Supposing her to have left Walcot Park, as her letter informed me, I rode in that direction no more; and though I knew the family address in London, I could neither write in exculpation of myself nor procure leave to follow her. All furloughs were now forbidden or withdrawn, as the new detachments for the East expected hourly the order to depart. Thus I passed my days pretty much as one may do those which precede or follow a funeral. I performed all my military duties, went to mess, rose and retired to bed, mechanically, my mind occupied by one thought--the anxious longing to do something by which to clear myself and regain Estelle; and feeling in Winchester Barracks somewhat as Ixion might have felt on his fabled wheel, or the son of Clymene on his rock; and so I writhed under the false position in which another's art and malice had placed me; writhed aimlessly and fruitlessly, save that, although tied up by my promise of secrecy to Estelle, I had written a full and candid detail of the whole affair to Sir Madoc, and entreated his good offices for me. Vainly did Price, little Tom Clavell (the 19th depôt had come in), Raymond Mostyn of the Rifles, and other friends say, when noticing my preoccupation, "Come, old fellow, rouse yourself; don't mope. Are you game for pool to-day?"
"Pool with a recently-broken arm!" I would reply.
"True--I forgot. Well, let us take Mostyn's drag to Southampton to-morrow--it is Sunday, no drill going--cross to the Isle of Wight, dine at the hotel, and with our field-glasses--the binoculars--see the girls bathing at Freshwater."
"I don't approve of gentlemen overlooking ladies bathing."
"What the deuce do you approve of?"
"Being let alone, Price; as the girls say to you, I suspect."
"Not always--not always, old fellow," replied Hugh, with a very self-satisfied smile, as he caressed and curled his fair moustache.
"Nor the married ones either," added Mostyn, a tall showy officer in a braided green patrol jacket; "for when you were in North Wales, Hardinge, our friend Price got into a precious mess with a selfish old sposo, who thought he should keep his pretty wife all to himself, or at least from flirting with a redcoat."
"Perhaps he was less irritated by the rifle green."
"Come with me into the city," urged Clavell; "the Dean's lady gives a kettledrum before mess, and I can take a friend."
"Parish scandal, cathedral-town gossip, coffee, ices, and Italian confectionery. Thanks, Tom, no."
"I have met some very pretty girls there," retorted Clavell, "and it is great fun to lean over their chairs and see them look up at one over their fans shyly, half-laughing at, and half-approving of, the balderdash poured into their ears."
"A sensible way of winning favour and spending time."
"I vote for the Isle of Wight," continued Clavell; "I saw la belle Cressingham taking a header there the other day in splendid style. Only fancy that high-born creature taking a regular header!"
"Whodid you say?" said I, turning so suddenly that little Tom was startled, and let the glass drop from his eye.
"Lady Estelle Cressingham; you remember her of course. She had on a most becoming bathing-costume; I could make that out with my glass from the cliffs."
"Clavell, she is in London," said I, coldly; "and moreover is unlikely to indulge in headers, as she can't swim."
"I know better, excuse me," said Mostyn, who, I knew, had dined but lately at Walcot Park; "she told me that she had been recently bathing, and had studied at the Ecole de Natation on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris."
"It is more than she ever told me," thought I, as my mind reverted to our terrible adventure. I became silent and perplexed, and covertly looked with rather sad envy on the handsome and unthinking Mostyn, who had enjoyed the pleasure of seeing and talking to Estelle since I had done so.
"It is difficult," says David Hume, "for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore I will beshort;" and having much to narrate, I feel compelled to follow the example of the Scottish historian, for events now came thick and fast.
I had barely got rid of my well-meaning comrades, and was relapsing into gloomy reverie in my little room, when I heard voices, and heavy footsteps ascending the wooden stair that led thereto. Some one was laughing, and talking to Evans in Welsh; till the latter threw open the door, and, with a military salute, ushered in Sir Madoc Lloyd, looking just as I had seen him last, save that the moors had embrowned him, in his riding-coat, white-corded breeches, and yellow-topped boots, and whip in hand, for his horse was in the barrack yard.
"Welcome, Sir Madoc.--That will do, Evans; be at hand when I ring.--So kind of you, this; so like you!" I exclaimed.
"Not at all, not at all, Harry. So these are your quarters? Plain and undecorated, certainly; boots, bottles, boxes, a coal-scuttle--her Majesty's property by the look of it--a sword and camp-bed; humble splendour for the suitor of an earl's daughter, and the rival of a rich viscount. Ah, you sly dog, you devilish sly dog!" he added, as he seated himself on the edge of the table, winked portentously, and poked me under the small ribs with the shank of his hunting-whip, "I suspected that something of this kind would follow that aquatic excursion of yours; and Winifred says she always knew of it."
"Winifred--Miss Lloyd!" said I, nervously.
"Why didn't you speak tome, and consult with me, about the matter when at Craigaderyn? I am certain that I should have made all square with the Countess. Egad, Harry, I will back you to any amount, for the sake of those that are dead and gone," he added, shaking my hand warmly, while his eyes glistened under the shaggy dark brows that in hue contrasted so strongly with the whiteness of his silky hair.
"You got my letter, Sir Madoc?"
"Yes, and I am here in consequence. It cut short my shooting, though."
"I am so sorry--"
"Tush; no apologies. The season opened gloriously; but I missed you sorely, Harry, when tramping alone over turnip fields, through miles of beans and yellow stubble, though I had some jolly days of it down in South Wales. Lady Naseby--
"She knows nothing of the secret engagement?" said I, hurriedly and anxiously.
"Nothing as yet."
"As yet! Must she be told?"
"Of course; but I shall make all that right, by-and-by. She believes now in the real character of her attaché, Mr. Guilfoyle, who intruded himself among us, and who has disappeared. Your perfect innocence has been proved alike to her and her daughter, and now you may win at a canter. The photo of you in the locket was abstracted from Winifred's album, and hashername written on the back of it. You are to ride over with me to Walcot Park, where I have left Winifred, as she refused flatly to come to Winchester--why, I know not. She will afford you an opportunity of slipping the ring again on your fair one's finger, and doing anything else that may suggest itself at such a time--you comprehend, eh? Winny bluntly asked Lady Naseby's permission to invite you, as you were so soon to leave England."
"The dear girl! God bless her!"
"So say I. Lady Naseby said at first that though you had been maligned, there had also been acontretempsof which even her French maid was cognisant; that she hated allcontretempsand so forth; but Winny--you know how sweet the girl is, and how irresistible--carried her point, so you spend this evening there. Tell Evans to have your nag ready within the hour. That fellow is not forgetting his mother-tongue among the Sassenachs. He comes from our namesake's place,Dolwrheiddiog, 'the meadow of the salmon.' I know it well."
"If I could but meet Guilfoyle--" I was beginning.
"Forget him. I cannot comprehend how he found such favour in the sight of Lady Naseby; but when I called him a thoroughbred rascal, she quietly fanned herself, and fondling her beastly little cur said, 'My dear Sir Madoc, this teaches us how careful we ought to be in choosing our acquaintance, and how little we really know as to the true character, the inner life and habits of our nearest friends. But our mutual legal adviser Mr. Sharpus always spoke of Mr. Guilfoyle as a man of the greatest probity, and of excellent means.' 'Probably,' said I; 'but I never liked that fellow Sharpus; he always looked like a man who has done something of which he is ashamed, and that is not the usual expression of a legal face.'"
So poor Winifred Lloyd had been my chief good angel; yetshewas the last whom I should have chosen as ambassadress in a love affair of mine. She was a volunteer in the matter, and a most friendly one to boot. Were this a novel, and not "an owre true tale," I think I should have loved Winny; for "how comes it," asks a writer, "that the heroes of novels seem to have in general a bad taste by their choice of wives? The unsuccessful lady is the one we should have preferred. Rebecca is infinitely more calculated to interest than Rowena."
My heart was brimming with joy, and with gratitude to Sir Madoc and his elder daughter; the cloud that overhung me had been exhaled in sunshine, and all again was happiness. I was about to pour forth my thanks to my good old friend, whose beaming and rubicund face was as bright as it could be with pleasure, when there came a sharp single knock on the door of my room.
"Come in!" said I, mechanically.
My visitor was the sergeant-major of the dépôt battalion, a tall thin old fellow who had burned powder at Burmah and Cabul, and who instantly raised his hand to his forage-cap, saying,
"Beg pardon, sir; the adjutant's compliments--the route has just come for your draft of the Royal Welsh, and all the others, for the East."
"Is this certain!" asked Sir Madoc, hurriedly.
"Quite, sir; it will be in orders this evening. They all embark to-morrow at midday."
"Where?" asked I.
"At Southampton, as usual. The first bugle will sound afterréveilto-morrow."
The door closed on my formal visitor, who left me a little bewildered by this sudden sequel to the visit of Sir Madoc, who wrung my hand warmly and said,
"Heaven bless and protect you, Harry! I feel for you like a son of my own going forth in this most useless war. And so we are actually to lose you, and so soon, too!"
"But only for a little time, I hope, Sir Madoc," said I, cheerfully, thinking more of my early meeting with Estelle than the long separation the morrow must inevitably bring about. I ordered Evans to pack up and prepare everything, to leave my P.P.C. cards with a few persons I named; and avoiding Price, Clavell, Mostyn, and others, rode with Sir Madoc towards Walcot Park, as my mind somehow foreboded, amid all my joy and excitement, for what I feared would be thelasttime.
Close to, and yet quietly secluded from, the mighty tide of busy humanity that daily surges to and fro between the Bank and the Mansion House, all up Cheapside and Cornhill, in a small dark court off the latter, was the office of Messrs. Sharpus and Juggles, solicitors. The brick edifice towered to the height of many stories; a score of names appeared on each side of the doorway in large letters; and many long dark passages and intricate stairs led to the two dingy rooms where those human spiders sat and spun the webs and meshes of the law. Their dens had a damp and mouldy odour; no ray from heaven ever fell into them, but a cold gray reflected light came from the white encaustic tiles, with which the opposite wall of the court was faced for that purpose; and of that borrowed light even the lower room, where their half-starved clerks worked into the still hours of the night--a veritable cave of Trophonius, if one might judge by their sad, seedy, and dejected appearance--was deprived from its situation; and in all these courts and chambers gas was burned daily in those terrible seasons when the London fogs assume somewhat the solidity and hue of pea-soup. Mr. Sharpus sat in his private room, surrounded by boxes of wood or japanned tin and ticketed dockets of papers, that were mouldy and dirty--as their contents too probably were--while fly-blown prospectuses, plans, and advertisements of lands, houses, and messuages for sale, and so forth, covered the discoloured walls.
Juggles, his partner, was a suave, slimy, and meekly-mannered man, "with the eye of a serpent and the voice of a dove;" but our present business is with the former, who was a thin round-shouldered individual, with a cold keen face, an impending forehead, sunken dark gray eyes, the expression of which varied between cunning and solemnity, pride, vulgar assurance, and occasionally restlessness. Shrewd of head and stony of heart, he was not quite the kind of man at whose mercy one would wish to be. He had a hard-worked and sometimes worried aspect; but now an abject white fear, with an unmistakably hunted expression, came over his face, when one of the clerks from the lower den ushered in, without much ceremony, Mr. Guilfoyle, who had in his hand a sporting paper, which he was reading as he entered.
"Youhere again?" exclaimed Sharpus, laying down his pen, and carefully closing the door.
"Yes, by Jove, again!" replied Guilfoyle, with barely a nod, and seating himself with his hat on.
"So soon!" groaned Sharpus; and reseating himself, he eyed, with an expression of haggard hate, Guilfoyle, who continued to read from the paper hurriedly, excitedly, and half aloud, some report of a steeplechase.
"The Devil--threw his rider--remounted; at the next fence Raglan took the lead, followed by Fairy and Beauty, and Beau, the Devil lying next; last fence but one taken by the quintette almost simultaneously, when Raglan, Beauty, and Beau came away together, the first-named winning a very fine race by half a length--Beauty being third, and close upon Beau, but Fairy was nowhere. D--nation! there is a pot of money gone, or not won, which amounts to the same thing in the end!" and crushing up the paper, he threw it on the writing-table of Sharpus.
"Wanting more money?" said the latter, in a hollow voice.
"Precisely so; out at the elbows--in low water--phrase it as you will. I have sold even my horse at last," replied the other, folding his arms, and regarding the lawyer mockingly.
"And the ring given you by--by the King of Bavaria?" said Sharpus, with a sickly smile.
"I retain but a paste imitation of that remarkable brilliant; and that I may present you as a mark of my regard and esteem."
"I thought you had made something by a mercantile transaction, as you phrased it, when last on the Continent?"
"So I did; 'the mercantile transaction' being nothing less than breaking the bank at Homburg, by steadily and successfully backing the red, and sending home all those who came for wool most decidedlyshorn."
"You should have saved some of those ill-gotten gains for future contingencies," said Sharpus.
"How much easier it is to advise and to speculate than to act with care and decision!" sneered Guilfoyle.
"I pity your poor wife," said the lawyer, sincerely enough.
"She has no documentary proof that she is such," replied Guilfoyle, angrily. "Pshaw! what is pity? an emotion that is often at war with reason and with sense, too; for a handsome face or a well-turned ankle may make us pity the most undeserving object."
The lawyer sighed, and at that moment sincerely pitied himself; for it had chanced that, in earlier years, an intimacy with Guilfoyle led to the latter discovering that which gave him such absolute power as to reduce him--Sharpus--to be his very slave. This was nothing less than theforgeryof a bill in the name of Guilfoyle; who, before relinquishing the privilege of prosecution, on retiring the document, had obtained a complete holograph confession of the act, which he now retained as a wrench for money, and held over the head of Sharpus, thereby compelling him to act as he pleased. After a minute's silence, during which the two men had been surveying each other, the one with hate and fear, the other with malignant triumph, Guilfoyle said, "I did Lady Naseby, as you know, a service at Berlin, when at very low water; being seen with her won me credit, which I failed not to turn to advantage. I followed her and her daughter through all Germany--at Ems, Gerolstein, Baden, and then to Wales, where I was in clover at Craigaderyn. I was a fool to fly my hawks at game so high as the peerage; and I feel sure it was that beast of a fellow Hardinge, of the Royal Welsh, who blew the gaff upon me, and prevented me from entering stakes, as I intended to do, for one of the daughters of that horse-and-cow-breeding old Welsh baronet; and they are, bar one, the handsomest girls in England."
"And that one?"
"Is Lady Estelle Cressingham."
Even the ghastly lawyer smiled at his profound assurance.
"Have you no remorse when you think of Miss Franklin?"
"No more than you have, when you have sucked a client dry, and leave him to die in the streets," replied Guilfoyle, with his strange dry mocking laugh; "remorse is the word for a fool--the unpunished crime, I have read somewhere, is never regretted. Men mourn the consequences, but never the sin or a crime itself. As for Hardinge, d--n him!" he added, grinding his teeth; "I thought to put a spoke in his wheel, by passing off Georgette as his wife, but Taffy came to his aid, and the true story was told; and yet, do you know, there were times when I played my cards exceedingly well with the Cressinghams. Besides, you always represented me to be a man of fortune."
"I have invariably done so," groaned Sharpus.
"And have stumped out pretty well to maintain the story, while hinting of--"
"Coal-mines in Labuan, shares in others in Mexico, and all manner of things, to account for the sums wrung from me--from my wife and children. But, God help me, I can do no more!"
"Bah! what do they or you want with that villa at Hampstead? But you are a good fellow, Sharpus; and, thanks to your assistance, I worked the oracle pretty well at Walcot Park for Mr. Henry Hardinge."
"Against him, you mean?"
"Of course; but, unluckily, our story wouldn't stand testing."
"Could you expect it to do so?"
"But I put a hitch in his gallop there, anyhow. By Jove, I was a great fool not to make love to the old woman, instead of her daughter."
"Meaning Lady Naseby?" said Sharpus, with surprise.
"So Burke and Debrett name her. She is just at that age--twice her daughter's--when the soft sex become remarkably soft indeed, and apt to make fools of themselves."
"She would indeed have been one had she listened to you."
"Thanks, old tape-and-parchment; I did not come here for a character, but to show you the state of my cash-book."
Again the lawyer groaned, and Guilfoyle laughed louder than ever. Delight to have a lawyer under his heel rendered him merciless; but even a worm will turn, so Sharpus said sternly, "How have you lived since the last remittance--extortion?"
"Call it as you will," replied the other, putting his glass in his eye, and smilingly switching his leg with his cane; "I have lived as most men do who live by their wits, and the follies, or it may be thecrimes--O, you wince!--of others; meeting debts and emergencies as they come, content with the peace or action of the present, and never regretting the past, or fearing the future! With the help of an ace, king, and queen, when my betting-book or a stroke of billiards failed me, and with your great kindness, my dear old Sharpus, I have, till now, always kept my funds far above zero."
"Your life is a great sham--a very labyrinth of deceit!" exclaimed the lawyer, furiously.
"And yours, friend Sharpus?"
"Is spent in slaving for my family, and endeavouring to atone for, or to buy the concealment of, one great error--the error that made you--ay, men such as you--my master!"
Guilfoyle laughed heartily, and said,
"I require 600l. instantly!"
"Not a penny--not another penny!"
"We shall see. Sharpus, though a bad lot, I know that you are not the utter rogue that most of your profession are--"
"Leave my office, scoundrel, or I shall kill you!" said Sharpus, in a low voice of concentrated passion, as he became deadly pale, and a dangerous white gleam came into his stealthy restless eyes, which seemed to search in vain for a weapon.
"If I leave your office it will be for the purpose of laying before the nearest police-magistrate a certain document you may remember to have written; and I am so loth to kill the goose that lays my golden eggs," continued the other, in his quiet mocking tone. "But remember, Mr. Sharpus," he added, in a lofty and bullying manner, as he grasped the shoulder of the listener, "that the forgery of a document is not deemed an error in legal practice here, as in Spain or Scotland, but acrimemeriting penal servitude; and shall I tell you what that means--you, who have now wealth, ease, position, a handsome wife, and several children? You will be torn from all these for ever, as a felon!"
Drops of perspiration poured over the poor wretch's temples as his tormentor continued: "Think of being in Millbank, beside the muggy Thames, and the years that would find you there, a bondsman and a slave, who for the least misconduct would be lashed like a faulty hound, and ironed in a blackhole. Hard work, aggravated by the consciousness of infamy; clad in the gray livery of disgrace; your name effaced from the Law List, and for it substituted the letter or number on your prison garb!"
"For God's sake, hush!" implored the wretched lawyer, in terror, lest the speaker's voice might reach the room of Juggles, or the ears of the clerks below; "hush, and I shall do all you wish."
"Come--that is acting like a reasonable being."
"Will 200l. do you--this time?"
"Two hundred devils! I want 600l. at least."
"I shall be ruined with my partner; he must know ere long where all these moneys have gone."
"That is nothing to me; tell him if you dare."
Sharpus burst into tears, and said, piteously,
"At present I can give but 200l.--the rest shall follow."
"Well, you can do something else for me, and I may trouble you no more."
"How?" asked Sharpus, eagerly and incredulously, with a dreary and bewildered air.
"Get me some employment, where there is little to do; I hate brain-work."
"Employment!--where? with whom?"
"Civil or military, I care not which."
"Military! impossible--too old. Stay, I have it!" exclaimed the lawyer; "you have been in the Militia, I know."
"Three months in the Royal Diddlesex."
"What say you to an appointment in Lord Aberdeen's new Land Transport Corps? It will be easily got--a handsome uniform and greatéclat, though the officers are nearly all taken from the ranks. The duties are simple enough--conveyance of baggage, and carrying off the woundedafteran action."
"Not to bury the dead?--ugly work that."
"No, no."
"By Jove, I'll go!" he exclaimed, as Sharpus filled up the cheque.
Sharpus strove in vain to conceal his delight.
"I have of course done a few things which would hardly bear the 'light of the world's bull's-eye' turned upon them, but the Horse Guards know nothing of them. You have noble and powerful clients, and can do this easily for me. Bravo!" And they actually shook hands over the matter, as if over a bargain.
Sharpus lost no time in using the necessary influence, and--though not exactly a cadet after Mr. Cardwell's heart--this commission was decidedly one without purchase; and on the strength of having been once in the boasted constitutional force, "Henry Hawkesby Guilfoyle, gent.,lateLieutenant, Diddlesex Militia," appeared in theGazetteere long, as one of twenty-four comets of the long-since disbanded Land Transport Corps, for service in the Crimea.
As Sir Madoc and I proceeded along the to me well-known Whitchurch road, I asked myself mentally, could it really be that I was again looking with farewell eyes on all this fair English scenery, and perhaps for the last time; for our departure to the seat of war, where we were to be face to face and foot to foot with an enemy, was very different from other voyages to a peaceful British colony? Now, varied by autumnal tints, brown, golden, or orange, I saw the long and shady lane where Estelle had last seen me, and near it the low churchyard wall, where our evil genius had rent away the locket from his wife. Sir Madoc's eyes were turned chiefly to the tawny stubble-fields, and he sighed with regret, as he saw the brown coveys of partridges whirring up, that he had not his patent breech-loader in lieu of a hunting-whip.
"Estelle--Estelle!" thought I. "How many temptations in mighty London, and in the country, too--in Brighton, that other London by the sea, and wherever she may go--will beset one so noble and so beautiful--allurements that may teach her to forget and banish from her memory the poor Fusileer subaltern, to whom she seems as the centre of the universe!"
The evening was a lovely one, and the scenery was beautiful. Chestnuts and oaks were, at every turn of the way we rode, forming natural arches and avenues, beyond which were pleasant glimpses of quaint cottages, whose walls and roofs were nearly hidden by masses of roses and honeysuckle; short square village spires and ivy-covered parsonages; widespreading pastures, where the sleepy cattle browsed amid purple clover and golden cowslips, with the glory of the ruddy sunset falling aslant upon them, while the ambient air was full of earthy and leafy fragrance; for many fallen leaves, the earliest spoil of autumn, lay with bursting cones in cool and sunless dells, or by the wayside, where the fern and foxglove mingled under the old thick hedgerows. And so I was looking, as I have said, on all this peaceful scene, perhaps for thelasttime; yet there was no sadness in my heart, for the revulsion or change of feeling, from the gloom and tumultuous anxiety of many, many days past, and even of that morning, was great indeed to me, especially when we cantered through the handsome iron gates of Walcot Park, the once suspicious keeper of which gave me an unmistakable glance of recognition. I felt like one in a dream as I threw my reins to a servant, and was led upstairs by Sir Madoc.
"Where is Lady Estelle?" he asked of another valet, to whom I gave my sword in the hall.
"In the front drawing-room."
"Alone?"
"I think so, sir."
"All right, Harry!"
But he suddenly affected to remember that he had something to say to his own groom, and as he turned back, I was ushered into the long and stately apartment. I had a dreamy sense of being amid many buhl tables and glass shades, much drapery, and several mirrors that reproduced everything, amid which I saw Estelle advancing cordially to meet me. She had a bright smile in her face, and held out both her hands; but I could scarcely speak.
"Estelle," I whispered, "joy--joy! It is indeed joy, to see you once again!"
"Then you quite forgive me, dearest Harry?"
"Forgive you? O Estelle!" I exclaimed, in a low and passionate voice, as she turned up her adorable face to meet mine half-way.
I knew from past experience that caresses from her meant much more than they did from most women; for Estelle, though proud and reticent, and apparently cold and calm, was reluctant to give and to accept them; so now I felt all the truth and sincerity of this reunion. "A lovers' quarrel is but love renewed;" we, however, had not quarrelled, but been cruelly wrenched asunder by the art and cunning of another.
"Are you on duty, Mr. Hardinge?" said a voice; and from a window where she had been sitting, quite unseen and unnoticed by me, Winny Lloyd came forth, looking, as I thought, a little paler and sadder than when I had seen her last at Craigaderyn Court.
"What makes you think I am on duty, dear Miss Lloyd?--or rather let me say, my dear, dear good friend and guardian angel Winifred, to whose intercession I owe all the happiness of a time like this," said I, pressing her hand caressingly between both of mine.
"Because you are in undress uniform, of course," said she, almost petulantly.
"I can wear no other costume now; we bid good-bye to mufti, the sable livery of civilisation, to-morrow."
"How?"
"We march at daybreak."
"For the East?"
"Yes; for the East, at last."
"So soon?" exclaimed both girls at once.
"The order came within an hour or little more, when Sir Madoc was with me."
The eyes of the girls were full of sudden tears, and they gazed on me with an honest emotion of tenderness and real interest, that, considering the rare beauty and high position of both, were alike flattering and bewildering; and I felt that this was one of those moments when, to be a soldier or a sailor on the eve of departure to the seat of war, was indeed worth something.
And Winifred, the impulsive Welsh fairy, so fresh-hearted, so simple in her motives, and sweet in her disposition, uttered something very like a little sob in her slender white throat, adding apologetically to Estelle, "We have been such old friends, Harry Hardinge and I."
"You never wrote to me, Estelle," said I, softly, yet reproachfully.
"I dared not; you remember our arrangement," she replied, with hesitation.
"Nor was I invited here, like Mostyn, Clavell, and others; thus I had no opportunity of--"
"I had no control, darling Harry, over mamma's dinner-list: I could but suggest to mamma; and then there was that terrible story. But here comes mamma!"
And turning, I found myself face to face with the tall, handsome, and stately Countess of Naseby, whom--nathless her chilling manner and lofty presence--I hoped yet to hail as a very creditable mother-in-law.
I was on the eve of departure, to go where glory waited me. I might cross her exclusive path no more; so my Lady Naseby seemed quite disposed to bury the hatchet, and received me with that which was--for her--unusual kindness, and anenmpressementwhich made the eyes of her daughter to sparkle with pleasure. A late dinner made a sad hole in the time I had hoped to spend with Estelle; yet I had the pleasure of sitting beside her--a pleasure that was clouded by the conviction that my presence would soon be imperatively requisite at the barracks, where so much was to be done ere morning, and that I should be compelled to abridge even this, my farewell visit, to pleasant Walcot Park, and all who were there. Fortunately, Lady Naseby went quietly to sleep in her boudoir after dinner, with Tiny on her lap; Sir Madoc obligingly went into the library to write; and Winifred suggested a turn in the conservatory, where for a little time she adroitly left Estelle and me together.
There is no utility in dwelling on how we sealed our reconciliation and renewed our troth, when once more I placed my ring upon her finger; or in rehearsing the soft and tender words--perhaps (O heaven!) the "twaddle"--we spoke for an indescribable few minutes, and how each said to the other that our apparent separation had been as a living death. But now all that misery was over; we loved each other more than ever, and the grave alone could part us finally; words, the prompting of the heart, came readily, till our emotions became too deep, and she agreed that I should write to her boldly, "as ere long mamma, through good Sir Madoc, must know all." And so we leaned against a great flower-stand, almost hidden by gorgeous azaleas, our hands tightly clasped in each other, eyes looking fondly into eyes, and feeling that the depth of our tenderness formed for us one of those few-and-far-between portions of existence when time seems to stand still, when silence is made eloquent by the beatings of the heart, when we almost forget we are mortal, and feel as if earth had become heaven. From this species of happy trance we were roughly roused by the crash of a great majolica vase containing a giant cactus, and a voice exclaiming querulously,
"God bless my soul!--Pardon me; I did not know any one was here."
"The devil you didn't!" was my blunt rejoinder.
And there, with gold glasses on his long aristocratic nose, and in his richly-tasselledrobe de chamberand embroidered slippers, stood my Lord Pottersleigh, whom I knew not to be at Walcot Park, as he had been nursing his gout upstairs; and now I wished his lordship in a hotter climate than the quarters of the 2nd West India for his unwelcome interruption. Of what he had seen or what he thought I cared not a rush, so far ashewas concerned; and a few minutes later saw me, after a hurried farewell to all, with the pleasure of remembered kisses on my lips, and my heart full of mingled joy and sadness, triumph and prayerful hope for the perilous future, flying at full gallop back to Winchester.
"Weather bit your chain, and cast loose the topsails!" cried a hoarse voice, rousing me from a reverie into which I had fallen--one of those waking-dreams in which I am so apt to indulge.
By this time the quarter-boats had been hoisted in, and the anchor got up "reluctant from its oozy cave"--no slight matter in the great troopship Urgent--when there was a stiff breeze even under the lee of the Isle of Wight; and as her head pitched into the sea, the water rushed through the hawse-holes, and the chain cables surged in such a fashion as almost to start the windlass-barrel when it revolved beneath the strength of many sturdy arms, and tough, though bending, handspikes. Leaning over the taffrail, and looking at the dim outline of the coast of Hampshire from St. Helen's Roads, to which two tugs had brought us from the great tidal dock at Southampton to a temporary anchorage, and seeing Portsmouth, with its spires and shipping steeped in a golden evening haze, I recalled the events of the past bustling day--could it be that onlya dayhad passed?--since "the first bugle sounded afterréveil," and all our detachments, five in number, destined for the army of the East had paraded amid the gray light of dawn, in the barrack-square at Winchester, in heavy marching order, with packs, blankets, and kettles, and marched thence, their caps and muskets decked with laurel-leaves, the drums and fifes playing many a patriotic air, accompanied by the cheers of our comrades, and the tears of the girls who were left behind us--the girls "who doat upon the military."
Yet so had we marched--the drafts of the Scots Royals and Kentish Buffs, the two oldest regiments in the world, leading the way; then came those of the 7th Fusileers, my own of the Royal Welsh, the 46th, and the wild boys of the 88th bringing up the rear--to the railway station, when they were packed in carriages, eight file to each compartment--packed like sheep for the slaughter, yet all were singing merrily, their spirits high though their purses were empty, the last of their "clearings" having gone in the grog-shop and canteen over night; and there by that railway platform many saw the last they were to see, in this life, at least, of those they loved best on earth--the wife of her husband, the parent of the child--separated all, with the sound of the fatal drum in their ears, and the sadness of remembered kisses on their lips, or tear-wetted cheeks, till, with a shriek and a snort, the iron horse swept them away on his rapid journey. I caught the enthusiasm of the brave fellows around me. It was impossible not to do so; and yet, amid it all, there was the recollection of a woman's face, so pale and beautiful, as I had seen it last (when bidding a brief and formal farewell at the drawing-room door of Walcot Park), with her mouth half open, her sorrowful eyes full of earnestness, and the tender under lip clenched by the teeth above it, as if to restrain emotion and repress tears--the face of Estelle Cressingham.
My heart and thoughts were with her, while mechanically I had, as in duty bound, to see to the most prosaic wants of my detachment, consisting of one officer (Hugh Price), two sergeants, and forty rank and file of the Royal Welsh. To the latter were issued their coarse canvas fatigue-frocks. I had to see their muskets racked, their berths allotted, the messes and watches formed, the ammunition secured, and fifty other things required by her Majesty's regulations. All baggage not required for the voyage was sent below; and we heartily quizzed poor Price, whose bullock trunks were alleged to contain only cambric handkerchiefs, odd tiny kids, variously-tinted locks of hair, and faded ribbons. But strict orders were issued concerning smoking, as we had gunpowder in the lower hold; and a number of four-wheeled hospital-waggons for the Land Transport Corps, grimly suggestive, as each vehicle was divided into four compartments, fitted to receive four killed or wounded men, on commodious stretchers, with under-carriages, canopies, and medicine-chests.
Some of my brother officers were glad enough, glory apart, to be leaving Jews and lawyers, "shent. per shent." and legal roguery, behind them. One of the former tribe, having followed Raymond Mostyn concerning a bill discounted at only sixty per cent., came alongside, insisting that the balance should be taken half in cash, and half in a "warranted Correggio," with some villainous wine for the voyage, and some jewelry "for the girls at Malta;" but he was swamped in his boat under the counter, when the first mate unceremoniously cast loose the painter, and sent old Moses--"Mammon incarnate"--to leeward, shrieking and cursing in rage and terror. So my short reverie was completely broken now, as the great ship, with her deck crowded by soldiers in forage-caps and gray greatcoats, swayed round, and our skipper, an old man-o'-war lieutenant, from the poop continued his orders with that promptitude and tone of authority which are best learned under the long pennant.
"Make sail on her, my lads, with a will!" he cried. And the watch rushed to the coils at the belaying-pins, aided by the soldiers told off for deck duty. "Cast loose the topsails! hoist away, and sheet home!"
"Bear a hand, forecastle, there! cat and fish the anchor!" added the first mate; and in a few minutes, with a heavy head sea--the same sea where, by that shore now lessening in the distance, Danish Canute taught his servile Saxon courtiers the lesson of humility--we bore past Sandown Bay, with its old square fort of bluff King Harry's day upon its level beach: and Portsmouth's spires and Selsey Point sunk fast upon our lee, while our bugles were announcing sunset. And then something of sadness and silence seemed to steal over the once noisy groups, as they gathered by the starboard side, when we cleared the Isle of Wight. When the yards were squared, more sail was made on the Urgent; and before the north wind we stood down the Channel, and ere the same bugles sounded again, for all save the deck-watches to turn-in below, we were standing well over to the coast of France. The white cliffs had melted into the world of waters, and we had bidden a long good-night to dear old England. The twinkling light on St. Catharine's Point lingered long at the horizon, and was watched by many an eye, as Mostyn, Clavell, and I, with others, cigar in mouth, walked to and fro on the poop, surmising what awaited us in the land for which we were bound.
As yet the land forces of the Allies had not come to blows with the Russians; but the imperial fort and mole at Odessa (works constructed at vast cost and care by Catharine and Alexander) had been destroyed, and all their ships of war lying there had been burnt or sunk by the Anglo-French fleet. The Russians had taken and burned our war-steamer the Tiger, and cruelly bombarded Sinope. The Turks had driven them across the Danube, and defeated them at Giurgevo, but had lost a subsequent battle in Armenia. Napier had bombarded and destroyed the forts upon the Aland Isles in the Baltic; and we on board the Urgent, with many other successive drafts departing eastward, from every British port south of Aberdeen, were full of ardour and of hope to be in time to share in the landing that was to be made atlastupon the coast of the enemy, though no one knewwhere.