The Trumpet-Major

‘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.