Olive Part 21

"Tell me only one thing!" cried Olive to Mr..Wyld, with whom, after the funeral, she was holding conference--she only--for her mother was incapable of acting, and this girl of sixteen was the sole ruler of the household now. "Tell me only that my father died unblemished in honour--that there are none to share misfortune with us, and to curse the memory of the ruined merchant."

"I know of none," answered Mr. Wyld. "True, there are still remaining many private debts, but they may be easily paid." And he cast a meaning glance round the luxuriously furnished room.

"I understand. It shall be done," said Olive. Misery had made her very wise--very quick to comprehend. Without shrinking she talked over every matter connected with that saddest thing--a deceased bankrupt's sale.

The lawyer was a hard man, and Olive's prejudice against him was not unfounded. Still the most stony heart has often a little softness buried deep at its core. Mr. Wyld looked with curiosity, even with kindness, on the young creature who sat opposite to him, in the dim lamp-light of the silent room, once Captain Rothesay's study. Her cheek, ever delicate, was now of a dull white; her pale gold hair fell neglected over her black dress; her hand supported her care-marked brow, as she pored over dusty papers, pausing at times to speak, in a quiet, sensible, subdued manner, of things fit only for old heads and worn hearts. Mr. Wyld thought of his own merry daughters, whom he had left at home, and felt a vague thankfulness that they were not as Olive Rothesay. Tenderness was not in his nature; but in all his intercourse with her, he could not help treating with a sort of reverence the dead merchant's forlorn child.

When they had finished their conversation, he said, "There is one matter--painful, too--upon which I ought to speak to you. I should have done so before, but I did not know it myself until yesterday."

"Know what? Is there more trouble coming?" answered Olive, sighing bitterly. "But tell me all."

"_All_, is very little. You know, my dear Miss Rothesay, that your father was speechless from the moment of his seizure. But my wife, who never quitted him--ah! I a.s.sure you she was a devoted nurse to him, was Mrs. Wyld."

"I thank her deeply, as she knows."

"My wife has just told me, that a few minutes before his death your poor father's consciousness returned; that he seemed struggling in vain to speak; at last she placed a pencil in his hand, and he wrote--one word only, in the act of writing which he died. Forgive me, my dear young lady for thus agitating you, but"----

"The paper--give me the paper!"

Mr. Wyld pulled out his pocket-book, and produced a torn and blotted sc.r.a.p, whereon was written, in characters scarcely legible, the name "Harold."

"Do you know any one who bears that name, Miss Rothesay?"

"No. Yes--one," added she, suddenly remembering that the name of Sara's husband was Harold Gwynne. But between him and her father she knew of no single tie. It must be a mere chance coincidence.

"What is to be done?" cried Olive. "Shall I tell my mother?"

"If I might advise, I would say decisively, No! Better leave the matter in my hands. Harold!--'tis a boy's name," he added, meditatively. "If it were a girl's now--I executed a little commission for Captain Rothesay once."

"What did you say?" asked Olive, looking up at him with her innocent eyes. He could not meet them; his own fell confused.

"What did I say, Miss Rothesay? Oh, nothing--nothing at all; only that if I had a commission--to--to hunt out this secret."

"I thank you, Mr. Wyld; but a daughter would not willingly employ any third person to 'hunt out' her father's secret. His papers will doubtless inform me of everything; therefore we will speak no more on this subject."

"As you will" He gathered up his blue bag and its voluminous contents, and made his adieux.

But Olive had scarcely sat down again, and with her head leaning on her father's desk, had given vent to a sigh of relief, in that she was freed from Mr. Wyld's presence, when the old lawyer again appeared.

"Miss Rothesay, I merely wished to say, if ever you find out--any secret--or need any advice about that paper, or anything else, I'm the man to give it, and with pleasure in this case. Good evening!"

Olive thanked him coldly, somewhat proudly, for what she thought a piece of unnecessary impertinence. However, it quickly pa.s.sed from her gentle mind; and then, as the best way to soothe all her troubles, she quitted the study, and sought her mother.

Of Mrs. Rothesay's affliction we have as yet said little. Many and various are earth's griefs; but there must be an awful individuality in the stroke which severs the closest human tie, that between two whom marriage had made "one flesh." And though in this case coldness had loosened the sacred tie, still no power could utterly divide it, while life endured. Angus Rothesay's widow remembered that she had once been the loved and loving bride of his youth. As such, she mourned him; nor was her grief without that keenest sting, the memory of unatoned wrong.

From the dim sh.o.r.es of the past, arose ghosts that nothing could ever lay, because death's river ran eternally between.

Sybilla Rothesay was one of those women whom no force of circ.u.mstances can ever teach self-dependence or command. She had looked entirely to her husband for guidance and control, and now for both she looked to her child. From the moment of Captain Rothesay's death, Olive seemed to rule in his stead--or rather, the parent and child seemed to change places. Olive watched, guided, and guarded the pa.s.sive, yielding, sorrow-stricken woman, as with a mother's care; while Mrs. Rothesay trusted implicitly in all things to her daughter's stronger mind, and was never troubled by thinking or acting for herself in any one thing.

This may seem a new picture of the maternal and filial bond, but it is frequently true. If we look around on those daughters who have best fulfilled the holy duty, without which no life is or can be blest, are they not women firm, steadfast--able to will and to act? Could not many of them say, "I am a mother unto my mother. I, the strongest now, take her in her feeble age, like a child, to my bosom--s.h.i.+eld her, cherish her, and am to her all in all."

And so, in heart, resolved Olive Rothesay. She had made that vow when her mother lay insensible in her arms; she kept it faithfully; until eternity, closing between them, sealed it with that best of earth's blessings--the blessing that falls on a duteous daughter, whose mother is with G.o.d.

When Captain Rothesay's affairs were settled, the sole wreck of his wealth that remained to his widow and child was the small settlement from Mrs. Rothesay's fortune, on which she had lived at Stirling. So they were not left in actual poverty.

Still, Olive and her mother were poor--poor enough to make them desire to leave prying, gossiping Oldchurch, and settle in the solitude of some great town. "There," Olive said to herself, "I shall surely find means to work for her--that she may have not merely necessaries, but comforts."

And many a night--during the few weeks that elapsed before their home was broken up--she lay awake by her sleeping mother's side, planning all sorts of schemes; arranging everything, so that Mrs. Rothesay might not be annoyed with arguings or consultations. When all was matured, she had only to say, "Dearest mother, should we not be very happy living together in London?" And scarcely had Mrs. Rothesay a.s.sented, than she found everything arranged itself, as under an invisible fairy hand--so that she had but to ask, "My child, when shall we go?"

The time of departure at last arrived. It was the night but one before the sale. Olive persuaded her mother to go to rest early; for she herself had a trying duty to perform--the examining of her father's private papers. As she sat in his study--in solitude and gloom--the young girl might have been forgiven many a pang of grief, even a shudder of superst.i.tious fear. But Heaven had given her a hero-soul, not the less heroic because it was a woman's.

Her father's business-papers she had already examined; these were only his private memoranda. But they were few,--Captain Rothesay's thoughts never found vent in words; there were no data of any kind to mark the history of a life, which was almost as unknown to his wife and daughter as to any stranger. Of letters, she found very few; he was not a man who loved correspondence. Only among these few she was touched deeply to see some, dated years back, at Stirling. Olive opened one of them. The delicate hand was that of her mother when she was young. Olive only glanced at the top of the page, where still smiled, from the worn, yellow paper, the words, "My dearest, dearest Angus;" and then, too right-minded to penetrate further, folded it up again. Yet, she felt glad; she thought it would comfort her mother to know how carefully he had kept these letters. Soon after she found a memento of herself--a little curl, wrapped in silver-paper, and marked with his own hand, "Olive's hair." Her father had loved her then--ay, and more deeply than she knew.

The chief thing which troubled Olive was the sight of the paper on which her father's dying hand had scrawled "Harold." No date of any kind had been found to explain the mystery. She determined to think of the matter no more, but to put the paper by in a secret drawer.

In doing so, she found a small packet, carefully tied and sealed. She was about to open it, when the superscription caught her eyes. Thereon she read her father's written desire that it should after his death be burnt unopened.

His faithful daughter, without pausing to think, threw the packet on the fire; even turning aside, lest the flames, while destroying, should reveal anything of the secret. Only once, forgetting herself, the crackling fire made her start and turn, and she caught a momentary glimpse of some curious foreign ornament; while near it, twisted in the flame into almost life-like motion, was what seemed a long lock of black hair. But she could be certain of nothing; she hated herself for even that involuntary glance. It seemed an insult to the dead.

Still more did these remorseful feelings awake, when, her task being almost done, she found one letter addressed thus:

"For my daughter, Olive. Not to be opened till her mother is dead, and she is alone in the world."

Alone in the world! His fatherly tenderness had looked forward, then, even to that bitter time--far off, she prayed G.o.d!--when she would be alone--a woman no longer young, without parents, husband, or child, or smiling home. She doubted not that her father had written this letter to counsel and comfort her at such a season of desolation, years after he was in the dust.

His daughter blessed him for it; and her tender tears fell upon words which he had written, as she saw by the date outside, on that night--the last he ever spent at home. She never thought of breaking his injunction, or of opening the letter before the time; and after considering deeply, she decided that it was too sacred even for the ear of her mother, to whom it would only give pain. Therefore she placed it in the private drawer of her father's desk--now her own--to wait until time should bring about the revealing of this solemn secret between her and the dead.

Then she went to bed, wearied and worn; and creeping close to her slumbering mother, thanked G.o.d that there was one warm living bosom to which she could cling, and which would never cast her out.

O mother! O daughter! who, when time has blended into an almost sisterly bond the difference of years, grow together, united, as it were, in one heart and one soul by that perfect love which is beyond even "honour"

and "obedience," because including both--how happy are ye! How blessed she, who, looking on her daughter--woman grown--can say, "Child, thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, as when I brought thee into the world!" And thrice blessed is she who can answer, "Mother, I am all thine own--I desire no love but thine--I bring to thee my every joy; and my every grief finds rest on thy bosom."

Let those who have this happiness rejoice! Let those who only have its memory pray always that G.o.d would make that memory live until the eternal meeting, at the resurrection of the just!

CHAPTER XIX.

In one of the western environs of London is a region which, lying between two great omnibus outlets, is yet as retired and old-fas.h.i.+oned as though it had been miles and miles distant from the metropolis.

Fields there are few or none, certainly; but there are quiet, green lanes (where in springtime you may pluck many a fragrant hawthorn branch), and market-gardens, and grand old trees; while on summer mornings you may continually hear a loud chorus of birds--especially larks--though these latter "blithe spirits" seem to live perpetually in the air, and one marvels how they ever contrive to make their nests in the potato-grounds below. Perhaps they do so in emulation of their human neighbours--authors, actors, artists, who in this place "most do congregate," many of them, poor souls! singing their daily songs of life out in the world, as the larks in the air; none knowing what a mean, lowly, sometimes even desolate home, is the nest whence such music springs.

Well, in this region, there is a lane * (a crooked, unpaved, winding, quaint, dear old lane!); and in that lane there is a house; and in that house there are two especially odd rooms, where dwelt Olive Rothesay and her mother.

* _Was_. It is no more, now.

Chance had led them hither; but they both--Olive especially--thanked chance, every day of their lives, for having brought them to such a delicious old place. It was the queerest of all queer abodes, was Woodford Cottage. The entrance-door and the stable-door stood side by side; and the cellar-staircase led out of the drawing-room. The direct way from the kitchen to the dining-room was through a suite of sleeping apartments; and the staircase, apparently cut out of the wall, had a beautiful little break-neck corner, which seemed made to prevent any one who once ascended from ever descending alive. Certainly the contriver of Woodford Cottage must have had some slight twist of the brain, which caused the building to partake of the same pleasant convolution.

Yet, save this slight peculiarity, it was a charming house to live in.

It stood in a garden, whose high walls shut out all view, save of the trees belonging to an old dilapidated, uninhabited lodge, where an ill.u.s.trious statesman had once dwelt, and which was now creeping to decay and oblivion, like the great man's own memory. The trees waved, and the birds sang therein for the especial benefit of Woodford Cottage and of Olive Rothesay. She, who so dearly loved a garden, perfectly exulted in this. Most delightful was its desolate untrimmed luxuriance--where the peaches grew almost wild upon the wall, and one gigantic mulberry-tree looked beautiful all the year through. Moreover, climbing over the picturesque, bay-windowed house, was such a clematis!