Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (340 page)

‘Will the captain allow me to wait on him to-night?’ inquired Loveday, explaining who and what he was.

The servant went away for a few minutes, and then told Bob that he might see the captain in the morning.

‘If that’s the case, I’ll come again,’ replied Bob, quite cheerful that failure was not absolute.

He had left the door but a few steps when he was called back and asked if he had walked all the way from Overcombe Mill on purpose.

Loveday replied modestly that he had done so.

‘Then will you come in?’  He followed the speaker into a small study or office, and in a minute or two Captain Hardy entered.

The captain at this time was a bachelor of thirty-five, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy eyebrows, a square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners played between humour and grimness.  He surveyed Loveday from top to toe.

‘Robert Loveday, sir, son of the miller at Overcombe,’ said Bob, making a low bow.

‘Ah!  I remember your father, Loveday,’ the gallant seaman replied.  ‘Well, what do you want to say to me?’  Seeing that Bob found it rather difficult to begin, he leant leisurely against the mantelpiece, and went on, ‘Is your father well and hearty?  I have not seen him for many, many years.’

‘Quite well, thank ‘ee.’

‘You used to have a brother in the army, I think?  What was his name — John?  A very fine fellow, if I recollect.’

‘Yes, cap’n; he’s there still.’

‘And you are in the merchant-service?’

‘Late first mate of the brig Pewit.’

‘How is it you’re not on board a man-of-war?’

‘Ay, sir, that’s the thing I’ve come about,’ said Bob, recovering confidence.  ‘I should have been, but ‘tis womankind has hampered me.  I’ve waited and waited on at home because of a young woman — lady, I might have said, for she’s sprung from a higher class of society than I.  Her father was a landscape painter — maybe you’ve heard of him, sir?  The name is Garland.’

‘He painted that view of our village here,’ said Captain Hardy, looking towards a dark little picture in the corner of the room.

Bob looked, and went on, as if to the picture, ‘Well, sir, I have found that —  However, the press-gang came a week or two ago, and didn’t get hold of me.  I didn’t care to go aboard as a pressed man.’

‘There has been a severe impressment.  It is of course a disagreeable necessity, but it can’t be helped.’

‘Since then, sir, something has happened that makes me wish they had found me, and I have come to-night to ask if I could enter on board your ship the Victory.’

The captain shook his head severely, and presently observed: ‘I am glad to find that you think of entering the service, Loveday; smart men are badly wanted.  But it will not be in your power to choose your ship.’

‘Well, well, sir; then I must take my chance elsewhere,’ said Bob, his face indicating the disappointment he would not fully express.  ‘‘Twas only that I felt I would much rather serve under you than anybody else, my father and all of us being known to ye, Captain Hardy, and our families belonging to the same parts.’

Captain Hardy took Bob’s altitude more carefully.  ‘Are you a good practical seaman?’ he asked musingly.

‘Ay, sir; I believe I am.’

‘Active?  Fond of skylarking?’

‘Well, I don’t know about the last.  I think I can say I am active enough.  I could walk the yard-arm, if required, cross from mast to mast by the stays, and do what most fellows do who call themselves spry.’

The captain then put some questions about the details of navigation, which Loveday, having luckily been used to square rigs, answered satisfactorily.  ‘As to reefing topsails,’ he added, ‘if I don’t do it like a flash of lightning, I can do it so that they will stand blowing weather.  The Pewit was not a dull vessel, and when we were convoyed home from Lisbon, she could keep well in sight of the frigate scudding at a distance, by putting on full sail.  We had enough hands aboard to reef topsails man-o’-war fashion, which is a rare thing in these days, sir, now that able seamen are so scarce on trading craft.  And I hear that men from square-rigged vessels are liked much the best in the navy, as being more ready for use?  So that I shouldn’t be altogether so raw,’ said Bob earnestly, ‘if I could enter on your ship, sir.  Still, if I can’t, I can’t.’

‘I might ask for you, Loveday,’ said the captain thoughtfully, ‘and so get you there that way.  In short, I think I may say I will ask for you.  So consider it settled.’

‘My thanks to you, sir,’ said Loveday.

‘You are aware that the Victory is a smart ship, and that cleanliness and order are, of necessity, more strictly insisted upon there than in some others?’

‘Sir, I quite see it.’

‘Well, I hope you will do your duty as well on a line-of-battle ship as you did when mate of the brig, for it is a duty that may be serious.’

Bob replied that it should be his one endeavour; and receiving a few instructions for getting on board the guard-ship, and being conveyed to Portsmouth, he turned to go away.

‘You’ll have a stiff walk before you fetch Overcombe Mill this dark night, Loveday,’ concluded the captain, peering out of the window.  ‘I’ll send you in a glass of grog to help ‘ee on your way.’

The captain then left Bob to himself, and when he had drunk the grog that was brought in he started homeward, with a heart not exactly light, but large with a patriotic cheerfulness, which had not diminished when, after walking so fast in his excitement as to be beaded with perspiration, he entered his father’s door.

They were all sitting up for him, and at his approach anxiously raised their sleepy eyes, for it was nearly eleven o’clock.

‘There; I knew he’d not be much longer!’ cried Anne, jumping up and laughing, in her relief.  ‘They have been thinking you were very strange and silent to-day, Bob; you were not, were you?’

‘What’s the matter, Bob?’ said the miller; for Bob’s countenance was sublimed by his recent interview, like that of a priest just come from the penetralia of the temple.

‘He’s in his mate’s clothes, just as when he came home!’ observed Mrs. Loveday.

They all saw now that he had something to tell.  ‘I am going away,’ he said when he had sat down.  ‘I am going to enter on board a man-of-war, and perhaps it will be the Victory.’

‘Going?’ said Anne faintly.

‘Now, don’t you mind it, there’s a dear,’ he went on solemnly, taking her hand in his own.  ‘And you, father, don’t you begin to take it to heart’ (the miller was looking grave).  ‘The press-gang has been here, and though I showed them that I was a free man, I am going to show everybody that I can do my duty.’

Neither of the other three answered, Anne and the miller having their eyes bent upon the ground, and the former trying to repress her tears.

‘Now don’t you grieve, either of you,’ he continued; ‘nor vex yourselves that this has happened.  Please not to be angry with me, father, for deserting you and the mill, where you want me, for I
must go
.  For these three years we and the rest of the country have been in fear of the enemy; trade has been hindered; poor folk made hungry; and many rich folk made poor.  There must be a deliverance, and it must be done by sea.  I have seen Captain Hardy, and I shall serve under him if so be I can.’

‘Captain Hardy?’

‘Yes.  I have been to his house at Pos’ham, where he’s staying with his sisters; walked there and back, and I wouldn’t have missed it for fifty guineas.  I hardly thought he would see me; but he did see me.  And he hasn’t forgot you.’

Bob then opened his tale in order, relating graphically the conversation to which he had been a party, and they listened with breathless attention.

‘Well, if you must go, you must,’ said the miller with emotion; ‘but I think it somewhat hard that, of my two sons, neither one of ‘em can be got to stay and help me in my business as I get old.’

‘Don’t trouble and vex about it,’ said Mrs. Loveday soothingly.  ‘They are both instruments in the hands of Providence, chosen to chastise that Corsican ogre, and do what they can for the country in these trying years.’

‘That’s just the shape of it, Mrs. Loveday,’ said Bob.

‘And he’ll come back soon,’ she continued, turning to Anne.  ‘And then he’ll tell us all he has seen, and the glory that he’s won, and how he has helped to sweep that scourge Buonaparty off the earth.’

‘When be you going, Bob?’ his father inquired.

‘To-morrow, if I can.  I shall call at the barracks and tell John as I go by.  When I get to Portsmouth — ’

A burst of sobs in quick succession interrupted his words; they came from Anne, who till that moment had been sitting as before with her hand in that of Bob, and apparently quite calm.  Mrs. Loveday jumped up, but before she could say anything to soothe the agitated girl she had calmed herself with the same singular suddenness that had marked her giving way.  ‘I don’t mind Bob’s going,’ she said.  ‘I think he ought to go.  Don’t suppose, Bob, that I want you to stay!’

After this she left the apartment, and went into the little side room where she and her mother usually worked.  In a few moments Bob followed her.  When he came back he was in a very sad and emotional mood.  Anybody could see that there had been a parting of profound anguish to both.

‘She is not coming back to-night,’ he said.

‘You will see her to-morrow before you go?’ said her mother.

‘I may or I may not,’ he replied.  ‘Father and Mrs. Loveday, do you go to bed now.  I have got to look over my things and get ready; and it will take me some little time.  If you should hear noises you will know it is only myself moving about.’

When Bob was left alone he suddenly became brisk, and set himself to overhaul his clothes and other possessions in a business-like manner.  By the time that his chest was packed, such things as he meant to leave at home folded into cupboards, and what was useless destroyed, it was past two o’clock.  Then he went to bed, so softly that only the creak of one weak stair revealed his passage upward.  At the moment that he passed Anne’s chamber-door her mother was bending over her as she lay in bed, and saying to her, ‘Won’t you see him in the morning?’

‘No, no,’ said Anne.  ‘I would rather not see him!  I have said that I may.  But I shall not.  I cannot see him again!’

When the family got up next day Bob had vanished.  It was his way to disappear like this, to avoid affecting scenes at parting.  By the time that they had sat down to a gloomy breakfast, Bob was in the boat of a Budmouth waterman, who pulled him alongside the guardship in the roads, where he laid hold of the man-rope, mounted, and disappeared from external view.  In the course of the day the ship moved off, set her royals, and made sail for Portsmouth, with five hundred new hands for the service on board, consisting partly of pressed men and partly of volunteers, among the latter being Robert Loveday.

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A SPECK ON THE SEA

In parting from John, who accompanied him to the quay, Bob had said: ‘Now, Jack, these be my last words to you: I give her up.  I go away on purpose, and I shall be away a long time.  If in that time she should list over towards ye ever so little, mind you take her.  You have more right to her than I.  You chose her when my mind was elsewhere, and you best deserve her; for I have never known you forget one woman, while I’ve forgot a dozen.  Take her then, if she will come, and God bless both of ye.’

Another person besides John saw Bob go.  That was Derriman, who was standing by a bollard a little further up the quay.  He did not repress his satisfaction at the sight.  John looked towards him with an open gaze of contempt; for the cuffs administered to the yeoman at the inn had not, so far as the trumpet-major was aware, produced any desire to avenge that insult, John being, of course, quite ignorant that Festus had erroneously retaliated upon Bob, in his peculiar though scarcely soldierly way.  Finding that he did not even now approach him, John went on his way, and thought over his intention of preserving intact the love between Anne and his brother.

He was surprised when he next went to the mill to find how glad they all were to see him.  From the moment of Bob’s return to the bosom of the deep Anne had had no existence on land; people might have looked at her human body and said she had flitted thence.  The sea and all that belonged to the sea was her daily thought and her nightly dream.  She had the whole two-and-thirty winds under her eye, each passing gale that ushered in returning autumn being mentally registered; and she acquired a precise knowledge of the direction in which Portsmouth, Brest, Ferrol, Cadiz, and other such likely places lay.  Instead of saying her own familiar prayers at night she substituted, with some confusion of thought, the Forms of Prayer to be used at sea.  John at once noticed her lorn, abstracted looks, pitied her, — how much he pitied her! — and asked when they were alone if there was anything he could do.

‘There are two things,’ she said, with almost childish eagerness in her tired eyes.

‘They shall be done.’

‘The first is to find out if Captain Hardy has gone back to his ship; and the other is — O if you will do it, John! — to get me newspapers whenever possible.’