Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (333 page)

Anne did not wait to recognize further; instantly re-entering the house, she shut the door and bolted it.  In the dark she sat and listened: not a sound.  At the end of ten minutes, thinking that the rider if he were not Festus had carelessly passed by, or that if he were Festus he had not seen her, she crept softly upstairs and peeped out of the window.  Excepting the spot of shade, formed by the gig as before, the down was quite bare.  She then opened the casement and stretched out her neck.

‘Ha, young madam!  There you are!  I knew ‘ee!  Now you are caught!’ came like a clap of thunder from a point three or four feet beneath her, and turning down her frightened eyes she beheld Festus Derriman lurking close to the wall.  His attention had first been attracted by her shutting the door of the cottage; then by the overturned gig; and after making sure, by examining the vehicle, that he was not mistaken in her identity, he had dismounted, led his horse round to the side, and crept up to entrap her.

Anne started back into the room, and remained still as a stone.  Festus went on — ’Come, you must trust to me.  The French have landed.  I have been trying to meet with you every hour since that confounded trick you played me.  You threw me into the water.  Faith, it was well for you I didn’t catch ye then!  I should have taken a revenge in a better way than I shall now.  I mean to have that kiss of ye.  Come, Miss Nancy; do you hear? — ’Tis no use for you to lurk inside there.  You’ll have to turn out as soon as Boney comes over the hill — Are you going to open the door, I say, and speak to me in a civil way?  What do you think I am, then, that you should barricade yourself against me as if I was a wild beast or Frenchman?  Open the door, or put out your head, or do something; or ‘pon my soul I’ll break in the door!’

It occurred to Anne at this point of the tirade that the best policy would be to temporize till somebody should return, and she put out her head and face, now grown somewhat pale.

‘That’s better,’ said Festus.  ‘Now I can talk to you.  Come, my dear, will you open the door?  Why should you be afraid of me?’

‘I am not altogether afraid of you; I am safe from the French here,’ said Anne, not very truthfully, and anxiously casting her eyes over the vacant down.

‘Then let me tell you that the alarm is false, and that no landing has been attempted.  Now will you open the door and let me in?  I am tired.  I have been on horseback ever since daylight, and have come to bring you the good tidings.’

Anne looked as if she doubted the news.

‘Come,’ said Festus.

‘No, I cannot let you in,’ she murmured, after a pause.

‘Dash my wig, then,’ he cried, his face flaming up, ‘I’ll find a way to get in!  Now, don’t you provoke me!  You don’t know what I am capable of.  I ask you again, will you open the door?’

‘Why do you wish it?’ she said faintly.

‘I have told you I want to sit down; and I want to ask you a question.’

‘You can ask me from where you are.’

‘I cannot ask you properly.  It is about a serious matter: whether you will accept my heart and hand.  I am not going to throw myself at your feet; but I ask you to do your duty as a woman, namely, give your solemn word to take my name as soon as the war is over and I have time to attend to you.  I scorn to ask it of a haughty hussy who will only speak to me through a window; however, I put it to you for the last time, madam.’

There was no sign on the down of anybody’s return, and she said, ‘I’ll think of it, sir.’

‘You have thought of it long enough; I want to know.  Will you or won’t you?’

‘Very well; I think I will.’  And then she felt that she might be buying personal safety too dearly by shuffling thus, since he would spread the report that she had accepted him, and cause endless complication.  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I have changed my mind.  I cannot accept you, Mr. Derriman.’

‘That’s how you play with me!’ he exclaimed, stamping.  ‘“Yes,” one moment; “No,” the next.  Come, you don’t know what you refuse.  That old hall is my uncle’s own, and he has nobody else to leave it to.  As soon as he’s dead I shall throw up farming and start as a squire.  And now,’ he added with a bitter sneer, ‘what a fool you are to hang back from such a chance!’

‘Thank you, I don’t value it,’ said Anne.

‘Because you hate him who would make it yours?’

‘It may not lie in your power to do that.’

‘What — has the old fellow been telling you his affairs?’

‘No.’

‘Then why do you mistrust me?  Now, after this will you open the door, and show that you treat me as a friend if you won’t accept me as a lover?  I only want to sit and talk to you.’

Anne thought she would trust him; it seemed almost impossible that he could harm her.  She retired from the window and went downstairs.  When her hand was upon the bolt of the door, her mind misgave her.  Instead of withdrawing it she remained in silence where she was, and he began again —

‘Are you going to unfasten it?’

Anne did not speak.

‘Now, dash my wig, I will get at you!  You’ve tried me beyond endurance.  One kiss would have been enough that day in the mead; now I’ll have forty, whether you will or no!’

He flung himself against the door; but as it was bolted, and had in addition a great wooden bar across it, this produced no effect.  He was silent for a moment, and then the terrified girl heard him attempt the shuttered window.  She ran upstairs and again scanned the down.  The yellow gig still lay in the blazing sunshine, and the horse of Festus stood by the corner of the garden — nothing else was to be seen.  At this moment there came to her ear the noise of a sword drawn from its scabbard; and, peeping over the window-sill, she saw her tormentor drive his sword between the joints of the shutters, in an attempt to rip them open.  The sword snapped off in his hand.  With an imprecation he pulled out the piece, and returned the two halves to the scabbard.

‘Ha! ha!’ he cried, catching sight of the top of her head.  ‘‘Tis only a joke, you know; but I’ll get in all the same.  All for a kiss!  But never mind, we’ll do it yet!’  He spoke in an affectedly light tone, as if ashamed of his previous resentful temper; but she could see by the livid back of his neck that he was brimful of suppressed passion.  ‘Only a jest, you know,’ he went on.  ‘How are we going to do it now?  Why, in this way.  I go and get a ladder, and enter at the upper window where my love is.  And there’s the ladder lying under that corn-rick in the first enclosed field.  Back in two minutes, dear!’

He ran off, and was lost to her view.

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ANNE DOES WONDERS

Anne fearfully surveyed her position.  The upper windows of the cottage were of flimsiest lead-work, and to keep him out would be hopeless.  She felt that not a moment was to be lost in getting away.  Running downstairs she opened the door, and then it occurred to her terrified understanding that there would be no chance of escaping him by flight afoot across such an extensive down, since he might mount his horse and easily ride after her.  The animal still remained tethered at the corner of the garden; if she could release him and frighten him away before Festus returned, there would not be quite such odds against her.  She accordingly unhooked the horse by reaching over the bank, and then, pulling off her muslin neckerchief, flapped it in his eyes to startle him.  But the gallant steed did not move or flinch; she tried again, and he seemed rather pleased than otherwise.  At this moment she heard a cry from the cottage, and turning, beheld her adversary approaching round the corner of the building.

‘I thought I should tole out the mouse by that trick!’ cried Festus exultingly.  Instead of going for a ladder, he had simply hidden himself at the back to tempt her down.

Poor Anne was now desperate.  The bank on which she stood was level with the horse’s back, and the creature seemed quiet as a lamb.  With a determination of which she was capable in emergencies, she seized the rein, flung herself upon the sheepskin, and held on by the mane.  The amazed charger lifted his head, sniffed, wrenched his ears hither and thither, and started off at a frightful speed across the down.

‘O, my heart and limbs!’ said Festus under his breath, as, thoroughly alarmed, he gazed after her.  ‘She on Champion!  She’ll break her neck, and I shall be tried for manslaughter, and disgrace will be brought upon the name of Derriman!’

Champion continued to go at a stretch-gallop, but he did nothing worse.  Had he plunged or reared, Derriman’s fears might have been verified, and Anne have come with deadly force to the ground.  But the course was good, and in the horse’s speed lay a comparative security.  She was scarcely shaken in her precarious half-horizontal position, though she was awed to see the grass, loose stones, and other objects pass her eyes like strokes whenever she opened them, which was only just for a second at intervals of half a minute; and to feel how wildly the stirrups swung, and that what struck her knee was the bucket of the carbine, and that it was a pistol-holster which hurt her arm.

They quickly cleared the down, and Anne became conscious that the course of the horse was homeward.  As soon as the ground began to rise towards the outer belt of upland which lay between her and the coast, Champion, now panting and reeking with moisture, lessened his speed in sheer weariness, and proceeded at a rapid jolting trot.  Anne felt that she could not hold on half so well; the gallop had been child’s play compared with this.  They were in a lane, ascending to a ridge, and she made up her mind for a fall.  Over the ridge rose an animated spot, higher and higher; it turned out to be the upper part of a man, and the man to be a soldier.  Such was Anne’s attitude that she only got an occasional glimpse of him; and, though she feared that he might be a Frenchman, she feared the horse more than the enemy, as she had feared Festus more than the horse.  Anne had energy enough left to cry, ‘Stop him; stop him!’ as the soldier drew near.

He, astonished at the sight of a military horse with a bundle of drapery across his back, had already placed himself in the middle of the lane, and he now held out his arms till his figure assumed the form of a Latin cross planted in the roadway.  Champion drew near, swerved, and stood still almost suddenly, a check sufficient to send Anne slipping down his flank to the ground.  The timely friend stepped forward and helped her to her feet, when she saw that he was John Loveday.

‘Are you hurt?’ he said hastily, having turned quite pale at seeing her fall.

‘O no; not a bit,’ said Anne, gathering herself up with forced briskness, to make light of the misadventure.

‘But how did you get in such a place?’

‘There, he’s gone!’ she exclaimed, instead of replying, as Champion swept round John Loveday and cantered off triumphantly in the direction of Oxwell, a performance which she followed with her eyes.

‘But how did you come upon his back, and whose horse is it?’

‘I will tell you.’

‘Well?’

‘I — cannot tell you.’

John looked steadily at her, saying nothing.

‘How did you come here?’ she asked.  ‘Is it true that the French have not landed at all?’

‘Quite true; the alarm was groundless.  I’ll tell you all about it.  You look very tired.  You had better sit down a few minutes.  Let us sit on this bank.’

He helped her to the slope indicated, and continued, still as if his thoughts were more occupied with the mystery of her recent situation than with what he was saying: ‘We arrived at Budmouth Barracks this morning, and are to lie there all the summer.  I could not write to tell father we were coming.  It was not because of any rumour of the French, for we knew nothing of that till we met the people on the road, and the colonel said in a moment the news was false.  Buonaparte is not even at Boulogne just now.  I was anxious to know how you had borne the fright, so I hastened to Overcombe at once, as soon as I could get out of barracks.’

Anne, who had not been at all responsive to his discourse, now swayed heavily against him, and looking quickly down he found that she had silently fainted.  To support her in his arms was of course the impulse of a moment.  There was no water to be had, and he could think of nothing else but to hold her tenderly till she came round again.  Certainly he desired nothing more.

Again he asked himself, what did it all mean?

He waited, looking down upon her tired eyelids, and at the row of lashes lying upon each cheek, whose natural roundness showed itself in singular perfection now that the customary pink had given place to a pale luminousness caught from the surrounding atmosphere.  The dumpy ringlets about her forehead and behind her poll, which were usually as tight as springs, had been partially uncoiled by the wildness of her ride, and hung in split locks over her forehead and neck.  John, who, during the long months of his absence, had lived only to meet her again, was in a state of ecstatic reverence, and bending down he gently kissed her.

Anne was just becoming conscious.

‘O, Mr. Derriman, never, never!’ she murmured, sweeping her face with her hand.