Chapter II: The Gates of the Morning

Dawn had woven her own texture of pearl into the fabric of the Moor, and the sun, like a great lamp, hung low upon the shoulder of the eastern hills. Silence brooded, save for the murmur of water, and all things were still but the stream, upon whose restless currents morning wrote in letters of pale gold. The world glimmered under sparkling moisture born of a starry night, and every blade of grass and frond of fern lifted its proper jewel to the sun. Peace held the waking hour a while, and living man still slept as soundly as the old stone heroes in their forgotten graves beneath the heather. Then newborn things began to suck the udder, or open little bills for food. Parent birds and beasts were busy tending upon their young. The plovers mewed far off, and swooped and tumbled; curlews cried; herons took the morning upon their wings and swept low and heavily to their hunting grounds.

Young dawn danced golden-footed over the stony hills, fired the greater gorse, lighted each granite pinnacle like a torch, flooded the world with radiance, and drank the dew of the morning. Earth also awoke, and her sleeping garb of pearly mist, still spread upon the river valleys, at length dwindled, and glowed, and burnt away into the ardent air. Then incense of peat-smoke ascended in a transparent veil of blue above Ruddyford, while from the cot hard by came forth a woman.

Sarah Jane had been at her new life a week, and began to know the cows and their characters. They waited for her now, and soon the milk purred into her glittering pails. First the note of the can was sharp and thin; then, as the precious fluid spirted, now right, now left, from the teats under Sarah's firm fingers, the vessel uttered a milder harmony and finally gave out only a dull thud with each addition. The cows waited their turns patiently, licked one another's necks and lowed; as yet no man moved, and the milker amused herself by talking to the kine. She sat with her cheek pressed to a great red flank, and her hair shone cowslip-colour against the russet hide of the beast. Her splendid arms were bare to the elbow. Already something of the past had vanished from her, and in her eyes new thought was added to the old frankness. She thought upon motherhood as she milked these placid mothers; she perceived that the summer world was full of mothers wheeling the air and walking on earth. Wifehood was good to her, and very dearly she loved the man who had led her into it.

Sarah Jane whistled sometimes when she felt unusually cheerful. She whistled now, and her red lips creased up till they resembled the breaking bud of a flower. The sounds she uttered were deep and full, like a blackbird's song, and they made no set tune, but rippled in harmonious, sweet, irregular notes, as an accompaniment to kindred thoughts.

Suddenly feet fell on the stone pavement outside the cow-byres, and a man approached where she sat and milked the last cow. The others, each in turn, her store yielded, had passed through an open gate into the Moor, there to browse and repose and chew the cud until another evening.

Sarah Jane glanced up and saw Hilary Woodrow standing and looking at her. As yet she had but seen him once upon a formal introduction; now he stopped and spoke to her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Brendon. I hope your house is comfortable, and that you are settling down. Let Tabitha know if she can do anything for you."

"Good-morning, sir, and thank you. 'Tis a very snug li'l house, and nothing could be nicer."

He nodded. Then the last cow went off, and Sarah Jane rose, patted it on the flank and stretched her arms. He remarked her height and splendid figure.

"Rather cramping work, I'm afraid," he said.

"'Twas at first, but I like it better now. Cows be nice, cosy creatures an' terrible understanding. Some's so peaceful an' quiet; an' others that masterful they won't take 'no' for an answer, an' push afore the patient ones and get their own way, and will be milked first."

He nodded once more and smiled. Then she washed her hands in a granite trough of sweet water and spoke again.

"You'm moving early," she remarked, in her easy and friendly fashion. "John Prout said you always laid late for health, yet you be up afore the men."

"I slept badly and was glad to get out into this sun."

"You'm over-thin seemingly, and have a hungry look, sir. Here--wait a minute! Bide where you be, and I'll come back afore you can count ten!"

She vanished into Ruddyford, and Hilary, wondering, watched her swift, splendid speed. In a moment she returned with an empty glass. She filled it from the milk-pail and held it to him.

"Drink," she said. "'Tis what you'm calling out for."

"I can't, Mrs. Brendon--raw milk doesn't suit me."

"Don't you believe that! Milk hot out of the cow suits everybody. Take it so, and you'll get rounder and happier in a week. My own father was largely the better for it. Try, sir; do please."

He could not resist her eyes, and took the glass from her hands and thanked her.

"Here's good luck and all prosperity to you and your husband," he said, and emptied the glass.

Her face brightened with pleasure.

"Lick your lips," she begged. "Don't lose a drop of it: 'tis life--milk's the very beginning of life--so my mother used to tell."

"And do you think this cup is the beginning of mine?"

"No--yours beginned fifty year ago by the look of you. But milk will help you. You're just the thin, poor-fed fashion of man as ought to drink it. My Daniel's different. With his huge thews he must have red meat--like a dear old tiger. Milk's no use to him."

"By Jove--d'you think I look fifty, Mrs. Brendon?" he asked.

"To my eye, I should guess you wasn't much under. Beg pardon, I'm sure, if you be."

"I'm thirty-six," he said.

"My stars! Then you ought to take more care of yourself."

"I sleep badly."

"You think too much belike?"

"Yes--there's a lot to think about."

"You did ought to put a bit of wool round your neck when you come out in the morning air, perhaps," she suggested; but he laughed at this.

"Good gracious! I'm not made of sugar. I look a giant of strength beside town folk. 'Tis only in your eye that all of us seem weaklings beside Brendon. To tell you the truth, I'm rather a fool about my health. I said just now I had so much to think about: don't you believe it! I've got nothing to think about--hardly more than the cows. Now, I mustn't waste any more of your time."

He sauntered on towards the Moor.

Daniel Brendon was standing at his entrance as Woodrow approached, and he touched his hat and said--

"Morning, sir!"

"Morning, Dan," the master answered and passed on.

Sarah Jane took her milk-pails to the dairy, and then went home to breakfast. She chattered to her husband, narrated her morning's experience, and explained at length her theories of Hilary Woodrow.

"To think as he be no more than six-and-thirty!" she said.

"How d'you know that?"

"He told me. I forget how it went, but I'd just said I reckoned he was fifty, and he seemed rather troubled."

"Fancy your speaking like that!"

"He don't look much less, all the same. And I gave him a bit of advice too."

"Advise him! Nought stops you," Daniel said with his mouth full.

"Why should it? After you've been married a month--there 'tis--you've got more wisdom and understanding of menfolk than a century of maiden life could bring to 'e. I feel like a mother to these here helpless men a'ready."

"Never was such a large-hearted female as you, Sarah Jane."

"What that man wants is a wife. I couldn't have read him any more than you could a bit ago; now 'tis as plain to my understanding as this cup of tea. A wisht, hangdog, sorrowful face to my eye; yet very good-looking in his thin way. But hungry--awful hungry."

"As to women, he's had enough of them. One treated him shameful. But 'tisn't them: 'tis his terrible vain ideas about religion makes him fretful, I reckon. Well he may be hungry!"

"Don't you believe that," she answered. "Church-going don't put fat on the bones, whatever else it may do. He should have a female after him, to fuss a bit, and coddle him, and see he lets his proper food down. He wants somebody to listen to his talk--somebody to sharpen his wits on."

With startling intuition of truth she spoke; but Daniel did not appreciate her discernment.

"Fewer that listen to his talk, the better," he said. "Ban't likely Mr. Woodrow will be happy so long as he sucks poison out of all sorts of godless books."

"Poison is as poison does," she answered. "Everybody says he's a very good sort of man. The good man can't be godless."

"Because his Maker's stronger than his opinions and ban't sleeping, though Woodrow's conscience may be. In time of trouble I wouldn't give a rush for his way. There's nought to help then but Heaven; and so he'll find it. Not that I judge--only I'm sorry for it."

"He wants a woman after him," repeated Sarah Jane decisively.

Daniel laughed at her.

"You think, because you and me are married, that nobody can be happy otherwise."

"Men and women must come to it for sartain, if they'm to be complete, and shine afore their fellow-creatures. A bachelor's an unfinished thing; and so's a maiden--I don't care who she is. And she knows it at the bottom of her heart, for all she pretends different."

"That's not Christianity," Daniel answered; "and you oughtn't to say it, or think it. You speak in the first flush of being married; and I feel just the same and scorn a single man; but 'tis silly nonsense, and we'm both wrong. The saints and martyrs was mostly single, and the holiest Christians that ever lived haven't found no use for women as a rule. Christ's Self wasn't married for that matter."

She considered this view, then shook her head unconvinced.

"He went to marriages and was kind to the women. He might have found the right maiden Himself, and won joy of her after He'd set the world right, if they hadn't killed Him."

Daniel stared.

"Don't say things like that, Sarah Jane! You don't mean it for profane speaking; but 'tis very near it, and makes me feel awful scared."

"What have I said now, dear heart? I never know what you think 'bout things. You change so. If 'tis holier and better to bide single--but there--what foolishness! Jesus Christ set store by little children anyway; and He knowed you can't have 'em without getting 'em."

Brendon rose up from the table and kissed her neck.

"You'm a darling creature," he said, "and to look at you be to make single life but a frosty thing in a man's eyes, no doubt. Certainly 'twould be false for me to say a word against marriage; only it ban't for all; and the Christian religion shows that there are many can do more useful work out of it than in it."

"Poor things!" she said in her pride. "Let 'em do what they can, then. But I'd be sorry to think that a churchyard stone, getting crookeder every year, was all that was left to remember me by when I went."

"That's your narrowness, Sarah. There's other contrivances beside babbies that a man or a woman can bring into the world. Goodness and proper actions, and setting an example, and such like."

"Parson's work," she said. "What's that to taking your share in the little ones? If I thought us should have no childer, I'd so soon hang myself as not, Dan."

"Your ideas do hurtle about my ears like hail," he said, "And they'm awful wild and silly sometimes."

"I know it. You'll larn me better come presently."

"I hope so," he said. "You're all right at heart--only the pattern of your ideas now and then be a thought too outlandish for a Christian home. You wasn't taught all you've got to larn. I don't say it out of no disrespect to father; but--well--us all have a deal to larn yet--the oldest and youngest--and me most of all."

Daniel heaved a contented sigh upon this platitude, and his day's work began.