“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.
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.
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 neveris, but always is to come! Blessed Childhood! spent in peace and loneliness and dreams; hidden therein lay the germs of a whole life.
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 isany 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 arenotalone 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!
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.
“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 toher. 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 likemine—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!”