He was about to say "robbed," but the facts forbade him; for Gwynn's legal rights rendered her position as difficult as unenviable. In her own house she had contrived to hold her belongings together. Now, day by day, came tidings of the sale of her special personal effects—her carriage, her domestic animals, her furniture, the very pictures on the walls; then had followed a letter from her husband, regretting all his misdeeds and promising infinite rehabilitation if she would but forgive him. Naught could provoke a remonstrance, could stimulate Leonora to action, could induce a return.
Judge Roscoe had said but little. He had the deep-seated juridical respect for the relation of man and wife as a creation of law, as well as an institution of God. When he was appealed to, he felt it his duty to place impartially before her the husband's arguments, and promises, and protestations, but he experienced intense relief when she tersely dismissed Rufus Gwynn's plea for a reconciliation. "I know him now," she replied.
"An' 'fore de Lawd,Iknows him too!" her old nurse declared; "I jes' uped an' I sez, 'Marse Rufe, ye hev' got sech a notion o' sellin' out, ye mought sell old Chaney—ef ennybody would buy sech a contraption in dese days! So I'm goin' over to my old home at Judge Roscoe'splace, to wait on Miss Leonora. I knows she needs me, an' I 'spect she's watchin' fur me now.' An' Marse Rufe, he says, 'Aunt Chaney, I don't knowwhatyou are talking about! Go over there, an' welcome! An' try to get my wife to see I was just overtaken in my temper and desperate;youpersuade her to come back, Aunt Chaney.' Dat's what de debbil said ter me. I always heard dat de debbil had a club foot. But, mon, he ain't. Two long, slim, handsome feet, an' his boots, sah, made in New Orleens!"
The end had come characteristically at last! A horse, furiously ridden, brutally beaten, reared suddenly, lost his balance, fell backward, crushing the rider and breaking his neck. And so Rufus Gwynn reached his goal, and his wife was free at last.
Free as some defenceless, hunted, tremulous animal, miraculously escaping fierce fangs, and a furious rush of a murderous pursuit; forever dominated by the sense of disaster, and despair, and flight; forever looking backward, forever hearkening to the echoes of the troublous past—exhausted, listless, hopeless, every impulse of volition stunned.
It was well for her, doubtless, that the insistent duties of the care of her uncle's household had grown difficult in the changed conditions induced by the war; that the education, the training, the well-being, of the motherless little "ladies"—all restricted by the ever narrowing opportunityof the beleaguered town, and overshadowed by the impending clouds of disaster—appealed to her womanly heart and her maternal instincts. Their needs had roused her interest, stimulated her invention, elicited her self-control, that she might more definitely control them.
In the days of Captain Baynell's convalescence he had unique opportunities for observing the methods that had prevailed under her management, for all the life of the house revolved about the one big fire in the library. Sometimes, as he and Judge Roscoe sat there with papers and books and cigars, presumably oblivious of the minutiæ of the household matters, while the fire flared and the tobacco smoke hung in blue wreaths about the stuccoed ceiling and the carved ornaments of the tall book-cases, he fancied that it was the characteristic interest in trifles animating an invalid which caused him to smilingly watch the scholastic struggles of the "ladies,"—their turmoils with "jogaphy," for it was decreed that they should learn somewhat of the earth on which they lived; the anguish inflicted by that potent instrument of torture, the Blue Speller; the bowed head of juvenile despair on the wooden rim of the slate, over the mysteries of "subscraction," as the "lady" sobbed softly, under her breath, for loud weepings were interdicted, however poignant the woe might be. Mrs. Gwynn was indeed unfeeling in these crises and often sarcastic. "You might use your sponge to wipeaway your tears, Geraldine," she would say, with that curt icy inflection of her soft voice. "I notice it is too dry for use on your slate."
Each slate had a string to which was attached a small sponge and a short slate-pencil, capable of an excruciating creak, which often set the judge's teeth on edge; as he would wince from the sound, Mrs. Gwynn would comment in this wise, "I have often heard that learned ladies do not contribute to household comfort,—so your Honor must suffer for the erudition that we have here."
And the activities of "subscraction" were never abated.
Baynell had at first a certain shrinking to witness the lessons of the deaf-mute, pitying the poor deprived child, so young, so tender, so pretty, so plaintive in her infirmity, shut out from all the usual avenues of knowledge. He would take up his book and withdraw his attention. But after a time there was suddenly forced upon his observation the superior judgment and acumen and careful altruistic thought exerted in these small matters by Mrs. Gwynn. Inexpert in the manual alphabet, she wasted no time nor labor on its acquisition for herself; but, notwithstanding this, "subscraction" had no terrors for Lucille. So practised was she in the domain of demonstration that her slate was swiftly covered with figures, and her sponge had no necessity to be diverted to the incongruousfunction of wiping her bright eyes. All the questions were put in writing and answered by the little deaf-mute with correct spelling and a most legible and creditable chirography, over which Captain Baynell found himself exclaiming with delighted surprise, while the cheeks both of the scholar and teacher flushed with pride and gratification, as they exchanged congratulatory smiles. So far from being the sport of her limitations and humiliated by them, Lucille was pressed forward to excel, and the twins gazed upon her as a miracle of learning, and often craved the privilege of scanning her slate, and imitating the childish flourishes of her capital letters. In naught was she permitted to feel her deficiencies—so craftily tender was her preceptress. The hour which the twins devoted to playing scales on the grand piano—being snugly buttoned up in sacques to protect them from the chill of the great parlors, and often called across the hall to warm their fingers at the library fire—Lucille sat at her drawing-board, and although she had only an ordinary degree of talent, she acquired a deftness and a proficiency that made the result remarkable for a child of her age; her leisure was encouraged to express itself in sketching from nature, and she went about much of the time pleasantly engrossed, holding up a pencil at a stiff angle and at arm's-length to take accurate measurement of relative distances and details of perspective.
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 goddess 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-keepinglore, 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 passions. 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 ablank 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 shuttlecock 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 assigned 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 thefruitless 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 Janus" 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!"
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 revealedthrough 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 gaysallies, 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 shuttlecock, 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 withthree 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 cardfrom 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 passed 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 wasso gladshe 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 thechoice was precipitately abandoned at the last moment and another card snatched 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 abigstake," 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 manœuvred to retain. Her crestfallen dismay betrayed thedisaster. 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 Chaneysays 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 assumptions,—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 attitude 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 buttons 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 heathad 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.
Outside the rain still fell in torrents; the tumult of the gush from the gutter hard by gave intimations of great volume of overflow. At long intervals a drop fell hissing down the chimney on the coals where the fire had burned to a white heat. The wind sang like a trump, and from far away the reverberations of a train of cars came with a sort of muffled sonority that was almost indistinguishable from the vibrations of the earth. One hardly knew whether the approach of the train was felt or heard.
"I can't see how a locomotive can keep the rails in such a night as this," Colonel Ashley remarked, lifting his head to listen. "I had rather my command would be playing the duck down there in the puddles than crossing that half-submerged bridge on that troop train."
"Are they transporting troops now?" asked Judge Roscoe, casually. He was a lawyer and knew the general inappropriateness and inadmissibility of a leading question. He had, however, no interest in the response, for the transit of troops did not necessarily intimate reënforcements to the garrison, and hence the expectation of attack, but perhaps merely the intention of distant activity.
Captain Baynell lifted his eyes from his cards,and a glance of warning, of upbraiding, flashed into the jovial dark eyes of Colonel Ashley. Judge Roscoe perceived it with surprise and a sort of uncomfortable monition that he and his guest, the son of his cherished friend, were in reality in opposition in a most important crisis of the life of each—in effect, national enemies. He had not thus regarded their standpoint, and the idea that this was Baynell's conviction wounded him. He hardly thought the warning glance in his own house either necessary or in good form, and he was not ill pleased to subtly perceive that Ashley secretly resented it.
"A troop train, I should judge, by the sound," Ashley said hardily, his head still poised in a listening pose. "Evidently heavily laden; might be horses, though," he continued speculatively. He would not submit to be checked or disciplined into prudential considerations by Baynell, especially as Judge Roscoe must have noted the warning sign, which itself would tend to convert a simple casual remark into a significant disclosure. He said to himself that he knew the proper limitations of conversation, and was the last man in the world to let slip a hint that might by any means inform or even prompt the enemy. Moreover, Judge Roscoe was not deaf, and could distinguish the deep rumble of cars laden with troops from the usual sound of the running-gear of a train of ordinary freight and passengers. He went on casually and with an expansiveeffect of frankness: "Horses, most probably; there is a cavalry regiment in town that has been at the front as dismounted troops, and I think an order is out for horses for their use as cavalry again; they have been pressing horses all over the county yesterday and the day before. Winstead's troopers, you know," he added, addressing Baynell. "I saw him to-day. He says his men all seem pigeon-toed, or web-footed, or something. They were of no use afoot, although they have done very well in the saddle."
"An'—an' did they wear boots on birds' feet an' web-toes?" asked the amazed Geraldine, innocently.
"Oh—oh,Ger'ldine!" screamed the superior Adelaide. "He means walkin' this-a-way," and her hands went across the table in a "toeing-in" gait, illustrative of the defect known as "pigeon toes."
"Aw—aw—Iknow now!" said the instructed "lady," wofully out of countenance. Then she turned to draw from her neighbor's hand with much doubt and circumspection, for the matched pile in the centre was now large and the remaining cards had become few.
At that moment Mrs. Gwynn glanced up from the paper; she had been reading an account of a recent spirited skirmish at the front.
"What is the difference between shrapnel and grape-shot?" she asked of the company at large.
Baynell, the artillery expert, rejoiced to enlightenher. He turned in his chair and promptly took the word from the others. Few experts can answer any simple question categorically. Not only did he explain the missiles in question, but also how they had happened to be what they were, and the earlier stages of their development. He gave his views on their relative value and the possibility of their future utility,—all while Ashley, who now sat next him, as they had chanced to shift their chairs when Mrs. Gwynn had entered, waited with quiet and polite patience for him to draw. Baynell did this at haphazard at last, and whether it was accident or Fate that the significant card was practically thrust into his heedless hand by the mischievous Ashley, his countenance fell at beholding the prognosis of single blessedness, so palpably, so preposterously, that the jovial Ashley could not restrain his bantering laughter. Baynell instantly presented the cards to him to draw in turn, but either favored by luck or having acquired some surreptitious unfair knowledge of the outer aspect of the card, Ashley avoided the ill-omened pasteboard, and Baynell was at last left with the single card in his hand, while his triumphant friend made the room riotous with laughter, and the three "ladies" bent compassionate, tender eyes upon him, as if they anticipated the conventional gush of tears. They had grown very fond of him, and deeply felt the disaster that had befallen him.
"Oh, Captain Baynell, never mind! never mind!" cried the inspirational Adelaide. "We'llmarry you!We'llmarry you! You needn't besoanxious!"
Once more Ashley's ringing merriment amazed the sympathetic "ladies."
Lucille cast a burning glance of reproof upon him. Then she held up three fingers to Captain Baynell to intimate that three brides awaited him.
"Ha! ha!" laughed Ashley. "Here's a settler for Utah, Judge. That's evidently the place for this fellow 'when this cruel war is over'!"
Judge Roscoe smilingly watched the benignant, commiserating little countenances.
Adelaide had gone around the table and was hanging on the arm of Captain Baynell's chair as she proffered consolation.
"Colonel Ashley wouldn't think it so mighty funny ifhehad the Old Maid! Butdon'tmind, Captain. Why,IknowCousin Leonorawould marry you, if nobody else would,—she always does anything when nobody else wants to."
The silver tones were singularly clear, and for a moment the group sat in appalled silence. Ashley did not laugh, though his face was still distended with the risible muscles. It was like a laughing mask—the form without the fact. He did not dare even to glance toward the chair where Mrs. Gwynn imperturbably perused the war news, nor yet at the stony terror which hefelt was petrified on his friend's face. At that moment a vivid white light quivered horribly through the room and the repetitious crashing clamor of the thunder was like a cannonade at close quarters. A great fibrous sound of the riving of timber told that a tree hard by had been split by the bolt; the torrents descended with redoubled force, and the massive old house seemed to rock.
And in the moment of comparative quiet a new, strange sound intruded itself on recognition,—that most uncanny voice, the cry of a horse in the extremity of terror. It came again and again; at each successive peal of the thunder and recurrent furious flare of lightning it seemed nearer. It had a subterranean effect; and then after the crash of falling objects, as if some barrier had been overthrown, the iteration of unmistakable hoof beats on stone flagging announced that there was a horse in the cellar.
This phenomenon obviously indicated an effort to save the animal from the impress of horses for army service, which had been in progress for days and to which Colonel Ashley had alluded. Far away in the wine-cellar, in the safe precincts under the back drawing-room, which was rarely used nowadays, the horse had evidently been ensconced, and but for the storm his presence might have continued indefinitely undetected. The tremendous conflict of the powers of the air, the unfamiliar place, the loneliness,had stricken the creature with panic fright, and, doubtless hearing human voices in the library, he had overthrown temporary obstacles, burst down inadequate doors, and following the genial sound was now stamping and whinnying just beneath the floor. Colonel Ashley, affecting to note nothing unusual, dealt the cards anew, and commented on the fury of the tempest.
"I fancy you have lost one of your fine ancestral oaks, Judge. That bolt struck timber with a vengeance."
"We have the consolation of a prospect of firewood," responded Judge Roscoe. "But I doubt if it struck only one of the trees."
"I think I never before saw such a flash as that," remarked Ashley.
The horse in the cellar protested thathenever had. Then he fairly yelped at a comparatively mild suffusion followed by a dull roar of thunder, evidently anticipating a renewal of the pyrotechnic horrors that had so terrified him.
Judge Roscoe maintained an imperturbable aspect, despite a certain mortification and a sense of derogation of dignity. He recognized this as a scheme of old Ephraim's. More than once he had so contrived the disappearance of the last milch cow that his master possessed as to save her from the foraging parties bent on beef. Chickens had experiences of invisibility that were not fatal, and though the carriage pair and the judge's saddle-horse had been the victims of surprise,—impressedlong ago,—the old servant had again and again rescued a beautiful animal that Mrs. Gwynn owned and which had been a second gift from Judge Roscoe. Hearing betimes of the press orders from the soldiers, the "double-faced Janus" had besought Judge Roscoe to leave the concealment of Acrobat to him; and, although only a passive factor in the enterprise, Judge Roscoe, as much surprised at the denouement as any one else, was forced to bear the brunt of the lamentable fiasco in which the secret had become public.
Baynell, though silent, looked extremely annoyed.
"This rainfall will raise the river considerably," Ashley commented.
"Shouldn't be surprised if the lower portions of the town are flooded already," said Judge Roscoe, throwing out a pair of matched cards.
"Those precincts are very ill situated," said Ashley.
The Houyhnhnm in the cellar protested that he was, too.
"High water must occasion considerable suffering among the poorer class," rejoined the judge.
"But the locality could have been easily avoided in laying out Roanoke City. Draw, Captain—" Ashley broke off suddenly, being forced to remind the preoccupied Baynell of his turn to supply his hand.
"The commercial convenience of wharfage atlow stages of water was doubtless the inducement," explained Judge Roscoe.
"To be sure,—minimizes the distance for loading freights," assented Ashley.
"Yes, the drays come to the very decks of the boats."
"Thatwas a pretty sharp flash," said Ashley.
"Oh, it was—it was!" whooped the Houyhnhnm from out the cellar. He evidently executed a sort of intricate passado, to judge from the sound of his hysteric hoofs on the stone flagging.
"I hope your fine grove will sustain no more casualties," said Ashley.
"I hope, myself, the house won't be struck," whimpered the speculative Adelaide.
"Me, too! Me, too!" cried the horse.
"Draw, Captain,"—once more Ashley had occasion to rouse the absorbed Baynell.
At every inapposite, disaffected remark that the horse in the cellar saw fit to interject into the conversation, the twins, evidently well aware of the betrayal of the domestic secret by his loud-voiced intrusion into the apartment beneath the library, fully apprehending the disaster, at first looked aghast at each other, then referred it to the adjustment of superior wisdom by a long, earnest gaze at their grandfather.
Judge Roscoe could ill sustain the expectation of their childish comment. But he felt that his dignity was involved in ignoring that aught was amiss. His composure emulated Ashley'sresolute placidity and well-bred, conventional determination to admittedly hear and see naught that was not intentionally addressed by his host to his observation. Baynell gave no outward and obvious sign of notice, but the subcurrent of brooding thought that occupied his mind was token of his evident comprehension and a nettled annoyance. Perhaps they all felt the relief from the tension when Ashley, suddenly glancing toward the window, saw between the long red curtains the section of a clearing sky and the glitter of a star.
"The storm is over," he said. "I think, Judge, we might venture out now to view the damage. I trust there is not much timber down."
The three men trooped heavily out into the hall, and suddenly the challenge of the sentry rang forth, simultaneously with the sound of the approach of horses' hoofs and the jingle of military accoutrements. Colonel Ashley's groom had bethought himself to bring up his master's charger in case he should care, since the weather had cleared, to return to camp. This Ashley preferred, despite Judge Roscoe's cordial insistence that he could put him up for the night without the slightest inconvenience.
As Ashley took leave of the family and galloped down the avenue in the chill damp air, and over the spongy turf, now and then constrained to turn aside to avoid fallen boughs,he had not even a vague prevision how short an interval was to elapse before chance should bring him back. His expectation of meeting a charming young lady, with perhaps the sequel of an interesting flirtation, in which all his best qualities as squire of dames should be elicited for the admiration of the fair,—his preëminence in singing, in quoting poetry, in saying pretty things, in horsemanship, above all the killing glances of his arch dark eyes, to say naught of the relish he always experienced in his own excellent pose as a lover, one of his favorite rôles,—all had been nullified by Mrs. Gwynn's unresponsiveness. His vanity was touched, upon reflecting on the events of the evening. He did not feel entreated according to his merits by her attitude of a faded and elderly widow-woman, and his relegation to the puerilities of the little Old Maids, or little "ladies," or whatever they called themselves (certainly not the first), with Baynell playing the stick, and the old judge merely a galvanized Opinion. He resolved that he would stick to camp hereafter. He knew a game of "Draw" with no Old Maid in the pack, and he would solace his spare time with such diversion as it might afford, and look to the drill of his squadrons.
Nevertheless the moisture of the storm was scarcely sun-dried the next afternoon before he was again galloping up the long avenue of the grove and inquiring of old Janus, appropriatelyplaying janitor, if Captain Baynell were within, as he had some special business with him.
As on other occasions there was no glimpse or sound of feminine presence in the halls or on the stairs as he followed the old servant up the softly padded ascent. He fancied the old negro was much disaffected; he had a plaintive, remonstrant submissiveness, and a sort of curious, shadowy, aged look that seemed a concomitant of a sullen reproach. Had they been beyond earshot of the household, Ashley would have bidden the old man out with his grievance, but naught was said, and presently the door of Captain Baynell's bedroom closed upon him.
"Did you know that Tompkins had sent up here and impressed Mrs. Gwynn's horse?"
Baynell had not risen from a seat at an escritoire, where he seemed to have been writing, and Ashley was half across the room and had flung himself into a chair before the fire ere his friend could lay down the pen.
"Yes, I knew it."
"Why—why—how did he know they had the animal in the cellar? He was up here the day before yesterday, and that old darkey told him that the horse had already been pressed into service."
"He must have been put into the cellar earlier. You know we heard the animal there last night."
"Why—why—" Colonel Ashley stammered in his haste—"how didTompkinsknow?"
"How?—why, of course I notified him—this morning."
Vertnor Ashley was altogether inarticulate. Baynell replied to the surprise in his face.
"Why—whatever did you think I should do?"
"Hold your tongue, of course!—as I held mine! Why, I thought you were a friend of these people."
Baynell looked at him, surprised in turn. "And so I am."
"And they have been kindness itself to you!"
"But do they expect me to return their kindness by helping them deceive the government, or to hold back supplies the army needs? They are mistaken if they do! It is a matter of conscience!"
"Oh, alittlething like that—" Ashley snapped his fingers—"a lady's horse!"
"It is a matter of conscience!" Baynell reiterated.
"I tell you, my friend, I wouldn't have such a conscience as that in the house! It's a selfish beast—a raging monster! exceedingly deadly to the interests of other folks," Ashley retorted with his bright eyes aglow.
Baynell glanced out of the great window, with its white, embroidered muslin curtains, between which he could see the ranges in the distance, Roanoke in the mid-spaces, the white tents ofthe girdle of encampments on all the hillsides about the little city; at intervals, held in cup-like hollows, were great glittering ponds of water, the accumulations of the storm, glassing the clouds like mirrors, and realizing to the eye the geologist's description of the prehistoric days when lakes were here.
A sudden suspicion was in Ashley's mind. His resolution was taken on the instant. "I hope you will advance no objection; but I intend to see Mrs. Gwynn and Judge Roscoe, and assure them thatIhad no part in giving this information to the quartermaster's department."
Baynell looked at him with an indignant retort rising to his lips, then laughed satirically.
"Do you imagine I leftyouunder that imputation?"
"You consider it no imputation, but a duty. Now I don't see my duty in that light. And I prefer to make my position clear to them."
Baynell already had his hand on the bell-cord, and it was with pointed alacrity that he gave the order when old Ephraim appeared—"Please say to Mrs. Gwynn and Judge Roscoe that Colonel Ashley and Captain Baynell wish to speak to them a few minutes on a matter of business if they are at leisure."
Uncle Ephraim, in whose soul the misadventure about the horse was rankling deep, surlily assented, closed the door, and took his way downstairs.
"I reckenyoukin speak ter dem," he soliloquized,—"mos' ennything kin speak hyar. Who'd 'a' thought dat ar horse, dat Ac'obat, would set out ter talk ter de folks in de lawberry, like no four-footed one hev' done since de days ob Balaam's ass. But I ain't never hearn dat de ass was fool enough ter got hisse'f pressed inter de Fed'ral army. 'Fore de Lawd, dat horse wish now he had held his tongue an' stayed in de wine-cellar, wid dat good feed, whar I put him."
Once in the library, the traits which so endeared Vertnor Ashley to himself, and eke to others, were amply in evidence. He was gentle, deferential, thoroughly straightforward and frank, albeit he saw the subject was a mortification to Judge Roscoe and abated his sense of his own dignity; still Ashley gave no offence.
"I understand. It was a matter of conscience with Captain Baynell," said Judge Roscoe, seeking to dispose of the question in few words. "I can have no displeasure against a man for obeying the dictates of his own conscience, as every man must."
"Well, I am happy to say I had no conscience in the matter," said Colonel Ashley.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Gwynn, with her curt, low, icy tone. "We have indeed fallen on evil times. Captain Baynell has conscience enough to destroy us all, if only he sees fit. And Colonel Ashley, by his own admission, hasno conscience at all. Between the two wemustcome to grief."
"It seems to me a trifle," Ashley persisted smilingly, "brought to my attention accidentally on a hospitable occasion. For aughtIknew, you might have a permit, or the horse might have been a condemned animal, unsound, thus escaping the requisition. I had no orders to investigate your domestic affairs, nor to search for animals evading the impress. The men detailed to that duty are presumed to be capable of discharging it."
"I assure you we have no feeling on that account—no antagonism—" began Judge Roscoe.
"I desire you to realize thatnothingwould have induced me to report the presence of the horse here," Ashley interrupted; "though," he added, checking himself, "I do not wish to reflect on Captain Baynell's procedure!"
"He thought himself justified, indeed obligated," interposed Judge Roscoe.
"Of course I greatly regretted the necessity, which seemed forced on me, as I saw the matter," said Baynell.
"I fully appreciate that you take a different view," began Ashley.
"'O give ye good even. Here's a million of manners,'" quoted Mrs. Gwynn, satirically, smiling from one to the other as each sought to press forward his own view, yet to cast no reflections on the probity of the standpoint of the other.
Judge Roscoe laughed. He was an admirer ofwhat he called "understanding in women," and the mere flavor of a Shakespearian collocation of words refreshed his spirit like an oasis in a desert.
Ashley looked at her doubtfully. He wondered that they could forgive Baynell for this gratuitous bit of official tyranny, as it seemed to him, and also the serious loss of the value of the horse. He said to himself that almost any rule is constrained to exceptions. He thought Baynell's course was small-minded, unjustifiable, and an ungrateful requital of hospitality, such as only important interests might warrant. He did not reckon on the strength of the attachment which Judge Roscoe, despite politics, had formed for his dear friend's son, or for his respect for the coercive force of a man's convictions of the requirements of duty. It was a sort of Brutus-like urgency which appealed to a high sense of probity and which commended itself to the ex-judge, accustomed to deal with subtle differentiations of moral intent as well as intricate principles of sheer law.
As for Mrs. Gwynn—it was sufficient that she had lost the horse. She cared too little for either man as an individual to consider the delicate adjustment of the problem of official integrity involved.
"I surely should have lost every claim to your good opinion if I had glozed it over and passed it by for personal reasons," Baynell argued after Ashley had gone.
She looked at him speculatively for an instant, wondering what possible claim he could fancy he possessed to her good opinion.
"If you think impressing a horse is a recommendation, a great many citizens of this town have cause to hold the quartermaster-general in high esteem. A perfect drove of horses passed here this afternoon. I looked for Acrobat, but I did not see him."
He was taken aback at this turn. "But you know, of course, it was against my own will—my own preference—the horse—it was a sacrifice on my part!"
"So glad to know it; I thought the sacrifice was mine!"
He shifted the subject.
"Judge Roscoe has kindly given me permission to stable here my own horses,—not belonging to the service,—and to use the pasture, and I hope you will ride one that I think is particularly suitable for a lady. Judge Roscoe, to show that he bears no malice, is riding another one to Roanoke City this afternoon."
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.
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 rehearsed 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 embarrassment; 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 æonof 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 canvass 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 hissake, 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 ignoble 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 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 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 anticipated 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.
"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 of heavy white satin simple yet queenly—and had gone to one of those balls 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, pawned, 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 threatenedthe 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 hadnotasked 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 passed 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 associates, 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 occasionedby 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 analysis 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 assert itself, to rise up with wild eyeslooking 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 balusters great bloody 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 alikeof 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 attitude was suddenly stultified by his direct appeal to her. Thus she had reddened and faltered in embarrassment 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 asingle 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 theresounded 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 dickens 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."