and in truth those hills that surround it are set about this quiet agricultural town in a manner that fairly astounds the traveller. No railway reaches “Emminster,” as it is named in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and, looking upon those mighty natural turrets and domes that beset it, the traveller is of opinion that no railway ever will. Nearing Beaminster at cockshut time, when the birds have all gone to bed, when the sky is hot in the west with the burnished copper of the after-glow, and a cold blue and green, with pale stars appearing, fills the eastern firmament, the scenery is something awesome and approaching an Alpine sublimity. Then the twilight streets of this quiet place in the basin-like hollow begin to take an hospitable look, and the tall red stone tower of the church, that looks so nobly aloof in day, assumes a welcoming paternal benignancy. It is a toilsome winning to Beaminster, but, when won, worth the trouble of it.
CHAPTER XXIII
WEYMOUTH TO LULWORTH COVE
You cannot go far from Weymouth without a good deal of hill-climbing, but the longest stretch of level in this district, where levels are the exception and hills the rule, is by this route. It is not so very long, even then, for when you have passed the curving Esplanade and Lodmoor Marsh, and come to the foot of Jordan Hill, thought to have been the site of the Roman “Clavinium,” it is only two and a half miles. Preston stands on the top of a further hill, and is a place of great resort for brake-parties not greatly interested in literature. Turning to the left out of its street, opposite the Ship inn, we come to the pretty village—or hamlet, for no church is visible—of Sutton Poyntz, the “Overcombe” of The Trumpet Major. Its thatched stone cottages, charming tree-shaded stream and mill-pond, and old barns, all under the looming shadow of the downs, vividly recall the old-fashioned ways and talk, and the pleasant romance of Mr. Hardy’s only semi-historical novel; and you need not see, if you do not wish, the flagrant Vandalism of the Weymouth waterworks, hard by, and can if you will, turn your back upon the inn that will be interesting and picturesque some day, but now, rawly new, is an outrage upon, and a thing altogether out of key with, these old rustic surroundings.
Squawking ducks, hurrying across the dusty road and flouncing noisily into the clearly running stream, rooks cawing contentedly from their windy see-saw in the topmost branches of tall trees; and tired horses coming stolidly home from plough are the chief features of this “Overcombe,” where John Loveday had his mill, and his sons John and Bob, and Anne Garland and Matilda, and all the lovable, the hateful, or the merely contemptible characters in that sympathetic tale came and went. The mill—I am afraid it is not the mill, but one of somewhat later date—still grinds corn, and you can see it, bulking very largely between the trees, “the smooth millpond, over-full, and intruding into the hedge and into the road,” as mill-ponds will do, even in these later days of strict local government. But the days of European wars are gone. It is a hundred years since the last call of brave, tender, loyal John Loveday, the Trumpet Major, was silenced on a bloody battlefield in Spain, and well on toward the same tale of years since the press gangs, fellows to that which searched Overcombe Mill for Bob Loveday, impressed likely fellows for service on His Majesty’s ships:—the characters of The Trumpet Major belong wholly to a bygone age.
To the same age belonged the characters in The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion, a short story associated with Bincombe, a tiny village it requires no little exertion to reach; but you may win this way to it as easily—or at any rate, not more laboriously—than by any other route. It stands up among the downs, and in what Dorset folk would call an “outspan”—that is to say a remote hollow, recess or shelf amid them, where their sides are so steep that they give the appearance of some theatrical “back-cloth” to a romantic scene.
“Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden heaps lay are still to be observed. At night, when I 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 spectral tents and the impedimenta of the soldiery. From within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland; for they were mainly regiments of the King’s German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time.”
The story associated with this out-of-the-way place is one in its chief lines true to facts, for in an unmarked grave within the little churchyard, lie two young German soldiers, shot for desertion from the York Hussars, as quoted at the end of the story from the register: