Читать книгу Olive - Dinah Maria Mulock Craik - Страница 9

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Next morning Captain Rothesay and his wife sat together by the fireside, where she had so often sat alone. Sybilla seemed in high spirits—her love was ever exuberant in expression—and the moment her husband seemed serious she sprang on his knee and looked playfully in his face.

“Just as much a child as ever, I see,” said Angus Rothesay, with a rather wintry smile.

And then, looking in his face by daylight, Sybilla had opportunity to see how changed he was. He had become a grave, middle-aged man. She could not understand it. He had never told her of any cares, and he was little more than thirty. She felt almost vexed at him for growing so old; nay, she even said so, and began to pull out a few grey hairs that defaced the beauty of his black curls.

“You shall lecture me presently, my dear,” said Captain Rothesay. “You forget that I had two welcomes to receive, and that I have not yet seen my little girl.”

He had not indeed. His eager inquiries after Olive overnight had been answered by a pretty pout, and several trembling, anxious speeches about “a wife being dearer than a child.” “Baby was asleep, and it was so very late—he might, surely, wait till morning.” To which, though rather surprised, he assented. A few more caresses, a few more excuses, had still further delayed the terrible moment; until at last the father's impatience would no longer be restrained.

“Come, Sybilla, let us go and see our little Olive.”

“O Angus!” and the mother turned deadly white.

Captain Rothesay seemed alarmed. “Don't trifle with me, Sybilla—there is nothing the matter? The child is not ill?”

“No; quite well.”

“Then, why cannot Elspie bring her?” and he pulled the bell violently. The nurse appeared. “My good Elspie, you have kept me waiting quite long enough; do let me see my little girl.”

Elspie gave one glance at the mother, who stood mute and motionless, clinging to the chair for support. In that glance was less compassion than a sort of triumphant exultation. When she quitted the room Sybilla flung herself at her husband's feet. “Angus, Angus, only say you forgive me before”——

The door opened and Elspie led in a little girl. By her stature she might have been two years old, but her face was like that of a child of ten or twelve—so thoughtful, so grave. Her limbs were small and wasted, but exquisitely delicate. The same might be said of her features; which, though thin, and wearing a look of premature age, together with that quiet, earnest, melancholy cast peculiar to deformity, were yet regular, almost pretty. Her head was well-shaped, and from it fell a quantity of amber-coloured hair—pale “lint-white locks,” which, with the almost colourless transparency of her complexion, gave a spectral air to her whole appearance. She looked less like a child than a woman dwarfed into childhood; the sort of being renowned in elfin legends, as springing up on a lonely moor, or appearing by a cradle-side; supernatural, yet fraught with a nameless beauty. She was dressed with the utmost care, in white, with blue ribands; and her lovely hair was arranged so as to hide, as much as possible, the defect, which, alas! was even then only too perceptible. It was not a hump-back, nor yet a twisted spine; it was an elevation of the shoulders, shortening the neck, and giving the appearance of a perpetual stoop. There was nothing disgusting or painful in it, but still it was an imperfection, causing an instinctive compassion—an involuntary “Poor little creature, what a pity!”

Such was the child—the last daughter of the ever-beautiful Rothesay line—which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish shyness—only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of an iron vice.

“Tell me! Is that—that miserable creature—our daughter, Olive Rothesay?”

She answered, “Yes.” He shook her off angrily, looked once more at the child, and then turned away, putting his hand before his eyes, as if to shut out the sight.

Olive saw the gesture. Young as she was, it went deep to her child's soul. Elspie saw it too, and without bestowing a second glance on her master or his wife, she snatched up the child and hurried from the room.

The father and mother were left alone—to meet that crisis most fatal to wedded happiness, the discovery of the first deceit Captain Rothesay sat silent, with averted face; Sybilla was weeping—not that repentant shower which rains softness into a man's heart, but those fretful tears which chafe him beyond endurance.

“Sybilla, come to me!” The words were a fond husband's words: the tone was that of a master who took on himself his prerogative. Never had Angus spoken so before, and the wilful spirit of his wife rebelled.

“I cannot come. I dare not even look at you. You are so angry.”

His only answer was the reiterated command, “Sybilla, come!” She crept from the far end of the room, where she was sobbing in a fear-stricken, childish way, and stood before him. For the first time she recognised her husband, whom she must “obey.” Now, with all the power of his roused nature, he was teaching her the meaning of the word. “Sybilla,” he said, looking sternly in her face, “tell me why, all these years, you have put upon me this cheat—this lie!”

“Cheat!—lie! Oh, Angus! What cruel, wicked words!”

“I am sorry I used them, then. I will choose a lighter term—deceit. Why did you so deceive your husband?”

“I did not mean it,” sobbed the young wife. “And this is very unkind of you, Angus! As if Heaven had not punished me enough in giving me that miserable child!”

“Silence! I am not speaking of the child, but of you; my wife, in whom I trusted; who for five long years has wilfully deceived me. Why did you so?”

“Because I was afraid—ashamed. But those feelings are past now,” said Sybilla, resolutely. “If Heaven made me mother, it made you father to this unhappy child. You have no right to reproach me.”

“God forbid! No, it is not the misfortune—it is the falsehood which stings me.”

And his grave, mournful tone, rose into one of bitter anger. He paced the room, tossed by a passion such as his wife had never before seen.

“Sybilla!” he suddenly cried, pausing before her; “you do not know what you have done. You little think what my love has been, nor against how much it has struggled these five years. I have been true to you—ay, to the depth of my heart And you to me have been—not wholly true.”

Here he was answered by a burst of violent hysterical weeping. He longed to call for feminine assistance to this truly feminine ebullition, which he did not understand. But his pride forbade. So he tried to soothe his wife a little with softer words, though even these seemed somewhat foreign to his lips, after so many long-parted years.

“I did not mean to pain you thus deeply, Sybilla. I do not say that you have ceased to love me!”

Would that Sybilla had done as her first impulse taught her; have clung about him, crying “Never! never!” murmuring penitent words, as a tender wife may well do, and in such humility be the more exalted! But she had still the wayward spirit of a petted child. Fancying she saw her husband once more at her feet, she determined to keep him there. She wept on, refusing to be pacified.

At last Angus rose from her side, dignified and cold, his new, not his old self; the lover no more, but the quiet, half-indifferent husband. “I see we had better not talk of these things until you are more composed—perhaps, indeed, not at all. What is past—is past, and cannot be recalled.”

“Angus!” She looked up, frightened at his manner. She determined to conciliate him a little. “What do you want me to do? To say I am sorry? That I will—but,” with an air of coquettish command, “you must say so too.”

The jest was ill-timed; he was in too bitter a mood. “Excuse me—you exact too much, Mrs. Rothesay.”

“Mrs. Rothesay! Oh, call me Sybilla, or my heart will break!” cried the young creature, throwing herself into his arms. He did not repulse her; he even looked down upon her with a melting, half-reproachful tendernes.

“How happy we might have been! How different had been this coming home if you had only trusted me, and told me all from the beginning.”

“Have you told me? Is there nothing you have kept back from me these five years?”

He started a little, and then said resolutely, “Nothing, Sybilla! I declare to Heaven—nothing! save, perhaps, some trifles that I would at any time tell you; now, if you will.”

“Oh no! some other time, I am too much exhausted now,” murmured Sybilla, with an air of languor, half real, half feigned, lest perchance she should lose what she had gained. In the sweetness of this reconciled “lovers' quarrel,” she had almost forgotten its hapless cause. But Angus, after a pause of deep and evidently conflicting thoughts, referred to the child.

“She is ours still. I must not forget that. Shall I send for her again?” he said, as if he wished to soothe the mother's wounded feelings.

Alas! in Sybilla's breast the fountain of mother's feeling was as yet all sealed. “Send for Olive!” she said, “oh no! Do not, I implore you. The very sight of her is a pain to me. Let us two be happy together, and let the child be left to Elspie.”

Thus she said, thinking not only to save herself, but him, from what must be a constant pang. Little she knew him, or guessed the after-effect of her words.

Angus Rothesay looked at his wife, first with amazement, then with cold displeasure. “My dear, you scarcely speak like a mother. You forget likewise that you are speaking to a father. A father who, whatever affection may be wanting, will never forsake his duty. Come, let us go and see our child.”

“I cannot—I cannot!” and Sybilla hung back, weeping anew.

Angus Rothesay looked at his wife—the pretty wayward idol of his bridegroom-memory—looked at her with the eyes of a world-tried, world-hardened man. She regarded him too, and noted the change which years had brought in her boyish lover of yore. His eye wore a fretful reproach—his brow, a proud sorrow.

He walked up to her and clasped her hand. “Sybilla, take care! All these years I have been dreaming of the wife and mother I should find here at home; let not the dream prove sweeter than the reality.”

Sybilla was annoyed—she, the spoilt darling of every one, who knew not the meaning of a harsh word. She answered, “Don't let us talk so foolishly.”

“You think it foolish? Well, then! we will not speak in this confidential way any more. I promise, and you know I always keep my promises.”

“I am glad of it,” answered Sybilla. But she lived to rue the day when her husband made this one promise.

At present, she only felt that the bitter secret was disclosed, and Angus' anger overpast. She gladly let him quit the room, only pausing to ask him to kiss her, in token that all was right between them. He did so, kindly, though with a certain pride and gravity—and departed. She dared not ask him whether it was to see again their hapless child.

What passed between the father and mother whilst they remained shut up together there, Elspie thought not-cared not. She spent the time in passionate caresses of her darling, in half-muttered ejaculations, some of pity some of wrath. All she desired was to obliterate the impression which she saw had gone deeply to the child's heart. Olive wept not—she rarely did; it seemed as though in her little spirit was a pensive repose, above either infant sorrow or infant fear. She sat on her nurse's knee, scarcely speaking, but continually falling into those reveries which we see in quiet children even at that early age, and never without a mysterious wonder, approaching to awe. Of what can these infant musings be?

“Nurse,” said the child, suddenly fixing on Elspie's face her large eyes, “was that my papa I saw?”

“It was just himsel, my sweet wee pet,” cried Elspie, trying to stop her with kisses; but Olive went on.

“He is not like mamma—he is great and tall, like you. But he did not take up and kiss me, as you said he would.”

Elspie had no answer for these words—spoken in a tone of quiet pain—so unlike a child. It is only after many years that we learn to suffer and be silent.

Was it that nature, ever merciful, had implanted in this poor girl, as an instinct, that meek endurance which usually comes as the painful experience of after-life?

A similar thought passed through Elspie's mind, while she sat with little Olive at the window, where, a few years ago, she had stood rocking the new-born babe in her arms, and pondering drearily on its future. That future seemed still as dark in all outward circumstances—but there was one ray of hope, which centred in the little one herself. There was something in Olive which passed Elspie's comprehension. At times she looked almost with an uneasy awe on the gentle, silent child who rarely played, who wanted no amusing, but would sit for hours watching the sky from the window, or the grass and waving trees in the fields; who never was heard to laugh, but now and then smiled in her own peculiar way—a smile almost “uncanny,” as Elspie expressed it. At times the old Scotswoman—who, coming from the debateable ground between Highlands and Lowlands, had united to the rigid piety of the latter much wild Gaelic superstition—was half inclined to believe that the little girl was possessed by some spirit. But she was certain it was a good spirit; such a darling as Olive was—so patient, and gentle, and good—more like an angel than a child.

If her misguided parents did but know this! Yet Elspie, in her secret heart, was almost glad they did not. Her passionate and selfish love could not have borne that any tie on earth, not even that of father or mother, should stand between her and the child of her adoption.

While she pondered, there came a light knock to the door, and Captain Rothesay's voice was heard without—his own voice, soothed down to its soft, gentleman-like tone; it was a rare emotion, indeed, could deprive it of that peculiarity.

“Nurse, I wish to see Miss Olive Rothesay.”

It was the first time that formal appellation had ever been given to the little girl. Still it was a recognition. Elspie heard it with joy. She answered the summons, and Captain Rothesay walked in.

We have never described Olivet father—there could not be a better opportunity than now. His tall, active form—now subsiding into the muscular fulness of middle age—was that of a Hercules of the mountains. The face combined Scottish beauties and Scottish defects, which, perhaps, cease to be defects when they become national peculiarities. There was the eagle-eye: the large, but well-chiselled features—especially the mouth; and also there was the high cheek-bone, the rugged squareness of the chin, which, while taking away beauty, gave character.

When he came nearer, one could easily see that the features of the father were strangely reflected in those of the child. Altered the likeness was—from strength into feebleness—from manly beauty into almost puny delicacy; but it did exist, and, faint as it was, Elspie perceived it.

Olive was looking up at the clouds, her thin cheek resting against the embrasure of the window, gazing so intently that she never seemed to hear her father's voice or step. Elspie motioned him to walk softly, and they came behind the child.

“Do ye no see, Captain Angus,” she whispered, “'tis your ain bonnie face—ay, and your Mither's. Ye mind her yet?”

Captain Rothesay did not answer, but looked earnestly at his little daughter. She, turning round, met his eyes. There was something in their expression which touched her, for a rosy colour suffused her face; she smiled, stretched out her little hands, and said “Papa!”

How Elspie then prided herself for the continual tutoring which had made the image of the absent father an image of love!

Captain Rothesay started from his reverie at the sound of the child's voice. The tone, and especially the word, broke the spell. He felt once more that he was the father, not of the blooming little angel that he had pictured, but of this poor deformed girl. However, he was a man in whom a stern sense of right stood in the place of many softer virtues. He had resolved on his duty—he had come to fulfil it—and fulfil it he would. So he took the two little cold hands, and said—

“Papa is glad to see you, my dear.”

There was a silence, during which Elspie placed a chair for Captain Rothesay, and Olive, sliding quietly down from hers, came and stood beside him. He did not offer to take the two baby-hands again, but did not repulse them, when the little girl laid them on his knee, looking inquiringly, first at him, and then at Elspie.

“What does she mean?” said Captain Rothesay.

“Puir bairn! I tauld her, when her father was come hame, he wad tak' her in his arms and kiss her.”

Rothesay looked angrily round, but recollected himself. “Your nurse was right, my dear.” Then pausing for a moment, as though arming himself for a duty—repugnant, indeed, but necessary—he took his daughter on his knee, and kissed her cheek—once, and no more. But she, remembering Elspie's instructions, and prompted by her loving nature, clung about him, and requited the kiss with many another. They melted him visibly. There is nothing sweeter in this world than a child's unasked voluntary kiss!

He began to talk to her—uneasily and awkwardly—but still he did it. “There, that will do, little one! What is your name, my dear?” he said absently.

She answered, “Olive Rothesay.” “Ay—I had forgotten! The name at least, she told me true.” The next moment, he set down the child—softly but as though it were a relief.

“Is papa going?” said Olive, with a troubled look.

“Yes; but he will come back to-morrow. Once a day will do,” he added to himself. Yet, when his little daughter lifted her mouth for another kiss, he could not help giving it.

“Be a good child, my dear, and say your prayers every night, and love nurse Elspie.”

“And papa too, may I?”

He seemed to struggle violently against some inward feeling, and then answered with a strong effort, “Yes.”

The door closed after him abruptly. Very soon Elspie saw him walking with hasty strides along the beautiful walk that winds round the foot of the castle rock. The nurse sat still for a long time thinking, and then ended her ponderings with her favourite phrase,

“God guide us! it's a' come richt at last.”

Poor, honest, humble soul!