The Continental Dragoon Part 13

"And a good thing Washington didn't marry her!" said Peyton, gallantly. "She'd have tried to turn him Tory, and the ladies of this family are not to be resisted."

"Go on with your letter," said Elizabeth, chillingly.

"'Mr. Bryan Fairfax,'" dictated Peyton, steadying his voice with an effort, "'Towlston Hall, Fairfax County, Virginia. My dear Fairfax: If ever these reach you, 'twill be from out a captivity destined, probably, to end soon in that which all dread, yet to which all must come; a captivity, nevertheless, sweetened by the divinest presence that ever bore the name of woman--'"

Elizabeth stopped writing, and looked up, with an astonishment so all-possessing that it left no room even for indignation.

Peyton, his eyes astray in the preoccupation of composition, did not notice her look, but, as if moved by enthusiasm, rose on his right leg and stood, his hands placed on the back of the light chair by the sofa, the chair's front being turned from him. He went on, with an affectation of repressed rapture: "''Twere worth even death to be for a short hour the prisoner of so superb--'"

"Sir, what are you saying?" And Elizabeth dropped the pen, and stood up, regarding him with freezing resentment.

"My thoughts, madam," said he, humbly, meeting her gaze.

"How dare you jest with me?" said she.

"Jest? Does a man jest in the face of his own death?"

"'Twas a jest to bid me write such lies!"

"Lies? 'Fore gad, the mirror yonder will not call them lies!" He indicated the oblong gla.s.s set in above the mantel. "If there is lying, 'tis my eyes that lie! 'Tis only what they tell me, that my lips report."

Keeping his left foot slightly raised from the floor, he pushed the chair a little towards her, and himself followed it, resting his weight partly on its back, while he hopped with his right foot. But Elizabeth stayed him with a gesture of much imperiousness.

"What has such rubbish to do with your confession and your plot?" she demanded.

"Can you not see?" And he now let some of his real agitation appear, that it might serve as the lover's perturbation which it would be well to display.

"My confession is of the instant yielding of my heart to the charms of a G.o.ddess."

In those days lovers, real or pretended, still talked of G.o.ddesses, flames, darts, and such.

"Who desired your heart to yield to anything?" was Miss Elizabeth's sharply spoken reply.

"Beauty _commanded_ it, madam!" said he, bowing low over his chair-back.

"So, then, there was no plot?" Her eyes flashed with indignation.

"A plot, yes!" He glanced sidewise at the clock, and drew self-reliance from the very situation, which began to intoxicate him. "_My_ plot, to attract you hither, by that message, that I might console myself for my fate by the joy of seeing you!"

"The joy of seeing me!" She spoke with incredulity and contempt.

A glad boldness had come over Peyton. He felt himself masterful, as one feels who is drunk with wine; yet, unlike such a one, he had command of mind and body.

"Ay, joy," said he, "joy none the less that you are disdainful! Pride is the attribute of queens, and tenderness is not the only mood in which a woman may conquer. Heaven! You can so discomfit a man with your frowns, _what_ might you do with your smile!"

He felt now that he could dissimulate to fool the very devil.

But Elizabeth, though interested as one may be in an oddity, seemed not otherwise impressed. 'Twas something, however, that she remained in the room to answer:

"I do not know what I have done with my frown, nor what I might do with my smile, but, whatever it be, _you_ are not like to see!"

"That I know," said Peyton, and added, at a reckless venture, "and am consoled, when I consider that no other man has seen!"

"How do you know that?"

"Your smile is not for any common man, and I'll wager your heart is as whole as your beauty."

She looked at him for a moment of silence, then:

"I cannot imagine why you say all this," quoth she, in real puzzlement.

"'Tis an easing to the tortured heart to reveal itself," he answered, "as one would fain uncover an inner wound, though there be no hope of cure. I can go the calmer to my doom for having at least given outlet in words to the flame kindled in a moment within me. My doom! Yes, and none so unwelcome, either, if by it I escape a lifetime of vain longing!"

"Your talk is incomprehensible, sir. If you are serious, it must be that your head is turned."

"My head is turned, doubtless, but by you!"

He was now a.s.suming the low, quick, nervous utterance that is often a.s.sociated with intense repressed feeling; and his words were accompanied by his best possible counterfeit of the burning, piercing, distraught gaze of pa.s.sion. Though he acted a part, it was not with the cold-blooded art of a mimic who simulates by rule; it was with the animation due to imagining himself actually swayed by the feeling he would feign. While he _knew_ his emotion to be fict.i.tious, he _felt_ it as if it were real, and his consequent actions were the same as if real it were.

"I'm sure the act was not intentional with me," said Elizabeth. "I'd best leave you, lest you grow worse." And she moved towards the door.

Peyton had rapid work of it, pushing the chair before him and hopping after it, so as to intercept her. In the excitement of the moment, he lost his mastery of himself.

"But you must not go! Hear me, I beg! Good G.o.d, only a half hour left!"

"A half hour?" repeated Elizabeth, inquiringly.

"I mean," said Peyton, recovering his wits, "a half hour till the troops may be here for me,--only a half hour until I must leave your house forever! Do not let me be deprived of the sight of you for those last minutes! Tis so short a time, yet 'tis all my life!"

"The man is mad, I think!" She spoke as if to herself.

"Mad!" he echoed. "Yes, some do call it a madness--the love that's born of a glance, and lasts till death!"

"Love!" said she. "'Tis impossible you should come to love me, in so short a time."

"'Tis born of a glance, I tell you!" he cried. "What is it, if not love, that makes me forget my coming death, see only you, hear only you, think of only you? Why do I not spend this time, this last hour, in pleading for my life, in begging you to hide me and send the troops away without me when they come? They would take your word, and you are a woman, and women are moved by pleading. Why, then, do I not, in the brief time I have left, beg for my life? Because my pa.s.sion blinds me to all else, because I would use every moment in pouring out my heart to you, because my feelings must have outlet in words, because it is more than life or death to me that you should know I love you!--G.o.d, how fast that clock goes!"

She had stood in wonderment, under the spell of his vehemence. Now, as he leaned towards her, over the chair-back, his breath coming rapidly, his eyes luminous, she seemed for a moment abashed, softened, subdued.

But she put to flight his momentary hope by starting again for the doorway, with a low-spoken, "I must go!"

But he thrust his chair in her way.

"Nay, don't go!" he said. "You may hear my avowal with propriety. My people are as good as any in Virginia."

She stood regarding him with a look of scrutiny.

"You are a rebel against your king," she said, but not harshly.