Olive Part 23

"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, we are evidently his debtors. Even Mr. Wyld admits this, you see. We must not forget justice and honour--my poor fathers 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 a.s.sented. 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 a.s.sented.

"Well, then, here it begins--'Reverend Sir' (I ought to address him thus, 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 debt--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, that his last moments were spent in endeavouring to write your name. We never understood why, until now. 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.'"

"You have said nothing of Sara. I wonder if she knows this!" said the mother, as Olive folded up her letter.

"Hush, mamma! Let me forget everything that was once. Perhaps, too, she is not to blame. I knew Charles Geddes; Sara might not like to 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! I hate it."

Years after, Olive remembered these words.

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 antic.i.p.ation 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 antic.i.p.ation. 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 t.i.tian, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 compa.s.sion 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 un.o.btrusive 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!"