CHAPTER XV.
The day of the funeral was a trying one for Freda. She ran up to her own room when the undertaker’s men arrived, and would have remained there for hours if she had not been disturbed by a peremptory knock at her door, and by Crispin’s voice telling her to get ready to go to the church. She opened the door, trembling with fear and repugnance.
“Crispin,” she entreated, “don’t make me go! I can’t go, when I know it is only a sham. I can’t pretend to be sorry, I can’t, and I won’t.”
“Oh, well, nobody will expect much sorrow from you, but you will have to go to the church. Haven’t you got a black dress?”
“Yes.”
“Well, put it on, and make haste. Nell is waiting.”
“Aren’t you going?”
For Crispin wore his usual costume: a threadbare velveteen coat, evidently one of his late master’s, riding-breeches and gaiters.
He shook his head.
“No, I can’t stand old Staynes. If I went I should laugh.”
“People won’t think it very respectful of you, will they?”
“People know me. Besides, I don’t care what they think. Now you look sharp.”
He went away, and Freda very reluctantly obeyed his injunctions, dressed herself all in black and went downstairs to the hall, where she found Nell waiting for her.
“Come along,” said the housekeeper rather crossly.
And seizing Freda by the arm, she dashed across the court-yard and the enclosure beyond, and dragged her through the open iron gates, outside which the funeral procession could be seen on its way through the churchyard. Freda felt so sick with disgust at the part she had to play in the farce, that she looked unutterably miserable, and heard sympathetic murmurs from many lips, as Nell with a strong hand half dragged her through the crowd.
“Poor little thing!” “Doan’t she look unhappy, poor lass!” and many such exclamations reached Freda’s ears and made her furious. Nell seemed to feel that there was a danger of the girl’s wrathful honesty breaking out, for she hurried her on into the church, and heaved a sigh of relief when she had pushed the girl into a square pew lined with green baize, immediately over which an old-fashioned three-decker pulpit frowned. Freda, at last distracted from her thoughts of the proceedings, looked about her in amazement.
“Is this a church?” she whispered.
Her ignorance was pardonable. Surely never yet did wild churchwardens in the frenzy of their Puritanism so run riot in a church before. Originally a plain Norman structure, erected by the monks of Presterby Abbey, and given to the townsfolk when their own Abbey church was completed, it had been transformed by later improvements into a very good copy of the interior of a ship. Clumsy little galleries had been erected wherever there was room for one, even before the old Norman chancel-arch. These galleries were entered from the outside of the church by covered flights of wooden steps, made on the model of the entrance to a bathing-machine. The roof was perforated by small cabin windows; the whole of the interior was covered with white-wash, including any small fragments of stone-work which the modern improvements had left visible; the Norman windows had all been carefully stopped up, and replaced by ordinary house windows, filled with small panes of poor glass. The only decorations were an enormous coloured coat of arms over the gallery of the chancel-arch, and a series of texts, indifferently spelt and painted coarsely on square wooden boards, which hung on the white-washed walls.
Nell scented popery in the girl’s innocent question, and answered with a frown.
“Of course it is. People don’t want tawdry fal-lals to help them to worship God, when they come in the right spirit,” she said severely. “Be quiet, here comes the Vicar.”
She thrust a prayer-book into the hand of the girl, who did not, however, follow the service, and who certainly could not understand much from the mumbling delivery of Mr. Staynes. She was shocked at the deception which was being carried out through all these solemn details, and when she was led to the side of the grave she shuddered and looked away.
When it was all over, Nell tried hard to lead her at once back to the house. But little Mrs. Staynes was too quick for her. Trotting up to the girl with what was only a decorous caricature of grief on her round apple face, she said:
“You must bear up, my dear Miss Mulgrave. ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.’ We must be resigned to His will. You must control your grief, my dear.”
“I haven’t any grief,” said Freda in spite of Nell’s warning fingers on her arm.
Poor little Mrs. Staynes looked shocked and disconcerted.
“Of course, my dear, we know it’s not the same as if you had been brought up at home. Indeed, I told the poor Captain so, times without number, but he hardened his heart and would not listen to me. But still, of course, you feel all that it is right for a daughter to feel under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Staynes was getting hurried and nervous. Indeed, she could only give half her mind to the consolation of her husband’s bereaved young parishioner, for she held the Vicar’s goloshes in her hand, and if she did not turn up with them exactly at the moment when he was ready to put them on, both he and she were apt to think that she had only escaped perdition by the skin of her teeth.
Before Freda had time to answer, a rather loud and peremptory voice close to them startled both ladies. Standing beside them was a robust-looking man in a close cap and thick travelling ulster, who suddenly struck in:
“And pray what is it, ma’am, that a daughter should feel under the circumstances of losing a father who had, from a sentimental point of view no claim to the name?”
He took Freda’s hand and shook it warmly, almost before she had had time to recognise in him her friend of the journey.
“A friend of yours, Miss Mulgrave?” asked the Vicar’s wife rather primly.
The new-comer replied for her.
“Yes, ma’am, a friend of Miss Mulgrave’s—whether she likes it or not,” said he.
“This gentleman has been very, very kind to me,” said Freda, recovering her voice. “On the journey here I——”
“Was indebted to this good gentleman for a biscuit and a cup of tea,” chimed in the stranger’s good-humoured voice. “And unlike most ladies to whom one may chance to render a small service of the kind, she remembers it.”
“It is not always prudent for young ladies to make chance friends on the railway,” said Mrs. Staynes.
“It is convenient though, madam, in case of an accident. And perhaps the young lady had the judgment to see that there’s very little of the gay Lothario about me.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs. Staynes, who thought the stranger rather flippant. “Ah, there’s the Vicar. I—er—I—— Good-morning, Miss Mulgrave.”
With a curious little salutation to the stranger, which was half a bow and half a “charity bob,” the Vicar’s wife trotted off, waving the goloshes. Nell whispered to Freda to make haste home. The girl withdrew her arm suddenly.
“You go home, Mrs. Bean,” she said. “I will come in a few minutes.”
Then she turned, in spite of Nell’s remonstrances and rejoined the stranger.
The crowds of poor-looking people who had collected to see the funeral had begun very slowly to melt away, and Freda overheard enough of the remarks they exchanged to learn that her father had been very good to the poor, especially to the seafaring folk, and that there was much genuine sorrow at his death. She wanted to speak to some of these people, to assure them that as far as lay in her power, she would fill his place to them. But she was too shy. Her friend had to speak to her to recall her attention to himself.
“Rum business this altogether,” he said. “They say your father was found dead in his room, don’t they?”
“Yes,” mumbled Freda, with white lips.
“Nothing said about his being shot out-of-doors, eh?”
She shook her head.
“No man accused of having murdered him?”
“No.”
“Well, I could tell a tale—only it wouldn’t do for me just now to be telling tales, and bringing myself into prominence. Besides, without corroboration, I daresay my tale wouldn’t amount to much. Still——”
“Don’t, don’t,” said Freda hoarsely, “don’t find out anything, don’t try to. What good could it do now?”
He looked at her searchingly, not unkindly. Yet there was something in the expression of his face which impressed Freda with the belief that he was a man with whom no prayers, no entreaties would avail anything when he had once made up his mind.
She went on, as if anxious to change the subject: “You stayed the night with Barnabas, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and came on the next day, and climbed up to this old place because I wanted to see where you were going to live.”
“Did you meet anybody?”
“Only one person, a rough-looking fellow, who told me I was trespassing, and ordered me into the road. I had got over into the fields between the house and the ruin.”
“Was he tall, with a short greyish beard?”
“Yes.”
“That was Crispin Bean.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him; he was a devoted servant to your father. I’ve been making inquiries to find out whose care you’d been left in.”
“That was very kind of you. Then you’ve been in Presterby on business? What business?”
“Ah, that’s the question.”
“Secret business then?”
“No wise man cares to have his business prattled about.”
“But you will tell me if I guess right?”
“Perhaps I’ll go as far as that.”
“And you will tell me your name?”
“John Thurley.”
“And where you come from?”
“London.”
“John Thurley, of London.” She meditated a moment. “You have come on some business connected with trade?”
“Well, not exactly,” said he, as if rather offended at the suggestion.
“I mean Free Trade,” corrected Freda.
John Thurley was perceptibly startled. He paused for a few moments, looking at her attentively, before he asked, in an altered tone:
“What do you know about that?”
“Oh, I’ve heard people talking about it—on the journey. Nobody seems to think it beneath him to be interested in trade up here.”
“You mean Free Trade?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose you don’t know that Free Trade means smuggling?”
Now Freda had had suspicions of this before, so that she was not greatly surprised by the information. She jumped at once to a conclusion suggested by it.
“You are up here to look after the smugglers then?”
“Well, I’m not much given to disguise of any sort,” he admitted bluntly, “but the feeling up here is so strongly against the law and with the evildoers, that a little caution is absolutely necessary.”
“Have you caught them yet?” asked Freda with curiosity.
“No. Everybody seems banded together in a league to help them.”
“How are you sure there are any?”
“Well, we’ve had suspicions for years of a great organisation for smuggling, admirably planned and carried out, defrauding the revenue to the extent of thousands of pounds annually. The plans of these wretches were so well laid that, though we have again and again caught the receivers of smuggled spirits and tobacco, we have never yet been able to lay hands upon the big offenders, and it is only lately that we have had information pointing to the Yorkshire coast as the probable centre of the trade. I have been sent down to investigate.”
“And what will be done to these men if they are caught?”
“Well, the usual punishment for smuggling is by fines; to be strictly correct it is the value of the article smuggled and three times the duty on it. But if, as we suspect, we get hold of a chief or chiefs of a regular gang, why, then, he or they, whichever it proves to be, will have to be proceeded against by some method more convincing.”
“Oh, yes,” said Freda.
“I am going southward for a few days, to visit two or three places further down the coast. When I come back I shall call at the Abbey to see you: will you make me welcome for an hour?”
“Indeed I would if I might, if I could,” said she mournfully. “But I don’t feel that I am the real mistress there; there are Crispin and his wife.”
Her friend frowned and spoke with kindly impatience.
“I can’t bear to think of your having to put up with the companionship and protection of those people! I shall find out your guardian—you must have some guardian, and get him to send you back to the convent, at least for a little while, since that seems to be your ideal of happiness.”
“My ideal of happiness!” echoed Freda wonderingly.
“Yes, you said so the other day at the ‘Barley Mow.’ ”
“Did I!” said the girl, blushing.
“Yes, you did. Now, I suppose, it is something else.”
She hung her head.
“Some young fellow has been talking to you!”
Freda gave him a glance of terror. How horribly shrewd he was, to touch at once upon a kind of secret she hardly knew herself yet! She would admit nothing, yet she was afraid to be silent. He might blunder upon some other sensitive truth if she did not speak. So she evaded the point.
“You seem here in England,” she began proudly, “to think that there is only one subject which can interest a girl!”
“Quite true. Everywhere else it is the same. There is only one. I don’t want to force your confidence, but I know that you stayed at Oldcastle Farm on the night of the journey.”
It seemed to Freda that an expression of disappointment crossed Mr. Thurley’s face when she made no answer to this, and the next moment he seemed suddenly in a great hurry to be off. Shaking her hand heartily in both his, he uttered a number of good wishes, and questions about her welfare with a bluff sincerity of interest which touched her. She watched him as he went down the steep churchyard without one look behind him, and the tears came into her eyes as she felt that here was a friend, none the less real for being a new acquaintance, going away.
Freda felt almost like a prisoner coming of his own accord back to the confinement from which he had escaped, as she pulled the lodge-bell and passed through the iron gates. Mrs. Bean, who was probably on the lookout, heard the loud clang, and was ready to open the inner gate. She did not seem in very good humour.
“You have been a long time talking with your gentleman friend,” she said coldly. “I didn’t know those were convent manners, to encourage every man who chooses to cast sheep’s-eyes at one!”
Poor Freda entered the dining-room thoroughly heart-sick and disgusted. Why did they say those coarse things to her, and about people she liked too! She felt so miserable that, instead of trying to eat, she sat down on the hearth-rug and cried, with her head on a chair.
Presently Crispin looked in at the window, and coming round to the door of the room, opened it and peeped in.
“What’s the matter?” asked he.
Freda sprang from the floor, but refused to give any other explanation than that she was tired, and had stood talking in the churchyard.
“Talking! Who to?”
“To the gentleman who was kind to me in the train. Mrs. Bean, doesn’t seem to think it was right of me to talk to him; but he was very kind.”
Crispin said nothing to this, but persuaded her to eat her dinner, waiting upon her himself. When she had finished, and he was making up the fire for her, she suddenly addressed him.
“Crispin,” she said, “I want to ask you a question. There is a thing which some people call Free Trade, and other people call smuggling. Which do you call it?”
Crispin, who was holding the poker in his hand, stopped short in his work, and remained for a few seconds quite still, without looking at her. Then he answered in a very quiet manner, and went on making up the fire.
“Smuggling, of course. And, what did your friend of the journey call it?”
He suddenly turned as he spoke, and under the piercing gaze which he directed upon her, Freda fancied that all her little girlish fancies and secrets were laid bare to his eyes.
“He called it smuggling too,” she answered.
“And what was his name?”
Freda hesitated. Such a hard, disagreeable tone seemed suddenly to be heard in Crispin’s voice. He repeated the question.
“His name is John Thurley.”
Without asking her any more questions, seeming, in fact, to become suddenly unconscious of her presence, Crispin abruptly left her to herself.