The Storm Centre: A Novel Read online

  CHAPTER V

  Baynell's disposition to recur to the subject inaugurated a habit ofconversation with Mrs. Gwynn after the scholastic hours of the "ladies,"when he sat in the library through the long afternoons. The vast subjectof the abstract values of right and wrong, the ultimate decrees ofconscience, whether in matters of great or minute importance, might seeminexhaustible in itself. But he gradually drifted therefrom into adiscursive monologue of many things. He began to talk of himself asnever before, as he had never dreamed that he could. He described hisfriends and acquaintances; he rehearsed his experiences; he evenrepeated traditional stories of his father's college life, and the madpranks which the staid Judge Roscoe had played in the callow days oftheir youth, thus emphasizing the bond of intimacy and his own claim torecognition as a hereditary friend; he went farther and detailed his ownintimate plans for the future.

  Throughout she maintained a conventional pose of courteous attention.Surely, he thought, he must have roused some responsive interest. Forhimself, in all his life, he had never experienced moments so surchargedwith significance, with pleasure, with importance. One day he concludeda long exposition of thought and conviction, intensely vital to him, bymaking a direct appeal to her opinion. She looked up with half-startledeyes, then hesitatingly replied, while a quick, deep flush sprang intoher pale cheeks. Elated, confident, victorious, he beheld the color riseand glow, and noted her lingering, conscious embarrassment; for thesubject was unimportant save as it concerned him, and why, but for hissake, 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 deadpast, while he, insistently, clamorously, was knocking at the door ofthe living present.

  Step by step she had been retracing her early foolish fondness for theman who had been her husband. How could she have been so blind! she wasasking herself. Why could she not have seen him with the eyes ofothers,--that wise, kindly, far-sighted vision which scanned the presentwith caution for her sake, and by its gauge measured the future with anunerring and an appalled accuracy? How contemptuously, like a heroine ofromance indeed, she had flouted the well-meant opposition of herrelatives to her marriage! They had proved wise prophets. Drunkard,gambler, spendthrift, he had wrecked her fortune and embittered herwhole life. The two years she had spent with him seemed an aeon ofmisery. They had obliterated the past as well as excluded the future.Somehow she could not look beyond them into her earlier days save uponthose gradations of events--the swift courtship, the egregious,headstrong, romantic resolution, the foolish love founded on falseideals which led her at last to the altar, so confiding, so happy, sodisdainful of the grave faces and the disapproving shaking heads of allher elder kith and kindred, so triumphant in setting them at naught andenhancing Rufus Gwynn's victory with the quelling of their every claim.

  In these long, quiet afternoons she would silently canvass humiliatingdetails--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 truthhad faltered for his sake. She had eagerly sought to deceive herself--togloze over his lies, now told for a purpose, and constrained to theirmisleading device, now thrown off without intention or effect, as if thefalse were the more native incident of his moral atmosphere. Perhaps,with the love that possessed her, she, too, might have acquired theproclivity; she meditated on this possibility with a bowed head. Atfirst, when he lied to her, she herself could not distinguish the truthfrom the false in his words. She had found herself at sea without arudder. However she might have desired to protect him, whether she mighthave bent in time to deceit for his sake, there is a sort of monopolyin falsehood. It is a game at which two cannot play to good effect. Thefirst time he struck her full in the face was in the fury whichpossessed him, when, through her agency, a lie had been fairly fixedupon him. She had given him as her authority for a statement she made toJudge Roscoe, and her uncle had, in repeating it to him, discovered thelie--the blatant open lie--that could not be qualified or gainsaid.

  And she had forgiven this, both the word and the blow. How strange! Shemade allowances for his irritation, for his mortification at thediscovery by a man so upright, so ascetic, so unsympathetic with anymoral weakness as Judge Roscoe. She offered to herself excuses whicheven she, however, in her inmost soul, hardly accepted--for the lieitself! He desired to avoid reproaches for mistaken arrangements aboutmoney matters, she had said to herself; he shrank from contention withher thus. Never dreaming that she might be questioned, he had been ledto palliate, to distort the facts. For at first she would have notraffic with the ignoble word "lie." The restrictions of her own phrasesbegan to have a sort of terror for her. She could no longer talk freely.She hardly dared make the most obvious statement concerning any simplefact of household affairs, or amusements, or visits, or friends, lest,in his prodigal untruth, for no reason,--the abandonment of folly, or amomentary whim,--he should have committed himself and her unequivocallyto some different effect. She hesitated, stammered, when she was incompany,--faltered, blushed,--she who used to be so different!--whileall her world stared. And when they were alone, he would storm at herfor it, furiously mimicking her distressful uncertainty, her tremuloussolicitude lest she openly convict him of lying continually. She soughtto give him no occasion for anger, not that she so dreaded the hurt ofhis heavy hand, but that she might save him from the ignominy ofstriking his wife. She studied his face and conformed to his whims, andanticipated his wants, and forbore vexation. Her subjection was soobvious that while her own near friends raged inwardly, divining that hewas unkind, their casual acquaintance sportively fleered, never dreaminghow their arrows sped to the mark.

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

  "It is one of the beautiful aspects of matrimony that the law oncerecognized the right of a man to correct his wife with 'a stick notthicker than his thumb'; let me see the size of your thumb, Mr.Gwynn,--it must be that which keeps Leonora in this edifying state ofsubjection."

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

  "Damn 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 ofheavy white satin simple yet queenly--and had gone to one of those ballsof the early times of the Confederacy, where the cavaliers were many andgay; she was all smiles and bright eyes, though these were the onlyjewels she wore, for had she not discovered at the moment of opening thecase that her diamonds--Rufus Gwynn's own bridal gift to her--weremissing!--sold, pawned, given away, it was never known. Thus seeking herduty in these devious ways and to do his choice credit, as a wifeshould, her charm held a court about her,--even Mildred Fisher, wholoved splendor, ablaze with the collection of precious stones at herdisposal, her mother's, her grandmother's, and her aunt's, was eclipsed.The glittering officers followed the beautiful young wife in thepromenade, and stood about and awaited the cessation of the whirl as shewaltzed with one of the number, and devoutly held her bouquet while inthe banqueting room, and drank her health and toasted her happiness, andbroke her fan, soliciting a breeze for her comfort. The result?--When inthe carriage homeward bound, she was fit to throw herself out of thewindow and under the wheels in sheer terror of the demon of jealousy shehad aroused. Her husband loaded her with curses, he foamed at the mouthas he threatened the men with whom she had danced, more than one ofwhom he had himself introduced for the purpose. He protested he wouldshoot Julius Roscoe because he had _not_ asked her to dance, but hadturned pale when he saw her, and had stood in the shadows of the columnsat the upper end of the ball room and with melancholy, love-lorn eyeswatched her in the waltz. When she declared she had not seen Julius, shehad not spoken to him--"You dare not!" he cried. And but that sheclutched his arm, he would have sprung from the vehicle in motion tohide in the shrubbery--the pine hedge--as they pas
sed Judge Roscoe'sgate, to shoot Julius in the back as he went home from the ball,--in theback, in the darkness, from ambush, that none might know! Then as herhusband could not force himself from her grasp, he turned and struck heracross the face twice, heavily.

  All her soldier friends, old playmates, youthful compeers, elderassociates, marched away without a farewell word from her,--a lastfarewell it would have been to many, who, alack, came never marchingback again; for she was denied at the door to all callers, since herbruises were so deep and lacerated that she must needs keep her room inorder that the conjugal happiness might not be impugned. For still shemade excuses for Gwynn, sought to shield him from himself. He had begunto drink heavily under the sting of the universal financial disastersoccasioned by the war which he also shared, supplemented by heavylosses at the gaming table and the race track and often "was nothimself," as she phrased it. He was expert at repentance, practised inconfession, and had a positive ingenuity for shifting responsibility tostronger shoulders. He could burst into torrents of protesting tears,and dramatically fling himself on his knees at her feet, and bury hisface in her hands, covering them with kisses, and craving her pardon andhelp. And she would once more, inconsistently, hopefully, take up herfaith in him anew, albeit it had all the tearful tremors ofdespair,--believing, yet doubting, with a strange duality of emotionimpossible to the analysis of reason. Thus the curtain was rung upagain, and the terrible tragedy of her life on this limited stage wenton apace.

  He had infinite ingenuity in concealment, abetted by her silence insuffering which her pride fostered. Albeit her friends had divined hisunkindness, the extent of his brutality was not suspected by them untilone night when frightful screams had been heard to issue from the house,despite the closed and shuttered windows of winter weather. These wereelicited by the sheer agony of being dragged by the hair through therooms and halls and down the stairs, and thrust out into the chill ofthe fierce January freeze. She was given hardly time for the instinct offlight to assert itself, to rise up with wild eyes looking adown thesnowy street; for the door opened, and he dragged her within once more,as a watchman of the precinct, Roanoke City being at this time heavilypoliced, ascended the steps to the portico with an inquiry as to thesound. He was satisfied with the explanation from the husband that Mrs.Gwynn was suffering with a violent attack of hysterics. But the nextday, while the mistress of the house, bruised and almost shattered, layhalf unconscious in her own room, the housemaid, in the hall polishingthe stair rail and wainscot, was terrified to draw out here and therefrom the balusters great bloody lengths of Mrs. Gwynn's beautiful hairwhich had caught and held as she was dragged by it down the stairs. Thisrumor, taken in connection with the explanation of her screams offeredby her husband to the watchman, occasioned Mrs. Gwynn's relatives greatanxiety for her safety. It was with the view of discovering from her thetruth, insisting on its disclosure as a matter of paramount importance,that Judge Roscoe as her nearest kinsman and former guardian hadsuggested a ride with her, when in the quiet of an uninterruptedconversation he intended to remonstrate against her lack of candor, seekto ascertain the facts, and then devise some measures looking toward thebetterment of the unhappy situation.

  The slaughter by Rufus Gwynn of the unoffending horse had eliminated thenecessity alike of remonstrance or advice. Her ideals, her hope, herlove, were destroyed as by one blow. Her resolution of separation wastaken and, albeit her anxious friends feared her capacity forforgiveness was not exhausted, it proved final. The end came on the daythat 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. Thesewere the scenes that she lived over and over. This was her past thatevery moment of leisure converted into her present,--palpable, visible,vital,--and her future seemed bounded only by the possibilities ofretrospect.

  With the many-thonged scourge of her memory how could she listen to themonologue of this stranger! Thus it was that her attentive attitude wassuddenly stultified by his direct appeal to her. Thus she had reddenedand faltered in embarrassment for the rude solecism, and gathered herfaculties for some hesitant semblance of polite response.

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

  A red sky it found at the horizon; a chill wind starting up over apurple earth spangled with golden camp-fires. Presently the world wassunk in a slate-tinted gloom, and the night came on raw and dark, withmoon and stars showing only in infrequent glimpses through gusty clouds.A great fire had burned out on the library hearth; the group hadgenially sat together till the candles were guttering in their socketsin the old crystal-hung candelabra. Judge Roscoe still lingered,smoking, meditating before the embers. All the house was asleep, silentsave for the martial tread of the sentry walking to and fro before theportico. Suddenly Judge Roscoe heard a sound, alien, startling,--a soundat the side window. The room was illumined by a pervasive red glow fromthe embers, in which he saw his own shadow, gigantic, gesticulatory, ashe rose to his feet, listening again to--silence! Only the wind rustlingin the lilac hedge, only the ring of the sentry's step, crisp and clearon the frosty air.

  The moment that the soldier turned to retrace his way to the fartherside of the house, there came once more that grating sound at thewindow, 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 theold gentleman gazed spellbound with starting eyes and chin a-quiver, atiny flame flickered up, keenly white amongst the embers, illuminatingthe room, revealing the object at the window. Only for one moment; forin a frenzy of energy Judge Roscoe had caught up the heavy velvet rugand, as he held it against the aperture of the chimney, the room oncemore sunk into indistinguishable gloom; the sudden bounding entrance ofan agile figure was wholly invisible to the sentry, albeit he was almostimmediately under the window, peering in with a stern "Who goes there?"

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

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

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

  Then two men in the darkness within, reaching out in the gloom, fellinto 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'sbuoyant laughter. "The picket-lines are so close to-night, I couldn'tresist 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 arib-cracking hug--"only think, father, it's more than two years nowsince 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 aretoo close; you must have seen them, even i
n the grove."

  "Why, I can lie low."

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

  "Thunderation! The dickens there is! Why--"

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

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

  Judge Roscoe turned faint and sick. Then, rising to the emergency, andconsidering the suspicions the sound of voices here at this hour of thenight 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 directionof his former chamber, his father turned the corner to the secondflight.

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

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

  The place was sorely neglected since the reduction of the service in theold house. Cobwebs had congregated about ceiling and windows; the dustwas thick on rows of old trunks, which annotated the journeyings of thefamily since the hair-covered, brass-studded style was the latestfashion to the sole leather receptacle that bore the initials of JudgeRoscoe's dead wife, and the gigantic "Saratoga" that had served in Mrs.Gwynn's famous wedding journey. There were many specimens of brokenchairs, and some glimmering branching girandoles, five feet high, thathad illumined the house at one of the great weddings of long ago. Alarge cedar chest, proof against moths, preserved the ancient shawls andgowns of beauties of by-gone times, who little thought this ephemeraltoggery would survive them. Certain antiquated pieces of furniture,hardly meet for the more modern assortment below,--chests of drawerssurmounted by quaint little cabinets with looking-glasses, a lumberingwardrobe that seemed built for high water and stood on four longstilt-like legs, a pair of old mantel mirrors, wide and low, withtarnished gilded frames, dividing the reflecting surface into threeequal sections, a great barometer that surlily threatened stormyweather, clumsy bureaus, bedsteads, each with four tall "cluster posts"surmounted by testers of red, quilled cloth drawn to a brass star in thecentre, fire-dogs and fenders of dull brass--all were grouped here andthere. One of these bedsteads had been occupied on some occasion whenthe house had been overcrowded, for the cords that sufficed in lieu ofthe more modern slats now supported a huge feather-bed. Judge Roscoethrew on it a carriage rug that had been hung to air on a cord which wasstretched across one corner of the room. He almost fainted at a sudden,frightened clutch upon his arm, and, turning, saw his son in the agoniesof panic, his teeth chattering, his eyes starting out of his head, hishand pointing tremulously toward the bed, as if bereft of his senses,demanding to be informed what that object might be. It was thetime-honored joke of the young Southern soldiers that they had not seenor slept in a bedstead for so long that the mere sight of sounaccustomed a thing threw them into convulsions of fear. His fatherforgave the genuine tremors the joke had occasioned him for the joker'ssake, and as Julius, flinging off his cap, coat, and boots, stretchedout at his long length luxuriously, he stood by the pillow andadmonished 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--thelibrary, dining room, on the portico, in the grove. If Leonora or the"ladies" knew of the presence here of Julius, they could hardly preservein this close association with the enemy an unaffected aspect; sosignificant a secret might be betrayed in facial expression, a tone ofvoice, a nervous start. This would be fatal; his life might prove theforfeit. It was a mistake to come, and this mistake must forthwith beannulled. Despite the man in the house, Julius could lie perdu here inthe garret, observing every precaution of secrecy, till the evershifting picket-line should be drawn close enough to enable him to hopeto 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.

  "Are you hungry now, dear?" Judge Roscoe asked disconsolately, aftertelling him that he must wait till morning.

  "If you have such a thing as the photograph of a chicken about you, Ishould be glad to see it," Julius murmured demurely.

  Judge Roscoe bent down and kissed him good night on the forehead, thenturned to pick his way carefully among the debris of the old furniture.Soon he had reached the stairway, and noiseless as a shadow he flitteddown the flight.

  The young officer lay for a while intently listening, but no stirreached his ear; naught; absolute stillness. For a long time, despitehis fatigue, the change, the pleasant warmth, the soft luxury of thefeather-bed, would not let him slumber. He was used to the canopy ofheaven, the chill ground, the tumult of rain; the sense of a roof abovehis head was unaccustomed, and he was stiflingly aware of itspropinquity. Nevertheless he contrasted its comfort with his own recentplight and that of his comrades a few miles away, lying now asleep underthe security of their camp-guards, some still in the mud of thetrenches, all on the cold ground, shelterless, half frozen, halfstarved, ill, destitute, but fired with a martial ardor and a zeal forthe Southern cause which no hardship could damp, and only death itselfmight quench. As he gazed about at the grotesqueries of the great room,now in the sheen of the moon, and now in the shadow of the cloud, hethought how little he had anticipated finding the enemy here ensconcedin his place in his father's house, a convalescent, "the son of an oldfriend, of whom we have all grown very fond." He raged inwardly at thedestruction of his cherished plans wrought by the mere presence of theFederal officer. The joy of his visit was brought to naught. Dangerousas it would have been under the best auspices, its peril was now greatand imminent. Instead of the meeting his thoughts had cherished,--thesweets of the stolen hours at the domestic fireside, with the dear facesthat he loved, the dulcet voices for which he yearned,--he was to skulkhere, undreamed of, like some unhappy ghost haunting a lonely place,fortunate indeed if he might chance to be able to make off elusivelyafter the fashion of the spectral gentry, without becoming a ghost inserious earnest by the event of capture, or catching the pistol ball ofthe Yankee officer. So much he had risked for this visit--life andlimb!--and to be relegated to the surplusage of the garret, theloneliness, the desolate moon, the deserted dust of the unfrequentedplace! He was to approach none of them--none of the hearthstone group!There was to be no joyous greeting, no stealthy laughter, no interchangeof loving words, and clasps, and kisses. He was still young; his eyesfilled, his throat closed. But that shadowy glimpse of his dearfather--he had had that boon!

  "I'll remember it, if I bite the dust in the next skirmish. And thequestion is to get away--for the next skirmish!"

  Once more he fell to studying mechanically the grouping of the archaic,disordered furniture; the shifting of the shadows amongst it as a cloudsped by with the wind; the spare boughs of a bare aspen tree etched onthe floor by the moon, shining down through the high windows; and thatmelancholy orb itself, suggestive of a futile vanished past, a timeforgotten, and spent illusions, the familiar of loneliness, and the deepempty hours of the midnight--itself a spectre of a dead planet, hauntingits wonted pathway of the skies. When its light ceased to fill hislustrous, contemplative eyes he did not know, but as the moon passed onto
the west, his melancholy gaze had ceased to follow.