Books: The Lilac Sunbonnet
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S.R. Crockett >> The Lilac Sunbonnet
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"Ye're a nice boy comin' to yer bed at this time o' the mornin',"
said Jock Forrest from his bunk at the other side.
"Nicht-wanderin' bairns needs skelpin'!" remarked Jock Gordon, who
had taken up his abode in a vacant stall beneath.
"Sleep yer ain sleeps, ye pair o' draft-sacks, in yer beds,"
answered Ebie Farrish without heat and simply as a conversational
counter.
He did not know that he was quoting the earliest English classic.
He had never heard of Chaucer.
"What wad Jess say?" continued Jock Forrest, sleepily.
"Ask her," said Ebie sharply.
"At any rate, I'm no gaun to be disturbit in my nicht's rest wi'
the like o' you, Ebie Farrish! Ye'll eyther come hame in time o'
nicht, or ye'll sleep elsewhere--up at the Crae, gin ye like."
"Mind yer ain business," retorted Ebie, who could think of nothing
else to say.
Down below daft Jock Gordon, with some dim appropriateness was
beginning his elricht croon of--
"The devil sat on his ain lum-tap,
Hech how--black and reeky--"
when Jock Forrest, out of all patience, cried out down to him:
"Jock Gordon, gin ye begin yer noise at twa o'clock i' the mornin'
I'll come down an' pit ye i' the mill-dam!"
"Maybes ye'll be cryin' for me to pit you i' the mill-dam some
warm day!" said Jock Gordon grimly, "but I'se do naething o' the
kind. I'll een bank up the fires an' gie ye a turn till ye're weel
brandered. Ye'll girn for mill-dams then, I'm thinkin'!"
So, grumbling and threatening in his well-accustomed manner, Jock
Gordon returned to the wakeful silence which he kept during the
hours usually given to sleep. It was said, however, that he never
really slept. Indeed, Ebie and Jock were ready to take their oath
that they never went up and down that wooden ladder, from which
three of the rounds were missing, without seeing Jock Gordon's
eyes shining like a cat's out of the dark of the manger where,
like an ape, he sat all night cross-legged.
CHAPTEK XXII.
A SCARLET POPPY.
IT was early afternoon at Craig Ronald. Afternoon is quite a
different time from morning at a farm. Afternoon is slack-water in
the duties of the house, at least for the womenfolk--except in hay
and harvest, when it is full flood tide all the time, night and
day. But when we consider that the life of a farm town begins
about four in the morning, it will be readily seen that afternoon
comes far on in the day indeed for such as have tasted the
freshness of the morning.
In the morning, Winsome had seen that every part of her farm
machinery was going upon well-oiled wheels. She had consulted her
honorary factor, who, though a middle-aged man and a bachelor of
long and honourable standing, enrolled himself openly and avowedly
in the army of Winsome's admirers. He used to ask every day what
additions had been made to the list of her conquests, and took
much interest in the details of her costume. This last she mostly
devised for herself with taste which was really a gift natural to
her, but which seemed nothing less than miraculous to the maidens
and wives of a parish which had its dressmaking done according to
the canons of an art which the Misses Crumbcloth, mantua-makers at
the Dullarg village, had learned twenty-five years before, once
for all.
Now it was afternoon, and Winsome was once more at the bake-board.
There were few things that Winsome liked better to do, and she
daily tried the beauty of her complexion before the open
fireplace, though her grandmother ineffectually suggested that Meg
Kissock would do just as well.
While Winsome was rubbing her hands with dry meal, before
beginning, she became conscious that some one was coming up the
drive. So she was not at all astonished when a loud knock in the
stillness of the afternoon echoed through the empty house and far
down the stone passages.
It was Ralph Peden who knocked, as indeed she did not need to tell
herself. She called, however, to Meg Kissock.
"Meg," she said, "there is the young minister come to see my
grandmother. Go and show him into the parlour."
Meg looked at her mistress. Her reply was irrelevant. "I was born
on a Friday," she said.
But notwithstanding she went, and received the young man. She took
him into the parlour, where he was set down among strange voluted
foreign shells with a pink flush within the wide mouth of every
one of them. Here there was a scent of lavender and subtle
essences in the air, and a great stillness. While he sat waiting,
he could hear afar off the sound of rippling water. It struck a
little chill over him that, after the letter he had sent, Winsome
should not have come to greet him herself. From this he argued the
worst. She might be offended, or--still more fatal thought--she
and Meg might be laughing over it together.
A tall, slim girl entered the quiet parlour with a silent, catlike
tread. She was at his side before he knew it. It was the girl whom
he had met on his way to the Manse the first day of his arrival.
Jess's experience as a maid to her ladyship has stood her in good
stead. She had a fineness of build which even the housework of a
farm could not coarsen. Besides, Winsome considered Jess delicate,
and did not allow her to lift anything really heavy. So it
happened that when Ralph Peden came Jess was putting the fresh
flowers in the great bowls of low relief chinaware--roses from
the garden and sprays of white hawthorn, which flowers late in
Galloway, blue hyacinths and harebells massed together--yellow
marigolds and glorious scarlet poppies, of which Jess with her
taste of the savage was passionately fond. She had arranged some
of these against a pale blue background of bunches of forget-me-
nots, with an effect strangely striking in that cool, dusky room.
When Jess came in Ralph had risen instinctively. He shook hands
heartily with her. As she looked up at him, she said:
"Do you remember me?"
Ralph replied with an eager frankness, all the more marked that he
had expected Winsome instead of Jess Kissock: "Indeed, how could I
forget, when you helped me to carry my books that night? I am glad
to find you here. I had no idea that you lived here."
Which was indeed true, for he had not yet been able to grasp the
idea that any but Winsome lived at Craig Ronald.
Jess Kissock, who knew that not many moments were hers before Meg
might come in, replied:
"I am here to help with the house. Meg Kissock is my sister." She
looked to see if there was anything in Ralph's eyes she could
resent; but a son of the Marrow kirk had not been trained to
respect of persons.
"I am sure you will help very much," he said, politely.
"I'm not as strong as my sister, you see, so that I'm generally in
the house," said Jess, who was carrying two dishes of flowers at
once across the room. At Ralph's feet one of them overset, and
poured all its wealth of blue and white and splashed crimson over
the floor.
Jess stooped to lift them, crying shame on her own awkwardness.
Ralph kindly assisted her. As they stooped to gather them
together, Jess put forward all her attractions. Her lithe grace
never showed to more advantage. Yet, for all the impression she
made on Ralph, she might as well have wasted her sweetness on Jock
Gordon--indeed, better so, for Jock recognized in her something
strangely kin to his own wayward spirit.
When the flowers were all gathered and put back:
"Now you shall have one for helping," said Jess, as she had once
seen a lady in England do, and she selected a dark-red, velvety
damask rose from the wealth which she had cut and brought out of
the garden. Standing on tiptoe, she could scarcely reach his
button-hole.
"Bend down," she said. Obediently Ralph bent, good-humouredly
patient, to please this girl who had done him a good turn on that
day which now seemed so far away--the day that had brought Craig
Ronald and Winsome into his life.
But in spite of his stooping, Jess had some difficulty in pinning
in the rose, and in order to steady herself on tiptoe, she reached
up and laid a staying hand on his shoulder. As he bent down, his
face just touched the crisp fringes of her dark hair, which seemed
a strange thing to him.
But a sense of another presence in the room caused him to raise
his eyes, and there in the doorway stood Winsome Charteris,
looking so pale and cold that she seemed to be a thousand miles
away.
"I bid you good-afternoon, Master Peden," said Winsome quietly; "I
am glad you have had time to come and visit my grandmother. She
will be glad to see you."
For some moments Ralph had no words to answer. As for Jess, she
did not even colour; she simply withdrew with the quickness and
feline grace which were characteristic of her, without a flush or
a tremor. It was not on such occasions that her heart stirred.
When she was gone she felt that things had gone well, even beyond
her expectation.
When Ralph at last found his voice, he said somewhat falteringly,
yet with a ring of honesty in his voice which for the time being
was lost upon Winsome:
"You are not angry with me for coming to-day. You knew I would
come, did you not?"
Winsome only said: "My grandmother is waiting for me. You had
better go in at once."
"Winsome," said Ralph, trying to prolong the period of his
converse with her, "you are not angry with me for writing what I
did?"
Winsome thought that he was referring to the poem which had come
to her by way of Manse Bell and Saunders Mowdiewort. She was
indignant that he should try to turn the tables upon her and so
make her feel guilty.
"I received nothing that I had any right to keep," she said.
Ralph was silent. The blow was a complete one. She did not wish
him to write to her any more or to speak to her on the old terms
of friendship. He thought wholly of the letter that he had sent by
Saunders the day before, and her coldness and changed attitude
were set down by him to that cause, and not to the embarrassing
position in which Winsome had surprised him when she came into the
flower-strewn parlour. He did not know that the one thing a woman
never really forgives is a false position, and that even the best
of women in such cases think the most unjust things. Winsome moved
towards the inner door of her grandmother's room.
Ralph put out his hand as if to touch hers, but Winsome withdrew
herself with a swift, fierce movement, and held the door open for
him to pass in. He had no alternative but to obey.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCERNING JOHN BAIRDIESON.
"Guid e'en to ye, Maister Ralph," said the gay old lady within, as
soon as she caught sight of Ralph. "Keep up yer heid, man, an'
walk like a Gilchrist. Ye look as dowie as a yow [ewe] that has
lost her lammie."
Walter Skirving from his arm-chair gave this time no look of
recognition. He yielded his hand to Ralph, who raised it clay-
chill and heavy even in the act to shake. When he let it drop, the
old man held up his palm and looked at it.
"Hae ye gotten aneuch guid Gallawa' lear to learn ye no to rin awa
frae a bonny lass yet, Maister Ralph?" said the old lady briskly.
She had not many jokes save with Winsome and Meg, and she rode one
hard when she came by it.
But no reply was needed.
"Aye, aye, weelna," meditated the old lady, leaning back and
folding her hands like a mediaeval saint of worldly tendencies,
"tell me aboot your faither." "He is very robust and strong in
health of body," said Kalph.
"Ye leeve in Edinbra'?" said the old lady, with a rising
inflection of inquiry.
"Yes," said Ralph, "we live in James's Court. My father likes to
be among his people."
"Faith na, a hantle o' braw folk hae leeved in James's Court in
their time. I mind o' the Leddy Partan an' Mistress Girnigo, the
king's jeweller's wife haein' a fair even-doon fecht a' aboot wha
was to hae the pick o' the hooses on the stair.--Winifred, ma
lassie, come here an' sit doon! Dinna gang flichterin' in an' oot,
but bide still an' listen to what Maister Peden has to tell us
aboot his farther."
Winsome came somewhat slowly and reluctantly towards the side of
her grandmother's chair. There she sat holding her hand, and
looking across the room towards the window where, motionless and
abstracted, Walter Skirving, who was once so bold and strong,
dreamed his life away.
"I hardly know what to tell you first," said Ralph, hesitatingly.
"Hoot, tell me gin your faither and you bide thegither withoot ony
woman body, did I no hear that yince; is that the case na?"
demanded the lady of Craig Ronald with astonishing directness.
"It is true enough," said Ralph, smiling, "but then we have with
us my father's old Minister's Man, John Bairdieson. John has us
both in hands and keeps us under fine. He was once a sailor, and
cook on a vessel in his wild days; but when he was converted by
falling from the top of a main yard into a dock (as he tells
himself), he took the faith in a somewhat extreme form. But that
does not affect his cooking. He is as good as a woman in a house."
"An' that's a lee," said the old lady. "The best man's no as guid
as the warst woman in a hoose!"
Winsome did not appear to be listening. Of what interest could
such things be to her?
Her grandmother was by no means satisfied with Ralph's report.
"But that's nae Christian way for folk to leeve, withoot a woman
o' ony kind i' the hoose--it's hardly human!"
"But I can assure you, Mistress Skirving, that, in spite of what
you say, John Bairdieson does very well for us. He is, however,
terribly jealous of women coming about. He does not allow one of
them within the doors. He regards them fixedly through the keyhole
before opening, and when he does open, his usual greeting to them
is, 'Noo get yer message dune an' be gaun!'"
The lady of Craig Ronald laughed a hearty laugh.
"Gin I cam' to veesit ye I wad learn him mainners! But what does
he do," she continued, "when some of the dames of good standing in
the congregation call on your faither? Does he treat them in this
cavalier way?"
"In that case," said Ralph, "John listens at my father's door to
hear if he is stirring. If there be no sign, John says, 'The
minister's no in, mem, an' I could not say for certain when he
wull be!' Once my father came out and caught him in the act, and
when he charged John with telling a deliberate lie to a lady, John
replied, 'A'weel, it'll tak' a lang while afore we mak' up for the
aipple!'"
It is believed that John Bairdieson here refers to Eve's fatal
gift to Adam.
"John Bairdieson is an ungallant man. It'll be from him that ye
learned to rin awa'," retorted the old lady.
"Grandmother," interrupted Winsome, who had suffered quite enough
from this, "Master Peden has come to see you, and to ask how you
find yourself to-day."
"Aye, aye, belike, belike--but Maister Ralph Peden has the power
o' his tongue, an' gin that be his errand he can say as muckle for
himsel'. Young fowk are whiles rale offcecious!" she said, turning
to Ralph with the air of an appeal to an equal from the
unaccountabilities of a child.
Winsome lifted some stray flowers that Jess Kissock had dropped
when she sped out of the room, and threw them out of the window
with an air of disdain. This to some extent relieved her, and she
felt better. It surprised Ralph, however, who, being wholly
innocent and unembarrassed by the recent occurrence, wondered
vaguely why she did it.
"Noo tell me mair aboot your faither," continued Mistress
Skirving. "I canna mak' oot whaur the Marrow pairt o' ye comes in
--I suppose when ye tak' to rinnin' awa'."
"Grandmammy, your pillows are not comfortable; let me sort them
for you."
Winsome rose and touched the old lady's surroundings in a manner
that to Ralph was suggestive of angels turning over the white-
bosomed clouds. Then Ralph looked at his pleasant querist to find
out if he were expected to go on. The old lady nodded to him with
an affectionate look.
"Well," said Ralph, "my father is like nobody else. I have missed
my mother, of course, but my father has been like a mother for
tenderness to me."
"Yer grandfaither, auld Ralph Gilchrist, was sore missed. There
was thanksgiving in the parish for three days after he died!" said
the old lady by way of an anticlimax.
Winsome looked very much as if she wished to say something, which
brought down her grandmother's wrath upon her.
"Noo, lassie, is't you or me that's haein' a veesit frae this
young man? Ye telled me juist the noo that he had come to see me.
Then juist let us caa' oor cracks, an' say oor says in peace."
Thus admonished, Winsome was silent. But for the first time she
looked at Ralph with a smile that had half an understanding in it,
which made that yonng man's heart leap. He answered quite at
random for the next few moments.
"About my father--yes, he always takes up the Bibles when John
Bairdieson preaches."
"What!" said the old lady.
"I mean, John Bairdieson takes up the Bibles for him when he
preaches, and as he shuts the door, John says over the railing in
a whisper,'Noo, dinna be losin' the Psalms, as ye did this day
three weeks'; or perhaps,'Be canny on this side o' the poopit; the
hinge is juist pitten on wi' potty [putty];' whiles John will walk
half-way down the kirk, and then turn to see if my father has sat
quietly down according to instructions. This John has always done
since the day when some inward communing overcame my father before
he began his sermon, and he stood up in the pulpit without saying
a word till the people thought that he was in direct communion
with the Almighty."
"There was nane o' thae fine abstractions aboot your grandfaither,
Ralph Gilchrist--na, whiles he was taen sae that he couldna speak
he was that mad, an' aye he gat redder an' redder i' the face,
till yince he gat vent, and then the ill words ran frae him like
the Skyreburn [Footnote: A Galloway mountain stream noted for
sudden floods.] in spate."
"What else did John Bairdieson say to yer faither?" asked Winsome,
for the first time that day speaking humanly to Ralph.
That young man looked gratefully at her, as if she had suddenly
dowered him with a fortune. Then he paused to try (because he was
very young and foolish) to account for the unaccountability of
womankind.
He endeavoured to recollect what it was that he had said and what
John Bairdieson had said, but with indifferent success. He could
not remember what he was talking about.
"John Bairdieson said--John Bairdieson said--It has clean gone out
of my mind what John Bairdieson said," replied Ralph with much
shamefacedness.
The old lady looked at him approvingly. "Ye're no a Whig. There's
guid bluid in ye," she said, irrelevantly.
"Yes, I do remember now," broke in Ralph eagerly. "I remember what
John Bairdieson said. 'Sit doon, minister,' he said, 'gin yer
ready to flee up to the blue bauks'" [rafters--said of hens going
to rest at nights]; "'there's a heap o' folk in this congregation
that's no juist sae ready yet.'"
Ralph saw that Winsome and her grandmother were both genuinely
interested in his father.
"Ye maun mind that I yince kenned yer faither as weel as e'er I
kenned a son o' mine, though it's mony an' mony a year sin' he was
i' this hoose." Winsome looked curiously at her grandmother. "Aye,
lassie," she said, "ye may look an' look, but the faither o' him
there cam as near to bein' your ain faither--"
Walter Skirving, swathed in his chair, turned his solemn and awful
face from the window, as though called back to life by his wife's
words. "Silence, woman!" he thundered.
But Mistress Skirving did not look in the least put out; only she
was discreetly silent for a minute or two after her husband had
spoken, as was her wont, and then she proceeded:
"Aye, brawly I kenned Gilbert Peden, when he used to come in at
that door, wi' his black curls ower his broo as crisp an' bonny as
his son's the day."
Winsome looked at the door with an air of interest. "Did he come
to see you, grandmammy?" she asked.
"Aye, aye, what else?--juist as muckle as this young man here
comes to see me. I had the word o' baith o' them for't. Ralph
Peden says that he comes to see me, an' sae did the faither o'
him--"
Again Mistress Skirving paused, for she was aware that her husband
had turned on her one of his silent looks.
"Drive on aboot yer faither an' John Rorrison," she said; "it's
verra entertainin'."
"Bairdieson," said Winsome, correctingly.
Ralph, now reassured that he was interesting Winsome as well, went
on more briskly. Winsome had slipped down beside her grandmother,
and had laid her arm across her grandmother's knees till the full
curve of her breast touched the spare outlines of the elder woman.
Ralph wondered if Winsome would ever in the years to come be like
her grandmother. He thought that he could love her a thousand
times more then.
"My father," said Ralph, "is a man much beloved by his
congregation, for he is a very father to them in all their
troubles; but they give him a kind of adoration in return that
would not be good for any other kind of man except my father. They
think him no less than infallible. 'Dinna mak' a god o' yer
minister,' he tells them, but they do it all the same."
Winsome looked as if she did not wonder.
"When I kenned yer faither," said the old dame, "he wad hae been
nocht the waur o' a pickle mair o' the auld Adam in him. It's a
rale usefu' commodity in this life--"
"Why, grandmother--" began Winsome.
"Noo, lassie, wull ye haud yer tongue? I'm sair deeved wi' the din
o' ye! Is there ony yae thing that a body may say withoot bern'
interruptit? Gin it's no you wi' yer 'Grandmither!' like a
cheepin' mavis, it's him ower by lookin' as if ye had dung doon
the Bible an' selled yersel' to Sawtan. I never was in sic a
hoose. A body canna get their tongue rinnin' easy an' comfortable
like, but it's 'Woman, silence!' in a yoice as graund an' awfu' as
'The Lord said unto Moses'--or else you wi' yer Englishy peepin'
tongue, 'Gran'mither!' as terrible shockit like as if a body were
gaun intil the kirk on Sabbath wi' their stockin's doon aboot
their ankles!"
The little outburst seemed mightily to relieve the old lady.
Neither of the guilty persons made any signs, save that Winsome
extended her elbow across her grandmother's knee, and poised a
dimpled chin on her hand, smiling as placidly and contentedly as
if her relative's words had been an outburst of admiration. The
old woman looked sternly at her for a moment. Then she relented,
and her hand stole among the girl's clustering curls. The little
burst of temper gave way to a semi-humorous look of feigned
sternness.
"Ye're a thankless madam," she said, shaking her white-capped
head; "maybe ye think that the fifth commandment says nocht aboot
grandmithers; but ye'll be tamed some day, my woman. Mony's the
gamesome an' hellicat [madcap] lassie that I hae seen brocht to
hersel', an' her wings clippit like a sea-gull's i' the yaird,
tethered by the fit wi' a family o' ten or a dizzen--"
Winsome rose and marched out of the room with all the dignity of
offended youth at the suggestion. The old lady laughed a hearty
laugh, in which, however, Ralph did not join.
"Sae fine an' Englishy the ways o' folk noo," she went on; "ye
mauna say this, ye mauna mention that; dear sirse me, I canna mind
them a'. I'm ower auld a Pussy Bawdrous to learn new tricks o'
sayin' 'miauw' to the kittlins. But for a' that an' a' that, I
haena noticed that the young folk are mair particular aboot what
they do nor they waur fifty years since. Na, but they're that nice
they manna say this and they canna hear that."
The old lady had got so far when by the sound of retreating
footsteps she judged that Winsome was out of hearing. Instantly
she changed her tone.
"But, young man," she said, shaking her finger at him as if she
expected a contradiction, "mind you, there's no a lass i' twunty
parishes like this lassie o' mine. An' dinna think that me an' my
guidman dinna ken brawly what's bringin' ye to Craig Ronald. Noo,
it's richt an' better nor richt--for ye're yer faither's son, an'
we baith wuss ye weel. But mind you that there's sorrow comin' to
us a'. Him an' me here has had oor sorrows i' the past, deep
buried for mair nor twenty year."
"I thank you with all my heart," said Ralph, earnestly. "I need
not tell you, after what I have said, that I would lay my life
down as a very little thing to pleasure Winsome Charteris. I love
her as I never thought that woman could be loved, and I am not the
kind to change."
"The faither o' ye didna change, though his faither garred him
mairry a Gilchrist-an' a guid bit lass she was. But for a' that he
didna change. Na, weel do I ken that he didna change."
"But," continued Ralph, "I have no reason in the world to imagine
that Winsome thinks a thought about me. On the contrary, I have
some reason to fear that she dislikes my person; and I would not
be troublesome to her--"
"Hoot toot! laddie, dinna let the Whig bluid mak' a pulin' bairn
o' ye. Surely ye dinna expect a lass o' speerit to jump at the
thocht o' ye, or drap intil yer moo' like a black-ripe cherry aff
a tree i' the orchard. Gae wa' wi' ye, man! what does a blithe
young man o' mettle want wi' encouragement--encouragement, fie!"
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