He followed them to the square, still with the drums pounding and the
fifes shrilling, and now the town was awake in every window. At a word
the Colonel on his horse dispelled the illusion. “Halt!” he cried; the
drum and fife ceased, the arms grounded, the soldiers clamoured for
their billets. Over the hill of Strone the morning paled, out of
the gloom the phantom body came a corps most human, thirsty, hungry,
travel-strained.
Gilian ran home and found the household awake but unconscious of the
great doings in the town.
“What!” cried the Cornal, when he heard the news. “They came here this
morning and this is the first we have of it.” He was in a fever of
annoyance. “Dugald, Dugald, are you hearing? The Army’s in the town, it
moved in when we were snoring and only the boy heard it. I hope Jiggy
Crawford does not make it out a black affront to him that we were not
there to welcome him. My uniform, Mary, my uniform, it should be aired
and ironed, and here at my hand, and I’ll warrant it’s never out of the
press yet. It was the boy that heard the drums; it was you that heard
the drums, Gilian. Curse me, but I believe you’ll make a soger yet!”
For the next few days, Gilian felt he must indeed be the soldier the
Paymaster would make him, for soldiering was in the air. The red-coats
gaily filled the street; parade and exercise, evening dance and the
continuous sound of pipe and drum left no room for any other interest in
life. Heretofore there was ever for the boy in his visions of the Army a
background of unable years and a palsied hand, slow decay in a parlour,
with every zest and glamour gone. But here in the men who stepped always
to melody there was youth, seemingly a singular enjoyment of life, and
watching them he was filled with envy.
When the day came that they must go he was inconsolable though he made
no complaint. They went in the afternoon by the lowlands road that bends
about the upper bay skirting the Duke’s flower gardens, and with the
Cornal and the Paymaster he went to see them depart, the General left
at home in his parlour, unaccountably unwilling to say good-bye. The
companies moved in a splendour of sunshine with their arms bedazzling to
look upon, their pipers playing “Bundle and Go.”
“Look at the young one!” whispered the Cornal in his brother’s ear,
nudging him to attention. Gilian was walking in step to the corps, his
shoulders hack, his head erect, a hazel switch shouldered like a musket.
But it was the face of him that most compelled attention for it revealed
a multitude of emotions. His fancy ran far ahead of the tramping force
thudding the dust on the highway. He was now the Army’s child
indeed, stepping round the world to a lilt of the bagpipes, with the
_currachd_--the caul of safety--as surely his as it was Black Duncan the
seaman’s. There were battles in the open, and leaguering of towns,
but his was the enchanted corps moving from country to country through
victory, and always the same comrades were about the camp-fire at night.
Now he was the foot-man, obedient, marching, marching, marching, all
day, while the wayside cottars wondered and admired; now he was the
fugleman, set before his company as the example of good and honest and
handsome soldiery; now he was Captain--Colonel--General, with a horse
between his knees, his easy body swaying in the saddle as he rode among
the villages and towns. The friendly people ran (so his fancy continued)
to their close-mouths to look upon his regiment passing to the roll and
thunder of the drums and the cheery music of the pipes. Long days of
march and battle, numerous nights of wearied ease upon the heather, if
heather there should be, the applause of citadels, the smile of girls.
The smile of girls! It came on him, that, with a rush of blood to his
face and a strange tingling at the heart as the one true influence to
make the soldier. For what should the soldier wander but to come again
home triumphant, and find on the doorstep of his native place the
smiling girls?
“Look at him, look at him!” cried the Cornal again with a nudge at his
brother’s arm. They were walking over the bridge and the pipes still
were at their melody. Jiggy Crawford’s braid shone like moving torches
at his shoulder as the sun smote hot upon his horse and him. The trees
upon the left leaned before the breeze to share this glory; far-off
the lonely hills, the great and barren hills, were melancholy that they
could not touch closer on the grandeur of man. As it were in a story of
the shealings, the little ones of the town and wayside houses pattered
in the rear of the troops, enchanted, their bare legs stretching to the
rhythm of the soldiers’ footsteps, the children of hope, the children
of illusion and desire, and behind them, sad, weary, everything
accomplished, the men who had seen the big wars and had many times
marched thus gaily and were now no more capable.
“It is the last we’ll ever see of it, John,” said the Cornal. “Oh, man,
man, if I were young again!” His foot was very heavy and slow as he
followed the last he would witness of what had been his pride; his
staff, that he tried to carry like a sword, roust go down now and then
to seek a firmness in the sandy foot-way. Not for long at a time but in
frequent flashes of remembrance he would throw back his shoulders and
lift high his head and step out in time to the music.
The Paymaster walked between him and Gilian, a little more robust and
youthful, altogether in a different key, a key critical, jealous of the
soldier lads that now he could not emulate. They were smart enough, he
confessed, but they were not what the 46th had been; Crawford had a good
carriage on his horse but--but--he was not----
“Oh, do not haver, Jock,” said the Cornal, angrily at last; “do
not haver! They are stout lads, good lads enough, like what we were
ourselves when first the wars summoned us, and Crawford, as he sits
there, might very well be Dugald as I saw him ride about the bend of the
road at San Sebastian and look across the sandy bay to see the rock we
had to conquer. Let you and me say nothing that is not kind, Colin; have
we not had our own day of it with the best? and no doubt when we were at
the marching there were ancients on the roadside to swear we were never
their equal. They are in there in the grass and bracken where you and
I must some day join them and young lads still will be marching out to
glory.”
“In there among the grass and bracken,” thought Gilian, turning a moment
to look up the slope that leads to Kilmalieu. The laurel drugged the
air with death’s odour. “In the grasses and the bracken,” said Gilian,
singing it to himself as if it were a coronach. Was that indeed the end
of it all, of the hope, the lilt, the glory? And then he had a great
pity for the dead that in their own time had been on many a march
like this. Their tombs are thick in Kilmalieu. It seemed so cruel,
so heedless, so taunting thus to march past them with no obeisance or
remembrance, that to them, the dead soldiers, all his heart went out,
and he hated the quick who marched upon the highway.
But Crawford, like the best that have humour, had pity and pathos too.
“Slow march!” he cried to his men, and the pipers played “Lochaber No
More.”
“He’s punctilious in his forms,” said the Paymaster, “but it’s
thoughtful of him too.”
“There was never but true _duine uasail_ put on the tartan of Argyll,”
said the Cornal.
The pipes ceased; the drums beat again, echoing from the Sgornach rock
and the woody caverns of Blaranbui, Glenshira filled to the lip with
rolling thunder, the sea lulled to a whisper on the shore. Gilian and
the children were now all that were left to follow the soldiers, for the
oldsters had cheered feebly and gone back. And as he walked close up on
the rear of the troops, his mind was again on the good fortune of those
that from warfare must return. To come home after long years, and go up
the street so well acquaint, sitting bravely on his horse, paled in
the complexion somewhat from a wound, perhaps with the scar of it as
perpetual memorial, and to behold pity and pride in the look of them
that saw him! It would be such a day as this, he chose, with the sun
upon his braid and the sheen upon his horse’s neck. The pipers would
play merrily and yet with a melancholy too, and so crowded the causeways
by the waiting community that even the windows must be open to their
overflowing.
And as thus he walked and dreamt saying no word to any of the chattering
bairns about him he was truly the Army’s child. The Paymaster was right,
and generous to choose for him so fine a calling; the Cornal made
no error, the soldier’s was the life for youth and spirit. He had
no objection now to all their plans for his future, the Army was his
choice.
It was then, at the Boshang Gate that leads to Dhuloch, Maam, Kilblaan
and all the loveliness of Shira Glen, that even his dreaming eyes found
Nan the girl within the gates watching the soldiers pass. Her face was
flushed with transport, her little shoes beat time to the tread of the
soldiers. They passed with a smile compelled upon their sunburnt faces,
to see her so sweet, so beautiful, so sensible to their glory. And
there was among them an ensign, young, slim, and blue-eyed; he wafted
a vagabond kiss as he passed, blowing it from his finger-tips as he
marched in the rear of his company. She tossed her hair from her temples
as the moon throws the cloud apart and beamed brightly and merrily and
sent him back his symbol with a daring charm.
Gilian’s dream of the Army fled. At the sight of Nan behind the Boshang
Gate he was startled to recognise that the girls he had thought of
as smiling on the soldier’s return had all the smile of this one, the
nut-brown hair of this one, her glance so fearless and withal so kind
and tender. At once the roll of the drums lost its magic for his ear;
a caprice of sun behind a fleck of cloud dulled the splendour of the
Colonel’s braid; Gilian lingered at the gate and let the soldiers go
their way.
For a little the girl never looked at him as he stood there with
the world (all but her, perhaps) so commonplace and dull after the
splendours of his mind. Her eyes were fixed upon the marching soldiers
now nearing the Gearron and about her lips played the smile of wonder
and pleasure.
At last the drumming ceased as the soldiers entered the wood of Strone,
still followed by the children. In the silence that fell so suddenly,
the country-side seemed solitary and sad. The great distant melancholy
hills were themselves again with no jealousy of the wayside trees
dreaming on their feet as they swayed in the lullaby wind. Nan turned
with a look yet enraptured and seemed for the first time to know the boy
was there on the other side of the gate alone.
“Oh!” she said, with the shudder of a woman’s delight in her accent. “I
wish I were a soldier.”
“It might be good enough to be one,” he answered, in the same native
tongue her feeling had made her choose unconsciously to express itself.
“But this is the worst of it,” she said, pitifully; “I am a girl, and
Sandy is to be the soldier though he was too lazy to come down the glen
to-day to see them away, and I must stay at home and work at samplers
and seams and bake bannocks.”
With wanton petulant fingers she pulled the haws from the hedge beside
her, and took a strand of her hair between her teeth and bit it in her
reverie of wilfulness.
“Perhaps,” said Gilian, coming closer, “it is better to be at home and
soldiering in your mind instead of marching and fighting.” It was a
thought that came to him in a flash and must find words, but somehow he
felt ashamed when he had uttered them.
“I do not understand you a bit,” said Nan, with a puzzled look in her
face. “Oh, you mean to pretend to yourself,” she added immediately.
“That might be good enough for a girl, but surely it would not be good
enough for you. You are to be a soldier, my father says, and he laughs
as if it were something droll.”
“It is not droll at all,” said Gilian stammering, very much put out.
“There are three old soldiers in our house and----”
“One of them Captain Mars, Captain Mars, Who never saw scars!” said the
girl mischievously, familiar with the town’s song. “I hope you do not
think of being a soldier like Mars. Perhaps that is what my father
laughs at when he says the Paymaster is to make you a soldier.”
“Oh, that!” said Gilian, a little relieved. “I thought you were thinking
I would not be man enough for a soldier.”
Nan opened the gate and came out to measure herself beside him. “You’re
a little bigger than I am,” said she, somewhat regretfully. “Perhaps you
will be big enough for a soldier. But what about that when you think you
would sooner stay at home and pretend, than go with the army? Did you
see the soldier who kissed his hand to me? The liberty!” And she laughed
with odd gaiety as if her mood resented the soldier’s freedom.
“He was very thin and little,” said Gilian, enviously.
“I thought he was quite big enough,” said Nan promptly, “and he was so
good-looking!”
“Was he?” asked Gilian gloomily. “Well, he was not like the Cornal or
the General. They were real soldiers and have seen tremendous wars.”
“I daresay,” said Nan, “but no more than my father. I cannot but wonder
at you; with the chance to be a soldier like my father or--or the
General, being willing to sit at home pretending or play-acting it in
school or----”
“I did not say I would prefer it,” said the boy; “I only said it could
be done.”
“I believe you would sooner do it that way than the other,” she said,
standing back from him, and looking with shrewd scrutiny. “Oh, I don’t
like the kind of boy you are.”
“Except when you are singing, and then you like to have me listening
because I understand,” said Gilian, smiling with pleasure at his own
astuteness.
She reddened at his discovery and then laughed in some confusion. “You
are thinking of the time I sang in the cabin to Black Duncan. You looked
so white and curious sitting yonder in the dark, I could have stopped my
song and laughed.”
“You could not,” he answered quite boldly, “because your eyes were----”
“Never mind that,” said she abruptly. “I was not speaking of singing or
of eyes, but I’m telling you I like men, men, men, the kind of men who
do things, brave things, hard things, like soldiers. Oh, I wish I was
the soldier who kissed his hand to me! What is pretending and thinking?
I can do that in a way at home over my sampler or my white seam. But to
be commanding, and fighting the enemies of the country, to be good with
the sword and the gun and strong with a horse, like my father!”
“I have seen your father,” said Gilian. “That is the kind of soldier
I would like to be.” He said so, generously, with some of the Highland
flauery; he said so meaning it, for Turner the bold, the handsome, the
adventurer, the man with years of foreign life in mystery, was always
the ideal soldier of Brooks’ school.
“You are a far nicer boy than I thought you were,” said she enjoying
the compliment. “Only--only--I think when you can pretend so much
to yourself you cannot so well do the things you pretend. You can be
soldiering in your mind so like the real thing that you may never go
soldiering at all. And of course that would not be the sort of soldier
my father is.”
A mellowed wail of the bagpipe came from Strone, the last farewell of
the departing soldiers; it was but a moment, then was gone. The wind
changed from the land, suddenly the odours of the traffics of peace blew
familiarly, the scents of gathered hay and the more elusive perfume of
yellowing corn. A myriad birds, among them the noisy rooks the blackest
and most numerous, sped home. In the bay the skiffs spread out their
pinions, the halyards singing in the blocks, the men ye-hoing. For a
space the bows rose and fell, lazy, reluctant to be moving in their
weary wrestle with the sea, then tore into the blue and made a feather
of white. Gilian looked at them and saw them the birds of night and sea,
the birds of prey, the howlets of the brine, flying large and powerful
throughout the under-sky that is salt and swinging and never lit by moon
or star. And as the boats followed each other out of the bay, a gallant
company, the crews leaned on tiller or on mast and sang their Gaelic
_iorrams_ that ever have the zest of the oar, the melancholy of the
wave.
As it were in a pious surrender to the influence of the hour, he and
the girl walked slowly, silently, by the wayside, busy with their own
imaginings. They were all alone.
Beyond the Boshang Gate is an entrance to the policies, the parks, the
gardens, of the Duke, standing open with a welcome, a trim roadway edged
with bush and tree. Into it Nan and Gilian walked, almost heedless, it
might seem, of each other’s presence, she plucking wild flowers as she
went from bush to bush, humming the refrain of the fishers’ songs, he
with his eyes wide open looking straight before him yet with some vague
content to have her there for his companion.
When they spoke again they were in the cloistered wood, the sea hidden
by the massive trees.
“I will show you my heron’s nest,” said Gilian, anxious to add to the
riches the ramble would confer on her.
She was delighted. Gilian at school had the reputation of knowing
the most wonderful things of the woods, and few were taken into his
confidence.
He led her a little from the path to the base of a tall tree with its
trunk for many yards up as bare as a pillar.
“There it is,” he said, pointing upward to a knot of gathered twigs
swaying in the upper branches.
“Oh! is it so high as that?” she cried, with disappointment. “What is
the use of showing me that? I cannot see the inside and the birds.”
“But there are no birds now,” said Gilian; “they are flown long ago.
Still I’m sure you can easily fancy them there. I see them quite
plainly. There are three eggs, green-blue like the sky up the glen, and
now--now there are three grey hairy little birds with tufts on their
heads. Do you not see their beaks opening?”
“Of course I don’t,” said Nan impatiently, straining her eyes for the
tree-top. “If they are all flown how can I see them?”
Gilian was disappointed with her. “But you think you see them, you think
very hard,” he said, “and if you think very hard they will be there
quite true.”
Nan stamped her foot angrily. “You are daft,” said she. “I don’t believe
you ever saw them yourself.”
“I tell you I did,” he protested hotly.
“Were you up the tree?” she pressed, looking him through with eyes that
then and always wrenched the prosaic truth from him.
He flushed more redly than in his eagerness of showing the nest, his
eyes fell, he stammered.
“Well,” said he, “I did not climb the tree. What is the good when I know
what is there? It is a heron’s nest.”
“But there might have been no eggs and no birds in it at all,” she
argued.
“That’s just it,” said he eagerly. “Lots of boys would be for climbing
and finding that out, and think how vexatious it would be after all that
trouble! I just made the eggs and the young ones out of my own mind, and
that is far better.”
At the innocence of the explanation Nan laughed till the woods rang. Her
brown hair fell upon her neck and brow, the flowers tumbled at her feet
all mingled and beautiful as if summer has been raining on its queen. A
bird rose from the thicket, chuck-chucking in alarm, then fled, trailing
behind him a golden chain of melody.