Dr. Anderson came, and went, shaking hands with Miss Mary in the lobby and his eyes most sternly bent upon the inside of his hat “Before morning at the very most,” he said in his odd low-country voice. No more than that, and still it thundered at her soul like an infernal doom. Up she gathered her apron, up to her face, and fled in among her pots and pans, and loudly she moved among them to drown her lamentation.
Dr. Colin came later and prayed in the two languages over a figure on the bed, and then went home to write another sermon than the one already started. The room he left was silent for a while, till of a sudden the eyes of the General opened and he looked upon the sorry company.
“Bring me MacGibbon,” said he in a voice extremely sensible.
Gilian ran up the street and fetched the old comrade, who put his hand upon the General’s head.
“Dugald, do you ken me?” said he.
“Do I ken you?” said the General with an unpractised smile. “You’re the laddie that burned the master’s cane. I would know your voice if you were in any guise, and what masquerade is this that you should be so old? We’re to be the first to move in the morning, under arms at scream of day.... Lord, but I’m tired! Bob, Bob, they’re not thinking of us at home in the old place I’ll warrant, and to-morrow we may be stricken corpses for the king without so much as Macintyre’s stretching-board to give us a soger’s chest and shoulders.”
“Was there anything I could do, Dugald?” said the comrade, a ludicrous man with his paunch now far beyond the limit of the soldier’s belt he used to buckle easily, wearing in a clownish notion of deference to this soldier’s passing a foolish small Highland bonnet he had donned in old campaigns.
“There was something running in my mind,” said the man in the bed. “I think I would be wanting you to take word home in case anything happened. I was thinking of—of—of—what was her name, now? You know the one I mean—her ladyship in Glen Shira. Am I not stupid to forget it? that’s the worst of the bottle! What was her name, now?... Battalion will form an hollow square.... The name, the name, what was it?... On the center companies, ‘kwards wheel.... I’m wearied to the marrow of my bones, all but the right arm, that’s like a feather, that’s like a... By the right angle of the front face; sub-divisions to the right and left half wheel. Re-form the square. Hall! Dress!... What’s that piper doing out there? MacVurich, come in! This is not a reel at a Skye wedding.... Let me see, I have the name on the tip of my tongue—what could it be, now? Steady, men!”
The door of the chamber was pushed in a little, and to Gilian’s mouth his heart rose up at the manifestation, for what was this with no footstep on the wooden stair? About him he felt of a sudden cold airs waft, and the door ajar with no one entering glued his gaze upon its panels. The others in the room had not perceived it. Miss Mary, grown of a sudden plain and old, looked up in the Cornal’s face, craving there for something for the ease of sorrow, as if he that had wandered so far and seen the Enemy so often and so ugly had some secret to share with her whereby this ancient trouble could be marred. There she found no consolation. No magician but only the brother looked over an untidy scarf and a limp high collar at the delirious man in bed. The Paymaster stood at the window frowning out upon the street; MacGibbon coughed in short dry jerky coughs, patted with a bony hand upon the coverlet, turned his head away. A stillness that was like a swoon came over all.
“Is that you, mother?” It was the General who broke the quiet, and his eyes were on his sister. A flush had fallen like a sunset on his face, his eyes were very clear and full, and, with his shaven cheeks, he might in the mitigate light of the chamber have been a lad new waked from an unpleasant dream. His sister put her head upon the pillow beside him and an arm about his shoulders.