The Storm Centre. Mary Noailles Murfree

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СКАЧАТЬ protection and treatment he was to be removed as soon as possible to the hospital near the town. Judge Roscoe verified this rumor upon hastening to camp, and with hospitable warmth he invited the son of his old schoolmate to sojourn instead in his house; for in the college days to which he was fond of recurring he had been taken into the home of the elder Fluellen Baynell, and nursed by his friend's mother through a typhoid attack. To repay the obligation thus was peculiarly acceptable to a man of his type. But Baynell hardly heeded the detail of the hospitable precedent. He needed no persuasion, and thereafter he seemed more than ever lapsed in the serenities of the storm centre, ensconced in one of the great square upper bedrooms, with the spare furnishing of heavy mahogany that gave an idea of so much space, the order of the day when the plethora of decoration, the "cosy corner," the wall pocket, the "art drapery," the crowded knickknackery, did not obtain. For more than a week Baynell could not rise; the surgeon visited him at regular intervals, and Judge Roscoe appeared unfailingly each morning in the sick room; but the rest of the family remained invisible, and held unsympathetically aloof.

      This was a shrewd loss to Ashley, for although he had called at first with genuine anxiety as to his friend's state, the humors of the situation appealed to him as time wore on, and he recollected with the enhanced interest of enforced idleness his boast that he would compass an introduction to Mrs. Gwynn, despite Baynell's stiff refusal. Seymour still resented the circumstance so seriously that he had withheld all manifestations of sympathy or concern, and this, the kind Ashley considered, carried the matter much too far. He thought it might effect a general reconciliation if he should meet Mrs. Gwynn by accident, when he fancied he would not fear to introduce any one whom he considered fit for good society. Thus, after he had ceased to be apprehensive concerning Baynell's condition, he called on him again and again, but hearing never a light footfall on the stair or the flutter of flounces that might promise a realization of his quest. He was all unconscious that his project had an unwitting ally in Judge Roscoe himself. For more than once Judge Roscoe was uncomfortably visited by hospitable monitions.

      "I should have liked to ask Colonel Ashley to dine with us," he said tentatively to Mrs. Gwynn. "He was leaving the house just as the meal was being served. Old Ephraim—confound the old fellow—has no sort of tact. He brought in the soup to Captain Baynell with Colonel Ashley sitting by the bedside! It was indeed a hint to beat a retreat. I was—I was mortified. I was really mortified not to ask him to stay."

      "Heavens, Uncle Gerald!—what are you dreaming about? Ask people to dine, and no trained servant to wait on the table—and this china—and the ladies in their pinafores!" And Mrs. Gwynn glanced scoffingly around the domestic board, for the place had once been famous for the elegance of its entertainments; but the balls, the "wine suppers," the formal late dinners of many courses, had come to an end with the conclusion of the period of prosperity, and the perfectly trained service had vanished with the vanishing butler and his corps of assistants whom he himself had rigorously drilled in the school of the pantry, in strict accordance with old traditions.

      "Well, we have better china," said the judge, inexorably. "And the pinafores don't grow on the ladies; we have excellent precedent for believing they can be dispensed with."

      Mrs. Gwynn fixed him with a resolute eye. "I don't intend to have the ladies taken from their studies in the forenoon to dress for company and distract their minds with fascinating gentlemen. Besides it is too great a compliment to receive an absolute stranger informally, as one of ourselves—as we treat Captain Baynell—and it is almost impossible to entertain Colonel Ashley otherwise. You forget that we have no trained servants. And I am not going to trust the handling of my aunt's beautiful old Sèvres dinner set to our inexperienced factotum—oh, the idea! It makes me shudder to think of the nicks and smashings. It ought to be kept intact for Julius's wife when he takes one, or for Clarence's if he should ever marry again. A stray Yankee officer isn't sufficient justification for risking it."

      "He has called so often, and has been so kind to Captain Baynell."

      "Well, so have I been kind to Captain Baynell, and here am I eating on the everyday china—no Sèvres for me! And I am going to be kinder still, for he is allowed to have some dessert to-day, and I have spread this tray with mine own hands."

      She touched a call-bell, and, as old Janus appeared, "Take this tray upstairs to Captain Baynell," she said, as she transferred it, "be careful—don't tilt it so!" Then, as the old servant left the room, she resumed, addressing Judge Roscoe: "You can sentimentalize about your precious Captain Baynell, if you like, on the score of old friendship. I can appreciate the claims of old friendship, especially as he has been so ill, and possibly was better off here than at the hospital. But to go in generally for entertaining Yankee officers—and all our near and dear out yonder in those cold wet trenches, half starved, and ragged, and wounded, and dying—indeed, no! For my own part, I couldn't be induced to spread a board for another one, except at the point of the bayonet."

      "Colonel Ashley don't wear no bayonet," interposed Adelaide, glibly.

      "He's got him a sword," acceded Geraldine.

      "A long sword, clickety-clank," suggested the first "lady."

      "Clickety, clickety-clank," echoed the other, with brightening eyes.

      "Don't eat with your fingers—nor the spoon; take the fork." Mrs. Gwynn's admonitory aside was hardly an interruption.

      "That is a very narrow view, Leonora," the judge contended. "There can be no parity between the fervor of convictions on the issues of a great national question and merely human predilections as between individuals. Patriotism is not license for rancor. I have shown my devotion to the Southern cause. I have risked the lives of my dear, dear sons. I have expended much in its interests; I have endangered and lost my fortune. The future of all I hold dear is in jeopardy in many aspects. But I do not feel bound for that reason to hate individually every fellow-creature who has opposite convictions, to which he has a right, and takes up arms to sustain them."

      "Well—I do! Being a woman, and having no reasoning capacities, there is no necessity for me to be logical on the subject. I feel what I feel, without qualification. And I know what I know without either legal proof or ocular demonstration. You are welcome to your intellect, Uncle Gerald! Much good may it do you! Intuition is enough for me. Meantime the Sèvres is safe on the shelves."

      Beaten from the field as Judge Roscoe must needs be when his vaunted ratiocination was no available weapon, he held stanchly nevertheless to his own opinion, helpless though he was in the domestic administration. He adopted such measures as were practicable to comport with his own view. Flattered by Ashley's interest in Baynell and recognizant of the frequency of his visits, never dreaming that a glimpse of Mrs. Gwynn was their ultimate object, he took occasion to offer him such slight courtesies as opportunity presented.

      One day when they were descending the stairs Judge Roscoe chanced to comment on the fine bouquet of a certain choice old wine. He still hoarded a few costly bottles of an ancient importation, and with a sudden thought he insisted on pausing in the library to take a glass and finish a discussion happily begun by the invalid's bedside. The room was vacant, as the colonel's keen glance swiftly assured him, and the judge's order for wine was inaugurated through the bell-cord, which jangling summons old Ephraim answered somewhat procrastinatingly. The expression of surprise in the old darkey's eyes, even admonitory dissuasion, as he hearkened to the demand, very definitely nettled the judge and secretly amused Ashley, who divined the old servitor's doubts as to gaining the permission of "de widder 'oman." The host was more relieved than he cared to acknowledge to himself when the factotum presently reappeared, bearing a tray, with the old-fashioned red-and-white Bohemian wine-glasses and decanter which contained the rare vintage, and he felt with a sigh that he was still supreme in his own house, despite the sway of Mrs. Gwynn. He recognized the more gratefully, however, her influence in the perfection of the service and the solemnly careful, preternaturally СКАЧАТЬ