Mr. Brander conducted the service with no assistance but that of the choir and the clerk, who was evidently a privileged person; for he put everybody out who was within a dozen feet of his nasal voice. Olivia was impressed by the sermon, but she was hardly sure whether the impression was altogether favorable. For the preacher did not speak “as one having authority,” but rather as the servant than the teacher of his hearers; as one who was bound to keep them in mind of truths which they knew already, rather than as one who held up their duty before them with all the weight of a respected and honored pastor.
When the service was over, Olivia lingered a little in the churchyard, looking at the gravestones, not unwilling to give the much-discussed Mr. Brander an opportunity of proving that no rumors could affect her behavior to one who had been kind to her; but he would not avail himself of it. On coming out of the church, which he did with extraordinary little delay, Mr. Brander seemed purposely to avoid glancing towards the spot where she was standing, but at once, with quick steps, made for the gate at which the lady, whose appearance had attracted Olivia, was waiting. Her party, including the ill-mannered Frederick, had gone, as they had come, without her.
Olivia, who, like all young girls, could see a great deal without looking, knew that the clergyman and the lady were talking about her, and she would not pass out at the gate while they stood there. So she continued her inspection of the tombstones, with a heart beating rather faster than usual, for the very few minutes that the tete-a-tete lasted. Now, surely, she might have a chance of speaking to him; in common civility he would come, if only, as his note expressed it “as his brother’s representative,” to ask how she was getting on with her furnishing, and whether her friends were coming soon to relieve her of her responsibilities. He passed quite near to her on his way to the Vicarage gate. She raised her head with a smile and a heightened color, ready to give him her prettiest greeting; but he looked away with a persistency which she could no longer doubt was intentional, and it was with a blush of the deepest mortification that Olivia, whose burning eyes no longer saw inscriptions, or tombstones, or anything but a particularly tactless and unobservant clergyman, whose conduct in not allowing her to lessen her obligation to him by an expression of her gratitude was, Olivia felt, highly reprehensible. She was so hurt, so indignant, that when the pleasant-looking lady, who stood by the gate and watched her approach, made a movement forward as if to address the young stranger, Olivia turned her head stiffly away. She would give no opening to the friend of the man who had so deeply offended her.
But anger in Olivia’s breast was a feeling which could not last. Before she was half-way down the hill she was sorry for her hasty action and ashamed of her disappointment. With the exaggerated feeling of an impulsive young girl, she blamed herself as ungracious and ungrateful, and decided that the avoidance of a man as kindly and chivalrous as Mr. Brander had proved himself to be could only proceed from the most honorable motives.
The observant Lucy, perhaps, detected a lightening of the cloud on her young mistress’ face, for, at this point of the latter’s reflections, she broke the silence she had discreetly kept since leaving the churchyard.
“It’s a lot to do to take the service here in the morning, and at St. Cuthbert’s in the afternoon, and a young men’s class four miles away at night, isn’t it, ma’am?” she asked, glibly.
Lucy had already collected as much local information as if she had been settled in Rishton three months, and could have enlightened Miss Denison on a good many points of local gossip if she had been encouraged to do so.
“Why, who does all that, Lucy?”
“Mr. Brander, ma’am. He holds a meeting of colliers belonging to some pit at night, and he says ‘he goes to them because they wouldn’t all come to him.’”
Olivia looked at her in astonishment. Here was the little maid quoting with perfect confidence the clergyman’s own words.