“A constant stream of love that knew no fall.”
As she looked forth into the world without, there rose the hope of her Art, 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.
Perhaps, ere following Olive's fortunes, it may be as well to set the reader's mind at rest concerning the incident narrated in the preceding chapter. It turned out the olden tale of passion, misery, and death. No more could be made of it, even by the imaginative Miss Meliora.
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; 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 calledma 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 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 herprotégéeaway to school The only place she could think of was an old-fashionedpensionin 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 thepension, 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 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. 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 begged her to neglect everything but the picture. But Olive refused. Yet it cost her somewhat—ay, 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 alevéeof 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 purchaseable picture with which Michael this year condescended to favour the Academy; and admired, to the painter's heart's content, the beloved and long-to-be-unsold “Alcestis,” which extended in solitary 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.” All, thought the delighted Meliora, was an ovation to her brother. 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 nothingbutadmiration, 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 neat 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, whenyourpicture is not finished. 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.
“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 which was in Olive like a smile. When she had left Mrs. Rothesay to take her afternoon's 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 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 scarcely 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 soldyours!”
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 Danäe-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 money, 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 and best reward, her mother's proud and happy kiss.
“You will be quite rich now, my child.”
“Wewill 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. 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 of 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. O 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.”
“But not that they should go to redeem my father's honour?” said Olive, still gently. 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 incancelling a portion of my claim. I would fain cancel thewhole of it, but I must not sacrifice my own household tothat of strangers.“Allow me to express my deep respect for a child sohonourably jealous over a father's memory, and to subscribemyself,“Your very obedient,“Harold Gwynne.”
“He is not so stony-hearted after all, mamma,” said Olive, smiling. “Shall I put this letter with the other; we had better keep them both?”
“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 an 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.
Seven summers more the grand old mulberry-tree at Woodford Cottage has borne leaf, flower, and fruit; the old dog that used to lie snarling under its branches, lies there still, but snarls no more. Between him and the upper air are two feet of earth, together with an elegant canine tombstone, on which Miss Rothesay, by the entreaty of the disconsolate Meliora, has modelled in clay a very good likeness of the departed.
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 luxuriance is that of flowers, not weeds; and luxuriant it is, so that every day you might pull for 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 dreariness 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; 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 feared. She was now 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 didmustbe 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 bear or to take away.
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, 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 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—fortunate likeness for me!”
“Ay,” 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 mammamustgo into the country this autumn.”
“Mrs. Fludyer is a very nice chatty 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 scarcely 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.”
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 Van-brugh 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 equally grateful to the painter's sister.
“There is something quite charming about Miss Rothesay—the 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.”
“Shall I call Olive? Perhaps she knows your friend,” observed Meliora.
“Oh no! Mrs.—that is, the lady I allude to, said they were entire strangers, and it was needless to mention her name. Do not 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 washelike?” 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 exactly 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.” Here 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 rushed towards her brother. 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 triumph of a man who exulted only in and for his Art, neither asking nor heeding any human sympathies. Such a look might have been on the face of the great Florentine, when he beheld the multitude gaze half in rapture, half in awe, on his work in the Sistine Chapel; then, folding his coarse garments round him, walked through the streets of Rome to his hermit dwelling, and sat himself down 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.”
“And, brother, brother—you will be very rich. The price you asked for the 'Alcestis' was a thousand pounds,” said Meliora.
He smiled bitterly.
“You women always think of money.”
“But for your sake only, 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 sum 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 worshipingly 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 too.”
“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 that would suit 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. Olive gradually became to him his cherished pupil—the child of his soul, to whom he would fain transmit the mantle of his fame. He had but one regret, sometimes earnestly, and comically 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.
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 idolator 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 loth 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.
“Lord Arundale is an honour to his rank, anoble manindeed. 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 agreeable 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 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, 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 his name? 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 forgot it. However, you may find a card somewhere about.”
Meliora ran to the mantelpiece, and brought one to her brother. “Is this it?” He nodded. She ran for the light, and read aloud—
“The Reverend Harold Gwynne.”
The subject of Harold Gwynne served Olive-and her mother for a full half-hour's conversation during that idle twilight season which they always devoted to pleasant talk. It was a curious coincidence which thus revived in their memories a name now almost forgotten. For, the debt once paid, Mr. Gwynne and all things connected with him had passed into complete oblivion, save that Olive carefully kept his letters.
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 had drawn.
“How strange that he should have been so near us, and we not know the fact! He seems quite to haunt us—to be 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 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 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 most 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 prepared herself for her destiny. She went out into society, and there saw men, as they arein society—feeble, fluttering coxcombs, hard, grovelling men of business, some few men of pleasure, or of 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 much 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 worshiped—she grew quite happy in her own certain lot. She saw her companions wedded to men who from herself would never have won a single thought. So she put aside for ever the half-sad dream of her youth, 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. “It could not have been a happy marriage, mamma,—if Mr. Gwynne be really the man that Miss Vanbrugh and her brother describe.” And all day there recurred to Olive's fancy the words, “A wife who loved her husband.” She, at least, knew too well that Sara Derwent, when she married, could not have loved hers. Wonderings as to 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 of thunder, and it took all Olive's powers of soothing to quiet her nervous alarms. These were increased by another sound that broke through the pouring rain—a violent ringing of the garden-bell, which, in Mrs. Rothesay's excited state, seemed a warning of all sorts of horrors.
“The house is on fire—the bolt has struck it Oh Olive, Olive, save me!” she cried.
“Hush, darling! You are quite safe with me.” And Olive rose up, folding her arms closely round her mother, who hid her head in her daughter's bosom. They stood—Mrs. Rothesay trembling and cowering—Olive with her pale brow lifted fearlessly, as though she would face all terror, all danger, for her mother's sake. Thus they showed, in the faint glimmer of the lightning, a beautiful picture of filial love—to the eyes of a stranger, who that moment opened the door. She was a woman, whom the storm had apparently driven in for shelter.
“Is this Miss Vanbrugh's house—is there any one here?” she asked; her accent being slightly foreign.
Olive invited her to enter.
“Thank you; forgive my intrusion, but I am frightened—half drowned. The thunder is awful; will you take me in till Miss Vanbrugh returns?”
A light was quickly procured, and Olive came to divest the stranger of her dripping garments.
“Thank you, no! I can assist myself—I always do.”
And she tried to unfasten her shawl—a rich heavy fabric, and of gaudy colours, when her trembling fingers failed; she knitted her brows, and muttered some sharp exclamation in French.
“You had better let me help you,” said Olive, gently, as, with a firm hand, she took hold of the shivering woman, or girl, for she did not look above seventeen, drew her to a seat, and there disrobed her of her drenched shawl.
Not until then did Miss Rothesay pause to consider further about this incognita, arrived in such a singular manner. But when, recovered from her alarm the young stranger subsided into the very unromantic occupation of drying her wet frock by the kitchen fire, Olive regarded her with no small curiosity.
She stood, a picture less of girlish grace, than of such grace as French fashion dictates. Her tall, well-rounded form struggled through a painful compression into slimness; her whole attire had that peculiartournurewhich we islanders term Frenchified. Nay, there was something in the very tie of her neck-ribbon which showed it never could have been done by English fingers. She appeared, all over, “a young lady from abroad.”
We have noticed her dress first, because that was most noticeable. She herself was a fine, tall, well-modelled girl, who would have been graceful had fashion allowed her. She had one beauty—a column-like neck and well-set head, which she carried very loftily. Her features were somewhat large, not pretty, and yet not plain. She had a good mouth and chin; her eyes were very dark and silken-fringed; but her hair was fair.
This peculiarity caught Olive's eye at once; so much so, that she almost fancied she had seen the face before, she could not tell where. She puzzled about the matter, until the young guest, who seemed to make herself quite at home, had dried her garments, and voluntarily proposed that they should return to the drawing-room.
They did so, the stranger leading the way, and much to Olive's surprise, seeming to thread with perfect ease the queer labyrinths of the house.
By this time the storm was over, and they found Mrs. Rothesay sitting quietly waiting for tea. The young lady again apologised in her easy, foreign manner, and asked if she might stay with them until Miss Vanbrugh's return? Of course her hostess assented, and she talked for above an hour; chiefly of Paris, which she said she had just left; of French customs; music, and literature.
In the midst of this, Miss Vanbrugh's voice was heard in the hall. The girl started, as one does at the sound of some old tune, heard in youth, and forgotten for years; her gaiety ceased; she put her hand before her eyes; but when the door opened, she was her old self again.
No child “frayed with a sprite” could have looked more alarmed than Miss Meliora at the sudden vision of this elegant young damsel, who advanced towards her. The little old maid was quite overpowered with her stylish bend; her salute, French fashion, cheek to cheek; and her anxious inquiries after Miss Vanbrugh's health.
“I am quite well, thank you, madam. A friend of Mrs. Rothesay's I suppose?” was poor Meliora's bewildered reply.
“No, indeed; I have not till now had the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Rothesay's name. My visit was to yourself,” said the stranger, evidently enjoying theincognitoshe had kept, for her black eyes sparkled with fun.
“I am happy to see you, madam,” again stammered the troubled Meliora.
“I thought you would be—I came to surprise you. My dear Miss Vanbrugh, have you really forgotten me? Then allow me to re-introduce myself. My name is Christal Manners.”
Miss Meliora looked as if she could have sunk into the earth! Year after year, from the sum left in the bank, she had paid the school-bill of her self-assumed charge; but that was all. After-thoughts, and a few prudish hints given by good-natured friends, had made her feel both ashamed and frightened at having taken such a doubtfulprotégée. Whenever she chanced to think of Christal's growing up, and coming back a woman, she drove the subject from her mind in absolute alarm. Now the very thing she dreaded had come upon her. Here was the desolate child returned, a stylish young woman, with no home in the world but that of her sole friend and protectress.
Poor Miss Vanbrugh was quite overwhelmed. She sank on a chair, “Dear me! I am so frightened—that is, so startled. Oh, Miss Rothesay, what shall I do?” and she looked appealingly to Olive.
But between her and Miss Rothesay glided the young stranger. The bright colour paled from Christa's face—her smile passed into a frown.
“Then you are not glad to see me—you, the sole friend I have in the world, whom I have travelled a thousand miles to meet—travelled alone and unprotected—you are not glad to see me? I will turn and go back again—I will leave the house—I will—I”——
Her rapid speech ended in a burst of tears. Poor Meliora felt like a guilty thing. “Miss Manners—Christal—my poor child! I didn't mean that! Don't cry—don't cry! I am very glad to see you—so are we all—are we not, Olive?”
Olive was almost as much puzzled as herself. She had a passing recollection of the death of Mrs. Manners, and of the child's being sent to school; but since then she had heard no more of her. She could hardly believe that the elegant creature before her was the little ragged imp of a child whom she had once seen staring idly down the river. However, she asked no questions, but helped to soothe the girl, and to restore, as far as possible, peace and composure to the household.
They all spent the evening together without any reference to the past. Only once, Christal—in relating how, as soon as ever her term of education expired, she had almost compelled her governess to let her come to England, and to Miss Vanbrugh,—said, in her proud way,
“It was not to ask a maintenance—for you know my parents left me independent; but I wanted to see you because I believed that, besides taking charge of my fortune, you had been kind to me when a child. How, or in what way, I cannot clearly remember; for I think,” she added, laughing, “that I must have been a very stupid little girl: all seems so dim to me until I went to school. Can you enlighten me, Miss Vanbrugh?”
“Another time, another time, my dear,” said the painter's sister, growing very much confused.
“Well! I thank you all the same, and you shall not find me ungrateful,” said the young lady, kissing Miss Meliora's hand, and speaking in a tone of real feeling, which would have moved any woman. It quite overpowered Miss Van-brugh—the softest-hearted little woman in the world. She embraced herprotégée, declaring that she would never part with her.
“But,” she added, with a sudden thought, a thought of intense alarm, “what will Michael say?”
“Do not think of that to-night,” interposed Olive. “Miss Manners is tired; let us get her to bed quickly, and we will see what morning brings.”
The advice was followed, and Christal disappeared; not, however, without lavishing on Mrs. and Miss Rothesay a thousand gracious thanks and apologies, with an air and deportment that did infinite honour to the polite instruction of herpension.
Mrs. Rothesay, confused with all that had happened, did not ask many questions, but only said as she retired,
“I don't quite like her, Olive—I don't like the tone of her voice; and yet there was something that struck me in the touch of her hand—which is so different in different people.”
“Hers is a very pretty hand, mamma. It is quite classic in shape—like poor papa's—which I remember so well!”
“There never was such a beautiful hand as your papa's. He said it descended in the Rothesay family. You have it, you know, my child,” observed Mrs. Rothesay. She sighed, but softly; for, after all these years, the widow and the fatherless had learned to speak of their loss without pain, though with tender remembrance.
Thinking of him and of her mother, Olive thought, likewise, how much happier was her own lot than that of the orphan-girl, who, by her own confession, had never known what it was to remember the love of the dead, or to rejoice in the love of the living. And her heart was moved with the pity—nay, even tenderness, for Christal Manners.
When she had assisted her mother to bed—as she always did—Olive, in passing down stairs, moved by some feeling of interest, listened at the door of the young stranger. She was apparently walking up and down her room with a quick, hurried step. Olive knocked.
“Are you quite comfortable?—do you want anything?”
“Who's there? Oh! come in, Miss Rothesay.”
Olive entered, and found, to her surprise, that the candle was extinguished.
“I thought I heard you moving about, Miss Manners.”
“So I was. I felt restless and could not sleep. I am very tired with my journey, I suppose, and the room is strange to me. Come here—give me your hand.”
“You are not afraid, my dear child?” said Olive, remembering that she was, indeed, little more than a child, though she looked so womanly. “You are not frightening yourself in this gloomy old house, nor thinking of ghosts and goblins?”
“No—no! I was thinking, if I must tell the truth,” said the girl, with something very like a suppressed sob—“I was thinking of you and your mother, as I saw you standing when I first came in. No one ever clasped me so, or ever will! Not that I have any one to blame; my father and mother died; they could not help dying. But if they had just brought me into the world and left me, as I have heard some parents have done, then I should cry out, 'Wicked parents! if I grow up heartless, because I have no one to love me; and vile, because I have none to guide me,—my sin be upon your head!'”
She said these words with vehement passion. But Olive answered calmy, “Hush, Christal!—let me call you Christal; for I am much older than you. Lie down and rest. Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding. You have good friends here, who will care for you very much, I doubt not. Be content, my poor, tired child!”
She spoke very softly; for the darkness quite obliterated the vision of that stylish damsel who had exhibited her airs and graces in the drawing-room. As she sat by Christal's bedside, Olive only felt the presence of a desolate orphan.
She said in her heart, “Please God, I will do her all the good that lies in my feeble power. Who knows but that, in some way or other, I may comfort and help this child!” So she stooped down and kissed Christal on the forehead, a tenderness that the girl passionately returned. Then Olive went and lay down by her blind mother's side, with a quiet and a happy heart.