“What d’ye spy, Tom?” called out another officer on the deck, to the one whose attitude most interested Harry.
“I thought I made out some kind of craft steering through the bushes yonder,” was the answer.
“I see nothing.”
“Neither do I, now. ’Twasn’t human craft, anyhow, so it doesn’t signify,” and the officers looked elsewhere.
Harry lay low in the thicket, awaiting the departure of the vessel or the arrival of darkness. On the deck there was no sign of weighing anchor. As night came, the vessel’s lights were slung. The sky was partly clear in the west, and stars appeared in that direction, but the east was overcast, so that the rising moon was hid. The atmosphere grew colder.
When Harry could make out nothing of the vessel on the dark water, save the lights that glowed like low-placed stars, he crawled from the bushes and up 181 the bank to the terrace. He then rose and proceeded, with the aid of his stick, aching from having so long maintained a cramped position, and from the suddenly increased cold. Before him, as he continued to ascend, rose the house, darkness outlined against darkness. No sound came from it, no window was lighted. This meant that the British officers had left, for their presence would have been marked by plenitude of light and by noise of merriment. Harry stopped on the terrace, and stood in doubt how to proceed. What had been thought of his disappearance? Where would he be supposed to have gone? Had provision been made for his possible return? Perhaps he should find a guiding light in some window on the other side of the house; perhaps a servant remained alert for his knock on the door. His only course was to investigate, unless he would undergo a night of much discomfort.
As he was about to approach the house, he was checked by a sight so vaguely outlined that it might be rather of his imagination than of reality, and which added a momentary shiver of a keener sort than he already underwent from the weather. A dark cloaked and hooded figure stood by the balustrade that ran along the roof-top. As Peyton looked, his hand involuntarily clasping his sword-hilt, and the stories of the ghosts that haunted this old mansion shot through his mind, the figure seemed to descend 182 through the very roof, as a stage ghost is lowered through a trap. He continued to stare at the spot where it had stood, but nothing reappeared against the backing of black cloud. Wondering much, Harry presently went on towards the house, turned the southwest corner, and skirted the south front as far as to the little porch in its middle. Intending to reconnoitre all sides of the house before he should try one of the doors, he was passing on, after a glance at the south door lost in the blacker shadows of the porch, when suddenly the fan-window over the door seemed to glow dimly with a wavering light. He placed his hand on one of the Grecian pillars of the porch, and watched. A moment later the door softly opened. A figure appeared, beyond the threshold, bearing a candle. The figure wore a cloak with a hood, but the hood was down.
“All is safe,” whispered a low voice. “The officers went hours ago. I knew you must have escaped from the house, and were hiding somewhere. I saw you a minute ago from the roof gallery.”
Peyton having entered, Elizabeth swiftly closed and locked the door behind him, handed him the candle with a low “Good night,” and fled silently, ghostlike, up the stairs, disappearing quickly in the darkness.
Harry made his way to his own room, as in a kind of dream. She herself had waited and watched for 183 him! This, then, was the effect wrought in the proudest, most disdainful young creature of her sex, by that feeling which he had, by telling and acting a lie, awakened in her. The revelation set him thinking. How long might such a feeling last? What would be its effect on her after his departure? He had read, and heard, and seen, that, when these feelings were left to pine away slowly, the people possessing them pined also. And this was the return he was about to give his most hospitable hostess, the woman who had saved his life! Yet what was to be done? His life belonged to his country, his chosen career was war; he could not alter completely his destiny to save a woman some pining. After all, she would get over it; yet it would make of her another woman, embitter her, change entirely the complexion of the world to her, and her own attitude towards it. He tried to comfort himself with the thought of her engagement to Colden, of which he had not learned until after the mischief had been done. But he recalled her manner towards Colden, and a remark of old Mr. Valentine’s, whence he knew that the engagement was not, on her side, a love one, and was not inviolable. Yet it would be a crime to a woman of her pride, of her power of loving, to allow the deceit, his pretence of love, to go as far as marriage. A disclosure would come in time, and would bring her a bitter awakening. The falsehood, natural if not 184 excusable in its circumstances, and broached without thought of ultimate consequence, must be stopped at once. He must leave her presence immediately, but, before going, must declare the truth. She must not be allowed to waste another day of her life on an illusion. Aside from the effect on her heart, of the continuance of the delusion, it would doubtless affect her outward circumstances, by leading her to break her engagement with Colden. An immediate discovery of the truth, moreover, by creating such a revulsion of feeling as would make her hate him, would leave her heart in a state for speedy healing. This disclosure would be a devilishly unpleasant thing to make, but a soldier and a gentleman must meet unpleasant duties unflinchingly.