Books: The Lilac Sunbonnet

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Ebie gathered himself up savagely. His temperature was something
considerably above summer heat, yet he dared not give expression
to his feelings, for his experiences in former courtships had led
him to the conclusion that you cannot safely, having regard to
average family prejudice, abuse the brothers of your sweetheart.
After marriage the case is believed to be different.

Winsome Charteris stood at the green gate which led out of the
court-yard into the croft, as Andra was making his schoolward
exit. She had a parcel for him. This occasioned no surprise, nor
did the very particular directions as to delivery, and the dire
threatenings against forgetfulness or failure in the least dismay
Andra. He was entirely accustomed to them. From his earliest years
he had heard nothing else. He never had been reckoned as a "sure
hand," and it was only in default of a better messenger that
Winsome employed him. Then these directions were so explicit that
there did not appear to be any possibility of mistake. He had only
to go to the manse and leave the parcel for Mr. Ralph Peden
without a message.

So Andrew Kissock, nothing loath, promised faithfully. He never
objected to promising; that was easy. He carried the small, neatly
wrapped parcel in his hand, walking most sedately so long as
Winsome's eyes were upon him. He was not yet old enough to be
under the spell of the witchery of those eyes; but then Winsome's
eye controlled his sister Meg's hand, and for that latter organ he
had a most profound respect.

Now we must take the trouble to follow in some detail the course
of this small boy going to school, for though it may be of no
interest in itself save as a study in scientific procrastination,
a good deal of our history directly depends upon it.

As soon as Andrew was out of sight he pulled his leather satchel
round so that he could open it with ease, and, having taken a
handful of broken and very stale crumbs out of it for immediate
use, he dropped Winsome's parcel within. There it kept company
with a tin flask of milk which his mother filled for him every
morning, having previously scalded it well to restore its
freshness. This was specially carefully done after a sad occasion
upon which his mother, having poured in the fine milk for Andra's
dinner fresh from Crummie the cow, out of the flask mouth there
crawled a number of healthy worms which that enterprising youth
had collected from various quarters which it is best not to
specify. Not that Andra objected in the least. Milk was a good
thing, worms were good things, and he was above the paltry
superstition that one good thing could spoil another. He will
always consider to his dying day that the very sound licking which
his mother administered to him, for spoiling at once the family
breakfast and his own dinner, was one of the most uncalled-for and
gratuitous, which, even in his wide experience, it had been his
lot to recollect.

So Andra took his way to school. He gambolled along, smelling and
rooting among the ragged robin and starwort in the hedges like an
unbroken collie. It is safe to say that no further thought of
school or message crossed his mind from the moment that the
highest white steading of Craig Ronald sank out of view, until his
compulsory return. Andra had shut out from his view so commonplace
and ignominious facts as home and school.

At the first loaning end, where the road to the Nether Crae came
down to cross the bridge, just at the point where the Grannoch
lane leaves the narrows of the loch, Andra betook himself to the
side of the road, with a certain affectation of superabundant
secrecy.

With prodigious exactness he examined the stones at a particular
part of the dyke, hunted about for one of remarkable size and
colour, said "Hist! hist!" in a mysterious way, and ran across the
road to see that no one was coming.

As we have seen, Andra was the reader of the family. His eldest
brother had gone to America, where he was working in New York as a
joiner. This youth was in the habit of sending across books and
papers describing the terrible encounters with Indians in the
Boone country--the "dark and bloody land" of the early romancers.
Not one in the family looked at the insides of these relations of
marvels except Andra, who, when he read the story of the Indian
scout trailing the murderers of his squaw across a continent in
order to annihilate them just before they entered New York city,
felt that he had found his vocation--which was to be at least an
Indian scout, if indeed it was too late for him to think of being
a full-blooded Indian.

The impressive pantomime at the bridge was in order to ascertain
whether his bosom companion, Dick Little, had passed on before
him. He knew, as soon as he was within a hundred yards of the
stone, that he had NOT passed. Indeed, he could see him at that
very moment threading his way down through the tangle of heather
and bog myrtle, or, as he would have said, "gall busses opposite."
But what of that?--For mighty is the power of make-believe, and in
Andra, repressed as he was at home, there was concentrated the
very energy and power of some imaginative ancestry. He had a full
share of the quality which ran in the family, and was exceeded
only by his brother Jock in New York, who had been "the biggest
leer in the country side" before he emigrated to a land where at
that time this quality was not specially marked among so many
wielders of the long bow. Jock, in his letters, used to frighten
his mother with dark tales of his hair-breadth escapes from
savages and desperadoes on the frontier, yet, strangely enough,
his address remained steadily New York.

Now it is not often that a Galloway boy takes to lying; but when
he does, a mere Nithsdale man has no chance with him, still less a
man from the simple-minded levels of the "Shire."[Footnote:
Wigtonshire is invariably spoken of in Galloway as the Shire,
Kirkcudbrightshire as the Stewardry.] But Andra Kissock always
lied from the highest motives. He elevated the saying of the thing
that was not to the height of a principle. He often lied, knowing
that he would be thrashed for it--even though he was aware that he
would be rewarded for telling the truth. He lied because he would
not demean himself to tell the truth.

It need not therefore surprise us in the least that when Dick
Little came across the bridge he was greeted by Andra Kissock with
the information that he was in the clutches of The Avenger of
Blood, who, mounted upon a mettle steed with remarkably dirty
feet, curveted across the road and held the pass. He was required
to give up a "soda scone or his life." The bold Dick, who had
caught the infection, stoutly refused to yield either. His life
was dear to him, but a soda scone considerably dearer. He had
rather be dead than hungry.

"Then die, traitor!" said Andra, throwing down his bag, all
forgetful of Winsome Charteris's precious parcel and his promises
thereanent. So these two brave champions had at one another with
most surprising valour.

They were armed with wooden swords as long as themselves, which
they manoeuvred with both hands in a marvellously savage manner.
When a blow did happen to get home, the dust flew out of their
jackets. But still the champions fought on. They were in the act
of finishing the quarrel by the submission of Dick in due form,
when Allan Welsh, passing across the bridge on one of his pastoral
visitations, came upon them suddenly. Dick was on his knees at the
time, his hands on the ground, and Andra was forcing his head
determinedly down toward the surface of the king's highway.
Meanwhile Dick was objecting in the most vigorous way.

"Boys," said the stern, quiet voice of the minister, "what are you
doing to each other? Are you aware it is against both the law of
God and man to fight in this way? It is only from the beasts that
perish that we expect such conduct."

"If ye please, sir," answered Andra in a shamefaced way, yet with
the assurance of one who knows that he has the authorities on his
side, "Dick Little wull no bite the dust."

"Bite the dust!--what do you mean, laddie?" asked the minister,
frowning.

"Weel sir, if ye please, sir, the Buik says that the yin that got
his licks fell down and bit the dust. Noo, Dick's doon fair
aneuch. Ye micht speak till him to bite the dust!"

And Andra, clothed in the garments of conscious rectitude, stood
back to give the minister room to deliver his rebuke.

The stern face of the minister relaxed.

"Be off with you to school," he said; "I'll look in to see if you
have got there in the afternoon."

Andra and Dick scampered down the road, snatching their satchels
as they ran. In half an hour they were making momentary music
under the avenging birch rod of Duncan Duncanson, the learned
Dullarg schoolmaster. Their explanations were excellent. Dick said
that he had been stopped to gather the eggs, and Andra that he had
been detained conversing with the minister. The result was the
same in both cases--Andra getting double for sticking to his
statement. Yet both stories were true, though quite accidentally
so, of course. This is what it is to have a bad character. Neither
boy, however, felt any ill-will whatever at the schoolmaster. They
considered that he was there in order to lick them. For this he
was paid by their parents' money, and it would have been a fraud
if he had not duly earned his money by dusting their jackets
daily. Let it be said at once that he did most conscientiously
earn his money, and seldom overlooked any of his pupils even for a
day.

Back at the Grannoch bridge, under the parapet, Allan Welsh, the
minister of the Kirk of the Marrow, found the white packet lying
which Winsome had tied with such care. He looked all round to see
whence it had come. Then taking it in his hand, he looked at it a
long time silently, and with a strange and not unkindly expression
on his face. He lifted it to his lips and kissed the handwriting
which addressed it to Master Ralph Peden. As he paced away he
carefully put it in the inner pocket of his coat. Then, with his
head farther forward than ever, and the immanence of his great
brow overshadowing his ascetic face, he set himself slowly to
climb the brae.

CHAPTER XII.

MIDSUMMER DAWN.

True love is at once chart and compass. It led Ralph Peden out
into a cloudy June dawning. It was soft, amorphous, uncoloured
night when he went out. Slate-coloured clouds were racing along
the tops of the hills from the south. The wind blew in fitful
gusts and veering flaws among the moorlands, making eddies and
back-waters of the air, which twirled the fallen petals of the
pear and cherry blossoms in the little manse orchard.

As he stepped out upon the moor and the chill of dawn struck
inward, he did not know that Allan Welsh was watching him from his
blindless bedroom. Dawn is the testing-time of the universe. Its
cool, solvent atmosphere dissolves social amenities. It is
difficult to be courteous, impossible to be polite, in that hour
before the heart has realized that its easy task of throwing the
blood horizontally to brain and feet has to be exchanged for the
harder one of throwing it vertically to the extremities.

Ralph walked slowly and in deep thought through the long avenues
of glimmering beeches and under the dry rustle of the quivering
poplars. Then, as the first red of dawn touched his face, he
looked about him. He was clear of the trees now, and the broad
open expanse of the green fields and shining water meadows that
ring in Loch Grannoch widened out before him. The winds sighed and
rumbled about the hill-tops of the Orchar and the Black Laggan,
but in the valley only the cool moist wind of dawn drew largely
and statedly to and fro.

Ralph loved Nature instinctively, and saw it as a townbred lad
rarely does. He was deeply read in the more scientific literature
of the subject, and had spent many days in his Majesty's botanic
gardens, which lie above the broad breast of the Forth. He now
proved his learning, and with quick, sure eye made it real on the
Galloway hills. Every leaf spoke to him. He could lie for half a
day and learn wisdom from the ant. He took in the bird's song and
the moth's flight. The keepers sometimes wondered at the lights
which flashed here and there about the plantations, when in the
coolness of a moist evening he went out to entrap the sidelong-
dashing flutterers with his sugar-pots.

But since he came to Galloway, and especially since he smelled the
smell of the wood-fire set for the blanket-washing above the Crae
Water bridge, there were new secrets open to him. He possessed a
voice that could wile a bird off a bought. His inner sympathy with
wild and tame beasts alike was such that as he moved quietly among
a drowsing, cud-chewing herd on the braes of Urioch not a beast
moved.

Among them a wild, untamed colt stood at bay, its tail arched with
apprehension, yet sweeping the ground, and watched him with
flashing eyes of suspicion. Ralph held out his hand slowly, more
as if it were growing out of his side by some rapid natural
process than as if he were extending it. He uttered a low
"sussurrus" of coaxing and invitation, all the while imperceptibly
decreasing his distance from the colt. The animal threw back its
head, tossed its mane in act to flee, thought better of it and
dropped its nose to take a bite or two of the long coarse grass.
Then again it looked up and continued to gaze, fascinated at the
beckoning and caressing fingers. At last, with a little whinny of
pleasure, the colt, wholly reassured, came up and nestled a wet
nose against Ralph's coat. He took the wild thing's neck within
the arch of his arm, and the two new friends stood awhile in grave
converse.

A moment afterwards Ralph bent to lay a hand upon the head of one
of the placid queys [Footnote: Young--cows.] that had watched the
courtship with full, dewy eyes of bovine unconcern. Instantly the
colt charged into the still group with a wild flourish of hoofs
and viciously snapping teeth, scattering the black-polled
Galloways like smoke. Then, as if to reproach Ralph for his
unfaithfulness, he made a circle of the field at a full, swinging
gallop, sending the short turf flying from his unshod hoofs at
every stride. Back he came again, a vision of floating mane and
streaming tail, and stopped dead three yards from Ralph, his
forelegs strained and taut, ploughing furrows in the grass. As
Ralph moved quietly across the field the colt followed, pushing a
cool moist nose over the young man's shoulder. When at last Ralph
set a foot on the projecting stone which stood out from the side
of the grey, lichen-clad stone dyke, the colt stood stretching an
eager head over as though desirous of following him; then, with a
whinny of disappointment, he rushed round the field, charging at
the vaguely wondering and listlessly grazing cattle with head
arched between his forelegs and a flourish of widely distributed
heels.

Over the hill, Craig Ronald was still wrapped in the lucid
impermanence of earliest dawn, when Winsome Charteris set her foot
over the blue flag-stones of the threshold. The high tide of
darkness, which, in these northern summer mornings never rose very
high or lasted very long, had ebbed long ago. The indigo grey of
the sky was receding, and tinging towards the east with an
imperceptibly graded lavender which merged behind the long shaggy
outline of the piny ridge into a wash of pale lemon yellow.

The world paused, finger on lip, saying "Hush!" to Winsome as she
stepped over the threshold from the serenely breathing morning
air, from the illimitable sky which ran farther and farther back
as the angels drew the blinds from the windows of heaven.

"Hush!" said the cows over the hedge, blowing fragrant breaths of
approval from their wide, comma-shaped nostrils upon the lush
grass and upon the short heads of white clover, as they stood face
to the brae, all with their heads upward, eating their way like an
army on the march.

"Hush! hush!" said the sheep who were straggling over the shorter
grass of the High Park, feeding fitfully in their short, uneasy
way--crop, crop, crop--and then a pause, to move forward their own
length and begin all over again.

But the sheep and the kine, the dewy grass and the brightening
sky, might every one have spared their pains, for it was in no
wise in the heart of Winsome Charteris to make a noise amid the
silences of dawn. Meg Kissock, who still lay snug by Jess in a
plump-cheeked country sleep, made noise enough to stir the country
side when, rising, she set briskly about to get the house on its
morning legs. But Winsome was one of the few people in this world
--few but happy--to whom a sunrise is more precious than a sun set
--rarer and more calming, instinct with message and sign from a
covenant-keeping God. Also, Winsome betook her self early to bed,
and so awoke attuned to the sun's rising.

What drew her forth so early this June day was no thought or hope
or plan except the desire to read the heart of Nature, and perhaps
that she might not be left too long alone with the parable of her
own heart. A girl's heart is full of thought which it dares not
express to herself--of fluttering and trembling possibilities,
chrysalis-like, set aside to await the warmth of an unrevealed
summer. In Winsome's soul the first flushing glory of the May of
youth was waking the prisoned life. But there were throbs and
thrillings too piercingly sweet to last undeveloped in her soul.
The bursting bud of her healthful beauty, quickened by the shy
radiance of her soul, shook the centres of her life, even as a
laburnum-tree mysteriously quivers when the golden rain is in act
to break from the close-clustered dependent budlets.

Thus it was that, at the stile which helps the paths be tween the
Dullarg and Craig Ronald to overleap the high hill dyke, Ralph met
Winsome. As they looked into one another's eyes, they saw Nature
suddenly dissolve into confused meaninglessness. There was no
clear message for either of them there, save the message that the
old world of their hopes and fears had wholly passed away. Yet no
new world had come when over the hill dyke their hands met. They
said no word. There is no form of greeting for such. Eve did not
greet Adam in polite phrase when he awoke to find her in the dawn
of one Eden day, a helpmeet meet for him. Neither did Eve reply
that "it was a fine morn ing." It is always a fine morning in
Eden. They were silent, and so were these two. Their hands lay
within one another a single instant. Then, with a sense of
something wanting, Ralph sprang lightly over the dyke as an Edin
burgh High-School boy ought who had often played hares and hounds
in the Hunter's Bog, and been duly thrashed therefor by Dr. Adam
[Footnote: The Aery famous master of the High School of
Edinburgh.] on the following morning.

When Ralph stood beside her upon the sunny side of the stile he
instinctively resumed Winsome's hand. For this he had no reason,
certainly no excuse. Still, it may be urged in excuse that it was
as much as an hour or an hour and a half before Winsome remembered
that he needed any. Our most correct and ordered thoughts have a
way of coming to us belated, as the passenger who strolls in
confidently ten minutes after the platform is clear. But, like
him, they are at least ready for the next train.

As Winsome and Ralph turned towards the east, the sun set his face
over the great Scotch firs on the ridge, whose tops stood out like
poised irregular blots on the fire centred ocean of light.

It was the new day, and if the new world had not come with it, of
a surety it was well on the way.

CHAPTER XIII.

A STRING OF THE LILAC SUNBONNET.

For a long time they were silent, though it was not long before
Winsome drew away her hand, which, however, continued to burn
consciously for an hour afterwards. Silence settled around them.
The constraint of speech fell first upon Ralph, being town-bred
and accustomed to the convenances at Professor Thriepneuk's.

"You rise early," he said, glancing shyly down at Winsome, who
seemed to have forgotten his presence. He did not wish her to
forget. He had no objection to her dreaming, if only she would
dream about him.

Winsome turned the bewildering calmness of her eyes upon him. A
gentleman, they say, is calm-eyed. So is a cow. But in the eye of
a good woman there is a peace which comes from many generations of
mothers--who, every one Christs in their way, have suffered their
heavier share of the Eden curse.

Ralph would have given all that he possessed--which, by the way,
was not a great deal--to be able to assure himself that there was
any hesitancy or bashfulness in the glance which met his own. But
Winsome's eyes were as clearly and frankly blue as if God had made
them new that morning. At least Ralph looked upon their Sabbath
peace and gave thanks, finding them very good.

A sparkle of laughter, at first silent and far away, sprang into
them, like a breeze coming down Loch Grannoch when it lies asleep
in the sun, sending shining sparkles winking shoreward, and
causing the wavering golden lights on the shallow sand of the bays
to scatter tremulously. So in the depths of Winsome's eyes
glimmered the coming smile. Winsome could be divinely serious, but
behind there lay the possibility and certainty of very frank
earthly laughter. If, as Ralph thought, not for the first time in
this rough island story, this girl were an angel, surely she was
one to whom her Maker had given that rarest gift given to woman--
a well-balanced sense of humour.

So when Ralph said, hardly knowing what he said, "You rise early,"
it was with that far-away intention of a smile that Winsome
replied:

"And you, sir, have surely not lagged in bed, or else you have
come here in a great hurry."

"I rose," returned Ralph, "certainly betimes--in fact, a great
while before day; it is the time when one can best know one's
self."

The sententiousness, natural to his years and education, to some
extent rebuked Winsome, who said more soberly:

"Perhaps you have again lost your books of study?"

"I do not always study in books," answered Ralph.

Winsome continued to look at him as though waiting his
explanation.

"I mean," said Ralph, quickly, his pale cheek touched with red,
"that though I am town-bred I love the things that wander among
the flowers and in the wood. There are the birds, too, and the
little green plants that have no flow ers, and they all have a
message, if I could only hear it and understand it."

The sparkle in Winsome's eyes quieted into calm.

"I too--" she began, and paused as if startled at what she was
about to say. She went on: "I never heard any one say things like
these. I did not know that any one else had thoughts like these
except myself."

"And have you thought these things?" said Ralph, with a quick joy
in his heart.

"Yes," replied Winsome, looking down on the ground and playing
with the loose string of the lilac sunbonnet. "I used often to
wonder how it was that I could not look on the loch on Sabbath
morning without feeling like crying. It was often better to look
upon it than to go to Maister Welsh's kirk. But I ought not to say
these things to you," she said, with a quick thought of his
profession.

Ralph smiled. There were few things that Winsome Charteris might
not say to him. He too had his experiences to collate.

"Have you ever stood on a hill-top as though you were suspended in
the air, and when you seem to feel the earth whirling away from
beneath you, rushing swiftly eastward towards the sunrise?"

"I have heard it," said Winsome unexpectedly.

"Heard it?" queried Ralph, with doubt in his voice.

"Yes," said Winsome calmly, "I have often heard the earth wheeling
round on still nights out on the top of the Craigs, where there
was no sound, and all the house was asleep. It is as if some Great
One were saying 'Hush!' to the angels--I think God himself!"

These were not the opinions of the kirk of the Marrow; neither
were they expressed in the Acts Declaratory or the protests or
claims of right made by the faithful contending remnant. But Ralph
would not at that moment have hesitated to add them to the
Westminster Confession.

It is a wonderful thing to be young. It is marvellously delightful
to be young and a poet as well, who has just fallen--nay, rather,
plunged fathoms--deep in love. Ralph Peden was both. He stood
watching Winsome Charteris, who looked past him into a distance
moistly washed with tender ultramarine ash, like her own eyes too
full of colour to be gray and too pearly clear to be blue.

An equal blowing wind drew up the loch which lay be neath flooded
with morning light, the sun basking on its broad expanse, and
glittering in a myriad sparkles on the, narrows beneath them
beside which the blanket-washing had been. A frolicsome breeze
blew down the hill towards them in little flicks and eddies. One
of these drew a flossy tendril of Winsome's golden hair, which
this morning had red lights in it like the garnet gloss on ripe
wheat or Indian corn, and tossed it over her brow. Ralph's hand
tingled with the desire to touch it and put it back under her
bonnet, and his heart leaped at the thought. But though he did not
stir, nor had any part of his being moved save the hidden thought
of his heart, he seemed to fall in his own estimation as one who
had attempted a sacrilege.

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