Olivia Denison’s thoughts on the morning after the haymaking, were
entirely occupied with Vernon Brander, his illness, the possibility of
his innocence, and the chances of his escape if guilty; so that when,
on entering the poultry yard with her basket on her arm, she found Fred
Williams, amusing himself by setting two cocks to fight each other, she
uttered a cry of unmistakable annoyance and astonishment.
“You look as if you hadn’t expected to see me, and as if, by Jove, you
hadn’t wanted to!” said he, frankly. As she made no answer, but only
raised her eyebrows he went on--“Don’t you remember I said I should be
here this morning?”
“I had forgotten it, or only remembered it as a kind of nightmare.”
“Do you mean me to take your rudeness seriously?” asked Fred, after
a pause in which he had at last struggled with the amazing fact
that he had met a girl to whom his admiration, and all the glorious
possibilities it conveyed, meant absolutely nothing.
“As seriously as I have always taken yours.”
Fred was silent again for some moments, during which Olivia went
on throwing handfuls of grain to the chickens, and calling softly
“Coop-coop-coop-coop!” in a most persuasive and unconcerned manner.
“And you really mean that this is your last answer? I can tell you,
it’s your last chance with me?”
Olivia turned, making the most of her majestic height, and looked down
on him with the loftiest disdain.
“I assure you that if it were my ‘last chance,’ as you call it, not
only with you, but with anybody, I should say just the same.”
Fred Williams leaned against the wall of the yard, turned out the
heterogeneous contents of one of his pockets, and began turning them
over with shaking fingers to hide his mortification.
Still Olivia went on with her occupation, without paying the slightest
attention to him. Suddenly the rejected suitor shovelled all the things
he had taken out back into his pockets, and with a monkey-like spring
placed himself right in front of her.
“I wish there was somebody about to tell you what a jolly fool you’re
making of yourself,” he said, looking up at her rather viciously.
“You may go and fetch somebody to do so if you like,” said she,
serenely.
“And leave you in peace for a little while, I suppose you mean?”
“Perhaps some such thought may have crossed my mind.”
Mr. Fred Williams had not a high opinion of himself, but experience
had taught him that his “expectations” gave him an adventitious value;
to find neither his modesty nor his money of any avail was a discovery
which destroyed for once his habitual good humor, and showed a side of
his character which he should by all means have kept concealed from a
lady he wished to charm.
“Very well,” he snarled, while an ugly blush spread over his face,
and his fingers twitched with anger; “very well. You may think it
very smart to snub me, and high-spirited and all that. I’ve stood a
good deal of it--a good deal more than I’d have stood from anybody
else--because you’re handsome. I know I’m not handsome, or refined
either; but I don’t pretend to be. And I’m a lot handsomer than the
hatchet-faced parson, anyhow. And as for refinement, you can get a lot
more for twenty-five thousand a year than for a couple of hundred,
which is quite a decent screw for one of your preaching fellows. But
now I’ve done with you, I tell you, I’ve done with you.”
“Isn’t that rather a singular expression, considering that I’ve never
given you the slightest encouragement?” asked Olivia, coldly.
“Encouragement! I don’t expect encouragement; but I expect a girl like
you to know a good thing when she sees it.”
“I am afraid we differ as to what constitutes a good thing.”
“Very likely; but we shan’t ‘differ as to what constitutes’ a bad thing
for Vernon Brander; and if you don’t see all those twopenny geraniums
pulled up out of St. Cuthbert’s churchyard, and every stone grubbed up,
and every brick of that old tower pulled down, before another week’s
up, my name’s not Fred Williams. There, Miss Denison; now, what do you
say to that?”
“I say that you have fully justified your low opinion of yourself.”
“And I’ll justify my low opinion of Vernon Brander. If he’s got any
secrets buried in those old stones, we’ll have them dragged out, and
make you jolly well ashamed of your friend.”
“Oh, no, you won’t do that,” said Olivia, who had turned pale to the
lips, and grown very majestic and stern; “though you have succeeded in
making me ashamed of having called you even an acquaintance.”
“Perhaps you have a weakness for--”
Before he could finish his sentence, he found himself seized by the
shoulders, and saw towering over him a beautiful countenance, so aglow
with passionate indignation that it looked like the face of a Fury.
“If you dare to say that word I’ll shake you like a rat!” hissed out
Olivia, giving him an earnest of her promise with great good will.
“Stop! stop! unless you--want--to--kill somebody--to be
more--like--your--precious--friend,” panted Fred, who was not a coward.
Olivia let him go with a movement which sent him spinning among the
chickens.
“Well, that’s cool,” panted he, as he picked up his hat and looked at
it ruefully. “You talk about refinement one minute and the next you
treat me in this unladylike way!”
“Oh, I apologize for my vulgar manners,” laughed Olivia, who was
already rather ashamed of her outbreak. “I’m only a farmer’s daughter,
you know.”
“Yes, and you couldn’t give yourself more airs if you were a duchess.
Your father isn’t so proud by a long way, I can tell you,” he added
with meaning.
Olivia became in an instant very quiet.
“What do you mean?” she asked sternly.
“Oh, nothing but that he’s been in the habit of borrowing money of me
for some time; only trifling sums, but still they seemed to come in
handy, judging by the way he thanked me.”
He was disappointed to see that Olivia took this information without
any of the tragic airs he had expected.
“I daresay they did,” said she. “We are not too well off, as everybody
knows.”
The simplicity with which she uttered these words made the young man
feel at last rather ashamed of himself.
“Of course, I know he’ll pay me back,” he said hastily.
Olivia opened great proud eyes, full of astonishment and disdain, and
said, superbly, “Of course he will.”
“And you don’t feel annoyed at the obligation, eh?” asked Fred, rather
bewildered.
“I don’t see any obligation,” said she quietly.
“Oh, don’t you? Well, most people would consider it one.”
“How much does he owe you?”
“Oh, only a matter of forty or fifty pounds.”
He thought the amount would astonish and distress her; but as,
apparently, it failed to do either, he hastened to add--
“Of course, that’s a mere nothing; but he let me know, a day or two
ago, that he should want a much larger loan, and of course, I informed
him he could have it for the asking.”
She did wince at that; but the manner in which she resented his
impertinence was scarcely to his taste.
“And you think the obligation is on our side?” she said, sweetly, but
with a tremor of subdued anger in her voice. “What have you done except
to lend my father a few pounds, which you would never have missed, even
if you had thrown them into a well instead of lent them to an honorable
man! While he, by accepting the loan, has given you a chance of putting
on patronizing airs towards a man in every respect your superior.”
“All right--all right! Go on! Vernon Brander shall pay for this!”
snarled Fred, at last rendered thoroughly savage by her contempt.
“Vernon Brander will never be the worse for having you for an enemy. I
should be sorry for him if you were his friend,” she said, defiantly.
“Oh, all right, I’m glad to hear it,” said Fred, glad at last to beat
a retreat, and delivering his parting words at the gate of the poultry
yard, with one foot in the new-laid egg basket. “Then if anything
unpleasant happens to your father or your parson through me, you’ll be
able to make light of it!”
Olivia felt rather frightened when she saw how discolored and distorted
with rage his little weasel’s face had become. But she bore a brave
front, and only said, for all reply to his threats--
“Won’t you find it more convenient to stand on the ground, Mr.
Williams? To walk about among eggs without accident requires a great
deal of skill and experience.”
But when, with an impatient exclamation, he left the poultry yard,
Olivia’s heart gave way, and she began to reproach herself bitterly
for not having kept a bridle upon her tongue. On the other hand, she
was glad that her words had provoked the mean little fellow to confess
his loans to her father; for she thought she had influence enough with
the latter to prevent any more such transactions, and as for the money
already owing, means must somehow be found to repay it.
It was late in the afternoon before she was able to start on the way to
St. Cuthbert’s. She felt, as usual, some self-reproach at the thought
that she was acting contrary to her father’s wishes; but, as usual, she
was too self-willed to give up her own in deference to his. The sun was
still glowing on the fields, and pouring its hot rays on the roads,
which were parched and cracked for want of rain. The cart-tracks made
faint lines in a thick layer of white dust, which the lightest breeze
from the hills blew up in clouds, coating the leaves on the hedges and
swirling into heaps by the well-worn foot path. The wood that bordered
the road for some distance between Rishton and Matherham was as silent
as if the birds had all left it; oak and beech and dusty pine looked
dry and brown in the glare. It was a long, hot, weary walk; but at last
she came near the lonely Vicarage, and slipping down the final few
yards of the steep lane, in a cloud of dust which was raised by her
own feet at each step, Olivia heard the faint sound of voices coming
from the house, and stopped short, fancying she could detect Vernon’s
voice, and wondering who was with him. But the sounds ceased, and she
went slowly on, thinking she had perhaps been mistaken. She entered the
garden gate, and walked up the stone pathway, still without hearing
anything more, until, suddenly, just as she was within a few paces of
the door, she heard a woman’s voice, low, but clear and strong, utter
these words--
“Remember, you swore it. Ten years ago you swore it to me, and it is
still as binding on you as it was then.”
“Why should I forget it?”
Olivia knew that it was Mrs. Brander’s voice that answered, in a tone
full of contempt and dislike--
“Why, this Denison girl, this----”
Neither she nor Vernon had paid any heed to the footsteps on the stone
flags.
Now Olivia hastened to ring the bell sharply, and there was silence
immediately.
“How is Mr. Brander to-day?” asked she of Mrs. Warmington when the
housekeeper opened the door.
“He’s not much better, and not likely to be while that uncivilized
creature from the Antipodes continues to make his abode here, and worry
my master morning, noon, and night,” said the housekeeper, tartly.
“Mr. Mitchell? Where is he now?” asked Olivia, eagerly.
“He’s out in the churchyard there, poking about among the gravestones.
I’ve been watching him from the window of the little room he sleeps
in. I don’t know how he got hold of the key. I have a duplicate, for
cleaning the church. I don’t know myself where my master keeps his.”
“I think I’ll go and speak to Mr. Mitchell, and come back when Mr.
Brander is disengaged.”
“Disengaged! He’s disengaged now, as far as I know----”
“I think I heard Mrs. Brander’s voice as I came up the path.”
The housekeeper’s lips tightened, and she drew herself up in evident
disapproval.
“Indeed! I was not aware she was here.”
“Well, I’ll be back in about a quarter of an hour, as I should like to
see Mr. Brander,” said Olivia, hastily.
Mrs. Warmington raised her eyebrows. She was longing to tell Miss
Denison that she thought, under the circumstances, it would be more
modest to stay away; but she did not dare. So Olivia tripped down the
stone path, and was in the churchyard before the housekeeper had had
time to make up her mind how much of her suspicions it would be proper
to communicate to a young girl.
It was some minutes before Olivia succeeded in finding Ned Mitchell.
The sun was setting by this time, and there were dark shadows among the
ruined portions of the church. It seemed to her as she walked between
the newly laid out flower beds with their bright array of geranium,
calceolaria, and verbena, that this innovation was out of place, and
only showed up, in a more striking manner, the havoc time and tempest
had made among the old stones, just as the mowing of the grass upon
them had accentuated the irregular mounds and hillocks which filled
the ruined south aisle. Olivia stepped in and out and over the mounds,
calling softly, “Mr. Mitchell!” At last, in the corner where the old
crypt was, she heard a sound coming, as it were, from the ground under
her feet. She stopped and listened, holding her breath. The sounds
continued, a soft, muffled “thud, thud,” as of some heavy instrument
brought again and again down on the earth. She advanced, step by step,
always listening, fancying that she felt the ground tremble under her
feet at the force of the blows. At last she came close to the place
where the rugged steps leading down into the crypt had been blocked
up years before. With her senses keenly on the alert, Olivia noticed
that some of the stones and earth which blocked the entrance had been
recently moved; and prying more closely, she found, behind a bramble
and a tuft of rank grass, a small hole, low down in the ground, which
looked scarcely large enough for the passage of a man’s body. However,
this seemed to be the only outlet from the vault, so Olivia sat down on
a broken gravestone, and waited.
It seemed to Olivia to be growing quite cold and dark before a
scraping and rumbling noise, as of falling stones and earth, drew her
attention to the concealed hole in the ground. She got up, and the
noise almost ceased.
“It is I, Mr. Mitchell,” she said, without being able to see him; “I’ve
been waiting for you.”
For answer, Mr. Mitchell’s unmistakable, gruff voice murmured a string
of sullen imprecations, of which, luckily, nothing was distinctly
audible. However, he put his head out of the hole, and then proceeded
to extricate the whole of his person with such exceeding neatness and
cleverness that the hole was scarcely enlarged, and the bramble and
grass remained intact. He presented a strange appearance, however, for
he was in his shirt sleeves; a colored silk handkerchief was bound
round his head down to his eyes; in his right hand he held a common
kitchen poker; while he was so covered with mould and dust from head
to foot that but for his peculiarly heavy movements and rough voice he
would have been unrecognizable.
“Well, what are you doing here?” he asked, very ill-humoredly, as
he shook himself free from some of the dust he had collected in his
subterranean exploration. “I thought I heard somebody messing about up
here. How did you get in?”
“In the same way that you did, except that I asked for a key instead of
taking one without asking.”
She was alarmed to see, when he had wiped some of the dirt off his face
with his handkerchief, that he looked savagely self-satisfied, and
quite beyond all reasoning. This was proved clearly by his next words.
He nodded his head quietly while she spoke, and then said--
“All right. That’s so. Now you had better run home, and be careful not
to say anything about what you’ve just seen. For I tell you, little
girl, if you do anything to interfere with me and my actions just now,
it’ll be the worst day’s work for your little parson up yonder that
ever was done. So now you know.”
Olivia shivered, but she did not answer or contradict him. She only
said, in a subdued and tremulous voice, “Good-evening, Mr. Mitchell,”
and walked away towards the gate, stumbling over the chips of stone
that lay hidden in the grass, which had been allowed to remain long and
rank in this the south side of the graveyard. She unlocked the gate,
passed out, and was relocking it when she heard rapid footsteps behind
her.
“Give me that key!” said Mrs. Brander’s voice, so hoarse, so agitated
that Olivia looked round before she could be sure that it was really
the vicar’s calm, cold wife.
Her large eyes had deep black semicircles under them; her usually firm
lips were trembling; her whole appearance showed a disorder, a lack
of that dainty preciseness in little things which was so strongly
characteristic of her.
“This key!” said Olivia, doubtfully. “Do you know who is in there?”
Mrs. Brander examined the girl from head to foot with passionate
mistrust, while at the same time she struggled to regain a calmer
manner.
“Who is it?” she asked, with an attempt at an indifferent tone.
“Mr. Mitchell.”
The vicar’s wife drew back from the gate.
“You mean this? You are not playing me a trick?”
“A trick? No. Why should I?”
There was a pause, during which Mrs. Brander stood looking at her
fixedly. As she did not speak, Olivia presently asked--
“Do you still wish to go in?”
Mrs. Brander hesitated, and then drew back with a shudder.
“No,” she murmured, scarcely above her breath, “I--I won’t go in.”
As, however, she did not attempt to go away, Olivia bade her
“good-night,” without getting any answer, and went up the lane towards
the house. She did not wish to call at the Vicarage now; she wanted
first to have time to think over what she had seen and heard in the
churchyard, as well as her interview with Mrs. Brander. A new idea,
which promised to throw light on the whole mystery, had come into her
mind. But there was the key to be returned to Mrs. Warmington. After a
moment’s thought, she decided that she would leave it at the back door,
and thus escape the risk of a meeting with Vernon.
But when she had reached the gate of the yard behind the house, she
heard Vernon’s voice calling her.
“Miss Denison, Miss Denison, wait one moment!”
He had caught sight of her from a side window, and in another minute he
had come down to her.
“Why did you come round this way?” he asked, taking her hand in one of
his, which was hot, and dry, and feverish.
“I--I have the key of the churchyard to return to Mrs. Warmington.”
“And you wanted to escape the chance of seeing me. But I was watching
for you, you know,” said he, looking at her tenderly. Then he suddenly
changed his manner. “I thought you would come and see me to-day,” he
said. “It would be like your usual kindness when any one is ill.”
“I did call and inquire,” said Olivia, demurely. “But Mrs. Brander was
with you.”
Vernon looked at her earnestly.
“Ah!” he exclaimed; “then I know when you came. I heard your
footsteps.” Then he looked at her curiously, and asked, “Didn’t you
hear voices? Didn’t you hear us talking?”
“Yes,” answered Olivia, simply. “And I heard something of what you were
saying.”
“You will tell me what you heard?”
Olivia answered, looking down--
“I heard her remind you to keep an oath that you had made to her, and I
heard her mention--me!”
“And didn’t you want to know what she meant?”
“I suppose I did.”
“And will you be content not to know?”
“Perhaps I shall. For I think I have guessed something of the truth
already.”
Vernon’s eyes glowed with passionate yearning as they met hers.
“Impossible!” said he, below his breath. “And yet--you women have such
quick perception. If it is true that you know,” he went on, in a firmer
and sterner voice, “I shall never dare to speak to you again.”
Olivia was trembling with excitement. It was not true that she was
mistress of the secret, but there a dim intuition in her mind which
bewildered, sometimes almost maddened, her. She did not attempt to
answer Vernon Brander; but drawing sharply away from him the hand he
still held, she abruptly wished him “good-night,” and putting the
church keys on the wall beside him, ran away up the lane as fast as her
active feet could carry her.
When Olivia reached home she was greeted by severe silence on the part
of her step-mother; while her father, who was usually so careful to try
to make amends for any unkindness of his wife’s by little unobtrusive
attentions, carefully avoided her. The girl learned the reason of this
treatment by remarks which Mrs. Denison, apropos of nothing, addressed
from time to time to the children, warning them not to spoil their
clothes, as they were the last they would have; telling them not to
disturb their father, as he was writing to a gentleman to whom he owed
money, asking for time in which to repay it; and finally admonishing
them to be courteous to Olivia, as she could have the place sold up
in a moment by insulting her father’s creditors; from which Olivia
gathered that Fred Williams had already vented his spite on her father,
and thereby prepared a most uncomfortable domestic life for her for
some time to come.
She affected to take no notice of this treatment however, and did not
even go in search of her father, thinking it would be better to let
the first effects both of Fred’s and of his wife’s ill temper pass off
before she spoke to him on the subject of the former’s addresses.
Telling Lucy to bring her supper up to her rooms, Olivia left the
inharmonious family circle without bidding good-night to any one, and
shut herself up in the east wing, where she could always draw the bolt
of the outer door and be free from molestation. This she did, and being
in a restless and excited state of mind, passed the next two hours
in wandering from one room to the other, considering the mystery of
Nellie Mitchell’s disappearance by the light of all the facts which,
one by one, had come to her knowledge. She had become so accustomed to
these rooms that it was only now and then that she remembered their
connection with the murdered girl. To-night, however, the recollection
startled her at every turn she took in her walks up and down. She
seemed again to see the bedroom as it had looked on her first entrance,
nearly six months ago, the rat scurrying down the curtains, the carpet
lying in damp strings upon the floor, the mouldy books, and the dust
lying thickly on chairs and mantelpiece. Everything had been changed
since then; fresh hangings put to the bed; bright cretonne coverings
to the old furniture; a new carpet, soft and warm, had replaced the
damp rags. But on this particular evening her imagination seemed
stronger than reality; as she walked from the one room to the other,
she pictured to herself always that the chamber she was not in at the
moment was in the state in which she had first seen it. These fancies
grew so strong that they drove more serious thoughts out of her
head; just when she wanted to be able to analyze the ideas which the
day’s occurrences had suggested, she had lost all power of thinking
connectedly; nothing but bewildering recollections of the words she
had heard and the scenes she had witnessed could be got to occupy her
excited mind.
She ran at last to one of her bedroom windows, threw it open, and
looked out. It was dark now, for it was past nine o’clock, and the
evening had turned wet. A light, drizzling summer rain was falling, and
the sky was heavy with clouds. The outlook was so dreary that after a
few minutes she shut the window, shivering, lit the candles, and tried
to read. But she was in such a nervous state that she uttered a little
scream when Lucy, bringing her supper, knocked at the outer door. Very
much disgusted with herself for this display of feminine weakness, she
would not even allow Lucy, who loved to linger about when she had any
little service to perform for “Miss Olivia,” to stay for a few minutes’
chat. When the supper had been laid on the table in the outer room, and
the bright little maid had run down stairs, Olivia did not, as usual,
lock the outer door after her. She felt so unaccountably lonely and
restless that she went into the little passage outside her two rooms,
and set the outer door open, so as to feel that her connection with
the rest of the human life in the house was not altogether severed.
She even walked to the end of the corridor and glanced out through the
large square window at the end, listening all the while for some sounds
of household life downstairs. But in this east wing very little could
be heard, and this evening everything seemed to Olivia to be unusually
quiet.
The corridor window looked out over fields, showing the farm garden,
with its fruit trees and vegetable beds on the right, and barns
and various other outbuildings on the left. Right underneath was a
neglected patch of land--a corner of the garden not considered worth
cultivation. Lying among the rank grass were an old ladder and a pile
of boards, which had been there when the Denisons took the farm, and
had remained undisturbed ever since. It suddenly occurred to Olivia,
for the first time, how alarmingly easy it would be for an evilly
disposed person to place the ladder against the wall, and to effect
an entrance through the window, the fastening of which she noticed
was broken, and had evidently been so a long time. Not that such a
thing was likely to happen, burglaries being unheard-of things in this
neighborhood. Still, the idea got such firm hold of her excited fancy
that, two hours later, when all the household had retired to rest, she
came out of her apartments in her dressing-gown, to give a final glance
outside, and to make sure that her absurd fears were as groundless as
she told herself they were.
Opening the window and putting her head out into the drizzling rain,
Olivia saw, in the gloom of the misty night, a dark object creeping
stealthily along outside the garden wall. Just as it reached that part
of the wall which was immediately opposite the window, a watery gleam
of moonlight showed through the clouds, and enabled her to see that
the object was a man. The next moment she saw him climb over into the
garden beneath. Still keeping close to the wall, he crept rapidly along
until he was close under the window. Holding her breath, Olivia watched
him as he stooped and lifted the ladder from the ground. Her blood
suddenly seemed to rush to her brain, and then to trickle slowly back
through her veins as cold as ice.
For she recognized him.