The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
young man, in one full eye-blink read his heart, then dropped her
eyes again and said:
"But I thought you liked lilac sunbonnets!"
Ralph Peden had now his turn to blush. Hardly in the secret of his
own heart had he said this thing. Only to Mr. Welsh had his
forgetful tongue uttered the word that was in his mind, and which
had covered since yesterday morn all the precepts of that most
superfluous wise woman, the mother of King Lemuel.
"Are you a witch?" asked Ralph, blundering as an honest and
bashful man may in times of distress into the boldest speech.
"You want to go up and see my grandmother, do you not?" said
Winsome, gravely, for such conversation was not to be continued on
any conditions.
"Yes," said the young man, perjuring himself with a readiness and
facility most unbecoming in a student desiring letters of
probation from the Protesting and Covenant-keeping Kirk of the
Marrow.
Ralph Peden lightly picked up the books, which, as Winsome knew,
were some considerable weight to carry.
"Do you find them quite safe?" she asked.
"There was a heavy dew last night," he answered, "but in spite of
it they seem quite dry.
"We often notice the same thing on Loch Grannoch side," said
Winsome.
"I thought--that is, I was under the impression--that I had left a
small book with some manuscript notes!" said the young man,
tentatively.
"It may have dropped among the broom," replied the simple maid.
Whereupon the two set to seeking, both bareheaded, brown cropped
head and golden wilderness of tresses not far from one another,
while the "book of manuscript notes" rose and fell to the
quickened heart-beating of that wicked and deceitful girl, Winsome
Charteris.
CHAPTER VI.
CURLED EYELASHES.
Now Meg Kissock could stand a great deal, and she would put up
with a great deal to pleasure her mistress; but half an hour of
loneliness down by the washing was overly much for her, and the
struggle between loyalty and curiosity ended, after the manner of
her sex, in the victory of the latter.
As Ralph and Winsome continued to seek, they came time and again
close together and the propinquity of flushed cheek and mazy
ringlet stirred something in the lad's heart which had never been
touched by the Mistresses Thriepneuk, who lived where the new
houses of the Plainstones look over the level meadows of the
Borough Muir. His father had often said within himself, as he
walked the Edinburgh streets to visit some sick kirk member, as he
had written to his friend Adam Welsh, "Has the lad a heart?" Had
he seen him on that broomy knowe over the Grannoch water, he had
not doubted, though he might well have been fearful enough of that
heart's too sudden awakening.
Never before had the youth come within that delicate AURA of charm
which radiates from the bursting bud of the finest womanhood.
Ralph Peden had kept his affections ascetically virgin. His
nature's finest juices had gone to feed the brain, yet all the
time his heart had waited expectant of the revealing of a mystery.
Winsome Charteris had come so suddenly into his life that the
universe seemed newborn in a day. He sprang at once from the
thought of woman as only an unexplained part of the creation, to
the conception of her (meaning thereby Winsome Charteris) as an
angel who had not lost her first estate.
It was a strange thing for Ralph Peden, as indeed it is to every
true man, to come for the first time within the scope of the
unconscious charms of a good girl. There is, indeed, no better
solvent of a cold nature, no better antidote to a narrow
education, no better bulwark of defence against frittering away
the strength and solemnity of first love, than a sudden, strong
plunge into its deep waters.
Like timid bathers, who run a little way into the tide and then
run out again with ankles wet, fearful of the first chill, many
men accustom themselves to love by degrees. So they never taste
the sweetness and strength of it as did Ralph Peden in these days,
when, never having looked upon a maid with the level summer
lightning of mutual interest flashing in his eyes, he plunged into
love's fathomless mysteries as one may dive upon a still day from
some craggy platform among the westernmost isles into Atlantic
depths.
Winsome's light summer dress touched his hand and thrilled the lad
to his remotest nerve centres. He stood light-headed, taking in as
only they twain looked over the loch with far-away eyes, that
subtle fragrance, delicate and free, which like a garment clothed
the maid of the Grannoch lochside.
"The water's on the boil," cried Meg Kissock, setting her ruddy
shock of hair and blooming, amplified, buxom form above the knoll,
wringing at the same time the suds from her hands, "an' I canna
lift it aff mysel'."
Her mistress looked at her with a sudden suspicion. Since when had
Meg grown so feeble?
"We had better go down," she said simply, turning to Ralph, who
would have cheerfully assented had she suggested that they
should together walk into the loch among the lily beds. It was the
"we" that overcame him. His father had used the pronoun in quite a
different sense. "WE will take the twenty-ninth chapter of second
Chronicles this morning, Ralph--what do WE understand by this
peculiar use of VAV CONVERSIVE?"
But it was quite another thing when Winsome Charteris said simply,
as though he had been her brother:
"We had better go down!"
So they went down, taking the little stile at which Winsome had
meditated over the remarks of Ralph Peden concerning the creation
of Eve upon their way. Meg Kissock led the van, and took the dyke
vigorously without troubling the steps, her kirtle fitting her for
such exercises. Winsome came next, and Ralph stood aside to let
her pass. She sprang up the low steps light as a feather, rested
her fingertips for an appreciable fraction of a second on the hand
which he instinctively held out, and was over before he realized
that anything had happened. Yet it seemed that in that contact,
light as a rose-leaf blown by the winds of late July against his
cheek, his past life had been shorn clean away from all the future
as with a sharp sword.
Ralph Peden had dutifully kissed his cousins Jemima, Kezia, and
Kerenhappuch; but, on the whole, he had felt more pleasure when he
had partaken of the excellent bannocks prepared for him by the
fair hands of Kerenhappuch herself. But this was wholly a new
thing. His breath came suddenly short. He breathed rapidly as
though to give his lungs more air. The atmosphere seemed to have
grown rarer and colder. Indeed, it was a different world, and the
blanket-washing itself was transferred to some deliciously homely
outlying annex of paradise.
Yet it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should
be helping this girl, and he went forward with the greatest
assurance to lift the black pot off the fire for her. The keen,
acrid swirls of wood-smoke blew into his eyes, and the rank steam
of yellow home-made soap, manufactured with bracken ash for lye,
rose to his nostrils. Now, Ralph Peden was well made and strong.
Spare in body but accurately compacted, if he had ever struggled
with anything more formidable than the folio hide-hound Calvins
and Turretins on his father's lower shelf in James's Court, he had
been no mean antagonist.
But, though he managed with a great effort to lift the black pot
off its gypsy tripod, he would have let the boiling contents swing
dangerously against his legs had not Winsome caught sharply at his
other hand and leaned over, so balancing the weight of the boiling
water. So they walked down the path to where the tubs stood under
the shade of the great ash-trees, with their sky-tossing, dry-
rustling leaves. There Ralph set his burden down. Meg Kissock had
been watching him keenly. She saw that he had severely burned his
hand, and also that he said nothing whatever about it. He was a
man. This gained for the young man Meg's hearty approval almost as
much as his bashfulness and native good looks. What Meg Kissock
did not know was that Ralph was altogether unconscious of the
wound in his hand. It was a deeper wound which was at that time
monopolising his thoughts. But this little incident was more than
a thousand certificates in the eyes of Meg Kissock, and Meg's
friendship was decidedly worth cultivating. Even for its own sake
she did not give it lightly.
Before Winsome Charteris could release her hand, Ralph turned and
said:
"Do you know you have not yet told me your name?"
Winsome did know it very well, but she only said, "My name is
Winsome Charteris, and this is Meg Kissock."
"Winsome Charteris, Winsome Charteris," said Ralph's heart over
and over again, and he had not even the grace to say "Thank you";
but Meg stepped up to shake him by the hand.
"I'm braw an' prood to ken ye, sir," said Meg. "That muckle sumph
[stupid], Saunders Mowdiewort, telled me a' aboot ye comin' an'
the terrible store o' lear [learning] ye hae. He's the minister's
man, ye ken, an' howks the graves ower by at the parish kirk-yard,
for the auld betheral there winna gang ablow three fit deep, and
them that haes ill-tongued wives to haud doon disna want ony
mistake--"
"Meg," said her mistress, "do not forget yourself."
"Deil a fear," said Meg; "it was auld Sim o' Glower-ower-'em, the
wizened auld hurcheon [hedgehog], that set a big thruch stane ower
his first wife; and when he buried his second in the neist grave,
he just turned the broad flat stone. 'Guid be thankit!' he says,
'I had the forethocth to order a stane heavy eneuch to hand them
baith doon!'"
"Get to the washing, Meg," said Winsome.
"Fegs!" returned Meg, "ye waur in nae great hurry yersel' doon aff
the broomy knowe! What's a' the steer sae sudden like?"
Winsome disdained an answer, but stood to her own tub, where some
of the lighter articles--pillow-slips, and fair sheets of
"seventeen-hundred" linen were waiting her daintier hand.
As Winsome and Meg washed, Ralph Peden carried water, learning the
wondrous science of carrying two cans over a wooden hoop; and in
the frankest tutelage Winsome put her hand over his to teach him,
and the relation of master and pupil asserted its ancient danger.
It had not happened to Winsome Charteris to meet any one to whom
she was attracted with such frank liking. She had never known what
it was to have a brother, and she thought that this clear-eyed
young man might be a brother to her. It is a fallacy common among
girls that young men desire them as sisters. Ralph himself was
under no such illusion, or at least would not have been, had he
had the firmness of mind to sit down half a mile from his emotions
and coolly look them over. But in the meanwhile he was only
conscious of a great and rising delight in his heart.
As Winsome Charteris bent above the wash-tub he was at liberty to
observe how the blood mantled on the clear oval of her cheek. He
had time to note--of course entirely as a philosopher--the pale
purple shadow under the eyes, over which the dark, curling lashes
came down like the fringe of the curtain of night.
"Why--I wonder why?" he said, and stopped aghast at his utterance
aloud of his inmost thought.
"What do you wonder?" said Winsome, glancing up with a frank dewy
freshness in her eyes.
"I wonder why--I wonder that you are able to do all this work," he
said, with an attempt to turn the corner of his blunder.
Winsome shook her head.
"Now you are trying to be like other people," she said; "I do not
think you will succeed. That was not what you were going to say.
If you are to be my friend, you must speak all the truth to me and
speak it always." A thing which, indeed, no man does to a woman.
And, besides, nobody had spoken of Ralph Peden being a friend to