The Storm Centre: A Novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

There was a sudden agitated flutter in the coterie. The beautiful aged countenance of Mrs. Clinton was overcast with a sort of tremor of fright. A sense of discovery, as of a moral paralysis, pervaded the atmosphere. A long significant pause ensued. Then with the intimations of a stanch reserve of resolution,—a sort of "die in the last ditch" spirit,—those more efficient members of the association, middle-aged, competent, experienced matrons, recovered their dignified equanimity and went on with the examining and counting of the results of the day's work and the contributions from without,—Mrs. Fisher, the acting secretary, receiving the reports of the conferring squads and jotting the enumeration down during the sorting and folding of the completed product.

Baynell, apparently losing self-control, had started angrily forward. Ashley, grave, perturbed, had changed color—even he was at a loss. One might not say what a moment so charged with angry potentialities might bring forth. But nothing, no collocation of invented circumstances seemed capable of baffling Miss Fisher. She was equal to any emergency. She had snatched the towel from the lieutenant's hand, and, flying to meet Baynell, her smiling face incongruous with a serious, steady light in her eyes, she stopped him midway the room.

"Now do me the favor to look at that," she cried gayly, presenting the hem for inspection; "wouldn't you despise an enemy who could take aid and comfort from such a hem as that?"

"A good soldier should never despise the enemy," replied Baynell, seeking to adopt her mood and repeating the truism with an air of banter.

"Well, then, to fit the phrase to your precision, such an enemy would deserve to be despised! What—going—Mrs. Clinton? It is getting late."

It was not the usual hour of their separation, but to a very old woman the turmoils of war were overwhelming. As long as the idea of conflict was expressed in the satisfaction of being able to aid in her little way the needy with the work of her own hands,—to knit as she sat by her desolate fireside and wrought for the unknown comrades of her dead sons; to join friends in furnishing blankets and making stout clothes for the soldiers; to bottle her famous blackberry cordial, and to pick lint for the hospitals,—it seemed to have some gentle phase, to bear a human heart. But when the heady tumult, the secret inquisitions, the bitter rancors, the cruelty of bloodshed, and the savagery of death that constitute the incorporate entity of the great monster, War, were reasserted with menace, her gentle, wrinkled hands fell, her hope fled. The grave was kind in those days to the aged.

Ashley had contrived to give Seymour a glance so significant that he heeded its meaning, though he was already repentant and cowed by the fear of Miss Fisher's displeasure. His heart beat fast as she turned her face all rippling with smiles toward him, albeit he told himself in the same breath that she would have smiled exactly so sweetly had she been as angry as he deserved. For Miss Fisher was not in the business of philanthropy. She had no call to play missionary to any petulant young man's rôle of heathen.

"Are you going to take mamma and me home?" she asked, "or are you going to leave us to be eaten up by the cows homeward bound?"

Now and again might be heard the fitful clanking of a bell as the cows, wending their way along the river bank, paused to graze and once more took up their leisurely progress toward the town. The sunlight was reddening through the rooms. It had painted on the walls arabesques of the lace curtains of the western windows; the glow touched with a sort of revivifying effect the family portraits. Groups of the members of the society having resumed their bonnets and swaying crape veils were going from one to another and commenting on the likeness to the subject and the resemblance to other members of the family, and one or two of artistic bent discussed the relative merits of the artists, for several canvases were painted by eminent brushes. All were going home, though in the grove the mocking-birds were singing with might and main, but there indeed in the moonlight they would sing the night through with a romantic jubilance impossible to describe.

Ashley, with the ready tact and good breeding which caused him so much to be admired, and so much to admire himself, passed by the more attractive of the younger members of the Circle, and did not even heed the half-veiled challenge of Miss Fisher to join her party homeward, for she had become exceedingly exasperated with Lieutenant Seymour, and had Colonel Ashley been attainable, she would have made the younger man rabid with jealousy on the walk to the town.