OLIVIA DENISON’S outburst against the Vicarage folk and their treatment of Vernon Brander seemed to overwhelm the latter with consternation. He stood before the impulsive girl as if benumbed by her vehemence; and it was not until her restless movements and bending head showed that she felt uncomfortable and ashamed of herself that he tried to speak and to reassure her. For it was evident that she thought her boldness had deeply offended him.
“You do them injustice, Miss Denison. Though I know it’s only through your kind feeling for me. There is nothing my brother would not do for me; he always takes my part most valiantly.”
“Ah, your brother, perhaps. But Mrs. Brander! She doesn’t. And a woman can do you more harm by raising her eyebrows at the mention of your name than a man could by preaching a course of sermons against you.”
“But why should she? Miss Denison, I can’t believe it.”
“Do you believe what I tell you, that Mrs. Brander warned my step-mother against admitting you into her house?”
“I must believe it, since you say it is true. But I am sure there must be some explanation—”
“Of course there will be an explanation; and one that will satisfy you perfectly, I have no doubt,” interrupted Olivia, impatiently. “Mrs. Brander will be able to explain everything, and make you see how entirely right and natural it is that you should have no friends but those at the Vicarage.”
She saw by the change in his face that she had succeeded in sowing the seed of what she considered a wholesome suspicion in his mind; and rather afraid of trusting herself to further speak on a matter which lay nearer her heart than she cared to show, she held out her hand abruptly, saying with a break in her voice—
“Good-night, Mr. Brander.”
She knew he was grateful for her interest in him; she knew he had that day been happy in her society. But she was quite unprepared for the flash of passionate feeling which suddenly shone out of his dark, thin face at the touch of her hand. It was like the wild gratitude of a starving man for food, which he seizes ravenously, and for which he can utter no articulate thanks. Olivia was almost frightened by it, and her hand trembled as he clutched it in his.
“Good-night,” he said; “good-night. I had forgotten what such a thing was—as a friend—until, until you came. They are very good—my sister-in-law, and even my old housekeeper. But they are cold; at least, they are not like you. There is something in the very touch of your hand, in the kindness of your eyes, that warms one and makes one feel—human again. God bless you, Miss Denison!”
He had hurried out his words so fast, in such a low, hoarse voice, that Olivia scarcely heard more than half. But what she did hear touched, melted her, made her heart open with a yearning tenderness she had never felt before, even for her beloved father in his troubles. She let Mr. Brander hold her hands in the grip of a moment’s passionate happiness, and only sighed out a faint protest against his fervent words. It was he who first woke from the entrancing pleasure of that moment’s mutual sympathy. Letting the girl’s hand drop, he stepped back as abruptly as if they had been interrupted, leaving her confused and ashamed at her involuntary show of feeling.
Through long years of self-control on his side, through pride on hers, they both recovered their outward composure so quickly that a very keen observer, who happened to pass a moment later, could detect no sign of unusual emotion in either of them. This passer-by was Ned Mitchell, who touched his hat to Miss Denison with a significant air of being determined to remark nothing, and nodded to the clergyman with a side glance of no great favor. As she caught sight of him, Olivia drew a deep breath and shivered, as if some forgotten horror had become suddenly vivid. Instead of allowing Mr. Brander to take a formal farewell of her, as he was about to do, she detained him by a gesture until the colonist was out of hearing, and then made an impulsive step nearer to him, with a face full of deep anxiety and excitement.
“I had forgotten—quite forgotten,” she panted out. “That man—do you know who he is?”
“No.”
“Do you know why he is here?”
“No—o. But I have sometimes made ugly guesses.”
“They were right; they were true. He is the brother of Nellie Mitchell.”
She communicated this intelligence in the lowest of whispers, and he received it without a perceptible movement. She did not know what to do next—whether she should attempt to comfort and reassure him, or whether she should quietly slip away while he was apparently absorbed in his own thoughts and unconscious of her presence. She decided on a middle course.
“Good-bye, Mr. Brander,” she said, in a gentle and timid voice. He started, and as he turned towards her, she noted narrowly the expression of his face. Whether the waning daylight had now grown too faint for her to see properly, she could not be sure; but it seemed to her that there was more relief than alarm in his eyes, which were glowing with keen excitement.
“When did you find this out?” he asked, very quietly.
“This afternoon, on my way to St. Cuthbert’s,” she answered, promptly.
“On your way to St. Cuthbert’s,” he echoed, very softly. Olivia blushed and bit her lip, but she answered readily enough, holding up her head with some dignity—
“You had been insulted by my people. I came to apologize for them. That was only natural, as you were my friend.”
Mr. Brander smiled. He seemed already to have quite recovered from any shock her alarming information might have been supposed to cause him.
“That was generous of you—and like you,” he said. “But it was very unwise. Do you want to set all the old women’s tongues wagging?”
“I don’t care,” murmured Olivia defiantly, though she cast down her eyes; “besides, I didn’t stop to think.”
“But you ought to stop to think. You haven’t always some one at your elbow to do it for you, as I verily believe a woman ought to have.”
He had fallen into the tone of playful reproach which was natural to him when he was moved to tenderness.
“But I was in the right,” said Olivia.
“I don’t know about that. However, we will leave that unsettled. How came this man to speak to you?”
“He saw that I wanted to get into the churchyard, and so did he.”
“And he told you he was Nellie Mitchell’s brother?”
“Yes,” answered Olivia, who felt the hot blood burning in her face as he mentioned the dead girl’s name.
Both were silent for some moments, during which Mr. Brander regarded the girl intently, trying to fathom the thoughts in her mind.
“And you thought it would interest me to know this?” he asked, very gently.
“I—I was afraid so,” she burst out, and impulsively hid her face for a moment in her hands.
She heard his breath come fast; she seemed to feel that his hands were near her, hovering over her, almost touching her; and she remained motionless. But when she looked up he was some paces away, busily employed digging holes in the ground with the point of his umbrella. As she looked up, their eyes met.
“Yes. You were right. It does interest me,” he said, gravely. Olivia’s face fell. At sight of this change in her expression, Mr. Brander’s composure suddenly gave way again—broke up altogether. He showed himself suddenly in an entirely new light, swayed by excitement so tempestuous that the girl realized for the first time the depths of passion which still remained in this man under the burnt-out crust. In a moment she recognized the fact that he was capable of impulses and of acts which she could neither measure nor understand. For good or for evil, his was a nature deeper and stronger than hers. This knowledge, so suddenly borne in upon her, gave her a new interest in, and respect for, him, even while it made her reluctantly admit that the possibility of his having committed a great crime was far clearer to her than before. All this flashed into her mind in a second of time, as his agitated face turned towards her just before the feelings which surged within him broke on his lips in hoarse, incoherent speech.
“I must tell you—Oh, God! Why should I not tell you? Who in the whole world deserves to hear the truth as you do? Listen!”
No need to tell the girl that. Her heart was in her eyes. She held her very breath in the intensity of a rush of feelings, which made her wet and cold from head to foot as she stood, unable to utter a word, waiting for the fatal explanation. He had come a step nearer to her, the first words of his confession were on his lips, when a bright, high, woman’s voice broke upon their ears. The sound acted on Vernon Brander like a stroke of paralysis. His right hand, raised in eager gesture, fell to his side; into his excited face came suddenly the vacant stare of idiotcy. As for Olivia, the tension on her weaker feminine nerves had been too great.
She drew a long sigh, and burst into tears. Then, before he could recover himself sufficiently to offer one word of comfort or apology, she muttered a hasty “good-night,” and hurried through the farmyard gate towards her home.
Vernon could only watch her retreating figure a little way, as an angle of the big barn that stood opposite the farmhouse soon hid her from sight. Then he went on with slow, dogged footsteps to meet his sister-in-law; for it was her voice which had disturbed his tete-a-tete with Miss Denison. The suspicions of the latter had already bore some fruit in his mind; for he asked himself whether Mrs. Brander had not come out on purpose to interrupt them. What other motive could bring that comfort-loving lady out into the damp and cold of a wet April evening? He dismissed the idea from his mind almost as soon as it entered; nevertheless, it was a just one.
Mrs. Brander had called on Mrs. Denison that afternoon, and had learnt, through the indiscretion of the latter’s husband, enough of the morning’s proceedings to fill her with anxiety and annoyance. The vicar managed to restrain her first impulse, which was to go straight to St. Cuthbert’s and see Vernon.
“You will be putting yourself in the wrong if you do that, my dear,” said Meredith, quietly. “If he thinks he has any cause of complaint against you, he is not the man to nurse it up silently. He is sure to come straight here on the first opportunity to ‘have it out’ with you. And then I have no doubt of your powers of making the rough places smooth again.”
Evelyn Brander submitted to her husband’s judgment, with a doubt which he made light of. A few months ago she could have made her brother-in-law take her own view of any matter; now there was an unpleasant possibility that he might take somebody else’s.
As the afternoon wore on, therefore, and Vernon did not appear, she went the length of watching for him at one of the drawing-room windows which commanded the best view of the road; and when the tenant of the adjoining cottage returned home, she threw up the sash, and asked him if, in the course of the rambles round the parish which he was known to be in the habit of taking, he had that day met the vicar of St. Cuthbert’s. The colonist, being an observant man, noted the lady’s anxiety, and the unusual courtesy towards himself to which it gave rise.
“Your brother-in-law, madam,” said he, bluntly, “is standing at the bottom of the hill. He has been standing there some time, I believe.” Then the idea of a little experiment crossing his mind, Ned Mitchell made a pause to give the more effect to his next words. “He is with Miss Denison, of the farm down yonder.”
Mrs. Brander’s handsome eyes flashed; with what feeling, whether jealousy, or anger or disquietude, he could not be sure. She bestowed upon him a little polite smile of thanks for his information, and said it was an unpleasant evening. But it was evident that her interest in him was gone; and as he had nothing more at present to obtain from or to impart to her, the colonist gave the off-hand touch to his hat which was the most respectful form of salutation he ever bestowed, and retreated into his cottage. Mrs. Brander shut down the window with one vigorous pull, and in two minutes was sallying down the hill through the mud and the drizzle, her handsome dinner dress held at a height more convenient than graceful, her kid shoes encased in stout goloshes, an old macintosh of her husband’s buttoned round her with the sleeves left swinging and a huge carriage umbrella held over her head. She was a practical woman, and if one liked to wear handsome clothes, there was no reason why one should spoil them for the sake of a more picturesque appearance for ten minutes on a wet evening. As she passed the end of her neighbor’s garden, that gentleman, who was on the watch underneath his porch, addressed to her an admiring word.
“Well done, ma’am!” cried he. “As long as you parsons’ ladies do your husband’s district visiting in such weather as this, you’ll stave off disestablishment, I reckon.”
“Oh, yes,” she called out in answer, being in one of those anxious moods in which the proudest woman is afraid of giving offence to a fellow mortal; “you don’t know yet what weak woman is capable of.”
These were the words she was uttering when the faint sound of her voice startled Vernon and Olivia as they stood together at the foot of the hill.
When Miss Denison left him, Vernon had only a few steps to take before he met his sister-in-law, who greeted him with the kindly affectionate manner of a relation with whom one is on perfectly good terms. She gave her umbrella to him to hold, and passed the disengaged hand lightly through his arm. Instead of proceeding up the hill with her, however, he stood still, remaining as stiff as a wooden soldier.
“Aren’t you coming up to the house?” she asked, with innocent peremptoriness, shaking his arm persuasively.
“No, thank you,” said he coolly, but with a coolness utterly different from hers, as it arose from the chilling of a warm nature, not from the innate frigidity of a cold one.
“Oh, but you must! I was peeping out of the drawing-room window when the bear next door came back to his den and told me you were out here, talking to Miss Denison. So I rushed out hoping to catch you both, and drag you in to dinner; the pretty farmer’s daughter to amuse Meredith, and you to entertain me.”
With the audacious coquetry of a cold woman, she pressed his arm with her hand, and bending forward looked into his face with her great gazelle-like eyes, which, by a turn of her head, she could make divinely alluring while ordering the details of a custard pudding. But Vernon was not now to be allured. He withdrew his arm boldly under the pretence that it required two hands to hold the heavy umbrella at the proper angle.
“Miss Denison has gone home,” said he. “And I’m going home: thank you.”
“What, without an umbrella? Come as far as the house, and I’ll give you one. It’s sure to rain before you can get back.”
“Miss Denison has got mine. I can go to the farm to fetch it.”
“Well, perhaps you won’t mind seeing me as far as the door first. I can’t hold that great thing and keep my dress up too. I won’t insist on your coming in; that will do some other time. I had something to say—to ask you about my Katie; but never mind now. I see you are thinking of something else.”
“Katie!” exclaimed Vernon. “What about Katie?”
“Oh, she doesn’t seem very well to-day, and I thought perhaps—”
“You thought what? Is there anything I can do?”
“There might have been. But I can’t ask favors of you in such a mood as you are in to-night. We are losing you day by day. You will soon have no place in your heart even for Katie.”
“I think you misjudge me, Evelyn. A child may forget her friends when they are absent. But at least she does not speak ill of them.”
Mrs. Brander stopped short in the mud, and looked at him with proud indignation.
“Of course I see you are insinuating that I have done so. Your new friends have been turning you against the old!”
“No. It seems, though I can scarcely believe it, that my old friends have been turning my new ones against me. Now, Evelyn, you are honest, aren’t you? Did you, or did you not, warn Mrs. Denison against me, as not being a proper friend for a young girl?”
Now, Vernon Brander only did his sister-in-law justice when he called her honest. Her blunt frankness, which made little account of other people’s feelings, had often been counted against her as a fault. Moreover, it was one result of her husband’s profession that, though not by nature over-scrupulous, lying should now seem a great sin to her. But the issues at stake seemed to her so great that it cost her only a moment’s hesitation to reply—
“I did not. I told her I understood you did not think of marrying. Was I wrong?”
“No,” answered Vernon, in a very low voice.
Evelyn’s great eyes were meeting his with the simple, direct stare habitual to her, which seemed to preclude the idea that she could lie. A weaker, a more sensitive, or a more modest nature would have shrunk from the gaze of his burning, pleading eyes. But her character was not built on complex lines; she felt that she was doing the best possible thing under the circumstances for herself and for everybody else, and so, her conscience being, as usual, free, there was no need for any airs of disquietude or remorse. And so the guileless man was caught at the first throw of the line, and was carried off to the house safe and subdued, while she informed him that Katie was not well, and that if he and his old housekeeper were willing to take charge of the little girl at St. Cuthbert’s for a fortnight, she thought the change would do her good.
The vicar’s wife had not overrated the effect of this proposal. To have his darling niece in his own care for two whole weeks was a bribe which would have tempted him to condone any wrong. By the light which came into his face as he quietly said he should be glad to have the child, Mrs. Brander knew that her trump card had been very well played, and that she had an influence ready to her hand which might be reckoned upon to counteract the dangerous one of Olivia Denison’s youth and beauty.
The tenant of the cottage watched the pair curiously as they passed his garden on the way up to the Vicarage. Nothing in the demeanor of either escaped his penetrating eyes. Absorbed as he was in one object, every smallest incident which occurred in his neighborhood was regarded by him as having a possible bearing upon it.
“I wonder,” he said to himself, as they turned the corner into the private road at the top of the hill, “what is the reason of the interest that parson’s wife takes in her husband’s brother? Pretty strong it must be to bring my lady out into the puddles in those finicking togs of hers! Love, passion, anything of that sort? She ain’t built that way; and if she had liked him best, she would either have married him or she’d have given ’em something to talk about by this time. I should like to think there was a woman in the secret—my secret; it would make my work seventy-five per cent. easier.”
In the meantime, Mrs. Brander and Vernon had reached the house, and had been met at the door by the vicar, who seemed placidly amused by the triumph and satisfaction he saw on his wife’s face, and by the subdued and even hangdog expression on that of his brother.
Dinner was waiting; and the vicar, who was as much disturbed by such an occurrence as he ever was about anything, hastened to lead the way to the dining-room, gently murmuring disapproval of his wife’s conduct in leaving the house at such a critical moment. The meal passed uncomfortably; for the unexplained uneasiness under which Vernon was evidently laboring could not fail to effect, in some degree, even his rather stolid brother. When they all adjourned to the drawing-room, the constraint of his manner became so apparent that Meredith, used to an atmosphere of calm respect for himself and content with things in general, laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder and asked him, with benevolent peremptoriness, if there was anything the matter.
Vernon who was standing by a table, turning over the leaves of a magazine with unmistakable lack of interest, started violently, and caused his sister-in-law to look up from the needle work with which her handsome, industrious fingers were nearly always employed. Her quick eyes discovered, at a glance, that there was some more serious reason for his melancholy than she had supposed. She rose and with a thrill of vague anxiety laid aside her work and crossed the room towards the two brothers. Vernon’s eyes met hers, and the expression she saw in them caused her to stop abruptly.
“Well, what is it? Do speak out, Vernon. We are not fools. We are ready to hear anything,” she said, in impatient, almost querulous tones.
Her brother-in-law cleared his throat, looking from the one to the other with a strange yearning in his eyes.
“I will speak; I will tell you,” he said huskily. “I have learnt to-day something which may cause you some alarm—for me,” he added, hastily, as husband and wife looked anxiously each at the other. “I don’t know whether you have ever troubled yourselves about the man who has come to live next door, or made any inquiries about him.”
“Well, who is he? What is his name?” asked Evelyn, while her husband remained silently watching his brother.
“He is Ned Mitchell, the brother of—”
He stopped. There was dead silence in the room. Not one of the three seemed to dare to meet the eyes of another. Evelyn was the first to speak. Her voice was low and husky, quite unlike her usual bright, imperious tones.
“You are sure?” she said.
“Quite sure.”
Another silence.
Then the vicar spoke. His voice was not affected by the alarming announcement, except that it was, perhaps, unusually gentle and kind. He laid a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of his brother, who still remained, with head bowed down, unable to meet their eyes.
“And, of course, you think he is here about that unfortunate business of ten years ago?”
Evelyn shuddered, and glanced first at her husband and then at the broken-down man on the other side of her. Her lips moved, imploring Meredith to be kind, to be careful. Vernon raised his head, looking still at the carpet.
“I suppose so,” he answered, in a husky voice. “Not that we need trouble ourselves. What can he really do? Nothing. I—I am as safe as ever.”
The vicar withdrew his hand. Calm as he had remained, he seemed to breathe more freely at this assurance.
“I hope so, indeed,” he said, solemnly; “for all our sakes.”
Vernon rose, and his eyes met those of his brother for the first time. He tried to speak, but only a dry, choking sound came from his parched mouth. He seized the hand his brother held out to him, and wrung it till the clasp of his thin, nervous fingers left livid marks on the soft pink flesh.
“God bless you,” murmured the vicar, in his warmest tones of encouragement and sympathy.
Again Vernon tried to speak: again he failed. With a hasty side glance at his sister-in-law, full of a plaintive, dumb sort of gratitude and entreaty, he crossed the room rapidly, with almost a staggering gait, opened the door with clammy fingers, and hurried out.
Husband and wife, thus left face to face, said not a word, but each gave a strange look of searching inquiry into the face of the other.
“Poor fellow!” said the vicar, gently.
Mrs. Brander did not answer. With a woman’s keener sympathy, she was listening to her brother-in-law’s footsteps in the hall outside. All there was of warmth in her somewhat cool nature was brought to the surface to-night. As she heard the hall door open, she uttered a little cry, and, leaving the room quickly, came up with Vernon before he had got out of the house, and put a warm, loving hand upon his arm.
“Oh, Vernon, Vernon! I wanted to say God bless you too!” she whispered, with tenderness most unwonted in the self-contained woman.
Vernon looked in her face with astonishment. There were tears in her great brown eyes; tears which, if he had seen them a few months ago, would have set his blood and his brain on fire. Now the sight of them filled him with astonishment and gratitude, but left him calm.
“You are too kind, dear,” he said, pressing her hand affectionately in his. “You must not trouble your head so much about me. Indeed there is no need. Good-night, good-night.”
He stooped and kissed her hand very gently, very reverently, and left her, hurrying down the lane without a look behind.
Evelyn Brander stared out into the darkness for some minutes after he had disappeared from her sight. For the first time, perhaps, in all her life she felt a vague sense that there might be something in existence more serious, more interesting than what we should eat, and what we should drink, and wherewithal we should be clothed.
“If I had only known,” she murmured to herself; “if I had only been able to know!”
Then she looked curiously at the hand Vernon had kissed, seeming surprised to find no change in its appearance. The next moment, raising her head to its usual proud angle, with a little laugh at her own folly, she shut herself into the house.