Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely RomanceMacDonald, George
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Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance
MacDonald, George
Christian fiction; Highlands (Scotland) -- Fiction
The love of the son, kept alive by the love of the husband, glorifying
through the mists of his memory the earthly appearance of the mother,
gave to her the form in which he would see her again, rather than that
in which he had actually beheld her. And indeed the father saw her
after the same fashion in the memory of his love. Tall to the boy of
five, she was little above the middle height, yet the husband saw her
stately in his dreams; there was nothing remarkable in her face except
the expression, which after her marriage had continually gathered
tenderness and grace, but the husband as well as the child called her
absolutely beautiful.
“What colour were her eyes, Cosmo?”
“I don’t know; I never saw the colour of them; but I remember they
looked at me as if I should run into them.”
“She would have died for you, my boy. We must be very good that we may
see her again some day.”
“I will try. I do try, papa.”
“You see, Cosmo, when a woman like that condescends to be wife to one
of us and mother to the other, the least we can do, when she is taken
from us, is to give her the same love and the same obedience after
she is gone as when she was with us. She is with her own kind up in
heaven now, but she may be looking down and watching us. It may be God
lets her do that, that she may see of the travail of her soul and be
satisfied--who can tell? She can’t be very anxious about me now, for I
am getting old, and my warfare is nearly over; but she may be getting
things ready to rest me a bit. She knows I have for a long time now
been trying to keep the straight path, as far as I could see it, though
sometimes the grass and heather has got the better of it, so that it
was hard to find. But _you_ must remember, Cosmo, that it is not enough
to be a good boy, as I shall tell her you have always been: you’ve got
to be a good man, and that is a rather different and sometimes a harder
thing. For, as soon as a man has to do with other men, he finds they
expect him to do things they ought to be ashamed of doing themselves;
and then he has got to stand on his own honest legs, and not move an
inch for all their pushing and pulling; and especially where a man
loves his fellow man and likes to be on good terms with him, that is
not easy. The thing is just this, Cosmo--when you are a full-grown
man, you must be a good boy still--that’s the difficulty. For a man
to be a boy, and a good boy still, he must be a thorough man. The man
that’s not manly can never be a good boy to his mother. And you can’t
keep true to your mother, except you remember Him who is father and
mother both to all of us. I wish my Marion were here to teach you as
she taught me. She taught me to pray, Cosmo, as I have tried to teach
you--when I was in any trouble, just to go into my closet, and shut
to the door, and pray to my Father who is in secret--the same Father
who loved you so much as to give you my Marion for a mother. But I am
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