MIDSUMMER DAWN.
True love is at once chart and compass. It led Ralph Peden out
into a cloudy June dawning. It was soft, amorphous, uncoloured
night when he went out. Slate-coloured clouds were racing along
the tops of the hills from the south. The wind blew in fitful
gusts and veering flaws among the moorlands, making eddies and
back-waters of the air, which twirled the fallen petals of the
pear and cherry blossoms in the little manse orchard.
As he stepped out upon the moor and the chill of dawn struck
inward, he did not know that Allan Welsh was watching him from his
blindless bedroom. Dawn is the testing-time of the universe. Its
cool, solvent atmosphere dissolves social amenities. It is
difficult to be courteous, impossible to be polite, in that hour
before the heart has realized that its easy task of throwing the
blood horizontally to brain and feet has to be exchanged for the
harder one of throwing it vertically to the extremities.
Ralph walked slowly and in deep thought through the long avenues
of glimmering beeches and under the dry rustle of the quivering
poplars. Then, as the first red of dawn touched his face, he
looked about him. He was clear of the trees now, and the broad
open expanse of the green fields and shining water meadows that
ring in Loch Grannoch widened out before him. The winds sighed and
rumbled about the hill-tops of the Orchar and the Black Laggan,
but in the valley only the cool moist wind of dawn drew largely
and statedly to and fro.
Ralph loved Nature instinctively, and saw it as a townbred lad
rarely does. He was deeply read in the more scientific literature
of the subject, and had spent many days in his Majesty's botanic
gardens, which lie above the broad breast of the Forth. He now
proved his learning, and with quick, sure eye made it real on the
Galloway hills. Every leaf spoke to him. He could lie for half a
day and learn wisdom from the ant. He took in the bird's song and
the moth's flight. The keepers sometimes wondered at the lights
which flashed here and there about the plantations, when in the
coolness of a moist evening he went out to entrap the sidelong-
dashing flutterers with his sugar-pots.
But since he came to Galloway, and especially since he smelled the
smell of the wood-fire set for the blanket-washing above the Crae
Water bridge, there were new secrets open to him. He possessed a
voice that could wile a bird off a bought. His inner sympathy with
wild and tame beasts alike was such that as he moved quietly among
a drowsing, cud-chewing herd on the braes of Urioch not a beast
moved.
Among them a wild, untamed colt stood at bay, its tail arched with
apprehension, yet sweeping the ground, and watched him with
flashing eyes of suspicion. Ralph held out his hand slowly, more
as if it were growing out of his side by some rapid natural
process than as if he were extending it. He uttered a low
"sussurrus" of coaxing and invitation, all the while imperceptibly
decreasing his distance from the colt. The animal threw back its
head, tossed its mane in act to flee, thought better of it and
dropped its nose to take a bite or two of the long coarse grass.
Then again it looked up and continued to gaze, fascinated at the
beckoning and caressing fingers. At last, with a little whinny of
pleasure, the colt, wholly reassured, came up and nestled a wet
nose against Ralph's coat. He took the wild thing's neck within
the arch of his arm, and the two new friends stood awhile in grave
converse.
A moment afterwards Ralph bent to lay a hand upon the head of one
of the placid queys [Footnote: Young--cows.] that had watched the
courtship with full, dewy eyes of bovine unconcern. Instantly the
colt charged into the still group with a wild flourish of hoofs
and viciously snapping teeth, scattering the black-polled
Galloways like smoke. Then, as if to reproach Ralph for his
unfaithfulness, he made a circle of the field at a full, swinging
gallop, sending the short turf flying from his unshod hoofs at
every stride. Back he came again, a vision of floating mane and
streaming tail, and stopped dead three yards from Ralph, his
forelegs strained and taut, ploughing furrows in the grass. As
Ralph moved quietly across the field the colt followed, pushing a
cool moist nose over the young man's shoulder. When at last Ralph
set a foot on the projecting stone which stood out from the side
of the grey, lichen-clad stone dyke, the colt stood stretching an
eager head over as though desirous of following him; then, with a
whinny of disappointment, he rushed round the field, charging at
the vaguely wondering and listlessly grazing cattle with head
arched between his forelegs and a flourish of widely distributed
heels.
Over the hill, Craig Ronald was still wrapped in the lucid
impermanence of earliest dawn, when Winsome Charteris set her foot
over the blue flag-stones of the threshold. The high tide of
darkness, which, in these northern summer mornings never rose very
high or lasted very long, had ebbed long ago. The indigo grey of
the sky was receding, and tinging towards the east with an
imperceptibly graded lavender which merged behind the long shaggy
outline of the piny ridge into a wash of pale lemon yellow.
The world paused, finger on lip, saying "Hush!" to Winsome as she
stepped over the threshold from the serenely breathing morning
air, from the illimitable sky which ran farther and farther back
as the angels drew the blinds from the windows of heaven.
"Hush!" said the cows over the hedge, blowing fragrant breaths of
approval from their wide, comma-shaped nostrils upon the lush
grass and upon the short heads of white clover, as they stood face
to the brae, all with their heads upward, eating their way like an
army on the march.
"Hush! hush!" said the sheep who were straggling over the shorter
grass of the High Park, feeding fitfully in their short, uneasy
way--crop, crop, crop--and then a pause, to move forward their own
length and begin all over again.
But the sheep and the kine, the dewy grass and the brightening
sky, might every one have spared their pains, for it was in no
wise in the heart of Winsome Charteris to make a noise amid the
silences of dawn. Meg Kissock, who still lay snug by Jess in a
plump-cheeked country sleep, made noise enough to stir the country
side when, rising, she set briskly about to get the house on its
morning legs. But Winsome was one of the few people in this world
--few but happy--to whom a sunrise is more precious than a sun set
--rarer and more calming, instinct with message and sign from a
covenant-keeping God. Also, Winsome betook her self early to bed,
and so awoke attuned to the sun's rising.
What drew her forth so early this June day was no thought or hope
or plan except the desire to read the heart of Nature, and perhaps
that she might not be left too long alone with the parable of her
own heart. A girl's heart is full of thought which it dares not
express to herself--of fluttering and trembling possibilities,
chrysalis-like, set aside to await the warmth of an unrevealed
summer. In Winsome's soul the first flushing glory of the May of
youth was waking the prisoned life. But there were throbs and
thrillings too piercingly sweet to last undeveloped in her soul.
The bursting bud of her healthful beauty, quickened by the shy
radiance of her soul, shook the centres of her life, even as a
laburnum-tree mysteriously quivers when the golden rain is in act
to break from the close-clustered dependent budlets.
Thus it was that, at the stile which helps the paths be tween the
Dullarg and Craig Ronald to overleap the high hill dyke, Ralph met
Winsome. As they looked into one another's eyes, they saw Nature
suddenly dissolve into confused meaninglessness. There was no
clear message for either of them there, save the message that the
old world of their hopes and fears had wholly passed away. Yet no
new world had come when over the hill dyke their hands met. They
said no word. There is no form of greeting for such. Eve did not
greet Adam in polite phrase when he awoke to find her in the dawn
of one Eden day, a helpmeet meet for him. Neither did Eve reply
that "it was a fine morn ing." It is always a fine morning in
Eden. They were silent, and so were these two. Their hands lay
within one another a single instant. Then, with a sense of
something wanting, Ralph sprang lightly over the dyke as an Edin
burgh High-School boy ought who had often played hares and hounds
in the Hunter's Bog, and been duly thrashed therefor by Dr. Adam
[Footnote: The Aery famous master of the High School of
Edinburgh.] on the following morning.
When Ralph stood beside her upon the sunny side of the stile he
instinctively resumed Winsome's hand. For this he had no reason,
certainly no excuse. Still, it may be urged in excuse that it was
as much as an hour or an hour and a half before Winsome remembered
that he needed any. Our most correct and ordered thoughts have a
way of coming to us belated, as the passenger who strolls in
confidently ten minutes after the platform is clear. But, like
him, they are at least ready for the next train.
As Winsome and Ralph turned towards the east, the sun set his face
over the great Scotch firs on the ridge, whose tops stood out like
poised irregular blots on the fire centred ocean of light.
It was the new day, and if the new world had not come with it, of
a surety it was well on the way.