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BY
WHITING, BEAUFORD HOUSE, STRAND.
THE AUTHOR.
"This book is charming. It is written with deep earnestness, and pervaded by a noble and loving philosophy; while in giving form to her conceptions, the writer evinces at once a fine and subtle imagination, and that perception of minute characteristics which gives to fiction the life-like truth of biography. Nor does she want the power to relieve her more serious view by one of genial and well-directed humour."--Athenæum.
"It is a pleasure to speak, as we are bound to speak, of the book before us--viz., in terms of high and cordial praise."--Weekly News.
"A tale of intense passion, powerfully written, evidently by one whose acquaintance with the mysteries of the human heart, with its infirmities and its inconsistencies, is long and deep."--John Bull.
"A clever novel... No class of reader will be disappointed."--Literary Gazette.
Such was the first greeting ever received by my heroine, Olive Rothesay.
However, she would be then entitled neither a heroine, nor even
"Olive Rothesay," being a small nameless concretion of
humanity, in colour and consistency strongly resembling the "red
earth," whence was taken the father of all nations. No foreshadowing
of the coming life brightened her purple, pinched-up, withered face, which,
as in all new-born children, bore such a ridiculous likeness to
extreme old age. No tone of the all-expressive human voice thrilled through the unconscious wail that was her first utterance, and in her wide-open meaningless eyes had never dawned the beautiful human soul. There she lay, as you and I, reader, with all our compeers, lay once--a helpless lump of breathing flesh, faintly stirred by animal life, and scarce at all by that inner life which we call spirit. And, if we, every one, were thus to look back, half in compassion, half in humiliation, at our infantile likeness--may it not be that in the world to come some who in this world bore an outward image, poor, mean, and degraded, will cast a glance of equal pity on their well-remembered olden selves, now transfigured into beautiful immortality.
I seem to be wandering from my Olive Rothesay; but the time to come will
show the contrary.
Poor little spirit! newly come to earth, who knows whether that
"waesome welcome" may not be a prophecy? The old
nurse seemed almost to dread this, even while she uttered it, for with the superstition from which not an "auld wife" in Scotland is altogether free, she changed the dolorous croon into a "God guide us!" and, pressing the babe to her aged breast, bestowed a hearty blessing on her nursling of the second generation--the child of him who was at once her master and her foster-son.
"An' wae's the day that he's sae far awa', and
canna do't himsel, my bonnie bairn! It's ill coming into the
warld without a father's blessing."
Perhaps the good soul's clasp was the tenderer, and her warm heart
throbbed the warmer to the new-born child, for a passing remembrance of her
own two fatherless babes, who now slept--as close together, as when,
"twin-laddies," they had nestled in one mother's
bosom--slept beneath the wide Atlantic which marks the sea-boy's
grave.
Nevertheless, the memory was now grown so dim with years, that it
vanished the moment the infant waked and began to cry.
Rocking to and fro, the nurse tuned her cracked voice to a long-forgotten lullaby--something about a "boatie." It was stopped by a hand on her shoulder, followed by the approximation of a face which, in its bland gravity, bore "M.D." on every line.
"Well! my good--excuse me, but I forget your name."
"Elspeth, or mair commonly, Elspie Moray. A very gude name,
doctor. The Murrays o' Perth were--"
"No doubt--no doubt, Mrs. Elsappy."
"Elspie, sir. Ye maunna ca' me out o' my
name, wi' your unceevil English tongue," added the pertinacious
old dame.
"Well, then, Elspie, or what the deuce you like," said the
doctor, vexed out of his proprieties. But his rosy face became rosier when
he met the horrified and sternly reproachful stare of Elspie's keen
blue eyes as she turned round--a whole volume of sermons expressed in
her, "Eh, sir?" Then she added, quietly,
"I'll thank ye no to speak ony mair sic
words in the ears o' this puir innocent new-born lassie. It's no canny."
"Humph!--I suppose I must beg pardon again. I shall never get
out what I wanted to say--which is, that you must be quiet, my good
dame, and you must keep Mrs. Rothesay quiet. She is a delicate young
creature, you know, and must have every possible comfort that she
needs."
The doctor glanced round the room, as though there was scarce enough
comfort for his notions of worldly necessity. Yet though not luxurious, the
antechamber and the room half-revealed beyond it seemed to furnish all that
could be needed by an individual of moderate fortune and desires. And an
eye more romantic and poetic than that of the worthy medico might have
found ample atonement for the want of rich furniture within, in the
magnificent view without. The windows looked down on a lovely champaign,
through which the many-winding Forth span its silver network, until,
vanishing in the distance, a white sparkle here
and there only showed whither the river wandered. In the distance, the blue mountains rose like dim clouds, marking the horizon. The foreground of this landscape was formed by the hill, castle-crowned--than which there is none in the world more beautiful or more renowned.
In short, Olive Rothesay shared with many a king and hero the honour of
her place of nativity. She was born at Stirling.
Perhaps this circumstance of birth has more influence over character
than many matter-of-fact people would imagine. It is pleasant, in
after-life, to think that we first opened our eyes in a spot famous in the
world's story, or remarkable for natural beauty. It is sweet to say,
"Those are my mountains," or "This is
my fair valley;" and there is a delight almost like that
of a child who glories in his noble or beautiful parents, in the grand
historical pride which links us to the place where we were born. So this
little morsel of humanity, yet unnamed, whom by an allowable prescience we
have called Olive,
may perhaps be somewhat influenced in her nature by the fact that her cradle was rocked under the shadow of the hill of Stirling, and that the first breezes which fanned her baby brow came from the Highland mountains.
But the excellent presiding genius at this interesting advent
"cared for none of these things." Dr. Jacob Johnson stood at
the window with his hands in his pockets--to him the wide beautiful
world was merely a field for the exercise of the medical profession--a
place where old women died, and children were born. He watched the shadows
darkening over Ben Ledi--calculating how much longer he ought in
propriety to stay with his present patient, and whether he should have time
to run home and take a cosy dinner and a bottle of port before he was again
required.
"Our sweet young patient is taking a nice sleep, I think,
nurse," said he, at last, in his most benevolent tones.
"Ye may say that, doctor--ye ought to ken."
"I might almost venture to leave her, except that she seems so
lonely, without friends or attendance, save yourself."
"And wha's the best nurse for Captain Angus Rothesay's
wife and bairn, but the woman that nursed himsel?" said Elspie,
lifting up her tall gaunt frame, and for the second time frowning the
little doctor into confused silence. "An' as for friends, ye
suld just be unco' glad o' the chance that garr'd the leddy
bide here, and no amang her ain folk. Else there wadna hae been sic a dowie
welcome for her bonnie bairn. Maybe a waur, though, God forgie me;"
added the woman to herself, with a sigh, as she once more half buried her
little nursling in her capacious embrace.
"I have not the slightest doubt of Captain Rothesay's
respectability," answered Dr. Johnson. Respectability!
applied to the scions of a family which had had the honour of being nearly
extirpated at Flodden-field, and again at Pinkie. Had the trusty follower
of the Rothesays heard the term, she certainly would have been inclined to annihilate the presumptuous Englishman. But she was fortunately engaged in stilling the cries of the poor infant, who, in return for the pains she took in undressing it, began to give full evidence that the weakness of its lungs was not at all proportionate to the smallness of its size.
"Crying will do it good. A fine child--a very fine
child," observed the doctor, as he made ready for his departure,
while the nurse proceeded in her task, and the heap of white drapery was
gradually removed, until from beneath it appeared the semblance of a
very--very tiny specimen of babyhood.
"Ye needna trouble yoursel to say what's no true," was
the answer; "it's just a bit bairnie--unco' sma'.
An' that's nae wonder, considering the puir mither's
trouble."
"And the father is gone abroad?"
"Just twa months sin' syne. But eh doctor, look ye
here," suddenly cried Elspie, as with her great, brown, but tender
hand
she was rubbing down the delicate little spine of the now quieted babe.
"Well--what's the matter now?" said Dr. Johnson,
rather sulkily, as he laid down his hat and gloves. "The child is
quite perfect, rather small perhaps, but as nice a little girl as ever was
seen. It's all right."
"It's no a' richt," cried the nurse, in a tone
trembling between anger and apprehension. "Doctor, see!"
She pointed with her finger to a slight curve at the upper part of the
spine, between the shoulder and neck. The doctor's professional
anxiety was aroused--he came near and examined the little creature,
with a countenance that grew graver each instant.
"Aweel?" said Elspie, inquiringly.
"I wish I had noticed this before; but it would have been of no
use," he answered, his bland tones made earnest by real feeling.
"Eh, what?" said the nurse.
"I am sorry to say that the child is
deformed--born so--and will remain so for
life."
At this terrible sentence Elspie sank back in her chair, overpowered
with blank dismay. Then she started up, clasping the child convulsively,
and faced the doctor.
"Ye lee, ye ugly creepin, Englisher! How daur ye speak so of ane
o' the Rothesays,--frae whase blude cam the tallest men an'
the bonniest leddies--ne'er a lamiter amang them a'. How
daur ye say that my master's bairn will be a --. Wae's me! I
canna speak the word."
"Poor woman!" mildly said the doctor, "I am really
concerned!" He looked so, and considerably frightened besides.
"Haud your tongue, ye fule!" muttered Elspie. While she
again laid the child on her lap, and examined it earnestly for herself. The
result confirmed all. She wrung her hands, and rocked to and fro, moaning,
aloud.
"Ochone, the wearie day! O, my dear master, my bairn, that I
nursed on my knee! how will ye come back an' see your firstborn, the
last o' the Rothesays, a puir bit crippled lassie."
A faint call from the inner room startled both doctor and nurse.
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed the former. "We must think
of the mother. Stay--I'll go. She does not, and she must not know
of this. What a blessing that I told her the child was a fine and perfect
child. Poor thing, poor thing!" he added, compassionately, as he
hurried to his patient, leaving Elspie hushed into silence, still
mournfully gazing on her charge.
It would have been curious to mark the changes in the nurse's face
during that brief interval. At first it wore a look almost of repugnance as
she regarded the unconscious child; and then that very unconsciousness
seemed to awaken her womanly compassion.
"Puir hapless bairnie, ye little ken what ye're coming to!
Lack o' kinsman's love, and lack o' siller, and lack o'
beauty. God forgie me--but why did He send ye into the waefu'
warld at a'?"
It was a question, the nature of which has perplexed theologians,
philosophers, and
mnetaphysicians, in every age, and will perplex them all to the end of time. No wonder, therefore, that it could not be solved by the poor simple Scotswoman. But as she stood hushing the child to her breast, and looking vacantly out of the window at the far mountains which grew golden in the sunset, she was unconsciously soothed by the scene, and settled the matter in a way which wiser heads might often do with advantage.
"Aweel! He kens best wha's made the warld and a'
that's in't; and maybe He will gie unto this puir wee thing a
meek spirit to bear ill luck. Ane must wark, anither suffer. As the
minister says, It'll a' come richt at last."
Still the babe slept on, the sun sank, and night fell upon the earth.
And so the morning and evening made the first day of the new existence,
which was about to be developed, through all the various phases which
compose that strange and touching mystery--A woman's life.
Any poet, painter, or sculptor, would certainly have raved about Mrs.
Rothesay, had he seen her in the days of convalescence, sitting at the
window with her baby on her knee. She furnished that rare sight--and
one that is becoming rarer as the world grows older--an exquisitely
beautiful woman. Would there were more of such!--that the
ideal of physical beauty might pass into the heart, through the eyes, and bring with it the ideal of the soul's perfection, which our senses can only thus receive. So great is this influence--so unconsciously do we associate the type of spiritual with material beauty, that perhaps the world might have been purer and better if its onward progress in what it calls civilisation had not so nearly destroyed the fair mould of symmetry and loveliness which tradition celebrates.
It would have done any one's heart good only to look at Sybilla
Rothesay. She was a creature to watch from a distance, and then to go away
and dream of, scarce thinking whether she were a woman or a spirit. As for
describing her, it is almost impossible--but let us try.
She was very small in stature and proportions--quite a little
fairy. Her cheek had the soft peachy hue of girlhood; nay, of very
childhood. You would never have thought her a mother. She lay back,
half-buried in the great arm-chair; and then,
suddenly springing up from amidst the cloud of white muslins and laces that enveloped her, she showed her young, blithe face.
"I will not have that cap, Elspie; I am not an invalid now, and I
don't choose to be an old matron yet," she said, in a pretty,
wilful way, as she threw off the ugly ponderous production of her
nurse's active fingers, and exhibited her beautiful head.
It was, indeed, a beautiful head! exquisite in shape, with masses of
light-brown hair folded round it. The little rosy ear peeped out, forming
the commencement of that rare and dainty curve of chin and throat, so
pleasant to an artist's eye. A beauty to be lingered over among all
other beauties. Then the delicately outlined mouth, the lips folded over in
a lovely gravity, that seemed ready each moment to melt away into smiles.
Her nose--but who would destroy the romance of a beautiful woman by
such an allusion? Of course, Mrs. Rothesay had a nose; but it was so
entirely in harmony with the rest of her face, that you never thought
whether it were Roman, Grecian, or aquiline. Her eyes--
"She has two eyes, so soft and brown--
She gives a side-glance and looks down."
But was there a soul in this exquisite frame? You never asked--you
never cared! You took the thing for granted; and whether it were so or not,
you felt that the world, and yourself especially, ought to be thankful for
having looked at so lovely an image, if only to prove that earth still
possessed such a thing as ideal beauty; and you forgave all the men, in
every age, that have run mad for the same. Sometimes, perchance, you would
pause a moment, to ask if this magic were real, and remember the calm, holy
airs that breathed from the presence of some woman, beautiful only in her
soul. But then you never would have looked upon Sybilla Rothesay as a woman
at all--only a flesh-and-blood fairy--a Venus de Medici
transmuted from the stone.
Perhaps this was the way in which Captain Angus Rothesay contrived to
fall in love
with Sybilla Hyde; until he woke from the dream to find his seraph of beauty--a baby-bride, pouting like a vexed child, because, in their sudden elopement, she had neither wedding-bonnet nor Brussels veil!
And now she was a baby-mother; playing with her infant as, not so very
long since, she had played with her doll; twisting its tiny fingers, and
making them close tightly round her own, which were quite as elfin-like,
comparatively. For Mrs. Rothesay's surpassing beauty included
beautiful hands and feet; a blessing which nature--often niggardly in
her gifts--does not always extend to pretty women, but bestows it on
those who have infinitely more reason to be thankful for the boon.
"See, nurse Elspie," said Mrs. Rothesay, laughing in her
childish way; "see how fast the little creature holds my finger!
Really, I think a baby is a very pretty thing; and it will be so nice to
play with until Angus comes home."
Elspie turned round from the corner
where she sat sewing, and looked with a half-suppressed sigh at her master's wife, whose delicate English beauty, and quick, ringing English voice, formed such a strong contrast to herself, and were so opposed to her own peculiar prejudices. But she had learned to love the young creature, nevertheless; and for the thousandth time she smothered the half-unconscious thought that Captain Angus might have chosen better.
"Children are a blessing frae the Lord, as maybe ye'll see,
ane o' these days, Mrs. Rothesay," said Elspie, gravely;
"ye maun tak' them as they're sent, and mak' the best
o' them."
Mrs. Rothesay laughed merrily. "Thank you, Elspie, for giving me
such a solemn speech, just like one of my husband's. To put me in mind
of him, I suppose. As if there were any need for that! Dear Angus! I wonder
what he will say to his little daughter when he sees her; the new Miss
Rothesay, who has come in opposition to the old Miss Rothesay--ha!
ha!"
"The auld Miss Rothesay! Ye speak a wee bit too lightly, seeing
she's your husband's aunt," observed Elspie, feeling it
necessary to stand up for the honour of the family. "Miss Flora was a
braw, braw leddy ance, as a' the Rothesays aye were."
"And this Miss Rothesay will be too, I hope, though she is such a
little brown thing now. But people say that the brownest babies grow the
fairest in time, eh, nurse?"
"They do say that," replied Elspie, with another and a
heavier sigh; while she bent closer over her work, and her hard coarse
features softened into a look of deepest compassion.
Mrs. Rothesay went on in her blithe chatter. "I half wished for a
boy, as Captain Rothesay thought it would please his uncle; but that's
of no consequence. He will be quite satisfied with a girl, and so am I. Of
course she will be a beauty, my dear little baby!" And with a deeper
shadowing of mother-love piercing through her childish pleasure, she bent
over the
infant; then took it up, awkwardly and comically enough, as though it were a toy she was afraid of breaking, and rocked it to and fro on her breast.
Elspie started up. "Tak' care, tak' care! ye'll
hurt it, maybe, the puir wee--Oh, what was I gaun to say!" and
she stopped hastily, with an expression of anguish which showed how hard
was concealment to her honest nature.
"Don't trouble yourself," said the young mother, with a
charming assumption of matronly dignity; "I shall hold the baby safe.
I know all about it."
And she really did succeed in lulling the child to sleep; which was no
sooner accomplished than she re-commenced her pleasant musical chatter,
partly addressed to her nurse, but chiefly the unconscious overflow of a
simple nature which could not conceal a single thought.
"I wonder what I shall call her--the darling! We must not
wait until her papa comes home. She can't be 'baby' for
three
years. I shall have to decide on her name myself. Oh, what a pity! I, who never could decide anything. Poor dear Angus! he does all--he had even to fix the wedding-day!" And her musical laugh--another rare charm that she possessed--caused Elspie to look round with mingled pity and affection.
"Come, nurse; you can help me, I know. I am puzzling my poor head
for a name to give this young lady here. It must be a very pretty one. I
wonder what Angus would like? A family name, perhaps, after one of those
old Rothesays that you and he make so much of."
"Oh, Mrs. Rothesay! And are ye no proud o' your
husband's family?" said Elspie, reproachfully.
"Yes, very proud; especially as I have none of my own. He took
me--an orphan, without a single tie in the wide world--he took me
into his warm loving arms"--here her voice faltered, and a sweet
womanly tenderness softened her eyes. "God bless
my noble husband! I am proud of him, and of his people, and of all his race. So come," she added, her childish manner reviving, "tell me of the remarkable women in the Rothesay family for the last five hundred years--you know all about them, Elspie. Surely we'll find one to be a namesake for my baby."
Elspie--pleased and important--began eagerly to relate long
traditions about the Lady Christina Rothesay, who was a witch, and a great
friend of "Maister Michael Scott," and how, with spells, she
caused her seven step-sons to pine away and die; also the Lady Isobel, who
let her lover down from her bower-window with the long strings of her
golden hair; and how her brother found and slew him;--whence she laid
a curse on all the line who had golden hair, and such never prospered, but
died unmarried and young.
"I hope the curse has past away now," gaily said the young
mother, "and that the latest scion will not be a golden-tressed
damsel. Yet look here"--and she touched the soft down beneath her infant's cap, which might, by a considerable exercise of imagination, be called hair--"it is yellow, you see, Elspie! But I'll not believe your tradition. My child shall be both beautiful and beloved."
Smitten with a sudden pang, poor Elspie cried, "Oh my leddy, dinna
think o' the future. Dinna!--" and she stopped,
confused.
"Really, how strange you are. But go on. We'll have no more
Christinas nor Isobels."
Hurriedly, Elspie continued to relate the histories: of noble Jean
Rothesay, who died by an arrow aimed at her husband's heart; and
Alison, her sister, the beauty of James the Fifth's reckless court,
who was "no gude;" and Mistress Katharine Rothesay, who hid two
of "the Prince's" soldiers after Culloden, and stood with
a pair of pistols before their bolted door.
"Nay, I'll have none of these--they
frighten me," cried Sybilla, hiding her pretty face with a pretended alarm; "I wonder I ever had courage to marry the descendant of such awful women. No! my sweet innocent! you shall not be christened after them," she continued, stroking the baby-cheek with her soft finger. "You shall not be like them at all, except in their beauty. And they were all handsome--were they, Elspie?"
"Ne'er a ane o' the Rothesay line, man or woman, that
wasna fair to see--the fairest in the land," cried Elspie.
"Then so will my baby be!--like her father, I hope--or
just a little like her mother, who is not so very ugly, either; at least,
Angus says not." And with a charming consciousness, Mrs. Rothesay
drew up her tiny figure, patted one dainty hand--the wedded
one--with its fairy fellow; then--touched perhaps with a passing
melancholy that he who most prized her beauty, and for whose sake she most
prized it herself, was far away--she leaned back and sighed.
However, in a few minutes, she cried out,
her words showing how light and wandering was the reverie, "Elspie, I have a thought! The baby shall be christened Olive!"
"It's a strange, heathen name, Mrs. Rothesay."
"Not at all. Listen how I chanced to think of it. This very
morning, just before you came to waken me, I had such a queer, delicious
dream."
"Dream! Are ye sure it was i' the morning-tide?" cried
Elspie, aroused into interest.
"Yes; and so it certainly means something, you will say, Elspie?
Well, it was about my baby. She was then lying fast asleep in my bosom, and
her warm, soft breathing soon sent me to sleep too. I dreamt that somehow I
had gradually let her go from me, so that I felt her in my arms no more,
and I was very sad, and cried out how cruel it was for any one to steal my
child, until I found I had let her go of my own accord. Then I looked up,
after awhile, and saw standing at the foot of the bed a
little angel--a child-angel--with a green olive-branch in its hand. It told me to follow; so I rose up, and followed it over a wide desert country, and across rivers and among wild beasts; but at every peril the child held out the olive-branch, and we passed on safely. And when I felt weary, and my feet were bleeding, with the rough journey the little angel touched them with the olive, and I was strong again. At last we reached a beautiful valley, and the child said, 'You are quite safe now.' I answered, 'And who is my beautiful comforting angel?' Then the white wings fell off, and I only saw a sweet child's face, which bore something of Angus's likeness and something of my own, and the little one stretched out her bands and said, 'Mother!'"
While Mrs. Rothesay spoke, her thoughtless manner had once more softened
into deep feeling. Elspie watched her with wondering eagerness.
"It was nae dream; it was a vision. God send it true," said
the old woman, solemnly.
"I know not. Angus always laughed at my dreams, but I have a
strange feeling whenever I think of this. Oh, Elspie, you can't tell
how sweet it was! And so I should like to call my baby Olive, for the sake
of the beautiful angel. It may be foolish--but 'tis a fancy of
mine. Olive Rothesay! It sounds well, and Olive Rothesay she shall
be."
"Amen; and may she be an angel to ye a' her days. And
ye'll mind o' the blessed dream, and love her evermair. Oh, my
sweet leddy, promise me that ye will!" cried the nurse, approaching
her mistress's chair, while two great tears stole down her hard
cheeks.
"Of course I shall love her dearly! What made you doubt it?
Because I am so young? Nay, I have a mother's heart, though I am only
eighteen. Come, Elspie, do let us be merry; send these drops away;"
and she patted the old withered face with her little hand. "Was it
not you who told me the saying, 'It's ill greeting ower a new
born wean.' There! don't I succeed charmingly in your northern tongue?"
What a winning little creature she was, this young wife of Angus
Rothesay! Probably the only person who did not think so was the old
Highland uncle, Miss Flora's brother, who had disinherited his nephew
and promised heir for bringing him a Sassenach niece.
"A charming scene of maternal felicity! I am quite sorry to
intrude upon it," said a bland voice at the door, as Dr. Johnson put
in his shining bald head.
Mrs. Rothesay welcomed him in her graceful, cordial way. She was so
ready to cling to every one who showed her kindness--and he had been
very kind; so kind that, with her usual quick impulses, she had determined
to stay and live at Stirling until her husband's return from Jamaica.
She told Dr. Johnson so now; and, moreover, as an earnest of the friendship
which she, accustomed to be loved by every one, expected from him, she
requested him to stand godfather to her little babe.
"She shall be christened after our English fashion, doctor, and
her name shall be Olive. What do you think of her now? Is she growing
prettier?"
The doctor bowed a smiling assent, and walked to the window. Thither
Elspie followed him.
"Ye maun tell her the truth--I daurna. Ye will?" and
she clutched his arm with eager anxiety. "An' oh! for Godsake,
say it saftly, kindly. Think o' the puir mither."
He shook her off with an uneasy look. He had never felt in a more
disagreeable position.
Mrs. Rothesay called him back again. "I think, doctor, her
features are improving. She will certainly be a beauty. I should break my
heart if she were not. And what would Angus say? Come--what are you
and Elspie talking about so mysteriously?"
"My dear madam--hem!" began Dr. Johnson. "I do
hope--indeed, I am sure--your child will be a good child, and a
great comfort to both her parents;--"
"Certainly--but how grave you are about it."
"I have a painful duty--a very painful duty," he
replied. But Elspie pushed him aside.
"Ye're just a fule, man!--ye'll kill her. Say your
say at ance!"
The young mother turned deadly pale. "Say what,
Elspie? What is he going to tell me? Angus--"
"No, no, my darlin' leddy! your husband's safe;"
and Elspie flung herself on her knees beside the chair. "But, the
bairnie--(dinna fear, for it's the will o' God, and a'
for gude, nae doubt)--the sweet wee bairnie is--"
"Is, I grieve to say it, deformed," added Dr. Johnson.
The poor mother gazed incredulously on him, on the nurse, and lastly on
the sleeping child. Then, without a word, she fell back, and fainted in
Elspie's arms.
ardently to care for attracting the petty admiration of others. She took it quite as a matter of course; and was no more surprised at being worshipped than if she had been the Goddess of Beauty herself.
But if Sybilla Rothesay gloried in her own perfections, she no less
gloried in those of all she loved, and chiefly in her noble-looking
husband. And they were so young and impassioned, so quickly wed and so soon
parted, that this emotion had no time to deepen into that soul-united
affection which is independent of outward semblance; or, rather, becomes so
divine, that instead of beauty creating love, love has power to create
beauty.
No marvel then, that not having attained to a higher experience, Sybilla
considered beauty as all in all. And this child--her child and
Angus's, would be a deformity on the face of the earth, a shame to its
parents, a dishonour to its race. How should she ever bear to look upon it?
Still more, how should she ever dare to show the poor cripple
to its father, and say, "This is our child--our first-born." Would he not turn away in disgust, and answer that it had better died?
Such exaggerated fancies as these haunted the miserable and erring
mother, when she passed from her long swoon into a sort of fever; which,
though scarce endangering her life, was yet for days a source of great
anxiety to the devoted Elspie. To the unhappy infant this madness--for
it was temporary madness--almost caused death. Mrs. Rothesay
positively refused to see or notice her child, scorning alike the tearful
entreaties and the stern reproaches of the nurse. At last Elspie ceased to
combat this passionate resolve, springing half from anger and half from
delirium--
"God forgie ye, and save the innocent bairn--the dochter He
gave, and the whilk ye're like to murder--unthankfu' woman
as ye are," muttered Elspie, under her breath, as she quitted the
room and went to succour the almost dying babe. Over it her heart yearned
as it had never yearned before.
"Your mither casts ye aff, ye puir wee thing. Maybe ye're no
lang for this warld, but while ye're in it ye sall be my ain lassie,
an' I'll be your ain mammie, evermair."
So, like Naomi of old, Elspie Murray "laid the child in her bosom
and became nurse unto it." But for her, the life of our Olive
Rothesay,--with all its influences, good or evil, small or great, as
yet unknown,--would have expired like a faint-flickering taper.
Perhaps, in her madness, the unhappy mother might almost have desired
such an ending. As it was, the disappointed hope, which had at first
resembled positive dislike, subsided into the most complete indifference.
She endured her child's presence, but she took no notice of it; she
seemed to have forgotten its very existence. Her shattered health supplied
sufficient excuse for the utter abandonment of all a mother's duties,
and the poor feeble spark of life was left to Elspie's cherishing. By
night and by day the child knew no other resting-place than
the old nurse's arms, the mother's seeming to be for ever closed to its helpless innocence. True, Sybilla kissed it once a day, when Elspie brought the little creature to her, and exacted, as a duty, the recognition which Mrs. Rothesay, girlish and yielding as she was, dared not refuse. Her husband's faithful retainer had over her an influence which could never be gainsaid.
Elspie seemed to be the sole regent of the babe's destiny. It was
she who took it to its baptism;--not the festal ceremony which had
pleased Sybilla's childish fancy with visions of christening robes and
cakes, but the beautiful and simple "naming" of Elspie's
own church. She stood before the minister, holding the desolate babe in her
protecting arms; and there her heart sealed the promise of her lips, to
bring it up in the knowledge and fear of God. And with an earnest
credulity, which contained the germs of purest and loftiest faith, she,
remembering the mother's dream, called her nursling by the name of
Olive.
She carried the babe home and laid it on Mrs. Rothesay's lap. The
young creature, who had so strangely renounced that dearest blessing of
mother-love, would fain have put the child aside; but Elspie's stern
eye controlled her.
"Ye maun kiss and bless your dochter. Nae tongue but her
mither's suld ca' her by her new-christened name."
"What name?"
"The name ye gied her yer ain sel."
"No, no. Surely you have not called her so. Take her away; she is
not my sweet angel-baby--the darling in my dream." And Sybilla
hid her face; not in anger, or disgust, but in bitter weeping.
"She's your ain dochter--Olive Rothesay," answered
Elspie, less harshly. "She may be an angel to ye, yet."
While she spoke, it so chanced that there flitted over the infant-face
one of those smiles that we see sometimes in young children--strange,
causeless smiles, which seem the reflection of some invisible
influence.
And so, while the babe smiled, there came to its face such an
angel-brightness, that it shone into the mother's careless heart. For
the first time since that mournful day which had so changed her nature,
Sybilla Rothesay sat down and kissed the child of her own accord. Elspie
heard no maternal blessing--the name of "Olive" was never
breathed; but the nurse was satisfied when she saw that the babe's
second baptism was its mother's repentant tears.
There was in Sybilla no hardness or cruelty, only the disappointment and
vexation of a child deprived of an expected toy. She might have grown weary
of her little daughter almost as soon, even if her pride and hope had not
been crushed by the knowledge of Olive's deformity. Love to her seemed
a treasure to be paid in requital, not a free gift bestowed without thought
of return. That self-forgetting maternal devotion, lavished first on
unconscious infancy, and then on unregarding youth, was a mystery to her
utterly incom-
prehensible. At least it seemed so now, when, with the years and the character of a child, she was called to the highest duty of woman's life. This duty comes to some girlish mothers as an instinct, but it was not so with Mrs. Rothesay. An orphan, and heiress to a competence, if not to wealth, she had been brought up like a plant in a hot-bed, with all natural impulses either warped and suppressed, or forced into undue luxuriance. And yet it was a sweet plant withal; one that might have grown, ay, and might yet grow, into perfect strength and beauty.
Mrs. Rothesay's education,--that education of heart, and mind,
and temper, which is essential to a woman's happiness,--had to
begin when it ought to have been completed--at her marriage. Most
unfortunate it was for her, that ere the first twelvemonth of their wedded
life had passed, Captain Rothesay was forced to depart for Jamaica, whence
was derived his wife's little fortune; their whole fortune now, for he
had quitted the army on his marriage. Thus Sybilla
was deprived of that wholesome influence which man has ever over a woman who loves him, and by which he may, if he so will, counteract many a fault and weakness in her disposition.
Time passed on, and Mrs. Rothesay, a wife and mother, was at twenty-one
years old just the same as she had been at seventeen--as girlish, as
thoughtless, eager for any amusement, and often treading on the very verge
of folly. She still lived at Stirling, enforced thereunto by the
entreaties, almost the commands, of Elspie Murray, against whom she
bitterly murmured sometimes, for shutting her up in such a dull Scotch
town. When Elspie urged her unprotected situation, the necessity of living
in retirement, for the "honour of the family," while Captain
Angus was away, Mrs. Rothesay sometimes frowned, but more often put the
matter off with a merry jest. Meanwhile she consoled herself by going as
much into society as the limited circle of Dr. and Mrs. Johnson allowed;
and therein, as usual, the lovely, gay, winning
young creature was spoiled to her heart's content.
So she still lived the life of a wayward, petted child, whose natural
instinct for all things good and beautiful kept her from ever doing what
was positively wrong, though she did a great deal that was foolish enough
in its way. She was, as she jestingly said, "a widow
bewitched;" but she rarely coquetted, and then only in that innocent
way which comes natural to some women, from a universal desire to please.
And she never ceased talking and thinking of her beautiful, noble
Angus.
When his letters came, she always made a point of kissing them
half-a-dozen times, and putting them under her pillow at night, just like a
child! And she wrote to him regularly once a month--pretty, playful,
loving letters. But there was in them one peculiarity,--they were
utterly free from that delicious maternal egotism which chronicles all the
little incidents of babyhood. She said, in answer to her husband's
questions, that "Olive was well;" "Olive could just
walk;"
"Olive had learned to say 'Papa and Elspie.'" Nothing more.
The fatal secret she had not dared to tell him.
Her first letters,--full of joy about "the loveliest baby
that ever was seen,"--had brought his in return echoing the
rapture with truly paternal pride. They reached her in her misery, to which
they added tenfold. Every sentence smote her with bitter regret, even with
shame, as though it were her fault in having given to the world the
wretched child. Captain Rothesay expressed his joy that his little daughter
was not only healthy, but pretty; for, he said, "He should be quite
unhappy if she did not grow up as beautiful as her mother." The words
pierced Sybilla's heart; she could not--dared not tell him the
truth; not yet, at least. And whenever Elspie's rough honesty urged
her to do so, she fell into such agonies of grief and anger, that the nurse
was obliged to desist.
Sometimes, when letter after letter came from the father, full of
inquiries about his
precious first-born,--Sybilla, whose fault was more in weakness than deceit, resolved that she would nerve herself for the terrible task. But it was vain--she had not strength to do it.
The three years extended into four, and still Captain Rothesay sent gift
after gift, and message after message, to his daughter. Still he wrote to
the conscience-stricken mother how many times he had kissed the
"little lock of golden hue," severed from the baby-head;
picturing the sweet face and lithe, active form which he had never seen.
And all the while there was stealing about the old house at Stirling, a
pale, deformed, child; small and attenuated in frame--quiet beyond its
years, delicate, spiritless, with scarce one charm that would prove its
lineage from the young beautiful mother, out of whose sight it
instinctively crept.
Thus the years fled with Olive Rothesay and her parents; each month,
each day, sowing seeds that would assuredly spring up, for good or for
evil, in the destinies of all three.
do what was right, and to return to his dearly-loved wife as soon as ever he could. And, though scarce acknowledging the fact to herself, her husband's return involved such a humiliating explanation of truth concealed, if not of positive falsehood, that Sybilla dared not even think of it. Whenever the long-parted wife mused on the joy of meeting--of looking once more into the beloved face, and being lifted up like a child to cling round his neck with her fairy arms, for Angus was a very giant to her--then there seemed to rise between them the phantom of the pale, deformed child.
To drown these fancies, Sybilla rushed into every amusement which her
secluded life afforded. At last she resolved on an exploit at which Elspie
looked aghast, and which made the quiet Mrs. Johnson shake her
head--an evening party--nay, even a dance, at her own home.
"It will never do for the people here; they're
'unco gude,'" said the
doctor's English wife, who had imbibed a few Scottish
pre-
judices by a residence of thirty years. "Nobody ever dances in Stirling."
"Then I'll teach them," cried the lively Mrs.
Rothlesay; "I long to show them a quadrille--even that new dance
that all the world is shocked at. Oh! I should dearly like a
waltz."
Mrs. Jacob Johnson was scandalised at first, but there was something in
Sybilla to which she could not say nay,--nobody ever could. The matter
was decided by Mrs. Rothesay's having her own way, except with regard
to the waltz, which her friend stanchly resisted. Elspie, too, interfered
as long as she could; but her heart was just now full of anxiety about her
nursling, who seemed to grow more delicate every year. Day after day the
faithful nurse might have been seen trudging across the country, carrying
little Olive in her arms, to strengthen the child with the healing springs
of Bridge of Allan, and invigorate her weak frame with the fresh mountain
air--the heather breath of beautiful Ben-Ledi. Among these
in-
fluences did Olive's childhood dawn, so that in after-life they never faded from her.
Elspie scarce thought again about the gay party, until when she came in
one evening, and was undressing the sleepy little girl in the dusk, a
vision appeared at the nursery door. It quite startled the old Scotswoman
at first, it looked so like a fairy apparition, all in white, with a green
coronet. She hardly could believe that it was her young mistress.
"Eh! Mrs. Rothesay, ye're no goin' to show yoursel in
sic a dress," she cried, regarding with horror the gleaming bare
arms, the lovely neck, and the tiny white-sandalled feet, which the short
and airy robe exhibited in all their perfection.
"Indeed, but I am! and 'tis quite a treat to wear a
ball-dress. I, that have been smothered up in all sorts of ugly costume for
nearly five years. And see my jewels! Why, Elspie, this pearl-set has only
beheld the light once since I was married--so beautiful as it
is--and Angus's gift too."
"Dinna say that name," cried Elspie,
driven to a burst of not very respectful reproach. "I marvel ye daur speak of Captain Angus--and ye, wi' your havers and your jigs, while yer husband's far awa', and your bairn sick! It's for nae gude I tell ye, Mrs. Rothesay."
Sybilla had looked a little subdued at the allusion to her husband, but
the moment Elspie mentioned the little Olive, her manner changed.
"You are always blaming me about the child, and I will not bear it.
She is quite well. Are you not, Baby?"--the mother never would
call her Olive.
A feeble, trembling voice answered from the little bed, "Yes,
please, mamma!"
"There, you hear, Elspie! Now, don't torment me any more
about her. But I must go down stairs."
She danced across the room in a graceful waltzing step, held out her
hand towards the child, and touched one so tiny, cold, and damp, that she
felt half inclined to take and warm it in her own. But Elspie's
hawk-eyes were watching her, and she was ashamed. So
she only said, "Good night, Baby!" and danced back again, out through the open door.
For hours Elspie sat in the dark room beside the bed of the little
child, who lay murmuring, sometimes moaning, in her sleep. She never did
moan but in her sleep, poor innocent! The sound of music and dancing rose
up from below, and then Mrs. Rothesay's clear, bird-like voice was
heard in many a blithe ditty.
"Ye'd better be hushin' your puir wee bairnie here, ye
heartless woman!" muttered Elspie, who grew daily more jealous over
the forsaken child, now the very darling of her old age. She knew not that
her love for Olive, and its open tokens shown by reproaches to Olive's
mother, were sure to suppress any dawning tenderness that might be awakened
in Mrs. Rothesay's bosom.
It had not done so yet, for many a time during the dance and song did
the touch of that little cold hand haunt the young mother,
rousing a feeling akin to remorse. But she threw it off again and again, and entered with the gaiety of her nature into all the evening's pleasure. Her wild enjoyment was at its height, when an old acquaintance, just discovered--an English officer, quartered at the Castle--proposed a waltz. Before she had time to say "Yes" or "No," the music struck up one of those enchanting waltz-measures which, to all true lovers of dancing, are as irresistible as Maurice Connor's "Wonderful Tune." Sybilla felt again the same blithe young creature of sixteen, who had led the revels at her first ball, dancing into the heart of one old colonel, six ensigns, a doctor, a lawyer, and of Angus Rothesay. There was no resisting the impulse: in a moment she was whirling away.
In the midst of the dizzy round the door opened, and, like some evil
spectre, in stalked Elspie Murray.
Never was there such an uncouth apparition seen in a ball-room. Her grey
petticoat exhibited her bare feet; her short upper
gown, that graceful and picturesque attire of the Scottish peasantry, was thrown carelessly over her shoulders; her mutch was put on awry, and from under its immense border her face appeared, as white almost as the cap itself. She walked right into the centre of the floor, laid her heavy hand on Sybilla's shoulder, and said,
"Mrs. Rothesay, your husband's here!"
The young wife stood one moment transfixed; she turned pale, afterwards
crimson, and then, uttering a cry of joy, sprang to the door--sprang
into her husband's arms.
Dazzled with the light, the traveller resisted not, while Elspie half
led, half dragged him--still clasping his wife--into a little
room close by, when she shut the door and left them. Then she burst in once
more among the astonished guests.
"Ye may gang your gate, ye heathens! Awa wi' ye, for Captain
Rothesay's come hame!"
Sybilla and her husband stood face to face in the little gloomy room,
lighted only by a
solitary candle. At first she clung about him so closely that he could not see her face, though he felt her tears falling, and her little heart beating against his own. He knew it was all for joy. But he was strangely bewildered by the scene which had flashed for a minute before his eyes, while standing at the door of the room.
After a while he drew his wife to the light, and held her out at
arm's length to look at her. Then, for the first time, she remembered
all. Trembling--blushing scarlet, over face and neck--she
perceived her husband's eyes rest on her glittering dress. He regarded
her fixedly, from head to foot. She felt his expression change from joy to
uneasy wonder, from love to sternness, and then he wore a strange, cold
look, such a one as she had never beheld in him before.
"So, the young lady I saw whirling madly in some man's
arms--was you, Sybilla--was my wife."
As Captain Rothesay spoke, Sybilla distinguished in his voice a new
tone, echoing
the strange coldness in his eyes. She sprang to his neck, weeping now for grief and alarm, as she had before wept for joy; she prayed him to forgive her, told him with a sincerity that none could doubt, how rejoiced she was at his coming, and how dearly she loved him--now and ever. He kissed her, at her passionate entreaty; said he had nothing to blame; suffered her caresses patiently; but the impression was given, the deed was done.
While he lived, Captain Rothesay never forgot that night. Nor did
Sybilla; for then she had first seen that cold, stern look and heard that
altered tone. How many times was it to haunt her afterwards!
"Just as much a child as ever, I see," said Angus Rothesay,
with a rather wintry smile.
And then, looking in his face by daylight, Sybilla had opportunity to
see how changed he was. He had become a grave, middle-aged man. She could
not understand it. He had never told her of any cares, and he was little
more than thirty. She felt almost
vexed at him for growing so old; nay, she even said so, and began to pull out a few grey hairs that defaced the beauty of his black curls.
"You shall lecture me presently, my dear," said Captain
Rothesay. "You forget that I had two welcomes to receive, and that I
have not yet seen the little girl."
He had not indeed. His eager inquiries after Olive overnight had been
answered by a pretty pout, and several trembling, anxious speeches about
"a wife being dearer than a child." "Baby was asleep, and
it was so very late--he might, surely, wait tills morning." To
which, though rather surprised, he assented. A few more caresses, a few
more excuses, had still further delayed the terrible moment; until at last
the father's impatience would no longer be restrained.
"Come, Sybilla, let us go and see our little Olive."
"Oh, Angus!" and the mother turned deadly white.
Captain Rothesay seemed alarmed. "Don't
trifle with me, Sybilla--there is nothing the matter? The child is not ill?"
"No; quite well."
"Then, why cannot Elspie bring her?" and he pulled the bell
violently. The nurse appeared. "My good Elspie, you have kept me
waiting quite long enough; do let me see my little girl."
Elspie gave one glance at the mother, who stood mute and motionless,
clinging to the chair for support. In that glance was less compassion than
a sort of triumphant exultation. When she quitted the room Sybilla flung
herself at her husband's feet.
"Angus, Angus, only say you forgive me, before--"
The door opened, and Elspie led in a little girl. By her stature she
might have been two years old, but her face was like that of a child of ten
or twelve--so thoughtful, so grave. Her limbs were small and wasted,
but exquisitely delicate. The same might be said of her features; which,
though thin, and wearing a look of premature age, together
with that quiet, earnest, melancholy cast peculiar to deformity, were yet regular, almost pretty. Her head was well-shaped, and from it fell a quantity of amber-coloured hair--pale "lint-white locks," which, with the almost colourless transparency of her complexion, gave a spectral air to her whole appearance. She looked less like a child than a woman dwarfed into childhood; the sort of being renowned in elfin legends, as springing up on a lonely moor, or appearing by a cradle-side; supernatural, yet fraught with a nameless beauty. She was dressed with the most care, in white, with blue ribands; and her lovely hair was arranged so as to hide, as much as possible, the defect, which, alas! was even then only too perceptible. It was not a humpback, nor yet a twisted spine; it was an elevation of the shoulders, shortening the neck, and giving the appearance of a perpetual stoop. There was nothing disgusting or painful in it, but still it was an imperfection, causing an instinctive compassion--an involuntary "Poor little creature, what a pity!"
Such was the child--the last daughter of the ever-beautiful
Rothesay line--which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive
looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no
childish shyness--only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied
unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of
an iron vice.
"Tell me! for God's sake, deceive me no longer. Is that our
daughter, Olive Rothesay?"
She answered, "Yes." He shook her off angrily, looked once
more at the child, and then turned away, putting his hand before his eyes,
as if to shut out the sight.
Olive saw the gesture. Young as she was, it went deep to her
child's soul. Elspie saw it too, and without bestowing a second glance
on her master or his wife, she snatched up the child and hurried from the
room.
The father and mother were left alone--to meet that crisis most
fatal to wedded happiness, the discovery of the first deceit.
Cap-
tain Rothesay sat silent, with averted face; Sybilla was weeping--not that repentant shower which rains softness into a man's heart, but those fretful tears which chafe him beyond endurance.
"Sybilla, come to me!" The words were a fond husband's
words; the tone was that of a master who took on himself his prerogative.
Never had Angus spoken so before, and the wilful spirit of his wife
rebelled.
"I cannot come. I dare not even look at you. You are so
angry."
His only answer was the reiterated command, "Sybilla, come!"
She crept from the far end of the room, where she was sobbing in a
fear-stricken, childish way, and stood before him. For the first time she
recognised her husband, whom she must "obey." Now, with all the
power of his roused nature, he was teaching her the meaning of the word.
"Sybilla," he said, looking sternly in her face, "tell me
why, all these years, you have put upon me this cheat--this
lie!"
"Cheat!--lie! Oh, Angus! What cruel, wicked words!"
"I am sorry I used them, then. I will choose a lighter
term--deceit. Why did you so deceive your
husband?"
"I did not mean it," sobbed the young wife. "And this
is very unkind of you, Angus! As if Heaven had not punished me enough in
giving me that miserable child!"
"Silence! I am not speaking of the child, but of you; my wife, in
whom I trusted; who for five long years has wilfully deceived me. Why did
you so?"
"Because I was afraid--ashamed. But those feelings are past
now," said Sybilla, resolutely. "If Heaven made me mother, it
made you father to this unhappy child. You have no right to reproach
me."
"God forbid! No, it is not the misfortune--it is the
falsehood which stings me. All these five years I have toiled and
toiled--comforting myself with thoughts of you and our child, dreaming
over your letters--oh, Heaven! what a dupe I have been!"
And his grave, mournful tone, rose into one of bitter anger. He paced
the room, tossed by a passion such as his wife had never before seen.
"Sybilla!" he suddenly cried, pausing before her; "you
do not know what you have done. You little think what my love has been, nor
against how much it has struggled these five years. I have been true to
you--ay, to the depth of my heart. And you to me have been--not
wholly true."
Here he was answered by a burst of violent hysterical weeping. He longed
to call for feminine assistance to this truly feminine ebullition, which he
did not understand. But his pride forbade. So he tried to soothe his wife a
little with softer words, though even these seemed somewhat foreign to his
lips, after so many long-parted years.
"I did not mean to pain you thus deeply, Sybilla. I do not say
that you have ceased to love me!"
Would that Sybilla had done as her first impulse taught her; have clung
about him, crying
"Never! never!" murmuring penitent words, as a tender wife may well do, and in such humility be the more exalted! But she had still the wayward spirit of a petted child. Fancying she saw her husband once more at her feet, she determined to keep him there. She wept on, refusing to be pacified.
At last Angus rose from her side, dignified and cold, his new, not his
old self; the lover no more, but the quiet, half-indifferent husband.
"I see we had better not talk of these things until you are more
composed--perhaps, indeed, not at all. What is past--is past, and
cannot be recalled."
"Angus!" She looked up, frightened at his grave manner. She
determined to conciliate him a little. "What do you want me to do? To
say I am sorry? That I will--but," she added with an air of
coquettish command, "you must say so too."
The jest was ill-timed; he was in too bitter a mood. "I thank you,
but you exact too much, Mrs. Rothesay."
"Mrs. Rothesay! oh, call me Sybilla, or
my heart will break!" cried the young creature, throwing herself into his arms. He did not repulse her; he even looked down upon her with a melting, half reproachful tenderness.
"How happy we might have been! How different had been this coming
home if you had only trusted me, and told me all from the
beginning."
"Have you told me? Is there nothing you have kept
back from me these five years?" said the young wife, in her pretty,
wilful way.
He started a little, and then said resolutely, "Nothing, Sybilla!
I declare to Heaven--nothing! save, perhaps, some trifles that I would
at any time tell you; now, if you will."
"Oh no! some other time, I am too much exhausted now,"
murmured Sybilla, with an air of languor, half real, half feigned, lest
perchance she should lose what she had gained. In the sweetness of this
reconciled "lovers' quarrel," she had almost forgotten
its hapless cause. But Angus, after a pause of deep and evidently conflicting thoughts, referred to the child.
"She is ours still. I must not forget that. Shall I send for her
again?" he said, as if he wished to soothe the mother's wounded
feelings.
Alas, in Sybilla's breast the fountain of mother's feeling was
as yet all sealed. "Send for Olive?" she said, "oh no! Do
not, I implore you. The very sight of her is a pain to me. Let us be happy
together, and let the child be left to Elspie."
Thus she said, thinking not only to save herself, but him, from what
must be a constant pang. Little she knew him, or guessed the after-effect
of her words.
Angus Rothesay looked at his wife, first with amazement, then with cold
displeasure. "My dear, you scarce speak like a mother. You forget,
likewise, that you are speaking to a father. A father who, whatever
affection may be wanting, will never forsake his duty. Come, let us go and
see our child."
"I cannot--I cannot!" and Sybilla hung back, weeping
anew.
Angus Rothesay looked at his wife--the pretty, wayward idol of his
bridegroom-memory--looked at her with the eyes of a world-tried,
world-hardened man. She regarded him too, and noted the change which years
had brought in her almost boyish lover of yore. His eye wore a fretful
reproach--his brow, a proud sorrow.
He walked up to her and clasped her hand. "Sybilla, take care! All
these years I have been dreaming of the wife and mother I should find here
at home; let not the dream prove sweeter than the reality."
Sybilla was annoyed--she, the spoiled darling of every one, who
knew not the meaning of a harsh word. She answered, "Don't let
us talk so foolishly."
"You think it foolish? Well, then! we will not speak in this
confidential way any more," said Angus, shrinking back into his
reserve. "I promise, and you know I always keep my
promises."
"I am glad of it," answered Sybilla. But she lived to rue
the day when her husband made this one promise.
At present, she only felt that the bitter secret was disclosed, and
Angus' anger overpast. She gladly let him quit the room, only pausing
to ask him to kiss her, in token that all was right between them. He did
so, kindly, though with a certain pride and gravity--and departed. She
dared not ask him whether it was to see again their hapless child.
What passed between the father and mother whilst they remained shut up
together there, Elspie thought not--cared not. She spent the time in
passionate caresses of her darling, in half-muttered ejaculations, some of
pity, some of wrath. All she desired was to obliterate the impression which
she saw had gone deeply to the child's heart. Olive wept not--she
rarely did; it seemed as though in her little spirit was a pensive repose,
above either infant sorrow or infant fear. She sat on her nurse's
knee, scarce speaking, but continually falling into those reveries which we
see in quiet children even at that early age, and never without a mysterious wonder, approaching to awe. Of what can these infant musings be?
"Nurse Elspie," said the child, suddenly fixing on
Elspie's face her large eyes, to look into which seemed like looking
into a spring, not knowing what secrets may lie--depth within
depth--beneath the dark blue waters. "Elspie, was that my papa I
saw?"
"It was just himsel, my sweet wee pet," cried Elspie, trying
to stop the little girl's question with impassioned caresses; but
Olive went on.
"He is not like mamma--he is great and tall, like you. But he
did not take me up and kiss me, as you said he would."
Elspie had no answer for these words--spoken in a tone of quiet
pain--so unlike a child, in whom are the springs of anger and revenge,
but rarely of wounded feeling. It is only after many years that we learn to
suffer and be silent.
Was it that nature, ever merciful, had im-
planted in this poor girl, as an instinct, that meek endurance which usually comes as the painful experience of after-life?
A similar thought passed through Elspie's mind, while she sat with
little Olive at the window, where, a few years ago, she had stood rocking
the new-born babe in her arms, and pondering drearily on its future. That
future seemed still as dark in all outward circumstances--but there
was one ray of hope, which centred in the little one herself. There was
something in Olive which passed Elspie's comprehension. At times she
looked almost with an uneasy awe on the gentle, silent child, who rarely
played; who wanted no amusing, but would sit for hours watching the sky
from the window, or the grass and waving trees in the fields; who never was
heard to laugh, but now and then smiled in her own peculiar way--a
smile almost "uncanny," as Elspie expressed it. At times the
old Scotswoman--who, coming from the debateable ground between
Highlands and Lowlands, had united to the rigid piety of
the latter much wild Gaelic superstition--was half inclined to believe that the little girl was possessed by some spirit. But she was certain it was a good spirit; such a darling as Olive was--so patient, and gentle, and good--more like an angel than a child.
If her misguided parents did but know this! Yet Elspie, in her secret
heart, was almost glad they did not. Her passionate and selfish love could
not have borne that any tie on earth, not even that of father or mother,
should stand between her and the child of her adoption.
While she pondered, there came a light knock to the door, and Captain
Rothesay's voice was heard without--his own voice, soothed down
to its soft, gentleman-like tone; it was a rare emotion, indeed, that could
deprive it of that peculiarity.
"Nurse, I wish to see Miss Olive Rothesay."
It was the first time that formal appellation had ever been given to the
little girl. Still, it was a recognition. Elspie heard it with
joy, for her excited and indignant fancy had almost pictured the parents disowning their child. She answered the summons, and Captain Rothesay walked in.
We have never described Olive's father--there could not be a
better opportunity than now. His appearance did not belie his race, which,
though of late generations somewhat mingled with Lowland blood, had been
originally pure Gaelic. His tall, active form--now subsiding into the
muscular fulness of middle age--was that of a Hercules of the
mountains. The face combined Scottish beauties and Scottish defects, which,
perhaps, cease to be defects when they become national peculiarities. There
was the eagle-eye; the large, but perfectly-chiselled
features--especially the mouth; and also there was the high
cheek-bone, the rugged squareness of the chin, which, while taking away
beauty, gave character to the whole.
When he came nearer, one could easily discern that the features of the
father were strangely reflected in those of the child.
Altered the likeness was--from strength into feebleness--from manly beauty into almost puny delicacy; but it did exist, and, faint as it was, Elspie perceived it.
Olive was looking up at the clouds, her thin cheek resting against the
embrasure of the window, gazing so intently that she never seemed to hear
her father's voice or step. Elspie motioned him to walk softly, and
they came behind the child.
"Do ye no see, Captain Angus," she whispered,
"'tis your ain bonnie face--aye, and your mither's,
wha dee'd when ye were a bit laddie. Ye mind her weel?"
Captain Rothesay did not answer, but looked earnestly at his little
daughter. She, turning round, met his eyes. There was something in their
expression which touched her, for a rosy colour suffused her face; she
smiled, stretched out her little hands, and said, "Papa!"
How Elspie then prided herself for the continual tutoring which had made
the image of the absent father an image of love!
Captain Rothesay started from his reverie at the sound of the
child's voice. The tone, and especially the word, broke the spell. He
felt once more that he was the father, not of the blooming little angel
that he had pictured, but of this poor deformed girl. However, he was a man
in whom a stern sense of right stood in the place of many softer virtues.
He had resolved on his duty--he had come to fulfil it--and fulfil
it he would. So he took the two little cold hands, and said--
"Papa is glad to see you, my dear."
There was a silence, during which Elspie placed a chair for Captain
Rothesay, and Olive, sliding quietly down from hers, came and stood beside
him. He did not offer to take the two baby-hands again, but did not repulse
them, when the little girl laid them on his knee, looking inquiringly,
first at him, and then at Elspie.
"What does she mean?" said Captain Rothesay.
"Puir wee lassie! I tauld her, when her father was come hame, he
wad be fair to tak' her in his arms and kiss her."
Rothesay looked angrily round, but recollected himself. "Your
nurse was right, my dear." Then pausing for a moment, as though
arming himself for a duty--repugnant, indeed, but necessary--he
took his daughter on his knee, and kissed her cheek--once, and no
more. But she, remembering Elspie's instructions, and prompted by her
loving nature, clung about him, and requited the kiss with many another.
They melted him visibly. There is nothing sweeter in this world than a
child's unasked, voluntary kiss!
He began to talk to her--uneasily and awkwardly--but still, he
did it. "There, that will do, little one! What is your name, my
dear?" he said, absently.
She answered, "Olive Rothesay."
"Aye--I had forgotten! The name, at least, was true."
And he spoke bitterly. The next moment, he set down the
child--softly--but as though it was a relief.
"Is papa going?" said Olive, with a troubled look.
"Yes; but he will come back to-morrow.
Once a day will do," he added, to himself. Yet, when his little daughter lifted her mouth for another kiss, he could not help giving it.
"Be a good child, my dear, and say your prayers every night, and
love nurse Elspie."
"And papa too, may I?"
He seemed to struggle violently against some inward feeling, and then
answered, with a strong effort, "Yes."
The door closed after him abruptly. Very soon Elspie saw him walking
with hasty strides along the beautiful walk that winds round the foot of
the castle rock. The nurse sat still for a long time thinking, and then
ended her ponderings with her favourite phrase--
"God guide us! it'll a' come richt at last."
Poor, honest, humble soul!
calls, at which the grim phantom of the husband frowned from a corner, and suppressed all idle chatter. Sybilla's favourite system of killing time by half-hours in various idle ways, at home and abroad, was terminated at once. She had now to learn how to be a duteous wife, always ready at the beck and call of her husband, and attentive to his innumerable wants.
She was quite horrified by these at first. The captain actually expected
to dine well and punctually, every day, without being troubled beforehand
with "What he would like for dinner?" He listened once or
twice, patiently too, to her histories of various small domestic
grievances, and then requested politely that she would confine such details
to the kitchen in future; at which poor Mrs. Rothesay retired in tears. He
liked her to stay at home in the evening, make his tea, and then read to
him, or listen while he read to her. This was the most arduous task of the
two, for, dearly as she loved to hear the sound of his voice, Sybilla never
could feel in-
terested in the prosy books he read, and often fell half asleep; then he always stopped suddenly, sometimes looked cross, sometimes sad; and in a few minutes he invariably lighted her candle, with the gentle hint that it was time to retire. But often she woke, hours after, and heard him still walking up and down below, or stirring the fire perpetually, as a man does who is obliged to make the fire his sole companion.
And then Sybilla's foolish, but yet loving heart, would feel itself
growing sad and heavy; and her husband's image, once painted there in
such glittering colours, began to fade. The real Angus was not the Angus to
her fancy. Joyful as was his coming home, it had not been quite what she
expected. Else, why was it that at times, amidst all her gladness, she
thought of their olden past with regret, and of their future with doubt,
almost fear?
But it was something new for Sybilla to think at all. It did her good in
spite of herself.
While these restless elements of future pain were brooding in the
parents, the little, neglected, unsightly blossom, which had sprung up at
their feet, lived the same unregarded, monotonous life as heretofore. Olive
Rothesay had attained to five years, growing much as a daisy in the field,
how, none knew or cared, except Heaven. And that Heaven did both know and
care, was evident from the daily sweetness that was stealing into this poor
wayside flower, so that it would surely one day be discovered through the
invisible perfume which it shed.
Captain Rothesay kept to his firm resolve of seeing his little daughter
in her nursery, once a day at least. After a while, the visit of a few
minutes lengthened to an hour, even two. He listened with interest to
Elspie's delighted eulogiums on her beloved charge, which sometimes
went so far as to point out the beauty of the child's wan face, with
the assurance that Olive, in features, at least, was a true Rothesay. But
the father always stopped her with a dignified, cold look.
"We will quit that subject, if you please."
Nevertheless, guided by his rigid sense of a parent's duty, he
showed all kindness to the child, and his omnipotent sway over his wife
exacted the same consideration from the hitherto indifferent Sybilla. It
might be, also, that in her wayward and informal nature, the chill which
had unconsciously fallen on the heart of the wife, caused the mother's
heart to awaken. Feelings unwonted began to dawn faintly in Mrs.
Rothesay's bosom; they were reflected in her eyes; and then the mother
would be almost startled to see the response which this new, though
scarcely defined, tenderness created in her child.
For some months after Captain Rothesay's return, the little family
abode in the retired old-fashioned dwelling on the hill of Stirling. Their
quiet round of uniformity was only broken by the occasional brief absence
of the head of the household, as he said, "on business."
Business was a word conveying such distaste, if not horror, to
Sybilla's ears, that she asked no questions, and
her husband volunteered no information. In fact, he rarely was in the habit of doing so--whether interrogated or not.
At last, one day when he was sitting after dinner with his wife and
child--he always punctiliously commanded that "Miss
Rothesay" might be brought in with the dessert--Angus made the
startling remark:
"My dear Sybilla, I wish to consult with you on a subject of some
importance."
She looked up with a pretty, childish surprise.
"Consult with me! Oh, Angus! pray don't teaze me with any of
your hard business matters; I never could understand them."
"And I never for a moment imagined you could. In fact, you told me
so, and therefore I have never troubled you with them, my dear," was
the reply, dignified, with just the slightest shade of satire. But its
bitterness passed away the moment Sybilla jumped up and came to sit down on
the hearth at his feet, in an attitude of comical attention. Thereupon he
patted her on the head, gently and smilingly, for he
was but a young husband still, and she was such a sweet plaything for an idle hour.
A plaything! Would that all women considered the full meaning of the
term--a thing sighed for, snatched, caressed, wearied of, neglected,
scorned! And would, also, that every wife knew that her fate depends less
on what her husband makes of her, than what she makes herself to him!
"Now, Angus, begin--I am all attention."
He looked one moment doubtfully at Olive, who sat in her little chair at
the further end of the room, quiet, silent, and demure. She had beside her
some purple plums, which she did not attempt to eat, but was playing with
them, arranging them with green leaves in a thousand graceful ways, and
smiling to herself when the afternoon sunlight, creeping through the dim
window, rested upon them, and made their rich colour richer still.
"Shall we send Olive away?" said the mother.
"No, let her stay--she is of no importance."
The parents both looked at the child's pale, spiritual face, felt
the reproach it gave, and sighed. Perhaps both father and mother would have
loved her, but for a sense of shame in the latter, and the painful memory
of deceit in the former.
"Sybilla," suddenly resumed Captain Rothesay, "what I
have to say is merely, how soon you can arrange to leave
Stirling?"
"Leave Stirling?"
"Yes; I have taken a house."
"Indeed! and you never told me anything about it," said
Sybilla, with a vexed look.
"Now, my little wife, do not be foolish; you know that you never
wish to hear about business, and I have taken you at your word; you cannot
object to that?"
But she could, and she had a thousand half-pouting, half-jesting
complaints to urge. She put them forth rather incoherently; in fact, she
talked for five minutes without giving her husband opportunity for a single
word, and yet she loved him dearly, and had in her heart scarce any
objection to being saved the
trouble of thinking beforehand; only she thought it right to stand up a little for her conjugal prerogative.
He listened in perfect silence. When she had done, he merely said,
"Very well, Sybilla; then we will leave Stirling this day month. I
have decided to live in England. Oldchurch is a very convenient town, and I
have no doubt you will find Merivale Hall an agreeable
residence.
"Merivale Hall. Are we really going to live in a Hall?"
cried Sybilla, clapping her hands with childish glee. But immediately her
face changed. "You must be jesting with me, Angus. I don't know
much about money, but I know we are not rich enough to keep up a
Hall."
"We were not rich, but we are now, I am happy to
say," answered Captain Rothesay, with a look of dignified
triumph.
"Rich! very rich! and you never told me!" Sybilla's
hands fell on her knee, and it was doubtful which expression was dominant
in
her countenance--womanly pain, or womanly indignation.
Angus looked annoyed. "My dear Sybilla, listen to me
quietly--yes, quietly," he added, in a resolute tone, seeing how
her colour came and went, and her lips seemed ready to burst out into
petulant reproach. "When I left England, I was taunted with having
ran away with an heiress. That, I did not do, since you were far poorer
than the world thought--and I loved little Sybilla Hyde for herself,
and not for her fortune. But the taunt stung me, and, when I left you, I
resolved never to return until I could return a rich man on my own account.
I am such now. Are you not glad, Sybilla?"
"Glad--glad to have been kept in the dark like a baby--a
fool! It was not proper treatment towards your wife, Angus," was the
petulant answer, as Sybilla drew herself from his arm, which came as a mute
peace-maker to encircle her waist.
"Now you are a child, indeed. I did it
from love--believe me or not, it was so--that you might not be pained with the knowledge of my struggles, toils, and cares. And was not the reward, the wealth, all for you?"
"No; for yourself."
"Pray, hear reason, Sybilla!" her husband continued, in
those quiet, unconcerned tones, which, to a woman of quick feelings, and
equally quick resentments, were sure to add fuel to fire.
"I will not hear reason. When you have these four years been
rolling in wealth, and your wife and child were--oh, Angus!" and
she began to weep.
Captain Rothesay tried at first, by explanations and by soothings, to
stop the small torrent--the "continual dropping" of
fretful tears and half-broken accusations. All his words were misconstrued
or misapplied. Sybilla would not believe but that he had slighted,
ill-used, deceived her.
At the term the husband rose up sternly.
"Mrs. Rothesay, who was it that deceived me?"
He pointed to the child, and the glance of both rested on little
Olive.
She sat, her graceful playthings fallen from her hands, her large soft
eyes dilated with such a terrified wonder, that both father and mother
shrank before them. That fixed gaze of the unconscious child seemed like
the reproachful look of some angel of innocence sent from a purer
world.
There was a dead silence. In the midst of it the little child crept from
her corner and stood between her parents, her little hands stretched out,
and her eyes full of tears.
"Olive has done nothing wrong? Papa and mamma, you are not angry
with poor little Olive?" said the faint, sweet voice, falling like
oil on the troubled waters.
For the first time, as she looked into the poor child's face, there
flashed across the mother's memory the likeness of the angel in her
dream. She pressed the thought back, almost angrily, but it came again.
Then Sybilla stooped down, and, for the only time
since her babyhood, Olive found herself lifted to her mother's embrace.
"The child had better go away to bed," said Captain
Rothesay, restlessly, but yet gently.
Olive was carried out, nestling closely in her mother's arms.
When Sybilla came back the angry pout had passed from her beautiful
face, though a grave, troubled shadow still remained there. She made tea
for her husband, tried to talk on common topics once or twice, but he gave
little encouragement. Before retiring to rest, she said to him,
timidly--
"There is no quarrel between us, Angus?"
"Not in the least, my dear," he answered, with that composed
deprecation of any offence, given or received, which is the most painful
check to an impulsive nature; "only, we will not discuss matters of
business together again. Women never can talk things over quietly. Good
night, Sybilla."
He lifted his head a little, a very little, for her accustomed kiss. She
gave it, but with it there came a sigh. He scarcely noticed
either one or the other, being apparently deep in a large folio "Commentary on the Proverbs," for it was Sunday evening. He lingered for a whole hour over the last chapter, and chiefly the passages,--
"Who can find a virtuous woman: for her price is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her: so that he shall have no
need of spoil.... She openeth her mouth with wisdom: and in her tongue is
the law of kindness."
At this, Captain Rothesay closed the book, laid his arms upon it; and
sighed--oh, how heavily! He did not go to bed that night until his
young wife had lain awake for hours, regretting and resolving; nor until,
after many determinations of future penitence and love, she had at last
wept herself to sleep for very sorrow.
Olive's childhood was passed in the place mentioned by her father.
Merivale! Oldchurch!
In her future life the words, whenever heard, always sounded like an echo of that dreamy time, whose sole epochs are birthdays, Christmas-days, the first snowdrop found in the garden, the first daisy in the field. Such formed the only chronicle of Olive's childhood.
Its earliest period was marked by events which she was too young to
notice, troubles which she was too young to feel. They passed over her like
storm-clouds over a safely sheltered flower--only perceivedby the
momentary shadow which they cast. Once--it was in the first summer at
Merivale--the child noticed how pleased every one seemed, and how papa
and mamma, now always together, used to speak more tenderly than usual to
her. Elspie said it was because they were so happy, and that Olive ought to
be happy too, because God would soon send her "a wee wee
brother." She would find him some day in the pretty cradle, which
Elspie showed her. So the little girl went to look there every morning, but
in vain. At last her nurse said she need not look there any more, for God
had taken away the baby-
brother as soon as it came. Olive was very much disappointed, and when she went down to her father that day she told him of her trouble. But he angrily sent her away to her nurse. She looked ever after with grief and childish awe on the empty cradle.
At last it was empty no longer. She, a thoughtful child of seven, could
never forget the impression made, when one morning she was roused by the
loud pealing of the Oldchurch bells, and the maids told her, laughing, it
was in honour of her little brother, come at last. She was allowed to kiss
him once, and and then spent half her time, watching, with great joy and
wonderment, the tiny face, and touching the tiny hands. After some days she
missed him; and after some more Elspie showed her a little heap in the
nearest churchyard, saying, that was her baby-brother's cradle now.
Poor little Olive!--her only knowledge of the sweet tie of brotherhood
was these few days of silent watching, and the little green mound left
behind in the churchyard.
From that time there came a gradual change over the household, and over
Olive's life. No more long, quiet hours after dinner, her father
reading, her mother occupied in some light work, or resting on the sofa in
delicious idleness, while Olive herself, little noticed, but yet treated
with uniform kindness by both, sat on the hearthrug fondling the sleepy
cat, or gazing with vague childish reverie into the fire. No more of the
proud pleasure, with which, on Sunday afternoons, exalted to her grave
papa's knee, she created an intense delight, out of what was to him a
somewhat formal duty, and said her letters from the large family Bible.
These childish joys vanished gradually, she scarce knew how. Her papa she
now rarely saw, he was so much from home, and the quiet, dreamy house
wherein she loved to ramble, became a house of feasting, her beautiful
mamma being the centre of its gaiety. Olive retreated to her nursery and to
Elspie, and the rest of her childhood was one long, solitary, pensive
dream.
In that dream was the clear transcript
of all the scenes amidst which it passed. The old hall, seated on a rising ground, and commanding views which were really beautiful in their way, considering that Merivale was on the verge of a manufacturing district, bounded by pastoral and moorland country. Those strange furnace-fires, which rose up at dusk from the earth, and gleamed all around the horizon, like red fiery eyes open all night long, how mysteriously did they haunt the imaginative child! Then the town, Oldchurch, how in her after-life it grew distinct from all other towns, like a place seen in a dream, so real and yet so unreal! There was its castle-hill, a little island within a large pool, which had once been a real fortress and moat. Old Elspie contemned alike tradition and reality, until Olive read in her little "History of England" the name of the place, and how John of Gaunt had built a castle there. And then Elspie vowed it was unworthy to be named the same day with beautiful Stirling. Continually did she impress on the child the glories of her birth-place, so that Olive in
after-life, while remembering her childhood's scenes as a pleasant land of earth, came to regard her native Scotland as a sort of dream paradise. The shadow of the mountains where she was born, fell softly, solemnly, over her whole life; influencing her pursuits, her character, perhaps even her destiny.
Yet there was a curious fascination about Oldchurch. In the cloudy
memories of her childhood it rose up, as she used to go there with Elspie,
at far distant intervals. The two great wide streets, High-street and
Broadstreet, intersecting one another in the form of a cross: the two
churches--the Old Church, gloomy, and Norman, with its ghostly
graveyard; and the New Church, shining white amidst a pleasant
garden-cemetery, beneath one of whose flower-beds her baby-brother lay. The
two shops, the only ones she ever visited, the confectioner's, where
she stood to watch the yearly fair, and the bookseller's, whither she
dragged her nurse on any excuse, that she might pore over its incalculable
treasures.
Above all, there was fixed in her memory
the strange aspect the town wore on one day--a Coronation-day--the grandest gala of her childhood. One king had died and been buried. Olive saw the black-hung pulpit and heard the funeral sermon, awfully thundered forth at night. Another king had been proclaimed, and Olive had gloried in the sight of the bonfires and the roasted sheep. Now, the people talked of a Coronation-day. Simple child! she knew nothing of the world's events or the world's destinies, save that she rose early to the sound of carolling bells, was dressed in a new white frock, and taken to see the town--the beautiful town, smiling with triumphal flower-arches, and winding processions. How she basked in the merry sunshine, and heard the shouts, and the band playing "God save the King," and felt very loyal, until her enthusiasm vented itself in tears.
Such was one of the few links between Olive's early life and the
world outside. Otherwise she dwelt, for those seven years of childhood, in
a little Eden of her own, whose
boundary was rarely crossed by the footsteps of either joy or pain. She was neither neglected nor ill-used, but she never knew that fullness of love, on which one looks back in after-life, saying deprecatingly, and yet sighing the while, "Ah, I was indeed a spoiled child!" Her little heart was not positively checked in its overflowings; but it had a world of secret tenderness that, being never claimed, expended itself in all sorts of wild fancies. She loved every flower of the field and every bird in the air. She also--having a passionate fondness for study and reading--loved her pet authors and their characters, with a curious individuality. Mrs. Hofland stood in the place of some good aunt, and Sandford and Merton were regarded just like real brothers.
She had no one to speak to about poetry; she did not know there was such
a thing in the world. Yet she was conscious of strange and delicious
sensations, when in the early days of spring she had at length conquered
Elspie's fears about wet feet and muddy
fields, and had gone with her nurse to take the first meadow ramble, she could not help bounding to pluck every daisy she saw; and when the violets came, and the primroses, she was out of her wits with joy. She had never even heard of Wordsworth; yet, as she listened to the first cuckoo note, she thought it no bird, but truly "a wandering voice." Of Shelley's glorious lyric ode she knew nothing; and yet she never heard the skylark's song without thinking it a spirit of the air, or one of the angels hymning at Heaven's gate. And many a time she looked up in the clouds at early morning, half expecting to see that gate open, and wondering whereabouts it was in the beautiful sky.
She had never heard of Art, yet there was something in the gorgeous
sunset that made her bosom thrill; and out of the cloud-ranges she tried to
form mountains such as there were in Scotland, and palaces of crystal such
as she read of in her fairy tales. No human being had ever told her of the
mysterious links that reach from the finite to
the Infinite, out of which, from the buried ashes of dead Superstition, great souls can evoke those two mighty spirits, Faith and Knowledge; yet she went to sleep every night believing that she felt, nay, could almost see, an angel standing at the foot of her little bed, watching her with holy eyes, guarding her with outspread wings.
O Childhood! beautiful dream of unconscious poetry; of purity so pure,
that it knew neither the existence of sin nor of its own innocence; of
happiness so complete, that the thought, "I am now happy," came
not to drive away the wayward sprite which never is, but
always is to come! Blessed Childhood! spent in peace and loneliness and
dreams! We would fain look back lovingly on our own, as Olive Rothesay may
yet look on hers--feeling that hidden therein, lay the germs of a
whole life.
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 as her own.
Such were the strange 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 childhood, 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 the child's 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 sick-room. 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?"
"Aye, aye, just a wee bit aur, 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. But soon she sank back dizzily.
"It's nae use, I canna gang. 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!" answered the child, with
the eager certainty of desire.
"It's no that;" and Elspie took her child's hands
and looked wistfully in her face. "Olive, what suld ye say gin ye
were to tine your puir auld nurse, an' I were to gang far
awa'?"
"Go 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 young 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 seen to suffer. 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 sought her pillow.
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
EIlspie'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 in these ponderings, so horrible, yet fraught
with such a strange fascination, and 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 wee drappie o' milk or
tea."
"Shall I go and call the maids. But that dark, dark
passage--I dare not," cried Olive, whose wild imagination often
exposed her to the terrors of a superstition far beyond mere childish fear
of darkness.
"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
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 to 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 behold-