Olive Part 40

"Truth, still truth, I yearned for in another form--in domestic peace--in the love of woman.--My soul was famishing for any food; I s.n.a.t.c.hed this--in my mouth it became ashes!" His voice seemed choking, but with an effort he continued. "After this time I gave up earth, and turned to interests beyond it. With straining eyes I gazed into the Infinite--and I was dazzled, blinded, whirled from darkness to light, and from light to darkness--no rest, no rest! This state lasted long, but its end came. Now I walk like a man in his sleep, feeling nothing, fearing nothing,--no, thou mighty Unknown, I do _not_ fear! But then I hope nothing: I believe nothing. Those pleasant dreams of yours--G.o.d, Heaven, Immortality--are to me meaningless words. At times I utter them, and they seem to shine down like pitiless stars upon the black boiling sea in which I am drowning."

"Oh, G.o.d, have mercy!" moaned Olive Rothesay. "Give me strength that my own faith fail not, and that I may bring Thy light unto this perishing soul!" And turning to Harold, she said aloud, as calmly as she could, "Tell me--since you have told me thus far--how you came to take upon yourself the service of the Church; you who"----

"Ay, well may you pause and shudder! Hear, then, how the devil--if there be one--can mock men's souls in the form of an angel of light. But it is a long history--it may drive me to utter things that you will shrink from."

"I _will_ hear it." There was, in that soft, firm voice an influence which Harold perforce obeyed. She was stronger than he, even as light is stronger than darkness.

Mr. Gwynne began, speaking quietly, even humbly. "When I was a youth studying for the Church, doubts came upon my mind, as they will upon most young minds whose strivings after truth are hedged in by a th.o.r.n.y rampart of old worn-out forms. Then there came a sudden crisis in my life; I must either enter on a ministry in whose creed I only half believed, or let my mother--my n.o.ble, self-denying mother--starve. You know her, Miss Rothesay, though you know not half that she is, and ever was to me. But you do know what it is to have a beloved mother."

"Yes."

Infidel as he was, she could have clung to Harold Gwynne, and called him brother.

"Well, after a time of great inward conflict, I decided--for her sake.

Though little more than a boy in years, struggling in a chaos of mingled doubt and faith, I bound myself to believe whatever the Church taught, and to lead souls to heaven in the Church's own road. These very bonds, this vow so blindly to be fulfilled, made me, in after years, an infidel."

He paused to look at her.

"I am listening, speak on," said Olive Rothesay.

"As you say truly, I am one whose natural bent of mind is less to faith than to knowledge. Above all, I am one who hates all falsehood, all hypocritical show. Perchance in the desert I might have learned to serve G.o.d. Face to face with Him I might have worshiped His revealings. But when between me and the one great Truth came a thousand petty veils of cunning forms and blindly taught precedents; when among my brethren I saw wicked men preaching virtue--men without brains enough to acquire a mere worldly profession, such as law or physic, set to expound the mighty mysteries of religion--then I said to myself, 'The whole system is a lie!' So I cast it from me, and my soul stood forth in its naked strength before the Creator of all."

"But why did you still keep up this awful mockery?"

"Because," and his voice sounded hoa.r.s.e and hollow, "just then there was upon me a madness which all men have in youth--love. For that I became a liar in the face of Heaven, of men, and of my own soul."

"It was a great sin."

"I know it; and, being such, it fell down upon my head in a curse.

Since then I have been what you now see me--a very honest, painstaking clergyman; doing good, preaching, certainly not doctrine, but blameless moralities, carrying a civil face to the world, and a heart--Oh G.o.d!

whosoever and whatsoever Thou art, Thou knowest what blackest darkness there is _there!_"

She made no answer.

After a few minutes, Mr. Gwynne said, "You must forgive me, Miss Rothesay."

"I do. And so will He whom you do not know, but whom you will know yet! I will pray for you--I will comfort you. I wish I were indeed your sister, that I might never leave you until I brought you to faith and peace."

He smiled very faintly. "Thank you; it is something to feel there is goodness in the world. I did not believe in any except my mother's.

Perhaps if she had known all this--if I could have told her--I had not been the wretched man I am."

"Hush; do not talk any more." And then she stood beside him for some minutes quite silent, until he grew calm.

They were on the verge of the forest, close to Olive's home. It was about seven in the evening, but all things lay as in the stillness of midnight. They two might have been the only beings in the living world--all else dead and buried under the white snow. And then, lifting itself out of the horizon's black nothingness, arose the great red moon, like an immortal soul.

"Look!" said Olive. He looked once, and no more. Then, with a sigh, he placed her arm in his, and walked with her to her own door.

Arrived there, he bade her adieu, adding, "I would bid G.o.d bless you; but in such words from me, you would not believe. How could you?"

He said this with a mournful emphasis, to which she could not reply.

"But," he continued in a tone of eager anxiety, "remember that I have trusted you. My secret is in your hands. You will be silent, I know; silent as death, or eternity.--That is, as both are to me!"

Olive promised; and he left her. She stood listening, until the echo of his footfall ceased along the frosty road; then, clasping her hands, she lifted once more the pet.i.tion "for those who have erred and are deceived," the prayer which she had once uttered--unconscious how much and by whom it was needed. Now she said it with a yearning cry--a cry that would fain pierce heaven, and ringing above the loud choir of saints and angels, call down mercy on one perishing human soul.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

Never since her birth had Olive felt such a bewildering weight of pain, as when she awoke to the full sense of that terrible secret which she had learned from Harold Gwynne. This pain lasted, and would last, not alone for an hour or a day, but perpetually. It gathered round her like a mist. She seemed to walk blindfold, she knew not whither. Never to her, whose spiritual sense was ever so clear and strong, had come the possibility of such a mind as Harold's, a mind whose very eagerness for truth had led it into scepticism. His doubts must be wrestled with, not with the religion of precedent--not even with the religion of feeling--but by means of that clear demonstration of reason which forces conviction.

In the dead of night, when all was still--when the frosty moon cast an unearthly light over her chamber, Olive lay and thought of these things.

Ever and anon she heard the striking of the clock, and remembered with horror that it heralded the Sabbath morning, when she must go to Har-bury Church--and hear, oh, with what feelings! the service read by one who did not believe a single word he uttered. Not until now had she so thoroughly realised the horrible sacrilege of Harold's daily life.

For a minute she felt as though to keep his secret were a.s.sociating herself with his sin.

But calmer thoughts enabled her to judge him more mercifully. She tried to view his case not as with her own eyes, but as it must appear to him.

To one who disbelieved the Christian faith, the repet.i.tions of its forms could seem but a mere idle mummery. He suffered, not for having outraged Heaven, but for having outraged his own conscience an agony of self-humiliation which must be to him a living death. Then again there awoke in Olive's heart a divine pity; and once more she dared to pray that this soul, in which was so much that was true and earnest, might not be cast out, but guided into the right way.

Yet, who should do it? He was, as he had said, drowning in a black abyss of despair, and there was no human hand to save him--none, save that feeble one of hers!

Feeble--but there was One who could make it strong. Suddenly she felt in her that consciousness which the weakest have at times felt, and which, however the rationalist may scoff, the Christian dare not disbelieve--that sense of not working, but being worked upon--by which truths come into one's heart, and words into one's mouth, involuntarily, as if some spirit, not our own, were at work within us. Such had been oftentimes the case with her; but never so strong as now. A voice seemed breathed into her soul--"Be not afraid."

She arose--her determination taken. "No," she thought, as standing at the window she watched the sun rise gloriously--"No, Lord! _my_ Lord and _my_ G.o.d!--I am not afraid."

Nevertheless, she suffered exceedingly. To bear the burden of this heavy secret; to keep it from her mother; to disguise it before Mrs. Gwynne; above all, to go to church, and have the ministry of such an one as Harold between her and heaven--this last was the most awful point of all; but she could not escape it without betraying him. And it seemed to her that the sin--if sin it were--would be forgiven; nay, her voluntary presence might even strike his conscience.

It was so. When Harold beheld her, his cheeks grew ashen pale. All through the service his reading at times faltered and his eyes were lowered. Once, too, during the epistle for the day, which chanced to be the sixth Sunday after Epiphany, the plain words of St. John seemed to attract his notice, and his voice took an accent of keen sorrow.

Yet, when Olive pa.s.sed out of the church, she felt as though she had spent there years of torture--such torture as no earthly power should make her endure again. And it so chanced that she was not called upon to do so.

Within a week from that time Mrs. Rothesay sank into a state of great feebleness, not indicating positive danger, but still so nearly resembling illness that Olive could not quit her, even for an hour. This painful interest, engrossing all her thoughts, shut out from them even Harold Gwynne. She saw little of him, though she heard that he came almost daily to inquire at the door. But for a long time he rarely crossed the threshold.

"Harold is like all men--he does not understand sickness," said that most kind and constant friend, Mrs. Gwynne. "You must forgive him, both of you. I tell him often it would be an example for him, or for any clergyman in England, to see Olive here--the best and most pious daughter that ever lived. He thinks so too; for once, when I hoped that his own daughter might be like her, you should have heard the earnestness of his 'Amen!'"

This circ.u.mstance touched Olive deeply, and strengthened her the more in that work to which she had determined to devote herself. And a secret hope told her that erring souls are oftentimes reclaimed less by a Christian's preaching than by a Christian's life.

And so, though they did not meet again alone, and no words on the one awful subject pa.s.sed between them, Harold began to come often to the Dell. Mrs. Rothesay's lamp of life was paling so gradually, that not even her child knew how soon it would cease to shine among those to whom its every ray was so precious and so beautiful--more beautiful as it drew nearer its close.

Yet there was no sorrow at the Dell, but great peace--a peace so holy that it seemed to rest upon all who entered there. These were not a few; never was there any one who gained so many kindly attentions as Mrs.

Rothesay. Even the wild young Fludyers inquired after her every day.

Christal, who was almost domiciled at the Hall, and seemed by some invisible attraction most disinclined to leave it, was yet a daily visitor--her high spirit softened to gentleness whenever she came near the invalid.

As to Lyle Derwent, he positively haunted them. His affectations dropped off, he ceased his sentimentalities, and never quoted a single line of poetry. To Olive he appeared in a more pleasing light, and she treated him with her old regard; as for him, he adored the very ground she trod upon. A ministering angel could not have been more hallowed in his eyes.

He often made Mrs. Rothesay and Olive smile with his raptures; and the latter said sometimes that he was certainly the same enthusiastic little boy who had been her knight in the garden by the river. She never thought of him otherwise; and though he often tried, in half-jesting indignation, to a.s.sure her that he was quite a man now, he seemed still a lad to her. There was the difference of a lifetime between his juvenile romance and her calm reality of six-and-twenty years.

She did not always feel so old though. When kneeling by her mother's side, amusing her, Olive still felt a very child; and there were times when near Harold Gwynne she grew once more a feeble, timid girl. But now that the secret bond between them was held in abeyance, their intercourse sank within its former boundary. Even his influence could not compete with that affection which had been the day-star of Olive's life. No other human tie could come between her and her mother.

Beautiful it was to see them, clinging together so closely that none of those who loved both had the courage to tell them how soon they must part. Sometimes Mrs. Gwynne would watch Olive with a look that seemed to ask, "Child, have you strength to bear?" But she herself had not the strength to tell her. Besides, it seemed as though these close cords of love were knitted so tightly around the mother, and every breath of her fading life so fondly cherished, that she could not perforce depart.