Gilian The Dreamer | Page 5

at home in the Highlands feeding your mother's hens."
In one way it might have been better, in another way it was well enough for John Campbell to be there. He might have had the luck to see more battles in busier parts of the world, as General Dugald did, or Colin, who led the Royal Scots at Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo; but he might have done worse, for he of all those gallants came home at the end a hale man, with neither sabre-cut nor bullet. To give him his due he was willing enough to risk them all. It bittered his life at the last, that behind his back his townspeople should call him "Old Mars," in an irony he was keen enough to feel the thrust of.
"Captain Mars, Captain Mars, Who never saw wars,"
said Evan MacColl, the bard of the parish, and the name stuck as the bye-names of that wonderful town have a way of doing.
"Old Mars," Paymaster, sat among the pensioners in the change-house of the Sergeant More when Gilian came to the door. His neck overflowed in waves of fat upon a silk stock that might have throttled a man who had not worn the king's stock in hot lands over sea; his stockings fitted tightly on as neat a leg as ever a kilt displayed, though the kilt was not nowadays John Campbell's wear but kerseymore knee-breeches. He had a figured vest strewn deep with snuff that he kept loose in a pocket (the regiment's gold mull was his purse), and a scratch wig of brown sat askew on his bullet head, raking with a soldier's swagger. He had his long rattan on the table before him, and now and then he would lift its tasseled head and beat time lightly to the chorus of Dugald MacNicol's song. Dugald was Major once of the 1st Royals; he had carried the sword in the Indies, East and West, and in the bloody Peninsula, and came home with a sabre-slash on the side of the head, so that he was a little weak-witted. When he would be leaving his sister's door to go for the meridian dram at the quay-head he would dart for cover to the Cross, then creep from close to close, and round the church, and up the Ferry Land, in a dread of lurking enemies; yet no one jeered at his want, no boy failed to touch his bonnet to him, for he was the gentleman in the very weakest moment of his disease. He had but one song in his budget:
"O come and gather round me, lads, and help the chorus through, When I tell you how we fought the French on the plains of Waterloo."
He sang it in a high quavering voice with curious lapses in the vigour of his singing and cloudings in the fire of his eyes, so that now and then the company would have to jolt him awake to give the air more lustily. Colonel Hall was there (of St John's) and Captain Sandy Campbell of the Marines, Bob MacGibbon, old Lochgair, the Fiscal with a ruffled shirt, and Doctor Anderson. The Paymaster's brothers were not there, for though he was the brother with the money they were field-officers and they never forgot it.
The chorus was ringing, the glasses and the Paymaster's stick were rapping on the table, the Sergeant More, with a blue brattie tied tight across his paunch to lessen its unsoldierly amplitude, went out and in with the gill-stoups, pausing now and then on the errand to lean against the door of the room with the empty tray in his hand, drumming on it with his finger-tips and joining in the officers' owercome.
He turned in the middle of a chorus, for the boy was standing abashed in the entry, his natural fears at meeting the Paymaster greatly increased by the sound of revelry.
"Well, little hero," said the Sergeant More, in friendly Gaelic, "are you seeking any one?"
"I was sent to see the Paymaster, if it's your will," said Gilian, with his eyes falling below the scrutiny of this swarthy old sergeant.
"The Paymaster!" cried the landlord, shutting the door of the room ere he said it, and uplifting farmed hands, "God's grace! do not talk of the Paymaster here! He is Captain Campbell, mind, late of his Majesty's 46th Foot, with a pension of ��4 a week, and a great deal of money it is for the country to be paying to a gentleman who never saw of wars but skirmish with the Syke. Nothing but Captain, mind you, and do not forget the salute, so, with the right hand up and thumb on a line with the right eyebrow. But could your business not be waiting? If it is Miss Mary who sent