Emily Sarah Holt

“ Colonel Keith did not die for that Cause. He died for right and righteousness, for truth and honour, for faithfulness, for loyalty and love—no bad things to die for. Not for the Prince—only for God and Flora, and a little, perhaps, for Angus. God forbid that I should judge any true and honourable man—most of all that man who gave his life for those we love. Only, Cary, the Cause is dead and gone. The struggle is over for ever: and we may thank God it is so. ”

“ I had to do it; but I can assure you, Hatty, I felt like anything but a hero.”
“They are the heroes,” said my Aunt Kezia, softly, “who feel unlike heroes, but have to do it, and go and do it therefore. Colonel Keith and Cary seem to be of that sort. And there is only one other kind of heroes—those who stand by and see their best beloved do such things, and, knowing it to be God’s will, bid them God-speed with cheerful countenance, and cry their own hearts out afterwards, when no one sees them but Himself.” ”

“ Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of “Annas!” and then she stood up, and I saw Annas Keith.
A princess! was my first thought. I saw a tall, slight figure, a slender white throat, a pure pale face, dark grey eyes with black lashes, and a soul in them. Some people have no souls in their eyes, Annas Keith has.
Yet I could not have said then, and I cannot say now, when I try to recall her picture in my mind’s eye, whether Annas Keith is beautiful. It does not seem the right word to describe her: and yet “ugly” would be much further off. ”

“ I should not like my rights, I know.”
“Ah, you mean your deserts, Aunt,” said Hatty. “But rights are not just the same thing, are they?”
“Let us look it in the face, girls, if you wish,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “I hate seeing folks by side-face. If you want to see anybody, or understand anything, look right in its face. What are rights? They are not always deserts,—you are right there, Hatty,—for none of us hath any rights as regards God. Rights concern ourselves and our fellow-men. ”

“ My Aunt Kezia laughed. “My dear,” said she, “if you were a little older I might reason with you. But you are just at that age when girls take up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much farther, and just make regular geese of themselves. ’Tis a comfort to hope you will grow out of it. Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible women. At least I hope so.”
“Never!” cried Amelia. “I never could demean myself to be just an every-day creature like that!” ”

“ Some men will give their lives for a cause, but you don’t often see a woman do it. Mostly, with women, it is father or brother, lover or husband, that carries the day: at least, if you have seen women of another sort, they haven’t come my way.”
“But, Aunt, that is so ignoble a way of acting!” cried Amelia, as though she wanted to show that she was one of the other sort. “Love and devotion to a holy or chivalrous cause should be free from all petty personal considerations.”
“You can get yours free, my dear, if you like—and find you can manage it,” said my Aunt Kezia. ”

“ I asked of Flora.
“The exercise, dear,” said she.
“Exercise!” cried I. “What are we to exercise?”
A curious sort of gurgle came from Angus’s part of the room, as if a laugh had made its way into his throat, and he had smothered it in its cradle.
“The word is strange to Miss Caroline,” said Mr Keith, looking round with a smile. “We Scots people, Madam, speak of exercising our souls in prayer. We are about to read in God’s Word, and pray, if you please. It is our custom, morning and evening.”
“But how can we pray?” said I. “There is no clergyman.” ”

“ I am a proscribed fugitive. You harbour me at a risk even now. But to God! Cary, I have been a rebel: but I never was a deserter from that service. God helping me, I will enlist now. If my worthless life have cost the most precious life in Scotland, it shall not have been given in vain.”
“There was Another who gave His life for you, Angus,” I could not help saying.
“Ay, I have been bought twice over,” was the trembling answer. “God help me to live worthy of the cost!”
We all keep the name of Duncan Keith in our inmost hearts—unspoken, but very dear. ”

“ I wish I were making jumballs in the kitchen at Brocklebank, and could have a good talk with my Aunt Kezia afterwards! Somehow, I never cared much about it when I could, and now that I cannot, I feel as if I would give anything for it. Are things always like that? Does nothing in this world ever happen just as one would like it in every point?
In my cherry-coloured satin, with white shoulder-knots, a blue pompoon in my hair, and my new hoop (I detest these hoops; they are horrid) , I came down to the withdrawing room, and cast my eye round the chamber. ”

“ And my Aunt Dorothea will never interfere. My Uncle Charles is the only one who dare say another word, and it was a question if he would. He is good-natured enough, but so careless that I could not feel at all certain of enlisting him. Oh dear! I do feel to be growing so old with all my cares! It seems as if Hatty, and Annas, and Flora, and Angus, and Colonel Keith, and the Prince,—I beg his pardon, he should have come first,—were all on my shoulders at once. And I don’t feel strong enough to carry such a lot of people. ”

“ Now don’t you go saying to yourselves that Aunt Kezia is an old country woman who knows nothing of grand town folks. As I was beginning to say when you interrupted me, Cary—there, don’t look abashed, child; I am not angry with you—manners change, but natures don’t. Dress men and women how you will, and let them talk what language you please, and have what outside ways you like, they are men and women still. Wherever you go, you will find human nature is unchanged; and the Devil that tempts men is unchanged ”

“ I do hope my Uncle Drummond will not be like Mr Bagnall, and I hope all the gentlemen in the South are not like that odious Mr Parmenter.
Flora seems very much pleased about my going back with her. I do not know why, but I fancied Angus did not quite like it. Can he be afraid of my telling his father the story of the hunt-supper? He knows nothing of what I heard up on the Scar.
I do hope Ephraim Hebblethwaite is not very unhappy about Fanny. I should think it must be dreadful, when you love any one very much, to see her go and give herself quite away to somebody else. ”

“ I suppose my Aunt Kezia would say I ought. I do so dislike my Aunt Kezia’s oughts. She always thinks you ought to do just what you do not want. If only people would say, now and then, that you ought to eat plum-pudding, or you ought to dance, or you ought to wear jewels! But no! it is always you ought to sew, or you ought to carry some broken victuals to old Goody Branscombe, or you ought to be as sweet as a rosebud when Hatty says things at you. ”

“ Poor unfledged birds, fluttering your wings on the brim of the nest, and pooh-poohing the old bird behind you, that says, ‘Take care, my dears, or you will fall!’ She never flew out of the nest, did she?—she never preened her wings, and thought all the world lay before her, and she could fly as straight as any lark of them all, and catch as many flies as any swallow? ”

“ Am I to maintain that black beetles are cherubim, because I am a black beetle? Truth is truth. The Crown is God’s, not the people’s. When He chose to make the present King—King James of course, not that wretched Elector—the son of his father, He distinctly told the people whom He wished them to have for their king. What right have they to dispute His ordinance?”
I was quite beyond myself. I had forgotten where I was, and to whom I was talking—forgotten Mr Raymond, and Angus, and Flora, and even Grandmamma. ”

“ And is this Miss Annas Keith, your friend? I am glad to see you, my dear. Don’t mind an old woman’s freedom: I call all girls ‘my dear’.”
Annas smiled, and said she was very pleased to feel as though my Aunt Kezia reckoned her among her friends.
“My friends’ friends are mine,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “Well, Cary, I have brought you all the things in your minute, save your purple lutestring scarf, which I could not find. ”

“ What sort of women must their mothers and sisters be?
“Card-playing snuff-takers and giddy flirts,” said Annas. “Be just to them, Cary. If they never see women of any other sort, how are they to know that such are?”
“Poor wretches! do you think that possible. Annas?” said I.
“Miserably possible,” she said, very seriously. “In every human heart, Cary, there is a place where the man or the woman dwells inside all the frippery and mannerism; the real creature itself, stripped of all disguises. ”

“ I have always wished we had a brother.
“No, not good-bye just yet, Cary,” said Ephraim, in answer to my farewell. “You will see me again in the morning.”
“Oh, are you coming to see us off?”
He nodded; and we only said good-night.
Grandmamma was very kind when we took leave of her. She gave each of us a keepsake—a beautiful garnet necklace to Hatty, and a handsome pearl pin to me.
“And, my dear,” said she to Hatty, “I do hope you will try to keep as genteel as you are now. Don’t, for mercy’s sake, go and get those blowzed red cheeks again. They are so unbecoming a gentlewoman. ”

“ I was not aware of that,” said Mr Keith.
“I can’t see,” Angus went on, “why you must all turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thunder, and hold up your hands in pious horror at me, because I have done just once what every gentleman in the land does every week, and thinks nothing of it. If you had not been brought up in a hen-coop, and ruled like a copy-book, you would not be so con—so hideously strict and particular! Just ask Ambrose Catterall whether there is any weight on his conscience; or ask that jolly parson, who tackled you and Flora at breakfast, what he has to say to it. ”

“ I said, hesitatingly Flora had left the room a moment before, and now she put her head in at the door and called Angus. My Uncle Drummond and I were left alone.
“My dear lassie,” said he, as tenderly as if I had been his own child, “you would never have wished to be helped if He had not first wished to help you. But remember, Cary, help is not the right word. The true word is save. You are not a few yards out of the path, and able to turn back at any moment. You are lost. Dear Cary, will you let the Lord find you?” ”

“ Mr Lundie, the minister of Monks’ Brae, led the worship (as they say here) ; and when the sermon came, I looked with some curiosity at the great preacher who did such unusual things, and whom some people seemed to think it so wrong to like. Mr Whitefield is not anything particular to look at: just a young man in a fair wig, with a round face and rosy cheeks. He has a most musical voice, and he knows how to put it to the best advantage. Every word is as distinct as can be, and his voice rings out clear and strong, like a well-toned bell. ”