Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (321 page)

‘But, my dear Matilda,’ said Bob, when he had kissed her three times with much publicity — the practical step he had determined on seeming to demand that these things should no longer be done in a corner — ’my dear Matilda, why didn’t you come by the coach, having the money for’t and all?’

‘That’s my scrimping!’ said Matilda in a delightful gush.  ‘I know you won’t be offended when you know I did it to save against a rainy day!’

Bob, of course, was not offended, though the glory of meeting her had been less; and even if vexation were possible, it would have been out of place to say so.  Still, he would have experienced no little surprise had he learnt the real reason of his Matilda’s change of plan.  That angel had, in short, so wildly spent Bob’s and her own money in the adornment of her person before setting out, that she found herself without a sufficient margin for her fare by coach, and had scrimped from sheer necessity.

‘Well, I have got the trap out at the Greyhound,’ said Bob.  ‘I don’t know whether it will hold your luggage and us too; but it looked more respectable than the waggon on a Sunday, and if there’s not room for the boxes I can walk alongside.’

‘I think there will be room,’ said Miss Johnson mildly.  And it was soon very evident that she spoke the truth; for when her property was deposited on the pavement, it consisted of a trunk about eighteen inches long, and nothing more.

‘O — that’s all!’ said Captain Loveday, surprised.

‘That’s all,’ said the young woman assuringly.  ‘I didn’t want to give trouble, you know, and what I have besides I have left at my aunt’s.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he answered readily.  ‘And as it’s no bigger, I can carry it in my hand to the inn, and so it will be no trouble at all.’

He caught up the little box, and they went side by side to the Greyhound; and in ten minutes they were trotting up the Southern Road.

Bob did not hurry the horse, there being many things to say and hear, for which the present situation was admirably suited.  The sun shone occasionally into Matilda’s face as they drove on, its rays picking out all her features to a great nicety.  Her eyes would have been called brown, but they were really eel-colour, like many other nice brown eyes; they were well-shaped and rather bright, though they had more of a broad shine than a sparkle.  She had a firm, sufficient nose, which seemed to say of itself that it was good as noses go.  She had rather a picturesque way of wrapping her upper in her lower lip, so that the red of the latter showed strongly.  Whenever she gazed against the sun towards the distant hills, she brought into her forehead, without knowing it, three short vertical lines — not there at other times — giving her for the moment rather a hard look.  And in turning her head round to a far angle, to stare at something or other that he pointed out, the drawn flesh of her neck became a mass of lines.  But Bob did not look at these things, which, of course, were of no significance; for had she not told him, when they compared ages, that she was a little over two-and-twenty?

As Nature was hardly invented at this early point of the century, Bob’s Matilda could not say much about the glamour of the hills, or the shimmering of the foliage, or the wealth of glory in the distant sea, as she would doubtless have done had she lived later on; but she did her best to be interesting, asking Bob about matters of social interest in the neighbourhood, to which she seemed quite a stranger.

‘Is your watering-place a large city?’ she inquired when they mounted the hill where the Overcombe folk had waited for the King.

‘Bless you, my dear — no!  ‘Twould be nothing if it wasn’t for the Royal Family, and the lords and ladies, and the regiments of soldiers, and the frigates, and the King’s messengers, and the actors and actresses, and the games that go on.’

At the words ‘actors and actresses,’ the innocent young thing pricked up her ears.

‘Does Elliston pay as good salaries this summer as in — ?’

‘O, you know about it then?  I thought — ’

‘O no, no!  I have heard of Budmouth — read in the papers, you know, dear Robert, about the doings there, and the actors and actresses, you know.’

‘Yes, yes, I see.  Well, I have been away from England a long time, and don’t know much about the theatre in the town; but I’ll take you there some day.  Would it be a treat to you?’

‘O, an amazing treat!’ said Miss Johnson, with an ecstasy in which a close observer might have discovered a tinge of ghastliness.

‘You’ve never been into one perhaps, dear?’

‘N — never,’ said Matilda flatly.  ‘Whatever do I see yonder — a row of white things on the down?’

‘Yes, that’s a part of the encampment above Overcombe.  Lots of soldiers are encamped about here; those are the white tops of their tents.’

He pointed to a wing of the camp that had become visible.  Matilda was much interested.

‘It will make it very lively for us,’ he added, ‘especially as John is there.’

She thought so too, and thus they chatted on.

CHAPTER XVII. 

TWO FAINTING FITS AND A BEWILDERMENT

Meanwhile Miller Loveday was expecting the pair with interest; and about five o’clock, after repeated outlooks, he saw two specks the size of caraway seeds on the far line of ridge where the sunlit white of the road met the blue of the sky.  Then the remainder parts of Bob and his lady became visible, and then the whole vehicle, end on, and he heard the dry rattle of the wheels on the dusty road.  Miller Loveday’s plan, as far as he had formed any, was that Robert and his wife should live with him in the millhouse until Mrs. Garland made up her mind to join him there; in which event her present house would be made over to the young couple.  Upon all grounds, he wished to welcome becomingly the woman of his son’s choice, and came forward promptly as they drew up at the door.

‘What a lovely place you’ve got here!’ said Miss Johnson, when the miller had received her from the captain.  ‘A real stream of water, a real mill-wheel, and real fowls, and everything!’

‘Yes, ‘tis real enough,’ said Loveday, looking at the river with balanced sentiments; ‘and so you will say when you’ve lived here a bit as mis’ess, and had the trouble of claning the furniture.’

At this Miss Johnson looked modest, and continued to do so till Anne, not knowing they were there, came round the corner of the house, with her prayer-book in her hand, having just arrived from church.  Bob turned and smiled to her, at which Miss Johnson looked glum.  How long she would have remained in that phase is unknown, for just then her ears were assailed by a loud bass note from the other side, causing her to jump round.

‘O la! what dreadful thing is it?’ she exclaimed, and beheld a cow of Loveday’s, of the name of Crumpler, standing close to her shoulder.  It being about milking-time, she had come to look up David and hasten on the operation.

‘O, what a horrid bull! — it did frighten me so.  I hope I shan’t faint,’ said Matilda.

The miller immediately used the formula which has been uttered by the proprietors of live stock ever since Noah’s time.  ‘She won’t hurt ye.  Hoosh, Crumpler!  She’s as timid as a mouse, ma’am.’

But as Crumpler persisted in making another terrific inquiry for David, Matilda could not help closing her eyes and saying, ‘O, I shall be gored to death!’ her head falling back upon Bob’s shoulder, which — seeing the urgent circumstances, and knowing her delicate nature — he had providentially placed in a position to catch her.  Anne Garland, who had been standing at the corner of the house, not knowing whether to go back or come on, at this felt her womanly sympathies aroused.  She ran and dipped her handkerchief into the splashing mill-tail, and with it damped Matilda’s face.  But as her eyes still remained closed, Bob, to increase the effect, took the handkerchief from Anne and wrung it out on the bridge of Matilda’s nose, whence it ran over the rest of her face in a stream.

‘O, Captain Loveday!’ said Anne, ‘the water is running over her green silk handkerchief, and into her pretty reticule!’

‘There — if I didn’t think so!’ exclaimed Matilda, opening her eyes, starting up, and promptly pulling out her own handkerchief, with which she wiped away the drops, and an unimportant trifle of her complexion, assisted by Anne, who, in spite of her background of antagonistic emotions, could not help being interested.

‘That’s right!’ said the miller, his spirits reviving with the revival of Matilda.  ‘The lady is not used to country life; are you, ma’am?’

‘I am not,’ replied the sufferer.  ‘All is so strange about here!’

Suddenly there spread into the firmament, from the direction of the down: —

‘Ra, ta, ta!  Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!  Ra, ta, ta!’

‘O dear, dear! more hideous country sounds, I suppose?’ she inquired, with another start.

‘O no,’ said the miller cheerfully.  ‘‘Tis only my son John’s trumpeter chaps at the camp of dragoons just above us, a-blowing Mess, or Feed, or Picket, or some other of their vagaries.  John will be much pleased to tell you the meaning on’t when he comes down.  He’s trumpet-major, as you may know, ma’am.’

‘O yes; you mean Captain Loveday’s brother.  Dear Bob has mentioned him.’

‘If you come round to Widow Garland’s side of the house, you can see the camp,’ said the miller.

‘Don’t force her; she’s tired with her long journey,’ said Mrs. Garland humanely, the widow having come out in the general wish to see Captain Bob’s choice.  Indeed, they all behaved towards her as if she were a tender exotic, which their crude country manners might seriously injure.

She went into the house, accompanied by Mrs. Garland and her daughter; though before leaving Bob she managed to whisper in his ear, ‘Don’t tell them I came by waggon, will you, dear?’ — a request which was quite needless, for Bob had long ago determined to keep that a dead secret; not because it was an uncommon mode of travel, but simply that it was hardly the usual conveyance for a gorgeous lady to her bridal.

As the men had a feeling that they would be superfluous indoors just at present, the miller assisted David in taking the horse round to the stables, Bob following, and leaving Matilda to the women.  Indoors, Miss Johnson admired everything: the new parrots and marmosets, the black beams of the ceiling, the double-corner cupboard with the glass doors, through which gleamed the remainders of sundry china sets acquired by Bob’s mother in her housekeeping — two-handled sugar-basins, no-handled tea-cups, a tea-pot like a pagoda, and a cream-jug in the form of a spotted cow.  This sociability in their visitor was returned by Mrs. Garland and Anne; and Miss Johnson’s pleasing habit of partly dying whenever she heard any unusual bark or bellow added to her piquancy in their eyes.  But conversation, as such, was naturally at first of a nervous, tentative kind, in which, as in the works of some minor poets, the sense was considerably led by the sound.

‘You get the sea-breezes here, no doubt?’

‘O yes, dear; when the wind is that way.’

‘Do you like windy weather?’

‘Yes; though not now, for it blows down the young apples.’

‘Apples are plentiful, it seems.  You country-folk call St. Swithin’s their christening day, if it rains?’

‘Yes, dear.  Ah me! I have not been to a christening for these many years; the baby’s name was George, I remember — after the King.’

‘I hear that King George is still staying at the town here.  I
hope
he’ll stay till I have seen him!’

‘He’ll wait till the corn turns yellow; he always does.’

‘How
very
fashionable yellow is getting for gloves just now!’

‘Yes.  Some persons wear them to the elbow, I hear.’

‘Do they?  I was not aware of that.  I struck my elbow last week so hard against the door of my aunt’s mansion that I feel the ache now.’

Before they were quite overwhelmed by the interest of this discourse, the miller and Bob came in.  In truth, Mrs. Garland found the office in which he had placed her — that of introducing a strange woman to a house which was not the widow’s own — a rather awkward one, and yet almost a necessity.  There was no woman belonging to the house except that wondrous compendium of usefulness, the intermittent maid-servant, whom Loveday had, for appearances, borrowed from Mrs. Garland, and Mrs. Garland was in the habit of borrowing from the girl’s mother.  And as for the demi-woman David, he had been informed as peremptorily as Pharaoh’s baker that the office of housemaid and bedmaker was taken from him, and would be given to this girl till the wedding was over, and Bob’s wife took the management into her own hands.