The Storm Centre Part 24

"Doubtless he had some high-minded motive, so intricate that he can never explain it, and n.o.body else can ever unravel it. I only know he has played the fool,--and I _fear_ he has ruined himself irretrievably."

"But you don't answer my question--what do _you think_ he has done?"

Ashley might have responded that his conclusions were not subject to her inquisition. But his suave methods of thought and conduct could not compa.s.s this unmannerly retort. Moreover, it was a relief to his feelings to canva.s.s the matter so paramount in his mind with an irresponsible woman, rather than with his brother officers, among whom it was rife, thereby sending his speculations and doubts and views abroad as threads to be wrought into the warp and woof of their opinion, and possibly give undue substance and color to the character of the fabric.

"Why,--of course this is just my own view,--formed on what I hear from outsiders,--and I think it is the general view. Baynell knew the young man was hidden in the house, on a stolen visit to his father, thinking he had no ultimate intentions but to escape at a convenient opportunity.

These separations must be very cruel indeed, with no means of communication. Baynell, though very wrongfully, _might_ have indulged this concealment from motives of--ah--er--friendship to the family, for young Roscoe would undoubtedly have been dealt with as a spy, had he been captured in lurking here. The two _may_ have been more or less a.s.sociated,--certainly they came together in an altercation that resulted in blows. _I_ think Baynell possibly discovered Roscoe's scheme, and threatened him with arrest. Roscoe knocked him down the stairs and fled from the house to the grotto, considering this safe, for he might have crossed from the balcony to the firs without observation if he had been lucky, as at that time none of us knew that the grotto existed. Now these are _my_ conclusions--but for the integrity of the service Baynell's acts and his motives must be sifted. They may not bear to an impartial mind even so liberal a construction as this. It is a threatening situation, and I am apprehensive--I am very apprehensive."

Mrs. Gwynn's hand fell with a discordant crash on the keys of the piano.

"Why--why--what can they do to him?" she gasped.

Vertnor Ashley shied from the subject like a frightened horse.

"Ah--oh--ah--er--well," he said, "let us not think of that." He paused abruptly. Then, "To forecast the immediate future is enough of disaster.

There is already said to be an official investigation on the cards. No doubt charges will be preferred, and he will be brought to a court-martial."

He sighed again, and looked about futilely, as if for suggestion. He rose at length, and with his pleasant, cordial manner and a smile of deprecating apology, he said, "I am afraid my grim subjects do not commend me for a lady's parlor." Then with a light change of tone, "So much obliged for that lovely little French song--what is it--_Quel est cet attrait qui m'attire_? I want to be able to distinguish it, for may I not ask for it again some time?" And bowing, and smiling, and prosperous, he took his graceful departure.

Mrs. Gwynn stood motionless, her eyes on the carpet, her mind almost dazed by the magnitude, by the terrors, of the subjects of her contemplation. She felt she must be more certain; she could not leave this disastrous complication thus. She could not speak to this man, friendly though he had seemed, lest she betray some fact of her own knowledge that might be of disadvantage to another who had meant no ill--nay, she was sure had done no ill. Then she was beset by the realization of the sophistry of circ.u.mstance. But if circ.u.mstance could be adduced against Baynell, should it not equally prevail in his favor?

When she, knowing naught of the lurking Julius, had sent to his hiding-place this Federal officer, did not instantly the clamors of discovery resound through the house? She could hear even now in the tones of his voice, steadied and sonorous by the habit of command, sharp and decisive on the air, the words, "You are my prisoner!" twice repeated, that had summoned her, stricken with sudden panic, from her flowers on the library table to the hall, where she saw the bal.u.s.trade of the stairs still shaking with the concussion of a heavy fall. And as she stood there, another moment--barely a moment--brought the apparition of Julius, flying as if for his life, a pistol in his hand, and covered with blood. Dreams! Who said aught of dreams! This was not the course a man would take who desired to shield a concealed Rebel. There was no eye-witness of the altercation. But she, on the lower floor, had heard it all--the swift ascent for the book, the exclamation of amazement, then the stern voice of command, the words of arrest, the impact of the blow, and the clamors of the fall. Then the flight; she had seen Julius, fleeing for safety, fleeing from the house into the very teeth of the camps.

Should not Baynell know this, the event that preceded the long insensibility which had so blunted his impressions, his recollections?

She resolved to confer with Judge Roscoe. How much he knew of Julius Roscoe's lurking visit, how much he cared for her to know, she could not be sure. She suspected that old Ephraim was fully informed, for without his services the visitor could hardly have been maintained. But neither had been at hand at the moment of discovery, of collision.

When Judge Roscoe came in she submitted this question to his judgment.

To her surprise he did not canva.s.s the matter. He said at once: "By all means Captain Baynell ought to know this. It would be best to send for him and explain to him what you saw and heard,--the whole occurrence.

Captain Baynell should be made aware of all the details of the actual event that you more nearly than any one else witnessed."

The house in these summer days, with the shutters half closed and the doors all open, seemed more retired, more solitary, than when all the busy life of the place was drawn to the focus of the library fire. She was quite alone, as she traversed the hall and sat down to write at the library table. The "ladies" were playing out of doors, close in to the window under a tree. Judge Roscoe had business in the town and walked thither leaning rather heavily on his cane, for no news came of Acrobat, and somehow he no longer cared to ride the glossy iron-gray that Captain Baynell still left grazing in his pastures. So still were all the precincts she feared she might not find a messenger as she went out on the latticed gallery searching for old Ephraim. But there he sat in the sun in front of the kitchen door. He was not wont to be so silent. He said naught when she handed him the missive with her instructions, but he looked unwilling, with a sort of warning wisdom in his expression, and several times turned the note gingerly in his hand, as if he thought it might explode. He would fain have remonstrated against the renewal of communication with the elements that had brought so much disquiet into the calm life of the old house hitherto. But his lips were sealed so far as the "Yankee man" and Julius were concerned. And he would maintain that he had never seen or heard of the grotto till indeed it was blown up.

"All dese young folks is a stiff-necked and tarrifyin' generation, an'

ef dey will leave ole Ephraim in peace, he p'intedly won't pester dem,"

he said to himself.

Therefore, merely murmuring acquiescence, "Yes'm, yes'm, yes'm," while he received his orders, he put on his hat which he had hitherto held in his hand, and walked off briskly to the tent of the artillery captain.

The succinct dignified tone of Mrs. Gwynn's note requesting to see Captain Baynell at his earliest convenience on a matter of business precluded effectually any false sentimental hopes, had any communication from her been calculated to raise them. He was already mounted, having just returned from afternoon parade; and saying to Uncle Ephraim that he would wait on Mrs. Gwynn immediately, he wheeled his horse and forthwith disappeared in the midst of the shadow and sheen of the full-leaved grove.

Baynell had changed, changed immeasurably, since she had last seen him.

Always quiet and sedate, his gravity had intensified to sternness, his dignified composure to a cold, impenetrable reserve, his attentive interest to a sort of wary vigilance, all giving token of the effect wrought in his mental and moral endowment by the knowledge of the suspicions entertained concerning his actions, and the charges that were being formulated against him.

In one sense these had already slain him. His individuality was gone. He would be no more what once he was. His pride, so strong, so vivid, as essential an element of his being as his breath, as his soul, had been done to death. It had been a n.o.ble endowment, despite its exactions, and maintained high standards and sought finer issues. It had died with the woe of a thousand deaths, that calumny should touch his name; that accusation could ever find a foothold in his life; that treachery should come to investigation in his deeds.

She rather wondered at his calmness, the self-possession expressed in his manner, his face. He had himself well in hand. He was not nervous.

His haggard pallor told what the sleepless hours of self-communing brought to him, yet he was strong enough to confront the future. He would give battle to the false charge, the lying circ.u.mstance, the implacable phalanxes of the probabilities. The truth was intrinsically worth fighting for, in any event, and even now his heart could swell with the conviction that the truth could only demonstrate the impeccancy of his official record.

He met her with that grave, conventional, inexpressive courtesy which had always characterized him, and it was a little difficult, in her unusual flutter and agitation, to find a suitable beginning.

She had seated herself in the library at the table where she had written the note, and she was mechanically trifling with an ivory paper-knife, the portfolio and paper still lying before her. He took a chair near at hand and waited, not seeking to inaugurate the conversation.

"I sent for you, Captain Baynell, because I have heard something--there are rumors--"

He did not take the word from her, nor help her out. He sat quietly waiting.

"In short, I think you ought to know that I overheard all that pa.s.sed between you and Julius Roscoe on the stairs that morning."

Captain Baynell's rejoinder surprised her.

"Then he was really in the house?" he said meditatively.

"Oh, yes,--though I did not know it till he dashed past me in the hall.

Two minutes had not elapsed since you had left me here standing by the table."

She detailed the circ.u.mstances, and when she had finished speaking he thanked her simply, and said that the facts would be of value to him.

"I thought you ought to know them, hearing Colonel Ashley describe the various rumors afloat--but, but these--they--they will soon die out?"

She looked at him appealingly.

He did not answer immediately. Then--

"I shall be court-martialled," he said succinctly.

Her heart seemed almost to stand still in the presence of this great threat, yet she strove against its menace.

"Of course I know this is serious, and must trouble all your friends,"

she said vaguely. "But doubtless--doubtless there will be an acquittal."

"It is a matter of liberty, and life itself," he said. "But I do not care for either,--I deprecate the reflections on my character as a soldier." He hesitated for one moment, then broke out with sudden pa.s.sion, "I care for the jeopardy of my honor--my sacred honor!"

There was an interval of stillness so long that a slant of the sunset light might seem to have moved on the floor. The soft babble of the voices of the children came in at the open window; the mocking-bird's jubilance rose from among the magnolia blooms outside. The great bowl on the table was full of roses, and she eyed their magnificence absently, seeing nothing, remembering all that Ashley had said, and realizing how difficult it would be to convince even him, with all his friendly good-will, of the simplicity of the motives that had precipitated the real events, so grimly metamorphosed in the monstrous mischances of war.

"Oh--" she cried suddenly, with a poignant accent, "that this should have fallen upon you in the house of your friends! We can never forgive ourselves, and you can never forgive us!"

"There is nothing to forgive," he said heartily; "I have no grievance against this kind roof. I could not expect Judge Roscoe to betray his own son, and deliver him up to capture, to death as a spy--because I happened to be here, a temporary guest. And I could not expect the young man to voluntarily surrender--for my convenience. No--I blame no one."

"You are magnanimous!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, her luminous gray eyes shining through tears as she looked at him.

"Only omniscience could have foreseen and guarded against this disastrous complication of adverse circ.u.mstances. But the results are serious enough to justify doubt and provoke investigation. Knowing the simple truth, it seems a little difficult to see how it can fail to be easily established--it is the imputation that afflicts me. I am not used to contemplate myself as a traitor--with my motives."

"Oh, it is so unjust--so rancorously untrue! You arrested him the moment you saw him--although he was in Judge Roscoe's house. You must have known that he was Judge Roscoe's son."

"I recognized him from his portrait--" Baynell checked himself. He would not have liked to say how often, with what jealous apprais.e.m.e.nt of its manly beauty and interest of suggestion, he had studied the portrait of Julius on the parlor wall, knowing him as a man who had loved Leonora Gwynn, and fearing him as a man whom possibly Leonora Gwynn loved.

"But I was obliged to arrest him on the spot--why, I was in honor bound."

His face suddenly fell--in this most intimate essential of true gentlemanhood, in this dearest requisition of a soldier's faith, that is yet the commonest principle of the humblest campaigner, he was held to have failed, in point of honor. He was held to have paltered and played a double part, to have betrayed alike his country, the fair name of his corps, and his own unsullied record. And this was the fiat of fair-minded men, comrades, countrymen, to be expressed in the preferred charges.

Bankrupt in all he held dear, he shrank from seeming to beg the sheer empty bounty of her sympathy. He hardly cared to face these reflections in her presence. He arose to go, and it was with composed, conventional courtesy, as inexpressive as if he were some casual friendly caller, that he took his leave, resolutely ignoring all the tragedy of the situation.