CHAPTER X.
“You’ll be glad to go to bed, I dare say, my dear,” said the housekeeper. “If you hear any noises in the night, don’t be afraid; this old house is full of them. Good-night.”
Freda fled across the hall and hopped up the stairs.
Oh! How long that gallery seemed, skim over the floor as she might! The candle smoked and flared and guttered in her hand, and the boards creaked, and the musty smell seemed to choke her. The row of stately carved oak chairs, ranged along the wall on one side, seemed to be set ready for the midnight hour when the faded ladies and the sombre gentlemen should come down from their frames and hold ghostly converse there. She ran along the stone passage to the door of her room, and threw it open suddenly.
A man sprang up from his knees before the wide, open grate, in which a wood fire now burned. The girl, no longer mistress of herself in her fright and excitement, uttered a cry.
“It’s all right,” said the rough voice which had already begun to grow familiar to her, “I thought you’d like a fire. So I brought some sticks, and a log. It’s cold here after France, I expect. Anyhow, the blaze makes it look more cheerful.”
Freda was touched.
“Oh, thank you—so very much! How kind of you.”
“Stuff! Kind! You’re mistress here now, you know, as you said; and one must make the mistress comfortable.”
He spoke in a jeering tone, but Freda did not mind that now.
“I wish,” she said, looking wistfully at the blazing log, “that you were going to stay here, Crispin.”
He gave one of his short, hard laughs.
“I should get spoilt for work,” he said. “You’d make a ladies’-man of me. Sha’n’t see you again. Good-night.”
Freda held out her hand, and he held it a moment in his, while a gleam almost of tenderness passed over his seamed and rugged face. Then he gave her fingers a sudden, rough squeeze, which left her red girl’s hand for a minute white and helpless.
“Good-night,” he then said again, shortly and as if indifferently. “If I come into these parts again, I’ll give you a look in.”
He left her hardly time to murmur “good-night” in answer, before he was out of the room. He put his head in again immediately, however, to say “Draw the bolt of the door, and you’ll be all right.”
Freda obeyed this direction at once, with another little quiver of the heart. But Crispin’s kindness had so warmed her that what now chiefly troubled her was the fact that she would see no more of him for an indefinite time. The strongest proof of the confidence he had inspired in her was the fact that she accepted implicitly his assurance as to her father’s wishes, and resolved to make no attempt to return to the convent. Indeed, the last three days had been so full of excitement and adventure that the old, calm years seemed to have been passed by some other person.
Freda’s last thought as she fell asleep, watching the dancing light of the fire on the roughly white-washed beams of the ceiling, was, however, neither of quiet nuns at their prayers in the convent by the sea, nor of Crispin Bean with his rugged face and hard voice, but of Oldcastle Farm and one of its occupants.
The girl was tired out; so utterly weary that she was ready to lie like a log till morning. But presently she began to dream, with the leaden drowsiness of a person in whom some outward disturbance struggles with fatigue, of thunder and battling crowds of men. And then she started into wakefulness, and found that the fire had burnt low, and that men’s loud voices were disturbing her rest. They seemed to come, muffled by the massive boards between, from a chamber under hers; they died away into faintness, and she was so overpowered with fatigue that she would have dropped to sleep again almost without troubling herself, when one voice suddenly broke out above the murmur. It was loud and shrill, and high-pitched, a voice Freda had never heard before. She could hear the words it uttered:
“Ye maun stay, ye maun stay. We can’t get on wi’out ye. Do ye want us to starve?”
And a chorus of evidently assenting murmurs followed. The voices dropped again, and again the listening girl’s attention relaxed, as sleep got the better of her senses. But suddenly she was aroused again, this time by sounds which came from behind the head of the bed, and were so plain that they seemed to be in the very room. Sounds as of a man’s footsteps coming up a stone staircase, coming up unsteadily, with many pauses. Sounds, too, as of heavy weights being dragged up, and of suppressed laughter and jeers.
“Eh, but tha’s gotten aboot as much as tha’ can carry, eh, Crispin?” said one voice.
“Tha’ couldn’t climb oop a mast to-night, Crispin,” said another, during the laughter which succeeded the first speech.
The voice of the man who was on the stairs answered, in low and husky tones. Although he was the nearest to her, Freda could not distinguish what he said, except the word “hush.” Then she heard a mumbling sound, like the drawing back of a sliding door, and then the dragging of some heavy weight over the boards, and the opening of a window. Presently the man came back, went down the stone steps, and re-ascended in the same manner as before. This happened three or four times, until the voices below died gradually away, and the sounds ceased. Not until long after all was quiet did Freda fall asleep again, and for the remainder of the night her rest was troubled by all sorts of wild dreams.
Next morning, as a consequence of her broken night’s rest, she did not wake until the housekeeper knocked loudly at the door. Springing up with a sudden rush of confused memories through her brain, Freda ran to the door, drew back the bolt, and pulled Mrs. Bean into the room.
“Oh,” she cried, “this is a dreadful house; how can you stay in it? It is haunted, or——”
Mrs. Bean interrupted her with a peculiar expression on her face.
“Didn’t I tell you to take no notice of anything you heard?” she asked quietly. “What does it matter to you what goes on outside your door, while you’re locked safe inside?”
“But I want to know——” began Freda.
Again Mrs. Bean cut her short.
“Didn’t they teach you, in the place you came from, that curiosity was the worst sin a woman can have?” she asked drily. “A wise woman doesn’t meddle with anything outside her own business, and especially she does not poke her nose into any business where men only are concerned. I see you’ve had a fire,” she went on in a less severe tone.
“Yes, Crispin made it for me.”
Mrs. Bean shook her head good-humouredly.
“You’re making a fool of that man. He was to have gone away last night, and he is still hanging about this morning. And it’s all because of you, I’m certain. Now make haste and get dressed, for I’ve got a tiresome day’s work before me, and I want to get the breakfast done with as soon as I can.”
It was a bright, sunny morning. The numerous windows let in floods of sunshine, the snow outside dazzled the eyes, even the knights and dames in the picture-gallery seemed to be in better spirits. In the dining-room Freda found Crispin, who affected to treat her with marked coldness, and to be grieved that he had had to put off his journey until the following night. Now although she stood in some awe of the housekeeper, Freda had no fear whatever of Crispin; so she very soon opened the dangerous subject.
“Crispin,” she began solemnly, “I heard you last night after I was in bed.”
“Very likely,” he answered quietly.
“There were some men with you.”
“Yes, so there were.”
“The voices seemed to come from under my room.”
“So they did.”
“And some one came up the stairs.”
He nodded.
“Dragging a heavy weight over the floor,” continued she. “And then some one opened a window. And the sounds went on over and over again.”
“Quite right. Well?”
“What did it all mean?”
“That I had some of the men from your father’s yacht here, and told them all about his death. I suppose you don’t wish the yacht sold? It would throw half a dozen men out of work.”
“No-o,” said Freda. “But——”
“Here’s your breakfast,” he interrupted, as Mrs. Bean brought a laden tray into the room.