The Athelings. Маргарет Олифант

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “If there’s one thing I like worse than another, it’s your writing young men,” said Miss Willsie, vehemently. “I lighted on a paper this very day, that the young leasing-maker had gotten from America, and what do you think I saw therein, but just a long account—everything about us—of my brother and me. My brother Robert Foggo, as decent a man as there is in the three kingdoms—and me! What do you think of that, Mrs Atheling?—even Harry in it, and the wallflowers! If it had not been for my brother, he never should have set foot in this house again.”

      “Oh dear, how interesting!” said the widow. Mrs Tavistock turned her eyes to the other end of the room almost with excitement. She had not the least objection, for her own part, in the full pomp of sables and sentiment, to figure at full length in the Mississippi Gazette.

      “And what was it for?” said Mrs Atheling, innocently; “for I thought it was only remarkable people that even the Americans put in the papers. Was it simply to annoy you?”

      “Me!—do you think a lad like yon could trouble me?” exclaimed Miss Willsie. “He says, ‘All the scenes through which he has passed will be interesting to his readers.’ That’s in a grand note he sent me this morning—the impertinent boy! My poor Harry, though he’s often in mischief, and my brother thinks him unsteady—I would not give his little finger for half-a-dozen lads like yon.”

      “But Harry is doing well now, Miss Willsie?” said Mrs Atheling. There was a faint emphasis on the now which proved that Harry had not always done well.

      “Ay,” said Miss Willsie, drily; “and so Chairles has settled to his business—that’s aye a comfort. If there’s one thing that troubles me, it is to see young folk growing up in idleness; I pity them, now, that are genteel and have daughters. What are you going to do, Mrs Atheling, with these girls of yours?”

      Mrs Atheling’s eyes sought them out with fond yet not untroubled observation. There was Marian’s beautiful head before the other window, looking as if it had arrested and detained the sunbeams, long ago departed in the west; and there was Agnes, graceful, animated, and intelligent, watching, with an affectionate and only half-conscious admiration, her sister’s beauty. Their mother smiled to herself and sighed. Even her anxiety, looking at them thus, was but another name for delight.

      “Agnes,” said Marian at the other window, half whispering, half aloud—“Agnes! Harry says Mr Endicott has published a book.”

      With a slight start and a slight blush Agnes turned round. Mr Foggo S. Endicott was tall, very thin, had an extremely lofty mien, and a pair of spectacles. He was eight-and-twenty, whiskerless, sallow, and by no means handsome: he held his thin head very high, and delivered his sentiments into the air when he spoke, but rarely bent from his altitude to address any one in particular. But he heard the whisper in a moment: in his very elbows, as you stood behind him, you could see the sudden consciousness. He perceived, though he did not look at her, the eager, bright, blushing, half-reverential glance of Agnes, and, conscious to his very finger-points, raised his thin head to its fullest elevation, and pretended not to hear.

      Agnes blushed: it was with sudden interest, curiosity, reverence, made more personal and exciting by her own venture. Nothing had been heard yet of this venture, though it was nearly a month since Charlie took it to Mr Burlington, and the young genius looked with humble and earnest attention upon one who really had been permitted to make his utterance to the ear of all the world. He had published a book; he was a real genuine printed author. The lips of Agnes parted with a quick breath of eagerness; she looked up at him with a blush on her cheek, and a light in her eye. A thrill of wonder and excitement came over her: would people by-and-by regard herself in the same light?

      “Oh, Mr Endicott!—is it poems?” said Agnes, shyly, and with a deepening colour. The simple girl was almost as much embarrassed asking him about his book, as if she had been asking about the Transatlantic lady of this Yankee young gentleman’s love.

      “Oh!” said Mr Endicott, discovering suddenly that she addressed him—“yes. Did you speak to me?—poems?—ah! some little fugitive matters, to be sure. One has no right to refuse to publish, when everybody comes to know that one does such things.”

      “Refuse?—no, indeed; I think not,” said Agnes, in spite of herself feeling very much humbled, and speaking very low. This was so elevated a view of the matter, and her own was so commonplace a one, that the poor girl was completely crestfallen. She so anxious to get into print; and this bonâ fide author, doubtless so very much her superior, explaining how he submitted, and could not help himself! Agnes was entirely put down.

      “Yes, really one ought not to keep everything for one’s own private enjoyment,” said the magnanimous Mr Endicott, speaking very high up into the air with his cadenced voice. “I do not approve of too much reserve on the part of an author myself.”

      “And what are they about, Mr Endicott?” asked Marian, with respect, but by no means so reverentially as Agnes. Mr Endicott actually looked at Marian; perhaps it was because of her very prosaic and improper question, perhaps for the sake of the beautiful face.

      “About!” said the poet, with benignant disdain. “No, I don’t approve of narrative poetry; it’s after the time. My sonnets are experiences. I live them before I write them; that is the true secret of poetry in our enlightened days.”

      Agnes listened, much impressed and cast down. She was far too simple to perceive how much superior her natural bright impulse, spontaneous and effusive, was to this sublime concentration. Agnes all her life long had never lived a sonnet; but she was so sincere and single-minded herself, that, at the first moment of hearing it, she received all this nonsense with unhesitating faith. For she had not yet learned to believe in the possibility of anybody, save villains in books, saying anything which they did not thoroughly hold as true.

      So Agnes retired a little from the conversation. The young genius began to take herself to task, and was much humiliated by the contrast. Why had she written that famous story, now lying storm-stayed in the hands of Mr Burlington? Partly to please herself—partly to please Mamma—partly because she could not help it. There was no grand motive in the whole matter. Agnes looked with reverence at Mr Endicott, and sat down in a corner. She would have been completely conquered if the sublime American had been content to hold his peace.

      But this was the last thing which occurred to Mr Endicott. He continued his utterances, and the discouraged girl began to smile. She was no judge of character, but she began to be able to distinguish nonsense when she heard it. This was very grand nonsense on the first time of hearing, and Agnes and Marian, we are obliged to confess, were somewhat annoyed when Mamma made a movement of departure. They kept very early hours in Bellevue, and before ten o’clock all Miss Willsie’s guests had said good-night to Killiecrankie Lodge.

      CHAPTER XIV.

      THE HOUSE OF FOGGO

      It was ten o’clock, and now only this little family circle was left in the Lodge of Killiecrankie. Miss Willsie, with one of the big silver candlesticks drawn so very close that her blue turban trembled, and stood in jeopardy, read the Times; Mr Foggo sat in his armchair, doing nothing save contemplating the other light in the other candlestick; and at the unoccupied sides of the table, between the seniors, were the two young men.

      These nephews did not live at Killiecrankie Lodge; but Miss Willsie, who was very careful, and a notable manager, considered it would be unsafe for “the boys” to go home to their lodgings at so late an hour as this—so her invitations always included a night’s lodging; and the kind and arbitrary little woman was not accustomed to be disobeyed. Yet “the boys” found it dull, we confess. Mr Foggo was not pleased with Harry, and by no means СКАЧАТЬ