In the afternoon they drove off, John Loveday being nowhere visible. All
along the road they passed and were overtaken by vehicles of all
descriptions going in the same direction; among them the extraordinary
machines which had been invented for the conveyance of troops to any
point of the coast on which the enemy should land; they consisted of four
boards placed across a sort of trolly, thirty men of the volunteer
companies riding on each.
The popular Georgian watering-place was in a paroxysm of gaiety. The
town was quite overpowered by the country round, much to the town's
delight and profit. The fear of invasion was such that six frigates lay
in the roads to ensure the safety of the royal family, and from the
regiments of horse and foot quartered at the barracks, or encamped on the
hills round about, a picket of a thousand men mounted guard every day in
front of Gloucester Lodge, where the King resided. When Anne and her
attendant reached this point, which they did on foot, stabling the horse
on the outskirts of the town, it was about six o'clock. The King was on
the Esplanade, and the soldiers were just marching past to mount guard.
The band formed in front of the King, and all the officers saluted as
they went by.
Anne now felt herself close to and looking into the stream of recorded
history, within whose banks the littlest things are great, and outside
which she and the general bulk of the human race were content to live on
as an unreckoned, unheeded superfluity.
When she turned from her interested gaze at this scene, there stood John
Loveday. She had had a presentiment that he would turn up in this
mysterious way. It was marvellous that he could have got there so
quickly; but there he was--not looking at the King, or at the crowd, but
waiting for the turn of her head.
'Trumpet-major, I didn't see you,' said Anne demurely. 'How is it that
your regiment is not marching past?'
'We take it by turns, and it is not our turn,' said Loveday.
She wanted to know then if they were afraid that the King would be
carried off by the First Consul. Yes, Loveday told her; and his Majesty
was rather venturesome. A day or two before he had gone so far to sea
that he was nearly caught by some of the enemy's cruisers. 'He is
anxious to fight Boney single-handed,' he said.
'What a good, brave King!' said Anne.
Loveday seemed anxious to come to more personal matters. 'Will you let
me take you round to the other side, where you can see better?' he asked.
'The Queen and the princesses are at the window.'
Anne passively assented. 'David, wait here for me,' she said; 'I shall
be back again in a few minutes.'
The trumpet-major then led her off triumphantly, and they skirted the
crowd and came round on the side towards the sands. He told her
everything he could think of, military and civil, to which Anne returned
pretty syllables and parenthetic words about the colour of the sea and
the curl of the foam--a way of speaking that moved the soldier's heart
even more than long and direct speeches would have done.
'And that other thing I asked you?' he ventured to say at last.
'We won't speak of it.'
'You don't dislike me?'
'O no!' she said, gazing at the bathing-machines, digging children, and
other common objects of the seashore, as if her interest lay there rather
than with him.
'But I am not worthy of the daughter of a genteel professional man--that's
what you mean?'
'There's something more than worthiness required in such cases, you
know,' she said, still without calling her mind away from surrounding
scenes. 'Ah, there are the Queen and princesses at the window!'
'Something more?'
'Well, since you will make me speak, I mean the woman ought to love the
man.'
The trumpet-major seemed to be less concerned about this than about her
supposed superiority. 'If it were all right on that point, would you
mind the other?' he asked, like a man who knows he is too persistent, yet
who cannot be still.
'How can I say, when I don't know? What a pretty chip hat the elder
princess wears?'
Her companion's general disappointment extended over him almost to his
lace and his plume. 'Your mother said, you know, Miss Anne--'
'Yes, that's the worst of it,' she said. 'Let us go back to David; I
have seen all I want to see, Mr. Loveday.'
The mass of the people had by this time noticed the Queen and princesses
at the window, and raised a cheer, to which the ladies waved their
embroidered handkerchiefs. Anne went back towards the pavement with her
trumpet-major, whom all the girls envied her, so fine-looking a soldier
was he; and not only for that, but because it was well known that he was
not a soldier from necessity, but from patriotism, his father having
repeatedly offered to set him up in business: his artistic taste in
preferring a horse and uniform to a dirty, rumbling flour-mill was
admired by all. She, too, had a very nice appearance in her best clothes
as she walked along--the sarcenet hat, muslin shawl, and tight-sleeved
gown being of the newest Overcombe fashion, that was only about a year
old in the adjoining town, and in London three or four. She could not be
harsh to Loveday and dismiss him curtly, for his musical pursuits had
refined him, educated him, and made him quite poetical. To-day he had
been particularly well-mannered and tender; so, instead of answering,
'Never speak to me like this again,' she merely put him off with a 'Let
us go back to David.'
When they reached the place where they had left him David was gone.
Anne was now positively vexed. 'What _shall_ I do?' she said.
'He's only gone to drink the King's health,' said Loveday, who had
privately given David the money for performing that operation. 'Depend
upon it, he'll be back soon.'
'Will you go and find him?' said she, with intense propriety in her looks
and tone.
'I will,' said Loveday reluctantly; and he went.
Anne stood still. She could now escape her gallant friend, for, although
the distance was long, it was not impossible to walk home. On the other
hand, Loveday was a good and sincere fellow, for whom she had almost a
brotherly feeling, and she shrank from such a trick. While she stood and
mused, scarcely heeding the music, the marching of the soldiers, the
King, the dukes, the brilliant staff, the attendants, and the happy
groups of people, her eyes fell upon the ground.
Before her she saw a flower lying--a crimson sweet-william--fresh and
uninjured. An instinctive wish to save it from destruction by the
passengers' feet led her to pick it up; and then, moved by a sudden self-
consciousness, she looked around. She was standing before an inn, and
from an upper window Festus Derriman was leaning with two or three
kindred spirits of his cut and kind. He nodded eagerly, and signified to
her that he had thrown the flower.
What should she do? To throw it away would seem stupid, and to keep it
was awkward. She held it between her finger and thumb, twirled it round
on its axis and twirled it back again, regarding and yet not examining
it. Just then she saw the trumpet-major coming back.
'I can't find David anywhere,' he said; and his heart was not sorry as he
said it.
Anne was still holding out the sweet-william as if about to drop it, and,
scarcely knowing what she did under the distressing sense that she was
watched, she offered the flower to Loveday.
His face brightened with pleasure as he took it. 'Thank you, indeed,' he
said.
Then Anne saw what a misleading blunder she had committed towards Loveday
in playing to the yeoman. Perhaps she had sown the seeds of a quarrel.
'It was not my sweet-william,' she said hastily; 'it was lying on the
ground. I don't mean anything by giving it to you.'
'But I'll keep it all the same,' said the innocent soldier, as if he knew
a good deal about womankind; and he put the flower carefully inside his
jacket, between his white waistcoat and his heart.
Festus, seeing this, enlarged himself wrathfully, got hot in the face,
rose to his feet, and glared down upon them like a turnip-lantern.
'Let us go away,' said Anne timorously.
'I'll see you safe to your own door, depend upon me,' said Loveday.
'But--I had near forgot--there's father's letter, that he's so anxiously
waiting for! Will you come with me to the post-office? Then I'll take
you straight home.'
Anne, expecting Festus to pounce down every minute, was glad to be off
anywhere; so she accepted the suggestion, and they went along the parade
together.
Loveday set this down as a proof of Anne's relenting. Thus in joyful
spirits he entered the office, paid the postage, and received the letter.
'It is from Bob, after all!' he said. 'Father told me to read it at
once, in case of bad news. Ask your pardon for keeping you a moment.' He
broke the seal and read, Anne standing silently by.
'He is coming home _to be married_,' said the trumpet-major, without
looking up.
Anne did not answer. The blood swept impetuously up her face at his
words, and as suddenly went away again, leaving her rather paler than
before. She disguised her agitation and then overcame it, Loveday
observing nothing of this emotional performance.
'As far as I can understand he will be here Saturday,' he said.
'Indeed!' said Anne quite calmly. 'And who is he going to marry?'
'That I don't know,' said John, turning the letter about. 'The woman is
a stranger.'
At this moment the miller entered the office hastily.
'Come, John,' he cried, 'I have been waiting and waiting for that there
letter till I was nigh crazy!'
John briefly explained the news, and when his father had recovered from
his astonishment, taken off his hat, and wiped the exact line where his
forehead joined his hair, he walked with Anne up the street, leaving John
to return alone. The miller was so absorbed in his mental perspective of
Bob's marriage, that he saw nothing of the gaieties they passed through;
and Anne seemed also so much impressed by the same intelligence, that she
crossed before the inn occupied by Festus without showing a recollection
of his presence there.