Coming home!--coming home! In different ears how differently sound
the words! They who in all their wanderings have still the little,
well-filled, love-expectant nest whereto they may wing their way, should
think sometimes of the many there are to whom the whole wide world is
all alike; whose sole rest must be in themselves; who never can truly
say, “I am going home,” until they say it with eyes turned longingly
towards a Home unseen.
Something of this mournfulness felt Olive Rothesay. It was dreary enough
to reach her journey's end alone, and have to wait some hours at the
small railway station; and then, tired and worn, to be driven for miles
across the country through the gloomiest of all gloomy November days.
Still, the dreariness passed, when she saw, shining from afar, the
light from the windows of Farnwood Dell. As the chaise stopped, out came
running old Hannah, the maid, with little Ailie too; while awaiting her
in the parlour, were Christal and Mrs. Gwynne. _No one else!_ Olive saw
that in one moment, and blamed herself for having wished--what she had
no right to hope--what had best not be.
Mrs. Gwynne embraced her warmly--Christal with dignified grace. The
young lady looked gay and pleased, and there was a subdued light in her
black eyes which almost softened them into sweetness. The quick restless
manner in which she had indulged at times since she came to Farnwood
seemed melting into a becoming womanliness, Altogether, Christal was
improved.
“Well, now, I suppose you will be wanting to hear the news of all your
friends,” said Miss Manners, with smiles bubbling round her pretty
mouth. “We are not all quite the same as you left us. To begin with--let
me see--Mr. Harold Gwynne”----
“Of that, Miss Christal, I will beg you not to speak. It is a painful
subject to me,” observed Mrs. Gwynne, with a vexed air. “You need not
look at me so earnestly, dear, kind Olive! All is well with me and with
my son; but he has done what I think is not exactly good for him, and it
somewhat troubles me. However, we will talk of this another time.”
“More news do you want, Olive?” (Christal now sometimes called her so.)
“Well, then, Dame Fortune is in the giving mood. She has given your
favourite Mr. Lyle Derwent a fortune of £1000 a year, and a little
estate to match!”
“I am so glad! for his sake, good dear Lyle!”
“_Dear_ Lyle!” repeated Christal, turning round with a sparkle either of
pleasure or anger in her glittering eyes; but it was quenched before
it reached those of Olive. “Well, winning is one thing, deserving is
another!” she continued, merrily. “I could have picked out a dozen
worthy, excellent young men, who would have better merited the blessing
of a rich uncle, ay, and made a better use of his money too.”
“Lyle would thank you if he knew.”
“That he ought, and that he does, and that he shall do, every day of
his life!” cried Christal, lifting up her tall figure with a sudden
haughtiness, not the less real because she laughed the while; then with
one light bound she vanished from the room.
Olive, left alone with Mrs. Gwynne, would fain have taken her hands,
and said as she had oft done before. “Friend, tell me all that troubles
you--all that concerns you and _him._” But now a faint fear repelled
her. However, Harold's mother, understanding her looks, observed,
“You are anxious, my dear. Never was there such a faithful friend to me
and to my son! I wish you had been here a week ago, and then you might
have helped me to persuade him not to go away.”
“He is gone, then, to America?”
“America!--who mentioned America?” said Mrs. Gwynne, sharply. “Has he
told you more than he told me?”
Olive, sorely repentant, tried to soothe the natural jealousy she had
aroused. “You know well Mr. Gwynne would be sure to tell his plans to
his mother; only I have heard him talk of liking America--of wishing to
go thither.”
“He has not gone then. He has started with his friend Lord Arundale, to
travel all through Europe. It is a pity, I think, for one of his cloth,
and it shows a wandering and restless mind. I know not what has come
over my dear Harold.”
“Was it a sudden journey?--is it long since he went?” said Olive,
shading her eyes from the fire-light.
“Only yesterday. I told him you were coming to-day; and he desired me to
say how grieved he was that he thus missed you, but it was unavoidable.
He had kept Lord Arundale waiting already, and it would not be courteous
to delay another day. You will not mind?”
“Oh no! oh no!” The hand was pressed down closer over the eyes.
Mrs. Gwynne pursued. “Though I have all confidence in my son, yet I own
this sudden scheme has troubled me. His health is better;--why could he
not stay at Harbury?”
Olive, wishing to discover if she knew anything of her son's sad secret,
observed, “It is a monotonous life that Mr. Gwynne leads here--one
hardly suited for him.”
“Ah, I know,” said the mother, sighing. “His heart is little in his
calling. I feared so, long ago. But it is not that which drives him
abroad; for I told him if he still wished to resign his duties to his
curate, we would give up the Parsonage, and he should take pupils. There
is a charming little house in the neighbouring village that would suit
us. But no; he seemed to shrink from this plan too. He said he must go
entirely away from Harbury.”
“And for how long?”
“I cannot tell--he did not say. I should think, not above a year--his
mother may not have many more years to spend with him;” and there was a
little trembling of Mrs. Gwynne's mouth; but she continued with dignity:
“Do not imagine, Olive, that I mean to blame my son. He has done what he
thought right. Against my wish, or my happiness, he would not have done
it at all. So I did not let him see any little pain it might have given
me. 'Twas best not. Now we will let the subject rest.”
But, though they spoke no more, Olive speculated vainly on what had
induced Harold to take this precipitate journey. She thought she had
known him so thoroughly--better than any one else could. But in him lay
mysteries beyond her ken. She could only still rest on that which had
comforted her in all she suffered;--an entire faith in him and in his
goodness.
Mrs. Gwynne sat an hour or two, and then rose to return to the
Parsonage. “We must be home before it is dark, little Ailie and I. We
have no one to take care of us now.”
Some pain was visible as she said this. When she took her grandchild by
the hand, and walked down the garden, it seemed to Olive that the old
lady's step was less firm than usual. Her heart sprang to Harold's
mother.
“Let me walk with you a little way, Mrs. Gwynne. I am thoroughly rested
now; and as for coming back alone, I shall not mind it.”
“What a little trembling arm it is for me to lean on!” said Mrs. Gwynne,
smiling, when, after some faint resistance, she had taken Olive for a
companion. “'Tis nothing like my Harold's, and yet I am glad to have it.
I am afraid I shall often have to look to it now Harold is away. Are you
willing, Olive?”
“Quite, quite willing;--nay, very glad!”
Olive went nearly all the way to Harbury. She was almost happy, walking
between Harold's mother and Harold's child. But when she parted from
them she felt alone, bitterly alone. Then first she began to realise the
truth, that the dream of so many months was now altogether ended! It
had been something, even after her sorrow began, to feel that Harold was
near! that, although days might pass without her seeing him, still
he _was_ there--within a few miles. Any time, sitting wearily in her
painting room, she might hear his knock at the door; or in any walk,
however lonely and sad, there was at least the possibility of his
crossing her path, and, despite her will, causing her heart to bound
with joy. Now, all these things could not be again. She went homeward
along the dear old Harbury road, knowing that no possible chance could
make his image appear to brighten its loneliness; that where they had
so often walked, taking sweet counsel together as familiar friends, she
must learn to walk alone. Perhaps, neither there nor elsewhere, would
she ever walk with Harold more.
In her first suffering, in her brave resolve to quit Harbury, she had
not thought how she should feel when all was indeed over. She had not
pictured the utter blankness of a world wherein Harold was not. The
snare broken and her soul escaped, she knew not how it would beat its
broken wings in the dun air, meeting nothing but the black, silent
waste, ready once more to flutter helplessly down into the alluring
death.
Olive walked along with feet heavy and slow. In her eyes were no
tears--she had wept them all away long since. She did not look up much;
but still she saw, as one sees in a dream, all that was around her--the
white, glittering grass, the spectral hedges, the trees laden with a
light snow, silent, motionless, stretching their bare arms up to the
dull sky. No, not the sky, that seemed far, far off; between it and
earth interposed a mist, so thick and cold that it blinded sight and
stifled breath. She could not look up at God's dear heaven--she almost
felt that through the gloom the pitying Heaven could not look at her.
But after a while the mist changed a little, and then Olive drew her
breath, and her thoughts began to form themselves as she went along.
“I am now alone, quite alone. I must shut my life up in myself--look
to no one's help, yearn for no one's love. What I receive I will take
thankfully; but I have no claim upon any one in this wide world. Many
pleasant friendships I have, many tender ties, but none close enough to
fill the void in my heart--none to love as I could love--as I did
love for many years. Oh, mother, why did you go away? Why did I love
again--lose again? Always loving only to lose.”
Many times she said to herself, “I am alone--quite alone in the world;”
and at last the words seemed to strike the echo of some old remembrance.
But it was one so very dim, that for a long time Olive could not give it
any distinct form. At last she recollected the letter which, ten years
ago, she had put away in a secret drawer of her father's desk. Strange
to say, she had never thought of it since. Perhaps this was because, at
the time, she had instinctively shuddered at the suggestions it gave,
and so determined to banish them. And then the quick, changing scenes of
life had prevented her ever recurring to the subject Now, when all had
come true, when on that desert land which, still distant, had seemed so
fearful to the girl's eyes, the woman's feet already stood, she turned
with an eager desire to the words which her father had written--“_To his
daughter Olive when she was quite alone in the world_.”
Reaching home, and hearing Christal warbling some Italian song, Olive
went at once to her own apartment, half parlour, half studio. There was
a fire lit, and candles. She fastened the door, that she might not be
interrupted, and sat down before her desk.
She found some difficulty in opening the secret drawer, for the spring
was rusty from long disuse, and her own fingers trembled much. When at
last she held the letter in her hand, its yellow paper and faded ink
struck her painfully. It seemed like suddenly coming face to face with
the dead.
A solemn, anxious feeling stole over her. Ere breaking the seal,
she lingered long; she tried to call up all she remembered of her
father--his face--his voice--his manners. Very dim everything was! She
had been such a mere child until he died, and the ten following years
were so full of action, passion, and endurance, that they made the old
time look pale and distant. She could hardly remember how she used to
feel then, least of all how she used to feel towards her father. She had
loved him, she knew, and her mother had loved him, ay, long after love
became only memory. He had loved them, too, in his quiet way. Olive
thought, with tender remembrance, of his kiss, on that early morning
when, for the last time, he had left his home. And for her mother!
Often, during Mrs. Rothesay's declining days, had she delighted to talk
of the time when she was a young, happy wife, and of the dear love that
Angus bore her. Something, too, she hinted of her own faults, which had
once taken away that love, and something in Olive's own childish memory
told her that this was true. But she repelled the thought, remembering
that her father and mother were now together before God.
At length with an effort she opened the letter. She started to see its
date--the last night Captain Rothesay ever spent at home--the night,
which of all others, she had striven to remember clearly, because they
were all three so happy together, and he had been so kind, so loving, to
her mother and to her. Thinking of him on this wise, with a most tender
sadness, she began to read:
“Olive Rothesay--My dear Child!--It may be many--many years--(I pray
so, God knows!) before you open this letter. If so, think of me as I sit
writing it now--or rather as I sat an hour ago--by your mother's side,
with your arms round my neck. And, thus thinking of me, consider what a
fierce struggle I must have had to write as I am going to do--to confess
what I never would have confessed while I lived, or while your mother
lived. I do it, because remorse is strong upon me; because I would fain
that my Olive--the daughter who may comfort me, if I live--should, if I
die, make atonement for her father's sins. Ay, sins. Think how I must be
driven, thus to humble myself before my own child--to unfold to my pure
daughter that--But I will tell the tale plainly, without any exculpation
or reserve.
“I was very young when I married Sybilla Hyde. God be my witness,
I loved her then, and in my inmost heart I have loved her evermore.
Remember, I say this--hear it as if I were speaking from my
grave--Olive, _I did love your mother_. Would to Heaven she had loved
me, or shown her love, only a little more!
“Soon after our marriage I was parted from my wife for some years. You,
a girl, ought not to know--and I pray may never know--the temptations of
the world and of man's own nature. I knew both, and I withstood both.
I came back, and clasped my wife to the most loving and faithful heart
that ever beat in a husband's breast. I write this even with tears--I,
who have been so cold. But in this letter--which no eye will ever see
until I and your mother have lain together long years in our grave--I
write as if I were speaking, not as now, but as I should speak then.
“Well, between my wife and me there came a cloud. I know not whose was
the fault--perhaps mine, perhaps hers; or, it might be, both. But there
the cloud was--it hung over my home, so that I could find therein
no peace, no refuge. It drove me to money-getting, excitement,
amusement--at last to crime!
“In the West Indies there was one who had loved me, in vain,--mark you,
I said _in vain_,--but with the vehemence of her southern blood. She was
a Quadroon lady--one of that miserable race, the children of planters
and slaves, whose beauty is their curse, whose passion knows no law
except a blind fidelity. And, God forgive me! that poor wretch was
faithful unto me.
“She followed me to England without my knowledge. Little she had ever
heard of marriage; she found no sacred-ness in mine. I did not love
her--not with a pure heart as I loved Sybilla. But I pitied her.
Sometimes I turned from my dreary home--where no eye brightened at mine,
where myself and my interests were nothing--and I thought of this woman,
to whom I was all the world. My daughter Olive, if ever you be a wife,
and would keep your husband's love, never let these thoughts enter and
pollute his mind. Give him your whole heart, and he will ask no other.
Make his home sweet and pleasant to him, and he will not stray from it.
Bind him round with cords of love--fast--fast. Oh, that my wife had had
strength so to encircle me!
“But she had not; and so the end came! Olive, you are not my _only_
child.
“I have no desire to palliate my sin. Sin, I know it was, heavy and
deadly; against God's law, against my trusting wife, and against that
hapless creature on whom I brought a whole lifetime of misery. Ay,
not on her alone, but on that innocent being who has received from me
nothing but the heritage of shame, and to whom in this world I can never
make atonement. No man can! I felt this when she was born. It was a
girl, too--a helpless girl. I looked on the little face, sleeping
so purely, and remembered that on her brow would rest through life a
perpetual stain; and that I, her father, had fixed it there. Then there
awoke in me a remorse which can never die. For, alas, Olive, I have more
to unfold! My remorse, like my crimes, was selfish at the root, and I
wreaked it on her, who, if guilty, was less guilty than I.
“One day I came to her, restless and angry, unable to hide the worm that
was continually gnawing at my heart. She saw it there, and her proud
spirit rose; she poured on me a torrent of reproachful words. I answered
them as one who had erred like me was sure to answer. Poor wretch! I
reviled her as having been the cause of my misery. When I saw her in her
fury, I contrasted her image with that of the pale, patient, trusting
creature I had left that morning--my wife, my poor Sybilla--until,
hating myself, I absolutely loathed _her_--the enchantress who had been
my undoing. With her shrill voice yet pursuing me, I precipitately left
the house. Next day mother and child had disappeared! Whither, I knew
not; and I never have known, though I left no effort untried to solve a
mystery which made me feel like a _murderer_.
“Nevertheless, I believe that they are still alive--these wretched two.
If I did not, I should almost go mad at times.
“Olive, have pity on your father, and hearken to what I implore. Whilst
I live, I shall continue this search--but I may die without having had
the chance of making atonement. In that case I entreat of my daughter
Olive to stand between her father and his sin. If you have no other
ties--if you never marry, but live alone in the world--seek out and
protect that child! Remember, she is of your own blood--_she_, at
least, never wronged you. In showing mercy to her, you do so to me,
your father; who, when you read this, will have been for years among the
dead, though the evil that he caused may still remain unexpiated. Oh!
think that this is his voice crying out from the dust, beseeching you to
absolve his memory. Save me from the horrible thought, now haunting me
evermore, that the being who owes me life may one day heap curses on her
father's name!
“Herewith enclosed you will find instructions respecting an annuity I
wish paid to--to the woman. It was placed in----'s bank by Mr. Wyld,
whom, however, I deceived concerning it--I am now old enough in the
school of hypocrisy. Hitherto the amount has never been claimed.
“Olive, my daughter, forgive me! Judge me not harshly. I never would
have asked this of you while your mother lived--your mother, whom _I
loved_, though I wronged her so grievously. In some things, perhaps, she
erred towards me; but I ought to have shown her more sympathy, and have
dealt gently with her tender nature, so unlike my own. May God forgive
us both!--God, in whose presence we shall both be, when you, our
daughter, read this record. And may He bless you evermore, prays your
loving father,
“Angus Rothesay.
“Celia Manners was her name. Her child she called _Christal_.”
It ceased--this voice from the ten years' silent grave of Angus
Rothesay. His daughter sat motionless, her fixed eyes blindly
out-gazing, her whole frame cold and rigid, frozen into a statue of
stone.