Olive: A Novel

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

This may seem a new picture of the maternal and filial bond, but it is frequently true. If we look around on those daughters who have best fulfilled the holy duty, without which no life is or can be blest, are they not women firm, steadfast—able to will and to act? Could not many of them say, “I am a mother unto my mother. I, the strongest now, take her in her feeble age, like a child, to my bosom—shield her, cherish her, and am to her all in all.”

And so, in heart, resolved Olive Rothesay. She had made that vow when her mother lay insensible in her arms; she kept it faithfully; until eternity, closing between them, sealed it with that best of earth's blessings—the blessing that falls on a duteous daughter, whose mother is with God.

When Captain Rothesay's affairs were settled, the sole wreck of his wealth that remained to his widow and child was the small settlement from Mrs. Rothesay's fortune, on which she had lived at Stirling. So they were not left in actual poverty.

Still, Olive and her mother were poor—poor enough to make them desire to leave prying, gossiping Oldchurch, and settle in the solitude of some great town. “There,” Olive said to herself, “I shall surely find means to work for her—that she may have not merely necessaries, but comforts.”

And many a night—during the few weeks that elapsed before their home was broken up—she lay awake by her sleeping mother's side, planning all sorts of schemes; arranging everything, so that Mrs. Rothesay might not be annoyed with arguings or consultations. When all was matured, she had only to say, “Dearest mother, should we not be very happy living together in London?” And scarcely had Mrs. Rothesay assented, than she found everything arranged itself, as under an invisible fairy hand—so that she had but to ask, “My child, when shall we go?”

The time of departure at last arrived. It was the night but one before the sale. Olive persuaded her mother to go to rest early; for she herself had a trying duty to perform—the examining of her father's private papers. As she sat in his study—in solitude and gloom—the young girl might have been forgiven many a pang of grief, even a shudder of superstitious fear. But Heaven had given her a hero-soul, not the less heroic because it was a woman's.

Her father's business-papers she had already examined; these were only his private memoranda. But they were few,—Captain Rothesay's thoughts never found vent in words; there were no data of any kind to mark the history of a life, which was almost as unknown to his wife and daughter as to any stranger. Of letters, she found very few; he was not a man who loved correspondence. Only among these few she was touched deeply to see some, dated years back, at Stirling. Olive opened one of them. The delicate hand was that of her mother when she was young. Olive only glanced at the top of the page, where still smiled, from the worn, yellow paper, the words, “My dearest, dearest Angus;” and then, too right-minded to penetrate further, folded it up again. Yet, she felt glad; she thought it would comfort her mother to know how carefully he had kept these letters. Soon after she found a memento of herself—a little curl, wrapped in silver-paper, and marked with his own hand, “Olive's hair.” Her father had loved her then—ay, and more deeply than she knew.

The chief thing which troubled Olive was the sight of the paper on which her father's dying hand had scrawled “Harold.” No date of any kind had been found to explain the mystery. She determined to think of the matter no more, but to put the paper by in a secret drawer.

In doing so, she found a small packet, carefully tied and sealed. She was about to open it, when the superscription caught her eyes. Thereon she read her father's written desire that it should after his death be burnt unopened.

His faithful daughter, without pausing to think, threw the packet on the fire; even turning aside, lest the flames, while destroying, should reveal anything of the secret. Only once, forgetting herself, the crackling fire made her start and turn, and she caught a momentary glimpse of some curious foreign ornament; while near it, twisted in the flame into almost life-like motion, was what seemed a long lock of black hair. But she could be certain of nothing; she hated herself for even that involuntary glance. It seemed an insult to the dead.