Olive Part 9

"Your dresses must be handsomer and more womanly now, Olive; for I intend to take you out with me now and then. You are quite old enough; and I am tired of visiting alone. I intended to speak to your papa about it to-night; but he seems not in a good humour."

"Only tired with his journey," put in the sweet little awdiator. "Is it not so papa?"

Captain Rothesay started from a dull, anxious reverie, into which his reading had merged, and lifted his face, knitted and darkened with some inward care, heavy enough to make his tone sharp and angry, as he said,

"Well, child, what do you want?"

"Do not scold Olive; it was I who wished to speak to you." And then, without pausing to consider how evidently ill-timed the conversation was, Mrs. Rothesay began to talk eagerly about Olive's "coming out," and whether it should be at home or abroad; finally arguing that a ball at Merivale would be best, and entering at large on the question of ball-costume. There was nothing wrong in anything she said, but she said it at the wrong time. Her husband listened first with indifference, then fidgeted restlessly in his chair, and at last subsided into an angry silence.

"Why don't you speak, Captain Rothesay?" He took up the poker and hammered the fire to small cinders. "Of course, you will be reasonable.

Say, shall it be as I have arranged?"

"No!" The word came thundering out--as Captain Rothesay rarely thundered; for he was calm and dignified even in his wrath. Immediately afterwards he rose up and left the room.

Sybilla grew pale, sorrowful, and then melted into tears. She tried not to let Olive see them. She was still too faithful a wife to seek in any way to turn the child against her father. But yet she wept: and drawing her young daughter closer to her arms, she felt the sweetness of having a child--and such a child--left to love her. In proportion as the wife's heart closed, the mother's opened.

Ere long, Captain Rothesay sent for little Olive, to read the evening newspaper to him in his study.

"Go, love," said Mrs. Rothesay; and she went--without fear, too; for her father never said a harsh word to _her_. And as, each year of her life, the sterling truth and stern uprightness of his character dawned upon her, she could not fail to respect him, even while she worshipped her sweet-tempered gentle mother.

Captain Rothesay made no remark, save upon the subject she was reading, and came in with Olive to tea, just as usual. But when he had finished, and was fast sinking back into that painful reverie which seemed to oppress him, his weak ill-judging wife recommenced her attack. She talked gently when speaking of Olive, even affectionately--poor soul!

She persuaded herself, all the time, that she was doing right, and that he was a hardhearted father not to listen to her. He did listen, apparently; and she took his silence for consent, for she ended with--

"Well, then, it is quite settled; the ball shall be at Merivale, on the 20th of next month."

Angus turned round, his blue eyes glittering, yet cold as steel--"Mrs.

Rothesay, if you will worm the truth out of me, you shall. By next month you may not have a roof over your head."

He rose up and again quitted the room. Mrs. Rothesay trembled--grew terrified--but tried to rea.s.sure herself. "He only says this in anger, or else to frighten me. I will not believe it." Then conscience whispered, that never in her whole life had she known Angus Rothesay to tell a falsehood; and she trembled more and more. Finally, she pa.s.sed into a violent fit of nervous weeping--a circ.u.mstance by no means rare.

Her health was weakened by the exciting gaieties of her outward life, and the inward sorrow which preyed upon her heart.

This night--and not for the first time either--the little maiden of fifteen might have been seen, acting with the energy and self-possession of a woman--soothing her mother's hysterical sufferings--smoothing her pillow, and finally watching by her until she fell asleep. Then Olive crept downstairs, and knocked at her father's study-door. He said, "Come in," in a dull, subdued tone. She entered, and saw him sitting, his head on his hand, jaded and exhausted, leaning over the last embers of the fire, which had gone out without his noticing it. If there had been any anger in the child's heart, it must have vanished at once, when she looked upon her father thus.

"Oh! is that you, Olive?" was all he said, beginning to turn over his papers, as if to make a show of occupation.

But he soon relapsed into that unknown thought which oppressed him so much. It was some minutes before he completely aroused himself, and saw the little elfin-like figure standing beside him, silent and immovable, with the taper in her hand.

"Shall I bring your candle, dear papa? It is eleven o'clock and more."

"Where is your mother, Olive?"

"She is gone to bed;" and Olive paused, uncertain whether she should tell him that her mamma was ill. Again there was a silence--during which, do what he would, Captain Rothesay could not keep his eyes from the earnest, wistful, entreating gaze of his "little Olive." At last, he lifted her on his knee, and took her face between his two hands, saying, in a smothered tone,

"You are not like your mother; you are like _mine_--ay, and seem more so as you grow to be a woman."

"I wish I were a woman, that papa might talk to me and tell me anything which he has on his mind," whispered Olive, scarcely daring to breathe that which she had nerved herself to say, during many minutes of silent pondering at the study-door.

Captain Rothesay relapsed hastily into his cold manner. "Child, how do you know?"

"I know nothing, and want to know nothing, that papa does not wish to tell me," answered Olive, gently.

The father turned round again, and looked into his daughter's eyes.

Perhaps he read there a spirit equal to, and not unlike, his own--a nature calm, resolute, clear-sighted; the strong will and decision of a man, united to the tenderness of a woman. From that hour father and daughter understood one another.

"Olive, how old are you?--I forget."

"Fifteen, dear papa."

"Ah! and you are a thoughtful girl. I can talk to you as to a woman--pah! I mean, a sensible woman. Put out your candle; you can sit up a while longer."

She obeyed, and sat with him for two whole hours in his study, while he explained to her how sudden reverses had so damaged his fortune that it was necessary to have a far smaller establishment than Merivale Hall.

"Not that we need fear poverty, my dear child; but the future must be considered and provided for. Your mother's jointure, should I die--nay, do not look sad, we will not talk of that--and then, too, your own portion, when you marry."

Olive blushed, as any girl of fifteen will do when talked to on such a topic, even in the most business-like way. "I shall not marry, papa,"

said she, expressing the thought which had come to her, as it does to most young girls who love their parents very dearly, too dearly to imagine a parting.

Captain Rothesay started, as if suddenly recollecting himself. Then he regarded her earnestly, mournfully; and in the look was something which struck on Olive's memory as though she had seen it before.

"I had forgotten," muttered Captain Rothesay to himself. "Of course, she will never marry. Poor child!--poor child!"

He kissed her very tenderly, then lighted his candle, and went upstairs to bed, holding her hand all the way, until they parted at her room door, when he kissed her a second time. As he did so, she contrived to whisper--

"Mamma is sure to wake; she always does when you come in. Kiss mamma, too."

Olive went to bed, happier than she could have believed possible, had any one told her in the morning that ere night she would hear the ill news of having to leave beautiful Merivale. But it was so sweet to feel herself a comfort to both parents--they who, alas! would receive no comfort from each other.

Only, just when she was falling asleep, the thought floated across Olive's mind--

"I wonder why papa said that, of course, I should never marry!"

CHAPTER XI.

"Dear mamma, is not this a pretty house, even though it is in a town?--so pretty, one need hardly pine after Merri-vale."

Thus said Olive when they had been established some time in their new abode, and sat together, one winter evening, listening to the sweet bells of Oldchurch--one of the few English parishes where lingers "the curfew's solemn sound."

"A pretty house, if any one came to see us in it, my dear; but n.o.body does. And then we miss the close carriage so much. To think that I have been obliged to refuse the Stantons' ball and the dinner-party at Everingham. How dull these long winter evenings will be, Olive!"

Olive answered neither _yes_ nor _no_, but tried quietly, by her actions, to disprove the fact She was but a child--scarcely would have been called a clever child; was neither talkative nor musical; and yet she had a thousand winning ways of killing time, so sweetly that each minute died, dolphin-like, shedding glorious hues.

A very romantic simile this--one that would never have crossed Olive's innocent brain. She only knew that she loved her mother; and therefore tried to amuse and make her happy, so that she might not feel the change of circ.u.mstances--a change so unimportant to Olive, so vital to Mrs.

Rothesay.

Olive, this night, was peculiarly successful in her little _ruse_ of love. Her mother listened while she explained a whole sketch-book of designs, ill.u.s.trative of half-a-dozen modern poets. Mrs. Rothesay even asked her to read some of the said poets aloud; and though not of an imaginative temperament, was fain to shed a few womanly tears over Tennyson's "Queen of the May" and the "Miller's Daughter." Finally, she was coaxed into sitting to her daughter for her portrait, which Olive thought would make a design exactly suited to the heroine of the latter poem, and chiefly at the verse--