Gilian The Dreamer Part 10

It was in such an att.i.tude Young Islay found him on the Sat.u.r.day after the episode on the Ramparts. Gilian was in the midst of the same book, trying hard to fill up the gaps that his sacrifice of leaves had brought into the narrative, and Young Islay going a-fishing in the moor-lochs, a keen sportsman all alone, stood over him a very much surprised discoverer.

He gave an halloo that brought Gilian to his feet alarmed, for it happened to fit in with some pa.s.sage in his mind where foes cried. In vain the book went behind the Paymaster's boy; Islay saw the ragged pages.

"Oh!" he cried, "you'll not cheat me this time; you're reading." An annoying contempt was in his manner, and as he stood with his basket slung upon his back, and his rod in the crook of an arm, like a gun, a straight, st.u.r.dy lad of neat limb, a handsome face, and short black curls, he was, for a moment, more admirable in Gilian's eyes than the hero of the book he was ashamed to show.

"I had it in my pocket," said Gilian, in a poor, ineffective explanation, relinquishing the volume with a grudge to the examination of this cynic.

"You pretended on the Ramparts you were tearing it up like any other boy," said Young Islay, "and I was sure you were doing nothing of the kind." He turned over the pages with scornful fingers. "It's not a school-book, there's not a picture in it, it's full of talking--fancy being here with that rubbish, when you might be fishing with me!"

Gilian s.n.a.t.c.hed the volume from him. "You don't know anything about it!"

he cried.

"I know _you_ at any rate," said Young Islay craftily. "You were ashamed of your book; you come here often with books; you do nothing like anybody else; you should have been a girl!"

All the resentment of the Paymaster's boy sprung to his head at this taunt; he threw the book down and dashed a small fist in Young Islay's face. There he found a youth not slow to reply. Down went the rod and the book, and with the fishing-basket swinging and beating at his back, Young Islay fell upon the zealous student. Gilian's arms, as he defended or aimed futile blows, felt, in a little, as heavy as lead. Between each blow he aimed there seemed to be a great s.p.a.ce of time, and yet his enemy was striking with rapidity.

"Are you beaten?" at last cried Young Islay, drawing back for a truce.

"No," said Gilian, gasping. "I'm only tired,'' but he looked b.l.o.o.d.y and vanquished.

"It's the same thing," said Young Islay, picking up his rod. "You can do nothing with your hands; I--I can do anything." And he drew up with a bantam's vanity. He moved off. The torn book was in his path. He kicked it before him like a football until he reached the ditch beside the hunting road, and there he left it. A little later Gilian saw him in a distant vista of the trees as an old hunter of the wood, with a gun in his hand and his spoil upon his back, breasting the brae with long strides, a figure of achievement altogether admirable.

CHAPTER X--ON HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE

Marget Maclean (or one of her sisters) was accustomed when the mails contained a letter on His Majesty's Service for the Paymaster, to put on a bonnet, and in a mild flurry cross the street, feeling herself a sharer in the great matters of State. So important was the mission that she had been known even to shut her shop door for the time of her absence upon eager and numerous youths waiting the purchase of her superior "black man," a comfit more succulent with her than with Jenny Anderson in Crombie's Land, or on older patrons seeking the hire of the new sensation in literature--something with a tomb by Mrs. Radcliffe.

"Tell your mistress I wish to see her," she would say on these occasions with great pomp to Peggy, but even Miss Mary was not sufficiently close to State to be entrusted with the missive. "Goodday, Miss Campbell, I called to see Captain John on important business," and the blue doc.u.ment with its legend and seal would be clutched with mittened hands tight to the faded bodice.

Miss Mary shared some of this awe for State doc.u.ments; at least she helped out the illusion that they were worth all this anxiety on the part of the post-office, and she would call the Paymaster from his breakfast. His part on the other hand was to depreciate their importance. He would take the most weighty and portentous with an air of contempt.

"What's this, Miss Maclean?" he would say impatiently with the snuff-pinch suspended between his pocket and his nose. "A king's letter.

Confound the man! what can he be wanting now?" Then with a careless forefinger he would break the seal and turn the paper outside in, heedless (to all appearance) as if it were an old copy of the _Courier_.

One day such a letter sent his face flaming as he returned to the breakfast table. He looked at Miss Mary, sitting subdued behind her urn and Gilian at her side, and then at his brothers, hardly yet awake in the early morning, whose breakfasts in that small-windowed room it needed two or three candles to illuminate.

"The county corps is coming south this way," said he, with a great restraint upon his feelings.

Cornal Colin turned on him a l.u.s.treless eye.

"What havers are you on now, John?" said he, with no pause in the supping of his porridge. Dugald paid no heed. With a hand a little palsied he b.u.t.tered a scone, and his lower lip was dropped and his eyes were vacant, showing him far absent in the spirit. Conversation was never very rife at the Paymaster's breakfast table.

"I'm telling you the county corps is coming south," said Mars, with what for him to the field officer was almost testiness. "Here's a command for billeting three hundred men on Friday night on their way to Dumbarton."

Up stood the Cornal with a face transfigured. He stretched across the table and almost rudely clutched the paper from his brother's hand, cast a fast glance at the contents and superscription, then sat again and gave a little choked cheer, the hurrah of spent youth and joyfulness.

"Curse me! but it's true," he cried to the General. "The old 91st under Crawford--Jiggy Crawford we called him for his dance in the ken at Madrid before he exchanged--Friday, Friday; where's my uniform, Mary?

They'll be raw recruits, I'll warrant, not the old stuff, but--are you hearing, Dugald? Oh! the Army, the Army! Let me see--yes, it says six pipers and thirty band. My medals, Mary, are they in the shuttle of my kist yet? The 91st--G.o.d! I wish it was our own; would I not show them!

You are not hearing a word I am saying, Dugald."

He paused in a feverish movement in his chair, thrust off from him with a clatter of dishes and a spilling of milk the breakfast still unfinished, and stared with annoyance at the General. Dugald picked at his fish with no appet.i.te, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, a silent old man palsied on one side, with a high bald head full of visions. "What's that about the Argyls?" he said at last, with a start, brought to by the tone and accent of his brother.

Cornal Colin cleared his throat, and read the notification of the billet

"Friday, did you say Friday?" asked Dugald, all abstraction gone.

"This very Friday."

The old man rose and threw back his shoulders with some of the gallantry of his prime. He walked without a word to the window and looked at the deserted street. Ten--fifteen--twenty years fell from his back as thus he stood in the mingled light of the wan reluctant morning and the guttering candles on the table. To Miss Mary, looking at him there against the morning light, his figure--black and indefinite--was the figure that went to Spain, the strong figure, the straight figure, the figure that filled its clothes with manliness. There was but the oval of the bald high head to spoil the illusion. He turned again and looked into the candle-lit room, but seeing nothing there, for all his mind was elsewhere.

"I thought," he muttered, brokenly, "I thought I would never see red-coat again." Then he straightened his shoulders anew, and flexed the sinews of his knees, and pressed the palsied hand against the breeches'

seam. The exertion brought a cough to his throat, a choking resistless cough of age and clogging humours. It was Time's mocking reminder that the morning parade was over for ever, and now the soldier must be at ease. He gasped and spluttered, his figure lost its tenseness, and from the fit of coughing he came back again an old and feeble man. He looked at his hand trembling against his waist, at his feet in their large and clumsy slippers; he looked at the picture of himself upon the wall, then quitted the room with something like a sob upon his lip.

"Man! he's in a droll key about it!" said the Paymaster, breaking the silence. "What in all the world is his vexation?"

Miss Mary put down her handkerchief impatiently and loaded Gilian at her side with embarra.s.sing attentions.

"What--in--all--the--world--is--his vexation?" mocked the Cornal in the Captain's high and squeaking voice, reddening at the face and his scar purpling. "That's a terribly stupid question to put, Jock.

What--in--all--the--world--is--his--vexation? If you had the soger's heart and your brother's past you would not be asking what an ancient's sorrow at his own lost strength might mean. Oh, man, man! make a pretence at spirit even if the Almighty denied it to you!"

He tossed the letter from him, almost in his brother's face.

The Paymaster held his anger in leash. He was incapable of comprehending and he was, too, afraid. With a forced laugh, he pressed the creases from the doc.u.ment.

"Oh, I'm glad enough to see the corps," said he, "if that's what you mean. If I have not your honours from the Army, I'm as fond of Geordie's uniform as any man of my years. I'll get the best billets in the town for----"

The Cornal scowled and interjected, "Ay, ay, and you'll make all the fraca that need be about the lads, and c.o.c.k your hat to the fife, and march and act the veteran as if you were Moore himself, but you'll be far away from knowing what of their pomp and youth is stirring the hearts of your brother Dugald and me. The Army is all bye for us, Jock, Boney's by the heels; there's younger men upon the roster if the foreign route is called again in the barrack yard."

His glance fell upon Gilian, wide-eyed, wonderful, in the shade beside Miss Mary's chair, and he turned to him with a different accent.

"There _you_ are!" said he, "my wan-faced warlock. What would Colin Campbell, Commander of the Bath, not give to be your age again and all the world before him? Do you say your prayers at night, laddie, before you go to your naked bed in the garret? I'll warrant Mary taught you that if she taught you nothing else. Pray every night then that Heaven may give you thew and heart and a touch of the old Hielan' glory that this mechanic body by my side has got through the world wanting. Oh, laddie, laddie, what a chance is yours! To hear the drum in the morning and see the sun glint on the line; to sail away and march with pipe or bugle in foreign countries; to have a thousand good companions round about the same camp-fires and know the lift and splendour of parades in captured towns. It's all bye for me; I'm an old pensioner rotting to the tomb in a landward burgh packed with relics like myself, and as; G.o.d's in heaven, I often wish I was with brother Jamie yonder fallen in my prime with a clod stopping the youth and spirit in my throat."

"Tut, tut, now we're in our flights!" said the Paymaster, not very audibly, so that in his transport the Cornal never heard.

"_Are_ you for the Army?" asked the Cornal, like a recruiting sergeant bringing the question home to a lad at a country fair; and he fixed Gilian with an eye there was no baffling.

"I would--I would like it fine," said Gilian stammering, "if it was all like that."

"Like what?" asked the Cornal, subdued, and a hand behind his ear to listen.

"Like that--" repeated the boy, trembling though Miss Mary's fingers were on his. "All the morning time, all with trumpets and the same friends about the camp-fire. Always the lift inside and the notion to go on and on and----"

He stopped for want of English words to tell the sentiment completely.

The Cornal looked at him now wistfully.

"I would not say, Gilian," said he, "but what there might be the makings of a soger in you yet. If you have not the sinews for it you have the sense. You'll see a swatch on Friday of what I talked about and we'll--Come away this minute, Mary, and look me out my uniform. Jiggy Crawford! Young Jiggy that danced in the booze-house in Madrid! He was Ensign then and now he has his spurs and handles tartan. He is at the very topmost of the thing and I am going down, down, down, out, out, out, like this, and this, and this," and so saying he pinched out the candle flames one by one. The morning swept into the room, no longer with a rival, lighting up this parlour of old people, showing the wrinkles and the grey hairs and the parchment-covered knuckles, and in its midst the Paymaster's boy with a transfigured face and a head full of martial glory.