THE CONQUEST.
Miss Sally saw 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 seen her 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 pretext that 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 was pride, 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 belonging to 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 was _not quite_ her 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 single _coup_, 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 it while 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. _Your_ visit began unexpectedly."
"Then somebody else is about to begin a visit that _is_ expected?"
"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, and then, 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 for
_him_ that 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
right arm. 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, and 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.
"Why, yes,--for this," and she tossed them into the fire.
He looked at them as they withered in the blaze, then said, "Have you
any objection to my carrying away the ashes, Miss Philipse?"
She answered, considerately, "'Twill take you more time than you can
lose, to gather them up."
"Oh, I am in no haste."
"Oh, then, I ask your pardon. A moment since, you were about to go."
"But now I prefer to stay."
"Indeed? May I ask the reason--but no matter."
But he felt that a reason ought to be forthcoming. "Why, you know,
because--" And here he thought of one. "I wish to stay to meet Major
Colden, of whom you say I am afraid. I shall prove to you at least I
am no coward. After what you have said to me this night, I must in
honor wait to face him."
"But it is late now. I don't think he will come till to-morrow."
"Then I can wait till to-morrow."
"But your duty calls you back to your own camp, now that your wound
has healed."
"I think my wound has undergone a slight relapse. You shall see, at
least, I am not afraid of your champion."
"If that is your only reason,--your desire to quarrel with Major
Colden,--I cannot invite you to remain."
"Well, then, to tell the truth, there _is_ another reason. When I
said, a while since, I had never seen you in that gown, I used too
many words. I should have said I had never really seen you at all."
"Where were your eyes?" she asked, absently, seeming to take his words
literally and to perceive no compliment.
"I was in a kind of waking sleep."
"It has been a time and place of hallucinations, I think. I, too, sir,
have been, since I came here a week ago, under the strangest spell. A
kind of light madness or witchery was over me, and made me act
ridiculously, against my very will. A week ago, when you were
disabled, I intended to give you up to the British,--as I should do
now, if it would not be so troublesome--"
"'Twould be troublesome to _me_, I assure you," he said, interrupting.
"But at the last moment," she went on, "I did precisely the reverse of
what I wished. Awhile ago, in this room, I seemed to be in the
possession of some evil spirit, which made me say preposterous things.
I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some
undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe,
the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one
returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may
have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of
having been curiously afflicted yourself."
"Then you mean," he faltered, "you did not really love me?"
"Why, certainly I did not! How could you think I did? Something
possessed my will. But, thank heaven, I am myself again. Why, sir, how
could I? You know very little of me, sir, to think--Oh!" She covered
her face with her hands. "What things must I have said and done, in my
clouded state, to make you think that! You,--an enemy, a rebel, a
person whose only possible interest to me arises from his enmity!"
Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty, the imposition on
him was complete. He saw this covetable being now indifferent to him,
out of his power to possess, likely soon to pass into the possession
of another.
"Pray try to forget awhile that enmity," he supplicated.
"I shall try, and then you can have no interest for me at all."
"Then don't try, I beg. I'd rather have an interest for you as an
enemy than not at all."
"Why, really, sir--" She seemed half puzzled, half amused.
"Lord," quoth he, "how I have been deluded! I thought my love-making
that night, feigned though it was, had wakened a response."
"Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me, sir, I don't remember
what passed here that night, save the unaccountable ending,--my making
you my guest instead of their prisoner."
"I wish you were pretending all this!"
"Why, if 'twould make you happier that I were, I wish so, too."
"How can you speak so lightly of such matters?"
"What matters?"
"Love, of course."
"Why, do men alone, because they laugh at women for taking love
seriously, have the right to take it lightly? And of what love am I
speaking lightly,--the love you say you feigned for me, or the love
you say you thought you had awakened in me?"
"The love I vow I do _not_ feign for you! The love I wish I _could_
awaken in you!"
"Why, captain, what a change has come over you!"
"Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in waking from yours, put
off love, I, in waking from mine, took on love!"
She smiled, as with amusement. "A somewhat speedy taking on, I should
say."
"Love's born of a glance, _I_ say!"
"Haven't I heard that before?" reflectively.
"Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it, and now I say it
again when I do!"
"And of what particular glance am I to suppose--"
"Of the first glance I cast on you when you entered this room in that
gown. Yes, born of a glance--"
"Born of a gown, in that case, don't you mean?" derisively.
"Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish."
"I don't wish it should be born at all."
"You don't wish I should love you?"
"I don't wish you should love me or shouldn't love me. I don't wish
you--anything. Why should I wish anything of one who is nothing to
me?"
"Nothing to you! I would you were to me what I am to you!"
"What is that, pray?"
"An adorer!"
"You are a--very amusing gentleman."
"You refuse me a glimpse of hope?"
"You would like to have it as a trophy, I suppose. You men treasure
the memories of your little conquests over foolish women, as an Indian
treasures the scalps he takes."
"Lord! which sex, I wonder, has the busier scalping-knife?"
"I can't speak for all my sex. Some of us seek no scalps--"
"You don't have to. I make you a present of mine. I fling it at your
feet."
"We seek no scalps, I say,--because we don't value them a finger-snap."
And she gave a specimen of the kind of finger-snap she did not value
them at.
"In heaven's name," he said, "say what you do value, that I may strive
to become like it! What do you value, I implore you, tell me?"
"Oh,--my studies, for one thing,--my French and my music,--"
"Could I but translate myself into French, or set myself to an air!"
"Nay, I don't care for _comic_ songs!"
"I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be buried in your garden,
and grow up in the shape of a rose-bush--"
"Or a cabbage!"
"I fear you don't like that flower."
"Better come up in the form of your own Virginia tobacco."
"And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you don't like tobacco. Ah,
Miss Philipse, this levity is far from the mood of my heart!"
"Why do you indulge in it, then?"
"I? Is it I who indulge in levity?"
"Assuredly, _I_ do not!" Oh, woman's privilege of saying unabashedly
the thing which is not!
"No," said he, "for there's no levity in the coldness with which
beauty views the wounds it makes."
"I'm sure one is not compelled to offer oneself to its wounds."
"No,--nor the moth to seek the flame."
"La, now you are a moth,--a moment ago, a rose-bush,--"
"And you are ten million roses, grown in the garden of heaven, and
fashioned into one body there, by some celestial Praxiteles!"
"Dear me, am I all that?"
"Ay," he said, sadly, "and no more truly conscious of what it means to
be all that, than any rose in any garden is conscious of what its
beauty means!"
"Perhaps," she said, softly, feeling for a moment almost tenderness
enough to abandon her purpose, "more conscious than you think!"
"Ah! Then you are not like common beauties,--as poor and dull within
as they are rich and radiant without? You but pretend insensibility,
to hide real feeling."
"I did not say so," she answered, lightly, bracing herself again to
her resolution.
"But it is so, is it not?" he went on. "Your heart and mind are as
roseate and delicate as your face? You can understand my praises and
my feelings? You can value such love as mine aright, and know 'tis
worthy some repayment?"
But she was not again to be duped by low-spoken, fervid words, or by
wistful, glowing eyes. She must be sure of him.
"I know,--I recall now," she said, with little apparent interest; "you
spoke of love a week ago, with no less eloquence and ardor."
"More eloquence and ardor, I dare say, for then I did not feel love.
Then my tongue was not tied by sense of a passion it could not hope to
express one hundredth part of! And, even if my tongue had gift to tell
my heart, I should not dare trust myself under the sway of my
feelings. But I _do_ love you now,--I do,--I do!"
"If now, why not before?"
"Haven't I said I've been blind to you until to-night? At first I
regarded you as only an enemy to be turned to my use in my peril.
Having been fortunate in that, I gave myself to other thoughts. But,
thinking my false love had drawn true love from you, I saw I could not
in honor leave you under a false belief. But now the falsehood has
become truth. A week ago, I avowed a pretended passion, to gain my
life! Now, I declare a real one, to gain your love!"
"What, you expect to take my love by storm, in reality, as you did, in
appearance, a week ago?" She had risen from the music seat, and now
stood with her back against the spinet, her hands behind her, her head
turned slightly upward, facing him.
"I don't expect," said he. "I only hope."
"And what gives you reason to hope?"
"My own love for you. Love elicits love, they say."
"They say wrong, then. If that were true, there would be no unrequited
lovers."
"Ay, but such love as mine,--how can it so fill me to overflowing, and
not infect you?"
"Love is not an infectious disease. If it were, I should have no
fear,--knowing myself love-proof."
"I can't believe that,--for a woman with no spark in herself could not
light so fierce a flame in me, by the mere meeting of our eyes."
"If it should create in me such a disturbance as you seem to undergo,
I shouldn't wish it to increase. But, I assure you, it isn't in me."
"Pray think it is. Only imagine it is there, and soon it will be."
She felt that the time was at hand to strike the blow.
"If I could be perfectly sure you spoke in earnest," she said, seeming
to search his countenance for testimony.
"In earnest!" he echoed. "Great heavens, what evidence do you want? If
there is an aspect of love I do not have, tell me, and I shall put it
on."
"Yes, you are experienced in putting on the _aspects_ of love."
"Oh, you well know I have no reason now for declaring a love I don't
feel. If you could be sure I spoke in earnest, you said,--what then?
Tell me, and I shall find a way to convince you I _am_ in earnest."
"Convince me first."
"'Convince me,' you say. And I say, 'Be convinced.' By the Lord, never
was so great a sceptic! Is not your sense of your own charms
sufficient to convince you of their effect?"
"Mere words!"
"I'll prove my love by acts, then!"
"By what acts?"
"By fighting for you or suffering for you, dying for you or living for
you, as you may command."
"You can prove it thus. Say, 'Long live the King!'"
He gazed at her a moment. "No," he said.
"Say, 'Long live the King!'" She went to the door, and paused on the
threshold, looking at him, as if to give him a last opportunity.
"Long live the King--" he said.
She came back from the door.
"Of France!" he added.
"No," she cried, and dictated, "'Long live the King of Great
Britain!'"
"Long live the King of Great Britain,--but not of America."
"No! 'Long live George the Third, King of Great Britain and the
American colonies!'"
"Long live George the Third, King of Great Britain and--Ireland."
"'And of the American colonies.' Say it! Say it all!"
"Long live Elizabeth Philipse, queen of beauty in the United States of
America!" he answered.
"You don't love me," said she, and set her mind to finding some other
means by which he might evince what she knew he would never
demonstrate in the way she had demanded. And she resolved his
humiliation should be all the greater for the delay. "You don't love
me."
"I do. I swear, on my knees."
"Then _get_ on your knees!"
"I do!" He dropped on one knee.
"Both knees!"
"Both." He suited action to word.
"Bow lower."
"I touch the floor." He did so, with his forehead. "Are you
convinced?"
"Yes." And she moved thoughtfully towards the door of the east hall.
"Ah! Convinced that I love you madly?" In obedience to a gesture, he
remained on his knees.
"Perfectly convinced."
"Then, the reward of which you hinted?"
"Reward?"
"You said, if you could be sure I spoke in earnest. Now you admit you
are sure. What then?"
She let her eyes rest on him a moment, without speaking, as he looked
ardently and expectantly up at her from his kneeling attitude, while
she took in breath, and then she flung her answer at him.
"What then? This! That you are now more contemptible and ridiculous
and utterly non-existent, to me, than you have formerly been! That,
whatever I may have done which seemed in your behalf, was partly from
the strange insanity of which I have spoken, and partly from the most
meaningless caprice! That, if you remain here till to-morrow, you may
see me in the arms of the man I really love, and that he may not be as
careless of the fate of a vagabond rebel as I am. And now, Captain
Crayton, or Dayton, or Peyton, or whatever you please, of somebody or
other's light horse, go or stay, as you choose; you're as welcome as
any other casual passer-by, for all the comical figure your impudence
has made you cut! Learn modesty, sir, and you may fare better in your
next love-making, if you do not aim too high! And that piece of advice
is the reward I hinted at! Good night!"
And she whirled from the room, slamming behind her the mahogany door,
at which Peyton stared for some seconds, in blank amazement, too
overwhelmed to speak or move or breathe or think.
But gradually he came to life, slowly rose, stood for a moment
thoughtful, fashioned his brows into a frown, drew his lips back hard,
and muttered through his closed teeth:
"I'll stay and fight that man, at least!"
And he sat down by the table, to wait.