The discovery of the fact that there was a secret way in and out of
the Abbey had a strong and most unhappy effect upon poor Freda. She
dared not say anything about it to Nell, and Crispin she never saw:
forced, therefore, to bear the burden of the secret alone, she crept
about the house day by day, not daring to make any fresh researches,
and suffering from a hundred fears. To add to her unhappiness, she now
could not but feel sure that Nell had kept back her letter to Sister
Agnes. For she got no answer to it. Mrs. Bean seemed to guess that the
girl had learned something about which she would want to ask
inconvenient questions. So Freda passed a week in silence and solitude
such as the convent had not accustomed her to. Even the nocturnal
noises had ceased. Once, and once only, she caught sight of Crispin,
and ran after him, calling him by name. It was dusk, and she was
watching the sea-mews from the courtyard, as they flew screaming about
the desolate walls of what had once been the banqueting-room. He did
not answer, but disappeared rapidly under the gallery in evident
avoidance of her.
Poor Freda felt so desolate that she burst into tears. Her old,
fanciful belief in her father was dead. Everything pointed to the fact
that he was really Blewitt’s murderer, and that, in order to save
himself from detection, he had feigned death and gone away without one
thought of the daughter he was deserting. Now that Crispin, whom she
had looked upon through all as her friend, was deserting her also, she
grew desperate, and recovering all the courage which for the last few
days had seemed dead in her, she resolved to make another attempt to
fathom the secrets the Abbey still held from her.
To begin with, she must explore the west wing. Now this west wing was
so dark and so cold, so honeycombed with narrow little passages which
seemed to lead to nowhere in particular, and with small rooms meagrely
furnished and full of dust, that Freda had always been rather afraid
of lingering about it, and had hopped through so much of it as she was
obliged to pass on her way to and from the library, with as much speed
as possible. Now, however, she got a candle, and boldly proceeded to
examine every nook and corner of the west wing. And the result of her
researches was to prove that on the ground floor, underneath her own
room, there was a chamber surrounded by four solid stone walls without
a single doorway or window. The only entrance to this mysterious
chamber seemed to be through the panel-door in the storey above.
Where, then, did the secret door in the library lead to? That question
she would solve at once. It was quite dark and very cold in the narrow
passages through which she ran, and the tipity-tap of her crutch
frightened her by the echo it awoke. She reached the library panting,
and running to the secret door, began pulling it and shaking it with
all her might.
Suddenly the door gave way, almost throwing her down as it opened upon
her; with a cry she recognised Dick behind it. She had thought of him
so much since his last strange appearance, that the sight of him in
the flesh made her feel shy. She said nothing, but crept away towards
the window, feeling indeed an overwhelming joy at the sight of a
friendly face.
“Did I frighten you again?” asked he.
The girl turned and looked up at him, shyly.
“I am always frightened here,” she said.
“Poor child! They are treating you very badly. I was afraid so. I have
been to see you twice, to make sure you had come to no harm.”
Freda, who had crept into the window-seat, as far away from him as she
could get, looked up in surprise.
“You have been to see me?” she exclaimed.
“Not to see you exactly, because the door was shut between us. But I
heard you in here, talking to yourself and turning over the leaves of
your books. I didn’t think it worth while to disturb you. I shouldn’t
have come in to-night, only I heard you shaking and pulling the door,
and I thought you had heard me and were frightened.”
“Oh, no. I wanted to know where it led to.”
“To the floor above by a staircase. See.”
He opened the door through which he had entered, and showed her the
lowest steps of a very narrow staircase, which went up along the outer
side of the library-wall.
“And how did you get into the floor above?”
“Well, it’s a secret I’m bound not to betray.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Freda coolly, “I shall find it out. I want
them to find that I am a meddlesome, inquisitive creature, who must be
got rid of.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” asked Dick.
“Crispin and Mrs. Bean.”
“And you want them to send you back to the convent?”
“Yes.”
“I think that would be a pity.”
“You didn’t last time.”
“No-o,” said Dick, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t see it quite
so well then. You see I hadn’t thought about it. But I have since; and
there’s a lot in what you said about the selfishness of it.”
“Ah, but now I’m just in the only position in the world in which it
isn’t selfish. I am quite alone, you see.”
“So you were a week ago.”
“But I had some hope then that I might be able to do some good. Now I
haven’t. And you don’t know what it is to be always lonely, to have
nobody to speak to even. It makes one feel like an outcast from all
the world.”
“Yes, so it does. So that one is glad of the very mice that run behind
the wainscot; and when one of the little brutes comes out of its hole
and runs about the room, why one wouldn’t disturb it for the world.”
“Oh, yes, I love the mice. Do you know I expect that sometimes when I
have listened to a scratching in the wall and thought it was mice, it
was really you all the time!”
“Very likely.”
“It was very good of you to come and see that I was all right.”
“Oh, I was glad to come. I’m lonely too now. They’ve gone away, the
others.”
“Your aunt, and your cousin? And left you all by yourself?”
“_That_ wouldn’t be much of a hardship, if only one could manage to
exist. But it is lonely, as you say. I shouldn’t mind it if the dog
wouldn’t howl so. Sign of a death, they say; I shouldn’t be sorry if
it were mine.”
“Your death! Oh, don’t say that. You didn’t seem at all miserable when
I went to your house.”
“No. The fact is, _you_ are at the bottom of my low spirits. It’s your
uncanny spells that have done it, Miss Mulgrave. Witches always have
little sticks like that.”
He took up her crutch almost reverently. It was leaning against the
window-seat between them, for he had sat down beside her.
“What do you mean, Dick?”
It was only a consequence of her extreme ignorance of the world’s ways
that she called him by the name by which she had heard others call
him. But it came upon the young man as a startling and delicious
surprise.
“Why, I mean,” he said, with rather more apparent constraint than
before, “that you said things which made me uncomfortable, preached me
a little sermon, in fact.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to preach indeed.”
“It’s all right, it did me good. I don’t mind a girl preaching, and I
thought over what you said very seriously. I--” he hesitated, and then
finished hurriedly, “I thought you’d like to know.”
“Indeed I’m very glad, if you didn’t think me rude. Perhaps if my
preaching did you good, it might do Crispin good too--if only I could
get hold of him.”
Dick laughed.
“I don’t think I should set my heart too much upon that. Crispin is a
thorough-paced old rascal.”
“You don’t know him. You haven’t seen into his heart,” cried Freda,
rising from the window-seat in her earnestness, and bending forward so
that she might look into the young man’s face. For very little light
now came through the old mullioned window.
“Well, I don’t believe he has a heart to see into.”
“Ah, that is because you have been careless, and have neglected your
religion. We all, even the worst, have a heart; it may sleep
sometimes, so that men think it is dead. But if God sends some one,
with love for Him alive and glowing, to speak to that sleeping heart,
it awakens, and a little spark of love and goodness will shine bright
in it. Don’t you believe that?”
“I believe that if anybody could work miracles through goodness, it
would be you. But it would take a thundering big miracle to make
Crispin Bean anything but an unprincipled rascal. Why, if you only
knew---- But then it’s better you should not know,” said he, pulling
himself up hurriedly and getting up to go.
“Oh, tell me, do tell me. I want to know!”
“You wouldn’t be a woman if you didn’t. But I’m not going to tell
you.”
And Dick drew himself up and looked out of the window, with the
obstinate look she had seen before on his face. Freda was far too
unconscious of her own feminine powers to attempt to move his
resolution. She only sighed as he held out his hand.
“Are you very lonely at the farm?” she asked.
“Very. At least I mean _rather_.”
“You have nobody there at all to speak to?”
“Nobody at all.”
“And you will go on living like that?”
“As long as I can hold out. The love of the old place, and of all this
country round, is a passion with me--the only one I’ve ever had, in
fact. And you,” he continued, leaving the subject of his own prospects
with some abruptness, “you are lonely too. May I come and see you
again?”
Freda hesitated.
“May I not come? Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Oh, yes. But----”
“I don’t frighten you, do I, with my rough, uncivilised ways?”
“Oh, no; Oh, no. Frighten me! Of course not.”
“Then, if I don’t frighten you, why did you screw yourself up into a
corner of the window-seat just now, to be as far from me as possible?”
He spoke in a low tone, bending towards her.
Freda blushed, but she never thought of denying the accusation. But
what had her reason been? She herself did not know.
“I--I think it must have been because I had been crying, and of course
nobody likes to be seen crying,” she answered slowly, hoping that she
had told the truth.
“Crying, had you? What about? Tell me just this: is it
about--Blewitt’s--death?”
“Why, why, do you know anything about that?”
“I know,” said Dick cautiously, “that it had something to do with your
father’s--disappearance.”
Freda shivered at the word.
“You know more than that?” she said hoarsely.
“Perhaps. But I swear I can’t tell _you_ what I know, so don’t ask
me.”
For a minute there was dead silence, as they stood face to face, but
scarcely able to see each other in the gathering darkness. Suddenly
both were startled by the sound of a man’s hoarse voice, muffled by
distance, which seemed to come from behind the door, through which
Dick had entered.