The town was dripping at its eaves and glucking full of waters at
rone-mouths and syvers when he got into it after his disgraceful retreat
He was alone in the street as he walked through it, a wet woebegone
figure with a jacket-collar high up to the ears to meet the nip of the
elements. Donacha Breck, leaning over his counter and moodily looking at
the hens sheltering their wind-blown feathers under his barrow, saw him
pass and threw over his shoulder to his wife behind a comment upon the
eccentricity of the Paymaster’s boy.
“He’s scarcely all there,” said he, “by the look of him. He’s wandering
about in the rah as if it was a fine summer day and the sun shining.”
Crossing from the school to his lodging, an arm occupied by a great
bundle of books, the other contending with an umbrella, was the dominie,
and he started at the sight of his errant pupil who nearly ran against
him before his presence was observed.
“Well, Gilian?” said he, a touch of irony in his accent, himself looking
a droll figure, hunched round his books and turning like a weathercock
jerkily to keep the umbrella between him and the wind that strained its
whalebone ribs till they almost snapped.
Gilian stopped, looked hard at the ground, said never a word. And old
Brooks, over him, gazed at the wet figure with puzzlement and pity.
“You beat me; you beat me quite!” said he. “There’s the making of a fine
man in you; you have sharpness, shrewdness, a kind of industry, or what
may be doing for that same; every chance of a paternal kind--that’s to
say a home complete and comfortable--and still you must be acting like
a wean! You were not at the school to-day. I’m keeping it from Miss
Campbell as long as I can, but I’ll be bound to tell her of your truancy
this time.”
He risked the surrounding hand a moment from his books, bent a little
and tapped the boy’s jacket pocket.
“Ay! A book again!” said he slyly. “What is it this time? But never
mind; it does not matter. I’ll warrant it is not Mr. Butter’s Spellings
nor Murray the Grammarian, but some trash of a novelle. Any exercise for
_your_ kind but the appointed task! I wish--I wish--Tuts! laddie, you
are wet to the skin, haste ye home and get a heat.”
Gilian did not need a second bidding; but ran up the street, without
slacking his pace till he got to the foot of the Paymaster’s stair,
where the wind from the pend-close was howling most dismally. He
lingered on the stair, extremely loth to face Miss Mary with a shame
so plain upon his countenance as he imagined it must be. No way that he
could tell the story of the _Jean’s_ disaster would leave out his sorry
share in it. A quick ear heard him on the stair; the door opened.
“Oh, you rascal!” cried Miss Mary, her anxious face peering down at him.
“You were never in the school till this time.” She put her hand upon
his bonnet and his sleeve and found them soaking. “Oh, I knew it! I knew
it!” she cried. “Just steeping!”
He found an unexpected relief in her consternation at his condition and
in her bustle to get him into dry clothing. After the experience he had
come through, the storm and the spectacle he had seen as in a dream
from the shore, he indulged in the cordiality and cosiness of the
warm kitchen for a little with selfish gladness. But it was only for a
little; the disaster to the vessel and the consciousness that his own
part in the business would certainly come to light, overwhelmed him
again, and it was a most dolorous face that looked at Miss Mary over the
viands she had just put before him.
“What ails the callant?” she demanded in a tremble, staring at him.
He burst into tears, the first she had seen on his face since ever he
had come to her house, and all her mother’s heart was sore.
“What mischief were you in?” she asked, putting an arm about his neck,
and her troubled face down upon his hair as he shook in his chair. “I am
sure you were not to blame. It could not have been much, Gilian.
Tuts! tuts!” And so she went on in a ludicrous way, coaxing him to
indifference for the sin she fancied.
At last he told her the beginnings of his tragedy, that he had seen the
_Jean_ wrecked on Ealan Dubh, and the girl Nan on board of her. She was
for a moment dumb with horror, believing the end had come to all upon
the vessel, but on this Gilian speedily assured her, and “Oh, am n’t I
glad!” said she with a simple utterance and a transport on her visage
that showed how deep was her satisfaction.
“How did they get ashore?” she asked,
“In the small boat,” said Gilian uncomfortably. “It caught on the logs
at the mouth of the river when she drifted off, and--and--”
“And a boy went out in it and brought them help!” she cried, finely
uplifted in a delight that she had guessed the cause of his trepidation.
“Oh, you darling! And not to say a word of it! Am not I the proud woman
this day? My dear companion Nan’s girl!”
She caught him fervently as he rose ashamed from his seat to explain
or to make an escape from the punishment that was in her error, a
punishment more severe than if he had been blamed. She was one never
prone to the displays of love and rapture, but this time her joy
overcame her, and she kissed him with something of a redness on her
face. It was to the boy as if he had been smitten on the mouth. He drew
back almost rudely in so great a confusion that it but confirmed her
guess. “You must come and tell my brothers,” said she, “this very
moment. Don’t say anything about the lass, but they’ll be keen to hear
about the vessel They sit there hearing nothing of the world’s news,
unless it comes to the fireside for them, and then I’ve noticed they’re
as ready to listen as Peggy would be at the Cross well.”
She had him half way to the parlour before he thought of a protest, he
had found such satisfaction in being relieved from her mistaken pride
in him. Then he concluded it was as well to go through with it, thinking
that if the rescue of the girl was not to be in the story, his own
shortcomings need not emerge. She pushed him before her into the room;
her brothers were seated at the fire, and they only turned when her
voice, in a very unaccustomed excitement, broke the quietness of the
chamber.
“Do you hear this?” she cried, and her hand on Gilian’s shoulder; “a
vessel’s sunk on the Ealan Dubh.”
“I knew there would be tales to tell of this,” said the General. “The
wind came too close on the frost. I mind at Toulouse----”
“And Gilian was down at the Waterfoot and saw it all,” she broke in upon
the reminiscence.
“Was he, faith?” said the Cornal. “I like my tales at first hand. Tell
us all about it, laddie; what vessel was she?”
He wheeled his chair about as he spoke, and roused himself to attention.
It was a curious group, too much like his old court-martial to be
altogether to the boy’s taste. For Miss Mary stood behind him, with an
air of proud possession of him that was disquieting, and the two men
seemed to expect from him some very exciting history indeed.
“Well, well!” said the Cornal, drumming with his fingers on his
chair-arm impatiently, “you’re in no great hurry with your budget. What
vessel was it?”
“It was the _Jean_,” said Gilian, bracing himself up for a plunge.
“Ye seem to be a wondrous lot mixed up with the fortunes of that
particular ship,” said the Cornal sourly. “What way did it happen?”
“She was in the mouth of the river,” said Gilian, “and the spate of the
river brought down the wooden bridge at Clonary. I saw it coming, and I
cried to them, and Black Duncan cast off, leaving boat and tiller. She
drove before the wind and went on Ealan Dubh, and sunk, and--that was
all.”
The story, as he told it, was as bald of interest as if it were a page
from an old almanack.
“What came of the men?” said the Cornal. “The loss of the _Jean_ does
not amount to muckle; there was not a plank of her first timbers left in
her.”
“They got ashore in the small boat,” said Gilian.
“Which was left behind, I think you said at first,” said the Cornal,
annoyed at some apparent link a missing in the chain of circumstance.
“If the boat was left behind as well as the tiller--I think you
mentioned the tiller--how did they get ashore in it? Did you see them
get ashore?”
“I saw Black Duncan and the girl, but not the others,” answered Gilian,
all at once forgetting that some caution was needed here.
Up more straightly sat the Cornal, and fixed him with a stern eye.
“Oh, ay!” said he; “she was in the story too, and you fancied you
might hide her. I would not wonder now but you had been in the vessel
yourself.”
Gilian was abashed at his own inadvertence, but he hastened to explain
that he was on the shore watching the vessel when she struck.
“But you were on the vessel some time?” said the Cornal, detecting some
reservation.
“Oh, Colin, Colin, I wonder at you!” cried Miss Mary, now in arms for
her favourite, and utterly heedless of the frown her brother threw at
her for her interference. “You treat the boy as if he was a vagabond
and--”
“--Vagabond or no vagabond,” said the Cornal, “he was where he should
not be. I’m wanting but the truth from him, and that, it seems, is not
very easy to get.”
“You are not just at all,” she protested. Then she went over and
whispered something in his ear. His whole look changed; where had
been suspicion came something of open admiration, but he gave it no
expression on his tongue.
“Take your time, Gilian,” said he; “tell us how the small boat got to
the vessel.”
“The boy went down to the river mouth,” said Gilian, “and--”
“--The boy?” said the Cornal. “Well, if you must be putting it that
idiotic way, you must; anyway, we’re waiting on the story.”
“--The boy went down to the river mouth and got into the small boat.
She was half full of water and he baled her as well as he could with his
bonnet, then pushed her off! She went up and down like a cork, and he
was terrified. He thought when he went in first she would be heavy to
row, but he found the lightness of her was the fearful thing. The wind
slapped like a big open hand, and the water would scoop out on either
side--”
“Take it easy, man, take it easy; slow march,” said the Cornal. For
Gilian had run into his narrative in one of his transports and the words
could not come fast enough to his lips to keep up with his imagination.
His face was quivering with the emotions appropriate to the chronicle.
“--Then I put out the oar astern----”
“--Humph! _You_ did; that’s a little more sensible way of putting it.”
“I put the oar astern,” said Gilian, never hearing the comment, but
carried away by his illusion; “and the wind carried us up the way of
Ealan Dubh. Sometimes the big waves would try to pull the oar from my
hands, wanting fair play between their brothers and the ship. [‘Havers!’
muttered the Cornal.) And the spindrift struck me in the eyes like hands
full of sand. I thought I would never get to the vessel. I thought
she would be upset every moment, and I could not keep from thinking of
myself hanging on to the keel and my fingers slipping in weariness.”
“A little less thinking and more speed with your boat would be welcome,”
said the Cornal impatiently. “I’m sick sorry for them, waiting there on
a wreck with so slow a rescue coming to them.”
Gilian hesitated, with his illusion shattered, and, all unnerved, broke
for the second time into tears.
“Look at that!” cried Miss Mary pitifully, herself weeping; “you are
frightening the poor laddie out of his wits,” and she soothed Gilian
with numerous Gaelic endearments.
“Tuts! never mind me,” said the Cornal, rising and coming forward to
clap the boy on the head for the very first time. “I think we can guess
the rest of the story. Can we not guess the rest of the story, Dugald?”
The General sat bewildered, the only one out of the secret, into which
Miss Mary’s whisper to the Cornal has not brought him.
“I am not good at guessing,” said he; “a man at my time likes everything
straight forward.” And there was a little irritation in his tone.
“It’s only this, Dugald,” said his brother, “that here’s a pluckier
young fellow than we thought, and good prospects yet for a soger in the
family. I never gave Jock credit for discretion, but, faith, he seems to
have gone with a keen eye to the market for once in his life! If it was
not for Gilian here, Turner was wanting a daughter this day; we could
hardly have hit on a finer revenge.”
“Revenge!” said the General, a flash jumping to his eyes, then dying
away. “I would not have said that, Colin; I would not have said that. It
is the phrase of a rough, quarrelsome young soldier, and we are elders
who should be long by with it.”
“Anyhow,” said the Cornal, “here’s the makings of a hero.” And he beamed
almost with affection on Gilian, now in a stupor at the complexity his
day’s doings had brought him to.
The Paymaster’s rattan sounded on the stair, and “Here’s John,” said his
sister. “He’ll be very pleased, I’m sure.”
It was anything but a pleased man who entered the room, his face puffed
and red and his eyes searching around for his boy. He pointed a shaking
finger at him.
“What, in God’s name, do you mean by this?” he asked vaguely.
“Don’t speak to the boy in that fashion,” said the Cornal in a
surprising new paternal key. “If he has been in mischief he has got out
of it by a touch of the valiant--”
“Valiant!” cried the Paymaster with a sneer. “He made an ass of himself
at the Waterfoot, and his stupidity would have let three or four people
drown if Young Islay, a callant better than himself had not put out a
boat and rescued them. The town’s ringing with it.”
The scar on the Cornal’s face turned almost black. “Is that true that my
brother says?” said he.
Gilian searched in a reeling head for some answer he could not find; his
parched lips could not have uttered it, even if he had found it, so he
nodded.
“Put me to my bed, somebody,” said the General, breaking in suddenly
on the shock of the moment, and staggering to one side a little as he
spoke. “Put me to my bed, somebody. I am getting too old to understand!”