The Trumpet-Major

Anne was just becoming conscious.

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

‘I thought he was at the bottom of it,’ said John.

Anne opened her eyes, and started back from him. ‘What is it?’ she said wildly.

‘You are ill, my dear Miss Garland,’ replied John in trembling anxiety, and taking her hand.

‘I am not ill, I am wearied out!’ she said. ‘Can’t we walk on? How far are we from Overcombe?’

‘About a mile. But tell me, somebody has been hurting you – frightening you. I know who it was; it was Derriman, and that was his horse. Now do you tell me all.’

Anne reflected. ‘Then if I tell you,’ she said, ‘will you discuss with me what I had better do, and not for the present let my mother and your father know? I don’t want to alarm them, and I must not let my affairs interrupt the business connexion between the mill and the hall that has gone on for so many years.’

The trumpet-major promised, and Anne told the adventure. His brow reddened as she went on, and when she had done she said, ‘Now you are angry. Don’t do anything dreadful, will you? Remember that this Festus will most likely succeed his uncle at Oxwell, in spite of present appearances, and if Bob succeeds at the mill there should be no enmity between them.’

‘That’s true. I won’t tell Bob. Leave him to me. Where is Derriman now? On his way home, I suppose. When I have seen you into the house I will deal with him – quite quietly, so that he shall say nothing about it.’

‘Yes, appeal to him, do! Perhaps he will be better then.’

They walked on together, Loveday seeming to experience much quiet bliss.

‘I came to look for you,’ he said, ‘because of that dear, sweet letter you wrote.’

‘Yes, I did write you a letter,’ she admitted, with misgiving, now beginning to see her mistake. ‘It was because I was sorry I had blamed you.’

‘I am almost glad you did blame me,’ said John cheerfully, ‘since, if you had not, the letter would not have come. I have read it fifty times a day.’

This put Anne into an unhappy mood, and they proceeded without much further talk till the mill chimneys were visible below them. John then said that he would leave her to go in by herself.

‘Ah, you are going back to get into some danger on my account?’

‘I can’t get into much danger with such a fellow as he, can I?’ said John, smiling.

‘Well, no,’ she answered, with a sudden carelessness of tone. It was indispensable that he should be undeceived, and to begin the process by taking an affectedly light view of his personal risks was perhaps as good a way to do it as any. Where friendliness was construed as love, an assumed indifference was the necessary expression for friendliness.

So she let him go; and, bidding him hasten back as soon as he could, went down the hill, while John’s feet retraced the upland.

The trumpet-major spent the whole afternoon and evening in that long and difficult search for Festus Derriman. Crossing the down at the end of the second hour he met Molly and Mrs. Loveday. The gig had been repaired, they had learnt the groundlessness of the alarm, and they would have been proceeding happily enough but for their anxiety about Anne. John told them shortly that she had got a lift home, and proceeded on his way.

The worthy object of his search had in the meantime been plodding homeward on foot, sulky at the loss of his charger, encumbered with his sword, belts, high boots, and uniform, and in his own discomfiture careless whether Anne Garland’s life had been endangered or not.

At length Derriman reached a place where the road ran between high banks, one of which he mounted and paced along as a change from the hard trackway. Ahead of him he saw an old man sitting down, with eyes fixed on the dust of the road, as if resting and meditating at one and the same time. Being pretty sure that he recognized his uncle in that venerable figure, Festus came forward stealthily, till he was immediately above the old man’s back. The latter was clothed in faded nankeen breeches, speckled stockings, a drab hat, and a coat which had once been light blue, but from exposure as a scarecrow had assumed the complexion and fibre of a dried pudding-cloth. The farmer was, in fact, returning to the hall, which he had left in the morning some time later than his nephew, to seek an asylum in a hollow tree about two miles off. The tree was so situated as to command a view of the building, and Uncle Benjy had managed to clamber up inside this natural fortification high enough to watch his residence through a hole in the bark, till, gathering from the words of occasional passers-by that the alarm was at least premature, he had ventured into daylight again.

He was now engaged in abstractedly tracing a diagram in the dust with his walking-stick, and muttered words to himself aloud. Presently he arose and went on his way without turning round. Festus was curious enough to descend and look at the marks. They represented an oblong, with two semi-diagonals, and a little square in the middle. Upon the diagonals were the figures 20 and 17, and on each side of the parallelogram stood a letter signifying the point of the compass.

‘What crazy thing is running in his head now?’ said Festus to himself, with supercilious pity, recollecting that the farmer had been singing those very numbers earlier in the morning. Being able to make nothing of it, he lengthened his strides, and treading on tiptoe overtook his relative, saluting him by scratching his back like a hen. The startled old farmer danced round like a top, and gasping, said, as he perceived his nephew, ‘What, Festy! not thrown from your horse and killed, then, after all!’

‘No, nunc. What made ye think that?’

‘Champion passed me about an hour ago, when I was in hiding – poor timid soul of me, for I had nothing to lose by the French coming – and he looked awful with the stirrups dangling and the saddle empty. ’Tis a gloomy sight, Festy, to see a horse cantering without a rider, and I thought you had been – feared you had been thrown off and killed as dead as a nit.’

‘Bless your dear old heart for being so anxious! And what pretty picture were you drawing just now with your walking-stick!’

‘O, that! That is only a way I have of amusing myself. It showed how the French might have advanced to the attack, you know. Such trifles fill the head of a weak old man like me.’

‘Or the place where something is hid away – money, for instance?’

‘Festy,’ said the farmer reproachfully, ‘you always know I use the old glove in the bedroom cupboard for any guinea or two I possess.’

‘Of course I do,’ said Festus ironically.

They had now reached a lonely inn about a mile and a half from the hall, and, the farmer not responding to his nephew’s kind invitation to come in and treat him, Festus entered alone. He was dusty, draggled, and weary, and he remained at the tavern long. The trumpet-major, in the meantime, having searched the roads in vain, heard in the course of the evening of the yeoman’s arrival at this place, and that he would probably be found there still. He accordingly approached the door, reaching it just as the dusk of evening changed to darkness.

There was no light in the passage, but John pushed on at hazard, inquired for Derriman, and was told that he would be found in the back parlour alone. When Loveday first entered the apartment he was unable to see anything, but following the guidance of a vigorous snoring, he came to the settle, upon which Festus lay asleep, his position being faintly signified by the shine of his buttons and other parts of his uniform. John laid his hand upon the reclining figure and shook him, and by degrees Derriman stopped his snore and sat up.

‘Who are you?’ he said, in the accents of a man who has been drinking hard. ‘Is it you, dear Anne? Let me kiss you; yes, I will.’

‘Shut your mouth, you pitiful blockhead; I’ll teach you genteeler manners than to persecute a young woman in that way!’ and taking Festus by the ear, he gave it a good pull. Festus broke out with an oath, and struck a vague blow in the air with his fist; whereupon the trumpet-major dealt him a box on the right ear, and a similar one on the left to artistically balance the first. Festus jumped up and used his fists wildly, but without any definite result.

‘Want to fight, do ye, eh?’ said John. ‘Nonsense! you can’t fight, you great baby, and never could. You are only fit to be smacked!’ and he dealt Festus a specimen of the same on the cheek with the palm of his hand.

‘No, sir, no! O, you are Loveday, the young man she’s going to be married to, I suppose? Dash me, I didn’t want to hurt her, sir.’

‘Yes, my name is Loveday; and you’ll know where to find me, since we can’t finish this to-night. Pistols or swords, whichever you like, my boy. Take that, and that, so that you may not forget to call upon me!’ and again he smacked the yeoman’s ears and cheeks. ‘Do you know what it is for, eh?’

‘No, Mr. Loveday, sir – yes, I mean, I do.’

‘What is it for, then? I shall keep smacking until you tell me. Gad! if you weren’t drunk, I’d half kill you here to-night.’

‘It is because I served her badly. Damned if I care! I’ll do it again, and be hanged to ’ee! Where’s my horse Champion? Tell me that,’ and he hit at the trumpet-major.

John parried this attack, and taking him firmly by the collar, pushed him down into the seat, saying, ‘Here I hold ’ee till you beg pardon for your doings to-day. Do you want any more of it, do you?’ And he shook the yeoman to a sort of jelly.

‘I do beg pardon – no, I don’t. I say this, that you shall not take such liberties with old Squire Derriman’s nephew, you dirty miller’s son, you flour-worm, you smut in the corn! I’ll call you out to-morrow morning, and have my revenge.’

‘Of course you will; that’s what I came for.’ And pushing him back into the corner of the settle, Loveday went out of the house, feeling considerable satisfaction at having got himself into the beginning of as nice a quarrel about Anne Garland as the most jealous lover could desire.

But of one feature in this curious adventure he had not the least notion – that Festus Derriman, misled by the darkness, the fumes of his potations, and the constant sight of Anne and Bob together, never once supposed his assailant to be any other man than Bob, believing the trumpet-major miles away.

There was a moon during the early part of John’s walk home, but when he had arrived within a mile of Overcombe the sky clouded over, and rain suddenly began to fall with some violence. Near him was a wooden granary on tall stone staddles, and perceiving that the rain was only a thunderstorm which would soon pass away, he ascended the steps and entered the doorway, where he stood watching the half-obscured moon through the streaming rain. Presently, to his surprise, he beheld a female figure running forward with great rapidity, not towards the granary for shelter, but towards open ground. What could she be running for in that direction? The answer came in the appearance of his brother Bob from that quarter, seated on the back of his father’s heavy horse. As soon as the woman met him, Bob dismounted and caught her in his arms. They stood locked together, the rain beating into their unconscious forms, and the horse looking on.

The trumpet-major fell back inside the granary, and threw himself on a heap of empty sacks which lay in the corner: he had recognized the woman to be Anne. Here he reclined in a stupor till he was aroused by the sound of voices under him, the voices of Anne and his brother, who, having at last discovered that they were getting wet, had taken shelter under the granary floor.

‘I have been home,’ said she. ‘Mother and Molly have both got back long ago. We were all anxious about you, and I came out to look for you. O, Bob, I am so glad to see you again!’

John might have heard every word of the conversation, which was continued in the same strain for a long time; but he stopped his ears, and would not. Still they remained, and still was he determined that they should not see him. With the conserved hope of more than half a year dashed away in a moment, he could yet feel that the cruelty of a protest would be even greater than its inutility. It was absolutely by his own contrivance that the situation had been shaped. Bob, left to himself, would long ere this have been the husband of another woman.

The rain decreased, and the lovers went on. John looked after them as they strolled, aqua-tinted by the weak moon and mist. Bob had thrust one of his arms through the rein of the horse, and the other was round Anne’s waist. When they were lost behind the declivity the trumpet-major came out, and walked homeward even more slowly than they. As he went on, his face put off its complexion of despair for one of serene resolve. For the first time in his dealings with friends he entered upon a course of counterfeiting, set his features to conceal his thought, and instructed his tongue to do likewise. He threw fictitiousness into his very gait, even now, when there was nobody to see him, and struck at stems of wild parsley with his regimental switch as he had used to do when soldiering was new to him, and life in general a charming experience.

Thus cloaking his sickly thought, he descended to the mill as the others had done before him, occasionally looking down upon the wet road to notice how close Anne’s little tracks were to Bob’s all the way along, and how precisely a curve in his course was followed by a curve in hers. But after this he erected his head and walked so smartly up to the front door that his spurs rang through the court.

They had all reached home, but before any of them could speak he cried gaily, ‘Ah, Bob, I have been thinking of you! By God, how are you, my boy? No French cut-throats after all, you see. Here we are, well and happy together again.’

‘A good Providence has watched over us,’ said Mrs. Loveday cheerfully. ‘Yes, in all times and places we are in God’s hand.’

‘So we be, so we be!’ said the miller, who still shone in all the fierceness of uniform. ‘Well, now we’ll ha’e a drop o’ drink.’

‘There’s none,’ said David, coming forward with a drawn face.

‘What!’ said the miller.

‘Afore I went to church for a pike to defend my native country from Boney, I pulled out the spigots of all the barrels, maister; for, thinks I – damn him! – since we can’t drink it ourselves, he shan’t have it, nor none of his men.’

‘But you shouldn’t have done it till you was sure he’d come!’ said the miller, aghast.

‘Chok’ it all, I was sure!’ said David. ‘I’d sooner see churches fall than good drink wasted; but how was I to know better?’

‘Well, well; what with one thing and another this day will cost me a pretty penny!’ said Loveday, bustling off to the cellar, which he found to be several inches deep in stagnant liquor. ‘John, how can I welcome ’ee?’ he continued hopelessly, on his return to the room. ‘Only go and see what he’s done!’

‘I’ve ladled up a drap wi’ a spoon, trumpet-major,’ said David. ‘’Tisn’t bad drinking, though it do taste a little of the floor, that’s true.’

John said that he did not require anything at all; and then they all sat down to supper, and were very temperately gay with a drop of mild elder-wine which Mrs. Loveday found in the bottom of a jar. The trumpet-major, adhering to the part he meant to play, gave humorous accounts of his adventures since he had last sat there. He told them that the season was to be a very lively one – that the royal family was coming, as usual, and many other interesting things; so that when he left them to return to barracks few would have supposed the British army to contain a lighter-hearted man.

Anne was the only one who doubted the reality of this behaviour. When she had gone up to her bedroom she stood for some time looking at the wick of the candle as if it were a painful object, the expression of her face being shaped by the conviction that John’s afternoon words when he helped her out of the way of Champion were not in accordance with his words to-night, and that the dimly-realized kiss during her faintness was no imaginary one. But in the blissful circumstances of having Bob at hand again she took optimist views, and persuaded herself that John would soon begin to see her in the light of a sister.

XXIX. A DISSEMBLER

To cursory view, John Loveday seemed to accomplish this with amazing ease. Whenever he came from barracks to Overcombe, which was once or twice a week, he related news of all sorts to her and Bob with infinite zest, and made the time as happy a one as had ever been known at the mill, save for himself alone. He said nothing of Festus, except so far as to inform Anne that he had expected to see him and been disappointed. On the evening after the King’s arrival at his seaside residence John appeared again, staying to supper and describing the royal entry, the many tasteful illuminations and transparencies which had been exhibited, the quantities of tallow candles burnt for that purpose, and the swarms of aristocracy who had followed the King thither.

When supper was over Bob went outside the house to shut the shutters, which had, as was often the case, been left open some time after lights were kindled within. John still sat at the table when his brother approached the window, though the others had risen and retired. Bob was struck by seeing through the pane how John’s face had changed. Throughout the supper-time he had been talking to Anne in the gay tone habitual with him now, which gave greater strangeness to the gloom of his present appearance. He remained in thought for a moment, took a letter from his breast-pocket, opened it, and, with a tender smile at his weakness, kissed the writing before restoring it to its place. The letter was one that Anne had written to him at Exonbury.

Bob stood perplexed; and then a suspicion crossed his mind that John, from brotherly goodness, might be feigning a satisfaction with recent events which he did not feel. Bob now made a noise with the shutters, at which the trumpet-major rose and went out, Bob at once following him.

‘Jack,’ said the sailor ingenuously, ‘I’m terribly sorry that I’ve done wrong.’

‘How?’ asked his brother.

‘In courting our little Anne. Well, you see, John, she was in the same house with me, and somehow or other I made myself her beau. But I have been thinking that perhaps you had the first claim on her, and if so, Jack, I’ll make way for ’ee. I – I don’t care for her much, you know – not so very much, and can give her up very well. It is nothing serious between us at all. Yes, John, you try to get her; I can look elsewhere.’ Bob never knew how much he loved Anne till he found himself making this speech of renunciation.

‘O Bob, you are mistaken!’ said the trumpet-major, who was not deceived. ‘When I first saw her I admired her, and I admire her now, and like her. I like her so well that I shall be glad to see you marry her.’

‘But,’ replied Bob, with hesitation, ‘I thought I saw you looking very sad, as if you were in love; I saw you take out a letter, in short. That’s what it was disturbed me and made me come to you.’

‘O, I see your mistake!’ said John, laughing forcedly.

At this minute Mrs. Loveday and the miller, who were taking a twilight walk in the garden, strolled round near to where the brothers stood. She talked volubly on events in Budmouth, as most people did at this time. ‘And they tell me that the theatre has been painted up afresh,’ she was saying, ‘and that the actors have come for the season, with the most lovely actresses that ever were seen.’

When they had passed by John continued, ‘I am in love, Bob; but – not with Anne.’

‘Ah! who is it then?’ said the mate hopefully.

‘One of the actresses at the theatre,’ John replied, with a concoctive look at the vanishing forms of Mr. and Mrs. Loveday. ‘She is a very lovely woman, you know. But we won’t say anything more about it – it dashes a man so.’

‘O, one of the actresses!’ said Bob, with open mouth.

‘But don’t you say anything about it!’ continued the trumpet-major heartily. ‘I don’t want it known.’

‘No, no – I won’t, of course. May I not know her name?’

‘No, not now, Bob. I cannot tell ’ee,’ John answered, and with truth, for Loveday did not know the name of any actress in the world.

When his brother had gone, Captain Bob hastened off in a state of great animation to Anne, whom he found on the top of a neighbouring hillock which the daylight had scarcely as yet deserted.

‘You have been a long time coming, sir,’ said she, in sprightly tones of reproach.

‘Yes, dearest; and you’ll be glad to hear why. I’ve found out the whole mystery – yes – why he’s queer, and everything.’

Anne looked startled.

‘He’s up to the gunnel in love! We must try to help him on in it, or I fear he’ll go melancholy-mad like.’

‘We help him?’ she asked faintly.

‘He’s lost his heart to one of the play-actresses at Budmouth, and I think she slights him.’

‘O, I am so glad!’ she exclaimed.

‘Glad that his venture don’t prosper?’

‘O no; glad he’s so sensible. How long is it since that alarm of the French?’

‘Six weeks, honey. Why do you ask?’

‘Men can forget in six weeks, can’t they, Bob?’

The impression that John had really kissed her still remained.

‘Well, some men might,’ observed Bob judicially. ‘I couldn’t. Perhaps John might. I couldn’t forget you in twenty times as long. Do you know, Anne, I half thought it was you John cared about; and it was a weight off my heart when he said he didn’t.’

‘Did he say he didn’t?’

‘Yes. He assured me himself that the only person in the hold of his heart was this lovely play-actress, and nobody else.’

‘How I should like to see her!’

‘Yes. So should I.’

‘I would rather it had been one of our own neighbours’ girls, whose birth and breeding we know of; but still, if that is his taste, I hope it will end well for him. How very quick he has been! I certainly wish we could see her.’

‘I don’t know so much as her name. He is very close, and wouldn’t tell a thing about her.’

‘Couldn’t we get him to go to the theatre with us? and then we could watch him, and easily find out the right one. Then we would learn if she is a good young woman; and if she is, could we not ask her here, and so make it smoother for him? He has been very gay lately; that means budding love: and sometimes between his gaieties he has had melancholy moments; that means there’s difficulty.’

Bob thought her plan a good one, and resolved to put it in practice on the first available evening. Anne was very curious as to whether John did really cherish a new passion, the story having quite surprised her. Possibly it was true; six weeks had passed since John had shown a single symptom of the old attachment, and what could not that space of time effect in the heart of a soldier whose very profession it was to leave girls behind him?

After this John Loveday did not come to see them for nearly a month, a neglect which was set down by Bob as an additional proof that his brother’s affections were no longer exclusively centred in his old home. When at last he did arrive, and the theatre-going was mentioned to him, the flush of consciousness which Anne expected to see upon his face was unaccountably absent.

‘Yes, Bob; I should very well like to go to the theatre,’ he replied heartily. ‘Who is going besides?’

‘Only Anne,’ Bob told him, and then it seemed to occur to the trumpet-major that something had been expected of him. He rose and said privately to Bob with some confusion, ‘O yes, of course we’ll go. As I am connected with one of the – in short I can get you in for nothing, you know. At least let me manage everything.’

‘Yes, yes. I wonder you didn’t propose to take us before, Jack, and let us have a good look at her.’

‘I ought to have. You shall go on a King’s night. You won’t want me to point her out, Bob; I have my reasons at present for asking it?’

‘We’ll be content with guessing,’ said his brother.

When the gallant John was gone, Anne observed, ‘Bob, how he is changed! I watched him. He showed no feeling, even when you burst upon him suddenly with the subject nearest his heart.’

‘It must be because his suit don’t fay,’ said Captain Bob.

XXX. AT THE THEATRE ROYAL

In two or three days a message arrived asking them to attend at the theatre on the coming evening, with the added request that they would dress in their gayest clothes, to do justice to the places taken. Accordingly, in the course of the afternoon they drove off, Bob having clothed himself in a splendid suit, recently purchased as an attempt to bring himself nearer to Anne’s style when they appeared in public together. As finished off by this dashing and really fashionable attire, he was the perfection of a beau in the dog-days; pantaloons and boots of the newest make; yards and yards of muslin wound round his neck, forming a sort of asylum for the lower part of his face; two fancy waistcoats, and coat-buttons like circular shaving glasses. The absurd extreme of female fashion, which was to wear muslin dresses in January, was at this time equalled by that of the men, who wore clothes enough in August to melt them. Nobody would have guessed from Bob’s presentation now that he had ever been aloft on a dark night in the Atlantic, or knew the hundred ingenuities that could be performed with a rope’s end and a marline-spike as well as his mother tongue.