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“I suppose,” she went on, desperately, “if you go back to town, you will leave the captain in Williams’s charge.”
“If I go back before the captain leaves,” said Elizabeth, thereby dashing her amiable aunt’s secretly cherished hope of affording the wounded officer the pleasure of her own unalloyed society.
Elizabeth really did not know what she would do. Her actions, on Colden’s return, would depend on the prior actions of the captain. No one had spoken to Peyton of her intention to leave after a week’s stay. She had thought such an announcement to him from her might seem to imply a hint that it was time he should resume his wooing. That he would resume it, in due course, she took for granted. Measuring his supposed feelings by her own real ones, she assumed that her loveless betrothal to another would not deter Peyton’s further courtship. She believed he had divined the nature of that betrothal. Nor would he be hindered by the prospect of their being parted some while by the war. Engagements were broken, wars did not last forever, those who loved each other found ways to meet. So he would surely speak, before their parting, of what, since it filled her heart, must of course fill his. But she would show no forwardness in the matter. She therefore avoided him till dinner-time.
At the table he abruptly announced that, as duty187required he should rejoin the army at the first moment possible, and as he now felt capable of making the journey, he would depart that night.
Miss Sally hid her startled emotions behind a glass of madeira, into which she coughed, chokingly. Molly, the maid, stopped short in her passage from the kitchen door to the table, and nearly dropped the pudding she was carrying. Elizabeth concealed her feelings, and told herself that his declaration must soon be forthcoming. She left it to him to contrive the necessary private interview.
After dinner, he sat with the ladies before the fire in the east parlor, awaiting his opportunity with much hidden perturbation. Elizabeth feigned to read. At last, habit prevailing, her aunt fell asleep. Peyton hummed and hemmed, looked into the fire, made two or three strenuous swallows of nothing, and opened his mouth to speak. At that instant old Mr. Valentine came in, newly arrived from the Hill, and “whew”-ing at the cold. Peyton felt like one for whom a brief reprieve had been sent by heaven.
All afternoon Mr. Valentine chattered of weather and news and old times. Peyton’s feeling of relief was short-lasting; it was supplanted by a mighty regret that he had not been permitted to get the thing over. No second opportunity came of itself, nor could Peyton, who found his ingenuity for once188quite paralyzed, force one. Supper was announced, and was partaken of by Harry, in fidgety abstraction; by Elizabeth, in expectant but outwardly placid silence; by Miss Sally, in futile smiling attempts to make something out of her last conversational chances with the handsome officer; and by Mr. Valentine, in sedulous attention to his appetite, which still had the vigor of youth.
Almost as soon as the ladies had gone from the dining-room, Peyton rose and left the octogenarian in sole possession. In the parlor Harry found no one but Molly, who was lighting the candles.
“What, Molly?” said he, feeling more and more nervous, and thinking to retain, by constant use of his voice, a good command of it for the dreaded interview. “The ladies not here? They left Mr. Valentine and me at the supper-table.”
“They are walking in the garden, sir. Miss Elizabeth likes to take the air every evening.”
“’Tis a chill air she takes this evening, I’m thinking,” he said, standing before the fire and holding out his hands over the crackling logs.
“A chill night for your journey,” replied Molly. “I should think you’d wait for day, to travel.”
Peyton, unobservant of the wistful sigh by which the maid’s speech was accompanied, replied, “Nay, for me, ’tis safest travelling at night. I must go through dangerous country to reach our lines.”
189
“It mayn’t be as cold to-morrow night,” persisted Molly.
“My wound is well enough for me to go now.”
“’Twill be better still to-morrow.”
But Peyton, deep in his own preoccupation, neither deduced aught from the drift of her remarks nor saw the tender glances which attended them. While he was making some insignificant answer, the maid, in moving the candelabrum on the spinet, accidentally brushed therefrom his hat, which had been lying on it. She picked it up, in great confusion, and asked his pardon.
“’Twas my fault in laying it there,” said he, receiving it from her. “I’m careless with my things. I make no doubt, since I’ve been here, I’ve more than once given your mistress cause to wish me elsewhere.”
“La, sir,” said Molly, “I don’t think—anyone would wish you elsewhere!” Whereupon she left the room, abashed at her own audacity.
“The devil!” thought Peyton. “I should feel better if some one did wish me elsewhere.”
As he continued gazing into the fire, and his task loomed more and more disagreeably before him, he suddenly bethought him that Elizabeth, in taking her evening walk, showed no disposition for a private meeting. Dwelling on that one circumstance, he thought for awhile he might have been wrong in190supposing she loved him. But then the previous night’s incident recurred to his mind. Nothing short of love could have induced such solicitude. But, then, as she sought no last interview, might he not be warranted in going away and leaving the disclosure to come gradually, implied by the absence of further word from him? Yet, she might be purposely avoiding the appearance of seeking an interview. The reasons calling for a prompt confession came back to him. While he was wavering between one dictate and another, in came Mr. Valentine, with a tobacco pipe.
Like an inspiration, rose the idea of consulting the octogenarian. A man who cannot make up his own mind is justified in seeking counsel. Elizabeth could suffer no harm through Peyton’s confiding in this sage old man, who was devoted to her and to her family. Mr. Valentine’s very words on entering, which alluded to Peyton’s pleasant visit as Elizabeth’s guest, gave an opening for the subject concerned. A very few speeches led up to the matter, which Harry broached, after announcing that he took the old man for one experienced in matters of the heart, and receiving the admission that the old manhadenjoyed a share of the smiles of the sex. But if the captain had thought, in seeking advice, to find reason for avoiding his ugly task, he was disappointed. Old Valentine, though he had for some191days feared a possible state of things between the captain and Miss Sally, had observed Elizabeth, and his vast experience had enabled him to interpret symptoms to which others had been blind. “She has acted towards you,” he said to Peyton, “as she never acted towards another man. She’s shown you a meekness, sir, a kind of timidity.” And he agreed that, if Peyton should go away without an explanation, it would make her throw aside other expectations, and would, in the end, “cut her to the heart.” Valentine hinted at regrettable things that had ensued from a jilting of which himself had once been guilty, and urged on Peyton an immediate unbosoming, adding, “She’ll be so took aback and so full of wrath at you, she won’t mind the loss of you. She’ll abominate you and get over it at once.”
The idea came to Peyton of making the confession by letter, but this he promptly rejected as a coward’s dodge. “It’s a damned unpleasant duty, but that’s the more reason I should face it myself.”
At that moment the front door of the east hall was heard to open.
“It’s Miss Elizabeth and her aunt,” said Valentine, listening at the door.
“Then I’ll have the thing over at once, and be gone! Mr. Valentine, a last kindness,—keep the aunt out of the room.”
Before Valentine could answer, the ladies entered,192their cheeks reddened by the weather. Elizabeth carried a small bunch of belated autumn flowers.
“Well, I’m glad to come in out of the cold!” burst out Miss Sally, with a retrospective shudder. “Mr. Peyton, you’ve a bitter night for your going.” She stood before the fire and smiled sympathetically at the captain.
But Peyton was heedful of none but Elizabeth, who had laid her flowers on the spinet and was taking off her cloak. Peyton quickly, with an “Allow me, Miss Philipse,” relieved her of the wrap, which in his abstraction he retained over his left arm while he continued to hold his hat in his other hand. After receiving a word of thanks, he added, “You’ve been gathering flowers,” and stood before her in much embarrassment.
“The last of the year, I think,” said she. “The wind would have torn them off, if aunt Sally and I had not.” And she took them up from the spinet to breath their odor.
Meanwhile Mr. Valentine had been whispering to Miss Sally at the fireplace. As a result of his communications, whatever they were, the aunt first looked doubtful, then cast a wistful glance at Peyton, and then quietly left the room, followed by the old man, who carefully closed the door after him.
While Elizabeth held the flowers to her nostrils, Peyton continued to stand looking at her, during an193awkward pause. At length she replaced the nosegay on the spinet, and went to the fireplace, where she gazed at the writhing flames, and waited for him to speak.
Still laden with the cloak and hat, he desperately began:
“Miss Philipse, I—ahem—before I start on my walk to-night—”
“Your walk?” she said, in slight surprise.
“Yes,—back to our lines, above.”
“But you are not going towalkback,” she said, in a low tone. “You are to have the horse, Cato.”
Peyton stood startled. In a few moments he gulped down his feelings, and stammered:
“Oh—indeed—Miss Philipse—I cannot think of depriving you—especially after the circumstances.”
She replied, with a gentle smile:
“You took the horse when I refused him to you. Now will you not have him when I offer him to you? You must, captain! I’ll not have so fine a horse go begging for a master. I’ll not hear of your walking. On such a night, such a distance, through such a country!”
“The devil!” thought Harry. “This makes it ten times harder!”
Elizabeth now turned to face him directly. “Does not my cloak incommode you?” she said, amusedly. “You may put it down.”
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“Oh, thank you, yes!” he said, feeling very red, and went to lay the cloak on the table, but in his confusion put down his own hat there, and kept the cloak over his arm. He then met her look recklessly, and blurted out:
“The truth is, Miss Philipse, now that I am soon to leave, I have something to—to say to you.” His boldness here forsook him, and he paused.
“I know it,” said Elizabeth, serenely, repressing all outward sign of her heart’s blissful agitation.
“You do?” quoth he, astonished.
“Certainly,” she answered, simply. “How could you leave without saying it?”
Peyton had a moment’s puzzlement. Then, “Without saying what?” he asked.
“What you have to say,” she replied, blushing, and lowering her eyes.
“But what have I to say?” he persisted.
She was silent a moment, then saw that she must help him out.
“Don’t you know? You were not at all tongue-tied when you said it the evening you came here.”
Peyton felt a gulf opening before him. “Good heaven,” thought he, “she actually believes I am about to propose!”
Now, or never, was the time for the plunge. He drew a full breath, and braced himself to make it.
“But—ah—you see,” said he, “the trouble is,—what195I said then is not what I have to say now. You must understand, Miss Philipse, that I am devoted to a soldier’s career. All my time, all my heart, my very life, belong to the service. Thus I am, in a manner, bound no less on my side, than you—I beg your pardon—”
“What do you mean?” She spoke quietly, yet was the picture of open-eyed astonishment.
“Cannot you see?” he faltered.
“You mean”—her tone acquired resentment as her words came—“that I, too, am bound onmyside,—to Mr. Colden?”
“I did not say so,” he replied, abashed, cursing his heedless tongue. He would not, for much, have reminded her of any duty on her part.
She regarded him for a moment in silence, while the clouds of indignation gathered. Then the storm broke.
“You poltroon, Idosee! You wish to take back your declaration, because you are afraid of Colden’s vengeance!”
“Afraid? I afraid?” he echoed, mildly, surprised almost out of his voice at this unexpected inference.
“Yes, you craven!” she cried, and seemed to tower above her common height, as she stood erect, tearless, fiery-eyed, and clarion-voiced. “Your cowardice outweighs your love! Go from my sight and from my father’s house, you cautious lover, with196your prudent scruples about the rights of your rival! Heavens, that I should have listened to such a coward! Go, I say! Spend no more time under this roof than you need to get your belongings from your room. Don’t stop for farewells! Nobody wants them! Go,—and I’ll thank you to leave my cloak behind you!”
“‘GO, I SAY!’”
“‘GO, I SAY!’”
Silenced and confounded by the force of her denunciation, he stupidly dropped the cloak to the floor where he stood, and stumbled from the room, as if swept away by the torrent of her wrath and scorn.
197CHAPTER X.THE PLAN OF RETALIATION.
Itwas in the south hall that he found himself, having fled through the west door of the parlor, forgetful that his hat still remained on the table. He naturally continued his retreat up the stairs to his chamber. The only belongings that he had to get there were his broken sword, his scabbard, and belt. These he promptly buckled on, resolved to leave the house forthwith.
Still tingling from the blow of her words, he yet felt a great relief that the task was so soon over, and that her speedy action had spared him the labor of the long explanation he had thought to make. As matters stood, they could not be improved. Her love had turned to hate, in the twinkling of an eye.
And yet, how preposterously she had accounted for his conduct! Dwelling on his hint, though it was checked at its utterance, that she was already bound, she had assumed that he held out her engagement to Colden as a barrier to their love. And she believed, or pretended to believe, that his regard198for that barrier arose from fear of inviting a rival’s vengeance! As if he, who daily risked his life, could fear the vengeance of a man whom he had already once defeated with the sword! It was like a woman to alight first on the most absurd possibility the situation could imply. And if she knew the conjecture was absurd, she was the more guilty of affront in crying it out against him. He, in turn, was now moved to anger. He would not have false motives imputed to him. It would be useless to talk to her while her present mood continued. But he could write, and leave the letter where it would be found. Inasmuch as he had faced the worst storm his disclosure could have aroused, there was no cowardice in resorting to a letter with such explanations as could not be brought to her mind in any other form. Two days previously, he had requested writing materials in his room, for the sketching of a report of his being wounded, and these were still on a table by the window. He lighted candles, and sat down to write.
When he had finished his document, sealed and addressed it, he laid it on the table, where it would attract the eye of a servant, and looked around for his hat. Presently he recalled that he had left it in the parlor. He first thought of seeking a servant, and sending for it, lest he might meet Elizabeth, should he again enter the parlor. But it would be199better to face her, for a moment, than to give an order to a servant of a house whence he had been ordered out. And now, as he intended to go into the parlor, he would preferably leave the letter in that room, where it would perhaps reach her own eyes before any other’s could fall on it. He therefore took up the letter, thrust it for the time in his belt, descended quietly to the south hall, cautiously opened the parlor door, peeped through the crack, saw with relief that only Miss Sally was in the room, threw the door wide, and strode quickly towards the table on which he thought he had left his hat.
But, as he approached, he saw that the hat was not there.
In the meantime, during the few minutes he had spent in his room, things had been occurring in this parlor. As soon as Peyton had left it, or had been carried out of it by the resistless current of Elizabeth’s invective, the girl had turned her anger on herself, for having weakened to this man, made him her hero, indulged in those dreams! She could scarcely contain herself. Having mechanically picked up her cloak, where Peyton had let it fall, she evinced a sudden unendurable sense of her humiliation and folly, by hurling the cloak with violence across the room. At that moment old Mr. Valentine entered, placidly seeking his pipe, which he had left behind him.
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The octogenarian looked surprisedly at the cloak, then at Elizabeth, then mildly asked her if she had seen his pipe.
“Oh, the cowardly wretch!” was Elizabeth’s answer, her feelings forcing a release in speech.
“What, me?” asked the old man, startled, not yet having thought to connect her words with his last interview with the American officer. He looked at her for a moment, but, receiving no satisfaction, calmly refilled, from a leather pouch, his pipe, which he had found on the mantel.
Elizabeth’s thoughts began to take more distinct shape, and, in order to formulate them the more accurately, she spoke them aloud to the old man, finding it an assistance to have a hearer, though she supposed him unable to understand.
“Yet he wasn’t a coward that evening he rode to attack the Hessians,—nor when he was wounded,—nor when he stood here waiting to be taken! He was no coward then, was he, Mr. Valentine?” Getting no answer, and irritated at the old man’s owl-like immovability, she repeated, with vehemence, “Was he?”
Mr. Valentine had, by this time, begun to put things together in his mind.
“No. To be sure,” he chirped, and then lighted his pipe with a small fagot from the fireplace, an operation that required a good deal of time.
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Elizabeth now spoke more as if to herself. “Perhaps, after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool, to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He would not encroach where another had the prior claim. He considers Colden in the matter. That’s it, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” said Valentine, blindly, not having paid attention to this last speech, and sitting down in his armchair.
“I can understand now,” she went on. “He did not know of my engagement that time he made love, when his life was at stake.”
“Then he’s told you all about it?” said the old man, beginning to take some interest, now that he had provided for his own comfort.
“About what?” asked Elizabeth, showing a woman’s consistency, in being surprised that he seemed to know what she had been addressing him about.
“About pretending he loved you,—to save his life,” replied Mr. Valentine, innocently, considering that her supposed acquaintance with the whole secret made him free to discuss it with her.
Elizabeth’s astonishment, unexpected as it was by him, surprised the old man in turn, and also gave202him something of a fright. So the two stared at each other.
“Pretending he loved me!” she repeated, reflectively. “Pretending! To save his life!Now I see!” The effect of the revelation on her almost made Mr. Valentine jump out of his chair. “For onlyIcould save him!” she went on. “There was no other way! Oh,howI have been fooled! I—tricked by a miserable rebel! Made a laughing-stock! Oh, to think he did not really love me, and that I—Oh, I shall choke! Send some one to me,—Molly, aunt Sally, any one! Go! Don’t sit there gazing at me like an owl! Go away and send some one!”
Mr. Valentine, glad of reason for an honorable retreat from this whirlwind that threatened soon to fill the whole room, departed with as much activity as he could command.
“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” Elizabeth asked of the air around her. “I must repay him for his duplicity. I shall never rest a moment till I do! What an easy dupe he must think me! Oh-h-h!”
She brought her hand violently down on the table but fortunately struck something comparatively soft. In her fury, she clutched this something, raised it from the table, and saw what it was.
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“Hishat!” she cried, and made to throw it into the fire, but, with a woman’s aim, sent it flying towards the door, which was at that instant opened by her aunt, who saved herself by dodging most undignifiedly.
“What is it, my dear?” asked Miss Sally, in a voice of mingled wonderment and fear.
“I’ll pay him back, be sure of that!” replied Elizabeth, who was by this time a blazing-eyed, scarlet-faced embodiment of fury, and had thrown off all reserve.
“Pay whom back?” tremblingly inquired Miss Sally, with vague apprehensions for the safety of old Mr. Valentine, who had so recently left her niece.
“Your charming captain, your gentleman rebel, your gallant soldier, your admirable Peyton, hang him!” cried Elizabeth.
“MyPeyton? I only wish he was!” sighed the aunt, surprised into the confession by Elizabeth’s own outspokenness.
“You’re welcome to him, when I’ve had my revenge on him! Oh, aunt Sally, to think of it! He doesn’t love me! He only pretended, so that I would save his life! But he shall see! I’ll deliver him up to the troops, after all!”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Sally, deprecatingly. Great as was the news conveyed to her by Elizabeth’s204speech, she comprehended it, and adjusted her mind to it, in an instant, her absence of outward demonstration being due to the very bigness of the revelation, to which any possible outside show of surprise would be inadequate and hence useless. Moreover, Elizabeth gave no time for manifestations.
“No,” the girl went on. “You are right. He’s able-bodied now, and might be a match for all the servants. Besides, ’twould come out why I shielded him, and I should be the laugh o’ the town. Oh,howshall I pay him? How shall I make himfeel—ah! I know! I’ll give him six for half a dozen! I’ll makehimloveme, and then I’ll cast him off and laugh at him!”
She was suddenly as jubilant at having hit on the project as if she had already accomplished it.
“Make him love you?” repeated her aunt, dubiously. Her aunt had her own reasons for doubting the possibility of such an achievement.
“Perhaps you think I can’t!” cried Elizabeth. “Wait and see! But, heavens! He’s going away,—he won’t come back,—perhaps he’s gone! No, there’s his hat!” She ran and picked it up from the corner of the doorway. “He won’t go without his hat. He’ll have to come here for it. He went to his room for his sword. He’ll be here at any moment.”
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And she paced the floor, holding the hat in one hand, and lapsing to the level of ordinary femininity as far as to adjust her hair with the other.
“You’ll have to make quick work of it, Elizabeth, dear,” said the aunt, with gentle irony, “if he’s going to-night.”
“I know, I know,—but I can’t do it looking like this.” She laid the hat on the table, in order to employ both hands in the arrangement of her hair. “If I only had on my satin gown! By the lord Harry, I have a mind—I will! When he comes in here, keep him till I return. Keep him as if your life depended on it.” She went quickly towards the door of the east hall.
“But, Elizabeth!” cried Miss Sally, appalled. “Wait! How—”
“How?” echoed Elizabeth, turning near the door. “By hook or crook! You must think of a way! I have other things on my mind. Only keep him till I come back. If you let him go, I’ll never speak to you again! And not a word to him of what I’ve told you! I sha’n’t be long.”
“But what are you going to do?” asked the aunt, despairingly.
“Going to arm myself for conquest! To put on my war-paint!” And the girl hastened through the doorway, crossed the hall, called Molly, and ran up-stairs to her room.
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Miss Sally stood in the parlor, a prey to mingled feelings. She did not dare refuse the task thrown on her by her imperative niece. Not only her niece’s anger would be incurred by the refusal, but also the niece’s insinuations that the aunt was not sufficiently clever for the task. However difficult, the thing must be attempted. And, which made matters worse, even if the attempt should succeed, it would be a rewardless one to Miss Sally. If she might detain the captain for herself, the effort would be worth making. The aunt sighed deeply, shook her head distressfully, and then, reverting to a keen sense of Elizabeth’s rage and ridicule in the event of failure, looked wildly around for some suggestion of means to hold the officer. Her eye alighted on the hat.
“He won’t go without his hat, a night like this!” she thought. “I’ll hide his hat.”
She forthwith possessed herself of it, and explored the room for a hiding-place. She decided on one of the little narrow closets in either side of the doorway to the east hall, and started towards it, holding the hat at her right side. Before she had come within four feet of the chosen place, she heard the door from the south hall being thrown open, and, casting a swift glance over her left shoulder, saw the captain step across the threshold. She choked back her sensations, and gave inward thanks that the207hat was hidden from his sight by herself. Peyton walked briskly towards the table.
Suddenly he stopped short, and turned his eyes from the table to Miss Sally, whose back was towards him.
“Ah, Miss Williams,” said he, politely but hastily, “I left my hat here somewhere.”
“Indeed?” said Miss Sally, amazed at her own unconsciousness, while she tried to moderate the beating of her heart. At the same moment, she turned and faced him, bringing the hat around behind her so that it should remain unseen.
Peyton looked from her to the spinet, thence to the sofa, thence back to the table.
“Yes, on the table, I thought. Perhaps—” He broke off here, and went to look on the mantel.
Miss Sally, who had never thought the captain handsomer, and who smarted under the sense of being deterred, by her niece’s purpose, from employing this opportunity to fascinate him on her own account, continued to turn so as to face him in his every change of place.
“I don’t see it anywhere,” she said, with childlike innocence.
Peyton searched the mantel, then looked at the chairs, and again brought his eyes to bear on Miss Sally. She blinked once or twice, but did not quail.
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“’Tis strange!” he said. “I’m sure I left it in this room.”
And he went again over all the ground he had already examined. Miss Sally utilized the times when his back was turned, in making a search of her own, the object of which was a safe place where she could quickly deposit the hat without attracting his attention.
Peyton was doubly annoyed at this enforced delay in his departure, since Elizabeth might come into the parlor at any time, and the meeting occur which he had, for a moment, hoped to avoid.
“Would you mind helping me look for it?” said he. “I’m in great haste to be gone. Do me the kindness, madam, will you not?”
“Why, yes, with pleasure,” she answered, thinking bitterly how transported she would be, in other circumstances, at such an opportunity of showing her readiness to oblige him.
Her aid consisted in following him about, looking in each place where he had looked the moment before, and keeping the sought-for object close behind her.
Suddenly he turned about, with such swiftness that she almost came into collision with him.
“It must have fallen to the floor,” said he.
“Why, yes, we never thought of looking there, did we?” And she followed him through another209tour of the room, turning her averted head from side to side in pretendedly ranging the floor with her eyes.
“I know,” he said, with the elation of a new conjecture. “It must be behind something!”
Miss Sally gasped, but in an instant recovered herself sufficiently to say:
“Of course. It surelymustbe—behind something.”
Harry went and looked behind the spinet, then examined the small spaces between other objects and the wall. This search was longer than any he had made before, as some of the pieces of furniture had to be moved slightly out of position.
Miss Sally felt her proximity to the object of this search becoming unendurable. She therefore profited by Peyton’s present occupation to conduct pretended endeavors towards the closet west of the fireplace. She noiselessly opened one of the narrow doors, quickly tossed the hat inside, closed the door, and turned with ineffable relief towards Peyton.
To her consternation she found him looking at her.
“What are you doing there?” he asked.
“Why,—looking in this closet,” she stammered, guiltily.
“Oh, no, it couldn’t be in there,” said Peyton,210lightly. “But, yes. One of the servants might have laid it on the shelf.” And he made for the closet.
“Oh, no!”
Miss Sally stood against the closet doors and held out her hands to ward him off.
“No harm to look,” said he, passing around her and putting his hand on the door.
Miss Sally felt that, by remaining in the position of a physical obstacle to his opening the closet, she would betray all. Acting on the inspiration of the instant, she ran to the centre of the room, and cried:
“Oh, come away! Come here!” and essayed a well-meant, but feeble and abortive, scream.
“What’s the matter?” asked Peyton, astonished.
“Oh, I’m going to faint!” she said, feigning a sinkiness of the knees and a floppiness of the head.
“Oh, pray don’t faint!” cried Peyton, running to support her. “I haven’t time. Let me call some one. Let me help you to the sofa.”
By this time he held her in his arms, and was thinking her another sort of burden than Tom Jones found Sophia, or Clarissa was to Roderick Random.
The lady shrank with becoming and genuine modesty from the contact, gently repelled him with211her hands, saying, “No, I’m better now,—but come,” and took him by the arm to lead him further from the fatal closet.
But Peyton immediately released his arm.
“Ah, thank you for not fainting!” he said, with complete sincerity, and stalked directly back to the closet. Before she could think of a new device, he had opened the door, beheld the hat, and seized it in triumph. “By George, I was right! I bid you farewell, Miss Williams!” He very civilly saluted her with the hat, and turned towards the west door of the parlor.
Must, then, all her previous ingenuity be wasted? After having so far exerted herself, must she suffer the ignominious consequences of failure?
She ran to intercept him. Desperation gave her speed, and she reached the west door before he did. She closed it with a bang, and stood with her back against it. “No, no!” she cried. “You mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t what?” asked Peyton, surprised as much by her distracted eyes, panting nostrils, and heaving bosom, as by her act itself.
“Mustn’t go out this way. Mustn’t open this door,” she answered, wildly.
He scrutinized her features, as if to test a sudden suspicion of madness. In a moment he threw off this conjecture as unlikely.
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“But,” said he, putting forth his hand to grasp the knob of the door.
“You mustn’t, I say!” she cried. “I can’t help it! Don’t blame me for it! Don’t ask me to explain, but you must not go out this way!”
She stood by her task now from a new motive, one that impelled more strongly than her fear of being reproached and derided by Elizabeth. Her own self-esteem was enlisted, and she was now determined not to incur her own reproach and derision. She perceived, too, with a sentimental woman’s sense of the dramatic, that, though denied a drama of her own in which she might figure as heroine, here was, in another’s drama, a scene entirely hers, and she was resolved to act it out with honor. Circumstances had not favored her with a romance, but here, in another’s romance, was a chapter exclusively hers, a chapter, moreover, on whose proper termination the very continuation of the romance depended. So she would hold that door, at any cost.
Peyton regarded her for another moment of silence.
“Oh, well,” said he, at last, “I can go the other way.”
And, to her dismay, he strode towards the door of the east hall. She could not possibly outrun him thither. Her heart sank. The killing sense213of failure benumbed her body. He was already at the door,—was about to open it. At that instant he stepped back into the parlor. In through the doorway, that he was about to traverse, came Elizabeth.
214CHAPTER XI.THE CONQUEST.
Miss Sallysaw at a glance that her niece was dressed for conquest; then, with immense relief and supreme exultation, but with a feeling of exhaustion, knowing that her work was done, she silently left the room by the door she had guarded, closed it noiselessly behind her, and went up-stairs to restore her worked-out energies.
Elizabeth wore a blue satin gown, the one evening dress she had, in the possibility of a candle-light visit from the officers at the outpost, brought with her from New York. Her bare forearms, and the white surface surrounding the base of her neck, were thus for the first time displayed to Peyton’s view. A pair of slender gold bracelets on her wrists set off the smoothness of her rounded arms, but she wore no other jewelry. She had not had the time or the facilities to have her hair built high as a grenadier’s cap, but she looked none the less commanding. She was, indeed, a radiant creature. Peyton, having never before seen215her at her present advantage, opened wide his eyes and stared at her with a wonder whose openness was excused only by the suddenness of the dazzling apparition.
She cast on him a momentary look of perfect indifference, as she might on any one that stood in her way; then walked lightly to the spinet, giving him a barely noticeable wide berth in passing, as if he were something with which it was probably desirable not to come in contact. Her slight deviation from a direct line of progress, though made inoffensively, struck him like a blow, yet did not interrupt, for more than an instant, his admiration. He stood dumbly looking after her, at her smooth and graceful movement, which had no sound but the rustling of skirts, her footfalls being noiseless in the satin slippers she wore.
Peyton was not now as impatient as he had been to depart. In fact, he lost, in some measure, his sense of being in the act of departure. What he felt was an inclination to look longer on this so unexpected vision. She sat down at the spinet with her back towards him, and somehow conveyed in her attitude that she thought him no longer in the room. He felt a necessity for establishing the fact of his presence.
“Pardon me for addressing you,” he said, with a diffidence new to him, taking up the first pretext216that came to mind, “but I fear your aunt requires looking to. She behaves strangely.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, lightly, too wise to give him the importance of pretending not to hear him, “she is subject to queer spells at times. I thought you had gone.”
She began to play the spinet, very quietly and unobtrusively, with an absence of resentment, and with a seemingly unconscious indifference, that gave him a paralyzing sense of nothingness.
Unpleasant as this feeling made his position, he felt the situation become one from which it would be extremely awkward to flee. For the first time since certain boyhood fits of bashfulness, he now realized the aptness of that oft-read expression, “rooted to the spot.” That he should be thrown into this trance-like embarrassment, this powerlessness of motion, this feeling of a schoolboy first introduced to society, of a player caught by stage fright, was intolerable.
When she had touched the keys gently a few times, he shook off something of the spell that bound him, and moved to a spot whence he could get a view of her face in profile. It had not an infinitesimal trace of the storm that had driven him from the room a short time before. It was entirely serene. There was on it no anger, no grief, no reproach of self or of another, no scorn. There was217pride, but only the pride it normally wore; reserve, but only the reserve habitual to a high-born girl in the presence of any but her familiars. It was hard to believe her the woman who had been stirred to such tremendous wrath a few minutes ago, by the disclosure that she had been deceived, her love tricked and misplaced. Rather, it was hard to believe that the scene of wrath had ever occurred, that this woman had ever been so stirred by such cause, that she had ever loved him, that he had ever dared pretend love to her. The deception and the confession, with all they had elicited from her, seemed parts of a dream, of some fancy he had had, some romance he had read.
As for Elizabeth, she knew not, thought not, whether, in bearing him hot resentment, she still loved him. She knew only that she craved revenge, and that the first step towards her desired end was to assume that indifference which so puzzled, interested, and confounded him. A weak or a stupid woman would have shown a sense of injury, with flashes of anger. An ordinarily clever woman would have affected disdain, would have sniffed and looked haughty, would have overdone her pretended contempt. It is true, Elizabeth had moved slightly out of her way to pass further from him, but she had done this with apparent thoughtlessness, as if the act were dictated by some inner sense of his belonging218to an inferior race; not with a visible intention of showing repulsion. It is true she had assumed ignorance of his presence, but she had given him to attribute this to a belief that he had left the room. When his voice declared his whereabouts, she treated him just as she would have treated any other indifferent person who wasnot quiteher equal.
Peyton felt more and more uncomfortable. Would she continue playing the spinet forever, so perfectly at ease, so content not to look at him again, so assuming it for granted that, the operation of leave-taking being considered over between hostess and guest, the guest might properly be gone any moment without further attention on either side?
He began to fear that, if he did not soon speak, his voice would be beyond recovery. So, with a desperate resolve to recover his self-possession at a singlecoup, he blurted out, bunglingly:
“’Tis the first time I have seen you in that gown, madam.”
Elizabeth, not ceasing to let her fingers ramble with soft touch over the keyboard, replied, carelessly:
“I have not worn it in some time.”
Having found that he retained the power of speech, he proceeded to utter frankly his latest thought, concealing the slight bitterness of it with a pretence of playful, make-believe reproach:
“’Tis not flattering to me, that you never wore it219while I was your guest, yet put it on the moment you thought I had departed.”
She answered with good-humored lightness, “Why, sir, do you complain of not being flattered? I thought such complaints were made only by women, and only to their own hearts.”
“If by flattery,” said he, “you mean merited compliment, there are women who can never have occasion to complain of not receiving it.”
“Indeed? When was that discovery made?”
“A minute ago, madam.”
“Oh!” and she smiled with just such graciousness as a woman might show in accepting a compliment from a comparative stranger. “Thank you!”
“When I think of it,” said he, “it seems strange that you—ah—never took pains to—eh—to appear at your best—nay, I should say, as your real self!—before me.”
“Oh, you allude to my wearing this gown? Why, you must pardon my not having received you ceremoniously.Yourvisit began unexpectedly.”
“Then somebody else is about to begin a visit thatisexpected?”
“Didn’t you know? I thought all the house was aware Major Colden was to return in a week. He may be here to-night, though perhaps not till to-morrow.”
“Confound that man!” This to himself, and220then, to her: “I was of the impression you did not love him.”
“Why, what gave you that impression?”
“No matter. It seems I was wrong.”
“Oh, I don’t say that,—or that you’re right, either.”
“However,” quoth he, with an inward sigh of resignation, “it is forhimthat you are dressed as you never were for me!”
She did not choose to ask what reason had existed for considering him in selecting her attire. It was better not to notice his presumption, and she became more absorbed in her music.
Peyton strode up and down a few moments, then sat by the table, and rested his cheek on his hand, wearing a somewhat injured look.
“Major Colden, eh?” he mused. “To think I should come upon him again!” He essayed to renew conversation. “I trust, Miss Philipse, when I am gone—” But Elizabeth was now oblivious of surroundings; the notes from the spinet became louder, and she began to hum the air in a low, agreeable voice. Peyton looked hopeless. Presently he stood up again, watching her.
Elizabeth brought the piece to a lively finish, rose capriciously, took up the flowers she had laid on the spinet earlier in the evening, put them in her corsage, and made to readjust the bracelet on her right221arm. In this attempt, she accidentally dropped the bracelet to the floor. Peyton ran to pick it up. But she quickly recovered it before he could reach it, put it on, walked to the table and sat down by it, removed the flowers from her bosom to the table, took up the volume of “The School for Scandal,” and turned the leaves over as if in quest of a certain page.
While she was looking at the book, Peyton took up the flowers. Elizabeth, as if thinking they were still where she had laid them, put out her hand to repossess them, keeping her eyes the while on the book. For a moment, her hand ranged the table in search, then she abandoned the attempt to regain them.
Peyton held them out to her.
“No, I thank you,” she said, laying down the book, and went back to the spinet.
“Ah, you give them to me!” cried Peyton, with sudden pleasure.
“Not at all! I merely do not wish to have them now.”
“Oh,” said he, thinking to make account by finding offence where none was really expressed, “has my touch contaminated them for you?”
“How can you talk so absurdly?” And she resumed her seat at the spinet, and her playing.
Peyton stood holding the flowers, looking at her,222and presently heaved a deep sigh. This not moving her, he suddenly had an access of pride, brought himself together, and saying, with quick resolution, “I bid you good-night and good-by, madam,” went rapidly towards the door of the east hall. But his resolution weakened when his hand touched the knob, and, to make pretext for further sight of her, he turned and went to go out the other door.
Elizabeth had had a moment of alarm at his first sign of departure, but had not betrayed the feeling. Now when, from her seat at the spinet, she saw him actually crossing the threshold near her, she called out, gently, “A moment, captain.”
The pleased look on his face, as he turned towards her inquiringly, betrayed his gratification at being called back.
“You are taking my flowers away,” she said, in explanation.
He plainly showed his disappointment. “Your pardon. My thoughtlessness. But you said you didn’t wish to keep them.” He laid them on the spinet.
“I do not,—yet a woman must allow very few hands to carry off flowers of her gathering.”
She rose and took up the flowers and walked towards the fireplace.
“Then you at least take them back from my hands,” said Peyton.