Under the Red Dragon. James GrantЧитать онлайн книгу.
old gentleman, who was the exact counterpart of our host, and whose conversation, as it evidently failed to amuse, bored her. Miss Lloyd was led by Caradoc, and Dora fell to my care. Of the other ladies I took little heed; neither did I much of the sumptuous dinner, which passed away as other dinners do, through all its courses, with entrées and relays of various wines, the serving up of the latter proving in one sense a nuisance, from the absurd breaks caused thereby in the conversation. The buzz of voices was pretty loud at times, for many of the guests were country gentlemen, hale and hearty old fellows some of them, who laughed with right good will, not caring whether to do so was good ton or not. But while listening to the lively prattle of Dora Lloyd, I could not refrain from glancing ever and anon to where Estelle Cressingham, looking so radiant, yet withal "so delicately white" in her complexion, her slender throat and dazzling shoulders, her thick dark hair and tiny ears, at which the diamond pendants sparkled, sat listening to her elderly bore, smiling assents from time to time out of pure complaisance, and toying with her fruit knife when the dessert came, her hands and arms seeming so perfect in form and colour, and on more than one occasion--when her mamma was engrossed by courteous old Sir Madoc, who could "talk peerage," and knew the quartering of arms better than the Garter King or Rouge Dragon--giving me a bright intelligent smile, that made my heart beat happily; all the more so that I had been afflicted by some painful suspicion of coldness in her first reception of me--a coldness rather deduced from her perfect self-possession--while I had been farther annoyed to find that her somewhat questionable admirer, Guilfoyle, was seated by her side, with a lady whose presence he almost ignored in his desire to be pleasing elsewhere. Yet, had it been otherwise, if anything might console a man for fancied coldness in the woman he loved, or for a partial separation from her by a few yards of mahogany, it should be the lively rattle of a lovely girl of eighteen; but while listening and replying to Dora, my thoughts and wishes were with another.
"I told you how it would be, Mr. Hardinge," whispered Dora; "that the staple conversation of the gentlemen, if it didn't run on the county pack, would be about horses and cattle, sheep, horned and South Down; or on the British Constitution, which must be a very patched invention, to judge by all they say of it."
I confessed inwardly that much of what went on around me was so provincial and local--the bishop's visitation, the--parish poor, crops and game, grouse and turnips--and proved such boredom that, but for the smiling girl beside me, with her waggish eyes and pretty ways, and the longing and hope to have more of the society of Lady Estelle, I could have wished myself back at the mess of the depôt battalion in Winchester. Yet this restlessness was ungrateful; for Craigaderyn was as much a home to me as if I had been a son of the house, and times there were when the girls, like their father, called me simply "Harry," by my Christian name.
The long and stately dining-room, like other parts of the house, was well hung with portraits. At one end was a full-length of Sir Madoc in his scarlet coat and yellow-topped boots, seated on his favourite bay mare, "Irish Jumper," with mane and reins in hand, a brass horn slung over his shoulder, and looking every inch like what he was--the M.F.H. of the county, trotting to cover. Opposite, of course, was his lady--it might almost have passed for a likeness of Winifred--done several years ago, her dress of puce velvet cut low to show her beautiful outline, but otherwise very full indeed, as she leaned in the approved fashion against a vase full of impossible flowers beside a column and draped curtain, in what seemed a windy and draughty staircase, a view of Snowdon in the distance. "Breed and blood," as Sir Madoc used to say, "in every line of her portrait, from the bridge of her nose to the heel of her slipper;" for she was a lineal descendant of y Marchog gwyllt o' Cae Hywel, or "the wild Knight of Caehowel," a circumstance he valued more than all her personal merits and goodness of heart.
Some of Dora's remarks about the family portraits elicited an occasional glance of reprehension from the Dowager of Naseby, who thought such relics or evidences of descent were not to be treated lightly. On my enquiring who that lady in the very low dress with the somewhat dishevelled hair was, I had for answer, "A great favourite of Charles II., Mr. Hardinge--an ancestress of ours. Papa knows her name. There was some lively scandal about her, of course. And that is her brother beside her--he in the rose-coloured doublet and black wig. He was killed in a duel about a young lady--run clean through the heart by one of the Wynnes of Llanrhaidr, at the Ring in Hyde Park."
"When men risked their lives so, love must have been very earnest in those days," said Lady Estelle.
"And very fearful," said the gentler Winny. "It is said the lady's name was engraved on the blade of the sword that slew him."
"A duel! How delightful to be the heroine of a duel!" exclaimed the volatile Dora.
"And who is that pretty woman in the sacque and puffed cap?" asked Caradoc, pointing to a brisk-looking dame in a long stomacher. She was well rouged, rather décolletée, had a roguish kissing-patch in the corner of her mouth, and looked very like Dora indeed.
"Papa's grandmother, who insisted on wearing a white rose when she was presented to the Elector at St. James's," replied Dora; "and her marriage to the heir of Craigaderyn is chronicled in the fashion of the Georgian era, by gossipping Mr. Sylvanus Urban, as that of 'Mistress Betty Temple, an agreeable and modest young lady with 50,000l. fortune, from the eastward of Temple Bar.' I don't think people were such tuft-hunters in those days as they are now. Do you think so, Mr. Guilfoyle? O, I am sure, that if all we read in novels is true, there must have been more romantic marriages and much more honest love long ago than we find in society now. What do you say to this, Estelle?"
But the fair Estelle only fanned herself, and replied by a languid smile, that somehow eluded when it might have fallen on me. So while we lingered over the dessert (the pineapples, peaches, grapes, and so forth being all the produce of Sir Madoc's own hothouses), Dora resumed:
"And so, poor Harry Hardinge, in a few weeks more you will be far away from us, and face to face with those odious Russians--in a real battle, perhaps. It is something terrible to think of! Ah, heavens, if you should be killed!" she added, as her smile certainly passed away for a moment.
"I don't think somehow there is very much danger of that--at least I can but hope--"
"Or wounded! If you should lose a leg--two legs perhaps--"
"He could scarcely lose more," said Mr. Guilfoyle.
"And come home with wooden ones!" she continued, lowering her voice. "You will look so funny! O, I could never love or marry a man with wooden stumps!"
"But," said I, a little irritated that she should see anything so very amusing in this supposed contingency, "I don't mean to marry you."
"Of course not--I know that. It is Winny, papa thinks--or is it Estelle Cressingham you prefer?"
Lowly and whispered though the heedless girl said this, it reached the ears of Lady Estelle, and caused her to grow if possible paler, while I felt my face suffused with scarlet; but luckily all now rose from the table, as the ladies, led by Winifred, filed back alone to the drawing-room; and I felt that Dora's too palpable hints must have done much to make or mar my cause--perhaps to gain me the enmity of both her sister and the Lady Estelle.
Sir Madoc assumed his daughter's place at the head of the table, and beckoned me to take his chair at the foot. Owen Gwyllim replenished the various decanters and the two great silver jugs of claret and burgundy, and the flow of conversation became a little louder in tone, and of course less reserved. I listened now with less patience to all that passed around me, in my anxiety to follow the ladies to the drawing-room. Every moment spent out of her presence seemed doubly long and doubly lost. The chances of the coming war--where our troops were to land, whether at Eupatoria or Perecop, or were to await an attack where they were literally rotting in the camp upon the Bulgarian shore; their prospects of success, the proposed bombardment of Cronstadt, the bewildering orders issued to our admirals, the inane weakness and pitiful vacillation, if not worse, of Lord Aberdeen's government, our total want of all preparation in the ambulance and commissariat services, even to the lack of sufficient shot, shell, and gunpowder--were all freely descanted on, and attacked, explained, or defended according to the politics or the views of those present; and Guilfoyle--who, on the strength