ANTONIA'S GIFT.
When Susan returned to the drawing room she saw no one there but
Antonia, who, squatting on the floor, was absorbed heart and soul in
copying her Chinese dragons. Susy was not in a humour to talk to
Antonia, she therefore proceeded to go further afield. She was anxious
to find Hester and Annie. The Towers, with its old-fashioned rooms and
old-world furniture, had much disappointed her. It needs the sort of
education which nothing could ever give to Susy Drummond, to appreciate
a place like the Towers. Hester and Jane Macalister had also between
them contrived to depress her, and it was a subdued and rather
crestfallen Susy who now crossed the magnificent octagon hall in pursuit
of the rest of her party.
Antonia meanwhile worked at her dragons with a will. If Susy were out of
her element, Antonia was absolutely steeped in hers. The faded
furniture, the subdued light, the rich colour of the magnificent china
filled her really artistic nature with a sense of rejoicing. Behind all
her affectations, Antonia had a soul. It had never been awakened yet.
All her life hitherto poor Antonia had spent her time with the most
empty-headed and frivolous people. Only art seemed great and glorious
and satisfying. She loved it sincerely, and for itself alone; she had no
ambitions with regard to it, ambition was not a part of her queer
nature; she would all her life be a humble votary at a lofty shrine. She
did not imagine that there could be anything greater than art in the
whole world. As yet her soul had not been really aroused, but the time
of awakening was near.
Having made a rough, and, in truth, a very distorted sketch of the
dragons, she gathered up her colours and portfolio, and prepared to
search farther afield for objects on which to expend her genius. She
followed Susy into the octagon hall, but, seeing the wide front doors
open, went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept field, entered the
paddock, where the colts, Joe and Robin, had disported themselves before
their sale. The paddock was skirted by a copse of small fir-trees, and
Antonia sniffed the air as she walked towards it. Antonia was in a rusty
black dress, with very little material in the skirt, and an extremely
long train, which she never held up. She had just got to the edge of the
copse of young trees, and was preparing to make a sketch of their
straight trunks with the delicate sunlight shining across them, when a
strange noise attracted her attention. She dropped her colour box,
uttered one of her affected little shrieks, and then dropped on her
knees beside a child who was lying face downwards on the grass. The
child's dark hair completely covered her face, but the sobs which shook
her slender little frame were too violent to be inaudible. Whatever
ailed the child, she was prostrated by such a tempest of grief that
Antonia forgot high art in an honest wish to comfort human misery.
[Illustration: ANTONIA AND NELL IN THE PADDOCK (_p._ 209).]
"Who are you?" she asked. "Can I do anything for you? What can be the
matter with you? Have you lost your colour box?"
Antonia could understand grief at such a loss, hence her inquiry.
Nell turned a little when she was spoken to; dabbed her
pocket-handkerchief into each eye, and then looked up at Antonia.
"I wish you'd go away," she said. "I don't want you. I have come away
here to hide. I wish, I wish you'd go away!"
"I don't wish to trouble you in any way," replied Antonia, "but I can't
go away, for I've come here to sketch. Your sobs don't disturb me now
that I know there's nothing very serious the matter, so perhaps my
presence won't disturb you. I'll sit here and not take the least notice
of you. I must imprison that sunshine before it goes. You can sob away,
I won't listen."
But to be told that you can sob as long as you like has generally the
effect of stopping tears, and Nell, astonished at Antonia's appearance
and words, presently sat up on the grass, and, flinging back her heavy
mane of hair, watched the priestess of art with great interest. How
could Antonia imprison a sunbeam? It sounded interesting! Nell blinked
her eyes and looked at her solemnly.
"Well, child," said Antonia, pausing in her work, and giving her one of
her slow glances, "I'm glad you're better; I never heard such
distressing sobs. It's a great pity for you to cry so much, for you
disfigure yourself; but I wish now that you are here you'd sit still,
for I'd like to sketch you with that woebegone look. I never saw such a
perfect ideal of true artistic beauty before."
"Beauty?" said Nell, with a little laugh. "But I'm called 'the ugly
duckling'!"
"Charming!" exclaimed Antonia. "I'll immortalise this 'ugly duckling.'
She shall be the foreground for these pine trees, and the imprisoned
sunbeams can light her up from behind."
Notwithstanding her sorrow, Nell found it intensely interesting to be
made the foreground of a picture. She wondered how the imprisoned
sunbeams would like their office of always shining round her head. Nell
was by no means vain. She honestly believed herself to be a hideous
little girl, but it was refreshing once, as a change, to be spoken of as
a true artistic beauty. She thought that she would learn the phrase, and
repeat it over when she looked at herself in the glass, or when Kitty
and Harry became more than usually aggravating about her personal
appearance.
Meanwhile, the artist dashed in her colours with fiery speed. Nell sat
perfectly still, and gazed straight at Antonia. Suddenly a flood of
colour spread itself all over her face. Was Antonia the new owner of the
Towers? If so, _she_ was the cause of poor Nell's heart-broken sobs.
The younger members of the Lorrimer household had solemnly vowed an
undying feud against the new owner of the Towers. They had established
this feud with the solemnity of a sacred rite. They had made a bonfire
and stood round it in a circle and joined hands, and declared the
following awful formula:--
"Neither I, nor my children, nor my grandchildren, nor any of my
descendants, will ever speak a friendly word to the new owner of my
ancestral home. I wish the ghost of my ancestor, Hugh Lorrimer, who died
in the Wars of the Roses, to haunt the new owner and his family; and I
solemnly declare that I never will have part or lot with him or his."
This jargon had been made up by Harry, but each member of the feud, as
they termed themselves, had solemnly repeated it, even down to little
two-year-old Philip.
Suppose this wonderful, queer lady, who was making a sketch of Nell, was
the new owner. In that case, it was Nell's duty to leave her at once.
"I want to ask you a question," said Nell.
"Yes--don't stir, please--ask me anything you like."
"Are you the new owner of my home?"
"I the new owner?" exclaimed Antonia. "Heavens! no! I own nothing except
this"--she clasped her colour-box and looked up with a face of ecstacy.
"I only want this," she said, "_and this_," she continued, waving her
hand with an impressive sweep which was meant to include both earth and
sky.
She claimed a good deal, Nell thought; but, after all, that did not
matter, as she had nothing to do with the feud.
"I'm glad you are not the owner," said Nell, "for, if you were, I should
have been obliged to leave you."
"Why so?"
"I and the others have sworn it solemnly round a bonfire."
The words were so unusual that Antonia was greatly amused.
"You don't like to leave the Towers, then?" she said.
"Like it?" replied Nell. "Would you, if you had lived here ever since
the tenth century?"
"Mercy, child! how venerable I'd be!" exclaimed Antonia. She smiled in
quite a tragic way--it was quite a new thing to see a smile on Antonia's
face.
Nell looked at her very gravely. Her own sweet grey eyes grew full of
tears.
"It will kill father," she said suddenly, in a smothered voice.
She swayed herself backwards and forwards as she spoke, in an ecstasy of
pain. Strange to say, she seemed to understand Antonia, and, still
stranger, Antonia understood her.
The priestess of art dropped her palette.
"Tell me about your father," she said, quickly; "tell me about yourself.
You and your people have lived here for years--centuries--and it breaks
your hearts to go? It's wonderfully artistic--it savours of mediaeval
romance. And you go for a creature like Susan Drummond--shallow as a
plate--no soul anywhere about her? She gets your rooms replete with
memories, and your dear briary avenues and your fir trees, and this
uncultured waste?"
"It's a paddock," interrupted Nell, who could not quite follow Antonia's
imagery.
"It's a waste," said Miss Bernard Temple, with fire. "The Towers is
untrammelled by man's vulgar restraint. Child, I do not even know your
name, but I think I understand your grief."
"You cannot," said Nell, with gentle dignity--"you are not a Lorrimer.
But I'm glad I didn't vow to hate you round the bonfire. Now I'm afraid
I must go."
"One minute first," said Antonia. "Did you say that leaving this place
would kill your father?"
"I'm afraid it will," said Nell. "He won't come home--mother can't get
him to come back. He came the night he had sold the Towers, and Boris
and I saw him; but I don't think he'll ever come back again. I think his
heart is broken. But I cannot speak of it any longer, please--it hurts
me so dreadfully here."
Nell had risen from the grass--she stood tall and thin and pale by
Antonia's side. When she uttered the last words, she pressed her hand
against her heart.
"Good-bye," she said solemnly. "Jane Macalister said I was to be in at
twelve o'clock to help her with some darning. Good-bye."
Antonia held out one of her very long, very bony hands. She slipped it
round Nell's waist, and drawing her close, kissed her gently between her
eyebrows, then she let her go.
Nell left the paddock; but Antonia did not attempt to finish her
interrupted sketch. She sat on, lost in a world of musing. At last she
uttered some emphatic words aloud.
"I'm not much use," she said to herself; "nobody cares about me, and I
care for no one. I love art with a divine passion; but art does not need
such a poor, feeble disciple. Art can still exist and be glorious
without Antonia. I am ugly I know, and I have no genius; but I have got
one power--I can get my own way. All my life long, through a queer kind
of persistence which is in me, I have got my way. I do not get it
because people love me, for I don't honestly think a soul in the wide
world loves me, but I get it because--because of something which I don't
myself understand. It's a power I've got; it's my one gift. Did mother
want me to study art in Paris? No; still I went. Did mother wish me to
become grotesque, and to wear a dress like this? No; still I wear it.
Did mother intend me to come with her on Saturday to the Grange? No, a
thousand times no; still I came. I can twist mother round this finger.
She appeals to me; I counsel her; she asks my advice; she is obliged to
take it whether she likes or not. Mother is completely under my thumb.
So it was with the professor who taught me; so it was with the students
who worked with me; so it will be in the future with Hester, if I still
wish it; and with Sir John Thornton, if I ordain it. They think very
little of Antonia now; but wait until they feel my power; wait until I
choose to direct them, and--hey, presto--they walk in my paths, not
their own. Now I have made up my mind on one point. I have not the
faintest idea how it is to be managed; but managed it shall be. Susan
Drummond and her father are not to desecrate the Towers with their
commonplaceness, their shallowness, and vulgarity. The Lorrimers are
still to live here; and Nell's heart is not to be broken. For the sake
of the ugly duckling I do this. How, I know not; but I turn all the
power that is in me in that one direction from this hour forward.
"Poor, ugly duckling with the pathetic eyes. I do believe Antonia loves
you."