Olive: A Novel

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

Reaching home, and hearing Christal warbling some Italian song, Olive went at once to her own apartment, half parlour, half studio. There was a fire lit, and candles. She fastened the door, that she might not be interrupted, and sat down before her desk.

She found some difficulty in opening the secret drawer, for the spring was rusty from long disuse, and her own fingers trembled much. When at last she held the letter in her hand, its yellow paper and faded ink struck her painfully. It seemed like suddenly coming face to face with the dead.

A solemn, anxious feeling stole over her. Ere breaking the seal, she lingered long; she tried to call up all she remembered of her father—his face—his voice—his manners. Very dim everything was! She had been such a mere child until he died, and the ten following years were so full of action, passion, and endurance, that they made the old time look pale and distant. She could hardly remember how she used to feel then, least of all how she used to feel towards her father. She had loved him, she knew, and her mother had loved him, ay, long after love became only memory. He had loved them, too, in his quiet way. Olive thought, with tender remembrance, of his kiss, on that early morning when, for the last time, he had left his home. And for her mother! Often, during Mrs. Rothesay's declining days, had she delighted to talk of the time when she was a young, happy wife, and of the dear love that Angus bore her. Something, too, she hinted of her own faults, which had once taken away that love, and something in Olive's own childish memory told her that this was true. But she repelled the thought, remembering that her father and mother were now together before God.

At length with an effort she opened the letter. She started to see its date—the last night Captain Rothesay ever spent at home—the night, which of all others, she had striven to remember clearly, because they were all three so happy together, and he had been so kind, so loving, to her mother and to her. Thinking of him on this wise, with a most tender sadness, she began to read:

“Olive Rothesay—My dear Child!—It may be many—many years—(I pray so, God knows!) before you open this letter. If so, think of me as I sit writing it now—or rather as I sat an hour ago—by your mother's side, with your arms round my neck. And, thus thinking of me, consider what a fierce struggle I must have had to write as I am going to do—to confess what I never would have confessed while I lived, or while your mother lived. I do it, because remorse is strong upon me; because I would fain that my Olive—the daughter who may comfort me, if I live—should, if I die, make atonement for her father's sins. Ay, sins. Think how I must be driven, thus to humble myself before my own child—to unfold to my pure daughter that—But I will tell the tale plainly, without any exculpation or reserve.

“I was very young when I married Sybilla Hyde. God be my witness, I loved her then, and in my inmost heart I have loved her evermore. Remember, I say this—hear it as if I were speaking from my grave—Olive, I did love your mother. Would to Heaven she had loved me, or shown her love, only a little more!

“Soon after our marriage I was parted from my wife for some years. You, a girl, ought not to know—and I pray may never know—the temptations of the world and of man's own nature. I knew both, and I withstood both. I came back, and clasped my wife to the most loving and faithful heart that ever beat in a husband's breast. I write this even with tears—I, who have been so cold. But in this letter—which no eye will ever see until I and your mother have lain together long years in our grave—I write as if I were speaking, not as now, but as I should speak then.

“Well, between my wife and me there came a cloud. I know not whose was the fault—perhaps mine, perhaps hers; or, it might be, both. But there the cloud was—it hung over my home, so that I could find therein no peace, no refuge. It drove me to money-getting, excitement, amusement—at last to crime!

“In the West Indies there was one who had loved me, in vain,—mark you, I said in vain,—but with the vehemence of her southern blood. She was a Quadroon lady—one of that miserable race, the children of planters and slaves, whose beauty is their curse, whose passion knows no law except a blind fidelity. And, God forgive me! that poor wretch was faithful unto me.

“She followed me to England without my knowledge. Little she had ever heard of marriage; she found no sacred-ness in mine. I did not love her—not with a pure heart as I loved Sybilla. But I pitied her. Sometimes I turned from my dreary home—where no eye brightened at mine, where myself and my interests were nothing—and I thought of this woman, to whom I was all the world. My daughter Olive, if ever you be a wife, and would keep your husband's love, never let these thoughts enter and pollute his mind. Give him your whole heart, and he will ask no other. Make his home sweet and pleasant to him, and he will not stray from it. Bind him round with cords of love—fast—fast. Oh, that my wife had had strength so to encircle me!