The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
love. That love of giving up all, which is the precious privilege,
the saving dowry or utter undoing of women, surged in upon her
heart.
She drew away her hand, not quickly, but slowly and firmly, and as
if she meant it. "I have come to a decision--I have made a vow,"
she said. She paused, and looked at Ralph a little defiantly,
hoping that he would take the law into his own hands, and forbid
the decision and disallow the vow.
But Ralph was not yet enterprising enough, and took her words a
little too seriously. He only stood looking at her and waiting, as
if her decision were to settle the fate of kingdoms.
Then Winsome emitted the declaration which has been so often made,
at which even the more academic divinities are said to smile, "I
am resolved never to marry!"
An older man would have laughed. He might probably have heard
something like this before. But Ralph had no such experience, and
he bowed his head as to an invincible fate--for which stupidity
Winsome's grandmother would have boxed his ears.
"But I may still love you, Winsome?" he said, very quietly and
gently.
"Oh, no, you must not--you must not love me! Indeed, you must not
think of me any more. You must go away."
"Go away I can and will, if you say so, Winsome; but even you do
not believe that I can forget you when I like."
"And you will go away?" said Winsome, looking at him with eyes
that would have chained a Stoic philosopher to the spot.
"Yes," said Ralph, perjuring his intentions.
"And you will not try to see me any more--you promise?" she added,
a little spiteful at the readiness with which he gave his word.
So Ralph made a promise. He succeeded in keeping it just twenty-
four hours--which was, on the whole, very creditable, considering.
What else he might have promised we cannot tell--certainly
anything else asked of him so long as Winsome continued to look at
him.
Those who have never made just such promises, or listened to them
being made--occupations equally blissful and equally vain--had
better pass this chapter by. It is not for the uninitiated. But it
is true, nevertheless.
So in silence they walked down to the opening of the glen. As they
turned into the broad expanse of glorious sunshine the shadows
were beginning to slant towards them. Loch Grannoch was darkening
into pearl grey, under the lee of the hill. Down by the high-
backed bridge, which sprang at a bound over the narrows of the
lane, there was a black patch on the greensward, and the tripod of
the gipsy pot could faintly be distinguished.
Ralph, who had resumed Winsome's hand as a right, pointed it out.
It is strange how quickly pleasant little fashions of that kind
tend to perpetuate themselves!
As Winsome's grandmother would have said, "It's no easy turnin' a
coo when she gets the gate o' the corn."
Winsome looked at the green patch and the dark spot upon it. "Tell
me," she said, looking up at him, "why you ran away that day?"
Ralph Peden was nothing if not frank. "Because," he said, "I
thought you were going to take off your stockings!"
Through the melancholy forebodings which Winsome had so recently
exhibited there rose the contagious blossom of mirth, that never
could be long away even from such a fate-harassed creature as
Winsome Charteris considered herself to be. "Poor fellow," she
said, "you must indeed have been terribly frightened!"
"I was," said Ralph Peden, with conviction. "But I do not think I
should feel quite the same about it now!"
They walked silently to the foot of the Craig Ronald loaning,
where by mutual consent they paused.
Winsome's hand was still in Ralph's. She had forgotten to take it
away. She was, however, still resolved to do her duty.
"Now you are sure you are not going to think of me any more?" she
asked.
"Quite sure," said Ralph, promptly.
Winsome looked a little disappointed at the readiness of the
answer. "And you won't try to see me any more?" she asked,
plaintively.
"Certainly not," replied Ralph, who had some new ideas.
Winsome looked still more disappointed. This was not what she had
expected.
"Yes," said Ralph, "because I shall not need to think of you
again, for I shall never stop thinking of you; and I shall not try
to see you again, because I know I shall. I shall go away, but I
shall come back again; and I shall never give you up, though every
friend forbid and every cloud in the heavens break!"
The gladness broke into his love's face in spite of all her
gallant determination.
"But remember," said Winsome, "I am never going to marry. On that
point I am quite determined."
"You can forbid me marrying you, Winsome dear," said Ralph, "but
you cannot help me loving you."
Indeed on this occasion and on this point of controversy Winsome
did not betray any burning desire to contradict him. She gave him
her hand--still with the withholding power in it, however, which
told Ralph that his hour was not yet come.
He bowed and kissed it--once, twice, thrice. And to him who had
never kissed woman before in the way of love, it was more than
many caresses to one more accustomed.
Then she took her way, carrying her hand by her side tingling with
consciousness. It seemed as if Ebie Farrish, who was at the
watering-stone as she passed, could read what was written upon it
as plain as an advertisement. She put it, therefore, into the
lilac sunbonnet and so passed by.
Ralph watched her as she glided, a tall and graceful young figure,
under the archway of the trees, till he could no longer see her
light dress glimmering through the glades of the scattered oaks.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE OPINIONS OF SAUNDERS MOWDIEWORT UPON BESOMSHANKS.
Ralph Peden kept his promise just twenty-four hours, which under
the circumstances was an excellent performance. That evening, on
his return to the manse, Manse Bell handed him, with a fine
affectation of unconcern, a letter with the Edinburgh post-mark,
which had been brought with tenpence to pay, from Cairn Edward.
Manse Bell was a smallish, sharp-tongued woman of forty, with her
eyes very close together. She was renowned throughout the country
for her cooking and her temper, the approved excellence of the one
being supposed to make up for the difficult nature of the other.
The letter was from his father. It began with many inquiries as to
his progress in the special studies to which he had been devoting
himself. Then came many counsels as to avoiding all entanglements
with the erroneous views of Socinians, Erastians, and Pelagians In
conclusion, a day was suggested on which it would be convenient
for the presbytery of the Marrow kirk to meet in Edinburgh in
order to put Ralph through his trials for license. Then it was
that Ralph Peden felt a tingling sense of shame. Not only had he
to a great extent forgotten to prepare himself for his
examinations, which would be no great difficulty to a college
scholar of his standing, but unconsciously to himself his mind had
slackened its interest in his licensing. The Marrow kirk had
receded from him as the land falls back from a ship which puts out
to sea, swiftly and silently. He was conscious that he had paid
far more attention to his growing volume of poems than he had done
to his discourses for license; though indeed of late he had given
little attention to either.
He went up-stairs and looked vaguely at his books. He found that
it was only by an effort that he could at all think himself into
the old Ralph, who had shaken his head at Calvin under the broom-
bush by the Grannoch Water. Sharp penitence rode hard upon Ralph's
conscience. He sat down among his neglected books. From these he
did not rise till the morning fully broke. At last he lay down on
the bed, after looking long at the ridge of pines which stood
sharp up against the morning sky, behind which Craig Ronald lay.
Then the underlying pang, which he had been crushing down by the
night's work among the Hebrew roots, came triumphantly to the
surface. He must leave the manse of Dullarg, and with it that
solitary white farmhouse on the braeface, the orchard at the back
of it, and the rose-clambered gable from which a dear window
looked down the valley of the Grannoch, and up to the heathery
brow of the Crae Hill.
So, unrefreshed, yet unconscious of the need of any refreshment,
Ralph Peden rose and took his place at the manse table.
"I saw your candle late yestreen," said the minister, pausing to
look at the young man over the wooden platter of porridge which
formed the frugal and sufficient breakfast of the two.
Porridge for breakfast and porridge for supper are the cure-alls
of the true Galloway man. It is not every Scot who stands through
all temptation so square in the right way as morning and night to
confine himself to these; but he who does so shall have his reward
in a rare sanity of judgment and lightness of spirit, and a
capacity for work unknown to countrymen of less Spartan habit.
So Ralph answered, looking over his own "cogfu' o' brose" as Manse
Bell called them, "I was reading the book of Joel for the second
time."
"Then you have," said the minister, "finished your studies in the
Scripture character of the truly good woman of the Proverbs, with
which you were engaged on your first coming here?"
"I have not quite finished," said Ralph, looking a little
strangely at the minister.
"You ought always to finish one subject before you begin another,"
said Mr. Welsh, with a certain slow sententiousness.
By-and-bye Ralph got away from the table, and in the silence of
his own room gave himself to a repentant and self-accusing day of
study. Remorsefully sad, with many searchings of heart, he
questioned whether indeed he were fit for the high office of
minister in the kirk of the Marrow; whether he could now accept
that narrow creed, and take up alone the burden of these manifold
protestings. It was for this that he had been educated; it was for
this that he had been given his place at his father's desk since
ever he could remember.
Here he had studied in the far-off days of his boyhood strange
deep books, the flavour of which only he retained. He had learned
his letters out of the Bible--the Old Testament. He had gone
through the Psalms from beginning to end before he was six. He
remembered that the paraphrases were torn out of all the Bibles in
the manse. Indeed, they existed only in a rudimentary form even in
the great Bible in the kirk (in which by some oversight a heathen
binder had bound them), but Allan Welsh had rectified this by
pasting them up, so that no preacher in a moment of demoniac
possession might give one out. What would have happened if this
had occurred in the Marrow kirk it is perhaps better only
guessing. At twelve Ralph was already far on in Latin and Greek,
and at thirteen he could read plain narrative Hebrew, and had a
Hebrew Bible of his own in which he followed his father, to the
admiration of all the congregation.
Prigs of very pure water have sometimes been manufactured by just
such means as this.
Sometimes his father would lean over and say, "My son, what is the
expression for that in the original?" whereupon Ralph would read
the passage. It was between Gilbert Peden and his Maker that
sometimes he did this for pride, and not for information; but
Ralph was his only son, and was he not training him, as all knew,
in order that he might be a missionary apostle of the great truths
of the protesting kirk of the Marrow, left to testify lonely and
forgotten among the scanty thousands of Scotland, yet carrying
indubitably the only pure doctrine as it had been delivered to the
saints?
But, in spite of all, the lad's bent was really towards
literature. The books of verses which he kept under lock and key