But, if they had only known it, there was a very strong woman’s will working against any such happy consummation. Mrs. Meredith Brander, for reasons of her own, had conceived the intention of doing what she could to form an impassable bridge between her brother-in-law and the household at Rishton Hall Farm. She shrewdly guessed that her best chance lay through the step-mother; but for a day or two she took no active steps, contenting herself with gleaning all the information she could concerning the character and habits of each member of the Denison family. Mr. Denison, she decided, was not of much account; Mrs. Denison, a vain, half-educated woman, exalted above her natural station, ought, with judicious treatment, to be easy to deal with. It was with the handsome, high-spirited Olivia herself that the difficulty lay, and Mrs. Brander felt that she must proceed with caution.
In the meantime, the new inmate of the cottage was exciting much general interest, and some suspicion. He lived entirely by himself, but for such companionship as was afforded him by Mrs. Wall, during the two or three hours a day when she jogged slowly through his apartments with a broom and a pail, and generally “did for” him. He drove such a hard bargain with this lady, and lived so simply, that the belief soon spread among the villagers that he was very poor, that his big watch chain was brass, and that his solid manner and imperative speech were mere empty “swagger.”
The Reverend Meredith Brander was shrewd enough to think differently. There was a weight and solidity about the speech and manner of the new comer which it is not given to the mere waifs and strays of the earth to acquire. When he passed an opinion, which was seldom, for he was apparently of reticent disposition, it was with the evident belief, not only that it was worth listening to, but that it would be listened to. The vicar tried hard, in every decent and graceful way, to win from him some information as to who he was and what he did there; but his geniality and his personal charm had no perceptible effect on the stranger, who kept even his name a secret, and steadily declined Mr. Brander’s invitations to him to dine at the Vicarage, or to play a game of chess with him in the evenings.
“I’m sure you must find it dull alone in the cottage at night,” the vicar would say to him cheerily; “for one can see with half an eye that you’ve been used to an active life, with lots of movement and all sorts of society. Why don’t you let yourself be persuaded into sitting by a warm hearth instead of a cold one, with a woman and children about you? All globe-trotters love the atmosphere of women and children.”
“I can bear with ’em, but I’m not excited about either species,” the stranger answered one day to his neighbor’s persuasions. “I’ve had a wife and children myself; but I’m bound to say I get on quite as comfortably without them.”
If this unorthodox speech was meant to shock the vicar, it failed of its effect; for Meredith Brander had no Puritanical horror of human frailties and eccentricities, but a cheery belief that they gave a healthy outlet to the dangerous humors of the world.
He discussed the new comer with his wife, who, however, took scarcely enough interest in the subject to set her feminine wits to work towards solving the mystery which hung about him.
“I don’t know why you make so much fuss about him,” she said rather contemptuously one day, when her husband had been recounting his fruitless efforts to induce the stranger to dine with them. “And I am sure I am thankful that he had the sense not to come. To judge by his manners he has been a navvy, who went gold-digging and picked up a nugget; and to judge by his coming here and the way he lives, the nugget was somebody else’s, and he has to live perdu until the little affair has blown over.”
The vicar made no reply to this; but there was evidently nothing convincing to him in his wife’s contempt for the stranger. When he spoke again, it was upon a fresh subject.
“Vernon’s getting very thick with the new people at the Hall Farm. I met him to-day arm-in-arm with papa, and I hear that he’s going to dine with them next Friday. Now, papa is a very amiable man, though he may not be over-endowed with brains; but I suppose it is not far-fetched to imagine that there may be another attraction.”