"Scarcely. Woman, you should be aware, is a privileged enigma."
"Well, I was about to say that, whatever happens, we must ever be dear friends, and think of each other kindly and tenderly, for the pleasant times that are past and gone."
"What can happen to make us otherwise?" she asked, in a strange voice.
"I--may be killed," said I, not knowing very well what to say or suggest; "so, while there is a chance of such a contingency, let us part kindly; not so coldly as this, dear Winifred; and kiss me ere I go."
Her lips, warm and tremulous, touched mine for an instant; but her eyes were sad and wild, and her poor little face grew ashy white as she hastened away, leaving me with Estelle, who was approaching through the long and shaded room; and when with her, Winifred Lloyd and the momentary emotion that had sprung up--emotion that I cared not and dared not _then_ to analyse--were utterly forgotten.
Our interview was a very silent one. We had barely time for a few words, and heavy on my heart as lead weighed the conviction that I had to part from her--my love so recently won, so firmly promised and affianced. I knew that the days of my sojourn at Winchester must be few now; and with the chances of war before me, and temptations and aristocratic ambition left behind with her, how dubious and how remote were the chances of our meeting again!
Moments there were when I felt blindly desperate, and with my arms round Estelle.
When returning, would she still love me, as Desdemona loved her Moor, for the dangers I had dared? The days of chivalry and romance have gone; but the "old, old story" yet remains to us, fresh as when first told in Eden.
"For life or death, for good or for evil, for weal or woe, darling Estelle, I leave my heart in your keeping!" said I, in a low passionate whisper; "in twelve months, perhaps, I may claim you as my wife."
"L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose," said she, quietly and tenderly. "I yet hope to see you, were it but for a day, at Walcot Park, ere you sail."
"Bless you for the hope your words give me!" said I, as Owen Gwyllim came to announce that the carriage was at the door, and to give me Lady Naseby's and Lord Pottersleigh's cards and farewell wishes. And from that moment all the rest of my leave-taking seemed purely mechanical; and not only Sir Madoc, his two daughters, and Estelle, were on the terrace of the mansion to bid me adieu, but all the hearty, hot-tempered, high-cheekboned old Welsh domestics, most of whom had known me since boyhood, were also there.
The impulsive Dora brought me my courier-bag, a flask filled with brandy, and dainty sandwiches cut and prepared by Winifred's own kind little hands (for in doing this for me she would trust neither the butler nor Mrs. Gwenny Davis the housekeeper), and then she held up her bright face to be kissed; but inspired by I know not what emotion of doubt or dread, I only touched with my lips the hands of Lady Estelle and Miss Lloyd. Both girls stood a little apart from each other, pale as death, tremulous with suppressed emotion, and with their lashes matted and their eyes filled with tears, that pride and the presence of others restrained from falling. They were calm externally, but their hearts were full of secret thoughts, to which I was long in getting the clue. In the eyes of Estelle there was that glance or expression of loving intensity which most men have seen _once_--it may be twice--in a woman's eye, and have never, never forgotten.
Sir Madoc's brown manly hand shook mine heartily, and he clapped me on the back.
"I hope to see you yet ere you leave England, my boy, and such hopes always take the sting from an adieu," said he, with a voice that quivered nevertheless. "Sorry you can't stay for the 1st of September--the partridges will be in splendid order; but there is shooting enough of another kind in the preserves you are going to."
"And may never come back from," was the comforting addendum of old Mrs. Davis, as she applied her black-silk apron to her eyes.
"Ah, Harry," said Sir Madoc, "you gave a smile so like your mother just now! She was handsome; but you will be never like her, were you as beautiful as Absalom."
"It is well that poor mamma can't hear all this," said Dora, laughing through her tears.
"Your dear mamma, my girl, was very fond of her and of him, too," said honest Sir Madoc; and then he whispered, "If ever you want cash, Harry, don't forget me, and Coutts and Co.--the dingy den in the Strand. Farewell--anwylbach!--good-bye!"
A few minutes more and all the tableau on the steps had passed away. I was bowling along the tall lime avenue and down the steep mountain road, up which Phil Caradoc and I had travelled but a few weeks before. How much had passed since _then!_ and how much was inevitably to pass ere I should again see these familiar scenes! What had I said, or left unsaid? What had I done, what had passed, or how was it, that as the train sped with me beyond brave old Chester, on and on, on and on, monotonously clanking, grinding, jarring, and occasionally shrieking, while intrenched among railway rugs, with a choice cigar between my teeth, and while I was verging into that pleasant frame of mind when soft and happy visions are born of the half-drowsy brain, lulled as it were by rapidity of motion and the sameness of recurring sounds--how was it, I say, that the strange, unfathomable expression I had seen in the soft pleading eyes of dear Winifred--distance was already making her "dear"--mingled in my memory with the smileless, grave, and tender farewell glance of my pale Estelle; and that the sweet innocent kiss of the former was remembered with sadness and delight?
I strove to analyse my ideas, and then thrust them from me, as I lowered the carriage window and looked forth upon the flying landscape and the starry night, and muttered,
"Poor Winny--God bless her! But _two loves for one heart_ will never, never do. I have been at Craigaderyn too long!"
And I pictured to myself the drawing-room there: Estelle, perhaps, at the piano to conceal her emotions; or listening, it might be, to the twaddle of old Pottersleigh. Winny gazing out upon the starlit terrace, trying to realise the prospect--as women proposed to will do--if she had married Phil Caradoc; or thinking of--heaven knows what! And old Sir Madoc in his arm-chair, and dreaming, while Dora nestled by his side, of the old times, and the boy--to wit, myself--he loved so well.
CHAPTER XX.-FEARS.
Caradoc and many other good fellows were gone eastward, and save Hugh Price and a newly-fledged ensign, I was the only officer with the depôt, and being senior had the command. The former had always some affair of the heart on the tapis; the latter was a mere boy, fresh from Harrow, so neither was companion for me. Back once more to the prosaic life of heavy drill and much useless duty in Winchester barracks, the picturesque and joyous past at Craigaderyn--after I had written a letter to Sir Madoc full of remembrances to the ladies-- seemed somewhat like a dream.
My engagement with Estelle--our rides, drives, and rambles by the wild green hills of Mynedd Hiraethrog; in the chase and long lime avenue; our chance meetings in the garden arbour; by the fountain, where the lilies floated and the gold fish shot to and fro; over all, that wild boat adventure, by which our lives were to be knit up as one in the future--seemed too like a dream, of which her ring on my finger alone remained to convince me of the reality, as no letters could pass between us--at least none from me to her. Thus I grew fond of courting solitude after the duties of the day were over, and I could fling sword, sash, and belt aside; and usually I quitted early the jollity of the battalion mess, that I might indulge in visions and conjure up bright fancies amid the gray smoke wreaths of a quiet cigar, in that humble bachelor's quarter already described; while the moonlight silvered the spires and red-tiled roofs of Winchester, and when all became still in the crowded barrack, after the tattoo-drums had beaten, and the notes of the last bugle had warned--like the Norman curfew of old--the extinction of all lights and fires.
I had seen many a drama and read many a romance; but now I seemed to be personally the hero of either one or other. Engaged to the daughter of an earl; but in _secret_, and unknown to all! And how or when was that engagement to end--to be brought to a successful issue? On these points my ideas were painfully vague and full of anxiety. Were we yet to meet--were it but for an hour--ere war separated us more completely, by sea as well as land? Returning, it might be mutilated and disfigured, should I still find her loving, tender, and true? and if I fell in action, how long might I hope to be remembered ere Estelle--But I could not with patience contemplate the chances of another replacing or supplanting me. Occasionally, as if to kill time, I was seized by fits of unwonted zeal, and found plenty of work to do, apart from parades, guards, sword-exercise, and revolver-pistol practice--for hourly recruits, many of whom could not speak a word of English, were coming in to replace those that had sailed with Phil Caradoc; and it is one of the essential parts of the duty of the officer commanding a regimental depôt to see after the arms, accoutrements, and clothing of his men; and also, that so far as drill goes, they are made perfect soldiers. Few or none of these recruits were natives of the counties outside Offa's Dyke; but when the news of the Alma came, and all England thrilled with the story of the uphill charge of the Royal Welsh, more than one London paper enviously spread the rumour, that our regiment was Cambrian only in name; till it was flatly contradicted by the colonel--but the story nearly gave hot peppery Sir Madoc a fit of apoplexy.