The Continental Dragoon Part 18

"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, with your 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!

n.o.body wants them! Go,--and I'll thank you to leave my cloak behind you!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'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.

CHAPTER X.

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 a.s.sumed 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 doc.u.ment, 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 a.s.sistance 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 f.a.got 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 s.h.i.+elded 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.