Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  As she had expected, Festus appeared at a stile over which she sometimes went for shortness’ sake, and showed by his manner that he awaited her. When she saw this she kept straight on, as if she would not enter the park at all.

  ‘Surely this is your way?’ said Festus.

  ‘I was thinking of going round by the road,’ she said.

  ‘Why is that?’

  She paused, as if she were not inclined to say. ‘I go that way when the grass is wet,’ she returned at last.

  ‘It is not wet now,’ he persisted; ‘the sun has been shining on it these nine hours.’ The fact was that the way by the path was less open than by the road, and Festus wished to walk with her uninterrupted. ‘But, of course, it is nothing to me what you do.’ He flung himself from the stile and walked away towards the house.

  Anne, supposing him really indifferent, took the same way, upon which he turned his head and waited for her with a proud smile.

  ‘I cannot go with you,’ she said decisively.

  ‘Nonsense, you foolish girl! I must walk along with you down to the corner.’

  ‘No, please, Mr. Derriman; we might be seen.’

  ‘Now, now — that’s shyness!’ he said jocosely.

  ‘No; you know I cannot let you.’

  ‘But I must.’

  ‘But I do not allow it.’

  ‘Allow it or not, I will.’

  ‘Then you are unkind, and I must submit,’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘Ho, ho; what a shame of me! My wig, I won’t do any such thing for the world,’ said the repentant yeoman. ‘Haw, haw; why, I thought your “go away” meant “come on,” as it does with so many of the women I meet, especially in these clothes. Who was to know you were so confoundedly serious?’

  As he did not go Anne stood still and said nothing.

  ‘I see you have a deal more caution and a deal less good-nature than I ever thought you had,’ he continued emphatically.

  ‘No, sir; it is not any planned manner of mine at all,’ she said earnestly. ‘But you will see, I am sure, that I could not go down to the hall with you without putting myself in a wrong light.’

  ‘Yes; that’s it, that’s it. I am only a fellow in the yeomanry cavalry — a plain soldier, I may say; and we know what women think of such: that they are a bad lot — men you mustn’t speak to for fear of losing your character — chaps you avoid in the roads — chaps that come into a house like oxen, daub the stairs wi’ their boots, stain the furniture wi’ their drink, talk rubbish to the servants, abuse all that’s holy and righteous, and are only saved from being carried off by Old Nick because they are wanted for Boney.’

  ‘Indeed, I didn’t know you were thought so bad of as that,’ said she simply.

  ‘What! don’t my uncle complain to you of me? You are a favourite of that handsome, nice old gaffer’s, I know.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, what do we think of our nice trumpet-major, hey?’

  Anne closed her mouth up tight, built it up, in fact, to show that no answer was coming to that question.

  ‘O now, come, seriously, Loveday is a good fellow, and so is his father.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What a close little rogue you are! There is no getting anything out of you. I believe you would say “I don’t know,” to every mortal question, so very discreet as you are. Upon my heart, there are some women who would say “I don’t know,” to “Will ye marry me?”‘

  The brightness upon Anne’s cheek and in her eyes during this remark showed that there was a fair quantity of life and warmth beneath the discretion he complained of. Having spoken thus, he drew aside that she might pass, and bowed very low. Anne formally inclined herself and went on.

  She had been at vexation point all the time that he was present, from a haunting sense that he would not have spoken to her so freely had she been a young woman with thriving male relatives to keep forward admirers in check. But she had been struck, now as at their previous meeting, with the power she possessed of working him up either to irritation or to complacency at will; and this consciousness of being able to play upon him as upon an instrument disposed her to a humorous considerateness, and made her tolerate even while she rebuffed him.

  When Anne got to the hall the farmer, as usual, insisted upon her reading what he had been unable to get through, and held the paper tightly in his skinny hand till she had agreed. He sent her to a hard chair that she could not possibly injure to the extent of a pennyworth by sitting in it a twelvemonth, and watched her from the outer angle of his near eye while she bent over the paper. His look might have been suggested by the sight that he had witnessed from his window on the last occasion of her visit, for it partook of the nature of concern. The old man was afraid of his nephew, physically and morally, and he began to regard Anne as a fellow-sufferer under the same despot. After this sly and curious gaze at her he withdrew his eye again, so that when she casually lifted her own there was nothing visible but his keen bluish profile as before.

  When the reading was about half-way through, the door behind them opened, and footsteps crossed the threshold. The farmer diminished perceptibly in his chair, and looked fearful, but pretended to be absorbed in the reading, and quite unconscious of an intruder. Anne felt the presence of the swashing Festus, and stopped her reading.

  ‘Please go on, Miss Anne,’ he said, ‘I am not going to speak a word.’ He withdrew to the mantelpiece and leaned against it at his ease.

  ‘Go on, do ye, maidy Anne,’ said Uncle Benjy, keeping down his tremblings by a great effort to half their natural extent.

  Anne’s voice became much lower now that there were two listeners, and her modesty shrank somewhat from exposing to Festus the appreciative modulations which an intelligent interest in the subject drew from her when unembarrassed. But she still went on that he might not suppose her to be disconcerted, though the ensuing ten minutes was one of disquietude. She knew that the bothering yeoman’s eyes were travelling over her from his position behind, creeping over her shoulders, up to her head, and across her arms and hands. Old Benjy on his part knew the same thing, and after sundry endeavours to peep at his nephew from the corner of his eye, he could bear the situation no longer.

  ‘Do ye want to say anything to me, nephew?’ he quaked.

  ‘No, uncle, thank ye,’ said Festus heartily. ‘I like to stay here, thinking of you and looking at your back hair.’

  The nervous old man writhed under this vivisection, and Anne read on; till, to the relief of both, the gallant fellow grew tired of his amusement and went out of the room. Anne soon finished her paragraph and rose to go, determined never to come again as long as Festus haunted the precincts. Her face grew warmer as she thought that he would be sure to waylay her on her journey home to-day.

  On this account, when she left the house, instead of going in the customary direction, she bolted round to the further side, through the bushes, along under the kitchen-garden wall, and through a door leading into a rutted cart-track, which had been a pleasant gravelled drive when the fine old hall was in its prosperity. Once out of sight of the windows she ran with all her might till she had quitted the park by a route directly opposite to that towards her home. Why she was so seriously bent upon doing this she could hardly tell but the instinct to run was irresistible.

  It was necessary now to clamber over the down to the left of the camp, and make a complete circuit round the latter — infantry, cavalry, sutlers, and all — descending to her house on the other side. This tremendous walk she performed at a rapid rate, never once turning her head, and avoiding every beaten track to keep clear of the knots of soldiers taking a walk. When she at last got down to the levels again she paused to fetch breath, and murmured, ‘Why did I take so much trouble? He would not, after all, have hurt me.’

  As she neared the mill an erect figure with a blue body and white thighs descended before her from the down towards the village, and went past the mill to a stil
e beyond, over which she usually returned to her house. Here he lingered. On coming nearer Anne discovered this person to be Trumpet-major Loveday; and not wishing to meet anybody just now Anne passed quickly on, and entered the house by the garden door.

  ‘My dear Anne, what a time you have been gone!’ said her mother.

  ‘Yes, I have been round by another road.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  Anne looked thoughtful and reticent, for her reason was almost too silly a one to confess. ‘Well, I wanted to avoid a person who is very busy trying to meet me — that’s all,’ she said.

  Her mother glanced out of the window. ‘And there he is, I suppose,’ she said, as John Loveday, tired of looking for Anne at the stile, passed the house on his way to his father’s door. He could not help casting his eyes towards their window, and, seeing them, he smiled.

  Anne’s reluctance to mention Festus was such that she did not correct her mother’s error, and the dame went on: ‘Well, you are quite right, my dear. Be friendly with him, but no more at present. I have heard of your other affair, and think it is a very wise choice. I am sure you have my best wishes in it, and I only hope it will come to a point.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said the astonished Anne.

  ‘You and Mr. Festus Derriman, dear. You need not mind me; I have known it for several days. Old Granny Seamore called here Saturday, and told me she saw him coming home with you across Park Close last week, when you went for the newspaper; so I thought I’d send you again to-day, and give you another chance.’

  ‘Then you didn’t want the paper — and it was only for that!’

  ‘He’s a very fine young fellow; he looks a thorough woman’s protector.’

  ‘He may look it,’ said Anne.

  ‘He has given up the freehold farm his father held at Pitstock, and lives in independence on what the land brings him. And when Farmer Derriman dies, he’ll have all the old man’s, for certain. He’ll be worth ten thousand pounds, if a penny, in money, besides sixteen horses, cart and hack, a fifty-cow dairy, and at least five hundred sheep.’

  Anne turned away, and instead of informing her mother that she had been running like a doe to escape the interesting heir-presumptive alluded to, merely said ‘Mother, I don’t like this at all.’

  CHAPTER IX.

  ANNE IS KINDLY FETCHED BY THE TRUMPET-MAJOR

  After this, Anne would on no account walk in the direction of the hall for fear of another encounter with young Derriman. In the course of a few days it was told in the village that the old farmer had actually gone for a week’s holiday and change of air to the Royal watering-place near at hand, at the instance of his nephew Festus. This was a wonderful thing to hear of Uncle Benjy, who had not slept outside the walls of Oxwell Hall for many a long year before; and Anne well imagined what extraordinary pressure must have been put upon him to induce him to take such a step. She pictured his unhappiness at the bustling watering-place, and hoped no harm would come to him.

  She spent much of her time indoors or in the garden, hearing little of the camp movements beyond the periodical Ta-ta-ta-taa of the trumpeters sounding their various ingenious calls for watch-setting, stables, feed, boot-and-saddle, parade, and so on, which made her think how clever her friend the trumpet-major must be to teach his pupils to play those pretty little tunes so well.

  On the third morning after Uncle Benjy’s departure, she was disturbed as usual while dressing by the tramp of the troops down the slope to the mill-pond, and during the now familiar stamping and splashing which followed there sounded upon the glass of the window a slight smack, which might have been caused by a whip or switch. She listened more particularly, and it was repeated.

  As John Loveday was the only dragoon likely to be aware that she slept in that particular apartment, she imagined the signal to come from him, though wondering that he should venture upon such a freak of familiarity.

  Wrapping herself up in a red cloak, she went to the window, gently drew up a corner of the curtain, and peeped out, as she had done many times before. Nobody who was not quite close beneath her window could see her face; but as it happened, somebody was close. The soldiers whose floundering Anne had heard were not Loveday’s dragoons, but a troop of the York Hussars, quite oblivious of her existence. They had passed on out of the water, and instead of them there sat Festus Derriman alone on his horse, and in plain clothes, the water reaching up to the animal’s belly, and Festus’ heels elevated over the saddle to keep them out of the stream, which threatened to wash rider and horse into the deep mill-head just below. It was plainly he who had struck her lattice, for in a moment he looked up, and their eyes met. Festus laughed loudly, and slapped her window again; and just at that moment the dragoons began prancing down the slope in review order. She could not but wait a minute or two to see them pass. While doing so she was suddenly led to draw back, drop the corner of the curtain, and blush privately in her room. She had not only been seen by Festus Derriman, but by John Loveday, who, riding along with his trumpet slung up behind him, had looked over his shoulder at the phenomenon of Derriman beneath Anne’s bedroom window and seemed quite astounded at the sight.

  She was quite vexed at the conjunction of incidents, and went no more to the window till the dragoons had ridden far away and she had heard Festus’s horse labouriously wade on to dry land. When she looked out there was nobody left but Miller Loveday, who usually stood in the garden at this time of the morning to say a word or two to the soldiers, of whom he already knew so many, and was in a fair way of knowing many more, from the liberality with which he handed round mugs of cheering liquor whenever parties of them walked that way.

  In the afternoon of this day Anne walked to a christening party at a neighbour’s in the adjoining parish of Springham, intending to walk home again before it got dark; but there was a slight fall of rain towards evening, and she was pressed by the people of the house to stay over the night. With some hesitation she accepted their hospitality; but at ten o’clock, when they were thinking of going to bed, they were startled by a smart rap at the door, and on it being unbolted a man’s form was seen in the shadows outside.

  ‘Is Miss Garland here?’ the visitor inquired, at which Anne suspended her breath.

  ‘Yes,’ said Anne’s entertainer, warily.

  ‘Her mother is very anxious to know what’s become of her. She promised to come home.’ To her great relief Anne recognized the voice as John Loveday’s, and not Festus Derriman’s.

  ‘Yes, I did, Mr. Loveday,’ said she, coming forward; ‘but it rained, and I thought my mother would guess where I was.’

  Loveday said with diffidence that it had not rained anything to speak of at the camp, or at the mill, so that her mother was rather alarmed.

  ‘And she asked you to come for me?’ Anne inquired.

  This was a question which the trumpet-major had been dreading during the whole of his walk thither. ‘Well, she didn’t exactly ask me,’ he said rather lamely, but still in a manner to show that Mrs. Garland had indirectly signified such to be her wish. In reality Mrs. Garland had not addressed him at all on the subject. She had merely spoken to his father on finding that her daughter did not return, and received an assurance from the miller that the precious girl was doubtless quite safe. John heard of this inquiry, and, having a pass that evening, resolved to relieve Mrs. Garland’s mind on his own responsibility. Ever since his morning view of Festus under her window he had been on thorns of anxiety, and his thrilling hope now was that she would walk back with him.

  He shifted his foot nervously as he made the bold request. Anne felt at once that she would go. There was nobody in the world whose care she would more readily be under than the trumpet-major’s in a case like the present. He was their nearest neighbour’s son, and she had liked his single-minded ingenuousness from the first moment of his return home.

  When they had started on their walk, Anne said in a practical way, to show that there was no sentiment whatever in her acce
ptance of his company, ‘Mother was much alarmed about me, perhaps?’

  ‘Yes; she was uneasy,’ he said; and then was compelled by conscience to make a clean breast of it. ‘I know she was uneasy, because my father said so. But I did not see her myself. The truth is, she doesn’t know I am come.’

  Anne now saw how the matter stood; but she was not offended with him. What woman could have been? They walked on in silence, the respectful trumpet-major keeping a yard off on her right as precisely as if that measure had been fixed between them. She had a great feeling of civility toward him this evening, and spoke again. ‘I often hear your trumpeters blowing the calls. They do it beautifully, I think.’

  ‘Pretty fair; they might do better,’ said he, as one too well-mannered to make much of an accomplishment in which he had a hand.

  ‘And you taught them how to do it?’

  ‘Yes, I taught them.’

  ‘It must require wonderful practice to get them into the way of beginning and finishing so exactly at one time. It is like one throat doing it all. How came you to be a trumpeter, Mr. Loveday?’

  ‘Well, I took to it naturally when I was a little boy,’ said he, betrayed into quite a gushing state by her delightful interest. ‘I used to make trumpets of paper, eldersticks, eltrot stems, and even stinging-nettle stalks, you know. Then father set me to keep the birds off that little barley-ground of his, and gave me an old horn to frighten ‘em with. I learnt to blow that horn so that you could hear me for miles and miles. Then he bought me a clarionet, and when I could play that I borrowed a serpent, and I learned to play a tolerable bass. So when I ‘listed I was picked out for training as trumpeter at once.’

  ‘Of course you were.’

  ‘Sometimes, however, I wish I had never joined the army. My father gave me a very fair education, and your father showed me how to draw horses — on a slate, I mean. Yes, I ought to have done more than I have.’