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Updated: June 12, 2025
Persons, places, and events assume a mystery and importance. We never think of them, or hear them named afterwards, but there clings to them something of the strange glamour of the time when "we saw men as trees walking." Olive's childhood was passed in the place mentioned by her father. Merivale! Oldchurch!
When she had done, he merely said, "Very well, Sybilla; and we will leave Stirling this day month. I have decided to live in England. Oldchurch is a very convenient town, and I have no doubt you will find Merivale Hall an agreeable residence." "Merivale Hall. Are we really going to live in a Hall?" cried Sybilla, clapping her hands with childish glee. But immediately her face changed.
At present let us look at the mother and daughter, as they sit in the one parlour to which all the glories of Meri-vale Hall and Oldchurch had dwindled. But they did not murmur at that, for they were together; and now that the first bitterness of their loss had passed away, they began to feel cheerful even happy.
Yet there was a curious fascination about Oldchurch. She never forgot it.
She kept the secret even from her mother; that is, in the only manner Olive would conceal aught from any one so beloved, by saying, "Please, mamma, do not ask me anything." And Mrs. Rothesay, who, always guided by some one, was now in a fair way to be entirely guided by her daughter, made no inquiries, but depended entirely upon Olive's wisdom and tenderness. Charles Geddes came to Oldchurch.
She did not see her beautiful idol again for some time; and feeling little interest in any other girl, and none at all in the awkward Oldchurch "beaux," she took consolation in her own harmless fashion. This was hiding herself under the thick curtains, and looking out of the window at the moon. Sara's voice was heard close by, talking to a young girl whom Olive knew.
Here she paused, half-shaming to confess to herself that for this reason chiefly would she welcome the letters of poor Lyle. "Is that all? Will you not care to hear about me? Oh, Miss Rothesay," cried Lyle, "I often wish I was again a little boy in the dear old garden at Oldchurch." "Why so?" "Because because" and the quick blood rose in his cheek.
Those strange furnace-fires, which rose up at dusk from the earth and gleamed all around the horizon, like red fiery eyes open all night long, how mysteriously did they haunt the imaginative child! Then the town, Oldchurch, how in her after-life it grew distinct from all other towns, like a place seen in a dream, so real and yet so unreal!
"What! did you not know me, brother Harold? How funny!" And he laughed: his laugh was something like Sara's. It seemed to ring jarringly on Mr. Gwynne's ear. "I was not aware, Miss Rothesay, that you knew my brother-in-law." "Oh, Miss Rothesay and I were friends almost ten years ago. She was our neighbour at Oldchurch." "Indeed."
And, as if to chant the chorus of so sweet a scene, there broke out on the clear frosty air the distant carillon of Oldchurch bells marriage-bells too signifying that not far off was dawning another scene of love and hope; that, somewhere in the parish, was celebrated the "coming home" of a bride.
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