Olive Part 59

"Poor child!--poor child!"

"How dare you pity me? You think I am dying for love, do you? But no! It is pride--only pride! Why did I not always scorn that pitiful boy? I did once, and he knows it. And afterwards, because there was no one else to care for, and I was lonely, and wanted a home--haughty, and wanted a position--I have humbled myself thus."

"Then, Christal, if you never did really love him"----

"Who told you that? Not I!" she cried, her broken and contradictory speech revealing the chaos of her mind.

"I say, I did love him--more than you, with your cold prudence, could ever dream of! What could such an one as you know about love? Yet you have taken him from me.

"I tell you, no! Never till this day did he breathe one word of love to me. I can show you his letters."

"Letters! He wrote to you, then, and I never knew it. Oh! how I hate you! I could kill you where you stand!"

She went to the open desk, and began searching there with trembling hands.

"What--what are you going to do?" cried Olive, with sudden terror.

"To take his letters, and read them. I do it in your presence, for I am no dishonourable thief. But I will know everything. You are in my power--you need not stir or shriek."

But Olive did shriek, for she saw that Christal's hand already touched the one fatal letter. A hope there was that she might pa.s.s it by, unconscious that it contained her doom! But no! her eye had been attracted by her own name, mentioned in the postscript.

"More wicked devices against me!" cried the girl, pa.s.sionately. "But I will find out this plot too," and she began to unfold the paper.

"The letter--give me that letter. Oh, Christal! for the happiness of your whole life, I charge you--I implore you not to read it!" cried Olive, springing forward, and catching her arm. But Christal thrust her back with violence. "'Tis something you wish to hide from me; but I defy you! I _will_ read!"

Nevertheless, in the confusion of her mind, she could not at once find the pa.s.sage where she had seen her own name. She began, and read the letter all through, though without a change of countenance until she reached the end. Then the change was so awful, none could be like it, save that left by death on the human face. Her arms fell paralysed, and she staggered dizzily against the wall.

Trembling, Olive crept up and touched her; Christal recoiled, and stamped on the ground, crying:

"It is all a lie, a hideous lie! _You_ have forged it--to shame me in the eyes of my lover."

"Not so," said Olive, most tenderly; "no one in the wide world knows this, but we two. No one ever shall know it! Oh, would that you had listened to me, then I should still have kept the secret, even from you!

My sister--my poor sister!"

"_Sister!_ And you are his child, his lawful child, while I---- But you shall not live to taunt me. I will kill you, that you may go to your father, and mine, and tell him that I cursed him in his grave!"

As she spoke, she wreathed her arms round Olive's slight frame, but the deadly embrace was such as never sister gave. With the marvellous strength of fury, she lifted her from the floor, and dashed her down again. In falling, Olive's forehead struck against the marble chimney-piece, and she lay stunned and insensible on the hearth.

Christal looked at her sister for a moment,--without pity or remorse, but in motionless horror. Then she unlocked the door and fled.

CHAPTER XLIV.

When Olive returned to consciousness she was lying on her own bed, the same whereon her mother had died. Olive almost thought that she herself had died too, so still lay the shadows of the white curtains, cast by the one faint night-lamp that was hidden on the floor. She breathed heavily in a kind of sigh, and then she was aware of some watcher close beside, who said, softly, "Are you sleeping, my dear Olive?"

In her confused fancy, the voice seemed to her like Harold's. She imagined that she was dead, and that he was sitting beside her bier--sorrowfully--perhaps even in tenderness, as he might look on her _then_. So strong was the delusion, that she feebly uttered his name.

"It is Harold's mother, my dear. Were you dreaming about my son?"

Olive was far too ill to have any feeling of self-betrayal or shame; nor was there any consecutive memory in her exhausted mind. She only stretched out her hands to Harold's mother with a sense of refuge and peace.

"Take care of me! Oh, take care of me!" she murmured; and as she felt herself drawn lovingly to that warm breast--the breast where Harold had once lain--she could there have slept herself into painless death, wherein the only consciousness was this one thought of him.

But, after an hour or two, the life within her grew stronger, and she began to consider what had happened. A horrible doubt came, of something she had to hide.

"Tell me, do tell me, Mrs. Gwynne, have I said anything in my sleep?

Don't mind it, whatever it be. I am ill, you know."

"Yes, you have been ill for some days. I have been nursing you."

"And what has happened in this house, the while? Oh, where is Christal,--poor Christal?"

There was a frown on Mrs. Gwynne's countenance--a frown so stern that it brought back to Olive's memory all that had befallen. Earnestly regarding her, she said, "Something has happened--something awful. How much of it do you know?"

"Everything! But, Olive, we must not talk."

"_I_ must not be left to think, or I should lose my senses again.

Therefore, let me hear all that you have found out, I entreat you!"

Mrs. Gwynne saw she had best comply, for there was still a piteous bewilderment in Olive's look. "Lie still," she said, "and I will tell you. I came to this house when that miserable girl was rus.h.i.+ng from it. I brought her back--I controlled her, as I have ere now controlled pa.s.sions as wild as hers, though she is almost a demon."

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" murmured Olive.

"She told me everything. But all is safe, for I have possession of the letter; and I have nursed you myself, alone."

"Oh, how good, how wise, how faithful you have been!"

"I would have done all and more for your sake, Olive, and for the sake of your unhappy father. But, oh! that ever I should hear this of Angus Rothesay. Alas! it is a sinful, sinful world. Never knew I one truly good man, save my son Harold."

The mention of this name fell on Olive's wandering thoughts like balm, turning her mind from the horror she had pa.s.sed through. Besides, from her state of exhaustion, everything was growing dim and indistinct to her mind.

"You shall tell me more another time," she said; and then, sinking back on her pillow, still holding fast the hand of Harold's mother, she lay and slept till morning.

When, in the daylight, she recovered a little more, Mrs. Gwynne told her all that had happened. From the moment that Christal saw her sister carried upstairs, dead, as it were, her pa.s.sion ceased. But she exhibited neither contrition nor alarm. She went and locked herself up in her chamber, from whence she had never stirred. She let no one enter except Mrs. Gwynne, who seemed to have over her that strong rule which was instinctive in such a woman. She it was who brought Christal her meals, and compelled her to take them; or else, in her sullen misery, the girl would, as she threatened, have starved herself to death. And though many a stormy contest arose between the two, when Mrs. Gwynne, stern in her justice, began to reprove and condemn, still she ever conquered so far as to leave Christal silent, if not subdued.

Subdued she was not. Night after night, when Olive was recovering, they heard her pacing up and down her chamber, sometimes even until dawn. A little her spirit had been crushed, Mrs. Gwynne thought, when there was hanging over her what might become the guilt of murder; but as soon as Olive's danger pa.s.sed, it again rose. No commands, no persuasions, could induce Christal to visit her sister, though the latter entreated it daily, longing for the meeting and reconciliation.

But in illness there is great peace sometimes, especially after a long mental struggle. In the dreamy quiet of her sick-room, all things belonging to the world without, all cares, all sufferings, grew dim to Olive. Ay, even her love. It became sanctified, as though it had been an affection beyond the grave. She lay for hours together, thinking of Harold; of all that had pa.s.sed between them--of his goodness, his tender friends.h.i.+p; of hers to him, more faithful than he would ever know.

It was very sweet, too, to be nursed so tenderly by Harold's mother--to feel that there was growing between them a bond like that of parent and child. Often Mrs. Gwynne even said so, wis.h.i.+ng that in her old age she could have a daughter like Olive; and now and then, when Olive did not see, she stole a penetrating glance, as if to observe how her words were received.

One day when Olive was just able to sit up, and looked, in her white drapery and close cap, so like her lost mother,--Mrs. Gwynne entered with letters. Olive grew pale. To her fancy every letter that came to Harbury could only be from Rome.

"Good tidings, my dear; tidings from Harold. But you are trembling."

"Everything sudden startles me now. I am very weak, I fear," murmured Olive. "But you look so pleased!--All is well with him?"