‘Of me?’ he asked with earnest frankness.
Anne’s colour rose fast.
‘Well, yes,’ she said, trying to infuse much plain matter-of-fact into her voice. ‘Of course I am led to think of the person who invented it.’
Bob seemed unaccountably embarrassed, and the subject was not pursued. About half-an-hour later he came to her again, with something of an uneasy look.
‘There was a little matter I didn’t tell you just now, Miss Garland,’ he said. ‘About that harp thing, I mean. I did make it, certainly, but it was my brother John who asked me to do it, just before he went away. John is very musical, as you know, and he said it would interest you; but as he didn’t ask me to tell, I did not. Perhaps I ought to have, and not have taken the credit to myself.’
‘O, it is nothing!’ said Anne quickly. ‘It is a very incomplete instrument after all, and it will be just as well for you to take it away as you first proposed.’
He said that he would, but he forgot to do it that day; and the following night there was a high wind, and the harp cried and moaned so movingly that Anne, whose window was quite near, could hardly bear the sound with its new associations. John Loveday was present to her mind all night as an ill-used man; and yet she could not own that she had ill-used him.
The harp was removed next day. Bob, feeling that his credit for originality was damaged in her eyes, by way of recovering it set himself to paint the summer-house which Anne frequented, and when he came out he assured her that it was quite his own idea.
‘It wanted doing, certainly,’ she said, in a neutral tone.
‘It is just about troublesome.’
‘Yes; you can’t quite reach up. That’s because you are not very tall; is it not, Captain Loveday?’
‘You never used to say things like that.’
‘O, I don’t mean that you are much less than tall! Shall I hold the paint for you, to save your stepping down?’
‘Thank you, if you would.’
She took the paint-pot, and stood looking at the brush as it moved up and down in his hand.
‘I hope I shall not sprinkle your fingers,’ he observed as he dipped.
‘O, that would not matter! You do it very well.’
‘I am glad to hear that you think so.’
‘But perhaps not quite so much art is demanded to paint a summer-house as to paint a picture?’
Thinking that, as a painter’s daughter, and a person of education superior to his own, she spoke with a flavour of sarcasm, he felt humbled and said—
‘You did not use to talk like that to me.’
‘I was perhaps too young then to take any pleasure in giving pain,’ she observed daringly.
‘Does it give you pleasure?’
Anne nodded.
‘I like to give pain to people who have given pain to me,’ she said smartly, without removing her eyes from the green liquid in her hand.
‘I ask your pardon for that.’
‘I didn’t say I meant you—though I did mean you.’
Bob looked and looked at her side face till he was bewitched into putting down his brush.
‘It was that stupid forgetting of ’ee for a time!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, I hadn’t seen you for so very long—consider how many years! O, dear Anne!’ he said, advancing to take her hand, ‘how well we knew one another when we were children! You was a queen to me then; and so you are now, and always.’
Possibly Anne was thrilled pleasantly enough at having brought the truant village lad to her feet again; but he was not to find the situation so easy as he imagined, and her hand was not to be taken yet.
‘Very pretty!’ she said, laughing. ‘And only six weeks since Miss Johnson left.’
‘Zounds, don’t say anything about that!’ implored Bob. ‘I swear that I never—never deliberately loved her—for a long time together, that is; it was a sudden sort of thing, you know. But towards you—I have more or less honoured and respectfully loved you, off and on, all my life. There, that’s true.’
Anne retorted quickly—
‘I am willing, off and on, to believe you, Captain Robert. But I don’t see any good in your making these solemn declarations.’
‘Give me leave to explain, dear Miss Garland. It is to get you to be pleased to renew an old promise—made years ago—that you’ll think o’ me.’
‘Not a word of any promise will I repeat.’
‘Well, well, I won’t urge ’ee to-day. Only let me beg of you to get over the quite wrong notion you have of me; and it shall be my whole endeavour to fetch your gracious favour.’
Anne turned away from him and entered the house, whither in the course of a quarter of an hour he followed her, knocking at her door, and asking to be let in. She said she was busy; whereupon he went away, to come back again in a short time and receive the same answer.
‘I have finished painting the summer-house for you,’ he said through the door.
‘I cannot come to see it. I shall be engaged till supper-time.’
She heard him breathe a heavy sigh and withdraw, murmuring something about his bad luck in being cut away from the starn like this. But it was not over yet. When supper-time came and they sat down together, she took upon herself to reprove him for what he had said to her in the garden.
Bob made his forehead express despair.
‘Now, I beg you this one thing,’ he said. ‘Just let me know your whole mind. Then I shall have a chance to confess my faults and mend them, or clear my conduct to your satisfaction.’
She answered with quickness, but not loud enough to be heard by the old people at the other end of the table—‘Then, Captain Loveday, I will tell you one thing, one fault, that perhaps would have been more proper to my character than to yours. You are too easily impressed by new faces, and that gives me abad opinionof you—yes, abad opinion.’
‘O, that’s it!’ said Bob slowly, looking at her with the intense respect of a pupil for a master, her words being spoken in a manner so precisely between jest and earnest that he was in some doubt how they were to be received. ‘Impressed by new faces. It is wrong, certainly, of me.’
The popping of a cork, and the pouring out of strong beer by the miller with a view to giving it a head, were apparently distractions sufficient to excuse her in not attending further to him; and during the remainder of the sitting her gentle chiding seemed to be sinking seriously into his mind. Perhaps her own heart ached to see how silent he was; but she had always meant to punish him. Day after day for two or three weeks she preserved the same demeanour, with a self-control which did justice to her character. And, on his part, considering what he had to put up with—how she eluded him, snapped him off, refused to come out when he called her, refused to see him when he wanted to enter the little parlour which she had now appropriated to her private use, his patience testified strongly to his good-humour.
Christmas had passed. Dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Rapid thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come—the season of pink dawns and white sunsets; and people hoped that the March weather was over.
The chief incident that concerned the household at the mill was that the miller, following the example of all his neighbours, had become a volunteer, and duly appeared twice a week in a red, long-tailed military coat, pipe-clayed breeches, black cloth gaiters, a heel-balled helmet-hat, with a tuft of green wool, and epaulettes of the same colour and material. Bob still remained neutral. Not being able to decide whether to enrol himself as a sea-fencible, a local militia-man, or a volunteer, he simply went on dancing attendance upon Anne. Mrs. Loveday had become awake to the fact that the pair of young people stood in a curious attitude towards each other; but as they were never seen with their heads together, and scarcely ever sat even in the same room, she could not be sure what their movements meant.
Strangely enough (or perhaps naturally enough), since entering the Loveday family herself, she had gradually grown to think less favourably of Anne doing the same thing, and reverted to her original idea of encouraging Festus; this more particularly because he had of late shown such perseverance in haunting the precincts of the mill, presumably with the intention of lighting upon the young girl. But the weather had kept her mostly indoors.
One afternoon it was raining in torrents. Such leaves as there were on trees at this time of year—those of the laurel and other evergreens—staggered beneath the hard blows of the drops which fell upon them, and afterwards could be seen trickling down the stems beneath and silently entering the ground. The surface of the mill-pond leapt up in a thousand spirts under the same downfall, and clucked like a hen in the rat-holes along the banks as it undulated under the wind. The only dry spot visible from the front windows of the mill-house was the inside of a small shed, on the opposite side of the courtyard. While Mrs. Loveday was noticing the threads of rain descending across its interior shade, Festus Derriman walked up and entered it for shelter, which, owing to the lumber within, it but scantily afforded to a man who would have been a match for one of Frederick William’s Patagonians.
It was an excellent opportunity for helping on her scheme. Anne was in the back room, and by asking him in till the rain was over she would bring him face to face with her daughter, whom, as the days went on, she increasingly wished to marry other than a Loveday, now that the romance of her own alliance with the millet had in some respects worn off. She was better provided for than before; she was not unhappy; but the plain fact was that she had married beneath her. She beckoned to Festus through the window-pane; he instantly complied with her signal, having in fact placed himself there on purpose to be noticed; for he knew that Miss Garland would not be out-of-doors on such a day.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Loveday,’ said Festus on entering. ‘There now—if I didn’t think that’s how it would be!’ His voice had suddenly warmed to anger, for he had seen a door close in the back part of the room, a lithe figure having previously slipped through.
Mrs. Loveday turned, observed that Anne was gone, and said, ‘What is it?’ as if she did not know.
‘O, nothing, nothing!’ said Festus crossly. ‘You know well enough what it is, ma’am; only you make pretence otherwise. But I’ll bring her to book yet. You shall drop your haughty airs, my charmer! She little thinks I have kept an account of ’em all.’
‘But you must treat her politely, sir,’ said Mrs. Loveday, secretly pleased at these signs of uncontrollable affection.
‘Don’t tell me of politeness or generosity, ma’am! She is more than a match for me. She regularly gets over me. I have passed by this house five-and-fifty times since last Martinmas, and this is all my reward for’t!’
‘But you will stay till the rain is over, sir?’
‘No. I don’t mind rain. I’m off again. She’s got somebody else in her eye!’ And the yeoman went out, slamming the door.
Meanwhile the slippery object of his hopes had gone along the dark passage, passed the trap which opened on the wheel, and through the door into the mill, where she was met by Bob, who looked up from the flour-shoot inquiringly and said, ‘You want me, Miss Garland?’
‘O no,’ said she. ‘I only want to be allowed to stand here a few minutes.’
He looked at her to know if she meant it, and finding that she did, returned to his post. When the mill had rumbled on a little longer he came back.
‘Bob,’ she said, when she saw him move, ‘remember that you are at work, and have no time to stand close to me.’
He bowed and went to his original post again, Anne watching from the window till Festus should leave. The mill rumbled on as before, and at last Bob came to her for the third time. ‘Now, Bob—’ she began.
‘On my honour, ’tis only to ask a question. Will you walk with me to church next Sunday afternoon?’
‘Perhaps I will,’ she said. But at this moment the yeoman left the house, and Anne, to escape further parley, returned to the dwelling by the way she had come.
Sunday afternoon arrived, and the family was standing at the door waiting for the church bells to begin. From that side of the house they could see southward across a paddock to the rising ground further ahead, where there grew a large elm-tree, beneath whose boughs footpaths crossed in different directions, like meridians at the pole. The tree was old, and in summer the grass beneath it was quite trodden away by the feet of the many trysters and idlers who haunted the spot. The tree formed a conspicuous object in the surrounding landscape.
While they looked, a foot soldier in red uniform and white breeches came along one of the paths, and stopping beneath the elm, took from his pocket a paper, which he proceeded to nail up by the four corners to the trunk. He drew back, looked at it, and went on his way. Bob got his glass from indoors and levelled it at the placard, but after looking for a long time he could make out nothing but a lion and a unicorn at the top. Anne, who was ready for church, moved away from the door, though it was yet early, and showed her intention of going by way of the elm. The paper had been so impressively nailed up that she was curious to read it even at this theological time. Bob took the opportunity of following, and reminded her of her promise.
‘Then walk behind me not at all close,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he replied, immediately dropping behind.
The ludicrous humility of his manner led her to add playfully over her shoulder, ‘It serves you right, you know.’
‘I deserve anything, but I must take the liberty to say that I hope my behaviour about Matil—, in forgetting you awhile, will not make ye wish to keep mealwaysbehind?’
She replied confidentially, ‘Why I am so earnest not to be seen with you is that I may appear to people to be independent of you. Knowing what I do of your weaknesses I can do no otherwise. You must be schooled into—’
‘O, Anne,’ sighed Bob, ‘you hit me hard—too hard! If ever I do win you I am sure I shall have fairly earned you.’
‘You are not what you once seemed to be,’ she returned softly. ‘I don’t quite like to let myself love you.’ The last words were not very audible, and as Bob was behind he caught nothing of them, nor did he see how sentimental she had become all of a sudden. They walked the rest of the way in silence, and coming to the tree read as follows:—
ADDRESS TO ALL RANKS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF ENGLISHMEN.Friends and Countrymen,—The French are now assembling the largest force that ever was prepared to invade this Kingdom, with the professed purpose of effecting our complete Ruin and Destruction. They do not disguise their intentions, as they have often done to other Countries; but openly boast that they will come over in such Numbers as cannot be resisted.Wherever the French have lately appeared they have spared neither Rich nor Poor, Old nor Young; but like a Destructive Pestilence have laid waste and destroyed every Thing that before was fair and flourishing.On this occasion no man’s service is compelled, but you are invited voluntarily to come forward in defence of everything that is dear to you, by entering your Names on the Lists which are sent to the Tything-man of every Parish, and engaging to act either asAssociated Volunteers bearing Arms,as Pioneers and Labourers, or asDrivers of Waggons.As Associated Volunteers you will be called out only once a week, unless the actual Landing of the Enemy should render your further Services necessary.As Pioneers or Labourers you will be employed in Breaking up Roads to hinder the Enemy’s advance.Those who have Pickaxes, Spades, Shovels, Bill-hooks, or other Working Implements, are desired to mention them to the Constable or Tything-man of their Parish, in order that they may be entered on the Lists opposite their Homes, to be used if necessary. . . .It is thought desirable to give you this Explanation, that you may not be ignorant of the Duties to which you may be called. But if the love of true Liberty and honest Fame has not ceased to animate the Hearts of Englishmen, Pay, though necessary, will be the least Part of your Reward. You will find your best Recompense in having done your Duty to your King and Country by driving back or destroying your old and implacable Enemy, envious of your Freedom and Happiness, and therefore seeking to destroy them; in having protected your Wives and Children from Death, or worse than Death, which will follow the Success of such Inveterate Foes.Rouse, therefore, and unite as one man in the best of Causes! United we may defy the World to conquer us; but Victory will never belong to those who are slothful and unprepared.[207]
ADDRESS TO ALL RANKS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF ENGLISHMEN.
Friends and Countrymen,—The French are now assembling the largest force that ever was prepared to invade this Kingdom, with the professed purpose of effecting our complete Ruin and Destruction. They do not disguise their intentions, as they have often done to other Countries; but openly boast that they will come over in such Numbers as cannot be resisted.
Wherever the French have lately appeared they have spared neither Rich nor Poor, Old nor Young; but like a Destructive Pestilence have laid waste and destroyed every Thing that before was fair and flourishing.
On this occasion no man’s service is compelled, but you are invited voluntarily to come forward in defence of everything that is dear to you, by entering your Names on the Lists which are sent to the Tything-man of every Parish, and engaging to act either asAssociated Volunteers bearing Arms,as Pioneers and Labourers, or asDrivers of Waggons.
As Associated Volunteers you will be called out only once a week, unless the actual Landing of the Enemy should render your further Services necessary.
As Pioneers or Labourers you will be employed in Breaking up Roads to hinder the Enemy’s advance.
Those who have Pickaxes, Spades, Shovels, Bill-hooks, or other Working Implements, are desired to mention them to the Constable or Tything-man of their Parish, in order that they may be entered on the Lists opposite their Homes, to be used if necessary. . . .
It is thought desirable to give you this Explanation, that you may not be ignorant of the Duties to which you may be called. But if the love of true Liberty and honest Fame has not ceased to animate the Hearts of Englishmen, Pay, though necessary, will be the least Part of your Reward. You will find your best Recompense in having done your Duty to your King and Country by driving back or destroying your old and implacable Enemy, envious of your Freedom and Happiness, and therefore seeking to destroy them; in having protected your Wives and Children from Death, or worse than Death, which will follow the Success of such Inveterate Foes.
Rouse, therefore, and unite as one man in the best of Causes! United we may defy the World to conquer us; but Victory will never belong to those who are slothful and unprepared.[207]
‘I must go and join at once!’ said Bob.
Anne turned to him, all the playfulness gone from her face. ‘I wish we lived in the north of England, Bob, so as to be further away from where he’ll land!’ she murmured uneasily.
‘Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so.’
‘It is not right to talk so lightly at such a serious time,’ she thoughtfully returned, going on towards the church.
On drawing near, they saw through the boughs of a clump of intervening trees, still leafless, but bursting into buds of amber hue, a glittering which seemed to be reflected from points of steel. In a few moments they heard above the tender chiming of the church bells the loud voice of a man giving words of command, at which all the metallic points suddenly shifted like the bristles of a porcupine, and glistened anew.
‘’Tis the drilling,’ said Loveday. ‘They drill now between the services, you know, because they can’t get the men together so readily in the week. It makes me feel that I ought to be doing more than I am!’
When they had passed round the belt of trees, the company of recruits became visible, consisting of the able-bodied inhabitants of the hamlets thereabout, more or less known to Bob and Anne. They were assembled on the green plot outside the churchyard-gate, dressed in their common clothes, and the sergeant who had been putting them through their drill was the man who nailed up the proclamation. He was now engaged in untying a canvas money-bag, from which he drew forth a handful of shillings, giving one to each man in payment for his attendance.
‘Men, I dismissed ye too soon—parade, parade again, I say,’ he cried. ‘My watch is fast, I find. There’s another twenty minutes afore the worship of God commences. Now all of you that ha’n’t got firelocks, fall in at the lower end. Eyes right and dress!’
As every man was anxious to see how the rest stood, those at the end of the line pressed forward for that purpose, till the line assumed the form of a bow.
‘Look at ye now! Why, you are all a crooking in! Dress, dress!’
They dressed forthwith; but impelled by the same motive they soon resumed their former figure, and so they were despairingly permitted to remain.
‘Now, I hope you’ll have a little patience,’ said the sergeant, as he stood in the centre of the arc, ‘and pay strict attention to the word of command, just exactly as I give it out to ye; and if I should go wrong, I shall be much obliged to any friend who’ll put me right again, for I have only been in the army three weeks myself, and we are all liable to mistakes.’
‘So we be, so we be,’ said the line heartily.
‘’Tention, the whole, then. Poise fawlocks! Very well done!’
‘Please, what must we do that haven’t got no firelocks!’ said the lower end of the line in a helpless voice.
‘Now, was ever such a question! Why, you must do nothing at all, but thinkhowyou’d poise ’emifyou had ’em. You middle men, that are armed with hurdle-sticks and cabbage-stumps just to make-believe, must of course use ’em as if they were the real thing. Now then, cock fawlocks! Present! Fire! (Pretend to, I mean, and the same time throw yer imagination into the field o’ battle.) Very good—very good indeed; except that some of you were alittletoo soon, and the rest alittletoo late.’
‘Please, sergeant, can I fall out, as I am master-player in the choir, and my bass-viol strings won’t stand at this time o’ year, unless they be screwed up a little before the passon comes in?’
‘How can you think of such trifles as churchgoing at such a time as this, when your own native country is on the point of invasion?’ said the sergeant sternly. ‘And, as you know, the drill ends three minutes afore church begins, and that’s the law, and it wants a quarter of an hour yet. Now, at the wordPrime, shake the powder (supposing you’ve got it) into the priming-pan, three last fingers behind the rammer; then shut your pans, drawing your right arm nimble-like towards your body. I ought to have told ye before this, that atHand your katridge, seize it and bring it with a quick motion to your mouth, bite the top well off, and don’t swaller so much of the powder as to make ye hawk and spet instead of attending to your drill. What’s that man a-saying of in the rear rank?’
‘Please, sir, ’tis Anthony Cripplestraw, wanting to know how he’s to bite off his katridge, when he haven’t a tooth left in ’s head?’
‘Man! Why, what’s your genius for war? Hold it up to your right-hand man’s mouth, to be sure, and let him nip it off for ye. Well, what have you to say, Private Tremlett? Don’t ye understand English?’
‘Ask yer pardon, sergeant; but what must we infantry of the awkward squad do if Boney comes afore we get our firelocks?’
‘Take a pike, like the rest of the incapables. You’ll find a store of them ready in the corner of the church tower. Now then—Shoulder—r—r—r—’
‘There, they be tinging in the passon!’ exclaimed David, Miller Loveday’s man, who also formed one of the company, as the bells changed from chiming all three together to a quick beating of one. The whole line drew a breath of relief, threw down their arms, and began running off.
‘Well, then, I must dismiss ye,’ said the sergeant. ‘Come back—come back! Next drill is Tuesday afternoon at four. And, mind, if your masters won’t let ye leave work soon enough, tell me, and I’ll write a line to Gover’ment! ‘Tention! To the right—left wheel, I mean—no, no—right wheel. Mar—r—r—rch!’
Some wheeled to the right and some to the left, and some obliging men, including Cripplestraw, tried to wheel both ways.
‘Stop, stop; try again! ‘Cruits and comrades, unfortunately when I’m in a hurry I can never remember my right hand from my left, and never could as a boy. You must excuse me, please. Practice makes perfect, as the saying is; and, much as I’ve learnt since I ‘listed, we always find something new. Now then, right wheel! march! halt! Stand at ease! dismiss! I think that’s the order o’t, but I’ll look in the Gover’ment book afore Tuesday.’[211]
Many of the company who had been drilled preferred to go off and spend their shillings instead of entering the church; but Anne and Captain Bob passed in. Even the interior of the sacred edifice was affected by the agitation of the times. The religion of the country had, in fact, changed from love of God to hatred of Napoleon Buonaparte; and, as if to remind the devout of this alteration, the pikes for the pikemen (all those accepted men who were not otherwise armed) were kept in the church of each parish. There, against the wall, they always stood—a whole sheaf of them, formed of new ash stems, with a spike driven in at one end, the stick being preserved from splitting by a ferule. And there they remained, year after year, in the corner of the aisle, till they were removed and placed under the gallery stairs, and thence ultimately to the belfry, where they grew black, rusty, and worm-eaten, and were gradually stolen and carried off by sextons, parish clerks, whitewashers, window-menders, and other church servants for use at home as rake-stems, benefit-club staves, and pick-handles, in which degraded situations they may still occasionally be found.
But in their new and shining state they had a terror for Anne, whose eyes were involuntarily drawn towards them as she sat at Bob’s side during the service, filling her with bloody visions of their possible use not far from the very spot on which they were now assembled. The sermon, too, was on the subject of patriotism; so that when they came out she began to harp uneasily upon the probability of their all being driven from their homes.
Bob assured her that with the sixty thousand regulars, the militia reserve of a hundred and twenty thousand, and the three hundred thousand volunteers, there was not much to fear.
‘But I sometimes have a fear that poor John will be killed,’ he continued after a pause. ‘He is sure to be among the first that will have to face the invaders, and the trumpeters get picked off.’
‘There is the same chance for him as for the others,’ said Anne.
‘Yes—yes—the same chance, such as it is. You have never liked John since that affair of Matilda Johnson, have you?’
‘Why?’ she quickly asked.
‘Well,’ said Bob timidly, ‘as it is a ticklish time for him, would it not be worth while to make up any differences before the crash comes?’
‘I have nothing to make up,’ said Anne, with some distress. She still fully believed the trumpet-major to have smuggled away Miss Johnson because of his own interest in that lady, which must have made his professions to herself a mere pastime; but that very conduct had in it the curious advantage to herself of setting Bob free.
‘Since John has been gone,’ continued her companion, ‘I have found out more of his meaning, and of what he really had to do with that woman’s flight. Did you know that he had anything to do with it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That he got her to go away?’
She looked at Bob with surprise. He was not exasperated with John, and yet he knew so much as this.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘what did it mean?’
He did not explain to her then; but the possibility of John’s death, which had been newly brought home to him by the military events of the day, determined him to get poor John’s character cleared. Reproaching himself for letting her remain so long with a mistaken idea of him, Bob went to his father as soon as they got home, and begged him to get Mrs. Loveday to tell Anne the true reason of John’s objection to Miss Johnson as a sister-in-law.
‘She thinks it is because they were old lovers new met, and that he wants to marry her,’ he exclaimed to his father in conclusion.
‘Thenthat’sthe meaning of the split between Miss Nancy and Jack,’ said the miller.
‘What, were they any more than common friends?’ asked Bob uneasily.
‘Not on her side, perhaps.’
‘Well, we must do it,’ replied Bob, painfully conscious that common justice to John might bring them into hazardous rivalry, yet determined to be fair. ‘Tell it all to Mrs. Loveday, and get her to tell Anne.’
The result of the explanation upon Anne was bitter self-reproach. She was so sorry at having wronged the kindly soldier that next morning she went by herself to the down, and stood exactly where his tent had covered the sod on which he had lain so many nights, thinking what sadness he must have suffered because of her at the time of packing up and going away. After that she wiped from her eyes the tears of pity which had come there, descended to the house, and wrote an impulsive letter to him, in which occurred the following passages, indiscreet enough under the circumstances:—
‘I find all justice, all rectitude, on your side, John; and all impertinence, all inconsiderateness, on mine. I am so much convinced of your honour in the whole transaction, that I shall for the future mistrust myself in everything. And if it be possible, whenever I differ from you on any point I shall take an hour’s time for consideration before I say that I differ. If I have lost your friendship, I have only myself to thank for it; but I sincerely hope that you can forgive.’
‘I find all justice, all rectitude, on your side, John; and all impertinence, all inconsiderateness, on mine. I am so much convinced of your honour in the whole transaction, that I shall for the future mistrust myself in everything. And if it be possible, whenever I differ from you on any point I shall take an hour’s time for consideration before I say that I differ. If I have lost your friendship, I have only myself to thank for it; but I sincerely hope that you can forgive.’
After writing this she went to the garden, where Bob was shearing the spring grass from the paths. ‘What is John’s direction?’ she said, holding the sealed letter in her hand.
‘Exonbury Barracks,’ Bob faltered, his countenance sinking.
She thanked him and went indoors. When he came in, later in the day, he passed the door of her empty sitting-room and saw the letter on the mantelpiece. He disliked the sight of it. Hearing voices in the other room, he entered and found Anne and her mother there, talking to Cripplestraw, who had just come in with a message from Squire Derriman, requesting Miss Garland, as she valued the peace of mind of an old and troubled man, to go at once and see him.
‘I cannot go,’ she said, not liking the risk that such a visit involved.
An hour later Cripplestraw shambled again into the passage, on the same errand.
‘Maister’s very poorly, and he hopes that you’ll come, Mis’ess Anne. He wants to see ’ee very particular about the French.’
Anne would have gone in a moment, but for the fear that some one besides the farmer might encounter her, and she answered as before.
Another hour passed, and the wheels of a vehicle were heard. Cripplestraw had come for the third time, with a horse and gig; he was dressed in his best clothes, and brought with him on this occasion a basket containing raisins, almonds, oranges, and sweet cakes. Offering them to her as a gift from the old farmer, he repeated his request for her to accompany him, the gig and best mare having been sent as an additional inducement.
‘I believe the old gentleman is in love with you, Anne,’ said her mother.
‘Why couldn’t he drive down himself to see me?’ Anne inquired of Cripplestraw.
‘He wants you at the house, please.’
‘Is Mr. Festus with him?’
‘No; he’s away to Budmouth.’
‘I’ll go,’ said she.
‘And I may come and meet you?’ said Bob.
‘There’s my letter—what shall I do about that?’ she said, instead of answering him. ‘Take my letter to the post-office, and you may come,’ she added.
He said yes and went out, Cripplestraw retreating to the door till she should be ready.
‘What letter is it?’ said her mother.
‘Only one to John,’ said Anne. ‘I have asked him to forgive my suspicions. I could do no less.’
‘Do you want to marryhim?’ asked Mrs. Loveday bluntly.
‘Mother!’
‘Well; he will take that letter as an encouragement. Can’t you see that he will, you foolish girl?’
Anne did see instantly. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘Tell Robert that he need not go.’
She went to her room to secure the letter. It was gone from the mantelpiece, and on inquiry it was found that the miller, seeing it there, had sent David with it to Budmouth hours ago. Anne said nothing, and set out for Oxwell Hall with Cripplestraw.
‘William,’ said Mrs. Loveday to the miller when Anne was gone and Bob had resumed his work in the garden, ‘did you get that letter sent off on purpose?’
‘Well, I did. I wanted to make sure of it. John likes her, and now ’twill be made up; and why shouldn’t he marry her? I’ll start him in business, if so be she’ll have him.’
‘But she is likely to marry Festus Derriman.’
‘I don’t want her to marry anybody but John,’ said the miller doggedly.
‘Not if she is in love with Bob, and has been for years, and he with her?’ asked his wife triumphantly.
‘In love with Bob, and he with her?’ repeated Loveday.
‘Certainly,’ said she, going off and leaving him to his reflections.
When Anne reached the hall she found old Mr. Derriman in his customary chair. His complexion was more ashen, but his movement in rising at her entrance, putting a chair and shutting the door behind her, were much the same as usual.
‘Thank God you’ve come, my dear girl,’ he said earnestly. ‘Ah, you don’t trip across to read to me now! Why did ye cost me so much to fetch you? Fie! A horse and gig, and a man’s time in going three times. And what I sent ye cost a good deal in Budmouth market, now everything is so dear there, and ’twould have cost more if I hadn’t bought the raisins and oranges some months ago, when they were cheaper. I tell you this because we are old friends, and I have nobody else to tell my troubles to. But I don’t begrudge anything to ye since you’ve come.’
‘I am not much pleased to come, even now,’ said she. ‘What can make you so seriously anxious to see me?’
‘Well, you be a good girl and true; and I’ve been thinking that of all people of the next generation that I can trust, you are the best. ’Tis my bonds and my title-deeds, such as they be, and the leases, you know, and a few guineas in packets, and more than these, my will, that I have to speak about. Now do ye come this way.’
‘O, such things as those!’ she returned, with surprise. ‘I don’t understand those things at all.’
‘There’s nothing to understand. ’Tis just this. The French will be here within two months; that’s certain. I have it on the best authority, that the army at Boulogne is ready, the boats equipped, the plans laid, and the First Consul only waits for a tide. Heaven knows what will become o’ the men o’ these parts! But most likely the women will he spared. Now I’ll show ’ee.’
He led her across the hall to a stone staircase of semi-circular plan, which conducted to the cellars.
‘Down here?’ she said.
‘Yes; I must trouble ye to come down here. I have thought and thought who is the woman that can best keep a secret for six months, and I say, “Anne Garland.” You won’t be married before then?’
‘O no!’ murmured the young woman.
‘I wouldn’t expect ye to keep a close tongue after such a thing as that. But it will not be necessary.’
When they reached the bottom of the steps he struck a light from a tinder-box, and unlocked the middle one of three doors which appeared in the whitewashed wall opposite. The rays of the candle fell upon the vault and sides of a long low cellar, littered with decayed woodwork from other parts of the hall, among the rest stair-balusters, carved finials, tracery panels, and wainscoting. But what most attracted her eye was a small flagstone turned up in the middle of the floor, a heap of earth beside it, and a measuring-tape. Derriman went to the corner of the cellar, and pulled out a clamped box from under the straw. ‘You be rather heavy, my dear, eh?’ he said, affectionately addressing the box as he lifted it. ‘But you are going to be put in a safe place, you know, or that rascal will get hold of ye, and carry ye off and ruin me.’ He then with some difficulty lowered the box into the hole, raked in the earth upon it, and lowered the flagstone, which he was a long time in fixing to his satisfaction. Miss Garland, who was romantically interested, helped him to brush away the fragments of loose earth; and when he had scattered over the floor a little of the straw that lay about, they again ascended to upper air.
‘Is this all, sir?’ said Anne.
‘Just a moment longer, honey. Will you come into the great parlour?’
She followed him thither.
‘If anything happens to me while the fighting is going on—it may be on these very fields—you will know what to do,’ he resumed. ‘But first please sit down again, there’s a dear, whilst I write what’s in my head. See, there’s the best paper, and a new quill that I’ve afforded myself for’t.’
‘What a strange business! I don’t think I much like it, Mr. Derriman,’ she said, seating herself.
He had by this time begun to write, and murmured as he wrote—
‘“Twenty-three and a half from N.W. Sixteen and three-quarters from N.E.”—There, that’s all. Now I seal it up and give it to you to keep safe till I ask ye for it, or you hear of my being trampled down by the enemy.’
‘What does it mean?’ she asked, as she received the paper.
‘Clk! Ha! ha! Why, that’s the distance of the box from the two corners of the cellar. I measured it before you came. And, my honey, to make all sure, if the French soldiery are after ye, tell your mother the meaning on’t, or any other friend, in case they should put ye to death, and the secret be lost. But that I am sure I hope they won’t do, though your pretty face will be a sad bait to the soldiers. I often have wished you was my daughter, honey; and yet in these times the less cares a man has the better, so I am glad you bain’t. Shall my man drive you home?’
‘No, no,’ she said, much depressed by the words he had uttered. ‘I can find my way. You need not trouble to come down.’
‘Then take care of the paper. And if you outlive me, you’ll find I have not forgot you.’
Festus Derriman had remained in the Royal watering-place all that day, his horse being sick at stables; but, wishing to coax or bully from his uncle a remount for the coming summer, he set off on foot for Oxwell early in the evening. When he drew near to the village, or rather to the hall, which was a mile from the village, he overtook a slim, quick-eyed woman, sauntering along at a leisurely pace. She was fashionably dressed in a green spencer, with ‘Mameluke’ sleeves, and wore a velvet Spanish hat and feather.
‘Good afternoon t’ye, ma’am,’ said Festus, throwing a sword-and-pistol air into his greeting. ‘You are out for a walk?’
‘Iamout for a walk, captain,’ said the lady, who had criticized him from the crevice of her eye, without seeming to do much more than continue her demure look forward, and gave the title as a sop to his apparent character.
‘From the town?—I’d swear it, ma’am; ’pon my honour I would!’
‘Yes, I am from the town, sir,’ said she.
‘Ah, you are a visitor! I know every one of the regular inhabitants; we soldiers are in and out there continually. Festus Derriman, Yeomanry Cavalry, you know. The fact is, the watering-place is under our charge; the folks will be quite dependent upon us for their deliverance in the coming struggle. We hold our lives in our hands, and theirs, I may say, in our pockets. What made you come here, ma’am, at such a critical time?’
‘I don’t see that it is such a critical time?’
‘But it is, though; and so you’d say if you was as much mixed up with the military affairs of the nation as some of us.’
The lady smiled. ‘The King is coming this year, anyhow,’ said she.
‘Never!’ said Festus firmly. ‘Ah, you are one of the attendants at court perhaps, come on ahead to get the King’s chambers ready, in case Boney should not land?’
‘No,’ she said; ‘I am connected with the theatre, though not just at the present moment. I have been out of luck for the last year or two; but I have fetched up again. I join the company when they arrive for the season.’
Festus surveyed her with interest. ‘Faith! and is it so? Well, ma’am, what part do you play?’
‘I am mostly the leading lady—the heroine,’ she said, drawing herself up with dignity.
‘I’ll come and have a look at ye if all’s well, and the landing is put off—hang me if I don’t!—Hullo, hullo, what do I see?’
His eyes were stretched towards a distant field, which Anne Garland was at that moment hastily crossing, on her way from the hall to Overcombe.
‘I must be off. Good-day to ye, dear creature!’ he exclaimed, hurrying forward.
The lady said, ‘O, you droll monster!’ as she smiled and watched him stride ahead.
Festus bounded on over the hedge, across the intervening patch of green, and into the field which Anne was still crossing. In a moment or two she looked back, and seeing the well-known Herculean figure of the yeoman behind her felt rather alarmed, though she determined to show no difference in her outward carriage. But to maintain her natural gait was beyond her powers. She spasmodically quickened her pace; fruitlessly, however, for he gained upon her, and when within a few strides of her exclaimed, ‘Well, my darling!’ Anne started off at a run.
Festus was already out of breath, and soon found that he was not likely to overtake her. On she went, without turning her head, till an unusual noise behind compelled her to look round. His face was in the act of falling back; he swerved on one side, and dropped like a log upon a convenient hedgerow-bank which bordered the path. There he lay quite still.
Anne was somewhat alarmed; and after standing at gaze for two or three minutes, drew nearer to him, a step and a half at a time, wondering and doubting, as a meek ewe draws near to some strolling vagabond who flings himself on the grass near the flock.
‘He is in a swoon!’ she murmured.
Her heart beat quickly, and she looked around. Nobody was in sight; she advanced a step nearer still and observed him again. Apparently his face was turning to a livid hue, and his breathing had become obstructed.
‘’Tis not a swoon; ’tis apoplexy!’ she said, in deep distress. ‘I ought to untie his neck.’ But she was afraid to do this, and only drew a little closer still.
Miss Garland was now within three feet of him, whereupon the senseless man, who could hold his breath no longer, sprang to his feet and darted at her, saying, ‘Ha! ha! a scheme for a kiss!’
She felt his arm slipping round her neck; but, twirling about with amazing dexterity, she wriggled from his embrace and ran away along the field. The force with which she had extricated herself was sufficient to throw Festus upon the grass, and by the time that he got upon his legs again she was many yards off. Uttering a word which was not exactly a blessing, he immediately gave chase; and thus they ran till Anne entered a meadow divided down the middle by a brook about six feet wide. A narrow plank was thrown loosely across at the point where the path traversed this stream, and when Anne reached it she at once scampered over. At the other side she turned her head to gather the probabilities of the situation, which were that Festus Derriman would overtake her even now. By a sudden forethought she stooped, seized the end of the plank, and endeavoured to drag it away from the opposite bank. But the weight was too great for her to do more than slightly move it, and with a desperate sigh she ran on again, having lost many valuable seconds.
But her attempt, though ineffectual in dragging it down, had been enough to unsettle the little bridge; and when Derriman reached the middle, which he did half a minute later, the plank turned over on its edge, tilting him bodily into the river. The water was not remarkably deep, but as the yeoman fell flat on his stomach he was completely immersed; and it was some time before he could drag himself out. When he arose, dripping on the bank, and looked around, Anne had vanished from the mead. Then Festus’s eyes glowed like carbuncles, and he gave voice to fearful imprecations, shaking his fist in the soft summer air towards Anne, in a way that was terrible for any maiden to behold. Wading back through the stream, he walked along its bank with a heavy tread, the water running from his coat-tails, wrists, and the tips of his ears, in silvery dribbles, that sparkled pleasantly in the sun. Thus he hastened away, and went round by a by-path to the hall.
Meanwhile the author of his troubles was rapidly drawing nearer to the mill, and soon, to her inexpressible delight, she saw Bob coming to meet her. She had heard the flounce, and, feeling more secure from her pursuer, had dropped her pace to a quick walk. No sooner did she reach Bob than, overcome by the excitement of the moment, she flung herself into his arms. Bob instantly enclosed her in an embrace so very thorough that there was no possible danger of her falling, whatever degree of exhaustion might have given rise to her somewhat unexpected action; and in this attitude they silently remained, till it was borne in upon Anne that the present was the first time in her life that she had ever been in such a position. Her face then burnt like a sunset, and she did not know how to look up at him. Feeling at length quite safe, she suddenly resolved not to give way to her first impulse to tell him the whole of what had happened, lest there should be a dreadful quarrel and fight between Bob and the yeoman, and great difficulties caused in the Loveday family on her account, the miller having important wheat transactions with the Derrimans.
‘You seem frightened, dearest Anne,’ said Bob tenderly.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I saw a man I did not like the look of, and he was inclined to follow me. But, worse than that, I am troubled about the French. O Bob! I am afraid you will be killed, and my mother, and John, and your father, and all of us hunted down!’
‘Now I have told you, dear little heart, that it cannot be. We shall drive ’em into the sea after a battle or two, even if they land, which I don’t believe they will. We’ve got ninety sail of the line, and though it is rather unfortunate that we should have declared war against Spain at this ticklish time, there’s enough for all.’ And Bob went into elaborate statistics of the navy, army, militia, and volunteers, to prolong the time of holding her. When he had done speaking he drew rather a heavy sigh.
‘What’s the matter, Bob?’
‘I haven’t been yet to offer myself as a sea-fencible, and I ought to have done it long ago.’
‘You are only one. Surely they can do without you?’
Bob shook his head. She arose from her restful position, her eye catching his with a shamefaced expression of having given way at last. Loveday drew from his pocket a paper, and said, as they slowly walked on, ‘Here’s something to make us brave and patriotic. I bought it in Budmouth. Isn’t it a stirring picture?’
It was a hieroglyphic profile of Napoleon. The hat represented a maimed French eagle; the face was ingeniously made up of human carcases, knotted and writhing together in such directions as to form a physiognomy; a band, or stock, shaped to resemble the English Channel, encircled his throat, and seemed to choke him; his epaulette was a hand tearing a cobweb that represented the treaty of peace with England; and his ear was a woman crouching over a dying child.[225]
‘It is dreadful!’ said Anne. ‘I don’t like to see it.’
She had recovered from her emotion, and walked along beside him with a grave, subdued face. Bob did not like to assume the privileges of an accepted lover and draw her hand through his arm; for, conscious that she naturally belonged to a politer grade than his own, he feared lest her exhibition of tenderness were an impulse which cooler moments might regret. A perfect Paul-and-Virginia life had not absolutely set in for him as yet, and it was not to be hastened by force. When they had passed over the bridge into the mill-front they saw the miller standing at the door with a face of concern.
‘Since you have been gone,’ he said, ‘a Government man has been here, and to all the houses, taking down the numbers of the women and children, and their ages and the number of horses and waggons that can be mustered, in case they have to retreat inland, out of the way of the invading army.’
The little family gathered themselves together, all feeling the crisis more seriously than they liked to express. Mrs. Loveday thought how ridiculous a thing social ambition was in such a conjuncture as this, and vowed that she would leave Anne to love where she would. Anne, too, forgot the little peculiarities of speech and manner in Bob and his father, which sometimes jarred for a moment upon her more refined sense, and was thankful for their love and protection in this looming trouble.
On going upstairs she remembered the paper which Farmer Derriman had given her, and searched in her bosom for it. She could not find it there. ‘I must have left it on the table,’ she said to herself. It did not matter; she remembered every word. She took a pen and wrote a duplicate, which she put safely away.
But Anne was wrong. She had, after all, placed the paper where she supposed, and there it ought to have been. But in escaping from Festus, when he feigned apoplexy, it had fallen out upon the grass. Five minutes after that event, when pursuer and pursued were two or three fields ahead, the gaily-dressed woman whom the yeoman had overtaken, peeped cautiously through the stile into the corner of the field which had been the scene of the scramble; and seeing the paper she climbed over, secured it, loosened the wafer without tearing the sheet, and read the memorandum within. Unable to make anything of its meaning, the saunterer put it in her pocket, and, dismissing the matter from her mind, went on by the by-path which led to the back of the mill. Here, behind the hedge, she stood and surveyed the old building for some time, after which she meditatively turned, and retraced her steps towards the Royal watering-place.
The night which followed was historic and memorable. Mrs. Loveday was awakened by the boom of a distant gun: she told the miller, and they listened awhile. The sound was not repeated, but such was the state of their feelings that Mr. Loveday went to Bob’s room and asked if he had heard it. Bob was wide awake, looking out of the window; he had heard the ominous sound, and was inclined to investigate the matter. While the father and son were dressing they fancied that a glare seemed to be rising in the sky in the direction of the beacon hill. Not wishing to alarm Anne and her mother, the miller assured them that Bob and himself were merely going out of doors to inquire into the cause of the report, after which they plunged into the gloom together. A few steps’ progress opened up more of the sky, which, as they had thought, was indeed irradiated by a lurid light; but whether it came from the beacon or from a more distant point they were unable to clearly tell. They pushed on rapidly towards higher ground.
Their excitement was merely of a piece with that of all men at this critical juncture. Everywhere expectation was at fever heat. For the last year or two only five-and-twenty miles of shallow water had divided quiet English homesteads from an enemy’s army of a hundred and fifty thousand men. We had taken the matter lightly enough, eating and drinking as in the days of Noe, and singing satires without end. We punned on Buonaparte and his gunboats, chalked his effigy on stage-coaches, and published the same in prints. Still, between these bursts of hilarity, it was sometimes recollected that England was the only European country which had not succumbed to the mighty little man who was less than human in feeling, and more than human in will; that our spirit for resistance was greater than our strength; and that the Channel was often calm. Boats built of wood which was greenly growing in its native forest three days before it was bent as wales to their sides, were ridiculous enough; but they might be, after all, sufficient for a single trip between two visible shores.
The English watched Buonaparte in these preparations, and Buonaparte watched the English. At the distance of Boulogne details were lost, but we were impressed on fine days by the novel sight of a huge army moving and twinkling like a school of mackerel under the rays of the sun. The regular way of passing an afternoon in the coast towns was to stroll up to the signal posts and chat with the lieutenant on duty there about the latest inimical object seen at sea. About once a week there appeared in the newspapers either a paragraph concerning some adventurous English gentleman who had sailed out in a pleasure-boat till he lay near enough to Boulogne to see Buonaparte standing on the heights among his marshals; or else some lines about a mysterious stranger with a foreign accent, who, after collecting a vast deal of information on our resources, had hired a boat at a southern port, and vanished with it towards France before his intention could be divined.
In forecasting his grand venture, Buonaparte postulated the help of Providence to a remarkable degree. Just at the hour when his troops were on board the flat-bottomed boats and ready to sail, there was to be a great fog, that should spread a vast obscurity over the length and breadth of the Channel, and keep the English blind to events on the other side. The fog was to last twenty-four hours, after which it might clear away. A dead calm was to prevail simultaneously with the fog, with the twofold object of affording the boats easy transit and dooming our ships to lie motionless. Thirdly, there was to be a spring tide, which should combine its manoeuvres with those of the fog and calm.
Among the many thousands of minor Englishmen whose lives were affected by these tremendous designs may be numbered our old acquaintance Corporal Tullidge, who sported the crushed arm, and poor old Simon Burden, the dazed veteran who had fought at Minden. Instead of sitting snugly in the settle of the Old Ship, in the village adjoining Overcombe, they were obliged to keep watch on the hill. They made themselves as comfortable as was possible in the circumstances, dwelling in a hut of clods and turf, with a brick chimney for cooking. Here they observed the nightly progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles, the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy. As, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their duty to fire at a signal—one being of furze for a quick flame, the other of turf, for a long, slow radiance—they thought and talked of old times, and drank patriotically from a large wood flagon that was filled every day.
Bob and his father soon became aware that the light was from the beacon. By the time that they reached the top it was one mass of towering flame, from which the sparks fell on the green herbage like a fiery dew; the forms of the two old men being seen passing and repassing in the midst of it. The Lovedays, who came up on the smoky side, regarded the scene for a moment, and then emerged into the light.
‘Who goes there?’ said Corporal Tullidge, shouldering a pike with his sound arm. ‘O, ’tis neighbour Loveday!’
‘Did you get your signal to fire it from the east?’ said the miller hastily.
‘No; from Abbotsea Beach.’
‘But you are not to go by a coast signal!’
‘Chok’ it all, wasn’t the Lord-Lieutenant’s direction, whenever you see Rainbarrow’s Beacon burn to the nor’east’ard, or Haggardon to the nor’west’ard, or the actual presence of the enemy on the shore?’
‘But is he here?’
‘No doubt o’t! The beach light is only just gone down, and Simon heard the guns even better than I.’
‘Hark, hark! I hear ’em!’ said Bob.
They listened with parted lips, the night wind blowing through Simon Burden’s few teeth as through the ruins of Stonehenge. From far down on the lower levels came the noise of wheels and the tramp of horses upon the turnpike road.
‘Well, there must be something in it,’ said Miller Loveday gravely. ‘Bob, we’ll go home and make the women-folk safe, and then I’ll don my soldier’s clothes and be off. God knows where our company will assemble!’
They hastened down the hill, and on getting into the road waited and listened again. Travellers began to come up and pass them in vehicles of all descriptions. It was difficult to attract their attention in the dim light, but by standing on the top of a wall which fenced the road Bob was at last seen.
‘What’s the matter?’ he cried to a butcher who was flying past in his cart, his wife sitting behind him without a bonnet.
‘The French have landed!’ said the man, without drawing rein.
‘Where?’ shouted Bob.
‘In West Bay; and all Budmouth is in uproar!’ replied the voice, now faint in the distance.
Bob and his father hastened on till they reached their own house. As they had expected, Anne and her mother, in common with most of the people, were both dressed, and stood at the door bonneted and shawled, listening to the traffic on the neighbouring highway, Mrs. Loveday having secured what money and small valuables they possessed in a huge pocket which extended all round her waist, and added considerably to her weight and diameter.
‘’Tis true enough,’ said the miller: ‘he’s come! You and Anne and the maid must be off to Cousin Jim’s at King’s-Bere, and when you get there you must do as they do. I must assemble with the company.’
‘And I?’ said Bob.
‘Thou’st better run to the church, and take a pike before they be all gone.’
The horse was put into the gig, and Mrs. Loveday, Anne, and the servant-maid were hastily packed into the vehicle, the latter taking the reins; David’s duties as a fighting-man forbidding all thought of his domestic offices now. Then the silver tankard, teapot, pair of candlesticks like Ionic columns, and other articles too large to be pocketed were thrown into a basket and put up behind. Then came the leave-taking, which was as sad as it was hurried. Bob kissed Anne, and there was no affectation in her receiving that mark of affection as she said through her tears, ‘God bless you!’ At last they moved off in the dim light of dawn, neither of the three women knowing which road they were to take, but trusting to chance to find it.
As soon as they were out of sight Bob went off for a pike, and his father, first new-flinting his firelock, proceeded to don his uniform, pipe-claying his breeches with such cursory haste as to bespatter his black gaiters with the same ornamental compound. Finding when he was ready that no bugle had as yet sounded, he went with David to the cart-house, dragged out the waggon, and put therein some of the most useful and easily-handled goods, in case there might be an opportunity for conveying them away. By the time this was done and the waggon pushed back and locked in, Bob had returned with his weapon, somewhat mortified at being doomed to this low form of defence. The miller gave his son a parting grasp of the hand, and arranged to meet him at King’s-Bere at the first opportunity if the news were true; if happily false, here at their own house.
‘Bother it all!’ he exclaimed, looking at his stock of flints.
‘What?’ said Bob.
‘I’ve got no ammunition: not a blessed round!’
‘Then what’s the use of going?’ asked his son.
The miller paused. ‘O, I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Perhaps somebody will lend me a little if I get into a hot corner?’
‘Lend ye a little! Father, you was always so simple!’ said Bob reproachfully.
‘Well—I can bagnet a few, anyhow,’ said the miller.
The bugle had been blown ere this, and Loveday the father disappeared towards the place of assembly, his empty cartridge-box behind him. Bob seized a brace of loaded pistols which he had brought home from the ship, and, armed with these and a pike, he locked the door and sallied out again towards the turnpike road.
By this time the yeomanry of the district were also on the move, and among them Festus Derriman, who was sleeping at his uncle’s, and had been awakened by Cripplestraw. About the time when Bob and his father were descending from the beacon the stalwart yeoman was standing in the stable-yard adjusting his straps, while Cripplestraw saddled the horse. Festus clanked up and down, looked gloomily at the beacon, heard the retreating carts and carriages, and called Cripplestraw to him, who came from the stable leading the horse at the same moment that Uncle Benjy peeped unobserved from a mullioned window above their heads, the distant light of the beacon fire touching up his features to the complexion of an old brass clock-face.
‘I think that before I start, Cripplestraw,’ said Festus, whose lurid visage was undergoing a bleaching process curious to look upon, ‘you shall go on to Budmouth, and make a bold inquiry whether the cowardly enemy is on shore as yet, or only looming in the bay.’
‘I’d go in a moment, sir,’ said the other, ‘if I hadn’t my bad leg again. I should have joined my company afore this; but they said at last drill that I was too old. So I shall wait up in the hay-loft for tidings as soon as I have packed you off, poor gentleman!’
‘Do such alarms as these, Cripplestraw, ever happen without foundation? Buonaparte is a wretch, a miserable wretch, and this may be only a false alarm to disappoint such as me?’
‘O no, sir; O no!’
‘But sometimes there are false alarms?’
‘Well, sir, yes. There was a pretended sally o’ gunboats last year.’
‘And was there nothing else pretended—something more like this, for instance?’
Cripplestraw shook his head. ‘I notice yer modesty, Mr. Festus, in making light of things. But there never was, sir. You may depend upon it he’s come. Thank God, my duty as a Local don’t require me to go to the front, but only the valiant men like my master. Ah, if Boney could only see ’ee now, sir, he’d know too well there is nothing to be got from such a determined skilful officer but blows and musket-balls!’
‘Yes, yes. Cripplestraw, if I ride off to Budmouth and meet ’em, all my training will be lost. No skill is required as a forlorn hope.’
‘True; that’s a point, sir. You would outshine ’em all, and be picked off at the very beginning as a too-dangerous brave man.’
‘But if I stay here and urge on the faint-hearted ones, or get up into the turret-stair by that gateway, and pop at the invaders through the loophole, I shouldn’t be so completely wasted, should I?’
‘You would not, Mr. Derriman. But, as you was going to say next, the fire in yer veins won’t let ye do that. You are valiant; very good: you don’t want to husband yer valiance at home. The arg’ment is plain.’
‘If my birth had been more obscure,’ murmured the yeoman, ‘and I had only been in the militia, for instance, or among the humble pikemen, so much wouldn’t have been expected of me—of my fiery nature. Cripplestraw, is there a drop of brandy to be got at in the house? I don’t feel very well.’
‘Dear nephew,’ said the old gentleman from above, whom neither of the others had as yet noticed, ‘I haven’t any spirits opened—so unfortunate! But there’s a beautiful barrel of crab-apple cider in draught; and there’s some cold tea from last night.’
‘What, is he listening?’ said Festus, staring up. ‘Now I warrant how glad he is to see me forced to go—called out of bed without breakfast, and he quite safe, and sure to escape because he’s an old man!—Cripplestraw, I like being in the yeomanry cavalry; but I wish I hadn’t been in the ranks; I wish I had been only the surgeon, to stay in the rear while the bodies are brought back to him—I mean, I should have thrown my heart at such a time as this more into the labour of restoring wounded men and joining their shattered limbs together—u-u-ugh!—more than I can into causing the wounds—I am too humane, Cripplestraw, for the ranks!’
‘Yes, yes,’ said his companion, depressing his spirits to a kindred level. ‘And yet, such is fate, that, instead of joining men’s limbs together, you’ll have to get your own joined—poor young sojer!—all through having such a warlike soul.’
‘Yes,’ murmured Festus, and paused. ‘You can’t think how strange I feel here, Cripplestraw,’ he continued, laying his hand upon the centre buttons of his waistcoat. ‘How I do wish I was only the surgeon!’
He slowly mounted, and Uncle Benjy, in the meantime, sang to himself as he looked on, ‘Twen-ty-three and half from N.W.Six-teen and three-quar-ters from N.E.’
‘What’s that old mummy singing?’ said Festus savagely.
‘Only a hymn for preservation from our enemies, dear nephew,’ meekly replied the farmer, who had heard the remark. ‘Twen-ty-three and half from N.W.’
Festus allowed his horse to move on a few paces, and then turned again, as if struck by a happy invention. ‘Cripplestraw,’ he began, with an artificial laugh, ‘I am obliged to confess, after all—I must see her! ’Tisn’t nature that makes me draw back—’tis love. I must go and look for her.’
‘A woman, sir?’
‘I didn’t want to confess it; but ’tis a woman. Strange that I should be drawn so entirely against my natural wish to rush at ’em!’
Cripplestraw, seeing which way the wind blew, found it advisable to blow in harmony. ‘Ah, now at last I see, sir! Spite that few men live that be worthy to command ye; spite that you could rush on, marshal the troops to victory, as I may say; but then—what of it? there’s the unhappy fate of being smit with the eyes of a woman, and you are unmanned! Maister Derriman, who is himself, when he’s got a woman round his neck like a millstone?’
‘It is something like that.’
‘I feel the case. Be you valiant?—I know, of course, the words being a matter of form—be you valiant, I ask? Yes, of course. Then don’t you waste it in the open field. Hoard it up, I say, sir, for a higher class of war—the defence of yer adorable lady. Think what you owe her at this terrible time! Now, Maister Derriman, once more I ask ye to cast off that first haughty wish to rush to Budmouth, and to go where your mis’ess is defenceless and alone.’
‘I will, Cripplestraw, now you put it like that!’
‘Thank ye, thank ye heartily, Maister Derriman. Go now and hide with her.’
‘But can I? Now, hang flattery!—can a man hide without a stain? Of course I would not hide in any mean sense; no, not I!’
‘If you be in love, ’tis plain you may, since it is not your own life, but another’s, that you are concerned for, and you only save your own because it can’t be helped.’
‘’Tis true, Cripplestraw, in a sense. But will it be understood that way? Will they see it as a brave hiding?’
‘Now, sir, if you had not been in love I own to ye that hiding would look queer, but being to save the tears, groans, fits, swowndings, and perhaps death of a comely young woman, yer principle is good; you honourably retreat because you be too gallant to advance. This sounds strange, ye may say, sir; but it is plain enough to less fiery minds.’
Festus did for a moment try to uncover his teeth in a natural smile, but it died away. ‘Cripplestraw, you flatter me; or do you mean it? Well, there’s truth in it. I am more gallant in going to her than in marching to the shore. But we cannot be too careful about our good names, we soldiers. I must not be seen. I’m off.’
Cripplestraw opened the hurdle which closed the arch under the portico gateway, and Festus passed under, Uncle Benjamin singing,Twen-ty-three and a half from N.W.with a sort of sublime ecstasy, feeling, as Festus had observed, that his money was safe, and that the French would not personally molest an old man in such a ragged, mildewed coat as that he wore, which he had taken the precaution to borrow from a scarecrow in one of his fields for the purpose.