The Storm Centre Part 11

"No. But it was not at all serious--I wasn't so dead gone, I mean--when I wanted him to take me to the Roscoes'. If I had had some other place to visit--some other people to know--some distraction of a reasonable social circle, she couldn't have brought me to such a--a--"

"--state of captivity," suggested Ashley.

"Well, you know, seeing n.o.body else of one's own sort--and a charming girl--and nothing to do but to watch her sing--and hear her talk--and all the other men wild about her--and--it's--it's--"

"You'll forget it all before long," suggested the consolatory Ashley.

"You know we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, in a sense that General Orders make less permanent than Scripture. If the word should come to break camp and march--how little you would be thinking of Miss Fisher."

"I suppose you were never in love, Ashley," Seymour said, a trifle drearily, adding mentally, "except with yourself!"

"I!" exclaimed Ashley, twirling his mustache. "Oh, I have had my sad experiences, too--but I have survived them--and partially forgotten them."

"I have no interest now in going to the Roscoes'. Mrs. Fisher offered to introduce me. She and Miss Millie are going there to-morrow to some sort of a sewing-circle--they just want an officer's escort through the suburbs, I know. That sewing-circle is a fraud, and ought to be interdicted. They pretend to sew and knit for the hospitals here and Confederate prisoners, and I feel sure they smuggle the lint and clothes and supplies through the lines to Rebels openly in arms. I hate to go."

"Well, now, I'll engage to eat all the homespun cotton s.h.i.+rts that Miss Fisher ever makes for the Rebel in arms, or any other man. You need have no punctilio on that score."

"Oh, it isn't that. I hate to meet Baynell--what is he staying on there for? He is as rugged now as ever in his life. Is he in love with the widow?"

"He has a queer way of showing it if he is." And Ashley detailed the circ.u.mstance of the impressing of the horse. Seymour listened with a look of searching, keen intentness.

"Baynell would never have done that in this world," he declared, "if you had not been there to hear the neighing, too. Why, it stands to reason.

The family must have known the horse might whinny at any moment. They relied on his winking at it, and he would have done it if you had not been there. He took that pose of being so regardful of the needs of the service because he has been favoring the Roscoes in every way imaginable. Why, hardly anybody else has a stick of timber left, and every day houses are seized for military occupation, and the owners turned adrift, but _I_ know that when one of his men stole only a plank from Judge Roscoe's fence, he had the fellow tied up by his thumbs with the plank on his back for hours in the sun. That was for the sake of _discipline_, my dear fellow--not for Judge Roscoe's plank. On the contrary--quite the reverse!"

Seymour wagged his satiric head, unconvinced, and Ashley remembered afterward that he vaguely wished that Baynell would not make so definite a point about these matters, provoking a sort of comment that ordinary conduct could hardly incur. Baynell ought to be in camp.

CHAPTER VIII

Baynell, himself, reached the same conclusion the next evening, but by an altogether different process of reasoning.

He had noticed the unusual stir among the "ladies" early in the afternoon and a sort of festival aspect that the old house was taking on. The parlors were opened and a glow of suns.h.i.+ne illumined the windows and showed the grove from a new aspect--the choicer view where the slope was steep. The river rounded the point of woods, and there was a great stretch of cliffs opposite; beyond were woods again, reaching to the foot-hills that cl.u.s.tered about the base of the distant mountains bounding the prospect. The glimpse seen through the rooms was like a great painting in intense, clear, fine colors, and he paused for a moment to glance at it as he pa.s.sed down the hall, for all the doors were standing broadly aflare and all the windows were open to the summer-like zephyr that played through the house.

"Oh, Captain Baynell!" cried Adelaide, catching sight of him and gasping in the sheer joy of the antic.i.p.ation of a great occasion. "The Sewing-Society is going to meet here, and you can come in, too! Mayn't he come in, Cousin Leonora?"

Mrs. Gwynn was filling a large bowl on a centre-table with a gorgeous cl.u.s.ter of deep red tulips, and Baynell noticed that she had thrust two or three into the dense knot of fair hair at the nape of her neck. As she turned around one of the swaying bells was still visible, giving its note of fervid brilliancy to her face. Her dress was a white mull, of simple make--old, even with a delicate darn on one of its floating open sleeves, but to one familiar with her appearance in the sombre garb of widowhood she seemed radiant in a sort of splendor. What was then called a "Spanish waist," a deeply pointed girdle of black velvet, flecked with tiny red tufts, made the sylphlike grace of her figure more p.r.o.nounced, and at her throat was a collarette of the same material. Her cheeks were flushed. It had been a busy day--with the morning lessons, with the arrangement of the parlors, the array of materials, the setting of the sewing-machines in order, including two or three of the earlier hand-power contrivances, sent in expressly from the neighbors, the baskets for lint,--one could hear even now the whirring of the grindstone as old Ephraim put a keener edge on the scissors. Last but not least Leonora had accomplished the bedizenment of the "ladies."

Adelaide was not born to blush unseen. She realized the solecism that her vanity lured her to commit, yet she said hardily, "Look at _me_, Captain--I'm got me a magenta sas.h.!.+"

"And it's beautiful!" cried Baynell, responsively. "And so are you!"

Mrs. Gwynn glanced down at her reprovingly and was out of countenance for a moment.

"How odious it is to give to colors the names of battles," she said,--"Magenta and Solferino!"

"This is a beautiful color, though," said Baynell.

"But the name gives such an ensanguined suggestion," she objected.

Her eye critically scanned the three "ladies" in their short white mull dresses and magenta sashes, each with a bow of black velvet in her hair, as they led Captain Baynell into the room, and it did not occur to her till too late to canva.s.s the acceptability of the presence of the Yankee officer to the ladies of the vicinity, a.s.sembling in this choice symposium, who had some of them the cruel a.s.sociations of death itself with the very sight of the uniform.

Whether it were good breeding, or the magnanimity that exempts the unit from the responsibility of the mult.i.tude, or a realization that Judge Roscoe's guest, be he whom he might, was ent.i.tled to the consideration of all in the Roscoe house, there was no demonstration of even the slightest antagonism. The usual civility of salutation in acknowledging the introduction served to withhold from Captain Baynell himself the fact that he could hardly hope to be _persona grata_; and ensconced in an arm-chair at the window overlooking the lovely landscape, he found a certain amus.e.m.e.nt and entertainment in watching the zealous industry of the little Roscoe "ladies," who were very competent lint-pickers and boasted some prodigies of performance. A large old linen crumb-cloth, laundered for the occasion, had been spread in the corner between the rear and side windows of the back parlor, so that the flying lint should not bespeck the velvet carpet, or an overturned basket work injury, and here in their three little chairs they sat and competed with each other, appealing to Captain Baynell to time them by his watch.

Now and then their comments, after the manner of their age, were keenly malapropos and occasioned a sense of embarra.s.sment.

"Don't you reckon Ac'obat is homesick by this time, Captain?" demanded Adelaide.

"Look out of the window, Captain--you can see the grating to the wine-cellar where he could put his nose out to take the air," said Geraldine.

"An' he thought the lightning could come in there to take him--kee--kee--" giggled Adelaide.

"Oh, _wasn't_ he a foolish horse!" commented Geraldine, regretfully.

"Uncle Ephraim said Ac'obat had no religion else he'd have stayed where he was put like a Christian," Adelaide observed.

"Oh, but he was _just_ a horse--poor Ac'obat!"

At this moment emulation seized Geraldine. "Oh, my--just look how Lucille is double-quickin' about that lint pickin'!"

And a busy silence ensued.

The large rooms were half full of members of the society. In those days the infinite resources of the "ready-made" had not penetrated to these regions, and doubtless the work of such eager and industrious coteries carried comfort and help farther than one can readily imagine, and the organized aid of woman's needle was an appreciable blessing. Two or three matrons, with that wise, capable look of the able house-sovereign, when scissors, or a dish, or a vial of medicine is in hand, sat with broad "lapboards" across their knees, and cut and cut the coa.r.s.e garments with the skill of experts, till great piles were lying on the floor, caught up with a st.i.tch to hold component parts together and pa.s.sed on to the younger ladies at the sewing-machines that whirred and whirred like the droning bees forever at the jessamine blooming about the windows. Nothing could be more unbeautiful or uninviting than the aspect of these stout garments, unless it were to the half-clad soldier in the trenches to whom they came like an embodied benediction. The thought of him--that unknown, unnamed beneficiary, for whose grisly needs they wrought--was often, perhaps, in the mind of each.

"And oh!" cried Adelaide, "while I'm pickin' lint for this hospital, I dust know some little girl away out yonder in the Confederacy is pickin' lint too--an' if my papa was to get wounded, they'd have plenty."

"Pickin' fast, she is, like us!" cried the hastening Geraldine.

The deft-fingered mute, discerning their meaning by the motion of their lips, redoubled her speed.

Others were sewing by hand, and one very old lady had knitted some lamb's wool socks, which were pa.s.sed about and greatly admired; she was complacent, almost coquettish, so bland was her smile under these compliments.

And into this scene of placid and almost pious labor came Miss Mildred Fisher presently, leading her "dancing bear."

If there were any question of the acceptability of the enforced presence of a Yankee officer, either in the mind of the Sewing-Circle or Lieutenant Seymour, it was not allowed to smoulder in discomfort, but set ablaze to burn itself out.

"I know you are all just perfectly amazed at our a.s.surance in bringing a Yankee officer here,--_don't_ be mortified, Lieutenant Seymour,--but mamma wouldn't hear of coming without a valiant man-at-arms as an escort, so I begged and prayed him to come, and now I want you all to beg and pray him to stay!"

Then she introduced him to several ladies, while Mrs. Fisher, always the mainspring of the executive committee, a keen, thin, birdlike woman, swift of motion and of a graceful presence, but p.r.o.ne to settle moot points with a decisive and not altogether amiable peck, gave him no attention, but darting from group to group devoted herself wholly to the business in hand. She seemed altogether oblivious, too, of Mildred's whims, which were to her an old story. Seldom, indeed, had Mildred Fisher looked more audaciously sparkling. Her fairness was enhanced by the black velvet facing of her white Leghorn turban, encircled with one of those beautiful long white ostrich plumes then so much affected that, after pa.s.sing around the crown, fell in graceful undulations over the equivocal locks and almost to the shoulder of her black-and-white checked walking suit of "summer silk," trimmed with a narrow black-and-white fringe.

"Grandma sent these socks and s.h.i.+rts--" she said officiously, taking a bundle from a neat colored maid who had followed her--"and I brought my thimble--here it is--golden gold--and a large bra.s.s thimble for Mr.

Seymour. You wouldn't think he has so much affinity for bra.s.s--to look at him now! I intend to make him sew, too. Mrs. Clinton, I know you think I am just _awful_," turning apologetically upon the very old lady her sweet confiding eyes. "But--oh, Mrs. Warren--before I forget it, I want to let you know that your son was _not_ wounded in that Bear-gra.s.s Creek skirmish at all. I have a letter from one of my brothers--brother number four--and he says it is a mistake; your son was not hurt, but distinguished himself greatly. Here's the letter. I can't tell you _how_ it came through the lines, for Lieutenant Seymour might _repeat_ it; he has the l-o-n-g-e-s-t tongue, though you wouldn't think it, to see him now, speechless as he is."

Lieutenant Seymour rallied sufficiently to protest he couldn't get in a word edgewise, and Mrs. Gwynn, with her official sense of hospitality and a real pity for anything that Millie Fisher had undertaken to torment on whatever score, adopted the tone of the conversation, and said with a smile that he might consider himself "begged and prayed" to remain.

Lieutenant Seymour was instantly placed at ease by this episode, but Mrs. Gwynn experienced a vague disquietude because of the genuine surprise that expressed itself in Mildred Fisher's face as that comprehensive feminine glance of instantaneous apprais.e.m.e.nt of attire took account of her whole costume. Leonora had not reckoned on this development when, in that sudden revulsion of feeling, she had discarded the fict.i.tious semblance of mourning for the villain who had been the curse of her life. The momentary glance pa.s.sed as if it had not been, but she could not at once rid herself of a sense of disadvantage. She knew that to others as well the change must seem strange--yet, why should it? All knew that her widow's weeds had been but an empty form--what significance could the fact possess that they were worn for a time as a concession to convention, then laid aside? She could not long lend herself, however, to the absorption of reflection. The present was strenuous.

Miss Fisher was bent on investing Lieutenant Seymour with the thimble and requiring him to thread a needle for himself, while she soberly and with despatch basted a towel which she destined him to hem. The comedy relief that these arrangements afforded to the serious business of the day was very indulgently regarded, and her bursts of silvery laughter and the young officer's frantic pleas for mercy--utterly futile, as all who knew Millie Fisher foresaw they must be--brought a smile to grave faces and relaxed the tension of the situation, placing the unwelcome presence of the unasked visitor in the category of one of Millie Fisher's many freaks.