“Look at the General there; you’re fairly scunnering him with your notions,” said the Cornal. “I must speak to John about this. A soldier indeed! You’re not fit for it, lad; you have only the makings of a dominie. Sit you there, and we’ll see what John has to say about this when he comes in: it is going on seven, and he’ll be back from the dregy in time for his supper.”
Gilian sat trembling in his chair; the brothers leaned back in theirs and breathed heavily and said no word, and never even stretched a hand to the bottle of spirits. A solemn quiet again took possession of the house, but for a door that slammed in the lower flat, shaking the dwelling; the lulled sound of women’s conversation at the oven-grate was utterly stilled. The pigeons came to the sill a moment, mourned and flew away; the carts did not rumble any more in the street; the children’s chorus was altogether lost. A feeling came over the boy that he had been here or somewhere like it before, and he was fascinated, wondering what next would happen. A tall old clock in the lobby, whose pendulum swung so slowly that at first he had never realised its presence, at last took advantage of the silence and swung itself into his notice with a tick-tack. The silence seemed to thicken and press upon his ears; no striving after fancy could bring the boy far enough off from that strange convention, and try as he might to realise himself back in his familiar places by the riverside at Ladyfield, the wings of his imagining failed in their flight and he tumbled again into that austere parlour sitting with two men utterly beyond his comprehension.
There was, at last, one sound that gave a little comfort, and checked the tears that had begun to gather on the edges of his eyes. It came from the direction of the kitchen; it was a creaking of the wooden stairs; it was a faint shuffle of slippers in the lobby; then there was a hush outside the door deeper even than the stillness within. Gilian knew, as if he could see through the brown panelling, that a woman was standing out there listening with her breath caught up and wondering at the quiet within, yet afraid to open a door upon the mystery. The brothers did not observe it; all this was too faint for their old ears, though plainly heard by a child of the fields whose ear against the grass could detect the marching of insects and the tunnelling of worms. But for that he would have screamed—but for the magic air of friendship and sympathy that flowed to him through chink and keyhole from the good heart loud-beating outside; in that kind air of fond companionship (even with a door between) there was comfort. In a little the slippers sped back along the lobby, the stair creaked, in the lower flat a door slammed. Gilian felt himself more deserted and friendless than ever, and a few moments more would have found him break upon the appalling still with sobs of cowardly surrender, but the church bell rang. It was the first time he had heard its evening clamour, that, however far it might search up the glens, never reached Lady-field, so deep among the hills, and he had no more than recovered from the bewildering influence of its unexpected alarm when the foot of the Paymaster sounded heavily on the stair.
“You’re here at last,” said the Cornal, without looking at him.
“I was a thought later than I intended,” said the Paymaster quickly, putting his cane softly into a corner. “I had a little encounter with that fellow Turner and it put by the time.”
“What—Jamie?”
“No; Charlie.”
“Man! I wonder at you, John,” said the Cornal with a contempt in his utterance and a tightening of the corner of his lips. “I wonder at you changing words with him. What was it you were on?”
The Paymaster explained shortly, guardedly, because of Gilian’s presence, and as he spoke the purple of the Cornal’s face turned to livid and the scar became a sickly yellow. He rose and thumped his fist upon the table.
“That was his defiance, was it?” he cried. “We are the old sonless bachelors, are we, and the name’s dead with the last of us? And you argued with him about that! I would have put a hand on his cravat and throttled him.”