The Storm Centre Part 10

"We _all_ receive the Yankees," she was wont to say smilingly. "It is a family failing with us. My father and five brothers in the Confederate vanguard are waiting now to receive Yankees--as many Yankees as care to come to Bear-gra.s.s Creek."

"Oh, Miss Fisher!" remonstrated the gay young lieutenant, perceiving her drift; "how can you consign me so heartlessly to six red-handed Rebels!"

"Only red-headed as yet, fiery,--_all_ of them! They'll be red-handed enough after you and they come to blows!"

This mimic warfare had a certain zest, and many were the youths among the officers of the garrison who liked to "talk politics" in this vein with "Sister Millie," as she was often designated in jocose allusion to the five fiery-haired brothers. And indeed, as the Fisher family was so numerously represented in the Confederate army, she considered that her Southern partisanship was thus comprehensively demonstrated, and she felt peculiarly at liberty to make merry with the enemy if the enemy would be merry in turn.

Very merry and good-natured the enemy was pleased to be as far as she was concerned. They wrote home for social credentials. They secured introductions from brother-officers who had the entre, and especially courted for this purpose were two elderly colonels who had been cla.s.smates of her father's at West Point, where he was educated, although he had resigned from the army many years ago. The two had sought and naturally had found a cordial welcome at the home of his wife, sister, and mother. It was natural, too, that they should feel and exert a sort of prudential care of the household, in the midst of inimical soldiers, and although their ancient companion-in-arms was in an adverse force hardly fifty miles away, they regarded this as merely the political aspect of the situation, which did not diminish their amity and bore no relation to their personal sentiment, as they came and went in his house on the footing of friends of the family. Now and again the incongruity was brought home to them by some audacity of Mildred Fisher's.

"If you should meet papa, Colonel Monette," she said one day as one of these elderly officers was going out to command a scouting expedition--"if you _should_ meet papa, don't fail to reintroduce yourself, and give him our prettiest compliments."

The elderly officer was a literal-minded campaigner, and as he put his foot in the stirrup he felt rather dolorously that if ever he did meet Guy Fisher again, it would probably be at point-blank range where one would have to swallow the other's pistol ball.

The war, however, was seldom so seriously regarded at the Fisher mansion, one of the fine modern houses of the town,--brick with heavy limestone facings and much iron grille work, perched up on a double terrace, from which two flights of stone steps descended to the pavement. The more youthful officers contrived to import fruits and hothouse flowers, the fresh books and sheet music of the day, and they stood by the piano and wagged their heads to the march in "Faust," which was all the rage at that time, and sped around nimbly to the vibrations of its waltz, that might have made a pair of spurs dance. She had a very pretty wit of an exaggerated tenor, and it seemed to whet the phrase of every one who was a.s.sociated with "The Fair One with the Equivocal Locks," as an imitator of her methods had dubbed her.

No order was so strictly enforced as to touch her mother's and her aunt's household. Their poultry roosted in peace. Their firearms were left by officers conducting searches through citizens' houses and confiscating pistols, guns, and knives.

"_We_ are as capable of armed rebellion as ever," she would declare joyously.

Miss Fisher's favorite horse bore her airy weight as jauntily down the street as if no impress had desolated equestrian society. On these occasions she was always accompanied by two or three officers, sometimes more, and there was a fable in circulation that once the cavalcade was so numerous that the guard was turned out at the fort, the sentries mistaking the gayly caparisoned approach for the major general commanding the division and his mounted escort.

She sang in a very high soprano voice and with a considerable degree of culture, but one may be free to say that her rendering of "Il Bacio" and "La Farfalletta" was by no means the triumph of art that it seemed to Seymour, and it was suggested to the mind of several of the elder officers that there ought to be something more arduous for him to do than to languish over the piano in a sentimental daze, fairly hypnotized by the simpler melodies--"Her bright smile haunts me still"

and "Sweet Evangeline."

Serious thoughts were sometimes his portion, and Vertnor Ashley now and again received the benefit of them.

"I heard some news when I was in town to-day--and I don't believe it,"

Seymour said as he sat on a camp-stool on the gra.s.s in front of the colonel's tent.

The so-called "street" of the cavalry encampment lay well to the rear.

Hardly a sound emanated therefrom save now and then the echo of a step, the jingling of a spur or sabre, and sometimes voices in drowsy talk--perhaps a s.n.a.t.c.h of song or the thrumming of a guitar. A sort of luminous hush pervaded the atmosphere of the sunny spring afternoon. The shadows slanted long on the lush blue-gra.s.s that, despite the trampling to which it had been subjected, sent a revivifying impetus from its thickly interlaced mat of roots and spread a turf like dark rich velvet.

The impulse of bloom was rife throughout nature--in a sort of praise offering for the grace of the spring. Humble untoward sprigs of vegetation, nameless, one would think, unnoticed, must needs wear a tiny corolla or offer a chalice full of dew--so minute, so apart from observation, that their very creation seemed a work of supererogation.

The dandelions' rich golden glow was instarred along the roadside, and there was a bunch of wood violets in the roots of the maple near Ashley's head, the branches of the tree holding far down their dark garnet blossoms with here and there cl.u.s.ters of flat wing-like seed-pods, striped with green and brown. A few paces distant was a tulip-tree, gloriously aflare with red and yellow blooms through all its boughs to the height of eighty feet, and between was swung Ashley's hammock with Ashley luxuriously disposed therein. His eyes were on the infinite roseate ranges of the Great Smoky Mountains in the amethystine distance; the purple Chilhowee darkly loomed closer at hand, and about the foot-hills was belted the placid cestus of tents, all gleaming white, while the splendid curves of the river, mirroring the sky, vied with the golden west. Nothing could have more picturesquely suggested the warrior in his hours of ease. The consciousness of one's own graces ought to add a zest to their value, especially when vanity is as absolutely harmless as Vertnor Ashley's enjoyment of his own good opinion of himself.

"What news? Why don't you believe it? Grape-vine?" asked Ashley.

(Grape-vine was the telegraph of irresponsible rumor.)

"No--no--nothing fresh from the army. I heard a rumor to-day about Miss Fisher--that she is engaged to be married."

"I am not surprised--the contrary would surprise me."

Seymour looked alarmed. "Had you heard it, too?"

"No; but from what I have seen of 'Sister Millie,' as they call her about here, I should say she is a fine recruiting officer."

There was an interval of silence, while Ashley swung back and forth in the hammock and Seymour sat in a clumped posture on the camp-stool, his hands on his knees, and his gloomy eyes on the square toes of his new boots. At length he resumed:--

"Did you ever hear of a fellow that hails from somewhere near here named Lloyd?"

"Lawrence Lloyd?"

"That's the man," said Seymour.

"I've heard of him. That's the Lloyd place a little down the river,--old brick house, but all torn down now--burned by Gibdon's men; good-sized park, or 'grove,' as they call it. That's the man, is it? Commanded some Rebel cavalry in the Bear-gra.s.s Creek skirmish."

"Fought like a bear with a sore head--mad about his house, I suppose."

"If I _knew_ that Miss Fisher was engaged to him, I would send her a barrel or two of fine old books that I rescued from Gibdon's men--thought I'd save 'em for the owner. They made a bonfire of the library there."

"Lloyd used 'em up in a raid last fall--Gibdon's fellows. I don't blame 'em. But, say Miss Fisher has not been fair to me if she is engaged to that man."

"I always thought Miss Fisher was particularly fair--owing to a sun-bonnet, rather than to a just mind."

"You think she would treat me as she has--encourage me to make a fool of myself--if she is engaged to another man?"

"I think she is likelier to be engaged to five than 'another.'"

"You should not say that, Ashley," retorted Seymour, gravely. "It is not appropriate. You should not say that," he urged again.

"Oh, I mean no offence, and certainly no disrespect to the lovely Miss Fisher, who is my heart's delight. But you have heard the five-swain story?"

As Seymour looked an inquiry--

"Five Rebs in camp, all homesick, very blue, on a Sunday morning," began Ashley, graphically; "all sitting on logs, each brooding over his fiance's ivory-type. And, as misery loves company, one sympathized with another, and, by way of boastfulness, showed the beautiful counterfeit presentment of his lady-love. Their clamors brought up the rest of the five, and _each_ had the identical photograph of Miss Millie Fisher. She was engaged to all five! There was nothing else they could do--so they held a prayer-meeting!"

"What bosh!" exclaimed Seymour, fretfully. "People are always at some extravagant story about her like that. It isn't true, of course."

"It is as much like her as if it were true," Ashley declared laughingly.

The serious, not to say petulant traits of Seymour were intensified by the conscious jeopardy of his happiness, and the continual doubt in his mind as to whether he had any ground for hope at all.

"By George! if I knew she was engaged--or--if I knew--anything at all about anything--I'd cut it all, and give it up. I don't want to be a source of amus.e.m.e.nt to her--or to be made a show of. Sometimes, I pledge you my word, I feel like a dancing bear."

"Miss Fisher has something of the style of a bear-ward, it must be confessed," said Ashley. "I fancied at one time she had a notion of getting a chain on me--she is enterprising, you know."

Then, after a moment, "Why _don't_ you cut it all, Mark?"

"Oh," cried Seymour, with an accent of positive pain, "I can't.

Sometimes I believe she _does_ care--she makes me believe it."

"Well," smiled Ashley, banteringly, "you dance very prettily--not a bit clumsily--a very creditable sort of bear."

Another interval of silence ensued.

"I blame Baynell for all this," said Seymour, sullenly.

"Why? Is he a rival?"