‘’Tis what I was thinking,’ she said, trying to be composed.
‘You were saying it,’ he answered gently.
‘Was I?—I did not know it. . . . How came you here?’ she presently added.
‘I have been behind you a good while; but you never turned round.’
‘I was deeply occupied,’ she said in an undertone.
‘Yes—I too came to see him pass. I heard this morning that Lord Nelson had embarked, and I knew at once that they would sail immediately. The Victory and Euryalus are to join the rest of the fleet at Plymouth. There was a great crowd of people assembled to see the admiral off; they cheered him and the ship as she dropped down. He took his coffin on board with him, they say.’
‘His coffin!’ said Anne, turning deadly pale. ‘Something terrible, then, is meant by that! O, whywouldBob go in that ship? doomed to destruction from the very beginning like this!’
‘It was his determination to sail under Captain Hardy, and under no one else,’ said John. ‘There may be hot work; but we must hope for the best.’ And observing how wretched she looked, he added, ‘But won’t you let me help you back? If you can walk as far as Hope Cove it will be enough. A lerret is going from there across the bay homeward to the harbour in the course of an hour; it belongs to a man I know, and they can take one passenger, I am sure.’
She turned her back upon the Channel, and by his help soon reached the place indicated. The boat was lying there as he had said. She found it to belong to the old man who had been with her at the Bill, and was in charge of his two younger sons. The trumpet-major helped her into it over the slippery blocks of stone, one of the young men spread his jacket for her to sit on, and as soon as they pulled from shore John climbed up the blue-grey cliff, and disappeared over the top, to return to the mainland by road.
Anne was in the town by three o’clock. The trip in the stern of the lerret had quite refreshed her, with the help of the biscuits, which she had at last been able to eat. The van from the port to Overcombe did not start till four o’clock, and feeling no further interest in the gaieties of the place, she strolled on past the King’s house to the outskirts, her mind settling down again upon the possibly sad fate of the Victory when she found herself alone. She did not hurry on; and finding that even now there wanted another half-hour to the carrier’s time, she turned into a little lane to escape the inspection of the numerous passers-by. Here all was quite lonely and still, and she sat down under a willow-tree, absently regarding the landscape, which had begun to put on the rich tones of declining summer, but which to her was as hollow and faded as a theatre by day. She could hold out no longer; burying her face in her hands, she wept without restraint.
Some yards behind her was a little spring of water, having a stone margin round it to prevent the cattle from treading in the sides and filling it up with dirt. While she wept, two elderly gentlemen entered unperceived upon the scene, and walked on to the spring’s brink. Here they paused and looked in, afterwards moving round it, and then stooping as if to smell or taste its waters. The spring was, in fact, a sulphurous one, then recently discovered by a physician who lived in the neighbourhood; and it was beginning to attract some attention, having by common report contributed to effect such wonderful cures as almost passed belief. After a considerable discussion, apparently on how the pool might be improved for better use, one of the two elderly gentlemen turned away, leaving the other still probing the spring with his cane. The first stranger, who wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, came on in the direction of Anne Garland, and seeing her sad posture went quickly up to her, and said abruptly, ‘What is the matter?’
Anne, who in her grief had observed nothing of the gentlemen’s presence, withdrew her handkerchief from her eyes and started to her feet. She instantly recognised her interrogator as the King.
‘What, what, crying?’ his Majesty inquired kindly. ‘How is this!’
‘I—have seen a dear friend go away, sir,’ she faltered, with downcast eyes.
‘Ah—partings are sad—very sad—for us all. You must hope your friend will return soon. Where is he or she gone?’
‘I don’t know, your Majesty.’
‘Don’t know—how is that?’
‘He is a sailor on board the Victory.’
‘Then he has reason to be proud,’ said the King with interest. ‘He is your brother?’
Anne tried to explain what he was, but could not, and blushed with painful heat.
‘Well, well, well; what is his name?’
In spite of Anne’s confusion and low spirits, her womanly shrewdness told her at once that no harm could be done by revealing Bob’s name; and she answered, ‘His name is Robert Loveday, sir.’
‘Loveday—a good name. I shall not forget it. Now dry your cheeks, and don’t cry any more. Loveday—Robert Loveday.’
Anne curtseyed, the King smiled good-humouredly, and turned to rejoin his companion, who was afterwards heard to be Dr. ---, the physician in attendance at Gloucester Lodge. This gentleman had in the meantime filled a small phial with the medicinal water, which he carefully placed in his pocket; and on the King coming up they retired together and disappeared. Thereupon Anne, now thoroughly aroused, followed the same way with a gingerly tread, just in time to see them get into a carriage which was in waiting at the turning of the lane.
She quite forgot the carrier, and everything else in connexion with riding home. Flying along the road rapidly and unconsciously, when she awoke to a sense of her whereabouts she was so near to Overcombe as to make the carrier not worth waiting for. She had been borne up in this hasty spurt at the end of a weary day by visions of Bob promoted to the rank of admiral, or something equally wonderful, by the King’s special command, the chief result of the promotion being, in her arrangement of the piece, that he would stay at home and go to sea no more. But she was not a girl who indulged in extravagant fancies long, and before she reached home she thought that the King had probably forgotten her by that time, and her troubles, and her lover’s name.
The remaining fortnight of the month of September passed away, with a general decline from the summer’s excitements. The royal family left the watering-place the first week in October, the German Legion with their artillery about the same time. The dragoons still remained at the barracks just out of the town, and John Loveday brought to Anne every newspaper that he could lay hands on, especially such as contained any fragment of shipping news. This threw them much together; and at these times John was often awkward and confused, on account of the unwonted stress of concealing his great love for her.
Her interests had grandly developed from the limits of Overcombe and the town life hard by, to an extensiveness truly European. During the whole month of October, however, not a single grain of information reached her, or anybody else, concerning Nelson and his blockading squadron off Cadiz. There were the customary bad jokes about Buonaparte, especially when it was found that the whole French army had turned its back upon Boulogne and set out for the Rhine. Then came accounts of his march through Germany and into Austria; but not a word about the Victory.
At the beginning of autumn John brought news which fearfully depressed her. The Austrian General Mack had capitulated with his whole army. Then were revived the old misgivings as to invasion. ‘Instead of having to cope with him weary with waiting, we shall have to encounter This Man fresh from the fields of victory,’ ran the newspaper article.
But the week which had led off with such a dreary piping was to end in another key. On the very day when Mack’s army was piling arms at the feet of its conqueror, a blow had been struck by Bob Loveday and his comrades which eternally shattered the enemy’s force by sea. Four days after the receipt of the Austrian news Corporal Tullidge ran into the miller’s house to inform him that on the previous Monday, at eleven in the morning, the Pickle schooner, Lieutenant Lapenotiere, had arrived at Falmouth with despatches from the fleet; that the stage-coaches on the highway through Wessex to London were chalked with the words ‘Great Victory!’ ‘Glorious Triumph!’ and so on; and that all the country people were wild to know particulars.
On Friday afternoon John arrived with authentic news of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, and the death of Nelson. Captain Hardy was alive, though his escape had been narrow enough, his shoe-buckle having been carried away by a shot. It was feared that the Victory had been the scene of the heaviest slaughter among all the ships engaged, but as yet no returns of killed and wounded had been issued, beyond a rough list of the numbers in some of the ships.
The suspense of the little household in Overcombe Mill was great in the extreme. John came thither daily for more than a week; but no further particulars reached England till the end of that time, and then only the meagre intelligence that there had been a gale immediately after the battle, and that many of the prizes had been lost. Anne said little to all these things, and preserved a superstratum of calmness on her countenance; but some inner voice seemed to whisper to her that Bob was no more. Miller Loveday drove to Pos’ham several times to learn if the Captain’s sisters had received any more definite tidings than these flying reports; but that family had heard nothing which could in any way relieve the miller’s anxiety. When at last, at the end of November, there appeared a final and revised list of killed and wounded as issued by Admiral Collingwood, it was a useless sheet to the Lovedays. To their great pain it contained no names but those of officers, the friends of ordinary seamen and marines being in those good old days left to discover their losses as best they might.
Anne’s conviction of her loss increased with the darkening of the early winter time. Bob was not a cautious man who would avoid needless exposure, and a hundred and fifty of the Victory’s crew had been disabled or slain. Anybody who had looked into her room at this time would have seen that her favourite reading was the office for the Burial of the Dead at Sea, beginning ‘We therefore commit his body to the deep.’ In these first days of December several of the victorious fleet came into port; but not the Victory. Many supposed that that noble ship, disabled by the battle, had gone to the bottom in the subsequent tempestuous weather; and the belief was persevered in till it was told in the town and port that she had been seen passing up the Channel. Two days later the Victory arrived at Portsmouth.
Then letters from survivors began to appear in the public prints which John so regularly brought to Anne; but though he watched the mails with unceasing vigilance there was never a letter from Bob. It sometimes crossed John’s mind that his brother might still be alive and well, and that in his wish to abide by his expressed intention of giving up Anne and home life he was deliberately lax in writing. If so, Bob was carrying out the idea too thoughtlessly by half, as could be seen by watching the effects of suspense upon the fair face of the victim, and the anxiety of the rest of the family.
It was a clear day in December. The first slight snow of the season had been sifted over the earth, and one side of the apple-tree branches in the miller’s garden was touched with white, though a few leaves were still lingering on the tops of the younger trees. A short sailor of the Royal Navy, who was not Bob, nor anything like him, crossed the mill court and came to the door. The miller hastened out and brought him into the room, where John, Mrs. Loveday, and Anne Garland were all present.
‘I’m from aboard the Victory,’ said the sailor. ‘My name’s Jim Cornick. And your lad is alive and well.’
They breathed rather than spoke their thankfulness and relief, the miller’s eyes being moist as he turned aside to calm himself; while Anne, having first jumped up wildly from her seat, sank back again under the almost insupportable joy that trembled through her limbs to her utmost finger.
‘I’ve come from Spithead to Pos’ham,’ the sailor continued, ‘and now I am going on to father at Budmouth.’
‘Ah!—I know your father,’ cried the trumpet-major, ‘old James Cornick.’
It was the man who had brought Anne in his lerret from Portland Bill.
‘And Bob hasn’t got a scratch?’ said the miller.
‘Not a scratch,’ said Cornick.
Loveday then bustled off to draw the visitor something to drink. Anne Garland, with a glowing blush on her face, had gone to the back part of the room, where she was the very embodiment of sweet content as she slightly swayed herself without speaking. A little tide of happiness seemed to ebb and flow through her in listening to the sailor’s words, moving her figure with it. The seaman and John went on conversing.
‘Bob had a good deal to do with barricading the hawse-holes afore we were in action, and the Adm’l and Cap’n both were very much pleased at how ’twas done. When the Adm’l went up the quarter-deck ladder, Cap’n Hardy said a word or two to Bob, but what it was I don’t know, for I was quartered at a gun some ways off. However, Bob saw the Adm’l stagger when ‘a was wownded, and was one of the men who carried him to the cockpit. After that he and some other lads jumped aboard the French ship, and I believe they was in her when she struck her flag. What ‘a did next I can’t say, for the wind had dropped, and the smoke was like a cloud. But ‘a got a good deal talked about; and they say there’s promotion in store for’n.’
At this point in the story Jim Cornick stopped to drink, and a low unconscious humming came from Anne in her distant corner; the faint melody continued more or less when the conversation between the sailor and the Lovedays was renewed.
‘We heard afore that the Victory was near knocked to pieces,’ said the miller.
‘Knocked to pieces? You’d say so if so be you could see her! Gad, her sides be battered like an old penny piece; the shot be still sticking in her wales, and her sails be like so many clap-nets: we have run all the way home under jury topmasts; and as for her decks, you may swab wi’ hot water, and you may swab wi’ cold, but there’s the blood-stains, and there they’ll bide. . . . The Cap’n had a narrow escape, like many o’ the rest—a shot shaved his ankle like a razor. You should have seen that man’s face in the het o’ battle, his features were as if they’d been cast in steel.’
‘We rather expected a letter from Bob before this.’
‘Well,’ said Jim Cornick, with a smile of toleration, ‘you must make allowances. The truth o’t is, he’s engaged just now at Portsmouth, like a good many of the rest from our ship. . . . ’Tis a very nice young woman that he’s a courting of, and I make no doubt that she’ll be an excellent wife for him.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Loveday, in a warning tone.
‘Courting—wife?’ said the miller.
They instinctively looked towards Anne. Anne had started as if shaken by an invisible hand, and a thick mist of doubt seemed to obscure the intelligence of her eyes. This was but for two or three moments. Very pale, she arose and went right up to the seaman. John gently tried to intercept her, but she passed him by.
‘Do you speak of Robert Loveday as courting a wife?’ she asked, without the least betrayal of emotion.
‘I didn’t see you, miss,’ replied Cornick, turning. ‘Yes, your brother hev’ his eye on a wife, and he deserves one. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Not in the least,’ she said, with a stage laugh. ‘I am interested, naturally. And what is she?’
‘A very nice young master-baker’s daughter, honey. A very wise choice of the young man’s.’
‘Is she fair or dark?’
‘Her hair is rather light.’
‘I like light hair; and her name?’
‘Her name is Caroline. But can it be that my story hurts ye? If so—’
‘Yes, yes,’ said John, interposing anxiously. ‘We don’t care for more just at this moment.’
‘Wedocare for more!’ said Anne vehemently. ‘Tell it all, sailor. That is a very pretty name, Caroline. When are they going to be married?’
‘I don’t know as how the day is settled,’ answered Jim, even now scarcely conscious of the devastation he was causing in one fair breast. ‘But from the rate the courting is scudding along at, I should say it won’t be long first.’
‘If you see him when you go back, give him my best wishes,’ she lightly said, as she moved away. ‘And,’ she added, with solemn bitterness, ‘say that I am glad to hear he is making such good use of the first days of his escape from the Valley of the Shadow of Death!’ She went away, expressing indifference by audibly singing in the distance—
‘Shall we go dance the round, the round, the round,Shall we go dance the round?’
‘Shall we go dance the round, the round, the round,Shall we go dance the round?’
‘Your sister is lively at the news,’ observed Jim Cornick.
‘Yes,’ murmured John gloomily, as he gnawed his lower lip and kept his eyes fixed on the fire.
‘Well,’ continued the man from the Victory, ‘I won’t say that your brother’s intended ha’n’t got some ballast, which is very lucky for’n, as he might have picked up with a girl without a single copper nail. To be sure there was a time we had when we got into port! It was open house for us all!’ And after mentally regarding the scene for a few seconds Jim emptied his cup and rose to go.
The miller was saying some last words to him outside the house, Anne’s voice had hardly ceased singing upstairs, John was standing by the fireplace, and Mrs. Loveday was crossing the room to join her daughter, whose manner had given her some uneasiness, when a noise came from above the ceiling, as of some heavy body falling. Mrs. Loveday rushed to the staircase, saying, ‘Ah, I feared something!’ and she was followed by John.
When they entered Anne’s room, which they both did almost at one moment, they found her lying insensible upon the floor. The trumpet-major, his lips tightly closed, lifted her in his arms, and laid her upon the bed; after which he went back to the door to give room to her mother, who was bending over the girl with some hartshorn.
Presently Mrs. Loveday looked up and said to him, ‘She is only in a faint, John, and her colour is coming back. Now leave her to me; I will be downstairs in a few minutes, and tell you how she is.’
John left the room. When he gained the lower apartment his father was standing by the chimney-piece, the sailor having gone. The trumpet-major went up to the fire, and, grasping the edge of the high chimney-shelf, stood silent.
‘Did I hear a noise when I went out?’ asked the elder, in a tone of misgiving.
‘Yes, you did,’ said John. ‘It was she, but her mother says she is better now. Father,’ he added impetuously, ‘Bob is a worthless blockhead! If there had been any good in him he would have been drowned years ago!’
‘John, John—not too fast,’ said the miller. ‘That’s a hard thing to say of your brother, and you ought to be ashamed of it.’
‘Well, he tries me more than I can bear. Good God! what can a man be made of to go on as he does? Why didn’t he come home; or if he couldn’t get leave why didn’t he write? ’Tis scandalous of him to serve a woman like that!’
‘Gently, gently. The chap hev done his duty as a sailor; and though there might have been something between him and Anne, her mother, in talking it over with me, has said many times that she couldn’t think of their marrying till Bob had settled down in business with me. Folks that gain victories must have a little liberty allowed ’em. Look at the Admiral himself, for that matter.’
John continued looking at the red coals, till hearing Mrs. Loveday’s foot on the staircase, he went to meet her.
‘She is better,’ said Mrs. Loveday; ‘but she won’t come down again to-day.’
Could John have heard what the poor girl was moaning to herself at that moment as she lay writhing on the bed, he would have doubted her mother’s assurance. ‘If he had been dead I could have borne it, but this I cannot bear!’
Meanwhile Sailor Cornick had gone on his way as far as the forking roads, where he met Festus Derriman on foot. The latter, attracted by the seaman’s dress, and by seeing him come from the mill, at once accosted him. Jim, with the greatest readiness, fell into conversation, and told the same story as that he had related at the mill.
‘Bob Loveday going to be married?’ repeated Festus.
‘You all seem struck of a heap wi’ that.’
‘No; I never heard news that pleased me more.’
When Cornick was gone, Festus, instead of passing straight on, halted on the little bridge and meditated. Bob, being now interested elsewhere, would probably not resent the siege of Anne’s heart by another; there could, at any rate, be no further possibility of that looming duel which had troubled the yeoman’s mind ever since his horse-play on Anne at the house on the down. To march into the mill and propose to Mrs. Loveday for Anne before John’s interest could revive in her was, to this hero’s thinking, excellent discretion.
The day had already begun to darken when he entered, and the cheerful fire shone red upon the floor and walls. Mrs. Loveday received him alone, and asked him to take a seat by the chimney-corner, a little of the old hankering for him as a son-in-law having permanently remained with her.
‘Your servant, Mrs. Loveday,’ he said, ‘and I will tell you at once what I come for. You will say that I take time by the forelock when I inform you that it is to push on my long-wished-for alliance wi’ your daughter, as I believe she is now a free woman again.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Derriman,’ said the mother placably. ‘But she is ill at present. I’ll mention it to her when she is better.’
‘Ask her to alter her cruel, cruel resolves against me, on the score of—of my consuming passion for her. In short,’ continued Festus, dropping his parlour language in his warmth, ‘I’ll tell thee what, Dame Loveday, I want the maid, and must have her.’
Mrs. Loveday replied that that was very plain speaking.
‘Well, ’tis. But Bob has given her up. He never meant to marry her. I’ll tell you, Mrs. Loveday, what I have never told a soul before. I was standing upon Budmouth Quay on that very day in last September that Bob set sail, and I heard him say to his brother John that he gave your daughter up.’
‘Then it was very unmannerly of him to trifle with her so,’ said Mrs. Loveday warmly. ‘Who did he give her up to?’
Festus replied with hesitation, ‘He gave her up to John.’
‘To John? How could he give her up to a man already over head and ears in love with that actress woman?’
‘O? You surprise me. Which actress is it?’
‘That Miss Johnson. Anne tells me that he loves her hopelessly.’
Festus arose. Miss Johnson seemed suddenly to acquire high value as a sweetheart at this announcement. He had himself felt a nameless attractiveness in her, and John had done likewise. John crossed his path in all possible ways.
Before the yeoman had replied somebody opened the door, and the firelight shone upon the uniform of the person they discussed. Festus nodded on recognizing him, wished Mrs. Loveday good evening, and went out precipitately.
‘So Bob told you he meant to break off with my Anne when he went away?’ Mrs. Loveday remarked to the trumpet-major. ‘I wish I had known of it before.’
John appeared disturbed at the sudden charge. He murmured that he could not deny it, and then hastily turned from her and followed Derriman, whom he saw before him on the bridge.
‘Derriman!’ he shouted.
Festus started and looked round. ‘Well, trumpet-major,’ he said blandly.
‘When will you have sense enough to mind your own business, and not come here telling things you have heard by sneaking behind people’s backs?’ demanded John hotly. ‘If you can’t learn in any other way, I shall have to pull your ears again, as I did the other day!’
‘Youpull my ears? How can you tell that lie, when you know ’twas somebody else pulled ’em?’
‘O no, no. I pulled your ears, and thrashed you in a mild way.’
‘You’ll swear to it? Surely ’twas another man?’
‘It was in the parlour at the public-house; you were almost in the dark.’ And John added a few details as to the particular blows, which amounted to proof itself.
‘Then I heartily ask your pardon for saying ’twas a lie!’ cried Festus, advancing with extended hand and a genial smile. ‘Sure, if I had known’twasyou, I wouldn’t have insulted you by denying it.’
‘That was why you didn’t challenge me, then?’
‘That was it! I wouldn’t for the world have hurt your nice sense of honour by letting ’ee go unchallenged, if I had known! And now, you see, unfortunately I can’t mend the mistake. So long a time has passed since it happened that the heat of my temper is gone off. I couldn’t oblige ’ee, try how I might, for I am not a man, trumpet-major, that can butcher in cold blood—no, not I, nor you neither, from what I know of ’ee. So, willy-nilly, we must fain let it pass, eh?’
‘We must, I suppose,’ said John, smiling grimly. ‘Who did you think I was, then, that night when I boxed you all round?’
‘No, don’t press me,’ replied the yeoman. ‘I can’t reveal; it would be disgracing myself to show how very wide of the truth the mockery of wine was able to lead my senses. We will let it be buried in eternal mixens of forgetfulness.’
‘As you wish,’ said the trumpet-major loftily. ‘But if you evershouldthink you knew it was me, why, you know where to find me?’ And Loveday walked away.
The instant that he was gone Festus shook his fist at the evening star, which happened to lie in the same direction as that taken by the dragoon.
‘Now for my revenge! Duels? Lifelong disgrace to me if ever I fight with a man of blood below my own! There are other remedies for upper-class souls!. . . Matilda—that’s my way.’
Festus strode along till he reached the Hall, where Cripplestraw appeared gazing at him from under the arch of the porter’s lodge. Derriman dashed open the entrance-hurdle with such violence that the whole row of them fell flat in the mud.
‘Mercy, Maister Festus!’ said Cripplestraw. ‘“Surely,” I says to myself when I see ye a-coming, “surely Maister Festus is fuming like that because there’s no chance of the enemy coming this year after all.”’
‘Cr-r-ripplestraw! I have been wounded to the heart,’ replied Derriman, with a lurid brow.
‘And the man yet lives, and you wants yer horse-pistols instantly? Certainly, Maister F---’
‘No, Cripplestraw, not my pistols, but my new-cut clothes, my heavy gold seals, my silver-topped cane, and my buckles that cost more money than he ever saw! Yes, I must tell somebody, and I’ll tell you, because there’s no other fool near. He loves her heart and soul. He’s poor; she’s tip-top genteel, and not rich. I am rich, by comparison. I’ll court the pretty play-actress, and win her before his eyes.’
‘Play-actress, Maister Derriman?’
‘Yes. I saw her this very day, met her by accident, and spoke to her. She’s still in the town—perhaps because of him. I can meet her at any hour of the day— But I don’t mean to marry her; not I. I will court her for my pastime, and to annoy him. It will be all the more death to him that I don’t want her. Then perhaps he will say to me, “You have taken my one ewe lamb”—meaning that I am the king, and he’s the poor man, as in the church verse; and he’ll beg for mercy when ’tis too late—unless, meanwhile, I shall have tired of my new toy. Saddle the horse, Cripplestraw, to-morrow at ten.’
Full of this resolve to scourge John Loveday to the quick through his passion for Miss Johnson, Festus came out booted and spurred at the time appointed, and set off on his morning ride.
Miss Johnson’s theatrical engagement having long ago terminated, she would have left the Royal watering-place with the rest of the visitors had not matrimonial hopes detained her there. These had nothing whatever to do with John Loveday, as may be imagined, but with a stout, staid boat-builder in Cove Row by the quay, who had shown much interest in her impersonations. Unfortunately this substantial man had not been quite so attentive since the end of the season as his previous manner led her to expect; and it was a great pleasure to the lady to see Mr. Derriman leaning over the harbour bridge with his eyes fixed upon her as she came towards it after a stroll past her elderly wooer’s house.
‘Od take it, ma’am, you didn’t tell me when I saw you last that the tooting man with the blue jacket and lace was yours devoted?’ began Festus.
‘Who do you mean?’ In Matilda’s ever-changing emotional interests, John Loveday was a stale and unprofitable personality.
‘Why, that trumpet-major man.’
‘O! What of him?’
‘Come; he loves you, and you know it, ma’am.’
She knew, at any rate, how to take the current when it served. So she glanced at Festus, folded her lips meaningly, and nodded.
‘I’ve come to cut him out.’
She shook her head, it being unsafe to speak till she knew a little more of the subject.
‘What!’ said Festus, reddening, ‘do you mean to say that you think of him seriously—you, who might look so much higher?’
‘Constant dropping will wear away a stone; and you should only hear his pleading! His handsome face is impressive, and his manners are—O, so genteel! I am not rich; I am, in short, a poor lady of decayed family, who has nothing to boast of but my blood and ancestors, and they won’t find a body in food and clothing!—I hold the world but as the world, Derrimanio—a stage where every man must play a part, and mine a sad one!’ She dropped her eyes thoughtfully and sighed.
‘We will talk of this,’ said Festus, much affected. ‘Let us walk to the Look-out.’
She made no objection, and said, as they turned that way, ‘Mr. Derriman, a long time ago I found something belonging to you; but I have never yet remembered to return it.’ And she drew from her bosom the paper which Anne had dropped in the meadow when eluding the grasp of Festus on that summer day.
‘Zounds, I smell fresh meat!’ cried Festus when he had looked it over. ‘’Tis in my uncle’s writing, and ’tis what I heard him singing on the day the French didn’t come, and afterwards saw him marking in the road. ’Tis something he’s got hid away. Give me the paper, there’s a dear; ’tis worth sterling gold!’
‘Halves, then?’ said Matilda tenderly.
‘Gad, yes—anything!’ replied Festus, blazing into a smile, for she had looked up in her best new manner at the possibility that he might be worth the winning. They went up the steps to the summit of the cliff, and dwindled over it against the sky.
There was no letter from Bob, though December had passed, and the new year was two weeks old. His movements were, however, pretty accurately registered in the papers, which John still brought, but which Anne no longer read. During the second week in December the Victory sailed for Sheerness, and on the 9th of the following January the public funeral of Lord Nelson took place in St. Paul’s.
Then there came a meagre line addressed to the family in general. Bob’s new Portsmouth attachment was not mentioned, but he told them he had been one of the eight-and-forty seamen who walked two-and-two in the funeral procession, and that Captain Hardy had borne the banner of emblems on the same occasion. The crew was soon to be paid off at Chatham, when he thought of returning to Portsmouth for a few days to see a valued friend. After that he should come home.
But the spring advanced without bringing him, and John watched Anne Garland’s desolation with augmenting desire to do something towards consoling her. The old feelings, so religiously held in check, were stimulated to rebelliousness, though they did not show themselves in any direct manner as yet.
The miller, in the meantime, who seldom interfered in such matters, was observed to look meaningly at Anne and the trumpet-major from day to day; and by-and-by he spoke privately to John.
His words were short and to the point: Anne was very melancholy; she had thought too much of Bob. Now ’twas plain that they had lost him for many years to come. Well; he had always felt that of the two he would rather John married her. Now John might settle down there, and succeed where Bob had failed. ‘So if you could get her, my sonny, to think less of him and more of thyself, it would be a good thing for all.’
An inward excitement had risen in John; but he suppressed it and said firmly—
‘Fairness to Bob before everything!’
‘He hev forgot her, and there’s an end on’t.’
‘She’s not forgot him.’
‘Well, well; think it over.’
This discourse was the cause of his penning a letter to his brother. He begged for a distinct statement whether, as John at first supposed, Bob’s verbal renunciation of Anne on the quay had been only a momentary ebullition of friendship, which it would be cruel to take literally; or whether, as seemed now, it had passed from a hasty resolve to a standing purpose, persevered in for his own pleasure, with not a care for the result on poor Anne.
John waited anxiously for the answer, but no answer came; and the silence seemed even more significant than a letter of assurance could have been of his absolution from further support to a claim which Bob himself had so clearly renounced. Thus it happened that paternal pressure, brotherly indifference, and his own released impulse operated in one delightful direction, and the trumpet-major once more approached Anne as in the old time.
But it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months, and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed her. She was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden: she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. She had subsided into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any little action with seeming composure—very different from the flutter of her inexperienced days.
‘Are you never going to turn round?’ he at length asked good-humouredly.
She then did turn, and looked at him for a moment without speaking; a certain suspicion looming in her eyes, as if suggested by his perceptible want of ease.
‘How like summer it is getting to feel, is it not?’ she said.
John admitted that it was getting to feel like summer: and, bending his gaze upon her with an earnestness which no longer left any doubt of his subject, went on to ask—
‘Have you ever in these last weeks thought of how it used to be between us?’
She replied quickly, ‘O, John, you shouldn’t begin that again. I am almost another woman now!’
‘Well, that’s all the more reason why I should, isn’t it?’
Anne looked thoughtfully to the other end of the garden, faintly shaking her head; ‘I don’t quite see it like that,’ she returned.
‘You feel yourself quite free, don’t you?’
‘Quitefree!’ she said instantly, and with proud distinctness; her eyes fell, and she repeated more slowly, ‘Quite free.’ Then her thoughts seemed to fly from herself to him. ‘But you are not?’
‘I am not?’
‘Miss Johnson!’
‘O—that woman! You know as well as I that was all make-up, and that I never for a moment thought of her.’
‘I had an idea you were acting; but I wasn’t sure.’
‘Well, that’s nothing now. Anne, I want to relieve your life; to cheer you in some way; to make some amends for my brother’s bad conduct. If you cannot love me, liking will be well enough. I have thought over every side of it so many times—for months have I been thinking it over—and I am at last sure that I do right to put it to you in this way. That I don’t wrong Bob I am quite convinced. As far as he is concerned we be both free. Had I not been sure of that I would never have spoken. Father wants me to take on the mill, and it will please him if you can give me one little hope; it will make the house go on altogether better if you can think o’ me.’
‘You are generous and good, John,’ she said, as a big round tear bowled helter-skelter down her face and hat-strings.
‘I am not that; I fear I am quite the opposite,’ he said, without looking at her. ‘It would be all gain to me— But you have not answered my question.’
She lifted her eyes. ‘John, I cannot!’ she said, with a cheerless smile. ‘Positively I cannot. Will you make me a promise?’
‘What is it?’
‘I want you to promise first— Yes, it is dreadfully unreasonable,’ she added, in a mild distress. ‘But do promise!’
John by this time seemed to have a feeling that it was all up with him for the present. ‘I promise,’ he said listlessly.
‘It is that you won’t speak to me about this foreverso long,’ she returned, with emphatic kindliness.
‘Very good,’ he replied; ‘very good. Dear Anne, you don’t think I have been unmanly or unfair in starting this anew?’
Anne looked into his face without a smile. ‘You have been perfectly natural,’ she murmured. ‘And so I think have I.’
John, mournfully: ‘You will not avoid me for this, or be afraid of me? I will not break my word. I will not worry you any more.’
‘Thank you, John. You need not have said worry; it isn’t that.’
‘Well, I am very blind and stupid. I have been hurting your heart all the time without knowing it. It is my fate, I suppose. Men who love women the very best always blunder and give more pain than those who love them less.’
Anne laid one of her hands on the other as she softly replied, looking down at them, ‘No one loves me as well as you, John; nobody in the world is so worthy to be loved; and yet I cannot anyhow love you rightly.’ And lifting her eyes, ‘But I do so feel for you that I will try as hard as I can to think about you.’
‘Well, that is something,’ he said, smiling. ‘You say I must not speak about it again for ever so long; how long?’
‘Now that’s not fair,’ Anne retorted, going down the garden, and leaving him alone.
About a week passed. Then one afternoon the miller walked up to Anne indoors, a weighty topic being expressed in his tread.
‘I was so glad, my honey,’ he began, with a knowing smile, ‘to see that from the mill-window last week.’ He flung a nod in the direction of the garden.
Anne innocently inquired what it could be.
‘Jack and you in the garden together,’ he continued laying his hand gently on her shoulder and stroking it. ‘It would so please me, my dear little girl, if you could get to like him better than that weathercock, Master Bob.’
Anne shook her head; not in forcible negation, but to imply a kind of neutrality.
‘Can’t you? Come now,’ said the miller.
She threw back her head with a little laugh of grievance. ‘How you all beset me!’ she expostulated. ‘It makes me feel very wicked in not obeying you, and being faithful—faithful to—’ But she could not trust that side of the subject to words. ‘Why would it please you so much?’ she asked.
‘John is as steady and staunch a fellow as ever blowed a trumpet. I’ve always thought you might do better with him than with Bob. Now I’ve a plan for taking him into the mill, and letting him have a comfortable time o’t after his long knocking about; but so much depends upon you that I must bide a bit till I see what your pleasure is about the poor fellow. Mind, my dear, I don’t want to force ye; I only just ask ye.’
Anne meditatively regarded the miller from under her shady eyelids, the fingers of one hand playing a silent tattoo on her bosom. ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ she answered brusquely, and went away.
But these discourses were not without their effect upon the extremely conscientious mind of Anne. They were, moreover, much helped by an incident which took place one evening in the autumn of this year, when John came to tea. Anne was sitting on a low stool in front of the fire, her hands clasped across her knee. John Loveday had just seated himself on a chair close behind her, and Mrs. Loveday was in the act of filling the teapot from the kettle which hung in the chimney exactly above Anne. The kettle slipped forward suddenly, whereupon John jumped from the chair and put his own two hands over Anne’s just in time to shield them, and the precious knee she clasped, from the jet of scalding water which had directed itself upon that point. The accidental overflow was instantly checked by Mrs. Loveday; but what had come was received by the devoted trumpet-major on the back of his hands.
Anne, who had hardly been aware that he was behind her, started up like a person awakened from a trance. ‘What have you done to yourself, poor John, to keep it off me!’ she cried, looking at his hands.
John reddened emotionally at her words, ‘It is a bit of a scald, that’s all,’ he replied, drawing a finger across the back of one hand, and bringing off the skin by the touch.
‘You are scalded painfully, and I not at all!’ She gazed into his kind face as she had never gazed there before, and when Mrs. Loveday came back with oil and other liniments for the wound Anne would let nobody dress it but herself. It seemed as if her coyness had all gone, and when she had done all that lay in her power she still sat by him. At his departure she said what she had never said to him in her life before: ‘Come again soon!’
In short, that impulsive act of devotion, the last of a series of the same tenor, had been the added drop which finally turned the wheel. John’s character deeply impressed her. His determined steadfastness to his lode star won her admiration, the more especially as that star was herself. She began to wonder more and more how she could have so persistently held out against his advances before Bob came home to renew girlish memories which had by that time got considerably weakened. Could she not, after all, please the miller, and try to listen to John? By so doing she would make a worthy man happy, the only sacrifice being at worst that of her unworthy self, whose future was no longer valuable. ‘As for Bob, the woman is to be pitied who loves him,’ she reflected indignantly, and persuaded herself that, whoever the woman might be, she was not Anne Garland.
After this there was something of recklessness and something of pleasantry in the young girl’s manner of making herself an example of the triumph of pride and common sense over memory and sentiment. Her attitude had been epitomized in her defiant singing at the time she learnt that Bob was not leal and true. John, as was inevitable, came again almost immediately, drawn thither by the sun of her first smile on him, and the words which had accompanied it. And now instead of going off to her little pursuits upstairs, downstairs, across the room, in the corner, or to any place except where he happened to be, as had been her custom hitherto, she remained seated near him, returning interesting answers to his general remarks, and at every opportunity letting him know that at last he had found favour in her eyes.
The day was fine, and they went out of doors, where Anne endeavoured to seat herself on the sloping stone of the window-sill.
‘How good you have become lately,’ said John, standing over her and smiling in the sunlight which blazed against the wall. ‘I fancy you have stayed at home this afternoon on my account.’
‘Perhaps I have,’ she said gaily—
‘“Do whatever we may for him, dame, we cannot do too much!For he’s one that has guarded our land.”
‘“Do whatever we may for him, dame, we cannot do too much!For he’s one that has guarded our land.”
‘And he has done more than that: he has saved me from a dreadful scalding. The back of your hand will not be well for a long time, John, will it?’
He held out his hand to regard its condition, and the next natural thing was to take hers. There was a glow upon his face when he did it: his star was at last on a fair way towards the zenith after its long and weary declination. The least penetrating eye could have perceived that Anne had resolved to let him woo, possibly in her temerity to let him win. Whatever silent sorrow might be locked up in her, it was by this time thrust a long way down from the light.
‘I want you to go somewhere with me if you will,’ he said, still holding her hand.
‘Yes? Where is it?’
He pointed to a distant hill-side which, hitherto green, had within the last few days begun to show scratches of white on its face. ‘Up there,’ he said.
‘I see little figures of men moving about. What are they doing?’
‘Cutting out a huge picture of the king on horseback in the earth of the hill. The king’s head is to be as big as our mill-pond and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre. When shall we go?’
‘Whenever you please,’ said she.
‘John!’ cried Mrs. Loveday from the front door. ‘Here’s a friend come for you.’
John went round, and found his trusty lieutenant, Trumpeter Buck, waiting for him. A letter had come to the barracks for John in his absence, and the trumpeter, who was going for a walk, had brought it along with him. Buck then entered the mill to discuss, if possible, a mug of last year’s mead with the miller; and John proceeded to read his letter, Anne being still round the corner where he had left her. When he had read a few words he turned as pale as a sheet, but he did not move, and perused the writing to the end.
Afterwards he laid his elbow against the wall, and put his palm to his head, thinking with painful intentness. Then he took himself vigorously in hand, as it were, and gradually became natural again. When he parted from Anne to go home with Buck she noticed nothing different in him.
In barracks that evening he read the letter again. It was from Bob; and the agitating contents were these:—
‘Dear John,—I have drifted off from writing till the present time because I have not been clear about my feelings; but I have discovered them at last, and can say beyond doubt that I mean to be faithful to my dearest Anne after all. The fact is, John, I’ve got into a bit of a scrape, and I’ve a secret to tell you about it (which must go no further on any account). On landing last autumn I fell in with a young woman, and we got rather warm as folks do; in short, we liked one another well enough for a while. But I have got into shoal water with her, and have found her to be a terrible take-in. Nothing in her at all—no sense, no niceness, all tantrums and empty noise, John, though she seemed monstrous clever at first. So my heart comes back to its old anchorage. I hope my return to faithfulness will make no difference to you. But as you showed by your looks at our parting that you should not accept my offer to give her up—made in too much haste, as I have since found—I feel that you won’t mind that I have returned to the path of honour. I dare not write to Anne as yet, and please do not let her know a word about the other young woman, or there will be the devil to pay. I shall come home and make all things right, please God. In the meantime I should take it as a kindness, John, if you would keep a brotherly eye upon Anne, and guide her mind back to me. I shall die of sorrow if anybody sets her against me, for my hopes are getting bound up in her again quite strong. Hoping you are jovial, as times go, I am,—Your affectionate brother,Robert.’
‘Dear John,—I have drifted off from writing till the present time because I have not been clear about my feelings; but I have discovered them at last, and can say beyond doubt that I mean to be faithful to my dearest Anne after all. The fact is, John, I’ve got into a bit of a scrape, and I’ve a secret to tell you about it (which must go no further on any account). On landing last autumn I fell in with a young woman, and we got rather warm as folks do; in short, we liked one another well enough for a while. But I have got into shoal water with her, and have found her to be a terrible take-in. Nothing in her at all—no sense, no niceness, all tantrums and empty noise, John, though she seemed monstrous clever at first. So my heart comes back to its old anchorage. I hope my return to faithfulness will make no difference to you. But as you showed by your looks at our parting that you should not accept my offer to give her up—made in too much haste, as I have since found—I feel that you won’t mind that I have returned to the path of honour. I dare not write to Anne as yet, and please do not let her know a word about the other young woman, or there will be the devil to pay. I shall come home and make all things right, please God. In the meantime I should take it as a kindness, John, if you would keep a brotherly eye upon Anne, and guide her mind back to me. I shall die of sorrow if anybody sets her against me, for my hopes are getting bound up in her again quite strong. Hoping you are jovial, as times go, I am,—Your affectionate brother,
Robert.’
When the cold daylight fell upon John’s face, as he dressed himself next morning, the incipient yesterday’s wrinkle in his forehead had become permanently graven there. He had resolved, for the sake of that only brother whom he had nursed as a baby, instructed as a child, and protected and loved always, to pause in his procedure for the present, and at least do nothing to hinder Bob’s restoration to favour, if a genuine, even though temporarily smothered, love for Anne should still hold possession of him. But having arranged to take her to see the excavated figure of the king, he started for Overcombe during the day, as if nothing had occurred to check the smooth course of his love.
‘I am ready to go,’ said Anne, as soon as he arrived.
He paused as if taken aback by her readiness, and replied with much uncertainty, ‘Would it—wouldn’t it be better to put it off till there is less sun?’
The very slightest symptom of surprise arose in her as she rejoined, ‘But the weather may change; or had we better not go at all?’
‘O no!—it was only a thought. We will start at once.’
And along the vale they went, John keeping himself about a yard from her right hand. When the third field had been crossed they came upon half-a-dozen little boys at play.
‘Why don’t he clasp her to his side, like a man?’ said the biggest and rudest boy.
‘Why don’t he clasp her to his side, like a man?’ echoed all the rude smaller boys in a chorus.
The trumpet-major turned, and, after some running, succeeded in smacking two of them with his switch, returning to Anne breathless. ‘I am ashamed they should have insulted you so,’ he said, blushing for her.
‘They said no harm, poor boys,’ she replied reproachfully.
Poor John was dumb with perception. The gentle hint upon which he would have eagerly spoken only one short day ago was now like fire to his wound.
They presently came to some stepping-stones across a brook. John crossed first without turning his head, and Anne, just lifting the skirt of her dress, crossed behind him. When they had reached the other side a village girl and a young shepherd approached the brink to cross. Anne stopped and watched them. The shepherd took a hand of the young girl in each of his own, and walked backward over the stones, facing her, and keeping her upright by his grasp, both of them laughing as they went.
‘What are you staying for, Miss Garland?’ asked John.
‘I was only thinking how happy they are,’ she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a suppressed groan from John.
When they reached the hill they found forty navvies at work removing the dark sod so as to lay bare the chalk beneath. The equestrian figure that their shovels were forming was scarcely intelligible to John and Anne now they were close, and after pacing from the horse’s head down his breast to his hoof, back by way of the king’s bridle-arm, past the bridge of his nose, and into his cocked-hat, Anne said that she had had enough of it, and stepped out of the chalk clearing upon the grass. The trumpet-major had remained all the time in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of his Majesty’s right spur.
‘My shoes are caked with chalk,’ she said as they walked downwards again; and she drew back her dress to look at them. ‘How can I get some of it cleared off?’
‘If you was to wipe them in the long grass there,’ said John, pointing to a spot where the blades were rank and dense, ‘some of it would come off.’ Having said this, he walked on with religious firmness.
Anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own. Panting with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him.
‘I hope it is right now?’ he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder.
‘No, indeed!’ said she. ‘I wanted some assistance—some one to steady me. It is so hard to stand on one foot and wipe the other without support. I was in danger of toppling over, and so gave it up.’
‘Merciful stars, what an opportunity!’ thought the poor fellow while she waited for him to offer help. But his lips remained closed, and she went on with a pouting smile—
‘You seem in such a hurry! Why are you in such a hurry? After all the fine things you have said about—about caring so much for me, and all that, you won’t stop for anything!’
It was too much for John. ‘Upon my heart and life, my dea—’ he began. Here Bob’s letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up to dumbness and gloom as before.
When they reached home Anne sank upon a stool outside the door, fatigued with her excursion. Her first act was to try to pull off her shoe—it was a difficult matter; but John stood beating with his switch the leaves of the creeper on the wall.
‘Mother—David—Molly, or somebody—do come and help me pull off these dirty shoes!’ she cried aloud at last. ‘Nobody helps me in anything!’
‘I am very sorry,’ said John, coming towards her with incredible slowness and an air of unutterable depression.
‘O, I can do withoutyou. David is best,’ she returned, as the old man approached and removed the obnoxious shoes in a trice.
Anne was amazed at this sudden change from devotion to crass indifference. On entering her room she flew to the glass, almost expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore. But it was, if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise. ‘Well!’ she said retrospectively. For the first time since their acqaintance she had this week encouraged him; and for the first time he had shown that encouragement was useless. ‘But perhaps he does not clearly understand,’ she added serenely.
When he next came it was, to her surprise, to bring her newspapers, now for some time discontinued. As soon as she saw them she said, ‘I do not care for newspapers.’
‘The shipping news is very full and long to-day, though the print is rather small.’
‘I take no further interest in the shipping news,’ she replied with cold dignity.
She was sitting by the window, inside the table, and hence when, in spite of her negations, he deliberately unfolded the paper and began to read about the Royal Navy she could hardly rise and go away. With a stoical mien he read on to the end of the report, bringing out the name of Bob’s ship with tremendous force.
‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll hear no more! Let me read to you.’
The trumpet-major sat down. Anne turned to the military news, delivering every detail with much apparent enthusiasm. ‘That’s the subjectIlike!’ she said fervently.
‘But—but Bob is in the navy now, and will most likely rise to be an officer. And then—’
‘What is there like the army?’ she interrupted. ‘There is no smartness about sailors. They waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid battles that no one can form any idea of. There is no science nor stratagem in sea-fights—nothing more than what you see when two rams run their heads together in a field to knock each other down. But in military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are so smart, particularly the horse-soldiers. O, I shall never forget what gallant men you all seemed when you came and pitched your tents on the downs! I like the cavalry better than anything I know; and the dragoons the best of the cavalry—and the trumpeters the best of the dragoons!’
‘O, if it had but come a little sooner!’ moaned John within him. He replied as soon as he could regain self-command, ‘I am glad Bob is in the navy at last—he is so much more fitted for that than the merchant-service—so brave by nature, ready for any daring deed. I have heard ever so much more about his doings on board the Victory. Captain Hardy took special notice that when he—’
‘I don’t want to know anything more about it,’ said Anne impatiently; ‘of course sailors fight; there’s nothing else to do in a ship, since you can’t run away! You may as well fight and be killed as be killed not fighting.’
‘Still it is his character to be careless of himself where the honour of his country is concerned,’ John pleaded. ‘If you had only known him as a boy you would own it. He would always risk his own life to save anybody else’s. Once when a cottage was afire up the lane he rushed in for a baby, although he was only a boy himself, and he had the narrowest escape. We have got his hat now with the hole burnt in it. Shall I get it and show it to you?’
‘No—I don’t wish it. It has nothing to do with me.’ But as he persisted in his course towards the door, she added, ‘Ah! you are leaving because I am in your way. You want to be alone while you read the paper—I will go at once. I did not see that I was interrupting you.’ And she rose as if to retreat.
‘No, no! I would rather be interrupted byyouthan—O, Miss Garland, excuse me! I’ll just speak to father in the mill, now I am here.’
It is scarcely necessary to state that Anne (whose unquestionable gentility amid somewhat homely surroundings has been many times insisted on in the course of this history) was usually the reverse of a woman with a coming-on disposition; but, whether from pique at his manner, or from wilful adherence to a course rashly resolved on, or from coquettish maliciousness in reaction from long depression, or from any other thing,—so it was that she would not let him go.
‘Trumpet-major,’ she said, recalling him.
‘Yes?’ he replied timidly.
‘The bow of my cap-ribbon has come untied, has it not?’ She turned and fixed her bewitching glance upon him.
The bow was just over her forehead, or, more precisely, at the point where the organ of comparison merges in that of benevolence, according to the phrenological theory of Gall. John, thus brought to, endeavoured to look at the bow in a skimming, duck-and-drake fashion, so as to avoid dipping his own glance as far as to the plane of his interrogator’s eyes. ‘It is untied,’ he said, drawing back a little.
She came nearer, and asked, ‘Will you tie it for me, please?’
As there was no help for it, he nerved himself and assented. As her head only reached to his fourth button she necessarily looked up for his convenience, and John began fumbling at the bow. Try as he would it was impossible to touch the ribbon without getting his finger tips mixed with the curls of her forehead.
‘Your hand shakes—ah! you have been walking fast,’ she said.
‘Yes—yes.’
‘Have you almost done it?’ She inquiringly directed her gaze upward through his fingers.
‘No—not yet,’ he faltered in a warm sweat of emotion, his heart going like a flail.
‘Then be quick, please.’
‘Yes, I will, Miss Garland! B-B-Bob is a very good fel—’
‘Not that man’s name to me!’ she interrupted.
John was silent instantly, and nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the ribbon; till his hands once more blundered among the curls, and then touched her forehead.
‘O good God!’ ejaculated the trumpet-major in a whisper, turning away hastily to the corner-cupboard, and resting his face upon his hand.
‘What’s the matter, John?’ said she.
‘I can’t do it!’
‘What?’
‘Tie your cap-ribbon.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you are so—Because I am clumsy, and never could tie a bow.’
‘You are clumsy indeed,’ answered Anne, and went away.
After this she felt injured, for it seemed to show that he rated her happiness as of meaner value than Bob’s; since he had persisted in his idea of giving Bob another chance when she had implied that it was her wish to do otherwise. Could Miss Johnson have anything to do with his firmness? An opportunity of testing him in this direction occurred some days later. She had been up the village, and met John at the mill-door.
‘Have you heard the news? Matilda Johnson is going to be married to young Derriman.’
Anne stood with her back to the sun, and as he faced her, his features were searchingly exhibited. There was no change whatever in them, unless it were that a certain light of interest kindled by her question turned to complete and blank indifference. ‘Well, as times go, it is not a bad match for her,’ he said, with a phlegm which was hardly that of a lover.
John on his part was beginning to find these temptations almost more than he could bear. But being quartered so near to his father’s house it was unnatural not to visit him, especially when at any moment the regiment might be ordered abroad, and a separation of years ensue; and as long as he went there he could not help seeing her.
The year changed from green to gold, and from gold to grey, but little change came over the house of Loveday. During the last twelve months Bob had been occasionally heard of as upholding his country’s honour in Denmark, the West Indies, Gibraltar, Malta, and other places about the globe, till the family received a short letter stating that he had arrived again at Portsmouth. At Portsmouth Bob seemed disposed to remain, for though some time elapsed without further intelligence, the gallant seaman never appeared at Overcombe. Then on a sudden John learnt that Bob’s long-talked-of promotion for signal services rendered was to be an accomplished fact. The trumpet-major at once walked off to Overcombe, and reached the village in the early afternoon. Not one of the family was in the house at the moment, and John strolled onwards over the hill towards Casterbridge, without much thought of direction till, lifting his eyes, he beheld Anne Garland wandering about with a little basket upon her arm.
At first John blushed with delight at the sweet vision; but, recalled by his conscience, the blush of delight was at once mangled and slain. He looked for a means of retreat. But the field was open, and a soldier was a conspicuous object: there was no escaping her.
‘It was kind of you to come,’ she said, with an inviting smile.
‘It was quite by accident,’ he answered, with an indifferent laugh. ‘I thought you was at home.’
Anne blushed and said nothing, and they rambled on together. In the middle of the field rose a fragment of stone wall in the form of a gable, known as Faringdon Ruin; and when they had reached it John paused and politely asked her if she were not a little tired with walking so far. No particular reply was returned by the young lady, but they both stopped, and Anne seated herself on a stone, which had fallen from the ruin to the ground.
‘A church once stood here,’ observed John in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘Yes, I have often shaped it out in my mind,’ she returned. ‘Here where I sit must have been the altar.’
‘True; this standing bit of wall was the chancel end.’
Anne had been adding up her little studies of the trumpet-major’s character, and was surprised to find how the brightness of that character increased in her eyes with each examination. A kindly and gentle sensation was again aroused in her. Here was a neglected heroic man, who, loving her to distraction, deliberately doomed himself to pensive shade to avoid even the appearance of standing in a brother’s way.
‘If the altar stood here, hundreds of people have been made man and wife just there, in past times,’ she said, with calm deliberateness, throwing a little stone on a spot about a yard westward.
John annihilated another tender burst and replied, ‘Yes, this field used to be a village. My grandfather could call to mind when there were houses here. But the squire pulled ’em down, because poor folk were an eyesore to him.’
‘Do you know, John, what you once asked me to do?’ she continued, not accepting the digression, and turning her eyes upon him.
‘In what sort of way?’
‘In the matter of my future life, and yours.’
‘I am afraid I don’t.’
‘John Loveday!’
He turned his back upon her for a moment, that she might not see his face. ‘Ah—I do remember,’ he said at last, in a dry, small, repressed voice.
‘Well—need I say more? Isn’t it sufficient?’
‘It would be sufficient,’ answered the unhappy man. ‘But—’
She looked up with a reproachful smile, and shook her head. ‘That summer,’ she went on, ‘you asked me ten times if you asked me once. I am older now; much more of a woman, you know; and my opinion is changed about some people; especially about one.’
‘O Anne, Anne!’ he burst out as, racked between honour and desire, he snatched up her hand. The next moment it fell heavily to her lap. He had absolutely relinquished it half-way to his lips.
‘I have been thinking lately,’ he said, with preternaturally sudden calmness, ‘that men of the military profession ought not to m—ought to be like St. Paul, I mean.’
‘Fie, John; pretending religion!’ she said sternly. ‘It isn’t that at all.It’s Bob!’
‘Yes!’ cried the miserable trumpet-major. ‘I have had a letter from him to-day.’ He pulled out a sheet of paper from his breast. ‘That’s it! He’s promoted—he’s a lieutenant, and appointed to a sloop that only cruises on our own coast, so that he’ll be at home on leave half his time—he’ll be a gentleman some day, and worthy of you!’
He threw the letter into her lap, and drew back to the other side of the gable-wall. Anne jumped up from her seat, flung away the letter without looking at it, and went hastily on. John did not attempt to overtake her. Picking up the letter, he followed in her wake at a distance of a hundred yards.
But, though Anne had withdrawn from his presence thus precipitately, she never thought more highly of him in her life than she did five minutes afterwards, when the excitement of the moment had passed. She saw it all quite clearly; and his self-sacrifice impressed her so much that the effect was just the reverse of what he had been aiming to produce. The more he pleaded for Bob, the more her perverse generosity pleaded for John. To-day the crisis had come—with what results she had not foreseen.
As soon as the trumpet-major reached the nearest pen-and-ink he flung himself into a seat and wrote wildly to Bob:—
‘Dear Robert,—I write these few lines to let you know that if you want Anne Garland you must come at once—you must come instantly, and post-haste—or she will be gone! Somebody else wants her, and she wants him! It is your last chance, in the opinion of—‘Your faithful brother and well-wisher,‘John.‘P.S.—Glad to hear of your promotion. Tell me the day and I’ll meet the coach.’
‘Dear Robert,—I write these few lines to let you know that if you want Anne Garland you must come at once—you must come instantly, and post-haste—or she will be gone! Somebody else wants her, and she wants him! It is your last chance, in the opinion of—
‘Your faithful brother and well-wisher,‘John.
‘P.S.—Glad to hear of your promotion. Tell me the day and I’ll meet the coach.’