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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.
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 preeminence. 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—among these, let woman shine!
But her sphere is, and ever must be, bounded; because, however fine 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 reward. A Brutus, for that ambition which is misnamed patriotism, can trample on all human ties. A Michael Angelo can stand alone with his work, and so go sternly down unto a desolate old age. But there scarcely 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; though never to the stature of man's. Then, even while she walks with scarce-healed feet over the world's rough pathway, heaven's glory may rest upon her upturned 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 weary 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 prettiness of most woman-painters to the grandeur of true Art. Strengthened by her almost masculine power of mind, she learned to comprehend and to reverence the mighty masters whom Vanbrugh loved. He led her to those heights and depths which are rarely opened to a woman's ken. And she, following, applied herself to the most abstruse 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 labour from which most women would have shrunk, to make herself worthy of being ranked among those painters who are "not for an age, but for all time."
That personal deformity which she thought excluded her from a woman's natural destiny, gave her freedom in her own. Brought into contact with the world, she scarcely 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 aim; and can therefore step aside for no vain fear, nor sink beneath any foolish shame. And wherever she went, her own perfect innocence wrapped her round as with a shield.
Still, little quiet Olive could do many things with an independence that would have been impossible to a girl lively and beautiful Oftentimes Mrs. Rothesay trembled and murmured at days of solitary study in the British Museum, and in various picture-galleries; 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 disagreeable 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 her 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 mind 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 devotion, less a sentiment than a passion, which she felt for her mother. Her intellectual fife grew more intense; while she felt the stay and solace of having a fixed pursuit to occupy her whole future. Also, it was good for her to live 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. There was a greatness and happiness beyond 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 these gloomiest of all gloomy lanes, familiar to her even in dark nights, and this was a sunny spring morning.
"I am not going to see an ordinary poor person, but that Quadroon 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, Hannah 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 certain romance which, putting all sympathy aside, 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 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 invested 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 retire 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. "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, who cares for them, for, as ma mie says, they were drowned together in the deep sea, years ago."
"Ay, ay," 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 than a tender woman's clasp.
Then she fell back exhausted, and took no more notice of anybody. Meliora forgot Mr. Vanbrugh's dinner, and all things else, in making a few charitable arrangements, which 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, finger in 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 is 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."
"Poor young creature!" she continued, sitting down beside the object of her compassion, who was, or seemed, asleep. "How hard to loose 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. What do you know about me?"
"I don't know anything about you, indeed," said Meliora, creeping to the door; while Olive, who could not understand the cause of half she witnessed, stood simply looking on in wonder—almost in admiration,—for there was 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 girls, whose mixed blood is too pure for slavery, too tainted for freedom. Lovely, accomplished, brought up delicately, they yet have no higher future than to be the white man's passing toy—cherished, wearied of, and spurned."
She paused, and Miss Vanbrugh, astonished at this sudden outburst, in language so vehement, and so above her apparent rank, 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 ladies?" cried the outcast, as she tossed back her cloud of dark crisped hair, and fixed her eyes sternly, yet mockingly, upon her visitors.
Poor Miss Vanbrugh was conscious of but one thing, that this scene was most unfit for a young girl; and that if she once could get Olive away, all future visits to the miserable woman should be paid by herself alone.
"I will see you another day, Mrs. Manners, but we cannot really stay now. Come, 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 so keenly 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 odour of the bursting leaves. Scarcely 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 towards things unattainable, had she framed one sole wish that she might be beautiful and beloved!
Beautiful and beloved! She thought of the poor creature whose fierce words yet rang in her 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 better wisdom of subdued and patient womanhood. Had she now a wish, it was 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, 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.