"Letter for you, sir--an English one."
"For me! how, at this hour?" I exclaimed, starting up.
"It came by the mail this morning, sir; but was in the bag for the 88th. The address is almost obliterated, as you see, so the 88th officers were tossing-up for it, when Mr. Mostyn--"
"Pshaw! give me the letter," said I, impatiently. "It is from Sir Madoc--_only_ Sir Madoc!" I added, with unconcealed disappointment; and in proportion as my countenance lowered, Phil's brightened with interest.
I tore open what appeared to be a pretty long letter.
"It seems to have a postscript," said Phil, lingering ere he went.
"Kindest regards to Caradoc from Winny and Dora."
"Is that all?"
"All that seems to refer to you, Phil."
Phil sighed, and said,
"Well, a letter is an uncommon luxury here, so I shall not disturb you. Good night, old fellow."
"Good night; and keep clear of the tent-pegs."
Again the canvas door was tied, and I was alone; so drawing the lantern, that hung on the tent-pole, close to the empty flour-cask, which now did duty as a table, I sat down to read the characteristic epistle of my good old fatherly friend, Sir Madoc Lloyd, which was dated from Craigaderyn Court. After some rambling remarks about the war, and the mode in which he thought it should be conducted, and some smart abuse of the administration in general, and Lord Aberdeen in particular, over all of which I ran my eyes impatiently, at last they caught a name that made my heart thrill, for this was the first letter that had reached me from England.
"Lady Estelle's admirer Pottersleigh has been raised to an earldom--Heaven only knows why or for what--his own distinguished services, he says. It was all in last night's _Gazette_--that her Majesty had been pleased to direct letters patent, &c., granting the dignity of Earl of the United Kingdom, unto Viscount Pottersleigh, K.G., and the heirs male of his body (good joke that, Harry: reckoning his chickens before they are hatched), by the name and title of Aberconway, in the principality of Wales. For some weeks past he has been at Walcot Park, with the Cressinghams--seems quite to live there, in fact. He has been very assiduous in his attentions to a certain young lady there; he always flatters her quietly, and it seems to please her; a sure sign it would seem to me that she is not displeased with the flatterer. People say it is old Lady Naseby whom he affects; but I don't think so; neither does Winny. You will probably have heard much of this kind of gossip from Lady Estelle herself. She certainly got your Malta letter, and one from the camp before Sebastopol--so Winny, who is in her confidence, told me. You only can know if she replied--Winny rather thinks not; but I hope she may be faithful to you as Oriana herself.
"I heard all about poor Caradoc's affair from Dora; but Winny has refused another offer of marriage--a most eligible one, too--from Sir Watkins Vaughan; and since then he was nearly done for in another fashion: for when he and I were cub-hunting last month near Hawkstone, his horse, a hard-mouthed brute, swerved as we were crossing a fence, and rolled over him; so between her blunt refusal and his ugly spill, he is rather to be pitied. I don't understand Winny at all. I should not like my girls to throw themselves away; but hay should be made while the sun shines, and baronets are not to be found under every bush. Beauty fades; it is but a thing of a season; and the most blooming girl, in time, becomes passé and wrinkled, or it may be fat and fusby, as her grandmother was before her. And then Sir Watkins represents one of the best families in Wales, not so old as _us_ certainly, but still he is descended in a direct line from Gryffyth Vychan, who was Lord of Glyndwyrdwy in Merionethshire, in Stephen's time."
(Why should Winifred Lloyd refuse and refuse again thus? As certain little passages between us in days gone by came flashing back to my memory, I felt my cheek flush by that wretched camp-fire, and then I thrust the thoughts aside as vanity.)
"Poor Winny has not been very well of late," the letter proceeded. "When she and Dora were decorating their poor mamma's grave, in the old Welsh fashion, on Palm Sunday, at Craigaderyn church, I fear she must have caught cold; it ended in a touch of fever, and I think the dear girl grew delirious, for she had a strange dream about the ghost of Jorwerth Du--you remember that absurd old story?--but the ghost was _you_, and the red-haired daughter of the Gwylliad Cochion, who spirited you away, was--whom think you?--but Lady Estelle!
"We had a jolly shooting-season at Vaughan's place in South Wales. With Don and our double-barrelled breech-loader we soon filled a spring-cart, and brought it back in state, with all the hares and the long bright tails of the pheasants hanging over it. Vaughan--who will not relinquish his hope of Winny--and a lot of other fine fellows--old friends, some of them--are coming to have their annual Christmas shooting with me, and I have got two kegs of ammunition all ready in the gun-room. How I wish you were to be with us, Harry!
"Golden plover and teal, too, are appearing here now, and flocks of white Norwegian pigeons in Scotland; all indications that we shall have an unusually severe winter; so God help you poor fellows under canvas in the Crimea! In common with all the girls in England, Winny and Dora are busy making mufflings, knitted vests and cuffs, and so forth for the troops; and I have despatched some special hampers of good things, made up and packed by Owen Gwyllim and Gwenny Davis, the housekeeper, for our own lads of the 23rd to make merry with at Christmas, or on St. David's day."
(The warm wrappers arrived for us in summer, and as for the "special hampers," they were never heard of at all.)
And so, with many warm wishes, almost prayers, for my preservation from danger, and offers of money if I required it, the letter of my kind old friend ended; but it gave me food for much thought, and far into the hours of the chill night I sat and pondered over it. Why did Winny refuse so excellent an offer as that of Sir Watkins, whom I knew to be a wealthy and good-looking young baronet? I scarcely dared to ask myself, and so, as before, dismissed _that_ subject. Why had not Estelle's answers reached me, if she had actually written then? That Lady Naseby had surreptitiously intercepted our correspondence, I could not believe, though she might forbid it. Was my Lord Pottersleigh, now Earl of Aberconway, at work; or had they, like many others, perished at sea? Heaven alone new. His flatteries "pleased her," his, the senile dotard! And he had taken up his residence at Walcot Park; his earldom, too! I was full of sadness, mortification, and bitter thoughts; thoughts too deep and fierce for utterance or description. Could it be that the earldom and wealth on one hand were proving too strong for love, with the stringent tenor of her father's will on the other?
At the opera and theatre I had seen Estelle's beautiful eyes fill with tears, as she sympathised with the maudlin love and mimic sorrow, the wrongs or mishaps, of some well-rouged gipsy in rags, some peasant in a steeple-crowned hat and red bandages, some half-naked fisherman, like Masaniello, and her bosom would heave with emotion and enthusiasm; and yet with all this natural commiseration and fellow-feeling, she, who could almost weep with the hero or heroine of the melodrama, while their situation was enhanced by the effects of the orchestra, the lime-light, and the stage-carpenter, was perhaps casting me from her heart and her memory, as coolly as if I were an old ball-dress! So I strove yet awhile to think and to hope that her letters were with the lost mails at the bottom of the Ægean or the Black Sea; but Sir Madoc's letter occasioned me grave and painful doubts; and memory went sadly back to many a little but well-remembered episode of tenderness, a word, a glance, a stolen caress, when we rode or drove by the Elwey or Llyn Aled, in the long lime avenue, in the Martens' dingle, and in the woods and gardens of pleasant Craigaderyn. The wretched light in my lantern was beginning to fail; my little fire had died quite out, and the poor sentry shivering outside had long since ceased to warm his hands at the flue. The tent was cold and chill as a tomb, and I was just about to turn in, when a sound, which a soldier never hears without starting instinctively to his weapons, struck my ear.
A drum, far on the right, was beating _the long roll!_ Hundreds of others repeated that inexorable summons all over the camp, while many a bugle was blown, as the whole army stood to their arms. It was the morning of the battle of Inkermann!
CHAPTER XXXVI.--THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.
We had all long since forgotten the discomfort of early rising. In my case I had never been to bed, so to buckle on my sword and revolver was the work of one moment; in another I was threading my way among the streets of tents, from which our men, cold, damp, pale, and worn-looking, were pouring towards their various muster-places, many of them arranging their belts as they hurried forward.