'I am ready to go,' said Anne, as soon as he arrived.
He paused as if taken aback by her readiness, and replied with much
uncertainty, 'Would it--wouldn't it be better to put it off till there is
less sun?'
The very slightest symptom of surprise arose in her as she rejoined, 'But
the weather may change; or had we better not go at all?'
'O no!--it was only a thought. We will start at once.'
And along the vale they went, John keeping himself about a yard from her
right hand. When the third field had been crossed they came upon half-a-
dozen little boys at play.
'Why don't he clasp her to his side, like a man?' said the biggest and
rudest boy.
'Why don't he clasp her to his side, like a man?' echoed all the rude
smaller boys in a chorus.
The trumpet-major turned, and, after some running, succeeded in smacking
two of them with his switch, returning to Anne breathless. 'I am ashamed
they should have insulted you so,' he said, blushing for her.
'They said no harm, poor boys,' she replied reproachfully.
Poor John was dumb with perception. The gentle hint upon which he would
have eagerly spoken only one short day ago was now like fire to his
wound.
They presently came to some stepping-stones across a brook. John crossed
first without turning his head, and Anne, just lifting the skirt of her
dress, crossed behind him. When they had reached the other side a
village girl and a young shepherd approached the brink to cross. Anne
stopped and watched them. The shepherd took a hand of the young girl in
each of his own, and walked backward over the stones, facing her, and
keeping her upright by his grasp, both of them laughing as they went.
'What are you staying for, Miss Garland?' asked John.
'I was only thinking how happy they are,' she said quietly; and
withdrawing her eyes from the tender pair, she turned and followed him,
not knowing that the seeming sound of a passing bumble-bee was a
suppressed groan from John.
When they reached the hill they found forty navvies at work removing the
dark sod so as to lay bare the chalk beneath. The equestrian figure that
their shovels were forming was scarcely intelligible to John and Anne now
they were close, and after pacing from the horse's head down his breast
to his hoof, back by way of the king's bridle-arm, past the bridge of his
nose, and into his cocked-hat, Anne said that she had had enough of it,
and stepped out of the chalk clearing upon the grass. The trumpet-major
had remained all the time in a melancholy attitude within the rowel of
his Majesty's right spur.
'My shoes are caked with chalk,' she said as they walked downwards again;
and she drew back her dress to look at them. 'How can I get some of it
cleared off?'
'If you was to wipe them in the long grass there,' said John, pointing to
a spot where the blades were rank and dense, 'some of it would come off.'
Having said this, he walked on with religious firmness.
Anne raked her little feet on the right side, on the left side, over the
toe, and behind the heel; but the tenacious chalk held its own. Panting
with her exertion, she gave it up, and at length overtook him.
'I hope it is right now?' he said, looking gingerly over his shoulder.
'No, indeed!' said she. 'I wanted some assistance--some one to steady
me. It is so hard to stand on one foot and wipe the other without
support. I was in danger of toppling over, and so gave it up.'
'Merciful stars, what an opportunity!' thought the poor fellow while she
waited for him to offer help. But his lips remained closed, and she went
on with a pouting smile--
'You seem in such a hurry! Why are you in such a hurry? After all the
fine things you have said about--about caring so much for me, and all
that, you won't stop for anything!'
It was too much for John. 'Upon my heart and life, my dea--' he began.
Here Bob's letter crackled warningly in his waistcoat pocket as he laid
his hand asseveratingly upon his breast, and he became suddenly scaled up
to dumbness and gloom as before.
When they reached home Anne sank upon a stool outside the door, fatigued
with her excursion. Her first act was to try to pull off her shoe--it
was a difficult matter; but John stood beating with his switch the leaves
of the creeper on the wall.
'Mother--David--Molly, or somebody--do come and help me pull off these
dirty shoes!' she cried aloud at last. 'Nobody helps me in anything!'
'I am very sorry,' said John, coming towards her with incredible slowness
and an air of unutterable depression.
'O, I can do without _you_. David is best,' she returned, as the old man
approached and removed the obnoxious shoes in a trice.
Anne was amazed at this sudden change from devotion to crass
indifference. On entering her room she flew to the glass, almost
expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her
pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore. But it was,
if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise. 'Well!' she
said retrospectively. For the first time since their acqaintance she had
this week encouraged him; and for the first time he had shown that
encouragement was useless. 'But perhaps he does not clearly understand,'
she added serenely.
When he next came it was, to her surprise, to bring her newspapers, now
for some time discontinued. As soon as she saw them she said, 'I do not
care for newspapers.'
'The shipping news is very full and long to-day, though the print is
rather small.'
'I take no further interest in the shipping news,' she replied with cold
dignity.
She was sitting by the window, inside the table, and hence when, in spite
of her negations, he deliberately unfolded the paper and began to read
about the Royal Navy she could hardly rise and go away. With a stoical
mien he read on to the end of the report, bringing out the name of Bob's
ship with tremendous force.
'No,' she said at last, 'I'll hear no more! Let me read to you.'
The trumpet-major sat down. Anne turned to the military news, delivering
every detail with much apparent enthusiasm. 'That's the subject _I_
like!' she said fervently.
'But--but Bob is in the navy now, and will most likely rise to be an
officer. And then--'
'What is there like the army?' she interrupted. 'There is no smartness
about sailors. They waddle like ducks, and they only fight stupid
battles that no one can form any idea of. There is no science nor
stratagem in sea-fights--nothing more than what you see when two rams run
their heads together in a field to knock each other down. But in
military battles there is such art, and such splendour, and the men are
so smart, particularly the horse-soldiers. O, I shall never forget what
gallant men you all seemed when you came and pitched your tents on the
downs! I like the cavalry better than anything I know; and the dragoons
the best of the cavalry--and the trumpeters the best of the dragoons!'
'O, if it had but come a little sooner!' moaned John within him. He
replied as soon as he could regain self-command, 'I am glad Bob is in the
navy at last--he is so much more fitted for that than the
merchant-service--so brave by nature, ready for any daring deed. I have
heard ever so much more about his doings on board the Victory. Captain
Hardy took special notice that when he--'
'I don't want to know anything more about it,' said Anne impatiently; 'of
course sailors fight; there's nothing else to do in a ship, since you
can't run away! You may as well fight and be killed as be killed not
fighting.'
'Still it is his character to be careless of himself where the honour of
his country is concerned,' John pleaded. 'If you had only known him as a
boy you would own it. He would always risk his own life to save anybody
else's. Once when a cottage was afire up the lane he rushed in for a
baby, although he was only a boy himself, and he had the narrowest
escape. We have got his hat now with the hole burnt in it. Shall I get
it and show it to you?'
'No--I don't wish it. It has nothing to do with me.' But as he
persisted in his course towards the door, she added, 'Ah! you are leaving
because I am in your way. You want to be alone while you read the
paper--I will go at once. I did not see that I was interrupting you.'
And she rose as if to retreat.
'No, no! I would rather be interrupted by _you_ than--O, Miss Garland,
excuse me! I'll just speak to father in the mill, now I am here.'
It is scarcely necessary to state that Anne (whose unquestionable
gentility amid somewhat homely surroundings has been many times insisted
on in the course of this history) was usually the reverse of a woman with
a coming-on disposition; but, whether from pique at his manner, or from
wilful adherence to a course rashly resolved on, or from coquettish
maliciousness in reaction from long depression, or from any other
thing,--so it was that she would not let him go.
'Trumpet-major,' she said, recalling him.
'Yes?' he replied timidly.
'The bow of my cap-ribbon has come untied, has it not?' She turned and
fixed her bewitching glance upon him.
The bow was just over her forehead, or, more precisely, at the point
where the organ of comparison merges in that of benevolence, according to
the phrenological theory of Gall. John, thus brought to, endeavoured to
look at the bow in a skimming, duck-and-drake fashion, so as to avoid
dipping his own glance as far as to the plane of his interrogator's eyes.
'It is untied,' he said, drawing back a little.