Culraine was not a pretty village, though its cottages were all alike whitewashed outside, and roofed with heather. They had but two rooms generally—a but and a ben, with no passage between. The majority were among the sand hills, but many were built on the lofty, sea-lashed rocks. James Ruleson’s stood on a wide shelf, too high up for the highest waves, though they often washed away the wall of the garden, where it touched the sandy shore.
The house stood by itself. It had its own sea, and its own sky, and its own garden, the latter sloping in narrow, giddy paths to the very beach. Sure feet were needed among its vegetables, and its thickets of gooseberry and currant bushes, and its straying tangles of blackberry vines. Round the whole plot there was a low stone wall, covered with wall-flowers, wild thyme, rosemary, and house-leek.
A few beds around the house held roses and lilies, and other floral treasures, but these were so exclusively Margot’s property, and Margot’s adoration, that I do not think she would like me even to write about them. Sometimes she put a rosebud in the buttonhole of her husband’s Sunday coat, and sometimes 5 Christina had a similar favor, but Margot was intimate with her flowers. She knew every one by a special name, and she counted them every morning. It really hurt her to cut short their beautiful lives, and her eldest son Norman, after long experience said: “If Mither cuts a flower, she’ll ill to live wi’. I wouldna tine her good temper for a bit rosebud. It’s a poor bargain.”
One afternoon, early in the June of 1849, Christine Ruleson walked slowly up the narrow, flowery path of this mountain garden. She was heard before she was seen, for she was singing an east coast ballad, telling all the world around her, that she
—Cast her line in Largo bay,
And fishes she caught nine;
Three to boil, and three to fry,
And three to bait the line.
So much she sang, and then she turned to the sea. The boat of a solitary fisherman, and a lustrously white bird, were lying quietly on the bay, close together, and a large ship with all her sails set was dropping lazily along to the south. For a few moments she watched them, and then continued her song.
She was tall and lovely, and browned and bloomed in the fresh salt winds. Her hair had been loosened by the breeze, and had partially escaped from her cap. She had a broad, white brow, and the dark blue eyes that dwelt beneath it were full of soul—not 6 a cloud in them, only a soft, radiant light, shaded by eyelids deeply fringed, and almost transparent—eyelids that were eloquent—full of secrets. Her mouth was beautiful, her lips made for loving words—even little children wanted to kiss her. And she lived the very life of the sea. Like it she was subject to ebb and flow. Her love for it was perhaps prenatal, it might even have driven her into her present incarnation.