'IF YOU PLEASE, MAY I BRING RAG AND TATTERS?'
'O, my Father's hand,
Stroke heavily, heavily the poor hair down,
Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee—
I'm still too young, too young, to sit alone.'—Aurora Leigh.
So this was Polly.
It was only a shabby studio, where poverty and art fought a hand-to-hand struggle for the bare maintenance, but among the after scenes of her busy life Mildred never forgot the place where she first saw Dr. Heriot's ward; it lingered in her memory, a fair, haunting picture as of something indescribably sweet and sad.
Its few accessories were so suggestive of a truer taste made impossible by paucity of success; an unfinished painting all dim grays and pallid, watery blues; a Cain fleeing out of a blurred outline of clouds; fragmentary snatches of colour warming up pitiless details; rickety chairs and a broken-down table; a breadth of faded tapestry; a jar of jonquils, the form pure Tuscan, the material rough earthenware, a plaster Venus, mutilated but grand, shining out from the dull red background of a torn curtain. A great unfurnished room, full of yellow light and warm sunshine, and, standing motionless in a ladder of motes and beams, with brown eyes drinking in the twinkling glory like a young eagle, was a girl in a shabby black dress, with thin girlish arms clasped across her breast. For a moment Dr. Heriot paused, and he and Mildred exchanged glances; the young figure in its forlornness came to them like a mournful revelation; the immobility was superb, the youthful languor pitiful. As Dr. Heriot touched her, she turned on them eyes full of some lost dream, and a large tear that had been gathering unconsciously brimmed over and splashed down on his hand.
'My child, have we startled you? Mr. Fabian told us to come up.' For a moment she looked bewildered. Her thoughts had evidently travelled a long way, but with consciousness came a look of relief and pleasure.
'Oh, I knew you would come—papa told me so. Oh, why have you been so long?—it is three months almost since papa died. Oh, poor papa! poor papa!' and the flush of joy died out of her face as, clasping her small nervous hands round Dr. Heriot's arm, she laid her face down on them and burst into a passion of tears.
'I sent for you directly I heard; they kept me in ignorance—have they not told you so? Poor child, how unkind you must have thought me!' and a grieved look came over Dr. Heriot's face as he gently stroked the closely-cropped head, that felt like the dark, soft plumage of some bird.
'No, I never thought you that,' she sobbed. 'I was only so lonely and tired of waiting; and then I got ill, and Mr. Fabian was good to me, and so were the others. But papa had left me to you, and I wanted you to fetch me. You have come to take me home, have you not?'
She looked up in his face pleadingly as she said this; she spoke in a voice sweet, but slightly foreign, but with a certain high-bred accent, and there was something unique in her whole appearance that struck her guardian with surprise. The figure was slight and undeveloped, with the irregularity of fourteen; but the ordinary awkwardness of girlhood was replaced by dignity, almost grace, of movement. She was dark-complexioned, but her face was a perfect oval, and the slight down on the upper lip gave a characteristic but not unpleasing expression to the mouth, which was firm but flexible; the hair had evidently been cut off in recent illness, for it was tucked smoothly behind the ears, and was perfectly short behind, which would have given her a boyish look but for the extreme delicacy of the whole contour.
'You have come to take me home, have you not?' she repeated anxiously.
'This lady has,' he replied, with a look at Mildred, who had stood modestly in the background. 'I wish I had a home to offer you, my dear; but my wife is dead, and——'
'Then you will want me all the more,' she returned eagerly. 'Papa and I have so often talked about you; he told me how good you were, and how unhappy.'
'Hush, Mary,' laying his hand lightly over her lips; but Mildred could see his colour changed painfully. But she interrupted him a little petulantly—
'Nobody calls me Mary, and it sounds so cold and strange.'
'What then, my dear?'
'Why, Polly, of course!' opening her brown eyes widely; 'I have always been Polly—always.'
'It shall be as you will, my child.'
'How gently you speak! Are you ever irritable, like papa, I wonder?—he used to be so ill and silent, and then, when we tried to rouse him, he could not bear it. Who is this lady, and why do you say you have no home for me?'
'She means to be our good friend, Polly—there, will that do? But you are such a dignified young lady, I should never have ventured to call you that unasked.'
'Why not?' she repeated, darting at him a clear, straightforward glance. Evidently his reticence ruffled her; but Dr. Heriot skilfully evaded the brief awkwardness.
'This lady is Miss Lambert, and she is the sister of one of my best friends; she is going to take charge of his girls and boys, who have lost their mother, and she has kindly offered to take charge of you too.'
'She is very good,' returned Polly, coldly; 'very, very good, I mean,' as though she had repented of a slight hauteur. 'But I have never had anything to do with children. Papa and I were always alone, and I would much rather live with you; you have no idea what a housekeeper I shall make you. I can dress salad and cook omelettes, and Nanette taught me how to make potage. I used to take a large basket myself to the market when we lived at Dresden, when Nanette was so bad with rheumatism.'
'What an astonishing Polly!'
'Ah! you are laughing at me,' drawing herself up proudly, and turning away so that he should not see the tears in her eyes.
'My dear Polly, is that a "crime"?'
'It is when people are in earnest I have said nothing that deserves laughing at—have I, Miss Lambert?' with a sweet, candid glance that won Mildred's heart.
'No, indeed; I was wishing that my nieces were like you.'
'I did not mean that—I was not asking for praise,' stammered Polly, turning a vivid scarlet. 'I only wanted my guardian to know that I should not be useless to him. I can do much more than that I can mend and darn better than Annette, who was three years older. You are smiling still.'
'If I smile, it is only with pleasure to know my poor friend had such a good daughter. Listen to me, Polly—how old are you?'
'Fourteen last February.'
'What a youthful Polly!—too young, I fear, to comprehend the position. And then with such Bohemian surroundings—that half-crazed painter, Fabian,' he muttered, 'and a purblind fiddler and his wife. My poor child,' he continued, laying his hand on her head lightly, and speaking as though moved in spite of himself, 'as long as you want a friend, you will never find a truer one than John Heriot. I will be your guardian, adopted father, what you will; but,' with a firmness of voice that struck the girl in spite of herself, 'I cannot have you to live with me, Polly.'
'Why not?' she asked, pleadingly.
'Because it would be placing us both in a false position; because I could not incur such a responsibility; because no one is so fit to take charge of a young girl as a good motherly woman, such as you will find, in Miss Lambert.' And as the girl looked at him bewildered and disappointed, he continued kindly, 'You must forget this pleasant dream, Polly; perhaps some day, when your guardian is gray-haired, it may come to pass; but I shall often think how good my adopted daughter meant to be to me.'
'Shall I never see you then?' asked Polly mournfully.
If these were English ways, the girl thought, what a cold, heartless place it must be! Had not Mr. Fabian promised to adopt her if the English guardian should not be forthcoming? Even Herr Schreiber had offered to keep her out of his poor salary, when her father's death had left her dependent on the little community of struggling artists and musicians. Polly was having her first lesson in the troublesome convenances of life, and to the affectionate, ardent girl it was singularly unpalatable.
'I am afraid you will see me every day,' replied her guardian, with much gravity. 'I shall not be many yards off—just round the corner, and across the market-place. No, no, Miss Polly; you will not get rid of me so easily. I mean to direct your studies, haunt your play-time, and be the cross old Mentor, as Olive calls me.'
'Oh, I am so glad!' returned the girl earnestly, and with a sparkle of pleasure in her eyes. 'I like you so much already that I could not bear you to do wrong.'
It was Heriot's turn to look puzzled.
'Would it not be wrong,' she returned, answering the look, 'when papa trusted me to you, and told me on his deathbed that you would be my second father, if you were to send me right away from you, and take no notice of me at all!'
'I should hardly do that in any case,' returned her guardian, seriously. 'What a downright, unconventional little soul you are, Polly! You may set your mind at rest; your father's trust shall be redeemed, his child shall never be neglected by me. But come—you have not made Miss Lambert's acquaintance. I hope you mean to tell her next you like her.'
'She looks good, but sad—are you sad?' touching Mildred's sleeve timidly.
'A little. I have been in trouble, like you, and have lost my mother,' replied Milly, simply; but she was not prepared for the suddenness with which the girl threw her arms round her neck and kissed her.
'I might have thought—your black dress and pale face,' she murmured remorsefully. 'Every one is sad, every one is in trouble—myself, my guardian, and you.'
'But you are the youngest—it falls heaviest on you.'
'What am I to call you? I don't like Miss Lambert, it sounds stiff,' with a little shrug and movement of the hands, rather graceful than otherwise.
'I shall be Aunt Milly to the others, why not to you?' returned Mildred, smiling.
'Ah, that sounds nice. Papa had a sister, only she died; I used to call her Aunt Amy. Aunt Milly! ah, I can say that easily; it makes me feel at home, somehow. Am I to come home with you to-day, Aunt Milly?'
'Yes, my dear.' Milly absolutely blushed with pleasure at hearing herself so addressed. 'I am not going to my new home for three weeks, but I shall be glad of your company, if you will come and help me.'
'Poor Mr. Fabian will be sorry, but he is expecting to lose me. There is one thing more I must ask, Aunt Milly.'
'A dozen if you will, dear.'
'Oh, but this is a great thing. Oh, please, dear Aunt Milly, may I bring Rag and Tatters?' And as Mildred looked too astonished for reply, she continued, hurriedly: 'Tatters never left papa for an instant, he was licking his hand when he died; and Rag is such a dear old thing. I could not be happy anywhere without my pets.' And without waiting for an answer she left the room; and the next instant the light, springy tread was heard in company with a joyous scuffling and barking; then a large shaggy terrier burst into the room, and Polly followed with a great tortoise-shell cat in her arms.
'Isn't Rag handsome, except for this?' touching the animal where a scrap of fur had been rudely mauled off, and presented a bald appearance; 'he has lost the sight of one eye too. Veteran Rag, we used to call him. He is so fond of me, and follows me like a dog; he used to go out with me in Dresden, only the dogs hunted him.'
'You may bring your pets, Polly,' was Mildred's indulgent answer; 'I think I can answer for my brother's goodwill.'
Dr. Heriot shook his head at her laughingly.
'I am afraid you are no rigid disciplinarian, Miss Lambert; but it is "Love me, love my dog" with Polly, I expect. Now, my child, you must get ready for the flitting, while I go in search of Mr. Fabian. From the cloud of tobacco-smoke that met us on entering, I fancy he is on the next story.'
'He is with the Rogers, I expect. His model disappointed him, and he is not working to-day. If you will wait a moment, I will fetch him.'
'What an original character!' observed Dr. Heriot as the door closed.
'A loveable one,' was Mildred's rejoinder. She was interested and roused by the new phase of life presented to her to-day. She looked on amused, yet touched, when Polly returned, leading by the hand her pseudo-guardian—a tall old man, with fiery eyes and scanty gray hair falling down his neck, in a patched dressing-gown that had once been a gorgeous Turkey-red. It was the first time that the simple woman had gazed on genius down-at-heel, and faring on the dry crust of unrequited self-respect.
'There is my Cain, sir; a new conception—unfinished, if you will—but you may trace the idea I am feebly striving to carry out. Sometimes I fancy it will be my last bit of work. Look at that dimly-traced figure beside the murderer—that is his good angel, who is to accompany the branded one in his life-long exile. I always believed in Cain's repentance—see the remorse in his eyes. I caught that expression on a Spanish sailor's face when he had stabbed his mate in a drunken brawl. I saw my Cain then.'
Needy genius could be garrulous, as Mildred found. The old man warmed at Polly's open-eyed admiration and Mildred's softly-uttered praise; appreciation was to him what meat and drink would be to more material natures. He looked almost majestic as he stood before them, in his ragged dressing-gown, descanting on the merits of his Tobit, that had sold for an old song. 'A Neapolitan fisher-boy had sat for my angel; every one paints angels with yellow hair and womanish faces, but I am not one of those that must follow the beaten track—I formed my angel on the loftiest ideal of Italian beauty, and got sneered at for my pains. One ought to coin a new proverb nowadays, Dr. Heriot—Originality moves contempt. People said the subject was not a taking one; Tobit was too much like an old clothes man, or a veritable descendant of Moses and Sons. There was no end to the quips and jeers; even our set had a notion it would not do, and I sold it to a dealer at a sum that would hardly cover a month's rent,' finished the old man, with a mixture of pathos and dignity.
'After all, public taste is a sort of lottery,' observed Dr. Heriot; 'true genius is not always requited in this world, if it offends the tender prejudices of preconceived ideas.'
'The worship of the golden image fills up too large a space in the market-place,' replied Mr. Fabian, solemnly, 'while the blare of instruments covers the fetish-adoration of its votaries. The world is an eating and drinking and money-getting world, and art, cramped and stifled, goes to the wall.'
'Nay, nay; I have not so bad an opinion of my generation as all that,' interposed Dr. Heriot, smiling. 'I have great faith in the underlying goodness of mankind. One has to break through a very stiff outer-crust, I grant you; but there are soft places to be found in most natures.' And, as the other shook his head—'Want of success has made you a little down-hearted on the subject of our human charities, Mr. Fabian; but there is plenty of reverence and art-worship in the world still. I predict a turn of the wheel in your case yet. Cain may still glower down on us from the walls of the Royal Academy.'
'I hope so, before the hand has lost its cunning. But I am too egotistical. And so you are going to take Polly from me—from Dad Fabian, ay?'—looking at the young girl fondly.
'Indeed, Mr. Fabian, I must thank you for your goodness to my ward. Poor child! she would have fared badly without it. Polly, you must ask Miss Lambert to bring you to see this kind friend again.'
'Nay, nay; this is a poor place for ladies to visit,' replied the other, hastily, as he brushed away the fragment of a piece of snuff with a trembling hand; but he looked gratified, notwithstanding. 'Polly has been a good girl—a very good girl—and weathered gallantly through a very ticklish illness, though some of us thought she would never reach England alive.'
'Were you so ill, Polly?' inquired her guardian anxiously.
'Dad Fabian says so; and he ought to know, for he and Mrs. Rogers nursed me. Oh, he was so good to me,' continued Polly, clinging to him. 'He used to sit up with me part of the night and tell me stories when I got better, and go without his dinner sometimes to buy me fruit. Mrs. Rogers was good-natured, too; but she was noisy. I like Dad Fabian's nursing best.'
'You see she fretted for her father,' interposed the artist. 'Polly's one of the right sort—never gives way while there is work to be done; and so the strain broke her down. She has lost most of her pretty hair. Ellison used to be so proud of her curls; but it suits her, somehow. But you must not keep your new friends waiting, my child. There, God bless you! We shall be seeing you back again here one of these days, I dare say.'
Mildred felt as though her new life had begun from the moment the young stranger crossed her threshold. Polly bade her guardian good-bye the next day with unfeigned regret. 'I shall always feel I belong to him, though he cannot have me to live with him,' she said, as she followed Mildred into the house. 'Papa told me to love him, and I will. He is different, somehow, from what I expected,' she continued. 'I thought he would be gray-haired, like papa. He looks younger, and is not tall. Papa was such a grand-looking man, and so handsome; but he has kind eyes—has he not, Aunt Milly?—and speaks so gently.'
Mildred was quite ready to pronounce an eulogium on Dr. Heriot. She had already formed a high estimate of her brother's friend; his ready courtesy and highly-bred manners had given her a pleasing impression, while his gentleness to his ward, and a certain lofty tone of mind in his conversation, proved him a man of good heart and of undoubted ability. There was a latent humour at times discernible, and a certain caustic wit, which, tinged as it was with melancholy, was highly attractive. She felt that a man who had contrived to satisfy Betha's somewhat fastidious taste could not fail to be above the ordinary standard, and, though she did not quite echo Polly's enthusiasm, she was able to respond sympathetically to the girl's louder praise.
Before many days were over Polly had transferred a large portion of loving allegiance to Mildred herself. Women—that is, ladies—had not been very plentiful in her small circle. One or two of the artists' wives had been kind to her; but Polly, who was an aristocrat by nature, had rather rebelled against their want of refinement, and discovered flaws which showed that, young as she was, she had plenty of discernment.
'Mrs. Rogers was noisy, and showed all her teeth when she laughed, and tramped as she walked—in this way;' and Polly brought a very slender foot to prove the argument. And Mrs. Hornby? Oh, she did not care for Mrs. Hornby much—'she thought of nothing but smart dresses, and dining at the restaurant, and she used such funny words—that men use, you know. Papa never cared for me to be with her much; but he liked Mrs. Rogers, though she fidgeted him dreadfully.'
Mildred listened, amused and interested, to the girl's prattle. The young creature on the stool at her feet was conversant with a life of which she knew nothing, except from books. Polly would chatter for hours together of picture-galleries and museums, and little feasts set out in illuminated gardens, and of great lonely churches with swinging lamps, and little tawdry shrines. Monks and nuns came familiarly into her reminiscences. She had had gateau and cherries in a convent-garden once, and had swung among apple-blossoms in an orchard belonging to one.
'I used to think I should like to be a nun once,' prattled Polly, 'and wear a great white flapping cap, as they did in Belgium. Sœur Marie used to be so kind. I shall never forget that long, straight lime-walk, where the girls used to take their recreation, or sit under the cherry-trees with their lace-work, while Sœur Marie read the lives of the saints. Do you like reading the lives of the saints, Aunt Milly? I don't. They are glorious, of course; but it pains me to know how uncomfortable they made themselves.'
'I do not think I have ever read any, Polly.'
'Have you not?'—with a surprised arching of the brows. 'Sœur Marie thought them the finest books in the world. She used to tell me stories of many of them; and her face would flush and her eyes grow so bright, I used to think she was a saint herself.'
Mildred rarely interrupted the girl's narratives; but little bits haunted her now and then, and lingered in her memory with tender persistence. What sober prose her life seemed in contrast to that of this fourteen-years' old girl! How bare and empty seemed her niche compared to Polly's series of pictures! How clearly Mildred could see it all! The wandering artist-life, in search of the beautiful, poverty oppressing the mind less sadly when refreshed by novel scenes of interest; the grave, taciturn Philip Ellison, banishing himself and his pride in a self-chosen exile, and training his motherless child to the same exclusiveness.
The few humble friends, grouped under the same roof, and sharing the same obscurity; stretching out the right hand of fellowship, which was grasped, not cordially, but with a certain protest, the little room which Polly described so graphically being a less favourite resort than the one where Dad Fabian was painting his Tobit.
'It was only after papa got so ill that Mrs. Rogers would bring up her work and sit with us. Papa did not like it much; but he was so heavy that I could not lift him alone, and, noisy as she was, she knew how to cheer him up. Dad suited papa best: they used to talk so beautifully together. You have no idea how Dad can talk, and how clever he is. Papa used to say he was one of nature's gentlemen. His father was only a working man, you know;' and Polly drew herself up with a gesture Mildred had noticed before, and which was to draw upon her later the soubriquet of 'the princess.'
'I think none the less of him for that,' returned Mildred, with gentle reproof.
'You are not like papa then,' observed Polly, with one of her pretty gestures of dissent. 'It fretted him so being with people not nice in their ways. The others would call him milord, and laugh at his grand manners; but all the same they were afraid of him; every one feared him but I; and I only loved him,' finished Polly, with one of her girlish outbursts of emotion, which could only be soothed by extra petting on Mildred's part.
Mildred's soft heart was full of compassion for the lonely girl. Polly, who cried herself to sleep every night for the longing for her lost father, often woke to find Mildred sitting beside her bed watching her.
'You were sleeping so restlessly, I thought I would look in on you,' was all she said; but her motherly kiss spoke volumes.
'How good you are to me, Aunt Milly,' Polly would say to her sometimes. 'I am getting to love you more every day; and then your voice is so soft, and you have such nice ways. I think I shall be happy living with you, and seeing my guardian every day; but we don't want Olive and Chrissy, do we?'—for Mildred had described the vicarage and its inhabitants—'It will feel as though we were in a beehive after this quiet little nest,' as she observed once. Mildred smiled, as she always did over Polly's quaint speeches, which were ripe at times with an old-fashioned wisdom, gathered from the stored garner of age. She would ponder over them sometimes in her slow way, when the girl was sleeping her wet-eyed sleep.
Would it come to her to regret the quietness of life which she was laying by for ever as a garment that had galled and fretted her?—that life she had inwardly compared to a dead mill-stream, flecked only by the shadow and sunlight of perpetually recurring days? Would there come a time when the burden and heat of the day would oppress her?—when the load of existence would be too heavy to bear, and even this retrospect of faint gray distances would seem fair by contrast?
Women who lead contemplative and sedentary lives are overmuch given to this sort of morbid self-questioning. They are for ever examining the spiritual mechanism of their own natures, with the same result as though one took up a feeble and growing plant by the root to judge of its progress. They spend labour for that which is not bread. By and by, out of the vigour of her busy life, Mildred learnt the wholesome sweetness of a motto she ever afterwards cherished as her favourite: Laborare est orare. Polly's questions, direct or indirect, sometimes ruffled the elder woman's tranquillity, however gently she might put them by. 'Were you ever a girl, Aunt Milly?—a girl like me, I mean?' And as Mildred bit her lip and coloured slightly at a question that would have galled any woman of eight-and-twenty, she continued, caressingly, 'You are so nice; only just a trifle too solemn. I think, after all, I would rather be Polly than you. You seem to have had no pictures in your life.'
'My dear child, what do you mean?' returned Mildred; but she spoke with a little effort.
'I mean, you don't seem to have lived out pretty little bits, as I have. You have walked every day over that common and down those long white sunny roads, where there is nothing to imagine, unless one stares up at the clouds—just clouds and dust and wheel-ruts. You have never gone through a forest by moonlight, as I have, and stopped at a little rickety inn, with a dozen Jäger drinking lager-bier under the linden-trees, and the peasants dancing in their sabots on a strip of lawn. You have never——' continued Polly breathlessly; but Mildred interrupted her.
'Stop, Polly; I love your reminiscences; but I want to ask you a question. Is that all you saw in our walk to-day—clouds and dust and wheel-ruts?'
'I saw a hand-organ and a lazy monkey, and a brass band, driving me frantic. It made me feel—oh, I can't tell you how I felt,' returned Polly, with a grimace, and putting up her hands to her delicate little ears.
'The music was bad, certainly; but I found plenty to admire in our walk.'
Polly opened her eyes. 'You are not serious, Aunt Milly.'
'Let me see: we went across the common, and then on. My pictures are very humble ones, Polly; but I framed at least half-a-dozen for my evening's refreshment.'
Polly drew herself up a little scornfully. 'I don't admire monkeys, Aunt Milly.'
'What sort of eyes have you, child?' replied Mildred, who had recovered her cheerfulness. 'Do you mean that you did not see that old blind man with the white beard, and, evidently, his little grand-daughter, at his knees, just before we crossed the common?'
'Yes; I noticed she was a pretty child,' returned Polly, with reluctant candour.
'She and her blue hood and tippet, and the great yellow mongrel dog at her feet, made a pretty little sketch, all by themselves; and then, when we went on a little farther, there was the old gipsy-woman, with a handsome young ne'er-do-weel of a boy. Let me tell you, Polly, Mr. Fabian would have made something of his brown skin and rags. Oh, what rags!'
'She was a horrid old woman,' put in Polly, rather crossly.
'Granted; but, with a clump of fir-trees behind her, and a bit of sunset-clouds, she made up a striking picture. After that we came on a flock of sheep. One of them had got caught in a furze-bush, and was bleating terribly. We stood looking at it for full a minute before the navvy kindly rescued it.'
'I was sorry for the poor animal, of course. But, Aunt Milly, I don't call that much of a picture.'
'Nevertheless, it reminded me of the one that hangs in my room. To my thinking it was highly suggestive; all the more, that it was an old sheep, and had such a foolish, confiding face. We are never too old to go astray,' continued Mildred, dreamily.
'Three pictures, at least we have finished now,' asked Polly, impatiently.
'Finished! I could multiply that number threefold! Why, there was the hay-stack, with the young heifers round it; and that red-tiled cottage, with the pigeons tumbling and wheeling round the roof, and the flower-girl asleep on my own doorstep, with the laburnum shedding its yellow petals on her lap, to the great delight of the poor sickly baby. Come, Polly; who made the most of their eyes this evening? Only clouds, dust, and wheel-ruts, eh?'
'You are too wise for me, Aunt Milly. Who would have thought you could have seen all that? Dad Fabian ought to have heard you talk! We must go out to-morrow evening, and you shall show me some more pictures. But doesn't it strike you, Aunt Milly'—leaning her dimpled chin on her hand—'that you have made the most of very poor material? After all'—triumphantly—'there is not much in your pictures!'