He wandered along the shore on the land side of the
mound, with a favourite old book of Scottish ballads
in his hand, every now and then stooping to gather
a sea anemone—a white flower something
like a wild geranium, with a faint sweet smell, or
a small, short stalked harebell, or a red daisy, as
large as a small primrose; for along the coast there,
on cliff or in sand, on rock or in field, the daisies
are remarkable for size, and often not merely tipped,
but dyed throughout with a deep red.
He had gathered a bunch of the finest, and had thrown
himself down on the side of the dune, whence, as he
lay, only the high road, the park wall, the temple
of the winds, and the blue sky were visible.
The vast sea, for all the eye could tell, was nowhere—not
a ripple of it was to be seen, but the ear was filled
with the night gush and flow of it. A sweet wind
was blowing, hardly blowing, rather gliding, like
a slumbering river, from the west. The sun had
vanished, leaving a ruin of gold and rose behind him,
gradually fading into dull orange and lead and blue
sky and stars. There was light enough to read
by, but he never opened his book. He was thinking
over something Mr Graham had said to him a few days
before, namely, that all impatience of monotony, all
weariness of best things even, are but signs of the
eternity of our nature—the broken human
fashions of the divine everlastingness.
“I dinna ken whaur it comes frae,” said
a voice above him.
He looked up. On the ridge of the mound, the
whole of his dwarfed form relieved against the sky
and looking large in the twilight, stood the mad laird,
reaching out his forehead towards the west with his
arms expanded as if to meet the ever coming wind.
“Naebody kens whaur the win’ comes frae,
or whaur it gangs till,” said Malcolm.
“Ye’re no a hair waur aff nor ither fowk,
there, laird.”
“Does’t come frae a guid place, or frae
an ill?” said the laird, doubtingly.
“It’s saft an’ kin’ly i’
the fin’ o’ ’t,” returned Malcolm
suggestively, rising and joining the laird on the
top of the dune, and like him spreading himself out
to the western air.
The twilight had deepened, merging into such night
as the summer in that region knows—a sweet
pale memory of the past day. The sky was full
of sparkles of pale gold in a fathomless blue; there
was no moon; the darker sea lay quiet below, with only
a murmur about its lip, and fitfully reflected the
stars. The soft wind kept softly blowing.
Behind them shone a light at the harbour’s mouth,
and a twinkling was here and there visible in the town
above; but all was as still as if there were no life
save in the wind and the sea and the stars. The
whole feeling was as if something had been finished
in heaven, and the outmost ripples of the following
rest had overflowed and were now pulsing faintly and
dreamily across the bosom of the labouring earth,
with feeblest suggestion of the mighty peace beyond.
Alas, words can do so little! even such a night is
infinite.
