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[from Wessex Tales, New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1912]
HERE stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed. At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and thistles, the old trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of the halters; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and the impedimenta of the soldiery. From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the King's German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time.
It was nearly ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and barbarous now. Ideas have changed; invention has followed invention. Soldiers were monumental objects then. A divinity still hedged kings here and there; and war was considered a glorious thing.
Secluded old manor-houses and hamlets lie in the
ravines and hollows among these hills, where a stranger had hardly
ever been seen till the King chose to take the baths yearly at the
sea-side watering- Phyllis told me the story with her own lips. She was
then an old lady of seventy-five, and her auditor a lad of fifteen.
She enjoined silence as to her share in the incident, till she should
be "dead, buried and forgotten." Her life was prolonged twelve years
after the day of her narration, and she has now been dead nearly
twenty. The oblivion which in her modesty and humility she courted
for herself has only partially fallen on her, with the unfortunate
result of inflicting an injustice upon her memory; since such
fragments of her story as got abroad at the time, and have been kept
alive ever since, are precisely those which are most unfavourable to
her character.
It all began with the arrival of the York Hussars, one
of the foreign regiments above alluded to. Before that day scarcely a
soul had been seen near her father's house for weeks. When a noise
like the brushing skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep, it
proved to be a scudding leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the
door, it was her father grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden
for his favourite relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the
plots. A sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far
away at sea; and what looked like a tall man by the gate at dusk was a
yew bush cut into a quaint and attenuated shape. There is no such
solitude in country places now as there was in those old days.
Yet all the while King George and his court were at his
favourite sea-side resort, not more than five miles off.
The daughter's seclusion was great, but beyond the
seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father. If her social
condition was twilight, his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his
darkness, while her twilight oppressed her. Dr. Grove had been a
professional man whose taste for lonely meditation over metaphysical
questions had diminished his practice till it no longer paid him to
keep it going; after which he had relinquished it and hired at a
nominal rent the small, dilapidated, half farm half manor-house of
this obscure inland nook, to make a sufficiency of an income which in
a town would have been inadequate for their maintenance. He stayed in
his garden the greater part of the day, growing more and more
irritable with the lapse of time, and the increasing perception that
he had wasted his life in the pursuit of illusions. He saw his
friends less and less frequently. Phyllis became so shy that if she
met a stranger anywhere in her short rambles she felt ashamed at his
gaze, walked awkwardly, and blushed to her shoulders.
Yet Phyllis was discovered even here by an admirer, and
her hand most unexpectedly asked in marriage.
The King, as aforesaid, was at the neighbouring town,
where he had taken up his abode at Gloucester Lodge; and his presence
in the town naturally brought many county people thither. Among these
idlers -- many of whom professed to have connections and interests
with the Court -- was one Humphrey Gould, a bachelor; a personage
neither young nor old; neither good-looking nor positively plain. Too
steady-going to be "a buck" (as fast and unmarried men were then
called), he was an approximately fashionable man of a mild type. This
bachelor of thirty found his way to the village on the down; beheld
Phyllis; made her father's acquaintance in order to make hers; and by
some means or other she sufficiently inflamed his heart to lead him in
that direction almost daily; till he became engaged to marry her.
As he was of an old local family, some of whose members
were held in respect in the county, Phyllis, in bringing him to her
feet, had accomplished what was considered a brilliant move for one in
her constrained position. How she had done it was not quite known to
Phyllis herself. In those days unequal marriages were regarded rather
as a violation of the laws of nature than as a mere infringement of
convention, the more modern view, and hence when Phyllis, of the
watering-place bourgeoisie, was chosen by such a gentlemanly
fellow, it was as if she were going to be taken to heaven, though
perhaps the uninformed would have seen no great difference in the
respective positions of the pair, the said Gould being as poor as a
crow.
This pecuniary condition was his excuse -- probably a
true one -- for postponing their union, and as the winter drew nearer,
and the King departed for the season, Mr. Humphrey Gould set out for
Bath, promising to return to Phyllis in a few weeks. The winter
arrived, the date of his promise passed, yet Gould postponed his
coming, on the ground that he could not very easily leave his father
in the city of their sojourn, the elder having no other relative near
him. Phyllis, though lonely in the extreme, was content. The man who
had asked her in marriage was a desirable husband for her in many
ways; her father highly approved of his suit; but this neglect of her
was awkward, if not painful, for Phyllis. Love him in the true sense
of the word she assured me she never did, but she had a genuine regard
for him; admired a certain methodical and dogged way in which he
sometimes took his pleasure; valued his knowledge of what the Court
was doing, had done, or was about to do; and she was not without a
feeling of pride that he had chose her when he might have exercised a
more ambitious choice.
But he did not come; and the spring developed. His
letters were regular though formal; and it is not to be wondered that
the uncertainty of her position, linked with the fact that there was
not much passion in her thoughts of Humphrey, bred an indescribable
dreariness in the heart of Phyllis Grove. The spring was soon summer,
and the summer brought the King; but still no Humphrey Gould. All
this while the engagement by letter was maintained intact.
At this point of time a golden radiance flashed in upon
the lives of people here, and charged all youthful thought with
emotional interest. This radiance was the aforesaid York Hussars.
The present generation has probably but a very dim
notion of the celebrated York Hussars of ninety years ago. They were
one of the regiments of the King's German Legion, and (though they
somewhat degenerated later on) their brilliant uniform, their splendid
horses, and above all, their foreign air and mustachios (rare
appendages then), drew crowds of admirers of both sexes wherever they
went. These with other regiments had come to encamp on the downs and
pastures, because of the presence of the King in the neighbouring
town.
The spot was high and airy, and the view extensive,
commanding Portland -- the Isle of Slingers -- in front, and reaching
to St. Aldhelm's Head eastward, and almost to the Start on the west.
Phyllis, though not precisely a girl of the village,
was as interested as any of them in this military investment. Her
father's home stood somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground
to which the lane ascended, so that it was almost level with the top
of the church tower in the lower part of the parish. Immediately from
the outside of the garden-wall the grass spread away to a great
distance, and it was crossed by a path which came close to the wall.
Ever since her childhood it had been Phyllis's pleasure to clamber up
this fence and sit on the top -- a feat not so difficult as it may
seem, the walls in this district being built of rubble, without
mortar, so that there were plenty of crevices for small toes.
She was sitting up here one day, listlessly surveying
the pasture without, when her attention was arrested by a solitary
figure walking along the path. It was one of the renowned German
Hussars, and he moved onward with his eyes on the ground, and with the
manner of one who wished to escape company. His head would probably
have been bent like his eyes but for his stiff neck-gear. On nearer
view she perceived that his face was marked with deep sadness.
Without observing her, he advanced by the footpath till it brought him
almost immediately under the wall.
Phyllis was much surprised to see a fine, tall soldier
in such a mood as this. Her theory of the military, and of the York
Hussars in particular (derived entirely from hearsay, for she had
never talked to a soldier in her life), was that their hearts were as
gay as their accoutrements.
At this moment the Hussar lifted his eyes and noticed
her on her perch, the white muslin neckerchief which covered her
shoulders and neck where left bare by her low gown, and her white
raiment in general, showing conspicuously in the bright sunlight of
this summer day. He blushed a little at the suddenness of the
encounter, and without halting a moment from his pace passed on.
All that day the foreigner's face haunted Phyllis; its
aspect was so striking, so handsome, and his eyes were so blue, and
sad, and abstracted. It was perhaps only natural that on some
following day at the same hour she should look over that wall again,
and wait till he had passed a second time. On this occasion he was
reading a letter, and at the sight of her his manner was that of one
who had half expected or hoped to discover her. He almost stopped,
smiled, and made a courteous salute. The end of the meeting was that
they exchanged a few words. She asked him what he was reading, and he
readily informed her that he was re-perusing letters from his mother
in Germany; he did not get them often, he said, and was forced to read
the old ones a great many times. This was all that passed at the
present interview, but others of the same kind followed.
Phyllis used to say this his English, though not good,
was quite intelligible to her, so that their acquaintance was never
hindered by difficulties of speech. Whenever the subject became too
delicate, subtle, or tender, for such words of English as were at his
command, the eyes no doubt helped out the tongue, and -- though this
was later on -- the lips helped out the eyes. In short this
acquaintance unguardedly made, and rash enough on her part, developed
and ripened. Like Desdemona, she pitied him, and learnt his history.
His name was Matthäus Tina, and Saarbrück his
native town, where his mother was still living. His age was
twenty-two, and he had already risen to the grade of corporal, though
he had not long been in the army. Phyllis used to assert that no such
refined or well-educated young man could have been found in the ranks
of the purely English regiments, some of these foreign soldiers having
rather the graceful manner and presence of our native officers than of
our rank and file.
She by degrees learnt from her foreign friend a
circumstance about himself and his comrades which Phyllis would least
have expected of the York Hussars. So far from being as gay as its
uniform, the regiment was pervaded by a dreadful melancholy, a chronic
home-sickness, which depressed many of the men to such an extent that
they could hardly attend to their drill. The worst sufferers were the
younger soldiers who had not been over here long. They hated England
and English life; they took no interest whatever in King George and
his island kingdom, and they only wished to be out of it and never see
it any more. Their bodies were here, but their hearts and minds were
always far away in their dear fatherland, of which -- brave men and
stoical as they were in many ways -- they would speak with tears in
their eyes. One of the worst of the sufferers from the home-woe, as
he called it in his own tongue, was Matthäus Tina, whose dreamy
musing nature felt the gloom of exile still more intensely from the
fact that he had left a lonely mother at home with nobody to cheer
her.
Though Phyllis, touched by all this, and interested in
his history, did not disdain her soldier's acquaintance, she declined
(according to her own account, at least) to permit the young man to
overstep the line of mere friendship for a long while -- as long,
indeed, as she considered herself likely to become the possession of
another; though it is probable that she lost her heart to
Matthäus before she was herself aware. The stone wall of
necessity made anything like intimacy difficult; and he had never
ventured to come, or to ask to come, inside the garden, so that all
their conversation had been overtly conducted across this boundary.
But news reached the village from a friend of Phyllis's
father concerning Mr. Humphrey Gould, her remarkably cool and patient
betrothed. This gentleman had been heard to say in Bath that he
considered his overtures to Miss Phyllis Grove to have reached only
the stage of a half-understanding; and in view of his enforced absence
on his father's account, who was too great an invalid now to attend to
his affairs, he thought it best that there should be no definite
promise as yet on either side. He was not sure, indeed, that he might
not cast his eyes elsewhere.
This account -- though only a piece of hearsay, and as
such entitled to no absolute credit -- tallied so well with the
infrequency of his letters and their lack of warmth, that Phyllis did
not doubt its truth for one moment; and from that hour she felt
herself free to bestow her heart as she should choose. Not so her
father; he declared the whole story to be a fabrication. He had known
Mr. Gould's family from his boyhood; and if there was one proverb
which expressed the matrimonial aspect of that family well, it was
"Love me little, love me long." Humphrey was an honourable man, who
would not think of treating his engagement so lightly. "Do you wait
in patience," he said; "all will be right enough in time."
From these words Phyllis at first imagined that her
father was in correspondence with Mr. Gould; and her heart sank within
her; for in spite of her original intentions she had been relieved to
hear that her engagement had come to nothing. But she presently
learnt that her father had heard no more of Humphrey Gould than she
herself had done; while he would not write and address her affianced
directly on the subject, lest it should be deemed an imputation on
that bachelor's honour.
"You want an excuse for encouraging one or other of
those foreign fellows to flatter you with his unmeaning attentions,"
her father exclaimed, his mood having of late been a very unkind one
towards her. "I see more than I say. Don't you ever set foot outside
that garden-fence without my permission. If you want to see the camp
I'll take you myself some Sunday afternoon."
Phyllis had not the smallest intention of disobeying
him with her actions, but she assumed herself to be independent with
respect to her feelings. She no longer checked her fancy for the
Hussar, though she was far from regarding him as her lover in the
serious sense in which an Englishman might have been regarded as such.
The young foreign soldier was almost an ideal being to her, with none
of the appurtenances of an ordinary house-dweller; one who had
descended she knew not whence, and would disappear she knew not
whither; the subject of a fascinating dream -- no more.
They met continually now -- mostly at dusk -- during
the brief interval between the going down of the sun and the minute at
which the last trumpet-call summoned him to his tent. Perhaps her
manner had become less restrained latterly; at any rate that of the
Hussar was so; he had grown more tender every day, and at parting
after these hurried interviews she reached down her hand from the top
of the wall that he might press it. One evening he held it such a
while that she exclaimed, "The wall is white, and somebody in the
field may see your shape against it!"
He lingered so long that night that it was with the
greatest difficulty that he could run across the intervening stretch
of ground and enter the camp in time. On the next occasion of his
awaiting her she did not appear in her usual place at the usual hour.
His disappointment was unspeakably keen; he remained staring blankly
at the spot, like a man in a trance. The trumpets and tattoo sounded,
and still he did not go.
She had been delayed purely by an accident. When she
arrived she was anxious because of the lateness of the hour, having
heard as well as he the sounds denoting the closing of the camp. She
implored him to leave immediately.
"No," he said gloomily. "I shall not go in yet -- the
moment you come -- I have thought of your coming all day."
"But you may be disgraced at being after time?"
"I don't mind that. I should have disappeared from the
world some time ago if it had not been for two persons -- my beloved,
here, and my mother in Saarbrück. I hate the army. I care more
for a minute of your company than for all the promotion in the world."
Thus he stayed and talked to her, and told her
interesting details of his native place, and incidents of his
childhood, till she was in a simmer of distress at his recklessness in
remaining. It was only because she insisted on bidding him good-night
and leaving the wall that he returned to his quarters.
The next time that she saw him he was without the
stripes that had adorned his sleeve. He had been broken to the level
of private for his lateness that night; and as Phyllis considered
herself to be the cause of his disgrace her sorrow was great. But the
position was now reversed; it was his turn to cheer her.
"Don't grieve, meine Liebliche!" he said. "I have got
a remedy for whatever comes. First, even supposing I regain my
stripes, would your father allow you to marry a non-commissioned
officer in the York Hussars?"
She flushed. This practical step had not been in her
mind in relation to such an unrealistic person as he was; and a
moment's reflection was enough for it. "My father would not --
certainly would not," she answered unflinchingly. "It cannot be
thought of! My dear friend, please do forget me: I fear I am ruining
you and your prospects!"
"Not at all!" said he. "You are giving this country of
yours just sufficient interest to me to make me care to keep alive in
it. If my dear land were here also, and my old parent, with you, I
could be happy as I am, and would do my best as a soldier. But it is
not so. And now listen. This is my plan. That you go with me to my
own country, and be my wife there, and live there with my mother and
me. I am not a Hanoverian, as you know, though I entered the army as
such; my country is by the Saar, and is at peace with France, and if I
were once in it I should be free."
"But how get there?" she asked. Phyllis had been
rather amazed than shocked at his proposition. Her position in her
father's house was growing irksome and painful in the extreme; his
parental affection seemed to be quite dried up. She was not a native
of the village, like all the joyous girls around her; and in some way
Matthäus Tina had infected her with his own passionate longing
for his country, and mother, and home.
"But how?" she repeated, finding that he did not
answer. "Will you buy your discharge?"
"Ah, no," he said. "That's impossible in these times.
No; I came here against my will; why should I not escape? Now is the
time, as we shall soon be striking camp, and I might see you no more.
This is my scheme. I will ask you to meet me on the highway two miles
off, on some calm night next week that may be appointed. There will
be nothing unbecoming in it, or to cause you shame; you will not fly
alone with me, for I will bring with me my devoted young friend
Christoph, an Alsatian, who has lately joined the regiment, and who
has agreed to assist in this enterprise. We shall have come from
yonder harbour, where we shall have examined the boats, and found one
suited to our purpose. Christoph has already a chart of the Channel,
and we will then go to the harbour, and at midnight cut the boat from
her moorings, and row away round the point out of sight; and by the
next morning we are on the coast of France, near Cherbourg. The rest
is easy, for I have saved money for the land journey, and can get a
change of clothes. I will write to my mother, who will meet us on the
way."
He added details in reply to her inquiries, which left
no doubt in Phyllis's mind of the feasibility of the undertaking. But
its magnitude almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would
ever have gone further in the wild adventure if, on entering the house
that night, her father had not accosted her in the most significant
terms.
"How about the York Hussars?" he said.
"They are still at the camp; but they are soon going
away, I believe."
"It is useless for you at attempt to cloak your actions
in that way. You have been meeting one of those fellows; you have
been seen walking with him -- foreign barbarians, not much better than
the French themselves! I have made up my mind -- don't speak a word
till I have done, please! -- I have made up my mind that you shall
stay here no longer while they are on the spot. You shall go to your
aunt's."
It was useless for her to protest that she had never
taken a walk with any soldier or man under the sun except himself.
Her protestations were feeble, too, for though he was not literally
correct in his assertion, he was virtually only half in error.
The house of her father's sister was a prison to
Phyllis. She had quite recently undergone experience of its gloom;
and when her father went on to direct her to pack what would be
necessary for her to take, her heart died within her. In after years
she never attempted to excuse her conduct during this week of
agitation; but the result of her self-communing was that she decided
to join in the scheme of her lover and his friend, and fly to the
country which he had coloured with such lovely hues in her
imagination. She always said that the one feature in his proposal
which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and
straight-
It was on a soft, dark evening of the following week
that they engaged in the adventure. Tina was to meet her at a point
in the highway at which the lane to the village branched off.
Christoph was to go ahead of them to the harbour where the boat lay,
row it round the Nothe -- or Look-out as it was called in those days
-- and pick them up on the other side of the promontory, which they
were to reach by crossing the harbour-bridge on foot, and climbing
over the Look-out hill.
As soon as her father had ascended to his room she left
the house, and, bundle in hand, proceeded at a trot along the lane.
At such an hour not a soul was afoot anywhere in the village, and she
reached the junction of the lane with the highway unobserved. Here
she took up her position in the obscurity formed by the angle of a
fence, whence she could discern every one who approached along the
turnpike-road, without being herself seen.
She had not remained thus waiting for her lover longer
than a minute -- though from the tension of her nerves the lapse of
even that short time was trying -- when, instead of the expected
footsteps, the stage-coach could be heard descending the hill. She
knew that Tina would not show himself till the road was clear, and
waited impatiently for the coach to pass. Nearing the corner where
she was it slackened speed, and, instead of going by as usual, drew up
within a few yards of her. A passenger alighted, and she heard his
voice. It was Humphrey Gould's.
He had brought a friend with him, and luggage. The
luggage was deposited on the grass, and the coach went on its route to
the royal watering-place.
"I wonder where that young man is with the horse and
trap?" said her former admirer to his companion. "I hope we shan't
have to wait here long. I told him half-past nine o'clock precisely."
"Have you got her present safe?"
"Phyllis's? O, yes. It is in this trunk. I hope it
will please her."
"Of course it will. What woman would not be pleased
with such a handsome peace-offering?"
"Well -- she deserves it. I've treated her rather
badly. But she has been in my mind these last two days much more than
I should care to confess to everybody. Ah, well; I'll say no more
about that. It cannot be that she is so bad as they make out. I am
quite sure that a girl of her good wit would know better than to get
entangled with any of those Hanoverian soldiers. I won't believe it
of her, and there's an end on't."
More words in the same strain were casually dropped as
the two men waited; words which revealed to her, as by a sudden
illumination, the enormity of her conduct. The conversation was at
length cut off by the arrival of the man with the vehicle. The
luggage was placed in it, and they mounted, and were driven on in the
direction from which she had just come.
Phyllis was so conscious- Phyllis had thus braced herself to an exceptional
fortitude when, a few minutes later, the outline of Matthäus Tina
appeared behind a field-gate, over which he lightly leapt as she
stepped forward. There was no evading it, he pressed her to his
breast.
"It is the first and last time!" she wildly thought as
she stood encircled by his arms.
How Phyllis got through the terrible ordeal of that
night she could never clearly recollect. She always attributed her
success in carrying out her resolve to her lover's honour, for as soon
as she declared to him in feeble words that she had changed her mind,
and felt that she could not, dared not, fly with him, he forbore to
urge her, grieved as he was at her decision. Unscrupulous pressure on
his part, seeing how romantically she had become attached to him,
would no doubt have turned the balance in his favour. But he did
nothing to tempt her unduly or unfairly.
On her side, fearing for his safety, she begged him to
remain. This, he declared, could not be. "I cannot break faith with
my friend," said he. Had he stood alone he would have abandoned his
plan. But Christoph, with the boat and compass and chart, was waiting
on the shore; the tide would soon turn; his mother had been warned of
his coming; go he must.
Many precious minutes were lost while he tarried,
unable to tear himself away, Phyllis held to her resolve, though it
cost her many a bitter pang. At last they parted, and he went down
the hill. Before his footsteps had quite died away she felt a desire
to behold at least his outline once more, and running noiselessly
after him regained view of his diminishing figure. For one moment she
was sufficiently excited to be on the point of rushing forward and
linking her fate with his. But she could not. The courage which at
the critical instant failed Cleopatra of Egypt could scarcely be
expected of Phyllis Grove.
A dark shape, similar to his own, joined him in the
highway. It was Christoph, his friend. She could see no more; they
had hastened on in the direction of the town and harbour, four miles
ahead. With a feeling akin to despair she turned and slowly pursued
her way homeward.
Tattoo sounded in the camp; but there was no camp for
her now. It was as dead as the camp of the Assyrians after the
passage of the Destroying Angel.
She noiselessly entered the house, seeing nobody, and
went to bed. Grief, which kept her awake at first, ultimately wrapped
her in a heavy sleep. The next morning her father met her at the foot
of the stairs.
"Mr. Gould has come!" he said triumphantly.
Humphrey was staying at the inn, and had already called
to inquire for her. He had brought her a present of a very handsome
looking-glass in a frame of repoussé silverwork, which
her father held in his hand. He had promised to call again in the
course of an hour, to ask Phyllis to walk with him.
Pretty mirrors were rarer in country-houses at that day
than they are now, and the one before her won Phyllis's admiration.
She looked into it, saw how heavy her eyes were, and endeavoured to
brighten them. She was in that wretched state of mind which leads a
woman to move mechanically onward in what she conceives to be her
allotted path. Mr. Humphrey had, in his undemonstrative way, been
adhering all along to the old understanding; it was for her to do the
same, and to say not a word of her own lapse. She put on her bonnet
and tippet, and when he arrived at the hour named she was at the door
awaiting him.
Phyllis thanked him for his beautiful gift; but the
talking was soon entirely on Humphrey's side as they walked along. He
told her of the latest movements of the world of fashion -- a subject
which she willingly discussed to the exclusion of anything more
personal -- and his measured language helped to still her disquieted
heart and brain. Had not her own sadness been what it was she must
have observed his embarrassment. At last he abruptly changed the
subject.
"I am glad you are pleased with my little present," he
said. "The truth is that I brought it to propitiate 'ee, and to get
you to help me out of a mighty difficulty."
It was inconceivable to Phyllis that this independent
bachelor -- whom she admired in some respects -- could have a
difficulty.
"Phyllis -- I'll tell you my secret at once; for I have
a monstrous secret to confide before I can ask your counsel. The case
is, then, that I am married: yes, I have privately married a dear
young belle; and if you knew her, and I hope you will, you would say
everything in her praise. But she is not quite the one that my father
would have chose for me -- you know the paternal idea as well as I --
and I have kept it secret. There will be a terrible noise, no doubt;
but I think that with your help I may get over it. If you would only
do me this good turn -- when I have told my father, I mean -- say that
you never could have married me, you know, or something of that sort
-- 'pon my life it will help to smooth the way vastly. I am so
anxious to win him round to my point of view, and not to cause any
estrangement."
What Phyllis replied she scarcely knew, or how she
counselled him as to his unexpected situation. Yet the relief that
his announcement brought her was perceptible. To have confided her
trouble in return was what her aching heart longed to do; and had
Humphrey been a woman she would instantly have poured out her tale.
But to him she feared to confess; and there was a real reason for
silence, till a sufficient time had elapsed to allow her lover and his
comrade to get out of harm's way.
As soon as she reached home again she sought a solitary
place, and spent the time in half regretting that she had not gone
away, and in dreaming over the meetings with Matthäus Tina from
their beginning to their end. In his own country, amongst his own
countrywomen, he would possible soon forget her, even to her very
name.
Her listlessness was such that she did not go out of
the house for several days. There came a morning which broke in fog
and mist, behind which the dawn could be discerned in greenish grey;
and the outlines of the tents, and the rows of horses at the ropes.
The smoke from the canteen fires drooped heavily.
The spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been
accustomed to climb the wall to meet Matthäus, was the only inch
of English ground in which she took any interest; and in spite of the
disagreeable haze prevailing she walked out there till she reached the
well-known corner. Every blade of grass was weighted with little
liquid globes, and slugs and snails had crept out upon the plots. She
could hear the usual faint noises from the camp, and in the other
direction the trot of farmers on the road to the town, for it was
market-day. She observed that her frequent visits to this corner had
quite trodden down the grass in the angle of the wall, and left marks
of garden soil on the stepping-stones by which she had mounted to look
over the top. Seldom having gone there till dusk, she had not
considered that her traces might be visible by day. Perhaps it was
these which had revealed her trysts to her father.
While she paused in melancholy regard, she fancied that
the customary sounds from the tents were changing their character.
Indifferent as Phyllis was to camp doings now, she mounted by the
steps to the old place. What she beheld at first awed and perplexed
her; then she stood rigid, her fingers hooked to the wall, her eyes
staring out of her head, and her face as if hardened to stone.
On the open green stretching before her all the
regiments in the camp were drawn up in line, in the mid-front of which
two empty coffins lay on the ground. The unwonted sounds which she
had noticed came from an advancing procession. It consisted of the
band of the York Hussars playing a dead march; next two soldiers of
that regiment in a mourning coach, guarded on each side, and
accompanied by two priests. Behind came a crowd of rustics who had
been attracted by the event. The melancholy procession marched along
the front of the line, returned to the centre, and halted beside the
coffins, where the two condemned men were blindfolded, and each placed
kneeling on his coffin; a few minutes' pause was now given, while they
prayed.
A firing-party of twenty-four men stood ready with
levelled carbines. The commanding officer, who had his sword drawn,
waved it through some cuts of the sword-exercise till he reached the
downward stroke, whereat the firing party discharged their volley.
The two victims fell, one upon his face across his coffin, the other
backwards.
As the volley resounded there arose a shriek from the
wall of Dr. Grove's garden, and some one fell down inside; but nobody
among the spectators without noticed it at the time. The two executed
Hussars were Matthäus Tina and his friend Christoph. The
soldiers on guard placed the bodies in the coffins almost instantly;
but the colonel of the regiment, an Englishman, rode up and exclaimed
in a stern voice: "Turn them out -- as an example to the men!"
The coffins were lifted endwise, and the dead Germans
flung out upon their faces on the grass. Then all the regiments
wheeled in sections, and marched past the spot in slow time. When the
survey was over the corpses were again coffined, and borne away.
Meanwhile Dr. Grove, attracted by the noise of the
volley, had rushed out into his garden, where he saw his wretched
daughter lying motionless against the wall. She was taken indoors,
but it was long before she recovered consciousness; and for weeks they
despaired of her reason.
It transpired that the luckless deserters from the York
Hussars had cut the boat from her moorings in the adjacent harbour,
according to their plan, and, with two other comrades who were
smarting under ill-treatment from their colonel, had sailed in safety
across the Channel. But mistaking their bearings they steered into
Jersey, thinking that island the French coast. Here they were
perceived to be deserters, and delivered up to the authorities.
Matthäus and Christoph interceded for the other two at the
court-martial, saying that it was entirely by the former's
representations that these were induced to go. Their sentence was
accordingly commuted to flogging, the death punishment being reserved
for their leaders.
The visitor to the well-known old Georgian
watering-place, who may care to ramble to the neighbouring village
under the hills, and examine the register of burials, will there find
two entries in these words:--
"Matth: Tina (Corpl.) in His Majesty's Regmt.
of York Hussars, and Shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th, 1801,
aged 22 years. Born in the town of Sarrbruk, Germany. Their graves were dug at the back of the little church,
near the wall. There is no memorial to mark the spot, but Phyllis
pointed it out to me. While she lived she used to keep their mounds
neat; but now they are overgrown with nettles, and sunk nearly flat.
The older villagers, however, who know of the episode from their
parents, still recollect the place where the soldiers lie. Phyllis
lies near.
October 1889.
(End.)II
III
IV
V
"Christoph Bless, belonging to His Majesty's Regmt.
of York Hussars, who was Shot for Desertion, was Buried June 30th,
1801, aged 22 years. Born at Lothaargen, Alsatia."
Prepared by Patricia Teter