“If I go back before the captain leaves,” said Elizabeth, thereby dashing her amiable aunt’s secretly cherished hope of affording the wounded officer the pleasure of her own unalloyed society.
Elizabeth really did not know what she would do. Her actions, on Colden’s return, would depend on the prior actions of the captain. No one had spoken to Peyton of her intention to leave after a week’s stay. She had thought such an announcement to him from her might seem to imply a hint that it was time he should resume his wooing. That he would resume it, in due course, she took for granted. Measuring his supposed feelings by her own real ones, she assumed that her loveless betrothal to another would not deter Peyton’s further courtship. She believed he had divined the nature of that betrothal. Nor would he be hindered by the prospect of their being parted some while by the war. Engagements were broken, wars did not last forever, those who loved each other found ways to meet. So he would surely speak, before their parting, of what, since it filled her heart, must of course fill his. But she would show no forwardness in the matter. She therefore avoided him till dinner-time.
At the table he abruptly announced that, as duty 187 required he should rejoin the army at the first moment possible, and as he now felt capable of making the journey, he would depart that night.
Miss Sally hid her startled emotions behind a glass of madeira, into which she coughed, chokingly. Molly, the maid, stopped short in her passage from the kitchen door to the table, and nearly dropped the pudding she was carrying. Elizabeth concealed her feelings, and told herself that his declaration must soon be forthcoming. She left it to him to contrive the necessary private interview.
After dinner, he sat with the ladies before the fire in the east parlor, awaiting his opportunity with much hidden perturbation. Elizabeth feigned to read. At last, habit prevailing, her aunt fell asleep. Peyton hummed and hemmed, looked into the fire, made two or three strenuous swallows of nothing, and opened his mouth to speak. At that instant old Mr. Valentine came in, newly arrived from the Hill, and “whew”-ing at the cold. Peyton felt like one for whom a brief reprieve had been sent by heaven.
All afternoon Mr. Valentine chattered of weather and news and old times. Peyton’s feeling of relief was short-lasting; it was supplanted by a mighty regret that he had not been permitted to get the thing over. No second opportunity came of itself, nor could Peyton, who found his ingenuity for once 188 quite paralyzed, force one. Supper was announced, and was partaken of by Harry, in fidgety abstraction; by Elizabeth, in expectant but outwardly placid silence; by Miss Sally, in futile smiling attempts to make something out of her last conversational chances with the handsome officer; and by Mr. Valentine, in sedulous attention to his appetite, which still had the vigor of youth.
Almost as soon as the ladies had gone from the dining-room, Peyton rose and left the octogenarian in sole possession. In the parlor Harry found no one but Molly, who was lighting the candles.
“What, Molly?” said he, feeling more and more nervous, and thinking to retain, by constant use of his voice, a good command of it for the dreaded interview. “The ladies not here? They left Mr. Valentine and me at the supper-table.”
“They are walking in the garden, sir. Miss Elizabeth likes to take the air every evening.”
“’Tis a chill air she takes this evening, I’m thinking,” he said, standing before the fire and holding out his hands over the crackling logs.