The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
to be counted on, till the world should end.
"It is true what you say," said Ralph; "I mourn for it every word,
but I cannot and will not submit my conscience and my heart to the
keeping even of the Marrow kirk."
"Ye should have thought on that sooner," interjected the minister
grimly.
"God gave me my affections as a sacred trust. This also is part of
my religion. And I will not, I cannot in any wise give up hope of
winning this girl whom I love, and whom you above all others ought
surely to love."
"Then," said the minister, rising solemnly with his hand
outstretched as when he pronounced the benediction, "I, Allan
Welsh, who love you as my son, and who love my daughter more than
ten daughters who bear no reproach, tell you, Ralph Peden, that I
can no longer company with you. Henceforth I count you as a rebel
and a stranger. More than self, more than life, more than child or
wife, I, sinner as I am, love the honour and discipline of the
kirk of the Marrow. Henceforth you and I are strangers."
The words fired the young man. He took up his hat, which had
fallen upon the floor.
"If that be so, the sooner that this house is rid of the presence
of a stranger and a rebel the better for it, and the happier for
you. I thank you for all the kindness you have shown to me, and I
bid you, with true affection and respect, farewell!"
So, without wailing even to go up-stairs for anything belonging to
him, and with no further word on either side, Ralph Peden stepped
into the clear, sobering midnight, the chill air meeting him like
a wall. The stars had come out and were shining frosty-clear,
though it was June.
And as soon as he was gone out the minister fell on his knees, and
so continued all the night praying with his face to the earth.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
JOCK GORDON TAKES A HAND.
Whatever is too precious, too tender, too good, too evil, too
shameful, too beautiful for the day, happens in the night. Night
is the bath of life, the anodyne of heartaches, the silencer of
passions, the breeder of them too, the teacher of those who would
learn, the cloak that shuts a man in with his own soul. The seeds
of great deeds and great crimes are alike sown in the night. The
good Samaritan doeth his good by stealth; the wicked one cometh
and soweth his tares among the wheat. The lover and the lustful
person, the thief and the thinker, the preacher and the poacher,
are abroad in the night. In factories and mills, beside the
ceaseless whirl of machinery, stand men to whom day is night and
night day. In cities the guardians of the midnight go hither and
thither with measured step under the drizzling rain. No man cares
that they are lonely and cold. Yet, nevertheless, both light and
darkness, night and day, are but the accidents of a little time.
It is twilight--the twilight of the morning and of the gods--that
is the true normal of the universe. Night is but the shadow of the
earth, light the nearness of the central sun. But when the soul of
man goeth its way beyond the confines of the little multiplied
circles of the system of the sun, it passes at once into the dim
twilight of space, where for myriads of myriad miles there is only
the grey of the earliest God's gloaming, which existed just so or
ever the world was, and shall be when the world is not. Light and
dark, day and night, are but as the lights of a station at which
the train does not stop. They whisk past, gleaming bright but for
a moment, and the world which came out of great twilight plunges
again into it, perhaps to be remade and reillumined on some
eternal morning.
It is good for man, then, to be oftentimes abroad in the early
twilight of the morning. It is primeval-instinct with
possibilities of thought and action. Then, if at all, he will get
a glimpse into his soul that may hap to startle him. Judgment and
the face of God justly angry seem more likely and actual things
than they do in the city when the pavements are thronged and at
every turning some one is ready for good or evil to hail you
"fellow."
So Ralph Peden stepped out into the night, the sense of injustice
quick upon him. He had no plans, but only the quick resentments of
youth, and the resolve to stay no longer in a house where he was
an unwelcome guest. He felt that he had been offered the choice
between his career and unfaithfulness to the girl who had trusted
him. This was not quite so; but, with the characteristic one-
sidedness of youth, that was the way that he put the case to
himself.
It was the water-shed of day and night when Ralph set out from the
Dullarg manse. He had had no supper, but he was not hungry.
Naturally his feet carried him in the direction of the bridge,
whither he had gone on the previous evening and where amid an
eager press of thoughts he had waited and watched for his love.
When he got there he sat down on the parapet and looked to the
north. He saw the wimples of the lazy Grannoch Lane winding dimly
through their white lily beds. In the starlight the white cups
glimmered faintly up from their dark beds of leaves. Underneath
the bridge there was only a velvety blackness of shadow.
What to do was now the question. Plainly he must at once go to
Edinburgh, and see his father. That was the first certainty. But
still more certainly he must first see Winsome, and, in the light
of the morning and of her eyes, solve for her all the questions
which must have sorely puzzled her, at the same time resolving his
own perplexities. Then he must bid her adieu. Right proudly would
he go to carve out a way for her. He had no doubts that the
mastership in his old school, which Dr. Abel had offered him a
month ago, would still be at his disposal. That Winsome loved him
truly he did not doubt. He gave no thought to that. The cry across
the gulf of air from the high march dyke by the pines on the hill,
echoing down to the bridge in the valley of the Grannoch, had
settled that question once for all.
As he sat on the bridge and listened to the ripple of the Grannoch
lane running lightly over the shallows at the Stepping Stones, and
to the more distant roar of the falls of the Black Water, he
shaped out a course for himself and for Winsome. He had ceased to
call her Winsome Charteris. "She," he called her--the only she.
When next he gave her a surname he would call her Winsome Peden.
Instinctively he took off his hat at the thought, as though he had
opened a door and found himself light-heartedly and suddenly in a
church.
Sitting thus on the bridge alone and listening to the ocean-like
lapse of his own thoughts, as they cast up the future and the past
like pebbles at his feet, he had no more thought of fear for his
future than he had that first day at Craig Ronald, under the whin-
bushes on the ridge behind him, on that day of the blanket-washing
so many ages ago. He was so full of love that it had cast out
fear.
Suddenly out of the gloom beneath the bridge upon which he was
sitting, dangling his legs, there came a voice.
"Maister Ralph Peden, Maister Ralph Peden."
Ralph nearly fell backward over the parapet in his astonishment.
"Who is that calling on me?" he asked in wonder.
"Wha but juist daft Jock Gordon? The hangman haesna catchit him
yet, an' thank ye kindly--na, nor ever wull."
"Where are you, Jock, man?" said Ralph, willing to humour the
instrument of God.
"The noo I'm on the shelf o' the brig; a braw bed it maks, if it
is raither narrow. But graund practice for the narrow bed that
I'll get i' the Dullarg kirkyaird some day or lang, unless they
catch puir Jock and hang him. Na, na," said Jock with a canty kind
of content in his voice, "they may luik a lang while or they wad
think o' luikin' for him atween the foundation an' the spring o'
the airch. An' that's but yin o' Jock Gordon's hidie holes, an' a
braw an' guid yin it is. I hae seen this bit hole as fu' o'
pairtricks and pheasants as it could hand, an' a' the keepers and
their dowgs smellin', and them could na find it oot. Na, the water
taks awa' the smell."
"Are ye not coming out, Jock?" queried Ralph.
"That's as may be," said Jock briefly. "What do ye want wi' Jock?"
"Come up," said Ralph; "I shall tell you how ye can help me. Ye
ken that I helped you yestreen."
"Weel, ye gied me an unco rive aff that blackguard frae the
Castle, gin that was a guid turn, I ken na!"
So grumbling, Jock Gordon came to the upper level of the bridge,
paddling unconcernedly with his bare feet and ragged trousers
through the shallows.
"Weel, na--hae ye a snuff aboot ye, noo that I am here? No--dear
sirce, what wad I no do for a snuff?"
"Jock," said Ralph, "I shall have to walk to Edinburgh. I must
start in the morning."
"Ye'll hae plenty o' sillar, nae doot?" said Jock practically.
Ralph felt his pockets. In that wild place it was not his custom
to carry money, and he had not even the few shillings which were
in his purse at the manse.
"I am sorry to say," he said, "that I have no money with me."
"Then ye'll be better o' Jock Gordon wi' ye?" said Jock promptly.
Ralph saw that it would not do to be saddled with Jock in the
city, where it might be necessary for him to begin a new career
immediately; so he gently broke the difficulties to Jock.
"Deed na, ye needna be feared; Jock wadna set a fit in a toon.
There's ower mony nesty imps o' boys, rinnin' an' cloddin' stanes
at puir Jock, forby caa'in' him names. Syne he loses his temper
wi' them an' then he micht do them an injury an' get himsel' intil
the gaol. Na, na, when Jock sees the blue smoor o' Auld Reeky gaun
up into the lift he'll turn an' gae hame."
"Well, Jock," said Ralph, "it behooves me to see Mistress Winsome
before I go. Ye ken she and I are good friends."
"So's you an' me; but had puir Jock no cried up till ye, ye wad
hae gane aff to Embra withoot as muckle as 'Fairguide'en to ye,
Jock.'"
"Ah, Jock, but then you must know that Mistress Charteris and I
are lad and lass," he continued, putting the case as he conceived
in a form that would suit it to Jock's understanding.
"Lad an' lass! What did ye think Jock took ye for? This is nane o'
yer Castle tricks," he said; "mind, Jock can bite yet!"
Ralph laughed.
"No, no, Jock, you need not be feared. She and I are going to be
married some day before very long"--a statement made entirely
without authority.
"Hoot, hoot!" said Jock, "wull nocht ser' ye but that ava--a
sensible man like you? In that case ye'll hae seen the last o'
Jock Gordon. I canna be doin' wi' a gilravage o' bairns aboot a
hoose--"
"Jock," said Ralph earnestly, "will you help me to see her before
I go?"
"'Deed that I wull," said Jock, very practically. "I'll gaun an'
wauken her the noo!"
"You must not do that," said Ralph, "but perhaps if you knew where
Meg Kissock slept, you might tell her."
"Certes, I can that," said Jock; "I can pit my haund on her in a
meenit. But mind yer, when ye're mairret, dinna expect Jock Gordon
to come farther nor the back kitchen."
So grumbling, "It couldna be expeckit--I canna be doin' wi' bairns
ava'--"Jock took his way up the long loaning of Craig Ronald,
followed through the elderbushes by Ralph Peden.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE DEW OF THEIR YOUTH.
Jock made his way without a moment's hesitation to the little hen-
house which stood at one end of the farm steading of Craig Ronald.
Up this he walked with his semi-prehensile bare feet as easily as
though he were walking along the highway. Up to the rigging of the
house he went, then along it--setting one foot on one side and the
other on the other, turning in his great toes upon the coping for
support. Thus he came to the gable end at which Meg slept. Jock
leaned over the angle of the roof and with his hand tapped on the
window.