Freda Mulgrave was superstitious. While she was groping her way
along the front of the dismantled house, she heard a bell tolling
fitfully and faintly, and the sound seemed to come from the sea. She
flew instantly to the fantastic conclusion that Saint Hilda, in
heaven, was ringing the bell of her old church on earth to comfort her
in her sore trouble.
“Saint Hilda was always good to wanderers,” she thought. And the next
moment her heart sprang up with a great leap of joy, for her hand,
feeling every excrescence along the wall, had at last touched the long
swinging handle of a rusty bell.
Freda pulled it, and there was a hoarse clang. She heard a man’s
footsteps upon a flagged court-yard, and a rough masculine voice
asked:
“Who’s that at this time of night?”
“It is Captain Mulgrave’s daughter. And oh! take me in; I am tired,
tired.”
The gate was unbolted and one side was opened, enabling the girl to
pass in. The man closed the gate, and lifted a lantern he carried so
as to throw the light on Freda’s face.
“So you’re the Captain’s daughter, you say?”
“Yes.”
Freda looked at him, with tender eyes full of anxiety and inquiry. He
was a tall and rather thickset man with very short greyish hair and a
little unshaved stubble on his chin. Her face fell.
“I thought----” she faltered.
“Thought what, miss?”
There was a pause. Then she asked:
“Who are _you_?”
She uttered the words slowly, under her breath.
“I am your servant, ma’am.”
“_My_ servant--you mean my father’s?”
“It is the same thing, is it not?”
“Oh, then you are Crispin Bean!”
The man seemed surprised.
“How did you know my name?”
“They told me about you.”
“What did they tell you?”
“That you were a ‘rough-looking customer.’”
The man laughed a short, grim laugh, which showed no amusement.
“Well, yes; I suppose they were about right. But who were ‘they’?”
“The people at Oldcastle Farm.”
The man stopped short just as, after leading her along a wide,
stone-paved entry, between the outer wall and the side of the house,
he turned into a large square court-yard.
“Oh!” he said, and lifting his lantern again, he subjected the young
lady to a second close scrutiny. “So you’ve been making friends with
those vermin.”
Freda did not answer for a moment. Presently she said, in a stifled
voice:
“I am not able to choose my friends.”
“You mean that you haven’t got any? Poor creature, poor creature,
that’s not far from the truth, I suppose. That father of yours didn’t
treat you over well, or consider you over much, did he?”
Freda grew cold, and her crutch rattled on the stones.
“What do you mean? ‘_Didn’t_ treat me well’!” she whispered. “He will,
I am sure he will, when he sees me, knows me.”
“Oh, no, you’re mistaken. He’s dead.”
Freda did not utter a sound, did not move. She remained transfixed,
benumbed, stupefied by the awful intelligence.
“It isn’t true! It can’t be true!” she whispered at last, with dry
lips. “Barnabas saw him to-day--just now.”
“He was alive two hours ago. He went out this afternoon, came in in a
great state of excitement and went up to his room. Presently I heard a
report, burst open the door, and found him dead--shot through the
head.”
“Dead!” repeated Freda hoarsely.
She could not believe it. All the dreams, which she had cherished up
to the last moment in spite of disappointments and disillusions, of a
tender and loving father whom her affection and dutiful obedience
should reconcile to a world which had treated him harshly, were in a
moment dashed to the ground.
“Dead!”
It was the knell of all her hopes, all her girlish happiness. Forlorn,
friendless, utterly alone, she was stranded upon this unknown corner
of the world, in a cheerless house, with no one to offer her even the
comfort of a kindly pressure of the hand. The man seemed sorry for
her. He stamped on the ground impatiently, as if her grief distressed
and annoyed him.
“Come, come,” he said. “You haven’t lost much in losing him. I know
all about it; he never went to see you all these years, and didn’t
care a jot whether you lived or died, as far as any one could see. And
it’s all nonsense to pretend you’re sorry, you know. How can you be
sorry for a father you don’t remember?”
“Oh,” said Freda, with a sob, “can’t you understand? You can love a
person without knowing him, just as we love God, whom we can never see
till we die.”
“Well, but I suppose you love God, because you think He’s good to
you.”
“We believe He is, even when He allows things to happen to us which
seem cruel. And my father being, as I am afraid he was, an unhappy
man, was perhaps afraid of making me unhappy too. And he did send for
me at last, remember.”
“Yes, in a fit of annoyance over something--I forget what.”
“How do you know that he hadn’t really some other motive in his
heart?” said Freda, down whose cheeks the tears were fast rolling. “He
was a stern man, everybody says, who didn’t show his feelings. So that
at last he grew perhaps ashamed to show them.”
“More likely hadn’t got any worth speaking of,” said the man gruffly.
“It’s not very nice or right of you to speak ill of your master, when
he’s de-ad,” quavered Freda.
“Well, it’s very silly of you to make such a fuss about him when he’s
de-ad,” mimicked the man.
Although he spoke without much feeling of his late master, and
although he was somewhat uncouth of speech, manner and appearance,
Freda did not dislike this man. As might have been expected, she
confounded bluntness with honesty in the conventional manner.
Therefore she bore even his little jibes without offence. There was a
pause, however, after his last words. Then he asked, rather curiously:
“Come, honestly, what is your reason for taking his part through thick
and thin like this? Come,” he repeated, getting for the moment no
answer, “what is it?”
Freda hesitated, drying her eyes furtively.
“Don’t you see,” she said, tremulously, “that it is my only
consolation now to think the very, very best of him?”
The man, instead of answering, turned from her abruptly, and signed to
her with his hand to follow him. This she did; and they passed round
one side of the court-yard under a gallery, supported by a colonnade,
and entering the house, went through a wide, low hall, into an
apartment to the right at the front of the building. It was a pretty
room, with a low ceiling handsomely moulded, panelled walls, and an
elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece, which had been a good deal
knocked about. The room had been furnished with solid comfort, if
without much regard to congruity, a generation or so back; and the
mahogany arm-chairs having been since shrouded in voluminous chintz
covers with a pattern of large flowers on a dark ground, the room
looked warm and cheerful. Tea was laid on the table for two persons.
Freda’s sharp eyes noted this circumstance at once. She turned round
quickly.
“Who is this tea for?” she asked.
“Captain Mulgrave’s death was not discovered until it was ready.”
“But it was laid for two. Was it for you also?”
“Yes.”
Freda’s face fell.
“You think it was derogatory to his dignity to have his meals with
me?”
“Oh, no, no indeed,” said Freda blushing. “I knew at once, when you
said you were a servant, that it was only a way of speaking. You were
an officer on board his ship, of course?”
“Yes,” said he.
“But I had hoped,” said Freda wilfully, “that he had expected me, and
had tea made ready for me and him together.”
“Ah!” said the man shortly. “Sit down,” he went on, pointing brusquely
to a chair without looking at her, “I’ll send Mrs. Bean to you; she
must find a room for you somewhere, I suppose.”
“For to-night, yes, if you please. Mrs. Bean--that is your wife?”
He nodded and went out, shutting the door.
Freda heard him calling loudly “Nell, Nell!” in a harsh, authoritative
voice, as he went down the passage.
She thought she should be glad to be alone, to have an opportunity to
think. But she could not. The series of exciting adventures through
which she had passed since she left the quiet convent life had
benumbed her, so that this awful discovery of her father’s sudden
death, though it agitated her did not impress her with any sense of
reality. When she tried to picture him lying dead upstairs, she failed
altogether; she must see him by-and-by, kiss his cold face; and then
she thought that she would be better able to pray that she might meet
him in heaven.
It seemed to her that she had been left alone for hours when a bright
young woman’s voice, speaking rather querulously, reached her ears.
Freda guessed, before she saw Mrs. Bean, that her father’s
fellow-officer or servant (she was uncertain what to call him) had
married beneath him. However, when the door opened, it revealed, if
not a lady of the highest refinement, a very pleasant-looking, plump
little woman, with fair hair and bright eyes, who wore a large apron
but no cap, and who looked altogether like an important member of the
household, accustomed to have her own way unquestioned.
“Dear me, and is that the little lady?” she asked, in a kind, motherly
voice, encircling the girl with a rounded arm of matronly protection.
“Bless her poor little heart, she looks half-perished. Crispin,” she
went on, in a distant tone, which seemed to betray that she and her
husband had been indulging in a little discussion, “go and put the
kettle on while I take the young lady upstairs. Come along, my dear.
I’ll get you some hot water and some dry clothes, and in two-twos I’ll
have you as cosy as can be.”
Mrs. Bean looked a little worried, but she was evidently not the woman
to take to heart such a trifle as a suicide in the house, as long as
things went all right in the kitchen, and none of the chimneys smoked.
Crispin, who seemed to have little trust in her discretion, gave her
arm a rough shake of warning as she left the room with the young lady.
Mrs. Bean, therefore, kept silence until she and her charge got
upstairs. Then she popped her head over the banisters to see that
Crispin was out of hearing, and proceeded to unbend in conversation,
being evidently delighted to have somebody fresh to speak to.