“Papa has no objections,” said Margaret, demurely; “he says if you will
come he will be--glad to see you.” This, however, being an addition
made on the spot, she faltered over it, not quite knowing how it was
to be supported by fact; and she added, timidly, “Will you really take
all that trouble for me? Perhaps I am stupid. I think very likely I am
stupid; for I cannot draw anything-- I have been trying,” she said, with
a great blush.
“You have been trying! I should like to see what you have done. If you
could have seen my stumbles and blunders, you would have had no respect
for me at all,” said Rob Glen; “and how I dare now to take upon me to
teach you, who probably know more than I do--”
“Oh, I know nothing at all--just nothing at all! What shall we do,
Mr.--Glen? I found a book and some pencils. I think there is everything
in the world up in the old presses in the high room. What shall we do
first? Might I begin with--the house? or a tree?”
“There are some preliminary exercises,” said Rob, “that are thought
necessary; very simple--drawing straight lines, and curves, and
corners. I am sure you will do them all--by instinct.”
“Oh!” said Margaret again. Her countenance fell. “But any child would
draw straight lines; a straight line is nothing--it is just that,”
she added, tracing a line in the soft, brown, upturned earth of the
ploughed field through which the path ran. But when Margaret looked at
it, she reddened and furtively attempted another. She had met Rob by
the burn as before, and he was walking back with her toward home. The
sky was overcast and lowering. The brief interval of lovely weather had
for the moment come to an end. Clouds were gathering on all the hills,
and the winds sighed about the hedges, heavy with coming rain.
“The furrow is straight,” said Rob, “straight as an arrow; that is the
ploughman’s pride; but it is not so easy to draw a straight line as you
think. I have known people who could never do it.”
Margaret was crimson with the failure.
“It’s me that am stupid!” she cried, in sudden rage with herself. “How
do the ploughmen learn to do it? There’s nobody to show them the way.”
“It’s their pride; and it’s their trade, Miss Margaret.”
“Oh!” cried Margaret, stamping her foot, “it shall be my pride, and my
trade too. I will begin to-night when I go home. I will never, never
rest till I can do it.”
“But it will never be your trade--nor mine,” said Rob Glen, with a
sigh. “I wish I knew what mine was. You are rich and a lady; but I am
a poor man, that must work for my living, and I don’t know what I must
do.”
“If I were you--” said Margaret. As she spoke she blushed, but only
because she always did, not with any special signification in it. Rob,
however, did not understand this. He saw the glow of color, the sudden
brightness, the droop and sensitive fall of the soft eyelids: all
things telling of emotion, he thought, as though the supposition, “if
I were you,” had thrilled the girl’s being; and his own heart gave a
leap. Did she--was it possible--feel like this for him already? “If I
were you,” said Margaret, musingly, “I would be a farmer; but no, not,
perhaps, if I were you. You could do other things; you could go into
the world, you could do something great--”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I? No, there is nothing great,
nothing grand about me.”
“How can you judge yourself?” said Margaret, with fine and flattering
scorn; “it is other people that can judge best. No; if I were you, I
would go away and paint and write, and be a great man; and then you
could come home and visit the place where you used to live, and see
your old friends; but just now I would go away. I would go to London,
into the world. I would let people see what I could do--only first I
would learn Margaret Leslie to draw,” she said, with a little laugh;
“that would be kind--for she never could find any one else to learn her
about here.”
“That would be the finest office of all,” said Rob, inspired. “To go to
London, every adventurer can do that; but to teach Miss Leslie is for
few. I would rather have that privilege than--”
“Oh,” cried Margaret, careless of the compliment, “and will you paint
a picture, a great picture of Earl’s-hall? I know we are poor. We are
not great people, like the Bruces, or the Lindsays, or Sir Claude. We
have not grand horses and carriages, and men in livery. That is just
why I should like poor old mossy Earl’s-hall to be in a bonnie picture,
to make folks ask where is that? what beautiful old house is that? You
see,” she added, laughing, “it is not just a beautiful house. It is
not what you would call comfortable, perhaps. Jean and Grace, that is,
my old sisters, Miss Leslie and Mrs. Bellingham, are never tired of
abusing it. It is quite true that we have not got a thing that can be
called a drawing-room--not a real drawing-room,” she said, shaking her
head. “You will wonder, but it is true. There is the long room, and
there is the high room; the one papa sits in; and we dine in it, and
he lives in it; and the other is empty, and full of--oh, everything
you can think of! But there is no drawing-room, only the little West
Chamber, such a little place. They say it was Lady Jean’s room, and
Lady Jean--is the only ghost we have.”
“Is she the lady with the silk gown?”
“She is the Rustle,” said Margaret, not disposed to treat the family
ghost lightly. “You never see her, you only hear as if a grand lady
walked by with her train sweeping. I think there is that very train in
the old aumrie, as Bell calls it. But what I was saying was, because it
is so old, Mr. Glen, because it’s not grand, nor even comfortable--oh,
I would like a bonnie picture, a real beautiful picture, of poor old
Earl’s-hall!”
“You must make one,” he said.
“Yes, if I can; but you must make one first. You must take a big
sheet of paper and draw it all out; I will show you the best view;
and you must paint in every bit of it, the tower and the view from
the tower (but, perhaps, after all, it would be difficult to put in
the view, you must make another picture of that); and you must put
it up in a beautiful frame, and write upon it ‘Old Earl’s-hall.’ Oh!
that will make Jean and Grace jump. They will say, ‘Who can have done
it? Earl’s-hall--papa’s place--that horrid, tumble-down old Scotch
crow’s-nest!’” Margaret was a mimic, without knowing it, and mouthed
this forth with the warmest relish in Mrs. Bellingham’s very tone. But
her own acting of her elder sister called forth lively indignation
in the girl’s warlike soul. “That’s what they dare to call it,” she
cried, stopping to stamp her foot. “_My_ Earl’s-hall! But this is
what you will do, Mr. Glen, if you want to please me. You will make a
picture--not a common thing--a _beautiful_ picture, that everybody
will talk about; and send it to the biggest place in London, in the
season when everybody is there, and hang it up for everybody to see.”
“To please you,” said Rob, “I would do a great deal--I would do--” he
went on, sinking his voice, “as much as man can do.” Margaret scarcely
turned to him as he began to speak; but when his voice sank lower, her
attention was caught. She raised her head with a little surprise, and,
catching his eye, blushed: and paused, arrested, and wondering-- What
did he mean? Her frank girlish astonishment was very discomposing; he
himself blushed and faltered, and stopped in the middle of his pretty
speech--“as much as man _can_ do!” but it was not so very much
she asked him for. It seemed necessary to Margaret to say this to make
things clear.
“Oh no,” she said, with a shake of her head, “not that; though there
are many men could not do what I want you to do, Mr. Glen; but you can
do it easy--quite easy. What will I want to begin with?” she added,
changing the subject abruptly, and with true Scotch disregard for the
difference between shall and will. This gentle indifference to his
protestations chilled Rob a little. She had been so sweet and gracious
to him that her demand upon his services only as something that he
could do “easy, quite easy,” brought him to a sudden stand-still. He
did not know how to reply.
“It may not be much,” he said; “but it will be all I can do. Miss
Margaret, I will begin to-morrow, to show that I want to please you;
and if it is not a good drawing it will not be my fault, nor for want
of trying.”
“I am sure it will be beautiful,” she said. “Oh, I would like to see
Grace and Jean jump when they see all the people, all the fine folk in
London, running to look at old Earl’s-hall.”
Alas! Rob knew the great London people were not very likely to run in
crowds to any performance of his. But the idea was delightful, however
unlikely. He suffered himself to laugh, too, though he shook his head.
He had never seen any one so sweet, so enchanting, or felt so near to
being transported and carried out of himself as by this gracious little
lady. Never before, he thought, had he known what such enthusiasm was.
He had not forgotten Jeanie, and perhaps others. He was a connoisseur
indeed in these soft emotions, the excitement of love-making, the
pleasure of pursuit, the flattering consciousness of being admired and
loved. All these sensations he knew well enough, not in any guilty
way, except in so far as multiplicity of affections implied guilt; but
this was not only something new, it was something altogether novel.
Margaret had much of the great lady in her, simple as she was. She
was not like his previous loves. Even in the little foolishnesses she
said, there were signs of a wider world, of something more than even
Rob himself, heretofore the oracle of his friends and sweethearts,
was acquainted with. All the Fife gentry, all the rural aristocracy,
all the great world, so fine at a distance, seemed to glide toward
him half caressingly, half mocking, in that girlish figure. It gave
him a new sensation. He was dazzled, enchanted, drawn out of himself.
Who could tell what this new influence might effect in a young man
avowedly “clever,” whose abilities everybody had acknowledged? Love
had inspired men who had no such eminence to start from. Love had made
the blacksmith a painter; why should it not make Rob Glen a painter.
To please her! she had put it on that ground. She was not like any of
those he had trifled with before. Love had done wonders in all ages,
and why not now--if perhaps this new sentiment, so mingled, yet so
strange, so dazzling, so bewildering, might be Love.
“If that is what will please you best,” he said, faltering a little
with something which felt to him like real emotion, “then it shall be
done, Miss Margaret, you must let me say so, if man can do it-- I mean,
if my skill can do it. But perhaps the two things can be done together.
I will begin to-morrow, and you can watch me. I will tell you all I
know, and you will see how I do it; that will be better, perhaps, than
the straight lines.”
“Oh, a great deal better,” cried Margaret, fervently. “Come early; be
sure you come early, Mr. Glen. I will be ready. I will be waiting. I
will let you see the best place for the view. And perhaps you would
like to see the house? And then I will go with you, and stand by you,
and hold your colors and your pencils, and watch the way you do it.
Oh!” cried Margaret, putting her hands together, and breathing forth an
earnest invocation of all the good spirits of the elements. “Oh, that
it may only be a fine day!”
This very prayer brought home to them both the too plain suggestion
conveyed by these gathering clouds, that it might not be a fine day,
and chilled their very souls within them. If it should rain! “I think,”
said Rob, but timidly, “that it is looking better. The sky is cloudy
here, but it’s clear in the quarter where the wind is, and a north wind
is seldom rainy. I think it will be a fine day.”
“Do you think so, Mr. Glen?” Margaret looked up at him very wistfully,
and then at the sky. Then she cleared up all at once, though the sky
did not. “Any way,” she said, “you will come? If it’s wet, I could let
you see the house. I think you would like to see the house. And bring
a great many pictures and sketch-books to let papa see. Even if it
is wet, it will be not so very bad,” said Margaret, throwing a smile
suddenly upon him like a light from a lantern. But then she recollected
herself, and blushed wildly and grew serious--for he was a man and a
stranger. Was he a stranger? No, she said to herself--and not even a
gentleman, only Robert Glen. What fury would have been in poor Rob’s
heart had he known this last consoling sentiment which kept Margaret
from feeling herself overbold. But she did not mean all the arrogance
and impertinence that appeared in the thought. Not all of it, nor half
of it. She meant no impertinence at all. She parted with him where the
by-way came out upon the road, and went along the flowery hedge-row
very demurely, thinking very kindly of Rob Glen. Margaret had not known
before what it was to have a companion of her own age. Youth loves
youth, all the more if youth has little experience of anything but
age. Rob was a great deal more amusing (to Margaret) than Bell. This,
perhaps, was a mistake, for Rob was not nearly so original as Bell was,
nor so well worth knowing. But Margaret did not know that Bell was
original. She knew all her stories, and was not too anxious to call
forth that homely philosophy which so often (or so the girl thought)
was subtly adapted for her own reproof and discouragement. Rob was a
novelty to Margaret, even more than she was to him. The prospect of his
visit made her feel that even a wet day would be endurable. He amused
her more than any one had ever done before. And then she comforted
herself that she could not be thought forward, or too bold, because,
after all, he was not a gentleman or a stranger, but only Rob Glen!
Jeanie had got in before her young mistress, before the clouds had
risen that threatened to cover the sky. What different thoughts were
hers on the same subject! She listened to Margaret’s voice talking to
Bell, as she moved about putting everything in order for the night.
What a sweet voice it was, Jeanie thought, speaking so softly, such
bonnie English! no like us common folk. The tones which were so
wofully Fifeish to Sir Ludovic, and which made Mrs. Bellingham cry,
seemed the very acme of refinement to Jeanie; and when a lady spoke
to him so sweetly, looked at him with such lovely een, would it be
wonderful if Rob forgot? And he was a gentleman himself, for what was
it that made a gentleman but just education? and nobody could say but
he had that. It gave Jeanie’s heart a pang, but she was too just and
candid not to see all this. How could he think of Jeanie Robertson
with Miss Margaret for a friend? Jeanie went away into the depths of
those low vaulted rooms, which formed the under-story of Earl’s-hall
in order to escape the sweet sound of Margaret’s voice. Here there was
a maze of rooms and cellars one within another, among which you might
escape very easily from sounds without. You might escape, even, which
was more difficult, from pursuers, even from persecutors, as had been
known, it was said, in the old times; but, ah me, in the very deepest
of recesses, how could poor Jeanie escape from herself?
Next day, next morning, Margaret looked at the sky long before any one
was up at Earl’s-hall. She looked out over the tree-tops to the sea,
which swept round in a semicircle as far as the eye carried. From the
Eden to the Tay the silvery line swept the horizon one dazzling curve
of light. St. Andrews lay on her right hand, with all its towers and
its ruins, and the glimmer of water beyond the headland on which it
stood. Not a trace of smoke or human breath came from the brown old
city, which stood there silent, with a homely majesty, in the profound
stillness of the early morning. Not a human creature was awake between
Margaret’s window and the old town of St. Rule, except, indeed, in
the fishing-boat, with its brown sail, out upon the dazzling line of
sea, which was bearing slowly toward the bar after a night’s fishing,
with scarce wind enough to move it. The birds were all up and awake,
but nothing else--not the ploughmen and laborers, so early was it, the
sun still low over the sea. The girl’s heart leaped at the beauty of
the sight, but sank again so far as her own interests were concerned.
Is it not a bad sign when it is so bright so early? And the light
which thus lavished itself upon the world with none to see it, had a
certain pale gleam which frightened the young observer, too much used
to atmospheric effects not to know something about them. “Oh, what a
lovely morning!” she said to herself; but even sanguine Margaret shook
her head, thinking it doubtful if the day would be as fine. And oh, if
she had but learned, if she could but make a picture of that old town
upon the headland, lying voiceless in the morning light, with the great
silver bow of the sea flashing round the vast horizon, all round to
the vague shores of Forfarshire, and the dazzling breadth of Tay! If
Rob were but here with his pencil and his colors! Margaret was in the
enthusiast stage of ignorant faith, believing all things possible to
Rob. He was to her the young Raphael, the Michael Angelo of the future.
Or perhaps it would be better to say (but Margaret at that stage knew
no difference) the Claude, the Turner of the new generation. She seemed
to see all that scene transferred to canvas--nay, not even to canvas,
to paper (but she knew no difference), dazzling, shining with early dew
and freshness, with the chirp of the birds in it, and the silence of
nature, fixed there never to die. Poor Rob and his box of water-colors!
He would himself, fortunately, at least when unintoxicated by the
firmness of her faith in him, have had sense enough not to try.
But when the common world was awake, and when the working day had
begun, the brilliancy did not last. First, mists crept over the sun,
then the silver bow of the sea paled and whitened, the old brown tower
turned gray, the blue sky disappeared. By eight o’clock everything was
the hue of mud--sky, sea, and land together, with blurred shades of
green and brown upon the last, but not an honest color; and lastly, it
began to rain, softly, slowly, persistently, at first scarcely audible
upon the leaves, then pattering with continuous sound, which filled all
the air. Nothing but rain! The very air was rain, not disagreeable, not
cruel, but constant.
“Well, it’s aye good for the turnips,” said Bell; “and I’ll get my
stocking done that’s been so long in hand.”
“And what do you say till the hay?” asked John, who was a pessimist,
“and a’ the low land about Eden in flood already.”
But he, too, comforted himself by getting out the oldest plate, and
giving it “a guid clean,” which was an occupation he kept for this
kind of weather; it is easier to endure a wet day when you are old
than when you are young. Jeanie was less well off. When her work was
done, she was not happy enough to take out the stocking, with which
every woman in Fife is provided against a moment’s leisure. To sit down
tranquilly and turn the heel was not in Jeanie’s power. She went up to
her little turret room, and began to turn over her little possessions,
and there found a keepsake or two from Rob, poor Jeanie! which filled
her already dewy eyes with tears. But even that was an occupation, and
Margaret, who had no occupation, was worst off of all. She flitted all
over the house, up-stairs and down, sometimes disturbing Sir Ludovic
with restless movements, taking down books and putting them up again,
then flying down-stairs to warm her hands by the fire and tease the
long-suffering Bell.
“Eh, Miss Margaret, if you would but try something to do! To see you
aye coming and going makes my head gang round and round.”
“How can you sit there with your stocking?” cried Margaret, “as if you
were a part of the day? Will nothing happen--will nothing ever happen?
Will it go on till dinner-time, and then till bed-time, and nobody
come?”
“Wha would come, or what should happen?” said Bell, startled. It was
a new idea to her that succor should come from without. “I ken nobody
that is such a fool as to come out of their ain house on such a day.
But, bless me! what is that?” And lo! in a moment as they listened,
making Bell wonder and Margaret clap her hands, there came--blessed
sound--a knock at the door!