Part 23 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXVI.

SUCH SWEET PERIL.

Winsome looked away down the glen, and strove to harden her face into a superhuman indignation.

”That he should dare--the idea!”

But it so happened that the idea so touched that rare gift of humour, and the picture of herself looking at Ralph Peden solemnly with one eye at a time, in order at once to spare his susceptibilities and give the other a rest, was too much for her.

She laughed a peal of rippling merriment that sent all the blackbirds indignant out of their copses at the infringement of their prerogative.

Ralph's humour was slower and a little grimmer than Winsome's, whose sunny nature had blossomed out amid the merry life of the woods and streams. But there was a sternness in both of them as well, that was of the heather and the moss hags. And that would in due time come out. It is now their day of love and bounding life.

And there are few people in this world who would not be glad to sit just so at the opening of the flower of love. Indeed, it was hardly necessary to tell one another.

Laughter, say the French (who think that their l'amour is love, and so will never know anything), kills love. But not the kind of laughter that rang in the open dell which peeped like the end of a great green-lined prospect gla.s.s upon the glimmering levels of Loch Grannoch; nor yet the kind of love which in alternate currents pulsed to and fro between the two young people who sat so demurely on either side of the great, many-spiked fir-branch.

”Is not this nice?” said Winsome, shrugging her shoulders contentedly and swinging her feet.

Their laughter made them better friends than before. The responsive gladness in each other's eyes seemed part of the midsummer stillness of the afternoon. Above, a red squirrel dropped the husks of larch ta.s.sels upon them, and peered down upon them with his bright eyes. He was thinking himself of household duties, and had his own sweetheart safe at home, nestling in the bowl of a great beech deep in the bowering wood by the loch.

”I liked to hear you speak of your father to-day,” said Winsome, still swinging her feet girlishly. ”It must be a great delight to have a father to go to. I never remember father or mother.”

Her eyes were looking straight before her now, and a depth of tender wistfulness in them went to Ralph's heart. He was beginning to hate the branch.

”My father,” he said, ”is often stern to others, but he has never been stern to me--always helpful, full of tenderness and kindness.

Perhaps that is because I lost my mother almost before I can remember.”

Winsome's wet eyes, with the lashes curving long over the under side of the dark-blue iris, were turned full on him now with the tenderness of a kindred pity.

”Do you know I think that your father was once kind to my mother.

Grandmother began once to tell me, and then all at once would tell me no more--I think because grandfather was there.”

”I did not know that my father ever knew your mother,” answered Ralph.

”Of course, he would never tell you if he did,” said the woman of experience, sagely; ”but grandmother has a portrait in an oval miniature of your father as a young man, and my mother's name is on the back of it.”

”Her maiden name?” queried Ralph.

Winsome Charteris nodded. Then she said wistfully: ”I wish I knew all about it. I think it is very hard that grandmother will not tell me!”

Then, after a silence which a far-off cuckoo filled in with that voice of his which grows slower and fainter as the midsummer heats come on, Winsome said abruptly, ”Is your father ever hard and-- unkind?”

Ralph started to his feet as if hastily to defend his father.

There was something in Winsome's eyes that made him sit down again--something s.h.i.+ning and tender and kind.

”My father,” he said, ”is very silent and reserved, as I fear I too have been till I came down here” (he meant to say, ”Till I met you, dear,” but he could not manage it), ”but he is never hard or unkind, except perhaps on matters connected with the Marrow kirk and its order and discipline. Then he becomes like a stone, and has no pity for himself or any. I remember him once forbidding me to come into the study, and compelling me to keep my own garret- room for a month, for saying that I did not see much difference between the Marrow kirk and the other kirks. But I am sure he could never be unkind or hurtful to any one in the world. But why do you ask, Mistress Winsome?”

”Because--because--” she paused, looking down now, the underwells of her sweet eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g to the overflow--”because something grandfather said once, when he was very ill, made me wonder if your father had ever been unkind to my mother.”