_ CHAPTER XI
"Dear mamma, is not this a pretty house, even though it is in a town?--so pretty, one need hardly pine after Merri-vale."
Thus said Olive when they had been established some time in their new abode, and sat together, one winter evening, listening to the sweet bells of Oldchurch--one of the few English parishes where lingers "the curfew's solemn sound."
"A pretty house, if any one came to see us in it, my dear; but nobody does. And then we miss the close carriage so much. To think that I have been obliged to refuse the Stantons' ball and the dinner-party at Everingham. How dull these long winter evenings will be, Olive!"
Olive answered neither _yes_ nor _no_, but tried quietly, by her actions, to disprove the fact She was but a child--scarcely would have been called a clever child; was neither talkative nor musical; and yet she had a thousand winning ways of killing time, so sweetly that each minute died, dolphin-like, shedding glorious hues.
A very romantic simile this--one that would never have crossed Olive's innocent brain. She only knew that she loved her mother; and therefore tried to amuse and make her happy, so that she might not feel the change of circumstances--a change so unimportant to Olive, so vital to Mrs. Rothesay.
Olive, this night, was peculiarly successful in her little _ruse_ of love. Her mother listened while she explained a whole sketch-book of designs, illustrative of half-a-dozen modern poets. Mrs. Rothesay even asked her to read some of the said poets aloud; and though not of an imaginative temperament, was fain to shed a few womanly tears over Tennyson's "Queen of the May" and the "Miller's Daughter." Finally, she was coaxed into sitting to her daughter for her portrait, which Olive thought would make a design exactly suited to the heroine of the latter poem, and chiefly at the verse--
"Look through mine eyes with thine. True wife, Round my true heart thine arms entwine; My other dearer life in life, Look through my very soul with thine."
And, reading the verses over and over again, to bring the proper expression to her mother's face, the young girl marvelled that they brought likewise a look so sad that she would fain have made some excuse, and terminated the sitting.
"No, no, my dear; it amuses me, and I can talk with you the while."
But Mrs. Rothesay did not talk much; she was continually falling into a reverie. Once she broke it with the words--
"Olive, my child, I think, now we lead a quieter life, your papa will stay at home more. He seems to like this house, too--he never liked Merivale."
"Dear old Merivale!" said Olive, with a sigh. It seemed ages since she had left the familiar place.
"Do not call it _dear_. It was a dreary home. I did not think so at first, but I did afterwards."
"Why, mamma?" asked Olive. She was glad to lure her mother on to talk a little, if only to dispel the shadow which so ill became Mrs. Rothesay's still fair face.
"You were too young to know anything then--indeed, you are now, almost. But, somehow, I have learned to talk with you as if you were quite a little woman, Olive, my dear."
"Thank you, mamma. And what made you dislike sweet Merivale?"
"It was when your papa first began to take his long journeys--on business you know. He was obliged to do it, I suppose; but, nevertheless, it was very dull for me. I never had such a dreary summer as that one. You could not remember it, though--you were only ten years old."
Olive did remember it faintly, nevertheless--a time when her father's face was sterner, and her mother's more fretful, than now; when the shadow of many domestic storms passed over the child. But she never spoke of these things; and, lest her mother should ponder painfully on them now, she began to talk of lighter matters. Yet though the sweet companionship of her only daughter was balm to Mrs. Rothesay's heart, still there was a pain there which even Olive could not remove. Was it that the mother's love had sprung from the ruins of the wife's happiness; and that while smiling gaily with her child, Sybilla Rothesay's thoughts were with the husband who, year by year, was growing more estranged, and whom, as she found out too late, by a little more wisdom, patience, and womanly sympathy, she might perhaps have kept for ever at her side?
But none of these mysteries came to the knowledge of little Olive. She lived the dream-life of early girlhood--dwelling in an atmosphere still and pure as a grey spring morning ere the sun has risen. All she learnt was from books; for though she had occasional teachers, she had never been sent to school. Sometimes she regretted this, thinking how pleasant it would be to have companions, or at least one friend, of her own age, to whom she might talk on the various subjects of which she had of late begun to dream. These never passed the still sanctuary of her own thoughts; for some instinct told her that her mother would not sympathise with her fancies. So she thought of them always by herself, when she was strolling about the small but pleasant garden that sloped down from the back of the house to the river; or when, extending her peregrinations, she went to sit in the summer-house of the garden adjoining, which belonged to a large mansion close by, long uninhabited. It was quite a punishment to Olive when a family came to live there, and she lost the use of the beautiful deserted garden.
Still, it was something new to have neighbours. She felt quite a curiosity respecting them, which was not diminished when, looking out one day from the staircase window (a favourite seat, from which every night she watched the sun set), Olive caught sight of the new occupants of her former haunts.
They were two little boys of about nine or ten, playing noisily enough--as boys will. Olive did not notice them much, except the youngest, who appeared much the quieter and gentler of the two; but her gaze rested a long time on a girl, who seemed to be their elder sister. She was walking by herself up and down an alley, with a shawl thrown over her head, and her thick, black hair blown about by the March winds. Olive thought she looked very picturesque--in fact, just like some of her own fantastic designs of "Norna on the Fitful head," "Medora watching for Conrad," etc. etc. And when the young stranger drew nearer, her admiration was still further excited, by perceiving under the shawl a face that needed but a little romantic imagination to make it positively beautiful. Olive thought so, and accordingly sat the whole evening drawing it from memory, and putting it into various characters, from Scott, Byron, Moore, and Coleridge.
For several days after, she took a deep interest in watching the family party, and chiefly this young girl--partly because she was so pretty, and partly because she seemed nearly about her own age, or perhaps a year or two older. Olive often contrived to walk in her garden when her neighbours were in theirs--so that she could hear the boys' cheerful voices over the high hedge. By this means she learnt their Christian names, Robert and Lyle--the latter of which she admired very much, and thought it exactly suited the pretty, delicate younger brother. She wished much to find out the name of their sister--but could not; for the elder girl took little notice of them, or they of her. So Olive, after thinking and talking of her for some time, as "my beauty next door," to Mrs. Rothesay's great amusement, at last christened her by the imaginary name of Maddalena.
After a few weeks it seemed as though the interest between the young neighbours became mutual--for Olive, in her walks, sometimes fancied she saw faces watching _her_, too from the staircase window. And once, peering over the wall, she perceived the mischievous eyes and pointed finger of the elder boy, and heard the younger one say, reproachfully--
"Don't--pray! You are very cruel, Bob."
And Olive, deeply blushing--though at what she scarcely knew--fled into the house, and did not take her usual garden walks for some days.
At last, when, one lovely spring evening, she stood leaning over the low wall at the garden's end, idly watching the river flow by beneath, she turned round, and saw fixed on her, with a curiosity not unmingled with interest, the dark eyes of "Maddalena." Somehow or other, the two girls smiled--and then the elder spoke.
"The evening was very fine," she said; "and it was rather dull, walking in the garden all alone."
Olive had never found it so; but she was used to it. Her young neighbour was not; she had always lived in a large town, etc. etc.
A few more simple nothings spun out the conversation for ten minutes. The next day it was resumed, and extended to twenty; during which Olive learnt that her young beauty's name, so far from being anything so fine as Maddalena, was plain Sarah--or _Sara_, as its owner took care to explain. Olive was rather disappointed--but she thought of Coleridge's ladye love; consoled herself, and tried to console the young lady, with repeating,
My pensive Sarah! thy soft cheek reclined, etc. At which Miss Sara Derwent laughed, and asked who wrote that very pretty poetry?
Olive was a little confounded. She fancied everybody read Coleridge, and her companion sank just one degree in her estimation. But as soon as she looked again on the charming face, with its large, languishing Asiatic eyes, and delicate mouth--just like that of the lotus-leaved "Clytie," which she loved so much,--Olive felt all her interest revive.
Never was there any girl over whom every form of beauty exercised more fascination. By the week's end she was positively enchanted with her neighbour, and before a month had passed, the two young girls had struck up that romantic friendship peculiar to sixteen.
There is a deep beauty--more so than the world will acknowledge--in this impassioned first friendship, most resembling first love, the fore-shadowing of which it truly is. Who does not, even while smiling at its apparent folly, remember the sweetness of such a dream? Many a mother with her children at her knee, may now and then call to mind some old playmate, for whom, when they were girls together, she felt such an intense love. How they used to pine for the daily greeting--the long walk, fraught with all sorts of innocent secrets. Or, in absence, the almost interminable letters--positive love-letters, full of "dearest" and "beloveds," and sealing-wax kisses. Then the delicious meetings--sad partings, also quite lover-like in the multiplicity of tears and embraces--embraces sweeter than those of all the world beside--and tears--But our own are gathering while we write--Ah!
We also have been in Arcadia.
Gracious reader! grave, staid mother of a family!--you are not quite right if you jest at the days of old, and at such feelings as these. They were real at the time--and most pure, true, and beautiful. What matter, if years sweeping on have swept them all away or merged them into higher duties and closer ties? Perhaps, if you met your beautiful idol of fifteen, you would see a starched old maid of fifty, or a grandame presiding over the third generation; or perchance, in seeking thus, you would find only a green hillock, or a stone inscribed with the well-known name. But what of that? To you the girlish image is still the same--it never can grow old, or change, or die. Think of it thus; and then you will think not mockingly, but with an interest almost mournful, on the rapturous dream of first friendship which now came to visit Olive Rothesay.
Sara Derwent was the sort of girl of whom we meet some hundreds in a lifetime--the class from whence are taken the lauded "mothers, wives, and daughters of England." She was sincere, good-tempered, and affectionate; not over-clever, being more gifted with heart than brains; rather vain, which fault her extreme prettiness half excused; always anxious to do right, yet, from a want of decision of character, often contriving to do wrong.
But she completely charmed the simple Olive with her beauty, her sparkling, winning cheerfulness, and her ready sympathy. So they became the most devoted friends. Not a day passed without their spending some portion of it together--Olive teaching the young Londoner the pleasures of the country; and Sara, in her turn, inducting the wondering Olive into all the delightful mysteries of life, as learnt in a large home circle, and a still larger circle of society. Olive, not taking aught from the passionate love with which she looked up to her mother, yet opened her warm heart to the sweetness of this affection--so fresh, so sudden, so full of sympathetic contact. It was like a new revelation in her girlhood--the satisfying of a thirst, just beginning to be felt. She thought of Sara continually; delighted in being with her; in admiring her beauty, and making interests out of every interest of hers. And to think that her friend loved her in return brought a sensation of deep happiness, not unmixed with gratitude.
Sara's own feelings may be explained by one sentence of a letter which she wrote to an old schoolfellow. Therein she told how she had found "such a dear, loving, gentle thing; a girl, not pretty--even slightly deformed; but who was an amusing companion, and to whom she could confide everything. Such a blessing in that dull place, Oldchurch!"
Poor little Olive! _