Cyrus Brady - Secret Service

“Well, how do I know.”

“What dress did she have on?”

“Dress?”

“Oh, you men! Why, she’s only got two.”

“Yes; well, very likely, this was one of them, Miss Mitford.”

“No matter, I am going upstairs to see, anyway. Captain Thorne, you can wait out there on the veranda or, perhaps, it would be pleasanter if you were to smoke a cigar out in the summerhouse at the side of the garden. It is lovely there in the moonlight, and – ”

“I know, but if I wait right here – ”

“Those are my orders. It’s cooler outside, you know, anyway, and – ”

“Pardon me, Miss Mitford, orders never have to be explained, you know,” interrupted the Captain, smiling at the charming girl.

“That’s right; I take back the explanation,” she said, as Thorne stepped toward the window; “and, Captain,” cried the girl.

“Yes?”

“Be sure and smoke.”

Thorne laughed, as he lighted his cigar and stepped out onto the porch, and thence into the darkness of the garden path.

“Oh,” said Caroline to herself, “he is splendid. If Wilfred were only like that!” she pouted. “But then – our engagement’s broken off anyway, so what’s the difference. If he were like that – I’d – No! – I don’t think I’d – ”

Her soliloquy was broken by the entrance of Mrs. Varney, who came slowly down the room.

“Why, Caroline dear! What are you talking about, all to yourself?”

“Oh – just – I was just saying, you know – that – why, I don’t know what I was – Do you think it is going to rain?” she returned in great confusion.

“Dear me, child; I haven’t thought about it. Why, what have you got on? Is that a new dress, and in Richmond?”

“A new dress? Well, I should think so. These are my great-grandmother’s mother’s wedding clothes. Aren’t they lovely? Just in the nick of time, too. I was on my very last rags, or, rather, they were on me, and I didn’t know what to do. Mother gave me a key and told me to open an old horsehair trunk in the attic, and these were in it.” She seized the corners of her dress and pirouetted a step or two forward to show it off, and then dropped the older woman an elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy. “I ran over to show them to Edith,” she resumed. “Where is she? I want her to come over to my house.”

“Upstairs, I think. I am afraid she can’t come. I have just come from her room,” Mrs. Varney continued as Caroline started to interrupt, “and she means to stay here.”

“I will see about that,” said Caroline, running out of the room.

Mrs. Varney turned and sat down at her desk to write a letter which evidently, from her sighs, was not an easy task. In a short time the girl was back again. Mrs. Varney looked up from writing and smiled at her.

“You see it was no use, Caroline,” she began.

“No use,” laughed the girl; “well, you will see. I didn’t try to persuade her or argue with her. I just told her that Captain Thorne was waiting for her in the summerhouse. Yes,” she continued, as Mrs. Varney looked her astonishment; “he is still here, and he said he would take her over. You just watch which dress she has on when she comes down. Now I will go out there and tell him she’ll be down in a minute. I have more trouble getting people fixed so that they can come to my party than it would take to run a blockade into Savannah every fifteen minutes.”

Mrs. Varney looked at her departing figure pleasantly for a moment, and then, with a deep sigh, resumed her writing, but she evidently was not to conclude her letter without further interruption, for she had scarcely begun again when Wilfred came into the room with a bundle very loosely done up in heavy brown paper. As his mother glanced toward him he made a violent effort to conceal it under his coat.

“What have you got there, Wilfred?” she asked incuriously.

“That? Oh, nothing; it is only – say, mother, have you written that letter yet?”

“No, my dear, I have been too busy. I have been trying to write it, though, since I came down, but I have had one interruption after another. I think I will go into your father’s office and do it there.” She gathered up her paper and turned to leave the room. “It is a hard letter for me to write, you know,” she added as she went away.

Wilfred, evidently much relieved at his mother’s departure, took the package from under his coat, put it on the table, and began to undo it. He took from it a pair of very soiled, dilapidated, grey uniform trousers. He had just lifted them up when he heard Caroline’s step on the porch, and the next moment she came into the room through the long French window. Wilfred stood petrified with astonishment at the sudden and unexpected appearance of his young beloved, but soon recovered himself and began rolling the package together again, hastily and awkwardly, while Caroline watched him from the window. She coldly scrutinised his confusion while he made his ungainly roll, and, as he moved toward the door, she broke the silence.

“Ah, good-evening, Mr. Varney,” she said coolly.

“Good-evening,” he said, his voice as cold as her own.

They both of them had started for the hall door and in another second they would have met.

“Excuse me,” said Caroline, “I’m in a hurry.”

“That’s plain enough. Another party, I suppose, and dancing.”

“What of it? What’s the matter with dancing, I’d like to know.”

“Nothing is the matter with dancing if you want to, but I must say that it is a pretty way of going on, with the cannon roaring not six miles away.”

“Well, what do you want us to do? Cry about it! I have cried my eyes out already; that would do a heap of good now, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I haven’t time to talk about such petty details. I have some important matters to attend to,” he returned loftily.

“It was you that started it,” said the girl.

Wilfred turned suddenly, his manner at once losing its badly assumed lightness.

“Oh, you needn’t try to fool me,” he reproached her; “I know well enough how you have been carrying on since our engagement was broken off. Half a dozen officers proposing to you – a dozen for all I know.”

“What difference does it make?” she retorted pertly. “I haven’t got to marry them all, have I?”

“Well, it isn’t very nice to go on like that,” said Wilfred with an air into which he in vain sought to infuse a detached, judicial, and indifferent appearance. “Proposals by the wholesale!”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Caroline, “what’s the use of talking about it to me. They’re the ones that propose, I don’t. How can I help it?”

“Oh,” said Wilfred loftily, “you can help it all right. You helped it with me.”

“Well,” she answered, with a queer look at him, “that was different.”

“And ever since you threw me over – ” he began.

“I didn’t throw you over, you just went over,” she interrupted.

“I went over because you walked off with Major Sillsby that night we were at Drury’s Bluff,” said the boy, “and you encouraged him to propose. You admit it,” he said, as the girl nodded her head.

“Of course I did. I didn’t want him hanging around forever, did I? That’s the only way to finish them off. What do you want me to do – string a placard around my neck, saying, ‘No proposals received here. Apply at the office’? Would that make you feel any better? Well,” she continued, as the boy shrugged his shoulders, “if it doesn’t make any difference to you what I do, it doesn’t even make as much as that to me.”

“Oh, it doesn’t? I think it does, though. You looked as if you enjoyed it pretty well while the Third Virginia was in the city.”