The Continental Dragoon Part 26

Meanwhile Colden was answering:

"There's no regularity in such a meeting. Where are the seconds?"

"I'll be your second, major," cried Elizabeth. "Aunt Sally, second Captain Peyton."

"Ridiculous!" said the major.

"Anything to bring you out," said Peyton, as desirous of avenging himself on Elizabeth, through her affianced, as she was to complete her own revenge through the same instrument. "I'll fight you with half a sword. I'd forgotten 'tis all I've left."

"I would not take an advantage," said the New Yorker.

"Then break your own sword, and make us equal," said the Virginian.

"I value my weapon too much for that."

Peyton smiled ironically. But he tried again.

"Then I shall be less scrupulous," said he. "I _will_ take an advantage. The greater honor to you, if you defeat me. You take the broken sword, and lend me yours."

He held out his hilt for exchange.

Colden pretended to laugh, saying:

"Am I a fool to put it in your power to murder me?"

"_I'll_ tell you what, gentlemen," put in Elizabeth. "Use the swords above the chimney-place, yonder. They are equal."

"Yes!" cried Peyton.

But Colden said:

"I will not so degrade myself as to cross swords, except on the battle-field, with one who is a rebel, a deserter, and no gentleman."

Peyton turned to Elizabeth with a smile.

"Then you see, madam," said he, "'tis no fault of mine if my affronts go unpunished, since this gentleman must keep his courage for the battle-field! Egad," he added, sacrificing truth for the sake of the taunt, "you Tories need all the courage there you can save up in a long time! I take my leave of this house!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I TAKE MY LEAVE OF THIS HOUSE!'"]

He thrust his sword back into the scabbard, bowed rapidly and low, with a flourish of his hat, and went out by the same door Elizabeth had used in her own moment of triumph. He unbolted the outside door himself, before black Sam could come from the settle to serve him.

Snowflakes rushed in at the open door. He plunged into them, swinging the door close after him. Out through the little portico he went, down the walk outside the very parlor window through which he had looked out awhile ago, but through which he did not now look in as he pa.s.sed; through the gate, and up the branch road to the highway. He was possessed by a confusion of thoughts and feelings,--temporary and superficial elation at having put Elizabeth's preferred lover in so bad a light, wild ideas of some future crossing of her path, swift dreams of a future conquest of her in spite of all, a fierce desire for such action as would lead to that end. He was eager to rejoin the army now, to partic.i.p.ate in the fighting that would bring about the humbling of her cause and make it the more in his power to master her.

He heeded little the snow that impeded his steps as his boots sank into it, and which, in falling, blinded his eyes, tickled his face, and clung to his hair. The tumult of flakes was akin to that of his feelings, and he was in mood for encountering such opposition as the storm made to his progress.

Arriving at the post-road, he turned and went northward. At his left lay the great lawn fronting the manor-house, and separated from the road by hedge and palings. He could see, across the snowy expanse, between the dark trunks and whitened branches of the trees, the long front of the manor-house, its roof and its porticoes already covered with snow, the light glowing in the one exposed window of the east parlor. As he quieted down within, he felt pleasantly towards the house, to which his week's half-solitary residence in it, with the comfort he had enjoyed there and the books he had read, had given him an attachment. He cast on it a last affectionate look, then breasted the weather onward, wondering what things the future might have in store for him.

He had little fear of not reaching the American lines in safety. It was unlikely that any of the enemy's marauders would be out on such a night, and more unlikely that any regular military movement would be making on the neutral ground. He expected to meet no one on the road, but he would keep a sharp lookout in all directions as he went, and, in case of any human apparition, would take to the fields or the woods. But all the world, thought he, would stay within doors this white night.

Sliding back a part of every step he took in the snow, he pa.s.sed the boundary of the Philipse lawn, and that of such part of the grounds as included, with other appurtenances, the garden north of the house. He had come, at last, to a place where the fence at his left ended and the forest began. He had, a moment before, cast a long look backward to a.s.sure himself the road was empty behind him. He now trudged on, his eyes fixed ahead.

From behind a low pine-tree, at the end of the fence, two dark figures glided up to the captain's rear, their steps noiseless in the snow.

One of them caught both his forearms at the same instant, and pulled them back together, as with grips of iron. A second pair of hands placed a noose about his wrists, and quickly tightened it. Ere he could turn, his first a.s.sailant released the bound arms to the second, drew a pistol, and thrust the muzzle close to Peyton's cheek, whereupon the second man said:

"Your pardon, captain. Come quietly, or you're a dead man!"

CHAPTER XIII.

THE UNEXPECTED.

Peyton's somewhat elate exit from the parlor was followed by a moment of silence and inertia on the part of the three who remained there.

But Elizabeth's chagrin was speedily translated into anger against Major Colden.

"Why didn't you fight him?" she demanded of that gentleman, who was flinching inwardly, but who maintained a pale and haughty exterior.

"What was the use?" he replied. "He's reserved for the gallows. If my two men were here! Why not send your servants after him? Sam is a powerful fellow, and Williams is shrewd and strong."

Elizabeth ignored Colden's reply, and answered her own question, thus:

"It was because you remembered the time he disarmed you, three years ago."

"You may think so, if you choose," he replied, in the patient manner of one who quietly endures unjust reproaches when self-defence is useless.

"You will find refreshments in the dining-room," said Elizabeth, coldly. "Sam will show you to your room."

"I would rather remain with you," he replied.

"I would rather be alone with my aunt a while."

A deep sigh expressed his dejecting sense of how futile it would be to oppose her.

"As you will," he then said, and, bowing gravely, left the parlor.

Elizabeth's feelings now burst out.

"Oh," she exclaimed to her aunt, "what a chicken-hearted copy of a man! And he calls himself a soldier! I wonder where he found the spirit to volunteer!"

"From you, my dear," replied Miss Sally. "Didn't you urge him to take a commission?"

"And that rebel fellow had the best of it all through," Elizabeth went on. "I was to see him laid low by his rival, as my crowning revenge!

How he swaggered out! with what a look of triumph in his eye!

And--aunt Sally! He won't come back! I shall never see him again!"

"Why, child, do you wish to?"

"Of course not! But I can't have him go away with the laugh on his side! He made me ridiculous after my trying to stab him with my love for the other man. _Such_ another man! Oh, the rebel must come back!"