that to the time of war? I’ll tell you this, Sandy, I’ll have to roup out for my rent yet.” And by he would sail, as red in the face as a bubbly-jock, swelling his neck over his stock more largely than ever, and swinging his rattan by its tassel or whacking with it on his calves, satisfied once more to have put this merchant-body in his own place.
To-day he paid no heed to the merchant, when, having just keeked in at the schoolroom to tell Dr. Colin and old Brooks he would be back in a minute to join the dregy, he went up the stairs with Gilian. “I’m going to leave you with my sister Mary,” he explained. “You’ll think her a droll woman, but all women have their tiravees, and my sister is a well-meaning creature.”
Gilian thought no one could be more droll than this old man himself. Before indifferent to him, he had, in the past hour, grown to be afraid of him as a new mysterious agent who had his future in his hands. And to go up the stairs of this great high house, with its myriad windows looking out upon the busiest part of the street, and others gazing over the garden and the sea, was an experience new and bewildering. The dwelling abounded in lobbies and corridors, in queer corners where the gloom lurked, and in doors that gave glimpses of sombre bedsteads and high-backed austere chairs, of china painted with the most wonderful designs (loot of the old Indian palaces), of swords and sabretaches hung on walls, and tables polished to such degree that they reflected their surroundings.
They went into a parlour with its window open, upon the window-sill a pigeon mourning among pots of wallflowers and southernwood that filled the entering air with sweetness. A room with thin-legged chairs, with cupboards whose lozens gave view to punch-bowls and rummers and silver ladles, a room where the two brothers would convene at night while John was elsewhere, and in a wan candle light sit silent by the hour before cooling spirits, musing on other parlours elsewhere in which spurs had jingled under the board, musing on comrades departed. It was hung around with dark pictures in broad black frames, for the most part pictures of battles, “Fontenoy,” “Stemming the Rout at Steinkirk,” “Blenheim Field,” and—a new one—“Vittoria.” There were pictures of men too, all with soldier collars high upon the nape of the neck, and epaulettes on their shoulders, whiskered, keen-eyed young men—they were the brothers in their prime when girls used to look after them as they went by on their horses. And upon the mantlebrace, flanked by tall silver candlesticks, was an engraving of John, Duke of Argyll, Field-Marshal.
“Look at that man there,” said the Paymaster, pointing to the noble and arrogant head between the candles, “that was a soldier’s soldier. There is not his like in these days. If you should take arms for your king, boy, copy the precept and practice of Duke John. I myself modelled me on his example, and that, mind you, calls for dignity and valour and education and every manly part and——”
“Is that you blethering away in there, John?” cried a high female voice from the spence.
The Paymaster’s voice surrendered half its confidence and pride, for he never liked to be found vaunting before his sister, who knew his qualities and had a sense of irony.
“Ay! it’s just me, Mary,” he cried back, hastening to the door. “I have brought a laddie up here to see you.”
“It would be wiser like to bring me a man,” cried the lady, coming into the room. “I’m wearied of washing sheets and blankets for a corps of wrunkled old brothers that have no gratitude for my sisterly slavery. Keep me! who’s ballachan is that?”
She was a little thin woman, of middle age, with a lowland cap of lace that went a little oddly with the apron covering the front of the merino gown from top to toe. She had eyes like sloes, and teeth like pearls that gleamed when she smiled, and by constant trying to keep herself from smiling at things, she had worn two lines up and down between her eyebrows. A dear fond heart, a darling hypocrite, a foolish bounteous mother-soul without chick or child of her own, and yet with tenement for the loves of a large family. She fended, and mended, and tended for her soldier brothers, and they in the selfish blindness of their sex never realised her devotion. They sat, and over punch would talk of war, and valour, and devotion, and never thought that here, within their very doors, was a constant war in their behalf against circumstances, in their interest an unending valour that kept the little woman bustling on her feet, and shrewd-eyed over her stew-pans, while weariness and pain itself, and the hopeless unresponse and ingratitude of the surroundings, rendered her more appropriate place between the bed-sheets.
“What ballachan is this?” she asked, relaxing the affected acidity of her manner and smoothing out the lines upon her brow at the sight of the little fellow in a rough kilt, standing in a shy unrest upon the spotless drugget of her parlour floor. She waited no answer, but went forward as she spoke, as one who would take all youth to her heart, put a hand on his head and stroked his fair hair. It was a touch wholly new to the boy; he had never felt before that tingling feeling that a woman’s hand, in love upon his head, sent through all his being. At the message of it, the caress of it, he shivered and looked up at her face in surprise.
“What do you think of him, Mary?” asked the brother. “Not a very stout chap, I think, but hale enough, and if you stuck his head in a pail of cream once a day you might put meat on him. He’s the oe from Ladyfield; surely you might know him even with his boots on.”
“Dear, dear,” she said; “you’re the Gilian I never saw but at a distance, the boy who always ran to the hill when I went to Ladyfield. O little hero, am I not sorry for the goodwife? You have come for your pick of the dinner——”
“Do you think we could make a soldier of him?” broke in the Paymaster, carrying his rattan like a sword and throwing back his shoulders.
“A soldier!” she said, casting a shrewd glance at the boy in a red confusion. “We might make a decenter man of him. Weary be on the soldiering! I’m looking about the country-side and I see but a horde of lameter privatemen and half-pay officers maimed in limb or mind sitting about the dram bottle, hoved up with their vain-glory, blustering and blowing, instead of being honest, eident lairds and farmers. I never saw good in a soldier yet, except when he was away fighting and his name was in the Courier as dead or wounded. Soldiers, indeed! sitting round there in the Sergeant More’s tavern, drinking, and roaring, and gossiping like women—that I should miscall my sex! No, no, if I had a son——
“Well, well, Mary,” said the Paymaster, breaking in again upon this tirade, “here’s one to you. If you’ll make the man of him I’ll try to make him the soldier.”
She understood in a flash! “And is he coming here?” she asked in an accent the most pleased and motherly. A flush came over her cheeks and her eyes grew and danced. It was as if some rare new thought had come to her, a sentiment of poetry, the sound of a forgotten strain of once familiar song.
“I’m sure I am very glad,” she said simply. She took the boy by the hand, she led him into the kitchen, she cried “Peggy, Peggy,” and when her servant appeared she said, “Here’s our new young gentleman, Peggy,” and stroked his hair again, and Peggy smiled widely and looked about for something to give him, and put a bowl of milk to his lips.
“Tuts!” cried Miss Mary, “it’s not a calf we have; we will not spoil his dinner. But you may skim it and give him a cup of cream.”
The Paymaster, left in the parlour among the prints of war and warriors, stood a moment with his head bent and his fingers among the snuff listening to the talk of the kitchen that came along the spence and through the open doors.
“She’s a queer body, Mary,” said he to himself, “but she’s taking to the brat I think—oh yes, she’s taking to him.” And then he hurried down the stair and up round the church corner to the schoolhouse where the company,
