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!