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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Olive," Dinah Maria Mulock Craik weaves a poignant narrative centered on a young woman navigating the complex intersections of love, independence, and societal expectations in Victorian England. The novel is noted for its rich detail and psychological depth, utilizing an intimate, almost confessional tone that allows readers to delve into Olive's internal struggles and aspirations. Craik's prose reflects a keen awareness of the constraints placed upon women during her time, skillfully illustrating how Olive's defiance against these norms invites both admiration and critique from those around her. The novel also reflects the emerging themes of the New Woman, capturing the tension between personal desire and societal duty, making it a crucial commentary of its literary context. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, an influential writer of the 19th century, emerged from a background steeped in literary tradition and social reform. Born into a family of moderate means, Craik faced early loss and hardship, lending her a profound empathy for the struggles of women like Olive. Her experiences, coupled with her participation in the literary circles of her time, informed her commitment to embodying female perspectives and advocating for women's rights. "Olive" is an essential read for those intrigued by feminist literature and the exploration of character-driven narratives. Craik's insightful portrayal of personal integrity against societal adversity is remarkably relevant, inspiring readers to reflect on contemporary issues of autonomy and identity. This novel not only enriches its genre but also challenges its audience to reconsider their own perceptions of freedom and constraint. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Olive
Table of Contents
Introduction
With compassionate persistence, the novel contends that a life outwardly marked by limitation can become a proving ground for inward freedom, creativity, and love, pressing against the social habits that equate physical beauty with moral worth and asking how family, faith, and work might broaden or constrict the possibilities of a woman's destiny within a watchful nineteenth-century world, tracing how self-knowledge is forged in the friction between public gaze and private aspiration, how generosity resists humiliation, and how the claim to be seen wholly (in mind, character, and vocation) can reconfigure the domestic sphere into a place of genuine dignity.
Olive is a Victorian domestic novel and bildungsroman by Dinah Maria Mulock (later known as Dinah Maria Mulock Craik), first published in 1850. Set in nineteenth-century Britain, it employs social realism to follow its heroine from childhood into adult life, interlacing family histories with questions of conduct, duty, and choice. Written early in the author's career, the book belongs to a moment when English fiction probed the moral textures of everyday existence and examined the pressures that class expectations, respectability, and economic dependency placed on women. The result is a narrative at once intimate in its focus and attentive to the cultural atmosphere surrounding it.
The premise is spare and resonant: a child is born with a visible difference, an event that unsettles parental assumptions and quietly redraws the map of a household's hopes and fears. As she grows, the girl navigates a world alert to appearances, meeting both kindness and misunderstanding, and discovering how disciplined work and imaginative vision can offer solace and direction. Domestic scenes, friendships, and the wider community supply momentum, while the narrator attends closely to motives and consequences. Rather than hinging on secrets, the book accrues meaning through choices made in ordinary rooms and the gradual recognition of a calling that promises purpose.
Central themes include disability and the ethics of seeing, the negotiation of identity within family and community, and the uneasy power of beauty standards to shape opportunity. The novel interrogates the social gaze that reduces persons to surfaces and insists on the protagonist's full humanity, encompassing labor, affection, and aspiration. It is concerned with education and work as avenues to self-respect, with conscience as a steadying force, and with the forms of care that dignify rather than diminish. In exploring these matters, it invites readers to examine how sympathy is cultivated and how a society reveals itself in its treatment of difference.
Stylistically, the book offers a measured omniscient voice that balances feeling with analysis, pausing to illuminate motive while letting the textures of place and season register. The prose favors clarity and an even cadence characteristic of its period, moving patiently from scene to scene. Moments of heightened emotion sit alongside quiet observation, and small acts—an offer of help, a refusal, a work of art taking shape—are allowed to carry moral weight. Readers should expect reflection rather than sensation, the slow unfolding of character rather than abrupt twists, and a narrative that encourages ethical attention as much as aesthetic appreciation.
Appearing years before the author's later, widely recognized John Halifax, Gentleman, Olive already displays traits that would define Dinah Maria Mulock Craik's fiction: respect for everyday courage, attention to the dignity of labor, and confidence in the educative power of affection. It places a woman's creative ambition within the ordinary pressures of family economies and social judgment, advancing a quietly progressive outlook for its time without recourse to polemic. By grounding social questions in lived experience, the novel participates in contemporary debates about womanhood, work, and moral agency through the cumulative impact of choices and relationships rather than through public controversy.
For readers today, the book's appeal lies in its steadfast tenderness and its insistence that worth cannot be tallied by appearance or applause. Those interested in the history of disability representation, in women's artistic lives, or in the ethics of care will find a thoughtful companion here. Its pacing asks patience, and repays it with an enlarging sympathy and a sense of earned hope. Read as a character-centered journey rather than a puzzle to be solved, Olive offers the quiet satisfactions of recognition and resolve, inviting reflection on how communities might widen their welcome and how dignity can be nurtured within everyday life.
Synopsis
Olive opens with the birth of Olive Rothesay, the only child of Captain Angus Rothesay and his gentle wife, Sybilla. The child’s visible deformity, a curved spine, shocks the proud father and alters the tenor of the household. Sybilla’s tenderness shelters Olive, but Captain Rothesay’s disappointment and restlessness create distance and uncertainty. The family’s circumstances, never fully secure, carry them between Scotland and England, among shifting acquaintances and precarious means. From the outset, the novel sets the themes of beauty and worth beyond appearances, the resilience formed by affection and neglect, and the quiet strength that Olive must develop to find her place in a guarded world.
Olive grows up in partial seclusion, keenly observant and inwardly rich. She discovers an aptitude for drawing, encouraged by her mother’s taste and stories, which cultivate a moral imagination. The father’s fortunes fluctuate, and he remains a commanding but opaque presence. Social conventions of the time limit Olive’s opportunities and emphasize her difference, yet her sympathy and patience win her confidences others miss. The domestic sphere becomes her school: she learns prudence, self-reliance, and a habit of self-effacement. The narrative attends closely to small, formative scenes, establishing Olive’s character as modest, industrious, and perceptive, while hinting that her gifts may someday overcome the boundaries that confine her.
As Olive enters adolescence, chance acquaintances broaden her world. An eccentric painter recognizes her talent and gives disciplined guidance; his kindly sister offers practical counsel and friendship. Through this mentorship, Olive gains technique, purpose, and the first sense of an independent vocation. Meanwhile, Captain Rothesay’s secrets trouble the household: the shadow of a past connection, never fully explained, returns in guarded visits and brief letters. Olive, sensitive to shifts in tone, gathers only fragments. The narrative balances this artistic awakening with deepening domestic unease, suggesting that Olive’s integrity will soon be tested by events that bind art, duty, and the unspoken consequences of her father’s earlier life.
A family crisis brings decisive change. After a bereavement that leaves the two women alone, Olive and her mother settle in modest lodgings and rearrange their lives with quiet economy. Olive begins to earn through painting and teaching, translating talent into livelihood. New acquaintances arise from necessity and inclination: a thoughtful clergyman’s household offers intellectual and moral companionship, while the artistic circle opens commissions and criticism. The provincial town’s rhythms allow Olive to observe varied characters and tempers, strengthening her empathetic insight. The narrative’s focus remains on incremental progress, showing how steady work and principled conduct secure Olive a respected, if fragile, position within a society watchful of rank and reputation.
Into this ordered struggle comes Christal Manners, a brilliant, impetuous young woman whom Olive receives as guest and companion. Christal’s beauty and energy contrast with Olive’s reserve, and her presence both enlivens and unsettles the household. Gradually, Olive discerns that Christal is linked to the unresolved portions of Captain Rothesay’s past. Letters and half-heard stories point to obligations and claims that could wound several families if spoken rashly. Choosing discretion, Olive guards the secret and treats Christal with scrupulous kindness. The plot subtly tightens around this connection, making it the axis upon which loyalty, justice, and personal happiness may turn, while neither fully exposing nor resolving it too soon.
Harold Gwynne, a serious and high-minded clergyman, becomes another pivotal figure in Olive’s circle. His disciplined thought, reserved manner, and devotion to duty attract trust and provoke debate. Olive’s admiration remains quiet, shaped by humility and the habit of self-denial; her own sense of difference discourages any open avowal. Christal’s liveliness captivates drawing rooms and seems to meet Harold’s public expectations more readily. Conversations on faith, truth, and responsibility knit these relationships into a complex fabric. The narrative traces the maturing of feeling without melodrama, letting small gestures, misread silences, and the pressure of conscience build a triangle in which affection, pride, and principle constantly test one another.
Olive’s art advances through steady commissions: portraits that require tact, landscapes that reflect inner stillness, and studies refined under exacting critique. The income stabilizes the household, especially as Sybilla’s health fails, drawing Olive more deeply into tender obligations. Professional decisions pose moral choices: whether to pursue public recognition, accept uncertain patronage, or keep to the unobtrusive work that secures daily bread. Mentors urge confidence, while experience counsels patience. The novel shows craft as character, linking color and line to truthfulness and charity. Olive’s progress remains realistic and hard-won, making independence not a dramatic escape but a measured extension of competence, self-command, and the goodwill she quietly inspires.
The strands of secrecy, love, and duty converge in a series of moral crises. A revelation about family bonds threatens reputations and would, if mishandled, embitter several lives. An imprudent promise, born of haste and pride, forces the principal characters to measure honor against desire. Public opinion, quick to judge, looms in the background, while private conscience demands candor. Olive, guided by a consistent ethic of gentleness and truth, takes a difficult course that requires personal sacrifice and careful speech. The consequences unsettle alliances and test convictions, yet they also open a path toward restitution. Themes of forgiveness, legitimacy, and the worth of inward integrity come decisively to the fore.
In its final movement, the novel draws together domestic and artistic threads into a tempered resolution. Certain wrongs are acknowledged, duties embraced, and estrangements softened, without recasting life as easy or ideal. Olive attains a secure footing earned by perseverance, affection, and unpretending talent. The story’s closing emphasis falls on constancy rather than triumph: the belief that beauty resides in character, that work dignifies, and that generous love redefines limitation. Without relying on dramatic reversals, the book affirms the quiet heroism of a woman who makes a place for herself and others. Its central message is humane and steady: worth is proved by patience, fidelity, and compassionate truth.
Historical Context
Set in the first half of the nineteenth century, Olive unfolds within a British—strongly Scottish—milieu shaped by post‑Napoleonic society, rising provincial towns, and a stern Protestant moral climate. The narrative moves through domestic interiors, small towns, and artistic circles that orbit cultural poles such as Edinburgh and the Clyde region. Time is marked by the aftermath of war (after 1815), the advance of urban industry, and expanding yet stratified middle‑class respectability. The novel’s emphasis on kinship, parish life, and reputation reflects Scotland’s Lowland social order, while the heroine’s pursuit of art situates the story at the intersection of provincial gentility and metropolitan institutions that were only slowly opening to women.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), including the Peninsular War (1808–1814) and Waterloo (18 June 1815), realigned British households through mobilization and demobilization, pensions, and officer patronage. Many Scottish families were entwined with imperial and military service, and postwar contraction pressed veteran households to relocate and recalibrate status. Olive echoes this background through its military father figure and the transits of a genteel family negotiating honor, income, and place in peacetime. The discipline, sacrifice, and dislocation associated with veterans’ return provide a historical frame for the novel’s attention to duty, household authority, and the precariousness of middle‑class security in the decades after 1815.
The Reform Act of 1832 and the Scottish Reform Act of 1832 reconfigured political representation, curbing rotten boroughs and enlarging the electorate. In England and Wales, approximately 217,000 new voters were added; in Scotland, the electorate jumped from roughly 4,500 to about 65,000, strengthening urban and professional voices. These changes underwrote the confidence and anxieties of the provincial middle class—merchants, professionals, and artisans—whose values dominate Olive’s domestic settings. The novel’s worlds of propriety, reputation, and respectability mirror the new civic order, where property, education, and sobriety governed status, yet where women and dependents remained politically voiceless despite their central place in sustaining middle‑class culture.
Women’s entry into professional art was constrained by institutions that favored male training and patronage. The Royal Academy (RA, founded 1768) accepted women’s works for exhibition but barred them from its Schools until 1860, when Laura Herford gained admission by submitting under initials. The Government School of Design (1837) created a Female School of Design in 1842, yet women’s instruction emphasized ornament and textile design over high art. In Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy (1826) provided exhibition venues but not equal access to tutelage. Olive’s vocation as a painter reflects these structures: her self‑directed study, reliance on private networks, and moralized labor dramatize the uphill path to artistic professionalism available to women before mid‑century reforms.
Victorian medical and charitable cultures framed physical difference through nascent orthopedics and moral discourse. London’s Orthopaedic Institution (founded 1838; later the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital) popularized braces, spinal chairs, and corrective regimens, while provincial infirmaries expanded specialist wards. Yet disability also carried social stigma—curtailing education, marriage prospects, and economic autonomy—managed through family care and philanthropy more than law. Olive’s heroine, born with a spinal curvature, inhabits this world of cure‑seeking and pity. The narrative contests prevailing assumptions by aligning bodily difference with artistic vision and ethical strength, exposing how mid‑nineteenth‑century communities conflated physical ‘defect’ with moral or social deficiency despite medical advances and proliferating charitable institutions.
Religious upheaval, especially Scottish evangelicalism and the Disruption of 1843, reshaped parish authority and social leadership. On 18 May 1843, 474 ministers left the established Church of Scotland to found the Free Church under Thomas Chalmers, rejecting state patronage in favor of spiritual independence. Congregational secessions reorganized schooling, poor relief, and lay voluntarism, intensifying scrutiny of conduct and belief. Olive reflects this climate through its serious clerical figures, lay piety, and ethical debates about duty, charity, and individual conscience. The novel’s conflicts over judgment, forgiveness, and vocation resonate with Free Church ideals of self‑supporting congregations and the era’s surging voluntary associations that policed, but also empowered, communal life.
Industrialization and popular agitation culminated in Chartism (1838–1848), which demanded universal male suffrage, secret ballots, and annual Parliaments. Mass petitions in 1839, 1842, and 1848, the Newport Rising (1839), the Plug Plot strikes (1842), and the Kennington Common meeting (10 April 1848) expressed working‑class grievance amidst rapid urban growth. Glasgow’s population, for instance, rose from about 77,000 (1801) to over 250,000 (1841), driven by cotton, calico printing, and Clyde shipbuilding. While Olive centers on genteel life, its sympathy for the poor, attention to servants, and depictions of charitable aid reflect the same widening class divide and civic anxiety that Chartism dramatized, urging moral responsibility within a fracturing social landscape.
As social critique, Olive exposes the moral costs of a society that prized respectability while restricting women, the disabled, and dependents. Its portrait of a self‑supporting woman artist challenges coverture and the economic dependence it imposed, anticipating mid‑century debates over custody (1839), divorce (1857), and married women’s property (1870, 1882). By aligning bodily difference with dignity and competence, the novel indicts superficial standards that equated beauty with worth. Its measured scrutiny of clerical authority and class charity further questions how power operates in parishes and households. Through domestic narrative and professional aspiration, the book interrogates the era’s legal, religious, and social hierarchies without abandoning moral seriousness.
Olive
OLIVE.
CHAPTER I.
“Puir wee lassie, ye hae a waesome[1] welcome to a waesome warld!”
Such was the first greeting ever received by my heroine, Olive Rothesay. However, she would be then entitled neither a heroine nor even “Olive Rothesay,” being a small nameless concretion of humanity, in colour and consistency strongly resembling the “red earth,” whence was taken the father of all nations. No foreshadowing of the coming life brightened her purple, pinched-up, withered face, which, as in all new-born children, bore such a ridiculous likeness to extreme old age. No tone of the all-expressive human voice thrilled through the unconscious wail that was her first utterance, and in her wide-open meaningless eyes had never dawned the beautiful human soul. There she lay, as you and I, reader, with all our compeers, lay once-a helpless lump of breathing flesh, faintly stirred by animal life, and scarce at all by that inner life which we call spirit. And, if we thus look back, half in compassion, half in humiliation, at our infantile likeness-may it not be that in the world to come some who in this world bore an outward image poor, mean, and degraded, will cast a glance of equal pity on their well-remembered olden selves, now transfigured into beautiful immortality?
I seem to be wandering from my Olive Rothesay; but time will show the contrary. Poor little spirit! newly come to earth, who knows whether that “waesome welcome” may not be a prophecy? The old nurse seemed almost to dread this, even while she uttered it, for with superstition from which not an “auld wife” in Scotland is altogether free, she changed the dolorous croon into a “Gude guide us!” and, pressing the babe to her aged breast, bestowed a hearty blessing upon her nursling of the second generation—the child of him who was at once her master and her foster-son.
“An' wae's me that he's sae far awa', and canna do't himsel. My bonnie bairn! Ye're come into the warld without a father's blessing.”
Perhaps the good soul's clasp was the tenderer, and her warm heart throbbed the warmer to the new-born child, for a passing remembrance of her own two fatherless babes, who now slept—as close together, as when, “twin-laddies,” they had nestled in one mother's bosom—slept beneath the wide Atlantic which marks the sea-boy's grave.
Nevertheless, the memory was now grown so dim with years, that it vanished the moment the infant waked, and began to cry. Rocking to and fro, the nurse tuned her cracked voice to a long-forgotten lullaby—something about a “boatie.” It was stopped by a hand on her shoulder, followed by the approximation of a face which, in its bland gravity, bore “M.D.” on every line.
“Well, my good—— excuse me, but I forget your name.”
“Elspeth, or mair commonly, Elspie Murray. And no an ill name, doctor. The Murrays o' Perth were”——
“No doubt—no doubt, Mrs. Elsappy.”
“Elspie, sir. How daur ye ca' me out o' my name, wi' your unceevil English tongue!”
“Well, then, Elspie, or what the deuce you like,” said the doctor, vexed out of his proprieties. But his rosy face became rosier when he met the horrified and sternly reproachful stare of Elspie's keen blue eyes as she turned round—a whole volume of sermons expressed in her “Eh, sir?” Then she added, quietly,
“I'll thank ye no to speak ill words in the ears o' this puir innocent new-born wean. It's no canny.”
“Humph!—I suppose I must beg pardon again. I shall never get out what I wanted to say—which is, that you must be quiet, my good dame, and you must keep Mrs. Rothesay quiet. She is a delicate young creature, you know, and must have every possible comfort that she needs.”
The doctor glanced round the room as though there was scarce enough comfort for his notions of worldly necessity. Yet though not luxurious, the antechamber and the room half-revealed beyond it seemed to furnish all that could be needed by an individual of moderate fortune and desires. And an eye more romantic and poetic than that of the worthy medico might have found ample atonement for the want of rich furniture within, in the magnificent view without. The windows looked down on a lovely champaign, through which the many-winding Forth[3] span its silver network, until, vanishing in the distance, a white sparkle here and there only showed whither the river wandered. In the distance, the blue mountains rose like clouds, marking the horizon. The foreground of this landscape was formed by the hill, castle-crowned—than which there is none in the world more beautiful or more renowned.
In short, Olive Rothesay shared with many a king and hero the honour of her place of nativity. She was born at Stirling.
Perhaps this circumstance of birth has more influence over character than many matter-of-fact people would imagine. It is pleasant, in after life, to think that we first opened our eyes in a spot famous in the world's story, or remarkable for natural beauty. It is sweet to say, “Those are my mountains,” or “This is my fair valley;” and there is a delight almost like that of a child who glories in his noble or beautiful parents, in the grand historical pride which links us to the place where we were born. So this little morsel of humanity, yet unnamed, whom by an allowable prescience we have called Olive, may perhaps be somewhat influenced in after life by the fact that her cradle was rocked under the shadow of the hill of Stirling, and that the first breezes which fanned her baby brow came from the Highland mountains.
But the excellent presiding genius at this interesting advent “cared for none of these things.” Dr. Jacob Johnson stood at the window with his hands in his pockets—to him the wide beautiful world was merely a field for the exercise of the medical profession—a place where old women died, and children were born. He watched the shadows darkening over Ben-Ledi—calculating how much longer he ought in propriety to stay with his present patient, and whether he should have time to run home and take a cosy dinner and a bottle of port before he was again required.
“Our sweet young patient is doing well, I think, nurse,” said he, at last, in his most benevolent tones.
“Ye may say that, doctor—ye suld ken.”
“I might almost venture to leave her, except that she seems so lonely, without friend or nurse, save yourself.”
“And wha's the best nurse for Captain Angus Rothesay's wife and bairn, but the woman that nursed himsel?” said Elspie, lifting up her tall gaunt frame, and for the second time frowning the little doctor into confused silence. “An' as for friends, ye suld just be unco glad o' the chance that garr'd the leddy bide here, and no amang her ain folk. Else there wadna hae been sic a sad welcome for her bonnie bairn. Maybe a waur, though,” added the woman to herself, with a sigh, as she once more half-buried her little nursling in her capacious embrace.
“I have not the slightest doubt of Captain Rothesay's respectability,” answered Dr. Johnson. Respectability! applied to the scions of a family which had had the honour of being nearly extirpated at Flodden-field[4], and again at Pinkie. Had the trusty follower of the Rothesays heard the term, she certainly would have been inclined to annihilate the presumptuous Englishman. But she was fortunately engaged in stilling the cries of the poor infant, who, in return for the pains she took in addressing it, began to give full evidence that the weakness of its lungs was not at all proportionate to the smallness of its size.
“Crying will do it good. A fine child—a very fine child,” observed the doctor, as he made ready for his departure, while the nurse proceeded in her task, and the heap of white drapery was gradually removed, until from beneath it appeared a very—very tiny specimen of babyhood.
“Ye needna trouble yoursel to say what's no' true,” was the answer; “it's just a bit bairnie—unco sma' An' that's nae wonder, considering the puir mither's trouble.”
“And the father is gone abroad?”
“Just twa months sin' syne. But eh! doctor, look ye here,” suddenly cried Elspie, as with her great, brown, but tender hand she was rubbing down the delicate spine of the now quieted babe.
“Well—what's the matter now?” said Dr. Johnson rather sulkily, as he laid down his hat and gloves, “The child is quite perfect, rather small perhaps, but as nice a little girl as ever was seen. It's all right.”
“It's no a' richt,” cried the nurse, in a tone trembling between anger and apprehension. “Doctor, see!”
She pointed with her finger to a slight curve at the upper part of the spine, between the shoulder and neck. The doctor's professional anxiety was aroused—he came near and examined the little creature, with a countenance that grew graver each instant.
“Aweel?” said Elspie, inquiringly.
“I wish I had noticed this before; but it would have been of no use,” he answered, his bland tones made earnest by real feeling.
“Eh, what?” said the nurse.
“I am sorry to say that the child is deformed—slightly so—very slightly I hope—but most certainly deformed. Hump-backed.”
At this terrible sentence Elspie sank back in her chair. Then she started up, clasping the child convulsively, and faced the doctor.
“Ye lee, ye ugly creeping Englisher! How daur ye speak so of ane o' the Rothesays,—frae the blude o' whilk cam the tallest men an' the bonniest leddies—ne'er a cripple amang them a —— How daur ye say that my master's bairn will be a———. Wae's me! I canna speak the word.”
“My poor woman!” mildly said the doctor, “I am really concerned.”
“Haud your tongue, ye fule!” muttered Elspie, while she again laid the child on her lap, and examined it earnestly for herself. The result confirmed all. She wrung her hands, and rocked to and fro, moaning aloud.
“Ochone, the wearie day! O my dear master, my bairn, that I nursed on my knee! how will ye come back an' see your first-born, the last o' the Rothesays, a puir bit crippled lassie!”
A faint call from the inner room startled both doctor and nurse.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed the former. “We must think of the mother. Stay—I'll go. She does not, and she must not, know of this. What a blessing that I have already told her the child was a fine and perfect child. Poor thing, poor thing!” he added passionately, as he hurried to his patient leaving Elspie hushed into silence, still mournfully gazing on her charge.
It would have been curious to mark the changes in the nurse's face during that brief interval. At first it wore a look almost of repugnance as she regarded the unconscious child, and then that very unconsciousness seemed to awaken her womanly compassion. “Puir hapless wean, ye little ken what ye're coming to! Lack o' kinsman's love, and lack o' siller, and lack o' beauty. God forgie me—but why did He send ye into the waefu' warld at a'?”
It was a question, the nature of which has perplexed theologians, philosophers, and metaphysicians, in every age, and will perplex them all to the end of time. No wonder, therefore, that it could not be solved by the poor simple Scotswoman. But as she stood hushing the child to her breast, and looking vacantly out of the window at the far mountains which grew golden in the sunset, she was unconsciously soothed by the scene, and settled the matter in a way which wiser heads might often do with advantage.
“Aweel! He kens best. He made the warld and a' that's in't; and maybe He will gie unto this puir wee thing a meek spirit to bear ill-luck[1q]. Ane must wark, anither suffer. As the minister says, It'll a' come richt at last.”
Still the babe slept on, the sun sank, and night fell upon the earth. And so the morning and evening made the first day of the new existence, which was about to be developed, through all the various phases which compose that strange and touching mystery—a woman's life.
CHAPTER II.
There is not a more hackneyed subject for poetic enthusiasm than that sight—perhaps the loveliest in nature—a young mother with her first-born child. And perhaps because it is so lovely, and is ever renewed in its beauty, the world never tires of dwelling thereupon.
Any poet, painter, or sculptor, would certainly have raved about Mrs. Rothesay, had he seen her in the days of convalescence, sitting at the window with her baby on her knee. She furnished that rare sight—and one that is becoming rarer as the world grows older—an exquisitely beautiful woman. Would there were more of such!—that the idea of physical beauty might pass into the heart through the eyes, and bring with it the ideal of the soul's perfection, which our senses can only thus receive. So great is this influence—so unconsciously do we associate the type of spiritual with material beauty, that perhaps the world might have been purer and better if its onward progress in what it calls civilisation had not so nearly destroyed the fair mould of symmetry and loveliness which tradition celebrates.
It would have done any one's heart good only to look at Sybilla Rothesay. She was a creature to watch from a distance, and then to go away and dream of, wondering whether she were a woman or a spirit. As for describing her, it is almost impossible—but let us try.
She was very small in stature and proportions—quite a little fairy. Her cheek had the soft peachy hue of girlhood; nay, of very childhood. You would never have thought her a mother. She lay back, half-buried in the great armchair; and then, suddenly springing up from amidst the cloud of white muslins and laces that enveloped her, she showed her young, blithe face.
“I will not have that cap, Elspie; I am not an invalid now, and I don't choose to be an old matron yet,” she said, in a pretty, wilful way, as she threw off the ugly ponderous production of her nurse's active fingers, and exhibited her beautiful head.
It was, indeed, a beautiful head! exquisite in shape, with masses of light-brown hair folded round it. The little rosy ear peeped out, forming the commencement of that rare and dainty curve of chin and throat, so pleasant to an artist's eye. A beauty to be lingered over among all other beauties. Then the delicately outlined mouth, the lips folded over in a lovely gravity, that seemed ready each moment to melt away into smiles. Her nose—but who would destroy the romance of a beautiful woman by such an allusion? Of course, Mrs. Rothesay had a nose; but it was so entirely in harmony with the rest of her face, that you never thought whether it were Roman, Grecian, or aquiline. Her eyes—
But was there a soul in this exquisite form? You never asked—you hardly cared! You took the thing for granted; and whether it were so or not, you felt that the world, and yourself especially, ought to be thankful for having looked at so lovely an image, if only to prove that earth still possessed such a thing as ideal beauty; and you forgave all the men, in every age, that have run mad for the same. Sometimes, perchance, you would pause a moment, to ask if this magic were real, and remember the calm holy airs that breathed from the presence of some woman, beautiful only in her soul. But then you never would have looked upon Sybilla Rothesay as a woman at all—only a flesh-and-blood fairy—a Venus de Medici transmuted from the stone.
Perhaps this was the way in which Captain Angus Rothesay contrived to fall in love with Sybilla Hyde; until he woke from the dream to find his seraph of beauty—a baby-bride, pouting like a vexed child, because, in their sudden elopement, she had neither wedding-bonnet nor Brussels veil!
And now she was a baby-mother; playing with her infant as, not so very long since, she had played with her doll; twisting its tiny fingers, and making them close tightly round her own, which were quite as elfin-like, comparatively. For Mrs. Rothesay's surpassing beauty included beautiful hands and feet; a blessing which Nature—often niggardly in her gifts—does not always extend to pretty women, but bestows it on those who have infinitely more reason to be thankful for the boon.
“See, nurse Elspie,” said Mrs. Rothesay, laughing in her childish way; “see how fast the little creature holds my finger! Really, I think a baby is a very pretty thing; and it will be so nice to play with until Angus comes home.”
Elspie turned round from the corner where she sat sewing, and looked with a half-suppressed sigh at her master's wife, whose delicate English beauty, and quick, ringing English voice, formed such a strong contrast to herself, and were so opposed to her own peculiar prejudices. But she had learned to love the young creature, nevertheless; and for the thousandth time she smothered the half-unconscious thought that Captain Angus might have chosen better.
“Children are a blessing frae the Lord, as maybe ye'll see, ane o' these days, Mrs. Rothesay,” said Elspie, gravely; “ye maun tak' them as they're sent, and mak' the best o' them.”
Mrs. Rothesay laughed merrily. “Thank you, Elspie, for giving me such a solemn speech, just like one of my husband's. To put me in mind of him, I suppose. As if there were any need for that! Dear Angus! I wonder what he will say to his little daughter when he sees her; the new Miss Rothesay, who has come in opposition to the old Miss Rothesay,—ha! ha!”
“The auld Miss Rothesay! She's your husband's aunt,” observed Elspie, feeling it necessary to stand up for the honour of the family. “Miss Flora was a comely leddy ance, as a' the Rothesays were.”
“And this Miss Rothesay will be too, I hope, though she is such a little brown thing now. But people say that the brownest babies grow the fairest in time, eh, nurse?”
“They do say that,” replied Elspie, with another and a heavier sigh; as she bent closer over her work.
Mrs. Rothesay went on in her blithe chatter. “I half wished for a boy, as Captain Rothesay thought it would please his uncle; but that's of no consequence. He will be quite satisfied with a girl, and so am I. Of course she will be a beauty, my dear little baby!” And with a deeper mother-love piercing through her childish pleasure, she bent over the infant; then took it up, awkwardly and comically enough, as though it were a toy she was afraid of breaking, and rocked it to and fro on her breast.
Elspie started up. “Tak' tent, tak' tent! ye'll hurt it, maybe, the puir wee——Oh, what was I gaun to say!”
“Don't trouble yourself,” said the young mother, with a charming assumption of matronly dignity; “I shall hold the baby safe. I know all about it.”
And she really did succeed in lulling the child to sleep; which was no sooner accomplished than she recommenced her pleasant musical chatter, partly addressed to her nurse, but chiefly the unconscious overflow of a simple nature, which could not conceal a single thought.
“I wonder what I shall call her—the darling! We must not wait until her papa comes home. She can't be 'baby' for three years. I shall have to decide on her name myself. Oh, what a pity! I, who never could decide anything. Poor dear Angus! he does all—he had even to fix the wedding-day!” And her musical laugh—another rare charm that she possessed—caused Elspie to look round with mingled pity and affection.
“Come, nurse, you can help me, I know. I am puzzling my poor head for a name to give this young lady here. It must be a very pretty one. I wonder what Angus would like? A family name, perhaps, after one of those old Rothesays that you and he make so much of.”
“Oh, Mrs. Rothesay! And are ye no proud o' your husband's family?”
“Yes, very proud; especially as I have none of my own. He took me—an orphan, without a single tie in the wide world—he took me into his warm loving arms”—here herm voice faltered, and a sweet womanly tenderness softened her eyes. “God bless my noble husband! I am proud of him, and of his people, and of all his race. So come,” she added, her childish manner reviving, “tell me of the remarkable women in the Rothesay family for the last five hundred years—you know all about them, Elspie. Surely we'll find one to be a namesake for my baby.”
Elspie—pleased and important—began eagerly to relate long traditions about the Lady Christina Rothesay, who was a witch, and a great friend of “Maister Michael Scott,” and how, with spells, she caused her seven step-sons to pine away and die; also the lady Isobel, who let her lover down from her bower-window with the long strings of her golden hair, and how her brother found and slew him;—whence she laid a curse on all the line who had golden hair, and such never prospered, but died unmarried and young.
“I hope the curse has passed away now,” gaily said the young mother, “and that the latest scion will not be a golden-tressed damsel. Yet look here”—and she touched the soft down beneath her infant's cap, which might, by a considerable exercise of imagination, be called hair—“it is yellow, you see, Elspie! But I'll not believe your tradition. My child shall be both beautiful and beloved.”
Smitten with a sudden pang, poor Elspie cried, “Oh, my leddy, dinna think o' the future. Dinna!”—— and she stopped, confused.
“Really, how strange you are. But go on. We'll have no more Christinas nor Isobels.”
Hurriedly, Elspie continued to relate the histories: of noble Jean Rothesay, who died by an arrow aimed at her husband's heart; and Alison, her sister, the beauty of James the Fifth's reckless court, who was “no gude;” and Mistress Katharine Rothesay, who hid two of the “Prince's” soldiers after Culloden, and stood with a pair of pistols before their bolted door.
“Nay, I'll have none of these—they frighten me,” said Sybilla, “I wonder I ever had courage to marry the descendant of such awful women. No! my sweet innocent! you shall not be christened after them,” she continued, stroking the baby cheek with her soft finger. “You shall not be like them at all, except in their beauty. And they were all handsome—were they, Elspie?”
“Ne'er a ane o' the Rothesay line, man or woman, that wasna fair to see.”
“Then so will my baby be!—like her father, I hope—or just a little like her mother, who is not so very ugly, either; at least, Angus says not.” And Mrs. Rothesay drew up her tiny figure, patted one dainty hand—the wedded one—with its fairy fellow; then—touched perhaps with a passing melancholy that he who most prized her beauty, and for whose sake she most prized it herself, was far away—she leaned back and sighed.
However, in a few minutes, she cried out, her words showing how light and wandering was the reverie, “Elspie, I have a thought! The baby shall be christened Olive!”
“It's a strange, heathen name, Mrs. Rothesay.”
“Not at all. Listen how I chanced to think of it. This very morning, just before you came to waken me, I had such a queer, delicious dream.”
“Dream! Are ye sure it was i' the morning-tide?” cried Elspie, aroused into interest.
“Yes; and so it certainly means something, you will say, Elspie? Well, it was about my baby. She was then lying fast asleep in my bosom, and her warm, soft breathing soon sent me to sleep too. I dreamt that somehow I had gradually let her go from me, so that I felt her in my arms no more, and I was very sad, and cried out how cruel it was for any one to steal my child, until I found I had let her go of my own accord. Then I looked up, after awhile, and saw standing at the foot of the bed a little angel—a child-angel—with a green olive-branch in its hand. It told me to follow; so I rose up, and followed it over a wide desert country, and across rivers and among wild beasts; but at every peril the child held out the olive-branch, and we passed on safely. And when I felt weary, and my feet were bleeding with the rough journey, the little angel touched them with the olive, and I was strong again. At last we reached a beautiful valley, and the child, said, 'You are quite safe now.' I answered, 'And who is my beautiful comforting angel?' Then the white wings fell off, and I only saw a sweet child's face, which bore something of Angus's likeness and something of my own, and the little one stretched out her hands and said, 'Mother!'”
While Mrs. Rothesay spoke, her thoughtless manner had once more softened into deep feeling. Elspie watched her with wondering eagerness.
“It was nae dream; it was a vision. God send it true!” said the old woman, solemnly.
“I know not. Angus always laughed at my dreams, but I have a strange feeling whenever I think of this. Oh, Elspie, you can't tell how sweet it was! And so I should like to call my baby Olive, for the sake of the beautiful angel. It may be foolish—but 'tis a fancy of mine. Olive Rothesay! It sounds well, and Olive Rothesay she shall be.”
“Amen; and may she be an angel to ye a' her days. And ye'll mind o' the blessed dream, and love her evermair. Oh, my sweet leddy, promise me that ye will!” cried the nurse, approaching her mistress's chair, while two great tears stole down her hard cheeks.
“Of course I shall love her dearly! What made you doubt it? Because I am so young? Nay, I have a mother's heart, though I am only eighteen. Come, Elspie, do let us be merry; send these drops away;” and she patted the old withered face with her little hand. “Was it not you who told me the saying, 'It's ill greeting ower a new-born wean'? There! don't I succeed charmingly in your northern tongue?”
What a winning little creature she was, this young wife of Angus Rothesay! A pity he had not seen her—the old Highland uncle, Miss Flora's brother, who had disinherited his nephew and promised heir for bringing him a Sassenach[2] niece.
“A charming scene of maternal felicity! I am quite sorry to intrude upon it,” said a bland voice at the door, as Dr. Johnson put in his shining bald head.
Mrs. Rothesay welcomed him in her graceful, cordial way. She was so ready to cling to every one who showed her kindness—and he had been very kind; so kind that, with her usual quick impulses, she had determined to stay and live at Stirling until her husband's return from Jamaica. She told Dr. Johnson so now; and, moreover, as an earnest of the friendship which she, accustomed to be loved by every one, expected from him, she requested him to stand godfather to her little babe.
“She shall be christened after our English fashion, doctor, and her name shall be Olive. What do you think of her now? Is she growing prettier?”
The doctor bowed a smiling assent, and walked to the window. Thither Elspie followed him.
“Ye maun tell her the truth—I daurna. Ye will!” and she clutched his arm with eager anxiety. “An' oh! for Gudesake, say it safyly, kindly.”
He shook her off with an uneasy look. He had never felt in a more disagreeable position.
Mrs. Rothesay called him back again. “I think, doctor, her features are improving. She will certainly be a beauty. I should break my heart if she were not. And what would Angus say? Come—what are you and Elspie talking about so mysteriously?”
“My dear madam—hem!” began Dr. Johnson. “I do hope—indeed, I am sure—your child will be a good child, and a great comfort to both her parents;”——
“Certainly—but how grave you are about it.”
“I have a painful duty—a very painful duty,” he replied. But Elspie pushed him aside.
“Ye're just a fule, man!—ye'll kill her. Say your say at ance!”
The young mother turned deadly pale. “Say what Elspie? What is he going to tell me? Angus”——
“No, no, my darlin' leddy! your husband's safe;” and Elspie flung herself on her knees beside the chair. “But, the lassie—(dinna fear, for it's the will o' God, and a' for gude, nae doubt)—your sweet wee dochter is”——
“Is, I grieve to say it, deformed,” added Dr. Johnson.
The poor mother gazed incredulously on him, on the nurse, and lastly on the sleeping child. Then, without a word, she fell back, and fainted in Espie's arms.
CHAPTER III.
It was many days before Mrs. Rothesay recovered from the shock occasioned by the tidings—to her almost more fearful than her child's death—that it was doomed for life to suffer the curse of hopeless deformity. For a curse, a bitter curse, this seemed to the young and beautiful creature, who had learned since her birth to consider beauty as the greatest good. She was, so to speak, in love with loveliness; not merely in herself, but in every human creature. This feeling sprang more from enthusiasm than from personal vanity, the borders of which meanness she had just touched, but never crossed. Perhaps, also, she was too conscious of her own loveliness, and admired herself too ardently to care for attracting the petty admiration of others. She took it quite as a matter of course; and was no more surprised at being worshipped than if she had been the Goddess of Beauty herself.
But if Sybilla Rothesay gloried in her own perfections, she no less gloried in those of all she loved, and chiefly in her noble-looking husband. And they were so young, so quickly wed, and so soon parted, that this emotion had no time to deepen into that soul-united affection which is independent of outward things, or, rather, becomes so divine, that instead of beauty creating love, love has power to create beauty.
No marvel, then, that not having attained to a higher experience, Sybilla considered beauty as all in all. And this child—her child and Angus's,—would be a deformity, a shame to its parents, a dishonour to its race. How should she ever bear to look upon it? Still more, how should she ever dare to show the poor cripple to its father, and say, “This is our child—our firstborn.” Would he not turn away in disgust, and answer that it had better died?
Such exaggerated fancies as these haunted the miserable mother, when she passed from her long swoon into a sort of fever; which, though scarce endangering her life, was yet for days a source of great anxiety to the devoted Elspie. To the unhappy infant this madness—for it was temporary madness—almost caused death. Mrs. Rothesay positively refused to see or notice her child, scorning alike the tearful entreaties and the stern reproaches of the nurse. At last Elspie ceased to combat this passionate resolve, springing half from anger and half from delirium——
“God forgie ye, and save the innocent bairn—the dochter He gave, and that ye're gaun to murder—unthankfu' woman as ye are,” muttered Elspie, under her breath, as she quitted the room and went to succour the almost dying babe. Over it her heart yearned as it had never yearned before.
“Your mither casts ye aff, ye puir wee thing. Maybe ye're no lang for this warld, but while ye're in it ye sall be my ain lassie, an' I'll be your ain mammie, evermair.”
So, like Naomi of old, Elspie Murray “laid the child in her bosom and became nurse unto it.” But for her, the life of our Olive Rothesay—with all its influences, good or evil, small or great, as yet unknown—would have expired like a faint-flickering taper.
Perhaps, in her madness, the unhappy mother might almost have desired such an ending. As it was, the disappointed hope, which had at first resembled positive dislike, subsided into the most complete indifference. She endured her child's presence, but she took no notice of it; she seemed to have forgotten its very existence. Her shattered health supplied sufficient excuse for the utter abandonment of all a mother's duties, and the poor feeble spark of life was left to Elspie's cherishing. By night and by day the child knew no other resting-place than the old nurse's arms, the mother's seeming to be for ever closed to its helpless innocence. True, Sybilla kissed it once a day, when Elspie brought the little creature to her, and exacted, as a duty, the recognition which Mrs. Rothesay, girlish and yielding as she was, dared not refuse. Her husband's faithful retainer had over her an influence which could never be gainsaid.
Elspie seemed to be the sole regent of the babe's destiny. It was she who took it to its baptism;—not the festal ceremony which had pleased Sybilla's childish fancy with visions of christening robes and cakes, but the beautiful and simple “naming” of Elspie's own church. She stood before the minister, holding the desolate babe in her protecting arms; and there her heart sealed the promise of her lips, to bring it up in the knowledge and fear of God. And with an earnest credulity, which contained the germ of purest faith, she, remembering the mother's dream, called her nursling by the name of Olive.
She carried the babe home and laid it on Mrs. Rothesay's lap. The young creature, who had so strangely renounced that dearest blessing of mother-love, would fain have put the child aside; but Elspie's stern eye controlled her.
“Ye maun kiss and bless your dochter. Nae tongue but her mither's suld ca' her by her new-christened name.”
“What name?”
“The name ye gied her yer ain sel.”
“No, no. Surely you have not called her so. Take her away; she is not my sweet angel-baby—the darling in my dream.” And Sybilla hid her face; not in anger, or disgust, but in bitter weeping.
“She's yer ain dochter—Olive Rothesay,” answered Elspie, less harshly. “She may be an angel to ye yet.”
While she spoke, it so chanced that there flitted over the infant-face one of those smiles that we see sometimes in young children—strange, causeless smiles, which seem the reflection of some invisible influence.
And so, while the babe smiled, there came to its face such an angel-brightness, that it shone into the mother's careless heart. For the first time since that mournful day which had so changed her nature, Sybilla Rothesay sat down and kissed the child of her own accord. Elspie heard no maternal blessing—the name of “Olive” was never breathed; but the nurse was satisfied when she saw that the babe's second baptism was its mother's repentant tears.
There was in Sybilla no hardness nor cruelty, only the disappointment and vexation of a child deprived of an expected toy. She might have grown weary of her little daughter almost as soon, even if her pride and hope had not been crushed by the knowledge of Olive's deformity. Love to her seemed a treasure to be paid in requital, not a free gift bestowed without thought of return. That self-forgetting maternal devotion, lavished first on unconscious infancy, and then on unregarding youth, was a mystery to her utterly incomprehensible. At least it seemed so now, when, with the years and the character of a child, she was called to the highest duty of woman's life. This duty comes to some girlish mothers as an instinct, but it was not so with Mrs. Rothesay. An orphan, and heiress to a competence, if not to wealth, she had been brought up like a plant in a hot-bed, with all natural impulses either warped and suppressed, or forced into undue luxuriance. And yet it was a sweet plant withal; one that might have grown, ay, and might yet grow, into perfect strength and beauty.
Mrs. Rothesay's education—that education of heart, and mind, and temper, which is essential to a woman's happiness, had to begin when it ought to have been completed—at her marriage. Most unfortunate it was for her, that ere the first twelvemonth of their wedded life had passed, Captain Rothesay was forced to depart for Jamaica, whence was derived his wife's little fortune; their whole fortune now, for he had quitted the army on his marriage. Thus Sybilla was deprived of that wholesome influence which man has ever over a woman who loves him, and by which he may, if he so will, counteract many a fault and weakness in her disposition.
Time passed on, and Mrs. Rothesay, a wife and mother, was at twenty-one years old just the same as she had been at seventeen—as girlish, as thoughtless, eager for any amusement, and often treading on the very verge of folly. She still lived at Stirling, enforced thereunto by the entreaties, almost the commands, of Elspie Murray, against whom she bitterly murmured sometimes, for shutting her up in such a dull Scotch town. When Elspie urged her unprotected situation, the necessity of living in retirement, for the “honour of the family,” while Captain Angus was away, Mrs. Rothesay sometimes frowned, but more often put the matter off with a merry jest. Meanwhile she consoled herself by going as much into society as the limited circle of Dr. and Mrs. Johnson allowed; and therein, as usual, the lovely, gay, winning young creature was spoiled to her heart's content.
So she still lived the life of a wayward, petted child, whose natural instinct for all things good and beautiful kept her from ever doing what was positively wrong, though she did a great deal that was foolish enough in its way. She was, as she jestingly said, “a widow bewitched;” but she rarely coquetted, and then only in that innocent way which comes natural to some women, from a universal desire to please. And she never ceased talking and thinking of her noble Angus.
When his letters came, she always made a point of kissing them half-a-dozen times, and putting them under her pillow at night, just like a child! And she wrote to him regularly once a month—pretty, playful, loving letters. But there was in them one peculiarity—they were utterly free from that delicious maternal egotism which chronicles all the little incidents of babyhood. She said, in answer to her husband's questions, that “Olive was well;” “Olive could just walk;” “Olive had learned to say 'Papa and Elspie.'” Nothing more.
The fatal secret she had not dared to tell him.
Her first letters—full of joy about “the loveliest baby that ever was seen”—had brought his in return echoing the rapture with truly paternal pride. They reached her in her misery, to which they added tenfold. Every sentence smote her with bitter regret, even with shame, as though it were her fault in having given to the world the wretched child. Captain Rothesay expressed his joy that his little daughter was not only healthy, but pretty; for, he said, “He should be quite unhappy if she did not grow up as beautiful as her mother.” The words pierced Sybilla's heart; she could not—dared not tell him the truth; not yet, at least. And whenever Elspie's rough honesty urged her to do so, she fell into such agonies of grief and anger, that the nurse was obliged to desist.
Sometimes, when letter after letter came from the father, full of inquiries about his precious first-born,—Sybilla, whose fault was more in weakness than deceit, resolved that she would nerve herself for the terrible task. But it was vain—she had not strength to do it.
The three years extended into four, and still Captain Rothesay sent gift after gift, and message after message, to his daughter. Still he wrote to the conscience-stricken mother how many times he had kissed the “little lock of golden hue,” severed from the baby-head; picturing the sweet face and lithe, active form which he had never seen. And all the while there was stealing about the old house at Stirling a pale, deformed child: small and attenuated in frame—quiet beyond its years, delicate, spiritless, with scarce one charm that would prove its lineage from the young beautiful mother, out of whose sight it instinctively crept.
Thus the years fled with Olive Rothesay and her parents; each month, each day, sowing seeds that would assuredly spring up, for good or for evil, in the destinies of all three.
CHAPTER IV.
The fourth year of Captain Rothesay[5]'s absence passed,—not without anxiety, for it was war-time, and his letters were frequently interrupted. At first, whenever this happened, his wife fretted extremely—fretted is the right word, for it was more a fitful chafing than a positive grief. Sybilla knew not the sense of deep sorrow. Her nature resembled one of those sunny climes where even the rains are dews. So, after a few disappointments, she composed herself to the certainty that nothing would happen amiss to her Angus; and she determined never to expect a letter until she received it, and not to look for him at all until he wrote her word that he was coming. He was sure to do what was right, and to return to his dearly-loved wife as soon as ever he could. And, though scarce acknowledging the fact to herself, her husband's return involved such a humiliating explanation of truth concealed, if not of positive falsehood, that Sybilla dared not even think of it. Whenever the long-parted wife mused on the joy of meeting—of looking once more into the beloved face, and being lifted up like a child to cling round his neck with her fairy arms, for Angus was a very giant to her—then there seemed to rise between them the phantom of the pale, deformed child.
To drown these fancies, Sybilla rushed into every amusement which her secluded life afforded. At last, she resolved on an exploit at which Elspie looked aghast, and which made the quiet Mrs. Johnson shake her head—an evening party—nay, even a dance, at her own home.
“It will never do for the people here; they're 'unco gude[7],'” said the doctor's English wife, who had imbibed a few Scottish prejudices by a residence of thirty years. “Nobody ever dances in Stirling.”
“Then I'll teach them,” cried the lively Mrs. Rothesay: “I long to show them a quadrille[6]—even that new dance that all the world is shocked at Oh! I should dearly like a waltz.”
