One night, about a week later, two men were walking in the dark along the
turnpike road towards Overcombe, one of them with a bag in his hand.
'Now,' said the taller of the two, the squareness of whose shoulders
signified that he wore epaulettes, 'now you must do the best you can for
yourself, Bob. I have done all I can; but th'hast thy work cut out, I
can tell thee.'
'I wouldn't have run such a risk for the world,' said the other, in a
tone of ingenuous contrition. 'But thou'st see, Jack, I didn't think
there was any danger, knowing you was taking care of her, and keeping my
place warm for me. I didn't hurry myself, that's true; but, thinks I, if
I get this promotion I am promised I shall naturally have leave, and then
I'll go and see 'em all. Gad, I shouldn't have been here now but for
your letter!'
'You little think what risks you've run,' said his brother. 'However,
try to make up for lost time.'
'All right. And whatever you do, Jack, don't say a word about this other
girl. Hang the girl!--I was a great fool, I know; still, it is over now,
and I am come to my senses. I suppose Anne never caught a capful of wind
from that quarter?'
'She knows all about it,' said John seriously.
'Knows? By George, then, I'm ruined!' said Bob, standing stock-still in
the road as if he meant to remain there all night.
'That's what I meant by saying it would be a hard battle for 'ee,'
returned John, with the same quietness as before.
Bob sighed and moved on. 'I don't deserve that woman!' he cried
passionately, thumping his three upper ribs with his fist.
'I've thought as much myself,' observed John, with a dryness which was
almost bitter. 'But it depends on how thou'st behave in future.'
'John,' said Bob, taking his brother's hand, 'I'll be a new man. I
solemnly swear by that eternal milestone staring at me there that I'll
never look at another woman with the thought of marrying her whilst that
darling is free--no, not if she be a mermaiden of light! It's a lucky
thing that I'm slipped in on the quarterdeck! it may help me with
her--hey?'
'It may with her mother; I don't think it will make much difference with
Anne. Still, it is a good thing; and I hope that some day you'll command
a big ship.'
Bob shook his head. 'Officers are scarce; but I'm afraid my luck won't
carry me so far as that.'
'Did she ever tell you that she mentioned your name to the King?'
The seaman stood still again. 'Never!' he said. 'How did such a thing
as that happen, in Heaven's name?'
John described in detail, and they walked on, lost in conjecture.
As soon as they entered the house the returned officer of the navy was
welcomed with acclamation by his father and David, with mild approval by
Mrs. Loveday, and by Anne not at all--that discreet maiden having
carefully retired to her own room some time earlier in the evening. Bob
did not dare to ask for her in any positive manner; he just inquired
about her health, and that was all.
'Why, what's the matter with thy face, my son?' said the miller, staring.
'David, show a light here.' And a candle was thrust against Bob's cheek,
where there appeared a jagged streak like the geological remains of a
lobster.
'O--that's where that rascally Frenchman's grenade busted and hit me from
the Redoubtable, you know, as I told 'ee in my letter.'
'Not a word!'
'What, didn't I tell 'ee? Ah, no; I meant to, but I forgot it.'
'And here's a sort of dint in yer forehead too; what do that mean, my
dear boy?' said the miller, putting his finger in a chasm in Bob's skull.
'That was done in the Indies. Yes, that was rather a troublesome chop--a
cutlass did it. I should have told 'ee, but I found 'twould make my
letter so long that I put it off, and put it off; and at last thought it
wasn't worth while.'
John soon rose to take his departure.
'It's all up with me and her, you see,' said Bob to him outside the door.
'She's not even going to see me.'
'Wait a little,' said the trumpet-major. It was easy enough on the night
of the arrival, in the midst of excitement, when blood was warm, for Anne
to be resolute in her avoidance of Bob Loveday. But in the morning
determination is apt to grow invertebrate; rules of pugnacity are less
easily acted up to, and a feeling of live and let live takes possession
of the gentle soul. Anne had not meant even to sit down to the same
breakfast-table with Bob; but when the rest were assembled, and had got
some way through the substantial repast which was served at this hour in
the miller's house, Anne entered. She came silently as a phantom, her
eyes cast down, her cheeks pale. It was a good long walk from the door
to the table, and Bob made a full inspection of her as she came up to a
chair at the remotest corner, in the direct rays of the morning light,
where she dumbly sat herself down.
It was altogether different from how she had expected. Here was she, who
had done nothing, feeling all the embarrassment; and Bob, who had done
the wrong, feeling apparently quite at ease.
'You'll speak to Bob, won't you, honey?' said the miller after a silence.
To meet Bob like this after an absence seemed irregular in his eyes.
'If he wish me to,' she replied, so addressing the miller that no part,
scrap, or outlying beam whatever of her glance passed near the subject of
her remark.
'He's a lieutenant, you know, dear,' said her mother on the same side;
'and he's been dreadfully wounded.'
'Oh?' said Anne, turning a little towards the false one; at which Bob
felt it to be time for him to put in a spoke for himself.
'I am glad to see you,' he said contritely; 'and how do you do?'
'Very well, thank you.'
He extended his hand. She allowed him to take hers, but only to the
extent of a niggardly inch or so. At the same moment she glanced up at
him, when their eyes met, and hers were again withdrawn.
The hitch between the two younger members of the household tended to make
the breakfast a dull one. Bob was so depressed by her unforgiving manner
that he could not throw that sparkle into his stories which their
substance naturally required; and when the meal was over, and they went
about their different businesses, the pair resembled the two Dromios in
seldom or never being, thanks to Anne's subtle contrivances, both in the
same room at the same time.
This kind of performance repeated itself during several days. At last,
after dogging her hither and thither, leaning with a wrinkled forehead
against doorposts, taking an oblique view into the room where she
happened to be, picking up worsted balls and getting no thanks, placing a
splinter from the Victory, several bullets from the Redoubtable, a strip
of the flag, and other interesting relics, carefully labelled, upon her
table, and hearing no more about them than if they had been pebbles from
the nearest brook, he hit upon a new plan. To avoid him she frequently
sat upstairs in a window overlooking the garden. Lieutenant Loveday
carefully dressed himself in a new uniform, which he had caused to be
sent some days before, to dazzle admiring friends, but which he had never
as yet put on in public or mentioned to a soul. When arrayed he entered
the sunny garden, and there walked slowly up and down as he had seen
Nelson and Captain Hardy do on the quarter-deck; but keeping his right
shoulder, on which his one epaulette was fixed, as much towards Anne's
window as possible.
But she made no sign, though there was not the least question that she
saw him. At the end of half-an-hour he went in, took off his clothes,
and gave himself up to doubt and the best tobacco.
He repeated the programme on the next afternoon, and on the next, never
saying a word within doors about his doings or his notice.
Meanwhile the results in Anne's chamber were not uninteresting. She had
been looking out on the first day, and was duly amazed to see a naval
officer in full uniform promenading in the path. Finding it to be Bob,
she left the window with a sense that the scene was not for her; then,
from mere curiosity, peeped out from behind the curtain. Well, he was a
pretty spectacle, she admitted, relieved as his figure was by a dense
mass of sunny, close-trimmed hedge, over which nasturtiums climbed in
wild luxuriance; and if she could care for him one bit, which she
couldn't, his form would have been a delightful study, surpassing in
interest even its splendour on the memorable day of their visit to the
town theatre. She called her mother; Mrs. Loveday came promptly.
'O, it is nothing,' said Anne indifferently; 'only that Bob has got his
uniform.'
Mrs. Loveday peeped out, and raised her hands with delight. 'And he has
not said a word to us about it! What a lovely epaulette! I must call
his father.'
'No, indeed. As I take no interest in him I shall not let people come
into my room to admire him.'
'Well, you called me,' said her mother.
'It was because I thought you liked fine clothes. It is what I don't
care for.'
Notwithstanding this assertion she again looked out at Bob the next
afternoon when his footsteps rustled on the gravel, and studied his
appearance under all the varying angles of the sunlight, as if fine
clothes and uniforms were not altogether a matter of indifference. He
certainly was a splendid, gentlemanly, and gallant sailor from end to end
of him; but then, what were a dashing presentment, a naval rank, and
telling scars, if a man was fickle-hearted? However, she peeped on till
the fourth day, and then she did not peep. The window was open, she
looked right out, and Bob knew that he had got a rise to his bait at
last. He touched his hat to her, keeping his right shoulder forwards,
and said, 'Good-day, Miss Garland,' with a smile.
Anne replied, 'Good-day,' with funereal seriousness; and the acquaintance
thus revived led to the interchange of a few words at supper-time, at
which Mrs. Loveday nodded with satisfaction. But Anne took especial care
that he should never meet her alone, and to insure this her ingenuity was
in constant exercise. There were so many nooks and windings on the
miller's rambling premises that she could never be sure he would not turn
up within a foot of her, particularly as his thin shoes were almost
noiseless.
One fine afternoon she accompanied Molly in search of elderberries for
making the family wine which was drunk by Mrs. Loveday, Anne, and anybody
who could not stand the rougher and stronger liquors provided by the
miller. After walking rather a long distance over the down they came to
a grassy hollow, where elder-bushes in knots of twos and threes rose from
an uneven bank and hung their heads towards the south, black and heavy
with bunches of fruit. The charm of fruit-gathering to girls is enhanced
in the case of elderberries by the inoffensive softness of the leaves,
boughs, and bark, which makes getting into the branches easy and pleasant
to the most indifferent climbers. Anne and Molly had soon gathered a
basketful, and sending the servant home with it, Anne remained in the
bush picking and throwing down bunch by bunch upon the grass. She was so
absorbed in her occupation of pulling the twigs towards her, and the
rustling of their leaves so filled her ears, that it was a great surprise
when, on turning her head, she perceived a similar movement to her own
among the boughs of the adjoining bush.
At first she thought they were disturbed by being partly in contact with
the boughs of her bush; but in a moment Robert Loveday's face peered from
them, at a distance of about a yard from her own. Anne uttered a little
indignant 'Well!' recovered herself, and went on plucking. Bob thereupon
went on plucking likewise.
'I am picking elderberries for your mother,' said the lieutenant at last,
humbly.
'So I see.'
'And I happen to have come to the next bush to yours.'
'So I see; but not the reason why.'
Anne was now in the westernmost branches of the bush, and Bob had leant
across into the eastern branches of his. In gathering he swayed towards
her, back again, forward again.
'I beg pardon,' he said, when a further swing than usual had taken him
almost in contact with her.
'Then why do you do it?'
'The wind rocks the bough, and the bough rocks me.' She expressed by a
look her opinion of this statement in the face of the gentlest breeze;
and Bob pursued: 'I am afraid the berries will stain your pretty hands.'
'I wear gloves.'
'Ah, that's a plan I should never have thought of. Can I help you?'
'Not at all.'
'You are offended: that's what that means.'
'No,' she said.
'Then will you shake hands?'
Anne hesitated; then slowly stretched out her hand, which he took at
once. 'That will do,' she said, finding that he did not relinquish it
immediately. But as he still held it, she pulled, the effect of which
was to draw Bob's swaying person, bough and all, towards her, and herself
towards him.
'I am afraid to let go your hand,' said that officer, 'for if I do your
spar will fly back, and you will be thrown upon the deck with great
violence.'
'I wish you to let me go!'
He accordingly did, and she flew back, but did not by any means fall.
'It reminds me of the times when I used to be aloft clinging to a yard
not much bigger than this tree-stem, in the mid-Atlantic, and thinking
about you. I could see you in my fancy as plain as I see you now.'
'Me, or some other woman!' retorted Anne haughtily.
'No!' declared Bob, shaking the bush for emphasis, 'I'll protest that I
did not think of anybody but you all the time we were dropping down
channel, all the time we were off Cadiz, all the time through battles and
bombardments. I seemed to see you in the smoke, and, thinks I, if I go
to Davy's locker, what will she do?'
'You didn't think that when you landed after Trafalgar.'
'Well, now,' said the lieutenant in a reasoning tone; 'that was a curious
thing. You'll hardly believe it, maybe; but when a man is away from the
woman he loves best in the port--world, I mean--he can have a sort of
temporary feeling for another without disturbing the old one, which flows
along under the same as ever.'
'I can't believe it, and won't,' said Anne firmly.
Molly now appeared with the empty basket, and when it had been filled
from the heap on the grass, Anne went home with her, bidding Loveday a
frigid adieu.
The same evening, when Bob was absent, the miller proposed that they
should all three go to an upper window of the house, to get a distant
view of some rockets and illuminations which were to be exhibited in the
town and harbour in honour of the King, who had returned this year as
usual. They accordingly went upstairs to an empty attic, placed chairs
against the window, and put out the light; Anne sitting in the middle,
her mother close by, and the miller behind, smoking. No sign of any
pyrotechnic display was visible over the port as yet, and Mrs. Loveday
passed the time by talking to the miller, who replied in monosyllables.
While this was going on Anne fancied that she heard some one approach,
and presently felt sure that Bob was drawing near her in the surrounding
darkness; but as the other two had noticed nothing she said not a word.
All at once the swarthy expanse of southward sky was broken by the blaze
of several rockets simultaneously ascending from different ships in the
roads. At the very same moment a warm mysterious hand slipped round her
own, and gave it a gentle squeeze.
'O dear!' said Anne, with a sudden start away.
'How nervous you are, child, to be startled by fireworks so far off,'
said Mrs. Loveday.
'I never saw rockets before,' murmured Anne, recovering from her
surprise.