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BY
WHITING, BEAUFORD HOUSE, STRAND.
especially larks--though these latter "blithe spirits" seem to live perpetually in the air, and one marvels how they ever contrived to make their nests in the potato-grounds below. Perhaps they do so in emulation of their human neighbours--authors, actors, artists, who in this place "most do congregate," many of them, poor souls! singing their daily songs of life out in the world, as the larks in the air; none knowing what a mean, lowly--sometimes even desolate home, is the nest whence such music springs.
Well, in this region, there is a lane (a crooked, unpaved, winding,
quaint, dear old lane!); and in that lane there is a house; and in that
house there are two especially odd rooms--where dwelt Olive Rothesay
and her mother.
Chance had led them hither; but they both--Olive
especially--thanked chance, every day of their lives, for having
brought them
to such a delicious old place. It was the queerest of all queer abodes, was Woodford Cottage. The entrance-door and the stable-door stood side by side; and the cellar-staircase led out of the drawing-room. The direct way from the kitchen to the diningroom, was through a suite of sleeping apartments; and the staircase, apparently cut out of the wall, had a beautiful little break-neck corner, which seemed made to prevent any one who once ascended from ever descending alive. Certainly, the contriver of Woodford Cottage must have had some slight twist of the brain, which caused the building to partake of the same unpleasant convolution.
Yet, save this slight peculiarity, it was a charming house to live in.
It stood in a garden, whose high walls shut out all view, save of the trees
belonging to an old dilapidated, uninhabited Lodge, where an illustrious
statesman had once dwelt, and which was
now creeping to decay and oblivion, like the great man's own memory. The trees waved, and the birds sang therein, for the especial benefit of Woodford Cottage, and of Olive Rothesay. She, who so dearly loved a garden, perfectly exulted in this one. Most delightful was its desolate, untrimmed luxuriance--where the peaches grew almost wild upon the wall, and one gigantic mulberry-tree looked beautiful all the year through. Moreover, climbing over the picturesque, bay-windowed house, was such a clematis as never was seen! Its blossoms glistened like a snow-shower throughout the day; and in the night-time, its perfume was a very breath of Eden. Altogether, the house was a grand old house--just suited for a dreamer, a poet, or an artist. An artist did really live therein; which had been no small attraction to draw Olive thither. But of him, more anon.
At present let us look at the mother and daughter, as they sit in the
one parlour to which all the glories of Merivale 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.
Olive was flitting in and out of the low windows which opened into the
garden, and bringing thence her apron-full of flowers, to dispose about the
large, somewhat gloomy, and scantily-furnished room. Mrs. Rothesay was
sitting in the sunshine, engaged in some delicate needlework. In the midst
of it she stopped, and her hands fell with a heavy sigh.
"It is of no use, Olive."
"What is of no use, mamma?"
"I cannot see to thread my needle. I really must be growing
old."
"Nonsense, darling"--Olive often said
"darling," quite in a protecting way--"Why, you are
not near forty yet. Don't talk about growing old, my own beautiful
mamma--for you are beautiful; I heard Mr. Vanbrugh saying so to his
sister, the other day; and of course he, an artist, must know," added
Olive, with a sweet flattery, as she took her mother's hands, and
looked at her with the deep admiration which love alone creates.
And truly the admiration was not uncalled for. Over the delicate beauty
of Sybilla Rothesay had crept a spiritual charm, that increased with
life's decline--for her life was declining, early
maturity having caused early decay. Not that her health was broken, or that
she looked withered and aged; but still there was a gradual change, as of
the tree which from its richest green melts into hues that, though still
lovely, indicate the time, distant but certain, of autumn days, and of
leaves softly falling earthwards. So doubtless, her life's leaf would fall.
Mrs. Rothesay smiled; sweeter than any of the flatteries of her youth,
now fell her daughter's tender praise. "You are a silly little
maiden; but never mind!--Only, I wish my eyes did not trouble me so
much. Olive, suppose I should come to be a blind old woman, for you to take
care of."
Olive snatched away the work, and closed the strained, aching eyes with
two sweet kisses. It was a subject she could not bear to talk upon;
perhaps, because it rested often on Mrs. Rothesay's mind; and she
herself had an instinctive apprehension that there was, after all, some
truth in these fears concerning her mother's sight. She began quickly
to talk of other matters.
"Hark, mamma, there is Mr. Vanbrugh walking in his painting-room
overhead. He always does so when he is dissatisfied about
his picture; and I am sure he need not be, for, oh! how beautiful it is! Miss Meliora took me in yesterday to see it, when he was out."
"She seems to make quite a pet of you, my child."
"Her kitten ran away last week, which accounts for it,
mamma," said Olive, wickedly. "But indeed I ought not to laugh
at her, for one must have something to love, and she has nothing but her
dumb pets."
"And her brother."
"I wonder if anybody ever loved him, or if he ever loved
anybody," said Olive, musingly. "But, mamma, if he is not
handsome himself, he admires beauty in others. What do you think?--he
is longing to paint somebody's face, and put it in this picture; and I
promised to ask. Oh, darling, do sit to him! it would not be much trouble,
and I should be so proud to see my beautiful mamma on the
Academy-exhibition next year."
Mrs. Rothesay shook her head.
"Nay, mamma--here he comes to ask you for himself,"
cried Olive, as a tall, a very tall shadow darkened the window, and its
corporeality entered the room.
He was a most extraordinary-looking man, was Mr. Vanbrugh. Olive had,
indeed, delicately called him "not handsome," for you probably
would not see an uglier man twice in a lifetime. Gigantic and ungainly in
height, and coarse in feature, he certainly was the very antipodes of his
own exquisite creations. And for that reason he created them. In his
troubled youth, tortured with a keen, passionate sense of that blessing
which was denied him, he had said, "Providence has created me
hideous--I will out-do Providence; I, with my hand, will continually
create beauty." And so he did--ay, and where he created, he
loved. He took his art for his mistress, and, like the Rhodian sculptor, he
clasped it to his soul
night and day, until it grew warm and life-like, and became to him in the stead of every human tie. Thus Michael Vanbrugh had lived, for fifty years, a life solitary even to moroseness; emulating the great Florentine master, whose christian name it was his glory to bear. He painted grand pictures, which nobody bought, but which he and his faithful little sister Meliora thought the greater for that. The world did not understand him, nor did he understand the world; so he shut himself out from it altogether, until his small and rapidly-decreasing income caused him to admit into his house the widow and daughter. He might not have done so, had not Miss Meliora hinted how lovely the former was, and how useful she might be as a model, when they grew sociable together.
He came to make his request now, and he made it with the greatest
unconcern. In his opinion, everything in life tended toward one
great end!--Art! He looked on all beautiful forms of nature as only made to be painted. Accordingly, he stepped up to his inmate, with the following succinct address:
"Madam, I want a Grecian head. Yours just suits me; will you
oblige me by sitting?" And then adding, as a soothing and flattering
encouragement: "It is for my great work--my
'Alcestis!'--one of a series of six pictures, which I hope
to finish one day."
He tossed back his long iron-grey hair, and his eyes, lighted with wild
genius, scanned curiously the gentle creature, whom he had hitherto noticed
only with the usual civilities of an acquaintanceship consequent on some
months' residence in the same house.
"Really, Mr. Vanbrugh, you are very flattering. If it will oblige
you in any way," began the widow, faintly colouring, and appealing to
Olive, who looked delighted; for
she regarded the old artist with as much reverence as if he had been Michael Angelo himself.
He interrupted them both--"Ay, that will just do;" and
his long, gaunt fingers drew in the air some magic circles over Mrs.
Rothesay's head. "Good line of brow--Greek mouth. If,
madam, you would favour me with taking off your cap. Thank you, Miss Olive.
You understand me, I see. That will do--the white drapery
over the hair--ah, divine! My 'Alcestis' to the life!
Madam--Mrs. Rothesay, your head is glorious; it shall go down to
posterity in my picture."
And he walked up and down the room, rubbing his hands with a delighted
pride, which, in its perfect simplicity, could never be confounded with
paltry vanity or self-adulation. "My work,
my picture," in which he so gloried, was utterly
different from--"I,
the man who painted it." He worshipped--not himself at all; and scarce so much his real work, as the ideal which ever flitted before him, and which it was the one great misery of his life never to have sufficiently attained.
"When shall I sit?" timidly inquired Mrs. Rothesay, still
too much of a woman not to be flattered by a painter's praise.
"At once, madam, at once, while the mood is on me. Miss Rothesay,
you will lead the way; you are not unacquainted with the arcana of my
studio." As, indeed, she was not, having before stood some three
hours in the painful attitude of a "Cassandra raving," while he
painted from her outstretched and very beautiful hands.
Happy she was the very moment her foot crossed the threshold of a
painter's studio, for Olive's love of Art had grown with her
growth, and strengthened with her
strength. Moreover, the artistic atmosphere in which she now lived had increased this passion tenfold; and while her hand secretly laboured to attain perfection, her mind was expanding, so that the deeper things of Art were opening unto her.
"Truly, Miss Rothesay, you seem to know all about it," said
Michael Vanbrugh, when, in great pride and delight, she was helping him to
arrange her mother's attitude, and at last became absorbed in
admiration of the graceful 'Alcestis.' "You might have
been an artist's daughter or sister."
"I wish I had," said Olive, softly.
"My daughter is somewhat of an artist herself, Mr.
Vanbrugh," observed Mrs. Rothesay, with a due maternal pride; which
Olive, deeply blushing, soon quelled by an entreating motion of
silence.
But the painter went on painting; he saw nothing, thought of nothing,
save his 'Al-
cestis.' He was indeed an enthusiast. Olive watched how, beneath the coarse, ill-formed hand, grew images of perfect beauty; how, within the mortal frame, almost repulsive in its ugliness, dwelt a mind which had power to produce the grandest ideal loveliness; and there dawned in the girl's spirit a stronger conviction than ever of the majesty of that genius which is superior to all human accident.
It was a comforting thought to one like her, who, as she deemed, had
been deprived by Nature of so many of life's sweetnesses. For the
sense of personal deformity, aroused by Sara's words, and increased by
her father's cruel epithet, had now taken such strong hold on her
mind, that it might perhaps never be obliterated.
The sitting had lasted some hours, during which it took all poor Mrs.
Rothesay's gentle patience to humour Olive's enthusiasm, by
maintaining that very arduous position in life, an artist's model. "Alcestis" was getting thoroughly weary of her duties, when they were broken by an advent rather rare at Woodford Cottage--that of the daily post. Vanbrugh grumblingly betook himself to the substitute of a lay figure and drapery, while Mrs. Rothesay read her letter, or rather looked at it, and gave it to Olive to read--glad, as usual, to escape from the trouble of correspondence.
Olive examined the superscription, as one sometimes does, uselessly
enough--when breaking the seal would explain everything. It was a
singularly bold, upright hand, distinct as print, free from all caligraphic
flourishes, indicating, as most writing does indicate in some degree, the
character of the writer. Slightly eccentric it might be, quick, restless,
in its turned-up Gs and Ys, but still it was a good hand--an honest
hand.
Olive thought so and liked it. Wondering who the writer could be, she opened it, and read thus:
"MADAME,
"From respect to your recent affliction I have kept silence for some months--a silence which, you will allow, was more than could have been expected from a wronged man. Perhaps I should not break it now, save for the claim of a wife and mother, who are suffering, and must suffer, from the results of an act which sprung from my own folly, and another's cruel--But no; I will not apply harsh words towards one who is now no more.
"Are you aware, madam, that your late husband, not two days before his death, when in all human probability he must have known himself to be ruined, accepted from me as-
Page 18sistance in a matter of business, which the enclosed correspondence between my solicitor and yours will explain? This act of mine, done for the sake of an ancient friendship subsisting between my mother and Captain Rothesay, has rendered me liable for a debt so heavy, that in paying it my income is impoverished, and must continue to be so, for years.
"Your husband gave me no security--I desired none. Therefore I have no legal claim of requital for this great and bitter sacrifice, which makes me daily curse my own folly in having trusted living man. But I ask of you, madam, who, secured from the effects of Captain Rothesay's insolvency, have, I understand, been left in comfort, if not affluence--I ask, is it right, in honour and in honesty, that I, a clergyman with a small stipend, should suffer the penalty of a
Page 19deed wherein, with all charity to the dead, I cannot but think I was grievously injured?
"Awaiting your answer, I remain, madam, your very obedient,
"HAROLD GWYNNE."
The mystery, then, was solved. Now she knew why in that last agony her
dying father had written the name of "Harold"--her poor
father, who was here accused, by implication at least, of a wilful act of
dishonesty! She regarded the letter with a sense of abhorrence--so
coldly cruel it seemed to her, whose tenderness for a father's memory
naturally a little belied her judgment.
And the heartless charge was brought by the husband of Sara Derwent! There was bitterness in every association connected with the name of Harold Gwynne.
"Well, dear, who is the letter from? You were poring over it long
enough," said Mrs. Rothesay, as they passed from the studio to their
own apartment.
"It brings news that will grieve you. But never mind, mamma,
darling--we will bear all our troubles together," said Olive, as
she prepared to read the letter aloud.
Well she knew the effect it would produce on her mother's feebler
mind. Tears it brought, and angry exclamations, and bitter repinings; but
the tender daughter soothed them all.
"Now, dear mamma," she whispered, when Mrs. Rothesay was a
little composed, "we must answer the letter at once. What shall we
say?"
"Nothing! That cruel man deserves no reply at all."
"Mamma!" cried Olive, somewhat reproachfully.
"Whatever he may be, the sum is evidently owed to him. Even Mr. Wyld
admits this, you see. We must not forget justice and honour--my poor
father's honour."
"No--no! You are right, my child. Let us do anything, if it
is for the sake of his dear memory," sobbed the widow, whose love
death had sanctified, and endowed with an added tenderness. "But,
Olive, you must write--I cannot!"
Olive assented. She had long taken upon herself all similar duties. At
once she sat down to pen this formidable letter. It took her some time; for
there was a constant struggle between the necessary formality of a
business-letter, and the impulse of wounded feeling, natural to her dead
father's
child. The finished epistle was a curious mingling of both.
"Shall I read it aloud, mamma? and then the subject will be taken
from your mind," said Olive, as she came and stood by her
mother's chair.
Mrs. Rothesay assented.
"Well, then, here it begins--'Reverend Sir' (I
ought to address him so, you know, because he is a clergyman, though he
does seem so harsh, and so unlike what a Christian pastor ought to
be)."
"He does, indeed, my child--but, go on." And Olive
read:
"'REVEREND SIR,
"'I address you by my mother's desire, to say that she was quite unaware of your claim upon my late dear father. She can only reply to it, by requesting your patience for a little time, until she is able to liquidate the
Page 23debt--not out of the wealth you attribute to her, but out of her present restricted means. And I, my father's only child, wishing to preserve his memory from the imputations you have cast upon it, must tell you in his defence, that his last moments were spent in a speechless effort to explain a mystery which none could divine. It has been now revealed by your letter, stating his secret debt. Oh, sir! was it right or kind of you so harshly to judge the dead? My father intended to pay you. If you have suffered, it was through his misfortune--not his crime. Have a little patience with us, and your claim shall be wholly discharged.
"'OLIVE ROTHESAY.'"
"Hush, mamma! Let me forget every-
thing that was once. Perhaps, too, she is not to blame. How, remembering the past, could Sara speak of me to her husband?"
Yet, with a look of bitter pain, Olive wrote the address of her
letter--"Harbury Parsonage"--Sara's
home!--She lingered, too, over the name of Sara's husband.
"Harold Gwynne! Oh, mamma! how different names look!
I cannot bear the sight of this! It fills me with bitterness--even
disgust." So spoke the lofty, but rarely roused spirit of Angus
Rothesay's daughter.
Years after, Olive remembered these words.
never married, for no one had ever asked her. Whether she had loved--but that was another question. She had probably quite forgotten the days of her youth; at all events, she never talked about them now.
But though to herself her name had been a mockery, to others it was not
so. Wherever she went, she always brought "better
things"--at least, in anticipation. She was the most hopeful
little body in the world, and carried with her a score of consolatory
proverbs, about "long lanes" that had most fortunate
"turnings," and "cloudy mornings" that were sure to
change into "very fine days." She had always in her heart a
garden full of small budding blessings; and though they never burst into
flowers, she kept on ever expecting they would do so, and was therefore
quite satisfied. Poor Miss Meliora! if her hopes never blossomed,
she also never had the grief of watching them die.
Her whole life had been pervaded by one grand desire--to see her
brother president of the Royal Academy. When she was a school-girl and he a
student, she had secretly sketched his likeness--the only one extant
of his ugly, yet soul-lighted face--and had prefixed thereto his name,
with the magic letters, "P.R.A." She felt sure the prophecy
would be fulfilled one day, and then she would show him the portrait, and
let her humble, sisterly love go down to posterity on the hem of his robe
of fame.
Meliora told all this to her favourite, Olive Rothesay, one day when
they were busying themselves in gardening--an occupation wherein their
tastes met, and which contributed no little to the affection and confidence
that was gradually springing up between them.
"It is a great thing to be an artist," said Olive,
musingly.
"Nothing like it in the world, my dear," was the
enthusiastic answer. "Think of all the stories of little peasant-boys
who have thus risen to be the companions of kings, whereby the kings ought
to think themselves much honoured. Remember the stories of Francis I. and
Titian, of Henry VII. and Hans Holbein, of Vandyck and Charles
I.!"
"You seem quite learned in Art, Miss Vanbrugh. I wish you would
impart to me a little of your knowledge."
"To be sure I will, my dear," said the proud, delighted
little woman. "You see, when I was a girl, I 'read up' on
Art, that I might be able to talk to Michael. Somehow, he never did care to
talk with me; but perhaps he may yet."
Olive's mind seemed wandering from the conversation, and from her
employment, too;
for the mignonette-bed she was weeding lost quite as many flowers as weeds. At last she said--
"Miss Meliora, do people ever grow rich as
artists?"
"Michael has not done so," answered her friend, a little
confused (at which Olive began to blush for what seemed a thoughtless
question). "But Michael has peculiar notions. However, I feel sure he
will be a rich man yet--like Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Thomas
Lawrence, and many more."
Olive began to muse again. Then she said, timidly, "I wonder why,
with all your love for Art, you yourself did not become an
artist?"
"Bless you, my dear, I should never think of such a thing. I have
no genius at all for anything--Michael always said so. I an
artist!--a poor little woman like me!"
"Yet, some women have been painters."
"Oh, yes, plenty. There was Angelica Kauffman, and Properzia
Rossi, and Elizabetta Sirani. In our day, there is Mrs. A-- and Miss
B--, and the two C--s. And if you read about the old Italian
masters, you will find that many of them had wives, or daughters, or
sisters, who helped them a great deal. I wish I had been such an one!
Depend upon it, my dear girl," said Meliora, waxing quite oracular in
her enthusiasm, "there is no profession in the world that brings
fame, and riches, and happiness, like that of an artist."
Olive only half believed in the innocent optimism of her companion.
Still, Miss Vanbrugh's words impressed themselves strongly on her
mind, wherein was now a chaos of anxious thought. From the day when Mr.
Gwynne's letter came, she had positively writhed under the burden of
this
heavy debt, which it would take years to discharge, unless a great deduction were made from their slender income. And how could she propose that--how bear to see her delicate and often-ailing mother deprived of the small luxuries which had become necessary comforts? To their letter no answer came--the creditor was then a patient one; but this thought the more stimulated Olive to defray the debt. Night and day it weighed her spirit down; plan after plan she formed, chiefly in secret, for the mention of this painful circumstance was more than her mother could bear. Among other schemes, she thought of entering on that last resource of helpless womanhood, the dreary life of a daily governess; but her desultory education, she well knew, unfitted her for the duty; and no sooner did she venture to propose the plan, than Mrs. Rothesay's lamentations and entreaties rendered it impracticable.
But Miss Vanbrugh's conversation now awakened a new scheme, by
which in time she might be able to redeem her father's memory, and to
save her mother from any sacrifice entailed by this debt. And
so--though this confession may somewhat lessen the romance of her
character--it was from no yearning after fame, no genius-led ambition,
but from the mere desire of earning money, that Olive Rothesay first
conceived the thought of becoming an artist.
Very faint it was at first--so faint that she did not breathe it
even to her mother. But it stimulated her to labour incessantly at her
drawing; silently to try and acquire information from Miss Meliora; to
haunt the painter's studio, until she had become familiar with many of
its mysteries. She had crept into Vanbrugh's good graces, and he, with
his customary, unconscious egotism, made her useful in a thousand ways.
But labouring secretly and without encouragement, Olive found her
progress in drawing--she did not venture to call these humble efforts
Art--very slow indeed. One day, when Mrs. Rothesay was
gone out, Meliora came in to have a chat with her young favourite, and
found poor Olive sitting by herself, quietly crying. There was lying beside
her an unfinished sketch, which she hastily hid, before Miss Vanbrugh could
notice what had been her occupation.
"My dear, what is the matter with you--no serious trouble, I
hope?" cried the painter's little sister, who always melted into
anxious compassion at the sight of anybody's tears. But Olive's
only flowed the faster--she being in truth extremely miserable. For
this day her mother had sorrowfully alluded to Mr. Gwynne's claim, and
had begun to propose many little personal sacrifices on her own
part, which grieved her affectionate daughter to the heart.
Meliora made vain efforts at womanly soothing, and then, as a last
resource, she went and fetched two little kittens and laid them on
Olive's lap by way of consolation; for her own delight and solace was
in her household menagerie, from which she was ever evolving great future
blessings. She had always either a cat so beautiful, that when sent to
Edwin Landseer, it would certainly produce a revolution in the subjects of
his animal-pictures--or else a terrier so bewitching, that she
intended to present it to her then girlish, dog-loving Majesty, thereby
causing a shower of prosperity to fall upon the household of Vanbrugh.
Olive dried her tears, and stroked the kittens--her propensity for
such pets was not her lightest merit in Meliora's eyes. Then
she suffered herself to be tenderly soothed into acknowledging that she was very unhappy.
"I'll not ask you why, my dear, because Michael used to tell
me I had far too much feminine curiosity," said Miss Vanbrugh,
humbly. "I only meant, if I could comfort you in any way."
There was something so unobtrusive in her sympathy, that Olive felt
inclined to open her heart to the gentle Meliora. "I can't tell
you all," she said, "I think it would not be quite
right;" and, trembling and hesitating, as if in the confession were
something of shame, she whispered her longing for that great comfort, money
of her own earning.
"You, my dear, you want money!" cried Miss Meliora, who had
always looked upon her new iniate, Mrs. Rothesay, as a sort of domestic
gold-mine. But she had the delicacy not to press Olive farther.
"I do. I can't tell you why, but it is for a good
purpose--a holy purpose! Oh, Miss Vanbrugh, if you could show me any
way of earning money for myself! Think for me--you, who know so much
more of the world than I."
--Which truth did not at all ignore the fact, that innocent little
Meliora was a very child in worldly knowledge. She proved it by her next
sentence, delivered oracularly after some minutes of hard cogitation.
"My dear, there is but one way to gain wealth and prosperity. If you
had but a taste for Art!"
Olive looked up eagerly. "Ah, that is what I have been brooding
over this long time; until I was ashamed of myself and my own
presumption."
"Your presumption?"
"Yes; because I have sometimes thought my drawings were not so
very, very bad; and I love Art so dearly, I would give anything in the
world to be an artist!"
"You draw! You long to be an artist!" It was the only thing
wanted to make Olive quite perfect in Meliora's eyes. She jumped up,
and embraced her young favourite with the greatest enthusiasm. "I
knew this was in you. All good people must have a love for Art. And you
shall have your desire, for my brother shall teach you. I must go and tell
him directly."
But Olive resisted, for her poor little heart began to quake. What if
her long-loved girlish dreams should be quenched at once--if Mr.
Vanbrugh's stern dictum should be that she had no talent, and never
could become an artist at all!
"Well, then, don't be frightened, my dear girl. Let me see
your sketches. I do know a little about such things, though Michael thinks
I don't," said Miss Meliora.
And Olive, her cheeks tingling with that sensitive emotion which makes
many a young
artist, or poet, shrink in positive agony, when the crude first-fruits of his genius are brought to light--Olive stood by, while the painter's kind little sister turned over a portfolio, filled with a most heterogeneous mass of productions.
Their very oddity showed the spirit of Art that dictated them. There
were no pretty, well-finished, young-ladyish sketches of tumble-down
cottages, and trees whose species no botanist could ever define;--no
smooth chalk heads, with very tiny mouths, and very crooked noses.
Olive's productions were all as rough as rough could be; few even
attaining to the dignity of drawing-paper. They comprised numberless
pen-and-ink portraits of the one beautiful face, dearest to the
daughter's heart--rude studies, in charcoal, of natural
objects--outlines, from memory, of pictures she had seen, among which
Meliora's eye proudly discerned several of Mr.
Vanbrugh's; while, scattered on every scrap of paper, were original pencil designs, ludicrously voluminous, illustrating nearly every poet, living or dead.
Michael Vanbrugh's sister was not likely to be quite ignorant of
Art. Indeed, she had quietly gathered up a tolerable critical knowledge of
the same--love teaches women so much! She went through the portfolio,
making remarks here and there. At last she closed it; but with a look so
beaming and encouraging, that Olive trembled for very joy.
"Let us go to Michacl, let us go to Michael," was all the
happy little woman said. So they went.
Unluckily, Michael was not himself; he had been "pestered with a
popinjay," in the shape of a would-be connoisseur, and he was trying
to smooth his ruffled feathers, and compose himself again to solitude and
"Alcestis."
His "well, what d'ye want?" was a sort of suppressed bellow, softening down a little at sight of Olive.
"Brother," cried Miss Meliora, trying to gather up her
crumbling enthusiasm into one courageous point--"Michael, I have
found out a new genius! Look here, and say if Olive Rothesay will not make
an artist!"
"Pshaw--a woman make an artist! Ridiculous!" was the
answer. "Ha! take the rubbish away--don't come near my
picture. The paint's wet. Get away!"
And he stood, flourishing his mahl-stick and palette--looking very
like a gigantic warrior, guarding the shrine of Art with shield and
spear.
His poor little sister, quite confounded, tried to pick up the drawings
which had fallen on the floor; but he thundered out "Let them
stay!" and then politely desired his sister to quit the room.
"Very well, brother--perhaps it will be better for you to
look at the sketches another time. Come, my dear."
"Stay, I want Miss Rothesay; no one else knows how to wear that
purple chlamys properly, and I must work at the drapery today. I am fit for
nothing else, thanks to that puppy who is just gone; confound him! I beg
your pardon, Miss Rothesay," muttered the old painter, in a slight
tone of concession, which encouraged Meliora to another gentle attack.
"Then, brother, since your day is spoiled, don't you think if
you were to look--"
"I'll look at nothing; get away with you, and leave Miss
Rothesay here--the only one of you womenkind who is fit to enter an
artist's studio."
Here Meliora slyly looked at Olive with an encouraging smile, and then,
by no means
despairing of her kind-hearted mission, she made herself invisible.
Olive, very humbled and disconsolate, prepared for her voluntary duty as
Vanbrugh's lay-figure. If she had not so reverenced his genius, she
certainly would not have altogether liked the man. But her hero-worship was
so intense, and her womanly patience so all-forgiving, that she bore his
occasional strange humours almost as meekly as Meliora herself. To-day, for
the hundredth time, she watched the painter's brow smoothe, and his
voice soften, as upon him grew the influence of his beautiful creation.
"Alcestis," calmly smiling from the canvas, shed balm into his
vexed soul.
But beneath the purple chlamys poor little Olive still trembled and
grieved. Not until her hope was thus crushed, did she know how near her
heart it had been. She
thought of Michael Vanbrugh's scornful rebuke, and bitter shame possessed her. She stood--patient model!--her fingers stiffening over the rich drapery, her eyes wearily fixed on the one corner of the room, in the direction of which she was obliged to turn her head. The monotonous, silent attitude contributed to plunge her mind into that dull despair which produces immobility of frame;--Michael Vanbrugh had never had so excellent a model.
As Olive was placed, he could not see her face unless he moved. When he
did so, he quite startled her out of a reverie by exclaiming--
"Exquisite! Stay just as you are. Don't change your
expression. That's the very face I want for the Mother of Alcestis. A
little older I must make it--but the look of passive misery, the
depressed eyelids and mouth. Ah, beautiful--beautiful, Miss
Rothesay--do, pray let me have that expression again, just for three minutes!" cried the eager painter.
He accomplished his end; for Olive's features, from long habit, had
a great power of retaining immobility;--and she would willingly have
acted all Le Brun's Passions, if necessary, for artistic purposes.
Delighted at his success, Mr. Vanbrugh suddenly thought of his model, not
as a model, but as a human being. He wondered what had
produced the look which, now faithfully transferred to the canvas,
completed "a bit" that had troubled him for weeks. He then
thought of the drawings, and of his roughness concerning them. Usually, he
hated amateurs and their productions, but perhaps these might not be so
bad. He would not stoop to lift them, but, fidgeting with his mahl-stick,
he stirred them about once or twice--accidentally as it
seemed--until he had a very good notion of
what they were. Then, after half an hour's silent painting, he thus addressed Olive.
"Miss Rothesay, what put it into your head that you wanted to be
an artist?"
Olive answered nothing. She was ashamed to speak of her girlish
aspirations, such as they had been; and she could not tell the other
motive--the secret about Mr. Gwynne. Besides, Vanbrugh would have
scorned the bare idea of her entering on the great career of Art for money!
So she was silent.
He did not seem to mind it at all, but went on talking, as he sometimes
did, in a sort of declamatory monologue.
"I am not such a fool as to say that genius is of either sex, but
it is an acknowledged fact that no woman ever was a great painter, poet, or
musician. Genius, the mighty one, does not exist in weak female nature, and
even if it did, custom and education would certainly stunt its growth.
Look here, child,"--and, to Olive's astonishment, he snatched up one of her drawings, and began lecturing thereupon--"here you have made a design--of some original power, too. I hate your young lady copyists of landscapes and flowers, and Jullien's paltry heads. Come, let us see this epigraph, 'Laon's Vision of Cythna,'
Good! Bold enough, too!"
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood.
And the painter settled himself into a long, silent examination of the
sketch. Then he said,
"Well, this is tolerable; a woman standing on a rock, a man a
little distance below looking at her--both drawn more correctly than
most amateurs could, only overlaid with drapery to hide ignorance of
anatomy. A very respectable design. But when one compares it with the
poem!" And, in his
deep, sonorous voice, he repeated the stanzas from the "Revolt of Islam."
She stood alone.
Above, the heavens were spread; below, the flood
Was murmuring in its caves; the wind had blown
Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.
A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
Before its blue and moveless depth was flying.
Grey mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
Of darkness in the north--the day was dying.
Sudden the sun shone forth; its beams were lying
Like boiling gold on ocean, strange to see;
And on the shattered vapours, which defying
The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly
In the red heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.
It was a stream of living beams, whose bank
On either side by the cloud's cleft was made;
And where its chasms that flood of glory drank,
Its waves gushed forth like fire, and, as if swayed
By some mute tempest, rolled on her. The shade
Of her bright image floated on the river
Of liquid light, which then did end and fade.
Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver
Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.
"There!" cried Vanbrugh, his countenance glowing with a
fierce inspiration that
made it grand amidst its ugliness; "there--what woman could paint that? Or rather, what man? Alas! how feeble we are--we, boldest followers of an Art which is divine. Truly there was but one among us who was himself above humanity, Michael the Angel!"
And he went and gazed reverently at the majestic head of Buonarotti,
which loomed out from the shadowy corner of the studio.
Olive experienced--as she often did, when brought into contact with
this man's enthusiasm--a delight almost like terror; for it made
her shudder and tremble as though within her own poor frame was that
Pythian effluence, felt, not understood--the spirit of Genius.
Vanbrugh came back, and continued his painting, talking all the
while.
"I said that it was impossible for a woman to become an
artist--I mean, a great artist.
Have you ever thought what that term implies? Not only a painter, but a poet; a man of learning, of reading, of observation. A gentleman--we artists have been the friends of kings. A man of high virtue, or how can he reach the pure ideal? A man of iron will, unconquered daring, and passions strong--yet stainless. Last and greatest, a man who, feeling within him the divine spirit, with his whole soul worships God!"
Vanbrugh lifted off his velvet cap and reverently bared his lofty crown;
then he continued:
"This is what an artist must be by nature. I have not
spoken of what he has to make himself. Years of study such as few can bear
lie before him,--no life of a carpet-knight, no easy play-work of
scraping colours on canvas. Why, these hands of mine have wielded not only
the pencil, but the scalpel;
these eyes have rested on scenes of horror, misery--even crime. I glory in it; for it was all for Art. At times I have almost felt like Parrhasius of old, who exulted in his captive's dying throes, since upon them his hand of genius would confer immortality. But this is not meet for the ears of a woman--a girl," added Vanbrugh, seeing Olive shudder at his words. Yet he had not been unmindful of the ardent enthusiasm which had dilated her whole frame while listening. It touched him like the memory of his own youth. Some likeness, too, there seemed between himself and this young girl to whom nature had been so niggardly. She might also be one of those who, shut out from human ties, are the more free to work the glorious work of genius.
After a few minutes of thought, Michael again burst forth.
"They who embrace Art, must embrace
her with heart and soul, as their one only bride. And she will be a loving bride to them,--she will stand in the place of all other joy. Is it not triumph for him to whom fate has denied personal beauty, that his hand--his flesh and blood hand--has power to create it? What cares he for worldly splendour, when in dreams he can summon up a fairyland so gorgeous that in limning it even his own rainbow-dyed pencil fails? What need has he for home, to whom the wide world is full of treasures of study--for which life itself is too short? And what to him are earthly and domestic ties? For friendship, he exchanges the world's worship, which may be his in life, must be, after death. For love--"
Here the old artist paused a moment, and there was something heavenly in
the melody of his voice as he continued,
"For love--frail human love--the poison-
flower of youth, which only lasts an hour--he has his own divine ideal. It flits continually before him, sometimes all but clasped; it inspires his manhood with purity, and pours celestial passion into his age. His heart, though dead to all human ties, is not cold, but burning. For he worships the ideal of beauty, he loves the ideal of love."
Olive listened, her senses reeling before these impetuous words. One
moment she looked at Vanbrugh where he stood, his age transfigured into
youth, his ugliness into majesty, by the radiance of the immortal fire that
dwelt within him. Then she sank at his feet, crying,
"I, too, am one of these outcasts; give me then this inner life
which is beyond all! Friend, counsel me! master, teach me! Woman as I am, I
will dare all things--endure all things. Let me be an
artist!"
She became an artist--not in a week, a month, a year--Art exacts of its votaries no less service than a lifetime. But in her girl's soul the right chord had been touched, which began to vibrate unto noble music--the true seed had been sown, which day by day grew into a goodly plant.
Like all strongest hopes,
By its own energy fulfilled itself.
Vanbrugh had said truly, that genius is of no sex; and he had said
likewise truly, that no woman can be an artist--that is, a great
artist. The hierarchies of the soul's dominion belong only to man, and it is right they should. He it was whom God created first, let him take the pre-eminence. But among those stars of lesser glory, which are given to lighten the nations, among sweet-voiced poets, earnest prose writers, who, by the lofty truth that lies hid beneath legend and parable, purify the world, graceful painters and beautiful musicians, each brightening their generation with serene and holy lustre--among these, let woman shine!
But her sphere is, and ever must be, bounded; because, however lofty her
genius may be, it always dwells in a woman's breast. Nature, which
gave to man the dominion of the intellect, gave to her that of the heart
and affections. These bind her with everlasting links from which she cannot
free herself,--nay, she would not if she could. Herein man has the
advantage. He,
strong in his might of intellect, can make it his all in all, his life's sole aim and guerdon. A Brutus, for that ambition which is misnamed patriotism, can trample on all human ties. A Michael Angelo can stand alone with his genius, and so go sternly down unto a desolate old age. But there scarce ever lived the woman who would not rather sit meekly by her own hearth, with her husband at her side, and her children at her knee, than be the crowned Corinne of the Capitol.
Thus woman, seeking to strive with man, is made feebler by the very
spirit of love which in her own sphere is her chiefest strength. But
sometimes chance or circumstance or wrong, sealing up her woman's
nature, converts her into a self-dependent human soul. Instead of
life's sweetnesses, she has before her life's greatnesses. The
struggle passed, her genius may lift itself upward, expand and grow mighty;
never so
mighty as man's, but still great and glorious. Then, even while she walks with scarce-healed feet over the world's rough pathway, heaven's glory may rest upon her up-turned brow, and she may become a light unto her generation.
Such a destiny lay open before Olive Rothesay.
She welcomed it as one who has girded himself with steadfast but
mournful patience unto a long and dreary journey, welcomes the faint ray
that promises to guide him through the desolation. No more she uttered, as
was her custom in melancholy moods, the bitter complaint, "Why was I
born?" but she said to herself, "I will live so as to leave the
world better when I die. Then I shall not have lived in vain."
It was long before Michael Vanbrugh could thoroughly reconcile himself
to the idea of a girl's becoming a painter. But by degrees
he learned to view his young pupil as a pupil, and never thought of her sex at all. Under his guidance, Olive passed from the mere prettinesses of most woman-painters to the grandeur of sublimer Art. Strengthened by her almost masculine power of mind, she learned to comprehend and to reverence the mighty masters which Vanbrugh loved. He unveiled to her those heights and depths which are rarely opened to a woman's ken. And she, following as he led--following with a daring will, and a firm perseverance--applied herself to the most obstruse of Art-studies. Still, as he had said, there were bounds that she could not pass; but as far as in her lay, she sought to lift herself above her sex's weakness and want of perseverance; and by an arduous toil from which most women would have shrunk, to make herself worthy of being ranked among
those painters who are not of the passing hour, but for all time.
That sense of personal imperfection which she deemed excluded her from a
woman's natural destiny, gave her freedom in her own. Brought into
contact with the world, she scarce felt like a young and timid girl, but as
a being--isolated, yet strong in her isolation; who mingles, and must
mingle, among men, not as a woman, but as one who, like themselves, pursues
her own calling, has her own spirit's aim; and can therefore step
aside for no vain fear, nor sink beneath any idle shame. And wherever she
went, her own perfect womanliness wrapped her round as with a shield.
Still, Olive could do many things with an independence that would have
been impossible to beautiful and unguarded youth. Oftentimes Mrs. Rothesay
trembled and mur-
mured at the days of solitary study in the British Museum, and in various picture-galleries; the long lonely walks, sometimes in winter-time extending far into the dusk of evening. But Olive always answered, with a pensive smile,
"Nay, mother; I am quite safe everywhere. Remember, I am not like
other girls. Who would notice me?"
But she always accompanied any painful allusion of this kind by saying
how happy she was in being so free, and how fortunate it seemed that there
could be nothing to hinder her from following her heart's desire. She
was growing as great an optimist as Miss Meliora herself,
who--cheerful little soul--was in the seventh heaven of delight
whenever she heard her brother acknowledge Olive's progress.
"And don't you see, my dear Miss Rothesay," she said
sometimes, "that everything
always turns out for the best; and that if you had not been so unhappy, and I had not come in and found you crying, you might have gone on pining in secret, instead of growing up to be an artist."
Olive assented, and confessed it was rather strange that out of her
chiefest trouble should have arisen her chiefest joy.
"It almost seems," said she to her mother, laughing,
"as if that hard-hearted Mr. Harold Gwynne had held the threads of my
destiny, and helped to make me an artist."
"Don't let us talk about Mr. Gwynne; it is a disagreeble
subject, my child," was Mrs. Rothesay's answer.
Olive did not talk about him, but she thought the more. And--though
had he known it, the pelf-despising Mr. Vanbrugh would never have forgiven
such a desecration of Art--it was not Olive's lightest spur in
the attainment of excellence, to feel that as
soon as her pictures were good enough to sell, she might earn money enough to discharge the claim of this harsh creditor, whose very name sent a pang to her heart.
Day by day, as her spirit strengthened and her genius developed,
Olive's existence seemed to brighten. Her domestic life was full of
many dear ties, the chief of which was that wild devotion, less a sentiment
than a passion, which she felt for her mother. Her intellectual life grew
more intense and all-vivifying; while she felt the stay and solace of
having one pursuit to occupy the whole aims and desires of her future.
Also, it was good for her to dwell with the enthusiastic painter and his
meek contented little sister; for she learnt thereby that life might pass
not merely in endurance, but in peace, without either of those blessings
which in her early romance she deemed the chief of all--
beauty and love. She felt that worth and genius were above them both.
The lesson was impressed more deeply by a little incident that chanced
about this time.
Miss Vanbrugh sometimes took Olive with her on those little errands of
charity which were not unfrequent with the gentle Meliora.
"I wish you would come with me to-day," she said once,
"because, to tell the truth, I hardly like to go alone."
"Indeed!" said Olive, smiling, for the little old maid was
as brave as a lion among those gloomiest of all gloomy lanes. She would
traverse them even in dark nights, and this was a sunny spring morning.
"I am not going to see an ordinary poor person, but that strange
foreign-looking woman--Mrs. Manners; who is one of my brother's
models sometimes--you know her?"
"Scarcely; but I have seen her pass
through the hall. Oh, she was a grand, beautiful woman, like an Eastern queen. You remember it was she from whom Mr. Vanbrugh painted the "Cleopatra." What an eye she had, and what a glorious mouth!" cried Olive, waxing enthusiastic.
"Poor thing! Her beauty is sadly wasting now," said Meliora.
"She seems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were
of sheer starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as
she stood--Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her
some wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor
place, Jane says, but quite decent and respectable. I shall surely go and
see the poor creature; but she looks such a desperate sort of woman, her
eyes glare quite ferociously sometimes. She might be angry--so I had
rather not be alone, if you will come, Miss Rothesay?"
Olive consented at once; there was in her a daring romance which,
putting all sympathy aside, would have quite gloried in such an
adventure.
They walked for a mile or two until they reached a miserable street by
the river-side; but Miss Meliora had forgotten the number. They must have
returned, their quest unsatisfied, had not Olive seen a little girl leaning
out of an upper window,--her ragged elbows on the sill, her wild
elf-like black eyes watching the boats up and down the Thames.
"I know that child," Olive said; "it is the poor
woman's. She left it in the hall one day at Woodford-cottage, and I
noticed it from its black eyes and fair hair. I remember, too--for I
asked--its singular and very pretty name,
Christal."
Talking thus, they mounted the rickety staircase, and inquired for Mrs.
Manners. The door of the room was flung open from
without, with a noise that would have broken any torpor less deep than that into which its wretched occupant had fallen.
"Ma mie is asleep don't wake
her or she'll scold," said Christal, jumping down from the
window, and interposing between Miss Vanbrugh and the woman who was called
Mrs. Manners.
She was indeed a very beautiful woman, though her beauty was on a grand
scale. She had flung herself, half-dressed, upon what seemed a heap of
straw with a blanket thrown over. As she lay there, sleeping heavily, her
arm tossed above her head, the large but perfect proportions of her form
reminded Olive of the reclining figure in the group of the "Three
Fates."
But there was in the prematurely old and wasted face something that told
of a wrecked life. Olive, prone to romance-weaving, wondered whether nature
had in a mere freak in-
vested an ordinary low-born woman with the form of the ancient queens of the world, or whether within that grand body lay ruined an equally grand soul.
Miss Meliora did not think about anything of the sort; but merely that
her brother's dinner-hour was drawing near, and that if poor Mrs.
Manners did not wake, they must go back without speaking to her.
But she did wake soon--and the paroxysm of anger which seized her
on discovering that she had intruding guests, caused Olive to shrink back
almost to the staircase. But brave little Miss Vanbrugh did not so easily
give up her charitable purpose.
"Indeed, my good woman, I only meant to offer you sympathy, or any
help you might need in your illness."
The woman refused both, in an accent that to Olive seemed rather
Spanish--or perhaps she fancied so, because the dark face had a
Spanish, or Creole cast. "I tell you, we want for nothing."
"Ma mie! I am so hungry!" said
little Christal, in a tone between complaint and effrontery. "I will
have something to eat."
"You should not speak so rudely to your mother, little
girl," interposed Miss Meliora.
"My mother! No, indeed; she is only ma
mie. My mother was a rich lady, and my father a noble
gentleman."
"Hear her, Heaven! oh, hear her!" groaned the woman on the
floor.
"But I love ma mie very
much--that's when she's kind to me," said Christal;
"and as for my own father and mother, I don't remember them at
all, for, as
ma mie says, they were drowned together in
the deep sea, years ago."
"I would they had been--I would they had been," was the
muttered answer, as Mrs. Manners clutched the child--a little, thin-
limbed, cunning-eyed girl, of eight or ten years old--and pressed her to her breast, with a strain more like the gripe of a lioness tha a tender woman's clasp.
Then she fell back quite exhausted, and took no more notice of anybody.
Meliora's easily-roused compassion forgot Mr. Vanbrugh's dinner,
and all things else, in making a few charitable arrangements, that resulted
in a comfortable tea for little Christal and "ma
mie."
Sleep had again overpowered the sick woman, who appeared to be slowly
dying of that anomalous disease called decline, in which the mind is the
chief agent of the body's decay. Meanwhile, Miss Vanbrugh talked in an
undertone to little Christal, who, her hunger satisfied, stood, her finger
in her mouth, watching the two ladies with her fierce black eyes--the
very image of a half-tamed gipsy. Indeed, Miss Meliora seemed rather
uneasy,
and desirous to learn more of her companions, for she questioned the child closely.
"And is the person you call ma mie
any relation to you?"
"The neighbours say she must be my aunt, from the likeness. I
don't know."
"And her name is Mrs. Manners--a widow, no doubt; for I
remember she was in very respectable mourning when she first came to
Woodford Cottage," said Meliora, who, having thus far drawn on her
lively imagination, deeply sympathised with the supposed heroine of her
fanciful tale.
"Poor young creature!" she continued, sitting down beside
the object of her compassion, who was, or seemed, asleep. "How hard
to lose her husband so soon! and I dare say she has gone through great
poverty--sold one thing after another to keep her alive. Why, I
declare," added the simple and unworldly Meliora, who could make a
story to
fit anything, "poor soul! she has even been forced to part with her wedding-ring."
"I never had one--I scorned it!" cried the woman,
leaping up with a violence that quite confounded the painter's sister.
"Do you come to insult me, you smooth-tongued English lady? Ah, you
shrink away--I am too vile for your presence, am I?"
"I don't know anything about you, indeed," said
Meliora, creeping to the door; while Olive, who, as yet untouched by human
passion, could not understand the mystery of half she witnessed, stood
simply looking on in wonder--almost in admiration. To her there seemed
a strange beauty, like that of a Pythoness, in the woman's attitude
and mien.
"You know nothing of me? Then you shall know. I come from a
country where are thousands of young maidens, whose blood, half-Southern,
half-European, is too
pure for slavery, too tainted for freedom. Lovely, and taught all accomplishments that can ennoble beauty, brought up delicately, in wealth and luxury, they yet have no higher future than to be the white man's passing toy--cherished, mocked, and spurned."
She paused; and Miss Vanbrugh, astonished at this sudden outburst, in
language so vehement, and above her apparent sphere, had not a word to say.
The woman continued:
"I but fulfilled my destiny. How could such as I hope to bear an
honest man's honest name? So, when my fate came upon me, I cast all
shame to the winds, and lived out my life. I followed my lover across the
seas; I clung to him, faithful in my degradation; and when his child slept
on my bosom, I looked at it, and was almost happy. Now, what think you of
me, virtuous English lady?" cried the outcast, as she tossed back her
cloud of dark crisped hair, chief token of
her Quadroon blood, and fixed her eyes sternly, yet mockingly, upon her visitors.
Poor Miss Vanbrugh was conscious of but one thing, that this scene was
most unmeet for a young girl; and that if once she could get Olive away,
all future visits to the miserable woman should be paid by herself alone.
Yet still she had the charity to say, in forbearing and half-disguised
words,
"I will see you another day, Mrs. Manners, but we cannot really
stay now. Come away, my dear Miss Rothesay."
And she and her charge quitted the room. Apparently, their precipitate
departure still further irritated the poor creature they had come to
succour; for as they descended the stairs, they heard her repeatedly shriek
out Olive's surname, in tones so wild, that whether it was meant for
rage or entreaty they could not tell.
Olive wanted to return.
"No, my dear; she would only insult you. Besides, I will go myself
to-morrow. Poor wretch! she is plainly near her end. We must be merciful to
the dying."
Olive walked home thoughtfully, not speaking much. When they passed out
of the squalid, noisy streets, into the quiet lane that led to Woodford
Cottage, she had never felt with so keen a sense the blessing of a pure and
peaceful home. She mounted to the pretty bedchamber which she and her
mother occupied, and stood at the open window, drinking in the fresh, sweet
odour of the bursting leaves. Scarce a breath stirred the soft spring
evening--the sky was like one calm blue lake, and therein floated,
close to the western verge, "the new moon's silver
boat."
She remembered how it had been one of her childish superstitions always
"to wish at the new moon." How often, her desire seeming
perversely to lift itself to-
wards things unattainable, had she framed one sole wish, that she might be beautiful and loved!
Beautiful and beloved! She thought of the poor erring creature whose
fierce words yet rang in her shrinking ear. Beautiful and beloved!
She had been both, and what was she now?
And Olive rejoiced that her own childish longings had passed into the
wisdom of subdued and patient womanhood. Had she now to frame a wish, it
would have been for that pure heart and lowly mind which are more precious
than beauty; for that serene peace of virtue, which is more to be desired
than love.
Now her fate seemed plain before her--within her home she saw the
vista of a life of filial devotion, blest in
As she looked forth into the world without,
"A constant stream of love that knew no fall."
there rose the vision, dim, yet sweet, of the great aim, that might perhaps achieve a success under shadow of which the lonely woman might go down to the grave not unhonoured in her day. Remembering all this, Olive murmured no longer at her destiny. She thanked God, for she felt that she was not unhappy.
A few words will comprise all that she discovered. Returning faithfully
next day, the kind little woman found that the object of her charity needed
it no more. In the night, suddenly it was thought, the spirit had departed.
There was no friend to arrange anything for the living or the dead; so Miss
Vanbrugh undertook it all. Her own unobtrusive benevolence prevented a pauper funeral. But in examining the few relics of the deceased, she was surprised to find papers which clearly explained the fact, that some years before there had been placed in a London bank, to the credit of Celia Manners, a sum sufficient to produce a moderate annuity. The woman had rejected it, and starved.
But she had not died without leaving a written injunction, that it
should be claimed by the child Christal, since it was "her
right." This was accomplished, to the great satisfaction of Miss
Vanbrugh and of the honest banker, who knew that the man--what sort of
man he had quite forgotten--who deposited the money, had enjoined that
it should be paid, whenever claimed by Celia or by Christal Manners.
Christal Manners was then the child's
name. Miss Vanbrugh might have thought that this discovery implied the heritage of shame, but for the little girl's obstinate persistence in the tale respecting her unknown father and mother, who were "a noble gentleman and grand lady," and had both been drowned at sea. The circumstance was by no means improbable, and it had evidently been strongly impressed on Christal by the woman she called ma mie. Whatever relationship there was between them, it could not be the maternal one. Miss Vanbrugh could not believe in the possibility of a mother's thus voluntarily renouncing her own child.
Miss Meliora put Christal to board with an old servant of hers, for a
few weeks. But there came such reports of the child's daring and
unruly temper, that, quaking under her responsibility, she decided to send
her protègée away to school.
The only place she could think of was an old-fashioned
pension
in Paris, where, during her brother's studies there, her own slender education had been acquired. Thither the little stranger was despatched, by means of a succession of contrivances which almost drove the simple Meliora crazy. For--lest her little adventure of benevolence should come to Michael's ears--she dared to take no one into her confidence, not even the Rothesays. Madame Blandin, the mistress of the pension, was furnished with no explanations; indeed, there were none to give. The orphan appeared there under the character she so steadily sustained--as Miss Christal Manners, the child of illustrious parents lost at sea; and so she vanished altogether from the atmosphere of Woodford Cottage.
Olive Rothesay was now straining every nerve towards the completion of
her first-exhibited picture--a momentous crisis in every young
artist's life. It was March:
always a pleasant month in this mild, sheltered neighbourhood where she had made her home. There, of all the regions about London, the leaves come earliest, the larks soonest begin to sing, and the first soft spring breezes blow. But nothing could allure Olive from that corner of their large drawing-room which she had made her studio, and where she sat painting from early morning until daylight was spent. The artist herself formed no unpleasing picture--at least, so her fond mother often thought; as Olive stood before her easel, the light from the half-closed-up window slanting downwards on her long curls, of that rare pale gold, the delight of the ancient painters, and now the especial admiration of Michael Vanbrugh. To please her master, Olive--though now a woman grown--wore her hair still in childish fashion, falling in most artistic confusion over her neck and shoulders. It seemed that nature had bestowed on her this
great beauty, in order to veil that defect which, though made far less apparent by her maturer growth, and a certain art in dress, could never be entirely removed. Still there was an inexpressible charm in her purely-outlined features, to which the complexion always accompanying pale-gold hair imparted such a delicate, spiritual colouring. Oftentimes her mother sat and looked at her, thinking she beheld the very likeness of the angel in her dream.
March was nearly passed--March, that month the most trying of the
year to English artists and their "forbears." Olive's
anxiety that the picture should be finished, and worthily finished,
amounted almost to torture. At last, when there was but one week
left--a week whose every hour of daylight must be spent in work, the
hope and fear were at once terminated by her mother's sudden illness.
Passing it was, and not dangerous;
but to Olive's picture it brought a fatal interruption.
The tender mother more than once prayed her to neglect all a
daughter's cares, rather than lose the year's exhibition; but
Olive forsook not her duty. Yet it cost her somewhat--aye, more than
Mrs. Rothesay could understand, to give up a year's hopes. She felt
this the more when came the Monday and Tuesday for sending in pictures to
the Academy.
Heavily these days passed, for there was not now the attendance on the
invalid to occupy Olive's mind. She was called hither and thither all
over the house; since on these two days, for the only time in the year,
there was at Woodford Cottage a positive
levée of artists, patrons, and
connoisseurs. Miss Rothesay was needed everywhere; first in the
painting-room, to assist in arranging its various treasures, her taste and
tact assisting
Mr. Vanbrugh's artistic skill. For the thousandth time, she helped to move the easel that sustained the small purchasable picture with which Michael this year condescended to favour the Academy; and admired, to the painter's heart's content, the beloved and long unsold "Alcestis," which extended in desolate grandeur over one whole side of the studio. Then she flitted to Miss Vanbrugh's room, to help her to dress for this important occasion. Never was there such a proud, happy little woman as Meliora Vanbrugh on the first Monday and Tuesday in April, when at least a dozen carriages usually rolled down the muddy lane, and the great surly dog, kennelled under the mulberry-tree, was never silent "from morn till dewy eve;" and all, thought the delighted Meliora, was an ovation to her brother's fame. Each year she fully expected that these visiting patrons would buy up every work of Art in the studio, to
say nothing of those adorning the hall--the cartoons and frescoes of Michael's long-past youth. And each year, when the carriages rolled away, and the visitants' admiration remained nothing but admiration, she consoled herself with the thought that Michael Vanbrugh was "a man before his age," but that his time for appreciation would surely come. So she hoped on till the next April: happy Meliora!
"Yes, you do seem happy, Miss Vanbrugh," said Olive, when
she had coaxed the stiff grizzled hair under a pretty cap of her own
skilful manufacturing; and the painter's little sister was about to
mount guard in the bay-window of the parlour, from whence she could see the
guests walk down the garden, and be also ready to mark the expression of
their faces as they came out of the studio.
"Happy!--to be sure I am! Everybody. must confess that this
last is the best picture
Michael ever painted"--(his sister had made the same observation every April for twenty years). "But, my dear Miss Rothesay, how wrong I am to talk so cheerfully to you, when your picture is not finished. But never mind, love! You have been a good, attentive daughter, and it will end all for the best."
Olive smiled faintly, and said she knew it would. But she thought in her
troubled heart how much seldomer were hopes fulfilled than
disappointed.
"Perhaps," continued Meliora, as a new and consolatory idea
struck her, "perhaps, even if you had sent in the picture, it might
have been returned, or put in the octagon room, or among the miniatures,
where nobody could see it; and that would have been much worse, would it
not?"
"I suppose so; and, indeed, I will be quite patient and
content."
Patient she was, but not content. It was
scarcely possible. Nevertheless, she quitted Miss Vanbrugh with smiles; and when she again sought her mother's chamber, it was with smiles too--or, at least, with that soft sweetness that ever dwelt in Olive's face. When she had left Mrs. Rothesay to take her afternoon sleep, she thought what she was to do to pass away the hours that, in spite of herself, dragged very wearily. This day was so different to what she had hoped. No eager, delighted "last touches" to her beloved picture; no exhibiting of it in its best light, in all the glory of the frame. It lay neglected below--she could not bear to look at it. The day was clear and bright--just the sort of day for painting; but Olive felt that the very sight of the poor picture would be more than she could bear. She did not go near it, but put on her bonnet and walked out.
"Courage! hope!" sang the larks to her,
high up above the green lanes; but her heart was too sad to hear them. A year, a whole year, lost!--a whole year to wait for the next hope! And a year seems so long when one has scarce counted twenty. Afterwards, how fast it flies!
"Perhaps," she said, her thoughts taking their colour from
the general weariness of her spirits, "perhaps Miss Vanbrugh was
right, and I might have had the picture returned. It cannot be very good,
or it would not have taken such long and constant labour. Genius, they say,
never toils--all comes by inspiration. It may be that I have no
genius; well then, where is the use of my labouring to excel?--indeed,
where is the use of my living at all?"
Alas! how little is known of the struggles of young, half-formed
genius!--struggles, not only with the world, but with itself; a
hopeless, miserable bearing-down--a sense of utter
unworthiness and self-contempt. At times, when the inner life--the soul's lamp--burns dimly, there rises the piteous moan--"Fool! fool! why strivest thou in vain? Thou hast deceived thyself; thou art no better than any brainless ass that plods through life!" And then the world grows so dull, and one's life seems so worthless, that one would fain blot it out at once.
Olive walked beneath this bitter cloud. She said to herself, that if her
picture had been a work of genius, it would have been finished long ere the
time; and that if she were destined to be an artist, there would not have
come this cross. No! all fates were against her. She must be patient and
submit, but she felt as if she should never have courage to paint again.
And now, when her work had become the chief aim and joy of her life, how
hard this seemed!
She came home, drearily enough; for the
sunny day had changed to rain, and she was thoroughly wet. But even this was, as Meliora would have expressed it, "for the best;" since it made her feel the sweetness of having a tender mother to take off her dripping garments, and smooth her hair, and make her sit down before the bright fire. And then Olive laid her head in her mother's lap, and thought how wrong--nay, wicked--she had been! She was thinking thus, even with a few quiet tears, when Miss Meliora burst, like a stream of sunshine, into the room.
"Good news--good news!"
"What? Mr. Vanbrugh has sold his picture, as you hoped, to Mr.
--"
"No, not yet!" and the least possible shadow troubled the
sister's face, "but perhaps he will. And, meanwhile, what think
you? Something has happened quite as good--at least, for somebody
else. Guess!"
"Indeed, I cannot!"
"He has sold yours!"
Olive's face flushed, grew white, and then she welcomed this first
success, as many another young aspirant to fame has done, by bursting into
tears. So did the easily-touched Mrs. Rothesay, and so did the kind Miss
Meliora, from pure sympathy. Never was good fortune hailed in a more
lachrymose fashion.
But soon Miss Vanbrugh, resuming her smiles, explained how she had
placed Olive's nearly-finished picture in her brother's studio,
where all the visitors had admired it, and one, a good friend to Art, and
to young, struggling artists, had bought it.
"My brother managed all--even to the payment. The full price
you will have when you have completed the picture. And, meanwhile, look
here!"
She had filled one hand with golden guineas, and now poured a
Danae-stream
into Olive's lap. Then, laughing and skipping about like a child, she vanished--the beneficent little fairy!--as swiftly as Cinderella's godmother.
Olive sat mute, her eyes fixed on the "bits of shining
gold," which seemed to look different to all other pieces of gold
that she had ever seen. She touched them, as if half fearing they would
melt away, or, like elfin coins, change into withered leaves. Then,
brightly smiling, she took them up, one by one, and told them into her
mother's lap.
"Take them, darling--my first earnings; and kiss
me--kiss your happy little girl!"
How sweet was that moment--worth whole years of after fame! Olive
Rothesay might live to bathe in the sunshine of renown--to hear behind
her the murmur of a world's praise--but she never could know
again the bliss of laying at her mother's feet the
first-fruits of her genius, and winning, as its first guerdon, her mother's proud and happy kiss.
"You will be quite rich now, my child."
"We will be," said Olive, softly.
"And to think that such a great connoisseur as Mr. -- should
choose my Olive's picture. Ah! she will be a celebrated woman some
time--I always thought she would."
"I will!" said the firm voice in Olive's
heart, as, roused to enthusiasm by this sweet first success, she felt
stirring within her the spirit whose pulses she could not
mistake--woman, nay, girl as she was--the spirit of Genius.
Thinking on her future--the future that, with Heaven's blessing,
she would nobly work out, her eye dilated and her breast heaved. And then
on that wildly-heaving bosom strayed a soft, warm hand--a tender voice
whispered, "My child."
And Olive, flinging her arms round her mother's neck, hid her face
there, and was a simple trembling child once more.
It was a very happy evening for them both--almost the happiest in
their lives. The mother formed a score of plans for expending this
newly-won wealth, always to the winner's benefit solely; but Olive
began to look grave, and at last said, timidly,
"Mamma, indeed I want for nothing; and for this money, let us
spend it in a way that will make us both most content. Oh, mother! I can
know no rest until we have paid Mr. Gwynne."
The mother sighed.
"Well, love, as you will. It is yours, you know; only, a little it
pains me that my child's precious earnings should go to pay that cruel
debt."
"Not that they should go to redeem my
father's honour?" said Olive, still gently. But she had her will.
When her picture was finished, and its price received, Olive, with a
joyful heart, enclosed the sum to their long-silent creditor.
"His name does not look quite so fearful now," she said,
smiling, when she was addressing the letter. "I can positively write
it without trembling, and perhaps I may not have to write it many times. If
I grow very rich, mamma, we shall soon pay off this debt, and then we shall
never hear any more of Harold Gwynne. Oh! how happy that would
be!"
The letter went, and an answer arrived in due form--not to Mrs.,
but to Miss Rothesay:
"MADAM,-I thank you for your letter, and have pleasure in cancelling a portion of my claim. I would fain cancel the whole of
Page 95it, but I must not sacrifice my own household to that of strangers.
"Allow me to express my deep respect for a child so honourably jealous over a father's memory, and to subscribe myself,
"Your very obedient, "HAROLD GWYNNE."
"Certainly, my dear."
"Look, the envelope is edged and sealed with black."
"Is it? Oh, perhaps he has lost his mother. I think I once heard
your poor papa say he knew her once. She must be now a very old woman;
still her loss has probably been a grief to her son."
"Most likely," said Olive, hastily. She never could bear to
hear of any one's mother
dying; it made her feel compassionately even towards Mr. Gwynne; and then she quickly changed the subject.
The two letters were put by in her desk, and thus--for a season at
least--the Harbury correspondence closed.
Snap is the only individual who has passed away at Woodford Cottage; in
all things else there has been an increase, not a decrease.
The peaches and nectarines cover two walls instead of one, and the clematis has mounted in white virgin beauty even to the roof. Altogether, the garden is changed for the better. Trim it is not, and never would be--thanks to Olive, who, a true lover of the picturesque, hated trim gardens. But its wild luxuriance is that of flowers, not weeds; and luxuriant it is, so that every day you might pull fore a friend that pleasantest of all pleasant gifts, a nosegay; yea, and afterwards find, that, like charity, the more you gave the richer was your store.
Enter from the garden into the drawing room, and you will perceive a
change, too. Its once gloomy barrenness has been softened by many a
graceful adjunct of comfort and luxury. Half of it, by means of a crimson
screen, is transformed into a painting-room. Olive would have it so, even
when need no longer required. She did this for several
reasons, the chief of which was, that whether the young paintress was working or not, Mrs. Rothesay might never be out of the sound of her daughter's voice. For, alas! this same sweet, love-toned voice was all the mother now knew of Olive!
Gradually there had come over Mrs. Rothesay the misfortune which she
once feared. She was now quite blind. Relating this, it may seem though we
were about to picture a scene of grief and desolation; but not so. A
misfortune that steals on year by
year--slowly--inevitably--often comes with so light a
footstep that we scarcely hear it. In this manner had come Mrs.
Rothesay's blindness. Her sight faded so gradually, that its
deprivation caused no despondency; and the more helpless she grew, the
closer she was clasped by those supporting arms of filial love, which
softened all pain, supplied all need, and were to her instead of strength,
youth, eyesight!
One only bitterness did she know--that she could not see
Olive's pictures. Not that she understood Art at all; but everything
that Olive did must be beautiful. She missed nought
else--not even her daughter's face; for she saw it continually in
her heart. Perhaps, in the grey shadow of a form, which she said her eyes
could still trace in the dim haze, she pictured the likeness of an Olive
ten times fairer than the real one--an Olive, whose cheek never grew
pale with toil, whose brow was never crossed by that cloud of heart
weariness which all who labour in an intellectual pursuit must know at
times. If so, the mother was saved from many of the pangs which visit those
who see their beloved ones staggering under a burden which they themselves
have no power either to take away or to bear.
And so, in spite of this affliction, the mother and daughter were
happy--even quite
cheerful, sometimes. For cheerfulness, originally foreign to Olive's nature, had sprung up there--one of those heart-flowers which Love, passing by, sows according as they are needed, until they bloom as though indigenous to the soil. To hear Miss Rothesay laugh, as she was laughing just now, you would have thought she was the merriest creature in the world, and had been so all her life. Moreover, from this blithe laugh, as well as from her happy face, you might have taken her for a young maiden of nineteen, instead of a woman of six-and-twenty--which she really was. But with some natures, after youth's first sufferings are passed, life's dial seems to run backward.
"My child, how very merry you are, you and Miss Vanbrugh!"
said Mrs. Rothesay, from her inner corner.
"Well, mamma, and how can we help it--talking of my
'Charity,' and the lady who
bought it. Would you believe, darling, she told Miss Vanbrugh that she did so because the background was like a view in their park, and the two little children resembled the two young Masters Fludyer--a fortunate likeness for me!"
"Aye," said Miss Meliora, "only my brother would say
you were very wrong to sell your picture to such stupid people, who know
nothing about Art."
"Perhaps I was; but," she added, whisperingly, "you
know I have not sold my Academy picture yet, and mamma must go
into the country this autumn."
"Mrs. Fludyer is a very nice lady-like woman," observed the
mother; "and she talked of her beautiful country-seat at Farnwood
Hall. I think it would do me good to go there, Olive."
"Well, you know she asked you, dear mamma."
"Yes; but only for courtesy. She would scarce be troubled with a
guest so helpless as I," said Mrs. Rothesay, half sighing.
In a moment Olive was by her side, talking away, at first softly, and
then luring her on to smiles with a merry tale,--how Mr. Fludyer, when
the picture came home, wanted to have the three elder Fludyers painted in a
row behind "Charity," that thus the allegorical picture might
make a complete family-group. "He also sent to know if I
couldn't paint his horse 'Beauty,' and one or two
greyhounds also, in the same picture. What a comical idea of Art this
country-squire must have!"
"My dear, every one is not so clever as you," said the
mother. "I like Mrs. Fludyer very much, because, whenever she came to
Woodford Cottage about the picture, she used to talk to me so
kindly."
"And she has asked after you in all her
letters since she went home. So she must be a good creature; and I too will like her very much indeed, because she likes my sweet mamma," was Olive's caressing answer.
The determination was soon called into exercise; for the next half hour,
to the surprise of all parties, Mrs. Fludyer appeared.
She assigned no reason for her visit, except that being again in town,
she had chosen to drive down to Woodford Cottage. She talked for half an
hour in her mild, limpid way; and then, when the arrival of one of
Olive's models broke the quiet leisure of the painting-room, she
rose.
"Nay, Miss Rothesay, do not quit your easel; Miss Vanbrugh will
accompany me through the garden, and besides, I wish to speak to her about
her clematis. We cannot make them grow in S--shire; the Hall is
perhaps too cold and bleak."
"Ah, how I love a clear bracing air!" said
Mrs. Rothesay, with the restlessness peculiar to all invalids--and she had been a greater invalid than usual this summer.
"Then you must come down, as I said--you and Miss
Rothesay--to S--shire; our part of the country is very beautiful.
I should be most happy to see you at Farnwood."
She urged the invitation with an easy grace, even cordiality, which
charmed Mrs. Rothesay, to whom it brought back the faint reflex of her
olden life--the life at Merivale Hall.
"I should like to go, Olive," she said, appealingly.
"I feel dull, and want a change."
"You shall have a change, darling," was the soothing but
evasive answer. For Olive had a tincture of the old Rothesay pride, and had
formed a somewhat disagreeable idea of the position the struggling artist
and her blind mother would fill as charity-guests at
Farnwood Hall. So, after a little conversation with Mrs. Fludyer, she contrived that the first plan should melt into one more feasible. There was a pretty cottage, the squire's lady said, on the Farnwood estate; Miss Fludyer's daily governess had lived there; it was all fitted up. What if Miss Rothesay would bring her mother there for the summer months? It would be pleasant for all parties.
And so, very quickly, the thing was decided--decided as suddenly
and unexpectedly as things are, when it seems as though not human will, but
destiny, held the balance.
Mrs. Fludyer seemed really pleased and interested; she talked to Miss
Meliora, less about her clematis than about her two inmates--a subject
not less grateful to the painter's sister.
"There is something quite charming about Miss Rothesay--an
air and manner of one
who has always moved in good society. Do you know who she was? I should apologise for the question, but that a friend of mine, looking at her picture, was struck by the name, and desired me to inquire."
Meliora explained that she believed Olive's family was Scottish,
and that her father was a Captain Angus Rothesay.
"Captain Angus Rothesay! I think that was the name mentioned by my
friend," answered Mrs. Fludyer, musing.
"Shall I call Miss Rothesay? Perhaps your friend is known to
her," observed Meliora.
"Oh no! Mrs.-- that is, the lady I allude to, said it was
needless to mention her name. And, by-the-bye, there is no reason why you
should trouble Miss Rothesay with my idle inquiry. Many thanks for the
clematis, and good morning, my dear Miss Vanbrugh."
She ascended her carriage with the easy, smiling grace of one born to
fortune, marrying fortune, and dwelling hand-in-hand with fortune all her
life. Miss Meliora gazed in intense admiration after her departing wheels,
and forthwith retired to plan out of the few words she had let fall a
glorious future for her dear Miss Rothesay. There was certainly some
unknown wealthy relative who would probably appear next week, and carry off
Olive and her mother to affluence--in a carriage as grand as Mrs.
Fludyer's.
She would have rushed at once to communicate the news to her friends,
had it not been that she was stopped in the garden-walk by the apparition
of her brother escorting two gentlemen from his studio--a rare
courtesy with him. Meliora accounted for it when, from behind a sheltering
espalier, she heard him address one of them as "my lord."
But when she told this to Olive, the young paintress was of a different
opinion. She had heard the name of Lord Arundale, and recognised it as that
of a nobleman on whom his love of Art and science shed more honour than his
title. That was why Mr. Vanbrugh showed him respect, she knew.
"Certainly, certainly!" said Meliora, a little ashamed.
"But to think that such a clever man, and a nobleman, should be so
ordinary in appearance. Why, he was not half so remarkable-looking as the
gentleman who accompanied him."
"What was he like?" said Olive, smiling.
"You would have admired him greatly. His was just the sort of head
you painted for your 'Aristides the Just'--your favourite
style of beauty--dark, cold, proud, with such piercing, eagle eyes;
they went right through me!"
Olive laughed merrily.
"Do you hear, mamma, how she runs on? What a bewitching young
hero!"
"A hero perhaps, but not at all young; and as for bewitching, that
he certainly might be, but it was in the fashion of a wizard or a magician.
I never felt so nervous at the sight of any one in the whole course of my
life," continued Miss Meliora, chattering on, as she often did, just
to amuse Mrs. Rothesay, and make Olive smile. She would have gone on
longer, but there was a knock at the drawing-room door.
"Come in," said Olive, and Mr. Vanbrugh entered.
For a moment he stood on the threshold without speaking; but there was a
radiance in his face, a triumphant dignity in his whole carriage, which
struck Olive and his sister with surprise.
"Brother--dear Michael, you are pleased with something; you
have had good news."
He passed Meliora by, and walked up to Miss Rothesay.
"My pupil, rejoice with me; I have found at length appreciation,
my life's aim has won success--I have sold my
'Alcestis.'"
Miss Vanbrugh, in her frantic joy, rushed towards her brother to embrace
him. Olive Rothesay, full of delight, would have clasped her master's
hand, but there was something in his look that repelled them both. His was
the stern solitary triumph of a man who exulted only in and for his art,
neither asking nor needing any human sympathies. Such a look might have
been on the face of the great Florentine, when he beheld the multitude bend
half in rapture, half in awe, before his work in the Sistine chapel, and,
folding his coarse garments round him, walked through the streets of Rome
to his hermit dwelling, and sat himself down in
stern rejoicement and proud humility, under the shadow of his desolate renown.
Michael Vanbrugh continued,
"Yes, I have sold my grand picture, the dream--the joy of a
lifetime. Sold it, too, to a man who is worthy to possess it. I shall see
it in Lord Arundale's noble gallery; I shall know that it, at least,
will remain where, after my death, it will keep from oblivion the name of
Michael Vanbrugh. Glorious indeed is this my triumph--yet less mine,
than the triumph of High Art. Do you not rejoice, my pupil?"
"I do, indeed, my dear and noble master," said Olive,
regarding him with reverent affection, for there had grown up a deep
sympathy between her and the eccentric painter.
"And brother, brother--you will be very rich. The price you
asked for the 'Alcestis' was two thousand pounds," said
Meliora.
He smiled bitterly.
"You women always think of that--the paltry gold that
rewarded genius brings."
"But for you, only for you, dear Michael," cried his sister;
and her tearful eyes spoke the truth. Poor little soul! she could but go as
far as her gifts went, and they extended no farther than to the thought of
what comforts would this money procure for Michael--a richer velvet
gown and cap, like one of the old Italian painters--perhaps a journey
to refresh his wearied eyes among lovely scenes of nature. She explained
this, looking, not angry, but just a little hurt.
"A journey! yes, I will take a journey--one which I have
longed for these thirty years--I will go to Rome! Once again I will
lie on the floor of the Sistine, and look up worshippingly to Michael the
Angel." (He always called him so.)
"And how long shall you stay, brother?"
"Stay? until my heart grows pulseless, and my brain dull. Why
should I ever come back to this cold England? No; let me grow old, die, and
be buried, under the shadow of the Eternal City."
"He will never come back again--never," said Miss
Vanbrugh, looking at Olive with a vague bewilderment. "He will leave
this pretty cottage, and me, and everything."
There was a dead silence, during which poor Meliora sat plaiting her
white apron in fold after fold, as was her habit when in deep and perplexed
thought. Then she went up to her brother.
"Michael, if you will take me, I should like to go with
you."
"What!" cried Mrs. Rothesay, "you, my dear Miss
Vanbrugh, who are so thoroughly English--who always said you hated
moving from place to place, and would live and die at Woodford
Cottage!"
"Hush--hush! we'll not talk about that, lest he should
hear," said Meliora, glancing half frightened at her brother. But he
stood absorbed by the window, looking out apparently on the sky, though his
eyes saw nothing--nothing! "Michael, do you quite
understand--may I go with you to Rome?"
"Very well--very well, sister," he answered, in the
tone of a man who is indifferent to the subject, except that consent gives
less trouble than refusal. Then he turned towards Olive, and asked her to
go with him to his painting-room; he wanted to consult with her as to the
sort of frame suited to the "Alcestis." Indeed, his pupil had
now grown associated with all his pursuits, and had penetrated further in
the depths of his inward life than any one else had been ever suffered to
do. And Olive's ardent, almost masculine genius, sympathised deeply
with the strange old artist; so that she became to him his
cher-
ished pupil--the child of his soul, to whom he would fain transmit the mantle of his fame. He had but one regret, sometimes touchingly expressed--that she was a woman--only a woman.
They went and stood before the picture, he and Olive, Meliora stealing
after her brother's footsteps, noiseless but constant as his shadow.
And this ever-following, faithful love clung so closely to its object,
that, shadow-like, what all others beheld, by him was never seen. It is
often so!
Michael Vanbrugh cast on his picture a look such as no living face ever
had won, or ever would win, from his cold eyes. It was the gaze of a parent
on his child, a lover on his mistress, an idolater on his self-created god.
Then he took his palette, and began to paint, lingeringly and lovingly, on
slight portions of background or drapery--less as though he thought
this needed, than as if
loath to give the last, the very last, touch to a work so precious. He talked all the while, seemingly to hide the emotion which he would not show.
"That Lord Arundale is an honour to his order, a noble
man indeed. One does not often meet such, Miss Rothesay. It was a
pleasure to receive him in my studio. It did me good to talk with him, and
with his friend."
Here Olive looked at Meliora and smiled. "Was his friend, then, as
pleasing as himself?"
"Not so brilliant in conversation, but far the higher nature of
the two, or I have read the human countenance in vain. He said, boldly and
frankly, that he was no artist, and no connoisseur, like Lord Arundale; but
I saw from his eye, that, if he did not understand, he felt my
picture."
"How so?" said Olive, with growing interest.
"He looked at Alcestis,--the 'Alcestis' I have
painted,--sitting on her golden throne, her head on her husband's
breast, waiting for death to call her from her kingdom and her lord:
waiting solemnly, yet without fear. 'See,' said Lord Arundale
to his friend, 'how love makes this feeble woman stronger than a
hero! See how fearlessly a noble wife can die!'--'A wife
who loves her husband,' was the answer, given so bitterly, that I
turned to look at him. Oh, that I could have painted his head at that
instant! It would have made a Heraclitus--a Timon!"
"And do you know who is this man?" asked Olive, unable to
restrain her curiosity. "Will he come here again?"
"No; for he was leaving London to-day. I wish it had not been so,
for I would have asked him to sit to me. That grand, iron, rigid head of
his, with the close curling hair, would be a treasure indeed!"
"But who is he, brother?" inquired Meliora.
"A man of science; well known in the world, too, Lord Arundale
said. He told me his name, but I forget it. However, you may find a card
somewhere about."
Meliora ran to the mantel-piece, and brought one to her brother.
"Is this it?" He nodded. She went quickly to the light, and
read aloud--
"The Reverend Harold Gwynne."
These she had the curiosity to take from their hiding-place, and examine
once more--partly for her mother's amusement, partly for
her own; for it was a whim of hers to judge of character by hand-writing, and she really had been quite interested in the character which both Miss Vanbrugh and her brother unconsciously drew of this man.
"How strange that he should have been so near us, and we not know
the fact! though he must have known it, of course. He seems quite to haunt
us--to be positively our evil genius--our
Daimon!"
"Hush, my dear! it is wrong to talk so. Remember, too, that he is
Sara's husband."
Olive did remember it. Jestingly though she spoke, there was in her
spirit a remembrance, as mournful as a thing so long ended could be, of
that early friendship, whose falseness had been her loving heart's
first blight. She had never formed another. There was a grand unity in her
nature which made it impossible to build the shrine of a second affection
on the ruins of the first. She found
it so, even in life's ordinary ties. What would it have been with her had she ever known the great mystery of love.
She never had known it. She had lived all these years with a heart as
virgin as mountain snows. When the one sweet dream which comes to all pure
spirits in early maidenhood--the dream of loving and being
loved--was crushed, her heart drew back within itself, and, after a
time of suffering almost as deep as if for the loss of a real object
instead of a mere ideal, she meekly prepared herself for her destiny. She
went out into society, and there saw men, as they are in
society--feeble, fluttering coxcombs, hard, grovelling men of
business; some few men of pleasure, and of scarce-concealed vice; and,
floating around all, the race of ordinary mankind, neither good nor bad.
Out of these classes, the first she merely laughed at, the second she
turned from with distaste, the
third she abhorred and despised, the fourth she looked upon with a calm indifference. Some good and clever men she had met occasionally, towards whom she had felt herself drawn with a friendly inclination; but they had always been drifted from her by the ever-shifting currents of society.
And these, the exceptions, were chiefly old, or at least elderly
persons; men of long-acknowledged talent, wise and respected heads of
families. The "new generation," the young men out of whose
community her female acquaintances were continually choosing lovers and
husbands, were positively disliked by Olive Rothesay. Gradually, when she
saw how mean was the general standard of perfection, how ineffably beneath
her own ideal--the man she could have worshipped--she ceased to
regret that loneliness which on earth was, she deemed, her perpetual lot.
She saw her companions wedded to
men who from herself would never have won a single thought. So she gathered up all her passionate love-impulses into her virgin soul, and married herself unto her Art.
She indulged in some of her sage reflections on men and women, courtship
and wedlock, in general, when she sat at her mother's feet talking of
Harold Gwynne and of his wife.
"Sara, too, must have suffered--if Mr. Gwynne be really the
man that Miss Vanbrugh and her brother describe," thought Miss
Rothesay; and there recurred over and over again to her fancy the words,
"A wife who loved her husband." Olive at least
knew too well that Sara Derwent, when she married, could not have loved
hers. Wonderings as to what that marriage had been, and what was
Sara's present fate, occupied her mind for a long, long time. She had
full opportunity for thought; as her
mother, oppressed by the sultry August evening, had fallen asleep with her hand on her daughter's neck, and Olive could not stir for fear of waking her.
Slowly she watched the twilight darken into a deeper shadow--that
of a gathering thunderstorm. The trees beyond the garden began to sway
restlessly about, and then, with a sudden flash and distant thunder growl,
down came the rain in torrents. Mrs. Rothesay started and woke; like most
timid women, she had a great dread o