The body of Blewitt, still wearing its clothes, had been wrapped in
a sheet and dragged to this hiding-place that morning. As soon as she
recognised the dead face, Freda sprang up from her knees, dropping her
candle and forgetting to replace the loose board. With flying feet,
not caring now who heard her, she went clattering down the stairs,
sick with horror of the house and everything in it, capable of only
one thought, one wish: that she could leave it at once, never to enter
it again.
The front door into the garden was ajar. Freda ran out into the snow,
which was now falling pretty thickly. But the intense cold was
pleasant to her: it seemed to give a little relief to her feverishly
hot head. She ran to the bottom of the garden; but the door in the
wall was locked. Returning slowly, despondently, she caught sight of
the door leading to the out-house and stable-yard. This had been left
open. She saw the track of many feet leading to one of the out-houses,
and guessing that it was that in which the jury had viewed her
father’s body, she instantly resolved to satisfy herself on one point
of the mystery. The door was not locked. Creeping in, her heart
beating wildly with excitement, Freda found herself in a bare
stone-paved building, which might once have been a court-house. It was
badly lighted by a small window, high up in the right-hand wall. Near
the middle of the floor was a coffin, supported by trestles. Freda
approached slowly, her feet slipping on the pavement, which was wet
with snow brought in by many feet. She was so much stupefied by the
sensations of the morning that she was no longer able to feel any
shock acutely. One dull pang of astonishment rather than any other
feeling shot through her as she looked in, expecting to see her
father’s face.
The coffin was empty.
Freda staggered away out of the building. She was now only capable of
one sensation--a longing to escape so strong, so fixed, that it became
at once a resolution. She stole past the stables, a long line of stone
buildings, with remnants of monastic character in blocked up Gothic
doorways and disused niches. No one had passed that way this morning,
for the night’s snow was untrodden. From the other extremity of the
line of stables, however, there were footprints in the snow going
backwards and forwards through the stone entrance to the open space in
front of the banqueting-hall. From this entrance the gates had been
torn down, so that the one barrier between Freda and liberty was now
the outer gates at the lodge.
She had nothing to fear from the blind eyes of the blocked-up windows
in the roofless hall. So she went across the enclosure to the lodge,
and tried the iron gates. They were fastened. She did not dare to
summon the woman in charge to open for her: hatless as she was, she
would never be allowed to pass. This place, with its secret locks, its
well-guarded exits, its high stone walls, was practically a prison at
the will of its owners. Her only chance was to wait until the gates
were opened for some one else to go in or out, and then to slip past
and take her chance of being unnoticed. Of course this plan could not
be tried until darkness set in; but it was such a gloomy day that dusk
could not fail to be early. In the meantime she must find a
hiding-place. There was no nook or corner in this great bare enclosure
into which she could creep; she had to retrace her steps, forgetting
the tell-tale print of her poor little feet in the snow, to the
stable-yard, where she found an unlocked door. Entering a four-stall
stable, which had evidently not been used for years except as a
storage-place for lumber, she sat down on an empty packing-case, and
prepared to wait.
She was so bitterly cold that she began to feel too benumbed to move
or even to think. She tried to clap her hands together, but the
movement caused her so much pain that she gave up this attempt, and
remained in a crouching attitude with her arms folded. The incident of
the morning faded from her mind, so that she soon almost forgot how
she came there. Perhaps she was dreaming it all. Then she drew herself
up with a start, remembering stories that she had heard of the danger
of falling asleep in the cold. Danger! why danger? If she died there
she would go to heaven, and meet the Mother-Superior and Sister Agnes
and the rest some day, and perhaps God would forgive her father for
the sake of her prayers. She could pray for him now, die praying for
him, that was the best thing she could do. For now, although the
mystery was not cleared, there seemed no doubt possible that he was
the murderer of the man Blewitt.
So she fell on her knees, and, supporting herself against a pile of
old hampers and mouldy straw, tried to pray. But she could not keep
her mind from straying, and, with the words of supplication still on
her lips, the thought would flit through her mind that it was to
Barnabas Ugthorpe she must escape; or again, the figure of Dick
Heritage would seem to appear before her eyes, with the good-humoured
smile which had so won her heart. And then prayers and thoughts alike
merged into a sensation of nameless horror, which she could neither
understand nor fight against.
At this point, when she was on the verge of insensibility, there came
a noise, a light, a touch. She was shaken by the shoulder, then lifted
up bodily, and some one spoke to her in a voice which at first seemed
to come from a long way off, and then suddenly, without any warning,
sounded close to her ear.
“Wake up, child, wake up. Are you asleep?” Then it was that the change
came, and the words almost stunned her like a loud cry: “Merciful God!
She is not dead, not dead?”
Freda raised her head feebly.
“Is it you, Barnabas?” she said.
There was no answer, and the girl had time to collect her thoughts.
Raising herself, she found she had been supported by the arms of
Crispin Bean, who hung over her with a face of dumb solicitude.
Struggling away from him, with what would have been a shriek if her
vocal powers had been fully restored, she ran towards the door, but
stumbled blindly. He ran after her and supported her against her will.
“Let me go, I entreat you let me go,” she pleaded hoarsely.
“Presently, perhaps,” answered Crispin in a gentle tone, “but I want
to talk to you first.”
Freda was still too benumbed with cold and fright to offer much
resistance. Finding that her hands were blue and stiff and that she
looked starved and miserable, Crispin lifted her right off her feet,
and, without heeding her weak ejaculations of protest, carried her out
of the stable, holding her with her face against his shoulder, so that
she could not see. Freda protested and tried to cry out, but he only
laughed at her.
“Oh,” she cried hoarsely, when she found that Crispin stopped to turn
the key in a lock, “don’t take me into that dreadful house again; I
shall go out of my senses if you do.”
“No, you won’t.”
He spoke rather peremptorily, and she was cowed into silence. The next
moment she heard the tramp of his feet on stone flags and heard the
echo of every step, so that she fancied they must be passing through a
passage or chamber with a vaulted stone roof. In spite of the warnings
she had received, she first tried to lift her head and look round, and
being checked in this attempt by the wary Crispin, she suddenly
endeavoured to jump out of his arms. He laughed grimly.
“Don’t you ever intend to learn prudence?” he asked.
Freda was desperate.
“No,” she cried with determination. “I don’t care what happens to me
as long as I have to stay in this wicked place, and if my curiosity
causes me to be sent away any sooner, why, I shall be very glad.”
“I suppose it depends where you will be sent away to?”
“No. I would rather be anywhere in the world, yes, anywhere than
here.”
She was now being carried up a flight of wooden steps. She counted
twenty. The next flight, a shorter one, was of stone. Then came a few
steps of level ground, and again Crispin proceeded to turn a key. When
they had passed through this second door, and while Crispin was
engaged in relocking it, Freda took the opportunity to drop her own
handkerchief unseen by him. Then she was carried on again, along
boarded floors and through two or three more doors, down a flight of
stairs and to the dining-room. Here Crispin put her down and pushed
her gently inside. Then he summoned Mrs. Bean, who looked at her with
a puzzled and frightened face, and told her to bring something for the
young lady to eat. Freda, who had sunk down in a chair by the fire to
warm herself, sprang up at these words, and interrupted Crispin.
“Not for me,” she cried. “I will never eat anything again till I’m out
of this house.”
“Then you’ll starve,” said Crispin quietly.
The girl flew up, shaking with fear, and horror, and anger. Mrs. Bean,
who kept her eyes on the ground, but looked exceedingly troubled,
remained in a half-furtive manner near the door.
“Do you think I care?” cried the girl, in a broken voice, “I know this
house is a place to murder people in, and if I’m to be hidden away
under the floor, like the poor man I found upstairs, I don’t care by
what way you kill me first!”
The housekeeper’s face blanched at the girl’s words, but she did not
utter a word, did not even look up. Crispin dismissed her with a nod,
and turned to the young girl. Freda cowered on a chair, expecting a
great outburst of anger from him. But there was a long silence, during
which she heard him poke the fire and push the blazing logs together.
At last he said, in an unemotional voice:
“I am not surprised that you want to know the meaning of the strange
things you have seen and heard here.”
Freda answered passionately, only raising her head sufficiently to be
heard,
“I do know the meaning of it all. It is you who have murdered both my
father and Blewitt!”
“The d----l it is!” exclaimed Crispin, in unmistakable amusement and
surprise. “If you give information against me on that ground, you will
create a small sensation in Presterby.”
Freda perceived at once that her shot was wide of the mark. She sat up
and looked at him.
“Well, if you didn’t, then who did?”
Crispin looked at her steadily, with rather a comical expression, for
a long time. Then he shook his head.
“Of course you won’t believe me,” he said; “but I don’t know.”
“But wasn’t it you that brought Blewitt’s body into the house?”
Crispin nodded.
“And had it seen by the doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And then hid it under the floor?”
“Well, I had a hand in that too.”
“Why?”
“Because, if the body had been found in the road, your father would
have been hanged for the murder.”
“But he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” wailed Freda, in a tone which
implored him to agree with her.
“Perhaps he thought a live man could prove his own innocence better
than a dead one,” suggested Crispin drily.
Freda sprang up, and in great excitement, forgetting her crutch, half
hobbled, half leapt across the room until she stood close to him, face
to face, eye to eye.
She seized his hands, and devoured his face with eyes which seemed to
burn and shoot forth flames.
“Then he is--not--dead?” she hissed out, with hot breath.
“Hush, hush, for goodness’ sake, girl, hold your tongue,” said
Crispin, whose turn it was to feel alarmed. “Do you know, you little
fool, what it would mean to everybody in this house if such--such
craziness were suspected?”
“Oh, yes,” said she, turning suddenly grave, “of course I know that.
Tell me, Crispin, where is he? where is my father?”
“He’s where he hasn’t got to trust his life to your prattling tongue,”
said Crispin gruffly.
“He is about the house somewhere, I expect,” said Freda yearningly. “I
saw the empty coffin,” she continued, in a whisper of suppressed
horror, “not more than half an hour after they had all gone, so I am
sure he cannot have got far. He is in hiding somewhere about. Oh,
Crispin, Crispin, you are in all the secret, you were the chief
witness, you helped in it all, you _do_ know. Tell me, tell me where
he is. Is he going away? Can’t I see him, just for one moment. I would
not say one word.”
She seemed to be moving him: as she clung about him, he turned away
his head uneasily. She continued her pleading, more and more
earnestly, more and more passionately, until at last he burst out: “He
was a bad man. You’d better forget him.”
“How can he be so bad when you and your wife take all sorts of risks
to shield him?”
“It’s to our interest.”
“I believe you’re a better man than you pretend, Crispin,” said Freda
after a pause.
“Perhaps so. Here’s your tea,” he answered laconically, as Mrs. Bean,
tray in hand, entered the room.