It was getting dark when the dogcart drove up to Oldcastle Farm. The
front door which had been partly destroyed by the forcible entry of
the police was open, and both gentlemen were inclined to the
conclusion that the lonely tenant of the house had left it. They were
confirmed in this opinion when, on ringing the bell, they found no
notice taken of their summons.
“Poor lad’s turned it up,” said Captain Mulgrave turning to Thurley
with a nod.
“It looks like it.”
They tied the horse up to an iron ring in the farm-house wall provided
for such purposes, and went inside, leaving Freda, who now hung back a
little, to come in or not, as she pleased. As soon as the two
gentlemen had gone down the entrance hall, Freda slipped in after
them, and waited to see which way they would turn. After a glance into
the rooms to right and left, they went through into the court-yard.
Taking for granted that Dick had at last followed the only possible
course of abandoning the old shell of what had been his boyhood’s
home, they were going, by Thurley’s demand, to explore those recesses
where the smuggled goods had formerly been stored.
Freda knew better than they. Tripping quickly through the empty rooms
and passages, she reached the door of the banqueting-hall, but was
suddenly seized with a fit of shyness when she heard the sound of a
man coughing. However, she conquered this feeling sufficiently to open
the door under cover of the noise Dick made in poking the fire, and
then she stood just inside, shy again. Dick felt the draught from the
open door, turned and saw her. He was sitting in his own chair by the
fire, with the old dog still at his feet. The shadows were already
black under the high windows on the side of the court-yard, but the
light from the west was still strong enough for Freda to see a flash
of pleasure come into his face as he caught sight of her.
“You have a bad cold,” she said in a constrained voice, coming shyly
forward as he almost ran to meet her.
“Yes, there’s a broken window up there,” said he, glancing upwards,
“and--and the curtains the spiders make are not very thick.”
“Poor Dick!”
She said it in such a heartfelt tone of commiseration that the tears
came into his eyes, and when she saw them, a sympathetic mist came
over her eyes too.
“They think you have gone away,” she said in a whisper, glancing up at
the windows which overlooked the court-yard, “but I knew better!”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“My father and Mr. Thurley.”
“Your father! I didn’t know that he was alive till yesterday. What
will he do? There will be all sorts of difficulties about the trick he
played.”
“He will have to go away. But he seems rather glad; he is tired of
living up here, he says.”
She spoke rather sadly.
“And you?” said Dick.
“Oh, I’m not tired of it. I think the old Abbey-church the most
beautiful place in the world. I should like to spend my life here.”
“And will you go away with him?”
“No, he is going to take me back to the convent.”
“What! For ever? For altogether? Will you be a nun?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like that?” asked Dick very earnestly, “to go and waste your
youth and your prettiness, shut up with a lot of sour old women who
were too ugly to get themselves husbands?”
Freda laughed a little.
“Oh, you don’t know anything about it,” she said, shaking her head,
“they are not at all like that.”
“But do you seriously like the thought of going back as much as you
liked the thought of being a nun before you left the convent?”
There was a long pause. At last:
“No-o,” said Freda very softly. “But--it’s better than what I should
have had to do if I hadn’t chosen that!”
“What was that?”
“Marry Mr. Thurley.”
Dick started and grew very red.
“Oh, yes, it is better than that, much better,” he assented heartily.
“Yes, I--I thought you’d think so.”
She said this because they were both getting rather flurried and
excited, and she felt a little awkward. Both were leaning against the
table, and tapping their fingers on it. Something therefore had to be
said, but in a moment she felt it was not the right thing. For Dick
began to breathe hard, and to grow restless, as he said quickly:
“You see it’s not as if some young fellow of a suitable age, whom
you--whom you--rather liked, could ever have a chance of--of asking
you to be his wife. That would be a different thing altogether.”
“Ah, yes, if I were not lame! If I could ride, and row, and--and sail
a boat!” said Freda with a quavering voice.
“No, no, just as you are, the sweetest, the dearest little----”
He stopped short, got up abruptly, and rushed at the fire, which he
poked so vigorously that it went out. Then, quite subdued, he turned
again to Freda, and holding his hands behind him, as he stood in a
defiant attitude with his back to the fireplace, he asked abruptly:
“Would you like to know what I’ve been making up my mind to do, during
these days that I’ve been living here like a rat in a hole?”
“Ye-es,” said Freda without looking up.
“Well, you’ll be shocked. At least, perhaps you won’t be, but anybody
else would be. I’m going to turn farm-labourer, and here, in the very
neighbourhood where I was brought up a gentleman, as they call it.”
The girl raised her head quickly, and looked him straight in the face,
with shining, straightforward eyes.
“I think it is very brave of you,” she said in a high, clear voice.
“Hundreds of well educated young fellows,” he went on, flushed by her
encouragement, “go out to Manitoba, and Texas, and those places, and
do that or anything to keep themselves, and nobody thinks the less of
them. Why shouldn’t I do the same here, in my own country, where I
know something about the way of farming, which will all come in
by-and-by? You see, I know my family’s disgraced, through my--my
unfortunate cousin’s escapade; for even if it’s brought in
manslaughter in a quarrel, as some of them say, he’ll get penal
servitude. But, disgrace or no disgrace, I can’t bring myself to leave
the old haunts; and as I’ve no money to farm this place, I’ll get work
either here, if it lets, or somewhere near, if it doesn’t. I’ve made
up my mind.”
The obstinate look which Freda had seen on his face before came out
more strongly than ever as he said these words. During the pause that
followed, they heard voices and footsteps approaching, and then
Captain Mulgrave opened the door. The breaking up of the organisation
he had worked so long seemed already to have had a good moral effect
on him, for he spoke cheerfully as he turned to John Thurley, who
followed him.
“Here’s the hermit! but oh, who’s this in the anchorite’s cell with
him? Why, it’s the nun!”
John Thurley looked deeply annoyed. He had an Englishman’s natural
feeling that he was very much the superior of a man who looked
underfed; and it was this haggard-faced young fellow who, as he
rightly guessed, had been the chief cause of the failure of his own
suit. Captain Mulgrave’s good-humored amusement over the discovery of
the young people together woke in him, therefore, no responsive
feeling. Before they were well in the room, Freda had slipped out of
it, through the door by the fireplace, and was making her way up to
the outer wall. Dick was at first inclined to be annoyed at the
interruption; but when Captain Mulgrave explained the object of his
visit and that of his companion, the young man’s joy at the project
they came to suggest was unbounded. This was the setting up of himself
to farm the land, for the benefit of his aunt, to whom it had been
left for life.
“Mr. Thurley is a connection of hers and wishes to see some provision
made for her. So, as I felt sure you would be glad to do your best for
her too,” continued Captain Mulgrave, “and as you have some knowledge
of farming, I suggested setting you up in a small way as farmer here,
and extending operations if you proved successful. How would that meet
your views?”
Dick was overwhelmed; he could scarcely answer coherently.
“I never expected such happiness, sir,” he stammered, in a low voice.
“I would rather follow the plough on this farm than be a millionaire,
anywhere else. Why,” he went on after a moment’s pause, in a tone of
eager delight, “I might--marry!”
He flushed crimson as Captain Mulgrave began to laugh.
“Well,” said the latter, “I don’t know that you could do better. You
were always a good lad at heart, and my quarrel was never with you,
but with your cousin. He used your services for his own advantage, but
I must do you the justice to say it was never for yours. So find a
wife if you can; I think you’re the sort to treat a woman well.”
Dick took the suggestion literally, and acted upon it at once. Leaving
the two other men together in the darkening room, with some sort of
excuse about seeing after the house, he went outside into the
court-yard, and soon spied out Freda on the ruined outer wall. He was
beside her in a few moments, looking down at her with a radiant face.
“I’m going to stay here--on the farm--to manage it myself--to be
master here.”
“Oh, Dick!” was all the girl could say, in a breathless way.
“It sounds too good for belief, doesn’t it? But it’s true. That old
Thurley must be a good fellow, for he’s going to help to start me.
It’s for my aunt’s benefit he’s doing it; he’s a connection of hers.”
“Oh, Dick, if you had had a fairy’s wish, you couldn’t have chosen
more, could you?”
There was a pause before Dick answered, and during that pause he began
to get nervous. At last he said:
“There is one more thing. Your father said----”
A pause.
“Well, what did my father say?”
“He said--I might marry. Is--it true?”
And it took Dick very few minutes to find out that it was.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Florence Warden was the pseudonym of Florence Alice (Price) James.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ back-door/back door,
farmhouse/farm-house, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Add TOC.
Punctuation fixes: sentences missing periods, quotation mark pairings,
etc.
[Chapter XIII]
Change “in which the jury had _veiwed_ her father’s body” to _viewed_.
[Chapter XXXI]
“and the other asked the way to _Oldastle_ Farm.” to _Oldcastle_.
“a good suggestion; and Dick took advantage _af_ it.” to _of_.
[End of text]