CHAPTER LIX.--"A DREAM WHICH WAS NOT ALL A DREAM."

Brief though my nap of "forty winks," I had within it a little dream,

induced, no doubt, by my return to Wales, and by my surroundings, as

it was of Winifred Lloyd, of past tenderness, and our old kind,

flirting, cousinly intercourse, before _others_ came between us; for

Winifred had ever been as a sister to me, and dearer, perhaps. Now I

thought she was hanging over me with much of sorrowful yearning in her

soft face, and saying,

"Papa will not be here for an hour, perhaps, and for that hour I may

have him all to myself, to watch. Poor Harry, so bruised, so battered,

and so ill-used by those odious wretches!"

Her lips were parted; her breath came in short gasps.

Was it imagination or reality that a kiss or a tress of her hair

touched my cheek so lightly? There was certainly a tear, too!

I started and awoke fully, to see her I dreamt of standing at the side

of my chair, with one hand resting on it, while her soft eyes regarded

me sadly, earnestly, and--there is no use evading it--lovingly. She

wore her blue riding-habit, her skirt gathered in the hand which held

her switch and buff gauntlets; and though her fine hair was

beautifully dressed under her riding-hat, one tress _was_ loose.

"Dear Winifred, my appearance does not shock you, I hope?" said I,

clasping her hand tenderly, and perhaps with some of that energy

peculiar to those who have but one.

"Thank Heaven, it is no worse!" she replied; "but, poor Harry

Hardinge, an arm is a serious loss."

"Yet I might have come home, like _Le Diable Boiteux_, on two wooden

stumps, as Dora once half predicted; but even as it is, my

round-dancing is at an end now. By the way, I have a sorrowful message

for you."

"Then I don't want to hear it. But from whom?"

"One who can return no more, but one who loved you well--Phil

Caradoc."

A shade of irritation crossed her face for a moment; and then, with

something of sorrow, she asked,

"And this message?--poor fellow, he fell at the Redan!"

"His last thoughts and words were of you, Winny--amid the anguish of a

mortal wound," said I; and then I told her the brief story of his

death, and of his interment in the fifth parallel. Her eyes were very

full of tears; yet none fell, and somehow my little narrative failed

to excite her quite so much as I expected.

"Did you not love him?"

"No," she replied, curtly, and gathering up the skirt of her habit

more tightly, as if to leave me.

"Did you never do so?"

"Why those questions?--never, save as a friend--poor dear Mr. Caradoc!

But let us change the subject," she added, her short lip quivering,

and her half-drooped eyelids, too.

I was silent for a minute. I knew that, with a knowledge of the secret

sentiment which Winifred treasured in her heart for myself, I was

wrong in pursuing thus the unwelcome theme of Caradoc's rejection;

moreover, there are few men, if any, who would not have felt immensely

flattered by the preferences of a girl so bright and beautiful, so

soft and artless, as Miss Lloyd; and I found myself rapidly yielding

to the whole charm of the situation.

"How odd that you should have returned on my birthday!" said she,

playing with her jewelled switch, and permitting me to retain her

ungloved hand in mine.

"Your birthday."

"Yes; I am just twenty-three."

"The number of the old corps, Winifred--the number, see it when he

may, a soldier never forgets."

"But I hope you have bidden good-bye to it for ever."

"Too probably; and you cannot know, dear Winifred, how deep is the

pleasure I feel in being here again, after all I have undergone--here

in pleasant Craigaderyn; and more than all with you--hearing your

familiar voice, and looking into your eyes."

"Why?" she asked, looking out on the sunlit chase.

"Can you ask me why, when you know that I love you, Winny, and have

always loved you?"

"As a friend, of course," said she, trembling very much; "yes--but

nothing more."

"I repeat that I love you tenderly and truly; have I not ever known

your worth, your goodness--"

"Is this true, Harry Hardinge?" she asked, in a low voice, as my arm

encircled her, and she looked coyly but tremblingly down.

"True as that God now hears us, my darling, whom I hope yet to call my

wife!"

"O, say it again and again, dear Harry," said she, in a low voice like

a whisper; "I did so doubt it once--did so doubt that you would ever,

ever love me, who--who--loved you so," she continued, growing very

pale. "It may be unwomanly in me to say this, Harry; but I am not

ashamed to own it now."

"To a poor cripple, a warlike fragment from the Crimea," said I, with

a smile, as caressingly I drew her head down on my shoulder; and while

I toyed with her dark-brown hair, and gazed into her tender

violet-coloured eyes, I thought, "How can a man love any but a woman

with eyes and hair like Winny's?"

(At that moment I quite forgot how fatuously I had worshipped the

thick golden tresses, the snow-white skin, and deep black eyes of

Valerie. And it was for _me_ that Winny had declined poor Phil, Sir

Watkins, and some one else! O, I certainly owed her some reparation!)

"Bless you, darling, for your love," said I; "and I think our marriage

will make good Sir Madoc so happy."

"You were ever his favourite, Harry."

"And you have actually loved me, Winny--"

"Ever since I was quite a little girl," she replied, in a low voice,

while blushing deeply now.

"Ah, how blind I have been to the best interests of my heart! I always

loved you, Winifred; but I never knew how much until now."

"I am sure, Harry, that I--that I shall--"

"What, love?"

"Make you a very, very good little wife, and be so kind to you after

all you have undergone."

As she said this, with something between coyness and artlessness that

proved very bewitching, I pressed her close to me, and there flashed

upon my memory the dream of her, as I lay wounded and athirst near the

ditch of the Redan, and also the singular coincidence of her pet goat

leading to my discovery when lying half buried under the dead horse

and cannon-wheel on the field of Inkermann.

"Papa and Dora," said she, in a low broken voice, "on that day when my

great grief came--"

"Which grief?"

"The tidings of your being drowned," she continued, weeping at the

recollection, "and when I let out the long-hidden secret of my heart,

told me not to weep for you, Harry; that you were far happier

elsewhere than on earth; that you were in Heaven; and poor papa said

over and over again the Welsh prayer which ends Gogoniant ir Tad, ac

ir Mab, ac ir Yspryd Glan."

"What on earth is all that!" I asked, smiling.

"Glory to the Father, the Son, and so on. Well, Harry, it was all in

vain. I felt that in losing you I had lost the desire of my eyes, the

love of my girl's heart--for I always did love you, and I care not to

tell you so openly again," she added, as the tender arms went round

me, and the loving lips sought mine. "My crave for news from the seat

of war, and the terror with which I read those horrible lists, Harry,

are known to myself only; yet why should I say so? many others, whose

dearest were there, must have felt and endured as I did."

"All that is over now, pet Winny."

"And you are here with us again, Harry."

"And am yours--yours only!"

"But there is the bell to dress for dinner, Harry--and here come Dora

and Gwenny Vaughan," she added, giving a hasty smooth to her hair,

which somehow had been a little rumpled during the preceding

conversation.

The two girls came in for a minute or so, in their hats and riding

habits; the last-named was a very beautiful and distinguished-looking

blonde, who could talk about hunting like an old whipper-in, and who

received me with kind interest, while Dora did so with her usual

gushing _empressement_.

The dinner, which came subsequently in due course, was rather a tame

affair to Winny and me, when contrasted with our recent interview in

the drawing-room; but the tender secret we now shared, and the perfect

consciousness that no obstacle existed to our marriage, made us both

so radiantly happy, that Sir Madoc's rubicund face wore a comical and

somewhat perplexed expression, till we had our postprandial cigar

together in the conservatory. So the whole affair came about in the

fashion I have narrated; yet but a day or two before, I had been

affecting a desire to visit the Russian prisoners at Lewes!

At table, of course, I required much assistance, and though I urged

that Owen Gwyllim or one of the footmen should attend me, there was

often a friendly contention among the three girls to cut my food for

me, as if I were a great baby; and like something of that kind, I was

flattered, petted, and made much of; and there was something so

pleasant in being thus made a fuss with, and viewed as a "Crimean

hero," that I scarcely regretted the bones I had left at the Redan.

"And so, poor Harry," said Dora, after hearing the story of that

affair, "you had no brave beautiful Sister of Mercy to nurse you?"

"No; I had only Corporal Mulligan, a true and brave-hearted Irishman,

who lost an eye at Alma; and a kind-hearted fellow he was!"

Winifred did not talk much; but in her place as hostess seemed

brilliantly happy, and quite her old self. We had all a thousand

things to talk of, to tell, and to ask each other; and the fate of

that strange creature Guilfoyle, or rather the mystery which then

attended it, excited almost the commiseration of Sir Madoc, who, once

upon a time, was on the point of horse-whipping him. On certain points

connected with my residence at Yalta, I was, of course, as mute as a

fish.

Of Caradoc he spoke with genuine sorrow--the more so, as he was the

last of an old, old Welsh line.

"Poor fellow!" said he; "Phil was a man of whom we may say that which

was averred of Colonel Mountain, of the Cameronians, 'that though he

were cut into twenty pieces, yet every piece would be a gentleman!'"

Over our cigars, I told Sir Madoc all that had passed between Winifred

and me, and begged his approbation; and I have no words to express how

enthusiastic the large-hearted and jolly old man became; how rejoiced,

and how often he shook my hand, assuring me that he had ever loved me

quite as much as if I had been a son of his own; that his Winny was

one of the best girls in all Wales--true as steel, and one who, when

she loved, did so for ever.

"I thank Heaven," he added, "you didn't get that slippery eel, my Lady

Aberconway!"

"So do I, now, Sir Madoc," was my earnest response.

But I had not yet seen quite the last of Estelle Cressingham.

Of her Winifred must, at times, have been keenly and bitterly jealous,

yet she was too gentle, too ladylike and enduring, to permit such an

emotion to be visible to others.