Gilian The Dreamer | Page 2

down the river-side, a
regard for the manner of his message busied him more than the matter
of it. It was not every Friday a boy had a task so momentous had the
chance to come upon households with intelligence so unsettling. They
would be sitting about the table, perhaps, or spinning by the fire, the
good-wife of Ladyfield still for them a living, breathing body, home
among her herds, and he would come in among them and in a word
bring her to their notice in all death's great monopoly. It was a duty to
be done with care if he would avail himself of the whole value of so
rare a chance. A mere clod would be for entering with a weeping face,
to blurt his secret in shaking sentences, or would let it slip out in an
indifferent tone, as one might speak of some common occurrence. But
Gilian, as he went, busied himself on how he should convey most
tellingly the story he brought down the glen. Should he lead up to his
news by gradual steps or give it forth like an alarum? It would be a fine
and rare experience to watch them for a little, as they looked and spoke
with common cheerfulness, never guessing why he was there, then
shock them with the intelligence, but he dare not let them think he felt
so little the weightiness of his message that his mind was ready to
dwell on trivialities. Should it be in Gaelic or in English he should tell
them? Their first salutations would be in the speech of the glens; it
would be, "Oh Gilian, little hero! fair fellow! there you are! sit down
and have town bread, and sugar on its butter," and if he followed the
usual custom he would answer in the same tongue. But between "Tha
bean Lecknamban air falbh" and "The wife of Ladyfield is gone," there
must be some careful choice. The Gaelic of it was closer on the feelings
of the event; the words some way seemed to make plain the emptiness
of the farmhouse. When he said them, the people would think all at
once of the little brown wrinkled dame, no more to be bustling about
the kitchen, of her wheel silent, of her foot no more upon the blue
flagstones of the milk-house, of her voice no more in the chamber
where they had so often known her hospitality. The English, indeed,
when he thought of it with its phrase a mere borrowing from the Gaelic,
seemed an affectation. No, it must be in the natural tongue his tidings
should be told. He would rap at the door hurriedly, lift the sneck before
any response came, go in with his bonnet in his hand, and say "Tha
bean Lecknamban air falbh" with a great simplicity.

And thus as he debated and determined in his mind, he was hastening
through a country that in another mood would be demanding his
attention almost at every step of the way. Ladyfield is at the barren end
of the glen--barren of trees, but rich in heather, and myrtle, and
grass--surrounded by full and swelling hills. The river, but for the
gluttonous sea that must be sucking it down, would choose, if it might,
to linger in the valley here for ever, and in summer it loiters on many
pretences, twining out and in, hiding behind Baracaldine and the bushes
of Tom-an-Dearc, and pretending to doze in the long broad levels of
Kincreggan, so that it may not too soon lose its freedom in so magic a
place. But the glen opens out anon, woods and parks cluster, and the
Duke's gardens and multitudes of roads come into view. The deer
stamp and flee among the grasses, flowers grow in more profusion than
up the glen where no woods shelter. There are trim houses by the
wayside, with men about the doors talking with loud cheerfulness, and
laughing in the way of inn-frequenters. A gateway from solitude, an
entrance to a region where the most startling and varied things were
ever happening, to a boy from the glen this town end of the valley is a
sample of Paradise for beauty and interest. Gilian went through it with
his blue eyes blurred to-day, but for wont he found it full of charms and
fancies. To go under its white-harled archways on a market day was to
come upon a new world, and yet not all a new world, for its spectacles
of life and movement--the busy street, the clanging pavement, the noisy
closes, the quay ever sounding with the high calls of mariners and
fishers--seemed sometimes to strike a chord of memory. At the first
experience of this busy community, the innumerable children playing
before the