The Trumpet-Major

Anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own. Panting with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him.

‘I hope it is right now?’ he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder.

‘No, indeed!’ said she. ‘I wanted some assistance – some one to steady me. It is so hard to stand on one foot and wipe the other without support. I was in danger of toppling over, and so gave it up.’

‘Merciful stars, what an opportunity!’ thought the poor fellow while she waited for him to offer help. But his lips remained closed, and she went on with a pouting smile —

‘You seem in such a hurry! Why are you in such a hurry? After all the fine things you have said about – about caring so much for me, and all that, you won’t stop for anything!’

It was too much for John. ‘Upon my heart and life, my dea – ’ he began. Here Bob’s letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up to dumbness and gloom as before.

When they reached home Anne sank upon a stool outside the door, fatigued with her excursion. Her first act was to try to pull off her shoe – it was a difficult matter; but John stood beating with his switch the leaves of the creeper on the wall.

‘Mother – David – Molly, or somebody – do come and help me pull off these dirty shoes!’ she cried aloud at last. ‘Nobody helps me in anything!’

‘I am very sorry,’ said John, coming towards her with incredible slowness and an air of unutterable depression.

‘O, I can do without you. David is best,’ she returned, as the old man approached and removed the obnoxious shoes in a trice.

Anne was amazed at this sudden change from devotion to crass indifference. On entering her room she flew to the glass, almost expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore. But it was, if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise. ‘Well!’ she said retrospectively. For the first time since their acqaintance she had this week encouraged him; and for the first time he had shown that encouragement was useless. ‘But perhaps he does not clearly understand,’ she added serenely.

When he next came it was, to her surprise, to bring her newspapers, now for some time discontinued. As soon as she saw them she said, ‘I do not care for newspapers.’

‘The shipping news is very full and long to-day, though the print is rather small.’

‘I take no further interest in the shipping news,’ she replied with cold dignity.

She was sitting by the window, inside the table, and hence when, in spite of her negations, he deliberately unfolded the paper and began to read about the Royal Navy she could hardly rise and go away. With a stoical mien he read on to the end of the report, bringing out the name of Bob’s ship with tremendous force.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘I’ll hear no more! Let me read to you.’

The trumpet-major sat down. Anne turned to the military news, delivering every detail with much apparent enthusiasm. ‘That’s the subject I like!’ she said fervently.

‘But – but Bob is in the navy now, and will most likely rise to be an officer. And then – ’

‘What is there like the army?’ she interrupted. ‘There is no smartness about sailors. They waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid battles that no one can form any idea of. There is no science nor stratagem in sea-fights – nothing more than what you see when two rams run their heads together in a field to knock each other down. But in military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are so smart, particularly the horse-soldiers. O, I shall never forget what gallant men you all seemed when you came and pitched your tents on the downs! I like the cavalry better than anything I know; and the dragoons the best of the cavalry – and the trumpeters the best of the dragoons!’

‘O, if it had but come a little sooner!’ moaned John within him. He replied as soon as he could regain self-command, ‘I am glad Bob is in the navy at last – he is so much more fitted for that than the merchant-service – so brave by nature, ready for any daring deed. I have heard ever so much more about his doings on board the Victory. Captain Hardy took special notice that when he – ’

‘I don’t want to know anything more about it,’ said Anne impatiently; ‘of course sailors fight; there’s nothing else to do in a ship, since you can’t run away! You may as well fight and be killed as be killed not fighting.’

‘Still it is his character to be careless of himself where the honour of his country is concerned,’ John pleaded. ‘If you had only known him as a boy you would own it. He would always risk his own life to save anybody else’s. Once when a cottage was afire up the lane he rushed in for a baby, although he was only a boy himself, and he had the narrowest escape. We have got his hat now with the hole burnt in it. Shall I get it and show it to you?’

‘No – I don’t wish it. It has nothing to do with me.’ But as he persisted in his course towards the door, she added, ‘Ah! you are leaving because I am in your way. You want to be alone while you read the paper – I will go at once. I did not see that I was interrupting you.’ And she rose as if to retreat.

‘No, no! I would rather be interrupted by you than – O, Miss Garland, excuse me! I’ll just speak to father in the mill, now I am here.’

It is scarcely necessary to state that Anne (whose unquestionable gentility amid somewhat homely surroundings has been many times insisted on in the course of this history) was usually the reverse of a woman with a coming-on disposition; but, whether from pique at his manner, or from wilful adherence to a course rashly resolved on, or from coquettish maliciousness in reaction from long depression, or from any other thing, – so it was that she would not let him go.

‘Trumpet-major,’ she said, recalling him.

‘Yes?’ he replied timidly.

‘The bow of my cap-ribbon has come untied, has it not?’ She turned and fixed her bewitching glance upon him.

The bow was just over her forehead, or, more precisely, at the point where the organ of comparison merges in that of benevolence, according to the phrenological theory of Gall. John, thus brought to, endeavoured to look at the bow in a skimming, duck-and-drake fashion, so as to avoid dipping his own glance as far as to the plane of his interrogator’s eyes. ‘It is untied,’ he said, drawing back a little.

She came nearer, and asked, ‘Will you tie it for me, please?’

As there was no help for it, he nerved himself and assented. As her head only reached to his fourth button she necessarily looked up for his convenience, and John began fumbling at the bow. Try as he would it was impossible to touch the ribbon without getting his finger tips mixed with the curls of her forehead.

‘Your hand shakes – ah! you have been walking fast,’ she said.

‘Yes – yes.’

‘Have you almost done it?’ She inquiringly directed her gaze upward through his fingers.

‘No – not yet,’ he faltered in a warm sweat of emotion, his heart going like a flail.

‘Then be quick, please.’

‘Yes, I will, Miss Garland! B-B-Bob is a very good fel – ’

‘Not that man’s name to me!’ she interrupted.

John was silent instantly, and nothing was to be heard but the rustling of the ribbon; till his hands once more blundered among the curls, and then touched her forehead.

‘O good God!’ ejaculated the trumpet-major in a whisper, turning away hastily to the corner-cupboard, and resting his face upon his hand.

‘What’s the matter, John?’ said she.

‘I can’t do it!’

‘What?’

‘Tie your cap-ribbon.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you are so – Because I am clumsy, and never could tie a bow.’

‘You are clumsy indeed,’ answered Anne, and went away.

After this she felt injured, for it seemed to show that he rated her happiness as of meaner value than Bob’s; since he had persisted in his idea of giving Bob another chance when she had implied that it was her wish to do otherwise. Could Miss Johnson have anything to do with his firmness? An opportunity of testing him in this direction occurred some days later. She had been up the village, and met John at the mill-door.

‘Have you heard the news? Matilda Johnson is going to be married to young Derriman.’

Anne stood with her back to the sun, and as he faced her, his features were searchingly exhibited. There was no change whatever in them, unless it were that a certain light of interest kindled by her question turned to complete and blank indifference. ‘Well, as times go, it is not a bad match for her,’ he said, with a phlegm which was hardly that of a lover.