Anne fearfully surveyed her position. The upper windows of the cottage
were of flimsiest lead-work, and to keep him out would be hopeless. She
felt that not a moment was to be lost in getting away. Running
downstairs she opened the door, and then it occurred to her terrified
understanding that there would be no chance of escaping him by flight
afoot across such an extensive down, since he might mount his horse and
easily ride after her. The animal still remained tethered at the corner
of the garden; if she could release him and frighten him away before
Festus returned, there would not be quite such odds against her. She
accordingly unhooked the horse by reaching over the bank, and then,
pulling off her muslin neckerchief, flapped it in his eyes to startle
him. But the gallant steed did not move or flinch; she tried again, and
he seemed rather pleased than otherwise. At this moment she heard a cry
from the cottage, and turning, beheld her adversary approaching round the
corner of the building.
'I thought I should tole out the mouse by that trick!' cried Festus
exultingly. Instead of going for a ladder, he had simply hidden himself
at the back to tempt her down.
Poor Anne was now desperate. The bank on which she stood was level with
the horse's back, and the creature seemed quiet as a lamb. With a
determination of which she was capable in emergencies, she seized the
rein, flung herself upon the sheepskin, and held on by the mane. The
amazed charger lifted his head, sniffed, wrenched his ears hither and
thither, and started off at a frightful speed across the down.
'O, my heart and limbs!' said Festus under his breath, as, thoroughly
alarmed, he gazed after her. 'She on Champion! She'll break her neck,
and I shall be tried for manslaughter, and disgrace will be brought upon
the name of Derriman!'
Champion continued to go at a stretch-gallop, but he did nothing worse.
Had he plunged or reared, Derriman's fears might have been verified, and
Anne have come with deadly force to the ground. But the course was good,
and in the horse's speed lay a comparative security. She was scarcely
shaken in her precarious half-horizontal position, though she was awed to
see the grass, loose stones, and other objects pass her eyes like strokes
whenever she opened them, which was only just for a second at intervals
of half a minute; and to feel how wildly the stirrups swung, and that
what struck her knee was the bucket of the carbine, and that it was a
pistol-holster which hurt her arm.
They quickly cleared the down, and Anne became conscious that the course
of the horse was homeward. As soon as the ground began to rise towards
the outer belt of upland which lay between her and the coast, Champion,
now panting and reeking with moisture, lessened his speed in sheer
weariness, and proceeded at a rapid jolting trot. Anne felt that she
could not hold on half so well; the gallop had been child's play compared
with this. They were in a lane, ascending to a ridge, and she made up
her mind for a fall. Over the ridge rose an animated spot, higher and
higher; it turned out to be the upper part of a man, and the man to be a
soldier. Such was Anne's attitude that she only got an occasional
glimpse of him; and, though she feared that he might be a Frenchman, she
feared the horse more than the enemy, as she had feared Festus more than
the horse. Anne had energy enough left to cry, 'Stop him; stop him!' as
the soldier drew near.
He, astonished at the sight of a military horse with a bundle of drapery
across his back, had already placed himself in the middle of the lane,
and he now held out his arms till his figure assumed the form of a Latin
cross planted in the roadway. Champion drew near, swerved, and stood
still almost suddenly, a check sufficient to send Anne slipping down his
flank to the ground. The timely friend stepped forward and helped her to
her feet, when she saw that he was John Loveday.
'Are you hurt?' he said hastily, having turned quite pale at seeing her
fall.
'O no; not a bit,' said Anne, gathering herself up with forced briskness,
to make light of the misadventure.
'But how did you get in such a place?'
'There, he's gone!' she exclaimed, instead of replying, as Champion swept
round John Loveday and cantered off triumphantly in the direction of
Oxwell, a performance which she followed with her eyes.
'But how did you come upon his back, and whose horse is it?'
'I will tell you.'
'Well?'
'I--cannot tell you.'
John looked steadily at her, saying nothing.
'How did you come here?' she asked. 'Is it true that the French have not
landed at all?'
'Quite true; the alarm was groundless. I'll tell you all about it. You
look very tired. You had better sit down a few minutes. Let us sit on
this bank.'
He helped her to the slope indicated, and continued, still as if his
thoughts were more occupied with the mystery of her recent situation than
with what he was saying: 'We arrived at Budmouth Barracks this morning,
and are to lie there all the summer. I could not write to tell father we
were coming. It was not because of any rumour of the French, for we knew
nothing of that till we met the people on the road, and the colonel said
in a moment the news was false. Buonaparte is not even at Boulogne just
now. I was anxious to know how you had borne the fright, so I hastened
to Overcombe at once, as soon as I could get out of barracks.'
Anne, who had not been at all responsive to his discourse, now swayed
heavily against him, and looking quickly down he found that she had
silently fainted. To support her in his arms was of course the impulse
of a moment. There was no water to be had, and he could think of nothing
else but to hold her tenderly till she came round again. Certainly he
desired nothing more.
Again he asked himself, what did it all mean?
He waited, looking down upon her tired eyelids, and at the row of lashes
lying upon each cheek, whose natural roundness showed itself in singular
perfection now that the customary pink had given place to a pale
luminousness caught from the surrounding atmosphere. The dumpy ringlets
about her forehead and behind her poll, which were usually as tight as
springs, had been partially uncoiled by the wildness of her ride, and
hung in split locks over her forehead and neck. John, who, during the
long months of his absence, had lived only to meet her again, was in a
state of ecstatic reverence, and bending down he gently kissed her.
Anne was just becoming conscious.
'O, Mr. Derriman, never, never!' she murmured, sweeping her face with her
hand.
'I thought he was at the bottom of it,' said John.
Anne opened her eyes, and started back from him. 'What is it?' she said
wildly.
'You are ill, my dear Miss Garland,' replied John in trembling anxiety,
and taking her hand.
'I am not ill, I am wearied out!' she said. 'Can't we walk on? How far
are we from Overcombe?'
'About a mile. But tell me, somebody has been hurting you--frightening
you. I know who it was; it was Derriman, and that was his horse. Now do
you tell me all.'
Anne reflected. 'Then if I tell you,' she said, 'will you discuss with
me what I had better do, and not for the present let my mother and your
father know? I don't want to alarm them, and I must not let my affairs
interrupt the business connexion between the mill and the hall that has
gone on for so many years.'
The trumpet-major promised, and Anne told the adventure. His brow
reddened as she went on, and when she had done she said, 'Now you are
angry. Don't do anything dreadful, will you? Remember that this Festus
will most likely succeed his uncle at Oxwell, in spite of present
appearances, and if Bob succeeds at the mill there should be no enmity
between them.'
'That's true. I won't tell Bob. Leave him to me. Where is Derriman
now? On his way home, I suppose. When I have seen you into the house I
will deal with him--quite quietly, so that he shall say nothing about
it.'
'Yes, appeal to him, do! Perhaps he will be better then.'
They walked on together, Loveday seeming to experience much quiet bliss.
'I came to look for you,' he said, 'because of that dear, sweet letter
you wrote.'
'Yes, I did write you a letter,' she admitted, with misgiving, now
beginning to see her mistake. 'It was because I was sorry I had blamed
you.'
'I am almost glad you did blame me,' said John cheerfully, 'since, if you
had not, the letter would not have come. I have read it fifty times a
day.'
This put Anne into an unhappy mood, and they proceeded without much
further talk till the mill chimneys were visible below them. John then
said that he would leave her to go in by herself.
'Ah, you are going back to get into some danger on my account?'
'I can't get into much danger with such a fellow as he, can I?' said
John, smiling.
'Well, no,' she answered, with a sudden carelessness of tone. It was
indispensable that he should be undeceived, and to begin the process by
taking an affectedly light view of his personal risks was perhaps as good
a way to do it as any. Where friendliness was construed as love, an
assumed indifference was the necessary expression for friendliness.
So she let him go; and, bidding him hasten back as soon as he could, went
down the hill, while John's feet retraced the upland.
The trumpet-major spent the whole afternoon and evening in that long and
difficult search for Festus Derriman. Crossing the down at the end of
the second hour he met Molly and Mrs. Loveday. The gig had been
repaired, they had learnt the groundlessness of the alarm, and they would
have been proceeding happily enough but for their anxiety about Anne.
John told them shortly that she had got a lift home, and proceeded on his
way.
The worthy object of his search had in the meantime been plodding
homeward on foot, sulky at the loss of his charger, encumbered with his
sword, belts, high boots, and uniform, and in his own discomfiture
careless whether Anne Garland's life had been endangered or not.
At length Derriman reached a place where the road ran between high banks,
one of which he mounted and paced along as a change from the hard
trackway. Ahead of him he saw an old man sitting down, with eyes fixed
on the dust of the road, as if resting and meditating at one and the same
time. Being pretty sure that he recognized his uncle in that venerable
figure, Festus came forward stealthily, till he was immediately above the
old man's back. The latter was clothed in faded nankeen breeches,
speckled stockings, a drab hat, and a coat which had once been light
blue, but from exposure as a scarecrow had assumed the complexion and
fibre of a dried pudding-cloth. The farmer was, in fact, returning to
the hall, which he had left in the morning some time later than his
nephew, to seek an asylum in a hollow tree about two miles off. The tree
was so situated as to command a view of the building, and Uncle Benjy had
managed to clamber up inside this natural fortification high enough to
watch his residence through a hole in the bark, till, gathering from the
words of occasional passers-by that the alarm was at least premature, he
had ventured into daylight again.
He was now engaged in abstractedly tracing a diagram in the dust with his
walking-stick, and muttered words to himself aloud. Presently he arose
and went on his way without turning round. Festus was curious enough to
descend and look at the marks. They represented an oblong, with two semi-
diagonals, and a little square in the middle. Upon the diagonals were
the figures 20 and 17, and on each side of the parallelogram stood a
letter signifying the point of the compass.
'What crazy thing is running in his head now?' said Festus to himself,
with supercilious pity, recollecting that the farmer had been singing
those very numbers earlier in the morning. Being able to make nothing of
it, he lengthened his strides, and treading on tiptoe overtook his
relative, saluting him by scratching his back like a hen. The startled
old farmer danced round like a top, and gasping, said, as he perceived
his nephew, 'What, Festy! not thrown from your horse and killed, then,
after all!'
'No, nunc. What made ye think that?'
'Champion passed me about an hour ago, when I was in hiding--poor timid
soul of me, for I had nothing to lose by the French coming--and he looked
awful with the stirrups dangling and the saddle empty. 'Tis a gloomy
sight, Festy, to see a horse cantering without a rider, and I thought you
had been--feared you had been thrown off and killed as dead as a nit.'
'Bless your dear old heart for being so anxious! And what pretty picture
were you drawing just now with your walking-stick!'
'O, that! That is only a way I have of amusing myself. It showed how
the French might have advanced to the attack, you know. Such trifles
fill the head of a weak old man like me.'
'Or the place where something is hid away--money, for instance?'
'Festy,' said the farmer reproachfully, 'you always know I use the old
glove in the bedroom cupboard for any guinea or two I possess.'
'Of course I do,' said Festus ironically.
They had now reached a lonely inn about a mile and a half from the hall,
and, the farmer not responding to his nephew's kind invitation to come in
and treat him, Festus entered alone. He was dusty, draggled, and weary,
and he remained at the tavern long. The trumpet-major, in the meantime,
having searched the roads in vain, heard in the course of the evening of
the yeoman's arrival at this place, and that he would probably be found
there still. He accordingly approached the door, reaching it just as the
dusk of evening changed to darkness.
There was no light in the passage, but John pushed on at hazard, inquired
for Derriman, and was told that he would be found in the back parlour
alone. When Loveday first entered the apartment he was unable to see
anything, but following the guidance of a vigorous snoring, he came to
the settle, upon which Festus lay asleep, his position being faintly
signified by the shine of his buttons and other parts of his uniform.
John laid his hand upon the reclining figure and shook him, and by
degrees Derriman stopped his snore and sat up.
'Who are you?' he said, in the accents of a man who has been drinking
hard. 'Is it you, dear Anne? Let me kiss you; yes, I will.'
'Shut your mouth, you pitiful blockhead; I'll teach you genteeler manners
than to persecute a young woman in that way!' and taking Festus by the
ear, he gave it a good pull. Festus broke out with an oath, and struck a
vague blow in the air with his fist; whereupon the trumpet-major dealt
him a box on the right ear, and a similar one on the left to artistically
balance the first. Festus jumped up and used his fists wildly, but
without any definite result.
'Want to fight, do ye, eh?' said John. 'Nonsense! you can't fight, you
great baby, and never could. You are only fit to be smacked!' and he
dealt Festus a specimen of the same on the cheek with the palm of his
hand.
'No, sir, no! O, you are Loveday, the young man she's going to be
married to, I suppose? Dash me, I didn't want to hurt her, sir.'
'Yes, my name is Loveday; and you'll know where to find me, since we
can't finish this to-night. Pistols or swords, whichever you like, my
boy. Take that, and that, so that you may not forget to call upon me!'
and again he smacked the yeoman's ears and cheeks. 'Do you know what it
is for, eh?'
'No, Mr. Loveday, sir--yes, I mean, I do.'
'What is it for, then? I shall keep smacking until you tell me. Gad! if
you weren't drunk, I'd half kill you here to-night.'
'It is because I served her badly. Damned if I care! I'll do it again,
and be hanged to 'ee! Where's my horse Champion? Tell me that,' and he
hit at the trumpet-major.
John parried this attack, and taking him firmly by the collar, pushed him
down into the seat, saying, 'Here I hold 'ee till you beg pardon for your
doings to-day. Do you want any more of it, do you?' And he shook the
yeoman to a sort of jelly.
'I do beg pardon--no, I don't. I say this, that you shall not take such
liberties with old Squire Derriman's nephew, you dirty miller's son, you
flour-worm, you smut in the corn! I'll call you out to-morrow morning,
and have my revenge.'
'Of course you will; that's what I came for.' And pushing him back into
the corner of the settle, Loveday went out of the house, feeling
considerable satisfaction at having got himself into the beginning of as
nice a quarrel about Anne Garland as the most jealous lover could desire.
But of one feature in this curious adventure he had not the least
notion--that Festus Derriman, misled by the darkness, the fumes of his
potations, and the constant sight of Anne and Bob together, never once
supposed his assailant to be any other man than Bob, believing the
trumpet-major miles away.
There was a moon during the early part of John's walk home, but when he
had arrived within a mile of Overcombe the sky clouded over, and rain
suddenly began to fall with some violence. Near him was a wooden granary
on tall stone staddles, and perceiving that the rain was only a
thunderstorm which would soon pass away, he ascended the steps and
entered the doorway, where he stood watching the half-obscured moon
through the streaming rain. Presently, to his surprise, he beheld a
female figure running forward with great rapidity, not towards the
granary for shelter, but towards open ground. What could she be running
for in that direction? The answer came in the appearance of his brother
Bob from that quarter, seated on the back of his father's heavy horse. As
soon as the woman met him, Bob dismounted and caught her in his arms.
They stood locked together, the rain beating into their unconscious
forms, and the horse looking on.
The trumpet-major fell back inside the granary, and threw himself on a
heap of empty sacks which lay in the corner: he had recognized the woman
to be Anne. Here he reclined in a stupor till he was aroused by the
sound of voices under him, the voices of Anne and his brother, who,
having at last discovered that they were getting wet, had taken shelter
under the granary floor.
'I have been home,' said she. 'Mother and Molly have both got back long
ago. We were all anxious about you, and I came out to look for you. O,
Bob, I am so glad to see you again!'
John might have heard every word of the conversation, which was continued
in the same strain for a long time; but he stopped his ears, and would
not. Still they remained, and still was he determined that they should
not see him. With the conserved hope of more than half a year dashed
away in a moment, he could yet feel that the cruelty of a protest would
be even greater than its inutility. It was absolutely by his own
contrivance that the situation had been shaped. Bob, left to himself,
would long ere this have been the husband of another woman.
The rain decreased, and the lovers went on. John looked after them as
they strolled, aqua-tinted by the weak moon and mist. Bob had thrust one
of his arms through the rein of the horse, and the other was round Anne's
waist. When they were lost behind the declivity the trumpet-major came
out, and walked homeward even more slowly than they. As he went on, his
face put off its complexion of despair for one of serene resolve. For
the first time in his dealings with friends he entered upon a course of
counterfeiting, set his features to conceal his thought, and instructed
his tongue to do likewise. He threw fictitiousness into his very gait,
even now, when there was nobody to see him, and struck at stems of wild
parsley with his regimental switch as he had used to do when soldiering
was new to him, and life in general a charming experience.
Thus cloaking his sickly thought, he descended to the mill as the others
had done before him, occasionally looking down upon the wet road to
notice how close Anne's little tracks were to Bob's all the way along,
and how precisely a curve in his course was followed by a curve in hers.
But after this he erected his head and walked so smartly up to the front
door that his spurs rang through the court.
They had all reached home, but before any of them could speak he cried
gaily, 'Ah, Bob, I have been thinking of you! By God, how are you, my
boy? No French cut-throats after all, you see. Here we are, well and
happy together again.'
'A good Providence has watched over us,' said Mrs. Loveday cheerfully.
'Yes, in all times and places we are in God's hand.'
'So we be, so we be!' said the miller, who still shone in all the
fierceness of uniform. 'Well, now we'll ha'e a drop o' drink.'
'There's none,' said David, coming forward with a drawn face.
'What!' said the miller.
'Afore I went to church for a pike to defend my native country from
Boney, I pulled out the spigots of all the barrels, maister; for, thinks
I--damn him!--since we can't drink it ourselves, he shan't have it, nor
none of his men.'
'But you shouldn't have done it till you was sure he'd come!' said the
miller, aghast.
'Chok' it all, I was sure!' said David. 'I'd sooner see churches fall
than good drink wasted; but how was I to know better?'
'Well, well; what with one thing and another this day will cost me a
pretty penny!' said Loveday, bustling off to the cellar, which he found
to be several inches deep in stagnant liquor. 'John, how can I welcome
'ee?' he continued hopelessly, on his return to the room. 'Only go and
see what he's done!'
'I've ladled up a drap wi' a spoon, trumpet-major,' said David. ''Tisn't
bad drinking, though it do taste a little of the floor, that's true.'
John said that he did not require anything at all; and then they all sat
down to supper, and were very temperately gay with a drop of mild elder-
wine which Mrs. Loveday found in the bottom of a jar. The trumpet-major,
adhering to the part he meant to play, gave humorous accounts of his
adventures since he had last sat there. He told them that the season was
to be a very lively one--that the royal family was coming, as usual, and
many other interesting things; so that when he left them to return to
barracks few would have supposed the British army to contain a lighter-
hearted man.
Anne was the only one who doubted the reality of this behaviour. When
she had gone up to her bedroom she stood for some time looking at the
wick of the candle as if it were a painful object, the expression of her
face being shaped by the conviction that John's afternoon words when he
helped her out of the way of Champion were not in accordance with his
words to-night, and that the dimly-realized kiss during her faintness was
no imaginary one. But in the blissful circumstances of having Bob at
hand again she took optimist views, and persuaded herself that John would
soon begin to see her in the light of a sister.