The Storm Centre Part 21

"Did you see that in a book, too?" asked Watt.

"They can only climb under certain conditions," opined Hugh, sleepily.

"But they'd scorn to intrude on a lady in a hammock, Sister," declared George.

"Oh, hush, George!" said Jim, authoritatively. "No mouse can get up there, Sister. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I can't," said Millie Fisher, plaintively. "I saw so many awful things to-day!"

"You had better think about mice," said Watt, quickly, to effect a diversion. "They are minute, but monstrous. Just imagine how one could scale the wall, and taking its tail under its left arm spring across to your hammock, and run along, say, the nape of your neck! Oh-h-h!

wouldn't that be just _aw-w-wful_!"

"Oh, hush, Watt!" said Jim. "Just compose your mind, Sister. Shut your eyes and think about nothing."

"Think how nearly you scared a gallant captain of artillery out of his seven senses to-day," suggested Watt, anew. "I thought Jim would get run over by the gun-carriages and the caissons, whether or no. He was so scatter-brained, and white, and wild-eyed, and blundering--nearly under the horses' feet."

Millie Fisher gave a pleased little laugh.

"Was he? Was he, truly?"

"He was, for a fact. Few captains of artillery have the opportunity to make their own sister a target in a regular knock-down-and-drag-out fight. I thought I was going to have to support the gentleman off the field of battle. He couldn't stand up for a while."

"How funny!" exclaimed Millie Fisher, delightedly. "Just _too_ funny."

She shifted her position in the hammock, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the sun was flaring into the open door and window of the large room, and all the five Fisher brothers were up and fully accoutred for the duty of the service, and she was requested to get out of the hammock that it might again be turned into a cloak.

The details of her exploit were brought back to the main body of the Federal army and bruited abroad by the men whom she had rescued from death or capture. One of these, the officer, was much disposed to vaunt his grat.i.tude and sense of obligation, and as Miss Millie Fisher was as well known as the river itself, the incident created no small stir in many different circles. The girl was held to be a prodigy of courage.

All the men of the family were known to be brave, eke to say, fractious.

There had been seldom a row of any sort, in several generations, in which a Fisher's red head had not been in the thick of it, and held high. There were several who were now men of mark, but never had aught else so appealed to their pulse of pride, their close bond of union in family ties and clannish affection for which they were noted. Great were the boastings of the Fisher brothers, each feeling that he shone by reflected light, and echoes of their vain-glorious brag were borne to the storm centre by that mysterious means of communication known as the Grape-vine Telegraph.

One day Seymour detailed, with a touch of bitter sarcasm, the rumor that Jim Fisher had declared that Sister Millie could stampede the whole Yankee army if she had the chance. With his customary bluntness Seymour had broached the subject on a hospitable occasion, in a group both of officers and civilians. The latter said nothing, leaving it to the comrades of the men who had benefited by her hair-brained bravery and dashing equestrianism to controvert the hyperbole. But Ashley's tact was so rooted in good nature that it was difficult to take him amiss. He could not say, he declared, whether she could stampede the army, but he could testify that she had captured it.

The Grape-vine was shortly burdened with other rumors that were of far more import to Seymour, who was of a serious mind, and of an exacting, not to say, petulant, temper. These traits had been intensified by his recent subjection to the whims and caprices of a coquette of exceptional capacity, for his feelings were deeply involved. He was truly in love, and all his dearest interests hung on the uncertain telegraphy of the Grape-vine. It was an unhappy time for him, when he doubted in a rush of hope, and again believed sunk in the despondency of absolute despair, having almost as much foundation for the one as the other, the reports of her marriage to Lawrence Lloyd.

This time the Grape-vine had proved a reliable medium of information.

Colonel Lloyd had sought and secured leave of absence long enough to ride fifty miles across country to greet her as soon as he had heard she was within the Confederacy. When her father joined the family party Colonel Lloyd laid siege for his consent to an immediate marriage.

They had long been engaged, he urged.

"I had almost forgotten that," Millie interpolated. She had promised her a.s.sistance in the persuasion of her father, and thus she fulfilled her pledge.

"There is no reason for further delay," Lloyd insisted.

"I _have_ been a _dbutante_ these--four--years!" she suggested demurely.

Lloyd submitted that he hoped there were no objections to him in Colonel Fisher's estimation.

"Except such as are insuperable--you'll never be any better," suggested Millie.

It would be undesirable, even dangerous, Lloyd argued, to send her back to her home in Roanoke City with a flag of truce in the present state of conflict.

"But it is not at all dull there--" she interrupted vivaciously. "Some very nice Yankee officers are in society there--several old friends of yours, papa. Colonel Monette and Lieutenant-Colonel Blake of the regular army--old cla.s.smates of yours. And some others whom you don't know--Captain Baynell, who is _very_ handsome, and Colonel Ashley--he belongs to the volunteers; he is most agreeable and highly thought of, and oh--of course Lieutenant Seymour--oh, it is _not_ dull there!"

Lloyd looked at her in blank dismay, and the blank dismay on the face of her father was nearly as marked, but the latter's anxiety was due to a different cause--what would his wife decide if she were here!--for every one who knew the Fishers was well aware that Guy Fisher, albeit a man of much force in his own domain of business or military life, "sung mighty small" in all matters in which his wife had concern.

Lloyd rallied to the attack and continued to explain that he had orders detaching him, showing that he would be stationary, in command of a fort in the far South for some time, and that Millie would be in a position to be comfortable.

"But can I ride horseback there?" she stipulated. "I have just found out what I can do in that line!"

She liked to describe this conversation afterward. Her lover was the most serious and literal-minded of men, anxious and doubtful, and her father the prey of vacillation and indecision. They looked alternately at her and at each other with an expression of startled bewilderment as she spoke, seeking to adjust what she had said with their own knowledge of the facts.

The flying column was once more in motion, and one evening, after a considerable distance southward had been accomplished, the leave both of Colonel Fisher and Colonel Lloyd being close upon expiration and decision exigent, the doubting, anxious father gave his consent.

The young people were married like campaigners under a tree in a beautiful magnolia grove, the rhododendron blooming everywhere in the woods and the mocking-birds in full song. Colonel Lloyd was in uniform, armed and spurred, Miss Fisher in her hat and riding-habit, which last she wore with peculiar elegance; as the skirts of the day were of great length, the superfluous folds were caught up and carried over one arm, and it was said she had attained her graceful proficiency in this art, which was esteemed of much difficulty, by constant practice before the long mirror in her wardrobe at home. She used to tell afterward of the beautiful site, the velvet turf, the magnolia blooms, the rhododendron blossoms, the singing mocking-birds. Then she would enumerate the brilliant martial a.s.semblage that witnessed the ceremony, the men of high rank in full uniform; the wives of a number of them--refugees in the Confederacy "seeking for a home," as the sardonically humorous song of that day phrased it--also graced the occasion. Her father and brothers, all the six Fisher men, were present, and she used to say, with the tone of an after-thought, but with a glint of mischief in her eye, "_And_ Colonel Lloyd--_he_ was there, too!"

There, but hardly up to the standard. He was a man whose courage had been of especial note, even in those days when bravery seemed the rule.

He had had, too, exceptional opportunities to display his mettle. But on this occasion his terror was so palpable that he trembled perceptibly; he was pale and agitated; he fumbled for the ring and occasioned a general fear that he might let it fall--altogether furnishing an admirable exhibition of the stage fright usual with bridegrooms.

All these details did she observe and recollect and even his gravity would relax as she rehea.r.s.ed them in after years. It was considered one of the evidences of her incurable frivolity that she seemed to care nothing for that momentous incident of her experience in those days, hardly to remember it,--the exploit by which she had saved the lives of three men, sore hara.s.sed and beset; but she found endless source of interest in the reminiscence of trifles such as the incongruous aspect of the chaplain who officiated at the wedding ceremony, with his spurs showing on his reverend heels beneath his surplice, and the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on his sleeves as he lifted his hands in benediction,--which afforded her a glee of retrospect.

CHAPTER XIV

After the escape of Julius Roscoe time held to a tranquil pace in the placidities of the storm centre. The rose-red dawns burst into bloom and the days flowered whitely, full of fragrance and singing birds, of loitering sunshine and light-winged breezes. One by one the still noons glowed and glistered, expanding into summer radiance, and dulled gradually to the mellow splendors of the sunset. Then fell the serene dusk, blue on the far-away mountains, violet nearer at hand, with a white star in the sky, and a bugle's strain leaping into the air like a thing of life, a vivified sound. And all the panorama of troops, and forts, and camps, and cannon might be some magnificent military spectacle, so remote seemed the war--so unreal. Every morning the "ladies" wrought at their lessons in the library, and Leonora cut their small summer garments and helped the seamstress, who came in by the day, to sew. Despite these absorptions Mrs. Gwynn managed to find leisure to read aloud to Judge Roscoe his favorite old novels, and essays, and dull antiquated histories. She evolved subjects of controversy on which to argue with him, and was facetious and found occasion to call him "Your Honour" oftener than heretofore. For he had grown old suddenly; his step had lost its elasticity; he looked up a cane that had once been presented to him by some fraternity; his hair was turning white and--worst sign of all--he was not sorry to be approaching the end.

"The night is long, and the day is a burden," he once said.

Then, when she reminded him of duty, he recanted. But he had obviously fallen into that indifference to life incident to advancing age, and was sensible of a not involuntary gravitation toward the tomb. Later he asked her if she did not think those lines of Stephen Hawes's had a most mellow and languorous cadence,--

"For though the day appear ever so long, At last the bell ringeth to even-song."

He showed great anxiety concerning Captain Baynell's recovery, but he had never mentioned to her the fact of Julius's presence in the house.

She knew that he and probably old Ephraim had been aware of it, but this was only a constructive knowledge on her part, and founded on no a.s.surance. When once more Baynell was able to come downstairs, she perceived that he himself had no remote consciousness of his a.s.sailant.

He had entirely accepted the theory of a fall instead of a collision, and was only a little deprecatory and embarra.s.sed at being so long in getting himself away.

"Positively my last appearance!" He was reduced even to the hackneyed phrase.

Mrs. Gwynn made the conventional polite protest, and the "ladies"

joyously and affectionately flocked around him, and his heart expanded to the grave kindness of his host. Nevertheless he appreciated a subtle change. Despite the enhancing charm of the season, which even a few days had wrought to a deeper perfection, the place had somehow fallen under a tinge of gloom. But the roses were blooming at the windows, the lilies stood in ranks, tall and stately, in the borders, the humming-birds were rioting all day in the honeysuckle vines over the rear galleries and the side porch, the breeze swept back and forth through the dim, perfumed, wide s.p.a.ces of the house, which seemed expanded, with all the doors open. Sometimes he attributed the change to the tempered light, for all the trees were in full leaf, and the deeply umbrageous boughs transmitted scarce a beam to the windows, once so sunny; much of the time, too, the shutters were partially closed. And though the children flitted about like little fairies, in their thin white dresses, and Mrs.

Gwynn, garbed, too, in white, seemed, with her floating draperies, in the transparent green twilight, like some ethereal dream of youth and beauty, there was a pervasive sense of despondency, of domestic discomfort, of impending disaster. Sometimes he attributed the change to one or two untoward chances, a revelation of the real character of war that happened to be presented to the observation of the household. The "ladies" came clamoring in one day, all wide-eyed and half distraught.

With that relish of horror characteristic of ignorance, a negro woman, a visitor of Aunt Chaney's, had detailed to them the sentence of a soldier to be shot for some military crime--shot, as he knelt on his own coffin.

Presently they heard the music of the band playing a funeral march along the turnpike as the poor wretch was taken out with a detail from the city limits; then, only the drum, a terrible sound, a dull, m.u.f.fled thud, at intervals, that barely timed the marching footfall, while the victim was in the midst! And still the vibration of the mournful drum, seeking out every responsive nerve of terror within the shuddering children!

Their painful, tearless cries, their clinging hands, their frantic appeals for help for the doomed creature--would no one help him!--were most pathetic.

And though Leonora could shut the windows and gravely explain, then tell a story and divert the moment,--they were so young, so plastic, so trustful,--no ingenuity could find a satisfactory method to account for the anti-climax of the tragedy, when within the hour came the same detail, marching briskly back along the turnpike, with fife and drum playing a waggish tune. The wide, daunted eyes of the children, their paling cheeks, their breathless silence, annotated the lesson in brutality, in the essential heartlessness of the world, except for the tutored graces of a cultivated philanthropy. For a long time one or the other would wake in the night to cry out that she heard the m.u.f.fled drum,--they were taking the man out to shoot him, kneeling on his coffin,--and again and again would come the plaintive query, "And is n.o.body, _n.o.body_ sorry?"