Part 11 (2/2)

”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, rus.h.i.+ng 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 'Hus.h.!.+' to the angels--I think G.o.d 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-was.h.i.+ng 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.

”Have you ever noticed,” continued Winsome, all unconscious, going on with that fruitful comparison of feelings which has woven so many gossamer threads into three-fold cords, ”how everything in the fields and the woods is tamer in the morning? They seem to have forgotten that man is their natural enemy while they slept.”

”Perhaps,” said Ralph theologically, ”when they awake they forget that they are not still in that old garden that Adam kept.”

Winsome was looking at him now, for he had looked away in his turn, lost in a poet's thought. It struck her for the first time that other people might think him handsome. When a girl forgets to think whether she herself is of this opinion, and begins to think what others will think on a subject like this (which really does not concern her at all), the proceedings in the case are not finished.

They walked on together down by the sunny edge of the great plantation. The sun was now rising well into the sky, climbing directly upward as if on this midsummer day he were leading a forlorn hope to scale the zenith of heaven. He shone on the russet ta.s.sels of the larches, and the deep sienna boles of the Scotch firs. The clouds, which rolled fleecy and white in piles and crenulated bastions of c.u.mulus, lighted the eyes of the man and maid as they went onward upon the crisping piny carpet of fallen fir-needles.

”I have never seen Nature so lovely,” said Ralph, ”as when the bright morning breaks after a night of shower. Everything seems to have been new bathed in freshness.”

”As if Dame Nature had had her spring cleaning,” answered Winsome, ”or Andrew Kissock when he has had his face washed once a week,”

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