Books: The Lilac Sunbonnet
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S.R. Crockett >> The Lilac Sunbonnet
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"Many years ago there were two students, poor in money but rich in
their mutual love. They were closer in affection than twin
brothers. The elder was betrothed to be married to a beautiful
girl in the country; so he took down his friend with him to the
village where the maid dwelt to stand by his side and look upon
the joy of the bridegroom. He saw the trysted (betrothed) of his
friend. He and she looked into one another's eyes and were drawn
together as by a power beyond them. The elder was summoned
suddenly back to the city, and for a week he, all unthinking, left
the friends of his love together glad that they should know one
another better. They walked together. They spoke of many things,
ever returning back to speak of themselves. One day they held a
book together till they heard their hearts beat audibly, and in
the book read no more that day.
"Upon the friend's return he found only an empty house and
distracted parents. Bride and brother had fled. Word came that
they had been joined by old Joseph Paisley, the Gretna Green
'welder,' without blessing of minister or kirk. Then they hid
themselves in a little Cumbrian village, where for six years the
unfaithful friend wrought for his wife--for so he deemed her--till
in the late bitterness of bringing forth she died, that was the
fairest of women and the unhappiest."
The minister ceased. Outside the rain had come on in broad single
drops, laying the dust on the road. Ralph could hear it pattering
on the broad leaves of the plane-tree outside the window. He did
not like to hear it. It sounded like a woman's tears.
But he could not understand how all this bore on his case. He was
silenced and awed, but it was with the sight of a soul of a man of
years and approved sanctity in deep apparent waters of sorrow.
The minister lifted his head and listened. In the ancient woodwork
of the manse, somewhere in the crumbling wainscoting, the little
boring creature called a death-watch ticked like the ticking of an
old verge watch. Mr. Welsh broke off with a sudden causeless auger
very appalling in one so sage and sober in demeanour.
"There's that beast again!" he said; "often have I thought it was
ticking in my head. I have heard it ever since the night she died--"
"I wonder at a man like you," said Ralph, "with your wisdom and
Christian standing, caring for a worm--"
"You're a very young man, and when you are older maybe you'll
wonder at a deal fewer things," answered the minister with a kind
of excited truculence very foreign to his habit, "for I myself am
a worm and no man," he added dreamily. "And often I tried to kill
the beast. Ye see thae marks--" he broke off again--"I bored for
it till the boards are a honeycomb, but the thing aye ticks on."
"But, Mr. Welsh," said Ralph eagerly, with some sympathy in his
voice, "why should you trouble yourself about this story now--or
I, for the matter of that? I can understand that Winsome Charteris
has somehow to do with it, and that the knowledge has come to you
in the course of your duty; but even if, at any future time,
Winsome Charteris were aught to me or I to her--the which I have
at present only too little hope of--her forbears, be they
whomsoever they might, were no more to me than Julius Caesar. I
have seen her and looked into her eyes. What needs she of
ancestors that is kin to the angels?"
Something like pity came into the minister's stern eyes as he
listened to the lad. Once he had spoken just such wild, heart-
eager words.
"I will answer you in a sentence," he said. "I that speak with you
am the cause. I am he that has preached law and the gospel--for
twenty years covering my sin with the Pharisee's strictness of
observance. I am he that was false friend but never false lover--
that married without kirk or blessing. I am the man that clasped a
dead woman's hand whom I never owned as wife, and watched afar off
the babe that I never dared to call mine own. I am the father of
Winifred Oharteris, coward before man, castaway before God. Of my
sin two know besides my Maker--the father that begot you, whose
false friend I was in the days that were, and Walter Skirving, the
father of the first Winifred whose eyes this hand closed under the
Peacock tree at Crossthwaite."
The broad drops fell on the window-panes in splashes, and the
thunder rain drummed on the roof.
The minister rose and went out, leaving Ralph Peden sitting in the
dark with the universe in ruins about him. The universe is fragile
at twenty-one.
And overhead the great drops fell from the brooding thunder-
clouds, and in the wainscoting of Allan Welsh's study the death-
watch ticked.
CHAPTER XXXII.
OUTCAST AND ALIEN FROM THE COMMONWEALTH.
"Moreover," said the minister--coming in an hour afterwards to
take up the interrupted discussion--"the kirk of the Marrow
overrides all considerations of affection or self-interest. If you
are to enter the Marrow kirk, you must live for the Marrow, and
fight for the Marrow, and, above all, you must wed for the Marrow--"
"As you did, no doubt," said Ralph, somewhat ungenerously.
Ralph had remained sitting in the study where the minister had
left him.
"No, for myself," said the minister, with a certain firmness and
high civility, which made the young man ashamed of himself, "I am
no true son of the Marrow. I have indeed served the Marrow kirk in
her true and only protesting section for twenty-five years; but I
am only kept in my position by the good grace of two men--of your
father and of Walter Skirving. And do not think that they keep
their mouths sealed by any love for me. Were there only my own
life and good name to consider, they would speak instantly, and I
should be deposed, without cavil or word spoken in my own defence.
Nay, by what I have already spoken, I have put myself in your
hands. All that you have to do is simply to rise in your place on
the Sabbath morn and tell the congregation what I have told you--
that the minister of the Marrow kirk in Dullarg is a man rebuking
sin when his own hearthstone is unclean--a man irregularly
espoused, who wrongfully christened his own unacknowledged child."
Allan Welsh laid his brow against the hard wood of the study table
as though to cool it.
"No," he continued, looking Ralph in the face, as the midnight
hummed around, and the bats softly fluttered like gigantic moths
outside, "your father is silent for the sake of the good name of
the Marrow kirk; but this thing shall never be said of his own
son, and the only hope of the Marrow kirk--the lad she has
colleged and watched and prayed for--not only the two
congregations of Edinburgh and the Dullarg contributing yearly out
of their smallest pittances, but the faithful single members and
adherents throughout broad Scotland--many of whom are coming to
Edinburgh at the time of our oncoming synod, in order to be
present at it, and at the communion when I shall assist your
father."
"But why can not I marry Winsome Charteris, even though she be
your daughter, as you say?" asked Ralph.
"O young man," said the minister, "ken ye so little about the kirk
o' the Marrow, and the respect for her that your father and myself
cherish for the office of her ministry, that ye think that we
could permit a probationer, on trials for the highest office
within her gift, to connect himself by tie, bond, or engagement
with the daughter of an unblest marriage? That wouald be winking
at a new sin, darker even, than the old." Then, with a burst of
passion--"I, even I, would sooner denounce it myself, though it
cost me my position! For twenty years I have known that before God
I was condemned. You have seen me praying--yes, often--all night,
but never did you or mortal man hear me praying for myself."
Ralph held out his hand in sympathy. Mr. Welsh did not seem to
notice it. He went on:
"I was praying for this poor simple folk--the elect of God--their
minister alone a castaway, set beyond the mercy of God by his own
act. Have I not prayed that they might never be put to shame by
the knowledge of the minister's sin being made a mockery in the
courts of Belial? And have I not been answered?"
Here we fear that Mr. Welsh referred to the ecclesiastical
surroundings of the Reverend Erasmus Teends.
"And I prayed for my poor lassie, and for you, when I saw you both
in the floods of deep waters. I have wept great and bitter tears
for you twain. But I am to receive my answer and reward, for this
night you shall give me your word that never more will you pass
word of love to Winsome, the daughter of Allan Charteris Welsh.
For the sake of the Marrow kirk and the unstained truth delivered
to the martyrs, and upheld by your father one great day, you will
do this thing."
"Mr. Welsh," said the young man calmly, "I cannot, even though I
be willing, do this thing. My heart and life, my honour and word,
are too deeply engaged for me to go back. At whatever cost to
myself, I must keep tryst and pledge with the girl who has trusted
me, and who for me has to-night suffered things whose depths of
pain and shame I know not yet."
"Then," said the minister sternly, "you and I must part. My duty
is done. If you refuse my appeal, you are no true son of the
Marrow kirk, and no candidate that I can recommend for her
ministry. Moreover, to keep you longer in my house and at my board
were tacitly to encourage you in your folly."
"It is quite true," replied Ralph, unshaken and undaunted, "that I
may be as unfit as you say for the office and ministry of the
Marrow kirk. It is, indeed, only as I have thought for a long
season. If that be so, then it were well that I should withdraw,
and leave the place for some one worthier."
"I wonder to hear ye, Ralph Peden, your father's son," said the
minister, "you that have been colleged by the shillings and
sixpences of the poor hill folk. How will ye do with these?"
"I will pay them back," said Ralph.
"Hear ye, man: can ye pay back the love that hained and saved to
send them to Edinburgh? Can ye pay back the prayers and
expectations that followed ye from class to class, rejoicing in
your success, praying that the salt of holiness might be put for
you into the fountains of earthly learning? Pay back, Ralph
Peden?--I wonder sair that ye are not shamed!"
Indeed, Ralph was in a sorrowful quandary. He knew that it was all
true, and he saw no way out of it without pain and grief to some.
But the thought of Winsome's cry came to him, heard in the
lonesome night. That appeal had severed him in a moment from all
his old life. He could not, though he were to lose heaven and
earth, leave her now to reproach and ignominy. She had claimed him
only in her utter need, and he would stand good, lover and friend
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.
"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.
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