Miracles usually happen in cycles. They unquestionably did in the Severn
neighborhood. Before the hurricane of talk over Throckmorton's arrival,
Jack's audacity, and Sweeney's brogue had fairly reached a crisis, a
letter came one day to General Temple, from his nephew, Temple Freke,
announcing his intention of paying a visit to his dear uncle and aunt at
Barn Elms.
General Temple handed the letter to Mrs. Temple with a sort of groan.
"This is he--I mean, my love, this is most discomposing."
At this Mrs. Temple shook her head in a manner expressing perfect
despair. The problem whether Throckmorton should be admitted within the
doors of Barn Elms was a mere nothing compared with this. Both of them
firmly believed in a personal devil; and Temple Freke, with his
extravagance, his vices, his unprincipled behavior, stood for Satan
himself. This Freke was very unlike the conservative, home-keeping type
of a gentleman that prevailed in Virginia. He was born and brought up
in Louisiana, and was fifteen years old when, by the death of his
father, General Temple became his guardian, and he was brought to Barn
Elms to lead the staid Beverley into all sorts of scrapes, and to
torment General Temple's honest soul almost to madness. The elder Freke,
perhaps, knowing the boy's disposition, had made General Temple's
guardianship to extend until Temple Freke's twenty-fifth birthday.
Of the horrors of that guardianship, nobody but the kind and
simple-hearted general could tell--of Freke's extravagance, of his
gambling and betting and drinking, and one frightful scene, when Freke,
with a loaded pistol in his hand, swore that, unless a certain debt of
honor was paid, he would kill himself on the spot; and General Temple,
who was not easily frightened, promptly paid it, with the conviction
that the young fellow was quite capable of carrying out the threat.
Immediately after this, General Temple shipped him off to Europe, but
apparently it made bad worse. For six whole years was General Temple
commanding, entreating, praying, and wheedling to get Freke back to
Virginia. It was true, he might have cut off supplies, but Freke made no
bones of saying that, if he couldn't get his own money, he would
contrive to get somebody else's; so the poor general, with groans and
moans, would cash Freke's drafts on him as long as money could be
screwed out of the Louisiana sugar plantations to do it with.
But, as Mrs. Temple often said, Freke was unquestionably a gentleman; he
was mild-mannered to a degree, and his very impertinences were brought
out with a diffidence that frequently hoodwinked General Temple. He was
not nearly so handsome as Beverley, being much shorter and sandy-haired,
in contrast with Beverley's blonde beauty; but Mrs. Temple always
felt in the old days, with a little pang of jealousy, that this
ordinary-looking boy, with his exquisite manners--not the least affected
or effeminate, but simply the perfection of personal bearing--could put
Beverley at a disadvantage. The two had little in common, and had never
met after their school-days, when General Temple, in the innocence of
his heart, had sent Freke abroad, to reform, until the very time of
Beverley's death. Freke, whose courage was as flawless in its way as
General Temple's, had come home during the war and enlisted in the
Southern army. A strange fate had placed him close to Beverley when he
was killed. He had held Beverley's dying hand, and to him were intrusted
the last messages to the mother and the young wife, who waited and
prayed at Barn Elms. Nothing on earth but this could have brought Mrs.
Temple to tolerate Freke at all, after the sensational career which
had begun with the pistol scene. Moreover, to increase the abnormal
conditions about this unregenerate being, as the Temples considered
him, he was perfectly irresistible. How it was, General Temple gloomily
declared, he didn't know, but Freke had the most extraordinary way of
insinuating himself into the good graces of both men and women--not
by any affectation of goodness, for there was a frankness about his
wickedness that was peculiarly appalling to General Temple. Freke was no
handsomer as a man than as a boy; he had been steadily making ducks and
drakes of his fortune since he was twenty-five; yet, somehow, Freke
always seemed to have a plenty of friends, solely by the charm of his
personality. The most serious escapade that had come to General Temple's
knowledge since Freke was of age was his running away with a Cuban girl
in New Orleans, and afterward getting a divorce by some hocus-pocus, and
thereafter, with serene confidence, he bore himself as an unmarried man.
Now, divorce was practically unknown in that old part of Virginia, and
the Temples regarded it as in the category with murder and arson; so
that this final iniquity of Freke's would have quite put him beyond the
pale, but for those hours he spent kneeling on the ground with the dying
Beverley.
General Temple had a sort of Arab hospitality that would not have
begrudged itself to the Evil One himself, and to tell Freke that he was
not welcome under the roof of Barn Elms, where his grandfather and his
grandfather's father had lived, was an enormity of which he was not
capable. And Mrs. Temple was no manner of use to him in the case. In
vain he tried to shuffle the decision off on her. Mrs. Temple would
not accept it. Like the general, she sighed and groaned, and turned it
over in her mind; but always came back that picture of Beverley lying
bleeding and dying, and Freke risking his life to stay by him. So at
last, after a week of mutual misery, one night, in the privacy of the
"charmber," Mrs. Temple, watching the general stalking up and down
during one of his fits of midnight restlessness, said, tremulously:
"My love, we must let Freke come. We can not refuse it--for--for
Beverley's sake."
So the next morning a letter was dispatched to Freke, written by General
Temple with considerably less cordiality than usual, and very feeble
rhetorically, expressing the pleasure his uncle and aunt felt at the
prospect of a visit from their nephew.
The next day, as soon as the direful news of his coming was made known
to Jacqueline, she rushed off, as she always did, to give Judith the
startling information.
Judith heard it with a strange feeling of repulsion, which she at first
imagined was that infinite disapproval she felt for Freke; but, if he
came, all of that terrible story about Beverley would have to be told
over. Judith had not yet come to a clear understanding of herself, but
she had begun to shrink from that dwelling on Beverley which seemed to
give Mrs. Temple such exquisite comfort.
"Everything that looked at Freke fell in love with him," announced
Jacqueline. "Of course, he is as handsome as a dream--something like Mr.
Morford, I dare say."
There were two or three faded photographs of him at Barn Elms, and none
of them gave the idea of great beauty; but photographs in those days
were not very artistic reproductions.
Judith laughed a little uneasily.
"I wish he wern't coming, Jacky," she said. "He is too--too startling a
person for quiet people like ourselves. There is one comfort, though: he
will soon get tired of us."
Within a week or two came a very well-expressed letter from Freke,
thanking his uncle and aunt for their hospitable invitation, and saying
that on a certain day he would land from the river steamer at Oak Point.
Jacqueline was immensely taken with the letter, which was written on
paper the like of which she had never seen before, and was sealed with a
crest.
Two immense trunks arrived in advance of the expected visitor. Mrs.
Sherrard happened to be at Barn Elms when the luggage appeared. Mrs.
Temple's face expressed her misery.
"Jane, you have my sympathy. A more unmitigated scamp than Freke doesn't
live," was Mrs. Sherrard's remark.
"Kitty," feebly protested Mrs. Temple, "he is my husband's nephew."
"The more's the pity."
As a rule, the reputation of incalculable wickedness hurts nobody, in
the opinion of the very young. The more Mrs. Temple preached and warned,
holding on to that one saving clause, Freke's devotion to Beverley in
his dying hours, the more attractive he seemed to Jacqueline. At last
one afternoon, when the carriage returned from Oak Point Landing with
the much-talked-of Freke, Jacqueline, who had been curling her hair and
prinking all day for the visitor, came down into the drawing-room, and
the expression of acute disappointment on her face said loudly:
"Is this all?"
For Freke was neither surpassingly handsome nor any of the superlative
things Jacqueline had fondly imagined him to be. He was not even as
handsome as Throckmorton, and Jacqueline thought him no beauty. Freke
was under middle height, and his hair was as sandy as of old, and not
too abundant. His features were ordinary; and Jacqueline, not being a
physiognomist, did not take in the piercing expression, the firmness and
intelligence that redeemed them from commonplaceness. He did look
unmistakably the gentleman, Jacqueline grudgingly admitted. _This_ the
adorable, the irresistible, the--But Jacqueline was too disgusted to
continue.
Freke, who read Jacqueline like an open book, and suspected the advance
impression she had received, could hardly keep from laughing out aloud
at the girl's air and manner. He talked a little to her, somewhat more
to Judith, but chiefly to Mrs. Temple.
It was late in the afternoon when he had arrived, and tea was soon
announced. Directly it was over, Mrs. Temple marshaled a solemn
procession into "the charmber" to hear Freke's description of Beverley's
last hours. She went first with Judith, followed by Freke and General
Temple. Mrs. Temple had tried to get Jacqueline to come, too, but
Jacqueline, who had a horror of weeping and tragedies, begged off; and
Mrs. Temple, who really attached but little importance to the girl at
any time, did not press the point. The door of the room remained closed
for two hours. Jacqueline, who had got tired of Delilah's company and
the cat's, went up-stairs early, but not to bed. She waited until she
heard Judith's door open, and then went and knocked timidly at the door.
"Come in," said Judith, in an unfamiliar voice. Judith was sitting
before her dressing-table, and had already begun to unbraid her long,
rich hair. But her eyes were fixed with a hard, staring gaze on her own
image in the glass. The mother had wept at Freke's recital; the widow
had remained pale, tearless, and turning over in her troubled mind the
immaturity, the transitoriness of that first girlish love-affair that
had resulted, as so few first loves do, in a sudden marriage--a quick
widowhood. And she had a terrifying sense that she had betrayed herself
to Freke. There was one particular point in the narrative, when he
described how the dead man had got his death-wound. Beverley had run
across a small body of Federal cavalrymen, himself with only an advance
guard, and, _a la_ General Temple, had immediately dashed at them, as if
a cavalry scrimmage would affect one iota the great fight that was
impending the next day. Beverley himself had engaged in a hand-to-hand
tussle with a Federal officer--both of them had rolled off their horses,
and the struggle between them was more like Indian warfare than
civilized warfare--and Freke described, with cruel particularity, how
the two men fought in the underbrush, and crushed the wild rose and
hawthorn bushes, each one trying vainly to draw his pistol--and at last
a shot rang out, and Beverley turned over on his face with a wild shriek
and a death-wound. The Federal officer had got his arm entangled in his
bridle-reins, and Freke thought every moment the excited horse would
trample the wounded man to death; and then, a squad of Confederates
coming up, the Federals had made off, the officer mounting his horse and
getting out of the way with nothing worse than a few bruises. All the
time he was telling this he was eying Judith, who did not shed a single
tear. Mrs. Temple wept torrents, and even so did General Temple. For
poor Judith, whose reading of Freke was not less keen than his reading
of her, it was misery enough to feel that, after all, her widowhood was
not very real, and that the mourning, the entire giving up of the world,
the devotion to Beverley's parents, was, in some sort, a reparation; but
that it should escape her--for Judith with the eagerness to make amends,
of a generous nature, had readily adopted Mrs. Temple's view--that it
was a crime not to mourn for Beverley.
Jacqueline slipped down on her knees beside Judith, and, nodding her
head, gravely said:
"Mamma didn't get _me_ into the room. Ah, Judy, dear, why won't they let
us forget him--"
"Jacqueline!" cried Judith, turning a pale, shocked face on her.
"I say," persisted Jacqueline, who had one of her sudden fits of
courage, "why do they trouble us to remember him? I hardly knew him; he
was always off at college, and then in the war; why won't they let us
mourn decently for him? And then--and then--everybody wants to forget
griefs. I do."
Judith rose and shook her off impatiently. "I wish Temple Freke had
never come here," she said.
"I do, too," answered Jacqueline, getting up. "I am afraid of him. O
Judith, what two poor creatures are we!"
"I know I am," suddenly cried Judith, breaking into a storm of tears. "I
know there is no peace for me anywhere!--" Judith stopped as suddenly as
she had begun. How could she put it in words, the ghastliness of this
perpetual reminder of that which in her heart she longed to forget--this
feeling that had been growing on her for so long, that she ought to feel
more remorse for marrying Beverley Temple than grief at losing him--that
all this solemn mourning for him was like those state funerals, where
there is a great service, a catafalque, a coffin, mourners--everything
except a corpse? And to her candid soul how wicked, heartless, and
unnatural it seemed! Jacqueline's eyes, so full of meaning and fixed on
her, troubled her. She got up after a minute and walked over to the
window. The red glow of the fire and the dim candle-light did not
prevent her from seeing clearly into the moonlight night. She drew the
old-fashioned white curtains apart and looked out. The somber trees
loomed large and black, but up on the hill, a quarter of a mile away,
the light from Millenbeck gleamed cheerfully. From two windows on the
lower floor and two on the upper, as well as the great fan- and
side-lights of the hall-door, a ruddy glare streamed steadily. Presently
Jacqueline came and stood by Judith, timidly.
"Do you know," she said, "it seems queer that three strangers should
come into our lonely lives--in this quiet life here? And the one I
like--the one I like best--is Jack Throckmorton. I can't talk to the
others."
Judith, who had got back a little of her composure, smiled at this.
"You talked away fast enough with Major Throckmorton."
"Oh, yes, but I didn't feel at home with him. Jack and I understand each
other. I know what he means when he talks to me. I don't always
understand Major Throckmorton. Judith, is my cousin Freke a very wicked
man?"
"So people say," replied Judith in a subdued voice, which had not
altogether overcome its agitation.
"He isn't handsome enough to be very--very attractive," said Jacqueline
after a pause.
But the rule of contrary seemed to suddenly prevail at Barn Elms then.
Within a week everybody in the house had succumbed more or less to
Freke's charm. General Temple found him invaluable in the preparation of
the History of Temple's Brigade; and Freke, who had a store of military
knowledge among his great fund of general information, easily persuaded
the general that he was a military historian of the first order. When
the general began his evening harangues, Freke always had an example pat
of a certain occasion when Prince Eugene, or the Duke of Marlborough, or
some equally distinguished leader had successfully pursued General
Temple's tactics. All this General Temple laboriously transcribed in his
manuscript. Judith, who very much doubted whether Freke were not making
it up as he went along, had her suspicions confirmed when Freke would
occasionally turn his expressive face on her and actually wink with
appreciation of the general's simplicity. Judith was indignant, but she
could not help laughing at Freke's genuine humor. Mrs. Temple showed her
regard for the returned prodigal by taking him into the "charmber" one
day and reasoning in a motherly way upon Freke's duty to return to his
wife. Judith was astounded after a while to hear Mrs. Temple's gentle
but intense laughter making itself heard outside the room. Freke, with
the most good-natured manner in the world, sitting in the rush-bottomed
chair, with one foot over his knee, began to tell Mrs. Temple some of
his marital experiences with his Julia. Mrs. Temple at first put on her
severest frown and fairly groaned aloud at his declaration that he
didn't know whether he was married or not in Virginia, as his divorce
was got in one of the Northwestern States; but, divorce or no divorce,
he wouldn't tempt Fate again in another matrimonial venture even with a
creature as beautiful as Helen, as wise as Portia, and with a million in
her own right. Then he began to tell of the adventures between Julia and
himself which had led to their separation, winding up with a description
of their final scene, when Julia threw a dish at him and he in turn
threw a bucket of ice-water over Julia. Before this, though, Mrs.
Temple's laughter had been heard. Freke issued from the room the picture
of innocence, and at peace with himself and all the world. Mrs. Temple,
on the contrary, was an image of guilt. Never had she before in her life
been beguiled from a moral lecture into unseemly laughter--and laughter
on such a subject! Mrs. Temple's conscience rose up and fought her, and
she began to think that all her moral foundation was tottering.
Surprises were the order of the day. One night, just after family
prayers, when the gout, and the doubt whether anybody at all was to be
saved, had caused General Temple to make a more pessimistic, vociferous,
and grewsome prayer than usual, in which he called the Deity to account
for so grievously afflicting the Temple family, Freke, whom Judith had
caught smiling in the midst of General Temple's most telling periods,
quietly announced that he had that day bought Wareham, a place within
two miles of Barn Elms.
It was not much of a place, being at most about three hundred acres,
with a small, untenanted house on it--and property went for a song,
anyhow, in that part of the world--but, nevertheless, the news was
paralyzing to General and Mrs. Temple. Judith, who was developing a
certain dislike and distrust of Freke that grew daily, could hardly
forbear laughing at the mute horror of General and Mrs. Temple over this
unlooked-for news. Freke went on to say that a very little would make
the place habitable for him, and he liked the fishing and shooting to be
had--especially the shooting, as the birds had had four years' rest
during the war. Then he said good-night pleasantly, and went off to bed.
"This is the dev--I mean this is most unfortunate, my love," remarked
General Temple, dismally, to Mrs. Temple, at two o'clock in the morning
following this, as he paraded up and down the "charmber," declaiming
against Freke's iniquities.
Next day, Mrs. Sherrard came over, and the direful news was communicated
to her by Mrs. Temple, with a very long face. Mrs. Sherrard's eyes
danced.
"Now you'll know what it is to have a nephew that one would like to be
entirely unlike what he is. That's my trouble with Edmund Morford. You
know, I hate a humbug--and Edmund is a good soul, but a dreadful
humbug."
"Katharine!" exclaimed Mrs. Temple. "A minister of the gospel--"
"Go along, Jane Temple! You have no eyes in your head where ministers of
the gospel are concerned. Edmund is perfectly harmless--that's one
comfort."
"I wish I could say the same of Temple Freke," Mrs. Temple rejoined,
dolefully.
It would be a week or two yet before Freke could take possession of
Wareham. Some beds and tables and sheets and towels had to be procured,
and meanwhile he stayed on at Barn Elms. It would not have taken a very
astute person to see what the charm was. It was Judith.
When the knowledge first came to these two people--to Judith, that
Freke's eyes followed her continually; that, as if by some power beyond
his will, his chair was always next hers, his ear always alert to catch
her lightest word--to Freke, that this young country-woman, with her
spirited, expressive face, her untutored singing--for music was one of
his weak points, or strong ones, as the case might be--her gentle
sarcasm when he essayed a little sentiment, pretty and tender enough to
please a woman who knew twice as much as she; that at first sight,
without an effort, she had conquered his bold spirit--it is hard to say
which was the most vexed and disgusted. Judith found it easy enough to
play the inconsolable widow where a man who aroused a positive
antagonism like Freke was concerned, and denounced him in her own mind
as a wretch for daring to fall in love with her. And Freke--after New
York women and Creole women, French, Spanish, Russian, English, and
Italian women--to have been loved and petted, and virtually made free of
women's hearts; that this unsophisticated Virginia girl, who had never
seen six men in her life, should simply take him off his feet, and that,
without knowing it--was simply infuriating. In the privacy of his
bedroom, as he smoked his last cigar before turning in, he swore at
himself with a self-deprecation that was thoroughly genuine. What did he
want to marry again for, anyway? Hadn't he had all he wanted of that
pastime? And, of course, being a divorced man, Judith would see him
chopped into little pieces before she would marry him--and then the
staggering thought that, even if he were not divorced, the odds were
against her marrying him at all--it was altogether maddening. But he did
not lose his head completely. Judith's indifference--nay, dislike--saved
to him his discretion. But had she warmed to him for one little
moment--Freke, in thinking over this sweet impossibility, lay back in
his chair and watched the smoke curling upward, and was lost in a
delicious reverie--when suddenly, the utter preposterousness of it came
to him, and he threw the cigar into the fire with a savage energy that
nearly wrenched his arm off. No, the little devil--for he was not choice
of epithets in regard to this woman--would throw him away with as
little conscience and remorse as he threw that cigar away! Like all men
of many love-affairs, he regarded love-making as an aesthetic amusement;
and while it was absolutely necessary for its perfection that the woman
should be desperately in earnest--for Freke did not mind a tragic tinge
being given to the matter--it was nonsense for a man to permit himself
to be drawn into heroics--and yet--but for the indifference of this
girl, who was always half laughing at him--he would not answer for any
folly he might commit.
Then there was Jacqueline. She exactly suited him as a victim to his
charms, sardonically expressing it to himself. She, too, was not
particularly impressed with him as yet, but that was due to her
ignorance. He could easily enlighten her, and she would be led like a
slave by him; he could make her believe anything. So, in default of
Judith, he might as well amuse himself with Jacqueline; and, by
resolutely concealing his gigantic folly, he would in the end overcome
it. But he felt like a man who, having a head to stand champagne and
brandy and absinthe and every other intoxication, comes across something
that looks as harmless as water, but which sets his brain on fire and
makes him a madman.
The general and Mrs. Temple saw nothing; a man might have made love to
Judith and have run away with her under their very noses before they
would have realized that it was possible for any man to dare falling in
love with Beverley's widow; and if Jacqueline's eyes saw anything, she
kept it wisely to herself.
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 that in 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 he took 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.
_Young_ Mr. 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 critters _I_
ever 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 won her 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.