There was no letter from Bob, though December had passed, and the new year was two weeks old. His movements were, however, pretty accurately registered in the papers, which John still brought, but which Anne no longer read. During the second week in December the Victory sailed for Sheerness, and on the 9th of the following January the public funeral of Lord Nelson took place in St. Paul's.
Then there came a meagre line addressed to the family in general.
Bob's new Portsmouth attachment was not mentioned, but he told them he had been one of the eight-and-forty seamen who walked two-and-two in the funeral procession, and that Captain Hardy had borne the banner of emblems on the same occasion. The crew was soon to be paid off at Chatham, when he thought of returning to Portsmouth for a few days to see a valued friend. After that he should come home.
But the spring advanced without bringing him, and John watched Anne Garland's desolation with augmenting desire to do something towards consoling her. The old feelings, so religiously held in check, were stimulated to rebelliousness, though they did not show themselves in any direct manner as yet.
The miller, in the meantime, who seldom interfered in such matters, was observed to look meaningly at Anne and the trumpet-major from day to day; and by-and-by he spoke privately to John.
His words were short and to the point. Anne was very melancholy; she had thought too much of Bob. Now 'twas plain that they had lost him for many years to come. Well; he had always felt that of the two he would rather John married her. Now John might settle down there, and succeed where Bob had failed. 'So if you could get her, my sonny, to think less of him and more of thyself, it would be a good thing for all.'
An inward excitement had risen in John; but he suppressed it and said firmly--'Fairness to Bob before everything!'
'He hev forgot her, and there's an end on't.'
'She's not forgot him.'
'Well, well; think it over.'
This discourse was the cause of his penning a letter to his brother.
He begged for a distinct statement whether, as John at first supposed, Bob's verbal renunciation of Anne on the quay had been only a momentary ebullition of friendship, which it would be cruel to take literally; or whether, as seemed now, it had passed from a hasty resolve to a standing purpose, persevered in for his own pleasure, with not a care for the result on poor Anne.
John waited anxiously for the answer, but no answer came; and the silence seemed even more significant than a letter of assurance could have been of his absolution from further support to a claim which Bob himself had so clearly renounced. Thus it happened that paternal pressure, brotherly indifference, and his own released impulse operated in one delightful direction, and the trumpet-major once more approached Anne as in the old time.
But it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months, and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed her. She was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden. she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. She had subsided into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any little action with seeming composure-- very different from the flutter of her inexperienced days.
'Are you never going to turn round?' he at length asked good-humouredly.
She then did turn, and looked at him for a moment without speaking; a certain suspicion looming in her eyes, as if suggested by his perceptible want of ease.
'How like summer it is getting to feel, is it not?' she said.
John admitted that it was getting to feel like summer. and, bending his gaze upon her with an earnestness which no longer left any doubt of his subject, went on to ask--'Have you ever in these last weeks thought of how it used to be between us?'
She replied quickly, 'O, John, you shouldn't begin that again. I am almost another woman now!'
'Well, that's all the more reason why I should, isn't it?'
Anne looked thoughtfully to the other end of the garden, faintly shaking her head; 'I don't quite see it like that,' she returned.
'You feel yourself quite free, don't you?'
'QUITE free!' she said instantly, and with proud distinctness; her eyes fell, and she repeated more slowly, 'Quite free.. Then her thoughts seemed to fly from herself to him. 'But you are not?'
'I am not?'
'Miss Johnson!'
'O--that woman. You know as well as I that was all make-up, and that I never for a moment thought of her.'
'I had an idea you were acting; but I wasn't sure.'
'Well, that's nothing now. Anne, I want to relieve your life; to cheer you in some way; to make some amends for my brother's bad conduct. If you cannot love me, liking will be well enough. I have thought over every side of it so many times--for months have I been thinking it over--and I am at last sure that I do right to put it to you in this way. That I don't wrong Bob I am quite convinced. As far as he is concerned we be both free. Had I not been sure of that I would never have spoken. Father wants me to take on the mill, and it will please him if you can give me one little hope; it will make the house go on altogether better if you can think o' me.'
'You are generous and good, John,' she said, as a big round tear bowled helter-skelter down her face and hat-strings.
'I am not that; I fear I am quite the opposite,' he said, without looking at her. 'It would be all gain to me-. But you have not answered my question.'
She lifted her eyes. 'John, I cannot!' she said, with a cheerless smile. 'Positively I cannot. Will you make me a promise?'
'What is it?'
'I want you to promise first-. Yes, it is dreadfully unreasonable,' she added, in a mild distress. 'But do promise!'
John by this time seemed to have a feeling that it was all up with him for the present. 'I promise,' he said listlessly.
'It is that you won't speak to me about this for EVER so long,' she returned, with emphatic kindliness.
