The second Mrs. Denison was, unfortunately for her husband’s household,
one of those ladies who unite in themselves most of woman’s typical
frailties. One of the most marked of these was a great jealousy of any
member of her own sex who was younger, better looking, or in any way
considered more generally attractive than herself. This jealousy rose
to such a pitch in the case of her handsome step-daughter that she was
more pleased at the discovery of the ineligibility of Olivia’s new
admirer than disappointed at the failure of a prospect of getting rid
of her.
In spite of her promises to Mrs. Brander, Mrs. Denison of course
told her husband that night, with some triumph, what a desperate
character he proposed to introduce into the bosom of his household on
the following day. But her sensational tirade produced little effect.
Mr. Denison had indeed heard the old story since he gave the vicar of
Saint Cuthbert’s his invitation; and, to tell the truth, it had rather
tended to increase than diminish the liking he had taken to the parson.
An injudicious liking for the girls was a humanising foible which he
could understand and excuse. As for the disappearance, it was an old
story, and might contain an old slander. At any rate, even a murderer
was better than a milksop. So he made light of his wife’s deep-voiced
harangue, and pronounced his opinion that Mrs. Meredith Brander might
find something better to do than to spread these foolish stories
concerning her brother-in-law.
“Then you mean to take no steps, in the face of what I have told you,
to prevent your own hearth from being polluted by the presence of a
murderous libertine?” inquired Mrs. Denison, who had the liking of a
narrow and half-educated mind, in moments of excitement, for language
equal to the occasion.
“Well, I’m not going, after inviting a man to luncheon, to rush out and
tell him we have heard a cock-and-bull story about his doings a quarter
of a century ago, and so we can’t let him come in.”
“And so Beatrice and Reginald are to get their ideas of the church from
this man? I might have known what sort of a clergyman you would pick
up, who would never receive Mr. Lovekin or Mr. Butterworth! I am told
this Mr. Vernon Brander doesn’t even dress like a clergyman.”
“He wears a round collar,” said Mr. Denison; “perhaps that will save
the morals of Beatrice and Reginald. Anyhow, he doesn’t talk up in his
head like old Buttermilk, and he doesn’t look so like a trussed chicken
as that lean-necked Lovekin used to do.”
“At least there was no scandal about either of those gentlemen,” said
his wife with dignity. “A girl could trust herself with either of them.”
“She’d have an odd taste if she couldn’t.”
“Perhaps you have no objection to this man as a suitor for your
daughter?”
“He hasn’t proposed yet.”
“Or to the chance of her being found dead in a mysterious manner.”
“Perhaps he doesn’t make away with more than seventy-five per cent.
of the girls he comes across. Olivia might take her chance,” said Mr.
Denison, who was getting sleepy, and had had enough of the conversation.
This flippancy silenced her for a time; but it had for its permanent
effect on Mrs. Denison the strengthening of her resolution to show this
black sheep of the church what a high-principled British matron thought
of him.
When, next day, the Reverend Vernon Brander arrived at the farm for
luncheon, his evil star brought him before Olivia had returned from
her morning walk. He was shown into the drawing-room, where, by
Olivia’s orders, in honor of his coming, a fire blazed in the usually
cheerless grate; for Mrs. Denison, although an indolent and extravagant
housekeeper, practiced from habit a dozen uncomfortable and futile
little economies, which she had learnt in her childhood’s days in her
father’s small shop. On learning of the guest’s arrival, she made
no haste to receive him; and Vernon was left for some time to an
uninterrupted study of the room.
He decided at once, his thoughts while in this house all taking the
same direction, that Olivia seldom or never sat in the room, that
she did not like it, but that, nevertheless she had had something to
do with the arrangement of it, and that much of the decorative work,
both of needle and paint brush, with which it was adorned, was done by
her active fingers. The position of each article of furniture was too
coldly correct to please her, Vernon, used to the society of a woman of
taste, felt sure. There was no pretty disorder of open book or music,
untidy work-basket, with its picturesque overflow of feminine trifles;
no disarranged cushion; no displaced chair. The piano was shut--looked
even as if it might be locked; the furniture, of the pretty, modern,
spindle-shanked, uncomfortable type, was evidently scarcely ever used.
Vernon had time to wander about at his leisure until he found something
which roused in him more than a passing interest. This was a large
photographed head of Olivia, which stood by itself in a dark corner
on a side table in a handsome oak frame. It had evidently been taken
quite recently, and was an excellent likeness. Vernon could not resist
the temptation to take it up and carry it to a window to examine it,
as he could not do in the obscurity to which it had been condemned.
Then, as he was still left undisturbed, he put the portrait on a centre
table in the full light, and opening an album which lay not far off,
began hunting for more photographs of the same girl. He found a page
containing four, taken at different stages of childhood and gawky young
girlhood. Going down on his knees beside the large portrait, he held
open the album immediately underneath it, and began tracing out the
development of the woman from the child with the deepest interest.
Absorbed, as his habit was, in the occupation of the moment, he did
not hear, or did not heed, the approach of footsteps across the hall.
The door had not been properly closed, and, before he could change his
position, it had been thrust open with peremptory touch, and he was in
the presence of his hostess.
Glancing from him to the portrait on the table, and thence to the book
in his hand, Mrs. Denison saw or guessed how he was employed, and
feminine jealousy and dislike increased the horror and indignation
she was nursing against this homicidal clergyman whom her husband had
chosen to exalt at the expense of her own chosen divines. She stood
with a stony and most unwelcoming face while Vernon, rising hastily
with a bright laugh, shut the album, and came forward to meet her.
But she put forward no cordial hand, and vouchsafed him only the
coldest little nod of the head. Vernon mistook the reason of this
reception, confounding the step-mother with the mother, and supposing
that his hostess was in arms at the liberty he had taken in thus openly
worshipping at the young girl’s shrine.
“I must apologize for my attitude of apparent devotion,” he said; “but
I was so much interested in tracing the development of the child as
shown here,” and he held out the album, “into the woman as represented
here,” and he touched the portrait on the table, “that I did not notice
how unnecessarily devout my position had become.”
“Very unnecessarily,” assented Mrs. Denison, in a hard and frigid tone.
Poor Vernon looked much disconcerted by this rebuff.
“I hope you will believe,” he began, almost stammering in his
confusion, “that I had no intention of taking a liberty in admiring
your daughter’s portrait so openly----”
“My _step_-daughter’s!” interrupted Mrs. Denison, with a snap.
“Oh, ah, yes--I mean your step-daughter’s,”--floundered Vernon, more
perplexed than ever. If she did not care about the girl, why this
anger? “You must all be so much accustomed to the admiration Miss
Denison excites that even an eccentric tribute may, I hope, be excused.”
With masculine want of tact he was getting deeper and deeper into the
mire. Mrs. Denison’s cold, pale, plump face grew every moment more
forbidding.
“The place is not so overrun with admirers of Olivia Denison as you
seem to imagine,” said she, acidly. “There is nothing the matter with
the girl’s face; on the other hand, we are not accustomed to consider
it anything to rave about. We Londoners like beauty of a more delicate
type.”
“If by delicate you mean puny and pale,” said Vernon, with rash
honesty, “you certainly won’t get us up here to agree with you. But if
you mean refined, I can’t imagine a face more ideally satisfying in
that respect than Miss Denison’s.”
This was the last straw. The one consolation Mrs. Denison always had
ready for herself on the irritating subject of Olivia’s beauty was that
her own flaccid paleness made the girl’s bright coloring look “vulgar.”
She had made her entrance in an aggressive mood; every word the
unfortunate man had uttered had increased her prejudice against him,
and had seemed specially designed for her annoyance. Inflamed by sullen
anger, and rushing to the favorite conclusion of the ill-bred that she
had been “insulted,” Mrs. Denison let loose upon her guest the vials
of her wrath. She had just enough sense of decency not to get loud in
her anger; but her thin, compressed lips and coldly venomous grey eyes
struck a sort of terror into the unsuspecting clergyman, before her
slow words came like the crash of a thunderbolt upon his ears. Mrs.
Denison prefaced her speech by a hard, short laugh that scarcely moved
the muscles of her flabby face.
“I suppose your taste still runs in the same direction that it did ten
years ago then, and that you admire red-cheeked farmers’ daughters as
much as ever?”
“I don’t understand you, madam,” said Vernon, growing paler than ever,
if that were possible, but losing his nervousness in the face of this
preposterous attack.
His recovered self-possession irritated Mrs. Denison, who had expected
him to cower under her onslaught. Although she was already growing
alarmed at what she had done, she was too sullenly obstinate to draw
back, and she strengthened herself, even while her breath came faster
and a slight flush came over her face, with the conviction that she was
unmasking villainy, and putting to rout a man who was a disgrace to his
sacred calling.
“Indeed, I should have thought that in this house, of all others, your
memory would have been better.”
As Mrs. Denison had remained standing, Vernon had perforce done the
same. He now took a step to the left, so that the light might fall on
his face as well as on hers as he answered her.
“If you have any accusation to make against me, will you be kind enough
to make it in so many words, and not in roundabout hints?”
He had managed to make the woman feel the full awkwardness of the
position into which she had brought herself. She hesitated and
stammered, even though her grey eyes did not flinch from their
vindictive stare.
“I--I had heard--everybody has--stories which--a clergyman, too!--I
should never have thought----”
“No. People never do think, when they bring a vague charge, that they
ought to be ready to substantiate it. Will you tell me what you heard?”
“I am not to be brought to book in this way,” said Mrs. Denison,
recovering herself, and speaking in a louder voice. “You cannot be
ignorant of the stories about you, and you cannot be surprised that I
don’t think you a fit person to--to be a friend to--to young girls.”
There was a pause, which Mrs. Denison found very awkward. She stood
with one hand upon a small octagonal table, feeling very anxious that
this most obnoxious visitor would either go or give her an opportunity
of going. Vernon, on his side, stood perfectly still before her,
staring at the floor, not with the shamefaced look of remorse and
guilt, but with an expression of painful and earnest thought. At last
he raised his head, and his black eyes, full of passion and fire, met
her own cold grey ones steadily.
“You have heard that I caused the disappearance of a girl ten years
ago?” said he, not abruptly, but with grave deliberateness.
“Er--yes--something--yes--of the sort,” answered Mrs. Denison, taken
aback.
“And on sufficiently good authority to warrant your considering it
true?”
“On the very best authority. I never act on any other,” said the lady,
hastily.
Vernon looked perplexed, and his tone grew a little more diffident as
he continued--
“Then why not have spared me the humiliation of this reception? Just
two lines sent by the stable boy would have been enough, and you may
be sure I should never have troubled you with what, I hope, has been a
painful interview to you.”
Vernon said “hope,” and even put a slight emphasis on the word, as he
had a suspicion that his hostess was ill-natured enough to have found
some enjoyment in his discomfiture. With a ceremonious and dignified
bow he was passing her on his way to the door, when a genial voice
startled them both, and Mr. Denison entered.
Not being a man of specially quick perceptions, the new comer did not
at once see that anything was wrong. He seized Vernon by both hands,
welcomed him in warm words, and with apologies for having been absent
on his arrival.
“And where’s my Olivia?” he went on, turning to his wife, now observing
for the first time the unpromising frown on that lady’s face, and
believing that his daughter’s neglect was the cause. “She should have
been here to help you entertain Mr. Brander.”
Mrs. Denison began to say something inarticulately, but Vernon, in a
clear and deliberate voice, took the words out of her mouth.
“You do Mrs. Denison injustice. Judging from the manner in which she
has entertained me, I should think she is not only able, but that she
prefers, to do without any assistance.”
Mrs. Denison looked both confused and alarmed, as she stammered
something about Mr. Brander’s having misunderstood her. For her
husband, like many other easy-going men, was subject to occasional fits
of passionate violence, which, for a woman of Mrs. Denison’s cold and
somewhat stodgy temperament, had peculiar terrors.
“Misunderstood!” cried he, in an ominous tone of surprise and
perplexity.
“Misunderstood what?”
“I think the misunderstanding was on the lady’s side,” said Vernon,
very calmly, moving a step nearer the door. “For if Mrs. Denison really
thought that I could comfortably partake of her hospitality after being
accused by her of unspecified crimes, she made a mistake which I must
now beg to leave her leisure to recognize.”
Without giving Mr. Denison, who had grown during this speech
absolutely livid with anger, time to answer him, Vernon Brander hurried
out of the room and out of the house.
But Mr. Denison’s outbursts of passion, if violent, were short lived.
After having inveighed for a few minutes furiously against woman’s
talkativeness and woman’s indiscretion, he allowed himself to be talked
round by his wife, into believing that what little she had said to
the Reverend Vernon touching his former delinquencies, he had brought
upon himself by a very impertinent expression of his admiration for
Olivia. Being at heart a man of peace, and unable to retain displeasure
with any one for long, Mr. Denison had subsided into an uneasy and
conscience-pricked silence on the subject, when Olivia’s footsteps,
bounding through the hall with the agility of youth and high spirits,
startled both husband and wife.
The girl sprang into the room like a flash of sunshine, but being far
more acute than her father, the first glance from his face to that of
his wife showed her that something was wrong.
“Where’s Mr. Brander?” she asked abruptly, already with a dash of
suspicion in her tone. “Lucy told me he’d been here nearly half an
hour.”
Mr. Denison walked away to the nearest window without speaking; Mrs.
Denison leaned back in the easy chair which she was occupying with an
assumption of easy dignity meant to conceal the uneasiness which she
felt. For to displease Olivia seriously, much as the elder woman might
affect to ignore the girl’s feelings, was a very different thing from
displeasing her good-tempered father.
“Mr. Brander has been and has gone,” said Mrs. Denison, with an air of
offended dignity. “He has proved himself unworthy the honor of being
admitted as a friend into my family, and I never wish to hear his name
mentioned again.”
“You don’t think I’m to be satisfied like that,” said Olivia, very
quietly. Then she stood, with hands clasped and passionate, earnest
eyes, gazing at her step-mother’s doughy face with a steadfastness
which caused that lady to “fidget” uneasily, and thus to destroy the
effect of her efforts at dignified composure.
“You’re forgetting yourself strangely, Olivia, to speak to me in that
manner. I am mistress here, and I am not going to be dictated to by a
chit of a girl.”
“You have said something, done something, to send him away; I am sure
of it,” said the girl with breathless earnestness, not heeding her
step-mother’s fretful protest. “I will know what it is; I have a right
to know. Papa,” she went on, turning towards her father entreatingly,
and speaking in a voice that grew softer the moment she addressed
him, “you know Mr. Brander has been kind to me, most unselfishly,
disinterestedly kind--and just when I wanted help and kindness. You
would not let him be rudely treated, would you? You would never allow
your guest to be insulted, I am sure. Tell me what has happened; I must
know. Do tell me; do satisfy me. I am not curious; I am miserable until
I know.”
She had crossed the room to him, put affectionate hands on his
shoulders, and was looking into his face with tender pleading, far more
irresistible even than his wife’s peremptory reasoning had been. He
could not look her in the face, but frowned, and made feeble and futile
attempts to get rid of the clinging fingers. Mrs. Denison’s hard voice
then struck upon their ears.
“Really, Edward, you’re not going to allow yourself to be talked over
in that way, I hope. Surely you and I are the best judges as to who
are, and who are not fit acquaintances for our children. And when the
wife of the vicar of the parish herself warns me that such and such a
man is a criminal of a sort not fit to be admitted into a decent house,
I don’t think any one can dispute that we have authority for what we
do.”
“The wife of the vicar! Mrs. Brander!” exclaimed Olivia in
bewilderment. “She told you that about her brother-in-law?”
Mrs. Denison did not answer. She was ready to bite her tongue out for
her indiscretion in mentioning her informant’s name. For she knew
Olivia’s impulsive nature, and was very much afraid that the girl would
get her into trouble with the vicar’s wife, with whom she was anxious
to stand well. For Mrs. Brander’s well-bred simplicity of manner, and
a certain air of being queen of the district which years of homage had
given her, had made a strong impression on the ex-governess. Olivia
read the truth in her step-mother’s confusion, and a new spring of
anger bubbled up in her heart.
“The wicked, treacherous woman!” she panted, scarcely aloud, but with
great vehemence. “He shall know who are the friends who spread these
stories about him.”
She was turning impulsively towards the door, drawing on as she did
so, one of the gloves she had taken off, when Mrs. Denison, with
unaccustomed agility, sprang up from her chair and laid a heavy hand on
the girl’s arm.
“Where are you going?” she asked, peremptorily, with much anxiety.
Olivia looked down at her face with a resolute expression, which made
her step-mother’s hands tingle to box her ears.
“I am going to find Mr. Vernon Brander, to tell him of the slanders
that are being spread about him and who spreads them, and I am going to
apologize most humbly for the treatment he has received in this house
this morning.”
If Olivia had trusted herself for another minute in Mrs. Denison’s
clutches, the last ray of that good lady’s self-restraint would have
been torn away, and she would have recalled her old methods of school
room rule by bringing her plump hand in sharp contact with the girl’s
cheeks. But Olivia was too quick for her. With an agile twist of her
imprisoned arm she freed herself, and shaking her head at her father,
who was crossing the room to follow her, she left the room even more
rapidly than Vernon Brander had done.
Olivia flew along the road towards St. Cuthbert’s as if pursued. The
thought that the man who had done so much both to help and protect her
should have been exposed to the vulgar insults of the tyrant of her
father’s household threw her into a frenzy of anger and humiliation
for which she found no balm. With her indignation against Mrs.
Meredith Brander, on the other hand, there mingled an unacknowledged
consolation. She did not like that lady; she was also unconsciously
jealous of her strong hold upon her brother-in-law. Therefore the
discovery of Mrs. Brander’s perfidy, which could not fail to weaken
that hold, had an element which was not unwelcome. But to do the girl
justice, this selfish feeling was in very small proportion to the
passionate wish to make some amends to him for the indignity he had
just suffered.
It has been a dull morning and now the rain was beginning to fall,
and to envelope the hills far away on the left with a haze which by
its density threatened something worse than a light shower. In her
impulsive eagerness to start on her errand of consolation, she had not
thought of the mundane precaution of taking an umbrella, and although
she was now not too much absorbed to regret the omission, she was far
too impatient to go back. As the rain fell faster she began to run,
and when she came in sight of the ruinous church, standing still far
away in the valley below her, partly hidden by the gaunt and cheerless
Vicarage, she had to pause for breath, although by that time her
clothes were wet through. Through the veil of rain she caught sight
of a man who was making his way towards St. Cuthbert’s by a shorter
path, over the meadows and through the straggling trees which at this
point skirted the hill on the south side of the valley. It must be
Vernon Brander, she felt sure, returning passionately angry or deeply
humiliated, from his unlucky visit to the farm.
Olivia wanted to overtake him before he could reach his house: so with
her usual impetuous rashness, she broke through the hedge on her left,
ran, tumbled, and slipped down the hill, which was slippery with wet
grass, scrambled through the damp, dead underwood which grew between
the trees at the bottom, and, running for the rest of the way, got into
the lane leading to the church, and, turning the last sharp corner in a
brilliant spurt, ran into the man she was pursuing as he leaned against
the churchyard gate.
And it was not Vernon Brander after all!
The man had turned, hearing the rapid footsteps behind him, and the
change in the girl’s face, as she learnt her mistake, was far too
pronounced for him not to see easily that she was disappointed.
“I’m the wrong man, missee, I’m afraid,” said he good-humoredly, and in
a manner perfectly free from offence.
Olivia knew that this was the new tenant of Rishton Church Cottage;
she had seen him on the previous Sunday, not indeed inside the church,
of which he had confessed to the vicar a frank abhorrence, but leaning
over the low wall of his garden to watch the worshippers, as they left
the building, with half-shut, critical eyes.
“No,” said she, apologetically; “I thought it was the vicar.”
A curious look, partly of interest and partly, as it seemed to her, of
pity came over his face.
“The vicar of this rat run?” he asked, with a nod of his head in the
direction of the church.
“The Vicar of St. Cuthbert’s,” answered the girl with some dignity.
Her ideas on the subject of conversation with strangers were strictly
conventional, but besides the universal interest and curiosity which
the mystery surrounding the new comer excited, she felt a sudden
conviction that the attraction which brought him to this remote
neighborhood was not unconnected with Vernon Brander.
The stranger gave a sort of grunt, and nodded significantly.
“I thought so,” said he.
Olivia turned away, with a deep flush in her cheeks, much vexed with
herself for having given the man an opening for a remark which seemed
highly impertinent. She was making boldly for the Vicarage when she
heard the stranger’s voice again. He had followed and was walking
beside her.
“Look here, Miss Denison,” he began, in a serious and respectful tone,
“although I am a stranger to you, you are not one to me, for I’ve
studied you since I’ve been in this neighborhood, as I’ve studied all
the rest of my neighbors. And if I thought of them all as I do of you,
it would be better for some of them.”
Olivia turned suddenly towards him, and stopped, impressed by his tone,
and filled with dread of what was coming.
“Don’t be frightened,” he continued, in a voice which, for the rough
man, was almost gentle. “You’re a fine, high-spirited, generous girl,
and I want to be able to say to you that I will never harm you nor
yours.”
“You want to be able to say it!” she exclaimed in bewilderment.
“Yes. As long as you remain Miss Denison I can say it, but if you were
to shut your ears to everybody’s warnings and marry the Vicar of St.
Moulder-in-the Hole here, I couldn’t.”
“Why, who are you?” cried the girl, in a tremulous voice.
“Ned Mitchell, brother to Nellie Mitchell, who was done away with here
ten years ago. And I’m here to make the man who murdered her swing for
it!”