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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "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."
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 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 gla.s.s 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!"
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. "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. Babc.o.c.k"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?"
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 cla.s.s 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 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.
"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 gla.s.s 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.