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
_de_straction," she would loftily asseverate, in defence of the
situation, "and he didn't live long, nohow."
Continuing, she would remind her hearers that she had been opposed to
her young mistress's marriage, "But shucks! de pore chile saw how the
other gals wuz runnin' arter Rufus Allerton Gwynn,--dat Fisher gal tried
hard fur true, an' not married yit,--an' dat made Leonora Gwynn--Leonora
Roscoe dat wuz--think mo' of his bein' so taken up with her! De
hansomes' man in de whole country! He didn't live long!"
This gallant outward show did not prevent the iron from entering the old
nurse's soul especially as she detailed the gossip of Miss Fisher's
maid, Leanna, who overheard the conversation of her mistress with two
particular girl-cronies beside the midnight fire, pending the duty of
brushing the long hair of the Fisher enchantress, which, being of a
thrice-gilded red tint, required much care and gave her much trouble. It
gave trouble elsewhere. Its flaring glories kept others awake besides
poor Leanna, plying the brush nightly one "solid hour by the clock." For
the fair Miss Mildred Fisher was a famous belle, and many hearts had
been entangled in those glittering meshes.
This trio had been Leonora Gwynn's intimate coterie, and she knew just
how they looked as they sat half undressed in the chilly midnight before
the dying fire in a great bedroom, in the home of one of the three,
their tresses--Maude Eldon's dark, and Margaret Duncan's brown, and
Mildred Fisher's red-gold, with Leanna's interested face leaning above
their gilded shimmer--hanging down over dressing-sacques or nightgowns,
while they actively gesticulated at each other with handglass or brush,
and with spirit disputed whether it was a chair which Rufus Gwynn had
broken over Leonora's head, or did he merely drag her around by the
hair--"Think of that, my dear,--by her hair!"
It was a poor consolation, but this neither they, nor any other, would
ever know. With the reflection Leonora set her even little teeth
together as she still dreamily gazed into the fire.
Other more obvious facts she could not conceal. Her stringent, hopeless
poverty would bring a piteous expression to Judge Roscoe's face as
occasion required him to seek to gather together some humble remnants of
the estate her husband had recklessly flung away, for he had dissipated
her fortune as well as desolated her heart. She needed no reminder, and
indeed no word passed Judge Roscoe's lips of the settlements that he had
drawn when he discovered that, despite all remonstrances, his orphaned
niece was bent upon this marriage. Though Rufus Gwynn protested that he
would sign them, she had tossed them into the fire like a heroine of
romance, grandiloquently declaring that she would not trust herself to a
man to whom she could not trust her fortune.
How pleased her lover had been! How gay, gallant, triumphant! Later he
found his account in her folly and a more substantial value than
flattered pride, for by reason of her marriage the financial control of
her guardian was abrogated, and her thousands slipped through her
husband's fingers like sand at the gaming-table, the wine-rooms, the
race-track, as with his wild, riotous companions he went his swift way
to destruction and death. And even this did not alienate her, for her
early admiration and foolish adoration had a continuance that a devotion
for a worthier object rarely attains, and she loved him long, despite
financial reverses and wicked waste and cruelty and neglect. She could
have forgiven him aught, all, but his own unworthiness. Who can gauge
the sophistries, the extenuations, the hopes, that delude a woman who
clings to an ideal of her own tender fashioning, the dream of a fond
heart, and the sacrifice of a loving young life. He left her not one
vain imagining that she might still hold dear amidst the wreck of her
existence.
The crisis came at the end of a quarrel,--one of his own making,--a
quarrel about a horse that he wished to sell;--oh, the trifle--the
trifle that had wrought such woe!
As she thought of it anew, sitting before the fire, she laid the work
upon her knee and unconsciously wrung her hands. The next moment she
felt the eyes of the officer lifted toward her in a cursory glance. She
affected to shift the rings on her fingers, then took up the
crochet-needle and bent her head to the deft fashioning of shells.
Now she could think unmolested, think of what she could never forget!
Yet why should she canvass the details again and again, save that she
must. The event marked an epoch of final significance in her life,--the
moment that her dream fled and she awakened to the stern fact that she
had ceased to love. And at first it was a trifle, a mere trifle, that
had inaugurated this amazing change. Her husband wished to sell the
horse, her horse, that Judge Roscoe had given her a week before. The
gift had come, she knew, as an overture of reconciliation, as there had
been much hard feeling between Judge Roscoe and his niece. For after her
elopement and marriage he promptly applied to the chancery court seeking
to protect her future by securing the settlement on her of certain funds
of her estate, urging the fact of her minority and the spendthrift
character of her husband. Leonora vehemently opposed the petition, and
owing to the efforts of her counsel to gain time and the law's delays,
she came of age before any decree could be granted, and then defeated
the measure by making a full legal waiver of her rights in favor of her
husband. But, at length, when pity overmastered Judge Roscoe's just
anger, she welcomed a token of his renewed cordiality. She did not feel
at liberty to sell the gift, she had remonstrated. It was not bestowed
as a resource--to sell. She feared to wound her kinsman. What was the
pressing necessity for money? Why not manage as if the horse had not
been given her?
The contention waxed high as she stood in habit and hat just in the
vestibule with the horse outside hitched to the block, for Judge Roscoe
was coming to ride with her. She held fast, for a wonder; she seldom
could resist; but the horse was not theirs _to sell_. Rufus Gwynn
suddenly turned at last, sprang up the stairs, three steps at a time,
and as he came bounding down again she saw the glint of steel in his
hand.
Even now she shuddered.
"It is growing colder," Captain Baynell said. (How observant that man
seemed to be!) "Allow me to mend the fire."
He stirred the hickory logs, and as the yellow flames shot up the
chimney he sank back into his great chair, and she took up the thread of
her work and her reminiscences together.
She honestly thought her husband had intended to kill her. Somehow the
veil dropped from her eyes, and she knew him for the fiend he was even
before the dastardly act that revealed him unqualified.
But it was not she on whom his spite was to fall. Such deeds bring
retribution. Only the horse--the glossy, graceful, spirited animal,
turning his lustrous confiding eyes toward the house as the door
opened, whinnying a low joyous welcome, anticipative of the breezy
gallop--received the bullet just below the ear.
It was then and afterward like the distraught agony of a confused dream.
She heard her own screams as if they had been uttered by another; she
saw the great bulk of the horse lying in the road, struggling
frightfully, futilely, whether with conscious pain or merely the last
reserves of muscular energy she did not know; she noted the gathering
crowd, dismayed, bewildered, angry; she knew that her husband had
hastily galloped off, a trifle out of countenance because of certain
threats of some brawny Irish railroad hands going home with their
dinner-pails who had seen the whole occurrence. Then Judge Roscoe had
ridden up at last to accompany her as of old, thinking how pretty and
pleased she would be on the new horse,--for equestrianism was the vaunt
of the girls of that day and she had been a famous horsewoman,--and
feeling a great pity because of her privations, and her cruel folly, and
her unworthy husband. When he saw what had just occurred, he said
instantly, "You must come home with me, Leonora; you are not safe." And
she had answered, "Take me with you--quick--quick! So that I may never
see that coward again." Thus she had left her husband forever.
"Shall I draw up the blind?" asked Captain Baynell, seeing her fumble
for her zephyr.
"No, thank you; there is still light sufficient, I think. The days are
growing longer."
Again, in the silence of the quiet room, the spell of her reminiscences
resumed its sway. She recalled the promises that had not sufficed; no
explanations extenuated the facts; no lures could avail; her resolution
was taken and held firm. She laughed when, with full confidence in her
unshaken love for him, her husband appealed to her by their mutual
devotion. She was simply enlightened. But she resented the satisfaction
that Judge Roscoe and his wife obviously felt in the separation, and the
knowledge of the secret triumph of all her friends who had opposed the
match. She was embittered, humiliated, broken-spirited, yet she
maintained throughout a mask of placidity to the world, inquisitive,
pitying, ridiculing, as she knew it to be. The separation passed as
temporary. She was making a visit to her former home. This feint had the
more countenance when a sudden need for her presence arose. Her aunt
fell ill and died, and soon there came tidings of the death of Clarence
Roscoe's wife while he was far away in the Confederate army. The three
little girls were all alone.
"Bring them here, Uncle Gerald. I will take charge of them," Leonora had
said. "Perhaps I can feel less dependent then."
And Judge Roscoe, who had borne his own losses like a philosopher, had
tears in his eyes for her losses. "Oh, poor Leonora!" he had exclaimed.
"Your very presence is a boon, my dear. But for _you_ to be so stricken
and desolate and--"
He was about to say "robbed," but the facts forbade him; for Gwynn's
legal rights rendered her position as difficult as unenviable. In her
own house she had contrived to hold her belongings together. Now, day by
day, came tidings of the sale of her special personal effects--her
carriage, her domestic animals, her furniture, the very pictures on the
walls; then had followed a letter from her husband, regretting all his
misdeeds and promising infinite rehabilitation if she would but forgive
him. Naught could provoke a remonstrance, could stimulate Leonora to
action, could induce a return.
Judge Roscoe had said but little. He had the deep-seated juridical
respect for the relation of man and wife as a creation of law, as well
as an institution of God. When he was appealed to, he felt it his duty
to place impartially before her the husband's arguments, and promises,
and protestations, but he experienced intense relief when she tersely
dismissed Rufus Gwynn's plea for a reconciliation. "I know him now," she
replied.
"An' 'fore de Lawd, _I_ knows him too!" her old nurse declared; "I jes'
uped an' I sez, 'Marse Rufe, ye hev' got sech a notion o' sellin' out,
ye mought sell old Chaney--ef ennybody would buy sech a contraption in
dese days! So I'm goin' over to my old home at Judge Roscoe's place, to
wait on Miss Leonora. I knows she needs me, an' I 'spect she's watchin'
fur me now.' An' Marse Rufe, he says, 'Aunt Chaney, I don't know _what_
you are talking about! Go over there, an' welcome! An' try to get my
wife to see I was just overtaken in my temper and desperate; _you_
persuade her to come back, Aunt Chaney.' Dat's what de debbil said ter
me. I always heard dat de debbil had a club foot. But, mon, he ain't.
Two long, slim, handsome feet, an' his boots, sah, made in New Orleens!"
The end had come characteristically at last! A horse, furiously ridden,
brutally beaten, reared suddenly, lost his balance, fell backward,
crushing the rider and breaking his neck. And so Rufus Gwynn reached his
goal, and his wife was free at last.
Free as some defenceless, hunted, tremulous animal, miraculously
escaping fierce fangs, and a furious rush of a murderous pursuit;
forever dominated by the sense of disaster, and despair, and flight;
forever looking backward, forever hearkening to the echoes of the
troublous past--exhausted, listless, hopeless, every impulse of volition
stunned.
It was well for her, doubtless, that the insistent duties of the care of
her uncle's household had grown difficult in the changed conditions
induced by the war; that the education, the training, the well-being, of
the motherless little "ladies"--all restricted by the ever narrowing
opportunity of the beleaguered town, and overshadowed by the impending
clouds of disaster--appealed to her womanly heart and her maternal
instincts. Their needs had roused her interest, stimulated her
invention, elicited her self-control, that she might more definitely
control them.
In the days of Captain Baynell's convalescence he had unique
opportunities for observing the methods that had prevailed under her
management, for all the life of the house revolved about the one big
fire in the library. Sometimes, as he and Judge Roscoe sat there with
papers and books and cigars, presumably oblivious of the minutiae of the
household matters, while the fire flared and the tobacco smoke hung in
blue wreaths about the stuccoed ceiling and the carved ornaments of the
tall book-cases, he fancied that it was the characteristic interest in
trifles animating an invalid which caused him to smilingly watch the
scholastic struggles of the "ladies,"--their turmoils with "jogaphy,"
for it was decreed that they should learn somewhat of the earth on which
they lived; the anguish inflicted by that potent instrument of torture,
the Blue Speller; the bowed head of juvenile despair on the wooden rim
of the slate, over the mysteries of "subscraction," as the "lady" sobbed
softly, under her breath, for loud weepings were interdicted, however
poignant the woe might be. Mrs. Gwynn was indeed unfeeling in these
crises and often sarcastic. "You might use your sponge to wipe away
your tears, Geraldine," she would say, with that curt icy inflection of
her soft voice. "I notice it is too dry for use on your slate."
Each slate had a string to which was attached a small sponge and a short
slate-pencil, capable of an excruciating creak, which often set the
judge's teeth on edge; as he would wince from the sound, Mrs. Gwynn
would comment in this wise, "I have often heard that learned ladies do
not contribute to household comfort,--so your Honor must suffer for the
erudition that we have here."
And the activities of "subscraction" were never abated.
Baynell had at first a certain shrinking to witness the lessons of the
deaf-mute, pitying the poor deprived child, so young, so tender, so
pretty, so plaintive in her infirmity, shut out from all the usual
avenues of knowledge. He would take up his book and withdraw his
attention. But after a time there was suddenly forced upon his
observation the superior judgment and acumen and careful altruistic
thought exerted in these small matters by Mrs. Gwynn. Inexpert in the
manual alphabet, she wasted no time nor labor on its acquisition for
herself; but, notwithstanding this, "subscraction" had no terrors for
Lucille. So practised was she in the domain of demonstration that her
slate was swiftly covered with figures, and her sponge had no necessity
to be diverted to the incongruous function of wiping her bright eyes.
All the questions were put in writing and answered by the little
deaf-mute with correct spelling and a most legible and creditable
chirography, over which Captain Baynell found himself exclaiming with
delighted surprise, while the cheeks both of the scholar and teacher
flushed with pride and gratification, as they exchanged congratulatory
smiles. So far from being the sport of her limitations and humiliated by
them, Lucille was pressed forward to excel, and the twins gazed upon her
as a miracle of learning, and often craved the privilege of scanning her
slate, and imitating the childish flourishes of her capital letters. In
naught was she permitted to feel her deficiencies--so craftily tender
was her preceptress. The hour which the twins devoted to playing scales
on the grand piano--being snugly buttoned up in sacques to protect them
from the chill of the great parlors, and often called across the hall to
warm their fingers at the library fire--Lucille sat at her
drawing-board, and although she had only an ordinary degree of talent,
she acquired a deftness and a proficiency that made the result
remarkable for a child of her age; her leisure was encouraged to express
itself in sketching from nature, and she went about much of the time
pleasantly engrossed, holding up a pencil at a stiff angle and at
arm's-length to take accurate measurement of relative distances and
details of perspective.
Baynell was a man who could be allured by a pretty face, but he could
never have fallen in love with a woman merely for her beauty. He was
possessed of insistent ideals, and now and then these were shattered by
an evidence of Mrs. Gwynn's incongruously bitter cynicism, or a touch of
repellent hardness and an icy coldness unpleasing in one so young, and
all his preconceived prejudices were to adjust anew. He was beginning at
last to feel that he must seek to realize her nature, rather than to fit
her into the niche awaiting the conventional goddess of his fancy. She
had other traits as inconsistent with her youth, her grace, her beauty,
her lissome gait, her delicate hand; and these were homespun virtues, so
plain, so good, so useful, so aggressive--such as one may fancy are
designed to compensate the possessor for limitations in a more graceful
sort,--according with an angular frame, a near-sighted vision, a rasping
voice. There was scant need to look so beautiful, so daintily
speculative, as she sat and cast up the judge's household accounts in a
big red book that seemed full of cobweb perplexities and strenuous
calculations to make both ends meet. Sometimes she brought it over to
her uncle and, placing it before his reluctant gaze, pointed out some
item of his own extravagance with a dignity of rebuke and a look of
superior wisdom that might have realized to the imagination Minerva
herself. Such a wealth of good house-keeping lore, so accurately
applied, might have justified any amount of feminine ugliness.
Her tender, far-sighted, commiserative appreciation of the deaf-mute's
limitations, and the simple measures that had so far nullified them and
utilized all the child's capacity, were incongruous with the iron rule
under which the three were held.
"I am afraid the ladies are giving you a great deal of trouble,
Leonora," her uncle said one day, apologetically, when absolute mutiny
seemed abroad amongst them.
"Not half so much trouble as I intend to give them," Mrs. Gwynn replied
resolutely.
Their meek, mild, readjusted little faces after the scholastic hours
were over were enough to move a heart of stone, and now and again Judge
Roscoe glanced uneasily at them, and at last said inappropriately
enough:--
"I am afraid you have not had a happy morning, ladies."
"They have been brought to hear reason," Mrs. Gwynn observed dryly. "And
I have heard reason, too,--the Fourth Line of the Multiplication Table
recited backward four times, standing facing the wall. It is an exercise
that tends to subdue the angry passions. Allow me to commend it for
general experiment."
Baynell sought to laugh the episode off genially with the "ladies," but
the three little faces looked for permission to ridicule this dire
experience, and as Mrs. Gwynn's countenance maintained a blank
inscrutability, they did not venture to make merry over their miseries
of the "Four Line," now happily overpast.
The scholastic duties were well over by noon, except perhaps for the
scale-playing on the grand piano, and the "ladies" roamed at will about
the house, or in the parterre if the weather were dry, or played at
battledore and shuttlecock or graces in the long gallery enclosed with
Venetian blinds. If it rained they were permitted to repair to the
kitchen, where Aunt Chaney, a very tall, portly woman, with a stately
gruffness, obviously spurious, accommodated them with bits of dough, to
be moulded into ducks and pigs, and assigned them a small section of the
stove whereon to bake these triumphs of the plastic art. Doll's dresses
were here laundered, being washed in a small cedar noggin owned in
common by the trio, and a miniature sad-iron, heated by special
permission on Aunt Chaney's stove, was brought into requisition.
Sometimes Aunt Chaney was in a softened mood, and fluted a ruffle on a
wax baby's skirt, and told wonderful tales about Mrs. Gwynn's dresses in
her girlhood, "flounced to the waist, and crimped to a charm." Thence
the transition was easy to the details of her young mistress's social
triumphs and celebrated beauty, with lovers in gangs, all sighing like
furnaces and represented as rolling in riches and riding splendid and
prancing horses, the final special zest of each story being the
fruitless jealousy of the red-headed Miss Mildred Fisher, eating her
heart out,--this to the immature imagination of the "ladies" literally
resembled the chickens' hearts which were so daintily chopped to garnish
the dish of fried pullets amidst the parsley.
As the rain beat against the windows and the evening fell, the trio
thought many a loitering-place less attractive than the chimney-nook
behind the stove in Aunt Chaney's kitchen, regaled with her stories as
she cooked, and now and then a spoonful of some dainty, administered
with the curt command, "Open yer mouf, ladies!"
Thus it was that the library was almost deserted when Colonel Ashley
called more than once. Captain Baynell he found, and occasionally the
judge also. He always selected the afternoons, and after a time he was
wont to glance about with such a keen, predatory expression that the
truth began to dawn vaguely on Captain Baynell. Vanity is so robust an
endowment that it had been easy enough for the recipient of these visits
to appropriate wholly the interest that prompted them. It struck Baynell
with an indignant sense of impropriety when he began to remember
Ashley's ardent desire to meet Mrs. Gwynn, his admiration of the glimpse
of her beauty that had once been vouchsafed him, and to connect this
with his manifestation of good comradeship and eager solicitude
concerning his friend's health. Baynell was infinitely out of
countenance for a moment.
"Why, confound the fellow! He doesn't care a fig whether I live or die."
Then he was sensible of a rising anger, that he should be made the
subterfuge of a systematic endeavor to casually meet Mrs. Gwynn,--likely
to prove successful in the last instance. For lowering clouds overspread
the sky when Ashley entered late in the afternoon, and a storm so
violent, so tumultuous, broke with such sudden fury that it was
impossible for him to take leave had he desired this. Baynell knew that
nothing was further from his comrade's wish. Ashley reconciled himself
so swiftly to Judge Roscoe's insistence that he should remain to tea
that it might seem he had come for that express purpose.
"Dat man," soliloquized the "double-faced Janus" impressively, "mus'
hev' smelled de perfume of dat ar flummery plumb ter de camp. Chaney wuz
jes' dishin' up when he ring de door-bell!"