Olive Part 33

The child looked earnestly in Olive's face. "What is heaven, and what is G.o.d?"

Miss Rothesay's amazement was not unmingled with horror. Her own religious faith had dawned so imperceptibly--at once an instinct and a lesson--that there seemed something awful in this question of an utterly untaught mind.

"My poor child," she said, "do you not know who is G.o.d?--has no one told you?"

"No one."

"Then I will."

"Pardon me, madam," said a man's voice behind, calm, cold, but not unmusical; "but it seems to me that a father is the best teacher of his child's faith."

"Papa--it is papa." With a look of shyness almost amounting to fear, the child slid from the tombstone and ran away.

Olive stood face to face with the father.

He was a gentleman--a true _gentleman_; at the first glance any one would have given him that honourable and rarely-earned name. His age might be about thirty-five, but his face was cast in the firm rigid mould over which years pa.s.s and leave no trace. He might have looked as old as now at twenty; at fifty he would probably look little older.

Handsome he was, as Olive discerned at a glance, but there was something in him that controlled her much more than mere beauty would have done.

It was a grave dignity of presence, which indicated that mental sway which some men are born to hold, first over themselves, and then over their kind. Wherever he came, he seemed to say, "I rule--I am master here!"

Olive Rothesay, innocent as she was of any harm to this gentleman or to his child, felt as cowed and humbled as if she had done wrong. She wished she could have fled like the little girl--fled out of reach of his searching glance.

He waited for her to speak first, but she was silent; her colour rose to her very temples; she knew not whether she ought to apologise, or to summon her woman's dignity and meet the stranger with a demeanour like his own.

She was relieved when the sound of his voice broke the pause.

"I fear I startled you, madam; but I was not at first aware who was talking to my little girl. Afterwards, the few words of yours which I overheard induced me to pause."

"What words?"

"About sleep, and dreams, and immortality. Your way of putting the case was graceful--poetical Whether a child would apprehend it or not, is another question."

Olive was surprised at the half-sarcastic, half-earnest way in which he said this. She longed to ask what motive he could have had in bringing the child up in such total ignorance of the first principles of Christianity. The stranger seemed to divine her question, and answer it.

"No doubt you think it strange that my little daughter is so ill-informed in some theological points, and still more that I should have stopped you when you were kind enough to instruct her thereon. But, being a father--to say nothing of a clergyman"--(Olive looked at him in some surprise, and found that her interlocutor bore, in dress at least, a clerical appearance)--"I choose to judge for myself in some things; and I deem it very inexpedient that the feeble mind of a child should be led to dwell on subjects which are beyond the grasp of the profoundest philosopher."

"But not beyond the reverent faith of a Christian," Olive ventured to say.

He looked at her with his piercing eyes, and said eagerly, "You think so, you feel so?" then recovering his old manner, "Certainly--of course--that is the great beauty of a woman's religion. She pauses not to reason,--she is always ready to believe; therefore you women are a great deal happier than the philosophers."

It was doubtful, from his tone, whether he meant this in compliment or in sarcasm. But Olive replied as her own true and pious spirit prompted.

"It seems to me that while the intellect comprehends, the heart, or rather the soul, is the only fountain of belief. Without that, could a man dive into the infinite until he became as an angel in power and wisdom--could he 'by searching find out G.o.d '--still he could not believe."

"_Do you_ believe in G.o.d?"

"I love Him!" She said no more; but her countenance spoke the rest; and her companion saw it He stood as silently gazing as a man who in the desert comes face to face with an angel.

Olive recollecting herself blushed deeply. "I ought to apologise for speaking so freely of these things to a stranger and a clergyman--in this place too."

"Can there be a fitter place, or one that so sanctifies, and at the same time justifies this conversation?" was the answer, as the speaker glanced round the quiet domain of the dead. Then Olive remembered where they stood--that she was talking to the husband over his lost wife's tomb. The thought touched her with sympathy for this man, whose words, though so earnest, were yet so piercing. He seemed as though it were his habit to tear away every flimsy veil, in order to behold the s.h.i.+ning image of Truth.

They were silent for a moment, and then he resumed, with a smile,--the first that had yet lightened his face, and which now cast on it an inexpressible sweetness--

"Let me thank you for talking so kindly to my little daughter. I trust I have sufficiently explained why I interrupted your lessons."

"Still, it seems strange," said Olive. And strong interest conquering her diffidence, she asked how he, a clergyman, had possibly contrived to keep the child in such utter ignorance?

"She has not lived much with me," he answered; "my little Ailie has been brought up in complete solitude. It was best for a child, whose birth was soon followed by her mother's death."

Olive trembled lest she had opened a wound; but his words and manner had the grave composure of one who speaks of any ordinary event. Whatever grief he had felt, it evidently was healed. An awkward pause, during which Miss Rothesay tried to think in what way she could best end the conversation. It was broken at last by little Ailie, who crept timidly across the churchyard to her father.

"Please, papa, grandmamma wants to see you before she goes out. She is going to John Dent's, and to Farnwood, and"----

"Hush, little chatterbox! this lady cannot be interested in our family revelations. Bid her 'good-afternoon' and come!"

He tried to speak playfully, but it was a rigid playfulness. Though a father, it was evident he did not understand children. Bowing to Olive with a stately acknowledgment, he walked on alone towards the little wicket-gate. She noticed that his eye never turned back, either to his dead wife's grave or to his living child. Ailie, while his shadow was upon her, had been very quiet; when he walked away, she sprang up, gave Olive one of those rough, sudden, childish embraces which are so sweet, and then bounded away after her father.

Miss Rothesay watched them both disappear, and then was seized with an eager impulse to know who were this strange father and daughter. She remembered the tombstone, the inscription of which she had not yet seen: for it was half-hidden by an overhanging cornice, and by the tall gra.s.s that grew close by. Olive had to kneel down in order to decipher it. She did so, and read:

"SARA, Wife of the Reverend Harold Gwynne, Died--, Aged 21."

Then, the turf she knelt on covered Sara! the kiss, yet warm on her lips, was given by Sara's child! Olive bowed her face in the gra.s.s, trembling violently. Far, far through long-divided years, her heart fled back to its olden tenderness. She saw again the thorn-tree and the garden-walk, the beautiful girlish face, with its frank and constant smile. She sat down and wept over Sara's grave.

Then she thought of little Ailie. Oh! would that she had known this sooner! that she might have closer clasped the motherless child, and have seen poor Sara's likeness s.h.i.+ning from her daughter's eyes! With a yearning impulse Olive rose up to follow the little girl. But she remembered the father.

How strange--how pa.s.sing strange, that he with whom she had been talking, towards whom she had felt such an awe, and yet a vague attraction, should have been Sara's husband, and the man whose influence had curiously threaded her own life for many years.

She felt glad that the mystery was now solved--that she had at last seen Harold Gwynne.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Miss Rothesay was very silent during the walk home. She accounted for it to Christal by telling the simple truth--that in the churchyard she had found the grave of an early and dear friend. Her young companion looked serious, condoled in set fas.h.i.+on; and then became absorbed in the hateful labyrinths of the muddy road. Certainly, Miss Manners was never born for a simple rustic. Olive could not help remarking this.

"No; I was born for what I am," answered the girl, proudly. "My parents were aristocrats; so am I. Don't lecture me! Wrong or right, I always felt thus, and always shall. If I have neither friends nor relatives, I have at least my family and my name."

She talked thus, as she did sometimes, until they came to the garden-gate of Farnwood Dell. There stood an elegant carriage. Christars eyes brightened at the sight, and she trod with a more patrician air.

The maid--a parting bequest of Miss Meliora's, and who had long and faithfully served at Woodford Cottage--came anxiously to communicate that there were two ladies waiting. One of them she did not know; the other was Mrs. Fludyer. "The latter would have disturbed Mrs. Rothesay,"

Hannah added, "but the other lady said, 'No; they would wait.'" Whereat Olive's heart inclined towards "the other lady."

She went in and found, with Mrs. Fludyer, an ancient dame of large and goodly presence. Aged though she seemed, her tall figure was not bent; and dignity is to the old what grace is to the young. She stood a little aside, and did not speak, but Olive, labouring under the weight of Mrs. Mudyer's gracious inquiries, felt that the old lady's eyes were carefully reading her face. At last Mrs. Fludyer made a motion of introduction.

"No, I thank you," said the stranger, in the unmistakable northern tongue, which, falling from poor Elspie's lips, had made the music of Olive's childhood, and to which her heart yearned evermore. "Miss Rothesay, will you, for your father's sake, let me shake hands with his child? I am Mrs. Gwynne."

Thus it was that Olive received the first greeting of Harold's mother.