Smouldering Fire
D.E. Stevenson
Top 10 Best Quotes
“She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness.”
“There were compensations in poverty—so she discovered. You could talk to your neighbours and take part in their lives, and she found them more interesting than the people she met in the upper circles of society. They were real, and you were real. You could lend a hand when they were in trouble. . . . Another great advantage of being poor was that you had no servant worries, your home was your own and there was no need to bother your head about what the servants would think.”
“Sometimes she almost welcomed catastrophe as the concrete form of her fears—Here it is at last!—something seemed to say—you know now what it is, at any rate, and you can bear it.”
“Smouldering Fire was first published in the U.K. in 1935 and in the U.S. in 1938. Later reprints were all heavily abridged. For our reprint, Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press have followed the text of the first U.K. edition,”
“Single beds, she thought, I believe that’s what’s at the bottom of a lot of trouble nowadays. They had started with single beds and gone on to single rooms, which was even worse; but the single beds had started the trouble.”
“She had a moment of sheer panic, and visions of crooks and the white slave traffic swept through her mind. Had the woman picked her up—like that—on purpose. (There was that queer tale of Stevenson’s in which somebody had furnished a whole house for one night as a net to catch some people he wanted—she could not remember the whole story, but the furnishing of the house for one night had stuck in her mind, and the coming of the pantechnicons at dawn to take the furniture away.)”
“She brought in his dinner and stood looking at him while he helped himself—what was he but a bairn? Morag thought; all men were just big bairns, helpless and simple and easily pleased and—but this was not so fortunate—easily put out about small matters.”
“Offer him Ardfalloch for three months,’ said Mr. Simpson. ‘You need the money.’ I told him I did not want to let Ardfalloch. ‘You will sell a farm then,’ he told me. ‘Something you must do, MacAslan.’ He showed me figures in a book, Donald, and I saw, then, that it was true. Something must be done. Figures are strange things,” continued the voice in the darkness thoughtfully. “Columns of figures—and when they are added up—”
“MacAslan was speaking in the Gaelic now, and Donald was glad. It was their custom to speak to each other in both languages—sometimes in English and sometimes in Gaelic. MacAslan chose, and Donald followed. For ordinary everyday affairs connected with the estate MacAslan used English; but when they spoke together heart to heart of the things that mattered, or when MacAslan was happy and at peace with the world, or unhappy and in need of sympathy, it was always the Gaelic. Donald was glad when he heard the Gaelic from MacAslan’s lips and was at liberty to speak in return. He felt nearer to MacAslan then; he could let his heart speak.”
“I’m hoping you’ve got a guid price for it, then,” she said in a firm tone. He laughed involuntarily. “Oh, Janet!” he said. “Here have I been grieving over it the whole day, making a tragedy of the thing, and you bring it all down to a matter of pounds, shillings and pence.” Janet glanced at him sideways—the hands had relaxed a little. “And what else is it, pray?” she enquired tartly. “It’s for the money you’re daeing it, I’m thinking.”
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Book Keywords:
brave, fear, weakness, unknown
