“But I want my revenge. As a punishment for doubting one whom you had so little ground for believing, you shall be compelled to see the proof—that is, if you will do me the favour to wait here till I come back. I shall not be long, though it is some distance to the top of Baliol’s tower.”
“Davie told me your room was there: do you not find it cold? It must be very lonely! I wonder why mistress Brookes put you there!”
Donal assured her he could not have had a place more to his mind, and before she could well think he had reached the foot of his stair, was back with a roll of papers, which he laid on the table.
“There!” he said, opening it out; “if you will take the trouble to go over these, you may read the growth of the poem. Here first you see it blocked out rather roughly, and much blotted with erasures and substitutions. Here next you see the result copied—clean to begin with, but afterwards scored and scored. You see the words I chose instead of the first, and afterwards in their turn rejected, until in the proofs I reached those which I have as yet let stand. I do not fancy Miss Graeme has any doubt the verses are mine, for it was plain she thought them rubbish. From your pains to know who wrote them, I believe you do not think so badly of them!”
She thought he was satirical, and gave a slight sigh as of pain. It went to his heart.
“I did not mean the smallest reflection, my lady, on your desire for satisfaction,” he said; “rather, indeed, it flatters me. But is it not strange the heart should be less ready to believe what seems worth believing? Something must be true: why not the worthy—oftener at least than the unworthy? Why should it be easier to believe hard things of God, for instance, than lovely things?—or that one man copied from another, than that he should have made the thing himself? Some would yet say I contrived all this semblance of composition in order to lay the surer claim to that to which I had none—nor would take the trouble to follow the thing through its development! But it will be easy for you, my lady, and no bad exercise in logic and analysis, to determine whether the genuine growth of the poem be before you in these papers or not.”
“I shall find it most interesting,” said lady Arctura: “so much I can tell already! I never saw anything of the kind before, and had no idea how poetry was made. Does it always take so much labour?”
“Some verses take much more; some none at all. The labour is in getting the husks of expression cleared off, so that the thought may show itself plainly.”
At this point Mrs. Brookes, thinking probably the young people had had long enough conference, entered, and after a little talk with her, lady Arctura kissed her and bade her good night. Donal retired to his aerial chamber, wondering whether the lady of the house had indeed changed as much as she seemed to have changed.
From that time, whether it was that lady Arctura had previously avoided meeting him and now did not, or from other causes, Donal and she met much oftener as they went about the place, nor did they ever pass without a mutual smile and greeting.