Olive Part 43

Olive paused. An awful thing it was, with the dead lying in the chamber above, to wrestle with the unbelief of the living. But it seemed as if the spirit of her mother had pa.s.sed into her spirit, giving her strength to speak with words not her own. What if, in the inscrutable purposes of Heaven, this hour of death was to be to him an hour of new birth?

So, repressing all grief and weakness, Olive said, "Let us talk a little of the things which in times like this come home to us as the only realities."

"To you, not to me! You forget the gulf between us!"

"Nay," Olive said, earnestly; "you believe, as I do, in one G.o.d--the Creator and Ruler of this world?"

Harold made solemn a.s.sent.

"Of this world," she continued, "wherein is so much of beauty, happiness, and love. And can that exist in the created which is not in the Creator! Must not, therefore, the great Spirit of the Universe be a Spirit of Love?"

"Your argument contradicts itself," was the desponding answer. "Can _you_ speak thus--you, whose heart yet bleeds with recent suffering?"

"Suffering which my faith has changed into joy. Never until this hour did I look so clearly from this world into the world of souls--never did I so strongly feel within me the presence of G.o.d's spirit, a pledge for the immortality of mine."

"Immortality! Alas, that dream! And yet," he added, looking at her reverently, even with tenderness, "I could half believe that a life like yours--so full of purity and goodness--can never be destined to perish."

"And can you believe in human goodness, yet doubt Him who alone can be its origin? Can you think that He would give the yearning for the hereafter, and yet deny its fulfilment? That he would implant in us love, when there was nothing to love; and faith, when there was nothing to believe?"

Harold seemed struck. "You speak plain, reasonable words--not like the vain babblers of contradictory creeds. Yet you do profess a creed--you join in the Church's service?"

"Because, though differing from many of its doctrines, I think its forms of worship are pure--perhaps the purest extant. But I do not set up the Church between myself and G.o.d. I follow no ritual, and trust no creed, except so far as it is conformable to the instinct of faith--the inward revelation of Himself which he has implanted in my soul--and to that outward revelation, the nearest and clearest that He has ever given of Himself to men, the Divine revelation of love which I find here, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my Lord."

As she spoke, her hand rested on the Bible out of which she had last read to her mother. It opened at the very place, and from it there dropped the little book-marker which Mrs. Rothesay always used, one worked by Olive in her childish days. The sight drew her down to the helplessness of human woe.

"Oh, my mother!--my mother!" She bowed her head upon her knees, and for some minutes wept bitterly. Then she rose somewhat calmer.

"I am going upstairs"---- Her voice failed.

"I know--I know," said Harold.

"She spoke of you: they were almost her last words. You will come with me, friend?"

Harold was a man who never wept--never could weep--but his face grew pale, and there came over him a great awe. His step faltered, even more than her own, as he followed Olive up-stairs.

Her hand trembled a moment on the latch of the door. "No," she said, as if to herself,--"no, it is not my mother; my mother is not here!"

Then she went in composedly, and uncovered the face of the dead; Harold standing beside her.

Olive was the first to speak. "See," she whispered, "how very placid and beautiful it looks!--like her and yet unlike. I never for a moment feel that it is _my mother_."

Harold regarded with amazement the daughter newly orphaned, who stood serenely beholding her dead. He took Olive's hand, softly and with reverence, as if there were something sacred in her touch. _His_ she scarcely seemed to feel, but continued, speaking in the same tranquil voice:

"Two hours ago we were so happy, she and I, talking together of holy things, and of the love we had borne each other. And can such love end with death? Can I believe that one moment--the fleeting of a breath--has left of _my mother_ only this?"

She turned from the bed, and met Harold's eye--intense, athirst--as if his soul's life were in her words.

"You are calm--very calm," he murmured. "You stand here, and have no fear of death."

"No; for I have seen my mother die. Her last breath was on my mouth. I _felt_ her spirit pa.s.s, and I knew that it was pa.s.sing unto G.o.d."

"And you can rejoice?"

"Yes; since for all I lose on earth, heaven--the place of souls, which we call heaven, whatever or wherever that may be--grows nearer to me. It will seem the more my home, now I have a mother there."

Harold Gwynne fell on his knees at the bedside, crying out:

"Oh, G.o.d! that I could believe!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

It was again the season of late summer; and Time's soothing shadow had risen up between the daughter and her grief. The grave in the beautiful churchyard of Har-bury was bright with many months' growth of gra.s.s and flowers. It never looked dreary--nay, often seemed almost to smile. It was watered by no tears--it never had been. Those which Olive shed were only for her own loneliness, and at times she felt that even these were wrong. Many people, seeing how calm she was, and how, after a season, she fell into her old pursuits and her kindly duties to all around, used to say, "Who would have thought that Miss Rothesay would have forgotten her mother so easily?"

But _she did not forget_. Selfish, worldly mourners are they, who think that the memory of the beloved lost can only be kept green by tears.

Olive Rothesay was not of these. To her, her mother's departure appeared no more like death, than did one Divine parting--with reverence be it spoken!--appear to those who stood and looked upward from the hill of Bethany. And thus should we think upon all happy and holy deaths--if we fully and truly believed the faith we own.

Olive did not forget her mother--she could as soon have forgotten her own soul. In all her actions, words, and thoughts, this most sacred memory abided--a continual presence, silent as sweet, and sweet as holy. When her many and most affectionate friends had beguiled her into cheerfulness, so that they fancied she had put aside her sorrow, she used to say in her heart, "See, mother, I can think of you and not grieve. I would not that it should pain you to know I suffer still!"

Yet human feelings could not utterly be suppressed; and there were many times, when at night-time she buried her face on the now lonely pillow, and stretched out her arms into the empty darkness, crying, "My mother, oh my mother!" But then strong love came between Olive and her agony, whispering, that wherever her spirit abided, the mother _could not_ forget her child.

Olive looked very calm now, as she sat with Mrs. Gwynne in the bay-window of the little drawing-room at the Parsonage, engaged in some light work, with Ailie reading a lesson at her knee. It was a lesson too, taken from that lore--at once the most simple and most divine--the Gospels of the New Testament.

"I thought my son would prove himself right in all his opinions,"

observed Mrs. Gwynne, when the lesson was over and the child had run away. "I knew he would allow Ailie to learn everything at the right time."

Olive made no answer. Her thoughts turned to the day--now some months back--when, stung by the disobedience and falsehood that lay hid in a young mind which knew no higher law than a human parent's command, Harold had come to her for counsel She remembered his almost despairing words, "Teach the child as you will--true or false--I care not; so that she becomes like yourself, and is saved from those doubts which rack her father's soul."

Harold Gwynne was not singular in this. Scarcely ever was there an unbeliever who desired to see his own scepticism reflected in his child.

Mrs. Gwynne continued--"I don't think I can ever sufficiently thank you, my dear Miss Rothesay."

"Say _Olive_, as you generally do."

For her Christian name sounded so sweet and homelike from Harold's mother; especially now.

"_Olive_, then! My dear, how good you are to take Ailie so entirely under your care and teaching. But for that, we must have sent her to some school from home, and, I will not conceal from you, that would have been a great sacrifice, even in a worldly point of view, since our income is much diminished by my son's having been obliged to resign his duties altogether, and take a curate. But tell me, do you think Harold looks any better! What an anxious summer this has been!"

And Olive, hearing the heavy sigh of the mother, whose whole existence was bound up in her son, felt that there was something holy even in that deceit, or rather concealment, wherein she herself was now a sorely-tried sharer. "You must not be too anxious," she said; "you know that there is nothing dangerous in Mr. Gwynne's state of health, only his brain has been overworked."

"I suppose so; and perhaps it was the best plan for him to give up all clerical duties for a time. I think, too, that these frequent absences do him good."

"I hope so too."

"Besides, seeing that he is not positively disabled by illness, his parishioners might think it peculiar that he should continually remain among them, and yet abstain from preaching. But my Harold is a strange being; he always was. Sometimes I think his heart is not in his calling--that he would have been more happy as a man of science than as a clergyman. Yet of late he has ceased even that favourite pursuit; and though he spends whole days in his study, I sometimes find that he has not displaced one book, except the large Bible which I gave him when he went to college. G.o.d bless him--my dear Harold!"