The Trumpet-Major

‘She is in stays, for the larboard tack. I can see what she’s been doing. She’s been re’ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou’-west, and she’s bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d’ye see, they made sail to the west’ard. Captain Hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current about here, being a native.’

‘And now I can see the other side; it is a soldier where a sailor was before. You are sure it is the Victory?’

‘I am sure.’

After this a frigate came into view – the Euryalus – sailing in the same direction. Anne sat down, and her eyes never left the ships. ‘Tell me more about the Victory,’ she said.

‘She is the best sailer in the service, and she carries a hundred guns. The heaviest be on the lower deck, the next size on the middle deck, the next on the main and upper decks. My son Ned’s place is on the lower deck, because he’s short, and they put the short men below.’

Bob, though not tall, was not likely to be specially selected for shortness. She pictured him on the upper deck, in his snow-white trousers and jacket of navy blue, looking perhaps towards the very point of land where she then was.

The great silent ship, with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. After this something seemed to twinkle, and Anne, who had previously withdrawn from the old sailor, went back to him, and looked again through the glass. The twinkling was the light falling upon the cabin windows of the ship’s stern. She explained it to the old man.

‘Then we see now what the enemy have seen but once. That was in seventy-nine, when she sighted the French and Spanish fleet off Scilly, and she retreated because she feared a landing. Well, ’tis a brave ship and she carries brave men!’

Anne’s tender bosom heaved, but she said nothing, and again became absorbed in contemplation.

The Victory was fast dropping away. She was on the horizon, and soon appeared hull down. That seemed to be like the beginning of a greater end than her present vanishing. Anne Garland could not stay by the sailor any longer, and went about a stone’s-throw off, where she was hidden by the inequality of the cliff from his view. The vessel was now exactly end on, and stood out in the direction of the Start, her width having contracted to the proportion of a feather. She sat down again, and mechanically took out some biscuits that she had brought, foreseeing that her waiting might be long. But she could not eat one of them; eating seemed to jar with the mental tenseness of the moment; and her undeviating gaze continued to follow the lessened ship with the fidelity of a balanced needle to a magnetic stone, all else in her being motionless.

The courses of the Victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails went, and then her top-gallants. She was now no more than a dead fly’s wing on a sheet of spider’s web; and even this fragment diminished. Anne could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. The admiral’s flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very truck of the last topmast stole away. The Victory was gone.

Anne’s lip quivered as she murmured, without removing her wet eyes from the vacant and solemn horizon, ‘“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters – ”’

‘“These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep,”’ was returned by a man’s voice from behind her.

Looking round quickly, she saw a soldier standing there; and the grave eyes of John Loveday bent on her.

‘’Tis what I was thinking,’ she said, trying to be composed.

‘You were saying it,’ he answered gently.

‘Was I? – I did not know it… How came you here?’ she presently added.

‘I have been behind you a good while; but you never turned round.’

‘I was deeply occupied,’ she said in an undertone.

‘Yes – I too came to see him pass. I heard this morning that Lord Nelson had embarked, and I knew at once that they would sail immediately. The Victory and Euryalus are to join the rest of the fleet at Plymouth. There was a great crowd of people assembled to see the admiral off; they cheered him and the ship as she dropped down. He took his coffin on board with him, they say.’

‘His coffin!’ said Anne, turning deadly pale. ‘Something terrible, then, is meant by that! O, why would Bob go in that ship? doomed to destruction from the very beginning like this!’

‘It was his determination to sail under Captain Hardy, and under no one else,’ said John. ‘There may be hot work; but we must hope for the best.’ And observing how wretched she looked, he added, ‘But won’t you let me help you back? If you can walk as far as Hope Cove it will be enough. A lerret is going from there across the bay homeward to the harbour in the course of an hour; it belongs to a man I know, and they can take one passenger, I am sure.’

She turned her back upon the Channel, and by his help soon reached the place indicated. The boat was lying there as he had said. She found it to belong to the old man who had been with her at the Bill, and was in charge of his two younger sons. The trumpet-major helped her into it over the slippery blocks of stone, one of the young men spread his jacket for her to sit on, and as soon as they pulled from shore John climbed up the blue-grey cliff, and disappeared over the top, to return to the mainland by road.

Anne was in the town by three o’clock. The trip in the stern of the lerret had quite refreshed her, with the help of the biscuits, which she had at last been able to eat. The van from the port to Overcombe did not start till four o’clock, and feeling no further interest in the gaieties of the place, she strolled on past the King’s house to the outskirts, her mind settling down again upon the possibly sad fate of the Victory when she found herself alone. She did not hurry on; and finding that even now there wanted another half-hour to the carrier’s time, she turned into a little lane to escape the inspection of the numerous passers-by. Here all was quite lonely and still, and she sat down under a willow-tree, absently regarding the landscape, which had begun to put on the rich tones of declining summer, but which to her was as hollow and faded as a theatre by day. She could hold out no longer; burying her face in her hands, she wept without restraint.

Some yards behind her was a little spring of water, having a stone margin round it to prevent the cattle from treading in the sides and filling it up with dirt. While she wept, two elderly gentlemen entered unperceived upon the scene, and walked on to the spring’s brink. Here they paused and looked in, afterwards moving round it, and then stooping as if to smell or taste its waters. The spring was, in fact, a sulphurous one, then recently discovered by a physician who lived in the neighbourhood; and it was beginning to attract some attention, having by common report contributed to effect such wonderful cures as almost passed belief. After a considerable discussion, apparently on how the pool might be improved for better use, one of the two elderly gentlemen turned away, leaving the other still probing the spring with his cane. The first stranger, who wore a blue coat with gilt buttons, came on in the direction of Anne Garland, and seeing her sad posture went quickly up to her, and said abruptly, ‘What is the matter?’

Anne, who in her grief had observed nothing of the gentlemen’s presence, withdrew her handkerchief from her eyes and started to her feet. She instantly recognised her interrogator as the King.

‘What, what, crying?’ his Majesty inquired kindly. ‘How is this!’

‘I – have seen a dear friend go away, sir,’ she faltered, with downcast eyes.

‘Ah – partings are sad – very sad – for us all. You must hope your friend will return soon. Where is he or she gone?’

‘I don’t know, your Majesty.’

‘Don’t know – how is that?’

‘He is a sailor on board the Victory.’

‘Then he has reason to be proud,’ said the King with interest. ‘He is your brother?’

Anne tried to explain what he was, but could not, and blushed with painful heat.

‘Well, well, well; what is his name?’

In spite of Anne’s confusion and low spirits, her womanly shrewdness told her at once that no harm could be done by revealing Bob’s name; and she answered, ‘His name is Robert Loveday, sir.’

‘Loveday – a good name. I shall not forget it. Now dry your cheeks, and don’t cry any more. Loveday – Robert Loveday.’

Anne curtseyed, the King smiled good-humouredly, and turned to rejoin his companion, who was afterwards heard to be Dr. – , the physician in attendance at Gloucester Lodge. This gentleman had in the meantime filled a small phial with the medicinal water, which he carefully placed in his pocket; and on the King coming up they retired together and disappeared. Thereupon Anne, now thoroughly aroused, followed the same way with a gingerly tread, just in time to see them get into a carriage which was in waiting at the turning of the lane.

She quite forgot the carrier, and everything else in connexion with riding home. Flying along the road rapidly and unconsciously, when she awoke to a sense of her whereabouts she was so near to Overcombe as to make the carrier not worth waiting for. She had been borne up in this hasty spurt at the end of a weary day by visions of Bob promoted to the rank of admiral, or something equally wonderful, by the King’s special command, the chief result of the promotion being, in her arrangement of the piece, that he would stay at home and go to sea no more. But she was not a girl who indulged in extravagant fancies long, and before she reached home she thought that the King had probably forgotten her by that time, and her troubles, and her lover’s name.

XXXV. A SAILOR ENTERS

The remaining fortnight of the month of September passed away, with a general decline from the summer’s excitements. The royal family left the watering-place the first week in October, the German Legion with their artillery about the same time. The dragoons still remained at the barracks just out of the town, and John Loveday brought to Anne every newspaper that he could lay hands on, especially such as contained any fragment of shipping news. This threw them much together; and at these times John was often awkward and confused, on account of the unwonted stress of concealing his great love for her.

Her interests had grandly developed from the limits of Overcombe and the town life hard by, to an extensiveness truly European. During the whole month of October, however, not a single grain of information reached her, or anybody else, concerning Nelson and his blockading squadron off Cadiz. There were the customary bad jokes about Buonaparte, especially when it was found that the whole French army had turned its back upon Boulogne and set out for the Rhine. Then came accounts of his march through Germany and into Austria; but not a word about the Victory.

At the beginning of autumn John brought news which fearfully depressed her. The Austrian General Mack had capitulated with his whole army. Then were revived the old misgivings as to invasion. ‘Instead of having to cope with him weary with waiting, we shall have to encounter This Man fresh from the fields of victory,’ ran the newspaper article.

But the week which had led off with such a dreary piping was to end in another key. On the very day when Mack’s army was piling arms at the feet of its conqueror, a blow had been struck by Bob Loveday and his comrades which eternally shattered the enemy’s force by sea. Four days after the receipt of the Austrian news Corporal Tullidge ran into the miller’s house to inform him that on the previous Monday, at eleven in the morning, the Pickle schooner, Lieutenant Lapenotiere, had arrived at Falmouth with despatches from the fleet; that the stage-coaches on the highway through Wessex to London were chalked with the words ‘Great Victory!’ ‘Glorious Triumph!’ and so on; and that all the country people were wild to know particulars.

On Friday afternoon John arrived with authentic news of the battle off Cape Trafalgar, and the death of Nelson. Captain Hardy was alive, though his escape had been narrow enough, his shoe-buckle having been carried away by a shot. It was feared that the Victory had been the scene of the heaviest slaughter among all the ships engaged, but as yet no returns of killed and wounded had been issued, beyond a rough list of the numbers in some of the ships.

The suspense of the little household in Overcombe Mill was great in the extreme. John came thither daily for more than a week; but no further particulars reached England till the end of that time, and then only the meagre intelligence that there had been a gale immediately after the battle, and that many of the prizes had been lost. Anne said little to all these things, and preserved a superstratum of calmness on her countenance; but some inner voice seemed to whisper to her that Bob was no more. Miller Loveday drove to Pos’ham several times to learn if the Captain’s sisters had received any more definite tidings than these flying reports; but that family had heard nothing which could in any way relieve the miller’s anxiety. When at last, at the end of November, there appeared a final and revised list of killed and wounded as issued by Admiral Collingwood, it was a useless sheet to the Lovedays. To their great pain it contained no names but those of officers, the friends of ordinary seamen and marines being in those good old days left to discover their losses as best they might.

Anne’s conviction of her loss increased with the darkening of the early winter time. Bob was not a cautious man who would avoid needless exposure, and a hundred and fifty of the Victory’s crew had been disabled or slain. Anybody who had looked into her room at this time would have seen that her favourite reading was the office for the Burial of the Dead at Sea, beginning ‘We therefore commit his body to the deep.’ In these first days of December several of the victorious fleet came into port; but not the Victory. Many supposed that that noble ship, disabled by the battle, had gone to the bottom in the subsequent tempestuous weather; and the belief was persevered in till it was told in the town and port that she had been seen passing up the Channel. Two days later the Victory arrived at Portsmouth.

Then letters from survivors began to appear in the public prints which John so regularly brought to Anne; but though he watched the mails with unceasing vigilance there was never a letter from Bob. It sometimes crossed John’s mind that his brother might still be alive and well, and that in his wish to abide by his expressed intention of giving up Anne and home life he was deliberately lax in writing. If so, Bob was carrying out the idea too thoughtlessly by half, as could be seen by watching the effects of suspense upon the fair face of the victim, and the anxiety of the rest of the family.

It was a clear day in December. The first slight snow of the season had been sifted over the earth, and one side of the apple-tree branches in the miller’s garden was touched with white, though a few leaves were still lingering on the tops of the younger trees. A short sailor of the Royal Navy, who was not Bob, nor anything like him, crossed the mill court and came to the door. The miller hastened out and brought him into the room, where John, Mrs. Loveday, and Anne Garland were all present.

‘I’m from aboard the Victory,’ said the sailor. ‘My name’s Jim Cornick. And your lad is alive and well.’