The Ladies Lindores by Margaret Oliphant

John Erskine woke with the singing of the birds on the morning of Midsummer-day. It was early -- far before any civilised hour of waking. When he suddenly opened his eyes in the sweet strangeness of that unearthly moment, the sensation came back to his mind of childish wakings in summer mornings long departed; of getting up in the unutterable stillness with the sense of being the first adventurer into an unknown world; of stealing downstairs through the silent visionary house all full of unseen sleepers, like ghosts behind the closed doors; of finding, with heart beating and little hands trembling, half with alarm, half with delight, the bolt low down on some easily opened door; and of stepping out into the sweet dews, into the ineffable glory of sunshine in which there was no shadow but that little one which was his own. Nobody alive, nobody awake, except that riot of the birds in every tree which wounded the ideal sense of unearthly calm, yet gave a consolatory consciousness of life and motion in the strange quiet, though a life incomprehensible, a language unknown. Strange that this was the first recollection brought to him in his waking -- for the next was very different. The next was a confused sweet tumult in the air, a sound in his ears, an echo in his heart: "They are coming, they are coming! " He could not feel sure that somewhere or other in the words there were not joy-bells ringing -- a tinkle of chimes, now rising, now falling, "as if a door were shut between us and the sound. " "They are coming," everything seemed to say. The air of the morning blowing in by the open window puffed it at him with playful sweetness. The birds sang it, the trees shaped their rustlings to the words, "They are coming."

Well, it was perfectly true. The Earl and Countess of Lindores, and their daughter, Lady Edith Lindores, and perhaps their son Lord Rintoul, and it might be other noble persons in their train, were certainly expected to arrive that day; but what was that to John Erskine of Dalrulzian, a country gentleman of the most moderate pretensions, with nothing about him above mediocrity, and no claim to any part or share in the life led by these great people? For the moment John did not ask himself that question. He only felt after this long interval of solitude and abandonment that they were coming back. He had been as it were shipwrecked in this country with which he was so little acquainted, though it was his own country: and the time of their absence had appeared very long to him. He said to himself their absence -- but it will be understood that the absence of Lord Lindores, for example, had very little importance to the young man. He would not have been deeply concerned if that nobleman had been induced to serve his country and his party in any other sphere. But it was safer, easier to say their, and to make to himself a little picture of the reopening of the house, the feeling of population and warmth that would breathe about it, the chance even of meeting any day or hour smiles and pleasant looks on the very road, and a sense of society in the atmosphere. He tried to persuade himself that this was what he was thinking of, or rather he refused to enter into any analysis of his feelings at all, and allowed his mind to float upon a vague and delightful current of anticipations, which he preferred not to examine too closely, or put into any certain and definite form.