Olive was looking up at the clouds, her thin cheek resting against the embrasure of the window, gazing so intently that she never seemed to hear her father"s voice or step. Elspie motioned him to walk softly, and they came behind the child.
"Do ye no see, Captain Angus," she whispered, ""tis your ain bonnie face--ay, and your Mither"s. Ye mind her yet?"
Captain Rothesay did not answer, but looked earnestly at his little daughter. She, turning round, met his eyes. There was something in their expression which touched her, for a rosy colour suffused her face; she smiled, stretched out her little hands, and said "Papa!"
How Elspie then prided herself for the continual tutoring which had made the image of the absent father an image of love!
Captain Rothesay started from his reverie at the sound of the child"s voice. The tone, and especially the word, broke the spell. He felt once more that he was the father, not of the blooming little angel that he had pictured, but of this poor deformed girl. However, he was a man in whom a stern sense of right stood in the place of many softer virtues.
He had resolved on his duty--he had come to fulfil it--and fulfil it he would. So he took the two little cold hands, and said--
"Papa is glad to see you, my dear."
There was a silence, during which Elspie placed a chair for Captain Rothesay, and Olive, sliding quietly down from hers, came and stood beside him. He did not offer to take the two baby-hands again, but did not repulse them, when the little girl laid them on his knee, looking inquiringly, first at him, and then at Elspie.
"What does she mean?" said Captain Rothesay.
"Puir bairn! I tauld her, when her father was come hame, he wad tak" her in his arms and kiss her."
Rothesay looked angrily round, but recollected himself. "Your nurse was right, my dear." Then pausing for a moment, as though arming himself for a duty--repugnant, indeed, but necessary--he took his daughter on his knee, and kissed her cheek--once, and no more. But she, remembering Elspie"s instructions, and prompted by her loving nature, clung about him, and requited the kiss with many another. They melted him visibly.
There is nothing sweeter in this world than a child"s unasked voluntary kiss!
He began to talk to her--uneasily and awkwardly--but still he did it.
"There, that will do, little one! What is your name, my dear?" he said absently.
She answered, "Olive Rothesay." "Ay--I had forgotten! The name at least, she told me true." The next moment, he set down the child--softly but as though it were a relief.
"Is papa going?" said Olive, with a troubled look.
"Yes; but he will come back to-morrow. Once a day will do," he added to himself. Yet, when his little daughter lifted her mouth for another kiss, he could not help giving it.
"Be a good child, my dear, and say your prayers every night, and love nurse Elspie."
"And papa too, may I?"
He seemed to struggle violently against some inward feeling, and then answered with a strong effort, "Yes."
The door closed after him abruptly. Very soon Elspie saw him walking with hasty strides along the beautiful walk that winds round the foot of the castle rock. The nurse sat still for a long time thinking, and then ended her ponderings with her favourite phrase,
"G.o.d guide us! it"s a" come richt at last."
Poor, honest, humble soul!
CHAPTER VI.
The return of the husband and father produced a considerable change in the little family at Stirling. A household, long composed entirely of women, always feels to its very foundations the incursion of one of the "n.o.bler s.e.x." From the first morning when there resounded the multiplied ringing of bells, and the creaking of boots on the staircase, the glory of the feminine dynasty was departed. Its easy _laisser-aller_, its lax rule, and its indifference to regular forms were at an end. Mrs.
Rothesay could no longer indulge her laziness--no breakfasting in bed, and coming down in curl-papers. The long gossiping visits of her thousand-and-one acquaintances subsided into frigid morning calls, at which the grim phantom of the husband frowned from a corner and suppressed all idle chatter. Sybilla"s favourite system of killing time by half-hours in various idle ways, at home and abroad, was terminated at once. She had now to learn how to be a duteous wife, always ready at the beck and call of her husband, and attentive to his innumerable wants.
She was quite horrified by these at first. The captain actually expected to dine well and punctually, every day, without being troubled beforehand with "What he would like for dinner?" He listened once or twice, patiently too, to her histories of various small domestic grievances, and then requested politely that she would confine such details to the kitchen in future; at which poor Mrs. Rothesay retired in tears. He liked her to stay at home in the evening, make his tea, and then read to him, or listen while he read to her. This was the more arduous task of the two, for dearly as she loved to hear the sound of his voice.
Sybilla never could feel interested in the prosy books he read, and often fell half asleep; then he always stopped suddenly, sometimes looked cross, sometimes sad; and in a few minutes he invariably lighted her candle, with the gentle hint that it was time to retire. But often she woke, hours after, and heard him still walking up and down below, or stirring the fire perpetually, as a man does who is obliged to make the fire his sole companion.
And then Sybilla"s foolish, but yet loving heart, would feel itself growing sad and heavy; her husband"s image, once painted there in such glittering colours, began to fade. The real Angus was not the Angus of her fancy. Joyful as was his coming home, it had not been quite what she expected. Else, why was it that at times, amidst all her gladness, she thought of their olden past with regret, and of their future with doubt, almost fear.
But it was something new for Sybilla to think at all. It did her good in spite of herself.
While these restless elements of future pain were smouldering in the parents, the little neglected, unsightly blossom, which had sprung up at their feet, lived the same unregarded, monotonous life as heretofore.
Olive Rothesay had attained to five years, growing much like a primrose in the field, how, none knew or cared, save Heaven. And that Heaven did both know and care, was evident from the daily sweetness that was stealing into this poor wayside flower, so that it would surely one day be discovered through the invisible perfume which it shed.
Captain Rothesay kept to his firm resolve of seeing his little daughter in her nursery, once a day at least. After a while, the visit of a few minutes lengthened to an hour. He listened with interest to Elspie"s delighted eulogiums on her beloved charge, which sometimes went so far as to point out the beauty of the child"s wan face, with the a.s.surance that Olive, in features at least, was a true Rothesay. But the father always stopped her with a dignified, cold look.
"We will quit that subject, if you please."
Nevertheless, guided by his rigid sense of a parent"s duty, he showed all kindness to the child, and his omnipotent way over his wife exacted the same consideration from the hitherto indifferent Sybilla. It might be, also, that in her wayward nature, the chill which had unconsciously fallen on the heart of the wife, caused the mother"s heart to awaken And then the mother would be almost startled to see the response which this new, though scarcely defined tenderness, created in her child.
For some months after Captain Rothesay"s return, the little family lived in the retired old-fashioned dwelling on the hill of Stirling. Their quiet round of uniformity was only broken by the occasional brief absence of the head of the household, as he said, "on business."
_Business_ was a word conveying such distaste, if not horror, to Sybilla"s ears, that she asked no questions, and her husband volunteered no information. In fact, he rarely was in the habit of doing so--whether interrogated or not.
At last, one day when he was sitting after dinner with his wife and child--he always punctiliously commanded that "Miss Rothesay" might be brought in with the dessert--Angus made the startling remark:
"My dear Sybilla, I wish to consult with you on a subject of some importance."
She looked up with a pretty, childish surprise.
"Consult with me! O Angus! pray don"t tease me with any of your hard business matters; I never could understand them."
"And I never for a moment imagined you could. In fact, you told me so, and therefore I have never troubled you with them, my dear," was the reply, with just the slightest shade of satire. But its bitterness pa.s.sed away the moment Sybilla jumped up and came to sit down on the hearth at his feet, in an att.i.tude of comical attention. Thereupon he patted her on the head, gently and smilingly, for he was a fond husband still, and she was such a sweet plaything for an idle hour.
A plaything! Would that all women considered the full meaning of the term--a thing sighed for, s.n.a.t.c.hed, caressed, wearied of, neglected, scorned! And would also, that every wife knew that her fate depends less on what her husband makes of her, than what she makes herself to him!
"Now, Angus, begin--I am all attention."
He looked one moment doubtfully at Olive, who sat in her little chair at the farther end of the room, quiet, silent, and demure. She had beside her some purple plums, which she did not attempt to eat, but was playing with them, arranging them with green leaves in a thousand graceful ways, and smiling to herself when the afternoon sunlight, creeping through the dim window, rested upon them and made their rich colour richer still.
"Shall we send Olive away?" said the mother.
"No, let her stay--she is of no importance."
The parents both looked at the child"s pale, spiritual face, felt the reproach it gave, and sighed. Perhaps both father and mother would have loved her, but for a sense of shame in the latter, and the painful memory of deceit in the former.
"Sybilla," suddenly resumed Captain Rothesay, "what I have to say is merely, how soon you can arrange to leave Stirling?"
"Leave Stirling?"
"Yes; I have taken a house."