Gilian The Dreamer Part 11

CHAPTER XI--THE SOUND OF THE DRUM

And the same spirit, martial, poetic, make-believe, stayed with Gilian up till the Friday. It was hard indeed to escape it, for was not the town about him in a ferment of antic.i.p.ation? In our sleeping community we know no longer what of zest the very name of the Army had for the people now asleep in the rank gra.s.ses of Kilmalieu. The old war-dogs made more lingering sederunts in the change-houses, the low taverns in the back lands sounded with bragging chorus and debate, and in the room of the Sergeant More the half-pay gentlemen mixed more potently their midday drams. The burgh ceased its industry, and the Duke, coming down the street upon his horse, saw most of the people who should be working for his wages leaning upon the gables indolent or sitting at the open windows with the tumblers at their hands, singing naughty songs.

He leaned over, and with his crop rapped upon the factor's door. Old Islay came out with a quill behind his ear and a finger to his brow.

"What is wrong in the place to-day?" asked his Grace with a flourish of his crop about him to the lounging rascals and the groups at the tavern doors. "Am I paying good day's wages for the like of that?"

Islay Campbell bobbed and smirked. "It's the coming of the army," said he. "The county corps comes to-morrow and your men are all dukes to-day.

They would not do a hand's turn for an emperor."

"Humph!" said Duke George. "I wish I could throw off life's responsibilities so easily. The rogues! the rogues!" he mused, soothing his horse's neck with a fine and kindly hand. "I suppose it's in them, this unrest and liability to uproar under the circ.u.mstances.

My father--well, well, let them be." His heels turned the horse in a graceful curvet "I'm saying, Islay," he cried over his shoulder, "have a free cask or two at the Cross in the morning."

But it was in the Paymaster's house that the fullest stress, the most nervous restlessness of antic.i.p.ation were apparent. The Paymaster's snuff was now in two vest-pockets and even then was insufficient, as he went about the town from morning till night babbling in excited half-sentences of war, and the fields he had never fought in, to men who smiled behind his back. His brothers' slumbers in the silent parlour had been utterly destroyed till "Me-the-day!" Miss Mary had to cry at last when her maid brought back untasted viands, "I wish the army was never to darken our gates, for two daft men up there have never taken a respectable meal since the billet order came. Dugald will be none the better for this."

All this excitement sustained the tremulous feeling at the boy's heart. There must be something after all, he thought, in the soldier's experience that is precious and lasting when those old men could find in a rumour the spark to set the smouldering fire in a blaze. He wondered to see the heavy eyelids of the General open and the pupils fill as he had never seen them do before, to hear a quite new accent, though sometimes a melancholy, in his voice, and behold a distaste to his familiar chair with its stuffed and lazy arms. The Cornal's character suffered a change too. He that had been gruff and indifferent took on a pleasing though awkward geniality. He would jest with Miss Mary till she cried "The man's doited!" though she clearly liked it; to Gilian he began the narration of an unending series of campaign tales.

Listening to those old chronicles, Gilian made himself ever their hero.

It was he who took the flag at Fuentes d'Onoro, cutting the Frenchman to the chin; it was he who rode at Busaco and heard the Marshal cry "Well done!"; when the shots were threshing like rain out of a black cloud at Ciudad Rodrigo, and the soldiers were falling to it like ripe grain in thunderplumps, he was in the front with every "whe--e--et" of the bullets at his ear bringing the moment's alarm to his teeth in a checked sucking-in of air. Back to the school he went, a head full of dreams, to sit dumb before his books, with unwinking eyes fixed upon the battle-lines upon the page--the unbroken ranks of letters, or upon the blistered and bruised plaster of the wall to see hors.e.m.e.n at the charge and flags flying. Then in the absence of Brooks at the tavern of Kate Bell, Gilian led the school in a charge of cavalry, shouting, commanding, cheering, weeping for the desertion of his men at deadly embrasures till the schoolboys stood back amazed at his reality, and he was left to come to himself with a shiver, alone on the lid of the master's desk in the middle of the floor, utterly ashamed before the vexed but sadly tolerant gaze of the dominie.

Old Brooks took him by the ear, not painfully, when he had scrambled down from the crumbled battlements where his troops had left him.

"At the play-acting again, Master Gilian?" said the dominie a little bitterly, a little humorously. "And what might it be this time?"

"Sogers," said the boy most red and awkward.

"Ay, ay," said Brooks, releasing his ear and turning his face to him with a kind enough hand on his shoulder. "Soldiers is it? And the playground and the play-hour are not enough for a play of that kind.

Soldiers! H'm! So the lessons of the gentlemen up-bye are not to be in vain. I thought different, could I be wrong now? And you're going to meet Captain Campbell's most darling wish. Eh? You have begun the trade early, and I could well desire you had a better head for the counts.

Give me the mathematician and I will make something of him; give me a boy like yourself, with his head stuffed with feathers and the airs of heaven blowing them about through the lug-holes and--my work's hopeless.

Laddie, laddie, go to your task! If you become the soldier you play-act to-day you'll please the Paymaster; I could scarcely wish for better and--and--I maybe wished for worse."

That night Gilian went to bed in his garret while yet the daylight was abroad and the birds were still chattering in the pear-trees in the garden. He wished the night to pa.s.s quickly that the morrow and the soldiers should find him still in his fine antic.i.p.ation.

He woke in the dark. The house was still. A rumour of the sea came up to his window and a faint wind sighed in the garden. Suddenly, as he lay guessing at the hour and tossing, there sounded something far-off and unusual that must have wakened half the sleeping town. The boy sat up and listened with breath caught and straining ears. No, no, it was nothing; the breeze had gone round; the night was wholly still; what he had heard was but in the fringes of his dream. But stay! there it was again, the throb of a drum far-off in the night. It faded again in veering currents of the wind, then woke more robust and unmistakable.

The drums! the drums! the drums! The rumour of the sea was lost, no more the wind sighed in the pears, all the voices of nature were dumb to that throb of war. It came nearer and nearer and still the boy was all in darkness in a house betraying no other waking than his own, quivering to an emotion the most pa.s.sionate of his life. For with the call of the approaching drums there entered to him all the sentiment of the family of that house, the sentiment of the soldier, the full proclamation of his connection with a thousand years of warrior clans.

The drums, the drums, the drums! Up he got and dressed and silently down the stair and through a sleeping household to the street. He of all that dwelling had heard the drums that to ancient soldiers surely should have been more startling, but the town was in a tumult ere he reached the Cross. The windows flared up in the topmost of the tall lands, and the doors stood open to the street while men and women swept along the causeway. The drums, the drums, the drums! Oh! the terror and the joy of them, the wonder, the alarm, the sweet wild thrill of them for Gilian as he ran bare-legged, bare-headed, to the factor's corner there to stand awaiting the troops now marching on the highway through the wood! There was but a star or two of light in all the grudging sky, and the sea, a beast of blackness, growled and crunched upon the sh.o.r.e. The drums, the drums, the drums! Fronting that monotonous but pregnant music by the drummers of the regiment still unseen, the people of the burgh waited whispering, afraid like the Paymaster's boy to shatter the charm of that delightful terror. Then of a sudden the town roared and shook to a twofold rattle of the skins and the shrill of fifes as the corps from the north, forced by their jocular Colonel to a night march, swept through the arches and wheeled upon the gra.s.sy esplanade. Was it a trick of the soldier who in youth had danced in the ken in Madrid that he should thus startle the hosts of his regiment, and that pa.s.sing through the town, he should for a little make his men move like ghosts, saying no word to any one of the aghast natives, but moving mechanically in the darkness to the rattle of the drums? The drums, the drums, the drums!

Gilian stood entranced as they pa.s.sed, looming large and innumerable in the darkness, unchallenged and uncheered by the bewildered citizens. It was the very entrance he could have chosen. For now they were ghosts, legions of the air in borrowed boots of the earth, shades of some army cut down in swathes and pitted in the fashion of the Cornal's bloodiest stories. And now they were the foreign invader, dumb because they did not know the native language, pitying this doomed community but moving in to strike it at the vitals.

CHAPTER XII--ILLUSION

He followed them to the square, still with the drums pounding and the fifes shrilling, and now the town was awake in every window. At a word the Colonel on his horse dispelled the illusion. "Halt!" he cried; the drum and fife ceased, the arms grounded, the soldiers clamoured for their billets. Over the hill of Strone the morning paled, out of the gloom the phantom body came a corps most human, thirsty, hungry, travel-strained.

Gilian ran home and found the household awake but unconscious of the great doings in the town.

"What!" cried the Cornal, when he heard the news. "They came here this morning and this is the first we have of it." He was in a fever of annoyance. "Dugald, Dugald, are you hearing? The Army's in the town, it moved in when we were snoring and only the boy heard it. I hope Jiggy Crawford does not make it out a black affront to him that we were not there to welcome him. My uniform, Mary, my uniform, it should be aired and ironed, and here at my hand, and I'll warrant it's never out of the press yet. It was the boy that heard the drums; it was you that heard the drums, Gilian. Curse me, but I believe you'll make a soger yet!"

For the next few days, Gilian felt he must indeed be the soldier the Paymaster would make him, for soldiering was in the air. The red-coats gaily filled the street; parade and exercise, evening dance and the continuous sound of pipe and drum left no room for any other interest in life. Heretofore there was ever for the boy in his visions of the Army a background of unable years and a palsied hand, slow decay in a parlour, with every zest and glamour gone. But here in the men who stepped always to melody there was youth, seemingly a singular enjoyment of life, and watching them he was filled with envy.

When the day came that they must go he was inconsolable though he made no complaint. They went in the afternoon by the lowlands road that bends about the upper bay skirting the Duke's flower gardens, and with the Cornal and the Paymaster he went to see them depart, the General left at home in his parlour, unaccountably unwilling to say good-bye. The companies moved in a splendour of sunshine with their arms bedazzling to look upon, their pipers playing "Bundle and Go."

"Look at the young one!" whispered the Cornal in his brother's ear, nudging him to attention. Gilian was walking in step to the corps, his shoulders hack, his head erect, a hazel switch shouldered like a musket.

But it was the face of him that most compelled attention for it revealed a mult.i.tude of emotions. His fancy ran far ahead of the tramping force thudding the dust on the highway. He was now the Army's child indeed, stepping round the world to a lilt of the bagpipes, with the _currachd_--the caul of safety--as surely his as it was Black Duncan the seaman's. There were battles in the open, and leaguering of towns, but his was the enchanted corps moving from country to country through victory, and always the same comrades were about the camp-fire at night.

Now he was the foot-man, obedient, marching, marching, marching, all day, while the wayside cottars wondered and admired; now he was the fugleman, set before his company as the example of good and honest and handsome soldiery; now he was Captain--Colonel--General, with a horse between his knees, his easy body swaying in the saddle as he rode among the villages and towns. The friendly people ran (so his fancy continued) to their close-mouths to look upon his regiment pa.s.sing to the roll and thunder of the drums and the cheery music of the pipes. Long days of march and battle, numerous nights of wearied ease upon the heather, if heather there should be, the applause of citadels, the smile of girls.

The smile of girls! It came on him, that, with a rush of blood to his face and a strange tingling at the heart as the one true influence to make the soldier. For what should the soldier wander but to come again home triumphant, and find on the doorstep of his native place the smiling girls?

"Look at him, look at him!" cried the Cornal again with a nudge at his brother's arm. They were walking over the bridge and the pipes still were at their melody. Jiggy Crawford's braid shone like moving torches at his shoulder as the sun smote hot upon his horse and him. The trees upon the left leaned before the breeze to share this glory; far-off the lonely hills, the great and barren hills, were melancholy that they could not touch closer on the grandeur of man. As it were in a story of the shealings, the little ones of the town and wayside houses pattered in the rear of the troops, enchanted, their bare legs stretching to the rhythm of the soldiers' footsteps, the children of hope, the children of illusion and desire, and behind them, sad, weary, everything accomplished, the men who had seen the big wars and had many times marched thus gaily and were now no more capable.

"It is the last we'll ever see of it, John," said the Cornal. "Oh, man, man, if I were young again!" His foot was very heavy and slow as he followed the last he would witness of what had been his pride; his staff, that he tried to carry like a sword, roust go down now and then to seek a firmness in the sandy foot-way. Not for long at a time but in frequent flashes of remembrance he would throw back his shoulders and lift high his head and step out in time to the music.

The Paymaster walked between him and Gilian, a little more robust and youthful, altogether in a different key, a key critical, jealous of the soldier lads that now he could not emulate. They were smart enough, he confessed, but they were not what the 46th had been; Crawford had a good carriage on his horse but--but--he was not----

"Oh, do not haver, Jock," said the Cornal, angrily at last; "do not haver! They are stout lads, good lads enough, like what we were ourselves when first the wars summoned us, and Crawford, as he sits there, might very well be Dugald as I saw him ride about the bend of the road at San Sebastian and look across the sandy bay to see the rock we had to conquer. Let you and me say nothing that is not kind, Colin; have we not had our own day of it with the best? and no doubt when we were at the marching there were ancients on the roadside to swear we were never their equal. They are in there in the gra.s.s and bracken where you and I must some day join them and young lads still will be marching out to glory."

"In there among the gra.s.s and bracken," thought Gilian, turning a moment to look up the slope that leads to Kilmalieu. The laurel drugged the air with death's odour. "In the gra.s.ses and the bracken," said Gilian, singing it to himself as if it were a coronach. Was that indeed the end of it all, of the hope, the lilt, the glory? And then he had a great pity for the dead that in their own time had been on many a march like this. Their tombs are thick in Kilmalieu. It seemed so cruel, so heedless, so taunting thus to march past them with no obeisance or remembrance, that to them, the dead soldiers, all his heart went out, and he hated the quick who marched upon the highway.

But Crawford, like the best that have humour, had pity and pathos too.

"Slow march!" he cried to his men, and the pipers played "Lochaber No More."

"He's punctilious in his forms," said the Paymaster, "but it's thoughtful of him too."

"There was never but true _duine uasail_ put on the tartan of Argyll,"

said the Cornal.

The pipes ceased; the drums beat again, echoing from the Sgornach rock and the woody caverns of Blaranbui, Glenshira filled to the lip with rolling thunder, the sea lulled to a whisper on the sh.o.r.e. Gilian and the children were now all that were left to follow the soldiers, for the oldsters had cheered feebly and gone back. And as he walked close up on the rear of the troops, his mind was again on the good fortune of those that from warfare must return. To come home after long years, and go up the street so well acquaint, sitting bravely on his horse, paled in the complexion somewhat from a wound, perhaps with the scar of it as perpetual memorial, and to behold pity and pride in the look of them that saw him! It would be such a day as this, he chose, with the sun upon his braid and the sheen upon his horse's neck. The pipers would play merrily and yet with a melancholy too, and so crowded the causeways by the waiting community that even the windows must be open to their overflowing.

And as thus he walked and dreamt saying no word to any of the chattering bairns about him he was truly the Army's child. The Paymaster was right, and generous to choose for him so fine a calling; the Cornal made no error, the soldier's was the life for youth and spirit. He had no objection now to all their plans for his future, the Army was his choice.

It was then, at the Boshang Gate that leads to Dhuloch, Maam, Kilblaan and all the loveliness of Shira Glen, that even his dreaming eyes found Nan the girl within the gates watching the soldiers pa.s.s. Her face was flushed with transport, her little shoes beat time to the tread of the soldiers. They pa.s.sed with a smile compelled upon their sunburnt faces, to see her so sweet, so beautiful, so sensible to their glory. And there was among them an ensign, young, slim, and blue-eyed; he wafted a vagabond kiss as he pa.s.sed, blowing it from his finger-tips as he marched in the rear of his company. She tossed her hair from her temples as the moon throws the cloud apart and beamed brightly and merrily and sent him back his symbol with a daring charm.

Gilian's dream of the Army fled. At the sight of Nan behind the Boshang Gate he was startled to recognise that the girls he had thought of as smiling on the soldier's return had all the smile of this one, the nut-brown hair of this one, her glance so fearless and withal so kind and tender. At once the roll of the drums lost its magic for his ear; a caprice of sun behind a fleck of cloud dulled the splendour of the Colonel's braid; Gilian lingered at the gate and let the soldiers go their way.

For a little the girl never looked at him as he stood there with the world (all but her, perhaps) so commonplace and dull after the splendours of his mind. Her eyes were fixed upon the marching soldiers now nearing the Gearron and about her lips played the smile of wonder and pleasure.

At last the drumming ceased as the soldiers entered the wood of Strone, still followed by the children. In the silence that fell so suddenly, the country-side seemed solitary and sad. The great distant melancholy hills were themselves again with no jealousy of the wayside trees dreaming on their feet as they swayed in the lullaby wind. Nan turned with a look yet enraptured and seemed for the first time to know the boy was there on the other side of the gate alone.

"Oh!" she said, with the shudder of a woman's delight in her accent. "I wish I were a soldier."

"It might be good enough to be one," he answered, in the same native tongue her feeling had made her choose unconsciously to express itself.

"But this is the worst of it," she said, pitifully; "I am a girl, and Sandy is to be the soldier though he was too lazy to come down the glen to-day to see them away, and I must stay at home and work at samplers and seams and bake bannocks."