Olivia’s first thought, as the door closed on Mrs. Warmington, was
to follow her out and make a dash for freedom. But as she started up
with this impulse, a sliding movement on the part of the garments
she wore reminded her that she was not in walking trim; and a glance
at the gilt-framed but mildewy glass which adorned the housekeeper’s
mantelpiece showed her such a comical figure that the instincts of
maidenly coquetry would never have allowed her to risk a meeting with
Vernon Brander in that odd disguise.
Mrs. Warmington’s figure was of the straight-up-and-down sort--long
in the body and short in the limbs. Being a lady of frugal bent and
careful habits, she wore her dresses for so long a time that they
acquired enough of the shape and character of the owner to impart the
same characteristics to any subsequent wearer. Therefore, Olivia’s
glance in the mirror showed her a woman in dark-brown stuff of slipshod
fit, with a substantial square waist, and baggy sleeves too short in
the wrist. After one despairing look out of the window at the rain,
which went on falling in torrents, she sat down again disconsolately to
listen and wait for her hostess’ return.
Mrs. Warmington had not met her master on her way upstairs, for Olivia
had heard him go into the front room before the housekeeper left her;
that she might be equally lucky on her way down was the girl’s inward
prayer. For there were ominous sounds in the house suggesting that
Mr. Brander was not minded to sit down quietly to the writing of a
sermon or the reading of a good book, as one had a clear right to
expect of a clergyman. Poor Olivia, sitting upright as a ramrod, with
a scared expression of face, heard him come out of the dining-room
into the hall. By the noise he made at the hat and coat stand, she
guessed that he was changing his wet coat for a dry one. That business
over, he ought plainly to have returned to his room; so it seemed to
Olivia. But instead of that, he remained fumbling at the stand until
the listening girl remembered, with a spasm of terror, that she had
left there to dry, by the housekeeper’s directions, her little hand
bag. Perhaps Mr. Brander would pass it over, taking it for granted
that the flimsy little feminine thing belonged to Mrs. Warmington. No
woman would have thought so; but, of course, men are not observant. Her
worst fear was that he would remain there, not making enough noise to
put the housekeeper on her guard, until that lady should come sailing
down the stairs laden with a hat and cloak which evidently did not
belong to her. The girl scarcely dared to draw breath in her intense
anxiety. To be caught sneaking into a gentleman’s house in his absence,
warming yourself at his fire, and even--as she discovered to her dismay
on examining her feet--making free with his slippers, is an awkward
situation at any time. But when you have just been told the secret
of his life, and when your whole soul is warring about him, mercy
struggling with horror, and conviction with doubt, the dilemma becomes
well-nigh tragic.
Presently Olivia heard him drop some object, and the little crash it
made caused her to shiver and almost to cry out. Then he began to cross
the uncarpeted hall with very slow steps. Olivia strained her ears and
held her breath. He was coming towards the room she was in. Had he
guessed the presence of an intruder, or was he only coming with the
prosaic intention of ordering something to eat? The girl remembered
with remorse how he had been cheated out of his luncheon. But what
should she do? Already she heard him calling, in a low and, as she
fancied, tired voice, “Mrs. Warmington!” There was no time to escape by
way of the kitchen--no corner of the room where she could hide herself.
As she stood up to give one last hopeless look round, she again caught
sight of her disguised figure in the glass. Seized by a happy thought,
she snatched up from the top of one of the side cupboards, that filled
the space between the fireplace and the walls, a small woollen shawl
of rusty black, which Mrs. Warmington used to wrap round her head when
she indulged in an afternoon doze. Olivia now blessed her fervently for
this information. She had just time to wrap it round her head, to throw
herself back in the rocking chair with her head turned away from the
door, to cross her legs as Mrs. Warmington did, to fold her arms, and
hide her hands in the folds of the baggy sleeves, when the door opened
softly, and Mr. Brander put his head inside.
“Mrs. Warmington!” he called, very gently.
No answer, of course.
“Are you asleep?” more gently still.
His housekeeper’s afternoon doze was a very common occurrence
apparently, for he uttered a little petulant sound, and disappeared
into the kitchen. In the dusk of a wet afternoon the girl’s ruse had
succeeded perfectly. But the obscurity which had favored her was
not equally kind to him, for Olivia heard much chinking of china
and clattering of plate before he re-entered the room. Instead of
going through to his own domain, however, he stood still between the
fireplace and the door, and Olivia, not daring to look, guessed that he
was eating. Trembling as she was with the fear of discovery, it seemed
to her a long time before she heard him take up the poker and proceed
very noiselessly to break the red-hot coals. She seized the opportunity
to turn her head a little, and to steal a frightened glance at him
through her eyelashes. He had on the shabbiest of threadbare and ragged
house coats, and was hungrily eating bread and cheese and a piece of
dry and crumbling cake. When he had built up the fire to please him, he
dragged an old church hassock from under the table, and seating himself
on it, drew as near to the grate as possible, and went on with his
improvised meal.
He was so close to Olivia that she could detect the coaly smell which
constant contact with his mining parishioners had imparted to his old
clothes; so close that she felt that he was cold as well as hungry; so
close that his hair brushed Mrs. Warmington’s brown stuff gown as he
bent forward, with his elbows on his knees, and looked into the fire.
And as they sat thus, in the darkening twilight, side by side, he
unconscious of her presence, she grew less afraid that he should
discover it, altogether less anxious for the safety of her disguise.
Her thoughts turned instead to consideration of his loneliness. What a
cheerless existence was implied in this creeping up to the side of a
rather cold and cross-grained old woman for warmth and companionship!
The close contact seemed to help Olivia to feel her way into the mind
of the solitary man. She pictured him innocent, laboring under a
charge which for some unaccountable reason he was unable to refute;
she pictured him guilty, torn with remorse, and working out a weary
expiation. In the latter case, she began to feel, even more strongly
than before her interview with Mrs. Warmington, that the horror of the
deed was swallowed up in compassion for the doer. When he had finished
his very frugal dinner, he sat so still that she was able to open her
eyes and so gain all the information concerning the state of his mind
which a careful study of the back of his head could impart. He was
dejected, weary, unhappy; probably smarting still, so she told herself,
from the pain her step-mother’s treatment had caused him. Presently he
rested his head on his left hand, and so came nearer still to her. She
could feel that she was trembling from the force of an aching pity, and
that her hands seemed to tingle with the wish to lie with consoling
touch on his bent head. She had forgotten Mrs. Warmington and the dry
clothes--forgotten to wonder how she was going to get out of the house
and home again without discovering herself to Mr. Brander. She soon
discovered, however, that her feelings were more acute than those of
the object of her pity; for his head tilted slowly further and further
in her direction until at last it rested on her knee. Mr. Brander, who,
after a fierce battle with certain very unclerical feelings, had tried
to subdue the mind to the flesh by a long stretch over the hills, had
succeeded in tiring himself out.
He was fast asleep.
And if he had but known it, he might have had sweeter dreams than he
was used to. For the resting-place he had found was the creature who
cared most about him of any in the world.
Olivia had an inkling of this, and it made the touch of her hand
almost motherly as she bent down and held it very, very gently just
near enough to feel his hair against her fingers. Only thirty-four or
thereabouts, and his hair so grey! She could dare now, as he slept,
to bend right down, and to see by the firelight how thickly the white
threads grew among the dark behind his ears and near the temples. So
curly his hair was, she noticed; quite soft, too, and silky, like a
child’s: quite out of keeping with the worn, lined face, that looked so
sad and so old as the dancing flames threw deep shadows upon it. And
her fingers moved involuntarily through the wavy mass, as she thought,
as women will, that there had been a time, long ago, when he lay, a
helpless child, depending on the kindness of a woman. And she tried to
fancy what that poor mother would have felt if she had known what evil
rumors would some day darken the name of her curly-haired boy. Olivia
was by nature more impulsive and passionate than sentimental; therefore
these unaccustomed feelings and fancies instead of finding vent in a
gentle sigh, made her breast heave and her eyes fill, until a broken
whisper slipped through her trembling lips--
“Poor mother--poor son!”
She was ashamed of her foolishness the next moment, and raised her head
quickly with a start and a hot, tingling blush, anxious to jump up and
run away, though still not daring to move. She took out her pocket
handkerchief very carefully, dabbed it against her wet eyes with much
fierceness, and then gave another glance, not at all sentimental this
time, at the face against her knee. Horror and confusion! Was he asleep
at all? The expression of his face had quite changed, and there was a
wretched tear--her tear!--on his forehead. What should she do? Remove
that tear, certainly. For she felt that it would leave a huge stain,
unmistakable as ink. Very nervously she attempted to dry it with her
handkerchief; but the moment the cambric touched his face, Mr. Brander
raised his head and prevented her.
“Don’t!” he said, huskily. “Why should you? What is there to be ashamed
of in your kindness to me? Do I get too much from anybody?”
Olivia did not answer. She felt as if a new acquaintance had suddenly
been sprung upon her. This mood was so different from any she had seen
Mr. Brander in before. The half-cynical self-reliance, the bright,
somewhat bitter humor had disappeared, and given place to a humility so
touching, so gentle, that she felt constrained to remain where she was
rather than risk hurting his feelings by rising abruptly. But she could
not answer his questions, and so she sat silently, with her head bent
down and turned a little away, while he resumed the position he had
first taken, with his arms on his knees, looking into the fire. After
a few moments, during which the girl had time to wonder that she felt,
under these rather awkward circumstances, so much at her ease, she
broke the silence, in a low, hesitating voice.
“Mr. Brander,” she began, “I should like to say something to you
about--about this morning--about Mrs. Denison.”
Her painfully apologetic tone made him turn his head at once, with a
smile.
“You may say something to me--in fact anything--upon any other subject
than those two,” he answered, in his usual kindly tone. “Say something
to me about this afternoon and about yourself. Let this morning--and
Mrs. Denison--be buried. Mind, I say, this is no unchristian spirit.”
“You are very good,” said Olivia, glancing at him timidly and
gratefully.
“Do you mean that?” he asked, inquisitively. “You have heard a good
deal to the contrary, you know.”
“Well, but is all that true?” she burst out boldly. “Now, you have
brought that question upon yourself before, and now you deliberately
bring it upon yourself again. Why don’t you satisfy me by a
straightforward answer? I do deserve it; for I always take your part,
to other people and to myself too.”
“Do you?” he asked, so eagerly, with such a flash of pleasure over his
face that Olivia felt abashed again. Then he paused, and the light had
gone quite out of his face before he went on: “You won’t be satisfied
then with the consciousness that you are a poor beggar’s solitary
champion?”
“I won’t be satisfied with that if I can get you to tell me any more,”
she answered, simply. “I don’t pretend that I’m not anxious to know
more; but it is not out of curiosity to learn other people’s affairs,
but because there really must be something peculiarly interesting about
a secret which causes your own relations to speak ill of you.”
Olivia had suddenly made up her mind for a bold stroke. It cannot be
denied that there was a little malice in her heart; but it was a small
matter compared with her real anxiety to put him on his guard against
one whom she considered a treacherous friend.
“My relations!” he echoed, with a look of such bewilderment and
incredulity that she began to think he would not believe her.
“Isn’t a sister-in-law a kind of relation?” asked Olivia, rather
unsteadily, after a pause.
Mr. Brander’s expression changed to one of pain and fear; so that
Olivia watched him in terror, not daring to go on. He looked at her
without answering, and then, as she remained silent and fearful, he
got up and walked to the other side of the little room, where, as her
face was turned towards the fireplace, she could not see him; but she
knew without the aid of her eyes, that he was much agitated; and when
he came back and, standing by her chair, put his hand gently on her
shoulder and spoke to her with calmness which might have passed for
unconcern, she was not deceived by it.
“And what ill does my sister-in-law say of me?” he asked.
“She told my step-mother an old story, and said you were not a proper
acquaintance for--young girls.”
“Oh, she said that, did she?” returned Mr. Brander, in a measured
voice. Then he said, abruptly, after a silence, “You are sure of this?”
“Quite sure.”
Then it appeared to the girl that he stood beside her without a word
for a very long time. For the fire seemed to die down, and the murky
light outside to fade perceptibly, before he even changed his attitude.
At last she found courage to look up timidly into his face, and saw
that his eyes were staring towards the window with the blind look of a
seer whose vision is only keen for the fancies and phantoms in his own
mind. And Mr. Brander’s fancies must have been of the gloomiest kind,
for his face startled the girl into uttering a little exclamation,
which roused him from his abstraction, and woke him to the fact that
his hand had been laying all this time on the young girl’s shoulder.
“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, as he withdrew it as hastily as if it
had been red-hot iron.
The blood rushed to Olivia’s face. The touch of Mr. Brander’s hand had
not offended her; the knowledge that it had been unconscious did. And
a most acute pang shot through her heart, as she realized that it was
because his mind was full of another woman’s treatment that he was
oblivious of her. She was jealous. In such an impulsive, energetic
girl as she was, vivid feeling found vent in hasty action. Rising from
her chair, and quite forgetting that her odd costume made dignity
impossible, she said, very coldly, that she must go home now; her
father would be anxious about her, and the rain was less violent. Even
as she spoke the wind dashed a clattering shower against the window
in disproof of her words. She did not notice it herself; neither,
apparently, did her host. For he opened the door for her at once
without any semblance of a wish to detain her, and without seeming to
remark her singular apparel.
Olivia darted out of the room and up the stairs in a tempest of excited
feelings which found vent in an outburst of indignation against
Mrs. Warmington for leaving her so long alone with Mr. Brander. The
housekeeper met her at the top of the stairs, looking herself pale and
frightened.
“Why didn’t you come down?” asked Olivia, impatiently.
The old woman glanced nervously down into the hall, and answered in a
soothing tone of apology,
“I did not dare, Miss Denison. I did not want my employer to find me
talking to you. He would have guessed what we were talking about. We
get so sharp, we people who live much alone, and he would never have
forgiven me. Ever since I heard him go into the room where you were I
have been walking up and down the landing in a fever. You did not tell
him what we had been talking about, did you?”
“No,” answered Olivia. “He didn’t ask me.”
“Thank goodness!” said the housekeeper with such a depth of relief that
the girl’s curiosity was roused.
“Why should you mind so much?” she asked. “He seems quite used to
having his affairs discussed, and takes it for granted that people
should think the worst of him.”
This thought moved her as she spoke, and caused her voice to tremble
sympathetically. The housekeeper examined her face narrowly as she
answered, with great discretion--
“He wouldn’t have minded about any one else, Miss Denison: but it’s
different with you.”
“Different--with me!” echoed the girl, very softly.
Without more words, Mrs. Warmington, after once more listening and
glancing down into the hall to assure herself that they were not likely
to be disturbed, crossed the landing on tiptoe, and beckoned Olivia to
follow her. Then throwing open the door of one of the front bedrooms
without noise, she said--
“That is Mr. Brander’s room. Do you see by his bedside a set of hanging
shelves on the wall?”
“Yes.”
“And a box in the middle of the bottom shelf?”
As she spoke, the housekeeper was crossing the room. Taking down the
box, she returned to the door with it, and, raising the lid, showed
Olivia the tray of an old-fashioned workbox with well-worn fittings.
“It was his mother’s, I believe,” she whispered. Then, as the girl drew
back, shocked at having been inveigled into prying among Mr. Brander’s
treasures, she went on: “Have you ever seen this?” And lifting out the
tray of the workbox, she thrust under Olivia’s reluctant but astonished
eyes an indiarubber golosh, which Miss Denison instantly recognized as
one she had lost on her way back from the Vicarage on the evening of
her arrival at Rishton.
With a little cry of astonishment and annoyance, Olivia put out a hasty
hand to recover her lost property. But Mrs. Warmington prevented her,
shutting the box hastily, and restoring it to its place.
“I can’t take, or allow you to take, anything out of my employer’s
boxes in his absence,” she said, drily.
“But it’s mine; it’s of no use to him, and I want it!”
“You will have to do without it, unless you care to go and fetch it
yourself. But I think, on second thoughts, you will be satisfied that
enough honor has been paid to your old shoe.”
Olivia blushed, and moved her shoulders with vexation.
“It was such a huge thing!” she exclaimed, impatiently. “They were
always sizes and sizes too big for me.”
Mrs. Warmington’s thin lips relaxed into a smile.
“Oh!” she said; “perhaps you only wish to put a smaller one in its
place.”
Olivia felt that she had, as her brothers would have termed it, “given
herself away,” and she was glad to let the subject drop. Following her
conductress into her bedroom, she put on her own, now dry, clothes,
in silence and much meekness, thanked her in a subdued voice for her
hospitality, and begged, as a final grace, the loan of an umbrella.
“It won’t be necessary. Mr. Brander will see you home.”
“Oh, no, indeed,” broke out Olivia, hastily. “I want to slip out of the
house quietly without his seeing me again.”
“Do you really want that?” asked the old woman, with a searching look
which set the younger blushing. “Because, if so, I can take you down
this way by the back staircase. It is never used, but--”
“Then, perhaps, the stairs will creak,” interrupted Olivia, and without
more delay she made, softly indeed but deliberately, for the front
staircase.
“I can’t thank you enough for your kindness,” she whispered, when they
both stood in the hall.
Mrs. Warmington shook her head with a drily amused smile.
“I had a motive,” she said. “I am too fond of my own comfort to put
myself out of the way without one.”
“A motive!” echoed Olivia.
“Yes. I wanted to know you better, and I wanted you to know Mr. Brander
better. Now nobody can deceive you about him, and nobody can deceive me
about you.”
“Why, who would try?” asked Olivia.
“Nobody, perhaps. Good-bye.”
With one glance towards the open door of the front room, from which
they both heard the sounds of a man’s tread, the housekeeper shook
her guest’s hand, and, abruptly leaving her, disappeared into her own
domain at the back of the house.
Olivia, who was highly offended at this discovery that she had been
“managed” and made the victim of a little trick, walked to the front
door with her head held high, and a firm intention of not even glancing
in the direction of the study. But a sound inside the room, as she
passed the door, broke her resolution, and she gave a swift glance that
way. The look revealed Mr. Blander standing beside the black, empty
fireplace. That was all. He saw her, and saw the proud turn of her head
as she instantly averted her eyes. Then he heard the latch of the front
door as her hands fumbled with it; he heard the door open, and shut
again immediately, very softly. The next moment there was a hesitating
step back across the hall, and the young girl’s face was looking into
the dingy room.
“Please will you open the door for me, Mr. Brander? I--I don’t quite
understand the lock.”
He came at once, and did the little service without a word. She looked
out; it was still raining persistently, the heavy downpour having been
succeeded by a fine drizzle.
“It hasn’t left off yet,” she said, timidly.
“No.”
They both stood still, looking out into the gathering darkness.
“Shall I lend you an umbrella?”
“Oh, if you would, I should be so glad. I will be sure to bring--send
it back.”
He brought an umbrella from the stand, and opened it thoughtfully.
“If I lend you this one--it is the best, the lightest; the one I use
when there’s a bishop about--I shall want it again early to-morrow
morning--”
“I’ll be sure to--”
“Very early,” he continued, without heeding her.
“Then let me have the old one.”
“It’s full of holes. Besides, one of the ribs is broken.”
“Oh, never mind. I can quite well get back without one at all.”
“It might be managed,” suggested Vernon, guiltily, when he had produced
and examined carefully the second best umbrella, which proved to be
only a little better than its reputation. “If I were to walk part of
the way back with you, it might clear up, and you might be able to get
home without one; and I could bring it back, you see.”
“But I don’t like to trouble. I’m always imposing,” murmured Olivia.
However, the half permission had been enough for Mr. Brander, who was
by this time slipping into his rough overcoat with the alacrity of the
British workman at the sound of the first stroke of six.
Worse conditions for a pleasant walk through the fields and lanes can
scarcely be imagined than a March evening after a pouring wet day,
a fine rain falling, the ground ankle-deep in mud, and the darkness
already so thick that an occasional slip into a puddle was unavoidable.
They had to walk in most uneven, jolting fashion to find a path at
all through the steepest part of the lane. Sometimes Olivia had to
take Mr. Brander’s arm to keep her footing at all, and once he had to
help her to jump over a miniature torrent. They scarcely talked at
all, but a warm sense of human sympathy and mutual help grew so strong
between them that when they came to a particularly ugly quagmire their
eyes would meet with a smile and a nod, and they would go on again
very happily. At last, when they got to the top of the hill, and both
instinctively stopped for breath at the same moment, Olivia looked up
and said, shyly and simply--
“Did you know it was I--all the time?”
“I knew it was you when I felt--something on my face. I was asleep, and
it woke me.”
“I’m so sorry,” murmured she.
“Don’t apologize. You may cry over me just as much as you like.”
She laughed a little, and then they went on again, but without
exchanging any more looks, until they came suddenly, without having
realized that they were so near, to the bottom of the Vicarage hill. He
glanced up it, and Olivia caught the expression of his eyes.
“You are not going there--to the Vicarage?” she burst out, impulsively.
“Yes, I am,” he answered, with a dogged look of anger and scorn on his
face.
The girl, drawing a long, sobbing breath, retreated a step without
speaking.
Vernon stopped and looked into her face almost with the boldness of a
lover.
“Why not?” he asked, in a voice little above a whisper.
“Why not, indeed, Mr. Brander!” she said, coldly, but without
succeeding in hiding a break in her voice; “if the friends you can’t
trust are of more value than those you can.”
“It is not a question of that, Miss Denison.”
“Isn’t it?” she broke in, quickly. “I think it is. You will go in all
cold indignation, and come out all hot remorse and repentance. And you
will never see that lessons in patient self-sacrifice are all the good
you will ever get out of the Vicarage!”
Vernon started violently, and fell to shivering.
Shocked at the strong effect of her bold words, Olivia remained
silently and humbly waiting for the reproaches she expected.