Victorian England - Articles and Stories

THE RACE FOR WEALTH. CHAPTER XXVII.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "GEORGE GEITH," "MAXWELL DREWITT," etc.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SPRING and AUTUMN.

BEFORE— long before — the evening arrived on which an entrance was to be obtained into fairy land, Olivine decided that time had a spite against her, and was travelling slowly on purpose.

" I am positive that night never will come," she declared twenty times a day to Mrs. Martyn Gregory, and Mrs. Martyn Gregory, once the question of the dress was decided, refrained from rebuking her pupil for impatience; but rested con tented with telling her time would soon pass by, and bring the long expected evening on its wings.

" Wings! " repeated Olivine scornfully. "Crutches!" and the young lady declared once more, she thought no time in all her life — none — had ever limped along so slowly.

" What will you do when once the party is over? " inquired Mrs. Gregory.

" Oh! do not talk about that," entreated Olivine, looking very much cast down; but next moment she brightened up and said, when it was all over she could think about it.

" Whenever we have a dreadfully wet day in the winter time I sit and think to myself about the summer," she went on; " and it is wonderful how the time passes by when I do that; when I put buds on the lilacs, and hang flowers on the laburnums, and imagine the sun shining over the green fields down at Grays. Do you ever ' make out ' summer in the winter, Mrs. Gregory? I cannot help fancying it is a good plan in the wet days."

And the girl turned her young, fresh, spring face as she spoke towards Mrs. Gregory, who answered —

"It is of the coming summer, not of the past, you think, Olivine."

"And what difference does that make?" asked Olivine.

" All the difference," was the reply, spoken sadly, albeit Mrs. Gregory was neither very sentimental nor reflective. "If a summer were certain never to follow your winter, if there were no future, in fact, you would scarcely care to look back."

"I believe I should," Olivine answered. " If I were certain never to go to another party I am sure I should like to look back on Mr. Forbes'; and when I am an old woman, with grey — white hair," corrected the girl, fearful of seeming personal — " I shall tell my grand children about the night I went to a ball in Limehouse, and wore nothing but a muslin dress, and looked among all the fine ladies a perfect Cinderella."

" My dear, you ought not to talk about grandchildren," suggested Mrs. Martyn Gregory.

" Well, my children then," amended Olivine. " There must be a great pleasure in looking back and talking about the past, or else old people would not keep on telling stories about the time when they were boys and girls. If there never were to be another summer, I should still love to remember last August, and the month we spent down by the sea. Do you not care to think about when you were a girl, Mrs. Gregory?"

" No," was the answer; " I like to forget."

" How unhappy you must have been," said Olivine, sympathetically. "I do hope the time will never come when I shall like to for get," and Spring folded her hands together and let them lie idly in her lap, whilst she thought about her future; and Autumn looked at Spring and envied her.

Little though the past may have held for any man or woman, still there is something in the mere fact of the greater part of life being gone for ever which causes middle age to look regretfully on very early youth. If the past of middle age have been happy, then it cannot help sighing at the idea of all the happiness that may be in store for youth — happiness which for it, is now a tale of the past and gone. If the early story were, on the contrary, sad, then it is hard to think of the wasted years, the wretched hours, the clouded morning, the darkened noon.