Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (312 page)

It was necessary now to clamber over the down to the left of the camp, and make a complete circuit round the latter — infantry, cavalry, sutlers, and all — descending to her house on the other side.  This tremendous walk she performed at a rapid rate, never once turning her head, and avoiding every beaten track to keep clear of the knots of soldiers taking a walk.  When she at last got down to the levels again she paused to fetch breath, and murmured, ‘Why did I take so much trouble?  He would not, after all, have hurt me.’

As she neared the mill an erect figure with a blue body and white thighs descended before her from the down towards the village, and went past the mill to a stile beyond, over which she usually returned to her house.  Here he lingered.  On coming nearer Anne discovered this person to be Trumpet-major Loveday; and not wishing to meet anybody just now Anne passed quickly on, and entered the house by the garden door.

‘My dear Anne, what a time you have been gone!’ said her mother.

‘Yes, I have been round by another road.’

‘Why did you do that?’

Anne looked thoughtful and reticent, for her reason was almost too silly a one to confess.  ‘Well, I wanted to avoid a person who is very busy trying to meet me — that’s all,’ she said.

Her mother glanced out of the window.  ‘And there he is, I suppose,’ she said, as John Loveday, tired of looking for Anne at the stile, passed the house on his way to his father’s door.  He could not help casting his eyes towards their window, and, seeing them, he smiled.

Anne’s reluctance to mention Festus was such that she did not correct her mother’s error, and the dame went on: ‘Well, you are quite right, my dear.  Be friendly with him, but no more at present.  I have heard of your other affair, and think it is a very wise choice.  I am sure you have my best wishes in it, and I only hope it will come to a point.’

‘What’s that?’ said the astonished Anne.

‘You and Mr. Festus Derriman, dear.  You need not mind me; I have known it for several days.  Old Granny Seamore called here Saturday, and told me she saw him coming home with you across Park Close last week, when you went for the newspaper; so I thought I’d send you again to-day, and give you another chance.’

‘Then you didn’t want the paper — and it was only for that!’

‘He’s a very fine young fellow; he looks a thorough woman’s protector.’

‘He may look it,’ said Anne.

‘He has given up the freehold farm his father held at Pitstock, and lives in independence on what the land brings him.  And when Farmer Derriman dies, he’ll have all the old man’s, for certain.  He’ll be worth ten thousand pounds, if a penny, in money, besides sixteen horses, cart and hack, a fifty-cow dairy, and at least five hundred sheep.’

Anne turned away, and instead of informing her mother that she had been running like a doe to escape the interesting heir-presumptive alluded to, merely said ‘Mother, I don’t like this at all.’

CHAPTER IX. 

ANNE IS KINDLY FETCHED BY THE TRUMPET-MAJOR

After this, Anne would on no account walk in the direction of the hall for fear of another encounter with young Derriman.  In the course of a few days it was told in the village that the old farmer had actually gone for a week’s holiday and change of air to the Royal watering-place near at hand, at the instance of his nephew Festus.  This was a wonderful thing to hear of Uncle Benjy, who had not slept outside the walls of Oxwell Hall for many a long year before; and Anne well imagined what extraordinary pressure must have been put upon him to induce him to take such a step.  She pictured his unhappiness at the bustling watering-place, and hoped no harm would come to him.

She spent much of her time indoors or in the garden, hearing little of the camp movements beyond the periodical Ta-ta-ta-taa of the trumpeters sounding their various ingenious calls for watch-setting, stables, feed, boot-and-saddle, parade, and so on, which made her think how clever her friend the trumpet-major must be to teach his pupils to play those pretty little tunes so well.

On the third morning after Uncle Benjy’s departure, she was disturbed as usual while dressing by the tramp of the troops down the slope to the mill-pond, and during the now familiar stamping and splashing which followed there sounded upon the glass of the window a slight smack, which might have been caused by a whip or switch.  She listened more particularly, and it was repeated.

As John Loveday was the only dragoon likely to be aware that she slept in that particular apartment, she imagined the signal to come from him, though wondering that he should venture upon such a freak of familiarity.

Wrapping herself up in a red cloak, she went to the window, gently drew up a corner of the curtain, and peeped out, as she had done many times before.  Nobody who was not quite close beneath her window could see her face; but as it happened, somebody was close.  The soldiers whose floundering Anne had heard were not Loveday’s dragoons, but a troop of the York Hussars, quite oblivious of her existence.  They had passed on out of the water, and instead of them there sat Festus Derriman alone on his horse, and in plain clothes, the water reaching up to the animal’s belly, and Festus’ heels elevated over the saddle to keep them out of the stream, which threatened to wash rider and horse into the deep mill-head just below.  It was plainly he who had struck her lattice, for in a moment he looked up, and their eyes met.  Festus laughed loudly, and slapped her window again; and just at that moment the dragoons began prancing down the slope in review order.  She could not but wait a minute or two to see them pass.  While doing so she was suddenly led to draw back, drop the corner of the curtain, and blush privately in her room.  She had not only been seen by Festus Derriman, but by John Loveday, who, riding along with his trumpet slung up behind him, had looked over his shoulder at the phenomenon of Derriman beneath Anne’s bedroom window and seemed quite astounded at the sight.

She was quite vexed at the conjunction of incidents, and went no more to the window till the dragoons had ridden far away and she had heard Festus’s horse labouriously wade on to dry land.  When she looked out there was nobody left but Miller Loveday, who usually stood in the garden at this time of the morning to say a word or two to the soldiers, of whom he already knew so many, and was in a fair way of knowing many more, from the liberality with which he handed round mugs of cheering liquor whenever parties of them walked that way.

In the afternoon of this day Anne walked to a christening party at a neighbour’s in the adjoining parish of Springham, intending to walk home again before it got dark; but there was a slight fall of rain towards evening, and she was pressed by the people of the house to stay over the night.  With some hesitation she accepted their hospitality; but at ten o’clock, when they were thinking of going to bed, they were startled by a smart rap at the door, and on it being unbolted a man’s form was seen in the shadows outside.

‘Is Miss Garland here?’ the visitor inquired, at which Anne suspended her breath.

‘Yes,’ said Anne’s entertainer, warily.

‘Her mother is very anxious to know what’s become of her.  She promised to come home.’  To her great relief Anne recognized the voice as John Loveday’s, and not Festus Derriman’s.

‘Yes, I did, Mr. Loveday,’ said she, coming forward; ‘but it rained, and I thought my mother would guess where I was.’

Loveday said with diffidence that it had not rained anything to speak of at the camp, or at the mill, so that her mother was rather alarmed.

‘And she asked you to come for me?’ Anne inquired.

This was a question which the trumpet-major had been dreading during the whole of his walk thither.  ‘Well, she didn’t exactly ask me,’ he said rather lamely, but still in a manner to show that Mrs. Garland had indirectly signified such to be her wish.  In reality Mrs. Garland had not addressed him at all on the subject.  She had merely spoken to his father on finding that her daughter did not return, and received an assurance from the miller that the precious girl was doubtless quite safe.  John heard of this inquiry, and, having a pass that evening, resolved to relieve Mrs. Garland’s mind on his own responsibility.  Ever since his morning view of Festus under her window he had been on thorns of anxiety, and his thrilling hope now was that she would walk back with him.

He shifted his foot nervously as he made the bold request.  Anne felt at once that she would go.  There was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major’s in a case like the present.  He was their nearest neighbour’s son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment of his return home.

When they had started on their walk, Anne said in a practical way, to show that there was no sentiment whatever in her acceptance of his company, ‘Mother was much alarmed about me, perhaps?’

‘Yes; she was uneasy,’ he said; and then was compelled by conscience to make a clean breast of it.  ‘I know she was uneasy, because my father said so.  But I did not see her myself.  The truth is, she doesn’t know I am come.’

Anne now saw how the matter stood; but she was not offended with him.  What woman could have been?  They walked on in silence, the respectful trumpet-major keeping a yard off on her right as precisely as if that measure had been fixed between them.  She had a great feeling of civility toward him this evening, and spoke again.  ‘I often hear your trumpeters blowing the calls.  They do it beautifully, I think.’

‘Pretty fair; they might do better,’ said he, as one too well-mannered to make much of an accomplishment in which he had a hand.

‘And you taught them how to do it?’

‘Yes, I taught them.’

‘It must require wonderful practice to get them into the way of beginning and finishing so exactly at one time.  It is like one throat doing it all.  How came you to be a trumpeter, Mr. Loveday?’

‘Well, I took to it naturally when I was a little boy,’ said he, betrayed into quite a gushing state by her delightful interest.  ‘I used to make trumpets of paper, eldersticks, eltrot stems, and even stinging-nettle stalks, you know.  Then father set me to keep the birds off that little barley-ground of his, and gave me an old horn to frighten ‘em with.  I learnt to blow that horn so that you could hear me for miles and miles.  Then he bought me a clarionet, and when I could play that I borrowed a serpent, and I learned to play a tolerable bass.  So when I ‘listed I was picked out for training as trumpeter at once.’

‘Of course you were.’

‘Sometimes, however, I wish I had never joined the army.  My father gave me a very fair education, and your father showed me how to draw horses — on a slate, I mean.  Yes, I ought to have done more than I have.’

‘What, did you know my father?’ she asked with new interest.

‘O yes, for years.  You were a little mite of a thing then; and you used to cry when we big boys looked at you, and made pig’s eyes at you, which we did sometimes.  Many and many a time have I stood by your poor father while he worked.  Ah, you don’t remember much about him; but I do!’

Anne remained thoughtful; and the moon broke from behind the clouds, lighting up the wet foliage with a twinkling brightness, and lending to each of the trumpet-major’s buttons and spurs a little ray of its own.  They had come to Oxwell park gate, and he said, ‘Do you like going across, or round by the lane?’

‘We may as well go by the nearest road,’ said Anne.

They entered the park, following the half-obliterated drive till they came almost opposite the hall, when they entered a footpath leading on to the village.  While hereabout they heard a shout, or chorus of exclamation, apparently from within the walls of the dark buildings near them.

‘What was that?’ said Anne.

‘I don’t know,’ said her companion.  ‘I’ll go and see.’

He went round the intervening swamp of watercress and brooklime which had once been the fish-pond, crossed by a culvert the trickling brook that still flowed that way, and advanced to the wall of the house.  Boisterous noises were resounding from within, and he was tempted to go round the corner, where the low windows were, and look through a chink into the room whence the sounds proceeded.

It was the room in which the owner dined — traditionally called the great parlour — and within it sat about a dozen young men of the yeomanry cavalry, one of them being Festus.  They were drinking, laughing, singing, thumping their fists on the tables, and enjoying themselves in the very perfection of confusion.  The candles, blown by the breeze from the partly opened window, had guttered into coffin handles and shrouds, and, choked by their long black wicks for want of snuffing, gave out a smoky yellow light.  One of the young men might possibly have been in a maudlin state, for he had his arm round the neck of his next neighbour.  Another was making an incoherent speech to which nobody was listening.  Some of their faces were red, some were sallow; some were sleepy, some wide awake.  The only one among them who appeared in his usual frame of mind was Festus, whose huge, burly form rose at the head of the table, enjoying with a serene and triumphant aspect the difference between his own condition and that of his neighbours.  While the trumpet-major looked, a young woman, niece of Anthony Cripplestraw, and one of Uncle Benjy’s servants, was called in by one of the crew, and much against her will a fiddle was placed in her hands, from which they made her produce discordant screeches.

The absence of Uncle Benjy had, in fact, been contrived by young Derriman that he might make use of the hall on his own account.  Cripplestraw had been left in charge, and Festus had found no difficulty in forcing from that dependent the keys of whatever he required.  John Loveday turned his eyes from the scene to the neighbouring moonlit path, where Anne still stood waiting.  Then he looked into the room, then at Anne again.  It was an opportunity of advancing his own cause with her by exposing Festus, for whom he began to entertain hostile feelings of no mean force.