Danger had roused Freda from a little frightened girl into a
ready-witted and daring woman. No sooner had she fastened down the
trap-door and made it impossible for Crispin to get into the house
from below than another idea for securing the safety of her sick guest
flashed into her mind. As soon as the thought suggested itself, she
set about carrying it out. Flying out of the house, across the
court-yard, unlocking the first gate and taking care to keep it from
closing by a stone at its base, she was out of breath by the time she
reached the lodge-gates and pulled lustily at the bell. Of course the
old woman was asleep, and it was some moments before the gates opened.
In the meantime, Freda had had another inspiration. As soon as one of
the gates opened, she slipped through, and placed a stone at the foot
as she had done with the inner gate, and watched for the effect. As
she had hoped when the spring was pulled again by the lodgekeeper from
within, the gate swung to, but remained open a couple of inches.
Satisfied, the young girl went on her way.
She crossed the churchyard, not without certain nervous and
superstitious terrors, for some of which her convent training was
perhaps responsible: and passing by the shapeless church with its
squat stone tower, and the seat underneath where the old fishermen
would sit and smoke their pipes and tell their yarns, with one eye on
the listener, and one on their old love, the sea, she came to the
steep flight of worn stone steps that led down into the town.
The moon was in her second quarter, and the light she gave was bright
enough for Freda to see the silver river below, for the tide was high.
Here and there the weak little town-lights twinkled, but they were so
far between that they did not save Freda from a feeling that she was
plunging into an abyss of blackness and horror, as she found herself
in the steep, stone-paved street at the bottom of the steps. She had
been told where the Vicarage was, knew that she must turn to the left,
and go down Church Street until she came to it. But the sound of her
footsteps and her crutch on the rough stones of the narrow street
frightened her. The little irregular, old-fashioned shops, with their
overhanging eaves and tiny windows, seemed to the scared girl to have
a threatening aspect; she fancied every moment that one of the
desperate characters with whom her imagination peopled them was lying
in wait for her at the entrance of one of the squalid courts which ran
between the houses. Past the tiny market-place she ran, with a
frightened glance at the pillars which supported a pretentious
town-hall about the size of a large beehive. But no one was in hiding
among them; and she reached the Vicarage without even meeting a
drunken fisherman finishing his evening’s enjoyment by a nap on a
friend’s doorstep.
Her ring at the bell brought Mrs. Staynes to an upper window, and a
few words of entreaty brought her to the front door. The sight of Miss
Mulgrave without hat or cloak at three o’clock in the morning filled
her with shocked amazement; but when Freda implored her to come with
her at once to help to nurse a sick man, a stranger, who had been
wounded on the scaur that night in some not very clearly explained
manner, the good little woman at once agreed to come, and retreated to
get ready. Her toilette being always of the simplest, she soon
reappeared, tying on her rusty mushroom hat and clasping round her
neck a circular cloak, the rabbit-skin lining of which had been so
well worn that there was only enough of the fur left to come off on
the garments it touched. But to Freda’s eyes, who saw in her coming
safety for John Thurley, no princess’s court dress ever looked more
pleasing than the ragged garments of the Vicar’s old wife, as she
stepped cheerfully out in the raw April morning, first insisting on
tying up the young girl’s head and shoulders in her garden shawl.
“You have sent for a doctor, my dear, of course?” she said.
“No,” said Freda. “Mrs. Bean says it’s nursing and watching he wants.
So I thought of you. I knew you were good to the sick. Everybody says
so.”
“Everybody” only did the odd little woman justice. Tied to a selfish
husband for whom she thought it an honour to slave, she had learned to
look upon herself as born to drudge for his comfort and glory; and
feeling that whatever she did as the Vicar’s wife redounded to the
Vicar’s credit, she was a devoted nurse and visitor to the sick, at
the disposal of anybody in the parish. She received Freda’s thanks
almost apologetically.
“It is a luxury to do good,” she said.
And although her tone was dogmatic and “preaching,” she meant what she
said.
Nowhere could Freda have found a person better able to get her out of
her difficulty. Even Mrs. Bean gave a sigh of relief, after the first
moment of dismay at this unexpected intrusion of a stranger, on
finding the burden of her responsibility thus suddenly lightened.
Crispin would never dare do further harm to John Thurley while this
“outsider” was about. The very personality of the quiet, chirpingly
cheerful middle-aged woman, with her conversation largely made up of
texts and quotations from the book of Common Prayer, her placid
commonplaces, and her prosaic disbelief in any occurrence out of the
common was healing and healthful to these two women who had been
living under a volcano of crime and dread. When John Thurley raved in
her presence of smuggling and murder, the little lady placidly
ascribed his utterances to the effects of injudicious reading; when
she heard a mysterious noise in the night which the other watchers
knew too well how to account for, no arguments would have been strong
enough to shake her conviction that it was caused by rats behind the
wainscotting.
She brought in her train another safeguard for the sick man; the
Reverend Berkeley, who missed his wife’s ministrations on the one
hand, but was delighted at the opportunity of rummaging in the old
house on the other, was constant in his visits; so that under this
pastoral surveillance no bodily harm to the sick man could be
attempted; and Crispin, who, to Freda’s horror, still lurked about the
house, dared not show his face except to his wife.
John Thurley recovered rapidly; Mrs. Staynes soon gave up her watching
for occasional visits, and indeed there seemed no reason why he should
not go about his business. He must have been dull too, one would have
thought; for Freda, when he came downstairs, avoided him as much as
possible, dreading the fatal knowledge he possessed. She had never,
since that eventful night on the scaur, been able to meet her father
again, to warn him to keep out of the way of his danger. Every night
now she hid herself in the secret portion of the house, watching and
waiting for him. But he never came. Every day she would go out to the
cliff’s edge, looking out for the yacht; and then she would roam about
the Abbey ruins, and listen at the door of the tower in the north
transept, hoping to hear his voice or his tread. It was all in vain.
At last one day, when Thurley had been downstairs nearly a week, he
met her flying through one of the passages, and asked if she would
speak with him.
“I will only keep you a few minutes,” he said humbly, apologetically.
“I am going away. I must go away.”
Freda began to tremble. She dreaded some revelation about her father,
and felt that she must have a little while to prepare herself for what
she might have to hear, and for the entreaties she must make.
“I--I have got to go and help Mrs. Bean now,” she said in a frightened
voice. “Won’t it do this afternoon? I mean----”
She blushed and stammered, afraid that she seemed rude; but John
Thurley answered at once eagerly:
“This afternoon will do perfectly.”
Freda spent the intervening hours partly in prayer, partly in trying
to devise entreaties which would move him to spare her father. In
order to put off the evil hour of the interview, she roamed about the
ruined church, supposing that Thurley was where he usually spent his
time, in the library. Habit took her to the transept tower. She had
not, this time, her usual thought of trying to meet her father; it was
through custom, rather than by intention, that she leaned against the
wooden door. To her surprise, it gave way, and she only just missed
falling on her back. She forgot all about John Thurley in her
excitement. This was only the second time she had found the door open,
and she was convinced that there must be some one about. She listened
at the opening, first of the one underground passage and then of the
other, but could hear no sound in either. Should she dare to go down
into the one which led to the cliff?
While she was hesitating, she was startled by a faint noise from
outside the tower. It was like the falling of stones. At the same
moment there was a sound of footsteps in the passage beneath her feet.
She had to make up her mind quickly what she should do; and deciding
that it would be less dangerous to meet an enemy outside the tower
than in, if the new-comer should prove an enemy, she passed quickly
into the church, and came face to face with John Thurley.
Her cheeks blanched, and she stood before him without a word to say.
He, on his side, struck by the terror on her face, muttered an
apology, and was turning to retreat, when a footstep in the tower
caused him to stop. Freda recognised the tread, and a low cry escaped
her.
“Go, go,” she entreated in a hoarse voice. “Why do you stay when I beg
you, implore you to go?”
John Thurley hesitated. But that moment’s delay was too long. For the
door of the tower was pulled roughly open, and Captain Mulgrave, who
had heard his daughter’s pleading appeared, bristling with anger, as
her champion.
“Who is this annoying you?” he asked fiercely.
But Freda drew a long breath and said nothing. For the men had caught
sight of each other, had exchanged a long, steady look. It was
impossible to doubt that it was a recognition.
Captain Mulgrave did not repeat his question, asked for no further
explanation. With a stare of quiet defiance he took a great key from
his pocket, locked the door in the tower, and whistling to himself
with a splendid affectation of unconcern, walked past his daughter and
Thurley, and made his way over the fields towards the side-gate of
Sea-Mew Abbey.