Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 12

“That’s the finest thing you’ve said, Robert,” said the Doctor. “I see your heart is right, although your head is all wrong;” and with this they parted, and the good man came in to look over his sermons. As for Rob, he hurried home to collect some sketch-books for Margaret’s benefit, and would not share his mother’s tea, notwithstanding his pretty speech. But it was astonishing how tolerant Mrs. Glen had grown. She shook her head, but she did not insist upon the bread-and-butter.

“I’ll have something ready for your supper if you havena time now,” she said; and entreated him to take the block with to-day’s drawing, which she thought might be offered “in a present” to the young lady.

“Not that, mother,” said Rob, “not till it is finished.”

“Finished!” she said, with a disdain which was complimentary; “what would you have? You canna mend it. It’s just the Kirkton itsel’.”

And she would have liked him to put on his best black coat when he went to meet Miss Margaret, and the tall hat he wore on Sundays. “When you have good claes, why should ye no wear them? She should see that you ken the fashion and can keep the fashion with the best—as my poor purse will feel when the bill comes in,” she added, with a sigh. But at last Rob managed to escape in his ordinary garments, and with the sketches he had chosen. After the events of the day, which had been a kind of crisis in his career, Rob’s mind was full of a pleasant excitement; all things seemed once more to promise well for him—if only this little lady of romance would keep her promise. Would she come again? or had he been flattering himself, supposing a greater interest in her mind than really existed, or a greater freedom in her movements? He lingered about for some time, watching the sun as it lighted up the west, and began to paint the sky with crimson and purple; and as he watched it, Rob was natural enough and innocent enough to forget most other things. Who could attempt to put that sky upon paper? There was all the fervor of first love in his enthusiasm for art, and as he pondered what color could give some feeble idea of such a sky, he thought no more of Margaret. What impossible combination could do it? And if it was done, who would believe in it? He looked at the growing glory with that despair of the artist which is in itself a worship. Rob was not an artist to speak of, yet he had something of the “feeling” which makes one, and all the enthusiasm of a beginner just able to make some expression of his delight in the beauty round him; and there is no one who sees that beauty so clearly, and all the unimaginable glories of the atmosphere, the clouds and shadows, the wonderful varieties of color of which our northern heaven is capable, as the artist, however humble. He was absorbed in this consideration, wondering how to do it, wondering if he ever could succeed in catching that tone of visionary light, that touch of green amidst the blue—or whether he would not be condemned as an impostor if he tried, when suddenly his book of sketches was softly drawn out of his hand. Looking round with a start, he saw Margaret by his side. She had stolen upon him ere he was aware, and her laugh at having taken him by surprise changed into her habitual sudden blush as she caught his eye.

“You need not mind me,” she said, confused. “I am very happy, looking at the pictures. Are you trying to make a picture out of that sky?”

“If I could,” he said; “but I don’t know how to do it; and if I did, it would not be believed, though people see the sunset every day. Did you ever see a Turner, Miss Margaret? Do you know he was the greatest artist—one of the greatest artists?”

“I have heard his name; but I never saw any pictures, never one except our own, and a few in other houses. I have heard, or rather I have read that name. Did he paint landscapes like you?”

“Like me!” Rob laughed. “You don’t know what you are saying. I am a poor creature, a beginner, a fellow that knows nothing. But he!—and he is very fond of sunsets, and paints them; but he dared no more have done that—”

Margaret looked up curiously into the western heavens. It was “all aflame,” and the glow of it threw a warm reflection upon her as she looked up wistfully, with a look of almost infantile, suddenly awakened wonder. Her face was very grave, startled, and full of awe, like one of Raphael’s child-angels. The idea was new to her. She, who thought these sketches so much more interesting than the sunset, it gave her a new sensation to hear of the great artist who had never dared to represent that which the careless heavens accomplish every day. Some floating conception of the greatness of that great globe of sky and air which kept herself suspended a very atom in its vastness, and of the littleness of any man’s attempt at representing it, came suddenly upon her, then floated away again, leaving her as eager as ever over Rob Glen’s poor little sketches. She turned them over with hurried hands. Some were of scenes she did not know, the lochs and hills of the West Highlands, which filled her with delight, and now and then an old tumble-down house, which interested her less.

“Would you like to draw Earl’s-hall?” she said. “I know you have it done in the distance. But it is grand in the distance, and close at hand it is not so grand, it is only funny. Perhaps you could make a picture, Mr.—Glen, of Earl’s-hall?”

“I should very much like to try. Might I try? Perhaps Sir Ludovic might not like it.”

“Papa likes what I like,” said Margaret. But then she paused. “There is Bell. You know Bell, Mr.—Glen.”

She made a little pause before his name, and he smiled. Perhaps it was better that she should not be so easily familiar and call him Rob. The touch of embarrassment was more attractive.

“Bell,” she added, with a little furtive smile, avoiding his look, “is more troublesome than papa; and she will go and speak to papa when she takes it into her head.”

“Then you do not like Bell? I am wrong, I am very wrong; I see it. You did not mean that!”

“Not like—Bell? What would happen if you did not care for those that belong to you?”

“But Bell is only your servant—only your house-keeper.”

Margaret closed the sketch-book, and looked at him with indignant eyes.

“I cannot tell you what Bell is,” she said. “She is just Bell. She took care of my mother, and she takes care of me. Who would be like Bell to me, if it were the Queen? But sometimes she scolds,” she added, suddenly, coming down in a moment from her height of seriousness; “and if you come to Earl’s-hall, you must make friends with Bell. I will tell her you want to draw the house. She would like to see a picture of the house, I am sure she would; and, Mr. Glen,” said Margaret, timidly, looking up in his face, “you promised—but perhaps you have forgotten—you promised to learn me—”

(Learn, by one of the curious turns of meaning not uncommon over the Border, means teach in Scotch, just as to hire means to be hired.)

“Forgotten!” said Rob, his face, too, glowing with the sunset. “If you will only let me! The worst is that you will soon find out how little I know.”

“Not when I look at these beautiful pictures,” said Margaret, opening the sketch-book again. “Tell me where this is. It is a little dark loch, with hills rising and rising all round; here there is a point out into the water with a castle upon it, all dim and dark; but up on the hills the sun is shining. Oh, I would like, I would like to see it! What bonnie places there must be in the world!”

“It is in the Highlands. I wish I could show you the place,” said Rob. “The colors on the hills are far beyond a poor sketch of mine. They are like a beautiful poem.”

Margaret looked up at him again with a misty sweetness in her eyes, a recognition, earnest and happy, of another link of union.

“Do you like poetry too?” she said.