WHEN Olivia had come as near as she could to the porch without being seen from thence, she stopped, in the hope that Mrs. Denison, who was still grumbling at her step-daughter’s non-appearance, would go indoors, and give her a chance of enveloping her father in a warm hug, and of snatching a stolen interview with him unknown to the ruling powers.
In a few moments, to the girl’s great delight, Mrs. Denison said, impatiently, “Well, I can’t stand here in the snow, just because your daughter chooses to insult me by absenting herself when I am expected.”
“My dear, my dear,” expostulated papa’s mild tones, “Olivia is the best creature in the world. She wouldn’t think of insulting you or anybody. But how could she guess that we should come by an earlier train than the one we said?”
“Well, I’m not going to catch cold even for the best creature in the world, and I should advise you not to either. Are you coming in?”
“Not directly, I think, my dear. I want a little air after that stuffy railway carriage. And really, you know, those children do quarrel so——”
“If you want to go hunting for Olivia, say so; but don’t put it down to the poor children,” said Mrs. Denison.
And she went indoors, shutting the door with a nearer approach to a “slam” than etiquette prescribes for a lady.
No sooner was she safely inside than Olivia crept along under the lea of the house wall, and springing up the worn steps at a bound, flung down her umbrella, and threw her arms round her father’s neck like a hungry young bear.
“Good gracious, my dear, you’re quite wet and as cold as ice. You must come inside and warm yourself.”
“Oh, no, dear old papa—poor old papa; it’s warmer here outside. With Beatrix and Regie fighting, and mamma at freezing point, the place must be——”
“Now you’ve been listening; that isn’t right.”
“Yes, I have—all the afternoon—taking in all the private conversations I could get near enough to overhear. I find it grows upon one. But I can always tell what temper Mrs. Denison is in without any listening.”
“Now, Olivia, I won’t hear that. Your step-mother is the best of women——”
“Yes, papa, I know,” said Olivia, nodding gravely.
Indeed she had heard that sentiment many scores of times, and she supposed that by constant repetition her good-natured father hoped to persuade himself that it was true.
“And Regie and Beatrix are the best of children, aren’t they, old papa?” she asked, gravely.
He was quite distressed at not being able to reply truthfully in the affirmative.
“Well,” he said, “I’m sure they would be. Only somehow, I don’t know how it is, they seem to get a little too much indulged, I think.”
“Perhaps they do. I think they want a little more of your iron rule, papa,” said Olivia, who was hanging on to his arm, lovingly patting his cheek and turning up his coat collar and lavishing upon him all the caressing little attentions he loved from his adored daughter’s hands.
He began to laugh; her liveliness and demonstrative affection were dispelling the gloomy forebodings which had hung upon him all day on the entrance to this new and untried life.
“You don’t treat me with proper respect, Olivia. If you are going to be impudent, I shall take you indoors and get Mrs. Denison to talk to you.”
“What mortal man may dare, you dare; but you don’t dare that,” said his daughter, saucily. “Don’t you want to know how I’ve got on here all by myself?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid you’ll catch cold?”
“No, I shan’t. The excitement of this stolen meeting with the king of my heart will keep me warm. Besides, we’ll go in directly. Only when we do, you know what it will be. Nag, nag—oh, no, I forgot; that word is tabooed. I should say orate, orate, until all the ills that flesh is heir to have been exhausted.”
“What were you doing out on a day like this? You hadn’t gone to meet us, had you?”
“No-o, I hadn’t. I’d been to look at a church.”
“That means that you’ve fallen in love with a parson.”
“Papa, papa, how can you say such things—of me, too?”
“Why, my dear child, I only spoke in fun. You don’t really suppose I thought so meanly of you as that?”
Olivia laughed with some constraint. If her father, who already had a prejudice against the clergy, should hear the rumors about poor Mr. Brander, nothing, short of entreaties which she would be ashamed to use, would induce him to allow her to exchange another word with the vicar of St. Cuthbert’s. And, in a neighborhood where the social attractions were so few as at Rishton, the loss of an acquaintance capable of intelligent conversation was a serious one. She grew silent, and beginning to feel conscious of the cold, shivered. Her father instantly opened the door and led her into the house. He could hear his wife’s powerful voice as she chatted with one of the servants in the dining-room. Mrs. Denison was one of those women who confide much in their servants, without extracting any confidence worth having in return. She dropped into a stony silence as her husband and his daughter entered; for there was a feud, generally covert but none the less real, between the two ladies.
Mrs. Denison was a woman of about thirty-five, of the middle height, somewhat thick set, with a cold face, which was not ill looking, though she had never been strictly handsome. She drew herself up, with a displeased expression, in the arm chair she occupied by the fire; and Olivia knew that her efforts to make the house comfortable had not met with the approval of its mistress. The girl walked the whole length of the long room with a rather rebellious feeling in her heart, which she tried to subdue, and held out her hand with the best grace she could.
“How do you do, mamma? I hope you had a pleasant journey,” she said, cordially.
Mrs. Denison gave her finger tips, and looked at her with cold eyes.
“Quite as well as I could expect, thank you, knowing what I had to look forward to.”
“I hope you don’t dislike the new home already.”
“Oh, when it begins to look at all like ‘home,’ I daresay it will be bearable enough; but there is at least a fortnight’s hard work for me before that can happen.”
Olivia’s face changed, and began to look proud and mutinous. Mr. Denison rushed into the breach.
“Come, come, Susan, I don’t think you are quite fair to poor Olivia. Remember, it’s hard work for a girl, arranging a big house like this. I think she has done very well indeed.”
“You must allow me, Edward, to know what I am talking about,” said his wife; while Regie and Beatrix, who had been quarrelling silently but viciously in a corner, scenting something in a possible discussion among their elders, came to an abrupt truce and listened eagerly. “I think I ought to understand the arrangement of a house by this time.”
“It is a pity, Mrs. Denison, that you could not have spared Lucy and me a week of discomfort and hard work by coming here first yourself,” said Olivia, whose quick temper was seldom proof against her step-mother’s attacks. “I never doubted that we should fail to please you, but you might give us the credit of having tried.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Susan? What have you to find fault with?” asked Mr. Denison. His easy-going nature made him averse from interfering in any discussion; but he had suffered so much self-reproach for allowing his daughter to come to Rishton by herself that he felt impelled to dare a word in her behalf. “Hasn’t she made the place very comfortable?”
“She has at least taken care that she herself shall be very comfortable,” said Mrs. Denison, in her most disagreeable tone.
“Will you please tell me how I have done that?” asked Olivia, in a very low voice.
She was afraid lest her self-control should leave her, and the discussion assume the vulgar aspect of a quarrel between two angry women. For, blame herself for it as she might, she was angry as well as hurt.
“By consulting nobody’s convenience but your own in your choice of a room for yourself,” said Mrs. Denison, sharply.
“My bedroom!” cried the girl with unfeigned surprise. “Why, what other could I have chosen? It is the smallest in this side of the house, except papa’s dressing-room!”
“It is the only one that I could possibly make into a boudoir for myself. I don’t know whether you expect me to give up all the little comforts and refinements of a lady.”
This speech grated on the ears of both Olivia and her father. Mr. Denison, after ten years of his second marriage, was by no means so absorbed by marital devotion as to ignore the descent he had made in taking for his second wife a woman scarcely refined enough to have been maid to his first. Being a man of affectionate temperament, fond of home, and sensitively grateful for kindness real or supposed, it was natural that in his keen sorrow at his first wife’s death, he should fall a prey to the first woman, near at hand, who should find it worth her while to capture him. This, in the natural course of things, proved to be his daughter’s governess.
The clever, superficially educated daughter of a small provincial shopkeeper, the second Mrs. Denison, on her elevation to a rank above her birth, was determined to avail herself to the full of every privilege to which her new station entitled her. One of these privileges she conceived to be the possession of a “boudoir,” though what the precise significance of it was to her it was not easy to see, as she entered it very rarely, while the whole house was not large enough for her to “sulk” in. But in overlooking this necessity of her station, Mrs. Denison chose to consider that Olivia had wished to put upon her a slight of the kind she could least brook, and no pains the girl had taken in other directions could induce her to overlook the indignity.
Again Mr. Denison, with unusual rashness, stepped in.
“My dear Susan,” he expostulated, “Olivia must have a room to sleep in. And there must be a spare room kept for Ernest. Where else could she stow herself?”
“There are two good rooms in the wing——” began Mrs. Denison.
“But, my dear, they are damp and full of mouldy old things that——”
He was interrupted in his turn by his daughter.
“I haven’t the least objection to sleeping in the wing, papa. I left those rooms untouched for Mrs. Denison to decide what she would have done with them. I will take the large room with pleasure, mouldy old things and all.”
In truth, Olivia was pleased with this arrangement, and she took possession of the room which had once been Ellen Mitchell’s with alacrity which she did her best to hide from her step-mother. Nobody had told Mrs. Denison the story about those two rooms; but their decayed and desolate appearance had inspired her with a strong prejudice against them, so that Olivia was allowed to keep not only the bedroom but the outer room as well for her own use. Mr. Denison was strongly opposed to the idea of his beautiful daughter sleeping away from the rest of the household in what he called “a wretched old rat run.” But as the two feminine wills were both against his, he could do nothing but stipulate emphatically that fires were to be kept up in both rooms throughout the winter. His wife demurred at the expense, but on this point he was firm, and had his own way.
In the jarring family life which the Denison household led under the presidency of the second wife, Olivia found a great relief in being able to shut herself up in her wing, away from all discordant elements, even though the atmosphere of these two rooms remained to the end heavy with the tragedy of their last occupant. That tragedy the young girl grew more and more anxious fully to know about; so she turned over the leaves of the old books, and read again the inscription in faded ink in the old prayer book: “Ellen Mitchell, from her affectionate brother Ned.” What had become of “Ned?” Did the “affectionate brother” know that his sister had been spirited away, leaving no trace? These were conjectures which often passed through Olivia’s mind as she sat down for a lazy half hour by her fire at bedtime.
This half hour was now the only idle time in Olivia’s day. Like many other idle English girls, she had only wanted something to do to develop the most dashing energy; and as Mrs. Denison was too much enervated by long years of laziness to care for the trouble of housekeeping, Olivia flung herself with ardor into these new duties, and found in them that necessary outlet for her energies which she had previously sought in lawn tennis.
The whole family had been settled at Rishton Hall a week, and Mrs. Denison had begun bitterly to complain that nobody had called upon her, when one afternoon, while Olivia was busy in the dining-room with the children’s clothes, and her step-mother was shut up in her boudoir with a novel, a carriage drove up to the door, and a footman, descending from the box, gave such a thundering knock as made the old door creak on its hinges. Olivia could just see from where she sat that the carriage was very large, that the footman was very tall, and that the horses were showy animals, their heads held well back with the bearing rein. That was enough for her. She loved horses, and the bearing rein was an abomination in her eyes.
“Those parvenus!” she said to herself, haughtily.
And when Lucy came to announce that Mrs. and Miss and Mr. Frederick Williams were in the drawing-room, she said, briefly, “Tell Mrs. Denison, Lucy,” without looking up, or pausing in her work.
She knew this was wrong. She knew that she ought to go and entertain the visitors during the ten minutes which Mrs. Denison would certainly devote to self-adornment before going down to the drawing-room. But, besides that she felt, in her new burst of house-managing fervor, the giving and receiving of visits to be a frivolity, Olivia was resolved not to cultivate any intimacy with the family of the odious Frederick. So she worked on, feeling guilty but defiant, until she heard Mrs. Denison’s heavy and pompous tread upon the stairs. A few minutes later, the drawing-room door opened again, and Olivia heard the whole party come out to be shown over the house.
“You shall see what I have made of the upstairs rooms first,” said Mrs. Denison’s voice, “and make the acquaintance of my cherubs.”
And to Olivia’s delight, they streamed upstairs towards the room where the cherubs could be distinctly heard screaming with all their might. She gave a sigh of relief at this respite, and was turning over a small stocking on her hand to see what mending it needed, when there came a little, timid, hesitating knock at the door.
“Come in,” said she, feeling instantly sure the knock was that of a complete stranger.
The door was opened by the pleasant-looking lady whom Olivia had noticed in church. She had a diffident blush on her face, and a deprecating smile, which made her look pleasanter than ever. Olivia rose, and the lady hurried forward.
“No, don’t get up. Don’t make me feel I’ve disturbed you,” she entreated. “I know I’ve taken a dreadful liberty, but I caught sight of you in here as we came in, and I’m so devouringly anxious to know you that when Mrs. Denison offered to take us all upstairs, I slipped behind to try to get a peep at you.”
Olivia was disarmed. Miss Williams took a chair beside her, and looked with interest at the work in her hand.
“I could show you such a much better way of mending that heel if you’d let me,” she said, almost with eagerness.
“Oh, if you’re what they call ‘clever with your needle’ I musn’t work before you,” said the girl, smiling, “I’m only a beginner at anything useful, and I bungle frightfully over everything at present.”
“But you want to learn?” asked the lady quite earnestly.
“Indeed I do. We haven’t enough servants now to do everything; and unless I learn to give real help in the house—not mere amateurish dabbling, you know—half the things that ought to be done will be left undone.”
Miss Williams’ gloves were off, and she was already busy with the small stocking. Olivia was astonished to notice that the quick, clever fingers bore distinct traces, both in shape and texture, of former hard work. The elder lady glanced up, caught the girl’s eyes, and blushed.
“Yes,” she said, smiling, and as if telling a secret, “you would be astonished if I were to tell you of all the work these hands have done in their time. Now that my father has got on, and married a lady, all that has to be forgotten. But, oh! if the servants knew, when I tell them the hall has not been properly scrubbed, how I long to be down on my knees doing it myself!”
She was in earnest, but there was such a twinkle of fun in her eyes that Olivia, who liked her more and more every minute, joined her in a burst of laughter. Then Olivia remembered that there was a bond of union between them, and she said, in a confidential tone—
“You have a step-mother too, then?”
“Yes, and no. Mrs. Williams is my father’s second wife, and I am the child of his first. My own mother was”—she looked round her with mock mystery—“a factory lass. And—and so was I till I was fourteen. Then my father made a discovery, and began to grow rich and ambitious. And my mother died—perhaps luckily for her, poor thing—and he buried her and the old life together. But he could not bury me, you know; and if the lady he then married had not had the sweetest disposition in the world, it might have fared ill with me. But she is a kind creature, and she made my civilization as little irksome to me as possible. And that is why step-mother doesn’t seem the right name for her; and there is all my autobiography.”
All the time her busy fingers were making the needle fly through the stocking with a deftness absolutely bewildering to Olivia.
“You are luckier than I have been,” said the young girl, in a low voice.
Miss Williams looked up again, her eyes beaming with sympathetic intelligence.
“Yes, I could see that. My father married up for the second time, while yours——”
“Married down. Yes, down in every way; that’s the worst of it; temper, manners, everything. If she had been different, I should not have minded growing poorer in the least, but it is tiresome to be thrown so much on her society.”
“Yes, there are absolutely no suitable friends about here for you.”
“Well,” said Olivia, laughing, blushing, and hesitating. “I thought so till ten minutes ago.”
Miss Williams in her turn flushed with pleasure. But then she shook her head.
“You might put up with me perhaps, though I am much too old for you. But my half brother! You have met him, and snubbed him, I think, because he is always raving about your beauty and spirit. But if so, you certainly do not want to meet him again.”
“Indeed I don’t,” answered the girl, laughing.
“We might perhaps find a common meeting ground at the Vicarage after next week, when the vicar comes back. But I don’t know how you will like Mrs. Brander,” she added, very dubiously.
“Isn’t she nice?” asked Olivia, with great interest.
“Oh, yes, she’s very nice, and very handsome, and—and straightforward, and—and looked up to. She quite leads the fashions here, you know, and starts every thing. She is not at all like the ordinary humdrum vicar’s wife. But——”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to talk scandal, but you must hear all the standing gossip, and you may as well hear it without venom. People talk about her and her husband’s brother——”
“Mr. Vernon Brander?”
“Yes.”
“He told me himself he had been in love with her before she married,” said Olivia, warmly.
Miss Williams gave a quick glance at her face, making the girl blush.
“Yes, but, well, people have seen her going in and out of his house since, and late, very late in the evening. I should not have told you these things, only they must make a difference in the way one looks upon people.”
“From your manner towards Mr. Vernon Brander, I shouldn’t have thought they made any difference,” said Olivia, who was much excited.
“Ah, that is the privilege of being an old maid,” answered Miss Williams, very quietly. “I can do without fear what a young girl cannot do—make friends with a black sheep.”
Olivia started. “Do you think he is guilty, then?” she asked in a startled whisper.
Miss Williams, who had risen, looked very grave.
“Of the other charge? I don’t know. I would give my right hand to know that it was not so. For I am so much interested in him—I may even say, so fond of him. I know, from what he has told me, that his inner life is one long storm, one long struggle. But, why doesn’t he clear himself if he can? To an old friend like me three words would be enough.”
“Then you believe——”
“Why does he accept the position? Why does he come to me, and ask me to do what I can to help you in your loneliness?”
Olivia looked up.
“That is what he did last Sunday,” continued Miss Williams. “And he alluded to ‘his unfortunate position’ as putting a barrier between you and any wish he might have to assist you. Why should he speak like that if he knew himself to be innocent of either charge?”
Olivia was silent. She did not care to let the other lady see how deeply this matter affected her. She was, indeed, surprised at the keenness of her own feeling. It was a great relief to her that at that moment voices were heard at the top of the staircase, and Miss Williams jumped up, saying that she would have to excuse herself for playing truant. Olivia shook hands with her almost mechanically, and promised to go to see her without knowing what she said. As soon as she was left alone, the young girl abandoned her work, and sat staring before her in most unusual idleness. One sentence was ringing in her ears:
“Why didn’t he clear himself if he could?”
And to this question it was impossible to suggest an answer.