‘Ha, ha! I’ve affronted you. Isn’t that it, fair angel, fair—what do you call it?—fair vestal? Ah, well! would you was safe in my own house! But honour must be minded now, not courting. Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum. Pardon me, my sweet, I like ye! It may be a come down for me, owning land; but I do like ye.’
‘Sir, please be quiet,’ said Anne, distressed.
‘I will, I will. Well, Corporal Tullidge, how’s your head?’ he said, going towards the other end of the room, and leaving Anne to herself.
The company had again recovered its liveliness, and it was a long time before the bouncing Rufus who had joined them could find heart to tear himself away from their society and good liquors, although he had had quite enough of the latter before he entered. The natives received him at his own valuation, and the soldiers of the camp, who sat beyond the table, smiled behind their pipes at his remarks, with a pleasant twinkle of the eye which approached the satirical, John Loveday being not the least conspicuous in this bearing. But he and his friends were too courteous on such an occasion as the present to challenge the young man’s large remarks, and readily permitted him to set them right on the details of camping and other military routine, about which the troopers seemed willing to let persons hold any opinion whatever, provided that they themselves were not obliged to give attention to it; showing, strangely enough, that if there was one subject more than another which never interested their minds, it was the art of war. To them the art of enjoying good company in Overcombe Mill, the details of the miller’s household, the swarming of his bees, the number of his chickens, and the fatness of his pigs, were matters of infinitely greater concern.
The present writer, to whom this party has been described times out of number by members of the Loveday family and other aged people now passed away, can never enter the old living-room of Overcombe Mill without beholding the genial scene through the mists of the seventy or eighty years that intervene between then and now. First and brightest to the eye are the dozen candles, scattered about regardless of expense, and kept well snuffed by the miller, who walks round the room at intervals of five minutes, snuffers in hand, and nips each wick with great precision, and with something of an executioner’s grim look upon his face as he closes the snuffers upon the neck of the candle. Next to the candle-light show the red and blue coats and white breeches of the soldiers—nearly twenty of them in all besides the ponderous Derriman—the head of the latter, and, indeed, the heads of all who are standing up, being in dangerous proximity to the black beams of the ceiling. There is not one among them who would attach any meaning to ‘Vittoria,’ or gather from the syllables ‘Waterloo’ the remotest idea of his own glory or death. Next appears the correct and innocent Anne, little thinking what things Time has in store for her at no great distance off. She looks at Derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and thither, and hopes he will not single her out again to hold a private dialogue with—which, however, he does, irresistibly attracted by the white muslin figure. She must, of course, look a little gracious again now, lest his mood should turn from sentimental to quarrelsome—no impossible contingency with the yeoman-soldier, as her quick perception had noted.
‘Well, well; this idling won’t do for me, folks,’ he at last said, to Anne’s relief. ‘I ought not to have come in, by rights; but I heard you enjoying yourselves, and thought it might be worth while to see what you were up to; I have several miles to go before bedtime;’ and stretching his arms, lifting his chin, and shaking his head, to eradicate any unseemly curve or wrinkle from his person, the yeoman wished them an off-hand good-night, and departed.
‘You should have teased him a little more, father,’ said the trumpet-major drily. ‘You could soon have made him as crabbed as a bear.’
‘I didn’t want to provoke the chap—’twasn’t worth while. He came in friendly enough,’ said the gentle miller without looking up.
‘I don’t think he was overmuch friendly,’ said John.
‘’Tis as well to be neighbourly with folks, if they be not quite onbearable,’ his father genially replied, as he took off his coat to go and draw more ale—this periodical stripping to the shirt-sleeves being necessitated by the narrowness of the cellar and the smeary effect of its numerous cobwebs upon best clothes.
Some of the guests then spoke of Fess Derriman as not such a bad young man if you took him right and humoured him; others said that he was nobody’s enemy but his own; and the elder ladies mentioned in a tone of interest that he was likely to come into a deal of money at his uncle’s death. The person who did not praise was the one who knew him best, who had known him as a boy years ago, when he had lived nearer to Overcombe than he did at present. This unappreciative person was the trumpet-major.
At this time in the history of Overcombe one solitary newspaper occasionally found its way into the village. It was lent by the postmaster at Budmouth (who, in some mysterious way, got it for nothing through his connexion with the mail) to Mr. Derriman at the Hall, by whom it was handed on to Mrs. Garland when it was not more than a fortnight old. Whoever remembers anything about the old farmer-squire will, of course, know well enough that this delightful privilege of reading history in long columns was not accorded to the Widow Garland for nothing. It was by such ingenuous means that he paid her for her daughter’s occasional services in reading aloud to him and making out his accounts, in which matters the farmer, whose guineas were reported to touch five figures—some said more—was not expert.
Mrs. Martha Garland, as a respectable widow, occupied a twilight rank between the benighted villagers and the well-informed gentry, and kindly made herself useful to the former as letter-writer and reader, and general translator from the printing tongue. It was not without satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening, newspaper in hand, with three or four cottagers standing round, and poured down their open throats any paragraph that she might choose to select from the stirring ones of the period. When she had done with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed it on to the miller, the miller to the grinder, and the grinder to the grinder’s boy, in whose hands it became subdivided into half pages, quarter pages, and irregular triangles, and ended its career as a paper cap, a flagon bung, or a wrapper for his bread and cheese.
Notwithstanding his compact with Mrs. Garland, old Mr. Derriman kept the paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man’s time on a merely intellectual errand, that unless she sent for the journal it seldom reached her hands. Anne was always her messenger. The arrival of the soldiers led Mrs. Garland to despatch her daughter for it the day after the party; and away she went in her hat and pelisse, in a direction at right angles to that of the encampment on the hill.
Walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she came out upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of the way was the entrance to what at first sight looked like a neglected meadow, the gate being a rotten one, without a bottom rail, and broken-down palings lying on each side. The dry hard mud of the opening was marked with several horse and cow tracks, that had been half obliterated by fifty score sheep tracks, surcharged with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond this geological record appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, which Anne followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under dark-rinded elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of a waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a bend round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once been a fish pond. Here the grey, weather-worn front of a building edged from behind the trees. It was Oxwell Hall, once the seat of a family now extinct, and of late years used as a farmhouse.
Benjamin Derriman, who owned the crumbling place, had originally been only the occupier and tenant-farmer of the fields around. His wife had brought him a small fortune, and during the growth of their only son there had been a partition of the Oxwell estate, giving the farmer, now a widower, the opportunity of acquiring the building and a small portion of the land attached on exceptionally low terms. But two years after the purchase the boy died, and Derriman’s existence was paralyzed forthwith. It was said that since that event he had devised the house and fields to a distant female relative, to keep them out of the hands of his detested nephew; but this was not certainly known.
The hall was as interesting as mansions in a state of declension usually are, as the excellent county history showed. That popular work in folio contained an old plate dedicated to the last scion of the original owners, from which drawing it appeared that in 1750, the date of publication, the windows were covered with little scratches like black flashes of lightning; that a horn of hard smoke came out of each of the twelve chimneys; that a lady and a lap-dog stood on the lawn in a strenuously walking position; and a substantial cloud and nine flying birds of no known species hung over the trees to the north-east.
The rambling and neglected dwelling had all the romantic excellencies and practical drawbacks which such mildewed places share in common with caves, mountains, wildernesses, glens, and other homes of poesy that people of taste wish to live and die in. Mustard and cress could have been raised on the inner plaster of the dewy walls at any height not exceeding three feet from the floor; and mushrooms of the most refined and thin-stemmed kinds grew up through the chinks of the larder paving. As for the outside, Nature, in the ample time that had been given her, had so mingled her filings and effacements with the marks of human wear and tear upon the house, that it was often hard to say in which of the two or if in both, any particular obliteration had its origin. The keenness was gone from the mouldings of the doorways, but whether worn out by the rubbing past of innumerable people’s shoulders, and the moving of their heavy furniture, or by Time in a grander and more abstract form, did not appear. The iron stanchions inside the window-panes were eaten away to the size of wires at the bottom where they entered the stone, the condensed breathings of generations having settled there in pools and rusted them. The panes themselves had either lost their shine altogether or become iridescent as a peacock’s tail. In the middle of the porch was a vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say, ‘Here’s your fine model dial; here’s any time for any man; I am an old dial; and shiftiness is the best policy.’
Anne passed under the arched gateway which screened the main front; over it was the porter’s lodge, reached by a spiral staircase. Across the archway was fixed a row of wooden hurdles, one of which Anne opened and closed behind her. Their necessity was apparent as soon as she got inside. The quadrangle of the ancient pile was a bed of mud and manure, inhabited by calves, geese, ducks, and sow pigs surprisingly large, with young ones surprisingly small. In the groined porch some heifers were amusing themselves by stretching up their necks and licking the carved stone capitals that supported the vaulting. Anne went on to a second and open door, across which was another hurdle to keep the live stock from absolute community with the inmates. There being no knocker, she knocked by means of a short stick which was laid against the post for that purpose; but nobody attending, she entered the passage, and tried an inner door.
A slight noise was heard inside, the door opened about an inch, and a strip of decayed face, including the eye and some forehead wrinkles, appeared within the crevice.
‘Please I have come for the paper,’ said Anne.
‘O, is it you, dear Anne?’ whined the inmate, opening the door a little further. ‘I could hardly get to the door to open it, I am so weak.’
The speaker was a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees, revealing a bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white shirt-frill to compensate for this untidiness below. The edge of his skull round his eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he had a mouth whose corners made towards the back of his head on the slightest provocation. He walked with great apparent difficulty back into the room, Anne following him.
‘Well, you can have the paper if you want it; but you never give me much time to see what’s in en! Here’s the paper.’ He held it out, but before she could take it he drew it back again, saying, ‘I have not had my share o’ the paper by a good deal, what with my weak sight, and people coming so soon for en. I am a poor put-upon soul; but my “Duty of Man” will be left to me when the newspaper is gone.’ And he sank into his chair with an air of exhaustion.
Anne said that she did not wish to take the paper if he had not done with it, and that she was really later in the week than usual, owing to the soldiers.
‘Soldiers, yes—rot the soldiers! And now hedges will be broke, and hens’ nests robbed, and sucking-pigs stole, and I don’t know what all. Who’s to pay for’t, sure? I reckon that because the soldiers be come you don’t mean to be kind enough to read to me what I hadn’t time to read myself.’
She would read if he wished, she said; she was in no hurry. And sitting herself down she unfolded the paper.
‘“Dinner at Carlton House”?’
‘No, faith. ’Tis nothing to I.’
‘“Defence of the country”?’
‘Ye may read that if ye will. I hope there will be no billeting in this parish, or any wild work of that sort; for what would a poor old lamiger like myself do with soldiers in his house, and nothing to feed ’em with?’
Anne began reading, and continued at her task nearly ten minutes, when she was interrupted by the appearance in the quadrangular slough without of a large figure in the uniform of the yeomanry cavalry.
‘What do you see out there?’ said the farmer with a start, as she paused and slowly blushed.
‘A soldier—one of the yeomanry,’ said Anne, not quite at her ease.
‘Scrounch it all—’tis my nephew!’ exclaimed the old man, his face turning to a phosphoric pallor, and his body twitching with innumerable alarms as he formed upon his face a gasping smile of joy, with which to welcome the new-coming relative. ‘Read on, prithee, Miss Garland.’
Before she had read far the visitor straddled over the door-hurdle into the passage and entered the room.
‘Well, nunc, how do you feel?’ said the giant, shaking hands with the farmer in the manner of one violently ringing a hand-bell. ‘Glad to see you.’
‘Bad and weakish, Festus,’ replied the other, his person responding passively to the rapid vibrations imparted. ‘O, be tender, please—a little softer, there’s a dear nephew! My arm is no more than a cobweb.’
‘Ah, poor soul!’
‘Yes, I am not much more than a skeleton, and can’t bear rough usage.’
‘Sorry to hear that; but I’ll bear your affliction in mind. Why, you are all in a tremble, Uncle Benjy!’
‘’Tis because I am so gratified,’ said the old man. ‘I always get all in a tremble when I am taken by surprise by a beloved relation.’
‘Ah, that’s it!’ said the yeoman, bringing his hand down on the back of his uncle’s chair with a loud smack, at which Uncle Benjy nervously sprang three inches from his seat and dropped into it again. ‘Ask your pardon for frightening ye, uncle. ’Tis how we do in the army, and I forgot your nerves. You have scarcely expected to see me, I dare say, but here I am.’
‘I am glad to see ye. You are not going to stay long, perhaps?’
‘Quite the contrary. I am going to stay ever so long!’
‘O I see! I am so glad, dear Festus. Ever so long, did ye say?’
‘Yes,everso long,’ said the young gentleman, sitting on the slope of the bureau and stretching out his legs as props. ‘I am going to make this quite my own home whenever I am off duty, as long as we stay out. And after that, when the campaign is over in the autumn, I shall come here, and live with you like your own son, and help manage your land and your farm, you know, and make you a comfortable old man.’
‘Ah! How you do please me!’ said the farmer, with a horrified smile, and grasping the arms of his chair to sustain himself.
‘Yes; I have been meaning to come a long time, as I knew you’d like to have me, Uncle Benjy; and ’tisn’t in my heart to refuse you.’
‘You always was kind that way!’
‘Yes; I always was. But I ought to tell you at once, not to disappoint you, that I shan’t be here always—all day, that is, because of my military duties as a cavalry man.’
‘O, not always? That’s a pity!’ exclaimed the farmer with a cheerful eye.
‘I knew you’d say so. And I shan’t be able to sleep here at night sometimes, for the same reason.’
‘Not sleep here o’ nights?’ said the old gentleman, still more relieved. ‘You ought to sleep here—you certainly ought; in short, you must. But you can’t!’
‘Not while we are with the colours. But directly that’s over—the very next day—I’ll stay here all day, and all night too, to oblige you, since you ask me so very kindly.’
‘Th-thank ye, that will be very nice!’ said Uncle Benjy.
‘Yes, I knew ’twould relieve ye.’ And he kindly stroked his uncle’s head, the old man expressing his enjoyment at the affectionate token by a death’s-head grimace. ‘I should have called to see you the other night when I passed through here,’ Festus continued; ‘but it was so late that I couldn’t come so far out of my way. You won’t think it unkind?’
‘Not at all, if youcouldn’t. I never shall think it unkind if you reallycan’tcome, you know, Festy.’ There was a few minutes’ pause, and as the nephew said nothing Uncle Benjy went on: ‘I wish I had a little present for ye. But as ill-luck would have it we have lost a deal of stock this year, and I have had to pay away so much.’
‘Poor old man—I know you have. Shall I lend you a seven-shilling piece, Uncle Benjy?’
‘Ha, ha!—you must have your joke; well, I’ll think o’ that. And so they expect Buonaparty to choose this very part of the coast for his landing, hey? And that the yeomanry be to stand in front as the forlorn hope?’
‘Who says so?’ asked the florid son of Mars, losing a little redness.
‘The newspaper-man.’
‘O, there’s nothing in that,’ said Festus bravely. ‘The gover’ment thought it possible at one time; but they don’t know.’
Festus turned himself as he talked, and now said abruptly: ‘Ah, who’s this? Why, ’tis our little Anne!’ He had not noticed her till this moment, the young woman having at his entry kept her face over the newspaper, and then got away to the back part of the room. ‘And are you and your mother always going to stay down there in the mill-house watching the little fishes, Miss Anne?’
She said that it was uncertain, in a tone of truthful precision which the question was hardly worth, looking forcedly at him as she spoke. But she blushed fitfully, in her arms and hands as much as in her face. Not that she was overpowered by the great boots, formidable spurs, and other fierce appliances of his person, as he imagined; simply she had not been prepared to meet him there.
‘I hope you will, I am sure, for my own good,’ said he, letting his eyes linger on the round of her cheek.
Anne became a little more dignified, and her look showed reserve. But the yeoman on perceiving this went on talking to her in so civil a way that he irresistibly amused her, though she tried to conceal all feeling. At a brighter remark of his than usual her mouth moved, her upper lip playing uncertainly over her white teeth; it would stay still—no, it would withdraw a little way in a smile; then it would flutter down again; and so it wavered like a butterfly in a tender desire to be pleased and smiling, and yet to be also sedate and composed; to show him that she did not want compliments, and yet that she was not so cold as to wish to repress any genuine feeling he might be anxious to utter.
‘Shall you want any more reading, Mr. Derriman?’ said she, interrupting the younger man in his remarks. ‘If not, I’ll go homeward.’
‘Don’t let me hinder you longer,’ said Festus. ‘I’m off in a minute or two, when your man has cleaned my boots.’
‘Ye don’t hinder us, nephew. She must have the paper: ’tis the day for her to have ’n. She might read a little more, as I have had so little profit out o’ en hitherto. Well, why don’t ye speak? Will ye, or won’t ye, my dear?’
‘Not to two,’ she said.
‘Ho, ho! damn it, I must go then, I suppose,’ said Festus, laughing; and unable to get a further glance from her he left the room and clanked into the back yard, where he saw a man; holding up his hand he cried, ‘Anthony Cripplestraw!’
Cripplestraw came up in a trot, moved a lock of his hair and replaced it, and said, ‘Yes, Maister Derriman.’ He was old Mr. Derriman’s odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only, giving him a triangular smile.
‘Well, Cripplestraw, how is it to-day?’ said Festus, with socially-superior heartiness.
‘Middlin’, considering, Maister Derriman. And how’s yerself?’
‘Fairish. Well, now, see and clean these military boots of mine. I’ll cock my foot up on this bench. This pigsty of my uncle’s is not fit for a soldier to come into.’
‘Yes, Maister Derriman, I will. No, ’tis not fit, Maister Derriman.’
‘What stock has uncle lost this year, Cripplestraw?’
‘Well, let’s see, sir. I can call to mind that we’ve lost three chickens, a tom-pigeon, and a weakly sucking-pig, one of a fare of ten. I can’t think of no more, Maister Derriman.’
‘H’m, not a large quantity of cattle. The old rascal!’
‘No, ’tis not a large quantity. Old what did you say, sir?’
‘O nothing. He’s within there.’ Festus flung his forehead in the direction of a right line towards the inner apartment. ‘He’s a regular sniche one.’
‘Hee, hee; fie, fie, Master Derriman!’ said Cripplestraw, shaking his head in delighted censure. ‘Gentlefolks shouldn’t talk so. And an officer, Mr. Derriman! ’Tis the duty of all cavalry gentlemen to bear in mind that their blood is a knowed thing in the country, and not to speak ill o’t.’
‘He’s close-fisted.’
‘Well, maister, he is—I own he is a little. ’Tis the nater of some old venerable gentlemen to be so. We’ll hope he’ll treat ye well in yer fortune, sir.’
‘Hope he will. Do people talk about me here, Cripplestraw?’ asked the yeoman, as the other continued busy with his boots.
‘Well, yes, sir; they do off and on, you know. They says you be as fine a piece of calvery flesh and bones as was ever growed on fallow-ground; in short, all owns that you be a fine fellow, sir. I wish I wasn’t no more afraid of the French than you be; but being in the Locals, Maister Derriman, I assure ye I dream of having to defend my country every night; and I don’t like the dream at all.’
‘You should take it careless, Cripplestraw, as I do; and ’twould soon come natural to you not to mind it at all. Well, a fine fellow is not everything, you know. O no. There’s as good as I in the army, and even better.’
‘And they say that when you fall this summer, you’ll die like a man.’
‘When I fall?’
‘Yes, sure, Maister Derriman. Poor soul o’ thee! I shan’t forget ’ee as you lie mouldering in yer soldier’s grave.’
‘Hey?’ said the warrior uneasily. ‘What makes ’em think I am going to fall?’
‘Well, sir, by all accounts the yeomanry will be put in front.’
‘Front! That’s what my uncle has been saying.’
‘Yes, and by all accounts ’tis true. And naterelly they’ll be mowed down like grass; and you among ’em, poor young galliant officer!’
‘Look here, Cripplestraw. This is a reg’lar foolish report. How can yeomanry be put in front? Nobody’s put in front. We yeomanry have nothing to do with Buonaparte’s landing. We shall be away in a safe place, guarding the possessions and jewels. Now, can you see, Cripplestraw, any way at all that the yeomanry can be put in front? Do you think they really can?’
‘Well, maister, I am afraid I do,’ said the cheering Cripplestraw. ‘And I know a great warrior like you is only too glad o’ the chance. ’Twill be a great thing for ye, death and glory! In short, I hope from my heart you will be, and I say so very often to folk—in fact, I pray at night for’t.’
‘O! cuss you! you needn’t pray about it.’
‘No, Maister Derriman, I won’t.’
‘Of course my sword will do its duty. That’s enough. And now be off with ye.’
Festus gloomily returned to his uncle’s room and found that Anne was just leaving. He was inclined to follow her at once, but as she gave him no opportunity for doing this he went to the window, and remained tapping his fingers against the shutter while she crossed the yard.
‘Well, nephy, you are not gone yet?’ said the farmer, looking dubiously at Festus from under one eyelid. ‘You see how I am. Not by any means better, you see; so I can’t entertain ’ee as well as I would.’
‘You can’t, nunc, you can’t. I don’t think you are worse—if I do, dash my wig. But you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make me welcome when you are better. If you are not so brisk inwardly as you was, why not try change of air? This is a dull, damp hole.’
‘’Tis, Festus; and I am thinking of moving.’
‘Ah, where to?’ said Festus, with surprise and interest.
‘Up into the garret in the north corner. There is no fireplace in the room; but I shan’t want that, poor soul o’ me.’
‘’Tis not moving far.’
‘’Tis not. But I have not a soul belonging to me within ten mile; and you know very well that I couldn’t afford to go to lodgings that I had to pay for.’
‘I know it—I know it, Uncle Benjy! Well, don’t be disturbed. I’ll come and manage for you as soon as ever this Boney alarm is over; but when a man’s country calls he must obey, if he is a man.’
‘A splendid spirit!’ said Uncle Benjy, with much admiration on the surface of his countenance. ‘I never had it. How could it have got into the boy?’
‘From my mother’s side, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps so. Well, take care of yourself, nephy,’ said the farmer, waving his hand impressively. ‘Take care! In these warlike times your spirit may carry ye into the arms of the enemy; and you are the last of the family. You should think of this, and not let your bravery carry ye away.’
‘Don’t be disturbed, uncle; I’ll control myself,’ said Festus, betrayed into self-complacency against his will. ‘At least I’ll do what I can, but nature will out sometimes. Well, I’m off.’ He began humming ‘Brighton Camp,’ and, promising to come again soon, retired with assurance, each yard of his retreat adding private joyousness to his uncle’s form.
When the bulky young man had disappeared through the porter’s lodge, Uncle Benjy showed preternatural activity for one in his invalid state, jumping up quickly without his stick, at the same time opening and shutting his mouth quite silently like a thirsty frog, which was his way of expressing mirth. He ran upstairs as quick as an old squirrel, and went to a dormer window which commanded a view of the grounds beyond the gate, and the footpath that stretched across them to the village.
‘Yes, yes!’ he said in a suppressed scream, dancing up and down, ‘he’s after her: she’ve hit en!’ For there appeared upon the path the figure of Anne Garland, and, hastening on at some little distance behind her, the swaggering shape of Festus. She became conscious of his approach, and moved more quickly. He moved more quickly still, and overtook her. She turned as if in answer to a call from him, and he walked on beside her, till they were out of sight. The old man then played upon an imaginary fiddle for about half a minute; and, suddenly discontinuing these signs of pleasure, went downstairs again.
‘You often come this way?’ said Festus to Anne rather before he had overtaken her.
‘I come for the newspaper and other things,’ she said, perplexed by a doubt whether he were there by accident or design.
They moved on in silence, Festus beating the grass with his switch in a masterful way. ‘Did you speak, Mis’ess Anne?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Anne.
‘Ten thousand pardons. I thought you did. Now don’t let me drive you out of the path. I can walk among the high grass and giltycups—they will not yellow my stockings as they will yours. Well, what do you think of a lot of soldiers coming to the neighbourhood in this way?’
‘I think it is very lively, and a great change,’ she said with demure seriousness.
‘Perhaps you don’t like us warriors as a body?’
Anne smiled without replying.
‘Why, you are laughing!’ said the yeoman, looking searchingly at her and blushing like a little fire. ‘What do you see to laugh at?’
‘Did I laugh?’ said Anne, a little scared at his sudden mortification.
‘Why, yes; you know you did, you young sneerer,’ he said like a cross baby. ‘You are laughing at me—that’s who you are laughing at! I should like to know what you would do without such as me if the French were to drop in upon ye any night?’
‘Would you help to beat them off?’ said she.
‘Can you ask such a question? What are we for? But you don’t think anything of soldiers.’
O yes, she liked soldiers, she said, especially when they came home from the wars, covered with glory; though when she thought what doings had won them that glory she did not like them quite so well. The gallant and appeased yeoman said he supposed her to mean chopping off heads, blowing out brains, and that kind of business, and thought it quite right that a tender-hearted thing like her should feel a little horrified. But as for him, he should not mind such another Blenheim this summer as the army had fought a hundred years ago, or whenever it was—dash his wig if he should mind it at all. ‘Hullo! now you are laughing again; yes, I saw you!’ And the choleric Festus turned his blue eyes and flushed face upon her as though he would read her through. Anne strove valiantly to look calmly back; but her eyes could not face his, and they fell. ‘You did laugh!’ he repeated.
‘It was only a tiny little one,’ she murmured.
‘Ah—I knew you did!’ thundered he. ‘Now what was it you laughed at?’
‘I only—thought that you were—merely in the yeomanry,’ she murmured slily.
‘And what of that?’
‘And the yeomanry only seem farmers that have lost their senses.’
‘Yes, yes! I knew you meant some jeering o’ that sort, Mistress Anne. But I suppose ’tis the way of women, and I take no notice. I’ll confess that some of us are no great things: but I know how to draw a sword, don’t I?—say I don’t just to provoke me.’
‘I am sure you do,’ said Anne sweetly. ‘If a Frenchman came up to you, Mr. Derriman, would you take him on the hip, or on the thigh?’
‘Now you are flattering!’ he said, his white teeth uncovering themselves in a smile. ‘Well, of course I should draw my sword—no, I mean my sword would be already drawn; and I should put spurs to my horse—charger, as we call it in the army; and I should ride up to him and say—no, I shouldn’t say anything, of course—men never waste words in battle; I should take him with the third guard, low point, and then coming back to the second guard—’
‘But that would be taking care of yourself—not hitting at him.’
‘How can you say that!’ he cried, the beams upon his face turning to a lurid cloud in a moment. ‘How can you understand military terms who’ve never had a sword in your life? I shouldn’t take him with the sword at all.’ He went on with eager sulkiness, ‘I should take him with my pistol. I should pull off my right glove, and throw back my goat-skin; then I should open my priming-pan, prime, and cast about—no, I shouldn’t, that’s wrong; I should draw my right pistol, and as soon as loaded, seize the weapon by the butt; then at the word “Cock your pistol” I should—’
‘Then there is plenty of time to give such words of command in the heat of battle?’ said Anne innocently.
‘No!’ said the yeoman, his face again in flames. ‘Why, of course I am only telling you whatwouldbe the word of commandif—there now! you la—’
‘I didn’t; ’pon my word I didn’t!’
‘No, I don’t think you did; it was my mistake. Well, then I come smartly to Present, looking well along the barrel—along the barrel—and fire. Of course I know well enough how to engage the enemy! But I expect my old uncle has been setting you against me.’
‘He has not said a word,’ replied Anne; ‘though I have heard of you, of course.’
‘What have you heard? Nothing good, I dare say. It makes my blood boil within me!’
‘O, nothing bad,’ said she assuringly. ‘Just a word now and then.’
‘Now, come, tell me, there’s a dear. I don’t like to be crossed. It shall be a sacred secret between us. Come, now!’
Anne was embarrassed, and her smile was uncomfortable. ‘I shall not tell you,’ she said at last.
‘There it is again!’ said the yeoman, throwing himself into a despair. ‘I shall soon begin to believe that my name is not worth sixpence about here!’
‘I tell you ’twas nothing against you,’ repeated Anne.
‘That means it might have been for me,’ said Festus, in a mollified tone. ‘Well, though, to speak the truth, I have a good many faults, some people will praise me, I suppose. ’Twas praise?’
‘It was.’
‘Well, I am not much at farming, and I am not much in company, and I am not much at figures, but perhaps I must own, since it is forced upon me, that I can show as fine a soldier’s figure on the Esplanade as any man of the cavalry.’
‘You can,’ said Anne; for though her flesh crept in mortal terror of his irascibility, she could not resist the fearful pleasure of leading him on. ‘You look very well; and some say, you are—’
‘What? Well, they say I am good-looking. I don’t make myself, so ’tis no praise. Hullo! what are you looking across there for?’
‘Only at a bird that I saw fly out of that tree,’ said Anne.
‘What? Only at a bird, do you say?’ he heaved out in a voice of thunder. ‘I see your shoulders a-shaking, young madam. Now don’t you provoke me with that laughing! By God, it won’t do!’
‘Then go away!’ said Anne, changed from mirthfulness to irritation by his rough manner. ‘I don’t want your company, you great bragging thing! You are so touchy there’s no bearing with you. Go away!’
‘No, no, Anne; I am wrong to speak to you so. I give you free liberty to say what you will to me. Say I am not a bit of a soldier, or anything! Abuse me—do now, there’s a dear. I’m scum, I’m froth, I’m dirt before the besom—yes!’
‘I have nothing to say, sir. Stay where you are till I am out of this field.’
‘Well, there’s such command in your looks that I ha’n’t heart to go against you. You will come this way to-morrow at the same time? Now, don’t be uncivil.’
She was too generous not to forgive him, but the short little lip murmured that she did not think it at all likely she should come that way to-morrow.
‘Then Sunday?’ he said.
‘Not Sunday,’ said she.
‘Then Monday—Tuesday—Wednesday, surely?’ he went on experimentally.
She answered that she should probably not see him on either day, and, cutting short the argument, went through the wicket into the other field. Festus paused, looking after her; and when he could no longer see her slight figure he swept away his deliberations, began singing, and turned off in the other direction.
When Anne was crossing the last field, she saw approaching her an old woman with wrinkled cheeks, who surveyed the earth and its inhabitants through the medium of brass-rimmed spectacles. Shaking her head at Anne till the glasses shone like two moons, she said, ‘Ah, ah; I zeed ye! If I had only kept on my short ones that I use for reading the Collect and Gospel I shouldn’t have zeed ye; but thinks I, I be going out o’ doors, and I’ll put on my long ones, little thinking what they’d show me. Ay, I can tell folk at any distance with these—’tis a beautiful pair for out o’ doors; though my short ones be best for close work, such as darning, and catching fleas, that’s true.’
‘What have you seen, Granny Seamore?’ said Anne.
‘Fie, fie, Miss Nancy! you know,’ said Granny Seamore, shaking her head still. ‘But he’s a fine young feller, and will have all his uncle’s money when ‘a’s gone.’ Anne said nothing to this, and looking ahead with a smile passed Granny Seamore by.
Festus, the subject of the remark, was at this time about three-and-twenty, a fine fellow as to feet and inches, and of a remarkably warm tone in skin and hair. Symptoms of beard and whiskers had appeared upon him at a very early age, owing to his persistent use of the razor before there was any necessity for its operation. The brave boy had scraped unseen in the out-house, in the cellar, in the wood-shed, in the stable, in the unused parlour, in the cow-stalls, in the barn, and wherever he could set up his triangular bit of looking-glass without observation, or extemporize a mirror by sticking up his hat on the outside of a window-pane. The result now was that, did he neglect to use the instrument he once had trifled with, a fine rust broke out upon his countenance on the first day, a golden lichen on the second, and a fiery stubble on the third to a degree which admitted of no further postponement.
His disposition divided naturally into two, the boastful and the cantankerous. When Festus put on the big pot, as it is classically called, he was quite blinded ipso facto to the diverting effect of that mood and manner upon others; but when disposed to be envious or quarrelsome he was rather shrewd than otherwise, and could do some pretty strokes of satire. He was both liked and abused by the girls who knew him, and though they were pleased by his attentions, they never failed to ridicule him behind his back. In his cups (he knew those vessels, though only twenty-three) he first became noisy, then excessively friendly, and then invariably nagging. During childhood he had made himself renowned for his pleasant habit of pouncing down upon boys smaller and poorer than himself, and knocking their birds’ nests out of their hands, or overturning their little carts of apples, or pouring water down their backs; but his conduct became singularly the reverse of aggressive the moment the little boys’ mothers ran out to him, brandishing brooms, frying-pans, skimmers, and whatever else they could lay hands on by way of weapons. He then fled and hid behind bushes, under faggots, or in pits till they had gone away; and on one such occasion was known to creep into a badger’s hole quite out of sight, maintaining that post with great firmness and resolution for two or three hours. He had brought more vulgar exclamations upon the tongues of respectable parents in his native parish than any other boy of his time. When other youngsters snowballed him he ran into a place of shelter, where he kneaded snowballs of his own, with a stone inside, and used these formidable missiles in returning their pleasantry. Sometimes he got fearfully beaten by boys his own age, when he would roar most lustily, but fight on in the midst of his tears, blood, and cries.
He was early in love, and had at the time of the story suffered from the ravages of that passion thirteen distinct times. He could not love lightly and gaily; his love was earnest, cross-tempered, and even savage. It was a positive agony to him to be ridiculed by the object of his affections, and such conduct drove him into a frenzy if persisted in. He was a torment to those who behaved humbly towards him, cynical with those who denied his superiority, and a very nice fellow towards those who had the courage to ill-use him.
This stalwart gentleman and Anne Garland did not cross each other’s paths again for a week. Then her mother began as before about the newspaper, and, though Anne did not much like the errand, she agreed to go for it on Mrs. Garland pressing her with unusual anxiety. Why her mother was so persistent on so small a matter quite puzzled the girl; but she put on her hat and started.
As she had expected, Festus appeared at a stile over which she sometimes went for shortness’ sake, and showed by his manner that he awaited her. When she saw this she kept straight on, as if she would not enter the park at all.
‘Surely this is your way?’ said Festus.
‘I was thinking of going round by the road,’ she said.
‘Why is that?’
She paused, as if she were not inclined to say. ‘I go that way when the grass is wet,’ she returned at last.
‘It is not wet now,’ he persisted; ‘the sun has been shining on it these nine hours.’ The fact was that the way by the path was less open than by the road, and Festus wished to walk with her uninterrupted. ‘But, of course, it is nothing to me what you do.’ He flung himself from the stile and walked away towards the house.
Anne, supposing him really indifferent, took the same way, upon which he turned his head and waited for her with a proud smile.
‘I cannot go with you,’ she said decisively.
‘Nonsense, you foolish girl! I must walk along with you down to the corner.’
‘No, please, Mr. Derriman; we might be seen.’
‘Now, now—that’s shyness!’ he said jocosely.
‘No; you know I cannot let you.’
‘But I must.’
‘But I do not allow it.’
‘Allow it or not, I will.’
‘Then you are unkind, and I must submit,’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears.
‘Ho, ho; what a shame of me! My wig, I won’t do any such thing for the world,’ said the repentant yeoman. ‘Haw, haw; why, I thought your “go away” meant “come on,” as it does with so many of the women I meet, especially in these clothes. Who was to know you were so confoundedly serious?’
As he did not go Anne stood still and said nothing.
‘I see you have a deal more caution and a deal less good-nature than I ever thought you had,’ he continued emphatically.
‘No, sir; it is not any planned manner of mine at all,’ she said earnestly. ‘But you will see, I am sure, that I could not go down to the hall with you without putting myself in a wrong light.’
‘Yes; that’s it, that’s it. I am only a fellow in the yeomanry cavalry—a plain soldier, I may say; and we know what women think of such: that they are a bad lot—men you mustn’t speak to for fear of losing your character—chaps you avoid in the roads—chaps that come into a house like oxen, daub the stairs wi’ their boots, stain the furniture wi’ their drink, talk rubbish to the servants, abuse all that’s holy and righteous, and are only saved from being carried off by Old Nick because they are wanted for Boney.’
‘Indeed, I didn’t know you were thought so bad of as that,’ said she simply.
‘What! don’t my uncle complain to you of me? You are a favourite of that handsome, nice old gaffer’s, I know.’
‘Never.’
‘Well, what do we think of our nice trumpet-major, hey?’
Anne closed her mouth up tight, built it up, in fact, to show that no answer was coming to that question.
‘O now, come, seriously, Loveday is a good fellow, and so is his father.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What a close little rogue you are! There is no getting anything out of you. I believe you would say “I don’t know,” to every mortal question, so very discreet as you are. Upon my heart, there are some women who would say “I don’t know,” to “Will ye marry me?”’
The brightness upon Anne’s cheek and in her eyes during this remark showed that there was a fair quantity of life and warmth beneath the discretion he complained of. Having spoken thus, he drew aside that she might pass, and bowed very low. Anne formally inclined herself and went on.
She had been at vexation point all the time that he was present, from a haunting sense that he would not have spoken to her so freely had she been a young woman with thriving male relatives to keep forward admirers in check. But she had been struck, now as at their previous meeting, with the power she possessed of working him up either to irritation or to complacency at will; and this consciousness of being able to play upon him as upon an instrument disposed her to a humorous considerateness, and made her tolerate even while she rebuffed him.
When Anne got to the hall the farmer, as usual, insisted upon her reading what he had been unable to get through, and held the paper tightly in his skinny hand till she had agreed. He sent her to a hard chair that she could not possibly injure to the extent of a pennyworth by sitting in it a twelvemonth, and watched her from the outer angle of his near eye while she bent over the paper. His look might have been suggested by the sight that he had witnessed from his window on the last occasion of her visit, for it partook of the nature of concern. The old man was afraid of his nephew, physically and morally, and he began to regard Anne as a fellow-sufferer under the same despot. After this sly and curious gaze at her he withdrew his eye again, so that when she casually lifted her own there was nothing visible but his keen bluish profile as before.
When the reading was about half-way through, the door behind them opened, and footsteps crossed the threshold. The farmer diminished perceptibly in his chair, and looked fearful, but pretended to be absorbed in the reading, and quite unconscious of an intruder. Anne felt the presence of the swashing Festus, and stopped her reading.
‘Please go on, Miss Anne,’ he said, ‘I am not going to speak a word.’ He withdrew to the mantelpiece and leaned against it at his ease.
‘Go on, do ye, maidy Anne,’ said Uncle Benjy, keeping down his tremblings by a great effort to half their natural extent.
Anne’s voice became much lower now that there were two listeners, and her modesty shrank somewhat from exposing to Festus the appreciative modulations which an intelligent interest in the subject drew from her when unembarrassed. But she still went on that he might not suppose her to be disconcerted, though the ensuing ten minutes was one of disquietude. She knew that the bothering yeoman’s eyes were travelling over her from his position behind, creeping over her shoulders, up to her head, and across her arms and hands. Old Benjy on his part knew the same thing, and after sundry endeavours to peep at his nephew from the corner of his eye, he could bear the situation no longer.
‘Do ye want to say anything to me, nephew?’ he quaked.
‘No, uncle, thank ye,’ said Festus heartily. ‘I like to stay here, thinking of you and looking at your back hair.’
The nervous old man writhed under this vivisection, and Anne read on; till, to the relief of both, the gallant fellow grew tired of his amusement and went out of the room. Anne soon finished her paragraph and rose to go, determined never to come again as long as Festus haunted the precincts. Her face grew warmer as she thought that he would be sure to waylay her on her journey home to-day.
On this account, when she left the house, instead of going in the customary direction, she bolted round to the further side, through the bushes, along under the kitchen-garden wall, and through a door leading into a rutted cart-track, which had been a pleasant gravelled drive when the fine old hall was in its prosperity. Once out of sight of the windows she ran with all her might till she had quitted the park by a route directly opposite to that towards her home. Why she was so seriously bent upon doing this she could hardly tell but the instinct to run was irresistible.
It was necessary now to clamber over the down to the left of the camp, and make a complete circuit round the latter—infantry, cavalry, sutlers, and all—descending to her house on the other side. This tremendous walk she performed at a rapid rate, never once turning her head, and avoiding every beaten track to keep clear of the knots of soldiers taking a walk. When she at last got down to the levels again she paused to fetch breath, and murmured, ‘Why did I take so much trouble? He would not, after all, have hurt me.’
As she neared the mill an erect figure with a blue body and white thighs descended before her from the down towards the village, and went past the mill to a stile beyond, over which she usually returned to her house. Here he lingered. On coming nearer Anne discovered this person to be Trumpet-major Loveday; and not wishing to meet anybody just now Anne passed quickly on, and entered the house by the garden door.
‘My dear Anne, what a time you have been gone!’ said her mother.
‘Yes, I have been round by another road.’
‘Why did you do that?’
Anne looked thoughtful and reticent, for her reason was almost too silly a one to confess. ‘Well, I wanted to avoid a person who is very busy trying to meet me—that’s all,’ she said.
Her mother glanced out of the window. ‘And there he is, I suppose,’ she said, as John Loveday, tired of looking for Anne at the stile, passed the house on his way to his father’s door. He could not help casting his eyes towards their window, and, seeing them, he smiled.
Anne’s reluctance to mention Festus was such that she did not correct her mother’s error, and the dame went on: ‘Well, you are quite right, my dear. Be friendly with him, but no more at present. I have heard of your other affair, and think it is a very wise choice. I am sure you have my best wishes in it, and I only hope it will come to a point.’
‘What’s that?’ said the astonished Anne.
‘You and Mr. Festus Derriman, dear. You need not mind me; I have known it for several days. Old Granny Seamore called here Saturday, and told me she saw him coming home with you across Park Close last week, when you went for the newspaper; so I thought I’d send you again to-day, and give you another chance.’
‘Then you didn’t want the paper—and it was only for that!’
‘He’s a very fine young fellow; he looks a thorough woman’s protector.’
‘He may look it,’ said Anne.
‘He has given up the freehold farm his father held at Pitstock, and lives in independence on what the land brings him. And when Farmer Derriman dies, he’ll have all the old man’s, for certain. He’ll be worth ten thousand pounds, if a penny, in money, besides sixteen horses, cart and hack, a fifty-cow dairy, and at least five hundred sheep.’
Anne turned away, and instead of informing her mother that she had been running like a doe to escape the interesting heir-presumptive alluded to, merely said ‘Mother, I don’t like this at all.’
After this, Anne would on no account walk in the direction of the hall for fear of another encounter with young Derriman. In the course of a few days it was told in the village that the old farmer had actually gone for a week’s holiday and change of air to the Royal watering-place near at hand, at the instance of his nephew Festus. This was a wonderful thing to hear of Uncle Benjy, who had not slept outside the walls of Oxwell Hall for many a long year before; and Anne well imagined what extraordinary pressure must have been put upon him to induce him to take such a step. She pictured his unhappiness at the bustling watering-place, and hoped no harm would come to him.
She spent much of her time indoors or in the garden, hearing little of the camp movements beyond the periodical Ta-ta-ta-taa of the trumpeters sounding their various ingenious calls for watch-setting, stables, feed, boot-and-saddle, parade, and so on, which made her think how clever her friend the trumpet-major must be to teach his pupils to play those pretty little tunes so well.
On the third morning after Uncle Benjy’s departure, she was disturbed as usual while dressing by the tramp of the troops down the slope to the mill-pond, and during the now familiar stamping and splashing which followed there sounded upon the glass of the window a slight smack, which might have been caused by a whip or switch. She listened more particularly, and it was repeated.
As John Loveday was the only dragoon likely to be aware that she slept in that particular apartment, she imagined the signal to come from him, though wondering that he should venture upon such a freak of familiarity.
Wrapping herself up in a red cloak, she went to the window, gently drew up a corner of the curtain, and peeped out, as she had done many times before. Nobody who was not quite close beneath her window could see her face; but as it happened, somebody was close. The soldiers whose floundering Anne had heard were not Loveday’s dragoons, but a troop of the York Hussars, quite oblivious of her existence. They had passed on out of the water, and instead of them there sat Festus Derriman alone on his horse, and in plain clothes, the water reaching up to the animal’s belly, and Festus’ heels elevated over the saddle to keep them out of the stream, which threatened to wash rider and horse into the deep mill-head just below. It was plainly he who had struck her lattice, for in a moment he looked up, and their eyes met. Festus laughed loudly, and slapped her window again; and just at that moment the dragoons began prancing down the slope in review order. She could not but wait a minute or two to see them pass. While doing so she was suddenly led to draw back, drop the corner of the curtain, and blush privately in her room. She had not only been seen by Festus Derriman, but by John Loveday, who, riding along with his trumpet slung up behind him, had looked over his shoulder at the phenomenon of Derriman beneath Anne’s bedroom window and seemed quite astounded at the sight.
She was quite vexed at the conjunction of incidents, and went no more to the window till the dragoons had ridden far away and she had heard Festus’s horse laboriously wade on to dry land. When she looked out there was nobody left but Miller Loveday, who usually stood in the garden at this time of the morning to say a word or two to the soldiers, of whom he already knew so many, and was in a fair way of knowing many more, from the liberality with which he handed round mugs of cheering liquor whenever parties of them walked that way.
In the afternoon of this day Anne walked to a christening party at a neighbour’s in the adjoining parish of Springham, intending to walk home again before it got dark; but there was a slight fall of rain towards evening, and she was pressed by the people of the house to stay over the night. With some hesitation she accepted their hospitality; but at ten o’clock, when they were thinking of going to bed, they were startled by a smart rap at the door, and on it being unbolted a man’s form was seen in the shadows outside.
‘Is Miss Garland here?’ the visitor inquired, at which Anne suspended her breath.
‘Yes,’ said Anne’s entertainer, warily.
‘Her mother is very anxious to know what’s become of her. She promised to come home.’ To her great relief Anne recognized the voice as John Loveday’s, and not Festus Derriman’s.
‘Yes, I did, Mr. Loveday,’ said she, coming forward; ‘but it rained, and I thought my mother would guess where I was.’
Loveday said with diffidence that it had not rained anything to speak of at the camp, or at the mill, so that her mother was rather alarmed.
‘And she asked you to come for me?’ Anne inquired.
This was a question which the trumpet-major had been dreading during the whole of his walk thither. ‘Well, she didn’t exactly ask me,’ he said rather lamely, but still in a manner to show that Mrs. Garland had indirectly signified such to be her wish. In reality Mrs. Garland had not addressed him at all on the subject. She had merely spoken to his father on finding that her daughter did not return, and received an assurance from the miller that the precious girl was doubtless quite safe. John heard of this inquiry, and, having a pass that evening, resolved to relieve Mrs. Garland’s mind on his own responsibility. Ever since his morning view of Festus under her window he had been on thorns of anxiety, and his thrilling hope now was that she would walk back with him.
He shifted his foot nervously as he made the bold request. Anne felt at once that she would go. There was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major’s in a case like the present. He was their nearest neighbour’s son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment of his return home.
When they had started on their walk, Anne said in a practical way, to show that there was no sentiment whatever in her acceptance of his company, ‘Mother was much alarmed about me, perhaps?’
‘Yes; she was uneasy,’ he said; and then was compelled by conscience to make a clean breast of it. ‘I know she was uneasy, because my father said so. But I did not see her myself. The truth is, she doesn’t know I am come.’
Anne now saw how the matter stood; but she was not offended with him. What woman could have been? They walked on in silence, the respectful trumpet-major keeping a yard off on her right as precisely as if that measure had been fixed between them. She had a great feeling of civility toward him this evening, and spoke again. ‘I often hear your trumpeters blowing the calls. They do it beautifully, I think.’
‘Pretty fair; they might do better,’ said he, as one too well-mannered to make much of an accomplishment in which he had a hand.
‘And you taught them how to do it?’
‘Yes, I taught them.’
‘It must require wonderful practice to get them into the way of beginning and finishing so exactly at one time. It is like one throat doing it all. How came you to be a trumpeter, Mr. Loveday?’
‘Well, I took to it naturally when I was a little boy,’ said he, betrayed into quite a gushing state by her delightful interest. ‘I used to make trumpets of paper, eldersticks, eltrot stems, and even stinging-nettle stalks, you know. Then father set me to keep the birds off that little barley-ground of his, and gave me an old horn to frighten ’em with. I learnt to blow that horn so that you could hear me for miles and miles. Then he bought me a clarionet, and when I could play that I borrowed a serpent, and I learned to play a tolerable bass. So when I ‘listed I was picked out for training as trumpeter at once.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘Sometimes, however, I wish I had never joined the army. My father gave me a very fair education, and your father showed me how to draw horses—on a slate, I mean. Yes, I ought to have done more than I have.’
‘What, did you know my father?’ she asked with new interest.
‘O yes, for years. You were a little mite of a thing then; and you used to cry when we big boys looked at you, and made pig’s eyes at you, which we did sometimes. Many and many a time have I stood by your poor father while he worked. Ah, you don’t remember much about him; but I do!’
Anne remained thoughtful; and the moon broke from behind the clouds, lighting up the wet foliage with a twinkling brightness, and lending to each of the trumpet-major’s buttons and spurs a little ray of its own. They had come to Oxwell park gate, and he said, ‘Do you like going across, or round by the lane?’
‘We may as well go by the nearest road,’ said Anne.
They entered the park, following the half-obliterated drive till they came almost opposite the hall, when they entered a footpath leading on to the village. While hereabout they heard a shout, or chorus of exclamation, apparently from within the walls of the dark buildings near them.
‘What was that?’ said Anne.
‘I don’t know,’ said her companion. ‘I’ll go and see.’
He went round the intervening swamp of watercress and brooklime which had once been the fish-pond, crossed by a culvert the trickling brook that still flowed that way, and advanced to the wall of the house. Boisterous noises were resounding from within, and he was tempted to go round the corner, where the low windows were, and look through a chink into the room whence the sounds proceeded.
It was the room in which the owner dined—traditionally called the great parlour—and within it sat about a dozen young men of the yeomanry cavalry, one of them being Festus. They were drinking, laughing, singing, thumping their fists on the tables, and enjoying themselves in the very perfection of confusion. The candles, blown by the breeze from the partly opened window, had guttered into coffin handles and shrouds, and, choked by their long black wicks for want of snuffing, gave out a smoky yellow light. One of the young men might possibly have been in a maudlin state, for he had his arm round the neck of his next neighbour. Another was making an incoherent speech to which nobody was listening. Some of their faces were red, some were sallow; some were sleepy, some wide awake. The only one among them who appeared in his usual frame of mind was Festus, whose huge, burly form rose at the head of the table, enjoying with a serene and triumphant aspect the difference between his own condition and that of his neighbours. While the trumpet-major looked, a young woman, niece of Anthony Cripplestraw, and one of Uncle Benjy’s servants, was called in by one of the crew, and much against her will a fiddle was placed in her hands, from which they made her produce discordant screeches.
The absence of Uncle Benjy had, in fact, been contrived by young Derriman that he might make use of the hall on his own account. Cripplestraw had been left in charge, and Festus had found no difficulty in forcing from that dependent the keys of whatever he required. John Loveday turned his eyes from the scene to the neighbouring moonlit path, where Anne still stood waiting. Then he looked into the room, then at Anne again. It was an opportunity of advancing his own cause with her by exposing Festus, for whom he began to entertain hostile feelings of no mean force.
‘No; I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘’Tis underhand. Let things take their chance.’
He moved away, and then perceived that Anne, tired of waiting, had crossed the stream, and almost come up with him.
‘What is the noise about?’ she said.
‘There’s company in the house,’ said Loveday.
‘Company? Farmer Derriman is not at home,’ said Anne, and went on to the window whence the rays of light leaked out, the trumpet-major standing where he was. He saw her face enter the beam of candlelight, stay there for a moment, and quickly withdraw. She came back to him at once. ‘Let us go on,’ she said.
Loveday imagined from her tone that she must have an interest in Derriman, and said sadly, ‘You blame me for going across to the window, and leading you to follow me.’
‘Not a bit,’ said Anne, seeing his mistake as to the state of her heart, and being rather angry with him for it. ‘I think it was most natural, considering the noise.’
Silence again. ‘Derriman is sober as a judge,’ said Loveday, as they turned to go. ‘It was only the others who were noisy.’
‘Whether he is sober or not is nothing whatever to me,’ said Anne.
‘Of course not. I know it,’ said the trumpet-major, in accents expressing unhappiness at her somewhat curt tone, and some doubt of her assurance.
Before they had emerged from the shadow of the hall some persons were seen moving along the road. Loveday was for going on just the same; but Anne, from a shy feeling that it was as well not to be seen walking alone with a man who was not her lover, said—
‘Mr. Loveday, let us wait here a minute till they have passed.’
On nearer view the group was seen to comprise a man on a piebald horse, and another man walking beside him. When they were opposite the house they halted, and the rider dismounted, whereupon a dispute between him and the other man ensued, apparently on a question of money.
‘’Tis old Mr. Derriman come home!’ said Anne. ‘He has hired that horse from the bathing-machine to bring him. Only fancy!’
Before they had gone many steps further the farmer and his companion had ended their dispute, and the latter mounted the horse and cantered away, Uncle Benjy coming on to the house at a nimble pace. As soon as he observed Loveday and Anne, he fell into a feebler gait; when they came up he recognized Anne.
‘And you have torn yourself away from King George’s Esplanade so soon, Farmer Derriman?’ said she.
‘Yes, faith! I couldn’t bide at such a ruination place,’ said the farmer. ‘Your hand in your pocket every minute of the day. ’Tis a shilling for this, half-a-crown for that; if you only eat one egg, or even a poor windfall of an apple, you’ve got to pay; and a bunch o’ radishes is a halfpenny, and a quart o’ cider a good tuppence three-farthings at lowest reckoning. Nothing without paying! I couldn’t even get a ride homeward upon that screw without the man wanting a shilling for it, when my weight didn’t take a penny out of the beast. I’ve saved a penn’orth or so of shoeleather to be sure; but the saddle was so rough wi’ patches that ‘a took twopence out of the seat of my best breeches. King George hev’ ruined the town for other folks. More than that, my nephew promised to come there to-morrow to see me, and if I had stayed I must have treated en. Hey—what’s that?’
It was a shout from within the walls of the building, and Loveday said—
‘Your nephew is here, and has company.’
‘My nephewhere?’ gasped the old man. ‘Good folks, will you come up to the door with me? I mean—hee—hee—just for company! Dear me, I thought my house was as quiet as a church?’
They went back to the window, and the farmer looked in, his mouth falling apart to a greater width at the corners than in the middle, and his fingers assuming a state of radiation.
‘’Tis my best silver tankards they’ve got, that I’ve never used! O! ’tis my strong beer! ’Tis eight candles guttering away, when I’ve used nothing but twenties myself for the last half-year!’
‘You didn’t know he was here, then?’ said Loveday.
‘O no!’ said the farmer, shaking his head half-way. ‘Nothing’s known to poor I! There’s my best rummers jingling as careless as if ’twas tin cups; and my table scratched, and my chairs wrenched out of joint. See how they tilt ’em on the two back legs—and that’s ruin to a chair! Ah! when I be gone he won’t find another old man to make such work with, and provide goods for his breaking, and house-room and drink for his tear-brass set!’
‘Comrades and fellow-soldiers,’ said Festus to the hot farmers and yeomen he entertained within, ‘as we have vowed to brave danger and death together, so we’ll share the couch of peace. You shall sleep here to-night, for it is getting late. My scram blue-vinnied gallicrow of an uncle takes care that there shan’t be much comfort in the house, but you can curl up on the furniture if beds run short. As for my sleep, it won’t be much. I’m melancholy! A woman has, I may say, got my heart in her pocket, and I have hers in mine. She’s not much—to other folk, I mean—but she is to me. The little thing came in my way, and conquered me. I fancy that simple girl! I ought to have looked higher—I know it; what of that? ’Tis a fate that may happen to the greatest men.’