Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (304 page)

T. H.

October
1895.

CHAPTER 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.’