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There is a way of leaning on a stick and talking over the shoulder at an antagonist that can be very trying to the antagonist if he has any sense of shyness. "Down again," agreed Gilian uncomfortably, sorry he had had the courtesy to stop. The others moved away, for they knew the relations of the man and his adopted son were not of the pleasantest.
It was as if an empty world had been fresh tenanted. Gilian, as he rode up home, woke to wonder at his own cheerfulness. He reflected that he had been called a failure and he laughed. Next day he was up with the sun, and Cameron was amazed at this new zeal that sent him, crook in hand, to the hill for some wanderers of the flock, whistling blithely as he went.
"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 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.
"Oh, ay! they must be making the leddy of her; that was the spoiling of her mother before her. As if old Brooks could not be learning any woman enough schooling to carry on a career in a kitchen. And have you seen her elsewhere?" "I heard her once singing on her father's vessel," said Gilian. "She was singing!" cried the Cornal, standing to his feet and thumping the table till the glasses rang.
What she felt beyond timidity she betrayed not, but Gilian peopled the house at an instant with all its bygone tenants, seeing the peats ruddy on the stones, the smoke curling up among the shining cabars, hearing ghosts gossiping in muffled Gaelic round the fire.
The room he left was silent for a while, till of a sudden the eyes of the General opened and he looked upon the sorry company. "Bring me MacGibbon," said he in a voice extremely sensible. Gilian ran up the street and fetched the old comrade, who put his hand upon the General's head. "Dugald, do you ken me?" said he. "Do I ken you?" said the General with an unpractised smile.
All the reading in Marget Maclean's books, the shy mornings, the pondering eves, the ruminations lonely by wood and shore, had prepared Gilian for such an hour, and now he felt its magic. And as they sat thus on the bank of the little lake, Nan sung, forgetting herself in her song as she ever must be doing.
And yet and yet, it is true, no one came; or if they came, they never came that I wanted." "And he?" said Gilian. She paused and sighed, her thin little hands, so white for all their toil in that hard barracks, playing upon her lap. "He never had the chance. My father's parlour had no welcome, a soldier's household left no vacant hours for an only daughter's gallivanting.
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.
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