Olivia

Mr. Bartley Bradstone, as he left the garden after his remarkably unpleasant interview with Harold Faradeane, decided to strike while the iron was hot. He had got the net round Olivia; he resolved to draw it tight. From that evening he kept a close guard on himself, and his manner changed—for the better. In fact, to the casual observer he would have passed as a remarkably good-tempered man. He was polite to the servants, deferential to the squire, attentive to Miss Amelia, and to Olivia was devoted and reverential.

Not only the Grange people but outsiders noticed the change.

“Bradstone has improved since his engagement,” said Lord Carfield. “But daily intercourse with Olivia Vanley would tame a savage and educate a bear!”

He watched Olivia as a cat does a mouse, and she was quite afraid of expressing a desire for anything, lest he should rush off and procure it for her.

To Harold Faradeane, too, his manner was quite friendly; and he had plenty of opportunity for showing it, for Faradeane came often to the Grange now.

Sometimes he would walk in after breakfast, sometimes before they had finished. In the latter case, he would sit and talk with the squire until the meal was over; then go round the stables with him, or ride over to some farm on the estate. And Olivia noticed that whenever Harold Faradeane came her father’s face brightened, and lost something of its anxious look. In fact, the old man had conceived a great liking for the handsome, grave-voiced owner of The Dell, a liking that grew day by day into a warm friendship.

To Olivia, Faradeane’s bearing was one of quiet, respectful courtesy. At first the color had risen to her face, and her heart had leaped at his approval; but though his appearance always sent a thrill through her, she learned to master her emotion, and greeted him as calmly as he greeted her.

Sometimes he would be persuaded to walk over and dine with them, and on those occasions she put on one of her best frocks, and was more than usually careful with the thick coils of hair which nestled like a crown of silk on her shapely head. Often she stood before the glass when her maid had left her, and looked at herself with a strange, absent air, seeing not the reflection of her own face, but his, as she recalled it on the day he had bent over her and taken her in his arms.

Then she would sigh heavily—and ah! so wistfully and wearily—and go down to the drawing-room to see his tall, patrician figure and handsome face beside the plebeian one of Bartley Bradstone, her future husband.

All through the dinner Bartley Bradstone would covertly watch the two, even while he was apparently engaged with his plate or in talk with the squire; but his sharp, suspicious eyes never detected the slightest hint of any understanding between her and Faradeane. Always pleasant and courteous, sometimes witty and amusing, Faradeane never singled her out for any special attention of any kind; and Bartley Bradstone guessed nothing of the scene in the woods, had no idea of the effect upon Olivia which every word of Faradeane’s, every smile of his, produced.

The days sped on without anything of consequence occurring, until Bartley Bradstone struck.

One evening, just after the post had come in, Olivia went into the study to get a fresh supply of notepaper, and found the squire pacing up and down, with an ashen face and tightly-drawn lips. In his trembling hand was an open letter, which, at her entrance, he crushed up and thrust into his pocket.

“Papa!” she said in a low, anxious voice, and, going up to him instantly, “what is the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing, dear!” he said, and his voice sounded harsh and strained. “That is, I have had a troublesome letter.”

“Let me see it, dear,” she said, putting her arms round his neck.

“No, no!” he replied, hurriedly. “It—it is nothing you would understand; only a business matter.”

“But let me see it, dear,” she pleaded. “I may be able to help you; at any rate, I can share the trouble with you,” she added, sweetly.

But he shook his head.

“No, no; you could not help me. It—it is an old affair, that has cropped up; it will be all right, but it has taken me by surprise. Leave me now, dear. Bartley is waiting for you.”

“Shall I tell him to come to you? He understands business, at least,” she added, with a touch of bitterness he did not notice.

“No,” he said, with a faint tinge of color coming into his white face. “Why should we worry him? Go now, dear; I would show you this letter if it could do any good, but it could not.”

She stole out, and the harassed man flung himself into a chair, and, flattening out the note, read it again and again, with the persistence of a man completely overwhelmed and bewildered.

It ran, in a hard, angular hand:

The squire sat and pondered—if his confusion of mind could be termed pondering—over the letter. He had never heard this name of Mowle before, but at once understood that it must be that of some money-lender; some man who had, for reasons best known to himself, bought these debts, and, as he had a perfect right to do, required them paid.

He knew that the Home Farm and Swivelscote were both mortgaged above their value, and that any attempt to re-borrow the money would be futile. They would have to be sold. The Home Farm, that had been part and parcel of the Grange estate for centuries, and Swivelscote, which had been granted to the Vanleys by King Charles II.—they would have to be sold, and with them would go the pride and repute of the good, old name!

“Thank God, I have no son to reproach me!” murmured the squire, with quivering lips. “Thank God, my child will marry a rich man!” and he hid his face in his hands as he bowed over the letter of Ezekiel Mowle.

Olivia went into the drawing-room, and found Harold Faradeane alone. He was standing by the window, his clear-cut face and stalwart figure silhouetted against the red light of the setting sun, and he turned as her footsteps fell upon his ear; light as her tread was, he knew it.

They had never been alone together since the night he had brought her home from Bessie’s, and at another time Olivia’s heart would have beaten wildly, and her color would have come at finding herself alone with him; but to-night she was too anxious about the squire to remark it.

His quick eye, which always seemed to dwell upon her face with a grave, guardian kind of watchfulness, noticed that something was amiss instantly.

“Is anything the matter?” he asked, in a low, earnest voice which never failed to find an echo in her heart. “Forgive me, but I thought you looked—worried.”

For a moment she hesitated, and a strong impulse to tell him seized her; but she put it from her, alas!

“Did I?” she said, forcing a smile. “Perhaps I am anxious about the dinner. We have a new cook, you know.”

His eyes rested upon hers—smiling so bravely!—for a moment, then he smiled.

“I cannot fancy you anxious about the dinner,” he said. “Is that all?” and his hand held hers, or, rather, let hers go, slowly and reluctantly. “If there is any other trouble I shall ask you to remember our compact, and tell me.”

She was moving away, but turned her face toward him with a doubting, wistful expression in her lovely eyes. Even then she might have spoken and all her future changed, but her evil genius sent Bartley Bradstone into the room at that moment, and with a bitter smile she turned, thinking:

“If I tell any one it should be—my future husband.”

He came across the room, looking in more than his usual spirits, with a light in his eyes which seemed like that of coming triumph, of confident victory, and began talking in a light and laughing tone.

“How well you look to-night, dearest!” he murmured as he passed Olivia, and she smiled again as she thought how blind he was, and how keen-sighted was the other man. “Ah, Faradeane!” and he shook his hand vigorously. “Jolly evening; we shall have plenty of birds if this goes on. Of course you’ll consider yourself free of all my shooting. Glad to see you at any time, don’t you know.”

“Thank you,” said Faradeane, in the quiet manner in which he always addressed him; “that’s very kind of you.”

“Oh, I like treating a neighbor as a neighbor; that’s my form—always was. Where’s the squire, Olivia? Miss Amelia, you’ll lose your character for punctuality,” and he pulled out his watch, and nodded and laughed at that lady, who, in an elaborate dinner-dress, which would have been juvenile for a girl of twenty-one, was casting side-glances of approval at her figure in the pier-glass.

“I’m sure you gentlemen would destroy any one’s good habits,” she simpered, slapping him with her fan. “Often and often I hurry and scurry my maid so that she sends me down a perfect fright lest I should be late, then you come in a quarter of an hour after the bell has rung. Oh, you men, you men!” and she reached out and made a dab at Faradeane, who smiled gravely down upon her as a huge mastiff looks down in kindly pity on a spaniel.

At that moment the squire entered, and Faradeane saw at once how pale and harassed he looked. Bartley Bradstone, however, appeared to take no notice, and he greeted him in the same half-boisterous way he had done the others.

All through the dinner the squire seemed depressed, though he made a valiant attempt to be cheerful, and all through the dinner Bartley Bradstone’s spirits seemed to rise. He took more wine than usual, too, and seemed disposed to linger over the Château Lafitte after Olivia and Aunt Amelia had gone.

Faradeane, who rarely drank more than one glass with his dessert, arose.

“I’ll smoke my cigarette on the terrace,” he said, and the squire nodded with the gentle smile which the father might bestow on a favorite son.

Bartley Bradstone looked after the tall, thin figure with an evil, envious glance.

“Faradeane isn’t much in the way of company, is he?” he said, disparagingly.

The squire looked surprised.

“I think he is the most entertaining of men,” he said.

“Oh, ah, with ladies, perhaps,” assented Bartley Bradstone, grudgingly, “but he can’t sit and take his glass of wine like other fellows,” and he filled his glass again.

“He doesn’t drink much,” said the squire, absently, and he sighed.

“You seem a cup too low to-night, squire,” said Bartley Bradstone, with affected carelessness. “Anything wrong?”

The squire hesitated a moment, then took the letter from his pocket.

“I did not mean to trouble you with it, though Olivia asked me to do so,” he said. “But perhaps it is my duty to tell you,” and he leaned his head on his hand.

Bradstone read the note slowly, then emitted a low whistle.

“Mowle, Mowle. I seem to have heard the name before,” he said, as if trying to recall it. “I’ve an idea he is a kind of money-lender. Do you know him?”

The squire shook his head, the fingers of his thin, right hand beating a mournful tune on the tablecloth.

“No. I’ve no doubt you are right. It doesn’t signify who or what he is; his claim is a lawful one, and I must meet it. I thought you ought to know.”

“Yes, if it’s the man I think it is, you will have to meet it,” said Bradstone. “These fellows will have their bond; and you can’t blame them. Business is business.”

“I do not blame him,” said the poor squire, simply. “What troubles me is the fact that I do not know how to arrange for his claim.”

Bartley Bradstone looked at the letter again.

“What is the amount?” he said.

The squire, after a few minutes’ reflection, told him, and he whistled again. It was not a loud whistle, but it jarred upon the squire’s nerves.

“Look here,” said Bradstone, after an artistic pause. “If you will leave this to me I will try and arrange it for you——”

The squire looked up, and his face flushed.

“I—I could not permit you to pay it,” he said, gravely.

“No, no; but I can arrange it. I can get time, and time is everything in these matters. Things are going to improve presently, and the property will be worth a great deal more money than this. Leave it to me, will you?”

“You are very kind,” said the squire in a low voice.

“Not at all. I’m doing it for Olivia, don’t you know! But I say, I must ask you to keep it quiet.”

The squire looked up inquiringly.

“I mean, don’t mention it to any one—not to Faradeane, for instance.”

“It is not the kind of thing one talks about,” said the squire, slowly. “I should certainly not mention it to Faradeane or any one else.”

Bradstone nodded with an air of satisfaction.

“All right; I’ll do the best I can, depend on it; and don’t you worry about it. Mr. Rowle, Mowle, or whatever his name is, will find he has a business man to deal with, and alter his tune, no doubt.”

The squire sighed.

“If one could only wipe out one’s past!” he said.

“Oh, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk,” responded Bartley Bradstone. “Shall we go in to the ladies now?”

“You go,” said the squire. “I will take a turn on the terrace with Faradeane.”

Bartley Bradstone’s face darkened.

“Oh, very well,” he said, with a curt nod, and left the room.

Olivia looked up from the book she was supposed to be reading as he entered the drawing-room.

“Where are papa and Mr. Faradeane?” she said.

“On the terrace,” he replied, speaking in a low tone, so as not to awaken Miss Amelia, who was sleeping the sleep of the just in an armchair. “He is rather out of sorts to-night.”

She looked at him apprehensively.

“He is in trouble. Has he told you?” she asked, below her breath.

He drew a chair near hers, and sat down, bending close over her, his eyes resting on her lovely face with a hungry and cunning regard.

“Well, yes, he has. Do you know what it is?”

She shook her head.

“No. Will you tell me?”

“A man has come down upon him for a large sum of money,” he said. “A man named Mowle.”

She drew a sharp breath, and her face grew pale. Then she looked at him quickly.

“But—but I thought——”

His face did not change, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I know. You mean that I told you I had got all the debts. Well, I thought I had, but I must have missed these somehow. At any rate, this fellow has got them, and he wants them paid, and the squire can’t see his way——”

“Oh, poor papa, poor papa!” she breathed.

He ventured to take her hand.

“Don’t be cut up about it,” he said in a low voice. “I have promised to see the man and arrange with him.”

She raised her eyes to his, and her face grew crimson.

“That—that is good of you,” she said.

“No, no. Of course I’d do anything. It will keep the man off for a time; but——”

He stopped.

“But?” she said, anxiously.

“The money must be paid before long, you know,” he went on, “and—and——See here, Olivia, it rests with you.”

“With me?” faintly.

He nodded, keeping his eyes upon the carpet.

“Yes. You—you know our agreement. The day we are married it shall be in your power to take all this trouble off your father’s shoulders. I’ve said what I’ll do, and I’ll do it. The morning of the marriage I shall pay into the Wainford Bank the sum of fifty thousand pounds in your name. You can do what you like with it. Pitch it in the gutter, buy diamonds, or clear the squire——”

Her head drooped lower and lower, then she raised it slowly, and waited for him to continue, for she felt that more was coming.

“Why should we wait?” he continued, insidiously. “I hate long engagements; and the sooner we are married the sooner will the squire be rid of this trouble of his. Will you marry me in a fortnight, Olivia?”

She started, and every drop of blood seemed to leave her face.

She could hear her father’s and Faradeane’s footsteps outside, could catch a word or two spoken by the latter, and his musical, true voice seemed to strike in with that of the man at her side and caused it to sound falser.

“In a fortnight?” she breathed, and her voice sounded strained and harsh.

“Why not?” he insisted. “You can get everything ready by that time. But you are not the one to think of clothes and all that sort of thing when your father’s happiness is at stake.”

“No,” she said in a hard, mechanical voice. “But——” and her hands locked together. “Give me another week!”

“Very well,” he said, and his eyes shone with satisfaction, for he had expected her to plead for a month at least. “Say three weeks, then. Three weeks!” his face flushed and he smiled, “that will give me time to do up The Maples and make it fit for its mistress, its queen. Ah, how happy we will be, dearest! Where shall we go? Italy, Switzerland, the lakes?” and he clasped her hand, which seemed to grow colder each moment. “There is nothing in the world you may want that you shan’t have, I promise you—nothing! I’m rich, as you know, and I’m prepared to spend any amount you like; you shall see.”

She looked at him. It seemed to her marvelous that he should so little understand her.

“I want nothing—nothing but to see papa happy!” she said.

“Very well,” he assented, “and you will do so, and have the satisfaction of feeling that it’s all your doing! It isn’t every girl who could pull her father out of the mud as you will do.”

She winced; every word he uttered jarred upon her as it did upon the squire.

“I—I think I will go upstairs,” she said. “I have a headache to-night.”

“Oh,” he said in a tone of disappointment; then he added, with a cunning glance, “Don’t forget you promised to sing that duet with Faradeane.”

Her lips quivered, and she turned her head aside.

“I had forgotten,” she said, simply.

He got up to hide the evil look which crossed his face.

“Yes, you’ll stop to please him, my lady,” he muttered. “But wait a while, wait a while!”

Faradeane and the squire came in, and the former went up to her.

“Will you sing?” he said, “or are you too tired?” he added, quick to notice her pallor and weariness.

“No,” she said, and went to the piano, and he found one of the modern ballads set duet fashion, and they began.

Their voices harmonized perfectly, and the squire settled himself in a chair to listen with something like peace in his eyes.

the refrain of the song ran; but at the last line of the second verse Olivia’s clear voice faltered and broke, and the music ceased.

The squire rose apprehensively, and Bartley Bradstone glowered across the room suspiciously, but, with a quick, yet apparently natural motion of his hand, Faradeane caused the music to slide from the stand.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It was my clumsiness.”

She looked up at him gratefully, the moment or two giving her time to recover herself.

“Let me try it again,” she said in a low voice; but he shook his head.

“No; you are tired, I can see, and I am out of voice.”

“I am tired,” she said, with a smile that cut him to the heart. “And I think I’ll say good-night.”

He went and opened the door for her, and, after bidding the rest “Good-night,” she passed him with bent head, and without giving him her hand.

When she had gained her own room she flung herself down beside the bed, and hid her face in her hands.

“Three weeks! Three weeks!” she moaned. Then she rose with a desperate laugh, and sang softly, with the delight in self-torture which a woman alone can feel: