CHAPTER LIII.--NEWS FROM CRAIGADERYN.

It was impossible for me not to feel lingering in my heart a deep and

tender interest for Valerie. She had not deceived or ill-used me; we

had simply been separated by the force of circumstances; by her

previous troth to Tolstoff, whom I flattered myself she could not

love, even if she respected or esteemed him.

That they were married by this time I could scarcely doubt, as she had

assured me that she was on "the very eve" of her nuptials (one of

those "marriages of convenience," according to Caradoc's book); and if

he held a command so high in Sebastopol, there was every reason to

conclude she must be with him. In the event of a general assault, I

was fully resolved to send my card to headquarters as a volunteer for

the storming column, though I knew right well that I dare not allow

myself to fall alive, into _his_ hands, at all events; thus the whole

situation gave me an additional and more personal interest in the fall

and capture of that place than, perhaps, inspired any other man in the

whole allied army. What if Tolstoff should be killed? This surmise

opened up a wide field for speculation.

Any of those balls that were incessantly poured against the city might

send that amiable commander to kingdom come, and if Valerie were left

a widow--well, I did not somehow like to think of her as a widow,

Tolstoff's especially, yet I was exasperated to think of her, so

brilliant, so gentle, and so highly cultured, as the wife of one so

coarse and even brutal in bearing, and if he did happen to stand in

the way of a bullet, why should he not be killed as well as another;

and so I reasoned, so true it is, that "with all our veneering and

French polish, the tiger is only half dead in any of us."

If I were again unluckily sent with a flag of truce into Sebastopol,

on any mission such as the burial of the dead and removal of the

wounded, or so forth, it would, I knew, be certainly violated by

Tolstoff, and myself be made prisoner for the affairs at Yalta. Then

if such a duty were again offered me, on what plea could I, with

honour, decline it? I could but devoutly hope that no such contingency

might happen for me again.

Times there were when, brooding over the past, and recalling the

strange magnetism of the smile of Valerie, and in the touch of her

hand, the contour of her face, her wonderful hair, and pleading

winning dark eyes, there came into my heart the tiger feeling referred

to, the jealousy that makes men feel mad, wild, fit for homicide or

anything; and as hourly "human lives were lavished everywhere, as the

year closing whirls the scarlet leaves," I had--heroics apart--a

terrible longing to have my left hand upon the throat of Tolstoff,

with her Majesty's Sheffield regulation blade in the other, to help

him on his way to a better world.

In these, or similar visions and surmises, I ceased to indulge when

with Caradoc, as he was wont to quiz me, and say that if I got a wife

out of Sebastopol, I should be the only man who gained anything by the

war, and even my gain might be a loss; that, like himself, I had twice

burned my fingers at the torch of Hymen, and that I should laugh at

the Russian episode or loving interlude, as he called it, as there

were girls in England whose shoe-strings he was sure she was not fit

to tie. Though she had rightly told me that my passion was but a

passing fancy, she knew not that it was one fed by revenge and

disappointment.

"Lady Estelle may perhaps have destroyed your faith in women," added

Phil, "but any way she has not destroyed _mine_."

"Have you still the locket with the likeness of Winifred Lloyd?" said

I.

"Yes--God bless her--she left it with me," he replied, with a kindling

eye. How true Phil was to her! and yet she knew it not, and as far as

we knew, recked but little of the faith he bore her.

On a Saturday night--the night of that 21st of April, on which we

captured the rifle-pits--as we sat in our hut talking over the affair,

weary with toil of that incessant firing to which the cannonading at

Shoeburyness is a joke, Phil said,

"Let us drink 'sweethearts and wives,' as we used to do in the

transport."

"Agreed," said I; and as we clinked our glasses together and exchanged

glances, I knew that his thoughts went back to Craigaderyn, even as

mine recurred to that moonlight night on the terrace at Yalta.

"You remained with the burial party," said he, after a pause.

"Yes, and I saw something which convinced me that the fewer tender

ties we fighting men have, the better for our own peace. An officer of

the 19th lay among the dead, a man past forty apparently. A paper was

peeping from the breast of his coat; I pulled it out, and it proved to

be a letter, received perhaps that morning--a letter from his wife,

thrust hastily into his breast, as we marched to the front. A little

golden curl was in it, and there was written in a child's hand,

'Cecil's love to dearest papa.' I must own that the incident, at such

a time and place, affected me; so I replaced the letter in the poor

fellow's breast, and we buried it with him. So papa lies in a

rifle-pit, with mamma's letter and little Cecil's lock of hair; but,

after all, king Death did not get much of him--the poor man had been

nearly torn to pieces by a cannon shot."

"I saw you in advance of the whole line of skirmishers to-day, Harry,

far beyond the zigzags."

"I was actually at the foot of the glacis."

"The glacis--was not that madness?" exclaimed Phil.

"The truth is, I did so neither through enthusiastic courage nor in a

spirit of bravado. I was only anxious to see if from behind the

sap-roller that protected me, my field-glass could enable me to detect

among the gray-coated figures at the embrasures, the tall person and

grim visage of old Tolstoff."

"By Jove, I thought as much!"

"But I looked in vain, and retired in crab-fashion, the bullets

falling in a shower about me the while."

At that moment a knock rung on the door of the hut, and Sergeant

Rhuddlan, who acted as our regimental postman, handed a small packet

to me.

"The second battalion of the Scots Royals, the 48th, and the 72nd

Highlanders have just come in, sir, from Balaclava, and have brought a

mail with them," said he, in explanation; and while he was speaking,

we heard the sound of drums and bagpipes, half drowned by cheers in

the dark, as those in camp welcomed the new arrivals from home, and

helped to get them tented and hutted.

"From Craigaderyn!" said I, on seeing the seal--Sir Madoc's antique

oval--with the lion's head _erased_, as the heralds have it.

I had written instantly to the kind old man on my return to camp, and

this proved to be the answer by the first mail. On opening the packet

I found a letter, and a cigar-case beautifully worked in beads of the

regimental colours, red, blue, and gold, with _my_ initials on one

side, and those of Winifred Lloyd on the _other_. Poor Phil Caradoc

looked wistfully at the work her delicate hands had so evidently

wrought--so wistfully that, but for the ungallantry of the proceeding,

I should have presented the case to him. However, he had the simple

gratification of holding it, while I read the letter of Sir Madoc, and

did so aloud, as being of equal interest to us both. It was full of

such warm expressions of joy for my safety and of regard for me

personally, that I own they moved me; but some passages proved a

little mysterious and perplexing.

"Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your letter

caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny especially?

She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I have now

learned _why_ the poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I understand,

another."

"That is me," said Phil, parenthetically.

"But of that unexpected refusal of Sir Watkins Vaughan nothing can be

said here."

"What on earth can he mean!" said I, looking up; "perhaps she has some

lingering compunction about you, Phil."

"If so, she might have sent the cigar-case to me--or something else;

just to square matters, as it were."

Remembering my old suspicions and fears--they were fears _then_--as I

drove away from Craigaderyn for Chester, I read the letter in haste,

and with dread of what it might contain or reveal; as I would not for

worlds have inflicted a mortification, however slight, on my dear

friend Caradoc, who gnawed the ends of his moustache at the following:

"Young Sir Watkins had been most attentive to Winny during the past

season in town--that gay London season, which, notwithstanding the

war, was quite as brilliant as usual; when every one had come back

from the Scotch moors, from Ben Nevis, Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, and

everywhere else that the roving Englishman is wont to frequent, to

kill game, or time, or himself, as it sometimes happens. But Winny

won't listen to him, and I think he is turning his attention to Dora,

though whether or not the girl--who has another adorer, in the shape

of a long-legged Plunger with parted hair and a lisp--only laughs at

him, I can't make out.

"Tell Caradoc, Gwynne, and other true-hearted Cymri in the Welsh

Fusileers, that when in London I attended more than one meeting,

inaugurating a movement to secure for Wales judges and counsel who

shall speak Welsh, and Welsh only. The meetings were failures, and the

d--d Sassenachs only laughed at us; but from such injustice, _Gwared

ni Argylywd daionus!_[5] say I.

"And so poor Hugh Price of yours is gone. A good-hearted fellow, who

could do anything, from crossing the stiffest hunting country to

making a champagne cup, singing a love song or mixing a salad--one of

the old line of the Rhys of Geeler in Denbighshire. My God, how many

other fine fellows lie in that hecatomb in the Valley of Inkermann!

Sebastopol seems to be left quite open on one side, so that the

Russians may pour in stores and fresh troops, and go and come at their

pleasure? It is pleasant for tax-payers at home and the troops abroad

to think that things are so arranged in Downing-street, by my Lords

Aberdeen, Aberconway, and suchlike Whig incapables and incurables.

"I fear your regimental dinner would be a scanty one on St.

David's-days." (On that day I had dined with Valerie, and forgot all

about the yearly festival of the Fusileers!) "I thought of it and of

you all--the more so, perhaps, that I had just seen the old colours of

the Royal Welsh in St. Peter's Church at Carmarthen."

The old baronet, after a few Welsh words, of which I could make

nothing, rambled away into such subjects as mangold-wurzels and

subsoil, scab-and-foot rot, and food for pheasants, all of which I

skipped; ditto about the close of the hunting-season, which he and Sir

Watkins--Winny's admirer--had shared together; and how the rain had

deluged Salop, throwing the scent breast-high, so that in many a run

the fox and the hounds had it all to themselves, and that following

them was as bad as going all round the Wrekin to Shrewsbury, mere

brooks having become more than saddle-girth deep; moreover, the

mischievous, execrable, and pestilent wire fences were playing the

devil with the noble old sport of fox-hunting; then, with a few more

expressions of regard, and a hint about Coutts & Co., if I wanted

cash, his characteristic letter closed, and just when folding it, I

detected Master Phil Caradoc surreptitiously placing Winny's cigar

case very near his bushy moustache--about to kiss it, in fact. He grew

very red, and looked a little provoked.

"So that is all Sir Madoc's news?" said he.

"All--a dear old fellow."

"To-morrow is Sunday, when we shall have the chaplain at the

drum-head, and be confessing that we have done those things which we

ought not to have done, and left undone those things which we ought to

have done, while the whistling dicks are bursting and the shot

booming, as the Ruskies seek to have a quiet shy at our hollow square,

and the Naval Brigade, with their long 'Lancasters,' are making, as

usual, the devil's own row against the Redan--so till then, adieu!" he

added, adopting a bantering tone, as men will at times, when ashamed

of having exhibited any emotion or weakness.

Not long after this, with my company, I had to escort to Balaclava,

and to guard for some days, till embarked, some Russian prisoners, who

had been taken by the Turks in an affair between Kamara and the

Tchernaya, and who were afterwards transmitted to Lewes in Sussex; and

I had a little opportunity afforded me for studying their character

and composition; and brave though these men undoubtedly were, I felt

something of pity and contempt for them; nor was I mistaken, though

Prince Dolgorouki maintains, in _La Vérité sur la Russie_, that a

Muscovite alone can write on a Russian subject. A British soldier

never forgets that he is a citizen and a free-born man; but to the

Russian these terms are as untranslatable as that of _slave_ into the

Celtic.

In the empire, when fresh levies are wanted, the chief of each village

makes a selection; the wretched serfs have then one side of the head

shaved, to prevent desertion, and, farther still, are manacled and

marched like felons to the headquarters of their regiment. There they

are stripped, bathed--rather a necessary ceremony--and deprived of all

they may possess, save the brass crosses and medals which are chained

round their neck--the holy amulet of the Russian soldier, and spared

to him as the only consolation of his miserable existence. He is

docile, submissive, and gallant, but supple, subservient, and cunning,

though his gallantry and courage are the result of dull insensibility,

tinged with ferocity rather than moral force.

The recruit bemoans the loss of his beard, and carefully preserves it

that it may be buried with him, as an offering to St. Nicholas, who

would not admit him into heaven without it. Once enrolled--we cannot

say _enlisted_--he makes a solemn vow never to desert the colours of

his regiment, each of which has its own _artel_ or treasury, its own

chaplain, sacred banners, and relics. The pay of these warriors

averages about a halfpenny English per diem. Their food is of the most

wretched description, and it is known that when the troops of Suwarrow

served in the memorable campaign of Italy, they devoured with keen

relish the soap and candles wherever they went; but many of the

Russian battalions, and even the Cossack corps, have vocal companies

that sing on the march, or at a halt, where they form themselves into

a circle, in the centre of which stands the principal singer or

leader. And thus I heard some of these poor fellows sing, when I

halted them outside Balaclava, at a place where, as I remember,

there lay a solitary grave--that probably of a Frenchman, as it was

marked by a cross, had a wreath of immortelles upon it, and was

inscribed--alas for the superstitions of the poor human heart!--"the

last tribute of love."

The snow and the rain had frittered it nearly away.

Among my prisoners were four officers--dandies who actually wore

glazed boots, and were vain of their little hands and feet. I was more

than usually attentive to them for the sake of Valerie, and as they

certainly seemed--whatever the rank and file might be--thorough

gentlemen. One knew Volhonski, and all seemed to know Valerie, and had

probably danced--perhaps flirted--with her, for they had met at balls

in St. Petersburg. All knew Tolstoff, and laughed at him; but none

could tell me whether or not she and that northern bear were as yet

"one flesh," or married in _facie ecclesia_.