The Trumpet-Major. Томас ХардиЧитать онлайн книгу.
words to the dairymen’s wives she was acquainted with, and to the two old soldiers of the parish.
‘Why didn’t ye speak to me afore, chiel?’ said one of these, Corporal Tullidge, the elderly man with the hat, while she was talking to old Simon Burden. ‘I met ye in the lane yesterday,’ he added reproachfully, ‘but ye didn’t notice me at all.’
‘I am very sorry for it,’ she said; but, being afraid to shout in such a company, the effect of her remark upon the corporal was as if she had not spoken at all.
‘You was coming along with yer head full of some high notions or other no doubt,’ continued the uncompromising corporal in the same loud voice. ‘Ah, ’tis the young bucks that get all the notice nowadays, and old folks are quite forgot! I can mind well enough how young Bob Loveday used to lie in wait for ye.’
Anne blushed deeply, and stopped his too excursive discourse by hastily saying that she always respected old folks like him. The corporal thought she inquired why he always kept his hat on, and answered that it was because his head was injured at Valenciennes, in July, Ninety-three. ‘We were trying to bomb down the tower, and a piece of the shell struck me. I was no more nor less than a dead man for two days. If it hadn’t a been for that and my smashed arm I should have come home none the worse for my five-and-twenty years’ service.’
‘You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven’t ye, corpel?’ said Anthony Cripplestraw, who had drawn near. ‘I have heard that the way they morticed yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young woman would like to see the place? ’Tis a curious sight, Mis’ess Anne; you don’t see such a wownd every day.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Anne hurriedly, dreading, as did all the young people of Overcombe, the spectacle of the corporal uncovered. He had never been seen in public without the hat and the handkerchief since his return in Ninety-four; and strange stories were told of the ghastliness of his appearance bare-headed, a little boy who had accidentally beheld him going to bed in that state having been frightened into fits.
‘Well, if the young woman don’t want to see yer head, maybe she’d like to hear yer arm?’ continued Cripplestraw, earnest to please her.
‘Hey?’ said the corporal.
‘Your arm hurt too?’ cried Anne.
‘Knocked to a pummy at the same time as my head,’ said Tullidge dispassionately.
‘Rattle yer arm, corpel, and show her,’ said Cripplestraw.
‘Yes, sure,’ said the corporal, raising the limb slowly, as if the glory of exhibition had lost some of its novelty, though he was willing to oblige. Twisting it mercilessly about with his right hand he produced a crunching among the bones at every motion, Cripplestraw seeming to derive great satisfaction from the ghastly sound.
‘How very shocking!’ said Anne, painfully anxious for him to leave off.
‘O, it don’t hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corpel?’ said Cripplestraw.
‘Not a bit,’ said the corporal, still working his arm with great energy.
‘There’s no life in the bones at all. No life in ’em, I tell her, corpel!’
‘None at all.’
‘They be as loose as a bag of ninepins,’ explained Cripplestraw in continuation. ‘You can feel ’em quite plain, Mis’ess Anne. If ye would like to, he’ll undo his sleeve in a minute to oblege ye?’
‘O no, no, please not! I quite understand,’ said the young woman.
‘Do she want to hear or see any more, or don’t she?’ the corporal inquired, with a sense that his time was getting wasted.
Anne explained that she did not on any account; and managed to escape from the corner.
V. THE SONG AND THE STRANGER
The trumpet-major now contrived to place himself near her, Anne’s presence having evidently been a great pleasure to him since the moment of his first seeing her. She was quite at her ease with him, and asked him if he thought that Buonaparte would really come during the summer, and many other questions which the gallant dragoon could not answer, but which he nevertheless liked to be asked. William Tremlett, who had not enjoyed a sound night’s rest since the First Consul’s menace had become known, pricked up his ears at sound of this subject, and inquired if anybody had seen the terrible flat-bottomed boats that the enemy were to cross in.
‘My brother Robert saw several of them paddling about the shore the last time he passed the Straits of Dover,’ said the trumpet-major; and he further startled the company by informing them that there were supposed to be more than fifteen hundred of these boats, and that they would carry a hundred men apiece. So that a descent of one hundred and fifty thousand men might be expected any day as soon as Boney had brought his plans to bear.
‘Lord ha’ mercy upon us!’ said William Tremlett.
‘The night-time is when they will try it, if they try it at all,’ said old Tullidge, in the tone of one whose watch at the beacon must, in the nature of things, have given him comprehensive views of the situation. ‘It is my belief that the point they will choose for making the shore is just over there,’ and he nodded with indifference towards a section of the coast at a hideous nearness to the house in which they were assembled, whereupon Fencible Tremlett, and Cripplestraw of the Locals, tried to show no signs of trepidation.
‘When d’ye think ’twill be?’ said Volunteer Comfort, the blacksmith.
‘I can’t answer to a day,’ said the corporal, ‘but it will certainly be in a down-channel tide; and instead of pulling hard against it, he’ll let his boats drift, and that will bring ’em right into Budmouth Bay. ’Twill be a beautiful stroke of war, if so be ’tis quietly done!’
‘Beautiful,’ said Cripplestraw, moving inside his clothes. ‘But how if we should be all abed, corpel? You can’t expect a man to be brave in his shirt, especially we Locals, that have only got so far as shoulder fire-locks.’
‘He’s not coming this summer. He’ll never come at all,’ said a tall sergeant-major decisively.
Loveday the soldier was too much engaged in attending upon Anne and her mother to join in these surmises, bestirring himself to get the ladies some of the best liquor the house afforded, which had, as a matter of fact, crossed the Channel as privately as Buonaparte wished his army to do, and had been landed on a dark night over the cliff. After this he asked Anne to sing, but though she had a very pretty voice in private performances of that nature, she declined to oblige him; turning the subject by making a hesitating inquiry about his brother Robert, whom he had mentioned just before.
‘Robert is as well as ever, thank you, Miss Garland,’ he said. ‘He is now mate of the brig Pewit—rather young for such a command; but the owner puts great trust in him.’ The trumpet-major added, deepening his thoughts to a profounder view of the person discussed, ‘Bob is in love.’
Anne looked conscious, and listened attentively; but Loveday did not go on.
‘Much?’ she asked.
‘I can’t exactly say. And the strange part of it is that he never tells us who the woman is. Nobody knows at all.’
‘He will tell, of course?’ said Anne, in the remote tone of a person with whose sex such matters had no connexion whatever.
Loveday shook his head, and the tete-a-tete was put an end to by a burst of singing from one of the sergeants, who was followed at the end of his song by others, each giving a ditty in his turn; the singer standing up in front of the table, stretching his chin well into the air, as though to abstract every possible wrinkle from his throat, and