The Storm Centre Part 2

"She took only the most casual notice of my presence--barely to give me a cup of tea."

"Now, Baynell," said the lieutenant, exceedingly wroth. "I want you to understand that I take this very ill of you."

He was a tall, spare young fellow, with light, straight brown hair, a light-brown mustache, and a keen, excitable blue eye, which showed well-opened and alert from under the dark brim of his cap as he looked upward, still standing at the side of Baynell's restive horse. "I think it a very poor return for similar courtesy. I took _you_ with me to call on Miss Fisher--and--"

"This is a very different case. I, personally, am not on terms with Mrs.

Gwynn. Besides, she is very different from Miss Fisher, who entertains general society. Mrs. Gwynn is a widow--in deep mourning."

"But it _is_ told in Gath that widows are not usually inconsolable,"

suggested Ashley, with a brightening of his arch eyes, and still laughing it off.

"I am much affronted, Captain Baynell," declared the irascible lieutenant. "I consider this personal. And I will get even with you for this!"

"And I will get an introduction to Mrs. Gwynn without your kind offices," declared Ashley, with a jocular imitation of their young friend's indignant manner.

"I shall be very happy if you can meet her in any appropriate way. It is not appropriate for me, cognizant of their ardent rebel sympathies and intense antagonism to the Union cause and antipathy to all its supporters, to ask to introduce my friends of the invading 'Yankee army,'" Baynell replied with stiff hauteur.

Just then the bugle sang out, its mandatory, clear, golden tones lifting into the sunshine with such a full buoyant effect that it was like the very spirit of martial courage trans.m.u.ted into sound. Baynell instantly put his horse into motion, and rode off through the brilliant air and the spa.r.s.e shadows of the budding trees. His blond hair and mustache, gilded by the sunlight, had as decorative an effect as his gold lace; his blue eyes glittered with a stern, vigilant light; his face was flushed, something unusual, for he was wont to be pale, and his erect, imposing, soldierly figure sat his spirited young charger with the firmness of a centaur. The eyes of all the group followed him, several commenting on his handsome appearance, his fine bearing, his splendid horse, and his great value as an officer.

"He is an admirable fellow," declared Dr. Grindley, a surgeon on his way to the hospital hard by. He had paused at a little distance, and had not heard the conversation.

"If he were not such a prig," Ashley a.s.sented dubiously. "Such an uncompromising stickler on trifles! Any other man in the world would have slurred the matter over, and never kept the promise of the introduction. If inconvenient or undesirable, he might have postponed the call indefinitely."

"He is a most confounded prig," said Lieutenant Seymour, in great irritation.

"Baynell must have everything out--to the bitter end," said Ashley.

"I'd like to break his head! I'd like to break his face--with my fist,"

exclaimed the lieutenant, petulantly, clenching his hand again and again. He detailed the tenor of the conversation to the surgeon as the group watched the manoeuvring battery. "Isn't that a dog-in-the-manger-ish trick, Dr. Grindley? He wants to keep his Roscoes to himself. Mrs. Gwynn won't speak to him, and so he wants n.o.body else to go there whom she _might_ speak to!"

Baynell, still uncomfortably conscious of the rancor he had roused, had taken his position in the centre, just the regulation twelve paces in front of the leading horses, with the music four paces distant from the right of the first gun. As the sound blared out gayly on the crisp, clear, vernal breeze, the glittering ranks, every soldier mounted on a strong, fresh steed, moved forward swiftly, with the gun-carriages and caissons each drawn by a team of six horses. The air was full of the tramp of hoofs and the clangor of heavy, revolving wheels, ever and anon punctuated by the sharp monition, "Obstacle!" as one of the giant oaks of the grove intervened and the direction of the march of a piece was obliqued. The efficiency of the battery was very evident. The drill was almost perfect, despite the difficulty of manoeuvring among the trees.

But when the ranks pa.s.sed from the grove they swept like a whirlwind over the open s.p.a.ces of the adjoining pasture-lands, the whole battery swinging here and there in sharp turns, never losing the prescribed intervals of the relative distance of squads, and guns, and caissons--all like some single intricate piece of connected mechanism, impossible of disa.s.sociation in its several parts. Ever and anon the clear tenor tones of the captain rang out with a trumpet-like effect, and the refrain of the subalterns and non-commissioned officers commanding the sections followed in their various clamors, while the great whirling congeries of horses and men and wheels and guns obeyed the sound like some automatic creation of the ingenuity of man. Once the surgeon bent an attentive ear.

"By sections--break from the right to march to left!" called the commander, with a sudden "catch" in the tones.

"Caissons forward! Trot! March!" came from a different voice.

"Section forward, guide left!" thundered a ba.s.so profundo.

"March!" cried the captain, sharply.

"March!" came the subaltern's echo.

As the moving panorama turned and wheeled and shifted, the surgeon commented in a spirit of forecast:--

"If that fellow doesn't pay some attention to his bronchial tubes, they will pay some attention to him, and that promptly."

So promptly indeed was this prophecy verified that within the next few days old Ephraim, who purveyed all the news of the period to the remote secluded country house, informed Judge Roscoe that Captain Baynell was seriously ill with bronchitis and threatened with pneumonia. In order to have indoor protection and treatment he was to be removed as soon as possible to the hospital near the town. Judge Roscoe verified this rumor upon hastening to camp, and with hospitable warmth he invited the son of his old schoolmate to sojourn instead in his house; for in the college days to which he was fond of recurring he had been taken into the home of the elder Fluellen Baynell, and nursed by his friend's mother through a typhoid attack. To repay the obligation thus was peculiarly acceptable to a man of his type. But Baynell hardly heeded the detail of the hospitable precedent. He needed no persuasion, and thereafter he seemed more than ever lapsed in the serenities of the storm centre, ensconced in one of the great square upper bedrooms, with the spare furnishing of heavy mahogany that gave an idea of so much s.p.a.ce, the order of the day when the plethora of decoration, the "cosy corner," the wall pocket, the "art drapery," the crowded knickknackery, did not obtain. For more than a week Baynell could not rise; the surgeon visited him at regular intervals, and Judge Roscoe appeared unfailingly each morning in the sick room; but the rest of the family remained invisible, and held unsympathetically aloof.

This was a shrewd loss to Ashley, for although he had called at first with genuine anxiety as to his friend's state, the humors of the situation appealed to him as time wore on, and he recollected with the enhanced interest of enforced idleness his boast that he would compa.s.s an introduction to Mrs. Gwynn, despite Baynell's stiff refusal. Seymour still resented the circ.u.mstance so seriously that he had withheld all manifestations of sympathy or concern, and this, the kind Ashley considered, carried the matter much too far. He thought it might effect a general reconciliation if he should meet Mrs. Gwynn by accident, when he fancied he would not fear to introduce any one whom he considered fit for good society. Thus, after he had ceased to be apprehensive concerning Baynell's condition, he called on him again and again, but hearing never a light footfall on the stair or the flutter of flounces that might promise a realization of his quest. He was all unconscious that his project had an unwitting ally in Judge Roscoe himself. For more than once Judge Roscoe was uncomfortably visited by hospitable monitions.

"I should have liked to ask Colonel Ashley to dine with us," he said tentatively to Mrs. Gwynn. "He was leaving the house just as the meal was being served. Old Ephraim--confound the old fellow--has no sort of tact. He brought in the soup to Captain Baynell with Colonel Ashley sitting by the bedside! It was indeed a hint to beat a retreat. I was--I was mortified. I was really mortified not to ask him to stay."

"Heavens, Uncle Gerald!--what are you dreaming about? Ask people to dine, and no trained servant to wait on the table--and this china--and the ladies in their pinafores!" And Mrs. Gwynn glanced scoffingly around the domestic board, for the place had once been famous for the elegance of its entertainments; but the b.a.l.l.s, the "wine suppers," the formal late dinners of many courses, had come to an end with the conclusion of the period of prosperity, and the perfectly trained service had vanished with the vanishing butler and his corps of a.s.sistants whom he himself had rigorously drilled in the school of the pantry, in strict accordance with old traditions.

"Well, we have better china," said the judge, inexorably. "And the pinafores don't grow on the ladies; we have excellent precedent for believing they can be dispensed with."

Mrs. Gwynn fixed him with a resolute eye. "I don't intend to have the ladies taken from their studies in the forenoon to dress for company and distract their minds with fascinating gentlemen. Besides it is too great a compliment to receive an absolute stranger informally, as one of ourselves,--as we treat Captain Baynell,--and it is almost impossible to entertain Colonel Ashley otherwise. You forget that we have no trained servants. And I am not going to trust the handling of my aunt's beautiful old Svres dinner set to our inexperienced factotum--oh, the idea! It makes me shudder to think of the nicks and smashings. It ought to be kept intact for Julius's wife when he takes one, or for Clarence's if he should ever marry again. A stray Yankee officer isn't sufficient justification for risking it."

"He has called so often, and has been so kind to Captain Baynell."

"Well, so have I been kind to Captain Baynell, and here am I eating on the everyday china--no Svres for me! And I am going to be kinder still, for he is allowed to have some dessert to-day, and I have spread this tray with mine own hands."

She touched a call-bell, and, as old Ja.n.u.s appeared, "Take this tray upstairs to Captain Baynell," she said, as she transferred it, "be careful--don't tilt it so!" Then, as the old servant left the room, she resumed, addressing Judge Roscoe: "You can sentimentalize about your precious Captain Baynell, if you like, on the score of old friendship. I can appreciate the claims of old friendship, especially as he has been so ill, and possibly was better off here than at the hospital. But to go in generally for entertaining Yankee officers,--and all our near and dear out yonder in those cold wet trenches, half starved, and ragged, and wounded, and dying,--indeed, no! For my own part, I couldn't be induced to spread a board for another one, except at the point of the bayonet."

"Colonel Ashley don't wear no bayonet," interposed Adelaide, glibly.

"He's got him a sword," acceded Geraldine.

"A long sword, clickety-clank," suggested the first "lady."

"Clickety, clickety-clank," echoed the other, with brightening eyes.

"Don't eat with your fingers--nor the spoon; take the fork." Mrs.

Gwynn's admonitory aside was hardly an interruption.

"That is a very narrow view, Leonora," the judge contended. "There can be no parity between the fervor of convictions on the issues of a great national question and merely human predilections as between individuals.

Patriotism is not license for rancor. I have shown my devotion to the Southern cause. I have risked the lives of my dear, dear sons. I have expended much in its interests; I have endangered and lost my fortune.

The future of all I hold dear is in jeopardy in many aspects. But I _do not_ feel bound for that reason to hate individually every fellow-creature who has opposite convictions, to which he has a right, and takes up arms to sustain them."

"Well--_I do_! Being a woman, and having no reasoning capacities, there is no necessity for me to be logical on the subject. I feel what I feel, without qualification. And I know what I know without either legal proof or ocular demonstration. You are welcome to your intellect, Uncle Gerald! Much good may it do you! Intuition is enough for me. Meantime the Svres is safe on the shelves."

Beaten from the field as Judge Roscoe must needs be when his vaunted ratiocination was no available weapon, he held stanchly nevertheless to his own opinion, helpless though he was in the domestic administration.

He adopted such measures as were practicable to comport with his own view. Flattered by Ashley's interest in Baynell and recognizant of the frequency of his visits, never dreaming that a glimpse of Mrs. Gwynn was their ultimate object, he took occasion to offer him such slight courtesies as opportunity presented.

One day when they were descending the stairs Judge Roscoe chanced to comment on the fine bouquet of a certain choice old wine. He still h.o.a.rded a few costly bottles of an ancient importation, and with a sudden thought he insisted on pausing in the library to take a gla.s.s and finish a discussion happily begun by the invalid's bedside. The room was vacant, as the colonel's keen glance swiftly a.s.sured him, and the judge's order for wine was inaugurated through the bell-cord, which jangling summons old Ephraim answered somewhat procrastinatingly. The expression of surprise in the old darkey's eyes, even admonitory dissuasion, as he hearkened to the demand, very definitely nettled the judge and secretly amused Ashley, who divined the old servitor's doubts as to gaining the permission of "de widder 'oman." The host was more relieved than he cared to acknowledge to himself when the factotum presently reappeared, bearing a tray, with the old-fashioned red-and-white Bohemian wine-gla.s.ses and decanter which contained the rare vintage, and he felt with a sigh that he was still supreme in his own house, despite the sway of Mrs. Gwynn. He recognized the more gratefully, however, her influence in the perfection of the service and the solemnly careful, preternaturally watchful step of old Ephraim, as he bore about the delicate gla.s.s with all the effect of treading on eggs,--finally depositing it on the table and withdrawing at his habitual plunging gait.

Although Ashley dawdled as he listened and sipped his wine languorously, no rustle of draperies rewarded his attentive ear, no graceful presence gladdened his expectant eye. And when at last he could linger no longer, he took up his hope even as he had laid it down, in the expectation of a luckier day.

"Come again, my dear sir, whenever you can. I am always glad to see you, and your presence cheers Captain Baynell. His father was my dearest friend. I felt his death as if he had been a brother. I have grown greatly attached to his son, who closely resembles him. Anything you can do for Captain Baynell I appreciate as a personal favor. Come again!

Come again soon!"

Perhaps if Colonel Ashley had not been so bereft of the normal interests of life, in this interval of inactivity, his curiosity as to that fleeting glimpse of a beautiful woman might not have maintained its whetted edge. Perhaps constantly recurrent disappointment roused his persistence. He came again and yet again, and still he saw no member of the family save Judge Roscoe. Even the surgeon commented. "There is a considerable feminine garrison up there," he said one day; "I often hear mention of the ladies, but they never make a sally. I suspect the old judge is more of a fire-eater than he shows nowadays, for his womenfolks are evidently straight-out 'Secesh'!"

CHAPTER III