The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

"Now, there you go! Hurrah! Make haste! Not such a big stitch! Now, Mr. Seymour, let me tell you, Hercules with the distaff was not a circumstance to you!"

And the Sewing-Circle could but laugh.

Upstairs in the quiet old attic these evidences of hilarity rose with an intimation of poignant contrast. The dreary entourage of broken furniture and dusty trunks and chests, the silence and loneliness,—no motion but the vague shifting of the motes in the slant of the sun, no sound but the unshared mirth below, in his own home,—this seemed a more remote exile. Julius felt actually further from the ancestral roof than when he lay many miles away in the trenches in the cold spring rains, with never a canopy but the storm, nor a candle but the flash of the lightning. He sat quite still in the great arm-chair that his weight deftly balanced on its three legs, his head bent to a pose of attention, his cap slightly on one side of his long auburn locks, his eyes full of a sort of listening interest, divining even more than he heard. He was young enough, mercurial enough, to yearn wistfully after the fun,—the refined "home-folks fun" of the domestic circle, the family and their friends,—to which he had been so long a stranger; not the riotous dissipation of the wilder phases of army life nor the animal spirits, the "horse-play," of camp comrades. Sometimes at a sudden outburst of laughter, dominated by Millie Fisher's silvery trills of mirth, his own lips would curve in sympathy, albeit this was but the shell of the joke, its zest unimagined, and light would spring into his clear dark eyes responsive to the sound. Now and again he frowned as he noted men's voices, not his father's nor well-remembered tones of old friends. They had been less frequent than the women's voices, but now they came at closer intervals, with an unfamiliar accent, with a different pitch, and he began to realize that here were the Yankee officers.

"Upon my word, they seem to be having a fine time," he said sarcastically.

In the next acclaim he could distinguish, besides the tones of the invaders and the ringing vibration from Millie Fisher that led every laugh, Leonora's drawling contralto accents, now and again punctuated with a suggestion of mirth, and high above all the callow chirp of the twin "ladies." He lifted his head and looked at the wasps, building their cells on the window lintel, the broad, dreary spaces of the attic; and he beheld, as it were, in contrast, his own expectation, the welcome, the cherished guest, the guarded secret, the open-hearted talks with his father, with the "ladies," with her whom, since widowed, he might call to himself, without derogation to his affection or disrespect to her, his "best beloved." The hardship it was that for the bleak actuality he should have risked his capture, his life,—yes, even his neck! His hand trembled upon the map, wrought out to every detail of his discoveries, that he kept now in his breast, and now shifted to the sole of his boot, and now slid in the lining of his coat-pocket, always seeking the safest hiding-place,—forever seeking, forever doubting the wisdom of his selection.

But the map—that was something! He had gained this precious knowledge. Only to get away with it, unharmed, unchallenged, unmolested! This was the problem. This was worth coming for.

"I'll give you some more active entertainment before long, my fine squires of dames," he apostrophized the strangers triumphantly. Then he experienced a species of rage that they should be so merry—and he, he must not see Leonora's face, must not touch her hand, must not tell her all he felt; this would have been dear to him even if she had not cared to listen. It would have been like the votive offering at a shrine, like a prayer from out the fulness of the heart.

There was presently the tinkle of glasses and spoons, intimating the serving of refreshments. "I'd like to see old Uncle Ephraim playing butler. He must step about as gingerly as a gobbler on hot tin," Julius said to himself with a smile. "I'll bet a million of dollars he has saved me my share—on a high shelf in the pantry it is right now, in a covered dish; and if Leonora should come across it, she would think the old man was thieving on his own account. Such are the insincerities of circumstantial evidence!"

The genial hubbub in the parlors below was resumed after the decorous service of salad and sherbet, and became even more animated when Colonel Ashley chanced to call to see Baynell on a matter affecting their respective commands. He had of course no idea that he would find Baynell engaged with the Sewing-Society, but he met Miss Fisher on her own ground, as it were, and there ensued an encounter of wits, a gay joust, neither being more sincere than the other, nor with any arrière pensée of irritable feeling to treat a feint as a threat or to cause a thrust to rankle.

Seymour did not welcome him. The prig, Baynell, as he regarded the captain, was so null, so stiffly inexpressive, that his presence had sunk out of account, and the young lieutenant felt that he could rely to a degree on the quiet kindness of the mature dames at work. They did not laugh at his sewing over much, although they noted with secret amusement that, being of the ambitious temper which cannot endure to be found lacking, he had bent his whole energies to the endeavor, and had sewed, indeed, as well as it was possible for a lieutenant of infantry to do on a first lesson. He had a sort of pride in his performance as he handed it up to Miss Fisher, and she showed it to Ashley with an air of pronounced amaze.