Gilian The Dreamer: His Fancy, His Love and Adventure. Munro Neil
in thought, for neither of them noted the step upon the stair when the General and Cornal came back from the dregy. The brothers were in the lobby beside them before Miss Mary realised their presence. She turned with a flushed face and, as it were, put herself a little in front of the boy, so that half his figure found the shelter of a wing. The two brothers between them filled the width of the lobby, and yet they were not wide. But they were broad at the shoulders and once, no doubt, they filled their funeral suits that of their own stiffness seemed to stand out in all their old amplitude. The General was a white-faced rash of a man with bushy eyebrows, a clean-shaven parchment jowl, and a tremulous hand upon the knob of his malacca rattan; his brother the Cornal was less tall; he was of a purpled visage, and a crimson scar, the record of a wound from Corunna, slanted from his chin to the corner of his left eye.
“What wean is that?” he asked, standing in the lobby and casting a suspicious eye upon the boy, his voice as high as in a barrack yard. The General stood at his shoulder, saying nothing, but looking at Gilian from under his pent brows.
Into Miss Mary’s demeanour there had came as great a change as that which came upon the Pay-master when she broke in upon his vaunting. The lines dashed to her brow; when she spoke it was in a cold constrained accent utterly different from that the boy had grown accustomed to.
“It is the oe from Ladyfield,” she explained.
“He’ll be making a noise in the house,” said the Cornal with a touch of annoyance. “I cannot stand boys; he’ll break things, I’m sure. When is he going away?”
“Are you one of the boys who cry after Major MacNicol, my old friend and comrade?” asked the General in a high squeaking voice. “If I had my stick at some of you, tormenting a gallant old soldier!” And as he spoke he lifted his cane by the middle and shook it at the limbs of the affrighted youth.
“O Dugald, Dugald, you know none of the children of this town ever annoyed the Major; it is only the keelies from the low-country who do so. And this is not the boy to make a mock of any old gentleman, I am sure.”
“I know he’ll make a noise and start me when I am thinking,” said the Cornal, still troubled. “Is it not very strange, Dugald, that women must be aye bringing in useless weans off the street to make noise and annoyance for their brothers?” He poked as he spoke with his stick at Gilian’s feet as he would at an animal crossing his path.
“It is a strange cantrip, Mary,” said the General; “I suppose you’ll be going to give him something. It is give, give all the day in this house like Sergeant Scott’s cantiniers.”
“Indeed and you need not complain of the giving,” said Miss Mary: “there was nobody gave with a greater extravagance than yourself when you had it to give, and nobody sends more gangrels about the house than you.”
“Give the boy his meat and let him go,” said the Cornal roughly.
“He’s not going,” said Miss Mary, turning quite white and taking the pin carefully out of her shawl and as carefully putting it in again. And having done this quite unnecessary thing she slipped her hand down and warmly clasped unseen the fingers of the boy in the folds of her bombazine gown.
“Not going? I do not understand you, Mary; as you grow older you grow stupider. Does she not grow stupider, Dugald?” said the Cornal.
“She does,” said the General. “I think she does it to torment us, just.” He was tired by this discussion; he turned and walked to the parlour.
Miss Mary mustered all her courage, and speaking with great rapidity explained the situation. The boy was the Ladyfield boy; the Paymaster was going to keep him hereafter.
The Cornal stood listening to the story as one in a trance. There was a little silence when she had done, and he broke it with a harsh laugh.
“Ah! and what is he going to make of this one?” he asked.
“That’s to be seen,” said Miss Mary; “he spoke of the army.”
“Fancy that now!” said the Cornal with contempt. “Let me see him,” he added suddenly.
“Let me see the seeds of soldiery.” He put out a hand and—not roughly but still with more force than Gilian relished—drew him from the protection of the gown and turned his face to the window. He put his hand under the boy’s chin; Gilian in the touch felt an abhorrence of the hard, clammy fingers that had made dead men, but his eyes never quailed as he looked up in the scarred face. He saw a mask; there was no getting to the secrets behind that purple visage. Experience and trial, emotions and passions had set lines there wholly new to him, and his fancy refused to go further than just this one thought of the fingers that had made dead men.
The Cornal looked him deeply in the eyes, caught him by the ear, and with a twist made him wince, pushed him on the shoulders and made his knees bend. Then he released him with a flout of contempt.
“Man! Jock’s the daft recruiter,” he said coarsely with an oath. “What’s this but a clerk? There’s not the spirit in the boy to make a drummer of him. There’s no stuff for sogering here.”
Miss Mary drew Gilian to her again and stiffened her lips. “You have nothing to do with it, Colin; it’s John’s house and if he wants to keep the boy he’ll do it. And I’m sure if you but took the trouble to think that he is a poor orphan with no kith nor kin in the world, you would be the first to take him in at the door.”
The Cornal’s face visibly relaxed its sternness. He looked again more closely at the boy.
“Come away into our parlour here, and the General and I will have a crack with you,” said he, leading the way.
Miss Mary gave the boy’s hand a gentle squeeze, and softly pushed him in after her brother, shut the door behind them, and turned and went down to the kitchen.
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