Part 27 (1/2)
The thrill electric of the contact, the yielding quiescence of the girl whom he held to his breast, stilled his heart's tumultuous beating. She raised her head, and their lips drew together into a long kiss. What was this thing? It was a kiss in which he tasted a strange alien flavour even through the pa.s.sion of it. A sense of wrong and disappointment flowed round Ralph's heart. So on the bridge in the darkness, where many lovers had stood ever since the first Pict trysted his dark-browed bride by the unbridged water, the pair stood very still. They only breathed each other's breath.
Something familiar struck on Ralph's senses. He seemed to be standing silent in the parlour at Craig Ronald--not here, with his arms round his love--and somehow between them there rose unmistakable the perfume of the flower which for an hour he had carried in his coat on the day that he and she went a-fis.h.i.+ng.
”Beloved,” he said tenderly, looking down, ”you are very good to me to come!”
For all reply a face was held close pressed to his. The mists of night had made her cheek damp. He pa.s.sed his hand across the ripples of her hair. Half hidden by the shawl he could feel the crisping of the curls under his fingers.
It was harder in texture than he had fancied Winsome's hair would be. He half smiled that he had time at such a moment to think such a thing. It was strange, however. He had thought a woman's hair was like floss silk--at least Winsome's, for he had theorized about none other.
”Winsome, dear!” he said, again bending his head to look down, ”I have to go far away, and I wanted to tell you. You are not angry with me, sweetest, for asking you to come? I could not go without bidding you good-bye, and in the daytime I might not have seen you alone. You know that I love you with all my life and all my heart.
And you love me--at least a little. Tell me, beloved!”
Still there was no answer. Ralph waited with some cert.i.tude and ease from pain, for indeed the clasping arms told him all he wished to know.
There was a brightness low down in the west. Strangely and slowly the gloomy eyelid of cloud which had fallen athwart the evening lifted for a moment its sullen fringe; a misty twilight of lurid light flowed softly over the land. The shawl fell back like a hood from off the girl's shoulders. She looked up throbbing and palpitating. Ralph Peden was clasping Jess Kissock in his arms.
She had kept her word. He had kissed her of his own free will, and that within a day. Her heart rejoiced over Winsome. ”So much, at least, she cannot take from me.”
Ralph Peden's heart stopped beating for a tremendous interval of seconds. Then the dammed-back blood-surge drave thundering in his ears. He swayed, and would have fallen but for the parapet of the bridge and the clinging arms about his neck. All his nature and love in full career stopped dead. The shock almost unhinged his soul and reason. It was still so dark that, though he could see the outline of her head and the paleness of her face, nothing held him but the intense and vivid fascination of her eyes. Ralph would have broken away, indignant and amazed, but her arms and eyes held him close prisoner, the dismayed turmoil in his own heart aiding.
”Yes, Ralph Peden,” Jess Kissock said, cleaving to him, ”and you hate me because it is I and not another. You think me a wicked girl to come to you in her place. But you called her because you loved her, and I have come because I loved you as much. Have I not as much right? Do not dream that I came for aught but that. Have I not as good a right to love as you?”
She prisoned his face fiercely between her hands, and held him off from her as if to see into his soul by the light of the lingering lake of ruddy light low in the west.
”In your Bible where is there anything that hinders a woman from loving? Yet I know you will despise me for loving you, and hate me for coming in her place.”
”I do not hate you!” said Ralph, striving to go without rudely unclasping the girl's hands. Her arms fell instantly again about his neck, locking themselves behind.
”No, you shall not go till you have heard all, and then you can cast me into the loch as a worthless thing that you are better rid of.”
Through his disappointment and his anger, Ralph was touched. He would have spoken, but the girl went on:
”No, you do not hate me--I am not worth it. You despise me, and do you think that is any better? I am only a cottar's child. I have been but a waiting-maid. But I have read how maids have loved the kings and the kings loved them. Yes, I own it. I am proud of it. I have schemed and lain awake at nights for this. Why should I not love you? Others have loved me without asking my leave. Why should I ask yours? And love came to me without your leave or my own that day on the road when you let me carry your books.”
She let her arms drop from his neck and buried her face in her hands, sobbing now with very genuine tears. Ralph could not yet move away, even though no longer held by the stringent coercion of this girl's arms. He was too grieved, too suddenly and bitterly disappointed to have any fixed thought or resolve. But the good man does not live who can listen unmoved to the despairing catch of the sobbing in a woman's throat. Then on his hands, which he had clasped before him, he felt the steady rain of her tears; his heart went out in a great pity for this wayward girl who was baring her soul to him.
The whole note and accent of her grief was of unmistakable feeling. Jess Kissock had begun in play, but her inflammable nature kindled easily into real pa.s.sion. For at least that night, by the bridge of the Grannoch water, she believed that her heart was broken.
Ralph put his hand towards her with some unformed idea of sympathy. He murmured vague words of comfort, as he might have done to a wailing child that had hurt itself; but he had no idea how to still the tempestuous grief of a pa.s.sion-pale woman.
Suddenly Jess Kissock slipped down and clasped him about the knees. Her hair had broken from its snood and streamed a cloud of intense blackness across her shoulders. He could see her only weirdly and vaguely, as one may see another by the red light of a wood ember in the darkness. She seemed like a beautiful, pure angel, lost by some mischance, praying to him out of the hollow pit of the night.
”I carried your burden for you once, the day I first saw you. Let me carry your burden for you across the world. If you will not love me, let me but serve you. I would slave so hard! See, I am strong--”
She seized his hands, gripping thorn till his fingers clave together with the pressure.
”See how I love you!” her hands seemed to say. Then she kissed his hands, wetting them with the downfalling of her tears.
The darkness settled back thicker than before. He could not see the kneeling woman whose touch he felt. He strove to think what he should do, his emotions and his will surging in a troubled maelstrom about his heart.
But just then, from out of the darkness high on the unseen hill above them, there came a cry--a woman's cry of pain, anger, and ultimate danger: ”Ralph, Ralph, come to me--come!” it seemed to say to him. Again and again it came, suddenly faltered and was silenced as if smothered--as though a hand had been laid across a mouth that cried and would not be silent.
Ralph sprang clear of Jess Kissock in a moment. He knew the voice.