Under the Red Dragon. James Grant
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having been attaché at the petty German court of Catzenelnbogen, affected a great knowledge of continental affairs--indulged in much "tall talk" on the European situation till once more the county pack and hunting became the chief topic, and then too he endeavoured, but perhaps vainly, to take the lead.
"You talk of fox-hunting, gentlemen," said he, raising his voice after a preliminary cough, "and some of the anecdotes you tell of wonderful leaps, mistakes, and runs, with the cunning displayed by reynard on various occasions, such as hiding in a pool up to the snout, feigning death--a notion old as the days of Olaus Magnus--throwing dogs off the scent by traversing a running stream, and so forth, are all remarkable enough; but give me a good buck-hunt, such as I have seen in Croatia! When travelling there among the mountains that lie between Carlstadt and the Adriatic, I had the good fortune to reside for a few weeks with my kind friend Ladislaus Count Mosvina, Grand Huntsman to the Emperor of Austria, and captain of the German Guard of Arzieres, and who takes his title from that wine-growing district, the vintage of which is fully equal to the finest burgundy. The season was winter. The snow lay deep among the frightful valleys and precipices of the Vellibitch range, and an enormous rehbock, or roebuck, fully five feet in height to the shoulder, with antlers of vast size--five feet, if an inch, from tip to tip--driven from the mountains by the storm and la bora, the biting north-east wind, took shelter in a thicket near the house. Several shots were fired; but no one, not even I, could succeed in hitting him, till at last he defiantly and coolly fed among the sheep, in the yard of the Count's home farm, where, by the use of his antlers, he severely wounded and disabled all who attempted to dislodge him. At last four of the Count's farmers or foresters--some of those Croatian boors who are liable to receive twenty-five blows of a cudgel yearly if they fail to engraft at least twenty-five fruit-trees--undertook to slay or capture the intruder. But though they were powerful, hardy, and brave men, this devil of a rehbock, by successive blows of its antlers, fractured the skulls of two and the thigh-bones of the others, smashing them like tobacco-pipes, and made an escape to the mountains. A combined hunt was now ordered by my friend Mosvina, and all the gentlemen and officers in the generalat or district commanded by him set off, mounted and in pursuit. There were nearly a thousand horsemen; but the cavalry there are small and weak. I was perhaps the best-mounted man in the field. We pursued it for twenty-five miles, by rocky hills and almost pathless woods, by ravines and rivers. Many of our people fell. Some got staked, were pulled from their saddles by trees, or tumbled off by running foul of wild swine. Many missed their way, grew weary, got imbogged in the half-frozen marshes, and so forth, till at last only the Count and I with four dogs were on his track, and when on it, we leaped no less than four frozen cataracts, each at least a hundred feet in height--'pon honour they were. We had gone almost neck and neck for a time; but the Grand Huntsman's horse began to fail him now (for we had come over terrible ground, most of it being uphill), and ultimately it fell dead lame. Then whoop--tally-ho! I spurred onward alone. Just as the furious giant was coming to bay in a narrow gorge, and, fastening on his flanks and neck, the maddened dogs were tearing him down, their red jaws steaming in the frosty air, the Count came up on foot, breathless and thoroughly blown, to have the honour of slaying this antlered monarch of the Dinovian Alps. But I was too quick for him. I had sprung from my horse, and with my unsheathed hanshar or Croatian knife had flung myself, fearlessly and regardless of all danger, upon the buck, eluding a last and desperate butt made at me with his pointed horns. Another moment saw my knife buried to the haft in his throat, and a torrent of crimson blood flowing upon the snow, then I courteously tendered my weapon by the hilt to the Count, who, in admiration of my adroitness, presented me with this ring--a very fine brilliant, you may perceive--which his grandfather had received from the Empress Maria Theresa, and the pure gold of which is native, from the sand upon the banks of the Drave."
And as he concluded his anecdote, which he related with considerable pomposity and perfect coolness, he twirled round his finger this remarkable ring, of which I was eventually to hear more from time to time.
"So, out of a thousand Croatian horsemen, you were the only one in at the death! It says little for their manhood," said an old fox-hunter, as he filled his glass with burgundy, and pretty palpably winked to Sir Madoc, under cover of an épergne.
"This may all be true, Harry, or not--only entre nous, I don't believe it is," said Phil Caradoc aside to me; "for who here knows anything of Croatia? He might as well talk to old Gwyllim the butler, or any chance medley Englishman, of the land of Memnon and the hieroglyphics. This fellow Guilfoyle beats Munchausen all to nothing; but did he not before tell something else about that ring?"
"I don't remember; but now, Phil, that you have seen her," said I, in a tone of tolerably-affected carelessness, "what do you think of la belle Cressingham?"
"She is very handsome, certainly," replied Phil, in the same undertone, and luckily looking at his glass, and not at me, "a splendid specimen of her class--a proud and by no means a bashful beauty."
"Most things in this world are prized just as they are difficult of attainment, or are scarce. I reckon beauty among these, and no woman holds it cheap," said I, not knowing exactly what to think of Caradoc's criticism. "There is Miss Lloyd, for instance--"
"Ah," said he, with honest animation, "she is a beauty too, but a gentle and retiring one--a girl that is all sweetness and genuine goodness of heart."
"With some dairy-farms in the midland counties, eh?"
"The graces of such a girl are always the most attractive. We men are so constituted that we are apt to decline admiration where it is loftily courted or seemingly expected--as I fear it is in the case of Lady Cressingham--and to bestow it on the gentle and retiring."
I felt there was much truth in my friend's remarks, and yet they piqued me so that I rather turned from him coldly for the remainder of the evening.
"Her mother is haughty, intensely ambitious, and looks forward to a title for her as high, if not higher, than that her father bore," I heard Sir Madoc say to a neighbour who had been talking on the same subject--the beauty of Lady, Estelle; "the old lady is half Irish and half Welsh."
"Rather a combustible compound, I should think," added Guilfoyle, as, after coffee and curaçoa, we all rose to join the ladies in the drawing-room.
CHAPTER VII.--PIQUE.
The moment I entered the drawing-room, where Winifred Lloyd had been doing her utmost to amuse her various guests till we came, and where undoubtedly the ladies' faces grew brighter when we appeared, I felt conscious that the remark of the hoydenish Dora had done me some little mischief. I could read this in the face of the haughty Estelle, together with her fear that others might have heard it; thus, instead of seating myself near her, as I wished and had fully intended, I remained rather aloof, and leaving her almost exclusively to the industrious Guilfoyle, divided my time between listening to Winifred, who, with Caradoc, proceeded to perform the duet he had sent her from the barracks, and endeavouring to make myself agreeable to the Countess--a process rather, I am sorry to say, somewhat of a task to me. Though her dark hair was considerably seamed with gray, her forehead was without a line, smooth and unwrinkled as that of a child--care, thought, reflection, or sorrow had never visited her. Wealth and rank, with a naturally aristocratic indolence and indifference of mind, had made the ways of life and of the world--at least, the world in which she lived--easy, soft, and pleasant, and all her years had glided brilliantly but monotonously on. She had married the late earl to please her family rather than herself, because he was undoubtedly an eligible parti; and she fully expected their only daughter to act exactly in the same docile manner. Her mien and air were stately, reserved, and uninviting; her eyes were cold, inquiring, and searching in expression, and I fancied that they seemed to watch and follow me, as if she really and naturally suspected me of "views," or, as she would have deemed them, designs.
Amid the commonplaces I was venturing to utter to this proud, cold, and decidedly unpleasant old dame, whose goodwill and favour I was sedulously anxious to gain, it was impossible for me to avoid hearing some remarks that Sir Madoc made concerning me, and to her daughter.
"I