E-text prepared by David Edwards, Katherine Ward, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team ( http://www.pgdp.net ) from digital material generously made available by Internet Archive ( http://www.archive.org ) — The Continental Dragoon.
“I dare say ’tis a wild, foolish, dangerous thing;
but I do it, nevertheless! As for my reasons, they
are the strongest. First, I wish to do it. Second,
you’ve all opposed my doing it. So there’s an end
of the matter!”
It was, of course, a woman that spoke,—moreover,
a young one.
And she added:
“Drat the wind! Can’t we ride faster? ’Twill
be dark before we reach the manor-house. Get
along, Cato!”
She was one of three on horseback, who went
northward on the Albany post-road late in the afternoon
of a gray, chill, blowy day in November, in the
war-scourged year 1778. Beside the girl rode a
12
young gentleman, wrapped in a dark cloak. The
third horse, which plodded a short distance in the
rear, carried a small negro youth and two large portmanteaus.
The three riders made a group that was,
as far as could be seen from their view-point, alone
on the highway.
There were reasons why such a group, on that
road at that time, was an unusual sight,—reasons
familiar to any one who is well informed in the
history of the Revolution. Unfortunately, most
good Americans are better acquainted with the
French Revolution than with our own, know more
about the state of affairs in Rome during the reign
of Nero than about the condition of things in New
York City during the British occupation, and compensate
for their knowledge of Scotch-English border
warfare in remote times by their ignorance of the
border warfare that ravaged the vicinity of the island
of Manhattan, for six years, little more than a century
ago.
Our Revolutionary War had reached the respectable
age of three and a half years. Lexington,
Bunker Hill, Brooklyn, Harlem Heights, White
Plains, Trenton, Princeton, the Brandywine, German-town,
Bennington, Saratoga, and Monmouth—not
to mention events in the South and in Canada and
on the water—had taken their place in history.
The army of the King of England had successively
13
occupied Boston, New York, and Philadelphia; had
been driven out of Boston by siege, and had left
Philadelphia to return to the town more pivotal and
nearer the sea,—New York. One British commander-in-chief
had been recalled by the British ministry to
explain why he had not crushed the rebellion, and
one British major-general had surrendered an army,
and was now back in England defending his course
and pleading in Parliament the cause of the Americans,
to whom he was still a prisoner on parole.
Our Continental army—called Continental because,
like the general Congress, it served the whole union
of British-settled Colonies or States on this continent,
and was thus distinguished from the militia, which
served in each case its particular Colony or State
only—had experienced both defeats and victories in
encounters with the King’s troops and his allies, German,
Hessian, and American Tory. It had endured
the winter at Valley Forge while the British had
fed, drunk, gambled, danced, flirted, and wenched in
Philadelphia. The French alliance had been sanctioned.
Steuben, Lafayette, DeKalb, Pulaski, Kosciusko,
Armand, and other Europeans, had taken
service with us. One plot had been made in Congress
and the army to supplant Washington in the
chief command, and had failed. The treason of
General Charles Lee had come to naught,—but was
to wait for disclosure till many years after every person
14
concerned should be graveyard dust. We had
celebrated two anniversaries of the Fourth of July.
The new free and independent States had organized
local governments. The King’s appointees still made
a pretence of maintaining the royal provincial governments,
but mostly abode under the protection of the
King’s troops in New York. There also many of
those Americans in the North took refuge who distinctly
professed loyalty to the King. New York
was thus the chief lodging-place of all that embodied
British sovereignty in America. Naturally the material
tokens of British rule radiated from the town,
covering all of the island of Manhattan, most of
Long Island, and all of Staten Island, and retaining
a clutch here and there on the mainland of New
Jersey.
It was the present object of Washington to keep
those visible signs of English authority penned up
within this circle around New York. The Continental
posts, therefore, formed a vast arc, extending
from the interior of New Jersey through Southeastern
New York State to Long Island Sound and into
Connecticut. This had been the situation since midsummer
of 1778. It was but a detachment from our
main army that had cooperated with the French fleet
in the futile attempt to dislodge a British force from
Newport in August of that year.
The British commander-in-chief and most of the
15
superior officers had their quarters in the best residences
of New York. That town was packed snugly
into the southern angle of the island of Manhattan,
like a gift in the toe of a Christmas stocking. Southward,
some of its finest houses looked across the
Battery to the bay. Northward the town extended
little beyond the common fields, of which the City
Hall Square of 1898 is a reduced survival. The
island of Manhattan—with its hills, woods, swamps,
ponds, brooks, roads, farms, sightly estates, gardens,
and orchards—was dotted with the cantonments
and garrisoned forts of the British. The outposts
were, largely, entrusted to bodies of Tory allies
organized in this country. Thus was much of Long
Island guarded by the three Loyalist battalions of
General Oliver De Lancey, himself a native of New
York. On Staten Island was quartered General
Van Cortlandt Skinner’s brigade of New Jersey Volunteers,
a troop which seems to have had such difficulty
in finding officers in its own State that it had
to go to New York for many of them,—or was it
that so many more rich New York Loyalists had to
be provided with commissions than the New York
Loyalist brigades required as officers?
But the most important British posts were those
which guarded the northern entrance to the island
of Manhattan, where it was separated from the mainland
by Spuyten Duyvel Kill, flowing westward into
16
the Hudson, and the Harlem, flowing southward into
the East River. King’s Bridge and the Farmers’
Bridge, not far apart, joined the island to the main;
and just before the Revolution a traveller might have
made his choice of these two bridges, whether he
wished to take the Boston road or the road to Albany.
In 1778 the British “barrier” was King’s
Bridge, the northern one of the two, the watch-house
being the tavern at the mainland end of the bridge.
Not only the bridge, but the Hudson, the Spuyten
Duyvel, and the Harlem, as well, were commanded
by British forts on the island of Manhattan. Yet
there were defences still further out. On the mainland
was a line of forts extending from the Hudson,
first eastward, then southward, to the East River.
Further north, between the Albany road and the
Hudson, was a camp of German and Hessian allies,
foot and horse. Northeast, on Valentine’s Hill,
were the Seventy-first Highlanders. Near the
mainland bank of the Harlem were the quarters of
various troops of dragoons, most of them American
Tory corps with English commanders, but one, at
least, native to the soil, not only in rank and file, but
in officers also,—and with no less dash and daring
than by Tarleton, Simcoe, and the rest, was King
George III. served by Captain James De Lancey,
of the county of West Chester, with his “cowboys,”
officially known as the West Chester Light Horse.
17
Thus the outer northern lines of the British were
just above King’s Bridge. The principal camp of
the Americans was far to the north. Each army
was affected by conditions that called for a wide
space of territory between the two forces, between
the outer rim of the British circle, and the inner face
of the American arc. Of this space the portion that
lay bounded on the west by the Hudson, on the
southeast by Long Island Sound, and cut in two by
the southward-flowing Bronx, was the most interesting.
It was called the Neutral Ground, and neutral
it was in that it had the protection of neither side,
while it was ravaged by both. Foraged by the two
armies, under the approved rules of war, it underwent
further a constant, irregular pillage by gangs
of mounted rascals who claimed attachment, some
to the British, some to the Americans, but were not
owned by either. It was, too, overridden by the
cavalry of both sides in attempts to surprise outposts,
cut off supplies, and otherwise harass and
sting. Unexpected forays by the rangers and dragoons
from King’s Bridge and the Harlem were reciprocated
by sudden visitations of American horse
and light infantry from the Greenburg Hills and
thereabove. The Whig militia of the county also
took a hand against British Tories and marauders.
Of the residents, many Tories fled to New York,
some Americans went to the interior of the country,
18
but numbers of each party held their ground, at risk
of personal harm as well as of robbery. Many of
the best houses were, at different times during the
war, occupied as quarters by officers of either side.
Little was raised on the farms save what the farmers
could immediately use or easily conceal. The Hudson
was watched by British war-vessels, while the
Americans on their side patrolled it with whale-boats,
long and canoe-like, swift and elusive. For the
drama of partisan warfare, Nature had provided, in
lower West Chester County,—picturesquely hilly,
beautifully wooded, pleasantly watered, bounded in
part by the matchless Hudson and the peerless
Sound,—a setting unsurpassed.
Thus was it that Miss Elizabeth Philipse, Major
John Colden, and Miss Philipse’s negro boy, Cuff,
all riding northward on the Albany post-road, a few
miles above King’s Bridge, but still within territory
patrolled daily by the King’s troops, constituted, on
that bleak November evening in 1778, a group unusual
to the time and place.
’Twas a wettish wind, concerning which Miss
Elizabeth expressed, in the imperative mood, her
will that it be dratted,—a feminine wind, truly, as
was clear from its unexpected flarings up and sudden
calmings down, its illogical whiskings around and
eccentric changes of direction. Now it swept down
the slope from the east, as if it meant to bombard
19
the travellers with all the brown leaves of the hillside.
Now it assailed them from the north, as if to impede
their journey; now rushed on them from the rear as
if it had come up from New York to speed them on
their way; now attacked them in the left flank, armed
with a raw chill from the Hudson. It blew Miss
Elizabeth’s hair about and additionally reddened her
cheeks. It caused the young Tory major to frown,
for the protection of his eyes, and thus to look more
and more unlike the happy man that Miss Elizabeth’s
accepted suitor ought to have appeared.
“I make no doubt I’ve brought on me the anger
of your whole family by lending myself to this.
And yet I am as much against it as they are!”
So spake the major, in tones as glum as his looks.
“’Twas a choice, then, between their anger and
mine,” said Miss Elizabeth, serenely. “Don’t think
I wouldn’t have come, even if you had refused your
escort. I’d have made the trip alone with Cuff, that’s
all.”
“I shall be blamed, none the less.”
“Why? You couldn’t have hindered me. If
the excursion is as dangerous as they say it is, your
company certainly does not add to my danger. It
lessens it. So, as my safety is what they all clamor
about, they ought to commend you for escorting me.”
“If they were like ever to take that view, they
would not all have refused you their own company.”
20
“They refused because they neither supposed
that I would come alone nor that Providence would
send me an escort in the shape of a surly major on
leave of absence from Staten Island! Come, Jack,
you needn’t tremble in dread of their wrath. By
this time my amiable papa and my solicitous
mamma and my anxious brothers and sisters are
in such a state of mind about me that, when you
return to-night and report I’ve been safely consigned
to Aunt Sally’s care, they’ll fairly worship you as a
messenger of good news. So be as cheerful as the
wind and the cold will let you. We are almost
there. It seems an age since we passed Van Cortlandt’s.”
Major Colden merely sighed and looked more
dismal, as if knowing the futility of speech.
“There’s the steeple!” presently cried the girl,
looking ahead. “We’ll be at the parsonage in ten
minutes, and safe in the manor-house in five more.
Do look relieved, Jack! The journey’s end is in
sight, and we haven’t had sight of a soldier this
side of King’s Bridge,—except Van Wrumb’s Hessians
across Tippett’s Vale, and they are friends.
Br-r-r-r! I’ll have Williams make a fire in every
room in the manor-house!”
Now while these three rode in seeming security
from the south towards the church, parsonage, country
tavern, and great manor-house that constituted
21
the village then called, sometimes Lower Philipsburgh
and sometimes Younker’s, that same hill-varied,
forest-set, stream-divided place was being
approached afar from the north by a company of
mounted troops riding as if the devil was after
them. It was not the devil, but another body of
cavalry, riding at equal speed, though at a great
distance behind. The three people from New York
as yet neither saw nor heard anything of these
horsemen dashing down from the north. Yet the
major’s spirits sank lower and lower, as if he had
an omen of coming evil.
He was a handsome young man, Major John
Colden, being not more than twenty-seven years
old, and having the clearly outlined features best
suited to that period of smooth-shaven faces. His
dark eyes and his pensive expression were none the
less effective for the white powder on his cued hair.
A slightly petulant, uneasy look rather added to his
countenance. He was of medium height and regular
figure. He wore a civilian’s cloak or outer coat
over the uniform of his rank and corps, thus hiding
also his sword and pistol. Other externals of his
attire were riding-boots, gloves, and a three-cornered
hat without a military cockade. He was mounted
on a sorrel horse a little darker in hue than the
animal ridden by Miss Elizabeth’s black boy, Cuff,
who wore the rich livery of the Philipses.
22
The steed of Miss Elizabeth was a slender black,
sensitive and responsive to her slightest command—a
fit mount for this, the most imperious, though not
the oldest, daughter of Colonel Frederick Philipse,
third lord, under the bygone royal régime, of the
manor of Philipsburgh in the Province of New York.
They gave classic names to quadrupeds in those days
and Addison’s tragedy was highly respected, so Elizabeth’s
scholarly father had christened this horse
Cato. Howsoever the others who loved her regarded
her present jaunt, no opposition was shown
by Cato. Obedient now as ever, the animal bore
her zealously forward, be it to danger or to what
she would.
Elizabeth’s resolve to revisit the manor hall on the
Hudson, which had been left closed up in the steward’s
charge when the family had sought safety in
their New York City residence in 1777, had sprung
in part from a powerful longing for the country and
in part from a dream which had reawakened strongly
her love for the old house of her birth and of most
of her girlhood. The peril of her resolve only increased
her determination to carry it out. Her parents,
brothers, and sisters stood aghast at the project,
and refused in any way to countenance it. But there
was no other will in the Philipse household able to
cope with Elizabeth’s. She held that the thing was
most practicable and simple, inasmuch as the steward,
23
with the aid of two servants, kept the deserted house
in a state of habitation, and as her mother’s sister,
Miss Sarah Williams, was living with the widow Babcock
in the parsonage of Lower Philipsburgh and could
transfer her abode to the manor-house for the time
of Elizabeth’s stay. Major Colden, an unloved lover,—for
Elizabeth, accepting marriage as one of the
inevitables, yet declared that she could never love
any man, love being admittedly a weakness, and she
not a weak person,—was ever watchful for the opportunity
of ingratiating himself with the superb girl,
and so fearful of displeasing her that he dared not
refuse to ride with her. He was less able even than
her own family to combat her purpose. One day
some one had asked him why, since she called him
Jack, and he was on the road to thirty years, while
she was yet in her teens, he did not call her Betty
or Bess, as all other Elizabeths were called in those
days. He meditated a moment, then replied, “I
never heard any one, even in her own family, call
her so. I can’t imagine any one ever calling her by
any more familiar name than Elizabeth.”
Now it was not from her father that this regal
young creature could have taken her resoluteness,
though she may well have got from him some of the
pride that went with it. There certainly must have
been more pride than determination in Frederick
Philipse, third lord of the manor, colonel in provincial
24
militia before the Revolution, graduate of King’s
College, churchman, benefactor, gentleman of literary
tastes; amiable, courtly, and so fat that he and his
handsome wife could not comfortably ride in the same
coach at the same time. But there was surely as much
determination as pride in this gentleman’s great-grandfather,
Vrederyck Flypse, descendant of a line of
viscounts and keepers of the deer forests of Bohemia,
Protestant victim of religious persecution in his own
land, immigrant to New Amsterdam about 1650, and
soon afterward the richest merchant in the province,
dealer with the Indians, ship-owner in the East and
West India trade, importer of slaves, leader in provincial
politics and government, founder of Sleepy
Hollow Church, probably a secret trafficker with
Captain Kidd and other pirates, and owner by purchase
of the territory that was erected by royal
charter of William and Mary into the lordship and
manor of Philipsburgh. The strength of will probably
declined, while the pride throve, in transmission
to Vrederyck’s son, Philip, who sowed wild oats, and
went to the Barbadoes for his health and married
the daughter of the English governor of that island.
Philip’s son, Frederick, being born in a hot climate,
and grandson of an English governor as well as of
the great Flypse, would naturally have had great
quantity of pride, whatever his stock of force, particularly
as he became second lord of the manor at
25
the lordly age of four. And he could not easily have
acquired humility in later life, as speaker of the provincial
Assembly, Baron of the Exchequer, judge of
the Supreme Court, or founder of St. John’s Church,—towards
which graceful edifice was the daughter of
his son, the third lord, directing her horse this wintry
autumn evening. As for this third lord, he had been
removed by the new Government to Connecticut for
favoring the English rule, but, having received permission
to go to New York for a short time, had
evinced his fondness for the sweet and soft things of
life by breaking his parole and staying in the city,
under the British protection, thus risking his vast
estate and showing himself a gentleman of anything
but the courage now displayed by his daughter.
Elizabeth, therefore, must have derived her spirit,
with a good measure of pride and a fair share (or
more) of vanity, from her mother, though, thanks to
that appreciation of personal comfort which comes
with middle age, Madam Philipse’s high-spiritedness
would no longer have displayed itself in dangerous
excursions, nor was it longer equal to a contest
with the fresher energy of Elizabeth. She was the
daughter of Charles Williams, once naval officer of
the port of New York, and his wife, who had been
Miss Sarah Olivier. Thus came Madam Philipse
honestly by the description, “imperious woman of
fashion,” in which local history preserves her memory.
26
She was a widow of twenty-four when Colonel
Philipse married her, she having been bereaved two
years before of her first husband, Mr. Anthony Rutgers,
the lawyer. She liked display, and her husband
indulged her inclination without stint, receiving in
repayment a good nursery-full of what used, in the
good old days, to be called pledges of affection.
Being the daughter of a royal office-holding Englishman,
how could she have helped holding her head
mighty high on receiving her elevation to the ladyship
of Philipsburgh, and who shall blame her daughter
and namesake, now within a stone’s throw of St.
John’s parsonage and in full sight of the tree-bowered
manorial home of her fathers, for holding hers, which
was younger, a trifle higher?
Not many high-held heads of this or any other day
are or were finer than that of Elizabeth Philipse was
in 1778, or are set on more graceful figures. For all
her haughtiness, she was not a very large person,
nor yet was she a small one. She was neither fragile
nor too ample. Her carriage made her look taller
than she was. She was of the brown-haired, blue-eyed
type, but her eyes were not of unusual size or
surpassing lucidity, being merely clear, honest, steady
eyes, capable rather of fearless or disdainful attention
than of swift flashes or coquettish glances. The precision
with which her features were outlined did not
lessen the interest that her face had from her pride,
27
spirit, independence, and intelligence. She was, moreover,
an active, healthy creature, and if she commanded
the dratting of the wind, it was not as much
because she was chilled by it as because it blew her
cloak and impeded her progress. In fine, she was a
beauty; else this historian would never have taken
the trouble of unearthing from many places and
piecing together the details of this fateful incident,—for
if any one supposes that the people of this
narrative are mere fictions, he or she is radically in
error. They lived and achieved, under the names
they herein bear; were as actual as the places herein
mentioned,—as any of the numerous patriotic Americans
who daily visit the genealogical shelves of the
public libraries can easily learn, if they will spare
sufficient time from the laudable task of hunting
down their own ancestors. If this story is called a
romance, that term is used here only as it is oft applied
to actual occurrences of a romantic character.
So the Elizabeth Philipse who, before crossing the
Neperan to approach the manor-house, stopped in
front of the snug parsonage at the roadside and
directed Cuff to knock at the door, was as real as
was then the parsonage itself.
Presently a face appeared furtively at one of the
up-stairs windows. The eyes thereof, having dwelt
for an instant on the mounted party shivering in the
road, opened wide in amazement, and a minute later,
28
after a sound of key-turning and bolt-drawing, the
door opened, and a good-looking lady appeared in
the doorway, backed up by a servant and two pretty
children who clung, half-curious, half-frightened, to
the lady’s skirts.
“Why, Miss Elizabeth! Is it possible—”
But Elizabeth cut the speech of the astonished
lady short.
“Yes, my dear Mrs. Babcock,—and I know how
dangerous, and all that! And, thank you, I’ll not
come in. I shall see you during the week. I’m
going to the manor-house to stay awhile, and I wish
my aunt to stay there with me, if you can spare her.”
“Why, yes,—of course,—but—here comes
your aunt.”
“Why, Elizabeth, what in the world—”
She was a somewhat stately woman at first sight,
was Elizabeth’s mother’s sister, Miss Sarah Williams;
but on acquaintance soon conciliated and found to
be not at all the formidable and haughty person she
would have had people believe her; not too far gone
in middle age, preserving, despite her spinsterhood,
much of her bloom and many of those little roundnesses
of contour which adorn but do not encumber.
“I haven’t time to say what, aunt,” broke in
Elizabeth. “I want to get to the manor-house
before it is night. You are to stay with me there
a week. So put on a wrap and come over as soon
29
as you can, to be in time for supper. I’ll send a boy
for you, if you like.”
“Why, no, there’s some one here will walk over
with me, I dare say. But, la me, Elizabeth,—”
“Then I’ll look for you in five minutes. Good
night, Mrs. Babcock! I trust your little ones are
well.”
And she rode off, followed by Colden and Cuff,
leaving the two women in the parsonage doorway to
exchange what conjectures and what ejaculations of
wonderment the circumstances might require.
Night was falling when the riders crossed the
Neperan (then commonly known as the Saw Mill
River) by the post-road bridge, and gazed more
closely on the stone manor-house. Looking westward,
from the main road, across the hedge and
paling fence, they saw, first the vast lawn with its
comely trees, then the long east front of the house,
with its two little entrance-porches, the row of
windows in each of its two stories, the dormer windows
projecting from the sloping roof, the balustraded
walk on the roof-top; at both ends the
green and brown and yellow hints of what lay north
of the house, between it and the forest, and west of
the house, between it and the Hudson,—the box-hedged
gardens, the terraces breaking the slope to
the river, the deer paddock enclosed by high pickets,
the great orchard. The Hudson was nearer to the
30
house then than now, and its lofty further bank,
rich with growth of wood and leaf, was the backing
for the westward view. To the east, which the
riders put behind them in facing the manor-house,
were the hills of the interior.
“Not a sign of light from the house, and the
shutters all closed, as if it were a tomb! It looks
as cold and empty as one. I’ll soon make it warm
and live enough inside at least!” said Elizabeth, and
turned westward from the highway into the short
road that ran between the mansion and the north
bank of the Neperan, by the grist-mill and the gate
and the stables, down a picturesque descent to a
landing where that stream entered the Hudson.
She proceeded towards the gate, where, being near
the southeast corner of the house, one could see
that the south front was to the east front as the
base to the upright of a capital L turned backward;
that the south front resembled the east in all but
in being shorter and having a single porched entrance,
which was in its middle.
As the party neared the gate, there arose far
northward a sound of many horsemen approaching
at a fast gallop. Elizabeth at once reined in, to
listen. Major Colden and Cuff followed her example,
both looking at her in apprehension. The
galloping was on the Albany road, but presently
deviated eastwardly, then decreased.
31
“They’ve turned up the road to Mile Square,
whoever they are,” said Elizabeth, and led the way
on to the gate, which Cuff, dismounting, quickly
opened, its fastening having been removed and not
replaced. “Lead your horse to the door, Cuff.
Then take off the portmanteaus and knock, and
tie the horses to the post.”
She rode up to the southern door in the east
front, and was there assisted to dismount by the
major, while Cuff followed in obedience. Colden,
as the sound of the distant galloping grew fainter
and fainter, showed more relief than he might have
felt had he known that a second troop was soon to
come speeding down in the track of the first.
Elizabeth, in haste to escape the wind, stepped
into the little porch and stood impatiently before the
dark, closed door of the house of her fathers.
32
CHAPTER II. — THE MANOR-HOUSE.
The stone mansion before which the travellers
stood, awaiting answer to Cuff’s loud knock on the
heavy mahogany door, had already acquired antiquity
and memories. It was then, as to all south
of the porch which now sheltered the three visitors,
ninety-six years old, and as to the rest of the eastern
front thirty-three, so that its newest part was twice
the age of Elizabeth herself.
Her grandfather’s grandfather, the first lord of
the manor, built the southern portion in 1682, a
date not far from that of the erection of his upper
house, called Philipse Castle, at what is now Tarrytown,—but
whether earlier or later, let the local
historians dispute. This southern portion comprised
the entire south front, its length running east and
west, its width going back northward to, but not
including, the large east entrance-hall, into which
opened the southern door of the east front. The
new part, attached to the original house as the
upright to the short, broad base of the reversed L,
was added by Elizabeth’s grandfather, the second
33
lord, in 1745. The addition, with the eastern section
of the old part, was thereafter the most used
portion, and the south front yielded in importance
to the new east front. The two porched doors in
the latter front matched each other, though the
southern one gave entrance to the fine guests in silk
and lace, ruffles and furbelows, who came up from
New York and the other great mansions of the
county to grace the frequent festivities of the Philipses;
while the northern one led to the spacious
kitchen where means were used to make the aforesaid
guests feel that they had not arrived in vain.
The original house, rectangular as to its main
part, had two gables, and, against its rear or
northern length, a pent-roofed wing, and probably a
veranda, the last covering the space later taken by
the east entrance-hall. The main original building,
on its first floor, had (and has) a wide entrance-hall
in its middle, with one large parlor on each side.
The second floor, reached by staircase from the
lower hall, duplicated the first, there being a middle
hall and two great square chambers. Overhead,
there was plentiful further room beneath the gable
roof. Under the western room of the first floor was
the earlier kitchen, which, before 1745, served in
relation to the guests who entered by the southern
door exactly as thereafter the new kitchen served in
relation to those entering by the eastern door,—making
34
them glad they had come, by horse or coach,
over the long, bad, forest-bordered roads. Adjacent
to the old kitchen was abundant cellarage for the
stowing of many and diverse covetable things of
the trading first lord’s importation.
The Neperan joined the Hudson in the midst
of wilderness, where Indians and deer abounded,
when Vrederyck Flypse caused the old part of the
stone mansion to grow out of the green hill slope in
1682. He planted a foundation two feet thick and
thereupon raised walls whose thickness was twenty
inches. He would have a residence wherein he
might defy alike the savage elements, men and
beasts. For the front end of his entrance-hall he
imported a massive mahogany door made in 1681 in
Holland,—a door in two parts, so that the upper half
could be opened, while the lower half remained shut.
The rear door of that hall was similarly made. Ponderous
were the hinges and bolts, being ordinary
blacksmith work. Solid were the panel mouldings.
He brought Holland brick wherewith to
trim the openings of doorways and windows. He
laid the floor of his aforesaid kitchen with blue
stone. The chimney breasts and hearthstones of
his principal rooms were seven feet wide.
Here, in feudal fashion, with many servants and
slaves to do his bidding, and tenants to render him
dues, sometimes dwelt Vrederyck Flypse, with his
35
second wife, Catherine Van Cortlandt, and the children
left by his first wife, Margaret Hardenbrock;
but sometimes some of the family lived in New York,
and sometimes at the upper stone house, “Castle
Philipse,” by the Pocantico, near Sleepy Hollow
Church, of this Flypse’s founding. He built mills
near both his country-houses, and from the saw-mill
near the lower one did the Neperan receive the name
of Saw Mill River. He died in 1702, in his seventy-seventh
year, and the bones of him lie in Sleepy Hollow
Church.
But even before the first lord went, did “associations”
begin to attach to the old Dutch part of the
mansion. Besides the leading families of the province,
the traders,—Dutch and English,—and the
men with whom he held counsel upon affairs temporal
and spiritual, public and private, terrestrial and
marine, he had for guests red Indians, and, there
is every reason to believe, gentlemen who sailed the
seas under what particular flag best promoted their
immediate purposes, or under none at all. That old
story never would down, to the effect that the adventurous
Kidd levied not on the ships of Vrederyck
Flypse. The little landing-place where Neperan
joined Hudson, at which the Flypses stepped ashore
when they came up from New York by sloop instead
of by horse, was trodden surely by the feet of more
than one eminent oceanic exponent of—
36
“The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can.”
A great merchant may have more than one way of
doing business, and I would not undertake to account
for every barrel and box that was unladen at that little
landing. Nor would I be surprised to encounter
sometime, among the ghosts of Philipse Manor Hall,
that of the immortal Kidd himself, seated at dead of
night, across the table from the first lord of the
manor, before a blazing log in the seven-foot fireplace,
drinking liquor too good for the church-founding
lord to have questioned whence it came; and
leaving the next day without an introduction to the
family.
This 1682 part of the house, in facing south, had
the Albany road at its left, the Hudson at its right,
and at its front the lane that ran by the Neperan,
from the road to the river. Thus was the house for
sixty-three years. When the first lord’s grandson,
Elizabeth’s grandfather, in 1745 made the addition
at the north, what was the east gable-end of the
old house became part of the east front of the completed
mansion. The east rooms of the old house
were thus the southeast rooms of the completed
mansion, and, being common to both fronts, gained
by the change of relation, becoming the principal
parlor and the principal chamber. The east parlor,
37
entered on the west from the old hall, was entered
on the north from the new hall; and the new
hall was almost a duplicate of the old, but its
ceiling decorations and the mahogany balustrade of
its stairway were the more elaborate. This stairway,
like its fellow in the old hall, ascended, with two
turns, to a hall in the second story. Besides the
new halls, the addition included, on the first floor, a
large dining-room and the great kitchen; on the
second floor, five sleeping-chambers, and, in the
space beneath the roof-tree, dormitories for servants
and slaves. Elizabeth’s grandfather gave the house
the balustrade that crowns its roof from its northern
to its southern, and thence to its western end. He
had the interior elaborately finished. The old part
and its decorations were Dutch, but now things in
the province were growing less Dutch and more
English,—like the Philipse name and blood themselves,—and
so the new embellishments were English.
The second lord imported marble mantels
from England, had the walls beautifully wainscoted,
adorned the ceilings richly with arabesque work in
wood. He laid out, in the best English fashion, a
lawn between the eastern front and the Albany post-road.
He it was who married Joanna, daughter of
Governor Anthony Brockholst, of a very ancient
family of Lancashire, England; and who left provision
for the founding of St. John’s Church, across
38
the Neperan from the manor-house, and for the
endowment of the glebe thereof. And in his long
time the manor-house flourished and grew venerable
and multiplied its associations. He had five children:
Frederick (Elizabeth’s father), Philip, Susannah, Mary
(the beauty, wooed of Washington in 1756, ’tis said,
and later wed by Captain Roger Morris), and Margaret;
and, at this manor-house alone, white servants
thirty, and black servants twenty; and a numerous
tenantry, happy because in many cases the yearly
rent was but nominal, being three or four pounds or
a pair of hens or a day’s work,—for the Philipses,
thanks to trade and to office-holding under the Crown,
and to the beneficent rule whereby money multiplies
itself, did not have to squeeze a living out of the
tillers of their land. The lord of the manor held
court leet and baron at the house of a tenant, and
sometimes even inflicted capital punishment.
In 1751, the second lord followed his grandfather
to the family vault in Sleepy Hollow Church. With
the accession of Elizabeth’s father, then thirty-one
years old, began the splendid period of the mansion;
then the panorama of which it was both witness and
setting wore its most diverse colors. The old contest
between English and French on this continent
was approaching its glorious climax. Whether they
were French emissaries coming down from Quebec,
by the Hudson or by horse, or English and colonial
39
officers going up from New York in command of
troops, they must needs stop and pay their respects
to the lord of the manor of Philipsburgh, and drink
his wine, and eat his venison, and flirt with his
stunning sisters. Soldiers would go from New York
by the post-road to Philipsburgh, and then embark
at the little landing, to proceed up the Hudson, on
the way to be scalped by the red allies of the French
or mowed down by Montcalm’s gunners before impregnable
Ticonderoga. Many were the comings
and goings of the scarlet coat and green. The
Indian, too, was still sufficiently plentiful to contribute
much to the environing picturesqueness. But,
most of all, in those days, the mansion got its character
from the festivities devised by its own inmates
for the entertainment of the four hundred of that
time.
For Elizabeth’s mother, of the same given name,
was “very fond of display,” and in her day the family
“lived showily.” Her husband (who was usually
called Colonel Philipse, from his title in the militia, and
rarely if ever called lord) had the house refurnished.
It was he who had the princely terraces made on the
slope between the mansion and the Hudson, and
who had new gardens laid out and adorned with tall
avenues of box and rarest fruit-trees and shrubs.
Doubtless his deer, in their picketed enclosure, were
a sore temptation to the country marksmen who
40
passed that way. Lady, or Madam, or Mrs. Philipse,
the colonel’s wife, bedazzled the admiring inhabitants
of West Chester County in many ways, but there is
a difference between authorities as to whether it was
she that used to drive four superb black horses over
the bad roads of the county, or whether it was her
mother-in-law, the second lord’s wife. Certainly it
was the latter that was killed by a fall from a carriage,
and certainly both had fine horses and magnificent
coaches, and drove over bad roads,—for all
roads were bad in those days, even in Europe, save
those the Romans left.
Of all the gay and hospitable occasions that brought,
through the mansion’s wide doors, courtly gentlemen
and high-and-mighty ladies, from their coaches, sleighs,
horses, or Hudson sloops, perhaps none saw more feasting
and richer display of ruffles and brocade than did
the wedding of Mary Philipse and Captain Morris,
seven years after the death of her father, and two after
the marriage of her brother. It was on the afternoon
of Sunday, Jan. 15, 1758. In the famous east parlor,
which has had much mention and will have more in
course of this narrative, was raised a crimson canopy
emblazoned with the Philipse crest,—a crowned
golden demi-lion rampant, upon a golden coronet.
Though the weather was not severe, there was snow
on the ground, and the guests began to drive up in
sleighs, under the white trees, at two o’clock. At
41
three arrived the Rev. Henry Barclay, rector of
Trinity, New York, and his assistant, Mr. Auchmuty.
At half-past three the beauteous Mary (did so proud
a heart-breaker blush, I wonder?) and the British
captain stood under the crimson canopy and gold,
and were united, “in the presence of a brilliant
assembly,” says the old county historian.[1] Miss Barclay,
Miss Van Cortlandt, and Miss De Lancey were
the bridesmaids, and the groomsmen were Mr. Heathcote
(of the family of the lords of the manor of
Scarsdale), Captain Kennedy (of Number One, Broadway),
and Mr. Watts. No need to report here who
were “among those present.” The wedding did not
occur yesterday, and the guests will not be offended
at the omission of their names; but one of them was
Acting Governor De Lancey. Colonel Philipse—wearing
the ancestral gold chain and jewelled badge
of the keepers of the deer forests of Bohemia—gave
the bride away, and with her went a good portion of
the earth’s surface, and much money, jewelry, and
plate.
After the wedding came the feast, and the guests—or
most of them—stayed so late they were not
sorry for the brilliant moonlight of the night that set
in upon their feasting. And now the legend! In the
midst of the feast, there appeared at the door of the
banquet-hall a tall Indian, with a scarlet blanket
close about him, and in solemn tones quoth he,
42
“Your possessions shall pass from you when the
eagle shall despoil the lion of his mane.” Thereupon
he disappeared, of course, as suddenly as he had
come, and the way in which historians have treated
this legend shows how little do historians apply to
their work the experiences of their daily lives,—such
an experience, for instance, as that of ignoring
some begging Irishwoman’s request for “a few pennies
in the Lord’s name,” and thereupon receiving a
volley of hair-raising curses and baleful predictions.
’Tis easy to believe in the Indian and the prophecy
of a passing of possessions, even though it was fulfilled;
but the time-clause involving the eagle and
the lion was doubtless added after the bird had
despoiled the beast.
It was years and years afterward, and when and
because the eagle had decided to attempt the said
despoiling, that there was a change of times at
Philipse Manor Hall. Meanwhile had young Frederick,
and Maria, and Elizabeth, and their brothers
and sisters arrived on the scene. What could one
have expected of the ease-loving, beauty-loving, book-loving,
luxury-loving, garden-loving, and wide-girthed
lord of the manor—connected by descent, kinship,
and marriage with royal office-holding—but Toryism?
In fact, nobody did expect else of him, for
though he tried in 1775 to conceal his sympathy
with the cause of the King, the powers in revolt
43
inferred it, and took measures to deter him from
actively aiding the British forces. His removal to
Hartford, his return to the manor-house,—where he
was for awhile, in the fall of 1776, at the time of
the battle of White Plains,—his memorable business
trip to New York, and his parole-breaking continuance
there, heralded the end of the old régime
in Philipse Manor Hall. The historians say that
at that time of Colonel Philipse’s last stay at the
hall, Washington quartered there for awhile, and
occupied the great southwestern chamber. Doubtless
Washington did occupy that chamber once
upon a time, but his itinerary and other circumstances
are against its having been immediately
before or immediately after the battle of White
Plains. Some of the American officers were there
about the time. As for the colonel’s family, it did
not abandon the house until 1777. With the occasions
when, during the first months of Revolutionary
activity in the county, use was sought of the
secret closets and the underground passage thoughtfully
provided by the earlier Philipses in days of risk
from Indians, fear of Frenchmen, and dealings with
pirates, this history has naught to do.
In 1777, then, the family took a farewell view of
the old house, and somewhat sadly, more resentfully,
wended by familiar landmarks to New York,—to
await there a joyous day of returning, when the
44
King’s regiments should have scattered the rebels
and hanged their leaders. John Williams, steward of
the manor, was left to take care of the house against
that day, with one white housemaid, who was of kin
to him, and one black slave, a man. The outside shutters
of the first story, the inside shutters above, were
fastened tight; the bolts of the ponderous mahogany
doors were strengthened, the stables and mills
and outbuildings emptied and locked. Much that
was precious in the house went with the family
and horses and servants to New York. Yet be
sure that proper means of subsistence for Williams
and his two helpers were duly stowed away, for the
faithful steward had to himself the discharge of that
matter.
So wholesale a departure went with much bustle,
and it was not till he returned from seeing the numerous
party off, and found himself alone with the
maid and the slave in the great entrance-hall, which
a few minutes before had been noisy with voices,
that Williams felt to the heart the sudden loneliness
of the place. The face of Molly, the maid,
was white and ready for weeping, and there was a
gravity on the chocolate visage of black Sam that
gave the steward a distinctly tremulous moment.
Perhaps he recalled the prediction of the Indian,
and had a flash of second sight, and perceived that
the third lord of the manor was to be the last.
45
Howbeit, he cleared his throat and set black Sam
to laying in fire-wood as for a siege, and Molly to
righting the disorder caused by the exodus; betook
himself cellarward, and from a hidden place drew
forth a bottle of an old vintage, and comforted his
solitude. He was a snug, honest, discreet man of
forty, was the steward, slim but powerful, looking
his office, besides knowing and fulfilling it.
But, as the months passed, he became used to
the solitude, and the routine of life in the closed-up,
memory-haunted old house took on a certain charm.
The living was snug enough in what parts of the
mansion the steward and his two servitors put to
their own daily use. As for the other parts, the
great dark rooms and entrance-halls, we may be
sure that when the steward went the rounds, and
especially after a visit to the wine-cellar, he found
them not so empty, but peopled with the vague and
shifting images of the many beings, young and old,
who had filled the house with life in brighter days.
Then, if ever, did noise of creaking stair or sound
as of human breath, or, perchance, momentary vision
of flitting face against the dark, betray the present
ghost of some old-time habitué of the mansion.
When the raiding and foraging and marauding
began in the county, the manor-house was not molested.
The partisan warfare had not yet reached
its magnitude. After the battle of White Plains
46
in 1776, the British had retained New York City,
while the main American army, leaving a small
force above, had gone to New Jersey. Late in
1777, the British main army, leaving New York
garrisoned, had departed to contest with the Americans
for Philadelphia. Not until July, 1778, after
Monmouth battle, did the British main army return
to New York, and the American forces form the
great arc, with their chief camp in upper West
Chester County. Then was great increase of foray
and pillage. The manor-house was of course exempt
from harm at the hands of King’s troops and
Tory raiders, while it was protected from American
regulars by Washington’s policy against useless
destruction, and from the marauding “Skinners”
by its nearness to the British lines and by the solidity
of its walls, doors, and shutters. Its gardens
suffered, its picket fences and gate fastenings were
tampered with, its orchards prematurely plucked.
But its trees were spared by the British foragers,
and the house itself was no longer in demand as
officers’ quarters, being too near King’s Bridge for
safe American occupancy, but not sufficiently near
for British. Hessians and Tories, though, patrolled
the near-by roads, and sometimes Continental troops
camped in the neighboring hills. In 1778, the
American Colonel Gist, whose corps was then at
the foot of Boar Hill, north of the manor-house, was
47
paying his court to the handsome widow Babcock,
in the parsonage, when he was surprised by a force
of yagers, rangers, and Loyalist light horse, and got
away in the nick of time.[2] The parsonage, unlike
the manor-house, was often visited by officers on
their way hither and thither, but I will not say it
was for this reason that Miss Sally Williams, the
sister of Colonel Philipse’s wife, preferred living in
the parsonage with the Babcocks rather than in the
great deserted mansion.
On a dark November afternoon, Williams had
sent black Sam to the orchard for some winter
apples, and the slave, after the fashion of his race,
was taking his time over the errand. The shades
of evening gathered while the steward was making
his usual rounds within the mansion. Molly, whose
housewifely instincts ever asserted themselves, had
of her own accord made a dusting tour of the rooms
and halls. She was on the first landing of the stairway
in the east hall, just about to finish her task
in the waning light admitted by the window over the
landing and by the fanlight over the front door,
when, as she applied her cloth to the mahogany balustrade,
the door of the east parlor opened, and
Williams came out of that dark apartment.
“Lord, Molly!” he said, a moment later, having
started at suddenly beholding her. “I thought
you were a ghost! It’s time to get supper, I think,
48
from the look of the day outside. I’ll have to make
a light.”
From a closet in the side of the staircase he took
a candle, flint, and tinder, talking the while to Molly,
as she rubbed the balusters. Having produced a
tiny candle-flame that did not light up half the
hall, Williams started towards the dining-room, but
stopped at a distant sound of galloping horses,
which were evidently coming down the Albany road.
The steward and the maid exchanged conjectures as
to whether this meant a British patrol or “Rebel”
dragoons, “Skinners” or Hessian yagers, Highlanders,
or Loyalist light horse; and then observed
from the sound that the horses had turned aside
into the Mile Square road.
But now came a new sound of horses, and though
it was of only a few, and those walking, it gave
Williams quite a start, for the footfalls were manifestly
approaching the mansion. They as manifestly
stopped before that very hill. And then came a
sharp knock on the mahogany door.
“See who it is,” whispered Molly.
Williams hesitated. The knock was repeated.
“Who’s there?” called out Williams.
There was an answer, but the words could not
be made out.
“Who?” repeated Williams.
This time the answer was clear enough.
49
“It’s I, Williams! Don’t keep me standing here
in the wind all night.”
“It’s Miss Elizabeth!” cried Molly; and Williams,
in a kind of daze of astonishment, hastily
unlocked, unbolted, and threw open the door.
50
CHAPTER III. — THE SOUND OF GALLOPING.
A rush of wind came in from the outer gloom and
almost blew out the candle. Williams held up his
hand to protect the flame and stepped aside from
before the doorway.
The wind was promptly followed by Elizabeth,
who strode in with the air that a king might show
on reentering one of his palaces, still holding her
whip in her gloved hand. Behind her came Colden,
the picture of moody dejection. When Cuff had
entered with the portmanteaus, Williams, seeing but
three horses without, closed the door, locked it, and
looked with inquiry and bewilderment at Elizabeth.
“Br-r-r-r!” she ejaculated. “Light up my chamber,
Molly, and have a fire in it; then make some
hot tea, and get me something to eat.”
Elizabeth’s impetuosity sent the open-mouthed
maid flying up-stairs to execute the first part of the
order, whereupon the mistress turned to the wondering
steward.
“I’ve come to spend a week at the manor-house,
Williams. Cuff, take those to my room.”
51
The black boy, with the portmanteaus, followed in
the way Molly had taken, but with less rapidity.
By this time Williams had recovered somewhat from
his surprise, and regained his voice and something
of his stewardly manner.
“I scarcely expected any of the family out from
New York these times, miss. There——”
“I suppose not!” Elizabeth broke in. “Have
some one put away the horses, Williams, or they’ll
be shivering. It’s mighty cold for the time of year.”
“I’ll go myself, ma’am. There’s only black Sam,
you know, and he isn’t back from the orchard. I
sent him to get some apples.” And the steward set
the candlestick on the newel post of the stairway,
and started for the door.
“No, let Cuff go,” said Elizabeth, sitting down on
a settle that stood with its back to the side of the
staircase. “You start a fire in the room next mine,
for aunt Sally. She’ll be over from the parsonage
in a few minutes.”
Williams thereupon departed in quest of the
stable key, inwardly devoured by a mighty curiosity
as to the wherefore of Elizabeth’s presence
here in the company of none but her affianced,
and also the wherefore of that gentleman’s manifest
depression of spirits. His curiosity was not
lessened when the major called after him:
“Tell Cuff he may feed my horse, but not take
52
the saddle off. I must ride back to New York as
soon as the beast is rested.”
“Why,” said Elizabeth to Colden, “you may stay
for a bite of supper.”
“No, thank you! I am not hungry.”
“A glass of wine, then,” said the girl, quite heedless
of his tone; “if there is any left in the house.”
“No wine, I thank you!” Colden stood motionless,
too far back in the hall to receive much light
from the feeble candle, like a shadowy statue of the
sulks.
“As you will!”
Whereupon Elizabeth, as if she had satisfied her
conscience regarding what was due from her in the
name of hospitality, rose, and opened the door to
the east parlor.
“Ugh! How dark and lonely the house is! No
wonder aunt Sally chose to live at the parsonage.”
After one look into the dark apartment, she closed
the door. “Well, I’ll warm up the place a bit.
Sorry you can’t stay with us, major.”
“It is only you who send me away,” said Colden,
dismally and reproachfully. “I could have got
longer leave of absence. You let me escort you
here, because no gentleman of your family will lend
himself to your reckless caprice. And then, having
no further present use for me, you send me about
my business!”
53
Elizabeth, preferring to pace the hall until her
chamber should be heated, and her aunt should
arrive, was striking her cloak with her riding-whip
at each step; not that the cloak needed dusting, but
as a method of releasing surplus energy.
“But I do have further present use for you,” she
said. “You are going back to New York to inform
my dear timid parents and sisters and brothers that
I’ve arrived here safe. They’ll not sleep till you tell
them so.”
“One of your slaves might bear that news as
well,” quoth the major.
“Well, are you not forever calling yourself my
slave? Besides, my devotion to King George won’t
let me weaken his forces by holding one of his officers
from duty longer than need be.”
But Colden was not to be cheered by pleasantry.
“What a man you are! So cross at my sending
you back that you’ll neither eat nor drink before
going. Pray don’t pout, Colden. ’Tis foolish!”
“I dare say! A man in love does many foolish
things!”
The utterance of this great and universal truth
had not time to receive comment from Elizabeth
before Cuff reappeared, with the stable key; and at
the same instant, a rather delicate, inoffensive knock
was heard on the front door.
“That must be aunt Sally,” said Elizabeth.
54
“Let her in, Cuff. Then go and stable the horses.
My poor Cato will freeze!”
It was indeed Miss Sarah Williams, and in a state
of breathlessness. She had been running, perhaps
to escape the unseemly embraces of the wind, which
had taken great liberties with her skirts,—liberties
no less shocking because of the darkness of the
evening; for though De la Rochefoucauld has settled
it that man’s alleged courage takes a vacation when
darkness deprives it of possible witnesses, no one will
accuse an elderly maiden’s modesty of a like eclipse.
“My dear child, what could have induced you——”
were her first words to Elizabeth; but her attention
was at that point distracted by seeing Cuff, outside
the threshold, about to pull the door shut. “Don’t
close the door yet, boy. Some one is coming.”
Cuff thereupon started on his task of stabling the
three horses, leaving the door open. The flame of
the candle on the newel post was blown this way
and that by the in-rushing wind.
“It’s old Mr. Valentine,” explained Miss Sally to
Elizabeth. “He offered to show me over from the
parsonage, where he happened to be calling, so I
didn’t wait for Mrs. Babcock’s boy——”
“You found Mr. Valentine pleasanter company,
I suppose, aunty, dear,” put in Elizabeth, who spared
neither age nor dignity. “He’s a widower again,
isn’t he?”
55
Miss Sally blushed most becomingly. Her plump
cheeks looked none the worse for this modest suffusion.
“Fie, child! He’s eighty years old. Though, to
be sure, the attentions of a man of his experience
and judgment aren’t to be considered lightly.”
Those were the days when well-bred people could—and
often did, naturally and without effort—improvise
grammatical sentences of more than twelve
words, in the course of ordinary, every-day talk.
“We started from the parsonage together,” went
on Miss Sally, “but I was so impatient I got ahead.
He doesn’t walk as briskly as he did twenty years
ago.”
Yet briskly enough for his years did the octogenarian
walk in through the little pillared portico a
moment later. Such deliberation as his movements
had might as well have been the mark of a proper
self-esteem as the effect of age. He was a slender
but wiry-looking old gentleman, was Matthias Valentine,
of Valentine’s Hill; in appearance a credit to
the better class of countrymen of his time. His
white hair was tied in a cue, as if he were himself a
landowner instead of only a manorial tenant. Yet
no common tenant was he. His father, a dragoon
in the French service, had come down from Canada
and settled on Philipse Manor, and Matthias had
been proprietor of Valentine’s Hill, renting from
56
the Philipses in earlier days than any one could
remember. His grandsons now occupied the Hill,
and the old man was in the full enjoyment of the
leisure he had won. His rather sharp countenance,
lighted by honest gray eyes, was a mixture of good-humor,
childlike ingenuousness, and innocent jocosity.
The neatness of his hair, his carefully shaven
face, and the whole condition of his brown cloth coat
and breeches and worsted stockings, denoted a fastidiousness
rarely at any time, and particularly in
the good (or bad) old days, to be found in common
with rustic life and old age. Did some of the dandyism
of the French dragoon survive in the old Philipsburgh
farmer?
He carried a walking-stick in one hand, a lighted
lantern in the other. After bowing to the people in
the hall, he set down his lantern, closed the door
and bolted it, then took up his lantern, blew out the
flame thereof, and set it down again.
“Whew!” he puffed, after his exertion. “Windy
night, Miss Elizabeth! Windy night, Major Colden!
Winter’s going to set in airly this year. There
ain’t been sich a frosty November since ’64, when
the river was froze over as fur down as Spuyten
Duyvel.”
There was in the old man’s high-pitched voice a
good deal of the squeak, but little of the quaver, of
senility.
57
“You’ll stay to supper, I hope, Mr. Valentine.”
From Elizabeth this was a sufficient exhibition of
graciousness. She then turned her back on the
two men and began to tell her aunt of her arrangements.
“Thankee, ma’am,” said old Valentine, whose
sight did not immediately acquaint him, in the dim
candle-light, with Elizabeth’s change of front; wherefore
he continued, placidly addressing her back: “I
wouldn’t mind a glass and a pipe with friend Williams
afore trudging back to the Hill.”
He then walked over to the disconsolate Colden,
and, with a very gay-doggish expression, remarked
in an undertone:
“Fine pair o’ girls yonder, major?”
He had known Colden from the time of the latter’s
first boyhood visits to the manor, and could venture
a little familiarity.
“Girls?” blurted the major, startled out of his
meditations.
The old country beau chuckled.
“We all know what’s betwixt you and the niece.
How about the aunt and me taking a lesson from
you two, eh?”
Even the gloomy officer could not restrain a
momentary smile.
“What, Mr. Valentine? Do you seriously think
of marrying?”
58
“Why not? I’ve been married afore, hain’t I?
What’s to hinder?”
“Why, there’s the matter of age.” Colden rather
enjoyed being inconsiderate of people’s feelings.
“Oh, the lady is not so old,” said the octogenarian,
placidly, casting a judicial, but approving look at the
commanding figure of Miss Sally.
Then, as he had been for a considerable time on
his legs, having walked over from the Hill to the
parsonage that afternoon, and as at best his knees
bent when he stood, he sat down on the settle by
the staircase.
Miss Sally, though she knew it useless to protest
further against Elizabeth’s caprice, nevertheless felt
it her duty to do so, especially as Major Colden
would probably carry to the family a report of her
attitude towards that caprice.
“Did you ever hear of such rashness, major? A
young girl like Elizabeth coming out here in time of
war, when this neutral ground between the lines is
overridden and foraged to death, and deluged with
blood by friend as well as foe? La me! I can’t
understand her, if she is my sister’s child.”
“Why, aunt Sally, you stay out here through it
all,” said Elizabeth, not as much to depreciate the
dangers as to give her aunt an opportunity of posing
as a very courageous person.
Miss Sally promptly accepted the opportunity.
59
“Oh,” said she, with a mien of heroic self-sacrifice,
“I couldn’t let poor Grace Babcock stay at the parsonage
with nobody but her children; besides I’m
not Colonel Philipse’s daughter, and who cares
whether I’m loyal to the King or not? But a girl
like you isn’t made for the dangers and privations
we’ve had to put up with out here since the King’s
troops have occupied New York, and Washington’s
rebel army has held the country above. I’m surprised
the family let her come, or that you’d countenance
it by coming with her, major.”
“We all opposed it,” said Colden, with a sigh.
“But—you know Elizabeth!”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth herself with cheerful nonchalance,
“Elizabeth always has her way. I was
hungry for a sight of the place, and the more the
old house is in danger, the more I love it. I’m here
for a week, and that ends it. The place doesn’t
seem to have suffered any. They haven’t even
quartered troops here.”
“Not since the American officers stayed here in
the fall o’ ’76,” put in old Mr. Valentine, from the
settle. “I reckon you’ll be safe enough here, Miss
Elizabeth.”
“Of course I shall. Why, our troops patrol all this
part of the country, Lord Cathcart told us at King’s
Bridge, and we have naught to fear from them.”
“No, the British foragers won’t dare treat Philipse
60
Manor-house as they do the homes of some of
their loyal friends,” said Miss Sally, who was no less
proud of her relationship with the Philipses, because
it was by marriage and not by blood. “But the horrible
”Skinners,“ who don’t spare even the farms of
their fellow rebels—”
“Bah!” said Elizabeth. “The scum of the earth!
Williams has weapons here, and with him and the
servants I’ll defend the place against all the rebel
cut-throats in the county.”
The major thought to make a last desperate
attempt to dissuade Elizabeth from remaining.
“That’s all well enough,” said he; “but there are
the rebel regulars, the dragoons. They’ll be raiding
down to our very lines, one of these days, if only in
retaliation. You know how Lord Cornwallis’s party
under General Grey, over in Jersey, the other night,
killed a lot of Baylor’s cavalry,—Mrs. Washington’s
Light Horse, they called the troop. And the Hessians
made a great foray on the rebel families this
side the river.”
“Ay,” chirped old Valentine; “but the American
Colonel Butler, and their Major Lee, of Virginia, fell
on the Hessian yagers ’tween Dobbs’s Ferry and
Tarrytown, and killed ever so many of ’em,—and I
wasn’t sorry for that, neither!”
“Oho!” said Colden, “you belong to the opposition.”
61
“Oh, I’m neither here nor there,” replied the old
man. “But they say that there Major Lee, of Virginia,
is the gallantest soldier in Washington’s army.
He’d lead his men against the powers of Satan if
Washington gave the word. Light Horse Harry,
they call him,—and a fine dashing troop o’ light
horse he commands.”
“No more dashing, I’ll wager, than some of ours,”
said Elizabeth, whose mood for the moment permitted
her to talk with reason and moderation;
“not even counting the Germans. And as for leaders,
what do you say to Simcoe, of the Queen’s
Rangers, or Emmerick, or Tarleton, or”—turning
to Colden—“your cousin James De Lancey, of this
county, major?”
The major, notwithstanding his Toryism, did not
enter with enthusiasm into Elizabeth’s admiration
for these brave young cavalry leaders. Staten Island
and East New Jersey had not offered him as great
opportunities for distinction as they had had. It
was, therefore, Miss Sally who next spoke.
“Well, Heaven knows there are enough on either
side to devastate the land and rob us of comfort and
peace. One wakes in the middle of the night, at the
clatter of horses riding by like the wind, and wonders
whether it’s friend or foe, and trembles till
they’re out of hearing, for fear the door is to be broken
in or the house fired. And the sound of shots
62
in the night, and the distant glare of flames when
some poor farmer’s home is burned over his head!”
“Ay,” added Mr. Valentine, “and all the cattle
and crops go to the foragers, so it’s no use raising
any more than you can hide away for your own
larder.”
Elizabeth was beginning to be bored, and saw
nothing to gain from a continuation of these recitals.
Doubtless, by this time, her room was lighted and
warm. So, thoughtless of Colden, she mounted the
first step of the stairway, and said:
“I have no doubt Williams has contrived to hide
away enough provisions for our use. So I sha’n’t
suffer from hunger, and as for Lee’s Light Horse,
I defy them and all other rebels. Come, aunt
Sally!”
She had ascended as far as to the fourth step of
the stairway, and Miss Sally was about to follow, when
there was heard, above the wind’s moaning, another
sound of galloping horses. Like the previous similar
sound, it came from the north.
Elizabeth stopped and stood on the fourth step.
Miss Sally raised her finger to bid silence. Colden’s
attitude became one of anxious attention, while he
dropped his hat on the settle and drew his cloak close
about him, so that it concealed his uniform, sword,
and pistol. The galloping continued.
When time came for it to turn off eastward, as it
63
would do should the riders take the road to Mile
Square, it did not so. Instead, as the sound unmistakably
indicated, it came on down the post-road.
“Hessians, perhaps!” Miss Sally whispered.
“Or De Lancey’s Cowboys,” said Valentine, but
not in a whisper.
Elizabeth cast a sharp look at the old man, as if to
show disapproval of his use of the Whigs’ nickname
for De Lancey’s troop. But the octogenarian did
not quail.
“They’re riding towards the manor-house,” he
added, a moment later.
“Let us hope they’re friends,” said Colden, in a
tone low and slightly unsteady.
Elizabeth disdained to whisper.
“Maybe it is Lee’s Light Horse,” she said, in her
usual voice, but ironically, addressing Valentine. “In
that case we should tremble for our lives, I suppose.”
“Whoever they are, they’ve stopped before the
house!” said Miss Sally, in quite a tremble.
There was a noise of horses pawing and snorting
outside, of directions being given rapidly, and of two
or three horses leaving the main band for another
part of the grounds. Then was heard a quick, firm
step on the porch floor, and in the same instant a
sharp, loud knock on the door.
No one in the hall moved; all looked at Elizabeth.
“A very valiant knock!” said she, with more
64
irony. “It certainly must be Lee’s Light Horse.
Will you please open the door, Colden?”
“What?” ejaculated Colden.
“Certainly,” said Elizabeth, turning on the stairway,
so as to face the door; “to show we’re not
afraid.”
Jack Colden looked at her a moment demurringly,
then went to the door, undid the fastenings, and
threw it open, keeping his cloak close about him
and immediately stepping back into the shadow.
A handsome young officer strode in, as if ’twere
a mighty gust of wind that sent him. He wore a
uniform of blue with red facings,—a uniform that
had seen service,—was booted and spurred, without
greatcoat or cloak. A large pistol was in his belt,
and his left hand rested on the hilt of a sword. He
swept past Colden, not seeing him; came to a stop
in the centre of the hall, and looked rapidly around
from face to face.
“Your servant, ladies and gentlemen!” he said,
with a swift bow and a flourish of his dragoon’s hat.
His eye rested on Elizabeth.
“Who are you?” she demanded, coldly and imperiously,
from the fourth step.
“I’m Captain Peyton, of Lee’s Light Horse,”
said he.
65
CHAPTER IV. — THE CONTINENTAL DRAGOON.
The Peytons of Virginia were descended from a
younger son of the Peytons of Pelham, England, of
which family was Sir Edward Peyton, of Pelham,
knight and baronet. Sir Edward’s relative, the first
American Peyton, settled in Westmoreland County.
Within one generation the family had spread to Stafford
County, and within another to Loudoun County
also. Thus it befell that there was a Mr. Craven
Peyton, of Loudoun County, justice of the peace,
vestryman, and chief warden of Shelburne Parish.
He was the father of nine sons and two daughters.
One of the sons was Harry.
This Harry grew up longing to be a soldier. Military
glory was his ambition, as it had been Washington’s;
but not as a mere provincial would he be
satisfied to excel. He would have a place as a regular
officer, in an army of the first importance, on the
fields of Europe. Before the Revolution, Americans
were, like all colonials, very loyal to their English
King. Therefore would Harry Peyton be content
with naught less than a King’s commission in the
King’s army.
66
His father, glad to be guided in choosing a future
for one of so many sons, sent Harry to London in
1770, to see something of life, and so managed matters,
through his English relations, that the boy was
in 1772, at the age of nineteen, the possessor, by
purchase, of an ensign’s commission. He was soon
sent to do garrison duty in Ireland, being enrolled
with the Sixty-third Regiment of Foot.
He had lived gaily enough during his two years
in London, occupying lodgings, being patronized by
his relations, seeing enough of society, card-tables,
drums, routs, plays, prize-fights, and other diversions.
He had made visits in the country and showed what
he had learned in Virginia about cock-fighting, fox-hunting
and shooting, and had taken lessons from
London fencing-masters. A young gentleman from
Virginia, if well off and “well connected,” could have
a fine time in London in those days; and Harry
Peyton had it.
But he could never forget that he was a colonial.
If he were treated by his English associates as an
equal, or even at times with a particular consideration,
there was always a kind of implication that he
was an exception among colonials. Other colonial
youths were similarly treated, and some of these
were glad to be held as exceptions, and even joined
in the derision of the colonials who were not. For
these Harry Peyton had a mighty disgust and detestation.
67
He did not enjoy receiving as Harry Peyton
a tolerance and kindness that would have been denied
him as merely an American. And he sometimes
could not avoid seeing that, even as Harry Peyton, he
was regarded as compensating, by certain attractive
qualities in the nature of amiability and sincerity, for
occasional exhibitions of what the English rated as
social impropriety and bad taste. Often, at the
English lofty derision of colonials, at the English
air of self-evident superiority, the English pretence
of politely concealed shock or pain or offence at
some infringement of a purely superficial conduct-code
of their own arbitrary fabrication, he ground
his teeth in silence; for in one respect, he had as
good manners as the English had then, or have
now,—when in Rome he did not resent or deride
what the Romans did. He began to think that the
lot of a self-respecting American among the English,
even if he were himself made an exception of and
well dealt with, was not the most enviable one. And,
after he joined the army, he thought this more and
more every day. But he would show them what a
colonial could rise to! Yet that would prove nothing
for his countrymen, as he would always, on his
meritorious side, be deemed an exception.
His military ambition, however, predominated, and
he had no thought of leaving the King’s service.
The disagreement between the King and the
68
American Colonies grew, from “a cloud no bigger
than a man’s hand,” to something larger. But
Harry heard little of it, and that entirely from the
English point of view. He received but three or
four letters a year from his own people, and the
time had not come for his own people to write much
more than bare facts. They were chary of opinions.
Harry supposed that the new discontent in the Colonies,
after the repeal of the Stamp Act and the
withdrawal of the two regiments from Boston Town
to Castle William, was but that of the perpetually
restless, the habitual fomenters, the notoriety-seeking
agitators, the mob, whose circumstances could
not be made worse and might be improved by disturbances.
Now the Americans, from being a subject
of no interest to English people, a subject
discussed only when some rare circumstance brought
it up, became more talked of. Sometimes, when
Americans were blamed for opposing taxes to support
soldiery used for their own protection, Harry
said that the Americans could protect themselves;
that the English, in wresting Canada from the
French, had sought rather English prestige and
dominion than security for the colonials; that the
flourishing of the Colonies was despite English
neglect, not because of English fostering; that if
the English had solicitude for America, it was for
America as a market for their own trade. Thereupon
69
his fellow officers would either laugh him out,
as if he were too ignorant to be argued with, or
freeze him out, as if he had committed some grave
outrage on decorum. And Harry would rage inwardly,
comparing his own ignorance and indecorousness
with the knowledge and courtesy exemplified in the
assertion of Doctor Johnson, when that great but
narrow Englishman said, in 1769, of Americans,
“Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to
be thankful for anything we allow them short of
hanging.”
There came to Harry, now and then, scraps of
vague talk of uneasiness in Boston Town, whose port
the British Parliament had closed, to punish the
Yankees for riotously destroying tea on which there
was a tax; of the concentration there of British
troops from Halifax, Quebec, New York, the Jerseys,
and other North American posts. But there was
not, in Harry’s little world of Irish garrison life, the
slightest expectation of actual rebellion or even of a
momentous local tumult in the American Colonies.
Imagine, therefore, his feelings when, one morning
late in March in 1775, he was told that, within
a month’s time, the Sixty-third, and other regiments,
would embark at Cork for either Boston or New
York!
There could not be a new French or Spanish
invasion. As for the Indians, never again would
70
British regulars be sent against them. Was it,
then, Harry’s own countrymen that his regiment
was going to fight?
His comrades inferred the cause of his long face,
and laughed. He would have no more fighting to
do in America against the Americans than he had
to do in Ireland against the Irish, or than an
English officer in an English barrack town had to
do against the English. The reinforcements were
being sent only to overawe the lawless element.
The mere sight of these reinforcements would obviate
any occasion for their use. The regiment would
merely do garrison duty in America instead of in
Ireland or elsewhere.
He had none to advise or enlighten him. What
was there for him to do but sail with his regiment,
awaiting disclosures or occurrences to guide? What
misgivings he had, he kept to himself, though once
on the voyage, as he looked from the rocking transport
towards the west, he confided to Lieutenant
Dalrymple his opinion that ’twas damned bad luck
sent his regiment to America, of all places.
When he landed in Boston, June 12th, he found,
as he had expected, that the town was full of soldiers,
encamped on the common and quartered
elsewhere; but also, as he had not expected, that
the troops were virtually confined to the town,
which was fortified at the Neck; that the last
71
time they had marched into the country, through
Lexington to Concord, they had marched back
again at a much faster gait, and left many score
dead and wounded on the way; and that a host
of New Englanders in arms were surrounding Boston!
The news of April 19th had not reached Europe
until after Harry had sailed, nor had it met
his regiment on the ocean. When he heard it now,
he could only become more grave and uneasy. But
the British officers were scornful of their clodhopper
besiegers. In due time this rabble should be
scattered like chaff. But was it a mere rabble?
Certainly. Were not the best people in Boston
loyal to the King’s government? Some of them,
yes. But, as Harry went around with open eyes
and ears, eager for information, he found that many
of them were with the “rabble.” News was easy
to be had. The citizens were allowed to pass the
barrier on the Neck, if they did not carry arms or
ammunition, and there was no strict discipline in
the camp of New Englanders. Therefore Harry
soon learned how Doctor Warren stood, and the
Adamses, and Mr. John Hancock; and that a Congress,
representing all the Colonies, was now sitting
at Philadelphia, for the second time; and that in
the Congress his own Virginia was served by such
gentlemen as Mr. Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Patrick
Henry, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, and Colonel Washington.
72
And the Virginians had shown as ready
and firm a mind for revolt against the King’s
measures as the New Englanders had. Here, for
once, the sympathies of trading Puritan and fox-hunting
Virginian were one. Moreover, a Yankee
was a fellow American, and, after five years of
contact with English self-esteem, Harry warmed at
the sight of a New Englander as he never would
have done before he had left Virginia.
But it did not conduce to peace of mind, in his
case, to be convinced that the colonial remonstrance
was neither local nor of the rabble. The more
general and respectable it was, the more embarrassing
was his own situation. Would it really
come to war? With ill-concealed anxiety, he sought
the opinion of this person and that.
On the fourth day after his arrival, he went into
a tavern in King Street with Lieutenant Massay, of
the Thirty-fifth, Ensign Charleton, of the Fifth, and
another young officer, and, while they were drinking,
heard a loyalist tell what one Parker, leader
of the Lexington rebels, said to his men on Lexington
Common, on the morning of April 19th, when
the King’s troops came in sight.
“‘Stand your ground,’ says he. ‘Don’t fire till
you’re fired on, but if they mean to have a war, let
it begin here!’”
“And it began there!” said Harry.
73
The English officers stared at him, and laughed.
“Ay, ’twas the Yankee idea of war,” said one
of them. “Run for a stone wall, and, when the
enemy’s back is turned, blaze away. I’d like to
see a million of the clodhoppers compelled to stand
up and face a line of grenadiers.”
“Ay, gimme ten companies of grenadiers,” cried
one, who had doubtless heard of General Gage’s
celebrated boast, “and I’ll go from one end of the
damned country to the other, and drive ’em to their
holes like foxes. Only ’tis better sport chasing
handsome foxes in England than ill-dressed poltroons
in Bumpkin-land.”
“They’re not all poltroons,” said Harry, repressing
his feelings the more easily through long
practice. “Some of them fought in the French
war. There’s Putnam, and Pomeroy, and Ward.
I heard Lieutenant-Colonel Abercrombie, of the
Twenty-second, say yesterday that Putnam—”
“Cowards every one of ’em,” broke in another.
“Cowards and louts. A lady told me t’other day
there ain’t in all America a man whose coat sets in
close at the back, except he’s of the loyal party.
Cowards and louts!”
“Look here, damn you!” cried Peyton. “I want
you to know I’m American born, and my people are
American, and I don’t know whether they are of the
loyal party or not!”
74
“Oh, now, that’s the worst of you Americans,—always
will get personal! Of course, there are exceptions.”
“Then there are exceptions enough to make a
rule themselves,” said Harry. “I’m tired hearing
you call these people cowards before you’ve had a
chance to see what they are. And you needn’t wait
for that, for I can tell you now they’re not!”
“Well, well, perhaps not,—to you. Doubtless
they’re very dreadful,—to you. You don’t seem to
relish facing ’em, that’s a fact! You’ll be resigning
your commission one o’ these days, I dare say, if it
comes to blows with these terrible heroes!”
Harry saw everybody in the room looking at him
with a grin.
“By the Lord,” said he, “maybe I shall!” and
stalked hotly out of the place.
His wrath increased as he walked. He noticed
now, more than before, the confident, arrogant air
of the redcoats who promenaded the streets; how
they leered at the women, and made the citizens
who passed turn out of the way. Forthwith, he
went to his quarters, and wrote his resignation.
When the ink was dry he folded up the document
and put it in the pocket of his uniform coat. Then
that last tavern speech recurred to him. “If I resign
now,” he thought, “they’ll suppose it’s because
I really am afraid of fighting, not because the rebels
75
are my countrymen.” So he lapsed into a state of
indecision,—a state resembling apathy, a half-dazed
condition, a semi-somnolent waiting for events. But
he kept his letter of resignation in his coat.
At dawn the next morning, Saturday, June 17th,
he was awakened by the booming of guns. He was
soon up and out. It was a beautiful day. People
were on the eminences and roofs, looking northward,
across the mouth of the Charles, towards Charlestown
and the hill beyond. On that hill were seen rough
earthworks, six feet high, which had not been there
the day before. The booming guns were those of
the British man-of-war Lively, firing from the river
at the new earthworks. Hence the earthworks
were the doing of the rebels, having been raised
during the night. Presently the Lively ceased its
fire, but soon there was more booming, this time not
only from the men-of-war, but also from the battery
on Copp’s Hill in Boston. After awhile Harry saw,
from where he stood with many others on Beacon
Hill, some of the rebels emerge from one part of the
earthworks, as if to go away. One of these was
knocked over by a cannon-ball. His comrades
dragged his body behind the earthen wall. By and
by a tall, strong-looking man appeared on top of the
parapet, and walked leisurely along, apparently giving
directions. Harry heard from a citizen, who had
a field-glass, the words, “Prescott, of Pepperell.”
76
Other men were now visible on the parapet, superintending
the workers behind. And now the booming
of the guns was answered by disrespectful cheers
from those same unseen workers.
The morning grew hot. Harry heard that General
Gage had called a council of war at the Province
House; that Generals Howe, Clinton, Burgoyne,[3]—these
three having arrived in Boston about three
weeks before Harry had,—Pigott, Grant, and the
rest were now there in consultation. At length
there was the half-expected tumult of drum and
bugle; and Harry was summoned to obey, with
his comrades, the order to parade. There was now
much noise of officers galloping about, dragoons
riding from their quarters, and rattling of gun-carriages.
The booming from the batteries and vessels
increased.
At half-past eleven Harry found himself—for he
was scarcely master of his acts that morning, his will
having taken refuge in a kind of dormancy—on
parade with two companies of his regiment, and he
noticed in a dim way that other companies near were
from other different regiments, all being supplied
with ammunition, blankets, and provisions. When
the sun was directly overhead and at its hottest, the
order to march was given, and soon he was bearing
the colors through the streets of Boston. The roar
of the cannon now became deafening. Harry knew
77
not whether the rebels were returning it from their
hill works across the water or not. In time the
troops reached the wharf. Barges were in waiting,
and field-pieces were being moved into some of them.
He could see now that all the firing was from the
King’s vessels and batteries. Mechanically he followed
Lieutenant Dalrymple into a barge, which soon
filled up with troops. The other barges were speedily
brilliant with scarlet coats and glistening bayonets.
Not far away the river was covered with smoke,
through which flashed the fire of the belching artillery.
A blue flag was waved from General Howe’s
barge, and the fleet moved across the river towards
the hill where the rebels waited silently behind their
piles of earth.
At one o’clock, Harry followed Lieutenant Dalrymple
out of the barge to the northern shore of the
river, at a point northeast of Charlestown village and
east of the Yankees’ hill. There was no molestation
from the rebels. The firing from the vessels and batteries
protected the hillside and shore. The troops
were promptly formed in three lines. Harry’s place
was in the left of the front line. Then there was long
waiting. The barges went back to the Boston side.
Was General Howe, who had command of the movements,
sending for more troops? Many of the soldiers
ate of their stock of provisions. Harry, in a
kind of dream, looked westward up the hill towards
78
the silent Yankee redoubt. It faced south, west,
and east. The line of its eastern side was continued
northward by a breastwork, and still beyond
this, down the northern hillside to another river,
ran a straggling rail fence, which was thatched
with fresh-cut hay. What were the men doing behind
those defences? What were they saying and
thinking?
The barges came back across the Charles from
Boston, with more troops, but these were disembarked
some distance southwest, nearer Charlestown.
General Howe now made a short speech to the troops
first landed. Then some flank guards were sent out
and some cannon wheeled forward. The companies of
the front line, with one of which was Harry, were
now ordered to form into files and move straight
ahead. They were to constitute the right wing of
the attacking force, and to be led by General Howe
himself. The four regiments composing the two rear
lines moved forward and leftward, to form, with the
troops newly landed, the left wing, which was to be
under General Pigott. The cannonading from the
river and from Boston continued.
The companies with which was Harry advanced
slowly, having to pass through high grass, over stone
fences, under a roasting sun. These companies were
moving towards the hay-thatched rail fence that straggled
down the hillside from the breastwork north of
79
the redoubt. Harry had a vague sense that the left
wing was ascending the southeastern side of the hill,
towards the redoubt, at the same time. His eye
caught the view at either side. Long files of scarlet
coats, steel bayonets, grenadiers’ tall caps. He looked
ahead. The stretch of green, grassy hillside, the
hay-covered rail fence looking like a hedge-row, the
rude breastwork, the blue sky. Suddenly there came
from the rail fence the belching of field-pieces. Two
grenadiers fell at the right of Harry. One moaned,
the other was silent. Harry, shocked into a sense
that war was begun between his King and his
people, instantly resolved to strike no blow that
day against his people. But this was no time for
leaving the ranks. Mechanically he marched on.
Heads appeared over the fence-rail, guns were
rested on it, and there came from it some irregular
flashes of musketry. Then Harry saw a man moving
his head and arms, as if shouting and gesticulating.
The musket flashes ceased. Harry did not know it
then, but the man was Putnam, and he was commanding
the Yankees to reserve their fire. The
British files were now ordered to deploy into line,
and fire. They did so as they advanced, firing
in machine-like unison, as if on parade, but aiming
high. Nearer and nearer, as Harry went forward,
rose the fence ahead and the breastwork on the hill
towards the left. Why did not the Yankees fire?
80
Were they, indeed, paralyzed with fear at sight of the
lines of the King’s grenadiers?
All at once blazed forth the answer,—such a
volley of musketry, at close range, as British grenadiers
had not faced before. Down went officers and
men, in twos and threes and rows. Great gaps were
cut in the scarlet lines. The broken columns returned
the volley, but there came another. Harry
found himself in the midst of quivering, writhing,
yelling death. The British who were left,—startled,
amazed,—turned and fled. As mechanically
as he had come up, did Harry go back in the
common movement. General Howe showed astonishment.
The left wing, too, had been hurled back,
down the hill, by death-dealing volleys. The rabble
had held their rude works against the King’s choice
troops. Never had as many officers been killed or
wounded in a single charge. There had not been
such mowing down at Fontenoy or Montmorenci.
These unmilitary Yankees actually aimed when they
fired, each at some particular mark! Harry had
heard them cheering, and had thought they were
about to pursue the King’s troops; they had evidently
been ordered back.
The troops re-formed by the shore. Orders came
for another assault. Back again went Harry with
the right wing, bearing the colors as before. He
had secretly an exquisite heart-quickening elation
81
at the success of his countrymen. If they should
win the day, and hold this hill, and drive the King’s
troops from Boston! He knew, at last, on which
side his heart was.
There was more play of artillery during this
second charge. Harry could see, too, that the village
of Charlestown was on fire, sending flames,
sparks, and smoke far towards the sky. It was
not as easy to go to the charge this time, there
were so many dead bodies in the way. But the
soldiers stepped over them, and maintained the
straightness of their lines. Again it seemed as if
the rebels would never fire. Again, when the
King’s troops were but a few rods from them,
came that flaming, low-aimed discharge. But the
troops marched on, in the face of it, till the very
officers who urged them forward fell before it; then
they wavered, turned, and ran. Harry’s joy, as he
went with them, increased, and his hopes mounted.
The left wing, too, had been thrown back a second
time.
There was a long wait, and the generals were seen
consulting. At last a third charge was ordered.
This time the greater part of the right wing was
led up the hill against the breastwork. With this
part was Harry. One more volley from the rebel defences
met the King’s troops. They wavered slightly,
then sprang forward, ready for another. But another
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came not. The rebels’ ammunition was giving out.
Harry’s heart fell. The British forced the breastwork,
carrying him along. He found himself at the
northern end of the redoubt. Some privates lifted
him to the parapet; he and a sergeant mounted at
the same time, and leaped together into the redoubt.
They saw Lieutenant Richardson, of the Royal Irish
Regiment, appear on the southern parapet, give a
shout of triumph, and fall dead from a Yankee
musket-ball. A whole rank that followed him
was served likewise, but others surged over the
parapet in their places. The rebels were defending
mainly the southern parapet. Many were retreating
by the rear passageway. Harry saw that
the King’s troops had won the redoubt. He took his
resolution. He threw the colors to the sergeant,
pulled off his coat, handed it to the same sergeant,
shouting into the man’s ear, “Give it to
the colonel, with the letter in the pocket;” picked
up a dead man’s musket, and ran to the aid of a
tall, powerful rebel who was parrying with a sword
the bayonets of three British privates. The tramp
of the retreating rebels, invading British, and hand-to-hand
fighters raised a blinding dust. Harry and
the tall American, gaining a breathing moment,
strode together with long steps, guarding their
flank and rear, to the passageway and out of it;
and then fought their course between two divisions
of British, which had turned the outer corners
of the redoubt. There was no firing here, so closely
mingled were British and rebels, the former too
exhausted to use forcibly their bayonets. So Harry
retreated, beside the tall man, with the rebels. A
British cheer behind him told the result of the day;
but Harry cared little. His mind was at ease; he
was on the right side at last.
“‘GIVE IT TO THE COLONEL.’”
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Thus did young Mr. Peyton serve on both sides in
the same battle, being with each in the time of its
defeat, striking no blow against his country, yet
deserting not the King’s army till the moment of
its victory. His act was indeed desertion, desertion
to the enemy, and in time of action; for, though
his resignation was written, it was not only unaccepted,
but even undelivered. Thus did he render
himself liable, under the laws of war, to an ignominious
death should he ever fall into the hands of the
King’s troops.
During the flight to Cambridge, Harry was separated
from the tall man with whom he had come
from the redoubt, but soon saw him again, this time
directing the retreat, and learned that he was Colonel
Prescott, of Pepperell. Some of the rebels discussed
Harry freely in his own hearing, inferring from his
attire that he was of the British, and wondering why
he was not a prisoner. Harry asked to be taken to
the commander, and at Cambridge a coatless, bare-headed
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captain led him to General Ward, of the Massachusetts
force. That veteran militiaman heard
his story, gave it credit, and, with no thought that
he might be a spy, invited him to remain at the
camp as a volunteer. Harry obtained a suit of blue
clothes, and quartered in one of the Harvard College
buildings. In a few days news came that the Congress
at Philadelphia had resolved to organize a
Continental army, of which the New England force
at Cambridge was to be the present nucleus; that a
general-in-chief would soon arrive to take command,
and that the general-in-chief appointed was a Virginian,—Colonel
Washington. Harry was jubilant.
Early in July the new general arrived, and Harry
paid his respects to him in the house of the college
president. General Washington advised the boy to
send another letter of resignation, then to go home
and join the troops that his own State would soon be
raising. On hearing Harry’s story, Washington had
given a momentary smile and a look at Major-General
Charles Lee, who had but recently published his
resignation of his half-pay as a retired British officer,
and who did not know yet whether that resignation
would be accepted or himself considered a deserter.
Peyton sent a new letter of resignation to Boston,
then procured a horse, and started to ride to Virginia.
Six days later he was in New York. In a
coffee-house where he was dining, he struck up an
85
acquaintance with three young gentlemen of the
city, and told his name and story. One of the three—a
dark-eyed man—thereupon changed manner
and said he had no time for a rascally turncoat.
Harry, in hot resentment, replied that he would
teach a damned Tory some manners. So the four
went out of the town to Nicholas Bayard’s woods,
where, after a few passes with rapiers, the dark-eyed
gentleman was disarmed, and admitted, with no
good grace, that Harry was the better fencer. Harry
left New York that afternoon, having learned that
his antagonist was Mr. John Colden, son of the postmaster
of New York. His grandfather had been
lieutenant-governor.
Harry had for some time thought he would prefer
the cavalry, and he was determined, if possible, to
gratify that preference in entering the military service
of his own country. On arriving home he
found his people strongly sympathizing with the
revolt. But it was not until June, 1776, that Virginia
raised a troop of horse. On the 18th of that
month Harry was commissioned a cornet thereof.
After some service he found himself, March 31,
1777, cornet in the First Continental Dragoons.
The next fall, in a skirmish after the battle of
Brandywine, he was recognized by British officers as
the former ensign of the Sixty-third. In the following
spring, thanks to his activity during the British
86
occupation of Philadelphia, he was made captain-lieutenant
in Harry Lee’s battalion of light dragoons.
After the battle of Monmouth he was promoted,
July 2, 1778, to the rank of captain. In the early
fall of that year he was busy in partisan warfare
between the lines of the two armies.
And thus it came that he was pursuing a troop
of Hessians down the New York and Albany post-road
on a certain cold November evening. Eager
on the chase, he was resolved to come up with them
if it could be, though he should have to ride within
gunshot of King’s Bridge itself. Suddenly his horse
gave out. He had the saddle taken from the dead
animal and given to one of his men to bear while he
himself mounted in front of a sergeant, for he was
loath to spare a man. Approaching Philipse Manor-house,
the party saw a boy leading horses into a
stable. Captain Peyton ordered some of his men to
patrol the road, and with the rest he went on to the
manor-house lawn.
Here he gave further directions, dismounted,
knocked at the door, and was admitted to the hall
where were Miss Elizabeth Philipse, Major Colden,
Miss Sally Williams, and old Matthias Valentine;
and, on Elizabeth’s demand, announced his name and
rank.
87
CHAPTER V. — THE BLACK HORSE.
Thanks to the dimness, to his uniform, and to his
swift entrance, Peyton had not been recognized by
Major Colden until he had given his name. That
name had on the major the effect of an apparition,
and he stepped back into the dark corner of the hall,
drawing his cloak yet closer about him. This alarm
and movement were not noticed by the others, as
Peyton was the object of every gaze but his own,
which was fixed on Elizabeth.
“What do you want?” her voice rang out, while
she frowned from her place on the staircase, in cold
resentment. Her aunt, meanwhile, made the newcomer
a tremulous curtsey.
“I want to see the person in charge of this house,
and I want a horse,” replied Peyton, with more
promptitude than gentleness, yet with strict civility.
Elizabeth’s manner would have nettled even a colder
man.
Elizabeth did not keep him waiting for an answer.
“I am at present mistress of this house, and I am
neither selling horses nor giving them!”
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Peyton stared up at her in wonderment.
The candle-flame struggled against the wind, turning
this way and that, and made the vague shadows
of the people and of the slender balusters dance on
floor and wall. From without came the sound of
Peyton’s horses pawing, and of his men speaking
to one another in low tones.
“Your pardon, madam,” said Peyton, “but a horse
I must have. The service I am on permits no delay—”
“I doubt not!” broke in Elizabeth. “The Hessians
are probably chasing you.”
“On the contrary, I am chasing the Hessians.
At Boar Hill, yonder, my horse gave out. ’Tis important
my troops lose no time. Passing here, we
saw horses being led into your stable. I ordered
one of my men to take the best of your beasts,
and put my saddle on it,—and he is now doing
so.”
“How dare you, sir!” and Elizabeth came quickly
to the foot of the stairs, a picture of regal, flaming
wrath.
“Why, madam,” said Peyton, “’tis for the service
of the army. I require the horse, and I have come
here to pay for it—”
“It is not for sale—”
“That makes no difference. You know the custom
of war.”
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“The custom of robbery!” cried Elizabeth.
Captain Peyton reddened.
“Robbery is not the custom of Harry Lee’s dragoons,
madam,” said he, “whatever be the practice
of the wretched ‘Skinners’ or of De Lancey’s Tory
Cowboys. I shall pay you as you choose,—with a
receipt to present at the quartermaster’s office, or
with Continental bills.”
“Continental rubbish!”
And, indeed, Elizabeth was not far from the
truth in the appellation so contemptuously hurled.
“You prefer that, do you?” said Peyton, unruffled;
whereupon he took from within his waistcoat
a long, thick pocketbook, and from that a number
of bills; which must have been for high amounts,
for he rapidly counted out only a score or two of
them, repocketing the rest, and at that time, thereabouts,
“a rat in shape of a horse,” as Washington
himself had complained a month before, was “not to
be bought for less than £200.”[4] Peyton handed her
the bills he had counted out. “There’s a fair price,
then,” said he; “allowing for depreciation. The
current rate is five to one,—I allow six.”
Elizabeth looked disdainfully at the proffered bills,
and made no move to take them.
“Pah!” she cried. “I wouldn’t touch your
wretched Continental trash. I wouldn’t let one
of my black women put her hair up in it. Money,
90
do you call it? I wouldn’t give a shilling of the
King for a houseful of it.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Peyton, cheerfully.
“Since July in ’76 there has been no king in
America. I leave the bills, madam.” He laid them
on the newel post, beside the candlestick. “’Tis all
I can do, and more than many a man would do, seeing
that Colonel Philipse, the owner of this place, is
no friend to the American cause, and may fairly be
levied on as an enemy—”
“Colonel Philipse is my father!”
“Then I’m glad I’ve been punctilious in the matter,”
said Peyton, but without any increase of deference.
“Egad, I think I’ve been as scrupulous as the
commander-in-chief himself!”
“The commander-in-chief!” echoed Elizabeth.
“Sir Henry Clinton pays in gold.”
“I meant our commander-in-chief,” with a suavity
most irritating.
“Mr. Washington!” said Elizabeth, scornfully,
with a slight emphasis on the “Mr.”
“His Excellency, General Washington.” Peyton
spoke as one would in gently correcting a child who
was impolite. Then he added, “I think the horse
is now ready; so I bid you good evening!”
And he strode towards the door.
Elizabeth was now fully awake to the certainty
that one of the horses would indeed be taken. At
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Peyton’s movement she ran to the door, reaching it
before he did, and looked out. What she saw, transformed
her into a very fury.
“Oh, this outrage!” she cried, facing about and
addressing those in the hall. “It is my Cato they
are leading out! My Cato! Under my very eyes!
I forbid it! He shall not go! Where are Cuff and
the servants? Why don’t they prevent? And you,
Jack?”
She turned to Colden for the first time since Peyton’s
arrival.
“My troop would make short work of any who
interfered, madam,” said Peyton, warningly, still
looking at Elizabeth only.
“Oh, that I should have to endure this!” she
said. “Oh, if I had but a company of soldiers at
my back, you dog of a rebel!”
And she paced the hall in a great passion. Passing
the newel post, she noticed the Continental bills.
She took these up, violently tore them across, and
threw the pieces about the hall, as one tosses corn
about a chicken-yard.
Major Colden had been having a most uncomfortable
five minutes. As a Tory officer, he was in close
peril of being made prisoner by this Continental captain
and the latter’s troop outside, and this peril was
none the less since he had so adversely criticised
Peyton in the talk which had led to the duel in
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Bayard’s woods. He had not put himself on
friendly terms with Peyton after that affair. There
was still no reason for any other feeling towards him,
on Peyton’s part, than resentment. Now Jack Colden
had no relish for imprisonment at the hands of
the despised rebels. Moreover, he had no wish that
Elizabeth should learn of his former defeat by Peyton.
He had kept the meeting in Bayard’s woods a
secret, thanks to Peyton’s having quitted New York
immediately after it, and to the relation of dependence
in which the two only witnesses stood to him.
Thus it was that he had remained well out of view
during Elizabeth’s sharp interview with Peyton, being
unwilling alike to be known as a Tory officer, and to
be recognized by Peyton. His civilian’s cloak hid
his uniform and weapons; the dimness of the candle-light
screened his face.
But matters had reached a point where he could
not, without appearing a coward, refrain longer from
taking a hand. He stepped forward from the dark
remoteness.
“Sir,” said he to Peyton, politely, “I know the
custom of war. But since a horse must be taken,
you will find one of mine in the stable. Will you
not take it instead of this lady’s?”
Peyton had been scrutinizing Colden’s features.
“Mr. Colden, if I remember,” he said, when the
major had finished.
93
“You remember right,” said Colden, with a bow,
concealing behind a not too well assumed quietude
what inward tremors the situation caused him.
“And you are doubtless now an officer in some
Tory corps?” said Peyton, quickly.
“No, sir, I am neutral,” replied Colden, rather
huskily, with an instant’s glance of warning at Elizabeth.
“Gad!” said Peyton, with a smile, still closely
surveying the major. “From your sentiments the
time I met you in New York in ’75, I should have
thought you’d take up arms for the King.”
“That was before the Declaration of Independence,”
said Colden, in a tone scarcely more than
audible. “I have modified my opinions.”
“They were strong enough then,” Peyton went
on. “You remember how you upheld them with a
rapier in Bayard’s woods?”
“I remember,” said Colden, faintly, first reddening,
then taking on a pale and sickly look, as if a prey to
hidden chagrin and rage.
It seemed as if his tormentor intended to torture
him interminably. Peyton, who knew that one of
his men would come for him as soon as the horse
should be saddled and bridled, remained facing the
unhappy major, wearing that frank half-smile which,
from the triumphant to the crestfallen, seems so
insolent and is so maddening.
94
“I’ve often thought,” said Peyton, “I deserved
small credit for getting the better of you that day.
I had taken lessons from London fencing-masters.”
(Consider that the woman whom Colden loved was
looking on, and that this was all news to her, and
imagine how he raged beneath the outer calmness he
had, for safety’s sake, to wear.) “’Twas no hard
thing to disarm you, and I’m not sorry you’re neutral
now. For if you wore British or Tory uniform,
’twould be my duty to put you again at disadvantage,
by taking you prisoner.”
The face of one of Peyton’s men now appeared in
the doorway. Peyton nodded to him, then continued
to address the major.
“As for your request, my traps are now on the
other horse, and there is not time to change. I
must ride at once.”
He stepped quickly to the door, and on the
threshold turned to bow.
Then cried Elizabeth:
“May you ride to your destruction, for your
impudence, you bandit!”
“Thank you, madam! I shall ride where I
must! Farewell! My horse is waiting.”
And in an instant he was gone, having closed the
door after him with a bang.
“His horse! The highwayman!” quoth Elizabeth.
95
“Give the gentleman his due,” said Miss Sally, in
a way both mollified and mollifying. “He paid for
it with those.” She indicated the strewn fragments
of the Continental bills on the floor.
“Forward! Get up!”
It was the voice of Captain Peyton outside. The
horses were heard riding away from the lawn.
Elizabeth opened the door and looked out. Her
aunt accompanied her. Old Valentine gazed with a
sagely deploring expression at the torn-up bills on
the floor. Colden stood where he had been, lest by
some chance the enemy might return and discover
his relief from straint.
“Oh,” cried Elizabeth, at the door, as the light
horsemen filed out the gate and up the branch road
towards the highway, “to see the miserable rebel
mounted on my Cato!”
“He looks well on him,” said her aunt.
It was a brief flow of light from the fresh-risen
moon, between wind-driven clouds, that enabled Miss
Sally to make this observation.
“Looks well! The tatterdemalion!” And Elizabeth
came from the door, as if loathing further sight
of him.
But Miss Sally continued to look after the riders,
as their dark forms were borne rapidly towards
the post-road. “Nay, I think he is quite handsome.”
96
“Pah! You think every man is handsome!” said
the niece, curtly.
Miss Sally turned from the door, quite shocked.
“Why, Elizabeth, you know I’m the least susceptible
of women!”
Old Mr. Valentine nodded sadly, as much as to
say, “I know that, all too well!”
As the racing clouds now rushed over the moon,
and the horsemen’s figures, having become more and
more blurred, were lost in the blackness, Miss Sally
closed and bolted the door. The horses were faintly
heard coming to a halt, at about the junction of the
branch road with the highway, then moving on again
rapidly, not further towards the south, as might have
been expected, but back northward, and finally towards
the east. Meanwhile Elizabeth stood in the hall,
her rage none the less that its object was no longer
present to have it wreaked on him. Such hate, such
passionate craving for revenge, had never theretofore
been awakened in her. And when she realized the
unlikelihood of any opportunity for satisfaction, she
was exasperated to the limit of self-control.
“If you had only had some troops here!” she
said to Colden.
“I know it! May the rascal perish for finding me
at such a disadvantage! ’Twas my choice between
denying my colors and becoming his prisoner.”
This brought back to Elizabeth’s mind the talk
97
between Colden and Peyton, which her feelings had
for the time driven from her thoughts. But now a
natural curiosity asserted itself.
“So you knew the fellow before?”
“I met him in ’75,” said Colden, blurting awkwardly
into the explanation that he knew had to
be made, though little was his stomach for it. “He
was passing through New York from Boston to
his home in Virginia, after he had deserted from
the King’s army—”
“Deserted?” Elizabeth opened wide her eyes.
Colden briefly outlined, as far as was desirable,
what he knew of Peyton’s story.
It was Miss Sally who then said:
“And he disarmed you in a duel?”
“He had practised under London fencing-masters,
as he but now admitted,” replied Colden, grumpily.
“He made no secret of his desertion; and in a coffee-house
discussion I said it was a dastardly act.
So we—fought. Since then I’ve met officers of
the regiment he left. Such a thing was never
known before,—the desertion of an officer of the
Sixty-third,—and General Grant, its colonel, has
the word of Sir Henry Clinton that this fellow shall
hang if they ever catch him.”
“Then I hope my horse will carry him into their
hands!” said Elizabeth, heartily. “My poor Cato!
I shall never see him again!”
98
“We may get him back some day,” said Colden,
for want of aught better to say.
“If you can do that, John Colden, and have this
rebel hanged who dared treat me so—” Elizabeth
paused, and her look dwelt on the major’s face.
“Well?”
“Then I think I shall almost be really in love
with you!”
But Colden sighed. “A rare promise from one’s
betrothed!”
“Heavens, Jack!” said Elizabeth, now diverted
from the thought of her horse. “Don’t I do the
best I can to love you? I’m sure I come as near
loving you as loving anybody. What more can I do
than that, and promising my hand? Don’t look dismal,
major, I pray,—and now make haste back to
New York.”
“How can I go and leave you exposed to the
chance of another visit from some troop of rebels?”
pleaded Colden, in a kind of peevish despair, taking
up his hat from the settle.
“Oh, that fellow showed no disposition to injure
me!” she answered, reassuringly. “Trust me to
take care of myself.”
“But promise that if there’s any sign of danger,
you will fly to New York.”
“That will depend on the circumstances. I may
be safer in this house than on the road.”
99
“Then, at least, you will have guns fired, and also
send a man to one of our outposts for help?” There
was no pretence in the young man’s solicitude.
Such a bride as Elizabeth Philipse was not to be
found every day. The thought of losing her was
poignant misery to him.
“To which one?” she asked. “The Hessian
camp by Tippett’s Brook, or the Highlanders’, at
Valentine’s Hill?”
“No,” said Colden, meditating. “Those may be
withdrawn if the weather is bad. Send to the barrier
at King’s Bridge,—but if your man meets one
of our patrols or pickets on the way, so much the
better. Good-by! I shall see your father to-night,
and then rejoin my regiment on Staten Island.”
He took her hand, bent over it, and kissed it.
“Be careful you don’t fall in with those rebel
dragoons,” said Elizabeth, lightly, as his lips dwelt
on her fingers.
“No danger of that,” put in old Valentine, from
the settle, for the moment ceasing to chew an imaginary
cud. “They took the road to Mile Square.”
The octogenarian’s hearing was better than his sight.
“I shall notify our officers below that this rebel
force is out,” said Colden, “and our dragoons may
cut it off somewhere. Farewell, then! I shall return
for you in a week.”
“In a week,” repeated Elizabeth, indifferently.
100
He kissed her hand again, bowed to Miss Sally,
and hastened from the hall, closing the door behind
him. Once outside, he made his way to the stables,
where he knew that Cuff, not having returned to
Elizabeth, must still be.
“It’s little reward you give that gentleman’s
devotion, Elizabeth,” said Miss Sally, when he had
gone.
“Why, am I not going to give him myself? Come,
aunty, don’t preach on that old topic. My parents
wish me to be married to Jack Colden, and I
have consented, being an obedient child,—in some
things.”
“More obedient to your own whims than to anything
else,” was Miss Sally’s comment.
The sound of Colden’s horse departing brought
to the amiable aunt the thought of a previous departure.
“That fine young rebel captain!” said she. “If
our troops take him they’ll hang him! Gracious!
As if there were so many handsome young men that
any could be spared! Why can’t they hang the old
and ugly ones instead?”
Mr. Valentine suspended his chewing long enough
to bestow on Miss Sally a look of vague suspicion.
The door, which had not been locked or bolted
after Colden’s going, was suddenly flung open to
admit Cuff. The negro boy had been thrown by
101
the dragoons’ visit into an almost comatose condition
of fright, from which the orders of Colden had
but now sufficiently restored him to enable his venturing
out of the stable. He now stood trembling
in fear of Elizabeth’s reproof, stammering out a wild
protestation of his inability to save the horse by
force, and of his inefficacious attempts to save him
by prayer.
Elizabeth cut him short with the remark, intended
rather for her own satisfaction than for aught else,
that one thing was to be hoped,—the chance of
war might pay back the impertinent rebel who had
stolen the horse. She then gave orders that the
hall and the east parlor be lighted up.
“For the proper reception,” she added to her
aunt, “of the next handsome rebel captain who may
condescend to honor us with a visit. Mr. Valentine,
wait in the parlor till supper is ready. I’ll have a
fire made there. Come, aunt Sally, we’ll discuss
over a cup of tea the charms of your pretty rebel
captain and his agreeable way of relieving ladies of
their favorite horses. I’ll warrant he’ll look handsomer
than ever, on the gallows, when our soldiers
catch him.”
And she went blithely up the stairs, which at the
first landing turned rightward to a second landing,
and thence rightward again to the upper hall. The
darkness was interrupted by a narrow stream of light
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from a slightly open doorway in the north side of
this upper hall. This was the doorway to her own
room, and when she crossed the threshold she saw
a bright blaze in the fireplace, lights in a candelabrum,
cups and saucers on a table, and Molly bringing
in a steaming teapot from the next room, which,
being northward, was nearer the kitchen stairs.
This next room, too, was lighted up. Solid wooden
shutters, inside the windows of both chambers, kept
the light from being seen without, and the wind from
being felt within.
As Elizabeth was looking around her room, smiling
affectionately on its many well-remembered and
long-neglected objects, there was a sudden distant
detonation. Molly looked up inquiringly, but Elizabeth
directed her to place the tea things, find fresh
candles, if any were left in the house, and help Cuff
put them on the chandelier in the lower hall, and
then get supper. As Molly left the room, Miss
Sally entered it.
“Elizabeth! Oh, child! There’s firing beyond
Locust Hill. It’s on the Mile Square road, Mr.
Valentine says,—cavalry pistols and rangers’ muskets.”
“Mr. Valentine has a fine ear.”
“He says the rebel light horse must have met the
Hessians! There ’tis again!”
“Sit down, aunt, and have a dish of tea. Ah-h!
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This is comfortable! Delicious! Let them kill one
another as they please, beyond Locust Hill; let the
wind race up the Hudson and the Albany road as
it likes,—we’re snugly housed!”
Williams, who had, from the upper hall, safely
overheard Captain Peyton’s intrusion, and had not
seen occasion for his own interference, now came
in from the next room, which he had been making
ready for Miss Sally, and received Elizabeth’s orders
concerning the east parlor.
Meanwhile, what of Harry Peyton and his troop?
Riding up the little tree-lined road towards the
highway, they saw dark forms of other riders
standing at the point of junction. These were the
men whom Peyton had directed to patrol the road.
They now told him that, by the account of a belated
farmer whom they had halted, the Hessians had
turned from the highway into the Mile Square road.
Peyton immediately led his men to that road. Thus,
as old Valentine said, that part of the highway between
the manor-house and King’s Bridge remained
clear of these rebel dragoons, and Major Colden
stood in no danger of meeting them on his return to
New York. The major, nevertheless, did not spare
his horse as he pursued his lonely way through the
windy darkness. When he arrived at King’s Bridge
he was glad to give his horse another rest, and to
accept an invitation to a bottle and a game in the
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tavern where the British commanding officer was
quartered.
The Hessians had not gone far on the Mile Square
road, when their leader called a halt and consulted
with his subordinate officer. They were now near
Mile Square, where the Tory captain, James De
Lancey, kept a recruiting station all the year round,
and Valentine’s Hill, where there was a regiment of
Highlanders. Their own security was thus assured,
but they might do more than come off in safety,—they
might strike a parting blow at their pursuers.
A plan was quickly formed. A messenger was
despatched to Mile Square to request a small reinforcement.
The troop then turned back towards the highway,
having planned for either one of two possibilities.
The first was that the rebel dragoons, not thinking
the Hessians had turned into the Mile Square road,
would ride on down the highway. In that case, the
Hessians would follow them, having become in their
turn the pursuers, and would fall upon their rear.
The noise of firearms would alarm the Hessian camp
by Tippett’s Brook, below, and the rebels would thus
be caught between two forces. The second possibility
was that the Americans would follow into the
Mile Square road. When the sound of their horses
soon told that this was the reality, the Hessians
promptly prepared to meet it.
The force divided into two parts. The foremost
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blocked the road, near a turning, so as to remain
unseen by the approaching rebels until almost the
moment of collision. The second force stayed some
rods behind the first, forming in two lines, one along
each side of the road. As to each force, some were
armed with sabres and cavalry pistols, but most,
being mounted yagers of Van Wrumb’s battalion,
with rifles.
As for the little detachment of Lee’s Light Horse
that was now galloping along the Mile Square road,
under Harry Peyton’s command, the arms were
mainly broadswords and pistols, but some of the men
had rifles or light muskets.
The troop went forward at a gallop against the
wind, there being just sufficient light for keen eyes
to make out the road ahead. Harry Peyton was
inwardly deploring the loss of time at Philipse Manor-house,
and fearing that the prey would reach its
covert, when suddenly the moon appeared in a cloud-rift,
the troops passed a turn in the road, and there
stood a line of Hessians barring the way.
Ere Peyton could give an order, came one loud,
flaming, whistling discharge from that living barrier.
Harry’s horse—Elizabeth Philipse’s Cato—reared,
as did others of his troop. Some of the men came
to a quick stop, others were borne forward by the
impetus of their former speed, but soon reined in for
orders. No man fell, though one groaned, and two
cursed.
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Harry got his horse under control, drew his broadsword
with his right hand, his pistol with his left,—which
held also the rein,—and ordered his men to
charge, to fire at the moment of contact, then to cut,
slash, and club. So the little troop, the well and the
wounded alike, dashed forward.
But the line of Hessians, as soon as they had fired,
turned and fled, passing between the two lines of the
second force, and stopping at some further distance
to reform and reload. The second force, being thus
cleared by the first, wheeled quickly into the road,
and formed a second barrier against Peyton’s oncoming
troop.
Peyton’s men, intoxicated by the powder-smell that
filled their nostrils as they passed through the smoke
of the Hessians’ first volley, bore down on this second
barrier with furious force. They were the best
riders in the world, and many a one of them held his
broadsword aloft in one hand, his pistol raised in
the other, the rein loose on his horse’s neck; while
those with long-barrelled weapons aimed them on the
gallop.
The Hessians and Peyton’s foremost men fired at
the same moment. The Hessians had not time to
turn and flee, for the Americans, unchecked by this
second greeting of fire, came on at headlong speed.
“At ’em, boys!” yelled Peyton, discharging his pistol
at a tall yager, who fell sidewise from his horse
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with a fierce German oath. The light horse men
dashed between the Hessians’ steeds, and there was
hewing and hacking.
A Hessian officer struck with a sabre at Peyton’s
left arm, but only knocked the pistol from his hand.
Peyton then found himself threatened on the right
by a trooper, and slashed at him with broadsword.
The blow went home, but the sword’s end became
entangled somehow with the breast bones of the victim.
A yager, thinking to deprive Peyton of the
sword, brought down a musket-butt heavily on it.
But Peyton’s grip was firm, and the sword snapped
in two, the hilt in his hand, the point in its human
sheath. At that instant Peyton felt a keen smart in
his left leg. It came from a second sabre blow
aimed by the Hessian officer, who might have followed
it with a third, but that he was now attacked
elsewhere. Peyton had no sooner clapped his hand
to his wounded leg than he was stunned by a blow
from the rifle-butt of the yager who had previously
struck the sword. Harry fell forward on the horse’s
neck, which he grasped madly with both arms, still
holding the broken sword in his right hand; and
lapsed from a full sense of the tumult, the plunging
and shrieking horses, the yelling and cursing men,
the whirr and clash of swords, and the thuds of
rifle-blows, into blind, red, aching, smarting half-consciousness.
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When he was again aware of things, he was still
clasping the horse’s neck, and was being borne alone
he knew not whither. His head ached, and his left
leg was at every movement a seat of the sharpest
pain. He was dizzy, faint, bleeding,—and too
weak to raise himself from his position. He could
not hear any noise of fighting, but that might have
been drowned by the singing in his ears. He tried
to sit up and look around, but the effort so increased
his pain and so drew on his nigh-fled strength, that
he fell forward on the horse’s neck, exhausted and
half-insensible. The horse, which had merely turned
and run from the conflict at the moment of Peyton’s
loss of sense, galloped on.
Clouds had darkened the moon in time to prevent
their captain’s unintentional defection from being
seen by his troops. They had, therefore, fought
on against such antagonists as, in the darkness, they
could keep located. The moon reappeared, and
showed many of the Hessians making for the wooded
hill near by, and some fleeing to the force that had
re-formed further on the road. Some of the Americans
charged this force, which thereupon fired a volley
and fled, having the more time therefor inasmuch
as the charging dragoons did not this time possess
their former speed and impetus. The dragoons, in
disorder and without a leader, came to a halt. Becoming
aware of Peyton’s absence, they sought in
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vain the scene of recent conflict. It was soon inferred
that he had been wounded, and, therefore of
no further use in the combat, had retreated to a safe
resting-place. It was decided useless to follow the
enemy further towards the near British posts, whence
the Hessians might be reinforced,—as they would
have been, had they held the ground longer. So,
having had much the better of the fight, the surviving
dragoons galloped back towards the post-road,
expecting to come upon their captain, wounded, by
the wayside, at any moment. He might, indeed, to
make sure of safe refuge, ride as far towards the
American lines as the wound he must have received
would allow him to do.
Such were the doings, on the windy night, beyond
Locust Hill, while Elizabeth Philipse and her aunt
sat drinking tea by candle-light before a sputtering
wood fire. Elizabeth having set the example, the
others in the house went about their business, despite
the firing so plainly heard. Black Sam had,
after Elizabeth’s arrival, returned from the orchard,
whither he had gone late in the day, lest he might
attract the attention of some dodging whale-boat or
skulking Whig to the few remaining apples. He
had been let in at a rear door by Williams, who had
repressed him during the visit of the American
dragoons,—for Sam was a sturdy, bold fellow, of
different kidney from the dapper, citified Cuff. At
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Williams’s order he had made a roaring fire in the
east parlor, to the great comfort of old Mr. Valentine,
and was now putting the dining-room into a
similar state of warmth and light. Williams was
setting out provisions for Molly presently to cook;
and the maid herself was, with Cuff’s assistance, replenishing
the hall chandelier with fresh candles.
The sound of firing had put Elizabeth’s black boy
into a tremulous and white-eyed state. When Molly,
who stood on the settle while he handed the candles
up to her, assured him that the firing was t’other
side of Locust Hill, that the bullets would not penetrate
the mahogany door, and that anyhow only one
bullet in a hundred ever hit any one, Cuff affrightedly
observed ’twas just that one bullet he was afraid of;
and when, at the third discharge, Molly dropped a
candle on his woolly head, he fell prostrate, howling
that he was shot. Molly convinced him after awhile
that he was alive, but he averred he had actually had
a glimpse of the harps and the golden streets, though
the prospect of soon possessing them had rather
appalled him, as indeed it does many good people
who are so sure of heaven and so fond of it. He
had been reassured but a short time, when he had
new cause for terror. Again a horse was heard
galloping up to the house. It stopped before the
door and gave a loud whinny.
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“LEANED FORWARD ON THE HORSE’S NECK.”
Molly exchanged with Cuff a look of mingled wonder,
delight, and doubt; then ran and opened the
front door.
“Yes!” she cried. “It is! It’s Miss Elizabeth’s
horse! It’s Cato!”
Cuff ran to the threshold in great joy, but suddenly
stopped short.
“Dey’s a soldier on hees back,” he whispered.
So Molly had noticed,—but a soldier who made
no demonstration, a soldier who leaned forward on
the horse’s neck and clutched its mane, holding at the
same time in one hand a broken sword, and who
tried to sit up, but only emitted a groan of pain.
“He’s wounded, that’s it,” said Molly. “Go and
help the poor soldier in, Cuff. Don’t you see he’s
injured? He can’t hurt you.”
Molly enforced her commands with such physical
persuasions that Cuff, ere he well knew what he was
about, was helping Peyton from the horse. The
captain, revived by a supreme effort, leaned on the
boy’s shoulder and came limping and lurching across
the porch into the hall. Molly then went to his
assistance, and with this additional aid he reached
the settle, on which he dropped, weak, pale, and
panting. He took a sitting posture, gasped his
thanks to Molly, and, noticing the blood from his leg
wound, called damnation on the Hessian officer’s
sword. Presently he asked for a drink of water.
At Molly’s bidding the negro boy hastened for
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water, and also to inform his mistress of the arrival.
Elizabeth, hearing the news, rose with an exclamation;
but, taking thought, sat down again, and, with
a pretence of composure, finished her cup of tea.
Cuff returned with a glass of water to the hall,
where Molly was listening to Peyton’s objurgations
on his condition. The captain took the glass eagerly,
and was about to drink, when a footstep was
heard on the stairs. He turned his head and saw
Elizabeth.
“Here’s my respects, madam,” quoth he, and
drank off the water.
Elizabeth came down-stairs and took a position
where she could look Peyton well over. He watched
her with some wonderment. When she was quite
ready she spoke:
“So, it is, indeed, the man who stole my horse.”
“Pardon. I think your horse has stolen me! It
made me an intruder here quite against my will, I
assure you.”
“You will doubtless not honor us by remaining?”
There was more seriousness of curiosity in this question
than Elizabeth betrayed or Peyton perceived.
“What can I do? I can neither ride nor walk.”
“But your men will probably come for you?”
“I don’t think any saw the horse bear me from
the fight. The field was in smoke and darkness.
My troops must have pursued the enemy. They’ll
113
think me killed or made prisoner. If they return
this way, however, I can have them stop and take
me along.”
“Then you expect that, in repayment of your
treatment of me awhile ago—” Elizabeth paused.
“Madam, you should allow for the exigencies of
war! Yet, if you wish to turn me out—”
Elizabeth interrupted him:
“So it is true that, if you fell into the hands of
the British, they would hang you?”
“Doubtless! But you shouldn’t blame me for
what they’d do. And how did you know?”
“Help this gentleman into the east parlor,” said
Elizabeth, abruptly, to Cuff.
“Ah!” cried Peyton, his face lighting up with
quick gratitude. “Madam, you then make me your
guest?” He thrust forward his head, forgetful of
his condition.
“My guest?” rang out Elizabeth’s voice in answer.
“You insolent rebel, I intend to hand you
over to the British!”
There was a brief silence. Each gazed at the other.
“You will not—do that?” said Peyton, in a voice
little above a whisper.
“Wait and see!” And she stood regarding him
with elation.
He stared at her in blank consternation.
Again, the sound of the trample of many horses.
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“Ah!” cried Peyton, joyfully. “My men returning!”
He rose to go to the door, but his wounded leg
gave way, and he staggered to the staircase, and
leaned against the balustrade.
Elizabeth’s look of gratification faded. She ran
to the door, fastened it with bolt and key, and stood
with her back against it.
The sound, first distant as if in the Mile Square
road, was now manifestly in the highway. Would it
come southward, towards the house, or go northward,
decreasing?
“They are my men!” cried Peyton to Cuff.
“Call them! They’ll pass without knowing I am
here. Call them, I say! Quick! They’ll be out of
hearing.”
“Silence!” said Elizabeth to Cuff, in a low tone,
and stood listening.
Peyton made another attempt to move, but realized
his inability. ’Twas all he could do to support
himself against the balustrade.
“My God, they’ve gone by!” he cried. “They’ll
return to our lines, leaving me behind.” And he
shouted, “Carrington!”
The voice rang for a moment in the remoteness of
the hall above. Then complete silence within. All
in the hall remained motionless, listening. The
sound of the horses came fainter and fainter.
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“Carrington! Help! I’m in the manor-house,—a
prisoner!”
A look of despair came over his face. On Elizabeth’s
the suspense gave way to a smile of triumph.
The sound of the horses died away.
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CHAPTER VI. — THE ONE CHANCE.
Peyton staggered back to the settle and sank
down on it, exhausted. Elizabeth, hearing black
Sam moving about in the dining-room, which was
directly north of the hall, bade Molly summon him.
When he appeared, she ordered him and Cuff to
carry the settle, with the wounded man on it, into
the east parlor, and to place the man on the sofa
there. She then told Molly to hasten the supper,
and to send Williams to her up-stairs, and thereupon
rejoined her excited aunt above. When Williams
attended her, she gave him commands regarding the
prisoner.
Peyton was thus carried through the deep doorway
in the south side of the hall into the east parlor,
which was now exceedingly habitable with fire
roaring and candles lighted. In the east and south
sides of this richly ornamented room were deeply
embrasured windows, with low seats. In the west
side was a mahogany door opening from the old or
south hall. In the north side, which was adorned
with wooden pillars and other carved woodwork, was
117
the door through which Peyton had been carried;
west of that, the decorated chimney-breast with its
English mantel and fireplace, and further west a
pair of doors opening from a closet, whence a winding
staircase descended cellarward. The ceiling was
rich with fanciful arabesque woodwork. Set in the
chimney-breast, over the mantel, was an oblong mirror.
The wainscoting, pillars, and other woodwork
were of a creamy white. But Peyton had no eye for
details at the moment. He noticed only that his
entrance disturbed the slumbers of the old gentleman—Matthias
Valentine—who had been sleeping
in a great armchair by the fire, and who now blinked
in wonderment.
The negroes put down the settle and lifted Peyton
to a sofa that stood against the western side of the
room, between a spinet and the northern wall. At
Peyton’s pantomimic request they then moved the sofa
to a place near the fire, and then, taking the settle
along, marched out of the room, back to the hall,
closing the door as they went.
Peyton, too pain-racked and exhausted to speak,
lay back on the sofa, with closed eyes. Old Valentine
stared at him a few moments; then, curious both
as to this unexpected advent and as to the proximity
of supper, rose and hobbled from the parlor and
across the hall to the dining-room. For some time
Peyton was left alone. He opened his eyes, studied
118
the flying figures on the ceiling, the portraits on the
walls, the carpet,—Philipse Manor-house, like the
best English houses of the time, had carpet on its
floors,—the carving of the mantel, the clock and
candelabrum thereupon, the crossed rapiers thereabove,
the curves of the imported furniture. His
twinges and aches were so many and so diverse that
he made no attempt to locate them separately. He
could feel that the left leg of his breeches was
soaked with blood.
Finally the door opened, and in came Williams
and Cuff, the former with shears and bands of linen,
the latter with a basin of water. Williams, whom
Peyton had not before seen, scrutinized him critically,
and forthwith proceeded to expose, examine,
wash, and bind up the wounded leg, while Cuff stood
by and played the rôle of surgeon’s assistant. Peyton
speedily perceived on the steward’s part a reliable
acquaintance with the art of dressing cuts, and therefore
submitted without a word to his operations.
Williams was equally silent, breaking his reticence
only now and then to utter some monosyllabic command
to Cuff.
When the wound was dressed, Williams put the
patient’s disturbed attire to rights, and adjusted his
hair. Peyton, with a feeling of some relief, made to
stretch the wounded leg, but a sharp twinge cut the
movement short.
119
“You should make a good surgeon,” Peyton said
at last, “you tie so damnably tight a bandage.”
“I’ve bound up many a wound, sir,” said Williams;
“and some far worse than yours. ’Tis not a dangerous
cut, yours, though ’twill be irritating while it
lasts. You won’t walk for a day or two.”
“It’s remarkable your mistress has so much
trouble taken with me, when she intends to deliver
me to the British.”
Peyton had inferred the steward’s place in the
house, from his appearance and manner.
“Why, sir,” said Williams, “we couldn’t have you
bleeding over the floor and furniture. Besides, I
suppose she wants to hand you over in good condition.”
“I see! No bedraggled remnant of a man, but a
complete, clean, and comfortable candidate for Cunningham’s
gallows!” Peyton here forgot his wound
and attempted to sit upright, but quickly fell back
with a grimace and a groan.
“Better lie still, sir,” counselled Williams, sagely.
“If you need any one, you are to call Cuff. He will
be in waiting in that hall, sir.” And the steward
pointed towards the east hall. “There will be no use
trying to get away. I doubt if you could walk half
across the room without fainting. And if you could
get out of the house, you’d find black Sam on guard,
with his duck-gun,—and Sam doesn’t miss once in
120
a hundred times with that duck-gun. Bring those
things, Cuff.” Williams indicated Peyton’s hat,
remnant of sword, and scabbard, which had been
placed on the armchair by the fireside.
“Leave my sword!” commanded Peyton.
“Can’t, sir!” said Williams, affably. “Miss Elizabeth’s
orders were to take it away.”
Williams thereupon went from the room, crossed
the east hall, and entered the dining-room, to report
to Elizabeth, who now sat at supper with Miss Sally
and Mr. Valentine.
Cuff, with basin of water in one hand, took up the
hat, sword, and scabbard, with the other.
“Miss Elizabeth!” mused Peyton. “Queen Elizabeth,
I should say, in this house. Gad, to be a girl’s
prisoner, tied down to a sofa by so small a cut!”
Hereupon he addressed Cuff, who was about to
depart: “Where is your mistress?”
“In the dining-room, eating supper.”
“And Mr. Colden, whom I saw in that hall about
an hour ago, when I bought the horse?”
“Major Colden rode back to New York.”
“Major Colden! Major of what?”
“New Juzzey Vollingteers, sir.”
“What? Then he is in the King’s service, after
all? And when I was here with my troops he said
he was neutral. I’ll never take a Tory’s word
again.”
121
“Am you like to hab de chance, sir?” queried
Cuff, with a grin.
“What! You taunt me with my situation?” And
Harry’s head shot up from the sofa as he made to
rise and chastise the boy; but he could not stand
on his leg, and so remained sitting, propped on his
right arm, panting and glaring at the negro.
Cuff, whose whiteness of teeth had shown in his
moment of mirth, now displayed much whiteness of
eye in his alarm at Peyton’s movement, and glided to
the door. As he went out to the hall, he passed
Molly, who was coming into the parlor with a bowl
of broth.
“Hah!” ejaculated Peyton as she came towards
him. “They would feed the animal for the slaughter,
eh?”
Molly curtseyed.
“Please, sir, it wa’n’t they sent this. I brought it
of my own accord, sir, though with Miss Elizabeth’s
permission.”
“Oh! so Miss Elizabeth did give her permission,
then?”
“Yes, sir. At least, she said it didn’t matter, if I
wished to.”
“And you did wish to? Well, you’re a good girl,
and I thank you.”
Whereupon Peyton took the bowl and sipped of
the broth with relish.
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“Thank you, sir,” said Molly, who then moved a
small light chair from its place by the wall to a spot
beside the sofa and within Peyton’s reach. “You
can set the bowl on this,” she added. “I must go
back to the kitchen.” And, after another curtsey,
she was gone.
The broth revived Peyton, and with all his pain
and fatigue he had some sense of comfort. The
handsome, well warmed, well lighted parlor, so
richly furnished, so well protected from the wind
and weather by the solid shutters outside its four
small-paned windows, was certainly a snug corner
of the world. So far seemed all this from stress
and war, that Peyton lost his strong realization of the
fate that Elizabeth’s threat promised him. Appreciation
of his surroundings drove away other thoughts
and feelings. That he should be taken and hanged
was an idea so remote from his present situation, it
seemed rather like a dream than an imminent reality.
There surely would be a way of his getting hence in
safety. And he imbibed mouthful after mouthful of
the warm broth.
Presently old Mr. Valentine reappeared, from the
east hall, looking none the less comfortable for the
supper he had eaten. A long pipe was in his hand,
and, that he might absorb smoke and liquor at the
same time, he had brought with him from the table,
where the two ladies remained, a vast mug of hot
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rum punch of Williams’s brewing. He now set the
mug on the mantel, lighted his pipe with a brand
from the fire, repossessed himself of the mug, and
sat down in the armchair, with a sigh of huge satisfaction.
It mattered not that this was the parlor of
Philipse Manor-house,—for Mr. Valentine, in his
innocent way, indulged himself freely in the privileges
and presumptions of old age.
Peyton, after staring for some time with curiosity
at the smoky old gentleman, who rapidly grew smokier,
at last raised the bowl of broth for a last gulp,
saying, cheerily:
“To your very good health, sir!”
“Thank you, sir!” said the old man, complacently,
not making any movement to reciprocate.
“What! won’t you drink to mine?”
“’Twould be a waste of words to drink the health
of a man that’s going to be hanged,” replied Valentine,
who at supper had heard the ladies discuss
Peyton’s intended fate. He thereupon sent a cloud
of smoke ceiling-ward for the flying cherubs to rest on.
“The devil! You are economical!”
“Of words, maybe, not of liquor.” The octogenarian
quaffed deeply from the mug. “They say
hanging is an easy death,” he went on, being in loquacious
mood. “I never saw but one man hanged.
He didn’t seem to enjoy it.” Mr. Valentine puffed
slowly, inwardly dwelling on the recollection.
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“Oh, didn’t he?” said Peyton.
“No, he took it most unpleasant like.”
“Did you come in here to cheer me up in my last
hours?” queried Harry, putting the empty bowl on
the chair by the sofa.
“No,” replied the other, ingenuously. “I came
in for a smoke while the ladies stayed at the table.”
He then went back to a subject that seemed to have
attractions for him. “I don’t know how hanging will
go with you. Cunningham will do the work.[5] They
say he makes it as disagreeable as may be. I’d come
and see you hanged, but it won’t be possible.”
“Then I suppose I shall have to excuse you,” said
Peyton, with resignation.
“Yes.” The old man had finished his punch and
set down his mug, and he now yawned with a completeness
that revealed vastly more of red toothless
mouth than one might have calculated his face could
contain. “Some take it easier than others,” he
went on. “It’s harder with young men like you.”
Again he opened his jaws in a gape as whole-souled
as that of a house-dog before a kitchen fire. “It
must be disagreeable to have a rope tightened around
your neck. I don’t know.” He thrust his pipe-stem
absently between his lips, closed his eyes, mumbled
absently, “I don’t know,” and in a few moments was
asleep, his pipe hanging from his mouth, his hands
folded in his lap.
125
“A cheerful companion for a man in my situation,”
thought Peyton. His mind had been brought
back to the future. When would this resolute and
vengeful Miss Elizabeth fulfil her threat? How
would she proceed about it? Had she already taken
measures towards his conveyance to the British lines?
Should she delay until he should be able to walk,
there would be two words about the matter. Meanwhile,
he must wait for developments. It was useless
to rack his brain with conjectures. His sense
of present comfort gradually resumed sway, and he
placed his head again on the sofa pillow and closed
his eyes.
He was conscious for a time of nothing but his
deadened pain, his inward comfort, the breathing of
old Mr. Valentine, the intermittent raging of the
wind without, and the steady ticking of the clock on
the mantel,—which delicately framed timepiece had
been started within the hour by Sam, who knew
Miss Elizabeth’s will for having all things in running
order. Peyton’s drowsiness wrapped him closer and
closer. Presently he was remotely aware of the
opening of the door, the tread of light feet on the
floor, the swish of skirts. But he had now reached
that lethargic point which involves total indifference
to outer things, and he did not even open his eyes.
“Asleep,” said Elizabeth, for it was she who had
entered with her aunt.
126
Harry recognized the voice, and knew that he was
the subject of her remark; but his feeling towards
his contemptuous captor was not such as to make
him take the trouble of setting her right. Therefore,
he kept his eyes closed, having a kind of satisfaction
in her being mistaken.
“How handsome!” whispered Miss Sally, who
beamed more bigly and benignly after supper than
before.
“Which one, aunty?” said Elizabeth, looking
from Peyton to old Valentine.
Her aunt deigned to this levity only a look of
hopeless reproof.
Elizabeth sat down on the music-seat before the
spinet, and became serious,—or, more accurately,
businesslike.
“On second thought,” said she, “it won’t do to
keep him here waiting for one of our patrols to pass
this way. In the meantime some of the rebels might
come into the neighborhood and stop here. He
must be delivered to the British this very night!”
Peyton gave no outward sign of the momentary
heart stoppage he felt within.
“Why,” said the aunt, speaking low, and in some
alarm, “’twould require Williams and both the blacks
to take him, and we should be left alone in the
house.”
“I sha’n’t send him to the troops,” said Elizabeth,
127
in her usual tone, not caring whether or not the
prisoner should be disturbed,—for in his powerlessness
he could not oppose her plans if he did know
them, and in her disdain she had no consideration
for his feelings. “The troops shall come for him.
Black Sam shall go to the watch-house at King’s
Bridge with word that there’s an important rebel
prisoner held here, to be had for the taking.”
“Will the troops at King’s Bridge heed the story
of a black man?” Aunt Sally seemed desirous of
interposing objections to immediate action.
“Their officer will heed a written message from
me,” said the niece. “Most of the officers know
me, and those at King’s Bridge are aware I came
here to-day.”
Thereupon she called in Cuff, and sent him off
for Williams, with orders that the steward should
bring her pen, ink, paper, and wax.
“Oh, Elizabeth!” cried Miss Sally, looking at the
floor. “Here’s some of the poor fellow’s blood on
the carpet.”
“Never mind. The blood of an enemy is a sight
easily tolerated,” said the girl, probably unaware
how nearly she had duplicated a famous utterance of
a certain King of France, whose remark had borne
reference to another sense than that of sight.[6]
Williams soon came in with the writing materials,
and placed them, at Elizabeth’s direction, on a table
128
that stood between the two eastern windows, and on
which was a lighted candelabrum. Elizabeth sat
down at the table, her back towards the fireplace
and Peyton.
“I wish you to send black Sam to me,” said she
to the steward, “and to take his place on guard with
the gun till he returns from an errand.”
Williams departed, and Elizabeth began to make
the quill fly over the paper, her aunt looking on from
beside the table. Peyton opened his eyes and looked
at them.
“It does seem a pity,” said Miss Sally at last.
“Such a pretty gentleman,—such a gallant soldier!”
“Gentleman?” echoed Elizabeth, writing on.
“The fellow is not a gentleman! Nor a gallant
soldier!”
Peyton rose to a sitting posture as if stung by a
hornet, but was instantly reminded of his wound.
But neither Elizabeth nor her aunt saw or heard his
movement. The girl, unaware that he was awake,
continued:
“Does a gentleman or a gallant soldier desert the
army of his king to join that of his king’s enemies?”
Quick came the answer,—not from aunt Sally,
but from Peyton on the sofa.
“A gallant soldier has the right to choose his
side, and a gentleman need not fight against his
country!”
129
Elizabeth did not suffer herself to appear startled
at this sudden breaking in. Having finished her
note, she quietly folded it, and addressed it, while
she said:
“A gallant soldier, having once chosen his side,
will be loyal to it; and a gentleman never bore the
odious title of deserter.”
“A gentleman can afford to wear any title that is
redeemed by a glorious cause and an extraordinary
danger. When I took service with the King’s army
in England, I never dreamt that army would be sent
against the King’s own colonies; and not till I
arrived in Boston did I know the true character of
this revolt. We thought we were coming over
merely to quell a lawless Boston rabble. I gave
in my resignation—”
“But did not wait for it to be accepted,” interrupted
Elizabeth, quietly, as she applied to the folded
paper the wax softened by the flame of a candle.
“I was a little hasty,” said Harry.
“The rebel army was the proper place for such
fellows,” said Elizabeth. “No true British officer
would be guilty of such a deed!”
“Probably not! It required exceptional courage!”
Peyton knew, as well as any, that the British
were brave enough; but he was in mood for sharp
retort.
“That is not the reason,” said Elizabeth, coldly,
130
refusing to show wrath. “Your enemies hold such
acts as yours in detestation.”
“I am not serving in this war for the approbation
of my enemies.”
At this moment black Sam came in. Elizabeth
handed him the letter, and said:
“You are to take my horse Cato, and ride with
this message to the British barrier at King’s Bridge.
It is for the officer in command there. When the
sentries challenge you, show this, and say it is of the
greatest consequence and must be delivered at once.”
“Yes, Miss Elizabeth.”
“The commander,” she went on, “will probably
send here a body of troops at once, to convey this
prisoner within the lines. You are to return with
them. If no time is lost, and they send mounted
troops, you should be back in an hour.”
Peyton could hardly repress a start.
“An hour at most, miss, if nothing stops,” said
the negro.
“If any officer of my acquaintance is in command,”
said Elizabeth, “there will be no delay. Cuff shall
let the troops in, through that hall, as soon as they
arrive.”
Whereupon the black man, a stalwart and courageous
specimen of his race, went rapidly from the
room.
“One hour!” murmured Peyton, looking at the
clock.
131
Molly, the maid, now reappeared, carrying carefully
in one hand a cup, from which a thin steam ascended.
“What is’t now, Molly?” inquired Elizabeth,
rising from her chair.
Molly blushed and was much confused. “Tea,
ma’am, if you please! I thought, maybe, you’d
allow the gentleman—”
“Very well,” said Elizabeth. “Be the good
Samaritan if you like, child. His tea-drinking days
will soon be over. Come, aunt Sally, we shall be in
better company elsewhere.” And she returned to
the dining-room, not deigning her prisoner another
look.
Miss Sally followed, but her feelings required confiding
in some one, and before she went she whispered
to the embarrassed maid, “Oh, Molly, to think
so sweet a young gentleman should be completely
wasted!”
Molly heaved a sigh, and then approached the
young gentleman himself, with whom she was now
alone, saving the presence of the slumbering Valentine.
“So your name is Molly? And you’ve brought
me tea this time?”
“Yes, sir,—if you please, sir.” She took up the
bowl from the chair and placed the cup in its stead.
“I put sugar in this, sir, but if you’d rather—”
“I’d rather have it just as you’ve made it, Molly,”
132
he said, in a singularly gentle, unsteady tone. He
raised the cup, and sipped. “Delicious, Molly!—Hah!
Your mistress thinks my tea-drinking days
will soon be over.”
“I’m very sorry, sir.”
“So am I.” He held the cup in his left hand,
supporting his upright body with his right arm, and
looked rather at vacancy than at the maid. “Never
to drink tea again,” he said, “or wine or spirits, for
that matter! To close your eyes on this fine world!
Never again to ride after the hounds, or sing, or
laugh, or chuck a pretty girl under the chin!”
And here, having set down the cup, he chucked
Molly herself under the chin, pretending a gaiety he
did not feel.
“Never again,” he went on, “to lead a charge
against the enemies of our liberty; not to live to see
this fight out, the King’s regiments driven from the
land, the States take their place among the free
nations of the world! By God, Molly, I don’t want
to die yet!”
It was not the fear of death, it was the love of
life, and what life might have in reserve, that moved
him; and it now asserted itself in him with a force
tenfold greater than ever before. Death,—or, rather,
the ceasing of life,—as he viewed it now, when he
was like to meet it without company, with prescribed
preliminaries, in an ignominious mode, was a far
133
other thing than as viewed in the exaltation of battle,
when a man chances it hot-headed, uplifted,
thrilled, in gallant comradeship, to his own fate
rendered careless by a sense of his nothingness in
comparison with the whole vast drama. Moreover,
in going blithely to possible death in open fight, one
accomplishes something for his cause; not so, going
unwillingly to certain death on an enemy’s gallows.
It was, too, an exasperating thought that he should die
to gratify the vengeful whim of an insolent Tory girl.
“Will it really come to that?” asked Molly, in a
frightened tone.
“As surely as I fall into British hands!”
Peyton remembered the case of General Charles
Lee, whose resignation of half-pay had not been acknowledged;
who was, when captured by the British,
long in danger of hanging, and who was finally rated
as an ordinary war prisoner only for Washington’s
threat to retaliate on five Hessian field officers. If
a major-general, whose desertion, even if admitted,
was from half-pay only, would have been hanged
without ceremony but for General Howe’s fear of a
“law scrape,” and had been saved from shipment to
England for trial, only by the King’s fear that Washington’s
retaliation would disaffect the Hessian allies,
for what could a mere captain look, who had come
over from the enemy in action, and whose punishment
would entail no official retaliation?
134
“And your mistress expects a troop of British
soldiers here in an hour to take me! Damn it, if I
could only walk!” And he looked rapidly around
the room, in a kind of distraction, as if seeking some
means of escape. Realizing the futility of this, he
sighed dismally, and drank the remainder of the tea.
“You couldn’t get away from the house, sir,” said
Molly. “Williams is watching outside.”
“I’d take a chance if I could only run!” Peyton
muttered. He had no fear that Molly would betray
him. “If there were some hiding-place I might
crawl to! But the troops would search every cranny
about the house.” He turned to Molly suddenly,
seeing, in his desperate state and his lack of time,
but one hope. “I wonder, could Williams be bribed
to spirit me away?”
Molly’s manner underwent a slight chill.
“Oh, no,” said she. “He’d die before he’d disobey
Miss Elizabeth. We all would, sir. I’m very
sorry, indeed, sir.” Whereupon, taking up the
empty bowl and teacup, she hastened from the
room.
Peyton sat listening to the clock-ticks. He moved
his right leg so that the foot rested on the floor, then
tried to move the left one after it, using his hand to
guide it. With great pains and greater pain, he
finally got the left foot beside the right. He then
undertook to stand, but the effort cost him such
135
physical agony as could not be borne for any length
of time. He fell back with a groan to the sofa, convinced
that the wounded leg was not only, for the
time, useless itself, but also an impediment to whatever
service the other leg might have rendered alone.
But he remained sitting up, his right foot on the
floor.
Suddenly there was a raucous sound from old Mr.
Valentine. He had at last begun to snore. But
this infliction brought its own remedy, for when his
jaws opened wider his tobacco pipe fell from his
mouth and struck his folded hands. He awoke with
a start, and blinked wonderingly at Peyton, whose
face, turned towards the old man, still wore the look
of disapproval evoked by the momentary snoring.
“Still here, eh?” piped Mr. Valentine. “I dreamt
you were being hanged to the fireplace, like a pig to
be smoked. I was quite upset over it! Such a fine
young gentleman, and one of Harry Lee’s officers,
too!”
And the old man shook his head deploringly.
“Then why don’t you help me out of this?” demanded
Peyton, whose impulse was for grasping at
straws, for he thought of black Sam urging Cato
through the wind towards King’s Bridge at a
gallop.
“It ain’t possible,” said Valentine, phlegmatically.
“If it were, would you?” asked Harry, a spark of
136
hope igniting from the appearance that the old man
was, at least, not antagonistic to him.
“Why, yes,” began the octogenarian, placidly.
Harry’s heart bounded.
“If,” the old man went on, “I could without
lending aid to the King’s enemies. But you see I
couldn’t. I won’t lend aid to neither side’s enemies.[7]
I don’t want to die afore my time.” And he gazed
complacently at the fire.
Peyton knew the hopeless immovability of selfish
old age.
“God!” he muttered, in despair. “Is there no
one I can turn to?”
“There’s none within hearing would dare go
against the orders of Miss Elizabeth,” said Mr.
Valentine.
“Miss Elizabeth evidently rules with a firm hand,”
said Peyton, bitterly. “Her word—” He stopped
suddenly, as if struck by a new thought. “If I
could but move her! If I could make her change
her mind!”
“You couldn’t. No one ever could, and as for a
rebel soldier—”
“She has a heart of iron, that girl!” broke in
Peyton. “The cruelty of a savage!”
Mr. Valentine took on a sincerely deprecating
look. “Oh, you mustn’t abuse Miss Elizabeth,”
said he. “It ain’t cruelty, it’s only proper pride.
137
And she isn’t hard. She has the kindest heart,—to
those she’s fond of.”
“To those she’s fond of,” repeated Harry, mechanically.
“Yes,” said the old man; “her people, her horses,
her dogs and cats, and even her servants and slaves.”
“Tender creature, who has a heart for a dog and
not for a man!”
The old man’s loyalty to three generations of
Philipses made him a stubborn defender, and he
answered:
“She’d have no less a heart for a man if she
loved him.”
“If she loved him!” echoed Peyton, and began to
think.
“Ay, and a thousand times more heart, loving
him as a woman loves a man.” Mr. Valentine
spoke knowingly, as one acquainted by enviable
experience with the measure of such love.
“As a woman loves a man!” repeated Peyton.
Suddenly he turned to Valentine. “Tell me, does
she love any man so, now?” Peyton did not know
the relation in which Elizabeth and Major Colden
stood to each other.
“I can’t say she loves one,” replied Valentine,
judicially, “though—”
But Peyton had heard enough.
“By heaven, I’ll try it!” he cried. “Such
138
miracles have happened! And I have almost an
hour!”
Old Valentine blinked at him, with stupid lack of
perception. “What is it, sir?”
“I shall try it!” was Peyton’s unenlightening
answer. “There’s one chance. And you can help
me!”
“The devil I can!” replied Valentine, rising
from his chair in some annoyance. “I won’t lend
aid, I tell you!”
“It won’t be ‘lending aid.’ All I beg is that you
ask Miss Elizabeth to see me alone at once,—and
that you’ll forget all I’ve said to you. Don’t stand
staring! For Christ’s sake, go and ask her to come
in! Don’t you know? Only an hour,—less than
that, now!”
“But she mayn’t come here for the asking,”
objected the old man, somewhat dazed by Peyton’s
petulance.
“She must come here!” cried Harry. “Induce
her, beg her, entice her! Tell her I have a last
request to make of my jailer,—no, excite her curiosity;
tell her I have a confession to make, a plot to
disclose,—anything! In heaven’s name, go and
send her here!”
It was easier to comply with so light a request
than to remain recipient of such torrent-like importunity.
“I’ll try, sir,” said the peace-loving old
139
man, “but I have no hope,” and he hobbled from
the room. He left the door open as he went, and
Harry, tortured by impatience, heard him shuffling
over the hall floor to the dining-room.
Peyton’s mind was in a whirl. He glanced at the
clock. These were his thoughts:
“Fifty minutes! To make a woman love me!
A proud woman, vain and wilful, who hates our
cause, who detests me! To make her love me!
How shall I begin? Keep your wits now, Harry,
my son,—’tis for your life! How to begin? Why
doesn’t she come? Damn the clock, how loud it
ticks! I feel each tick. No, ’tis my heart I feel.
My God, will she not come? And the time is
going—”
“Well, sir, what is it?”
He looked from the clock to the doorway, where
stood Elizabeth.
140
CHAPTER VII. — THE FLIGHT OF THE MINUTES.
The silence of her entrance was from her having,
a few minutes earlier, exchanged her riding-boots
for satin slippers.
“I—I thank you for coming, madam,” said
Peyton, feeling the necessity of a prompt reply to
her imperious look of inquiry, yet without a practicable
idea in his head. “I had—that is—a request
to make.”
He was trembling violently, not from fear, but
from that kind of agitation which often precedes the
undertaking of a critical task, as when a suppliant
awaits an important interview, or an actor assumes
for the first time a new part.
“Mr. Valentine said a confession,” said Elizabeth,
holding him in a coldly resentful gaze.
“Why, yes, a confession,” said he, hopelessly.
“A plot to disclose,” she added, with sharp impatience.
“What is it?”
“You shall hear,” he began, in gloomy desperation,
without the faintest knowledge of how he should
141
finish. “I—ah—it is this—” His wandering
glance fell on the table and the writing materials she
had left there. “I wish to write a letter—a last
letter—to a friend.” The vague general outline of
a project arose in his mind.
Elizabeth was inclined to be as laconic as implacable.
“Write it,” said she. “There are pen and
ink.”
“But I can’t write in this position,” said Peyton,
quickly, lest she might leave the room. “I fear I
can’t even hold a pen. Will you not write for
me?”
“I? Secretary to a horse-thieving rebel!”
“It is a last request, madam. A last request is
sacred,—even an enemy’s.”
“I will send in some one to write for you.” And
she turned to go.
“But this letter will contain secrets.”
“Secrets?” The very word is a charm to a woman.
Elizabeth’s curiosity was touched but slightly,
yet sufficiently to stay her steps for the moment.
“Ay,” said Peyton, lowering his tone and speaking
quickly, “secrets not for every ear. Secrets of the
heart, madam,—secrets so delicate that, to convey
them truly, I need the aid of more than common tact
and understanding.”
He watched her eagerly, and tried to repress the
signs of his anxiety.
142
Elizabeth considered for a moment, then went to
the table and sat down by it.
“But,” said she, regarding him with angry suspicion,
“the confession,—the plot?”
“Why, madam,” said he, his heart hammering
forcefully, “do you think I may communicate them
to you directly? The letter shall relate them, too,
and if the person who holds the pen for me pays
heed to the letter’s contents, is it my fault?”
“I understand,” said the woman, entrapped, and
she dipped the quill into the ink.
“The letter,” began Peyton, slowly, hesitating for
ideas, and glancing at the clock, yet not retaining a
sense of where the hands were, “is to Mr. Bryan
Fairfax—”
“What?” she interrupted. “Kinsman to Lord
Fairfax, of Virginia?”
“There’s but one Mr. Bryan Fairfax,” said Peyton,
acquiring confidence from his preliminary expedient
to overcome prejudice, “and, though he’s on the side
of King George in feeling, yet he’s my friend,—a
circumstance that should convince even you I’m not
scum o’ the earth, rebel though you call me. He’s
the friend of Washington, too.”
“Poh! Who is your Washington? My aunt
Mary rejected him, and married his rival in this very
room!”
“And a good thing Washington didn’t marry
143
her!” said Peyton, gallantly. “She’d have tried
to turn him Tory, and the ladies of this family are
not to be resisted.”
“Go on with your letter,” said Elizabeth, chillingly.
“‘Mr. Bryan Fairfax,’” dictated Peyton, steadying
his voice with an effort, “‘Towlston Hall, Fairfax
County, Virginia. My dear Fairfax: If ever these
reach you, ’twill be from out a captivity destined,
probably, to end soon in that which all dread, yet to
which all must come; a captivity, nevertheless,
sweetened by the divinest presence that ever bore
the name of woman—’”
Elizabeth stopped writing, and looked up, with an
astonishment so all-possessing that it left no room
even for indignation.
Peyton, his eyes astray in the preoccupation of
composition, did not notice her look, but, as if moved
by enthusiasm, rose on his right leg and stood, his
hands placed on the back of the light chair by the
sofa, the chair’s front being turned from him. He
went on, with an affectation of repressed rapture:
“‘’Twere worth even death to be for a short hour
the prisoner of so superb—’”
“Sir, what are you saying?” And Elizabeth
dropped the pen, and stood up, regarding him with
freezing resentment.
“My thoughts, madam,” said he, humbly, meeting
her gaze.
144
“How dare you jest with me?” said she.
“Jest? Does a man jest in the face of his own
death?”
“’Twas a jest to bid me write such lies!”
“Lies? ’Fore gad, the mirror yonder will not
call them lies!” He indicated the oblong glass set
in above the mantel. “If there is lying, ’tis my eyes
that lie! ’Tis only what they tell me, that my lips
report.”
Keeping his left foot slightly raised from the floor,
he pushed the chair a little towards her, and himself
followed it, resting his weight partly on its back,
while he hopped with his right foot. But Elizabeth
stayed him with a gesture of much imperiousness.
“What has such rubbish to do with your confession
and your plot?” she demanded.
“Can you not see?” And he now let some
of his real agitation appear, that it might serve as
the lover’s perturbation which it would be well to
display.
“My confession is of the instant yielding of my
heart to the charms of a goddess.”
In those days lovers, real or pretended, still talked
of goddesses, flames, darts, and such.
“Who desired your heart to yield to anything?”
was Miss Elizabeth’s sharply spoken reply.
“Beauty commanded it, madam!” said he, bowing
low over his chair-back.
145
“So, then, there was no plot?” Her eyes flashed
with indignation.
“A plot, yes!” He glanced sidewise at the
clock, and drew self-reliance from the very situation,
which began to intoxicate him. “My plot, to attract
you hither, by that message, that I might console
myself for my fate by the joy of seeing you!”
“The joy of seeing me!” She spoke with incredulity
and contempt.
A glad boldness had come over Peyton. He felt
himself masterful, as one feels who is drunk with
wine; yet, unlike such a one, he had command of
mind and body.
“Ay, joy,” said he, “joy none the less that you
are disdainful! Pride is the attribute of queens,
and tenderness is not the only mood in which a
woman may conquer. Heaven! You can so discomfit
a man with your frowns, what might you do
with your smile!”
He felt now that he could dissimulate to fool the
very devil.
But Elizabeth, though interested as one may be in
an oddity, seemed not otherwise impressed. ’Twas
something, however, that she remained in the room
to answer:
“I do not know what I have done with my frown,
nor what I might do with my smile, but, whatever it
be, you are not like to see!”
146
“That I know,” said Peyton, and added, at a reckless
venture, “and am consoled, when I consider that
no other man has seen!”
“How do you know that?”
“Your smile is not for any common man, and I’ll
wager your heart is as whole as your beauty.”
She looked at him for a moment of silence, then:
“I cannot imagine why you say all this,” quoth
she, in real puzzlement.
“’Tis an easing to the tortured heart to reveal
itself,” he answered, “as one would fain uncover an
inner wound, though there be no hope of cure. I
can go the calmer to my doom for having at least
given outlet in words to the flame kindled in a
moment within me. My doom! Yes, and none so
unwelcome, either, if by it I escape a lifetime of vain
longing!”
“Your talk is incomprehensible, sir. If you are
serious, it must be that your head is turned.”
“My head is turned, doubtless, but by you!”
He was now assuming the low, quick, nervous
utterance that is often associated with intense repressed
feeling; and his words were accompanied by
his best possible counterfeit of the burning, piercing,
distraught gaze of passion. Though he acted a part,
it was not with the cold-blooded art of a mimic who
simulates by rule; it was with the animation due to
imagining himself actually swayed by the feeling he
147
would feign. While he knew his emotion to be fictitious,
he felt it as if it were real, and his consequent
actions were the same as if real it were.
“I’m sure the act was not intentional with me,”
said Elizabeth. “I’d best leave you, lest you grow
worse.” And she moved towards the door.
Peyton had rapid work of it, pushing the chair
before him and hopping after it, so as to intercept
her. In the excitement of the moment, he lost his
mastery of himself.
“But you must not go! Hear me, I beg! Good
God, only a half hour left!”
“A half hour?” repeated Elizabeth, inquiringly.
“I mean,” said Peyton, recovering his wits, “a
half hour till the troops may be here for me,—only
a half hour until I must leave your house forever!
Do not let me be deprived of the sight of you for
those last minutes! Tis so short a time, yet ’tis all
my life!”
“The man is mad, I think!” She spoke as if
to herself.
“Mad!” he echoed. “Yes, some do call it a madness—the
love that’s born of a glance, and lasts till
death!”
“Love!” said she. “’Tis impossible you should
come to love me, in so short a time.”
“’Tis born of a glance, I tell you!” he cried.
“What is it, if not love, that makes me forget my
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coming death, see only you, hear only you, think of
only you? Why do I not spend this time, this last
hour, in pleading for my life, in begging you to hide
me and send the troops away without me when they
come? They would take your word, and you are a
woman, and women are moved by pleading. Why,
then, do I not, in the brief time I have left, beg for
my life? Because my passion blinds me to all else,
because I would use every moment in pouring out
my heart to you, because my feelings must have outlet
in words, because it is more than life or death to
me that you should know I love you!—God, how
fast that clock goes!”
She had stood in wonderment, under the spell of
his vehemence. Now, as he leaned towards her,
over the chair-back, his breath coming rapidly, his
eyes luminous, she seemed for a moment abashed,
softened, subdued. But she put to flight his momentary
hope by starting again for the doorway, with a
low-spoken, “I must go!”
But he thrust his chair in her way.
“Nay, don’t go!” he said. “You may hear my
avowal with propriety. My people are as good as
any in Virginia.”
She stood regarding him with a look of scrutiny.
“You are a rebel against your king,” she said,
but not harshly.
“Is not the King soon to have his revenge?
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And is that a reason why you should leave me
now?”
“You deserted your first colors.”
“’Twas in extraordinary circumstances, and in the
right cause. And is that a reason why you—”
“You took my horse.”
“But paid you for it, and you have your horse
again. Abuse me, madam, but do not go from me.
Call me rebel, deserter, robber, what you will, but
remain with me. Denunciation from your lips is
sweeter than praise from others. Chastise me,
strike me, trample on me,—I shall worship you
none the less!”
He inclined his body further forward over the
chair-back, and thus was very near her. She put
out her hand to repel him. He moved back with
humility, but took her hand and kissed it, with an
appearance of passion qualified by reverence.
“How dare you touch my hand?” And she
quickly drew it from him.
“A poor wretch who loves, and is soon to die,
dares much!”
“You seem resigned to dying,” she remarked.
“Have I not said ’tis better than living with a
hopeless passion?”
“And yet death,” she said, “that kind of a
death is not pleasant.”
“I’m not afraid of it,” said he, wondering how the
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minutes were running, yet not daring the loss of
time to look. “’Tis not in consigning me to the
enemy that you have your revenge on me, ’tis in
making me vainly love you. I receive the greater
hurt from your beauty, not from the British provost-marshal!”
“Bravado!” said she.
“Time will show,” said he.
“If you are so strong a man that you can endure
the one hurt so calmly, why are you not a little
stronger,—strong enough to ignore this other hurt,—this
love-wound, as you call it?”
She blushed furiously, and much against her will,
at the mere word, “love-wound.” Her mood now
seemed to be one of pretended incredulity, and yet
of a vague unwillingness that the man should be so
weak to her charms.
Peyton conceived that a change of play might aid
his game.
“By heaven,” he cried, “I will! ’Tis a weakness,
as you imply! I shall close my heart, vanquish my
feelings! No word more of love! I defy your
beauty, your proud face, your splendid eyes! I
shall die free of your image. Go where you will,
madam. It sha’n’t be a puling lover that the British
hang. A snap o’ the finger for your all-conquering
charms!—why do you not leave me?”
“What! Do you order me from my own parlor?”
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Hope accelerated Peyton’s heart at this, but he
feigned indifference.
“Go or stay,” he said; “’tis nothing to me!”
“You rebel, you speak like that to me!”
Her speech rang with genuine anger, and of a
little hotter quality than he had thought to raise.
He was about to answer, when suddenly a sound,
far and faint, reached his ear. “Isn’t that—do you
hear—” he said, huskily, and turning cold.
“Horses?” said Elizabeth. “Yes,—on the road
from King’s Bridge.”
She went to one of the eastern windows, opened
the sash, unfastened the shutter without, and let in
a rush of cold air. Then she closed the sash and
looked out through the small panes.
“Is it—” said Peyton, quietly, with as much
steadiness as he could command, “I wonder—can
it be—”
“A troop of rangers!” said Elizabeth. “And
Sam is with them!” She closed the shutter, and
turned to Peyton, her face still glowing with the resentment
elicited by the cavalier attitude he had
assumed before this alarm. “Go or stay, ’tis nothing
to you, you said! The last insult, Sir Rebel
Captain!” and she made for the door.
“You mustn’t go! You mustn’t go!” was the
only speech he could summon. But she was already
passing him. He snatched a kerchief from her dress,
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and dropped it on the floor. She did not observe
his act. “Pardon me!” he cried. “Your kerchief!
You’ve dropped it, don’t you see?”
She turned and saw it on the floor.
Peyton quickly stepped from behind his chair,
stooped and picked up the kerchief, kissed it, and
handed it to her, then staggered to his former support,
showing in his face and by a groan the pain
caused him by his movement.
“Your wound!” said Elizabeth, standing still.
“You shouldn’t have stooped!”
Harry’s pain and consequent weakness, added to
his consciousness of the rapidly approaching enemy,
who had already turned in from the main road,
gave him a pallor that would have claimed the
attention of a less compassionate woman even than
Elizabeth.
“No matter!” he murmured, feebly. Then, as if
about to swoon, he threw his head back, lost his hold
of the chair-back, and staggered to the spinet. Leaning
on this, he gasped, “My cravat! I feel as if I
were choking!” and made some futile effort with his
hand to unfasten the neck-cloth. “Would you,” he
panted, “may I beg—loosen it?”
She went to his side, undid the cravat, and otherwise
relieved his neck of its confinement. She could
not but meet his gaze as she did so. It was a gaze
of eager, adoring eyes. He feebly smiled his thanks,
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and spoke, between short breaths, the words, “The
hour—I love you—yes, the troops!”
The horses were clattering up towards the house.
A voice of command was heard through the
window.
“Halt! Guard the windows and the rear, you
four!”
“Colden’s voice!” exclaimed Peyton.
Elizabeth was somewhat startled. “He must
have been still at King’s Bridge when Sam arrived,”
said she.
“He must be a close friend,” said Peyton.
“He is my affianced husband.”
Peyton staggered, as if shot, around the projection
of the spinet, and came to a rest in the small space
between that projection and the west wall of the
room. “Her affianced! Then it’s all up with me!”
The outside door was heard to open. Elizabeth
turned her back towards the spinet and Peyton, and
faced the door to the hall. That, too, was flung
wide. Peyton dropped on his right knee, behind the
spinet, leaning forward and stretching his wounded
leg out behind him, just as Colden rushed in at the
head of six of the Queen’s Rangers, who were armed
with short muskets. The major stopped short at
sight of Elizabeth, and the rangers stood behind him,
just within the door. Peyton was hidden by the
spinet.
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“Where is the rebel, Elizabeth?” cried Colden.
She met his gaze straight, and spoke calmly, with
a barely perceptible tremor.
“You are too late, Jack! The prisoner has eluded
me. Look for him on the road to Tarrytown,—and
be quick about it, for God’s sake!”
Colden drew back aghast, thrown from the height
of triumph to the depth of chagrin. Peyton, fearing
lest the one joyous bound of his heart might have
betrayed him, remained perfectly still, knowing that
if any movement should take Elizabeth from between
the soldiers and the projection of the spinet, or if the
soldiers should enter further and chance to look under
the spinet, he would be seen.
“Don’t you understand?” said Elizabeth, assuming
one impatience to conceal another. “There’s
no time to lose! ’Twas the rebel Peyton! He’s
afoot!”
“The road to Tarrytown, you say?” replied Colden,
gathering back his faculties.
“Yes, to Tarrytown! Why do you wait?” Her
vehemence of tone sufficed to cover the growing
insupportability of her situation.
“To the road again, men!” Colden ordered. “Till
we meet, Elizabeth!” And he hastened, with the
rangers, from the place.
“‘YOU ARE TOO LATE, JACK!’”
Peyton and Elizabeth remained motionless till the
sound of the horses was afar. Then Elizabeth called
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Williams, who, as she had supposed, had come into
the hall with the rangers. He now entered the
parlor. Elizabeth, whose back was still towards Peyton,
who had risen and was leaning on the spinet,
addressed the steward in a low, embarrassed tone, as
if ashamed of the weakness newly come over her.
“Williams, this gentleman will remain in the
house till his wound is healed. His presence is to
be a secret in the household. He will occupy the
southwestern chamber.” She then turned and spoke,
in a constrained manner, to Peyton, not meeting his
look. “It is the room your General Washington had
when he was my father’s guest.”
With an effort, she raised her eyes to his, but
shyly dropped them again. He bowed his thanks
gravely, rather shamefaced at the success of his
deception. A moment later, Elizabeth, with averted
glance, walked quickly from the room.
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CHAPTER VIII. — THE SECRET PASSAGE.
The steward immediately set about preparing the
designated chamber for occupancy, so that Peyton,
on being carried up to it a few minutes later, found
it warm and lighted. It was a large, square, panelled
apartment, in which the fireplace of 1682 remained
unchanged, a wide, deep, square opening, faced with
Dutch tile, of which there were countless pieces,
each piece having a picture of some Scriptural incident.
Into this fireplace, where a log was burning
crisply, Peyton gazed languidly as he lay on the bed,
his clothes having been removed by black Sam, who
had been assigned to attend him, and who now lay
in the wide hall without. Williams had taken another
look at the wound, and expressed a favorable
opinion of its condition. A lighted candle was placed
within Peyton’s reach, on a table by the bedside.
Williams had brought him, at Elizabeth’s orders,
part of what remained from the general supper.
The captain felt decidedly comfortable.
He supposed that Colden, after abandoning the
false chase, would make another call at the house,
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but he inferred from Elizabeth’s previous conduct
that she could and would send the Tory major and
the rangers back to King’s Bridge without opportunity
of discovering her guest. And, indeed, Elizabeth
had so provided. On returning to the dining-room
from her fateful interview with Peyton, she
had answered the astonished and inquisitive looks of
Miss Sally and Mr. Valentine, by saying, in an abrupt
and reserved manner, “For important reasons I have
chosen not to give the prisoner up. He will stay in
the house for a time, and nobody is to know he is
here. Please remember, Mr. Valentine.” The old
man tried to recall Peyton’s words in asking him to
send Elizabeth to the parlor, and made a mental
effort to put this and that together; failing in which,
he decided to repeat nothing of Peyton’s conversation,
lest it might in some way appear that he had
“lent aid.” He now lighted his lantern, and sallied
forth on his long walk homeward over the windswept
roads. Elizabeth, who, much to the dismay
of her aunt’s curiosity, had not broken silence save
to give orders to the servants, now charged Williams
to stay up till Colden should return, and to
inform him that all were abed, that there was no
news of the escaped prisoner, and that she desired
the major to hasten to New York and relieve her
family’s anxiety. This command the steward executed
about midnight, with the result that the
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major, utterly tired out and sadly disappointed, rode
away from the manor-house a third time that night,
more disgruntled than on either of the two previous
occasions. By this time the house was dark and
silent, Elizabeth and her aunt having long retired,
the latter with a remark concerning the effect of late
hours on the complexion, a hope that Mr. Valentine
would not fall into a puddle on the way home, and
a curiosity as to how the rebel captain fared.
The rebel captain, afar in his spacious chamber,
was mentally in a state of felicity. As he ceased to
remember the conquered, abashed look Elizabeth’s
face had last worn, he ceased to feel ashamed of
having deceived her. Her earlier manner recurred
to his mind, and he jubilated inwardly over having
got the better of this arrogant and vengeful young
creature. Even had she been otherwise, and had
his life depended on tricking her with a pretence
of love, he would have valued his life far above her
feelings, and would not have hesitated to practise
on her a falsehood that many a gentleman has
practised on many a maid for no higher purpose
than for the sport or for the testing of his powers,
and often for no other purpose than the maid’s
undoing in more than her feelings. How much
less, then, need he consider her feelings when he
regarded her as an enemy in war, of whom it
was his right to take all possible advantage for
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the saving of his own or any other American soldier’s
life! These thoughts came only at those
moments when it occurred to him that his act
might need justification. But if he thought he
was entitled to avail himself of these excuses, he
deceived himself, for no such considerations had
been in his mind before or during his act. He
had proceeded on the impulse of self-preservation
alone, with no further thought as to the effect on
her feelings than the hope that her feelings would
be moved in his behalf. He had been totally selfish
in the matter, and yet, while it is true he had not
stopped to reason whether the act was morally
justifiable or not, he had felt that her attitude
warranted his deception, or, rather, he had not
felt that the deception was a discreditable act, as
he might have felt had her attitude been kindlier.
Even had he possessed any previous scruples about
that act, he would have overcome them. As it
was, the scruples came only when he thought of
that new, chastened, subdued look on her face.
Only then did he feel that his trick might be debatable,
as to whether it became a gentleman.
Only then did he take the trouble to seek justifiable
circumstances. Only then did he have a dim
sense of what might be the feelings of a girl
suddenly stormed into love. He had never been
sufficiently in love to know how serious a feeling—serious
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in its tremendous potency for joy or
pain—love is. In Virginia, in London, and in
Ireland, he had indulged himself in such little
flirtations, such amours of an hour, as helped make
up a young gentleman’s amusements. But he had
long been, as he was now, heart-free, and, though
it occurred to him that, in this girl, so great a
change of mien must arise from a pronounced
change of heart, he had no thought that her new
mood could have deep root or long life. So, less
from what thoughts he did have on the subject
than from his absence of thought thereon, he lapsed
into peace of mind, and went to sleep, rejoicing in
his security and trusting it would last. Her face
did not appear in his dreams. He had not retained
a strong or accurate impression of that face. His
mind had been too full of other things, even while
enacting his impromptu love-scene, to make note
of her beauty. He had been sensible, of course,
that she was beautiful, but there had not been
time or circumstance for flirtation. He had not
for an instant viewed her as a possible object of
conquest for its own sake. She had been to him
only an enemy, in the shape of a beautiful young
girl, and of whom it had become necessary to make
use. And so his dreams that night were made up
of wild cavalry charges, rides through the wind,
and painful crushings and tearings of his leg.
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Elizabeth’s thoughts were in a whirl, her feelings
beyond analysis. She was sensible mainly of a
wholly novel and vast pleasure at the adoration so
impetuously expressed for her by this audacious
stranger, of a pride in his masterful way, of applause
for that very manner which she had rebuked
as insolence. Was this love at last? Undoubtedly;
for she had read all the romances and plays and
poems, and, if this feeling of hers were a thing other
than the love they all described, they would have
described such a feeling also. Because she had never
felt its soft touch before, she had thought herself
exempt from it. But now that it had found lodgment
in her, she knew it at once, from the very fact
that in a flash she understood all the romances and
plays and poems that had before interested her but
as mere tales, whose motives had seemed arbitrary
and insufficient. Now they all took reality and
reason. She knew at last why Hero threw herself
into the Hellespont after Leander, why all that commotion
was caused by Helen of Troy, why Oriana
took such trouble for Mirabel, why Juliet died on
Romeo’s body, why Miss Richland paid Honeywood’s
debts. The moon, rushing through a cleft
in the clouds (she had opened one of the shutters on
putting out the candles), had for her a sudden beauty
which accounted for the fine things the poets had
said of it and love together. Yes, because it opened
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on her world of romance a magic window, letting in
a wondrous light, waking that world to throbbing
life, clothing it with indescribable charm, she knew
the name of the key that had unlocked her own
heart. Now she knew them all,—the heroes, the
fairy princes, the knights errant; perceived that
they were real and live, recognized their traits and
manners, their very faces, in that bold, free, strong
young rebel; he was Orlando, and Lovelace, and
Prince Charming, and Æneas, and Tom Jones, and
King Harry the Fifth, and young Marlowe, and even
Captain Macheath (she had read forbidden books
guilelessly, in course of reading everything at hand),
and Roderick Random, and Captain Plume, and all
the conquering, gallant, fine young fellows, at the
absurd weakness of whose sweethearts she had
marvelled beyond measure. She understood that
weakness now, and knew, too, why those sweethearts
had, in the first delicious hours of their weakness,
trembled and dropped their eyes before those
young gentlemen. For, as she mentally beheld his
image, she felt her own cheeks glow, and in imagination
was fain to drop her own eyes before his bold,
unquailing look. She wondered, with confusion and
unseen blushes, how she would face him at their
next meeting, and felt that she must not, could not,
be the one to cause that meeting. Right surely had
this fair castle, that had withstood many a long siege,
163
fallen now at a single onslaught, and that but a sham
onslaught. The haughty princess in her tower had
not longed for the prince, but the prince had arrived,
not to her rescue, but to the taming of her. And
alas! the prince, whom she fondly thought her lover,
was no more lover of her than of the picture of her
female ancestor on his bedroom wall!
She gave no thought to consequences, and, as for
Jack Colden, she simply, by power of will, kept him
out of her mind.
It was three days before Peyton could walk about
his room, and two days more before he felt sufficient
confidence in his wounded leg to come down-stairs
and take his meals with the household. And even
then, refusing a crutch, he used a stick in moving
about. During the five days when he kept his room,
he was waited on alternately by Sam and Cuff, who
served at his bath and brought his food; and occasionally
Molly carried to him at dinner some belated
delicacy or forgotten dish. Williams, too, visited
him daily, and expressed a kind of professional satisfaction
at the uninterrupted healing of the wound,
which the steward treated with the mysterious applications
known to home surgery. Williams lent his
own clean linen to Harry, while Harry’s underwent
washing and mending at the hands of the maid.
Old Valentine, who visited the house every day, the
weather being cold and sometimes cloudy, but without
164
rain, called at the sick chamber now and then,
and filled it with tobacco smoke, homely philosophy,
and rustic reminiscence. Harry had no other visitors.
During these five days he saw not Elizabeth
or Miss Sally, save from his window twice or thrice,
at which times they were walking on the terrace.
In daytime, when no artificial light was in the room
to betray to some possible outsider the presence of
a guest, he had the shutters opened of one of the
two south windows and of one of the two west ones.
Often he reclined near a window, pleasing his eyes
with the view. Westward lay the terrace, the wide
river, the leafy, cliffs, and fair rolling country beyond.
His eye could take in also the deer paddock, which
the hand of war had robbed of its inmates, and
the great orchard northward overlooking the river.
Through the south window he could see the little
branch road and boat-landing, the old stone mill, the
winding Neperan and its broad mill-pond, and the
sloping, ravine-cut, wooded stretch of country, between
the post-road on the left and the deep-set
Hudson on the right. The spire of St. John’s
Church, among the yew-trees, with the few edifices
grouped near it, broke gratefully the deserted aspect
of things, at the left. The spacious scene, so richly
filled by nature, had in its loneliness and repose a
singular sweetness. Rarely was any one abroad.
Only when the Hessians or Loyalist dragoons patrolled
165
the post-road, or when some British sloop-of-war
showed its white sails far down the river, was
there sign of human life and conflict. The deserted
look of things was in harmony with the spirit of a
book with which Harry sweetened the long hours
of his recovery. It was a book that Elizabeth had
sent up for his amusement, called “The Man of Feeling,”
and there was something in the opening picture
of the venerable mansion, with its air of melancholy,
its languid stillness, its “single crow, perched on an
old tree by the side of the gate,” and its young lady
passing between the trees with a book in her hand,
that harmonized with his own sequestered state. He
liked the tale better than the same author’s later
novel, “The Man of the World,” which he had read
a few years before. Every day he inquired about his
hostess’s health, and sent his compliments and thanks.
He was glad she did not visit him in person, for such
a visit might involve an allusion to their last previous
interview, and he did not know in what manner
he should make or treat such allusion. He felt it
would be an awkward matter to get out of the
situation of pretended adorer, and he was for putting
that awkward matter off till the last possible
moment.
It was necessary for him to think of his return to
the army. Duty and inclination required he should
make that return as soon as could be. His first impulse
166
had been to send word of his whereabouts and
condition. But as Elizabeth had not offered a messenger,
he was loath to ask for one. Moreover, the
messenger might be intercepted by the enemy’s
patrols and induced by fear to betray the message.
Then, too, even if the messenger should reach the
American lines uncaught, a consequent attempt to
convey a wounded man from the manor hall to the
camp might attract the attention of the vigilant
patrols, and risk not only Harry’s own recapture, but
also the loss of other men. Decidedly, the best
course was to await the healing of his wound, and
then to make his way alone, under cover of night,
to the army. He knew that, whatever might occur,
it was now Elizabeth’s interest to protect him, for
should she give him up, the disclosure that she
had formerly shielded him would render her liable to
suspicion and ridicule. He felt, too, from the manifestations
he had seen of her will and of her ingenuity,
that she was quite able to protect him. So he
rested in security in the quiet old chamber, dreading
only the task of taking back his love-making. Of
that task, the difficulty would depend on Elizabeth’s
own conduct, which he could not foresee, and that in
turn on her state of heart, which he did not exactly
divine. He knew only that she had, in that critical
moment of the troops’ arrival, felt for him a tenderness
that betokened love. Whether that feeling had
167
flourished or declined, he could not, during the five
days when they did not meet, be aware.
It had not declined. She had gone on idealizing
the confident rebel captain all the while. The fact
that he was of the enemy added piquancy to the sentiments
his image aroused. It lent, too, an additional
poetic interest to the idea of their love. Was not
Romeo of the enemies of Juliet’s house? The fact
of her being now his protector, by its oppositeness
to the conventional situation, gave to their relation
the charm of novelty, and also gratified her natural
love of independence and domination. Yet that
very love, in a woman, may afford its owner keen
delight by receiving quick and confident opposition
and conquest from a man, and such Elizabeth’s had
received from Peyton, both in the matter of the
horse and in that of his successful wooing. But
the greater her softness for him, the greater was her
delicacy regarding him, and the more in conformity
with the strictest propriety must be her conduct
towards him. Her pride demanded this tribute of
her love, in compensation for the latter’s immense
exactions on the former in the sudden yielding to his
wooing. Moreover, she would not appear in anything
short of perfection in his eyes. She would
not make her company cheap to him. If she had
been a quick conquest, up to the point of her first
token of submission, she would be all the slower in
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the subsequent stages, so that the complete yielding
should be no easier than ought to be that of one
valued as she would have him value her. All this
she felt rather than thought, and she acted on it
punctiliously.
She did not confide in her aunt, though that lady
watched her closely and had her suspicions. Yet
there was apparent so little warrant for these suspicions,
save the protection of the rebel in itself, that
Miss Sally often imagined Elizabeth had other reasons,
reasons of policy, for the sudden change of
intention that had resulted in that protection. Elizabeth’s
conduct was always so mystifying to everybody!
And when this thought possessed Miss Sally, she
underwent a pleasing agitation, which she in turn
kept secret, and which attended the hope that perhaps
the handsome captain might not be averse to
her conversation. She had both read and observed
that the taste of youth sometimes was for ripeness.
She might atone, in a measure, for Elizabeth’s disdain.
She would have liked to visit him daily, with
condolence and comfortings, but she could not do
so without previous sanction of the mistress of the
house, which sanction Elizabeth briefly but very
peremptorily refused. Miss Sally thought it a cruelty
that the prisoner should be deprived of what
consolation her society might afford, and dwelt on
this opinion until she became convinced he was
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actually pining for her presence. This made her
poutish and reproachfully silent to Elizabeth, and
sighful and whimsical to herself. The slightly
strained feeling that arose between aunt and niece
was quite acceptable to Elizabeth, as it gave her
freedom for her own dreams, and prohibited any
occasion for an expression of feelings or opinions of
her own as to the captain. But Miss Sally’s symptoms
were observed by old Mr. Valentine, who,
inferring their cause, underwent much unrest on
account of them, became snappish and sarcastic
towards the lady, watchful both of her and of
Peyton, and moody towards the others in the house.
It was the old man’s disquietude regarding the state
of Miss Sally’s affections that brought him to the
house every day. For one brief while he considered
the advisability of transferring his attentions back
from Miss Sally to the widow Babcock, who had
possessed them first, but, when he tarried in the parsonage,
his fears as to what might be going on in the
manor-house made his stay in the former intolerable,
and led him irresistibly to the latter.
Meanwhile the wounded guest, so unconscious
of the states of mind caused by him in the household,
was the evoker of flutters in yet another female
breast. The girl, Molly, had read toilsomely through
“Pamela,” and saw no reason why an equally attractive
housemaid should not aspire to an equally high
170
destiny on this side of the ocean. But, often as she
artfully contrived that the black boy should forget
some part of the guest’s dinner, and timely as she
planned her own visits with the missing portion,
she found the officer heedless of her smiles, engrossed
sometimes in his meal, sometimes in his
book, sometimes in both. She conceived a loathing
for that book, more than once resisted a temptation
to make way with it, and, having one day stolen a
look into it, thenceforth abominated the poor young
lady of it, with all the undying bitterness of an
unpreferred rival.
Though Elizabeth and her aunt found each other
reticent, they yet passed their time together, breakfasting
early, then visiting the widow Babcock or
some tenant, dining at noon, spending the early
afternoon, the one at her book or embroidery, the
other in a siesta before the fireplace, supping early,
then preparing for the night by a brisk walk in the
garden, or on the terrace, or to the orchard and back.
Elizabeth had Williams provided with instructions as
to his conduct in the event of a visit from King’s
troops, and, to make Peyton’s security still less
uncertain, she confined her walks to the immediate
vicinity. The house itself was kept in a pretence
of being closed, the shutters of the parlor being skilfully
adjusted to admit light, and yet, from the road,
appear fast.
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Thus Elizabeth, finding enjoyment in the very
look and atmosphere of the old house, fulfilled
quietly the purpose of her capricious visit, and at
the same time cherished a dreamy pleasure such
as she had not thought of finding in that visit.
On the fifth day after Peyton’s arrival, Williams
announced that the captain would venture down-stairs
on the morrow. The next morning Elizabeth
waited in the east parlor to receive him. Whatever
inward excitement she underwent, she was on the
surface serene. She was dressed in her simplest,
having purposely avoided any appearance of desiring
to appear at her best. Her aunt, who stood with her,
on the other side of the fireplace, was perceptibly
flustered, being got up for the occasion, with ribbons
in evidence and smiles ready for production
on the instant. When the west door opened, and
the awaited hero entered, pale but well groomed,
using his cane in such fashion that he could carry
himself erectly, Elizabeth greeted him with formal
courtesy. Though her manner had the repose
necessary to conceal her sweet agitation, an observant
person might have noticed a deference, a kind
of meekness, that was new in her demeanor towards
men. Peyton, whose mien (though not his feeling)
was a reflex of her own, was relieved at this appearance
of indifference, and hoped it would continue.
His mind being on this, the stately curtsey and
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profuse smirks of Miss Sally were quite lost on
him.
The three breakfasted together in the dining-room,
a large and cheerful apartment whose front
windows, looking on the lawn, were the middle
features of the eastern facade of the house. The
mass of decorative woodwork, and the fireplace in
the north side of the room, added to its impression
of comfort as well as to its beauty. Conversation
at the breakfast was ceremonious and on the most
indifferent subjects, despite the attempts of Miss
Sally, who would have monopolized Peyton’s attention,
to inject a little cordial levity. After breakfast
Elizabeth, to avoid the appearance of distinguishing
the day, took her aunt off for the usual walk, which
she purposely prolonged to unusual length, much to
Miss Sally’s annoyance. Peyton passed the morning
in reading a new play that had made great talk
in London the year before, namely, “The School
for Scandal.” It was one of the new books received
by Colonel Philipse from London, by a recent
English vessel,—plays being, in those days, good
enough to be much read in book form,—and
brought out from town by Elizabeth. The dinner
was, as to the attitude of the participants towards
one another, a repetition of the breakfast. In the
afternoon, Peyton having expressed an intention of
venturing outdoors for a little air, Elizabeth assigned
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Sam to attend him, and said that, as he had
to traverse the south hall and stairs in going to his
room, he might thereafter put to his own service
the unused south door in leaving and entering the
house. Harry strolled for a few minutes on the
terrace, but his lameness made walking little pleasure,
and he returned to the east parlor, where
Elizabeth sat reading while her aunt was looking
drowsily at the fire. Peyton took a chair at the
right side of the fireplace, and mentally contrasted
his present security with his peril in that place on
a former occasion.
The trampling of horses at a distance elicited
from Elizabeth the words, “The Hessian patrol, on
the Albany road, as usual, I suppose.” But, the
clatter increasing, she arose and looked through
the narrow slit whereby light was admitted between
the almost closed shutters. After a moment she
said, in unconcealed alarm:
“Oh, heaven! ’Tis a party of Lord Cathcart’s
officers! They said at King’s Bridge they’d come
one day to pay their respects. How can I keep
them out?”
Peyton arose, but remained by the fireplace, and
said, “To keep them out, if they think themselves
expected, would excite suspicion. I will go to my
room.”
Elizabeth, meanwhile, had opened the window to
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draw the shutter close; but her trembling movement,
assisted by a passing breeze, and by the
perversity of inanimate things, caused the shutter
to fly wide open.
She turned towards Peyton, with signs of fright
on her face. “Back!” she whispered. “They’ll
see you through the window. Into the closet,—the
closet!” She motioned imperatively towards
the pair of doors immediately beside him, west
of the fireplace. Hearing the horses’ footfalls near
at hand, and perceiving, with her, that he would
not have time to walk safely across the parlor to
the hall, he opened one of the doors indicated by
her, and stepped into the closet.
In the instant before he closed the door after him,
he noticed the stairs descending backward from the
right side of the closet. He foresaw that the British
officers would come into the parlor. If they should
make a long stay, he might have to change his position
during their presence. He might thus cause
sufficient sound to attract attention. He would be
in better case further away. Therefore, using his
stick and feeling the route with his hand, he made
his way down the steps to a landing, turned to the
right, descended more steps, and found himself in
a dark cellar. He had no sooner reached the last
step than a burst of hearty greetings from above
informed him the officers were in the parlor.
175
This part of the cellar being damp, he set out in
search of a more comfortable spot wherein to bestow
himself the necessary while. Groping his way, and
travelling with great labor, he at last came into a
kind of corridor formed between two rolls of piled-up
barrels. He proceeded along this passage until
it was blocked by a barrel on the ground. On this
he sat down, deciding it as good a staying-place
as he might find. Leaning back, he discovered with
his head what seemed to be a thick wooden partition
close to the barrel. Changing his position, he
bumped his head against an iron something that lay
horizontally against the partition, and so violent was
this collision that the iron something was moved
from its place, a fact which he noted on the instant
but immediately forgot in the sharpness of his pain.
Having at last made himself comfortable, he sat
waiting in the darkness, thinking to let some time
pass before returning to the closet stairway. An
hour or more had gone by, when he heard a door
open, which he knew must be at the head of some
other stairway to the cellar, and a jocund voice cry:
“Damme, we’ll be our own tapsters! Give me the
candle, Mr. Williams, and if my nose doesn’t pull me
to the barrel in one minute, may it never whiff spirits
again!” A moment later, quick footfalls sounded
on the stairs, then candle-light disturbed the blackness,
and Williams was heard saying, “This way,
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gentlemen, if you insist. The barrel is on the
ground, straight ahead.” Whereupon Peyton saw
two merry young Englishmen enter the very passage
at whose end he sat, one bearing the candle, both
followed by the steward, who carried a spigot and a
huge jug.
Harry instantly divined the cause of this intrusion.
The servants were busy preparing refreshments for
the officers, and, in a spirit of gaiety, these two
had volunteered to help Williams fetch the liquor
which he, not knowing Harry’s whereabouts, was
about to draw from the barrel on which Harry sat.
It was not Elizabeth who could save him from
discovery now.
The officers came groping towards him up the
narrow passage.
Before the candle-light reached him, he rose and
got behind the barrel, there being barely room for
his legs between it and the partition. He had, in
dressing for the day, put on his scabbard and his
broken sword. He now took his stick in his left
hand, and drew his sword with his right. He set
his teeth hard together, thought of nothing at all, or
rather of everything at once, and waited.
“Hear the rats,” said one of the Englishmen. It
was Peyton’s stealthy movement he had heard.
“Ay, sir, there’s often a terrible scampering of
’em,” said Williams.
177
“Maybe I can pink a rat or two,” said the officer
without the candle, and drew his sword. Harry
braced himself rapidly against the woodwork at his
back. The candle-light touched the barrel.
At that instant Harry felt the woodwork give way
behind him, and fell on his back on the ground.
“What’s that?” cried the officer with the candle,
standing still.
“Tis the scampering of the rats, of course,” said
the other.
Harry had apprehended, by this time, that the
supposed wooden partition was in reality a door in
the cellar wall. He now pushed it shut with his
foot, remaining outside of it, then rose, and, feeling
about him, discovered that his present place was in a
narrow arched passage that ran, from the door in
the cellar wall, he knew not how far. Recalling the
bumping of his head, he inferred now that the iron
something was a bolt, and that his blow had forced
it from its too large socket in the stone wall.
He proceeded onward in the dark passage for
some distance, then stopped to listen. No sound
coming from the door he had closed, he decided that
the officers were satisfied the noise had been of the
rats’ making. He sheathed his broken sword, having
retained that and his stick in his fall, and went
forward, hoping to find a habitable place of waiting.
Soon the passage widened into a kind of subterranean
178
room, one side of which admitted light. Going to
this side, Harry stopped short at the verge of a well,
on whose circumference the subterranean chamber
abutted. The light came from the well’s top, which
was about ten feet above the low roof of the underground
room, the passage from the cellar being
on a descent. In this artificial cave were wooden
chests, casks, and covered earthen vessels, these contents
proclaiming the place a secret storage-room
designed for use in siege or in military occupation.
Harry waited here a while that seemed half a day,
then returned through the passage to the door, intending
to return to the cellar. He listened at the
door, found all quiet beyond, and made to push open
the door. It would not move. From the feel of
the resistance, he perceived that the bolt had been
pushed home again—as indeed it had, by the steward,
who had noticed it while tapping the barrel, and
had imputed its being drawn to some former carelessness
of his own.
Peyton, finding himself thus barred into the subterranean
regions, was in a quandary. Any alarm
he might attempt, by shouting or pounding, might
not be heard, or, if heard, might reach some tarrying
British. In due time, Elizabeth would doubtless
have him looked for in the closet and then in the
cellar, but, on his not being found there, would suppose
he had left the cellar by one of the other stairways.
179
Thus he could little hope to be sought for
in his prison. Williams might at any time have
occasion to visit the secret storeroom, but, on the
other hand, he might not have such occasion for
weeks. Harry groped back to the cave, and sought
some way of escape by the well, but found none.
He then examined the cave more closely, and
came finally on another passage than that by which
he had entered. He followed this for what seemed
an interminable length. At last, it closed up in
front of him. He tested the barrier of raw earth
with his hands, felt a great round stone projecting
therefrom, pushed this stone in vain, then clasped it
with both arms and pulled. It gave, and presently
fell to the ground at his feet, leaving an aperture
two feet across, which let in light. He crawled the
short length of this, and breathed the open air in a
small thicket on the sloping bank of the Hudson.[8]
He crept to the thicket’s edge, and saw, in the sunset
light, the river before him; on the river, a
British war-vessel; on the vessel, some naval officers,
one of whom was looking, with languid preoccupation,
straight at the thicket from which Harry
gazed.
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CHAPTER IX. — THE CONFESSION.
“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
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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.
He lay a long time awake, disturbed by thoughts
of the task before him. When he did sleep, it was
to dream that the task was in progress, then that it
was finished but had to be begun anew, then that
countless obstacles arose in succession to hinder
him in it. Dawn found him little refreshed in mind,
but none the worse in body. He found, on arising,
that he could walk without aid from the stick, and
he required no help in dressing himself. Looking
towards the river, he saw the British vessel heading
for New York. But that sight gave him little comfort,
thanks to the ordeal before him, in contemplating
which he neglected to put on his sword
185
and scabbard, and so descended to breakfast without
them.
That meal offered no opportunity for the disclosure,
the aunt being present throughout. Immediately
after breakfast, the two ladies went for
their customary walk. While they were breasting
the wind, between two rows of box in the garden,
Miss Sally spoke of Major Colden’s intention to
return for Elizabeth at the end of a week, and said,
“’Twill be a week this evening since you arrived.
Is he to come for you to-day or to-morrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth, shortly.
“But, my dear, you haven’t prepared—”
“I sha’n’t go back to-day, that is certain. If
Colden comes before to-morrow, he can wait for
me,—or I may send him back without me, and
stay as long as I wish.”
“But he will meet Captain Peyton—”
“It can be easily arranged to keep him from
knowing Captain Peyton is here. I shall look to
that.”
Miss Sally sighed at the futility of her inquisitorial
fishing. Not knowing Elizabeth’s reason for saving
the rebel captain, she had once or twice thought
that the girl, in some inscrutable whim, intended to
deliver him up, after all. She had tried frequently
to fathom her niece’s purposes, but had never got
any satisfaction.
186
“I suppose,” she went on, desperately, “if you go
back to town, you will leave the captain in Williams’s
charge.”
“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.
“A chill night for your journey,” replied Molly.
“I should think you’d wait for day, to travel.”
Peyton, unobservant of the wistful sigh by which
the maid’s speech was accompanied, replied, “Nay,
for me, ’tis safest travelling at night. I must go
through dangerous country to reach our lines.”
189
“It mayn’t be as cold to-morrow night,” persisted
Molly.
“My wound is well enough for me to go now.”
“’Twill be better still to-morrow.”
But Peyton, deep in his own preoccupation,
neither deduced aught from the drift of her remarks
nor saw the tender glances which attended them.
While he was making some insignificant answer, the
maid, in moving the candelabrum on the spinet, accidentally
brushed therefrom his hat, which had been
lying on it. She picked it up, in great confusion,
and asked his pardon.
“’Twas my fault in laying it there,” said he,
receiving it from her. “I’m careless with my
things. I make no doubt, since I’ve been here, I’ve
more than once given your mistress cause to wish
me elsewhere.”
“La, sir,” said Molly, “I don’t think—any one
would wish you elsewhere!” Whereupon she left the
room, abashed at her own audacity.
“The devil!” thought Peyton. “I should feel
better if some one did wish me elsewhere.”
As he continued gazing into the fire, and his task
loomed more and more disagreeably before him, he
suddenly bethought him that Elizabeth, in taking her
evening walk, showed no disposition for a private
meeting. Dwelling on that one circumstance, he
thought for awhile he might have been wrong in
190
supposing she loved him. But then the previous
night’s incident recurred to his mind. Nothing
short of love could have induced such solicitude.
But, then, as she sought no last interview, might he
not be warranted in going away and leaving the disclosure
to come gradually, implied by the absence
of further word from him? Yet, she might be purposely
avoiding the appearance of seeking an interview.
The reasons calling for a prompt confession
came back to him. While he was wavering between
one dictate and another, in came Mr. Valentine, with
a tobacco pipe.
Like an inspiration, rose the idea of consulting the
octogenarian. A man who cannot make up his own
mind is justified in seeking counsel. Elizabeth could
suffer no harm through Peyton’s confiding in this
sage old man, who was devoted to her and to her
family. Mr. Valentine’s very words on entering,
which alluded to Peyton’s pleasant visit as Elizabeth’s
guest, gave an opening for the subject concerned.
A very few speeches led up to the matter,
which Harry broached, after announcing that he took
the old man for one experienced in matters of the
heart, and receiving the admission that the old man
had enjoyed a share of the smiles of the sex. But
if the captain had thought, in seeking advice, to find
reason for avoiding his ugly task, he was disappointed.
Old Valentine, though he had for some
191
days feared a possible state of things between the
captain and Miss Sally, had observed Elizabeth, and
his vast experience had enabled him to interpret
symptoms to which others had been blind. “She
has acted towards you,” he said to Peyton, “as she
never acted towards another man. She’s shown you
a meekness, sir, a kind of timidity.” And he agreed
that, if Peyton should go away without an explanation,
it would make her throw aside other expectations,
and would, in the end, “cut her to the heart.”
Valentine hinted at regrettable things that had ensued
from a jilting of which himself had once
been guilty, and urged on Peyton an immediate
unbosoming, adding, “She’ll be so took aback and
so full of wrath at you, she won’t mind the loss of
you. She’ll abominate you and get over it at once.”
The idea came to Peyton of making the confession
by letter, but this he promptly rejected as a coward’s
dodge. “It’s a damned unpleasant duty, but that’s
the more reason I should face it myself.”
At that moment the front door of the east hall
was heard to open.
“It’s Miss Elizabeth and her aunt,” said Valentine,
listening at the door.
“Then I’ll have the thing over at once, and be
gone! Mr. Valentine, a last kindness,—keep the
aunt out of the room.”
Before Valentine could answer, the ladies entered,
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their cheeks reddened by the weather. Elizabeth
carried a small bunch of belated autumn flowers.
“Well, I’m glad to come in out of the cold!”
burst out Miss Sally, with a retrospective shudder.
“Mr. Peyton, you’ve a bitter night for your going.”
She stood before the fire and smiled sympathetically
at the captain.
But Peyton was heedful of none but Elizabeth,
who had laid her flowers on the spinet and was
taking off her cloak. Peyton quickly, with an “Allow
me, Miss Philipse,” relieved her of the wrap, which
in his abstraction he retained over his left arm while
he continued to hold his hat in his other hand.
After receiving a word of thanks, he added, “You’ve
been gathering flowers,” and stood before her in
much embarrassment.
“The last of the year, I think,” said she. “The
wind would have torn them off, if aunt Sally and I
had not.” And she took them up from the spinet
to breath their odor.
Meanwhile Mr. Valentine had been whispering
to Miss Sally at the fireplace. As a result of his
communications, whatever they were, the aunt first
looked doubtful, then cast a wistful glance at Peyton,
and then quietly left the room, followed by the
old man, who carefully closed the door after him.
While Elizabeth held the flowers to her nostrils,
Peyton continued to stand looking at her, during an
193
awkward pause. At length she replaced the nosegay
on the spinet, and went to the fireplace, where she
gazed at the writhing flames, and waited for him to
speak.
Still laden with the cloak and hat, he desperately
began:
“Miss Philipse, I—ahem—before I start on my
walk to-night—”
“Your walk?” she said, in slight surprise.
“Yes,—back to our lines, above.”
“But you are not going to walk back,” she said,
in a low tone. “You are to have the horse, Cato.”
Peyton stood startled. In a few moments he
gulped down his feelings, and stammered:
“Oh—indeed—Miss Philipse—I cannot think of
depriving you—especially after the circumstances.”
She replied, with a gentle smile:
“You took the horse when I refused him to you.
Now will you not have him when I offer him to you?
You must, captain! I’ll not have so fine a horse go
begging for a master. I’ll not hear of your walking.
On such a night, such a distance, through such a
country!”
“The devil!” thought Harry. “This makes it
ten times harder!”
Elizabeth now turned to face him directly. “Does
not my cloak incommode you?” she said, amusedly.
“You may put it down.”
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“Oh, thank you, yes!” he said, feeling very red,
and went to lay the cloak on the table, but in his
confusion put down his own hat there, and kept the
cloak over his arm. He then met her look recklessly,
and blurted out:
“The truth is, Miss Philipse, now that I am soon
to leave, I have something to—to say to you.” His
boldness here forsook him, and he paused.
“I know it,” said Elizabeth, serenely, repressing
all outward sign of her heart’s blissful agitation.
“You do?” quoth he, astonished.
“Certainly,” she answered, simply. “How could
you leave without saying it?”
Peyton had a moment’s puzzlement. Then, “Without
saying what?” he asked.
“What you have to say,” she replied, blushing,
and lowering her eyes.
“But what have I to say?” he persisted.
She was silent a moment, then saw that she must
help him out.
“Don’t you know? You were not at all tongue-tied
when you said it the evening you came here.”
Peyton felt a gulf opening before him. “Good
heaven,” thought he, “she actually believes I am
about to propose!”
Now, or never, was the time for the plunge. He
drew a full breath, and braced himself to make it.
“But—ah—you see,” said he, “the trouble is,—what
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I said then is not what I have to say now.
You must understand, Miss Philipse, that I am
devoted to a soldier’s career. All my time, all my
heart, my very life, belong to the service. Thus I
am, in a manner, bound no less on my side, than
you—I beg your pardon—”
“What do you mean?” She spoke quietly, yet
was the picture of open-eyed astonishment.
“Cannot you see?” he faltered.
“You mean”—her tone acquired resentment as
her words came—“that I, too, am bound on my
side,—to Mr. Colden?”
“I did not say so,” he replied, abashed, cursing
his heedless tongue. He would not, for much, have
reminded her of any duty on her part.
She regarded him for a moment in silence, while
the clouds of indignation gathered. Then the storm
broke.
“You poltroon, I do see! You wish to take back
your declaration, because you are afraid of Colden’s
vengeance!”
“Afraid? I afraid?” he echoed, mildly, surprised
almost out of his voice at this unexpected inference.
“Yes, you craven!” she cried, and seemed to
tower above her common height, as she stood erect,
tearless, fiery-eyed, and clarion-voiced. “Your cowardice
outweighs your love! Go from my sight and
from my father’s house, you cautious lover, with
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your prudent scruples about the rights of your rival!
Heavens, that I should have listened to such a coward!
Go, I say! Spend no more time under this
roof than you need to get your belongings from
your room. Don’t stop for farewells! Nobody
wants them! Go,—and I’ll thank you to leave my
cloak behind you!”
“‘GO, I SAY!’”
Silenced and confounded by the force of her denunciation,
he stupidly dropped the cloak to the
floor where he stood, and stumbled from the room,
as if swept away by the torrent of her wrath and
scorn.
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CHAPTER X. — THE PLAN OF RETALIATION.
It was in the south hall that he found himself,
having fled through the west door of the parlor, forgetful
that his hat still remained on the table. He
naturally continued his retreat up the stairs to his
chamber. The only belongings that he had to get
there were his broken sword, his scabbard, and belt.
These he promptly buckled on, resolved to leave the
house forthwith.
Still tingling from the blow of her words, he yet
felt a great relief that the task was so soon over,
and that her speedy action had spared him the labor
of the long explanation he had thought to make.
As matters stood, they could not be improved. Her
love had turned to hate, in the twinkling of an eye.
And yet, how preposterously she had accounted
for his conduct! Dwelling on his hint, though it
was checked at its utterance, that she was already
bound, she had assumed that he held out her engagement
to Colden as a barrier to their love. And
she believed, or pretended to believe, that his regard
198
for that barrier arose from fear of inviting a rival’s
vengeance! As if he, who daily risked his life,
could fear the vengeance of a man whom he had
already once defeated with the sword! It was like
a woman to alight first on the most absurd possibility
the situation could imply. And if she knew the
conjecture was absurd, she was the more guilty of
affront in crying it out against him. He, in turn,
was now moved to anger. He would not have false
motives imputed to him. It would be useless to
talk to her while her present mood continued. But
he could write, and leave the letter where it would
be found. Inasmuch as he had faced the worst
storm his disclosure could have aroused, there was
no cowardice in resorting to a letter with such explanations
as could not be brought to her mind in any
other form. Two days previously, he had requested
writing materials in his room, for the sketching of
a report of his being wounded, and these were still
on a table by the window. He lighted candles, and
sat down to write.
When he had finished his document, sealed and
addressed it, he laid it on the table, where it would
attract the eye of a servant, and looked around for
his hat. Presently he recalled that he had left it in
the parlor. He first thought of seeking a servant,
and sending for it, lest he might meet Elizabeth,
should he again enter the parlor. But it would be
199
better to face her, for a moment, than to give an
order to a servant of a house whence he had been
ordered out. And now, as he intended to go into
the parlor, he would preferably leave the letter in
that room, where it would perhaps reach her own
eyes before any other’s could fall on it. He therefore
took up the letter, thrust it for the time in his belt,
descended quietly to the south hall, cautiously opened
the parlor door, peeped through the crack, saw with
relief that only Miss Sally was in the room, threw
the door wide, and strode quickly towards the table
on which he thought he had left his hat.
But, as he approached, he saw that the hat was
not there.
In the meantime, during the few minutes he had
spent in his room, things had been occurring in this
parlor. As soon as Peyton had left it, or had been
carried out of it by the resistless current of Elizabeth’s
invective, the girl had turned her anger on
herself, for having weakened to this man, made him
her hero, indulged in those dreams! She could
scarcely contain herself. Having mechanically picked
up her cloak, where Peyton had let it fall, she evinced
a sudden unendurable sense of her humiliation and
folly, by hurling the cloak with violence across the
room. At that moment old Mr. Valentine entered,
placidly seeking his pipe, which he had left behind
him.
200
The octogenarian looked surprisedly at the cloak,
then at Elizabeth, then mildly asked her if she had
seen his pipe.
“Oh, the cowardly wretch!” was Elizabeth’s
answer, her feelings forcing a release in speech.
“What, me?” asked the old man, startled, not
yet having thought to connect her words with his
last interview with the American officer. He looked
at her for a moment, but, receiving no satisfaction,
calmly refilled, from a leather pouch, his pipe, which
he had found on the mantel.
Elizabeth’s thoughts began to take more distinct
shape, and, in order to formulate them the more
accurately, she spoke them aloud to the old man,
finding it an assistance to have a hearer, though she
supposed him unable to understand.
“Yet he wasn’t a coward that evening he rode to
attack the Hessians,—nor when he was wounded,—nor
when he stood here waiting to be taken! He
was no coward then, was he, Mr. Valentine?” Getting
no answer, and irritated at the old man’s owl-like
immovability, she repeated, with vehemence,
“Was he?”
Mr. Valentine had, by this time, begun to put
things together in his mind.
“No. To be sure,” he chirped, and then lighted
his pipe with a small fagot from the fireplace, an
operation that required a good deal of time.
201
Elizabeth now spoke more as if to herself. “Perhaps,
after all, I may be wrong! Yes, what a fool,
to forget all the proofs of his courage! What a blind
imbecile, to think him afraid! It must be that
he acts from a delicate conception of honor. He
would not encroach where another had the prior
claim. He considers Colden in the matter. That’s
it, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” said Valentine, blindly, not having
paid attention to this last speech, and sitting down
in his armchair.
“I can understand now,” she went on. “He did
not know of my engagement that time he made love,
when his life was at stake.”
“Then he’s told you all about it?” said the old
man, beginning to take some interest, now that he
had provided for his own comfort.
“About what?” asked Elizabeth, showing a
woman’s consistency, in being surprised that he
seemed to know what she had been addressing
him about.
“About pretending he loved you,—to save his
life,” replied Mr. Valentine, innocently, considering
that her supposed acquaintance with the
whole secret made him free to discuss it with
her.
Elizabeth’s astonishment, unexpected as it was by
him, surprised the old man in turn, and also gave
202
him something of a fright. So the two stared at
each other.
“Pretending he loved me!” she repeated, reflectively.
“Pretending! To save his life! Now I
see!” The effect of the revelation on her almost
made Mr. Valentine jump out of his chair. “For
only I could save him!” she went on. “There was
no other way! Oh, how I have been fooled! I—tricked
by a miserable rebel! Made a laughing-stock!
Oh, to think he did not really love me, and
that I—Oh, I shall choke! Send some one to
me,—Molly, aunt Sally, any one! Go! Don’t sit
there gazing at me like an owl! Go away and send
some one!”
Mr. Valentine, glad of reason for an honorable
retreat from this whirlwind that threatened soon to
fill the whole room, departed with as much activity
as he could command.
“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
Elizabeth asked of the air around her. “I must
repay him for his duplicity. I shall never rest a
moment till I do! What an easy dupe he must
think me! Oh-h-h!”
She brought her hand violently down on the
table but fortunately struck something comparatively
soft. In her fury, she clutched this something,
raised it from the table, and saw what it
was.
203
“His hat!” she cried, and made to throw it into
the fire, but, with a woman’s aim, sent it flying
towards the door, which was at that instant opened
by her aunt, who saved herself by dodging most
undignifiedly.
“What is it, my dear?” asked Miss Sally, in a
voice of mingled wonderment and fear.
“I’ll pay him back, be sure of that!” replied
Elizabeth, who was by this time a blazing-eyed,
scarlet-faced embodiment of fury, and had thrown
off all reserve.
“Pay whom back?” tremblingly inquired Miss
Sally, with vague apprehensions for the safety of
old Mr. Valentine, who had so recently left her
niece.
“Your charming captain, your gentleman rebel,
your gallant soldier, your admirable Peyton, hang
him!” cried Elizabeth.
“My Peyton? I only wish he was!” sighed the
aunt, surprised into the confession by Elizabeth’s
own outspokenness.
“You’re welcome to him, when I’ve had my revenge
on him! Oh, aunt Sally, to think of it!
He doesn’t love me! He only pretended, so that
I would save his life! But he shall see! I’ll deliver
him up to the troops, after all!”
“Oh, no!” said Miss Sally, deprecatingly. Great
as was the news conveyed to her by Elizabeth’s
204
speech, she comprehended it, and adjusted her
mind to it, in an instant, her absence of outward
demonstration being due to the very bigness of the
revelation, to which any possible outside show of
surprise would be inadequate and hence useless.
Moreover, Elizabeth gave no time for manifestations.
“No,” the girl went on. “You are right. He’s
able-bodied now, and might be a match for all the
servants. Besides, ’twould come out why I shielded
him, and I should be the laugh o’ the town. Oh,
how shall I pay him? How shall I make him feel—ah!
I know! I’ll give him six for half a dozen!
I’ll make him love me, and then I’ll cast him off and
laugh at him!”
She was suddenly as jubilant at having hit on the
project as if she had already accomplished it.
“Make him love you?” repeated her aunt, dubiously.
Her aunt had her own reasons for doubting
the possibility of such an achievement.
“Perhaps you think I can’t!” cried Elizabeth.
“Wait and see! But, heavens! He’s going away,—he
won’t come back,—perhaps he’s gone! No,
there’s his hat!” She ran and picked it up from
the corner of the doorway. “He won’t go without
his hat. He’ll have to come here for it. He went
to his room for his sword. He’ll be here at any
moment.”
205
And she paced the floor, holding the hat in one
hand, and lapsing to the level of ordinary femininity
as far as to adjust her hair with the other.
“You’ll have to make quick work of it, Elizabeth,
dear,” said the aunt, with gentle irony, “if he’s going
to-night.”
“I know, I know,—but I can’t do it looking like
this.” She laid the hat on the table, in order to
employ both hands in the arrangement of her hair.
“If I only had on my satin gown! By the lord
Harry, I have a mind—I will! When he comes in
here, keep him till I return. Keep him as if your
life depended on it.” She went quickly towards the
door of the east hall.
“But, Elizabeth!” cried Miss Sally, appalled.
“Wait! How—”
“How?” echoed Elizabeth, turning near the door.
“By hook or crook! You must think of a way! I
have other things on my mind. Only keep him till
I come back. If you let him go, I’ll never speak to
you again! And not a word to him of what I’ve
told you! I sha’n’t be long.”
“But what are you going to do?” asked the
aunt, despairingly.
“Going to arm myself for conquest! To put on
my war-paint!” And the girl hastened through the
doorway, crossed the hall, called Molly, and ran up-stairs
to her room.
206
Miss Sally stood in the parlor, a prey to mingled
feelings. She did not dare refuse the task thrown
on her by her imperative niece. Not only her
niece’s anger would be incurred by the refusal, but
also the niece’s insinuations that the aunt was not
sufficiently clever for the task. However difficult,
the thing must be attempted. And, which made
matters worse, even if the attempt should succeed,
it would be a rewardless one to Miss Sally. If
she might detain the captain for herself, the effort
would be worth making. The aunt sighed deeply,
shook her head distressfully, and then, reverting
to a keen sense of Elizabeth’s rage and ridicule in
the event of failure, looked wildly around for some
suggestion of means to hold the officer. Her eye
alighted on the hat.
“He won’t go without his hat, a night like this!”
she thought. “I’ll hide his hat.”
She forthwith possessed herself of it, and explored
the room for a hiding-place. She decided on one
of the little narrow closets in either side of the doorway
to the east hall, and started towards it, holding
the hat at her right side. Before she had come
within four feet of the chosen place, she heard the
door from the south hall being thrown open, and,
casting a swift glance over her left shoulder, saw the
captain step across the threshold. She choked back
her sensations, and gave inward thanks that the
207
hat was hidden from his sight by herself. Peyton
walked briskly towards the table.
Suddenly he stopped short, and turned his eyes
from the table to Miss Sally, whose back was
towards him.
“Ah, Miss Williams,” said he, politely but hastily,
“I left my hat here somewhere.”
“Indeed?” said Miss Sally, amazed at her own
unconsciousness, while she tried to moderate the
beating of her heart. At the same moment, she
turned and faced him, bringing the hat around
behind her so that it should remain unseen.
Peyton looked from her to the spinet, thence to
the sofa, thence back to the table.
“Yes, on the table, I thought. Perhaps—”
He broke off here, and went to look on the
mantel.
Miss Sally, who had never thought the captain
handsomer, and who smarted under the sense of being
deterred, by her niece’s purpose, from employing
this opportunity to fascinate him on her own account,
continued to turn so as to face him in his every
change of place.
“I don’t see it anywhere,” she said, with childlike
innocence.
Peyton searched the mantel, then looked at the
chairs, and again brought his eyes to bear on Miss
Sally. She blinked once or twice, but did not quail.
208
“’Tis strange!” he said. “I’m sure I left it in
this room.”
And he went again over all the ground he had
already examined. Miss Sally utilized the times
when his back was turned, in making a search of her
own, the object of which was a safe place where she
could quickly deposit the hat without attracting his
attention.
Peyton was doubly annoyed at this enforced delay
in his departure, since Elizabeth might come into
the parlor at any time, and the meeting occur which
he had, for a moment, hoped to avoid.
“Would you mind helping me look for it?” said
he. “I’m in great haste to be gone. Do me the
kindness, madam, will you not?”
“Why, yes, with pleasure,” she answered, thinking
bitterly how transported she would be, in other
circumstances, at such an opportunity of showing her
readiness to oblige him.
Her aid consisted in following him about, looking
in each place where he had looked the moment before,
and keeping the sought-for object close behind
her.
Suddenly he turned about, with such swiftness
that she almost came into collision with him.
“It must have fallen to the floor,” said he.
“Why, yes, we never thought of looking there,
did we?” And she followed him through another
209
tour of the room, turning her averted head from side
to side in pretendedly ranging the floor with her
eyes.
“I know,” he said, with the elation of a new conjecture.
“It must be behind something!”
Miss Sally gasped, but in an instant recovered
herself sufficiently to say:
“Of course. It surely must be—behind something.”
Harry went and looked behind the spinet, then
examined the small spaces between other objects and
the wall. This search was longer than any he had
made before, as some of the pieces of furniture
had to be moved slightly out of position.
Miss Sally felt her proximity to the object of
this search becoming unendurable. She therefore
profited by Peyton’s present occupation to conduct
pretended endeavors towards the closet west of
the fireplace. She noiselessly opened one of the
narrow doors, quickly tossed the hat inside, closed
the door, and turned with ineffable relief towards
Peyton.
To her consternation she found him looking at
her.
“What are you doing there?” he asked.
“Why,—looking in this closet,” she stammered,
guiltily.
“Oh, no, it couldn’t be in there,” said Peyton,
210
lightly. “But, yes. One of the servants might
have laid it on the shelf.” And he made for the
closet.
“Oh, no!”
Miss Sally stood against the closet doors and held
out her hands to ward him off.
“No harm to look,” said he, passing around her
and putting his hand on the door.
Miss Sally felt that, by remaining in the position
of a physical obstacle to his opening the closet, she
would betray all. Acting on the inspiration of the
instant, she ran to the centre of the room, and
cried:
“Oh, come away! Come here!” and essayed a
well-meant, but feeble and abortive, scream.
“What’s the matter?” asked Peyton, astonished.
“Oh, I’m going to faint!” she said, feigning
a sinkiness of the knees and a floppiness of the
head.
“Oh, pray don’t faint!” cried Peyton, running to
support her. “I haven’t time. Let me call some
one. Let me help you to the sofa.”
By this time he held her in his arms, and was
thinking her another sort of burden than Tom
Jones found Sophia, or Clarissa was to Roderick
Random.
The lady shrank with becoming and genuine
modesty from the contact, gently repelled him with
211
her hands, saying, “No, I’m better now,—but
come,” and took him by the arm to lead him
further from the fatal closet.
But Peyton immediately released his arm.
“Ah, thank you for not fainting!” he said, with
complete sincerity, and stalked directly back to the
closet. Before she could think of a new device, he
had opened the door, beheld the hat, and seized it in
triumph. “By George, I was right! I bid you
farewell, Miss Williams!” He very civilly saluted
her with the hat, and turned towards the west door
of the parlor.
Must, then, all her previous ingenuity be wasted?
After having so far exerted herself, must she suffer
the ignominious consequences of failure?
She ran to intercept him. Desperation gave her
speed, and she reached the west door before he
did. She closed it with a bang, and stood with
her back against it. “No, no!” she cried. “You
mustn’t!”
“Mustn’t what?” asked Peyton, surprised as
much by her distracted eyes, panting nostrils, and
heaving bosom, as by her act itself.
“Mustn’t go out this way. Mustn’t open this
door,” she answered, wildly.
He scrutinized her features, as if to test a sudden
suspicion of madness. In a moment he threw off
this conjecture as unlikely.
212
“But,” said he, putting forth his hand to grasp
the knob of the door.
“You mustn’t, I say!” she cried. “I can’t help
it! Don’t blame me for it! Don’t ask me to explain,
but you must not go out this way!”
She stood by her task now from a new motive,
one that impelled more strongly than her fear of
being reproached and derided by Elizabeth. Her
own self-esteem was enlisted, and she was now
determined not to incur her own reproach and
derision. She perceived, too, with a sentimental
woman’s sense of the dramatic, that, though denied
a drama of her own in which she might figure as
heroine, here was, in another’s drama, a scene entirely
hers, and she was resolved to act it out with
honor. Circumstances had not favored her with a
romance, but here, in another’s romance, was a chapter
exclusively hers, a chapter, moreover, on whose
proper termination the very continuation of the
romance depended. So she would hold that door,
at any cost.
Peyton regarded her for another moment of
silence.
“Oh, well,” said he, at last, “I can go the other
way.”
And, to her dismay, he strode towards the door
of the east hall. She could not possibly outrun
him thither. Her heart sank. The killing sense
213
of failure benumbed her body. He was already at
the door,—was about to open it. At that instant
he stepped back into the parlor. In through the
doorway, that he was about to traverse, came Elizabeth.
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CHAPTER XI. — THE CONQUEST.
Miss Sally saw at a glance that her niece was
dressed for conquest; then, with immense relief and
supreme exultation, but with a feeling of exhaustion,
knowing that her work was done, she silently left
the room by the door she had guarded, closed it
noiselessly behind her, and went up-stairs to restore
her worked-out energies.
Elizabeth wore a blue satin gown, the one evening
dress she had, in the possibility of a candle-light
visit from the officers at the outpost, brought
with her from New York. Her bare forearms, and
the white surface surrounding the base of her
neck, were thus for the first time displayed to
Peyton’s view. A pair of slender gold bracelets
on her wrists set off the smoothness of her rounded
arms, but she wore no other jewelry. She had
not had the time or the facilities to have her
hair built high as a grenadier’s cap, but she looked
none the less commanding. She was, indeed, a
radiant creature. Peyton, having never before seen
215
her at her present advantage, opened wide his eyes
and stared at her with a wonder whose openness
was excused only by the suddenness of the dazzling
apparition.
She cast on him a momentary look of perfect
indifference, as she might on any one that stood in
her way; then walked lightly to the spinet, giving
him a barely noticeable wide berth in passing, as
if he were something with which it was probably
desirable not to come in contact. Her slight deviation
from a direct line of progress, though made
inoffensively, struck him like a blow, yet did not
interrupt, for more than an instant, his admiration.
He stood dumbly looking after her, at her smooth
and graceful movement, which had no sound but the
rustling of skirts, her footfalls being noiseless in
the satin slippers she wore.
Peyton was not now as impatient as he had been
to depart. In fact, he lost, in some measure, his
sense of being in the act of departure. What he
felt was an inclination to look longer on this so unexpected
vision. She sat down at the spinet with
her back towards him, and somehow conveyed in her
attitude that she thought him no longer in the room.
He felt a necessity for establishing the fact of his
presence.
“Pardon me for addressing you,” he said, with a
diffidence new to him, taking up the first pretext
216
that came to mind, “but I fear your aunt requires
looking to. She behaves strangely.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, lightly, too wise to give him
the importance of pretending not to hear him, “she
is subject to queer spells at times. I thought you
had gone.”
She began to play the spinet, very quietly and
unobtrusively, with an absence of resentment, and
with a seemingly unconscious indifference, that gave
him a paralyzing sense of nothingness.
Unpleasant as this feeling made his position, he
felt the situation become one from which it would be
extremely awkward to flee. For the first time since
certain boyhood fits of bashfulness, he now realized
the aptness of that oft-read expression, “rooted to
the spot.” That he should be thrown into this
trance-like embarrassment, this powerlessness of
motion, this feeling of a schoolboy first introduced
to society, of a player caught by stage fright, was
intolerable.
When she had touched the keys gently a few
times, he shook off something of the spell that
bound him, and moved to a spot whence he could
get a view of her face in profile. It had not an
infinitesimal trace of the storm that had driven him
from the room a short time before. It was entirely
serene. There was on it no anger, no grief, no
reproach of self or of another, no scorn. There was
217
pride, but only the pride it normally wore; reserve,
but only the reserve habitual to a high-born girl in
the presence of any but her familiars. It was hard
to believe her the woman who had been stirred to
such tremendous wrath a few minutes ago, by the
disclosure that she had been deceived, her love
tricked and misplaced. Rather, it was hard to believe
that the scene of wrath had ever occurred, that
this woman had ever been so stirred by such cause,
that she had ever loved him, that he had ever dared
pretend love to her. The deception and the confession,
with all they had elicited from her, seemed
parts of a dream, of some fancy he had had, some
romance he had read.
As for Elizabeth, she knew not, thought not,
whether, in bearing him hot resentment, she still
loved him. She knew only that she craved revenge,
and that the first step towards her desired end
was to assume that indifference which so puzzled,
interested, and confounded him. A weak or a stupid
woman would have shown a sense of injury, with
flashes of anger. An ordinarily clever woman would
have affected disdain, would have sniffed and looked
haughty, would have overdone her pretended contempt.
It is true, Elizabeth had moved slightly out
of her way to pass further from him, but she had
done this with apparent thoughtlessness, as if the
act were dictated by some inner sense of his belonging
218
to an inferior race; not with a visible intention
of showing repulsion. It is true she had assumed
ignorance of his presence, but she had given him to
attribute this to a belief that he had left the room.
When his voice declared his whereabouts, she treated
him just as she would have treated any other indifferent
person who was not quite her equal.
Peyton felt more and more uncomfortable. Would
she continue playing the spinet forever, so perfectly
at ease, so content not to look at him again, so
assuming it for granted that, the operation of leave-taking
being considered over between hostess and
guest, the guest might properly be gone any moment
without further attention on either side?
He began to fear that, if he did not soon speak,
his voice would be beyond recovery. So, with a
desperate resolve to recover his self-possession at
a single coup, he blurted out, bunglingly:
“’Tis the first time I have seen you in that gown,
madam.”
Elizabeth, not ceasing to let her fingers ramble
with soft touch over the keyboard, replied, carelessly:
“I have not worn it in some time.”
Having found that he retained the power of speech,
he proceeded to utter frankly his latest thought, concealing
the slight bitterness of it with a pretence of
playful, make-believe reproach:
“’Tis not flattering to me, that you never wore it
219
while I was your guest, yet put it on the moment
you thought I had departed.”
She answered with good-humored lightness, “Why,
sir, do you complain of not being flattered? I
thought such complaints were made only by women,
and only to their own hearts.”
“If by flattery,” said he, “you mean merited compliment,
there are women who can never have occasion
to complain of not receiving it.”
“Indeed? When was that discovery made?”
“A minute ago, madam.”
“Oh!” and she smiled with just such graciousness
as a woman might show in accepting a compliment
from a comparative stranger. “Thank you!”
“When I think of it,” said he, “it seems strange
that you—ah—never took pains to—eh—to appear
at your best—nay, I should say, as your real
self!—before me.”
“Oh, you allude to my wearing this gown? Why,
you must pardon my not having received you ceremoniously.
Your visit began unexpectedly.”
“Then somebody else is about to begin a visit
that is expected?”
“Didn’t you know? I thought all the house was
aware Major Colden was to return in a week. He
may be here to-night, though perhaps not till to-morrow.”
“Confound that man!” This to himself, and
220
then, to her: “I was of the impression you did not
love him.”
“Why, what gave you that impression?”
“No matter. It seems I was wrong.”
“Oh, I don’t say that,—or that you’re right,
either.”
“However,” quoth he, with an inward sigh of
resignation, “it is for him that you are dressed as
you never were for me!”
She did not choose to ask what reason had existed
for considering him in selecting her attire. It was
better not to notice his presumption, and she became
more absorbed in her music.
Peyton strode up and down a few moments, then
sat by the table, and rested his cheek on his hand,
wearing a somewhat injured look.
“Major Colden, eh?” he mused. “To think I
should come upon him again!” He essayed to
renew conversation. “I trust, Miss Philipse, when
I am gone—” But Elizabeth was now oblivious of
surroundings; the notes from the spinet became
louder, and she began to hum the air in a low,
agreeable voice. Peyton looked hopeless. Presently
he stood up again, watching her.
Elizabeth brought the piece to a lively finish, rose
capriciously, took up the flowers she had laid on the
spinet earlier in the evening, put them in her corsage,
and made to readjust the bracelet on her right
221
arm. In this attempt, she accidentally dropped the
bracelet to the floor. Peyton ran to pick it up.
But she quickly recovered it before he could reach
it, put it on, walked to the table and sat down by it,
removed the flowers from her bosom to the table,
took up the volume of “The School for Scandal,”
and turned the leaves over as if in quest of a certain
page.
While she was looking at the book, Peyton took
up the flowers. Elizabeth, as if thinking they were
still where she had laid them, put out her hand to
repossess them, keeping her eyes the while on the
book. For a moment, her hand ranged the table in
search, then she abandoned the attempt to regain
them.
Peyton held them out to her.
“No, I thank you,” she said, laying down the
book, and went back to the spinet.
“Ah, you give them to me!” cried Peyton, with
sudden pleasure.
“Not at all! I merely do not wish to have them
now.”
“Oh,” said he, thinking to make account by finding
offence where none was really expressed, “has
my touch contaminated them for you?”
“How can you talk so absurdly?” And she resumed
her seat at the spinet, and her playing.
Peyton stood holding the flowers, looking at her,
222
and presently heaved a deep sigh. This not moving
her, he suddenly had an access of pride, brought
himself together, and saying, with quick resolution,
“I bid you good-night and good-by, madam,” went
rapidly towards the door of the east hall. But his
resolution weakened when his hand touched the
knob, and, to make pretext for further sight of her,
he turned and went to go out the other door.
Elizabeth had had a moment of alarm at his first
sign of departure, but had not betrayed the feeling.
Now when, from her seat at the spinet, she saw him
actually crossing the threshold near her, she called
out, gently, “A moment, captain.”
The pleased look on his face, as he turned towards
her inquiringly, betrayed his gratification at being
called back.
“You are taking my flowers away,” she said, in
explanation.
He plainly showed his disappointment. “Your
pardon. My thoughtlessness. But you said you
didn’t wish to keep them.” He laid them on the
spinet.
“I do not,—yet a woman must allow very few
hands to carry off flowers of her gathering.”
She rose and took up the flowers and walked
towards the fireplace.
“Then you at least take them back from my
hands,” said Peyton.
223
“Why, yes,—for this,” and she tossed them into
the fire.
He looked at them as they withered in the blaze,
then said, “Have you any objection to my carrying
away the ashes, Miss Philipse?”
She answered, considerately, “’Twill take you more
time than you can lose, to gather them up.”
“Oh, I am in no haste.”
“Oh, then, I ask your pardon. A moment since,
you were about to go.”
“But now I prefer to stay.”
“Indeed? May I ask the reason—but no matter.”
But he felt that a reason ought to be forthcoming.
“Why, you know, because—” And here he
thought of one. “I wish to stay to meet Major
Colden, of whom you say I am afraid. I shall prove
to you at least I am no coward. After what you
have said to me this night, I must in honor wait to
face him.”
“But it is late now. I don’t think he will come
till to-morrow.”
“Then I can wait till to-morrow.”
“But your duty calls you back to your own camp,
now that your wound has healed.”
“I think my wound has undergone a slight relapse.
You shall see, at least, I am not afraid of
your champion.”
“If that is your only reason,—your desire to
224
quarrel with Major Colden,—I cannot invite you
to remain.”
“Well, then, to tell the truth, there is another
reason. When I said, a while since, I had never
seen you in that gown, I used too many words. I
should have said I had never really seen you at all.”
“Where were your eyes?” she asked, absently,
seeming to take his words literally and to perceive
no compliment.
“I was in a kind of waking sleep.”
“It has been a time and place of hallucinations, I
think. I, too, sir, have been, since I came here a
week ago, under the strangest spell. A kind of light
madness or witchery was over me, and made me act
ridiculously, against my very will. A week ago,
when you were disabled, I intended to give you up
to the British,—as I should do now, if it would not
be so troublesome—”
“’Twould be troublesome to me, I assure you,” he
said, interrupting.
“But at the last moment,” she went on, “I did
precisely the reverse of what I wished. Awhile
ago, in this room, I seemed to be in the possession
of some evil spirit, which made me say preposterous
things. I can only remember some wild raving I
indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed
towards you. But, will you believe, the instant
you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am
225
like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will
pardon any incivility I may have done you in my
peculiar state, I’m sure, since you speak of having
been curiously afflicted yourself.”
“Then you mean,” he faltered, “you did not
really love me?”
“Why, certainly I did not! How could you think
I did? Something possessed my will. But, thank
heaven, I am myself again. Why, sir, how could I?
You know very little of me, sir, to think—Oh!”
She covered her face with her hands. “What things
must I have said and done, in my clouded state,
to make you think that! You,—an enemy, a rebel,
a person whose only possible interest to me arises
from his enmity!”
Dazzled as he was by her newly discovered beauty,
the imposition on him was complete. He saw this
covetable being now indifferent to him, out of his
power to possess, likely soon to pass into the possession
of another.
“Pray try to forget awhile that enmity,” he
supplicated.
“I shall try, and then you can have no interest
for me at all.”
“Then don’t try, I beg. I’d rather have an interest
for you as an enemy than not at all.”
“Why, really, sir—” She seemed half puzzled,
half amused.
226
“Lord,” quoth he, “how I have been deluded!
I thought my love-making that night, feigned though
it was, had wakened a response.”
“Love-making, do you say? Will you believe me,
sir, I don’t remember what passed here that night,
save the unaccountable ending,—my making you
my guest instead of their prisoner.”
“I wish you were pretending all this!”
“Why, if ’twould make you happier that I were,
I wish so, too.”
“How can you speak so lightly of such matters?”
“What matters?”
“Love, of course.”
“Why, do men alone, because they laugh at
women for taking love seriously, have the right
to take it lightly? And of what love am I speaking
lightly,—the love you say you feigned for me,
or the love you say you thought you had awakened
in me?”
“The love I vow I do not feign for you! The
love I wish I could awaken in you!”
“Why, captain, what a change has come over
you!”
“Yes. I have risen from my sleep. If you, in
waking from yours, put off love, I, in waking from
mine, took on love!”
She smiled, as with amusement. “A somewhat
speedy taking on, I should say.”
227
“Love’s born of a glance, I say!”
“Haven’t I heard that before?” reflectively.
“Aye, for I said it here when I did not mean it,
and now I say it again when I do!”
“And of what particular glance am I to suppose—”
“Of the first glance I cast on you when you
entered this room in that gown. Yes, born of a
glance—”
“Born of a gown, in that case, don’t you mean?”
derisively.
“Of a gown, or a glance, or a what you wish.”
“I don’t wish it should be born at all.”
“You don’t wish I should love you?”
“I don’t wish you should love me or shouldn’t
love me. I don’t wish you—anything. Why
should I wish anything of one who is nothing to
me?”
“Nothing to you! I would you were to me what
I am to you!”
“What is that, pray?”
“An adorer!”
“You are a—very amusing gentleman.”
“You refuse me a glimpse of hope?”
“You would like to have it as a trophy, I suppose.
You men treasure the memories of your little conquests
over foolish women, as an Indian treasures
the scalps he takes.”
228
“Lord! which sex, I wonder, has the busier
scalping-knife?”
“I can’t speak for all my sex. Some of us seek
no scalps—”
“You don’t have to. I make you a present of
mine. I fling it at your feet.”
“We seek no scalps, I say,—because we don’t
value them a finger-snap.” And she gave a specimen
of the kind of finger-snap she did not value
them at.
“In heaven’s name,” he said, “say what you do
value, that I may strive to become like it! What
do you value, I implore you, tell me?”
“Oh,—my studies, for one thing,—my French
and my music,—”
“Could I but translate myself into French, or set
myself to an air!”
“Nay, I don’t care for comic songs!”
“I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be
buried in your garden, and grow up in the shape of
a rose-bush—”
“Or a cabbage!”
“I fear you don’t like that flower.”
“Better come up in the form of your own Virginia
tobacco.”
“And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you
don’t like tobacco. Ah, Miss Philipse, this levity is
far from the mood of my heart!”
229
“Why do you indulge in it, then?”
“I? Is it I who indulge in levity?”
“Assuredly, I do not!” Oh, woman’s privilege
of saying unabashedly the thing which is not!
“No,” said he, “for there’s no levity in the coldness
with which beauty views the wounds it makes.”
“I’m sure one is not compelled to offer oneself to
its wounds.”
“No,—nor the moth to seek the flame.”
“La, now you are a moth,—a moment ago, a
rose-bush,—”
“And you are ten million roses, grown in the garden
of heaven, and fashioned into one body there, by
some celestial Praxiteles!”
“Dear me, am I all that?”
“Ay,” he said, sadly, “and no more truly conscious
of what it means to be all that, than any rose
in any garden is conscious of what its beauty means!”
“Perhaps,” she said, softly, feeling for a moment
almost tenderness enough to abandon her purpose,
“more conscious than you think!”
“Ah! Then you are not like common beauties,—as
poor and dull within as they are rich and radiant
without? You but pretend insensibility, to hide real
feeling.”
“I did not say so,” she answered, lightly, bracing
herself again to her resolution.
“But it is so, is it not?” he went on. “Your
230
heart and mind are as roseate and delicate as your
face? You can understand my praises and my feelings?
You can value such love as mine aright, and
know ’tis worthy some repayment?”
But she was not again to be duped by low-spoken,
fervid words, or by wistful, glowing eyes. She must
be sure of him.
“I know,—I recall now,” she said, with little apparent
interest; “you spoke of love a week ago,
with no less eloquence and ardor.”
“More eloquence and ardor, I dare say, for then I
did not feel love. Then my tongue was not tied by
sense of a passion it could not hope to express one
hundredth part of! And, even if my tongue had gift
to tell my heart, I should not dare trust myself
under the sway of my feelings. But I do love you
now,—I do,—I do!”
“If now, why not before?”
“Haven’t I said I’ve been blind to you until
to-night? At first I regarded you as only an
enemy to be turned to my use in my peril. Having
been fortunate in that, I gave myself to other
thoughts. But, thinking my false love had drawn
true love from you, I saw I could not in honor leave
you under a false belief. But now the falsehood has
become truth. A week ago, I avowed a pretended
passion, to gain my life! Now, I declare a real one,
to gain your love!”
231
“What, you expect to take my love by storm, in
reality, as you did, in appearance, a week ago?”
She had risen from the music seat, and now stood
with her back against the spinet, her hands behind
her, her head turned slightly upward, facing him.
“I don’t expect,” said he. “I only hope.”
“And what gives you reason to hope?”
“My own love for you. Love elicits love, they
say.”
“They say wrong, then. If that were true, there
would be no unrequited lovers.”
“Ay, but such love as mine,—how can it so fill
me to overflowing, and not infect you?”
“Love is not an infectious disease. If it were, I
should have no fear,—knowing myself love-proof.”
“I can’t believe that,—for a woman with no
spark in herself could not light so fierce a flame in
me, by the mere meeting of our eyes.”
“If it should create in me such a disturbance as
you seem to undergo, I shouldn’t wish it to increase.
But, I assure you, it isn’t in me.”
“Pray think it is. Only imagine it is there, and
soon it will be.”
She felt that the time was at hand to strike the
blow.
“If I could be perfectly sure you spoke in earnest,”
she said, seeming to search his countenance
for testimony.
232
“In earnest!” he echoed. “Great heavens, what
evidence do you want? If there is an aspect of love
I do not have, tell me, and I shall put it on.”
“Yes, you are experienced in putting on the
aspects of love.”
“Oh, you well know I have no reason now for
declaring a love I don’t feel. If you could be sure
I spoke in earnest, you said,—what then? Tell
me, and I shall find a way to convince you I am in
earnest.”
“Convince me first.”
“‘Convince me,’ you say. And I say, ‘Be convinced.’
By the Lord, never was so great a sceptic!
Is not your sense of your own charms sufficient to
convince you of their effect?”
“Mere words!”
“I’ll prove my love by acts, then!”
“By what acts?”
“By fighting for you or suffering for you, dying
for you or living for you, as you may command.”
“You can prove it thus. Say, ‘Long live the
King!’”
He gazed at her a moment. “No,” he said.
“Say, ‘Long live the King!’” She went to the
door, and paused on the threshold, looking at him,
as if to give him a last opportunity.
“Long live the King—” he said.
233
She came back from the door.
“Of France!” he added.
“No,” she cried, and dictated, “‘Long live the
King of Great Britain!’”
“Long live the King of Great Britain,—but not
of America.”
“No! ‘Long live George the Third, King of
Great Britain and the American colonies!’”
“Long live George the Third, King of Great
Britain and—Ireland.”
“‘And of the American colonies.’ Say it! Say
it all!”
“Long live Elizabeth Philipse, queen of beauty in
the United States of America!” he answered.
“You don’t love me,” said she, and set her mind
to finding some other means by which he might
evince what she knew he would never demonstrate
in the way she had demanded. And she resolved
his humiliation should be all the greater for the
delay. “You don’t love me.”
“I do. I swear, on my knees.”
“Then get on your knees!”
“I do!” He dropped on one knee.
“Both knees!”
“Both.” He suited action to word.
“Bow lower.”
“I touch the floor.” He did so, with his forehead.
“Are you convinced?”
234
“Yes.” And she moved thoughtfully towards
the door of the east hall.
“Ah! Convinced that I love you madly?” In
obedience to a gesture, he remained on his knees.
“Perfectly convinced.”
“Then, the reward of which you hinted?”
“Reward?”
“You said, if you could be sure I spoke in earnest.
Now you admit you are sure. What then?”
She let her eyes rest on him a moment, without
speaking, as he looked ardently and expectantly up
at her from his kneeling attitude, while she took in
breath, and then she flung her answer at him.
“What then? This! That you are now more
contemptible and ridiculous and utterly non-existent,
to me, than you have formerly been! That, whatever
I may have done which seemed in your behalf, was
partly from the strange insanity of which I have
spoken, and partly from the most meaningless caprice!
That, if you remain here till to-morrow, you
may see me in the arms of the man I really love,
and that he may not be as careless of the fate of
a vagabond rebel as I am. And now, Captain Crayton,
or Dayton, or Peyton, or whatever you please,
of somebody or other’s light horse, go or stay, as
you choose; you’re as welcome as any other casual
passer-by, for all the comical figure your impudence
has made you cut! Learn modesty, sir, and you
235
may fare better in your next love-making, if you do
not aim too high! And that piece of advice is the
reward I hinted at! Good night!”
And she whirled from the room, slamming behind
her the mahogany door, at which Peyton stared for
some seconds, in blank amazement, too overwhelmed
to speak or move or breathe or think.
But gradually he came to life, slowly rose, stood
for a moment thoughtful, fashioned his brows into a
frown, drew his lips back hard, and muttered through
his closed teeth:
“I’ll stay and fight that man, at least!”
And he sat down by the table, to wait.
236
CHAPTER XII. — THE CHALLENGE.
A very few moments had elapsed, and Peyton
still sat by the table, in a dogged study, when the
door from the south hall was opened slightly, and
if he had looked he might have seen a pair of eyes
peeping through the aperture. But he did not look,
either then or when, some seconds later, the door
opened wide and Miss Sally bobbed gracefully in.
It has been related how, after her brilliant but
exhausting conduct of the important scene assigned
her, she sought repose in her room. Looking out
of her window presently, she saw something, of
which she thought it advisable to inform Elizabeth.
Therefore she came down-stairs. Did she listen at
the door to the last part of that notable conversation?
Ungallant thought, aroint thee! ’Tis well
known women have little curiosity, and what little
they have they would not, being of Miss Sally’s
station in life, descend to gratify by eavesdropping.
Let it be assumed, therefore, that the much vaunted
informant, feminine intuition, told Miss Sally of the
237
end of the interview between her niece and the captain,
both as to the time of that end and as to its
nature.
She entered, tremulous with a vast idea that had
blazed suddenly on her mind. Now that Elizabeth
was quite through with Peyton, now that Peyton
must be low in his self-esteem for Elizabeth’s humiliation
of him, and therefore likely to be grateful for
consolatory attentions, Miss Sally might resume her
own hopes. But there was no time to be lost.
“Your pardon, captain,” she began, sweetly, with
her most flattering smile. “I am looking for Miss
Elizabeth.”
“She was here awhile ago,” replied Peyton, glumly,
not bringing his eyes within range of the smile.
“She went that way. I trust you’ve recovered
from your attack.”
“My attack?” inquiringly, with surprise.
“The queer spell, I think Miss Philipse called it.
She said you were subject to them.”
“Well, how does she dare—” She checked
her tongue, lest she might betray the device for his
detention. Something in his absent, careless way of
associating her with a queer spell irritated her a
little for the moment, and impelled her to retaliation.
“I suppose that was not the only thing she said to
you?” she added, ingenuously.
“No,—she said other things.” He rose and
238
went to the fireplace, leaned against the mantel,
and gazed pensively at the red embers.
“They don’t seem to have left you very cheerful,”
ventured Miss Sally.
“Not so very damned cheerful!—I beg your
pardon.”
Miss Sally’s moment of resentment had passed.
Now was the time to strike for herself. She thought
she had hit on a clever plan of getting around to the
matter.
“Captain,” said she, “you’re a man of the world.
I know it’s presumptuous of me to ask it, but—if
you would give me a word of advice—”
Peyton did not take his look from the fire, or his
thoughts from their dismal absorption. He answered,
half-unconsciously:
“Oh, certainly! Anything at all.”
“You are aware, of course,” she went on, with
smirking, rosy confusion, “that Mr. Valentine is a
widower.”
“Indeed? Oh, yes, yes, I know.”
“Yes, a widower twice over.”
“How sad! He must feel twice the usual amount
of grief.”
“Why,—I don’t know exactly about that.”
“The poor man has my sympathy. Doubtless he
is inconsolable.” Peyton scarce knew what he was
saying, or whom it was about.
239
“Why, no,” said Miss Sally, averting her eyes,
with a smiling shyness, “not altogether inconsolable.
That’s just it.”
“Oh, is it?” said Peyton, obliviously.
“You may have noticed that he spends a good
deal of time here at present,” she went on.
“A good deal of time,” he repeated. “There’s
doubtless some strong attraction.”
“Yes. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say it, but there is
a strong attraction. In fact, he has proposed marriage
to me, and now, as a man of the world to a
woman of little experience, would you advise me to
accept him?”
And she looked at the disconsolate officer so
sweetly, it seemed impossible he should do aught
but say it would be throwing herself away to bestow
on an old man charms of which younger and warmer
eyes were sensible. But he answered only:
“Certainly! An excellent match!”
For a time Miss Sally was speechless, yet open-mouthed.
And then, for the length of one brief but
fiery tirade, she showed herself to be her niece’s aunt:
“Sir! The idea! I wouldn’t have that old
smoke-chimney if he were the last man on earth!
I’d have given him his congé long ago, if it hadn’t
been that he might propose to my friend, the widow
Babcock! I’ve only kept him on the string to prevent
her getting him. When I want your advice,
240
Captain Peyton, I’ll ask for it! Excuse me, I must
find Elizabeth. I’ve news for her.”
“News?” he echoed, stupidly.
“Yes. From my chamber window awhile ago I
saw some one riding this way on the post-road,—Major
Colden!”
And she swept out by the same door that had
closed, a few minutes before, on Elizabeth.
“Major Colden!” Peyton’s teeth tightened, his
eyes shot fire, his hand flew to his sword-hilt, as he
spoke the name.
He went to the window, the same window at
which Elizabeth had looked out a week ago, and
peered through the panes at the night.
“Why, the ground is white,” he said. “It has
begun to snow.”
But, through the large flakes that fell thick and
swiftly among the trees, he did not yet see any
humankind approaching. His view of the branch
road was, at some places, obstructed by tall shrubbery
that rose high above the palings and the hedge.
Yet through those flakes, assaulted by them in
eyes and nostrils, invaded by them in ears and neck,
humankind was riding. It was, indeed, Colden
that Miss Sally had seen through a fortuitous
opening, which gave, between the trees, a view of the
most eminent point of the post-road southward. He
was to conduct Elizabeth home the next day, but
241
had availed himself of his opportunity to ride out to
the manor-house that night, so as to have the few
more hours in her society. He had this time taken
an escort of two privates of his own regiment, but
these men were not as well mounted as he, and, in
his impatience, having seen the best their horses
could do, and having passed King’s Bridge, he had
ridden ahead of them, leaving them to follow to
the manor-house in their own speediest time. Thus
it was that now he bore alone down from the post-road,
his horse’s feet making on the new-fallen snow
no other sound than a soft crunching, scarce louder
than its heavy breathing or its mouth-play on the
bit, or the creak and clank of saddle, bridle, stirrups,
pistols, and scabbard. His eyes dwelt eagerly on
the manor-house, where awaited him light and
warmth and wine, refuge from the pelting flakes,
and, above all else, the joy-giving presence of Elizabeth.
His breast expanded, he sighed already with
relief; he approached the gate as a released soul,
with admission ticket duly purchased by a deathbed
repentance, might approach the gate of heaven.
But Peyton, looking out on the white world, saw
no one. He did not change his attitude when the
door reopened and Elizabeth and her aunt came into
the parlor, arm in arm.
“You’re sure ’twas he, aunt Sally?” Elizabeth had
been saying.
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“Positive. He should be here now,” Miss Sally
had replied.
Elizabeth cast a look of secret elation on the
unheeding rebel captain, whose forehead was still
against the window-pane. She saw a possible means
of his still further degradation.
Suddenly he took a quick step back from the
window, impulsively renewed his grasp of his sword-hilt,
and showed a face of resolute antagonism.
Elizabeth knew from this that he had seen Colden.
She gave a smile of pleasant anticipation.
But Miss Sally had relapsed into her usual timid
self. She held tightly to Elizabeth’s arm.
“Oh, dear!” she whispered. “Won’t something
happen when those two meet?”
“I hope so!” said Elizabeth, placidly.
“Why?” demanded Miss Sally, beginning to
weaken at the knees.
“If Colden sends him to the ground, in our presence,
that will crown the fellow’s humiliation.”
Five brisk knocks, in quick succession, were heard
from the outside door of the east hall.
Peyton walked across the parlor, turned, and stood
facing the east hall door, the greater part of the
room’s length being between him and it. His hand
remained on his sword. He paid no heed to Elizabeth,
she paid none to him.
“His knock!” she said, and called out through
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the east hall door: “’Tis Major Colden, Sam. Show
him here at once.” She then stepped back from the
door, to a place whence she could see both it and
Peyton. Her aunt clung to her arm all the while,
and now whispered, “Oh, Elizabeth, I fear there will
be trouble!”
“If there is, it won’t fall on your silly head,”
whispered Elizabeth, in reply.
From the hall came the sound of the drawing
of bolts. Peyton did not take his eyes from the
door.
A noise of footfalls, accompanied by clank of
spurs and weapons, and in came Colden, his hat
in his left hand, snow on his hat and shoulders, his
cloak open, his sword and pistols visible, his right
hand ungloved to clasp Elizabeth’s.
She received him with such a cordial smile as he
had never before had from her.
“Elizabeth!” he cried,—beheld only her, hastened
to her, took her proffered hand, bent his head
and kissed the fingers, raised his eyes with a grateful,
joyous smile,—and saw Peyton standing motionless
at the other side of the room. The smile
vanished; a look of amazement and hatred came.
“I wish you a very good evening, Major Colden!”
Peyton said this in a voice as hard and ironical
as might have come from a brass statue.
For the next few seconds the two men stood
244
gazing at each other, the women gazing at the men.
At last the Tory major found speech:
“Elizabeth,—what does it mean? Why is this
man here,—again?”
“’Tis rather a long story, Jack, and you shall hear
it all in time,” said Elizabeth, determined he should
never hear the true story.
Before she could continue, Colden suffered a start
of alarm to possess him, and asked, quickly:
“Are any of his troops here?”
“No; he is quite alone,” she answered.
Colden at once took on height, arrogance, and
formidableness.
“Then why have not your servants made him
a prisoner?” he asked.
“Why,” said she, “you being mentioned to-night,
in his presence, he made some kind of boast of not
fearing you, and I, divining how soon you would be
here, thought fit his freedom with your name should
best be paid for at your hands, major.”
“Ay, major,” put in Peyton, “and I have stayed
to receive payment!”
Colden thought for a short while. Then he said,
“A moment, Elizabeth. Your pardon, Miss Williams,”
and drew Elizabeth aside, and spoke to her
in a low tone: “We have only to temporize with
him. Two of my men have attended me from my
quarters. I had a better horse, and rode ahead, in
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my eagerness to see you. My two fellows will be
here soon, and the business will be done.”
But such doing of the business did not suit Elizabeth’s
purpose. “I wish to humiliate the man,”
she answered Colden, inaudibly to the others; “to
take down his upstart pride! ’Twould be no shame
to him, to be made prisoner by numbers.”
“What, then?” asked Colden, dubiously.
“Bring down the coxcomb, before us women, in
an even match!”
To prevent objections, she then abruptly went
from Colden, and resumed her place at her aunt’s
side.
Colden stood frowning, not half pleased at her
hint. It occurred to him, as it did not to her, that
the mere allegiance and favoring wishes of herself
were not sufficient possessions to ensure victory in
such a match as she meant. Elizabeth, accustomed
to success, did not conceive it possible that the
chosen agent of her own designs could fail. But
the chosen agent had, in this case, wider powers
of conception.
All this time, Captain Peyton had stood as
motionless as a figure in a painting. He now interrupted
Colden’s meditations with the gentle
reminder:
“I am waiting for my payment, Major Colden.”
Colden was not a man of much originality. So,
246
in his instinctive endeavor to gain time, he bungled
out the conventional reply, “You wish to seek a
quarrel with me, sir?”
“Seek a quarrel?” retorted Peyton. “Is not the
quarrel here? Has not Miss Philipse spoken of an
offence to your name, for which I ought to receive
payment from you? Gad, she’d not have to speak
twice to make me draw!”
Colden continued to be as conventional as a virtuous
hero of a novel. “I do not fight in the
presence of ladies, sir,” said he.
“Nor I,” said Peyton. “Choose your own place,
in the garden yonder. With snow on the ground,
there’s light enough.”
And Harry went quickly, almost to the door, near
which he stopped to give Colden precedence.
“Nay,” put in Elizabeth, “we ladies can bear the
sight of a sword-cut or two. Wait for us,” and
she would have gone to send for wraps, but that
Colden raised his hand in token of refusal, saying:
“Nay, Elizabeth. I will not consent.”
“Come, sir,” said Peyton. “’Tis no use to oppose
a lady’s whim. But if you make haste, we
may have it over before they can arrive on the
ground.”
In handling his sword-hilt, Peyton had pulled the
weapon a few inches out of the scabbard, and now,
though he did not intend to draw while in the house,
247
he unconsciously brought out the full length of what
remained of the blade. For the time he had forgotten
the sword was broken, and now he was
reminded of it with some inward irritation.
Meanwhile Colden was answering:
“There’s no regularity in such a meeting. Where
are the seconds?”
“I’ll be your second, major,” cried Elizabeth.
“Aunt Sally, second Captain Peyton.”
“Ridiculous!” said the major.
“Anything to bring you out,” said Peyton, as
desirous of avenging himself on Elizabeth, through
her affianced, as she was to complete her own
revenge through the same instrument. “I’ll fight
you with half a sword. I’d forgotten ’tis all I’ve
left.”
“I would not take an advantage,” said the New
Yorker.
“Then break your own sword, and make us
equal,” said the Virginian.
“I value my weapon too much for that.”
Peyton smiled ironically. But he tried again.
“Then I shall be less scrupulous,” said he. “I
will take an advantage. The greater honor to you,
if you defeat me. You take the broken sword, and
lend me yours.”
He held out his hilt for exchange.
Colden pretended to laugh, saying:
248
“Am I a fool to put it in your power to murder
me?”
“I’ll tell you what, gentlemen,” put in Elizabeth.
“Use the swords above the chimney-place, yonder.
They are equal.”
“Yes!” cried Peyton.
But Colden said:
“I will not so degrade myself as to cross swords,
except on the battle-field, with one who is a rebel, a
deserter, and no gentleman.”
Peyton turned to Elizabeth with a smile.
“Then you see, madam,” said he, “’tis no fault of
mine if my affronts go unpunished, since this gentleman
must keep his courage for the battle-field!
Egad,” he added, sacrificing truth for the sake of
the taunt, “you Tories need all the courage there
you can save up in a long time! I take my leave of
this house!”
“‘I TAKE MY LEAVE OF THIS HOUSE!’”
He thrust his sword back into the scabbard, bowed
rapidly and low, with a flourish of his hat, and went
out by the same door Elizabeth had used in her own
moment of triumph. He unbolted the outside door
himself, before black Sam could come from the settle
to serve him. Snowflakes rushed in at the open
door. He plunged into them, swinging the door
close after him. Out through the little portico he
went, down the walk outside the very parlor window
through which he had looked out awhile ago,
249
but through which he did not now look in as he
passed; through the gate, and up the branch road to
the highway. He was possessed by a confusion of
thoughts and feelings,—temporary and superficial
elation at having put Elizabeth’s preferred lover in
so bad a light, wild ideas of some future crossing of
her path, swift dreams of a future conquest of her
in spite of all, a fierce desire for such action as
would lead to that end. He was eager to rejoin the
army now, to participate in the fighting that would
bring about the humbling of her cause and make it
the more in his power to master her. He heeded
little the snow that impeded his steps as his boots
sank into it, and which, in falling, blinded his eyes,
tickled his face, and clung to his hair. The tumult
of flakes was akin to that of his feelings, and he
was in mood for encountering such opposition as the
storm made to his progress.
Arriving at the post-road, he turned and went
northward. At his left lay the great lawn fronting
the manor-house, and separated from the road by
hedge and palings. He could see, across the snowy
expanse, between the dark trunks and whitened
branches of the trees, the long front of the manor-house,
its roof and its porticoes already covered with
snow, the light glowing in the one exposed window
of the east parlor. As he quieted down within, he
felt pleasantly towards the house, to which his week’s
250
half-solitary residence in it, with the comfort he had
enjoyed there and the books he had read, had given
him an attachment. He cast on it a last affectionate
look, then breasted the weather onward, wondering
what things the future might have in store for
him.
He had little fear of not reaching the American
lines in safety. It was unlikely that any of the enemy’s
marauders would be out on such a night, and
more unlikely that any regular military movement
would be making on the neutral ground. He expected
to meet no one on the road, but he would
keep a sharp lookout in all directions as he went,
and, in case of any human apparition, would take to
the fields or the woods. But all the world, thought
he, would stay within doors this white night.
Sliding back a part of every step he took in the
snow, he passed the boundary of the Philipse lawn,
and that of such part of the grounds as included,
with other appurtenances, the garden north of the
house. He had come, at last, to a place where the
fence at his left ended and the forest began. He
had, a moment before, cast a long look backward
to assure himself the road was empty behind him.
He now trudged on, his eyes fixed ahead.
From behind a low pine-tree, at the end of the
fence, two dark figures glided up to the captain’s
rear, their steps noiseless in the snow. One of them
251
caught both his forearms at the same instant, and
pulled them back together, as with grips of iron. A
second pair of hands placed a noose about his wrists,
and quickly tightened it. Ere he could turn, his
first assailant released the bound arms to the second,
drew a pistol, and thrust the muzzle close to Peyton’s
cheek, whereupon the second man said:
“Your pardon, captain. Come quietly, or you’re
a dead man!”
252
CHAPTER XIII. — THE UNEXPECTED.
Peyton’s somewhat elate exit from the parlor was
followed by a moment of silence and inertia on the
part of the three who remained there. But Elizabeth’s
chagrin was speedily translated into anger
against Major Colden.
“Why didn’t you fight him?” she demanded of
that gentleman, who was flinching inwardly, but who
maintained a pale and haughty exterior.
“What was the use?” he replied. “He’s reserved
for the gallows. If my two men were
here! Why not send your servants after him?
Sam is a powerful fellow, and Williams is shrewd
and strong.”
Elizabeth ignored Colden’s reply, and answered
her own question, thus:
“It was because you remembered the time he
disarmed you, three years ago.”
“You may think so, if you choose,” he replied, in
the patient manner of one who quietly endures unjust
reproaches when self-defence is useless.
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“You will find refreshments in the dining-room,”
said Elizabeth, coldly. “Sam will show you to your
room.”
“I would rather remain with you,” he replied.
“I would rather be alone with my aunt a while.”
A deep sigh expressed his dejecting sense of how
futile it would be to oppose her.
“As you will,” he then said, and, bowing gravely,
left the parlor.
Elizabeth’s feelings now burst out.
“Oh,” she exclaimed to her aunt, “what a chicken-hearted
copy of a man! And he calls himself
a soldier! I wonder where he found the spirit to
volunteer!”
“From you, my dear,” replied Miss Sally. “Didn’t
you urge him to take a commission?”
“And that rebel fellow had the best of it all
through,” Elizabeth went on. “I was to see him
laid low by his rival, as my crowning revenge!
How he swaggered out! with what a look of triumph
in his eye! And—aunt Sally! He won’t
come back! I shall never see him again!”
“Why, child, do you wish to?”
“Of course not! But I can’t have him go away
with the laugh on his side! He made me ridiculous
after my trying to stab him with my love for the
other man. Such another man! Oh, the rebel
must come back!”
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“But he isn’t likely to,” said Miss Sally.
“Oh, what shall I do?” wailed the niece.
“Elizabeth, I’ll wager you’re still in love with
him!”
“I’m not! I hate him!—Well, what if I am?
He loved me, I’m sure, the last time he said it.
But, good heavens, he’s going farther away every
instant!”
She clasped her hands, and, for once, looked at
her aunt for help, like a distressed child on the verge
of weeping.
“Why don’t you call him back?” said Miss
Sally.
“I? Not if I die for want of seeing him!—I
know! I will send the servants after him.” And
she started for the door, but stopped at her aunt’s
comment:
“But that will be as bad as calling him yourself.”
“Not at all, you empty pate!” cried Elizabeth,
who had become, in a moment, all action. “While
he’s going around by the road, Williams and Sam
shall cut across the garden, lie in wait, and take him
by surprise. He has no weapon but a broken sword,
and they can make him prisoner. They shall bring
him back here bound, and he’ll think he’s to be turned
over to the British after all!”
“But what then?”
“Why, he shall be left alone here, well guarded, for
255
half an hour, and then I’ll happen in, give him an
opportunity to make love again, and I can yield
gracefully! Don’t you see?”
“Then you do love him?” said the aunt.
“I don’t know. However, I don’t love Jack Colden.
Not a word to him, of this! I’m going to give
orders to the men.”
As she entered the hall, she met Colden, who was
coming from the dining-room with Mr. Valentine.
The major had limited his refreshments to two
glasses of brandy and water, swallowed in quick succession.
Mr. Valentine, who was smoking his pipe,
held Colden fraternally by the arm.
“What, Elizabeth, are you still angry?” said Colden,
stopping as she passed.
“Excuse me, I have something to see to,” said the
girl, coolly, hurrying away from him.
He made a slight movement to follow her, but old
Valentine drew him into the parlor, saying:
“Come, major, you’ll see the lady enough after
she’s married to you. I was just going to say, the
last lot of tobacco I got—”
“Oh, damn your tobacco!” said the other, jerking
his arm from the old man’s tremulous grasp.
“Damn my tobacco?” echoed Mr. Valentine, quite
stupefied.
“Yes. I’ve matters more important on my mind
just now.”
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“The deuce!” cried the old man. “What could
be more important than tobacco?”
And he stood looking into the fire, muttering to
himself between furious puffs.
Colden sought comfort of Miss Sally. “Was ever
a woman as unreasonable as Elizabeth?” he said to
her. “She’d have had me lower myself to meet that
rebel vagabond as one gentleman meets another.”
But Miss Sally was not going to betray her own
disappointment by showing a change from her oft-expressed
opinion of the rebel captain,—particularly
in the presence of Mr. Valentine. So she
answered:
“You met him so once, three years ago.”
“I had a less scrupulous sense of propriety then,”
replied Colden, raging inwardly.
“But, as he’s a rebel and deserter,” pursued Miss
Sally, “was it not your duty as a soldier to take him,
just now?”
“I’d have done so, had my men been here,”
growled the major. “Elizabeth ought to’ve had
her servants hold him. I had half a mind to order
them, in the King’s name, but I never can bring myself
to oppose her, she’s so masterful! By George,
though, I’ll have him yet! My two fellows will soon
come up. They shall give chase. He will leave
tracks in the snow.”
Colden went to the window, and peered out as
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Peyton himself had done not long before. The
flakes were coming down as thick as ever.
“I don’t see my rascals yet!” he muttered.
“They’ve stopped at the tavern, I’ll warrant.”
And he continued to gaze eagerly out, impatient
that his men should arrive before the new-fallen snow
should cover his enemy’s tracks.
Old Mr. Valentine, having exhausted his present
stock of mutterings, now walked over to Miss Sally,
who had sat down near the spinet.
“Miss Williams,” said he, “this is the first chance
I’ve had to speak to you alone in a week.”
“But we’re not alone,” said Miss Sally, motioning
her head towards Colden.
“He’s nobody,” contemptuously replied the octogenarian.
“A man that damns tobacco is nobody.
So you may go ahead and speak out. What’s your
answer, ma’am?”
“Oh, Mr. Valentine, not now! You must give
me time.”
“That’s what you said before,” he complained.
She had, indeed, said it before, scores of times.
“Well, give me more time, then,” she replied.
“How much?” asked the old man, in a matter-of-fact
way.
“Oh, I don’t know! Long enough for me to
make up my mind.”
Thus far, this conversation had followed in the
258
exact lines of many that had preceded it, but now
Mr. Valentine made a departure from the customary
form.
“I think,” said he, “if my other two wives had
taken as long as you to make up their minds, I
shouldn’t have been twice a widower by now.”
“Oh, Mr. Valentine!” said Miss Sally, in a sweetly
reproachful way. “Now you know—”
But he cut her speech off short. “Very likely,”
said he. “I don’t know. Well, take your time.
Only please remember I haven’t so very much time
left! Better take me while I’m here to be had!
Good night, ma’am!” And he went to the dining-room
to fortify himself for his long homeward walk
through the snow.
In crossing the hall, he saw Cuff on the settle in
Sam’s place. In the dining-room he met Molly, who
was clearing the table of the supper that Colden had
disdained. He asked her the whereabouts of Williams,
and she replied that the steward and Sam had
gone out on some order of Miss Elizabeth’s. Deciding
to await Williams’s return, the old man sat down
before the dining-room fire, and was soon peacefully
snoring.
Elizabeth had gone up-stairs to watch from her
darkened window the issue of the expedition of
Williams and Sam, who had gone out by the kitchen,
equipped respectively with rope and pistol. While
259
they were in the immediate vicinity of the house, she
could not see them from her elevation, but presently
she beheld them glide swiftly across a white open
space in the garden, cross a stile, and disappear
among the trees and bushes between the garden
and the post-road. Turning her eyes to the road
itself, that lonely highway now called Broadway,[9] she
made out a solitary figure toiling forward through
the whirling whiteness,—and she gave a sigh, the
deepest and longest with which her frame had ever
trembled.
Meanwhile Miss Sally remained in the parlor,
thinking it best not to go to Elizabeth unless sent
for; while Colden continued to stand at the window,
showing his impatience for the arrival of his two
soldiers in a tense contracting of the brow, in a
restless shifting from foot to foot, and in intermittent
stifled curses.
As he kept his eyes on the place where the branch
road left the highway, he did not see that part of the
lawn walk which led from the garden. But suddenly
a slight noise drew his look towards the portico
before the east hall.
“Who are these coming?” he cried, startling
Miss Sally out of her musings and her chair.
“Are they your men?” she asked, hastening to
join him at the window.
“No, mine are mounted,” said he. “Why,—these
260
are Williams and Sam,—and they are bringing,—yes,
it is he! They’re bringing him back
a prisoner! She has done it, after all, without
consulting me!” And he strode to the centre of
the room, in the utmost elation.
Miss Sally weakened at the imminent prospect of
a meeting between the two enemies in the changed
circumstances, and felt the need of her niece’s support.
“I must tell Elizabeth they have him,” she said,
and ran out to the east hall, and thence to the dining-room,
just in time to avoid seeing Peyton led in
through the outer door, which Cuff had opened at
Williams’s call.
The steward and Sam conducted their prisoner
immediately into the parlor. There Colden stood,
with a rancorously jubilant smile, to receive him.
Peyton’s wrists were as Williams had tied them.
He was without his hat, which had been knocked off
in a brief struggle he had essayed against his captors
in a moment when Sam had lowered the pistol.
There was a little fresh snow on his hair, and more
on his shoulders. The feet of his boots were cased
with it. His left arm was held by Williams, who
carried the broken sword, having taken it from the
scabbard at the first opportunity. Peyton’s other
arm was grasped by the huge, bony left hand of
Sam, who held the cocked pistol in his right. The
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two men walked with him to the centre of the parlor,
and stopped.
“By George,” said he, turning his face towards
Sam, with fire in his eyes, “had the snow not killed
the sound of your sneaking footsteps till you’d caught
my arms behind, I’d have done for the two of you!”
“Good, Williams!” said Colden. “Place him on
that chair, and leave him here with me. But stay
in the hall on guard.”
“So Miss Elizabeth ordered us, sir,” said Williams,
dryly, and, with Sam, conducted Peyton to
the chair, on which he sat willingly.
“Of course she did,” replied Colden. “Was it
not at my suggestion?”
Peyton looked sharply up at the major, who regarded
him with the undisguised pleasure of hate
about to be satisfied.
Williams handed the broken sword to Colden,
saying, “This was the only weapon he had, sir.
We grabbed him before he could use it. We ran
out behind him from the roadside, and he couldn’t
hear us for the snow.”
“Ay, or the pair of you couldn’t have taken me!”
said Peyton, with hot scorn and defiant gameness.
Colden, with the piece of sword, motioned Williams
to go from the room.
“Leave the door ajar a little,” he added, “so you
can hear if I call.”
262
Peyton uttered a short laugh of derision at this
piece of prudence. The steward and Sam withdrew
to the hall, where Sam remained, while Williams
went in search of Elizabeth for further orders. As
soon as she had assured herself, by watching and
listening, that Peyton was safe in the parlor, she
had stolen quietly down-stairs to the dining-room,
where she had met her aunt, with whom the steward
now found her sitting. She told him to get the
duck-gun, make sure it was loaded and primed, and
to wait with Sam on the settle in the hall. She
then requested her aunt to remain in the dining-room,
silently returned to the hall, and took station
by the door leading from the parlor,—the door
which Williams, at Colden’s command, had left
slightly ajar. Her original plan, she felt, might
have to be altered by reason of Colden’s having
obtruded his hand into the game, a possibility she
had not, in roughly sketching that plan, taken into
account. It was in order to have the guidance of
circumstance, that she now put herself in the way
of hearing, unseen, what might pass between the
two men. Meanwhile, through the snow-storm,
Colden’s two soldiers, who had indeed tarried at
the tavern for the heating up of their interiors,
were blasphemously urging their sleepy horses
towards the manor-house.
In the parlor, the two enemies were facing each
263
other, Peyton on his chair, his tied wrists behind
him, Colden standing at some distance from him,
holding the broken sword. As soon as they were
alone, Peyton uttered another one-syllabled laugh,
and said:
“The hospitality of this house beats my recollection.
One is always coming back to it.”
“You’ll not come back the next time you leave
it!” said Major Colden, his eyes glittering with
gratified rancor.
“And when shall that time be?” asked Peyton,
airily.
“As soon as two of my men arrive, whom I outrode
on my way hither to-night. They attended me
out of New York. I shall be generous and give
them over to you, to attend you into New York.”
“Thanks for the escort!”
“’Tis the only kind you rebels ever have, when
you enter New York,” sneered the major.
“We shall enter it with an escort of our own
choosing some day! And a sorry day that for
you Tories and refugees, my dear gentleman!”
“But if that day ever comes, you’ll have been
rotting underground a long time,—and thanks to
me, don’t forget that!”
“Thanks to her, you coward!” cried Peyton.
“’Twas she that sent her servants after me! You
didn’t dare try taking me, alone!”
264
“Bah!” said Colden, hotly, “I might have pistolled
you here to-night”—and he placed his hand
on the fire-arm in his belt—“but for the presence
of the ladies!”
“Was it the ladies’ presence,” retorted Peyton,
contemptuously, “or the fact that you’re a devilish
bad shot?”
Neither man heard the door moved farther open,
or saw Elizabeth step through the aperture to the
inner side of the threshold, where she stopped and
watched. Peyton’s back was towards her, and Colden’s
rage at the last words was too intense to
permit his eyes to rove from its object.
“Damn you!” cried the major. “I’d show you
how bad a shot I am, but that I’d rather wait and
see you on the gallows!”
“Will she come to see me there, I wonder?” said
Peyton, half thoughtfully. “She ought to, for it’s
her work sends me there, not yours! ’Twill not
be your revenge when they string me up, my jolly
friend!”
Taunted beyond all self-control, the Tory yelled:
“Not mine, eh? Then I’ll have mine now, you
dog!”
With that, he strode forward and struck Harry
a fierce blow across the face with the flat side of
Harry’s own broken sword.
Harry merely blinked his eyes, and did not flinch.
265
He turned pale, then red, and in a moment, first
clearing his voice of a slight huskiness, said, quietly:
“That blow I charge against you both,—the lady
as well as you!”
Colden had stepped back some distance after
delivering the blow. Something in Harry’s answer
seemed to infuriate still further the devil awakened
in the Tory’s body, for he cried out:
“The lady as well as me,—yes! And this, too!”
And he advanced on Peyton, to strike a second
time.
“Stop! How dare you?”
The cry was Elizabeth’s. It startled Colden so
that he loosened his hold of the broken sword before
he could deliver the blow. At that instant, she
caught his arm in her one hand, the sword-guard in
her other. She tore the weapon from his grasp, and
faced him with a countenance as furious as his own.
“What do you mean?” he cried.
For answer she struck him in the face with the
flat of the sword, as he had struck Peyton. “You
sneak!” she said.
He recoiled, and stood staring, a ghastly image of
bewilderment and consternation. After a moment
he turned livid.
“Ah! I see now!” he gasped. “You love him!”
“Yes!” came the answer, prompt and decided.
He gazed at her with such an expression as a
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painter of hell might put into the face of a lost soul,
and he said, faintly, in a kind of articulate moan:
“I might have known!”
Suddenly there came from the outer night the
exclamation, quick and distinct:
“Whoa!”
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CHAPTER XIV. — THE BROKEN SWORD.
The sound wrought a transformation in Colden.
His face lighted up with malevolent joy.
“You love too late!” he cried, to Elizabeth. “My
men are there! They shall take him to New York
a prisoner, at last!”
“But not delivered up by me, thank God!” replied
Elizabeth, while Peyton rose quickly from his chair,
and Colden reeled like a drunken man to the window.
She went behind Peyton, and, with the edge of
the broken sword, hacked rather than cut through
one of the outer windings that bound his wrists
together, whereupon she speedily uncoiled the rope.
“You were my prisoner. I set you free!” she
said, dropped the rope to the floor, and handed him
the broken sword.
He took the weapon in his right hand, and imprisoned
Elizabeth with his left arm.
“I’m more your prisoner now than ever!” he
said. “You’ve cut these bonds. Will you put
others on me?”
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“Sometime,—if we can save your life!” she
answered.
Both turned their eyes towards Colden.
The Tory officer had drawn his sword, and was
motioning, in great excitement, to his soldiers outside.
“This way, men!” he shouted. “To the front
door! Damn the louts! Can’t they understand?”
He beat upon the window with his sword, knocking
out panes of glass. “Come through that door, I say!
Quick, curse you, there’s a prisoner here, with a
price for his taking! Ay, that’s it! Some one in
the hall there, open the front door to my men!”
The sound now came of knocks bestowed on the
outside door, and of Sam’s heavy tread on the hall
floor.
“Williams! Sam!” shouted Elizabeth. “Don’t
let them in!”
The heavy tread was heard to stop short. The
knocking on the outer door was resumed.
“Let them in, I say,” roared Colden, too proud
to go himself to the door. “I command it, in the
name of the King!”
“Obey your mistress,” cried Peyton, to those in
the hall. “I command it, in the name of Congress!”
Colden was silent for a moment, then suddenly
threw open the window and called out, “This way,
men! Quick!”
And he drew pistol, and stood ready with steel
269
and ball to guard the window by which his men were
to enter. A new, wild ferocity was on his face, a
new, nervous hardness in his body, as if the latent
resolution and strength which a prudent man keeps
for a great contest, on which his all may depend,
were at last aroused. In such a mood, the man
who, governed by interest, may have seemed a coward
all his life becomes for the once supremely formidable.
At last he thinks the stake worth the
play, at last the prize is worth the risk, and because
it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding
all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened
the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform
his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like,
“fight upon this theme until” his “eyelids will no
longer wag.” So was Colden aroused, transfigured,
as he stood doubly armed by the window, waiting
for his men to clamber in.
“What shall we do, dear?” said Elizabeth.
“Fight!” replied Peyton, tightening at the same
time his right palm around his broken sword, and
his left around the hand she had let him take,—for
she had moved from the embrace of his arm.
“Ay, there are only two of them,” she said, as
two burly forms appeared in the open window, one
behind the other.
“There will be three of us, you’ll find!” cried
Colden. “This time I’ll take a hand, if need be.”
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“You must not stay here,” said Peyton to Elizabeth,
quickly. “Things will be flying loose in a
moment!”
“I won’t leave you!” said she.
“Go! I beg you, go!” he said, releasing her
hand, and stepping back.
Meanwhile, Colden’s men bounded in through the
window. Rough, sturdy fellows were they, who
landed heavily on the parlor floor, and blinked at the
light, drawing the while the breeches of their short
muskets from beneath their coats. Their hats and
shoulders were coated with snow.
“Take that rebel alive, if you can!” ordered Colden.
“He’s meant to hang! Stun him with your
musket-butts!”
The men quickly reversed their weapons, and
strode heavily towards Harry. To their surprise,
before they could bring down their muskets, which
required both hands of each to hold, Harry dashed
forward between them, thinking to cut down Colden
with his broken sword, possess himself of the latter’s
pistol, shoot one of the soldiers, and meet the other
on less unequal terms. He saw a possibility of his
leaping through the open window and fleeing on one
of the soldiers’ horses, but the idea was accompanied
by the thought that Elizabeth might be made to
suffer for his escape. Her safety now depended
on his getting the mastery over his three would-be
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captors. So, ere the two astonished fellows could
turn, Harry had leaped within sword’s reach of his
doubly armed enemy.
But Colden was now as alert as rigid, and he
opposed his officer’s sword against Peyton’s broken
cavalry blade, guarding himself with unexpected swiftness,
and giving back, for Harry’s sweeping stroke,
a thrust which only the quickest and most dexterous
movement turned aside from entering the Virginian’s
lungs. As Harry stepped back for an instant out of
his adversary’s reach, the Tory raised his pistol. At
the same moment the two soldiers, having turned
about, rushed on Peyton from behind. He heard
them coming, and half turned to face them. Their
movement had for him one fortunate circumstance.
It kept Colden from shooting, for his bullet might
have struck one of his own men.
Now Elizabeth had not been idle. At the moment
when Harry had stepped back from her and
bade her go, she had run to the door of the east
hall, and called Williams and Sam. While Peyton
had been engaging Colden near the window, the
steward and the negro had entered the parlor, and
she had excitedly ordered them to Peyton’s aid.
Williams still had the duck-gun, Sam the pistol.
Thus it occurred that, as Peyton half turned from
Colden towards the two soldiers, these last-named
saw Williams and Sam rush in between them and
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their prey. Before Williams could bring his duck-gun
to bear, he was struck down senseless by one of
the musket blows first intended for Peyton. Another
blow, and from another musket, had been
aimed at Sam’s woolly head, but the negro had
put up his left hand and caught the descending
weapon, and at the same time had discharged his
pistol at the weapon’s holder. But Williams, in falling,
had knocked against the darky, and so disturbed
his aim, and the ball flew wide. The man
who had brought down Williams now struck Sam a
terrible blow with the musket-club, on the temple,
and the negro dropped like a felled ox.
During this brief passage, Peyton had returned to
close quarters with Colden. The latter, who had
lowered his pistol when his men had last approached
Peyton, and who had resumed the contest of swords
unequal in size and kind, now raised the pistol a
second time. But it was caught by the hands of
Elizabeth, who had run around to his left, and who
now, suddenly endowed with the strength of a
tigress, wrenched it from him as she had wrenched
the broken sword earlier in the evening. She tried
to discharge the pistol at one of the two soldiers,
as they, relieved of the brief interposition of Williams
and Sam, were again taking position to bring
down their muskets on Peyton’s head while he continued
at sword-work with Colden. But the pistol
273
snapped without going off, whereupon Elizabeth
hurled it in the face of the man at whom she had
aimed. The blow disconcerted him so that his musket
fell wide of Peyton, who at the same instant, having
seen from the corner of his eye how he was menaced,
leaped backward from under the other descending
musket. Then, taking advantage of the moment
when the muskets were down, he ran to the music
seat before the spinet, and mounted upon it, thinking
rightly that the infuriated major would follow him,
and that he might the better execute a certain
manœuvre from the vantage of height. Colden
indeed rushed after him, and thrust at him, Peyton
sweeping the thrusts aside with pendulum-like swings
of his own short weapon. His thought was to send
the point that menaced him so astray that he might
leap forward and cleave his enemy with a downward
stroke before the Tory could recover his guard. But
Colden pressed him so speedily that he was at last
fain to step up from the music seat to the spinet,
landing first on the keyboard, which sent out a
frightened discord as he alighted on it. Finding
the keys an uncertain footing, he took another step,
and stood on the body of the instrument, so that
Colden would be at the disadvantage of thrusting
upwards. But Colden, seeming to tire a little after
a few such thrusts, called to his men:
“Shoot the dog in the legs!”
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Both men aimed at once. Elizabeth screamed.
Peyton leaped down from his height to the little
space behind the spinet projection, where he had
hidden a week before. Here he found himself well
placed, for here he could be approached on one side
only,—unless his adversaries should follow his example
and come at him from the top of the spinet.
Colden attacked him with sword, at the open side,
and shouted to his men:
“One of you get on the spinet. The other crawl
under. We have him now.”
Still guarding himself from his enemy’s thrusts,
Peyton heard one of the men leap from the music
seat to the spinet, and the other advance creeping,
doubtless with gun before him, under the instrument.
Peyton sank to his knees, placed his shoulder under
the back edge of the spinet’s projection, and, warding
off a downward movement of Colden’s sword,
turned the instrument over on its side, checking the
creeping man under it, and throwing the other fellow
to the floor some feet away. As the spinet fell,
one of its legs, rising swiftly into the air, knocked
Colden’s blade upward, and the Tory leaped back
lest Peyton might avail himself of the opening. But
the spinet-leg itself hindered Peyton from doing
so. Colden rushed forward again, thrusting as he
did so. Peyton leaped aside, made a swift half-turn,
and landed a stroke on Colden’s sword-hand, making
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the Tory cry out and drop the sword. Harry put
his foot on it and cried:
“You’re at my mercy! Beg quarter!”
But the man who had been thrown from the top
of the spinet now returned to the attack, coming
around that end of the upset instrument which was
opposite the end where Colden had menaced Harry.
Seeing this new adversary, Harry retreated past
Colden, in order to put himself in position. The
soldier hastened after him, with upraised musket.
At this moment, Peyton saw himself confronted by
Elizabeth, who pulled open the door of the south
hall. He stopped short to avoid running against
her.
“Save yourself!” she cried, and pushed him
through the open doorway, flinging the door shut
upon him, a movement which the pursuing soldier,
stayed for a moment by collision with Colden, was
not in time to prevent. Harry heard the key move
in the lock, and knew that Elizabeth had turned it,
and that he was safe in the south hall, with a minute
of vantage which he might employ as he would.
Elizabeth withdrew the key from the locked door,
just as the pursuing soldier arrived at that door.
The man, in his excitement, violently tried to open
the door. Colden, who was wrapping a handkerchief
around his wounded hand, shouted to the man:
“You fool, she has the key! Take it from her!”
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“You shall kill me first!” she cried, and ran from
the man towards the open window, stepping over the
prostrate bodies of Sam and Williams as she went.
“After her! She’ll throw it into the snow!” cried
Colden.
This much Harry heard through the door, and
heard also the heavy tread of the soldier’s feet in
pursuit of the girl. His mind imaged forth a momentary
picture of the fellow’s rough hands laid on the
delicate arms of Elizabeth, of her body clasped by
the man in a struggle, her white skin reddened by
his grasp. The spectacle, imaginary and lasting but
an instant, maddened Peyton beyond endurance, made
him a giant, a Hercules. He threw himself against
the door repeatedly, plied foot and body in heavy
blows. Meanwhile Elizabeth had reached the window,
and thrown the key far out on the snow-heaped
lawn. She had no sooner done so than the man laid
his clutch on her arm.
“Fly, Peyton, for God’s sake! For my sake!”
she shouted.
“You shall pay for aiding the enemy, if he does!”
cried Colden. “Don’t let her escape, Thompson!”
At that instant the locked door gave way, and in
burst Harry, having broken, to save Elizabeth from
a rude contact, the barrier she had closed to save his
life. That life, which he had once saved by callously
assailing her heart, he now risked, that her body
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might not suffer the touch of an ungentle hand. So
swift and sudden was his entrance, that he had
crossed the room, and floored Elizabeth’s captor, with
a deep gash down the side of the head, ere Colden
made a step towards him.
The man who had been under the fallen spinet
had now extricated himself, and regained his feet,
and he and Colden rushed on Peyton at once.
Elated by having so speedily wrought Elizabeth’s
release, and reduced the number of his able adversaries
to two, Peyton bethought himself of a new
plan. He fled through the deep doorway to the east
hall, and took position on the staircase. He turned
just in time to parry Colden’s sword, which the
major had picked up and made shift to hold in his
wrapped-up, wounded hand. Harry saw that an
opportune stroke might send the sword from his
enemy’s numb and weakening grasp, and his heart
swelled with anticipated triumph, until he heard
Colden’s hoarse cry:
“Shoot him, James, while I keep him occupied!”
This order was now the more practicable from
Harry’s being on the stairs, above Colden, a great
part of his body exposed to an aim that could not
endanger his antagonist. Breathing heavily, his eyes
afire with hatred, Colden repeated his attacks, while
Harry saw the other’s musket raised, the barrel looking
him in the eyes. He leaped a step higher, swung
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his broken sword against the pendent chandelier,
knocked the only burning candle from its socket,
and threw the hall into darkness. A moment later
the gun went off, giving an instant’s red flame, a
loud crack, and a smell of gunpowder smoke.
Harry heard a swift singing near his right ear,
and knew that he was untouched.
Lest Colden’s sword, thrust at random, might find
him in the dark, Harry instantly bestrode the stair-rail,
and dropped, outside the balustrade, to the floor
of the hall. He grasped his half-sword in both
hands, so as to put his whole weight behind it, and
made a lunge in the direction of a muttered curse.
The curse gave way to a roar of pain and rage, and
Colden’s second follower dropped, spurting blood in
the darkness, his shoulder gashed horribly by the
blunt end of Peyton’s imperfect weapon. Harry
now ran back to the parlor, to deal with Colden in
the light, the latter’s greater length of weapon giving
a greater searching-power in the darkness. In the
parlor Elizabeth stood waiting in suspense. Sam was
sitting on the floor and staring stupidly at Williams,
who was now awake and rubbing his head, and the
Tory first fallen was still senseless. Harry had no
sooner taken this scene in at a glance, than Colden
was upon him.
The major’s eyes seemed to stand out like blazing
carbuncles from the face of some deity of rage.
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“G—d d—n your soul!” he screamed, and thrust.
The point went straight, and Elizabeth, seeing it
protrude through the back of Harry’s coat, near the
left side of his body, uttered a low cry, and sank
half-fainting to her knees. Colden shouted with
triumphant laughter. “Die, you dog! And when
you burn in hell, remember I sent you there!”
But the evil joy suddenly faded out of Colden’s
face, for Harry Peyton, smiling, took a forward step,
grasped near the hilt the sword that seemed to be
sheathed in his own body, forced it from Colden’s
hand, and then drew it slowly from its lodgment.
No blood discolored it, and none oozed from Harry’s
body.
The Virginian’s quick movement to escape the
thrust had left only a part of his loose-fitting coat
exposed, and Colden’s sword had passed through it,
leaving him unhurt. Colden’s momentary appearance
of victory had been the means of actual
defeat.
The Tory major saw his cup of revenge dashed
from his lips, saw himself deprived of sword and
sweetheart, neither chance left of living nor motive
left for life. His rage collapsed; his hate burst like
a bubble.
“Kill me,” he said, quietly, to Peyton.
His look, innocent of any thought to draw compassion,
quite disarmed Harry, who stood for a moment
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with moistening eyes and a kind of welling-up at the
throat, then said, in a rather unsteady voice:
“No, sir! God knows I’ve taken enough from
you,” and he looked at Elizabeth, who had risen and
was standing near him. Softened by the triumphant
outcome for her love, she, too, was suddenly sensible
of the defeated man’s unhappiness, and her eyes
applauded and thanked Harry.
“You’ve taken what I never had,” said Colden,
with a chastened kind of bitterness, “yet without
which the life you give me back is worthless.”
“Make it worth something with this,” and Peyton
held Colden’s sword out to him.
“What! You will trust me with it?” said Colden,
amazed and incredulous, taking the sword, but
holding it limply.
“Certainly, sir!”
Colden was motionless a moment, then placed his
arm high against the doorway, and buried his face
against his arm, to hide the outlet of what various
emotions were set loose by his enemy’s display of
pity and trust.
Harry gently drew Elizabeth to him and kissed
her. Yielding, she placed her arms around his neck,
and held him for a moment in an embrace of her
own offering. Then she withdrew from his clasp,
and when Colden again faced them she had resumed
that invisible veil which no man, not even
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the beloved, might pass through till she bade
him.
“You will find me worthy of your trust, sir,” said
Colden, brokenly, yet with a mixture of manly humility
and honorable pride.[10]
“I am so sure of that,” said Harry, “that I confide
to your care for a time what is dearest to me in
the world. I ask you to accompany Miss Philipse to
her home in New York, when it may suit her convenience,
and to see that she suffer nothing for what
has occurred here this night.”
“You are a generous enemy, sir,” said Colden, his
eyes moistening again. “One man in ten thousand
would have done me the honor, the kindness, of that
request!”
“Why,” said Harry, taking his enemy’s hand, as
if in token of farewell, “whatever be the ways of the
knaves, respectable and otherwise, who are so cautious
against tricks like their own, thank God it’s
not so rotten a world that a gentleman may not
trust a gentleman, when he is sure he has found
one!”
Turning to Elizabeth, he said: “I beg you will
leave this house at dawn, if you can. Williams and
Sam, there, will be little the worse for their knocks,
and can look after the fellows on the floor.”
“And you,” she replied, “must go at once. You
must not further risk your life by a moment’s waiting.
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Cuff shall saddle Cato for you. I sha’n’t rest
till I feel that you are far on your way.”
He approached as if again to kiss her, but she
held out her hand to stay him. He took the hand,
bent over it, pressed it to his lips.
“But,—” he said, in a tone as low as a whisper,
“when—”
“When the war is over,” she answered, softly,
“let Cato bring you back.”
“The old county historian.” Rev. Robert Bolton,
born 1814, died 1877. His “History of the County of
Westchester,” especially the revised edition published
in 1881, is a rich mine of “material.” Among other
works that have served the author of this narrative in
a study of the period and place are Allison’s “History
of Yonkers,” Cole’s “History of Yonkers,” Edsall’s “History
of Kingsbridge,” Dawson’s “Westchester County
during the Revolution,” Jones’s “New York during the
Revolution,” Watson’s “Annals of New York in the
Olden Time,” General Heath’s “Memoirs,” Thatcher’s
“Memoirs,” Simcoe’s “Military Journal,” Dunlap’s “History
of New York,” and Mrs. Ellet’s “Domestic History
of the Revolution.” For an excellent description of the
border warfare on the “neutral ground,” the reader should
go to Irving’s delightful “Chronicle of Wolfert’s Roost.”
Cooper’s novel, “The Spy,” deals accurately with that subject,
which is touched upon also in that good old standby,
Lossing’s “Pictorial Field-book of the Revolution.” Philipse
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Manor-house has been carefully written of by Judge
Atkins in a Yonkers newspaper, and less accurately by
Mrs. Lamb in her “History of New York City,” and
Marian Harland in “Some Colonial Homesteads and
Their Stories.” Of general histories, Irving’s “Life of
Washington” treats most fully of things around New York
during the British occupation, and these things are
interestingly dealt with in local histories, such as the
“History of Queens County,” Stiles’s “History of
Brooklyn,” Barber and Howe’s “New Jersey Historical
Collections,” etc., as well as in such special works as
Onderdonk’s “Revolutionary Incidents.”
Of Colonel Gist’s escape, Bolton gives the following
account: “The house was occupied by the handsome
and accomplished widow of the Rev. Luke Babcock, and
Miss Sarah Williams, a sister of Mrs. Frederick Philipse.
To the former lady Colonel Gist was devotedly attached;
consequently, when an opportunity afforded, he gladly
moved his command into that vicinity. On the night
preceding the attack, he had stationed his camp at the
foot of Boar Hill, for the better purpose of paying a special
visit to this lady. It is said that whilst engaged in
urging his suit the enemy were quietly surrounding his
quarters; he had barely received his final dismissal from
Mrs. Babcock when he was startled by the firing of musketry....
It appears that all the roads and bridges had
been well guarded by the enemy, except the one now
285
called Warner’s Bridge, and that Captain John Odell
upon the first alarm led off his troops through the woods
on the west side of the Saw Mill [River]. Here Colonel
Gist joined them. In the meantime Mrs. Babcock, having
stationed herself in one of the dormer windows of the
parsonage, aided their escape whenever they appeared,
by the waving of a white handkerchief.”
The British attack was under Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe,
whose journal shows that his force so far outnumbered
Gist’s that the latter’s only sensible course was in
flight. About the year 1840, trees cut down near the site
of Gist’s camp were found to contain balls buried six
inches in the wood.
The three generals arrived on the Cerberus, May 25th.
All the histories say that they arrived “with reinforcements.”
It is true, troops were constantly arriving at
Boston about that time, but none came immediately with
the three generals. The Connecticut Gazette (published in
New London) printed, early in June, this piece of news,
brought by a gentleman who had been in Boston, May
28th: “Generals Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe arrived at
Boston last Friday in a man-of-war. No troops came
with them. They brought over 25 horses.” It is a wonder
that Frothingham, in his admirably complete history
of the siege of Boston, missed even this little circumstance.
Probably everybody has read the incident thus
related by Irving: “As the ships entered the harbor and
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the rebel camp was pointed out, Burgoyne could not restrain
a burst of surprise and scorn. ‘What!’ cried he;
‘ten thousand peasants keep five thousand King’s troops
shut up! Well, let us get in and we’ll soon find elbow
room!’” I don’t think Irving relates anywhere the sequel,
which is that when, after his surrender, Burgoyne
marched with his conquered army into Cambridge, an old
woman shouted from a window to the crowd of spectators,
“Give him elbow room!” This story ought to be true, if
it is not.
It was in a letter under date of October 4, 1778, that
Washington wrote: “What officer can bear the weight of
prices that every necessary article is now got to? A rat
in the shape of a horse is not to be bought for less than
£200; a saddle under thirty or forty.”
Captain Cunningham was the British provost marshal,
as everybody knows, whose name became a synonym for
wanton cruelty in the treatment of war prisoners. He
had come to New York before the Revolution, and had
kept a riding school there. As soon as the war broke out
he took the royal side. It was he who had in charge the
summary execution of Nathan Hale. He would often
amuse himself by striking his prisoners with his keys and
by kicking over the baskets of food or vessels of soup
brought for them by charitable women, who, he said,
were the worst rebels in New York. He died miserably
287
in England after the war. His career is briefly outlined
in Sabine’s “Loyalists.” As to the manner in which
Peyton, if caught, would have died, it must be remembered
that in the American Revolution the rope served in
many a case which, occurring in Europe or in one of our
later wars, would have been disposed of with the bullet.
Writing of General Charles Lee, John Fiske says: “There
is no doubt that Sir William Howe looked upon him as a
deserter, and was more than half inclined to hang him
without ceremony.” Then, as now, a deserter in time of
war was liable to death if caught at any subsequent time,
his case being worse than that of a spy, who was liable to
death only if caught before getting back to his own lines.
There was, by the way, much unceremonious hanging on
the “neutral ground.” Not far from the Van Cortlandt
mansion there still stood, in Bolton’s time, “a celebrated
white oak, in the midst of a pretty glade, called the Cowboy
Oak,” from the fact that many of the Tory raiders
had been suspended from its branches during the war of
Revolution.
I am not sure whether the saying, “The corpse of an
enemy smells sweet,” attributed to Charles IX. of France,
in allusion to Coligny, is historical or was the invention
of a romancer. It occurs in Dumas’s “La Reine Margot.”
Mr. Valentine’s unwillingness to lend aid was doubtless
due to the frequency of such incidents as one that
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had occurred to his neighbor, Peter Post, in 1776. Post’s
estate occupied the site of the present town of Hastings.
He gave information to Colonel Sheldon regarding the
movements of some Hessians, and afterwards deceived
the Hessians as to the whereabouts of Sheldon’s own
cavalry. Thereby, Sheldon’s troop was enabled to surprise
the Hessians, and defeat them in a short and bloody
conflict. The Hessians’ comrades later caught Post,
stripped him, beat him to insensibility, and left him for
dead. He recovered of his injuries. His house, a small
stone one, became a tavern after the Revolution, and was
a celebrated resort of cock-fighters and hard-drinkers.
Not far north of Hastings is Dobbs Ferry, which was
occupied by both armies alternately, during the Revolution.
Further north is Sunnyside, Irving’s house, elaborated
from the original Wolfert’s Roost, and beyond that
are Tarrytown, where André was stopped and taken in
charge, and Sleepy Hollow. Enchanted ground, all this,
hallowed by history, legend, and romance.
The secret passage or passages of Philipse Manor-house
have not been neglected by writers of fiction,
history, and magazine articles. The passage does not
now exist, but there are numerous traces of it. The
different writers do not agree in locating it. The author
of an interesting story for children, “A Loyal Little
Maid,” has it that the passage was reached through an
opening in the panelling of the dining-room, this opening
289
concealed by a tall clock. I think Marian Harland
says that a closet in one of the parlors or chambers
connects with the secret passage. Both these assumptions
are wrong. Mr. R. P. Getty has pointed out in the
northwestern corner of the cellar what seems to have
once been the entrance to the passage. One authority
quotes a belief “that from the cellar there was a passage
to a well now covered by Woodworth Avenue,” and that
this was to afford access to what may have been a storage
vault. A man who was born in 1821 says that, when a
boy, he saw, near the house, a dry cistern, from the
bottom of which was an arched passage towards the
Hudson, large enough for a man six feet tall to pass
through. Judge Atkins says that the well was opposite
the kitchen door, and had, at its western side, about ten
feet deep, a chamber in which butter was kept. One
writer locates an ice-house where Judge Atkins places
this well, and says a subterranean arched way led northward
as far as the present Wells Avenue. “The ice-house
was formerly, it is said, a powder-magazine.”
Many years ago, the coachman of Judge Woodworth
used to say he had “gone through an underground passage
all the way from the manor-house to the Hudson
River.” Judge Atkins has written interesting legends of
the manor-house, involving the secret passage and other
features.
“That lonely highway now called Broadway.” A
block of houses and another street now lie between that
290
highway and the east front of the manor-house. The
building is closely hemmed in by the sordid signs of
progress. Ugly houses, in crowded blocks, cover all the
great surrounding space that once was thick forest, fair
orchards, gardens, fields, and pastoral rivulet. The
Neperan or Saw Mill River flows, sluggish and scummy,
under streets and houses. A visit to the manor-house,
now, would spoil rather than improve one’s impression
of what the place looked like in the old days. Yet the
house itself remains well preserved, for which all honor
to the town of Yonkers. There is in our spacious
America so much room for the present and the future,
that a little ought to be kept for the past. It is well to
be reminded, by a landmark here and there, of our brave
youth as a people. A posterity, sure to value these
landmarks more than this money-grabbing age does,
will reproach us with the destruction we have already
wrought. Worse still than the crime of obliterating all
human-made relics of the past, is the vandalism of nature
herself where nature is exceptionally beautiful. To rob
millions of beauty-lovers, yet to live, of the Palisades of the
Hudson, would bring upon us the amazement and execration
of future centuries. This earth is an entailed estate,
that each generation is in honor bound to hand down,
undefaced, undiminished, to its successor. In order that
a close-clutched wallet or two may wax a little fatter,
shall we bring upon ourselves a cry of shame that would
ring with increasing bitterness through the ages,—shall
we invite the execration merited by such greed as could
so outrage our fair earth, such stolid apathy as could
291
stand by and see it done? Shall an alien or two, as
hard of soul as the stone in which he traffics, mar the
Hudson that Washington patrolled, rob countless eyes,
yet unopened, of a joy; countless minds, yet to waken, of
an inspiration; countless hearts, yet to beat, of a thrill
of pride in the soil of their inheriting? Shall some future
reader wonder why Irving, deeming it “an invaluable
advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood
of some grand and noble object in nature,” should
have thanked God he was born on the banks of the
Hudson? I write this with the sound of the blowing up
of Indian Head still echoing in my ears, and knowing
nothing done by Government to protect the next fair
Hudson headland from similar destruction.
It is probable that Colden served with his brigade
when it fought in the South in the last part of the war.
He was afterwards lost at sea, leaving no heir. He was
of a family prominent in New York affairs, both before
the Revolution and afterwards, and which was intermarried
with other New York families of equal prominence,
as may be seen in the “New York Genealogical and Biographical
Record,” the “New England Genealogical and
Historical Register,” and similar publications. It is probable
that Sabine means this Colden when he mentions a
Captain Colden, of the First Battalion of New Jersey
Volunteers. That he was a major, however, is certain,
from the official British Army lists published in Hugh
292
Gaines’s “Universal Register” for the years of the Revolution.
People curious about Harry Peyton’s military record
may consult Saffel’s “Lists of American Officers,”
Heitman’s “Manual,” and a large work on “Virginia
Genealogies,” by H. E. Hayden, published at Wilkes-barre.
To the reader who demands a happy ending, it
need be no shock to learn that Peyton, having risen to
the rank of major, was killed at Charleston, S. C., May
12, 1780. For a love story, it is a happy ending that
occurs at the moment when the conquest and the submission
are mutual, complete, and demonstrated. A
love to be perfect, to have its sweetness unembittered,
ought not to be subjected to the wear and tear of prolonged
fellowship. So subjected, it may deepen and gain
ultimate strength, but it will lose its intoxicating novelty,
and become associated with pain as well as with pleasure.
We may be sure that the love of Peyton and Elizabeth
was to Harry a sweetener of life on many a night encampment,
many a hard ride, in the campaign of 1779, and
in the spring of 1780, and exalted him the better to meet
his death on that day when Charleston fell to the British;
and that to Elizabeth, while it receded into further memory,
it kept its full beauty during the half century she
lived faithful to it. Her sisters were married into the
English nobility, gentry, and military, but Elizabeth died
in Bath, England, in March, 1828, unmarried. Colonel
Philipse had moved with his family to England when the
British quitted New York in 1783. Many other Tories
did likewise. Some went to England, but more to Canada,
293
the greater part of which was then a wilderness. Many
of the Tory officers got commissions in the English
army.
No Tory family did more for the King’s cause in
America, lost more, or got more in redress, than the De
Lancey family, which had been foremost in the administration
of royal government in the province of New York.
It had great holdings of property in New York City, elsewhere
on the island of Manhattan, and in various parts
of Westchester County, notably in Westchester Township,
where De Lancey’s mills and a fine country mansion were
a famous landmark “where gentle Bronx clear winding
flows.” The founder of the American family was a
French Huguenot of noble descent. The family was
represented in the British army and navy before the Revolution.
One member of it, a young officer in the navy,
at the breaking out of the war, resigned his commission
rather than serve against the Colonies, but most of the
other De Lancey men were differently minded. Oliver
De Lancey, a member of the provincial council, was made
a brigadier-general in the royal service, and raised three
battalions of loyalists, known as “De Lancey’s Battalions.”
Of these battalions, the Tory historian, Judge
Jones, says: “Two served in Georgia and the Carolinas
from the time the British army landed in Georgia until the
final evacuation of Charleston.” One of these, during this
period, was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Stephen
De Lancey, the other by Colonel John Harris Cruger.
The third battalion, during the whole war, was employed
solely in protecting the wood-cutters upon Lloyd’s Neck,
294
Queens County, L. I. This General De Lancey’s son,
Oliver De Lancey, Junior, was educated in Europe, took
service with the 17th Light Dragoons, was a captain when
the Revolution began, a major in 1778, a lieutenant-colonel
in 1781, and, on the death of Major André,
adjutant-general of the British army in America. Returning
to England, he became deputy adjutant-general of
England; as a major-general, he was also colonel of the
17th Light Dragoons; was subsequently barrack-master
general of the British Empire, lieutenant-general, and
finally general. When he died he was nearly at the head
of the English army list. This branch of the family
became extinct when Sir William Heathcoate De Lancey,
the quartermaster-general of Wellington’s army, was
killed at Waterloo.
The James De Lancey who commanded the Westchester
Light Horse was a nephew of the senior General Oliver
De Lancey, and a cousin of the Major Colden of this narrative.
His troop was not “a battalion in the brigade of
his uncle,” Bolton’s statement that it was so being incorrect;
its operations were limited to Westchester County.
It raided and fought for the King untiringly, until it was
almost entirely killed off, at the end of the war, by the
persistent efforts of our troops to extirpate it.
The members of this corps were called “Cowboys”
because, in their duty of procuring supplies for the
British army, they made free with the farmers’ cattle.
Like the other conspicuous Tories, this James De Lancey
was attainted by the new State Government, and his property
was confiscated. Local historians draw an effective
295
picture of him departing alone from his estate by the
Bronx, turning for a last look, from the back of his horse,
at the fair mansion and broad lands that were to be his
no more, and riding away with a heavy heart. He went,
with many shipfuls of Tory emigrants, to Nova Scotia,
and became a member of the council of that colony.
His uncle went to England and died at his country house,
Beverly, Yorkshire, in 1785. I allude to the case of this
family, because it was typical of that of a great many
families. The Tories of the American Revolution constitute
a subject that has yet to be made much of. They
were the progenitors of English-speaking Canada.
The act of attainder that deprived the De Lanceys of
their estates, deprived Colonel Philipse of his. It was
passed by the New York legislature, October 22, 1779. The
persons declared guilty of “adherence to the enemies of
the State” were attainted, their estates real and personal
confiscated, and themselves proscribed, the second section
of the act declaring that “each and every one of
them who shall at any time hereafter be found in any
part of this State, shall be, and are hereby, adjudged and
declared guilty of felony, and shall suffer death as in
cases of felony, without benefit of clergy.” Acts of similar
import were passed in other States. Under this act,
Philipse Manor-house was forfeited to the State about
a year after the time of our narrative. The commissioners
whose duty it was to dispose of confiscated property
sold the house and mills, in 1785, to Cornelius P.
Lowe. It underwent several transfers, but little change,
becoming at length the property of Lemuel Wells, who
296
held it a long time and, dying in 1842, left it to his
nephew. The town of Yonkers grew up around it, and
on May 1, 1868, purchased it for municipal use. The
fewest possible alterations were made in it. These are
mainly in the north wing, the part added by the second
lord of the manor in 1745. On the first floor, the partition
between dining-room and kitchen was removed,
and the whole space made into a court-room. On the
second floor, the space formerly divided into five bedrooms
was transformed into a council-chamber, the garret
floor overhead being removed. The new city hall of
Yonkers leaves the old manor-house less necessary for
public purposes. May the old parlors, where the besilked
and bepowdered gentry of the province used to dance the
minuet before the change of things, not be given over to
baser uses than they have already served.
Allusion has been made, in different chapters of this
narrative, to the Hessians who daily patrolled the roads
in the vicinity of the manor-house. This duty often fell
to Pruschank’s yagers, the troop to which belonged Captain
Rowe, whose love story is thus told by Bolton:
“Captain Rowe appears to have been in the habit of
making a daily tour from Kingsbridge, round by Miles
Square. He was on his last tour of military duty, having
already resigned his commission for the purpose of
marrying the accomplished Elizabeth Fowler, of Harlem,
when, passing with a company of light dragoons, he was
suddenly fired upon by three Americans of the water
guard of Captain Pray’s company, who had ambuscaded
themselves in the cedars. The captain fell from his
297
horse, mortally wounded. The yagers instantly made
prisoners of the undisciplined water guards, and a messenger
was immediately despatched to Mrs. Babcock,
then living below, in the parsonage, for a vehicle to remove
the wounded officer. The use of her gig and horse
was soon obtained, and a neighbor, Anthony Archer,
pressed to drive. In this they conveyed the dying man
to Colonel Van Cortlandt’s. They appear to have taken
the route of Tippett’s Valley, as the party stopped at
Frederick Post’s to obtain a drink of water. In the
meantime an express had been forwarded to Miss Fowler,
his affianced bride, to hasten without delay to the side of
her dying lover. On her arrival, accompanied by her
mother, the expiring soldier had just strength enough
left to articulate a few words, when he sank exhausted
with the effort.” The room in which he died is in the
well-known mansion in Van Cortlandt Park.
The incident of the horse, related in an early chapter,
has a likeness to an adventure that befell one Thomas
Leggett early in the Revolutionary war. He lived with
his father on a farm near Morrisania, then in Westchester
County, and was proud in the possession of a fine young
mare. A party of British refugees took this animal, with
other property. They had gone two miles with it, when,
from behind a stone wall which they were passing, two
Continental soldiers rose and fired at them. The man
with the mare was shot dead. The animal immediately
turned round and ran home, followed by the owner, who
had dogged her captors at a distance in the hope of
recovering her.
SELECTIONS FROM L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY’S LIST OF NEW FICTION.
An Enemy to the King.
From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the
Sieur de la Tournoire. By Robert Neilson Stephens.
Illustrated by H. De M. Young.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
An historical romance of the sixteenth century, describing
the adventures of a young French nobleman at the Court of
Henry IV., and on the field with Henry of Navarre.
The Continental Dragoon.
A Romance of Philipse Manor House, in 1778.
By Robert Neilson Stephens, author of “An Enemy
to the King.” Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
A stirring romance of the Revolution, the scene being laid in
and around the old Philipse Manor House, near Yonkers, which
at the time of the story was the central point of the so-called
“neutral territory” between the two armies.
Muriella; or, Le Selve.
By Ouida. Illustrated by M. B. Prendergast.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
This is the latest work from the pen of the brilliant author of
“Under Two Flags,” “Moths,” etc., etc. It is the story of the
love and sacrifice of a young peasant girl, told in the absorbing
style peculiar to the author.
The Road to Paris.
By Robert Neilson Stephens, author of “An
Enemy to the King,” “The Continental Dragoon,”
etc. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
An historical romance, being an account of the life of an
American gentleman adventurer of Jacobite ancestry, whose
family early settled in the colony of Pennsylvania. The scene
shifts from the unsettled forests of the then West to Philadelphia,
New York, London, Paris, and, in fact, wherever a love of
adventure and a roving fancy can lead a soldier of fortune.
The story is written in Mr. Stephens’s best style, and is of
absorbing interest.
Rose à Charlitte.
An Acadien Romance. By Marshall Saunders,
author of “Beautiful Joe,” etc. Illustrated by H.
De M. Young.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
In this novel, the scene of which is laid principally in the land
of Evangeline, Marshall Saunders has made a departure from
the style of her earlier successes. The historical and descriptive
setting of the novel is accurate, the plot is well conceived
and executed, the characters are drawn with a firm and delightful
touch, and the fortunes of the heroine, Rose à Charlitte, a
descendant of an old Acadien family, will be followed with
eagerness by the author’s host of admirers.
Bobbie McDuff.
By Clinton Ross, author of “The Scarlet Coat,”
“Zuleika,” etc. Illustrated by B. West Clinedinst.
1 vol., large 16mo, cloth $1.00
Clinton Ross is well known as one of the most promising of
recent American writers of fiction, and in the description of the
adventures of his latest hero, Bobbie McDuff, he has repeated
his earlier successes. Mr. Ross has made good use of the
wealth of material at his command. New York furnishes him
the hero, sunny Italy a heroine, grim Russia the villain of the
story, while the requirements of the exciting plot shift the scene
from Paris to New York, and back again to a remote, almost
feudal villa on the southern coast of Italy.
In Kings’ Houses.
A Romance of the Reign of Queen Anne. By
Julia C. R. Dorr, author of “A Cathedral Pilgrimage,”
etc. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
Mrs. Dorr’s poems and travel sketches have earned for her a
distinct place in American literature, and her romance, “In
Kings’ Houses,” is written with all the charm of her earlier
works. The story deals with one of the most romantic episodes
in English history. Queen Anne, the last of the reigning
Stuarts, is described with a strong, yet sympathetic touch, and
the young Duke of Gloster, the “little lady,” and the hero of
the tale, Robin Sandys, are delightful characterizations.
Sons of Adversity.
A Romance of Queen Elizabeth’s Time. By L.
Cope Conford, author of “Captain Jacobus,” etc.
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
A tale of adventure on land and sea at the time when Protestant
England and Catholic Spain were struggling for naval
supremacy. Spanish conspiracies against the peace of good
Queen Bess, a vivid description of the raise of the Spanish
siege of Leyden by the combined Dutch and English forces,
sea fights, the recovery of stolen treasure, are all skilfully woven
elements in a plot of unusual strength.
The Count of Nideck.
From the French of Erckman-Chatrian, translated
and adapted by Ralph Browning Fiske. Illustrated
by Victor A. Searles.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
A romance of the Black Forest, woven around the mysterious
legend of the Wehr Wolf. The plot has to do with the later
German feudal times, is brisk in action, and moves spiritedly
from start to finish. Mr. Fiske deserves a great deal of credit
for the excellence of his work. No more interesting romance
has appeared recently.
The Making of a Saint.
By W. Somerset Maugham. Illustrated by Gilbert
James.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
“The Making of a Saint” is a romance of Mediæval Italy, the
scene being laid in the 15th century. It relates the life of a
young leader of Free Companions who, at the close of one of
the many petty Italian wars, returns to his native city. There
he becomes involved in its politics, intrigues, and feuds, and
finally joins an uprising of the townspeople against their lord.
None can resent the frankness and apparent brutality of the
scenes through which the hero and his companions of both
sexes are made to pass, and many will yield ungrudging praise
to the author’s vital handling of the truth. In the characters
are mirrored the life of the Italy of their day. The book will
confirm Mr. Maugham’s reputation as a strong and original
writer.
Omar the Tentmaker.
A Romance of Old Persia. By Nathan Haskell
Dole. Illustrated. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
Mr. Dole’s study of Persian literature and history admirably
equips him to enter into the life and spirit of the time of the
romance, and the hosts of admirers of the inimitable quatrains
of Omar Khayyam, made famous by Fitzgerald, will be deeply
interested in a tale based on authentic facts in the career of the
famous Persian poet. The three chief characters are Omar
Khayyam, Nizam-ul-Mulk, the generous and high-minded Vizier
of the Tartar Sultan Malik Shah of Mero, and Hassan ibu
Sabbah, the ambitious and revengeful founder of the sect of
the Assassins. The scene is laid partly at Naishapur, in the
Province of Khorasan, which about the period of the First
Crusade was at its acme of civilization and refinement, and
partly in the mountain fortress of Alamut, south of the Caspian
Sea, where the Ismailians under Hassan established themselves
towards the close of the 11th century. Human nature is
always the same, and the passions of love and ambition, of
religion and fanaticism, of friendship and jealousy, are admirably
contrasted in the fortunes of these three able and remarkable
characters as well as in those of the minor personages of
the story.
Captain Fracasse.
A new translation from the French of Gotier. Illustrated
by Victor A. Searles.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
This famous romance has been out of print for some time,
and a new translation is sure to appeal to its many admirers,
who have never yet had any edition worthy of the story.
The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore.
A farcical novel. By Hal Godfrey. Illustrated
by Etheldred B. Barry. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
A fanciful, laughable tale of two maiden sisters of uncertain
age who are induced, by their natural longing for a return to
youth and its blessings, to pay a large sum for a mystical water
which possesses the value of setting backwards the hands of
time. No more delightfully fresh and original book has appeared
since “Vice Versa” charmed an amused world. It is
well written, drawn to the life, and full of the most enjoyable
humor.
Midst the Wild Carpathians.
By Maurus Jokai, author of “Black Diamonds,”
“The Lion of Janina,” etc. Authorized translation
by R. Nisbet Bain. Illustrated. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
A thrilling, historical, Hungarian novel, in which the extraordinary
dramatic and descriptive powers of the great Magyar
writer have full play. As a picture of feudal life in Hungary it
has never been surpassed for fidelity and vividness. The translation
is exceedingly well done.
The Golden Dog.
A Romance of Quebec. By William Kirby. New
authorized edition. Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
A powerful romance of love, intrigue, and adventure in the
time of Louis XV. and Mme. de Pompadour, when the French
colonies were making their great struggle to retain for an ungrateful
court the fairest jewels in the colonial diadem of
France.
Bijli the Dancer.
By James Blythe Patton. Illustrated by Horace
Van Rinth. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
A novel of Modern India. The fortunes of the heroine,
an Indian Naucht girl, are told with a vigor, pathos, and a
wealth of poetic sympathy that makes the book admirable from
first to last.
“To Arms!”
Being Some Passages from the Early Life of Allan
Oliphant, Chirurgeon, Written by Himself, and now
Set Forth for the First Time. By Andrew Balfour.
Illustrated. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
A romance dealing with an interesting phase of Scottish and
English history, the Jacobite Insurrection of 1715, which will
appeal strongly to the great number of admirers of historical
fiction. The story is splendidly told, the magic circle which
the author draws about the reader compelling a complete
forgetfulness of prosaic nineteenth century life.
Mere Folly.
A novel. By Maria Louise Poole, author of “In a
Dike Shanty,” etc. Illustrated. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.25
An extremely well-written story of modern life. The interest
centres in the development of the character of the heroine, a
New England girl, whose high-strung temperament is in constant
revolt against the confining limitations of nineteenth
century surroundings. The reader’s interest is held to the end,
and the book will take high rank among American psychological
novels.
A Hypocritical Romance and other
stories.
By Caroline Ticknor. Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.
1 vol., large 16mo, cloth $1.00
Miss Ticknor, well known as one of the most promising of
the younger school of American writers, has never done better
work than in the majority of these clever stories, written in a
delightful comedy vein.
Cross Trails.
By Victor Waite. Illustrated. (In press.)
1 vol., library 12mo, cloth $1.50
A Spanish-American novel of unusual interest, a brilliant,
dashing, and stirring story, teeming with humanity and life.
Mr. Waite is to be congratulated upon the strength with which
he has drawn his characters.
A Mad Madonna and other stories.
By L. Clarkson Whitelock, with eight half-tone
illustrations.
1 vol., large 16mo, cloth $1.00
A half dozen remarkable psychological stories, delicate in
color and conception. Each of the six has a touch of the supernatural,
a quick suggestion, a vivid intensity, and a dreamy
realism that is matchless in its forceful execution.
On the Point.
A Summer Idyl. By Nathan Haskell Dole, author
of “Not Angels Quite,” with dainty half-tone
illustrations as chapter headings.
1 vol., large 16mo, cloth $1.00
A bright and clever story of a summer on the coast of Maine,
fresh, breezy, and readable from the first to the last page.
The narrative describes the summer outing of a Mr. Merrithew
and his family. The characters are all honest, pleasant people,
whom we are glad to know. We part from them with the
same regret with which we leave a congenial party of friends.
Cavalleria Rusticana; or, Under the
Shadow of Etna.
Translated from the Italian of Giovanni Verga, by
Nathan Haskell Dole. Illustrated by Etheldred
B. Barry.
1 vol., 16mo, cloth $0.50
Giovanni Verga stands at present as unquestionably the
most prominent of the Italian novelists. His supremacy in
the domain of the short story and in the wider range of the
romance is recognized both at home and abroad. The present
volume contains a selection from the most dramatic and characteristic
of his Sicilian tales. Verga is himself a native of
Sicily, and his knowledge of that wonderful country, with its
poetic and yet superstitious peasantry, is absolute. Such
pathos, humor, variety, and dramatic quality are rarely met
in a single volume.
Transcriber's note:
Hyphenation has been made consistent.
Archaic and variable spellings are preserved.
The author’s punctuation style is preserved, except quotation
marks, which have been standardized.
