Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (327 page)

One breezy night, when the mill was kept going into the small hours, and the wind was exactly in the direction of the water-current, the music so mingled with her dreams as to wake her: it seemed to rhythmically set itself to the words, ‘Remember me! think of me!’  She was much impressed; the sounds were almost too touching; and she spoke to Bob the next morning on the subject.

‘How strange it is that you should have thought of fixing that harp where the water gushes!’ she gently observed.  ‘It affects me almost painfully at night.  You are poetical, Captain Bob.  But it is too — too sad!’

‘I will take it away,’ said Captain Bob promptly.  ‘It certainly is too sad; I thought so myself.  I myself was kept awake by it one night.’

‘How came you to think of making such a peculiar thing?’

‘Well,’ said Bob, ‘it is hardly worth saying why.  It is not a good place for such a queer noisy machine; and I’ll take it away.’

‘On second thoughts,’ said Anne, ‘I should like it to remain a little longer, because it sets me thinking.’

‘Of me?’ he asked with earnest frankness.

Anne’s colour rose fast.

‘Well, yes,’ she said, trying to infuse much plain matter-of-fact into her voice.  ‘Of course I am led to think of the person who invented it.’

Bob seemed unaccountably embarrassed, and the subject was not pursued.  About half-an-hour later he came to her again, with something of an uneasy look.

‘There was a little matter I didn’t tell you just now, Miss Garland,’ he said.  ‘About that harp thing, I mean.  I did make it, certainly, but it was my brother John who asked me to do it, just before he went away.  John is very musical, as you know, and he said it would interest you; but as he didn’t ask me to tell, I did not.  Perhaps I ought to have, and not have taken the credit to myself.’

‘O, it is nothing!’ said Anne quickly.  ‘It is a very incomplete instrument after all, and it will be just as well for you to take it away as you first proposed.’

He said that he would, but he forgot to do it that day; and the following night there was a high wind, and the harp cried and moaned so movingly that Anne, whose window was quite near, could hardly bear the sound with its new associations.  John Loveday was present to her mind all night as an ill-used man; and yet she could not own that she had ill-used him.

The harp was removed next day.  Bob, feeling that his credit for originality was damaged in her eyes, by way of recovering it set himself to paint the summer-house which Anne frequented, and when he came out he assured her that it was quite his own idea.

‘It wanted doing, certainly,’ she said, in a neutral tone.

‘It is just about troublesome.’

‘Yes; you can’t quite reach up.  That’s because you are not very tall; is it not, Captain Loveday?’

‘You never used to say things like that.’

‘O, I don’t mean that you are much less than tall!  Shall I hold the paint for you, to save your stepping down?’

‘Thank you, if you would.’

She took the paint-pot, and stood looking at the brush as it moved up and down in his hand.

‘I hope I shall not sprinkle your fingers,’ he observed as he dipped.

‘O, that would not matter!  You do it very well.’

‘I am glad to hear that you think so.’

‘But perhaps not quite so much art is demanded to paint a summer-house as to paint a picture?’

Thinking that, as a painter’s daughter, and a person of education superior to his own, she spoke with a flavour of sarcasm, he felt humbled and said —

‘You did not use to talk like that to me.’

‘I was perhaps too young then to take any pleasure in giving pain,’ she observed daringly.

‘Does it give you pleasure?’

Anne nodded.

‘I like to give pain to people who have given pain to me,’ she said smartly, without removing her eyes from the green liquid in her hand.

‘I ask your pardon for that.’

‘I didn’t say I meant you — though I did mean you.’

Bob looked and looked at her side face till he was bewitched into putting down his brush.

‘It was that stupid forgetting of ‘ee for a time!’ he exclaimed.  ‘Well, I hadn’t seen you for so very long — consider how many years!  O, dear Anne!’ he said, advancing to take her hand, ‘how well we knew one another when we were children!  You was a queen to me then; and so you are now, and always.’

Possibly Anne was thrilled pleasantly enough at having brought the truant village lad to her feet again; but he was not to find the situation so easy as he imagined, and her hand was not to be taken yet.

‘Very pretty!’ she said, laughing.  ‘And only six weeks since Miss Johnson left.’

‘Zounds, don’t say anything about that!’ implored Bob.  ‘I swear that I never — never deliberately loved her — for a long time together, that is; it was a sudden sort of thing, you know.  But towards you — I have more or less honoured and respectfully loved you, off and on, all my life.  There, that’s true.’

Anne retorted quickly —

‘I am willing, off and on, to believe you, Captain Robert.  But I don’t see any good in your making these solemn declarations.’

‘Give me leave to explain, dear Miss Garland.  It is to get you to be pleased to renew an old promise — made years ago — that you’ll think o’ me.’

‘Not a word of any promise will I repeat.’

‘Well, well, I won’t urge ‘ee to-day.  Only let me beg of you to get over the quite wrong notion you have of me; and it shall be my whole endeavour to fetch your gracious favour.’

Anne turned away from him and entered the house, whither in the course of a quarter of an hour he followed her, knocking at her door, and asking to be let in.  She said she was busy; whereupon he went away, to come back again in a short time and receive the same answer.

‘I have finished painting the summer-house for you,’ he said through the door.

‘I cannot come to see it.  I shall be engaged till supper-time.’

She heard him breathe a heavy sigh and withdraw, murmuring something about his bad luck in being cut away from the starn like this.  But it was not over yet.  When supper-time came and they sat down together, she took upon herself to reprove him for what he had said to her in the garden.

Bob made his forehead express despair.

‘Now, I beg you this one thing,’ he said.  ‘Just let me know your whole mind.  Then I shall have a chance to confess my faults and mend them, or clear my conduct to your satisfaction.’

She answered with quickness, but not loud enough to be heard by the old people at the other end of the table — ’Then, Captain Loveday, I will tell you one thing, one fault, that perhaps would have been more proper to my character than to yours.  You are too easily impressed by new faces, and that gives me a
bad opinion
of you — yes, a
bad opinion
.’

‘O, that’s it!’ said Bob slowly, looking at her with the intense respect of a pupil for a master, her words being spoken in a manner so precisely between jest and earnest that he was in some doubt how they were to be received.  ‘Impressed by new faces.  It is wrong, certainly, of me.’

The popping of a cork, and the pouring out of strong beer by the miller with a view to giving it a head, were apparently distractions sufficient to excuse her in not attending further to him; and during the remainder of the sitting her gentle chiding seemed to be sinking seriously into his mind.  Perhaps her own heart ached to see how silent he was; but she had always meant to punish him.  Day after day for two or three weeks she preserved the same demeanour, with a self-control which did justice to her character.  And, on his part, considering what he had to put up with — how she eluded him, snapped him off, refused to come out when he called her, refused to see him when he wanted to enter the little parlour which she had now appropriated to her private use, his patience testified strongly to his good-humour.

CHAPTER XXIII. 

MILITARY PREPARATIONS ON AN EXTENDED SCALE

Christmas had passed.  Dreary winter with dark evenings had given place to more dreary winter with light evenings.  Rapid thaws had ended in rain, rain in wind, wind in dust.  Showery days had come — the season of pink dawns and white sunsets; and people hoped that the March weather was over.

The chief incident that concerned the household at the mill was that the miller, following the example of all his neighbours, had become a volunteer, and duly appeared twice a week in a red, long-tailed military coat, pipe-clayed breeches, black cloth gaiters, a heel-balled helmet-hat, with a tuft of green wool, and epaulettes of the same colour and material.  Bob still remained neutral.  Not being able to decide whether to enrol himself as a sea-fencible, a local militia-man, or a volunteer, he simply went on dancing attendance upon Anne.  Mrs. Loveday had become awake to the fact that the pair of young people stood in a curious attitude towards each other; but as they were never seen with their heads together, and scarcely ever sat even in the same room, she could not be sure what their movements meant.

Strangely enough (or perhaps naturally enough), since entering the Loveday family herself, she had gradually grown to think less favourably of Anne doing the same thing, and reverted to her original idea of encouraging Festus; this more particularly because he had of late shown such perseverance in haunting the precincts of the mill, presumably with the intention of lighting upon the young girl.  But the weather had kept her mostly indoors.

One afternoon it was raining in torrents.  Such leaves as there were on trees at this time of year — those of the laurel and other evergreens — staggered beneath the hard blows of the drops which fell upon them, and afterwards could be seen trickling down the stems beneath and silently entering the ground.  The surface of the mill-pond leapt up in a thousand spirts under the same downfall, and clucked like a hen in the rat-holes along the banks as it undulated under the wind.  The only dry spot visible from the front windows of the mill-house was the inside of a small shed, on the opposite side of the courtyard.  While Mrs. Loveday was noticing the threads of rain descending across its interior shade, Festus Derriman walked up and entered it for shelter, which, owing to the lumber within, it but scantily afforded to a man who would have been a match for one of Frederick William’s Patagonians.

It was an excellent opportunity for helping on her scheme.  Anne was in the back room, and by asking him in till the rain was over she would bring him face to face with her daughter, whom, as the days went on, she increasingly wished to marry other than a Loveday, now that the romance of her own alliance with the millet had in some respects worn off.  She was better provided for than before; she was not unhappy; but the plain fact was that she had married beneath her.  She beckoned to Festus through the window-pane; he instantly complied with her signal, having in fact placed himself there on purpose to be noticed; for he knew that Miss Garland would not be out-of-doors on such a day.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Loveday,’ said Festus on entering.  ‘There now — if I didn’t think that’s how it would be!’  His voice had suddenly warmed to anger, for he had seen a door close in the back part of the room, a lithe figure having previously slipped through.

Mrs. Loveday turned, observed that Anne was gone, and said, ‘What is it?’ as if she did not know.

‘O, nothing, nothing!’ said Festus crossly.  ‘You know well enough what it is, ma’am; only you make pretence otherwise.  But I’ll bring her to book yet.  You shall drop your haughty airs, my charmer!  She little thinks I have kept an account of ‘em all.’

‘But you must treat her politely, sir,’ said Mrs. Loveday, secretly pleased at these signs of uncontrollable affection.

‘Don’t tell me of politeness or generosity, ma’am!  She is more than a match for me.  She regularly gets over me.  I have passed by this house five-and-fifty times since last Martinmas, and this is all my reward for’t!’

‘But you will stay till the rain is over, sir?’

‘No.  I don’t mind rain.  I’m off again.  She’s got somebody else in her eye!’  And the yeoman went out, slamming the door.

Meanwhile the slippery object of his hopes had gone along the dark passage, passed the trap which opened on the wheel, and through the door into the mill, where she was met by Bob, who looked up from the flour-shoot inquiringly and said, ‘You want me, Miss Garland?’

‘O no,’ said she.  ‘I only want to be allowed to stand here a few minutes.’

He looked at her to know if she meant it, and finding that she did, returned to his post.  When the mill had rumbled on a little longer he came back.

‘Bob,’ she said, when she saw him move, ‘remember that you are at work, and have no time to stand close to me.’

He bowed and went to his original post again, Anne watching from the window till Festus should leave.  The mill rumbled on as before, and at last Bob came to her for the third time.  ‘Now, Bob — ’ she began.

‘On my honour, ‘tis only to ask a question.  Will you walk with me to church next Sunday afternoon?’