Olive Part 24

"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 ma.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ps: 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, ill.u.s.trating 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sive 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 Pa.s.sions, 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 s.e.x; 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d!"

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 sc.r.a.ping 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 n.i.g.g.ardly.

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 pa.s.sion 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."