'Yes, 'tis well known--especially latterly.' He dropped his voice to
confidence pitch. 'I suppose your friends here are disturbed by my
coming in, as they don't seem to talk much? I don't mean to interrupt
the party; but I often find that people are put out by my coming among
'em, especially when I've got my regimentals on.'
'La! and are they?'
'Yes; 'tis the way I have.' He further lowered his tone, as if they had
been old friends, though in reality he had only seen her three or four
times. 'And how did you come to be here? Dash my wig, I don't like to
see a nice young lady like you in this company. You should come to some
of our yeomanry sprees in Casterbridge or Shottsford-Forum. O, but the
girls do come! The yeomanry are respected men, men of good substantial
families, many farming their own land; and every one among us rides his
own charger, which is more than these cussed fellows do.' He nodded
towards the dragoons.
'Hush, hush! Why, these are friends and neighbours of Miller Loveday,
and he is a great friend of ours--our best friend,' said Anne with great
emphasis, and reddening at the sense of injustice to their host. 'What
are you thinking of, talking like that? It is ungenerous in you.'
'Ha, ha! I've affronted you. Isn't that it, fair angel, fair--what do
you call it?--fair vestal? Ah, well! would you was safe in my own house!
But honour must be minded now, not courting. Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-
lorum. Pardon me, my sweet, I like ye! It may be a come down for me,
owning land; but I do like ye.'
'Sir, please be quiet,' said Anne, distressed.
'I will, I will. Well, Corporal Tullidge, how's your head?' he said,
going towards the other end of the room, and leaving Anne to herself.
The company had again recovered its liveliness, and it was a long time
before the bouncing Rufus who had joined them could find heart to tear
himself away from their society and good liquors, although he had had
quite enough of the latter before he entered. The natives received him
at his own valuation, and the soldiers of the camp, who sat beyond the
table, smiled behind their pipes at his remarks, with a pleasant twinkle
of the eye which approached the satirical, John Loveday being not the
least conspicuous in this bearing. But he and his friends were too
courteous on such an occasion as the present to challenge the young man's
large remarks, and readily permitted him to set them right on the details
of camping and other military routine, about which the troopers seemed
willing to let persons hold any opinion whatever, provided that they
themselves were not obliged to give attention to it; showing, strangely
enough, that if there was one subject more than another which never
interested their minds, it was the art of war. To them the art of
enjoying good company in Overcombe Mill, the details of the miller's
household, the swarming of his bees, the number of his chickens, and the
fatness of his pigs, were matters of infinitely greater concern.
The present writer, to whom this party has been described times out of
number by members of the Loveday family and other aged people now passed
away, can never enter the old living-room of Overcombe Mill without
beholding the genial scene through the mists of the seventy or eighty
years that intervene between then and now. First and brightest to the
eye are the dozen candles, scattered about regardless of expense, and
kept well snuffed by the miller, who walks round the room at intervals of
five minutes, snuffers in hand, and nips each wick with great precision,
and with something of an executioner's grim look upon his face as he
closes the snuffers upon the neck of the candle. Next to the
candle-light show the red and blue coats and white breeches of the
soldiers--nearly twenty of them in all besides the ponderous Derriman--the
head of the latter, and, indeed, the heads of all who are standing up,
being in dangerous proximity to the black beams of the ceiling. There is
not one among them who would attach any meaning to 'Vittoria,' or gather
from the syllables 'Waterloo' the remotest idea of his own glory or
death. Next appears the correct and innocent Anne, little thinking what
things Time has in store for her at no great distance off. She looks at
Derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and thither, and
hopes he will not single her out again to hold a private dialogue
with--which, however, he does, irresistibly attracted by the white muslin
figure. She must, of course, look a little gracious again now, lest his
mood should turn from sentimental to quarrelsome--no impossible
contingency with the yeoman-soldier, as her quick perception had noted.
'Well, well; this idling won't do for me, folks,' he at last said, to
Anne's relief. 'I ought not to have come in, by rights; but I heard you
enjoying yourselves, and thought it might be worth while to see what you
were up to; I have several miles to go before bedtime;' and stretching
his arms, lifting his chin, and shaking his head, to eradicate any
unseemly curve or wrinkle from his person, the yeoman wished them an off-
hand good-night, and departed.
'You should have teased him a little more, father,' said the
trumpet-major drily. 'You could soon have made him as crabbed as a
bear.'
'I didn't want to provoke the chap--'twasn't worth while. He came in
friendly enough,' said the gentle miller without looking up.
'I don't think he was overmuch friendly,' said John.
''Tis as well to be neighbourly with folks, if they be not quite
onbearable,' his father genially replied, as he took off his coat to go
and draw more ale--this periodical stripping to the shirt-sleeves being
necessitated by the narrowness of the cellar and the smeary effect of its
numerous cobwebs upon best clothes.
Some of the guests then spoke of Fess Derriman as not such a bad young
man if you took him right and humoured him; others said that he was
nobody's enemy but his own; and the elder ladies mentioned in a tone of
interest that he was likely to come into a deal of money at his uncle's
death. The person who did not praise was the one who knew him best, who
had known him as a boy years ago, when he had lived nearer to Overcombe
than he did at present. This unappreciative person was the
trumpet-major.