Chapter 22 Red Rose and Tiger Lily by L. T. Meade
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.
"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 mediæval 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."