Under the Red Dragon: A Novel
of all the stories he had the unblushing effrontery to tell, the
present was perhaps the most daring. He had contrived, during the
short visit he had paid to Walcot Park, under the wing of Mr. Sharpus,
to let Estelle know by covert hints and remarks all he knew, and all
he might yet disclose to her mother, to the young Earl of Naseby, to
Lord Pottersleigh, Sir Madoc, and others; and feeling herself in his
power, with all her lofty spirit the poor girl cowered before him, and
he felt this instinctively, as he turned his green eyes exultingly
upon her. But for a delicate, proud, and sensitive girl to have the
secrets of her heart laid bare, and at the mercy of a man like this,
was beyond all measure exasperating. And this strange narrative of
his, coming after what she had seen, and all that Pompon with French
exaggeration had related, crushed her completely for the time.
"I have another little item to add to our Hardinge romance," said he,
with his strange, hard, dry, crackling laugh, and a smile of positive
delight in his shifty green eyes, while he toyed with the long ears of
Tiny the shock, which had resumed its place in Lady Naseby's lap. "You
remember the locket with the initials 'H. H. G.' and the date 1st
September which Miss Dora Lloyd mentioned when we were at
Craigaderyn?"
"I have some recollection of it," replied Lady Naseby, languidly.
"Curiously enough, as I rode past the spot where you saw that touching
and interesting interview--the lane, I mean--I perceived something
glittering among the grass. Dismounting, I picked up that identical
locket, which doubtless the lady had dropped, thus losing it within a
few days of its bestowal, if we are to judge by the date."
"And you have it?"
"Here."
Opening his leather portemonnaie, he drew from it a gold locket, to
which a black-velvet ribbon was attached, and said with the utmost
deliberation, "The initials represent those of Henry Hardinge and his
inamorata, and behold!"
Pressing a spring, the secret of which he knew very well, the locket
flew open, and within it were seen the photograph of the pale woman
whom they saw in Craigaderyn church, and opposite to it one of _me_,
inserted by himself, pilfered from the album of Winifred Lloyd, as we
afterwards ascertained.
"Aha! the moral Mr. Henry Hardinge with his _petite femme entretenue_,
as the French so happily term it."
Lady Estelle was quite calm now in her demeanour, and she surveyed the
locket with a contemptuous smile; but her face was as white as marble.
She felt conscious that it was so, and hence sat with her back to the
nearest window, lest her mother should perceive that she was affected.
Guilfoyle, smilingly, stood by her, stroking his dyed moustache.
"This must be restored to its owner," said he.
"Permit me to do so," said Lady Estelle.
"You, Estelle--you!" exclaimed her usually placid mother, becoming
almost excited now; "why should you touch the wretched creature's
ornament?"
"As an act of charity it should be restored to her, or to _him_," she
added, through her clenched teeth; and taking the locket, she left the
room for her own, ere her mother could reply; and there she gave way
to a paroxysm of tears, that sprang from sorrow, rage, and shame that
she had for a moment permitted herself to have been deluded by me, and
thus be placed in the power of Guilfoyle. Her lips, usually of a rosy
tint, were colourless now; her upper one quivered from time to time,
as she shuddered with emotions she strove in vain to repress; and her
proud hot blood flowed furiously under her transparent skin, as she
threw open her desk, and sought to apply herself to the task of
writing me that which was to be her first, her last, and only letter.
For her heart swelled with thoughts of love and disappointment, pride,
reproach, disdain, and hate, as she spoiled and tore up sheet after
sheet of note-paper in her confusion and perplexity, and at last
relinquished the idea of writing at all.
Thus, while I was scheming how to expose Mr. Hawkesby Guilfoyle, and
have him cast forth from that circle in which he was an intruder, he
turned the tables with a vengeance, and provided me with a wife to
boot. But finding, or suspecting, that he was beginning to be viewed
with doubt, that very day, after having done all possible mischief, he
quitted Walcot Park with Lady Naseby's solicitor, who, strange to say,
seemed to be his most particular friend. He had made no impression
favourable to himself on the heart of Estelle; but he hoped that he
had succeeded in ruining me, as I could neither write nor clear myself
of an allegation of which I was then, of course, ignorant. She was
unjust to me; but she certainly--whatever came to pass in the gloomy
and stormy future--loved me _then_.
CHAPTER XXIV.--BITTER THOUGHTS.
As yet I knew nothing of all that has been detailed in the foregoing
chapter, consequently the entire measure of my vengeance against
Guilfoyle was not quite full. I had, however, a revival of my old
doubts, anxiety, and perplexity, in not hearing from Walcot Park in
some fashion, by an invitation, or otherwise privately from Estelle
herself, as, by our prearrangement, there was nothing to prevent her
writing to me; and to these were added now a dread of what they had
seen on that unlucky evening, and the reasonable misconstructions to
which the scene was liable. More than one of my mess-room friends had
received cards of invitation from Lady Naseby; why then was I, whom
she had met so recently, apparently forgotten?
After the relation of her story, I left Mrs. Guilfoyle in such
a state of mental prostration and distress, that I was not without
well-founded fears that she might commit some rash act, perhaps
suicide, to add to the vile complication of our affairs. Next day I
was detailed for guard, and could not leave the barracks, either to
consult with my new unhappy acquaintance, or for my accustomed canter
in the vicinity of Walcot Park. A presentiment that something
unpleasant would happen ere long hung over me, and a day and a night
of irritation and hot impatience had to be endured, varied only by the
exceedingly monotonous duties that usually occupy the attention of the
officer who commands a guard, such as explaining all the standing
orders to the soldiers composing it, inspecting the reliefs going out
to their posts and those returning from them, and going the round of
those posts by night; but on this occasion, the routine was varied by
a fire near Winchester, so we were kept under arms for some hours in a
torrent of rain, with the gates barricaded, till the barrack engines
returned. On the following morning, just when dismissing my old guard
after being relieved by the new one, I perceived a servant in the
well-known Naseby livery--light-blue and silver--ride out of the
barracks; and with a fluttering in my heart, that was born of hope and
apprehension, I hastened to my room.
"Packet for you, sir," said my man Evans, "just left by a flunkey in
red breeches."
"You mean a servant of Lady Naseby's."
"I mean, sir," persisted Evans, "a flunky who eyed me very
superciliously, and seemed to think a private soldier as low and
pitiful as himself," added the Welshman, whom the pompous bearing of
the knight of the shoulder-knot had ruffled.
"You were not rude to him, I hope."
"O no, sir. I only said that, though the Queen didn't like bad
bargains, I'd give him a shilling in her name to play the triangles."
"That will do; you may go," said I, taking from his hand a small
packet sealed in pink paper, and addressed to me by Lady Estelle; and
my heart beat more painfully than ever with hope and fear as I tore it
open.
A locket dropped out--_the_ locket just described--in which I was
bewildered to find a likeness of myself, and with it the ring I had
placed on the hand of Estelle in Rhuddlan's cottage--the emerald
encircled by diamonds--on the morning after our escape from a terrible
fate! I have said that a shock awaited me at the barrack; but that the
locket should come to me, accompanied by Estelle's ring, so astonished
and perplexed me, that some time elapsed before I perceived there was
a little note in the box which contained them.
It ran thus:
"Lady E. Cressingham begs that Mr. Hardinge will return the
accompanying locket and ring to the lady to whom they properly
belong--she whom he meets in the lane near Walcot Park, and whom he
should lose no time in presenting to the world in her own character.
Farther communications are unnecessary, as Mr. Guilfoyle has explained
all, and Lady E. Cressingham leaves to-day for London."
The handwriting was very tremulous, as if she had written when under
no ordinary excitement; and now, as the use to which the two episodes,
at the lane and the inn-door, had been put by the artful Guilfoyle
became plain to me, I was filled by a dangerous fury at the false
position in which they placed me with her I loved and with whom I had
been so successful. For a minute the room seemed to swim round me,
each corner in pursuit of the other. We had both been wronged--myself
chiefly; and though I knew that Guilfoyle had been at work, I could
not precisely know how; but I thought the Spartan was right when, on
being asked if his sword was sharp, he replied, "Yes, sharper even
than calumny!" This wretched fellow had daringly calumniated me, and
to clear that calumny, to have an instant interview with Estelle,
became the immediate and burning desire of my heart. I rushed to my
desk, and opened it with such impulsive fury that I severely injured
my arm, so recently broken--broken in her service--and as yet but
scarcely well. I spread paper before me, but my fingers were
powerless; if able to hold the pen, I was now unable to write, and the
whole limb was alternately benumbed and full of acute agony; and
though Hugh Price of ours was a very good fellow, I had no friend--at
least, none like Phil Caradoc--in the dépôt battalion in whom I could
confide or with whom consult, in this emergency.
I despatched Evans for the senior surgeon, who alleged that the
original setting, dressing, and so forth of my fractured limb had been
most unsatisfactory; that if I was not careful, inflammation might set
in, and if so, that instant amputation alone could save my life. Being
almost in a fever, he placed me on the sick-list, with orders not to
leave my room for some days, and reduced me to claret-and-water.
"A pleasant predicament this!" thought I, grinding my teeth.
Estelle, through whom all this came to pass, lost to me, apparently
through no fault of my own, and I unable to communicate with her or
explain anything; for now she was in London, where I feared she might,
in pique or rage, take Pottersleigh, Naseby, or even, for all I knew,
accept Guilfoyle, a terrible compromise of her name. But she had
plenty of other admirers, and disappointed women marry every day in
disgust of some one. Next I thought of the regiment abroad wondering
"when that fellow Hardinge would join"--promotion, honour, profession,
and love in the balance against health, and all likely to be lost!
"Rest, rest," said the battalion Sangrado, whom my condition rather
perplexed; "don't worry yourself about anything. Rest, mental and
bodily, alone can cure you."
"It is a fine thing to talk," I muttered, while tossing on my pillow;
for I was confined to bed in my dull little room, and for three days
was left entirely to my own corroding thoughts.
I had but one crumb of comfort, one lingering hope. She had not asked
me to return _her_ ring, nor did I mean to do so, if possible. Once
again my arm was slung in a black-silk scarf, which Estelle had
insisted on making for me at Craigaderyn. Alas! would the joys of that