Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
“My head is full of plans, and I do not think that joy will let me sleep
to-night for thinking of you and all that we shall do together. We'll
be married early in the morning in the old kirk of Glenalder, as soon as
the sun has filled the Glen and Nature has just awaked from sleep. Mona
Macdonald will be your bridesmaid, I know, and she will wear white roses
that shall not be whiter than her teeth. Yes, I have learned to notice
all beautiful things since I knew you, Magdalen. My best man will be
Carmichael of Drumtochy, who is of Highland blood himself and a goodly
man to look upon, and he has his own love-story. All the Glen will come
to our wedding, and will grudge that a Lowland Scot has spoiled the
Glen of the Flower of Dalnabreck--yes, I know what they call you. And we
shall have our breakfast in the manse, for the minister has pledged
us to that, and it is he and John Carmichael that will be making the
wonderful speeches! (You see how I've learned the style.) But you and I
will leave them and catch the steamer, and then all the long June day
we shall sit on the deck together and see distant Skye, and the little
isles, and pass Mull and Ardnamurchan, and sail through Oban Bay and
down Loch Fyne, and thread our way by Tighnabruaich, and come into the
Firth of Clyde when the sun is going down away behind Ben Alder. Won't
it be a glorious marriage day, among lochs and hills and islands the
like of which travellers say cannot be found in all the world?
“Then I want to take you to Germany, and to show you the old University
town where I lived one summer, and we will have one good day there, too,
my bride and I. Early in the morning we shall stand in the market-place,
where the women are washing clothes at the fountain and the peasants
are selling butter and fruit, and the high-gabled houses rise on three
sides, and the old Rathhaus, on whose roof the storks build their nests,
makes the fourth. We'll go to my rooms near the Kirche, where I used to
write a letter to you every day, and here is what old Frau Hepzacker
will say, 'Mein Gott, der Schottlander und ein wunderschones madchen*
(you will English and Gaelic this for yourself), and we will drink a
glass of (fearfully sour) wine with her, and go out with her blessing
echoing down the street Then we will watch the rafts coming down the
Neckar from the Black Forest, and walk among the trees in the Vorstadt,
where I lay and dreamed of you far away in Glenalder. And we will go to
the University where you sent me... but that is never to be mentioned
again; and the students in their wonderful dress will come and go--red
hats and blue, besides the white, black and gold I used to wear. And
in the evening we will drive through the vines and fruit-trees to
Bebenhausen, the king's hunting-seat. And those will only be two days
out of our honeymoon, Magdalen. It seems too good to be my lot that
I should be minister of Christ's evangel--of which surely I am not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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