Gilian The Dreamer

Gilian The Dreamer, by Neil
Munro

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Title: Gilian The Dreamer His Fancy, His Love and Adventure
Author: Neil Munro
Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22211]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE DREAMER ***

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GILIAN THE DREAMER
Gilian the Dreamer, His Fancy, His Love and Adventure
By Neil Munro

Author of 'John Splendid' 'The Lost Pibroch' &c.
1899

GILIAN THE DREAMER


CHAPTER I
--WHEN THE GEAN-TREE BLOSSOMED">
PART I
CHAPTER I
--WHEN THE GEAN-TREE BLOSSOMED
Rain was beating on the open leaf of plane and beech, and rapping at
the black doors of the ash-bud, and the scent of the gean-tree flourish
hung round the road by the river, vague, sweet, haunting, like a
recollection of the magic and forgotten gardens of youth. Over the high
and numerous hills, mountains of deer and antique forest, went the mist,
a slattern, trailing a ragged gown. The river sucked below the banks
and clamoured on the cascades, drawn unwillingly to the sea, the old
gluttonous sea that must ever be robbing the glens of their gathered
waters. And the birds were at their loving, or the building of their
homes, flying among the bushes, trolling upon the bough. One with an
eye, as the saying goes, could scarcely pass among this travail of the
new year without some pleasure in the spectacle, though the rain might
drench him to the skin. He could not but joy in the thrusting crook of
the fern and bracken; what sort of heart was his if it did not lift and
swell to see the new fresh green blown upon the grey parks, to see the
hedges burst, the young firs of the Blaranbui prick up among the slower

elder pines and oaks?
Some of the soul and rapture of the day fell with the rain upon the boy.
He hurried with bare feet along the river-side from the glen to the town,
a bearer of news, old news of its kind, yet great news too, but now and
then he would linger in the odour of the bloom that sprayed the
gean-tree like a fall of snow, or he would cast an eye admiring upon the
turgid river, washing from bank to bank, and feel the strange uneasiness
of wonder and surmise, the same that comes from mists that swirl in
gorges of the hills or haunt old ancient woods. The sigh of the wind
seemed to be for his peculiar ear. The nod of the saugh leaf on the
banks was a salutation. There is, in a flutter of the tree's young plumage,
some hint of communication whose secret we lose as we age, and the
boy, among it, felt the warmth of companionship. But the sights were
for the errant moments of his mind; his thoughts, most of the way, were
on his message.
He was a boy with a timid and wondering eye, a type to be seen often
in those parts, and his hair blew from under his bonnet, a toss of white
and gold, as it blew below the helms of the old sea-rovers. He was from
Ladyfield, hastening as I say with great news though common news
enough of its kind--the news that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead.
If this were a tale of the imagination, and my task was not a work of
history but to pleasure common people about a hearth, who ever love
the familiar emotions in their heroes, I would credit my hero with grief.
For here was his last friend gone, here was he orphaned for ever. The
door of Ladyfield, where he was born and where he had slept without
an absent night since first his cry rose there, a coronach in the ears of
his dying mother, would be shut against him; the stranger would bar the
gates at evening, the sheep upon the hills would have another
keel-mark than the old one on their fleecy sides. Surely the sobs that
sometimes rose up in his throat were the utter surrender of sorrow;
were the tears that mingled with the rain-drops on his cheek not griefs
most bitter essence? For indeed he had loved the old shrunk woman,
wrinkled and brown like a nut, with a love that our race makes no
parade of, but feels to the very core.

But in truth, as he went sobbing in his loneliness