Miss Meliora put Christal to board with an old servant of hers for a few weeks. But there came such reports of the child's daring and unruly temper, that, quaking under her responsibility, she decided to send her protégée away to school The only place she could think of was an old-fashioned pension in Paris, where, during her brother's studies there, her own slender education had been acquired. Thither the little stranger was despatched, by means of a succession of contrivances which almost drove the simple Meliora crazy. For—lest her little adventure of benevolence should come to Michael's ears—she dared to take no one into her confidence, not even the Rothesays. Madame Blandin, the mistress of the pension, was furnished with no explanations; indeed there were none to give. The orphan appeared there under the character she so steadily sustained, as Miss Christal Manners, the child of illustrious parents lost at sea; and so she vanished altogether from the atmosphere of Woodford Cottage.
Olive Rothesay was now straining every nerve towards the completion of her first exhibited picture—a momentous crisis in every young artist's life. It was March: always a pleasant month in this mild, sheltered, neighbourhood, where she had made her home. There, of all the regions about London, the leaves come earliest, the larks soonest begin to sing, and the first soft spring breezes blow. But nothing could allure Olive from that corner of their large drawing-room which she had made her studio, and where she sat painting from early morning until daylight was spent. The artist herself formed no unpleasing picture—at least so her fond mother often thought—as Olive stood before her easel, the light from the half-closed-up window slanting downwards on her long curls, of that rare pale gold, the delight of the ancient painters, and now the especial admiration of Michael Vanbrugh To please her master, Olive, though now a woman grown, wore her hair still in childish fashion, falling in most artistic confusion over her neck and shoulders. It seemed that nature had bestowed on her this great beauty, in order to veil that defect which, though made far less apparent by her maturer growth, and a certain art in dress, could never be removed. Still there was an inexpressible charm in her purely-outlined features to which the complexion always accompanying pale-gold hair imparted such a delicate, spiritual colouring. Oftentimes her mother sat and looked at her, thinking she beheld the very likeness of the angel in her dream.
March was nearly passed. Olive's anxiety that the picture should be finished, and worthily finished, amounted almost to torture. At last, when there was but one week left—a week whose every hour of daylight must be spent in work, the hope and fear were at once terminated by her mother's sudden illness. Passing it was, and not dangerous; but to Olive's picture it brought a fatal interruption.
The tender mother more than once begged her to neglect everything but the picture. But Olive refused. Yet it cost her somewhat—ay, more than Mrs. Rothesay could understand, to give up a year's hopes. She felt this the more when came the Monday and Tuesday for sending in pictures to the Academy.
Heavily these days passed, for there was not now the attendance on the invalid to occupy Olive's mind. She was called hither and thither all over the house; since on these two days, for the only time in the year, there was at Woodford Cottage a levée of artists, patrons, and connoisseurs. Miss Rothesay was needed everywhere; first in the painting-room, to assist in arranging its various treasures, her taste and tact assisting Mr. Vanbrugh's artistic skill. For the thousandth time she helped to move the easel that sustained the small purchaseable picture with which Michael this year condescended to favour the Academy; and admired, to the painter's heart's content, the beloved and long-to-be-unsold “Alcestis,” which extended in solitary grandeur over one whole side of the studio. Then she flitted to Miss Vanbrugh's room, to help her to dress for this important occasion. Never was there such a proud, happy little woman as Meliora Vanbrugh on the first Monday and Tuesday in April, when at least a dozen carriages usually rolled down the muddy lane, and the great surly dog, kennelled under the mulberry-tree, was never silent “from morn till dewy eve.” All, thought the delighted Meliora, was an ovation to her brother. Each year she fully expected that these visiting patrons would buy up every work of Art in the studio, to say nothing of those adorning the hall—the cartoons and frescoes of Michael's long-past youth. And each year, when the carriages rolled away, and the visitants admiration remained nothing but admiration, she consoled herself with the thought that Michael Vanbrugh was “a man before his age,” but that his time for appreciation would surely come. So she hoped on till the next April. Happy Meliora!
“Yes, you do seem happy, Miss Vanbrugh,” said Olive, when she had coaxed the stiff grizzled hair under a neat cap of her own skilful manufacturing; and the painter's little sister was about to mount guard in the bay-window of the parlour, from whence she could see the guests walk down the garden, and be also ready to mark the expression of their faces as they came out of the studio.
“Happy! to be sure I am! Everybody must confess that this last is the best picture Michael ever painted”—(his sister had made the same observation every April for twenty years). “But, my dear Miss Rothesay, how wrong I am to talk so cheerfully to you, when your picture is not finished. Never mind, love. You have been a good, attentive daughter, and it will end all for the best.”
Olive smiled faintly, and said she knew it would.
“Perhaps,” continued Meliora, as a new and consolatory idea struck her, “perhaps even if you had sent in the picture, it might have been returned, or put in the octagon room, or among the miniatures, where nobody could see it; and that would have been much worse, would it not?”
“I suppose so; and, indeed, I will be quite patient and content.”