Olivia Denison was by no means a nervous or weak-minded girl. On
learning that the man who stood before her was the brother of Nellie
Mitchell, she did not scream or stagger back, or give any outward
sign of the shock she felt, except to bite her lips, which had begun
to tremble and twitch, as she bowed her head in acknowledgment of
the information. But, none the less, she was instantly possessed by
a much greater terror than if this unexpected avenger had been a
fierce-looking personage with flashing eyes and a melodramatic roll in
his voice. She felt that there would be no softening this hard-headed
colonist, who took the punishment of his sister’s betrayer as “all in
the day’s work,” and announced his intention of getting him hanged with
the same dispassionate decision with which he would have resolved on
the sale of a flock of sheep. And at the same time she felt for the
first time fully conscious that even the absolute knowledge of Vernon
Brander’s guilt would not suffice to stifle her interest in him.
Quietly as she took his sensational announcement, Ned Mitchell was
shrewd enough to know that the young lady was greatly shocked by it,
and her bearing filled him with genuine admiration. But his first
attempt to soften the blow was scarcely well worded.
“Come, Miss Denison, there are as good fish in the sea as ever came
out of it, and a young lady of your spirit is too good to waste half a
sigh on any man, let alone a parson. There’s nobody fit to mate with
you in this played-out old country; what you want is a lad who can sit
a buckjumper, or ride five hundred miles without a wink of sleep except
what he gets in the saddle. That’s your sort.”
“Is it?” said Olivia tranquilly. “Perhaps so. But I assure you, Mr.
Mitchell, I can exist a few more years without a mate at all, and that
it is no frantic desire to get married which makes me anxious to see
one of my friends cleared of a charge of which I believe him to be
innocent.”
“Well said. That’s what a friend should believe. But if your friend has
quite a free conscience about St. Cuthbert’s churchyard and anything
that may ever have taken place in it, can you suggest a reason for the
gate’s being always locked?”
“I suppose it is to prevent the sheep getting in,” said Olivia,
regretting the feeble suggestion the next moment.
“Certainly the sheep can’t pick a lock, but, then, neither could they
lift an ordinary latch.”
“Do you suppose that no churchyard is ever kept locked unless a murder
has ever been committed in it?”
“No. But I think it strange that since I have been here, prowling
about, let us say, not only has the gate been mended where it had grown
weak in one of the hinges, but two breaches in the wall, by which one
could have got into the churchyard without the help of the gate, have
been repaired.”
Olivia glanced towards the place where she had got in over the broken
wall on a former occasion. The gap had been stopped up, and some of the
earth underneath on the outside had been carted away to make a forced
entrance more difficult.
“Well,” said she, her cheeks flushing, “and is there anything singular
in the fact of a vicar’s having his churchyard wall repaired?”
“When the churchyard is so orderly and so beautifully kept as this
one?” added Mr. Mitchell, with a derisive laugh. “Yes, I think there is
something singular in it. And what makes it to my mind more singular
still is that when I congratulated the Reverend Vernon Brander on these
repairs he denied all knowledge of them.”
“Then he certainly knew nothing about them,” said Olivia, promptly.
Mr. Mitchell, for the first time, gave her a glance such as he was
accustomed to bestow on the ordinary run of women--a glance full of
resigned and lenient contempt.
“Well, you are thorough-going, at least,” he said, at last,
patronizingly. “But it is a curiously lucky thing for the vicar, whose
house is the only place that commands a view of the churchyard, mind
you, that I can be seen wandering about the place one day, and find I
can’t get in the next.”
“Very likely his housekeeper saw you, as you say, prowling about,
and, considering your manner suspicious, had the repairs made without
thinking it worth while to consult her master.”
“Not likely,” said Mr. Mitchell, with a shake of the head. “However,
I’ll not keep you here in the rain trying to persuade an old hand like
me that black’s white. Do you know that your clothes are wet through?”
This was quite true. Recalled to consciousness of physical discomfort,
Olivia shivered.
“Yes, I must make haste home,” she said. Then, with a hopeless glance
at his face, as if she despaired of her words having any effect, she
added, “You are too suspicious. You are so shrewd that you think you
can’t make a mistake. But for all your cleverness, my belief in the
friend I know and trust is just as likely to be right as your belief to
the contrary.”
“Well, well. I hope it may be. Don’t think I have any ill-feeling
towards this Vernon Brander as a man; it is the betrayer of my sister
that I’m after, and if Vernon Brander isn’t the guilty party, why,
he’ll have nothing to fear from me. Good-afternoon, Miss Denison.”
Mr. Mitchell raised his hat, with a shrewd and not unkindly smile into
the girl’s beautiful, agitated face, turned on his heel, and began to
make his way, with his usual stolid and leisurely manner, up the hill
towards the high road.
Left to herself, Olivia, who was by this time too thoroughly drenched
to trouble herself about a few minutes more or less in the rain,
debated what she should do. The heat of the impulse which made her
dash out of doors on learning the insult to Vernon had now departed,
and some of Mr. Mitchell’s words had hurt her maidenly modesty to the
extent of making her shy of visiting the clergyman at his house. On the
other hand, she had now, in the menaces of the colonist, another reason
for putting him on his guard. When Mr. Mitchell had disappeared from
her sight at the first bend in the lane, she began to follow in the
same direction slowly, her mind not yet made up. An unexpected incident
decided her.
Glancing furtively at the cheerless windows of the gaunt stone house,
Olivia saw, at one of them, the figure of an old woman in a black
dress and widow’s cap, who watched the girl with evident interest, and
at last opened the front door and began making signs to her. Olivia
stopped. The signs were plainly an invitation to come in. She advanced
as far as the gate, and then the old woman addressed her.
“Won’t you step inside a minute, out of the rain? Come in, come in;
there’s nobody about but me.”
This decided Olivia, who recognized the speaker as Vernon’s
housekeeper, whom she had seen at Rishton Church on Sundays. So she
walked up the stone-paved path, and thanking the old woman for the
proffered shelter, followed her into a hall, the desolate and bare
appearance of which corresponded perfectly with that of the exterior of
the house.
“I think you’d better come into my room, Miss, though it’s really only
the back kitchen,” said the housekeeper. “But Mr. Brander, being out
to-day, lunching up at the Hall Farm, as you know, Miss, there’s no
fire in his room.”
Olivia assenting gratefully, the old woman led her past the open door
of a comfortless and dingy room on the left, which might have been
either dining-room or study, past a second door on the same side,
which was closed, to a small apartment at the back, where a bright
fire, a cat on the hearthrug, a bird in its cage, and a cushioned
rocking chair, gave a look of comfort which was a welcome relief to
the cheerless aspect of the rest of the house. An open door led into
the kitchen, and gave a pleasant glimpse of firelight shining on
well-polished pots and pans.
The housekeeper broke into ejaculations of alarm as she touched the
girl’s wet garments.
“Bless me! you’re soaked to the skin!” she cried, beginning instantly
to divest Olivia of her outer garments with a vigorous hand. “Come
upstairs with me. Yes, you must; it would be manslaughter on my part to
let you stay five minutes in those clothes. I believe you’ve caught a
fever already.”
Fatigue, excitement, cold, and wet had done their work on Olivia, who
began to look and to feel ill. She resisted for a few moments the
housekeeper’s well-meant endeavors to drag her to the door, but yielded
at last, and suffered herself to be taken upstairs, and arrayed from
head to foot in garments belonging to her hostess which, if neither
well fitting nor fashionable, were at least dry. Mrs. Warmington, for
that, she informed Olivia, was her name, assured the girl that she
would have plenty of time to have her outer garments dried, and to get
away home before Mr. Brander returned, as it was his day for visiting
an outlying part of his straggling parish.
“And,” she said, “he will no doubt go straight on from the Hall Farm
after luncheon, and won’t be back here until teatime.”
“Without having had anything to eat,” thought poor Olivia.
She let herself be led downstairs again, noting, as she did so, that
no visible corner of the house, except such parts of it as came within
the housekeeper’s special province, was one whit more comfortable or
homelike than the bare hall. A pang of acute pity for the lonely man
pierced her heart as she decided that, whatever sin he might earlier
in life have been guilty of, no expiation could be more complete than
his dreary life in this desolate house, with only an old woman for
companion. And Mrs. Warmington did not strike her as the most devoted
servant or the most sympathetic personality in the world. She had
“seen better days,” evidently; but although she did not flaunt the
fact unduly, it perhaps gave her a little additional aggressiveness of
manner, so that, in spite of her kindness, Olivia felt that one must be
hard up for companionship to seek Mrs. Warmington’s society. The girl
was indeed struck by the difference between the warm kindliness the old
woman showed to herself and the rather off-hand manner in which she
alluded to her employer. She began to puzzle her head as to the reason
of this, and grew very anxious to find out in what esteem the clergyman
was held by his solitary dependent. After a little conversation by the
fireside, during which the warmth came gradually back to her shivering
limbs, she put out a feeler in this direction.
“It’s a very lonely life that you and Mr. Brander lead up here,” she
said, looking into the fire, and hoping that she did not betray in
which of the two lives she took the greater interest.
“You may well say lonely. It’s a godsend to see a human creature
about. I could have blessed the rain to-day for bringing you here.”
“I suppose it’s even worse for you than for Mr. Brander, because he has
his parish duties?”
“Well, I’m of a more contented turn of mind than he,” said Mrs.
Warmington, with the same coolness that she had previously shown on the
subject of her master. “But, then, to be sure, perhaps I’ve a better
conscience.”
There was silence for some minutes. Mrs. Warmington gave the impression
of being ready to be questioned, but Olivia was shy of taking advantage
of the fact. The housekeeper glanced at her from time to time, as if
hoping for some comment on her words. At last, as none came, she looked
her visitor full in the face, and said--
“I see you know the story. Every one does, more or less; though there
are not many who know the rights of it as well as I do.”
Olivia’s heart seemed to stand still.
“But you don’t think him guilty?” burst from her lips, in a tone which
expressed more anxiety than she guessed. “You know him, perhaps, better
than anybody; you know that he isn’t capable of anything so cruel, so
base.”
Mrs. Warmington pursed up her withered lips in a judicial manner,
poked the fire, and put on a fresh supply of coal, all with an air of
being the chosen keeper of some great mystery. Olivia watched her,
but without asking any more questions; she felt heartsick, miserable.
Other people might guess; this old woman probably knew. At last the
housekeeper solemnly broke silence.
“It’s hardly a tale for a young lady’s ears: perhaps it almost seems
like a breach of confidence on my part to touch upon my employer’s
secrets at all. But he has never made a confidante of me, and if
there’s any one in the world who might use the knowledge I possess to
Mr. Brander’s disadvantage, I know it is not you.”
The young girl felt a shamefaced flush rising in her cheeks. This woman
spoke in a significant tone, implying that the depth of the interest
Olivia took in her master was not unknown to her. The girl turned her
head a little away, and stared at the fire with statuesque stillness
while her companion continued--
“To begin with, I may tell you that the Branders are distant relations
of mine. It does not make me love them the more, but it will prove to
you that I have no interest in making them out to be worse than they
are.”
Olivia assented with a slight bend of the head.
“I don’t deny that I have noticed the interest you take in my master,
and as you are an inexperienced young girl, with some warm-hearted,
and perhaps rather quixotic, notions, I think it right to put you in
possession of the facts of this business, as I know them.”
Olivia glanced at the woman, and saw that, in spite of the dry hardness
of her manner, there was a kindly look in her eyes. Indeed, Mrs.
Warmington, whose heart was a little parched towards the world in
general, had taken a fancy to the bright-cheeked, handsome girl.
“I suppose you know,” she went on, “that the Branders pride themselves
upon being what is called a ‘good’ family. You will also know that
in all ‘good’ families there is generally more than one ‘bad lot.’
Although I am a connection of theirs, I must confess that there has
been quite an exceptional number among the Branders. And, awkwardly
enough, it happens that the family interest lies chiefly in the Church.
The Branders have been clergymen for generations, generally with little
credit to themselves. Here and there has been an exception, but never
more than one in a generation; the exception in our time is Meredith.
His two brothers, Vernon and one who is now in China, showed from the
very first how unfit they were for their calling. I don’t blame them
much; I don’t praise Meredith much; their temperaments are different,
and it can scarcely be called their fault that only one of the three
is a round peg in a round hole. Well, you know that both my master and
his brother, Meredith, fixed their choice on the same lady, and that
Meredith married her. After that, Vernon, who was no particular credit
to his cloth before, grew wilder than ever. It was not long before his
constant visits to the Hall Farm became the talk of the village; for
Nellie Mitchell hadn’t the best name in the world. Before long it was
rumored about that the girl had been seen, late in the evening, in the
neighborhood of St. Cuthbert’s.”
“Did you live here then?” abruptly asked Olivia, who had been sitting
in an attitude of straining attention, with close-shut lips and heaving
breast.
“I had been here six weeks when--when the end came. Tongues had been
going faster than ever for the last week or two, and, of course, some
of the talk had reached my ears. I knew, from little things I had
seen--a portrait, a glove, slight changes in his manner when speaking
of her--that my master had not yet got over his fancy for Mrs. Brander,
married though she was. Then I heard whispers of Nellie Mitchell’s
jealousy; how she flaunted past the vicar’s wife in the churchyard
on Sunday with a swing in her walk and a toss of her head which were
almost insults; of letters which were left in a wood close by, some of
which fell into strange hands. I was shocked by these reports, but I
looked upon them as partly gossip, and considered that, in any case,
they were no business of mine. One evening in August I was standing at
the window of the front room watching the sunset, when I saw Nellie
Mitchell coming down the lane past the house. Something in the girl’s
appearance and manner struck me as it had never done before. It was not
the first time that I had seen her come this way; but on all previous
occasions it had been after dark that I had seen a figure which I
believed to be hers slinking past hurriedly, as if anxious to escape
notice. Now the girl walked boldly--one would have said defiantly--with
a flushed face and an expression of reckless resolution. She carried in
her hand a small white packet, and, as she came opposite the house, she
stopped, and, turning so as to face the gate, deliberately untied the
string or ribbon which held her little parcel together, and counted the
letters of which it consisted. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
I could see her red lips move as she counted them out to herself, and
then slowly tied them up again with one angry and determined look up
at the windows of this house from her bold black eyes. She did not see
me; but it was evident that if a hundred people had been staring at her
out of these empty, shutterless windows, it would have been all the
same to her. I was shocked, horror-stricken. For the first time the
full meaning of all the ugly rumors I had heard became plain to me: my
master had been this woman’s lover!”
Olivia shivered at the woman’s words, which seemed doubly shocking from
the matter-of-fact, somewhat hard tone in which they were spoken.
“As the evening went on, I grew more and more restless and uneasy.
Certain noises I had heard from time to time in the night, which I had
put down to the rats, came back to my mind. It now seemed to me that
they might have been due to another cause. They had come from one of
the front unused rooms. If thoughts of evil now came into my mind, how
could I be blamed? My master was away, doing his rounds in the parish;
he had told me he should not be back till late. All the rest of the
evening I watched from the window, but I did not see the girl return.
The thought came into my mind to go out and try and find out where she
had gone; whether she was really, as the villagers’ hints suggested,
waiting for some one in the churchyard. But I was afraid; I had no mind
to interfere in other people’s affairs; it has always been my custom
not to do so. For a young girl like you I am ready to break my rule but
not for such as Nellie Mitchell.”
And Mrs. Warmington’s lips closed pharisaically.
“Nine o’clock came, ten o’clock, half-past ten; it was quite dark.
Then, as I was walking up and down, with an attack of what I call the
‘fidgets,’ there came through the open windows a scream so shrill, so
horrible, that I staggered into the nearest chair as if a blow from a
strong man’s arm had sent me there. ‘Nellie Mitchell! Nellie Mitchell!’
I felt myself saying, hoarsely. Then I think I fainted, for what I
remember next was to find myself hanging over the chair with my head
on Mr. Vernon’s writing-table. I got up, at first scarcely knowing
what it was that had startled me. I was in utter darkness; in my first
spasm of horror I had thrown down the lamp. As I groped about to find
a match, my fingers trembling so much that they were clumsy and almost
powerless, I heard a footstep outside the door. It was my master,
Vernon Brander!
“I stopped in my search, and drew back instinctively, as I heard him
fumbling at the handle of the room door. It seemed such a long time
before he came in that the whole of this ugly story--the villagers’
gossip, the sight I had seen, and the sound I had heard that
evening--all seemed to pass quite slowly through my mind as I stood
there waiting for him to come in. At last the door opened slowly, and
my master stood in the room with me. I heard his breath coming in
guttural gasps; I heard the table creak and the objects on it rattle
as he came forward and leaned upon it. I almost shrieked, middle-aged,
matter-of-fact woman that I was, when he suddenly whispered, in a
hoarse voice--
“‘Who’s that?’
“I summoned self-command enough to answer, pretty steadily--
“‘It’s I, sir.’
“He got up from the table, and turned towards the door; but an impulse
seized me to learn what I could then. I remembered with a sort of
inspiration, where the matches were, found them, and struck a light. I
was just in time to see my master’s hands as he opened the door: they
were stained with blood!
“‘What have you done? You have killed her!’ I hissed out close to him.
“‘Before Heaven I have not!’ he answered, huskily; but his teeth were
chattering, and his eyes were glassy and fixed.
“Then, covering his face with his hands with a groan, he turned and
staggered out of the room. As he did so he dropped something, which
I picked up and examined without scruple. I admit that this was
high-handed, but when you are almost a witness to a foul action, you
make new laws for yourself on the spur of the moment. By this time I
had quite recovered myself. I lit a candle, and read every word of
the letters which Nellie Mitchell had flourished before my face that
evening. There were no names used. The gentleman had insisted upon
caution, as the girl over and over again complained. For these letters
were hers, and as each successive one was full of more and more bitter
reproaches against her lover, I guessed that it was the return of her
letters which had at last goaded the girl to desperation. Her jealousy
of Mrs. Brander was expressed on every page, and the last contained a
threat of exposure. It was evident that, whatever the girl’s character
might have been, she was bitterly in earnest over this passion. In
spite of myself, the burning words, guilty though they were, filled
me with a kind of pity, increased by the awful suspicion which now
possessed me. I felt the hot tears fall upon the papers in my hands,
and I was so absorbed in my reading that I did not hear my master come
into the room again; for the door had been left open. When at last I
heard his tread close behind me I started, but did not attempt to hide
how I was engaged. He did not seem startled to see the letters in my
hand, but, taking them from me, he read them right through, one by
one, and then placed them in his desk. His face was as white as that
of a dead man, and the hands he had just washed were livid round the
nails. He looked the wreck of the man who had gone out to his work that
afternoon in the August sunshine. When he had shut his desk he turned
very calmly to me and said--
“‘You will leave me to-morrow, of course; but you had better not
go very far, as there will be an inquiry--an inquest; all sorts of
things--and your evidence will be important--against me.’
“Those last two words decided me. My life was my own. This man was my
own kin. I answered, as calmly as he had spoken to me--
“‘You are my master, sir, and of my own blood. I shall stay with you as
long as you please to keep me. If your conscience is bad, I shall be
an everlasting prick to it; if it is clear, as I pray Heaven, you will
have at least one friend when you most want one.’”
Olivia started up all on fire.
“That was good of you!--that was noble of you!” she cried, in a
trembling voice.
“Not at all. It is just the sort of thing a woman likes to do. A
little cheap quixotism--that is all; and I secured myself a home for
life, you see. I was no young girl that I should be afraid of him.”
It was impossible to tell whether it was the cynicism or the kindliness
which predominated in Mrs. Warmington’s motives, or whether they were
there in equal proportions. As Olivia stared wonderingly into the
withered and somewhat inexpressive face, the housekeeper rose somewhat
abruptly from her seat.
“That is Mr. Brander’s step!” she exclaimed as she turned to the door.
“If you stay here, you will be able to slip out presently without his
seeing you.”
With these words, leaving Olivia no time to protest, or even answer
her, the housekeeper left the room, closing the door behind her.