Vernon Brander left his brother’s house that evening in a frenzy of
doubt and uncertainty, such as his passionate, self-torturing nature
was liable to. He had so long been bound in a dutiful and chivalrous
vassalage to his sister-in-law, seeing her faults without being
repelled by them, and in all things doing her reverent homage as to his
early ideal, that it came upon him with a shock to discover suddenly,
as he had done this evening, that she had fallen from that high place
in her imagination. He tried in vain to hide from himself the fact that
this change in his feelings was due to the appearance on the scene of
a rival who was carrying away all before her. Mrs. Brander had, on
previous occasions, scoffed at his adoration of children; she had often
shown clearly how little she cared for his feelings; but never before
to-night had she seemed to him cold, and hard, and selfish; never
before had it occurred to him to think how lacking she was in feminine
softness and charm.
Following on this discovery came the inevitable consciousness who it
was that had brought about this knowledge. If he had not looked lately
into a softer pair of eyes, if he had not felt the touch of a warmer
hand, if, in short, he had never met Olivia Denison, he would have
gone on comfortably in his platonic worship of the only woman of his
acquaintance who had any of those elements of beauty and grace which
were necessary to his somewhat fastidious standard. But the advent
of the beautiful, warm-hearted, impulsive young girl had changed all
that; and Vernon, as he remembered the promises he had made to his
brother and his brother’s wife, and recognized clearly enough that
by the circumstances of his life he was bound to remain in bachelor
loneliness, felt that the burden of a bygone sin was heavier upon him
than he could bear.
He was going gloomily down the hill, and had nearly reached the
foot of it, when a rather rough voice, with an inflection which was
un-English and strange, addressed him quite close to his ear.
“Could you oblige me with a light?”
Vernon, who had his pipe between his lips, stopped, and offered the
stranger his matchbox. The night was dark, but he was able to recognize
in this abrupt-mannered person the man he and Meredith had seen that
evening leaning on the garden wall of the cottage adjoining the
Vicarage. There had been something suspicious about the stranger’s
manner then; there was something more now. He took the proffered
matchbox, struck a light, and, instead of applying it to the cigar he
had ready in his mouth, held it close enough to Vernon’s face to get a
good view of every feature.
The clergyman, returning his gaze, grew deadly pale. He did not flinch,
however, but settling his face with the hard determination of a man
accustomed to bear pain, submitted to the scrutiny in dogged silence.
“Thank you,” said the stranger slowly, as he threw away the match,
which had burnt down, and struck another, with which he proceeded to
light his cigar. “You are the first person about here who has shown
what in other parts we should call common civility. A rough lot, these
Yorkshiremen!”
“And they don’t always improve much in manners by going abroad,” said
Vernon, quietly.
The other remained silent for a moment, peering at him in the darkness.
Then he spoke again, more courteously than before.
“You take me for a Yorkshireman, then?”
“Yes; I can hear the Yorkshire burr through some accent you have picked
up since.”
“Well, you’re a smart chap for a parson,” said the other, approvingly.
“You’ll excuse my frankness; but I’m a plain man, and I dare say my
manners are none the more polished for fifteen years spent among
cattle-drovers. They’re not the sort of company to make one fit for
Buckingham Palace.”
“I suppose not,” said Vernon. “And you have said good-bye to them, and
come back to settle down in your native county?”
“For a little while--a year, or maybe two,” answered the stranger
with great deliberateness. “I haven’t come over here to sit still and
twiddle my thumbs for the rest of my life.”
“Why, there’s plenty of work to be done here in the old country.”
“Yes, it’s work brings me over here, and hard work too, by what I
hear,” said the other, looking penetratingly at the clergyman through
shrewd, half-shut eyes.
He gave the impression of being able to see in the dark as well as
any owl, and Vernon felt that he himself was still being subjected
to the same keen inspection which had been begun by the light of the
match. He, on his side, could see enough of the stranger’s appearance
to feel curiously interested in him. This abrupt and somewhat uncouth
person was a man whose age was difficult to guess. That he was still
in the vigor and prime of life was evident, but it was not so certain
whether the rugged furrows in his face, and a certain deliberateness of
speech and action, were signs of approaching middle age, or the result
of heavy responsibilities and hard work begun early in life. The lower
part of his face was covered and much concealed by a short beard of a
fashion long grown obsolete in England; he was dressed with that sort
of solid respectability which disregards expense and also the fashion
of the moment, while a huge gold watch chain, to which was attached a
bunch of heavy and handsome seals, gave the final touch to a get-up
which was nothing if not confidence-inspiring. The man looked both
shrewd and honest, particularly the former; Vernon felt every moment
more and more eagerly interested as to the reason of his presence in
the village.
“You know that we parsons are privileged impertinents?” began Vernon,
after a short pause.
“Yes,” answered the stranger promptly.
“Perhaps you know too that I have been until to-day ‘deputy shepherd’
here at Rishton?”
“I know that too,” admitted the other.
“Then perhaps you will let me ask if you are the new tenant of Church
Cottage?”
“Well, there’s nothing gained or lost by admitting that I am; and
further, I don’t mind telling you that I’d as soon the cottage were a
little further off the church. One can’t expect to live in the odor of
sanctity for nothing, and with a parson living next door, and religious
consolation therefore always turned on, I shall feel, so to speak,
always under the tap.”
“You needn’t be afraid of that with my brother,” said Vernon, smiling.
“I suppose there never was a man with less professional cant about him.
He’ll talk to a neighbor about his fruit trees, his pigs, his poultry,
and everything that is his, but never a word of religion, unless the
subject is introduced by somebody else.”
“I see; won’t give professional advice for nothing? Well, I respect
him for it; there’s no good in making your wares too cheap. Guess your
brother and me’ll get along.”
What could the work be which brought this keen-eyed, prosperous-looking
colonist--for a colonist it was not difficult to guess that he must
be--to a sleepy little hole like Rishton, where the commerce was
restricted to the weekly buying and selling in Matherham market, and
to the still humbler traffic in the small wares of half a dozen puny
village shops? Vernon was shy of asking him point-blank the nature of
his work; indeed, something in the stranger’s manner intimated pretty
plainly that he would not have given the required information. And no
hints sufficed to draw him out. The vicar of St. Cuthbert’s made one
such attempt, which failed most signally.
“You will find also,” said he, “that my brother is a practical man, and
any help that he can give you in the work you speak of he will offer
most willingly, I know.”
But to this speech the first reply of the colonist was a sardonic laugh.
“I daresay he will,” said he, drily, when his hard merriment had
suddenly ceased. “For the matter of that, a man with a serious object
before him, who has his head screwed on the right way, can get help of
some sort from everybody he comes nigh to. And so, Mr. Brander, I make
no doubt I shall get assistance in my work, not only from your brother,
but from yourself.”
And with these words, uttered in a tone of some significance,
he turned on his heel with an abrupt nod, and made his way with
characteristically heavy and deliberate steps towards the gate of the
cottage.
Vernon Brander watched the solidly-built figure disappearing in the
dusk, and then proceeded on his way down the hill in some agitation
of spirit. The shadow of the old crime was creeping up again; the
tragedy which ten years had not lived down was reappearing with a new
and ghastly vividness in the presence of that matter-of-fact stranger.
Who he might be Vernon could scarcely guess; what the nature of his
work was in a quiet village flashed upon him with an intuition which
left no room for doubt. The feelings produced by this thought were not
all gloomy; a certain hungry look, which betokened perhaps that even
open shame would be welcome after ten years of silent ignominy, burned
in the clergyman’s dark eyes as he lifted his head and gazed into the
blue-black night sky above him with a piercing intentness which seemed
to be trying to fathom the mysteries of the future.
On reaching the bottom of the hill, he was startled out of his reverie
by a bright girl’s voice and a gentle touch on his arm. He stopped
short and lowered his head dreamily, almost inclined to think, in the
high state of excitement to which he had been worked, that the sweet
voice, the kindly touch, were a prophecy of happiness rather than
the commonplace incident of an every-day greeting. The next moment,
however, he came fully to himself, and found that he was in the
presence, not only of Olivia Denison, but of her father.
“Mr. Brander, come down from the clouds if you please, and leave your
next Sunday’s sermon to take care of itself for a little while. I want
to introduce you to my father.”
Mr. Denison, a tall, strikingly handsome man of about fifty years of
age, with a gentle, kindly face entirely destitute of any trace of his
daughter’s energy and impulsive frankness, held out his hand with a
very willing smile.
“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Brander, and to be able
to thank you for your great kindness to my little daughter here.”
He patted Olivia’s shoulder affectionately, but it seemed to the
clergyman, as he looked from the one face to the other, that the
action was scarcely typical of the mutual relations between gentle,
vacillating father and quick-witted, active daughter.
“Miss Denison is so much more valiant and self-helpful than most young
ladies that she spurs one up to do more for her than one would for
others,” said Vernon.
“Yet this afternoon you would not allow that I could help papa,” put in
Olivia, reproachfully.
“Didn’t I rather suggest that the help you really gave was of a
different kind from what you imagined?”
“She gives me help of all kinds,” said her father affectionately.
“She’s my clerk and my comforter; and I think if the farm-hands struck
work, she’d take to the plough as naturally as she’s taken to the
poultry.”
“Well, I’d certainly try my hand at it,” said the girl laughing. “I
suppose the chief qualifications are a steady hand and a correct eye,
and both those I’ve acquired at billiards.”
“My dear Olivia, you mustn’t own to playing billiards before a
clergyman!”
“And why not, Mr. Denison?” asked Vernon. “I love a good game of
billiards myself; and the strongest reasons that keep me out of old
Williams’s billiard-room up at the Manor Hall are old Williams’
inability to play a decent game, and his son’s inability to make a
decent remark.”
Olivia gave an exclamation of disgust at this passing allusion to her
importunate admirer: Mr. Denison seemed relieved by the clergyman’s
admission.
“I’ve not come much in contact with gentlemen of your calling,” said
he; “and I have rather a feeling that I must be on my best behavior
before them.”
“A very proper feeling, and one that I wish you could communicate
to some of the gentlemen engaged in mining occupations among my
parishioners. It’s a much healthier symptom than throwing bricks.”
“Do they throw bricks at you?” asked Olivia, indignantly.
“Not so many as they used to do,” said Vernon, with a twinkle in his
eye, which was, however, not discernible in the increasing darkness. “I
found a way to cure them of that.”
“What was that?”
“I threw them back.”
Mr. Denison did not attempt to disguise the fact that his respect for
and appreciation of the Church were rising rapidly. It was with a
cordiality very different from the formal gratitude he had shown at the
outset that he presently begged the clergyman to do himself and his
wife the pleasure of lunching with them on the following or an early
day.
“I am very anxious to introduce you to my wife,” said he. “She used
to try hard to get me to receive what I irreverently called her ‘pet
parsons;’ but I had heard them preach, and that was enough for me. Now
you see I can bring forward a candidate of my own.”
“That’s unfortunate, because I can’t come to-morrow; and next day is
Sunday. And perhaps, if you hear me preach, you may want to retract
your invitation.”
“Well, we must chance that,” said Mr. Denison, smiling. “But I can
trust a par--no, I mean a clergyman, who knows something about the
tables of slate as well as the tables of stone. Remember, we are only
poor farmer folk now; the glory of Streatham has departed. But we
shall make you heartily welcome; and you must forgive the absence of
champagne. Now, what day will you come?”
“May I say this day week?” said Vernon, after considering a moment.
“For the next few days I have work to do a long way off which will
make any sort of meal an impossibility. I shall live upon bread and
coaldust; and you must not be surprised if I turn up with a complexion
of Othello, and with a little of his savagery, after a week’s
intercourse with the blackest and roughest race in Yorkshire.”
The following Friday was, therefore, fixed upon as the day on which
the Rev. Vernon Brander was to make formal acquaintance with Rishton
Hall Farm and its new masters. And, with a mutual liking which opened a
pleasant prospect of future acquaintance, the two gentlemen bade each
other good-night, and separated.
But, if they had only known it, there was a very strong woman’s will
working against any such happy consummation. Mrs. Meredith Brander,
for reasons of her own, had conceived the intention of doing what she
could to form an impassable bridge between her brother-in-law and the
household at Rishton Hall Farm. She shrewdly guessed that her best
chance lay through the step-mother; but for a day or two she took no
active steps, contenting herself with gleaning all the information
she could concerning the character and habits of each member of the
Denison family. Mr. Denison, she decided, was not of much account;
Mrs. Denison, a vain, half-educated woman, exalted above her natural
station, ought, with judicious treatment, to be easy to deal with. It
was with the handsome, high-spirited Olivia herself that the difficulty
lay, and Mrs. Brander felt that she must proceed with caution.
In the meantime, the new inmate of the cottage was exciting much
general interest, and some suspicion. He lived entirely by himself, but
for such companionship as was afforded him by Mrs. Wall, during the
two or three hours a day when she jogged slowly through his apartments
with a broom and a pail, and generally “did for” him. He drove such
a hard bargain with this lady, and lived so simply, that the belief
soon spread among the villagers that he was very poor, that his big
watch chain was brass, and that his solid manner and imperative speech
were mere empty “swagger.”
The Reverend Meredith Brander was shrewd enough to think differently.
There was a weight and solidity about the speech and manner of the
new comer which it is not given to the mere waifs and strays of the
earth to acquire. When he passed an opinion, which was seldom, for he
was apparently of reticent disposition, it was with the evident belief,
not only that it was worth listening to, but that it would be listened
to. The vicar tried hard, in every decent and graceful way, to win
from him some information as to who he was and what he did there; but
his geniality and his personal charm had no perceptible effect on the
stranger, who kept even his name a secret, and steadily declined Mr.
Brander’s invitations to him to dine at the Vicarage, or to play a game
of chess with him in the evenings.
“I’m sure you must find it dull alone in the cottage at night,” the
vicar would say to him cheerily; “for one can see with half an eye that
you’ve been used to an active life, with lots of movement and all sorts
of society. Why don’t you let yourself be persuaded into sitting by a
warm hearth instead of a cold one, with a woman and children about you?
All globe-trotters love the atmosphere of women and children.”
“I can bear with ’em, but I’m not excited about either species,” the
stranger answered one day to his neighbor’s persuasions. “I’ve had
a wife and children myself; but I’m bound to say I get on quite as
comfortably without them.”
If this unorthodox speech was meant to shock the vicar, it failed of
its effect; for Meredith Brander had no Puritanical horror of human
frailties and eccentricities, but a cheery belief that they gave a
healthy outlet to the dangerous humors of the world.
He discussed the new comer with his wife, who, however, took scarcely
enough interest in the subject to set her feminine wits to work towards
solving the mystery which hung about him.
“I don’t know why you make so much fuss about him,” she said rather
contemptuously one day, when her husband had been recounting his
fruitless efforts to induce the stranger to dine with them. “And I
am sure I am thankful that he had the sense not to come. To judge by
his manners he has been a navvy, who went gold-digging and picked up
a nugget; and to judge by his coming here and the way he lives, the
nugget was somebody else’s, and he has to live _perdu_ until the little
affair has blown over.”
The vicar made no reply to this; but there was evidently nothing
convincing to him in his wife’s contempt for the stranger. When he
spoke again, it was upon a fresh subject.
“Vernon’s getting very thick with the new people at the Hall Farm. I
met him to-day arm-in-arm with papa, and I hear that he’s going to dine
with them next Friday. Now, papa is a very amiable man, though he may
not be over-endowed with brains; but I suppose it is not far-fetched to
imagine that there may be another attraction.”
Mr. Brander spoke in his usual light and genial tones, without even the
touch of seriousness he had shown when treating of this same subject
with his brother. But the effect of his words on his wife was instant
and strong. The lines of her handsome mouth grew straight and hard,
her low, handsome forehead puckered with an anxious frown as she said
sharply--
“He must be stopped.”
The vicar, raising his eyebrows blandly, stroked his chin, and looked
out of the window.
“Yes, my dear, I admit that it would be very much for the best if he
could be stopped; but the question is, how is it to be done? All we can
do is to persuade, exhort, advise. And haven’t we done it--perhaps even
overdone it? If Vernon takes it seriously into his head that he will
marry, why, marry he will; and I don’t see how all the king’s horses,
and all the king’s men, can prevent him.”
“Perhaps not,” said his wife, icily. “But I can.”
Her mouth, which was Mrs. Brander’s most eloquent feature, closed with
almost a snap, and strongly suggested the idea that her interest in her
brother-in-law’s matrimonial inclinations was not purely benevolent.
“Well, my dear, there is no denying that it would be for the best if
you could prevent this rather foolish flirtation with a particularly
headstrong girl from coming to anything. One can scarcely think that
this type of girl, for all her beauty and high spirit I think we must
allow her, would make him happy as a wife.”
“I hadn’t thought of the matter from that point of view,” said his
wife drily.
The vicar glanced rather uneasily at his wife, whose habit of looking
at things from a purely matter-of-fact and practical point of view
sometimes jarred upon his more easy-going nature.
He rose from his seat, and prepared to leave the room.
“But you should, my dear; you should,” he said in a gently reproachful
tone, as he came to the back of her chair and, gently stroking her dark
hair with his plump white hand, printed an affectionate kiss on the
smooth white forehead, from which the frown had scarcely yet departed.
As soon as her husband had left the room, Mrs. Brander gave herself up
to resolute consideration of a difficult and delicate plan of action.
After some time she came to a decision, and her face cleared.
“To-day is Wednesday,” she said to herself, glancing at an almanac on
her writing-table. “This dinner, or luncheon, or whatever it is, is not
till Friday. Then I have to-morrow to work in.”
And she rose with a sigh of relief, and went about her household duties
with a lighter heart, feeling that she had provided for the fulfilment
of a very disagreeable task in a rather able manner.
On the following afternoon Mrs. Brander, after a short drive in the
neighborhood, drove her little ponies up to the door of Rishton Hall
Farm to make her first call upon Mrs. Denison. The latter lady had
already expressed some indignation that the vicar’s wife had not called
upon her before, and had even announced her intention of being “not at
home” to Mrs. Brander, to show her sense of the folly of such airs in a
woman who ought, by virtue of her husband’s office, to be the humblest
in the parish. However, what happened when the smart-looking little
pony carriage drew up at the door was this: the farmer’s wife, after
peeping through the dining-room curtains, in a flutter of excitement,
rushed across the hall to the drawing-room, with a hoarse whisper of
directions to the approaching housemaid, and greeted the visitor,
on her entrance, with a mixture of dignity and effusiveness, which
the vicar’s wife met with her usual, straightforward, matter-of-fact
simplicity of manner. Mrs. Brander had brought her ten-year-old
daughter with her, less for companionship than for the reason, which
she would at once frankly have owned, that the child’s fragile fairness
formed an admirable compliment to her own brunette beauty. The child
also served to make the introduction of the two ladies less formal,
as her presence resulted in Mrs. Denison sending for her own two
spoilt children, whom Mrs. Brander greeted courteously, but without
effusiveness. Indeed, she afterwards described them as the two most
intolerable little offences against humanity she had ever met, and
she was much too frank to do more than veil this feeling even in
the presence of their mother, whose caresses of the little Kate and
compliments on her beauty evidently excited in the more sensible of the
two mothers no approval whatever.
The vicar’s wife had something in her mind that she considered of far
more importance than any matter connected with mere children. Before
very long she brought the conversation round to Olivia Denison, of
whom she took care to speak with such exceedingly moderate approbation
as she thought likely to suit a step-mother’s taste. Mrs. Denison was
delighted to meet some one who did not go into the usual raptures about
the young girl’s beauty and amiability.
“Olivia is not a bad sort of girl,” she admitted, in a patronizing
tone. “But she has been terribly spoilt by her father. Her temper is
almost unbearable, and I regret to say that she does not scruple to
indulge it on my poor children.”
“I should think you would be glad to get her married and settled, both
for her sake and your own, then,” said Mrs. Brander. “She is a showy
sort of girl, who ought to marry even here.”
Mrs. Denison looked for a moment rather embarrassed.
“Well, certainly,” she admitted grudgingly. “A gentleman has already
made his appearance who seems to be attracted by her--at least, so her
father thinks. I myself shall not see him till to-morrow, when he comes
to luncheon here.”
“Indeed!” cried Mrs. Brander, raising her eyebrows with great apparent
interest. “I wonder if it is any one I know?” Mrs. Denison gave a
little cough of uncertainty.
“Well,” she said at last, with some hesitation, “I hope I’m not letting
out a secret, but it is your own brother-in-law, Mr. Vernon Brander.”
Mrs. Brander almost started from her chair in well simulated horror and
surprise.
“Vernon!” she exclaimed, in a low voice. “Impossible!” Mrs. Denison
turned pale.
“Why not?” she faltered. “Surely there is nothing against the vicar’s
brother!”
Mrs. Brander hesitated, in much apparent confusion and distress.
“I would not for the world have been the first to break it to you, and
even now I scarcely like to tell you. In fact, I will not unless you
will promise that it shall make no difference in your treatment of the
unhappy young fellow,” she said at last.
Mrs. Denison, shaking with curiosity and alarm, gave the required
promise in an unconvincing tone.
“Years ago,” began the vicar’s wife in a tone lowered to escape the
children’s ears, “Vernon unhappily became involved in an intrigue with
the sister of the man who occupied this house, and at last, after a
quarrel, she mysteriously disappeared, and has not since been heard of.”
“Murdered!” shrieked Mrs. Denison, startling the children, who all
turned round, and caused her to put sudden constraint upon herself.
“Hush!” said Mrs. Brander, rather alarmed by the strength of her
effect. “We don’t like to think that; we _mustn’t_ think that.
But there is just enough unpleasantness about the affair. _You_
understand,” she murmured confidentially.
“I should think so!” cried Mrs. Denison, heartily. “I’ll take care that
he shall never----”
The vicar’s wife interrupted her, laying a persuasive, but not feeble,
hand on the arm of the excited lady.
“You will take care never to hint a word of this to him, or to any
one,” she said, in a low, but exceedingly authoritative, tone. “You
remember your promise. Without any measure so strong as that, we women
always know how to give an acquaintance who is in any way undesirable
not too much cold shoulder, but just cold shoulder enough.”
She rose to go, feeling that she had done enough to accomplish her
purpose.
“I think that ought to do it,” she said to herself, with subdued and
still somewhat anxious satisfaction, as she whipped up her ponies, and
drove away from the farm.