The Storm Centre Part 7

She said that she had lost her equestrian tastes. But she listened quite civilly while he argued the ethics anew, and, as her interest in the subject had waned with the dissolving view of her horse and she did not care for the question in the abstract, she did not controvert his theory or relish placing obstacles to the justification of his course.

CHAPTER V

Baynell's disposition to recur to the subject inaugurated a habit of conversation with Mrs. Gwynn after the scholastic hours of the "ladies,"

when he sat in the library through the long afternoons. The vast subject of the abstract values of right and wrong, the ultimate decrees of conscience, whether in matters of great or minute importance, might seem inexhaustible in itself. But he gradually drifted therefrom into a discursive monologue of many things. He began to talk of himself as never before, as he had never dreamed that he could. He described his friends and acquaintances; he rehea.r.s.ed his experiences; he even repeated traditional stories of his father's college life, and the mad pranks which the staid Judge Roscoe had played in the callow days of their youth, thus emphasizing the bond of intimacy and his own claim to recognition as a hereditary friend; he went farther and detailed his own intimate plans for the future.

Throughout she maintained a conventional pose of courteous attention.

Surely, he thought, he must have roused some responsive interest. For himself, in all his life, he had never experienced moments so surcharged with significance, with pleasure, with importance. One day he concluded a long exposition of thought and conviction, intensely vital to him, by making a direct appeal to her opinion. She looked up with half-startled eyes, then hesitatingly replied, while a quick, deep flush sprang into her pale cheeks. Elated, confident, victorious, he beheld the color rise and glow, and noted her lingering, conscious embarra.s.sment; for the subject was unimportant save as it concerned him, and why, but for his sake, should she blush and falter in sweet confusion?

How could he know that hardly one word in ten had she heard! Absent, absorbed, she was silently turning again and again the ashes of the dead past, while he, insistently, clamorously, was knocking at the door of the living present.

Step by step she had been retracing her early foolish fondness for the man who had been her husband. How could she have been so blind! she was asking herself. Why could she not have seen him with the eyes of others,--that wise, kindly, far-sighted vision which scanned the present with caution for her sake, and by its gauge measured the future with an unerring and an appalled accuracy? How contemptuously, like a heroine of romance indeed, she had flouted the well-meant opposition of her relatives to her marriage! They had proved wise prophets. Drunkard, gambler, spendthrift, he had wrecked her fortune and embittered her whole life. The two years she had spent with him seemed an on of misery. They had obliterated the past as well as excluded the future.

Somehow she could not look beyond them into her earlier days save upon those gradations of events--the swift courtship, the egregious, headstrong, romantic resolution, the foolish love founded on false ideals which led her at last to the altar, so confiding, so happy, so disdainful of the grave faces and the disapproving shaking heads of all her elder kith and kindred, so triumphant in setting them at naught and enhancing Rufus Gwynn's victory with the quelling of their every claim.

In these long, quiet afternoons she would silently canva.s.s humiliating details--when was it that she had first known him for the liar he was; when had she admitted to herself his inherent falsity? Even the truth had faltered for his sake. She had eagerly sought to deceive herself--to gloze over his lies, now told for a purpose, and constrained to their misleading device, now thrown off without intention or effect, as if the false were the more native incident of his moral atmosphere. Perhaps, with the love that possessed her, she, too, might have acquired the proclivity; she meditated on this possibility with a bowed head. At first, when he lied to her, she herself could not distinguish the truth from the false in his words. She had found herself at sea without a rudder. However she might have desired to protect him, whether she might have bent in time to deceit for his sake, there is a sort of monopoly in falsehood. It is a game at which two cannot play to good effect. The first time he struck her full in the face was in the fury which possessed him, when, through her agency, a lie had been fairly fixed upon him. She had given him as her authority for a statement she made to Judge Roscoe, and her uncle had, in repeating it to him, discovered the lie--the blatant open lie--that could not be qualified or gainsaid.

And she had forgiven this, both the word and the blow. How strange! She made allowances for his irritation, for his mortification at the discovery by a man so upright, so ascetic, so unsympathetic with any moral weakness as Judge Roscoe. She offered to herself excuses which even she, however, in her inmost soul, hardly accepted--for the lie itself! He desired to avoid reproaches for mistaken arrangements about money matters, she had said to herself; he shrank from contention with her thus. Never dreaming that she might be questioned, he had been led to palliate, to distort the facts. For at first she would have no traffic with the ign.o.ble word "lie." The restrictions of her own phrases began to have a sort of terror for her. She could no longer talk freely.

She hardly dared make the most obvious statement concerning any simple fact of household affairs, or amus.e.m.e.nts, or visits, or friends, lest, in his prodigal untruth, for no reason,--the abandonment of folly, or a momentary whim,--he should have committed himself and her unequivocally to some different effect. She hesitated, stammered, when she was in company,--faltered, blushed,--she who used to be so different!--while all her world stared. And when they were alone, he would storm at her for it, furiously mimicking her distressful uncertainty, her tremulous solicitude lest she openly convict him of lying continually. She sought to give him no occasion for anger, not that she so dreaded the hurt of his heavy hand, but that she might save him from the ignominy of striking his wife. She studied his face and conformed to his whims, and antic.i.p.ated his wants, and forbore vexation. Her subjection was so obvious that while her own near friends raged inwardly, divining that he was unkind, their casual acquaintance sportively fleered, never dreaming how their arrows sped to the mark.

Their fleers nettled him; he was specially out of countenance one day because of a careless shaft of Mildred Fisher's.

"It is one of the beautiful aspects of matrimony that the law once recognized the right of a man to correct his wife with 'a stick not thicker than his thumb'; let me see the size of your thumb, Mr.

Gwynn,--it must be that which keeps Leonora in this edifying state of subjection."

And when she had gayly gone her way, Rufus Gwynn bitterly upbraided his wife.

"d.a.m.n you!" he had cried; "can't you hold up your head at all?"

Then it was that she had donned her most charming toilette--a dress of heavy white satin simple yet queenly--and had gone to one of those b.a.l.l.s of the early times of the Confederacy, where the cavaliers were many and gay; she was all smiles and bright eyes, though these were the only jewels she wore, for had she not discovered at the moment of opening the case that her diamonds--Rufus Gwynn's own bridal gift to her--were missing!--sold, p.a.w.ned, given away, it was never known. Thus seeking her duty in these devious ways and to do his choice credit, as a wife should, her charm held a court about her,--even Mildred Fisher, who loved splendor, ablaze with the collection of precious stones at her disposal, her mother's, her grandmother's, and her aunt's, was eclipsed.

The glittering officers followed the beautiful young wife in the promenade, and stood about and awaited the cessation of the whirl as she waltzed with one of the number, and devoutly held her bouquet while in the banqueting room, and drank her health and toasted her happiness, and broke her fan, soliciting a breeze for her comfort. The result?--When in the carriage homeward bound, she was fit to throw herself out of the window and under the wheels in sheer terror of the demon of jealousy she had aroused. Her husband loaded her with curses, he foamed at the mouth as he threatened the men with whom she had danced, more than one of whom he had himself introduced for the purpose. He protested he would shoot Julius Roscoe because he had _not_ asked her to dance, but had turned pale when he saw her, and had stood in the shadows of the columns at the upper end of the ball room and with melancholy, love-lorn eyes watched her in the waltz. When she declared she had not seen Julius, she had not spoken to him--"You dare not!" he cried. And but that she clutched his arm, he would have sprung from the vehicle in motion to hide in the shrubbery--the pine hedge--as they pa.s.sed Judge Roscoe's gate, to shoot Julius in the back as he went home from the ball,--in the back, in the darkness, from ambush, that none might know! Then as her husband could not force himself from her grasp, he turned and struck her across the face twice, heavily.

All her soldier friends, old playmates, youthful compeers, elder a.s.sociates, marched away without a farewell word from her,--a last farewell it would have been to many, who, alack, came never marching back again; for she was denied at the door to all callers, since her bruises were so deep and lacerated that she must needs keep her room in order that the conjugal happiness might not be impugned. For still she made excuses for Gwynn, sought to shield him from himself. He had begun to drink heavily under the sting of the universal financial disasters occasioned by the war which he also shared, supplemented by heavy losses at the gaming table and the race track and often "was not himself," as she phrased it. He was expert at repentance, practised in confession, and had a positive ingenuity for shifting responsibility to stronger shoulders. He could burst into torrents of protesting tears, and dramatically fling himself on his knees at her feet, and bury his face in her hands, covering them with kisses, and craving her pardon and help. And she would once more, inconsistently, hopefully, take up her faith in him anew, albeit it had all the tearful tremors of despair,--believing, yet doubting, with a strange duality of emotion impossible to the a.n.a.lysis of reason. Thus the curtain was rung up again, and the terrible tragedy of her life on this limited stage went on apace.

He had infinite ingenuity in concealment, abetted by her silence in suffering which her pride fostered. Albeit her friends had divined his unkindness, the extent of his brutality was not suspected by them until one night when frightful screams had been heard to issue from the house, despite the closed and shuttered windows of winter weather. These were elicited by the sheer agony of being dragged by the hair through the rooms and halls and down the stairs, and thrust out into the chill of the fierce January freeze. She was given hardly time for the instinct of flight to a.s.sert itself, to rise up with wild eyes looking adown the snowy street; for the door opened, and he dragged her within once more, as a watchman of the precinct, Roanoke City being at this time heavily policed, ascended the steps to the portico with an inquiry as to the sound. He was satisfied with the explanation from the husband that Mrs.

Gwynn was suffering with a violent attack of hysterics. But the next day, while the mistress of the house, bruised and almost shattered, lay half unconscious in her own room, the housemaid, in the hall polishing the stair rail and wainscot, was terrified to draw out here and there from the bal.u.s.ters great b.l.o.o.d.y lengths of Mrs. Gwynn's beautiful hair which had caught and held as she was dragged by it down the stairs. This rumor, taken in connection with the explanation of her screams offered by her husband to the watchman, occasioned Mrs. Gwynn's relatives great anxiety for her safety. It was with the view of discovering from her the truth, insisting on its disclosure as a matter of paramount importance, that Judge Roscoe as her nearest kinsman and former guardian had suggested a ride with her, when in the quiet of an uninterrupted conversation he intended to remonstrate against her lack of candor, seek to ascertain the facts, and then devise some measures looking toward the betterment of the unhappy situation.

The slaughter by Rufus Gwynn of the unoffending horse had eliminated the necessity alike of remonstrance or advice. Her ideals, her hope, her love, were destroyed as by one blow. Her resolution of separation was taken and, albeit her anxious friends feared her capacity for forgiveness was not exhausted, it proved final. The end came on the day that Rufus Gwynn's horse, rearing under whip and spur, and falling, broke his rider's neck.

This was her romance and her awakening from love's young dream. These were the scenes that she lived over and over. This was her past that every moment of leisure converted into her present,--palpable, visible, vital,--and her future seemed bounded only by the possibilities of retrospect.

With the many-thonged scourge of her memory how could she listen to the monologue of this stranger! Thus it was that her attentive att.i.tude was suddenly stultified by his direct appeal to her. Thus she had reddened and faltered in embarra.s.sment for the rude solecism, and gathered her faculties for some hesitant semblance of polite response.

Lapsed in the delight of his fool's paradise, Baynell discerned naught of the truth. Left presently alone in the library, he serenely watched through the long window the slow progress of the shadows following the golden vernal sunshine throughout the grove. The wind faintly stirred, barely enough to shake the bells of the pink and darkly blue hyacinths standing tall and full in the parterre at one side of the house. The plangent tone of a single key, struck on the grand piano, fell on the stillness within, and after a time another, and slowly still another, in doubting ascension of the gamut, as one of the "ladies" submitted to the cruelty of a music lesson. His lip smilingly curved at the thought. And still gazing out in serene languor, all unprescient, he once more noted the spring sun of that momentous day slowly westering, westering.

A red sky it found at the horizon; a chill wind starting up over a purple earth spangled with golden camp-fires. Presently the world was sunk in a slate-tinted gloom, and the night came on raw and dark, with moon and stars showing only in infrequent glimpses through gusty clouds.

A great fire had burned out on the library hearth; the group had genially sat together till the candles were guttering in their sockets in the old crystal-hung candelabra. Judge Roscoe still lingered, smoking, meditating before the embers. All the house was asleep, silent save for the martial tread of the sentry walking to and fro before the portico. Suddenly Judge Roscoe heard a sound, alien, startling,--a sound at the side window. The room was illumined by a pervasive red glow from the embers, in which he saw his own shadow, gigantic, gesticulatory, as he rose to his feet, listening again to--silence! Only the wind rustling in the lilac hedge, only the ring of the sentry's step, crisp and clear on the frosty air.

The moment that the soldier turned to retrace his way to the farther side of the house, there came once more that grating sound at the window, distinct, definite, of sinister import.

For one instant Judge Roscoe was tempted to call for the sentry's aid.

The next the shutter opened, the sash glided up noiselessly, and, as the old gentleman gazed spellbound with starting eyes and chin a-quiver, a tiny flame flickered up, keenly white amongst the embers, illuminating the room, revealing the object at the window. Only for one moment; for in a frenzy of energy Judge Roscoe had caught up the heavy velvet rug and, as he held it against the aperture of the chimney, the room once more sunk into indistinguishable gloom; the sudden bounding entrance of an agile figure was wholly invisible to the sentry, albeit he was almost immediately under the window, peering in with a stern "Who goes there?"

"There seems something amiss with the catch of the shutter," said the placid voice of the master of the house, who had left the rug still standing on its thick edge before the chimney place. "Can you help me there? Thank you very much."

The sentry muttered a sheepish apology, pleading the unusual noise at this hour. His excuse was cheerfully accepted. "It is well to be on the alert. Good night!"

"Good night, sir!" And once more there sounded through the sombre air the martial beat of the sentry's tread on the frosty ground.

Then two men in the darkness within, reaching out in the gloom, fell into each other's arms with tears of joy, but presently reproaches too.

"Oh, my son, my son! why did you come here?"

"Came a-visiting!" said a voice out of the obscurity, with a boy's buoyant laughter. "The picket-lines are so close to-night, I couldn't resist slipping in. Is Leonora here? How are my dear little nieces,--the 'ladies'?"

"Oh, Julius! My boy, this is so dangerous!"

"I'd risk ten times more to hear your dear voice again--" with a rib-cracking hug--"only think, father, it's more than two years now since I have seen you! I want to see Leonora ten minutes and kiss the 'ladies,' and then I'm off again in a day or so, and none the wiser."

"No, no, that is out of the question! No one must know. The camps are too close; you must have seen them, even in the grove."

"Why, I can lie low."

"And there is a--" Judge Roscoe hardly knew how to voice it--"a--a Yankee officer in the house."

"Thunderation! The d.i.c.kens there is! Why--"

"There is no time to explain; you must go back at once, while the Federal pickets are so close, and you can slip through the line. It's just at the creek."

"But they have thrown it out since dark, five miles. Our fellows skedaddled back to their support. And I tell you it will never do for me to be caught inside the lines. The Yankees might think I was spying around!"

Judge Roscoe turned faint and sick. Then, rising to the emergency, and considering the suspicions the sound of voices here at this hour of the night might excite in the mind of the sentry, he grasped his son's arm, with a warning clutch imposing silence, and led him along the dark hall, groping up the staircase. As the boy was about to bolt in the direction of his former chamber, his father turned the corner to the second flight.

"Sky parlor, is it?" the young daredevil muttered, as they stumbled together up the steep ascent to the garret.

A dreary place it showed as they entered, large, low ceiled, extending above the whole expanse of the square portion of the house. It was lighted only by the windows at either side; through one of these pale watery glimmers were falling from a moon which rolled heavily like a derelict in the surges of the clouds. This sufficed to show to each the other's beloved face; and that Judge Roscoe's ribs were not fractured in the hugs of the filial young bear betokened the enduring strength of his ancient physique.

The place was sorely neglected since the reduction of the service in the old house. Cobwebs had congregated about ceiling and windows; the dust was thick on rows of old trunks, which annotated the journeyings of the family since the hair-covered, bra.s.s-studded style was the latest fashion to the sole leather receptacle that bore the initials of Judge Roscoe's dead wife, and the gigantic "Saratoga" that had served in Mrs.

Gwynn's famous wedding journey. There were many specimens of broken chairs, and some glimmering branching girandoles, five feet high, that had illumined the house at one of the great weddings of long ago. A large cedar chest, proof against moths, preserved the ancient shawls and gowns of beauties of by-gone times, who little thought this ephemeral toggery would survive them. Certain antiquated pieces of furniture, hardly meet for the more modern a.s.sortment below,--chests of drawers surmounted by quaint little cabinets with looking-gla.s.ses, a lumbering wardrobe that seemed built for high water and stood on four long stilt-like legs, a pair of old mantel mirrors, wide and low, with tarnished gilded frames, dividing the reflecting surface into three equal sections, a great barometer that surlily threatened stormy weather, clumsy bureaus, bedsteads, each with four tall "cl.u.s.ter posts"

surmounted by testers of red, quilled cloth drawn to a bra.s.s star in the centre, fire-dogs and fenders of dull bra.s.s--all were grouped here and there. One of these bedsteads had been occupied on some occasion when the house had been overcrowded, for the cords that sufficed in lieu of the more modern slats now supported a huge feather-bed. Judge Roscoe threw on it a carriage rug that had been hung to air on a cord which was stretched across one corner of the room. He almost fainted at a sudden, frightened clutch upon his arm, and, turning, saw his son in the agonies of panic, his teeth chattering, his eyes starting out of his head, his hand pointing tremulously toward the bed, as if bereft of his senses, demanding to be informed what that object might be. It was the time-honored joke of the young Southern soldiers that they had not seen or slept in a bedstead for so long that the mere sight of so unaccustomed a thing threw them into convulsions of fear. His father forgave the genuine tremors the joke had occasioned him for the joker's sake, and as Julius, flinging off his cap, coat, and boots, stretched out at his long length luxuriously, he stood by the pillow and admonished him of the plan of the campaign.

The Yankee officer had been ill, Judge Roscoe explained, and, convalescing now, joined the family in their usual gathering places--the library, dining room, on the portico, in the grove. If Leonora or the "ladies" knew of the presence here of Julius, they could hardly preserve in this close a.s.sociation with the enemy an unaffected aspect; so significant a secret might be betrayed in facial expression, a tone of voice, a nervous start. This would be fatal; his life might prove the forfeit. It was a mistake to come, and this mistake must forthwith be annulled. Despite the man in the house, Julius could lie perdu here in the garret, observing every precaution of secrecy, till the ever shifting picket-line should be drawn close enough to enable him to hope to reach it without challenge. They would confide in trusty old Ephraim.

He would maintain a watch and bring them news. And old Ephraim, too, would bring up food, cautiously purloined from the table.

"The typical raven! appropriately black!" murmured Julius.