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Daddy's Girl, a fiction by L. T. Meade |
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Chapter 23 |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII There is such a thing in life as turning straight round and going the other way. This was what happened to Philip Ogilvie after the death of Sibyl. All his life hitherto he had been on the downward plane. He was now decidedly on the upward. The upward path was difficult, and his feet were tired and his spirits sore, and often he faltered and flagged and almost stopped, but he never once went back. He turned no look toward the easy way which leads to destruction, for at the top of the path which he was now climbing, he ever and always saw his child waiting for him, nor did he feel even here on earth that his spirit was really far from hers. Her influence still surrounded him--her voice spoke to him in the summer breeze--her face looked at him out of the flowers, and her smile met him in the sunshine. He had a rough time to go through, but he endured everything for her sake. By degrees his worldly affairs were put into some sort of order, and so far as his friends and society went he vanished from view. But none of these things mattered to him now. He was living on earth, it is true; but all the ordinary earth desires had died within him. The spiritual life, however, did not die. Day by day it grew stronger and braver; so it came to pass that his sympathies, instead of dwindling and becoming small and narrow, widened, until once more he loved and once more he hoped. He became very tolerant for others now, and especially was he tolerant to his wife. He bore with her small ways, pitied her grief, admitted to himself that there were limits in her nature which no power could alter, and did his best to make her happy. She mourned and grieved and grieved and mourned for that which meant nothing at all to him, but he was patient with her, and she owned to herself that she loved him more in his adversity than she had done in his prosperity. For Sibyl's sake, too, Ogilvie roused himself to do what he could for her special friends. There was a tiny fund which he had once put aside for his child's education, and this he now spent in starting a shop for the Holmans in Buckingham Palace Road. He made them a present of the shop, and helped them to stock it with fresh toys. The old pair did well there, they prospered and their trade was good, but they never forgot Sibyl, and their favorite talk in the evenings as they sat side by side together was to revive memories of the little, old shop and the child who used to buy the dusty toys. As to Lord Grayleigh, Philip Ogilvie and he never met after that day outside the Cannon Street Hotel. The fact is, a gulf divided them; for although both men to a great extent repented of what they had done, yet there was a wide difference in their repentance--one had acted with the full courage of his convictions, the other still led a life of honor before his fellow-men, but his heart was not straight with God. Grayleigh and Ogilvie, therefore, with the knowledge that each knew the innermost motives of the other, could not meet nor be friends. Nevertheless Sibyl had influenced Grayleigh. For her sake he ceased to be chairman of several somewhat shady companies, and lived more than he had done before in his own place, Grayleigh Manor, and surrounded by his children. He was scarcely heard to mention Sibyl's name after her death. But amongst his treasures he still keeps that little old note-book in which she begged of him to enter her special wishes, and so much affected was he in his heart of hearts, by her childish words, that he used his utmost influence and got a good diplomatic appointment for Rochester, thus enabling him and Lady Helen to marry, although not by the means which Sibyl had suggested. These things happened a few years ago, and Ogilvie is still alive, but, although he lives still on earth, he also waits on the verge of life, knowing that at any hour, any moment, day or night, the message may come for him to go, and in his dreams he believes that the first to meet him at the Gates will be the child he loves. [THE END] _ |
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