Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

“ What an age it seems since—that one play, to which Francis took us. And what a strange, dim dream, has become the impression it left; something like that I always have in reading of Thekla and Max; of love so true and strong—so perfect in its holy strength, that neither parting, grief, nor death, have any power over it. Love, which makes you feel that once to have possessed it, must be bliss unutterable, unalienable—better than any happiness or prosperity that this world could give—better than anything in the world or out of it, except the love of God. ”

“ This broke the chain of my thoughts—they wandered to my sister, Captain Treherne, and this Dr. Urquhart, with whom, now I came to think of it—I had not done so in the instant of his passing—I felt justly displeased. What right had he to meddle with my sister's affairs—to give his sage advice to his obedient young friend, who was foolish enough to ask it? Would I marry a man who went consulting his near, dear, and particular friends as to whether they were pleased to consider me a suitable wife for him? Never! Let him out of his own will love me, choose me, and win me, or leave me alone. ”

“ It was not now in an angry, but a humbled spirit, that, when Penelope was gone to her district visiting—she does far more in the parish than either Lis or I—I went out alone, as usual, upon the moor.
My moorlands looked dreary; the heather is fading from purple to brown; the Autumn days are coming on fast. That afternoon they had that leaden uniformity which always weighs me down; I felt weary, hopeless—longed for some change in my dull life; wished I were a boy, a man—anything, so that I might be something—do something. ”

“ Conscience, tender over dead heroes, feels not the smallest compunction in writing the angry initiatory line, when she thinks of that odious camp which has been established near us, for the education of the military mind, and the hardening of the military body. Whence red-coats swarm out over the pretty neighbourhood like lady-birds over the hop-gardens,—harmless, it is true, yet for ever flying in one's face in the most unpleasant manner, making inroads through one's parlour windows, and crawling over one's tea-table. ”

“ I blush almost to have such a thought, and concerning my own sister; yet it is so, and I have seen the like often and often. Surely it must be wrong; such sacred things as women's beauty and women's love were not made to set men mad at one another like brute beasts. Surely the woman could help it if she chose. Men may be jealous, and cross, and wretched; but they do not absolutely hate one another on a woman's account unless she has been in some degree to blame. ”

“ I have a habit of growing attached to places, independently of the persons connected with them. Thus, I cannot imagine any time when it would not be an enjoyment to drive up to the hall-door of the Cedars, sweeping round in the wide curve that Colin is so proud of making his carriage-wheels describe: to look back up the familiar hill-side, where the winter sun is shining on that slope of trees,—-then run into the house, through the billiard-room, and out again by the dining-room windows, on to the broad terrace. ”

“ I hate to see a woman all flounces and filligigs, or with her hair torn up by the roots like a Chinese Mandarin. Hair, curved over the brow like a Saxon arch, under the doorway of which two modest intelligent eyes stand sentinel, vouching for the worth of' what is within—grant these, and the rest of the features may be anything you choose, if not absolutely ugly. The only peculiarity about hers was, a squareness of chin, and closeness of mouth, indicating more strength than sweetness of disposition, until the young lady smiled. ”

“ I blame nobody, not even myself, I only state a fact. But with such people I can no more be my natural self, than I can run about, bare-footed and bare-headed, in our north winds or moorland snows. But if a little sunshine comes, my heart warms to it, basks in it, dances under it, like the silliest young lamb that ever frisked in a cowslip-meadow, rejoicing in the May. ”

“ So poor papa is to be dragged out from his cosy arm-chair, jogged and tumbled across these wintry moors, and stuck up solemn in a corner of the drawing-room—being kept carefully out of the card-room because he happens to be a clergyman. And all the while he will wear his politest and most immovable of smiles, just as if he liked it. Oh, why cannot people say what they mean and do as they wish! Why must they hold themselves tied and bound with horrible chains of etiquette even at the age of seventy! ”

“ Above all, her unvarying goodness and cheerfulness—truly the Cedars would not be the Cedars without my dear old lady!
I don't think she ever knew how fond I was of her, even as a little girl. Nobody could help it; never anybody had to do with Mrs. Granton without becoming fond of her. She is almost the only person living of whom I never heard anyone speak an unkind word; because she herself never speaks an ill word of any human being. ”

“ It was with some notion of the kind that I went to this ball—after getting up a vague sort of curiosity in Treherne's anonymous beauty, about whom he has so long been raving to me—boy-like. Ay, with all his folly, the lad is an honest lad. I should not like him to come to any harm.
The tall one must have been the lady, and the smaller, the plainer, though the pleasanter to my mind, was no doubt her sister. And of course her name too was Johnson.
What a name to startle a man so—to cause him to stand like a fool at that hall-door, with his heart dead still, and all his nerves quivering! ”

“ Only a child—not a bit better nor wiser than a child: full of all binds of childish naughtinesses, angers, petulances, doubts—oh, if I knew he was at this minute sitting in our parlour, and I could run down and sit beside him, tell him all the hard things I have been thinking of him of late, and beg his pardon; asking him to be a faithful friend to me, and help me to grow into a better woman than I am ever likely to become—what an unutterable comfort it would be! ”

“ We are not the birds and butterflies, but the labourers of the earthly vineyard. To discover one's right work and do it, must be the grand secret of life.—With or without love, I wonder? With it—I should imagine. But Doctor Urquhart in his plan of existence, never seems to think of such an insignificant necessity.
Yet let me not speak lightly. I like him—I honor him. Had I been his dead brother, or a sister which he never had, I would have helped, rather than have hindered him in his self-sacrificing career. ”

“ After study was over (and papa did not keep him very close either) , he cared for nothing except to saunter about with Penelope. What a nuisance those two used to be to us younger ones: always sending us out of the room on some pretence, or taking us long walks and losing us, and then—cruellest of all,—keeping us waiting indefinitely for dinner. Always making so much of one another, and taking no notice of us; having little squabbles with one another, and then snubbing us. The great bore of our lives was that love-affair of Francis and Penelope ”

“ If I cannot think of something or somebody better than myself, I will just give up thinking altogether: will pass entirely to the uppermost of my two lives, which I have now made to tally so successfully that they seem of one material: like our girls' new cloaks, which everybody imagines sober grey, till a lifting of the arms shows the other side of the cloth to be scarlet.
That reminds me in what a blaze of scarlet Captain Treherne appeared at our modest dinner-table. He was engaged to a full-dress party at the Camp, he said, and must leave immediately after dinner,—which he didn't. ”

“ At her urgent request, I sent a note to Rockmount, hard by, begging Miss Johnston would let her know if there had been heard anything of Lydia—a daughter, once in service with the Johnstons, afterwards in London—now—as the poor old mother mournfully expressed it—“gone wrong.”
To my surprise, Miss Johnston answered the message in person, and a most painful conversation ensued. She is a good woman—no doubt of that: but she is, as Treherne once said of her father, “as sharp as a needle and as hard as a rock.” ”

“ No; while there is so much misery and sin in the world, a man has no right to lull himself to sleep in a paradise of self-improvement and self-enjoyment; in which there is but one supreme Adam, one perfect specimen of humanity, namely himself. He ought 'to go out and work—fight, if it must be, wherever duty calls him. Nay, even a woman has hardly any right, in these days, to sit still and dream. The life of action is nobler than the life of thought. ”

“ Granton, and “my Colin,” who, if he has not three pennyworth of brains, has the kindest heart and the heaviest purse in the whole neighbourhood.
I am sure Mrs. Granton must have felt proud of her handsome suite of rooms, quite a perambulatory parterre, boasting all the hues of the rainbow, subdued by the proper complement of inevitable black. By and by, as the evening advanced, dot after dot of the adored scarlet made its appearance round the doors, and circulating gradually round the room, completed the coloring of the scene. ”

“ I wished it to be civil, if possible.
“But you are Doctor Urquhart. An army-surgeon is scarcely like a soldier: his business is to save life rather than to destroy it. Surely you never could have killed anybody?”
The moment I had put the question, I saw how childish and uncalled-for, in fact, how actually impertinent it was. Covered with confusion, I drew back, and looked another way. It was the greatest relief imaginable when just then Lisabel saw me, and came up with Captain Treherne, all smiles, to say, was it not the pleasantest party imaginable? ”

“ Where one is utterly powerless—a mere iota in a house—when, whatever one might desire, one's opinion has not a straw's weight with anybody, what is the good of vexing one's self in vain!
I shall content myself with giving a straightforward, succinct account of the week; this week which, I cannot deny, has made a vital difference in our family. Though outwardly all went on as usual—our quiet, monotonous life, unbroken by a single “event,”—breakfast, dinner, tea, and sleep coming round in ordinary rotation; still the change is made. What a long time it seems since Sunday week. ”

“ Imagine his coming to Colin as ground-landlord of Bourne hamlet, to beg him to see to the clearing of the village pool? or writing to the lord of the manor, saying that twenty new cottages built on the moor would do more moral good than the new county reformatory? He is one of the very few men who are not ashamed to say what they think—and makes people listen to it too—as they rarely do to those not long settled in the neighbourhood, and about whom they know little or nothing. ”

“ Penelope went upstairs to write her Sunday letter, and Augustus and Lisabel gave broad hints that they wished the drawing-room all to themselves. Perforce, Doctor Urquhart and I had to entertain ourselves.
I took him into the greenhouse, where he lectured to me on the orchidacea and vegetation of the tropics generally,—to his own content, doubtless, and partially to mine. I like to hear his talking, so wise, yet so simple; a freshness almost boyish seems to linger in his nature still, and he has the thoroughly boyish peculiarity of taking pleasure in little things. ”

“ But surely that dread and weariness of two people, in being left to one another's sole society, must apply chiefly to cases of association for mere amusement or convenience; not to those who voluntarily bind their lives together, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part;” how solemn the words are! They thrilled me all through, on the morning of Lisabel's marriage. ”

“ Common sense teaches a man in my circumstances that this is the best thing for him. What business has he to set himself up as a Simon Stylites on a solitary column of woe? as if misery constituted saintship? There is no arrogance like the hypocrisy of humility.
When Treherne had joined the ladies, Mr. Johnston and myself started some very interesting conversation, à propos of Mrs. Granton and her doings in the parish, when I found that he has the feeling, very rare among country gentlemen of his age and generation—an exceeding aversion for strong drinks. ”