CHAPTER XXII.
Not even the stolid silence with which he received her demonstrative outburst could dissuade Freda from her new belief that this man, whom she had always known as Crispin Bean, was really her father. She wondered, as she looked into his stern, rugged face, and noted the half involuntary tenderness in his eyes as he looked at her, how she could ever have doubted it. She chose to believe now that she had really known it all the time, and that she had only been waiting for him to declare himself. This, however, he was not ready to do even now.
“I am Crispin, Crispin,” he said, while he patted her soothingly on the shoulder, “remember that.”
He did not speak harshly, but even if he had done so she would not have been afraid of him. She was so overjoyed to have found her father, as she still obstinately believed she had done, that she was ready to submit to any condition it might be his fancy to impose.
“Yes, Crispin,” she said meekly, nestling up to his shoulder and looking with shy gladness up in his face, “I will remember anything you tell me, Crispin.”
He put his arm round her with a sudden impulse of tenderness, and Freda fancied, as he looked into her eyes, that he was trying to trace a resemblance to her mother; she fancied, too, by a look of content mingled with sadness which came over his face, that he succeeded.
“I heard you crying out as I came in,” he said at last, abruptly. “Was it my footsteps that frightened you?”
“No,” said Freda hesitatingly.
“What was it, then?”
“A man, a man I have seen about the house before, came up from there,”—she pointed to the hole in the floor—“and frightened me. He said he was my father.”
Crispin looked black.
“How did he frighten you?” he asked shortly.
“He saw me looking through at him and some other men—dreadful looking men—who were talking together; and I think he was angry because I saw them. So he made me throw the rope down to him, and he came up, and he was very angry.”
And Freda shuddered at the recollection.
“He didn’t hurt you, threaten you, did he?”
She hesitated.
“Not much. Perhaps he didn’t mean to hurt me at all, only to frighten me. But I was frightened.”
And she hid her face against Crispin’s shoulder.
“Jealous brute, he shall suffer for this!” he muttered angrily. Turning to her suddenly again he asked: “Did you hear what the other men said? Did they frighten you?”
“I didn’t hear much, and none of them saw me except that one man. But, oh, Crispin, they are dreadful people! Why do you have anything to do with them?”
“Little girls shouldn’t ask questions,” he answered rather grimly.
But Freda would not take his tone as a warning. Indeed she had an object of vital importance at her heart.
“But there was something they said, something I did hear, which I must tell you about, even if I make you angry—Crispin. There is a man whom they want to hurt, perhaps to kill; they said so. They are going to be out on the scaur to-night, and if he is there, as they expect, the wicked man, the worst of them all, said he would be on the watch.”
“Well, a man may watch another without hurting him. Like a foolish girl, who listens to what doesn’t concern her, you have half-heard things, and jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.”
But Freda was not to be put off like that. She rose from the bench on which they had been sitting side by side, and stood before him so that she could look straight into his face.
“No, no,” she cried vehemently. “I know more than you think, and I know they meant harm to John Thurley, who was kind to me, and wanted me to go away because he thought I was lonely and not taken care of.”
Crispin glanced up hastily, with a guilty flush on his face.
“Mrs. Bean—Nell looks after you, doesn’t she?” he asked sharply.
“Oh,” said the girl with a little half-bitter laugh, “I am fed all right; but perhaps Mr. Thurley thinks that food isn’t quite all a girl wants.”
Crispin got up abruptly, almost pushing her aside, and began walking about the room, as if in search of something to do, to hide a certain uneasiness which he felt. He kicked a coil of rope into a corner, and shifted one of the bales that had got a little out of place.
“I know,” he burst out suddenly, “that I—that you have not been treated well. You have been neglected, shamefully neglected. Of course you ought never to have come. It was a mistake, a caprice of temper on the part of—your father. Then when you came, of course you ought to have been sent back; it was cruel and wrong to keep you here. But by that time—you had brought—something, a ray of humanity, perhaps, or of sunshine, to—somebody, and so you stayed. And—and of course it was wrong, and somebody—is sorry.”
Freda, touched, breathless, was drinking in every word, with her great brown eyes fixed upon him. She flew up at the last words, and forgetting even her crutch, limped across to him and fell into his arms.
“Oh,” she whispered, “but you should have said so, you should have told me! And then if you had wished me to live on here like this for a year, ten years, without ever even seeing your face, I would have done it gladly, if I had only known you cared, that it gave you one spark of comfort or satisfaction. Oh, you believe me, do you not?”
He could not help believing her, for truth and devotion were burning clear in her eyes. But it puzzled, it almost alarmed him.
“You—you are strangely, ridiculously sentimental,” he said, trying to laugh. “How did you come by all these high-flown notions?”
“Whatever I feel God put into my heart, when he sent me to you to make you happy again, as you were when my mother was alive.”
He half-pushed her away, with a sharply-drawn breath of pain; for she had touched the still sensitive place.
“Ah, child,” he said, “they have educated you on fairy tales. There is no going back to peace and happiness and innocence to men like me. The canker has eaten too deep.”
These words gave Freda a sudden chill, recalling to her unwilling mind the mysterious murder of Blewitt. She shuddered, but she did not draw away.
“Well,” said Crispin brusquely, “if you are frightened you can go away. I’m not detaining you.”
She looked up with a flushed face, full of sensitive feeling.
“I am sorry and sad with thinking of things which can’t be undone,” she said softly; “but I am not frightened.”
He put his hand gently upon her head. She fancied that she heard him murmur: “God bless you.” In a few moments, however, he withdrew his hand abruptly, and said that he must “be off.”
“And you must go out of this place,” he continued in his harder tone. “We don’t allow intruders here, you know.”
He led her up the stone staircase to the panel-door, which he unlocked. Then he helped her through into the gallery, and said “Good-night” in his usual matter-of-fact, brusque manner. But Freda was not to be repulsed. Before he could close the door, she caught his hand, and held it firmly, forcing him to listen to her.
“Crispin,” she whispered, “remember what I said. John Thurley was kind to me. Don’t let them hurt him. Promise.”
But he would not promise. His face grew stern again, and he put her off with a laugh as he freed his hand.
“Don’t worry yourself with silly fancies,” he said shortly. “He’s all right.”
He closed the door sharply and fastened it. Freda remained for a few moments listening to his footsteps as he went down the stone stairs. Then remembering with excitement, that “Crispin” had forgotten to ask her how she got in, and that the way through the library into the locked-up portion of the house was still open, she went downstairs, and passed again through the door among the bookshelves.
She would try and get down to the scaur by the secret way the smugglers used.