“Nothing that I am ashamed of,” said the girl, quietly.
“Oh, no, you’ve too much cheek to be ashamed of anything. You’ve paid me back to-day, and I’ll pay you back to-morrow. For to-morrow the workmen begin to dig in St. Cuthbert’s churchyard, and if they should come across anything that’ll upset your friend’s apple-cart, remember you had the chance to stop it. And perhaps you won’t feel so proud then of having got clear of debt to me by running into debt with a murderer. Yes, a murderer, Miss High-and-Mighty,” he continued, with a little dance of delight on the garden path. “And if you don’t feel jolly well ashamed of yourself and your friend by about this time next week, why, I’m a polished gentleman, that I am!”
“You couldn’t say anything stronger than that, Mr. Williams,” said Olivia, ingenuously. “I suppose I shall have the pleasure of meeting you to-morrow at St. Cuthbert’s. Good-morning.”
And, quite unaffected by his threats, she bowed to him with great ceremony, and tripped away down the road as if greatly pleased with her interview.
But Olivia was not at ease: she only appeared so because she was excited to the pitch of recklessness. As the day drew on, and the time for the commencement of the excavations at St. Cuthbert’s grew nearer, she became restless, depressed, and so irritable that she had to pass the time either out of doors or in her own rooms, to avoid the domestic friction which she felt that to-day she could not bear. Next morning she awoke with a deadening sense of being on the brink of some great danger. At the breakfast table, at which she duly appeared to avoid giving unnecessary alarm to her father, her looks again provoked much comment, which she bore as patiently as she could, being particularly anxious not to encourage a discussion which might lead to interference with a project she had in view. She was so impatient to leave the house that every trifling delay seemed to her to be part of a conspiracy to keep her indoors. When her usual household duties were disposed of, when Mrs. Denison’s request that she would make up a parcel for the dyer’s had been complied with, she crept upstairs with a heart full of anxiety, dressed, slipped out of the house, and sped away in the direction of St. Cuthbert’s.
For all her haste, she could not reach the churchyard much before twelve o’clock, when the workingmen, their morning’s labor almost over, were slackening their efforts in anticipation of the dinner hour. Already their invasion had entirely changed the aspect of the churchyard. Piles of scaffolding poles, ladders, and boards lay just inside the walls. Planks placed across the broken gravestones, formed bridges for the passage of wheelbarrows to and from the scene of operations. This, Olivia saw, was the ground at the foot of the tower, extending to the crypt, the entrance to which had been freed from the stones and bricks which had blocked it up for so long. The men seemed to be at work in all directions: some were erecting a scaffolding against the old tower, the upper part of which was to be taken down; some carting away stones and rubbish from the east end; some removing that corner of the roof of the south aisle which, in a crumbling and dangerous condition, still remained. But it was upon the corner where the old crypt was that Olivia’s attention at once fixed. For here, listening perfunctorily with one ear to old Mr. Williams, who had a self-made man’s veneration for his own utterances, and keeping a sharp lookout upon two workmen whose labors within the crypt he was superintending, was Ned Mitchell.
Nothing had happened so far, Olivia easily guessed; no discoveries had been made; no alarm had been given. But to her fancy, there hung over the whole place the hush of expectancy: the workmen scarcely spoke to each other, the onlookers seemed to hold their breath. Another feature of the scene was that these onlookers each seemed to have come by stealth, and to wish to remain unnoticed by the rest. Olivia herself, for instance, remained outside the churchyard wall, seeing only so much of the operations as could be observed from the highest part of the rough and broken ground. Then, lurking behind the hedge on the opposite side of the lane, was the lame tramp, Abel Squires, who from this post could see very little more than the scaffolding poles, but who had remained there, nevertheless, since the moment, early that morning, when the workmen from Sheffield first made their appearance. Vernon was inside the church, keeping out of the way of everyone but the foreman, to whom he was giving certain structural explanations, while Mrs. Brander watched the proceedings from her pony carriage in the lane, and Fred Williams from the church roof. A small crowd of the country people, chiefly children and old pit women, filled up the spaces, and made the isolation of the others less noticeable. Roaming about the churchyard, in a somewhat impatient manner, was also a gentleman whom Olivia did not immediately recognize as the doctor who had attended Ned Mitchell in his illness.
It was a sultry day; sunless and heavy. The smoke of the Sheffield chimneys hung over the hills in a thick black cloud, and appeared, Olivia thought, to be coming nearer and nearer. The air seemed to choke instead of invigorate; the leaves of the trees hung parched and still. The girl’s excitement had all evaporated; she waited there without hope, without fear, in a dull state of expectancy, her clearest thought being a faint wish that she might be able to get quietly home again without having to speak to any one. Still she stood there, and watched the workmen slowly putting on their coats, the doctor as he flitted about the churchyard, without quite knowing whether she was asleep or awake, whether the figures, moving silently about, were flesh-and-blood creatures, or images seen in a dream.
Suddenly a breath of air seemed to pass over every one, and the stirring of a more active life was felt. It was a voice at the gate of the churchyard which broke the hushed silence, and made every eye look up, while the women and children curtseyed, and the workmen touched their caps. The Vicar of Rishton, cheerful and smiling and bland, had worked the change by his appearance alone. A certain listlessness, which had begun to creep over watchers and workers at the end of an eventless morning under a sullen sky, disappeared. There arose a hum of talk; the workmen who had left off work hurried to their dinner cans; the few who were still digging felt a spurt of fresh energy. It was felt that the portly presence of the much-respected vicar gave eclat to the proceedings, and new interest to a monotonous occupation. Only Ned Mitchell remained entirely unmoved. He gave the clergyman a glance and a nod, and then turned again to the two men at work in the crypt.
“Get on, you lazy devils!” he said, kicking a stone impatiently. “You might be millionaires, both of you, not to think it worth while to work harder for the chance of a ten-pound note.”