“What!” cried Mrs. Rothesay, “you, my dear Miss Vanbrugh, who are so thoroughly English—who always said you hated moving from place to place, and would live and die at Woodford Cottage!
“Hush—hush! we'll not talk about that, lest he should hear,” said Meliora glancing half frightened at her brother. But he stood absorbed by the window, looking out apparently on the sky, though his eyes saw nothing—nothing! “Michael, do you quite understand—may I go with you to Rome?”
“Very well—very well, sister,” he answered, in the tone of a man who is indifferent to the subject, except that consent gives less trouble than refusal. Then he turned towards Olive, and asked her to go with him to his painting-room; he wanted to consult with her as to the sort of frame that would suit the “Alcestis.” Indeed, his pupil had now grown associated with all his pursuits, and had penetrated further in the depths of his inward life than any one else had been ever suffered to do. Olive gradually became to him his cherished pupil—the child of his soul, to whom he would fain transmit the mantle of his fame. He had but one regret, sometimes earnestly, and comically expressed—that she was a woman—only a woman.
They went and stood before the picture, he and Olive; Meliora stealing after her brother's footsteps, noiseless but constant as his shadow. And this ever-following, faithful love clung so closely to its object that, shadow-like, what all others beheld, by him was never seen.
Michael Vanbrugh cast on his picture a look such as no living face ever had won, or ever would win, from his cold eyes. It was the gaze of a parent on his child, a lover on his mistress, an idolator on his self-created god. Then he took his palette, and began to paint, lingeringly and lovingly, on slight portions of background or drapery—less as though he thought this needed, than as if loth to give the last, the very last, touch to a work so precious. He talked all the while, seemingly to hide the emotion which he would not show.
“Lord Arundale is an honour to his rank, a noble man indeed. One does not often meet such, Miss Rothesay. It was a pleasure to receive him in my studio. It did me good to talk with him, and with his friend.”
Here Olive looked at Meliora and smiled. “Was his friend, then, as agreeable as himself?”
“Not so brilliant in conversation, but far the higher nature of the two, or I have read the human countenance in vain. He said frankly, that he was no artist, and no connoisseur, like Lord Arundale; but I saw from his eye, that, if he did not understand, he felt my picture.”
“How so?” said Olive, with growing interest.
“He looked at Alcestis,—the 'Alcestis' I have painted,—sitting on her golden throne, waiting for death to call her from her kingdom and her lord; waiting solemnly, yet without fear. 'See,' said Lord Arundale to his friend, 'how love makes this feeble woman stronger than a hero! See how fearlessly a noble wife can die!'—'A wife who loves her husband,' was the answer, given so bitterly, that I turned to look at him. Oh, that I could have painted his head at that instant! It would have made a Heraclitus—a Timon!”