, Ah’ll go and see,” answered the farmer who, knowing more than his little companion did of the reckless and violent character of the disputants, was in truth as much excited as she was.
“He’s carrying a letter which he said would enrage my father!” cried Freda in a tremulous voice to Barnabas, who was already some paces ahead, running up the hill as fast as he could.
The road lay between stone walls of fair height, and was full of curves and windings; so that it would have been impossible, even in broad daylight, for the farmer to see the two men until he was close upon them. He was not yet out of Freda’s sight when a sharp report, followed by a second, and then by a hoarse cry, broke upon their ears. There was silence for a moment, and then the sound of galloping hoofs upon the snow. A riderless horse, bearing a man’s saddle, came down the hill, with nostrils dilated and frightened eyes. Barnabas, who considered a horse as rather more a fellow-creature than a man, set to work to stop the animal before making his way to the human beings. This accomplished, he tied the horse to the gate of a field a few yards higher up, and quickening his pace again, reached the top of the hill.
Here, in the middle of the road, were two figures, the one prone on the ground, the other kneeling in the snow beside him.
The kneeling man started and rose to his feet as Barnabas came up. He held in his left hand an open letter, and in his right a revolver, which, without resistance, he allowed the farmer to take.
“Captain Mulgrave!”
The Captain only nodded. Barnabas went down in the snow beside the second figure. He was on his face, but Barnabas knew, even before he attempted to raise him, that it was Blewitt, the servant from Oldcastle Farm.
He was dead.