THE PLAN OF RETALIATION.
It was 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 regard for 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 be better 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.
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.
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 gave him 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 only _I_ could
save him!" she went on. "There was no other way! Oh, _how_ I 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.
"_His_ hat!" 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.
"_My_ Peyton? 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's speech, 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, _how_ shall I
pay him? How shall I make him _feel_--ah! I know! I'll give him six
for half a dozen! I'll make _him_ love _me_, 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."
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.
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 the hat 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.
"'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 another tour 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 surely _must_ be--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, lightly. "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 with her 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.
"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
sense of 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.