In all this dreary period of sickness and misery the good music-mistress had grown to love Mr. Vane’s daughter even more than she had loved her long ago, when Eleanor’s childish fingers had first stumbled slowly over the keys of the pianoforte, in a feeble endeavour to master the grand difficulties of Haydn’s “Surprise.”
The widow’s life had been a very sorrowful one. Perhaps its most tranquil period had come within the last ten years. It was ten years since, her Italian husband and her children having one by one died, she had found herself alone in the world, with a gaunt, long-legged hobbledehoy of eighteen, her dead sister’s orphan son, for her sole protector.
This long-legged hobbledehoy was Richard Thornton, the only child of the Signora’s pretty younger sister and a dashing cavalry officer, who had married a penniless and obscure girl for the love of her pretty face, and had died within a couple of years of his marriage, leaving his widow to drag out the remnant of a fretful, helpless life in dependence upon her sister. The Signora had been used to carrying other people’s burthens from a very early age. She was the eldest child of a clever violinist, for twenty years leader of the orchestra in one of the principal London theatres; and from babyhood she had been a brave-hearted self-reliant creature. When her sister died, therefore, and, with the last words upon her pale, tremulous lips, prayed the Signora to protect the helpless boy, Richard Thornton, Eliza Picirillo freely accepted the charge, and promised to perform it faithfully. The poor faded beauty died with a smile upon her face, and when Signor Picirillo—who was a teacher of languages at a few suburban schools, and a lazy good-tempered nonentity—came home that evening, he found that there was to be another member of his domestic circle, and another mouth to be fed henceforth.
The Signora’s cruse of oil held out bravely, in spite of the demands upon it; and by-and-by, when the honest-hearted music-mistress would otherwise have been terribly desolate, there was Richard, a tall lad, ready to stand by her sturdily in the battle of life, and as devoted to her as the most affectionate of sons. The boy had shown considerable talent at a very early age, but it was a versatile kind of talent, which did not promise ever to burst forth into the grander gift of genius. His aunt taught him music, and he taught himself painting, intending to be something in the way of Maclise or Turner, by-and-by, and scraping together some of the shillings he earned with his violin in order to attend a dingy academy somewhere in Bloomsbury.
But the great historical subjects after Maclise—“The Death of the Bloody Boar at Bosworth,” a grand battle scene, with a lurid sunset in the background, and Richmond’s face and armour all ablaze with crimson, lake and gamboge, from the flaming reflection of the skies, was the magnum opus which poor Dick fondly hoped to see in the Royal Academy—were not very saleable; and the Turneresque landscapes, nymphs and ruins, dryads and satyrs, dimly visible through yellow mist and rose-coloured fog, cost a great deal of time and money to produce, and were not easily convertible into ready cash. So when Richard had gone the usual weary round amongst the picture-dealers, and had endured the usual heart-burnings and agonies which wait upon ambitious youth, he was glad to accept the brush flung aside by a scene-painter at the Phœnix, where Dick received a scanty salary as second violinist; a salary which was doubled when the young man practised the double duty of second violin and assistant scene-painter.
These simple people were the only friends of Eleanor Vane’s childhood. They were ready to accept the responsibility of her future welfare now, when her rich sister would have sent her into the world, lonely and helpless, to sink to the abject drudgery which well-to-do people speak so complacently of, when they recommend their poor relations to get an honest living and trouble them no longer.
Richard Thornton was enraptured at the idea of taking this beautiful younger sister home with him, although that idea involved the necessity of working for her till she was able to do something for herself.
“Nothing could be better for us than all this sad business, aunty,” the scene-painter said, when he called in the Rue de l’Archevêque, and found his aunt alone in the little sitting-room. Eleanor was lying down after the morning’s excitement, while her friend packed her slender wardrobe and made all preparations for departure. “Nothing could be better for us,” the young man said. “Why, Nell’s golden hair will light up the Pilasters with perpetual sunshine, and I shall always have a model for my subject-pictures. Then what a companion she’ll be for you in the long dreary nights, when I am away at the Phœnix, and how capitally she’ll be able to help you with your pupils; for, of course, she plays and sings like anything by this time.”
“But she wants to go back to the people at the Brixton school, Dick.”
“But, Lord bless you, aunty, we won’t let her go,” cried Mr. Thornton; “we’ll make a prima donna or a leading tragedy-actress, or something of that kind, of her. We’ll teach her to make a hundred pounds a week out of her white arms, and her flashing grey eyes. How beautiful she looked last night when she was on her knees, vowing vengeance against that scoundrel who won her father’s money. How splendid she looked, with her yellow hair all streaming over her shoulders, and her eyes flashing sparks of fire! Wouldn’t she bring the house down, if she did that at the Phœnix? She’s a wonderful girl, aunty; the sort of girl to set all London in a blaze some day, somehow or other. Miss Bennett’s and Brixton, indeed!” cried Richard, snapping his fingers contemptuously; “you could no more chain that girl down to a governess’s drudgery, than you could make a flash of forked lightning do duty for a farthing candle.”