Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

“ I am a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and I hope that I am as tender-hearted as most women; nevertheless, I can understand how a man of weak principle and violent temper, or a man possessed of a desire to get to a particular spot not favoured by Jane, or by a wish to reach any spot by a certain hour,—I can understand how such a man, carried away by helpless wrath, might possibly ruffle Jane's sad-coloured hair with the toe of his boot. ”

“ After we pass Belvern churchyard we approach two roads: the one to the right leads to the Holy Well; the one to the left leads to Shady Dell Farm, where Jane lived when she was a girl. At the critical moment I pull the right rein with all my force. In vain: Jane is always overcome by sentiment when she sees that left-hand road. She bears to the left like a whirlwind, and nothing can stop her mad career until she is again amid the scenes so dear to her recollection, the beloved pastures where the mother still lives at whose feet she brayed in early youth! ”

“ With what an air of the drawing-room did he of the velvet coat help the singer into the cart, and with what elegant abandon and ultra-dilettantism did he light a cigarette, reseat himself at the piano, and weave Scots ballads into a charming impromptu! I confess I wrapped my shilling in a bit of paper and dropped it over the balcony with the wish that I knew the tragedy behind this little street drama.
Willie Beresford was in a royal mood that night. You know the mood, in which the heart is so full, so full, it overruns the brim. ”

“ Sometimes we sally forth in search of adventures in the thick of a 'London particular,' Mr. Guppy's phrase for a fog. When you are once ensconced in your garden seat by the driver, you go lumbering through a world of bobbing shadows, where all is weird, vague, grey, dense; and where great objects loom up suddenly in the mist and then disappear; where the sky, heavy and leaden, seems to descend bodily upon your head, and the air is full of a kind of luminous yellow smoke.
A Lipton's Tea 'bus is the only one we can see plainly in this sort of weather, and so we always take it. ”

“ The English nosegay had lost its white flower, for Patricia was not in the family group. I looked everywhere for the gleam of her silvery scarf, everywhere for Terence, while, the waltz music having ceased, the Spanish students played 'Love's Young Dream.'
I hummed the words as the sweet old tune, strummed by the tinkling mandolins, vibrated clearly in the maze of other sounds:—
'Oh! the days have gone when Beauty bright My heart's chain wove; When my dream of life from morn till night Was Love, still Love. ”

“ But there, to my dismay, stood a charmingly appointed tea-table glittering with silver and Royal Worcester, with several liveried servants bringing cakes and muffins and berries to Lady Veratrum, who sat behind the steaming urn. I started to retreat, when there appeared, walking towards us, a simple man, with nothing in the least extraordinary about him.
“That cannot be the Duke of Cimicifugas,” thought I, “a man in a corduroy jacket, without a sign of a suite; probably it is a Banished Duke come from the Forest of Arden for a buttered muffin.” ”

“ I never could have the heart, for example, to charge a struggling young genius eight shillings a week for two candles, and then eight shillings the next week for the same two candles, which the struggling young genius, by dint of vigorous economy, had managed to preserve to a decent height. No, I could never do it, not even if I were certain that she would squander the sixteen shillings in Bond Street fripperies instead of laying them up against the rainy day.
It is Salemina who always unsnarls the weekly bill. ”

“ Stormy weather does not vex the calm of the Park Lover, for 'the rains of Marly do not wet' when one is in love. By a clever manipulation of four arms and four hands they can manage an umbrella and enfold each other at the same time, though a feminine macintosh is well known to be ill adapted to the purpose, and a continuous drizzle would dampen almost any other lover in the universe. ”

“ And what the dream voice said to me was something like this:—
'If thou wouldst have happiness, choose neither fame, which doth not long abide, nor power, which stings the hand that wields it, nor gold, which glitters but never glorifies; but choose thou Love, and hold it for ever in thy heart of hearts; for Love is the purest and the mightiest force in the universe, and once it is thine all other gifts shall be added unto thee. ”

“ One has no need, though, of pictures on the walls here, for the universe seems unrolled at one's very feet. As I look out of my window the last thing before I go to sleep, I see the lights of Great Belvern, the dim shadows of the distant cathedral towers, the quaint priory seven centuries old, and just the outline of Holly Bush Hill, a sacred seat of magic science when the Druids investigated the secrets of the stars, and sought, by auspices and sacrifices, to forecast the future and to penetrate the designs of the gods. ”

“ There is no inn here where nice people will stop (who would ever think of asking for tea at the Retired Soldier?) , and the moment they see our sign, in walking or driving past, that moment they will be consumed with thirst. You do not begin to appreciate our advantages as a tea station. In the first place, there is a watering-trough not far from the gate, and drivers very often stop to water their horses; then we have the lovely garden which everybody admires; and if everything else fails, there is the baby. ”

“ He does not have the air of a gay deceiver roving from flower to flower, stealing honey as he goes; he looks, on the contrary, as if it were his intention to lead Phoebe to the altar on the next bank holiday; there is a dead calm in his actions which bespeaks no other course. If Colin were a Don Juan, surely he would be a trifle more ardent, for there is no tropical fervour in his matter-of-fact caresses. He does not embrace Phoebe in the park, apparently, because he adores her to madness; because her smile is like fire in his veins, melting down all his defences ”

“ In a trice, two of them had stretched a wire trellis across one wall of the drawing-room, and two more were trailing roses from floor to ceiling. Others tied the dark wood of the stair railing with tall Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and artificial-looking vine,—this idea being the principal stock-in-trade of every florist in the universe. ”

“ Modest flowers, whose charms we had not noted when youth was bright and the world seemed ours, now lift their heads in sheltered places and whisper peace. The morning song of the birds is hushed, for the dawn breaks less rosily in the eastern skies, but at twilight they still come and nestle in the branches that were sunned in the smile of love and watered with its happy tears. And over the grave of each buried hope or joy stands an angel with strong comforting hands and patient smile ”

“ I have been seeming to be strong so many years!' The woman and the artist in me have always struggled for the mastery. So far the artist has triumphed, and now all at once the woman is uppermost. I should think the two ought to be able to live peaceably in the same tenement; they do manage it in some cases; but it seems a law of my being that I shall either be all one or all the other.
The question for me to ask myself now is, “Am I in love with loving and with being loved, or am I in love with Willie Beresford?” How many women have confounded the two, I wonder? ”

“ Is it not strange that the fragrances of other days steal in upon the senses together with the sights and sounds that gave them birth?
Presently a horse and cart drew up before an hotel, a little further along, on the opposite side of the way. By the light of the street lamp under which it stopped we could see that it held a piano and two persons beside the driver. The man was masked, and wore a soft felt hat and a velvet coat. He seated himself at the piano and played a Chopin waltz with decided sentiment and brilliancy ”

“ Shady Dell Farm is interesting, too, for once, if one can swallow one's wrath and dudgeon at being taken there against one's will; and one feels that Jane's parents and Jane's early surroundings must be worth a single visit, if they could produce a donkey of such unusual capacity. Still, she must know, if she knows anything, that a person does not come from America and pay one and fourpence the hour (or thereabouts) merely in order to visit the home of her girlhood, which is neither mentioned in Baedeker nor set down in the local guide-books as a feature of interest. ”

“ She, dutiful girl, did as she was bid, especially as her youngest sister came to her in tears and said, 'Unless you consent we shall have to sell the cow!' So she went to the altar with a heart full of palpitating respect, but no love to speak of; that always comes in time to heroines who sacrifice themselves and spare the cows. ”

“ No, it is clearly necessary that we master the gentle art of eating eggs tidily and daintily from the shell. I have seen English women—very dull ones, too—do it without apparent effort; I have even seen an English infant do it, and that without soiling her apron, or, as Salemina would say, 'messing her pinafore.' I propose, therefore, that we order soft-boiled eggs daily; that we send Dawson from the room directly breakfast is served; and that then and there we have a class for opening eggs, lowest grade, object method. ”

“ The force of Dawson's intellect is such that he makes all this moral turbidity as clear as crystal while he remains in evidence. His bodily presence has a kind of illuminating power, and all the errors that we fancy we have found he traces to their original source, which is always in our suspicious and inexperienced minds. As he leaves the room he points out some proof of unexampled magnanimity on the part of the hotel; as, for instance, the fact that the management has not charged a penny for sending up Miss Monroe's breakfast trays. ”

“ Love that is passionate yet reverent, tender yet strong, selfish in desiring all yet generous in giving all; love of man for woman and woman for man, of parent for child and friend for friend—when this is born in the soul, the desert blossoms as the rose. ”

“ If I should ever desire two eggs, or if the fowl should turn sulky or indolent, I suppose Mrs. Bobby would have to go half a mile to the nearest shop, but as yet everything has worked to a charm. The cow is milked into my pitcher in the morning, and the fowl lays her egg almost literally in my egg-cup. One of the little Bobbies pulls a kidney bean or a tomato or digs a potato for my dinner, about half an hour before it is served. There is a sheep in the garden, but I hardly think it supplies the chops; those, at least, are not raised on the premises. ”

“ I would have taken him as gladly as ever the lavender boy took the half-crown, had I been quite, quite sure of myself! A woman with a vocation ought to be still surer than other women that it is the very jewel of love she is setting in her heart, and not a sparkling imitation. ”

“ Sometimes when we are to travel on a Pears' Soap 'bus we buy beforehand a bit of pure white Castile, cut from a shrinking, reserved, exclusive bar with no name upon it, and present it to some poor woman when we arrive at our journey's end. We do not suppose that so insignificant a protest does much good, but at least it preserves one's individuality and self-respect. ”

“ Francesca has accompanied Salemina. Not that the inspection of systems is much in her line, but she prefers it to a solitude a deux with me when I am in a working mood, and she comforts herself with the anticipation that the German army is very attractive. Willie Beresford has gone with his mother to Aix-les-Bains, like the dutiful son that he is. They say that a good son makes a good— But that subject is dismissed to the background for the present, for we are in a state of armed neutrality. ”

“ The conductors do all in their power to mitigate the lot of unhappy strangers, and it is only now and again that you hear an absent-minded or logical one call out, 'Castoria! all the w'y for a penny.'
We claim for our method of travelling, not that it is authoritative, but that it is simple—suitable to persons whose desires are flexible and whose plans are not fixed. It has its disadvantages, which may indeed be said of almost anything. For instance, we had gone for two successive mornings on a Cadbury's Cocoa 'bus to Francesca's dressmaker in Kensington. ”

“ We had been forty years in America then,” soliloquised Francesca; “and isn't it odd that the long thanksgivings in our country must all have been for having successfully run away from the Gunpowder Treason, King Charles the Martyr, and the Restituted Royal Family; yet here we are, you and I, the best of friends, talking it all over.”
As we jog along, or walk, by turns, we come to Buckingham Street, and looking up at Alfred Jingle's lodgings say a grateful word of Mr. Pickwick. We tell each other that much of what we know of London and England seems to have been learned from Dickens. ”

“ Yes, I wish it were the age of chivalry again, and that I were looking down from these hills into the Royal Chase. Of course I know that there were wicked and selfish tyrants in those days, before the free press, the jury system, and the folding-bed had wrought their beneficent influences upon the common mind and heart. Of course they would have sneered at Browning Societies and improved tenements, and of course they did not care a penny whether woman had the ballot or not, so long as man had the bottle ”

“ If I were an Englishwoman, say the fifty-fifth duchess of something, I could easily glow with pride to think that I was part and parcel of such antiquity; the fortunate heiress not only of land and titles, but of historic associations. But as I am an American with a very recent background, I blow out my candle with the feeling that it is rather grand to be making history for somebody else to inherit.
Chapter XIX. The heart of the artist.
I am almost too comfortable with Mrs. Bobby. In fact I wished to be just a little miserable in Belvern, so that I could paint with a frenzy. ”

“ Then electrically from Francesca, “It is Patricia's Irish lover! I forget his name.”
“Rory!”
“Shamus!”
“Michael!”
“Patrick!”
“Terence!”
“Hush!” she exclaimed at this chorus of Hibernian Christian names, “it is Patricia's undeclared impecunious lover. He is afraid that she won't know his gift is a harp, and afraid that the other girls will. He feared to send it, lest one of the sisters or h'orphan nieces should get it; it is frightful to love one of six, and the cards are always slipping off, and the wrong girl is always receiving your love-token or your offer of marriage.” ”

“ He is an Englishman first, and a man afterwards (I prefer it the other way) , but he does not realise it; he thinks he is just like all other good fellows, although he is mistaken. He and Willie Beresford speak the same language, but they are as different as Malay and Eskimo. He is an extreme type, but he is very likeable and very well worth looking at, with his long coat, his silk hat, and the white Malmaison in his buttonhole. He is always so radiantly, fascinatingly clean, the Honourable Arthur, simple, frank, direct, sensible, and he bores me almost to tears. ”