Jacqueline and Judith soon appeared. Jacqueline, in her new white frock, looked her prettiest, albeit it showed her youthful thinness and all her half-grown angles. Judith’s beauty was of a sort that could stand the simplicity of her black gown that revealed her white neck, and, for the first time since her widowhood, she wore no cap over her red-brown hair. Delilahand Simon Peter yah-yahed and ki-yied over both of them.
“Dem little foots o’ Miss Jacky’s in de silk stockin’s ain’ no bigger ’n little Beverley’s, hardly, and Miss Judy she look like de Queen o’ Sheba,” delightedly remarked Delilah.
Judith could scarcely meet Mrs. Temple’s eyes. She felt inexplicably guilty. Mrs. Temple examined them critically, though, and the general was loftily complimentary.
“And, Delilah,” said Judith, gathering up her gloves nervously, “be sure and look after Beverley. He has never been left alone in his life before.”
“I will look after Beverley, Judith,” said Mrs. Temple, and Judith blushed faintly at something in the tone.
All the way, going along the country road in the moonlight, Judith could feel Jacqueline’s little feet moving restlessly with excitement. As they drove up to the house, and caught glimpses through the open hall-door of the dancers and heard the sound of music, Jacqueline began to bob up and down with childish delight.
Like most Virginia country-houses, Turkey Thicket had an immense entrance hall, which was not heated and was of no earthly use the best part of the year, and for which all the rooms around it were unnecessarily cramped. Mrs. Sherrard’s hall was of more useto her than most people’s, owing to her party-giving proclivities, and was brightly lighted up for dancing. As Judith came down the broad stairs on General Temple’s arm, a kind of thrill of surprise went around among the guests. Nobody expected to see her. Many of them had never seen her except in her widow’s veil and cap. Judith, remembering this, could not restrain a blushing consciousness that made her not less handsome; and, besides, her good looks were always full of surprises. One never knew whether she would be simply pale and pretty, or whether she would blaze out into a sudden and captivating beauty.
They made their way through the dancers, Jacqueline alternately pale and red with excitement, and the general bowing right and left, until they entered the small, old-fashioned drawing-room. Mrs. Sherrard, in a plain black silk, but with a diamond comb in her white hair and a general air of superbness, was delighted to see Judith. It was a victory over Jane Temple. She detained her for a moment to whisper: “My dear, I am dreadfully afraid I shall make a failure in trying to get George Throckmorton accepted here. The girls, who most of them never saw so fine a man before, will hardly have a word to say to him; the men are a little better, but it isn’t a pronounced success by any means. I have been longing for you to come. You have so much more sense than any ofthe young people I know, I thought you would be a little less freezing to him.”
At this a warmer color surged into Judith’s cheeks. She could not remember ever to have seen a man who impressed her so instantly as Throckmorton. With her clear, feminine instinct, she had seen at the first glance what manner of man he was. As Mrs. Sherrard spoke to her, she turned and saw him standing by the fireplace, talking with Edmund Morford. Throckmorton could not have desired a better foil than the young clergyman, with his faultless red and white skin, his curling dark hair, his mouth full of perfect teeth, and his character as a clerical dandy written all over him. Throckmorton, whose good looks were purely masculine and characteristic, looked even more manly and soldierly by contrast. Both men caught sight of Judith at the same moment. Morford was thrown into a perfect flutter. He wondered if Judith had put on that square-necked, short-sleeved black gown to do him a mischief. Throckmorton, obeying a look from Mrs. Sherrard, came forward and was formally introduced. Judith offered her hand, after the Virginia custom, which Throckmorton bowed over.
“Mrs. Temple did not present me to you on Sunday,” he said, with a smile and a slight flush; “but I guessed very readily who you were.”
Judith, too, colored.
“Poor mother, you must not take her too hardly. You know how good she is, but—but she is very determined; she moves slowly.”
“Yes,” replied Throckmorton, with his easy, man-of-the-world manner; “but I am afraid there are others as unyielding as Mrs. Temple, and not half so kindly—for she is a dear soul! It seemed to me the carrying out of a sort of dream to come back to Millenbeck. My boy Jack—that young fellow yonder—looks rather old to be my son, don’t you think?”
“Y-e-s,” answered Judith, with provoking dubiousness and a wicked little smile.
“Oh, you are really too bad! I am very tired of explaining to people that Jack is nothing like as old as he looks. Well, the boy, although brought up at army posts, rather wanted to be a Virginian, and to own the old place; you know that sort of thing always crops out in a Virginian.”
“Yes,” smiled Judith; “I see how it crops out inyou. You are immensely proud of being a Throckmorton, and you would rather own Millenbeck, if it were tumbling down about your ears, than the finest place in the world anywhere else.”
“Now, Mrs. Beverley,” said Throckmorton, determinedly, “I can’t have my weaknesses picked out in this prompt and savage manner. I own I am a fool about Millenbeck, but I’d have sworn that nobody butmyself knew it. I’ve got a year’s leave, and I’ve come down here with Sweeney, an old ex-sergeant of mine, who has owned me for several years, and my old horse Tartar, that is turned out to grass; and if I like it as well as I expect, I may resign”—Throckmorton was always talking about resigning, as Mrs. Sherrard was about making her will, without the slightest idea of doing it—“and turn myself out to grass like Tartar. But my reception hasn’t been—a—exactly—cordial—or—”
“I am sorry you have been disappointed,” said Judith, gently; “but it seems to me that we are all in a dreadful sort of transition state now. We are holding on desperately to our old moorings, although they are slipping away; but I suppose we shall have to face a new existence some time.”
“I think I understand the feeling here—even that dead wall of prejudice that meets me. One look around Severn church, last Sunday, would have told me that those people had gone through with some frightful crisis. I thought, perhaps being one of their own county people originally might soften them toward me, but I believe that makes me blacker than ever.”
Judith could not deny it.
Throckmorton, who was worldly wise, read Judith at a glance, besides having learned her history since first seeing her. He saw that she was under a fixedrestraint, and that a word would frighten her into the deepest reserve. He treated her, therefore, as if she had been a Sister of Charity. Judith, who made up for her lack of knowledge of the world by rapid perceptions and natural talents, had seen more quickly than Throckmorton. Here was a man the like of whom she had not often met. Throckmorton knew perfectly well the solitary lives these country women led, and he had often wondered at the singular fortitude they showed. He set himself to work to find out what chiefly interested this young woman, who showed such remarkable constancy to her dead husband, but who gave indications to his practiced eye of secretly loving life and its concerns very much. He had heard about her pretty boy. At this Judith colored with pleasure and became positively talkative. Her boy was the sweetest boy—she would like never to have him out of her sight. Major Throckmorton, with a sardonic grin, confided to Judith that he would frequently be highly gratified at havinghisson out of his sight, because Jack made the women think he, the major, was a Methuselah, and covertly made much game of him, for which he would like to kick Jack, but couldn’t.
Judith laughed merrily at this—a laugh so clear and rippling, and yet so rare, that the sound of it startled her. Was Mrs. Beverley fond of reading? Mrs. Beverley was very fond of reading, but there wasnothing newer in the array of books at Barn Elms than 1840. Major Throckmorton would be only too happy to supply her with books. He had had a few boxes full sent down to Millenbeck. At this Judith blushed, but accepted, without reflecting how Major Throckmorton was to send books to a house where he was not permitted to visit.
She also protested that she had read nothing at all scarcely; but Throckmorton came to find out that, for want of the every-day modern literature, she was perfectly at home in the English classics, and knew her Scott and Thackeray like a lesson well learned. He began to find this gentle intelligence and cordiality amazingly pleasant after the cold shyness of the girls and the unmistakable keep-your-distance air of the older women. They sat together so long that Mr. Morford began to scowl, and think that Mrs. Beverley, after all, was rather a frivolous person, and with every moment Judith became brighter, gayer, more her natural charming self.
Meanwhile Jack Throckmorton had carried Jacqueline off for a quadrille, and was getting on famously. First they remarked on the similarity of their names, which seemed a fateful coincidence, and Jacqueline complained that the servants and some other people, too, often shortened her liquid three syllables with “Jacky,” but she hated it. Jack, who had a sweet, gay voice, and was an inveterate joker, whichJacqueline was not, amused both her and himself extremely.
“Will you look at the major?” he whispered. “Gone on the pretty widow—I beg your pardon,” he added, turning very red.
“You needn’t apologize,” calmly remarked Jacqueline. “Judithisa pretty widow, and the best and kindest sister in the world, besides. It is all mamma. Mamma loved my brother better than anything, and wants us all to think about him as much as she does.”
Jack, rather embarrassed by these family confidences, parried them with some confidences of his own.
“I shall have to go over soon and break the major up. You see, there isn’t but twenty-two years’ difference between us, and the major is a great toast among the girls still, which is repugnant to my filial feelings.”
Jacqueline listened gravely and in good faith.
“So, when I see him pleased with a girl, I generally sneak up on the other side, and manage to get my share of the girl’s attention, and call the major ‘father’ every two minutes. A man hates to be interfered with that way, particularly by his own son, which doesn’t often happen. The major has got a cast in one eye, and, whenever he is in a rage, he gets downright cross-eyed. Sometimes I work him up so, his eyes don’t get straight for a fortnight.”
“But doesn’t he get very mad with you?” asked Jacqueline in a shocked voice.
“Of course he does,” chuckled Jack; “and that’s where the fun comes in. But, you see, he can’t say anything; it is beneath his dignity; but his temper blazes up, although he doesn’t say a word. Sometimes, when I’ve run him off two or three times close together, he hardly speaks to me for a week—not that he cares about the girl particularly, but he hates to be balked.”
“What a nice sort of a son you must be!”
Jack laughed his frank, boyish laugh.
“Why, the major and I are the greatest chums in the world. I would do anything for him. And if he ever presents me with a step-mother, I’ll do the handsome thing—go to the wedding, and all that. And he’s a fascinating old fellow, too—just takes the girls off their feet.”
When the dance was over, Jack brought Jacqueline back to Judith, who still sat with Throckmorton. Jacqueline’s eyes were shining with childish delight, and she arched her thin white neck restlessly from side to side.
“I have had such a nice dance!” she cried, breathlessly.
Judith, smiling, said, “Major Throckmorton, this is my little sister Jacqueline.”
Throckmorton, having once fixed his eyes onJacqueline, seemed unable to take them off, as on that Sunday he had first seen her in Severn church. Delilah, who noticed in her primitive way the wonderful power of attraction that Jacqueline had, used to say, “Miss Jacky she allus cotches de beaux.” She certainly “cotched” Throckmorton’s attention from the first. Something in this slim, unformed, provincial girl was suddenly captivating to him. His genuine but sane admiration for Judith seemed tame beside it. Jacqueline, however, only saw a rather striking man, well on toward old age, in her infantile eyes, and wished herself back with Jack, when Major Throckmorton took her for a little promenade. Morford then made up to Judith, but found her singularly cold and unresponsive, and her eyes and smile were quite far away, over Morford’s head, as it were. The truth is, the Rev. Edmund Morford was a considerable let-down from George Throckmorton; and, in Judith’s starved and pinched existence, it was something to meet a man of Throckmorton’s caliber. So in place of the charming sweetness Morford had learned to expect from Judith, he received a cold douche of listlessness and indifference. All the rest of the evening people noticed that Judith, who had a good deal of smoldering vivacity under her quietness, was remarkably cold and silent and rather bored, and they supposed it was because of her aversion to anything like gayety. In truth, Judith had realizedrather more startlingly than usual the bareness and colorlessness of her life.
Mrs. Sherrard’s effort was a strong one, but, as she said, it was scarcely a success. General Temple ostentatiously sought out Throckmorton, and tasted the delights of a discussion regarding the trans-Alpine campaigns of Hannibal, in which Throckmorton was a modest listener, and the general a most fiery, earnest, and learned expounder—a past grand-master of military science. But, on shaking Throckmorton’s hand at saying good-night, with solemn but genuine effusiveness, he said not one word about calling at Millenbeck. Throckmorton went home feeling rather bitter toward all his county people, except his stanch friend Mrs. Sherrard; Judith, so gentle, clever, and well-read; and that fascinating child, Jacqueline.
For a week after the party Jacqueline lived in a kind of dream. She could do nothing but talk of the party. The whole current of her life had been disturbed. Since this one taste of excitement there was no satisfying her. The daily routine was going down to a solemn breakfast, and then getting through the forenoon as best she might, with her flowers, and her pets among the ducks and chickens, and romping with the little Beverley—for this unfortunate Jacqueline had no regular employments—and then the still more solemn three o’clock dinner, after which she practiced fitfully on the wheezy piano in the dark drawing-room; then a country walk with Judith, if the day was fine, coming back in time to watch the creeping on of the twilight before the sitting-room fire. This was the happiest time of the day to Jacqueline. She would sit flat on the rug, clasping her knees, and gazing into the fire until her mother would say, with a smile:
“What do you see in the fire, Jacky?”
“Oh, endless things—a beautiful young man, anda new piano, and a diamond comb like Mrs. Sherrard’s, and—Oh, I can’t tell you!”
“Miss Jacky she see evils, I know she do,” solemnly announced Simon Peter. “When folks sits fo’ de fire studyin’ ’bout nuttin’ ’tall, de evils an’ de sperrits dat’s ’broad come sneakin’ up ahine an’ show ’em things in de fire.”
General Temple, a few days after the party, fell a victim to a seductive pudding prepared by Delilah, and was immediately invalided with the gout. Dr. Wortley was sent for, and at once demanded to know what devilment Delilah had been up to in the way of puddings and such, and soon found out the true state of the case. A wordy war ensued between Dr. Wortley and Delilah, and the doctor renewed the threat he had been making at intervals for twenty-five years.
“Temple,” he screeched, “you may take your choice between that old ignoramus and me—between ignorance and science!”
“Ef ole marse was ter steal six leetle sweet ’taters an’ put ’em in he pocket,” began Delilah, undauntedly.
“Why don’t you advise him to steal a wheelbarrowful instead of a pocketful?” retorted the doctor.
“Kase he doan ’quire but six, an’ he got tersteal’em, fur ter make de conjurin’ wuk. Den ev’y day he th’ow ’way a ’tater, an’ when he th’ow de ’tater ’wayhe th’ow de gout ’way, too. De hy’ars from a black cat’s tail is mighty good, too—”
“Temple, how do you put up with this sort of thing being uttered in your hearing?” snapped the doctor.
General Temple looked rather sheepish. He had never actually tried stealing six potatoes, or testing the virtue in hairs from a black cat’s tail, as a relief from gout, but he had not been above a course of tansy tea, and decoctions of jimson-weed, and other of Delilah’s remedies that scientifically were on a par with the black cat’s tail. But, being racked with pain, he took refuge in pessimism and profanity.
“Excuse me, Wortley, but all medicine is a damned humbug!—I mean—er—an empirical science. What is written is written. The Great First Cause, that decrees from the hour of our birth every act of our lives, has decreed that I should suffer great pain, anguish, and discomfort from this hereditary disease.”
“Marse, ef you wuz ter repent an’ be saved—”
“Hold your infernal tongue!”
“An’ jine de Foot-washers—”
“Damn the Foot-washers!” howled the general.
“Plague on it!” snarled Dr. Wortley, whirling round with his back to the fire. “If you’ve got as far as predestination, you’re in for a six weeks’ spell. I can cure the gout, but I’ll be shot if I can do anything when it’s complicated with religion and blackcats’ tails and a constant diet like a Christmas dinner!”
In the midst of the discussion, the doctor’s shrill voice rising high over Delilah’s, who, with arms akimbo and a defiant air, only awaited Dr. Wortley’s departure to get in her innings with the patient, Mrs. Temple, serene and sweet, came in and quelled the insurrection. Delilah at once subsided, Dr. Wortley began to laugh, and the general directed that Mrs. Temple’s chair be put next to his.
“As your presence, my love, makes me forget my most unhappy foot,” he said.
Mrs. Temple’s adherence to either Delilah or Dr. Wortley would have caused victory to perch upon that side; but Mrs. Temple, like the general, had more faith in Delilah than she was willing to own up to. So, between Delilah’s feeding him high all the time, while the doctor only saw him once or twice a week, General Temple bade fair to remain an invalid for a considerable time. The attack of gout, though, just at that time, had its consolatory aspects. General Temple really wished to call at Millenbeck, but Mrs. Temple showed no sign of yielding. For the present, however, there could be no notion of his stirring out of doors. As long as the gout lasted there was a good excuse. But General Temple worried over it.
“My love,” he said one night, while Mrs. Temple and Jacqueline and Judith sat around the table in hisroom, where they had assembled to make his evening less dull, “I am troubled in my mind regarding George Throckmorton. It unquestionably seems heathenish for us to have one so intimately connected with our early married life—that truly blissful period—within a stone’s throw of us, and then to deny him the sacred rites of hospitality.”
Jacqueline gave a half glance at Judith which was full of meaning, and Judith could not for her life keep a slight blush from rising in her cheek.
Mrs. Temple said nothing, but looked hard at the fire, sighing profoundly. She had made herself some sort of a vague revengeful promise, that no man wearing a blue uniform should ever darken her doors. She had yielded first one thing, then another, of that scrupulous and daily mourning and remembrance she had promised herself, for Beverley—but this—
The pause was long. Mrs. Temple, looking at General Temple, was touched by something in his expression—a longing, a patient, but genuine desire. Occasionally she indulged him, as she sometimes relaxed a little the discipline over Jacqueline in her childish days. She put her hand over her eyes and waited a moment as if she were praying. Then she said in broken voice, “Do what seems best to you, my husband.”
General Temple took her hand.
“But, my own, I do not wish to coerce you. No matter what I think is our duty in the case, if it does not satisfy you, it shall not be done. I would rather anything befell Throckmorton, than you, my beloved Jane, should be grieved or troubled.”
Mrs. Temple received this sort of thing as she always did, with a shy pleasure like a girl.
“I have said it, my dear, and you know I do not easily recede. Like you, this thing has been upon me ever since Throckmorton’s return. I have felt it every day harder to maintain my attitude. Now, for your sake, I will abandon it. Have Throckmorton when you like. I will invite him over to tea on Sunday evening.”
General Temple fairly beamed. When Mrs. Temple gave in to him, which was not oftener than once a year, she gave in thoroughly.
“Thank you, my wife. It certainly seems unnatural that Millenbeck and Barn Elms should be estranged. It shall be so no longer, please God. And that George Throckmorton is a high-toned gentleman”—General Temple paused a little before saying this, hunting for a term magniloquent enough for the occasion—“no one, I think, will deny.”
This was early in the week. The very next afternoon, Jacqueline finding time more than usually hard to kill, went up into the garret and began rummaging over the remains of Mrs. Temple’s wedding fineryof thirty years before. She dived down into a capacious chest, and brought forth two or three faded silk dresses, the bridal bonnet and veil, yellowed from age; and, among other antiques, a huge muff almost as big as Jacqueline herself. This suddenly put the notion of a walk into her head. Judith was engaged in reading Napier’s History of the Peninsular Wars to General Temple, and Jacqueline had only herself for company. So, carrying her huge muff in which she plunged her arms up to her elbows, she started off. It was a raw autumn afternoon. The leaves had not yet all fallen, although the ground was dank with them, and the peculiar stillness of a lonely and lowland country was upon the monotonous landscape. The entire absence of sounds is a characteristic of that sort of country, and it makes a gloomy day more gloomy. Jacqueline, tripping along very fast, did not find it cheerful. She would go as far as the gate of the lane that led into the main road, and then turn back. This lane was also the entrance to Millenbeck, and Jacqueline had some sort of a faint expectation that she might run across Jack Throckmorton. She looked longingly toward Millenbeck, visible at intervals through the straggling fringe of pines. What an infinity of pleasure could be had, if her mother only came round thoroughly regarding the Throckmortons! What rides and dances she could have with Jack, and Judith could talk to the major! “What adull life Judith must lead!” she thought, stepping lightly along. It was true, Judith liked to read; but Jacqueline, who frankly confessed she could not read a novel through from cover to cover, hardly appreciated reading as a resource. Jacqueline’s imagination, with this superstructure to build upon, went ardently to work, and in a few minutes had installed Judith as mistress of Millenbeck, and herself as the young lady of the establishment. To do Jacqueline justice, she longed for Judith’s happiness, who, she sometimes bitterly felt, was her only friend. Just as she had arranged this scheme to her satisfaction, she looked up, and saw, not twenty feet ahead of her, Major Throckmorton coming out of the underbrush at the side of the lane. A big slouch hat half concealed his face. His usual trim and natty dress, with that unmistakable “military cut,” was exchanged for a shooting suit of corduroy, much stained, and otherwise the worse for wear. His stylish and immaculate hat was replaced by the flapping felt, and his gun and game-bag proclaimed his day’s employment. Yet Jacqueline thought she had never seen him look so handsome, and in some way she was not half so much afraid of him in his shooting-togs as in his perfectly fitting evening clothes. Jacqueline’s face turned a rosy red. As for Throckmorton, he too felt a thrill of pleasure. This pretty child, as he called her, had been in his mind rather constantly since he saw her at the party.He quickened his pace, and took his hat off while still some distance away.
“Any more parties in prospect?” he asked, smiling, as he took her little hand in his.
“No, I don’t suppose there will be. Delicious parties like that don’t happen very often,” answered Jacqueline, quite seriously, and not in the least understanding Throckmorton’s smile as she said this. “And—and young Mr. Throckmorton—oh, how I enjoyed dancing with him!”
The major did not smile at this. To have “young Mr. Throckmorton” thrust at him by a charming young girl was not particularly pleasing.
“Jack is a very jolly young fellow,” he replied, shortly. “We are great friends, Jack and I.”
Jacqueline had turned around, and they were now walking together toward Barn Elms.
“I—I should think,” said Jacqueline, giving him one of her half-glances from under the dark fringe of her eyelashes—“that J—Jack would be afraid of you.”
Throckmorton laughed aloud.
“Why should he be afraid of me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Everybody is afraid of one’s father,” replied Jacqueline, candidly.
“Jack and I entertain sentiments of mutual respect,” laughed Throckmorton again. “The only fault I find with him is that he is unduly filial sometimes.For example, when I am enjoying the society of a charming young lady he thinks too young for me, he behaves as if I were his great-grandfather instead of his father. Jack has a good deal of Satan in him.”
Jacqueline did not always follow Throckmorton’s remarks, but she noticed he had a rich voice, and he was the straightest, most soldierly-looking man she ever saw in her life. Throckmorton slung his game-bag around and held it open.
“Do you like robins?” he said. “They are delicious broiled on toast”—and he took out a bird by the legs and showed it to her.
Jacqueline stood perfectly still. Her eyes dilated and her breath came quickly. She took the bird out of his hand. It had long stopped bleeding, and its little cold head, with half-closed eyes, fell over piteously. Jacqueline took out her handkerchief and wrapped the poor robin in it.
“Oh, the poor bird!” she said, and suddenly two large tears ran down her cheeks.
Throckmorton stood surprised, touched, delighted, and almost ashamed. He had been a sportsman all his life, and could see no harm in knocking over a few birds in the season; but the picture of this tender-hearted child, that could not see a dead bird without weeping, struck him as beautifully feminine. But what could he say? If he was a bloodthirsty brute to shoot a robin, what must all the slaughter of birds hehad been guilty of in his lifetime make him? He could only say, half shamefacedly and half laughing “My dear little friend, you wouldn’t have men as squeamish as women, would you?”
But to this Jacqueline only responded by pressing the poor bird’s cold breast to her cheek.
Throckmorton, however, with an air of gentle authority, took the bird from her and put it back in the bag.
“If you cry for such things as this, you will have a hard time in life,” he said.
Jacqueline’s face did not clear up at once.
“I want you to do something for me—to promise me something,” she said, gravely.
“What is it?” asked Throckmorton. Jacqueline had laid her charm upon him in the last ten minutes, but he did not forget his caution entirely.
“It is,” said Jacqueline, punctuating her words with tender, appealing glances, “that you won’t kill any more robins—never, never, as long as you live.”
Throckmorton refrained from smiling, as he felt inclined, but it was plainly no laughing matter to Jacqueline. And if he gave the promise—nobody knew the absurdity of it more than Throckmorton—suppose Jack heard of it, what endless fun would he poke at his father on the sly! Nevertheless, Throckmorton, calling himself an old fool, made the promise.
Jacqueline, flushed with triumph, now conceived abold design. She would—that is, if her courage held out—tell him that her mother had at last come round. This delightful information she proceeded to impart.
“Do you know,” she said, smiling and showing her little even white teeth, “that mamma has at last agreed to—to let us have something to do with you and Jack?”
“Has she, indeed?” replied Throckmorton, with rather a grim smile.
“Yes,” continued Jacqueline, with much seriousness. “Occasionally she gives papa a little treat. You know she always liked you, and papa has been dying to call to see you. But mamma can’t forget the war and Beverley. At last, though—she’s been thinking about it ever since that first day at church—she concluded to give in—and—and—you’re to be asked to tea next Sunday evening!”
The way this was told was not particularly flattering to Throckmorton, but he was sincerely grateful and attached to Mrs. Temple, and he knew and pitied the state of feeling that had caused her to intrench herself in her prejudices. She must indeed remember those old days when she was willing to do what Throckmorton suspected she had promised herself never to do. “I want to be friends with Mrs. Temple—that’s plain enough,” he said, “and if she asks me I shall certainly come.”
“Do you know,” said Jacqueline, after a pause, in avery confidential voice, “I sometimes wish—now this is a secret, remember—that papa and mamma would forget Beverley a little—and think—of Judith and me? They seem to expect Judith to wear black all the time, and never to smile or to laugh or to sing, as if Beverley could know. I don’t believe the dead in their graves know or care anything about us.”
She was on delicate ground, but, her tongue being unloosed, Throckmorton’s attempt to check her was a complete failure.
“Judith, you know,” she continued, cutting in on Throckmorton’s awkward remonstrance, “only knew Beverley a little while. Her father and mother were dead, and papa was her guardian. She came to Barn Elms to live after she left school, and Beverley came home from the war, and they were married right away—almost as soon as they were acquainted. It was so sudden because Beverley’s leave was up, and Delilah says that Beverley knew he was going to be killed soon. She says he dreamed it, or something. Do you believe in dreams?”
“No, and you mustn’t believe all Delilah tells you.”
“Anyhow, he went away, and he never came back. That broke papa and mamma’s hearts. And you know—little Beverley—Judith’s child—is like her—and not a bit like Beverley, and mamma talks sometimes as if it was a crime on the child’s part. Shesays to everybody, ‘Don’t you think the child is like his father?’ and nobody answers her quite truthfully, and she knows it.”
Throckmorton hardly knew how to receive these family confidences, but he could not but admire the color coming and going in Jacqueline’s cheeks, and the fitful light that burned in her eyes as she talked.
“And Judith—I do love Judith. It seems hard—now this is another secret—that she should never have any more pleasure in this world. And she is so bright and clever. She understands the most wonderful books. And there’s something—I can’t help telling you this.”
“Perhaps you had better not tell me,” said Throckmorton in a warning voice.
“But I can’t help it, you are so—so sympathetic: I don’t believe Judith cared for Beverley much.”
Jacqueline drew off to see the effect of this on Throckmorton. She did not at all suspect him of any interest in Judith; but this family tragedy, that had stalked beside her nearly all her life, she thought was of immense importance, and she wanted to see how it affected Throckmorton. In fact, it only embarrassed him. He said, rather briefly:
“Mrs. Beverley is very handsome—very charming.”
“She’s the best sister in the world,” exclaimed Jacqueline. “Some people think that sisters-in-lawcan’t love each other. Sometimes I would throw myself in the river if it wasn’t for Judith.”
“Why should such a tender little thing as you want to throw herself in the river?” he asked; and if Jack had heard the tone in which this was spoken, he would, no doubt, have found food for ungodly mirth in it.
“You don’t know what sorrows I have,” responded Jacqueline, gravely. And then they were almost at the gate of Barn Elms, and Throckmorton bade her good-by, and tramped back home, while Jacqueline scudded into the house to confide the wonderful adventures of the afternoon to Judith.
In a day or two a note from General Temple came, inviting Throckmorton and Jack to tea at Barn Elms the following Sunday evening. It was rather a letter than a note, General Temple spreading himself—his honest soul loved a rhetorical flourish—and containing many references to their early association. Throckmorton accepted, in a reply in which he told, much more glibly than his tongue could, the grateful affection he had cherished from his neglected and unhappy boyhood toward the whole family at Barn Elms. On the Sunday evening, therefore, Throckmorton, with Jack, presented himself, and was effusively received by the general and Simon Peter, who were not unlike in their overpowering courtesy to guests. Judith was cordial and dignified, and Jacquelinefull of a shy delight. No doubt they would be invited to Millenbeck, and she would see with her own eyes the Bruskins carpets and other royal splendors Delilah was never weary of recounting.
General Temple was able to be down in the drawing-room, but Mrs. Temple was not present. Delilah, however, soon put her head in the door, and, crossing her hands under a huge white apron she wore, brought a message.
“Mistis, she say, won’t Marse George please ter come in de charmber.”
Throckmorton at once followed her. The “charmber” at Barn Elms was a sort of star chamber, and utterances within its precincts were usually of a solemn character. As Throckmorton entered, Mrs. Temple rose from the big rush-bottomed chair in which she sat. Throckmorton remembered the room perfectly, in all the years since he had been in it—the dimity curtains, the high-post mahogany bed, the shining brass fender and andirons, the tall candlesticks on the high wooden mantel. He remembered, with a queer, boyish feeling, sundry moral discourses gently administered to him in that room on certain occasions when he had been caught in the act of fishing on Sunday, or poking a broomstick up the chimney to dislodge the sooty swallows that built their nests there in the summer-time, and other instances of juvenile turpitude. And he well recollected once,when Mrs. Temple was ill, he had hung about the place, a picture of boyish misery; and when at last he was admitted into the room where she lay, white and feeble, on the broad, old-fashioned lounge, how happy, how glad, how honored he had felt. He went forward eagerly and raised Mrs. Temple’s hand to his lips.
“George Throckmorton, this is nearer forgiveness than I ever expected to come,” she said.
“Dear Mrs. Temple, don’t let us talk about forgiveness. Let us only remember that we are friends of more than thirty years’ standing—because I can’t remember the time when I was a boy that I didn’t love you.”
“And I loved you, too—next to my own Beverley. I sent for you here that I might tell you my trouble as you used to tell me yours so long ago. Often you have sat on that little cricket over there and told me of your grandfather’s cruel ways to you—he was a godless man, George.”
“He was indeed,” fervently assented Throckmorton.
“And now I want to tell you ofmysorrows, George.”
Throckmorton listened patiently while she went over all of Beverley’s life. She told it with a touching simplicity. Throckmorton well saw how that still stern unforgiveness might rankle in her gentle butimmovable mind. Then he told her of his marriage—something he had never in all his life spoken of to any one in that manner; but the force of sweet and early habit was upon him—he could talk to Mrs. Temple about the young creature so much loved and so long dead. Mrs. Temple, who knew what such revealing meant from a man of Throckmorton’s strong and self-contained nature, was completely won by this. An hour afterward, when they came into the drawing-room, and found Jack and Jacqueline in a perfect gale of merriment, with Judith looking smilingly on, Mrs. Temple laid her hand on Throckmorton’s shoulder, and said to General Temple, with sweet gravity, “He is the same George Throckmorton.”
Judith was leaning a little forward in her chair, with her arm around her child. The boy was a beautiful, manly fellow, and gazed at Throckmorton with friendly, serious eyes. Throckmorton, whose heart was tender toward all children, smiled at him. Beverley at this marched forward and climbed upon Throckmorton’s knee, his little white frock, heavy with embroidery worked by Judith’s patient fingers, spreading all around him. The boy immediately launched into conversation, eying Throckmorton boldly, although his eyes usually had the shy expression of his mother’s. He wanted to know if Throckmorton had a gun, and could he beat the drum; also, if he could ride a horse.Sometimes grandfather would take him up and let him ride as far as the gate. Throckmorton answered all these questions satisfactorily, and then told about a pony he had at Millenbeck—a pony that had been Jack’s, when Jack was no bigger than Beverley, and that was now too old and slow for any but a very little boy. While Throckmorton talked to the child, Judith listened with a smiling look in her eyes. Throckmorton could not but be struck by the pretty picture the young mother and her child made. He saw the resemblance between them at once, and when he told of a tragic adventure Jack had with the pony, falling through a bridge, both pairs of large, soft eyes grew wide with grave amazement. Unconsciously Judith assumed the child’s expression. Beverley seemed determined to monopolize his new acquaintance, but presently Judith with a little air of authority sent him off with Delilah. Beverley paused at the door to say:
“You come again and bring the pony.”
Presently they went into the dining-room, and the old-fashioned tea was served. There was enough to feed a regiment, and all of the best kind, but nothing approaching vulgar display. Mrs. Temple put Throckmorton at her right, and every time she spoke to Jack she called him George. Throckmorton had forgotten nothing of the old days, and he not only began to feel young himself, but he made General and Mrs. Templefeel that time had turned backward. Jacqueline, on the opposite side of the table, smiled at him and talked a little. In her heart she could not quite make out Throckmorton. He had arrived at an age that seemed to her almost venerable; yet he quite ignored the fact that he ought to be old, and certainly was not old, nor could anybody say that he was young. Jack’s boyish fun she understood well enough, but Throckmorton’s shrewd humor, his confident, experienced way of looking at things, was rather beyond her. And as the case had been, whenever Throckmorton saw her, he had to exercise a certain restraint, lest everybody should see how strangely and completely she magnetized him. If anybody had asked him to compare Judith and Jacqueline, he would have given Judith the palm in everything—even in beauty; but Jacqueline’s young prettiness in some way caught his fancy more than Judith’s deeper and more significant beauty.
But Judith had her charm too for him. She captivated his judgment as Jacqueline captivated some inner sense to which he could give no name. Judith’s talk was seasoned with liveliness, and Throckmorton, who possessed a dry and penetrating humor of his own, could always count on a responsive sparkle in Judith’s eye.
When they returned to the drawing-room, Mrs. Temple said:
“Judith, my dear, sing us some of your sweet hymns.”
Judith sat down to the piano and in her clear and bell-like soprano sang some old-fashioned hymns, so sweetly and unaffectedly that Throckmorton thought it was like angels singing. The sound of the simple music, the soft light of fire and lamp, the atmosphere of love and courtesy that seemed to breathe over the quaint circle, had a fascination for him. It was the poetry of domestic life. He had often dreamed of what “home” might be, but he had never known it, for that brief married life of his had been too short, too flickering; they were boy and girl lovers, and, before the new life had had time to crystallize, he was left alone. But here he saw the sweet privacy of home, the repose, the family nest, safe and warm. He sighed a little. Money could not buy it, else he would have had it at Millenbeck, comfortable handsome country-house that it was. But here, at this shabby old Barn Elms, it was in perfection, in all its naturalness and simplicity. After all, women were necessary to make a home; even money, with a Sweeney as presiding genius, couldn’t do it.
It was late when they left. Mrs. Temple’s parting was as solemn as her greeting:
“I have done that which I never expected to do, and all because in my heart I can’t but love you, George Throckmorton!”
Throckmorton’s keen pleasure showed in his dark eyes.
“I always knew, if you would only listen to that dear, kind heart of yours, you would forgive the Yankees,” he laughed.
Miracles usually happen in cycles. They unquestionably did in the Severn neighborhood. Before the hurricane of talk over Throckmorton’s arrival, Jack’s audacity, and Sweeney’s brogue had fairly reached a crisis, a letter came one day to General Temple, from his nephew, Temple Freke, announcing his intention of paying a visit to his dear uncle and aunt at Barn Elms.
General Temple handed the letter to Mrs. Temple with a sort of groan.
“This is he—I mean, my love, this is most discomposing.”
At this Mrs. Temple shook her head in a manner expressing perfect despair. The problem whether Throckmorton should be admitted within the doors of Barn Elms was a mere nothing compared with this. Both of them firmly believed in a personal devil; and Temple Freke, with his extravagance, his vices, his unprincipled behavior, stood for Satan himself. This Freke was very unlike the conservative, home-keeping type of a gentleman that prevailed in Virginia. Hewas born and brought up in Louisiana, and was fifteen years old when, by the death of his father, General Temple became his guardian, and he was brought to Barn Elms to lead the staid Beverley into all sorts of scrapes, and to torment General Temple’s honest soul almost to madness. The elder Freke, perhaps, knowing the boy’s disposition, had made General Temple’s guardianship to extend until Temple Freke’s twenty-fifth birthday.
Of the horrors of that guardianship, nobody but the kind and simple-hearted general could tell—of Freke’s extravagance, of his gambling and betting and drinking, and one frightful scene, when Freke, with a loaded pistol in his hand, swore that, unless a certain debt of honor was paid, he would kill himself on the spot; and General Temple, who was not easily frightened, promptly paid it, with the conviction that the young fellow was quite capable of carrying out the threat. Immediately after this, General Temple shipped him off to Europe, but apparently it made bad worse. For six whole years was General Temple commanding, entreating, praying, and wheedling to get Freke back to Virginia. It was true, he might have cut off supplies, but Freke made no bones of saying that, if he couldn’t get his own money, he would contrive to get somebody else’s; so the poor general, with groans and moans, would cash Freke’s drafts on him as long as money could bescrewed out of the Louisiana sugar plantations to do it with.
But, as Mrs. Temple often said, Freke was unquestionably a gentleman; he was mild-mannered to a degree, and his very impertinences were brought out with a diffidence that frequently hoodwinked General Temple. He was not nearly so handsome as Beverley, being much shorter and sandy-haired, in contrast with Beverley’s blonde beauty; but Mrs. Temple always felt in the old days, with a little pang of jealousy, that this ordinary-looking boy, with his exquisite manners—not the least affected or effeminate, but simply the perfection of personal bearing—could put Beverley at a disadvantage. The two had little in common, and had never met after their school-days, when General Temple, in the innocence of his heart, had sent Freke abroad, to reform, until the very time of Beverley’s death. Freke, whose courage was as flawless in its way as General Temple’s, had come home during the war and enlisted in the Southern army. A strange fate had placed him close to Beverley when he was killed. He had held Beverley’s dying hand, and to him were intrusted the last messages to the mother and the young wife, who waited and prayed at Barn Elms. Nothing on earth but this could have brought Mrs. Temple to tolerate Freke at all, after the sensational career which had begun with the pistol scene. Moreover, to increase the abnormal conditions aboutthis unregenerate being, as the Temples considered him, he was perfectly irresistible. How it was, General Temple gloomily declared, he didn’t know, but Freke had the most extraordinary way of insinuating himself into the good graces of both men and women—not by any affectation of goodness, for there was a frankness about his wickedness that was peculiarly appalling to General Temple. Freke was no handsomer as a man than as a boy; he had been steadily making ducks and drakes of his fortune since he was twenty-five; yet, somehow, Freke always seemed to have a plenty of friends, solely by the charm of his personality. The most serious escapade that had come to General Temple’s knowledge since Freke was of age was his running away with a Cuban girl in New Orleans, and afterward getting a divorce by some hocus-pocus, and thereafter, with serene confidence, he bore himself as an unmarried man. Now, divorce was practically unknown in that old part of Virginia, and the Temples regarded it as in the category with murder and arson; so that this final iniquity of Freke’s would have quite put him beyond the pale, but for those hours he spent kneeling on the ground with the dying Beverley.
General Temple had a sort of Arab hospitality that would not have begrudged itself to the Evil One himself, and to tell Freke that he was not welcome under the roof of Barn Elms, where his grandfather and hisgrandfather’s father had lived, was an enormity of which he was not capable. And Mrs. Temple was no manner of use to him in the case. In vain he tried to shuffle the decision off on her. Mrs. Temple would not accept it. Like the general, she sighed and groaned, and turned it over in her mind; but always came back that picture of Beverley lying bleeding and dying, and Freke risking his life to stay by him. So at last, after a week of mutual misery, one night, in the privacy of the “charmber,” Mrs. Temple, watching the general stalking up and down during one of his fits of midnight restlessness, said, tremulously:
“My love, we must let Freke come. We can not refuse it—for—for Beverley’s sake.”
So the next morning a letter was dispatched to Freke, written by General Temple with considerably less cordiality than usual, and very feeble rhetorically, expressing the pleasure his uncle and aunt felt at the prospect of a visit from their nephew.
The next day, as soon as the direful news of his coming was made known to Jacqueline, she rushed off, as she always did, to give Judith the startling information.
Judith heard it with a strange feeling of repulsion, which she at first imagined was that infinite disapproval she felt for Freke; but, if he came, all of that terrible story about Beverley would have to be told over. Judith had not yet come to a clear understandingof herself, but she had begun to shrink from that dwelling on Beverley which seemed to give Mrs. Temple such exquisite comfort.
“Everything that looked at Freke fell in love with him,” announced Jacqueline. “Of course, he is as handsome as a dream—something like Mr. Morford, I dare say.”
There were two or three faded photographs of him at Barn Elms, and none of them gave the idea of great beauty; but photographs in those days were not very artistic reproductions.
Judith laughed a little uneasily.
“I wish he wern’t coming, Jacky,” she said. “He is too—too startling a person for quiet people like ourselves. There is one comfort, though: he will soon get tired of us.”
Within a week or two came a very well-expressed letter from Freke, thanking his uncle and aunt for their hospitable invitation, and saying that on a certain day he would land from the river steamer at Oak Point. Jacqueline was immensely taken with the letter, which was written on paper the like of which she had never seen before, and was sealed with a crest.
Two immense trunks arrived in advance of the expected visitor. Mrs. Sherrard happened to be at Barn Elms when the luggage appeared. Mrs. Temple’s face expressed her misery.
“Jane, you have my sympathy. A more unmitigated scamp than Freke doesn’t live,” was Mrs. Sherrard’s remark.
“Kitty,” feebly protested Mrs. Temple, “he is my husband’s nephew.”
“The more’s the pity.”
As a rule, the reputation of incalculable wickedness hurts nobody, in the opinion of the very young. The more Mrs. Temple preached and warned, holding on to that one saving clause, Freke’s devotion to Beverley in his dying hours, the more attractive he seemed to Jacqueline. At last one afternoon, when the carriage returned from Oak Point Landing with the much-talked-of Freke, Jacqueline, who had been curling her hair and prinking all day for the visitor, came down into the drawing-room, and the expression of acute disappointment on her face said loudly:
“Is this all?”
For Freke was neither surpassingly handsome nor any of the superlative things Jacqueline had fondly imagined him to be. He was not even as handsome as Throckmorton, and Jacqueline thought him no beauty. Freke was under middle height, and his hair was as sandy as of old, and not too abundant. His features were ordinary; and Jacqueline, not being a physiognomist, did not take in the piercing expression, the firmness and intelligence that redeemed them from commonplaceness. He did look unmistakably thegentleman, Jacqueline grudgingly admitted.Thisthe adorable, the irresistible, the—But Jacqueline was too disgusted to continue.
Freke, who read Jacqueline like an open book, and suspected the advance impression she had received, could hardly keep from laughing out aloud at the girl’s air and manner. He talked a little to her, somewhat more to Judith, but chiefly to Mrs. Temple.
It was late in the afternoon when he had arrived, and tea was soon announced. Directly it was over, Mrs. Temple marshaled a solemn procession into “the charmber” to hear Freke’s description of Beverley’s last hours. She went first with Judith, followed by Freke and General Temple. Mrs. Temple had tried to get Jacqueline to come, too, but Jacqueline, who had a horror of weeping and tragedies, begged off; and Mrs. Temple, who really attached but little importance to the girl at any time, did not press the point. The door of the room remained closed for two hours. Jacqueline, who had got tired of Delilah’s company and the cat’s, went up-stairs early, but not to bed. She waited until she heard Judith’s door open, and then went and knocked timidly at the door.
“Come in,” said Judith, in an unfamiliar voice. Judith was sitting before her dressing-table, and had already begun to unbraid her long, rich hair. Buther eyes were fixed with a hard, staring gaze on her own image in the glass. The mother had wept at Freke’s recital; the widow had remained pale, tearless, and turning over in her troubled mind the immaturity, the transitoriness of that first girlish love-affair that had resulted, as so few first loves do, in a sudden marriage—a quick widowhood. And she had a terrifying sense that she had betrayed herself to Freke. There was one particular point in the narrative, when he described how the dead man had got his death-wound. Beverley had run across a small body of Federal cavalrymen, himself with only an advance guard, and,à laGeneral Temple, had immediately dashed at them, as if a cavalry scrimmage would affect one iota the great fight that was impending the next day. Beverley himself had engaged in a hand-to-hand tussle with a Federal officer—both of them had rolled off their horses, and the struggle between them was more like Indian warfare than civilized warfare—and Freke described, with cruel particularity, how the two men fought in the underbrush, and crushed the wild rose and hawthorn bushes, each one trying vainly to draw his pistol—and at last a shot rang out, and Beverley turned over on his face with a wild shriek and a death-wound. The Federal officer had got his arm entangled in his bridle-reins, and Freke thought every moment the excited horse would trample the woundedman to death; and then, a squad of Confederates coming up, the Federals had made off, the officer mounting his horse and getting out of the way with nothing worse than a few bruises. All the time he was telling this he was eying Judith, who did not shed a single tear. Mrs. Temple wept torrents, and even so did General Temple. For poor Judith, whose reading of Freke was not less keen than his reading of her, it was misery enough to feel that, after all, her widowhood was not very real, and that the mourning, the entire giving up of the world, the devotion to Beverley’s parents, was, in some sort, a reparation; but that it should escape her—for Judith with the eagerness to make amends, of a generous nature, had readily adopted Mrs. Temple’s view—that it was a crime not to mourn for Beverley.
Jacqueline slipped down on her knees beside Judith, and, nodding her head, gravely said:
“Mamma didn’t getmeinto the room. Ah, Judy, dear, why won’t they let us forget him—”
“Jacqueline!” cried Judith, turning a pale, shocked face on her.
“I say,” persisted Jacqueline, who had one of her sudden fits of courage, “why do they trouble us to remember him? I hardly knew him; he was always off at college, and then in the war; why won’t they let us mourn decently for him? And then—and then—everybody wants to forget griefs. I do.”
Judith rose and shook her off impatiently. “I wish Temple Freke had never come here,” she said.
“I do, too,” answered Jacqueline, getting up. “I am afraid of him. O Judith, what two poor creatures are we!”
“I know I am,” suddenly cried Judith, breaking into a storm of tears. “I know there is no peace for me anywhere!—” Judith stopped as suddenly as she had begun. How could she put it in words, the ghastliness of this perpetual reminder of that which in her heart she longed to forget—this feeling that had been growing on her for so long, that she ought to feel more remorse for marrying Beverley Temple than grief at losing him—that all this solemn mourning for him was like those state funerals, where there is a great service, a catafalque, a coffin, mourners—everything except a corpse? And to her candid soul how wicked, heartless, and unnatural it seemed! Jacqueline’s eyes, so full of meaning and fixed on her, troubled her. She got up after a minute and walked over to the window. The red glow of the fire and the dim candle-light did not prevent her from seeing clearly into the moonlight night. She drew the old-fashioned white curtains apart and looked out. The somber trees loomed large and black, but up on the hill, a quarter of a mile away, the light from Millenbeck gleamed cheerfully. From two windows on the lower floor and two on the upper, as well as the greatfan- and side-lights of the hall-door, a ruddy glare streamed steadily. Presently Jacqueline came and stood by Judith, timidly.
“Do you know,” she said, “it seems queer that three strangers should come into our lonely lives—in this quiet life here? And the one I like—the one I like best—is Jack Throckmorton. I can’t talk to the others.”
Judith, who had got back a little of her composure, smiled at this.
“You talked away fast enough with Major Throckmorton.”
“Oh, yes, but I didn’t feel at home with him. Jack and I understand each other. I know what he means when he talks to me. I don’t always understand Major Throckmorton. Judith, is my cousin Freke a very wicked man?”
“So people say,” replied Judith in a subdued voice, which had not altogether overcome its agitation.
“He isn’t handsome enough to be very—very attractive,” said Jacqueline after a pause.
But the rule of contrary seemed to suddenly prevail at Barn Elms then. Within a week everybody in the house had succumbed more or less to Freke’s charm. General Temple found him invaluable in the preparation of the History of Temple’s Brigade; and Freke, who had a store of military knowledge among his great fund of general information, easilypersuaded the general that he was a military historian of the first order. When the general began his evening harangues, Freke always had an example pat of a certain occasion when Prince Eugene, or the Duke of Marlborough, or some equally distinguished leader had successfully pursued General Temple’s tactics. All this General Temple laboriously transcribed in his manuscript. Judith, who very much doubted whether Freke were not making it up as he went along, had her suspicions confirmed when Freke would occasionally turn his expressive face on her and actually wink with appreciation of the general’s simplicity. Judith was indignant, but she could not help laughing at Freke’s genuine humor. Mrs. Temple showed her regard for the returned prodigal by taking him into the “charmber” one day and reasoning in a motherly way upon Freke’s duty to return to his wife. Judith was astounded after a while to hear Mrs. Temple’s gentle but intense laughter making itself heard outside the room. Freke, with the most good-natured manner in the world, sitting in the rush-bottomed chair, with one foot over his knee, began to tell Mrs. Temple some of his marital experiences with his Julia. Mrs. Temple at first put on her severest frown and fairly groaned aloud at his declaration that he didn’t know whether he was married or not in Virginia, as his divorce was got in one of the Northwestern States; but, divorce or no divorce, he wouldn’t temptFate again in another matrimonial venture even with a creature as beautiful as Helen, as wise as Portia, and with a million in her own right. Then he began to tell of the adventures between Julia and himself which had led to their separation, winding up with a description of their final scene, when Julia threw a dish at him and he in turn threw a bucket of ice-water over Julia. Before this, though, Mrs. Temple’s laughter had been heard. Freke issued from the room the picture of innocence, and at peace with himself and all the world. Mrs. Temple, on the contrary, was an image of guilt. Never had she before in her life been beguiled from a moral lecture into unseemly laughter—and laughter on such a subject! Mrs. Temple’s conscience rose up and fought her, and she began to think that all her moral foundation was tottering.
Surprises were the order of the day. One night, just after family prayers, when the gout, and the doubt whether anybody at all was to be saved, had caused General Temple to make a more pessimistic, vociferous, and grewsome prayer than usual, in which he called the Deity to account for so grievously afflicting the Temple family, Freke, whom Judith had caught smiling in the midst of General Temple’s most telling periods, quietly announced that he had that day bought Wareham, a place within two miles of Barn Elms.
It was not much of a place, being at most aboutthree hundred acres, with a small, untenanted house on it—and property went for a song, anyhow, in that part of the world—but, nevertheless, the news was paralyzing to General and Mrs. Temple. Judith, who was developing a certain dislike and distrust of Freke that grew daily, could hardly forbear laughing at the mute horror of General and Mrs. Temple over this unlooked-for news. Freke went on to say that a very little would make the place habitable for him, and he liked the fishing and shooting to be had—especially the shooting, as the birds had had four years’ rest during the war. Then he said good-night pleasantly, and went off to bed.
“This is the dev—I mean this is most unfortunate, my love,” remarked General Temple, dismally, to Mrs. Temple, at two o’clock in the morning following this, as he paraded up and down the “charmber,” declaiming against Freke’s iniquities.
Next day, Mrs. Sherrard came over, and the direful news was communicated to her by Mrs. Temple, with a very long face. Mrs. Sherrard’s eyes danced.
“Now you’ll know what it is to have a nephew that one would like to be entirely unlike what he is. That’s my trouble with Edmund Morford. You know, I hate a humbug—and Edmund is a good soul, but a dreadful humbug.”
“Katharine!” exclaimed Mrs. Temple. “A minister of the gospel—”
“Go along, Jane Temple! You have no eyes in your head where ministers of the gospel are concerned. Edmund is perfectly harmless—that’s one comfort.”
“I wish I could say the same of Temple Freke,” Mrs. Temple rejoined, dolefully.
It would be a week or two yet before Freke could take possession of Wareham. Some beds and tables and sheets and towels had to be procured, and meanwhile he stayed on at Barn Elms. It would not have taken a very astute person to see what the charm was. It was Judith.
When the knowledge first came to these two people—to Judith, that Freke’s eyes followed her continually; that, as if by some power beyond his will, his chair was always next hers, his ear always alert to catch her lightest word—to Freke, that this young country-woman, with her spirited, expressive face, her untutored singing—for music was one of his weak points, or strong ones, as the case might be—her gentle sarcasm when he essayed a little sentiment, pretty and tender enough to please a woman who knew twice as much as she; that at first sight, without an effort, she had conquered his bold spirit—it is hard to say which was the most vexed and disgusted. Judith found it easy enough to play the inconsolable widow where a man who aroused a positive antagonism like Freke was concerned, and denounced him in her ownmind as a wretch for daring to fall in love with her. And Freke—after New York women and Creole women, French, Spanish, Russian, English, and Italian women—to have been loved and petted, and virtually made free of women’s hearts; that this unsophisticated Virginia girl, who had never seen six men in her life, should simply take him off his feet, and that, without knowing it—was simply infuriating. In the privacy of his bedroom, as he smoked his last cigar before turning in, he swore at himself with a self-deprecation that was thoroughly genuine. What did he want to marry again for, anyway? Hadn’t he had all he wanted of that pastime? And, of course, being a divorced man, Judith would see him chopped into little pieces before she would marry him—and then the staggering thought that, even if he were not divorced, the odds were against her marrying him at all—it was altogether maddening. But he did not lose his head completely. Judith’s indifference—nay, dislike—saved to him his discretion. But had she warmed to him for one little moment—Freke, in thinking over this sweet impossibility, lay back in his chair and watched the smoke curling upward, and was lost in a delicious reverie—when suddenly, the utter preposterousness of it came to him, and he threw the cigar into the fire with a savage energy that nearly wrenched his arm off. No, the little devil—for he was not choice of epithets in regard to this woman—wouldthrow him away with as little conscience and remorse as he threw that cigar away! Like all men of many love-affairs, he regarded love-making as an æsthetic amusement; and while it was absolutely necessary for its perfection that the woman should be desperately in earnest—for Freke did not mind a tragic tinge being given to the matter—it was nonsense for a man to permit himself to be drawn into heroics—and yet—but for the indifference of this girl, who was always half laughing at him—he would not answer for any folly he might commit.
Then there was Jacqueline. She exactly suited him as a victim to his charms, sardonically expressing it to himself. She, too, was not particularly impressed with him as yet, but that was due to her ignorance. He could easily enlighten her, and she would be led like a slave by him; he could make her believe anything. So, in default of Judith, he might as well amuse himself with Jacqueline; and, by resolutely concealing his gigantic folly, he would in the end overcome it. But he felt like a man who, having a head to stand champagne and brandy and absinthe and every other intoxication, comes across something that looks as harmless as water, but which sets his brain on fire and makes him a madman.
The general and Mrs. Temple saw nothing; a man might have made love to Judith and have run away with her under their very noses before theywould have realized that it was possible for any man to dare falling in love with Beverley’s widow; and if Jacqueline’s eyes saw anything, she kept it wisely to herself.