Olive Part 58

When I grew older, I made you an idol. All the poetry I ever wrote was about you--your golden hair, and your sweet eyes. You seemed to me then, and you seem now, the most beautiful creature in the whole world."

"Lyle, you are mocking me," said Olive, sadly.

"Mocking you! It is very cruel to tell me so," and he turned away with an expression of deep pain.

Olive began to wake from the bewilderment into which his words had thrown her. But she could not realise the possibility of Lyle Derwent's loving _her_, his senior by some years, many years older than he in heart; pale, worn, _deformed_. For the sense of personal defect which had haunted her throughout her life was present still. But when she looked again at Lyle, she regretted having spoken to him so harshly.

"Forgive me," she said. "All this is so strange; you cannot really mean it. It is utterly impossible that you can love me. I am old, compared with you; I have no beauty, nay, even more than that"---- here she paused, and her colour sensitively rose.

"I know what you would say," quickly added the young man. "But I think nothing of it--nothing! To me you are, as I said, like an angel. I have come here to-day to tell you so; to ask you to share my riches, and teach me to deserve them. Dearest Miss Rothesay, be not only my friend, but--my wife?"

There was no doubting him now. The strong pa.s.sion within gave him dignity and manhood. Olive scarcely recognised in the earnest wooer before her, the poesy-raving, blus.h.i.+ng, sentimental Lyle. Great pain came over her. She had never dreamed of one trial--that of being loved by another as hopelessly as she herself loved.

"You do not answer, Miss Rothesay? What does your silence mean? That I have presumed too much! You think me a boy; a foolish, romantic boy; but I can love you, for all that, with my whole heart and soul."

"Oh, Lyle, why talk to me in this way? You do not know how deeply it grieves me."

"It grieves you--you do not love me, then? Well," he added, sighing, "I could hardly expect it at once; but you will grant me time, you will let me try to prove myself worthy of you--you will give me hope?"

Olive shook her head mournfully. "Lyle, dear Lyle, forget all this.

It is a mere dream; it will pa.s.s, I know it will. You will choose some young girl who is suited for you, and to whom you will make a good and happy husband."

Lyle turned very pale. "That means to say that you think me unworthy to be yours."

"No--no--I did not say you were unworthy; you are dear to me, you always were, though not in _that_ way. It goes to my very heart to inflict even a momentary pain; but I cannot, cannot marry you!"

Much agitated, Olive hid her face. Lyle moved away to the other end of the room. Perhaps, with manhood's love was also dawning manhood's pride.

"There must be some reason for this," he said at last. "If I am dear to you, though ever so little, a stronger love for me might come in time.

Will it be so?"

"No, never!"

"Are you quite sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Perhaps I am too late," he continued, bitterly. "You may already love some one else. Tell me, I have a right to know."

She blushed crimson, and then arose, not without dignity. "I think, Lyle, you go too far; we will cease this conversation."

"Forgive me, forgive me!" cried Lyle, melted at once, and humbled too.

"I will ask no more--I do not wish to hear. It is misery enough for me to know that you can never be mine, that I must not love you any more!"

"But you may regard me tenderly still. You may learn to feel for me as a sister--an elder sister. That is the fittest relation between us.

You yourself will think so, in time." And Olive truly believed what she said. Perhaps she judged him rightly: that this pa.s.sion was indeed only a boyish romance, such as most men have in their youth, which fades painlessly in the realities of after years. But now, at least, it was most deep and sincere.

As Miss Rothesay spoke, once more as in his childish days Lyle threw himself at her feet, taking both her hands, and looking up in her face with the wildest adoration.

"I must--must wors.h.i.+p you still; I always shall! You are so good--so pure; I look up to you as to some saint. I was mad to think of you in any other way. But you will not forget me; you will guide and counsel me always. Only, if you should be taken away from me--if you should marry"----

"I shall never marry," said Olive, uttering the words she had uttered many a time, but never more solemnly than now.

Lyle regarded her for a long and breathless s.p.a.ce, and then laying his head on her knees, he wept like a child.

That moment, at the suddenly-opened door there stood Christal Manners!

Like a vision, she came--and pa.s.sed. Lyle never saw her at all. But Olive did; and when the young man had departed, amidst all her own agitation, there flashed before her, as it were an omen of some woe to come--that livid face, lit with its eyes of fire.

Not long had Olive to ponder, for the door once more opened, and Christal came in. Her hair had all fallen down, her eyes had the same intense glare, her bonnet and shawl were still hanging on her arm. She flung them aside, and stood in the doorway.

"Miss Rothesay, I wish to speak with you; and that no one may interrupt us, I will do this." She bolted and locked the door, and then clenched her fingers over the key, as if it had been a living thing for her to crush.

Olive sat utterly confounded. For in her sister she saw two likenesses; one, of the woman who had once shrieked after her the name of "Rothesay,"--the other, that of her own father in his rare moments of pa.s.sion, as she had seen him the night he had called her by that opprobrious word which had planted the sense of personal humiliation in her heart for life.

Christal walked up to her. "Now tell me--for I _will_ know--what has pa.s.sed between you and--him who just now went hence."

"Lyle Derwent?"

"Yes. Repeat every word--every word!"

"Why so? You are not acting kindly towards me," said Olive, trying to resume her wonted dignity, but still speaking in a placable, quiet tone.

"My dear Christal, you are younger than I, and have scarcely a right to question me thus."

"Right! When it comes to that, where is yours? How dare you suffer Lyle Derwent to kneel at your feet? How dare you, I say!"

"Christal--Christal! Hus.h.!.+"

"I will not! I will speak. I wish every word were a dagger to stab you--wicked, wicked woman! who have come between me and my lover--for he is my lover, and I love him."

"You love him?"

"You stole him from me--you bewitched him with your vile flatteries. How else could he have turned from _me_ to _you_?"

And lifting her graceful, majestic height, she looked contemptuously on poor shrinking Olive--ay, as her father--the father of both--had done before. Olive remembered the time well. For a moment a sense of cruel wrong pressed down her compa.s.sion, but it rose again. Who was most injured, most unhappy--she, or the young creature who stood before her, shaken by the storm of rage.

She stretched out her hands entreatingly.--"Christal, do listen. Indeed, indeed, I am innocent. I shall never marry that poor boy--never! I have just told him so."

"He has asked you, then?"--and the girl almost gnashed her teeth--"Then he has deceived me. No, I will not believe that. It is you who are deceiving me now. If he loved you, you were sure to love him."

"What am I to do--how am I to convince you? How hard this is!"

"Hard! What, then, must it be to me? You did not think this pa.s.sion was in me, did you? You judged me by that meek cold-blooded heart of yours.

But mine is all burning--burning! Woe be to those who kindled the fire."

She began to walk to and fro, sweeping past Olive with angry strides.

She looked, from head to foot, her mother's child. Hate and love, melting and mingling together, flashed from her black, southern eyes.

But in the close mouth there was an iron will, inherited with her northern blood. Suddenly she stopped, and confronted Olive.

"You consider me a mere girl. But I learned to be a woman early. I had need."