Olive: A Novel

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

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 passed 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 circumstance 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 passed 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 assure 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.