The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
"Wha's there? "said Meg from her bed, no more surprised than if
the knock had been upon the outer door at midday.
"It's me, daft Jock Gordon," said Jock candidly.
"Gae wa' wi' ye, Jock! Can ye no let decent fowk sleep in their
beds for yae nicht?"
"Ye maun get up, Meg," said Jock.
"An' what for should I get up?" queried Meg indignantly. "I had
ancuch o' gettin' up yestreen to last me a gye while."
"There's a young man here wantin' to coort your mistress!" said
Jock delicately.
"Haivers!" said Meg, "hae ye killed another puir man?"
"Na, na, he's honest--this yin. It's the young man frae the manse.
The auld carle o' a minister has turned him oot o' hoose an' hame,
and he's gaun awa' to Enbra'. He says he maun see the young
mistress afore he gangs--but maybe ye ken better, Meg."
"Gae wa' frae the wunda, Jock, and I'll get up," said Meg, with a
brevity which betokened the importance of the news.
In a little while Meg was in Winsome's room. The greyish light of
early morning was just peeping in past the little curtain. On the
chair lay the lilac-sprigged muslin dress of her grandmother's,
which Winsome had meant to put on next morning to the kirk. Her
face lay sideways on the pillow, and Meg could see that she was
softly crying even in her sleep. Meg stood over her a moment.
Something hard lay beneath Winsome's cheek, pressing into its soft
rounding. Meg tenderly slipped it out. It was an ordinary
memorandum-book written with curious signs. On the pillow by her
lay the lilac sunbonnet.
Meg put her arms gently round Winsome, saying:
"It's me, my lamb. It's me, your Meg!"
And Meg's cheek was pressed against that of Winsome, moist with
sleep. The sleeper stirred with a dovelike moaning, and opened her
eyes, dark with sleep and wet with the tears of dreams, upon Meg.
"Waken, my bonnie; Meg has something that she maun tell ye."
So Winsome looked round with the wild fear with which she now
started from all her sleeps; but the strong arms of her loyal Meg
were about her, and she only smiled with a vague wistfulness, and
said:
"It's you, Meg, my dear!"
So into her ear Meg whispered her tale. As she went on, Winsome
clasped her round the neck, and thrust her face into the neck of
Meg's drugget gown. This is the same girl who had set the
ploughmen their work and appointed to each worker about the farm
her task. It seems necessary to say so.
"Noo," said Meg, when she had finished, "ye ken whether ye want to
see him or no!"
"Meg," whispered Winsome, "can I let him go away to Edinburgh and
maybe never see me again, without a word?"
"Ye ken that best yersel'," said Meg with high impartiality, but
with her comforting arms very close about her darling.
"I think," said Winsome, the tears very near the lids of her eyes,
"that I had better not see him. I--I do not wish to see him--Meg,"
she said earnestly; "go and tell him not to see me any more, and
not to think of a girl like me--"
Meg went to Winsome's little cupboard wardrobe in the wall and
took down the old lilac-sprayed summer gown which she had worn
when she first saw Ralph Peden.
"Ye had better rise, my lassie, an' tak' that message yersel'!"
said Meg dryly.
So obediently Winsome rose. Meg helped her to dress, holding
silently her glimmering white garments for her as she had done
when first as a fairy child she came to Craig Ronald. Some of them
were a little roughly held, for Meg could not see quite so clearly
as usual. Also when she spoke her speech sounded more abruptly and
harshly than was its wont.
At last the girl's attire was complete, and Winsome stood ready
for her morning walk fresh as the dew on the white lilies. Meg
tied the strings of the old sunbonnet beneath her sweet chin, and
stepped back to look at the effect; then, with sudden impulsive
movement, she went tumultuously forward and kissed her mistress on
the cheek.
"I wush it was me!" she said, pushing Winsome from the room.
The day was breaking red in the east when Winsome stepped out upon
the little wooden stoop, damp with the night mist, which seemed
somehow strange to her feet. She stepped down, giving a little
familiar pat to the bosom of her dress, as though to advertise to
any one who might be observing that it was her constant habit thus
to walk abroad in the dawn.
Meg watched her as she went. Then she turned into the house to
stop the kitchen clock and out to lock the stable door.
Through the trees Winsome saw Ralph long before he saw her. She
was a woman; he was only a naturalist and a man. She drew the
sunbonnet a little farther over her eyes. He started at last,
turned, and came eagerly towards her.
Jock Gordon, who had remained about the farm, went quickly to the
gate at the end of the house as if to shut it.
"Come back oot o' that," said Meg sharply.
Jock turned quite as briskly.
"I was gaun to stand wi' my back til't, sae that they micht ken
there was naebody luikin'. D'ye think Jock Gordon haes nae
mainners?" he said indignantly.
"Staun wi' yer back to a creel o' peats, Jock; it'll fit ye
better!" ooserved Meg, giving him the wicker basket with the broad
leather strap which was used at Craig Ronald for bringing the
peats in from the stack.
Winsome had not meant to look at Ralph as she came up to him. It
seemed a bold and impossible thing for her ever again to come to
him. The fear of a former time was still strong upon her.
But as soon as she saw him, her eyes somehow could not leave his
face. He dropped his hat on the grass beneath, as he came forward
to meet her under the great branches of the oak-trees by the
little pond. She had meant to tell him that he must not touch her
--she was not to be touched; yet she went straight into his open
arms like a homing dove. Her great eyes, still dewy with the warm
light of love in them, never left his till, holding his love safe
in his arms, he drew her to him and upon her sweet lips took his
first kiss of love.
"At last!" he said, after a silence.
The sun was rising over the hills of heather. League after league
of the imperial colour rolled westward as the level rays of the
sun touched it.
"Now do you understand, my beloved?" said Ralph. Perhaps it was
the red light of the sun, or only some roseate tinge from the
miles of Galloway heather that stretched to the north, but it is
certain that there was a glow of more than earthly beauty on
Winsome's face as she stood up, still within his arms, and said:
"I do not understand at all, but I love you."
Then, because there is nothing more true and trustful than the
heart of a good woman, or more surely an inheritance from the
maid-mother of the sinless garden than her way of showing that she
gives her all, Winsome laid her either hand on her lover's
shoulders and drew his face down to hers--laying her lips to his
of her own free will and accord, without shame in giving, or
coquetry of refusal, in that full kiss of first surrender which a
woman may give once, but never twice, in her life.
This also is part of the proper heritage of man and woman, and
whoso has missed it may attain wealth or ambition, may exhaust the
earth--yet shall die without fully or truly living.
A moment they stood in silence, swaying a little like twin flowers
in the wind of the morning. Then taking hands like children, they
slowly walked away with their faces towards the sunrise. There was
the light of a new life in their eyes. It is good sometimes to
live altogether in the present. "Sufficient unto the day is the
good thereof," is a proverb in all respects equal to the
scriptural original.
For a little while they thus walked silently forward, and on the
crest of the ridge above the nestling farm Ralph paused to take
his last look of Craig Ronald. Winsome turned with him in complete
comprehension, though as yet he had told her no word of his
projects. Nor did she think of any possible parting, or of
anything save of the eyes into which she did not cease to look,
and the lover whose hand it was enough to hold. All true and pure
love is an extension of God--the gladness in the eyes of lovers,
the tears also, bridals and espousals, the wife's still happiness,
the delight of new-made homes, the tinkle of children's laughter.
It needs no learned exegete to explain to a true lover what John
meant when he said, "For God is love." These things are not gifts
of God, they are parts of him.
It was at this moment that Meg Kissock, having seen them stand a
moment still against the sky, and then go down from their hilltop
towards the north, unlocked the stable door, at which Ebie
Fairrish had been vainly hammering from within for a quarter of an
hour. Then she went indoors and pulled close the curtains of
Winsome's little room. She came out, locked the bedroom door, and
put the key in her pocket. Her mistress had a headache. Meg was a
treasure indeed, as a thoughtful person about a household often
is.
As Winsome and Ralph went down the farther slope of the hill,
towards the road that stretched away northward across the moors,
they fell to talking together very practically. They had much to
say. Before they had gone a mile the first strangeness had worn
off, and the stage of their intimacy may be inferred from the fact
that they were only at the edge of the great wood of Grannoch
bank, when Winsome reached the remark which undoubtedly Mother Eve
made to her husband after they had been some time acquainted:
"Do you know, I never thought I should talk to any one as I am
talking to you?"
Ralph allowed that it was an entirely wonderful thing--indeed, a
belated miracle. Strangely enough, he had experienced exactly the
same thought. "Was it possible?" smiled Winsome gladly, from under
the lilac sunbonnet.
Such wondrous and unexampled correspondence of impression proved
that they were made for one another, did it not? At this point
they paused. Exercise in the early morning is fatiguing. Only the
unique character of these refreshing experiences induces us to put
them on record.
Then Winsome and Ralph proceeded to other and not less
extraordinary discoveries. Sitting on a wind-overturned tree-
trunk, looking out from the edge of the fringing woods of the
Grannoch bank towards the swells of Cairnsmuir's green bosom, they
entered upon their position with great practicality. Nature, with
an unusual want of foresight, had neglected to provide a back to
this sylvan seat, so Ralph attended to the matter himself. This
shows that self-help is a virtue to be encouraged.
Ralph had some disinclination to speak of the terrors of the night
which had forever rolled away. Still, he felt that the matter must
be cleared up; so that it was with doubt in his mind that he
showed Winsome the written line which had taken him to the bridge
instead of to the hill gate.
"That's Jess Kissock's writing!" Winsome said at once. Ralph had
the same thought. So in a few moments they traced the whole plot
to its origin. It was a fit product of the impish brain of Jess
Kissock. Jess had sent the false note of appointment to Ralph by
Andra, knowing that he would be so exalted with the contents that
he would never doubt its accuracy. Then she had despatched Jock
Gordon with "Winsome's real letter to Greatorix Castle; in answer
to the supposed summons, which was genuine enough, though not
meant for him, Agnew Greatorix had come to the hill gate, and Jess
had met Ralph by the bridge to play her own cards as best she
could for herself.
"How wicked!" said Winsome, "after all."
"How foolish!" said Ralph, "to think for a moment that any one
could separate you and me."
But Winsome bethought herself how foolishly jealous she had been
when she found Jess putting a flower into Ralph's coat, and Jess's
plot did not look quite so impossible as before.