LIKE all persons of strong nature, Olivia Denison grew bolder as danger came nearer. When she recognized the man in the garden, underneath the corridor window, it did not occur to her to call for help; but all her energies were instantly concentrated on learning the meaning of this intrusion. She was sure that she had not been seen. As noiselessly as she could she shut the window, and retreated into the private passage which led to her own apartments. There she waited, peeping cautiously out under cover of the black shadows of the corridor, into which the faint moonlight could not penetrate.
She heard the grinding sound made by the ladder as it was set against the wall, and presently she saw a man’s head appear just above the ledge outside. He raised his hand, gave three taps on the glass, and disappeared. A minute later he mounted a step higher than before, and tapped again. Then, with scarcely an instant’s more delay, he pushed up the window slowly and noiselessly, and, as soon as it was wide enough, put one leg over the sill and stood in the corridor.
Olivia, brave as she was by nature, was transfixed with alarm. What did he want with her? What shocking confession, what horrible entreaties, had he come to make to her like this, in the middle of the night? If she could have shrieked aloud, if she could have run out and alarmed the household, she would have done so now. But horror had paralyzed her. The voice she tried to use gave only a hoarse, almost inaudible rattle. Her limbs were rigid; her breath came and went in gasps, like that of a person dying of asthma. She could only stand and stare at the advancing figure, hoping desperately that the first words he uttered would break this spell, and restore her to herself. Why did he choose the night time to come and make her the victim of his guilty confidences? Were they too ghastly to make by day? That this man was the murderer of Nellie Mitchell she could not now doubt; the demeanor of his every-day life was utterly changed; there was guilt expressed in every furtive movement. All her respect and liking were transformed into loathing and fear; she almost crouched against the wall as he approached.
He reached the entrance to the corridor, and paused. If she could only keep still enough for him to pass her! Then she could escape into the main building of the house, and have time to think what she should do. But he stopped short, and stretched out his hand to knock at the door. In the darkness he could not see that it was open. But how, Olivia suddenly asked herself, did he know there was a door there at all? Although he moved slowly, too, it was with the manner of a man who knew his way about the place. Part of the truth flashed suddenly into her mind: he had been there before. By this time he had discovered that the door was open. Passing into the corridor, he shut the door, turned the key, and put it in his pocket. As he did so he touched Olivia, but did not appear to know it. Now thoroughly alarmed, she flew along the passage into her bedroom, and was in time to lock the door before she heard his footsteps in the outer apartment. There was no lock to the door between the two rooms. No one was likely to hear her if she shrieked at one of the windows. Before many minutes were over she felt that she should have to face him.
She flew across the bedroom floor to blow out the candle, thinking that in the darkness she would have a better chance of escape. As she did so she stumbled against a chair, which fell down with a loud noise. A moment later there was a knock at the inner door. The girl’s heart stood still. She remained motionless, and gave no answer. The knock was repeated. Still she was silent. A third time came the knock, and then a low, hoarse whisper, of one word only, startled her, and came as a revelation—
“Nellie!”
This was the manner in which, years ago, he had visited the girl whose love had ended by wearying him so fatally. By what means he had forgotten the intervening years she did not know, but Olivia recognized at once that it was not she of whom he was in search. The knowledge restored in a moment all her courage. If, as she supposed, fear of discovery had turned his brain, his was a madness with which she felt she could cope. After only one moment’s hesitation, she snatched up one of the candles, and unlocking the door she had secured, passed through the passage into the adjoining room.
“Mr. Brander!” said she, in a voice which scarcely trembled.
She had to repeat her words three or four times before he moved from the other door. At last he turned very slowly, and Olivia, raising the candle high, looked curiously, and not wholly without fear, into his face.
His eyes were closed; his breathing was heavy. He was asleep!
There flashed through her mind the remembrance of what the Vicar of Rishton had said about somnambulism, and the strange instances of it which had occurred in his family. It was clear to her that the excitement occasioned by Ned Mitchell’s obstinate determination had preyed upon the mind of the murderer, and led him at last to perform in sleep an action which had been an habitual one with him eleven years before.
In spite of the horror of this weird discovery, Olivia’s fears disappeared at once. She thought she might, without waking him, persuade him to go back as he had come. If he did wake, she knew he would not hurt her. She began in a low, intentionally monotonous voice.
“I think you had better go back to-night. It is getting very late; it is almost daylight.”
As before, she had to repeat her words before he grasped the sense of them.
Then he repeated in a whisper, and as if there were something soothing in the sound of her voice—
“Go back. Yes, go back.”
“I’ll give you a light. Come along,” she went on, coaxingly.
And without a moment’s delay she led the way out into the passage. Much to her relief, he followed, at the same slow, heavy pace.
“Now,” she said, when they had reached the outer door, “give me the key, please.”
He felt in his pocket obediently, and produced the key, which she, overjoyed, almost snatched from his hand. The noise she made in her excitement, as she opened the door, seemed to disturb him, for he began to move restlessly, like a person on the point of waking. Once in the corridor, however, Olivia was bold; she passed her hands several times slowly down his arms, murmuring in a low, soothing tone, injunctions to him to get home quickly. This treatment succeeded perfectly. His manner lost its momentary restlessness, and it was in the same stolid way as he came that he got out on the ladder, descended, replaced the ladder in the long grass, and climbed over the wall.
Olivia watched his retreating figure as long as it was in sight, and then, feeling sick and cold slunk back into her rooms, not forgetting to lock the outer door of the passage safely behind her. Like most women, however brave, when they have been through an exciting crisis, she felt exhausted, limp, almost hysterical. She staggered as she entered the bedroom, and it was with a reeling brain that she walked up and down, up and down, unable to sleep, unable even to rest. She knew the mystery now, and she felt that the knowledge was almost more than she could bear.
Next morning her appearance, when she came down late to breakfast, was so much affected by the awful night she had passed that even the children wondered what was the matter with her. Mr. Denison, believing it to be the result of his avoidance of her the evening before, was cut to the heart with remorse, while his wife, alarmed at the change in the girl, altered her tone, and did her best to be kind to her. Olivia could not eat. Her cheeks were almost livid; her great eyes seemed to fill her face; the hand she held out to be shaken was cold, clammy, and trembling. Her amiable little half sister, Beatrix, saw an opening for a disagreeable remark, and made use of it.
“Mr. Williams wouldn’t say you were pretty if he could see you now,” said she. “Would he, mamma?”
Like most children, she was quick enough to detect how inharmonious were the relations between her mother and her step-sister. She was surprised to find, however, that for once she received no sympathy from the quarter whence she expected it.
“Be quiet, Beatrix, and don’t be rude,” said Mrs. Denison, sharply, with a glance at Olivia, on whom she thought that the reference to the supposed cause of her distress would have some sudden and violent effect.
“Can’t you keep those children in better order, Susan?” asked Mr. Denison, peevishly. “Their rudeness is getting quite intolerable.”
However, Olivia scarcely heard this little discussion, and was in no way moved by it. But when the talk turned to the proposed restoration of St. Cuthbert’s and from that to the persons interested in it, she grew suddenly very still, and sat looking down at her plate, listening to each word with fear of what the next would be.
“I wonder how the vicar likes to see his wife about so constantly with another man, if it is his own brother,” said Mrs. Denison, who, in spite of her experience as a governess, was one of those people who think it doesn’t matter what subjects you discuss before children, because “they don’t understand.” “I’m sure the last week or so I’ve scarcely seen one without the other.”
“Well, now, do you know, I thought it was awfully good-natured of her. You know the stories that have been flying about lately. I’m sure I don’t pretend to say whether there’s any truth in them or not; still they have been flying about.”
“And not without some ground, you may depend,” said Mrs. Denison, tartly.
While avoiding the subject which she supposed to be the cause of Olivia’s present distress, her step-mother could not resist the opportunity of giving that headstrong young lady a few gentle thrusts on the subject of her “fancy for murderers.” Mr. Denison glanced from his wife to his daughter, who by putting strong constraint on herself, appeared not to notice what was being said.
“Well, and as she must know the rights of the story, it seems to me all the kinder in Mrs. Brander to take any notice of him now, when he’s under a cloud, as it were.”
Mrs. Denison uttered a little sound significant of doubt and scorn.
“It is to be hoped that everybody else will put as kind an interpretation upon her conduct,” she said, drily. “Only last Tuesday I met them as I walked back from the Towers. They were sitting in that little cart sort of thing Mrs. Brander drives—not at all the right kind of turnout for a clergyman’s wife, in my opinion—and talking together so—well, so confidentially—that they took no notice of me whatever.”
“Didn’t see you, of course,” said Mr. Denison, shortly.
“It may have been that, certainly,” assented his wife, incredulously. “Or it may be that they are not too much lost to shame to avoid the eye of a lady whom they respect when they feel they are not behaving quite correctly.”
“Rubbish!” said Mr. Denison, shortly.
It was so seldom that the so-called head of the house ventured so near to an expression of adverse opinion that there was a short silence, which his wife broke in a dangerously dignified manner.
“Perhaps,” she began, with strong emphasis, “when the whole truth comes to light concerning his relations with other ladies, my opinion on the matter will not be considered ‘rubbish’ after all.”
Reginald, with the delightful relish of an innocent child for conversation not intended for his ears, had left off making patterns on the tablecloth with the mustard spoon, in order to listen and watch with his mouth open. He now broke in with a happy sense that he was making mischief.
“Oh, look, mamma, what a funny color Olivia’s face has gone!” cried he, pointing to her with the mustard spoon.
The girl got up and left the room. Her father, who could not bear to see any one unhappy, was miserable at the thought that he himself was partly the cause of his darling daughter’s grief.
“Olivia, my dear child, come down—come here,” he called after her from the hall as she fled upstairs.
She never could resist any appeal from him, so she crept down again, unwillingly enough.
“Oh, that woman, that woman! Papa, I must go away, I can’t live with her,” she whispered as she laid her head on his shoulder and received his caress and incoherent attempts at comfort.
“Well, dear, what can I do?” he whispered, apologetically, back. “You see, you were such a little thing when your mother died, and I hate a household without a woman in it, so that even—”
“Even an objectionable woman is better than none,” suggested Olivia, mischievously.
“Oh, no, my dear, I didn’t say that,” whispered he, hurriedly.
“No, papa, you don’t dare,” said Olivia, with a touch of her old archness. “I really think that when a man with children marries a second time, he ought to drown the first lot in mercy to them.”
Poor Mr. Denison looked down at her ruefully.
“My dear, I hope you didn’t mean that,” was all he ventured to say.
“Yes, I did.”
Here Mr. Denison perceived an opening for a suggestion which his wife, of late, had been constantly urging him to make. Not being quite sure how his daughter would take it, he hurried it out in a shamefaced manner without looking at her.
“Since you don’t get on very well together, I wonder you don’t take the chance of getting a nice home of your own; you know you could if you like.”
“What; by wearing little Freddie Williams for ever on my watch chain?” cried Olivia, turning off the suggestion as a joke to avoid paining her father by expressing the disgust she felt.
“Well, my child, you know I shouldn’t press upon you anything that wouldn’t make you happy; but if you wait for a husband worthy of you, you’ll die an old maid.”
“And if you’ll go on living till you’re about a hundred and five to keep me company, papa, I’ll be the oldest old maid in England with pleasure,” said she, affectionately, as she kissed his cheek and ran away upstairs.
She had some work to do this morning; work for which she must drive all thought of last night’s adventure out of her head. As soon as she reached her own room she unlocked the drawer in which she kept her trinkets, and spreading them out before her on the dressing-table, she mentally passed them in review to decide which were the most likely to be saleable. Not a bad collection for a young girl, they formed; though Olivia, ignorant as she was about the value of jewellery, thought how poor they looked from the point of view at which she was now considering them. A pair of turquoise and pearl earrings and brooch to match, a heavy gold bracelet, a set of garnets and pearls of quaint, old-fashioned design, a handsome silver chatelaine watch, a quantity of silver bangles, a few very modest-looking rings, a diamond arrow brooch, and a massive gold necklet. Everything but the arrow, which had been a present from her father on her eighteenth birthday, looked, in a strictly commercial light, clumsy or out of date. The arrow must be sacrificed, she told herself with a sigh; so must the gold necklet and bracelet, which she rightly judged to be next in value. If she could only sell these things, and get ten or twelve pounds for them, she could pay off a fair instalment of her father’s debt to Fred Williams immediately, and she must trust to luck and her own determination for the rest. So she made a parcel of the trinkets she had chosen, and, at the last moment, packed also the turquoise and pearl set; then, dressing hastily, she slipped out of the house, and started at a rapid pace on her way to Matherham.
Before she reached the high road, however, she was met by Fred Williams, who was sauntering about, pipe in mouth, at the point where the roads met, on the chance of meeting her. He surveyed her with a sidelong look of unwilling admiration.
“Good-morning, Miss Denison,” he said, curtly, pulling off his cap in a sort of grudging manner. “I suppose you have nothing fresh to say to me this morning?”
“Not at present, though I may have by-and-by,” said she, lightly.
“Oh, well, er—do you know whether your father is likely to be about this morning? I want to see him on business.”
Olivia looked at him with great contempt from under her sweeping black eyelashes.
“He is about, of course; but I don’t think you need trouble yourself to see him, for I have a message to you from him. It is this: the first instalment of the money he owes you will be paid to-day, and the remainder very shortly. And he is very sorry to have put you to any inconvenience by accepting the loan.”
With which speech, and a low bow, Olivia left Mr. Williams to the enjoyment of his own society.
Then on she sped towards Matherham, not by way of the wood and St. Cuthbert’s, but by the shorter road that went past the Towers. A great bare building it was, standing ostentatiously on very high ground, with a spire here, a minaret there, and various irregular erections springing up from the roof to make good its name. Olivia laughed to herself, and wished the lady who might ultimately obtain the hand of her mean-spirited admirer joy of her bargain. She was not unhappy; the fearful nature of her discovery of the night before had shaken her out of the depression from which she had lately been suffering. She was excited, full of indignation and of energy: her head full of wild surmises, of fears connected with the approaching crisis. As if trying to keep pace with her fantastic thoughts, her feet seemed to fly along the ground. The few persons she passed stared at or curtseyed to her without any acknowledgment; she saw no one but the people in her thoughts.
Suddenly she was roused out of her wild reverie by hearing her own name called in sharp tones. She looked down from the high pathway alongside the hedge into the road, which at this point was some five feet below. There she saw the vicarage pony carriage, containing Mrs. Brander, who was driving, with Vernon sitting by her side. It was the lady who had called to Olivia. Having pulled up the ponies to the side of the road, she now beckoned to the girl in an impatient, imperious manner, to come down.
“Good-morning,” said Olivia, coldly, without attempting to leave the pathway. Her cheeks had grown in an instant deadly white on seeing who was the lady’s companion; but she did not glance at him.
“I can’t stop this morning, Mrs. Brander: I’m in a great hurry,” she said, in an unsteady voice, while her heart beat violently, and she felt that if the interview lasted a minute longer she should not be able to stand without support.
“But I have something important to say to you—very important. I really must beg you to give me a moment; and, if you like, I will drive you into Matherham myself.”
“No, thank you,” said Olivia, hastily.
“One minute, then, I beg, Miss Denison.”
The imperious lady’s voice had suddenly broken and become imploring. Olivia, with downcast eyes, and feet that tottered under her, found a convenient place for a descent into the road, and the next minute stood by the pony carriage, on the side where Mrs. Brander was sitting. She neither looked up nor spoke, but left the opening of the conversation to the vicar’s wife, whose hands, as she held the reins, shook with a nervousness altogether unusual with her. With strange diffidence, too, Mrs. Brander hesitated before she spoke.
“You are walking into Matherham?” she asked, at last.
“Yes, Mrs. Brander.”
“You are sure you won’t let me drive you in?”
“Quite sure, thank you.”
“Vernon, you know, would get down; he’d rather walk I’m certain.”
Olivia’s face became suddenly crimson.
“I couldn’t think of turning Mr. Brander out,” she said coldly.
“I should be delighted,” murmured Vernon in a low tone.
In spite of all her efforts to retain her self-command, Olivia shivered at the sound of his voice. She felt, although she never once looked at the face of either, that both the man and the woman were watching her intently. They had some suspicion of the knowledge she had so strangely obtained, she was sure. There was a pause, and then Mrs. Brander spoke again.
“You don’t look so well as usual this morning, Miss Denison,” she said, not quite able to keep curiosity and anxiety out of her tone. “You are quite pale. We miss your lovely roses.”
“I have had a bad night,” said Olivia, shortly, and with a sudden determination that it would be better to let them know all she had discovered.
The effort Mrs. Brander made to retain her usual calmness and coldness was piteous to see. Her beautiful features quivered; her great black eyes were dilated with apprehension.
“A bad night?” she repeated, inquiringly.
“Yes. I was frightened. A man got into my sitting-room.”
Neither of her hearers made any but the faintest attempt to affect astonishment.
“It must have alarmed you horribly,” said Mrs. Brander with blanched lips. “Did you call any one?”
“No.”
Over the face of the vicar’s wife came an expression of great relief.
“Have you told any one?”
“This is the first time I have mentioned it.”
There was a pause.
“Have you any idea—who—the man—was?”
“I recognized him at once, before he got in at the window. He spoke to me, but he did not know who I was. He was asleep.”
“He spoke to you?”
“Yes. He addressed me as ‘Nellie.’”
Olivia had dropped her eyes, but she heard Mrs. Brander’s breath, coming quickly, as if she was choking. The girl put her hand out impulsively on the arm of the elder lady, and whispered, without looking up—
“You made me tell you. And, after all, what does it matter? I think you know.”
She felt her hand seized with a convulsive pressure.
“You will say nothing?” Then Mrs. Brander snatched her hand away. “No, no; it is asking too much, of course. And perhaps, after all, it would be of no use.”
“At any rate, Mrs. Brander, nobody but you will ever hear the story from me.”
She ignored Vernon, as she had ignored him throughout the whole of the interview. Mrs. Brander drew a labored sigh.
“I trust you,” she said in a hoarse voice. “A woman can keep a secret as well as a man, I know.”
“Oh, yes,” said Olivia, simply. “Now you will let me go, will you not?”
She was frank, honest; but she was not cordial; scarcely even kind. When Mrs. Brander pressed her hand again, however, she returned the pressure with a firm clasp. Then, still without a glance at Vernon, she bowed and wished the vicar’s wife “good-morning,” and, turning, resumed her walk towards Matherham. She had not gone many yards before she quickened her pace still more, hearing footsteps she recognized behind, and then beside her.
It was Vernon Brander.
For some time he walked on in silence by her side, not daring to address her. At last he said, humbly, imploringly—
“Won’t you speak to me?”
No answer.
“Have you forgotten all you once said to me about friendship?”
“No,” she answered in a frightened, constrained voice, still without looking at him.
“Remember, what you saw last night was no worse than what you already believed.”
“Yes it was!” panted Olivia. “It was worse; much worse—to see—to hear. It was something I shall never forget. But don’t let us speak of it.”
“But is it to make this difference, that you will never speak to me again?”
“It is to make no difference; you heard me say so. You wish it; she wishes it. I have promised.”
“I take you at your word. If you had discovered nothing you would have let me go into Matherham with you, and you would have told me the object of your going. Will you now?”
“Yes, if you like, Mr. Brander.” In spite of herself, her tone was more formal than usual. “I am going to get some money to repay a loan from that wretched little Fred Williams.”
“To your father, of course. And I suppose,” he added, glancing at the little parcel she carried in her hand, “you are going to sell some trinkets of your own to do so.”
“To help to do so,” answered Olivia, with a blush and a look of surprise at his perspicacity. “The whole sum is much more than anything of mine could fetch.”
“Will you tell me how much?”
“Thirty pounds!”
“And will you, as a pledge of what you said—that you will forget everything—do for me what I know you would not do for any other man?”
“What is that?”
“Let me lend you the money. I spend nothing. I have a considerable sum saved, and it will do me a pleasure—such a pleasure!” he added, earnestly, below his breath. “It would be a mark of confidence which would prove to me, whatever I may have done wrong—and my conscience is not too clear, I know, you know—prove to me that you have a little compassion, a little kindness, for me still.”
Without answering in words, Olivia, who was trembling violently, took his hand, pressed it quickly for one moment in hers, and let it drop hastily, as if she had been too bold.
Then, without the exchange of a single word more, they walked through the narrow, hilly streets of Matherham, which they had now reached, until they came to the bank where Vernon kept an account. Olivia walked on while he went into the building; in a very few minutes he overtook her and put an envelope into her hand. She did not thank him; he did not give her time.
“I am very grateful,” he said simply: “I—I can’t say any more now. Good-bye.”
Olivia looked up and spoke with a sob in her voice.
“Good-bye,” she said.
Then they looked into each other’s eyes with the long, sad look of a farewell, and she was not surprised at his next words.
“I daresay,” he said in a hoarse voice, “that I shall be going away from here before long; I daresay I shall have to—when the tower is built,” he added in a whisper, looking down. “No, don’t say anything—I couldn’t bear it.”
But Olivia, though she tried, could utter no word. She wrung his hand and looked straight into his face with an expression of passionate sympathy and despair. Then, without another word, they parted.