_ CHAPTER XX
If the old painter of Woodford Cottage was an ascetic and a misanthrope never was the "milk of human kindness" so redundant in any human heart as in that of his excellent little sister, Miss Meliora Vanbrugh. From the day of her birth, when her indigent father's anticipation of a bequeathed fortune had caused her rather eccentric Christian name, Miss Meliora began a chase after the wayward sprite Prosperity. She had hunted it during her whole lifetime, and never caught anything but its departing shadow. She had never grown rich, though she was always hoping to do so. She had 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. B. 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 agreed, 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 whole world, my dear. Think of all the stories of little peasant-boys who have thus risen to be the companions of kings, whereby the kings were the parties most 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 (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 had come--the creditor was then a patient one; but this thought the more stimulated Olive to defray the debt. Night and day it weighed her 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, the 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 even breathe it to her mother. But it stimulated her to labour incessantly at her drawing; silently to try and gain 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 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 comforting, 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 of feminine curiosity. I only meant, could I 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," said she, "I think it would be not quite right;" and, trembling and hesitating, as if even the confession indicated 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 inmate, Mrs. Rothesay, as a sort of domestic gold-mine. But she had the delicacy not to press Olive further.
"I do. I can't tell you why, but it is for a good--a holy purpose--Oh, Miss Vanbrugh, if you could but 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 disprove the fact, that innocent little Meliora was a very child in worldly wisdom. 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 real 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;--or 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 were done on backs of letters, or any sort of scraps: and 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 here and there, 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 it. She went through the portfolio, making remarks here and there. At last she closed it; but with a look so beamingly encouraging, that Olive trembled for very joy.
"Let us go to Michael, 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! 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 alone!" and then politely desired Meliora 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 put on that purple chlamys properly, and I must work at drapery to-day. I am lit 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 vanished.
Olive, 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 smooth, 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 weariedly fixed on the one corner of the room, in the direction of which she was obliged to turn her head. The monotonous attitude contributed to plunge her mind into that dull despair which produces immobility--Michael Vanbrugh had never had so steady 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! 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 had good practice in that line;--and she would willingly have fixed them into all Le Bran'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 condescend 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, scorns to 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 originality. 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,'
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood. Good! Bold enough, too!"
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 with decent correctness, 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 depths were 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 flames did quiver. "There!" cried Vanbrugh, his countenance glowing with a fierce inspiration that made it grand through all its ugliness--"there! what woman could paint _that_?--or rather, what man! Alas! how feeble we are--we, the boldest followers of an Art which is divine.--Truly there was but one among us who was himself above humanity, Michael the angel!"
He 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 stainless virtue, or how can he reach the pure ideal? A man of iron will, indomitable daring, and passions strong, yet kept always leashed in his hand. 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 head; then he continued:
"This is what an artist should _be_, by nature. I have not spoken of what he has to make himself. Years of study incessant 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--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 I beg your pardon--you are but a woman--a mere girl," added Vanbrugh, seeing Olive shudder. 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 creature 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 ta create it? What cares he for worldly splendour, when in dreams he can summon up a fairy-land 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 mind 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 dropped almost at his feet crying.
"I, too, am one of these outcasts; give me then this inner life which atones for all! Friend, counsel me--master, teach me! Woman as I am, I will dare all things--endure all things. Let me be an artist." _