Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (307 page)

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.

CHAPTER 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.

CHAPTER 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.