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.