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Olive: A Novel

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik · English · Gutenberg #22121 · 815,892 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Olive: A Novel

Author: Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Illustrator: G. Bowers


        
Release date: July 23, 2007 [eBook #22121]
                Most recently updated: March 6, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22121

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVE: A NOVEL ***




Produced by David Widger





OLIVE

A NOVEL

BY DINAH MARIA CRAIK, AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock

“BY THE AUTHOR OF
'JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN'”

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. BOWERS


1875


FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1850.

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage]




OLIVE.




CHAPTER I.

“Puir wee lassie, ye hae a waesome welcome to a waesome warld!”

Such was the first greeting ever received by my heroine, Olive Rothesay.
However, she would be then entitled neither a heroine nor even “Olive
Rothesay,” being a small nameless concretion of humanity, in colour and
consistency strongly resembling the “red earth,” whence was taken the
father of all nations. No foreshadowing of the coming life brightened
her purple, pinched-up, withered face, which, as in all new-born
children, bore such a ridiculous likeness to extreme old age. No tone
of the all-expressive human voice thrilled through the unconscious wail
that was her first utterance, and in her wide-open meaningless eyes
had never dawned the beautiful human soul. There she lay, as you and
I, reader, with all our compeers, lay once-a helpless lump of breathing
flesh, faintly stirred by animal life, and scarce at all by that
inner life which we call spirit. And, if we thus look back, half in
compassion, half in humiliation, at our infantile likeness-may it not be
that in the world to come some who in this world bore an outward image
poor, mean, and degraded, will cast a glance of equal pity on
their well-remembered olden selves, now transfigured into beautiful
immortality?

I seem to be wandering from my Olive Rothesay; but time will show the
contrary. Poor little spirit! newly come to earth, who knows whether
that “waesome welcome” may not be a prophecy? The old nurse seemed
almost to dread this, even while she uttered it, for with superstition
from which not an “auld wife” in Scotland is altogether free, she
changed the dolorous croon into a “Gude guide us!” and, pressing the
babe to her aged breast, bestowed a hearty blessing upon her nursling of
the second generation--the child of him who was at once her master and
her foster-son.

“An' wae's me that he's sae far awa', and canna do't himsel. My bonnie
bairn! Ye're come into the warld without a father's blessing.”

Perhaps the good soul's clasp was the tenderer, and her warm heart
throbbed the warmer to the new-born child, for a passing remembrance of
her own two fatherless babes, who now slept--as close together, as when,
“twin-laddies,” they had nestled in one mother's bosom--slept beneath
the wide Atlantic which marks the sea-boy's grave.

Nevertheless, the memory was now grown so dim with years, that it
vanished the moment the infant waked, and began to cry. Rocking to
and fro, the nurse tuned her cracked voice to a long-forgotten
lullaby--something about a “boatie.” It was stopped by a hand on her
shoulder, followed by the approximation of a face which, in its bland
gravity, bore “M.D.” on every line.

“Well, my good---- excuse me, but I forget your name.”

“Elspeth, or mair commonly, Elspie Murray. And no an ill name, doctor.
The Murrays o' Perth were”----

“No doubt--no doubt, Mrs. Elsappy.”

“_Elspie_, sir. How daur ye ca' me out o' my name, wi' your unceevil
English tongue!”

“Well, then, Elspie, or what the deuce you like,” said the doctor, vexed
out of his proprieties. But his rosy face became rosier when he met the
horrified and sternly reproachful stare of Elspie's keen blue eyes as
she turned round--a whole volume of sermons expressed in her “Eh, sir?”
 Then she added, quietly,

“I'll thank ye no to speak ill words in the ears o' this puir innocent
new-born wean. It's no canny.”

“Humph!--I suppose I must beg pardon again. I shall never get out what
I wanted to say--which is, that you must be quiet, my good dame, and
you must keep Mrs. Rothesay quiet. She is a delicate young creature, you
know, and must have every possible comfort that she needs.”

The doctor glanced round the room as though there was scarce enough
comfort for his notions of worldly necessity. Yet though not luxurious,
the antechamber and the room half-revealed beyond it seemed to furnish
all that could be needed by an individual of moderate fortune and
desires. And an eye more romantic and poetic than that of the worthy
medico might have found ample atonement for the want of rich furniture
within, in the magnificent view without. The windows looked down on a
lovely champaign, through which the many-winding Forth span its silver
network, until, vanishing in the distance, a white sparkle here and
there only showed whither the river wandered. In the distance, the blue
mountains rose like clouds, marking the horizon. The foreground of this
landscape was formed by the hill, castle-crowned--than which there is
none in the world more beautiful or more renowned.

In short, Olive Rothesay shared with many a king and hero the honour of
her place of nativity. She was born at Stirling.

Perhaps this circumstance of birth has more influence over character
than many matter-of-fact people would imagine. It is pleasant, in after
life, to think that we first opened our eyes in a spot famous in the
world's story, or remarkable for natural beauty. It is sweet to say,
“Those are _my_ mountains,” or “This is _my_ fair valley;” and there
is a delight almost like that of a child who glories in his noble or
beautiful parents, in the grand historical pride which links us to
the place where we were born. So this little morsel of humanity, yet
unnamed, whom by an allowable prescience we have called Olive, may
perhaps be somewhat influenced in after life by the fact that her cradle
was rocked under the shadow of the hill of Stirling, and that the first
breezes which fanned her baby brow came from the Highland mountains.

But the excellent presiding genius at this interesting advent “cared for
none of these things.” Dr. Jacob Johnson stood at the window with his
hands in his pockets--to him the wide beautiful world was merely a field
for the exercise of the medical profession--a place where old women
died, and children were born. He watched the shadows darkening over
Ben-Ledi--calculating how much longer he ought in propriety to stay with
his present patient, and whether he should have time to run home and
take a cosy dinner and a bottle of port before he was again required.

“Our sweet young patient is doing well, I think, nurse,” said he, at
last, in his most benevolent tones.

“Ye may say that, doctor--ye suld ken.”

“I might almost venture to leave her, except that she seems so lonely,
without friend or nurse, save yourself.”

“And wha's the best nurse for Captain Angus Rothesay's wife and bairn,
but the woman that nursed himsel?” said Elspie, lifting up her tall
gaunt frame, and for the second time frowning the little doctor into
confused silence. “An' as for friends, ye suld just be unco glad o' the
chance that garr'd the leddy bide here, and no amang her ain folk. Else
there wadna hae been sic a sad welcome for her bonnie bairn. Maybe a
waur, though,” added the woman to herself, with a sigh, as she once more
half-buried her little nursling in her capacious embrace.

“I have not the slightest doubt of Captain Rothesay's respectability,”
 answered Dr. Johnson. _Respectability_! applied to the scions of
a family which had had the honour of being nearly extirpated at
Flodden-field, and again at Pinkie. Had the trusty follower of the
Rothesays heard the term, she certainly would have been inclined to
annihilate the presumptuous Englishman. But she was fortunately engaged
in stilling the cries of the poor infant, who, in return for the pains
she took in addressing it, began to give full evidence that the weakness
of its lungs was not at all proportionate to the smallness of its size.

“Crying will do it good. A fine child--a very fine child,” observed the
doctor, as he made ready for his departure, while the nurse proceeded
in her task, and the heap of white drapery was gradually removed, until
from beneath it appeared a very--very tiny specimen of babyhood.

“Ye needna trouble yoursel to say what's no' true,” was the answer;
“it's just a bit bairnie--unco sma' An' that's nae wonder, considering
the puir mither's trouble.”

“And the father is gone abroad?”

“Just twa months sin' syne. But eh! doctor, look ye here,” suddenly
cried Elspie, as with her great, brown, but tender hand she was rubbing
down the delicate spine of the now quieted babe.

“Well--what's the matter now?” said Dr. Johnson rather sulkily, as he
laid down his hat and gloves, “The child is quite perfect, rather small
perhaps, but as nice a little girl as ever was seen. It's all right.”

“It's no a' richt,” cried the nurse, in a tone trembling between anger
and apprehension. “Doctor, see!”

She pointed with her finger to a slight curve at the upper part of the
spine, between the shoulder and neck. The doctor's professional anxiety
was aroused--he came near and examined the little creature, with a
countenance that grew graver each instant.

“Aweel?” said Elspie, inquiringly.

“I wish I had noticed this before; but it would have been of no use,” he
answered, his bland tones made earnest by real feeling.

“Eh, what?” said the nurse.

“I am sorry to say that the child is _deformed_--slightly so--very
slightly I hope--but most certainly deformed. Hump-backed.”

At this terrible sentence Elspie sank back in her chair. Then she
started up, clasping the child convulsively, and faced the doctor.

[Illustration: Page 5, How daur ye speak so]

“Ye lee, ye ugly creeping Englisher! How daur ye speak so of ane o' the
Rothesays,--frae the blude o' whilk cam the tallest men an' the bonniest
leddies--ne'er a cripple amang them a ---- How daur ye say that my
master's bairn will be a------. Wae's me! I canna speak the word.”

“My poor woman!” mildly said the doctor, “I am really concerned.”

“Haud your tongue, ye fule!” muttered Elspie, while she again laid the
child on her lap, and examined it earnestly for herself. The result
confirmed all. She wrung her hands, and rocked to and fro, moaning
aloud.

“Ochone, the wearie day! O my dear master, my bairn, that I nursed on
my knee! how will ye come back an' see your first-born, the last o' the
Rothesays, a puir bit crippled lassie!”

A faint call from the inner room startled both doctor and nurse.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the former. “We must think of the mother.
Stay--I'll go. She does not, and she must not, know of this. What a
blessing that I have already told her the child was a fine and perfect
child. Poor thing, poor thing!” he added passionately, as he hurried to
his patient leaving Elspie hushed into silence, still mournfully gazing
on her charge.

It would have been curious to mark the changes in the nurse's face
during that brief interval. At first it wore a look almost of
repugnance as she regarded the unconscious child, and then that very
unconsciousness seemed to awaken her womanly compassion. “Puir hapless
wean, ye little ken what ye're coming to! Lack o' kinsman's love, and
lack o' siller, and lack o' beauty. God forgie me--but why did He send
ye into the waefu' warld at a'?”

It was a question, the nature of which has perplexed theologians,
philosophers, and metaphysicians, in every age, and will perplex them
all to the end of time. No wonder, therefore, that it could not be
solved by the poor simple Scotswoman. But as she stood hushing the
child to her breast, and looking vacantly out of the window at the far
mountains which grew golden in the sunset, she was unconsciously soothed
by the scene, and settled the matter in a way which wiser heads might
often do with advantage.

“Aweel! He kens best. He made the warld and a' that's in't; and maybe
He will gie unto this puir wee thing a meek spirit to bear ill-luck. Ane
must wark, anither suffer. As the minister says, It'll a' come richt at
last.”

Still the babe slept on, the sun sank, and night fell upon the earth.
And so the morning and evening made the first day of the new existence,
which was about to be developed, through all the various phases which
compose that strange and touching mystery--a woman's life.




CHAPTER II.

There is not a more hackneyed subject for poetic enthusiasm than
that sight--perhaps the loveliest in nature--a young mother with her
first-born child. And perhaps because it is so lovely, and is ever
renewed in its beauty, the world never tires of dwelling thereupon.

Any poet, painter, or sculptor, would certainly have raved about Mrs.
Rothesay, had he seen her in the days of convalescence, sitting at the
window with her baby on her knee. She furnished that rare sight--and
one that is becoming rarer as the world grows older--an exquisitely
beautiful woman. Would there were more of such!--that the idea of
physical beauty might pass into the heart through the eyes, and bring
with it the ideal of the soul's perfection, which our senses can
only thus receive. So great is this influence--so unconsciously do we
associate the type of spiritual with material beauty, that perhaps the
world might have been purer and better if its onward progress in what
it calls civilisation had not so nearly destroyed the fair mould of
symmetry and loveliness which tradition celebrates.

It would have done any one's heart good only to look at Sybilla
Rothesay. She was a creature to watch from a distance, and then to go
away and dream of, wondering whether she were a woman or a spirit. As
for describing her, it is almost impossible--but let us try.

She was very small in stature and proportions--quite a little fairy. Her
cheek had the soft peachy hue of girlhood; nay, of very childhood. You
would never have thought her a mother. She lay back, half-buried in the
great armchair; and then, suddenly springing up from amidst the cloud of
white muslins and laces that enveloped her, she showed her young, blithe
face.

“I will not have that cap, Elspie; I am not an invalid now, and I don't
choose to be an old matron yet,” she said, in a pretty, wilful way,
as she threw off the ugly ponderous production of her nurse's active
fingers, and exhibited her beautiful head.

It was, indeed, a beautiful head! exquisite in shape, with masses
of light-brown hair folded round it. The little rosy ear peeped out,
forming the commencement of that rare and dainty curve of chin and
throat, so pleasant to an artist's eye. A beauty to be lingered over
among all other beauties. Then the delicately outlined mouth, the lips
folded over in a lovely gravity, that seemed ready each moment to melt
away into smiles. Her nose--but who would destroy the romance of a
beautiful woman by such an allusion? Of course, Mrs. Rothesay had a
nose; but it was so entirely in harmony with the rest of her face,
that you never thought whether it were Roman, Grecian, or aquiline. Her
eyes--

     “She has two eyes, so soft and brown--
     She gives a side-glance and looks down.”

But was there a soul in this exquisite form? You never asked--you hardly
cared! You took the thing for granted; and whether it were so or not,
you felt that the world, and yourself especially, ought to be thankful
for having looked at so lovely an image, if only to prove that earth
still possessed such a thing as ideal beauty; and you forgave all the
men, in every age, that have run mad for the same. Sometimes, perchance,
you would pause a moment, to ask if this magic were real, and remember
the calm holy airs that breathed from the presence of some woman,
beautiful only in her soul. But then you never would have looked upon
Sybilla Rothesay as a woman at all--only a flesh-and-blood fairy--a
Venus de Medici transmuted from the stone.

Perhaps this was the way in which Captain Angus Rothesay contrived to
fall in love with Sybilla Hyde; until he woke from the dream to find his
seraph of beauty--a baby-bride, pouting like a vexed child, because,
in their sudden elopement, she had neither wedding-bonnet nor Brussels
veil!

And now she was a baby-mother; playing with her infant as, not so very
long since, she had played with her doll; twisting its tiny fingers, and
making them close tightly round her own, which were quite as elfin-like,
comparatively. For Mrs. Rothesay's surpassing beauty included beautiful
hands and feet; a blessing which Nature--often niggardly in her
gifts--does not always extend to pretty women, but bestows it on those
who have infinitely more reason to be thankful for the boon.

“See, nurse Elspie,” said Mrs. Rothesay, laughing in her childish way;
“see how fast the little creature holds my finger! Really, I think a
baby is a very pretty thing; and it will be so nice to play with until
Angus comes home.”

Elspie turned round from the corner where she sat sewing, and looked
with a half-suppressed sigh at her master's wife, whose delicate English
beauty, and quick, ringing English voice, formed such a strong contrast
to herself, and were so opposed to her own peculiar prejudices. But
she had learned to love the young creature, nevertheless; and for the
thousandth time she smothered the half-unconscious thought that Captain
Angus might have chosen better.

“Children are a blessing frae the Lord, as maybe ye'll see, ane o'
these days, Mrs. Rothesay,” said Elspie, gravely; “ye maun tak' them as
they're sent, and mak' the best o' them.”

Mrs. Rothesay laughed merrily. “Thank you, Elspie, for giving me such a
solemn speech, just like one of my husband's. To put me in mind of him,
I suppose. As if there were any need for that! Dear Angus! I wonder
what he will say to his little daughter when he sees her; the new Miss
Rothesay, who has come in opposition to the old Miss Rothesay,--ha! ha!”

“The auld Miss Rothesay! She's your husband's aunt,” observed Elspie,
feeling it necessary to stand up for the honour of the family. “Miss
Flora was a comely leddy ance, as a' the Rothesays were.”

“And this Miss Rothesay will be too, I hope, though she is such a
little brown thing now. But people say that the brownest babies grow the
fairest in time, eh, nurse?”

“They do say that,” replied Elspie, with another and a heavier sigh; as
she bent closer over her work.

Mrs. Rothesay went on in her blithe chatter. “I half wished for a boy,
as Captain Rothesay thought it would please his uncle; but that's of
no consequence. He will be quite satisfied with a girl, and so am I.
Of course she will be a beauty, my dear little baby!” And with a deeper
mother-love piercing through her childish pleasure, she bent over the
infant; then took it up, awkwardly and comically enough, as though it
were a toy she was afraid of breaking, and rocked it to and fro on her
breast.

Elspie started up. “Tak' tent, tak' tent! ye'll hurt it, maybe, the puir
wee----Oh, what was I gaun to say!”

“Don't trouble yourself,” said the young mother, with a charming
assumption of matronly dignity; “I shall hold the baby safe. I know all
about it.”

And she really did succeed in lulling the child to sleep; which was no
sooner accomplished than she recommenced her pleasant musical chatter,
partly addressed to her nurse, but chiefly the unconscious overflow of a
simple nature, which could not conceal a single thought.

“I wonder what I shall call her--the darling! We must not wait until her
papa comes home. She can't be 'baby' for three years. I shall have to
decide on her name myself. Oh, what a pity! I, who never could
decide anything. Poor dear Angus! he does all--he had even to fix
the wedding-day!” And her musical laugh--another rare charm that she
possessed--caused Elspie to look round with mingled pity and affection.

“Come, nurse, you can help me, I know. I am puzzling my poor head for
a name to give this young lady here. It must be a very pretty one. I
wonder what Angus would like? A family name, perhaps, after one of those
old Rothesays that you and he make so much of.”

“Oh, Mrs. Rothesay! And are ye no proud o' your husband's family?”

“Yes, very proud; especially as I have none of my own. He took me--an
orphan, without a single tie in the wide world--he took me into his warm
loving arms”--here herm voice faltered, and a sweet womanly tenderness
softened her eyes. “God bless my noble husband! I _am_ proud of him, and
of his people, and of all his race. So come,” she added, her childish
manner reviving, “tell me of the remarkable women in the Rothesay family
for the last five hundred years--you know all about them, Elspie. Surely
we'll find one to be a namesake for my baby.”

Elspie--pleased and important--began eagerly to relate long traditions
about the Lady Christina Rothesay, who was a witch, and a great friend
of “Maister Michael Scott,” and how, with spells, she caused her seven
step-sons to pine away and die; also the lady Isobel, who let her lover
down from her bower-window with the long strings of her golden hair, and
how her brother found and slew him;--whence she laid a curse on all the
line who had golden hair, and such never prospered, but died unmarried
and young.

“I hope the curse has passed away now,” gaily said the young mother,
“and that the latest scion will not be a golden-tressed damsel. Yet look
here”--and she touched the soft down beneath her infant's cap, which
might, by a considerable exercise of imagination, be called hair--“it is
yellow, you see, Elspie! But I'll not believe your tradition. My child
shall be both beautiful and beloved.”

Smitten with a sudden pang, poor Elspie cried, “Oh, my leddy, dinna
think o' the future. Dinna!”---- and she stopped, confused.

“Really, how strange you are. But go on. We'll have no more Christinas
nor Isobels.”

Hurriedly, Elspie continued to relate the histories: of noble Jean
Rothesay, who died by an arrow aimed at her husband's heart; and Alison,
her sister, the beauty of James the Fifth's reckless court, who was “no
gude;” and Mistress Katharine Rothesay, who hid two of the “Prince's”
 soldiers after Culloden, and stood with a pair of pistols before their
bolted door.

“Nay, I'll have none of these--they frighten me,” said Sybilla, “I
wonder I ever had courage to marry the descendant of such awful women.
No! my sweet innocent! you shall not be christened after them,” she
continued, stroking the baby cheek with her soft finger. “You shall
not be like them at all, except in their beauty. And they were all
handsome--were they, Elspie?”

“Ne'er a ane o' the Rothesay line, man or woman, that wasna fair to
see.”

“Then so will my baby be!--like her father, I hope--or just a little
like her mother, who is not so very ugly, either; at least, Angus says
not.” And Mrs. Rothesay drew up her tiny figure, patted one dainty
hand--the wedded one--with its fairy fellow; then--touched perhaps with
a passing melancholy that he who most prized her beauty, and for whose
sake she most prized it herself, was far away--she leaned back and
sighed.

However, in a few minutes, she cried out, her words showing how light
and wandering was the reverie, “Elspie, I have a thought! The baby shall
be christened Olive!”

“It's a strange, heathen name, Mrs. Rothesay.”

“Not at all. Listen how I chanced to think of it. This very morning,
just before you came to waken me, I had such a queer, delicious dream.”

“Dream! Are ye sure it was i' the morning-tide?” cried Elspie, aroused
into interest.

“Yes; and so it certainly means something, you will say, Elspie? Well,
it was about my baby. She was then lying fast asleep in my bosom,
and her warm, soft breathing soon sent me to sleep too. I dreamt that
somehow I had gradually let her go from me, so that I felt her in my
arms no more, and I was very sad, and cried out how cruel it was for any
one to steal my child, until I found I had let her go of my own accord.
Then I looked up, after awhile, and saw standing at the foot of the bed
a little angel--a child-angel--with a green olive-branch in its hand.
It told me to follow; so I rose up, and followed it over a wide desert
country, and across rivers and among wild beasts; but at every peril
the child held out the olive-branch, and we passed on safely. And when I
felt weary, and my feet were bleeding with the rough journey, the little
angel touched them with the olive, and I was strong again. At last we
reached a beautiful valley, and the child, said, 'You are quite safe
now.' I answered, 'And who is my beautiful comforting angel?' Then the
white wings fell off, and I only saw a sweet child's face, which bore
something of Angus's likeness and something of my own, and the little
one stretched out her hands and said, 'Mother!'”

While Mrs. Rothesay spoke, her thoughtless manner had once more softened
into deep feeling. Elspie watched her with wondering eagerness.

“It was nae dream; it was a vision. God send it true!” said the old
woman, solemnly.

“I know not. Angus always laughed at my dreams, but I have a strange
feeling whenever I think of this. Oh, Elspie, you can't tell how sweet
it was! And so I should like to call my baby Olive, for the sake of
the beautiful angel. It may be foolish--but 'tis a fancy of mine. Olive
Rothesay! It sounds well, and Olive Rothesay she shall be.”

“Amen; and may she be an angel to ye a' her days. And ye'll mind o' the
blessed dream, and love her evermair. Oh, my sweet leddy, promise me
that ye will!” cried the nurse, approaching her mistress's chair, while
two great tears stole down her hard cheeks.

“Of course I shall love her dearly! What made you doubt it? Because I am
so young? Nay, I have a mother's heart, though I am only eighteen. Come,
Elspie, do let us be merry; send these drops away;” and she patted the
old withered face with her little hand. “Was it not you who told me the
saying, 'It's ill greeting ower a new-born wean'? There! don't I succeed
charmingly in your northern tongue?”

What a winning little creature she was, this young wife of Angus
Rothesay! A pity he had not seen her--the old Highland uncle, Miss
Flora's brother, who had disinherited his nephew and promised heir for
bringing him a _Sassenach_ niece.

“A charming scene of maternal felicity! I am quite sorry to intrude upon
it,” said a bland voice at the door, as Dr. Johnson put in his shining
bald head.

Mrs. Rothesay welcomed him in her graceful, cordial way. She was so
ready to cling to every one who showed her kindness--and he had
been very kind; so kind that, with her usual quick impulses, she had
determined to stay and live at Stirling until her husband's return from
Jamaica. She told Dr. Johnson so now; and, moreover, as an earnest of
the friendship which she, accustomed to be loved by every one, expected
from him, she requested him to stand godfather to her little babe.

“She shall be christened after our English fashion, doctor, and her name
shall be Olive. What do you think of her now? Is she growing prettier?”

The doctor bowed a smiling assent, and walked to the window. Thither
Elspie followed him.

“Ye maun tell her the truth--I daurna. Ye will!” and she clutched his
arm with eager anxiety. “An' oh! for Gudesake, say it safyly, kindly.”

He shook her off with an uneasy look. He had never felt in a more
disagreeable position.

Mrs. Rothesay called him back again. “I think, doctor, her features are
improving. She will certainly be a beauty. I should break my heart if
she were not. And what would Angus say? Come--what are you and Elspie
talking about so mysteriously?”

“My dear madam--hem!” began Dr. Johnson. “I do hope--indeed, I am
sure--your child will be a good child, and a great comfort to both her
parents;”----

“Certainly--but how grave you are about it.”

“I have a painful duty--a very painful duty,” he replied. But Elspie
pushed him aside.

“Ye're just a fule, man!--ye'll kill her. Say your say at ance!”

The young mother turned deadly pale. “Say _what_ Elspie? What is he
going to tell me? Angus”----

“No, no, my darlin' leddy! your husband's safe;” and Elspie flung
herself on her knees beside the chair. “But, the lassie--(dinna fear,
for it's the will o' God, and a' for gude, nae doubt)--your sweet wee
dochter is”----

“Is, I grieve to say it, deformed,” added Dr. Johnson.

The poor mother gazed incredulously on him, on the nurse, and lastly on
the sleeping child. Then, without a word, she fell back, and fainted in
Espie's arms.




CHAPTER III.

It was many days before Mrs. Rothesay recovered from the shock
occasioned by the tidings--to her almost more fearful than her child's
death--that it was doomed for life to suffer the curse of hopeless
deformity. For a curse, a bitter curse, this seemed to the young and
beautiful creature, who had learned since her birth to consider beauty
as the greatest good. She was, so to speak, in love with loveliness; not
merely in herself, but in every human creature. This feeling sprang more
from enthusiasm than from personal vanity, the borders of which meanness
she had just touched, but never crossed. Perhaps, also, she was too
conscious of her own loveliness, and admired herself too ardently to
care for attracting the petty admiration of others. She took it quite as
a matter of course; and was no more surprised at being worshipped than
if she had been the Goddess of Beauty herself.

But if Sybilla Rothesay gloried in her own perfections, she no less
gloried in those of all she loved, and chiefly in her noble-looking
husband. And they were so young, so quickly wed, and so soon parted,
that this emotion had no time to deepen into that soul-united affection
which is independent of outward things, or, rather, becomes so divine,
that instead of beauty creating love, love has power to create beauty.

No marvel, then, that not having attained to a higher experience,
Sybilla considered beauty as all in all. And this child--her child and
Angus's,--would be a deformity, a shame to its parents, a dishonour
to its race. How should she ever bear to look upon it? Still more, how
should she ever dare to show the poor cripple to its father, and say,
“This is our child--our firstborn.” Would he not turn away in disgust,
and answer that it had better died?

Such exaggerated fancies as these haunted the miserable mother, when she
passed from her long swoon into a sort of fever; which, though scarce
endangering her life, was yet for days a source of great anxiety to the
devoted Elspie. To the unhappy infant this madness--for it was temporary
madness--almost caused death. Mrs. Rothesay positively refused to see
or notice her child, scorning alike the tearful entreaties and the stern
reproaches of the nurse. At last Elspie ceased to combat this passionate
resolve, springing half from anger and half from delirium----

“God forgie ye, and save the innocent bairn--the dochter He gave, and
that ye're gaun to murder--unthankfu' woman as ye are,” muttered Elspie,
under her breath, as she quitted the room and went to succour the almost
dying babe. Over it her heart yearned as it had never yearned before.

“Your mither casts ye aff, ye puir wee thing. Maybe ye're no lang for
this warld, but while ye're in it ye sall be my ain lassie, an' I'll be
your ain mammie, evermair.”

So, like Naomi of old, Elspie Murray “laid the child in her bosom and
became nurse unto it.” But for her, the life of our Olive Rothesay--with
all its influences, good or evil, small or great, as yet unknown--would
have expired like a faint-flickering taper.

Perhaps, in her madness, the unhappy mother might almost have desired
such an ending. As it was, the disappointed hope, which had at
first resembled positive dislike, subsided into the most complete
indifference. She endured her child's presence, but she took no notice
of it; she seemed to have forgotten its very existence. Her shattered
health supplied sufficient excuse for the utter abandonment of all a
mother's duties, and the poor feeble spark of life was left to Elspie's
cherishing. By night and by day the child knew no other resting-place
than the old nurse's arms, the mother's seeming to be for ever closed to
its helpless innocence. True, Sybilla kissed it once a day, when
Elspie brought the little creature to her, and exacted, as a duty, the
recognition which Mrs. Rothesay, girlish and yielding as she was, dared
not refuse. Her husband's faithful retainer had over her an influence
which could never be gainsaid.

Elspie seemed to be the sole regent of the babe's destiny. It was she
who took it to its baptism;--not the festal ceremony which had pleased
Sybilla's childish fancy with visions of christening robes and cakes,
but the beautiful and simple “naming” of Elspie's own church. She stood
before the minister, holding the desolate babe in her protecting arms;
and there her heart sealed the promise of her lips, to bring it up in
the knowledge and fear of God. And with an earnest credulity, which
contained the germ of purest faith, she, remembering the mother's dream,
called her nursling by the name of Olive.

She carried the babe home and laid it on Mrs. Rothesay's lap. The
young creature, who had so strangely renounced that dearest blessing of
mother-love, would fain have put the child aside; but Elspie's stern eye
controlled her.

“Ye maun kiss and bless your dochter. Nae tongue but her mither's suld
ca' her by her new-christened name.”

“What name?”

“The name ye gied her yer ain sel.”

“No, no. Surely you have not called her so. Take her away; she is not
my sweet angel-baby--the darling in my dream.” And Sybilla hid her face;
not in anger, or disgust, but in bitter weeping.

“She's yer ain dochter--Olive Rothesay,” answered Elspie, less harshly.
“She may be an angel to ye yet.”

While she spoke, it so chanced that there flitted over the infant-face
one of those smiles that we see sometimes in young children--strange,
causeless smiles, which seem the reflection of some invisible influence.

And so, while the babe smiled, there came to its face such an
angel-brightness, that it shone into the mother's careless heart. For
the first time since that mournful day which had so changed her nature,
Sybilla Rothesay sat down and kissed the child of her own accord. Elspie
heard no maternal blessing--the name of “Olive” was never breathed; but
the nurse was satisfied when she saw that the babe's second baptism was
its mother's repentant tears.

There was in Sybilla no hardness nor cruelty, only the disappointment
and vexation of a child deprived of an expected toy. She might have
grown weary of her little daughter almost as soon, even if her pride and
hope had not been crushed by the knowledge of Olive's deformity. Love to
her seemed a treasure to be paid in requital, not a free gift bestowed
without thought of return. That self-forgetting maternal devotion,
lavished first on unconscious infancy, and then on unregarding youth,
was a mystery to her utterly incomprehensible. At least it seemed so
now, when, with the years and the character of a child, she was called
to the highest duty of woman's life. This duty comes to some girlish
mothers as an instinct, but it was not so with Mrs. Rothesay. An orphan,
and heiress to a competence, if not to wealth, she had been brought up
like a plant in a hot-bed, with all natural impulses either warped and
suppressed, or forced into undue luxuriance. And yet it was a sweet
plant withal; one that might have grown, ay, and might yet grow, into
perfect strength and beauty.

Mrs. Rothesay's education--that education of heart, and mind, and
temper, which is essential to a woman's happiness, had to begin when it
ought to have been completed--at her marriage. Most unfortunate it was
for her, that ere the first twelvemonth of their wedded life had passed,
Captain Rothesay was forced to depart for Jamaica, whence was derived
his wife's little fortune; their whole fortune now, for he had quitted
the army on his marriage. Thus Sybilla was deprived of that wholesome
influence which man has ever over a woman who loves him, and by which
he may, if he so will, counteract many a fault and weakness in her
disposition.

Time passed on, and Mrs. Rothesay, a wife and mother, was at twenty-one
years old just the same as she had been at seventeen--as girlish, as
thoughtless, eager for any amusement, and often treading on the very
verge of folly. She still lived at Stirling, enforced thereunto by the
entreaties, almost the commands, of Elspie Murray, against whom she
bitterly murmured sometimes, for shutting her up in such a dull Scotch
town. When Elspie urged her unprotected situation, the necessity of
living in retirement, for the “honour of the family,” while Captain
Angus was away, Mrs. Rothesay sometimes frowned, but more often put the
matter off with a merry jest. Meanwhile she consoled herself by going as
much into society as the limited circle of Dr. and Mrs. Johnson allowed;
and therein, as usual, the lovely, gay, winning young creature was
spoiled to her heart's content.

So she still lived the life of a wayward, petted child, whose natural
instinct for all things good and beautiful kept her from ever doing
what was positively wrong, though she did a great deal that was foolish
enough in its way. She was, as she jestingly said, “a widow bewitched;”
 but she rarely coquetted, and then only in that innocent way which comes
natural to some women, from a universal desire to please. And she never
ceased talking and thinking of her noble Angus.

When his letters came, she always made a point of kissing them
half-a-dozen times, and putting them under her pillow at night, just
like a child! And she wrote to him regularly once a month--pretty,
playful, loving letters. But there was in them one peculiarity--they
were utterly free from that delicious maternal egotism which chronicles
all the little incidents of babyhood. She said, in answer to her
husband's questions, that “Olive was well;” “Olive could just walk;”
 “Olive had learned to say 'Papa and Elspie.'” Nothing more.

The fatal secret she had not dared to tell him.

Her first letters--full of joy about “the loveliest baby that ever was
seen”--had brought his in return echoing the rapture with truly paternal
pride. They reached her in her misery, to which they added tenfold.
Every sentence smote her with bitter regret, even with shame, as though
it were her fault in having given to the world the wretched child.
Captain Rothesay expressed his joy that his little daughter was not only
healthy, but pretty; for, he said, “He should be quite unhappy if she
did not grow up as beautiful as her mother.” The words pierced Sybilla's
heart; she could not--dared not tell him the truth; not yet, at least.
And whenever Elspie's rough honesty urged her to do so, she fell into
such agonies of grief and anger, that the nurse was obliged to desist.

Sometimes, when letter after letter came from the father, full of
inquiries about his precious first-born,--Sybilla, whose fault was more
in weakness than deceit, resolved that she would nerve herself for the
terrible task. But it was vain--she had not strength to do it.

The three years extended into four, and still Captain Rothesay sent gift
after gift, and message after message, to his daughter. Still he wrote
to the conscience-stricken mother how many times he had kissed the
“little lock of golden hue,” severed from the baby-head; picturing the
sweet face and lithe, active form which he had never seen. And all
the while there was stealing about the old house at Stirling a pale,
deformed child: small and attenuated in frame--quiet beyond its years,
delicate, spiritless, with scarce one charm that would prove its lineage
from the young beautiful mother, out of whose sight it instinctively
crept.

Thus the years fled with Olive Rothesay and her parents; each month,
each day, sowing seeds that would assuredly spring up, for good or for
evil, in the destinies of all three.




CHAPTER IV.

The fourth year of Captain Rothesay's absence passed,--not without
anxiety, for it was war-time, and his letters were frequently
interrupted. At first, whenever this happened, his wife fretted
extremely--_fretted_ is the right word, for it was more a fitful chafing
than a positive grief. Sybilla knew not the sense of deep sorrow. Her
nature resembled one of those sunny climes where even the rains are
dews. So, after a few disappointments, she composed herself to the
certainty that nothing would happen amiss to her Angus; and she
determined never to expect a letter until she received it, and not to
look for _him_ at all until he wrote her word that he was coming. He
was sure to do what was right, and to return to his dearly-loved wife
as soon as ever he could. And, though scarce acknowledging the fact to
herself, her husband's return involved such a humiliating explanation
of truth concealed, if not of positive falsehood, that Sybilla dared
not even think of it. Whenever the long-parted wife mused on the joy of
meeting--of looking once more into the beloved face, and being lifted up
like a child to cling round his neck with her fairy arms, for Angus was
a very giant to her--then there seemed to rise between them the phantom
of the pale, deformed child.

To drown these fancies, Sybilla rushed into every amusement which her
secluded life afforded. At last, she resolved on an exploit at which
Elspie looked aghast, and which made the quiet Mrs. Johnson shake her
head--an evening party--nay, even a dance, at her own home.

“It will never do for the people here; they're '_unco gude_,'” said the
doctor's English wife, who had imbibed a few Scottish prejudices by a
residence of thirty years. “Nobody ever dances in Stirling.”

“Then I'll teach them,” cried the lively Mrs. Rothesay: “I long to show
them a quadrille--even that new dance that all the world is shocked at
Oh! I should dearly like a waltz.”

Mrs. Jacob Johnson was scandalised at first, but there was something in
Sybilla to which she could not say nay,--nobody ever could. The matter
was decided by Mrs. Rothesay's having her own way, except with regard to
the waltz, which her friend staunchly resisted. Elspie, too, interfered
as long as she could; but her heart was just now full of anxiety about
her nursling, who seemed to grow more delicate every year. Day after
day the faithful nurse might have been seen trudging across the country,
carrying little Olive in her arms, to strengthen the child with the
healing springs of Bridge of Allan, and invigorate her weak frame with
the fresh mountain air--the heather breath of beautiful Ben-Ledi. Among
these influences did Olive's childhood dawn, so that in after-life they
never faded from her.

Elspie scarcely thought again about the gay party, until when she came
in one evening, and was undressing the sleepy little girl in the dusk,
a vision appeared at the nursery door. It quite startled the old
Scotswoman at first, it looked so like a fairy apparition, all in white,
with a green coronet. She hardly could believe that it was her young
mistress.

“Eh! Mrs. Rothesay, ye're no goin' to show yoursel in sic a dress,” she
cried, regarding with horror the gleaming bare arms, the lovely
neck, and the tiny white-sandaled feet, which the short and airy robe
exhibited in all their perfection.

“Indeed, but I am! and 'tis quite a treat to wear a ball-dress. I, that
have been smothered up in all sorts of ugly costume for nearly five
years. And see my jewels! Why, Elspie, this pearl-set has only beheld
the light once since I was married--so beautiful as it is--and Angus's
gift too.”

“Dinna say that name,” cried Elspie, driven to a burst of not very
respectful reproach. “I marvel ye daur speak of Captain Angus--and ye
wi' your havers and your jigs, while yer husband's far awa', and your
bairn sick! It's for nae gude I tell ye, Mrs. Rothesay.”

Sybilla had looked a little subdued at the allusion to her husband, but
the moment Elspie mentioned the little Olive, her manner changed. “You
are always blaming me about the child, and I will not bear it. She is
quite well. Are you not, baby?”--the mother never would call her _Olive_.

A feeble, trembling voice answered from the little bed, “Yes, please,
mamma!”

“There, you hear, Elspie! Now don't torment me any more about her. But I
must go down stairs.”

She danced across the room in a graceful waltzing step, held out her
hand towards the child, and touched one so tiny, cold, and damp, that
she felt half inclined to take and warm it in her own. But Elspie's
hawk-eyes were watching her, and she was ashamed. So she only said,
“Goodnight, baby!” and danced back again, out through the open door.

For hours Elspie sat in the dark room beside the bed of the little
child, who lay murmuring, sometimes moaning, in her sleep. She never
did moan but in her sleep, poor innocent! The sound of music and dancing
rose up from below, and then Mrs. Rothesay's singing.

“Ye'd better be hushin' your puir wee bairnie here, ye heartless woman!”
 muttered Elspie, who grew daily more jealous over the forsaken child,
now the very darling of her old age. She knew not that her love for
Olive, and its open tokens shown by reproaches to Olive's mother, were
sure to suppress any dawning tenderness that might be awakened in Mrs.
Rothesay's bosom.

It had not done so yet, for many a time during the dance and song did
the touch of that little cold hand haunt the young mother, rousing
a feeling akin to remorse. But she threw it off again and again, and
entered with the gaiety of her nature into all the evening's pleasure.
Her enjoyment was at its height, when an old acquaintance, just
discovered--an English officer, quartered at the castle--proposed a
waltz. Before she had time to say “Yes” or “No,” the music struck up one
of those enchanting waltz-measures which to all true lovers of dancing,
are as irresistible as Maurice Connor's “Wonderful Tune.” Sybilla felt
again the same blithe young creature of sixteen, who had led the revels
at her first ball, dancing into the heart of one old colonel, six
ensigns, a doctor, a lawyer, and of Angus Rothesay. There was no
resisting the impulse: in a moment she was whirling away.

In the midst of the dizzy round the door opened, and, like some evil
spectre, in stalked Elspie Murray.

Never was there such an uncouth apparition seen in a ball-room. Her grey
petticoat exhibited her bare feet; her short upper gown, that graceful
and picturesque attire of the Scottish peasantry, was thrown carelessly
over her shoulders; her _mutch_ was put on awry, and from under its
immense border her face appeared, as white almost as the cap itself.
She walked right into the centre of the floor, laid her heavy hand on
Sybilla's shoulder, and said,

“Mrs. Rothesay, your husband's come!”

The young wife stood one moment transfixed; she turned pale, afterwards
crimson, and then, uttering a cry of joy, sprang to the door--sprang
into her husband's arms.

Dazzled with the light, the traveller resisted not, while Elspie
half-led, half dragged him--still clasping his wife--into a little room
close by, when she shut the door and left them. Then she burst in once
more among the astonished guests.

“Ye may gang your gate, ye heathens! Awa wi' ye, for Captain Rothesay's
come hame!”

Sybilla and her husband stood face to face in the little gloomy room,
lighted only by a solitary candle. At first she clung about him so
closely that he could not see her face, though he felt her tears
falling, and her little heart beating against his own. He knew it was
all for joy. But he was strangely bewildered by the scene which had
flashed for a minute before his eyes, while standing at the door of the
room.

After a while he drew his wife to the light, and held her out at arm's
length to look at her. Then, for the first time, she remembered all.
Trembling--blushing scarlet, over face and neck--she perceived her
husband's eyes rest on her glittering dress. He regarded her fixedly,
from head to foot. She felt his expression change from joy to uneasy
wonder, from love to sternness, and then he wore a strange, cold look,
such a one as she had never beheld in him before.

“So, the young lady I saw whirling madly in some man's arms--was you,
Sybilla--was _my wife_.”

As Captain Rothesay spoke, Sybilla distinguished in his voice a new
tone, echoing the strange coldness in his eyes. She sprang to his neck,
weeping now for grief and alarm, as she had before wept for joy; she
prayed him to forgive her, told him, with a sincerity that none could
doubt, how rejoiced she was at his coming, and how dearly she loved
him--now and ever. He kissed her, at her passionate entreaty; said
he had nothing to blame; suffered her caresses patiently; but the
impression was given, the deed was done.

While he lived, Captain Rothesay never forgot that night. Nor did
Sybilla; for then she had first seen that cold, stern look, and heard
that altered tone. How many times was it to haunt her afterwards!




CHAPTER V.

Next morning Captain Rothesay and his wife sat together by the fireside,
where she had so often sat alone. Sybilla seemed in high spirits--her
love was ever exuberant in expression--and the moment her husband seemed
serious she sprang on his knee and looked playfully in his face.

“Just as much a child as ever, I see,” said Angus Rothesay, with a
rather wintry smile.

And then, looking in his face by daylight, Sybilla had opportunity to
see how changed he was. He had become a grave, middle-aged man. She
could not understand it. He had never told her of any cares, and he was
little more than thirty. She felt almost vexed at him for growing so
old; nay, she even said so, and began to pull out a few grey hairs that
defaced the beauty of his black curls.

“You shall lecture me presently, my dear,” said Captain Rothesay. “You
forget that I had two welcomes to receive, and that I have not yet seen
my little girl.”

He had not indeed. His eager inquiries after Olive overnight had been
answered by a pretty pout, and several trembling, anxious speeches about
“a wife being dearer than a child.” “Baby was asleep, and it was so
very late--he might, surely, wait till morning.” To which, though rather
surprised, he assented. A few more caresses, a few more excuses, had
still further delayed the terrible moment; until at last the father's
impatience would no longer be restrained.

“Come, Sybilla, let us go and see our little Olive.”

“O Angus!” and the mother turned deadly white.

Captain Rothesay seemed alarmed. “Don't trifle with me, Sybilla--there
is nothing the matter? The child is not ill?”

“No; quite well.”

“Then, why cannot Elspie bring her?” and he pulled the bell violently.
The nurse appeared. “My good Elspie, you have kept me waiting quite long
enough; do let me see my little girl.”

Elspie gave one glance at the mother, who stood mute and motionless,
clinging to the chair for support. In that glance was less compassion
than a sort of triumphant exultation. When she quitted the room Sybilla
flung herself at her husband's feet. “Angus, Angus, only say you forgive
me before”----

The door opened and Elspie led in a little girl. By her stature she
might have been two years old, but her face was like that of a child of
ten or twelve--so thoughtful, so grave. Her limbs were small and wasted,
but exquisitely delicate. The same might be said of her features; which,
though thin, and wearing a look of premature age, together with that
quiet, earnest, melancholy cast peculiar to deformity, were yet regular,
almost pretty. Her head was well-shaped, and from it fell a quantity
of amber-coloured hair--pale “lint-white locks,” which, with the almost
colourless transparency of her complexion, gave a spectral air to her
whole appearance. She looked less like a child than a woman dwarfed into
childhood; the sort of being renowned in elfin legends, as springing
up on a lonely moor, or appearing by a cradle-side; supernatural, yet
fraught with a nameless beauty. She was dressed with the utmost care,
in white, with blue ribands; and her lovely hair was arranged so as to
hide, as much as possible, the defect, which, alas! was even then only
too perceptible. It was not a hump-back, nor yet a twisted spine; it
was an elevation of the shoulders, shortening the neck, and giving the
appearance of a perpetual stoop. There was nothing disgusting or
painful in it, but still it was an imperfection, causing an instinctive
compassion--an involuntary “Poor little creature, what a pity!”

Such was the child--the last daughter of the ever-beautiful Rothesay
line--which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up
at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish
shyness--only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then
his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of an iron vice.

“Tell me! Is that--that miserable creature--our daughter, Olive
Rothesay?”

She answered, “Yes.” He shook her off angrily, looked once more at the
child, and then turned away, putting his hand before his eyes, as if to
shut out the sight.

Olive saw the gesture. Young as she was, it went deep to her child's
soul. Elspie saw it too, and without bestowing a second glance on her
master or his wife, she snatched up the child and hurried from the room.

The father and mother were left alone--to meet that crisis most fatal to
wedded happiness, the discovery of the first deceit Captain Rothesay
sat silent, with averted face; Sybilla was weeping--not that repentant
shower which rains softness into a man's heart, but those fretful tears
which chafe him beyond endurance.

“Sybilla, come to me!” The words were a fond husband's words: the tone
was that of a master who took on himself his prerogative. Never had
Angus spoken so before, and the wilful spirit of his wife rebelled.

“I cannot come. I dare not even look at you. You are so angry.”

His only answer was the reiterated command, “Sybilla, come!” She crept
from the far end of the room, where she was sobbing in a fear-stricken,
childish way, and stood before him. For the first time she recognised
her husband, whom she must “obey.” Now, with all the power of his roused
nature, he was teaching her the meaning of the word. “Sybilla,” he said,
looking sternly in her face, “tell me why, all these years, you have put
upon me this cheat--this lie!”

“Cheat!--lie! Oh, Angus! What cruel, wicked words!”

“I am sorry I used them, then. I will choose a lighter term--deceit. Why
did you so _deceive_ your husband?”

“I did not mean it,” sobbed the young wife. “And this is very unkind of
you, Angus! As if Heaven had not punished me enough in giving me that
miserable child!”

“Silence! I am not speaking of the child, but of you; my wife, in whom
I trusted; who for five long years has wilfully deceived me. Why did you
so?”

“Because I was afraid--ashamed. But those feelings are past now,” said
Sybilla, resolutely. “If Heaven made me mother, it made you father to
this unhappy child. You have no right to reproach me.”

“God forbid! No, it is not the misfortune--it is the falsehood which
stings me.”

And his grave, mournful tone, rose into one of bitter anger. He paced
the room, tossed by a passion such as his wife had never before seen.

“Sybilla!” he suddenly cried, pausing before her; “you do not know what
you have done. You little think what my love has been, nor against how
much it has struggled these five years. I have been true to you--ay, to
the depth of my heart And you to me have been--not wholly true.”

Here he was answered by a burst of violent hysterical weeping. He longed
to call for feminine assistance to this truly feminine ebullition, which
he did not understand. But his pride forbade. So he tried to soothe
his wife a little with softer words, though even these seemed somewhat
foreign to his lips, after so many long-parted years.

“I did not mean to pain you thus deeply, Sybilla. I do not say that you
have ceased to love me!”

Would that Sybilla had done as her first impulse taught her; have clung
about him, crying “Never! never!” murmuring penitent words, as a tender
wife may well do, and in such humility be the more exalted! But she had
still the wayward spirit of a petted child. Fancying she saw her husband
once more at her feet, she determined to keep him there. She wept on,
refusing to be pacified.

At last Angus rose from her side, dignified and cold, his new, not his
old self; the lover no more, but the quiet, half-indifferent husband.
“I see we had better not talk of these things until you are more
composed--perhaps, indeed, not at all. What is past--is past, and cannot
be recalled.”

“Angus!” She looked up, frightened at his manner. She determined to
conciliate him a little. “What do you want me to do? To say I am sorry?
That I will--but,” with an air of coquettish command, “you must say so
too.”

The jest was ill-timed; he was in too bitter a mood. “Excuse me--you
exact too much, Mrs. Rothesay.”

“_Mrs. Rothesay!_ Oh, call me Sybilla, or my heart will break!” cried
the young creature, throwing herself into his arms. He did not repulse
her; he even looked down upon her with a melting, half-reproachful
tendernes.

“How happy we might have been! How different had been this coming home
if you had only trusted me, and told me all from the beginning.”

“Have you told _me_? Is there nothing you have kept back from me these
five years?”

He started a little, and then said resolutely, “Nothing, Sybilla! I
declare to Heaven--nothing! save, perhaps, some trifles that I would at
any time tell you; now, if you will.”

“Oh no! some other time, I am too much exhausted now,” murmured Sybilla,
with an air of languor, half real, half feigned, lest perchance she
should lose what she had gained. In the sweetness of this reconciled
“lovers' quarrel,” she had almost forgotten its hapless cause. But
Angus, after a pause of deep and evidently conflicting thoughts,
referred to the child.

“She is ours still. I must not forget that. Shall I send for her again?”
 he said, as if he wished to soothe the mother's wounded feelings.

Alas! in Sybilla's breast the fountain of mother's feeling was as yet
all sealed. “Send for Olive!” she said, “oh no! Do not, I implore you.
The very sight of her is a pain to me. Let us two be happy together, and
let the child be left to Elspie.”

Thus she said, thinking not only to save herself, but him, from
what must be a constant pang. Little she knew him, or guessed the
after-effect of her words.

Angus Rothesay looked at his wife, first with amazement, then with cold
displeasure. “My dear, you scarcely speak like a mother. You forget
likewise that you are speaking to a father. A father who, whatever
affection may be wanting, will never forsake his duty. Come, let us go
and see our child.”

“I cannot--I cannot!” and Sybilla hung back, weeping anew.

Angus Rothesay looked at his wife--the pretty wayward idol of his
bridegroom-memory--looked at her with the eyes of a world-tried,
world-hardened man. She regarded him too, and noted the change which
years had brought in her boyish lover of yore. His eye wore a fretful
reproach--his brow, a proud sorrow.

He walked up to her and clasped her hand. “Sybilla, take care! All these
years I have been dreaming of the wife and mother I should find here at
home; let not the dream prove sweeter than the reality.”

Sybilla was annoyed--she, the spoilt darling of every one, who knew
not the meaning of a harsh word. She answered, “Don't let us talk so
foolishly.”

“You think it foolish? Well, then! we will not speak in this
confidential way any more. I promise, and you know I always keep my
promises.”

“I am glad of it,” answered Sybilla. But she lived to rue the day when
her husband made this one promise.

At present, she only felt that the bitter secret was disclosed, and
Angus' anger overpast. She gladly let him quit the room, only pausing
to ask him to kiss her, in token that all was right between them. He did
so, kindly, though with a certain pride and gravity--and departed. She
dared not ask him whether it was to see again their hapless child.

What passed between the father and mother whilst they remained shut
up together there, Elspie thought not-cared not. She spent the time in
passionate caresses of her darling, in half-muttered ejaculations, some
of pity some of wrath. All she desired was to obliterate the impression
which she saw had gone deeply to the child's heart. Olive wept not--she
rarely did; it seemed as though in her little spirit was a pensive
repose, above either infant sorrow or infant fear. She sat on her
nurse's knee, scarcely speaking, but continually falling into those
reveries which we see in quiet children even at that early age, and
never without a mysterious wonder, approaching to awe. Of what can these
infant musings be?

“Nurse,” said the child, suddenly fixing on Elspie's face her large
eyes, “was that my papa I saw?”

“It was just himsel, my sweet wee pet,” cried Elspie, trying to stop her
with kisses; but Olive went on.

“He is not like mamma--he is great and tall, like you. But he did not
take up and kiss me, as you said he would.”

Elspie had no answer for these words--spoken in a tone of quiet pain--so
unlike a child. It is only after many years that we learn to suffer and
be silent.

Was it that nature, ever merciful, had implanted in this poor girl,
as an instinct, that meek endurance which usually comes as the painful
experience of after-life?

A similar thought passed through Elspie's mind, while she sat with
little Olive at the window, where, a few years ago, she had stood
rocking the new-born babe in her arms, and pondering drearily on
its future. That future seemed still as dark in all outward
circumstances--but there was one ray of hope, which centred in the
little one herself. There was something in Olive which passed Elspie's
comprehension. At times she looked almost with an uneasy awe on the
gentle, silent child who rarely played, who wanted no amusing, but would
sit for hours watching the sky from the window, or the grass and waving
trees in the fields; who never was heard to laugh, but now and then
smiled in her own peculiar way--a smile almost “uncanny,” as Elspie
expressed it. At times the old Scotswoman--who, coming from the
debateable ground between Highlands and Lowlands, had united to the
rigid piety of the latter much wild Gaelic superstition--was half
inclined to believe that the little girl was possessed by some spirit.
But she was certain it was a good spirit; such a darling as Olive
was--so patient, and gentle, and good--more like an angel than a child.

If her misguided parents did but know this! Yet Elspie, in her secret
heart, was almost glad they did not. Her passionate and selfish love
could not have borne that any tie on earth, not even that of father or
mother, should stand between her and the child of her adoption.

While she pondered, there came a light knock to the door, and Captain
Rothesay's voice was heard without--his own voice, soothed down to its
soft, gentleman-like tone; it was a rare emotion, indeed, could deprive
it of that peculiarity.

“Nurse, I wish to see Miss Olive Rothesay.”

It was the first time that formal appellation had ever been given to the
little girl. Still it was a recognition. Elspie heard it with joy. She
answered the summons, and Captain Rothesay walked in.

We have never described Olivet father--there could not be a better
opportunity than now. His tall, active form--now subsiding into the
muscular fulness of middle age--was that of a Hercules of the mountains.
The face combined Scottish beauties and Scottish defects, which,
perhaps, cease to be defects when they become national peculiarities.
There was the eagle-eye: the large, but well-chiselled features--
especially the mouth; and also there was the high cheek-bone, the rugged
squareness of the chin, which, while taking away beauty, gave character.

When he came nearer, one could easily see that the features of the
father were strangely reflected in those of the child. Altered the
likeness was--from strength into feebleness--from manly beauty into
almost puny delicacy; but it did exist, and, faint as it was, Elspie
perceived it.

Olive was looking up at the clouds, her thin cheek resting against the
embrasure of the window, gazing so intently that she never seemed to
hear her father's voice or step. Elspie motioned him to walk softly, and
they came behind the child.

“Do ye no see, Captain Angus,” she whispered, “'tis your ain bonnie
face--ay, and your Mither's. Ye mind her yet?”

Captain Rothesay did not answer, but looked earnestly at his little
daughter. She, turning round, met his eyes. There was something in their
expression which touched her, for a rosy colour suffused her face; she
smiled, stretched out her little hands, and said “Papa!”

How Elspie then prided herself for the continual tutoring which had made
the image of the absent father an image of love!

Captain Rothesay started from his reverie at the sound of the child's
voice. The tone, and especially the word, broke the spell. He felt once
more that he was the father, not of the blooming little angel that he
had pictured, but of this poor deformed girl. However, he was a man in
whom a stern sense of right stood in the place of many softer virtues.
He had resolved on his duty--he had come to fulfil it--and fulfil it he
would. So he took the two little cold hands, and said--

“Papa is glad to see you, my dear.”

There was a silence, during which Elspie placed a chair for Captain
Rothesay, and Olive, sliding quietly down from hers, came and stood
beside him. He did not offer to take the two baby-hands again, but did
not repulse them, when the little girl laid them on his knee, looking
inquiringly, first at him, and then at Elspie.

“What does she mean?” said Captain Rothesay.

“Puir bairn! I tauld her, when her father was come hame, he wad tak' her
in his arms and kiss her.”

Rothesay looked angrily round, but recollected himself. “Your nurse was
right, my dear.” Then pausing for a moment, as though arming himself for
a duty--repugnant, indeed, but necessary--he took his daughter on his
knee, and kissed her cheek--once, and no more. But she, remembering
Elspie's instructions, and prompted by her loving nature, clung about
him, and requited the kiss with many another. They melted him visibly.
There is nothing sweeter in this world than a child's unasked voluntary
kiss!

He began to talk to her--uneasily and awkwardly--but still he did it.
“There, that will do, little one! What is your name, my dear?” he said
absently.

She answered, “Olive Rothesay.” “Ay--I had forgotten! The name at least,
she told me true.” The next moment, he set down the child--softly but as
though it were a relief.

“Is papa going?” said Olive, with a troubled look.

“Yes; but he will come back to-morrow. Once a day will do,” he added
to himself. Yet, when his little daughter lifted her mouth for another
kiss, he could not help giving it.

“Be a good child, my dear, and say your prayers every night, and love
nurse Elspie.”

“And papa too, may I?”

He seemed to struggle violently against some inward feeling, and then
answered with a strong effort, “Yes.”

The door closed after him abruptly. Very soon Elspie saw him walking
with hasty strides along the beautiful walk that winds round the foot of
the castle rock. The nurse sat still for a long time thinking, and then
ended her ponderings with her favourite phrase,

“God guide us! it's a' come richt at last.”

Poor, honest, humble soul!




CHAPTER VI.

The return of the husband and father produced a considerable change in
the little family at Stirling. A household, long composed entirely of
women, always feels to its very foundations the incursion of one of the
“nobler sex.” From the first morning when there resounded the multiplied
ringing of bells, and the creaking of boots on the staircase, the glory
of the feminine dynasty was departed. Its easy _laisser-aller_, its
lax rule, and its indifference to regular forms were at an end. Mrs.
Rothesay could no longer indulge her laziness--no breakfasting in
bed, and coming down in curl-papers. The long gossiping visits of her
thousand-and-one acquaintances subsided into frigid morning calls,
at which the grim phantom of the husband frowned from a corner and
suppressed all idle chatter. Sybilla's favourite system of killing time
by half-hours in various idle ways, at home and abroad, was terminated
at once. She had now to learn how to be a duteous wife, always ready
at the beck and call of her husband, and attentive to his innumerable
wants.

She was quite horrified by these at first. The captain actually
expected to dine well and punctually, every day, without being troubled
beforehand with “What he would like for dinner?” He listened once
or twice, patiently too, to her histories of various small domestic
grievances, and then requested politely that she would confine such
details to the kitchen in future; at which poor Mrs. Rothesay retired
in tears. He liked her to stay at home in the evening, make his tea,
and then read to him, or listen while he read to her. This was the more
arduous task of the two, for dearly as she loved to hear the sound of
his voice.

Sybilla never could feel interested in the prosy books he read, and
often fell half asleep; then he always stopped suddenly, sometimes
looked cross, sometimes sad; and in a few minutes he invariably lighted
her candle, with the gentle hint that it was time to retire. But often
she woke, hours after, and heard him still walking up and down below, or
stirring the fire perpetually, as a man does who is obliged to make the
fire his sole companion.

And then Sybilla's foolish, but yet loving heart, would feel itself
growing sad and heavy; her husband's image, once painted there in such
glittering colours, began to fade. The real Angus was not the Angus of
her fancy. Joyful as was his coming home, it had not been quite what she
expected. Else, why was it that at times, amidst all her gladness, she
thought of their olden past with regret, and of their future with doubt,
almost fear.

But it was something new for Sybilla to think at all. It did her good in
spite of herself.

While these restless elements of future pain were smouldering in the
parents, the little neglected, unsightly blossom, which had sprung up
at their feet, lived the same unregarded, monotonous life as heretofore.
Olive Rothesay had attained to five years, growing much like a primrose
in the field, how, none knew or cared, save Heaven. And that Heaven
did both know and care, was evident from the daily sweetness that was
stealing into this poor wayside flower, so that it would surely one day
be discovered through the invisible perfume which it shed.

Captain Rothesay kept to his firm resolve of seeing his little daughter
in her nursery, once a day at least. After a while, the visit of a few
minutes lengthened to an hour. He listened with interest to Elspie's
delighted eulogiums on her beloved charge, which sometimes went so far
as to point out the beauty of the child's wan face, with the assurance
that Olive, in features at least, was a true Rothesay. But the father
always stopped her with a dignified, cold look.

“We will quit that subject, if you please.”

Nevertheless, guided by his rigid sense of a parent's duty, he showed
all kindness to the child, and his omnipotent way over his wife exacted
the same consideration from the hitherto indifferent Sybilla. It might
be, also, that in her wayward nature, the chill which had unconsciously
fallen on the heart of the wife, caused the mother's heart to awaken And
then the mother would be almost startled to see the response which this
new, though scarcely defined tenderness, created in her child.

For some months after Captain Rothesay's return, the little family lived
in the retired old-fashioned dwelling on the hill of Stirling. Their
quiet round of uniformity was only broken by the occasional brief
absence of the head of the household, as he said, “on business.”
 _Business_ was a word conveying such distaste, if not horror, to
Sybilla's ears, that she asked no questions, and her husband volunteered
no information. In fact, he rarely was in the habit of doing so--whether
interrogated or not.

At last, one day when he was sitting after dinner with his wife and
child--he always punctiliously commanded that “Miss Rothesay” might be
brought in with the dessert--Angus made the startling remark:

“My dear Sybilla, I wish to consult with you on a subject of some
importance.”

She looked up with a pretty, childish surprise.

“Consult with me! O Angus! pray don't tease me with any of your hard
business matters; I never could understand them.”

“And I never for a moment imagined you could. In fact, you told me so,
and therefore I have never troubled you with them, my dear,” was the
reply, with just the slightest shade of satire. But its bitterness
passed away the moment Sybilla jumped up and came to sit down on the
hearth at his feet, in an attitude of comical attention. Thereupon he
patted her on the head, gently and smilingly, for he was a fond husband
still, and she was such a sweet plaything for an idle hour.

A plaything! Would that all women considered the full meaning of the
term--a thing sighed for, snatched, caressed, wearied of, neglected,
scorned! And would also, that every wife knew that her fate depends less
on what her husband makes of her, than what she makes herself to him!

“Now, Angus, begin--I am all attention.”

He looked one moment doubtfully at Olive, who sat in her little chair at
the farther end of the room, quiet, silent, and demure. She had beside
her some purple plums, which she did not attempt to eat, but was playing
with them, arranging them with green leaves in a thousand graceful ways,
and smiling to herself when the afternoon sunlight, creeping through the
dim window, rested upon them and made their rich colour richer still.

“Shall we send Olive away?” said the mother.

“No, let her stay--she is of no importance.”

The parents both looked at the child's pale, spiritual face, felt the
reproach it gave, and sighed. Perhaps both father and mother would
have loved her, but for a sense of shame in the latter, and the painful
memory of deceit in the former.

“Sybilla,” suddenly resumed Captain Rothesay, “what I have to say is
merely, how soon you can arrange to leave Stirling?”

“Leave Stirling?”

“Yes; I have taken a house.”

“Indeed! and you never told me anything about it,” said Sybilla, with a
vexed look.

“Now, my little wife, do not be foolish; you never wish to hear about
business, and I have taken you at your word; you cannot object to that?”

But she could, and she had a thousand half-pouting, half-jesting
complaints to urge. She put them forth rather incoherently; in fact,
she talked for five minutes without giving her husband opportunity for a
single word. Yet she loved him dearly, and had in her heart no objection
to being saved the trouble of thinking beforehand; only she thought it
right to stand up a little for her conjugal prerogative.

He listened in perfect silence. When she had done, he merely said, “Very
well, Sybilla; and we will leave Stirling this day month. I have decided
to live in England. Oldchurch is a very convenient town, and I have no
doubt you will find Merivale Hall an agreeable residence.”

“Merivale Hall. Are we really going to live in a Hall?” cried Sybilla,
clapping her hands with childish glee. But immediately her face changed.
“You must be jesting with me, Angus. I don't know much about money, but
I know we are not rich enough to keep up a Hall.”

“We _were_ not, but we are now, I am happy to say,” answered Captain
Rothesay, with some triumph.

“Rich! very rich! and you never told me?” Sybilla's hands fell on
her knee, and it was doubtful which expression was dominant in her
countenance--womanly pain, or womanly indignation.

Angus looked annoyed. “My dear Sybilla, listen to me quietly--yes,
quietly,” he added, seeing how her colour came and went, and her lips
seemed ready to burst out into petulant reproach. “When I left England,
I was taunted with having run away with an heiress. That I did not do,
since you were far poorer than the world thought--and I loved little
Sybilla Hyde for herself and not for her fortune. But the taunt stung
me, and, when I left you, I resolved never to return until I could
return a rich man on my own account. I am such now. Are you not glad,
Sybilla?”

“Glad--glad to have been kept in the dark like a baby--a fool! It was
not proper treatment towards your wife, Angus,” was the petulant answer,
as Sybilla drew herself from his arm, which came as a mute peacemaker to
encircle her waist.

“Now you are a child indeed. I did it from love--believe me or not, it
was so--that you might not be pained with the knowledge of my struggles,
toils, and cares. And was not the reward, the wealth, all for you?”

“No; it wasn't.”

“Pray, hear reason, Sybilla!” her husband continued, in those quiet,
unconcerned tones, which, to a woman of quick feelings and equally quick
resentments, were sure to add fuel to fire.

“I will not hear reason. When you have these four years been rolling in
wealth, and your wife and child were--O Angus!” and she began to weep.

Captain Rothesay tried at first, by explanations and by soothings, to
stop the small torrent of fretful tears and half-broken accusations. All
his words were misconstrued or misapplied. Sybilla would not believe but
that he had slighted, ill-used, _deceived_ her.

At the term the husband rose up sternly.

“Mrs. Rothesay, who was it that deceived me?”

He pointed to the child, and the glance of both rested on little Olive.

She sat, her graceful playthings fallen from her hands, her large soft
eyes dilated with such a terrified wonder, that both father and mother
shrank before them. That fixed gaze of the unconscious child seemed like
the reproachful look of some angel of innocence sent from a purer world.

There was a dead silence. In the midst of it the little one crept from
her corner, and stood between her parents, her little hands stretched
out, and her eyes full of tears.

“Olive has done nothing wrong? Papa and mamma, you are not angry with
poor little Olive?”

For the first time, as she looked into the poor child's face, there
flashed across the mother's memory the likeness of the angel in her
dream. She pressed the thought back, almost angrily, but it came again.
Then Sybilla stooped down, and, for the only time since her babyhood,
Olive found herself lifted to her mother's embrace.

“The child had better go away to bed,” said Captain Rothesay.

Olive was carried out nestling closely in her mother's arms.

When Sybilla came back the angry pout had passed away, though a grave
troubled shadow still remained. She made tea for her husband, tried to
talk on common topics once or twice, but he gave little encouragement.
Before retiring to rest, she said to him, timidly,

“There is no quarrel between us, Angus?”

“Not in the least, my dear,” he answered, with that composed deprecation
of any offence, given or received, which is the most painful check to
an impulsive nature; “only, we will not discuss matters of business
together again. Women never can talk things over quietly. Good-night,
Sybilla.”

He lifted his head a little, a very little, for her accustomed kiss. She
gave it, but with it there came a sigh. He scarcely noticed either one
or the other, being apparently deep in a large folio “Commentary on the
Proverbs,” for it was Sunday evening. He lingered for a whole hour over
the last chapter, and chiefly the passages,--

     “Who can find a virtuous woman;
        for her price is far above rubies.
     The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her:
        so that he shall have no need of spoil....
     She openeth her mouth with wisdom:
        and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”

At this, Captain Rothesay closed the book, laid his arms upon it; and
sighed--O how heavily! He did not go to bed that night until his young
wife had lain awake for hours, regretting and resolving; nor until,
after many determinations of future penitence and love, she had at last
wept herself to sleep for very sorrow.




CHAPTER VII.

Looking back on a calm and uneventful childhood--and by childhood we
mean the seven years between the babyhood of five and the dignity of
“teens,”--it always seems like a cloudy landscape, with a few points of
view here and there, which stand out clearly from the rest. Therein the
fields are larger and the sky brighter than any we now behold. Persons,
places, and events assume a mystery and importance. We never think of
them, or hear them named afterwards, but there clings to them something
of the strange glamour of the time when “we saw men as trees walking.”

Olive's childhood was passed in the place mentioned by her father.
Merivale! Oldchurch! In her future life the words, whenever heard,
always sounded like an echo of that dreamy time, whose sole epochs are
birthdays, Christmas-days, the first snowdrop found in the garden, the
first daisy in the field. Such formed the only chronicle of Olive's
childhood.

Its earliest period was marked by events which she was too young to
notice, troubles which she was too young to feel. They passed over her
like storm-clouds over a safely sheltered flower--only perceived by the
momentary shadow which they cast. Once--it was in the first summer at
Merivale--the child noticed how pleased every one seemed, and how papa
and mamma, now always together, used to speak more tenderly than usual
to her. Elspie said it was because they were so happy, and that Olive
ought to be happy too, because God would soon send her “a wee wee
brother.” She would find him some day in the pretty cradle, which Elspie
showed her. So the little girl went to look there every morning, but in
vain. At last her nurse said she need not look there any more, for God
had taken away the baby-brother as soon as it came. Olive was very much
disappointed, and when she went down to her father that day she told him
of her trouble. But he angrily sent her away to her nurse. She looked
ever after with grief and childish awe on the empty cradle.

[Illustration: Page 45, Olive, little noticed, sat on the hearthrug]

At last it was empty no longer. She, a thoughtful child of seven, could
never forget the impression made, when one morning she was roused by the
loud pealing of the Old-church bells, and the maids told her, laughing,
that it was in honour of her little brother, come at last. She was
allowed to kiss him once, and then spent half her time, watching, with
great joy and wonderment, the tiny face and touching the tiny hands.
After some days she missed him; and after some more Elspie showed her
a little heap in the nearest churchyard, saying, that was her
baby-brother's cradle now. Poor little Olive!--her only knowledge of the
tie of brotherhood was these few days of silent watching and the little
green mound left behind in the churchyard.

From that time there came a gradual change over the household, and
over Olive's life. No more long, quiet hours after dinner, her father
reading, her mother occupied in some light work, or resting on the sofa
in delicious idleness, while Olive herself, little noticed, but yet
treated with uniform kindness by both, sat on the hearthrug, fondling
the sleepy cat, or gazing with vague childish reverie into the fire. No
more of the proud pleasure with which, on Sunday afternoons, exalted to
her grave papa's knee, she created an intense delight out of what was to
him a somewhat formal duty, and said her letters from the large family
Bible. These childish joys vanished gradually, she scarce knew how. Her
papa she now rarely saw, he was so much from home, and the quiet house,
wherein she loved to ramble, became a house always full of visitors, her
beautiful mamma being the centre of its gaiety. Olive retreated to
her nursery and to Elspie, and the rest of her childhood was one long,
solitary, pensive dream.

In that dream was the clear transcript of all the scenes amidst which
it passed. The old hall, seated on a rising ground, and commanding views
which were really beautiful in their way, considering that Merivale
was on the verge of a manufacturing district, bounded by pastoral and
moorland country. Those strange furnace-fires, which rose up at dusk
from the earth and gleamed all around the horizon, like red fiery eyes
open all night long, how mysteriously did they haunt the imaginative
child! Then the town, Oldchurch, how in her after-life it grew distinct
from all other towns, like a place seen in a dream, so real and yet so
unreal! There was its castle-hill, a little island within a large pool,
which had once been a real fortress and moat. Old Elspie contemned
alike tradition and reality, until Olive read in her little “History of
England” the name of the place, and how John of Gaunt had built a castle
there. And then Elspie vowed it was unworthy to be named the same day
with beautiful Stirling. Continually did she impress on the child
the glories of her birthplace, so that Olive in after-life, while
remembering her childhood's scenes as a pleasant land of earth, came to
regard her native Scotland as a sort of dream-paradise. The shadow of
the mountains where she was born fell softly, solemnly, over her whole
life; influencing her pursuits, her character, perhaps even her destiny.

Yet there was a curious fascination about Oldchurch. She never
forgot it. The two great wide streets, High-street and Butcher-row,
intersecting one another in the form of a cross: the two churches--the
Old Church, gloomy and Norman, with its ghostly graveyard; and the New
Church, shining white amidst a pleasant garden cemetery, beneath one of
whose flower-beds her baby-brother lay: the two shops, the only ones she
ever visited, the confectioner's, where she stood to watch the yearly
fair, and the bookseller's whither she dragged her nurse on any excuse,
that she might pore over its incalculable treasures.

Above all, there was fixed in her memory the strange aspect the town
wore on one day--a Coronation-day, the grandest gala of her childhood.
One king had died and been buried.--Olive saw the black-hung pulpit and
heard the funeral sermon, awfully thundered forth at night Another king
had been proclaimed, and Olive had gloried in the sight of the bonfires
and the roasted sheep. Now the people talked of a Coronation-day. Simple
child! She knew nothing of the world's events or the world's destinies,
save that she rose early to the sound of carolling bells, was dressed
in a new white frock, and taken to see the town--the beautiful town,
smiling with triumphal flower-arches and winding processions. How she
basked in the merry sunshine, and heard the shouts, and the band playing
“God save the King,” and felt very loyal, until her enthusiasm vented
itself in tears.

Such was one of the few links between Olive's early life and the world
outside. Otherwise she dwelt, for those seven years of childhood, in
a little Eden of her own, whose boundary was rarely crossed by the
footsteps of either joy or pain. She was neither neglected nor ill-used,
but she never knew that fulness of love on which one looks back in
after-life, saying deprecatingly, and yet sighing the while, “Ah, I was
indeed a spoiled child!” Her little heart was not positively checked in
its overflowings; but it had a world of secret tenderness, which, being
never claimed, expended itself in all sorts of wild fancies. She loved
every flower of the field and every bird in the air. She also--having
a passionate fondness for study and reading--loved her pet authors and
their characters, with a curious individuality. Mrs. Holland stood in
the place of some good aunt, and Sandford and Merton were regarded just
like real brothers.

She had no one to speak to about poetry; she did not know there was such
a thing in the world. Yet she was conscious of strange and delicious
sensations, when in the early days of spring she had at length conquered
Elspie's fears about wet feet and muddy fields, and had gone with her
nurse to take the first meadow ramble; she could not help bounding to
pluck every daisy she saw; and when the violets came, and the
primroses, she was out of her wits with joy. She had never even heard of
Wordsworth; yet, as she listened to the first cuckoo note, she thought
it no bird, but truly “a wandering voice.” Of Shelley's glorious lyric
ode she knew nothing; and yet she never heard the skylark's song
without thinking it a spirit of the air, or one of the angels hymning
at Heaven's gate. And many a time she looked up in the clouds at early
morning, half expecting to see that gate open, and wondering whereabouts
it was in the beautiful sky.

She had never heard of Art, yet there was something in the gorgeous
sunset that made her bosom thrill; and out of the cloud-ranges she tried
to form mountains such as there were in Scotland, and palaces of crystal
like those she read of in her fairy tales. No human being had ever told
her of the mysterious links that reach from the finite to the infinite,
out of which, from the buried ashes of dead Superstition, great souls
can evoke those mighty spirits, Faith and Knowledge; yet she went to
sleep every night believing that she felt, nay, could almost see, an
angel standing at the foot of her little bed, watching her with holy
eyes, guarding her with outspread wings.

O Childhood! beautiful dream of unconscious poetry; of purity so pure
that it knew neither the existence of sin nor of its own innocence; of
happiness so complete, that the thought, “I am now happy,” came not to
drive away the wayward sprite which never _is_, but always is to come!
Blessed Childhood! spent in peace and loneliness and dreams; hidden
therein lay the germs of a whole life.




CHAPTER VIII.

Olive Rothesay was twelve years old, and she had never learnt the
meaning of that word whose very sound seems a wail--sorrow. And that
other word, which is the dirge of the whole earth--death--was still to
her only a name. She knew there was such a thing; she read of it in her
books; its shadow had passed her by when she missed her little brother
from the cradle; but still it had never stood by her side and said, “Lo,
I am here!” Her circle of love was so small that it seemed as though the
dread spectre could not enter. She saw it afar off; she thought upon
it sometimes in her poetical dreams, which clad the imaginary shape of
grief with a strange beauty. It was sweet to be sad, sweet to weep. She
even tried to make a few delicious sorrows for herself; and when a young
girl--whose beautiful face she had watched in church--died, she felt
pensive and mournful, and even took a pleasure in thinking that there
was now one grave in the new churchyard which she would almost claim to
weep over.

Such were the tendencies of this child's mind--ever toward the
melancholy and the beautiful united. Quietly pensive as her disposition
was, she had no young companions to rouse her into mirth. But there was
a serenity even in her sadness; and no one could have looked in her face
without feeling that her nature was formed to suit her apparent fate,
and that if less fitted to enjoy, she was the more fitted for the
solemnity of that destiny, to endure.

She had lived twelve years without knowing sorrow, and it was time that
the first lesson, bitter, yet afterwards sweet, should be learned by the
child. The shaft came to her through Elspie's faithful bosom, where she
had rested all her life, and did rest now, with the unconscious security
of youth, which believes all it loves to be immortal. That Elspie should
grow old seemed a thing of doubtful future; that she should be ill or
die was a thing that never crossed her imagination.

And when at last, one year in the fall of the leaf, the hearty and
vigorous old woman sickened, and for two or three days did not quit her
room, still Olive, though grieving for the moment, never dreamed of any
serious affliction. She tended her nurse lovingly and cheerfully, made
herself quite a little woman for her sake, and really half enjoyed the
stillness of the sickroom. It was a gay time--the house was full of
visitors--and Elspie and her charge, always much left to one another's
society, were now alone in their nursery, night and day. No one thought
the nurse was ailing, except with the natural infirmity of old age, and
Elspie herself uttered no word of complaint. Once or twice, while Olive
was doing her utmost to enliven the sick-chamber, she saw her nurse
watch her with eager love, and then sink into a grave reverie, from
which it took more than one embrace to rouse her.

One night, or rather morning, Olive was roused by the sight of a white
figure standing at her bedside. She would have been startled, but that
Elspie, sleeping in the same room, had many a time come to look on her
darling, even in the middle of the night. She had apparently done so
now.

“Go to your bed again, dear nurse,” anxiously cried Olive. “You should
not walk about. Nay, you are not worse?”

“Ay, ay, maybe; but dinna fear, dearie, we'll bide till the morn,” said
Elspie, faintly, as she tried to move away, supporting herself by the
bed. Soon she sank back dizzily. “I canna walk. My sweet lassie, will ye
help your puir auld nurse?”

Olive sprang up, and guided her back to her bed. When she reached it,
Elspie said, thoughtfully, “It's strange, unco strange. My strength is
a' gane.”

“Never mind, Elspie dear, you are weak with being ill; but you will get
better soon. Oh, yes, very soon!”

“It's no that;” and Elspie took her child's hands and looked wistfully
in her face. “Olive, gin ye were to tine your puir auld nurse? Gin I
were to gang awa?”

“Where?”

“Unto God,” said Elspie, solemnly.--“Dearie, I wadna grieve ye, but I'm
aye sure this sickness is unto death.”

It was strange that Olive did not begin to weep, as many a child would
have done; but though a cold trembling crept through her frame at these
words, she remained quite calm. For Elspie must be kept calm likewise,
and how could she be so if her child were not. Olive remembered this,
and showed no sign of grief or alarm. Besides, she could not--would not
believe a thing so fearful as Elspie's death. It was impossible.

“You must not think thus--you must think of nothing but getting well.
Lie down and go to sleep,” she said, in a tone of almost womanly
firmness, which Elspie obeyed mechanically. Then she would have roused
the household, but the nurse forbade. By her desire Olive again lay
down.

It had always been her custom to creep to Elspie's bed as soon as she
awoke, but now she did so long before daylight, in answer to a faint
summons.

“I want ye, my bairn. Ye'll come to your auld nurse's arms--maybe
they'll no haud ye lang,” murmured Elspie. She clasped the child once,
with an almost passionate tenderness, and then, turning away, dropped
heavily asleep.

But Olive did not sleep. She lay until broad daylight, counting hour
by hour, and thinking thoughts deep and strange in a child of her
years--thoughts of death and eternity. She did not believe Elspie's
words; but if they should be true--if her nurse should die--if this
should be the last time she would ever creep to her living bosom!

And then there came across the child's mind awful thoughts of death
and of the grave. She struggled with them, but they clung with fearful
tenacity to her fancy. All she had heard or read of mortality, of the
coffin and the mould, came back with a vivid horror. She thought,--what
if in a few weeks, a few days, the hand she held should be cold,
lifeless; the form, whose faint breathings she listened to, should
breathe no more, but be carried from her sight, and shut up in a
grave--under a stone? And then where would be Elspie--the tender, the
faithful--who seemed to live but in loving her? Olive had been told that
when people died, it was their bodies only that lay in the grave, and
their souls went up to heaven to be with God. But all her childish
reasoning could not dissever the two.

It was a marvel, that, loving Elspie as she did, such thoughts should
come at all--that her mind was not utterly numbed with grief and terror.
But Olive was a strange child. There were in her little spirit depths of
which no one dreamed.

Hour after hour she lay thinking these thoughts, horrible, yet fraught
with a strange fascination, starting with a shudder every time they were
broken by the striking of the clock below. How awful a clock sounds in
the night-time, and to such a watcher--a mere child too! Olive longed
for morning, and yet when the dusk of daybreak came, the very curtains
took ghastly shapes, and her own white dress, hanging behind the door,
looked like a shroud, within which----. She shuddered--and yet, all the
while, she could not help eagerly conjecturing what the visible form of
Death would be.

Utterly unable to endure her own thoughts, she tried to rouse her nurse.
And then Elspie started up in bed, seized her with burning hands, and
asked her who she was and what she had done with little Olive.

“I am little Olive--indeed I am,” cried the terrified child.

“Are ye sure? Aweel then, dearie, dinna greet,” murmured poor Elspie,
striving vainly against the delirium that she felt fast coming on. “My
bairn, is it near morn? Oh, for a drink o' milk or tea.”

“Shall I go and call the maids? But that dark dark passage--I dare not.”

“It's no matter, bide ye till the daylight,” said Elspie, as she sank
again into heavy sleep.

But the child could not rest. Was it not cruel to let her poor nurse lie
suffering burning thirst, rather than encounter a few vague terrors? and
if Elspie should have a long illness, should die--what then would the
remorseful remembrance be? Without another thought the child crept out
of bed and groped her way to the door.

It is easy to laugh at children's fancies about “ghosts” and “bogie,”
 but Dante's terrors in the haunted wood were not greater or more real
than poor little Olive's, when she stood at the entrance of the long
gallery, dimly peopled with the fantastic shadows of dawn. None but
those who remember the fearful imaginings of their childhood, can
comprehend the self-martyrdom, the heroic daring, which dwelt in that
little trembling bosom, as Olive groped across the gloom.

Half-way through, she touched the cold handle of a door, and could
scarce repress a scream. Her fears took no positive shape, but she felt
surrounding her Things before and Things behind. No human courage could
give her strength to resist such terrors. She paused, closed her eyes,
and said the Lord's Prayer all through. But “_Deliver us from evil_” she
repeated many times, feeling each time stronger and bolder. Then
first there entered into her heart that mighty faith “which can remove
mountains;” that fervent boldness of prayer with the very utterance of
which an answer comes. And who dare say that the Angel of that child
“always beholding the face of the Father in Heaven,” did not stand
beside her then, and teach her in faint shadow-ings the mystery of a
life to come?

Olive's awe-struck fancy became a truth--she never crept to her nurse's
bosom more. By noon that day, Elspie lay in the torpor which marks the
last stage of rapid inflammation. She did not even notice the child,
who crept in and out of the thronged room, speaking to no one, neither
weeping nor trembling, but struck with a strange awe, that made her
countenance and “mien almost unearthly in their quietness.

“Take her away to her parents,” whispered the physician. But her mother
had left home the day before, and Captain Rothesay had been absent a
week. There were only servants in the house; they looked at her often,
said “Poor child!” and left her to go where she would. Olive followed
the physician downstairs.

“Will she die?”

He started at the touch of the soft hand--soft but cold, always cold.
He looked at the little creature, whose face wore such an unchildlike
expression. He never thought to pat her head, or treat her like a girl
of twelve years old, but said gravely, as though he were speaking to a
grown woman:

“I have done my best, but it is too late. In three hours, or perhaps
four, all will be over.” He quitted the room, and Olive heard the rattle
of his carriage wheels. They died away down the gravel road, and all
was silent Silent, except the twitter of a few birds, heard through the
stillness of a July evening. Olive stood at the window and mechanically
looked out. It was so beautiful, so calm. At the west, the clouds were
stretched out in pale folds of rose colour and grey. On the lawn slept
the long shadows of the trees, for behind them was rising the round, red
moon. And yet, within the house was--death.

She tried to realise the truth. She said to herself, time after time,
“Elspie will die!” But even yet she could not believe it. How could the
little birds sing and the sunset shine when Elspie was dying! At last
the light faded, and then she believed it all. Night and death seemed to
come upon the world together.

Suddenly she remembered the physician's words. “Three hours--four
hours.” Was that all? And Elspie had not spoken to her since the moment
when she cried and was afraid to rise in the dark. Elspie was going
away, for ever, without one kiss, one good-bye.

Weeping passionately, Olive flew back to the chamber, where several
women stood round the bed. There lay the poor aged form in a torpor
which, save for the purple face and the loud, heavy breathing, had all
the unconsciousness of death. Was that Elspie? The child saw, and her
tears were frozen. The maids would have drawn her away.

“No--no,” Olive said in a frightened whisper; “let me look at her--let
me touch her hand.”

It lay outside the bedclothes, helpless and rigid, the fingers dropping
together, as they always do in the hour of parting life. Olive touched
them. They were cold--so cold! Then she knew what was death. The maids
carried her fainting from the room.

Mrs. Rothesay had returned, and, frightened and grieved, now wept with
all a woman's softness over the death-bed of the faithful old nurse. She
took her little daughter to her own sitting-room, laid her on the sofa,
and watched by her very tenderly. Olive, exhausted and half insensible,
heard, as in a dream, her mother whispering to the maid:

“Come and tell me when there is _any change_.”

_Any change!_ What change? That from life to death--from earth to
heaven! And would it take place at once? Could they tell the instant
when Elspie's soul departed “to be beyond the sun”?

Such and so strange were the thoughts that floated through the mind
of this child of twelve years old. And from these precocious yearnings
after the infinite, Olive's fancy turned to earthly, childish things.
She pictured with curious minuteness how she would feel when she awoke
next morning, and found that Elspie was dead;--how there would be a
funeral; how strange the house would seem afterward; even what would be
done with the black bonnet and shawl which, two days since, Elspie had
hung up against the nursery-door never to put on again.

And then a long silent agony of weeping came. Her mother, thinking she
slept, sat quietly by; but in any case Olive would never have thought
of going to her for consolation. Young as she was, Olive knew that her
sorrow must be borne alone, for none could understand it. Until we feel
that we are alone on earth, how rarely do we feel that we are _not_
alone in heaven! For the second time this day the child thought of God.
Not merely as of Him to whom she offered her daily prayers, and those
repeated after the clergyman in church on Sunday, but as One to whom,
saying “Our Father,” she could ask for anything she desired.

And she did so, lying on the sofa, not even turning to kneel down, using
her own simple words. She prayed that God would comfort her when Elspie
died, and teach her not to grieve, but to be a good, patient child,
so that she might one day go to her dear nurse in heaven, and never be
parted from her any more.

She heard the maid come in and whisper to her mamma. Then she knew that
all was over--that Elspie was dead. But so deep was the peace which had
fallen on her heart that the news gave no pang--caused no tears.

“Olive, dearest,” said Mrs. Rothesay, herself subdued into weeping.

“I know, mamma,” was the answer. “Now I have no one to love me but you.”

The feeling was strange, perhaps even wrong; but as Mrs. Rothesay
clasped her child, it was not without a thrill of pleasure that Olive
was all her own now.

“Where shall Miss Rothesay sleep to-night?” was the whispered question
of the maid. Olive burst into tears.

“She shall sleep with me. Darling, do not cry for your poor nurse, will
not mamma do instead?”

And looking up, Olive saw, as though she had never seen it before,
the face which, now shining with maternal love, seemed beautiful as an
angel's. It became to her like an angel's evermore.

How often, in our human fate, does the very Hand that taketh, give!




CHAPTER IX.

Mrs. Rothesay, touched by an impulse of regretful tenderness, showed
all due respect to the memory of the faithful woman who had nursed with
such devotion her husband and her child. For a whole long week Olive
wandered about the shut-up house, the formal solemnities of death, now
known for the first time, falling heavily on her young heart. Alas!
that there was no one to lift it beyond the terrors of the grave to the
sublime mysteries of immortality.

But the child knew none of these, and therefore she crept, awe-struck,
about the silent house, and when night fell, dared not even to pass near
the chamber--once her own and Elspie's--now Death's. She saw the other
members of the household enter there with solemn faces, and pass out,
carefully locking the door. What must there be within? Something on
which she dared not think, and which nothing could induce her to behold.
At times she forgot her sorrow; and, still keeping close to her mother's
side, amused herself with her usual childish games, piecing disjointed
maps, or drawing on a slate; but all was done with a quietness sadder
than even tears.

The evening before the funeral, Mrs. Rothesay went to look for the last
time on the remains of her faithful old servant. She tried to persuade
little Olive to go with her; the child accompanied her to the door, and
then, weeping violently, fled back and hid herself in another chamber.
From thence she heard her mother come away--also weeping, for the feeble
nature of Sybilla Rothesay had lost none of its tender-hearted softness.
Olive listened to the footsteps gliding downstairs, and there was
silence. Then the passionate affection which she had felt for her old
nurse rose up, driving away all childish fear, and strengthening her
into a resolution which until then she had not dared to form. To-morrow
they would take away Elspie--_for ever_. On earth she would never again
see the face which had been so beloved. Could she let Elspie go without
one look, only one? She determined to enter the awful room now, and
alone.

It was about seven in the evening, still daylight, though in the
darkened house dimmer than without. Olive drew the blind aside, took one
long gaze into the cheerful sunset landscape to strengthen and calm her
mind, and then walked with a firm step to the chamber-door. It was not
locked this time, but closed ajar. The child looked in a little way
only. There stood the well-remembered furniture, the room seemed the
same, only pervaded with an atmosphere of silent, solemn repose. There
would surely be no terror there.

Olive stole in, hearing in the stillness every beating of her heart.
She stood by the bed. It was covered, not with its usual counterpane of
patchwork stars, the work of Elspie's diligent hand through many a
long year, and on which her own baby-fingers had been first taught to
sew--but with a large white sheet. She stood, scarce knowing whether to
fly or not, until she heard a footstep on the stairs. One minute, and
it would be too late. With a resolute hand she lifted the sheet, and saw
the white fixed countenance, not of sleep, but death.

Uttering a shriek so wild and piercing that it rang through the house,
Olive sprang to the door, fled through the passage, at the end of which
she sank in convulsions.

That night the child was taken ill, and never recovered until some weeks
after, when the grass was already springing on poor Elspie's grave.

It is nature's blessed ordinance, that in the mind of childhood the
remembrance of fear or sorrow fades so fast. Therefore, when Olive
regained strength, and saw the house now smiling within and without
amidst the beauty of early autumn,--the horrors of death passed from her
mind, or were softened into a tender memory. Perhaps, in the end, it was
well for her that she had looked on that poor dead face, to be certain
that it was not Elspie. She never thought of Elspie in that awful
chamber any more. She thought of her as in life, standing knitting by
the nursery-window, walking slowly and sedately along the green lanes,
carrying the basket of flowers and roots, collected in their rambles, or
sitting in calm Sunday afternoons with her Bible on her knee.

And then, passing from the memory of Elspie once on earth, Olive thought
of Elspie now in heaven. Her glowing imagination idealised all sorrow
into poesy. She never watched the sunset, she never looked up into the
starry sky at night, without picturing Elspie as there. All the foibles
and peculiarities of her poor old Scottish nurse became transmuted into
the image of a guardian invisible, incorporeal; which seemed to draw
her own spirit nearer to heaven, with the thought that there was one she
loved, and who loved her, in the glorious mansions there.

From the time of her nurse's death, the whole current of Olive's life
changed. It cast no shadow over the memory of the deep affection
lost, to say that the full tide of living love now flowed towards Mrs.
Rothesay as it had never done before, perhaps never would have done but
for Elspie's death. And truly the mother's heart now thirsted for that
flood.

For seven years the little cloud which appeared when Captain Rothesay
returned, had risen up between husband and wife, increasing slowly but
surely, and casting a shadow over their married home. Like many another
pair who wed in the heat of passion, or the wilful caprice of youth,
their characters, never very similar, had grown less so day by day,
until their two lives had severed wider and wider. There was no open
dissension that the wicked world could take hold of, to glut its eager
eyes with the spectacle of an unhappy marriage; but the chasm was there,
a gulf of coldness, indifference, and distrust, which no foot of love
would ever cross.

Angus Rothesay was a disappointed man. At five-and-twenty he had taken a
beautiful, playful, half-educated child,

     “His bride and his darling to be,”

forgetting that at thirty-five he should need a sensible woman to be his
trustworthy sympathising wife, the careful and thoughtful mistress of
his household. When hard experience had made him old and wise, even a
little before his time, he came home expecting to find her old and wise
too. The hope failed. He found Sybilla as he had left her--a very child.
Ductile and loving as she was, he might even then have guided her mind,
have formed her character, in fact, have made her anything he liked. But
he would not do it; he was too proud. He brooded over his disappointed
hope in silence and reserve; and though he reproached her not, and never
ceased to love her in his own cold way, yet all respect and sympathy
were gone. Her ways were not his ways, and was it the place of a man and
a husband to bend? After a few years of struggling, less with her than
with himself, he decided that he would take his own separate course, and
let her take hers.

He did so. At first she tried to win him back, not with a woman's sweet
and placid dignity of love, never failing, never tiring, yet invisible
as a rivulet that runs through deep green bushes, scarcely heard and
never seen. Sybilla's arts--the only arts she knew--were the whole
armoury of girlish coquetry, or childish wile, passionate tenderness
and angry or sullen reproach, alternating each other. Her husband was
equally unmoved by all. He seemed a very rock, indifferent to either
sunshine or storm. And yet it was not so. He had in his nature deep,
earnest, abiding tenderness; but he was one of those people who must be
loved only in their own quiet, silent way. A hard lesson for one whose
every feeling was less a principle than an impulse. Sybilla could not
learn it. And thus the happiness of two lives was blighted, not
from evil, or even lack of worth in either, but because they did not
understand one another. Their current of existence flowed on coldly and
evenly, in two parallel lines, which would never, never meet!

The world beheld Captain Rothesay in two phases--one as the grave,
somewhat haughty but respected master of Merivale Hall; the other as the
rash and daring speculator, who was continually doubling and trebling
his fortune by all the thousand ways of legal gambling in which men
of capital can indulge. There was in this kind of life an interest and
excitement Captain Rothesay rushed to it as many another man would have
rushed to far less sinless means of atoning for the dreary blank of
home.

In Mrs. Rothesay the world only saw one of its fairest adornments--one
of those “charming women” who make society so agreeable; beautiful,
kind-hearted--at least as much so as her thoughtless life allowed;
lively, fond of amusement--perhaps a little too much, for it caused
people to note the contrast between the master and the mistress of the
Hall, and to say what no wife should ever give the world reason to say,
“Poor thing! I wonder if she is happy with her husband?”

But between those two stood the yet scarce recognised tie which bound
them together--the little deformed child.




CHAPTER X.

“Captain Rothesay?”

“My dear?”

Reader, did you ever notice the intense frigidity that can be expressed
in a “my dear!” The coldest, cruellest husband we ever knew once
impressed this fact on our childish fancy, by our always hearing him
call his wife thus. Poor, pale, broken-hearted creature! He “my deared”
 her into her grave.

Captain Rothesay also used the epithet with a formality which was
chilling enough in its way. He said it without lifting his eyes from the
book, “Smith's Wealth of Nations,” which had become his usual evening's
study now, whenever he was at home. That circumstance, rare enough to
have been welcome, and yet it was not welcome, now subdued his wife and
daughter into silence and quietness. Alas! that ever a presence which
ought to be the sunshine of a household should enter only to cast a
perpetual shade.

The firelight shone on the same trio which had formed the little
after-dinner circle years ago at Stirling. But there was a change in
all. The father and mother sat--not side by side, in that propinquity
which is so sweet, when every breath, every touch of the beloved's
garment gives pleasure; they sat one at each corner of the table,
engrossed in their several occupations; reading with an uncommunicative
eagerness, and sewing in unbroken silence. Each was entrenched within
a chilling circle of thoughts and interests in which the other never
entered. And now the only point of meeting between them was the
once-banished child.

Little Olive was growing almost a woman now, but she was called “little
Olive” still. She retained her diminutive stature, together with her
girlish dress, but her face wore, as ever, its look of premature age.
And as she sat between her father and mother, now helping the one in
her delicate fancy-work, now arranging the lamp for the other's reading,
continually in request by both, or when left quiet for a minute,
watching both with anxious earnestness, there was quite enough in
Olive's manner to show that she had entered on a woman's life of care,
and had not learned a woman's wisdom one day too soon.

The captain's last “my dear” found his wife in the intricacies of
a Berlin-wool pattern, so that she did not speak Again for several
minutes, when she again appealed to “Captain Rothesay.” She rarely
called him anything else now. Alas! the time of “Angus” and “Sybilla”
 was gone.

“Well, my dear, what have you to say?”

“I wish you would not be always reading, it makes the evening so dull.”

“Does it?” and he turned over another leaf of Adam Smith, and leisurely
settled himself for its perusal.

“Papa is tired, and may like to be quiet. Suppose we talk to one
another, mamma?” whispered Olive, as she put aside her own work--idle,
but graceful designings with pencil and paper--and drawing near to her
mother, began to converse in a low tone. She discussed all questions as
to whether the rose should be red or white, and what coloured wool
would form the striped tulip, just as though they had been the most
interesting topics in the world. Only once her eyes wandered wistfully
to the deserted “Sabrina,” which, half sketched, lay within the leaves
of her “Comus.” Mrs. Rothesay observed this, and said, kindly--

“Let me look at what you are doing, love. Ah!--very pretty! What is
Sabrina? Tell me all about her.” And she listened, with a pleased,
maternal smile, while her gratified little daughter dilated on the
beloved “Comus,” and read a passage or two in illustration. “Very
pretty, my love,” again repeated Mrs. Rothesay, stroking Olive's hair.
“Ah! you are a clever child. But now come and tell me what sort of
winter dresses you think we should have.”

If any observer could have seen a shade of disappointment on Olive's
face, he would also have seen it instantly suppressed. The young girl
closed “Comus” with the drawing inside, and came to sit down again,
looking up into the eyes of her “beautiful mamma.” And even the
commonplace question of dress soon became interesting to her, for her
artistic predilection followed her even there, and no lover ever gloried
in his mistress's charms, no painter ever delighted to deck his model,
more than Olive loved to adorn and to admire the still exquisite beauty
of her mother. It stood to her in the place of all attractions
in herself--in fact, she rarely thought about herself at all. The
consciousness of her personal defect had worn off through habit, and
her almost total seclusion from strangers prevented its being painfully
forced on her mind.

“I wish we could leave off this mourning,” said Mrs. Rothesay. “It is
quite time, seeing Sir Andrew Rothesay has been dead six months. And,
living or dying, he did not show kindness enough to make one remember
him longer.”

“Yet he was kind to papa, when a child; and so was Auntie Flora,” softly
said Olive, to whose enthusiastic memory there ever clung Elspie's tales
about the Perthshire relatives--bachelor brother and maiden sister,
living together in their lonely, gloomy home. But she rarely talked
about them; and now, seeing her mamma looked troubled, as she always did
at any reference to Scotland and the old times, the little maiden ceased
at once. Mrs. Rothesay was soon again safely and contentedly plunged
into the mysteries of winter costume.

“Your dresses must be handsomer and more womanly now, Olive; for I
intend to take you out with me now and then. You are quite old enough;
and I am tired of visiting alone. I intended to speak to your papa about
it to-night; but he seems not in a good humour.”

“Only tired with his journey,” put in the sweet little awdiator. “Is it
not so papa?”

Captain Rothesay started from a dull, anxious reverie, into which his
reading had merged, and lifted his face, knitted and darkened with some
inward care, heavy enough to make his tone sharp and angry, as he said,

“Well, child, what do you want?”

“Do not scold Olive; it was I who wished to speak to you.” And then,
without pausing to consider how evidently ill-timed the conversation
was, Mrs. Rothesay began to talk eagerly about Olive's “coming out,” and
whether it should be at home or abroad; finally arguing that a ball
at Merivale would be best, and entering at large on the question of
ball-costume. There was nothing wrong in anything she said, but she said
it at the wrong time. Her husband listened first with indifference, then
fidgeted restlessly in his chair, and at last subsided into an angry
silence.

“Why don't you speak, Captain Rothesay?” He took up the poker and
hammered the fire to small cinders. “Of course, you will be reasonable.
Say, shall it be as I have arranged?”

“No!” The word came thundering out--as Captain Rothesay rarely
thundered; for he was calm and dignified even in his wrath. Immediately
afterwards he rose up and left the room.

Sybilla grew pale, sorrowful, and then melted into tears. She tried not
to let Olive see them. She was still too faithful a wife to seek in any
way to turn the child against her father. But yet she wept: and drawing
her young daughter closer to her arms, she felt the sweetness of having
a child--and such a child--left to love her. In proportion as the wife's
heart closed, the mother's opened.

Ere long, Captain Rothesay sent for little Olive, to read the evening
newspaper to him in his study.

“Go, love,” said Mrs. Rothesay; and she went--without fear, too; for her
father never said a harsh word to _her_. And as, each year of her life,
the sterling truth and stern uprightness of his character dawned upon
her, she could not fail to respect him, even while she worshipped her
sweet-tempered gentle mother.

Captain Rothesay made no remark, save upon the subject she was reading,
and came in with Olive to tea, just as usual. But when he had finished,
and was fast sinking back into that painful reverie which seemed to
oppress him, his weak ill-judging wife recommenced her attack. She
talked gently when speaking of Olive, even affectionately--poor soul!
She persuaded herself, all the time, that she was doing right, and
that he was a hardhearted father not to listen to her. He did listen,
apparently; and she took his silence for consent, for she ended with--

“Well, then, it is quite settled; the ball shall be at Merivale, on the
20th of next month.”

Angus turned round, his blue eyes glittering, yet cold as steel--“Mrs.
Rothesay, if you will worm the truth out of me, you shall. By next month
you may not have a roof over your head.”

He rose up and again quitted the room. Mrs. Rothesay trembled--grew
terrified--but tried to reassure herself. “He only says this in
anger, or else to frighten me. I will not believe it.” Then conscience
whispered, that never in her whole life had she known Angus Rothesay to
tell a falsehood; and she trembled more and more. Finally, she passed
into a violent fit of nervous weeping--a circumstance by no means rare.
Her health was weakened by the exciting gaieties of her outward life,
and the inward sorrow which preyed upon her heart.

This night--and not for the first time either--the little maiden of
fifteen might have been seen, acting with the energy and self-possession
of a woman--soothing her mother's hysterical sufferings--smoothing her
pillow, and finally watching by her until she fell asleep. Then Olive
crept downstairs, and knocked at her father's study-door. He said, “Come
in,” in a dull, subdued tone. She entered, and saw him sitting, his
head on his hand, jaded and exhausted, leaning over the last embers of
the fire, which had gone out without his noticing it. If there had been
any anger in the child's heart, it must have vanished at once, when she
looked upon her father thus.

“Oh! is that you, Olive?” was all he said, beginning to turn over his
papers, as if to make a show of occupation.

But he soon relapsed into that unknown thought which oppressed him so
much. It was some minutes before he completely aroused himself, and saw
the little elfin-like figure standing beside him, silent and immovable,
with the taper in her hand.

“Shall I bring your candle, dear papa? It is eleven o'clock and more.”

“Where is your mother, Olive?”

“She is gone to bed;” and Olive paused, uncertain whether she should
tell him that her mamma was ill. Again there was a silence--during
which, do what he would, Captain Rothesay could not keep his eyes from
the earnest, wistful, entreating gaze of his “little Olive.” At last, he
lifted her on his knee, and took her face between his two hands, saying,
in a smothered tone,

“You are not like your mother; you are like _mine_--ay, and seem more so
as you grow to be a woman.”

“I wish I were a woman, that papa might talk to me and tell me anything
which he has on his mind,” whispered Olive, scarcely daring to breathe
that which she had nerved herself to say, during many minutes of silent
pondering at the study-door.

Captain Rothesay relapsed hastily into his cold manner. “Child, how do
you know?”

“I know nothing, and want to know nothing, that papa does not wish to
tell me,” answered Olive, gently.

The father turned round again, and looked into his daughter's eyes.
Perhaps he read there a spirit equal to, and not unlike, his own--a
nature calm, resolute, clear-sighted; the strong will and decision of
a man, united to the tenderness of a woman. From that hour father and
daughter understood one another.

“Olive, how old are you?--I forget.”

“Fifteen, dear papa.”

“Ah! and you are a thoughtful girl. I can talk to you as to a
woman--pah! I mean, a sensible woman. Put out your candle; you can sit
up a while longer.”

She obeyed, and sat with him for two whole hours in his study, while he
explained to her how sudden reverses had so damaged his fortune that it
was necessary to have a far smaller establishment than Merivale Hall.

“Not that we need fear poverty, my dear child; but the future must be
considered and provided for. Your mother's jointure, should I die--nay,
do not look sad, we will not talk of that--and then, too, your own
portion, when you marry.”

Olive blushed, as any girl of fifteen will do when talked to on such a
topic, even in the most business-like way. “I shall not marry, papa,”
 said she, expressing the thought which had come to her, as it does
to most young girls who love their parents very dearly, too dearly to
imagine a parting.

Captain Rothesay started, as if suddenly recollecting himself. Then he
regarded her earnestly, mournfully; and in the look was something which
struck on Olive's memory as though she had seen it before.

“I had forgotten,” muttered Captain Rothesay to himself. “Of course, she
will never marry. Poor child!--poor child!”

He kissed her very tenderly, then lighted his candle, and went upstairs
to bed, holding her hand all the way, until they parted at her room
door, when he kissed her a second time. As he did so, she contrived to
whisper--

“Mamma is sure to wake; she always does when you come in. Kiss mamma,
too.”

Olive went to bed, happier than she could have believed possible, had
any one told her in the morning that ere night she would hear the ill
news of having to leave beautiful Merivale. But it was so sweet to feel
herself a comfort to both parents--they who, alas! would receive no
comfort from each other.

Only, just when she was falling asleep, the thought floated across
Olive's mind--

“I wonder why papa said that, of course, I should never marry!”




CHAPTER XI.

“Dear mamma, is not this a pretty house, even though it is in a
town?--so pretty, one need hardly pine after Merri-vale.”

Thus said Olive when they had been established some time in their new
abode, and sat together, one winter evening, listening to the sweet
bells of Oldchurch--one of the few English parishes where lingers “the
curfew's solemn sound.”

“A pretty house, if any one came to see us in it, my dear; but nobody
does. And then we miss the close carriage so much. To think that I
have been obliged to refuse the Stantons' ball and the dinner-party at
Everingham. How dull these long winter evenings will be, Olive!”

Olive answered neither _yes_ nor _no_, but tried quietly, by her
actions, to disprove the fact She was but a child--scarcely would have
been called a clever child; was neither talkative nor musical; and yet
she had a thousand winning ways of killing time, so sweetly that each
minute died, dolphin-like, shedding glorious hues.

A very romantic simile this--one that would never have crossed Olive's
innocent brain. She only knew that she loved her mother; and therefore
tried to amuse and make her happy, so that she might not feel the change
of circumstances--a change so unimportant to Olive, so vital to Mrs.
Rothesay.

Olive, this night, was peculiarly successful in her little _ruse_ of
love. Her mother listened while she explained a whole sketch-book of
designs, illustrative of half-a-dozen modern poets. Mrs. Rothesay even
asked her to read some of the said poets aloud; and though not of an
imaginative temperament, was fain to shed a few womanly tears over
Tennyson's “Queen of the May” and the “Miller's Daughter.” Finally, she
was coaxed into sitting to her daughter for her portrait, which Olive
thought would make a design exactly suited to the heroine of the latter
poem, and chiefly at the verse--

“Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife, Round my true heart thine
arms entwine; My other dearer life in life, Look through my very soul
with thine.”

And, reading the verses over and over again, to bring the proper
expression to her mother's face, the young girl marvelled that they
brought likewise a look so sad that she would fain have made some
excuse, and terminated the sitting.

“No, no, my dear; it amuses me, and I can talk with you the while.”

But Mrs. Rothesay did not talk much; she was continually falling into a
reverie. Once she broke it with the words--

“Olive, my child, I think, now we lead a quieter life, your papa will
stay at home more. He seems to like this house, too--he never liked
Merivale.”

“Dear old Merivale!” said Olive, with a sigh. It seemed ages since she
had left the familiar place.

“Do not call it _dear_. It was a dreary home. I did not think so at
first, but I did afterwards.”

“Why, mamma?” asked Olive. She was glad to lure her mother on to talk a
little, if only to dispel the shadow which so ill became Mrs. Rothesay's
still fair face.

“You were too young to know anything then--indeed, you are now, almost.
But, somehow, I have learned to talk with you as if you were quite a
little woman, Olive, my dear.”

“Thank you, mamma. And what made you dislike sweet Merivale?”

“It was when your papa first began to take his long journeys--on
business you know. He was obliged to do it, I suppose; but,
nevertheless, it was very dull for me. I never had such a dreary summer
as that one. You could not remember it, though--you were only ten years
old.”

Olive did remember it faintly, nevertheless--a time when her father's
face was sterner, and her mother's more fretful, than now; when the
shadow of many domestic storms passed over the child. But she never
spoke of these things; and, lest her mother should ponder painfully on
them now, she began to talk of lighter matters. Yet though the sweet
companionship of her only daughter was balm to Mrs. Rothesay's heart,
still there was a pain there which even Olive could not remove. Was
it that the mother's love had sprung from the ruins of the wife's
happiness; and that while smiling gaily with her child, Sybilla
Rothesay's thoughts were with the husband who, year by year, was growing
more estranged, and whom, as she found out too late, by a little more
wisdom, patience, and womanly sympathy, she might perhaps have kept for
ever at her side?

But none of these mysteries came to the knowledge of little Olive. She
lived the dream-life of early girlhood--dwelling in an atmosphere still
and pure as a grey spring morning ere the sun has risen. All she learnt
was from books; for though she had occasional teachers, she had never
been sent to school. Sometimes she regretted this, thinking how pleasant
it would be to have companions, or at least one friend, of her own age,
to whom she might talk on the various subjects of which she had of
late begun to dream. These never passed the still sanctuary of her
own thoughts; for some instinct told her that her mother would not
sympathise with her fancies. So she thought of them always by herself,
when she was strolling about the small but pleasant garden that sloped
down from the back of the house to the river; or when, extending her
peregrinations, she went to sit in the summer-house of the garden
adjoining, which belonged to a large mansion close by, long uninhabited.
It was quite a punishment to Olive when a family came to live there, and
she lost the use of the beautiful deserted garden.

Still, it was something new to have neighbours. She felt quite a
curiosity respecting them, which was not diminished when, looking out
one day from the staircase window (a favourite seat, from which every
night she watched the sun set), Olive caught sight of the new occupants
of her former haunts.

They were two little boys of about nine or ten, playing noisily
enough--as boys will. Olive did not notice them much, except the
youngest, who appeared much the quieter and gentler of the two; but her
gaze rested a long time on a girl, who seemed to be their elder sister.
She was walking by herself up and down an alley, with a shawl thrown
over her head, and her thick, black hair blown about by the March winds.
Olive thought she looked very picturesque--in fact, just like some
of her own fantastic designs of “Norna on the Fitful head,” “Medora
watching for Conrad,” etc. etc. And when the young stranger drew nearer,
her admiration was still further excited, by perceiving under the
shawl a face that needed but a little romantic imagination to make it
positively beautiful. Olive thought so, and accordingly sat the whole
evening drawing it from memory, and putting it into various characters,
from Scott, Byron, Moore, and Coleridge.

For several days after, she took a deep interest in watching the family
party, and chiefly this young girl--partly because she was so pretty,
and partly because she seemed nearly about her own age, or perhaps a
year or two older. Olive often contrived to walk in her garden when her
neighbours were in theirs--so that she could hear the boys' cheerful
voices over the high hedge. By this means she learnt their Christian
names, Robert and Lyle--the latter of which she admired very much, and
thought it exactly suited the pretty, delicate younger brother. She
wished much to find out the name of their sister--but could not; for the
elder girl took little notice of them, or they of her. So Olive, after
thinking and talking of her for some time, as “my beauty next door,” to
Mrs. Rothesay's great amusement, at last christened her by the imaginary
name of Maddalena.

After a few weeks it seemed as though the interest between the young
neighbours became mutual--for Olive, in her walks, sometimes fancied
she saw faces watching _her_, too from the staircase window. And once,
peering over the wall, she perceived the mischievous eyes and pointed
finger of the elder boy, and heard the younger one say, reproachfully--

“Don't--pray! You are very cruel, Bob.”

And Olive, deeply blushing--though at what she scarcely knew--fled into
the house, and did not take her usual garden walks for some days.

At last, when, one lovely spring evening, she stood leaning over the low
wall at the garden's end, idly watching the river flow by beneath, she
turned round, and saw fixed on her, with a curiosity not unmingled with
interest, the dark eyes of “Maddalena.” Somehow or other, the two girls
smiled--and then the elder spoke.

“The evening was very fine,” she said; “and it was rather dull, walking
in the garden all alone.”

Olive had never found it so; but she was used to it. Her young neighbour
was not; she had always lived in a large town, etc. etc.

A few more simple nothings spun out the conversation for ten minutes.
The next day it was resumed, and extended to twenty; during which Olive
learnt that her young beauty's name, so far from being anything so fine
as Maddalena, was plain Sarah--or _Sara_, as its owner took care to
explain. Olive was rather disappointed--but she thought of Coleridge's
ladye love; consoled herself, and tried to console the young lady, with
repeating,

     My pensive Sarah! thy soft cheek reclined, etc.

At which Miss Sara Derwent laughed, and asked who wrote that very pretty
poetry?

Olive was a little confounded. She fancied everybody read Coleridge, and
her companion sank just one degree in her estimation. But as soon as she
looked again on the charming face, with its large, languishing Asiatic
eyes, and delicate mouth--just like that of the lotus-leaved “Clytie,”
 which she loved so much,--Olive felt all her interest revive.

Never was there any girl over whom every form of beauty exercised more
fascination. By the week's end she was positively enchanted with her
neighbour, and before a month had passed, the two young girls had struck
up that romantic friendship peculiar to sixteen.

There is a deep beauty--more so than the world will acknowledge--in
this impassioned first friendship, most resembling first love, the
fore-shadowing of which it truly is. Who does not, even while smiling
at its apparent folly, remember the sweetness of such a dream? Many a
mother with her children at her knee, may now and then call to mind some
old playmate, for whom, when they were girls together, she felt such
an intense love. How they used to pine for the daily greeting--the long
walk, fraught with all sorts of innocent secrets. Or, in absence, the
almost interminable letters--positive love-letters, full of
“dearest” and “beloveds,” and sealing-wax kisses. Then the delicious
meetings--sad partings, also quite lover-like in the multiplicity
of tears and embraces--embraces sweeter than those of all the world
beside--and tears--But our own are gathering while we write--Ah!

We also have been in Arcadia.

Gracious reader! grave, staid mother of a family!--you are not quite
right if you jest at the days of old, and at such feelings as these.
They were real at the time--and most pure, true, and beautiful. What
matter, if years sweeping on have swept them all away or merged them
into higher duties and closer ties? Perhaps, if you met your beautiful
idol of fifteen, you would see a starched old maid of fifty, or a
grandame presiding over the third generation; or perchance, in seeking
thus, you would find only a green hillock, or a stone inscribed with the
well-known name. But what of that? To you the girlish image is still the
same--it never can grow old, or change, or die. Think of it thus; and
then you will think not mockingly, but with an interest almost mournful,
on the rapturous dream of first friendship which now came to visit Olive
Rothesay.

Sara Derwent was the sort of girl of whom we meet some hundreds in a
lifetime--the class from whence are taken the lauded “mothers,
wives, and daughters of England.” She was sincere, good-tempered, and
affectionate; not over-clever, being more gifted with heart than brains;
rather vain, which fault her extreme prettiness half excused; always
anxious to do right, yet, from a want of decision of character, often
contriving to do wrong.

But she completely charmed the simple Olive with her beauty, her
sparkling, winning cheerfulness, and her ready sympathy. So they became
the most devoted friends. Not a day passed without their spending some
portion of it together--Olive teaching the young Londoner the pleasures
of the country; and Sara, in her turn, inducting the wondering Olive
into all the delightful mysteries of life, as learnt in a large home
circle, and a still larger circle of society. Olive, not taking aught
from the passionate love with which she looked up to her mother, yet
opened her warm heart to the sweetness of this affection--so fresh, so
sudden, so full of sympathetic contact. It was like a new revelation in
her girlhood--the satisfying of a thirst, just beginning to be felt. She
thought of Sara continually; delighted in being with her; in admiring
her beauty, and making interests out of every interest of hers. And to
think that her friend loved her in return brought a sensation of deep
happiness, not unmixed with gratitude.

Sara's own feelings may be explained by one sentence of a letter which
she wrote to an old schoolfellow. Therein she told how she had found
“such a dear, loving, gentle thing; a girl, not pretty--even slightly
deformed; but who was an amusing companion, and to whom she could
confide everything. Such a blessing in that dull place, Oldchurch!”

Poor little Olive!




CHAPTER XII.

As the summer advanced, Olive Rothesay and her new friend, sanctioned
by the elders of both families, took long walks together, read, and
practised. Not that Olive practised, for she had no voice, and little
knowledge of music; but she listened to Sara's performances for hours,
with patience, if not with delight. And when they talked--oh, what talks
those were!

Now, reader, be not alarmed lest we should indulge you with the same. Go
back into your own _repertoire_ of early friendships, and that will suit
us quite as well Still, we may just say that these young friends flitted
like bees over every subject under heaven, and at last alighted on the
subject most interesting at their age--love.

It is curious to note how the heart first puts out its tendrils and
stretches them forth toward the yet unknown good which is to be in
after-life its happiness and its strength. What folly of parents to
repress these blind seekings after such knowledge--this yearning which
nature teaches, and which in itself involves nothing wrong. Girls _will_
think of love, whether or no! How much better, then, that they should be
taught to think of it rightly, as the one deep feeling of life. Not,
on the one hand, to be repressed by ridicule; nor, on the other, to be
forced by romance into a precocious growth; but to be entered upon, when
fate brings the time, rationally, earnestly, and sacredly.

Olive Rothesay found, with considerable pain, that Miss Derwent and she
did not at all agree in their notions of love. Olive had always felt
half-frightened at the subject, and never approached it save with great
awe and timidity; but Sara did not seem to mind it in the least. She
talked of a score of “flirtations” at quadrille parties--showed her
friend half-a-dozen complimentary billets-doux which she had received,
and all with the greatest unconcern. By degrees this indifference
vanished under the influence of Olive's more earnest nature; and at
last, when they were sitting together one night, listening to the fierce
howling of the wind, a little secret came out.

“I don't like that equinoctial gale,” said Sara, shyly. “I used to hear
so much of its horrors from a friend I have--at sea.”

“Indeed. Who was that?”

“Only Charles Geddes. Did I never speak of him? Very likely not--because
I was so vexed at his leaving college and running off to sea. It was
a foolish thing. But don't mention him to papa or the boys.” And Sara
blushed--a real, good, honest blush.

Olive did the same--perhaps from sympathy. She continued very thoughtful
for a long time; longer even than Sara. They were not many days in
making out between them the charming secret for which in their hearts
they had been longing. Both were thirsting to taste--or at least to see
each other taste--of that enchanting love-stream, the stream of life or
of death, at whose verge they had now arrived.

And so, it somehow chanced that, however the conversation began, it
usually glided into the subject of Charles Geddes. Sara acknowledged
that he and she had always liked one another very much, though she
allowed that he was fonder of her than she was of him; that, when they
parted, he had seemed much agitated--and she had cried--but they were
mere boy and girl then. It was nothing--nothing at all.

Olive did not think so; and, contrasting all this with similar
circumstances in her pet poems and novels, she wove a very nice romance
round Charles Geddes and her beloved Sara, whom she now began to look
upon with greater interest and reverence than ever. This did not prevent
her reading Sara a great many lectures on constancy, and giving her own
opinions on what true love ought to be--opinions which were a little
too ethereal for Miss Derwent's comprehension, but which she liked very
much, nevertheless.

Olive took quite an affectionate interest in her friend's lover--for
lover she had decided that he must be. Not a day passed that she did not
eagerly consult the _Times'_ “shipping intelligence;” and when at last
she saw the name of Charles Geddes' vessel, as “arrived,” her heart
beat, and tears sprang to her eyes. When she showed it to Sara, Olive
could hardly speak for joy. Little simpleton! she counted her friend's
happiness as if it were her own. She kept the secret even from her
mother; that is, in the only manner Olive would conceal aught from any
one so beloved, by saying, “Please, mamma, do not ask me anything.” And
Mrs. Rothesay, who, always guided by some one, was now in a fair way
to be entirely guided by her daughter, made no inquiries, but depended
entirely upon Olive's wisdom and tenderness.

Charles Geddes came to Oldchurch. It was quite a new life for Olive--a
changed life, too; for now the daily rambles with her friend were less
frequent. Instead of which, she used to sit at her window, and watch
Sara and Charles taking long strolls in the garden, arm-in-arm, looking
so happy, that it was beautiful to see them.

Who can describe the' strange, half-defined thoughts which often brought
tears to the young girl's eyes as she watched them thus! It was no
jealousy of Sara's deserting her for Charles, still less was it envy;
but it was a vague longing--a desiring of love for love's own sake. Not
as regarded any individual object, for Olive had never seen any one in
whom she felt or fancied the slightest interest. Yet, as she looked on
these two young creatures, apparently so bound up in each other, she
thought how sweet such a tie must be, and how dearly she herself could
love some one. And her yearning was always _to love_ rather than _to be
loved_.

One morning, when Olive had not seen Sara for a day or two, she
was hastily summoned to their usual trysting-place, a spot by the
river-side, where the two gardens met, and where an over-arching
thorn-tree made a complete bower. Therein Sara stood, looking so pale
and serious, that Olive remarked it.

“Has anything happened?”

“Nothing--that is, nothing amiss. But oh, Olive, what do you think?
Charles put this letter into my hand last night. I have scarcely
slept--I feel so agitated--so frightened.”

And in truth she looked so. Was there ever a very young girl who did
not, on receiving her first love-letter?

It was an era in Olive's life, too. She even trembled, as by her
friend's earnest desire she read the missive. It was boyish, indeed, and
full of the ultra-romantic devotion of boyish love; but it was sincere,
and it touched Olive deeply. She finished it, and leaned against the
thorn-tree, pale and agitated as Sara herself.

“Well, Olive?” said the latter.

Olive threw her arms round her friend's neck and kissed her, feeling
almost ready to cry.

“And now, dear, tell me what I must do,” said Sara, earnestly; for
of late she had really begun to look up to Olive, so great was the
influence of the more thoughtful and higher nature.

“Do! Why, if you love him, you must tell him so, and give him your whole
life-long faith and affection.”

“Really, Olive, how grave you are! I had no idea of making it such a
serious matter. But, poor Charles!--to think that he should love me so
very much!”

“Oh, Sara, Sara!” murmured Olive, “how happy you ought to be!”

The time that followed was a strange period in Olive's life. It was one
of considerable excitement, too; she might as well have been in love
herself, so deeply did she sympathise with Sara and with Charles. With
the latter, even more than with her friend; for there was something in
the sincere, reserved, and yet passionate nature of the young sailor,
that answered to her own. If he had been her brother, she could not have
felt more warmly interested in Charles Geddes and his wooing. And
he liked her very much, for Sara's sake first, and then for her own,
regarding her also with that gentle compassion which the strong and bold
delight to show to the weak. He often called her “his faithful little
friend;” and truly she stood his friend in every conceivable way, by
soothing Sara's only parent--a most irascible papa--to consent to the
engagement, and also by lecturing the gay and coquettish Sara herself
into as much good behaviour as could be expected from an affianced
damsel of seventeen.

Charles Geddes went to sea again. Poor little Olive, in her warm
sympathies, suffered almost as much as the young man's own betrothed,
who, after looking doleful for a week, consoled herself by entering,
heart and soul, into the gaieties of the gayest Christmas that ever
was spent by the society of Oldchurch. Everywhere Miss Derwent was the
belle, and continually did her friend need to remind her of the promise
which Olive herself regarded as such a sacred, solemn thing.

The love-adventure in which she had borne a part had stirred strange
depths in the nature of the young girl. She was awakening slowly to the
great mystery of woman's life. And when, by degrees, Sara's amusements
somewhat alienated their continual intercourse, Olive was thrown
back upon her own thoughts more and more. She felt a vague sadness--a
something wanting in her heart, which not even her mother's love could
supply.

Mrs. Rothesay saw how dull and pensive she was at times, and with a
tender unselfishness contrived that, by Sara Derwent's intervention,
Olive should see a little more society; in a very quiet way, though; for
her own now delicate health and Captain Rothesay's will, prevented any
regular introduction of their daughter into the world. And sometimes
Mrs. Rothesay, pondering on Olive's future, felt-glad of this.

“Poor child! she is not made for the world, or the world for her. Better
that she should lead her own quiet life, where she will suffer no pain,
and be wounded by no neglect.”

Yet, nevertheless, it was with a vague pleasure that Mrs. Rothesay
dressed Olive for her first ball--a birthday treat--coaxed by Sara
Derwent out of her formidable papa, and looked forward to by both girls
for many weeks.

No one would have believed that the young creature, on whom Mrs.
Rothesay gazed with a tenderness, not unmingled with admiration, had
been the poor infant from which she once turned with a sensation of
pain, almost amounting to disgust. But, learning to love, one learns
also to admire. Besides, Olive's defect was less apparent as she grew
up, and the extreme sweetness of her countenance almost atoned for her
bad figure. Yet, as the mother fastened her white dress, and arranged
the golden curls so as to fall in a shower on her neck and bosom, she
sighed heavily.

Olive did not notice it; she was too much occupied in tying up a rare
bouquet--a birthday gift for Sara.

“Well, are you quite satisfied with my dress, dearest mamma?”

“Not quite;” and Mrs. Rothesay fetched a small mantle of white fur,
which she laid round Olive's shoulders. “Wear this, dear; you will
look better then--see.” She led her to the mirror, and Olive saw the
reflection of her own figure, so effectually disguised, that the head,
with its delicate and spiritual beauty, seemed lifting itself out of a
white cloud.

“'Tis a pretty little mantle, but why must I wear it, mamma?--the night
is not cold.” So little did she think of herself, and so slight had
been her intercourse with the world, that the defect in her shape rarely
crossed her mind. But the mother, so beautiful herself, and to whom
beauty was still of such importance, was struck with bitter pain. She
would not even console herself by the reflection, with which many a one
had lately comforted her, that Olive's slight deformity was becoming
less perceptible, and that she might, in a great measure, outgrow it
in time. Still it was there. As Mrs. Rothesay looked at the swan-like
curves of her own figure, and then at her daughter's, she would almost
have resigned her own once-cherished, but now disregarded, beauty, could
she have bestowed that gift upon her beloved child.

Without speaking, lest Olive should guess her thoughts, she laid the
mantle aside, only she whispered in bidding adieu, “Dear, if you see
other girls prettier, or more admired, more noticed than yourself, never
mind! Olive is mamma's own pet--always.”

Oh, blessed adversity! oh, sweetness, taught by suffering! How
marvellous was the change wrought in Sybilla's heart.

Olive had never in her life before been at a “private ball,” with
chalked floors, rout seats, and a regular band. She was quite dazzled
by the transformation thus effected in the Derwents' large, rarely-used,
dining-room, where she had had many a merry game with little Robert and
Lyle. It was perfect fairyland. The young damsels of Oldchurch--haughty
boarding-school belles, whom she had always rather feared, when Sara's
hospitality brought her in contact with them--were now grown into
perfect court beauties. She was quite alarmed by their dignity, and they
scarcely noticed poor little Olive at all. Sara, sweeping across the
room, appeared to the eyes of her little friend a perfect queen of
beauty. But the vision came and vanished. Never was there a belle so
much in request as the lively Sara.

Only once, Olive looked at her, and remembered the sailor-boy, who was,
perhaps, tossing in some awful night-storm, or lying on the lonely deck,
in the midst of the wide Atlantic. And she thought, that when her time
came to love and be loved, she would not take everything quite so easily
as Sara.

“How pleasant quadrilles must be!” said Olive, as she sat with her
favourite Lyle, watching the dancers. Lyle had crept to her, sliding his
hand in hers, and looking up to her with a most adoring gaze, as indeed
he often did. He had even communicated his intention of marrying her
when he grew a man--a determination which greatly excited the ridicule
of his elder brother.

“I like far better to sit here quietly with you,” murmured the faithful
little cavalier.

“Thank you, Lyle; still, they all look so merry, I almost wish some one
had asked me to dance.”

“You dance, Miss Rothesay! What fun! Why nobody would ever dance with
you,” cried rude Bob.

Lyle looked imploringly at his brother: “Hush! you naughty boy! Please,
Miss Rothesay, I will dance with you at any time, that is, if you think
I am tall enough.”

“Oh, quite; I am so small myself,” answered Olive, laughing; for
she took quite a pride in patronising him, as girls of sixteen often
affectionately patronise boys some five or six years their junior. “You
know, you are to grow up to be my little husband.”

“Your husband!” repeated Bob, mischievously. “Don't be too sure of
getting one at all. What do you think I overheard those girls there say?
That you looked just like an old maid; and, indeed, no one would ever
care to marry you, because you were”--

Here Lyle, blushing crimson, stopped his brother's mouth with his little
hand; whereat Bob flew into such a passion, that he quite forgot Olive,
and all he was about to say, in the excitement of a pugilistic
combat with his unlucky _cadet_ In the midst of which the two
belligerents--poor, untaught, motherless lads--were hurried off to bed.

Their companionship lost, Olive was left very much to her own devices
for amusement. Some few young people that she knew came and talked
to her for a little while, but they all went back to their singing,
dancing, or flirting; and Olive, who seemed to have no gift nor share
in either, was left alone. She did not feel this much at first, being
occupied in her thoughts and observations on the rest. She took great
interest in noticing all around. Her warm heart throbbed in sympathy
with many an idle, passing flirtation, which she in her simplicity
mistook for a real “attachment.” It seemed as if every one loved, or
was loved, except herself. She thought this, blushing as if it were
unmaidenliness, when it was only nature speaking in her heart.

Poor Olive! perhaps it was ill for her that Sara's “love affair” had
aroused prematurely these blind gropings after life's great mystery, so
often

     Too early seen unknown, and known too late.

“What! tired of dancing already?” cried Sara, flitting to the corner
where Olive sat.

“I have not danced once yet,” Olive answered, rather piteously.

“Come--shall I get you a partner?” said Sara, carelessly.

“No, no; every one is strange to me here. If you please, and if it would
not trouble you, Sara, I had much rather dance with you.”

Sara consented with a tolerably good grace; but there was a slight
shadow on her face, which somewhat pained her friend.

“Is she ashamed of me, I wonder?” thought Olive. “Perhaps, because I
am not beautiful. Yet, no one ever told me I was _very_ disagreeable to
look at. I will see.”

As they danced, she watched in the tall mirror Sara's graceful, floating
image, and the little pale figure that moved beside her. There _was_
a contrast! Olive, who inherited all her mother's love of beauty,
spiritualised by the refinement of a dawning artist-soul, felt keenly
the longing regret after physical perfection. She went through the dance
with less spirit, and in her heart there rung the idle echoes of some
old song she knew:

     “I see the courtly ladies stand,
        With their dark and shining hair;
     And I coldly turn aside to weep--
        Oh, would that I were fair!”

The quadrille ended, she hid herself in her old corner; and Sara, whose
good nature led her to perform this sacrifice to friendship, seemed
to smile more pleasantly and affectionately when it was over. At least
Olive thought so. She did not see her beautiful idol again for some
time; and feeling little interest in any other girl, and none at all in
the awkward Oldchurch “beaux,” she took consolation in her own harmless
fashion. This was hiding herself under the thick curtains, and looking
out of the window at the moon.

Sara's voice was heard close by, talking to a young girl whom Olive
knew. But Olive was too shy to join them. She greatly preferred her
friend the moon.

“I laughed to see you dancing with that little Olive Rothesay, Miss
Derwent. For my part, I hate dancing with girls--and as for _her_--But I
suppose you wanted to show the contrast.”

“Nay, that's ill-natured,” answered Sara, “She is a sweet little
creature, and my very particular friend.”

Here Olive, blushing and happy, doubted whether she ought not to come
out of the curtains. It was almost wrong to listen--only her beloved
Sara often said she had no secrets from Olive.

“Yes, I know she is your friend, and Mr. Charles Geddes' great friend
too; if I were you, I should be almost jealous.”

“Jealous of Olive--how very comical!” and the silver laugh was a little
scornful. “To think of Olive's stealing any girl's lover! She, who will
probably never have one in all her life--poor thing!”

“Of course not; nobody would fall in love with her! But there is a
waltz, I must run away. Will you come?”

“Presently--when I have looked in the other room for Olive?”

“Olive is here,” said a timid voice. “Oh, Sara, forgive me if I have
done wrong; but I can't keep anything from you. It would grieve me to
think I heard what you were saying, and never told you of it.”

Sara appeared confused, and with a quick impulse kissed and fondled her
little friend: “You are not vexed, or pained, Olive?”

“Oh, no--that is, not much; it would be very silly if I were. But,” she
added, doubtfully, “I wish you would tell me one thing, Sara--not that I
am proud, or vain; but still I should like to know. Why did you and Jane
Ormond say just now that nobody would ever love me?”

“Don't talk so, my little pet,” said Sara, looking pained and puzzled.
Yet, instinctively, her eye glanced to the mirror, where their two
reflections stood. So did Olive's.

“Yes, I know,” she murmured. “I am little, and plain, and in figure very
awkward--not graceful like you. Would that make people hate me, Sara?”

“Not hate you; but”----

“Well, go on--nay, I _will_ know all!” said Olive firmly; though
gradually a thought--long subdued--began to dawn painfully in her mind.

“I assure you, dear,” began Sara, hesitatingly, “it does not signify to
me, or to any of those who care for you; you are such a gentle little
creature, we forget it all in time. But perhaps with strangers,
especially with men, who think so much about beauty, this defect”----

She paused, laying her arm round Olive's shoulders--even affectionately,
as if she herself were much moved. But Olive, with a cheek that
whitened, and a lip that quivered more and more, looked resolutely at
her own shape imaged in the glass.

“I see as I never saw before--so little I thought of myself. Yes, it is
quite true--quite true.”

She spoke beneath her breath, and her eyes seemed fascinated into a
hard, cold gaze. Sara became almost frightened.

“Do not look so, my dear girl; I did not say that it was a positive
_deformity_.”

Olive faintly shuddered: “Ah, that is the word! I understand it all
now.”

She paused a moment, covering her face. But very soon she sat down, so
quiet and pale that Sara was deceived.

“You do not mind it, then, Olive--you are not angry with me?” she said
soothingly.

“Angry with you--how could I be?”

“Then you will come back with me, and we will have another dance.”

“Oh, no, no!” And the cheerful good-natured voice seemed to make Olive
shrink with pain. “Sara, dear Sara, let me go home!”




CHAPTER XIII.

“Well, my love, was the ball as pleasant as you expected?” said Mrs.
Rothesay, when Olive drew the curtains, and roused her invalid mother to
the usual early breakfast, received from no hands but hers.

Olive answered quietly, “Every one said it was pleasant.”

“But you,” returned the mother, with an anxiety she could scarce
disguise--“who talked to you?--who danced with you?”

“No one, except Sara.”

“Poor child!” was the half involuntary sigh; and Mrs. Rothesay drew her
daughter to her with deep tenderness.

It was a strange fate, that made the once slighted child almost the
only thing in the world to which Sybilla Rothesay now clung. And yet, so
rich, so full had grown the springs of maternal love, long hidden in her
nature, that she would not have exchanged their sweetness to be
again the petted, wilful, beautiful darling of society, as she was at
Stirling. The neglected wife--the often-ailing mother--dependent on her
daughter's tenderness, was happier and nearer to heaven than she had
ever been in her life.

Mrs. Rothesay regarded Olive earnestly. “You look as ill as if you
had been up all night; and yet you came to bed tolerably early, and I
thought you slept, you lay so quiet. Was it so, darling?”

“Not quite; I was thinking,” said Olive, truthfully, though her face
flushed, for she would fain have kept her bitter thoughts from her
mother. Just then, Mrs. Rothesay started at the sound of the hall-bell.

“Is that your father come home? He said he might, today or to-morrow.”

Olive went down-stairs. It was only a letter, to say Captain Rothesay
would return that day, and would bring--most rare circumstance!--some
guests to visit them. Olive seemed to shrink painfully at this news.

“What, my child, are you not pleased?--It will make the house less dull
for you.”

“No, no--I do not wish; oh, mamma! if I could only shut myself up, and
never see any one but you”---- And Olive turned very pale. At
last, resolutely trying to speak without any show of trouble, she
continued--“I have found out something that I never knew--at least,
never thought of before--that I am different from other girls. Oh,
mother! am I really deformed?”

She spoke with much agitation. Mrs. Rothesay burst into tears.

“Oh, Olive! how wretched you make me, to talk thus. Unhappy mother that
I am! Why should Heaven have punished me thus?”

“Punished you, mother?”

“Nay, my child--my poor, innocent child! I did not mean that,” cried
Mrs. Rothesay, embracing her with a passionate revulsion of feeling.

But the word was said,--to linger for ever after on Olive's mind. It
brought back the look once written on her childish memory--grown faint,
but never quite erased--her father's first look. She understood it now.

Mrs. Rothesay continued weeping, and Olive had to cast aside all other
feelings in the care of soothing her mother. She succeeded at last;
but she learnt at the same time that on this one subject there must be
silence between them for ever. It seemed, also, to her sensitive nature,
as if every tear and every complaining word were a reproach to the
mother that bore her. Henceforth her bitter thoughts must be wrestled
with alone.

She did so wrestle with them. She walked out into her favourite
meadow--now lying in the silent, frost-bound mistiness of a January day.
It was where she had often been in summer with Sara, and Charles Geddes,
and the little boys. Now everything seemed so wintry and lonely. What
if her own future life were so--one long winter-day, wherein was neither
beauty, gladness, nor love?

[Illustration: Page 88, She walked out into her favourite meadow]

“I am 'deformed.' That was Sara's own word,” murmured Olive to herself.
“If this is felt by one who loves me, what must I appear to the world?
Will not all shrink from me--and even those who pity, turn away in pain.
As for loving me”----

Thinking thus, Olive's fancy began to count, almost in despair, all
those whose affection she had ever known. There was Elspie, there were
her parents. Yet, the love of both father and mother--how sweet soever
now--had not blessed her always. She remembered the time when it was not
there.

“Alas! that I should have been, even to them, a burden--a punishment!”
 cried the girl, in the first outburst of suffering, which became ten
times keener, because concealed. Her vivid fancy even exaggerated the
truth. She saw in herself a poor deformed being, shut out from all
natural ties--a woman, to whom friendship would be given but in kindly
pity; to whom love--that blissful dream in which she had of late
indulged--would be denied for evermore. How hard seemed her doom! If it
were for months only, or even years; but, to bear for a whole life this
withering ban--never to be freed from it, except through death! And her
lips unconsciously repeated the bitter murmur, “O God! why hast thou
made me thus?”

It was scarcely uttered before her heart trembled at its impiety. And
then the current of her thoughts changed. Those mysterious yearnings
which had haunted her throughout childhood, until they had grown fainter
under the influence of earthly ties and pleasures, returned to her now.
God's immeasurable Infinite rose before her in glorious serenity. What
was one brief lifetime to the ages of eternity? She felt it: she, in her
weakness--her untaught childhood--her helplessness--felt that her poor
deformed body enshrined a living soul. A soul that could look on Heaven,
and on whom Heaven also looked--not like man, with scorn or loathing,
but with a Divine tenderness that had power to lift the mortal into
communion with the immortal.

Olive Rothesay seemed to have grown years older in that hour of solitary
musing. She walked homewards through the silent fields, over which the
early night was falling--night coming, as it were, in the midst of day,
where the only light was given by the white, cold snow. To Olive this
was a symbol, too--a token that the freezing sorrow which had fallen on
her path might palely light her on her earthly way. Strange things for
a young girl to dream of! But they whom Heaven teaches are sometimes
called--Samuel-like--while to them still pertains the childish ephod and
the temple-porch.

Passing on, with footsteps silent and solemn as her own heart, Olive
came to the street, on the verge of the town, where was her own dwelling
and Sara's. From habit she looked in at the Derwents' house. It had
all the cheerful brightness given by a blazing fire, glimmering through
windows not yet closed. Olive could plainly distinguish the light
shining on the crimson wall; even the merry faces of the circle round
the hearth. And, as if to chant the chorus of so sweet a scene, there
broke out on the clear frosty air the distant carillon of Oldchurch
bells--marriage-bells too--signifying that not far off was dawning
another scene of love and hope; that, somewhere in the parish, was
celebrated the “coming home” of a bride.

The young creature, born with a woman's longings--longings neither
unholy nor impure, after the love which is the religion of a woman's
heart--the sweetness of home, which is the heaven of a woman's
life--felt that from both she was shut out for ever.

“Not for me--alas! not for me,” she murmured; and her head drooped, and
it seemed as though a cold hand were laid on her breast, saying, “Grow
still, and throb no more!”

Then, lifting her eyes, she saw shining far up in the sky, beyond the
mist and the frost and the gloom, one little star--the only one. With a
long sigh, her soul seemed to pass upward in prayer.

“Oh, God! since Thou hast willed it so--if in this world I must walk
alone, do Thou walk with me! If I must know no human love, fill my soul
with Thine! If earthly joy be far from me, give me that peace of Heaven
which passeth all understanding!”

And so--mournful, yet serene--Olive Rothesay reached her home.

She found her friend there. Sara looked confused at seeing her, and
appeared to try, with the unwonted warmth of her greeting, to efface
from Olive's mind the remembrance of what had happened the previous
evening. But Olive, for the first time, shrank from these tokens of
affection.

“Even Sara's love may be only compassion,” she bitterly thought; but her
father's nature was in the girl--his self-command--his proud reserve.
Sara Derwent only thought her rather silent and cold.

There was a constraint on both--so much so that Olive heard, without
testifying much pain, news which a few days before would have grieved
her to the heart. This visit was a good-bye. Sara had been suddenly sent
for by her grandfather, who lived in a distant county; and the summons
entailed a parting of some weeks--perhaps longer.

“But I shall not forget you, Olive. I shall write to you constantly. It
will be my sole amusement in the dull place I am going to. Why, nobody
ever used to enter my grandfather's house except the parson, who lived
some few miles off. Poor old soul! I used to set fire to his wig, and
hide his spectacles. But he is dead now, I hear, and there has come in
his place a young clergyman. Shall I strike up a little flirtation with
_him_, eh, Olive?”

But Olive was in no jesting mood. She only shook her head.

Mrs. Rothesay looked with admiration on Sara. “What a blithe young
creature you are, my dear. You win everybody's liking. I wish Olive were
only half as merry as you.”

Another arrow in poor Olive's heart!

“Well, we must try to make her so when I come back,” said Sara,
affectionately. “I shall have tales enough to tell, perhaps about that
young curate. Nay, don't frown, Olive. My cousin says he is a Scotsman
born, and you like Scotland. Only his father was Welsh, and he has a
horrid Welsh name: Gwyrdyr, or Gwynne, or something like it. But I'll
give you all information.”

And then she rose--still laughing--to bid adieu; which seemed so long a
farewell, when the friends had never yet been parted but for one brief
day. In saying it, Olive felt how dear to her had been this girl--this
first idol of her warm heart. And then there came a thought almost like
terror. Though fated to live unloved, she could not keep herself from
loving. And if so, how would she bear the perpetual void--the yearning,
never to be fulfilled?

She fell on Sara's neck and wept. “You do care for me a little--only a
little.”

“A great deal--as much as ever I can, seeing I have so many people to
care for,” answered Sara, trying to laugh away the tears that--from
sympathy, perhaps--sprang to her eyes.

“Ah, true! And everybody cares for you. No wonder,” answered Olive.

“Now, little Olive, why do you put on that grave face? Are you going
to lecture me about not flirting with that stupid curate, and always
remembering Charles. Oh! no fear of that.”

“I hope not,” said Olive, quietly. She could talk no more, and they bade
each other good-bye; perhaps not quite so enthusiastically as they might
have done a week ago, but still with much affection. Sara had reached
the door, when with a sudden impulse she came back again.

“Olive, I am a foolish, thoughtless girl; but if ever I pained you in
any way, don't think of it again. Kiss me--will you--once more?”

Olive did so, clinging to her passionately. When Sara went away, she
felt as though the first flower had perished in her garden--the first
star had melted from her sky.

Sara gone, she went back to her old dreamy life. The romance of first
friendship seemed to have been swept away like a morning cloud. From
Sara there came no letters.

Olive wrote once or twice, even thrice. But a sense of wounded feeling
prevented her writing again. Robert and Lyle told her their sister was
quite well, and very merry. Then, over all the dream of sweet affection
fell a cold silence.

In Olive's own home were arising many cares. A great change came
over her father. His economical habits became those of the wildest
extravagance--extravagance in which his wife and daughter were not
likely to share. Little they saw of it either, save during his rare
visits to his home. Then he either spent his evenings out, or else
dining, smoking, drinking, disturbed the quiet house at Oldchurch.

Many a time, till long after midnight, the mother and child sat
listening to the gay tumult of voices below; clinging to each other,
pale and sad. Not that Captain Rothesay was unkind, or that either had
any fear for him, for he had always been a strict and temperate man. But
it pained them to think that any society seemed sweeter to him than that
of his wife and daughter--that any place was become dearer to him than
his home.

One night, when Mrs. Rothesay appeared exhausted, either with weariness
or sorrow of heart, Olive persuaded her mother to go to rest, while she
herself sat up for her father.

“Nay, let some of the servants do that, not you, my child.”

But Olive, innocent as she was, had accidentally seen the footman smile
rudely when he spoke of “master coming home last night;” and a vague
thought struck her, that such late hours were discreditable in the head
of a family. Her father should not be despised in his servant's eyes.

She dismissed the household, and waited up for him alone.
Twelve--one--two. The hours went by like long years. Heavily at first
drooped her poor drowsy eyes, and then all weariness was dispelled by
a feeling of loneliness--an impression of coming sorrow. At last,
when this was gradually merging into fear, she heard the sound of the
swinging gate, and her father's knock at the door--A loud, unsteady,
angry knock.

“Why do you stay up for me? I don't want anybody to sit up,” grumbled
Captain Rothesay, without looking at her.

“But I liked to wait for you, papa.”

“What, is that you, Olive?” and he stepped in with a lounging, heavy
gait.

“Did you not see me before? It was I who opened the door.”

“Oh, yes--but--I was thinking of something else,” he said, throwing
himself into the study-chair, and trying with an effort to seem just as
usual. “You are--a very good girl--I'm much obliged to you. The pleasure
is--I may truly say on both sides.” And he energetically struck the
table with his hand.

Olive thought this an odd form of speech; but her father's manner was
grown so changed of late--sometimes he seemed quite in high spirits,
even jocose--as he did now.

“I am glad to see you are not much tired, papa. I thought you were--you
walked so wearily when you first came in.”

“I tired? Nonsense, child! I have had the merriest evening in the world.
I'll have another to-morrow, for I've asked them all to dine here. We'll
give dinner parties to all the county.”

“Papa,” said Olive, timidly, “will that be quite right, after what you
told me of our being now so much poorer than we were?”

“Did I? Pshaw! I don't remember. However, I am a rich man now; richer
than I have ever been.”

“I am so glad; because then, dear papa, you know you need not be so much
away from home, or weary yourself with the speculations you told me of;
but come and live quietly with us.”

Her father laughed loudly. “Foolish little girl! your notion of
quietness would not suit a man like me. Take my word for it, Olive, home
serves as a fantastic dream till five-and-twenty, and then means nothing
at all. A man's home is the world.”

“Is it?”

“Ay, as I intend to show to you. By-the-by, I shall give up this stupid
place, and enter into society. Your mother will like it, of course; and
you, as my only child--eh, what did I say?” here he stopped hastily with
a blank, frightened look--then repeated, “Yes, you, my only child, will
be properly introduced to the world. Why, you will be quite an heiress,
my girl,” continued he, with an excited jocularity that frightened
Olive. “And the world always courts such; who knows but that you may
marry in spite of”----

“Oh, no--never!” interrupted Olive, turning away with bitter pain.

“Come, don't mind it,” continued her father, with a reckless
indifference to her feelings, quite unusual to him. “Why--my little
sensible girl--you are better than any beauty in England; beauties are
all fools, or worse.”

And he laughed so loud, so long, that Olive was seized with a great
horror, that absorbed even her own individual suffering. Was her father
mad? Alas! there is a madness worse than disease, a voluntary madness,
by which a man--longing at any price for excitement, or oblivion--“puts
an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains.” This was the foe--the
stealthy-footed demon, that had at last come to overmaster the brave and
noble Angus Rothesay. As yet it ruled him not--he was no sot; but his
daughter saw enough to know that the fiend was nigh upon him--that this
night he was even in its grasp.

It is only the noblest kind of affection that can separate the sinner
from the sin, and even while condemning, pity. Fallen as he was, Olive
Rothesay looked on her father mournfully--intreatingly. She could not
speak.

He seemed annoyed, and slightly confounded. “Come, simpleton, why do you
stare at me?--there is nothing the matter. Go away to bed.”

Olive did not move.

“Make haste--what are you waiting for? Nay, stay; 'tis a cold
night--just leave out the keys of the sideboard, will you, there's a
good little housekeeper,” he said, coaxingly.

Olive turned away in disgust, but only for a moment. “In case you should
want anything, let me stay a little longer, papa; I am not tired, and I
have some work to do--suppose I go and fetch it.”

She went into the inner room, slowly, quietly; and when safe out of
sight, burst into tears of such shame and terror as she had never before
known. Then she sat down to think. Her father thus; her mother feeble in
mind or body; no one in the wide world to trust to but herself; no one
to go to for comfort and counsel--none, save Heaven! She sank on her
knees and prayed. As she rose, the angel in the daughter's soul was
stronger than the demon in her father's.

Olive waited a little, and then walked softly into the other room. Some
brandy, left on the sideboard, had attracted Captain Rothesay's sight.
He had reached it stealthily, as if the act still conveyed to his dulled
brain a consciousness of degradation. Once he looked round suspiciously;
alas, the father dreaded his daughter's eye! Then stealthily standing
with his face to the fire, he began to drink the tempting poison.

It was taken out of his hand! So noiseless was Olive's step, so gentle
her movement, that he stood dumb, astonished, as though in the presence
of some apparition. And, in truth, the girl looked like a spirit; for
her face was very white, and her parted lips seemed as though they never
had uttered, and never could utter, one living sound.

Father and daughter stood for some moments thus gazing at each other;
and then Captain Rothesay threw himself into his chair, with a forced
laugh.

“What's the matter, little fool? Cannot your father take care of
himself? Give me the brandy again.”

But she held it fast, and made no answer.

“Olive, I say--do you insult me thus?” and his voice rose in anger. “Go
to bed, I command you! Will you not?”

“No!” The refusal was spoken softly--very softly--but it expressed
indomitable firmness; and there was something in the girl's resolute
spirit, before which that of the man quailed. With a sudden transition,
which showed that the drink had already somewhat overpowered his brain,
he melted into complaints.

“You are very rude to your poor father; you--almost the only comfort he
has left!”

This touch even of maudlin sentiment went direct to Olive's heart. She
clung to him, kissed him, begged his forgiveness, nay, even wept over
him. He ceased to rage, and sat in a sullen silence for many minutes.
Meanwhile Olive took away every temptation from his sight. Then she
roused him gently.

“Now, papa, it is time to go to bed. Pray, come upstairs.”

He--the calm, gentlemanlike, Captain Rothesay--burst into a storm of
passion that would have disgraced a boor. “How dare you order me about
in this manner! Cannot I do as I like, without being controlled by
you--a mere chit of a girl--a very child?”

“I know I am only a child,” answered Olive, meekly. “Do not be angry
with me, papa; do not speak unkindly to your poor little daughter.”

“My daughter! how dare you call yourself so, you white-faced,
mean-looking hunchback!”----

At the word, Olive recoiled--a strong shudder ran through her frame; one
long, sobbing sigh, and no more.

Her father, shocked, and a little sobered, paused in his cruel speech.
For minutes they remained--he leaning back with a stupefied air--she
standing before him; her face drooped, and covered with her hands.

“Olive!” he muttered, in a repentant, humbled tone.

“Yes, papa.”

“I am quite ready. If you like, I'll go to bed now.”

Without speaking, she lighted him up-stairs--nay, led him, for, to his
bitter shame, the guidance was not un-needed. When she left him, he had
the grace to whisper--

“Child, you are not vexed about anything I said?”

She looked sorrowfully into his hot fevered face, and stroked his arm.
“No--no--not vexed at all! You could not help it, poor father!”

She heard her mother's feeble voice speaking to him as he entered,
and saw his door close. Long she watched there, until beneath it she
perceived not one glimmer of light. Then she crept away, only murmuring
to herself--

“O God! teach me to endure!”




CHAPTER XIV.

“What is the matter with the child to-day?” said Captain Rothesay to his
wife, with whom, oh rare circumstance! he was sitting _tête-à-tête_.
But this, and a few other alterations for the better had taken place
in consequence of his longer stay at home than usual, during which an
unseen influence had been busily at work. Poor Olive! Was it not well
for her, that, to temper the first shock of her bitter destiny, there
should arise, in the dreary blank of the future, duties so holy, that
they stood almost in the place of joys?

“How dull the girl seems!” again observed Captain Rothesay, looking
after his daughter, with a tenderness of which he afterwards appeared
rather ashamed.

“Dull, is she?” said the mother; “oh, very likely poor child! She is
grieving to lose her chief friend and companion, Miss Derwent. News came
to her this morning that Sara is about to be married.”

“Oh, indeed!” and Captain Rothesay made an attempt at departure. He
hated gossiping, even of the most harmless kind. But his wife, pleased
that he condescended to talk to her at all, tried to amuse him in her
own easy way.

“Poor Sara! I am glad that she is going to have a home of her
own--though she is young enough to marry. But I believe it was a very
sudden affair; and the gentleman fell so desperately in love with her.”

“More fool he!” muttered Captain Rothesay.

“Nay, he is not a fool at all; he is a very sensible, clever man, and a
clergyman too; Miss Derwent said so in her brief note to Olive. But she
did not mention where he lived; little indeed she told, but that his
name was Gwynne”----

Captain Rothesay turned round quickly.

--“And Sara speaks of his mother being a stiff old Scotswoman. Ah, you
are listening now, my dear. Let me see, I think Miss Derwent mentions
her maiden name. The silly girl makes quite a boast of her lover's
ancient family, on the maternal side.”

“There is no silliness in that, I hope, Mrs. Rothesay?”

“Certainly not--was I not always proud of yours?” said the wife, with a
meekness not newly learnt She hunted in her reticule for Sara's letter,
and read.

“Ah, here is the name--Alison Balfour: do you know it?”

“I did once, when I was a boy.”

“Stay! do not go away in that hasty manner. Pray, talk to me a little
more, Angus; it is so dull to be confined to this sick-room. Tell me of
this Alison Balfour; you know I should like to hear about your friends.”

“Should you?--that is something new. If it had been always so--if you
had indeed made my interests yours, Sybilla!” There was a touch of
regret and old tenderness in his voice. She thought he was kind on
account of her illness, and thanked him warmly. But the thanks sent
him back to his usual cold self; he did not like to have his weakness
noticed.

Mrs. Rothesay understood neither one state of feeling nor the other, so
she said, cheerfully, “Come, now for the story of Alison Balfour.”

“There is no story to tell. She was merely a young companion of my aunt
Flora. I knew her for some years--in fact, until she married Mr. Gwynne.
She was a noble woman.”

“Really, Angus, I shall grow jealous,” said Mrs. Rothesay, half in jest,
half in earnest. “She must have been an old love of yours.”

Her husband frowned. “Folly, Sybilla! She was a woman, and I a
schoolboy!”

And yet the words galled him, for they were not far off the truth. True,
Alison was old enough to have been his mother; but many a precocious lad
of sixteen conceives a similar romantic passion, and Angus Rothesay had
really been very much in love, as he thought, with Alison Balfour.

Even when he quitted the room, and walked out into the road, his
thoughts went backward many years; picturing the old dull mansion, whose
only brightness had come with her presence. He remembered how he used to
walk by her side, in lonely mountain rambles--he a young boy, and she a
grown woman; and how proud he was, when she stooped her tall stature to
lean upon his arm. Once, she kissed him; and he lay awake all night, and
many a night after, dreaming of the remembered bliss. And, as he grew a
youth, what delicious sweetness in these continued dreams! what pride to
think himself “in love”--and with such a woman! Folly it was--hopeless
folly--for she had been long betrothed to one she loved. But that was
not Owen Gwynne. Alas! Alison, like many another proud, passionate
woman, had married in sudden anger, thereby wrecking her whole life!
When she did so, Angus Rothesay lost his boyish dream. He had already
begun to find out that it was only a dream; though his first fancy's
idol never ceased to be to him a memory full of all that was noble and
beautiful in womanhood.

For many years this enchanted portion of Captain Rothesay's past life
had rarely crossed his mind; but when it did, it was always with a
half-unconscious thought, that he himself might have been a better and
a happier man, had his own beautiful Sybilla been more like Alison
Balfour.

This chance news of her awakened memories connected with other scenes
and characters, which had gradually melted away from Angus Rothesay's
life, or been enveloped in the mist of selfishness and worldliness which
had gathered over it and over him. He thought of the old uncle, Sir
Andrew Rothesay, whose pride he had been; of the sweet aunt Flora, whose
pale beauty had bent over his cradle with a love almost like a mother's,
save that it was so very very sad. One had died estranged; the other--he
would not let many weeks pass before he sought out Miss Flora Rothesay:
that he was determined on! And to do so, the best plan would be first to
go and see Alison--Mrs. Gwynne.

Captain Rothesay always kept his intentions to himself, and transacted
his matters alone. Therefore, without the aid of wife or daughter, he
soon discovered in what region lay Mr. Gwynne's curacy, and determined
to hasten his customary journey to London, that he might visit the place
on his way.

The night before his departure came. It was really a melancholy evening;
for he had stayed at home so long, and been most of the time what his
wife called “so good,” that she quite regretted his going. The more
so, as he was about to travel by the awful railway--then newly
established--which, in the opinion of poor Mrs. Rothesay, with her
delicate nerves and easily-roused terrors, entailed on him the certainty
of being killed. She pleaded so much and so anxiously--even to the
last--that when, in order to start at daybreak, he bade “good-bye”
 to her and Olive overnight, Captain Rothesay was softened even to
tenderness.

“Do you really care so much about me, Sybilla?” said he, half
mournfully.

She did not spring to his arms, like the young wife at Stirling, but she
kissed his hand affectionately, and called him “Angus!”

“Olive!” said the father, when having embraced his wife, he now turned
to his daughter, “Olive, my child! take care of your mother! I shall be
at home soon, and we shall be very happy again--all three!”

As they ascended the staircase, they saw him watching them from below.
Olive so content, even though her father was going away. She kissed
her hand felt to him with a blithe gesture, and then saw him go in and
close the door. When the house sank into quietness, a curious feeling
oppressed Captain Rothesay. It seemed to take rise in his wife's
infectious fears.

“Women are always silly,” he argued to himself. “Why should I dread any
danger? The railway is safe as a coach--and yet, that affair of poor
Huskisson! Pooh! what a fool I am!”

But even while he mocked it, the vague presentiment appeared to take
form in his mind; and sitting, the only person awake in the slumbering
house, where no sound broke the stillness, except the falling of a
few cinders, and the occasional noise of a mouse behind the wainscot,
somewhat of the superstitions of his northern youth came over him. His
countenance became grave, and he sank into deep thought.

It is a trite saying, that every man has that in his heart, which, if
known, would make all his fellow-creatures hate him. Was it this evil
spirit which now struggled in Captain Rothesay's breast, and darkened
his face with storms of passion, remorse, or woe? He gave no utterance
to them in words. If any secret there were, he would not trust it even
to the air. But, at times, his mute lips writhed; his cheeks burned, and
grew ghastly. Sometimes, too, he wore a cowed and humble look, as on the
night when his daughter had stood like a pure angel to save him from the
abyss on the brink of which he trod.

She had saved him, apparently. That night's shame had never occurred
again. Slowly, his habits were changing, and his tastes becoming
home-like. But still his lonely hours betokened some secret hidden in
his soul--a secret which, if known, might have accounted for his having
plunged into uproarious excitement or drunken oblivion.

At length, as by a violent effort, Angus Rothesay sat down and began
to write. He wrote for several hours--though frequently his task was
interrupted by long reveries, and by fits of vehement emotion. When he
had finished, he carefully sealed up what he had written, and placed
it in a secret drawer of his desk. Then he threw himself on a sofa, to
sleep, during the brief time that intervened before daybreak.

In the grey of the morning, when he stood despatching a hasty breakfast,
he was startled by a light touch on his arm.

“Little Olive!--why, I thought you were fast asleep.”

“I could not sleep when papa was going away; so I rose and dressed. You
will not be angry?”

“Angry?--no!” He stooped down and kissed her, more affectionately even
than was his wont But he was hasty and fidgety, as most men are when
starting on a journey. They were both too busy for more words until the
few minutes during which he sat down to wait for the carriage. Then he
took his daughter on his knee--an act of fatherly tenderness rather rare
with him.

“I wish you were not going, or that I were going with you, papa,” Olive
whispered, nestling to him, in a sweet, childish way, though she was
almost a woman now. “How tired you look! You have not been in bed all
night.”

“No; I had writing to do.” As he spoke his countenance darkened.
“Olive,” he said, looking at her with sorrowful, questioning eyes.

“Well, dear papa.”

“Nothing--nothing. Is the carriage ready?”

“Not yet. You will have time just for one little thing--'twill take only
a minute,” said Olive, persuasively.

“What is it, little one?”

“Mamma is asleep--she was tired and ill; but if you would run up-stairs,
and kiss her once again before you go, it would make her so much
happier--I know it would.”

“Poor Sybilla!” he muttered, remorsefully, and quitted the room
slowly--not meeting his daughter's eyes; but when he came back, he took
her in his arms, very tenderly.

“Olive, my child in whom I trust, always remember I did love you--you
and your mother.”

These were the last words she heard him utter, ere he went away.




CHAPTER XV.

Captain Rothesay had intended to make the business-excursion wait on
that of pleasure--if pleasure the visit could be called, which
was entered on from duty, and would doubtless awaken many painful
associations; but he changed his mind, and it was not until his return
from London, that he stayed on the way, and sought out the village of
Harbury.

Verbal landscape-painting is rarely interesting to the general reader;
and as Captain Rothesay was certainly not devoted to the picturesque,
it seems idle to follow him during his ten-mile ride from the nearest
railway station to the place which he discovered was that of Mrs.
Gwynne's abode, and where her son was “perpetual curate.”

Her son! It seemed very strange to imagine Alison a mother; and yet,
while he thought, Angus Rothesay almost laughed at himself for his
folly. His boyish fancy had perforce faded at seventeen, and he was
now--pshaw!--he was somewhere above forty. As for Mrs. Gwynne, sixty
would probably be nearer her age. Yet, not having seen her since she
married, he never could think of her but as Alison Balfour.

As before observed, Captain Rothesay was by no means keenly susceptible
to beauty of scenery; otherwise, he would often have been attracted from
his meditations by that through which he passed. Lovely woodlands, just
bursting into the delicate green of spring; deep, still streams, flowing
through meadows studded with cattle; forest-roads shadowed with stately
trees, and so little frequented, that the green turf spread from hedge
to hedge, and the primroses and bluebells sprung up almost in the
pathway. All these composed a picture of rural loveliness which is
peculiar to England, and chiefly to that part of England where Harbury
is situated. Captain Rothesay scarcely noticed it, until, pausing
to consider his track, he saw in the distance a church upon a hill.
Beautiful and peaceful it looked--its ancient tower rising out against
the sky, and the evening sun shining on its windows and gilded vane.

“That must surely be my landmark,” thought Captain Rothesay; and he made
an inquiry to that effect of a man passing by.

“Ay, ay, measter,” was the answer, in rather unintelligible Doric;
“thot bees Harbury Church, as sure as moy name's John Dent; and thot red
house--conna ye see't?--thot's our parson's.”

Prompted by curiosity, Rothesay observed, “Oh, Mr. Gwynne's. He is quite
a young man, I believe? Do you like him, you good folks hereabout?”

“Some on us dun, and some on us dunna. He's not much of parson though;
he wunna send yer to sleep wi' his long preachings. But oi say the mon's
a good mon: he'll coom and see yer when you're bad, an' talk t' ye by
th' hour; though he dunna talk oot o' th' Bible. But oi'm a lad o' t'
forest, and 'll be a keeper some toime. That's better nor book-larning.”

Captain Rothesay had no will to listen to more personal revelations from
honest John Dent; so he said, quickly, “Perhaps so, my good fellow.”
 Then added, “Mr. Gwynne has a mother living with him, I believe. What
sort of person is she?”

“Her's a good-enough lady, oi reckon: only a bit too proud. Many's
the blanket her's gen to poor folk; and my owd mother sees her every
week--but her's never shook hands wi' her yet. Eh, measter, won ye
go?”

This last remark was bellowed after Captain Rothesay, whose horse had
commenced a sudden canter, which ceased not until its owner dismounted
at the parsonage-gate.

This gate formed the boundary of the garden, and a most lovely spot
it was. It extended to the churchyard, with which it communicated by a
little wicket-door. You passed through beautiful parterres and alleys,
formed of fragrant shrubs, to the spot

     Where grew the turf in many a mouldering heap.

It seemed as though the path of death were indeed through flowers.
Garden and churchyard covered the hill's summit; and from both might
be discerned a view such as is rarely seen in level England. It was
a panorama, extending some twenty or thirty miles across the country,
where, through woodlands and meadow-lands, flowed the silver windings
of a small river. Here and there was an old ruined castle--a manor-house
rising among its ancestral trees--or the faint, misty smoke-cloud, that
indicated some hamlet or small town. Save these, the landscape swept
on unbroken, until it ended at the horizon in the high range of the
D--shire hills.

Even to Captain Rothesay, this scene seemed strangely beautiful. He
contemplated it for some time, his hand still on the unopened gate; and
then he became aware that a lady, whose gardening dress and gardening
implements showed she was occupied in her favourite evening employment,
was looking at him with some curiosity.

The traces of life's downward path are easier to recognise than those
of its ascent. Though the mature womanhood of Alison Balfour had glided
into age, Rothesay had no di

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