The next morning Miss Garland awoke with an impression that something
more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon as she could
clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they might be, lay not far
away from her bedroom window. The sounds were chiefly those of pickaxes
and shovels. Anne got up, and, lifting the corner of the curtain about
an inch, peeped out.
A number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path down the
incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the house, and
judging from the quantity of work already got through they must have
begun very early. Squads of men were working at several equidistant
points in the proposed pathway, and by the time that Anne had dressed
herself each section of the length had been connected with those above
and below it, so that a continuous and easy track was formed from the
crest of the down to the bottom of the steep.
The down rested on a bed of solid chalk, and the surface exposed by the
roadmakers formed a white ribbon, serpenting from top to bottom.
Then the relays of working soldiers all disappeared, and, not long after,
a troop of dragoons in watering order rode forward at the top and began
to wind down the new path. They came lower and closer, and at last were
immediately beneath her window, gathering themselves up on the space by
the mill-pond. A number of the horses entered it at the shallow part,
drinking and splashing and tossing about. Perhaps as many as thirty,
half of them with riders on their backs, were in the water at one time;
the thirsty animals drank, stamped, flounced, and drank again, letting
the clear, cool water dribble luxuriously from their mouths. Miller
Loveday was looking on from over his garden hedge, and many admiring
villagers were gathered around.
Gazing up higher, Anne saw other troops descending by the new road from
the camp, those which had already been to the pond making room for these
by withdrawing along the village lane and returning to the top by a
circuitous route.
Suddenly the miller exclaimed, as in fulfilment of expectation, 'Ah,
John, my boy; good morning!' And the reply of 'Morning, father,' came
from a well-mounted soldier near him, who did not, however, form one of
the watering party. Anne could not see his face very clearly, but she
had no doubt that this was John Loveday.
There were tones in the voice which reminded her of old times, those of
her very infancy, when Johnny Loveday had been top boy in the village
school, and had wanted to learn painting of her father. The deeps and
shallows of the mill-pond being better known to him than to any other man
in the camp, he had apparently come down on that account, and was
cautioning some of the horsemen against riding too far in towards the
mill-head.
Since her childhood and his enlistment Anne had seen him only once, and
then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. His figure was
not much changed from what it had been; but the many sunrises and sunsets
which had passed since that day, developing her from a comparative child
to womanhood, had abstracted some of his angularities, reddened his skin,
and given him a foreign look. It was interesting to see what years of
training and service had done for this man. Few would have supposed that
the white and the blue coats of miller and soldier covered the forms of
father and son.
Before the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a body
by Miller Loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this being a plot
lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the water-side. It was just
the time of year when cherries are ripe, and hang in clusters under their
dark leaves. While the troopers loitered on their horses, and chatted to
the miller across the stream, he gathered bunches of the fruit, and held
them up over the garden hedge for the acceptance of anybody who would
have them; whereupon the soldiers rode into the water to where it had
washed holes in the garden bank, and, reining their horses there, caught
the cherries in their forage-caps, or received bunches of them on the
ends of their switches, with the dignified laugh that became martial men
when stooping to slightly boyish amusement. It was a cheerful, careless,
unpremeditated half-hour, which returned like the scent of a flower to
the memories of some of those who enjoyed it, even at a distance of many
years after, when they lay wounded and weak in foreign lands.
Then dragoons and horses wheeled off as the others had done; and troops
of the German Legion next came down and entered in panoramic procession
the space below Anne's eyes, as if on purpose to gratify her. These were
notable by their mustachios, and queues wound tightly with brown ribbon
to the level of their broad shoulder-blades. They were charmed, as the
others had been, by the head and neck of Miss Garland in the little
square window overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with
devoted foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers that the
modest girl suddenly withdrew herself into the room, and had a private
blush between the chest of drawers and the washing-stand.
When she came downstairs her mother said, 'I have been thinking what I
ought to wear to Miller Loveday's to-night.'
'To Miller Loveday's?' said Anne.
'Yes. The party is to-night. He has been in here this morning to tell
me that he has seen his son, and they have fixed this evening.'
'Do you think we ought to go, mother?' said Anne slowly, and looking at
the smaller features of the window-flowers.
'Why not?' said Mrs. Garland.
'He will only have men there except ourselves, will he? And shall we be
right to go alone among 'em?'
Anne had not recovered from the ardent gaze of the gallant York Hussars,
whose voices reached her even now in converse with Loveday.
'La, Anne, how proud you are!' said Widow Garland. 'Why, isn't he our
nearest neighbour and our landlord? and don't he always fetch our faggots
from the wood, and keep us in vegetables for next to nothing?'
'That's true,' said Anne.
'Well, we can't be distant with the man. And if the enemy land next
autumn, as everybody says they will, we shall have quite to depend upon
the miller's waggon and horses. He's our only friend.'
'Yes, so he is,' said Anne. 'And you had better go, mother; and I'll
stay at home. They will be all men; and I don't like going.'
Mrs. Garland reflected. 'Well, if you don't want to go, I don't,' she
said. 'Perhaps, as you are growing up, it would be better to stay at
home this time. Your father was a professional man, certainly.' Having
spoken as a mother, she sighed as a woman.
'Why do you sigh, mother?'
'You are so prim and stiff about everything.'
'Very well--we'll go.'
'O no--I am not sure that we ought. I did not promise, and there will be
no trouble in keeping away.'
Anne apparently did not feel certain of her own opinion, and, instead of
supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down, and abstractedly
brought her hands together on her bosom, till her fingers met tip to tip.
As the day advanced the young woman and her mother became aware that
great preparations were in progress in the miller's wing of the house.
The partitioning between the Lovedays and the Garlands was not very
thorough, consisting in many cases of a simple screwing up of the doors
in the dividing walls; and thus when the mill began any new performances
they proclaimed themselves at once in the more private dwelling. The
smell of Miller Loveday's pipe came down Mrs. Garland's chimney of an
evening with the greatest regularity. Every time that he poked his fire
they knew from the vehemence or deliberateness of the blows the precise
state of his mind; and when he wound his clock on Sunday nights the whirr
of that monitor reminded the widow to wind hers. This transit of noises
was most perfect where Loveday's lobby adjoined Mrs. Garland's pantry;
and Anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment, enjoyed
the privilege of hearing the visitors arrive and of catching stray sounds
and words without the connecting phrases that made them entertaining, to
judge from the laughter they evoked. The arrivals passed through the
house and went into the garden, where they had tea in a large
summer-house, an occasional blink of bright colour, through the foliage,
being all that was visible of the assembly from Mrs. Garland's windows.
When it grew dusk they all could be heard coming indoors to finish the
evening in the parlour.
Then there was an intensified continuation of the above-mentioned signs
of enjoyment, talkings and haw-haws, runnings upstairs and runnings down,
a slamming of doors and a clinking of cups and glasses; till the proudest
adjoining tenant without friends on his own side of the partition might
have been tempted to wish for entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to
know the cause of these fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the
guests were really so numerous, and the observations so very amusing as
they seemed.
The stagnation of life on the Garland side of the party-wall began to
have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past nine
o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a
longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe, mother, that you are
wishing you had gone.'
'I own to feeling that it would have been very cheerful if we had joined
in,' said Mrs. Garland, in a hankering tone. 'I was rather too nice in
listening to you and not going. The parson never calls upon us except in
his spiritual capacity. Old Derriman is hardly genteel; and there's
nobody left to speak to. Lonely people must accept what company they can
get.'
'Or do without it altogether.'
'That's not natural, Anne; and I am surprised to hear a young woman like
you say such a thing. Nature will not be stifled in that way. . . .'
(Song and powerful chorus heard through partition.) 'I declare the room
on the other side of the wall seems quite a paradise compared with this.'
'Mother, you are quite a girl,' said Anne in slightly superior accents.
'Go in and join them by all means.'
'O no--not now,' said her mother, resignedly shaking her head. 'It is
too late now. We ought to have taken advantage of the invitation. They
would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no real business there,
and the miller would say, with his broad smile, "Ah, you be obliged to
come round."'
While the sociable and unaspiring Mrs. Garland continued thus to pass the
evening in two places, her body in her own house and her mind in the
miller's, somebody knocked at the door, and directly after the elder
Loveday himself was admitted to the room. He was dressed in a suit
between grand and gay, which he used for such occasions as the present,
and his blue coat, yellow and red waistcoat with the three lower buttons
unfastened, steel-buckled shoes and speckled stockings, became him very
well in Mrs. Martha Garland's eyes.
'Your servant, ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of propriety
the raised standard of politeness required by his higher costume. 'Now,
begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis unnatural that you two
ladies should be biding here and we under the same roof making merry
without ye. Your husband, poor man--lovely picters that a' would make to
be sure--would have been in with us long ago if he had been in your
place. I can take no nay from ye, upon my honour. You and maidy Anne
must come in, if it be only for half-an-hour. John and his friends have
got passes till twelve o'clock to-night, and, saving a few of our own
village folk, the lowest visitor present is a very genteel German
corporal. If you should hae any misgivings on the score of
respectability, ma'am, we'll pack off the underbred ones into the back
kitchen.'
Widow Garland and Anne looked yes at each other after this appeal.
'We'll follow you in a few minutes,' said the elder, smiling; and she
rose with Anne to go upstairs.
'No, I'll wait for ye,' said the miller doggedly; 'or perhaps you'll
alter your mind again.'
While the mother and daughter were upstairs dressing, and saying
laughingly to each other, 'Well, we must go now,' as if they hadn't
wished to go all the evening, other steps were heard in the passage; and
the miller cried from below, 'Your pardon, Mrs. Garland; but my son John
has come to help fetch ye. Shall I ask him in till ye be ready?'
'Certainly; I shall be down in a minute,' screamed Anne's mother in a
slanting voice towards the staircase.
When she descended, the outline of the trumpet-major appeared half-way
down the passage. 'This is John,' said the miller simply. 'John, you
can mind Mrs. Martha Garland very well?'
'Very well, indeed,' said the dragoon, coming in a little further. 'I
should have called to see her last time, but I was only home a week. How
is your little girl, ma'am?'
Mrs. Garland said Anne was quite well. 'She is grown-up now. She will
be down in a moment.'
There was a slight noise of military heels without the door, at which the
trumpet-major went and put his head outside, and said, 'All right--coming
in a minute,' when voices in the darkness replied, 'No hurry.'
'More friends?' said Mrs. Garland.
'O, it is only Buck and Jones come to fetch me,' said the soldier. 'Shall
I ask 'em in a minute, Mrs Garland, ma'am?'
'O yes,' said the lady; and the two interesting forms of Trumpeter Buck
and Saddler-sergeant Jones then came forward in the most friendly manner;
whereupon other steps were heard without, and it was discovered that
Sergeant-master-tailor Brett and Farrier-extraordinary Johnson were
outside, having come to fetch Messrs. Buck and Jones, as Buck and Jones
had come to fetch the trumpet-major.
As there seemed a possibility of Mrs. Garland's small passage being
choked up with human figures personally unknown to her, she was relieved
to hear Anne coming downstairs.
'Here's my little girl,' said Mrs. Garland, and the trumpet-major looked
with a sort of awe upon the muslin apparition who came forward, and stood
quite dumb before her. Anne recognized him as the trooper she had seen
from her window, and welcomed him kindly. There was something in his
honest face which made her feel instantly at home with him.
At this frankness of manner Loveday--who was not a ladies' man--blushed,
and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a sentence which
had no end, and showed quite a boy's embarrassment. Recovering himself,
he politely offered his arm, which Anne took with a very pretty grace. He
conducted her through his comrades, who glued themselves perpendicularly
to the wall to let her pass, and then they went out of the door, her
mother following with the miller, and supported by the body of troopers,
the latter walking with the usual cavalry gait, as if their thighs were
rather too long for them. Thus they crossed the threshold of the mill-
house and up the passage, the paving of which was worn into a gutter by
the ebb and flow of feet that had been going on there ever since Tudor
times.