The Trumpet-Major
by
Thomas Hardy

Part 1 out of 7








This etext was prepared by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.





THE TRUMPET-MAJOR
being a tale of the Trumpet-Major, John Loveday, a soldier in the
war with Buonaparte, and Robert, his brother, first mate in the
Merchant Service.

by Thomas Hardy




PREFACE

The present tale is founded more largely on testimony--oral and
written--than any other in this series. The external incidents
which direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of
the recollections of old persons well known to the author in
childhood, but now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of those
scenes. If wholly transcribed their recollections would have filled
a volume thrice the length of 'The Trumpet-Major.'

Down to the middle of this century, and later, there were not
wanting, in the neighbourhood of the places more or less clearly
indicated herein, casual relics of the circumstances amid which the
action moves--our preparations for defence against the threatened
invasion of England by Buonaparte. An outhouse door riddled with
bullet-holes, which had been extemporized by a solitary man as a
target for firelock practice when the landing was hourly expected, a
heap of bricks and clods on a beacon-hill, which had formed the
chimney and walls of the hut occupied by the beacon-keeper,
worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those who
had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the
encampment, fragments of volunteer uniform, and other such lingering
remains, brought to my imagination in early childhood the state of
affairs at the date of the war more vividly than volumes of history
could have done.

Those who have attempted to construct a coherent narrative of past
times from the fragmentary information furnished by survivors, are
aware of the difficulty of ascertaining the true sequence of events
indiscriminately recalled. For this purpose the newspapers of the
date were indispensable. Of other documents consulted I may
mention, for the satisfaction of those who love a true story, that
the 'Address to all Ranks and Descriptions of Englishmen' was
transcribed from an original copy in a local museum; that the
hieroglyphic portrait of Napoleon existed as a print down to the
present day in an old woman's cottage near 'Overcombe;' that the
particulars of the King's doings at his favourite watering-place
were augmented by details from records of the time. The drilling
scene of the local militia received some additions from an account
given in so grave a work as Gifford's 'History of the Wars of the
French Revolution' (London, 1817). But on reference to the History
I find I was mistaken in supposing the account to be advanced as
authentic, or to refer to rural England. However, it does in a
large degree accord with the local traditions of such scenes that I
have heard recounted, times without number, and the system of drill
was tested by reference to the Army Regulations of 1801, and other
military handbooks. Almost the whole narrative of the supposed
landing of the French in the Bay is from oral relation as aforesaid.
Other proofs of the veracity of this chronicle have escaped my
recollection.

T. H.

OCTOBER 1895.



CONTENTS

I. WHAT WAS SEEN FROM THE WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE DOWN
II. SOMEBODY KNOCKS AND COMES IN
III. THE MILL BECOMES AN IMPORTANT CENTRE OF OPERATIONS
IV. WHO WERE PRESENT AT THE MILLER'S LITTLE ENTERTAINMENT
V. THE SONG AND THE STRANGER
VI. OLD MR. DERRIMAN OF OXWELL HALL
VII. HOW THEY TALKED IN THE PASTURES
VIII. ANNE MAKES A CIRCUIT OF THE CAMP
IX. ANNE IS KINDLY FETCHED BY THE TRUMPET MAJOR
X. THE MATCH-MAKING VIRTUES OF A DOUBLE GARDEN
XI. OUR PEOPLE ARE AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE OF ROYALTY
XII. HOW EVERYBODY, GREAT AND SMALL, CLIMBED TO THE TOP OF THE
DOWNS
XIII. THE CONVERSATION IN THE CROWD
XIV. LATER IN THE EVENING OF THE SAME DAY
XV. 'CAPTAIN' BOB LOVEDAY, OF THE MERCHANT SERVICE
XVI. THEY MAKE READY FOR THE ILLUSTRIOUS STRANGER
XVII. TWO FAINTING FITS AND A BEWILDERMENT
XVIII. THE NIGHT AFTER THE ARRIVAL
XIX. MISS JOHNSON'S BEHAVIOUR CAUSES NO LITTLE SURPRISE
XX. HOW THEY LESSENED THE EFFECT OF THE CALAMITY
XXI. 'UPON THE HILL HE TURNED'
XXII. THE TWO HOUSEHOLDS UNITED
XXIII. MILITARY PREPARATIONS ON AN EXTENDED SCALE
XXIV. A LETTER, A VISITOR, AND A TIN BOX
XXV. FESTUS SHOWS HIS LOVE
XXVI. THE ALARM
XXVII. DANGER TO ANNE
XXVIII. ANNIE DOES WONDERS
XXIX. A DISSEMBLER
XXX. AT THE THEATRE ROYAL
XXXI. MIDNIGHT VISITORS
XXXII. DELIVERANCE
XXXIII. A DISCOVERY TURNS THE SCALE
XXXIV. A SPECK ON THE SEA
XXXV. A SAILOR ENTERS
XXXVI. DERRIMAN SEES CHANCES
XXXVII. REACTION
XXXVIII. A DELICATE SITUATION
XXXIX. BOB LOVEDAY STRUTS UP AND DOWN
XL. A CALL ON BUSINESS
XLI. JOHN MARCHES INTO THE NIGHT



I. WHAT WAS SEEN FROM THE WINDOW OVERLOOKING THE DOWN

In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast
amount of soldiering going on in the country was a cause of much
trembling to the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast
two ladies of good report, though unfortunately of limited means.
The elder was a Mrs. Martha Garland, a landscape-painter's widow,
and the other was her only daughter Anne.

Anne was fair, very fair, in a poetical sense; but in complexion she
was of that particular tint between blonde and brunette which is
inconveniently left without a name. Her eyes were honest and
inquiring, her mouth cleanly cut and yet not classical, the middle
point of her upper lip scarcely descending so far as it should have
done by rights, so that at the merest pleasant thought, not to
mention a smile, portions of two or three white teeth were uncovered
whether she would or not. Some people said that this was very
attractive. She was graceful and slender, and, though but little
above five feet in height, could draw herself up to look tall. In
her manner, in her comings and goings, in her 'I'll do this,' or
'I'll do that,' she combined dignity with sweetness as no other girl
could do; and any impressionable stranger youths who passed by were
led to yearn for a windfall of speech from her, and to see at the
same time that they would not get it. In short, beneath all that
was charming and simple in this young woman there lurked a real
firmness, unperceived at first, as the speck of colour lurks
unperceived in the heart of the palest parsley flower.

She wore a white handkerchief to cover her white neck, and a cap on
her head with a pink ribbon round it, tied in a bow at the front.
She had a great variety of these cap-ribbons, the young men being
fond of sending them to her as presents until they fell definitely
in love with a special sweetheart elsewhere, when they left off
doing so. Between the border of her cap and her forehead were
ranged a row of round brown curls, like swallows' nests under eaves.

She lived with her widowed mother in a portion of an ancient
building formerly a manor-house, but now a mill, which, being too
large for his own requirements, the miller had found it convenient
to divide and appropriate in part to these highly respectable
tenants. In this dwelling Mrs. Garland's and Anne's ears were
soothed morning, noon, and night by the music of the mill, the
wheels and cogs of which, being of wood, produced notes that might
have borne in their minds a remote resemblance to the wooden tones
of the stopped diapason in an organ. Occasionally, when the miller
was bolting, there was added to these continuous sounds the cheerful
clicking of the hopper, which did not deprive them of rest except
when it was kept going all night; and over and above all this they
had the pleasure of knowing that there crept in through every
crevice, door, and window of their dwelling, however tightly closed,
a subtle mist of superfine flour from the grinding room, quite
invisible, but making its presence known in the course of time by
giving a pallid and ghostly look to the best furniture. The miller
frequently apologized to his tenants for the intrusion of this
insidious dry fog; but the widow was of a friendly and thankful
nature, and she said that she did not mind it at all, being as it
was, not nasty dirt, but the blessed staff of life.

By good-humour of this sort, and in other ways, Mrs. Garland
acknowledged her friendship for her neighbour, with whom Anne and
herself associated to an extent which she never could have
anticipated when, tempted by the lowness of the rent, they first
removed thither after her husband's death from a larger house at the
other end of the village. Those who have lived in remote places
where there is what is called no society will comprehend the gradual
levelling of distinctions that went on in this case at some
sacrifice of gentility on the part of one household. The widow was
sometimes sorry to find with what readiness Anne caught up some
dialect-word or accent from the miller and his friends; but he was
so good and true-hearted a man, and she so easy-minded, unambitious
a woman, that she would not make life a solitude for fastidious
reasons. More than all, she had good ground for thinking that the
miller secretly admired her, and this added a piquancy to the
situation.


On a fine summer morning, when the leaves were warm under the sun,
and the more industrious bees abroad, diving into every blue and red
cup that could possibly be considered a flower, Anne was sitting at
the back window of her mother's portion of the house, measuring out
lengths of worsted for a fringed rug that she was making, which lay,
about three-quarters finished, beside her. The work, though
chromatically brilliant, was tedious: a hearth-rug was a thing
which nobody worked at from morning to night; it was taken up and
put down; it was in the chair, on the floor, across the hand-rail,
under the bed, kicked here, kicked there, rolled away in the closet,
brought out again, and so on more capriciously perhaps than any
other home-made article. Nobody was expected to finish a rug within
a calculable period, and the wools of the beginning became faded and
historical before the end was reached. A sense of this inherent
nature of worsted-work rather than idleness led Anne to look rather
frequently from the open casement.

Immediately before her was the large, smooth millpond, over-full,
and intruding into the hedge and into the road. The water, with its
flowing leaves and spots of froth, was stealing away, like Time,
under the dark arch, to tumble over the great slimy wheel within.
On the other side of the mill-pond was an open place called the
Cross, because it was three-quarters of one, two lanes and a
cattle-drive meeting there. It was the general rendezvous and arena
of the surrounding village. Behind this a steep slope rose high
into the sky, merging in a wide and open down, now littered with
sheep newly shorn. The upland by its height completely sheltered
the mill and village from north winds, making summers of springs,
reducing winters to autumn temperatures, and permitting myrtle to
flourish in the open air.

The heaviness of noon pervaded the scene, and under its influence
the sheep had ceased to feed. Nobody was standing at the Cross, the
few inhabitants being indoors at their dinner. No human being was
on the down, and no human eye or interest but Anne's seemed to be
concerned with it. The bees still worked on, and the butterflies
did not rest from roving, their smallness seeming to shield them
from the stagnating effect that this turning moment of day had on
larger creatures. Otherwise all was still.

The girl glanced at the down and the sheep for no particular reason;
the steep margin of turf and daisies rising above the roofs,
chimneys, apple-trees, and church tower of the hamlet around her,
bounded the view from her position, and it was necessary to look
somewhere when she raised her head. While thus engaged in working
and stopping her attention was attracted by the sudden rising and
running away of the sheep squatted on the down; and there succeeded
sounds of a heavy tramping over the hard sod which the sheep had
quitted, the tramp being accompanied by a metallic jingle. Turning
her eyes further she beheld two cavalry soldiers on bulky grey
chargers, armed and accoutred throughout, ascending the down at a
point to the left where the incline was comparatively easy. The
burnished chains, buckles, and plates of their trappings shone like
little looking-glasses, and the blue, red, and white about them was
unsubdued by weather or wear.

The two troopers rode proudly on, as if nothing less than crowns and
empires ever concerned their magnificent minds. They reached that
part of the down which lay just in front of her, where they came to
a halt. In another minute there appeared behind them a group
containing some half-dozen more of the same sort. These came on,
halted, and dismounted likewise.

Two of the soldiers then walked some distance onward together, when
one stood still, the other advancing further, and stretching a white
line of tape between them. Two more of the men marched to another
outlying point, where they made marks in the ground. Thus they
walked about and took distances, obviously according to some
preconcerted scheme.

At the end of this systematic proceeding one solitary horseman--a
commissioned officer, if his uniform could be judged rightly at that
distance--rode up the down, went over the ground, looked at what the
others had done, and seemed to think that it was good. And then the
girl heard yet louder tramps and clankings, and she beheld rising
from where the others had risen a whole column of cavalry in
marching order. At a distance behind these came a cloud of dust
enveloping more and more troops, their arms and accoutrements
reflecting the sun through the haze in faint flashes, stars, and
streaks of light. The whole body approached slowly towards the
plateau at the top of the down.

Anne threw down her work, and letting her eyes remain on the nearing
masses of cavalry, the worsteds getting entangled as they would,
said, 'Mother, mother; come here! Here's such a fine sight! What
does it mean? What can they be going to do up there?'

The mother thus invoked ran upstairs and came forward to the window.
She was a woman of sanguine mouth and eye, unheroic manner, and
pleasant general appearance; a little more tarnished as to surface,
but not much worse in contour than the girl herself.

Widow Garland's thoughts were those of the period. 'Can it be the
French,' she said, arranging herself for the extremest form of
consternation. 'Can that arch-enemy of mankind have landed at
last?' It should be stated that at this time there were two
arch-enemies of mankind--Satan as usual, and Buonaparte, who had
sprung up and eclipsed his elder rival altogether. Mrs. Garland
alluded, of course, to the junior gentleman.

'It cannot be he,' said Anne. 'Ah! there's Simon Burden, the man
who watches at the beacon. He'll know!'

She waved her hand to an aged form of the same colour as the road,
who had just appeared beyond the mill-pond, and who, though active,
was bowed to that degree which almost reproaches a feeling observer
for standing upright. The arrival of the soldiery had drawn him out
from his drop of drink at the 'Duke of York' as it had attracted
Anne. At her call he crossed the mill-bridge, and came towards the
window.

Anne inquired of him what it all meant; but Simon Burden, without
answering, continued to move on with parted gums, staring at the
cavalry on his own private account with a concern that people often
show about temporal phenomena when such matters can affect them but
a short time longer. 'You'll walk into the millpond!' said Anne.
'What are they doing? You were a soldier many years ago, and ought
to know.'

'Don't ask me, Mis'ess Anne,' said the military relic, depositing
his body against the wall one limb at a time. 'I were only in the
foot, ye know, and never had a clear understanding of horses. Ay, I
be a old man, and of no judgment now.' Some additional pressure,
however, caused him to search further in his worm-eaten magazine of
ideas, and he found that he did know in a dim irresponsible way.
The soldiers must have come there to camp: those men they had seen
first were the markers: they had come on before the rest to measure
out the ground. He who had accompanied them was the quartermaster.
'And so you see they have got all the lines marked out by the time
the regiment have come up,' he added. 'And then they will--
well-a-deary! who'd ha' supposed that Overcombe would see such a day
as this!'

'And then they will--'

'Then-- Ah, it's gone from me again!' said Simon. 'O, and then they
will raise their tents, you know, and picket their horses. That was
it; so it was.'

By this time the column of horse had ascended into full view, and
they formed a lively spectacle as they rode along the high ground in
marching order, backed by the pale blue sky, and lit by the
southerly sun. Their uniform was bright and attractive; white
buckskin pantaloons, three-quarter boots, scarlet shakos set off
with lace, mustachios waxed to a needle point; and above all, those
richly ornamented blue jackets mantled with the historic pelisse--
that fascination to women, and encumbrance to the wearers
themselves.

''Tis the York Hussars!' said Simon Burden, brightening like a dying
ember fanned. 'Foreigners to a man, and enrolled long since my
time. But as good hearty comrades, they say, as you'll find in the
King's service.'

'Here are more and different ones,' said Mrs. Garland.

Other troops had, during the last few minutes, been ascending the
down at a remoter point, and now drew near. These were of different
weight and build from the others; lighter men, in helmet hats, with
white plumes.

'I don't know which I like best,' said Anne. 'These, I think, after
all.'

Simon, who had been looking hard at the latter, now said that they
were the --th Dragoons.

'All Englishmen they,' said the old man. 'They lay at Budmouth
barracks a few years ago.'

'They did. I remember it,' said Mrs. Garland.

'And lots of the chaps about here 'listed at the time,' said Simon.
'I can call to mind that there was--ah, 'tis gone from me again!
However, all that's of little account now.'

The dragoons passed in front of the lookers-on as the others had
done, and their gay plumes, which had hung lazily during the ascent,
swung to northward as they reached the top, showing that on the
summit a fresh breeze blew. 'But look across there,' said Anne.
There had entered upon the down from another direction several
battalions of foot, in white kerseymere breeches and cloth gaiters.
They seemed to be weary from a long march, the original black of
their gaiters and boots being whity-brown with dust. Presently came
regimental waggons, and the private canteen carts which followed at
the end of a convoy.

The space in front of the mill-pond was now occupied by nearly all
the inhabitants of the village, who had turned out in alarm, and
remained for pleasure, their eyes lighted up with interest in what
they saw; for trappings and regimentals, war horses and men, in
towns an attraction, were here almost a sublimity.

The troops filed to their lines, dismounted, and in quick time took
off their accoutrements, rolled up their sheep-skins, picketed and
unbitted their horses, and made ready to erect the tents as soon as
they could be taken from the waggons and brought forward. When this
was done, at a given signal the canvases flew up from the sod; and
thenceforth every man had a place in which to lay his head.

Though nobody seemed to be looking on but the few at the window and
in the village street, there were, as a matter of fact, many eyes
converging upon that military arrival in its high and conspicuous
position, not to mention the glances of birds and other wild
creatures. Men in distant gardens, women in orchards and at
cottage-doors, shepherds on remote hills, turnip-hoers in blue-green
enclosures miles away, captains with spy-glasses out at sea, were
regarding the picture keenly. Those three or four thousand men of
one machine-like movement, some of them swashbucklers by nature;
others, doubtless, of a quiet shop-keeping disposition who had
inadvertently got into uniform--all of them had arrived from nobody
knew where, and hence were matter of great curiosity. They seemed
to the mere eye to belong to a different order of beings from those
who inhabited the valleys below. Apparently unconscious and
careless of what all the world was doing elsewhere, they remained
picturesquely engrossed in the business of making themselves a
habitation on the isolated spot which they had chosen.

Mrs. Garland was of a festive and sanguine turn of mind, a woman
soon set up and soon set down, and the coming of the regiments quite
excited her. She thought there was reason for putting on her best
cap, thought that perhaps there was not; that she would hurry on the
dinner and go out in the afternoon; then that she would, after all,
do nothing unusual, nor show any silly excitements whatever, since
they were unbecoming in a mother and a widow. Thus circumscribing
her intentions till she was toned down to an ordinary person of
forty, Mrs. Garland accompanied her daughter downstairs to dine,
saying, 'Presently we will call on Miller Loveday, and hear what he
thinks of it all.'



II. SOMEBODY KNOCKS AND COMES IN

Miller Loveday was the representative of an ancient family of
corn-grinders whose history is lost in the mists of antiquity. His
ancestral line was contemporaneous with that of De Ros, Howard, and
De La Zouche; but, owing to some trifling deficiency in the
possessions of the house of Loveday, the individual names and
intermarriages of its members were not recorded during the Middle
Ages, and thus their private lives in any given century were
uncertain. But it was known that the family had formed matrimonial
alliances with farmers not so very small, and once with a gentleman-
tanner, who had for many years purchased after their death the
horses of the most aristocratic persons in the county--fiery steeds
that earlier in their career had been valued at many hundred
guineas.

It was also ascertained that Mr. Loveday's great-grandparents had
been eight in number, and his great-great-grandparents sixteen,
every one of whom reached to years of discretion: at every stage
backwards his sires and gammers thus doubled and doubled till they
became a vast body of Gothic ladies and gentlemen of the rank known
as ceorls or villeins, full of importance to the country at large,
and ramifying throughout the unwritten history of England. His
immediate father had greatly improved the value of their residence
by building a new chimney, and setting up an additional pair of
millstones.

Overcombe Mill presented at one end the appearance of a hard-worked
house slipping into the river, and at the other of an idle, genteel
place, half-cloaked with creepers at this time of the year, and
having no visible connexion with flour. It had hips instead of
gables, giving it a round-shouldered look, four chimneys with no
smoke coming out of them, two zigzag cracks in the wall, several
open windows, with a looking-glass here and there inside, showing
its warped back to the passer-by; snowy dimity curtains waving in
the draught; two mill doors, one above the other, the upper enabling
a person to step out upon nothing at a height of ten feet from the
ground; a gaping arch vomiting the river, and a lean, long-nosed
fellow looking out from the mill doorway, who was the hired grinder,
except when a bulging fifteen stone man occupied the same place,
namely, the miller himself.

Behind the mill door, and invisible to the mere wayfarer who did not
visit the family, were chalked addition and subtraction sums, many
of them originally done wrong, and the figures half rubbed out and
corrected, noughts being turned into nines, and ones into twos.
These were the miller's private calculations. There were also
chalked in the same place rows and rows of strokes like open
palings, representing the calculations of the grinder, who in his
youthful ciphering studies had not gone so far as Arabic figures.

In the court in front were two worn-out millstones, made useful
again by being let in level with the ground. Here people stood to
smoke and consider things in muddy weather; and cats slept on the
clean surfaces when it was hot. In the large stubbard-tree at the
corner of the garden was erected a pole of larch fir, which the
miller had bought with others at a sale of small timber in Damer's
Wood one Christmas week. It rose from the upper boughs of the tree
to about the height of a fisherman's mast, and on the top was a vane
in the form of a sailor with his arm stretched out. When the sun
shone upon this figure it could be seen that the greater part of his
countenance was gone, and the paint washed from his body so far as
to reveal that he had been a soldier in red before he became a
sailor in blue. The image had, in fact, been John, one of our
coming characters, and was then turned into Robert, another of them.
This revolving piece of statuary could not, however, be relied on as
a vane, owing to the neighbouring hill, which formed variable
currents in the wind.

The leafy and quieter wing of the mill-house was the part occupied
by Mrs. Garland and her daughter, who made up in summer-time for the
narrowness of their quarters by overflowing into the garden on
stools and chairs. The parlour or dining-room had a stone floor--a
fact which the widow sought to disguise by double carpeting, lest
the standing of Anne and herself should be lowered in the public
eye. Here now the mid-day meal went lightly and mincingly on, as it
does where there is no greedy carnivorous man to keep the dishes
about, and was hanging on the close when somebody entered the
passage as far as the chink of the parlour door, and tapped. This
proceeding was probably adopted to kindly avoid giving trouble to
Susan, the neighbour's pink daughter, who helped at Mrs. Garland's
in the mornings, but was at that moment particularly occupied in
standing on the water-butt and gazing at the soldiers, with an
inhaling position of the mouth and circular eyes.

There was a flutter in the little dining-room--the sensitiveness of
habitual solitude makes hearts beat for preternaturally small
reasons--and a guessing as to who the visitor might be. It was some
military gentleman from the camp perhaps? No; that was impossible.
It was the parson? No; he would not come at dinner-time. It was
the well-informed man who travelled with drapery and the best
Birmingham earrings? Not at all; his time was not till Thursday at
three. Before they could think further the visitor moved forward
another step, and the diners got a glimpse of him through the same
friendly chink that had afforded him a view of the Garland
dinner-table.

'O! It is only Loveday.'

This approximation to nobody was the miller above mentioned, a hale
man of fifty-five or sixty--hale all through, as many were in those
days, and not merely veneered with purple by exhilarating victuals
and drinks, though the latter were not at all despised by him. His
face was indeed rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come
from the mill. It was capable of immense changes of expression:
mobility was its essence, a roll of flesh forming a buttress to his
nose on each side, and a deep ravine lying between his lower lip and
the tumulus represented by his chin. These fleshy lumps moved
stealthily, as if of their own accord, whenever his fancy was
tickled.

His eyes having lighted on the table-cloth, plates, and viands, he
found himself in a position which had a sensible awkwardness for a
modest man who always liked to enter only at seasonable times the
presence of a girl of such pleasantly soft ways as Anne Garland, she
who could make apples seem like peaches, and throw over her
shillings the glamour of guineas when she paid him for flour.

'Dinner is over, neighbour Loveday; please come in,' said the widow,
seeing his case. The miller said something about coming in
presently; but Anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her
lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite
lapsing into one--her habitual manner when speaking.

Loveday took off his low-crowned hat and advanced. He had not come
about pigs or fowls this time. 'You have been looking out, like the
rest o' us, no doubt, Mrs. Garland, at the mampus of soldiers that
have come upon the down? Well, one of the horse regiments is the --
th Dragoons, my son John's regiment, you know.'

The announcement, though it interested them, did not create such an
effect as the father of John had seemed to anticipate; but Anne, who
liked to say pleasant things, replied, 'The dragoons looked nicer
than the foot, or the German cavalry either.'

'They are a handsome body of men,' said the miller in a
disinterested voice. 'Faith! I didn't know they were coming, though
it may be in the newspaper all the time. But old Derriman keeps it
so long that we never know things till they be in everybody's
mouth.'

This Derriman was a squireen living near, who was chiefly
distinguished in the present warlike time by having a nephew in the
yeomanry.

'We were told that the yeomanry went along the turnpike road
yesterday,' said Anne; 'and they say that they were a pretty sight,
and quite soldierly.'

'Ah! well--they be not regulars,' said Miller Loveday, keeping back
harsher criticism as uncalled for. But inflamed by the arrival of
the dragoons, which had been the exciting cause of his call, his
mind would not go to yeomanry. 'John has not been home these five
years,' he said.

'And what rank does he hold now?' said the widow.

'He's trumpet-major, ma'am; and a good musician.' The miller, who
was a good father, went on to explain that John had seen some
service, too. He had enlisted when the regiment was lying in this
neighbourhood, more than eleven years before, which put his father
out of temper with him, as he had wished him to follow on at the
mill. But as the lad had enlisted seriously, and as he had often
said that he would be a soldier, the miller had thought that he
would let Jack take his chance in the profession of his choice.

Loveday had two sons, and the second was now brought into the
conversation by a remark of Anne's that neither of them seemed to
care for the miller's business.

'No,' said Loveday in a less buoyant tone. 'Robert, you see, must
needs go to sea.'

'He is much younger than his brother?' said Mrs. Garland.

About four years, the miller told her. His soldier son was
two-and-thirty, and Bob was twenty-eight. When Bob returned from
his present voyage, he was to be persuaded to stay and assist as
grinder in the mill, and go to sea no more.

'A sailor-miller!' said Anne.

'O, he knows as much about mill business as I do,' said Loveday; 'he
was intended for it, you know, like John. But, bless me!' he
continued, 'I am before my story. I'm come more particularly to ask
you, ma'am, and you, Anne my honey, if you will join me and a few
friends at a leetle homely supper that I shall gi'e to please the
chap now he's come? I can do no less than have a bit of a randy, as
the saying is, now that he's here safe and sound.'

Mrs. Garland wanted to catch her daughter's eye; she was in some
doubt about her answer. But Anne's eye was not to be caught, for
she hated hints, nods, and calculations of any kind in matters which
should be regulated by impulse; and the matron replied, 'If so be
'tis possible, we'll be there. You will tell us the day?'

He would, as soon as he had seen son John. ''Twill be rather
untidy, you know, owing to my having no womenfolks in the house; and
my man David is a poor dunder-headed feller for getting up a feast.
Poor chap! his sight is bad, that's true, and he's very good at
making the beds, and oiling the legs of the chairs and other
furniture, or I should have got rid of him years ago.'

'You should have a woman to attend to the house, Loveday,' said the
widow.

'Yes, I should, but--. Well, 'tis a fine day, neighbours. Hark! I
fancy I hear the noise of pots and pans up at the camp, or my ears
deceive me. Poor fellows, they must be hungry! Good day t'ye,
ma'am.' And the miller went away.

All that afternoon Overcombe continued in a ferment of interest in
the military investment, which brought the excitement of an invasion
without the strife. There were great discussions on the merits and
appearance of the soldiery. The event opened up, to the girls
unbounded possibilities of adoring and being adored, and to the
young men an embarrassment of dashing acquaintances which quite
superseded falling in love. Thirteen of these lads incontinently
stated within the space of a quarter of an hour that there was
nothing in the world like going for a soldier. The young women
stated little, but perhaps thought the more; though, in justice,
they glanced round towards the encampment from the corners of their
blue and brown eyes in the most demure and modest manner that could
be desired.

In the evening the village was lively with soldiers' wives; a tree
full of starlings would not have rivalled the chatter that was going
on. These ladies were very brilliantly dressed, with more regard
for colour than for material. Purple, red, and blue bonnets were
numerous, with bunches of cocks' feathers; and one had on an
Arcadian hat of green sarcenet, turned up in front to show her cap
underneath. It had once belonged to an officer's lady, and was not
so much stained, except where the occasional storms of rain,
incidental to a military life, had caused the green to run and
stagnate in curious watermarks like peninsulas and islands. Some of
the prettiest of these butterfly wives had been fortunate enough to
get lodgings in the cottages, and were thus spared the necessity of
living in huts and tents on the down. Those who had not been so
fortunate were not rendered more amiable by the success of their
sisters-in-arms, and called them names which brought forth retorts
and rejoinders; till the end of these alternative remarks seemed
dependent upon the close of the day.

One of these new arrivals, who had a rosy nose and a slight
thickness of voice, which, as Anne said, she couldn't help, poor
thing, seemed to have seen so much of the world, and to have been in
so many campaigns, that Anne would have liked to take her into their
own house, so as to acquire some of that practical knowledge of the
history of England which the lady possessed, and which could not be
got from books. But the narrowness of Mrs. Garland's rooms
absolutely forbade this, and the houseless treasury of experience
was obliged to look for quarters elsewhere.

That night Anne retired early to bed. The events of the day,
cheerful as they were in themselves, had been unusual enough to give
her a slight headache. Before getting into bed she went to the
window, and lifted the white curtains that hung across it. The moon
was shining, though not as yet into the valley, but just peeping
above the ridge of the down, where the white cones of the encampment
were softly touched by its light. The quarter-guard and foremost
tents showed themselves prominently; but the body of the camp, the
officers' tents, kitchens, canteen, and appurtenances in the rear
were blotted out by the ground, because of its height above her.
She could discern the forms of one or two sentries moving to and fro
across the disc of the moon at intervals. She could hear the
frequent shuffling and tossing of the horses tied to the pickets;
and in the other direction the miles-long voice of the sea,
whispering a louder note at those points of its length where
hampered in its ebb and flow by some jutting promontory or group of
boulders. Louder sounds suddenly broke this approach to silence;
they came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the
right by the camp of the Hanoverians, and further on still by the
body of infantry. It was tattoo. Feeling no desire to sleep, she
listened yet longer, looked at Charles's Wain swinging over the
church tower, and the moon ascending higher and higher over the
right-hand streets of tents, where, instead of parade and bustle,
there was nothing going on but snores and dreams, the tired soldiers
lying by this time under their proper canvases, radiating like
spokes from the pole of each tent.

At last Anne gave up thinking, and retired like the rest. The night
wore on, and, except the occasional 'All's well' of the sentries, no
voice was heard in the camp or in the village below.



III. THE MILL BECOMES AN IMPORTANT CENTRE OF OPERATIONS

The next morning Miss Garland awoke with an impression that
something more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon
as she could clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they
might be, lay not far away from her bedroom window. The sounds were
chiefly those of pickaxes and shovels. Anne got up, and, lifting
the corner of the curtain about an inch, peeped out.

A number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path
down the incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the
house, and judging from the quantity of work already got through
they must have begun very early. Squads of men were working at
several equidistant points in the proposed pathway, and by the time
that Anne had dressed herself each section of the length had been
connected with those above and below it, so that a continuous and
easy track was formed from the crest of the down to the bottom of
the steep.

The down rested on a bed of solid chalk, and the surface exposed by
the roadmakers formed a white ribbon, serpenting from top to bottom.

Then the relays of working soldiers all disappeared, and, not long
after, a troop of dragoons in watering order rode forward at the top
and began to wind down the new path. They came lower and closer,
and at last were immediately beneath her window, gathering
themselves up on the space by the mill-pond. A number of the horses
entered it at the shallow part, drinking and splashing and tossing
about. Perhaps as many as thirty, half of them with riders on their
backs, were in the water at one time; the thirsty animals drank,
stamped, flounced, and drank again, letting the clear, cool water
dribble luxuriously from their mouths. Miller Loveday was looking
on from over his garden hedge, and many admiring villagers were
gathered around.

Gazing up higher, Anne saw other troops descending by the new road
from the camp, those which had already been to the pond making room
for these by withdrawing along the village lane and returning to the
top by a circuitous route.

Suddenly the miller exclaimed, as in fulfilment of expectation, 'Ah,
John, my boy; good morning!' And the reply of 'Morning, father,'
came from a well-mounted soldier near him, who did not, however,
form one of the watering party. Anne could not see his face very
clearly, but she had no doubt that this was John Loveday.

There were tones in the voice which reminded her of old times, those
of her very infancy, when Johnny Loveday had been top boy in the
village school, and had wanted to learn painting of her father. The
deeps and shallows of the mill-pond being better known to him than
to any other man in the camp, he had apparently come down on that
account, and was cautioning some of the horsemen against riding too
far in towards the mill-head.

Since her childhood and his enlistment Anne had seen him only once,
and then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. His
figure was not much changed from what it had been; but the many
sunrises and sunsets which had passed since that day, developing her
from a comparative child to womanhood, had abstracted some of his
angularities, reddened his skin, and given him a foreign look. It
was interesting to see what years of training and service had done
for this man. Few would have supposed that the white and the blue
coats of miller and soldier covered the forms of father and son.

Before the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a
body by Miller Loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this
being a plot lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the
water-side. It was just the time of year when cherries are ripe,
and hang in clusters under their dark leaves. While the troopers
loitered on their horses, and chatted to the miller across the
stream, he gathered bunches of the fruit, and held them up over the
garden hedge for the acceptance of anybody who would have them;
whereupon the soldiers rode into the water to where it had washed
holes in the garden bank, and, reining their horses there, caught
the cherries in their forage-caps, or received bunches of them on
the ends of their switches, with the dignified laugh that became
martial men when stooping to slightly boyish amusement. It was a
cheerful, careless, unpremeditated half-hour, which returned like
the scent of a flower to the memories of some of those who enjoyed
it, even at a distance of many years after, when they lay wounded
and weak in foreign lands.

Then dragoons and horses wheeled off as the others had done; and
troops of the German Legion next came down and entered in panoramic
procession the space below Anne's eyes, as if on purpose to gratify
her. These were notable by their mustachios, and queues wound
tightly with brown ribbon to the level of their broad
shoulder-blades. They were charmed, as the others had been, by the
head and neck of Miss Garland in the little square window
overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with devoted
foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers that the modest
girl suddenly withdrew herself into the room, and had a private
blush between the chest of drawers and the washing-stand.

When she came downstairs her mother said, 'I have been thinking what
I ought to wear to Miller Loveday's to-night.'

'To Miller Loveday's?' said Anne.

'Yes. The party is to-night. He has been in here this morning to
tell me that he has seen his son, and they have fixed this evening.'

'Do you think we ought to go, mother?' said Anne slowly, and looking
at the smaller features of the window-flowers.

'Why not?' said Mrs. Garland.

'He will only have men there except ourselves, will he? And shall
we be right to go alone among 'em?'

Anne had not recovered from the ardent gaze of the gallant York
Hussars, whose voices reached her even now in converse with Loveday.

'La, Anne, how proud you are!' said Widow Garland. 'Why, isn't he
our nearest neighbour and our landlord? and don't he always fetch
our faggots from the wood, and keep us in vegetables for next to
nothing?'

'That's true,' said Anne.

'Well, we can't be distant with the man. And if the enemy land next
autumn, as everybody says they will, we shall have quite to depend
upon the miller's waggon and horses. He's our only friend.'

'Yes, so he is,' said Anne. 'And you had better go, mother; and
I'll stay at home. They will be all men; and I don't like going.'

Mrs. Garland reflected. 'Well, if you don't want to go, I don't,'
she said. 'Perhaps, as you are growing up, it would be better to
stay at home this time. Your father was a professional man,
certainly.' Having spoken as a mother, she sighed as a woman.

'Why do you sigh, mother?'

'You are so prim and stiff about everything.'

'Very well--we'll go.'

'O no--I am not sure that we ought. I did not promise, and there
will be no trouble in keeping away.'

Anne apparently did not feel certain of her own opinion, and,
instead of supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down,
and abstractedly brought her hands together on her bosom, till her
fingers met tip to tip.

As the day advanced the young woman and her mother became aware that
great preparations were in progress in the miller's wing of the
house. The partitioning between the Lovedays and the Garlands was
not very thorough, consisting in many cases of a simple screwing up
of the doors in the dividing walls; and thus when the mill began any
new performances they proclaimed themselves at once in the more
private dwelling. The smell of Miller Loveday's pipe came down Mrs.
Garland's chimney of an evening with the greatest regularity. Every
time that he poked his fire they knew from the vehemence or
deliberateness of the blows the precise state of his mind; and when
he wound his clock on Sunday nights the whirr of that monitor
reminded the widow to wind hers. This transit of noises was most
perfect where Loveday's lobby adjoined Mrs. Garland's pantry; and
Anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment,
enjoyed the privilege of hearing the visitors arrive and of catching
stray sounds and words without the connecting phrases that made them
entertaining, to judge from the laughter they evoked. The arrivals
passed through the house and went into the garden, where they had
tea in a large summer-house, an occasional blink of bright colour,
through the foliage, being all that was visible of the assembly from
Mrs. Garland's windows. When it grew dusk they all could be heard
coming indoors to finish the evening in the parlour.

Then there was an intensified continuation of the above-mentioned
signs of enjoyment, talkings and haw-haws, runnings upstairs and
runnings down, a slamming of doors and a clinking of cups and
glasses; till the proudest adjoining tenant without friends on his
own side of the partition might have been tempted to wish for
entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to know the cause of these
fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the guests were really so
numerous, and the observations so very amusing as they seemed.

The stagnation of life on the Garland side of the party-wall began
to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past
nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had
resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe,
mother, that you are wishing you had gone.'

'I own to feeling that it would have been very cheerful if we had
joined in,' said Mrs. Garland, in a hankering tone. 'I was rather
too nice in listening to you and not going. The parson never calls
upon us except in his spiritual capacity. Old Derriman is hardly
genteel; and there's nobody left to speak to. Lonely people must
accept what company they can get.'

'Or do without it altogether.'

'That's not natural, Anne; and I am surprised to hear a young woman
like you say such a thing. Nature will not be stifled in that way.
. . .' (Song and powerful chorus heard through partition.) 'I
declare the room on the other side of the wall seems quite a
paradise compared with this.'

'Mother, you are quite a girl,' said Anne in slightly superior
accents. 'Go in and join them by all means.'

'O no--not now,' said her mother, resignedly shaking her head. 'It
is too late now. We ought to have taken advantage of the
invitation. They would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no
real business there, and the miller would say, with his broad smile,
"Ah, you be obliged to come round."'

While the sociable and unaspiring Mrs. Garland continued thus to
pass the evening in two places, her body in her own house and her
mind in the miller's, somebody knocked at the door, and directly
after the elder Loveday himself was admitted to the room. He was
dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such
occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red
waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled
shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well in Mrs. Martha
Garland's eyes.

'Your servant, ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of
propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher
costume. 'Now, begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis
unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the
same roof making merry without ye. Your husband, poor man--lovely
picters that a' would make to be sure--would have been in with us
long ago if he had been in your place. I can take no nay from ye,
upon my honour. You and maidy Anne must come in, if it be only for
half-an-hour. John and his friends have got passes till twelve
o'clock to-night, and, saving a few of our own village folk, the
lowest visitor present is a very genteel German corporal. If you
should hae any misgivings on the score of respectability, ma'am,
we'll pack off the underbred ones into the back kitchen.'

Widow Garland and Anne looked yes at each other after this appeal.

'We'll follow you in a few minutes,' said the elder, smiling; and
she rose with Anne to go upstairs.

'No, I'll wait for ye,' said the miller doggedly; 'or perhaps you'll
alter your mind again.'

While the mother and daughter were upstairs dressing, and saying
laughingly to each other, 'Well, we must go now,' as if they hadn't
wished to go all the evening, other steps were heard in the passage;
and the miller cried from below, 'Your pardon, Mrs. Garland; but my
son John has come to help fetch ye. Shall I ask him in till ye be
ready?'

'Certainly; I shall be down in a minute,' screamed Anne's mother in
a slanting voice towards the staircase.

When she descended, the outline of the trumpet-major appeared
half-way down the passage. 'This is John,' said the miller simply.
'John, you can mind Mrs. Martha Garland very well?'

'Very well, indeed,' said the dragoon, coming in a little further.
'I should have called to see her last time, but I was only home a
week. How is your little girl, ma'am?'

Mrs. Garland said Anne was quite well. 'She is grown-up now. She
will be down in a moment.'

There was a slight noise of military heels without the door, at
which the trumpet-major went and put his head outside, and said,
'All right--coming in a minute,' when voices in the darkness
replied, 'No hurry.'

'More friends?' said Mrs. Garland.

'O, it is only Buck and Jones come to fetch me,' said the soldier.
'Shall I ask 'em in a minute, Mrs Garland, ma'am?'

'O yes,' said the lady; and the two interesting forms of Trumpeter
Buck and Saddler-sergeant Jones then came forward in the most
friendly manner; whereupon other steps were heard without, and it
was discovered that Sergeant-master-tailor Brett and Farrier-
extraordinary Johnson were outside, having come to fetch Messrs.
Buck and Jones, as Buck and Jones had come to fetch the
trumpet-major.

As there seemed a possibility of Mrs. Garland's small passage being
choked up with human figures personally unknown to her, she was
relieved to hear Anne coming downstairs.

'Here's my little girl,' said Mrs. Garland, and the trumpet-major
looked with a sort of awe upon the muslin apparition who came
forward, and stood quite dumb before her. Anne recognized him as
the trooper she had seen from her window, and welcomed him kindly.
There was something in his honest face which made her feel instantly
at home with him.

At this frankness of manner Loveday--who was not a ladies' man--
blushed, and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a
sentence which had no end, and showed quite a boy's embarrassment.
Recovering himself, he politely offered his arm, which Anne took
with a very pretty grace. He conducted her through his comrades,
who glued themselves perpendicularly to the wall to let her pass,
and then they went out of the door, her mother following with the
miller, and supported by the body of troopers, the latter walking
with the usual cavalry gait, as if their thighs were rather too long
for them. Thus they crossed the threshold of the mill-house and up
the passage, the paving of which was worn into a gutter by the ebb
and flow of feet that had been going on there ever since Tudor
times.



IV. WHO WERE PRESENT AT THE MILLER'S LITTLE ENTERTAINMENT

When the group entered the presence of the company a lull in the
conversation was caused by the sight of new visitors, and (of
course) by the charm of Anne's appearance; until the old men, who
had daughters of their own, perceiving that she was only a
half-formed girl, resumed their tales and toss-potting with
unconcern.

Miller Loveday had fraternized with half the soldiers in the camp
since their arrival, and the effect of this upon his party was
striking--both chromatically and otherwise. Those among the guests
who first attracted the eye were the sergeants and sergeant-majors
of Loveday's regiment, fine hearty men, who sat facing the candles,
entirely resigned to physical comfort. Then there were other
non-commissioned officers, a German, two Hungarians, and a Swede,
from the foreign hussars--young men with a look of sadness on their
faces, as if they did not much like serving so far from home. All
of them spoke English fairly well. Old age was represented by Simon
Burden the pensioner, and the shady side of fifty by Corporal
Tullidge, his friend and neighbour, who was hard of hearing, and sat
with his hat on over a red cotton handkerchief that was wound
several times round his head. These two veterans were employed as
watchers at the neighbouring beacon, which had lately been erected
by the Lord-Lieutenant for firing whenever the descent on the coast
should be made. They lived in a little hut on the hill, close by
the heap of faggots; but to-night they had found deputies to watch
in their stead.

On a lower plane of experience and qualifications came neighbour
James Comfort, of the Volunteers, a soldier by courtesy, but a
blacksmith by rights; also William Tremlett and Anthony
Cripplestraw, of the local forces. The two latter men of war were
dressed merely as villagers, and looked upon the regulars from a
humble position in the background. The remainder of the party was
made up of a neighbouring dairyman or two, and their wives, invited
by the miller, as Anne was glad to see, that she and her mother
should not be the only women there.

The elder Loveday apologized in a whisper to Mrs. Garland for the
presence of the inferior villagers. 'But as they are learning to be
brave defenders of their home and country, ma'am, as fast as they
can master the drill, and have worked for me off and on these many
years, I've asked 'em in, and thought you'd excuse it.'

'Certainly, Miller Loveday,' said the widow.

'And the same of old Burden and Tullidge. They have served well and
long in the Foot, and even now have a hard time of it up at the
beacon in wet weather. So after giving them a meal in the kitchen I
just asked 'em in to hear the singing. They faithfully promise that
as soon as ever the gunboats appear in view, and they have fired the
beacon, to run down here first, in case we shouldn't see it. 'Tis
worth while to be friendly with 'em, you see, though their tempers
be queer.'

'Quite worth while, miller,' said she.

Anne was rather embarrassed by the presence of the regular military
in such force, and at first confined her words to the dairymen's
wives she was acquainted with, and to the two old soldiers of the
parish.

'Why didn't ye speak to me afore, chiel?' said one of these,
Corporal Tullidge, the elderly man with the hat, while she was
talking to old Simon Burden. 'I met ye in the lane yesterday,' he
added reproachfully, 'but ye didn't notice me at all.'

'I am very sorry for it,' she said; but, being afraid to shout in
such a company, the effect of her remark upon the corporal was as if
she had not spoken at all.

'You was coming along with yer head full of some high notions or
other no doubt,' continued the uncompromising corporal in the same
loud voice. 'Ah, 'tis the young bucks that get all the notice
nowadays, and old folks are quite forgot! I can mind well enough
how young Bob Loveday used to lie in wait for ye.'

Anne blushed deeply, and stopped his too excursive discourse by
hastily saying that she always respected old folks like him. The
corporal thought she inquired why he always kept his hat on, and
answered that it was because his head was injured at Valenciennes,
in July, Ninety-three. 'We were trying to bomb down the tower, and
a piece of the shell struck me. I was no more nor less than a dead
man for two days. If it hadn't a been for that and my smashed arm I
should have come home none the worse for my five-and-twenty years'
service.'

'You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven't ye, corpel?'
said Anthony Cripplestraw, who had drawn near. 'I have heard that
the way they morticed yer skull was a beautiful piece of
workmanship. Perhaps the young woman would like to see the place?
'Tis a curious sight, Mis'ess Anne; you don't see such a wownd every
day.'

'No, thank you,' said Anne hurriedly, dreading, as did all the young
people of Overcombe, the spectacle of the corporal uncovered. He
had never been seen in public without the hat and the handkerchief
since his return in Ninety-four; and strange stories were told of
the ghastliness of his appearance bare-headed, a little boy who had
accidentally beheld him going to bed in that state having been
frightened into fits.

'Well, if the young woman don't want to see yer head, maybe she'd
like to hear yer arm?' continued Cripplestraw, earnest to please
her.

'Hey?' said the corporal.

'Your arm hurt too?' cried Anne.

'Knocked to a pummy at the same time as my head,' said Tullidge
dispassionately.

'Rattle yer arm, corpel, and show her,' said Cripplestraw.

'Yes, sure,' said the corporal, raising the limb slowly, as if the
glory of exhibition had lost some of its novelty, though he was
willing to oblige. Twisting it mercilessly about with his right
hand he produced a crunching among the bones at every motion,
Cripplestraw seeming to derive great satisfaction from the ghastly
sound.

'How very shocking!' said Anne, painfully anxious for him to leave
off.

'O, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corpel?' said Cripplestraw.

'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great
energy.

'There's no life in the bones at all. No life in 'em, I tell her,
corpel!'

'None at all.'

'They be as loose as a bag of ninepins,' explained Cripplestraw in
continuation. 'You can feel 'em quite plain, Mis'ess Anne. If ye
would like to, he'll undo his sleeve in a minute to oblege ye?'

'O no, no, please not! I quite understand,' said the young woman.

'Do she want to hear or see any more, or don't she?' the corporal
inquired, with a sense that his time was getting wasted.

Anne explained that she did not on any account; and managed to
escape from the corner.



V. THE SONG AND THE STRANGER

The trumpet-major now contrived to place himself near her, Anne's
presence having evidently been a great pleasure to him since the
moment of his first seeing her. She was quite at her ease with him,
and asked him if he thought that Buonaparte would really come during
the summer, and many other questions which the gallant dragoon could
not answer, but which he nevertheless liked to be asked. William
Tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night's rest since the First
Consul's menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of
this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible
flat-bottomed boats that the enemy were to cross in.

'My brother Robert saw several of them paddling about the shore the
last time he passed the Straits of Dover,' said the trumpet-major;
and he further startled the company by informing them that there
were supposed to be more than fifteen hundred of these boats, and
that they would carry a hundred men apiece. So that a descent of
one hundred and fifty thousand men might be expected any day as soon
as Boney had brought his plans to bear.

'Lord ha' mercy upon us!' said William Tremlett.

'The night-time is when they will try it, if they try it at all,'
said old Tullidge, in the tone of one whose watch at the beacon
must, in the nature of things, have given him comprehensive views of
the situation. 'It is my belief that the point they will choose for
making the shore is just over there,' and he nodded with
indifference towards a section of the coast at a hideous nearness to
the house in which they were assembled, whereupon Fencible Tremlett,
and Cripplestraw of the Locals, tried to show no signs of
trepidation.

'When d'ye think 'twill be?' said Volunteer Comfort, the blacksmith.

'I can't answer to a day,' said the corporal, 'but it will certainly
be in a down-channel tide; and instead of pulling hard against it,
he'll let his boats drift, and that will bring 'em right into
Budmouth Bay. 'Twill be a beautiful stroke of war, if so be 'tis
quietly done!'

'Beautiful,' said Cripplestraw, moving inside his clothes. 'But how
if we should be all abed, corpel? You can't expect a man to be
brave in his shirt, especially we Locals, that have only got so far
as shoulder fire-locks.'

'He's not coming this summer. He'll never come at all,' said a tall
sergeant-major decisively.

Loveday the soldier was too much engaged in attending upon Anne and
her mother to join in these surmises, bestirring himself to get the
ladies some of the best liquor the house afforded, which had, as a
matter of fact, crossed the Channel as privately as Buonaparte
wished his army to do, and had been landed on a dark night over the
cliff. After this he asked Anne to sing, but though she had a very
pretty voice in private performances of that nature, she declined to
oblige him; turning the subject by making a hesitating inquiry about
his brother Robert, whom he had mentioned just before.

'Robert is as well as ever, thank you, Miss Garland,' he said. 'He
is now mate of the brig Pewit--rather young for such a command; but
the owner puts great trust in him.' The trumpet-major added,
deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the person discussed,
'Bob is in love.'

Anne looked conscious, and listened attentively; but Loveday did not
go on.

'Much?' she asked.

'I can't exactly say. And the strange part of it is that he never
tells us who the woman is. Nobody knows at all.'

'He will tell, of course?' said Anne, in the remote tone of a person
with whose sex such matters had no connexion whatever.

Loveday shook his head, and the tete-a-tete was put an end to by a
burst of singing from one of the sergeants, who was followed at the
end of his song by others, each giving a ditty in his turn; the
singer standing up in front of the table, stretching his chin well
into the air, as though to abstract every possible wrinkle from his
throat, and then plunging into the melody. When this was over one
of the foreign hussars--the genteel German of Miller Loveday's
description, who called himself a Hungarian, and in reality belonged
to no definite country--performed at Trumpet-major Loveday's request
the series of wild motions that he denominated his national dance,
that Anne might see what it was like. Miss Garland was the flower
of the whole company; the soldiers one and all, foreign and English,
seemed to be quite charmed by her presence, as indeed they well
might be, considering how seldom they came into the society of such
as she.

Anne and her mother were just thinking of retiring to their own
dwelling when Sergeant Stanner of the --th Foot, who was recruiting
at Budmouth, began a satirical song:--

When law'-yers strive' to heal' a breach',
And par-sons prac'-tise what' they preach';
Then lit'-tle Bo-ney he'll pounce down',
And march' his men' on Lon'-don town'!

Chorus.--Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum,
Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay.

When jus'-ti-ces' hold e'qual scales',
And rogues' are on'-ly found' in jails';
Then lit'tle Bo'-ney he'll pounce down',
And march' his men' on Lon'-don town'!

Chorus.--Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum,
Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay.

When rich' men find' their wealth' a curse',
And fill' there-with' the poor' man's purse';
Then lit'-tle Bo'-ney he'll pounce down',
And march' his men' on Lon'-don town'!

Chorus.--Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum,
Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay.

Poor Stanner! In spite of his satire, he fell at the bloody battle
of Albuera a few years after this pleasantly spent summer at the
Georgian watering-place, being mortally wounded and trampled down by
a French hussar when the brigade was deploying into line under
Beresford.

While Miller Loveday was saying 'Well done, Mr. Stanner!' at the
close of the thirteenth stanza, which seemed to be the last, and Mr.
Stanner was modestly expressing his regret that he could do no
better, a stentorian voice was heard outside the window shutter
repeating,

Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum,
Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay.

The company was silent in a moment at this reinforcement, and only
the military tried not to look surprised. While all wondered who
the singer could be somebody entered the porch; the door opened, and
in came a young man, about the size and weight of the Farnese
Hercules, in the uniform of the yeomanry cavalry.

''Tis young Squire Derriman, old Mr. Derriman's nephew,' murmured
voices in the background.

Without waiting to address anybody, or apparently seeing who were
gathered there, the colossal man waved his cap above his head and
went on in tones that shook the window-panes:--

When hus'-bands with' their wives' agree'.
And maids' won't wed' from mod'-es-ty',
Then lit'-tle Bo'-ney he'll pounce down',
And march' his men' on Lon'-don town'!

Chorus.--Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lo'-rum,
Rol'-li-cum ro'-rum, tol'-lol-lay.

It was a verse which had been omitted by the gallant Stanner, out of
respect to the ladies.

The new-comer was red-haired and of florid complexion, and seemed
full of a conviction that his whim of entering must be their
pleasure, which for the moment it was.

'No ceremony, good men all,' he said; 'I was passing by, and my ear
was caught by the singing. I like singing; 'tis warming and
cheering, and shall not be put down. I should like to hear anybody
say otherwise.'

'Welcome, Master Derriman,' said the miller, filling a glass and
handing it to the yeoman. 'Come all the way from quarters, then? I
hardly knowed ye in your soldier's clothes. You'd look more natural
with a spud in your hand, sir. I shouldn't ha' known ye at all if I
hadn't heard that you were called out.'

'More natural with a spud!--have a care, miller,' said the young
giant, the fire of his complexion increasing to scarlet. 'I don't
mean anger, but--but--a soldier's honour, you know!'

The military in the background laughed a little, and the yeoman then
for the first time discovered that there were more regulars present
than one. He looked momentarily disconcerted, but expanded again to
full assurance.

'Right, right, Master Derriman, no offence--'twas only my joke,'
said the genial miller. 'Everybody's a soldier nowadays. Drink a
drap o' this cordial, and don't mind words.'

The young man drank without the least reluctance, and said, 'Yes,
miller, I am called out. 'Tis ticklish times for us soldiers now;
we hold our lives in our hands--What are those fellows grinning at
behind the table?--I say, we do!'

'Staying with your uncle at the farm for a day or two, Mr.
Derriman?'

'No, no; as I told you, six mile off. Billeted at Casterbridge.
But I have to call and see the old, old--'

'Gentleman?'

'Gentleman!--no, skinflint. He lives upon the sweepings of the
barton; ha, ha!' And the speaker's regular white teeth showed
themselves like snow in a Dutch cabbage. 'Well, well, the
profession of arms makes a man proof against all that. I take
things as I find 'em.'

'Quite right, Master Derriman. Another drop?'

'No, no. I'll take no more than is good for me--no man should; so
don't tempt me.'

The yeoman then saw Anne, and by an unconscious gravitation went
towards her and the other women, flinging a remark to John Loveday
in passing. 'Ah, Loveday! I heard you were come; in short, I come
o' purpose to see you. Glad to see you enjoying yourself at home
again.'

The trumpet-major replied civilly, though not without grimness, for
he seemed hardly to like Derriman's motion towards Anne.

'Widow Garland's daughter!--yes, 'tis! surely. You remember me? I
have been here before. Festus Derriman, Yeomanry Cavalry.'

Anne gave a little curtsey. 'I know your name is Festus--that's
all.'

'Yes, 'tis well known--especially latterly.' He dropped his voice
to confidence pitch. 'I suppose your friends here are disturbed by
my coming in, as they don't seem to talk much? I don't mean to
interrupt the party; but I often find that people are put out by my
coming among 'em, especially when I've got my regimentals on.'

'La! and are they?'

'Yes; 'tis the way I have.' He further lowered his tone, as if they
had been old friends, though in reality he had only seen her three
or four times. 'And how did you come to be here? Dash my wig, I
don't like to see a nice young lady like you in this company. You
should come to some of our yeomanry sprees in Casterbridge or
Shottsford-Forum. O, but the girls do come! The yeomanry are
respected men, men of good substantial families, many farming their
own land; and every one among us rides his own charger, which is
more than these cussed fellows do.' He nodded towards the dragoons.

'Hush, hush! Why, these are friends and neighbours of Miller
Loveday, and he is a great friend of ours--our best friend,' said
Anne with great emphasis, and reddening at the sense of injustice to
their host. 'What are you thinking of, talking like that? It is
ungenerous in you.'

'Ha, ha! I've affronted you. Isn't that it, fair angel, fair--what
do you call it?--fair vestal? Ah, well! would you was safe in my
own house! But honour must be minded now, not courting. Rollicum-
rorum, tol-lol-lorum. Pardon me, my sweet, I like ye! It may be a
come down for me, owning land; but I do like ye.'

'Sir, please be quiet,' said Anne, distressed.

'I will, I will. Well, Corporal Tullidge, how's your head?' he
said, going towards the other end of the room, and leaving Anne to
herself.

The company had again recovered its liveliness, and it was a long
time before the bouncing Rufus who had joined them could find heart
to tear himself away from their society and good liquors, although
he had had quite enough of the latter before he entered. The
natives received him at his own valuation, and the soldiers of the
camp, who sat beyond the table, smiled behind their pipes at his
remarks, with a pleasant twinkle of the eye which approached the
satirical, John Loveday being not the least conspicuous in this
bearing. But he and his friends were too courteous on such an
occasion as the present to challenge the young man's large remarks,
and readily permitted him to set them right on the details of
camping and other military routine, about which the troopers seemed
willing to let persons hold any opinion whatever, provided that they
themselves were not obliged to give attention to it; showing,
strangely enough, that if there was one subject more than another
which never interested their minds, it was the art of war. To them
the art of enjoying good company in Overcombe Mill, the details of
the miller's household, the swarming of his bees, the number of his
chickens, and the fatness of his pigs, were matters of infinitely
greater concern.

The present writer, to whom this party has been described times out
of number by members of the Loveday family and other aged people now
passed away, can never enter the old living-room of Overcombe Mill
without beholding the genial scene through the mists of the seventy
or eighty years that intervene between then and now. First and
brightest to the eye are the dozen candles, scattered about
regardless of expense, and kept well snuffed by the miller, who
walks round the room at intervals of five minutes, snuffers in hand,
and nips each wick with great precision, and with something of an
executioner's grim look upon his face as he closes the snuffers upon
the neck of the candle. Next to the candle-light show the red and
blue coats and white breeches of the soldiers--nearly twenty of them
in all besides the ponderous Derriman--the head of the latter, and,
indeed, the heads of all who are standing up, being in dangerous
proximity to the black beams of the ceiling. There is not one among
them who would attach any meaning to 'Vittoria,' or gather from the
syllables 'Waterloo' the remotest idea of his own glory or death.
Next appears the correct and innocent Anne, little thinking what
things Time has in store for her at no great distance off. She
looks at Derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and
thither, and hopes he will not single her out again to hold a
private dialogue with--which, however, he does, irresistibly
attracted by the white muslin figure. She must, of course, look a
little gracious again now, lest his mood should turn from
sentimental to quarrelsome--no impossible contingency with the
yeoman-soldier, as her quick perception had noted.

'Well, well; this idling won't do for me, folks,' he at last said,
to Anne's relief. 'I ought not to have come in, by rights; but I
heard you enjoying yourselves, and thought it might be worth while
to see what you were up to; I have several miles to go before
bedtime;' and stretching his arms, lifting his chin, and shaking his
head, to eradicate any unseemly curve or wrinkle from his person,
the yeoman wished them an off-hand good-night, and departed.

'You should have teased him a little more, father,' said the
trumpet-major drily. 'You could soon have made him as crabbed as a
bear.'

'I didn't want to provoke the chap--'twasn't worth while. He came
in friendly enough,' said the gentle miller without looking up.

'I don't think he was overmuch friendly,' said John.

''Tis as well to be neighbourly with folks, if they be not quite
onbearable,' his father genially replied, as he took off his coat to
go and draw more ale--this periodical stripping to the shirt-sleeves
being necessitated by the narrowness of the cellar and the smeary
effect of its numerous cobwebs upon best clothes.

Some of the guests then spoke of Fess Derriman as not such a bad
young man if you took him right and humoured him; others said that
he was nobody's enemy but his own; and the elder ladies mentioned in
a tone of interest that he was likely to come into a deal of money
at his uncle's death. The person who did not praise was the one who
knew him best, who had known him as a boy years ago, when he had
lived nearer to Overcombe than he did at present. This
unappreciative person was the trumpet-major.



VI. OLD MR. DERRIMAN OF OXWELL HALL

At this time in the history of Overcombe one solitary newspaper
occasionally found its way into the village. It was lent by the
postmaster at Budmouth (who, in some mysterious way, got it for
nothing through his connexion with the mail) to Mr. Derriman at the
Hall, by whom it was handed on to Mrs. Garland when it was not more
than a fortnight old. Whoever remembers anything about the old
farmer-squire will, of course, know well enough that this delightful
privilege of reading history in long columns was not accorded to the
Widow Garland for nothing. It was by such ingenuous means that he
paid her for her daughter's occasional services in reading aloud to
him and making out his accounts, in which matters the farmer, whose
guineas were reported to touch five figures--some said more--was not
expert.

Mrs. Martha Garland, as a respectable widow, occupied a twilight
rank between the benighted villagers and the well-informed gentry,
and kindly made herself useful to the former as letter-writer and
reader, and general translator from the printing tongue. It was not
without satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening,
newspaper in hand, with three or four cottagers standing round, and
poured down their open throats any paragraph that she might choose
to select from the stirring ones of the period. When she had done
with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed it on to the miller, the miller
to the grinder, and the grinder to the grinder's boy, in whose hands
it became subdivided into half pages, quarter pages, and irregular
triangles, and ended its career as a paper cap, a flagon bung, or a
wrapper for his bread and cheese.

Notwithstanding his compact with Mrs. Garland, old Mr. Derriman kept
the paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man's time on a
merely intellectual errand, that unless she sent for the journal it
seldom reached her hands. Anne was always her messenger. The
arrival of the soldiers led Mrs. Garland to despatch her daughter
for it the day after the party; and away she went in her hat and
pelisse, in a direction at right angles to that of the encampment on
the hill.

Walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she
came out upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of
the way was the entrance to what at first sight looked like a
neglected meadow, the gate being a rotten one, without a bottom
rail, and broken-down palings lying on each side. The dry hard mud
of the opening was marked with several horse and cow tracks, that
had been half obliterated by fifty score sheep tracks, surcharged
with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond this geological record
appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, which Anne
followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under dark-rinded
elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of a
waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a
bend round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once
been a fish pond. Here the grey, weather-worn front of a building
edged from behind the trees. It was Oxwell Hall, once the seat of a
family now extinct, and of late years used as a farmhouse.

Benjamin Derriman, who owned the crumbling place, had originally
been only the occupier and tenant-farmer of the fields around. His
wife had brought him a small fortune, and during the growth of their
only son there had been a partition of the Oxwell estate, giving the
farmer, now a widower, the opportunity of acquiring the building and
a small portion of the land attached on exceptionally low terms.
But two years after the purchase the boy died, and Derriman's
existence was paralyzed forthwith. It was said that since that
event he had devised the house and fields to a distant female
relative, to keep them out of the hands of his detested nephew; but
this was not certainly known.

The hall was as interesting as mansions in a state of declension
usually are, as the excellent county history showed. That popular
work in folio contained an old plate dedicated to the last scion of
the original owners, from which drawing it appeared that in 1750,
the date of publication, the windows were covered with little
scratches like black flashes of lightning; that a horn of hard smoke
came out of each of the twelve chimneys; that a lady and a lap-dog
stood on the lawn in a strenuously walking position; and a
substantial cloud and nine flying birds of no known species hung
over the trees to the north-east.

The rambling and neglected dwelling had all the romantic
excellencies and practical drawbacks which such mildewed places
share in common with caves, mountains, wildernesses, glens, and
other homes of poesy that people of taste wish to live and die in.
Mustard and cress could have been raised on the inner plaster of the
dewy walls at any height not exceeding three feet from the floor;
and mushrooms of the most refined and thin-stemmed kinds grew up
through the chinks of the larder paving. As for the outside,
Nature, in the ample time that had been given her, had so mingled
her filings and effacements with the marks of human wear and tear
upon the house, that it was often hard to say in which of the two or
if in both, any particular obliteration had its origin. The
keenness was gone from the mouldings of the doorways, but whether
worn out by the rubbing past of innumerable people's shoulders, and
the moving of their heavy furniture, or by Time in a grander and
more abstract form, did not appear. The iron stanchions inside the
window-panes were eaten away to the size of wires at the bottom
where they entered the stone, the condensed breathings of
generations having settled there in pools and rusted them. The
panes themselves had either lost their shine altogether or become
iridescent as a peacock's tail. In the middle of the porch was a
vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind
blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say,
'Here's your fine model dial; here's any time for any man; I am an
old dial; and shiftiness is the best policy.'

Anne passed under the arched gateway which screened the main front;
over it was the porter's lodge, reached by a spiral staircase.
Across the archway was fixed a row of wooden hurdles, one of which
Anne opened and closed behind her. Their necessity was apparent as
soon as she got inside. The quadrangle of the ancient pile was a
bed of mud and manure, inhabited by calves, geese, ducks, and sow
pigs surprisingly large, with young ones surprisingly small. In the
groined porch some heifers were amusing themselves by stretching up
their necks and licking the carved stone capitals that supported the
vaulting. Anne went on to a second and open door, across which was
another hurdle to keep the live stock from absolute community with
the inmates. There being no knocker, she knocked by means of a
short stick which was laid against the post for that purpose; but
nobody attending, she entered the passage, and tried an inner door.

A slight noise was heard inside, the door opened about an inch, and
a strip of decayed face, including the eye and some forehead
wrinkles, appeared within the crevice.

'Please I have come for the paper,' said Anne.

'O, is it you, dear Anne?' whined the inmate, opening the door a
little further. 'I could hardly get to the door to open it, I am so
weak.'

The speaker was a wizened old gentleman, in a coat the colour of his
farmyard, breeches of the same hue, unbuttoned at the knees,
revealing a bit of leg above his stocking and a dazzlingly white
shirt-frill to compensate for this untidiness below. The edge of
his skull round his eye-sockets was visible through the skin, and he
had a mouth whose corners made towards the back of his head on the
slightest provocation. He walked with great apparent difficulty
back into the room, Anne following him.

'Well, you can have the paper if you want it; but you never give me
much time to see what's in en! Here's the paper.' He held it out,
but before she could take it he drew it back again, saying, 'I have
not had my share o' the paper by a good deal, what with my weak
sight, and people coming so soon for en. I am a poor put-upon soul;
but my "Duty of Man" will be left to me when the newspaper is gone.'
And he sank into his chair with an air of exhaustion.

Anne said that she did not wish to take the paper if he had not done
with it, and that she was really later in the week than usual, owing
to the soldiers.

'Soldiers, yes--rot the soldiers! And now hedges will be broke, and
hens' nests robbed, and sucking-pigs stole, and I don't know what
all. Who's to pay for't, sure? I reckon that because the soldiers
be come you don't mean to be kind enough to read to me what I hadn't
time to read myself.'

She would read if he wished, she said; she was in no hurry. And
sitting herself down she unfolded the paper.

'"Dinner at Carlton House"?'

'No, faith. 'Tis nothing to I.'

'"Defence of the country"?'

'Ye may read that if ye will. I hope there will be no billeting in
this parish, or any wild work of that sort; for what would a poor
old lamiger like myself do with soldiers in his house, and nothing
to feed 'em with?'

Anne began reading, and continued at her task nearly ten minutes,
when she was interrupted by the appearance in the quadrangular
slough without of a large figure in the uniform of the yeomanry
cavalry.

'What do you see out there?' said the farmer with a start, as she
paused and slowly blushed.

'A soldier--one of the yeomanry,' said Anne, not quite at her ease.

'Scrounch it all--'tis my nephew!' exclaimed the old man, his face
turning to a phosphoric pallor, and his body twitching with
innumerable alarms as he formed upon his face a gasping smile of
joy, with which to welcome the new-coming relative. 'Read on,
prithee, Miss Garland.'

Before she had read far the visitor straddled over the door-hurdle
into the passage and entered the room.

'Well, nunc, how do you feel?' said the giant, shaking hands with
the farmer in the manner of one violently ringing a hand-bell.
'Glad to see you.'

'Bad and weakish, Festus,' replied the other, his person responding
passively to the rapid vibrations imparted. 'O, be tender, please--
a little softer, there's a dear nephew! My arm is no more than a
cobweb.'

'Ah, poor soul!'

'Yes, I am not much more than a skeleton, and can't bear rough
usage.'

'Sorry to hear that; but I'll bear your affliction in mind. Why,
you are all in a tremble, Uncle Benjy!'

''Tis because I am so gratified,' said the old man. 'I always get
all in a tremble when I am taken by surprise by a beloved relation.'

'Ah, that's it!' said the yeoman, bringing his hand down on the back
of his uncle's chair with a loud smack, at which Uncle Benjy
nervously sprang three inches from his seat and dropped into it
again. 'Ask your pardon for frightening ye, uncle. 'Tis how we do
in the army, and I forgot your nerves. You have scarcely expected
to see me, I dare say, but here I am.'

'I am glad to see ye. You are not going to stay long, perhaps?'

'Quite the contrary. I am going to stay ever so long!'

'O I see! I am so glad, dear Festus. Ever so long, did ye say?'

'Yes, EVER so long,' said the young gentleman, sitting on the slope
of the bureau and stretching out his legs as props. 'I am going to
make this quite my own home whenever I am off duty, as long as we
stay out. And after that, when the campaign is over in the autumn,
I shall come here, and live with you like your own son, and help
manage your land and your farm, you know, and make you a comfortable
old man.'

'Ah! How you do please me!' said the farmer, with a horrified
smile, and grasping the arms of his chair to sustain himself.

'Yes; I have been meaning to come a long time, as I knew you'd like
to have me, Uncle Benjy; and 'tisn't in my heart to refuse you.'

'You always was kind that way!'

'Yes; I always was. But I ought to tell you at once, not to
disappoint you, that I shan't be here always--all day, that is,
because of my military duties as a cavalry man.'

'O, not always? That's a pity!' exclaimed the farmer with a
cheerful eye.

'I knew you'd say so. And I shan't be able to sleep here at night
sometimes, for the same reason.'

'Not sleep here o' nights?' said the old gentleman, still more
relieved. 'You ought to sleep here--you certainly ought; in short,
you must. But you can't!'

'Not while we are with the colours. But directly that's over--the
very next day--I'll stay here all day, and all night too, to oblige
you, since you ask me so very kindly.'

'Th-thank ye, that will be very nice!' said Uncle Benjy.

'Yes, I knew 'twould relieve ye.' And he kindly stroked his uncle's
head, the old man expressing his enjoyment at the affectionate token
by a death's-head grimace. 'I should have called to see you the
other night when I passed through here,' Festus continued; 'but it
was so late that I couldn't come so far out of my way. You won't
think it unkind?'

'Not at all, if you COULDN'T. I never shall think it unkind if you
really CAN'T come, you know, Festy.' There was a few minutes'
pause, and as the nephew said nothing Uncle Benjy went on: 'I wish
I had a little present for ye. But as ill-luck would have it we
have lost a deal of stock this year, and I have had to pay away so
much.'

'Poor old man--I know you have. Shall I lend you a seven-shilling
piece, Uncle Benjy?'

'Ha, ha!--you must have your joke; well, I'll think o' that. And so
they expect Buonaparty to choose this very part of the coast for his
landing, hey? And that the yeomanry be to stand in front as the
forlorn hope?'

'Who says so?' asked the florid son of Mars, losing a little
redness.

'The newspaper-man.'

'O, there's nothing in that,' said Festus bravely. 'The gover'ment
thought it possible at one time; but they don't know.'

Festus turned himself as he talked, and now said abruptly: 'Ah,
who's this? Why, 'tis our little Anne!' He had not noticed her
till this moment, the young woman having at his entry kept her face
over the newspaper, and then got away to the back part of the room.
'And are you and your mother always going to stay down there in the
mill-house watching the little fishes, Miss Anne?'

She said that it was uncertain, in a tone of truthful precision
which the question was hardly worth, looking forcedly at him as she
spoke. But she blushed fitfully, in her arms and hands as much as
in her face. Not that she was overpowered by the great boots,
formidable spurs, and other fierce appliances of his person, as he
imagined; simply she had not been prepared to meet him there.

'I hope you will, I am sure, for my own good,' said he, letting his
eyes linger on the round of her cheek.

Anne became a little more dignified, and her look showed reserve.
But the yeoman on perceiving this went on talking to her in so civil
a way that he irresistibly amused her, though she tried to conceal
all feeling. At a brighter remark of his than usual her mouth
moved, her upper lip playing uncertainly over her white teeth; it
would stay still--no, it would withdraw a little way in a smile;
then it would flutter down again; and so it wavered like a butterfly
in a tender desire to be pleased and smiling, and yet to be also
sedate and composed; to show him that she did not want compliments,
and yet that she was not so cold as to wish to repress any genuine
feeling he might be anxious to utter.

'Shall you want any more reading, Mr. Derriman?' said she,
interrupting the younger man in his remarks. 'If not, I'll go
homeward.'

'Don't let me hinder you longer,' said Festus. 'I'm off in a minute
or two, when your man has cleaned my boots.'

'Ye don't hinder us, nephew. She must have the paper: 'tis the day
for her to have 'n. She might read a little more, as I have had so
little profit out o' en hitherto. Well, why don't ye speak? Will
ye, or won't ye, my dear?'

'Not to two,' she said.

'Ho, ho! damn it, I must go then, I suppose,' said Festus, laughing;
and unable to get a further glance from her he left the room and
clanked into the back yard, where he saw a man; holding up his hand
he cried, 'Anthony Cripplestraw!'

Cripplestraw came up in a trot, moved a lock of his hair and
replaced it, and said, 'Yes, Maister Derriman.' He was old Mr.
Derriman's odd hand in the yard and garden, and like his employer
had no great pretensions to manly beauty, owing to a limpness of
backbone and speciality of mouth, which opened on one side only,
giving him a triangular smile.

'Well, Cripplestraw, how is it to-day?' said Festus, with
socially-superior heartiness.

'Middlin', considering, Maister Derriman. And how's yerself?'

'Fairish. Well, now, see and clean these military boots of mine.
I'll cock my foot up on this bench. This pigsty of my uncle's is
not fit for a soldier to come into.'

'Yes, Maister Derriman, I will. No, 'tis not fit, Maister
Derriman.'

'What stock has uncle lost this year, Cripplestraw?'

'Well, let's see, sir. I can call to mind that we've lost three
chickens, a tom-pigeon, and a weakly sucking-pig, one of a fare of
ten. I can't think of no more, Maister Derriman.'

'H'm, not a large quantity of cattle. The old rascal!'

'No, 'tis not a large quantity. Old what did you say, sir?'

'O nothing. He's within there.' Festus flung his forehead in the
direction of a right line towards the inner apartment. 'He's a
regular sniche one.'

'Hee, hee; fie, fie, Master Derriman!' said Cripplestraw, shaking
his head in delighted censure. 'Gentlefolks shouldn't talk so. And
an officer, Mr. Derriman! 'Tis the duty of all cavalry gentlemen to
bear in mind that their blood is a knowed thing in the country, and
not to speak ill o't.'

'He's close-fisted.'

'Well, maister, he is--I own he is a little. 'Tis the nater of some
old venerable gentlemen to be so. We'll hope he'll treat ye well in
yer fortune, sir.'

'Hope he will. Do people talk about me here, Cripplestraw?' asked
the yeoman, as the other continued busy with his boots.

'Well, yes, sir; they do off and on, you know. They says you be as
fine a piece of calvery flesh and bones as was ever growed on
fallow-ground; in short, all owns that you be a fine fellow, sir. I
wish I wasn't no more afraid of the French than you be; but being in
the Locals, Maister Derriman, I assure ye I dream of having to
defend my country every night; and I don't like the dream at all.'

'You should take it careless, Cripplestraw, as I do; and 'twould
soon come natural to you not to mind it at all. Well, a fine fellow
is not everything, you know. O no. There's as good as I in the
army, and even better.'

'And they say that when you fall this summer, you'll die like a
man.'

'When I fall?'

'Yes, sure, Maister Derriman. Poor soul o' thee! I shan't forget
'ee as you lie mouldering in yer soldier's grave.'

'Hey?' said the warrior uneasily. 'What makes 'em think I am going
to fall?'

'Well, sir, by all accounts the yeomanry will be put in front.'

'Front! That's what my uncle has been saying.'

'Yes, and by all accounts 'tis true. And naterelly they'll be mowed
down like grass; and you among 'em, poor young galliant officer!'

'Look here, Cripplestraw. This is a reg'lar foolish report. How
can yeomanry be put in front? Nobody's put in front. We yeomanry
have nothing to do with Buonaparte's landing. We shall be away in a
safe place, guarding the possessions and jewels. Now, can you see,
Cripplestraw, any way at all that the yeomanry can be put in front?
Do you think they really can?'

'Well, maister, I am afraid I do,' said the cheering Cripplestraw.
'And I know a great warrior like you is only too glad o' the chance.
'Twill be a great thing for ye, death and glory! In short, I hope
from my heart you will be, and I say so very often to folk--in fact,
I pray at night for't.'

'O! cuss you! you needn't pray about it.'

'No, Maister Derriman, I won't.'

'Of course my sword will do its duty. That's enough. And now be
off with ye.'

Festus gloomily returned to his uncle's room and found that Anne was
just leaving. He was inclined to follow her at once, but as she
gave him no opportunity for doing this he went to the window, and
remained tapping his fingers against the shutter while she crossed
the yard.

'Well, nephy, you are not gone yet?' said the farmer, looking
dubiously at Festus from under one eyelid. 'You see how I am. Not
by any means better, you see; so I can't entertain 'ee as well as I
would.'

'You can't, nunc, you can't. I don't think you are worse--if I do,
dash my wig. But you'll have plenty of opportunities to make me
welcome when you are better. If you are not so brisk inwardly as
you was, why not try change of air? This is a dull, damp hole.'

''Tis, Festus; and I am thinking of moving.'

'Ah, where to?' said Festus, with surprise and interest.

'Up into the garret in the north corner. There is no fireplace in
the room; but I shan't want that, poor soul o' me.'

''Tis not moving far.'

''Tis not. But I have not a soul belonging to me within ten mile;
and you know very well that I couldn't afford to go to lodgings that
I had to pay for.'

'I know it--I know it, Uncle Benjy! Well, don't be disturbed. I'll
come and manage for you as soon as ever this Boney alarm is over;
but when a man's country calls he must obey, if he is a man.'

'A splendid spirit!' said Uncle Benjy, with much admiration on the
surface of his countenance. 'I never had it. How could it have got
into the boy?'

'From my mother's side, perhaps.'

'Perhaps so. Well, take care of yourself, nephy,' said the farmer,
waving his hand impressively. 'Take care! In these warlike times
your spirit may carry ye into the arms of the enemy; and you are the
last of the family. You should think of this, and not let your
bravery carry ye away.'

'Don't be disturbed, uncle; I'll control myself,' said Festus,


 


Back to Full Books