Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
remained for me to do, but wait the event with patience, or endeavour
to seek her out, by throwing myself in her way? I writhed at the idea
of a fortnight having escaped us, while the coming of the fatal route
for the East hung over me. There was something revolting and
humiliating to my spirit in acting the part of a prowler about Walcot
Park; but who is a more humble slave than a lover? The declaration of
war had animated the services, both by sea and land, with a new or
revived interest for all, with women especially. Thus our parades,
reviews, and even our marches of exercise were frequently witnessed by
all the beauty and fashion of the city and county; and among them I
always looked in vain for the carriage and liveries of the Countess.
Was Estelle ill, or was their absence from these spectacles part of a
system to be pursued by the former?
Walcot Park was, I knew, only a few miles from the barracks on the
Whitchurch-road. I had spent many an hour riding there merely to see
the place which was associated with Estelle, when she had been absent
from it in London or elsewhere; and now I had doubly an attraction to
make me turn my horse's head in that direction, after Sir Madoc's
letter came; so the second day saw me take the way northward from the
old cathedral city, in mufti, to elude observation. The evening was a
lovely one, and those swelling hills and fertile valleys, wide
expanses of woodland already becoming crisp by the heat of the past
summer, with clumps of birch and elder, the wild ash and the oak,
which make up the staple features of Hampshire scenery, were in all
their autumnal beauty and repose. The tinkling of the waggoner's bells
on the dusty highway, was still heard, though the shrill whistle of
the locomotive seemed to hint that, like the old stage-coachman, he
should ere long find his occupation gone; and mellowed on the soft and
ambient air there came the merry evening chimes from more than one
quaint, village-church--the broad square Norman tower of which
stood--the landmark of its district--in outline distinct and dark
against the golden flush of the western sky. Dusk was almost closing
when I crossed that noted trouting-stream, the Teste; and passed
through Whitchurch.
As I trotted leisurely along the single street of which the little
market borough is chiefly composed, at the door of a small inn I
perceived a stable-boy holding by their bridles a black horse and a
roan mare. The form of the latter seemed familiar to me. I could not
mistake the height of forehead, the depth of chest, and roundness of
barrel, or a peculiar white spot on the off-shoulder, and in the
former recognised the roadster which Guilfoyle had brought with him to
Craigaderyn. On seeing that I drew my reins and looked rather
scrutinisingly at the animal, the groom, stable helper, or whatever he
was, touched his cap, on which I inquired,
"Whose nag is this, my man?"
"Can't say as I knows, sir; but the gentleman, with another, is inside
the bar, having a drop of summut," was the answer.
"Does he reside hereabout?"
"At Walcot Park he do."
"Walcot Park!"
"My Lady Naseby's place; he's been there for a couple of days at
least, with Mr. Sharpus, my lady's lawyer from London."
I rode on and spurred my horse to a maddening pace for some distance,
and then permitting the reins to drop on his neck, gave way to the
tide of perplexing, harassing, and exasperating thoughts that flowed
upon me. I remembered that we had arranged at Craigaderyn not to
inform Lady Naseby of the real character of her chosen continental
acquaintance, a foolish and fatal mistake, as the fellow would seem to
have had sufficient presumption to present himself at Walcot Park, and
there remain until exposed and expelled. But how came it to pass that
such as he was patronised and fostered, as it were, by "the family
solicitor," and patented by being his companion? Surely a legal man,
however great a rascal professionally and personally, was too wary to
adopt openly a blackleg as his friend and protégé!
I felt that Lady Naseby should instantly be warned of Guilfoyle's real
character; but by whom was this to be done? Tied up by my secret
arrangements with Estelle, I could neither write nor call uninvited;
but why had she not, as she had promised, written to me, or given me
some sign of her being so near Winchester as Walcot Park? When I
recalled her apparent preference for this man, when Caradoc and I
first went to Wales, their frequent recurrence to past companionship
abroad, their duets together, and so forth, her angry defence of him
to myself, together with an interest he had acquired in the eyes of
her usually unapproachable mother, something of my old emotions of
pique and doubt, and a jealousy for which I blushed, began to mingle
with my perplexity and mortification, and the fear that _he_ could
have any influence on her destiny or mine!
I recalled all the conversation overheard by Pottersleigh, and greater
grew my astonishment and indignation. I felt it imperative that
something should be done instantly, and resolved to telegraph or write
to Sir Madoc, requesting him to procure the dismission of this
intruder from Walcot Park as promptly as he had despatched him from
Craigaderyn. From a part of the road where it wound over an upland
slope I could see the Jointure House which formed the residence of
Lady Naseby and of that Estelle who was a law, a light, a guiding star
to me, and towards whom every thought and aspiration turned. Walcot
Park was a spacious domain, and studded by clumps of stately old
trees, which had been planted after the Revolution of 1688 by a peer
of the Naseby family, who was one of the first to desert his
hereditary king at Rochester. The mansion itself dated from the same
stormy period, and was built entirely of red brick with white stone
corners and cornices. Its peristyle of six Ionic columns glistened
white in the moonlight, and was distinctly visible from where I sat on
horseback. The shadow of the square façade of the entire edifice fell
purple and dark far across the park. There were lights in several of
the windows, and I knew that my Estelle must be in one of those
rooms--but which?
At that moment all my soul yearned for her; could I but for an instant
have seen her, or heard her voice! She dwelt there, visible to and
approachable by others, and yet I dared not visit her. The fact of her
presence there seemed to pervade and charm all the place, and with a
sad, loving, and yet exasperated interest, I continued to survey it. I
was hovering there, but aimlessly, and without any defined purpose,
other than the vague chance of seeing or being near her. Walcot I knew
was her favourite place, and there she kept all her pets, for she had
many: a parrot sent from the Cape by the captain of a frigate to whom
she had spoken but once at a ball; a spaniel from Malta, the gift of
some forgotten rifleman; a noble staghound, given by a Highland
officer who had danced with her once--once only--and never forgot it;
a squirrel, the gift of Sir Madoc; and an old horse or two, her
father's favourite hacks, turned loose in the park as perpetual
pensioners.
Could she really have loved me as she said she did, if she was already
behaving so coldly to me now? No letter or note, no invitation--she
had surely influence enough with her mother to have procured me
that!--no notice taken of my vicinity, of my presence with the depôt
again! What shadow was this that seemed already to be falling on our
sunny love? Whence the doubt that had sprung up within me, and the
coldness that seemed between us? Full of these thoughts, I was gazing
wistfully at the house, when I perceived the dark figures of two
horsemen riding leisurely along the winding approach that led to the
white peristyle, and felt certain that they were Guilfoyle and his
legal friend Mr. Sharpus (of Sharpus and Juggles) mounted on the
identical nags I had seen at the inn-door; and inspired by emotions of
a very mingled character, I galloped back to the barracks, never
drawing my bridle for the entire twelve miles of the way, until I
threw it to my man Evans; and hurrying to my room, wrote instantly a
most pressing letter to Sir Madoc, informing him of what I had seen
and heard. I was not without thoughts of communicating with Lord
Pottersleigh; but, for obvious reasons, shrunk from _his_ intervention
in the Cressingham family circle.
I knew that it would be delivered at Craigaderyn on the morrow, and
deemed that now twenty-four hours must be the utmost limit of Mr.
Hawkesby Guilfoyle's sojourn in his present quarters, and in a sphere
which he insulted by his presence; but three, four, even five days
passed, and no reply came from Sir Madoc, who was then, though I knew
it not, shooting with some friends in South Wales, and did not receive
my epistle until it was somewhat late for him to act on it. During
these intervening days I was in a species of fever. One Sunday I
incidentally heard, at mess, that Lady Naseby's party, now a pretty
numerous one, had been at service in the cathedral, and to hear the
bishop preach. She had come in state, in the carriage, attended by
several gentlemen on horseback, and two tall fellows in livery, one
carrying her prayer-books, the other a long cane and huge nosegay;
and there I might have met them all face to face, and seen Estelle
once more, had my evil destiny not assigned to me the command
of the main guard, and thus detained me in barracks; but Price of
ours--susceptible as the Tupman of _Pickwick_--had seen her, and came
to mess raving about her beauty.
Every hour I could spare from duty was spent in hovering, like a
spectre or a spy--an unquiet spirit certainly--in the vicinity of
Walcot Park, till the lodge-keepers, who had been wont to touch their
hats civilly at first, began ere long to view me with mistrust; and my
horse knew every crook and turn of the Whitchurch-road quite as well
as the way to his own stable. On the evening of the fifth day after I
had written to Sir Madoc--a pleasant evening in the first days of
September--I was again riding leisurely among the deep green lanes
that border on Walcot Park, and which lay between dark green hedgerows
then studded by scarlet dogberries, and the overarching branches of
apple, pear, and damson trees, my heart, as usual, full of vague
doubts, decided longings, and most undecided intentions, when I began
slowly to walk my horse up a long, steep, and picturesque road, the
vista of which was closed by an old village church, in the low and
moss-grown wall surrounding which was a green wicket. It was on just
such an evening as the last I have described, when the farewell gleam
of the sun shone level along the fields, when the many-coloured
foliage rustled in the gentle wind, and the voices of the blackbird,
the thrush, and the lark came sweetly at times from the darkening
copsewood, and when, as Clare writes in his rhyming calendar,
"The wagons haste the corn to load,
And hurry down the dusty road;
The driving boy with eager eye
Watches the church clock, passing by--
Whose gilt hands glitter in the sun--
To see how far the hours have run;
Right happy in the breathless day,
To see time wearing fast away."
Nearly covered with ivy, the square tower of the little church--a fane
old as the days when the Saxons bent their bows in vain at Hastings;
yea, old as the time of St. Ethelwold (the famous architect and Bishop
of Winchester)--peeped up amid the rich autumnal foliage that almost
hid it from the view. At the wicket, some hundred yards from me, in
the twilight--for though the sun had not set, the density of the
copsewood about the place rendered the light rather dim and