Olive Part 47

"Let me think. Will it ever pa.s.s away? There are feelings which come and go--light girlish fancies. But I am six-and-twenty years old. All this while I have lived without loving any man. And no one has ever wooed me except my master, Vanbrugh, whose feeling for me was not love at all.

No, no! I am, as they call me, 'an old maid,' destined to pa.s.s through life alone and unloved.

"Perhaps, though I have long ceased to think on the subject--perhaps my first girlish misery was true, and there is in me something repulsive--something that would prevent any man's seeking me as a wife.

Therefore, even if my own feelings could change, it is unlikely there will ever come any soothing after-tie to take away the memory of this utterly hopeless love.

"Hopeless I know it is. He admires beauty and grace--I have neither. Yet I will not do him the injustice to believe he would despise me for this.

Even once I overheard him say, there was such sweetness in my face, that he had never noticed my being 'slightly deformed.' Therefore, did he but love me, perhaps--O fool!--dreaming fool that I am! It is impossible!

"Let me think calmly once more. He has given me all he could--kindness, friends.h.i.+p, brotherly regard; and I have given him love--a woman's whole and entire love, such as she can give but once, and be beggared all her life after. I to him am like any other friend--he to me is all my world.

Oh, but it is a fearful difference!

"I will look my doom in the face--I will consider how I am to bear it.

No hope is there for me of being loved as I love. I shall never be his wife: never be more to him than I am now; in time, perhaps even less.

He will go out into the world, and leave me, as brothers leave sisters (even supposing he regards me as such). He will form new ties; perhaps he will marry; and then my love for him would be sin!"

Olive pressed her hands tightly together, and crushed her hot brow upon them, bending it even to her knees. Thus bowed, she lay until the fierce struggle pa.s.sed.

"I do not think that misery will come. His mother, who knows him best, was surely right when she said he would never take a second wife.

Therefore I may be his friend still. Neither he nor any one will ever know that I loved him otherwise than as a sister might love a brother.

Who would dream there could be any other thought in me--a pale, unlovely thing--a woman past her youth (for I seem very old now)? It ought not to be so; many women are counted young at six-and-twenty; but it is those who have been nurtured tenderly in joyous homes. While I have been struggling with the hard world these many years. No wonder I am not as they--that I am quiet and silent, without mirth or winning grace, a creature worn out before her time, pale, joyless, _deformed_. Yes, let me teach myself that word, with all other truths that 'can quench this mad dream. Then, perhaps knowing all hope vain, I may be able to endure.

"What am I to do? Am I to try and cleanse my heart of this love, as if it were some pollution? Not so. Sorrow it is--deep, abiding sorrow; but it is not sin. If I thought it so, I would crush it out, though I crushed my life out with it. But I need not. My heart is pure--O G.o.d, Thou knowest!

"Another comfort I have. He has not deceived me, as men sometimes deceive, with wooing that seems like love, and yet is only idle, cruel sport. He has ever treated me as a friend--a sister--nothing more!

Therefore, no bitterness is there in my sorrow, since he has done no wrong.

"I will not cease from loving--I would not if I could. Better this suffering than the utter void which must otherwise be in my heart eternally, seeing I have neither father, mother, brother, nor sister, and shall never know any nearer tie than the chance friends.h.i.+ps which spring up on the world's wayside, and wither where they spring. I know there are those who would bid me cast off this love as it were a serpent from my bosom. No! Rather let it creep in there, and fold itself close and secret. What matter, even if its sweet sting be death?

"But I shall not die. How could I, while he lived, and might need any comfort that I could give? Did he not say, 'Keep near me!' Ay, I will!

Though a world lay between us, my spirit shall follow him all his life long. Distance shall be nothing--years nothing! Whenever he calls, 'Friend I need thee.' I will answer, 'I am here!' If I could condense my whole life's current of joy into one drop of peace for him, I would pour it out at his feet, smile content, and die. And when I am dead--he will know how I loved him--Harold--my Harold."

Such were her thoughts--though no words pa.s.sed her lips--except the last. As she rose and went towards the house, she might even have met him and not trembled--she had grown so calm.

It was already night--but the mist had quite gone--there was only the sky and its stars.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

I know that I am promulgating a new theory of love; I know that in Olive Rothesay I dare to paint a woman full of all maidenly virtues, who has yet given her heart away unrequited--given it to a man who knows not of the treasure he has never sought to win. The case, I grant, is rare. I believe that a woman seldom bestows her love save in return for other love--be it silent or spoken--real or imaginary. If it is not so, either she has deceived herself, or has been deceived.

But the thing is quite possible--ay, and happens sometimes--that a woman unselfish, unexacting in all her affections, more p.r.o.ne to give than to receive, thinking perhaps very little of love or marriage, may be unconsciously attracted by some imagined perfection in the other s.e.x, and be thus led on through the wors.h.i.+p of abstract goodness until she wakes to find that she has learned to love _the man_. For what is love in its purest and divinest sense, but that innate yearning after perfection which we vainly hope to find in some other human soul; this is as likely to be felt by a woman as by a man--ay, and by one most pure from every thought of unfeminine boldness, vanity, or sin.

I know, too, that from many a sage and worthy matron my Olive has for ever earned her condemnation, because, at last discovering her mournful secret, she did not strive in horror and shame to root out this misplaced attachment. Then, after years of self-martyrdom, she might at last have pointed to her heart's trampled garden, and said, "Look what I have had strength to do!" But from such a wrecked and blasted soil what aftergrowth could ever spring?

Better, a thousand times, that a woman to whom this doom has come unwittingly, without her seeking--as inevitably and inexorably as fate--should pause, stand steadfast, and look it in the face, without fear. She cannot disguise it, or wrestle with it, or fly from it Let her meet it as she would meet death--solemnly, calmly, patiently. Let her draw nigh and look upon the bier of her life's dead hope, until the pale image grows beautiful as sleep; then cover it--bury it--if she can.

Perhaps it may one day rise from the grave, wearing a likeness no longer human, but divine.

It is time that we women should begin to teach and to think thus. It is meet that we--maidens, wives, mothers, to whom the lines have fallen in more pleasant places--should turn and look on that pale sisterhood--some carrying meekly to the grave their heavy unuttered secret, some living unto old age, to bear the world's smile of pity, even of derision, over an "unfortunate attachment." Others, perhaps, furnis.h.i.+ng a text whereupon prudent mothers may lesson romantic daughters, saying, "See that you be not like these 'foolish virgins;' give not _your_ heart away in requital of fancied love; or, madder still, in wors.h.i.+p of ideal goodness--give it for nothing but the safe barter of a speedy settlement, a comfortable income, a husband, and a ring."

Olive Rothesay, be not ashamed, nor afraid. Hide the arrow close in thy soul--lay over it thy folded hands and look upwards. Far purer art thou than many a young creature, married without love, living on in decent dignity as the mother of her husband's children, the convenient mistress of his household, and so sinking down into the grave, a pattern of all matronly virtue. Envy her not! A thousand times holier and happier than such a destiny is that silent lot of thine.

With meekness, yet with courage, Olive Rothesay prepared to live her appointed life. At first it seemed very bitter, as must needs be. Youth, while it is still youth, cannot at once and altogether be content to resign love. It will yearn for that tie which Heaven ordained to make its nature's completeness; it will shrink before the long dull vista of a solitary, aimless existence. Sometimes, wildly as she struggled against such thoughts, there would come to Olive's fancy dreams of what her life might have been. The holiness of lovers' love, of wedded love, of mother-love, would at times flit before her imagination; and her heart, still warm, still young, trembled to picture the lonely old age, the hearth blank and silent, the utter isolation from all those natural ties whose place not even the dearest bonds of adopted affection can.

ever entirely fill. But, whenever these murmurings arose, Olive checked them; often with a feeling of intolerable shame.

She devoted herself more than ever to her Art, trying to make it as once before the chief interest and enjoyment of her life. It would become the same again, she hoped. Often and often in the world's history had been noted that of brave men who rose from the wreck of love, and found happiness in fame. But Olive had yet to learn that, with women, it is rarely so.

She felt more than ever the mournful change which had come over her, when it happened that great success was won by one of her later pictures--a picture unconsciously created from the inspiration of that sweet love-dream. When the news came--tidings which a year ago would have thrilled her with pleasure--Olive only smiled faintly, and a few minutes after went into her chamber, locked the door, and wept.

There was not, and there could not be, any difference made in her ordinary way of life. She still went to the Parsonage, and walked and talked with Harold, as he seemed always to expect. She listened to all his projects for the future--a future wherein she, alas! had no part Eagerly she strove to impress this fact upon her mind--to forget herself entirely, to think only of him, and what would be best for his happiness. Knowing him so well, and having over him an influence which he seemed rather to like, and which, at least, he never repelled, she was able continually to reason, to cheer him, and sympathise with him.

He often thanked her for this, little knowing how every quiet word of hers was torn from a bleeding heart.

Walking home with her at nights, as usual, he never saw the white face turned upwards to the stars--the eyes wherein tears burned, but would not fall; the lips compressed in a choking agony, or opened to utter ordinary words in which his ear detected not one tremulous or discordant tone. When he sat in the house, absorbed in anxious thought, little he knew what looks were secretly fastened on his face, to learn by heart every beloved lineament, against the time when his visible likeness would be beheld no more.

Thus miserably did Olive struggle. The record of that time, its every day, its every hour, was seared on her heart as with a burning brand.

Afterwards she never thought of it but with a shudder, marvelling how she had been able to endure all and live.

At last the inward suffering began to be outwardly written on her face.

Some people said--Lyle Derwent first--that Miss Rothesay did not look so well as she used to do. But indeed it was no wonder, she was so engrossed in her painting, and worked far too much for her strength.

Olive neither dissented nor denied: but she never complained, and still went painting on. Harold himself saw she was ill, and sometimes treated her with almost brotherly tenderness. Often he noticed her pale face, paler than ever beneath his eye, or, in wrapping her from the cold, observed how she s.h.i.+vered and trembled. And then Olive would go home and cry out in her misery,

"How long? how long? Oh, that this would cease, or else I die!"

She was quite alone at the Dell now, for Mrs. Fludyer had paid a flying visit home, and had taken back with her both Christal and the somewhat unwilling Lyle. Solitude, once sweet and profitable, now grew fearful unto Olive's tortured mind. And to escape it she had no resource, but that which she knew was to her like a poison-draught, and for which she yet thirsted evermore--the daily welcome at the Parsonage. But the web of circ.u.mstances, which she herself seemed to have no power to break, was at length apparently broken for her. One day she received a letter from her father's aunt, Miss Flora Rothesay, inviting--nay, entreating--her to visit Edinburgh, that the old lady might look upon the last of her race.

For a moment Olive blessed this chance of quitting the scenes now become so painful. But then, Harold might need her. In his present conflict of feeling and of purpose he had no confidant save herself. She would have braved years of suffering if her presence could have given him one hour's relief from care. But of this she must judge, so she set off at once to the Parsonage.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gwynne, with a smiling and mysterious face, "of course you will go at once! It will do your health a world of good.

Harold said so only this morning."

"Then he knew of the letter?"

"Why, to tell the truth, I believe he originated the plan. He saw you wanted change--he has such a regard for you, Olive."

Then _he_ had done it all! He could let her part from him, easily, as friend from friend. Yet, what marvel! they were nothing more. She answered, quietly, "I will go."

She told him so when he came in. He seemed much pleased; and said, with more than his usual frankness,

"I should like you to know aunt Flora. You see, I call her _my_ aunt Flora, too, for she is of some distant kin, and I have dearly loved her ever since I was a boy."

It was something to be going to one whom Harold "dearly loved." Olive felt a little comfort in her proposed journey.

"Besides, she knows you quite well already, my dear," observed Mrs.

Gwynne. "She tells me Harold used often to talk about you during his visit with her this summer."

"I had a reason," said Harold, his dark cheek changing a little. "I wished her to know and love her niece, and I was sure her niece would soon learn to love _her_."