CHAPTER XIII
The day was one of those Highland days which are a dream of freshness and beauty and delight. I do not claim that they are very frequent, but sometimes they will occur in a cluster, two or three together, like a special benediction out of heaven. The sun has a purity, a clearness, an ecstasy of light which it has nowhere else. It looks, as it were, with a heavenly compunction upon earth and sky, as if to make up for the many days when it is absent, expanding over mountain and moor with a smiling which seems personal and full of intention. The air is life itself, uncontaminated with any evil emanation, full of the warmth of the sun, and the odor of the fir-trees and heather, and the murmur of all the living things about. The damp and dew which linger in the shady places disappear as if by magic. No unkindly creature, no venomous thing, is abroad; no noise, no jar of living, though every thing lives and grows and makes progress with such silent and smiling vigor. The two lovers in the midst of this incense-breathing nature, so still, yet so strong, so peaceful, yet so vigorous, felt that the scene was made for them, that no surroundings could have been more fitly prepared and tempered for the group which was as the group in Eden before trouble came. They wandered about together through the glen, and by the side of the shining brown trout stream, which glowed and smiled among the rocks, reflecting every ray and every cloud as it hurried and sparkled along, always in haste, yet always at leisure. They lingered here and there, in a spot which was still more beautiful than all the others, though not so beautiful as the next, which tempted them a little further on. Sometimes Ronald’s rod was taken out and screwed together; sometimes even flung over a dark pool, where there were driftings and leapings of trout, but pulled in again before, as Lily said, any harm was done. “For why should any peaceful creature get a sharp hook in its jaw because you and me are happy?” she said. “That’s no reason.” Ronald, but for the pride of having something to carry back in his basket, was much of her opinion. He was not a devoted fisherman. Their happiness was no reason, clearly, for interfering with that of the meanest thing that lived. And they talked about every thing in heaven and earth, not only of their own affairs, though they were interesting enough. Lily, who for a month had spoken to nobody except Beenie, save for that one visit to the Manse, had such an accumulation of remark and observation to get through on her side, and so much to demand from him, that the moments, and, indeed, the hours, flew. It is astonishing, even without the impulse of a long parting and sudden meeting, what wells of conversation flow forth between two young persons in their circumstances. Perhaps it would not sound very wise or witty if any cool spectator listened, but it is always delightful to the people concerned, and Lily was not the first comer, so to speak. She was full of variety, full of whim and fancy, no heaviness or monotony in her. Perhaps this matters less at such a moment of life than at any other. The dullest pair find the art of entertaining each other, of keeping up their mutual interest. And now that the cold chill of doubt in respect to Ronald was removed from her mind Lily flowed like the trout stream, as dauntless and as gay, reflecting every gleam of light.
“The worst thing is,” Ronald said, “that the Vacation will come to an end, not now or soon, Heaven be praised; but the time will come when I shall have to go back and pace the Parliament House, as of old, and my Lily will be left alone in the wilderness.”
“Not alone, as I was before,” said Lily—“never that any more; for now I have something to remember, and something to look forward to. You’ve been here, Ronald; nothing can take that from us. I will come and sit on this stone, and say to myself: ‘Here we spent the day; and here we had our picnic; and this was what he said.’ And I will laugh at all your jokes over again.”
“Ah!” he said, “it’s but a grim entertainment that. I went and stood behind those curtains in that window, do you remember? in George Square, and said to myself: ‘Here my Lily was; and here she said——’ But, instead of laughing, I was much more near crying. You will not find much good in that.”
“You crying!” she said, with the water in her eyes, and a little soft reproving blow of her fingers upon his cheek. “I do not believe it. But I dare say I shall cry and then laugh. What does it matter which? They are just the same for a girl. And then I shall say to myself: ‘At the New Year he is coming back again, and then——’”
“What shall we do at the New Year?” he said. “No days like this then. How can I take my Lily out on the moor among the snow?”
“If I am a Lily, I am one that can bloom anywhere—in the snow as well as the sun.”
“And so you are, my dearest, making a sunshine in a shady place. But still we must think of that. Winter and summer are two different things. Cannot we find a friend to take us in?”
“I will tell you where we shall find a friend. You’ll come to the Tower with your boldest face as if it was the first time you had been near. And you will ask: ‘Does Miss Ramsay live here?’ And Katrin will say: ‘’Deed does she, sir. Here and no other place.’ And you will smite your thigh in your surprise, and say: ‘I thought I had heard that! I am a friend from Edinburgh, and I just stopped on the road to [here say any name you please] to say “Good-day” to the young lady, if she was here.’ And then you will look about, and you will say: ‘It is rather a lonesome place.’”