The Trumpet-Major

‘Me, or some other woman!’ retorted Anne haughtily.

‘No!’ declared Bob, shaking the bush for emphasis, ‘I’ll protest that I did not think of anybody but you all the time we were dropping down channel, all the time we were off Cadiz, all the time through battles and bombardments. I seemed to see you in the smoke, and, thinks I, if I go to Davy’s locker, what will she do?’

‘You didn’t think that when you landed after Trafalgar.’

‘Well, now,’ said the lieutenant in a reasoning tone; ‘that was a curious thing. You’ll hardly believe it, maybe; but when a man is away from the woman he loves best in the port – world, I mean – he can have a sort of temporary feeling for another without disturbing the old one, which flows along under the same as ever.’

‘I can’t believe it, and won’t,’ said Anne firmly.

Molly now appeared with the empty basket, and when it had been filled from the heap on the grass, Anne went home with her, bidding Loveday a frigid adieu.

The same evening, when Bob was absent, the miller proposed that they should all three go to an upper window of the house, to get a distant view of some rockets and illuminations which were to be exhibited in the town and harbour in honour of the King, who had returned this year as usual. They accordingly went upstairs to an empty attic, placed chairs against the window, and put out the light; Anne sitting in the middle, her mother close by, and the miller behind, smoking. No sign of any pyrotechnic display was visible over the port as yet, and Mrs. Loveday passed the time by talking to the miller, who replied in monosyllables. While this was going on Anne fancied that she heard some one approach, and presently felt sure that Bob was drawing near her in the surrounding darkness; but as the other two had noticed nothing she said not a word.

All at once the swarthy expanse of southward sky was broken by the blaze of several rockets simultaneously ascending from different ships in the roads. At the very same moment a warm mysterious hand slipped round her own, and gave it a gentle squeeze.

‘O dear!’ said Anne, with a sudden start away.

‘How nervous you are, child, to be startled by fireworks so far off,’ said Mrs. Loveday.

‘I never saw rockets before,’ murmured Anne, recovering from her surprise.

Mrs. Loveday presently spoke again. ‘I wonder what has become of Bob?’

Anne did not reply, being much exercised in trying to get her hand away from the one that imprisoned it; and whatever the miller thought he kept to himself, because it disturbed his smoking to speak.

Another batch of rockets went up. ‘O I never!’ said Anne, in a half-suppressed tone, springing in her chair. A second hand had with the rise of the rockets leapt round her waist.

‘Poor girl, you certainly must have change of scene at this rate,’ said Mrs. Loveday.

‘I suppose I must,’ murmured the dutiful daughter.

For some minutes nothing further occurred to disturb Anne’s serenity. Then a slow, quiet ‘a-hem’ came from the obscurity of the apartment.

‘What, Bob? How long have you been there?’ inquired Mrs. Loveday.

‘Not long,’ said the lieutenant coolly. ‘I heard you were all here, and crept up quietly, not to disturb ye.’

‘Why don’t you wear heels to your shoes like Christian people, and not creep about so like a cat?’

‘Well, it keeps your floors clean to go slip-shod.’

‘That’s true.’

Meanwhile Anne was gently but firmly trying to pull Bob’s arm from her waist, her distressful difficulty being that in freeing her waist she enslaved her hand, and in getting her hand free she enslaved her waist. Finding the struggle a futile one, owing to the invisibility of her antagonist, and her wish to keep its nature secret from the other two, she arose, and saying that she did not care to see any more, felt her way downstairs. Bob followed, leaving Loveday and his wife to themselves.

‘Dear Anne,’ he began, when he had got down, and saw her in the candle-light of the large room. But she adroitly passed out at the other door, at which he took a candle and followed her to the small room. ‘Dear Anne, do let me speak,’ he repeated, as soon as the rays revealed her figure. But she passed into the bakehouse before he could say more; whereupon he perseveringly did the same. Looking round for her here he perceived her at the end of the room, where there were no means of exit whatever.

‘Dear Anne,’ he began again, setting down the candle, ‘you must try to forgive me; really you must. I love you the best of anybody in the wide, wide world. Try to forgive me; come!’ And he imploringly took her hand.

Anne’s bosom began to surge and fall like a small tide, her eyes remaining fixed upon the floor; till, when Loveday ventured to draw her slightly towards him, she burst out crying. ‘I don’t like you, Bob; I don’t!’ she suddenly exclaimed between her sobs. ‘I did once, but I don’t now – I can’t, I can’t; you have been very cruel to me!’ She violently turned away, weeping.

‘I have, I have been terribly bad, I know,’ answered Bob, conscience-stricken by her grief. ‘But – if you could only forgive me – I promise that I’ll never do anything to grieve ’ee again. Do you forgive me, Anne?’

Anne’s only reply was crying and shaking her head.

‘Let’s make it up. Come, say we have made it up, dear.’

She withdrew her hand, and still keeping her eyes buried in her handkerchief, said ‘No.’

‘Very well, then!’ exclaimed Bob, with sudden determination. ‘Now I know my doom! And whatever you hear of as happening to me, mind this, you cruel girl, that it is all your causing!’ Saying this he strode with a hasty tread across the room into the passage and out at the door, slamming it loudly behind him.

Anne suddenly looked up from her handkerchief, and stared with round wet eyes and parted lips at the door by which he had gone. Having remained with suspended breath in this attitude for a few seconds she turned round, bent her head upon the table, and burst out weeping anew with thrice the violence of the former time. It really seemed now as if her grief would overwhelm her, all the emotions which had been suppressed, bottled up, and concealed since Bob’s return having made themselves a sluice at last.

But such things have their end; and left to herself in the large, vacant, old apartment, she grew quieter, and at last calm. At length she took the candle and ascended to her bedroom, where she bathed her eyes and looked in the glass to see if she had made herself a dreadful object. It was not so bad as she had expected, and she went downstairs again.

Nobody was there, and, sitting down, she wondered what Bob had really meant by his words. It was too dreadful to think that he intended to go straight away to sea without seeing her again, and frightened at what she had done she waited anxiously for his return.

XL. A CALL ON BUSINESS

Her suspense was interrupted by a very gentle tapping at the door, and then the rustle of a hand over its surface, as if searching for the latch in the dark. The door opened a few inches, and the alabaster face of Uncle Benjy appeared in the slit.

‘O, Squire Derriman, you frighten me!’

‘All alone?’ he asked in a whisper.

‘My mother and Mr. Loveday are somewhere about the house.’

‘That will do,’ he said, coming forward. ‘I be wherrited out of my life, and I have thought of you again – you yourself, dear Anne, and not the miller. If you will only take this and lock it up for a few days till I can find another good place for it – if you only would!’ And he breathlessly deposited the tin box on the table.

‘What, obliged to dig it up from the cellar?’

‘Ay; my nephew hath a scent of the place – how, I don’t know! but he and a young woman he’s met with are searching everywhere. I worked like a wire-drawer to get it up and away while they were scraping in the next cellar. Now where could ye put it, dear? ’Tis only a few documents, and my will, and such like, you know. Poor soul o’ me, I’m worn out with running and fright!’

‘I’ll put it here till I can think of a better place,’ said Anne, lifting the box. ‘Dear me, how heavy it is!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Uncle Benjy hastily; ‘the box is iron, you see. However, take care of it, because I am going to make it worth your while. Ah, you are a good girl, Anne. I wish you was mine!’

Anne looked at Uncle Benjy. She had known for some time that she possessed all the affection he had to bestow.

‘Why do you wish that?’ she said simply.

‘Now don’t ye argue with me. Where d’ye put the coffer?’

‘Here,’ said Anne, going to the window-seat, which rose as a flap, disclosing a boxed receptacle beneath, as in many old houses.

‘’Tis very well for the present,’ he said dubiously, and they dropped the coffer in, Anne locking down the seat, and giving him the key. ‘Now I don’t want ye to be on my side for nothing,’ he went on. ‘I never did now, did I? This is for you.’ He handed her a little packet of paper, which Anne turned over and looked at curiously. ‘I always meant to do it,’ continued Uncle Benjy, gazing at the packet as it lay in her hand, and sighing. ‘Come, open it, my dear; I always meant to do it!’

She opened it and found twenty new guineas snugly packed within.