The Trumpet-Major. Thomas Hardy
Читать онлайн книгу.
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.
As there seemed a possibility of Mrs. Garland’s small passage being choked up with human figures personally unknown to her, she was relieved to hear Anne coming downstairs.
‘Here’s my little girl,’ said Mrs. Garland, and the trumpet-major looked with a sort of awe upon the muslin apparition who came forward, and stood quite dumb before her. Anne recognized him as the trooper she had seen from her window, and welcomed him kindly. There was something in his honest face which made her feel instantly at home with him.
At this frankness of manner Loveday – who was not a ladies’ man – blushed, and made some alteration in his bodily posture, began a sentence which had no end, and showed quite a boy’s embarrassment. Recovering himself, he politely offered his arm, which Anne took with a very pretty grace. He conducted her through his comrades, who glued themselves perpendicularly to the wall to let her pass, and then they went out of the door, her mother following with the miller, and supported by the body of troopers, the latter walking with the usual cavalry gait, as if their thighs were rather too long for them. Thus they crossed the threshold of the mill-house and up the passage, the paving of which was worn into a gutter by the ebb and flow of feet that had been going on there ever since Tudor times.
IV. WHO WERE PRESENT AT THE MILLER’S LITTLE ENTERTAINMENT
When the group entered the presence of the company a lull in the conversation was caused by the sight of new visitors, and (of course) by the charm of Anne’s appearance; until the old men, who had daughters of their own, perceiving that she was only a half-formed girl, resumed their tales and toss-potting with unconcern.
Miller Loveday had fraternized with half the soldiers in the camp since their arrival, and the effect of this upon his party was striking – both chromatically and otherwise. Those among the guests who first attracted the eye were the sergeants and sergeant-majors of Loveday’s regiment, fine hearty men, who sat facing the candles, entirely resigned to physical comfort. Then there were other non-commissioned officers, a German, two Hungarians, and a Swede, from the foreign hussars – young men with a look of sadness on their faces, as if they did not much like serving so far from home. All of them spoke English fairly well. Old age was represented by Simon Burden the pensioner, and the shady side of fifty by Corporal Tullidge, his friend and neighbour, who was hard of hearing, and sat with his hat on over a red cotton handkerchief that was wound several times round his head. These two veterans were employed as watchers at the neighbouring beacon, which had lately been erected by the Lord-Lieutenant for firing whenever the descent on the coast should be made. They lived in a little hut on the hill, close by the heap of faggots; but to-night they had found deputies to watch in their stead.
On a lower plane of experience and qualifications came neighbour James Comfort, of the Volunteers, a soldier by courtesy, but a blacksmith by rights; also William Tremlett and Anthony Cripplestraw, of the local forces. The two latter men of war were dressed merely as villagers, and looked upon the regulars from a humble position in the background. The remainder of the party was made up of a neighbouring dairyman or two, and their wives, invited by the miller, as Anne was glad to see, that she and her mother should not be the only women there.
The elder Loveday apologized in a whisper to Mrs. Garland for the presence of the inferior villagers. ‘But as they are learning to be brave defenders of their home and country, ma’am, as fast as they can master the drill, and have worked for me off and on these many years, I’ve asked ’em in, and thought you’d excuse it.’
‘Certainly, Miller Loveday,’ said the widow.
‘And the same of old Burden and Tullidge. They have served well and long in the Foot, and even now have a hard time of it up at the beacon in wet weather. So after giving them a meal in the kitchen I just asked ’em in to hear the singing. They faithfully promise that as soon as ever the gunboats appear in view, and they have fired the beacon, to run down here first, in case we shouldn’t see it. ’Tis worth while to be friendly with ’em, you see, though their tempers be queer.’
‘Quite worth while, miller,’ said she.
Anne was rather embarrassed by the presence of the regular military in such force, and at first confined her words to the dairymen’s wives she was acquainted with, and to the two old soldiers of the parish.
‘Why didn’t ye