The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion and Other Stories

Thomas Hardy

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.
It was nearly ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queer
cocked−hat, breeches, gaiters, 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 considered a glorious thing.
Secluded old manor−houses and hamlets 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 sea−side watering−place a few miles
to the south; as a consequence of which battalions descended in a cloud upon the open country around. Is it
necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about
here in more or less fragmentary form, to be caught by the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of
them I have forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget.
Phyllis told me the story with her own lips. She was then an old lady of seventy−five, and her auditor a lad of
fifteen. She enjoined silence as to her share in the incident, till she should be "dead, buried and forgotten." Her life
was prolonged twelve years after the day of her narration, and she has now been dead nearly twenty. The oblivion
which in her modesty and humility she courted for herself has only partially fallen on her, with the unfortunate
result of inflicting an injustice 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 unfavourable to her character.
It all began with the arrival of the York Hussars, one of the foreign regiments above alluded to. Before that
day scarcely a soul had been seen near her father's house for weeks. When a noise like the brushing skirt of a
visitor was heard on the doorstep, it proved to be a scudding leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the door,
it was her father grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden for his favourite relaxation of trimming the
box−tree borders to the plots. A sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away at sea; and
what looked like a 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 in those old days.
Yet all the while King George and his court were at his favourite sea−side resort, not more than five miles off.
The daughter's seclusion was great, but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay the seclusion of the father. If her
social condition was twilight, his was darkness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while her twilight oppressed her. Dr.
Grove had been a professional man whose taste for lonely meditation over metaphysical questions had diminished
his practice till it no longer paid him to keep it going; after which he had relinquished it and hired at a nominal
rent the small, dilapidated, half farm half manor−house of this obscure inland nook, to make a sufficiency of an
income which in a town would have been inadequate for their maintenance. He stayed in his garden the greater
part of the day, growing more and more irritable with the lapse of time, and the increasing perception that he had

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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, and her hand most unexpectedly asked in marriage.
The King, as aforesaid, was at the neighbouring town, where he had taken up his abode at Gloucester Lodge;
and his presence 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 personage
neither young nor old; neither good−looking nor positively plain. Too steady−going to be "a buck" (as fast and
unmarried men were then called), he was an approximately fashionable man of a mild type. This bachelor of
thirty found his way to the village on the down; beheld Phyllis; made her father's acquaintance in order to make
hers; and by some means or other she sufficiently inflamed his heart to lead him in that direction almost daily; till
he became engaged to marry her.
As he was of an old local family, some of whose members were held in respect in the county, Phyllis, in
bringing him to her feet, had accomplished what was considered a brilliant move for one in her constrained
position. How she had done it was not quite known to Phyllis herself. In those days unequal marriages were
regarded rather as a violation of the laws of nature than as a mere infringement of convention, the more modern
view, and hence when Phyllis, of the watering−place bourgeoisie, was chosen by such a gentlemanly fellow, it
was as if she were going to be taken to heaven, though perhaps the uninformed would have seen no great
difference in the respective positions of the pair, the said Gould being as poor as a crow.
This pecuniary condition was his excuse −− probably a true one −− for postponing their union, and as the
winter drew nearer, and the King departed for the season, Mr. Humphrey Gould set out for Bath, promising to
return to Phyllis in a few weeks. The winter arrived, the date of his promise passed, yet Gould postponed his
coming, on the ground that he could not very easily leave his father in the city of their sojourn, the elder having
no other relative near him. Phyllis, though lonely in the extreme, was content. The man who had asked her in
marriage was a desirable husband for her in many ways; her father highly approved of his suit; but this neglect of
her was awkward, if not painful, for Phyllis. Love him in the true sense of the word she assured me she never did,
but she had a genuine regard for him; admired a certain methodical and dogged way in which he sometimes took
his pleasure; valued his knowledge of what the Court was doing, had done, or was about to do; and she was not
without a feeling of pride that he had chose her when he might have exercised a more ambitious choice.
But he did not come; and the spring developed. His letters were regular though formal; and it is not to be
wondered that the uncertainty of her position, linked with the fact that there was not much passion in her thoughts
of Humphrey, bred an indescribable dreariness in the heart of Phyllis Grove. The spring was soon summer, and
the summer brought the King; but still no Humphrey Gould. All this while the engagement by letter was
maintained intact.
At this point of time a golden radiance flashed in upon the lives of people here, and charged all youthful
thought with emotional interest. This radiance was the aforesaid York Hussars.

II

The present generation has probably but a very dim notion of the celebrated York Hussars of ninety years ago.
They were one of the regiments of the King's German Legion, and (though they somewhat degenerated later on)
their brilliant uniform, their splendid horses, and above all, their foreign air and mustachios (rare appendages
then), drew crowds of admirers of both sexes wherever they went. These with other regiments had come to
encamp on the downs and pastures, because of the presence of the King in the neighbouring town.
The spot was high and airy, and the view extensive, commanding Portland −− the Isle of Slingers −− in front,
and reaching to St. Aldhelm's Head eastward, and almost to the Start on the west.
Phyllis, though not precisely a girl of the village, was as interested as any of them in this military investment.
Her father's home stood somewhat apart, and on the highest point of ground to which the lane ascended, so that it

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 The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion and Other Stories
was almost level with the top of the church tower in the lower part of the parish. Immediately from the outside of
the garden−wall the grass spread away to a great distance, and it was crossed by a path which came close to the
wall. Ever since her childhood it had been Phyllis's pleasure to clamber up this fence and sit on the top −− a feat
not so difficult as it may seem, the walls in this district being built of rubble, without mortar, so that there were
plenty of crevices for small toes.
She was sitting up here one day, listlessly surveying the pasture without, when her attention was arrested by a
solitary figure walking along the path. It was one of the renowned German Hussars, and he moved onward with
his eyes on the ground, and with the manner of one who wished to escape company. His head would probably
have been bent like his eyes but for his stiff neck−gear. On nearer view she perceived that his face was marked
with deep sadness. Without observing her, he advanced by the footpath till it brought him almost immediately
under the wall.
Phyllis was much surprised to see a fine, tall soldier in such a mood as this. Her theory of the military, and of
the York Hussars in particular (derived entirely from hearsay, for she had never talked to a soldier in her life), was
that their hearts were as gay as their accoutrements.
At this moment the Hussar lifted his eyes and noticed her on her perch, the white muslin neckerchief which
covered her shoulders and neck where left bare by her low gown, and her white raiment in general, showing
conspicuously in the bright sunlight of this summer day. He blushed a little at the suddenness of the encounter,
and without halting a moment from his pace passed on.
All that day the foreigner's face haunted Phyllis; its aspect was so striking, so handsome, and his eyes were so
blue, and sad, and abstracted. It was perhaps only natural that on some following day at the same hour she should
look over that wall again, and wait till he had passed a second time. On this occasion he was reading a letter, and
at the sight of her his manner was that of one who had half expected or hoped to discover her. He almost stopped,
smiled, and made a courteous salute. The end of the meeting was that they exchanged a few words. She asked him
what he was reading, and he readily informed her that he was re−perusing letters from his mother in Germany; he
did not get them often, he said, and was forced to read the old ones a great many times. This was all that passed at
the present interview, but others of the same kind followed.
Phyllis used to say this 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 Matthäus Tina, and Saarbrück 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 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 the home−woe, as he
called it in his own tongue, was Matthäus 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 lost her heart to Matthäus before she was herself aware. The stone wall of
necessity made anything like intimacy difficult; and he had never ventured to come, or to ask to come, inside the

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garden, so that all their conversation had been overtly conducted across this boundary.

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 with 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 such a while that she exclaimed, "The wall is white, and somebody in the field may see your shape
against it!"
He lingered so long that night that it was with the greatest difficulty that he could run across the intervening
stretch of ground and enter the camp in time. On the next occasion of his awaiting her she did not appear in her
usual place at the usual hour. His disappointment was unspeakably keen; he remained staring blankly at the spot,
like a man in a trance. The trumpets and tattoo sounded, and still he did not go.
She had been delayed purely by an accident. When she arrived she was anxious because of the lateness of the
hour, having heard as well as he the sounds denoting the closing of the camp. She implored him to leave
immediately.
"No," he said gloomily. "I shall not go in yet −− the moment you come −− I have thought of your coming all
day."
"But you may be disgraced at being after time?"

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"I don't mind that. I should have disappeared from the world some time ago if it had not been for two persons
−− my beloved, here, and my mother in Saarbrück. I hate the army. I care more for a minute of your company
than for all the promotion in the world."
Thus he stayed and talked to her, and told her interesting details of his native place, and incidents of his
childhood, till she was in a simmer of distress at his recklessness in remaining. It was only because she insisted on
bidding him good−night and leaving the wall that he returned to his quarters.
The next time that she saw him he was without the stripes that had adorned his sleeve. He had been broken to
the level of private for his lateness that night; and as Phyllis considered herself to be the cause of his disgrace her
sorrow was great. But the position was now reversed; it was his turn to cheer her.
"Don't grieve, meine Liebliche!" he said. "I have got a remedy for whatever comes. First, even supposing I
regain my stripes, would your father allow you to marry a non−commissioned officer in the York Hussars?"
She flushed. This practical step had not been in her mind in relation to such an unrealistic person as he was;
and a moment's reflection was enough for it. "My father would not −− certainly would not," she answered
unflinchingly. "It cannot be thought of! My dear friend, please do forget me: I fear I am ruining you and your
prospects!"
"Not at all!" said he. "You are giving this country of yours just sufficient interest to me to make me care to
keep alive in it. If my dear land were here also, and my old parent, with you, I could be happy as I am, and would
do my best as a soldier. But it is not so. And now listen. This is my plan. That you go with me to my own country,
and be my wife there, and live there with my mother and me. I am not a Hanoverian, as you know, though I
entered the army as such; my country is by the Saar, and is at peace with France, and if I were once in it I should
be free."
"But how get there?" she asked. Phyllis had been rather amazed than shocked at his proposition. Her position
in her father's house was growing irksome and painful in the extreme; his parental affection seemed to be quite
dried up. She was not a native of the village, like all the joyous girls around her; and in some way Matthäus Tina
had infected her with his own passionate longing for his country, and mother, and home.
"But how?" she repeated, finding that he did not answer. "Will you buy your discharge?"
"Ah, no," he said. "That's impossible in these times. No; I came here against my will; why should I not
escape? Now is the time, as we shall soon be striking camp, and I might see you no more. This is my scheme. I
will ask you to meet me on the highway two miles off, on some calm night next week that may be appointed.
There will be nothing unbecoming in it, or to cause you shame; you will not fly alone with me, for I will bring
with me my devoted young friend Christoph, an Alsatian, who has lately joined the regiment, and who has agreed
to assist in this enterprise. We shall have come from yonder harbour, where we shall have examined the boats,
and found one suited to our purpose. Christoph has already a chart of the Channel, and we will then go to the
harbour, and at midnight cut the boat from her moorings, and row away round the point out of sight; and by the
next morning we are on the coast of France, near Cherbourg. The rest is easy, for I have saved money for the land
journey, and can get a change of clothes. I will write to my mother, who will meet us on the way."
He added details in reply to her inquiries, which left no doubt in Phyllis's mind of the feasibility of the
undertaking. But its magnitude almost appalled her; and it is questionable if she would ever have gone further in
the wild adventure if, on entering the house that night, her father had not accosted her in the most significant
terms.
"How about the York Hussars?" he said.
"They are still at the camp; but they are soon going away, I believe."
"It is useless for you at attempt to cloak your actions in that way. You have been meeting one of those fellows;
you have been seen walking with him −− foreign barbarians, not much better than the French themselves! I have
made up my mind −− don't speak a word till I have done, please! −− I have made up my mind that you shall stay
here no longer while they are on the spot. You shall go to your aunt's."
It was useless for her to protest that she had never taken a walk with any soldier or man under the sun except
himself. Her protestations were feeble, too, for though he was not literally correct in his assertion, he was virtually
only half in error.
The house of her father's sister was a prison to Phyllis. She had quite recently undergone experience of its
gloom; and when her father went on to direct her to pack what would be necessary for her to take, her heart died

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within her. In after years she never attempted to excuse her conduct during this week of agitation; but the result of
her self−communing was that she decided to join in the scheme of her lover and his friend, and fly to the country
which he had coloured with such lovely hues in her imagination. She always said that the one feature in his
proposal which overcame her hesitation was the obvious purity and straight−forwardness of his intentions. He
showed himself to be so virtuous and kind; he treated her with a respect to which she had never before been
accustomed; and she was braced to the obvious risks of the voyage by her confidence in him.

IV

It was on a soft, dark evening of the following week that they engaged in the adventure. Tina was to meet her
at a point in the highway at which the lane to the village branched off. Christoph was to go ahead of them to the
harbour where the boat lay, row it round the Nothe −− or Look−out as it was called in those days −− and pick
them up on the other side of the promontory, which they were to reach by crossing the harbour−bridge on foot,
and climbing over the Look−out hill.
As soon as her father had ascended to his room she left the house, and, bundle in hand, proceeded at a trot
along the lane. At such an hour not a soul was afoot anywhere in the village, and she reached the junction of the
lane with the highway unobserved. Here she took up her position in the obscurity formed by the angle of a fence,
whence she could discern every one who approached along the turnpike−road, without being herself seen.
She had not remained thus waiting for her lover longer than a minute −− though from the tension of her nerves
the lapse of even that short time was trying −− when, instead of the expected footsteps, the stage−coach could be
heard descending the hill. She knew that Tina would not show himself till the road was clear, and waited
impatiently for the coach to pass. Nearing the corner where she was it slackened speed, and, instead of going by
as usual, drew up within a few yards of her. A passenger alighted, and she heard his voice. It was Humphrey
Gould's.
He had brought a friend with him, and luggage. The luggage was deposited on the grass, and the coach went
on its route to the royal watering−place.
"I wonder where that young man is with the horse and trap?" said her former admirer to his companion. "I
hope we shan't have to wait here long. I told him half−past nine o'clock precisely."
"Have you got her present safe?"
"Phyllis's? O, yes. It is in this trunk. I hope it will please her."
"Of course it will. What woman would not be pleased with such a handsome peace−offering?"
"Well −− she deserves it. I've treated her rather badly. But she has been in my mind these last two days much
more than I should care to confess to everybody. Ah, well; I'll say no more about that. It cannot be that she is so
bad as they make out. I am quite sure that a girl of her good wit would know better than to get entangled with any
of those Hanoverian soldiers. I won't believe it of her, and there's an end on't."
More words in the same strain were casually dropped as the two men waited; words which revealed to her, as
by a sudden illumination, the enormity of her conduct. The conversation was at length cut off by the arrival of the
man with the vehicle. The luggage was placed in it, and they mounted, and were driven on in the direction from
which she had just come.
Phyllis was so conscious−stricken that she was at first inclined to follow them; but a moment's reflection led
her to feel that it would only be a bare justice to Matthäus to wait till he arrived, and explain candidly that she had
changed her mind −− difficult as the struggle would be when she stood face to face with him. She bitterly
reproached herself for having believed reports which represented Humphrey Gould as false to his engagement,
when, from what she now heard from his own lips, she gathered that he had been living full of trust in her. But
she knew well enough who had won her love. Without him her life seemed a dreary prospect, yet the more she
looked at his proposal the more she feared to accept it −− so wild as it was, so vague, so venturesome. She had
promised Humphrey Gould, and it was only his assumed faithlessness which had led her to retreat that promise as
nought. His solicitude in bringing her these gifts touched her; her promise must be kept, and esteem must take the

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 The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion and Other Stories
place of love. She would preserve her self−respect. She would stay at home, and marry him, and suffer.
Phyllis had thus braced herself to an exceptional fortitude when, a few minutes later, the outline of Matthäus
Tina appeared behind a field−gate, over which he lightly leapt as she stepped forward. There was no evading it,
he pressed her to his breast.
"It is the first and last time!" she wildly thought as she stood encircled by his arms.
How Phyllis got through the terrible ordeal of that night she could never clearly recollect. She always
attributed her success in carrying out her resolve to her lover's honour, for as soon as she declared to him in feeble
words that she had changed her mind, and felt that she could not, dared not, fly with him, he forbore to urge her,
grieved as he was at her decision. Unscrupulous pressure on his part, seeing how romantically she had become
attached to him, would no doubt have turned the balance in his favour. But he did nothing to tempt her unduly or
unfairly.
On her side, fearing for his safety, she begged him to remain. This, he declared, could not be. "I cannot break
faith with my friend," said he. Had he stood alone he would have abandoned his plan. But Christoph, with the
boat and compass and chart, was waiting on the shore; the tide would soon turn; his mother had been warned of
his coming; go he must.
Many precious minutes were lost while he tarried, unable to tear himself away, Phyllis held to her resolve,
though it cost her many a bitter pang. At last they parted, and he went down the hill. Before his footsteps had
quite died away she felt a desire to behold at least his outline once more, and running noiselessly after him
regained view of his diminishing figure. For one moment she was sufficiently excited to be on the point of
rushing forward and linking her fate with his. But she could not. The courage which at the critical instant failed
Cleopatra of Egypt could scarcely be expected of Phyllis Grove.
A dark shape, similar to his own, joined him in the highway. It was Christoph, his friend. She could see no
more; they had hastened on in the direction of the town and harbour, four miles ahead. With a feeling akin to
despair she turned and slowly pursued her way homeward.
Tattoo sounded in the camp; but there was no camp for her now. It was as dead as the camp of the Assyrians
after the passage of the Destroying Angel.
She noiselessly entered the house, seeing nobody, and went to bed. Grief, which kept her awake at first,
ultimately wrapped her in a heavy sleep. The next morning her father met her at the foot of the stairs.
"Mr. Gould has come!" he said triumphantly.
Humphrey was staying at the inn, and had already called to inquire for her. He had brought her a present of a
very handsome looking−glass in a frame of repoussé silverwork, which her father held in his hand. He had
promised to call again in the course of an hour, to ask Phyllis to walk with him.
Pretty mirrors were rarer in country−houses at that day than they are now, and the one before her won
Phyllis's admiration. She looked into it, saw how heavy her eyes were, and endeavoured to brighten them. She
was in that wretched state of mind which leads a woman to move mechanically onward in what she conceives to
be her allotted path. Mr. Humphrey had, in his undemonstrative way, been adhering all along to the old
understanding; it was for her to do the same, and to say not a word of her own lapse. She put on her bonnet and
tippet, and when he arrived at the hour named she was at the door awaiting him.

Phyllis thanked him for his beautiful gift; but the talking was soon entirely on Humphrey's side as they walked
along. He told her of the latest movements of the world of fashion −− a subject which she willingly discussed to
the exclusion of anything more personal −− and his measured language helped to still her disquieted heart and
brain. Had not her own sadness been what it was she must have observed his embarrassment. At last he abruptly
changed the subject.
"I am glad you are pleased with my little present," he said. "The truth is that I brought it to propitiate 'ee, and
to get you to help me out of a mighty difficulty."

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It was inconceivable to Phyllis that this independent bachelor −− whom she admired in some respects −−
could have a difficulty.
"Phyllis −− I'll tell you my secret at once; for I have a monstrous secret to confide before I can ask your
counsel. The case is, then, that I am married: yes, I have privately married a dear young belle; and if you knew
her, and I hope you will, you would say everything in her praise. But she is not quite the one that my father would
have chose for me −− you know the paternal idea as well as I −− and I have kept it secret. There will be a terrible
noise, no doubt; but I think that with your help I may get over it. If you would only do me this good turn −− when
I have told my father, I mean −− say that you never could have married me, you know, or something of that sort
−− 'pon my life it will help to smooth the way vastly. I am so anxious to win him round to my point of view, and
not to cause any estrangement."
What Phyllis replied she scarcely knew, or how she counselled him as to his unexpected situation. Yet the
relief that his announcement brought her was perceptible. To have confided her trouble in return was what her
aching heart longed to do; and had Humphrey been a woman she would instantly have poured out her tale. But to
him she feared to confess; and there was a real reason for silence, till a sufficient time had elapsed to allow her
lover and his comrade to get out of harm's way.
As soon as she reached home again she sought a solitary place, and spent the time in half regretting that she
had not gone away, and in dreaming over the meetings with Matthäus Tina from their beginning to their end. In
his own country, amongst his own countrywomen, he would possible soon forget her, even to her very name.
Her listlessness was such that she did not go out of the house for several days. There came a morning which
broke in fog and mist, behind which the dawn could be discerned in greenish grey; and the outlines of the tents,
and the rows of horses at the ropes. The smoke from the canteen fires drooped heavily.
The spot at the bottom of the garden where she had been accustomed to climb the wall to meet Matthäus, was
the only inch of English ground in which she took any interest; and in spite of the disagreeable haze prevailing
she walked out there till she reached the well−known corner. Every blade of grass was weighted with little liquid
globes, and slugs and snails had crept out upon the plots. She could hear the usual faint noises from the camp, and
in the other direction the trot of farmers on the road to the town, for it was market−day. She observed that her
frequent visits to this corner had quite trodden down the grass in the angle of the wall, and left marks of garden
soil on the stepping−stones by which she had mounted to look over the top. Seldom having gone there till dusk,
she had not considered that her traces might be visible by day. Perhaps it was these which had revealed her trysts
to her father.
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 Matthäus
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

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 The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion and Other Stories
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.
Matthäus 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, w
Buried June 30th, 1801, aged 22 years. 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 22 years. 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.

THE THREE STRANGERS

AMONG the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse
of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe−leases, as they are indifferently
called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south−west. If any mark of human occupation is
met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd.
Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite
of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county−town.
Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows,
rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair
weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who 'conceive and meditate
of pleasant things.'
Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of ancient hedge is
usually taken advantage of in the erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in the present case, such a kind of
shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended.
The only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at right angles hard by, which
may have crossed there and thus for a good five hundred years. Hence the house was exposed to the elements on
all sides. But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell,
the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be
by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely

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