Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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“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.