"His Excellency is still engaged with the Council," went on the Countess. "I was wondering if this would be a good opportunity, while it isn't raining, to show you my orchids which I was telling you about last night, Sir Hubert."
"Oh yes, of course," said Davenant.
"Sir Hubert is interested in orchids, you see, Captain Peabody," explained the Countess, "and His Excellency's predecessor in office, General Brown, made a most interesting collection. The British occupation of the island had its brighter side, we must admit."
"Surely," said Peabody.
"Anne," said the Countess, "will you offer Captain Peabody some tea?"
"Yes, Aunt Sophie."
"Until we meet again, then, Captain," said the Countess.
Next moment she was gone, through the glass door which Davenant opened for her and through which he followed her. The room was suddenly quiet, except for the faint whine of the fan in the ceiling — an ingenious arrangement by which a cord was taken over a pulley through a hole in the wall, so that a Negro child outside the room could keep the air in motion without intruding on the privacy within. Peabody admired the contrivance for some seconds as if it were as fascinating as a snake. As the Countess and Davenant were leaving the room he had suddenly felt that he could not, for some unexplained reason, meet Anne's eyes. He remained on his feet, his left hand on his sword hilt, sliding the blade half an inch in and out.
"You went away!" said Anne suddenly in the silence of the room.
He looked down at her, and she was looking up at him reproachfully.
"Anne!" he said, and he melted. There was never anything like this, like this unrestrainable surge of emotion. His head swam, and he came down on his knees at her side — he had never knelt to any woman before, but it was the most natural thing he had ever done in his life. She put her two hands into his, and they kissed; and when they drew back from each other he went on looking into her eyes.
"Anne!" was all he could say. He did not know what a volume of meaning he put into that monosyllable.
"I didn't mean what I said," explained Anne.
"I had to go," said Peabody, "I had to try to go. I didn't want to."
"I know, my dear," said Anne.
She kissed him again, and then her lips left his and strayed over his mahogany cheek, fluttering as she murmured something to herself, some endearment or other.
"What am I going to do with you?" said Anne. "This — this — I can't bear to have you out of my sight."
She took one of her hands from him and put it on her breast where the emotion surged. Peabody knew just how she felt. He sawed at his stock with his free hand in a struggle against the passion which threatened to choke him. It seemed to be the last straw that she should so frankly admit to her emotion.
"Darling!" he said.
Her lips were the lips of innocence, of a sweetness and which they conferred. There had never been anything like this in all his experience. Within him subconsciously stirred a twenty-year forgotten memory of his mother's tainted caresses, and he clung to Anne's hands and put his face to hers in the violence of the reaction.
"I couldn't bear it," said Anne. "You were gone. I thought I might never see you again."
He looked into her eyes, and he remembered that death was awaiting him outside the bay, just beyond the Diamond Rock. The realization shook him, and he tore himself from her and got to his feet.
"I'm a fool," he said. "I shouldn't ever have done this."
It was a second or two before Anne answered, the fear that she felt revealing itself in her face and in her voice.
"Why not?" she whispered.
"Because — " said Peabody, "because — oh — "
It was hard to put it all into words, the Delaware's homelessness, the peril in which he stood, the losing fight which he was going to wage against the mightiest sea power the world had ever seen. Ironically, the love he bore for Anne crystallized his determination not to survive the eventual inevitable destruction of the Delaware; he did not say so to Anne, but it showed through the halting sentences with which he tried to explain his situation.
"I understand," said Anne, nodding her head. It was odd, and yet it tore at Peabody's heartstrings, to see this very young woman contemplating problems of life and death, of war and peace.
"There is only this one week," said Peabody.
"One week," said Anne.
The little round chin under the soft mouth was firm for all its allure. Peabody had a moment's piercing insight: this was the sort of woman who would load her husband's long rifle while savages howled outside the log cabin, no more than twenty years old and yet willing to face anything beside the man she loved. He shook away the mental picture before his eyes.
"That's all," he said, simply. "I'm sorry."
But all Anne's twenty years of life had been spent in a world in a turmoil of war. She had learned to think clearly through it.
"My dear," she said, and her eyes met Peabody's unflinching, "if we are lucky enough to have a week granted us, why should we waste it?"
Peabody's jaw dropped at that, and he looked at her with surprise. It was a view of the case which his far-seeing New England mind had not seen at all; he had paid so much attention to next week that tomorrow had escaped his notice.
"What do you mean?" he said, his voice choking a little as the explanation flooded in upon him.
Anne did not have the chance to explain, because the Marquis came in at that moment.
Peabody did not start at the sudden noise of the latch — his nerves were steady enough despite this present ordeal — and Anne retained her seat in the armchair with composure, but it would have been asking too much of them to expect that their attitudes should not reveal something of their preoccupation. The Marquis looked keenly from one to the other, and like a man of breeding he was prepared to pay no attention to the fact that his entrance had been at a difficult moment, but Peabody gave him no chance. He swung round on the Marquis, his brain laboring hard under the handicaps of strong emotion and recent sleeplessness.
"Good afternoon, Captain Peabody," said the Marquis.
"I want to marry your daughter," said Peabody, and even the Marquis's breeding was not proof against the surprise the statement occasioned. It was the sight of his discomposure which most helped Peabody to collect himself. The Marquis looked at them both again, as if during the last two seconds their appearance had undergone some radical change, and he waited some time before he spoke; even if Peabody's abrupt statement had taken him sufficiently off his guard to make him change countenance, years of training had taught him not to make an unguarded reply, and in theory, if not in practice, to count ten before he said anything decisive.
"The fact that you want to marry Mademoiselle de Villebois," he said fencing for time, "is a recommendation of your good taste, if not of your knowledge of the world."
"Surely," said Peabody. Now that he was in this affair he was not going to flinch, not for all the Marquises and Excellencies in His Most Christian Majesty's dominions.
"I know very little about you, Captain," said the Marquis. "Please forgive me — I intend no rudeness — but the name of Peabody does not enter into my genealogical knowledge. Can you tell me something about your family?"
"My father was a Connecticut farmer," said Peabody, sturdily, "and so was his father, although he came from Massachusetts. And I don't know who his father
was."
"I see," said the Marquis. "You are not a man of great fortune, Captain?"
The question very nearly nonplused Peabody. He was almost at the head of his profession, and he enjoyed a salary of one hundred dollars a month in hard money — a salary quite large enough to maintain a wife with dignity in New York or Philadelphia. But it was only now that his attention was called to the fact that this income — imposing enough to him — was insignificant compared with European fortunes, and it called for an effort on his part not to allow the realization to unsettle him.