The Continental Dragoon Part 27

"But he isn't likely to," said Miss Sally.

"Oh, what shall I do?" wailed the niece.

"Elizabeth, I'll wager you're still in love with him!"

"I'm not! I hate him!--Well, what if I am? He loved me, I'm sure, the last time he said it. But, good heavens, he's going farther away every instant!"

She clasped her hands, and, for once, looked at her aunt for help, like a distressed child on the verge of weeping.

"Why don't you call him back?" said Miss Sally.

"I? Not if I die for want of seeing him!--I know! I _will_ send the servants after him." And she started for the door, but stopped at her aunt's comment:

"But that will be as bad as calling him yourself."

"Not at all, you empty pate!" cried Elizabeth, who had become, in a moment, all action. "While he's going around by the road, Williams and Sam shall cut across the garden, lie in wait, and take him by surprise. He has no weapon but a broken sword, and they can make him prisoner. They shall bring him back here bound, and he'll think he's to be turned over to the British after all!"

"But what then?"

"Why, he shall be left alone here, well guarded, for half an hour, and then I'll happen in, give him an opportunity to make love again, and I can yield gracefully! Don't you see?"

"Then you _do_ love him?" said the aunt.

"I don't know. However, I don't love Jack Colden. Not a word to him, of this! I'm going to give orders to the men."

As she entered the hall, she met Colden, who was coming from the dining-room with Mr. Valentine. The major had limited his refreshments to two gla.s.ses of brandy and water, swallowed in quick succession. Mr.

Valentine, who was smoking his pipe, held Colden fraternally by the arm.

"What, Elizabeth, are you still angry?" said Colden, stopping as she pa.s.sed.

"Excuse me, I have something to see to," said the girl, coolly, hurrying away from him.

He made a slight movement to follow her, but old Valentine drew him into the parlor, saying:

"Come, major, you'll see the lady enough after she's married to you. I was just going to say, the last lot of tobacco I got--"

"Oh, d.a.m.n your tobacco!" said the other, jerking his arm from the old man's tremulous grasp.

"d.a.m.n my tobacco?" echoed Mr. Valentine, quite stupefied.

"Yes. I've matters more important on my mind just now."

"The deuce!" cried the old man. "What could be more important than tobacco?"

And he stood looking into the fire, muttering to himself between furious puffs.

Colden sought comfort of Miss Sally. "Was ever a woman as unreasonable as Elizabeth?" he said to her. "She'd have had me lower myself to meet that rebel vagabond as one gentleman meets another."

But Miss Sally was not going to betray her own disappointment by showing a change from her oft-expressed opinion of the rebel captain,--particularly in the presence of Mr. Valentine. So she answered:

"You met him so once, three years ago."

"I had a less scrupulous sense of propriety then," replied Colden, raging inwardly.

"But, as he's a rebel and deserter," pursued Miss Sally, "was it not your duty as a soldier to take him, just now?"

"I'd have done so, had my men been here," growled the major.

"Elizabeth ought to've had her servants hold him. I had half a mind to order them, in the King's name, but I never can bring myself to oppose her, she's so masterful! By George, though, I'll have him yet! My two fellows will soon come up. They shall give chase. He will leave tracks in the snow."

Colden went to the window, and peered out as Peyton himself had done not long before. The flakes were coming down as thick as ever.

"I don't see my rascals yet!" he muttered. "They've stopped at the tavern, I'll warrant."

And he continued to gaze eagerly out, impatient that his men should arrive before the new-fallen snow should cover his enemy's tracks.

Old Mr. Valentine, having exhausted his present stock of mutterings, now walked over to Miss Sally, who had sat down near the spinet.

"Miss Williams," said he, "this is the first chance I've had to speak to you alone in a week."

"But we're not alone," said Miss Sally, motioning her head towards Colden.

"He's n.o.body," contemptuously replied the octogenarian. "A man that d.a.m.ns tobacco is n.o.body. So you may go ahead and speak out. What's your answer, ma'am?"

"Oh, Mr. Valentine, not now! You must give me time."

"That's what you said before," he complained.

She had, indeed, said it before, scores of times.

"Well, give me more time, then," she replied.

"How much?" asked the old man, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Oh, I don't know! Long enough for me to make up my mind."

Thus far, this conversation had followed in the exact lines of many that had preceded it, but now Mr. Valentine made a departure from the customary form.

"I think," said he, "if my other two wives had taken as long as you to make up their minds, I shouldn't have been twice a widower by now."

"Oh, Mr. Valentine!" said Miss Sally, in a sweetly reproachful way.

"Now you know--"

But he cut her speech off short. "Very likely," said he. "I don't know. Well, take your time. Only please remember I haven't so very much time left! Better take me while I'm here to be had! Good night, ma'am!" And he went to the dining-room to fortify himself for his long homeward walk through the snow.

In crossing the hall, he saw Cuff on the settle in Sam's place. In the dining-room he met Molly, who was clearing the table of the supper that Colden had disdained. He asked her the whereabouts of Williams, and she replied that the steward and Sam had gone out on some order of Miss Elizabeth's. Deciding to await Williams's return, the old man sat down before the dining-room fire, and was soon peacefully snoring.

Elizabeth had gone up-stairs to watch from her darkened window the issue of the expedition of Williams and Sam, who had gone out by the kitchen, equipped respectively with rope and pistol. While they were in the immediate vicinity of the house, she could not see them from her elevation, but presently she beheld them glide swiftly across a white open s.p.a.ce in the garden, cross a stile, and disappear among the trees and bushes between the garden and the post-road. Turning her eyes to the road itself, that lonely highway now called Broadway,[9]

she made out a solitary figure toiling forward through the whirling whiteness,--and she gave a sigh, the deepest and longest with which her frame had ever trembled.