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THROCKMORTON
A NOVEL
BY
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers :: :: New York
COPYRIGHT, 1890
BY D. APPLETON & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1909
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
THROCKMORTON.
CHAPTER I.
In a lowland Virginia neighborhood, strangely cut off from the rest of
the world geographically, and wrapped in a profound and charming
stillness, a little universe exists. It has its oracles of law,
medicine, and divinity; its wars and alliances. Free from that outward
contact which makes an intolerable sameness among people, its types
develop quaintly. There is peace, and elbow-room for everybody's
peculiarities.
Such was the Severn neighborhood--called so from Severn church. Every
brick in this old pile had been brought from green England two hundred
years before. It seemed as if, in those early days, nothing made with
hands should be without picturesqueness; and so this ancient church,
paid for in hogsheads of black tobacco, which was also the currency in
which the hard-riding, hard-drinking parsons took their dues, was peaked
and gabled most beautifully. The bricks, mellowed by two centuries, had
become a rich, dull red, upon which, year after year, in the enchanted
Southern summers and the fitful Southern winters, mosses and gray
lichens laid their clinging fingers. It was set far back from the broad,
white road, and gnarled live-oaks and silver beeches and the melancholy
weeping-willows grew about the churchyard. Their roots had pushed, with
gentle persistence, through the crumbling brick wall that surrounded it,
where most of the tombstones rested peacefully upon the ground as they
chanced to fall. Within the church itself, modern low-backed pews had
supplanted the ancient square boxes during an outbreak of philistinism
in the fifties. At the same time, a wooden flooring had been laid over
the flat stones in the aisles, under which dead and gone vicars--for the
parish had a vicar in colonial days--slept quietly. The interior was
darkened by the branches of the trees that pressed against the wall and
peered curiously through the small, clear panes of the oblong windows;
and over all the singular, unbroken peace and silence of the region
brooded.
The country round about was fruitful and tame, the slightly rolling
landscape becoming as flat as Holland toward the rich river-bottoms. The
rivers were really estuaries, making in from the salt ocean bays, and as
briny as the sea itself. Next the church was the parsonage land, still
known as the Glebe, although glebes and tithes had been dead these
hundred years. The Glebe house, which was originally plain and
old-fashioned, had been smartened up by the rector, the Rev. Edmund
Morford, until it looked like an old country-woman masquerading in a
ballet costume; but the Rev. Edmund thought it beautiful, and only
watched his chance to lay sacrilegious hands on the old church and to
plaster it all over with ecclesiastical knickknacks of various sorts.
The Rev. Mr. Morford had come into the world handicapped by the most
remarkable personal beauty, and extreme fluency of tongue. Otherwise, he
was an honest and conscientious man. But he belonged to that common
class among ecclesiastics who know all about the unknowable, and have
accurately measured the unfathomable. On Sundays, when he got up in
the venerable pulpit at Severn, looking so amazingly handsome in his
snow-white surplice, he dived into the everlasting mysteries with a
cocksureness that was appalling or delightful according to the view one
took of it. In the tabernacle of his soul, which was quite empty of
guile and malice, three devils had taken up their abode: one was the
conviction of his own beauty, another was the conviction of his own
cleverness, and still another was the suspicion that every woman who
looked at him wanted to marry him. Mr. Morford reasoned thus:
I. That all women want to get married.
II. That an Edmund Morford is not to be picked up every day.
III. That eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
On Sundays he scarcely dared look toward the pew where General and Mrs.
Temple sat, with their beautiful widowed daughter-in-law, Mrs. Beverley
Temple, on one side of them, and Jacqueline Temple, as lovely in her
small, kittenish way, on the other, for fear that one or the other of
these young women would fall hopelessly in love with him. Mrs. Beverley,
as the young widow was called, to distinguish her from the elder Mrs.
Temple, had the fatal charm for the Rev. Edmund that all things feared
and admired have. He believed in his heart of hearts that widows were
made for his undoing, and that the good old Hindoo custom of burning
them up alive was the only really safe disposition to make of them. The
charm of Judith Temple's piquant face and soft, shy eyes was somewhat
neutralized by a grim suspicion lodged in Mr. Morford's mind that she
was unnecessarily clever. The Rev. Edmund had a wholesome awe of clever
women, especially if they had a knack of humor, and was very much afraid
of them. Judith had a sedate way of replying to Morford's resounding
platitudes that sometimes created a laugh, and when he laboriously
unwound the meaning, he was apt to find the germ of a joke; and Judith
was so grave--her eyes were so sweetly serious when she was laying traps
to catch the Rev. Edmund's sluggish wits. But Judith herself thought of
no man whatever, and had learned to regard the sparkle of her
unquenchable humor almost as a sin. However, having got a bad name for
cleverness, neither the most sincere modesty nor the deepest courtesy
availed her in keeping it quiet. Morford, in his simple soul, thought a
clever woman could do anything; and suppose Judith should cast her eyes
on--at this the Rev. Edmund would turn pale in the midst of his sermon
when he caught Judith's gray eyes fixed soberly on him. Soberness--and
particularly Judith's soberness--was deceitful.
Barn Elms, the Temple place, was near to the Glebe and to Severn church.
The house was rambling and shabby, and had been patched and pieced, with
an utter disregard of architectural proportion that resulted in a
curious and unexpected picturesqueness. A room was put on here, and a
porch was clapped up there, just as the fancy of each successive Temple
had dictated. It was partly of brick and partly of stone. Around it
stood in tall ranks the solemn, black-leaved poplars, and great
locust-trees grew so close to the house that on windy nights the sound
of their giant arms beating the shingled roof awoke superstitious fears
in the negroes, who declared it to be the "sperrits" of dead and gone
Temples struggling to get in through the chimneys. There was a step up
or a step down in every room in the house, and draughts enough in the
unnecessary halls and passages to turn a windmill. There was, of
course, that queer mixture of shabbiness and luxury about the old place
and the mode of living that is characteristic of Virginia. Mrs. Temple
had piles and piles of linen sheets laid away with the leaves of damask
roses between them in the old cedar chests, but half the rooms and all
the stairs and passages were uncarpeted. It required the services of an
able-bodied negro to keep these floors polished--but polished they were,
like a looking-glass. The instrument used in this process was called a
"dry-rubbin' bresh" by the manipulators, and might well have been used
in Palestine during the days of Herod the tetrarch, being merely a block
of wood covered with a sheepskin, well matted with wax and turpentine.
At unearthly hours, in cold winter mornings and gray summer dawns, the
monotonous echo of this "bresh" going up and down the hall-floors was
the earliest sound in the Barn Elms house. There was a full service of
silver plate displayed upon a huge and rickety mahogany sideboard, but
there was a lack of teaspoons. Mrs. Temple had every day a dinner fit
for a king, but General Temple was invariably behindhand with his taxes.
The general's first purchase after the war was a pair of splendid
Kentucky horses to pull the old carriage bought when Mrs. Temple was a
bride, and which was so moth-eaten and worm-eaten and rust-eaten that
when it started out it was a wonder that it ever came back again. The
kitchen was a hundred yards from the house in one direction, and the
well, with its old-fashioned bucket and sweep, was a hundred yards off
in another direction. The ice-house and stables were completely out of
sight; while the negro houses, annually whitewashed a glaring white,
were rather too near. But none of these things annoyed General and Mrs.
Temple, who would have stared in gentle surprise at the hint that
anything at Barn Elms could be improved.
General Temple, six feet tall, as straight as an Indian, with a rich,
commanding voice and a lofty stride, stood for the shadow of domestic
authority; while Mrs. Temple, a gentle, affectionate, soft-spoken,
devoted, and obstinate woman, who barely reached to the general's elbow,
was the actual substance. From the day of their marriage he had never
questioned her decision upon any subject whatever, although an elaborate
fiction of marital authority was maintained between them and devoutly
believed in by both. Mrs. Temple always consulted the general
punctiliously--when she had made up her mind--and General Temple, after
a ponderous pretense of thinking it over, would say in his fine,
sonorous voice: "My dear Jane, the conviction of your extremely sound
judgment, formed from my experience of you during thirty years of
married life, inclines me to the opinion that your suggestion is
admirable. You have my permission, my love"--a permission Mrs. Temple
never failed to accept with wifely gratitude, and, like the general,
really thought it amounted to something. This status is extremely common
in Virginia, where, as a rule, the men have a magnificent but imaginary
empire, and the women conduct the serious business of life.
Brave, chivalrous, generous, loving God and revering woman, General
Temple was as near a monster of perfection as could be imagined, except
when he had the gout. Then he became transformed into a full-blown
demon. From the most optimistic form of Episcopal faith, he lapsed into
the darkest Calvinism as soon as he felt the first twinge of his malady,
and by the time he was a prisoner in the "charmber," as the bedroom of
the mistress of the family is called in Virginia, he believed that the
whole world was created to be damned. Never had General Temple been
known under the most violent provocation to use profane language; but
under the baleful influence of gout and superheated religion combined,
he always swore like a pirate. His womenkind, who quietly bullied him
during the best part of the year, found him a person to be feared when
he began to have doubts about freewill and election. To this an
exception must be made in favor of Mrs. Temple and of Delilah, the
household factotum, who was no more afraid of General Temple than Mrs.
Temple was. She it was who was mainly responsible for these carnivals
of gout by feeding the patient on fried oysters and plum-pudding when
Dr. Wortley prescribed gruel and tapioca. Delilah was one of the
unterrified, and used these spells to preach boldly at General Temple
the doctrines of the "Foot-washin' Baptisses," a large and influential
colored sect to which she belonged.
"Ole marse," Delilah would begin, argumentatively, "if you wuz ter jine
de Foot-washers--"
"Jane! Jane!" General Temple would shout.--"Come here, my love. If you
don't get rid of this infernal old fool, who wants absolutely to dragoon
me out of my religion, I'll be damned if I--God forgive me for
swearing--and you, my dear--"
Sometimes these theological discussions had been known to end by
Delilah's flying out of the room, with the general's boot-jack whizzing
after her. At Mrs. Temple's appearance, though, the emeute would be
instantly quelled. Delilah was also actively at war with Dr. Wortley, as
the black mammies and the doctors invariably were, and during the visits
of the doctor, who was a peppery little man, it was no infrequent thing
to hear his shrill falsetto, the general's loud basso, and Delilah's
emphatic treble all combined in an angry three-cornered discussion
carried on at the top of their lungs.
Like mistress, like maid. As Mrs. Temple ruled the general, Delilah
ruled Simon Peter, her husband, who since the war was butler, coachman,
gardener, and man-of-all-work at Barn Elms. Mrs. Temple, however, ruled
with circumlocution as well as circumspection, and had not words
sufficient to condemn women who attempt to govern their husbands. But
Delilah had no such scruples, and frequently treated Simon Peter to
remarks like these:
"Menfolks is mighty consequenchical. Dey strut 'bout, an' dey cusses an'
damns, an' de womenfolks do all de thinkin' an' de wukkin'. How long you
think ole marse keep dis heah plantation if it warn't fur mistis?"
"Look a heah, 'oman," Simon Peter would retaliate, when intolerably
goaded, "Paul de 'postle say--"
"What anybody keer fur Paul de 'postle? Womenfolks ain' got no use fur
dat ole bachelor. Men is cornvenient fur ter tote water, an' I ain' seen
nuttin' else much dey is good fur."
Simon Peter's entire absence of style partly accounted for the low
opinion of his abilities entertained by his better half. He was slouchy
and sheep-faced, and, when he appeared upon great occasions in one of
General Temple's cast-off coats, the tails dragged the ground, while
the sleeves had to be turned back nearly to the elbow. Delilah, on the
contrary, was as tall as a grenadier, and had an air of command second
only to General Temple himself and much more genuine. She was addicted
to loud, linsey-woolsey plaids, and on her head was an immaculately
white "handkercher" knotted into a turban that would have done credit
to the Osmanlis.
The war had given General Temple the opportunity of his lifetime. He
"tendered his sword to his State," as he expressed it, immediately
organized Temple's Brigade, and thereafter won a reputation as the
bravest and most incompetent commander of his day. His ideas of a
brigade commander were admirably suited to the middle ages. He would
have been great with Richard Coeur de Lion at the siege of Ascalon,
but of modern warfare the general was as innocent as a babe. It was
commonly reported that, the first time he led his brigade into action,
he did not find it again for three days. His men called him Pop, and
always cheered him vociferously, but pointedly declined to follow him
wherever he should lead, which was invariably where he oughtn't to have
been. He had innumerable horses shot under him, but, by a succession of
miracles, escaped wounds or capture. It was a serious mortification to
the general that he should have come out of the war with both arms and
both legs; and it was marvelous, considering that he put himself in
direct line of fire upon every possible occasion, and galloped furiously
about, waving his sword whenever he was in a particularly ticklish
place.
Since the war General Temple had found congenial employment in studying
the art of war as exemplified in books, and in writing a History of
Temple's Brigade. As he knew less about it than any man in it, his
undertaking was a considerable one, especially as he had to give a
personal sketch, with pedigree and anecdotes, of every member of the
brigade. He had started out to complete this great work in three
volumes, but it looked as if ten would be nearer the mark. As regards
the theory of war, General Temple soon became an expert, and knew by
heart every campaign of importance from those of Hannibal, the one-eyed
son of Hamilcar, down to Appomattox. A good deal of the money that would
have paid his taxes went into the general's military library, which
was a source of endless pride to him, and which caused the History of
Temple's Brigade to be, in some sort, a history of all wars, ancient
and modern.
The pride and satisfaction this literary work of his gave the general's
honest heart can not be described. He read passages of it aloud to Mrs.
Temple and Judith and Jacqueline in the solemn evenings in the old
country-house, his resonant voice echoing through the old-fashioned,
low-pitched drawing-room. Mrs. Temple listened sedately and admiringly,
and thanked Heaven for having given her this prodigy of valor and
learning. Nor, after hearing the History of Temple's Brigade all the
evening, was she wearied when, at two o'clock in the morning, General
Temple would have a wakeful period, and striding up and down the
bedroom floor, wrapped in a big blanket over his dressing-gown,
declaimed and dissected all the campaigns of the war, from Big Bethel to
Appomattox. Mrs. Temple, sitting up in bed, with the most placid air in
the world, would listen, and thank and admire and love more than ever
this hero, whom she had wrapped around her finger for the last thirty
years. O blessed ignorance--O happy blindness of women! which gracious
boon God has not withheld from any of the sex. But there was something
else that made General Temple's long-winded war stories so deeply,
tragically interesting to Mrs. Temple. There had been a son--the husband
of the handsome daughter-in-law--Mrs. Temple could not yet speak his
name without a sob in her voice. That was what she had given to the
great fight. When the news of his death came, General Temple, who had
never before dreamed of helping Mrs. Temple's stronger nature, had
ridden night and day to be with her at that supreme moment, knowing that
the blow would crush her if it did not kill her. She came out of the
furnace alive but unforgetting. She would not herself forget Beverley,
nor would she allow anybody else to forget him. She remembered his
anniversaries, she cherished his belongings; she, this tender,
excellent, self-sacrificing woman, sacrificed, as far as she could,
herself and everybody else to the memory of the dead and gone Beverley.
As fast as one crape band on the general's hat wore out, she herself,
with trembling hands, sewed another one on. As for herself, she would
have thought it sacrilege to have worn anything but the deepest black;
and Judith, after four years of widowhood, wore, whether willingly or
unwillingly, the severest widow's garb. Jacqueline alone had been
suffered, out of consideration for her youth and the general's pleading,
to put on colors. The girl, who was beautiful and simple, but quite
different from other girls, in her heart cherished a hatred against this
memory of the dead, that had made her youth so sad, so encompassed with
death. Jacqueline loved life and feared death; and whenever her mother
began to speak of Beverley, which she did a dozen times a day,
Jacqueline's shoulders would twitch impatiently. She longed to say:
"What is he to us? He is dead--and we live. Why can't he be allowed to
rest in peace, like other dead people?" Jacqueline was far from
heartless; she loved her sister-in-law twice as well as she had ever
loved her handsome silent brother, whose death made no gap in her life,
but had ruthlessly barred out all brightness from it. Jacqueline, in
her soul, longed for luxury and comfort. All the discrepancies and
deficiencies at Barn Elms were actually painful to her, although she had
been used to them all her life. She wanted a new piano instead of the
wheezy old machine in the drawing-room. She wanted a thousand things,
and, to make her dissatisfaction with Barn Elms more complete, not a
quarter of a mile away, across a short stretch of feathery pine-trees,
on a knoll, stood a really great house, Millenbeck by name. To
Jacqueline's inexperienced eyes, the large square brick house, with its
stone balustrade around the roof, its broad porch, with marble steps
that shone whitely through the trees around it, was quite palatial. And
nobody at all lived there. It was the family place of the Throckmortons.
The last Throckmorton in the county was dead and gone; but there was
another--grandson to the last--a certain Major George Throckmorton, who,
although Virginian born and bred, had remained in the regular army all
through the war, and was still in it. This George Throckmorton had spent
his boyhood at Millenbeck with his grandfather, who was evil tempered
and morose, and thoroughly wicked in every way. The old man had gone to
his account during the war, and since then his creditors had been
fighting over his assets, which consisted of Millenbeck alone. Major
Throckmorton had money, and it had been whispered about that, whenever
Millenbeck was sold, this army Throckmorton would buy it. But it was
freely predicted that he would never dare show his face in his native
county after his turpitude during the war in fighting against his State,
and he was commonly alluded to as a traitor. Nevertheless, at Severn
church, one Sunday, it was said that this Throckmorton had bought
Millenbeck, and would shortly make his appearance there.
General and Mrs. Temple, as they sat on opposite sides of the fireplace
at Barn Elms, discussing the matter with the profound gravity that the
advent of a new neighbor in the country requires, to say nothing of the
sensation of having a traitor at one's doors, came nearer disagreeing
than usual. The night was cool, although it was early in September, and
a little fire sparkled cheerfully upon the brass andirons on the hearth
in the low-pitched, comfortable, shabby drawing-room. Mrs. Temple,
clicking her knitting-needles placidly, with her soft eyes fixed on the
fire, went over the enormity of those to whom Beverley's death was due.
To her, the gentlest and at the same time the sternest of women, the war
took on a personal aspect that would have been ludicrous had it not been
pathetic. Ah! what was that boy that Beverley had left, what was Judith
the young widow, or even Jacqueline, to that lost son? Nothing, nothing!
Mrs. Temple, still gazing at the fire, saw in her mind, as she saw every
hour of the day and many of the night, the dead man lying stark and
cold; and, as if in answer to her thoughts, General Temple spoke, laying
down his volume of Jomini:
"My love, what will you do--ahem! what would you recommend me to do
regarding George Throckmorton when he arrives? Speak frankly, my dear,
and do not be timid about giving me your opinion."
A curious kind of resentment shone in Mrs. Temple's face.
"It is not for a woman to guide her husband; but _we_ at least can not
forget what the war has cost us."
General Temple sighed. He had heard that Throckmorton had got a year's
leave and would probably spend it at Millenbeck. How fascinating did the
prospect appear of a real military man with whom he could discuss plans
of campaign, and flank movements, and reconnaissances, and all the
_technique_ of war in which his soul delighted! For, although Dr.
Wortley had become a great military critic, as everybody was in those
days, he had never smelt powder, and was a very inferior antagonist for
a brigadier-general, who had been in sixteen pitched battles without
understanding the first thing about any of them.
Jacqueline, who sat in her own little chair, with her feet on a
footstool, and her elbows on her knees, began in an injured voice:
"And the house is going to be perfectly grand. Mrs. Sherrard told me
about it to-day. A whole parcel of people"--Jacqueline was a provincial,
although an amazingly pretty one--"a whole parcel of people came by the
boat--workmen and servants, and most splendid furniture, carpets, and
pictures, and cabinets, and all sorts of elegant things--just for those
two men--for there is a young man, too--Jack is his name."
"Yes," said Mrs. Temple, meditatively, as she still clicked her
knitting-needles together with a pleasant musical sound, "the boy must
be about twenty-two. George Throckmorton I well remember was married at
twenty-one to a pretty slip of a girl, so I've heard, who lived a very
little while. He can't be more than forty-four now. He is the last man I
ever supposed would ever turn traitor. He was the finest lad--I remember
him so well when he was a handsome black-eyed boy; and when we were
first married--don't you recollect, my dear?"
General Temple rose gallantly, and, taking Mrs. Temple's hand in his,
kissed it.
"Can you ask me, my love, if I remember anything connected with that
most interesting period of my life?" he asked.
Neither the handsome Judith nor little Jacqueline were at all
discomposed by this elderly love-making, to which they were perfectly
accustomed. A slight blush came into Mrs. Temple's refined, middle-aged
face. It was worth while to coddle a man, and take all the labor of
thinking and acting off his shoulders, for the sake of this delightful
sentiment. Like his courage, General Temple's sentiment was high-flown
but genuine.
"I was about to say," resumed Mrs. Temple, when the general had
returned to his chair, "that when I came to Barn Elms a bride, George
Throckmorton was much here. You did not notice him, my love, as I
did--but I felt sorry for the boy; old George Throckmorton certainly was
a most godless person. The boy's life would have been quite wretched, I
think, in spite of his grandfather's liberality to him, but for the few
people in the neighborhood like Kitty Sherrard and myself, who tried to
comfort him. He would come over in the morning and stay all day,
following me about the house and garden, trying to amuse Beverley, who
was a mere baby."
Mrs. Temple never spoke the name of her dead son without a strange
little pause before it.
"And, my dear," answered the general, making another feeble effort, "can
you not now embrace the scriptural injunction?"
"The Scripture says," responded sternly this otherwise gentle and
Christian soul, "that there is a time to love and a time to hate."
All this time, Judith, the young widow, had not said a word. She was
slight and girlish-looking. Her straight dark brows were drawn with a
single line, and in her eyes were gleams of mirth, of intelligence, of a
love of life and its pleasures, that habitual restraint could not wholly
subdue. When she rose, or when she sat down, or when she walked about,
or when she arched her white neck, there was a singular grace, of which
she was totally unconscious. Something about her suggested both love and
modesty. But Fate, that had used her as if she were a creature without a
soul, had married her to Beverley Temple--and within two months she was
a widow. The shock, the horror of it, the willingness to idealize the
dead man, had made her quietly assume the part of one who is done with
this world. And Nature struggles vainly with Fate. Judith, in her black
gown, and a widow's cap over her chestnut hair, with her pretty air of
wisdom and experience, fancied she had sounded the whole gamut of human
love, grief, loss, and joy. Neither Millenbeck, nor anything but
Beverley's child and his father and mother and sister, mattered anything
to her, she thought.
Jacqueline, however, looked rebellious, but said nothing. Like her
father, she was under the rule of this soft-voiced mother. But it
was certainly very hard, thought Jacqueline, bitterly, that with
Millenbeck beautifully fitted up, with a delightful young man like Jack
Throckmorton--for Jacqueline had already endowed him with all the graces
and virtues--and a not old man, a soldier too, should be right at their
doors, and she never to have a glimpse of Millenbeck, nor a chance for
walks and drives with them. Jacqueline sighed profoundly, and looked
despairingly at Judith, who was the stay, the prop, the comforter of
this undisciplined young creature.