Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

“ But each knows the other is close at hand, ready for any needful word, and always ready with that silent sympathy which is so mysterious a thing, the rarest thing to find in all human lives. These have found it, and are satisfied. And day by day truer grows the truth of that sentence which Mrs. Roy once discovered in her husband's pocket-book, cut out of a newspaper—she read and replaced it without a word, but with something between a smile and tear—"Young love is passionate, old love is faithful; but the very tenderest thing in all this world is a love revived." ”

“ She smiled, and tried to look as nice and as young as she could for her girls' sake.
I suppose there are such things as broken or breaking hearts, even at St. Andrews, but it is certainly not a likely place for them. They have little chance against the fresh, exhilarating air, strong as new wine; the wild sea waves, the soothing sands, giving with health of body wholesomeness of mind. By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face to Fortune Williams—not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she had fought it through it all these years. ”

“ It seemed so impossible to believe he had not written, when he said he would, that as a last hope, she stole out with a plaid over her head and crept through the sidewalks of the garden, almost groping her way through the fog, and, like Archy, stumbling over the low boughs of the laurel bush to the letter-box it held. Her trembling hands felt in every corner, but no letter was there.
She went wearily back; weary at heart, but patient still. A love like hers, self-existent and sufficient to itself, is very patient, quite unlike the other and more common form of the passion ”

“ She was by no means one of those women who go about the world moaning that nobody loves them. Every body loved her, and she knew it—every body whose love was worth having—except Robert Roy.
Still her mind never changed; not even when, in the weakness of illness, there would come vague dreams of that peaceful rectory, with its quiet rooms and green garden; of the gentle, kindly hearted father, and the two loving girls whom she could have made so happy, and perhaps won happiness herself in the doing of it. ”

“ The dream she dreamt was so inexpressibly soothing and peaceful, so entirely out of keeping with the reality of things, that it almost seemed to have been what in ancient times would be called a vision.
First, she thought that she and Robert Roy were little children—mere girl and boy together, as they might have been from the few years' difference in their ages—running hand in hand about the sands of St. Andrews, and so fond of one another—so very fond! With that innocent love a big boy often has for a little girl, and a little girl returns with the tenderest fidelity. ”

“ Wasn't he clever now, Miss Williams?"
"Yes," she answered and no more.
"I've got a better letter-box than yours," said little Davie, mysteriously. "Shall I show it to you, Miss Williams? And perhaps," with a knowing look—the mischievous lad! and yet he was more loving and lovable than all the rest, Mr. Roy's favorite, and hers—"perhaps you might even find a letter in it. Cook says she has seen you many a time watching for a letter from your sweetheart. Who is he?"
"I have none. Tell cook she should not talk such nonsense to little boys," said the governess, gravely. ”

“ The girls are here."
They came along laughing, that merry group—with whom life was at its spring—who had lost nothing, knew not what it was to lose!
"Good-night," said Mr. Roy, hastily. "But—to-morrow morning?"
"Yes."
"There never is night to which comes no morn," says the proverb. Which is not always true, at least as to this world; but it is true sometimes.
That April morning Fortune Williams rose with a sense of strange solemnity—neither sorrow nor joy. Both had gone by; but they had left behind them a deep peace. ”

“ Whatever he had felt for her—whether friendship, affection, love—must have been true. There was in his nature intense reserve, but no falseness, no insincerity, not an atom of pretense of any kind.
If he did not love her, why not tell her so? What was there to hinder him? Nothing, except that strange notion of the "dishonorableness" of asking a woman's love when one has nothing but love to give her in return. ”

“ And so Miss Williams had waited at the gate, not wishing him to have the additional trouble of walking up to the house, for she knew every minute of his time was precious. The poor and the hard-working can understand and sympathize with one another. Only a tutor and only a governess: Mrs. Dalziel drove away and never thought of them again. They were mere machines—servants to whom she paid their wages, and so that they did sufficient service to deserve these wages, she never interfered with them, nor, indeed, wasted a moment's consideration upon them or their concerns. ”

“ Can many waters quench love? Can the deep sea drown it? What years of silence can wither it? What frost of age can freeze it down? God only knows.
Hers was not like a girl's love. Those two girls sitting by her day after day would have smiled at it, and at its object. Between themselves they considered Mr. Roy somewhat of an "old fogy;" were very glad to make use of him now and then, in the great dearth of gentlemen at St. Andrews, and equally glad afterward to turn him over to Auntie, who was always kind to him. Auntie was so kind to every body. ”

“ Robert Roy did not "make love;" not at all. Possibly he never could have done it in the ordinary way. Sweet things, polite things were very difficult to him either to do or to say. Even the tenderness that was in him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could be! Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, if only just holding his hand. ”

“ Some men have eyes and ears for only one woman, and that merely while they happen to be in love with her; whereas Robert Roy was courteous and considerate to every woman, even as he was kind to every weak or helpless creature that crossed his path.
Evidently he perceived that all was not right; and, though he said nothing, there was a tenderness in his manner which went to her heart.
"You are not looking well to-day; should you not go out?" he said. "I met all your young people walking off to the sands: they seemed extraordinarily happy."
Fortune was much perplexed. ”

“ But the feeling and the moment passed by immediately. Mr. Roy took up the thread of conversation where he had left it off—it was some bookish or ethical argument, such as he would go on with for hours; so she listened to him in silence. They walked on, the larks singing and the primroses blowing. All the world was saying to itself, "I am young; I am happy;" but she said nothing at all.
People grow used to pain; it dies down at intervals, and becomes quite bearable, especially when no one see it or guesses at it. ”

“ Old maid as she was, or thought herself, Miss Williams knew enough of men not to fall into the feminine error of fancying they feel as we do—that their world is our world, and their interest our interest. To most men, a leader in the Times, an article in the Quarterly, or a fall in the money market is of far more importance than any love affair in the world, unless it happens to be their own. ”

“ After it, she roused herself to begin her life anew in a fresh home, to work hard, not only for daily bread but for that humble independence which she was determined to win before the dark hour when the most helpful become helpless, and the most independent are driven to fall a piteous burden into the charitable hands of friends or strangers—a thing to her so terrible that to save herself from the possibility of it, she who had never leaned upon any body, never had any body to lean on, became her one almost morbid desire. ”

“ David is able to take care of himself; but poor little Janetta—my Janetta—what if he should bring her to poverty? He is a little reckless about money, and has only a very small certain income. Worse; suppose being so young, he should by-and-by get tired of her, and neglect her, and break her heart?"
"Or twenty other things which may happen, or may not, and of which they must take the chance, like their neighbors. You do not believe very much in men, I see, and perhaps you are right. We are a bad lot—a bad lot. But David Dalziel is as good as most of us, that I can assure you." ”

“ Roy even, the St. Andrews folks think. But I won't stand it. I won't tamely sit by and see her sacrificed. He might persuade her; he has a very winning way with him sometimes. Auntie, I have not spoken, but I won't promise not to speak. It is all very well for you; you are old, and your blood runs cold, as you said to us one day—no, I don't mean that; you are a real brick still, and you'll never be old to us, but you are not in love, and you can't understand what it is to be a young fellow like me to see an old fellow like Roy coming in and just walking over the course. ”

“ Now, with all her might, she did her motherly duty to the orphan girls; and as she did so, by-and-by she began strangely to enjoy it, and to find also not a little of motherly pride and pleasure in them. She had not time to think of herself at all, or of the great blow which had fallen, the great change which had come, rendering it impossible for her to let herself feel as she had used to feel, dream as she used to dream, for years and years past. ”

“ There are some people who have an actual terror of the past—who the moment a thing ceases to be pleasurable fly from it, would willingly bury it out of sight forever. But others have no fear of their harmless dead—dead hopes, memories, loves—can sit by a grave-side, or look behind them at a dim spectral shape, without grief, without dread, only with tenderness. ”

“ One day, when the rain had a little abated, David appeared, greatly disappointed to find the girls had gone out, down to the West Sands with Mr. Roy.
"Always Mr. Roy! I am sick of his very name," muttered David, and then caught Miss Williams by the dress as she was rising. She had a gentle but rather dignified way with her of repressing bad manners in young people, either by perfect silence, or by putting the door between her and them. "Don't go! One never can get a quiet word with you, you are always so preternaturally busy." ”

“ They were merely the tutor and the governess.
As for the boys, they chattered vehemently all tea-time about Mr. Roy, and their envy of the "jolly" life he was going to; then their minds turned to their own affairs, and there was silence.
The kind of silence, most of us know it, when any one belonging to a household, or very familiar there, goes away on a long indefinite absence. At first there is little consciousness of absence at all; we are so constantly expecting the door to be opened for the customary presence that we scarcely even miss the known voice, or face, or hand. ”

“ We novelists do not "make up" our stories; they make themselves. Nor do human beings invent their own lives; they do but use up the materials given to them—some well, some ill; some wisely, some foolishly; but, in the main, the dictum of the Preacher is not far from the truth, "All things come alike to all."
A whole winter had passed by, and the spring twilights were beginning to lengthen, tempting Miss Williams and her girls to linger another half hour before they lit the lamp for the evening. ”

“ I know it may sound a ridiculous thing that a forlorn governess should be comforted for a lost love by the love of children; but it is true to nature. Women's lives have successive phases, each following the other in natural gradation—maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood: in not one of which, ordinarily, we regret the one before it, to which it is nevertheless impossible to go back. ”

“ This was the only question he ever asked her concerning her past life, though, by slow degrees, he told her a good deal of his own. Enough to make her quite certain, even if her keen feminine instinct had not already divined the fact, that whatever there might have been in it of suffering, there was nothing in the smallest degree either to be ashamed of or to hide. What Robert Roy of Shanghai had written about him had continued true. As he said one day to her, "We never stand still. We either grow better or worse. You have not grown worse." ”

“ That which we fight against in our youth as being human will, human error, in our age we take humbly, knowing it to be the will of God.
By-and-by in the little household the gas was lighted, the curtains drawn, and the two lovers fetched in for tea, to behave themselves as much as they could like ordinary mortals, in general society, for the rest of the evening. A very pleasant evening it was, spite of this new element; which was got rid of as much as possible by means of the window recess, where Janetta and David encamped composedly, a little aloof from the rest. ”

“ The more he loves her, the more he ought to take care of her. Don't you think so?"
"Yes."
"I'd cut myself up into little pieces for Janetta's sake," he went on, "and I'd do a deal for Helen too, the sisters are so fond of one another. She shall always have a home with us, when we are married."
"Then," said Miss Williams, hardly able again to resist a smile, "you are quite certain you will be married? You have no doubt about her caring for you?"
David pulled his whiskers, not very voluminous yet, looked conscious, and yet humble. ”

“ She had a sweet voice, and there seemed to have come into it a pathos which Fortune had never remarked before. The touching, ever old, ever new story made the young people quite quiet for a few minutes; and then they all wandered away together, Helen promising to look after the two wild young Roys, to see that they did not kill themselves in some unforeseen way, as, aided and abetted by David and Janetta, they went on a scramble up Balcarras Hill. ”

“ A single man—a marrying man, as all the world says he is, or ought to be, with his money—can not go in and out, like a tame cat, in a household of women, without having, or being supposed to have—ahem!—intentions. I assure you"—and he swung himself on the arm of her chair, and looked into her face with an angry earnestness quite unmistakable—"I assure you, I never go into the club without being asked, twenty times a day, which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry." ”