_ CHAPTER XLII
Rivetted by an inexplicable influence, Olive had read the letter through, without once pausing or blenching;--read it as though it had been some strange romance of misery, not relating to herself at all. She felt unable to comprehend or realise it, until she came to the name--"Christal." Then the whole truth burst upon her, wrapping her round with a cold horror, and, for the time, paralysing all her faculties. When she awoke, the letter was still in her hand, and from it still there stood out clear the name, which had long been a familiar word. Therefore, all this while, destiny had been leading her to work out her father's desire. The girl who had dwelt in her household for months, whom she had tried to love, and generously sought to guide, was--_her sister_.
But what a chaos of horror was revealed by this discovery! Olive's first thought was of her mother, who had showered kindness on this child of shame; who, dying, had unconsciously charged her to "take care of Christal."
With a natural revulsion of feeling, Olive thrust the letter from her. Its touch seemed to pollute her fingers.
"Oh, my mother--my poor, wronged mother!--well for you that you never lived to see this day. You--so good, so loving, so faithfully remembering him even to the last. But I--I have lived to shrink with abhorrence from the memory of my own father."
Suddenly she stopped, aghast at thinking that she was thus speaking of the dead--the dead from whom her own life had sprung.
"I am bewildered," she murmured. "Heaven help me! I know not what I say or do." And Olive fell on her knees.
She had no words to pray with; but, in such time of agony, all her thoughts were prayers. After a while these calmed her, and made her strong to endure one more trial--different from, perhaps even more awful than, all the rest.
Much sorrow had been her life's portion; but never until this hour had Olive Rothesay stood face to face with crime. She had now to learn the crowning lesson of virtue--how to deal with vice. Not by turning away in saintly pride, but by boldly confronting it, with an eye stern in purity, yet melting in compassion; remembering ever--
How all the souls that were, were forfeit once; And He who might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy.
Angus Rothesay's daughter read over once more the record of his sin. In so doing, she was struck with the depth of that remorse which, to secure a future expiation, threw aside pride, reserve, and shame. How awful must have been the repentance which had impelled such a confession, and driven a father to humble himself in the dust before his own child! She seemed to hear, rising from the long-closed grave, that mournful, beseeching cry, "Atone my sin!" It silenced even the voice of her mother's wrongs.
This duty then remained, to fulfil which--as it would appear--Olive had been left alone on earth. The call seemed like that of fate; nay, she half-shuddered to think of the almost supernatural chance, which had arranged everything before her, and made her course so plain. But it had often happened so. Her life appeared as some lives do, all woven about with mysteries; threads of guidance, first unseen, and then distinctly traced, forcing on the mind that sweet sense of invisible ministry which soothes all suffering, and causes a childlike rest on the Omnipotence which out of all evil continually evolves good.
With this thought there dawned upon Olive a solemn sense of calm. To lay down this world's crown of joys, and to take up its cross--no longer to be ministered unto, but to minister,--this was to be her portion henceforth, and with this holy work was her lonely life to be filled.
"I will do it," she cried. "O my poor father, may God have forgiven you, as my mother would, and as I now do! It is not mine to judge your sin; enough for me is the duty to atone it. How can this be best fulfilled?"
She sat long in silence, mournfully pondering. She tried to collect every scattered link of memory respecting what she had heard of Christal's mother. For such, she now knew, was the woman who, for the time, had once strongly excited her girlish imagination. That visit and its incidents now came vividly back upon her memory. Much there was which made her naturally revolt from the thought of this unhappy creature. How could it be otherwise with her mother's child? Still, amidst all, she was touched by the love of this other most wretched mother, who--living and dying--had renounced her maternal claim; and impressed upon her daughter's mind a feigned story, rather than let the brand of illegitimate birth rest upon the poor innocent.
Suddenly she heard from the next room Christal's happy, unconscious voice, singing merrily.
"My sister!" Olive gasped. "She is my sister--my father's child."
And there came upon her, in a flood of mingled compassion and fear, all that Christal would feel when she came to know the truth! Christal--so proud of her birth--her position--whose haughty nature, inherited from both father and mother, had once struggled wrathfully against Olive's mild control. Such a blow as this would either crush her to the earth, or, rousing up the demon in her, drive her to desperation. Thinking thus, Olive forgot everything in pity for the hapless girl;--everything, save an awe-struck sense of the crime, which, as its necessary consequence, entailed such misery from generation to generation.
It seemed most strange that Christal had lived for so many years, cherishing her blind belief, nay, not even seeking to investigate it when it lay in her power. For since the day she returned from France, she had never questioned Miss Vanbrugh, nor alluded to the subject of her parentage. Such indifference seemed incredible, and could only be accounted for by Christal's light, careless nature, her haughtiness, or her utter ignorance of the world.
What was Olive to do? Was she to reveal the truth, and thus blast for ever this dawning life, so full of hope? Was her hand to place the stigma of shame on the brow of this young creature?--a girl too! There might come a time when some proud, honourable man, however loving, would scruple to take to his bosom as a wife, one--whose mother had never owned that name. But then--was Olive to fix on herself the perpetual burden of this secret--the continual dread of its betrayal--the doubt, lest one day, chance might bring it to Christal's knowledge, perhaps when the girl would no longer be shielded by a sister's protection, or comforted by a sister's love?
While she struggled in this conflict, she heard a voice at the door.
"Olive--Olive!"--the tone was more affectionate than usual. "Are you never coming? I am quite tired of being alone. Do let me into the studio!"
Olive sprang to her desk and hid the letter therein. Then, without speaking--she had no power to speak--she mechanically unlocked the door.
"Well, I am glad to get at you at last," cried Christal, merrily. "I thought you were going to spend the night here. But what is the matter? You are as white as a ghost. You can't look me in the face. Why, one would almost imagine you had been planning a murder, and I was the 'innocent, unconscious victim,' as the novels have it."
"You--a victim!" cried Olive, in great agitation. But by an almost superhuman effort she repressed it, and added, quietly, "Christal, my dear, don't mind me. It is nothing--only I feel ill--excited."
"Why, what have you been doing?"
Olive instinctively answered the truth. "I have been sitting here alone--thinking of old times--reading old letters."
"Whose? nay, but I will know," answered Christal, half playfully, half in earnest, as though there was some distrust in her mind.
"It was my father's--my poor father's."
"Is that all? Oh, then don't vex yourself about any old father dead and gone. I wouldn't! Though, to be sure, I never had the chance. Little I ever knew or cared about mine."
Olive turned away, and was silent; but Christal, who seemed, for some reason best known to herself, to be in a particularly unreserved and benignant humour, said kindly, "You poor little trembling thing, how ill you have made yourself! You can scarcely stand alone; give me your hand, and I'll help you to the sofa."
But Olive shrank as if there had been a sting in the slender fingers which lay on her arm. She looked at them, and a slight circumstance, long forgotten, rushed back upon her memory,--something she had noticed to her mother the first night that the girl came home. Tracing the beautiful hereditary mould of the Rothesay line, she now knew why Christal's hand was like her own father's.
A shiver of instinctive repugnance came over her, and then the mysterious voice of kindred blood awoke in her heart. She took and passionately clasped that hand--the hand of _her sister_.
"O Christal! let us love one another--we two, who have no other tie left to us on earth."
But Christal was rarely in a pathetic mood. She only shrugged her shoulders, and then stroked Olive's arm with a patronising air. "Come, your journey has been too much for you, and you had no business to wander off that way with Mrs. Gwynne; you shall lie down and rest a little and then go to bed."
But Olive was afraid of night and its solitude. She knew there was no slumber for her. When she was a little recovered, feeling unable to talk, she asked Christal to read aloud.
The other looked annoyed. "Pleasant! to be a mere lady's companion and reader! Miss Rothesay forgets who I am, I think," muttered she, though apparently not meaning Olive to hear her.
But Olive did hear, and shuddered at the hearing.
Miss Manners carelessly took up the newspaper, and read the first paragraph which caught her eye. It was one of those mournful episodes which are sometimes revealed at the London police-courts. A young girl--a lady swindler--had been brought up for trial there. In her defence came out the story of a life, cradled in shame, nurtured in vice, and only working out its helpless destiny--that of a rich man's deserted illegitimate child. The report added, that "The convict was led from the dock in a state of violent excitement, calling down curses on her parents, but especially on her father, who, she said, had cruelly forsaken her mother. She ended by exclaiming that it was to him she herself owed all her life of misery, and that her blood was upon his head."
"It _was_ upon his head," burst forth Christal, whose sympathies, as by some fatal instinct, seemed attracted by a case like this. "If I had been that girl, I would have hunted my vile father through the world. While he lived, I would have heaped my miseries in his path, that everywhere they might torture and shame him. When he died, I would have trampled on his grave and cursed him!"
She stood up, her eyes flashing, her hands clenched in one of those paroxysms which to her came so rarely, but, when roused, were terrible to witness. Her mother's soul was in the girl. Olive saw it, and from that hour knew that, whatever it cost her, the secret of Christal's birth must be buried in her own breast for evermore.
Most faithfully Miss Rothesay kept her vow. But it entailed upon her the necessity of changing her whole plans for the future. For some inexplicable reason, Christal refused to go and live with her in Edinburgh, or, in fact, to leave Farnwood at all. Therefore Olive's despairing wish to escape from Harbury, and all its bitter associations, was entirely frustrated. It would be hard to say whether she lamented or rejoiced at this. The brave resolve had cost her much, yet she scarcely regretted that it would not be fulfilled. There was a secret sweetness in living near Harbury--in stealing, as it were, into a daughter's place beside the mother of him she still so fervently loved. But, thinking of him, she did not suffer now. For all great trials there is an unseen compensation; and this last shock, with the change it had wrought, made her past sorrows grow dim. Life became sweeter to her, for it was filled with a new and holy interest. It could be so filled, she found, even when love had come and vanished, and only duty remained.
She turned from all repining thoughts, and tried to make for herself a peaceful nest in her little home. And thither, above all, she desired to allure and to keep, with all gentle wiles of love, her sister. _Her sister_! Often, yearning for kindred ties, she longed to fall on Christal's neck, and call her by that tender name! But she knew it could never be, and her heart had been too long schooled into patience, to murmur because in every human tie this seemed to be perpetually her doom--that--save one who was gone--none upon earth had ever loved her as much as she loved them.
Harold Gwynne wrote frequently from Rome, but only to his mother. However, he always mentioned Miss Rothesay, and kindly. Once, when Mrs. Gwynne was unable to write herself, she asked Olive to take her place, and indulge Harold with a letter.
"He will be so glad, you know. I think of all his friends there is none whom my son regards more warmly than you," said the mother. And Olive could not refuse. Why, indeed, should she feel reluctance? He had never been her lover; she had no right to feel wounded, or angry at his silence. Certainly, she would write.
She did so. It was a quiet, friendly letter, making no reference to the past--expressing no regret, no pain. It was scarcely like the earnest letters which she had once written to him--that time was past. She tried to make it an epistle as from any ordinary acquaintance--easy and pleasant, full of everything likely to amuse him. She knew he would never dream how it was written--with a cold, trembling hand and throbbing heart, its smooth sentences broken by pauses of burning blinding tears.
She said little about herself or her own affairs, save to ask that, being in Rome, he would contrive to find out the Vanbrughs, of whom she had heard nothing for a long time. Writing, she paused a moment to think whether she should not apologise for giving him this trouble. But then she remembered his words--almost the last she had heard him utter--that she must always consider him "as a friend and brother."
"I will do so," she murmured. "I will not doubt him, or his true regard for me. It is all he can give; and while he gives me that, I shall endure life contentedly, even unto the end." _