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The Trumpet Major

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Trumpet Major




The leafy and quieter wing of the mill-house was the part occupied
by Mrs. Garland and her daughter, who made up in summer-time for the
narrowness of their quarters by overflowing into the garden on
stools and chairs. The parlour or dining-room had a stone floor--a
fact which the widow sought to disguise by double carpeting, lest
the standing of Anne and herself should be lowered in the public
eye. Here now the mid-day meal went lightly and mincingly on, as it
does where there is no greedy carnivorous man to keep the dishes
about, and was hanging on the close when somebody entered the
passage as far as the chink of the parlour door, and tapped. This
proceeding was probably adopted to kindly avoid giving trouble to
Susan, the neighbour's pink daughter, who helped at Mrs. Garland's
in the mornings, but was at that moment particularly occupied in
standing on the water-butt and gazing at the soldiers, with an
inhaling position of the mouth and circular eyes.

There was a flutter in the little dining-room--the sensitiveness of
habitual solitude makes hearts beat for preternaturally small
reasons--and a guessing as to who the visitor might be. It was some
military gentleman from the camp perhaps? No; that was impossible.
It was the parson? No; he would not come at dinner-time. It was
the well-informed man who travelled with drapery and the best
Birmingham earrings? Not at all; his time was not till Thursday at
three. Before they could think further the visitor moved forward
another step, and the diners got a glimpse of him through the same
friendly chink that had afforded him a view of the Garland
dinner-table.

'O! It is only Loveday.'

This approximation to nobody was the miller above mentioned, a hale
man of fifty-five or sixty--hale all through, as many were in those
days, and not merely veneered with purple by exhilarating victuals
and drinks, though the latter were not at all despised by him. His
face was indeed rather pale than otherwise, for he had just come
from the mill. It was capable of immense changes of expression:
mobility was its essence, a roll of flesh forming a buttress to his
nose on each side, and a deep ravine lying between his lower lip and
the tumulus represented by his chin. These fleshy lumps moved
stealthily, as if of their own accord, whenever his fancy was
tickled.

His eyes having lighted on the table-cloth, plates, and viands, he
found himself in a position which had a sensible awkwardness for a
modest man who always liked to enter only at seasonable times the
presence of a girl of such pleasantly soft ways as Anne Garland, she
who could make apples seem like peaches, and throw over her
shillings the glamour of guineas when she paid him for flour.

'Dinner is over, neighbour Loveday; please come in,' said the widow,
seeing his case. The miller said something about coming in
presently; but Anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her
lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite
lapsing into one--her habitual manner when speaking.

Loveday took off his low-crowned hat and advanced. He had not come
about pigs or fowls this time. 'You have been looking out, like the
rest o' us, no doubt, Mrs. Garland, at the mampus of soldiers that
have come upon the down? Well, one of the horse regiments is the --
th Dragoons, my son John's regiment, you know.'

The announcement, though it interested them, did not create such an
effect as the father of John had seemed to anticipate; but Anne, who
liked to say pleasant things, replied, 'The dragoons looked nicer
than the foot, or the German cavalry either.'

'They are a handsome body of men,' said the miller in a
disinterested voice. 'Faith! I didn't know they were coming, though
it may be in the newspaper all the time. But old Derriman keeps it
so long that we never know things till they be in everybody's
mouth.'

This Derriman was a squireen living near, who was chiefly
distinguished in the present warlike time by having a nephew in the
yeomanry.

'We were told that the yeomanry went along the turnpike road
yesterday,' said Anne; 'and they say that they were a pretty sight,
and quite soldierly.'

'Ah! well--they be not regulars,' said Miller Loveday, keeping back
harsher criticism as uncalled for. But inflamed by the arrival of
the dragoons, which had been the exciting cause of his call, his
mind would not go to yeomanry. 'John has not been home these five
years,' he said.

'And what rank does he hold now?' said the widow.

'He's trumpet-major, ma'am; and a good musician.' The miller, who
was a good father, went on to explain that John had seen some
service, too. He had enlisted when the regiment was lying in this
neighbourhood, more than eleven years before, which put his father
out of temper with him, as he had wished him to follow on at the
mill. But as the lad had enlisted seriously, and as he had often
said that he would be a soldier, the miller had thought that he
would let Jack take his chance in the profession of his choice.

Loveday had two sons, and the second was now brought into the
conversation by a remark of Anne's that neither of them seemed to
care for the miller's business.

'No,' said Loveday in a less buoyant tone. 'Robert, you see, must
needs go to sea.'

'He is much younger than his brother?' said Mrs. Garland.

About four years, the miller told her. His soldier son was
two-and-thirty, and Bob was twenty-eight. When Bob returned from
his present voyage, he was to be persuaded to stay and assist as
grinder in the mill, and go to sea no more.

'A sailor-miller!' said Anne.

'O, he knows as much about mill business as I do,' said Loveday; 'he
was intended for it, you know, like John. But, bless me!' he
continued, 'I am before my story. I'm come more particularly to ask
you, ma'am, and you, Anne my honey, if you will join me and a few
friends at a leetle homely supper that I shall gi'e to please the
chap now he's come? I can do no less than have a bit of a randy, as
the saying is, now that he's here safe and sound.'

Mrs. Garland wanted to catch her daughter's eye; she was in some
doubt about her answer. But Anne's eye was not to be caught, for
she hated hints, nods, and calculations of any kind in matters which
should be regulated by impulse; and the matron replied, 'If so be
'tis possible, we'll be there. You will tell us the day?'

He would, as soon as he had seen son John. ''Twill be rather
untidy, you know, owing to my having no womenfolks in the house; and
my man David is a poor dunder-headed feller for getting up a feast.
Poor chap! his sight is bad, that's true, and he's very good at
making the beds, and oiling the legs of the chairs and other
furniture, or I should have got rid of him years ago.'

'You should have a woman to attend to the house, Loveday,' said the
widow.

'Yes, I should, but--. Well, 'tis a fine day, neighbours. Hark! I
fancy I hear the noise of pots and pans up at the camp, or my ears
deceive me. Poor fellows, they must be hungry! Good day t'ye,
ma'am.' And the miller went away.

All that afternoon Overcombe continued in a ferment of interest in
the military investment, which brought the excitement of an invasion
without the strife. There were great discussions on the merits and
appearance of the soldiery. The event opened up, to the girls
unbounded possibilities of adoring and being adored, and to the
young men an embarrassment of dashing acquaintances which quite
superseded falling in love. Thirteen of these lads incontinently
stated within the space of a quarter of an hour that there was
nothing in the world like going for a soldier. The young women
stated little, but perhaps thought the more; though, in justice,
they glanced round towards the encampment from the corners of their
blue and brown eyes in the most demure and modest manner that could
be desired.

In the evening the village was lively with soldiers' wives; a tree
full of starlings would not have rivalled the chatter that was going
on. These ladies were very brilliantly dressed, with more regard
for colour than for material. Purple, red, and blue bonnets were
numerous, with bunches of cocks' feathers; and one had on an
Arcadian hat of green sarcenet, turned up in front to show her cap
underneath. It had once belonged to an officer's lady, and was not
so much stained, except where the occasional storms of rain,
incidental to a military life, had caused the green to run and
stagnate in curious watermarks like peninsulas and islands. Some of
the prettiest of these butterfly wives had been fortunate enough to
get lodgings in the cottages, and were thus spared the necessity of
living in huts and tents on the down. Those who had not been so
fortunate were not rendered more amiable by the success of their
sisters-in-arms, and called them names which brought forth retorts
and rejoinders; till the end of these alternative remarks seemed
dependent upon the close of the day.

One of these new arrivals, who had a rosy nose and a slight
thickness of voice, which, as Anne said, she couldn't help, poor
thing, seemed to have seen so much of the world, and to have been in
so many campaigns, that Anne would have liked to take her into their
own house, so as to acquire some of that practical knowledge of the
history of England which the lady possessed, and which could not be
got from books. But the narrowness of Mrs. Garland's rooms
absolutely forbade this, and the houseless treasury of experience
was obliged to look for quarters elsewhere.

That night Anne retired early to bed. The events of the day,
cheerful as they were in themselves, had been unusual enough to give
her a slight headache. Before getting into bed she went to the
window, and lifted the white curtains that hung across it. The moon
was shining, though not as yet into the valley, but just peeping
above the ridge of the down, where the white cones of the encampment
were softly touched by its light. The quarter-guard and foremost
tents showed themselves prominently; but the body of the camp, the
officers' tents, kitchens, canteen, and appurtenances in the rear
were blotted out by the ground, because of its height above her.
She could discern the forms of one or two sentries moving to and fro
across the disc of the moon at intervals. She could hear the
frequent shuffling and tossing of the horses tied to the pickets;
and in the other direction the miles-long voice of the sea,
whispering a louder note at those points of its length where
hampered in its ebb and flow by some jutting promontory or group of
boulders. Louder sounds suddenly broke this approach to silence;
they came from the camp of dragoons, were taken up further to the
right by the camp of the Hanoverians, and further on still by the
body of infantry. It was tattoo. Feeling no desire to sleep, she
listened yet longer, looked at Charles's Wain swinging over the
church tower, and the moon ascending higher and higher over the
right-hand streets of tents, where, instead of parade and bustle,
there was nothing going on but snores and dreams, the tired soldiers
lying by this time under their proper canvases, radiating like
spokes from the pole of each tent.

At last Anne gave up thinking, and retired like the rest. The night
wore on, and, except the occasional 'All's well' of the sentries, no
voice was heard in the camp or in the village below.



III. THE MILL BECOMES AN IMPORTANT CENTRE OF OPERATIONS

The next morning Miss Garland awoke with an impression that
something more than usual was going on, and she recognized as soon
as she could clearly reason that the proceedings, whatever they
might be, lay not far away from her bedroom window. The sounds were
chiefly those of pickaxes and shovels. Anne got up, and, lifting
the corner of the curtain about an inch, peeped out.

A number of soldiers were busily engaged in making a zigzag path
down the incline from the camp to the river-head at the back of the
house, and judging from the quantity of work already got through
they must have begun very early. Squads of men were working at
several equidistant points in the proposed pathway, and by the time
that Anne had dressed herself each section of the length had been
connected with those above and below it, so that a continuous and
easy track was formed from the crest of the down to the bottom of
the steep.

The down rested on a bed of solid chalk, and the surface exposed by
the roadmakers formed a white ribbon, serpenting from top to bottom.

Then the relays of working soldiers all disappeared, and, not long
after, a troop of dragoons in watering order rode forward at the top
and began to wind down the new path. They came lower and closer,
and at last were immediately beneath her window, gathering
themselves up on the space by the mill-pond. A number of the horses
entered it at the shallow part, drinking and splashing and tossing
about. Perhaps as many as thirty, half of them with riders on their
backs, were in the water at one time; the thirsty animals drank,
stamped, flounced, and drank again, letting the clear, cool water
dribble luxuriously from their mouths. Miller Loveday was looking
on from over his garden hedge, and many admiring villagers were
gathered around.

Gazing up higher, Anne saw other troops descending by the new road
from the camp, those which had already been to the pond making room
for these by withdrawing along the village lane and returning to the
top by a circuitous route.

Suddenly the miller exclaimed, as in fulfilment of expectation, 'Ah,
John, my boy; good morning!' And the reply of 'Morning, father,'
came from a well-mounted soldier near him, who did not, however,
form one of the watering party. Anne could not see his face very
clearly, but she had no doubt that this was John Loveday.

There were tones in the voice which reminded her of old times, those
of her very infancy, when Johnny Loveday had been top boy in the
village school, and had wanted to learn painting of her father. The
deeps and shallows of the mill-pond being better known to him than
to any other man in the camp, he had apparently come down on that
account, and was cautioning some of the horsemen against riding too
far in towards the mill-head.

Since her childhood and his enlistment Anne had seen him only once,
and then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. His
figure was not much changed from what it had been; but the many
sunrises and sunsets which had passed since that day, developing her
from a comparative child to womanhood, had abstracted some of his
angularities, reddened his skin, and given him a foreign look. It
was interesting to see what years of training and service had done
for this man. Few would have supposed that the white and the blue
coats of miller and soldier covered the forms of father and son.

Before the last troop of dragoons rode off they were welcomed in a
body by Miller Loveday, who still stood in his outer garden, this
being a plot lying below the mill-tail, and stretching to the
water-side. It was just the time of year when cherries are ripe,
and hang in clusters under their dark leaves. While the troopers
loitered on their horses, and chatted to the miller across the
stream, he gathered bunches of the fruit, and held them up over the
garden hedge for the acceptance of anybody who would have them;
whereupon the soldiers rode into the water to where it had washed
holes in the garden bank, and, reining their horses there, caught
the cherries in their forage-caps, or received bunches of them on
the ends of their switches, with the dignified laugh that became
martial men when stooping to slightly boyish amusement. It was a
cheerful, careless, unpremeditated half-hour, which returned like
the scent of a flower to the memories of some of those who enjoyed
it, even at a distance of many years after, when they lay wounded
and weak in foreign lands.

Then dragoons and horses wheeled off as the others had done; and
troops of the German Legion next came down and entered in panoramic
procession the space below Anne's eyes, as if on purpose to gratify
her. These were notable by their mustachios, and queues wound
tightly with brown ribbon to the level of their broad
shoulder-blades. They were charmed, as the others had been, by the
head and neck of Miss Garland in the little square window
overlooking the scene of operations, and saluted her with devoted
foreign civility, and in such overwhelming numbers that the modest
girl suddenly withdrew herself into the room, and had a private
blush between the chest of drawers and the washing-stand.

When she came downstairs her mother said, 'I have been thinking what
I ought to wear to Miller Loveday's to-night.'

'To Miller Loveday's?' said Anne.

'Yes. The party is to-night. He has been in here this morning to
tell me that he has seen his son, and they have fixed this evening.'

'Do you think we ought to go, mother?' said Anne slowly, and looking
at the smaller features of the window-flowers.

'Why not?' said Mrs. Garland.

'He will only have men there except ourselves, will he? And shall
we be right to go alone among 'em?'

Anne had not recovered from the ardent gaze of the gallant York
Hussars, whose voices reached her even now in converse with Loveday.

'La, Anne, how proud you are!' said Widow Garland. 'Why, isn't he
our nearest neighbour and our landlord? and don't he always fetch
our faggots from the wood, and keep us in vegetables for next to
nothing?'

'That's true,' said Anne.

'Well, we can't be distant with the man. And if the enemy land next
autumn, as everybody says they will, we shall have quite to depend
upon the miller's waggon and horses. He's our only friend.'

'Yes, so he is,' said Anne. 'And you had better go, mother; and
I'll stay at home. They will be all men; and I don't like going.'

Mrs. Garland reflected. 'Well, if you don't want to go, I don't,'
she said. 'Perhaps, as you are growing up, it would be better to
stay at home this time. Your father was a professional man,
certainly.' Having spoken as a mother, she sighed as a woman.

'Why do you sigh, mother?'

'You are so prim and stiff about everything.'

'Very well--we'll go.'

'O no--I am not sure that we ought. I did not promise, and there
will be no trouble in keeping away.'

Anne apparently did not feel certain of her own opinion, and,
instead of supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down,
and abstractedly brought her hands together on her bosom, till her
fingers met tip to tip.

As the day advanced the young woman and her mother became aware that
great preparations were in progress in the miller's wing of the
house. The partitioning between the Lovedays and the Garlands was
not very thorough, consisting in many cases of a simple screwing up
of the doors in the dividing walls; and thus when the mill began any
new performances they proclaimed themselves at once in the more
private dwelling. The smell of Miller Loveday's pipe came down Mrs.
Garland's chimney of an evening with the greatest regularity. Every
time that he poked his fire they knew from the vehemence or
deliberateness of the blows the precise state of his mind; and when
he wound his clock on Sunday nights the whirr of that monitor
reminded the widow to wind hers. This transit of noises was most
perfect where Loveday's lobby adjoined Mrs. Garland's pantry; and
Anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment,
enjoyed the privilege of hearing the visitors arrive and of catching
stray sounds and words without the connecting phrases that made them
entertaining, to judge from the laughter they evoked. The arrivals
passed through the house and went into the garden, where they had
tea in a large summer-house, an occasional blink of bright colour,
through the foliage, being all that was visible of the assembly from
Mrs. Garland's windows. When it grew dusk they all could be heard
coming indoors to finish the evening in the parlour.

Then there was an intensified continuation of the above-mentioned
signs of enjoyment, talkings and haw-haws, runnings upstairs and
runnings down, a slamming of doors and a clinking of cups and
glasses; till the proudest adjoining tenant without friends on his
own side of the partition might have been tempted to wish for
entrance to that merry dwelling, if only to know the cause of these
fluctuations of hilarity, and to see if the guests were really so
numerous, and the observations so very amusing as they seemed.

The stagnation of life on the Garland side of the party-wall began
to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past
nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had
resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe,
mother, that you are wishing you had gone.'

'I own to feeling that it would have been very cheerful if we had
joined in,' said Mrs. Garland, in a hankering tone. 'I was rather
too nice in listening to you and not going. The parson never calls
upon us except in his spiritual capacity. Old Derriman is hardly
genteel; and there's nobody left to speak to. Lonely people must
accept what company they can get.'

'Or do without it altogether.'

'That's not natural, Anne; and I am surprised to hear a young woman
like you say such a thing. Nature will not be stifled in that way.
. . .' (Song and powerful chorus heard through partition.) 'I
declare the room on the other side of the wall seems quite a
paradise compared with this.'

'Mother, you are quite a girl,' said Anne in slightly superior
accents. 'Go in and join them by all means.'

'O no--not now,' said her mother, resignedly shaking her head. 'It
is too late now. We ought to have taken advantage of the
invitation. They would look hard at me as a poor mortal who had no
real business there, and the miller would say, with his broad smile,
"Ah, you be obliged to come round."'

While the sociable and unaspiring Mrs. Garland continued thus to
pass the evening in two places, her body in her own house and her
mind in the miller's, somebody knocked at the door, and directly
after the elder Loveday himself was admitted to the room. He was
dressed in a suit between grand and gay, which he used for such
occasions as the present, and his blue coat, yellow and red
waistcoat with the three lower buttons unfastened, steel-buckled
shoes and speckled stockings, became him very well in Mrs. Martha
Garland's eyes.

'Your servant, ma'am,' said the miller, adopting as a matter of
propriety the raised standard of politeness required by his higher
costume. 'Now, begging your pardon, I can't hae this. 'Tis
unnatural that you two ladies should be biding here and we under the
same roof making merry without ye. Your husband, poor man--lovely
picters that a' would make to be sure--would have been in with us
long ago if he had been in your place. I can take no nay from ye,
upon my honour. You and maidy Anne must come in, if it be only for
half-an-hour. John and his friends have got passes till twelve
o'clock to-night, and, saving a few of our own village folk, the
lowest visitor present is a very genteel German corporal. If you
should hae any misgivings on the score of respectability, ma'am,
we'll pack off the underbred ones into the back kitchen.'

Widow Garland and Anne looked yes at each other after this appeal.

'We'll follow you in a few minutes,' said the elder, smiling; and
she rose with Anne to go upstairs.

'No, I'll wait for ye,' said the miller doggedly; 'or perhaps you'll
alter your mind again.'

While the mother and daughter were upstairs dressing, and saying
laughingly to each other, 'Well, we must go now,' as if they hadn't
wished to go all the evening, other steps were heard in the passage;
and the miller cried from below, 'Your pardon, Mrs. Garland; but my
son John has come to help fetch ye. Shall I ask him in till ye be
ready?'

'Certainly; I shall be down in a minute,' screamed Anne's mother in
a slanting voice towards the staircase.

When she descended, the outline of the trumpet-major appeared
half-way down the passage. 'This is John,' said the miller simply.
'John, you can mind Mrs. Martha Garland very well?'

'Very well, indeed,' said the dragoon, coming in a little further.
'I should have called to see her last time, but I was only home a
week. How is your little girl, ma'am?'

Mrs. Garland said Anne was quite well. 'She is grown-up now. She
will be down in a moment.'

There was a slight noise of military heels without the door, at
which the trumpet-major went and put his head outside, and said,
'All right--coming in a minute,' when voices in the darkness
replied, 'No hurry.'

'More friends?' said Mrs. Garland.

'O, it is only Buck and Jones come to fetch me,' said the soldier.
'Shall I ask 'em in a minute, Mrs Garland, ma'am?'

'O yes,' said the lady; and the two interesting forms of Trumpeter
Buck and Saddler-sergeant Jones then came forward in the most
friendly manner; whereupon other steps were heard without, and it
was discovered that Sergeant-master-tailor Brett and Farrier-
extraordinary Johnson were outside, having come to fetch Messrs.
Buck and Jones, as Buck and Jones had come to fetch the
trumpet-major.

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