The Trumpet-Major

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.

‘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.