The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
"Have you enough money?"
Ralph blushed and looked most unhappy, for the first time since
the sun rose.
"I have none at all," he said; "my father only gave me the money
for my journey to the Dullarg, and Mr. Welsh was to provide me
what was necessary--" He stopped here, it seemed such a hard and
shameful thing to say. "I have never had anything to do with
money," he said, hanging down his head.
Now Winsome, who was exceedingly practical in this matter, went
forward to him quickly and put an arm upon his shoulder.
"My poor boy!" she said, with the tenderest and sweetest
expression on her face. And again Ralph Peden perceived that there
are things more precious than much money.
"Now bend your head and let me whisper." It was already bent, but
it was in his ear that Winsome wished to speak.
"No, no, indeed I cannot, Winsome, my love; I could not, indeed,
and in truth I do not need it."
Winsome dropped her arms and stepped back tragically. She put one
hand over the other upon her breast, and turned half way from him.
"Then you do not love me," she said, purely as a coercive measure.
"I do, I do--you know that I do; but I could not take it," said
Ralph, piteously.
"Well, good-bye, then," said Winsome, without holding out her
hand, and turning away.
"You do not mean it; Winsome, you cannot be cruel, after all. Come
back and sit down. We shall talk about it, and you will see--"
Winsome paused and looked at him, standing so piteously. She says
now that she really meant to go away, but she smiles when she says
it, as if she did not quite believe the statement herself. But
something--perhaps the look in his eyes, and the thought that,
like herself, he had never known a mother--made her turn. Going
back, she took his hand and laid it against her cheek.
"Ralph," she said, "listen to me; if _I_ needed help and had none
I should not be proud; I would not quarrel with you when you
offered to help me. No, I would even ask you for it! BUT THEN I
LOVE YOU." It was hardly fair. Winsome acknowledges as much
herself; but then a woman has no weapons but her wit and her
beauty--which is, seeing the use she can make of these two, on the
whole rather fortunate than otherwise.
Ralph looked eager and a little frightened.
"Would you do that really?" he asked eagerly.
"Of course I should!" replied Winsome, a little indignantly.
Ralph took her in his arms, and in such a masterful way, that
first she was frightened and then she was glad. It is good to feel
weak in the arms of a strong man who loves you. God made it so
when he made all things well.
"My lassie!" said Ralph for all comment.
Then fell a silence so prolonged that a shy squirrel in the boughs
overhead resumed his researches upon the tassels and young shoots
of the pine-tops, throwing down the debris in a contemptuous
manner upon Winsome and Ralph, who stood below, listening to the
beating of each other's hearts.
Finally Winsome, without moving, produced apparently from regions
unknown a long green silk purse with three silver rings round the
middle.
As she put it into Ralph's hand, something doubtful started again
into his eyes, but Winsome looked so fierce in a moment, and so
decidedly laid a finger on his lips, that perforce he was silent.
As soon as he had taken it, Winsome clapped her hands (as well as
was at the time possible for her--it seemed, indeed, altogether
impossible to an outsider, yet it was done), and said:
"You are not sorry, dear--you are glad?" with interrogatively
arched eyebrows.
"Yes," said Ralph, "I am very glad." As indeed he might well be.
"You see," said the wise young woman, "it is this way: all that is
my very own. _I_ am your very own, so what is in the purse is your
very own."
Logic is great--greatest when the logician is distractingly
pretty; then, at least, it is sure to prevail--unless, indeed, the
opponent be blind, or another woman. This is why they do not
examine ladies orally in logic at the great colleges.
We have often tried to recover Ralph's reply, but the text is
corrupt at this place, the context entirely lost. Experts suspect
a palimpsest.
Perhaps we linger overly long on the records; but there is so much
called love in the world, which is no love, that there may be some
use in dwelling upon the histories of a love which was fresh and
tender, sweet and true. It is at once instruction for the young,
and for the older folk a cast back into the days that were. If to
any it is a mockery or a scorning, so much the worse--for of them
who sit in the scorner's chair the doom is written.
Winsome and Ralph walked on into the eye of the day, hand in hand,
as was their wont. They crossed the dreary moor, which yet is not
dreary when you came to look at it on such a morning as this.
The careless traveller glancing at it as he passed might call it
dreary; but in the hollows, miniature lakes glistened, into which
the tiny spurs of granite ran out flush with the water like
miniature piers. The wind of the morning waking, rippled on the
lakelets, and blew the bracken softly northward. The heather was
dark rose purple, the "ling" dominating the miles of moor; for the
lavender-grey flush of the true heather had not yet broken over
the great spaces of the south uplands.
So their feet dragged slower as they drew near to that spot where
they knew they must part. There was no thought of going back.
There was even little of pain.
Perfect love had done its work. All frayed and secondhand loves
may be made ashamed by the fearlessness of these two walking to
their farewell trysting-place, lonely amid the world of heather.
Only daft Jock Gordon above them, like a jealous scout, scoured
the heights--sometimes on all-fours, sometimes bending double,
with his long arms swinging like windmills, scaring even the sheep
and the deer lest they should come too near. Overhead there was
nothing nearer them than the blue lift, and even that had
withdrawn itself infinitely far away, as though the angels
themselves did not wish to spy on a later Eden. It was that
midsummer glory of love-time, when grey Galloway covers up its
flecked granite and becomes a true Purple Land.
If there be a fairer spot within the four seas than this fringe of
birch-fringed promontory which juts into westernmost Loch Ken, I
do not know it. Almost an island, it is set about with the tiniest
beaches of white sand. From the rocks that look boldly up the loch
the heather and the saxifrage reflect themselves in the still
water. To reach it Winsome led Ralph among the scented gall-bushes
and bog myrtle, where in the marshy meadows the lonely grass of
Parnassus was growing. Pure white petals, veined green, with
spikelets of green set in the angles within, five-lobed broidery
of daintiest gold stitching, it shone with so clear a presage of
hope that Ralph stooped to pick it that he might give it to
Winsome.
She stopped him.
"Do not pull it," she said; "leave it for me to come and look at--
when--when you are gone. It will soon wither if it is taken away;
but give me some of the bog myrtle instead," she added, seeing
that Ralph looked a little disappointed.
Ralph gathered some of the narrow, brittle, fragrant leaves.
Winsome carefully kept half for herself, and as carefully inserted
a spray in each pocket of his coat.
"There, that will keep you in mind of Galloway!" she said. And
indeed the bog myrtle is the characteristic smell of the great
world of hill and moss we call by that name. In far lands the mere
thought of it has brought tears to the eyes unaccustomed, so close
do the scents and sights of the old Free Province--the lordship of
the Picts--wind themselves about the hearts of its sons.
"We transplant badly, we plants of the hills. You must come back
to me," said Winsome, after a pause of wondering silence.
Loch Ken lay like a dream in the clear dispersed light of the
morning, the sun shimmering upon it as through translucent ground
glass. Teal and moor-hen squattered away from the shore as Winsome
and Ralph climbed the brae, and stood looking northward over the
superb levels of the loch. On the horizon Cairnsmuir showed golden
tints through his steadfast blue.
Whaups swirled and wailed about the rugged side of Bennan above
their heads. Across the loch there was a solitary farm so
beautifully set that Ralph silently pointed it out to Winsome, who
smiled and shook her head.
"The Shirmers has just been let on a nineteen years' lease," she
said, "eighteen to run."
So practical was the answer, that Ralph laughed, and the strain of
his sadness was broken. He did not mean to wait eighteen years for
her, fathers or no fathers.
Then beyond, the whole land leaped skyward in great heathery
sweeps, save only here and there, where about some hill farm the
little emerald crofts and blue-green springing oatlands clustered
closest. The loch spread far to the north, sleeping in the
sunshine. Burnished like a mirror it was, with no breath upon it.
In the south the Dee water came down from the hills peaty and
brown. The roaring of its rapids could faintly be heard. To the
east, across the loch, an island slept in the fairway, wooded to
the water's edge.
It were a good place to look one's last on the earth, this wooded
promontory, which might indeed have been that mountain, though a
little one, from which was once seen all the kingdoms of the earth
and the glory of them. For there are no finer glories on the earth
than red heather and blue loch, except only love and youth.
So here love and youth had come to part, between the heather that
glowed on the Bennan Hill and the sapphire pavement of Loch Ken.
For a long time Winsome and Ralph were silent--the empty interior
sadness, mixed of great fear and great hunger, beginning to grip
them as they stood. Lives only just twined and unified were again
to twain. Love lately knit was to be torn asunder. Eyes were to
look no more into the answering eloquence of other eyes.
"I must go," said Ralph, looking down into his betrothed's face.
"Stay only a little," said Winsome. "It is the last time."
So he stayed.
Strange, nervous constrictions played at "cat's cradle" about
their hearts. Vague noises boomed and drummed in their ears,
making their own words sound strange and empty, like voices heard
in a dream.
"Winsome!" said Ralph.
"Ralph!" said Winsome.
"You will never for a moment forget me?" said Winsome Charteris.
"You will never for a moment forget me?" said Ralph Peden.
The mutual answer taken and given, after a long silence of soul
and body in not-to-be-forgotten communion, they drew apart.
Ralph went a little way down the birch-fringed hill, but turned to
look a last look. Winsome was standing where he had left her.
Something in her attitude told of the tears steadily falling upon
her summer dress. It was enough and too much.
Ralph ran back quickly.
"I cannot go away, Winsome. I cannot bear to leave you like this!"
Winsome looked at him and fought a good fight, like the brave girl
she was. Then she smiled through her tears with the sudden
radiance of the sun upon a showery May morning when the white
hawthorn is coming out.
At this a sob, dangerously deep, rending and sudden, forced itself
from Ralph's throat. Her smile was infinitely more heart-breaking
than her tears. Ralph uttered a kind of low inarticulate roar at
the sight--being his impotent protest against his love's pain. Yet
such moments are the ineffaceable treasures of life, had he but
known it. Many a man's deeds follow his vows simply because his
lips have tasted the salt water of love's ocean upon the face of
the beloved.
"Be brave, Winsome," said Ralph; "it shall not be for long."
Yet she was braver than he, had he but known it; for it is the