The Storm Centre Part 22

The incident pa.s.sed with the events of the crowded time, but even within the domestic periphery harmony had ceased to reign as of yore. Old Ephraim was a bit sullen, gloomy, did his work with an ill grace, and repudiated all acquaintance with "Brer Rabbit" and "Brer Fox." The soldiers in the neighboring camps--possibly to secure an influence, his alienation from the interest of his quasi-owner, in order to ferret out more of the mystery concerning the Confederate officer, possibly only animated by political fervor, and it may be with a spice of mischief, finding amus.e.m.e.nt in the old negro's garrulous grotesqueries--had been talking to him of slavery, making the most of his grievances, setting them in order before him, and urging him to rouse himself to the great opportunities of freedom.

"I done make up my mind," he said autocratically, one day in the kitchen. "I gwine realize on my forty acres an' a muel!"

For this substantial bonanza freedom was supposed to confer on each ex-slave.

"Forty acres an' a mule!" the old cook echoed in derisive incredulity and with a scornful black face. "You _done_ realize on de mule--a mule is whut you is, sure! Here's yer mule! An' now you go out an' fotch me a pail of water, else I'll make ye realize on enough good land ter kiver ye! Dat's whut! It'll be six feet--not forty acres,--but it kin do yer job!"

He might have made a fractious politician but for this adverse influence, for he had the variant moods of a mercurial nature, and in gloom showed a morose perversity that could have been easily manipulated into a spurious sense of martyrdom, lacking a tutored ratiocination to enable him to discriminate the facts. But despite his failings, his ignorance, the bewildering changes in his surroundings, never a word concerning his young master escaped his lips, never an inadvertent allusion, a disastrous whisper. He scarcely allowed himself a thought, a speculation.

"Fust thing I know," he reflected warily, "I'll be talkin' ter myself.

They always tole me dat walls had ears!"

A day or two of murky weather seemed to penetrate the mental atmosphere as well. It was perhaps the inauguration of the chill interval known as "blackberry winter." Everywhere the great brambles were snowy with bloom, and in the house the "ladies" s.h.i.+vered and clasped their cold elbows in the sleeves of their thin summer dresses till the fenders and fire-dogs were brought out once more, and the flicker of hearthstone flames made cheery the aspect of the library, and dispensed a genial warmth. The air was moist; the trains ran with a dull roar and an undertone of reverberation; there was a collision of boats in the fog on the river, involving loss of life, and one night, the window being up, the sentry in pa.s.sing called Captain Baynell out on the portico. He said he hesitated to summon the corporal of the guard, lest the sound should pa.s.s before the non-commissioned officer could come.

"What sound?" asked Baynell.

"Listen, sir," said the sentry.

The night was dark. There was no moon. The stars now and then glimmering through the mists afforded scant illumination to the earth. The fires of the troops in bivouac about the town shone like thousands of constellations, reflected by the earth. The wind was surging fitfully among the pines. There was a dull iterative beat, rather felt than heard.

"The train?" suggested Baynell.

"The train is in, sir."

"Must have been a freight," Baynell hazarded, for the indefinite vibration had ceased.

"That's 'hep, hep, hep,'--that's marching feet, sir,--that's what it is!"

"Well, what of that?" Baynell demanded. "It's the corporal of the guard going out with the relief."

"It's too early----"

"Grand Rounds, possibly."

"It's too near," objected the man. "It's very near."

The wind struck their faces with a dank fillip of dew. The vine hard by was dripping; they could hear the drops fall, and a silent interval, and again a falling drop.

"There is nothing now," said Baynell. "It was doubtless some patrol. The air is very moist, and sounds are heavier than usual."

"This seemed to me very near, sir," said the soldier, discontentedly. He wished he had fired his piece and called for the corporal of the guard.

He had hesitated, for the corporal had scant patience with a military zealot who was forever discovering causes of alarm without foundation, and this exercise of judgment was a strain on a soldier's sense of duty.

He had expected the captain to respond to the mere suggestion of a secret approach, remembering the search for the hidden Rebel officer.

But Baynell had never heard of that episode!

Suddenly all the camps broke into a turbulence of sound. A hundred drums were beating the tattoo. From down the valley and over the river the bugle iterated the strain. Near the town and along the hills it was duplicated anew, and all the echoes of the crags and the rocks of the river bank repeated it, and called out the mandate, and sang it again in a different key; at last it died into a fitful repet.i.tion; silence once more; an absolute hush.

A rocket went up from the fort hard by; another rose, starlike and stately, from unseen regions beyond a hill. Presently the lights were dying out like magic all along the encampments, as if some great cataclysm were among the stellular reflections, blotting them from the sphere of being. The constellations above glowed more brightly as the earth darkened. The wind was gathering force. Baynell listened as the boughs clashed and surged together.

"You doubtless heard the patrol," he said. And again--"The air is dank."

Then he turned and went within; the soldier marched back and forth, as he was destined to do for some time yet, and listened with all the keen intentness of which he was capable. And heard nothing.

The next morning--it was still before dawn--a sudden sharp clamor rose from a redoubt within which was a powder magazine near the main works, lying on the hither side of the river. The mischief which the earlier sentinel at the Roscoe place antic.i.p.ated had come; how, whence,--the man now on duty hardly knew. He fired his rifle and called for the guard.

Then a few sharp reports, and a tumult of shouting sounded from the redoubt. A general alarm ensued. The drums were beating the long roll in the infantry camps,--a nerve-thrilling, terrifying vibration; and the sharp cry, "Fall in!--Fall in!" was like an incident of the keen, rare, matutinal air, the iterative command sounding like an echo from every quarter in which the lines of tents were beginning to glimmer dimly.

From where the cavalry horses were picketed in long rows came the clash of accoutrements and the tramp of hoofs as the trumpets sang "Boots and Saddles!" Once a courier--a shadowy, mounted figure, half distinguishable in the gray obscurity, seeming gigantic, like some horseman of a fable--dashed past in the gloom, going or coming none could know whither. The clamors increased, the shots multiplied, then the clear, chill light came gradually over the turmoils of darkness and sudden surprise. The first rays of the sun struck upon the Confederate flag flying from the redoubt, and its paroled garrison were trooping across to the main line of fortifications, bearing the miraculous story that they had awakened to find the work full of Confederate soldiers who seemed to have mined their way into the place from some subterranean access, and who were now in the name of Julius Roscoe, their ranking officer, demanding the surrender of the fort which the redoubt overlooked.

The Federal commander would have sh.e.l.led them out of their precarious advantage with very hearty good-will, but he feared for the stores of powder, which he really could not spare. Moreover, the explosion of the magazine at such close quarters could but result in the total demolition of the main work and its valuable armament, inflicting also great destruction of life. Thus, although the burly and experienced warrior, Colonel Deltz, was fairly rampant with indignation at the insignificance of this bold enemy both in point of the subordinate rank of the leader and the small number of the force, he was fain to hold parley, instead of opening fire upon the redoubt at once and wiping the raiders, with one hand, as it were, from the face of the earth. It may be doubted if any capable and trusted military expert ever discharged a more distasteful duty. Nevertheless, it was performed _secundum artem_, with every show of those amenities which of all professional courtesies have the slightest root in truth and real feeling. He invited the surrender of the redoubt, ignoring the demand for the surrender of the fort as a puerile and impudent folly, offering the usual fine and humane suggestions touching the avoidance of the useless effusion of blood, such as often before have been heard when a sophistry must needs fill the breach in lieu of force. When this was declined, Julius Roscoe was reminded, in the most cautious terms, of the personal jeopardy incurred by a commander who undertakes to hold out an untenable position. Julius Roscoe's reply, couched in the same strain of courteous phraseology, such, indeed, as might have been employed by a general of division, deliberating on articles of capitulation involving the well-being of an army, intimated that he was popularly supposed to be able to take care of himself; that so far from being unprepared to hold the redoubt which he had captured, he had means at his disposal to possess himself of the fort itself, and if its garrison would but await his onset, he should be happy to entertain Colonel Deltz in his own quarters at dinner in a campaigner's simple way--say, at one of the clock.

These covert allusions to the signal advantages of his situation showed that Lieutenant Roscoe was fully apprized of the very large quant.i.ty of ammunition stored in the magazine, and the tone of his rejoinder intimated that he would avail himself to the uttermost of its efficiency. The works were close enough to render visible the occupations of the Confederates. Though gaunt and half-starved, many ragged and barefoot, they were as merry as grigs and as industrious as beavers, destroying such Federal stores as they could not remove, spiking or otherwise disabling the ordnance that they could not use,--the heavy howitzers at the embrasures,--and briskly preparing to serve the barbette battery, that they had s.h.i.+fted to command the fort and a line of intrenchments taken at a grievous disadvantage in the rear, and some lighter swivel artillery that could sweep all the horizon within range.

It was a sight to stir the gorge of a professed soldier and a martinet.

If aught of action could have availed, the colonel would have welcomed a fierce and summary devoir. But the true soldier rarely allows personal antagonism or a sentimental theory to influence the line of conduct to which duty and prudence alike point. He swallowed his fury, and it was a great gulp for a heady and choleric man who had lived by burning gunpowder--lo, these many years. He perceived that his garrison, able to descry the antics of the Confederates in the redoubt, were apprized of their own imminent peril from the magazine in the hands of their enemy--now, practically a mine. There was a doubt among his observant officers as to whether the reckless band were taking any of the usual precautions, requisite in dealing with so extensive a store of explosives, as they joyfully loaded the cannon. Under these circ.u.mstances, attack being out of the question, Colonel Deltz could hardly be a.s.sured of the efficiency of his force in defence. His garrison were palsied by surprise, the mysterious appearance of the Confederates, and the impunity of their situation. They could only be sh.e.l.led out of the redoubt by the jeopardy of the powder magazine itself, and its explosion would destroy the lives of the besiegers as well as the besieged. Hence strategy was requisite. The fort was gradually evacuated as a lure to draw the raiders into the main works, where they could be dealt with, thus quitting their post of advantage.

Later in the day from a k.n.o.b called Sugar Loaf Pinnacle an artillery fire opened, the sh.e.l.ls falling at first at uncertain intervals, seeking to ascertain the range; then, in fast and furious succession, hurtling down upon the guns of the masked battery beside the river. The missiles seemed but tiny clouds of white smoke, each with a heart of fire, the fuse redly burning against the densely blue sky, till dropping elastically to the moment of explosion it was resolved into a fiercely white focus with rayonnant fibres and stunning clamors.

The town itself was hardly in danger during this riverside bombardment, unless, indeed, from some accident of defective marksmans.h.i.+p. But with all the world gone mad, the atmosphere itself a field of pyrotechnic magnificence, the familiar old mountains but a background to display the curves a flying sh.e.l.l might describe, now and again bursting in mid-air ere it reached its billet, the non-combatant populace was panic-stricken. Streets were deserted. All ordinary vocations ceased.

The more substantial buildings of brick or stone were crowded, their walls presumed to be capable of resisting at least the spent b.a.l.l.s, wide of aim, for these were often endowed with such a residue of energy as still to be destructive. Cellars were in request, and while the darkness precluded the terrifying glare of the bursting projectiles, nevertheless the tremendous clamor of the detonation, the wild reverberations of the echoes, the shouts of cheering men, the sound of bugles and drums and of voices in command in the distance, gave intimations of what was going forward, and uncertainty perhaps enhanced fear.

"Dar, now, de Yankee man's battery is done gone too!" exclaimed Uncle Ephraim, as the voice of authority rang out sharply, with all its echo-like variants in the subalterns' commands. The clangor of accoutrements, the heavy but swift roll of the wheels of gun-carriages and caissons, the tumultuous hoof-beats of horses at full gallop, the spirited cheering of the artillerymen, filled the air--and then silence ensued, deep and dark, the stone walls of the cellar vaguely glimmering with one candle set on the head of a barrel.

"He's gone wid 'em,--dat man! Time dat bugle blow he tore dat bandage off his haid--nicked or no,--dat he did!"

Uncle Ephraim was seated on an inverted cotton basket, and Aunt Chaney, with the three "ladies" cl.u.s.tered about her knees, sat on the flight of steps that led down from a cautiously closed door. The "ladies" kept their fingers in their ears as a protection against sound, but the deaf-mute, strangely enough, was the most acute to discern the crash, possibly by reason of the vibrations of the air, since she could not hear the detonation of the sh.e.l.ls.

Somehow the st.u.r.dy courage of that soldierly shout was rea.s.suring.

"Dere ain't no danger, ladies," declared Aunt Chaney. Then, "Oh, my King!" she cried in an altered voice, while the three "ladies" hid their faces in the folds of her ap.r.o.n as a terrific explosion took place in mid-air, the pieces of the sh.e.l.l falling burning in the grove.

"Jus' lissen at dat owdacious Julius!" muttered Uncle Ephraim, indignantly. "I never 'lowed he war gwine ter kick up sech a tarrifyin'

commotion as dis yere, nohow."

"I wish Gran'pa would come down here," whined one of the twins.

"Where the cannon-b.a.l.l.s can't catch him," whimpered the other.

"What you talking about, ladies?" demanded the old cook, rising to the occasion. "You 'spec' a gemman lak yer gran'pa gwine sit in de cellar, lak--lak a 'tater!"--the simile suggested by a bushel-basket half full of Irish potatoes for late planting in the "garden spot."

The "ladies," rea.s.sured by the joke, laughed shrilly, a little off the key, and clung to her comfortable fat arm that so inspired their confidence.

"_I_ gwine sit in de cellar tell _I_ sprout lak a 'tater, ef disher tribulation ain't ober 'twell den," declared Uncle Ephraim. "Dar now!

lissen ter dat!" as once more the clamorous air broke forth with sound.

The "ladies" exclaimed in piteous accents.

"Dat ain't nuffin ter hurt, honey," Aunt Chaney rea.s.sured her trembling charges. "Dese triflin' sodjers ain't got much aim. Yer gran'pa an' yer cousin Leonora wouldn't stay up dere in de lawbrary ef dere was destruction comin'."

"Then why do _you_ come in the cellar?" asked the logical Adelaide.