The Storm Centre Part 4

Baynell was a man who could be allured by a pretty face, but he could never have fallen in love with a woman merely for her beauty. He was possessed of insistent ideals, and now and then these were shattered by an evidence of Mrs. Gwynn's incongruously bitter cynicism, or a touch of repellent hardness and an icy coldness unpleasing in one so young, and all his preconceived prejudices were to adjust anew. He was beginning at last to feel that he must seek to realize her nature, rather than to fit her into the niche awaiting the conventional G.o.ddess of his fancy. She had other traits as inconsistent with her youth, her grace, her beauty, her lissome gait, her delicate hand; and these were homespun virtues, so plain, so good, so useful, so aggressive--such as one may fancy are designed to compensate the possessor for limitations in a more graceful sort,--according with an angular frame, a near-sighted vision, a rasping voice. There was scant need to look so beautiful, so daintily speculative, as she sat and cast up the judge's household accounts in a big red book that seemed full of cobweb perplexities and strenuous calculations to make both ends meet. Sometimes she brought it over to her uncle and, placing it before his reluctant gaze, pointed out some item of his own extravagance with a dignity of rebuke and a look of superior wisdom that might have realized to the imagination Minerva herself. Such a wealth of good house-keeping lore, so accurately applied, might have justified any amount of feminine ugliness.

Her tender, far-sighted, commiserative appreciation of the deaf-mute's limitations, and the simple measures that had so far nullified them and utilized all the child's capacity, were incongruous with the iron rule under which the three were held.

"I am afraid the ladies are giving you a great deal of trouble, Leonora," her uncle said one day, apologetically, when absolute mutiny seemed abroad amongst them.

"Not half so much trouble as I intend to give them," Mrs. Gwynn replied resolutely.

Their meek, mild, readjusted little faces after the scholastic hours were over were enough to move a heart of stone, and now and again Judge Roscoe glanced uneasily at them, and at last said inappropriately enough:--

"I am afraid you have not had a happy morning, ladies."

"They have been brought to hear reason," Mrs. Gwynn observed dryly. "And I have heard reason, too,--the Fourth Line of the Multiplication Table recited backward four times, standing facing the wall. It is an exercise that tends to subdue the angry pa.s.sions. Allow me to commend it for general experiment."

Baynell sought to laugh the episode off genially with the "ladies," but the three little faces looked for permission to ridicule this dire experience, and as Mrs. Gwynn's countenance maintained a blank inscrutability, they did not venture to make merry over their miseries of the "Four Line," now happily overpast.

The scholastic duties were well over by noon, except perhaps for the scale-playing on the grand piano, and the "ladies" roamed at will about the house, or in the parterre if the weather were dry, or played at battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k or graces in the long gallery enclosed with Venetian blinds. If it rained they were permitted to repair to the kitchen, where Aunt Chaney, a very tall, portly woman, with a stately gruffness, obviously spurious, accommodated them with bits of dough, to be moulded into ducks and pigs, and a.s.signed them a small section of the stove whereon to bake these triumphs of the plastic art. Doll's dresses were here laundered, being washed in a small cedar noggin owned in common by the trio, and a miniature sad-iron, heated by special permission on Aunt Chaney's stove, was brought into requisition.

Sometimes Aunt Chaney was in a softened mood, and fluted a ruffle on a wax baby's skirt, and told wonderful tales about Mrs. Gwynn's dresses in her girlhood, "flounced to the waist, and crimped to a charm." Thence the transition was easy to the details of her young mistress's social triumphs and celebrated beauty, with lovers in gangs, all sighing like furnaces and represented as rolling in riches and riding splendid and prancing horses, the final special zest of each story being the fruitless jealousy of the red-headed Miss Mildred Fisher, eating her heart out,--this to the immature imagination of the "ladies" literally resembled the chickens' hearts which were so daintily chopped to garnish the dish of fried pullets amidst the parsley.

As the rain beat against the windows and the evening fell, the trio thought many a loitering-place less attractive than the chimney-nook behind the stove in Aunt Chaney's kitchen, regaled with her stories as she cooked, and now and then a spoonful of some dainty, administered with the curt command, "Open yer mouf, ladies!"

Thus it was that the library was almost deserted when Colonel Ashley called more than once. Captain Baynell he found, and occasionally the judge also. He always selected the afternoons, and after a time he was wont to glance about with such a keen, predatory expression that the truth began to dawn vaguely on Captain Baynell. Vanity is so robust an endowment that it had been easy enough for the recipient of these visits to appropriate wholly the interest that prompted them. It struck Baynell with an indignant sense of impropriety when he began to remember Ashley's ardent desire to meet Mrs. Gwynn, his admiration of the glimpse of her beauty that had once been vouchsafed him, and to connect this with his manifestation of good comradeship and eager solicitude concerning his friend's health. Baynell was infinitely out of countenance for a moment.

"Why, confound the fellow! He doesn't care a fig whether I live or die."

Then he was sensible of a rising anger, that he should be made the subterfuge of a systematic endeavor to casually meet Mrs. Gwynn,--likely to prove successful in the last instance. For lowering clouds overspread the sky when Ashley entered late in the afternoon, and a storm so violent, so tumultuous, broke with such sudden fury that it was impossible for him to take leave had he desired this. Baynell knew that nothing was further from his comrade's wish. Ashley reconciled himself so swiftly to Judge Roscoe's insistence that he should remain to tea that it might seem he had come for that express purpose.

"Dat man," soliloquized the "double-faced Ja.n.u.s" impressively, "mus'

hev' smelled de perfume of dat ar flummery plumb ter de camp. Chaney wuz jes' dishin' up when he ring de door-bell!"

CHAPTER IV

Now, face to face with the long-sought opportunity, Colonel Ashley was grievously disappointed. A woman--young, singularly beautiful, dressed like a middle-aged frump, with the manners of a matron of fifty, staid, reserved, inattentive, uninterested!

The incongruity affected him like a discourtesy; its rarity had no attractions for him, nor in the slightest degree roused his curiosity.

He had expected charm, glow, responsiveness, coquetry,--all the various traits that attend on beauty and youth. Even a conscious hauteur would have had its special grace and piqued an effort to win her to cordiality, but here was the inexpressiveness, the indifference, of an elderly woman, one tired, despondent, done with the world--civil, indeed, as behooved her rearing, her station, but unnoting--really apart from all the interests of the present and all thought for the future.

And, certainly, Mrs. Gwynn's life might be considered already lived out in her past.

The rain fell in sheets, and Colonel Ashley wished himself back in camp, despite the flavor of the flummery. As they sat at table, now and again a vivid glare of lightning revealed through the windows the expanse of falling water, closely wrought as a silver-gray fabric, and the flash of white foam from its impact with the ground. The house seemed to rock with the reverberations of the bursts of thunder.

When they were once more in the library, Colonel Ashley found himself with a long evening on his hands; his chum, Baynell, had fallen into one of his frequent fits of silent reflectiveness as he smoked, and Judge Roscoe, an ascetic, quiet, uncongenial old man, of opposite political convictions,--which placed an embargo on all the topics of the day,--did not seem to promise much in the way of lively companionship.

Mrs. Gwynn still lingered in the dining room, and the little "ladies"

explained that her old nurse, who was now the cook, was afflicted with a "misery," seeming to bear some relation to neuralgia, and needed help to get through with her work, "Uncle Ephraim being a poor dependence" where the handling of crockery was concerned.

The "ladies," with true feminine coquetry, affected a shy reserve, and rather retreated from the expansive jovial bonhomie of Colonel Ashley's hearty advances toward them, albeit they were wont to press their attentions upon the inexpressive Captain Baynell. They met with fluttering downcast glances the engaging twinkle of Ashley's bright dark eyes. They replied with demure little clipped monosyllables to his gay sallies, and indeed Colonel Ashley bade fair to discharge the task of entertaining himself throughout the evening, till he luckily asked one of them what she liked best to play--graces or battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k, Geraldine having brought in a grace-hoop and now holding it in her hands before her as she stood in the flicker of the fire.

"I like cards best," Adelaide volunteered unexpectedly.

"Have you a pack of cards? Then let's have a game!" Ashley cried gayly; "though I'm afraid you can beat me at anything I try."

There was a shrill jubilance of juvenile acclaim. The three, their ringlets waving, their cheeks flushing, the short skirts of their gay attire--blue, and crimson, and orange--fluttering joyfully, were instantly placing the chairs about the little card-table and climbing into them, while Colonel Ashley took the cards and dealt them with many airy fancy touches, to the amazement and admiration of the "ladies."

With his versatile capacity for all sorts of enjoyment, the incident was beginning to have a certain zest for him, involving no sacrifice either of inclination or time. Baynell realized how Ashley also valued the pose. He had an intuitive perception of Ashley's own relish of its incongruity,--the gallant colonel of cavalry, who had successfully measured blades with the fiercest swordsmen and masters of fence, to be now lending himself gently to play with three little children, whose soft eyes glowed upon him with radiant admiration and tenderest confidence, while the firelight flared and flickered within and the storm raged without! Baynell knew that it was with an appreciated sacrifice of the perfect proportions of the situation that Ashley finally dealt cards for his friend and Judge Roscoe; he would have preferred to exclude them, if he might, and have the whole stage for the effects of his own dramatic personality. But never, in all his weavings of romance about himself, was Ashley guilty of even the slightest injustice or discourtesy or forgetfulness of the claims of others; hence his character was almost as fine and lovable as he feigned, or as it would have seemed, had but his foible of self-appreciation, self-gratulation, borne a juster proportion and been rendered less obvious by his own cheerful, unconscious, transparent candor. There was no guile in him, and the smile was quite genuine with which he took up his cards and affected to look anxiously through them to discern if Fate lurked therein in the presence of the Old Maid.

For it was this dread game that the "ladies" had chosen, and a serious affair it is when regarded from their standpoint. Ashley had now no need of his own sentiments or mental processes or artistic poses to minister to his entertainment. It was quite sufficient to watch the faces of the "ladies" as the "draw" went round, each player in turn taking at random an unseen card from the hand of the next neighbor to the left, the whole pack of course having been dealt. The heavy terror of doom was attendant upon the unwelcome pasteboard. Once, as this harbinger of Fate pa.s.sed on, a gleeful squeal announced that a "lady" had escaped the anguish of the prospect of single blessedness.

"That's not fair, Ger'ldine!" exclaimed Adelaide, reprovingly; "you have told ever'body that Gran'pa has drawed the Old Maid!"

"I jus' couldn't help it--I was _so glad_ she was gone," apologized the contrite Geraldine.

"It makes no difference, my precious, for I have two of the queens, and they are a pair," said Judge Roscoe, and as he threw the mates on the table the "ladies" placed their hands on their lips to stifle the aghast "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" that trembled on utterance, and gazed on their fellow-gamesters with great, excited, round eyes. For the crisis had supervened. Of course one of the queens had been withdrawn from the pack at the commencement of the game, in order to leave an odd queen as the Old Maid. Since two had just been discarded there remained the prophetic spinster, and each "lady's" delicate little fingers trembled on the "draw." Ashley could scarcely preserve a becoming gravity and inexpressiveness as the pleading beseeching eyes of his next neighbor were cast up to his countenance, seeking to read there some intimation of the character of the card she had selected. More than once the choice was precipitately abandoned at the last moment and another card s.n.a.t.c.hed at hysteric haphazard. Then when an insignificant five of diamonds or three of spades was revealed,--what joy of relief, what deep-drawn sighs of relaxed tension, what activity of little slippered feet under the table, unable to be still, fairly dancing with pleasure that the Old Maid with her awful augury still held aloof and went the rounds elsewhere! Then--the eagerness of expectation and the renewed jeopardy of doubt.

"On my word, this is sport!" exclaimed Colonel Ashley. "This is better than a 'small stake to give an interest to the game,'--eh, Judge?"

"It's a _big_ stake," said Geraldine, at his elbow, "the Old Maid is!"

The desperate suspense, the anguish of jeopardy, continued, and at length Geraldine had but one card left, Colonel Ashley holding two; the other players having matched and tabled the rest of the pack were now out of the game. Seeing how seriously the doom of spinsterhood was regarded, Colonel Ashley sought to prevent his little neighbor from drawing the fateful pasteboard by craftily shifting the cards in his hand as she was about to take hold of the grim-visaged queen. Geraldine detected the motion instantly, with deep suspicion misinterpreted his intention, and laid hold on the card he had manoeuvred to retain. Her crestfallen dismay betrayed the disaster. With wide, fearfully prescient eyes she nevertheless gathered all her faculties for the final effort. Cautiously holding her two cards under the table, she shifted them, interchanged them back and forth, then tremulously permitted him to draw. This done, he placidly placed two fives on the table.

There was a moment of impressive silence while the "lady" held before her eyes in her babyish fingers the single card, and gazed petrified on the Medusa-like visage of the Old Maid. Then, as a murmur of awe arose from the other "ladies," looking pityingly upon her, yet blissful in their own escape, she burst into tears, and, bowing her golden head in her arms on the table, wept copiously, though softly, silently, mindful that Cousin Leonora allowed no "loud whooping in weeps," her little shoulders shaken by her sobs.

Colonel Ashley could but laugh as he protested, "This is truly flattering to masculine vanity." Then, his kindly impulses uppermost, "Come, Miss Geraldine, let's have another round. There must be more Old Maids still hiding out in this crowd. Let's see who they are."

Adelaide looked alarmed as the stricken one lifted her head to the prospect of the company that misery loves.

"I wish I was like Cousin Leonora, born a widow-woman," she remarked, regarding the doubtful future askance.

"Widow-womans can marry,--Aunt Chaney says they can," Geraldine declared, as she took up the cards of the new deal.

"Well, you would speak more properer if you said 'widow-_womens_' than 'widow-_womans_,'" rejoined the critical Adelaide, rendered tart by her renewed jeopardy and the sudden termination of the definite sense of escape.

While each player's hand was full of cards, the three queens still amongst them, the interest was not so tense as the first few draws went round and Mrs. Gwynn's entrance from the dining room created some stir.

Baynell and Ashley rose to offer her a chair, and the latter proposed to deal her a hand in the game.

"Not this round," she returned, "as the game has already commenced.

Besides, I am quite chilly. I shall sit by the fire and read the evening paper until you play out the hand."

She seated herself near the fire, shivered once or twice, and held out her dainty fingers to it with exactly the utilitarian manner of some elderly woman, whose house-keeping errands have detained her in the cold, and who extends gnarled, misshapen, chapped, wrinkled hands, soliciting comfort from the warmth. Then she took up the paper and held the sheet to catch the lamplight from the centre-table upon it.

"Why doesn't she put on her 'specs'? She knows she needs them," Colonel Ashley said to himself in a sort of whimsical exasperation. Her figure was slim and girlish, sylphlike as she reclined in the large fauteuil; her hair glittered golden in the flicker of the fire and the sheen of the lamp; her face, with its serious expression intent on the closely printed columns, might almost seem a sculptor's study of perfect facial symmetry. Her incongruous indifference, her elderly a.s.sumptions,--if, indeed, she was conscious of the effect of her manner,--all betokened that she considered it no part of her duty, and certainly no point of interest, to entertain young men.

"We are mere boys to her, Baynell and I; she'll never see her sixtieth birthday again. I have known younger grandmothers," was Colonel Ashley's farcical thought.

Her nullity of att.i.tude toward him was so complete that she limited the possibilities of his imagination. He began to devote himself to the gentle pursuit in hand with a freshened ardor.

Around and around the draw went, almost in absolute silence. Now and again the tabling of matching cards sounded with the sharp impact of triumph, but this was growing infrequent as the hands were thus depleted. The firelight flickered on the incongruous group,--the bearded faces of the military men, the gold-laced uniforms, with b.u.t.tons glimmering like points of light, the infantine softness of the "ladies,"

with their fluttering ringlets and gala attire, the gray head and ascetic aspect of the judge. The heat had enhanced the odor of a bowl of violets on the table in the centre of the room; as the flames rose and fell, the lion on the rug seemed to stir about, to rouse from his lair.