The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
angel, lost by some mischance, praying to him out of the hollow
pit of the night.
"I carried your burden for you once, the day I first saw you. Let
me carry your burden for you across the world. If you will not
love me, let me but serve you. I would slave so hard! See, I am
strong--"
She seized his hands, gripping thorn till his fingers clave
together with the pressure.
"See how I love you!" her hands seemed to say. Then she kissed his
hands, wetting them with the downfalling of her tears.
The darkness settled back thicker than before. He could not see
the kneeling woman whose touch he felt. He strove to think what he
should do, his emotions and his will surging in a troubled
maelstrom about his heart.
But just then, from out of the darkness high on the unseen hill
above them, there came a cry--a woman's cry of pain, anger, and
ultimate danger: "Ralph, Ralph, come to me--come!" it seemed to
say to him. Again and again it came, suddenly faltered and was
silenced as if smothered--as though a hand had been laid across a
mouth that cried and would not be silent.
Ralph sprang clear of Jess Kissock in a moment. He knew the voice.
He would have known it had it come to him across the wreck of
worlds. It was his love's voice. She was calling to him--Ralph
Peden--for help. Without a thought for the woman whose despairing
words he had just listened to, he turned and ran, plunging into
the thick darkness of the woods, hillward in the direction of the
cry. But he had not gone far when another cry was heard--not the
cry of a woman this time, but the shorter, shriller, piercing yell
of a man at the point of death--some deadly terror at his throat,
choking him. Mixed with this came also unearthly, wordless,
inhuman howlings, as of a wild beast triumphing. For a dozen
seconds these sounds dominated the night. Then upon the hill they
seemed to sink into a moaning, and a long, low cry, like the
whining of a beaten dog. Lights gleamed about the farm, and Ralph
could vaguely see, as he sprang out of the ravine, along which he
and Winsome had walked, dark forms flitting about with lanterns.
In another moment he was out on the moor, ranging about like a
wild, questing hound, seeking the cause of the sudden and hideous
outcry.
CHAPTEE XXX.
THE HILL GATE.
There was no merry group outside Winsome's little lattice window
this night, as she sat unclad to glimmering white in the quiet of
her room. In her heart there was that strange, quiet thrill of
expectancy--the resolve of a maiden's heart, when she knows
without willing that at last the flood-gates of her being must
surely be raised and the great flood take her to the sea. She did
not face the thought of what she would say. In such a case a man
plans what he will say, and once in three times he says it. But a
woman is wiser. She knows that in that hour it will be given her
what she shall speak.
"I shall go to him," said Winsome to herself; "I must, for he is
going away, and he has need of me. Can I let him go without a
word?"
Though Ralph had done no noble action in her sight or within her
ken, yet there was that about him which gave her the knowledge
that she would be infinitely safe with him even to the world's
end. Winsome wondered how she could so gladly go, when she would
not have so much as dreamed of stealing out at night to meet any
other, though she might have known him all her life. She did not
know, often as she had heard it read, that "perfect love casteth
out fear." Then she said to herself gently, as if she feared that
the peeping roses at the window might hear, "Perhaps it is because
I love him." Perhaps it was. Happy Winsome, to have found it out
so young!
The curtain of the dark drew down. Moist airs blew into the room,
warm with the scent of the flowers of a summer night. Honeysuckle
and rose blew in, and quieted the trembling nerves of the girl
going to meet her first love.
"He has sair need o' me!" she said, lapsing as she sometimes did
into her grandmother's speech. "He will stand before me," she
said, "and look so pale and beautiful. Then I will not let him
come nearer--for a while--unless it is very dark and I am afraid."
She glanced out. It promised to be very dark, and a tremour came
over her. Then she clad herself in haste, drawing from a box a
thin shawl of faded pale blue silk with a broad crimson edge,
which she drew close about her shoulders. The band of red lying
about her neck forced forward her golden tresses, throwing them
about her brow so that they stood out round her face in a
changeful aureole of fine-spun gold. She took a swift glance in
the mirror, holding her candle in her hand. Then she laughed a
nervous little laugh all to herself. How foolish of her! Of
course, it would be impossible for him to see her. But
nevertheless she put out her light, and went to the door smiling.
She had no sense of doing that which she ought not to do; for she
had been accustomed to her liberty in all matters whatsoever, ever
since she came to Craig Ronald, and in the summer weather nothing
was more common than for her to walk out upon the moor in the dewy
close of day. She shut the door quietly behind her, and set her
foot on the silent elastic turf, close cropped by many woolly
generations. The night shut down behind her closer than the door.
The western wind cooled her brain, and the singing in her heart
rose into a louder altar-song. A woman ever longs to be giving
herself. She rejoices in sacrifice. It is a pity that she so often
chooses an indifferently worthy altar. Yet it is questionable
whether her own pleasure in the sacrifice is any the less.
At the gate of the yard, which had been left open and hung
backward perilously upon its hinges, she paused.
"That is that careless girl, Jess!" she said, practical even at
such a moment.
And she was right--it was Jess who had so left it. Indeed, had she
been a moment sooner, she might have seen Jess flit by, taking the
downward road which led through the elder--trees to the waterside.
As it was, she only shut the gate carefully, so that no night-
wandering cattle might disturb the repose of her grandparents,
laid carefully asleep by Meg in their low-ceilinged bedroom.
The whole farm breathed from its walls and broad yard spaces the
peaceful rise and fall of an infant's repose. There was no sound
about the warm and friendly place save the sleepy chunner of a hen
on the bauks of the peat-house, just sufficiently awake to be
conscious of her own comfort.
The hill road was both stony and difficult, but Winsome's light
feet went along it easily and lightly. On not a single stone did
she stumble. She walked so gladsomely that she trod on the air.
There were no rocks in her path that night. Behind her the light
in the west winked once and went out. Palpable darkness settled
about her. The sigh of the waste moorlands, where in the haggs the
wild fowl were nestling and the adders slept, came down over the
well-pastured braes to her.
Winsome did not hasten. Why hasten, when at the end of the way
there certainly lies the sweet beginning of all things. Already
might she be happy in the possession of certainties? It never
occurred to her that Ralph would not be at the trysting-place.
That a messenger might fail did not once cross her mind. But
maidenly tremours, delicious in their uncertainty, coursed along
her limbs and through all her being. Could any one have seen,
there was a large and almost exultant happiness in the depths of
her eyes. Her lips were parted a little, like a child that waits
on tiptoe to see the curtain rise on some wondrous and long-
dreamed-of spectacle.
Soon against the darker sky the hill dyke stood up, looking in the
gloom massive as the Picts' Wall of long ago. It followed
irregularly the ridgy dips and hollows downward, till it ran into
the in tenser darkness of the pines. In a moment, ere yet she was
ready, there before her was the gate of her tryst. She paused,
affrighted for the first time. She listened, and there was no
sound. A trembling came over her and an uncertainty. She turned,
in act to flee.
But out of the dark of the great dyke stepped a figure cloaked
from head to heel, and while Winsome wavered, tingling now with
shame and fear, in an instant she was enclosed within two very
strong arms, that received her as in a snare a bird is taken.
Suddenly Winsome felt her breath shorten. She panted as if she
could not get air, like the bird as it nutters and palpitates.
"Oh, I ought not to have come!" &he said, "but I could not help
it!"
There was no word in answer, only a closer folding of the arms
that cinctured her. In the west the dusk was lightening and the
eyelid of the night drew slowly and grimly up.
When for the first time she looked shyly upward, Winsome found
herself in the arms of Agnew Greatorix. Wrapped in his great
military cloak, with a triumphant look in his handsome face, he
smiled down upon her.
Great Lord of Innocence! give now this lamb of thine thy help!
The leaping soul of pure disembodied terror stood in Winsome's
eyes. Fascinated like an antelope in the coils of a python she
gazed, her eyes dilating and contracting--the world whirling
about her, the soul of her bounding and panting to burst its bars.
"Winsome, my darling!" he said, "you have come to me. You are
mine"--bending his face to hers.
Not yet had the power to speak or to resist come back to her, so
instant and terrible was her surprise. But at the first touch of
his lips upon her cheek the very despair brought back to her
tenfold her own strength. She pushed against him with her hands,
straining him from her by the rigid tension of her arms, setting
her face far from his, but she was still unable to break the clasp
of his arms about her.
"Let me go! let me go!" she cried, in a hoarse and labouring
whisper.
"Gently, gently, fair and softly, my birdie," said Greatorix;
"surely you have not forgotten that you sent for me to meet you
here. Well, I am here, and I am not such a fool as to come for
nothing!"
The very impossibility of words steeled Winsome's heart,
"_I_ send for you!" cried Winsome; "I never had message or word
with you in my life to give you a right to touch me with your
little finger. Let me go, and this instant, Agnew Greatorix!"
"Winsome, sweetest girl, it pleases you to jest. Have not I your
own letter in my pocket telling me where to meet you? Did you not
write it? I am not angry. You can play out your play and pretend
you do not care for me as much as you like; but I will not let you
go. I have loved you too long, though till now you were cruel and
would give me no hope. So when I got your letter I knew it was
love, after all, that had been in your eyes as I rode away."
"Listen," said Winsome eagerly; "there is some terrible mistake; I
never wrote a line to you--"
"It matters not; it was to me that your letter came, brought by a
messenger to the castle an hour ago. So here I am, and here you
are, my beauty, and we shall just make the best of it, as lovers
should when the nights are short."
He closed his arms about her, forcing the strength out of her
wrists with slow, rude, masculine muscles. A numbness and a
deadness ran through her limbs as he compelled her nearer to him.
Her head spun round with the fear of fainting. With a great effort
she forced herself back a step from him, and just as she felt the
breath of his mouth upon hers her heart made way through her lips.
"Ralph! Ralph! Help me--help! Oh, come to me!" she cried in her
extremity of terror and the oncoming rigour of unconsciousness.
The next moment she dropped limp and senseless into the arms of
Agnew Greatorix. For a long moment he held her up, listening to