ANCIENT HISTORY
Outwardly Miss Mason was not unlike certain pictures of the fairy
godmother who escorted Cinderella to the ball. Being a fairy godmother,
no doubt that old lady's heart was every bit as young as Miss Mason's,
so the similarity may very likely have extended still further.
Of the fairy godmother's previous history there is no known record.
Miss Mason's history was the public property of the little town in
which she lived. It is not unduly lengthy. It also cannot be termed
exciting.
Miss Mason became an orphan at the age of five. Her mother had been a
pretty Irish girl, only daughter of a penniless Irish gentleman; and
not having had enough of poverty in her own home, she gave her heart
to one, Dick Mason, a struggling painter, who was as ugly as he was
gay and light-hearted. In spite of poverty she had seven years of such
happiness as falls to the lot of few women. Then Dick was killed riding
a friend's young unbroken mare, and a month later his wife followed
him; dying--if such a complaint truly exists--of a broken heart.
Their one child, Olive, was left penniless, and with only one relation
in the world--a Miss Stanhope, a wealthy and eccentric cousin of her
father's, who was at this time a maiden lady of thirty.
A sense of duty as stern and uncompromising as Miss Stanhope's own
appearance induced her to offer the child a home. Duty also prompted
her to look well after her physical welfare, and educate her in
a style befitting a young woman of gentle birth. Miss Stanhope's
views on education were decided and not at all involved. Every lady,
she averred, should be able to speak French fluently, make her own
underclothes, and be conversant with the writings of the best authors.
Music--which she disliked--was left outside the category. She provided
the child with a French governess, who was a beautiful needlewoman. The
introduction to the authors would come later.
Olive remained under Madame Dupont's tuition for twelve years. When she
was seventeen she was sent to "finish her education" at Miss Talbot's
select Academy for Young Ladies at Brighton. This year was the happiest
in Olive's life. Not only was there a daily walk on the esplanade,
from whence she gazed for the first time in her life at the marvel of
the sea, but also she was permitted to take drawing-lessons. She had
inherited three things from her father, the first being his plainness
of feature, the second his youthful heart, and the third his passion
for drawing.
An extremely inefficient but well-meaning young man of impeachable
character visited Miss Talbot's Academy for Young Ladies twice a week,
and instructed the pupils in this art. Chalk drawings from casts
were the style in vogue. It was considered an extremely advanced
style. The chalk was kept in small glass tubes, it was shaken on to
a pad, and applied to the paper with leather stumps, in the manner
known as stippling. The poverty of the instruction, the horribly
inartistic results produced, were unrecognized by Miss Mason. Chalk
representations of plaster pears, apples, and floreate designs were
produced by her at the rate of one a fortnight, and were laid carefully
away in a large portfolio with tissue paper between to keep the chalk
from rubbing.
Among the pupils at Miss Talbot's Academy had been a girl--one Peggy
O'Hea. Her father was a portrait painter of some note. Miss Talbot had
hesitated at introducing this girl; daughter of a Bohemian--all artists
were Bohemian in Miss Talbot's eyes--into her select establishment,
but the fact that her father was a yearly exhibitor at that most
respectable institution the Royal Academy, and that her uncle was a
Dean, induced Miss Talbot to overlook Bohemia. She kept, however, a
strict guard over Miss O'Hea's conversation with the other pupils,
a guard Peggy invariably evaded; and curled up on her bed in her
nightdress, her arms clasped round her knees, she would hold forth
in glowing terms regarding her father's studio and the artists who
frequented it. She had in her secret heart a distinct contempt for the
chalk drawings; but she was a generous little soul, and refrained from
putting her thoughts into words.
From her glowing descriptions, the word studio came to sound in Miss
Mason's ears with a note akin to magic, while no one guessed the dreams
of art and artists, of the mad sweet land of Bohemia, cherished by the
ugly girl who was known in the school as "that awkward Olive Mason."
At the end of the year Miss Mason returned home, to find her presence
almost hourly required by Miss Stanhope, who had developed into what
is usually termed a _malade imaginaire_. Her only recreations were
gardening, and later--when at the age of twenty-seven she was allowed
free access to the library--reading. In these two occupations she was
able to forget the monotony of the days.
Children who peeped through the gate on sunny mornings saw a small
shrunken woman with a thin peevish face sitting on the lawn or in the
veranda, according to the season, while Miss Mason was busy in the
flower-beds, her grey dress tucked up over a black and white striped
petticoat, goloshes on her feet, a large black hat tied on her head,
and gauntlet gloves covering her hands. The progress of fashion being
outside the strictly limited circle of Miss Mason's life, she had
adopted a costume of her own device, which costume she found both warm
and comfortable, and it never varied.
The children who peeped through the gate grew to be men and women;
their children peeped in like fashion, and still the same order of
things endured at the house named the Poplars.
During these years Miss Mason made one friend. It was curious, though
perhaps not out of keeping with Miss Mason's character, which was now
almost as original as the garments she wore, that the friend should
be a child of ten years old. She had come to live with her parents at
the small town in which Miss Stanhope resided. The child's paternal
grandmother had been a friend of Miss Stanhope's youth. That statement
in itself had a flavour of respectability about it. Armed with a letter
of introduction from the grandmother--Mrs. Quarly--the parents ventured
to call upon Miss Stanhope. She received them graciously enough, and a
week later Miss Mason was ordered to return the visit.
It was then that she met little Sybil Quarly, who promptly took an
unaccountable, but very strong, liking to her. In a short time Sybil
learnt which were the hours spent by Miss Mason in the garden, and from
that moment those hours saw a fair-haired child in short petticoats
busy in the flower-beds with her. To an onlooker Miss Mason's manner
would have appeared almost surly, but Sybil, with the infallible
instinct of childhood, recognized the tenderness beneath the gruff
exterior. The two became fast friends.
For seven years Sybil helped Miss Mason pull up weeds, destroy
slugs, bud roses, and take cuttings of carnations. She called her
"Granny," and she confided all her childish woes and griefs to her.
Her parents were conventional people, also they were somewhat strict
and unsympathetic. They did not in the least understand Sybil's timid
nature. Miss Mason saw, to her sorrow, that the child was being driven
to subterfuge and petty untruth by an overharsh system of treatment.
But she was powerless to do anything. Mrs. Quarly would have resented
the smallest interference. For seven years Miss Mason gave the child
all the tenderness at her disposal. At the end of that time Sybil's
parents left the little town and took her to Pangbourne.
During the next three or four years Sybil and Miss Mason kept up a
fitful correspondence. From much that the girl left unsaid Miss Mason
felt that she was not happy. Had she herself been gifted with the
pen of a ready writer, she might indirectly have sought the girl's
confidence, but neither written nor spoken words came easily to her.
There were times--and those when she most longed for the power of
speech--when she felt herself possessed of a dumb dog. She wrote and
told Sybil that the roses were in bloom, that she had pickled a hundred
and fifty slugs in salt and water after one shower of rain, that the
Shirley poppies they had planted one year were spreading like weeds
over the garden. She heard from Sybil that she had made a few new
friends, among them one, Cecily Mainwaring, who lived in London, and
that she stayed with her occasionally. Her letters, however, gave mere
facts; there was no hint as to her thoughts, or whether she were happy
in her new surroundings. And Miss Mason longed to ask her, yet all the
time she could write of nothing but pickled slugs and the blight on
rose-trees. And after four years Sybil's letters suddenly ceased. Miss
Mason wrote three times and received no answer. Then she, too, stopped
writing. And thus the years, as far as Miss Mason was concerned, rolled
on.
But, at last, one sunny morning when a boy and girl approached the gate
they saw no one in the garden, and the blinds in the house pulled down.
Old Miss Stanhope had died quietly in her sleep that morning, and after
forty-three years Miss Mason had deserted the flower-beds. She was
sitting in the desolate drawing-room, unable yet to grasp the meaning
of the one really important event which had occurred in her life since
she was five years old.
Four days later Miss Stanhope's will was read. Miss Mason had been left
sole heiress to an income which amounted to something like fifteen
thousand a year. No one but Miss Stanhope herself and her trustees had
had the smallest conception of her wealth. The terms of the will, which
appeared in the local papers, had the effect of taking every one's
breath away.
Miss Mason spoke to the lawyer regarding it.
"Can't spend anything like that amount a year," she said gruffly.
"Don't know how Miss Stanhope managed to. Much rather you gave me one
thousand and looked after the rest. Shan't find it easy to spend one."
Mr. Davis stared for a moment. Then he suddenly realized--and by a
marvellous leap of intelligence on his part--that Miss Mason was under
the impression that he would yearly press fifteen thousand sovereigns
into her palm. The question of banks and cheque-books had not presented
itself to her mind.
During the next half-hour Henry Davis found himself explaining matters
to Miss Mason much as he would have explained them to a child of
twelve. Miss Mason grasped the situation instantly.
"Then before you go you'd better show me how to draw a cheque,"
she said. "Think that was your expression. I'm not imbecile, though
when a woman of sixty doesn't know the first principles of banks and
cheque-books you might think she was."
It was after Mr. Davis had left that Miss Mason gradually began to
realize what Miss Stanhope's death and her newly-acquired wealth would
mean. She had lived so long in one groove that the possibility of
change had never actually occurred to her. At first she had felt almost
stunned. But suddenly, in a flash, she saw a new life before her. Every
dream of her seventeenth year could be fulfilled. It found expression
in one short sentence:
"Shall go to London and take a studio."