The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1896-09-08
The Melancholy HuSSar.
By THOMAS HARDY.
Copyright, 1896, by the Auth ,r.l
CHAPTER L

siiiNO tllOsO tbtuIlul uuSS. "A plOW HIS
never disturbed the turf, and the sod
that was uppermost then is uppermost
row. Here stood the camp, here are dis
tinct traces of the banks thrown up for
the horses of the cavalry and spots where
the hidden heaps lay are still to be OBJ
served. At night when 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 spec
trail tents and the impedimenta of the
soldiery. From within the canvases come
cultural syllables of foreign tongues and
broken songs of the fatherland, for they
were mainly regiments of the kings
German legion that slept round the tent
poles hereabout at that time.
1t was nearly 80 years ago. The Brit
ish uniform Of the period, with its
immense epaulets, queer cooked hat,
breeches, CATERS, 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 con-
sidered a glorious thing.
Secluded old manor houses and ham
lets 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 seaside watering
place few miles to the south, as a con-
sequence of which battalions descended
in cloud upon the open country around.
Is it necessary to add that the echoes Of
many episode tales, dating from that
picturesque time, still linger about here
in more or less fragmentary form, to he
caught by the attentive ear. Some of
them 1 have repeated; most of them 1
have forgotten; one l have never repeat
ed and assuredly can never forget
Phyllis told me the story with her
own lips. She was then an old lady of
rs and her auditor a lad of 16. She en-
joined silence as to her share in the Incl
dent till she should be "dead, buried
and forgotten. Her life was prolonged
~ years after the day of her narration,
and she has now been dead nearly 20.
The oblivion which in her modesty and
humility she courted for herself has
only partially fallen upon her. with the
unfortunate result of inf1icting an in
justice 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
unfavorable to her character.
1t all began with the arrival of the
York hussars, one of the foreign regi-
ments above alluded to. Before that day
scarcely soul had been seen near her
fathers house for weeks. When a noise
like the brushing skirt of q visitor was
heard on the doorstep, it proved to be
a scudding leaf, when carriage seemed
to be nearing the door it was her father
grinding his sickle ON the stone in the
garden for his favorite relaxation of
trimming the box tree borders to the
plots. A sound like luggage thrown
down from the coach was gun far
away at sea, and what looked like 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 i'll those old
days.
Yet all the while King George and
his court were at Weymouth, not more
than five miles off.
The daughters seclusiOn was great,
but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay
the seclusion of the father If her social
condition was twilight, his was dark
ness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while
her twilight oppressed her. DR.. Grove
had been professional man whose taste
for lonely meditation over metaphysical
questions had diminished his practice
| till it no longer paid him to keep it 60
ing, after which he had relinquished it
and hired at nominal rent the small,
dilapidated manor house of this obscure
| inland nook, to make a sufficiency of an
income which in town would have
been inadequate for their maintenance.
He staid i'll his garden the greater part
of the day, growing more and more irri-
table with the lapse of time and the in
creasing 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 aud her hand most unex-
pectedly asked in marriage.
The king, as aforesaid, was at Wey-
mouth, where he had taken up his
abode at Gloucester lodge, and his pres
ence 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 parsonage neither young MOI
old, neither good looking nor positively
plain Too steady going to be "a buck
las fast and unmarried men were then
called) he was an approximately fash
ionable man of mild type This bach
elor of 80 found his way to the village
on the down, beheld Phyllis, made her
father'E acnu aintance in order to make