The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy

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?'