CHAPTER XXXI.
When Freda recovered her voice, Dick had broken away from her restraining touch, and was moving, in a hesitating sort of way, towards the door.
“Dick?” cried the girl in a frightened whisper, “Listen! I had forgotten why I came. There are men coming here, perhaps to-night, policemen from London, I think. Is—he—safe?”
Dick started, and began to tremble violently.
“Great Heavens!” he said in a hoarse voice, “how did you know? How did you hear? Is it known all over the place?”
“I don’t know,” said Freda sadly, “but I don’t think it is. Barnabas didn’t seem to know anything about it.”
He stood still for a moment, considering.
“Men coming here, you say! You are sure of that?”
“I am not sure that they are coming to-night, but they will come sooner or later. One said they knew where he was, and the other asked the way to Oldcastle Farm.”
Dick turned to her quickly and decisively.
“Do you mind if I leave you here alone for a little while?”
“No-o, but won’t you let me come too? Oh, do let me!”
“I can’t. It would only alarm him the more. You stay here, and if you hear any one at the front door, don’t take any notice, but come across the yard as softly as you can; and if you see a light shining through a grating close to the ground on the other side, throw a stone through, but don’t cry out.”
“Very well,” said Freda.
As Dick turned again to go, the provisions laid out on the table caught his eye. With a hotly flushing face, he took up the bread and cutting off a piece, said, with an awkward laugh:
“We may as well give him some supper, don’t you think so?”
Without a word, Freda loaded him with meat, bread and butter.
“The tea isn’t ready yet,” she whispered. “I’ll make it, and you can come back for that.”
He nodded and went off, not without trying to utter some husky thanks, which the girl would not hear. He had one of her candles and a box of matches in his pocket. Left alone in the great bare room, poor Freda felt all the womanish fears which the need of active exertion had kept off for so long. Terror on her father’s account, grief for poor starving Dick; above all, an awestruck fear that God would not forgive such black crimes as some of those laid to their account, caused the bitter tears to roll down her cheeks, while her lips moved in simple-hearted prayer for them.
Presently the old dog, whom she had been feeding, pricked up his ears and growled ominously. She sprang to her feet, but at first heard nothing. Crossing the floor quickly and lightly, she opened the door and listened. Somebody at the front of the house was knocking. The summons, however, was neither loud nor imperative, and she crept through the passages, fancying that it might perhaps be only Barnabas Ugthorpe who had come back for her. Creeping into the deserted kitchen, she peeped through the dusty panes of the window, which was heavily barred. She could just see the outline of a large hooded cart, and a couple of men standing beside it. At once she knew it was the cart which had followed Barnabas Ugthorpe’s.
Retreating from the window as noiselessly as she had come while the intermittent knocking at the front door went on a little louder than before, she returned through the passage and slipped into the court-yard. She knew where to look for the grating of which Dick had spoken, having noticed it in the course of her investigations on the occasion of her previous visit. It consisted of two iron bars placed perpendicularly across a small opening in the wall of the very oldest part of the building—the portion known as “the dungeons.” Freda crept to the grating and stooped down. Yes, there was a light inside. She took up a handful of earth and stones, as she had been told to do, and threw them in with a trembling hand.
Instantly the light was extinguished.
Freda stole away from the grating, afraid that if the front door were burst open and the police were to find her there, her presence might afford a clue to her father’s hiding-place. If she got on to the top of the old outer wall, she thought, she might watch the course of events without herself being seen. She had hardly reached this post of vantage when she heard a crash and a noise as of splintering wood, and a few moments later she saw the black figures of half a dozen men dispersed about the court-yard below. She was crouching down in the narrow path that ran along the ruinous old wall, and peeping over the fringe of dried grass and brambles which grew along the edge. Suddenly she felt a hand placed roughly over her mouth and eyes, so that she could neither see nor cry out. After the first moment, she did not attempt to do either, but remained quite still, not knowing in whose grasp she was. She heard the man breathing hard, felt that his hands trembled, and knew that he was in a paroxysm of physical terror. Was it her father himself? That thought would have kept her quiet, even if his rough clasp had been rougher still. As it was, the pressure of his hand caused her teeth to cut through her under-lip.
Crouching still in the same cramped attitude, and still gagged and blindfolded by the mysterious hand, she presently heard a stealthy footfall close behind, and then a whispered word or two.
“Let her go,” hissed Dick’s voice peremptorily.
The next moment Freda felt herself free, heard a soft thud on the earth below, and saw the figure of a man crouching close under the wall on the outer side.
“Oh, Dick, will he get safe away?” she whispered, breathing the word close to his ear.
“I don’t know,” answered Dick gloomily. “Sh! Keep quiet.”
But they had already been seen. In a very short time the men in the yard below had found their way up, and Freda and her companion found themselves flanked on either side by a stalwart policeman.
“Hallo!” cried a voice from the court-yard, which Freda recognised as Thurley’s, “have you got him?”
Dick said nothing, but Freda, moved by a sudden, overpowering impulse, threw her arms round his neck and cried aloud:
“No, no!”
Thurley spoke again, in a hard, altered voice.
“Bring them both down here,” he said sharply.
But Dick would not suffer a strange man’s hand to touch the girl.
“I will take her down,” he said quietly.
And, escorted by a policeman in front and another behind, they made their way down into the court-yard, and were conducted to John Thurley, who, with a police-officer in plain clothes, evidently took the lead in this expedition.
“What are you doing with that young lady?” asked Thurley harshly.
“That is no business of yours,” answered Dick. “By what authority have you forced your way into my house?”
Thurley was about to answer, but the police-officer with him spoke instead, in a conciliatory tone.
“You see, sir, we’ve got a search-warrant.”
And he produced a document at which Dick glanced hastily.
“Very well,” he said shortly. “But you won’t find any one here!”
“I hope not, sir,” said the man, touching his hat and stepping back.
Meanwhile Thurley, a good deal agitated by the discovery of Freda’s presence, was trying to persuade her to let him send her back to the Abbey at once. She refused simply but firmly; and turning her back upon him, went straight to Dick, who had withdrawn a little from the group. Thurley went up to him.
“If you have any of the feelings of a man,” he said, “which perhaps is not likely, you will persuade this young lady to go back to her friends.”
“I am with one of them now,” cried Freda, clinging to Dick’s arm.
“I think,” said Dick, whose deep voice was trembling, “that you had better go back to your manhunting, and not insult people who have done you no harm.”
“I have a right to interfere on behalf of this lady. I love her.”
“So do I,” said Dick in a low voice.
“You!”
“And Dick has more right to say so than you,” broke in Freda’s clear voice, shaking with feeling, “for I love him!”
Dick pressed her arm against his side, but he did not speak. Neither did John Thurley, but he reeled back a step, as if he had received a blow. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders which was meant to be contemptuous, but which was only crestfallen and disgusted, he turned away and left the young fellow with Freda, while he rejoined the search-party.
Neither Dick nor his companion spoke for some minutes. In all the misery of this strange situation, with the messengers of the law hunting high and low around them for a man who had incurred the penalty of death, the new and strange delight each felt of touching a loving hand, deadened the anxiety and the pain. Each felt the intoxication of the knowledge that each was loved. Dick spoke first; he looked down into the girl’s face and said gently:
“I am afraid you are cold, dear.”
She shook her head.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, “if they hear you say that, they will take me away.”
He led her back into the house, and wished to place her in the one chair by the fireplace in the banqueting-hall. But she would not take it.
“Eat,” she whispered. “If they find you having your supper quietly they will be more likely to believe that there is no one here.”
This was undeniably a good suggestion; and Dick took advantage of it. But hungry as he was, having indeed been half-starved of late, he would have eaten little but for Freda’s insistence. She waited on him herself, cutting bread and butter, making the tea, hovering about like a good spirit. He, however, having hungered for more than bread during these solitary latter days, would have neglected the food before him to watch her tender eyes, to kiss her little hands. But whenever he turned from the table, he felt a peremptory touch on his shoulder, and heard a stamp of Freda’s crutch and her commanding voice saying:
“Eat, eat!”
So the minutes passed by, and their spirits began to rise. For, although they did not tell each other so in so many words, both felt that on this great happiness which was stealing upon them the shadow of a great misfortune could not come.
When he had finished his supper, Dick drew his one chair to the fireside, made Freda sit in it, and curled himself up on the ground at her feet.
“Isn’t it strange,” said the girl, “that they leave us alone so long? You don’t think they have gone away, do you?”
“No such luck, I’m afraid.”
“Hadn’t we better go out and see what they are doing?”
“Why should we leave off being happy any sooner then we need?”
“What do you mean, Dick? You don’t think they’ve—caught him?” whispered she in alarm.
“No, and I don’t think they will catch him. But when we leave this room we shall be just strangers for the rest of our lives.”
“But we shan’t! Oh, Dick, do you think I would ever treat you as a stranger?”
“You won’t be able to help yourself,” said he, looking up at her with a dreary smile. “You are so ridiculously ignorant of the world, little one, and you’ve been so neglected since you’ve been here that I don’t know how to explain the smallest thing to you without frightening you. But I assure you that after this escapade to-night you will never be allowed to go out by yourself again.”
“Escapade!”
“Yes. That is what you will hear your expedition called, and you will never be allowed to make another. Quite right too. If you had been left to run wild here, you would have been spoilt, and you would have begun to mix up right with wrong like the rest of us.”
“I don’t think so,” said Freda gently. “I should have been told the difference.”
“But who was there to tell you?”
“God would have told me.”
There was a pause, and then Dick said:
“You’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you?”
“No, I was not allowed to be one.”
“Well, what are you then?”
Freda looked puzzled, and rather grieved.
“I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“If you’re religious, you must belong to some religion, you know.”
“Well, I’m a Christian. Isn’t that enough religion?”
“I’ve never met any sort of Christian who would admit that it was.”
Freda sighed.
“I am afraid mine is a religion all to myself then. But somehow,” and she lowered her voice reverently, “I don’t believe it makes any difference to God.”
“I don’t suppose it does,” said Dick gently. “I think,” he went on presently, “judging by its effect on you, I would rather have your religion than any other.”
“I wish you would, then,” she rejoined eagerly. “For then you could never do wrong things and think they were right.”
“How shall I begin?”
“Go to church.”
“What church?”
“It doesn’t matter. Sister Agnes used to say that in every church in the world there was some good spoken to those who wanted to hear it.”
“I wonder what good Sister Agnes would have heard from old Staynes?”
“Something, you may be sure. Or, how would his wife be such a noble woman?”
More pleased by her ingenuousness than convinced by her arguments, Dick promised that he would go to church, to the delight of Freda, who thought she had secured a great moral victory.
They had forgotten the police, who were searching the house; they had forgotten the jealous Thurley; when again the old dog, half opening his eyes, gave a low growl of warning. Dick jumped up and faced the door. There was no enemy, but Barnabas Ugthorpe, wearing a very grave and troubled face.
“What is it? Speak out, man,” cried Dick impatiently.
“Let me teake t’ little leady aweay first, mester.”
Dick staggered.
“They haven’t—caught him, Barnabas?”
“Ah’m afreaid so.”
Low as he spoke, Freda caught the words. Overcome with self-reproach for having momentarily forgotten her father’s danger, with misery at his unhappy plight, she tottered across the room towards the farmer, who, lifting her up in his arms as if she had been a child, carried her straight out of the room, to the front door of the farm-house.