The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
his first goddess of the shining water-pails sit calmly down on
the great granite boulder in the shadow of the bridge, and take
one small foot in her hand with the evident intention of removing
her foot-gear and occupying the second tub.
The hot blood surged in responsive shame to Ralph Peden's cheeks
and temples. He started up. Meg Kissock was tramping the blankets
rhythmically, holding her green kirtle well up with both hands,
and singing with all her might. The goddess of the shining pails
was also happily unconscious, with her face to the running water.
Ralph bent low and hastened through a gap in the fence towards the
shade of the elder bushes on the slope. He did not run--he has
never acknowledged that; but he certainly came almost
indistinguishably near it. As soon, however, as he was really out
of sight, he actually did take to his heels and run in the
direction of the manse, disconcerted and demoralized.
The dogs completed his discomfiture, for they caught sight of his
flying figure and gave chase--contenting themselves, however, with
pausing on the hillside where Ralph had been lying, with indignant
barkings and militant tails high crested in air.
Winsome Charteris went up to the broom bushes which fringed the
slope to find out what was the matter with Tyke and Roger. When
she got there, a slim black figure was just vanishing round the
white bend of the Far Away Turn. Winsome whistled low this time,
and without putting even one finger into her mouth.
CHAPTER II.
THE MOTHER OF KING LEMUEL.
It was not till Ralph Peden had returned to the study of the manse
of the Marrow kirk of Dullarg, and the colour induced by exercise
had had time to die out of his naturally pale cheeks, that he
remembered that he had left his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon, as well
as a half-written exegesis on an important subject, underneath the
fatal whin bush above the bridge over the Grannoch water. He would
have been glad to rise and seek it immediately--a task which,
indeed, no longer presented itself in such terrible colours to
him. He found himself even anxious to go. It would be a serious
thing were he to lose his father's Lexicon and Mr. Welsh's Hebrew
Bible. Moreover, he could not bear the thought of leaving the
sheets of his exposition of the last chapter of Proverbs to be the
sport of the gamesome Galloway winds--or, worse thought, the
laughing-stock of gamesome young women who whistled with two
fingers in their mouths.
Yet the picture of the maid of the loch which rose before him
struck him as no unpleasant one. He remembered for one thing how
the sun shone through the tangle of her hair. But he had quite
forgotten, on the other hand, at what part of his exegesis he had
left off. It was, however, a manifest impossibility for him to
slip out again. Besides, he was in mortal terror lest Mr. Welsh
should ask for his Hebrew Bible, or offer to revise his chapter of
the day with him. All the afternoon he was uneasy, finding no
excuse to take himself away to the loch-side in order to find his
Bible and Lexicon.
"I understand you have been studying, with a view to license, the
last chapter of the Proverbs of Solomon?" said Gilbert Welsh,
interrogatively, bending his shaggy brows and pouting his underlip
at the student.
The Marrow minister was a small man, with a body so dried and
twisted ("shauchelt" was the local word) that all the nerve stuff
of a strong nature had run up to his brain, so that when he walked
he seemed always on the point of falling forward, overbalanced by
the weight of his cliff-like brow.
"Ralph, will you ground the argument of the mother of King Lemuel
in this chapter? But perhaps you would like to refer to the
original Hebrew?" said the minister.
"Oh, no," interrupted Ralph, aghast at the latter suggestion, "I
do not need the text--thank you, sir."
But, in spite of his disclaimer, he devoutly desired to be where
the original text and his written comment upon it were at that
moment--which, indeed, was a consummation even more devoutly to be
wished than he had any suspicion of. The Marrow minister leaned
his head on his hand and looked waitingly at the young man.
Ralph recalled himself with an effort. He had to repeat to himself
that he was in the manse study, and almost to pinch his knee to
convince himself of the reality of his experiences. But this was
not necessary a second time, for, as he sat hastily down on one of
Allen Welsh's hard-wood chairs, a prickle from the gorse bush
which he had brought back with him from Loch Grannoch side was
argument sharp enough to convince Bishop Berkeley.
"Compose yourself to answer my question," said the minister, with
some slight severity. Ralph wondered silently if even a minister
of the Marrow kirk in good standing, could compose himself on one
whin prickle for certain, and the probability of several others
developing themselves at various angles hereafter.
Ralph "grounded" himself as best as he could, explaining the views
of the mother of King Lemuel as to the woman of virtue and
faithfulness. He seemed to himself to have a fluency and a fervour
in exposition to which he had been a stranger. He began to have
new views about the necessity for the creation of Eve. Woman might
possibly, after all, be less purely gratuitous than he had
supposed.
"The woman who is above rubies," said he, "is one who rises early
to care for the house, who oversees the handmaids as they cleanse
the household stuffs--in a" (he just saved himself from saying "in
a black pot")--"in a fitting vessel by the rivers of water."
"Well put and correctly mandated," said Mr. Welsh, very much
pleased. There was unction about this young man. Though a bachelor
by profession, he loved to hear the praises of good women; for he
had once known one.
"She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and--"
Here Ralph paused, biting his tongue to keep from describing the
picture which rose before him.
"And what," said the minister, tentatively, leaning forward to
look into the open face of the young man, "what is the distinction
or badge of true beauty and favour of countenance, as so well
expressed by the mother of King Lemuel?"
"A LILAC SUNBONNET!" said Ralph Peden, student in divinity.
CHAPTER III.
A TREASURE-TROVE.
Winsome CHARTERIS was a self-possessed maid, but undeniably her
heart beat faster when she found on the brae face, beneath the
bush of broom, two books the like of which she had never seen
before, as well as an open notebook with writing upon it in the
neatest and delicatest of hands. First, as became a prudent woman
of experience, she went up to the top of the hill to assure
herself that the owner of this strange treasure was not about to
return. Then she carefully let down her high-kilted print dress
till only her white feet "like little mice" stole in and out. It
did not strike her that this sacrifice to the conventions was just
a trifle belated.
As she returned she said "Shoo!" at every tangled bush, and
flapped her apron as if to scare whatever curious wild fowl might
have left behind it in its nest under the broom such curious nest-
eggs as two great books full of strange, bewitched-looking
printing, and a note-book of curious and interesting writings.
Then, with a half sigh of disappointment, Winsome Charteris sat
herself down to look into this matter. Meg Kissock from the bridge
end showed signs of coming up to see what she was about; but
Winsome imperiously checked the movement.
"Bide where you are, Meg; I'll be down with you presently."
She turned over the great Hebrew Bible reverently. "A. Welsh" was
written on the fly-leaf. She had a strange idea that she had seen
it before. It seemed somehow thrillingly familiar.
"That's the minister's Hebrew Bible book, no doubt," she said.
"For that's the same kind of printing as between the double verses
of the hundred-and-nineteenth Psalm in my grandfather's big
Bible," she continued, sapiently shaking her head till the crispy
ringlets tumbled about her eyes, and she had impatiently to toss
them aside.
She laid the Bible down and peeped into the other strange-looking
book. There were single words here of the same kind as in the
other, but the most part was in ordinary type, though in a
language of which she could make nothing. The note-book was a
resource. It was at least readable, and Winsome Charteris began
expectantly to turn it over. But something stirred reprovingly in
her heart. It seemed as if she were listening to a conversation
not meant for her. So she kept her finger on the leaf, but did not
turn it.
"No," she said, "I will not read it. It is not meant for me."
Then, after a pause, "At least I will only read this page which is
open, and then look at the beginning to see whose it is; for, you
know, I may need to send it back to him." The back she had seen
vanish round the Far Away Turn demanded the masculine pronoun.
She lifted the book and read:
"Alas!" (so ran the writing, fluent and clear, small as printer's
type, Ralph Peden's beautiful Hellenic script), "alas, that the
good qualities of the housewives of Solomon's days are out of date
and forgotten in these degenerate times! Women, especially the
younger of them, are become gadabouts, chatterers in the public
ways, idle, adorners of their vain selves, pamperers of their
frail tabernacles--"
Winsome threw down the book and almost trod upon it as upon a
snake.
"'Tis some city fop," she said, stamping her foot, "who is tired
of the idle town dames. I wonder if he has ever seen the sun rise
or done a day's work in his life? If only I had the wretch! But I
will read no more!"
In token of the sincerity of the last assertion, she picked up the
note-book again. There was little more to read. It was at this
point that the humble-bee had startled the writer.
But underneath there were woids faintly scrawled in pencil: "Must
concentrate attention"--"The proper study of mankind is"--this
last written twice, as if the writer were practising copy-lines
absently. Then at the very bottom was written, so faintly that
hardly any eyes but Winsome's could have read the words:
"Of all colours I do love the lilac. I wonder all maids do not
wear gear of that hue!"
"Oh!" said Winsome Charteris quickly.
Then she gathered up the books very gently, and taking a kerchief
from her neck, she folded the two great books within it, fastening
them with a cunning knot. She was carrying them slowly up towards
the farm town of Craig Ronald in her bare arms when Ralph Peden
sat answering his catechism in the study at the manse. She entered
the dreaming courtyard, and walked sedately across its silent sun-
flooded spaces without a sound. She passed the door of the cool
parlour where her grandfather and grandmother sat, the latter with
her hands folded and her great tortoiseshell spectacles on her
nose, taking her afternoon nap. A volume of Waverley lay beside
her. Into her own white little room Winsome went, and laid the
bundle of books in the bottom of the wall-press, which was lined
with sheets of the Cairn Edward Miscellany. She looked at it some
time before she shut the door.
"His name is Ralph," she said. "I wonder how old he is--I shall
know tomorrow, because he will come back; but--I would like to
know tonight."
She sighed a little--so light a breath that it was only the dream
of a sigh. Then she looked at the lilac sunbonnet, as if it ought
to have known.
"At any rate he has very good taste," she said.
But the lilac sunbonnet said never a word.
CHAPTER IV.
A CAVALIER PURITAN.
The farm town of Craig Ronald drowsed in the quiet of noon. In the
open court the sunshine triumphed, and only the purple-grey marsh
mallows along the side of the house under the windows gave any