Olive Part 46

"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 pa.s.s. 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 suns.h.i.+ne and the soft air. "Would that I could be happy in this happy world!"

"It is G.o.d'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 Sat.u.r.day 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 friends.h.i.+p--your silent comforting--your prayers-Yes! thus far I believe. I can say, 'Pray G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion--least of all, the pa.s.sion 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 friends.h.i.+p 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, G.o.d 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!