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.