Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (346 page)

‘Not that man’s name to me!’ she interrupted.

John was silent instantly, and nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the ribbon; till his hands once more blundered among the curls, and then touched her forehead.

‘O good God!’ ejaculated the trumpet-major in a whisper, turning away hastily to the corner-cupboard, and resting his face upon his hand.

‘What’s the matter, John?’ said she.

‘I can’t do it!’

‘What?’

‘Tie your cap-ribbon.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you are so — Because I am clumsy, and never could tie a bow.’

‘You are clumsy indeed,’ answered Anne, and went away.

After this she felt injured, for it seemed to show that he rated her happiness as of meaner value than Bob’s; since he had persisted in his idea of giving Bob another chance when she had implied that it was her wish to do otherwise.  Could Miss Johnson have anything to do with his firmness?  An opportunity of testing him in this direction occurred some days later.  She had been up the village, and met John at the mill-door.

‘Have you heard the news?  Matilda Johnson is going to be married to young Derriman.’

Anne stood with her back to the sun, and as he faced her, his features were searchingly exhibited.  There was no change whatever in them, unless it were that a certain light of interest kindled by her question turned to complete and blank indifference.  ‘Well, as times go, it is not a bad match for her,’ he said, with a phlegm which was hardly that of a lover.

John on his part was beginning to find these temptations almost more than he could bear.  But being quartered so near to his father’s house it was unnatural not to visit him, especially when at any moment the regiment might be ordered abroad, and a separation of years ensue; and as long as he went there he could not help seeing her.

The year changed from green to gold, and from gold to grey, but little change came over the house of Loveday.  During the last twelve months Bob had been occasionally heard of as upholding his country’s honour in Denmark, the West Indies, Gibraltar, Malta, and other places about the globe, till the family received a short letter stating that he had arrived again at Portsmouth.  At Portsmouth Bob seemed disposed to remain, for though some time elapsed without further intelligence, the gallant seaman never appeared at Overcombe.  Then on a sudden John learnt that Bob’s long-talked-of promotion for signal services rendered was to be an accomplished fact.  The trumpet-major at once walked off to Overcombe, and reached the village in the early afternoon.  Not one of the family was in the house at the moment, and John strolled onwards over the hill towards Casterbridge, without much thought of direction till, lifting his eyes, he beheld Anne Garland wandering about with a little basket upon her arm.

At first John blushed with delight at the sweet vision; but, recalled by his conscience, the blush of delight was at once mangled and slain.  He looked for a means of retreat.  But the field was open, and a soldier was a conspicuous object: there was no escaping her.

‘It was kind of you to come,’ she said, with an inviting smile.

‘It was quite by accident,’ he answered, with an indifferent laugh.  ‘I thought you was at home.’

Anne blushed and said nothing, and they rambled on together.  In the middle of the field rose a fragment of stone wall in the form of a gable, known as Faringdon Ruin; and when they had reached it John paused and politely asked her if she were not a little tired with walking so far.  No particular reply was returned by the young lady, but they both stopped, and Anne seated herself on a stone, which had fallen from the ruin to the ground.

‘A church once stood here,’ observed John in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘Yes, I have often shaped it out in my mind,’ she returned.  ‘Here where I sit must have been the altar.’

‘True; this standing bit of wall was the chancel end.’

Anne had been adding up her little studies of the trumpet-major’s character, and was surprised to find how the brightness of that character increased in her eyes with each examination.  A kindly and gentle sensation was again aroused in her.  Here was a neglected heroic man, who, loving her to distraction, deliberately doomed himself to pensive shade to avoid even the appearance of standing in a brother’s way.

‘If the altar stood here, hundreds of people have been made man and wife just there, in past times,’ she said, with calm deliberateness, throwing a little stone on a spot about a yard westward.

John annihilated another tender burst and replied, ‘Yes, this field used to be a village.  My grandfather could call to mind when there were houses here.  But the squire pulled ‘em down, because poor folk were an eyesore to him.’

‘Do you know, John, what you once asked me to do?’ she continued, not accepting the digression, and turning her eyes upon him.

‘In what sort of way?’

‘In the matter of my future life, and yours.’

‘I am afraid I don’t.’

‘John Loveday!’

He turned his back upon her for a moment, that she might not see his face.  ‘Ah — I do remember,’ he said at last, in a dry, small, repressed voice.

‘Well — need I say more?  Isn’t it sufficient?’

‘It would be sufficient,’ answered the unhappy man.  ‘But — ’

She looked up with a reproachful smile, and shook her head.  ‘That summer,’ she went on, ‘you asked me ten times if you asked me once.  I am older now; much more of a woman, you know; and my opinion is changed about some people; especially about one.’

‘O Anne, Anne!’ he burst out as, racked between honour and desire, he snatched up her hand.  The next moment it fell heavily to her lap.  He had absolutely relinquished it half-way to his lips.

‘I have been thinking lately,’ he said, with preternaturally sudden calmness, ‘that men of the military profession ought not to m — ought to be like St. Paul, I mean.’

‘Fie, John; pretending religion!’ she said sternly.  ‘It isn’t that at all. 
It’s Bob
!’

‘Yes!’ cried the miserable trumpet-major.  ‘I have had a letter from him to-day.’ He pulled out a sheet of paper from his breast.  ‘That’s it!  He’s promoted — he’s a lieutenant, and appointed to a sloop that only cruises on our own coast, so that he’ll be at home on leave half his time — he’ll be a gentleman some day, and worthy of you!’

He threw the letter into her lap, and drew back to the other side of the gable-wall.  Anne jumped up from her seat, flung away the letter without looking at it, and went hastily on.  John did not attempt to overtake her.  Picking up the letter, he followed in her wake at a distance of a hundred yards.

But, though Anne had withdrawn from his presence thus precipitately, she never thought more highly of him in her life than she did five minutes afterwards, when the excitement of the moment had passed.  She saw it all quite clearly; and his self-sacrifice impressed her so much that the effect was just the reverse of what he had been aiming to produce.  The more he pleaded for Bob, the more her perverse generosity pleaded for John.  To-day the crisis had come — with what results she had not foreseen.

As soon as the trumpet-major reached the nearest pen-and-ink he flung himself into a seat and wrote wildly to Bob: —

‘Dear Robert, — I write these few lines to let you know that if you want Anne Garland you must come at once — you must come instantly, and post-haste —
or she will be gone
!  Somebody else wants her, and she wants him!  It is your last chance, in the opinion of —

‘Your faithful brother and well-wisher,

‘John.

‘P.S. — Glad to hear of your promotion.  Tell me the day and I’ll meet the coach.’

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

BOB LOVEDAY STRUTS UP AND DOWN

One night, about a week later, two men were walking in the dark along the turnpike road towards Overcombe, one of them with a bag in his hand.

‘Now,’ said the taller of the two, the squareness of whose shoulders signified that he wore epaulettes, ‘now you must do the best you can for yourself, Bob.  I have done all I can; but th’hast thy work cut out, I can tell thee.’

‘I wouldn’t have run such a risk for the world,’ said the other, in a tone of ingenuous contrition.  ‘But thou’st see, Jack, I didn’t think there was any danger, knowing you was taking care of her, and keeping my place warm for me.  I didn’t hurry myself, that’s true; but, thinks I, if I get this promotion I am promised I shall naturally have leave, and then I’ll go and see ‘em all.  Gad, I shouldn’t have been here now but for your letter!’

‘You little think what risks you’ve run,’ said his brother.  ‘However, try to make up for lost time.’

‘All right.  And whatever you do, Jack, don’t say a word about this other girl.  Hang the girl! — I was a great fool, I know; still, it is over now, and I am come to my senses.  I suppose Anne never caught a capful of wind from that quarter?’

‘She knows all about it,’ said John seriously.

‘Knows?  By George, then, I’m ruined!’ said Bob, standing stock-still in the road as if he meant to remain there all night.

‘That’s what I meant by saying it would be a hard battle for ‘ee,’ returned John, with the same quietness as before.

Bob sighed and moved on.  ‘I don’t deserve that woman!’ he cried passionately, thumping his three upper ribs with his fist.

‘I’ve thought as much myself,’ observed John, with a dryness which was almost bitter.  ‘But it depends on how thou’st behave in future.’

‘John,’ said Bob, taking his brother’s hand, ‘I’ll be a new man.  I solemnly swear by that eternal milestone staring at me there that I’ll never look at another woman with the thought of marrying her whilst that darling is free — no, not if she be a mermaiden of light!  It’s a lucky thing that I’m slipped in on the quarterdeck! it may help me with her — hey?’

‘It may with her mother; I don’t think it will make much difference with Anne.  Still, it is a good thing; and I hope that some day you’ll command a big ship.’

Bob shook his head.  ‘Officers are scarce; but I’m afraid my luck won’t carry me so far as that.’

‘Did she ever tell you that she mentioned your name to the King?’

The seaman stood still again.  ‘Never!’ he said.  ‘How did such a thing as that happen, in Heaven’s name?’

John described in detail, and they walked on, lost in conjecture.

As soon as they entered the house the returned officer of the navy was welcomed with acclamation by his father and David, with mild approval by Mrs. Loveday, and by Anne not at all — that discreet maiden having carefully retired to her own room some time earlier in the evening.  Bob did not dare to ask for her in any positive manner; he just inquired about her health, and that was all.

‘Why, what’s the matter with thy face, my son?’ said the miller, staring.  ‘David, show a light here.’  And a candle was thrust against Bob’s cheek, where there appeared a jagged streak like the geological remains of a lobster.

‘O — that’s where that rascally Frenchman’s grenade busted and hit me from the Redoubtable, you know, as I told ‘ee in my letter.’

‘Not a word!’

‘What, didn’t I tell ‘ee?  Ah, no; I meant to, but I forgot it.’

‘And here’s a sort of dint in yer forehead too; what do that mean, my dear boy?’ said the miller, putting his finger in a chasm in Bob’s skull.

‘That was done in the Indies.  Yes, that was rather a troublesome chop — a cutlass did it.  I should have told ‘ee, but I found ‘twould make my letter so long that I put it off, and put it off; and at last thought it wasn’t worth while.’

John soon rose to take his departure.

‘It’s all up with me and her, you see,’ said Bob to him outside the door.  ‘She’s not even going to see me.’

‘Wait a little,’ said the trumpet-major.  It was easy enough on the night of the arrival, in the midst of excitement, when blood was warm, for Anne to be resolute in her avoidance of Bob Loveday.  But in the morning determination is apt to grow invertebrate; rules of pugnacity are less easily acted up to, and a feeling of live and let live takes possession of the gentle soul.  Anne had not meant even to sit down to the same breakfast-table with Bob; but when the rest were assembled, and had got some way through the substantial repast which was served at this hour in the miller’s house, Anne entered.  She came silently as a phantom, her eyes cast down, her cheeks pale.  It was a good long walk from the door to the table, and Bob made a full inspection of her as she came up to a chair at the remotest corner, in the direct rays of the morning light, where she dumbly sat herself down.

It was altogether different from how she had expected.  Here was she, who had done nothing, feeling all the embarrassment; and Bob, who had done the wrong, feeling apparently quite at ease.

‘You’ll speak to Bob, won’t you, honey?’ said the miller after a silence.  To meet Bob like this after an absence seemed irregular in his eyes.

‘If he wish me to,’ she replied, so addressing the miller that no part, scrap, or outlying beam whatever of her glance passed near the subject of her remark.

‘He’s a lieutenant, you know, dear,’ said her mother on the same side; ‘and he’s been dreadfully wounded.’

‘Oh?’ said Anne, turning a little towards the false one; at which Bob felt it to be time for him to put in a spoke for himself.

‘I am glad to see you,’ he said contritely; ‘and how do you do?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

He extended his hand.  She allowed him to take hers, but only to the extent of a niggardly inch or so.  At the same moment she glanced up at him, when their eyes met, and hers were again withdrawn.

The hitch between the two younger members of the household tended to make the breakfast a dull one.  Bob was so depressed by her unforgiving manner that he could not throw that sparkle into his stories which their substance naturally required; and when the meal was over, and they went about their different businesses, the pair resembled the two Dromios in seldom or never being, thanks to Anne’s subtle contrivances, both in the same room at the same time.