The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Angela gazed at him with dark and troubled eyes. She did not fully understand all that Neville’s words implied, but they gave her pain and amazement and Neville seeing this gently explained to her. “What I mean is if the choice were given me on the one hand of having you, beloved, of fulfilling my father’s and mother’s wishes, of inheriting Harrowby as my father and mother have always told me, and on the other hand of giving up you and all whom I love and my inheritance, I should be compelled to do it if I felt that my duty as a soldier required me to remain in the United States Army, and at this moment it so appears to me.”

Angela fell back and withdrew her hand from Neville’s, and he made no effort to detain it. “You have promised to marry me, Angela,” he said quietly, “but if you are frightened at what you have done, I am the last man in the world to hold you to your word.”

The profoundest art could not have hit upon an idea more likely to influence Angela than the one which Neville had used without any art whatever. Angela, like all young creatures of high and untried courage, spurned the faintest suggestion of fear. “I am not afraid of anything,” she said. “I never was afraid to keep my word.”

“Child, you were never called upon to keep such a promise as this, and what I may do may mean that I shall never again be recognized by any whom I love unless it be yourself; it may mean the same to you.”

“If it does, I hope I should not be less brave than you.” Angela put her hand again into Neville’s, and he saw that he was victor. They had one hour together sitting in the dusk of the old study where they spent so many hours in the past when Angela was a little girl in a white frock and Neville was already a young man. The one fascination which Neville had for Angela was in his courage, that quality most adorable, most compelling to all women. She had not asked herself whether she were in love with him or not; it seemed so impossible to go against Neville or to desert him, and yet it was not to her what she had dreamed first love to be. Neville was not Isabey. When at last in the twilight they heard the servants moving about in the other part of the house and the carriage with Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine drive up to the door, Angela rose hurriedly, confused for the first time in her life at being found alone with Neville. As they reached the door she caught his arm and said hurriedly: “Shouldn’t we keep this a secret?”

“Perhaps it would be better for you,” answered Neville after a moment. “You see the test is yet to come.” They passed into the hall and Neville went out to assist his mother from the carriage. As the great hall door opened a gust of icy air came in; the evening had grown bitterly cold. Mrs. Tremaine came up the steps with Neville’s arm around her, who, with the other arm, offered to assist the colonel, who repulsed him indignantly, meanwhile putting his arm around Neville’s neck.

“A pretty pass, sir, it is when you imply that I am too old to get up the steps alone. I defy you, sir, or any fellow of your age to dance the Virginia reel as long as I can. I observed you youngsters last night. None of you had the life and spirit in you of your elders. Upon my soul, the youngsters of to-day are the most solemn, old-maidish, milk-and-watery set I ever knew. You should have been with us in Mexico. Ah, my dearest Sophie, the dark eyes of those Mexican Señoritas haunt me still!” And the colonel slapped himself upon the heart, and ogled Mrs. Tremaine as if she were sixteen and he were twenty.

That night there was to be a party at Greenhill and, as early hours were the fashion, the Harrowby carriage was to start at seven o’clock to make the five miles to Greenhill. In a little while Lyddon with Richard and Archie appeared, and they all sat round the hall fire discussing the ball of the night before. Colonel Tremaine was charmed with Angela and Archie’s delightful surprise of playing “Dixie” for the first time and insisted that Archie should take his violin to Greenhill that night and repeat the performance.

Angela had a very good excuse for not appearing at supper, saying that she was obliged to dress. But this was something new on her part, because usually when Neville was at home she had to be dragged away from him in order to make her toilet if they were going to a party. Colonel Tremaine, who was an arrant sentimentalist, had noticed one or two things between Angela and Neville, and when Mrs. Tremaine was putting on her lace headdress in her bedroom, the colonel tapped at the door and asked her to step into his dressing room. Then, closing the door, he remarked: “My dearest Sophie, have you noticed anything of a suspicious nature, I mean an agreeably suspicious nature, between Angela and Neville?”

Mrs. Tremaine, gorgeous in blue satin, and adding a white feather to her headdress, stopped for a moment as if she had been shot, and put her hand to her heart. No woman ever hears with composure that she has been deposed from the throne in the heart of her favorite son. She remained silent for half a minute trying to collect her wits, for no such idea as that suggested by Colonel Tremaine had ever occurred to her before.