Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
Leaving London, I had striven to stifle as simply absurd the passion
that had grown within me, and had joined at Winchester in the honest
and earnest hope that ere long the coming campaign would teach me to
forget the fair face and witching eyes, and, more than all, the
winning manner that haunted me; and now I was to be cast within their
magic influence once more, and doubtless to be hopelessly lost. To
have acted wisely, I should have declined the invitation and pleaded
military duty; yet to see her once, to be with her once again, without
that cordon of guardsmen and cavaliers who daily formed her mounted
escort in Rotten-row, and with all the chances our quiet mutual
residence in a sequestered country mansion, when backed by all the
influence and friendship of Sir Madoc, must afford me, proved a
temptation too strong for resistance or for my philosophy; so, like
the poor moth, infatuated and self-doomed, I resolved once more to
rush at the light which dazzled me.
"She seems to know you, _and would like to see more of you_," ran the
letter of Sir Madoc. I read that line over and over again, studying it
minutely in every way. Were those dozen words simply the embodiment of
his own ideas, or were they her personally expressed wish put
literally into writing? Were they but the reflex of some casual
remark? Even that conviction would bring me happiness. And so, after
my friends left me, I sat pondering thus, blowing long rings of
concentric smoke in the moonlight; and on those words of Sir Madoc
raising not only a vast and aerial castle, but a "bower of bliss," as
the pantomimes have it at Christmas time.
But how about this Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle? was my next thought. Could
_his_ attentions be tolerated by such a stately and watchful dowager as
the Countess of Naseby? Could Sir Madoc actually hint that such as he
might have a chance of success, when I had none? The idea was too
ridiculous; for I had heard whispers of this man before, in London and
about the clubs, where he was generally deemed to be a species of
adventurer, the exact source of whose revenue no one knew. One fact
was pretty certain: he was unpleasantly successful at billiards and on
the turf. If he--to use his own phraseology--was daring enough to
enter stakes for such a prize as Lord Cressingham's daughter, why
should not I?
Thus, in reverie of a somewhat chequered kind, I lingered on, while
the shadows of the cathedral, its lofty tower and choir, the spire of
St. Lawrence, and many other bold features of the view began to deepen
or become more uncertain on the city roofs below, and from amid which
their masses stood upward in a flood of silver sheen. Ere long the
full-orbed moon--that seemed to float in beauty beneath its snow-white
clouds, looking calmly down on Winchester, even as she had done ages
ago, ere London was a capital, and when the white city was the seat of
England's Saxon, Danish, and Norman dynasties, of Alfred's triumphs
and Canute's glories--began at last to pale and wane; and the solemn
silence of the morning--for dewy morning it was now--was broken only
by the chime of the city bells and clocks, and by the tread of feet in
the gravelled barrack-yard, as the reliefs went round, and the
sentinels were changed.
The first red streak of dawn was beginning to steal across the east;
the bugles were pealing reveilles, waking all the hitherto silent
echoes of the square; and just about the time when worthy and
unambitious Charley Gwynne would be parading his first squad for
"aiming drill" at sundry bull's-eyes painted on the barrack-walls, I
retired to dream over a possible future, and to hope that if the stars
were propitious, at the altar of that somewhat dingy fane, St.
George's, Hanover-square, I might yet become the son-in-law of the
late Earl of Naseby, Baron Cressingham of Cotteswold, in the county of
Northampton, and of Walcot Park in Hants, Lord-lieutenant, _custos
rotulorum_, and so forth, as I had frequently and secretly read in the
mess-room copy of Sir Bernard Burke's thick royal octavo; "the
Englishman's Bible" according to Thackeray, and, as I greatly feared,
the somewhat exclusive _libro d'oro_ of Mamma Cressingham, who was apt
to reverence it pretty much as the Venetian nobles did the remarkable
volume of that name.
CHAPTER III--By EXPRESS.
Leave granted, our acceptance of Sir Madoc's invitation duly
telegraphed--"wired," as the phrase is now--our uniforms doffed and
mufti substituted, the morning of the second day ensuing saw Caradoc
and myself on the Birmingham railway _en route_ for Chester; the
exclusive occupants of a softly cushioned compartment, where, by the
influence of a couple of florins slipped deftly and judiciously into
the palm of an apparently unconscious and incorruptible official, we
could lounge at our ease, and enjoy without intrusion the _Times_,
_Punch_, or our own thoughts, and the inevitable cigar. Though in
mufti we had uniform with us; we _believed_ in it then, and in its
influence; for certain German ideas of military tailoring subsequent
to the Crimean war had not shorn us of our epaulettes, and otherwise
reduced the character of our regimentals to something akin to the
livery of a penny postman or a railway guard.
Somehow, I felt more hopeful of my prospects, when, with the bright
sunshine of July around us, I found myself spinning at the rate of
fifty miles per hour by the express train--the motion was almost as
imperceptible as the speed was exhilarating--and swiftly passed the
scenes on either side, the broad green fields of growing grain, the
grassy paddocks, the village churches, the snug and picturesque
homesteads of Warwick and Worcestershire. We glided past Rugby, where
Caradoc had erewhile conned his tasks in that great Elizabethan pile
which is built of white brick with stone angles and cornices, and
where in the playing fields he had gallantly learned to keep his
wicket with that skill which made him our prime regimental bat and
bowler too. Coventry next, where of course we laughed as we thought of
"peeping Tom" and Earl Leofric's pretty countess, when we saw its
beautiful and tapering spires rise over the dark and narrow streets
below. Anon, we paused amid the busy but grimy world of Birmingham,
which furnishes half the world with the implements of destruction;
Stafford, with its ruined castle on a well-wooded eminence; and ere
long we halted in quaint old Chester by the Dee, where the stately red
stone tower of the cathedral rises darkly over its picturesque
thoroughfares of the middle ages. There the rail went no farther then;
but a carriage sent by Sir Madoc awaited us at the station, and we had
before us the prospect of a delightful drive for nearly thirty miles
amid the beautiful Welsh hills ere we reached his residence.
"This whiff of the country is indeed delightful!" exclaimed Caradoc,
as we bowled along on a lovely July evening, the changing shadows of
the rounded hills deepening as the sun verged westward; "it makes one
half inclined to cut the service, and turn farmer or cattle-breeding
squire--even to chuck ambition, glory, and oneself away upon a landed
heiress, if such could be found ready to hand."
"Even upon Winifred Lloyd, with her dairy-farms in the midland
counties, eh?"
Phil coloured a little, but laughed good-humouredly as he replied,
"Well, I must confess that she is somewhat more than my weakness--at
present."
At Aber-something we found a relay of fresh horses, sent on by Sir
Madoc, awaiting us, the Welsh roads not being quite so smooth as a
billiard-table; and there certain hoarse gurgling expletives, uttered
by ostlers and stable-boys, might have warned us that we were in the
land of Owen and Hughes, Griffiths and Davies, and all the men of the
Twelve Royal Tribes, even if there had not been the green mountains
towering into the blue sky, and the pretty little ivy-covered inn, at
the porch of which sat a white-haired harper (on the watch for patrons
and customers), performing the invariable "Jenny Jones" or
_Ar-hyd-y-nos_ (the live-long night), and all the while keeping a
sharp Celtic eye to the expected coin.
Everything around us indicated that we were drawing nearer to the
abode of Sir Madoc, and that ere long--in an hour or so, perhaps--I
should again see one who, by _name_ as well as circumstance, was a
star that I feared and hoped would greatly influence all my future.
The Eastern war, and, more than all, the novelty of any war after
forty years of European peace, occupied keenly the minds of all
thinking people. My regiment was already gone, and I certainly should
soon have to follow it. I knew that, individually and collectively,
all bound for the seat of the coming strife had a romantic and even
melancholy interest, in the hearts of women especially; and I was not
without some hope that this sentiment might add to my chances of
finding favour with the rather haughty Estelle Cressingham.
It was a glorious summer evening when our open barouche swept along
the white dusty road that wound by the base of Mynedd Hiraethrog, that
wild and bleak mountain chain which rises between the Dee and its
tributaries the Elwey and the Aled. Westward in the distance towered
blue Snowdon, above the white floating clouds of mist, with all its
subordinate peaks. In the immediate foreground were a series of
beautiful hills that were glowing, and, to the eye, apparently
vibrating, under a burning sunset. The Welsh woods were in all the
wealth of their thickest foliage--the umbrageous growth of centuries;
and where the boughs cast their deepest shadows, the dun deer and the
fleet hare lurked among the fragrant fern, and the yellow sunlight
fell in golden patches on the passing runnel, that leaped flashing
from rock to rock, to mingle with the Alwen, or crept slowly and
stealthily under the long rank grass towards Llyn-Aled.
That other accessories might not be wanting to remind us that we were
in the land of the Cymri, we passed occasionally the _Carneddau_, or
heaps of stones that mark the old places of battle or burial; and
perched high on the hills the _Hafodtai_ or summer farms, where
enormous flocks of sheep--the boasted Welsh mutton--were pasturing.
Then we heard at times the melancholy sound of the horn, by which
inmates summon the shepherds to their meals, and the notes of which,
when waking the echoes of the silent glen, have an effect so weird and
mournful.
"By Jove, but we have a change here, Phil," said I, "a striking
change, indeed, from the hot and dusty gravelled yard of Winchester
barracks, the awkward squads at incessant drill with dumb-bell, club,
or musket; the pipeclay, the pacing-stick, and the tap of the drum!"
Through a moss-grown gateway, the design of Inigo Jones, we turned
down the long straight avenue of limes that leads to Craigaderyn; a
fine old mansion situated in a species of valley, its broad lawn
overlooked by the identical craig from which it takes its name, "the
Rock of Birds," a lofty and insulated mass, the resort of innumerable
hawks, wood-pigeons, and even of hoarse-croaking cormorants from the
cliffs about Orme's Head and Llandulas. On its summit are the ruins of
an ancient British fort, wherein Sir Jorwerth Goch (_i. e_. Red Edward)
Lloyd of Craigaderyn had exterminated a band of Rumpers and Roundheads
in the last year of Charles I., using as a war-cry the old Welsh shout
of "Liberty, loyalty, and the long head of hair!" On either side of
the way spread the lawn, closely shorn and carefully rolled, the
turf being like velvet of emerald greenness, having broad winding
carriage-ways laid with gravel, the bright red of which contrasted so
strongly with the verdant hue of the grass. The foliage of the timber
was heavy and leafy, and there, at times, could be seen the lively