"Then when shall I see you?" said Winsome piteously. It is the cry of all loving womanhood, whose love goes out to the battle or into the city, to the business of war, or pleasure, or even of money- getting. "Then when shall I see you. again?" said Winsome, saying a new thing. There is nothing new under the sun, yet to lovers like Winsome and Ralph all things are new.
There was a catch in her throat. A salter dew gathered about her eyes, and the pupils expanded till the black seemed to shut out the blue.
Very tenderly Ralph looked down, and said, "Winsome, my dear, very soon I shall come again with more to ask and more to tell."
"But you are not going straight away to Edinburgh now? You must get a drive to Dumfries and take the Edinburgh coach."
"I cannot do that," said Ralph; "I must walk all the way; it is nothing."
Winsome looked at Ralph, the motherly instinct that is in all true love surging up even above the lover"s instinct. It made her clasp and unclasp her hands in distress, to think of him going away alone over the waste moors, from the place where they had been so happy.
"And he will leave me behind!" she said, with a sudden fear of the loneliness which would surely come when the bright universe was emptied of Ralph.
"Had it only been to-morrow, I could have borne it better," she said. "Oh, it is too soon! How could he let us be so happy when he was going away from me?"
Winsome knew even better than Ralph that he must go, but the most accurate knowledge of necessity does not prevent the resentful feeling in a woman"s heart when one she loves goes before his time.
But the latent motherhood in this girl rose up. If he were truly hers, he was hers to take care of. Therefore she asked the question which every mother asks, and no sweetheart who is nothing but a sweetheart has ever yet asked:
"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. G.o.d made it so when he made all things well.
"My la.s.sie!" said Ralph for all comment.
Then fell a silence so prolonged that a shy squirrel in the boughs overhead resumed his researches upon the ta.s.sels 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ces 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 gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus was growing. Pure white petals, veined green, with spikelets of green set in the angles within, five-lobed broidery of daintiest gold st.i.tching, 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.