第45章 THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION(7)

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 Matthaus 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.Matthaus 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 22years.Born in the town of Sarrbruk,Germany.

'Christoph Bless,belonging to His Majesty's Regmt.of York Hussars,who was Shot for Desertion,was Buried June 30th,1801,aged 22years.Born at Lothaargen,Alsatia.'

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.

THE FIDDLER OF THE REELS

'Talking of Exhibitions,World's Fairs,and what not,'said the old gentleman,'I would not go round the corner to see a dozen of them nowadays.The only exhibition that ever made,or ever will make,any impression upon my imagination was the first of the series,the parent of them all,and now a thing of old times--the Great Exhibition of 1851,in Hyde Park,London.None of the younger generation can realize the sense of novelty it produced in us who were then in our prime.A noun substantive went so far as to become an adjective in honour of the occasion.It was "exhibition"hat,""exhibition"razor-strop,"exhibition"watch;nay,even "exhibition"weather,"exhibition"spirits,sweethearts,babies,wives--for the time.

'For South Wessex,the year formed in many ways an extraordinary chronological frontier or transit-line,at which there occurred what one might call a precipice in Time.As in a geological "fault,"we had presented to us a sudden bringing of ancient and modern into absolute contact,such as probably in no other single year since the Conquest was ever witnessed in this part of the country.'

These observations led us onward to talk of the different personages,gentle and simple,who lived and moved within our narrow and peaceful horizon at that time;and of three people in particular,whose queer little history was oddly touched at points by the Exhibition,more concerned with it than that of anybody else who dwelt in those outlying shades of the world,Stickleford,Mellstock,and Egdon.

First in prominence among these three came Wat Ollamoor--if that were his real name--whom the seniors in our party had known well.