Under the Red Dragon: A Novel

"Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your letter caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny especially? She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I have now learned _why_ the poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I understand, another." "That is me," said Phil, parenthetically. "But of that unexpected refusal of Sir Watkins Vaughan nothing can be said here." "What on earth can he mean!" said I, looking up; "perhaps she has some lingering compunction about you, Phil." "If so, she might have sent the cigar-case to me--or something else; just to square matters, as it were." Remembering my old suspicions and fears--they were fears _then_--as I drove away from Craigaderyn for Chester, I read the letter in haste, and with dread of what it might contain or reveal; as I would not for worlds have inflicted a mortification, however slight, on my dear friend Caradoc, who gnawed the ends of his moustache at the following: "Young Sir Watkins had been most attentive to Winny during the past season in town--that gay London season, which, notwithstanding the war, was quite as brilliant as usual; when every one had come back from the Scotch moors, from Ben Nevis, Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and everywhere else that the roving Englishman is wont to frequent, to kill game, or time, or himself, as it sometimes happens. But Winny won't listen to him, and I think he is turning his attention to Dora, though whether or not the girl--who has another adorer, in the shape of a long-legged Plunger with parted hair and a lisp--only laughs at him, I can't make out. "Tell Caradoc, Gwynne, and other true-hearted Cymri in the Welsh Fusileers, that when in London I attended more than one meeting, inaugurating a movement to secure for Wales judges and counsel who shall speak Welsh, and Welsh only. The meetings were failures, and the d--d Sassenachs only laughed at us; but from such injustice, _Gwared ni Argylywd daionus!_[5] say I. "And so poor Hugh Price of yours is gone. A good-hearted fellow, who could do anything, from crossing the stiffest hunting country to making a champagne cup, singing a love song or mixing a salad--one of the old line of the Rhys of Geeler in Denbighshire. My God, how many other fine fellows lie in that hecatomb in the Valley of Inkermann! Sebastopol seems to be left quite open on one side, so that the Russians may pour in stores and fresh troops, and go and come at their pleasure? It is pleasant for tax-payers at home and the troops abroad to think that things are so arranged in Downing-street, by my Lords Aberdeen, Aberconway, and suchlike Whig incapables and incurables. "I fear your regimental dinner would be a scanty one on St. David's-days." (On that day I had dined with Valerie, and forgot all about the yearly festival of the Fusileers!) "I thought of it and of you all--the more so, perhaps, that I had just seen the old colours of the Royal Welsh in St. Peter's Church at Carmarthen." The old baronet, after a few Welsh words, of which I could make nothing, rambled away into such subjects as mangold-wurzels and subsoil, scab-and-foot rot, and food for pheasants, all of which I skipped; ditto about the close of the hunting-season, which he and Sir Watkins--Winny's admirer--had shared together; and how the rain had deluged Salop, throwing the scent breast-high, so that in many a run the fox and the hounds had it all to themselves, and that following them was as bad as going all round the Wrekin to Shrewsbury, mere brooks having become more than saddle-girth deep; moreover, the mischievous, execrable, and pestilent wire fences were playing the devil with the noble old sport of fox-hunting; then, with a few more expressions of regard, and a hint about Coutts & Co., if I wanted cash, his characteristic letter closed, and just when folding it, I detected Master Phil Caradoc surreptitiously placing Winny's cigar case very near his bushy moustache--about to kiss it, in fact. He grew very red, and looked a little provoked. "So that is all Sir Madoc's news?" said he. "All--a dear old fellow." "To-morrow is Sunday, when we shall have the chaplain at the drum-head, and be confessing that we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to have done, while the whistling dicks are bursting and the shot booming, as the Ruskies seek to have a quiet shy at our hollow square, and the Naval Brigade, with their long 'Lancasters,' are making, as usual, the devil's own row against the Redan--so till then, adieu!" he added, adopting a bantering tone, as men will at times, when ashamed of having exhibited any emotion or weakness. Not long after this, with my company, I had to escort to Balaclava, and to guard for some days, till embarked, some Russian prisoners, who had been taken by the Turks in an affair between Kamara and the Tchernaya, and who were afterwards transmitted to Lewes in Sussex; and I had a little opportunity afforded me for studying their character and composition; and brave though these men undoubtedly were, I felt something of pity and contempt for them; nor was I mistaken, though Prince Dolgorouki maintains, in _La Vérité sur la Russie_, that a Muscovite alone can write on a Russian subject. A British soldier never forgets that he is a citizen and a free-born man; but to the Russian these terms are as untranslatable as that of _slave_ into the Celtic. In the empire, when fresh levies are wanted, the chief of each village makes a selection; the wretched serfs have then one side of the head shaved, to prevent desertion, and, farther still, are manacled and marched like felons to the headquarters of their regiment. There they are stripped, bathed--rather a necessary ceremony--and deprived of all they may possess, save the brass crosses and medals which are chained round their neck--the holy amulet of the Russian soldier, and spared to him as the only consolation of his miserable existence. He is docile, submissive, and gallant, but supple, subservient, and cunning, though his gallantry and courage are the result of dull insensibility, tinged with ferocity rather than moral force. The recruit bemoans the loss of his beard, and carefully preserves it that it may be buried with him, as an offering to St. Nicholas, who would not admit him into heaven without it. Once enrolled--we cannot say _enlisted_--he makes a solemn vow never to desert the colours of his regiment, each of which has its own _artel_ or treasury, its own chaplain, sacred banners, and relics. The pay of these warriors averages about a halfpenny English per diem. Their food is of the most wretched description, and it is known that when the troops of Suwarrow served in the memorable campaign of Italy, they devoured with keen relish the soap and candles wherever they went; but many of the Russian battalions, and even the Cossack corps, have vocal companies that sing on the march, or at a halt, where they form themselves into a circle, in the centre of which stands the principal singer or leader. And thus I heard some of these poor fellows sing, when I halted them outside Balaclava, at a place where, as I remember, there lay a solitary grave--that probably of a Frenchman, as it was marked by a cross, had a wreath of immortelles upon it, and was inscribed--alas for the superstitions of the poor human heart!--"the last tribute of love." The snow and the rain had frittered it nearly away. Among my prisoners were four officers--dandies who actually wore glazed boots, and were vain of their little hands and feet. I was more than usually attentive to them for the sake of Valerie, and as they certainly seemed--whatever the rank and file might be--thorough gentlemen. One knew Volhonski, and all seemed to know Valerie, and had probably danced--perhaps flirted--with her, for they had met at balls in St. Petersburg. All knew Tolstoff, and laughed at him; but none could tell me whether or not she and that northern bear were as yet "one flesh," or married in _facie ecclesia_. CHAPTER LIV.--THE ASSAULT. It is the morning of Saturday, the 8th September, 1855. For a year now the allied forces have been before Sebastopol; but the flag of St. Andrew is still flying in defiance upon its forts, and on this memorable morning the columns of attack are forming for the great assault. In the preceding June, amid the din of the ceaseless cannonade, poor Lord Raglan had passed away to a quieter world; and the picturesque Sardinians, with their green uniforms, billycock hats, and Bersaglieri plumes--each private a species of _Fra Diavolo_--had come to aid us in the reduction of this place, the Gibraltar of the Euxine. It was a cheerless morning. From the sea, a biting wind swept over the land; clouds of white dust and dusky-brown smoke, that came from more than one blazing street and burning ship--among the latter was a two-decker, fired by the French rockets--rose high above the green spires and batteries of Sebastopol, and overhung it like a sombre pall, while shorn of its rays the sun resembled a huge red globe hung in mid-air above us. Gradually it seemed to fade out altogether, and then the whole sky became of a dull, leaden, and wintry gray. By this time our epaulettes had entirely disappeared, and our uniforms were hopeless rags; in some instances eked out by plain clothes, or whatever one could pick up; and the government contractors had such vague ideas of the dimensions of the human foot, that some of the boots issued to the soldiers would not have fitted a child of ten years old, and as they dared not throw away her Majesty's property, many men went bare-footed, with their boots dangling from their knapsack or waist-belt. "In our present toggery we may meet the Russians," said Dyneley, our adjutant; "but I should scarcely like to figure in them before the girls at Winchester, in 'the Row,' or at the windows of 'the Rag.'" In great masses, 30,000 Frenchmen were forming to assault the Malakoff, with 5,000 Sardinians as supports. A long line of cavalry--Hussars with their braided dolmans, Lancers with their fluttering banneroles, Dragoons with glittering helmets, and all with loaded carbine on thigh, had been, from an early hour, thrown to the front, to form a cordon of sentinels, to prevent straggling; while a similar line was formed in our rear to keep back idlers from Balaclava; yet to obtain glimpses of the impending attack, groups of red-fezzed Turks, of picturesque-looking Eupatorians, and fur-capped Tartars, began to cluster on every green knoll at a safe distance, where, in their excitement, they jabbered and gesticulated in a manner most unusual for people so generally placid and stolid. At half-past eleven A.M. the pipes of the Highland Brigade were heard, as it marched in from Kamara, and got into position in reserve of the right attack; and the fine appearance of the men of those mountains--"the backbone of Britain," as Pope Sylvester called them of old--elicited a hearty cheer from the Royal Welsh as they defiled past, with all their black plumes and striped tartans waving in the biting wind. During all the preceding day, the batteries had thundered in salvoes against Sebastopol; and hence vast gaps were now visible in the streets and principal edifices, most of which were half hidden in lurid sheets of fire; and by the bridge of boats that lay between the north and south side, thousands of fugitives, laden with their goods and household lares, their children, sick, and aged, had been seen to pour so long as light remained. Until the French began to move, the eyes of all in our division were turned on our famous point of attack--the Redan; and I may inform the