The Storm Centre. Mary Noailles Murfree

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СКАЧАТЬ as he bore about the delicate glass with all the effect of treading on eggs—finally depositing it on the table and withdrawing at his habitual plunging gait.

      Although Ashley dawdled as he listened and sipped his wine languorously, no rustle of draperies rewarded his attentive ear, no graceful presence gladdened his expectant eye. And when at last he could linger no longer, he took up his hope even as he had laid it down, in the expectation of a luckier day.

      "Come again, my dear sir, whenever you can. I am always glad to see you, and your presence cheers Captain Baynell. His father was my dearest friend. I felt his death as if he had been a brother. I have grown greatly attached to his son, who closely resembles him. Anything you can do for Captain Baynell I appreciate as a personal favor. Come again! Come again soon!"

      Perhaps if Colonel Ashley had not been so bereft of the normal interests of life, in this interval of inactivity, his curiosity as to that fleeting glimpse of a beautiful woman might not have maintained its whetted edge. Perhaps constantly recurrent disappointment roused his persistence. He came again and yet again, and still he saw no member of the family save Judge Roscoe. Even the surgeon commented. "There is a considerable feminine garrison up there," he said one day; "I often hear mention of the ladies, but they never make a sally. I suspect the old judge is more of a fire-eater than he shows nowadays, for his womenfolks are evidently straight-out 'Secesh'!"

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      Captain Baynell himself, throughout his illness, saw naught of the feminine inmates of the house, but the first day of convalescence that he was able to be out of his room and to descend the stairs, unsteadily enough and holding to the balustrade all the way, he was very civilly greeted by Mrs. Gwynn when he suddenly appeared at the library door.

      She glanced up with obvious surprise, then advanced with the light, airy elegance that was naturally appurtenant to her slight figure, and seemed no more a conscious pose or gait than the buoyancy of a bird or a butterfly. She shook hands with him, hoped he was better, congratulated him on the happy termination of so serious an illness, cautioned him against exposure to the chilly uncertain weather, drew a great arm-chair nearer to the fire, and as he seated himself she piled up some old numbers of Blackwood's Magazine and the Edinburgh Review on a little table close to his elbow.

      Her regard for his comfort—casual, even official, so to speak, though it was, the attentive, considerate expression of her beautiful eyes, the kindly tones of her dulcet, drawling voice—affected him like a benediction. He was still feeble, tremulous, and his heart throbbed with sudden surges of emotion. He was grateful, recognizant, flattered, although the provision for his mental entertainment bore also the interpretation that he need not trouble himself to talk.

      Therefore he affected to read, and she sat apparently oblivious of his presence, crocheting a fichu-like garment, called a "sontag" in those days, destined for a friend, evidently, not for her own sombre wear. The material was of an ultramarine blue zephyr, with a border of flecked black and white. She was making no great speed, for often the long, white bone needle fell from her listless grasp, and with her beautiful eyes on the fire, her face no longer a cold, impassive mask, but all unconscious, soft, wistful, sweet, showing her real identity, she would lose herself in revery till some interruption—Judge Roscoe's entrance, the "ladies" and their demands, old Ephraim seeking orders—would rouse her with a start as from a veritable dream.

      As the days went thus slowly by it soon came to pass that Baynell could not be silent. Her presence here flattered him, but he did not reflect that the library was the gathering-place of all the family; it held, too, the only fire, except his own, in the house, a fact which he, forgetful of the scarcity of fuel which the army had occasioned, did not appreciate. She could hardly withdraw, and, with her work in her hand, she could not ignore her uncle's guest.

      Sometimes he caught himself covertly studying her expression, marvelling at its complete absorption;—at the strange fact that so slight a token of such deep introspection showed on the surface. It was like some expanse of still, clear waters—one can only know that here are unmeasured fathoms, abysses of unexplored depths. Her meditation, her obvious brooding thought, seemed significant; yet sometimes he was prone to deem this merely the cast of her noble, reflective features, her expansive brow, the comprehensive intelligence of her limpid eyes—all so beautiful, yet endowed with something far beyond mere beauty. Now and again he read aloud a passage which specially struck his attention, and occasionally her comments jarred on his preconceived opinion of her, or, rather, of what a woman so young, so favored, so graciously endowed, ought to feel and think. One day, particularly, he was much impressed by this. Some benignant philosopher, reaching out both hands to the happy time of the millennium, had given voice to the theory that man's inhumanity to man, particularly in the more cultured circles, was the result of scant mutual knowledge—if we but knew the sorrows of others, how hate would be metamorphosed to pity, the bruised reed unbroken! This sentiment mightily pleased Captain Baynell, and he read it aloud.

      It seemed potently to arrest her attention. She laid her work down on her knee and gazed steadily at him.

      "If we could know the secret heartache—the blighted aspiration—the denied longing—the bruised pride of others?"

      As he signified assent, she gazed steadily at him for a moment longer in silence. Then—

      "If we only knew!" she cried—"Christian brethren—what a laughing, jeering, gibing world we should be!"

      Once more she took her work in her hands, once more exclaimed, "If we only knew!" and paused to laugh aloud with a low icy tone. Then she inserted the dexterous needle into the fashioning of the "shell" and bent her reflective, smiling face over the swift serpentines of the "zephyr."

      Captain Baynell was shocked in some sort. This frank unconscious cynicism was out of keeping with so much grace and charm. He was hardly ready to argue the question. He was dismayed by a sense of futility. If she had thought this, it was enough to show her inmost nature. A substituted, cultivated conviction does not uproot the spontaneous productions of the mind. It is only foisted in their midst. He was silent in his turn, and presently fell to fluttering the leaves of his book and reading with slight interest and only a superficial appearance of absorption.

      If we only knew the sorrows of others! Mrs. Gwynn's satiric eyes glowed with the uncomfortable thought that hers at all events had been public enough. If openness be a claim for sympathy, she might well be entitled to receive balm of all her world. It seared every sensitive fibre within her to realize how much of her intimate inner life they all knew—her friends, who masked this knowledge with a casual face, but talked over her foolish miseries among themselves with the mingled gusto of gossip, the superiority of contemptuous commiseration, and a rabid zest of speculation concerning such poor reserves as she had been able to maintain. Much of this drifted back to her knowledge through her old colored nurse, who since her childhood had remained her special attendant, though now officiating as cook to the Roscoe household, and by all respectfully called "Aunt Chaney." Her association with other cooks and ladies' maids enabled her to become well informed as to what was said and known in other households of these affairs. As Aunt Chaney detailed the gossip, she herself would burst into painful tears at the humiliating disclosures, exclaiming ever and anon, "Oh, de debbil was busy, shorely, de day dee married dat man!"

      But despite her burden of sympathetic woe, she would gather her powers to compass a debonair assurance toward observant outsiders and optimistically toss her head. "De man was good-looking to destraction," she would loftily asseverate, in defence of the situation, "and he didn't live long, nohow."

      Continuing, she would СКАЧАТЬ