In the days of high-waisted and muslin-gowned women, when the vast amount
of soldiering going on in the country was a cause of much trembling to
the sex, there lived in a village near the Wessex coast two ladies of
good report, though unfortunately of limited means. The elder was a Mrs.
Martha Garland, a landscape-painter's widow, and the other was her only
daughter Anne.
Anne was fair, very fair, in a poetical sense; but in complexion she was
of that particular tint between blonde and brunette which is
inconveniently left without a name. Her eyes were honest and inquiring,
her mouth cleanly cut and yet not classical, the middle point of her
upper lip scarcely descending so far as it should have done by rights, so
that at the merest pleasant thought, not to mention a smile, portions of
two or three white teeth were uncovered whether she would or not. Some
people said that this was very attractive. She was graceful and slender,
and, though but little above five feet in height, could draw herself up
to look tall. In her manner, in her comings and goings, in her 'I'll do
this,' or 'I'll do that,' she combined dignity with sweetness as no other
girl could do; and any impressionable stranger youths who passed by were
led to yearn for a windfall of speech from her, and to see at the same
time that they would not get it. In short, beneath all that was charming
and simple in this young woman there lurked a real firmness, unperceived
at first, as the speck of colour lurks unperceived in the heart of the
palest parsley flower.
She wore a white handkerchief to cover her white neck, and a cap on her
head with a pink ribbon round it, tied in a bow at the front. She had a
great variety of these cap-ribbons, the young men being fond of sending
them to her as presents until they fell definitely in love with a special
sweetheart elsewhere, when they left off doing so. Between the border of
her cap and her forehead were ranged a row of round brown curls, like
swallows' nests under eaves.
She lived with her widowed mother in a portion of an ancient building
formerly a manor-house, but now a mill, which, being too large for his
own requirements, the miller had found it convenient to divide and
appropriate in part to these highly respectable tenants. In this
dwelling Mrs. Garland's and Anne's ears were soothed morning, noon, and
night by the music of the mill, the wheels and cogs of which, being of
wood, produced notes that might have borne in their minds a remote
resemblance to the wooden tones of the stopped diapason in an organ.
Occasionally, when the miller was bolting, there was added to these
continuous sounds the cheerful clicking of the hopper, which did not
deprive them of rest except when it was kept going all night; and over
and above all this they had the pleasure of knowing that there crept in
through every crevice, door, and window of their dwelling, however
tightly closed, a subtle mist of superfine flour from the grinding room,
quite invisible, but making its presence known in the course of time by
giving a pallid and ghostly look to the best furniture. The miller
frequently apologized to his tenants for the intrusion of this insidious
dry fog; but the widow was of a friendly and thankful nature, and she
said that she did not mind it at all, being as it was, not nasty dirt,
but the blessed staff of life.
By good-humour of this sort, and in other ways, Mrs. Garland acknowledged
her friendship for her neighbour, with whom Anne and herself associated
to an extent which she never could have anticipated when, tempted by the
lowness of the rent, they first removed thither after her husband's death
from a larger house at the other end of the village. Those who have
lived in remote places where there is what is called no society will
comprehend the gradual levelling of distinctions that went on in this
case at some sacrifice of gentility on the part of one household. The
widow was sometimes sorry to find with what readiness Anne caught up some
dialect-word or accent from the miller and his friends; but he was so
good and true-hearted a man, and she so easy-minded, unambitious a woman,
that she would not make life a solitude for fastidious reasons. More
than all, she had good ground for thinking that the miller secretly
admired her, and this added a piquancy to the situation.
* * * * *
On a fine summer morning, when the leaves were warm under the sun, and
the more industrious bees abroad, diving into every blue and red cup that
could possibly be considered a flower, Anne was sitting at the back
window of her mother's portion of the house, measuring out lengths of
worsted for a fringed rug that she was making, which lay, about three-
quarters finished, beside her. The work, though chromatically brilliant,
was tedious: a hearth-rug was a thing which nobody worked at from morning
to night; it was taken up and put down; it was in the chair, on the
floor, across the hand-rail, under the bed, kicked here, kicked there,
rolled away in the closet, brought out again, and so on more capriciously
perhaps than any other home-made article. Nobody was expected to finish
a rug within a calculable period, and the wools of the beginning became
faded and historical before the end was reached. A sense of this
inherent nature of worsted-work rather than idleness led Anne to look
rather frequently from the open casement.
Immediately before her was the large, smooth millpond, over-full, and
intruding into the hedge and into the road. The water, with its flowing
leaves and spots of froth, was stealing away, like Time, under the dark
arch, to tumble over the great slimy wheel within. On the other side of
the mill-pond was an open place called the Cross, because it was three-
quarters of one, two lanes and a cattle-drive meeting there. It was the
general rendezvous and arena of the surrounding village. Behind this a
steep slope rose high into the sky, merging in a wide and open down, now
littered with sheep newly shorn. The upland by its height completely
sheltered the mill and village from north winds, making summers of
springs, reducing winters to autumn temperatures, and permitting myrtle
to flourish in the open air.
The heaviness of noon pervaded the scene, and under its influence the
sheep had ceased to feed. Nobody was standing at the Cross, the few
inhabitants being indoors at their dinner. No human being was on the
down, and no human eye or interest but Anne's seemed to be concerned with
it. The bees still worked on, and the butterflies did not rest from
roving, their smallness seeming to shield them from the stagnating effect
that this turning moment of day had on larger creatures. Otherwise all
was still.
The girl glanced at the down and the sheep for no particular reason; the
steep margin of turf and daisies rising above the roofs, chimneys, apple-
trees, and church tower of the hamlet around her, bounded the view from
her position, and it was necessary to look somewhere when she raised her
head. While thus engaged in working and stopping her attention was
attracted by the sudden rising and running away of the sheep squatted on
the down; and there succeeded sounds of a heavy tramping over the hard
sod which the sheep had quitted, the tramp being accompanied by a
metallic jingle. Turning her eyes further she beheld two cavalry
soldiers on bulky grey chargers, armed and accoutred throughout,
ascending the down at a point to the left where the incline was
comparatively easy. The burnished chains, buckles, and plates of their
trappings shone like little looking-glasses, and the blue, red, and white
about them was unsubdued by weather or wear.
The two troopers rode proudly on, as if nothing less than crowns and
empires ever concerned their magnificent minds. They reached that part
of the down which lay just in front of her, where they came to a halt. In
another minute there appeared behind them a group containing some half-
dozen more of the same sort. These came on, halted, and dismounted
likewise.
Two of the soldiers then walked some distance onward together, when one
stood still, the other advancing further, and stretching a white line of
tape between them. Two more of the men marched to another outlying
point, where they made marks in the ground. Thus they walked about and
took distances, obviously according to some preconcerted scheme.
At the end of this systematic proceeding one solitary horseman--a
commissioned officer, if his uniform could be judged rightly at that
distance--rode up the down, went over the ground, looked at what the
others had done, and seemed to think that it was good. And then the girl
heard yet louder tramps and clankings, and she beheld rising from where
the others had risen a whole column of cavalry in marching order. At a
distance behind these came a cloud of dust enveloping more and more
troops, their arms and accoutrements reflecting the sun through the haze
in faint flashes, stars, and streaks of light. The whole body approached
slowly towards the plateau at the top of the down.
Anne threw down her work, and letting her eyes remain on the nearing
masses of cavalry, the worsteds getting entangled as they would, said,
'Mother, mother; come here! Here's such a fine sight! What does it
mean? What can they be going to do up there?'
The mother thus invoked ran upstairs and came forward to the window. She
was a woman of sanguine mouth and eye, unheroic manner, and pleasant
general appearance; a little more tarnished as to surface, but not much
worse in contour than the girl herself.
Widow Garland's thoughts were those of the period. 'Can it be the
French,' she said, arranging herself for the extremest form of
consternation. 'Can that arch-enemy of mankind have landed at last?' It
should be stated that at this time there were two arch-enemies of
mankind--Satan as usual, and Buonaparte, who had sprung up and eclipsed
his elder rival altogether. Mrs. Garland alluded, of course, to the
junior gentleman.
'It cannot be he,' said Anne. 'Ah! there's Simon Burden, the man who
watches at the beacon. He'll know!'
She waved her hand to an aged form of the same colour as the road, who
had just appeared beyond the mill-pond, and who, though active, was bowed
to that degree which almost reproaches a feeling observer for standing
upright. The arrival of the soldiery had drawn him out from his drop of
drink at the 'Duke of York' as it had attracted Anne. At her call he
crossed the mill-bridge, and came towards the window.
Anne inquired of him what it all meant; but Simon Burden, without
answering, continued to move on with parted gums, staring at the cavalry
on his own private account with a concern that people often show about
temporal phenomena when such matters can affect them but a short time
longer. 'You'll walk into the millpond!' said Anne. 'What are they
doing? You were a soldier many years ago, and ought to know.'
'Don't ask me, Mis'ess Anne,' said the military relic, depositing his
body against the wall one limb at a time. 'I were only in the foot, ye
know, and never had a clear understanding of horses. Ay, I be a old man,
and of no judgment now.' Some additional pressure, however, caused him
to search further in his worm-eaten magazine of ideas, and he found that
he did know in a dim irresponsible way. The soldiers must have come
there to camp: those men they had seen first were the markers: they had
come on before the rest to measure out the ground. He who had
accompanied them was the quartermaster. 'And so you see they have got
all the lines marked out by the time the regiment have come up,' he
added. 'And then they will--well-a-deary! who'd ha' supposed that
Overcombe would see such a day as this!'
'And then they will--'
'Then-- Ah, it's gone from me again!' said Simon. 'O, and then they will
raise their tents, you know, and picket their horses. That was it; so it
was.'
By this time the column of horse had ascended into full view, and they
formed a lively spectacle as they rode along the high ground in marching
order, backed by the pale blue sky, and lit by the southerly sun. Their
uniform was bright and attractive; white buckskin pantaloons,
three-quarter boots, scarlet shakos set off with lace, mustachios waxed
to a needle point; and above all, those richly ornamented blue jackets
mantled with the historic pelisse--that fascination to women, and
encumbrance to the wearers themselves.
''Tis the York Hussars!' said Simon Burden, brightening like a dying
ember fanned. 'Foreigners to a man, and enrolled long since my time. But
as good hearty comrades, they say, as you'll find in the King's service.'
'Here are more and different ones,' said Mrs. Garland.
Other troops had, during the last few minutes, been ascending the down at
a remoter point, and now drew near. These were of different weight and
build from the others; lighter men, in helmet hats, with white plumes.
'I don't know which I like best,' said Anne. 'These, I think, after
all.'
Simon, who had been looking hard at the latter, now said that they were
the --th Dragoons.
'All Englishmen they,' said the old man. 'They lay at Budmouth barracks
a few years ago.'
'They did. I remember it,' said Mrs. Garland.
'And lots of the chaps about here 'listed at the time,' said Simon. 'I
can call to mind that there was--ah, 'tis gone from me again! However,
all that's of little account now.'
The dragoons passed in front of the lookers-on as the others had done,
and their gay plumes, which had hung lazily during the ascent, swung to
northward as they reached the top, showing that on the summit a fresh
breeze blew. 'But look across there,' said Anne. There had entered upon
the down from another direction several battalions of foot, in white
kerseymere breeches and cloth gaiters. They seemed to be weary from a
long march, the original black of their gaiters and boots being whity-
brown with dust. Presently came regimental waggons, and the private
canteen carts which followed at the end of a convoy.
The space in front of the mill-pond was now occupied by nearly all the
inhabitants of the village, who had turned out in alarm, and remained for
pleasure, their eyes lighted up with interest in what they saw; for
trappings and regimentals, war horses and men, in towns an attraction,
were here almost a sublimity.
The troops filed to their lines, dismounted, and in quick time took off
their accoutrements, rolled up their sheep-skins, picketed and unbitted
their horses, and made ready to erect the tents as soon as they could be
taken from the waggons and brought forward. When this was done, at a
given signal the canvases flew up from the sod; and thenceforth every man
had a place in which to lay his head.
Though nobody seemed to be looking on but the few at the window and in
the village street, there were, as a matter of fact, many eyes converging
upon that military arrival in its high and conspicuous position, not to
mention the glances of birds and other wild creatures. Men in distant
gardens, women in orchards and at cottage-doors, shepherds on remote
hills, turnip-hoers in blue-green enclosures miles away, captains with
spy-glasses out at sea, were regarding the picture keenly. Those three
or four thousand men of one machine-like movement, some of them
swashbucklers by nature; others, doubtless, of a quiet shop-keeping
disposition who had inadvertently got into uniform--all of them had
arrived from nobody knew where, and hence were matter of great curiosity.
They seemed to the mere eye to belong to a different order of beings from
those who inhabited the valleys below. Apparently unconscious and
careless of what all the world was doing elsewhere, they remained
picturesquely engrossed in the business of making themselves a habitation
on the isolated spot which they had chosen.
Mrs. Garland was of a festive and sanguine turn of mind, a woman soon set
up and soon set down, and the coming of the regiments quite excited her.
She thought there was reason for putting on her best cap, thought that
perhaps there was not; that she would hurry on the dinner and go out in
the afternoon; then that she would, after all, do nothing unusual, nor
show any silly excitements whatever, since they were unbecoming in a
mother and a widow. Thus circumscribing her intentions till she was
toned down to an ordinary person of forty, Mrs. Garland accompanied her
daughter downstairs to dine, saying, 'Presently we will call on Miller
Loveday, and hear what he thinks of it all.'