The Storm Centre Part 26

The president of the court cleared his throat as if minded to speak.

Then obviously with the view of avoiding misunderstandings as to dates he formulated the query: "Was this recent? May I ask _when_ you declined his proposal?"

"I am not certain of the date," she replied. "It was--let me think--it was the evening of a day when the neighborhood sewing-circle met at my uncle's house. I remember, now--it was the sixth of May."

"Did Captain Baynell attend the meeting of the sewing-circle?"--the judge-advocate permitted himself an edge of satire.

"He was present, and Colonel Ashley, and Lieutenant Seymour."

"Oh!" said the judge-advocate, at a loss.

At a loss and doubtful, but encouraged. To his mind she offered the key to the situation. Keenly susceptible to feminine influence himself, he fancied he could divine its effect on another man. He proceeded warily, reducing his question to writing, while on various faces ranged about the table appeared a shade of doubt and even reprobation of the tone he was taking.

"You have laid aside the insignia of mourning--yet you do not contemplate matrimony. You are very young."

"I am twenty-three--as I have already stated."

"You may live a long time. You may live to grow old. You propose to live alone the remainder of your days. Did you tell Captain Baynell that?"

"In effect, yes."

Her face had grown crimson, then paled, then the color came again in patches. But her voice did not falter, and she looked at her interlocutor with an admirable steadiness. The president again cleared his throat as if about to speak. The shade of disapprobation deepened on the listening faces.

The judge-advocate leaned forward, wrote swiftly, then read in a tantalizing tone, as of one who has a clincher in reserve:--

"Now was not that a mere feminine subterfuge? You know you could hardly be _sure_ that you will never marry again--at your age."

Once more the president cleared his throat, but he spoke this time.

"Do you desire to push this line of investigation farther?" he said, objection eloquent in his deep, full voice.

"One moment, sir." The judge-advocate had been feeling his way very cautiously, but he was fl.u.s.tered by the interruption, and he was conscious that he put his next question less adroitly than he had intended.

"Why are you so sure, if I may ask?"

There was a tense silence. She said to herself that this was no time or place for finical delicacy. A man's life, his honor, all he held dear, were in jeopardy, and it had fallen to her to say words that must needs affect the result. She answered steadily. "My reply to Captain Baynell was not actuated by any objections to him. I know nothing of him but what is greatly to his credit." She hesitated for a moment. She had grown very white, and her eyes glittered, but her voice was still firm as she went on:----

"There is no reason why I should not speak freely under these circ.u.mstances, for every one knows--every one who is cognizant of our family affairs--that my married life was extremely wretched. I was very unhappy, and I told Captain Baynell that I would never marry again."

Dead silence reigned for a moment. They had all heard the story of her hard fate. The discussion as to whether a chair had been merely broken over her head, or she had been dragged about her home one woful midnight by the ma.s.ses of her beautiful hair, was insistently suggested as the sunlight lay athwart it now, and the breeze moved its tendrils caressingly. The eyes of the court-martial looked at the judge-advocate with fiery reproach, and the heart of the court-martial beat for her for the moment with chivalric partisanship.

For the first time Baynell seemed to lose his composure. His face was scarlet, his hands trembled. He was biting his under lip violently in an effort at self-control; he was experiencing an agony of sympathy and regret that this should be forced upon her, of helpless fury that he could be of no avail.

Still once more the president cleared his throat, this time peremptorily. The judge-advocate, considerably out of countenance, hastily forestalled him, that he might justify his course by bringing out the point he desired to elicit, reading his question aloud for its submission to the court, though her last reply had rendered his clincher of little force.

"Did you say to Captain Baynell that you have no intention of marrying again merely as a subterfuge--to soften the blow, because you expect to marry Lieutenant Roscoe as soon as the war is over?"

His suspicion that Baynell had been accessory to the concealment of young Roscoe so long as he did not fear him as a rival was evident.

Baynell turned suddenly and stared with startled eyes in which an amazed dismay contended with futile anger that this,--such a motive--such a course of action, could be attributed to him.

She replied only to the obvious question, evidently not realizing the implication. The tension was over; her color had returned; her voice was casual.

"No. I have no thought of marrying Lieutenant Roscoe."

"Has he asked you to marry him?"

"Long ago,--when he was a mere boy."

"And again since your widowhood?"

"No."

"You have seen him since?"

"Only that morning when he rushed past me in the hall," she replied, not apprehending the trend of his questions.

"Captain Baynell must have had some reason to think you would marry him, or he would not have asked you. You rejected him one evening. The next morning he arrested Lieutenant Roscoe, who had been in hiding in the house,--was there some understanding between you and Captain Baynell,--had he earlier forborne this arrest in the expectation of your consent, and was the arrest made in revenge on a rival whom he fancied a successful suitor?"

She looked at the judge-advocate with a horrified amazement eloquent on her face.

"No! No! Oh," she cried in a poignant voice, "if you knew Captain Baynell, you could not, you would not, advance such implications against him,--who is the very soul of honor."

The judge-advocate was again for an instant out of countenance.

"You thought so little of him yourself as to reject his addresses," he said by way of recovering himself.

She was absorbed in the importance of the crisis. She did not realize the effect of her words until after she had uttered them.

"I did not appreciate his character then," she said simply.

Once more there was an interval of tense and significant silence.

Baynell, suddenly pale to the lips, lifted startled eyes as if he sought to a.s.sure himself that he had heard aright. Then he bent his gaze on the paper in his hand.

Mrs. Gwynn, tremulous with excitement, appreciated a moment later the inadvertent and personal admission, and a burning flush sprang into her cheeks. The judge-advocate took instant advantage of her loss of poise.

"I don't know what you mean by that--that you would not reject him again? Will you explain?" he read his question with a twinkling eye that nettled and hara.s.sed her.

A member of the court-martial objected to the interrogation as "frivolous and unnecessary," and therefore it was not addressed to the witness. A pause ensued.

The brevet brigadier cleared his throat.

"Have you concluded this line of investigation?" he said to the judge-advocate, for the prosecution was obviously breaking down.

"I believe we are about through," said the judge-advocate, vacuously, looking at a list in his hand, "that is"--to the accused--"if you have no questions to put in rexamination." And as Mrs. Gwynn was permitted to depart from the room, he still busied himself with his list. "Three names, yet. These are the children, sir."

Every member of the household of Judge Roscoe was summoned as a witness for the defence, to seek to establish Baynell's innocence in these difficult circ.u.mstances, even the little girls, and indeed otherwise the prosecution would have subpoenaed them on the theory that if there were any treachery, the children had not the artifice to conceal it. So far this testimony was unequivocal. Judge Roscoe had sworn to the simple facts and the measures taken to avoid the notice of the Federal officer.

Uncle Ephraim's testimony, save for the withheld episode of the grotto, the exact truth, was corroborative, but suffered somewhat from his reputation for wearing two faces, his sobriquet of "Ja.n.u.s" being adduced by the prosecution. Mrs. Gwynn had affirmed that she herself did not know or suspect the presence of Julius in the house, so completely was he held _perdu_. The agitated little twins, each examined as to her knowledge of the obligations of an oath and sworn, separately testified in curiously clipped, suppressed voices that they knew nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing of Julius Roscoe in the house.

In the face of this unanimity it seemed impossible to prove aught save that in one of those hazardous visits home, so dear to the rash young Southern soldiers, the father had taken successful precautions to defeat suspicion; and the Confederate officer had shown great adroitness in carrying out the plan of his campaign which his observations inside the lines had suggested.