Under the Red Dragon. James Grant
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pew and place; ever and anon our gloved fingers touched; I felt her silk dress rustling against me; her long lashes and snowy lids, with the soft pale beauty of her downcast face, and her sweetly curved mouth, were all most pleasing and attractive; but the sense of Estelle's presence rendered me invulnerable to all but her; and my eyes could not but roam to where she stood or knelt by the side of burly Sir Madoc, her fine face downcast too in the soft light that stole between the deep mullions and twisted tracery of an ancient stained-glass window, her noble and equally pure profile half seen and half hidden by a short veil of black lace; her rounded chin and lips rich in colour, and beautiful in character as those of one of Greuze's loveliest masterpieces. There, too, were the rich brightness of her hair, and the proud grace that pervaded all her actions, and even her stillness.
Thus, even when I did not look towards her, but in Winifred's face, or on the book we mutually held, and mechanically affected to read, a perception, a dreamy sense of Estelle's presence was about me, and I could not help reverting to our past season in London, and all that has been described by a writer as those "first sweet hours of communion, when strangers glide into friends; that hour which, either in friendship or in love, is as the bloom to the fruit, as the daybreak to the day, indefinable, magical, and fleeting;" the hours which saw me presented as a friend, and left me a lover. The day was intensely hot, and inside the old church, though some of the arched recesses and ancient tombs looked cool enough, there was a blaze of sunshine, that fell in hazy flakes or streams of coloured light athwart the bowed heads of the congregation. With heat and languor, there was also the buzz of insect life; and amid the monotonous tones of the preacher I loved to fancy him reading the marriage service for us--that is, for Estelle and myself--fancied it as an enthusiastic school-girl might have done; and yet how was it that, amid these conceits, the face and form of Winifred Lloyd, with her pretty hand in the tight straw-coloured kid glove, that touched mine, filled up the eye of the mind? Was I dreaming, or only about to sleep, like so many of the congregation--those toilers afield, those hardy hewers of wood and drawers of water, whose strong sinews, when unbraced, induced them to slumber now--the men especially, as the study of each other's toilets served to keep the female portion fully awake. When the clergyman prayed for the success of our arms in the strife that was to come, Winifred's dark eyes looked into mine for a moment, quick as light, and I saw her bosom swell; and when he prayed, "Give peace in our time, O Lord," her voice became earnest and tremulous in responding; and I could have sworn that I saw a tear oozing, but arrested, on the thick black eyelash of this impulsive Welsh girl, whom this part of the service, by its association and the time, seemed to move; but Lady Estelle was wholly intent on having one of her gloves buttoned by Guilfoyle, whose attendance she doubtless preferred to that of old Sir Madoc.
"Look!" said Winifred Lloyd, in an excited whisper, as she lightly touched my hand.
I followed the direction of her eye, and saw, seated at the end of the central aisle, modestly and humbly, among the free places reserved for the poor, a young woman, whose appearance was singularly interesting. Poorly, or rather plainly, attired in faded black, her face was remarkably handsome; and her whole air was perfectly ladylike. She was as pale as death, with a wild wan look in all her features; disease, or sorrow, or penury--perhaps all these together--had marked her as their own; her eyes, of clear, bright, and most expressive gray, were haggard and hollow, with dark circles under them. Black kid gloves showed her pretensions to neatness and gentility; but as they were frayed and worn, she strove to conceal her hands nervously under her gathered shawl.
"She is looking at you, Winifred," said Dora.
"No--at Estelle."
"At us all, I think," resumed Dora, in the same whispered tone; "and she has done so for some time past. Heavens! she seems quite like a spectre."
"Poor creature!" said Winifred; "we must inquire about her."
"Do you know her, Mr. Hardinge?" asked Dora.
"Nay, not I; it is Mr. Guilfoyle she is looking at," said I.
Guilfoyle, having achieved the somewhat protracted operation of buttoning Lady Estelle's lavender kid glove, now stuck his glass in his eye, and turned leisurely and languidly in the direction that attracted us all, just as the service was closing; but the pale woman quickly drew down her veil, and quitted the church abruptly, ere he could see her, as I thought; and this circumstance, though I took no heed of it then, I remembered in the time to come.
Winifred frankly took my arm as we left the church.
"You promised to come with me after luncheon and see the goat I have for the regiment," said she.
"Did I?--ah, yes--shall be most happy, I'm sure," said I, shamefully oblivious of the promise in question, as we proceeded towards the carriages, the people making way for us on all sides, the women curtseying and the men uncovering to Sir Madoc, who was a universal favourite, especially with the maternal portion of the parish, as he was very fond of children and flattered himself not a little on his power of getting on with them, being wont to stop mothers on the road or in the village street, and make knowing remarks on the beauty, the complexions, or the curly heads of their offspring while he was never without a handful of copper or loose silver for general distribution; and now it excited some surprise and even secret disdain in Guilfoyle--a little petulance in Lady Estelle too--to find him shaking hands and speaking in gutteral Welsh with some of the men cottagers, or peasant-women with jackets and tall odd hats. But one anecdote will suffice to show the character of Sir Madoc.
In the very summer of my visit, it had occurred that he had to serve on a jury when a property of some three thousand pounds or so was at issue; and when the jury retired, he found that they were determined to decide in such manner as he did not deem equitable, and which in the end would inevitably ruin an honest farmer named Evan Rhuddlan, father of a sergeant in my company of Welsh Fusileers, who dwelt at a place called Craig Eryri, or "the Rock of Eagles." Finding that they were resolute, he submitted, or affected to acquiesce in their decision; but on announcing it to the court he handed the losing party a cheque on Coutts and Co. for the whole sum in litigation, and became more than ever the idol of the country people.
"Romantic old place--casques, cobwebs, and all that sort of thing," said Guilfoyle, as he handed Lady Estelle into the carriage, and took the bridle of his horse from Bob Spurrit, the groom; "I thought Burke had written the epitaph of chivalry and all belonging to it."
"Yes, but romance still exists, Mr. Guilfoyle," said Winifred, whose face was bright with smiles.
"And love too, eh, Estelle?" added Dora, laughing.
"Even in the region of Mayfair, you think?" said she.
"Yes; and wherever there is beauty, that is rarest," said I.
But she only replied by one of her calm smiles; for she had a reticence of manner which there seemed to be no means of moving.
"Talking of love and romance, I should like to know more of that pale woman we saw in church to-day," said Dora.
"Why so?" asked Guilfoyle, curtly.
"Because I saw she must have some terrible story to tell.--What was the text, Mr. Caradoc?" she asked, as we departed homewards.
"Haven't the ghost of an idea," replied Phil.
"O fie!--or the subject?"
"No," said Caradoc, reddening a little; for he had been intent during the whole service on Winifred Lloyd.
"It was all about Jacob's ladder, of which we have had a most inaccurate notion hitherto," said Dora, as we drove down the long lime avenue, to find that, as the day was so sultry, luncheon had been laid for us by Owen Gwyllim under the grand old trees in the lawn, about thirty yards from the entrance-hall, under the very oak where the spectre of Sir Jorwerth Du was alleged to vanish, the oak of Owen Glendower; and where that doughty Cymbrian had perhaps sought to summon spirits from the vasty deep, we found spirits of another kind--brandy and seltzer, clicquot and sparkling moselle cooling in silver ice-pails on the greensward; and there too, awaiting us, sat Lady Naseby, smiling and fanning herself under the umbrageous shadows of the chase.
Over her stately head