第41章 THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION(3)

Phyllis used to say that 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 Matthaus Tina,and Saarbruck 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 to 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 this home-woe,as he called it in his own tongue,was Matthaus 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 had lost her heart to Matthaus before she was herself aware.The stone wall of necessity made anything like intimacy difficu

CHAPTER III

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 in 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 so long that she exclaimed,'The wall is white,and somebody in the field may see your shape against it!'