CHAPTER VI.
After a 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.