To Freda’s perhaps rather prejudiced mind, the contrast between the
two cousins seemed even stronger than when she had seen them a
fortnight before at their own home. The fact that both were evidently
harassed and anxious only emphasised the difference between them; for
while Robert looked savage and sullen even under the smile with which
he approached her, Dick seemed to Freda’s shy eyes to look haggard,
downcast and depressed to an extent which sent a pang through her
heart.
Robert came first, cracking his riding-whip and singing, and assuming
a jauntiness belied by the expression of his face. He raised his hat
again as he came through the ruined window, and greeted Freda with
much deference. He made a feint of holding out his hand, but the young
lady took no notice of it.
“I am afraid,” began he, in a deprecating tone, “that our acquaintance
did not begin in the most auspicious possible manner, Miss Mulgrave.”
“No, and I did not expect to see you again.”
Freda was far too unsophisticated to be otherwise than cruelly direct
of speech. Robert Heritage, however, was not easily disconcerted.
“But if the reason of my daring to appear before you again is to make
my peace in the humblest manner?”
“There is no need to be humble to me. You said so the last time I saw
you.”
“Pray forget everything I said then, and let us begin afresh. I had
had a good deal of worry that day, and I spoke to you under a
misapprehension.”
“I would rather have you remain under it, and not speak to me again.”
“You are very unforgiving.”
Freda hung her head. They used to tell her that at the convent. It was
true too, she felt. She had never been able to humble herself to
docile obedience--to the doctrine of forgiveness of enemies. Nothing
could be wrong in those she loved, nothing right in those she did not
love. And she did not love Robert Heritage. Guiltily, therefore, she
said, after a minute’s pause:
“I will hear what you have to say.”
Robert made a grimace to his cousin, to imply that this insignificant
little girl was giving herself great airs. As for Dick, Freda had
steadily avoided meeting his eyes, and he stood in the background,
silently watching the flying sea-mews, without taking any active part
in this interview.
“In the first place,” said Robert, still with a great show of
deference, “I came--my cousin and I came, to express our regrets at
your sad bereavement, at your father’s death, in fact.”
He looked at her rather curiously. Freda blushed.
“Thank you,” she said hurriedly.
“Yes,” he went on slowly, “we were very much shocked to hear about it,
and very much surprised too. For I was just coming over here to
inquire if Captain Mulgrave could tell me what had become of a servant
of mine, a man you saw at our house, Miss Mulgrave; Blewitt, I dare
say you remember him?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Freda, who had grown very pale.
“I sent him over here with a letter, a message to your father. From
that day to this he has never been seen, and we have been unable to
get any tidings of him. In the meantime comes the news of Captain
Mulgrave’s having committed suicide. Under the circumstances, your
father being known as a violent man, and the message being an
unwelcome one, it was impossible to help thinking that the two events
might have some connection with each other.”
“Well,” said Freda slowly, “but as both Blewitt and my father
are--gone, I don’t see how the truth is ever to be found now; unless,
indeed, the person who knows most about it should confess.”
Robert’s face flushed a little.
“I am afraid it will be difficult to clear your father’s name from
suspicion. Already I’ve heard these ugly rumors whispered about
everywhere. Nothing would set them at rest, unless I were to say that
I myself had sent Blewitt away to his home in London.”
“That would not be true.”
“But it would save your father’s reputation.”
Freda said nothing. Her mistrust of this man made her shrewd. After a
long pause she turned and looked straight into his face.
“Why do you tell _me_ this?”
“I wanted to know whether you would care to have your father’s name
cleared.”
“Not in such a way as that. I believe the best thing for my poor
father would be for the whole truth to come out, and though the
falsehood might seem to protect his name for the time, it would do
less real good than quietly waiting.”
“Then you wouldn’t do me any little favour, out of gratitude if I
tried to shield his name?”
“Little favour! Oh! and what is that?”
“For instance, you wouldn’t get Crispin Bean to deal with us instead
of with Josiah Kemm?”
“No!” flashed out the girl, “neither with you, nor Kemm, nor anybody
else. The Abbey’s mine now, and I won’t have it used for _smuggling_,
Mr. Heritage.”
Robert started violently, and his hand shook as he played with his
riding-whip.
“You are ready to accuse your own father of doing wrong then?”
“I don’t make any accusations, Mr. Heritage. I only tell you that the
Abbey is under my rule, now.”
“You think so, perhaps; but you will find yourself mistaken. The trade
will go on just the same whatever orders you may give; and it will
make no difference if I have to go away, and if my cousin Dick, who
brought you in out of the snow and was so good to you, has to starve.”
Freda moved uneasily and shot a furtive glance at Dick, who was
outside the old walls, apparently absorbed in unpleasant thoughts.
Robert perceived the expression on the girl’s face, its coy pity and
maidenly fear. This vein, so happily struck, would bear a little
further working, he thought.
“Yes,” he went on. “Poor Dick! It has always been his lot to have a
rough time of it. When he told me this morning of the impression you
had made upon him, and asked me to put in a word for him with you if I
got a chance, I knew it would be of no use. Not that he isn’t a
good-looking, good-hearted fellow enough, but because he is Dick, and
never has any luck!”
The girl’s face underwent many changes as she listened to this speech.
Compassion, surprise, pleasure, confusion, annoyance--all flitted over
her ingenious countenance, until at the end, suddenly perceiving that
Robert’s small light eyes were fixed upon her with great intentness,
she blushed and turned away from him even haughtily.
“I do not believe that he asked you to speak to me!” she said.
“You don’t? Well, I’ll fetch him and make him speak for himself.”
“No, no, no,” cried the girl, crimson with confusion and distress. “I
am going indoors. I--I am tired, cold. Good-morning, Mr. Heritage.”
While Freda was crossing the meadow which lay between the ruin and the
Abbey-house, she saw Nell at an upper window, watching her with an
uneasy expression of face; by the time she reached the side-door, the
housekeeper was there to admit her.
“Who was that I saw you talking to up there in the ruins?” asked Nell
sharply. “Come, I know, for I saw you.”
“Why do you ask me then?”
“After all the trouble I’ve taken too, to prevent those young rascals
getting at you! Why, they’ve been pulling the bell nearly off every
day and sometimes twice a day.”
“Oh, they’ve been to see me before then?”
“Yes, at least Bob Heritage has, and everybody knows what a nice
acquaintance _he_ is for a young girl! But they won’t see any more of
you, if I can help it. A pretty mess I should get myself into if they
did!”
Freda passed into the house and, without waiting for another word,
went straight into the library, which was in the west wing, away from
the rest of the inhabited part. The fire was burning very low, and the
room looked cold, dusty and forlorn. A great pile of the books with
which she had been amusing herself the night before still lay
undisturbed on the hearth-rug. The books had almost become living
friends to her, in the absence of sympathetic human beings. She threw
herself down beside them and rested her arms on a stack of calf-bound
histories and biographies.
What had Robert Heritage meant by those words about the “impression,”
she had made on Dick, and “putting in a good word for him.” Innocent
as she was, Freda could scarcely misunderstand the drift of these
expressions, and they roused a thought which brought the blood to her
cheeks, all alone as she was, and stirred her strangely. She did not
believe Robert; who was she, a little lame girl, to rouse any deep
interest in a big, strong, handsome man like Dick? And with a sigh,
the girl sat up among her books and tried to stir the log fire into a
blaze.
As she did so, a loud knocking on the wall behind her made her look
round. The whole of the side of the room from which the sound came was
filled with book-shelves from floor to ceiling. The knocking went on,
until suddenly Freda saw some of the books begin to shake in a
surprising manner, and a minute later six rows of books began to move
slowly forward, and then a face peered out from behind them. It was
that of Dick Heritage. Then she perceived that the books which he had
appeared to disturb were sham ones, mere leather backs pasted on a
door introduced among the genuine ones.
“How did you come in?” asked Freda in a husky whisper.
“By a way you don’t know of,” answered the young fellow, looking at
his riding-whip.
“You came in to see me?” asked Freda in a softer tone.
“Yes,” said Dick, suddenly standing erect, speaking in a full, firm
voice, and looking straight up at the dusty ceiling with flashing blue
eyes, “I came to see you, to speak to you about what that rascal Bob
said. He told you something about me, didn’t he? He made up some
ridiculous nonsense that I’d said about you?”
Freda, with her little head bending lower and lower, nodded an
affirmative very slowly.
“Well, there wasn’t a word of truth in it. I never said anything of
the sort. He only said it to serve his own interests. I was obliged to
come and tell you the moment he confessed to me what he’d done. I
didn’t wish you to think me a fool or a knave.”
Freda did not answer. When at last, after a long pause, Dick glanced
at her, he perceived that she was quietly crying. Dick looked closer,
in surprise and consternation.
“You’re not crying, are you?” asked he uneasily.
Freda shook her head. Rising from her chair, she picked up an armful
of the books that were scattered about the floor, and carrying them
back to the shelves, began to replace them very deliberately. Dick,
putting down his whip, followed with another load, which she took from
him so hastily and awkwardly that they all dropped on the floor.
“I hope it’s not anything in what I said, or the way I said it, that
made you cry?”
He had gone down on one knee to pick up the fallen books, and he
looked up into her face with an expression which seemed to Freda most
touching.
“I am not crying, Mr. Heritage,” she said, trying to be very
dignified; “and I quite understand that you were not so foolish as to
say that I had made a pleasant impression on you.”
Dick dropped the books, and looked up at her with curiosity,
compassion, and a little admiration. For although her eyes and nose
were red with crying, she looked rather pretty as well as very
pitiful.
“Oh,” he said, laughing with some embarrassment, “it’s not fair to put
it like that now, is it?”
“That is all that your cousin said to me about you.”
“No! Really? He told me that he said, implied rather, that I was
making up to you, wanted you to marry me, in fact.”
Freda blushed crimson.
“He never said anything like that to me,” she said, “if he had, I
should have known it was not true.”
Dick sprang up eagerly.
“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? You would have known it was impossible
such an idea should enter my head!”
Freda turned away and very quietly re-arranged some of the books she
had placed on the shelves.
“Oh, yes;” and she laughed with some bitterness but more sadness. “Did
you think it possible that I, who am lame, and fit for nothing but a
convent, where I can pray, and can work with my needle as well as the
strong ones, should ever put myself on an equality with the girls who
can dance, and ride, and row?”
Dick was overwhelmed. In her innocence, as she had misunderstood his
cousin, so she was misunderstanding him.
“Now look here, Miss Mulgrave,” said he, as he brought his right hand
heavily down on one of the bookshelves. “You are quite wrong. You have
mistaken Bob’s meaning and mine altogether. Don’t you see that what he
wanted was to get some sort of hold on you through me, since he
couldn’t get it in any other way? And can’t you understand how mean it
would be of me, and absurd (mean if I had any chance, and absurd as I
haven’t) to come to you and talk about admiration and love and
marriage, when I am just in the position of a farm-labourer about to
be turned off?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why, that your father’s refusal to--to have anything more to do with
us has ruined us; so that Bob and my aunt will have to leave the farm
and go to London.”
“And you, what will you do?”
“I shall stay on at the old place.”
“But, you won’t be comfortable!”
“More comfortable than I should be anywhere else. You see I’m not like
the others, who just came to the old place when they had to let the
Hall. I was brought up at the farm, and used to spend my holidays
there. I was only annexed by my aunt and Bob when there was some dirty
work to be done and it was seen that I might prove useful.”
Dick’s voice was so sweet and he spoke so very quietly that it was not
until some minutes after he had finished this short autobiography that
Freda perceived all the bitterness he had expressed in it.
“Oh!” she sighed out at last, in a voice full of soft reproach. “How
could you?”
Dick laughed a little.
“I don’t think I could make you understand. You are too good. I wish
none of this business had ever come to your ears.”
Freda looked thoughtful for a few minutes. Then she said:
“I don’t wish that. You see I’ve been obliged to think a great deal
lately, and I see that there is a great deal more wickedness and
unhappiness in the world than we in the convent ever thought of. And
it seems to me that to shut oneself up out of it all and to try to
make a little heaven for oneself and to keep apart from all the
difficulties and miseries outside is selfish. So that I’m glad I can’t
be so selfish any longer.”
“Now I don’t quite agree with you. By coming out you only add to the
general sum of misery in the world by one more miserable unit; where’s
the advantage to your fellow-creatures of that?”
“But I don’t intend to be miserable. I am going to try to bring some
of the convent’s happiness and peace to the people outside, or at
least to--some of them.”
“I should like to know how you propose to set about it.”
“First, I am going to try to persuade--some people to give up doing
what is wrong. I am going to try to persuade _you_.”
“To give up----”
“Well, Free Trade.”
“And make a virtue of necessity? You see, _it_ has given _me_ up.”
“Did you like--doing that?”
“Smuggling? You called it smuggling this morning, and now that it has
nothing more to do with me, I don’t mind if I give it the same name.
I was first mixed up with it when I was seventeen, before the age when
one grows either a beard or a conscience, and I can’t honestly say
that I felt anything but enjoyment of the excitement.”
“Your cousin led you into it?”
“Well, I suppose so. Somebody else led him.”
Her face fell.
“I know--my father.”
“And it went on for a long time, and one got used to the risk and took
that as a set-off against the wrong. And after all, we were only
carrying out with logical thoroughness the blessed theory of Free
Trade, of which we are told we ought as a nation to be so proud. It
has ruined us small land-owners, by making it impossible to cultivate
the land remuneratively. Who can blame us then if we try to get
compensation by taking a hair out of the tail of the dog that bit us?”
“I can’t argue with you, because I don’t know enough. But I suppose
the laws are on the whole good and just, and it is right to obey them.
It must be bad for people to live always under the feeling that they
have to hide something.”
“Why, what bad effect has it had upon me? Have you found me such a
very redoubtable ruffian?”
“Oh, no! Oh, no; you have been very good and kind.”
“Well, certainly I have wished nothing but good to you. I came with
Bob this morning only to see that he didn’t bully you, and if in any
way I could help you or get you away out of this place, I would. Is
that rough brute Crispin kind to you?”
“Yes, and no. He is very strange. Sometimes he is harsh and hard and
so disagreeable I scarcely dare speak to him, and then at other times
he will be almost tender.”
“He hasn’t got tipsy yet, and frightened you?”
“Tipsy! Oh, no!” cried Freda half in alarm and half in indignation. “I
don’t believe he would. I am sure he wouldn’t,” she added warmly.
“You speak as if you were quite fond of him,” said Dick, surprised and
laughing.
“So I am, rather. Somehow I can’t help thinking he is fond of me. It
is very strange.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think it strange that any one seeing a good
deal of you should get fond of you. Well,” he added after a pause,
during which they both reddened and looked rather embarrassed, “and
have you tried yet to convert Crispin to your views upon smuggling?”
“Crispin! Oh, no, I should be afraid.”
“I see, you respect him more than you do me. You think he may smuggle
from conscientious conviction? For I may tell you that he is the right
hand in all these enterprises, so that they can go on as well without
the Captain as with him, if only Crispin is there.”
“I know that.”
She paused a moment and then went on: “I haven’t seen him the last few
days. When I do I have something to say to him which will stop his
smuggling too, I think.”
“Why, what’s that!”
Freda raised her finger in sign of caution, not without a little air
of importance.
“There is a man about here sent by government to look after the
smuggling: I’m going to tell him that.”
Dick’s face changed, and became full of excitement and interest.
“Why, how came you to hear of such a thing? Are you sure of it?”
“Quite sure. I have seen him, talked with him. He is a great friend of
mine.”
“Then if he is, I warn you most solemnly to tell him not to interfere
with these men, nor to let them know what he’s up to. They’re an
awfully rough lot, these fellows. Only the Captain, and Crispin Bean,
who’s been captain of the yacht so long, can manage them.”
“The yacht!” cried Freda. “Why, that is used for the smuggling then!”
“Oh, I don’t know that,” answered Dick hastily. “But, but--if you
don’t want to hear of any more mysterious deaths and disappearances in
the neighbourhood, remember to warn your friend. Now I must go;
good-bye.”
He held out his hand abruptly, but withdrew it with a shy laugh before
Freda could take it.
“Perhaps you would rather not shake hands with such a rascal.”
“Oh,” said Freda naïvely, as she held out both hers, “that doesn’t
matter. For all the men I know seem to be rascals.”
Dick laughed, but did not seem to like this observation. He drew
himself up a little, and a variety of emotions seemed to chase each
other across his face.
“I’m glad my poor mother isn’t alive to hear me called _that_,” he
said in a low voice.
Freda ran up to him, but stopped herself shyly as she was going to
take his hand.
“You used the word first, and I didn’t mean it seriously,” she
whispered, in great distress. “You could not think me so ungrateful.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to put on airs and pretend to be insulted. But
perhaps I am not so bad as you think. At any rate, if I do wrong,
there’s a comfort in knowing I get punished for it.”