MacGibbon moved to the window and stood beside the Paymaster, saying no word, but looking out at the vacant street, its causeway still shining with the rain. They were turning their backs, as it were, on a sorrow irremediable. Miss Mary and the Cornal stood alone by the dying man. He lay like a log but that his left hand played restlessly on the coverlet, long in the fingers, sinewy at the wrist. Miss Mary took it in hers and put palm to palm, and caressed the back with her other hand with an overflowing of affection that murmured at her throat.
And now that MacGibbon did not see and the Cornal had blurred eyes upon his brother’s boyish countenance, she felt free to caress, and she laid the poor hand against her cheek and coyly kissed it.
The General turned his look upon her wet face with a moment’s comprehension. “Tuts! never mind, Mary, my dear,” said he, “it might have been with Jamie yonder on the field, and there—there you have a son—in a manner—left to comfort you.” Then he began to wander anew. “A son,” said he, “a son. Whose son? Turner threw our sonlessness in our Jock’s face, but it was in my mind there was a boy somewhere we expected something of.”
Miss Mary beckoned on Gilian to come forward to the bedside. He rose from the chair he sat on in the farthest corner with his dreads and faltered over.
“What boy’s this?” said the General, looking at him with surmising eyes. “He puts me in mind of—of—of—of an old tale somewhere with a sunny day in it. Nan! Nan! Nan!—that’s the name. I knew I would come on it, for the sound of it was always like a sunny day in Portugal or Spain—He estado en Espana.”
“This is the boy, Dugald,” said Miss Mary; “this is just our Gilian.”
“I see that. I know him finely,” said the General, turning upon him a roving melancholy eye: “Jock’s recruit.... Did you get back from your walk, my young lad? I never could fathom you, but perhaps you have your parts.... Well, well... what are ye dreaming on the day?... Eh? Ha! ha! ha! Aye dreaming, that was you; you’ll be dreaming next that the lassie likes you. Mind, she jilted Jock, she jilted Colin, she jilted me; were we not the born idiots? yet still-and-on.... Sixty miles in twenty-four hours; good marching, lads, good marching, for half-starved men, and not the true heather-bred at that.”
The voice was becoming weaker in every sentence, the flush was paling on the countenance. Standing by the bedside, the Cornal looked upon his brother with a most rueful visage, his face hoved up with tears.
“This beats all!” said he, and he turned and went beside the men at the window, leaving Miss Mary caressing still at the hand upon the coverlet, and with an arm about the boy.
“He was a strong, fine, wiry man in his time,” said MacGibbon, looking over his shoulder at this end of a stormy life. “I mind him at Talavera; I think he was at his very best there.”