Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (345 page)

‘I want you to go somewhere with me if you will,’ he said, still holding her hand.

‘Yes?  Where is it?’

He pointed to a distant hill-side which, hitherto green, had within the last few days begun to show scratches of white on its face.  ‘Up there,’ he said.

‘I see little figures of men moving about.  What are they doing?’

‘Cutting out a huge picture of the king on horseback in the earth of the hill.  The king’s head is to be as big as our mill-pond and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre.  When shall we go?’

‘Whenever you please,’ said she.

‘John!’ cried Mrs. Loveday from the front door.  ‘Here’s a friend come for you.’

John went round, and found his trusty lieutenant, Trumpeter Buck, waiting for him.  A letter had come to the barracks for John in his absence, and the trumpeter, who was going for a walk, had brought it along with him.  Buck then entered the mill to discuss, if possible, a mug of last year’s mead with the miller; and John proceeded to read his letter, Anne being still round the corner where he had left her.  When he had read a few words he turned as pale as a sheet, but he did not move, and perused the writing to the end.

Afterwards he laid his elbow against the wall, and put his palm to his head, thinking with painful intentness.  Then he took himself vigorously in hand, as it were, and gradually became natural again.  When he parted from Anne to go home with Buck she noticed nothing different in him.

In barracks that evening he read the letter again.  It was from Bob; and the agitating contents were these: —

‘Dear John, — I have drifted off from writing till the present time because I have not been clear about my feelings; but I have discovered them at last, and can say beyond doubt that I mean to be faithful to my dearest Anne after all.  The fact is, John, I’ve got into a bit of a scrape, and I’ve a secret to tell you about it (which must go no further on any account).  On landing last autumn I fell in with a young woman, and we got rather warm as folks do; in short, we liked one another well enough for a while.  But I have got into shoal water with her, and have found her to be a terrible take-in.  Nothing in her at all — no sense, no niceness, all tantrums and empty noise, John, though she seemed monstrous clever at first.  So my heart comes back to its old anchorage.  I hope my return to faithfulness will make no difference to you.  But as you showed by your looks at our parting that you should not accept my offer to give her up — made in too much haste, as I have since found — I feel that you won’t mind that I have returned to the path of honour.  I dare not write to Anne as yet, and please do not let her know a word about the other young woman, or there will be the devil to pay.  I shall come home and make all things right, please God.  In the meantime I should take it as a kindness, John, if you would keep a brotherly eye upon Anne, and guide her mind back to me.  I shall die of sorrow if anybody sets her against me, for my hopes are getting bound up in her again quite strong.  Hoping you are jovial, as times go, I am, — Your affectionate brother,

Robert.’

When the cold daylight fell upon John’s face, as he dressed himself next morning, the incipient yesterday’s wrinkle in his forehead had become permanently graven there.  He had resolved, for the sake of that only brother whom he had nursed as a baby, instructed as a child, and protected and loved always, to pause in his procedure for the present, and at least do nothing to hinder Bob’s restoration to favour, if a genuine, even though temporarily smothered, love for Anne should still hold possession of him.  But having arranged to take her to see the excavated figure of the king, he started for Overcombe during the day, as if nothing had occurred to check the smooth course of his love.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

A DELICATE SITUATION

‘I am ready to go,’ said Anne, as soon as he arrived.

He paused as if taken aback by her readiness, and replied with much uncertainty, ‘Would it — wouldn’t it be better to put it off till there is less sun?’

The very slightest symptom of surprise arose in her as she rejoined, ‘But the weather may change; or had we better not go at all?’

‘O no! — it was only a thought.  We will start at once.’

And along the vale they went, John keeping himself about a yard from her right hand.  When the third field had been crossed they came upon half-a-dozen little boys at play.

‘Why don’t he clasp her to his side, like a man?’ said the biggest and rudest boy.

‘Why don’t he clasp her to his side, like a man?’ echoed all the rude smaller boys in a chorus.

The trumpet-major turned, and, after some running, succeeded in smacking two of them with his switch, returning to Anne breathless.  ‘I am ashamed they should have insulted you so,’ he said, blushing for her.

‘They said no harm, poor boys,’ she replied reproachfully.

Poor John was dumb with perception.  The gentle hint upon which he would have eagerly spoken only one short day ago was now like fire to his wound.

They presently came to some stepping-stones across a brook.  John crossed first without turning his head, and Anne, just lifting the skirt of her dress, crossed behind him.  When they had reached the other side a village girl and a young shepherd approached the brink to cross.  Anne stopped and watched them.  The shepherd took a hand of the young girl in each of his own, and walked backward over the stones, facing her, and keeping her upright by his grasp, both of them laughing as they went.

‘What are you staying for, Miss Garland?’ asked John.

‘I was only thinking how happy they are,’ she said quietly; and withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him, not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a suppressed groan from John.

When they reached the hill they found forty navvies at work removing the dark sod so as to lay bare the chalk beneath.  The equestrian figure that their shovels were forming was scarcely intelligible to John and Anne now they were close, and after pacing from the horse’s head down his breast to his hoof, back by way of the king’s bridle-arm, past the bridge of his nose, and into his cocked-hat, Anne said that she had had enough of it, and stepped out of the chalk clearing upon the grass.  The trumpet-major had remained all the time in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of his Majesty’s right spur.

‘My shoes are caked with chalk,’ she said as they walked downwards again; and she drew back her dress to look at them.  ‘How can I get some of it cleared off?’

‘If you was to wipe them in the long grass there,’ said John, pointing to a spot where the blades were rank and dense, ‘some of it would come off.’  Having said this, he walked on with religious firmness.

Anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own.  Panting with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him.

‘I hope it is right now?’ he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder.

‘No, indeed!’ said she.  ‘I wanted some assistance — some one to steady me.  It is so hard to stand on one foot and wipe the other without support.  I was in danger of toppling over, and so gave it up.’

‘Merciful stars, what an opportunity!’ thought the poor fellow while she waited for him to offer help. But his lips remained closed, and she went on with a pouting smile —

‘You seem in such a hurry!  Why are you in such a hurry?  After all the fine things you have said about — about caring so much for me, and all that, you won’t stop for anything!’

It was too much for John.  ‘Upon my heart and life, my dea — ’ he began.  Here Bob’s letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up to dumbness and gloom as before.

When they reached home Anne sank upon a stool outside the door, fatigued with her excursion.  Her first act was to try to pull off her shoe — it was a difficult matter; but John stood beating with his switch the leaves of the creeper on the wall.

‘Mother — David — Molly, or somebody — do come and help me pull off these dirty shoes!’ she cried aloud at last.  ‘Nobody helps me in anything!’

‘I am very sorry,’ said John, coming towards her with incredible slowness and an air of unutterable depression.

‘O, I can do without
you
.  David is best,’ she returned, as the old man approached and removed the obnoxious shoes in a trice.

Anne was amazed at this sudden change from devotion to crass indifference.  On entering her room she flew to the glass, almost expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore.  But it was, if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise.  ‘Well!’ she said retrospectively.  For the first time since their acqaintance she had this week encouraged him; and for the first time he had shown that encouragement was useless.  ‘But perhaps he does not clearly understand,’ she added serenely.

When he next came it was, to her surprise, to bring her newspapers, now for some time discontinued.  As soon as she saw them she said, ‘I do not care for newspapers.’

‘The shipping news is very full and long to-day, though the print is rather small.’

‘I take no further interest in the shipping news,’ she replied with cold dignity.

She was sitting by the window, inside the table, and hence when, in spite of her negations, he deliberately unfolded the paper and began to read about the Royal Navy she could hardly rise and go away.  With a stoical mien he read on to the end of the report, bringing out the name of Bob’s ship with tremendous force.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll hear no more!  Let me read to you.’

The trumpet-major sat down.  Anne turned to the military news, delivering every detail with much apparent enthusiasm.  ‘That’s the subject
I
like!’ she said fervently.

‘But — but Bob is in the navy now, and will most likely rise to be an officer.  And then — ’

‘What is there like the army?’ she interrupted.  ‘There is no smartness about sailors.  They waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid battles that no one can form any idea of.  There is no science nor stratagem in sea-fights — nothing more than what you see when two rams run their heads together in a field to knock each other down.  But in military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are so smart, particularly the horse-soldiers.  O, I shall never forget what gallant men you all seemed when you came and pitched your tents on the downs!  I like the cavalry better than anything I know; and the dragoons the best of the cavalry — and the trumpeters the best of the dragoons!’

‘O, if it had but come a little sooner!’ moaned John within him.  He replied as soon as he could regain self-command, ‘I am glad Bob is in the navy at last — he is so much more fitted for that than the merchant-service — so brave by nature, ready for any daring deed.  I have heard ever so much more about his doings on board the Victory.  Captain Hardy took special notice that when he — ’

‘I don’t want to know anything more about it,’ said Anne impatiently; ‘of course sailors fight; there’s nothing else to do in a ship, since you can’t run away!  You may as well fight and be killed as be killed not fighting.’

‘Still it is his character to be careless of himself where the honour of his country is concerned,’ John pleaded.  ‘If you had only known him as a boy you would own it.  He would always risk his own life to save anybody else’s.  Once when a cottage was afire up the lane he rushed in for a baby, although he was only a boy himself, and he had the narrowest escape.  We have got his hat now with the hole burnt in it.  Shall I get it and show it to you?’

‘No — I don’t wish it.  It has nothing to do with me.’  But as he persisted in his course towards the door, she added, ‘Ah! you are leaving because I am in your way.  You want to be alone while you read the paper — I will go at once.  I did not see that I was interrupting you.’  And she rose as if to retreat.

‘No, no!  I would rather be interrupted by
you
than — O, Miss Garland, excuse me!  I’ll just speak to father in the mill, now I am here.’

It is scarcely necessary to state that Anne (whose unquestionable gentility amid somewhat homely surroundings has been many times insisted on in the course of this history) was usually the reverse of a woman with a coming-on disposition; but, whether from pique at his manner, or from wilful adherence to a course rashly resolved on, or from coquettish maliciousness in reaction from long depression, or from any other thing, — so it was that she would not let him go.

‘Trumpet-major,’ she said, recalling him.

‘Yes?’ he replied timidly.

‘The bow of my cap-ribbon has come untied, has it not?’  She turned and fixed her bewitching glance upon him.

The bow was just over her forehead, or, more precisely, at the point where the organ of comparison merges in that of benevolence, according to the phrenological theory of Gall.  John, thus brought to, endeavoured to look at the bow in a skimming, duck-and-drake fashion, so as to avoid dipping his own glance as far as to the plane of his interrogator’s eyes.  ‘It is untied,’ he said, drawing back a little.

She came nearer, and asked, ‘Will you tie it for me, please?’

As there was no help for it, he nerved himself and assented.  As her head only reached to his fourth button she necessarily looked up for his convenience, and John began fumbling at the bow.  Try as he would it was impossible to touch the ribbon without getting his finger tips mixed with the curls of her forehead.

‘Your hand shakes — ah! you have been walking fast,’ she said.

‘Yes — yes.’

‘Have you almost done it?’  She inquiringly directed her gaze upward through his fingers.

‘No — not yet,’ he faltered in a warm sweat of emotion, his heart going like a flail.

‘Then be quick, please.’

‘Yes, I will, Miss Garland!  B-B-Bob is a very good fel — ’