Part 35 (1/2)

”We transplant badly, we plants of the hills. You must come back to me,” said Winsome, after a pause of wondering silence.

Loch Ken lay like a dream in the clear dispersed light of the morning, the sun s.h.i.+mmering upon it as through translucent ground gla.s.s. Teal and moor-hen squattered away from the sh.o.r.e as Winsome and Ralph climbed the brae, and stood looking northward over the superb levels of the loch. On the horizon Cairnsmuir showed golden tints through his steadfast blue.

Whaups swirled and wailed about the rugged side of Bennan above their heads. Across the loch there was a solitary farm so beautifully set that Ralph silently pointed it out to Winsome, who smiled and shook her head.

”The s.h.i.+rmers has just been let on a nineteen years' lease,” she said, ”eighteen to run.”

So practical was the answer, that Ralph laughed, and the strain of his sadness was broken. He did not mean to wait eighteen years for her, fathers or no fathers.

Then beyond, the whole land leaped skyward in great heathery sweeps, save only here and there, where about some hill farm the little emerald crofts and blue-green springing oatlands cl.u.s.tered closest. The loch spread far to the north, sleeping in the suns.h.i.+ne. Burnished like a mirror it was, with no breath upon it.

In the south the Dee water came down from the hills peaty and brown. The roaring of its rapids could faintly be heard. To the east, across the loch, an island slept in the fairway, wooded to the water's edge.

It were a good place to look one's last on the earth, this wooded promontory, which might indeed have been that mountain, though a little one, from which was once seen all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. For there are no finer glories on the earth than red heather and blue loch, except only love and youth.

So here love and youth had come to part, between the heather that glowed on the Bennan Hill and the sapphire pavement of Loch Ken.

For a long time Winsome and Ralph were silent--the empty interior sadness, mixed of great fear and great hunger, beginning to grip them as they stood. Lives only just twined and unified were again to twain. Love lately knit was to be torn asunder. Eyes were to look no more into the answering eloquence of other eyes.

”I must go,” said Ralph, looking down into his betrothed's face.

”Stay only a little,” said Winsome. ”It is the last time.”

So he stayed.

Strange, nervous constrictions played at ”cat's cradle” about their hearts. Vague noises boomed and drummed in their ears, making their own words sound strange and empty, like voices heard in a dream.

”Winsome!” said Ralph.

”Ralph!” said Winsome.

”You will never for a moment forget me?” said Winsome Charteris.

”You will never for a moment forget me?” said Ralph Peden.

The mutual answer taken and given, after a long silence of soul and body in not-to-be-forgotten communion, they drew apart.

Ralph went a little way down the birch-fringed hill, but turned to look a last look. Winsome was standing where he had left her.

Something in her att.i.tude told of the tears steadily falling upon her summer dress. It was enough and too much.

Ralph ran back quickly.

”I cannot go away, Winsome. I cannot bear to leave you like this!”

Winsome looked at him and fought a good fight, like the brave girl she was. Then she smiled through her tears with the sudden radiance of the sun upon a showery May morning when the white hawthorn is coming out.

At this a sob, dangerously deep, rending and sudden, forced itself from Ralph's throat. Her smile was infinitely more heart-breaking than her tears. Ralph uttered a kind of low inarticulate roar at the sight--being his impotent protest against his love's pain. Yet such moments are the ineffaceable treasures of life, had he but known it. Many a man's deeds follow his vows simply because his lips have tasted the salt water of love's ocean upon the face of the beloved.

”Be brave, Winsome,” said Ralph; ”it shall not be for long.”