As yet I knew nothing of all that has been detailed in the foregoing chapter, consequently the entire measure of my vengeance against Guilfoyle was not quite full. I had, however, a revival of my old doubts, anxiety, and perplexity, in not hearing from Walcot Park in some fashion, by an invitation, or otherwise privately from Estelle herself, as, by our prearrangement, there was nothing to prevent her writing to me; and to these were added now a dread of what they had seen on that unlucky evening, and the reasonable misconstructions to which the scene was liable. More than one of my mess-room friends had received cards of invitation from Lady Naseby; why then was I, whom she had met so recently, apparently forgotten?
After the relation of her story, I left Mrs. Guilfoyle in such a state of mental prostration and distress, that I was not without well-founded fears that she might commit some rash act, perhaps suicide, to add to the vile complication of our affairs. Next day I was detailed for guard, and could not leave the barracks, either to consult with my new unhappy acquaintance, or for my accustomed canter in the vicinity of Walcot Park. A presentiment that something unpleasant would happen ere long hung over me, and a day and a night of irritation and hot impatience had to be endured, varied only by the exceedingly monotonous duties that usually occupy the attention of the officer who commands a guard, such as explaining all the standing orders to the soldiers composing it, inspecting the reliefs going out to their posts and those returning from them, and going the round of those posts by night; but on this occasion, the routine was varied by a fire near Winchester, so we were kept under arms for some hours in a torrent of rain, with the gates barricaded, till the barrack engines returned. On the following morning, just when dismissing my old guard after being relieved by the new one, I perceived a servant in the well-known Naseby livery--light-blue and silver--ride out of the barracks; and with a fluttering in my heart, that was born of hope and apprehension, I hastened to my room.
"Packet for you, sir," said my man Evans, "just left by a flunkey in red breeches."
"You mean a servant of Lady Naseby's."
"I mean, sir," persisted Evans, "a flunky who eyed me very superciliously, and seemed to think a private soldier as low and pitiful as himself," added the Welshman, whom the pompous bearing of the knight of the shoulder-knot had ruffled.
"You were not rude to him, I hope."
"O no, sir. I only said that, though the Queen didn't like bad bargains, I'd give him a shilling in her name to play the triangles."
"That will do; you may go," said I, taking from his hand a small packet sealed in pink paper, and addressed to me by Lady Estelle; and my heart beat more painfully than ever with hope and fear as I tore it open.
A locket dropped out--the locket just described--in which I was bewildered to find a likeness of myself, and with it the ring I had placed on the hand of Estelle in Rhuddlan's cottage--the emerald encircled by diamonds--on the morning after our escape from a terrible fate! I have said that a shock awaited me at the barrack; but that the locket should come to me, accompanied by Estelle's ring, so astonished and perplexed me, that some time elapsed before I perceived there was a little note in the box which contained them.
It ran thus:
"Lady E. Cressingham begs that Mr. Hardinge will return the accompanying locket and ring to the lady to whom they properly belong--she whom he meets in the lane near Walcot Park, and whom he should lose no time in presenting to the world in her own character. Farther communications are unnecessary, as Mr. Guilfoyle has explained all, and Lady E. Cressingham leaves to-day for London."
The handwriting was very tremulous, as if she had written when under no ordinary excitement; and now, as the use to which the two episodes, at the lane and the inn-door, had been put by the artful Guilfoyle became plain to me, I was filled by a dangerous fury at the false position in which they placed me with her I loved and with whom I had been so successful. For a minute the room seemed to swim round me, each corner in pursuit of the other. We had both been wronged--myself chiefly; and though I knew that Guilfoyle had been at work, I could not precisely know how; but I thought the Spartan was right when, on being asked if his sword was sharp, he replied, "Yes, sharper even than calumny!" This wretched fellow had daringly calumniated me, and to clear that calumny, to have an instant interview with Estelle, became the immediate and burning desire of my heart. I rushed to my desk, and opened it with such impulsive fury that I severely injured my arm, so recently broken--broken in her service--and as yet but scarcely well. I spread paper before me, but my fingers were powerless; if able to hold the pen, I was now unable to write, and the whole limb was alternately benumbed and full of acute agony; and though Hugh Price of ours was a very good fellow, I had no friend--at least, none like Phil Caradoc--in the dép?t battalion in whom I could confide or with whom consult, in this emergency.
I despatched Evans for the senior surgeon, who alleged that the original setting, dressing, and so forth of my fractured limb had been most unsatisfactory; that if I was not careful, inflammation might set in, and if so, that instant amputation alone could save my life. Being almost in a fever, he placed me on the sick-list, with orders not to leave my room for some days, and reduced me to claret-and-water.
"A pleasant predicament this!" thought I, grinding my teeth.
Estelle, through whom all this came to pass, lost to me, apparently through no fault of my own, and I unable to communicate with her or explain anything; for now she was in London, where I feared she might, in pique or rage, take Pottersleigh, Naseby, or even, for all I knew, accept Guilfoyle, a terrible compromise of her name. But she had plenty of other admirers, and disappointed women marry every day in disgust of some one. Next I thought of the regiment abroad wondering "when that fellow Hardinge would join"--promotion, honour, profession, and love in the balance against health, and all likely to be lost!
"Rest, rest," said the battalion Sangrado, whom my condition rather perplexed; "don't worry yourself about anything. Rest, mental and bodily, alone can cure you."
"It is a fine thing to talk," I muttered, while tossing on my pillow; for I was confined to bed in my dull little room, and for three days was left entirely to my own corroding thoughts.
I had but one crumb of comfort, one lingering hope. She had not asked me to return her ring, nor did I mean to do so, if possible. Once again my arm was slung in a black-silk scarf, which Estelle had insisted on making for me at Craigaderyn. Alas! would the joys of that time ever return to us again? I sent Evans, in uniform and not in my livery, to Whitchurch with the locket, after extracting my likeness therefrom; but he returned with it, saying that the lady had left the inn for London, having no doubt followed her husband. I knew not exactly of what I was accused--a liaison of some kind apparently, of which the strongest proofs had been put before the Cressinghams. If, when able, I wrote to explain that the two meetings with Mrs. Guilfoyle were quite fortuitous, would Estelle believe me? Without inquiry or explanation, she had coldly and abruptly cast me off; and it was terrible that one I loved so well should think evil or with scorn of me. What would honest old Sir Madoc's view of the matter be, and what the kind and noble-hearted Winifred's, who loved me as a sister, if they heard of this story, whatever it was?
Vengeance--swift, sudden, and sure--was what I panted for; and moments there were when I writhed under the laws that prevented me from discovering and beating to a jelly this fellow Guilfoyle, or even shooting him down like a mad dog, though I would gladly have risked my own life to punish him in the mode that was no longer approved of now in England; and I pictured to myself views of having him over in France, in the Bois de Boulogne, or on the level sands of Dunkirk, the spire of St. Eloi in the distance, the gray sky above us, the sea for a background, no sound in our ears but its chafing on the long strip of beach, and his villainous face covered by my levelled pistol at ten paces, or less--yea, even after I had let him have the first shot, by tossing or otherwise. And as these fierce thoughts burned within me, all the deeper and fiercer that they were futile and found no utterance, I glanced longingly at my sword, which hung on the wall, or handled my pistols with grim anticipative joy; and reflected on how many there are in this world who, in the wild sense of justice, or the longing for a just revenge on felons whom the laws protect, fear the police while they have no fear of God, even in this boasted age of civilisation; and I remembered a terrible duel à la mort in which I had once borne a part in Germany.
A July evening was closing in Altona, when I found myself in the garden of Rainville's Hotel, which overlooks the Elbe. The windows of the house, an edifice of quaint aspect, occupied successively in years past by General Dumourier and gossiping old Bourienne, were open, and lights and music, the din of many voices--Germans are always loud and noisy--and the odour of many cigars and meerschaums, came forth, to mingle with the fragrance of the summer flowers that decked the tea-garden, the trees of which were hung with garlands of coloured lanterns. A golden haze from the quarter where the sun had set enveloped all the lazy Elbe, and strings of orange-tinted lights showed here and there the gas-lamps of Hamburg reflected in its bosom.
In dark outline against that western flush were seen the masts and hulls of the countless vessels that covered the basin of the river and the Brandenburger Hafen. Waiters were hurrying about with coffee, ices, and confectionery, lager-beer in tankards, and cognac in crystal cruets; pretty Vierlander girls, in their grotesque costume, the bodice a mass of golden embroidery, were tripping about coyly, offering their bouquets for sale; and to the music of a fine German band, the dancing had begun on a prepared platform. There were mingling lovely Jewesses of half-Teutonic blood, covered with jewels; spruce clerks from the Admiralit-strasse, and stout citizens from the Neuer-wall; officers and soldiers from the Prussian garrison; girls of good style from the fashionable streets about the Alsterdamm, and others that were questionable from the quarter about the Grosse Theater Strasse.
I was seated in an arbour with a young Russian officer named Paulovitch Count Volhonski, who was travelling like myself, and whom I had met at the table-d'h?te of the Rolandsburg, in the Breitestrasse. As an Englishman, apt at all times to undervalue the Russian character, I was agreeably surprised to find that this young captain of the Imperial Guard could speak several European, and at least two of the dead, languages with............