Gilian The Dreamer | Page 7

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market, or haggle over a pound with a drover at the fair, but the farm
did little more than pay me and I had almost given it up when her
husband died."
He looked flushed and uncomfortable. His stock seemed to fit him
more tightly than before and his wig sat more askew than ever upon his
bald head. For a little he seemed to forget the young messenger still

standing in the room, no higher than the table whereon the glasses
ranged. Gilian turned his bonnet about in his hand and twisted the
ribbons till they tore, then he thought with a shock of the scolding he
would get for spoiling his Sunday bonnet, but the thought was quickly
followed by the recollection that she who would have scolded him
would chide no more.
The pensioners shared their attention between the Paymaster and the
boy. While the Paymaster gave them the state of his gentleman farming
(about which the town was always curious), they looked at him and
wondered at a man who had seen the world and had £4 a week of a
pension wasting life with a paltry three-hundred sheep farm instead of
spending his money royally with a bang. When his confidence seemed
likely to carry their knowledge of his affairs no further than the town's
gossip had already brought it, they lost their interest in his reflections
and had time to feel sorry for the boy. None of them but knew he was
an orphan in the most grievous sense of the term, without a relative in
the wide world, and that his future was something of a problem.
Bob MacGibbon--he was Captain in the 79th--leaned forward and tried
to put his hand upon the child's shoulder, not unkindly, but with a
rough playfulness of the soldier. Gilian shrank back, his face flushing
crimson, then he realised the stupidity of his shyness and tried to
amend it by coming a little farther into the room and awkwardly
attempting the salute in which the Sergeant More had tutored him. The
company was amused at the courtesy, but no one laughed. In a low
voice the Paymaster swore. He was a man given to swearing with no
great variety in his oaths, that were merely a camp phrase or two at the
most, repeated over and over again, till they had lost all their original
meanings and could be uttered in front of Dr. Colin himself without
any objection to them. In print they would look wicked, so they must
be fancied by such as would have the complete picture of the elderly
soldier with the thick neck and the scratch wig. The Sergeant More had
gently withdrawn himself and shut the door behind him the more
conveniently to hear what reception the messenger's tidings would meet
with from the Paymaster. And the boy felt himself cut off most
helplessly from escape out of that fearful new surrounding. It haunted

him for many a day, the strong smell of the spirits and the sharp odour
of the slices floating in the glasses, for our pensioners were extravagant
enough to flavour even the cold midday drams of the Abercrombie with
the lemon's juice. Gilian shifted from leg to leg and turned his bonnet
continuously, and through his mind there darted many thoughts about
this curious place and company that he had happened upon. As they
looked at him he felt the darting tremor of the fawn in the thicket, but
alas he was trapped! How old they were! How odd they looked in their
high collars and those bands wound round their necks! They were not
farmers, nor shepherds, nor fishermen, nor even shopkeepers; they
were people with some manner of life beyond his guessing. The
Paymaster of course he knew; he had seen him often come up to
Ladyfield, to talk to the goodwife about the farm and the clipping, to
pay her money twice yearly that was called wages, and was so little that
it was scarcely worth the name. Six men in a room, all gentle (by their
clothes), all with nothing better to do than stare at a boy who could not
stare back! How many things they had seen; how many thoughts they
must share between them! He wished himself on the other side of Aora
river in the stillness of Kincreggan wood, or on the hill among the
sheep--anywhere away from the presence of those old men with the
keen scrutiny in their eyes, doubtless knowing all about him and seeing
his very thoughts. Had they been shepherds, or even the clever gillies
that sometimes came to the kitchen of Ladyfield on nights of ceilidh or
gossip, he would have felt himself their equal. He would have been
comfortable in feeling that however