Read Ebook: Aunt Olive in Bohemia by LM Leslie Moore

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Ebook has 1818 lines and 65407 words, and 37 pages

engthy. 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."

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."

THE LADY OF THE BLUE DRESS

Miss Mason was sitting in the lounge of the Wilton Hotel. Mr. Davis--the lawyer--had given her the name of this hotel, telling her that it was both quiet and comfortable.

A tiny cloud had arisen in Miss Mason's mind. It partially eclipsed the sunshine of her morning mood. She knew vaguely what had caused it.

She had changed her dress on her arrival, donning a black satin gown made in precisely the same style as the cashmere. A lace collar took the place of the linen one. A cameo brooch, large, and set in gold as massive as her watch, superseded the black bow. Miss Mason never wore jewellery except in the evening.

She had dined excellently at a small table in a room adorned with water-colour drawings. Between the courses she had found herself admiring them. She was so intent on them that at first she did not notice the covert smiles which two girls were directing towards her table. When she did, the smiles began to make her feel uncomfortable. At first she wondered if her cap were crooked, or her brooch unpinned, but gradually it dawned on her that it was just she herself who was affording them amusement.

Miss Mason had finished the last morsels of her gooseberry tart hurriedly, had swallowed her glass of light wine, and gone out into the lounge. She told herself that she was an old fool to worry over the little incident, but it had caused a vague anxiety in her mind.

She took up a number of the "Graphic" and began turning the pages. The style of the advertisements displayed within its covers had made her previously imagine the periodical to be exclusively intended for feminine perusal. She had been slightly alarmed before dinner to see a stout elderly gentleman studying it profoundly. A momentary idea took possession of her as to whether it was not her duty to go up to him and warn him regarding the nature of some of the contents, but as she saw it was the middle of the book he was studying, she concluded that someone had already given him a delicate hint regarding the advertisement pages. All the same, she could not imagine the editor of the paper to be a modest man.

One or two people had come into the lounge for coffee after dinner, but they had left it again, and, at the moment, it was deserted save for Miss Mason and one other woman.

There was something about the woman that attracted her attention. It was not merely her beauty, but something in the graceful way in which she was sitting in her chair, and in her manner of speaking to the waiter who brought her coffee. Miss Mason found herself watching her. She liked the ivory whiteness of her skin, the vivid red-brown of her hair, and the expression in her eyes. Her dress, too, which was a curious deep blue, pleased her immensely.

Suddenly the woman looked up. She saw Miss Mason's eyes fixed on her, and she smiled. There was something so frank and spontaneous about the smile that Miss Mason found herself smiling too.

"We have the place to ourselves," said the woman. "Every one else has departed for different theatres. I should have gone myself if I hadn't an appointment with a friend of mine."

"Never been to a theatre in my life," said Miss Mason. "Lack of opportunity, not prejudice."

"If you really care to have the opportunity it is certain to present itself sooner or later," replied the woman calmly. "It's only a question of the intensity of wishing."

Miss Mason leant a little forward.

"Doesn't the opportunity sometimes arrive too late?"

The question was put almost involuntarily. It was one she had been asking herself for the last three-quarters of an hour--ever since her somewhat hurried exit from the dining-room; and the question did not refer merely to the opportunity of visiting the theatre. The woman understood.

"That raises rather a fine point of question," she replied. "Can it be fairly said that one has been given the opportunity if it is truly impossible to accept it, which I imagine 'too late' would signify?"

Miss Mason did not reply at once. She wanted to tell this woman about the little cloud which had covered the brightness of her sun, the insidious little doubt which had crept into her mind. Yet she hardly knew how to begin.

The woman waited. She was one of those to whom confidences are given. If she had said anything at that moment the sentence Miss Mason was slowly preparing in her mind would never have reached her lips. It came suddenly and jerkily, it was spoken, too, almost below Miss Mason's breath.

"Isn't one ever too old? Have waited a long time for the chance of happiness. Got it now. But perhaps I am too old." A slow painful flush had mounted in Miss Mason's face with the words.

The younger woman turned quickly towards her.

"Too old for happiness!" she cried, with a little laugh. "Never! If happiness has come to you, welcome her with both hands; and with every kiss she gives you years will roll away from your heart. Happiness is like the spring, which wakes the world to brightness after a dreary winter."

Miss Mason gave a little choke.

"Felt like that myself in the train this morning. Forgot I was sixty. Thought it was splendid to be alive. Was going to enjoy myself. Was so glad thinking about it thought everybody would be glad too. Can't explain very well, but felt quite young. Thought all the young things in the world would let me watch their happiness, and I'd be happy in my own happiness and theirs. Didn't want to interfere with them, or try to mix myself up with them. Just wanted to be a kind of onlooker. Never thought they'd stop to laugh at me--make quiet fun of me, I mean. Made me feel very old. Silly nonsense, of course. Oughtn't to care. Am old."

The woman looked up quickly. She had noticed the little scene in the dining-room.

"Age has nothing to do with the matter," she replied quietly. "There is no reason why you should not enjoy yourself enormously. The dullest person I know is a young man of twenty-three, and one of the gayest is an aunt of mine who is seventy-five. Happiness is a gift of the gods, and is bestowed by them irrespective of age."

"Think so?" said Miss Mason.

"I am sure of it."

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