The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

All the witnesses were dismissed at last, and the final formal defence was presented in writing. The room was cleared and the judge-advocate read aloud to the members of the court the proceedings from the beginning. Laboriously, earnestly, impartially, they bent their minds to weigh all the details, and then for a time they sat in secluded deliberation—a long time, despite the fact that the conclusions of the majority admitted of no doubt. Several of the members revolted against the inevitable result, argued with vehemence, recapitulated all in Baynell's favor with the fervor of eager partisans, and at last protested with a passion of despair against the decision, for the finding was adverse and the unanimity of two-thirds of the votes rendered the penalty death.

The sentence was of course kept secret until it should be approved and formally promulgated by authority. But the public had readily divined the result and anticipated naught from the revision of the proceedings.

Suspense is itself a species of calamity. It has all the poignant acuteness of hope without the buoyancy of a sustained expectation, and all the anguish of despair without its sense of conclusiveness and the surcease of striving. Pending the review of the action of the court-martial Baynell discovered the wondrous scope of human suffering disassociated from physical pain. He had seriously thought he might die of his wounded pride, thus touched in honor, in patriotism, in life itself, and therefore he was amazed by the degree of solace he experienced in the sight of a woman's tears shed for his sake. For to Leonora Gwynn he seemed a persecuted martyr, with all a soldier's valor and a saint's impeccability. No one could know better than she the falsity of the charges against him, and in her resentment against the unhappy chances and the military law that had overwhelmed him, and her absolute despair for his fate, he enlisted all her heart. Those high and noble qualities which he possessed and which she revered were elicited in the extremity of his mortal peril. His exacting conscientiousness; his steadfast courage on the brink of despair; his absolute truth; his constancy in adversity; his strict sense of justice which would not suffer him to blame his friends whose concealments had wrought his ruin, nor his enemies who seemed indeed rancorously zealous in aspersing him that they might exculpate themselves at his risk; his lofty sense of honor which he valued more than life itself,—all showed in genuine proportions in the bleak unidealizing light which an actual vital crisis brings to bear on the incidents of personal character.

She had even a more tender sympathy for his simpler traits, the filial friendship which he still manifested for Judge Roscoe, his affectionate remembrance of the little children of the household, the blended pride and delicacy with which he restrained all expression of the feeling he entertained toward her, that might seem to seek to utilize and magnify her unguarded admissions on the witness-stand,—influenced, as he feared, by her anxiety lest her rejection of his suit should militate to his disadvantage in the estimation of the court. In truth, however, there was scant need of his reserve on this point, for she made no disguise of her sentiment toward him. It became obvious, not only to him, but to all with whom she spoke. Indeed, she would have married him then, that she might be near him, that she might share his calamities, even while his disgrace, his everlasting contumely, seemed already accomplished, and he had scarcely a chance for life itself. And yet, hardly less than he, she valued those finer vibrations of chivalric ethics to which his every fibre thrilled. "I know that you are the very soul of honor," she said to him, "and that this certain assurance ought to be sufficient to nullify the stings of calumny,—but I had rather that you had died long ago, that I had never seen you, that I were dead myself, than that your record as a soldier, your probity as a man, the truth, the eternal truth, should even be questioned."

Judge Roscoe, too, was infinitely dismayed by this strange blunder of circumstance, and flinched under the sense of responsibility, of a breach of hospitality, albeit unintentional, that his guest should incur so desperate a disaster by reason of a sojourn under his roof. Baynell was constrained to comfort them both, but in the hope to which he magnanimously affected to appeal he had scant confidence indeed.

Even amidst the turmoil of his emotions and the crisis of his personal jeopardy he did not forget that the hand that hurled the bolts of doom had been innocent of cruel intent. "Never let her know," he warned Judge Roscoe, again and again. For although the testimony of the deaf-mute must needs have been elicited, she would be grieved to learn that she had wrought all these woes. Though literally the truth, it had the deceptive functions of a lie. It traduced him. It convicted him, the faithful soldier, of treachery. It hurled him down from his honorable esteem, and he seemed the basest of the base, traitor to his comrades, false to his oath, renegade to his cause, recreant to every sanction that can control a gentleman, and stained with blood-guiltiness for every life that was sacrificed in the skirmish by reason of his secret colloguing with the enemy.

Nevertheless, he tenderly considered how frightful a shock she would experience should she realize that it was she who had set this hideous monster of falsehood grimly a-stalk as fact. "But never let her know!" he insisted with an unselfish thoughtfulness that endeared him the more to those who already loved him. In that silent life of hers, so much apart, he would fain that not even a vague echo of reproach should sound. In those mute thoughts, which none might divine, he would not evoke a suggestion of regret. One could hardly forecast the effect, he urged. A sorrow like this might prove beyond the reach of reason, of remonstrance, of consolation. She loved him, the silent, little thing! and he loved her. Never, never, let her know.

And thus, although in the storm centre all else was changed, swept with sudden gusts of tempestuous grief, now and again reverberating with strange echoes of tumults beyond, all a-tremor with terror and frightful presage, calm still prevailed in her restricted little life. But to maintain this placidity was not without its special difficulties. More than once her grandfather's deep depression caught her intelligent attention, and she would pause to gaze wistfully, helplessly, sadly, upon him. Upon discovering Leonora in tears one day she flung herself on her knees beside her cousin, and kissing her hands wept and sobbed bitterly in sympathy with she knew not what. Sometimes she was moved to ask the dreary little twins if aught were amiss, and when they shook their heads in negation, she promptly signed that she did not believe them. Once she came perilously near the solution of the mystery that baffled her. Missing the visits of Baynell, who of course was still in arrest, she asked the twins if he were ill, and when they hysterically protested that he was well, a shadow of aghast apprehension hovered over her face, and she solemnly queried if he were dead.

The phrase, "Never let her know," was like a dying wish, as sacred, as imperative, and Judge Roscoe hastily interfered to assure her that Baynell was indeed alive and well, and affected to rebuke the twins, saying that they were getting so dull and slow in the manual alphabet that they could scarcely answer a simple question of their sister's, and set them to spelling on their fingers under Lucille's instruction the first stanza of "The boy stood on the burning deck."

Thus the continued calm of her life was akin to the quiet languors of the sweet summer evening so mutely reddening in the west, so softly changing to the azure and silver of twilight, so splendid in the vast diffusive radiance of the soundless moon. All the growths were as speechless. The rose was full of the voiceless dew. What need of words when the magnolia buds burst into bloom without a rustle. With a placid heart she watched the echoless march of the constellations. The daily brightening of the sumptuous season, the vivid presentment of the great pageant of the distant mountains glowed noiselessly. Amidst this encompassing hush, in suave content she thought out her inconceivable, unexpressed thoughts, with a smile in her eyes and the seal of eternal silence on her lips. For his behest was a sacred charge,—and she did not know,—she never knew!