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 air from 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 charm of 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's good 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 keptup 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 Temple at 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, Caesar, 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 all these 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 superiority to 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 remembered Dr.
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-room at 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 reputation as 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 odd widow'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.
"_You_ are 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, taking her 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 week or 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 a Virginia 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 disquisition respecting
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 a _porte-cochere_,
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
stairway wax-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 better
look 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.
Judith's blush lasted until she reached the drawing-room, and made her
not less handsome. There the gentlemen were being dazzled by still
further splendors. This room, which was large and of stately
proportions, was really handsome. Throckmorton, who cared nothing for
luxury, and whose personal habits were simplicity itself, was yet too
broad-minded to impress his own tastes upon anybody else. Since most
people liked luxury, he had his house made luxurious; and his own room
was the only plain one in it. Jack's was a perfect bower, "more fit," as
Throckmorton remarked with good-natured sarcasm, "for a young lady's
boudoir than a bunk for a hulking youngster." In the same way
Throckmorton managed to dress like a gentleman on what Jack spent on
hats and canes and cravats; but nobody ever knew whether Throckmorton's
clothes were new or old. His personality eclipsed all his belongings.
Jacqueline was completely subdued by the luxury around her. No human
soul ever loved these pleasant things of life better than she loved
them. Comfort and beauty and luxury were as the breath of life to her.
She had hungered and thirsted for them ever since she could remember.
Going down the stairs she caught Judith's hand, with a quick, childish
grasp. The lights, the glitter, almost took her breath away; and when
she saw a great mound of roses on the drawing-room table, got from
Norfolk by the phenomenal Sweeney, she almost screamed with delight.
"God bless my soul, this is pleasant!" remarked Dr. Wortley, rubbing his
hands cheerfully before the drawing-room fire, where the gentlemen,
including Morford and Freke, were assembled. "Here we are all met again,
under Millenbeck's roof, as we were before the war. Let by-gones be
by-gones, say I, about the war."
"Amen," answered Mrs. Temple, after a little pause, piously and sweetly.
Sweeney, who could make quite a dashing figure as a waiter, now
appeared, dressed in faultless evening costume of much newer fashion
than Throckmorton's, and announced dinner. Throckmorton, with his most
graceful air--for he was on his mettle in his own house, and with those
charming, unsophisticated women--gave his arm to Mrs. Temple; the
general, with a grand flourish, did the same to Mrs. Sherrard; Judith
had the doctor of divinity on one hand and the doctor of medicine on the
other and Jacqueline brought up the rear with Jack Throckmorton and
Temple Freke. Judith, when she saw this arrangement, comforted herself
with the reflection that, if anybody could counteract Freke's influence
over Jacqueline, it was Jack Throckmorton, whom Jacqueline candidly
acknowledged was infinitely more attractive to her than the master of
Millenbeck.
But Jacqueline needed no counteraction. Freke, who read her perfectly,
was secretly amused, and annoyed as well, when he saw that Jacqueline
was every moment more carried away by Throckmorton's wax-candles and
carved chairs and embroidered screens and onyx tables, and glass and
plate. He felt not one thrill of the jealousy of Throckmorton, where
Jacqueline was concerned, that Throckmorton sometimes felt for him,
because he was infinitely more astute in the knowledge of human and
especially feminine weaknesses and follies; and he saw that the chairs
and tables at Millenbeck were much more fascinating to Jacqueline than
Throckmorton with his matured grace, his manly dignity. Freke, too,
having long since worn out his emotions, except that slight lapse as
regarded Judith, for whom he always _felt_ something--admiration, or
pity, or a desire to be revenged--had an acute judgment of women which
was quite unbiased by the way any particular woman treated or felt
toward him. Judith, although she hated him, and he frankly admitted she
had cause to, he ranked infinitely above Jacqueline. He had seen, long
before, that Jacqueline, if she ever seriously tried, could draw
Throckmorton by a thread, and it gave Freke a certain contempt for
Throckmorton's taste and perception. Any man who could prefer Jacqueline
to Judith was, in Freke's esteem, wanting in taste; for, after all, he
considered these things more as matters of taste than anything else.
The dinner was very merry. When the general had told his fifth
long-winded story of his adventures and hair-breadth escapes during the
war, Mrs. Temple, with a glance, shut him up. Freke was in his element
at a dinner-table, and told some ridiculous stories about the straits to
which he had been reduced during his seven years' absence in
Europe--"when," as he explained "my laudable desire to acquire knowledge
and virtue threatened to be balked at every moment by my uncle getting
me home. However, I managed to stay." He told with much gravity how he
had been occasionally reduced to his fiddle for means of raising the
wind, and had figured in concert programmes as Signor Tempolino, at
which stories all shouted with laughter except Mrs. Temple and the
general--Mrs. Temple sighing, and the general scowling prodigiously.
Edmund Morford, who was afraid that laughing was injurious to his
dignity, tried not to smile, but Freke was too comical for him.
Amid all the laughter and jollity and good-cheer, Jacqueline sat,
glancing shyly up at Throckmorton once in a while with a look that
Nature had endowed her with, and which, had she but known it, was a full
equivalent to a fortune. She had never, in all her simple provincial
life, seen anything like this--endless forks and spoons at the table;
queer ways of serving queerer things; an easy-cushioned chair to sit in;
no darns or patches in the damask; and the aroma of wealth, an easy
income everywhere. The desire to own all this suddenly took possession
of her. At the moment this dawned upon her mind, she actually started,
and, opening her fan in a flutter, she knocked over a wine-glass, which
Jack deftly replaced without stopping in his conversation. Then she
began to study Throckmorton under her eyelashes. He was not so old,
after all, and did not have the gout, like her father. And then she
caught his kind eyes fixed on her, and flashed him back a look that
thrilled him. Jack was talking to her, but she managed to convey subtly
to Throckmorton that she was not listening to Jack, which pleased the
major very much, who had heretofore found Jack a dangerous rival in all
his looks and words with Jacqueline.
Freke, telling his funny stories, did not for one moment pretermit his
study of the little comedy before him--Jacqueline and Throckmorton and
Judith. It was as plain as print to him. Judith, in her black gown,
which opened at the throat and showed the white pillar of her neck, and
with half-sleeves that revealed the milky whiteness of her slender arms,
sat midway the table, just opposite Jacqueline. Usually Judith's color
was as delicate as a wild rose, but to-night it was a carnation flush.
"Is Throckmorton a fool?" thought Freke, in the midst of an interval
given over to laughter at some of his stories, which were as short and
pithy as General Temple's were sapless and long drawn out; for
Throckmorton, who did nothing by halves, and was constitutionally
averse to dawdling, returned Jacqueline's glances with compound
interest. Before they left the table, two persons had seen the promising
beginning of the affair, and only two, none of the others having a
suspicion. These two were Freke and Judith.
The knowledge came quickly to Judith. Women can live ages of agony in a
moment over these things. Judith, smiling, graceful, waving her large
black fan sedately to and fro, by all odds the handsomest as well as the
most gifted woman there, felt something tearing at her heart-strings,
that she could have screamed aloud with pain. But even Freke, who saw
everything nearly, did not see that; he only surmised it. It was nearly
ten o'clock before they went back into the drawing-room. Throckmorton
gave nobody occasion to say that he devoted himself particularly to any
of the four women who were his guests; but his look, his talk, his
manner to Jacqueline underwent a subtile change; and when he sat and
talked to Judith he thought what a sweet sister she would make, and
blessed her for her tenderness to Jacqueline. Judith's color had been
gradually fading from the moment she caught Throckmorton's glance at
Jacqueline. She was now quite pale, and less animated, less interesting,
than Throckmorton ever remembered to have seen her. At something he said
to her, she gave an answer so wide of the mark that she felt ashamed
and apologized.
"I was thinking of my child at that moment and wondering if he were
asleep," she said.
From the moment of that first meaning glance of Throckmorton's at
Jacqueline, the evening had spun out interminably to Judith. Mrs. Temple
noticed it with secret approval, as a sign of loyalty to her widowhood.
At eleven o'clock a move was made to go, when Throckmorton suddenly
remembered that he had not showed them his modest conservatory, which
appeared quite imposing to their provincial eyes. He took Judith into
the little glass room opening off the hall. It was very hot, very damp,
and very close, as such places usually are, and full of a faint, sickly
perfume. Freke followed them in. At last he had got his chance. He began
to talk in his easy, unconstrained way, and in a minute or two had got
the conversation around to something they had been speaking of the night
of the party at Turkey Thicket.
"You were saying," said Freke, "something about a bad quarter of an hour
you had with that old sorrel horse of yours--"
"Well, I should say it was a bad quarter of an hour," answered
Throckmorton. "To be ridden down and knocked off my horse was bad
enough, with that strapping fellow pinioning my arms to my side so I
couldn't draw my pistol; and old Tartar, perfectly mad with fright--the
only time I ever knew him to be so demoralized--tearing at the reins
that wouldn't break and that I couldn't loose my arm from, and every
time I looked up I saw his fore-feet in the air ready to come down on
me--"
"And what sort of a looking fellow was it you say that rode you down?"
"A tall, blonde fellow--an officer evidently.--Good God! Mrs. Beverley,
what is the matter?" For the color had dropped out of Judith's face as
the mercury drops out of the tube, and she was gazing with wide, wild
eyes at Throckmorton. How often had she heard that grewsome story--even
that the plunging horse was a sorrel! But at least Freke should not see
her break down. She heard herself saying, in a strange, unnatural voice:
"Nothing. I think it is too warm for me in here." Throckmorton took her
by the arm and led her back into the hall, and to a small window which
he opened. He felt like a brute for mentioning anything connected with
the war--of course it must be intensely painful to Judith--but she
stopped his earnest apologies with a word.
"Don't blame yourself--pray, don't. It was very warm--and Freke--oh, how
I hate him!"
Throckmorton had been afraid she was going to faint, but the energy with
which she brought out her last remark convinced him there was no
danger. It brought the blood surging back to her face in a torrent.
Nobody else had known anything of the little scene in the conservatory;
and then Throckmorton had to show Jacqueline over it, and Judith caught
sight of him, standing in one of his easy and graceful attitudes,
leaning over Jacqueline in expressive pantomime; and then came the
general's big, musical voice: "My love, it is now past eleven o'clock;
we must not trespass on Throckmorton's hospitality." Throckmorton felt
at that moment as if the evening had just begun; while to Judith it
seemed as if there was a stretch of years of pain between the dawn and
the midnight of that day--a pain secret but consuming.
There was the bustle of departure, during which Judith managed to say to
Freke:
"You have had your revenge--perfect but complete."
"That's for calling me a liar," was Freke's reply. It was, moreover, for
something that Judith had made him suffer--absurd as it was that any
woman could make Temple Freke suffer. But, after what he had seen that
night, he reflected that it was perhaps a work of supererogation to
build a barrier between Judith and Throckmorton. The major had other
views.
Throckmorton handed the ladies into the carriage; and, in spite of the
light from the open hall-door, and _not_ from the carriage-lamps--for
the Barn Elms carriage had long parted with its lamps--he pressed a
light kiss on Jacqueline's hand, under General and Mrs. Temple's very
eyes, without their seeing it. Judith, however, saw it, and was thankful
that it was dark, so that the pallid change, which she knew came over
her, was not visible.
Throckmorton went back into the house, shut himself up in his own den,
and smoked savagely for an hour. Yes, it was all up with him, he
ruefully acknowledged.