Gilian The Dreamer | Page 9

jowl purpled over his stock.
"I told him he would cross the bridge to Kilmalieu one day and instead
of being last he would be first."
The Fiscal hirpled along in his tight knee-breeches looking down with
vain satisfaction now and then at the ruffles of his shirt and the
box-pleated frills that were dressed very snodly and cunningly by Bell
Macniven, who had been in the Forty-second with her husband the

sergeant, and had dressed the shirts of the Marquis of Huntly, who was
Colonel.
"I have seldom, sir, seen a better dressed shirt," said Mr. William
Spencer, of the New Inn, who was a citizen of London and anxious to
make his way among the people here, "It is quite the style, quite the
style, sir."
"Do you think so, now?" asked the Fiscal, pleased at the compliment.
"I do, indeed," said Mr. Spencer, "it is very genteel and just as the
gentry like it."
The Fiscal coloured, turned and paused and fixed him with an angry
eye.
"Do you speak to me of gentry, Mr. Spencer," he asked, "with any idea
of making distinctions? You are a poor Sassenach person, I daresay,
and do not know that my people have been in Blarinarn for three
hundred years and I am the first man-of-business in the family."
The innkeeper begged pardon. Poor man! he had much to learn of
Highland punctilio. He might be wanting in delicacy of this kind
perhaps, but he had the heart, and it was he, as they came in front of the
glee'd gun that stands on the castle lawn, who stopped to look back at a
boy far behind them, alone on the top of the bridge.
"Is there no one with the boy?" he asked. "And where is he to stay now
that his grandmother is dead?"
The Paymaster drew up as if he had been shot, and swore warmly to
himself.
"Am not I the golan?" said he. "I forgot about the fellow, and I told the
shepherd at Ladyfield to lock up the house till Whitsunday. I'm putting
the poor boy out in the world without a roof for his head. It must be
seen to, it must be seen to."

Rixa pompously blew out his cheeks and put back his shoulders in a
way he had to convince himself he was not getting old and
round-backed. "Oh," said he, "Jean Clerk's a relative; he'll be going to
bide there."
They stood in a cluster in the middle of the road, the Paymaster with
his black coat so tight upon his stomach it looked as if every brass
button would burst with a crack like a gun; Rixa puffing and stretching
himself; Major Dugald ducking his head and darting his glance about
from side to side looking for the enemy; Mr. Spencer, tall, thin, with
the new strapped breeches and a London hat, blowing his nose with
much noise in a Barcelona silk handkerchief. All the way before them
the crowd went straggling down in blacks with as much hurry as the
look of the thing would permit, to reach the schoolhouse where the
Paymaster had laid out the last service of meat and drink for the
mourners. The tide was out; a sandy beach strewn with stones and
clumps of seaweed gave its saline odour to the air; lank herons came
sweeping down from the trees over Croitivile, and stalked about the
water's edge. There was only one sound in nature beyond the soughing
of the wind in the shrubbery of the Duke's garden, it was the plaintive
call of a curlew as it flew over the stable park. A stopped and stagnant
world, full of old men and old plaints, the dead of the yard behind, the
solemn and sleepy town before.
The boy was the only person left in the rear of the Paymaster and his
friends; he was standing on the bridge, fair in the middle of the way.
Though the Paymaster cried he was not heard, so he walked back and
up to the boy while the others went on their way to the schoolhouse,
where old Brooks the dominie was waiting among the jars and oatcakes
and funeral biscuits with currants and carvie in them.
Gilian was standing with the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his
bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he
found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive
face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the
tears were dropping down his cheeks.
"Oh, 'ille, what's the matter with you?" asked the Paymaster in Gaelic,

struck that sorrow should so long remain with a child.
Gilian started guiltily, flushed to the nape of his neck