The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

And she had forgiven this, both the word and the blow. How strange! She made allowances for his irritation, for his mortification at the discovery by a man so upright, so ascetic, so unsympathetic with any moral weakness as Judge Roscoe. She offered to herself excuses which even she, however, in her inmost soul, hardly accepted—for the lie itself! He desired to avoid reproaches for mistaken arrangements about money matters, she had said to herself; he shrank from contention with her thus. Never dreaming that she might be questioned, he had been led to palliate, to distort the facts. For at first she would have no traffic with the ignoble word "lie." The restrictions of her own phrases began to have a sort of terror for her. She could no longer talk freely. She hardly dared make the most obvious statement concerning any simple fact of household affairs, or amusements, or visits, or friends, lest, in his prodigal untruth, for no reason,—the abandonment of folly, or a momentary whim,—he should have committed himself and her unequivocally to some different effect. She hesitated, stammered, when she was in company,—faltered, blushed,—she who used to be so different!—while all her world stared. And when they were alone, he would storm at her for it, furiously mimicking her distressful uncertainty, her tremulous solicitude lest she openly convict him of lying continually. She sought to give him no occasion for anger, not that she so dreaded the hurt of his heavy hand, but that she might save him from the ignominy of striking his wife. She studied his face and conformed to his whims, and anticipated his wants, and forbore vexation. Her subjection was so obvious that while her own near friends raged inwardly, divining that he was unkind, their casual acquaintance sportively fleered, never dreaming how their arrows sped to the mark.

Their fleers nettled him; he was specially out of countenance one day because of a careless shaft of Mildred Fisher's.

"It is one of the beautiful aspects of matrimony that the law once recognized the right of a man to correct his wife with 'a stick not thicker than his thumb'; let me see the size of your thumb, Mr. Gwynn,—it must be that which keeps Leonora in this edifying state of subjection."

And when she had gayly gone her way, Rufus Gwynn bitterly upbraided his wife.

"Damn you!" he had cried; "can't you hold up your head at all?"

Then it was that she had donned her most charming toilette—a dress of heavy white satin simple yet queenly—and had gone to one of those balls of the early times of the Confederacy, where the cavaliers were many and gay; she was all smiles and bright eyes, though these were the only jewels she wore, for had she not discovered at the moment of opening the case that her diamonds—Rufus Gwynn's own bridal gift to her—were missing!—sold, pawned, given away, it was never known. Thus seeking her duty in these devious ways and to do his choice credit, as a wife should, her charm held a court about her,—even Mildred Fisher, who loved splendor, ablaze with the collection of precious stones at her disposal, her mother's, her grandmother's, and her aunt's, was eclipsed. The glittering officers followed the beautiful young wife in the promenade, and stood about and awaited the cessation of the whirl as she waltzed with one of the number, and devoutly held her bouquet while in the banqueting room, and drank her health and toasted her happiness, and broke her fan, soliciting a breeze for her comfort. The result?—When in the carriage homeward bound, she was fit to throw herself out of the window and under the wheels in sheer terror of the demon of jealousy she had aroused. Her husband loaded her with curses, he foamed at the mouth as he threatened the men with whom she had danced, more than one of whom he had himself introduced for the purpose. He protested he would shoot Julius Roscoe because he had not asked her to dance, but had turned pale when he saw her, and had stood in the shadows of the columns at the upper end of the ball room and with melancholy, love-lorn eyes watched her in the waltz. When she declared she had not seen Julius, she had not spoken to him—"You dare not!" he cried. And but that she clutched his arm, he would have sprung from the vehicle in motion to hide in the shrubbery—the pine hedge—as they passed Judge Roscoe's gate, to shoot Julius in the back as he went home from the ball,—in the back, in the darkness, from ambush, that none might know! Then as her husband could not force himself from her grasp, he turned and struck her across the face twice, heavily.

All her soldier friends, old playmates, youthful compeers, elder associates, marched away without a farewell word from her,—a last farewell it would have been to many, who, alack, came never marching back again; for she was denied at the door to all callers, since her bruises were so deep and lacerated that she must needs keep her room in order that the conjugal happiness might not be impugned. For still she made excuses for Gwynn, sought to shield him from himself. He had begun to drink heavily under the sting of the universal financial disasters occasioned by the war which he also shared, supplemented by heavy losses at the gaming table and the race track and often "was not himself," as she phrased it. He was expert at repentance, practised in confession, and had a positive ingenuity for shifting responsibility to stronger shoulders. He could burst into torrents of protesting tears, and dramatically fling himself on his knees at her feet, and bury his face in her hands, covering them with kisses, and craving her pardon and help. And she would once more, inconsistently, hopefully, take up her faith in him anew, albeit it had all the tearful tremors of despair,—believing, yet doubting, with a strange duality of emotion impossible to the analysis of reason. Thus the curtain was rung up again, and the terrible tragedy of her life on this limited stage went on apace.

He had infinite ingenuity in concealment, abetted by her silence in suffering which her pride fostered. Albeit her friends had divined his unkindness, the extent of his brutality was not suspected by them until one night when frightful screams had been heard to issue from the house, despite the closed and shuttered windows of winter weather. These were elicited by the sheer agony of being dragged by the hair through the rooms and halls and down the stairs, and thrust out into the chill of the fierce January freeze. She was given hardly time for the instinct of flight to assert itself, to rise up with wild eyes looking adown the snowy street; for the door opened, and he dragged her within once more, as a watchman of the precinct, Roanoke City being at this time heavily policed, ascended the steps to the portico with an inquiry as to the sound. He was satisfied with the explanation from the husband that Mrs. Gwynn was suffering with a violent attack of hysterics. But the next day, while the mistress of the house, bruised and almost shattered, lay half unconscious in her own room, the housemaid, in the hall polishing the stair rail and wainscot, was terrified to draw out here and there from the balusters great bloody lengths of Mrs. Gwynn's beautiful hair which had caught and held as she was dragged by it down the stairs. This rumor, taken in connection with the explanation of her screams offered by her husband to the watchman, occasioned Mrs. Gwynn's relatives great anxiety for her safety. It was with the view of discovering from her the truth, insisting on its disclosure as a matter of paramount importance, that Judge Roscoe as her nearest kinsman and former guardian had suggested a ride with her, when in the quiet of an uninterrupted conversation he intended to remonstrate against her lack of candor, seek to ascertain the facts, and then devise some measures looking toward the betterment of the unhappy situation.

The slaughter by Rufus Gwynn of the unoffending horse had eliminated the necessity alike of remonstrance or advice. Her ideals, her hope, her love, were destroyed as by one blow. Her resolution of separation was taken and, albeit her anxious friends feared her capacity for forgiveness was not exhausted, it proved final. The end came on the day that Rufus Gwynn's horse, rearing under whip and spur, and falling, broke his rider's neck.

This was her romance and her awakening from love's young dream. These were the scenes that she lived over and over. This was her past that every moment of leisure converted into her present,—palpable, visible, vital,—and her future seemed bounded only by the possibilities of retrospect.