“I have come to see the general, Captain Page,” said Mistress Arnold, when I had opened the coach door. “Will you be my avant coureur?”
“Most gladly,” I replied. And when I had found Arnold at his writing-table, and had his command to fetch his wife up to him, I went back to show Mistress Margaret the way.
“You will undertake to keep Beatrix from stagnating for the few minutes I shall need, Captain Page?” said this dear lady, when I was leaving her at Arnold’s office door; and I said I would try, and was thanking her when she bade me hasten before some of the other officers had cut me out.
I was minded to hasten fast enough, though not specially for the reason given by Mistress Margaret. I thought it would be a much more inclement day than this seventeenth day of December, Anno Domini, 1780, when I could not hold my own against a handful of redcoat popinjays who picked flaws in a man because he did not happen to be wearing a shoulder-knot to their liking.
But alas! pride goes before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction. When I reached the street here was my lady Beatrix laughing and chatting most amiably with the little ensign who had been one of her partners at Mr. Justice Smith’s rout, and there were only a cool little nod and a blank smile for my hasty return. All of which put me on my mettle so that I stayed at the ensign’s elbow, and trod on his toes, and apologized therefor, and was pleasantly rude and insulting until he finally gave me, though not without black looks and a smothered curse or two, my place at the open door of the hackney coach.
“Pray where did you learn your new boorishness, Captain Page; in the Dutch Highlands?” queried my lady, in the gentle tone she used when the lightning is about to flash.
“I learned to fight for my rights in Old Virginia,” I retorted gaily; “and I shall not soon forget the lessons you have taught me touching them.”
“I decline to be your sponsor—in that or in anything else, Captain Page,” she declared, regarding me critically.
Now here was a pretty change of climate, I thought. The night before, when she believed I was going off to the wars with Arnold, there were sympathy and anxiety and tenderness, and even a little love, perhaps. And now, merely because I had not gone quite so suddenly as the program called for, the wan December sunshine could not have held itself more chillingly aloof.
“What have I done to-day that I had not done before last night, Beatrix?” I asked, shifting my position at the coach step so that I could keep one eye on Sir Henry Clinton’s door—for the possible coming of the twiddler of watch-seals was sorely dividing my attention, or diverting it.