aptitude.
Coleridge’s poems had been read long ago; some of them, indeed, almost committed to memory in the process of repeated perusal. No doubt a good many of them must have been as yet too abstruse for her; not in the least, however, from inaptitude in her for such subjects as they treated of, but simply because neither the terms nor the modes of thought could possibly have been as yet presented to her in so many different positions as to enable her to comprehend their scope. Hugh lent her Sir Walter’s poems next, but those she read at an eye-glance. She returned the volume in a week, saying merely, they were “verra bonnie stories.” He saw at once that, to have done them justice with the girl, he ought to have lent them first. But that could not be helped now; and what should come next? Upon this he took thought. His library was too small to cause much perplexity of choice, but for a few days he continued undecided.
Meantime the interest he felt in his girl-pupil deepened greatly. She became a kind of study to him. The expression of her countenance was far inferior to her intelligence and power of thought. It was still to excess—almost dull in ordinary; not from any fault in the mould of the features, except, perhaps, in the upper lip, which seemed deficient in drawing, if I may be allowed the expression; but from the absence of that light which indicates the presence of active thought and feeling within. In this respect her face was like the earthen pitcher of Gideon: it concealed the light. She seemed to have, to a peculiar degree, the faculty of retiring inside. But now and then, while he was talking to her, and doubtful, from the lack of expression, whether she was even listening with attention to what he was saying, her face would lighten up with a radiant smile of intelligence; not, however, throwing the light upon him, and in a moment reverting to its former condition of still twilight. Her person seemed not to be as yet thoroughly possessed or informed by her spirit. It sat apart within her; and there was no ready transit from her heart to her face. This lack of presence in the face is quite common in pretty school-girls and rustic beauties; but it was manifest to an unusual degree in the case of Margaret. Yet most of the forms and lines in her face were lovely; and when the light did shine through them for a passing moment, her countenance seemed absolutely beautiful. Hence it grew into an almost haunting temptation with Hugh, to try to produce this expression, to unveil the coy light of the beautiful soul. Often he tried; often he failed, and sometimes he succeeded. Had they been alone it might have become dangerous—I mean for Hugh; I cannot tell for Margaret.
When they first met, she had just completed her seventeenth year; but, at an age when a town-bred girl is all but a woman, her manners were those of a child. This childishness, however, soon began to disappear, and the peculiar stillness of her face, of which I have already said so much, made her seem older than she was.
It was now early summer, and all the other trees in the wood—of which there were not many besides the firs of various kinds—had put on their fresh leaves, heaped up in green clouds between the wanderer and the heavens. In the morning the sun shone so clear upon these, that, to the eyes of one standing beneath, the light seemed to dissolve them away to the most ethereal forms of glorified foliage. They were to be claimed for earth only by the shadows that the one cast upon the other, visible from below through the transparent leaf. This effect is very lovely in the young season of the year, when the leaves are more delicate and less crowded; and especially in the early morning, when the light is most clear and penetrating. By the way, I do not think any man is compelled to bid good-bye to his childhood: every man may feel young in the morning, middle-aged in the afternoon, and old at night. A day corresponds to a life, and the portions of the one are “pictures in little” of the seasons of the other. Thus far man may rule even time, and gather up, in a perfect being, youth and age at once.
One morning, about six o’clock, Hugh, who had never been so early in the wood since the day he had met Margaret there, was standing under a beech-tree, looking up through its multitudinous leaves, illuminated, as I have attempted to describe, with the sidelong rays of the brilliant sun. He was feeling young, and observing the forms of nature with a keen discriminating gaze: that was all. Fond of writing verses, he was studying nature, not as a true lover, but as one who would hereafter turn his discoveries to use. For it must be confessed that nature affected him chiefly through the medium of poetry; and that he was far more ambitious of writing beautiful things about nature than of discovering and understanding, for their own sakes, any of her hidden yet patent meanings. Changing his attitude after a few moments, he descried, under another beech-tree, not far from him, Margaret, standing and looking up fixedly as he had been doing a moment before. He approached her, and she, hearing his advance, looked, and saw him, but did not move. He thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. She was the first to speak, however.
“What were you seeing up there, Mr. Sutherland?”
“I was only looking at the bright leaves, and the shadows upon them.”
“Ah! I thocht maybe ye had seen something.”
“What do you mean, Margaret?”
“I dinna richtly ken mysel’. But I aye expeck to see something in this fir-wood. I’m here maist mornin’s as the day dawns, but I’m later the day.”
“We were later than usual at our work last night. But what kind of thing do you expect to see?”
“That’s jist what I dinna ken. An’ I canna min’ whan I began to come here first, luikin’ for something. I’ve tried mony a time, but I canna min’, do what I like.”
Margaret had never said so much about herself before. I can account for it only on the supposition that Hugh had gradually assumed in her mind a kind of pastoral superiority, which, at a favourable moment, inclined her to impart her thoughts to him. But he did not know what to say to this strange fact in her history. She went on, however, as if, having broken the ice, she must sweep it away as well.
“The only thing ‘at helps me to account for’t, is a picter in our auld Bible, o’ an angel sittin’ aneth a tree, and haudin’ up his han’ as gin he were speakin’ to a woman ‘at’s stan’in’ afore him. Ilka time ‘at I come across that picter, I feel direckly as gin I war my lane in this fir-wood here; sae I suppose that when I was a wee bairn, I maun hae come oot some mornin’ my lane, wi’ the expectation o’ seein’ an angel here waitin’ for me, to speak to me like the ane i’ the Bible. But never an angel hae I seen. Yet I aye hae an expectation like o’ seein’ something, I kenna what; for the whole place aye seems fu’ o’ a presence, an’ it’s a hantle mair to me nor the kirk an’ the sermon forby; an’ for the singin’, the soun’ i’ the fir-taps is far mair solemn and sweet at the same time, an’ muckle mair like praisin’ o’ God than a’ the psalms thegither. But I aye think ‘at gin I could hear Milton playin’ on’s organ, it would be mair like that soun’ o’ mony waters, than onything else ‘at I can think o’.”
Hugh stood and gazed at her in astonishment. To his more refined ear, there was a strange incongruity between the somewhat coarse dialect in which she spoke, and the things she uttered in it. Not that he was capable of entering into her feelings, much less of explaining them to her. He felt that there was something remarkable in them, but attributed both the thoughts themselves and their influence on him, to an uncommon and weird imagination. As of such origin, however, he was just the one to value them highly.
“Those are very strange ideas,” he said.
“But what can there be about the wood? The very primroses—ye brocht me the first this spring yersel’, Mr. Sutherland—come out at the fit o’ the trees, and look at me as if they said, ‘We ken—we ken a’ aboot it;’ but never a word mair they say. There’s something by ordinar’ in’t.”
“Do you like no other place besides?” said Hugh, for the sake of saying something.
“Ou ay, mony ane; but nane like this.”
“What kind of place do you like best?”
“I like places wi’ green grass an’ flowers amo’t.”
“You like flowers then?”
“Like them! whiles they gar me greet an’ whiles they gar me lauch; but there’s mair i’ them than that, an’ i’ the wood too. I canna richtly say my prayers in ony ither place.”
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