Olive Part 13

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d! 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.

G.o.d'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.

Pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.s upward in prayer.

"Oh, G.o.d! 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 pa.s.seth 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 compa.s.sion," 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 amus.e.m.e.nt in the dull place I am going to. Why, n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionately. 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 friends.h.i.+p 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."