Some days passed in quiet uniformity, broken only by the visits of
good-natured Lyle, who came, as he said, to amuse the invalid. Whether
that were the truth or no, he was a frequent and always welcome guest at
the Dell. Only he made the proviso, that in all amusements which he and
Christal shared, Miss Rothesay should be in some way united. So, morning
after morning, the sofa whereupon the invalid gracefully reclined was
brought into the painting-room, and there, while Olive worked, she
listened, sometimes almost in envy, to the gay young voices that mingled
in song, or contended in the light battle of wits. How much older,
graver, and sadder, she seemed than they!
Harold Gwynne did not come. This circumstance troubled Olive. Not that
he was in the habit of paying long morning visits, like young Derwent;
but still when he was at Harbury, it usually chanced that every few
days they met somewhere. So habitual had this intercourse become, that a
week's complete cessation of it seemed a positive pain.
Ever, when Olive rose in the morning, the sun-gilded spire of Harbury
Church brought the thought, “I wonder will he come to-day!” And at
night, when he did not come, she could not conceal from herself, that
looking back on the past day, over all its duties and pleasures, there
rose a pale mist. She seemed to have only half lived. Alas, alas!
Olive knew, though she hardly would acknowledge it to herself, that
for many months this interest in Harold Gwynne had been the one great
interest of her existence. At first it came in the form of a duty, and
as such she had entered upon it. She was one of those women who seem
born ever to devote themselves to some one. When her mother died, it had
comforted Olive to think there was still a human being who stretched
out to her entreating hands, saying, “I need thee! I need thee!” Nay,
it even seemed as if the voice of the saint departed called upon her to
perform this sacred task. Thereto tended her thoughts and prayers.
And thus there came upon her the fate which has come upon many another
woman,--while thus devoting herself she learned to love. But so gradual
had been the change that she knew it not.
“Why am I restless?” she thought. “One is too exacting in friendship;
one should give all and ask nothing back. Still, it is not quite kind
of him to stay away thus. But a man is not like a woman. He must have
so many conflicting and engrossing interests, whilst I”---- Here her
thought broke and dissolved like a rock-riven wave. She dared not yet
confess that she had no interest in the world save what was linked with
him.
“If he comes not so often,” she re-commenced her musings, “even then I
ought to be quite content. I know he respects and esteems me; nay, that
he has for me a warm regard. I have done him good, too; he tells me so.
How fervently ought I to thank God if any feeble words of mine may so
influence him, as in time to lead him from error to truth. My friend,
my dear friend! I could not die, knowing or fearing that the abyss of
eternity would lie between my spirit and his. Now, whatever may part us
during life”----
Here again she paused, overcome with the consciousness of great pain.
If there was gloom in the silence of a week, what would a whole life's
silence be? Something whispered that even in this world it would be very
bitter to part with Harold Gwynne.
“You are not painting, Miss Rothesay; you are thinking,” suddenly cried
Lyle Derwent.
Olive started almost with a sense of shame. “Has not an artist a right
to dream a little?” she said. Yet she blushed deeply. Were her thoughts
wrong, that they needed to be thus glossed over? Was there stealing into
her heart a secret that taught her to feign?
“What! are you, always the idlest of the idle, reproving Miss Rothesay
for being idle too?” said Christal, somewhat sharply. “No wonder she is
dull, and I likewise. You are getting as solemn as Mr. Gwynne himself. I
almost wish he would come in your place.”
“Do you? Then 'reap the misery of a granted prayer' for there is a knock
It may be my worthy brother-in-law himself.”
“If so, for charity's sake, give me your arm and help me into the next
room. I cannot abide his gloomy face.”
“O woman!--changeful--fickle--vain!” laughed the young man, as he
performed the duty of supporting the not very fragile form of the fair
Christal.
Olive was left alone. Why did she tremble? Why did her pulse
sink, slower and slower? She asked herself this question, even in
self-disdain. But there was no answer.
Harold entered.
“I am come with a message from my mother,” said he; but added anxiously,
“How is this, Miss Rothesay? You look as if you had been ill?”
“Oh, no! only weary with a long morning's work. But will you sit!”
He received, as usual, the quiet smile--the greeting gentle and
friendly. He was deceived by them as heretofore.
“Are you better than when last I was at the Parsonage? I have seen
nothing of you for a week, you know.”
“Is it so long? I did not note the time.” He “did not note the time.”
And she had told every day by hours--every hour by minutes!
“I should have come before,” he continued, “but I have had so many
things to occupy me. Besides, I am such poor company. I should only
trouble you.”
“You never trouble me.”
“It is kind of you to say so. Well, let that pass. Will you now return
with me and spend the day? My mother is longing to see you.”
“I will come,” said Olive, cheerfully. There was a little demur about
Christars being left alone, but it was soon terminated by the incursion
of a tribe of the young lady's “friends,” whom she had made at Farnwood
Hall.
Soon Olive was walking with Mr. Gwynne along the well-known road. The
sunshine of the morning seemed to gather and float around her. She
remembered no more the pain--the doubt--the weary waiting. She was
satisfied now!
Gradually they fell into their old way of conversing. “How beautiful all
seems,” said Harold, as he stood still, bared his head, and drank in,
with a long sighing breath, the sunshine and the soft air. “Would that I
could be happy in this happy world!”
“It is God's world, and as He made it--good; but I often doubt whether
He meant it to be altogether happy.”
“Why so?”
“Because life is our time of education--our school-days. Our holidays, I
fancy, are to come. We should be thankful,” she added, smiling, “when we
get our brief play-hours--our pleasant Saturday afternoons--as now. Do
you not think so?”
“I cannot tell; I am in a great labyrinth, from which I must work my
way out alone. Nevertheless, my friend, keep near me.” Unconsciously she
pressed his arm. He started, and turned his head away. The next moment
he added, in a somewhat constrained voice, “I mean--let me have your
friendship--your silent comforting--your prayers-Yes! thus far I
believe. I can say, 'Pray God for me,' doubting not that He will
hear--you, at least, if not me. Therefore, let me go on and struggle
through this darkness.”
“Until comes the light! It will come--I know it will!” Olive looked up
at him, and their eyes met. In hers was the fulness of joy, in his a
doubt--a contest. He removed them, and walked on in silence. The very
arm on which Olive leaned seemed to grow rigid--like a bar of severance
between them.
“I would to Heaven!” Harold suddenly exclaimed as they approached
Harbury--“I would to Heaven I could get away from this place altogether.
I think I shall do so. My knowledge and reputation in science is not
small. I might begin a new life--a life of active exertion. In fact, I
have nearly decided it all.”
“Decided what? It is so sudden. I do not quite understand,” said Olive,
faintly.
“To leave England for ever. What do you think of the plan?”
What thought she? Nothing. There was a dull sound in her ears as of
a myriad waters--the ground whereon she stood seemed reeling to and
fro--yet she did not fall. One minute, and she answered.
“You know best. If good for you, it is a good plan.”
He seemed relieved and yet disappointed. “I am glad you say so. I
imagined, perhaps, you might have thought it wrong.”
“Why wrong?”
“Women have peculiar feelings about home, and country, and friends.
I shall leave all these. I would not care ever to see England more. I
would put off this black gown, and with it every remembrance of the life
of vile hypocrisy which I have led here. I would drown the past in new
plans--new energies--new hopes. And, to do this, I must break all ties,
and go alone. My poor mother! I have not dared yet to tell her. To her,
the thought of parting would be like death, so dearly does she love me.”
He spoke all this rapidly, never looking towards his silent companion.
When he ceased, Olive feebly stretched out her hand, as if to grasp
something for support, then drew it back again, and, hid under her
mantle, pressed it tightly against her heart. On that heart Harold's
words fell, tearing away all its disguises, laying it bare to the bitter
truth. “To me,” she thought--“to me, also, this parting is like death.
And why? Because I, too, love him--dearer than ever mother loved son, or
sister brother; ay, dearer than my own soul. Oh miserable me!”
“You are silent,” said Harold. “You think I am acting cruelly towards
one who loves me so well Human affections are to us secondary things.
We scarcely need them; or, when our will demands, we can crush them
altogether.”
“I--I have heard so,” said she, slowly.
“Well, Miss Rothesay?” he asked, when they had nearly reached the
Parsonage, “what are you thinking of?”
“I think that, wherever you go, you ought to take your mother with you;
and little Ailie, too. With them your home will be complete.”
“Yet I have friends to leave--one friend at least--_yourself_.”
“I, like others, shall miss you; but all true friends should desire,
above all things, each other's welfare. I shall be satisfied if I hear
at times of yours.”
He made no reply, and they went in at the hall door.
There was much to be done and talked of that afternoon at the Parsonage.
First, there was a long lesson to be given to little Ailie; then, at
least an hour was spent in following Mrs. Gwynne round the garden, and
hearing her dilate on the beauty of her hollyhocks and dahlias.
“I shall have the finest dahlias in the country next year,” said the
delighted old lady.
Next year! It seemed to Olive as if she were talking of the next world.
In some way or other the hours went by; how, Olive could not tell. She
did not see, hear, or feel anything, save that she had to make an
effort to appear in the eyes of Harold, and of Harold's mother, just
as usual--the same quiet little creature--gently smiling, gently
speaking--who had already begun to be called “an old maid”--whom no one
in the world suspected of any human passion--least of all, the passion
of _love_.
After this early dinner Harold went out. He did not return even when
the misty autumn night had begun to fall. As the daylight waned and the
firelight brightened, Olive felt terrified at herself. One hour of
that quiet evening commune, so sweet of old, and her strength and
self-control would have failed. Making some excuse about Christal, she
asked Mrs. Gwynne to let her go home.
“But not alone, my dear. You will surely wait until Harold comes in?”
“No, no! It will be late, and the mist is rising. Do not fear for me;
the road is quite safe; and you know I am used to walking alone,” said
Olive, feebly smiling.
“You are a brave little creature, my dear. Well, do as you will.”
So, ere long, Olive found herself on her solitary homeward road. It lay
through the churchyard. Closing the Parsonage-gate, the first thing she
did was to creep across the long grass to her mother's grave.
“Oh, mother, mother! why did you go and leave me? I should never have
loved any one if my mother had not died!”
And burning tears fell, and burning blushes came. With these came also
the horrible sense of self-degradation which smites a woman when she
knows that, unsought, she has dared to love.
“What have I done,” she cried, “O earth, take me in and cover me! Hide
me from myself--from my misery--my shame.” Suddenly she started up.
“What if he should pass and find me here! I must go. I must go home.”
She fled out of the churchyard and down the road. For a little way she
walked rapidly, then gradually slower and slower. A white mist arose
from the meadows; it folded round her like a shroud; it seemed to creep
even into her heart, and make its beatings grow still. Down the long
road, where she and Harold had so often passed together, she walked
alone. Alone--as once had seemed her doom through life--and must now be
so unto the end.
It might be the _certainty_ of this which calmed her. She had no maiden
doubts or hopes; not one. The possibility of Harold's loving her, or
choosing her as his wife, never entered her mind.
Since the days of her early girlhood, when she wove such a bright
romance around Sara and Charles, and created for herself a beautiful
ideal for future worship, Olive had ceased to dream about love at all.
Feeling that its happiness was for ever denied her, she had altogether
relinquished those fancies in which young maidens indulge. In their
place had come the intense devotion to her Art, which, together with her
passionate, love for her mother, had absorbed all the interests of her
secluded life. Scarcely was she even conscious of the happiness that she
lost; for she had read few of those books which foster sentiment; and in
the wooings and weddings she heard of were none that aroused either her
sympathy or her envy. Coldly and purely she had moved in her sphere,
superior to both love's joy and love's pain.
Reaching home, Olive sought not to enter the house, where she knew there
could be no solitude. She went into the little arbour--her mother's
favourite spot--and there, hidden in the shadows of the mild autumn
night, she sat down, to gather up her strength, and calmly to think over
her mournful lot.
She said to herself, “There has come upon me that which I have heard is,
soon or late, every woman's destiny. I cannot beguile myself any longer.
It is not friendship I feel: it is love. My whole life is threaded by
one thought--the thought of him. It comes between me and everything else
on earth--almost between me and Heaven. I never wake at morning but his
name rises to my heart--the first hope of the day; I never kneel down
at night but in my prayer, whether in thought or speech, that name is
mingled too. If I have sinned, God forgive me; He knows how lonely and
desolate I was--how, when that one best love was taken away, my heart
ached and yearned for some other human love. And this has come to fill
it. Alas for me!
“Let me think. Will it ever pass 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 pass 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,
friendship, 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 passed.
“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 God,
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 friendships 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 passed 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.