I asked him if you went in a ship over the sea to Elsinore, as Mary Jane
told me you went to America; and when he nodded and said "Yes," I got to
imagine there was no common sunlight on the sea as the ship crossed it
to Elsinore, but the lovely white light I had seen at the theatre when
the fairies danced, and all the people in the ship wore beautiful
garments of white and green gauze, and there was soft music all the way,
and the water shone like silver.
What I could not understand was why I should be a Dane because my eyes
were blue, when grandpapa's, who was so obviously more of a Dane than I,
were black. But grandpapa always frowned, and an odd flame shot into his
mild glance, if you asked him questions.
He gave you facts, and expected you to make what you could of them. He
was unreasonably proud, I thought, of his Scottish blood, all the same.
He was a Highlander, he said, while my grandmother, he explained
contemptuously, was a Glasgow lass. My uncle Douglas, he added, favoured
his side, while my mother was a blonde Ferguson. Pity it was an
intelligent little girl like me did not take more after the Camerons;
but I had my uncle Douglas's nose, and with a Cameron nose I need never
fear the future.
This was surely an excess of faith on my grandfather's side not
justified by experience. He had been only saved from the poorhouse by a
thrifty and judicious if hard-hearted wife, while my splendid uncle
Douglas, with his curly head of Greek god, had wandered from debt
through every expensive caprice, and was drowned sailing a little
pleasure-boat on one of the Killarney lakes at the inappropriate age of
twenty-four.
The Cameron nose has done as little for his young brother, my uncle
Willie. I have always loved the image I have made to myself of my
boy-uncle Willie, chiefly, I suppose, because of his brilliant promise
and early death; but largely, I believe, because not only grandpapa
Cameron, but others who remember him, tell me I resemble him in
character and feature.
They say it was his death, coming so soon after the blow of uncle
Douglas's doom, that turned my grandfather's brain. Willie had been
articled to a well-known architect, who, being musical like my
grandfather, was interested in his musical friend's bright-faced and
witty lad, with about as much knowledge of music as a healthy puppy.
This lamentable deficiency, however, brought about no disastrous clash
between master and pupil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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