Mary C. E. Wemyss

“ And that old woman had not forgotten the days of her youth, and why? Because the sun was in the heavens, by day, to remind her: the stars in the sky at night: the burn on the hillside: the heather on the moor: the little children passing by—tender reminders, these. Even the rain must re-awaken memories of the enfolded plaid: the peat smoke bring back memories of evenings when the day was past and over, the harvest gathered in, and the bairns asleep.
As with Dick and his mother the parting lay like a weight on the hearts of Miles and Diana. ”

“ It so happened that all the days were fine, so every day Diana and I watched for the small cloud in the distance that should herald their approach, and one day it appeared, no bigger than a man's hand. When it came nearer it was considerably bigger, and it finally assumed the dimensions of Zerlina, Hyacinth, the twins, Teddy, and a small nursery-maid. Betty was immensely delighted with the twins, her one ambition in life being to have twins of her own. Failing that, and every birthday only brought fresh disappointment in its wake, the care of somebody else's was the next best thing. ”

“ An old woman making hay, in a patch of a field, at the side of the road, came down to the low stone wall and greeted him in her soft native tongue; which greeting conveyed to him a wish for good luck in his wooing. She understood! Her smiling, sunken eyes held memories. It must have been years ago that she was wooed, yet she had not forgotten! Who could forget, if it had been among these hills, beside these burns, under this sky that he had loved? O Scotland! No wonder Shan’t addressed her letters to Uncle Marcus “Glenbossie, darlin’ Scotland.” ”

“ A wise woman is she who, seeing her husband tired and perhaps bored, slips into his hands this volume of immortal prose. If he be a sportsman, his chair comfortable, and the fire brightly burning, all his worries will vanish like “smoke” on the hillside, and for the space of some hours he will be at peace, tramping once again the moors, fishing the rivers, the lochs, and climbing the hills he loves. Marcus, lonely and deserted, opened the book and read:
Marcus leant forward and re-filled his pipe—the shadow of a great peace in his eyes—a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ”

“ It is not astonishing, perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in something that is not a real bed. ”

“ Watkins thought he had proposed to Diana and was in an agony of mind not knowing whether she knew it or not. If she did not know it, he thought he would leave things alone. But if she knew he had proposed, he would be equally willing to let things stand. Glad to let them! But he had been rushed, as it were, into a declaration. The perfidy of Pease had upset him; the prettiness of Diana had distracted him. And yet he had always vowed that nothing should ever induce him to marry a pretty woman. True beauty must be strange: must not be admired of the people—or understood by the crowd. ”

“ Dear Cousin Penelope, we are told, had a love-story in her youth, the sadness of which ruined her life. It must have been a very beautiful thing, that sorrow, to have made her what she is. One feels that it must be a very wonderful love that is laid away in the wrappings of submission and tied with the ribbons of resignation. There is assuredly no bitterness about it, and I sometimes wonder if one's own sorrow which tears and tugs at one's heart will some day leave such a record of holiness and patience on one's face! ”

“ If Scotland could do this for one man—then Scotland forever, for all men. There was a lorry for the luggage—a car for Marcus and Diana, and for the household a kind of a char-à-banc, Pillar presiding over all and preventing Marcus from interfering. He showed no excitement. He knew his Scotland; if not one part, then another. They were all the same. In one, less grouse than in another—seldom more: in another, more fishing: scenery more or less the same in all parts. Mountains higher in one part than another—nothing much to choose between them—and midges everywhere. ”

“ You don't want to die. You are quite happy, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm very happy, but I want to die, all the same."
"Oh, darling, don't say that," said Diana; "there is a great deal for you to do in this world before you die."
"Yes, but you see, darling," said Betty, "if I don't die soon, I shall be too old to sit on Jesus' knee."
Diana is very particular about the children's manners, and Hugh came face to face with a great difficulty a moment later, over his ginger beer. "If I don't say I thank you, mother doesn't like it, and if I do say I thank you, Bindon stops pouring." ”

“ If a man were a true Christian—and all fishermen should be that, for the earliest of all Christians were fishermen before anything else—he would give the rod oftener to the gillie who stands beside him, knowing himself to be by far the better fisherman of the two. For hours he stands there with that certain knowledge biting into his heart.
If Marcus had told Sandy all that lay in his heart, Sandy would have been profoundly interested, no doubt, because he had had cause, in his time, to think of women as interfering creatures—and of small use in a world of God-fearing men. ”

“ The very thought of Diana is sunshine. She is as God meant us to be, happy and good, believing in the goodness of others, slow to find evil in them, quick to forgive it, infinitely pitiful of the sorrows of the suffering. This is Diana, and she has three children, Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Allah be praised!
You do not imagine that I dislike Zerlina, do you? I should be sorry to give that impression. But a professional aunt must be above all things absolutely straightforward and truthful. ”

“ Once he had seen Diana walk down the platform with her chin in the air, as was her habit, approved by her uncle, who thought she walked as a woman should walk, and as few did, he was more cautious, and dodged behind mountains of luggage, but never losing sight of the figure in blue tweed. She wore her hat well pulled down over her eyes, and he was glad. Once his he would want the whole world to see her, but till then he would have all men blind to her beauty. ”

“ The regeneration of Sara was evidently a matter of moments only, for the words were hardly out of Betty's mouth when Sara, in all her clean, delicious dumpiness, appeared in the doorway. If there is one thing more delicious than a grubby Sara, it is a clean Sara. Sara after gardening is delicious, but Sara clean is assuredly the cleanest thing on God's earth. I have never seen a child look so new, and so straight out of tissue-paper, as Sara can look. ”

“ Why should Miss Carston have her? Under the care of Miss Carston she would grow up a suffragette; would grow up everything a man would wish a girl not to be; self-opinionated, strong-minded, argumentative; always right, never wrong. It was a horrible thought. And Pillar had been perfectly willing that Shan’t should stay. If Pillar didn’t mind, who should?
It was only right that Diana and Shan’t should not be separated. Miss Carston could have Dick in the holidays. That should satisfy her. If anything could satisfy a nature so exacting! ”

“ I can hardly imagine so great a sorrow! I dare not even think of David the day Betty marries. He says he thinks it must be worse for a father than a mother."
"I wonder," I said. "I think a mother perhaps has a greater belief in the goodness of men; a woman, a happy woman certainly, has so little knowledge of men, other than her own."
"Yes," said Diana, "a good father and a good husband give one a very deep rooted faith and belief in the goodness of mankind generally. How we are prosing, Betty!"
Zerlina meanwhile sat on a rock, of the hardness of which she complained. ”

“ At one o’clock in the morning Diana was singing in her bath and Marcus lay in bed wondering what it was she wanted to confess. He fell asleep uncertain whether he liked a niece in the house or not. He had pictured to himself a quiet, mousey niece, demure and obedient! But how charming she had looked on the sofa!—she got her feet from him, did she? A great attraction in women, pretty feet; and none too common. He must see that she gave enough for her boots. It was where some women economized. He shuddered to think of women out in the street, on muddy days, in house shoes. ”

“ Could it be that I had arrived at the age when it is advisable for a woman to sit back to the light at breakfast? Was this only another instance of Bindon's devotion to us all? That the credit of the family is paramount in his mind, I know! All this flashed through my mind, but I saw a moment later that it was not of my complexion that Bindon thought, for on a plate before the chair behind which he stood, lay a small dark gray wad about the size of a five-shilling piece. I hesitated, and Bindon said in an undertone, "Miss Betty made it." ”

“ She was expecting Diana on a long stay, so there lurked a smile at the corners of her mouth and a twinkle in her honest grey eyes. While Eustace was abroad, Diana would be hers. She was thankful Eustace had married so devoted a wife. She had known people express surprise that Lady Carston should leave her children, suggesting that however much you love your husband your children should not be neglected. Sibyl’s children were not neglected, nor had they ever been. Elsie loved them. Not even a mother could feel more for them than she felt. ”

“ I asked.
"Oh, quite close; when we go to tea there we walk. He hasn't got a mother, so there's no drawing-room. She died," added Hyacinth, as if it was an every-day occurrence that Thomas should be left without a mother, instead of its being a heart-breaking tragedy. A child with no mother, no mother to unwrap the pink bundle, no mother to grieve for the screw, no mother to understand things. Perhaps his mother had been a Diana sort of mother. ”

“ And in a bathing-machine the uncle found shelter. They are safer, and wiser and better things, than aunts. Where Aunt Elsie might have helped him, the bathing-machine got him out of a difficulty, and protected him.
Marcus Maitland had forgotten what the seaside was like. It compared in no way with the shores of a sea loch in Scotland—where the peace and beauty are indescribable; where he had many a time watched the swift sweep of the gulls on the wing—the diving of terns. He had seen seals swimming about—wise old men of the sea. ”

“ Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty, Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or other. A smile is enough.
So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. ”

“ Didn’t Marcus know it to his cost? But nothing would matter if Diana were happy in the end and Elsie must help to that end. It was not a question of which of them had the means to make her happy; she might take all the kudos so long as Diana was happy.
Never had Uncle Marcus reached such heights of self-effacement. He now saw clearly enough that the feud between him and Miss Carston had been in the nature of a joke—a poor joke, but a joke. It had amused them to imagine themselves enemies. They were now fighters in a common cause. ”

“ Bindon, having done his duty by Betty, and not being able on this occasion to do it by both of us, made no further explanation. Like the first step, it is no doubt the first bite that costs most dearly; and while I was pondering whether to take two bites or swallow it whole, Mr. Dudley came in and sat down opposite me. He is a young man who thinks that no woman he doesn't know can be worth knowing. When by force of circumstances he comes to know a fresh one, he always tells her he feels as if he had known her all her life, and talks of a previous existence, and so gets over a difficulty. ”

“ If a sister knows not a brother’s heart he has none to know. “Dearest Sibyl,” wrote Marcus, “why didn’t you tell me you were in London and taking Diana to her first dance? I had always meant to give her a pearl necklace for her coming-out ball. I will take her, of course, while you are abroad, on one condition, and that is that she isn’t always rushing off to her aunt in the country. I dislike that woman, as you know. I dislike all strong-minded, self-opinionated women. You are quite right, she is no fit companion for a girl of Diana’s age. Who has a better right to Diana than I have? ”

“ It was a difficulty, but Hugh's Heaven was or is a very real and very happy place to him. It is strangely like Hames; and isn't the home of every happy child very near to Heaven? Surely it lies at its very gates, which we could see if it was not for the mountains which intervene, those beautiful snow mountains, which foolish grown-ups call clouds.
Diana has come triumphantly out of situations more difficult, and she will no doubt surmount those connected with the spiritual upbringing of Hugh, Betty, and Sara. ”

“ But, Elsie, I want her to see something of the world; I want her to have the amusement a girl of her age should have. I want her to see men so that she may choose between them. I want her to stay in London for a few months and I want to leave her with my brother. I don’t think you like him? He was a dear to me when I was Diana’s age and a fierce chaperon. ”

“ To begin with, it is not fair to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense, whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands are not supposed to be."
Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby that night, a darling little baby!
And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day." ”