Freke certainly added a new and picturesque element to their lives; even Judith could not deny that, although she habitually denied Freke the possession of any of the graces as well as the virtues. But that Freke was a wonderful, a gifted, a fascinating talker, she was forced to admit. His conversation was quite different from Throckmorton’s manly plainness of speech, who, with more brains than Freke, had not them as readily soluble in talk. Judith was acute enough to see the difference between the two men—one the man of conversation, and the other the man of action. Throckmorton knew many things, and one thing surpassingly well—his profession. Freke excelled in conversation; what he knew was imposing, but what he could do was not. However, he had not only traveled, but he had observed as well as read. He never made himself the hero of his own stories; and there was a sparkle in his eyes, an animation that gave a deeper tone to his voice, and Judith, in her dull and colorless life, could not but feel the charm of it. Nevertheless, it was not all charm. Judith felt as strongly as ever the incongruity of Freke with his surroundings.
So, some days more passed. Judith found thatin finesse she was no match for Freke. Indifferent to him as she might be, he could always place himself where he wanted—he managed to have a great deal more of her society than she would willingly have given him; but she reasoned shrewdly with herself—women being naturally clever in these things: “He will soon give it up. The game is not worth the candle.” And so it proved; for in a little while he began to shadow Jacqueline, and Jacqueline succumbed like a bird to the charmer. If Freke was present, Jacqueline, who was wont to be impatient when not noticed, would sit quite quietly by her sister-in-law’s side, sewing demurely, or walk beside her gravely, not opening her mouth but listening intently, as her changing color showed. One day, when Jacqueline went into the gloomy, darkened drawing-room to play, Freke followed her. Jacqueline sat down, and began some short familiar piece, but she could not render it. She missed notes, became confused, and finally gave up and left the piano in mortification.
“It is because you are here,” she said to Freke, with a child’s resentment.
“Is it, little girl?” he asked.
He was sitting quite at the other end of the room and did not come near her, but something in his tone made Jacqueline halt, and brought the ever-ready blood into her cheeks. Freke, after a moment, rose and sauntered toward her. As he came up to her hetook a stray lock of hair that had escaped, in curly perversity, from the comb; and, just as he stood with it in his fingers, the door opened and Simon Peter announced:
“Walk right in, Marse George. Mistis, she countin’ de tuckeys in de coop, but Miss Judy, she be ’long pres’n’y. Hi! Here Miss Jacky!”
Throckmorton walked in. His eye, which was as quick as a hawk’s, caught the whole thing in an instant, and a sort of jealousy sprang into life. Of course, he did not display the smallest symptom of it. He shook hands pleasantly with Jacqueline, and also with Freke, whom he had met several times. With his easy, worldly judgment, he by no means ranked Freke as the chief of sinners, but, without regarding him as a model citizen, found him extremely good company, which Freke certainly was. Jacqueline looked painfully embarrassed, but Freke’s coolness was simply indomitable. The two men made conversation naturally enough, while Jacqueline, awkwardly silent, sat and twisted the unlucky lock of hair in her fingers until a diversion was created by Judith’s entrance, with little Beverley clinging to her skirts. A faint, girlish blush came into Judith’s face when she met Throckmorton; and for his part he felt always the charm, the refinement, the sprightliness, more piquant because subdued, that exhaled like a perfume wherever Judith was. Beverley made for Throckmorton,and, before his mother could interpose a warning hand, was perched on the arm of Throckmorton’s chair, whence both of them defied her. Jacqueline made but one remark. She asked Throckmorton, timidly:
“How is young Mr. Throckmorton?”
At which the major scowled, but responded carelessly that Jack was all right, as far as he knew.
YoungMr. Throckmorton! and from those lovely lips!
Presently there was a grinding of wheels, and a commotion at the front door.
“Mrs. Sherrard, I know!” said Judith. “She always begins her salutations at the gate.”
Sounds were distinguishable.
“Mistis be mighty glad ter see you an’ Marse Edmun’. She down at de fattenin’-coop countin’ de tuckeys, kase we didn’t have no luck wid de tuckey-aigs lars’ season, an’ de wuffless hen-tuckeys—”
So much for Simon Peter, when Delilah’s voice broke in:
“Miss Kitty, ’twan’ de hen-tuckeys ’tall. Ef de gobblers wuz ter take turns, like de pigeons, a-settin’ on de aigs—”
“I allus did think dem he-pigeons look like de foolishest crittersIever see a-settin’ on de nes’ while de she-pigeons hoppin’ roun’ de groun’ ’stid o’ mindin’ dey business—”
“You are right, Simon Peter,” answered Mrs. Sherrard, still invisible. “I wonder that Delilah hasn’t profited by Mrs. Temple’s example. You’ve got visitors. Whose hat is this?”
“Marse George Throckmorton’s an’ Marse Temple Freke’s. I gwi’ tell mistis you here. Marse c’yarn leave de charmber yet, he gout so bad.”
Mrs. Sherrard marched in, followed by Edmund Morford. She wore her most commanding and hostile air. She had pooh-poohed Mrs. Temple’s dread of Freke, but she meant to give him to understand that his goings on, and particularly his matrimonial difficulties, were perfectly well known in the Severn neighborhood, and properly reprobated. So she shook hands all around, followed by the Rev. Edmund, who never trusted himself at Barn Elms, with those two pretty young women, alone and unprotected.
“I understand you have bought Wareham,” remarked Mrs. Sherrard, tartly, to Freke.
“I have,” answered Freke, very mildly.
“You’ll repent it.”
“Not if you make yourself as agreeable as you ought,” answered Freke.
The impudence of this tickled Mrs. Sherrard.
“I hear you are an entertaining fellow,” she said. “Come and talk to me.”
Just then Mrs. Temple entered, but Mrs. Sherrard kept fast hold of Freke. In half an hour he had wonher over. Judith, responding with an intelligent glance to a rather cynical smile on Throckmorton’s part, saw it. Not satisfied with winning Mrs. Sherrard over, Freke applied himself to Morford, and that excellent but guileless person fell an instant victim to Freke’s tact and power. Mrs. Sherrard was so pleased with her morning’s visit, that she invited them all over to Turkey Thicket to spend the following Thursday evening.
In the few days that followed, Judith saw more plainly that Freke was deliberately casting his spell over Jacqueline, and, from the soft and seductive flattery he had tried on her, Judith, at first, he exchanged something like sarcasm. He would discuss constancy before her, Judith meanwhile keeping her seat resolutely, but she could not prevent the tell-tale color from rising into her face. But when, as Freke generally did, he surmised that all the so-called constancy in this world wasn’t exactly what it purported to be, she grew pale beneath his gaze. He watched her intently whenever she was with Throckmorton, and the mere consciousness of being watched embarrassed while it angered her. Freke, whose perceptions were of the quickest, saw far into the future, and often repeated in his own mind the old, old truth that all the passions of human nature—love, hope, despair, jealousy, and revenge—could be found within the quietest and most peaceful circle.
The very next evening after Mrs. Sherrard’s visit, Freke appeared in the dusky drawing-room, whereJacqueline sat crouched over the fire, and Judith, with her child in her arms, sang him quaint Mother Goose melodies. When Freke came within the fire’s red circle of light, Judith observed that he had a violin and bow under his arm. Jacqueline jumped up delightedly.
“Oh, oh! do you know any music?”
“I can fiddle a little,” answered Freke, smiling.
He settled himself, and, in the midst of the deep silence of twilight in the country, began a concerto of Brahms. The first movement, anallegro, he played with a dainty, soft trippingness that was fit for fairies dancing by moonlight. The next, ascherzo, was full of tender suggestiveness—a dream told in music. The third movement was deeper, more tragic, full of sorrow and wailing. As Freke drew the bow across the G-string, he would bring out tones as deep as the ’cello, while suddenly the sharp cry of the treble would cut into the somber depths of the basso like the shriek of a soul in torment. A melody like a wandering spirit appeared out of the deep harmonies, and lost, yet ever found, would make itself heard with a sweet insistence, only to be swallowed up in a tempest of sound, like a bird lost in a storm. And presently there was an abatement, then a calm, and the music died, literally, amid the twilight dusk and gloom.
As Freke, with strange eyes, and his bow suspended, tremblingly, as if waiting for the spirit toreturn, ceased, there was a perfect silence. Jacqueline, who had never heard anything like it in her life, and who, all unknown to herself, was singularly susceptible to music, gazed at Freke as the magician who had made her dream dreams, and after a while cried out:
“Why do you play like that? I never heard anybody play so before.”
In answer, Freke again smiled, and played a wild Hungarian dance, fit for the dancing of bacchantes, so full of barbaric clash and rhythm, that Jacqueline suddenly sprang up and began to dance around the chairs and tables. Freke half turned to glance at her; he retarded the time, and softened the tones, when Jacqueline, too, danced slowly and dreamily—until presently, with a storm and a rush of music,fortissimoandprestissimo, and a resounding blare of chords that sounded like the shouts of a victorious army, he stopped and lay back in his chair, still smiling.
But, although Judith had twice Jacqueline’s knowledge of music, with all her feeling for it, Freke was piqued to see that she did not for a moment confound his music with his personality. She seemed to take a malicious pleasure in complimenting him glibly, which is the last snub to an artist. Freke was so vexed by her indifference, that he began to play cats mewing and dogs barking, on his fiddle, to frightenlittle Beverley, who looked at him with wide, scared eyes.
“Never mind, my darling,” cried Judith, laughing. “Be a brave little boy—only girls are scared at such things.”
Beverley, thus exhorted, summoned up his courage and proposed to get grandfather’s sword to defend himself. Judith’s laughter, the defiant light in her eyes, the passionate kiss she gave the boy as a reward for his bravery, annoyed Freke. His vanity as an artist, however, was consoled by hearing Simon Peter’s voice, in an awed and solemn whisper from the door, through which his woolly head was just visible in the surrounding darkness:
“I ’clar’ ter God, dat fiddle is got evils in it. I hear some on ’em hollerin’ an’ cryin’ fur ter git out, an’ some on ’em larfin’ an’ jumpin’. Marse Temple, dem is spirits in dat fiddle. I knows it.”
“They are, indeed; and, if I go down to the grave-yard at midnight and play, all the dead and gone Temples will rise out of their graves and dance around in their grave-clothes. Do you hear that?” said Freke, gravely.
“Lord God A’mighty!” yelled Simon Peter, “I gwi’ sleep wid a sifter” (a sieve) “over my hade ev’y night arter dis. Sifters keeps away de evils, kase dey slips th’u de holes.” And, sure enough, a sieve was hung up over Simon Peter’s bed that very night, witha rabbit’s foot as an additional safeguard, and a bunch of peacock’s feathers over the fireplace was ruthlessly thrown into the fire to propitiate “de evils.”
When Thursday evening came, General Temple was high and dry with the gout, and Mrs. Temple, of course, could not leave him alone to fight it out with Delilah.
“Ole marse, you gwi’ keep on havin’ de gout twell you w’yar a ole h’yar foot in yo’ pocket. I done tole you so, an’ I ain’ feerd ter keep on tellin’ you so,” was Delilah’s Job-like advice.
“That’s true,” snapped the general. “Gad, if I had had a thousand men in my brigade as little ‘feerd’ as you, I’ll be damned if I ever would have surrendered at Appomattox! God forgive me for swearing.”
“I hope and pray He will, my darling husband,” responded Mrs. Temple, with calm piety.
Jacqueline was in a fever of delight, as she always was when there was any prospect of going from home. She danced up and down, romped with little Beverley, and, hugging him, told him in a laughing whisper that she would see “somebody” at Turkey Thicket, and “somebody had beautiful black eyes, and was only twenty-two years old.”
Judith, too, felt that pleasurable excitement of which she began to be less and less ashamed. A few words dropped meaningly by Throckmorton, full ofthat sound sense which distinguished him, made her look differently at life. His philosophy was not Mrs. Temple’s. He reminded Judith that we should accept peace and tranquillity thankfully, and that it was no sin to be happy; and everything that Throckmorton said commended itself to Judith. For the first time in her narrow and secluded life she enjoyed with him the pleasure of being as clever as she wanted to be. He was no timid soul, like Edmund Morford, to fear a rival in a woman. It never occurred to Throckmorton to feel jealous of any woman’s wit. One of his greatest charms to Judith was that he was not in the least afraid of her. Her quick feminine humor, her natural acuteness, her knack of pretty expression in speech and writing, appeared in their true light, as mere accomplishments, contrasted with Throckmorton’s firm and masculine mind. The conviction of his mental grasp, his will-power, all that goes to make a man fitted to command a woman, had in it a subtile attraction for Judith, like the spell that beauty casts over a man. He was the only man in all her surroundings whose calm superiority over her was perfectly plain to her. It was only necessary for him to express an opinion, that Judith did not at once see its force. She sometimes differed courteously with him; but it began soon to be a perilous pleasure to her to find that usually Throckmorton was infinitely wiser, more liberal, more just than herself.
When the Thursday evening came, only Judith, Jacqueline, and Freke were to go. It had turned bitterly cold. Simon Peter, sitting in solitary magnificence on the box, handled the ribbons over the Kentucky horses, who dashed along so briskly that the carriage, which was in the last stage of “befo’ the war” decrepitude, threatened to tumble to pieces and drop them all in the road.
Going along, Jacqueline sat back in the carriage, very quiet and silent. Freke, with his back to the horses, talked to Judith. Occasionally in the darkness, by a passing gleam, he could see Jacqueline’s eyes shining.
“What do you think of Major Throckmorton,” he asked Judith.
Although not versed in knowledge of the world, Judith was not devoid of self-possession. The question, though, embarrassed her a little.
“I—I—think he is most interesting, kind—and—”
“Military men are, as a rule, rather narrow, don’t you think?”
“I never saw enough to judge. I should think they ought to be the other way.”
“Every time I see Throckmorton, the consciousness comes to me that I have seen him before—seen him under some tragical and unusual circumstances. If I didn’t know that those who have good consciences, like myself, should be above superstition, Ishould say that in some previous state of being I had known him; however, I am too strictly orthodox in my beliefs to tolerate such notions. But some time or other—perhaps to-night—I intend to find out from Throckmorton himself if we haven’t had the pleasure of meeting in another cycle or state of being. There is, by the way, an ineffable impudence in Throckmorton returning to this county now.”
Judith suspected that Freke’s peroration was made with the intention of provoking a reply.
They were driving along an open piece of the road, and it was comparatively light in the carriage, although there was no moon. Freke glancing up to see the cause of Judith’s silence, caught the gleam of her white teeth in a broad smile. She was laughing at him. It certainly was delicious to hear Temple Freke commenting on anybody’s having impudence in returning to the county. Freke, who hated to be laughed at, promised himself he would be avenged. “I’ll make you wince, my lady!” he thought to himself. Presently, though, Judith said, in a tone with a sharpness in it, like one who has been wounded:
“I can’t imagine anybody applying the word impudence to Major Throckmorton. He is very reserved—very dignified.”
“Throckmorton, I see, has an advocate.—And little Cousin Jacky, what do you think of the other Jacky—Jacky Throckmorton?”
“I think he’s perfectly delightful,” assented Jacqueline, after a pause.
Freke said no more about the Throckmortons. The women were evidently against him there; and soon they were driving up to the door at Turkey Thicket, and going up the hall stairs to take off their wraps, very much as on that last evening, when Mrs. Sherrard took occasion to rehabilitate Throckmorton in the good graces of the county people, as she was now trying to do with Freke.
When Judith and Jacqueline came down the stairs, Freke met them at the foot. Jacqueline had pleaded hard to wear a white dress, but Mrs. Temple was inexorable. She might catch cold; consequently, she wore a little prim, Quakerish gown of gray. Judith, as usual, was stately in black.
Throckmorton was standing on the rug before the drawing-room fire, talking gravely with Mrs. Sherrard. Edmund Morford was there and Dr. Wortley, who, with Jack Throckmorton, constituted the company. Mrs. Sherrard drew Judith into the conversation that she had been carrying on with Throckmorton. He said to Judith:
“I will continue what I was saying—but I assure you it is something I could speak of to but few people. It is this absolute barring out on the part of the county people toward me. Not a soul except Mrs. Sherrard and Mrs. Temple has asked me to breakbread. I thought I knew Virginians—I thought them the kindest, easiest, least angular people in the world; but, upon my soul, anything like this cold and deliberate ostracism I never witnessed! Why, half the county is related to me—and I’ve been to school with every man in it—and yet, I am a pariah!”
“You don’t look at it from their point of view,” replied Mrs. Sherrard, with more patience than was her wont. “Think how these people have suffered. You see yourself, never was there such ruin wrought, and then remember that you are associated with that ruin. Can’t you fancy the dull and silent resentment, the cold anger, with which they must regard all—”
“Blasted Yankees?” cheerfully remarked Throckmorton, recovering his spirits a little.
“But you know,” said Mrs. Sherrard, whose ideas on some subjects were rudimentary, but speaking kindly though positively, “you mustn’t wear your uniform down here.”
Throckmorton laughed rather harshly.
“As I’m not going to be married or buried, I can’t see what chance I would have to wear it. But what you say disposes me to put on my full-dress uniform, with sword and chapeau, and wear it to church on Sunday.”
Then Mrs. Sherrard went off after her latest passion, Temple Freke, and left Judith and Throckmorton standing together.
“I thinkIunderstand you,” said Judith, with her pretty air of diffidence. “But, as you know, the people here have one principle which stands for honor, and you have another. You have got power and—and—victory out ofyourprinciple, and we have got nothing but ruin and defeat and wretchedness out ofourprinciple. How can you hold us to a strict account?”
“I do not—God knows I do not!—but I want a little human kindness. I get it from a few. Dr. Wortley, who was my tutor at my grandfather’s, and has licked me a hundred times—and Morford, and the families at Turkey Thicket and Barn Elms—but none of them, I think,” continued Throckmorton, looking into Judith’s eyes with admiration, “exactly understand howIfeel as well as you. What kept me in the army was, as you say, a principle of honor. It was like a knife in me, every Southern officer who resigned. I respected them, because I knew, as only the naval and military men knew, that they were giving up not only their future and their children’s future, for what they thought right, but that they knew the overwhelming odds against them. I don’t believe any one of them really expected success—they knew too much—it was a sacrifice most disinterested. I could not go with them; but I had to face as much obloquy among my people by staying in the army as they had to face in going out. But I swear I nevergave one thought to the advantage to me of staying where I was! I stayed because I could not, as a man of honor, do otherwise, I thought my own people would recognize this—that by this time the bitterness would be over.”
“Never mind,” said Judith, with a heavenly smile, “it will come—it will come.”
A little later, Mrs. Sherrard whispered to Throckmorton:
“Are not my two beauties from Barn Elms sweet creatures?”
“Very,” answered Throckmorton, a dark flush showing under his tan and sunburn. “Little Jacqueline is a charming creature.”
“Oh, pooh! Jacqueline. You mean Judith.”
“Mrs. Beverley is most dignified, charming, and interesting; but little Miss Jacky—”
“I should think she would be a nice playmate for your Jack,” remarked Mrs. Sherrard.
Throckmorton looked awkward, not to say foolish. Had he forgotten his forty-four years, his iron-gray hair, all the scars of life? Jacqueline and Jack were inseparable from the start, and their two heads were close together on the deep, old-fashioned sofa, at that very moment.
“The major stole a march on me the other day, going over to Barn Elms,” remarked Jack, confidentially. “However, I’ll get even with him yet.”
“Oh, how can you talk so about your own father?”
“Why shouldn’t I talk so about my own father?”
“Because it’s not right.”
“Look here, Miss Jacky. Nobody thinks as much of the major as I do—he’s the kindest, noblest, gamest chap alive—but you see, I’m a man, and he’s a man. When he got married at twenty-one, he took the risk of having a son in the field before he was ready to quit himself.”
“Do you—do you remember your mother?” asked Jacqueline, in a low voice.
“No,” answered Jack, fixing his dark eyes seriously on Jacqueline. “I have a miniature of her that my father gave me when I was twenty-one. He keeps her picture in his room, and on the anniversary of her death he spends the day alone. Once in a great while he has talked to me about her.”
Jacqueline glanced at Throckmorton with a new interest. He was still talking to Judith. The pleased look on the major’s face aroused the mischievous devil in Jack. In five minutes Jacqueline, to her disgust and disappointment, found herself talking to Dr. Wortley, while Jack had established himself on the other side of Judith. Neither Throckmorton nor Judith was pleased to see him.
“You ought to hear my father tell about some of his campaigns ’way back in the fifties,” remarkedJack. “It’s a good while ago, but the major isn’t sensitive about his age like some men.”
Perhaps the major was not, but Jack’s observation was received in grim silence.
“I am sure Major Throckmorton can tell us a great many interesting things,” answered Judith, smiling involuntarily—“particularly to us who lead such quiet lives, and who know so little. I sometimes wonder how I shall ever be able to bring up my boy; I have so few ideas, and they seem to be all rusting away.”
“I thought you were a great reader,” said Throckmorton.
“I like to read, but—”
“My father is a Trojan of a reader,” continued Jack, “and his eyesight is really wonderful.”
At this the major, with the cast in his eye very obvious, rose and walked over to where Jacqueline was sitting. Jack had accomplished his object, and ran his father out of the field. But Judith felt a sense of bitter disappointment. However, with the sweetness of her nature, she overcame her resentful feelings toward Jack, and, in spite of his boyish disposition to make people uncomfortable, really began to like him.
Throckmorton, though, was not ill pleased on the whole. It was by an effort that he had kept away from Jacqueline until then. But, after talking withher awhile, he was not quite so well satisfied. Her childishness was pretty, and the acuteness of her remarks sometimes surprised him, but there was nothing to her—she talked and thought about herself. Throckmorton tried once or twice to get her into the channel of rational conversation, but Jacqueline rebelled. She acknowledged with a pretty smile that she hated books, and that she was poor company for herself. Throckmorton felt a tinge of pity for her. What would become of her twenty years hence—so pretty, so charming, so inconsequent?
Freke had in the mean time completed his conquest of Mrs. Sherrard. Presently he went to the piano and trolled out songs in a rich barytone, playing his own accompaniments. This musical gift was a revelation to Mrs. Sherrard. It was not comparable, though, to his violin-playing. Nevertheless, it was enough to turn Jacqueline’s head a little. Freke sang a sentimental song, with a tender refrain, and every time he sang this refrain he cast a glance at Jacqueline.
Gradually the blood mounted to her face, until, when he stopped, she was as rosy as the morning. Then Freke sat down by her, and after that Jacqueline had no eyes for anybody else—not even Jack.
Throckmorton saw it, with a strong disgust for Freke, and with that same strange pang of jealousy he had felt before. Judith’s angry disapproval burnedwithin her, but she made no attempt to circumvent Freke until, looking around after a while, she missed him and Jacqueline both.
Judith, watching her opportunity, slipped out into the hall, and there found the culprits. Jacqueline made a little futile effort to pretend that they were looking at some prints by the light of a solitary kerosene-lamp; but Freke, who at least had no pretence about him, held on boldly to Jacqueline’s hand, until she wrenched it away.
“Jacqueline, dear,” said Judith, trying to speak naturally, “it is cold out here; come in!”
“I’m not cold,” answered Jacqueline after a pause.
“But it is not polite to run away like this,” urged Judith, casting an angry look at Freke, who, with folded arms, was whistling softly.
“I can’t help that, Judith,” answered Jacqueline, pettishly. “Why do you want me in that stiff drawing-room with old Dr. Wortley and Mrs. Sherrard, and—”
“But Jacqueline,Iwant you!”
There was no mistaking that tone.
“Go along, Jacky,” said Freke, with cheerful submission. “You’ll be liable to catch some dreadful moral complaint if you breathe the same atmosphere with me too long. I am a sinner of high degree, I am.”
Jacqueline turned and sullenly followed Judithback, while Freke, smiling and unruffled, walked by her side. And then supper was served, but Jacqueline was perfectly distrait and could not keep her eyes off Freke, who was the life and soul of the party. The supper was after the Virginia order—very good—and so profuse it could not all be got on the table.
On the drive home there was perfect silence. Freke made one or two observations to Judith, but her cold silence convinced him that it was useless. He was not afraid of her, but he saw no good in pretending to placate her. When they reached Barn Elms and were standing in the cold hall, Judith said to Jacqueline:
“Go on. I shall be up in a moment.”
“I’ll wait for you,” replied Jacqueline, doggedly.
“You may wait, but I wish to speak to Freke privately. I shall take him into the drawing-room.”
At this, Jacqueline went slowly and unwillingly up the stairs.
Judith picked up the lamp and went into the dark drawing-room. The fire still smoldered dimly in the great fireplace. Freke took up the tongs and made a vigorous attack on the fire, and in two minutes the flames were leaping around the brass firedogs. Then he settled himself comfortably in the corner of the sofa.
Judith, although her determination was made, yet felt timid, and her heart beat.
“What excuse can you give,” she asked in an unsteady voice, “for your behavior with that child to-night?”
“None whatever,” answered Freke, coolly. “I am not bound to justify myself to you, nor do I admit there was anything to be excused.”
“You are right in saying you are not bound to justify yourself to me,” said Judith; “but can you justify yourself to her father and mother? You see how she is. You know what they—what we all—think of you. You are a married man, remember.”
“Am I?” asked Freke, laughing. “By Jove, I wish I knew whether I was or not!”
“What right have you to fill Jacqueline’s head with dreams and notions? The child was well enough until you came. Why can’t you go away and leave her in peace?”
Freke smiled at this. “I don’t feel like going away,” he said, “and particularly now that I see you wish me to go. I have rather different plans in view now that I have bought property here. It doesn’t look well for a man to be cast off by his relations; and I intend to have, if I can, the backing of the Temples.”
“But how long, think you, could you stay, if the child’s mother knew of your behavior to-night?”
“That I don’t know. But I wish to stay, Madam Judith; and, since you are so prudish, I will promiseyou not look at Jacqueline again. Will that satisfy you?”
“I will first see how you keep your promise. But I warn you, Freke, if you remain here much longer, I shall use all the influence in my power to get you out of this house. You are no advantage to the child. It would be better for her if you went away and never came back.”
Freke had been sitting all this time, while Judith, standing up, pale and disdainful, spoke to him. But now he rose.
“Now,” he said with sudden seriousness, “since you have expressed that hospitable intention concerning me, let me tell you something—something very interesting, that I have suspected for some time, but only found out to-night. You remember I told you of that death-struggle of Beverley’s with an officer—how they rolled over and over and fought.”
“Yes—yes—”
“And how the officer’s horse, held by the bridle, I thought every moment would trample—”
“Yes—yes—yes!” cried Judith.
“Well,” said Freke, coming up close to her, “Throckmorton was that officer!”
Freke had meant to give her one fierce pang; it was a delicious thing to him to strike her through Throckmorton; but he was quite unprepared for the result, for Judith, although young and strong, afterstanding for a moment gazing at Freke with wild eyes, swayed and without a sound dropped to the floor in a dead faint.
Freke, cursing his own folly, ran to her and called loudly. His voice echoed through the midnight silence of the house. It brought Mrs. Temple, frightened and half dressed, into the room, followed by Delilah, struggling into her petticoats, and Simon Peter, scratching his wool and but half awake.
Freke had raised Judith on his arm. Something strange, like pity, of which he knew but little, came to him as he looked at her pallid face.
“You git ’way, Marse Temple,” said Delilah, with authority. “Me an’ mistis kin manage dis heah.—Hi, Miss Judy! Open yo’ eyes, honey, an’ tell what de matter wid you.”
Mrs. Temple, who never lost her head in emergencies, in five minutes had Judith in a fair way of coming to herself. Freke said truthfully that he never was so surprised in his life as when Judith fell over. Mrs. Temple could not account for it either, and proposed to leave the solution to Dr. Wortley when he should be sent for in the morning. In a few minutes more Judith came to and sat up. Almost her first conscious glance fell on Freke. She gazed at him steadily, and in an instant the conviction that what he had said was mere wanton cruelty came to her. Freke himself avoided her glance uneasily.
“Honey, tell yo’ ole mammy wh’yar hu’ts you,” pleaded Delilah, anxious to take charge of the case in advance of Dr. Wortley.
“Nowhere at all. I only want to get to bed.—Mother, I hope father wasn’t waked.”
“My dear, nothing short of an explosion would wake him.”
Mrs. Temple wisely refrained from tormenting Judith with questions. Her fainting-fit was certainly unaccountable, but Mrs. Temple remembered once or twice in her own early days when she had done the same thing. So she merely gave Judith some brandy-and-water, and in a few minutes, with Delilah’s help, got her on the old-fashioned sofa.
While Mrs. Temple and Delilah were stirring about the room, shutting up for the night and raking the fire down, Freke came up to Judith. Revenge was familiar to him, but not revenge on women, and remorse was altogether new to him.
“What I told you,” he began, awkwardly, “the facts in the case—”
“Say no more about it; I don’t believe you!” answered Judith in a low voice, but scornful beyond description.
Freke’s rage blazed up under that tone.
“You don’t believe me? Then I’ll make Throckmorton tell you himself. I can find it out from himwithout his suspecting it, and I’ll make him tell you how he killed your husband.”
Judith drew back and gave him a look that was equivalent to a slap in the face. Just then Mrs. Temple and Delilah went out into the hall to make fast the door.
“Well, then, if by any accident you have told me the truth, it was the fortune of war—”
“Yes, but the hand that killed your husband! Ah! do you think I don’t see it all—all—all—not only what has happened, but what is happening now?”
Judith rose slowly from her sofa, forgetting her weakness. At that moment Freke thought he had never seen her look so handsome. Her eyes, usually a soft, dark gray, were black with indignation; her cheeks burned; she looked capable of killing him where he stood. She opened her lips once or twice to speak, but no sound came. She had no words to express what she felt at that moment. Freke felt a sensation of triumph. At last he had brought this proud spirit to book; and Throckmorton—at least if she scorned himself, Freke—she was forever out of Throckmorton’s reach. There was a gulf between them now that nothing on earth could bridge over. He stood in a calm and easy attitude, his face only less expressive than Judith’s. Nobody who saw Freke then could say, as Mrs. Temple sometimes had said,“What is there so interesting in Freke’s face?” It was full of power and passion.
It seemed an age to each as they stood there, but it was really only a few moments. Mrs. Temple and Delilah came back. Judith nodded to Freke, and walked off, disdaining Delilah’s arm. She felt pride in showing him her strength and composure. She even glanced back at him, and gave him a smile from her pale lips.
“You have a spirit like a man!” he cried after her, involuntarily. Mrs. Temple thought he meant because Judith had rallied so quickly from her fainting-fit.
“Rather a spirit like a woman!” answered Judith, in a loud, clear voice, as she went up the stairs.
It was some little time before she could get rid of Mrs. Temple and Delilah. But presently the door was locked, and she was alone.
Some power beyond her will drew her steps to the window that looked toward Millenbeck. The moon had gone down, and a few clouds scurried across the pale immensity of the sky, whipped by the winds of night. There was enough of the ghastly half-light to distinguish the dark masses of the trees and even the outline of the Millenbeck house. From the window which she knew well enough belonged to Throckmorton’s own den the cheerful light still streamed. He was sitting there, reading and smoking, no doubt.She could imagine exactly how he looked. His face, when he was silent, was rather stern, which made the charm of his smile and his words more captivating by contrast. And what horror she ought to feel of this man!—for, in spite of that first involuntary protest that she did not believe Freke, the heart-breaking conviction came to her every moment that he was telling the truth. But did she feel horror and hatred of Throckmorton? Ah! no. And when she tried to think of Beverley, the feeling that he was dead; that he would trouble her no more; that he was forever gone out of her life, filled her with something that was frightfully like joy.
But when she remembered that an open grave lay between her and Throckmorton, it was not something like anguish she felt—it was anguish itself. Here was a man she might have loved—a man infinitely worthy of love—this much she acknowledged to herself; and yet Fate had married her to a man she never could have loved. For at that moment she saw as by a flash of lightning the falseness of her marriage and her widowhood. She dared not think any longer; she could only throw herself on her bed, and try and stifle among the pillows her sobs and cries. And, remembering Beverley and Throckmorton and Freke, and his words to her that night, this gentle and soft-hearted creature sounded all the depths of grief, love, shame, hatred. She tried to pray, but her prayers—ifprayers they could be called—were mere outcries against the inexorable and unpitying God. “Dear Lord, what have I done to thee that I should suffer so?”
The night wore on, the candles burned out, the fire was a mere red glow of embers. Anguish and despair, like other passions, spend themselves. Judith had ceased to weep, and lay on her bed with a sort of icy torpor upon her. Little Beverley, who rarely stirred in his sleep, waked up and called for his mother; but even the child’s voice had no power to move her. The little boy, finding himself unnoticed, crawled out of his small bed and came to his mother’s side. The sound of his baby voice, the touch of his little warm, moist hands, awakened something like remorse in her. She tried to help him up on the bed, but her arms fell helplessly—she, this strong young woman, was as weak as a child with the conflict of emotions. The boy, however—a sturdy little fellow—climbed up alone and nestled to her. She covered him up and held him close to her, and kissed him coldly once or twice. “My child, he killed your father,” she said to him, thinking of Throckmorton, and that perhaps, for the child’s sake, she might arouse some feeble spark of regret for the father—some dutiful hatred of Throckmorton. But she could do neither the one nor the other.
At last, as a wet, miserable, gloomy dawn approached,she fell into a wretched sleep. Judith’s unexpected fainting-fit was a very good excuse for her keeping her room for a day or two—a merciful provision for her, as, along with other new experiences, she found for the first time that her soul was stronger than her body, and that grief had made her ill. She expected, in all those wretched hours that she lay in her darkened room, that every time the door opened it would be Mrs. Temple coming with a ghastly face to tell her the dreadful thing that Freke knew; and the mere apprehension made her heart stand still. She, this candid and sincere woman, rehearsed to herself the very words and tones that she would express a grief and horror she did not feel. But when several days passed, and the explosion did not come, she concluded that Freke, for his own reasons, meant to keep it to himself.
For Freke’s part, he had no intention of telling anybody except Judith. He had no mind to bring about the storm that would follow his revelation. He meant to show Judith that gulf between Throckmorton and herself, and that was all. He would have been unfeignedly sorry had the hospitable doors of Millenbeck been no longer open to him.
When Judith came down-stairs, he felt a great curiosity to know how she would meet him. He himself was perfectly easy and natural in his manner to her; and she, to his enforced admiration, wasequally self-possessed with him, although she could not always control the expression of her eyes. “What a Spartan she is!” thought Freke to himself. “She could die of grief and chagrin with a smile on her lips, and with her voice as smooth and musical as the velvet wind of summer.”
The autumn crept on. Freke had gone to Wareham, to Judith’s delight, but she found that she had rejoiced too soon, for he was at Barn Elms nearly every day. The still, silent enmity between Judith and himself showed itself, on her part, by a certain fine scorn—an almost imperceptible raising of her narrow brows, that was infuriating to Freke. Still, he could not shake her self-possession. She even listened to his talk, and to his captivating violin-playing, with a cool and critical pleasure. When, as often happened, his step was heard in the hall at twilight, and he would walk into the drawing-room or the dining-room, as if Barn Elms were his home, with his violin in his hand—for he kept one at Barn Elms—and seating himself would begin to play in his masterly way, Judith would listen as closely as Jacqueline. But the spell was merely the spell of the music. She could listen to the celestial thrilling of the strings, the soft lamenting, without in the slightest degree succumbing to the player—not even when Freke, playing a wandering accompaniment, like another airfrom the one he was singing, would sing some of Heine’s sea-songs, in which she could almost hear the sound of the wind as it rose and wailed and died upon the waves. When the music stopped, and Freke would look at her piercingly, she was no more moved by it emotionally than General Temple was, who pronounced it “uncommon fine fiddling, by George! Some of the tunes haven’t got much tune, though.” This unbroken resistance on Judith’s part piqued Freke immeasurably; but quite naturally, as it often is with men of his temperament, as he could not please her, he determined to spite her—and he did it by a silent, furtive courtship of Jacqueline. Of this, neither General nor Mrs. Temple suspected anything. In one sense, the girl had suffered from neglect. Beverley had been the favorite of both parents. He had been the conventional good son, the comfort of his parents’ hearts, while Jacqueline was more or less of a puzzle to both of them. In vain Mrs. Temple tried to interest her in household affairs; Jacqueline would have none of them. She shocked and mystified her mother by saying that she hated Barn Elms—it was so old and shabby, and there were not enough carpets and curtains in the house; and the hair-cloth furniture in the drawing-room made her ill. Mrs. Temple, who excelled in all sweet, feminine virtues, who would have loved and bettered any home given her, thought this sort of thing on Jacqueline’s part very depraved.The mother and the daughter did not understand each other, and could not. Judith’s superior intelligence here came in. Jacqueline loved her, and, while she obeyed her mother from sheer force of will on Mrs. Temple’s part, she rebelled against being influenced by her. Judith, on the contrary, without a particle of authority over Jacqueline, could do anything she wished with her. Mrs. Temple could only command and be obeyed in outward things, but Judith ruled Jacqueline’s inner soul more than anybody else.
The county people, outside of the Severn neighborhood, still held perfectly aloof from Throckmorton. This angered him somewhat, although, as a matter of fact, the people who did recognize him supplied him with all the company he wanted; for Throckmorton was always enough for himself, and depended upon no man and no woman for his content. He had bought Millenbeck and come there for a year, and a year he would stay, no matter what the Carters and the Carringtons and the Randolphs thought about it. Then he really had enough of company, and all the books and cigars he wanted, and plenty of the finest shooting, although he never killed a robin after that absurd promise he made to Jacqueline, but he never saw one without giving a thought to her and a grim smile at himself. And so the quiet autumn slipped away. Throckmorton felt every day the charmof exquisite repose. In his life he had known a good deal of excitement—the four years of the war he had been in active service all the time—and this return to quiet and a sort of refined primitiveness pleased him. He was charmed with the simplicity of the people at Barn Elms—the simplicity of genuine country people, whose outlook is upon nature. He had often heard that country people never were really sophisticated, and he began to believe it. Even in the stirrings of his own heart toward the place of his boyhood, after the lapse of so many busy and exciting years, he recognized the spell that Nature lays softly upon those whose young eyes have seen nothing but her. Throckmorton, in spite of a certain firmness that was almost hardness, was at heart a sentimentalist. He found content, pleasure, and interest in this lazy, dreamy life. Of happiness he had discovered that, except during that early married life of his, he had none, for he was too wise to confound peace and happiness. At forty-four, when his dark hair had turned quite gray, he acknowledged to himself that nothing deserved the name of happiness but love. But all these dreams and fancies he kept to himself, and revolved chiefly in his mind when he was tramping along the country roads with a gun over his shoulder, or stretched before a blazing wood-fire in the library at Millenbeck smoking strong cigars by the dozen. He managed to keep his sentimentalism well out of sight,not because he was ashamed of it, but because he respected it.
Freke was a positive acquisition to him. Throckmorton had that sort of broad, masculine tolerance that can find excuses for everything a man may do except cheating at cards. Freke came constantly to Millenbeck, much oftener than Throckmorton went to Wareham.
Millenbeck, though, was a pleasant place to visit. Throckmorton had left the restoration and fitting up of the place to people who understood their business well; and consequently, when he arrived, he found he had one of the most comfortable, if not luxurious, country-houses that could be imagined. His fortune, which at the North would have been nothing more than a handsome competence, was a superb patrimony in the ruined Virginia, and with ready money and Sweeney anybody could be comfortable, Throckmorton thought. The Rev. Edmund Morford also gave him much of his (Morford’s) company, and obtained a vast number of household receipts and learned many contrivances for domestic comfort from Sweeney.
“Be jabers, the parson’s more of an ould woman than mesilf,” Sweeney would remark to his colored coadjutors. “He can make as good white gravy as any she-cook going, and counts his sheets and towels every week as reg’lar as the mother of him did, I warrant,” which was quite true. But the parson’sgood heart outweighed his innocent conceit and his effeminate beauty with Throckmorton. Morford tried conscientiously to get Throckmorton into the church, but with ill success.
“Sink the parson, Morford,” Throckmorton would laugh. “Perhaps I’ll get married some day, and my wife will pray me into heaven, like most of the men who get there, I suspect.”
Nevertheless Throckmorton had a reverent soul, and, although he would have turned pale and have been constrained by an iron silence had he got up and tried to open his mouth on the subject of the inscrutable problems that Morford attacked with such glib self-sufficiency, he revered religion and did not scoff even at the callowest form of it.
Both Jack and himself got to going over to Barn Elms often; Throckmorton, however, being an old bird, exercised considerable wariness, so as not to collide with Jack at these times. Jack kept up a continual fire from ambush at his father, regarding which of the young women at Barn Elms the major would eventually capitulate to; but Throckmorton treated this with the dignified silence that was the only weapon against Jack’s sly rallying. As for General Temple, he regarded all of Throckmorton’s visits as particularly directed toward himself, for the purpose of acquiring military knowledge; and Throckmorton heard more of the theory of war from General Templeat this time than he ever heard in all his life before. While the general, who had all campaigns, modern and ancient, at his finger-ends, declaimed with sonorous confidence on the mistakes of Hannibal, Cæsar, Scipio, and other well-known military characters, Throckmorton listened meekly, seldom venturing an observation. General Temple indicated a faint surprise that Throckmorton, during his career, had never undergone any of the thrilling adventures which had actually happened to General Temple, who would have been a great soldier after the pattern of Brian de Bois Guilbert; nor could Throckmorton convince him that he, Throckmorton, conceived it his duty to stay with his men, and considered unnecessary seeking of danger as unsoldier-like in the highest degree. Throckmorton, however, did not argue the point. In place of General Temple’s innumerable and real hair-breadth escapes, and horses shot under him, Throckmorton could only say that the solitary physical injury he received during the war was a bad rheumaticky arm from sleeping in the wet, and a troublesome attack of measles caught by visiting his men in the hospital. But General Temple knew that Throckmorton had been mentioned half a dozen times in general orders, and had got several brevets, while General Temple had narrowly missed half a dozen courts-martial for being where he didn’t belong at a critical time. The fact that he was in imminent personal danger on allthese occasions, General Temple considered not only an ample excuse, but quite a feather in his cap.
Occasionally, though (during the general’s disquisitions), Throckmorton’s eye would seek Judith’s as she sat under the lamp, with a piece of delicate embroidery in her hand, stitching demurely, and something like a smile would pass between them. Judith understood the joke. The mingled softness and archness of her glance was very beautiful to Throckmorton, but it had not the power over him of Jacqueline’s coquettish air. Throckmorton was rather vexed at the charm this kittenish young thing cast over him. He had always professed a great aversion to young fools, who invariably turn into old bores, but he could not deny that he was more drawn to sit near Jacqueline in her low chair, than to Judith sitting gracefully upright under the lamp. That Jacqueline was not far off from folly, he was forced to admit to himself every time he talked with her, but the admission brought with it a slight pang. Then he never lost sight of the disparity in their years; and this was painful because of the secret attraction he felt for her. Sometimes, walking home from Barn Elms, across the fields in autumn nights, he would find himself comparing the two women, and wishing that the older woman possessed for him the subtle charm of the younger one. Any man might love Judith Temple—she was so gentle, so unconscious of her own superiorityto the average woman, so winning upon one’s reason and self-respect—and then Throckmorton would sigh, and stride faster along the path in the wintry darkness. Suppose—suppose he should seriously try to win Jacqueline? How long would he be happy? And what sort of a life would it be for her, with that childish restlessness and inability to depend for one moment on herself? And Throckmorton knew instinctively that, although he possessed great power in bending women to his will, it was not in him to adapt himself to any woman. He might love her, indulge her, adore her, but he could not change his fixed and immutable character one iota. It would be a peculiar madness for him to marry any woman who did not possess adaptability in a high degree; and this Throckmorton had known, ever since he had grown hair on his face, went only with a certain mental force and breadth in women. He had the whole theory mapped out, that the more intellectual a man was, the less adaptable he was, while with women the converse was strikingly true—the more intellectual a woman was, the more adaptable she was. He also knew perfectly well that in women the emotions and the intellect are so inextricably involved that a woman’s emotional range was exactly limited by her intellectual range; that there is nothing more commonplace in a commonplace woman than her emotions. Nay, more. He rememberedDr. Johnson’s thundering against female fools: “Sir, a man usually marries a fool, with the expectation of ruling her; but the fool, sir, invariably rules the man.” But all this went to pieces when he saw Jacqueline. She was to him as if a figure of Youth had stepped out of a white Greek frieze; and whenever he realized this charm of hers, he sighed to himself profoundly.
People are never too old or too sensible to commit follies, but people of sense and experience suffer the misery of knowing all about their follies when they do commit them.
To Freke, who was incomparably the keenest observer in all this little circle, the whole thing was a psychic study of great interest. He had the art in a singular degree of getting outside of his own emotions; and the fact that he had been guilty of the egregious folly of falling in love with Judith at first sight made him only keener in studying out the situation. He took an abstract pleasure in partly confiding his discoveries to Mrs. Sherrard, who was a bold woman, and had become an out-and-out partisan of his—the only one he could count on, except Jacqueline, under the rose. It was a subject of active concern why Freke ever bought Wareham in the beginning, and still more so why he should continue to stay there. When pressed on the subject by Mrs. Sherrard—they were sitting in the comfortable drawing-roomat Turkey Thicket, the blazing wood-fire making the dull wintry afternoon, and the flat, monotonous landscape outside more dreary by contrast—Freke declared that he had settled in the country in order to cultivate the domestic virtues to advantage.
“Pooh!” said Mrs. Sherrard.
Freke then hinted at a possibility of his marrying, which, considering his divorced condition, gave Mrs. Sherrard a thrill of horror. He saw in an instant that this divorce question was one upon which Mrs. Sherrard’s prejudices, like those of everybody else in the county, were adamantine, and not to be trifled with; so he dropped the obnoxious subject promptly and wisely.
“The fact is,” he said, standing up with his back to the fire, and causing Mrs. Sherrard to notice how excellent was his slight but well-knit figure, “I’ve got to live somewhere, and why not here? I don’t know whether I’ve got anything left of my money or not—anything, that is, that my creditors or my lawyers will let me have in peace—but there’s excellent shooting on the place, and it only cost a song. I think I can stay here as long as I can stay anywhere; you know I am a sort of civilized Bedouin anyhow. And then I own up to a desire to see that little comedy between—between—Millenbeck and Barn Elms played through. It’s an amusing little piece.”
Mrs. Sherrard pricked up her ears. Freke’s reputationas a conquering hero had inspired in her the interest it always does in the female breast. Was it possible that he shouldn’t be making love to either Judith or Jacqueline?
“I’ll tell you what,” he cried, smiling, “they are the most precious pack of innocents at Barn Elms! There’s my uncle—a high-minded, good-natured, unterrified old blunderbuss—the most unsophisticated of the lot. Then my aunt, who belongs properly to the age of Rowena and Rebecca—and Judith.”
Here Freke’s countenance changed a little from its laughing carelessness. His rather ordinary features were full of a piercing and subtile expression.
“Judith fancies, because she has been a wife, a mother, and a widow, that she knows the whole gamut of life, when actually she has only struck the first note correctly a little while ago—no, I forget—that young one. But that’s very one-sided, although intense. She loves the child because he is her own, not because he is Beverley’s—rather in spite of it, I fancy.”
Mrs. Sherrard, in the excitement of the moment—for what is more exciting than unexpected and inside discoveries about our neighbors?—got up too.
“I knew it—I knew it!” she answered, her sharp old eyes getting bright. “I saw Judith when she was a bride, and she wasn’t in the least rapturous. And the next time I saw her she had on that oddwidow’s cap she wears, and that blessed baby in her arms; and if ever I saw secret happiness painted on any human countenance it was hers; and all the time she was trying to imagine herself broken-hearted for Beverley Temple.”
“Fudge!” almost shouted Freke. “It’s my belief she’d have traded off six husbands like Beverley for one black-eyed boy like that young one.”
“Beverley,” began Mrs. Sherrard, delighted, yet fluttered by this plain speaking, “you remember, was a big, handsome fellow—rode like a centaur, danced beautifully, the best shot in the county—as polite as a dancing-master or—General Temple—as brave as a lion—”
“Oh, good God, don’t talk to me about Beverley Temple! He was the most wooden-headed Temple I ever knew, and that’s saying a good deal, ma’am!” responded Freke, with energy.
“Youare no fool,” said Mrs. Sherrard, as if willing to argue the point.
“Yes, but you couldn’t any more take me as a type of the Temples than you could take Edmund Morford as a type of the Sherrards. Lord, Mrs. Sherrard, what an ass your nephew is!”
“Isn’t he, though? But he is a good soul,” was Mrs. Sherrard’s answer.
Was it Judith or was it Jacqueline that Freke was trying his charms on, thought Mrs. Sherrard, takingher afternoon nap over the fire, after Freke left. Freke, however, really could not have enlightened her. For Judith his admiration increased every day—her very defiance of him was captivating to him. He well knew that she hated every bone in his body, and he had made up his mind, as a set-off to this, to get a description of a certain scene during the war out of Throckmorton some time in her presence. It was a species of vivisection, but she deserved it—deserved it richly—for had she not brought it on herself by the way she treated him, Temple Freke? And then Jacqueline—she was certainly a fascinating little object, though not half the woman that Judith was—this Freke magnanimously allowed, riding briskly along the country road in the wintry twilight.
The family at Barn Elms had never yet dined with Throckmorton, owing to General Temple’s continued wrestle with the gout, that had now made him a prisoner for four long weeks. Mrs. Temple, who every day got fonder of George, as she called Throckmorton, had promised to dine at Millenbeck when the general was able to go; but, as she invested all their intercourse with Millenbeck with the solemnity of a formal reconciliation, she delayed until the whole family could go in state and ceremony. At last Dr. Wortley, having gained a temporary advantage over Delilah, and brought General Temple to observe his (Dr. Wortley’s) regimen, instead of Delilah’s, a weekor two marked a decided improvement. The general’s Calvinism abated, his profanity mended, and he became once more the amiable soldier and stanch churchman that he was by nature.
“Now, Mrs. Temple,” said Throckmorton one evening as he was going away, “if you will keep the general out of mischief for a day or two longer, you will be able to pay me that long-promised visit. Let me know, so I can get Mrs. Sherrard and Dr. Wortley—and Morford and Freke; but you, my dear friend, will be the guest of honor.”
Mrs. Temple blushed like a girl, with pleasure—Throckmorton’s way of saying this was so whole-souled and affectionate.
“You say right, my dear Throckmorton,” remarked General Temple, putting his arm around Mrs. Temple’s waist, “the tenderest, sweetest, most obedient wife”—at which Simon Peter, putting wood on the fire, snickered audibly, and Throckmorton would have laughed outright had he dared.
So it was fixed that on the following Friday evening they were all to dine at Millenbeck, Mrs. Temple promising to watch the general, lest he should relapse into gout and gloom—and a promise from Mrs. Temple was a promise. She went about, a little surprised at the complete way that Throckmorton had brought her round. Here was one Yankee whom she loved with a genuine motherly affection—and he was aVirginia Yankee, too—which she esteemed the very worst kind.
Jacqueline, as usual, was off her head at the notion of going, and Judith’s suppressed excitement did not escape Mrs. Temple’s eye. Both of them, provincials of provincials, as they were, felt a true feminine curiosity regarding the reputed splendors of Millenbeck, which was, in fact, destined to dazzle their countryfied eyes.
On the Friday evening, therefore, at half-past six, they found themselves driving down the Millenbeck lane. General Temple had begun, figuratively speaking, to shake hands across the bloody chasm from the moment he started from Barn Elms. He harangued the whole way upon the touching aspect of the reconciliation between the great leaders of the hostile armies, as typified by his present expedition. Going down the lane they caught up with Mrs. Sherrard, being driven by Mr. Morford in a top buggy.
“Jane Temple, are we a couple of fools?” called out Mrs. Sherrard, putting her head out of the buggy.
“No, Katharine Sherrard, we are a couple of Christians,” piously responded Mrs. Temple.
General Temple thrust his bare head out of the carriage-window, holding his hat in his hand, as it was his unbroken rule never to speak to a woman with his head covered, and entered into a disquisitionrespecting the ethics of the great civil war, which lasted until they drew up to the very door of Millenbeck.
A handsome graveled drive led up to the door, and aporte-cochère, which was really a very modest affair of glass and iron, had been thrown over the drive; but, as it was the only one ever seen in the county, all of them regarded it with great respect. Throckmorton, with old-time Virginia hospitality, met them at the steps. Like all true gentlemen, he was a model host. As he helped Mrs. Temple to alight, he raised her small, withered hand to his lips and kissed it respectfully.
“Welcome to Millenbeck, my best and earliest friend,” he said.
“George Throckmorton,” responded Mrs. Temple, with sweet gravity, “you have taught forgiveness to my hard and unforgiving heart.”
Within the house was more magnificence. The inevitable great, dark, useless hall was robbed of its coldness and bleakness by soft Turkish rugs placed over the polished floor. There was no way of heating it in the original plan, but Throckmorton’s decorator and furnisher had hit upon the plan of having a quaint Dutch stove, which now glowed redly with a hard-coal fire. The startling innovation of lighting the broad oak staircase had likewise been adopted, and at intervals up the stairwaywax-candles in sconces shed a mellow half-light in the hall below.
General Temple was exuberant. He shook hands with Throckmorton half a dozen times, and informed him that, strange as the defection of a Virginian from his native State might appear, he, General Temple, believed that Throckmorton was actuated by conscientious though mistaken notions in remaining in the army after the breaking out of the war.
“Thank you,” laughed Throckmorton, immensely tickled; “I haven’t apologized for it yet, have I, general?”
Up-stairs, in a luxurious spare bedroom, the ladies’ wraps were laid aside. Here, also, that perfect comfort prevailed, which is rare in Virginia country-houses, although luxury, in certain ways, is common enough. As they passed an open door, going down, they caught sight of Throckmorton’s own room. In that alone a Spartan simplicity reigned. There was no carpet on the spotless floor, and an iron bedstead, a large table, and a few chairs completed the furnishing of it. But it had an air of exquisite neatness and military preciseness in it that made an atmosphere about Throckmorton. Over the unornamented mantel two swords were crossed, and over them was a pretty, girlish portrait of Jack’s mother. Judith, in passing, craned her long, white neck to get a betterlook at the portrait, was caught in the act by Mrs. Temple, and blushed furiously.
She had a strange sensation of both joy and fear in coming to Throckmorton’s house. In her inmost soul she felt it to be a crime of great magnitude; and, indeed, the circumstances made it about as nearly a crime as such a woman could commit. More than that, if it should ever be known—and it was liable to be known at any moment—the deliberate foreknowledge with which she went to Millenbeck, she would never be allowed to remain another hour under the roof of Barn Elms: of that much she was perfectly sure. This, however, had but little effect on her, although she was risking not only her own but her child’s future; but the conviction that it was absolutely wrong for her to go, caused her to make some paltering excuse when Throckmorton first asked her. He put it aside with his usual calm superiority in dealing with her scruples about going to places, and she yielded to the sweet temptation of obeying his wishes. She took pains, though, to tell Freke herself that she was going—a risky but delicious piece of braggadocio—at which Freke lifted his eyebrows slightly. Inwardly he determined to make her pay for her rashness. She was the only woman who had ever fought him, and he was not to be driven off the field by any of the sex.