Winsome faltered. She had not been wooed after this manner before.
It was perilously sweet. Little ticking pulses beat in her head. A great yearning came to her to let herself drift up on a sea of love. That love of giving up all, which is the precious privilege, the saving dowry or utter undoing of women, surged in upon her heart.
She drew away her hand, not quickly, but slowly and firmly, and as if she meant it. "I have come to a decision--I have made a vow,"
she said. She paused, and looked at Ralph a little defiantly, hoping that he would take the law into his own hands, and forbid the decision and disallow the vow.
But Ralph was not yet enterprising enough, and took her words a little too seriously. He only stood looking at her and waiting, as if her decision were to settle the fate of kingdoms.
Then Winsome emitted the declaration which has been so often made, at which even the more academic divinities are said to smile, "I am resolved never to marry!"
An older man would have laughed. He might probably have heard something like this before. But Ralph had no such experience, and he bowed his head as to an invincible fate--for which stupidity Winsome"s grandmother would have boxed his ears.
"But I may still love you, Winsome?" he said, very quietly and gently.
"Oh, no, you must not--you must not love me! Indeed, you must not think of me any more. You must go away."
"Go away I can and will, if you say so, Winsome; but even you do not believe that I can forget you when I like."
"And you will go away?" said Winsome, looking at him with eyes that would have chained a Stoic philosopher to the spot.
"Yes," said Ralph, perjuring his intentions.
"And you will not try to see me any more--you promise?" she added, a little spiteful at the readiness with which he gave his word.
So Ralph made a promise. He succeeded in keeping it just twenty- four hours--which was, on the whole, very creditable, considering.
What else he might have promised we cannot tell--certainly anything else asked of him so long as Winsome continued to look at him.
Those who have never made just such promises, or listened to them being made--occupations equally blissful and equally vain--had better pa.s.s this chapter by. It is not for the uninitiated. But it is true, nevertheless.
So in silence they walked down to the opening of the glen. As they turned into the broad expanse of glorious sunshine the shadows were beginning to slant towards them. Loch Grannoch was darkening into pearl grey, under the lee of the hill. Down by the high- backed bridge, which sprang at a bound over the narrows of the lane, there was a black patch on the greensward, and the tripod of the gipsy pot could faintly be distinguished.
Ralph, who had resumed Winsome"s hand as a right, pointed it out.
It is strange how quickly pleasant little fashions of that kind tend to perpetuate themselves!
As Winsome"s grandmother would have said, "It"s no easy turnin" a coo when she gets the gate o" the corn."
Winsome looked at the green patch and the dark spot upon it. "Tell me," she said, looking up at him, "why you ran away that day?"
Ralph Peden was nothing if not frank. "Because," he said, "I thought you were going to take off your stockings!"
Through the melancholy forebodings which Winsome had so recently exhibited there rose the contagious blossom of mirth, that never could be long away even from such a fate-hara.s.sed creature as Winsome Charteris considered herself to be. "Poor fellow," she said, "you must indeed have been terribly frightened!"
"I was," said Ralph Peden, with conviction. "But I do not think I should feel quite the same about it now!"
They walked silently to the foot of the Craig Ronald loaning, where by mutual consent they paused.
Winsome"s hand was still in Ralph"s. She had forgotten to take it away. She was, however, still resolved to do her duty.
"Now you are sure you are not going to think of me any more?" she asked.
"Quite sure," said Ralph, promptly.
Winsome looked a little disappointed at the readiness of the answer. "And you won"t try to see me any more?" she asked, plaintively.
"Certainly not," replied Ralph, who had some new ideas.
Winsome looked still more disappointed. This was not what she had expected.
"Yes," said Ralph, "because I shall not need to think of you again, for I shall never stop thinking of you; and I shall not try to see you again, because I know I shall. I shall go away, but I shall come back again; and I shall never give you up, though every friend forbid and every cloud in the heavens break!"
The gladness broke into his love"s face in spite of all her gallant determination.
"But remember," said Winsome, "I am never going to marry. On that point I am quite determined."
"You can forbid me marrying you, Winsome dear," said Ralph, "but you cannot help me loving you."
Indeed on this occasion and on this point of controversy Winsome did not betray any burning desire to contradict him. She gave him her hand--still with the withholding power in it, however, which told Ralph that his hour was not yet come.
He bowed and kissed it--once, twice, thrice. And to him who had never kissed woman before in the way of love, it was more than many caresses to one more accustomed.
Then she took her way, carrying her hand by her side tingling with consciousness. It seemed as if Ebie Farrish, who was at the watering-stone as she pa.s.sed, could read what was written upon it as plain as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. She put it, therefore, into the lilac sunbonnet and so pa.s.sed by.
Ralph watched her as she glided, a tall and graceful young figure, under the archway of the trees, till he could no longer see her light dress glimmering through the glades of the scattered oaks.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE OPINIONS OF SAUNDERS MOWDIEWORT UPON BESOMSHANKS.
Ralph Peden kept his promise just twenty-four hours, which under the circ.u.mstances was an excellent performance. That evening, on his return to the manse, Manse Bell handed him, with a fine affectation of unconcern, a letter with the Edinburgh post-mark, which had been brought with tenpence to pay, from Cairn Edward.
Manse Bell was a smallish, sharp-tongued woman of forty, with her eyes very close together. She was renowned throughout the country for her cooking and her temper, the approved excellence of the one being supposed to make up for the difficult nature of the other.
The letter was from his father. It began with many inquiries as to his progress in the special studies to which he had been devoting himself. Then came many counsels as to avoiding all entanglements with the erroneous views of Socinians, Erastians, and Pelagians In conclusion, a day was suggested on which it would be convenient for the presbytery of the Marrow kirk to meet in Edinburgh in order to put Ralph through his trials for license. Then it was that Ralph Peden felt a tingling sense of shame. Not only had he to a great extent forgotten to prepare himself for his examinations, which would be no great difficulty to a college scholar of his standing, but unconsciously to himself his mind had slackened its interest in his licensing. The Marrow kirk had receded from him as the land falls back from a ship which puts out to sea, swiftly and silently. He was conscious that he had paid far more attention to his growing volume of poems than he had done to his discourses for license; though indeed of late he had given little attention to either.
He went up-stairs and looked vaguely at his books. He found that it was only by an effort that he could at all think himself into the old Ralph, who had shaken his head at Calvin under the broom- bush by the Grannoch Water. Sharp penitence rode hard upon Ralph"s conscience. He sat down among his neglected books. From these he did not rise till the morning fully broke. At last he lay down on the bed, after looking long at the ridge of pines which stood sharp up against the morning sky, behind which Craig Ronald lay.
Then the underlying pang, which he had been crushing down by the night"s work among the Hebrew roots, came triumphantly to the surface. He must leave the manse of Dullarg, and with it that solitary white farmhouse on the braeface, the orchard at the back of it, and the rose-clambered gable from which a dear window looked down the valley of the Grannoch, and up to the heathery brow of the Crae Hill.
So, unrefreshed, yet unconscious of the need of any refreshment, Ralph Peden rose and took his place at the manse table.
"I saw your candle late yestreen," said the minister, pausing to look at the young man over the wooden platter of porridge which formed the frugal and sufficient breakfast of the two.
Porridge for breakfast and porridge for supper are the cure-alls of the true Galloway man. It is not every Scot who stands through all temptation so square in the right way as morning and night to confine himself to these; but he who does so shall have his reward in a rare sanity of judgment and lightness of spirit, and a capacity for work unknown to countrymen of less Spartan habit.
So Ralph answered, looking over his own "cogfu" o" brose" as Manse Bell called them, "I was reading the book of Joel for the second time."