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