Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
"Perhaps; but you have not annoyed me, though you are not quite what
you used to be; and none are so blind as those who will not see."
"I am quite perplexed. I think we know each other pretty well,
Winifred?" said I, very softly.
"I know you certainly," was the dubious response.
"Well--and I you?" said I, laughing.
"Scarcely. Woman, you should be aware, is a privileged enigma."
"Well, I was about to say that, whatever happens, we must ever be dear
friends, and think of each other kindly and tenderly, for the pleasant
times that are past and gone."
"What can happen to make us otherwise?" she asked, in a strange voice.
"I--may be killed," said I, not knowing very well what to say or
suggest; "so, while there is a chance of such a contingency, let us
part kindly; not so coldly as this, dear Winifred; and kiss me ere I
go."
Her lips, warm and tremulous, touched mine for an instant; but her
eyes were sad and wild, and her poor little face grew ashy white as
she hastened away, leaving me with Estelle, who was approaching
through the long and shaded room; and when with her, Winifred Lloyd
and the momentary emotion that had sprung up--emotion that I cared not
and dared not _then_ to analyse--were utterly forgotten.
Our interview was a very silent one. We had barely time for a few
words, and heavy on my heart as lead weighed the conviction that I had
to part from her--my love so recently won, so firmly promised and
affianced. I knew that the days of my sojourn at Winchester must be
few now; and with the chances of war before me, and temptations and
aristocratic ambition left behind with her, how dubious and how remote
were the chances of our meeting again!
Moments there were when I felt blindly desperate, and with my arms
round Estelle.
When returning, would she still love me, as Desdemona loved her Moor,
for the dangers I had dared? The days of chivalry and romance have
gone; but the "old, old story" yet remains to us, fresh as when first
told in Eden.
"For life or death, for good or for evil, for weal or woe, darling
Estelle, I leave my heart in your keeping!" said I, in a low
passionate whisper; "in twelve months, perhaps, I may claim you as my
wife."
"L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose," said she, quietly and tenderly. "I
yet hope to see you, were it but for a day, at Walcot Park, ere you
sail."
"Bless you for the hope your words give me!" said I, as Owen Gwyllim
came to announce that the carriage was at the door, and to give me
Lady Naseby's and Lord Pottersleigh's cards and farewell wishes. And
from that moment all the rest of my leave-taking seemed purely
mechanical; and not only Sir Madoc, his two daughters, and Estelle,
were on the terrace of the mansion to bid me adieu, but all the
hearty, hot-tempered, high-cheekboned old Welsh domestics, most of
whom had known me since boyhood, were also there.
The impulsive Dora brought me my courier-bag, a flask filled with
brandy, and dainty sandwiches cut and prepared by Winifred's own kind
little hands (for in doing this for me she would trust neither the
butler nor Mrs. Gwenny Davis the housekeeper), and then she held up
her bright face to be kissed; but inspired by I know not what emotion
of doubt or dread, I only touched with my lips the hands of Lady
Estelle and Miss Lloyd. Both girls stood a little apart from each
other, pale as death, tremulous with suppressed emotion, and with
their lashes matted and their eyes filled with tears, that pride and
the presence of others restrained from falling. They were calm
externally, but their hearts were full of secret thoughts, to which I
was long in getting the clue. In the eyes of Estelle there was that
glance or expression of loving intensity which most men have seen
_once_--it may be twice--in a woman's eye, and have never, never
forgotten.
Sir Madoc's brown manly hand shook mine heartily, and he clapped me on
the back.
"I hope to see you yet ere you leave England, my boy, and such hopes
always take the sting from an adieu," said he, with a voice that
quivered nevertheless. "Sorry you can't stay for the 1st of
September--the partridges will be in splendid order; but there is
shooting enough of another kind in the preserves you are going to."
"And may never come back from," was the comforting addendum of old
Mrs. Davis, as she applied her black-silk apron to her eyes.
"Ah, Harry," said Sir Madoc, "you gave a smile so like your mother
just now! She was handsome; but you will be never like her, were you
as beautiful as Absalom."
"It is well that poor mamma can't hear all this," said Dora, laughing
through her tears.
"Your dear mamma, my girl, was very fond of her and of him, too," said
honest Sir Madoc; and then he whispered, "If ever you want cash,
Harry, don't forget me, and Coutts and Co.--the dingy den in the
Strand. Farewell--anwylbach!--good-bye!"
A few minutes more and all the tableau on the steps had passed away. I
was bowling along the tall lime avenue and down the steep mountain
road, up which Phil Caradoc and I had travelled but a few weeks
before. How much had passed since _then!_ and how much was inevitably to
pass ere I should again see these familiar scenes! What had I said, or
left unsaid? What had I done, what had passed, or how was it, that as
the train sped with me beyond brave old Chester, on and on, on and on,
monotonously clanking, grinding, jarring, and occasionally shrieking,
while intrenched among railway rugs, with a choice cigar between my
teeth, and while I was verging into that pleasant frame of mind when
soft and happy visions are born of the half-drowsy brain, lulled as it
were by rapidity of motion and the sameness of recurring sounds--how
was it, I say, that the strange, unfathomable expression I had seen in
the soft pleading eyes of dear Winifred--distance was already making
her "dear"--mingled in my memory with the smileless, grave, and tender
farewell glance of my pale Estelle; and that the sweet innocent kiss
of the former was remembered with sadness and delight?
I strove to analyse my ideas, and then thrust them from me, as I
lowered the carriage window and looked forth upon the flying landscape
and the starry night, and muttered,
"Poor Winny--God bless her! But _two loves for one heart_ will never,
never do. I have been at Craigaderyn too long!"
And I pictured to myself the drawing-room there: Estelle, perhaps, at
the piano to conceal her emotions; or listening, it might be, to the
twaddle of old Pottersleigh. Winny gazing out upon the starlit
terrace, trying to realise the prospect--as women proposed to will
do--if she had married Phil Caradoc; or thinking of--heaven knows
what! And old Sir Madoc in his arm-chair, and dreaming, while Dora
nestled by his side, of the old times, and the boy--to wit, myself--he
loved so well.
CHAPTER XX.-FEARS.
Caradoc and many other good fellows were gone eastward, and save Hugh
Price and a newly-fledged ensign, I was the only officer with the
depôt, and being senior had the command. The former had always some
affair of the heart on the tapis; the latter was a mere boy, fresh
from Harrow, so neither was companion for me. Back once more to the
prosaic life of heavy drill and much useless duty in Winchester
barracks, the picturesque and joyous past at Craigaderyn--after I had
written a letter to Sir Madoc full of remembrances to the ladies--
seemed somewhat like a dream.
My engagement with Estelle--our rides, drives, and rambles by the wild
green hills of Mynedd Hiraethrog; in the chase and long lime avenue;
our chance meetings in the garden arbour; by the fountain, where the
lilies floated and the gold fish shot to and fro; over all, that wild
boat adventure, by which our lives were to be knit up as one in the
future--seemed too like a dream, of which her ring on my finger alone
remained to convince me of the reality, as no letters could pass
between us--at least none from me to her. Thus I grew fond of courting
solitude after the duties of the day were over, and I could fling
sword, sash, and belt aside; and usually I quitted early the jollity
of the battalion mess, that I might indulge in visions and conjure up
bright fancies amid the gray smoke wreaths of a quiet cigar, in that
humble bachelor's quarter already described; while the moonlight
silvered the spires and red-tiled roofs of Winchester, and when all
became still in the crowded barrack, after the tattoo-drums had
beaten, and the notes of the last bugle had warned--like the Norman
curfew of old--the extinction of all lights and fires.
I had seen many a drama and read many a romance; but now I seemed to
be personally the hero of either one or other. Engaged to the daughter
of an earl; but in _secret_, and unknown to all! And how or when was
that engagement to end--to be brought to a successful issue? On these
points my ideas were painfully vague and full of anxiety. Were we yet
to meet--were it but for an hour--ere war separated us more
completely, by sea as well as land? Returning, it might be mutilated
and disfigured, should I still find her loving, tender, and true? and
if I fell in action, how long might I hope to be remembered ere
Estelle--But I could not with patience contemplate the chances of
another replacing or supplanting me. Occasionally, as if to kill time,
I was seized by fits of unwonted zeal, and found plenty of work to do,
apart from parades, guards, sword-exercise, and revolver-pistol
practice--for hourly recruits, many of whom could not speak a word of
English, were coming in to replace those that had sailed with Phil
Caradoc; and it is one of the essential parts of the duty of the
officer commanding a regimental depôt to see after the arms,
accoutrements, and clothing of his men; and also, that so far as drill
goes, they are made perfect soldiers. Few or none of these recruits
were natives of the counties outside Offa's Dyke; but when the news of
the Alma came, and all England thrilled with the story of the uphill
charge of the Royal Welsh, more than one London paper enviously spread
the rumour, that our regiment was Cambrian only in name; till it was
flatly contradicted by the colonel--but the story nearly gave hot
peppery Sir Madoc a fit of apoplexy.
Besides other duties there was no small number of books--goodly sized
folios--of which I had the supervision, ten at least exactly similar
to those which are kept at headquarters; and all these tasks were
varied by an occasional ball or rout such as a cathedral and garrison
town can furnish; or a court-martial, or one of inquiry, concerning
Mrs. Private Jones resenting--_vi et armis_--that the canteen-keeper
should cut her bacon and tobacco, butter and bread, with the same
knife; or to give some Giles Chawbacon fifty lashes about daybreak for
a violation of the Red-book, in a hollow square, where men's teeth
chattered in the chilly air, or they yawned behind their glazed stocks
and shivered with disgust, at a punishment for which the army was
indebted to William of Orange, and which is now happily a thing of the
past. So the month of August drew to a close, and a box of partridges
duly came from Sir Madoc--the spoil of his gun on the slopes of Mynedd
Hiraethrog, perhaps; with a letter which acquainted me that Lady
Naseby and her daughter had been for fully a fortnight at Walcot Park
in Hampshire, but that he supposed I was probably aware of the
circumstance, and that Pottersleigh was with them.
Fully a fortnight, and neither letter nor card of invitation, though
they knew that I was in Winchester! How or why was this? A chill came
over me, though I certainly had no fear of the Viscount's influence;
but then I reflected that Estelle could not, and that Lady Naseby
would not, invite me--each for reasons of her own. What, then,