The Continental Dragoon Part 20

"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 k.n.o.b 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. Circ.u.mstances 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.

CHAPTER XI.

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 pa.s.sing, 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 att.i.tude 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 un.o.btrusively, 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.suming 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.