“Yes,” he said with dignity. But he did not look at her. He maintained his abstracted look, which was so very impressive. They all hung upon, not only his lips, but every movement. As for Polly, the suspense was more than she could bear. She was not a patient young woman, nor had she been trained to deny herself like Ellen, or control her feelings as women in a different sphere are obliged to do. She resumed her work for a moment with hurried hands, trying to control her anxiety; then suddenly threw it in a heap on the table, without even taking the trouble to fold it tidily. She did not seem to know what she was doing, they all thought.
“I am going home,” she said, with a hoarseness in her voice. “There is nothing very pressing, so it won’t matter. I’ve got such a headache I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Oh, Polly, a headache! that’s not like you—yes, there’s Mrs. Arrowsmith’s dress that was promised.”
“I don’t care—and she’s not a regular customer. And it’s only a bit of an alpaca with no trimmings—you can finish it yourselves. Captain, if you’re coming my way, you can come—if you like; unless,” said Polly, with feverish bravado, “you’ve got something to say to the girls more than you seem to have to me—I’m going home.”
The Captain woke up from his abstraction, and looked round him, elevating his eyebrows. “Bless my heart, what is the matter?” he said. And then he made a grimace, which tempted the girls to laugh notwithstanding Polly’s tragic seriousness. “I had hoped to have contributed a little to the entertainment of the evening, my dear young ladies. I had hoped to have helped you to ‘pass the time,’ as you say. But when a lady bids me go——”
“Oh, you needn’t unless you like,” cried Polly; “don’t mind me! I don’t want nobody to go home with me. I can take care of myself—only leave me alone if you please. I won’t be made fun of, or taken off. Let me out into the fresh air, or I think I shall faint.” The Captain took an unfair advantage of the excited creature. He turned round upon them all when Polly rushed out to get her jacket and hat, which hung in the hall, and “took her off” on the spot, making himself so like her, that it was all they could do to keep from betraying him by their laughter. When she had put on her “things,” she put her head into the room she had just left. “Good-night, I’m going,” she said, with a look of impassioned anxiety and trouble. She was too much absorbed in her own feelings to see through the mist in which their faces shone to her, the laughter that was in them. She only saw the Captain standing up in the midst of them. Was he coming after her? or was he going to fall off from her at this crisis of his affairs? Perhaps it was foolish of her to rush off like this, and leave him with all these girls about him. But Polly had never been used to restrain her feelings, and she could not help it she vowed to herself. Everything in the future seemed to depend upon whether he came after her or not. Oh, why could not she have had a little more patience! oh, why should not he come with her, say something to her after all that had passed! As great a conflict was in her mind as if she had been a heroine of romance. The Captain and she had been “keeping company” for a long time. He had “kept off” others that would not have shilly-shallyed as he had done. A man’s “intentions” are rarely inquired into in Polly’s sphere. But if he cared for her the least bit, if he had any honour in him, she felt that he would follow her now. Polly knew that she might have been Mrs. Despard long ago if she had consented to be married privately as the Captain wished. But she was for none of those clandestine proceedings. She would be married in her parish church, with white favours and a couple of flys, and something that might be supposed to be a wedding breakfast. She had held by her notions of decorum stoutly, and would hear of no hole-and-corner proceedings. And now when fortune was smiling upon them, when his daughter had got hold of someone (this was Polly’s elegant way of putting it), and when the way would be clear, what if he failed her? The workroom with its blaze of light and its curious spectators had been intolerable to her, but a cold shudder crossed her when she got out of doors into the darkness of the lane. Perhaps she ought to have stayed at any cost, not to have left him in the midst of so many temptations. Her heart seemed to sink into her shoes. Oh, why had she been so silly! Her hopes seemed all dropping, disappearing from her. To sink into simple Polly Featherston, with no dazzling prospect of future elevation, would be death to her, she felt, now.
Polly was half way up the lane before the Captain, coming along at his leisure, made up to her; and, what with passion and fright, she had scarcely any voice left. “Oh, you have come after all!” was all she could manage to say. And she hurried on, so rapidly that he protested. “If you want to talk, how can we talk if we race like this?” he said. “Who wants to talk?” cried Polly breathless; but nevertheless she paused in her headlong career. They went up the hill together, on the steep side next the Abbey, where there never was anybody, and there the Captain discoursed to Polly about his new hopes. She would have liked it better had he decided how the old ones were to be realised. But still, as he was confidential and opened everything to her as to his natural confidant, her excitement gradually subsided, and her trust in him returned. She listened patiently while he recounted to her all the results that would be sure to follow, when an influential son-in-law, a member of a noble family, brought him to the recollection of the Commander-in-Chief.
“They think I’m shelved and superannuated,” he said; “but let me but have an opening—all I want is an opening; and then you can go and select the handsomest phaeton and the prettiest pair of ponies, my lady—”
Polly laughed and reddened with pleasure at this address, but she said prudently, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I wouldn’t give up being a Chevalier. It’s a nice little house and a nice little income too.”
“Pooh! a nothing,” cried the Captain. This was very fine and gave a sense of superiority and exaltation. Polly could not but allow a vision to float before her eyes of the phaeton and the ponies, nay more, of the march of a regiment with the flags and the music. She even seemed to see the sentry at her own door, and all the men presenting arms as she passed (what less could they do to the wife of their commander?). But, on the other hand, to live here at Michael’s where she was born, and be seen in her high estate by all the people who had known her as a poor dressmaker, that was a happiness which she did not like to give up, even for the glories of a high command far away.